Podcast appearances and mentions of tim what

TranscriptCorey: This episode is sponsored in part by LaunchDarkly. Take a look at what it takes to get your code into production. I'm going to just guess that it's awful because it's always awful. No one loves their deployment process. What if launching new features didn't require you to do a full-on code and possibly infrastructure deploy? What if you could test on a small subset of users and then roll it back immediately if results aren't what you expect? LaunchDarkly does exactly this. To learn more, visit launchdarkly.com and tell them Corey sent you, and watch for the wince.Jesse: Hello, and welcome to AWS Morning Brief: Fridays From the Field. I'm Jesse DeRose.Amy: I'm Amy Negrette.Tim: I'm Tim Banks.Jesse: This is the podcast within a podcast where we talk about all the ways that we've seen AWS used and abused in the wild, with a healthy dose of complaining about AWS for good measure. Today on the show, we are going to be talking about AWS re:Invent. Now, I know that most of you know what re:Invent is, but I just would love to set the playing field level for everybody really quick. Amy, Tim, what is AWS re:Invent.Tim: AWS re:Invent is AWS's week-long corporate conference. It's not really a user conference; it's certainly not, like, a community conference, but it's a week-long sales pitch in the desert. It's like the worst version of a corporate Burning Man you could ever imagine because they even have a concert.Jesse: It is in Las Vegas. Now, I personally have mixed feelings about going to Las Vegas in general, but this adds so much to the conference in general because it's not just in a single conference venue that's centrally located near the hotels. Is it is across the strip—Amy: It's the entire strip.Jesse: It's the entire strip. So—Amy: They block every hotel and they buy every piece of ad space.Jesse: Yes. There is no escaping AWS re:Invent for the entire week that you're there. And sometimes that's a good thing because you do want to be involved in what's going on, but other times, it is a lot.Tim: So, I'm trying to figure out which LP that ‘buy the entire Las Vegas trip' covers because it's certainly not be frugal.Amy: No. [laugh].Jesse: No, not at all. But we do have new information. We decided to do this episode specifically because new information was just released about re:Invent for this year. Amy, what is that information? What do we know?Amy: They've decided, in having to go virtual last year, due to some kind of horrible global crisis, to return in person to the world's most densely packed tourist spot, Las Vegas, and host this huge event from November 29th to December 3rd—that's right after Thanksgiving—and just, what do they say? Return to normal. Return to normal.Tim: That way everybody can get exposed to COVID before they go home for the holidays.Jesse: [laugh].well, you at least get one holiday in, if you celebrate or recognize Thanksgiving, and then you get to bring everything back after that.Amy: Yeah, people bring enough things back from Vegas. I'm not sure we'd have to find more reasons. [laugh].Tim: [laugh].Jesse: I know that there's that great marketing tactic of, “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas,” but—Tim: That's not what they say at the clinic.Jesse: Nope. Mm-mm. Now, I will say, I know that almost every conference event was completely virtual last year due to the pandemic, and this year, a lot of conferences are still trying to straddle that line between what's acceptable, can we do maybe smaller events in person, some kind of a hybrid online/in-person thing. I have mixed feelings on this. I appreciate that I can still attend AWS re:Invent from home this year digitally, I can still watch a lot of the main keynote events and a lot of the other information that is being shared, but I don't know, it's always hard because if you do a hybrid event, you're automatically going to miss out on any of that in-person socializing and networking.Tim: Well. So, I think it's interesting. AWS re:Invent suffers from the same issue that pretty much all other conferences suffer from is that there's not really value-add in the talks, at least for attending.Jesse: Yeah.Amy: If you're going to be able to see those talks afterwards if the announcements are going to be publicized afterwards which, that is true in both cases, then what's the point of spending the money, and the time, and the possible exposure to go watch them in person? So, then the other thing is, “Well, we want to go for some of the training seminars,” or some of these other things. Well, those are also offered online, often. Or, like, copies of them online. These are the same kinds of tutorials like that that you can have your TAM or SA run if you're an AWS customer currently; that's what they're doing there.The other thing is, too, those in-person sessions get filled up so quickly that there's no guarantee [unintelligible 00:05:08] anyways. And that's one of the complaints they've had about re:Invent in the past is that you can't get into any of the sessions. And so, you couple all that along with most of the reason going being—if it's not the talks and is not the sessions, it's the hallway track. And then you got to kind of wonder, is the hallway track going to be valuable this year because if it's hybrid, what percent of the people that you would normally talk to you are going to be there and what percentage aren't? And so there's a lot of calculus that's got to go into it this year.Jesse: I've always struggled with any vendor-sponsored event, all the talks feel either like a sales pitch, or they feel like a use case that just doesn't fit for me. And that may just be where I'm at in my professional journey; there's definitely reasons to go if you want to see some of these talks or see some of this information live, or be the first person to talk about it. Or even the people who are going to be the news sources for everybody else who want to be the first person to talk about, “Oh, we attended, and we saw these things and were live-tweeting the entire conference.” If that's your shtick, I fully support that, but I always struggle going to any kind of vendor conference because I just feel like the value that I get from the talks, from training if I go to training, just doesn't feel like enough for me, personally.Amy: So, I've done some of the AWS-led training when Summit was in Chicago, a couple years ago, and I'll be honest, you lose a lot in these large AWS-led trainings because these classes, it's not going to be like the ones that you would sign up for even being hosted either by your company or by your local user group chapter where you will have at max 100 people. You have well over that. You have an entire conference room full of people, and they're asking questions that are across the level of expertise for that topic. I went for one of the certification training seminars and straight-up 15 minutes was spent talking about what a region is. And given that's page one of any training material, that was a waste of $300.Jesse: Yeah.Tim: I think you run into the problem because it is, in fact, I mean, let's be honest, it's a multi-day sales pitch. It's not a user conference, it's not user-generated content. It's cherry-picked by the powers-that-be at AWS, the service groups. Is a big push for account executives to encourage high-level or high-spend accounts to participate in those so they get logo recognition. And so that becomes more of the issue than the actual cool user stories.And that's fine if you're using it literally just a sales conference because it's very compelling sales material, your account executive will go there and try and close deals, or close bigger deals, or sign EDPs or something like that, but from an engineering standpoint, from a technical standpoint, it's remarkably uncompelling.Jesse: Yeah, I think that's one other thing to call out, which is, there is definitely this networking opportunity that we talked about from a hallway track perspective, but there's also a networking and business opportunity to meet with your account manager, or your TAM, or your SA in person and have conversations about whatever things you want to talk about; about future architecture, or about closing an EDP—or I should say, about an EDP because the account manager will try to close that EDP with you—and then basically use that as next steps for what you want to do with AWS. But again, all of those things can be done without flying you to Las Vegas and being amongst all these other people.Tim: I mean, let's not take away, there's a certain synergy that happens when you have face-to-face contact with folks, and a lot of these conversations you have in hallways are super, super organic. And so I think that's indicative of conferences as a whole. One of the things that we learned in the pandemic is that, yeah, you can have talks where people just, like, look at a screen and watch talks, and a lot of conferences have done that. But that's not why people want to go to the conference; they want to go to the conference to talk to people and see people. And if you want to have a conference where people talk to people and see people, and that's the whole point of doing it, then the business model behind that looks dramatically different, and the content behind that looks dramatically different.You just have a bunch of birds-of-feather sessions or a bunch of breakout sessions. You do a keynote at the beginning, you do a keynote at the end, and then you just let people mingle, and maybe you have some led topics, but you don't generate content; you shut up and you let the people innovate.Jesse: I also want to add to that. It is one thing to have a conference that is in one venue where everybody is going to be gathered in the same space, creating conversation, or creating easy opportunities—Amy: Five miles worth of content isn't exciting for you?Jesse: Yeah. So, in Las Vegas because the entire conference is spread across the entire strip, you're going to have opportunities to network across the entire strip basically, and sometimes that means you're going to only spend time networking with the people who are in the same hotel as you at the time of the track that you are waiting for, or the time of the event that you are waiting for. It is unlikely that you are going to run all around the strip just to be able to network with everybody that you run into.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by our friends at Lumigo. If you've built anything from serverless, you know that if there's one thing that can be said universally about these applications, it's that it turns every outage into a murder mystery. Lumigo helps make sense of all of the various functions that wind up tying together to build applications. It offers one-click distributed tracing so you can effortlessly find and fix issues in your serverless and microservices environment. You've created more problems for yourself; make one of them go away. To learn more visit lumigo.io.Amy: The other issue I have, not just with re:Invent, but this is really any larger conference or conferences that rely on the kind of content where it is a person speaking at you and you don't get to meet these people, is that without any level of Q&A or interactivity—and this is true especially for AWS-led events—is that it is no different than watching someone on video. You can go to these talks, and you can perhaps have conversations with people as they filter out of the room, but there's no way you're going to be able to talk to that person who was delivering that content, unless you can track them down amongst the sea of people in re:Invent or [unintelligible 00:12:16] in Las Vegas.Tim: What typically has to happen is that after someone has given a compelling talk and you really want to talk to them, you have to go and talk to your account manager; your account manager will then set up a meeting that will happen at a later time where you're going to all call in over Chime, and then you will quote-unquote, “Meet” that person virtually. And if that's the case, you could have just stayed home and watched [laugh] the talk online, and then done the same thing.Amy: Conferences need more Chime. That's what [laugh] the problem is.Jesse: [laugh]. I think my eye just started twitching a little bit as soon as you said that, Amy.Amy: I'm glad. So, then why would people go? There's the hallway track, but is that worth the heavy price tag of going to Vegas? A lot of us live in areas where there is either going to be an AWS Summit or there are AWS user groups. What do you get from going to a larger event such as re:Invent and having that level of communication that you can't get from those smaller groups?Tim: I mean, the importance of networking cannot be overstated. It is extremely important, whether it's for laying groundwork for future deals, laying groundwork for future collaborations. I've been at conferences where a hallway track, just folks meeting up in the hallway and having a really organic discussion turned into a product within three months. So, those kinds of things are important. And, unfortunately or unfortunately, they do happen better quite often, when people are in-person and they've had a chance to talk, maybe even a couple of drinks or whatever.So, I mean, people ink deals, they shake hands, they get, you know, a lot of work done when it comes to maintaining and managing relationships, and to some people, that is worth it. But I do think that you have to be very, kind of, eyes-open about going into this. It's like, you're not going to go in there to get a lot of technical insight, you're not going to go in there to talk to a whole bunch of people unless you really have a relationship or establish some kind of rapport with them beforehand. Because just to go up and blindly like, “Hey, I'm going to grab you in the hallway, and this is who I am,” that's not always great, especially nowadays, when people are, kind of, already averse to, you know, talking to strangers, sometimes.Jesse: I've always struggled with talking to strangers in general at conferences because I'm predominantly introverted, so if I don't have an open introduction to someone through a mutual third party or mutual friend, it's just not going to happen. And I've gotten better at that over the years as I go to conferences, but it's going to be especially tough now in cases where folks are not just averse to, I don't want to say strangers, but averse to physical contact and adverse to people just, kind of, approaching them out of the blue. It's tough. I want to be more mindful of that and I want to be better, but it's hard, especially in cases where you're in a crowd of hundreds of people or, you know, thousands of people across the strip, that it just gets overwhelming really quickly for some folks.Amy: I do want to loop this round, if anything, just for a poll for Twitter. Do not close an EDP in Vegas. You're probably not of the right mind [laugh] and have the right people to do that. Wait till you get back to work. Please. That's just me. [laugh].Jesse: I would also like to add—we talk about why people go; I think that there's definitely a solid contingent of folks who attend re:Invent because it is the one time a year that the company sanctions them getting away from their family for a couple of days, getting away from, you know, the day-to-day routine of whatever work is going on for a couple days, and go to Vegas. Now, I know that the company is not going to sponsor them drinking every night, or gambling, or whatnot, but they're likely going to be doing those things anyhow, so it is this company-sanctioned opportunity to just go experience, you know, something different; go take a vacation, basically, for a couple days.Amy: Corporate Burning Man.Tim: Corporate Burning Man, exactly. A vacation in Vegas.Amy: I am not a fan of ever working in Vegas. If I'm on the clock, I cannot be in Vegas, not because I'm prone to excessive behavior when I'm on my own, but more that I cannot be productive in that much noise and that much flaky internet. It drives me absolutely batty, and I'm only going to be, as far as implementations, so productive in a crowd that large.Tim: I will say this, especially in regards to Vegas, there are other places you can go, other places that need the money more. AWS wants to rent a city, rent a city that needed the money. Put that money where it could be to used, where it really makes a difference. I don't know if Vegas is the right place for that, if I'm being honest, especially after all we've learned and dealt with in 2020. And so that's why in 2021, yeah, no for me, continuing to have re:Invent in Vegas is very, very tone-deaf.Jesse: I still think, Amy, you and I just need to—actually sorry, all three of us should attend and basically keep a running Waldorf and Statler commentary through the entire conference. I don't know if we can get that little, you know, opera booth that's kind of up and away from all the action, but if we can get something like that and do some sports commentary—ohh, maybe on the expo hall—Amy: That would be great. That would be great if we don't get banned. [laugh].Tim: I think what would be even more fun is to give a MST3K—Jesse: Ohhh.Tim: —treatment of the keynotes afterwards, you know what I mean?Jesse: Yeah.Amy: Yes.Jesse: I mean, Amy and I had also talked about playing some Dungeons and Dragons while we were there, and I feel like if we can find some, I'm going to say, tech-themed RPG—I realize that is a broad category, and everybody's going to spam me afterwards for this, but—Amy: I got that. Don't worry about it.Jesse: Yeah, I'm on board. I feel like anything that we can do to create a roleplaying game out of this conference, I'm down.Tim: I'm still waiting for you to explain to the audience in general who Waldorf and Statler were?Jesse: Oh, yes, that is fair. Okay. Waldorf and Statler are two characters from the old-school Muppets Show, which is amazing and delightful. It's on Disney+; I highly recommend it. They are basically—Amy: They're two grumpy old muppets, and they have been roasting people since the 70s. That is—that's all it is. [laugh].Tim: All they do is they sit up in the upper booth and they throw shade, and I love it.Amy: Yes. And they just show up in random parts in different movies. They'll be, like, on a park bench, and there'll be a serious moment, and then they'll just start talking crap for no reason. And it's great.Jesse: They're the best. They're absolutely fantastic. I adore them. I hope to be them one day.Amy: One day.Tim: Really, both of them? I don't, I don't know how that's going to work.Jesse: I am hoping to clone myself. One of me is going to have fabulous hair and one of me is going to be balding. Probably the clone is going to be balding; sorry about it, future me. But—Amy: [laugh].Tim: Well, I mean, and have just a magnificent chin, right?Jesse: Yes, yes, that's the trade-off. Losing the hair up top but absolutely fantastic chin.Tim: Here's what I want to see. I want to see the listeners submit things that you think should be on the re:Invent bingo cards.Amy: Ohh, yes.Jesse: Yes.Amy: I would love to see that.Jesse: So, for those of you listening, you've got two options for submitting things that you'd like to be on the re:Invent bingo cards. The ideal option is going to lastweekataws.com/QA. Fill out the form and let us know what you think should be on the bingo card. You can also respond to the social media post that will be posted for this content, and we can take a look at that as well. But that'll be a little bit harder for us to follow because I'm unfortunately not like Corey. I can't absorb all of Twitter in a day; it takes me a longer time to read all that content.Jesse: If you've enjoyed this podcast, please go to lastweekinaws.com/review and give it a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you hated this podcast, please go to lastweekinaws.com/review. Give it a five-star rating on your podcast platform of choice and tell us what you think about AWS re:Invent.Announcer: This has been a HumblePod production. Stay humble.

Our crew today: Miami Rick, Captains Nick and Jeff, Producer/Director Liz. Join us for the latest in aviation news, your feedback, and this week's Plane Tale: "Flying all the Fours." Photo Credit: Nick Anderson [00:03:16] NEWS [00:03:33] Citation Crash Kills 7 [00:18:47] Interim Report - Accident: DHL B752 at Leipzig on Feb 13th 2021, Cargo Door Opened in Flight [00:39:39] Report - Serious Incident Learjet 31A D-CAMB, 28 Dec 2018 [00:48:50] Ex-US Airline Pilot Admits Lewd Act in Cockpit Mid-Flight [00:54:16] American and Southwest Airlines Ban Alcohol After Rise in Violence [00:58:09] Bat Causes Newark-Bound Air India Flight To Divert | One Mile at a Time [01:02:40] GETTING TO KNOW US [01:17:20] COFFEE FUND [01:19:02] FEEDBACK [01:22:34] Lyle - Question from a Fan About Regional Airlines [01:35:42] Tom - Hi. My Name is Tom, and I'm an Avgeek [01:53:10] Albert/Chris - Cessna Caravan Pilot Falls Asleep for 40 Minutes [02:06:32] PLANE TALES - Flying all the Fours [02:31:23] Col Jeff - Startup Says It'll Fly Passengers Between Cities in Giant Blimps [02:39:52] Tim - What it was Like on Board the Qantas Supermoon Flight to Nowhere [02:46:27] Brian - Red Flag and News [02:50:29] Steffen - Logging Flights [02:54:55] Jose - KSAN Go Around, 321 Tail Strikes, TACA Levee Landing VIDEO Don't see the video? Click this to watch it on YouTube! ABOUT RADIO ROGER “Radio Roger” Stern has been a TV and Radio reporter since he was a teenager. He's won an Emmy award for his coverage in the New York City Market. Currently you can hear his reporting in New York on radio station 1010 WINS, the number one all-news station in the nation. Nationally you can hear him anchor newscasts on the Fox News Radio Network and on Fox's Headlines 24-7 service on Sirius XM Radio. In addition Roger is a proud member of and contributor to the APG community. Audible.com Trial Membership Offer - Get your free audio book today! Give us your review in iTunes! I'm "airlinepilotguy" on Facebook, and "airlinepilotguy" on Twitter. feedback@airlinepilotguy.com airlinepilotguy.com "Appify" the Airline Pilot Guy website (http://airlinepilotguy.com) on your phone or tablet! ATC audio from http://LiveATC.net Intro/outro Music, Coffee Fund theme music by Geoff Smith thegeoffsmith.com Dr. Steph's intro music by Nevil Bounds Capt Nick's intro music by Kevin from Norway (aka Kevski) Doh De Oh by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) Source: http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1100255 Artist: http://incompetech.com/ Copyright © AirlinePilotGuy 2021, All Rights Reserved Airline Pilot Guy Show by Jeff Nielsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License

Improving movement options is legit, but at what cost? We know that this breathing stuff works, but are there drawbacks to this approach? Can we really make the changes “stick?” These are a few of the many problems that Dr. Tim Richardt and I sift through, in a podcast where the script is flipped and Tim interviews me. In this podcast, you'll learn: How I structure my own training What's better, time management or energy management? Forget following your passion, focus on this instead What my biggest failure was and what it taught me? The dichotomy of the type A personality Movement behaviors: How do we get them to "stick" The dark side of internal cueing The best way to communicate effectively to clients and more! Is there a darkside to all this movement stuff? Is there a better way? Look here to watch the interview, listen to the podcast, get the show notes, and read the modified transcripts. Learn more about Tim Tim Richardt is a Doctor of Physical Therapy, Strength and Conditioning Coach, and Owner of Richardt Performance and Rehabilitation located in Denver, CO. He specializes in the treatment and preparation of humans that like to run, lift, or play in the mountains. He currently offers personal training, physical therapy, and professional mentorship services. His website More Train, Less Pain Podcast – Tim's podcast that is specifically designed around engineering the adaptable athlete. Instagram: @Tim_Richardt_dpt Show notes Here are links to things mentioned in the interview: Elevate Sports Performance and Healthcare - Where ya boi works Francis Hoare - An excellent coach who works with me at Elevate. How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big by Scott Adams - One of my favorite books. This book taught me to emphasize systems over goals Millionaire Fastlane by Mj DeMarco - This book completely flipped all that I know about business upside down. Unscripted by MJ DeMarco - This book will keep you pushing forward in all things business Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink - A book that helped me take ownership of all my own problems. The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday - If you are going through a tough time, this read is essential. The Ego is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday - This book will help squash any ego issues you may have The Subtle Art of Not Giving A Fuck - Basically modern Buddhism. A must-read Everything is Fucked: A Book About Hope - Why hope is BS and how to start a religion. It's an awesome book. Aline Thompson - One of the best PTs in the Denver area. Georgie Fear - My incredible nutrition coach. A master at behavior change Lorimer Moseley - One of the best pain researchers in existence. David Grey - An excellent physio Gary Ward - All things foot, he's the guy Seth Oberst - One of the best at all things trauma-related from a movement perspective. I reviewed his course here. Michelle Boland - Coach Bo. One of the best coaches in da game. I reviewed her course here. Boo Schexnayder: Rehab Insights from Track and Field - This podcast made me appreciate intensity and its importance How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie - The OG book on interacting with others. The Truth Detector by Jack Schafer - An awesome read on elicitation and interaction with others. Bill Hartman - Daddy-O Pops himself. My mentor. Modified Transcripts How I structure training Tim: So, my man, I thought we could start with your own training. And I'm wondering if you could describe the last workout that you personally did? Zac: Well, that would have been yesterday. I train mostly at night after work. Yesterday, it was chin-up day. I start with vision exercises because I did some vision therapy, so I'm just trying to maintain the visual skills that I currently struggle with, which is the ability to diverge. So, divergence is the eyes moving apart. You basically stretch them out, which is kind of like external rotation of the eyes, if you can think about that way, which is expansion. And guess who doesn't have that? Ya boy, same thing with everyone else. So, I do some moves to work on divergence, but then focusing within the divergence, which is accommodation. I spent a few minutes doing that. And then my warmup, I kind of do the same thing. I just roll around on the ground for a while, do just a few moves to - yes, I just literally - they were finishing class at Elevate and Francis is like, "Don't worry about the Ninja who works here in the background." Which was funny. So, just warm-up and then... Tim: Just some spinning flying kicks? Zac: Yes. Something like that. Tim: Yes. Like three sets of five...? Zac: Nunchucks. Tim: Sure. Zac: Yes. Tim: Yes, of course. I saw those in your office. Zac: Yes. Tim: I was going to ask about that. Zac: Once I do that, then I do my main move for the day, which yesterday involved post-activation potentiation combo. So, I'll do med ball throws up against the wall, rotational-style, and then chin-ups with some weight. I did these in the 3-6 rep range until I can't do that anymore. And then I ended up doing a trap bar squat and overhead press. https://youtu.be/CJgcqP_X8jM And then I usually do like a circuit of some - like something single leg. I did like a single-leg squat off a box. I do pushups. I do one-arm dumbbell row. And then, like the body saw. I did a circuit of that with just, you know, whatever reps I need. https://youtu.be/uBRYEyebmAY And then sometimes I'll follow with conditioning. But I did my favorite conditioning yesterday, which is kicking my man Francis ass and spike ball. Boom! You heard it internet. We usually play spike ball once a week and we have some good competition. We both have gotten pretty good. We did this thing where we were just playing Spikeball one on one for months because we both sucked. Tim: Sure? Zac: We didn't tell anyone. Tim: One on one spike ball? Zac: Yes. It's weird, but it's fun. And so, Francis was killing me and I can't have that happen because I hate losing in all things. So, I'm like consuming YouTube videos and figuring out how to serve. And so, now I can serve with both hands... Tim: Walking around with the spike balk all the time and go for it? Zac: Yes. And so, now we have some great games and we're just like hitting it way good. And we finally played two on two, not together, but it was way more competitive than we ever did. So, that was the skill that I learned. And that was my training session. Tim: How do you think kind of in the macro about structuring your own training? Like, do you have short, medium long-term training goals, and you kind of period eyes to accomplish those? Or are you more like a fly by the seat of your pants kind of guy? Zac: I have my main moves that I alternate between. So, what stays the same, and I got this, it's the mass effect program from Daddy-o Pops himself, Bill Hartman, just with some slight modifications. It looks like this: Lift one: 4-6 reps Lift 2: 6-8 reps Lift3: 10-12 You do each of these until you fatigue out of those rep ranges. And then I just do, you know, two to three rounds of whatever else I feel like I need, which can be like eight to 12 reps. And if there's a day I need to condition, I'll do that. If I want to do some extra arm farm, I do that. So, the three mains are there. I keep trying to get better at them. But the other stuff just varies depending on what I'm feeling. Because my main goal training-wise is just to look good naked. Tim: Okay. Zac: And maintain decent body comp. Tim: No, more fat Zac? Zac: Yes. Fat Zac is done. Tim: Fat Zac's not coming back? Zac: He's done. Tim: That guy was fun though. Zac: He was fun. Yes. He had the beard. He is like a young Santa. Tim: Couldn't touch his toes. Zac: Yes. Definitely couldn't squat. I still can't touch my toes, but I can squat now. So yes. And then like, you mentioned like periodization, I need to train enough that someone can take me seriously from a movement standpoint. It's kind of like looking the part when you're being a PT because I do think that that matters to some extent. https://youtu.be/UEZZEWyBN78 Tim: Yes. Zac: But right now, the highest priority is work, teaching, all that stuff, learning the craft. And so, that's always going to be the A1 for right now. Tim: The A1 of life. Yes. A2 is fitness. Time management vs energy management Tim: You gifted me a Scott Adams book about five or six months ago. In it, he talks a lot about this myth of time management and argues that time isn't necessarily the resource that we should be seeking to manage, but it's instead energy. And that in managing your own energy and taking on projects that seem to give you energy rather than drain them or tackling endeavors that seem to increase energy, you can get a lot more done versus just trying to very efficiently kind of micromanage your own time. So, you're one of the most kind of efficient, effective, prolific people that I personally know within our field. What do you think about this energy management concept? Is that something that kind of lets you do the amount of work that you do? Zac: It's very easy to waste time on frivolous things and I try to do my best to minimize that now. But I think because I have a little bit more freedom to do that now. I can, I think, for example, a couple of years ago I had the shackles of student loans, so it's like, I'll take on anything I can do to try to manage that. But I do think about that when I'm thinking about things that don't bring joy into my life, like social media, for example. Tim: Sure. Zac: I try to stay off that as much as humanly possible. Because it does take energy, even answering texts. Like I'm horrendous about getting back to people via text message or phone calls because I eliminated notifications on that. Because even that takes energy out. Tim: Yes. Zac: Even being around certain people who suck the life out of you... Tim: Exactly the black hole type of thing? Zac: Yes. But at the same time, I do think time management to some extent is important as well because, sometimes you might have to do things that are energy-draining, but they help move the needle forward. Does he talk about following your passion as well and how that's BS? Tim: Yes. Zac: Okay. Tim: And I've probably had that conversation with like 10 people over the past week that like passion is fleeting. It's, you know, rocket fuel, but it's not actually going to sustain you over the longer. It opposes a lot of advice that you conventionally hear. Zac: Yes. Well, what you have to do and there's another good guy you should read it. I might have an extra book. I'll give it to you. MJ DeMarco. He wrote "The Millionaire Fast Lane" and "Unscripted." He talks about that as well in the sense that you don't want to do things that you're passionate about. You want to do things that are going to have a positive impact on the world and change things forever. And then if you do that and you make enough money from that, you eventually will become passionate about it becauseyou're making an impact. Tim: Yes. Zac: I love video games, but I'm not going to be making money, playing video games unless I started... Tim: I was thinking about Twitch and Onlyfans. And I'm like, is there a way to combine those concepts and maybe have people pay you to watch you play video games in a reduced amount of clothing? Zac: Haha right? But even with that, sure, you can make money, but Twitch is not going to change the world. Tim: Sure. Zac: And I want to try to make the little world that I'm in, that we're in, a better place in that sense. And that's really the crux of what I do. That's why I try to take complex things and simplify them so most people can carry it out. I have a lot of good friends who are really smart, but they might not be able to devote the time and energy to diving deep into topics because maybe they got kids to worry about and all this stuff and well, they still patients to take care of. Tim: Yes. Zac: And so, if I can help that person get better a little bit faster, then I think we all win. Tim: I mean, and is doing that something that you find gives you more energy than it drains or drains kind of a minimal amount of energy? Zac: Yes, absolutely. I could teach, talk all the time. I love that. Even doing these podcasts. It's so much fun and then it's just time flies by. Because then it's also, you're just interacting with people and... Tim: Also real-life people. Zac: I know. Right? The failure that changed everything Tim: That's useful. I think along the same lines of that book, it's in the title that he's amassed a massive amount of failures and yet still is an extraordinary success. Thinking about kind of your own life professionally in the past five or 10 years, what are some of your favorite failures? Zac: Professional basketball. The thing that I had going into that was getting to pro basketball kind of a big deal. And I probably let that get to my head a little bit. I think I had a little bit of a Dunning-Kruger effect kicking in. Even though like I still would say back then, I was a pretty good practitioner. I'm much better now. But I think I let that get the best of me that I was in that setting. I can't say that that's why I was fired, but after that happened, it completely flipped everything. I did a lot of soulsearching during that time period. And there were four books that I read that just like changed everything. Tim: I bet I know one of them. Zac: Which one? Tim: "Extreme Ownership." Zac: That was definitely one of them. That was one, "The Obstacles is the Way," "Ego is the Enemy” both by Ryan Holiday and then "The Subtle Art of not Giving a Fuck." by Mark Manson. I read those four and that's when I realized my behaviors, my issues were the problem. And I was able to do things to flip that and just be more humble, reacquire the beginner's mindset, interact better with peers and people who I'm working with. And it really made a big difference. And I'm grateful for that. I'm grateful that I was out of that situation. It pushed me towards more of what I really like, which is this. And the fact that now I have a bit more freedom flexibility than I did in the league, was huge. That's probably the biggest failure that has flipped things for me. [caption id="attachment_13675" align="aligncenter" width="375"] the failure that led to this[/caption] Tim: Going back to something that we discussed, like removing things in your life that are not really serving you. The hard truth is those are people and probably people that you've known a really long time. And you know, If you can't kind of reflect back on your own life and make a decision about which people you're spending time with, you're liable to get trapped in a lot of, and trap is probably a strong word, but waste the resource of energy on relationships that aren't getting you to where you want to go. Zac: Is that something that you ever struggled with? When you knew you had to move on from a situation or a person? Tim: Yes. The job I took right out of school being a director of rehab in rural Colorado. That was so nice because it was lucrative. It was flexible. I think I could still do a lot of the things that I wanted to, because it was a three-day work week. In a lot of ways, it was the perfect situation, but it didn't have any upward trajectory to it. I started at the ceiling. I'm immensely grateful that I had that opportunity. And I think it changed me for the better, in many ways. But after my three years and change out there, I knew it was time to do something else. Something that had a little bit more of an avenue for growth. Zac: Yes. It's hard when you get comfortable like that because the chance of getting stagnant is significantly higher. And so, you always got to put yourself in slightly uncomfortable positions, I think, to really grow. Tim: Yes. It's a really interesting juxtaposition. I mean, that's something I think about all the time that type A people, kind of people like you and I, a lot of what drives us is we're not happy with the way things are. But if you let that mindset pervade everything, then you never really enjoy what you have. So, it's a really interesting tight rope to balance kind of, as physical therapists, as athletes, as human beings, how do we hold these two seemingly opposing ideas in our head simultaneously and not kind of fall apart? Zac: Yes. That's hard. Tim: Yes. Zac: I definitely let that bleed into areas that it shouldn't bleed into. Tim: Yes. Some things in life are just fine and they're okay the way they are. They don't need to be optimized. Zac: Yes. There are some things too that you got to just keep pushing. Tim: Absolutely. I mean, that's how people do great things. You're not going to just get this great opportunity kind of plopped in your lab. Zac: How do you find the balance? You probably are better than me. Tim: I don't know. I don't think I have a really good answer. I was talking to a mutual friend that we have, Aline Thompson. She was mentioning this friend that she has an incredibly high-powered tech broker of some type, makes boatloads of money. But he's a really, really good chef. And he says that the second he no longer has time to cook each day, that's the line in the sand that he draws between. That means he's striving too much. That means he's packing so much into his day that he can't just enjoy what he already has, which is quality time doing something good for himself, for his family, for his children. That really hit home. I love to cook as well. I also like to play Frisbee with my dog, Molly. If I can't take 10 or 15 minutes to do that like that's another - like I just want that to be built into my day-to-day. And then if I can maintain these things and then continue to strive and see certain life, key performance indicators trending in the right direction, I am doing an okay job. Zac: That's something I probably struggle with because I'm thinking about like, as you were saying that I'm like, "That's brilliant. Like everyone needs to find their cooking." And I don't know what mine is. Tim: I think for a lot of people it's working out. Zac: Yes. Tim: Probably not in our industry, because I think we are the people that will probably sacrifice in order to train and train at very inconvenient times. But I think for 99% of the American population, that's one of the early things to go. Zac: Yes. That's very reasonable. See, I can't fathom not having that. It's so automatic at this point that - there was one time where maybe I didn't work out and I'm like, I'll notice that one day, if I had a plan to workout, I can't do it. But I've never gotten to the point where I've worked so much that I've had to cut that out. Tim: And you do, and it's like a super power. But you go about the rest of your day supercharged, you know that you've done something that's probably more difficult than 90% of the people that you're going to interact with have completed that day. Especially for people like I'm a big morning trainer. Zac: Really? Tim: Yes. I'd love to train at like 6:00 AM or 7:00 AM. And that's recent. That's as I've gotten older, but in terms of the Scott Adams concept of adding energy to your life, it's like, that is something that so acutely drains you of energy and yet so quickly fills you right back up. Zac: Yes. It is interesting how that works. Isn't it? Can we get postural changes to stick? Tim: You and I, both physical therapists, we commonly see people that present with particular movement behaviors or positions. And I think one of the most pervasive ideas in our industry is that there's a bad posture or a bad position. Right? Like extension, anterior, pelvic tilt, rotation. What have you? Zac: Oh sure. Tim: There's this idea that there are these bad postures and people have bad postures and well just swap it out for a good posture and they're going to be good to go. Something you and I have talked about before is these postures positions, movement behaviors emerge in order to solve a particular problem? To manage gravity, to breathe, to better prepare you for a training stressor that you've experienced before. So, I guess how do you think about replacing a less than ideal movement behavior or pattern with a better one, because that's kind of what we do with these resets, with these drills to regain mobility? And how do you think about making that intervention like quote-unquote, "sticky" enough so that a person doesn't revert back as quickly as possible? Zac: I don't think it's replacing one for another. I think the key is giving more options. So, for example, if we go with like the forward head, I'm sitting at the chair for an extended period of time, you do that long enough, something might get cranky just because of tissue ischemia or whatever. At the same time, if you sit perched upright and have a good posture, and you hold that long enough, you could probably run into similar issues. [caption id="attachment_13676" align="aligncenter" width="376"] Cranky AF[/caption] But if you can get into each of those and a bazillion more, well, then you're never really overloading any specific areas. And I think it makes you more adept to surviving in several different environments. And I think really that's the key and that's like, what movement variability is all about is you need as many different ways to perform the task as possible even if you're getting the same consistent output. So, like if I did 10 squats and even though they looked exactly the same to the naked eye, if I have to remove that variability, there should be subtle differences with each one of those squats, but it's when I don't have those options available that problem ensue Tim: In both coordinative and endpoint variability. Zac: Exactly. I think that's really where the money is. Now, how do we get that to stick? It's basically, getting people into positions that they can't normally get into or struggle maintaining into and then being able to demonstrate that at progressive intensities and complexities. So, for example, you know, if we look at you and you know because we worked together for a minute. In the beginning, we started with some simple drills, some single leg positions, more supportive, really emphasized breathing. And look at where you're ay when we worked together the other day. Now we're giving you loaded-based strategies... Tim: Kicking ass, taking in? Zac: Yes, yes. Getting you a ridiculous pump. But the thought process is still there because you have the same needs, but can you maintain the positions that we had you get into that we'll get you those needs under higher intensities? Yesterday he did. Tim: And I like that. It's just it's incredibly intriguing to me, this notion that human beings lose movement options, either via physical structure or secondary training adaptations, lifestyle factors. And then it kind of, and I say this as a physical therapist who makes these changes on a daily basis, it shocks me that anything that we do has the power to override whatever stimulus came before to lead to that decrease in variability. Zac: Yes. Tim: You know what I mean? Zac: Yes. Because you're looking at reps time, all that stuff. Tim: Right. I mean, it's almost to think anything in the gym could actually have that prolonged, have an effect. I mean, it also brings up the issue of in a perfect world. Nobody would need activities to regain movement options. That would be the goal, right? You just walk into the gym and you train and your body adapts to the training with no deleterious secondary consequences. That's obviously not the world that we live in, but it does seem like some people need a far lesser volume of these reset low-level types of activities. And they can kind of progress away from that over time. Whereas some people, for whatever reason, you know, need that consistent manual therapy, stimulus or consistent low-level stimulus in order to make these changes stick. Zac: Yes. Well, I think the key is the body has to deem it meaningful and novel and salient. And I'll give you an example. If let's say, you witnessed something terrible happened, anything. Something of 9/11 proportions and it happened right before your eyes. You would remember that for the rest of your life. And it might be just one moment, one instance. And that could shape and shift everything that you thought before that. And I remember when I listened to Lorimer Moseley, he was talking about - I think my buddy Eric was talking about how taking NSAIDs could impair learning. And Lorimer gave the analogy if someone shot a gun right by you, you would remember that that happened, even if you were dosed up on NSAIDS. Tim: Sure. Zac: Of it's meaningful and novel enough, I think it could still lead to long-lasting changes. Tim: Right. Zac: Right? Now, does that mean the equivalent of you doing quadraped breathing is something like witnessing a horrific event? No. But your body might deem it novel and meaningful enough that it does remember that. And it does stick for some people. Tim: Yes. Zac: So, my point by bringing that up is we just don't know what's going to cause things to stick. Whereas some people might need continual reinforcement over and over and over again to get meaningful change. Tim: Something that, like David Gray and Gary Ward talk about all the time is, essentially that same thing, putting people in positions. But then if the nervous system likes that position, it'll remember that position and there's no need to revisit it as long as that's what it reaches for the next time it tries to solve a particular environmental or movement task. And that kind of makes some sense to me because if we think again about the Genesis of these like maladaptive, postures and positions, they are trying to solve a problem, get air in, maintain your ability to view your monitor while you're sitting in a chair, they don't emerge for no reason. This is a Seth Oberst quote, but everybody's body is doing exactly what it needs to do. The dark side of sensorimotor cueing Tim: What you and I do with people involves a high degree of sensorimotor cueuing, right? Having people maintain particular positions. Do you think that there's a potential dark side to sensorimotor cueuing and that it might put people sort of two in their own bodies if kind of left unchecked? If most of their program is find your heels, tuck your hips, breathe this particular way, shift left. Do you find yourself needing to pull that out at certain times for certain people when you design programs? Zac: Yes. I definitely think there's definitely a certain portion of people who can fall victim to that. Tim: Yes. What are those people typically like? I think I know what you're going to say, but I'm interested. Zac: Yes. They're almost hyper-aware of everything in a negative sense. And then that becomes their identity essentially. I feel twisted. I feel twerked. It's the person who gives me the laundry list of anatomical terminology that they shouldn't know, but they know. That can definitely be a problem because it's almost like when they get so intune to their bodies, but focusing only on the negatives. So, with those people, yes, a lot of it is education "It's no, you do not have to tuck your hips with every step you take every move you make." Tim: Because Zac's going to be watching you. Zac: Yes. In the creepiest way possible. Tim: From a deep squat with a really long beard. [caption id="attachment_13677" align="aligncenter" width="500"] Like a boss![/caption] Zac: Yes. And then just like, no, you don't have to feel your heels all the time when you walk and stuff like that. And it's educating them that, "Look, we're just using this as a strategy to increase your movement repertoire." And yes, I think if you can do that and frame the right mindset that can potentially mitigate some of that. Or I think that could also be where, especially when you get to loaded activities, a focus more towards external queuing might be useful. You know? Tim: I like that. I think something that Michelle Boland, Coach Bo, and I talk about frequently. Shout out to coach Bo. Is the need to have things in a programmer or in your life that just make you feel like you're a strong, capable human that doesn't need to think him or herself into positions to be able to execute a task. All of my practices have always been in CrossFit gyms. And I think that this is something that CrossFit gyms do incredibly well. And no CrossFit gym is perfect. And I have my issues with the moves that are commonly prescribed the over-reliance on barbells, but they do a really good job of getting people that haven't been doing anything intense and getting them to not fear doing a hang snatch, doing a deadlift from the ground. And I think that's really impactful in a completely different way. Because I think people like you and I take into one extreme sort of becoming those clinicians, those practitioners that are really potentially propagating a lot of this like fear of movement. Zac: It's something I definitely think about as well. Because I do get people who come to me and it's like, they've learned similar things to me, but they think about it in such a negative way. Like "I have to fix this anterior tilt." Well, if you're standing against gravity, you're always going to have that because that's the norm. There's a good podcast that Doug Kechijian did with Boo Schexnayder. He mentions that you should always be exposing them to intensity. And in order to produce intensity or move fast, you can't think, and relaxation is paramount. And I think if there's one thing it's probably shifted this year, is really appreciating that. But and here's where I still think respecting biomechanics comes in. You have to make sure that you choose activities that are appropriate for that individual, that they can execute without having the risk for potentially performing it in a negative manner. So, that could be doing a seated box jump, which it's almost like the constraints of the activity, get them into positions that they need to. Or, I've been using a lot of fake throws lately. https://youtu.be/riB-dGofs98 Tim: To load a cut? Zac: To load a cut or just to get them rotating pain-free or anything like that. Because you have to relax enough and move fast, but then you also have to stop fast. So, it kind of hits everything or just med ball throws. Like even though I talk a lot about biomechanics and stuff like that, if you look at how I actually program for someone, it has all of those other elements. And I keep the concepts the same and the progressions appropriate with within movement options that they have available. But they're not always having to think. They might think about the setup, but then when they're executing the movement, I don't have to think about anything. Because when you are thinking you can't move fast, that's when you get beat. Tim: Yes. That's what I like. I mean, one of my favorite lifts of all time is a single-arm dumbbell floor press, for that reason. Because like there's still enough range of motion to load and you can let 98% of people that would ever walk into your training facility can do that drill. https://youtu.be/oGKufR-a4Mg And the single-arm just forces some innate sense of not having the weight, rotate you off your back. T he goblet squats is another one. It's like, it's these things that people in our industry have been doing for a really long time, because they're just so simple and people can try hard, like you said, relax not think. Zac: Yes. Or like sleds, med ball throws, and carries. Those are all - if you have someone who is not exposed to much loading, that's a great way to produce intensity and not have to think "Oh, you know, man, I love machines." Love them. Tim: I know. We know you do. Zac: love them. In fact, one of my training is I'll load up the BFR cuffs and I'll go into my complex and just go ham on a leg press and all that. That's great. I look good for one day of the week. And that's my day for about 20 minutes. Tim: Got a sick leg pump. Zac: Yes. Just the veins out... Tim: Bursting out of your khakis? Zac: Exactly. How to maximize patient communication Tim: Speak to your journey in regards to your communication. How have you arrived at your current strategy for how to best communicate with probably both your clients and colleagues? How has that changed over the past five years? Zac: A lot. I was for a while, obsessed with learning about how to best interact with people. I think I was a pretty shy kid growing up. Quiet, uncertain of myself. But I found that whenever you got someone else talking, people would end up really liking you. Tim: Dale Carnegie. Zac: Honestly. Exactly. Yes. I forget the phrases that he says in his book? There's another one... Tim: Is it be interested, not interesting? Zac: Yes. Another quote I heard somewhere or this woman had met like these two higher-ups in English government and she talked to them about the first one. And she was like, "When I talked with this person, I thought he was the most interesting person in all of the UK." And then she said, "But when I talked to the other person, I thought I was the most interesting person in all of the UK." And that really hit home for me. And I try to, when I'm interacting with people, get that vibe. But at the same time too, the issue that I've run with when I've spent all of this time, learning with my interactions is in the beginning, I was just asking a lot of questions, almost interviewing people. And sometimes that can be off-putting if done in that way. So, to mitigate that, instead of asking a bunch of questions, there's a technique called elicitation that I've been experimenting with. And how people are going to be like," How is he eliciting me?" But basically, it's like getting information out of someone without coming off as a threatening thing. So, like if I come to Tim and I say, "Did you do this?" And say you did something wrong, whatever. Your inclination might be to go on the defense. And so, you might lie or you might say, "Well, yes I did. But it was because of this, this, this, this, and this." And that's not good. But if I wanted you to admit to that, I might say something or like a presumptive statement. It's like, "So what was it like when you did that?" Or "So you did X." And almost making assumptions to try to understand the other person or inferences based on what they said. I think helps build a greater connection because it shows that you not only are listening to them, but you're also understanding where they're coming from. And I think that's really important when it comes to human interaction and what I really focus on. And here's the cool thing about it. And there's actually a really good book by this FBI agent that goes into this, "If you're wrong about the assumption that I make..." Tim: The inference. Zac: The inference, that's still, doesn't lead to a negative interaction because people are so willing to correct any mistake that you make, but you'll still get the interaction. Like in the book, he talks about, if you're talking politics with someone, you might actually say someone has, I don't know, they say something and they're a Republican and you make the inference like, "Oh, well it sounds like something you might've gotten from FDR." And they might get so adamantly taking it back to like, "Like no, that's because Ronald Reagan did this, this and this." And so, then now you actually know their political bias and you didn't even have to ask... Tim: That direct question. Zac: Yes. And so, I think not having direct questioning can provide a lot more useful information because when you question can come off as interrogation. That's like some of the logistical things. But I think even more important than that is having good body language with someone. We were talking about Bill Clinton. One of my clients knows Bill pretty well; has met him multiple times. Everything you read about Bill in a positive light, obviously he's done some questionable things. But from an interaction standpoint, is a hundred percent true. And he has five different things that he thinks about when he's interacting with someone to build a rapport: Eye contact Close proximity The person's name Direction facing Tocuh Tim: Okay. Zac: So, like now if you do all of that at once, that can be a bit much. But if you're alternating among all of those variables, you can build an intimate connection with someone and have good rapport. And so, when I'm interacting with someone, I do think about those things. Not so overtly that it's like, "Okay, let's hit point number five." But those are things I think about incorporating whenever I'm interacting with someone, you know? And there's a reason why I try to sit on people's left most of the time, aside from it makes my neck more comfortable. And that's because the right hemisphere of your brain is where your emotional centers are. So, in theory, if I'm sending more information to that side, I could potentially build a greater emotional bond with you. Tim: Yes. Zac: You might be hearing this and it's like, "Oh gosh, this just sounds like every interaction is Zac making is this calculated thing." But it's not that. It's not if it's genuine. I think the reason why I dove into that so much is that I just wanted to connect with people, you know? Tim: Yes. Zac: I think back in my younger days, I was not in the best place mentally. I'm shy. And I didn't want that because human connection is something that we crave. So, if you can do anything that maximizes that, so it's beneficial for both parties or all parties involved. I don't think there's anything malicious about that. And that's something we should practice as a skill just like anything else. Tim: And it's intentional until it becomes automatic. Zac: Yes. Tim: And then it becomes automatic because frankly, a lot of those things are probably some of the best ways to connect with people. And I'm right there with you. Like you know, I think 90% of the reason why I do what we do is the ability to connect with people. I used to think it was the biomechanics and it's not, that evolves, that changes, but that connection... Zac: Absolutely. Tim: You know, we're in kind of rarefied air in terms of healthcare practitioners. Zac: Yes. And that's why I always wax and wane with manual therapy, but I always come back to it to some extent. Because touch is a form of connection. Tim: Yes. And its proximity without threat. Right. It's not this interview type of vibe. Zac: Yes, absolutely. Tim: Although we have a good 90-degree angle situation going on right now, [caption id="attachment_13679" align="alignnone" width="810"] Bruh on the left has it figured out (Image by uh_yeah_20101995 from Pixabay) [/caption] Zac: And there's a reason for that. So, and especially too, this is an interesting, a little difference between the sexes. If women, when they're interacting with each other, they generally face each other. And that's probably because they're generally more social creatures than us. They have more agreeableness and things of that nature. So, if you think back to like Hunter-gatherer times, that would be a useful thing. And so, that helps build more intimacy, but men who are close generally do not face each other. And the reason why is because when you're facing a man directly, it almost comes off as aggressive. Like you're going to challenge someone. So, that's why like, you know, bros, when they're hanging out, they're always like sitting. Right. And I think that there's a reason for that. And so, you can also based on whether it's someone's male or female, that can also influence the interaction depending on what direction you're trying to go. So, it's important. It's an important thing to recognize if you're working with people. Sum up Choose activities and people in your life that bring more energy, whioch will allow you to be a more productive member of society. Failure allows you to learn from your mistakes and create the life you want to live. You must push to great, but reconcile that some things are good as is. Movement beheavior change requires novelty, which is different for everyone. Sensorimotor cueing can have negative impacts on certain people; mitigate this through education and appropriate exercise selection. Pleasant interactions are acheived by being interested, elicitative language, and effective nonverbal communication.

What leadership is needed now? What are we learning in community, in business and globally about leadership? Join Tim and Tuesday as they dive into these questions, and more, for episode seventeen of season two.Together, Tim Merry and Tuesday Ryan-Hart are THE OUTSIDE—systems change and equity facilitators who bring the fresh air necessary to organize movements, organizations, and collaborators forward for progress, surfacing new mindsets for greater participation and shared impact.2.17 — SHOW NOTESTim: This week on the podcast we dig into leadership - a much talked about topic in the world but very specifically leadership right now. Leadership in the time of COVID. What does it mean? What are the leadership challenges and conversations we’re facing inside ourselves and in our work. As we look out at the political landscape, the leadership landscape in the world, where are we turning for inspiration?Tim: On the personal level, part of what I’ve been experiencing is the tension between the multiple experiences I’m having - this experience of horror, in a lot of ways, at what’s happening in the world and how COVID-19 is making visible the inequities that we all knew were there, let alone the shooting we had in Nova Scotia where 22 people were killed, let alone the struggle I see for parents who I love and care about in terms of caring for their kids right now. There is so much going on that’s hard to witness and sad. There has been a big piece of letting myself be sad. On the other side, there are beautiful things happening: my relationship to my kids and wife and feeling the fittest and healthiest I’ve ever felt. How can I hold both [sadness and happiness] and not let them be in contradiction to each other? That’s a lot of what my personal leadership is right now. Not swinging between but rather holding both.Tues: Last week we talked about our stress behaviours and I think that is what I would bring forward in my own personal leadership and what is being called out. There is such a level of stress in the air that when we think about leadership, many of us - in any given moment - are absolutely at our best and also not at our best. My stress behaviour/response is irritability. I experience it as hard-headed, not hard-hearted. I find that uncomfortable and have a huge amount of self judgement about it. I’m really interrogating that. What brings up irritability versus sadness or defeat. Is there a flavour to when I become irritable or not. That has my attention at the moment. What this brings up for me as we talk about this leadership piece is that many people, at any given moment especially right now, are in their stress behaviours. That feels like a question of leadership - how to understand and navigate their own and how do you meet people where they are? Tues: Part of what I am interested in, or at least has my attention, is sexism / gender depression. The experience of women in this moment. Here in Ohio, there is a viral video about our Department of Health Leader, Dr. Amy Acton, everyone wants to be her. I’m curious about the difference in women responding to this pandemic and their leadership and what we are learning there. I’m also really starting to notice that the backlash is focusing on women. As women step up into their power in this pandemic, then the backlash against them seems to be so intense. This is really up for me right now.Tim: One of the things that has struck me over 20+ years in this field - I would say 70% of the time, it is women who are stepping up to get the ground-breaking work done in all kinds of contexts. There has been a really significant pattern of women leveraging their positions of power to do good work in the world and to seek transformation. It struck me because when you talk about sexism becoming a default response, because it is more comfortable, what is that doing to our ability, within our countries, to have a good response?Tues: If we quiet the voice of the woman who is leading one of the most aggressive, successful responses to COVID in the country all of us are hurt by that - more people get sick, more people die. There is also certainly a race and class dimension to that. If you begin to look at all of these “isms” coming up; we are hobbling ourselves in our response because these structural issues are rearing their ugly heads and we don’t have access to some of the minds, action, thinking, skill, capacity and effort of the majority of people. Tim: We are talking on a national level at this point but we are also seeing this in the teams we are working with as well. As a result, some of the bigger picture of the work is getting lost. Seeing this enables us to be more tactical in our response / more deliberate in how we design our process. This is not about just identifying gender bias but if we can build these types of analysis, then we can organize ourselves more effectively to counterbalance them. This analysis can provide for a deliberate response and ultimately for a more equitable world. Tues: When people are in their stress behaviour, when they pull back, I think these biases are more likely to come out. Less reflective, going faster, more impatience, less able to listen. When those personal pieces begin to have patterns that show bias then it’s worth us bringing them to bear. Have compassion and notice the pattern and work with the pattern. Tim: I’m finding that shaming is being given permission during COVID. Are you finding that? Tues: Yes. I have not heard direct shaming but I have seen rants on Facebook about what other people are doing. To be fair, I can feel it. When I am on the trail and cannot get 6 feet away from people, there is a sense that we have to take care of each other. When people have a sense of threat, then shaming becomes justified. I was listening to a podcast with Esther Perel, a famous relationship expert, and she said that the problem here is that we all think we have the right information. With this lack of clarity around COVID, everyone thinks their position is right. Class-wise, I am wondering if this is happening more in middle class communities?Tim: I wonder if we could chat about what it has been like to lead an organization in the midst of all of this? We’ve had to pivot and redesign and not take massive risks and really change our plans and really distribute leadership to our teams. Tues: What I am holding that I want to share out is that we are trying to think of “who are we” in this crisis and give some real attention to that. We went through the purpose and principles of the company with our team to ask who we want to be, as a company, in this crisis. We are trying to be as thoughtful and transparent as we can be together and share with the team as much as possible. There has been a lot of thoughtfulness, and trying to have a lot of thoughtfulness around equity, in our leadership. I feel proud that we are trying to live by, expand, think through our principles as a company as this happens in this pivot. We are not just surviving, we are trying to figure this out as we go. Tim: What’s been interesting for me is not wanting to compromise on quality even though we are reducing cost. I feel proud that we are taking a stand for quality. We are taking time to think things through. Although we are contracting, we are simultaneously expanding. That makes it exciting to come to work that both those things are happening. Tues: COVID will be a huge period of transformation for The Outside and I will look back and be proud. Song: “Makhloogh” by GoogooshPoem: “Old and Black, A Prayer” by Charlene CarruthersI will watch my relativesgrow old. so oldthat they remember battling twenty five tyrannical presidentsso oldthat they knowpaper food stamps and free landso oldthat they meetmy great grandaughters daughters best friendso oldthat they rememberthat one time so I don't have toso oldthat they watchthis empire fall and never strike backso oldthat they rest and witnessus win.Subscribe to the podcast now—in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher or anywhere else you find podcasts. New episodes will be available every second Tuesday. If you’d like to get in touch with us about something you heard on the show, reach us at podcast@findtheoutside.com. Find the song we played in today’s show—and every song we’ve played in previous shows—on the playlist. Just search ‘Find the Outside’ on Spotify.Duration: 46:25Produced by: Mark Coffin @ Sound Good StudiosTheme music: Gary BlakemoreEpisode cover image: source See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In this episode of the Confidence Mastery: Unlock Your Life Podcast, Natalie talks to Chris Knight and Tim Webb on how you can gain body confidence. First off, learn to accept your own body and learn how to be confident.  If you can improve it by being fit and healthy, then by all means, do it! Listen as they discuss the following topics: the law of attraction, different workouts, routines, fitness setbacks, getting your dream girl, finding your primary drive, and many more. KEY TAKEAWAYS It was when Tim joined the West End Productions that he finally got into fitness. He became health conscious since looking good and being graceful are parts of the job. There was a time though that he neglected his health and body—he started smoking and became overweight amongst other bad habits. He realised that the body can only take enough toxicity and decided to do something about it. Routines aren’t for everyone. For Tim, he likes it that when there isn’t any pressure. No constraints, no deadlines. Tim also emphasises on the enormous difference of feeling good and looking good. Feeling good is what you want to aim for. But, if you want to look good, he suggested the benchmark workouts from CrossFit. What keeps Tim going? Tim answered, “What kept me going is realising that until I literally, physically can’t do it anymore, I will always be able to consider new things.” What can one do so to feel confident with their bodies and themselves? Don’t be afraid to ask for help from someone. Find a fitness program that works for you. Chris advises that if you want to better yourself, you need to do it for yourself and not for others. Hypnotherapy helped Chris in his focus and mindset. This is how he reached his goals incrementally. What keeps Chris motivated? Chris’ happiness lies in finding the right girl for him. So, what’s the best way to show her dream girl he’s the best fit? By looking good, staying fit, and living healthier. As Chris phrases the Law of Attraction, ‘what you put out, you get back’. Your thought processes will help you in how you reach your goals. You’re able to attract success when you take better action. It’s easier to attain your goals when you have a winning mindset. You feel that you have control over your own progress. It’s easier to remove doubts and let the process do its work. BEST MOMENTS “Just getting out there and being active is the right thing.” - Tim “The constant ability to learn new things, explore new things, and realise that you’re doing just this one kind of fitness doesn’t necessarily mean you know everything.” - Tim “Looking good is an opinion; feeling good is a fact.” - Tim “What keeps me going is knowing for a fact that the journey will never end.” - Tim “We can’t always cater to everyone and make everybody happy.” – Tim “Love yourself, and everything will get attracted to you.” – Chris “I want to be happy; that’s the end result I want.” – Chris “Try to change one habit at a time. Don’t do it all at once.” – Chris VALUABLE RESOURCES Insanity Workout Rob Moore - https://robmoore.com/ Confidence Mastery Podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/confidence-mastery-unlock-your-life-podcast/id1497917418 ABOUT THE GUESTS TIM WEBB Tim has been a professional actor for the past 12 years performing all over the world. He has performed in the Phil Collins' Disney musical Tarzan in Hamburg, Germany, the first UK tour of Wicked and in the West End in The Book of Mormon. Over the last few years, he has become for want of a better word, psyched about fitness and motivating others to achieve their fitness goals. From complete amateur doing Insanity in his parents' living room, he now teaches fitness classes in London at various locations. He is the co-founder of Target Time, a community running programme and website and also of Kinsman Property, an investment company he founded with his brother Edward. Tim has done the full Couch to 5K experience and last year achieved a podium finish in his age group at Spartan Race Scotland. His future goals include; becoming a silver fox, competing in a masters category at a CrossFit event and mastering the art of cooking the perfect Vegan nut roast. LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/tim-webb-06bba0153 Instagram - @webbothyt86 , @targettimerun Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/kinsmanproperty/ CHRIS KNIGHT Chris Knightis a Sales Manager with an entrepreneurial streak. For years he had issues with self-esteem, confidence, body weight fluctuation and depression. Following a relationship breakdown, he decided to use the emotion to fuel a total body and mind transformation. After losing 25lbs and becoming more aesthetically pleasing, he realised that the core reason that he had wanted to do this was to be happy. After following the process of the dieting and the mindset change, Chris realised that happiness comes from within. The external changes to his appearance weren't even necessary but they had been the catalyst to understanding that external changes are just at surface level. When Chris embraced that we have to change how we feel about ourselves internally before anything else matters; his life began to change for the better. Having undergone, and maintaining, his personal body and mindset Transformation; he is now applying the same principles and habits used for dieting into his professional life as he writes a book on mental health and launches his property business. Chris believes that anybody is capable of the same process. If you make the decision to start, as you progress, the positive changes will compound over time giving you results that you desire. https://www.facebook.com/chris.knight.1804 email: cdknight@live.co.uk ABOUT THE HOST Natalie is the Confident Entrepreneur, helping others be confident and successful in health, wealth & happiness with kick-ass coaching at Gold Star Life. She’s a Property Developer, has a Serviced Accommodation business which she runs alongside her business partner and Mum, Paula Bailey and they want to help combat loneliness with the Better Together message – helping others to come together to increase their confidence, network and life. Natalie lives in Mallorca and travels back to the UK regularly to speak at events, host her Gold Star Elite Mastermind and visit property projects. With a background in Personal Training, health and fitness are high on the agenda, with wealth creation and happiness going hand in hand to create a confident and successful life.  CONTACT METHOD Gold Star Elite - www.goldstar.life Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/NatalieArabellaBaileyGoldStar/ Facebook group - https://www.facebook.com/groups/GoldStarLife/ LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/nataliegoldstarbep/ Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/nataliearabellabailey See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

For episode thirteen of season two, Tim and Tuesday reach out to explain what they are doing, both personally and professionally, during the Coronavirus outbreak.Together, Tim Merry and Tuesday Ryan-Hart are THE OUTSIDE—systems change and equity facilitators who bring the fresh air necessary to organize movements, organizations, and collaborators forward for progress, surfacing new mindsets for greater participation and shared impact.2.13 —— SHOW NOTESReading: “Do Not Lose Heart, We Were Made for These Times: Letter to a Young Activist During Troubled Times,” by Dr. Clarissa Pinkola EstésMy friends, do not lose heart. We were made for these times. I have heard from so many recently who are deeply and properly bewildered. They are concerned about the state of affairs in our world now. Ours is a time of almost daily astonishment and often righteous rage over the latest degradations of what matters most to civilized, visionary people.You are right in your assessments. The lustre and hubris some have aspired to while endorsing acts so heinous against children, elders, everyday people, the poor, the unguarded, the helpless, is breathtaking. Yet, I urge you, ask you, gentle you, to please not spend your spirit dry by bewailing these difficult times. Especially do not lose hope. Most particularly because, the fact is that we were made for these times. Yes. For years, we have been learning, practicing, been in training for and just waiting to meet on this exact plain of engagement.I grew up on the Great Lakes and recognize a seaworthy vessel when I see one. Regarding awakened souls, there have never been more able vessels in the waters than there are right now across the world. And they are fully provisioned and able to signal one another as never before in the history of humankind.Look out over the prow; there are millions of boats of righteous souls on the waters with you. Even though your veneers may shiver from every wave in this stormy roil, I assure you that the long timbers composing your prow and rudder come from a greater forest. That long-grained lumber is known to withstand storms, to hold together, to hold its own, and to advance, regardless.In any dark time, there is a tendency to veer toward fainting over how much is wrong or unmended in the world. Do not focus on that. There is a tendency, too, to fall into being weakened by dwelling on what is outside your reach, by what cannot yet be. Do not focus there. That is spending the wind without raising the sails.We are needed, that is all we can know. And though we meet resistance, we more so will meet great souls who will hail us, love us and guide us, and we will know them when they appear. Didn’t you say you were a believer? Didn’t you say you pledged to listen to a voice greater? Didn’t you ask for grace? Don’t you remember that to be in grace means to submit to the voice greater?Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach. Any small, calm thing that one soul can do to help another soul, to assist some portion of this poor suffering world, will help immensely. It is not given to us to know which acts or by whom, will cause the critical mass to tip toward an enduring good.What is needed for dramatic change is an accumulation of acts, adding, adding to, adding more, continuing. We know that it does not take everyone on Earth to bring justice and peace, but only a small, determined group who will not give up during the first, second, or hundredth gale.One of the most calming and powerful actions you can do to intervene in a stormy world is to stand up and show your soul. Soul on deck shines like gold in dark times. The light of the soul throws sparks, can send up flares, builds signal fires, causes proper matters to catch fire. To display the lantern of soul in shadowy times like these – to be fierce and to show mercy toward others; both are acts of immense bravery and greatest necessity.Struggling souls catch light from other souls who are fully lit and willing to show it. If you would help to calm the tumult, this is one of the strongest things you can do.There will always be times when you feel discouraged. I too have felt despair many times in my life, but I do not keep a chair for it. I will not entertain it. It is not allowed to eat from my plate.The reason is this: In my uttermost bones I know something, as do you. It is that there can be no despair when you remember why you came to Earth, who you serve, and who sent you here. The good words we say and the good deeds we do are not ours. They are the words and deeds of the One who brought us here. In that spirit, I hope you will write this on your wall: When a great ship is in harbor and moored, it is safe, there can be no doubt. But that is not what great ships are built for. Tim + Tuesday: Today, we are talking about Coronavirus… it’s here and it’s real and it feels like the elephant in the room if we don’t talk about it. Tues: Her [Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés] words were what I know in my bones but have had trouble remembering. In some ways I can feel in interactions, that I might be viewed as “Pollyanna"; not based in reality as what is… in my bones I know that I cannot accept the invitation to fear and despair. Tim: What does ‘Pollyanna” mean?Tues: “Pollyanna” is a person who is always on the bright side, positive thinker, not based on reality. Tim: You are choosing how you are going to turn up. One of the things that have blown me away over the last few weeks are the Facebook groups that have kicked off all across Canada. One woman started a small Facebook group and called it “Care Mongering” - it was a group where people in her community could come together and identify offers or needs that they have and exchange them… and now they are all across Canada. Two of the things I really like about this is (1) It’s just so kind; and (2) It was emergent - it was not organized. Tues: We just wanted to be with people though this podcast. Tim, what are the things that you are doing to take care of yourself?Tim: Today, in particular, I am wearing a rather fetching tweed tie - in a funny way I am doing little things that give me pleasure. It feels fun and nice. I am getting a lot of time with my kids - we are playing a lot and talking a lot. I am also getting out and walking three times a day. This really helps me to stay centered. If there is a theme to this podcast it is choices. I definitely have more anxiety then I would normally have… and I have to look after the part of me that is worried. I need to look after it and be kind. Tues: Late last week, I decided to really limit social media. As a person who has a tendency towards anxiety, I had a sense of the amount of collective anxiety. I felt like I could not continue to keep reading… but I keep myself informed by reputable people. I am also committed to being active everyday and eating good food. I am being responsible and responsive. Tim: Let’s talk about The Outside. In 10 minutes time, we are jumping on with one of many organizations around online collaboration platforms. Our major clients that we are working with right now are front-line responders to situations like the Coronavirus outbreak. And so, we are in this tension between, obviously you have to respond to the immediate and urgent but it cannot be in complete dismissal of the long-term systemic changes that we are trying to overcome together or make progress on together. Everything is being pushed out - the virus itself is going to take 4 months to push through a region - and so we are looking at online collaboration platforms that we can start building. These are not event- based; we are going after something that can hold collaboration over an extended period of time. We’ve set up a whole bunch of demos and conversations - this fits a whole bunch of things we are doing at The Outside. It fits the declaration of climate emergency that we are beginning to craft, which is looking at what is our responsibility to carbon emissions, how do we respond to that and it also looks at how do you deal with increasing global crisis that results in increasing fragmentation globally and still organize together systemically together to solve major problems. Tues: We are trying to respond and meet people where they are in the crisis as well as seeing what is possible in this moment… which could be a really different way of gathering people virtually that is better for our planet and actually allows more voices in. There is all sorts of implications for equity that working in a different way could bring us. I can feel the fragility of this moment and I can also feel the possibility of it. Tim: We are deliberately looking at how we can combine synchronize and asynchronous efforts. Tues: I’m really curious to see what we [The Outside] can create and put out into the world as more time and space opens up.Tim: On that note, all of The Outside online courses - Leading Effective Meetings & Shared Work - are now available for FREE to anyone that is interested… right now until June 30, 2020. Also, we are brainstorming a weekly update from us and developing a list of resources that we have that we could make available. Song: “Sweet Inspiration” by the Derek Trucks BandSubscribe to the podcast now—in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher or anywhere else you find podcasts. New episodes will be available every second Tuesday. If you’d like to get in touch with us about something you heard on the show, reach us at podcast@findtheoutside.com. Find the song we played in today’s show—and every song we’ve played in previous shows—on the playlist. Just search ‘Find the Outside’ on Spotify.Duration: 31:53Produced by: Mark Coffin @ Sound Good StudiosTheme music: Gary BlakemoreEpisode cover image: source See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

For episode eleven of season two, Tim and Tuesday reflect on how hope can — and must — co-exist with an acknowledgement of where we are, even in crisis or struggle. If we are to respond massively to an emerging future, and grapple with our current reality, what steps can we take to preserve optimism?Together, Tim Merry and Tuesday Ryan-Hart are THE OUTSIDE—systems change and equity facilitators who bring the fresh air necessary to organize movements, organizations, and collaborators forward for progress, surfacing new mindsets for greater participation and shared impact.2.10 —— SHOW NOTESTim: There’s a Thomas Merton quote about finding rightness in the work itself, to surrender the hope of results. And I came across this quote from William the Silent: “It is not necessary to hope in order to persevere.” There is one story that I’ve come across in our work - how important hope has been to persevere.Tues: The quote that comes to me is a Toni Morrison quote: “You wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down.” I believe my ancestors, on both sides, had deep hope as they left their shores - that there was something different, something better.Tim: I feel like we are in the midst of a level of crisis that is now beginning to truly impact the middle and middle-upper classes in a way it hasn’t before in such a pervasive scale, scope and reach. I think that’s a piece of the class response that I want to identify and have some compassion for and not pretend it’s not a product of privilege. It makes me think of the quote from Rumi: “Sit down and be quiet. You are drunk, and this is the edge of the roof.”Tues: I wonder about my own lens and perspective; I feel there is no lack of material for hope for me. My vantage point is of people who are actively working and trying.Tim: This kind of analysis that becoming acquainted with despair, but still maintaining hope, is an issue of how insulated your life has been.Tues: Whose going to make it and who is not? Disaster capitalists are moving into Puerto Rico right now and beginning to set themselves up for when it all goes down and the question is what will happen to the Puerto Ricans who are there?Tim: What does it mean to not prioritize engaging with the emergence of consciousness among the privileged classes and the fragility that comes with that? This kind of awakening to the level of despair, because you are experiencing it… I am intrigued by that. How this get’s integrated into how we think about significant change happening. I also don’t want it to be the thing that slows us down.Tues: It’s not do we engage it or don’t we - it’s how and when and why. Everyone gets to decide what their own energy level is.Tim: When we go into those stories that are so intimately connected to us, we find both the “You are drunk, and this is the edge of the roof” and we find the hope, the gift, the power to stand in the face of it and take the next step.Poem: Build the Arks (King Kong Song) by Tim MerryI just read about the coming of the ice ageEarth’s rageThe mighty mother, the sage,Turning another pageOf evolutionA natural solutionThe vibrationOf creationMelting ice caps into the gulf stream flowsThe European heating system blowsBeyond repairMy mother, father, sister, brother live thereStop, bear witness, take a long good stareDigest our reality and start to careThe planet is movin’ onWe all be livin’ in the final swan songThe future’s comin’ on strongLike King KongWe all be the hapless maidenLooking in his big brown eyesBeginning to realiseIt’s all beyond our controlBigger than we’ll ever beSee?Fuck the swan song,This is the King Kong songWe ain’t got no choice but to go along. No more prizes for predicting the rainThe painNew startsTime to build the arks What’s my contributionAt this crazy time?Am I gonna whineComplainAbout the pain?The fact we all seem to be going insane?No!Trust in surpriseIntegrity has no compromiseRelease all tiesOpen the eyes. Our survival seems hit and missLike the world is taking the pissA final good night kissAll this material wealthThe illusion of blissIt’s a big mis –stakeTime to rakeThe fallen leavesAutumn choicesWinter bereavesNot everyone will make itWe can’t fake itThere’s no hidingFrom this collidingWith the end of an eraIt’s never been clearerSome will get left behindLinger in our mindsTheir remains to findIn millions of yearsAs we learn again our evolutionFrom homo-confusionHomo-luminumNo more prizes for predicting the rainThe painNew startsTime to build the arks Gather now at our community centresWith friends and mentorsAnd EldersWe all be the weldersOf fragmentationOn the edges of the new creationThe builders of the New Space StationRight here in the arms of the motherWhere the heroes gather undercoverSensing the future with sonar soundThe builders of boats aboundReadying for the coming stormsTrainers of the warriors who break the normsYield to the fieldDrop the shieldWhat are the skills we need to survive?To be one of ones aliveWho looks backThinking“holy shit how did we survive that?”What does it take to make the warrior casteTo see our king kong future comin’ on fastThen look back and know it as the past?This ain’t about seekin’ thrillsWe need to know the survival skillsGet into trainingI’m not exaggeratingI wish I wasThis is real,nowhereIt’s time to get clear.There’s no more prizes for predicting the rainThe painNew startsIt’s time to build the arksSong: Faith’s Hymn by Beautiful ChorusSubscribe to the podcast now—in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher or anywhere else you find podcasts. New episodes will be available every second Tuesday. If you’d like to get in touch with us about something you heard on the show, reach us at podcast@findtheoutside.com. Find the song we played in today’s show—and every song we’ve played in previous shows—on the playlist. Just search ‘Find the Outside’ on Spotify.Duration: 47:20Produced by: Mark Coffin @ Sound Good StudiosTheme music: Gary BlakemoreEpisode cover image: source See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Dr. Shannon Orr (Professor of Political Science whose research focuses on environmental policy, director of the Master of Public Administration Program at BGSU) and Dr. Tim Davis (Ryan Family Endowed Professor of Biology, member of the Lake Erie Research Center and the Environmental Protection Agency Subcommittee for Safe and Sustainable Water Resources) discuss algae blooms, water quality science, and policy in Lake Erie.       Transcript: Introduction: From Bowling Green State University and the Institute for the Study of Culture and Society, this is BG Ideas. Intro Song Lyrics: I'm going to show you this with a wonderful experiment. Jolie Sheffer: Welcome to the Big Ideas podcast, a collaboration between the Institute for the Study of Culture and Society and the School of Media and Communication at Bowling Green State University. I'm Dr. Jolie Sheffer, Associate Professor of English and American Culture Studies and the Director of ICS. Jolie Sheffer: Today I'm joined by two BGSU faculty members. Dr. Shannon Orr is a Professor of Political Science whose research focuses on environmental policy. She was recently recognized for her outstanding community involvement at the 2019 Faculty Excellence Awards, which lauded her for 100 service learning projects, among other activities. Dr. Orr is the director of the Master of Public Administration Program at BGSU. Jolie Sheffer: Dr. Tim Davis is a Ryan Family Endowed Professor of Biology, whose research focuses on algal blooms and aquatic ecosystems. He's a member of the Lake Erie Research Center and the Environmental Protection Agency Subcommittee for Safe and Sustainable Water Resources. Dr. Davis was recently honored in Washington DC for his work in the prevention of harmful algal blooms. Jolie Sheffer: Shannon and Tim, thanks for joining me. Dr. Tim Davis: Thank you. Dr. Shannon Orr: Thanks for having us. Jolie Sheffer: Tim, you've done substantial research regarding harmful algal blooms, especially around the Great Lakes region. How did you come to focus on that area in biology? Dr. Tim Davis: I mean honestly, it kind of started my senior year of undergrad. I was at Southampton College at Long Island University, and I went to the South Pacific with a research professor to do a winter term study abroad course, and even though you're supposed to have a project, I didn't have one. So I just started working with that faculty member, and he was working on algal blooms and we were doing some work with damselfish in Fiji and Solomon Islands. Dr. Tim Davis: So I started working with him, and then when I got back to a university, I joined his lab. Harmful algal blooms seemed to be a hot topic. Water quality is always something that's been a area that I think is really important, living and growing up either near the Atlantic Ocean or in the Great Lakes. I just kind of took off from there, and harmful algal bloom seemed to be popping up everywhere, and it presented a great opportunity to conduct meaningful science that would be applied to society. I thought this is a good way to spend the rest of my career. Jolie Sheffer: Shannon, your background is in environmental policy. How did you become interested in water issues in our region? Dr. Shannon Orr: Well, it was really because of the students when I first started teaching at BGSU. When I came here I had been working on climate change, and specifically looking at the United nations and the treaty negotiations that were going on around climate change. I was teaching in my very first semester, my very first class at BGSU, I was teaching an environmental policy class. I was using a lot of references to climate change. I had moved here from the Canadian Rockies, and so a lot of my examples were kind of Rocky Mountain based, Western Canada, Western US. Dr. Shannon Orr: And then the students started talking a lot about Asian carp, and they had so much passion for the issue and the concerns and threat of Asian carp as an invasive species posing a threat to the Great Lakes. So, I started reading about it based on their interest and then I got really captivated in it. Then I kind of caught their passion and then I started to become more involved in issues around kind of water quality, Great Lakes invasive species, from a social science perspective. Jolie Sheffer: So both of you are obviously doing important work on the Great Lakes and water quality. So, what does it mean? What are some of the particular issues that are maybe unique or distinctive in the Great Lakes compared to the South Pacific or the Rockies or other places. What do you think is distinctive about the issues locally? Do want to start us, Tim? Dr. Tim Davis: Sure, I can. Well I guess taking a step back, harmful algal blooms are not unique to the Great Lakes. They're happening pretty much on every continent except Antarctica, so they're a global issue that have regional implications. What's really kind of unique about this area is that we hold about one-fifth of the earth's available fresh surface water, and we rely on our surface water resources so heavily, especially for drinking water. That because of our actions in the watershed, we're impacting the water quality of the water that a lot of us are consuming. Right? Even in Bowling Green here, we drink water coming directly from the Maumee River that's obviously been treated. Dr. Tim Davis: So, when you look at the amount of fresh water, which is a finite resource, we need to take care of it, we need to protect it. The fact that we live in an area where we have to substantially treat our water even though there's such a ... It's not a quantity amount, it's a quality issue. To me, that's where it differs a bit from other areas where a lot of other areas are dealing with water quality and quantity issues. We don't have a quantity issue, especially right now. Our lakes are really high. We have a quality issue, and it's one that was self inflicted. Jolie Sheffer: Could you talk a little bit about what some of those causes are to our watershed problems? Dr. Tim Davis: Sure. So, the algal blooms in the lake are essentially the visual symptom of an unhealthy watershed, right? So when we look at our watershed, we essentially live in what was the Great Black Swamp. However, we've converted most of that area into agricultural land because it's very good agricultural soil. The problem there is that in order to farm, farmers routinely add fertilizer, nitrogen, phosphorus, to their land, and not all that gets taken up by the plants that they're growing, and if you don't apply it at the right time or there's a large rain, it can run off into our big river, especially the Maumee River and end up in our lake. Dr. Tim Davis: These algal blooms, they're essentially microscopic plants. They need sunlight, water, and nutrients to grow. Well, they have a lot of water, the sun's not going anywhere, and we're giving them an abundant of nutrients, so therefore we're going to see these blooms and they're going to continue to occur into the future unless we fix our watershed. If we fix our watershed, we'll fix our lake. Jolie Sheffer: Shannon, in terms of Asian carp, what are the particular conditions in the Great Lakes that are making this an issue here? Dr. Shannon Orr: So, building off of Tim's great answer just now about the science, now I turn and look at the politics and why can't we solve problems of water quality and why do we have these problems around Asian carp? So much of it is about competing interests. So, if we look at Asian carp in particular, Asian Carp are an invasive species that actually we brought to the US into Arkansas for treatment of aquaculture ponds. So one of the things about Asian carp is that they have a voracious appetite, so a great, clean, green alternative in the 1970s as an alternative to chemicals to clean these aquaculture ponds. When we brought them in, people said, "Well, they won't survive and thrive in the US, so it's fine, and they won't escape," but nobody told the carp that. So some epic flooding happened, the carp swam out of their aquaculture ponds, entered the water systems, and they've been slowly moving ever since closer and closer to the Great Lakes, and so now they're just a couple of miles away from entering Lake Michigan. Dr. Shannon Orr: The reason why it's so hard to stop it, it seems kind of easy and people say, "Well, why don't we eat them? Why don't we catch them?" It's a little bit more complicated than that, which we can go into later, but one of the biggest issues is that we have all these competing interests around water. So, we have farmers, we have the fishing industry, we have the barge industry, which is really dependent on using the lock system to transport goods. So then we have economic interests, particularly in the Chicago region. Even just here in Lake Erie and looking at the water quality issues that Tim was just talking about, we have farmers, we have homeowners, and then at the same time we also have competing political jurisdictions. Dr. Shannon Orr: So we're talking about the Great Lakes. So we're talking about the United States and we're talking about Canada. We're talking about multiple states and we're talking about the province of Ontario. We're also talking about counties and cities and tribal communities, and all of these different political jurisdictions have different ideas, different solutions, different ways of making decisions, so trying to solve our problems are really challenging in the Great Lakes region. Jolie Sheffer: Could you talk a little more, Shannon, about kind of what some of the approaches are to solving the Asian carp problem? Dr. Shannon Orr: Sure. So, there's lots of ideas out there about trying to solve the Asian carp problem, and technology is often cited as kind of an option. The big extreme option that is being proposed and seriously looked at is actually creating a wall. So we put up a wall and we stop the carp from being able to enter into the Great Lakes. So, very expensive proposition. It's about a 20 year timeline according to the Army Corps of Engineers. It would work, but the barge industry is against it because we have a billion dollars worth of goods transported along those water systems, so putting up a wall eliminates the barge industry and create some major problems for the shipping industry about how do we get the goods from one side of the wall over to the other. Dr. Shannon Orr: There are some technological options for that are being proposed, but they're all very expensive and have very long timelines, and the carp aren't that far away. Some people have proposed fishing and eating them, for example. I actually got to go Asian carp fishing, hunting actually, with a bow and arrow, which was pretty fun, but there's so many carp and they're actually pretty hard to catch on a large scale. There is a very government subsidized fishing industry for carp. Illinois has put in a lot of money to support the fishing industry, specifically for carp, and the processing industry. So, what do you do with all the carp once you catch them? So, one of the proposals has always been, "Well, you know what humans are really good at is eating things into extinction, and so why don't we do that with carp?" Dr. Shannon Orr: One of the problems when we think about a North American diet is that when we tend to eat fish, we tend to eat it as a filet, so we like a nice fish filet on a plate that you cut with a knife and fork. In Asia fish is often served as fish balls, fish cakes, fish that's flaked, and then served that way. The problem with Asian carp is it's really, really bony, and so people describe it as a very mild tasting fish, but in order to actually cut out a filet, there was a restaurant in Chicago that tried to do it. They're like, "We're going to eat the fish. The carp, we're going to make people like it." They realized that by the time they cut out a filet, they would have had to serve it at the price of a lobster, and who's going to pay lobster prices for kind of a mild white fish that's called carp, which we don't think of as a very good eating fish. So, the eating solution is a little bit challenging. Dr. Shannon Orr: There is an industry that's sending the carp back to Asia, kind of irony, because they're promoted as a clean fish, not a lot of pollution, a safe a healthy alternative. It's also being turned into fertilizer. There's pet food. My parent's dog is a huge fan of the Asian carp treats. Dr. Shannon Orr: So, those are some of the kind of the major solutions that are being proposed. Right now we have electric barriers that are in place that kind of, when the fish swim up to the barriers, they get kind of a tingle. It doesn't kill them. They get the sensation from the barrier which repels them so they turn away. It's not a perfect solution, and there are concerns that perhaps fish have gone through, that metal bottom boats disrupt the current so then fish could swim under a boat as it moves through the barriers. So those are some of the solutions, but there's no consensus yet about how to actually stop the carp. Jolie Sheffer: Tim, what are some of the solutions being investigated for the algal bloom issue? What are some of the approaches that you're studying? Dr. Shannon Orr: Sure. So what I always start out by saying is that there's no in lake solution. We have blooms that have these surface scums. Those big green surface scums that look like paint being spilled on top of the water, and they can be over 700 square kilometers, so they're huge. Four times the size of the district of Columbia. So really, really big events. There's nothing we can do in the lake. Once the blooms are formed, they're there, and there's nothing we can sprinkle on the lake. What we need to do is folks in the watershed, and that's difficult. Because we have to work with our agricultural community, and not that they're difficult to work with, but a lot of farmers work on razor thin margins, so there's just not a lot of money. A lot of the solutions, we talk about for R's, right place, right time, right depth, and right amount for fertilization on fields, and yo that's a good solution but a lot of the technology to get there is expensive. Dr. Shannon Orr: Governor DeWine just introduced the H2Ohio Initiative, which is a really great piece of ... it's a good bill because it provides $170 million dollars up front, and if we are able to get another round, if it's refunded again for five years, in total it's about $900 million in financial resources coming in to solve this problem. But we need to figure out one, how to use less fertilizer on farms, which there's about a third of the farmers that are always doing pretty much everything they can. There's a third of the farmers that would if they were incentivized to do so, and then of course there's a third that just are kind of stuck in their ways and are kind of recalcitrant to change. Dr. Shannon Orr: We really need to work on reducing the amount of runoff and reducing the amount of nutrients in that runoff, and that's going to be particularly challenging because climate change is going to make that more challenging. So, climate change is going to impact precipitation patterns. Right now, this past spring is a great example. We had a lot of rain over extended period of time and there was a lot of farm land that didn't get planted. So even though we had a lot of rain, we had a lot of runoff, and this was the fifth biggest bloom in recorded history. The amount of phosphorus that came in was about 30% less than what it would have been if all fields had gotten planted and fertilized. Dr. Shannon Orr: So, changing precipitation patterns is going to change farming practices, and climate change is going to continually impact our ability to fight the nutrient overload coming into the lake, and it's only going to get more difficult so we need to act quickly and aggressively. Dr. Shannon Orr: Again, it's a political issue. It really is. Farmers don't want to get regulated. There's a lot of folks that are worried about that we're going to turn into the nest next Chesapeake Bay, where there's a lot of regulations. So, we have a lot of scientists both at BGSU and across state of Ohio who are working with the agriculture community to implement new strategies, implement different ways of farming or just bringing back cover crops, for example. Winter cover crops can help stabilize soil, stabilize nutrients, reduce runoff. Dr. Shannon Orr: We have a lot more large animal farming operations. We call them CAFOs. It's consolidated animal feeding operations, and there's a lot of manure that is associated with that. So then what do you do with all that manure? Because manure is expensive to transport. Because a lot of it, manure is like 97% water. So if you can get rid of the water, you can transport that manure. It still has the nutrients, but that's expensive. So we're working on technologies to try to solve that issue. Jolie Sheffer: Tim, you're a member of the EPA Board of Scientific Counselors and part of the Safe and Sustainable Water Resources Subcommittee. How have you applied what you've learned in this position to your work as a Lake Erie center researcher and your work at BGSU? How are they informing each other? Dr. Tim Davis: I would say a lot of what I've learned through my research at BGSU has helped me more inform and advise EPA on their larger national policies, their national goals for their water research. So EPA is not just a regulatory agency, they also have research. What are their national goals going to be? What are their overarching goals going to be? So we take the expertise that we've built up through my work at BGSU and help them kind of define what their goals are for the next three years. Dr. Tim Davis: But then we can also kind of take what we know is important to EPA and then apply it when we're trying to apply for grants or assisting other colleagues in what's important to EPA, because we help advise them on ... They give us topics what they think are important. We help clarify and better define what their research is going to be, so we know what's important to them. And if we know it's important to them, we can write grants that BGSU researchers can help them do their work better, and it also helps BGSU and our research portfolio and individual faculty members. But it's really that that give and take. So we can take the knowledge that we've gained through our research here and help them, and then take the information and what we know is important to EPA and be able to apply it in our grant writing. Dr. Tim Davis: That helps us, quite frankly, maintain our research labs and, and help get students involved in research, which is something that we're all very passionate about. Jolie Sheffer: Shannon, you do a lot of work with students in your role with the Master's of Public Administration program. Can you talk a bit about how your students are connecting some of these policy issues with partners in the community? Dr. Shannon Orr: Oh yeah. That's a really part of our Master's of Public Administration program and the classes that I teach. A lot of it is that I want to give students the opportunity to make a difference. Our tagline for our MPA program is Education for Public Service. I also want students to understand that as individuals, they have a lot of power, and I want them to care about things and be engaged in their communities. Regardless of what careers they go off and pursue, that they can go out and do really great things and make a difference, and do impact studies and evaluations or strategic plans and help to make our communities better and stronger. One of the things that I really emphasize a lot in my classes is the idea of stakeholder collaboration, and really sitting down and listening to different perspectives, different ideas, bringing together different actors that so many of our decisions have to be made from that lens. That it can't just be people working in isolation or groups combatively arguing and yelling about solutions and decisions and the future. Dr. Shannon Orr: Aristotle defined politics as the search for the good life, and so that's kind of why I'm a political scientist, because I love that idea. People have different ideas about what the good life is. People have different ideas about what a Great Lakes should be, and so I really want my students to embrace the idea of listening to all of the different stakeholders involved in these issues and finding ways to come together and to create solutions and make meaningful, positive impact. Jolie Sheffer: We're going to take a short break. Thanks for listening to the Big Ideas podcast. Introduction: If you are passionate about Big Ideas, consider sponsoring this program. To have your name or organization mentioned here please contact us at ics@bgsu.edu. Jolie Sheffer: You're listening to the Big Ideas podcast. I'm here talking with professors Tim Davis and Shannon Orr. I'd like to ask next about some of the particular projects that each of you have on. So Tim, you're a part of a team at BGSU that received funding in October for a project titled Monitoring and Event Response for Harmful Algal Blooms. What are you learning from that project, and how are you hoping that that will directly be applied to solving some of these problems? Dr. Tim Davis: I'm really excited about this recent award from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA. This is a three year proposal or grant that we are taking technology. So, this is technology that allows us to measure these algal toxins. So, the toxins that caused the Toledo water crisis in 2014, it allows us to take these units out into the field. These portable rapid toxin detection devices, take them out in the field and measure toxins right in the field. These units that we're going to be using are about the size of a tissue box, about the size of a Kleenex box, and we have these cartridges that help us quantify the amount of toxin in a sample. What's really fantastic about that is that we're linking this advanced technology that's easy to use and rapid with citizen science, or community engaged science. Dr. Tim Davis: So we're working with water treatment managers, we're working with beach managers, we're working with the phytoplankton monitoring network, which is a volunteer network that's run through NOAA, and we are working with charter boat captains that are out on the lake every day. We're distributing these units to all of our partners, all of our community partners, and they're going to be out on the lake and they're going to take a sample. We're going to teach them how to do this, of course, and they're going to extract the toxins from the sample, then they're going to analyze it. Then they can go to their mobile phone, we're developing an app where they can open our app, it'll download their coordinates of where they are on the lake, and they can upload their data, which gets put into a central server. Dr. Tim Davis: So as scientists, we know that partnering with community stakeholders who really want to be part of the solution is a great way to expand our research. Because there's no way we can ever have enough students to do everything we want to do, but we definitely have enough stakeholders. So by partnering with them, we are going to be able to track the toxicity, or the toxin contraction of the bloom, in ways that we've never been able to do before, and that's really exciting. Dr. Tim Davis: So we're combining this new technology with citizen science, and hopefully be able to build a better picture of how the bloom is changing in its toxicity over time, over the course of a bloom season, which will then help us to better be able to predict when the bloom is going to be most toxic, least toxic, and that's really important for water managers. Because right now we can predict where it is, we can predict where it's going, we can even predict how big it's going to be on a seasonal scale, but we can't predict toxicity, and that's the one thing that we really need to improve on, and this work and partnering with citizen scientists is going to help us do that. Jolie Sheffer: Could you talk about that project in terms of its interdisciplinary scope? Because it sounds like you're not just talking about working with biologists, but there's also computer science. Talk about the scope of the project from a disciplinary perspective. Dr. Tim Davis: Yeah, absolutely. So, all of the work that we do is cross disciplinary. We have chemists, we have biologists, we have engineers who had to design this technology, and then of course, we have the computer scientist. So we're seeing this interdisciplinary work become more and more prevalent in our field, and quite frankly, it's allowing us to do work better than we have when we were working in silos. When we were just working with biologists or chemists. We were able to make gains. There's a lot of work that was done that was fundamental, and we build off of all of that previous research, but by combining these groups, not only are we able to do more, but we can now take these big data sets and actually analyze them in ways that we couldn't previously. That's really important, because scientists, we always get dinged for saying, "We need more data," but really we have a lot of data, it's how do we analyze all that data now? Dr. Tim Davis: So gathering data, we have been gathering data for years. Analyzing all those data to understand longterm and big trends, that's where the biological sciences is kind of really exploding, and it's an exciting time to be part of this work. Jolie Sheffer: How does interdisciplinarity function in the work that you're doing, Shannon? Because, you are also kind of really connecting different disciplines. Dr. Shannon Orr: Yeah, and so my work on Asian Carp, which is a book manuscript that I just finished, really draws on the work of biologists and the work of political scientists, but also the work of economists and sociologists, so I'm kind of bridging all of those disciplines to really look at the issue from what we would call a policy analysis perspective. So, I'm not trying to kind of advocate for any particular solution, it's to lay out kind of the complications and the political jurisdictions, the competing interests involved in the issue that really make it so hard to solve. Dr. Shannon Orr: So I'm not sure the book is kind of like, it's not really uplifting, because [inaudible 00:26:03] I think the end of it is, that it's just really hard, but what I hope is that people can see that the richness and the depth that comes by pulling in interdisciplinary approaches and understandings of an issue like an invasive species. I was doing an early interview when I was first starting to think about this project, and doing it as more than just something that I was adding to a class, and I had a biologist say, "Well, why would a political scientist write a book about Asian carp?" And so I said, "Well, it's all about kind of the decision making and the economics and the different interests in the barge industry versus the environmentalist's," and then he said, "Oh yeah. No, I get it. Like that really, really makes sense." Jolie Sheffer: What are some of the lessons that scientists, policymakers and others have learned from past mistakes in water conservation, and how are some of those lessons learned guiding current research and policy? Dr. Tim Davis: What we're learning now, what we've taken away from the success that we had in the late 70s into the 80s, and then the subsequent kind of failure is that one, we know that we can clean up Lake Erie. We know that it's possible to bring Lake Erie back to a spot, maybe not where it was pre-industrial revolution, but at least back to a state that doesn't have these annual algal blooms that are so large and toxic and disruptive to the environment and to the economy. We realize that one, it's going to take long term monitoring, so we are going to have to, once these policies get put in place, once we have these remedial actions that are put in place, we need to continue to monitor to make sure that what we're doing on the land is actually getting translated to results in the lake. Dr. Tim Davis: Even after we hopefully achieve those results, we're going to have to continue to keep our eye on the lake to make sure that things don't sneak back up on us the way that they did. So, we've learned a lot. We learned a lot from our failures. Sometimes we learn more from our failures than we do from our successes. But I would say we have a much better idea now of what we need to do. Sometimes the problem comes in more of the political arena where we're in this for a career. Hopefully we have this solved before the end of my career. That would be ideal. But the politicians, it's a two or four year cycle, so sometimes priorities change. So it's continuing to say, "Hey, we've cleaned this up. We've made progress. There are other issues that are always going to come up and that need attention, but it doesn't mean that we take our eye off of the issue that we used to have just because we're not having it anymore, because that's what we did in the past and it crept back up on us." Jolie Sheffer: What about for you, Shannon? Dr. Shannon Orr: I think I would say three things. I think the first one would be, as Tim said, the importance of monitoring and evaluation, and particularly looking at how government policies come into place. That's not the end of the story. So now we need to look at longer time horizons and we need to see how, as Tim was saying, has the lakes changed, but we also have to be open to the idea of making mistakes. That perhaps we've made mistakes. Dr. Shannon Orr: That would be my second point, would be learning from arrogance. I think the carp is a good example about that, right? So we bring in the carp and then we say, "Oh, well they're not going to escape," and then they, in fact, do. I think a lot of the mistakes have been made because of a failure to think about longterm thinking, so that would be my third reason what we need to learn from our past mistakes. Dr. Shannon Orr: It's very hard for politicians to be able to say, "I stopped Asian carp from coming in 20 years," because they need to be reelected now. One of the things in political science we say is that politicians are motivated primarily by two things, which is claiming credit and avoiding blame, and it's hard to get a lot of credit for doing things like not letting a species invade the Great Lakes. Because it didn't happen, nobody knows what efforts it took to stop it. So I think keeping those in mind about those three things, I think. Jolie Sheffer: Both of you have mentioned, in different ways, the role of students and ordinary people in both creating these problems and also solving them. For each of you, what would you say are some of the things that local citizens can do to help with some of these water issues in the region? Shannon? Dr. Shannon Orr: I would say to be educated and to read about them, because, I mean, this impacts our daily life, right? I always tell my students there's no alternative to water. We need it for cleaning, we need it for drinking, we need it for cooking. So learning about, do you know where your water comes from? Right? Thinking about water treatment systems. Thinking about the issues that are facing the Great Lakes. We live in 2019, it's not hard to do a Google search using good sources, so I encourage people to stay informed, and if you're upset, to call your local representatives. Because they need your vote, they will listen if you call. Now they may not always agree with you, but it's that public record of individuals in the community, interest groups, whatnot, everybody standing up and making their voice heard, and there are ways in which you can do that. You can just pick up the phone and call a representative. You can send them an email. You can attend a public forum. You can vote. Dr. Shannon Orr: I mean, all of those things really make a difference. I think they are things that, yes, we're busy, you've got to get your kids to dance, and make dinner and go to work and do all of that kind of stuff, but a little bit of action can make a big difference. And because water is such at the heart of our lives and particularly here in the Great Lakes Basin, it's about more than just drinking and cooking and cleaning, it's also about livelihoods and economic development and the wellbeing of this region. Jolie Sheffer: What about for you, Tim? What would you recommend for citizens who want to do something? Dr. Tim Davis: There was a study that I saw, at least a slide from a presentation, where they polled Democrats, Republicans, Independents, what their top three priorities were. Number one was always the economy, but regardless of whether they're Democrat, Republican, or Independent, in this region the second was health of the Great Lakes. So as Shannon said, politicians listen. They don't always listen to scientists, sometimes they don't always listen to their constituents, but if you have enough of them, a lot of them know it doesn't matter what side of the coin they're on, they're not going to get elected if the Great Lakes aren't in their platform somewhere and health of the Great Lakes. Dr. Tim Davis: But if you want to get involved, there are many ways to get involved. Whether it's trying to join one of these phytoplankton monitoring networks or any other environmental group, best thing you can do, I'm just going to agree with Shannon on the too, is just educate yourself, because there's nothing worse than someone who's kind of half educated making statements that they think are fully informed. Right? So fully inform yourself, because there are no enemies in this solution. It's not a blue versus red, it's not urban versus rural. We are all in this region. We all live here, we all drink the same water, we all use the same resources. Jolie Sheffer: We have some students who'd like to ask you a few questions. Courtney Keeney: I'm Courtney Keeney, and I am a graduate student in the NPA program. I was just wondering if you could both talk more about the best ways to communicate with each other, especially with contentious issues. This one with Lake Erie, but also other issues in general. Dr. Shannon Orr: It's always hard when you have people on different sides and you're trying to bring together passionate environmentalists and farmers who it's their livelihood and they're just trying to provide for their families, and to bring together really different interests together. I think one of the most important things to do is to create forums in which people feel comfortable sharing their views. Not creating hostile situations where people yell at each other, but trying to find the things that truly are in common. Dr. Shannon Orr: No one wants to drink contaminated water, right? Nobody wants the lakes to have algae problems. I mean, we all agree on that, right? So if we can start from some of those. And at the same time, we all need to eat food, so we need the farmers, we need healthy lakes. So, starting from those bases, instead of saying, "Well, one interest is evil or the other one is." That doesn't get to anywhere, right? I think creating mechanisms to bring together people who are willing to actually discuss and engage in the issues in kind of respectful ways where we really truly listen, and people are willing to be open minded and perhaps change their minds on either side. I know that's hard, and in 2019 it's very easy to be very isolated and to kind of only connect with people who share the same views and perspectives that you do. But to be challenged and to really listen and to see what we all have in common, which are clean water and healthy food. Jolie Sheffer: Do you have any recommendations perhaps, for young scientists and how to their knowledge and their priorities in ways that the nonscientific community can be more responsive to? Dr. Tim Davis: Yeah, absolutely. I think that's one of the biggest gaps that we have currently is that as scientists, we don't communicate our science well, because part of it is how we have been trained, right? We're trained to write scientifically. We're trained to present scientifically. We're working on developing science communication courses so you can take science and drill it down. We don't say dumb it down because people aren't stupid. You need to be able to package it in a way that you can communicate it to people that may not have taken a science course since they graduated high school, because their occupation doesn't require it. Dr. Tim Davis: It's practice. Everyone has friends who aren't in the sciences. Talk to your friends about what you do and if they don't understand you, keep talking to them until you figure out a way to get across your research in a way that they can understand and appreciate. Because we always say if people don't appreciate what we're doing, if they don't understand it, they're not going to care about it, and they're just going to write it off. Dr. Tim Davis: We can't be seen as just being in our ivory towers. For decades scientists, especially in academia, we are sitting in these ivory towers and we just look down and say, "Well, this is what science says, therefore that this is what you have to do," and a lot of it is somewhat in comprehensible. Even some of the science that goes on, I don't fully understand. So, practicing talking to people, getting people to care about our science, because we need them to care about what we're doing and see how it's actually going to be positively impacting the Great Lakes. Because if they understand and care, they're going to be more passionate about finding these solutions. Dr. Tim Davis: I would say also to young scientists, just listen. We are in an age now where it's so easy to voice your opinion on so many different platforms, and sometimes everyone has an opinion and maybe not everyone should have an opinion. We're all guilty to some degree of that, and I think the best thing that we can say is just listen. There's a lot of knowledge out there where you can not just inform, because again, in the way that we teach science, A is you get nothing wrong. Sometimes I feel like we're training these robotic know-it-alls. It's okay to be wrong and it's okay not to know something, and it's okay to listen and continue to learn. If we can do that, that's great. I've learned so much from my friends in the agricultural community that I didn't know before, and it's made me a better scientist and it helps inform the work that I do. Jolie Sheffer: Tim and Shannon, thank you so much for talking with me today. For more information on the water quality of Lake Erie, please visit the Ohio Department of Natural Resource's webpage on conditions. You can visit that at coastal.ohiodnr.gov/howslakeerie. Jolie Sheffer: You can the Big Ideas podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, or wherever you find your podcasts. Our producers for this podcast are Chris Cavera, Marco Mendoza. Research assistance for this podcast was provided by ICS Intern Emma Vallandingham, and editing was provided by Stevie Scheurich. This conversation was recorded by AC Luffel in the Stanton Audio Recording Studio in the Michael and Sara Kuhlin Center at Bowling Green State University.  

Tim: What's the best way to juggle projects when you're easily bored or distracted? The post Questions 757 – Project Switching appeared first on The Every Day Novelist.

Catholic Answers’ Director of Apologetics and Evangelization reflects with us on the identity of Jesus as incarnate God. What does this mean and why does it fill us with joy? Tim: What does Christmas celebrate? Next with Tim Staples. Cy: Merry Christmas from Catholic Answers and welcome to Catholic Answers focus. I’m Cy Kellett, your host. And a little bit of Christmas cheer there for you as we start. We’re going to talk about Christmas on this Christmas day with probably the most Christmasy person I know, Tim Staples, Director of Apologetics and Evangelization here at Catho…

Annette Franklin and her husband, Tim, have always known a life of hospitality. It marked their marriage from its earliest days. But in recent years, that intention of hospitality has taken a more formal shape. They purchased a renovated a colonial-style home, called The House, near Middlebury College in Vermont, so as to make their home and presence easily accessible and readily available to college students—particularly those in the international community—and other marginalized populations in their town.In this episode, we discuss:* How this life of hospitality came to be a way of life for Annette and Tim* What it was like to find, purchase, and renovate a home for this specific purpose* What the students in their lives really want (hint: it's not big plans or clever programming)* The hardest part about caring for college-aged students* How you can offer different forms of hospitality in your own community tooI love the way Annette and Tim have found a way to be "love with skin on" to those in their community who are likely to be missing home at any given time. Learn more by visiting The House website, and connect with Annette on Instagram at @annetteinvt. Connect with Christianne on Instagram at @christiannesquires or by subscribing to the Light Notes email list.And consider applying to be a guest on the show! Fill out the guest application form here.

If we have the same 24 hours as Beyonce, how should we use them if we want to be happy and well?Do we pour our time into work? Do we sacrifice sleep for exercise? What trade-offs do we make? Because I don't care who you are, you can’t fit 30 hours into 24!My guest for this episode is Professor Tim Olds from the University of South Australia. Tim is a time-use epidemiologist and the first of our guests who will be speaking at the upcoming Wellbeing Evidence and Horizons Conference - a 2 day science-based wellbeing event taking place in Melbourne at the Melbourne Exhibition and Conference Centre on 28 & 29 April 2020.Tim’s presentation at the Conference is titled: How to Build Your Best Day and in this episode we're getting a sneak peak into his research, his knowledge and his wisdom on what 'best days' look like and how to create yours.Questions I ask Tim:What is behavioural and time-use epidemiology?What is the Goldilocks Day?What is the relationship between our time use and our mental health and well being?What is the 'perfect' amount of time for each activity? For adults? For kids?What are the trade offs?What's the state of play for young people and their health today? As parents, are we helping them to get their time-use right?Are adults getting their time-use right?Given the trade offs and necessary compromises, what are your tips for building your best day?Does every 24 hours need to look roughly the same for happiness and wellbeing? Or can it vary?And why do things tend to go pear shaped healthwise on holidays?It's a fascinating conversation that got me thinking about how I juggle my time, the necessary choices we need to make and why it's important to be conscious about how we use our time if we want to maximise our wellbeing. Listen in to learn and thrive!For a full transcript, guest profile, expert tips and the resources mentioned in this episode, visit potential.com.au/podcast or join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram or TwitterThis episode of the Potential Psychology Podcast is brought to you by the Wellbeing Evidence and Horizons Conference, Australia’s leading multi-disciplinary, evidence-based wellbeing and resilience conference. April 28 & 29, 2020. See you there!

Tim Bosma was a kind family man who relied, in turn, upon the kindness of strangers. He listed his truck for sale online, met with interested buyers, and was never seen again. What happened to Tim? What is it that drives someone to hurt a stranger, a neighbour, a friend? For more on Betrayed, visit www.betrayedpodcast.com To learn more about or purchase Dark Ambition by Ann Brocklehurst, visit https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/537486/dark-ambition-by-ann-brocklehurst/9780143198277

For episode two of season two, Tim and Tuesday interview Jacob Watkins of PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) in Zürich, Switzerland. Collaborating with The Outside over the last nine months for the International Committee of the Red Cross, Jacob has brought remarkably point of view on how change happens, resulting in an incredibly rich field of learning between what might have once been thought of as an unlikely trio.Together, Tim Merry and Tuesday Ryan-Hart are THE OUTSIDE—systems change and equity facilitators who bring the fresh air necessary to organize movements, organizations, and collaborators forward for progress, surfacing new mindsets for greater participation and shared impact.2.02 - - SHOW NOTESTues: Jacob is one of the people we are learning with. It’s got us jazzed and excited. Feel like you [Jacob] keep us right on an edge.Jacob: It was a really interesting experience to be in our pitch with a client and be asked the question “would you be up for working with another consultancy on this project?” To be knowledgeable, subject matter people in these topics to then have this question asked… I was kind of intrigued and cautiously optimistic.Tim: In one of our early meetings, you named us as people who bring expertise, process and skill around systems change and what you, particularly, and PwC was bringing into the game was the ability for analysis and organizational assessment and an analytical approach.Tues: This was brave - you made a clear discernment. The client chose to work with both of us. Give them a lot of credit for trying something different.Jacob: What was cool, on both sides, was an openness to try to get under the skin of what is systems thinking.Jacob: I worked in the money market straight out of university. Making money and earning commission and trading was not enough intellectually for me or a meaningful change made. Had an early mid-life crisis — felt grumpy and bored. I was inspired by Tim Ferriss of The 4-Hour Workweek and other folks putting out different ways of thinking. Did a tech start-up and worked with a team that melded together and formed this incredible group. It was the learning journey that got me really excited. In my role with PwC, I am never bored and get to tackle really difficult problems. When I was in that room with you guys, I was thinking how cool it would be to figure out how to make this work. How could we bridge the seeming gap between our two worlds and that seemed like a problem worthy of attention, time and energy.Tim: What is distinct about PwC and Jacob Watkins and The Outside and Tim Merry & Tuesday Ryan-Hart? What’s the divide?Jacob: (1) I think if I can manage my PwC colleagues to keep an open mind around this, I think we can get to a meeting of the minds; and (2) We spoke with different business language. Process for you, means something different for me.Tues: In some ways, we wanted a lot of the same ends but our ways of going about them were completely different (i.e. data analysis vs developmental evaluation). To me, the data piece is where things come together quite beautifully. The data each of us got overlapped — it wasn’t in any way in conflict with each other. That 10% that was different was quite important!Tim: Often the particular worldviews that our two different organizations are coming from, but also we as individuals arrived into this initiative with one another, sets us up as adversaries where one has to win for there to be true progress of the human species or true progress for systems change or true progress for organizational development. … One of the real beauties of this particular initiative is in a very fundamental way we’ve been modelling the practice we’ve been inviting people into and in a very visible way.Jacob: The challenge that I faced in my career, particularly in working with clients when it comes to big-four consulting or strategy house consulting, is you're kind of hired with this underlying assumption that you will have a very clear, mechanical approach, that you will be able to deduce insights that they weren’t already aware of and that you can give answers to the organization that they can take forward… that’s kind of the more traditional consulting USP (Unique Selling Proposition) for the big firms. Traditionally, that is what the market and buyers have wanted but more and more I am seeing a shift, particularly through digital disruption, to new ways of working that challenge the older consulting models.Jacob: The more we can bring our world and your world together, for lack of better words, the greater the innovation and the greater the power of moving forward is going to be.Tues: 100%! Gives us a chance to live our rhetoric. We came up with the conception of a new Operating System together. That was definitely more of a sum of the parts. It results in better work - we developed something that did not exist in the world before.Tim: There are many people who will say that we [Tim & Tuesday] “sold out” by agreeing to work with an organization like PwC. Yet, what we are discovering is quite the opposite - it’s made our work better, it’s increased our capacity to serve the people we are working for.Tim: I’m proud of what we’ve done together, both of the work itself and the breaking down of barriers in our own worldviews and between our own organizations. Our client has talked about the Operating System we developed as “groundbreaking.” I would also say that our combined approach has also been groundbreaking.Poem: “Whereas: An Excerpt” by Layli Long SoldierWHEREAS I heard a noise I thought was a sneeze. At the breakfast table pushing eggs around my plate I wondered if he liked my cooking, thought about what to talk about. He pinched his fingers to the bridge of his nose, squeezed his eyes. He wiped. I often say he was a terrible drinker when I was a child I’m not afraid to say it because he’s different now: sober, attentive, showered, eating. But in my childhood when things were different I rolled onto my side, my hands together as if to pray, locked between knees. When things were different I lay there for long hours, my face to the wall, blank. My eyes left me, my soldiers, my two scouts to the unseen. And because language is the immaterial I never could speak about the missing so perhaps I cried for the invisible, what I could not see, doubly. What is it to wish for the absence of nothing? There at the breakfast table as an adult, wondering what to talk about if he liked my cooking, pushing the invisible to the plate’s edge I looked up to see he hadn’t sneezed, he was crying. I’d never heard him cry, didn’t recognize the symptoms. I turned to him when I heard him say I’m sorry I wasn’t there sorry for many things / like that / curative voicing / an opened bundle / or medicine / or birthday wishing / my hand to his shoulder / it’s okay I said it’s over now I meant it / because of our faces blankly / because of a lifelong stare down / because of centuries in sorrySong: “In Gold” by Submotion OrchestraSubscribe to the podcast now—in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher or anywhere else you find podcasts. New episodes will be available every second Tuesday. If you’d like to get in touch with us about something you heard on the show, reach us at podcast@findtheoutside.com. Find the song we played in today’s show—and every song we’ve played in previous shows—on the playlist. Just search ‘Find the Outside’ on Spotify.Duration: 41:02Produced by: Mark Coffin @ Sound Good StudiosTheme music: Gary BlakemoreEpisode cover image: source See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In episode seventeen, Tim & Tuesday talk about being clear versus having a feeling of clarity - even through confusion. How can we train ourselves to stay open and keep moving forward in rooms electric with uncertainty?1.17 —— SHOW NOTESTim: How do I hold my own centre and clarity the midst of it all? How not to get caught up in it or lost in it. Brings us back to personal practice. Keeps coming up again and again.Tues: Personal practice is key to navigate both the clarity and uncertainty. Tim: The difference between my brain feeling clear and having a feeling of clarity even though I’m incredibly confused. How can we train ourselves to sit in rooms where all of that is happening?Tues: Sinking down below some of thoughts into something different and that place is always quiet, still and settled when I get there. Meditation has given me this.Tim: Personal training directly translates into the ability to work in diverse rooms. Some of the best training in this work is being able to go inside and sit with that kind of inherent confusion of being a human being without freaking out.Tues: Is that maybe why we cling to models so tightly so we don’t have to enter into that confusion?Tim: Beyond self-care, personal practice is one of the things that bring you home to yourself. We all have personal practices available to us. When you choose to step into a world of action and change-making, that is inherently unpredictable, suddenly what is a personal practice for you needs to become a disciple that enables you to do the work.Tues: It’s about turning it on and bringing intention to it / see it as such. There can be a million ways to do it. What is accessible to you now?Tim: What if personal practice was integrated into our idea of what it means to be a parent, a friend, a son, a coach, a leader in my faith community? What if the idea of personal practice was fundamentally connected to our understanding of what it means to be a leader / professionalTues: There is some healing, cleansing, knowing, understanding, amazing thing that can happen in personal practice.Song: “River” by IbeyiPoem: “Radical empathy” by Kate TempestDuration: 43:05Produced by: Mark Coffin @ Sound Good StudiosTheme music: Gary BlakemoreEpisode cover image: source See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

(#280) Tim Anderson returns to the podcast this week in our best interview to date. (Honestly, this one is amazing, folks!) Tim is the co-founder of Original Strength and the author of several great books about how to restore human movement. His latest book is titled "The Becoming BulletProof Project" and you'll learn all about his great new book this week. This was a great conversation from the beginning and there are many practical applications in the session. Here's what you'll hear about: How Tim's training radically changed from the beginning What being "Superman" means to Tim What is it to Become Bulletproof? The advice he'd give his younger self What is it to be truly strong? The importance of "becoming" The importance of "choice" The key to fitness in one word How to combat the aging process Why does the body break down and how to prevent it Understand the mindset in aging What the Becoming Bulletproof Project is all about Understand the "nudge" that leads to action Examples of simple, but brutal workouts contained in the book How to develop a strong mind and body with this system Work capacity vs strength (defining work capacity) What it felt like doing a one-mile leopard crawl? How Tim overcomes doing OS movements in public settings? How often Tim "resets?" And why? Tim talks about his morning routines! Learn about the Original Strength Institute The best thing about Original Strength is... What's the hardest thing (the challenge) about OS? Neck nods and the overhead press - why it works? A specific practice to use neck nods to improve pressing Why Tim wrote the new book and the book he's most proud of The "story" of the 135-pound Turkish get-up What's your next step with Original Strength? Learn about the different OS certifications What's next for Tim? A training practice you can use today after hearing this interview [click_to_tweet tweet="Exercise is not what you think it is. What you think is strength is really not strength. Strength is being able to live the life the way you want. - Tim Anderson" quote="Exercise is not what you think it is. What you think is strength is really not strength. Strength is being able to live the life the way you want. - Tim Anderson" theme="style4"] Our proud podcast partner is Momentous.  Momentous is my #1 recommended protein that is available on the market today. It's super high-quality, it tastes great, and it's so well-tolerated, among other reasons. Don't settle for sub-standard protein supplements. Momentous is simply outstanding. Available in whey or plant-based. Check out LiveMomentous.com/Rdella and use the code "RDELLA30" to save 30% I've been using the "Essential Grass-Fed Whey" blend, pictured below. [jbox color="grey" radius ="2"] The Momentous Minute with Tim Caron Scott Iardella: Today's Momentous Minute is with Tim Caron, the owner of Allegiate Gym and performance engineer at Momentous, the sports nutrition company on a mission to clean up the supplement industry. The question today is about the NSF certification. What is important to know about the NSF certification on product labels and can you please explain what it is? Tim Caron: The NSF is a third-party group that evaluates products and how we're looking at supplements. A lot of it's unregulated so we need to have some sort of intervention in regards to saying what the ingredients are, saying that they actually have them, someone following through with them, and why that's important for you as a customer. Potentially you're an athlete, potentially you're someone who's under the guidelines of testing and seeing if you're actually under other substances that are not conducive to a competitive and equal playing field. NSF comes in and meets us in the middle in providing a service that makes companies hold themselves to a higher standard and the process to go through that is fairly rigorous. Having that piece of mind, knowing that a company went that extra step to actually really follow through and have integrity to make sure that they're providing really high quality products that actually say what they mean, that makes a big difference. As an athlete, as someone who's competitive, or just wants a higher quality, NSF is something you should really look for in your supplements. [/jbox] Get value from the podcast? Then, please take a minute to review the show. It’s fast and easy to do. To see how to post a review in Apple Podcasts, go to RdellaTraining.com/review SUBSCRIBE AND REVIEW THE SHOW ON APPLE PODCASTS SUBSCRIBE AND REVIEW THE SHOW ON STITCHER NOW AVAILABLE ON SPOTIFY!!! LISTEN AND SUBSCRIBE ON GOOGLE PLAY LISTEN AND SUBSCRIBE ON OVERCAST The Rdella Training® Podcast is published each week with valuable training information and amazing interviews with many “world-class” coaches, experts, and authors in the fitness industry. The Rdella Training Podcast is committed to helping athletes and fitness enthusiasts consistently evolve, grow, and become the strongest and best version of themselves. We teach intelligent training and lifestyle for serious fitness enthusiasts and dedicated lifters all over the world. SHOW NOTES AND LINKS: OriginalStrength.net The Becoming Bulletproof Project Original Strength on YOUTUBE Pressing Reset Book John Brookfield The Top 10 Podcasts on Rdella Training LiveMomentous.com/Rdella Use code "RDELLA30" to save 30% on first order. DID YOU GET YOUR MOBILITY FIX? [jbox color="red" radius ="2"]Follow @RdellaTraining on Instagram for high-value training tips, tutorials and education.[/jbox] [jbox color="yellow" radius ="2"]Community page: RdellaTraining.com/ask.[/jbox] Spread the word! Please share this on Facebook, Twitter or anywhere you’d like. [jbox color="blue" radius ="2"]Scott Iardella, MPT, CSCS, CISSN, SFG-TL, USAW, CACWC Scott's background as a strength coach, athlete, and former clinician are the basis for his one-of-a-kind approach to teaching strength, human movement, and peak performance. Scott is dedicated to helping serious fitness enthusiasts, athletes, and lifters all over the world, regardless of age, background, or training experience, become the best version of themselves through improved strength and skill development for a lifetime of health, happiness, and high-performance. Scott is the passionate host of The Rdella Training Podcast, a leading weekly fitness podcast in Apple Podcasts where he interviews the most brilliant minds in the industry. Finally, he is the author of The Edge of Strength, available in Amazon and currently working on his follow-up book. To learn more about Scott, please visit our About Page. Get stronger, perform better, and evolve into the athlete you were meant to be.[/jbox]

In episode sixteen, Tim and Tuesday speak with change makers at Forward Malmö, a movement uniting for multi-sector, multi-stakeholder change. How can we best share the work on shared problems?A conversation with Joel Veborg and Rodolfo Zuniga of Save The Children and Sabina Dethorey from the City of Malmö. Forward Malmö is a movement that brings together a number of organizations with shared and overlapping mandates to multi-sector, multi-stakeholder change. How can we best convene to change the conditions that impact shared problems?1.16 —— SHOW NOTESTues: We’ve been working with these three on an initiative/movement called Forward Malmö for about a year now. It was initiated by Save the Children (develop a systemic view of how to change the conditions that impact children), but pretty quickly it became apparent that we needed a multi-stakeholder/sector response to what is happening to children.Tim: The City of Malmö is dealing with a 30% child poverty rate. There are massive amounts of upheaval and uncertainty in Malmö. We are hoping to do something that impacts things nationally, pointing to the future of Sweden as a whole.Rodolfo: Save the Children - Sweden will be a 100-year organization soon. We are taking a big step to become part of a solution (i.e. migration crisis in 2015). The big eureka for us was that we cannot do it alone. That’s when we contacted The Outside.Joel: We found different people that understood us and wanted to figure things out with us. Sabina: Malmö is prepared for this because we’ve been working together with NGOs and other stakeholders for quite some time. Malmö has been a city of change for the last two decades. We are used to developing when in-crisis. This last decade was focused on social sustainability. For me, this initiative feels like home. This is the right way to work. Tim: What’s amazing to me is that people, in fundamentally different sectors, are having the same realization and somehow finding each other to do this work of transformation.Joel: This is true as we’ve been searching for answers outside of our organization—lots of conversations over many years. The private sector is new to us.Tues: There is some momentum that is attracting the private sector to Forward Malmö. Tim: The quality of relationship-building and care for each other creates fertile ground for our work to turn up and have a proper impact.Rodolfo: The invitation to our workshop [and this work] was built upon the relationship and trust from invitees. We are designing a long conversation here where we will see a lot of outputs and outcomes. This is imprinted in the cultural DNA of Swedes. When there is a problem, we gather and try to build a solution. Sabina: What I learned from the NGO I started was believing in yourself. We had people with power telling us ‘that won’t work / you won’t succeed’.Tim: We’ve decided to acknowledge that this is long-term work. It’s about connecting action so that we have a leadership cohort to carry us into the future. Just this change of narrative has attracted people to us.Joel: Think this is brilliant! People need this fragmented space to see and think.Rodolfo: We saw that there was a clear need for leadership and capacity-building.Sabina: During the last year, others also identified leadership as a crucial thing to work with. The Malmö Commission final report also pointed to this. Need to work with it in so many layers. This could really have an impact on our future work.Tim: People believe in the “how” even though they don’t know the destination. We are going to figure it out together and that’s what makes it trustworthy. It’s simple, but it’s powerful.Poem: Sabina shared a Swedish poem—we’ll upload the English version as soon as we have our hands on it.Song (Joel): “The Weight” (“The Last Waltz” LIVE version) by The BandSubscribe to the podcast now—in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher or anywhere else you find podcasts. New episodes will be available every second Tuesday. If you’d like to get in touch with us about something you heard on the show, reach us at podcast@findtheoutside.com.Find the song we played in today’s show—and every song we’ve played in previous shows—on the playlist. Just search ‘Find the Outside’ on Spotify.Duration: 44:57Produced by: Mark Coffin @ Sound Good StudiosTheme music: Gary BlakemoreEpisode cover image: source See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The promise of renewable energy has always been alluring. Now that the technology has caught up to the promise, record amounts of wind and solar are coming onto the grid both in Japan and throughout the world.  But so far startups, especially Japanese startups, have been playing a very limited role in this transformation. But that's starting to change. Today we sit down with Ken Isono, founder and CEO of Shizen Energy, and we talk about what it takes to succeed as an energy startup in Japan, and since Shizen Energy is rapidly expanding globally, what it takes to succeed as a startup in the global energy markets. We talk about which renewables are working in Japan and which are not, what the real bottlenecks are, and more important, how we can fix them. It's a great conversation, and I think you'll enjoy it. Show Notes Why startups struggle in the energy market How solar plants get built in Japan How to find wind projects worth building The importance of going local in a global market Why the Japanese value land rights so highly A deep dive into solar, wind, hydro, and geothermal energy in Japan How Japanese communities are funding local renewable energy Why so many of Japan's startups come from Fukuoka How Japan can transform into a free-energy economy Links from the Founder Everything you wanted to know about Shizen Energy Shizen Energy on Facebook Shizen Energy retail green energy Friend Ken on Facebook Leave a comment Transcript Welcome to Disrupting Japan, straight talk from Japan’s most successful entrepreneurs. I’m Tim Romero and thanks for joining me. It’s surprising at first, for all of the potential disruption in the energy industry, for all of the potential profits that can be made by doing things better and more efficiently in the energy industry, we don’t see that many energy startups, and as it turns out, there are good reasons for this. Generating and storing electricity at scale require skills that can’t be supplanted by new technology and innovation. Furthermore, most energy projects are long-term, low-risk medium return projects that are just not attractive to venture capital. These projects require a different kind of financing. One notable exception, however, is Japan’s Shizen Energy who is bringing a lot of renewable energy onto the grid in Japan and around the world as well, and they’re doing it as a startup. In just a minute, we’ll sit down with Ken Isono, Shizen Energy’s founder and CEO. He’ll explain how his little startup has worked with local governments and fought the incumbents to bring enough renewable energy onto the grid that Shizen Energy is not so little anymore. We’ll talk about that growth, of course, and we also take a deep dive into the current state and the future prospects of the most important renewable energy technologies in Japan. But you know, Ken tells that story much better than I can, so let’s get right to the interview. [pro_ad_display_adzone id="1411"  info_text="Sponsored by"  font_color="grey"  ] Interview  Tim: So, I’m sitting here with Ken Isono of Shizen Energy, and thanks for sitting down with me. Ken: Thanks for the chance to speak. Tim: Now, Shizen Energy, you guys are a vertically integrated renewable energy company. You guys do generation, your financing, and the retail side as well. Ken: Yeah. Tim: That’s a lot for a startup to do. Ken: We started with solar but the three co-founders used to work in wind power generation company together for five years. Tim: What made you guys decide to leave that company and start your own project? Ken: So, actually, Shizen Energy, we found this company 2011, June, so three months after Fukushima accident. Before that, there was no demand from the market, from policy in renewables, but we knew that it’s going to change. Tim: At first you were focused on large scale solar projects? Was it just the financing,

When we intentionally practice what it means to be together, we increase the possibility of levelling-up. In episode fourteen, Gibrán Rivera joins us for a conversation about how to co-create the space to tackle insurmountable problems.1.14 —— SHOW NOTESTues: Today we’re talking to one of my favourite people in the world, Gibrán Rivera, a facilitator also working in systems change. Gibrán is an internationally renowned master facilitator who has devoted his life to the development of leaders and organizational transformation.Gibrán: My great friend (RIP), Jake Brewer, said to me “our only known response to increasing complexity is exhilaration.” All we know how to do is go faster. As we go faster, we do less of what matters. I’m interested in a different response because complexity will keep increasing regardless. We’ve reached the upper threshold of exhilaration. What I’m interested in is what is an evolutionary response to this moment. How do we learn to be in this together better? Tues: Can you talk about this ‘leap’ that you can see us making?Gibrán: Is this going to be our evolutionary crash or our evolutionary leap? The only way to meet this moment is a leap. Linear action is doomed. We need to literally leap. I want to orient my work, my life and my spirit around that possibility. That’s what I am talking about.Tim: There is some undefinable confidence in the face of what looks like catastrophe. We’ve defined this at the heart of The Outside - there is always a way.Gibrán: If we can make order out of VUCA—volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity— we may make things feel more “normal” or stable, but we will be projecting a confidence not based on truth.Gibrán: I feel like there is a wakefulness, a part of us that knows what is true in each of us. I think looking at someone like that’s true. Interacting with someone like they know what they know, they are capable of what they are capable of. It’s integral. See people’s greatness.Tues: That brings up two things for me: 1) the charismatic facilitator and how we’re often made the maker of miracles; and 2) the quality of courage.Gibrán: Important for all of us to become aware of how much we bring to the spaces we’re in by cultivating that in ourselves - wellness or steadiness. It impacts our space. Tim: What happens when facilitators are not in the room anymore? When it’s back to work? There’s an attachment that facilitators have to epiphany.Gibrán: I am familiar with a discourse that warns against charisma because we know it can lead people astray. I think about my work as helping nurture a state experience of being together. I believe that as we become familiar with what it feels like to be together, then we can become more masterful, we can create more ease in entering those states of being together.Tim: We often talk about referential experiences—we know we can do it because we’ve did this. They illuminate possible futures.Gibrán: When we talk about the evolutionary leap, two things are integral: 1) Pattern of a web or network - connection is alive as any of us are. 2) Sense of self is decentralized. We need to ask: “What is the thing that I am cultivating?” “What is the seed that I am holding?” “What is the wisdom and the prayer I will transmit to my descendants, to my next generation?” Human-to-human in a world that we know is coming up against some real serious suffering. That is my orientation.Poem of the day: Everywhere by HafizEverywhereRunningThrough the streetsScreaming,Throwing rocks through windows,Using my own head to ringGreat bells,Pulling out my hair,Tearing off my clothes,Tying everything I ownTo a stick,And setting it onFire.What else can Hafiz do tonightTo celebrate the madness,The joy,Of seeing GodEverywhere!Song of the day: El Farsante (Remix) by Ozuna · Romeo SantosSubscribe to the podcast now—in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher or anywhere else you find podcasts. New episodes will be available every second Tuesday. If you’d like to get in touch with us about something you heard on the show, reach us at podcast@findtheoutside.com.Find the song we played in today’s show—and every song we’ve played in previous shows—on the playlist. Just search ‘Find the Outside’ on Spotify.Duration: 45: 28Produced by: Mark Coffin @ Sound Good StudiosTheme music: Gary BlakemoreEpisode cover image: source See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Championship: Leeds 1-3 Norwich WBA 2-3 Boro Bristol City 5 in a row - moving into the Play-Offs. Peter - any wildcard picks to reach the playoffs in any of the three divisions? Dan: Which current mid-pack championship club do you think are getting themselves is order to be in the mix for promotion next season? Tim: What is the reason that the big-spending clubs aren’t doing well on the whole in the Championship and does having a bigger budget lead to less inspired recruitment? Oliver: Are we beginning to see clubs take advantage of the foreign market more in the EFL? Thinking Norwich/Barnsley/Oldham as examples. League One: Barnsley, Luton, Sunderland won. Pompey drew. Charlton lost. Massive wins for Rochdale, Bristol Rovers, Plymouth. Gab - Can any team below DRFC reach the playoffs? Richard - are Accrington an outside bet to go down? League Two: Colchester - performance of the weekend in the EFL. Impressive - Grimsby, Exeter, Mansfield. Dale - who gets promotion/playoffs? John - name your top 3 from the top 8. Andrew - what’s the cut off in League Two for relegation battlers?

Every six months or so, I like to answer questions I'm asked by you, the listener or reader. but I've always shied away from publicly posting my responses to the "what do YOU do?" questions, because it feels like hubris.But recently, a friend pointed out that people ask Tim Ferriss and James Altucher those questions because they're looking for a model. No one--not even Tim--can do all of the 270 ideas he published in Tools of Titans. No one can follow every person he writes about in Tribe of Mentors. We ask Tim "What do YOU do?" because we're looking for a model; we want to try on his life to see if it fits. We want to know where to start.I'm also a huge believer in setting very clear, visual goals, and then working backward to build a plan. I did this for my clients for 20 years at the gym, and I've done it with my mentoring clients for 6 years now. But sometimes goals and "perfect days" are hard to visualize without context; until Bannister broke the 4:00 mile, no one had ever done it. As soon as he did it, several others did it within months. It just took someone to show them it could be done.

Hey ACC-tion heroes! This week, Tim and Nick ask each other three insightful questions. Come for the questions, stay for the amazing answers!   Feature 1 - Three Questions We each ask each other three questions. Nick to Tim What insights would an Asian-American bring to the shield if, like Sam Wilson, they took the mantle of Captain America for a while? If you were a wrestling promoter in the DC Universe, who would you recruit?  No, you can’t cross-over Ben Grimm. We talk a lot about how heroes (and sometimes villains) have helped us understand ourselves.  Has a hero (or villain) ever helped you understand someone ELSE?   Tim to Nick Generally speaking, what limits you from reading comics? Not a critique, but a genuine curiosity. If you were tapped to write for a book, which one would you want to tackle? Comic book movies obviously pull source material from comics, but increasingly we are seeing movies affect the content of comics. (Example: Drax’s redesign), do you think this is a positive trend, negative, or neutral?   Feature 2 - Pullbox   Nick: Future Guys of Tomorrow Tim: Iron Fist #1-7 (2017)    

Education is very hard to disrupt. That’s both good and bad. Education is so important to both individuals and society, it should not be changed on a whim, but over time it seems that our institutions of higher education have drifted away from meeting students real needs. Yoshito Hori, founder and CEO of Globis, is making radical changes. He turned a small training school into Japan's first independent and fully accredited business school with an MBA. Less than ten years later, Globis became Japan’s most popular MBA program. We talk about the need for change in education and about the successful, real-world pilot program Globis is running to modernize Japanese higher education. Yoshito also shares insights on how to teach innovative thinking and explains why such a high percentage of Globis MBAs go on to found starts or join them. It's a fascinating discussion and I think you'll really enjoy it. Show Notes Why most Japanese do not want to attend full-time MBA programs How to make an advanced degree both exclusive and inexpensive How to groom MBA students to start startups How Sumitomo missed out on a multi-billion dollar business Why Japanese higher education is so resistant to change This difference between SPOCs and MOOCs, and why it's important How drinking in front of your computer might save higher education Links from the Founder Check out Globis Yoshito's blog on entrepreneurship in Japan Follow Yoshito on Twitter@YoshiHoriGLOBIS Connect with him on LinkedIn Yoshito's article on 100 Actions to revive Japan The G1 Global Conference [shareaholic app="share_buttons" id="7994466"] Leave a comment Transcript Disrupting Japan. Straight talk from Japan’s most successful entrepreneurs. I’m Tim Romero, and thanks for joining me. You know, education is hard to disrupt. And as long-time fans know very well, that’s both a good thing and a bad thing. It’s good because education is so important and foundational not only to how well a given child will do later in life but also because in the large developed nations, the educational system forms the basis of society itself. It provides us all with a shared set of experiences. So the fact that we don’t change the rules every few years is a good thing. On the other hand, this lack of disruption leads to educational systems that don’t really meet the needs of today’s students and today’s societies for that matter. So clearly, there must be a better way of doing things than what we’re doing now. Well, today, I’d like to introduce you to someone who’s found a better way. Yoshito Hori founded Globis as a small business training school and grew it into Japan’s first independent and fully accredited business school offering MBAs. And then, Globis became Japan’s most popular MBA program. Yoshito’s strategy for innovation is fascinating. Unlike similar schools in the US, Globis does not compete on cost. In fact, the Globis MBA is more expensive than similar degree programs at Todai or Hitotsubashi. No. Globis is doing something unique and something that is making a lot of people rethink how university and post graduate education is done in Japan. But you know, Yoshito tells that story much better than I can, so let’s get right to the interview. [pro_ad_display_adzone id="1404"  info_text="Sponsored by"  font_color="grey" ] [Interview]  Tim: So we’re sitting here today with Yoshi Hori of Globis. Thank you so much for sitting down with me. Yoshi: Thank you very much as well. Tim: Globis has about 7,000 students per year. It’s the most popular MBA in Japan. It always does well in the national business school rankings here. But what seems most unusual, it’s a truly international MBA program. You have students both from Japan and overseas now, right? Yoshi: Yeah. Tim: What sort of ratio? Yoshi: Well, we have English MBA program and Japanese MBA program.

Tim Albright is arguably the most successful podcaster in AV. He started his career in radio, and somehow wound up becoming and AV consultant. He’s also worked as a control systems programmer and university technology manager before founding AVNation. AVNation is a network of AV professionals whose goal is to further the AV industry through education and knowledge. They do that through blog posts and covering industry events and they are most well known for podcasting. Their flagship podcast, AVWeek, was first recorded in 2011 and provides a weekly overview of the AV industry. Over the years they have launched several other podcasts like ResiWeek, EdTech and my personal favourite, A State Of Control. Transcript This transcription was created with IBM Watson's Speech To Text service. Computers aren't perfect. Please keep that in mind when reading the transcript. [spoiler title="Read More..."] Pat: Greetings everyone in AV lands my name is Patrick Murray and welcome to software defined survival, where we interview the people and companies in AV that you software to re invent themselves and the way they do business. We listen to their stories and asks for as for tactics and device on how to survive and even thrive in this software defines world.   I'm excited about our first guest on the show he is arguably the most successful podcaster in AV and before you run away saying what the heck does podcasting have to do with software, I kind of see podcasting and blogging as software defined media. Right? That the podcasts and the blogs and things like that, they don't care where you are and they don't care how you consume it. They don't care what time it is like a radio show and things like that so this is definitely a software defined solution and that's why I'm excited to have this guest.   He started his career in radio and somehow wound up becoming an AV consultant I'll have to ask how that happens and he also worked as a control system programmer and university technology manager before founding easy nation alienation is a network of AV professionals whose goal is to provide to further the AV industry through education and knowledge something that is near and dear to my heart and their flagship podcast TV week was first recorded in two thousand and eleven and it provides a weekly overview of the AV industry if you're in a movie you should definitely check out a few weeks it's a great way to get a a download of what's going on in the industry.   Now over the years they launched several other podcasts like crazy week ed tech and my personal favorite state of control if your navy programmer definitely check out a state of control well ladies and gentlemen Tim Albright.   Tim: Yeah, way too flowery.   Pat: Welcome to the show Tim. Is there anything about that introduction that you'd like to add or expand upon?   Tim: No you don't need me on the show now! Yeah yeah I'm good.   Pat: Nice.   Tim: How are you doing?   Pat: Yeah I'm good I'm good.   Tim: I'm excited for this dude.   Pat: Thank you I appreciate that. I got a couple questions lined up here. We could also let this meander and go wherever it takes us.   Tim: It probably will.   Pat: It probably will. So I know you have kids I have a couple kids myself and one thing you'll never hear a child say is when I grow up I want to be in AV. At least, I haven't heard that one yet. So there's usually a story behind how people wind up in this industry so tell us how did you get started in AV?   Tim: Why are you mention my broadcast and my broadcast background and I was working for radio stations and Lois and must show my my my wife and I Michelle had had had our first child and it was not conducive to having a child was not conducive to being on morning radio which is what I was because you know you get up at stupid o'clock in the morning and you go to bed at you know really early at night and just wasn't conducive for that and so I was starting to look around and the armada the college that I had had gone to school to school at was needing what they described as a in an engineer and somebody to take care of some projector installs once a month once a year and I was annoyed that day I'm, I'm somewhat technical and somewhat you know I can do that and I was already teaching already a production for them and so I was like sure I can do this and so they they they hired me on and what turned in what what started out as being do a couple of projector installs a year turned into holy cow we have no money and we have to upgrade all of these rooms and we have to adjust the programming in these rooms and we have to learn how to properly designed these these rooms so I quickly found myself taking Infocom classes and taking classes from various manufacturers and getting certified to program Sir your fax first and so I buy it we ended up having our own little small band of of designers and installers for our little college I mean we had a hundred ninety rooms which is not it's not small but it's not it's not the size of let's say young university of Illinois which is also listed above out for me but it was it was significant for us and so that got me only involved in AV almost from the get go. I mea, I went to my very first Infocomm shortly after starting there because of the lack of knowledge that I had and I need to get ramped up on so that's how I got involved was you need to do a career change and of finding myself you know in the ceiling trying to put together a five wire BNC and and getting a multi meter out to figure out why the heck my yellow look weird.   Pat: Exactly switching that the black and white wires.   Tim: Well, I started making cables with all kinds of short so that's why I that's what I used to multi meter is yeah every yeah eventually got better at it .   Pat : So you mentioned your first visit to Infocomm do you remember what your first impressions were kind of walking into that hall?   Tim: Holy crap, are you kidding me? I fell in love I honestly it well it wasn't the work and it was in the I love the work it was it was good work and I I still I still control is still my favorite part of of a B. and and probably always will be , but when I walked in the show floor this is this is back in the mid to late two thousands arm so wasn't the size it is now I was absolutely flabbergasted me, I had never been to anything like that like it before my life I'd never to the C. S. as as a as a journalist I'd been to a number of junk it's a movie junkets where they fight about interview people in this up now and go see movies and those are smaller by by a large margin but I never been to any be a detriment to CS and so this is my first trade show experience and I walked in the show for and I'm just awestruck and I'm like I don't want to do anything else I simply don't want to do anything else and I remember walking around and talking to folks and you know that was when I got to meet a lot of folks that I still you know consider friends today I mean I it was when when I will I met body mind his name is Kevin who happens to work for Crestron but you know met him there and I met them for the folks that just to kind of took me under their wing and said okay here's this here's as dumb kid that does not anything let's, let's show him a thing or two.   Pat: Yeah there's nothing like having a mentor in those first years to know an explain things that are that are now probably totally obvious to you.   Tim: And obsolete. Just for the record.   Pat: Well, Yeah, RGBHV byebye.   Pat: So everybody in AV usually has a at least one nightmare project under their belt. Let's not talk about that. Maybe you could tell me about your most rewarding AV projects and what made it special for you?   Tim: Oh wow, see that one is harder. I can tell you can tell you my nightmare story off the top of my head. So this is not one that I specifically did but I was in charge of I mention the fact that I work for college and the largest the largest construction project that we were a part of the college I where I went to over the cards that I've I worked at was a small community college and it was it was bigger than what it should have been. It's it's it has delusions of grandeur at time and it's a good thing right I'm not I'm not saying that as a negative I'm saying that they have delusions of grandeur and all the times they meet those right so this is a community college who reaches beyond what the normal community college to play does they wanted to do a research center right this organization called script switches scripts ocean Oceana ocean out ripple oceanography is that right oceanic scripts motioning research center are they study the ocean well I live in Illinois, I live in southwest Illinois just outside of Saint Louis. We live on the Mississippi, the biggest outside of the Amazon the biggest of fresh water longest waterway in the in the North America there's nothing like that. Right there's nothing and so they wanted to develop a research center I community college, building a research center for the for the rivers. And where Alton is which is the whole time I live and it actually happens to be right at the confluence between the Illinois Mississippi and the Missouri rivers so not only are you on the biggest river in North America you're also at this very unique place between where all these three rivers come togther, right. So that's kind of the backstory here, they have this this grand idea are they partner with a bunch of people I know like we're gonna build this, right? It is a platinum level or gold level LEED certified building, right. I think when they started out they were going platinum and I think eventually they got gold. And we were tasked with doing all the AV in this research facility. Now there have been a couple other projects where they they built this this four story twenty million dollar research facility a year or two earlier and we spec'd out right. That was you're talking about thirty or forty rooms I think , six lecture halls that was subbed out we helped with the design and we we assisted with some of the direction but we did not do that. We did this research facility and at the end of the day when we had the grand opening and and this that and the other, you walk through and everything's working and everything's exactly you know what kind of the way you envisioned it as a designer so it was the first project as as a AV person as an A. V. professional, as a programmer, as a designer, as an installer you could sit back and go: „yeah we did that and it freaking rocks“.   Pat: Nice! It does happen once in awhile. Has it ever happened again?   Tim: No, well like that, I mean we've had a couple others while we were there like I said we were there and had the AV because we had to.   Pat: Is that why you had that kind of success with it, because yeah because the control you have over the projects?   Tim: Yes,absolutely! No it was one of these things where we were actually brought in early enough and every AV person in the world will tell you, the earlier we can get brought in the more successful going to half and we were able to do things like you know have conversations about you know the network and have conversations and this is early on with video over IP and integrating we used a,video conferencing system it was like the second or third video conferencing system college never had. We had two of them in this building because they were visiting scientists from all over the world who had their own water ways that they were concerned with they would come to this resurfaced research facility, because it was one of a kind of I believe it still as it was, one of a kind and so you had folks from China on you had folks from our member Argentina and Venezuela coming here. And so they needed to talk to their compatriots in a secure manner so we had we were tasked with creating a secure BTC system and something that was easy for them to use and understand and you know this was back way before anybody considered you know one button usability we had a one button system where they all they had to do was you know come in and and we were working with the the scheduling software and they can hit a button and they were connected to their people. If it was the right time and the right schedule.     Pat: Very nice. There's a few things I want to impact there. Like somebody told me recently when a professor in a university for example. When they have a hard time with this technology, it kind of takes away from their credentials a bit. Right, if if they're like supposed to be this really smart person and they're fumbling around with the touch panel, it it kind of takes away from the authority that they have. So something like a one touch button, you know, where anybody could really use it, then they can get on with their own job.     Tim: So, so I have a story about that. I have over the years worked with a couple integrators in Saint Louis. I still do work for one group. Just because I've known him for twenty years and they're good friends. One of the first times I was on a significant ,college and university in Saint Louis .I'm not gonna say which one. We were replacing a touchpanel and we get there and this touchpanel is concaved,right and this is an old, if you're familiar with the old Crestron quick media systems, it was a seventeen inch quick media touch panel, so this was not a cheap device to replace. It was somewhere between fifteen and twenty grants and the the entire center of it is concave and I'm like „what in the world happened to this?“   Pat: I think, I know what happened.   Tim: There's this professor, who has like fifteen doctorates, probably like four or five, but still has a number of doctorates and is the first time using the system and just like any other good programmer you put in a cool down screen, when you're using a projector, especially back then right.   Pat: Sure.   Tim: And he said, how dare this thing tell me to wait two minutes so I can restart the system. And put his fist through it.   Pat: Wow, he actually punched the touch panel.   Tim: No, no he wailed on the touchpanel, to the point where it was busted.   Pat: Yeah, I'm sure there's a lot of people listening to this, or I hope there are. Thant wanted to do that themselves once or twice.   Tim: Oh, I'm certain.   Pat: I know a guy, who threw his laptop across the room once, programmer.   Tim: Laptop? I've done that too.   Pat: Yeah? I always wanted to, never had the guts to do it. I wanted to believe it, but never had the guts to actually do it. So the other thing I wanted to talk about on that story was. I always like it, because a lot of times we do these projects and we go away and we never see how the rooms are used and usually it's some generic thing that you know we never really can appreciate at all. So I like the fact that you actually knew about people using the room and how they're using it. Like scientists coming together from all over the world and actually using your technology to collaborate and really produce results. That’s something I think we don't get to see often enough.   Tim: Well especially folks like you, right. And you know folks, who are either independent programmers right. You guys are the mercenaries of the industry you get called in or subbed out and you don't. Alright, you go in and you know, I've talked about this before, you're kind of unique, because you're in Germany, you get to go around to different parts, different countries in you Amsterdam and done jobs. I've done jobs, not a whole lot of outside of Saint Louis but a couple of size and Louis. And you're right, if you are in this position, you're never going to go back to that job, hopefully. As long as everything worked correctly and see how they use it. Now being a tech manager, if you are a tech manager, yes, you get that you get that that ability you get that opportunity to do it on two different levels. First of all, if you're decent, if you are a tech manager worth their salt, you should at least be there or be available for folks especially new an incoming faculty to use your systems. Now you and I both know, that if you have to have instructions on how to use a touch panel the new done a poor job of designing the touch panel. But there are people with five doctor too that can't turn on a light switch successfully. Sometimes.   Pat: They've got their minds on other things.   Tim: Absolutely they do. So we actually developed a number of modules because we still had we're still going from one control system to another control system even when I left, because that we have had with at one standard we're moving to another so we had about three different, types of of control systems are at our college, so we had different models we had recorded them in and let met what made them available to new incoming faculty so I can get used to it right. If you're in this building with this is the type of system we have in this building this is how you access your but this building it's just a bunch of you know it's a it's a wall plate with a couple buttons this is how you do you you access it. And so, you would still be able to go and and and and walk through and and kind of be available the first couple weeks of of classes, to make sure that everything kind of works and and kind of comes off without a hitch. Pat: Very nice. Lets a shift gears for a minute and talk about AV Nation. Where did the...   Tim: Why? I'm not very serious Patrick, you should know by now.   Pat: Yeah I'm good I'm getting that, so I'll try to tone it down a little bit. Tim: No, you’re fine   Pat: It’s my first podcast , give me a break, I'll loosen up.   Tim: I have three hundred forty one AV weeks and I am not gonna count the other ones, so.   Pat: Nice, so where the original idea come from?   Tim: Oh Lord, so you mentioned very very nicely my broadcast background. I was weaned and kind of developed as a broadcast journalist at the the preeminent news talk stations at Lewis called KMOX. I had a job before I ever left college there and so I was able to rub shoulders with and learn from some of the best in the business it was it was owned by CBS at the time and so we were trained in the CBS way of of how to gather news. And said that that is my pedigree when it comes to the broadcast journalists part. And when I got involved in the AV industry and fell in love with it, that kind of put that down for a while I still taught on radio production in audio production, but actually since 2006, I was teaching students how to podcast I wasn't doing it myself, but I I saw it as an opportunity for up and coming broadcasters to cut their teeth and and and kind of stretch their legs and stretch their wings and see what's possible on in the realm of audio. And in 2005/2006 I was turned on to this week in tech by Leo Laporte. It's the twit network, yeah he has several podcasts, he's probably the most successful podcaster period. And possibly Adam Corolla has passed him at this point from a network standpoint I would say that Leo was probably up there. And so listening to that on a weekly basis, he does tech in general, right, so he does you know cell phones, computers and switches and all kind of stuff.   Pat: Everything.   Tim: Everything. And he also does for two hours a week which is way more than than I can I can do. So I was looking for something, right and, so there were a couple of people who have who have were already doing something not what I was looking for but they were doing something Essien at the time and that's when I see an atomic medications was doing a monthly video podcast are where they would bring people into a studio and they would talk about a specific project, right. So it was kind of white paper, a video version of a white paper.   Pat: Okay.   Tim: Wasn't what I was looking for. What I was looking for the twit version of the the AV version of twit, right. I want the news that I wanted it in a succinct way and I want it on a weekly basis. Nobody had it.   Pat: Right.   Tim: Right and I don't know that anybody's still does .   Pat: Maybe in prints, but certainly not weekly, right.   Tim: But not weekly, right. And so on it's one of these things where necessity breeds invention I didn't have what I wanted and so I made it.   Pat: Scratch your own itch.   Tim: Yeah, I mean I could see again I'm an old radio guy in and I've been in television as well and and I think that that medium has a lot to offer people. You get to learn people's voices and I don't mean that any any in the literal sense I mean, folks understand that I am as much, a lover of this industry, as I am not overly serious about it. And I was I don't take ourselves too seriously I've made the comment both on the air off the year it's our team and other people. If the projector doesn't work no one is going to die, right. You know it's not life and death and you have to understand kind of where your your places in the world. We make experiences. And I'm I'm gonna totally steal this line here, we make great experiences and our job as as a nation is kind of what we've developed into and what we were allies and and me still learning how to be a businessman, because I'm a producer that's my pedigree is, we speak directly to the integrators on a weekly basis, right. Way back when it when I was a radio we had, you will be called an avatar with this is the person that we're talking to. My avatar for AV nation specifically for a AV week are the folks the integrators who are are driving into their office on Monday morning: Why is it that they need to know for that week to be successful? Right? And that question has driven, darn near everything that we've done. It's driven the deep dive into the other, what I'll call niche podcast that we do on a monthly basis and that includes the state of control which is controlled automation that includes AV. social which is shell social media and marketing. Which is kind of developed into more marketing and social media because boxing in under understand how to talk to their clients, right. It drove a show actually from one of our underwriters, to look at the on the IT in A. V. and how they each influence each other. It drove a show that I developed probably a year ago with a consulting firm, called on the eighty profession. And that looks at you know ways to make your business better. Has nothing to do with the with the actual technology of AV, but it is about how to be better at your business. You know we've done everything from interview consultants who will help you with your business to interview business authors, on how to get consumer consumers. I'd just interviewed a guy who I was turned on to by a buddy of mine that I've developed a relationship with the Name Ian Altman. Ian is a fanstastic sales person to bend tastic sales consulting. He's spoken of a Bacchae spoke in other places you spoke with PSNI and super summit. Well, Ian turned me on this other guy by the name of Markus Sheridan. He is probably one of the best experts that I've ever read, when it comes to content marketing, he turned a like this closed bankrupt, swimming pool company in the middle of the recession, he turned around with about a year and a half through content marketing. And reading his story and reading his take on it, is fascinating and it's incredibly important to people in the A. V. industry. Title of his book is: „They asky you answer.“ It’s very simple.   Pat: Okay.   Tim: Your clients are going to ask you questions. Probably to the sales people, when they ask you questions, you answer it, in a not only obviously you know, Patrick is my client even assuming email say „Hey what about this and what what what's what's the steel with with HDMI to that on? How ist his gonna affect us?“ Okay, well first of all: Into the question to the client directly right now this is going to how it's going to do it this is this is what it's doing but then you send it to your marketing people and say „Hey we have a question, because, an old rule of thumb in broadcasting is that, between five and ten percent of your audience will ever ever contact you ever, I don't care if you're given a million million dollars will between five and ten percent of your of your audience will ever call and we'll ever email you ever contact you same is true in the business world. Between five and ten percent of your clients will ever ask you a question that is meaningful. You know, how they're going to be affected you take those nuggets, because I will guarantee you, that at least, twenty of the twenty other clients have the exact same question, they're just not gonna ask you.   Pat: Sure   Tim: Or potential clients may have that same question- they are not gonna ask you.   Pat: Trash.   Tim: But if you have this piece of content over here, right and they're searching how will HDMI two do affect me? Boom you have an article. Boom you have a video whatever, so it's stuff like this that has driven our content to say you know how it how can we best help integrators and in all honesty also tech managers do their job better and be more successful.   Pat: Great stuff. I mean really does a lot of stuff to tackle their. How do you know what to write? That's something I always come up against, because of course this idea of putting content out there, that's all people find you. It's basically SEO, which sounds a little fishy, if you ask me, but if you are just writing stuff that people want to know about and they do find you, nothing is better than that. And I know what you mean like I ask, I have my online courses and I ask students all the time. „Please tell me what's wrong?“ and they never answer me. It's like pulling teeth getting any kind of feedback- out of anybody. And blog posting it takes a lot of time. It's really time consuming. It's a lot of fun, because it really makes you dig deep into a subject and become more knowledgeable about it and really start to look at it from different angles that you might not have considered, but again that time investment how do you decide what to write about.   Tim: So we've done a couple different things. First of all we started taking our shows and regardless of the show there's going to be at least two or three different topics on each episode and and we've started pulling and culling information from there. But me personally, my personal blog it's what I'm interested in, right. It's what's hit me are within the last week or two weeks and right now this week I am formulating and doing some research for a blog about how the terrorists are going to impact the industry in North America large adversely beyond North America in the US our current president has put tariffs on steel, well let's not be silly a lot of our products are made with with feel , you know what the rack rack is a big giant piece of steel arm based metal and so I'm trying to do some research right now, because that to me is interesting and that's a question that nobody's asked yet. Is how are the how are the policies of not just this president every president, impacting our industry you know you look at what is it Brazil is one of the biggest exporters to us of steel. Guess what, they are also one of the biggest importer of what they are one of the biggest importers of US Cole. To make this deal.   Pat: Okay.   Tim: So you know, you're looking at stuff like this going, okay you know and at the end of the day whether it's you know Atlas or it's Middle Atlantic or its Chief and I'm just naming three you've got so many other people sure like a bank, that use steel every single day. And our listeners are users are clients or customers, how are they going to be impacted not today not tomorrow because they've already got a warehouse full of steel, but in six months or a year and then how do they decide whether or not to pass that shards alone? You know the first question is is there going to be an increase right. That's the number one question as you know this Atlas I eat is atlas and their racks had to they have to increase the price of middle when it comes to increase their price and if the question is yes it's almost like programming right, if yes then what's right and then you then the manufacturer has to make a decision without a past that that charge along most the time they have to, their business, they have to truck bass along the their their cost increases. And then okay so your you know H. B. can occasions are here city Iowa St Louis your rack price just went up ten percent okay you've designed a system you have a spec out will suddenly you're losing ten points right so how did you recoup that cost and hopefully you haven't done so are too far out right to where it's going to hurt you that much. But then how do you how do you adjust your prices again their business so they have to salute laces Hannah and so it just trickles on down to you know the final customer whether it's education reporter five hundred operation they've got to you know explain the situations I look you know. Our metal prices increased down the line, you know.   Pat: It could, putting my programmer hat on, use less hardware. It could cause people to, right?   Tim: That's actually a good point.   Pat: Just their system design, put less stuff in the rac, right? That big matrix switch can be compressed down to a network switch and maybe the numbers would work out that way. Could be an interesting angle for to solve that kind of issue.   Tim: Where people to more video over IP and not do it over a switcher. You'll also from a program from a control standpoint to you know move more toward software as opposed to you know a three to direct high, processor moved to software to where I somewhere in the cloud someone the network.   Pat: Now how about that all due to the price of steel you the way things are all kind of connected to each other. You were talking about how the business podcast and I think that's another great subject because there really is no how to. And in A.V. for a long time everybody's always been busy. But with things changing, I kind of wonder, if in a few years from now, the flow of projects will change, just a little bit, if things do become more software based. Right the whole integrators maybe to change their business model. I mean it there was talk of this years ago, as margin started to go down with with Amazon you could buy display on Amazon. But the model still doesn't seem to be service based for the most part at all. It's still his margin based model of selling hardware.   Tim: They trying.   Pat: Yeah, well that's exactly the point. That I'm trying to make is like, there's no how to, to make that jump. And have you bumped into any resources on on a podcast to try to just help us you know take this thing apart and and figure out a new way to put it back together.   Tim: Not on that possible broadcasters specifically. What I run into is some folks were doing it well. And I've run into those folks at different industry events. Two or three of my favorite events have nothing to do with the technology. They all had to do about the business of AV.   Pat: Okay.   Tim: And there's absolutely reasons to go to ISE, there's absolute reasons to go to Infocomm and all the other technology trade shows. Certainly you get to see cold things you get to do things you know it and and experience things, but what I would say is that there is more of a reason to go to these business centric our shows as well these business centric meetings.   Pat: Do you have any examples?   Tim: Well there's the three that I have is my super summit which that's only for PS my folks, in the CIA's BLC would stand for business leadership conference and then of ex is a back which is the A. B. executive conference. Is not taken out mean there's not there's not a technology showcase their. These are folks that are going to you're going to have a chance to talk with your peers, what other business owners.   Pat: Right     Tim: And find out what they're doing right and what they're doing wrong and how they can help you and honestly how you can help them. And in doing so, you know you're gonna be able to see what's worked in what's doesn't. You know we're obviously that there are regional differences in their cultural differences, not only across you know international borders but also on the scene in the US there's regional, cultural differences as big as we are. But the basics are the same, right and understanding that and it was it was actually at the BLC three years ago now, I ran into a young man who was in charge of emigration from up in Maine, which is singled out of the way. But but they were doing service and support, as a AV as a service and support through their clients right, they had they had taken the the sass model the software as a service model and convertible into AV rather successfully and they did it through number different ways number one was was the monitoring and maintaining of their systems. But that conversation and coupled with a couple different conversation with some other and integrators who had moved to AV as a service through not only monitoring but also leasing, the equipment.   Pat: The equipment, okay.   Tim: So it's not yellow you Patrick as the client you don't own anything, right. My contract with you says you're gonna have the latest greatest stuff within five years, every year, so it's my job to make sure that the system is up and running and maintained and that you have the latest greatest you don't have to worry about you know end of life for a projector or display or a control processor. Your stuff is just gonna work and it's my job to figure that out. Now you're going to pay me for that, right you gonna pay me for that, because suddenly you you don't have a need for a support team you know have a need for you know having somebody physically on site because I'm gonna come within and you know depending on base on the contract but within an hour five hours twenty four hours depending on what the contract says. I'm going to support you, to this to this degree.   Pat: Do those numbers work out?   Tim: It does for some people, it does for some organizations right for some for some clients they get, right.   Pat: Is it really just an understanding thing or because you could put this in black and white: over the next ten years, system it will cost you X. and doing that as a service option will cost also X.   Tim: X, plus some. Understand that, it's not, it's not the cheapest option, right.   Pat: But you are not laying out the money up front.   Tim: You’re not laying out the money up front: You're eliminating in you do you hate to talk about you know people line jobs for your limiting a jobber too are so your cost of off that. Number three you don't have to deal with the the half life of certain products of equipment and then you don't have to mess with what do you do with that product that that equipment once it's been taken out and that is actually one of the dirty little secrets of A V. Especially from a technology manager standpoint.   Pat: Sure.   Tim: What the heck do you do with this crap, once you've taken out of the rack.   Pat: It's useless.   Tim: Seriously I had the office I had it at Lewis and Clark, which is the college I worked at, it was, our head in for our master control for our our internal TV station, okay. So I had it you know five racks worth of equipment the set the other about time. I left there I had replaced everything in that rack, when I got there. It was all old CRTs and an old old analog equipment.   Pat: Big stuff too .   Tim: I all of my gosh I had, replaced everything in that rack to where it was down to two racks. I had a back room full of gear.   Pat: Yeah, try ebaying it.   Tim: Ebaying it is worth less right, because you you get five or ten Bucks. But then so we only end up doing electronic recycling our college had a green initiative in this and other once a year , we electronically cycle and that's where a lot of those old five wire switchers went right to a company that we knew that that are college had had bedded they knew what they did with the equipment once they got it and and they were responsible about the way that they dispose of it. But you know that's one of those things that folks don't really think about because you know I don't care what the VCR with the doc came from her years ago. This stuff has first of all has hazardous material and right now people think about that but you've got lead in there you've got ill do it like this electronics have got crap in it that probably shouldn't go into the ground how do you responsibly dispose of that and some companies absolutely do really good job of that they'll have a program to where the either get a credit to their their clients are the height say „Hey I'll take this off your hands and as we know how to properly dispose of it“. Absolutely there is that there's also I would say a large majority of folks we simply don't know what to do with you know a sixteen by sixteen BJ switcher, once they take it out and replaced it with the with a digital equipment.   Pat: Right, so that's like another bonus of that as a service modelle right, they would take care of that that final tasks. So it sounds like this is all as a service model is more about convenience it'll cost a little more but you get a ton of convenience it's like kind of like what Rich does as a white glove service. So what's the hold up?   Tim: Getting the AV sales people to wrap their head around it.   Pat: Are we, so we are our own worst enemy, kind of.   Tim: Absolutly, it’s just like every industry by way.   Pat: Yeah, okay, sure, but this is like a real opportunity to grow, because you know within a service model, you know how much is coming in every month for the next five years. These are contracts as opposed to the way we do things now, a project comes in, you get it done and then you basically start from zero again.   Tim: I think some of is also cultural, going back to that, but yet it's cultural as well, because you have a business that has a business plan. And it is in their business plan to sell ex amount in their hiring the salespeople to sell a system.   Pat: Okay.   Tim: I'm not so the contractor and some of that's it you know some that's also a cultural shift internally to say okay we're going to make the shift. I would say that the folks that I know they had gone to the service model alright there are sure to migrate to art are incredibly successful.   Pat: Yeah.   Tim: I am certain that there are failures out there. I have not heard of them, but I'm certain there are values out there, people who for whatever reason whether it's their market or their client base or whatever. Just couldn't get off the ground. Then gone back to to doing you know sales and and a service as a separate item.   Pat: Okay, so to shift to an end as a service model, is obviously a big investment, right. It would it completely changes everything. Is there a pass to do it incrementally?   Tim: That actually is how you almost have to do it, right? You can't exactly do on mass, you would have to take it , object right so you get an RFP, or you are selling to a client and you know you're listening to them and you're hearing their their big pain points. But that's the other part is this is not for everybody , there are some folks who eaten will never let you monitor their network okay ever let you monitor their system. So unless you can overcome that hurdle, it's not gonna be a very successful AV as in service installation. So that you use a limited arsenal system.   Pat: That could be handled with staffing no?   Tim: Yes and no. I mean yes, you can put somebody physically on on site, right. And then that's another cost.   Pat: Right.   Tim: Some cost, but yeah absolutely.   Pat: Okay, interesting stuff. Let's shift gears back again to....you know that kind of reminds me of, is like you were saying, to start incrementally like I tell programmers just do something small you know find your smallest projects, if you want to learn a new programming language and tried on that something that you know you could go back to your old language and do in just a few minutes. But just just try it on a really small project first. And that's how you that's a gain confidence with these things- that's how you start to that so you go from crawling to walking.   Tim: That's why the most famous phrase and all the programming is „hello world“.   Pat: Yeah, there you go.   Tim: Seriously, because that right there is you know if you can do „hello world“ in a language then you can go from there.   Pat: Yeah, definitely. So speaking of control, „state of control“, but I'm a big fan of it, obviously.   Tim: I am too.   Pat: It's actually, you know, hearing everybody, she knows that I respect, talk about the different ways to approach AV control it's it's kind of inspired me a bit to follow up on some of my own ideas and develop them and even try out a new product or so on the market. They don't know it, didn't always work but.   Tim: Oh they will.   Pat: Do you know of any similar stories on estate control or any other podcasts where somebody's been inspired to really take action and do something with the information that that you guys are providing?   Tim: There are a lot actually over the years.   Pat: Pick your favorite.   Tim: I'm trying to think, but I will probably will I'll stick with state control and the good lord this has been, two or three years ago now. I can't remember. Crestron came out with their diamond level programming. If you're not familiar with with Crestron sort of by programmers there are, number of years there was sweat three different metals and was bronze silver and gold and then they came out with platinum and then they came out with diamond. And we did a special episode with the first ever diamond programmers. Now two of them were Crestron employees but still there was there was four of them that were that were first ever and out of that Labadie Dave hats started talking about doing diamond and he became a diamond level year later the first ever diamond that I ever knew personally right. I knew the couple of the posters of the question that but I didn't know them really well the day was the incredible fantastic very talented diamond level programmerer.   Pat: But we should also point out that it's about three weeks of work to do that certification.   Tim: Well, more than that, because then you have to do it, you have to keep it you, have to teach every year.   Pat: So it's a real investment.   Tim: It's incredible investment and even with the one thing that I find fascinating, is you have to teach outside of your discipline and what I mean by that is, Dave is a network programmer, he could take you know network control and and and run with all day long he's a commercial programmer, he has done commercial programming for years, so the first class he did was buy a home.   Pat: Was resi.   Tim: Was residential automation. Fish out of water. As our water and that's with a duty right. That's what they do to you. To stretch your arms and to get you kind of on the path of making sure that you are not as a real well rounded, right. I'm obviously Hatz probably has you know, fifteen pro3's in this house and use fully automated the only service dog food every morning you know outlaw doc brown. But you know it it's, there is something where it's you're getting outside of your comfort zone and outside of what you do on a daily basis.   Pat: So, I've had to make his decision myself and I decided for the time being not to make that huge investment in the next level of Crestron programming just because, yeah, does it really make a difference? And you know, from what you're telling me, this guy was inspired to make this huge investment, from one of your shows. I don't know, what do you think, does it really? Maybe it's a country thing, here in Germany maybe they just don't look at certifications the same way. They all kind of look the same and blur, but is there, yeah.   Tim: This is why it depends: You're an independent programmer. I have been outside of the spec part of the AV industry for probably too long, so I understand that when I say what I'm gonna say. I have not yet run into a situation, where somebody has put on us back, that they want a diamond level programmer. It doesn't mean, that they're not out there. I'm just saying that I have not personally run into or heard about a spec I ate in our P. where somebody has put down but they want a diamond level I am certain that there is at least one or two out there that that they've asked for. And the other side of that is there very few situations where it be where it would be warranted.   Pat: Well, that's the other thing, yeah.   Tim: By and large most course for most programmers I know Crestron AMX external, most of them that are worth their salt and they get they get their certification, can handle a vast majority, of thrown at them. Yes, there are building automation's where you know what you're doing. right. And for that I would say a higher level of certification would be needed. And what you should be called out of respect, but if that's what your business is and that's what you talk about what you do on a daily basis a personal question then.   Pat: You know, sure sure, got to be decided on a case by case basis   Tim: Yep.   Pat: Alright shifting back TV nation. I remember running into you a few years ago and you quietly whispered to me in my ear that you were I'm gonna go a hundred percent all in with AV Nation. Do you remember that time?   Tim: I do.   Pat: So what was the biggest reason was the biggest thing that that gave me the confidence to make that jump?   Tim: Two things. First one the the support of my wife. Of any ship flight that you have to have the support of your partner, regardless of who that is.   Pat: Absolutely.   Tim: Certainly it was it was a weird combination. So we had just started monetizing aviation and and by what I said just I mean we had this was the first start, we had just started taking on money from other people up at that point it was completely financed by me. I was financing and by doing some outside jobs. We had just completed our first trip ISE, which was a can credibly successful Kickstarter for us. It was very humbling, because up to that point well Infocomm was a trip that almost went to anyway. So we were kinda able to kind of couple together and I could cover whatever nobody else could. But ISE was different, ISE was a big chunk of money. It was ten grand was our budget show and our listeners came through in our supporters came through in a huge winds quickly on more, but also prove something that we could do it and we could do it differently, than other people and that's kind of what our thing is. We cover the industry in a unique way because we're all in the industry. And so I wanted to finance it in a different way to kinda keep with with who we are. And so after I see that year was actually I was I is the twenty fifteen twenty fifteen to that I was looking around like, okay what's what makes sense to me and I'm a big fan of NPR and PBS and BBC in the UK and an image are an arcane and just the way they think their model is which is pretty much be a publicly financed but no undue influence, I guess the best way to put this.   Pat: Okay.   Tim: And so the way that we have our contracts with our underwriting structured is, there's no real influence. And you know that's just kind of the the way we we wanted to go. And so we were starting to take on some money, not a whole lot but enough to offset into where I didn't have to the side projects anymore. And the company that I worked for, was eighty eight, independent programming house. I was the they operate the ops manager for. We got sold to a local integration firm in Saint Louis of folks that I have a lot of respect for. Good friends with. They were one of our biggest clients at at the time. And some sitting in this meeting and not really knowing what to expect from them. They were very gracious, they had all these ideas for me. They wanted to do this and this and this and I'm sitting here in this meeting going „this is a unique place in my life, this is a unique time and I have an opportunity, I can absolutely take this job. I could take this job and I could work this job for a year two years five years whatever. But AN Nation at the time was in a unique spot that I was I it was it was when those moments where you either take it full bore and and and and take it out and spend it and take it out for a test drive and see what it's capable of. Or you just keep in the garage and it's something that you can tinker with on the weekend.   And in that moment I just kind of decided well this is this is my time to figure out whether or not this is something real or not. Without this is something that people can really honestly sustain or not.   And I told them that and I remember the owner, who's become a very good friend of mine and one of my business mentors, says „well it sounds like you're quitting, before you ever start“ and I said, „well I kind of am“ and so I left that meeting oddly on cloud nine. Not having a job. I was unemployed, thoroughly. And it has been the scariest and craziest two and a half years of my life and I would not do it differently.   Pat: Excellent. I like how you mentioned you had to recognize the opportunity, that was happening. It was the it was a special opportunity that came you had the Kickstarter you had maybe a few underwriters so you kind of proven that there was a need for it that it could become something and then the company getting sold was kind of a catalyst to to kind of snap your into reality and say „wait a minute, I can either do this or that“ and then you chose this road. So what was what was really your biggest concern at the time what what were you worried about?   Tim: Paying my bills.   Pat: Yeah obviously.   Tim: I mean so it's interesting, that when I tell people my story, they're the ones that one of the more common questions is „you have your wife“ and yet „you have kids right like „yeah yeah that I've a mortgage I have to to pay for in Ohio.   Pat: Are you mentally stable?   Tim: No, no I'm not. You know, but now that's that's the biggest concern every month you know and and you know there are months that are better than others. And well I have a really good friend, I have known Michael for over twenty years he has recently in the last year and a half he has gone out on his own is does he does IT consulting. And he will be on me the powerful, for advice and I'm you know is is one thing we were I'll tell him is like looking out there there are going to be days and they're gonna be months that are horrible, right where you are going to question your own sanity in question your own your own brains. But we've gotten to the point where we are are stable and we are solid. And I'm I'm happy with on or the underwriters that we have them happy with the group that we've got and so out of that stability you okay so what were stable now it's taken us two and a half years to get stable but were stable so okay so what does any good entrepreneur wants wants a stable, you try to grow right.   And so we're in the process of doing some things that were were assessing some things and going okay you know what can we do to be a silly bigger for her sake but what can we do better? Right? What what can we do better how can we do things are even more differently and how can we reach more people and how can we do it more efficiently and how can we make our underwriters lives easier and how can we connect with more integrators and and what are we not just covering and were we not doing and you know we we started doing adjustments expo last year twenty seventeen. For the first time and we are doing it again this year, because our integrators are telling us that deals digital signage as a particle is important to them, so okay so you spend two days in Vegas right honestly Patrick it's the cheapest show that I do , from a from a cost standpoint, so it is the least expensive show that we cover and it's you know I'm in Saint Louis so I tell people, I'm spoiled as far as he is whites it takes me I get any place in the country in three hours you know at the most and Vegas is among those and you know southwest being southwest you can get in a fight pretty cheaply and you know hotels in Vegas Sir you depends on where you stay obviously but you know those little relatively inexpensiveunless you go during CIS, which I've heard really horror stories about that, but that's a whole nother issue: But you know it's it to you you grow from a stability standpoint and a you stretch and you see what's possible and you know we're not perfect by any stretch the imagination we have our own issues and and we're still learning how to be a website as opposed to in in addition to being a podcast company and that comes with that with its own challenges, because it's something that we never had to worry about you know was a website traffic because our our podcasting traffic is is what it does. And so that comes with is its own set of challenges and trying to shore that up and and learn because as a business owner I have to make I have to make intelligent decisions so the way that I make decisions, I want to learn everything about right I'll be an expert but I had to have I have to know enough to make an informed decision, so you know learning about you know things like you mentioned SEO and learning about things like making sure things are in proper categories and making sure that your , you're promoting so proper and all this other „hoo hah“ that I never had to worry about you know five years ago. So that's a learning. It's a way that we can we're able to become better and and serve our clients in in our our listeners better is okay, we're good you know we're or stable now now let's start stretching.   Pat: Excellent, sounds great. Any plans for the future you'd care to share with us?   Tim: Take over the world.   Pat: Really? With a podcast?   Tim: Absolutly. Here’s the thing- we I see online media, as not just the future of media in general, but I see it as as kind of where we're going as a society and I do mean it is a global society. I still believe in print, I think print is a is a fantastic medium, I think the journalists that worked at The New York Times SEM are fantastic people. Right? I think they do an incredible job of what they do, but I also look at what time magazine is doing on time magazine, if you've never heard of them is little magazine right, but they start out being being a print magazine. If you go to Times website you're going to see as much video as you are written conduct and you take the flip side of that company that started out as being just as video on that CNN, CNN start out being just video right. It was the cables news network, well with the the onset of of the of the internet are there is much written as they are video on their website now so you've got you've got to be as a media company you have to be everything are you have to provide folks written content as well as video and I would argue also as well as audio all you have to give your audience what they want in the format that they wanted an you regardless of whether you're covering audio visual or you're covering politics you have to give folks what you what they want in the way that they want it. And it took us a long time to realize that it really really dead because I thought blocks right I thought blogs I thought press releases I fought you know written content I'll let them right on the folks that help me run AV Nation will tell you that but I finally realize that you know what yet not everybody likes listening to me talk right not everybody likes looking and looking and then when watching some people just simply like to read , okay so you gonna go down that road as well. But no I mean I am I am fully ensconced in my business owners share. !I wanna take over the world, I want to be the number one you know audio visual media platform, I want to be the number one audio visual media company out there I would be number one and I I say that very humbly and but very honestly you know I am also a competitor, as well as a broadcaster and so how you do that you listen to your people you listen to you you listen to people who give you feedback , you make adjustments and you say okay to that just don't work and if it didn't well then you go back to the drawing board okay what what what's next.   Pat: Excellent, excellent. Well, you're doing a great job you're definitely on the path. You know I'm a big fan. I remember the first time you called me for a programming job, that's the first time we met.   Tim: Yep.   Pat: And I was like holy crap, it's Tim, I heard your voice on the other side of a phone and not coming through my car speakers, so yeah there's a there's a lot about the power of you know audio and voice and things like that but but the other know die that you were mentioning it sounds a lot like the way people learn too. Like some people learn better with text, others with video and I guess the news is a form of of learning too. The next big change could be right, you're saying that there's this move to video. What happens when everybody has a pair of googles?   Tim: No, not everybody will have a pair of googles.   Pat: No, no, because then you're there, like it doesn't get more real.   Tim: Well, the reason I say that is because I am, objects are right I am that you know that that lost generation between the damn boomers in the damn memorials and yeah so we're we're you know we're that we are the forgotten generation at and you know there there is you know our our kids are kids may very well have goggles the more likely than not our grandkids or great grand grand kids may very well have the goggles but in the meantime it is the augmented reality of the cell phone right and you know it it's the reason I say that we we probably don't have goggles is is does he goes back you go back to 3D. one of the main reasons the three D. never really took off to the people who were in the glasses if they don't have to wear glasses.   Pat: Sure.   Tim: I'm thirty three years old and I don't have to wear glasses knock on wood right so do you think Zak like you know my dad was forty when he started wearing his readers and I'm forty three and I still don't have to so I and I will fight it tooth and nail but I I'm legitimately I'm not I'm not fighting and there's a there's a box over there with the small print I can still read it now you know once I get to that point with wearing glasses you know I I don't know that I'll feel differently but I would say that if you don't have to wear glasses you're probably not really apt to even if it's going to give you some weird experiences however okay if you are already looking at yourself or let's be very Frank about it we all are right arm then you you kind of lean towards that and there's there's where some of the the I a are going to come from in our years honestly there's some games out there and there's some programs out there with that I'll let you you know see stuff on your desk if you know if you look at it through the through your lands and I'll give you an augmented reality experience.   Pat: It's gonna be interesting however plays out. So given your background in the AV press do you have any ideas on for somebody if they're coming out with a new software based solution or even if it's hardware based something new and different approach to solving something in AV? Do you have any ideas or advice on how to raise awareness for something like?   Tim: Two things. First of all get yourself a couple integrators to buy into it, because here's the thing so regardless of what the press release says this is the this is the latest greatest thing in the history the world and it will change how everybody does business in a brief period in the sentence right, I just wrote somebody's press release with, it doesn't matter if you don't have somebody to sell it to and to give the people in the press, a use case because with very few exceptions, the vast majority of audiovisual press have never been in the back of Iraq pulling cable.   Pat: Okay.   Tim: And as much respect as I have for them and I have a lot of respect for for everybody that that I work alongside in the process of the AB industry that is one thing that that they don't have as they do they've never worked anywhere right so that you're gonna tell them its latest greatest thing I don't care what the display with its control program over to switcher. They're gonna look at the specs and their comparison up to an old the on the previous model and they're gonna say you know this does X. amount more or this does this and the other and number one the kind of had to take your word for it unless you're there physically going to get a hold a bit and I have the testing equipment to test your hypothesis in in your your marketing speak or they're gonna talk to any writers that they trust that they've developed relationships with. They all do you know they're out there they all do their job right they did they have any brothers that they trust that they can bring to other they can bring a product to and say what do you think about this and why. And then no cultivate you know I'll use their their opinions is as part of their of their coverage because these are the folks are using on a daily and weekly basis, so I would advise you to obviously connect with the press but also connect yourself with some integrators and that you can point the press two and say look here is Susie's AV emporium who's been using this product for six months and this is what they think.   Pat: All right. Great stuff, thanks for that. Tim, I think we can go on for a long time here, we're gonna have to do a part two some time   Tim: Ok, whatever. You're in Germany so you can stay up as late as you will.   Pat: Exactly, I think the kids will be knocking on the door here and running the podcast any minute so...   Tim: It wouldn't be the first time.   Pat: Exactly thank you so much for being on the show.   Tim: Absolutely.   Even with that shift in my head and and shipped in my philosophy, I sat there for probably, five minutes, yeah I'm wearing and blundering and just putting off quitting pressing record, before it will before we did our first show, once I pressed record and I started, it was down hill, but it was the active physically pressing record and saying what I had been trained to say which is three to one before ever start recording, it was that act that I was I was putting off right, I was it was that for whatever reason that pressing that record button was so difficult and in the moment. You know I had talked around I'd never met him before I had Linda from this who was a long time AV industry journalist, out her husband works for, okay booking audio and then I had my buddy Michael physically next to me right we're sitting in my college radio station that I top production and at the time and you know I've got things kind of Jerry rigged between two different computers and and a recording system and it's on the other, but it was until I hit record that it actually started doing anything in my head   Pat: Yeah, have you heard about the war of art?   Tim: No.   Pat: He talks about exactly that it calls it the resistance he gives it a name he calls it resistance and he goes into this whole book is explaining how the resistance is out to get you and prevent me from doing everything you're meant to do it's it's a great book, are the war of art tour of art and, it's a good one to read for ten minutes in the morning to then she did to fix your head right.   Tim: Okay. 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Hi! It’s David Lee. I’m with Tim Hall from Argyle Roofing in West London. Tim, I’ve been very happy with the work you’ve done, but I’d like to ask you this question, “What are the top three challenges that you have in running your business Tim? What are they?” Tim: “Making people feel confident with […]

The Spokesmen Cycling Roundtable Podcast Episode 132 Ironically Moronic March 20, 2016 Host: David Bernstein Today's Spokespeople: • Carlton Reid • Tim Jackson • Rich Kelly • Jim Moss Topics Included: Racing  • Milan San Remo 2016 • The Program movie released (limited) in U.S. on Friday 18 March (trailer) ◦ Lance on the Joe Rogan Podcast ◦ Lance's Speech in Colorado ◦ Latest Lawsuit News (whistleblower lawsuit) • Nick Brandt-Sorenson Pleads Guilty to Selling PEDs via his Blog Cyclist Safety and Advocacy • Video: Suck it up and start appreciating cyclists • Former pro cyclist loses arm in bike crash on Flagstaff Mountain Industry News • Velo Changes back to Velo News • Microshift to Release Electronic Road Group • Xiaomi Smart Bicycle • Use it or lose it: UK bike shop lays it on the line about online sales. • PRODUCT RECALLS: SRAM Recalls Zipp Quick Releases and Hubs Due to Crash and Injury Hazards • PRODUCT RECALL: RacerMate Recalls CompuTrainer Blue Flywheels Due to Risk of Injury Tips, Hints and Best Practices • David: Gladys Bikes' Saddle Library (thanks to listener Mark) • Carlton: Contact me to discuss your counterfeit bike frame purchase • Jim: Give to bike charities! • Jim: Take photos of your bike and accessories for insurance purposes • Tim: What happens behind you doesn't matter in a race or group ride • Rich: Properly compensate shops and mechanics for work done on your bikes Sponsors • Jenson USA • YOU! Please click the links in our show notes to support The Spokesmen WEB SITE: http://www.the-spokesmen.com The Spokesmen Cycling Roundtable Podcast is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommerical-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Timothy Ballard has met and arrested hundreds of child traffickers. They are different genders, ethnicities, ages, and religions, but what was the one thing they all had (have) in common? An addiction to pornography that started years before. In this bonus episode, Tim sites recent research about the effects of pornography on the human brain. He and his team, known as Operation Underground Railroad, often begin investigations into trafficking by following the trail of child pornography directly to traffickers on their way to act out the very things they have been watching in the videos. [caption id="attachment_12137" align="alignright" width="49"] In Episode 003 of the Slave Stealer Podcast, Timothy Ballard points to pornography as a root cause of child sex trafficking. This infographic, by FightTheNewDrug.org supports his claim with anecdotes and evidence.[/caption]     Full Transcript: Intro: You are listening to Slave Stealer.   Timothy Ballard: Ok, welcome to Slave Stealer podcast, this is a bonus edition. This bonus edition has to do with the topic of: Pornography. Not something people love to talk about, especially, the evil effects of it. But it was a tangent, that we started talking about as a result of the Vicente Fox interview, that we did recently, and it is my opinion, and I think science backs it up, that pornography is, in fact, creating a lot of the demand that we are seeing for child sex. This is me diverging from a conversation about Vicente Fox, and I am hitting pornography, and talking about the true evil that it can be, and creating sex addicts who hurt kids. So, roll it! If you saw the amounts of child pornography, that are being transferred and distributed every single day, and we know this, because we have worked these cases with our partners. It is stunning! It is mind-blowing! And, the largest consumers of pornography in the world are from the United States. So, we are producing these sex addicts. And what are we doing about that? And, I am not satisfied with what the U.S. Government is doing about that. Mark Mabry: What do you propose they would do? Tim: Well, one thing is, we need to start talking about the evils of pornography. This is not popular. Why? Because 98% of guys are stuck in pornography. Mark: Do you think 98%? Tim: I think so. That is what the studies say. Mark: 98%? Tim: Yeah. Mark: Of guys? So, between me and you, you are looking at pornography a lot? Tim: I am in the 2%. Mark: Me too! Tim: Ok, well, congratulations!   Mark: It must be Chris over there, our sound guy. Tim: Yeah, Chris. How is your porn use these days? Chris: I guess, I am in that 98%. Mark: Oh, great! Wrong answer! Tim: So, what is hard about porn, the porn issue is, that not everybody, by long shot, who looks at pornagraphy, is getting end up raping children. But, I would say, 100% of men who rape children are porn addicts.  And so, like anything else it needs to be education around it, like it can be a drug. Pornography can be a drug. Mark: Yes. Tim: Especially if it is in certain levels, and it becomes an addiction, like any other drug. Like alcohol is a drug, right? So, people need to drink responsibly. We need to educate people, kids especially, about what pornography could lead to. I have arrested dozens and dozens of pedophiles. I have interrogated dozens and dozens of pedophiles over my career as a special agent, and also in the work we are doing with Operation Underground Railroad. And every single time when they talk, they talk about how it all started when they were 12 years old, when they picked up a Playboy, or they looked at this naked picture or whatever, and their mind starts going there, and then it is a progression. And, the science backs it up. You can go to our friends at fightthenewdrug.org, and they talk all about the science behind what this pornography... how it is in fact a drug. I mean, it over-stimulates the frontal lobes of the brain, it creates shrinkage in the brain. It creates brain damage. And, what happens to people who are addicted to it, it is not the naked pictures they are addicted to. What they are addicted to is the chemical reaction, the dopamine, the endorphins that the images produce in their brains. That is what they want, and they will do anything to get that. And, when the naked pictures aren’t working anymore, just like marijuana eventually starts to wear off on the use - I need to progress to something more powerful to get that same chemical reaction - and, frankly it is very similar chemical reaction to pornography. So, they need something to... they just want that reaction, they want that dose of dopamine. They know their brain can give them, but they have got to shot their brain now, because the adult stuff, the legal stuff ain’t working. Mark: When we were… Tim: So what they do..wait! Mark: Dude! I heard what you were saying. I am not interrupting.. Tim: But, I am about to end it. I am about to give my final line and you cut me off. So, what they turn to is Mark: It is a long final line. Tim: Well, it is powerful. Mark: Alright, let’s go. Tim: What they turn to is child pornography. That becomes their heroine, their crack, cocaine, and it shots their brain enough to get the reaction they need. And, these guys are almost brain-dead at this point, but they need something, and then when that wears off, they travel to Cancun, Mexico to find a child. And, again, a very small percentage of porn users end up in Cancun, Mexico, but there is enough, that there is 2 million children who are being sold for sex in the world.   Ending: Get more Tim and Mark at slavestealer.com.

  Interview w/ Timothy Ballard Mark Mabry January 11, 2016 Final Transcript   Intro: You are listening to Slave Stealer. Tim: Welcome to Slave Stealer podcast, where we take you into the dark world of trafficking so you can help us find the solution. We are talking here with co-host, Mark Mabry. Mark: That’s me. And we did a little change in format. This is part two of our ‘Meet Tim’ series, because he has had a really interesting story. And what I found amazing in getting to know Tim over the last few years, is that sacrifice of peace of mind, sacrifice of kind of this level of innocence that 99.9% of the rest of us enjoy. And, to recap, we talked about Tim’s story a little bit, how he got into child crimes, and how he was invited by HSI to be on that team, and then we talked about his family. He has got young kids, and his son is now 15. And, the birds and the bees talk is awkward enough. What about that talk about what dad does for a living?” Tim: Well, you know, yeah..Let me say this first: I was scared to death some 15 years ago when I was asked to enter this dark world of child crimes. And the thing that scared me the most was the fact that I had kids, and I didn’t know how that would affect me. Would I see an image that reminded me of my kids, would that make me a paranoid father, would that turn me... My wife was scared to death that I would turn into just some cynical, just bitter old dude. And I was scared to death. I mean, you’ve got to wade through the sewer to find the crap. Mark: And what if the pornography took, I mean, worst case scenario, you turn into somebody that is actually into it? Not that that would happen with you knowing you, but... Tim: You know, what I have found that’s..a lot of people think that, and they go there, but... Mark: Those people are stupid. Tim: The people who had that suggestion are really idiotic. No, but it’s a logical conclusion. But what I have found is, frankly, kind of the opposite. Because when you are exposed to children - unless you are a pedophile, right - when you are exposed to that, it makes you want to distance yourself even more from all things pornography. At least that was my experience, and as I watched other agents who I have worked with, who have to be exposed to this. It turns you off so much to the whole industry, even the legal part of it, because it’s so, frankly, similar that it actually, at least for me, it has had the effect of major deterrent, even from any temptation my own part to even look at regular pornography. Does that make sense? Mark: Yeah! Tim: And, for the child stuff, it is just a punch in the stomach every time, and it is worse and worse every time. And you learn how to cope, you learn how to be able to see this stuff and still move on. But, like in the last show, I was talking about how the first thing I want to do when I saw particular images or videos, is just grab my kids and bring them to the safest place I know, which is my home, and just hold them. And so the whole concept, the whole idea to your question of how I bring together these two worlds, of what I do outside versus what I do inside - you have to factor in all these things. But my kids do start asking questions. I was addressing a group that was doing a benefit for Operation Underground Railroad just two nights ago. And they had the kids there and they wanted me to talk about it, and it was so hard, because I’m sitting there, and they say, “Tell us what you do!”, and I’m going, “All right, well I’ll start...”       Mark: How old were the kids? Tim: Oh, the kids were as young as five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve. Mark: Oh, geez.. Tim: It was like all these neighborhood kids. And their parents wanted them to know that there are kids who are less fortunate and that we need to help them. That was the idea. So, I thought to myself, “I’ll start with the software that we are building.” The software is called ‘Stars’. It’s a pretty name. Until one of the kids says, “What does STARS stand for?” And it stands for Sex Traveler Apprehension Retention System, right? So, I say SEEEE ugh...I can’t say it, I can’t even say the name of the software! Mark: Super Terrific Apprehension... Tim: Yes! So, I couldn’t, and it was so..it’s so difficult. A little kid raises his hand after I’m talking about slavery in general terms, and he said, “Why would someone want to steal a child? Wouldn’t they rather steal an adult because they’d be better at being a slave and a stronger worker?” I just looked at this little kid, I was like, “I know exactly the truth of your question, I know how to answer that, but I cannot answer that.” And so these issues that I was grappling with at this charity event, are the same issues I grapple with every day with my kids. When they see something on the news, and with my small children I just tell them, you know, I help kids, we help kids, we help kids who’ve been kidnapped. That’s all they know, and they seem ok with that. But as they get older, they start asking questions. And it intersects at the same time that I need to start talking to them about the birds and the bees. My wife and I are very open, I mean, I think my job has made me the most desensitized to all things sex, like I can say anything to anyone, because the conversations that I have had with people, with perpetrators especially during interrogations, where we were talking about things, or undercover, where they’re selling me kids. There is nothing that makes me blush, right. So, I can just take my kids and sit down, and say, “Hey”, talk about everything, embarrassing things, everything from pornography to masturbation to dating and all this stuff. It is rare that we talk about that, somehow it leads to the fact that - again these are my more adolescent, teenage kids - it always leads to some kind of an explanation that they are asking me for about, “Why would an adult want to do that to a child?”      Mark: When they say THAT, what ..I mean.. Tim: I mean they kind of..they know, I mean, they figured it out. Mark: Yeah. Tim: They do, because they know what is what we’re talking about. And so, I think, in the world of child pornography and sexual abuse of children, you don’t want to be graphic with the kids at all, even with my teenage kids. I kind of let them just figure it out and let their brain stop them where they should be stopped, because the brain will do that. Mark: Oh, adults don’t even grasp it. Tim: Adults don’t grasp it. I was sitting with my father-in-law - a brilliant man, PhD - we were in his kitchen, this was when I was an agent, and I heard him, he started talking.. What had happened was that I arrested one of his friends - not like a close friend, right, but... Mark: ”So, what did you do today, Tim?” “Well, I busted Larry.” Tim: Right! Mark: I have heard this story. Tim: He knew this guy, he had been to his home. So he knew this guy, and he started saying, “You know...I kind of feel bad for this particular individual, because it’s not really their fault. I mean, these girls dress in a certain way that is provocative, and it is not totally their fault.” And, I’m just dying. I’m like, “Wait, wait, wait, what?! You are telling me that a 5-year old puts on clothes, and now it’s not the pedophile’s fault that they look at the 5-year-old!” And his eyes almost popped out of his head! He says, “Five years old?! Why are you talking about 5-year-olds?!”     Mark: He’s thinking the 17 ½-year-old. Tim: He’s thinking 17, 16 years old, where you can’t really maybe tell the difference between a 17- and an 18-year-old, right. His eyes popped out of his head, and he says, “What?!” I said, “Yeah...Dad, you don’t know this, but what George was looking at was 5- to 7-year-old children, boys and girls, being raped, ok?” Mark: They sent a picture in the tub. Tim: Exactly. Being raped by adults. And he just kind of put his head down, shook it, and he said, “Now, that is weird..” I remember he said, ”That is just weird...”, and he walked out of the kitchen. He couldn’t handle it, and I don’t blame him. Our minds don’t even let us go there. And this is the problem. This is the problem that, frankly, is the obstacle to the solution. And the problem is we don’t want to see, we don’t want to believe it. I remember in the very beginning, in the early 2000s, when we were taking cases, child porn cases, to the judges, federal judges and state judges on pornography cases, on child pornography cases. And they were sentencing them to the most minimal sentences. Like this one guy had this collection that was unbelievable, categorized it by the names - he would name the kids in the videos, and create little files for them. It was unbelievable. He had hundreds of thousands of videos, images and everything else. And when the judge sentenced him, he sentenced him to four or five months in jail, but weekends only.            Mark: What?! Tim: And, I thought, “What is going on?!” The prosecutor I was working with, she said, “You know, the problem, Tim, is they don’t get it.The judges don’t get it!” They don’t get it. And we asked the judges if we could please show..during the sentencing they brought me in, and said, “Agent Ballard wants to show you the images.” He said, “I don’t want to see that junk! I don’t want to see that junk.” He’s embarrassed to even look at it. The human side of him doesn't want to even watch him looking at it, so he says, “I don’t need to see, I don’t need to see it!” So, we didn’t show it to him, and then that sentence came out. I guarantee you, I guarantee you that he doesn’t want to accept it. You know, the reports indicated that the kids were as young as five or four years old. His brain - my theory - wouldn’t let him grasp it, wouldn’t let him grasp it. And so he just gave him this super light sentence. But if I would have just opened that laptop, and say, “You have to watch this, you need to see this.” Now, I’m not advocating for showing child porn to people.    Mark: Exactly. Tim: At all! At all! Mark: But, maybe we emphasize, highly illegal: if you download this, even for altruistic, I’m-going-to-expose-myself, but...   Tim: You will go to jail. Don’t do it! Don’t do it! Mark: Yes! Tim: But what I’m telling you is, be aware that it is there, and we have got to talk about it. It hurts...You mentioned that when you talk about this, and this is why people don’t want to talk about it, you hit the nail in the head: you lose part of your own innocence. Mark: Absolutely. Tim: And every time you talk about it, some more of your innocence, even as adults, it goes away. You have to sacrifice that, but you sacrifice it for the kids. Because if we don’t sacrifice a part of our innocence to know this is happening, they have no hope, because we are the adults, we are the ones who will...if anyone’s going to save them, it is going to be the adults, that have the power and the influence and the ability. But if we don’t know about it, we are not going to save them. But to know about it, you must sacrifice some of your innocence. And so that’s what we ask people to do: sacrifice some of your innocence, listen to this show, go to our website, learn about trafficking. It’s the fastest growing criminal enterprise on earth. Two million children, and more, are being sold for sex, over ten million children sold for labor. Add all the adults, we’re on a 30-40 million range. I mean, wake up! Help them out! But it does require a sacrifice of innocence.     Mark: So, back to the question at hand, did you actually have, have you had a sit-down, “Ok, let me talk to you about this, son”? Like, let me ask it this way: have your kids seen the documentary? Tim: Here’s my policy and my wife’s, I mean, every kid is an individual, right. Every kid you treat differently, because it is not a ‘one size fits all’ solution to raising kids. Mark: You have how many? Tim: I have six kids. Mark: That’s awesome! Tim: So, our kind of general policy, guideline on the documentary, which is ‘The Abolitionists’ documentary, which films my team going into different countries and helping the police infiltrate trafficking rings and so forth... Mark: Catching you soliciting pimps for underaged girls. Tim: Right. Mark: Asking “Hey, will she do this, will she do that?” Tim: Oh, yeah. Mark: Your kids have to hear you saying that. Tim: My kids are hearing that, yeah. So, what we’ve decided is, generally speaking, if this particular video or this particular documentary includes children, who are being sold, who are, say, 12 years old, then I’m going to let my 12-year-old watch it. And that is because I think it’s important for him to see what he has and what someone else doesn’t have. “Someone your age is being trafficked. You get to play football; they are being sold for sex.” And, I think it’s important for kids to recognize what they have, and then it instills in them a sense of responsibility: “How can I help that kid, who doesn’t get to play football? What can I do?” And it makes them aware of the world and aware of what’s happening. So, that is kind of how we deal with it. And then again I let them watch it, I don’t rehash it with them, I don’t bring it up too much, at least graphically.           Mark: Yeah. Tim: I let their mind stop them where it needs to stop. Mark: Smart. I like that principle that you said with adults, with kids, with everyone - they will go to a point that they are ready to go to.   Tim: Right. But here’s the point that I was making too - once you are an adult and you have real influence to help, it changes a bit in my mind, right.     Mark: Especially if you are a judge. Tim: Especially if you are a judge. I don’t want it to stop where your mind wants it to stop. And this is our job at Slave Stealer podcast and other places, other people’s responsibility, who are in the know-how, who have seen it, you’ve got to say “No!” No, I’m not going to let you stop. I am not going to let you shake your head and walk out of the kitchen. I’m going to make you stay until your mind grasps this enough to where you are going to act. And that’s the problem, is people hit that point where their brain wants them to stop, and they shake their head and walk away. We can’t have that. If we do that, these kids will not be liberated.        Mark: If that happens in 1860, you have still got millions of slaves in the South. Tim: Absolutely! Mark: Because we have talked about it. Tim: Absolutely. That’s why, because people shook their head and walked out of the kitchen. Mark: Yeah. You have got to show it to them. There are so many questions - I’m trying to think of a logical order here. You talked about it with your father-in-law, and we are not talking about 17 ½-year-old girls.    Tim: Right. Mark: We are talking about kids that are groomed, And, maybe.. let’s define the term. We kind of need to have like a trafficking glossary on our site. But grooming, and, maybe in the case of Lady, that we talked about - that’s when you explained it to me, you know, when I was going to go be a scoutmaster. I had to go through the whole ‘how to identify a perv’, right, and one of the terms they used was grooming. And they’re like, “Well, when you prepare a child for…” whatever. But you really broke it down for me in the case of this 11-year old virgin, who was sold to you in Columbia. I was there watching, she was a virgin. Tim: Right Mark: However, she knew exactly what was going to go down. Tim: Right.. Mark: What do they do to groom a child and how were you made aware of it? Like, give me how you came to that knowledge. Because this episode is kind of about you and the topic. Tim: So I came to the knowledge the only way I think anyone can, and that is experiencing it firsthand. For me, that was going undercover, pretending to be someone, who is interested in that black market, and getting into that market, becoming a player in that market. So, in the case of this little girl, who they were calling ‘Lady’ - and that surely wasn’t her real name, it was a name the traffickers gave her - in that case, we were pretending to be solicitors of child sex. We were working with the Colombian police pretending to be Americans, who travel to Colombia to engage in sex with children. And what had happened in this case, because we were working in that capacity and because we presented ourselves as wealthy Americans, I hinted to the trafficker that we would be interested in sharing profits and investing in his trafficking business. The reason we did that was because that all of a sudden, if they believe us, that pushes them to open their books and open their business and explain the business plan. And that’s how we learn how they do this. I would say things like, ”Look, I could probably get you a million dollar investment in this, but I need to know how it works; I need to know how you get these kids; I want to know you maintain the kids, how you groom and prepare them,” and so on and so forth. And the guy was more than happy to tell me what he does. Mark: I have a photograph of your hands around this little pattern napkin. It was like a napkin business plan...     Tim: Sure, yeah. Mark: Of a sex hotel for kids. Tim: That’s right. Mark: I have a picture of that. I’ll post it, because it is so disturbing when you realize what those numbers represent, volume and quantity and velocity of children and child rape.    Tim: Yeah, it was the dirtiest, most evil business plan that anyone could ever dream up. Mark: Yeah. Tim: ..on that napkin. That’s right. Mark: I’ll post that. Tim: And that was like our third or fourth discussion about how their business operations work. So, what they explained to me was, “Look, it’s easy to get the kids. You find poor families.” You don’t want to do a hard kidnapping, you know like the movie ‘Taken’. Does that happen? Yes. Is that the likely scenario? No. Why? Because you kidnap a kid, a hard kidnapping - meaning go into their house, like what happened with Elizabeth Smart, go into the house, pull them out. Well, you are going to kick up a lot of dust around you. Why do that if you are a trafficker if you can instead make it a peaceful kidnapping. Not peaceful for the child, right.          Mark: Yeah. Tim: Hell for the child, peaceful for the trafficker. In other words, they can kind of do this without fearing much consequence. So, what they do is they go to poor families, and these guys had actually hired or were working with, contracting with, a beauty queen in Cartagena. She had won a pageant, a beauty pageant. So, kind of people knew who she was; she had been on the news, she showed up in music videos, and so people knew who she was. So, they walk into the house with this beauty queen, and they say, “Look, look at this beautiful woman. She doesn’t have a worry in the world. She is paid, she is wealthy, she is beautiful, she is famous.” And then they point to the 9-year old daughter, and say, “we focus” - they told us “9 years old is where we start”. And they say to the mother and father: “Your 9-year-old daughter is just as beautiful as this girl; we just got to train her. We can train her, and she can become a model and an actress.” And they fill the parents with all sorts of dreams that they never believed were possible for their child. And certainly this is legitimate, because they are looking at the star, who is in their living room saying, “I can do this for you. And we’re going to give you a scholarship. You can come to our school and learn how to be a model for free.” At that point, they bring them into the modeling school, and they teach them some things. And when they get comfortable, they say, “Now you are going to watch this video.” And the video will be pornography. “This is part of being an actress, it’s part of…you need to understand this world.” And when kids are at that age - nine, ten, eleven - their minds are still developing and forming, and if someone tells you this is right, this is right, this is right, eventually your mind develops as a 9- or 10-year old into believing, “Ok, this is right, this is right.” And so they start seeing that. We had evidence that some of them were being drugged, you know, threatened: “If you go back and tell your parents that we are doing these things, you are going to be in big trouble.” And again, kids are very… Elizabeth Smart, when we get her on the show, she can talk about this, where a police officer walked up to her, while she was in captivity, and said “Are you Elizabeth Smart?”. I mean that, it would have been over! Mark: Yeah. Tim: And she said, “I am not. I am not Elizabeth Smart.” Because she was scared to death because they, her captors, had told her, “If you ever reveal who you are, we will kill your sister, and your family.” And as Elizabeth tells it, everything they had told her they are going to do to her, they did it. They told her they are going to rape her, and they did it. They told her they are doing this particular thing - sex acts - and they did it. They told her they’d chain her up, and they did it. So, when they told her that they are going to kill her parents if she reveals who she is, why would a 14-year-old not believe that they are going to do it?                        Mark: They’ve got all power. Tim: All power. And she has received criticism for that, you know, like, “Why didn’t you run away? Did you want to be there?”, you know... People just can’t comprehend how the mind of a child works. And that’s what these kids go through - they are scared into not revealing what is really going on. So, they groom them, and they said it, it will be a year and a half, or more, while they are grooming them, all under the hospices of this modeling school. And of course they are being trained to be models as well, and then eventually they say, “Ok, so this is your test. You are going to this party on this island, and these men are going to come from America, and you are going to do the things that you have seen being done in the pornography videos, and do whatever they want.” In a nutshell, that is how it works. I mean, that is how it works, that is the reality. Mark: And variations of. Tim: And variations of that.   Mark: So, they can do everything up until the point that she is not a virgin to claim... Tim: Right. Mark: “Hey, it is a virgin.” Tim: And they can, and they want to do this because their virgins are premium, right.  Already, a child, in most black markets, a child will go for about a double or more than double of what an adult prostitute will go for. But then, if that child is also a virgin, then it’s quadruple, or more of that price. So, it’s a premium to sell a virgin child. Mark: Wow...Give me, you’ve talked about it - like pulling people’s blinders off, and those moments where people are opened up, and the one with I think your father-in-law, who gets it now - that was pretty dramatic. What about..give me another one. You don’t have to name names, I just like hearing about people’s response. Are there any high profiles that you are allowed to share, that, maybe change the name, change the whatever? Somebody that you have shocked, that should have known?        Tim: Yeah. I was in the office, probably a year or two ago, of a governor of a certain state. We were explaining who we were and what we did, and he was absolutely shocked. And, kudos to him for being honest, saying, “Wait, wait, wait, what?! There is how many kids? There is how many kids being hurt and trafficked in the world? And what does that mean? They do what?!” He didn’t know, he didn’t know anything! And again, I’m not blaming him for not knowing. It is not something you go seek out, right? It is not something that your advisors seek out to tell you. It is hard to talk about. And I don’t know that you know the answer - why aren’t we talking about it more? Why, why, why, why? I really believe because it is that.. it is so dark a topic. It is not even...you know, slavery in the nineteenth century - it was politically divisive. It was a political nightmare to get involved: go back to the Lincoln-Douglas debates and everything. I mean, it was a divisive and a political issue. This is not even a political issue. There is nobody standing on the side of the pedophiles - well there are some: NAMBLA, the North American Man/Boy Love Association, which deserves its own show someday.         Mark: Do they have a logo? Tim: Well, there are all sorts of different..Look them up: nambla.org. Mark: Is that weird? Tim: You might have cops knocking on your door tonight. Mark: That is what I am saying. Tim: No, no, no, you won’t. You can look them up. Mark: What are the pop-up ads I am getting after that? Tim: Yeah, be careful when you go: nambla.org. I mean, it is a legitimate organization, legitimate in terms of legality, right. And, they are just a group that is pushing for a.. Mark: Oh hell! Tim: What did you find? You got...I told you to be careful when you go to that... Mark: No, it is not...and luckily, I’ve retained that innocence: I have never seen child pornography. It is a cartoon on the front their page - it is an adult asking a little boy, “What can I do to make you happy?” And the little boy says, “I like hugs.” Tim: Boom! And that’s their whole message. If you go into...When I was an agent, I would go all into it and learn about it, what they believe in. And they actually talk about how kids, psychologically and emotionally, need sexual healing and sexual exposure from adults. And why not adults, who know what they are doing? And so they make it sound as though the kid wants to be hugged, the kid wants to be touched. Why is it so bad? And they bring up science, where they show that children are sexual beings based on this story and that. Of course, they are human beings! Their sexuality is attached to everybody; we are born with it. But that doesn’t mean you are ready to bring it out and force it on a child, because that’s what you would be really doing, forcing it on a child. Their brains aren’t developed to the point where they can make those kind of decisions, or comprehend the kind of consequences of that activity. I mean it destroys...I’ve seen kids destroyed over this. And here they are saying they just want to hug, “Just hug me, that is all I want.”      Mark: Oh, here’s the other one, right. They are just headlines and we’re not going to go off on NAMBLA forever, because it does deserve its own show. Maybe we bring one of these idiots in.   Tim: Yeah, bring them in, let them take it. Mark: Or, we bring in some of the people they are attacking. And I thought of this this morning, ok. I’ll read a couple headlines: ‘When Labor Loved Liberty (And Before They Changed Their Minds)’ about the labor unions formally supporting..whatever. ‘Remembering Michael Jackson’, and they’ve got the old black version of Michael, ‘Remembering a Lover of Boys’, ‘Michael Jackson’s Dangerous Liaisons’, ‘The Non-Wisdom of Crowds: Defender of Anonymous Outraged by our Lack of Passivity’. Now, this one’s interesting: ‘Hipster Vigilantism and the New Populist Attack on Free Speech’. That is what they are calling it: speech, right. And then, they say ‘Anonymous Decidedly Illiberal Campaign to Silence Us’. Dude, is Anonymous getting on these guys, because they would be an awesome ally.   Tim: I don’t know, but let’s check, let’s look into it - let’s absolutely look into it. But these guys have conventions; it’s a political movement to legalize this kind of behavior. Mark: They called Oprah a liar, by the way. Tim: And so... Mark: Saying she wasn’t, she wasn’t molested as a child. Ok, I’m off on NAMBLA. Tim: Ok. So, we’ll go back talking more about that, but the point is, that, except for these few total whackjobs, who think that this is a healthy thing for children, it is really just obviously serving their own selfish lust and pleasure and evil. Dark, dark souls...But, for the most part, this is not a political issue, right, it is not a political issue. Everyone will be on the side of solving this. So, what is the obstruction? It is simply, “I don’t want to know; I don’t want to see it.” It’s the ostrich, the ostrich effect, sticking our head in the sand: “I don’t want to see it, I don’t want to...I have kids, grandkids. I can’t think about it.” And that’s where we have to make the change, that’s where we have to convert people to look at it.    Mark: What are the more offensive things that people have said to you? Maybe on purpose or not on purpose. I don’t need the top three, because it’s hard to think in superlatives, but give me five offensive things people have said to Tim Ballard, unknowingly or knowingly.   Tim: Offensive, in terms of just this topic in general? Mark: Yeah, that you’re like, “I used to respect you three minutes ago, before that came out your mouth.” Tim:I think the one time I can remember where I got the most offended...and frankly, you actually just did it to me earlier today, accidentally. I wasn’t so mad. Mark: Oh, when I wondered if you would turn into a perv by looking at... Tim: Yeah, it was so...I felt really bad because... Mark: That wasn’t a personal attack, by the way. Tim: No, no no, it wasn’t. And I want to clear this up. I don’t have a whole lot of examples of people, who say things offensive in terms of why this should or shouldn’t be legal or illegal, right. I mean, I’ve had perpetrators during interrogations defended, you know. A guy named Ernst Luposchainsky, for example - you can look him up, we arrested him in Minnesota... And he was pretty, I mean he was offensive, but I mean, geez, he was just such a joke. You are looking at this guy and you are almost, almost...somewhere in between laughter and vomit. You know, you are just like: “Are you serious? You are saying this?” You know, but he would talk about like the benefits of child pornography and how it helps the poor kids. “These kids get paid, they get paid for their sexual services, and we are helping them, we are helping their families.” He would talk about the tiger and the meat analogy. I remember we talked about, and this is all during his interrogation, where he would say, “Look, you have got to feed the tiger meat. If you don’t feed the tiger meat, he will eventually attack human beings.” So, he is actually saying, “Children are being raped, that’s horrible! Now, a consensual sex with a child, that is a different story. But, children are being raped against their will, I’m against that. Oh, I’m so against that!” You know, he would say...       Mark: Just for the record, you were quoting him on the “consensual sex is a different story”? Tim: Yes. Mark: Ok, just making sure it wasn’t like... Tim: Yes, quoting. Mark: You, parenthetically saying “Hey, consensual sex...” Tim: I’m sure some out there would love to misquote me on that and accuse me. So, the tiger and the meat, right. “You have got to feed the tiger meat, you have got to feed the tiger meat, and then he will never rape the kids.” And the meat is child porngraphy. “Make it legal. Let them look at it, because then they will just look at it, and then they will get satisfied and the kids will be safe.” Mark: Oh, yeah, totally! Tim: Because it doesn’t, it certainly doesn’t fuel your evil passion by looking at it, right? Like for example, a man who watches pornography, he never watches pornography with an int to actually engage in sex with a woman. He just watches it for, you know, for the pleasure in itself. Yeah...baloney! Any dude, who watched porn will tell you, right, “I would like to translate this to my bedroom,” right. It is no different with child pornographers. They are looking at this, and they want to act out. So it is just the opposite - you are fueling the fire, not putting it out. But, I mean, that was offensive. And, by the way, that Ernst Lupochainsky case, we got to do a show sometime on that. That was the hardest case I have ever did. In the middle of that interview, ok, while he was telling me all this stuff, he would not break, he would not break, he would not break. So, what I had to do...because he believed that all men were closet pedophiles, he just believed that story... Mark: I love this story. Tim: He just believed that. It was his way to justify his own feelings, of course. But this puritanical society - that is what he called it - has stopped the natural flow of love between a man and young, little girls. But on this show, I have got to read...he had this postmortem message he put on all his child porn collection. We will prep and I will read his message.      Mark: Oh my gosh. Tim: It’s unbelievable. Unbelievable. But the point I am making here is, I had to go undercover - this is just a teaser - I had to go undercover... Mark: Don’t blow it, because I know the punchline, and it is unreal. Tim: Yeah..as myself. So, I pushed my buddy away, the other agent, who was interviewing the guy. I was still wired up undercover, you know, and I said, “Hey, listen man, listen Ernst, help me out. I mean you are right. Reading your stuff - it makes me trust you. I have got to look at this stuff all day long. What do you think that does to me? It makes me want that. But there is no one I can talk to. Can you talk to me? Can you help me?” Sure enough, his eyes just light up. He believed it! I couldn’t believe he bought into it. I was...I was...It is one thing when I am Brian Black, you know, or I’m some alias in an undercover operative.          Mark: That is a cute name. Did you make that one up? Tim: That was the name that I used to use, yeah...Brian Black. So, here I was, Tim Ballard, U.S. agent/pedophile. So it was a totally different thing. I was myself, and that went on for...and then you know, I reported it to my supervisors; they loved it. And that kept on for at least a month, until we could get all the information out of this guy we possibly could about his contacts and networks. And he opened up to me, thinking he was helping me enter into, you know, induct me into the beautiful world of pedophilia. So, someday we’ll do that story, because that is an amazing story. The guy is still in jail.     Mark: Good. Tim: So, that is kind of somewhat offensive, but the time I blew up...the sweetest lady on earth - she was, she was just...Lived down the street, sweet kind lady, and I was working in child porn cases, kind of mad - you know you’re just mad a lot, thinking about it. And she said to me, “So, how many agents, you know, end up…?” And again, the same thing you just said, but I didn’t blow up at you.    Mark: Good grief! I feel like such a schmuck, especially in context of the story you have just told me. Tim: Yeah, it was the first time... Mark: Because I know you are not susceptible to that. Tim: Right. And, I would honestly argue that unless you are predisposed and you enter the child crimes group so that you could access it, I think it is just the opposite. And, you know, she said, “So, how many end up pedophiles themselves, being exposed to this?” Mark: Legit question! Tim: Yeah...I mean it sounds like a legit question, unless when you are in it, you are like “Wait, whoa, whoa.” Yeah so, by the hundredth time I am watching a child scream in pain, by that time I am like, “I am digging this.” But, I went off, I went crazy. I said, “Do you think it is that?! Or maybe it is, ‘I can’t believe I have to watch this again! I can’t believe I have to subject myself again to this video, and my stomach is punched again and again and again.” It was so bothersome to me, because it is just the opposite of what she was saying. It is like, I have got to endure this. It is like saying this, here is a good analogy: someone who has been doing chemotherapy for a year, right, and every three months they got to go get another dose of chemo. It is like someone saying, “So, how many cancer patients become addicted to chemo? Even after the cancer is done, they still take chemo just because they are addicted to it?” Right?! That is analogous right there. Mark: Yeah... Tim: Ok? And, it is just like, “Wow, wow,” you know, it killed me. I get it, but it was just, it is...What they don’t understand is the potency of this. It is not! What they think is, she was probably still thinking 16-year-olds, 17-year-olds. I was like, are you kidding me?! It is not what we are talking about! If there is a 16-year old in a child porn video, we wouldn’t even prosecute that, unless you absolutely knew it was a 16-year-old, in like specific cases where, you know, uncles taking pictures or something. Mark:Yeah. Tim: But otherwise, you wouldn’t. You would be like “Eh...” If you can’t tell...The majority of the child porn cases we prosecuted: 5 years old, 7 years old, 10 years old, that range, right. I know, it’s just... it is just things the vast majority don’t have to see, and I don’t want them to see it. Mark: Yeah. Tim: I don’t want them to see it. But they need to know it is happening, so that they can be part of the solution. Mark: On that same thought of things that people unintentionally say that are offensive, how about this? And I have got this one before, even with my little bit of involvement: “Well, she looks like she wants it.” Tim: Oh, yeah...I get that quite a bit. In fact, right in our documentary, in “The Abolitionists”. Mark: Yeah! Tim: I have heard a couple of people say that. In an early screening that happened, and my wife who was in the room,  it was a very early screening, we brought some kind of influential people in to watch. Mark: I was there! Tim: Oh, right! You were there. That’s right! Mark: I was sitting by your wife. Tim: You were there. A sweet lady - I think you know her, I think you know who she is - totally innocent, you know, she just...she said, “Can’t you show like a little darker side to this, so that people know? Can’t you show us some kids who are not looking like they want to be here?” And, if you remember my wife, she’s like... Mark: Oh yeah. Tim: “Alright! This is tragic, what is happening to these kids! This isn’t a scripted film, this isn’t - we can’t make this up. This is real, and it is their hell. And just because you can’t see it, because you are not the spirit inside of that body,”... know, my wife just… bless her heart, she went crazy.   Mark: She is not outspoken. Tim: No. Mark: Right? For her to... Tim: For her to do that... it touched a nerve. Mark: Yeah.. Tim: And again, back to the misconceptions. Are you going to find cases of kids chained up and locked in closets? Absolutely, you are going to find that! The vast majority, the vast majority? No, that is not what it looks like. And in the documentary - most people get it, it is not usually a big problem - but in the documentary, I mean, you are watching the filmmakers put the ages of the kids - of course cover their identities - but they put their ages, their numbers like over their blurred faces. And so you are watching this 12-year old-girl, it says twelve, you know, and I remember that little girl, I remember that she actually had fear in her eyes. But if you weren’t looking straight into her eyes, she did walk into the party, and she knew what was going to happen to her.   Mark: And she was dressed like a 21-year-old prostitute. Maybe not her, but some of the others. Tim: Some of them were, that one wasn’t, but some of them absolutely... This little girl was wearing like long basketball shorts and a white t-shirt, and you will see that in the documentary. But others were, the 12-year-olds...    Mark: They are not picking their outfit here. Tim: Right, right. Mark: For the most part. Tim: And they are walking in and people say, “Looks like they want to do that! They want to do it! Look at, they... No one is forcing them to walk in.” And again back to Elizabeth Smart. When you will bring her on the show, we can talk to her about it, and she...If you thought Catherine, my wife, got passionate, wait until Elizabeth answers that question. And she says, because they bring it u, she had plenty of opportunities, in theory, to run. She did. She was in public areas, policeman came up to her, right, but what they don’t understand is trafficking, slavery, so much of slavery is mental. These traffickers enslave these kids mentally, emotionally, not just physically. In fact, they don’t want it; if they can get away with not enslaving them physically, all the better. Remember, they don’t want to kick up a lot of dust around them. So, if they can figure out how to enslave them mentally and emotionally, that is always the first choice, and they do it by the grooming process that we described earlier. They groom them, and then they control them. They control them! And this is why the rehab part is so important, because you have got to undo the damage, and that doesn’t happen overnight. It is a long process. I don’t know, I mean, I have talked to a lot of victims of trafficking, who are adults now and have families of their own, and they have told me, “You know, you don’t ever fully, fully heal.” I mean, there is always something there you have got to battle. And that is what happens, that is why when Elizabeth’s father runs to her, she still denies who she is for a second, and then she opens up. Because it is like a spell, and if you haven’t been through it - and I haven’t, so I can’t fully comprehend it, but I’ve been around it enough to know that you can’t comprehend it, unless it has happened to you. And a child’s mind is not like an adult’s mind. Children don’t think like adults think. Their minds are at different levels of development, they don’t have a lot of experience, they don’t understand the consequences like adults can and do. And so, it is not so difficult for the traffickers to play those mind games, warp them, brainwash them, and make them slaves.      Mark: Well, I think that...we’ll get into, I think, in shows down the road, we’ll have Throwback Thursdays. We’ll go revisit missions and do things, but I feel like that can give our listeners a little bit of insight into your passion, your feeling for what it is you do and how it affects your life. It is not a job you leave at the door, as you are hearing. And so if you have any parting shots along the lines of ‘Here’s Tim’, ‘Get to know Tim’, let’s go and leave our listeners with that.    Tim: You know I...I’d say this that I understand completely. We are talking about awareness, we are talking about people’s ability to see this problem. And I can’t sit back and judge and say, “Come on, open your eyes, open your eyes!” I was the worst of everybody; it was right before me and I was denying. I was denying it. I didn’t want to do it. It took me a long time to say yes, and even after I said yes, I was very apprehensive about how far I would go in this. So, I get it. It is a hard barrier to get around. And even when it is in front of you almost...you know, and then, when it is not in front you, of course, it is sometimes near impossible to get around. So, I get it, I get it, but I also understand that when you see it, when you allow yourself to open up to it, you become converted. And part of that I think is from God. I think God, more than anybody, wants these children liberated. I think he weeps more than anybody for these kids. So, if he can find an adult, who is willing to open their mind enough and not walk out of the room, he will help convert you, and put that passion into you, fill you with his spirit, and call you. He will call anybody, if you are going to help save his kids. And I just want people to go through the same conversion that I went through. I am kind of a missionary for trafficking, right. I mean, I am trying to evangelize here and get people converted to the cause, because that is who I am. I have been converted to the cause. And it hurt!        Mark: The cause of freedom. Tim: The cause of freedom. But it hurts to be converted, because you must leave something at the door, and that is your innocence. You must leave it. And who wants to give that up? But you must do that. You must make that sacrifice. And it hurts, and you cry, and you have moments that are embarrassing - and we’ll get into some of these. There were times, when I was like a child in my wife’s arms weeping and she is holding me, and I am just shaking. Still happens to me... I used to not talk about it, but I just talk about it now. It hurts, it hurts to get into this cause, because the cause of freedom requires you to fight evil, and evil hurts. But what we want to do here on this show is make converts, because I know this: converts to this cause equals liberty to children. And what greater thing can we do than bring liberty to children?   Mark: Thank you. And, because your last words were so good, I’ll sign off for you from OUR headquarters. Good night!    

This week on The Library with TIm Einenkel, Brooklyn MC, Skyzoo drops by to talk sneakers, gentrification, and his latest album, Music For My Friends,. Skyzoo tells Tim: "What makes people want to purchase? What makes people want to say, I know I can stream it legally, or I know I can download it illegally. But what makes me want to give Skyzoo or whoever else $9.99 for an album....This what makes it worth it. It's going to continue serve you after the fact. People buy an album, they listen to it once or twice and they figure it out. Because it was didn't hold a value; it didn't hold the weight...With my music I try to make it were it continues to serve you. Maybe a couple of months later, maybe a year, maybe 5 years, you're still finding things in it." Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com