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Redefining Friendship and True Curiosity (Mixed With A Lot of Laughter) with Dr. Todd Kashdan In this most laugh-filled episode of all time, Traci sits down with Dr. Todd Kashdan, author of The Art of Insubordination and one of the world's leading voices in well-being, curiosity, and psychological resilience. As a self-proclaimed fan of Todd's work, Traci and Todd talk about his groundbreaking insights, including the profound narratives from his wellness lab, where meaning and purpose are untethered from wealth or social status. And Todd performed free therapy for Traci about her trauma raising curious kids in a not-so-curious small town. Todd shares a sneak peek into his upcoming book on life purpose and meaning, challenges conventional ideas about anger management and relationships, and emphasizes the transformative power of curiosity and social connection. Whether it's building resilience in the face of stigmatization or embracing diverse perspectives, this conversation is packed with practical wisdom and thought-provoking ideas to inspire impactful change in your life and relationships. About Dr. Todd Kashdan Dr. Todd B. Kashdan is a Professor of Psychology at George Mason University and a leading authority on well-being, curiosity, and resilience. With over 225 peer-reviewed articles and recognition as one of the top 1% most-cited scientists globally, Todd has received the American Psychological Association Award for Distinguished Scientific Early Career Contributions. His bestselling books include Curious?, The Upside of Your Dark Side, and The Art of Insubordination. His work has been featured in The Atlantic, The New York Times, Harvard Business Review, and Time Magazine. Beyond academia, Todd is a sought-after keynote speaker and consultant, working with organizations like Microsoft, Mercedes-Benz, and the U.S. Department of Defense. A twin dad to twin 17-year-olds (plus one more!), Todd is on a mission to populate the world with great conversationalists.   Episode Timeline 00:00 Exciting Announcement: Sidewalk Talk Listening Bus Tour 00:34 Tour Schedule and Community Involvement 01:53 The Mission of Sidewalk Talk 03:02 Introducing Today's Guest: Dr. Todd Cashton 04:26 Diving into Purpose and Meaning with Dr. Todd Cashton 04:45 Exploring Curiosity and Connection 24:06 Debunking Pop Psychology Myths 30:49 The Four Stages of Handling Emotions 33:12 Exploring Relationship Science and Psychological Strengths 34:48 Navigating Social Interactions and Self-Perception 38:32 Motherhood and Social Anxiety 50:09 The Importance of Redemption and Second Chances 57:52 The Essence of Friendship 01:00:26 Podcast Conclusion and Final Thoughts   Resources Mentioned Todd's Substack (Substack) Todd's Personal Website (Website) The Art of Insubordination (Book) Curious? (Book) The Upside of Your Dark Side (Book)   Standout Quotes  One of many messages that I'd love people to know is that being idiosyncratic and having strange, bizarre, passionate hobbies, that is the unique elixir that makes you so socially attractive to other people.  (Todd)  Curiosity speeds up intimacy between two people.  (Traci paraphrasing Todd)  So you move from competitiveness to companionship and that's really what you want to be doing when you're experiencing really great pain is you don't even have to talk to somebody.  You really just have to be near somebody that is willing to have some semblance of care and desire for you to be around. (Todd) If you went to the bathroom and had a glowing orange bowel movement, would you share that detail with your partner? And if you answer the same way, you're probably going to get along well. So now there's a second question that supercharges even more likely that the two of you will get together.  It's that you have your body, you, you have your ability to observe your body from a distance. You have your mind, you're able to observe your mind from a distance. And that allows you to actually have space so that trauma and negative life events don't have a big enough impact on you because you could see there's a part of you that comes out unharmed because you could look at what happened to you with your mind's eye. (Todd) Connect: Find | Todd Kashdan At www.toddkashdan.com On LinkedIn: @ToddKashdan   Find | Sidewalk Talk  At sidewalk-talk.org On Instagram: @sidewalktalkorg On Twitter: @sidewalktalkorg On Facebook: @Sidewalktalksf On LinkedIn: @SidewalkTalkOrg   Find | Traci Ruble At Traciruble.com On Instagram: @TraciRubleMFT On Twitter: @TraciRubleMFT On Facebook: @TraciRubleMFT   SUBSCRIBE TO THIS PODCAST On Apple Podcasts On Google Podcasts On Spotify On YouTube  

Todd: So I'm here with Angela, and in a previous interview we were talking about kids and technology and devices, and how these days often people look at their device when they're with another person. How do you feel about that? If you're eating with somebody, you're at dinner, is it okay to check your phone? 托德：我和安吉拉一起在这里，在之前的一次采访中，我们讨论了孩子、技术和设备，以及现在人们在与另一个人在一起时通常如何看待他们的设备。你对这件事有什么感想？如果你和别人一起吃饭，吃饭的时候，可以看一下你的手机吗？Angela: We have a rule in our house, no phones at the table. Absolutely no phones. 安吉拉：我们家有一条规定，桌上不准打电话。绝对没有电话。 Todd: Very nice. 托德：非常好。 Angela: Because you know, you see people, they meet in restaurants, they sit around a table, the food comes, but everybody's looking into their phone, and engaging with whatever they're doing on their phone, and not talking to the people who have met them. And I see people walking on the subway, the street, head in their phone. It's ... 安吉拉：因为你知道，你看到人们在餐馆里见面，他们围坐在桌子旁，食物来了，但每个人都在看他们的手机，并参与他们在手机上所做的任何事情，而不是与人们交谈 谁见过他们。我看到人们走在地铁、街上，低头玩手机。它是 ...Todd: It is crazy. 托德：这太疯狂了。 Angela: It's really sad. 安吉拉：真的很难过。 Todd: And if you think about it, we used to have manners. Things you couldn't do. For example, no elbows on the table, no hats inside the house. I mean it sounds silly, but I remember those rules as a kid. The one that was really hard was the no elbows on the table. Yeah, so it's interesting that we don't have new rules, like we should reinvent them. You can't have your phone on during the plane when it takes off, so your rule is a good idea. 托德：如果你想一想，我们过去很有礼貌。你做不到的事情。例如，手肘不得放在桌子上，屋内不得戴帽子。我的意思是这听起来很傻，但我小时候记得这些规则。真正困难的是桌子上没有肘部。是的，有趣的是我们没有新的规则，就像我们应该重新发明它们一样。飞机起飞时您不能打开手机，因此您的规则是个好主意。Angela: Yeah, no phones at the table. 安吉拉：是的，桌上没有电话。 Todd: So you're an English teacher, what do you think about phones in the classroom? 托德：那么你是一名英语老师，你对课堂上的手机有何看法？ Angela: If they're on a break, I always call it their text break, because when I'm teaching English out here I find that people have got their phone to their hand, and maybe they're Googling a word or something, so it's not too much of a distraction. But when you stop them for a break, as soon as you say "let's have a break now," they're all after their phones, and they're sitting individually looking at their phones. 安吉拉：如果他们休息，我总是称其为短信休息，因为当我在这里教英语时，我发现人们手里拿着手机，也许他们正在谷歌搜索某个单词或其他东西， 所以这不会造成太多干扰。但当你阻止他们休息时，只要你说“我们现在休息一下吧”，他们就都在追手机，而且他们各自坐着看手机。 Todd: And it's silent, I know what you mean. I'll teach, and it used to be you would say "okay take a break," and it would be really loud, they would start talking with each other. And these days it's just silence, they just go and they do that motion of just flicking with their finger, as they're scrolling down. And I know I just sound like some old guy, "hey, get off my lawn!" And I have the same problem, I want to check my phone all the time, but I have to admit it's strange I think. 托德：而且很安静，我知道你的意思。我会教，过去你会说“好吧，休息一下”，声音会很大，他们会开始互相交谈。如今，一切都很安静，他们只是走过去，在向下滚动时用手指轻弹一下。我知道我听起来就像个老家伙，“嘿，离开我的草坪！” 我也有同样的问题，我想一直检查我的手机，但我不得不承认我认为这很奇怪。 Angela: And now you needn't even check your phone, you just look at your Apple watch or your watch on your wrist, it's going to tell you if your phone needs your attention. 安吉拉：现在你甚至不需要检查你的手机，你只需看看你的 Apple Watch 或手腕上的手表，它就会告诉你你的手机是否需要你的关注。 Todd: But it used to be where I would say things like, you know as a teacher you're teaching, you can see if the student's looking down at their phone, and I would say "hey, don't check your phone." But now these days kids actually call me on it, they're like, "Oh, I'm looking up a word," or "Oh, I'm checking something," and they literally are checking something. And the kids are good at using their phone as a learning tool - 托德：但过去我会说这样的话，你知道，作为一名老师，你正在教学，你可以看到学生是否低头看手机，我会说“嘿，不要检查你的手机。” 但现在，孩子们实际上打电话给我，他们会说，“哦，我正在查找一个单词”，或者“哦，我正在检查一些东西”，他们实际上是在检查一些东西。孩子们很擅长使用手机作为学习工具 - Angela: Yes, I think that's fine. 安吉拉：是的，我认为那还行。Todd: So it is, it's a gray area these days. Yeah. So when you're with somebody you never pop out your phone? 托德：确实如此，现在这是一个灰色地带。是的。那么当你和某人在一起时你从不拿出手机吗？ Angela: I would admit that I will be guilty of checking my phone in my bag, but I would never get it out and go on Facebook or Instagram and start Instagramming, I would just look at it and put it away. 安吉拉：我承认我会因为检查包里的手机而感到内疚，但我永远不会把它拿出来上 Facebook 或 Instagram 并开始 Instagram，我只会看看它然后把它收起来。Todd: Yeah. There's other things I've done, I mean could be because I'm getting older, but for example I try not to listen to my iPod so much anymore, or my phone. Radio, music, whatever. I actually just try to listen. I notice that when I am always listening to everything I kind of tune the world out, and I might miss things. 托德：是的。我还做过其他事情，我的意思是可能是因为我变老了，但例如我尽量不再听我的 iPod 或手机。广播、音乐等等。我其实只是试着听。我注意到，当我总是听所有的东西时，我就会把世界排除在外，而且我可能会错过一些东西。Angela: You will miss things. You see people, I've been quite tempted some days to put my earphones in and walk to the BTS, but actually I think, no, you'd miss the traffic noise, you miss the tuk tuks, you miss a dimension of the world that's happening around you. And then you get on the BTS and everybody in the carriage is head down, same position, on their phones. 安吉拉：你会想念一些事情的。你看，有些天我很想戴上耳机步行去 BTS，但实际上我认为，不，你会错过交通噪音，你会错过嘟嘟车，你会错过地铁的某个维度。你周围发生的世界。然后你上了 BTS，车厢里的每个人都低着头，保持着同样的姿势，拿着手机。 Todd: Yeah. And actually I don't do it just for that reason, because I noticed that I'm missing out. It's so tempting, but I might see something. 托德：是的。事实上，我这样做不仅仅是因为这个原因，因为我注意到我错过了。这太诱人了，但我可能会看到一些东西。

Take a moment to catch your breath before the Stanley Cup Final, with referee Kelly Sutherland mic'd up, the referees and linesmen working the Cup Final, the first female on-ice official enters the IIHF Hall of Fame, ECHL refs have an easy night, and the CHL looks at three major rule changes for the 2023-24 season -- all around penalties and power plays! More on these topics, including video clips and rule breakdowns, at scoutingtherefs.com Visit www.scoutingtherefs.com and follow @scoutingtherefs and @toddlewissports on Twitter and Instagram. Email us your questions - heyref@scoutingtherefs.com Call the RefLine at 585-484-REFS!   Episode Transcript #166 Scouting the Refs is an unscripted audio podcast, designed to be heard. It's a whole lot more interesting to listen to the audio, but we're happy to provide a transcription below. This transcript has been generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain textual or typographical errors.  Full transcript: https://scoutingtherefs.com/2023/06/40183/scouting-the-refs-podcast-166-making-the-cut-for-the-cup-final/   Todd: So I know we're all excited about the Stanley Cup final beginning and finally getting underway, Florida Panthers and the Vegas Golden Knights, but you know Josh? I'm thinking I want to start planning now. What we're going to be doing in the next few weeks when there's no games to watch, because no matter how much I prepare mentally at this point in time in the season, I always suffer from withdrawals after the Cup final is completed and the trophy is handed out. Josh: It's such a challenge, right? We go from the first round where you've got multiple games every night and just there's something going on everywhere at every hour. And the NHL even figured out scheduling this year, so with the games spread out, we could watch a lot of the action. And then it dwindles down a little bit more and now we've had this break of days without hockey, at least at the NHL level, and now the most we'll have is a game every other night. It's starting to feel real, Todd. It's starting to slip away a little bit. The hockey season is leaving us. Todd: It is and that's the hard part. I know the theory is that you start big and that it seems as though like you're kind of being weaned off the drug but it doesn't really work that way. You still suffer from the the withdrawals when it's gone.  Josh: And, you know, the warm temps outside don't exactly help you. The weather's warm. You want to be outdoors doing things, especially with these games on the weekend. You're out and about it's it's hot outside. You've got shorts and a t-shirt on, and then you come back in to watch some ice hockey. Yeah, I I love the length of the season. I love that we have all these games, but when you start to get into June, especially the middle of June, it it feels like maybe we've gone too far. Todd: You know, we'll, we'll get through it. We always do. And there will be the anticipation before long of the new season. This is the Scouting the Refs Podcast. Please make sure you follow us on the social channels. Josh, of course can be found @scoutingtherefs on Twitter and Instagram, you'll get me at @toddlewissports on Twitter and Instagram as well. Coming up on this week's episode: Kelly Sutherland mic'd up, who made the cut, a Hall of Fame career, and new rules the NHL should be considering. I am very excited to discuss this topic, Josh. Josh: New rules are always interesting, sometimes they have unintended consequences, so you never know how it will play out, but it will be interesting to see. Todd: Okay, so let's get to some of the other stuff before we talk about the potential for for new rules. Four-star review for the video of the Western Conference Series game One. You hear from players, you hear from coaches, but most importantly you hear referee Kelly Sutherland at work out on the ice. We've seen these  videos pop up semi regularly. They provide great insight into what is happening on the ice during the games, and conveniently enough, the bad words are taken out for you. That's why it takes a couple of days to get them out. So Kelly Sutherland, as you've perhaps seen before in some of these videos, is one of the most vocal referees out on the ice. He's explaining to players what he sees after a play. He's telling goaltenders that he's watching for the goalie interference. He's explaining to coaches what is happening out on this. It's it's as if he is a coach out on the ice at times. I think it's a great job that he does. Josh: Absolutely. It's one of the reasons that when they've had the player polls in the past that Sutherland scores so highly as one of the league's top officials. It's not only about positioning and judgment and comportment and all of the things that go in from an officiating standpoint. But from the players point of view, here's a guy who's actually helping you understand where the line is, and he's giving you advance notice before he's calling the penalty. And as a player, that's what you wanna have. You want to know where you stand and and when you're getting too far over the line. And that's what Sutherland does. I think one of his greatest strengths is the communication side of thing of warning guys and when they're getting too close and putting pressure in the crease. Or when it's a potential interference call and things he's seeing out there, so he tries to set that up front and then stick with that standard the whole game. And it's great when you have the mic'd up videos, because then we get to hear some of that dynamic and you see what goes into it before a penalty's actually called. Because he might have been chatting about it for the whole first period, halfway through the second period and a guy keeps at it and now all of a sudden he's blowing the whistle because he's warned him and he's had that conversation and it's one of his strengths. And it's really interesting to hear the types of things that go on. But you're right, Todd, it's almost like he's the second coach out there advising these guys. So he's not just enforcing the rules, but he's he's warning them he's giving them a heads up. He's reminding them of where the line is and when they've gone to far, that's when he has to send them off to the box. Todd: I I love it too. It's not just after the play that he's explaining calls, but as you mentioned, when two players are tied up, he's telling one like, okay, let him go. You gotta let him go now otherwise. You get the interference call and it's just like I don't want to penalize you, but I'm going to have to pretty soon. Josh: Yeah. And it's great in this video, you can hear a nice exchange he has with Keegan Kolesar about a hit that happened and there was a cross checking why he didn't call it and Kolesar's great, super polite there. Just thanking him for it. ‘I appreciate it' is what he says afterwards. So you might not always agree with it, but just giving that explanation and. Letting the guy understand why the call was or wasn't made in a certain situation is immensely helpful. But I don't know if you noticed, Todd, in the clip one of the coaches is on there saying, ‘Nice chat, Kelly.' We don't actually get the content of that conversation. So I don't know if it was something they wanted to keep quiet, or if there were just too many four letter words to include it. Todd: Yeah, that that sometimes the editing can be a little bit tricky on those. Again, I think it provides great insight and good job, I believe for putting those out even if it's 3-4 days after because of all the all the approval that has to go through. So with this video and hearing Kelly Sutherland at work, it is not surprising that he was one of the referees named to work in the Stanley Cup. Final he'll be joined by Steve Kozari, Wes McCauley – no surprise there, Dan O'Rourke, and Chris Rooney. The linesmen are Steve Barton, Scott Cherrey, Brad Kovachik, Kiel Murchison, and Jonny Murray. Congratulations to all for reaching the final. There's no real surprises with any of these names, is there? Josh: No, everybody's been here before, so I can't say that any of them come as a total shock. You've got tons of veteran experience there, McCauley, Sutherland both working their 10th Stanley Cup Final, Rooney with six. Even Johnny Murray, with six. So everybody's been here plenty of times. They all know what it's like, what the pressure entails, what the big games mean. It was not a shock.   I was hoping that some of the younger guys might have made it. We saw Jean Hebert make the Cup Final last year, thought he might have a shot at returning this year, but he and Trevor Hanson, looking to make his Cup Final debut, both left off of the rosters. I thought either one of them could have made it, but who do you cut in their place? This is such a a challenge here. Figuring it out. So you think of – from an NHL standpoint – everything that goes into it and it's your full season, it's your mid season grade, it's your season end evaluation and then it's what you've done each round in the playoffs. So all of that leading up to it and I I think you know, we see and expect who's going to make it. And I I'd say these are like you said, Todd, no surprises here on these crews. Todd: Now, as you explained nicely in a piece on the scoutingtherefs.com website, the final works a little bit differently in that there's not specifically a backup referee at each event and the whole procedure of pairing guys together works a little bit differently as well. Josh: It's interesting to see because all season long we get this rotation of refs. Everybody works the next game with a different partner, typically because of travel, maybe they'll have a back-to-back together, but you're typically working each game with an entirely different crew. Through the first few rounds of the playoffs, that changes a bit because we do see ref pairings and linesman pairings, and often we see that quartet move together through some games. We definitely saw in the conference final where Kelly Sutherland's crew, the same four of them, worked together each game. Once you get to the Stanley Cup Final, they throw everybody back in the hat and basically draw numbers again. So you've got an odd number of referees, which means we're no longer having that pairing; we're having a rotation where the first two guys will work game one, the second two guys will work game two and then they'll start to mix it up after that because of the odd number. So your partner being a standard guy and and maybe at some of them that you've worked together the entire postseason up until now, now you're gonna get a new partner every night. So back to how the regular season works with the rotation. Obviously you're hoping these are your top officials. These are the best of the best. These guys have been consistent throughout the postseason, so it shouldn't matter, but it definitely shakes things up a little bit, so it'll be interesting to see how those tendencies translate when we see a guy where maybe two guys have worked together the entire postseason and now they get to work with different partners in the Stanley Cup Final. Todd: One other note on the referees who are and are not working the Cup Final, and you and I were exchanging messages during this game. But for those that say there is no accountability for officials, yes, there is, because there was one particular game with the Florida Panthers and Carolina Hurricanes, where not one, but two goals were overturned on offside challenges and those two linesmen are not working in the Stanley Cup Final. Now, they were so close. It was microscopic that they were offside plays, but this is the price that they're paying. Josh: Yeah,  and we don't know. For sure if that happened to be the reason or the straw that broke the camel's back, or if there are other contributing factors here in making that decision. But, certainly, it's one of those things that you look at from an officiating management standpoint when you have guys that are frequently involved in coaches challenge or you have referees that maybe are calling major penalties, that they're downgrading after review, maybe it makes you question their judgment a little bit. I'm not saying it's right or wrong and and like you said, these are really close plays, so I'm not even going to point fingers at the officials or or find fault in how it worked out, but certainly the optics of having a call that had to be overturned on such a public stage and in such a critical juncture in a key moment for a goal to be scored or not, you can't help but think that that did put the spotlight on them a little bit more and may have influenced Stephen Walkom's decision. Todd: A couple of non-NHL notes that we should mention as well. Congratulations to Sandra Dombrowski, who now goes by Sandra Frye. She has become the first female on ice official inducted into the IIHF Hall of Fame. Congratulations Sandra on a great international hockey career.  Josh: Yeah. Very nice to see that honor there. The class of 2023 was inducted. We have lots of players from all over the place and another official making it in. And there's very few in the IIHF Hall of Fame. Only eight now, with Dombrowski's edition and mostly European, we don't have an American or even a Canadian official that are yet in the IIHF Hall of Fame, so there's there's still boundaries to hit there, but nice to see Dombrowski get in. She broke plenty of boundaries coming in and making her way up. Even as a hockey player, when she was younger, she couldn't find a team to play with as a woman, so she founded her own and it went from there and she was involved in a lot of firsts. The first unofficial women's game at the World Championship and then the first woman referee of a Women's World gold medal game. So nice to see her recognized for all the contributions to hockey, both as a player as an official and then coming off the ice, working as a supervisor and then part of the IIHF officiating committee. So she's given a lot to hockey and nice to see them reciprocate and and give the honor of putting her into the IIHF Hall of Fame. Todd: So the first North American referee that could go in potentially maybe a few years down the road, you know if that was Wes McCauley, I got to think that the acceptance speech is going to be out of this world because they they let them do that at the presentation, don't they? Josh: They do and they did, and Dombrowski gave a great speech. It was wonderful to hear from her and you could tell how much this meant to her; how much hockey means to her. So it was a great honor, but I just picture Wes being most comfortable with just want to give that speech with the mic on, at center ice in full uniform. Todd: Five for fighting! Josh: We've got an induction! Todd: Perfect. Love it. Okay, also non-NHL-related. Congratulations to the Florida Everblades for their win over the Newfoundland Growlers. They win the Eastern Conference final in the ECHL. They'll move on to play Idaho in the final. That series also opens up on Saturday, June the 3rd. Congrats to the Blades who are going for back-to-back titles. It is the second time these two teams have met. In 2004, it was the Idaho Steelheads that prevailed . It was an interesting game summary in this one. It was a double overtime game as I mentioned, but barely a whistle blown for a penalty. Josh: Yeah, quiet one for the officials, which is —  It's funny, we joked last week on the podcast about how things tighten up and saying that when you get into game six or game seven, we see fewer and fewer penalties and things really tighten up and I think it's on both sides, right? I think it's on the officials. Maybe I don't wanna say pocketing the whistles, cause that becomes a a negative, but maybe calling that standard tightly and making sure everybody knows where it is. But we also see it on the players trying to be on their best behavior because they don't want to be the person sitting in the box that's responsible for a power play goal against, especially when goals are so critical. But this one, Todd, referee Sam Heideman and Alex Normandin called a clean game effectively because they didn't hand out any power plays. They had some penalties. We had a holding minor that was accompanied by a diving penalty, so that washes out; we have no man advantage there. Only one other penalty in the game. And you can thank the linesman for it because it was a bench minor for too many men on the ice. Todd: Now those of us that are familiar with the ECHL and have, you know, seen a few games, is this a first? Josh: It's a relatively well behaved game for these guys. Nice to see how well-mannered both clubs were. I got to watch part of the game didn't see the whole thing, but you know it's one of those things where you don't want to be the guy who messes it up. You're trying to keep it clean. You don't wanna get whistled for anything. You're kind of playing a little more careful, a little, a little safe there, especially in a game that spent a lot of the time tied. I mean from the second period on, the whole third period, the whole first over time, you've got a tie game there. So you definitely don't want to be the guy who puts your team shorthanded. Todd: I'll just end by saying go Blades. That's my hometown team. Okay, now we talked about some potential rule changes that are going to take place. They are taking place in the Champions League in Europe and I think that there's some some of these –  in fact, I like all of them – that could and should be considered by the National Hockey League. Okay, so let's go through them one at a time. First, being minor penalties dealt with the same as a major penalty in that a team that has caused a minor penalty will remain shorthanded, even if the opposing team scores a goal, so you're serving the full two. Josh: Yeah, not a radical change here. This is one of those ‘everything old is new again' kind of moments because this is how it was in the National Hockey League up until 1956. You sat for the whole 2 minutes; you served your time. If they scored once, twice, three times, however many they score in that 2 minutes, you're staying in the box. So I think the Champions League is looking to boost goal scoring here and they also say that they want to make sure punishments are consistent. So yeah, you did the crime you will do the time, no matter how many goals get scored during your sentence. Todd: I don't think that's an unreasonable thing. I know that we had an exceptional power play this year with the Edmonton Oilers, but it still was, what? Just over 30%. So it's unlikely that you're going to score two or three or four goals, but maybe that helps as a deterrent. Josh:  It could because those penalties become a bit more valuable. And right now you're looking at it as you're either short handed for two minutes or you've given up a goal and then you're back to even strength. Now you're definitely going to be shorthanded for the whole 2 minutes, and you aren't capped at just giving up one shorthanded goal, so it does put a little premium on those penalties, which hopefully doesn't put more pressure on the refs when it comes to not wanting to decide the game or factor into the game. You need to call it the same way, it's just that the each penalty call becomes a bit more impactful, potentially. Todd: Okay, also with a delayed penalty, a minor penalty will be served even if a goal is scored while a delayed penalty is pending. Josh: Yep, and I'm good with this one. This is one of those interesting situations where many of the leagues wipe out the goals on delayed penalties. NCAA College Hockey in the US actually has this rule currently where a goal scored on the delayed penalty does not wash out the penalty. If you score on the delayed call, you still get a power play afterwards and the player still serves his time, which now under this other rule will also be a full 2 minute power play coming out of that. Todd: Right. Josh: It's it's pretty interesting at the NHL level and others that penalty just disappears. It never happened. The the guy doesn't have two minutes associated with any infraction. He doesn't serve any time in the box; the entire penalty isn't even recorded.  At the USA Hockey level, it is recorded but not served. So I think it's interesting. I mean, I've rallied before in the past to say they should consider at least booking the guy for the two minutes and making him sit in the box even if you don't give the team a man advantage, but I think this is the most honest way to do it. The delayed penalty isn't a power play. It's an opportunity where the other team can't touch the puck, so it it definitely comes to a benefit to the attacking team. They get to pull the goaltender, they get to maintain possession. So there there's definitely a benefit there, but I've always been amazed that it offsets the power play there. And again I think this is just try to keep balance and keep scoring down, but now you're going to see more scoring because not only will you score on the delayed penalty… or if you do, you'll still get a 2 minute power play. Todd: I like it. I think it's a a good idea and the other one that's being implemented by the Champions League is that a short handed goal erases a current minor penalty. If the team shorthanded scores, then their minor penalty will come to an end. I'm okay with this. I guess it's a bit of a ‘get out of jail' free card. Well, even more of a bonus than that, but I think it will encourage teams to maybe try stuff on the penalty kill. Josh: This is the most radical of them, right? Because everything up until now has been ‘Delayed penalty? You're still going to serve the time', ‘Other team scores? You're still gonna serve the time.' Well, your own team scores. Now you get out of jail free — so you worded it properly, Todd, I think that's exactly what it is. And this one's not looking at the change from a punishment standpoint. This is purely around goal scoring because you're you're hoping that you can get that team to stretch things out a little bit and think offensively, which could open scoring the other way and make those short handed teams a little less defensively conscious because now they want to score. They want to get that time back, especially if it's late in the game, you're trailing, you don't wanna wait out the whole 2 minutes. If you can get this goal, you can get back to even strength. So I think it's an interesting move. I think it's definitely the most radical of the ones that are coming in here and the one I'm curious to see what types of changes that makes to how teams approach being shorthanded and and what the power plays look like. And remember with those other changes, you will be shorthanded the entire time, so you've got that two minutes you can be scored on multiple times unless you do this to end your short handed situation by scoring a shorthanded goal.  The combination of these three makes it really interesting. I feel like it's gonna take some time for teams and coaches to adapt to what the strategy is here and how best to take advantage of this and and how to work it properly. So I'm glad the Champions Hockey League is putting these in place, since these are ones that we've talked about at the North American hockey level and it's the right place to test it. It's this the specialty league. They have limited scope, limited teams, 24 teams this year coming in from all over Europe. So because of the way they're set up, I think it's a great proving ground to see how are these going to work when we first put them in place and then by the end of the season, is it still doing what we thought it would? Or have we seen things change dramatically?  And you know what they then they take a break, they can change it for next year, but at least this is the right place where you can actually try that and see how it plays out before you implement it at a larger scale or at the AHL, ECHL, NHL level. Todd: I have one more that's been suggested, I think by a few people, but I think would be an interesting to be part of this experiment as well. If the team that has is getting the penalty has a choice between being on the man advantage for two minutes or taking a penalty shot. Josh: That's an interesting one. You know, we've, we've seen that come up before in discussions on especially late in game situations. Should it be a power play? Should it be a penalty shot? Todd: Right. Josh:  In the past you look at penalty shot, success rate versus power play success rate and it's not that far off. I mean we've we've seen maybe the penalty shots are a little bit higher, but statistically speaking it's not a huge difference where you see a big swing there, I think it'd be interesting to give teams that option, especially when you've got the full 2 minutes because now. Do you want 2 minutes on the power play where you can score multiple times, or do you want one shot at a breakaway? In this situation, you know if you're trailing in the game, maybe that 2 minutes is valuable and you you'd rather have the penalty shot. Or maybe the opposite is true and you just wanna kill time off the clock and you'd rather have the two-minute power play. I think that'd be an interesting strategy driver there, too, Todd, on how do you approach it because now you've got a power play that could result in multiple goals, or you get to take the penalty shot, which is only one – uses no time on the clock – but do you think your team has a better chance on the penalty shot than on the power play? Interesting dynamic there. Another one where I think it takes time. You you'd have to put that in and coaches would figure out how best to make it work for their team. You know, if you're the Edmonton Oilers this past season, you're taking the power play every time. Some teams with limited success or with a really strong breakaway scoring player there, you might want to take the penalty shot and I think that it just changes things up from a strategy standpoint. Todd: Now you mentioned the downfall.  Coaches ruin everything.   Thanks for listening… or reading. Please like, share, and subscribe to the Scouting the Refs Podcast wherever you get your podcasts:  

"An advanced practice provider's scope of practice can vary drastically depending on where you practice; listen to the ASCO Education's third episode of the advanced practice providers series, and learn more from our co-hosts, Todd Pickard (MD Anderson Cancer Center) and Dr. Stephanie Williams, (Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine), along with guest speaker Heather Hylton (K Health) on what scope of practice is, who or what defines it, and why knowing this information is critical to your oncology care team success. If you liked this episode, please subscribe. Learn more at https://education.asco.org, or email us at education@asco.org   TRANSCRIPT Todd:  Hello everyone, and welcome back to the ASCO Education Podcast, and the third episode of the Advanced Practice Provider series. I'm Todd Pickard, your co-host for this series, along with Dr. Stephanie Williams. We'd also like to introduce you to our guest panelist today, Heather Hylton. Heather, why don't you share a bit about yourself, what you do, and where you're from. Heather: Sure. Well, thank you so much. It's a pleasure to join you in this podcast. My name is Heather Hylton. I'm a physician assistant based in New York. Most of my career has been in oncology, but I've been fortunate to have been able to serve in administrative and clinical roles in organizations in multiple states. So, I'm currently working in the remote care space, and I'm excited to bring this experience to our conversation. Todd:And Stephanie, why don't you remind our listeners today about your background, and why you have so much experience and really just have a really true appreciation for working with advanced practice providers. Stephanie: Thanks, Todd. I've worked in oncology for almost 40 years and I've had the opportunity to work with advanced practice providers, both physician assistants, and nurse practitioners for a couple of decades now. I've been in stem cell transplants and cellular therapy, and they're absolutely integral to our practice, both inpatient and outpatient in that particular field. Todd:  Well, in today's episode, we're going to be talking about advanced practice providers' scope of practice; what it is, what it means, who defines it, and why it is important for oncology APPs to know and understand what their scope of practice is. So, why don't we jump right in? So, I think it's important to define scope of practice first. So, I would like to just offer a little bit of a perspective around that language of scope of practice. Generally speaking, it is what is allowed by law at any particular state for an advanced practice provider to perform care on patients; what types of patients they can see, what kind of medications they can prescribe and write, what kind of activities they can be in, what kinds of relationships they have to have with other providers and delegating or collaborating physicians. So, generally speaking, a scope of practice can be very, very broad or it can be very, very narrow. And it really depends on the state and how the state defines it. So, I'm going to ask Heather to jump in here and can you provide an example or a story, or a case that comes to mind that helps illustrate scope of practice for an APP? Heather: Sure, I'd be happy to, you know, in terms of how I think about this, very simply stated is, what it is that I'm permitted to do as an advanced practice provider. And the boundaries, as you said around this, are really determined by a number of factors. So, education, training, experience, my competency, federal law in some cases, state laws, regulations. And this may also include, as you mentioned, specific physician collaboration requirements, facility policy, clinical privileges that are granted by that facility, sometimes payer policy factors in, and then of course, the needs of the patient. So, one very common question that comes up in the oncology space is, can APPs order or prescribe systemic therapy? And the answer of course, is really going to be determined by going through that checklist of the entities that determine if this is something that that APP can actually do. So, one example I have is a facility where the module that they utilized for ordering systemic therapy provided system rates only to physicians. And the facility that had been using that module before APPs were widely integrated. So, there were some innocent assumptions made that the absence of the APPs in the module meant it was “illegal” for APPs to order systemic therapy. So, in working with this group, we were able to go through this checklist. So, there were no federal or state restrictions on this particular clinical activity, but it needed to be written into the facility policy. So, criteria for establishing competency were devised. And then an education training plan was designed, implemented, and driving systemic therapy became part of that privileges requests from the APP, and then the systems' rights issues were also addressed. So, this was truly a success story in being able to safely expand the number of clinicians, who were able to prescribe systemic therapy in a busy and growing facility. Stephanie: Heather, what does it mean to you (this is a term that our administrators throw around a lot and our nurse managers throw around as well) to practice at the top of your license, whether you're a nurse, physician assistant, or an advanced practice nurse; what is the top of your license? Heather:  Well, this is a hot topic. And top-of-license practice really comes down to role optimization. It is just good business. It means that the patients and the caregiver's needs are being met by the professional with the appropriate training, experience and competency for each function or task that the professional performs. And from an engagement standpoint (which I know is not the topic of our conversation today, but it is important) we know that people want to engage in work that they find meaningful. While that definition certainly is individualized, a common thread is being able to leverage that education, training and experience you have to help others. And often, the reason why we really pursued our careers. Todd: I think this is such an important topic to talk about, is the top of license practice, because it really impacts all of us, Stephanie. You know, as physicians, you want to do what you've been trained to do, which is to assess a patient, have a differential diagnosis, do a diagnostic workup, arrive at a diagnosis, create a treatment plan, and have that treatment plan implemented so that you can care for the patient. And APPs are the same way. So, when you have folks, whoever they are, whether they are the nurse or the advanced practice provider or the physician or the social worker or the pharmacist, whoever it is; if they are utilized in a way that does not take into account all the skills and competencies that they have to deploy and provide for that patient, they're really working below the top of license. As an example, if you had an APP go from room to room to room with you seeing patients and the only thing that you had the APP doing was scribing, that APP is working well below their licensure. And in fact it's incredibly wasteful with limited resources in healthcare, to have folks who have lots of skills and competencies working at a level where you really should have a different member of the team providing that service. Like if you need a scribe, you should get a scribe. And so, I think that kind of illustration really makes it salient to folks to think about; we should all work to stretch the knowledge and skills and competencies that we spent so much time developing in all of our training and our certification. Because otherwise, it's just wasteful. And as Heather said, it's not very satisfying. Stephanie: Todd, I think that those are excellent points that you bring out and I think that's very important for people to realize that APPs aren't scribes, they aren't there to extend me. They're there to help me as a physician in my practice, to help the patients actually. And then we should work together as a team to give the best patient care that we can. But many times I see my colleagues, just as you said, going from room to room with their APP and expecting the APP, you know, “I'll pontificate and tell you do this, that, that and the other, and then you go out there.” I think also from a career and job satisfaction rating, it's really important to have that team around that can help each other out. And I think that really does help in terms of decreasing burnout and other things like that. Todd: So, Heather, can you give us some idea of how is scope of practice defined at a state or an institutional level? How do people arrive at those kinds of decisions or, you know, how does an institution decide what the scope of practice is? How does it work? Heather: Taking a step back and just, you know, kind of thinking about it through different lenses. So, you know, in contrast to physicians whose scope of practice has minimal variability from state to state, we know that there can be a bit more state to state variability for APPs. And the regulatory bodies or agencies can also be different. And there may be multiple agencies that weigh in on what that APP can do within a particular state. And so, it's certainly important to be familiar with the Practice Act for each state in which you are licensed. And I would also add onto this, in certain geographic areas, this may be particularly relevant to you if you are in a practice that has multiple locations in multiple states, but we'll come back to that a little bit later. But, you know, again, kind of going through your checklist, starting off, looking at what the Practice Act says, and these can all be written up in many different ways. Sometimes it comes across as what I would call like a laundry list, which when you first read it, seems pretty straightforward, but it can also kind of lead you into some issues because if it isn't on there, then what does that mean? Some Practice Acts are written up really more on the basis of what activities are excluded or things that you cannot do as an APP. And then some are just kept very broad, which sometimes makes people uncomfortable, but I would encourage you to not be uncomfortable with that because sometimes, they're written this way in order to give you more flexibility to set that scope of practice at facility level, which is ideally where you really want to be cited. You don't want to create something more limiting or more restrictive than what the state actually allows you to do. Todd: That is a critically important point and one that in my 24 years as an advanced practice provider who happens to be a PA, that has come up often and frequently is, “Well, it doesn't say this” or, “It doesn't specifically exclude that. And so, we're uncomfortable.” And my response is, “Well, that gives us an opportunity to create this space”, because, you know, many times, as you point out, Heather, these kind of ambiguities are written intentionally, so that local practice decisions can be made, so that physicians and advanced practice nurses and PAs can decide as a team, how do we work? You know, in my state, it was very specific that they wanted APPs and physicians to collaborate on ‘what does our practice look like?' And every local level, outside of those very large kind of rules about who can prescribe and who can pronounce a patient dead or write a restraining order — outside of those very large things, they really want us, they want the care team to figure it out and to do it in a way that's best for our patients. I think that is the best approach, is when we get to decide how we work. You know, the places, some of the states that have these laundry lists, you're right, Heather, it seems like, “Oh, that's easy,” but then you're like, “wait a minute, there's only 10 things on this list and we do, you know, 57, what does that mean?” And so, I think it can be very disadvantageous when you have those lists. And I do think it's important to think through these things, work with your legal colleagues to analyze these things, and then take an approach, stake out some territory, you know, once you've gotten informed and say, “This is what our scope looks like, we've all talked about it and this is how we're going to work as a team.” So, that's wonderful when you've got that level of flexibility. I think that's really great. Stephanie: Does insurance reimbursement play any role in terms of scope of practice, either locally or nationally? Heather:  It absolutely can. And it's important to know, for example, if you are in a practice, where you're seeing Medicare patients, to understand Medicare conditions of participation. If you are in a practice where you are taking care of patients with Medicaid or certainly private payers as well, like understanding what is actually in those contracts, so that you can make sure that you are either updating them if you need to, or making sure that what you need to be able to bill for is billable within those contracts. Todd: It's really interesting because I always have a sense of feeling like I need to cringe when somebody says we can't do this because of a reimbursement issue, and also, partially laugh. And the reason why I have both of those reactions is it's typically a misunderstanding, because saying that we won't reimburse for oxygen unless a physician's order is present to prescribe the oxygen does not equate to only a physician can do this. And so, you constantly have to kind of explore these issues and say, “Okay, so yes they use the word physician, but as an APP who has a collaborative delegatory relationship with a physician, and according to my state license and scope of practice, I write physician orders.” So, if you connect those dots, if I, as the APP, have written the physician order for the oxygen, it meets your criteria. It doesn't say a person who holds a medical license, it says physician order. And so, I think that's where you have to really constantly be on guard about these misconceptions, misunderstandings, and these ambiguities. And as Heather said, working with APPs, you just have to say, “Look, there's going to be ambiguities, we're going to work it out, we're going to figure it out. And, you know, reimbursement is important.” But you have to remind folks that reimbursement doesn't define practice, it defines how you get paid. Stephanie: Excellent point, Todd. Excellent. Heather: I'll add a story to that as well. When I first came to New York, I became aware of a situation where the narrative at a particular facility was that a major private payer would not reimburse for services provided by PAs. Now, I thought that was a little strange, but, you know, I was a new kid in town, but at that time — there are more now, but at that time there were 10,000 PAs in New York. That's a pretty big number. And so, I thought, you know, I probably would've heard something about this if this major payer would not reimburse for these services. So, to help with the situation, I started doing the research, you know, looking at specific information from the payer, checking with connections at other facilities to learn about any issues that they may have experienced with this payer, checking with our national organization and so forth. And really, nothing was coming up, suggested that the payer would not buy reimbursement for services provided by PAs. And ultimately, it came down to something very simple, which was the facility just didn't have this in their payer contract, they hadn't needed it up to that point. So, it made perfect sense and it was fixed once the issue was identified. So, this goes back to just being very vigilant about the research that you're doing. And sometimes, it takes a little time to get to the solution, but really that perseverance does pay off. Todd: Heather, I'm sitting here, I'm laughing because I just had a recent example of where the right and the left hand within a state had no idea what was happening. So, an employer who does ambulatory outpatient treatments at different retail locations (we'll just leave it at that) there was this concept that PAs as an example, were ineligible because of the state requirements that then were reflected in this company's policy. And what was so interesting is that a PA colleague of mine started investigating and I said, “Well, what does the state law say?” And she went and she looked and she said, “Oh, it was changed last year that this thing that was causing this policy in this employer was changed.” And I said, “Well, does the company know that the law was changed?” So, she reached out to the medical director who was a physician, whose daughter was happening to want to go to PA school. So, she had an in, she had an in right away, which serendipity does play a part here. And she said, “Did you know that the state law changed?” And they said, “No.” And so, she sent them the state law and then within a week, the medical director said, “Oh, just so you know, we're hiring PAs now, we've updated our internal policies to reflect state law.” So, sometimes it's just these small things that people forget the details, that when something changes, you have to reflect that in your policies of companies or institutions or your practice group. And that's the one thing that I think is so different for APPs from physicians. Physicians are kind of just granted this big broad authority and it rarely changes. It's very stoic and it's kind of fixed. But for APPs it is constantly in flux, constantly in flux. And that's just the nature of it. I don't know why it's been that way. We've organically developed this in the United States over the past 50 years, maybe 50 years from now, it'll be different, but right now, it's not. And so, I think that's the important thing is there's more space out there for advanced practice, scope of practice and top of licensure, than you think is possible. It just requires a little work. Heather: I will say that I 100% agree and, you know, when you take a step back from some of these, like these Practice Acts, they tell a story about the climate in the state and the history in the state. And it's quite fascinating if you like that. I'm not the most fun person at a party, but, you know, these things, they tell a story and it gives you a good sense of what's actually going on in the micro environment in that state. In the last year plus, I've spent a lot of time reviewing Practice Acts of most of the states of the union, and so, I have this ability to really compare. And I also know which states I really, really like and which ones are a little bit more challenging. But there are things like even legislation that's left over from the industrial revolution that's actually influenced how a particular pharmacy interprets, you know, whether or not they can accept a prescription without a counter signature from a physician. And so, some of these things, like when you start drawing some of these lines, it becomes very interesting and it definitely comes down to some interpretation as well. So, always being able to work with a good legal team or people who do understand Practice Act information and working with your state resources as well, as well as your national organizations can be very impactful. Todd:  I would also say step one is to pull up whatever Practice Act is influencing something and read it. They are in English, they're not in Latin or French, they're in English. And many times, you can find something very plainly said. Other times you do need your legal friends to help you understand, “Okay, now what does this mean? I read the words but it's not clear.” But sometimes it will say, you know, “An APP may prescribe a controlled substance.” Period. So, oh, well, there's an answer right there. Now, there may be a how-to section later, in another part of the regulatory or administrative code within a state, but for the most part is, don't be afraid to look, don't be afraid to phone a friend and explore and ask questions. Stephanie:  You're eligible though for controlled substance licenses nationally, right? A DEA number? Todd:  That's a hot topic. Stephanie:  Is it? Heather: There may be other things that you need to do within a state as well in order to prescribe. So, for example, in Massachusetts, even to prescribe legend drugs, you need a Mass Controlled Substance Registration, because any substance that's not a DEA scheduled substance is considered a category 6 substance in Massachusetts. So, if I'm going to write a prescription for Omeprazole, I need to have a Massachusetts Controlled Substance Registration, as any prescriber would in the state. So, again, some of these little nuances, making sure that you're very familiar with that and doing the research. Stephanie: So Heather, you're in New York, I'm sure you get patients from Massachusetts. So, you have to make certain that you can prescribe both in New York and Massachusetts and probably, Rhode Island and all the states around there? Heather: Well, you bring up a really good point, which is, you know,when you are in a practice that has locations in multiple states, and we can talk about telehealth a little bit later. But if you are in a medical group that has practice sites, say in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New York, licensed in all three states, and you work at sites in all three states, say you're an APP who likes to float and you make these commutes each day. So, all three states may have significant differences in their Practice Acts or what you need to do in order to optimize your practice in that state. And that includes collaboration requirements. So, some states have the ability for nurse practitioners to have autonomous practice, but there may be other steps where you may need a particular license, in order to be able to do that within that state. So, again, being very aware of those steps that you need to take is really important. Stephanie: So, Heather, you mentioned telehealth, which is a big topic through COVID. I don't really have to tell people how big a topic that is. So, what are the changes or what is going to happen with that now that we're “getting to the other end of COVID”? Heather:  That's a big question mark, right? So, certainly, the advancement of telehealth was an important development during the pandemic. And many states have a separate set of laws, regulations that govern delivery of healthcare services through telehealth. So, if your practice is utilizing telehealth to deliver medical services, it's necessary to be fluent in this information. So, this can include important information such as how a patient provider relationship is established. And, you know, it may also include information on prescribing practices, what may or may not be permitted or the conditions under which a prescription can be provided and so forth. And so, some states relaxed telehealth-related rules under state of emergency declarations. And so, making sure that you are up-to-date on this as some of those rules have returned to the pre-pandemic state and some of those relaxations actually became permanent. And of course, if you're billing for these services, knowing the payer requirements and then the policies and procedures you need to follow, in order to bill for those services. And where the patient is physically located at the time that the service is being provided, is the state in which you need to be licensed in order to provide that service. So, if Todd is performing a telehealth service for a patient in Oklahoma and he's not licensed in Oklahoma, he won't be able to see that patient. Todd:  It's really strange because telehealth has brought a different layer of perspective around scope of practice and licensure that we hadn't really faced as much before, right? So, for example, I've been a PA for 24 years. I have been able to call across state lines and interact with patients and talk to them on the phone, get updates on their surgery, if they're having, you know, a postoperative infection, get them an antibiotic and do that kind of work forever. But as soon as you add that technology and that billing entity called a telehealth encounter or a virtual encounter, it becomes a different animal all of a sudden. And this really came to light during the pandemic. And we quickly realized all of these things made it impossible. And that's why all the states did all of these emergency declarations saying, “Just forget it, just take care of people.” But now that we're getting past that, we're kind of going backwards, not because anything bad happened, but because folks are saying, “Well, we want to go back to the older ways where, you know, every state could have differences in regulations and make folks pay those professional fees to get licensure.” So, it'll be interesting to see how this space develops, particularly since our patients are becoming more consumers. Really, they want to talk to who they want to talk to, when they want to talk to them, and they want service here and now. And I think we're going to have to continue to respond and adapt to that. And some places will lead and some places will lag. But those lagging places quickly are going to start having conversations within the state and our legislators will respond. I mean, politically, it will change over time. It just, you know, matters how quickly. So, it's really an interesting thing to watch unfold in real time. Stephanie: Heather, any final remarks, concerns, advice to those out there, both physicians and advanced practice providers, about how to handle questions about, my God, what is your scope of practice? Heather:  I'm so glad you asked Stephanie because I have a list I might be able to pass them along. So, here we go. Do take the time to review the state Practice Act information and laws and regulations and of course facility policy governing a practice where you are. And as the license holder, you are responsible for knowing what you are permitted to do. Please do not make any assumptions about others' knowledge of this. Unfortunately, I've seen people get caught up in that and always own it, yourself. Generally, recommend facility policy not be more restrictive than what is permitted under the Practice Act of the state. Fact check, challenge your assumptions, and if you haven't had the chance to already do so, do check out the ASCO Advanced Practice Provider Onboarding and Practice Guide for more resources. Stephanie: Well, I'd like to thank Heather for her excellent insight into this very complicated topic. Todd, as always, is always on top of everything. And sharing both your experiences and your ideas with us on APP scope of practice, which can vary quite drastically depending upon the state and also the type of institution you practice in. Stay tuned for our next episode. Until next time, take care. Voiceover:  Thank you for listening to the ASCO Education Podcast. To stay up to date with the latest episodes, please click subscribe. Let us know what you think by leaving a review. For more information, visit the Comprehensive Education Center at education.asco.org. Voiceover: The purpose of this podcast is to educate and to inform. This is not a substitute for professional medical care and is not intended for use in the diagnosis or treatment of individual conditions. Guests on this podcast express their own opinions, experience, and conclusions. Guest statements on the podcast do not express the opinions of ASCO. The mention of any product, service, organization, activity, or therapy, should not be construed as an ASCO endorsement.

01:09 - Todd's Superpower: Advocacy For Accessibility * Getting Started * Designing With Web Standards by Jeffrey Zeldman (https://www.amazon.com/Designing-Web-Standards-Jeffrey-Zeldman/dp/0321616952) * The A11Y Project (https://www.a11yproject.com/) * W3C (https://www.w3.org/) 06:18 - Joining The W3C * The W3C Community Page (https://www.w3.org/community/) 07:44 - Getting People/Companies/Stakeholders to Care/Prioritize About Accessibility * Making A Strong Case For Accessibility by Todd Libby (https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2021/07/strong-case-for-accessibility/) * Diplomatic Advocacy * You Don't Want To Get Sued! / $$$ * “We are all temporarily abled.” 15:20 - The Domino's Pizza Story * Supreme Court hands victory to blind man who sued Domino's over site accessibility (https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/07/dominos-supreme-court.html) 18:21 - Things That Typically Aren't Accessible And Should Be * The WebAIM Million Report (https://webaim.org/projects/million/) * WCAG (https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/wcag/) * Color Contrast * Missing Alt Text on Images * Form Input Labels * What's New in WCAG 2.1: Label in Name by Todd Libby (https://css-tricks.com/whats-new-in-wcag-2-1-label-in-name/) * Empty Links * Not Using Document Language * Triggering GIFS / Flashing Content * Empty Buttons – Use a Button Element!! * Tab Order * Semantic HTML, Heading Structure 26:27 - Accessibility for Mobile Devices * Target Size * Looking at WCAG 2.5.5 for Better Target Sizes (https://css-tricks.com/looking-at-wcag-2-5-5-for-better-target-sizes/) * Dragging Movements 28:08 - Color Contrast * Contrast Ratio (https://contrast-ratio.com/) 33:02 - Designing w/ Accessibility in Mind From the Very Beginning * Accessibility Advocates on Every Team * Accessibility Training 36:22 - Contrast (Cont'd) 38:11 - Automating Accessibility! * axe-core-gems (https://github.com/dequelabs/axe-core-gems) Reflections: Mae: Eyeballing for contrast. John: We are all only temporarily abled and getting the ball rolling on building accessibility in from the beginning of projects going forward and fixing older codebases. Mandy: Using alt-tags going forward on all social media posts. Todd: Accessibility work will never end. Accessibility is a right not a privilege. This episode was brought to you by @therubyrep (https://twitter.com/therubyrep) of DevReps, LLC (http://www.devreps.com/). To pledge your support and to join our awesome Slack community, visit patreon.com/greaterthancode (https://www.patreon.com/greaterthancode) To make a one-time donation so that we can continue to bring you more content and transcripts like this, please do so at paypal.me/devreps (https://www.paypal.me/devreps). You will also get an invitation to our Slack community this way as well. Transcript: JOHN: Welcome to Greater Than Code, Episode 251. I'm John Sawers and I'm here with Mae Beale. MAE: Hi, there! And also, Mandy Moore. MANDY: Hi, everyone! I'm Mandy Moore and I'm here today with our guest, Todd Libby. Todd Libby is a professional web developer, designer, and accessibility advocate for 22 years under many different technologies starting with HTML/CSS, Perl, and PHP. Todd has been an avid learner of web technologies for over 40 years starting with many flavors of BASIC all the way to React/Vue. Currently an Accessibility Analyst at Knowbility, Todd is also a member of the W3C. When not coding, you'll usually find Todd tweeting about lobster rolls and accessibility. So before I ask you what your superpower is, I'm going to make a bet and my bet is that I'm 80% positive that your superpower has something to do with lobster rolls. Am I right? [laughter] Am I right? TODD: Well, 80% of the time, you'd be right. I just recently moved to Phoenix, Arizona. So I was actually going to say advocacy for accessibility, but yes, lobster rolls and the consumption of lobster rolls are a big part. MAE: I love it. That's fantastic. MANDY: Okay. Well, tell me about the advocacy. [chuckles] TODD: So it started with seeing family members who are disabled, friends who are disabled, or have family members themselves who are disabled, and the struggles they have with trying to access websites, or web apps on the web and the frustration, the look of like they're about ready to give up. That's when I knew that I would try to not only make my stuff that I made accessible, but to advocate for people in accessibility. MAE: Thank you so much for your work. It is critical. I have personally worked with a number of different populations and started at a camp for children with critical illnesses and currently work at an organization that offers financial services for people with disabilities – well, complex financial needs, which the three target populations that we work with are people with disabilities, people with dementia, and people in recovery. So really excited to talk with you today. Thanks. TODD: You're welcome. JOHN: When you started that journey, did you already have familiarity with accessibility, or was it all just like, “Oh, I get to learn all this stuff so I can start making it better”? TODD: So I fell into it because if you're like me and you started with making table-based layouts way back in the day, because what we had—Mosaic browser, Netscape Navigator, and Internet Explorer—we were making table-based layouts, which were completely inaccessible, but I didn't know that. As the web progressed, I progressed and then I bought a little orange book by Jeffrey Zeldman, Designing with Web Standards, and that pretty much started me on my journey—semantic HTML, progressive enhancement in web standards, and accessibility as well. I tend to stumble into a lot of stuff [laughs] so, and that's a habit of mine. [laughs] MAE: It sounds like it's a good habit and you're using it to help all the other people. So I hate to encourage you to keep stumbling, but by all means. [laughter] Love it. If you were to advise someone wanting to know more about accessibility, would you suggest they start with that same book too, or what would you suggest to someone stumbling around in the dark and not hitting anything yet? TODD: The book is a little outdated. I think the last edition of his book was, I want to say 2018, maybe even further back than that. I would suggest people go on websites like The A11Y project, the a11yproject.com. They have a comprehensive list of resources, links to learning there. Twitter is a good place to learn, to follow people in the accessibility space. The other thing that, if people really want to dive in, is to join The W3C. That's a great place and there's a lot of different groups. You have the CSS Working Group, you have the accessibility side of things, which I'm a part of, the Silver Community Group, which is we're working on the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 3.0, which is still a little ways down the road, but a lot of great people and a lot of different companies. Some of those companies we've heard of—Google, Apple, companies like that all the way down to individuals. Individuals can join as individuals if your company isn't a member of the W3C. So those are the three things that I mainly point to people. If you don't really want to dive into the W3C side of things, there's a lot of resources on the a11yproject.com website that you can look up. MANDY: So what does being a member entail? What do you have to do? Do you have to pay dues? Do you have to do certain projects, maybe start as an individual level, because I'm sure we have mostly individuals listening to the show. Me as a newbie coder, what would I do to get started as a member of this initiative? TODD: Well, I started out as an individual myself, so I joined and I can get you the link to The W3C Community Page. Go to sign up as an individual and someone will approve the form process that you go through—it's nothing too big, it's nothing complicated—and then that will start you on your way. You can join a sub group, you can join a group, a working group, and it doesn't cost an individual. Companies do pay dues to the W3C and if your company is in the W3C, you get ahold of your company's liaison and there's a process they go through to add you to a certain group. Because with me, it was adding me to The Silver Community Group. But as an individual, you can join in, you can hop right into a meeting from there, and then that's basically it. That's how you start. JOHN: What are the challenges you see in getting not only the goals of a W3C, but I'm assuming specifically around accessibility? TODD: Some of the things that I've seen is buy-in from stakeholders is probably the number one hurdle, or barrier. Companies, stakeholders, and board members, they don't think of, or in some cases, they don't care about accessibility until a company is getting sued and that's a shame. That's one of the things that I wrote about; I have an article on Smashing Magazine. Making A Strong Case for Accessibility, it's called and that is one of few things that I've come across. Getting buy-in from stakeholders and getting buy-in from colleagues as well because you have people that they don't think about accessibility, they think about a number of different things. Mostly what I've come across is they don't think about accessibility because there's no budget, or they don't have the time, or the company doesn't have the time. It's not approved by the company. The other thing that is right up there is it's a process—accessibility—making things accessible and most people think that it's a big this huge mountain to climb. If you incorporate accessibility from the beginning of your project, it's so much easier. You don't have to go back and you don't have to climb that mountain because you've waited until the very end. “Oh, we have time now so we'll do the accessibility stuff,” that makes it more hard. MAE: John, your question actually was similar to something I was thinking about with how you developed this superpower and I was going to ask and still will now. [chuckles] How did you afford all the time in the different places where you were overtime to be able to get this focus? And so, how did you make the case along the way and what things did you learn in that persuasion class of life [chuckles] that was able to allow you to have that be where you could focus and spend more time on and have the places where you work prioritize successful? TODD: It was a lot of, I call it diplomatic advocacy. So for instance, the best example I have is I had been hired to make a website, a public facing website, and a SAAS application accessible. The stakeholder I was directly reporting to, we were sitting down in a meeting one day and I said, “Well, I want to make sure that accessibility is the number one priority on these projects,” and he shot back with, “Well, we don't have the disabled users,” and that nearly knocked me back to my chair. [laughs] So that was a surprise. MAE: There's some groaning inside and I had to [chuckles] do it out loud for a moment. Ooh. TODD: Yeah, I did my internal groaning at the meeting so that just was – [chuckles] Yeah, and I remember that day very vividly and I probably will for the rest of my life that I looked at him and I had to stop and think, and I said, “Well, you never know, there's always a chance that you're able, now you could be disabled at any time.” I also pointed out that his eyeglasses that he wore are an assistive technology. So there was some light shed on that and that propelled me even further into advocacy and the accessibility side of things. That meeting really opened my eyes to not everyone is going to get it, not everyone is going to be on board, not everyone is going to think about disabled users; they really aren't. So from there I used that example. I also use what I call the Domino's Pizza card lately because “Oh, you don't want to get sued.' That's my last resort as far as advocacy goes. Other than that, it's showing a videotape of people using their product that are disabled and they can't use it. That's a huge difference maker, when a stakeholder sees that somebody can't use their product. There's numbers out there now that disabled users in this country alone, the United States, make up 25% of the population, I believe. They have a disposable income of $8 trillion. The visually disabled population alone is, I believe it was $1.6 billion, I think. I would have to check that number again, but it's a big number. So the money side of things really gets through to a stakeholder faster than “Well, your eyeglasses are a assistive technology.” So once they hear the financial side of things, their ears perk up real quick and then they maybe get on board. I've never had other than one stakeholder just saying, “No, we're just going to skip that,” and then that company ended up getting sued. So that says a lot, to me anyways. But that's how I really get into it. And then there was a time where I was working for another company. I was doing consulting for them and I was doing frontend mostly. So it was accessibility, but also at the same time, it was more the code side of things. That was in 2018. 2019, I went to a conference in Burlington, Vermont. I saw a friend of mine speaking and he was very passionate about it and that talk, and there was a couple others there as well, it lit that fire under me again, and I jumped right back in and ever since then, it's just then accessibility. MAE: You reminded me one of the arguments, or what did you say? Diplomatic advocacy statements that I have used is that we are all temporarily abled. [chuckles] Like, that's just how it is and seeing things that way we can really shift how you orient to the idea of as other and reduce the othering. But I was also wondering how long it would be before Pizza Hut came up in our combo. [laughter] MANDY: Yeah, I haven't heard of that. Can you tell us what that is? TODD: [chuckles] So it was Domino's and they had a blind user that tried to use their app. He couldn't use their app; their app wasn't accessible. He tried to use the website; the website wasn't accessible. I have a link that I can send over to the whole story because I'm probably getting bits and pieces wrong. But from what I can recall, basically, this user sued Domino's and instead of Domino's spending, I believe it was $36,000 to fix their website and their app, they decided to drag it out for a number of years through court and of course, spent more money than just $36,000. In the end, they lost. I think they tried to appeal to the Supreme Court because they've gone up as high as federal court, but regardless, they lost. They had to – and I don't know if they still have an inaccessible site, or not, or the app for that matter because I don't go to Domino's. But that's basically the story that they had; a user who tried to access the app and the website, couldn't use it, and they got taken to court. Now Domino's claimed, in the court case, that he could have used the telephone, but he had tried to use the telephone twice and was on hold for 45 minutes. So [laughs] that says a lot. JOHN: Looks like it actually did go to the Supreme Court. TODD: Yeah. Correct me if I'm wrong, I think they did not want to hear it. They just said, “No, we're not going to hear the case.” Yeah, and just think about all these apps we use and all the people that can't access those apps, or the websites. I went to some company websites because I was doing some research, big companies, and a lot of them are inaccessible. A little number that I can throw out there: every year, there's been a little over 2,500 lawsuits in the US. This year, if the rate keeps on going that it has, we're on course for over 4,000 lawsuits in the US alone for inaccessible websites. You've had companies like Target, Bank of America, Winn-Dixie, those kinds of companies have been sued by people because of inaccessible sites. MAE: Okay, but may I say this one thing, which is, I just want to extend my apologies to Pizza Hut. [laughter] MANDY: What kinds of things do you see as not being accessible that should be or easily could be that companies just simply aren't doing? TODD: The big one, still and if you go to webaim.org/projects/million, it's The WebAIM Million report. It's an annual accessibility analysis of the top 1 million home pages on the internet. The number one thing again, this year is color contracts. There are guidelines in place. WCAG, which is the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, that text should be a 4.5:1 ratio that reaches the minimum contrast for texts. It's a lot of texts out there that doesn't even reach that. So it's color contrast. You'll find a lot of, if you look at—I'm looking at the chart right now—missing alt texts on images. If you have an image that is informative, or you have an image that is conveying something to a user, it has to have alternative text describing what's in the picture. You don't have to go into a long story about what's in the picture and describe it thoroughly; you can just give a quick overview as to what the picture is trying to convey, what is in the picture. And then another one being another failure type a is form input labels; labels that are not labeled correctly. I wrote a article about that [chuckles] on CSS-Tricks and that is, there's programmatic and there's accessible names for form labels that not only help the accessibility side of it, as far as making the site accessible, but also it helps screen reader users read forms and navigate through forms, keyboard users also. Then you have empty links and then a big one that I've seen lately is if you look up in the source code, you see the HTML tag, and the language attribute, a lot of sites now, because they use trademarks, they don't have a document language. I ran across a lot of sites that don't use a document language. They're using a framework. I won't name names because I'm not out to shame, but having that attribute helps screen reader users and I think that's a big thing. A lot of accessibility, people don't understand. People use screen readers, or other assistive technologies, for instance, Dragon NaturallySpeaking voice input. But at the same time, I've got to also add accessibility is more than just deaf, or blind. I suffer from migraines, migraine headaches so animation, or motion from say, parallax scrolling can trigger a migraine. Animations that are too fast, that also trigger migraine headache. You have flashing content that can potentially cause seizures and that's actually happened before where an animated GIF was intentionally sent to someone and it caused a seizure and almost killed the person. So there's those and then the last thing on this list that I'm looking at right now, and these are common failures, empty buttons. You have buttons that don't have labels. Buttons that have Click here. Buttons need to be descriptive. So you want to have – on my site to send me something on the contact form, it's Send this info to Todd, Click here, or something similar like that. MAE: Can you think of any, John that you know of, too? I've got a couple of mind. How about you, Mandy? MANDY: For me, because I'm just starting out, I don't know a whole lot about accessibility. That's why I'm here; I'm trying to learn. But I am really conscious and careful of some of the GIFs that I use, because I do know that some of the motion ones, especially really fast-moving ones, can cause problems, migraines, seizures for people. So when posting those, I'm really, really mindful about it. JOHN: Yeah, the Click here one is always bothers me too, because not only is it bad accessibility, it's bad UX. Like HTML loves you to turn anything into a link so you can make all the words inside the button and it's just fine. [laughs] There's so many other ways to do it that are just – even discounting the accessibility impact, which I don't want it. TODD: Yeah, and touching upon that, I'm glad you brought up the button because I was just going to let that go [chuckles] past me. I have to say and I think it was in the email where it said, “What's bothering you?” What bothers me is people that don't use the button. If you are using a div, or an anchor tag, or a span, stop it. [laughs] Just stop it. There's a button element for that. I read somewhere that anchor tag takes you somewhere, a div is a container, but button is for a button. MAE: I love that. The only other ones I could think of is related to something you said, making sure to have tab order set up properly to allow people to navigate. Again, I liked your point about you don't have to be fully blind to benefit from these things and having keyboard accessibility can benefit a lot of people for all kinds of reasons. The other one is, and I would love to hear everybody's thoughts on this one, I have heard that we're supposed to be using h1, h2, h3 and having proper setup of our HTML and most of us fail just in that basic part. That's another way of supporting people to be able to navigate around and figure out what's about to be on this page and how much should I dig into it? So more on non-visual navigation stuff. TODD: Yeah, heading structure is hugely important for keyboard users and screen reader users as well as tab order and that's where semantic HTML comes into play. If you're running semantic HTML, HTML by default, save for a few caveats, is accessible right out of the box. If your site and somebody can navigate through using let's say, the keyboard turns and they can navigate in a way that is structurally logical, for instance and it has a flow to it that makes sense, then they're going to be able to not only navigate that site, but if you're selling something on that site, you're going to have somebody buying something probably. So that's again, where tab order and heading structure comes into play and it's very important. JOHN: I would assume, and correct me if I'm wrong, or if you know this, that the same sort of accessibility enhancements are available in native mobile applications that aren't using each HTML, is that correct? TODD: Having not delved into the mobile side of things with apps myself, that I really can't answer. I can say, though, that the WCAG guidelines, that does pertain to mobile as well as desktop. There's no certain set of rules. 2.2 is where there are some new features that from mobile, for instance, target size and again, I wrote another article on CSS-Tricks about target size as well. So it's if you ever noticed those little ads that you just want to click off and get off your phone and they have those little tiny Xs and you're sitting there tapping all day? Those are the things target size and dragging movements as well. I did an audit for an app and there was a lot of buttons that were not named. A lot of the accessibility issues I ran into were the same as I would run into doing an audit on a website. I don't know anything about Swift, or Flutter, or anything like that, they pretty much fall into the same category with [inaudible] as far as accessible. JOHN: I also wanted to circle back on the first item that you listed as far as the WebAIM million thing was color contrast, which is one of those ones where a designer comes up with something that looks super cool and sleek, but it's dark gray on a light gray background. It looks great when you've got perfect eyesight, but anybody else, they're just like, “Oh my God, what's that?” That's also one of the things that's probably easiest to change site-wide; it's like you go in and you tweak the CSS and you're done in a half hour and you've got the whole site updated. So it's a great bit of low-hanging fruit that you can attach if you want to start on this process. TODD: Yeah. Color contrast is of course, as the report says, this is the number one thing and let me look back here. It's slowly, the numbers are dropping, but 85.3%, that's still a very high number of failures and there's larger text. If you're using anything over 18 pixels, or the equivalent of 18—it's either 18 points, or 18 pixels—is a 3:1 ratio. With that color contrast is how our brains perceive color. It's not the actual contrast of that color and there are people far more qualified than me going to that, or that can go into that. So what I'll say is I've seen a lot of teams and companies, “Yeah, we'll do a little over 4.5:1 and we'll call it a day.” But I always say, if you can do 7:1, or even 10:1 on your ratios and you can find a way to make your brand, or whatever the same, then go for it. A lot of the time you hear, “Well, we don't want to change the colors of our brand.” Well, your colors of your brand aren't accessible to somebody who that has, for instance, Tritanopia, which is, I think it's blues and greens are very hard to see, or they don't see it at all. Color deficiencies are a thing that design teams aren't going to check for. They're just not. Like you said, all these colors look awesome so let's just, we're going to go with that on our UI. That's one thing that I actually ran into on that SAAS product that I spoke about earlier was there was these colors and these colors were a dark blue, very muted dark blue with orange text. You would think the contrast would be oh yeah, they would be all right, but it was horrible. JOHN: You can get browser plugins, that'll show you what the page looks like. So you can check these things yourself. Like you can go in and say, “Oh, you're right. That's completely illegible.” TODD: Yeah. Firefox, like I have right here on my work machine. I have right here Firefox and it does this. There's a simulator for a visual color deficiencies. It also checks for contrast as well. Chrome has one, which it actually has a very cool eyedropper to check for color contrast. If you use the inspector also in Firefox, that brings up a little contrast thing. The WAVE extension has a contrast tool. There's also a lot of different apps. If you have a Mac, like I do, I have too many color contrast because I love checking out these color contrast apps. So I have about five different color contrast apps on my Mac, but there's also websites, too that you can use at the same time. Just do a search for polar contrast. Contrast Ratio, contrast-ratio.com, is from Lea Verou. I use that one a lot. A lot of people use that one. There's so many of them out there choose from, but they are very handy tool at designer's disposal and at developers' disposal as well. JOHN: So I'm trying to think of, like I was saying earlier, the color contrast one is one of those things that's probably very straightforward; you can upgrade your whole site in a short amount of time. Color contrast is a little trickier because it gets into branding and marketing's going to want to care about it and all that kind of stuff. So you might have a bit more battle around that, but it could probably be done and you might be able to fix, at least the worst parts of the page that have problems around that. So I'm just trying to think of the ways that you could get the ball rolling on this kind of a work. Like if you can get those early easy wins, it's going to get more people on board with the process and not saying like, “Oh, it's going to take us eight months and we have to go through every single page and change it every forum.” That sounds really daunting when you think about it and so, trying to imagine what those easy early wins are that can get people down that road. TODD: Yeah. Starting from the very outset of the project is probably the key one: incorporating accessibility from the start of the project. Like I said earlier, it's a lot easier when you do it from the start rather than waiting till the very end, or even after the product has been launched and you go back and go, “Oh, well, now we need to fix it.” You're not only putting stress on your teams, but it's eating up time and money because you're now paying everybody to go back and look at all these accessibility issues there. Having one person as a dedicated accessibility advocate on each team helps immensely. So you have one person on the development team, one person on the dev side, one person on the marketing team, starting from the top. If somebody goes there to a stakeholder and says, “Listen, we need to start incorporating accessibility from the very start, here's why,” Nine times out of ten, I can guarantee you, you're probably going to get that stakeholder onboard. That tenth time, you'll have to go as far as maybe I did and say, “Well, Domino's Pizza, or Bank of America, or Target.” Again, their ears are going to perk up and they're going to go, “Oh, well, I don't really, we don't want to get sued.” So that, and going back to having one person on each team: training. There are so many resources out there for accessibility training. There are companies out there that train, there are companies that you can bring in to the organization that will train, that'll help train. That's so easier than what are we going to do? A lot of people just sitting there in a room and go, “How are you going to do this?” Having that person in each department getting together with everybody else, that's that advocate for each department, meeting up and saying, “Okay, we're going to coordinate. You're going to put out a fantastic product that's going to be accessible and also, at the same time, the financial aspect is going to make the company money. But most of all, it's going to include a lot of people that are normally not included if you're putting out an accessible product.” Because if you go to a certain website, I can guarantee you it's going to be inaccessible—just about 99% of the web isn't accessible—and it's going to be exclusive as it's going to – somebody is going to get shut out of the site, or app. So this falls on the applications as well. Another thing too, I just wanted to throw in here for color contrast. There are different – you have color contrast text, but you also have non-text contrast, you have texts in images, that kind of contrast as well and it does get a little confusing. Let's face it, the guidelines right now, it's a very technically written – it's like a technical manual. A lot of people come up to me and said, “I can't read this. I can't make sense of this. Can you translate this?” So hopefully, and this is part of the work that I'm doing with a lot of other people in the W3C is where making the language of 3.0 in plain language, basically. It's going to be a lot easier to understand these guidelines instead of all that technical jargon. I look at something right now and I'm scratching my head when I'm doing an audit going, “Okay, what do they mean by this?” All these people come together and we agree on what to write. What is the language that's going to go into this? So when they got together 2.0, which was years and years ago, they said, “Okay, this is going to be how we're going to write this and we're going to publish this,” and then we had a lot of people just like me scratching their heads of not understanding it. So hopefully, and I'm pretty sure, 99.9% sure that it's going to be a lot easier for people to understand. MAE: That sounds awesome. And if you end up needing a bunch of play testers, I bet a lot of our listeners would be totally willing to put in some time. I know I would. Just want to put in one last plug for anybody out there who really loves automating things and is trying to avoid relying on any single developer, or designer, or QA person to remember to check for accessibility is to build it into your CI/CD pipeline. There are a lot of different options. Another approach to couple with that, or do independently is to use the axe core gems, and that link will be in the show notes, where it'll allow you to be able to sprinkle in your tests, accessibility checks on different pieces. So if we've decided we're going to handle color contrast, cool, then it'll check that. But if we're not ready to deal with another point of accessibility, then we can skip it. So it's very similar to Robocop. Anyway, just wanted to offer in some other tips and tricks of the trade to be able to get going on accessibility and then once you get that train rolling, it can do a little better, but it is hard to start from scratch. JOHN: That's a great tip, Mae. Thank you. TODD: Yeah, definitely. MANDY: Okay. Well, with that, I think it's about time we head into reflections; the point of the show, where we talk about something that we thought stood out, that we want to think about more, or a place that we can call for a call of action to our listeners, or even to ourselves. Who wants to go first? MAE: I can go first. I learned something awesome from you, Todd, which I have not thought of before, which is if I am eyeballing for “contrast,” especially color contrast, that's not necessarily what that means. I really appreciate learning that and we'll definitely be applying that in my daily life. [chuckles] So thanks for teaching me a whole bunch of things, including that. TODD: You're welcome. JOHN: I think for me, it's just the continuing reminder to – I do like the thinking that, I think Mae have brought up and also Todd was talking about earlier at the beginning about how we're all of us temporarily not disabled and that I think it helps bring some of that empathy a little closer to us. So it makes it a little more accessible to us to realize that it's going to happen to us at some point, at some level, and to help then bring that empathy to the other people who are currently in that state and really that's, I think is a useful way of thinking about it. Also, the idea that I've been thinking through as we've been talking about this is how do we get the ball rolling on this? We have an existing application that's 10 years old that's going to take a lot to get it there, but how do we get the process started so we feel like we're making progress there rather than just saying, “Oh, we did HTML form 27 out of 163. All right, back at it tomorrow.” It's hard to think about, so feeling like there's progress is a good thing. TODD: Yeah, definitely and as we get older, our eyes, they're one of the first things to go. So I'm going to need assistive technology at some point so, yeah. And then what you touched upon, John. It may be daunting having to go back and do the whole, “Okay, what are we going to do for accessibility now that this project, it's 10 years old, 15 years old?” The SAAS project that I was talking about, it was 15-year-old code, .net. I got people together; one from each department. We all got together and we ended up making that product accessible for them. So it can be done. [laughs] It can be done. JOHN: That's actually a good point. Just hearing about successes in the wild with particularly hard projects is a great thing. Because again, I'm thinking about it at the start of our project and hearing that somebody made it all through and maybe even repeatedly is hard. TODD: Yeah. It's not something that once it's done, it's done. Accessibility, just like the web, is an ever-evolving media. MANDY: For me. I think my reflection is going to be, as a new coder, I do want to say, I'm glad that we talked about a lot of the things that you see that aren't currently accessible that can be accessible. One of those things is using alt tags and right now, I know when I put the social media posts out on Twitter, I don't use the alt tags and I should. So just putting an alt tag saying, “This is a picture of our guest, Todd” and the title of the show would probably be helpful for some of our listeners. So I'm going to start doing that. So thank you. TODD: You're welcome. I'm just reminded of our talk and every talk that I have on a podcast, or with anybody just reminds me of the work that I have to do and the work that is being done by a lot of different people, other than myself as well, as far as advocacy goes in that I don't think it's ever going to be a job that will ever go away. There will always be a need for accessibility advocacy for the web and it's great just to be able to sit down and talk to people about accessibility and what we need to do to make the web better and more inclusive for everybody. Because I tweet out a lot, “Accessibility is a right, not a privilege,” and I really feel that to my core because the UN specifically says that the internet is a basic human and I went as far as to go say, “Well, so as an accessibility of that internet as well.” So that is my reflection. MAE: I'll add an alt tag for me right now is with a fist up and a big smile and a lot of enthusiasm in my heart. MANDY: Awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show, Todd. It's been really great talking with you and I really appreciate you coming on the show to share with us your knowledge and your expertise on the subject of accessibility. So with that, I will close out the show and say we do have a Slack and Todd will be invited to it if he'd like to talk more to us and the rest of the Greater Than Code community. You can visit patreon.com/greaterthancode and pledge to support us monthly and again, if you cannot afford that, or do not want to pledge to help run the show, you can DM anyone of us and we will get you in there for free because we want to make the Slack channel accessible for all. Have a great week and we'll see you next time. Goodbye! Special Guest: Todd Libby.

Todd: OK, Keith, if you won 1,000,000 dollars? No, wait, 10,000,000 dollars.Keith: 10,000,000.Todd: If you won 10,000,000, what would you do?Keith: Well, first thing I'd do, I'd probably buy a nice house for me and my wife.Todd: OK, where would this house be?Keith: Oh, I don't know. We'll have to talk about that with the wife but probably somewhere near Tokyo.Todd: OK. Would yo buy a house in the city or the country?Keith: Well, a little further out of the middle of Tokyo.Todd: So, it'd be in Japan.?Keith:Yeah, in Japan, but some place not too crowded.Todd: OK, would you have animals at this house?Keith: Not if I could help it.Todd: Really. No dog?Keith: Well, maybe a dog, but an outside dog.Todd: You got to have a dog, man.

Todd: OK, Keith, if you won 1,000,000 dollars? No, wait, 10,000,000 dollars.Keith: 10,000,000.Todd: If you won 10,000,000, what would you do?Keith: Well, first thing I'd do, I'd probably buy a nice house for me and my wife.Todd: OK, where would this house be?Keith: Oh, I don't know. We'll have to talk about that with the wife but probably somewhere near Tokyo.Todd: OK. Would yo buy a house in the city or the country?Keith: Well, a little further out of the middle of Tokyo.Todd: So, it'd be in Japan.?Keith:Yeah, in Japan, but some place not too crowded.Todd: OK, would you have animals at this house?Keith: Not if I could help it.Todd: Really. No dog?Keith: Well, maybe a dog, but an outside dog.Todd: You got to have a dog, man.

Todd: Hello, Daniela, how are you tonight?Daniella: Hi, Todd. I'm fine, thanks.Todd: Now, you were showing me a picture of a horse.Daniella: Yes.Todd: And you were saying that female horses and male horses are different.Daniella: They behave different to me, so maybe it's just my imagination, or not but female horses, mares, are kind of cold and aggressive towards me cause I'm a female and I kind of compete over the male coaches' affection, that was my conclusion because male horses are so nice to me.Todd: So you saying the horse can tell if it's a man or woman rider.Daniella: Exactly, my horse can do that. She's more affectionate towards men.Todd: Really!Daniella: Yeah, and she's a female.Todd: So if I want to go horse riding for the first time and I'm on my own.Daniella: You don't have to worry because the coach will make sure the horse will behave and it will fear the coach, at least, and it won't do anything wrong to you, but if you want to make friends with the horse you'll probably have to work out more with a male horse.Todd: Really.Daniella: Yeah, for me it's very difficult to become friendly with a female horse. Maybe it's just my impression. Maybe it's not true but that's my conclusion so far.Todd: Well, that's good to know. Thanks.

Todd: Hello, Daniela, how are you tonight?Daniella: Hi, Todd. I'm fine, thanks.Todd: Now, you were showing me a picture of a horse.Daniella: Yes.Todd: And you were saying that female horses and male horses are different.Daniella: They behave different to me, so maybe it's just my imagination, or not but female horses, mares, are kind of cold and aggressive towards me cause I'm a female and I kind of compete over the male coaches' affection, that was my conclusion because male horses are so nice to me.Todd: So you saying the horse can tell if it's a man or woman rider.Daniella: Exactly, my horse can do that. She's more affectionate towards men.Todd: Really!Daniella: Yeah, and she's a female.Todd: So if I want to go horse riding for the first time and I'm on my own.Daniella: You don't have to worry because the coach will make sure the horse will behave and it will fear the coach, at least, and it won't do anything wrong to you, but if you want to make friends with the horse you'll probably have to work out more with a male horse.Todd: Really.Daniella: Yeah, for me it's very difficult to become friendly with a female horse. Maybe it's just my impression. Maybe it's not true but that's my conclusion so far.Todd: Well, that's good to know. Thanks.

Todd: OK, Keri, I've heard you talk about your father quite a bit. He sounds like a very interesting man. Can you talk a little bit about him?Kerri: Sure. My dad's name is Robert and he's an interesting guy. He's retired now and lives in Oregon and in his free time he's building an airplane (wow!) Yeah!Todd: So can he fly a plane as well?Kerri: Yeah, he has a private pilot's license.Todd: Wow, that must be pretty difficult. He's actually making a plane from scratch.Kerri: Yeah. Well, he used to be an airplane mechanic, so quite awhile ago. But yeah, he's doing all the riveting, building all the different parts of the plane and assembling it.Todd: Wow! So when do you think he's going to be finished.Kerri: I don't know. I got an e-mail from him recently that said he's just putting the tail section on soon. But I haven't seen a picture of that yet.Todd: Wow. So are you going to go in this plane with your father as soon as it's finished?Kerri: I hope so. He's having someone else test fly it which made me happy when I found out. Although I trust his work cause he's meticulous but it made me feel good that someone else is going to try it for the first time, but yeah, after it's finished, when he's ready to take up passengers.Todd: Cool. Sounds fun.Kerri: Yeah. I think so.

Todd: OK, Keri, I've heard you talk about your father quite a bit. He sounds like a very interesting man. Can you talk a little bit about him?Kerri: Sure. My dad's name is Robert and he's an interesting guy. He's retired now and lives in Oregon and in his free time he's building an airplane (wow!) Yeah!Todd: So can he fly a plane as well?Kerri: Yeah, he has a private pilot's license.Todd: Wow, that must be pretty difficult. He's actually making a plane from scratch.Kerri: Yeah. Well, he used to be an airplane mechanic, so quite awhile ago. But yeah, he's doing all the riveting, building all the different parts of the plane and assembling it.Todd: Wow! So when do you think he's going to be finished.Kerri: I don't know. I got an e-mail from him recently that said he's just putting the tail section on soon. But I haven't seen a picture of that yet.Todd: Wow. So are you going to go in this plane with your father as soon as it's finished?Kerri: I hope so. He's having someone else test fly it which made me happy when I found out. Although I trust his work cause he's meticulous but it made me feel good that someone else is going to try it for the first time, but yeah, after it's finished, when he's ready to take up passengers.Todd: Cool. Sounds fun.Kerri: Yeah. I think so.

Todd: James, I saw on your desk you have a nice picture of a dog.James: Yes.Todd: OK. Tell us about your dog.James: My dog's name is Piper. He was a mutt, a homeless dog that we picked up off the street about four and a half years ago.Todd: Oh, wow! So what kind of dog is he now?James: He's a yellow lab, golden retriever mix. He's very very sweet, very very fun to play with, really really nice.Todd: Oh, that's great. Can he do any tricks?James: No.Todd: No.James: We can do one trick where we point our finger at him and go Bang Bang Bang Bang and he falls over dead, but that is the only trick he can do and he only does that maybe half the time.Todd: OK. Does he bark a lot?James: Usually no. Usually, he's pretty good.Todd: Pretty quiet.James: Mm, hm!Todd: OK. Is it a male dog or a female dog?James: Yeah. It's a male dog.Todd: So, no puppies.James: No, puppies.Todd: OK. Would you like to have another dog, another puppy?James: It would be fun in the future but not for a while.

Todd: James, I saw on your desk you have a nice picture of a dog.James: Yes.Todd: OK. Tell us about your dog.James: My dog's name is Piper. He was a mutt, a homeless dog that we picked up off the street about four and a half years ago.Todd: Oh, wow! So what kind of dog is he now?James: He's a yellow lab, golden retriever mix. He's very very sweet, very very fun to play with, really really nice.Todd: Oh, that's great. Can he do any tricks?James: No.Todd: No.James: We can do one trick where we point our finger at him and go Bang Bang Bang Bang and he falls over dead, but that is the only trick he can do and he only does that maybe half the time.Todd: OK. Does he bark a lot?James: Usually no. Usually, he's pretty good.Todd: Pretty quiet.James: Mm, hm!Todd: OK. Is it a male dog or a female dog?James: Yeah. It's a male dog.Todd: So, no puppies.James: No, puppies.Todd: OK. Would you like to have another dog, another puppy?James: It would be fun in the future but not for a while.

Todd: OK, Jeanna, you like the computer!Jeanna: Yes, I do.Todd: OK. Talk to us about computers.Jeanna: Well, I go on the computer a lot and I talk with friends through AOL instant messenger. And I just moved from my hometown to Sacremento so it's a good way to keep in touch with old friends.Todd: Yeah. Do you learn about computers at school or on your own?Jeanna: I picked most of what I know, I've picked it up, through, ya know, the years, and some at school, like keyboarding and such.Todd: OK. Do you have a laptop or a PC?Jeanna: I have a PC. A Compac.Todd: Do you like your computer or do you want a new one?Jeanna: I want a new one cause I think I screwed mine up and it's a little bit slow now.Todd: OK. How long have you had your computer?Jeanna: I've had it for about 3 or 4 years.Todd: Oh, yeah, that's pretty old for a computer. Yeah, so do you talk to your friends every night by e-mail?Jeanna: Yeah, yes I do.Todd: OK.Jeanna: See going on and you know the gossip.Todd: So nowadays, do high school kids talk by e-mail more than phone?Jeanna: Most people talk by either e-mail or cellular phone. You know a lot of people don't use their house phones as much, and a lot of people have cellular phones.Todd: OK. Thanks a lot Jeanna.

Todd: OK, Jeanna, you like the computer!Jeanna: Yes, I do.Todd: OK. Talk to us about computers.Jeanna: Well, I go on the computer a lot and I talk with friends through AOL instant messenger. And I just moved from my hometown to Sacremento so it's a good way to keep in touch with old friends.Todd: Yeah. Do you learn about computers at school or on your own?Jeanna: I picked most of what I know, I've picked it up, through, ya know, the years, and some at school, like keyboarding and such.Todd: OK. Do you have a laptop or a PC?Jeanna: I have a PC. A Compac.Todd: Do you like your computer or do you want a new one?Jeanna: I want a new one cause I think I screwed mine up and it's a little bit slow now.Todd: OK. How long have you had your computer?Jeanna: I've had it for about 3 or 4 years.Todd: Oh, yeah, that's pretty old for a computer. Yeah, so do you talk to your friends every night by e-mail?Jeanna: Yeah, yes I do.Todd: OK.Jeanna: See going on and you know the gossip.Todd: So nowadays, do high school kids talk by e-mail more than phone?Jeanna: Most people talk by either e-mail or cellular phone. You know a lot of people don't use their house phones as much, and a lot of people have cellular phones.Todd: OK. Thanks a lot Jeanna.

Todd: So Tara, I see you've just bought a new guitar.Tara: Yeah, I have, yeah.Todd: Yeah!Tara: It's very nice.Todd: So, what's the reasoning behind buying a guitar?Tara: Well, I work at nights so I have the daytime free, and to be honest, most people they work in the day so I'm often on my own, and I just want something to keep me entertained in the daytime, and I don't really like reading books, so I want something to do with my hands, so I thought buying a guitar is a good idea.Todd: Do you have any kind of music you would like to sing or learn to play?Tara: I'd like to learn, have you heard, there's some English bands, like Cold Play and Turn Break so I'd like to learn that kind of style.Todd: OK. Do you plan to take lessons or just learn on your own?Tara: No, well a couple of my friends, they you know, they can, they learned guitar as well. I can't really take lessons in Japan. I think that might be a bit too much, but my friends are going to teach me. Hopefully. Yeah!

Todd: So Tara, I see you've just bought a new guitar.Tara: Yeah, I have, yeah.Todd: Yeah!Tara: It's very nice.Todd: So, what's the reasoning behind buying a guitar?Tara: Well, I work at nights so I have the daytime free, and to be honest, most people they work in the day so I'm often on my own, and I just want something to keep me entertained in the daytime, and I don't really like reading books, so I want something to do with my hands, so I thought buying a guitar is a good idea.Todd: Do you have any kind of music you would like to sing or learn to play?Tara: I'd like to learn, have you heard, there's some English bands, like Cold Play and Turn Break so I'd like to learn that kind of style.Todd: OK. Do you plan to take lessons or just learn on your own?Tara: No, well a couple of my friends, they you know, they can, they learned guitar as well. I can't really take lessons in Japan. I think that might be a bit too much, but my friends are going to teach me. Hopefully. Yeah!

Todd: OK, Chris, Friday the 13th is coming up. So, first of all, are you superstitious?Chris: Yes. When I play sports I'm superstitious. I have a lucky shirt and stuff like that.Todd: Oh, really!Chris: Yeah.Todd: So what's your lucky shirt?Chris: It's a bungy jumping shirt that I got about 10 years ago. It's all falling apart but it's still my lucky shirt.Todd: OK, So you don't wash it or anything?Chris: If I have a good game I don't wash it until I have a bad game and then I wash the badness out.Todd: OK. What sport are we talking about?Chris: I play ice hockey.Todd: Oh, really.Chris: Yeah.Todd: Oh, so your a hockey player! Your a pretty solid guy.Chris: Yeah, I'm a goalie. Being a goalie it's a lot to being comfortable in the position, so if you have a good game you don't touch anything. You do the same routine. Goalies are known to be a little strange.Todd: Wow. So that's cool. Are you still playing in Japan?Chris: I've played a few times but it's just too much trouble to drag my equipment on three trains and a taxi and about a 800-meter walk. It's just not worth it right now. If I had a car I'd try for sure.Todd: Oh, that's too bad. Alright, well, good luck and...so right now is your shirt dirty of clean? Your unlucky shirt?Chris: It's just been washed. Yeah, it needed a good washing this time.

Todd: OK, Chris, Friday the 13th is coming up. So, first of all, are you superstitious?Chris: Yes. When I play sports I'm superstitious. I have a lucky shirt and stuff like that.Todd: Oh, really!Chris: Yeah.Todd: So what's your lucky shirt?Chris: It's a bungy jumping shirt that I got about 10 years ago. It's all falling apart but it's still my lucky shirt.Todd: OK, So you don't wash it or anything?Chris: If I have a good game I don't wash it until I have a bad game and then I wash the badness out.Todd: OK. What sport are we talking about?Chris: I play ice hockey.Todd: Oh, really.Chris: Yeah.Todd: Oh, so your a hockey player! Your a pretty solid guy.Chris: Yeah, I'm a goalie. Being a goalie it's a lot to being comfortable in the position, so if you have a good game you don't touch anything. You do the same routine. Goalies are known to be a little strange.Todd: Wow. So that's cool. Are you still playing in Japan?Chris: I've played a few times but it's just too much trouble to drag my equipment on three trains and a taxi and about a 800-meter walk. It's just not worth it right now. If I had a car I'd try for sure.Todd: Oh, that's too bad. Alright, well, good luck and...so right now is your shirt dirty of clean? Your unlucky shirt?Chris: It's just been washed. Yeah, it needed a good washing this time.

Todd: Hey, Marika!Marika: Hey!Todd: How you doing?Marika: I'm OK. How are you?Todd: Good. Marika do you like summer?Marika: No, I don't like summer it's my least favorite summer.Todd: Wow, why?Marika: Because I don't like hot weather. I don't like being hot and sweaty and uncomfortable.Todd: OK. Well, it's pretty hot in Japan so you must not like summer here.Marika: No, I don't.Todd: Is it hot in summer where you're from?Marika: Yeah, it's pretty hot but usually we go away on the weekends to cottages and we go swimming in lakes and stuff.Todd: Oh, that's nice. Where are you from by the way?Marika: Canada.Todd: So, what's your favorite season?Marika: Winter or fall.Todd: OK. Well, what do you do in the winter?Marika: In the winter, activities you mean?Todd: Yeah.Marika: I go snowboarding and I go to onsens and I walk around and I enjoy the cold weather.

Todd: Hey, Marika!Marika: Hey!Todd: How you doing?Marika: I'm OK. How are you?Todd: Good. Marika do you like summer?Marika: No, I don't like summer it's my least favorite summer.Todd: Wow, why?Marika: Because I don't like hot weather. I don't like being hot and sweaty and uncomfortable.Todd: OK. Well, it's pretty hot in Japan so you must not like summer here.Marika: No, I don't.Todd: Is it hot in summer where you're from?Marika: Yeah, it's pretty hot but usually we go away on the weekends to cottages and we go swimming in lakes and stuff.Todd: Oh, that's nice. Where are you from by the way?Marika: Canada.Todd: So, what's your favorite season?Marika: Winter or fall.Todd: OK. Well, what do you do in the winter?Marika: In the winter, activities you mean?Todd: Yeah.Marika: I go snowboarding and I go to onsens and I walk around and I enjoy the cold weather.

Todd: So, James, you're in a band!James: Yes!Todd: OK, tell us about your band.James: I play in a Swedish Bubblegum Punk Band.Todd: Swedish Bubblegum Punk Band. What exactly is that?James: I don't know, but that's what it says on the CD.Todd: OK. What do you play in your band?James: I play base guitar.Todd: OK. How long have you been playing the guitar?James: I've been playing the guitar for about 12 or 13 years.Todd: Oh, really! OK. Nice. Do you play any other instruments?James: I play a little guitar and a little drums.Todd: Since you're in a band do you meet lots of women?James: Yes.Todd: Really! You're a rock star.James: Yes.Todd: Nice. Nice. Do you tour or do you just play where you live?James: We just play in clubs. Local clubs.Todd: OK. What the best thing about being a musician, in the band?James: It's really good for relaxing and having fun.Todd: Is it your full-time job?James: No, it's not. It's only a hobby.Todd: Oh, OK.

Todd: So, James, you're in a band!James: Yes!Todd: OK, tell us about your band.James: I play in a Swedish Bubblegum Punk Band.Todd: Swedish Bubblegum Punk Band. What exactly is that?James: I don't know, but that's what it says on the CD.Todd: OK. What do you play in your band?James: I play base guitar.Todd: OK. How long have you been playing the guitar?James: I've been playing the guitar for about 12 or 13 years.Todd: Oh, really! OK. Nice. Do you play any other instruments?James: I play a little guitar and a little drums.Todd: Since you're in a band do you meet lots of women?James: Yes.Todd: Really! You're a rock star.James: Yes.Todd: Nice. Nice. Do you tour or do you just play where you live?James: We just play in clubs. Local clubs.Todd: OK. What the best thing about being a musician, in the band?James: It's really good for relaxing and having fun.Todd: Is it your full-time job?James: No, it's not. It's only a hobby.Todd: Oh, OK.

Todd: OK, Yoko!Yoko: Hi!Todd: We're going to talk about your trip to America.Yoko: Trip to America. OK.Todd: OK. When did you go to the U.S.?Yoko: It's about 4 years ago.Todd: And what did you do?Yoko: Actually, I went to Michigan and I worked as a volunteer teacher in public school.Todd: OK. What was the public school like?Yoko: It was not big, and so it was not big. I don't know how to say that, so what should I say....Todd: It was just a small school?Yoko: Yeah. Small school. So only maybe 200 students I think.Todd: Oh, really!Yoko: Yeah, it was really small.Todd: Wow, that is small.Yoko: Yeah, yeah.Todd: Did you know all the students?Yoko: I don't think so. I just visited some classes. Yes.Todd: So what did you think of America?Yoko: I think it is a great country for many people who wants to try new things.Todd: OKYoko: You know, so for example I did not have any special skills to teach, but they let me to work there as a volunteer, and they gave me a great oppurtunity to meet a lot of students, who are really nice I think.Todd: Ah, OK. I agree. What were your students like?Yoko: They were really motivated to learn Japanese, but they didn't learn a lot. They just, they just wanted to play with me, from other countries. Who is from, sorry!Todd: OK. Do you have any special memories from your trip?Yoko: Yes, I visited lots of places by myself and I was really afraid of speaking English to people there but they tried to understand me, and they helped me a lot and I really think OK, they are lots of people who are nice all over the world.

Todd: OK, Yoko!Yoko: Hi!Todd: We're going to talk about your trip to America.Yoko: Trip to America. OK.Todd: OK. When did you go to the U.S.?Yoko: It's about 4 years ago.Todd: And what did you do?Yoko: Actually, I went to Michigan and I worked as a volunteer teacher in public school.Todd: OK. What was the public school like?Yoko: It was not big, and so it was not big. I don't know how to say that, so what should I say....Todd: It was just a small school?Yoko: Yeah. Small school. So only maybe 200 students I think.Todd: Oh, really!Yoko: Yeah, it was really small.Todd: Wow, that is small.Yoko: Yeah, yeah.Todd: Did you know all the students?Yoko: I don't think so. I just visited some classes. Yes.Todd: So what did you think of America?Yoko: I think it is a great country for many people who wants to try new things.Todd: OKYoko: You know, so for example I did not have any special skills to teach, but they let me to work there as a volunteer, and they gave me a great oppurtunity to meet a lot of students, who are really nice I think.Todd: Ah, OK. I agree. What were your students like?Yoko: They were really motivated to learn Japanese, but they didn't learn a lot. They just, they just wanted to play with me, from other countries. Who is from, sorry!Todd: OK. Do you have any special memories from your trip?Yoko: Yes, I visited lots of places by myself and I was really afraid of speaking English to people there but they tried to understand me, and they helped me a lot and I really think OK, they are lots of people who are nice all over the world.

Kanade: Hi, Todd.Todd: How are you doing?Kanade: Good, how are you?Todd: Pretty good. Kanade, you talk about your little sister a lot.Kanade: Yes, I like her. Her name is Asuka. She's a university student now. She's two years younger than I and we are so close so we see each other more than twice in a month.People say we don't look like each other, we don't look similar, but sometimes we see, we look very similar in the pictures. She lives in Tokyo so we can have some coffee on the weekends or go shopping sometimes.Todd: So what did you sister give you as your last birthday gift?Kanade: Birthday gift? We don't really give the birthday gift instead but we give each other some small letter or something in normal day.Todd: That's nice.Kanade: Yeah, surprise.Todd: Are you in contact with each other every day by e-mailKanade: Every day, almost every day or sometimes the phone.Todd: Do you guys ever fight?Kanade: Ah, not really. I really like her so always, when she always asks me something I always do that.Todd: Wow! What a good big sister.Kanade: I know that!Todd: Wow! That's sweet. Well, if you're sister is listening what would you like to tellher right now.Kanade: I'm always with you so, you can do whatever you want.Todd: Oh, you're a nice sister. Thanks a lot Kanade.Kanade: Thank you, Todd.

Kanade: Hi, Todd.Todd: How are you doing?Kanade: Good, how are you?Todd: Pretty good. Kanade, you talk about your little sister a lot.Kanade: Yes, I like her. Her name is Asuka. She's a university student now. She's two years younger than I and we are so close so we see each other more than twice in a month.People say we don't look like each other, we don't look similar, but sometimes we see, we look very similar in the pictures. She lives in Tokyo so we can have some coffee on the weekends or go shopping sometimes.Todd: So what did you sister give you as your last birthday gift?Kanade: Birthday gift? We don't really give the birthday gift instead but we give each other some small letter or something in normal day.Todd: That's nice.Kanade: Yeah, surprise.Todd: Are you in contact with each other every day by e-mailKanade: Every day, almost every day or sometimes the phone.Todd: Do you guys ever fight?Kanade: Ah, not really. I really like her so always, when she always asks me something I always do that.Todd: Wow! What a good big sister.Kanade: I know that!Todd: Wow! That's sweet. Well, if you're sister is listening what would you like to tellher right now.Kanade: I'm always with you so, you can do whatever you want.Todd: Oh, you're a nice sister. Thanks a lot Kanade.Kanade: Thank you, Todd.

Todd: Clare, what are your plans for tonight?Clare: Well, tonight, first of all I'm going to head back home and take a nap because I've got a big night ahead of me.So, I'm going to be going out quite late, about 11:00 so I'll need my energy, but unfortunately, I don't think I'll be able to have much of a rest because it will be probably half past seven (7:30) by the time I get home and I need to start getting ready at about 9:00 so, an hour and a half max.Todd: Actually, what do you do to get ready when you go out?Clare: Well, have a shower, get changed, and then, play some games.Todd: OK. What games do you play?Clare: Well, we've recently acquaired a pack of giant cards, so we'll be playing some card games with the giant cards.Todd: So, can you like, give a specific game that you play?Clare: Well, I don't know if you know the game "Play Your Cards Right"Todd: No, no, how do you play?Clare: It's actually a TV game show. We take it from that. And it's very simple. You have a row of cards that you can't see. And you turn over the first one, and you have to say whether the next card is going to be higher or lower. Very simple, so, so you turn over a 10, and you say lower, and it's a 6, so you carry on. You say, "higher" and it's a 4, and if you're wrong....so as you can imagine, it's very easy to go wrong.Todd: Yeah. It sounds like a good game. Well, have a good time tonight and good luck in getting ready.

Todd: Clare, what are your plans for tonight?Clare: Well, tonight, first of all I'm going to head back home and take a nap because I've got a big night ahead of me.So, I'm going to be going out quite late, about 11:00 so I'll need my energy, but unfortunately, I don't think I'll be able to have much of a rest because it will be probably half past seven (7:30) by the time I get home and I need to start getting ready at about 9:00 so, an hour and a half max.Todd: Actually, what do you do to get ready when you go out?Clare: Well, have a shower, get changed, and then, play some games.Todd: OK. What games do you play?Clare: Well, we've recently acquaired a pack of giant cards, so we'll be playing some card games with the giant cards.Todd: So, can you like, give a specific game that you play?Clare: Well, I don't know if you know the game "Play Your Cards Right"Todd: No, no, how do you play?Clare: It's actually a TV game show. We take it from that. And it's very simple. You have a row of cards that you can't see. And you turn over the first one, and you have to say whether the next card is going to be higher or lower. Very simple, so, so you turn over a 10, and you say lower, and it's a 6, so you carry on. You say, "higher" and it's a 4, and if you're wrong....so as you can imagine, it's very easy to go wrong.Todd: Yeah. It sounds like a good game. Well, have a good time tonight and good luck in getting ready.

Todd: OK. I'm back here with Kanade.Kanade: Yes.Todd: So Kanade, why don't you talk about where you're from.Kanade: OK. I'm from Akita, which is Northern Japan. And there is a lot of mountains and you can see changing color in the fall and in my home Yashima town, there are only six thousand people in there and there is a waterfall called "Hotonedake", which is the best one hundred fall in Japan.Todd: Wow! That's cool.Kanade: Yeah, Cool!Todd: So you've seen it?Kanade: Yes!Todd: So how high is this amazing waterfall?Kanade: Uh, I don't really know. It's really big.Todd: Really. So is it famous because it's really tall or causes it's really wide?Kanade: Could be both.Todd: Oh really, that's a big waterfall. OK. When is the last time you went home?Kanade: Last week.Todd: Uh-huh. Really? Both you're parents still live there?Kanade: Yes.Todd: OK. And were your parents born there?Kanade: Yes, but different town. My father is from Yashima, the same hometown, the same home as my home, but my mom is from Nigaho, the next town from Yashima.Todd: Oh, OK. Do you have a lot of childhood memories?Kanade: Yes. Actually but my dad was really busy, so my mom took me. Took me many, many places...as a child.Todd: Oh, that's sweet. Well, you're a good daughter.Kanade: I think so. Yeah.Todd: OK. Thanks a lot.

Todd: OK. I'm back here with Kanade.Kanade: Yes.Todd: So Kanade, why don't you talk about where you're from.Kanade: OK. I'm from Akita, which is Northern Japan. And there is a lot of mountains and you can see changing color in the fall and in my home Yashima town, there are only six thousand people in there and there is a waterfall called "Hotonedake", which is the best one hundred fall in Japan.Todd: Wow! That's cool.Kanade: Yeah, Cool!Todd: So you've seen it?Kanade: Yes!Todd: So how high is this amazing waterfall?Kanade: Uh, I don't really know. It's really big.Todd: Really. So is it famous because it's really tall or causes it's really wide?Kanade: Could be both.Todd: Oh really, that's a big waterfall. OK. When is the last time you went home?Kanade: Last week.Todd: Uh-huh. Really? Both you're parents still live there?Kanade: Yes.Todd: OK. And were your parents born there?Kanade: Yes, but different town. My father is from Yashima, the same hometown, the same home as my home, but my mom is from Nigaho, the next town from Yashima.Todd: Oh, OK. Do you have a lot of childhood memories?Kanade: Yes. Actually but my dad was really busy, so my mom took me. Took me many, many places...as a child.Todd: Oh, that's sweet. Well, you're a good daughter.Kanade: I think so. Yeah.Todd: OK. Thanks a lot.

Todd: OK. Hello! Can I have your name please?Cat: Cat.Todd: Cat! Is that short for something?Cat: Short for Catherine.Todd: Catherine. OK, Catherine. What's your full name?Cat: Catherine Lovelock.Todd: Oh, nice name. Nice!Cat: Glad you think so.Todd: And where are you from?Cat: Ah, from England.Todd: OK. Where in England?Cat: Ah, in the Southeast. A small town just by the seaside.Todd: Nice. So you live by the beach?Cat: Yes, about ten minutes from the beach.Todd: Wow, do you surf?Cat: It's not the kind of place you can surf. The waves are too small and the sea is too cold.Todd: OK. What kind of place is your town?Cat: What kind of place?Todd: Yeah.Cat: It's..it's..well very very small. It's normally really busy in the summer. There's not very much to do there, but when the sun is shining you can go to the beach. It's really good.Todd: Yeah, sounds like a great place. How far is it from London?Cat: About 70 miles so that's about two hours by train.Todd: OK.Cat: From Central London.Todd: So when you go to London you go by train?Cat: Normally yes because you can't drive, there's nowhere to park.Todd: OK. Great. Thanks.

Todd: OK. Hello! Can I have your name please?Cat: Cat.Todd: Cat! Is that short for something?Cat: Short for Catherine.Todd: Catherine. OK, Catherine. What's your full name?Cat: Catherine Lovelock.Todd: Oh, nice name. Nice!Cat: Glad you think so.Todd: And where are you from?Cat: Ah, from England.Todd: OK. Where in England?Cat: Ah, in the Southeast. A small town just by the seaside.Todd: Nice. So you live by the beach?Cat: Yes, about ten minutes from the beach.Todd: Wow, do you surf?Cat: It's not the kind of place you can surf. The waves are too small and the sea is too cold.Todd: OK. What kind of place is your town?Cat: What kind of place?Todd: Yeah.Cat: It's..it's..well very very small. It's normally really busy in the summer. There's not very much to do there, but when the sun is shining you can go to the beach. It's really good.Todd: Yeah, sounds like a great place. How far is it from London?Cat: About 70 miles so that's about two hours by train.Todd: OK.Cat: From Central London.Todd: So when you go to London you go by train?Cat: Normally yes because you can't drive, there's nowhere to park.Todd: OK. Great. Thanks.

Todd: So what are you doing this weekend, Adrianna?Adrianna: I'm going to Fukuoka with...to meet my friend.Todd: Oh cool, how do you know her?Adrianna: She went to university with me.Todd: What's she doing in Fukuoka?Adrianna: She's on the Jet Program, teaching.Todd: Oh, cool. Does she like it?Adrianna: Yeah, she likes it. She renewed her contract so this is her third year.Todd: Excellent. Do you know what you are going to be doing down in Fukuoka?Adrianna: I think she's going to take me to a pub.Todd: You've not been to any of them in Japan?Adrianna: No, not.. first time. And we are going to...What are we going to do? Oh, we're going to have a Thanksgiving celebration on Sunday and we're going to go to a Karaoke.Todd: OK, have you been to any Karaoke bars here?Adrianna: Yeah, I went to a Karaoke bar in Roppongi.Todd: Did you sing?Adrianna: Of course.Todd: Excellent. In English?Adrianna: Ah.. yeah. My Japanese isn't too great.Todd: What has she told you about Fukuoka?Adrianna: How do you mean?Todd: Like, do you know about the city?Adrianna: Not much.

Todd: So what are you doing this weekend, Adrianna?Adrianna: I'm going to Fukuoka with...to meet my friend.Todd: Oh cool, how do you know her?Adrianna: She went to university with me.Todd: What's she doing in Fukuoka?Adrianna: She's on the Jet Program, teaching.Todd: Oh, cool. Does she like it?Adrianna: Yeah, she likes it. She renewed her contract so this is her third year.Todd: Excellent. Do you know what you are going to be doing down in Fukuoka?Adrianna: I think she's going to take me to a pub.Todd: You've not been to any of them in Japan?Adrianna: No, not.. first time. And we are going to...What are we going to do? Oh, we're going to have a Thanksgiving celebration on Sunday and we're going to go to a Karaoke.Todd: OK, have you been to any Karaoke bars here?Adrianna: Yeah, I went to a Karaoke bar in Roppongi.Todd: Did you sing?Adrianna: Of course.Todd: Excellent. In English?Adrianna: Ah.. yeah. My Japanese isn't too great.Todd: What has she told you about Fukuoka?Adrianna: How do you mean?Todd: Like, do you know about the city?Adrianna: Not much.

Todd: OK. Michael, you are into spearfishing.Michael: Yes, I enjoy going spearfishingTodd: OK. Can you talk about that a bit?Michael: Yeah, sure. Spearfishing basically is a sport that you dive under the water with the aid of flippers, a wet suit, and weights but you don't use oxygen at all. It's all-- you hyperventilate before you go down to get your oxygen levels up then you dive down.Yeah, then you have to you sometimes hide under rocks or actually stalk the fish and when you see a species that is edible and of legal size you can catch the fishTodd: Oh, Wow. Now spearfishing, does that mean you throw the spear?Michael: No, you use spear guns which uses surgical rubber to propel the spear you just pull it down to cock it. It's kind of like a crossbow without the crosspiece at the front.Todd: So do you ever see sharks down there?Michael: Yeah, you occasionally see sharks. It depends on where you are. You see a lot of.. there are some sharks called wobbegongs which are harmless sharks and they are actually quite friendly, they won't attack you but if you've caught some fish and you keep them on your purse and the blood goes into the water it can attract bigger sharks. And a few times when we've been spearfishing, we've actually had the sharks come down and take the fish while we're there and it's a little bit scary but the sharks themselves are.. they just sit there and watch you in the water. They're kind of like dogs, they're scary because they follow you and they look at you, and you turn around and they'll be sitting there looking at you. So most of the time we like to.. when we catch the fish, to keep the blood out of the water. We put them on a float that floats a fair way away from actually where you are fishing as a safety precaution but if you know..of course, you see too many sharks you just get out of the water...but now, it's nice and exciting.

Todd: OK. Michael, you are into spearfishing.Michael: Yes, I enjoy going spearfishingTodd: OK. Can you talk about that a bit?Michael: Yeah, sure. Spearfishing basically is a sport that you dive under the water with the aid of flippers, a wet suit, and weights but you don't use oxygen at all. It's all-- you hyperventilate before you go down to get your oxygen levels up then you dive down.Yeah, then you have to you sometimes hide under rocks or actually stalk the fish and when you see a species that is edible and of legal size you can catch the fishTodd: Oh, Wow. Now spearfishing, does that mean you throw the spear?Michael: No, you use spear guns which uses surgical rubber to propel the spear you just pull it down to cock it. It's kind of like a crossbow without the crosspiece at the front.Todd: So do you ever see sharks down there?Michael: Yeah, you occasionally see sharks. It depends on where you are. You see a lot of.. there are some sharks called wobbegongs which are harmless sharks and they are actually quite friendly, they won't attack you but if you've caught some fish and you keep them on your purse and the blood goes into the water it can attract bigger sharks. And a few times when we've been spearfishing, we've actually had the sharks come down and take the fish while we're there and it's a little bit scary but the sharks themselves are.. they just sit there and watch you in the water. They're kind of like dogs, they're scary because they follow you and they look at you, and you turn around and they'll be sitting there looking at you. So most of the time we like to.. when we catch the fish, to keep the blood out of the water. We put them on a float that floats a fair way away from actually where you are fishing as a safety precaution but if you know..of course, you see too many sharks you just get out of the water...but now, it's nice and exciting.

Todd: So Tim, you want to talk about road trips?Tim: Yeah, I wanna talk about road trips.Me and my friends when we were in high school we took a lot of road trips to lots of different places.Todd: OK.Tim: We would go down to California sometimes Mexico. One time when I was living in Wyoming, in one weekend we drove from Wyoming through Colorado, New Mexico, and Mexico and back in the same weekend.Todd: Wow! Well, actually for people who are not familiar with the United States how far is that?Tim: It's a long way. I don't know. It took.. I don't know, it took probably about 15 hours one way.Todd: Wow!Tim: So, thirty hours altogether. But it was fun. We drove down to Mexico had a good night a good meal, a little bit of drinksand drove back the next day.Todd: So you went to Tijuana?Tim: No, we went to Ciudad Juarez.Todd: OK. Nice.Tim: That was really fun and a lot of other trips we took when I lived in Oregon when we'd go down to California and we'd surf.Todd: Oh, really?Tim: Yeah!Todd: Oh, you're a surfer?Tim: A little bit, a little bit of surfer.Todd: OK. What kind of car do you drive? What do you use for this road trip?Tim: Well, typical American a four-wheel-drive vehicle. Big vehicle, lots of gas but a lot of fun.Todd: Oh man, you're from Oregon you're supposed to be a tree-hugger!Tim: I know. I know. But they're good. One rule we had on our road trips was any lake or big body of water we had to stop and swim in. It was a good thing to do.Todd: Well, you live in Japan now. Do you ever do road trips in Japan?Tim: I took a road trip from Niigata up around Hokkaido and back, so it was a long road trip actually.Todd: OK. Wow! What's the difference between a road trip in Japan and a road trip in America?Tim: Well, a road trip in Japan..it's a little bit more difficult to get around, it's a little bit more expensive. In America, road tripping is sort of.. something a lot of people do.Todd: Yeah.Tim: And in Japan, when we do that it is a little bit strange, a little bit different, not very normal.Todd: Yeah, that's true. OK. Great, thanks a lot Tim.Tim: All right.

Todd: So Tim, you want to talk about road trips?Tim: Yeah, I wanna talk about road trips.Me and my friends when we were in high school we took a lot of road trips to lots of different places.Todd: OK.Tim: We would go down to California sometimes Mexico. One time when I was living in Wyoming, in one weekend we drove from Wyoming through Colorado, New Mexico, and Mexico and back in the same weekend.Todd: Wow! Well, actually for people who are not familiar with the United States how far is that?Tim: It's a long way. I don't know. It took.. I don't know, it took probably about 15 hours one way.Todd: Wow!Tim: So, thirty hours altogether. But it was fun. We drove down to Mexico had a good night a good meal, a little bit of drinksand drove back the next day.Todd: So you went to Tijuana?Tim: No, we went to Ciudad Juarez.Todd: OK. Nice.Tim: That was really fun and a lot of other trips we took when I lived in Oregon when we'd go down to California and we'd surf.Todd: Oh, really?Tim: Yeah!Todd: Oh, you're a surfer?Tim: A little bit, a little bit of surfer.Todd: OK. What kind of car do you drive? What do you use for this road trip?Tim: Well, typical American a four-wheel-drive vehicle. Big vehicle, lots of gas but a lot of fun.Todd: Oh man, you're from Oregon you're supposed to be a tree-hugger!Tim: I know. I know. But they're good. One rule we had on our road trips was any lake or big body of water we had to stop and swim in. It was a good thing to do.Todd: Well, you live in Japan now. Do you ever do road trips in Japan?Tim: I took a road trip from Niigata up around Hokkaido and back, so it was a long road trip actually.Todd: OK. Wow! What's the difference between a road trip in Japan and a road trip in America?Tim: Well, a road trip in Japan..it's a little bit more difficult to get around, it's a little bit more expensive. In America, road tripping is sort of.. something a lot of people do.Todd: Yeah.Tim: And in Japan, when we do that it is a little bit strange, a little bit different, not very normal.Todd: Yeah, that's true. OK. Great, thanks a lot Tim.Tim: All right.

Todd: Hey Victor, I hear you're going home tomorrow.Victor: Yes, I am.Todd: Ah, that's too bad. So how long have you been here?Victor: I've been here for two weeks.Todd: I'm sorry, I was never sure. Why did you come to Japan?Victor: Came to Japan to study martial arts. Budo Ju Jitsu is the art that we study.Todd: Oh! OK, cool. So are like a black belt?Victor: Yes, yes!Todd: Oh, really? Wow, how long have you been doing your martial arts?Victor: I've been studying this art for about 18 years I guess.Todd: Really?Victor: A long time.Todd: That's a long time. You're a young-looking guy. You like 18 years.Victor: Well, I'm an old guy.Todd: Well, so when you go back to the States you also trainVictor: Yes, yes! We have a group that we train in martial arts there as sort of a hobby. In a way, it's a sort of a way of life also. But I have a real job. I'm a civil engineer.Todd: So, actually what does a civil engineer do?Victor: In America, a civil engineer designs things. In my case, I work on buildings, buildings that have structural problems and I work on repair plans.Todd: OK. Sounds like a tough job.Victor: It's OK. It's interesting. All buildings need repairs and it's fun.Todd: Great. Thanks a lot, Victor. Have a safe trip tomorrow.Victor: Well, thank you very much.

Todd: Hey Victor, I hear you're going home tomorrow.Victor: Yes, I am.Todd: Ah, that's too bad. So how long have you been here?Victor: I've been here for two weeks.Todd: I'm sorry, I was never sure. Why did you come to Japan?Victor: Came to Japan to study martial arts. Budo Ju Jitsu is the art that we study.Todd: Oh! OK, cool. So are like a black belt?Victor: Yes, yes!Todd: Oh, really? Wow, how long have you been doing your martial arts?Victor: I've been studying this art for about 18 years I guess.Todd: Really?Victor: A long time.Todd: That's a long time. You're a young-looking guy. You like 18 years.Victor: Well, I'm an old guy.Todd: Well, so when you go back to the States you also trainVictor: Yes, yes! We have a group that we train in martial arts there as sort of a hobby. In a way, it's a sort of a way of life also. But I have a real job. I'm a civil engineer.Todd: So, actually what does a civil engineer do?Victor: In America, a civil engineer designs things. In my case, I work on buildings, buildings that have structural problems and I work on repair plans.Todd: OK. Sounds like a tough job.Victor: It's OK. It's interesting. All buildings need repairs and it's fun.Todd: Great. Thanks a lot, Victor. Have a safe trip tomorrow.Victor: Well, thank you very much.

Todd: Nicola, you were talking to us the other day that you went diving in Australia?Nicola: That's right I did.Todd: Wow, so what was it like?Nicola: Well, actually it was quite scary, to be honest. When I first started I did an introductory course which was just maybe like two days.And so they just sent you out with all of the equipment, put you in the sea and guided you, but then when I did the real course we started in the swimming pool which was fine and it was all great fun.Although, there were two men on my course who completely freaked out and had to leave.Todd: Oh..Nicola: Yeah, so that was fine but then they took us out to sea which was a bit different. Yeah, they made us set up our own equipment, I mean they still checked us and everything so we didn't die but we had to put on our own equipment. We had a diving buddy who I was with and I was with my friend Graham, who I was traveling with anyway and we went down into the sea. We went down maybe fifteen meters. And they always say like 'Don't Panic' just keep breathing normally and everything. But I did kind of panic a bit.Todd: Oh, no!Nicola: So then I rose to the surface really quickly which you know, you're not supposed todo in diving. So I went up really quickly. Luckily we weren't deep enough to do any damage but my diving buddy Graham was having a great time down there looking at shipwrecks and didn't even notice that I was missing.Todd: What a terrible guy.Nicola: Yeah, I know. so, then...Todd: Wow! Did they fail him? I hope he failed the course?Nicola: No, he passed. He paid enough money. He passed. But it meant that I couldn't go diving for the rest of the day cause I had gone down quite deep so that was a shame, but...Todd: That's terrible. But you didn't hurt yourself, you didn't come up too fast?Nicola: No, I was fine in the end but it was a shame because that was the end of my diving day. But we had a few more days to do it.Todd: So now you are comfortable diving. You don't freak out anymore?Nicola: I don't freak out anymore but I couldn't go diving now on my own because it has been so long. Yeah.

Todd: Nicola, you were talking to us the other day that you went diving in Australia?Nicola: That's right I did.Todd: Wow, so what was it like?Nicola: Well, actually it was quite scary, to be honest. When I first started I did an introductory course which was just maybe like two days.And so they just sent you out with all of the equipment, put you in the sea and guided you, but then when I did the real course we started in the swimming pool which was fine and it was all great fun.Although, there were two men on my course who completely freaked out and had to leave.Todd: Oh..Nicola: Yeah, so that was fine but then they took us out to sea which was a bit different. Yeah, they made us set up our own equipment, I mean they still checked us and everything so we didn't die but we had to put on our own equipment. We had a diving buddy who I was with and I was with my friend Graham, who I was traveling with anyway and we went down into the sea. We went down maybe fifteen meters. And they always say like 'Don't Panic' just keep breathing normally and everything. But I did kind of panic a bit.Todd: Oh, no!Nicola: So then I rose to the surface really quickly which you know, you're not supposed todo in diving. So I went up really quickly. Luckily we weren't deep enough to do any damage but my diving buddy Graham was having a great time down there looking at shipwrecks and didn't even notice that I was missing.Todd: What a terrible guy.Nicola: Yeah, I know. so, then...Todd: Wow! Did they fail him? I hope he failed the course?Nicola: No, he passed. He paid enough money. He passed. But it meant that I couldn't go diving for the rest of the day cause I had gone down quite deep so that was a shame, but...Todd: That's terrible. But you didn't hurt yourself, you didn't come up too fast?Nicola: No, I was fine in the end but it was a shame because that was the end of my diving day. But we had a few more days to do it.Todd: So now you are comfortable diving. You don't freak out anymore?Nicola: I don't freak out anymore but I couldn't go diving now on my own because it has been so long. Yeah.

Todd: Hello, Ann! How are you doing?Ann: I'm fine.Todd: Ann, could you introduce yourself and tell people where you are from?Ann: Yeah. My name's Ann Hutchingson and I'm from Montreal, Canada. Right now I'm an English teacher in Tokyo, Japan.Todd: OK. What's Montreal like?Ann: Montreal is a really nice city. It's just very cold in the wintertime. It is.. it has four seasons and the nicest season is the summertime because it's really warm and people play a lot of sports. There are some parks in Montreal and you can go swimming and hiking and biking and rollerblading. It's a very interesting city.Todd: Wow! Were you born in Montreal?Ann: I was born in Montreal and I can speak two languages. English is my first language but I also studied French in high school.Todd: So, were you in a submersion program, or all your subjects in French.Ann: No, I went to an English high school but a lot of people in Montreal are in immersion programs.Todd: OK. Since you learned French, what do you think is the best way to learn a language?Ann: I think that you have to like learning another language and if you have a positive attitude then you can find learning another language fun rather than stressful so I think that I had a few French friends and we would practice. They would be very patient and I liked the fact that I could communicate using another language because then you have another identity.Todd: You have your French identity?Ann: I do.Todd: OK. So what's your name in French?Ann: "Mono e Ann"Todd: Wow! I need to get myself a French name?Ann: Todd.Todd: OK. Thanks a lot Ann.Ann: You're welcome. Nice speaking with you.

Todd: Hello, Ann! How are you doing?Ann: I'm fine.Todd: Ann, could you introduce yourself and tell people where you are from?Ann: Yeah. My name's Ann Hutchingson and I'm from Montreal, Canada. Right now I'm an English teacher in Tokyo, Japan.Todd: OK. What's Montreal like?Ann: Montreal is a really nice city. It's just very cold in the wintertime. It is.. it has four seasons and the nicest season is the summertime because it's really warm and people play a lot of sports. There are some parks in Montreal and you can go swimming and hiking and biking and rollerblading. It's a very interesting city.Todd: Wow! Were you born in Montreal?Ann: I was born in Montreal and I can speak two languages. English is my first language but I also studied French in high school.Todd: So, were you in a submersion program, or all your subjects in French.Ann: No, I went to an English high school but a lot of people in Montreal are in immersion programs.Todd: OK. Since you learned French, what do you think is the best way to learn a language?Ann: I think that you have to like learning another language and if you have a positive attitude then you can find learning another language fun rather than stressful so I think that I had a few French friends and we would practice. They would be very patient and I liked the fact that I could communicate using another language because then you have another identity.Todd: You have your French identity?Ann: I do.Todd: OK. So what's your name in French?Ann: "Mono e Ann"Todd: Wow! I need to get myself a French name?Ann: Todd.Todd: OK. Thanks a lot Ann.Ann: You're welcome. Nice speaking with you.

Todd: Devon, I hear that you took the train across Russia.Devon: Yes. I started in Moscow travelled through Russia, Mongolia and ended up in China.Todd: Wow! That's a long way.Devon: Yes, it was. It took three weeks. I did it as part of a tour with 10 other people.Todd: Man, that's a cool trip. That must of cost a lot of money.Devon: It did cost a lot of money but not a lot of people can say they have done that. I looked in, I researched the trip several months before I actually took it. A friend and I did it together and there was one other American and the rest of the people were from Switzerland.Todd: OK. Cool! What was the landscape like?Devon: A lot of it was flat and for miles around you could see absolutely nothing and as you got into Siberia there was scattered trees. When we got into Mongolia you could see some Camels every once in awhile but besides that there was a whole lot of nothing.Todd: Wow! Just wild camels.Devon: Wild Camels around the drinking hole. Yes, saw that more than once.Todd: So how did you eat on this train?Devon: We stopped several times along the way and upon every platform you could buy food that local people were selling. A lot of it consisted of dried fish and other types of Russian delicacies and a lot of noodles that you heat it up with hot water. Every train had hot water on it on every carriage so you were always able to make noodles if you were desperate.Todd: So was this a luxurious train or was it a pretty basic...?Devon: It was pretty much the most basic you could get. There were no animals on board but sometimes they were coal-heated so it was very basic.Todd: Wow! Would you do it again?Devon: Great question. Would I do it again? Yes, I would do it again but I would wait several years to do it. One because it does cost a lot of money and two because there are many other things to do, to see.Todd: OK. Thanks a lot Devon.Devon: You're very welcome.

Todd: Devon, I hear that you took the train across Russia.Devon: Yes. I started in Moscow travelled through Russia, Mongolia and ended up in China.Todd: Wow! That's a long way.Devon: Yes, it was. It took three weeks. I did it as part of a tour with 10 other people.Todd: Man, that's a cool trip. That must of cost a lot of money.Devon: It did cost a lot of money but not a lot of people can say they have done that. I looked in, I researched the trip several months before I actually took it. A friend and I did it together and there was one other American and the rest of the people were from Switzerland.Todd: OK. Cool! What was the landscape like?Devon: A lot of it was flat and for miles around you could see absolutely nothing and as you got into Siberia there was scattered trees. When we got into Mongolia you could see some Camels every once in awhile but besides that there was a whole lot of nothing.Todd: Wow! Just wild camels.Devon: Wild Camels around the drinking hole. Yes, saw that more than once.Todd: So how did you eat on this train?Devon: We stopped several times along the way and upon every platform you could buy food that local people were selling. A lot of it consisted of dried fish and other types of Russian delicacies and a lot of noodles that you heat it up with hot water. Every train had hot water on it on every carriage so you were always able to make noodles if you were desperate.Todd: So was this a luxurious train or was it a pretty basic...?Devon: It was pretty much the most basic you could get. There were no animals on board but sometimes they were coal-heated so it was very basic.Todd: Wow! Would you do it again?Devon: Great question. Would I do it again? Yes, I would do it again but I would wait several years to do it. One because it does cost a lot of money and two because there are many other things to do, to see.Todd: OK. Thanks a lot Devon.Devon: You're very welcome.

Todd: Hello, Gabrielle!Gabrielle: Hello!Todd: How are you doing today?Gabrielle: Good thanks.Todd: Now, Gabrielle, I hear that you are going back home to New Zealand.Gabrielle: That's right. I'm going home for summer.Todd: OK. What are your plans?Gabrielle: Probably a week relaxing, going camping, and then I'm going back to work.Todd: Oh, OK. Where do you work?Gabrielle: I teach as an English teacher in Christchurch in New Zealand.Todd: Oh, OK. And that's where you're from, naturally.Gabrielle: That's right.Todd: Were you born there?Gabrielle: I was, yeah.Todd: Well, you are going to have this short little break or vacation, are you going go to the beach or the mountains?Gabrielle: Probably, to the beach and camping for about a week with friends. Yeah.Todd: Actually, how warm is it in the summer?Gabrielle: Probably, a maximum of about 30 degrees. A nice dry heat. Very comfortable.Todd: So when you go to the beach is the water warm enough to swim in?Gabrielle: No, no! We swim but it is not warm. Yeah! It's pretty chilly actually.Todd: OK. Any other plans when you go home?Gabrielle: Yeah, I'm looking forward to catching up with friends and family and animals.Todd: Animals?Gabrielle: Well, I miss my pets.Todd: OK. Well, what pets do you have?Gabrielle: I have a cat, a dog, a sheep called Sydney, and two goldfish.Todd: Wow!Gabrielle: Yeah! And I really miss them.Todd: I'm sure they're really excited to see you. Alright, thanks a lot.Gabrielle: Cheers!

Todd: Hello, Gabrielle!Gabrielle: Hello!Todd: How are you doing today?Gabrielle: Good thanks.Todd: Now, Gabrielle, I hear that you are going back home to New Zealand.Gabrielle: That's right. I'm going home for summer.Todd: OK. What are your plans?Gabrielle: Probably a week relaxing, going camping, and then I'm going back to work.Todd: Oh, OK. Where do you work?Gabrielle: I teach as an English teacher in Christchurch in New Zealand.Todd: Oh, OK. And that's where you're from, naturally.Gabrielle: That's right.Todd: Were you born there?Gabrielle: I was, yeah.Todd: Well, you are going to have this short little break or vacation, are you going go to the beach or the mountains?Gabrielle: Probably, to the beach and camping for about a week with friends. Yeah.Todd: Actually, how warm is it in the summer?Gabrielle: Probably, a maximum of about 30 degrees. A nice dry heat. Very comfortable.Todd: So when you go to the beach is the water warm enough to swim in?Gabrielle: No, no! We swim but it is not warm. Yeah! It's pretty chilly actually.Todd: OK. Any other plans when you go home?Gabrielle: Yeah, I'm looking forward to catching up with friends and family and animals.Todd: Animals?Gabrielle: Well, I miss my pets.Todd: OK. Well, what pets do you have?Gabrielle: I have a cat, a dog, a sheep called Sydney, and two goldfish.Todd: Wow!Gabrielle: Yeah! And I really miss them.Todd: I'm sure they're really excited to see you. Alright, thanks a lot.Gabrielle: Cheers!

Todd: OK. Steven, you're looking at a picture. Please describe what you see.Steven: I can see a red double-decker bus. It's the kind of bus you'll see very often in London. In fact, I know this bus is from London because I can see the names: Chelsea, Sloane Square, Victoria, Charing Cross. These are all areas in London. Obviously, the bus is in London.Todd: OK. Have you ever been on a double-decker bus?Steven: Yeah, many times. When I was younger, you used to get double-decker all over England but now you only tend to see them in the big cities.Todd: Oh, really? How much is the fare?Steven: Well,it depends on the journey. It's..I guess it's not too expensive but the minimum price you would pay is -- for a short journey is about a pound.Todd: Yeah, who can you see on the bus? Can you pick out anybody on the bus who looks interesting?Steven: This girl here at the back that's leaning on the door, she looks really bored actually. Maybe she is going to work or something and she doesn't want to go.Todd: Yeah. Is that how you feel on the bus?Steven: No, not really because I haven't worked in England for a long time so I haven't taken a bus for a long time.Todd: So, you're British, do you missing them?Steven: Yes, sometimes.Todd: OK. Great. Thanks a lot.Steven: No problem.