Podcasts about todd yeah

This podcast episode delves into a powerful story of resilience and overcoming mental health challenges. Guest Todd Rennebohm shares his life-changing experience of a 911 call that not only saved his life but also opened up important conversations about mental health and addiction. Throughout the episode, Todd discusses his journey as a mental health advocate, a survivor of suicide attempts, and his recovery from addiction. From being diagnosed with chronic anxiety at a young age to battling alcohol and substance abuse, Todd's story sheds light on the connection between mental health and substance use. Todd emphasizes the importance of self-advocacy and seeking help within the flawed healthcare system. The episode also touches on Todd's book, which tackles the topic of mental health through a child's perspective, aiming to start conversations and normalize discussions surrounding mental health in families. ..................................................................................... Listen to Todd's podcast Bunny Hugs & Mental Health on Apple podcast or Spotify Follow Todd on Instagram @bunnyhugspodcast .................................................................................... RISING STRONG LINKS: Get new episode notifications: bit.ly/risingstrongupdates Follow us on Instagram: @risingstrongpodcast Facebook page - send your reviews and comments via the 'comment' button here: www.facebook.com/risingstrongpodcast WIN SWAG: · Email a screenshot of your 5-star review for a chance to win some Rising Strong swag! Lisa@LisaKBoehm.com Remember to follow and subscribe so you never miss an episode ..................................................................................... TRANSCRIPT: host/Lisa: In today's episode, we unravel the powerful story of a lifechanging 911 call that not only saved a life, but also opened up a conversation about mental health and addiction. Welcome to the Rising Strong podcast. I'm your host, Lisa, and today's guest is going to inspire you in so many ways. Tod and I met almost exactly one year ago at a mental health event where he openly shared his journey from the stage. He's a mental health advocate, suicide attempt, survivor in recovery from addiction, speaker, author and host of Bunny hugs and mental health. Welcome to the show, Todd. Todd Thank you. It's lovely to see you again. And at that exact same event a year ago this year, you were speaking at it. And so that was very exciting. Lisa: Right? It seems like we're like in a pinball game or something where we keep literally bumping into each other at these mental health events. So clearly, I really believe in the universe. When you meet people, it's for a reason. Todd: It's a reason. A season or a lifetime, I've been. Lisa: Told yes, or a lesson somewhere in there, I have a few lesson people. Todd: Well, yeah, that too. Yeah, sure. Right. Lisa So we're having this chat because you've had a long journey with mental health. How long does that go back and when did things start? Todd: Oh, boy. This could be a three hour episode if we wanted it to be, but it actually started in grade five. I was diagnosed with a stomach ulcer. When you're grade five, most kids don't have stomach issues that like 80 year old ceos of billion dollar companies have because they have so much anxiety and pressure and worry. But that is an ailment that kind of runs in my family. My grandfather had it and my mom has issues, so nobody thought anything of it. So they treated me for the physical part of it, but nobody really questioned why was there anxiety? Why does he worry so much? And that was the thing. Nobody called it anxiety when I was grade five. So I'm 46 years old, so that was almost 40 years ago. So, yeah, the word anxiety wasn't really a thing. It was more like, oh, you worry too much, or my mom would call it a nervous stomach. So the nervous boy love. It's called chronic anxiety, actually. So that's kind of when it started. And then in high school, I kind of was introduced to alcohol. Being in a small town mean, I say that, but I mean, kids drink everywhere. But that was very much the culture when I was that age in small town Saskatchewan. And a lot of my anxiety kind of, I don't know, it didn't go away, but I didn't worry about every little thing like I used to. And then, yeah, out of high know, drinking turned into more and more. And there's a lot of addiction to my family, a lot of anger issues with the men. So a lot of my anxiety and depression eventually turned into anger. I was bouncing around from job to job. It's so weird. I've been discussing this lately, how life can be very polarizing at all times. So it's like some of these moments, I look back and it's like, that was the darkest time of my life. But then I'm also like, oh, but I had so much fun, too. So it's like you can be miserable and happy at the same time, and it's hard to wrap your head around how that's possible. But I don't know if it's like different frequencies, so they're not actually overlapping, they're actually just happening at the same time or something. Anyway, yeah, I used to play in bands and stuff, and it was like, I mean, talk about touring with a band and stuff. It is so much fun, but also so anxiety inducing. And you're drinking all the time and you're calling home and the girlfriend's crying and upset and missing you. And so it's like, yeah, it's very polarizing. So anyway, I had cool things like that going through my life, but also just everyday kind of schlub stuff. Band breaks up, and then you're doing just labor jobs for minimum wage. So then my anxiety depression stuff kind of turns more into the anger. And I think I'd rather feel depressed than angry. I can't stand that feeling. I'd wake up angry and go to work angry just because I felt unfulfilled or something, or not satisfied with life and the drop of a hat. I would just be throwing stuff and smashing stuff, and it's not a good look. I mean, I felt like a child having a temper tantrum. Like, I've seen family members do it, and every time I'm just like, oh, my God, this is so, one, scary for people, two, just annoying. You just want to shut up. And then there I am doing it, and it's like, oh, my God, I hate this. But eventually I started drinking and using marijuana constantly, and my issues came to a head. I had a suicide attempt. I tried going to the hospital once and was basically turned away, which is kind of a reason for when I started advocating, because I went to the ER and was turned away. So then, yeah, eventually stuff came to a head again and I ended up. I quit drinking, and that was huge for my anger and my depression. Still working through anxiety, then Covid hit and more job bouncing around. Then eventually I was diagnosed with ADHD about a year ago. And so this fall I was working with EMDR therapists to maybe work through some of my trauma stuff. It's basically lifelong, and there's always, anytime you peel off a layer, there's another layer there that you could definitely work on. And whether it's you use the same strategies or the same tools that you used before, or you need a different strategy like EMDR, or a different diagnosis, like ADHD, a different medication, or a different perspective when it comes to therapies or different modalities. I'm just trying to get through the day without letting these extreme polar feelings pull me one way or another and just keep the balance, really. It's a journey. Lisa: I have a question for you. I just want to circle back to something that you said. Todd: Definitely. Lisa: In your opinion, do you think that there is a connection between. I don't want to just say mental health, but let's say anxiety, just because that's something you're familiar with. Do you think that there's an association, a link, a parallel between substance use, whether it's alcohol or drugs, and anxiety? Todd: I do, of course, everybody's different, but when I worked, because I worked at the treatment center I went to after I quit drinking for a couple of years, and it was quite obvious that addiction is a comorbidity of not just anxiety, but like PTSD, bipolar, different personality disorders. And really an anxiety is just a symptom of a greater thing quite often, too. So, yeah, I do think that substance abuse and anxiety, not only do they link, but they are a very common comorbidity of a lot of other bigger issues, including trauma. And I mean, trauma is also a huge contributor to personality disorders and things. It actually drives me nuts a little bit that when we say mental health and addictions, I wish we could just get rid of the addictions part, because it is part of mental health. When I say mental health or mental illness, it includes addictions. Someday it would be nice to just drop that. But for people that maybe don't understand, I don't know, they're still separated for some reason. Lisa: Absolutely. I found we were talking about this earlier before I hit record. Even amongst our own stories, we are not just this one silo, this single aspect of mental health. I really see mental health myself, as a massive umbrella. And under that umbrella. There are a myriad of topics, including addictions, including grief, including so, so many things. But you're right, the more I learn, and I feel like there's so much still to be learned, that trauma. Trauma, my goodness. I think if we could all heal our traumas, we would probably be far better off. But unfortunately, we live in this symptom, fix the symptom kind of society, right? So we kind of have to pick at the layers, as you say. We kind of maybe get a handle on one layer, and lo and behold, there's another layer to deal with. So interesting. Todd: Sorry, I was going to say also, even with my ADHD, I feel like that's a huge contributor to my anxiety, depression, substance abuse, maybe not the cause. I do think it caused those things, but also other things also contributed to those things. So it's very nuanced. It's all very complicated. There's no one treatment, one pill, one disorder, one diagnosis that's going to fix everything. For me, anyway. I'm finding that I think I have ADHD, but I also think I do have chronic anxiety. On top of that, I also do think that DNA has something to do with it. And nature versus nurture, like you were saying before, you throw spaghetti at the wall and you try different modalities and tools and things, and hopefully you figure out what's going to help you with that particular, I don't know, symptom or whatever. You peel another layer off and you go, okay, that's better. Now moving on to the next one. Lisa Exactly. And I'm certainly not an expert with a bunch of letters behind my name, but I do know that because we are all complex human beings and we are all learning so much more that I think the key maybe is being open. Right? Maybe we don't know what it is that we need or that what's going to, quote unquote, work. I don't know that we can be fixed as human beings as much as people try to fix us, but to cope better or to deal with the situation, whatever it looks like for us. Todd: Or change a belief system within yourself, right? Lisa: A mindset shift, whatever you want to call it. But I think the key is being open and like you say, to keep trying the things, even though you might not think that it's your thing. Like EMDR, man. Game changer. Game changer. When I first read about what it was and what was entailed, I thought, this is insane. I come from a long history of working in the medical system. I'm research driven. I'm data focused. And that EMDR, just when I was reading about it, I thought, well, I'm not so sure about this, but it was one of the greatest things that I did for myself and I cannot say enough about it. Todd: And I tell people all the time, even if it's a placebo and it works. It worked. So who gives a ****? Yeah. Lisa: So tell us about a visit that you had that involved a 911 call. Todd: Well, I'm getting so old. It was like eight years ago. And then it's like someone's like, no, that was like twelve years ago. It's like, oh yeah, I guess you were kidding. So I'm not sure how long ago it was. It was quite a while ago. So this was really some of my darkest times. The year before, I had drove myself to the hospital in Regina, in the ER, asked for help. None was given. And so I felt, as a man in a small town prairie, it was embarrassing for me as a man to go look for help, for emotions. It was huge for me to go do that and then to be told to go home. And basically I was super embarrassed. So I was like, all right, well, I guess I just got to suck it up here. I guess I was already on meds and kind of seen a counselor, but still, it was embarrassing to me. So over the year, I was a bad father, I was a bad husband, I was a bad employee, I was a bad son, and I was using marijuana, drinking all the time I was at a job. I wasn't finding fulfillment in whether that was at the job itself or just because I was in that frame of mind. And things came to a head one day and I had a few drinks in me already. I wasn't like super drunk or anything. My wife said something that triggered me. I don't even remember what. I don't know if it's a psychotic episode, but it's like a dream. I don't remember. I had people fill in some of the blanks, like even years later. But my wife said something and I snapped and I started punching myself in the face. I started slamming my head on the table and it freaked her out. She grabbed our kids. They were little at the time. She went out the door. And while I was there by myself, apparently I just put my head through the wall and I was slamming it as hard as I could against appliances of things. I was convinced in my mind that I just had ruined my life. My wife and kids are gone forever. Over that year, I not just had suicidal ideation, I mean, I was obsessed about it every night before bed, I was pushing knives against my throat and against my wrists, and I was doing really reckless behaviors at work that was dangerous, not for other people, but for myself. When people ask if you had a plan, when doctors are assessing you, do you have a plan? Are you suicidal? Do you have a plan? It didn't matter where I was during my day. I had places I could do things to take my life, right? I worked at the PFRA, at the tree nursery in indian head, and was like, that's a great tree. Mental note. Tools in my shop, I was, like, at work, it was like, didn't matter where I was. I had a plan. So things really came to a head, and, yeah, I was basically slamming my head against stuff. And then my brother showed up. He was the one I had a couple beers with earlier, and my wife apparently went to his place and said, what the hell were you guys doing? Like, you have to go help Todd. He's freaking out. And I pulled out a knife because I'd been practicing for a year, and this was it. And he tried to stop me, and I swung the knife at him, and then he jumped on top of me. He's a big dude. Got on top me and pinned me down. And apparently my sister was there too, and she's, like, trying to get me to smoke weed. To calm down, someone called the ambulance or called 911, and next thing I know, there's three or four police officers in my dining room. They don't know what the hell is going on. They see a knife on the floor. They see a big guy on top of another guy, and all hell breaks loose. Eventually, I'm screaming at them to shoot me. I'm begging them to kill me. I grab one of their guns. I didn't get it out of the holster, but I got my hand on one of their guns. And then things really escalated, and I had parts of my body that I didn't know had feelings that were hurting, because police are very good at detaining people, let's put it that way. And, yeah, they tied me up, and I just remember crying. Not sobbing. I mean, like, scream crying, begging them to shoot me. And I remember saying, like, you're hurting me. I'm tired of hurting. Stop hurting me. I'm tired of hurting. Kill me. Shoot me. But anyway, they detained me and got me in their vehicle, and they took me to my local hospital here in needing head, which then they put me in an ambulance and took me to Regina, to the general hospital, and they finally admitted me into the hospital there. But I remember pulling up. It was almost a year to the day that I tried going to the hospital on my own, and I thought, holy ****, this is what it took to get into the hospital this time, I'm handcuffed to a gurney, strapped to a gurney in an ambulance with two police officers on either side of me. But anyway, I got there. I spent a couple of weeks there, and, I mean, I could write a whole tv series just about the two weeks being in there. And I learned something while I was in there. I learned that you don't really get help in the hospital necessarily. It was a safe place for me to be to chill out for a couple of weeks till I was, like, got my wits about me again. And it did speed up the process to start seeing a psychiatrist because I was on, like, a year long waitlist. And once I got there, it was like, instantly I pushed up the waitlist. So there was that. And it was the beginning, I guess, of my healing process, even though it still took probably five years of really dark moments. There were a couple of kind of rock bottom moments after that, but that was kind of the major one that kind of got the ball rolling a bit. So that was scary. Lisa: Hey, rising strong listeners. If you've been enjoying the inspiring interviews on the podcast, we'd love your support to help us reach more listeners and hopefully gain some sponsorship. To do that, please, like, follow and subscribe wherever you listen to podcast. And here's a little extra incentive. Leave us a five star review, and you'll be entered to win some cool, rising strong swag. Your support means the world to me. Now back to the show. Well, what breaks my heart the most listening to that? Is that something, a situation so extreme is what it took for you to get some attention. Medical, professional, whatever. All the attention. Todd: Yeah. Lisa: How many people suffer in silence? Some people don't have these major breakdowns. That's terrifying that our system is so broken that it takes that much to finally get attention. And then what did your journey after that look like? Were you able to access a psychiatrist or a counselor? Did it tell us what that looked? Todd: Well, actually, while I was in there twice, aa came to my hospital room, and I was like, I shooed them away because I was like, well, I'm crazy depressed. I'm not an alcoholic. I have enough issues. I don't need to join a cult. I shoot them away. In the next few years, I was not thriving. Let's opposite. I was surviving, not thriving, let's put it that way. I was just going through the motions of my day to day. I kind of quit drinking on my own for a little bit, but I really upped my marijuana use because as a stoner, it's like, it's good for you, man. It helps my anxiety, bro. I know different now, but it drives me nuts when I hear people say that. It's not even addicting, man. And then I run out of weed and I have a nervous breakdown 4 hours later. It's my anxiety. Well, yeah, I wonder why I have anxiety. Anyway, I think it was a couple of years later. I did have another stint in the hospital. About a year after that, I had a kind of a bad weekend. It was only a couple of nights I spent in there. I'm doing my best. I'm self employed. Like I said. Eventually I start drinking again. I'm drinking, I'm smoking weed every day. And then I see in the newspaper that the health region or health district or whatever the hell it was called back then, they were laying off. I think it was like 20 some people from the general hospital, all from the psych ward, and I think it was something like 17 of them were psych nurses. And I thought, holy ****, like, I was in there. I know how I've seen how it operates, and I've seen how often security is called. At one point, security was called on me, and I ended up spending the night locked in a room with no bed. They just threw a mattress on the floor, and there was like, cameras. And I was like, security does not de escalate things like the psych nurses are trained. So anyway, I read this. I was like, how is this possible? And once in a while, anger, it's a good motivator. And I was so ****** off. Not like emotionally dysregulated anger. I was like, focused anger. I was like, this is bullshit. So I wrote, I don't know, a letter or blog. I don't know what I was doing. I just let my feelings out on. Well, it's not paper. It was on a keyboard. And I went through my. I basically told my story up to that point and how I thought this is all bs and all this stuff. And I talked about my suicide attempt, which I'd never really done publicly, especially in a small town. And I don't even remember doing this, but I sent it to a bunch of different media outlets and I posted it on facebook and stuff, and it blew up. It kind of went like, I don't know how many tens of thousands of times that letter got shared. I saw it on web pages, like in the states and stuff. Even. I'm like, what is going on? And the next day, it was like all the news outlets from Regina came out to indian head to interview me and talk to me about the stuff. So then I was kind of thrown into this advocacy role that I never thought I'd ever be doing. So then I felt like there was extra pressure on me. Now it's like, oh, okay, I've got people's attention, attention now, so let's keep this ball rolling and make some changes and make a difference. And within two months of having that pressure on me, not that other people were doing it, but my own pressure, I was in the hospital again, and I woke my wife up extremely intoxicated, told her I was going to harm myself and whatever. And that night, I wrote something on my computer. I considered it kind of a suicide note, but it wasn't really a suicide note. But again, a moment of clarity. I woke my wife up. Don't remember. I was so drunk. And that was the last night I drank, actually. I went to the small town hospital here in indian head, and I had an amazing doctor in town at the time, and he basically convinced me to go to treatment and start going to aa and stuff. And so I detoxed in the hospital here for a few weeks. And that really started. Well, actually. Okay, no, the other one started my journey. This was kind of mid journey now, but quitting drinking and quitting the marijuana and all that stuff, that was a huge thing. To this day, I have people reach out to me about a loved one they have, or even about themselves, and they're like, they're drinking, they're using, they're also depressed and all this stuff. And what do we treat first? The depression or the addiction? Again, no two people are the same for me. I had to get rid of that addiction before I could start healing about the anxiety and the depression and what was causing the depression and anxiety. That was the brown skin of the onion. I couldn't even get to layers until that big Chunk came off first. I'm assuming most people are like that, but again, everybody's different. Lisa Yeah. I think that is not a road that I have traveled, however, being on the sidelines of observing people in my life, I would say, from what I have observed, purely that I would concur with that. And so powerful. And it must be so difficult for loved ones spouses. May I ask how your marriage got through these years? I mean, that had to have been a massive strain. Todd: Oh, yeah. There was more than once where I wasn't sure we were going to make it. And I don't want to get too personal, but like I said, I was a bad husband. I was a bad father, I was a bad son. I was doing things that were against my own moral code. And then once you have some moments of clarity, you're like, what am I doing? This is not me. So she was amazing. My wife was amazing. After the first big stay at the hospital, I continued to see my psychiatrist and a counselor regularly. My wife knew somehow she's just a very intelligently, emotionally intelligent person. She knew that we couldn't work as a couple until she dealt with some stuff, too. So whatever I was going through kind of triggered some stuff in her. So she saw someone separately to deal with issues, traumas, and things she was dealing with, and then we would see someone together. So this was all happening at the same time. I was seeing my own person, she was seeing her own person. And then on separate days, we would see someone as a couple. And I really do feel like we got married young, like, we've been together for over 20 years, and I really do feel like we grew up together, even though we did know each other as children. We met when I was, like, 20 and she was 19 or something, but we really grew up together going through that. And then the next time when I was detoxing in the hospital and I quit drinking that night, it was shortly after that that I kind of wanted to leave the hospital and come home. And she said, like, I can't watch you do this to yourself anymore. I love you too much, and I just can't watch anymore. And she was like, if you are coming home, just come home to get your things, because I can't do this anymore. And I thought, oh, ****, okay, this is affecting people more than I thought. So I ended up staying at the hospital and detoxing and going through the whole thing the second time, it wasn't like she was mad or anything. I mean, I'm sure she was mad, but, yeah, it was just too. She was protecting herself and the kids. She's like, we can't do this anymore. I can't watch you do this anymore. And the kids are getting affected by it, and they're going to have traumas and stuff. Lisa: Do you think that hard line in the sand from her? Do you think that gave you a little nudge? A big nudge, maybe? Yeah. Todd: In addiction treatment, they're like, you're not doing this for other people. You're doing this for yourself. And it was kind of an ultimatum in a way, but also I was ready. I was so sick of it and I was just too scared. I was too scared to do it on my own. I didn't know how to do it. I was terrified. I tried for so many attempts to quit and to heal and it was too scary. So I'd quit. So generally, I don't think ultimatums work unless the other person is ready. Like I was ready. I just needed that nudge. And I tell people all the time too, that I think she had the harder end of the deal then. I've had people say, no, you can't compare pain, you can't compare traumas, and you can't compare, which is true. But as a parent now, it's like if my kids were going through it or my wife was going through the things I was going through, I don't know if I'd be able to stick around or just the sleepless nights, the absolute helplessness that she must have felt. God, I can only imagine how scary. Lisa Well, I'm glad that the two of you were able to work it through. I don't know the statistics, but marriage is hard enough on a good day to have extra stressors on it and so on and so forth. I mean, you clearly worked as a team, so I'm really glad to hear that. For anybody who might be listening, who is maybe at their lowest point struggling with either many of the aspects of mental health or addictions, what would be your advice to them? Todd: Oh man, there's so many things because there's so many levels to it. For one, keep advocating for yourself because the system does suck. And even when you're doing what your doctor's orders and you think things are going well, want more, demand more, get certain dates, whatever, like demand more. Because I guarantee you, I feel bad saying this because everyone I've ever met that works in addictions and mental health and in the health authorities, they're all sweet, lovely people, but the system, it's the system that sucks. And they know that. They even know that. So nothing against anyone that works in this field. It's just you have to demand more because the system will probably fail you at some point if you don't demand more. And I've seen it time and time again, and as far as we've come from my first suicide attempt to now, which has been about twelve years, it was only a year ago or a year and a half ago where that young guy was again told to leave the hospital in an hour later, he's found swim floating in the lake. So it's still happening. It's still not perfect. I know that there'll always be a certain percentage of people that get lost, but it's still very frustrating. And the other thing is, no one's going to do it for you. No pill, no therapist is going to fix you. You have to do the work. And that's the hardest part, is taking that first step to actually start doing the work. It took my wife saying, leave, I can't be around you anymore, to really start doing the work. I had seen a counselor for probably two or three years. Off and on. I wasn't doing anything. Like, I would go to the counselor session, I'd come home and not do anything to ask me to do. I'd be taking the pills and then be going like, why aren't they fixing me? Why haven't you cured me yet? And it's hard. It's simple. What you have to do is simple, but it's hard. It's not easy. It's a very simple plan on paper, but executing it is extremely difficult. It's painful, it's terrible. You think of having a broken leg, like the trauma of the broken leg, you don't even feel it at the time. It's the healing, it's the pain. That journey of healing sucks. And then it gets itchy under the cast and there's all types of things, and then you have to go through rehabilitation and all this stuff, like healing sucks, but if you don't do the work, you're just going to get gangrene and who knows what. It's kind of a weird analogy, I guess, but it works. So, yeah, it takes a lot of courage to heal, and unfortunately, a lot of people either don't get that nudge or they never, or something tragic happens before they're able to get into the mindset of doing the work. Lisa: I think you nailed it. There's no fairy godmother that's going to show up. No one is coming to save your butt. We've got to do the work ourselves. And you're absolutely right. It's simple, but far from easy. So one of the things I like to ask my guests on the podcast is what the word resilient means to you. Todd: I just used this word the other day, and I don't know if I've ever really used this word to describe myself or anyone other than Europe after World War II or something, but I use it the other day in a text to my know, life is still hard, whether it's financial or we were watching loved ones being sick. And like you said, even on a good day, marriages can be hard. So to me, resilience. When I think of the word resilience, I think of my wife and I, and I think of our family. And I said, we've been resilient in the past, and we're going to be resilient still, and we're going to get through this patch of it's not a relationship thing, but there's people around us that are suffering financially and kids are graduating, so we're borderline empty, nesting in a few months. So it's just a very transitional period in our lives right now for not just my wife and I, but for other people in our family. So when I think of resilience, I think of my wife and I, and I've never used that word to describe me or our relationship before. So it's kind of funny you use that word. You asked me about that today. Lisa: Well, when I started the podcast, and I knew I wanted to focus on mental health, but I knew that I also wanted to focus on people like you who really are resilient. And it's just really interesting to me because I do ask every single guest that question. Their answers are all varied, right? Because we're all unique snowflakes, but they're all the same at the same time. And I just find it so interesting. And I think it's your story that makes you resilient, right? I did a talk just a couple of weeks ago, and I said, unfortunately, we can't even talk about resilience until we talk about adversity, right? Because when we're sitting on a beach eating cupcakes all day long and the unicorns are running by, we're not growing, right? We're not becoming resilient. That's almost the opposite of resilience. So unfortunately, it does take adversity to get resilience. And like you are, you are that person. And I am so proud of you, Todd, so proud of you for the work that you've done, for the advocacy work that you continue to do. We didn't even get to your book. You've written a children's book, which I just think is just such a gift. It's such a hard topic to talk about. Yes, sometimes, daddy Christ, tell us just real quickly about your book and who it's for and where people can get a hold of it. Todd: Well, actually, the night I quit drinking and I said, I went to my computer and typed up a suicide note. It was actually the first draft of this book. So the night I quit drinking was the first draft of this book, and it was very different. It was the first draft, but it's basically the perspective of a kid watching his father go through depression, anxiety, and stuff. So the father never actually says anything in the book. It's always a conversation with the kid and the mother and the mother explaining to him that it's like having a stomachache. You're not well, so you have to get help. Sometimes you need rest. Sometimes you need medicine. Sometimes you have to go to the hospital. For whatever reason. I have a hard time tooting my own horn. But it's one of the things I'm very proud of, is that book. I think I've walked that fine line of making it realistic, but also not scary for kids. It's just this is what it's like. And kids do tend to understand physical things, so they can apply that to their emotions and to their mental health. And, yeah, it's gotten really great feedback from parents and from professionals. So, yeah, I'm really proud of it. lisa: Well, I think to me, the most important part is that it opens the door for conversation. Right. I mean, I am no parenting expert, but I do know that our kids don't necessarily learn from one conversation. Right. It's that constant revisiting topics. And a book for a small child is just a brilliant way to ease into it, open the door, make this a normalized part of conversations. Todd: Right, exactly. Lisa: It's very brilliant. And I'm, again, just so grateful that you were able to find the space and the heart space, really, to write that. So if people want to get a hold of your book, is it on Amazon? Todd Yeah, it. Yeah, if you go on Amazon ca. Or it's on some other websites and stuff, too. Yeah. Sometimes daddy cries. I wanted to add real quick that something I didn't expect with the book was opening up that conversation with the mother and the father, because probably 99% of the people that bought the book are females. So it's the mother or it's the mother of a child whose husband is suffering. Because for whatever reason, men. I don't know what it is. I talk about mental health all the time, and it's like 80% or 85% of my audience is female. And so it's like, I think men don't even know it's the problem because they either are drinking it away or getting angry. They don't realize their anger is actually depression or anxiety. Or whatever, so they don't even realize they're suffering anyway. That was a very interesting thing with the book, was finding that. Lisa: Absolutely. And maybe we'll come back and we'll do another podcast another time. But I think you critters, you males are absolute masters at a word I can never say. Compartmentalization, it's a big word and you just are able to put it somewhere. Push it down. I mean, not effectively. You don't get bonus points for doing that. But it's something that I think men do do, and I read something or heard something that we simple, right? We get better at what we do. So the more we push down, the better we get at pushing it down. The more we talk about it, the better we get at talking about it. So you know what? You are doing this world so much good by being a male voice speaking to mental health. And I know that eventually things will change and more men will know, opening up to this whole concept of doing the work. So I cannot thank you enough Todd for being here today, being vulnerable, sharing your story in such a raw and real way. Friends, make sure to check out Todd's podcast called Bunny Hugs and mental health. And make sure to follow him on Instagram at Bunny Hugs podcast. Stay well and be resilient and we'll catch you next time.

Todd: Okay, here's another thing. It's a little bit impolite. What about looking at other people's monitor over their shoulder? 'Cause you just mentioned the BTS. One thing I have to admit is, because I don't have my phone out and I am looking around, I have a tendency to see, wanna check and see what's on everybody's phone. And it's total intrusion. It's creepy in a way, but it's also because in Asia I'm a little bit taller than the average person, so I'm looking down and I can see everybody's monitor. And yeah, do you ever find yourself doing that too? 托德：好吧，还有一件事。这有点不礼貌。越过肩膀看别人的显示器怎么样？因为你刚刚提到了 BTS。我必须承认的一件事是，因为我没有拿出手机，而是环顾四周，所以我倾向于查看、想要检查并查看每个人手机上的内容。这是完全的入侵。从某种程度上来说这很令人毛骨悚然，但这也是因为在亚洲我比一般人高一点，所以我低头就能看到每个人的显示器。是的，你也发现自己也这样做过吗？ Angela: I do, yeah. But like you, I think it's impolite. 安吉拉：我做过，是的，但跟你一样，我也认为那个不礼貌。Todd: Right. So you gotta pull away, I know I shouldn't do it. 托德：对。所以你必须离开，我知道我不应该这样做。 Angela: But you know the worst thing with phones these days, the worst thing from my point of view is the amount of pictures that people take of themselves everywhere, on the BTS, on the subway, eating. I've been to S21 in Cambodia where those poor people were slaughtered basically, and there are people in front of pictures of these people who were killed, and they are just literally taking selfies of themselves, you know, this world isn't about you. It's sometimes, just stop and look and listen. 安吉拉：但是你知道现在手机最糟糕的事情，从我的角度来看，最糟糕的事情是人们在任何地方拍摄自己的照片，在 BTS 上、在地铁上、在吃饭时。我去过柬埔寨的S21，那里的穷人基本上都被屠杀了，有人在这些被杀者的照片前，他们只是在自拍，你知道，这个世界不是关于 你。有时，只需停下来看看、听一听。 Todd: Yeah, the selfie thing, I did a little bit. Sometimes I would do it almost like it's sending a postcard. 托德：是的，自拍这件事，我做了一点。有时我会像寄明信片一样这样做。Angela: Yeah 安吉拉：是的 Todd: You know what I mean? "Oh, look, I'm here." But I have to admit, yeah, I don't really like doing it, yeah. 托德：你明白我的意思吗？“哦，你看，我来了。” 但我必须承认，是的，我真的不喜欢这样做，是的。 Angela: I'm gonna take the shot again, the shot again. I use selfies in a group, because I think they're fun. It's actually quite fun to see one person in the front and the rest in the back. 安吉拉：我要再开枪，再开枪。我在团体中使用自拍照，因为我认为它们很有趣。看到一个人在前面，其他人在后面，其实挺有趣的。 Todd: Yes. 托德：是的。 Angela: And it usually means that I can get further back in the photograph, so that's always a good thing. 安吉拉：这通常意味着我可以在照片中看到更远的地方，所以这总是一件好事。Todd: Oh, yeah, that's true. So but, that's good that you admit you do some selfies. 托德：哦，是的，确实如此。所以，但是，你承认你做了一些自拍照，这很好。Angela: Yeah, yeah, yeah, with groups. And if I'm taking a group in the class, I'll get one of them to take the photograph. 安吉拉：是的，是的，是的，有团体。如果我在班上带领一群人，我会让其中一个人拍照。 Todd: Yeah. What about the ... mild pet peeve of mine, not a pet peeve, but people taking photos of their food. I don't know why it's a thing. 托德：是的。 那……我的轻微的烦恼呢？不是烦恼，而是人们给食物拍照。 我不知道为什么会有这样的事情。 Angela: Why? Eat it. Todd: Yeah, exactly, enjoy it. Enjoy the memory. It's interesting that you said that about Cambodia. A woman, a group of women once said something that was really like just a spear in the heart, really made me think. I was in Cambodia, this was years ago, and I was at Angkor, at Baton, Bayon, or I can't say it right, but where they have the beautiful face sculptures, and I'm like, "Oh, I gotta get a photo." And so there was a woman just sitting there, relaxed, she was maybe French or something, she was European, and she was like, "Oh, you want me to take your photo?" And I go, "Yeah, yeah, yeah." 托德：是的，确实如此，享受吧。 享受记忆。 有趣的是你对柬埔寨的评价。 一个女人，一群女人，曾经说过一句话，就像一根矛刺在心上，真的让我深思。 我在柬埔寨，那是几年前的事了，我在吴哥，在巴顿，巴戎寺，或者我不能说对，但是那里有美丽的面部雕塑，我想，“哦，我得 拍张照片。” 所以有一个女人坐在那里，很放松，她可能是法国人或其他什么人，她是欧洲人，她说，“哦，你想让我给你拍照吗？” 我说：“是啊，是啊，是啊。” So then she takes it, she takes my photo, this was before cell phone cameras. And then I'm like, okay, I have to reciprocate. I go, "Oh, would you like me to take a photo of you?" She's like, "No." I'm like, "You don't have a camera?" And she goes, "No," and she just points at her head and she taps her head like this, and she goes, "It's all up here." And I was like, "Wow." She was really- 然后她拿走了，她拍了我的照片，这是在手机相机出现之前。 然后我想，好吧，我必须回报。 我说：“哦，你愿意我给你拍张照片吗？” 她说：“不。” 我说：“你没有相机吗？” 她说，“不，”她只是指着自己的头，像这样轻拍她的头，然后她说，“全都在这里了。” 我当时想，“哇。” 她真的是—— Angela: amazing, yeah. 安吉拉：太棒了，是的。Todd: ... kind of like, politely saying, "Just, I'm never gonna ..." I've never forgotten how all those things look, I've never forgotten her sitting on the rock when she said that. So wise advice I think. 托德：……有点像，礼貌地说，“只是，我永远不会……”我永远不会忘记所有这些事情的样子，我永远不会忘记她说这句话时坐在岩石上的样子。 我认为这是明智的建议。 Angela: Yeah, I think so. Todd: Now, actually you are in photography. Do you think that actually taking so many ... I'm sorry, you have a photography business. 托德：现在，实际上你正在从事摄影工作。 你以为居然拍了这么多……对不起，你是做摄影生意的。 Angela: Yes. 安吉拉：是的。Todd: Do you think that actually taking so many photographs lessens the value of the art of photography and really appreciating a good picture? 托德：你认为拍摄这么多照片是否会降低摄影艺术的价值以及真正欣赏一张好照片的价值？Angela: Yes, I think it does. And I think that a lot of the apps and the things that you can use these days to improve photographs take away the real skill of the photographer, using the light, using the lines, using what's in the photograph to make a really good shot. I think people miss that these days. 安吉拉：是的，我想是的。 我认为现在很多可以用来改善照片的应用程序和东西都剥夺了摄影师的真正技能，即使用光线、使用线条、使用照片中的内容来拍出真正好的照片。 我想现在人们很怀念这一点。Todd: Yeah. That is true. Anyway, so today, no using your phone. 托德：是的。 那是真实的。 无论如何，所以今天不要使用手机。Angela: No, I did hear it go, "Bing, bing."安吉拉：不，我确实听到了“Bing，Bing”的声音。

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:  

Todd Riccio, Realtor and longtime Investor from California, discusses how he became interested in the Memphis real estate market and offers his experiences over the years of real estate investing and management of rental properties here in Memphis, TN. Find out more about this real estate investing podcast at: https://epmrealestate.com/podcast/california-based-realtor--investor-on-investment-real-estate--property-management-in-memphis-tn   Aaron: Today on the podcast, we have Todd Riccio. He is a longtime investor with Enterprise Property Management and EPM Real Estate, and we're going to talk a little bit about how he has become interested in the Memphis real estate market and maybe even tips and bits of wisdom that Todd has had over the years investing here in Memphis. Todd, you have been an investor with Enterprise Property Management for six years. Is that right? Todd: Yeah, six years.  Aaron: It's been a fast six years, right? Like, you really got in at a great time. Todd: I remember flying out to you, man. Well, I flew out to you and said, look, my goal is to get 40 to 50 properties. I want to get at least one to two a year, and you said right now, when we spoke, you said it's the equivalent of California's 2009, and six years later, you are pretty accurate, man. You know what I mean?  Aaron: Yeah. Todd: Because the prices have gone up and the properties that I first bought on Ross Road and stuff like that, that was like $105,000, probably like 250 right now. Just real estate agent out here in California. Obviously, prices make it extremely hard for me to build a portfolio out here. When the average house in Memphis, that would be 120,000, out there would probably be about 700,000 out here. So I knew that kind of branching outside of California would be the best option for me to accomplish my goals of having a portfolio that brings me $50,000, $60,000 a month when I get older. That's the goal right there. That's my 401K. That's my pension. That's my retirement, all these properties. Aaron: Do you remember what brought your attention to Memphis originally? Like what caused you to look over in our direction? Todd: I always did a bunch of research. I was going to seminars. I'm always looking for passive income, and Memphis was at that time one of the cities that would always pop up in different websites of best cities to buy rental properties, and Memphis popped up. Boise popped up, Indianapolis popped up, and Fort Lauderdale popped up. I think Scottsdale popped up, but Memphis was one that always consistently kind of popped up to me. Personally, I don't like the Panhandle States. I don't like Florida. Every time you turn on the news, Florida is getting a Hurricane. They're getting flooded. All this other stuff. There's Hurricanes. There's tornadoes. So Memphis was super stable. I remember when I spoke to you, you said, look, Memphis is pretty much an established metropolis. It's gone through its growth stage, and it's pulled backstage. You got Amazon headquarters there. You got Nike, it's growing. They're putting money back into the community. You got the Amazon fulfillment center. You got Shelby Farms. You got all this stuff. So it was kind of one of those cities that have already been established. It's not like an up-and-coming one, and I just felt comfortable. I felt comfortable with you guys. I felt comfortable because I actually flew out and me flying out and checking out the different neighborhoods is just one more piece of info gathering and due diligence, and ever since then, I'm comfortable with the knowledge, and I kind of think that that's kind of one of the things that I respect you on is there's times where I've said, hey, Aaron, what about this area, and you're like, look, I don't even think we could get a roofer out there because the neighborhood is not the best or anything like that, and you need that as an investor because it's not just about numbers, oh, this is a quadplex or a fourplex at this price, and the return is good. You need someone that's boots on the ground. That's, like, you probably want to like, from what you're looking for Todd, this isn't the neighborhood that you would express to me that you wanted or anything like that. I appreciate that info, and I think I'm comfortable after the first couple of them to get in my kind of system now, my numbers and my algorithms and everything, you know what I'm looking for and stuff like that. So it just seems to be working, and if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Aaron: Yeah, well, one of the things about working with you that I wish that other investors and other clients of mine would adopt is you do have a very decisive approach to investment real estate. You understand exactly what it is that you're looking for. I think that you had a really good start to your run. We bought some single-level homes in established neighborhoods that were built in the 90s, I believe, and you and I discussed this. We discussed in Memphis, what generation or what age of construction is really good for investments in an ongoing manner here, and so you and I talked about how, like we here in Memphis, if you live in Memphis, if you've lived in Memphis for a long time, if you do real estate in Memphis, especially, we have a term out here that we use called new construction or newer construction, and so what does that mean to us? Well, new construction basically means anything to me, at least, anything that's the late 80s or newer, and why is that different? Well, it's different because the technologies that we're putting into houses as we were building them back then are more durable. We're not dealing with poisonous building materials such as asbestos or lead. We're not dealing with shoddy electrical lines, like aluminum wiring that you found a lot in the 80s or late 70s all the way up into the early 80s. You're not dealing with things like I don't know… Todd: Asbestos. Aaron: Right, as asbestos. There's a type of plumbing material that the Dow Oil company produced. I think it's called polybutyrol or something like that, which is known to burst. It's like early Pex, and so if anybody knows what PEX is, we improved. We improved code and zoning, and these areas of newer construction are also in neighborhoods that are still highly desired by owner-occupants. And so Memphis being a wonderful town for investment, you can still get in and buy just like you have an investment property, which is right next door to someone who was on their property for anywhere from ten to 30 years, and you want to live next door or an own investment property next door to that guy you don't want to buy in neighborhoods that are all investment properties. You might as well buy a condominium or an apartment if you want to do something like that. But you've been very smart. You're like, where is the value? Right. So I've really appreciated you for that, and then the other thing that I love working with you on is you and I will often get in and we'll talk about a property and it'll get down to $10,000 or $20,000 difference in the price of the negotiation, especially in the last two years. You'll tell me, you'll say, Aaron, I feel like this is overpriced by 20 grand. What do you think, and I'll be like, yeah, I think it is. Your ability to walk away from a contract that's being negotiated and just say, you know what? I didn't like, what I saw, that the deck or the roof looks weird or that skylight looks like it's going to need repair. It's always going to be a problem. I'm just going to walk away. But we know that buyers can use that inspection as an excuse to walk away from something where they don't feel like now that they know the house better, they don't feel like they're getting a good deal, and you're very fast to point that out and say, you know what? I'm just going to pull the plug and walk away, and I love that about you. It's really good. Todd: Yeah, and the thing is, I'm on property number six and all other five of them that I've gone into contract. I've closed on because I'm also, like, a realist too of, like, look, at the end of the day, it's one-time fixes and stuff like that. But I think also having experience with the five other properties becoming more and more anticipatory of, like, I know that I'm going to get a letter from you guys saying, like, hey, the fence is shot or this that and the other thing and being in this industry, being in the real estate industry for so long, too, I'm all about preventative stuff and pro-activeness and stuff. So very rarely do I ever cancel. But this one I think I was like, look, it's probably like 15K, 16K, 17K to get it even rent ready, and after talking to a couple of agents, they think that it might slow down in November. I don't know if that's true or not, but around Thanksgiving time because I'm always hungry, too to get a minimum of one to two a year. So I'm still on the prowl of getting it. But it has to make sense as well, and the thing is, I've narrowed it down to a single story because me and water after being in this industry, water does not do well with houses and having a second floor. I just get nervous about water leaks through the ceiling and stuff. So single-story brick house for the maintenance, two-car garage, because I just value storage and stuff like that a usable yard, all that stuff where I'm sure other properties would do just as good. But this is just what I feel comfortable with, because you and I always have that conversation I'm like, look, Aaron, I know the rental market is very active right now, and properties are renting pretty quick, but I want the properties that no matter what the rental market is, if it's slow, if it's fast, if it's quick, what properties are going to be in the top 10% to rent out? I don't want the black sheep. I don't want the white elephant. I don't want the ones where in the time where the rental market is good, it gets rented out. But then when it's not good, we're sitting there and stuff like that. So I'm going to pay a little bit extra to be like, look, it's cool to have the two-car garage and storage when it's snowing and stuff like that. It's cool to have the brick and single-story because that's desirable and stuff like that. It's cool to have a yard because they barbecue and have their kids play outside and stuff. So that's also something that I value, as well as your opinion of this is going to be a very active one, no matter what the rental market is as opposed to on the lower end of it when the rental market does slow down. Aaron: Which it's funny that you should bring that up. So earlier, Todd, you had briefly touched on the fact that there will eventually be a slowdown in the rental market, and I know that your philosophy is obviously to make sure that you have just operable properties that aren't going to require. They don't require a lot from the renter. For instance, in order to move into their relatively simple, relatively basic layouts. There are all kinds of very specific preferences that you have that I think really head off these larger maintenance costs. That's really smart, and I agree with you. I want to go back and talk about storage for a second, at least a one-car garage man. For years you and I have talked about we'll look at a property. You'll say this one came up, the money looks good, and every single property that you send me has at least a one-car garage, which is very, very smart. In Memphis, Memphis is a very typical city of a million people more or less, and so in an urban setting or even a suburban setting that has urban tendencies or an urban demographic, you're going to have foot traffic, you're going to have petty crime, and so having an open carport in a city like Memphis is not a good idea. You know, like in Memphis, you need a garage for the door that shuts, and so you can keep your outside stuff outside, but also in an enclosed area that's secured. So another point that I would make to any investor that's looking to purchase property in Memphis is this if the house that you're looking for or if the house that you find that doesn't have a garage is $10,000, $15,000, or $20,000 cheaper than the house with a garage by the house with a garage. From a rental standpoint, it will always stand out to the renter. We have a great house on the market right now. It's a three-bedroom, two-bath. It's less than ten years old. It has a beautiful brick and French country facade. It was one of the last French country houses that were built here, and it has no covered parking and that it has no garage, obviously, and that poor house is just sitting out there and nobody wants it because they can't like, where are you going to store your stuff? Todd: Yeah, I kind of base it, even though California and Memphis are different markets, price point-wise. Human psychology, I think, is the same, and I think that after hearing clients out here, garages are huge because even if you're not going to park your car in there, people always have more stuff than they have room and stuff. So it's just having the options. I remember when I first started looking six years ago. There were some properties in central Memphis that have the laundry area outside in the carport area, and I'm like, Look, I don't want that either, because I relate that to the equivalent of houses out here having laundry in the garage, and sometimes when I hear people going when I'm showing buyers around like, oh, I don't want to go to the garage for laundry. I want it in the house. I just associate that with the same thing with Memphis, like, who wants to go out when it's snowing to get clean underwear from your dryer when it's 20 degrees out and stuff like that. So I just basically take my knowledge here and say what's the most desirable and the most desirable is going to be a two-car garage. Its single story is going to cater to not only the younger people that want to, but it's also going to cater to older people that don't want to climb stairs or anything like that. So single story. It's cool because it caters to more people having a yard to just stretch your legs out and stuff and not feel crammed to have kids play around and stuff and then again, the brick facade where there's not wood rot and damage and termites and all that stuff. So I just basically take whatever my knowledge is here and just transferred over to the Memphis properties, because again, at the end of the day, people want the same stuff just as people don't want to go in the garage in California. I'm sure people don't want to go out in the cold in Memphis and stuff, and so we can have an indoor laundry and they could park their car in the garage and walk-in their house with direct access and stuff like that. All that stuff is going to be desirable in my mind for the long term. Aaron: So there was a time when you and I were looking at these possible purchases, and we found several you would find, especially back in 2015 or so, and you would find four or five comparable in a certain area, and you would say, I'm looking at all of these. Which one of these do you think would be the most reliable? You know, which one of these do you feel like is going to bring the highest rent and obviously be the most attractive on the market, and we used to thumb through a Rolodex of houses that were possible purchases. I know that those purchases have probably become limited as you look in the Memphis marketplace right now. Can you kind of compare markets? Let's even say from 2019 to now, like, what is the difference to an investor when you're looking at the marketplace now versus two years ago? Todd: Well, I mean, the one thing that two years ago, I think that the good properties and stuff like that from what I saw two years ago, something would go like maybe 5000 over the asking. So if it's listed at like, 149, because up till last year, it seemed like $150,000 was like the ceiling of what these properties could yield that would fit what I'm looking for. But over the past couple of years, it seemed like 150 now is kind of the minimum, and it's kind of surpassed that. So I saw the prices increase. But another thing I've seen is whereas two years ago where if a property was like 149, it would sell for 156 or 155 and go 50. 00, 60. 00 over, and stuff like that where I just wrote an offer on another property and the highest offer with multiple offers was $30,000 over the asking price, and that just blew my mind because I was like, Are you kidding me? That's 20% over the asking price and stuff like that. So that's something that is new to me that I've seen is buyers in the Memphis market are aggressively going over asking, whereas a couple of years ago, they might go over asking, but it would be five, six grand, seven grand, maybe eight, nine grand, but not 30 grand. That was just unheard of or anything. So that's the one thing I've seen. But given that my background is real estate, I also have strategies that I could separate myself to where I can call the shots. For instance, when I wrote the offer, I was like, look, remove the appraisal contingency. I get it. I understand the terms, and I was like, put an escalation clause in which says I'll pay 33,000 over the highest verifiable offer and stuff like that, and that's where the listing agent came back and said, hey, we haven't offered 30,000 over the asking price, and I said, I'm out, you know what I mean? But it gave me the opportunity to know what I needed to be at as opposed to the listing agent. Just saying, oh, you didn't get it. We chose someone else. So there's different strategies that I use here that I use there that really stand out to the seller. And that escalation clause is great, because why not have a seller get 3000 more dollars with no appraisal contingency and stuff like that? So, again, if I could separate myself and write a more aggressive offer, I'm in the know of the risk and rewards and stuff like that. But it's all little strategies here and there that at least put you in the running to see if you want it at that price.  Aaron: Well, do you put a cap on your escalation clause? Todd: I don't because I could just walk away, like when the person said we had 30,000 over the asking price. I'm like, I'm out. But the thing is, I've seen when you put a cap, they know exactly where you're at, and so they know exactly where your cap is, and you could tell it. Say, I put offer 150 with a 3000 escalation up to 160 if someone comes in at 162, I'll never hear about it. So it's like, I'd rather not put a cap, and if an offer comes in at 161, they might say, hey, we had an offer of 161. You want to come in at 164. So I don't want to lose the house over two or three grand or anything like that. But when you put a cap in, you're kind of putting a ceiling on your place. So I would rather have no ceiling, and that also makes it difficult for the listing agent to know exactly where you're at because if you put a cap on it, the listing agent knows exactly what you're willing to come up to. If you put no cap, he's kind of flying blind to what he's advising the other buyer's agents of where my offers are. Aaron: So how are you financing your deals right now? Todd: I'm financing it with my own cash, 25% down. So $150,000 property probably takes about 30 GS, probably 35 with closing costs and stuff like that. So 35 grand gets another property. Aaron: So you got, I assume, a line of credit, or are you doing individual mortgages on each property, individual mortgages. So having said that and I know you're probably going conventional and not FHA, and so you don't have to deal with all of the federal requirements for houses to close. And then you've got repair addendums, and you've got all these other things that you have to deal with an FHA loan that you don't have to deal with conventional. So now we know you're fantasy game does appraisal matter to you? Todd: It does to a certain point. I think that I'm experienced enough to look at a property, look at what's sold around it, and kind of have a pretty good idea of where this thing is going to appraise that. So like the one that I was just talking about earlier, the one that came in 30,000 over. I'm out of that one. But if they came in 5000 over 6000 over and stuff like that, I'm not too concerned about it. I mean, even if it doesn't appraise by a couple of $1,000, I understand you have to pay to play and stuff like that, and at the end of the day, if it costs me a couple of thousand extra Bucks out of pocket, it's not a scarcity mindset. It's an abundance mindset, and I already know that I'm going to make the money back tenfold with just having another property because my main thing is keeping my momentum going and keep growing the portfolio and pushing myself to keep adding to and keep adding to it. I think I'm a good mix between looking at the numbers and being number conscious and stuff, but then also understanding that this is a good property. It's a good property. It's in a good area. If I have to pay an extra two, three, $4,000 to get it. It's the name of the game. I already know that I'll make it back and stuff like that in the next month with all the other incomes I have coming in and stuff, and it gets me one property closer to my goal of financial freedom and stuff. So it's just taking the abundance mindset and not the scarcity mindset because if you're dealing with the scarcity mindset and anything in life, you're always going to be hesitant and pulling the trigger and stuff, and it's just one of those things were being in this industry has really helped me out making these decisions and stuff, because again, I deal with a bunch of buyers out here where they find the property of their dreams, and they're scared to do a couple of thousand bucks, but they're paying 3,000 bucks a month in rent and it's like, look, just bite the bullet and just take a leap of faith and stuff like that. So if it matches everything and it's single-story with a two-car garage and it's upgraded because then I also look at okay, say, I don't get a house as upgraded. Is this what's the cost of the rent-ready one and that's like the other one I canceled on earlier this year. It's like by the time the fence around the whole perimeter was done cutting back the bushes, getting the wood trim of the deck repair, and stuff like that, as opposed to getting a property that's completely upgraded and spending an extra three or four or $5,000 because it didn't appraise but not really putting any money into because it's completely upgraded. I can quickly do the pros and cons and the risk and reward of that. Aaron: And the one that we were talking about may have only been a month ago. I'm not sure. Todd: Yeah, it was in September. Aaron: Yes, it was Southeast Memphis is where we were looking, and that house had zero updates. It was really disappointing, and you were really smart to pull out of that one. I mean, just updating a home in $2019. You're looking at $10,000-$15,000. We've got delays now we've got supply chain interruptions. I don't think we've necessarily seen the effects of the Hurricanes in the New Orleans area affect us as badly as we thought was going to happen. But we had a Hurricane come through about a month ago and it hit the Glidden paint factory. Hopefully, I can say that on-air and not have any issues. But the Glidden paint factory basically had stockpiled paint, as they always do, and the base paint and primer and things like that. But basically, the Hurricane flooded the entire factory, and they said, look, we can ship out what we've got and we can ship the base solution out to other refineries and paint makers so that they can finish the base product and move that out. But they were talking about a 30 to 45-day retrofit, and so we were going to have paint shortages and all of the lows and all the Home Depot and all these stores, my painters, a lot of my painters. They just stockpiled paint. They just said we're a Glidden company. We're going to buy up this paint and we're going to make sure that we have some in case there's a shortage so that they could continue to work through the winter. So anyway, that's just a random thing that's happening here in the south. We know what you like and we know what you've purchased. How do you foresee the changes in the marketplace if we take the whole foreclosure opportunity out of there, and I think that's something that you and I really need to investigate at a different time. But what are you looking at now? Because we know what was on the market. That was really great. That was rehabbed before. We know what's currently on the market, which really is not upgraded without a huge premium, and to ask and we know that you're not going to overpay and I respect that. I'm not going to overpay either. I'm not going to do it. I'll pay above a little bit for the joy of owning it and operating it and say, okay, I've got my one or my two for this year, but I'm not going to waste 50 grand just for the opportunity cost. That's not a good opportunity cost. Did you buy one this year already? Do we have one under your belt? Todd: Not this year. I'm going to be aggressively looking around November. November and the last two years. I've closed in December of that year. So like last year I closed December 31, and then I think the year before that I closed right around Thanksgiving and stuff like that. So I'm going to be aggressively looking in the next two or three weeks to be looking again, picking up my one for the year and then continuing to just push and push and push and even exploring the multi-units with you and stuff like that. So just always be open to pulling the trigger if the right property comes along. Aaron: That's cool. Just so that, you know, Glenn has got a couple in the bag right now. That just came across today, like in the last 2 hours, and they're both Cordova. Todd: Yeah, for sure, man. Aaron: Yeah, and that's exciting because we don't get Cordova a lot anymore. But these two, they're slightly distressed, just marginally. I would say 2% distressed, and that two to 4%, and of the value of the house itself, I would say, is cosmetic. So that's cool, and that's just proof right there to anybody listening. There's always an opportunity out there. If you're willing to have a conversation, right, you've got to be open to having conversations with people. You cannot do this on your own. When you listen to Todd and me talk right now, you're listening to two Realtors, and so earlier in our conversation, Todd was talking about how not trusting your realtor can get you into a lot of trouble. Realtors go through a lot of education. We go through a lot of continuing education. Being the principal broker of enterprise, property management, and EPM real estate, I have to take so much more education than even my agents. I have to constantly be paying attention to the news that comes down from our local state real estate Association and from the National Association of Realtors, and really know what's going on. Your realtor is being paid a Commission for their performance. Todd is a performer. There's no question, and he looks for a similar performance with us. Even though our markets are completely different. He asks me very high-end questions, high-level questions that he is asked as a realtor every day. He wants to know as the buyer, what am I getting myself into? What's my risk here? What do you think about this? What's your opinion? What would your experience suggest would be the proper course of action at this time? And then he relies on the information, my feedback, and my insight in order to make his decision, and I love the fact that he faces a lot of his decisions based on what I convey to him, not just his gut. So that's just so, so important. Listen to your realtor. There's a reason why you've hired them. So anyway, just to sort of ask you a couple of questions just to kind of wrap up where we are, and it's been a great conversation with you. Your fingers are on the pulse of what's happening in California, and I think California is kind of a leader in what happens in real estate. Really in the rest of the United States. You guys are sort of on the top end of fluctuations in the national real estate market. What happens in California often informs, the rest of the country as to where the real estate market is headed. You got some weird stuff going on over there like you were talking about earlier, very inventive insightful, imaginative solutions to real estate transactions, lots of technology, the rest of the country, though, like, if you stay away from the coasts, we still deal with hands-on. Right. Like, we want to go to the property, Glenn that we were talking about before. A lot of my agents will meet the neighbors. My wife, who just became an agent, by the way, four months ago, was at a property two days ago, and she was with the buyer who had flown in from New Jersey, and they were looking through the property and who would come out except for the neighbor. Right. So they met the neighbor and they got to ask those questions, right? Like, really important questions. What's your experience here? What would you do differently? What do you think about this property that you're next door to, or do you think they're asking too much? What would you do with this as a rental if you were to own it? Is it going to bother you to have a rental next door? What are your expectations of the community and of the tenant that leases here, and so a lot of that's going on? So back to my question again, when you consider your own business next year, and you also consider your investment business, what are the changes that you see happening in 2022 that you are aware of that you're going to be maybe shifting gears a little bit in order to respond to, and then how does that affect your investment outlook for 2022? Todd: I just think that there are so many moving parts right now that's all the statistical previous historical data. I think it goes out the window. We have a pandemic going on. You have inflation talk. You have the stock market talk, interest rate talk, Treasury bond talk, jobless talk. You got the borders that are going crazy around the country. You got other countries that are going crazy. So it's one of those things where I just put my head down. I just put my head down and do everything I can and just do better than the year before that and not really sway. I always think of Warren Buffett, where he said, when everyone scared, you go head first and stuff like that and that's kind of what I've been doing even in the stock market right now, like, all the stock of inflation and this that and the other thing I've just been continuing to buy and just continuing to buy and continuing to buy stock and properties I feel like are going to be in the future very productive and stuff like that. I'm getting into electric vehicle materials, raw materials. I'm getting into cannabis stocks. I'm getting into Carnival Cruise Line and United Airlines and Royal Caribbean and cell phone towers because of the 5G with electric cars and stuff. So it's just basically doing you and not really letting outside factors get in the way because there's times where I've seen time and time again people that I spoke to in my career five years ago, six years ago, two years ago, like, oh, the market is still going to dip. So I'm waiting here and they're trying to time the market, and they said that four years ago, I remember I spoke to a tenant four years ago and I was like, look, man, get in, and he was so Gung-Ho that he was getting a good deal on his rental, whereas just say the market value is like $2,000. He was getting charged, like, 1600, and he felt like he was winning the Lotto because he wasn't paying market rent, and that hindered him to buy a property because he was looking at the perfect property and this and the other thing and that didn't come along, and then all of a sudden, another year goes on and that and then nothing came, and then another year. Before you know it, if you would have bought four years ago, he would have had, like, 200 grand equity in this property and stuff like that, and you fast forward, and he's still been renting, no tax write-offs. So a lot of people look at outside factors of the market is going to dip in this, and the other thing. I just go with my plan, and my plan is at the end of the day, I want to have 50 properties by the time I retire, and if you really look at real estate, it might go down. You know what I mean? Look at 2009 when everyone thought the world was going to end in California, and then you fast forward to 2020 and they're above water again, and all the people that held onto their house and was okay with the 30 years the fixed rate at that number, paid and paid and paid and now have equity and now are above water, and the world didn't end, and all the people that short sell their house and gave up on it and thought that it didn't make sense to pay a mortgage on an $800,000 house when it's only 600 and they ruined their credit and they paid for rentals and this and the other thing and they're letting outside factors screw them up. It impacts you so much. So I have a big ideology of, like, make a goal and just whatever the factors are just making an educated decision and stuff like that. But I'm not slowing down whatsoever, because I already know that even if I buy a property that's 180 or 190 in Memphis and it goes down a little bit by the time I retire and stuff, I'm not looking at it to sell it. I'm looking at it as investment, passive income. I want to have about 50,000 a month when I retire, coming into me from all my rental incomes and stuff like that. If rent is going to go up over the next 20 years and I'm cool with this payment, and it makes sense now, then I do it. I don't try to time stuff. It's just it's one of those things where there's so many factors with Covid numbers, China defaults of Evergreen, you got the chip shortage, you got inflation, you got interest rates. There's so many factors that you could pick one and be like, this is really going to happen. But if I just do me, I've done that all the time and I lead with what my goals are, and it seems to work out because, at the end of the day, I don't let fear get in the way. I just say, you know, what if I pay this and it goes down because I also have that talk with my buyers and they're like, well, what if the market goes down 30K? I'm like, well, let me ask you this. If you buy a house and it goes up 30K, you're going to sell it and they're like, no, don't sell it. If it goes down 30K, I'm like, you understand that if you're cool with the monthly payment, you're fine. Right? It's like a stock. You could buy Tesla stock or go Bitcoin. Even Bitcoin was 40K, 45k. It went down to, I think last week 30K, and now this week, it's at 65K. So did the people really lose 10K or did they really gain 20K or are they still cool with what they got and only makers or lose money when they sell it and stuff like that? And when I'm buying these properties, I'm not looking to flip these things. I'm looking at my future 50-year-old self, and when I'm 50 and it's 2040 or 2041. I really going to care that I spent 170 on a property that the next year was 160, or am I going to be happy that I got 50 properties and stuff like that and they're all paying for each other and stuff. So it's always coming from a place of abundance and not scarcity, and the people that I've seen live their life on scarcity are the people that don't live a good life. I'll tell you that. Aaron: I think you're right. I think that there are a lot of people that make decisions out of fear, and I was reading an article about whether or not we have a balanced economy or an imbalanced economy, and this article that I read gave a lot of different ideas as to whether or not it was an economy that was based on greed or fear, which are the animal spirits which drive the stock market. Basically, it stated that there was more greed than there was fear, which is a good thing. It's a market that's a little out of balance. It's a little look to the positively expecting that things will be even better, and there's a lot of risks that people are taking out there. But at the same time, there's a lot of cash that people have right now, and we've seen that in California real estate, for sure. As I've said previously, that rip effect has gone all the way down to places like Memphis, Tennessee, Indianapolis, Cedar Rapids, other cities that are very popular for real estate investment. I definitely agree with you. Real estate, to me, is a buy-and-hold venture. I think a lot of people watch HDTV and they think I could flip this house. They watch Chip and Joanna Gaines or The Property Brothers or several new shows out there. I obviously don't watch IGTV because I don't know the name of the new shows, but they've got these new shows out there that are like people that are out there flipping houses and they're making money. My favorite shows are the shows where they do show people that lose money, and then they ask them at the end of the episode, they say, does this change your faith in the market or because you lost money on this deal? Some people get their shirts handed to them and they lose that $30,000 or that $40,000 on a venture that was supposed to make them $100,000, whatever because they tried for the fast money, right? I really appreciate your perspective on real estate, and I will say this one last thing. We have had so many houses sell out of the enterprise property management portfolio over the last two years. I would say it's at least 200 houses that have left in my management portfolio. That is a lot for a property manager to lose in two years. Simultaneously, we have had at least 300 houses come on over the last two years. So there are more people getting in similar to you, Todd, than there are people getting out. That's a big deal. I hope our listeners are hearing that I really appreciate you and your perspective on investment, real estate, and your partnership with all of this, and I am looking forward to working with you as the leaves change color and as they fall, things get cold around here. People do not want to buy so much. I think there's going to be an opportunity here this winter, this fall and winter, and then into next year. It's going to be great. So I really appreciate you coming on with us and sort of sharing some of your energy about investment real estate and how you've applied that here in Memphis. We're grateful to you as an investor and as a friend. Todd: Yeah, man, I appreciate all the insight that you give and it's invaluable, too, because again, the big picture is to have this for my retirement and stuff like that, and you really are the last line of pulling the trigger and stuff like that. Even down to a potential tenant where one of your staff was like, hey, Todd, we got these people and I said, hey, if Aaron's cool with it, I am and you came back and you're like, I'm not really comfortable with this. I value all that because again, what your ideal client is completely different than what California ideal client is, and so I could go and kind of base it on what the ideal California landlord is looking for, and it's going to be different than the Memphis landlord, and so I really value your guys ‘opinion and just the raw truth of it and stuff like that. So, that's all stuff that I appreciate you doing, and I think that we got a good system going on. I'm looking forward to many more purchases. Aaron: I'm grateful for that. Thank you for that. Interestingly. We're seeing the quality of the local Memphis and Southern tenant coming up, which is unbelievable. It's a really good sign of the local economy and the local demographics doing better. They're more successful in their own business ventures and with their education. You had mentioned major corporations which have relocated to Memphis and are now employing more people. That, of course, is going to continue. You and I didn't even have a chance to talk about the Ford F-150 Lightning plant that's coming into the Memphis area. It's a really cool concept. We could talk about it later. Basically, Ford had a plant here in Memphis that built Model T's and Model A's and all kinds of Ford vehicles here in the Memphis area all the way up until 1951. I think they sold at that time, and then now here we are, 70 years later, 75 years later, they're breaking ground. I believe next year on the Ford F-150 Lightning platform, which is all-electric.  Todd: Nice.  Aaron: This is just outside of Memphis, and so it's going to mean lots of great jobs and new housing, housing developments, and stuff like that. So anyway, we're going to walk through that together and see what kind of opportunities are out there. But thanks again for coming on, and I appreciate your insight as well. It's always very informative and helps me to even educate other investors as to how to do things based on your knowledge and your experience. So thanks for coming on.  Todd: Thank you for having me.

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.

Howard: Hi, Todd.Todd: Hey, how's it going, Howard? So I heard that you're really into motorcycles.Howard: Ah, yes, I love motorcyles. I've been riding motorcycles since I was 15 years old.Todd: Oh, really. Wow! So, what's the allure of motorcycles?Howard: Freedom. I like the fresh air. I like being out on my own. And I just like the feeling of riding on a bike. It's like a bicycle without having to pedal and you go a lot faster.Todd: Yeah, that's for sure. Do you have any good motorcylcle stories?Howard: About 10,000 of them.Todd: Well, have you ever like taken a special trip on a motorcycle?Howard: I've been all over the East coast of the United States, from Pennsylvania to Florida on a motorcycle.Todd: Oh, wow.Howard: Yeah, I've travelled many times and many different kinds of roads, and taken all kinds of camping trips on bikes.Todd: Wow, sounds great. So do you usually travel alone or in a group?Howard: Almost always I go alone. Some guys like to travel together but I found I enjoyed it by myself most of all.Todd: Oh really. Oh, wow. Don't you get kind of lonely?Howard: Never, there's always a new adventure on every trip.Todd: Have you ever made any special friends out on the road?Howard: Sure, bikers are like a special kind of fraternity. Every biker knows each other, and we're all very close even though we're not close.

Howard: Hi, Todd.Todd: Hey, how's it going, Howard? So I heard that you're really into motorcycles.Howard: Ah, yes, I love motorcyles. I've been riding motorcycles since I was 15 years old.Todd: Oh, really. Wow! So, what's the allure of motorcycles?Howard: Freedom. I like the fresh air. I like being out on my own. And I just like the feeling of riding on a bike. It's like a bicycle without having to pedal and you go a lot faster.Todd: Yeah, that's for sure. Do you have any good motorcylcle stories?Howard: About 10,000 of them.Todd: Well, have you ever like taken a special trip on a motorcycle?Howard: I've been all over the East coast of the United States, from Pennsylvania to Florida on a motorcycle.Todd: Oh, wow.Howard: Yeah, I've travelled many times and many different kinds of roads, and taken all kinds of camping trips on bikes.Todd: Wow, sounds great. So do you usually travel alone or in a group?Howard: Almost always I go alone. Some guys like to travel together but I found I enjoyed it by myself most of all.Todd: Oh really. Oh, wow. Don't you get kind of lonely?Howard: Never, there's always a new adventure on every trip.Todd: Have you ever made any special friends out on the road?Howard: Sure, bikers are like a special kind of fraternity. Every biker knows each other, and we're all very close even though we're not close.

Todd: OK, Nicoleta I am going to ask you questions about your kitchen.Nicoleta: Mm-hm.Todd: OK, first of all, what do you do in your kitchen?Nicoleta: Cooking mostly.Todd: Yeah, OK. At your home, back in Germany, who cooks at your house?Nicoleta: Well, I'm living alone so I do normally.Todd: OK, do you cook every night or do you usually buy take-out or?Nicoleta: No, at the weekends, yeah, mostly at the weekends.Todd: OK. Actually what's a German dish that people cook like ...Nicoleta: Typical?Todd: YeahNicoleta: Sauerkraut.Todd: Really?Nicoleta:No, Yeah, everyone asks me about sausages here by the way. But I don't know a typical meal. Maybe really sausages. I mean, originally but yes.Todd: OK. What's in your kitchen?Nicoleta: Dishes and food, fridge. No microwave.Todd: No microwaveNicoleta: No microwave.Todd: That's good. You're healthy. What's something you can cook very well?Nicoleta: That I can cook very well? Soups.Todd: OK. Like what kind of soup?Nicoleta: Zucchini, cucumber.Todd: How do you make it?Nicoleta: It's very easy, just I don't know the English word, so don't ask!

Todd: OK, Nicoleta I am going to ask you questions about your kitchen.Nicoleta: Mm-hm.Todd: OK, first of all, what do you do in your kitchen?Nicoleta: Cooking mostly.Todd: Yeah, OK. At your home, back in Germany, who cooks at your house?Nicoleta: Well, I'm living alone so I do normally.Todd: OK, do you cook every night or do you usually buy take-out or?Nicoleta: No, at the weekends, yeah, mostly at the weekends.Todd: OK. Actually what's a German dish that people cook like ...Nicoleta: Typical?Todd: YeahNicoleta: Sauerkraut.Todd: Really?Nicoleta:No, Yeah, everyone asks me about sausages here by the way. But I don't know a typical meal. Maybe really sausages. I mean, originally but yes.Todd: OK. What's in your kitchen?Nicoleta: Dishes and food, fridge. No microwave.Todd: No microwaveNicoleta: No microwave.Todd: That's good. You're healthy. What's something you can cook very well?Nicoleta: That I can cook very well? Soups.Todd: OK. Like what kind of soup?Nicoleta: Zucchini, cucumber.Todd: How do you make it?Nicoleta: It's very easy, just I don't know the English word, so don't ask!

Todd: OK, hello, Hisa!Hisa: Hi, Todd.Todd: How are you doing?Hisa: Fine thanks, and you?Todd: I'm doing pretty good. Hisa, you were telling me that you have a concern about Japan.Hisa: Yes.Todd: And what is your concern?Hisa: It's vending machines.Todd: Vending machinesHisa: Yes.Todd: OK. Can you talk a little about that?Hisa: Yes, as you already noticed, how many vending machines do you come across a day if you are on the street?Todd: Many, many.Hisa: I really do not think we need that many and then each one is really consuming energy, so that is my big concern.Todd: OK, so what would you like to see happen in Japan with the vending machines?Hisa: Sorry, what? where?Todd: Like, what would you like to happen with the vending machines?Hisa: Yes.Todd: Would you like more laws or..?Hisa: Number 1, it really aggravates the scenery. Yes, and then if each one of us take drink with us, we really don't need that many, each corner, or even one corner you really see so many kinds. And then that is, we can really evacuate so many and then we will have a safer, more space on the road, because even without vending machines, imagine how narrow our roads in Japan, even the walking path so narrow, it's dangerous.Todd: And you were saying that you can actually can see vending machines in very strange places in Japan, like very, very far places in the countryside?Hisa: Yes.Todd: Wow.Hisa: So, just one example is on the summit of Mt. Fuji. Yes, it's a shame.Todd: All the way on the top of Mt. Fuji?Hisa: Yes. So those mountain climbers are talking that don't make our mountains like Mt. Fuji. In other words, they are not to put another vending machine on the top of other mountains, because why we need it.Todd: Yeah, that's crazy.Hisa: It's ridiculous.

Todd: OK, hello, Hisa!Hisa: Hi, Todd.Todd: How are you doing?Hisa: Fine thanks, and you?Todd: I'm doing pretty good. Hisa, you were telling me that you have a concern about Japan.Hisa: Yes.Todd: And what is your concern?Hisa: It's vending machines.Todd: Vending machinesHisa: Yes.Todd: OK. Can you talk a little about that?Hisa: Yes, as you already noticed, how many vending machines do you come across a day if you are on the street?Todd: Many, many.Hisa: I really do not think we need that many and then each one is really consuming energy, so that is my big concern.Todd: OK, so what would you like to see happen in Japan with the vending machines?Hisa: Sorry, what? where?Todd: Like, what would you like to happen with the vending machines?Hisa: Yes.Todd: Would you like more laws or..?Hisa: Number 1, it really aggravates the scenery. Yes, and then if each one of us take drink with us, we really don't need that many, each corner, or even one corner you really see so many kinds. And then that is, we can really evacuate so many and then we will have a safer, more space on the road, because even without vending machines, imagine how narrow our roads in Japan, even the walking path so narrow, it's dangerous.Todd: And you were saying that you can actually can see vending machines in very strange places in Japan, like very, very far places in the countryside?Hisa: Yes.Todd: Wow.Hisa: So, just one example is on the summit of Mt. Fuji. Yes, it's a shame.Todd: All the way on the top of Mt. Fuji?Hisa: Yes. So those mountain climbers are talking that don't make our mountains like Mt. Fuji. In other words, they are not to put another vending machine on the top of other mountains, because why we need it.Todd: Yeah, that's crazy.Hisa: It's ridiculous.

Todd: OK, hello, Hisa!Hisa: Hi, Todd.Todd: How are you doing?Hisa: Fine thanks, and you?Todd: I'm doing pretty good. Hisa, you were telling me that you have a concern about Japan.Hisa: Yes.Todd: And what is your concern?Hisa: It's vending machines.Todd: Vending machinesHisa: Yes.Todd: OK. Can you talk a little about that?Hisa: Yes, as you already noticed, how many vending machines do you come across a day if you are on the street?Todd: Many, many.Hisa: I really do not think we need that many and then each one is really consuming energy, so that is my big concern.Todd: OK, so what would you like to see happen in Japan with the vending machines?Hisa: Sorry, what? where?Todd: Like, what would you like to happen with the vending machines?Hisa: Yes.Todd: Would you like more laws or..?Hisa: Number 1, it really aggravates the scenery. Yes, and then if each one of us take drink with us, we really don't need that many, each corner, or even one corner you really see so many kinds. And then that is, we can really evacuate so many and then we will have a safer, more space on the road, because even without vending machines, imagine how narrow our roads in Japan, even the walking path so narrow, it's dangerous.Todd: And you were saying that you can actually can see vending machines in very strange places in Japan, like very, very far places in the countryside?Hisa: Yes.Todd: Wow.Hisa: So, just one example is on the summit of Mt. Fuji. Yes, it's a shame.Todd: All the way on the top of Mt. Fuji?Hisa: Yes. So those mountain climbers are talking that don't make our mountains like Mt. Fuji. In other words, they are not to put another vending machine on the top of other mountains, because why we need it.Todd: Yeah, that's crazy.Hisa: It's ridiculous.

Todd: Alex, when you were little, what did you like to do?Alex: When I was small and I was in junior high school we used to like playing soccer with my friends. Actually in Kenya, what's different from other countries, we used to make our own soccer ball to play. So, it's very easy.Todd: Wow. How do you make the soccer ball?Alex: We used to collect like plastic papers and bind them with string, around them to make something round. So it was like, you didn't have to spend any money.Todd: Wow, that's ingenious. That's great. So were you a good soccer player?Alex: Not really. I used to like playing soccer but I was not very good, actually to tell the truthTodd: Yeah, me too. I wasn't a very good athlete. I mean I like sports but I was never any good. Um, so do you play soccer in Japan?Alex: Sometimes, until last year when I was in school I still played soccer. Right now, actually I'm not playing anymore because I'm like busy.Todd: Yeah.Alex: Yeah. You can't play soccer without a big group of people and everyone is busy right now so I'm not playing anymore.Todd: Yeah, that's a bummer. Like I always want to play sports but it's hard asyou get older. When's the last time you played soccer?Alex: About one year ago. I think November of 199?,...2003, November.Todd: OK. Actually in Kenya do you call it soccer or football?Alex: In Kenya you call it football.Todd: Football. I'm sorry.Alex: Actually, I've been in Japan for some time so I'm used to calling it soccer. In Kenya you call it football.

Todd: Alex, when you were little, what did you like to do?Alex: When I was small and I was in junior high school we used to like playing soccer with my friends. Actually in Kenya, what's different from other countries, we used to make our own soccer ball to play. So, it's very easy.Todd: Wow. How do you make the soccer ball?Alex: We used to collect like plastic papers and bind them with string, around them to make something round. So it was like, you didn't have to spend any money.Todd: Wow, that's ingenious. That's great. So were you a good soccer player?Alex: Not really. I used to like playing soccer but I was not very good, actually to tell the truthTodd: Yeah, me too. I wasn't a very good athlete. I mean I like sports but I was never any good. Um, so do you play soccer in Japan?Alex: Sometimes, until last year when I was in school I still played soccer. Right now, actually I'm not playing anymore because I'm like busy.Todd: Yeah.Alex: Yeah. You can't play soccer without a big group of people and everyone is busy right now so I'm not playing anymore.Todd: Yeah, that's a bummer. Like I always want to play sports but it's hard asyou get older. When's the last time you played soccer?Alex: About one year ago. I think November of 199?,...2003, November.Todd: OK. Actually in Kenya do you call it soccer or football?Alex: In Kenya you call it football.Todd: Football. I'm sorry.Alex: Actually, I've been in Japan for some time so I'm used to calling it soccer. In Kenya you call it football.

Todd: OK, Hisa, why don't we talk about food?Hisa: Good.Todd: OK, first of all, actually, can you cook?Hisa: Yes, I can.Todd: Yeah. What can you cook?Hisa: I can cook most of the Japanese dishes. And I also like baking.Todd: Oh, really. OK. Since you're Japanese can you tell us what things you cook in Japanese cuisine?Hisa: OK. I use a lot of vegetables in my cuisine, in cookery, and then I prepare lots of Japanese type of salad, which is sometimes we call it suno-mono.Todd: Suna-mono. OKHisa: Yes, with vinegar which is especially good for spring? And the summertime, and then also pickles, is one type of thing and then I use vegetables, even cooked kind of salad I use, that is, we call it O-shi-Tashi, green leaves, throughout the year, I use a different kind of green vegetables for salad.Todd: Can you talk about one kind of salad that you can make? (Yes) And how do you make it?Hisa: OK. For example, this is spring, I tell you one kind of salad, Udo.Todd: Udo.Hisa: That is a white stick, kind of vegetable. Just you peel them very thick because outside is quite bitter, so inside you slice up and then put them in the water with vinegar because that is how you can keep this white color. It lasts long, yes, and then, usually, I put some wakame, sea vegetables, and then two ingredients I use, and then add some ginger, which I love very much. Chop up some ginger, and then those three things I mix with vinegar, a little bit soy sauce and then salt, and then just sometimes you can even marinate if you like.Todd: Wow, sounds good.Hisa: Very light.Todd: And I can buy these ingredients at the Japanese supermarket?Hisa: Yes, greengrocer's, and it is only for springtime. Udo! Sounds like Udon. Just you remove "n"Todd: Udo. Good luck.Hisa: Alright, I'll try and make it.

Todd: OK, Hisa, why don't we talk about food?Hisa: Good.Todd: OK, first of all, actually, can you cook?Hisa: Yes, I can.Todd: Yeah. What can you cook?Hisa: I can cook most of the Japanese dishes. And I also like baking.Todd: Oh, really. OK. Since you're Japanese can you tell us what things you cook in Japanese cuisine?Hisa: OK. I use a lot of vegetables in my cuisine, in cookery, and then I prepare lots of Japanese type of salad, which is sometimes we call it suno-mono.Todd: Suna-mono. OKHisa: Yes, with vinegar which is especially good for spring? And the summertime, and then also pickles, is one type of thing and then I use vegetables, even cooked kind of salad I use, that is, we call it O-shi-Tashi, green leaves, throughout the year, I use a different kind of green vegetables for salad.Todd: Can you talk about one kind of salad that you can make? (Yes) And how do you make it?Hisa: OK. For example, this is spring, I tell you one kind of salad, Udo.Todd: Udo.Hisa: That is a white stick, kind of vegetable. Just you peel them very thick because outside is quite bitter, so inside you slice up and then put them in the water with vinegar because that is how you can keep this white color. It lasts long, yes, and then, usually, I put some wakame, sea vegetables, and then two ingredients I use, and then add some ginger, which I love very much. Chop up some ginger, and then those three things I mix with vinegar, a little bit soy sauce and then salt, and then just sometimes you can even marinate if you like.Todd: Wow, sounds good.Hisa: Very light.Todd: And I can buy these ingredients at the Japanese supermarket?Hisa: Yes, greengrocer's, and it is only for springtime. Udo! Sounds like Udon. Just you remove "n"Todd: Udo. Good luck.Hisa: Alright, I'll try and make it.

Todd: OK, Hisa, why don't we talk about food?Hisa: Good.Todd: OK, first of all, actually, can you cook?Hisa: Yes, I can.Todd: Yeah. What can you cook?Hisa: I can cook most of the Japanese dishes. And I also like baking.Todd: Oh, really. OK. Since you're Japanese can you tell us what things you cook in Japanese cuisine?Hisa: OK. I use a lot of vegetables in my cuisine, in cookery, and then I prepare lots of Japanese type of salad, which is sometimes we call it suno-mono.Todd: Suna-mono. OKHisa: Yes, with vinegar which is especially good for spring? And the summertime, and then also pickles, is one type of thing and then I use vegetables, even cooked kind of salad I use, that is, we call it O-shi-Tashi, green leaves, throughout the year, I use a different kind of green vegetables for salad.Todd: Can you talk about one kind of salad that you can make? (Yes) And how do you make it?Hisa: OK. For example, this is spring, I tell you one kind of salad, Udo.Todd: Udo.Hisa: That is a white stick, kind of vegetable. Just you peel them very thick because outside is quite bitter, so inside you slice up and then put them in the water with vinegar because that is how you can keep this white color. It lasts long, yes, and then, usually, I put some wakame, sea vegetables, and then two ingredients I use, and then add some ginger, which I love very much. Chop up some ginger, and then those three things I mix with vinegar, a little bit soy sauce and then salt, and then just sometimes you can even marinate if you like.Todd: Wow, sounds good.Hisa: Very light.Todd: And I can buy these ingredients at the Japanese supermarket?Hisa: Yes, greengrocer's, and it is only for springtime. Udo! Sounds like Udon. Just you remove "n"Todd: Udo. Good luck.Hisa: Alright, I'll try and make it.

Todd: Hello, Yoko.Yoko: Hello, Todd.Todd: How are you?Yoko: Good. How are you?Todd: Good. OK. We're gonna talk about trains.Yoko: OK.Todd: Do you take the train everyday?Yoko: Yes, I have to.Todd: Oh, really?Yoko: Yeah, cause I don't have a car.Todd: Oh, really?Yoko: Yeah!Todd: Are you have happy with that? Do you mind?Yoko: Actually no!Todd: Yeah, well, what's the train like in the morning when you get on?Yoko: It's really crowded.Todd: Yeah!Yoko: Yes.Todd: OK. How much is your train fare?Yoko: Almost 500 yen.Todd: What's the best thing about taking the train?Yoko: Mm, nothing.Todd: Nothing.Yoko: Nothing. I don't think it's great. Ah, I can sleep on the train.Todd: OK. Do you normally get a seat?Yoko: Ah, sometimes I can.Todd: Yeah.Yoko: Yeah.Todd: OK. Do you read?Yoko: Cause I can't read a book. I'll get sick.Todd: Oh, cause your eyes move around.Yoko: Yeah.Todd: Yeah, I gocha. What's the worse thing about the train?Yoko: Ah, too crowded in Japan.Todd: Yeah. It's terrible.Yoko: And I have to pay.Todd: Oh, you have to pay. Your company does not pay.Yoko: No.

Todd: Hello, Yoko.Yoko: Hello, Todd.Todd: How are you?Yoko: Good. How are you?Todd: Good. OK. We're gonna talk about trains.Yoko: OK.Todd: Do you take the train everyday?Yoko: Yes, I have to.Todd: Oh, really?Yoko: Yeah, cause I don't have a car.Todd: Oh, really?Yoko: Yeah!Todd: Are you have happy with that? Do you mind?Yoko: Actually no!Todd: Yeah, well, what's the train like in the morning when you get on?Yoko: It's really crowded.Todd: Yeah!Yoko: Yes.Todd: OK. How much is your train fare?Yoko: Almost 500 yen.Todd: What's the best thing about taking the train?Yoko: Mm, nothing.Todd: Nothing.Yoko: Nothing. I don't think it's great. Ah, I can sleep on the train.Todd: OK. Do you normally get a seat?Yoko: Ah, sometimes I can.Todd: Yeah.Yoko: Yeah.Todd: OK. Do you read?Yoko: Cause I can't read a book. I'll get sick.Todd: Oh, cause your eyes move around.Yoko: Yeah.Todd: Yeah, I gocha. What's the worse thing about the train?Yoko: Ah, too crowded in Japan.Todd: Yeah. It's terrible.Yoko: And I have to pay.Todd: Oh, you have to pay. Your company does not pay.Yoko: No.

Todd: OK, we're going to talk about apples.Kentaro: OK.Todd: OK, do you like apples?Kentaro: Yeah. So-so.Todd: OK, how often do you eat apples?Kentaro: Once a week, I would say.Todd: Once a week. How much is an apple in Japan?Kentaro: In Japan, it depends on the season.Todd: Uh-huh.Kentaro: If it's like summer season's gonna be very expensive.Todd: Uh-huh.Kentaro: Uh-huh. But you mean..are you talking about now?Todd: Yeah, like right now..how much does an apple cost?Kentaro: I would say maybe about a 100..15..450 yen per an apple.Todd: Really! Yeah..that's that's kind of expensive.Kentaro: Yeah.Todd: Where do apples come from?Kentaro: Aomori Prefecture.Todd: Aomori! Really!Kentaro: Which is in the northern part of Japan.Todd: OK. Oh..alright. And what colors are apples?Kentaro: Red or green or yellow.Todd: OK. Which color is your favorite?Kentaro: Red.Todd: Red. Yeah. Yeah. Actually I like the green apples.Kentaro: Really! Why?Todd: I don't know. I just..in America we have sour green apples.Kentaro: Does it taste different than the red apples?Todd: Yeah, like the red apples are sweet..and the green apples in America..they're very sour.Kentaro: Oh.Todd: Yeah..so..they're very nice. Um, one last thing! What can you make with apples?Kentaro: Apple Juice, apple pie, and apple tea.Todd: Apple tea.Kentaro: Yeah.Todd: OK. And can you make apple pie?Kentaro: No, not really.Todd: Yeah. Man, me neither.Kentaro: OK. Thanks.Todd: Thanks

Todd: OK, we're going to talk about apples.Kentaro: OK.Todd: OK, do you like apples?Kentaro: Yeah. So-so.Todd: OK, how often do you eat apples?Kentaro: Once a week, I would say.Todd: Once a week. How much is an apple in Japan?Kentaro: In Japan, it depends on the season.Todd: Uh-huh.Kentaro: If it's like summer season's gonna be very expensive.Todd: Uh-huh.Kentaro: Uh-huh. But you mean..are you talking about now?Todd: Yeah, like right now..how much does an apple cost?Kentaro: I would say maybe about a 100..15..450 yen per an apple.Todd: Really! Yeah..that's that's kind of expensive.Kentaro: Yeah.Todd: Where do apples come from?Kentaro: Aomori Prefecture.Todd: Aomori! Really!Kentaro: Which is in the northern part of Japan.Todd: OK. Oh..alright. And what colors are apples?Kentaro: Red or green or yellow.Todd: OK. Which color is your favorite?Kentaro: Red.Todd: Red. Yeah. Yeah. Actually I like the green apples.Kentaro: Really! Why?Todd: I don't know. I just..in America we have sour green apples.Kentaro: Does it taste different than the red apples?Todd: Yeah, like the red apples are sweet..and the green apples in America..they're very sour.Kentaro: Oh.Todd: Yeah..so..they're very nice. Um, one last thing! What can you make with apples?Kentaro: Apple Juice, apple pie, and apple tea.Todd: Apple tea.Kentaro: Yeah.Todd: OK. And can you make apple pie?Kentaro: No, not really.Todd: Yeah. Man, me neither.Kentaro: OK. Thanks.Todd: Thanks

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: 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: OK. Ramon, we're going to talk about opposites.Jamon: OK.Todd: What is big?Jamon: The earth is big.Todd: Yeah, I agree. What is small?Jamon: I'm small on the earth.Todd: That's true. How much do you weigh?Jamon: I weigh 65.Todd: Wow! 65 kilograms.Jamon: Yeah.Todd: Yeah, yeah. I'm a little bit heavier, about 72....What is expensive?Jamon: A big house is expensive.Todd: Yeah, pretty much anywhere. Ooh..loud motorcycle. Sorry! What is small? I mean..I'm sorry..what is cheap?Jamon: What is cheap? The 100 Yen shop is cheap.Todd: Yeah. What can you buy at a 100 Yen shop?Jamon: About everything.Todd: Yeah.Jamon: Which is good.Todd: Do you think 100 Yen shops are a good idea, or do you think they're environmentally a bad idea?Jamon: No, I like the 100 Yen shop.Todd: Yeah. The cheap stuff. Actually. I do to. It's nice. Alright. Thanks a lot.

Todd: OK. Ramon, we're going to talk about opposites.Jamon: OK.Todd: What is big?Jamon: The earth is big.Todd: Yeah, I agree. What is small?Jamon: I'm small on the earth.Todd: That's true. How much do you weigh?Jamon: I weigh 65.Todd: Wow! 65 kilograms.Jamon: Yeah.Todd: Yeah, yeah. I'm a little bit heavier, about 72....What is expensive?Jamon: A big house is expensive.Todd: Yeah, pretty much anywhere. Ooh..loud motorcycle. Sorry! What is small? I mean..I'm sorry..what is cheap?Jamon: What is cheap? The 100 Yen shop is cheap.Todd: Yeah. What can you buy at a 100 Yen shop?Jamon: About everything.Todd: Yeah.Jamon: Which is good.Todd: Do you think 100 Yen shops are a good idea, or do you think they're environmentally a bad idea?Jamon: No, I like the 100 Yen shop.Todd: Yeah. The cheap stuff. Actually. I do to. It's nice. Alright. Thanks a lot.

Todd: OK, Jamon, we're going to talk about abilities.Jamon: OKTodd: Can you cook?Jamon: I can cook a little bit. I like cooking.Todd: What do you like to make when you cook?Jamon: Just simple things. I love salad. I make a huge salad.Todd: I love salad. OK, can you sing?Jamon: No, I can't sing. I just sing for me. On the...when I have a shower.Todd: Oh, really, you sing in the shower? Nice, what, what songs do you sing? Like pop songs or just...?Jamon: No, mainly reggae. I love reggae.Todd: Wow! Can you play any musical instruments?Jamon: Dijuridu!Todd: Oh, really.Jamon: It's an Australian instrument.Todd: Yeah, yeah. Where did you learn that?Jamon: I learned in Switzerland.Todd: Really. OK. Is it popular in switzerland?Jamon: Yeah, it's popular. Everybody knows about it.Todd: Wow. How long have you played?Jamon: A couple of years maybe. Maybe 4 years.

Todd: OK, Jamon, we're going to talk about abilities.Jamon: OKTodd: Can you cook?Jamon: I can cook a little bit. I like cooking.Todd: What do you like to make when you cook?Jamon: Just simple things. I love salad. I make a huge salad.Todd: I love salad. OK, can you sing?Jamon: No, I can't sing. I just sing for me. On the...when I have a shower.Todd: Oh, really, you sing in the shower? Nice, what, what songs do you sing? Like pop songs or just...?Jamon: No, mainly reggae. I love reggae.Todd: Wow! Can you play any musical instruments?Jamon: Dijuridu!Todd: Oh, really.Jamon: It's an Australian instrument.Todd: Yeah, yeah. Where did you learn that?Jamon: I learned in Switzerland.Todd: Really. OK. Is it popular in switzerland?Jamon: Yeah, it's popular. Everybody knows about it.Todd: Wow. How long have you played?Jamon: A couple of years maybe. Maybe 4 years.

Todd: Hello! What is your name?Kentaro: My name is Kentaro.Todd: Kentaro. And what is your full name?Kentaro: My full name is Kentaro Sugimori.Todd: Sugimori.Kentaro: Mm-hm.Todd: OK. And where are you from?Kentaro: I'm originally from Hamamatsu city. Which is in Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan.Todd: Oh, really. Shizuoka is a nice place.Kentaro: Oh, really!Todd: Yeah!Kentaro: Have you been there?Todd: Yeah, I used to live there.Kentaro: Oh..Great!Todd: Tell me about Japan.Kentaro: Well, Japan is, compared to the states, it's small, homogeneous, however and it's also has it's own culture.Todd: OK. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. Japanese culture is very, very unique.Kentaro: Mm-hm.Todd: What is the capital city of Japan?Kentaro: Tokyo.Todd: TokyoKentaro: I believe so.Todd: OK! Yeah, and who is the leader of the country?Kentaro: Well, our political leader is Mr. Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro.Todd: OK.Kentaro: But our psychological leader will be our Emperor.Todd: OK. Nice, and do you like the Prime Minister?Kentaro: Yes, I like him.Todd: OK. Yeah, me too. Alright. Thanks a lot.Kentaro: Thank you.

Todd: Hello! What is your name?Kentaro: My name is Kentaro.Todd: Kentaro. And what is your full name?Kentaro: My full name is Kentaro Sugimori.Todd: Sugimori.Kentaro: Mm-hm.Todd: OK. And where are you from?Kentaro: I'm originally from Hamamatsu city. Which is in Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan.Todd: Oh, really. Shizuoka is a nice place.Kentaro: Oh, really!Todd: Yeah!Kentaro: Have you been there?Todd: Yeah, I used to live there.Kentaro: Oh..Great!Todd: Tell me about Japan.Kentaro: Well, Japan is, compared to the states, it's small, homogeneous, however and it's also has it's own culture.Todd: OK. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. Japanese culture is very, very unique.Kentaro: Mm-hm.Todd: What is the capital city of Japan?Kentaro: Tokyo.Todd: TokyoKentaro: I believe so.Todd: OK! Yeah, and who is the leader of the country?Kentaro: Well, our political leader is Mr. Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro.Todd: OK.Kentaro: But our psychological leader will be our Emperor.Todd: OK. Nice, and do you like the Prime Minister?Kentaro: Yes, I like him.Todd: OK. Yeah, me too. Alright. Thanks a lot.Kentaro: Thank you.

Todd: OK, Jessica, we are going to talk about cooking.Jessica: OK.Todd: Now, you like to cook!Jessica: Yes.Todd: OK. What can you cook?Jessica: I can cook Manicotti, Tacos, lots of food.Todd: OK. So what is Manicotti?Jessica: Manicotti is...it's a big noodle. It's hollow on the inside and you fill it with different cheeses and then you put red tomato sauce over the top of it and..it's pretty goodTodd: So how do you make it?Jessica: Well, you use Ricotta cheese, Mozzarella cheese, um , Parmesan Cheese,a little bit of salt, and basil and stuff and you mix it all together in a pot and then you stuff it in the noodle, and you put the noodle in the pan and shove it in the oven for 35 minutes and let it cook.Todd: Yeah!Jessica: And it's good.Todd: That sounds really good. How often do you make manicotti?Jessica: Oh, a couple times a month, probably.Todd: What is the secret to good manicotti?Jessica: You got to make it tasty, cause if you add enough salt or Parmesan cheese then it doesn't taste as good.It just tastes like your eating cheese. That's it.Todd: OK. Well I'll remember that. Thanks a lot Jessica.Jessica: You're welcome.

Todd: OK, Jessica, we are going to talk about cooking.Jessica: OK.Todd: Now, you like to cook!Jessica: Yes.Todd: OK. What can you cook?Jessica: I can cook Manicotti, Tacos, lots of food.Todd: OK. So what is Manicotti?Jessica: Manicotti is...it's a big noodle. It's hollow on the inside and you fill it with different cheeses and then you put red tomato sauce over the top of it and..it's pretty goodTodd: So how do you make it?Jessica: Well, you use Ricotta cheese, Mozzarella cheese, um , Parmesan Cheese,a little bit of salt, and basil and stuff and you mix it all together in a pot and then you stuff it in the noodle, and you put the noodle in the pan and shove it in the oven for 35 minutes and let it cook.Todd: Yeah!Jessica: And it's good.Todd: That sounds really good. How often do you make manicotti?Jessica: Oh, a couple times a month, probably.Todd: What is the secret to good manicotti?Jessica: You got to make it tasty, cause if you add enough salt or Parmesan cheese then it doesn't taste as good.It just tastes like your eating cheese. That's it.Todd: OK. Well I'll remember that. Thanks a lot Jessica.Jessica: You're welcome.

Todd: Hello!Kentaro: Hello!Todd: Did you have breakfast this morning Kentaro?Kentaro: Yeah!Todd: Really! What did you have?Kentaro: I had a traditional Japanese type of breakfast, natto and miso soup and rice, white rice, and fish.Todd: Wow! Do you eat that every day?Kentaro: Yeah, maybe five days a week I will eat Japanese style breakfast.Todd: Oh, really! OK. Nice. And do you eat it at home or at a restaurant?Kentaro: At home.Todd: At home?Kentaro: Mm-hm.Todd: OK. Do you make it yourself?Kentaro: Mm-hm.Todd: Oh, really. OK. What is a typical American breakfast?Kentaro: Well, I would say something like just toast and/or cereal and orange juice or milk.Todd: OK. Great and have you ever had breakfast in bed?Kentaro: In bed?Todd: Yeah!Kentaro: No, not really.Todd: No, OK. And what time do people usually eat breakfast in Japan?Kentaro: Well, I would say but maybe 7to 8. Something around that.Todd: Around 7 or 8. OK. Great. Thanks a lot.Kentaro: Thanks.

Todd: Hello!Kentaro: Hello!Todd: Did you have breakfast this morning Kentaro?Kentaro: Yeah!Todd: Really! What did you have?Kentaro: I had a traditional Japanese type of breakfast, natto and miso soup and rice, white rice, and fish.Todd: Wow! Do you eat that every day?Kentaro: Yeah, maybe five days a week I will eat Japanese style breakfast.Todd: Oh, really! OK. Nice. And do you eat it at home or at a restaurant?Kentaro: At home.Todd: At home?Kentaro: Mm-hm.Todd: OK. Do you make it yourself?Kentaro: Mm-hm.Todd: Oh, really. OK. What is a typical American breakfast?Kentaro: Well, I would say something like just toast and/or cereal and orange juice or milk.Todd: OK. Great and have you ever had breakfast in bed?Kentaro: In bed?Todd: Yeah!Kentaro: No, not really.Todd: No, OK. And what time do people usually eat breakfast in Japan?Kentaro: Well, I would say but maybe 7to 8. Something around that.Todd: Around 7 or 8. OK. Great. Thanks a lot.Kentaro: Thanks.

Todd: Hello!Tara: Hello!Todd: Can you say your name please?Tara: OK, my name is Tara.Todd: And, where are you from?Tara: I'm from England. I'm from Redding.Todd: Redding! OK. Where is Redding in England?Tara: It's south-east of London.Todd: OK. What's your hometown like?Tara: It's not quite a city, but it's big. It's quite spacious. It's not as crowded as Tokyo.Todd: Yeah.Tara: It's quite a few people. A lot of young people, and a lot of business there.Todd: OK. What's the best thing about your town?Tara: The best thing is the people. The people there are really friendly, and it's still quite clean and safe there.Todd: Oh, that's nice. Alright thanks, Tara.

Todd: Hello!Tara: Hello!Todd: Can you say your name please?Tara: OK, my name is Tara.Todd: And, where are you from?Tara: I'm from England. I'm from Redding.Todd: Redding! OK. Where is Redding in England?Tara: It's south-east of London.Todd: OK. What's your hometown like?Tara: It's not quite a city, but it's big. It's quite spacious. It's not as crowded as Tokyo.Todd: Yeah.Tara: It's quite a few people. A lot of young people, and a lot of business there.Todd: OK. What's the best thing about your town?Tara: The best thing is the people. The people there are really friendly, and it's still quite clean and safe there.Todd: Oh, that's nice. Alright thanks, Tara.

Todd: OK, Hello!Jeanna: Hello!Todd: We're back. What would you like to talk about?Jeanna: Driving.Todd: OK. Tell us about driving.Jeanna: Well, I'm gonna get my permit soon and then I get to drive. I'm really looking forward to that. It's kind of the start of being independent.Todd: Yeah, I hear you, so you say permit, is that the same thing as a license?Jeanna: No, you have to have your permit six months before you can get a license.Todd: Oh, really. How do you get a permit?Jeanna: You have to take driving school, then you have to go to the DMV and take a test.Todd: OK. What is the DMV?Jeanna: The Department of Motor Vehicles.Todd: OK, and they give you your license of permit so you can drive. OK, when you have a driver's license what places do you want to go to?Jeanna: To see my friends and to hang out, just to school and back.Todd: OK, nice, so do you have a car right now?Jeanna: No.Todd: OK, are you saving?Jeanna: Yeah!

Todd: OK, Hello!Jeanna: Hello!Todd: We're back. What would you like to talk about?Jeanna: Driving.Todd: OK. Tell us about driving.Jeanna: Well, I'm gonna get my permit soon and then I get to drive. I'm really looking forward to that. It's kind of the start of being independent.Todd: Yeah, I hear you, so you say permit, is that the same thing as a license?Jeanna: No, you have to have your permit six months before you can get a license.Todd: Oh, really. How do you get a permit?Jeanna: You have to take driving school, then you have to go to the DMV and take a test.Todd: OK. What is the DMV?Jeanna: The Department of Motor Vehicles.Todd: OK, and they give you your license of permit so you can drive. OK, when you have a driver's license what places do you want to go to?Jeanna: To see my friends and to hang out, just to school and back.Todd: OK, nice, so do you have a car right now?Jeanna: No.Todd: OK, are you saving?Jeanna: Yeah!

Todd: Hey, James!James: Yeah!Todd: Let's talk about seasons.James: OK.Todd: James, what is your favorite season?James: My favorite season is spring.Todd: Yeah, why is that?James: Because it's not so cold but it's not so hot that I'm sweating on the train. I can go to the beach. I can relax with my friends outside. It's very nice.Todd: OK. What is your least favorite season?James: My least favorite season in Japan is the rainy season ...because I don't like rain at all.Todd: OK. What season are we in right now?James: Right now it is the very end of winter. It is just starting to become spring.Todd: What's the weather like today?James: Today, it's very sunny. It's a little cool. A little breezy. It's very nice. I enjoy it.

Todd: Hey, James!James: Yeah!Todd: Let's talk about seasons.James: OK.Todd: James, what is your favorite season?James: My favorite season is spring.Todd: Yeah, why is that?James: Because it's not so cold but it's not so hot that I'm sweating on the train. I can go to the beach. I can relax with my friends outside. It's very nice.Todd: OK. What is your least favorite season?James: My least favorite season in Japan is the rainy season ...because I don't like rain at all.Todd: OK. What season are we in right now?James: Right now it is the very end of winter. It is just starting to become spring.Todd: What's the weather like today?James: Today, it's very sunny. It's a little cool. A little breezy. It's very nice. I enjoy it.

Todd: OK. Hello!Jamie: Hi!Todd: Hi! Can you introduce yourself please?Jamie: My name is Jamie. I'm living here in Japan, and I'm from Canada.Todd: OK. Where are you from in Canada?Jamie: Vancouver, Canada, British Columbia.Todd: Oh, nice. Were you born there?Jamie: I was born in British Columbia, in Victoria.Todd: OK.Jamie: But I spent my adult working life in Vancouver and Japan.Todd: OK. How long have you been in Japan?Jamie: Let's see, four years right now, and a grand total of six years.Todd: Wow. How much longer do you plan to stay in Japan?Jamie: That's a good question. I ask myself that on a daily basis.Todd: Yeah. Yeah. Me, too. OK. So we'll go ahead and pass on that one.... What do you think about Canada?Jamie: Canada is a great place. It's a..you know being Canadian of course. I'm pretty, fairly nationalistic about it, but it's not a perfect place, obviously. A lot of high taxes. Not always the job that you want is available but ultimately it's , you know, it's a pretty good place.Todd: OK. So when you get gray and old, is Canada the place you'll settle down in?Jamie: Settle down, that's kind of a hard call as well, but I certainly think of Canada as being a place I'd like to, I'd like to take it easy on a regular basis.Todd: OK. Great. Thanks a lot Jamie.Jamie: OK. My Pleasure.

Todd: OK. Hello!Jamie: Hi!Todd: Hi! Can you introduce yourself please?Jamie: My name is Jamie. I'm living here in Japan, and I'm from Canada.Todd: OK. Where are you from in Canada?Jamie: Vancouver, Canada, British Columbia.Todd: Oh, nice. Were you born there?Jamie: I was born in British Columbia, in Victoria.Todd: OK.Jamie: But I spent my adult working life in Vancouver and Japan.Todd: OK. How long have you been in Japan?Jamie: Let's see, four years right now, and a grand total of six years.Todd: Wow. How much longer do you plan to stay in Japan?Jamie: That's a good question. I ask myself that on a daily basis.Todd: Yeah. Yeah. Me, too. OK. So we'll go ahead and pass on that one.... What do you think about Canada?Jamie: Canada is a great place. It's a..you know being Canadian of course. I'm pretty, fairly nationalistic about it, but it's not a perfect place, obviously. A lot of high taxes. Not always the job that you want is available but ultimately it's , you know, it's a pretty good place.Todd: OK. So when you get gray and old, is Canada the place you'll settle down in?Jamie: Settle down, that's kind of a hard call as well, but I certainly think of Canada as being a place I'd like to, I'd like to take it easy on a regular basis.Todd: OK. Great. Thanks a lot Jamie.Jamie: OK. My Pleasure.

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. Jamie. We're back.Jamie: OK.Todd: Jamie, you're a businessman.Jamie: Sometimes.Todd: OK, so...Jamie: Not his week.Todd: Not this week! OK. We're going to talk about globalization.Jamie: OK.Todd: What do you think about globalization?Jamie: Globalization! I'm not really sure, I have a clear definition of what globalization is, but if globalization is several nations trading on the open, or semi-regular basis then I think globalization is a relatively positive thing.Todd: Yeah!Jamie: For, certainly for the countries that are involved in the, in the business that is going on between the nations that are obviously involved with that business.Todd: Yeah. OK. Great. So do you think it makes the world a better place?Jamie: Yeah, the world a better place? No, I don't think it makes the world a better place. I think it's just good for the countries that are directly and indirectly involved with the business that is going on between countries.Todd: OK. Great. Thanks a lot.Jamie: My pleasure.

Todd: OK. Jamie. We're back.Jamie: OK.Todd: Jamie, you're a businessman.Jamie: Sometimes.Todd: OK, so...Jamie: Not his week.Todd: Not this week! OK. We're going to talk about globalization.Jamie: OK.Todd: What do you think about globalization?Jamie: Globalization! I'm not really sure, I have a clear definition of what globalization is, but if globalization is several nations trading on the open, or semi-regular basis then I think globalization is a relatively positive thing.Todd: Yeah!Jamie: For, certainly for the countries that are involved in the, in the business that is going on between the nations that are obviously involved with that business.Todd: Yeah. OK. Great. So do you think it makes the world a better place?Jamie: Yeah, the world a better place? No, I don't think it makes the world a better place. I think it's just good for the countries that are directly and indirectly involved with the business that is going on between countries.Todd: OK. Great. Thanks a lot.Jamie: My pleasure.

We often talk about how XR technologies are great tools for education and training on this podcast. But why is that? Like, physiologically? Turns out, XR tickles the thalamus in ways traditional learning strategies never could, and that’s not us just whistling Dixie. Today’s guest — Cognitive Design & Statistical Consulting, LLC CEO Todd Maddox — has a PhD in Computational and Psychological Science, meaning there’s no one better to explain why XR and your brain are a match made in heaven. Alan: You’re listening to the XR for Business Podcast with your host, Alan Smithson. Today’s guest is Todd Maddox. He is a cognitive design specialist. Todd is a PhD, and the CEO and founder of Cognitive Design and Statistical Consulting LLC. He’s also a learning scientist and a research fellow at Amalgam Insights. His passion is to apply his 25 years of psychological and neuroscientific expertise gained by managing a large human learning, memory, and performance laboratory to help build better education and training solutions. Todd has published over 200 peer reviewed scientific articles, resulting in over 10,000 academic citations and hundreds of speaking engagements. During his 25 year academic career, he’s awarded $10-million in federal grants from the National Institute of Health, National Science Foundation, and the Department of Defense to support his research. Since entering the private sector, Todd has embarked on a mission to translate the amazing body of research conducted in the ivory towers into plain English and help companies leverage this research to build better products. Todd is especially interested in applying his expertise in the psychology and neuroscience of learning, memory, and performance, and to use immersive technologies in manufacturing, health care, corporate training, and retail, to name a few. You can follow Todd on LinkedIn. Just look for “Todd Maddox PhD.” Todd, welcome to the show. Todd: Hey, Alan, it is fantastic to be here. Thank you. Alan: It’s such an honor. I’ve been reading your posts and your articles, and trying to get through some of your scientific papers is a challenge. It’s so much information there. Todd: Yeah, I hear you. And to be honest, my recommendation is to sort of skim the peer-reviewed stuff, because it does seem like it’s written in a foreign language, even though it is English. And the LinkedIn post and the more recent stuff, where I really try to talk in plain English, because if a scientist can’t present their work in plain English then there’s something wrong. So that’s what I’m trying to do. Alan: I love it. And one of the articles that was recently published was a report on VR as an empathy builder, through Tech Trends. Todd: Yeah. Alan: Here, I’m just going to read a quote from it: “Any profession that requires interpersonal interaction, such as education, retail, food service, call centers is better served with strong empathy.” Let’s start with that. Todd: Totally, yeah. Every one of those examples is a people example; people interacting with other people. I know we’ve got amazing technologies; we’ve got robots, we’ve got all these wonderful things that are making our lives better. But let’s face it, in the end, it’s about people interacting with other people and caring for other people, walking a mile in somebody else’s shoes. That is really just so critical. These technologies — in particular virtual reality, I would say — this is an immersive technology. I could be dropped into any environment. ThatR