Podcasts about Versus

Febrero de 1944. Un P-51B Mustang solitario, pilotado por el novato Teniente Reed, es interceptado por dos Fw 190 sobre Holanda. Comparamos dos de las máquinas más letales en los cielos de Europa en plena campaña de bombardeo. El Focke Wulf es un asesino nato en busca de cuatrimotores aliados. El Mustang es el paladín defensor de las formaciones de B-17 que machacan la industria alemana. ¿Cuál fue el mejor avión? En la serie Versus no nos limitamos a enfrentar tecnológicamente un sistema de armas contra otro, sino que confrontemos aspectos como su rol, diseño, fabricación, recursos, pilotos, integración ... Con Antonio Gómez y Dani CarAn. Escucha el episodio completo en la app de iVoox, o descubre todo el catálogo de iVoox Originals

Our Chief U.S. Economist Michael Gapen and Global Head of Macro Strategy Matthew Hornbach discuss potential next steps for the FOMC and the risks to their views from the U.S. government shutdown. Read more insights from Morgan Stanley.----- Transcript -----Matthew Hornbach: Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Matthew Hornbach, Global Head of Macro Strategy.Michael Gapen: And I'm Michael Gapen, Morgan Stanley's Chief U.S. Economist.Matthew Hornbach: The October FOMC meeting delivered a quarter percent rate cut as widely expected – but things are more complicated, and policy is not on a preset path from here.It's Friday, November 7th at 10am in New York.So, Mike, the Fed did cut by 25 basis points in October, but it was not a unanimous decision. And the Federal Open Market Committee decided to end the reduction of its balance sheet on December 1st – earlier than we expected. How did things unfold and does this change your outlook in any way?Michael Gapen: Yeah, Matt, it was a surprise to me. Not so much the statement or the decision, but there were dissents. There was a dissent in favor of a 50-basis point cut. There was a dissent in favor of no cut. And that foreshadowed the press conference – where really the conversation was about, I think, a divided committee; and a committee that didn't have a lot of consensus on what would come next.The balance sheet discussion, which we can get into, it came a little sooner than we thought, but it was largely in line with our view. And I'm not sure it's a macro critical decision right now. But I do think it was a surprise to markets and it was certainly a surprise to me – how much Powell's tone shifted between September and October, in terms of what the market could expect from the Fed going forward.So, what he said in essence, the key points, you know. The policy's not on a preset path from here. Or [a] cut in December is maybe not decidedly part of the baseline; or certainly is not a foregone conclusion. And I think what that reflects is a couple of things.One is that they're recalibrating policy based on a risk management view. So, you can cut almost independent of the data, at least in the beginning. And so now I think Powell's saying, ‘Well, at least from here, future cuts are probably more data dependent than those initial cuts.' But second, and I think most importantly is the division that appeared within the Fed. I think there's one group that's hawkish, one group that's dovish, and I think it reflects the division and the tension that we have in the economic data.So, I think the hawkish crowd is looking at strong activity data, strong AI spending, an upper income consumer that seems to be doing just fine. And they're saying, ‘Why are we cutting? Financial conditions for the business community is pretty easy. Maybe the neutral rate of interest is higher. We're probably less restrictive than you think.' And then I think the other side of the committee, which I believe still that Chair Powell is in, is looking at a market slowdown in hiring a weak labor market. What that means for growth in real income for those households that depend on labor market income to consume; there's probably some front running of autos that artificially boosted growth in the third quarter.So, I think that the dissents, or I should say the division within the FOMC, I think reflects the tension in the underlying data. So, to know which way monetary policy evolves, Matt, it's essentially trying to decide: does the labor market rebound towards the activity data or does the activity data decelerate at least temporarily to the labor market?Matthew Hornbach: Mike, you talked a lot about data just now, and we're not exactly getting a lot of government data at the moment. How are you thinking about the path for the data in terms of its availability between now and the December FOMC meeting? And how do you think that may affect the Fed's willingness to move forward with another rate cut in the cycle?Michael Gapen: Right. So that's key and critical to understanding, right? We're operating under the assumption, of course the federal government shutdowns going to end at some point. We're going to get all this back data released and we can assess where the economy is or has been. I think the way markets should think about this is if the government shutdown has ended in the next few weeks, say before Thanksgiving – then I think we, markets, the Fed will have the bulk of the data in front of them and available to assess the economy at the December FOMC meeting.They may not have it all, but they should get at least some of that data released. We can assess it. If the economy has moderated and weakened a bit, the labor market has continued to cool, the Fed can cut. If it shows maybe the labor market rebounding downside risk to employment being diminished, maybe the Fed doesn't cut.So that's a world and it is our expectation the shutdown should end in the next few weeks. We're already at the longest shutdown on record, so we will get some data in hand to make the decision for December. Perhaps that's wishful thinking, Matt, and maybe we go beyond Thanksgiving, and the shutdown extends into December.My suspicion though, is if the government is still shut down in December, I can't imagine the economy's getting better. So, I think the Fed could lean in the direction of taking one more step.Matthew Hornbach: This is going to be very critical for how the markets think about the outlook in 2026 and price the outlook for 2026. The last FOMC meeting of the year has that type of importance for markets – pricing, the path of Fed policy, and the path of the economy into 2026. Because if we end up receiving a rate cut from the Fed, the dialogue in the investment community will be focused on when might the next cut arrive. Versus if we don't get that rate cut in December, the dialogue will focus on, maybe we will never see another rate cut in the cycle. And what if we see a rate hike as we make our way through the second half of 2026? So that can have a dramatic impact on the U.S. Treasury market and how investors think about the outlook for policy and the economy.Michael Gapen: So, I think that's right. And as you know, our baseline outlook is at least through the first quarter, if not into the second quarter. The private sector will still be attempting to pass through tariffs into prices. And I think in the meantime, demand for labor and the hiring rate will remain low.And so, we look for additional labor market slack to build. Not a lot, but the unemployment rate moving to more like 4.6, maybe 4.7 – and that underpins our expectation the Fed will be reducing rates in in 2026. But I think as you note, and as I mentioned earlier, there is this tension in the data and it's not inconceivable that the labor market accelerates. And you get, kind of, an animal spirits driven 2026; where a combination of momentum in the data, AI-related business spending, wealth effects for upper income consumers and maybe a larger fiscal stimulus from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, lead the economy to outperform.And to your point, if that is happening, it's not farfetched to think, well, if the Fed put in risk management insurance cuts, perhaps they need to take those out. And that could build in a way where that expectation, let's say towards the second half or the fourth quarter maybe of 2026, maybe it takes into 2027. But I agree with you that if the Fed can't cut in December because the economy's doing well and the data show that, and we learn more of that in 2026, you're right.So, it would… And may maybe to put it more simply, the more the Fed cuts, the more you need to open both sides of the rate path distribution, right? The deeper they cut, the greater the probability over time, they're going to have to raise those rates. And so, if the Fed is forced to stop in December, yeah, you can make that argument.Matthew Hornbach: Indeed, a lot of the factors that you mentioned are factors that are coming up in investor conversations increasingly. The way I've been framing it in my discussions is that investors want to see the glass as half full today, versus in the middle of this year the glass was looking half empty. And of course, as we head into the holiday season, the glass will be filled with something perhaps a bit tastier than water. And so…Michael Gapen: Fill my glass please.Matthew Hornbach: Indeed. So, I do think that we could be setting up for a bright 2026 ahead. And so, with that, Mike, look forward to seeing you again in December – with a glass of eggnog perhaps. And a decision in hand for the meeting that the Fed holds then. Thanks for taking the time to talk.Michael Gapen: Great speaking with you, Matt.Matthew Hornbach: And thanks for listening. If you enjoy Thoughts on the Market, please leave us a review wherever you listen and share the podcast with a friend or colleague today.

Nike and Palace have joined forces for a collaboration that has the streets talking. While the product drop grabbed the initial headlines, the creation of a South East London community hub has become the real story. The VERSUS team breaks down why this is a true example of what good brand partnership in football looks like — exploring its social impact and what it means for both Nike and Palace. We also unpack the growing discourse around Mary Earps ahead of her new book launch — and why some of the narratives surrounding it might be more harmful than they seem. Plus, we discuss how one strategic move from Erling Haaland has revealed a new side to his personality, and why it could inspire other players to follow suit. The Future of Football is a podcast from VERSUS — bringing you closer to the people, stories, and ideas shaping the next era of the game. Got something you want us to discuss? Email mailbag@versus.uk.com. Host: @mayowaquadri Cast: @CoreyPellatt @AmiLouCri @Ojhnyn)

This episode continues Brian's special series highlighting speakers from the recent Ozark Mountain Bigfoot Conference. This week, we feature researcher and field investigator Shane Carpenter, whose presentation offers a compelling look into some of the most intriguing and scientifically grounded aspects of Sasquatch research.Throughout his lecture, Shane shares updates from The 400, his primary research area, including:Infrasound phenomena and its potential role in reported Sasquatch encountersThe discovery of mysterious holes containing inserted sticks, possibly the work of juvenile SasquatchesThe relationship between high-energy geological zones and increased sighting activityTrack morphology and substrate analysis, with an emphasis on juvenile tracksInsights into the Melba Ketchum DNA study and the challenges of scientific validation in cryptozoologyEthical considerations in gifting versus baiting, and how each approach impacts research integrityShane also touches on the possibility of orb phenomena and other unexplained elements that seem to accompany encounters, emphasizing the importance of maintaining an open yet critical mindset in fieldwork. His presentation concludes with an engaging audience Q&A, exploring questions on orbs, energy zones, and evolving methodologies in Sasquatch research.Get Our FREE NewsletterGet Brian's BooksEmail Brian Share Your Encounter Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/sasquatch-odyssey--4839697/support.

On this episode of Detective Comments, Paul and Hemen go Bato el Bato for 'Versus'! They look at two unusual Batman crossovers: Batman Versus Predator and Batman / Judge Dredd: Judgement on Gotham. Join them as as they try discover if there can ever really be a winner in the never-ending war on crime. And remember: we want YOU to pick which theme we discuss each week! Tune into our socials or check out the text below for the remaining themes and cast your vote in the comments. The theme with the most votes gets played next week. Remaining themes: 'Batman, you loser!', 'Bat-Hamm!', 'Monsters & Mad Monks', 'Not My Batman', 'Joker's Wilder!', 'Batman: The Animated Comics'. Vote in the comments or on our socials!Check out The Comic Crush Website: https://www.thecomiccrush.com/ Get Batman Comics: https://www.thecomiccrush.com/shop-ba...Check out all our shops: https://www.thecomiccrush.com/our-com... Sign up to our Patreon for just £2: / the_comiccrush_com Follow Us! On Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/thecomiccrus...On Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thecomiccrush/On Threads: https://www.threads.com/@thecomiccrushOn Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thecomiccrush/

Jay Z Vs Everybody PT1 is here, and it's packed with real talk, heated debates, and pure hip-hop energy

In this episode of the Leading Voices in Food podcast, host Norbert Wilson is joined by food and nutrition policy economists Will Masters and Parke Wilde from Tufts University's Friedman School of Nutrition, Science and Policy. The discussion centers around the concept of the least cost diet, a tool used to determine the minimum cost required to maintain a nutritionally adequate diet. The conversation delves into the global computational methods and policies related to least cost diets, the challenges of making these diets culturally relevant, and the implications for food policy in both the US and internationally. You will also hear about the lived experiences of people affected by these diets and the need for more comprehensive research to better reflect reality. Interview Summary I know you both have been working in this space around least cost diets for a while. So, let's really start off by just asking a question about what brought you into this work as researchers. Why study least cost diets? Will, let's start with you. I'm a very curious person and this was a puzzle. So, you know, people want health. They want healthy food. Of course, we spend a lot on healthcare and health services, but do seek health in our food. As a child growing up, you know, companies were marketing food as a source of health. And people who had more money would spend more for premium items that were seen as healthy. And in the 2010s for the first time, we had these quantified definitions of what a healthy diet was as we went from 'nutrients' to 'food groups,' from the original dietary guidelines pyramid to the MyPlate. And then internationally, the very first quantified definitions of healthful diets that would work anywhere in the world. And I was like, oh, wow. Is it actually expensive to eat a healthy diet? And how much does it cost? How does it differ by place location? How does it differ over time, seasons, and years? And I just thought it was a fascinating question. Great, thank you for that. Parke? There's a lot of policy importance on this, but part of the fun also of this particular topic is more than almost any that we work on, it's connected to things that we have to think about in our daily lives. So, as you're preparing and purchasing food for your family and you want it to be a healthy. And you want it to still be, you know, tasty enough to satisfy the kids. And it can't take too long because it has to fit into a busy life. So, this one does feel like it's got a personal connection. Thank you both for that. One of the things I heard is there was an availability of data. There was an opportunity that seems like it didn't exist before. Can you speak a little bit about that? Especially Will because you mentioned that point. Will: Yes. So, we have had food composition data identifying for typical items. A can of beans, or even a pizza. You know, what is the expected, on average quantity of each nutrient. But only recently have we had those on a very large scale for global items. Hundreds and hundreds of thousands of distinct items. And we had nutrient requirements, but only nutrient by nutrient, and the definition of a food group where you would want not only the nutrients, but also the phytochemicals, the attributes of food from its food matrix that make a vegetable different from just in a vitamin pill. And those came about in, as I mentioned, in the 2010s. And then there's the computational tools and the price observations that get captured. They've been written down on pads of paper, literally, and brought to a headquarters to compute inflation since the 1930s. But access to those in digitized form, only really in the 2000s and only really in the 2010s were we able to have program routines that would download millions and millions of price observations, match them to food composition data, match that food composition information to a healthy diet criterion, and then compute these least cost diets. Now we've computed millions and millions of these thanks to modern computing and all of that data. Great, Will. And you've already started on this, so let's continue on this point. You were talking about some of the computational methods and data that were available globally. Can you give us a good sense of what does a lease cost diet look like from this global perspective because we're going to talk to Parke about whether it is in the US. But let's talk about it in the broad sense globally. In my case the funding opportunity to pay for the graduate students and collaborators internationally came from the Gates Foundation and the UK International Development Agency, initially for a pilot study in Ghana and Tanzania. And then we were able to get more money to scale that up to Africa and South Asia, and then globally through a project called Food Prices for Nutrition. And what we found, first of all, is that to get agreement on what a healthy diet means, we needed to go to something like the least common denominator. The most basic, basic definition from the commonalities among national governments' dietary guidelines. So, in the US, that's MyPlate, or in the UK it's the Eat Well Guide. And each country's dietary guidelines look a little different, but they have these commonalities. So, we distilled that down to six food groups. There's fruits and vegetables, separately. And then there's animal source foods altogether. And in some countries they would separate out milk, like the United States does. And then all starchy staples together. And in some countries, you would separate out whole grains like the US does. And then all edible oils. And those six food groups, in the quantities needed to provide all the nutrients you would need, plus these attributes of food groups beyond just what's in a vitamin pill, turns out to cost about $4 a day. And if you adjust for inflation and differences in the cost of living, the price of housing and so forth around the world, it's very similar. And if you think about seasonal variation in a very remote area, it might rise by 50% in a really bad situation. And if you think about a very remote location where it's difficult to get food to, it might go up to $5.50, but it stays in that range between roughly speaking $2.50 and $5.00. Meanwhile, incomes are varying from around $1.00 a day, and people who cannot possibly afford those more expensive food groups, to $200 a day in which these least expensive items are trivially small in cost compared to the issues that Parke mentioned. We can also talk about what we actually find as the items, and those vary a lot from place to place for some food groups and are very similar to each other in other food groups. So, for example, the least expensive item in an animal source food category is very often dairy in a rich country. But in a really dry, poor country it's dried fish because refrigeration and transport are very expensive. And then to see where there's commonalities in the vegetable category, boy. Onions, tomatoes, carrots are so inexpensive around the world. We've just gotten those supply chains to make the basic ingredients for a vegetable stew really low cost. But then there's all these other different vegetables that are usually more expensive. So, it's very interesting to look at which are the items that would deliver the healthfulness you need and how much they cost. It's surprisingly little from a rich country perspective, and yet still out of reach for so many in low-income countries. Will, thank you for that. And I want to turn now to looking in the US case because I think there's some important commonalities. Parke, can you describe the least cost diet, how it's used here in the US, and its implications for policy? Absolutely. And full disclosure to your audience, this is work on which we've benefited from Norbert's input and wisdom in a way that's been very valuable as a co-author and as an advisor for the quantitative part of what we were doing. For an article in the journal Food Policy, we use the same type of mathematical model that USDA uses when it sets the Thrifty Food Plan, the TFP. A hypothetical diet that's used as the benchmark for the maximum benefit in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which is the nation's most important anti-hunger program. And what USDA does with this model diet is it tries to find a hypothetical bundle of foods and beverages that's not too different from what people ordinarily consume. The idea is it should be a familiar diet, it should be one that's reasonably tasty, that people clearly already accept enough. But it can't be exactly that diet. It has to be different enough at least to meet a cost target and to meet a whole long list of nutrition criteria. Including getting enough of the particular nutrients, things like enough calcium or enough protein, and also, matching food group goals reasonably well. Things like having enough fruits, enough vegetables, enough dairy. When, USDA does that, it finds that it's fairly difficult. It's fairly difficult to meet all those goals at once, at a cost and a cost goal all at the same time. And so, it ends up choosing this hypothetical diet that's almost maybe more different than would feel most comfortable from people's typical average consumption. Thank you, Parke. I'm interested to understand the policy implications of this least cost diet. You suggested something about the Thrifty Food Plan and the maximum benefit levels. Can you tell us a little bit more about the policies that are relevant? Yes, so the Thrifty Food Plan update that USDA does every five years has a much bigger policy importance now than it did a few years ago. I used to tell my students that you shouldn't overstate how much policy importance this update has. It might matter a little bit less than you would think. And the reason was because every time they update the Thrifty Food Plan, they use the cost target that is the inflation adjusted or the real cost of the previous edition. It's a little bit as if nobody wanted to open up the whole can of worms about what should the SNAP benefit be in the first place. But everything changed with the update in 2021. In 2021, researchers at the US Department of Agriculture found that it was not possible at the old cost target to find a diet that met all of the nutrition criteria - at all. Even if you were willing to have a diet that was quite different from people's typical consumption. And so, they ended up increasing the cost of the Thrifty Food Plan in small increments until they found a solution to this mathematical model using data on real world prices and on the nutrition characteristics of these foods. And this led to a 21% increase in the permanent value of the maximum SNAP benefit. Many people didn't notice that increase all that much because the increase came into effect at just about the same time that a temporary boost during the COVID era to SNAP benefits was being taken away. So there had been a temporary boost to how much benefits people got as that was taken away at the end of the start of the COVID pandemic then this permanent increase came in and it kind of softened the blow from that change in benefits at that time. But it now ends up meaning that the SNAP benefit is substantially higher than it would've been without this 2021 increase. And there's a lot of policy attention on this in the current Congress and in the current administration. There's perhaps a skeptical eye on whether this increase was good policy. And so, there are proposals to essentially take away the ability to update the Thrifty Food Plan change the maximum SNAP benefit automatically, as it used to. As you know, Norbert, this is part of all sorts of things going on currently. Like we heard in the news, just last week, about plans to end collecting household food security measurement using a major national survey. And so there will be sort of possibly less information about how these programs are doing and whether a certain SNAP benefit is needed in order to protect people from food insecurity and hunger. Parke, this is really important and I'm grateful that we're able to talk about this today in that SNAP benefit levels are still determined by this mathematical program that's supposed to represent a nutritionally adequate diet that also reflects food preferences. And I don't know how many people really understand or appreciate that. I can say I didn't understand or appreciate it until working more in this project. I think it's critical for our listeners to understand just how important this particular mathematical model is, and what it says about what a nutritionally adequate diet looks like in this country. I know the US is one of the countries that uses a model diet like this to help set policy. Will, I'd like to turn to you to see what ways other nations are using this sort of model diet. How have you seen policy receive information from these model diets? It's been a remarkable thing where those initial computational papers that we were able to publish in first in 2018, '19, '20, and governments asking how could we use this in practice. Parke has laid out how it's used in the US with regard to the benefit level of SNAP. The US Thrifty Food Plan has many constraints in addition to the basic ones for the Healthy Diet Basket that I described. Because clearly that Healthy Diet Basket minimum is not something anyone in America would think is acceptable. Just to have milk and frozen vegetables and low-cost bread, that jar peanut butter and that's it. Like that would be clearly not okay. So, internationally what's happened is that first starting in 2020, and then using the current formula in 2022, the United Nations agencies together with the World Bank have done global monitoring of food and nutrition security using this method. So, the least cost items to meet the Healthy Diet Basket in each country provide this global estimate that about a third of the global population have income available for food after taking account of their non-food needs. That is insufficient to buy this healthy diet. What they're actually eating is just starchy staples, oil, some calories from low-cost sugar and that's it. And very small quantities of the fruits and vegetables. And animal source foods are the expensive ones. So, countries have the opportunity to begin calculating this themselves alongside their normal monitoring of inflation with a consumer price index. The first country to do that was Nigeria. And Nigeria began publishing this in January 2024. And it so happened that the country's national minimum wage for civil servants was up for debate at that time. And this was a newly published statistic that turned out to be enormously important for the civil society advocates and the labor unions who were trying to explain why a higher civil service minimum wage was needed. This is for the people who are serving tea or the drivers and the low wage people in these government service agencies. And able to measure how many household members could you feed a healthy diet with a day's worth of the monthly wage. So social protection in the sense of minimum wage and then used in other countries regarding something like our US SNAP program or something like our US WIC program. And trying to define how big should those benefit levels be. That's been the first use. A second use that's emerging is targeting the supply chains for the low-cost vegetables and animal source foods and asking what from experience elsewhere could be an inexpensive animal source food. What could be the most inexpensive fruits. What could be the most inexpensive vegetables? And that is the type of work that we're doing now with governments with continued funding from the Gates Foundation and the UK International Development Agency. Will, it's fascinating to hear this example from Nigeria where all of the work that you all have been doing sort of shows up in this kind of debate. And it really speaks to the power of the research that we all are trying to do as we try to inform policy. Now, as we discussed the least cost diet, there was something that I heard from both of you. Are these diets that people really want? I'm interested to understand a little bit more about that because this is a really critical space.Will, what do we know about the lived experiences of those affected by least cost diet policy implementation. How are real people affected? It's such an important and interesting question, just out of curiosity, but also for just our human understanding of what life is like for people. And then of course the policy actions that could improve. So, to be clear, we've only had these millions of least cost diets, these benchmark 'access to' at a market near you. These are open markets that might be happening twice a week or sometimes all seven days of the week in a small town, in an African country or a urban bodega type market or a supermarket across Asia, Africa. We've only begun to have these benchmarks against which to compare actual food choice, as I mentioned, since 2022. And then really only since 2024 have been able to investigate this question. We're only beginning to match up these benchmark diets to what people actually choose. But the pattern we're seeing is that in low and lower middle-income countries, people definitely spend their money to go towards that healthy diet basket goal. They don't spend all of their additional money on that. But if you improve affordability throughout the range of country incomes - from the lowest income countries in Africa, Mali, Senegal, Burkina Faso, to middle income countries in Africa, like Ghana, Indonesia, an upper middle-income country - people do spend their money to get more animal source foods, more fruits and vegetables, and to reduce the amount of the low cost starchy staples. They do increase the amount of discretionary, sugary meals. And a lot of what they're eating exits the healthy diet basket because there's too much added sodium, too much added sugar. And so, things that would've been healthy become unhealthy because of processing or in a restaurant setting. So, people do spend their money on that. But they are moving towards a healthy diet. That breaks down somewhere in the upper income and high-income countries where additional spending becomes very little correlated with the Healthy Diet Basket. What happens is people way overshoot the Healthy Diet Basket targets for animal source foods and for edible oils because I don't know if you've ever tried it, but one really delicious thing is fried meat. People love it. And even low middle income people overshoot on that. And that displaces the other elements of a healthy diet. And then there's a lot of upgrading, if you will, within the food group. So, people are spending additional money on nicer vegetables. Nicer fruits. Nicer animal source foods without increasing the total amount of them in addition to having overshot the healthy diet levels of many of those food groups. Which of course takes away from the food you would need from the fruits, the vegetables, and the pulses, nuts and seeds, that almost no one gets as much as is considered healthy, of that pulses, nuts and seeds category. Thank you. And I want to shift this to the US example. So, Parke, can you tell us a bit more about the lived experience of those affected by least cost diet policy? How are real people affected? One of the things I've enjoyed about this project that you and I got to work on, Norbert, in cooperation with other colleagues, is that it had both a quantitative and a qualitative part to it. Now, our colleague Sarah Folta led some of the qualitative interviews, sort of real interviews with people in food pantries in four states around the country. And this was published recently in the Journal of Health Education and Behavior. And we asked people about their goals and about what are the different difficulties or constraints that keep them from achieving those goals. And what came out of that was that people often talk about whether their budget constraints and whether their financial difficulties take away their autonomy to sort of be in charge of their own food choices. And this was something that Sarah emphasized as she sort of helped lead us through a process of digesting what was the key findings from these interviews with people. One of the things I liked about doing this study is that because the quantitative and the qualitative part, each had this characteristic of being about what do people want to achieve. This showed up mathematically in the constrained optimization model, but it also showed up in the conversations with people in the food pantry. And what are the constraints that keep people from achieving it. You know, the mathematical model, these are things like all the nutrition constraints and the cost constraints. And then in the real conversations, it's something that people raise in very plain language about what are all the difficulties they have. Either in satisfying their own nutrition aspirations or satisfying some of the requirements for one person or another in the family. Like if people have special diets that are needed or if they have to be gluten free or any number of things. Having the diets be culturally appropriate. And so, I feel like this is one of those classic things where different disciplines have wisdom to bring to bear on what's really very much a shared topic. What I hear from both of you is that these diets, while they are computationally interesting and they reveal some critical realities of how people eat, they can't cover everything. People want to eat certain types of foods. Certain types of foods are more culturally relevant. And that's really clear talking to you, Will, about just sort of the range of foods that end up showing up in these least cost diets and how you were having to make some adjustments there. Parke, as you talked about the work with Sarah Folta thinking through autonomy and sort of a sense of self. This kind of leads us to a question that I want to open up to both of you. What's missing when we talk about these least cost diet modeling exercises and what are the policy implications of that? What are the gaps in our understanding of these model diets and what needs to happen to make them reflect reality better? Parke? Well, you know, there's many things that people in our research community are working on. And it goes quite, quite far afield. But I'm just thinking of two related to our quantitative research using the Thrifty Food Plan type models. We've been working with Yiwen Zhao and Linlin Fan at Penn State University on how these models would work if you relaxed some of the constraints. If people's back in a financial sense weren't back up against the wall, but instead they had just a little more space. We were considering what if they had incentives that gave them a discount on fruits and vegetables, for example, through the SNAP program? Or what if they had a healthy bundle of foods provided through the emergency food system, through food banks or food pantries. What is the effect directly in terms of those foods? But also, what is the effect in terms of just relaxing their budget constraints. They get to have a little more of the foods that they find more preferred or that they had been going without. But then also, in terms of sort of your question about the more personal. You know, what is people's personal relationships with food? How does this play out on the ground? We're working with the graduate student Angelica Valdez Valderrama here at the Friedman School, thinking about what some of the cultural assumptions and of the food group constraints in some of these models are. If you sort of came from a different immigrant tradition or if you came from another community, what things would be different in, for example, decisions about what's called the Mediterranean diet or what's called the healthy US style dietary pattern. How much difference do this sort of breadth, cultural breadth of dietary patterns you could consider, how much difference does that make in terms of what's the outcome of this type of hypothetical diet? Will: And I think, you know, from the global perspective, one really interesting thing is when we do combine data sets and look across these very different cultural settings, dry land, Sahelian Africa versus countries that are coastal versus sort of forest inland countries versus all across Asia, south Asia to East Asia, all across Latin America. We do see the role of these cultural factors. And we see them playing out in very systematic ways that people come to their cultural norms for very good reasons. And then pivot and switch away to new cultural norms. You know, American fast food, for example, switching from beef primarily to chicken primarily. That sort of thing becomes very visible in a matter of years. So, in terms of things that are frontiers for us, remember this is early days. Getting many more nutritionists, people in other fields, looking at first of all, it's just what is really needed for health. Getting those health requirements improved and understood better is a key priority. Our Healthy Diet Basket comes from the work of a nutritionist named Anna Herforth, who has gone around the world studying these dietary guidelines internationally. We're about to get the Eat Lancet dietary recommendations announced, and it'll be very interesting to see how those evolve. Second thing is much better data on prices and computing these diets for more different settings at different times, different locations. Settings that are inner city United States versus very rural. And then this question of comparing to actual diets. And just trying to understand what people are seeking when they choose foods that are clearly not these benchmark least cost items. The purpose is to ask how far away and why and how are they far away? And particularly to understand to what degree are these attributes of the foods themselves: the convenience of the packaging, the preparation of the item, the taste, the flavor, the cultural significance of it. To what degree are we looking at the result of aspirations that are really shaped by marketing. Are really shaped by the fire hose of persuasion that companies are investing in every day. And very strategically and constantly iterating to the best possible spokesperson, the best possible ad campaign. Combining billboards and radio and television such that you're surrounded by this. And when you drive down the street and when you walk into the supermarket, there is no greater effort on the planet than the effort to sell us a particular brand of food. Food companies are basically marketing companies attached to a manufacturing facility, and they are spending much more than the entire combined budget of the NIH and CDC, et cetera, to persuade us to eat what we ultimately choose. And we really don't know to what degree it's the actual factors in the food itself versus the marketing campaigns and the way they've evolved. You know, if you had a choice between taking the food system and regulating it the way we regulate, say housing or vehicles. If we were to say your supermarket should be like an auto dealership, right? So, anything in the auto dealership is very heavily regulated. Everything from the paint to where the gear shift is to how the windows work. Everything is heavily regulated because the auto industry has worked with National Transportation Safety Board and every single crash investigation, et cetera, has led to the standards that we have now. We didn't get taxes on cars without airbags to make us choose cars with airbags. They're just required. And same is true for housing, right? You can't just build, you know, an extension deck behind your house any way you want. A city inspector will force you to tear it out if you haven't built it to code. So, you know, we could regulate the grocery store like we do that. It's not going to happen politically but compare that option to treating groceries the way we used to treat the legal services or pharmaceuticals. Which is you couldn't advertise them. You could sell them, and people would choose based on the actual merit of the lawyer or the pharmaceutical, right? Which would have the bigger impact. Right? If there was zero food advertising, you just walked into the grocery store and chose what you liked. Or you regulate the grocery store the same way we regulate automotive or building trades. Obviously, they both matter. There's, you know, this problem that you can't see, taste or smell the healthiness of food. You're always acting on belief and not a fact when you choose something that you're seeking health. We don't know to what extent choice is distorted away from a low-cost healthy diet by things people genuinely want and need. Such as taste, convenience, culture, and so forth. Versus things that they've been persuaded to want. And there's obviously some of both. All of these things matter. But I'm hopeful that through these least cost diets, we can identify that low-cost options are there. And you could feed your family a very healthy diet at the Thrifty Food Plan level in the United States, or even lower. It would take time, it would take attention, it would be hard. You can take some shortcuts to make that within your time budget, right? And the planning budget. And we can identify what those look like thanks to these model diets. It's a very exciting area of work, but we still have a lot to do to define carefully what are the constraints. What are the real objectives here. And how to go about helping people, acquire these foods that we now know are there within a short commuting distance. You may need to take the bus, you may need carpool. But that's what people actually do to go grocery shopping. And when they get there, we can help people to choose items that would genuinely meet their needs at lower cost. Bios Will Masters is a Professor in the Friedman School of Nutrition, with a secondary appointment in Tufts University's Department of Economics. He is coauthor of the new textbook on Food Economics: Agriculture, Nutrition and Health (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024). Before coming to Tufts in 2010 he was a faculty member in Agricultural Economics at Purdue University (1991-2010), and also at the University of Zimbabwe (1989-90), Harvard's Kennedy School of Government (2000) and Columbia University (2003-04). He is former editor-in-chief of the journal Agricultural Economics (2006-2011), and an elected Fellow of the American Society for Nutrition (FASN) as well as a Fellow of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association (AAEA). At Tufts his courses on economics of agriculture, food and nutrition were recognized with student-nominated, University-wide teaching awards in 2019 and 2022, and he leads over a million dollars annually in externally funded research including work on the Agriculture, Nutrition and Health Academy (https://www.anh-academy.org), as well as projects supporting government efforts to calculate the cost and affordability of healthy diets worldwide and work with private enterprises on data analytics for food markets in Africa. Parke Wilde (PhD, Cornell) is a food economist and professor at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University. Previously, he worked for USDA's Economic Research Service. At Tufts, Parke teaches graduate-level courses in statistics, U.S. food policy, and climate change. His research addresses the economics of U.S. food and nutrition policy, including federal nutrition assistance programs. He was Director of Design for the SNAP Healthy Incentives Pilot (HIP) evaluation. He has been a member of the National Academy of Medicine's Food Forum and is on the scientific and technical advisory committee for Menus of Change, an initiative to advance the health and sustainability of the restaurant industry. He directs the USDA-funded Research Innovation and Development Grants in Economics (RIDGE) Partnership. He received the AAEA Distinguished Quality of Communication Award for his textbook, Food Policy in the United States: An Introduction (Routledge/Earthscan), whose third edition was released in April 2025. 

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裏那圭、晏童秀吉 https://moo.im/a/8oqxDX 2025/10/3 東立 式守同學不只可愛而已 20(完) 真木蛍五 https://moo.im/a/09cnuM 2025/10/3 東立 黑貓與魔女的教室 11 金田陽介 https://moo.im/a/bfrzCS 2025/10/2 東立 婚姻劇毒 10 依田瑞稀 https://moo.im/a/9cuACM 2025/10/2 東立 末世二輪之旅（５） さいとー 榮 https://moo.im/a/0orAEQ 2025/10/2 青文 魔法中年(03) 灰刃ねむみ https://moo.im/a/4gEFOS ● 各自有興趣的作品： 2025/10/31 尖端 After God 神墮之境(03) 江野朱美 2025/10/31 尖端 超人Ｘ(09) 石田スイ 2025/10/31 東立 海波追尋的終幕 05 たらちねジョン 2025/10/31 東立 妖怪連絡簿 31 綠川幸 https://moo.im/a/7dgjEX 2025/10/30 東立 輝夜姬 愛藏版 (首刷附錄版) 12 清水玲子 2025/10/30 東立 第一神拳 143 森川譲次 2025/10/30 台灣東販 Myther（１）【首刷限定版】 八田てき 2025/10/30 台灣東販 王子殿下的會計師另有隱情（１）隱藏真實身分的千金小姐想要規避極刑，圓滿退休！ 押川いい 2025/10/30 台灣東販 獻祭巫女（１） アラスカぱん 2025/10/30 台灣東販 莉莉亞有喜之時即為世界末日（５）完 茶果山しん太 2025/10/30 未來數位 如果後宮是二周目~白豚妃再臨傳～3【完】 中村颯希、DOJA 2025/10/30 尖端 阿爾瑪醬想成為家人(01) ななてる 2025/10/30 青文 壞人大小姐與鬼畜騎士(04) 生還 2025/10/29 青文 哆啦A夢(05)50周年紀念特別版 藤子．F．不二雄 2025/10/29 青文 一弦定音！(32) アミュー https://moo.im/a/asvyRX 2025/10/29 青文 新網球王子(37) 許斐剛 2025/10/29 青文 我的推是壞人大小姐。(09) 青乃下 2025/10/29 青文 我的推是壞人大小姐。(09)限定版 青乃下 2025/10/29 東立 隱藏技能 BUG EGO (首刷限定版) 01 設楽清人 、 ONE 2025/10/28 長鴻 企業傭兵．艾妲–Initial Stage–03 山村哉 2025/10/27 東立 蝶人戰記 01 実乃助 2025/10/27 東立 PEEP窺視 01 植野メグル 2025/10/27 東立 石神戰記 01 古日向いろは 2025/10/24 今日出版 城寨誌異 Rex Koo 2025/10/24 今日出版 天眼Last Summer Edition 夏韶聲 Danny Summer 2025/10/24 今日出版 小妹 蘇軾 小燕 2025/10/24 海穹 水都物語3 南部書之助、伍薰 2025/10/23 台灣角川 露琪奧拉與魔境的商館員（１） 橋本花鳥 https://www.bookwalker.com.tw/product/262074 2025/10/23 台灣角川 Ubel Blatt ～斬魔凶刃～（１８） 鹽野干支郎次 2025/10/23 台灣角川 Ubel Blatt ～斬魔凶刃～（１９） 鹽野干支郎次 2025/10/23 台灣角川 耳邊蜜語（４） 米米卡醬 2025/10/23 東立 小千(全) 押見修造 2025/10/23 東立 國寶 01 三国史明 2025/10/23 東立 玻璃假面 愛藏版 (首刷限定版) 13 美內鈴惠 2025/10/22 三日月 灰燼花園【親簽特裝版】 金鼠 2025/10/22 三日月 灰燼花園【首刷附錄版】 金鼠 2025/10/22 長鴻 沉睡的傻瓜 新裝版-全 石黑正數 2025/10/22 凌宇 昭和怪怪怪事件 多力亞斯工場 2025/10/21 尖端 未踏之地(09) 山下和美 2025/10/21 尖端 未踏之地(10) 山下和美 2025/10/21 大辣 鴛鴦春膳 原著/李昂、漫畫/柳廣成 2025/10/21 東立 小鼠的初戀 (首刷附錄版) 03 大瀬戸陸 2025/10/20 東立 給不滅的你 24 大今良時 2025/10/17 尖端 BLUE GIANT EXPLORER 藍色巨星 美國篇(05) 石塚真一 2025/10/17 尖端 北斗之拳 新裝完全版 盒裝套書(10～18冊)完 武論尊 2025/10/17 長鴻 愛很沉重的騎士公爵想掠奪被流放千金的一切 海原 ゆた 2025/10/17 東立 月光迷情 愛藏版 (首刷限定版) 06 清水玲子 2025/10/17 東立 遭到驅逐的龍師在鄰國不小心大開無雙~從弱小國家轉身成為大陸最強龍之樂園01 佐藤駿光 2025/10/16 東立 ONE-PUNCH MAN 一拳超人 33 ONE/村田雄介 2025/10/16 東立 銀河金融保險公司COSMOS 02 田村隆平 https://moo.im/a/oADNOP 2025/10/16 尖端 日本三國(03) 松木いっか 2025/10/14 長鴻 怪獸８號-15 松本直也 2025/10/14 長鴻 砰太變成人類了01 濱田賢治 2025/10/14 長鴻 搖滾樂是淑女的嗜好-05 福田宏 2025/10/14 尖端 銅匠的新娘(02) ｎａｍｏ 2025/10/14 尖端 瓦尼塔斯的手札(11) 望月淳 2025/10/14 尖端 相反的你和我(08)完 阿賀沢紅茶 2025/10/13 東立 不死不運 27(完) 戶塚慶文 https://moo.im/a/8ftDIQ 2025/10/9 台灣角川 S級公會將我除籍，但其實只有我懂得龍族語言，回過神來時我已站上龍騎士的頂點。（３） ひそな 2025/10/9 台灣角川 S級公會將我除籍，但其實只有我懂得龍族語言，回過神來時我已站上龍騎士的頂點。（４） ひそな 2025/10/9 尖端 滿洲鴉片小隊(14) 門馬司 2025/10/9 尖端 我死前的百物語(02) 的野安志 2025/10/9 青文 閱覽不能(全) 岩崎ユウキ https://moo.im/a/57cxBW 2025/10/8 天光出版 再見了，漫畫(上) 高見奈緒 2025/10/8 天光出版 再見了，漫畫(下) 高見奈緒 2025/10/8 尖端 穹廬下的魔女(04) トマトスープ 2025/10/8 東立 大正學生愛妻家 01 粥川鈴 2025/10/7 東立 殺道 01 なだいにし 2025/10/3 尖端 畫完這個再去死(04) 豐田實 2025/10/3 東立 忍者祕事 01 御手洗三大 2025/10/3 東立 殺手旅店 (首刷限定版) 01 田島青 2025/10/2 東立 入間同學入魔了！ 39 西修 2025/10/2 東立 女校之星 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《魔法中年》https://sndn.link/otakuafterwork/IAfHlC BGM：ひまな時間 想要推坑或是推薦作品的，或是有什麼想法的，都歡迎跟我們聯絡喔！ 收聽方式：https://otakuafterwork2020.soci.vip 連結樹：https://linktr.ee/otakuafterwork -- Hosting provided by SoundOn

The actual and factual Kim Smith returns to the studio after an interesting trip to  Washington DC to report the latest in entertainment and current events. The podcast came to life in DC where our third co-host Monie and our DC co-host Josh met up with Kim and Sir Goodwin Live at Kitchen and Cocktails in Downtown DC.Onefest and TSA Atlanta 1000Verzuz 1300Kevin McCall v Patti LaBelle 1800NBA Players gambling 2500Emotional Justin Fields 2700 kims korner 5300Men with Money are to provide, a woman with money should leave 12500

Alex Fournier, General Manager at Enerteck Wind Services, returns to the spotlight to discuss the company's growth from specialized blade repair into a full-service wind maintenance provider. Fournier shares how Enerteck is positioning itself to support Quebec's ambitious wind expansion plans while navigating the unique challenges of Canada's shortened repair seasons. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard's StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes' YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining Light on Wind. Energy's brightest innovators. This is the Progress Powering tomorrow. Allen Hall: Alex, welcome back to the show. Thank you so much guys for having me. It sounds like we had a busy blade season with Enerteck up in Canada. It's just a different environment up there. What kind of, uh, repairs have you been working on this year?  Alex Fournier: Uh, really busy. Been some, uh, doing some transfer crack, open window and lighting damage, VGs, installation, polytech, erosion, uh, all that kind of stuff from road access on platform. Um, so we been pretty busy. Yeah. What parts of Canada are you focused on right now? Uh, at the beginning of the season we trying to focus on Quebec 'cause the temperature is getting colder faster. Um, so usually we start with Quebec and then we're making our way up west. So right now our blade season is pretty much done in Quebec, [00:01:00] so now we're focusing in Ontario. Uh, Ontario have way better, uh, temperature right now in Quebec. It might be around 15 to 20 degrees up north. Versus in Ontario that right now it's around 22, 25 degrees Celsius.  Joel Saxum: Celsius being the big thing there. Right. For our, for our US listeners, it's 25 degrees is really cold to us, but very nice to you. Yeah. Thanks. It's pretty cold.  Allen Hall: Yeah. I think for a lot of listeners, they don't realize how short the blade repair season is in Canada. How many days do you really have it? It depends where you are, right? There's some  Alex Fournier: site that, there's still some snow in May. Um, but, uh, if, if, if we're in a. Nice area. It can be from, uh, April, may to September, October, November. You're really pushing it. I think if, if you want to do, uh, blade work in November and que back, you need to have like a 360 platform with the heater and uh, and closed platform. Which we don't have yet,  Joel Saxum: but yet, [00:02:00] yet is an interesting concept there. You say we don't have that platform yet, but that kind of points to the eTech. Uh, I mean, of course. Congratulations. A new, new role over there I think, clue us in on that. What is the new role?  Alex Fournier: So it's general manager, so right now I'm taking care of the whole company, which is either composite or maintenance. Um, I'm doing boat. Um, so if you have any requests either on composite or maintenance and Quebec or candidate, just let me know. But yeah, when I first started I was, uh, director of composite operation and then, uh. Climbing at the ladder to turn on Azure. Now  Joel Saxum: what it makes sense is eTech is, uh, expanding, you know, strategically expanding services. Right? So you guys, uh, of course when we were talking with you and you joined the team there, you had a composite. So we, they just, this is your first big blade season. Sounds like it's gone very well. Um, but the eTech is a company does a lot more than that. You off air, you're clueing us in on some of the really cool things you guys are doing. Some, some stuff we've never actually really dealt with or heard too much of and wind, [00:03:00] but, um. Yeah,

SummaryIn this episode of the Get Right Podcast, the hosts celebrate personal milestones while diving into a nostalgic discussion about the recent Versus battle between Cash Money and No Limit. They reflect on the performances, critique the artists, and explore the dynamics of relationships within the hip-hop community. The conversation shifts to the legacy of Master P and the impact of R. Kelly versus Drake, culminating in a debate about the evolution of R&B and its current state. In this conversation, the hosts delve into the current landscape of R&B music, discussing the impact of artists like Leon Thomas and Lucky Day, while also reflecting on the generational shifts in music appreciation. They explore the influence of Drake on the genre and compare his legacy to that of Michael Jackson. The discussion transitions into the NBA, where they predict the upcoming season and analyze player dynamics, particularly focusing on LeBron James and the potential for trades.

In this episode, the Operators dive deep into omnichannel strategy, starting with the lingering debate: should your brand be on Amazon? The hosts break down the pros of incrementality and meeting customers where they are. Versus the cons of price wars, channel conflict, and the platform's brand-unfriendly nature.The discussion then shifts to the high-stakes game of wholesale, weighing the relative safety of the "Big Three" (Costco, Target, Walmart) against the serious financial risks of smaller retailers going bankrupt.Finally, the squad debates the ultimate omnichannel play: opening your own physical stores. They explore the potential for unique customer experiences and domestic supply chain advantages versus the immense complexity, high costs, and low success rate for digitally-native brands.Chapters:00:00:00 - Introduction00:16:55 - "Is it Good For My Brand?" Amazon Debate00:33:30 - The Risks of Wholesale00:43:45 - Is Being in Big Stores Worth It?00:56:51 - The Case for Owned RetailPowered By:Fulfil.io.https://bit.ly/3pAp2vuThe Only Cloud ERP Designed to Efficiently Scale 8 and 9-Figure Brands. Northbeam.https://www.northbeam.io/Postscript.https://postscript.io/Richpanel.https://www.richpanel.com/?utm_source=9O&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=ytdescSaras.https://bit.ly/9OP-YtdescSubscribe to The Marketing Operators Podcast here:https://www.youtube.com/@MarketingOperatorsSubscribe to The Finance Operators here:https://www.youtube.com/@FinanceOperatorsFOPSSign up to the 9 Operators newsletter here:https://9operators.com/

On the latest episode of our new Batman comics retrospective podcast, Detective Comments, Paul and Hemen take a look into The Men Who Made The Batman! They read The Untold Legend of The Batman and The Many Deaths of The Batman two stories that illustrate how the path to becoming the world's greatest detective was not a solo affair! And remember: we want YOU to pick which theme we discuss each week! Tune into our socials or check out the text below for the remaining themes and cast your vote in the comments. The theme with the most votes gets played next week. Remaining themes: 'Batman, you loser!', 'Bat-Hamm!', 'Monsters & Mad Monks', 'Not My Batman', 'Joker's Wilder!', 'Batman: The Animated Comics', '...Versus...', Vote in the comments or on our socials!

Introducing the All Def SquADD Cast show “Versus". It's a podcast with the OG SquADD! Each week, the SquADD will debate topics and vote at the end to see what wins. Versus airs every Monday and you can download and listen wherever podcasts are found. Special Guest Kali Scott Chinedu Unaka This Week We Discuss 10 Hour Flight In Middle Seat W/ Fastest Free Internet vs First Class W/ No Entertainment One Million Dollars Now vs One Special Power Of Your Choice Never Pay For Clothes Again vs Never Pay For Shoes Again S/o To Our Sponsors True Classic trueclassic.com/SQUADD Inda Cloud Inda cloud.co Promo: ALLDEF

Podcast for a deep examination into the career and life choices of Eddie Murphy & Jim Carrey. Patrick tries to pull a long con by convincing a high-powered attorney that he is a longshoreman. Joe has to get him out of prison when he's arrested for his poorly planned scheme. He does so by pretending that he is that very same high-powered attorney. Will Joe be better at the long con? And does Lev have anything to do this week? Find out on this week's episode of 'What the Hell Happened to Them?' Email the cast at whathappenedtothem@gmail.com Disclaimer: This episode was recorded in October 2025. References may feel confusing and/or dated unusually quickly. 'I Love You Phillip Morris' is available on DVD, Blu-ray, &... Hardcover?: https://www.amazon.com/Love-You-Phillip-Morris-Blu-ray/dp/B002ZG980A/ Music from "Lovey, Lovey" by Michael Kohler & Erik Richter and "Bubba Dub Bossa" by Robby Poitevin   Artwork from BJ West   quixotic, united, skeyhill, vekeman, murphy, carrey, versus, vs, love, phillip, morris, jail, gay, homosexual, prison, mcgregor, texas, carey

Jurandir Filho, Felipe Mesquita, João Pimenta e Bruno Carvalho batem um papo as diferenças entre os RPGs japoneses (JRPGs) e os RPGs ocidentais (WRPGs). Embora compartilhem a mesma base, como evolução de personagens, grandes narrativas e escolhas estratégicas, cada lado desenvolveu sua própria identidade cultural, estética e mecânica ao longo das décadas. Os RPGs japoneses surgiram fortemente influenciados por títulos de mesa como "Dungeons & Dragons", mas rapidamente ganharam personalidade própria. São marcados por histórias lineares e cinematográficas, personagens bem definidos e um foco narrativo que coloca o jogador como espectador de uma grande saga. Jogos como "Final Fantasy", "Dragon Quest",  "Chrono Trigger" e "Persona" moldaram essa tradição, com narrativas emocionais, heróis arquetípicos e mundos fantasiosos.Já os RPGs ocidentais nasceram de uma vertente mais próxima dos jogos de mesa, prezando por liberdade de escolha e construção de personagem. O jogador não interpreta um herói pré-determinado, mas cria o seu próprio avatar e molda a história com decisões morais e éticas. Séries como "The Witcher", "The Elder Scrolls", "Fallout", "Baldur's Gate" e "Mass Effect" são exemplos emblemáticos dessa abordagem, em que o mundo reage às ações do jogador, e cada jornada é única. O foco aqui está menos em uma trama fixa e mais em imersão e agência, transformando a narrativa em algo emergente, construído dinamicamente.Nos últimos anos, entretanto, essas fronteiras vêm se misturando. Jogos como "Persona 5" adotam elementos sociais e liberdade de escolhas típicos do Ocidente, enquanto "The Witcher 3" e "Cyberpunk 2077" apresentam tramas fortes e personagens profundos, à maneira japonesa. Hoje em dia, quem faz melhor?Essa é a estreia da série Versus!====- ALURA | Estude na Alura, a maior escola de tecnologia on-line do Brasil! Acesse o nosso link e ganhe 15% de desconto na matrícula! https://alura.com.br/99vidas

Kiera joins the Raving Patients Podcast to talk about obtaining that CEO mindset to systematize your practice. This mindset does not mean doing it all yourself, but leaning on others to maximize their skillsets. Kiera also discusses with Dr. Len Tau how to separate yourself from having your entire identity associated with dentistry. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript: Speaker 1 (00:00) Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the Raving Patients Podcast. As you know, I'm your host, Dr. Len Tau, and I am super excited today for multiple reasons. Well, first, before I get there, I want to first thank my sponsors, both Dental Intelligence, CallRail, and a new one, Net32. You'll be hearing their commercials as well, so check out those companies. And again, the only reason I'm able to do this every single week is because of their support. I also want to remind everybody about   my event, is only one week away. One week from now we'll be gathered in Fort Lauderdale for Supercharge with Dental Practice 2025. If you wanna be a come out last minute registrant, you can reach out to me. I will be glad to add you as a guest of me. So please reach out to me. You can check out the content at SuperchargeYourDentalPractice.com So I said I was super excited and I'm super excited because of our guest today. And she's been a guest before and I just recorded an episode with her on her podcast. ⁓   We're talking about Kiera Dent, who is from the Dental A Team, and we're gonna be talking the CEO mindset systematizing your practice for freedom and growth today. So before I let ⁓ Kiera take it off, I'm gonna go ahead and introduce her. So she is the founder and CEO of the Dental A Team, an entrepreneur, consultant, speaker, and podcast host dedicated to helping dental professionals reach their highest potential. Through customized in-office and virtual consulting,   She empowers dentists and their teams to cultivate an ownership mindset and achieving lasting growth. With experience spanning every role in the dental practice, front office, dental assistant, regional manager, and even practice owner, here brings unique first-hand perspective to her coaching. Alongside her team of expert consultants, she has partnered with hundreds of practices nationwide, leading them to greater efficiency, profitability, and fulfillment. As she often says, we don't just understand you, we are you.   So please welcome to the Raving Patients podcast, Kiara Dent. Kiara, thank you so much for being a guest on my podcast today.   Speaker 2 (02:03) Oh, Len, thank you so much. so excited to be here. I loved our podcast we did together. I love the podcast we did in the past together. I'm super excited about Supercharge. Everybody should go. We're going to like sneak peek, be there in 2026. Like Len, huge fan of you guys. Just excited to be here with you. So thank you. Thanks for having me. And yeah, it's always a little weird and fun to hear your bio read right before you get on. So just grateful to be here and just like have a good time with you. It's always a great time when we podcast together.   Speaker 1 (02:30) Well, I'm excited to spend the next 30 minutes or so with content from you. So I always like to ⁓ start off for people that don't know who you are. I obviously read your bio. Can you just tell dentists and other people reading or listening and watching this episode how you help dental practices?   Speaker 2 (02:50) Yeah, absolutely. So with the bio you heard, I started out as a dental assistant and then went throughout and I've owned practices. My first practice I took from 500,000 to 2.4 million in nine months and opened our second location. And that was with a Midwestern grad. I worked at the dental college there. And so helping practices, what I learned was   I've been a team member, I've been in so many of the team roles. And then in addition to that, I've owned dental practices and I understand the business and I've run multimillion dollar practices and businesses. so bringing that perspective, I feel like there's the dentist perspective, there's the owner, the CEO of the practice, and then there's the team perspective. And both are necessary for practices. And so Dental A Team, say like, it stands for dentist and team. So what we really do for practices is whether it's virtual or in person, it's...   I call it the yes model line is what I like to say is number one, you as a person, we're going to focus on your vision, where you want to go as a doctor. Like what is your vision? The practice should serve your life. ⁓ because I believe that when you're supported, you're actually a better owner, a better boss, a better dentist. And then we go to E stands for earnings and profitability. We've got to make sure it's a profitable practice. And then we use those things, the vision and the numbers to then tell us what systems and team development we need to put into place. I'm really much a custom.   Let's see kind of like dentists do with patients. Like let's do a comp exam. Let's see where we're at. And then let's go for what's going to make the biggest impact with the least amount of effort. And being team members ourselves, I really think that we're able to like, Hey dentists, we want to hear your vision. We need to know where you're going and then go do your like favorite thing. It's dentistry. And then let's help your team be empowered to learn how to run the practice. So it truly is like a self-managing team, utilizing every single player in the team to their highest potential, but doing it with a ton of fun and ease. Like as a team member, I didn't want more hard work.   As an owner, do not want you to give me more homework. I'm already busy. So I feel like we really come in and bridge that gap of like where we are to where we want to go and do it in the easiest, most efficient and most fun way possible to help like team and patient experience be the top that it can be.   Speaker 1 (04:48) So I guess someone's listening to this podcast and they say, you know, want to, I want to change the culture in my practice, but I'm very much a micromanager.   So which means they're not focused on their dentistry, they're focused on managing the team. Do you help with that? Because there are so many micromanagers out there. I always wanted them for a very long time. And honestly, wasn't until I gave up that micromanaging and I just did the things I was going to do that my practice excelled. So ⁓ that's something, if someone's a micromanager, do you get them off doing that? Or how do you deal with that?   Speaker 2 (05:19) Yes, and I'm so glad you said that because I think most   Founder owners are micromanagers. think leadership we believe I I think so many there's this belief out there that we just come into this world as great leaders and we should just know it like you went to dental school you should just know how to be a leader and leadership is a journey and so for those micromanagers I think it's really fun to have the doctor and the team perspective and to be able to help both of them say like no doctor like these are the things but what I found is doctors micromanage because there's a lack of communication feedback loops so it's a lot so it's either a lack of communication and feedback   loop, a lack of knowledge, or they just like genuinely want to be a manager and they don't want to be an owner. And I'm like, great, let's just figure out what the the reasoning is. And then let's find the solution to that. So if team members have doctors that are micromanaging, first question I'm looking at is like, where's the feedback loop and what are we missing? Next is like, hey, doctor, I understand that this is where we're at. This is where I need you to be for the growth of the practice. What do you need to feel confident to be the dentist, to be the like not micromanaging like   there's a lack. And when I realize there's a lack and when teams can realize that there's a lack, like there's just something missing, we fix that, dentist is now able to be happy, team's able to flourish, everything starts to move in in a good motion. absolutely. I think being team members ourselves, we're not doctors, we're not dentists. Like, Len, I'm gonna lean on you for clinical. Like, that's not my world. I'm not here to even discuss it for one minute. But what I am here to do is to bridge that gap between doctors and teams.   Because ultimately it's same team, like everybody wants the best experience for the patient. We want the practice to flourish. So if we're all same team, let's help get people right seat, right person, help them understand what they should and could be doing. But also like office managers, there's this whole weird world for them too, where they've never been taught to be managers. They've never been taught what they should or shouldn't be doing. They've never been taught like what the difference between an office manager is and a biller and a scheduler and a treatment coordinator and how all those roles are different. And so helping people understand even what their job entails.   I think really can cut that micromanagement passion project. It's just a lack of knowledge and so teaching teams and teaching people, but we're very hands on. I really don't like fluff. That's why think when you and I get along well, I want it to be tactical. I want it to be practical and I want it to be something that's sustainable as well.   Speaker 1 (07:34) And that makes a lot of sense. And that was a great answer, by the way.   We're talking about, obviously you're very systematized. You put systems in place, the team follows, everybody knows what they're doing, runs like a well-oiled machine. Okay. And that's how my practice was when I left, when I was traveling. ⁓ I knew things, I didn't worry. I knew that things were going to be done like this. They knew the roles, team members didn't need to be scolded. They just knew what their role was in the practice. So, ⁓ I know there are things, I like a term here you use the chaos creators. So there are chaos creators in the, in the office. So what are some of these, these common chaos creators?   ⁓ that actually can be helped by putting systems in place.   Speaker 2 (08:13) Yes, and I love that you brought that up because that's the ultimate goal. That's why I wanted this to be called like the CEO mindset. Like doctors, like you should be a dentist and you should own your business. You should not be the one managing. And when you recognize that this actually can be one of the biggest chaos creators in the practice of doctors trying to be the doctor, the dentist, the CEO visionary, plus the manager, plus all the other parts of the practice. Like that is a chaos creator, not knowing right person, right? See is a massive chaos creator. Number one thing I hear every time I go into an office or I work with someone,   is it's communication. And communication is again just a system that needs to be put into place. So how do team members know? Like what is our true morning huddle? It's not a time for us just to hang out. Like why do football players huddle? Why do basketball players huddle? They huddle to win the game. So what does winning on our practice even look like? Making that very clear for our team. Other things like handoffs. That's another communication drop that's a chaos creator. What doctor says to the patient, to the hygienist, to the front office,   It's such fun. I feel like we play a game of telephone. So putting in a little simple system there where we've got a great communication handoff and a process. I know Len, you and I are very big on this case acceptance process of just really having a great clean experience for the patient. These are chaos creators. Also, team members even knowing what their job should be, understanding how they go from where they were hired to how they can get raises. Those are chaos creators. The scheduling. How do we schedule? Let's have block schedules in there. Let's have   a way that we do this in our practice. I remember when I was a scheduling coordinator, my office manager said, Kiera, do not even think about scheduling outside of the blocks until you learn why we schedule the blocks the way we do. And you're right, like when team members know the rules of the game, so much chaos gets eliminated from the practice. like quick things are have great meetings and truly great meetings. If you don't know how to run a great meeting, Traction by Gina Wickman.   It's a little bit of a dull book. However, there are so many paramount pieces in that book and great meetings could be in there. Doctors and OMS have a same page meeting where we're looking at it. Get our KPIs in place where we know where is the practice even going? What is each person's number that they can like impact and improve in the practice? Have like set job descriptions, have protocols of how we treat a patient. What's our hygiene period protocol? Let's just have like really simple systems and I'm big on I don't like to remember things.   Like I love holidays, holidays are on a cadence. So how can we actually get cadences within your practice to where things really can run on more of an autopilot rather than trying to constantly like catch all the balls and remember things? That's the chaos. The chaos comes from the like not knowing and trying to scramble and being in reactive rather than proactive modes.   Speaker 1 (10:53) But that's really good, that's really great. So another question I have for you, there are dentists who are just dentists, and I don't mean that negatively, but they go in with the expectation that they're either gonna be an associate forever, or they're just going to practice and let everybody run the practice and they're just gonna come and do the dentistry, okay? Versus having the mindset of and acting like the CEO, okay? And there's a big difference. One, I believe, has a lot more stress.   I like to talk about it because I was the CEO of the practice. I handled everything. I handled the marketing. I handled the HR. I handled all of the things that makes it different than just being a dentist and putting your hands in the mouth and treating a patient. So if someone wants to act and think like a CEO, what does it really mean to do that versus just practicing dentistry and doing the dental work?   Speaker 2 (11:51) Yes, I'm so glad you brought this up. I've been like crushing on this idea. We actually just ran a three day CEO dentist workshop. like.   obsessing on this right now because there is nothing wrong. And I think that there's a few hats that people wear. I wear a consultant hat. I also wear a CEO hat. And they're actually and I think about big companies like let's look at Google. I know that CEO is not coding. They're not. They're not building it. They're truly in a CEO realm. And so when we look at like what does a CEO do, they are the chief executive officer. Like their job is to execute. Their job is vision. Their job is culture.   and their job is to like really steer and guide the ship and to come up with great ideas. And so when I look at that, I think that there's two hats for CEO dentists to wear. There's the true clinical dentistry, if that's what you want to do and continue to do. And then we really do need somebody who's guiding and leading this business. And I think when dentists, I know this can be a little like not favored, ⁓ dental practices are multimillion dollar businesses and they are. when we realize that they're   They are businesses and like you said, the HR and the marketing. But when you look at large businesses outside of dentistry, they have other players in the realm and in the rink with them to make it actually run as a very successful business. And so I believe that when we understand the business portion of dentistry and we have great clinical care, that's when we're able to serve and help more patients and more team members. And so helping these dentists realize what does a CEO do? And I actually pulled from Dan Martel.   the author of Buy Back Your Time, like obsessed with his book, met him in person, like raving fangirl. It was like slightly embarrassing, like how big of a fan I was of him. ⁓ But he has his delegation ladder in there for businesses and actually created a delegation ladder for dental practices of when CEO dentists go from like your right line, a lot of them do it all. And that's, think, where the burnout is and the chaos is to where when can we start to delegate? Like, do you have a personal assistant who answers all of your emails for you? And if not,   Administrative tasks are one of the best things to delegate. Then we move into like our scheduling and then into our customer service and the patient experience. And then we move into treatment planning. A lot of doctors do that on their own. And I'm not here to say you have to give up anything, but I am here to say that when you truly take on the role of CEO, trying to do it all actually creates chaos. And you actually, you're the bottleneck of the business. And so then we start to delegate out the case acceptance if you want to. You're allowed to keep whatever you want, whatever you're great at.   Then we delegate out the marketing, then we delegate out the, actually, me and my operations manager were talking that I believe that there's two spaces within leadership. There's the executive side, that's these big picture visionary pieces. And then there's the management side, which is the HR, the protocols, the accountability of the team. And when we had that like, and I believe that there's, it's like a black and a white, yin and yang, perfect whole, you need both sides of this leadership within that CEO realm.   But when you're trying to do all the pieces as a CEO, you need to know every aspect going on in the business. But that does not mean you need to do every aspect of the business. And so I think it's like figuring out which colors you like to paint with, which ones really are your zone of genius and then starting to then delegate in strategic manners, delegate and elevate, not abdicate ⁓ really are how you can make this where you become truly the CEO of your business and your practice. And you're able to have great players around you that are able to then.   Make sure every other part of your business is thriving and flourishing too.   Speaker 1 (15:19) Got it.   Speaker 2 (15:20) So   much line, I hope it wasn't lying.   Speaker 1 (15:22) No, that was great. That was great. I mean, they should replay that because I think there was some really good nuggets and pearls that they can take back. So, you know, I want to talk about delegation. ⁓ you know, Invisalign is a great product ⁓ to bring into the practice or aligners in general. doesn't have to be Invisalign, just aligners. And aligners are really good, but they become really profitable ⁓ when a dentist is willing and able to delegate the tasks to other team members.   And personally myself, I used to do it all. And then I took a class by somebody, can't remember who it was, but it was all about giving the empower your team to do things and delegate the services to them where you're literally kind of just doing the initial consultation and whatever is required by your license in the realm of the things. But the team is able to do mostly everything else. And once you do that, ⁓ Invisalign becomes a very, profitable procedure.   So what advice do you have about delegation to somebody, to a dentist who really feels like they need to do it all and does not want to give up control of anything?   Speaker 2 (16:28) Len, I'm so happy you asked me this question and I'm so happy that I'm a team member and I'm gonna put on a team member hat, not a CEO hat on this one. ⁓ Number one, I really, really hope, and dentists, if you need to pause, replay, record this and listen to it every single day, I really hope you do. ⁓ As a team member, my number one job, genuinely speaking, and doctors have told me so many times when they've heard me say this, it...   hopefully will strike you to your heart as well. As a team member, my number one, like genuine number one objective was to make my doctor happy and to make their life easier. And that was honestly what I did every single day. As a dental assistant, I'm looking ahead. I want to be seven steps ahead of you and I want to make sure that you're truly like set up for success. I want to make sure that patient's back on time. I want to make sure that hygiene exams are on time. And I think that while yes, you might have some team members that make you question this statement.   I think 95 % of the population is genuinely good and they want you to thrive and they want the patient experience to be great. So when you hear that and you truly honor that and you respect that and you trust that, you then will realize that one of the best things you can do is, I don't believe in delegating. So like I can empower, but if I empower and don't hold accountable, then I've created entitlement within my practice. So I want to empower through delegating of this like.   As a dental assistant, do know how happy I'd be if you gave me, can fit a line. I understand I'm going to make a few mistakes, but oh my gosh, the growth, growth equals happiness. So for your team to be happy, give them opportunities to progress. Like that's what creates the happiness and the sparkle and the zest in life. And so really when you empower your team and hold accountable, you don't get this entitlement. When you empower and don't hold accountable, that's when we get these entitled teams that genuinely then it just becomes mayhem in your practice.   So like you said, delegate these tasks that one, either you're not good at, or I do think about everybody should be working at the top of their license. What are you able to produce per hour? If there's a task that I can hire somebody for less than you can produce an hour, it's probably something that we shouldn't be using your time for. And I know as a CEO, as an owner, this is actually hard for me because you strip me of things that I'm actually really good at, but reality is there's better uses of my time. And when you can recognize   giving everybody the best use of their time. Me as a dental assistant being able to do Invisalign, you've now just lifted and elevated me to the highest level of my license as well. And so I really do believe like doctors, one, believe that your team is truly here to support you. And if they're not here to support you, they're not your right team players. they like, great, let them graduate to somebody else and you bring somebody else in. Two, empower them and hold accountable to ensure that it's like how you want it done. And team members like,   You can share this with your team. I'm happy to share this one reason I like to do this. Team members, give the feedback to your doctor. They are going to trust you so much more when you come back to them and you show them the things you listen to what they say, you create the protocols, you do it exactly how they want you to do it. That will build trust and confidence so quickly. Team members lose doctor's trust so quickly when they like lacked to follow through and like truly do what the doctors have given them like stewardship and ownership over. So for those doctors and like you said, Len.   You won't understand until you try. And when you do try, you will make mistakes. But I believe, this is my philosophy, anything that I've delegated never gets to come back to me. And I think when you have that notion and that idea, well, I know it could never come back to me. You actually make it really, really great. You train your team. You help them have this. ⁓ And I then believe everybody's able to flourish so much higher. So hopefully that answered of like, one, you need to delegate and you should delegate.   Two, what are the tasks that you can be doing that are like helping you work to the highest level of your license? Everybody working at that is going to make a better team experience, a better patient experience, and all around a better practice for you as well.   Speaker 1 (20:20) I think you, I mean, the content you're providing, the listening and viewing audience is spectacular. you know, one of the, I guess, negatives about being a dentist is a feeling of being overwhelmed. A lot of stress. You know, that's part of the reason why I think you've got, you know, dentists with the highest, one of the highest suicide rates out there is that, you know, it's a very stressful job. I mean, you've got a lot of debt, you've got a lot of, you know, people relying on you for income as well. So what mindset   do you think exist ⁓ that or traps do you mindset traps do dentists fall into that that keep them feeling overwhelmed and and what do do about that?   Speaker 2 (21:00) Yeah, this is something so real to me. My first practice, I mentioned it briefly at the very beginning of we took our practice from 500,000 to 2.4 million in nine months. And when I present and I speak, I often will bring up like the success story and I list off my stats of our practice. I asked the audience, said, who wants this practice? And like hands go up and people are like shouting like, yes, I want this.   And then I say the other side of success is that this person, is me, like, spoiler alert, I was 98 pounds and I'm 5'8". I ⁓ had divorce papers on the line. I remember like I walked out of my practice that like one day and I remember just like standing on the sidewalk and being like one step and all this could be over. Like it was, and I'm not a dentist. I didn't even have the pressure of having to be in the exam rooms, but I do understand the pressure of business. And that's actually what's like fueled my passion in consulting is.   Because I thought like if this is how so many of us feel to get to success, Tony Robbins has a quote that success without fulfillment is the ultimate failure. And that was curidant in a nutshell. We had success on paper, but fulfillment was lacking and my entire life was falling apart. And so when you ask like, what are some of these zones that keep people in this mindset is one, I think that we believe that to get to success, we have to grind it out. We have to hustle. We have to do it all. Like it's this hustle mentality that I believe is so false.   Yes, I do believe that hard work is required, but I don't believe you have to do all of the work. Just like we talked about before, also think delegations paramount. I think so many of the doctors that I see there in this burnout are just, it's like grippy. Like they want to hold on to everything and they're not willing to let go and they're not like, also you're telling your team that you don't trust them and you don't believe in them when you do that as well. So you're actually causing like this double-edged sword on it. And then third, I think ⁓ we just don't take time to stop and pause and realize like what really is necessary.   I think so much like when I sold out of the practices, my whole identity was associated with that. if we have our identities associated with these practices and with the success, well, I can imagine that that feels like chopping off your arm and your leg if you were to fail. therefore, if it's literally my physical body and I feel like it's my whole identity, I literally remember the day that I sold out of the practices. I felt who is cura dent, who is she? Like I have no purpose in this world anymore. Nothing is important. Like I don't even have a family. I have no practice.   I felt nothing and I think when people's identities are associated with this rather than having something else. So I talk about like what makes all of you up and I remember like like looks like this weird little doll. Like it's such a weird outline that I make people do but I'm like draw to me like how your life is and when I do this usually it's like from your neck to like your ankles that's work and if that much of your identity is associated with work in your practice.   What could we shift this to more so your whole identity is not associated with that? So that's like we go work out, we have time with family, we book the vacations and when you start to realize that there's more life outside of the chair, more life outside of it and you being a well-rounded human that truly and I don't like the word balance, I just love the word well-rounded and fulfilled. When we start to add some of those pieces in which again feels contradictory, it feels like if I give this up that I'm not making money. I used to say I don't want to sit on the couch and watch TV with my husband because I'm literally not making money.   That's one of the the grossest statements I've ever said, but Len, it's truth. I really truly felt this way. Like the only purpose is to be producing and to be productive. But I didn't realize that. Like you look at that athletes have to take a break and they have to reset. They have to recharge. They have to like the best time is actually the recovery off season. ⁓ no, no person can continue operating at 110%. And when they are operating, they're actually not their best self. So there's just as much beauty in the recharge off time.   as there is on the productive on time. So when we can delegate, when we have more purpose beyond just our practice, and it's okay, work to me is very fulfilling. It's such a big part of my life. I love it. ⁓ But it's not all of Kiera's identity. So if I were to lose work, Kiera and hopefully you can still exist outside of that. ⁓ And then truly having shut off time. A lot of clients when they come on board, I tell them, I'm like, I'm giving you the greatest gift. You're out of work today at 4.30 and I don't want you to talk about work. Close the laptop, walk out and literally leave it at work.   And what's crazy is people don't realize that you can actually get a lot done within your four or five hour, like four or five day a week work week. And to be home with your kids, to be home with your family, to go to the gym, to replenish your bucket that gives out so much every single day ⁓ really is what you actually need to be doing rather than trying to produce more. And it sounds contradictory, but it's true. You will actually produce more and be a better producer and happier business owner if you will do that.   I know that was a long-winded answer, Len, but I really hope that people can see there are two sides of success. The word itself of success has a portion of suck. Like there is a side of business that is really hard that does require that grind and that hard work, but there's also a beautiful side. And I think when people can dance in that, can see that their whole identity is not the practice. It's not all dependent on that and they fill themselves and fuel themselves. Literally, I feel like the burnout can be dissipated very quickly.   If you've been going on it for a long time, it will probably take a little bit longer, but these small, simple steps will make you so much more fulfilled. And honestly, I hope nobody listening to this podcast hit success without fulfillment. I hope all of us commit that while we're giving the great patient care, we're giving back to all these people, we equally get to deserve and we should deserve to have a beautiful life of our own as well.   Speaker 1 (26:39) So nicely said, very eloquent in way you said that as well. last thing I want to cover is, we talked about being overwhelmed. stress is also part of being overwhelmed. very stressed. What are some ways that you think a dentist can reduce the stress on a day-to-day part of his practice? If someone said, hey, I'm so stressed, I don't know what I'm going to do. And you hear it a lot. I I talk to dentists all the time. And one of the common denominators is that they're   You know, when I sold my practice, I was never truly, truly stressed out. The stuff that stressed me out, honestly, was stupid stuff. But since I sold my practice and retired, I don't really have much stress in my life anymore. It's very interesting. But what are some things that dentists could do to reduce those stress they see on a day-to-day basis?   Speaker 2 (27:29) Yes. Okay. And I said, yes, because I'm to go back to the S model. The S model is literally like my stress booster buster for you. Number one, where do you want to go and why? Like figure out you that truly if you don't have a North star, you don't know what you're going for and reassess to make sure that's really where you want to go. So many people put this like, I want to have four practices and I want to have this. And I'm like, why? You got to be able to tell me why I'm making sure it's your dream, not the dream you think you should be living.   That's like number one to get rid of stress, like truly living your dream. And I will tell you, you're allowed to like, it's in pencil, it's not in permanent ink. You can erase it, you can recraft it, you can recreate it. That's going to cut stress. I was chasing after a mountain, I didn't want to climb anymore. And when I realized that, that was a pivot shift. So number one is like, make sure you're actually truly going where you want to go. And that's the you. Earnings like profit, like Len, so much stress comes from not knowing the numbers.   And I know people sometimes want to avoid it. They don't want to look at it. Like I'm just going to go do production. I want to do ethical dentistry and I will tell you both exist. It's not an or like you will you as a human are going to naturally do ethical dentistry. Like you can't go against that. That's who you are at your core. And by knowing the numbers, you're not going to go and overdiagnose like I promise you it will not happen. But knowing the numbers and actually like looking at your cash, what are you spending money on? What do you need to produce to be able to afford the business?   Doctors learn the numbers and they actually use the numbers to make their decisions. Stress dissipates. I have so many doctors that reach out to me because they're cash flow poor and I'm like, you're producing 200,000 a month, how are we broke? ⁓ So actually understanding how to use numbers and not to be used by numbers and knowing how you actually can get money and like what can you live on and understanding tax brackets and savings like that discipline might seem constrictive, but I will tell you it is the most freeing stress free piece that you can have.   And then third, our systems and team. Like I'm going to like just really keep like painting this picture for you. Delegate to your team, use your team, put the systems into place. And we don't go for the whole elephant. We don't do the entire thing in one night shift. What we do is we look at the numbers. Where are numbers low on the KPIs? Let's go fix a system over there. So we fix that part of the leaking bucket. Just that alone, like even myself, I felt it like the hoosh of reducing that stress for you. ⁓ Start with your vision.   know your numbers and then put systems into place and team delegation and elevation ⁓ that will immediately reduce stress. And then like just quick, what is the one or two hot pain points right now causing the bulk of your stress? Let's figure out how we can eliminate those right now. And I want to, everybody always says, Kiera, there's no way like I can't do this. The answer is yes, you can. Yes, you can. And when we get out of this, I can't get that, I can't do this. We actually find the true core of what we can solve. Usually the answer is pretty simple and it's pretty immediate.   if we're willing to just let go and take action. So those would be kind of my like four little steps to reduce stress quickly and easily. And if you can't see it, sometimes having an outside voice and outside perspective, sometimes you're too far in the weeds, that can be very beneficial for you as well to like take you by the hand and say, here's step one, two, three, four, and they're there to guide you as well, rather than you trying to figure it out yourself.   Speaker 1 (30:35) amazing. This is great. ⁓ I want to shift for the final few minutes that we have together. I want to shift to my lightning round Q and a that I like to do with guests. We're going to get through eight to 10 of these. Okay, ready? The rule of thumb for this one, you like long winded answers, which is great. But for this one, it's very, fast. No long, no long winded. We'll never get through this.   Speaker 2 (30:47) So   You got it, Len.   Speaker 1 (30:58) So I opened my app up. First question, what book do you want to go back and reread as it's made a great impact on you the first time you read it?   Speaker 2 (31:07) I would go back and reread Bye, Your Time by Dan Martell. I feel like there's a lot that I could relearn from that where I'm at today.   Speaker 1 (31:14) repeat that one more time.   Speaker 2 (31:17) Yep, buy back your time by Daniel.   Speaker 1 (31:19) Buy back your time. I'm just writing it down. All right. Who has been your greatest inspiration?   Speaker 2 (31:25) Gosh Tony Robbins hands down. I love Tony so much. I look up to him a lot. I've been in his Lions group ⁓ the reason I look up to him is because He said one time the Tony you see in front of you is the Tony I created it's not from my parents It's not from business. It's not from anybody else It's who I want to be and who I esteem to be and he said life is always happening for you and not to you and those two pieces have Resonated with me so much in my life ⁓ truly one of the like   biggest, greatest mentors and I've been really blessed and lucky to have him directly mentor me, which have truly changed the trajectory of my course, of my life as well.   Speaker 1 (32:04) Awesome, amazing. ⁓ If you could take a class to learn anything, what would it be on?   Speaker 2 (32:10) marketing. Len, hate marketing. Call my Achilles heel. I learned so much and I think I know more. But man, if I could like understand it on a really high level easily all day every day and I take a lot of them. But man, one like magic one that would teach me everything. Yeah, it'd be amazing.   Speaker 1 (32:26) Amazing. Do you believe there is some sort of pattern or formula to becoming successful?   Speaker 2 (32:33) Yes, I do. It sounds like cliche. I didn't like, I think the yes model came from what I believe success is like you having a vision, looking at your numbers and then putting systems into play and using your team ⁓ and surrounding your yourself with people that are living and doing the life you want. I really do believe we become like the people we surround ourselves what we listen to. So that's what I would say is the path to success.   Speaker 1 (33:01) Amazing too. Has anyone in your network other than Tony Robbins, has anyone in your network been important in your journey or to your journey?   Speaker 2 (33:09) Absolutely. There's a lot of people. think my husband, that's a huge support for me. He believes in me, even though maybe he shouldn't believe in me, but having that rock. And then also my team, truly, I look at all the variations of Dental A Team and where I've gone as me as a person, they've evolved me as a human and they've also evolved our company and the good and the bad that have gone through.   They have truly shaped me, every single one of them, and I'm very, very grateful for the trust they put in me to create what we've built.   Speaker 1 (33:42) amazing. How do you develop how have you developed key partnerships?   Speaker 2 (33:47) Ah, that's fun. You go to events, you talk to people, you look to see how can you add value to their world, to their life. And I think partnerships, partnerships to me, I don't try to figure out like how to do something. I look to see like, who do I know that knows how to do this? That's how I use partnerships in life and vice versa. Like bring more to the table than you take from people. But I look at people have just like, what's their secret sauce? How can I like, like connect them to other people? To me, it's a fun connect the dots of just getting great people together. That's how I believe that like.   To me, that's how all boats rise is through partnerships like hands down. One of the best things was networking and meeting people. You will learn more from the minds of men than you will be able to like mine out of this world. Like there is more gold there than anywhere else in this world.   Speaker 1 (34:32) Got it. What has been your most satisfying moment in business?   Speaker 2 (34:39) Most satisfying moment? There have been a lot. I think recently my most satisfying moment was when I wanted to give up and I really was so burnt out and I was exhausted and I was tired and I hit that breaking point again in my life. And for the first time in my entire career, I took an entire month off and I reset and it was the most scaring. There was a lot of really bad backlash that came from it.   But me as a human, re-centered, refocused, re-prioritized. And I think that that was one of the most satisfying moments to realize, at the end of the day, CEOs and business owners have to show up for themselves first to be able to give to their entire team. And I'd never, ever, ever, ever done that. So like me personally, that was one of them. But man, like the hundreds and thousands of clients lives, Glenn, you and I both know, I think as consultants, when you hear people's lives changing,   like clients who are broke and literally had no money and now they're buying their kids their dream lives, that to me will always be the clincher of everything but like beautiful and why I show up every single day to do it. So there's a personal and a professional win that was like just super satisfying.   Speaker 1 (35:47) That's really great. All right, three questions left. Let's get through these quickly. What deserves all your attention but seldom gets it?   Speaker 2 (35:57) I would say probably my body like working out.   Speaker 1 (36:00) Okay, what three adjectives describe your strengths?   Speaker 2 (36:06) Adjectives. ⁓ I would say grit. would say fun. And I would say passion.   Speaker 1 (36:16) Great answers. Last question I ask is to everybody. So it is one subscription, either business or personal, so something you pay for either monthly or annually, that you simply cannot live without.   Speaker 2 (36:33) ⁓ Len.   I would say I can't live without, honestly, boomerang. That sounds so ridiculous. I would not be able to follow up with all the millions of things that I do day in and day out without boomerang as a person, like professional. Like I would pay for that all day every day. ⁓   Speaker 1 (36:53) I haven't heard that one before, that's a good one. you go. ⁓ So Kiera, how can people learn more about how you can help them if they want to learn more about your consulting agency? What's the best way for them to reach out and find out more?   Speaker 2 (37:03) Yeah, thank you so much Len. Best way is listen to the podcast, the Dental A Team podcast. Reach out on our website, TheDentalATeam.com. You can book a call with us or you can always reach out. You can text us directly, 775-243-5100. Like we will get back to you. I'm happy to share any tips, any insights. Find us on Instagram, Dental A Team. Truly, we try to be just like you are Len, available in all aspects and just really, really grateful for this opportunity today.   Speaker 1 (37:30) Well, this was great. Thank you so much for ⁓ spending 30 plus minutes with me, really educating the audience on things you're passionate about. And just like I did on yours, you can see the passion when you talk, you can see the passion in how you answer the questions. So I truly appreciate you kind of giving it all to us. So thank you again for being part of the Raving Patients podcast. ⁓ Guys, if you like the episode, please like us, please review us. If you think you or yourself or one of your colleagues can use what the Dental A Team can do for your practice, please reach out.   let them know you heard about them through the podcast that I just did with Kiera. ⁓ And as I end ⁓ every single one of my episodes, remember your reputation matters until the next episode. Thank you so much for joining me and we'll talk to everyone soon.  

  Inspiration for creativity often arises from active engagement rather than a passive search for it. This concept is vividly illustrated in the conversation between host Aaron Della Vedova his guest Fior Lorett, a seasoned tattoo artist. Fiori emphasizes that her creative process is deeply intertwined with her daily artistic practice. She states, "the more I do, the more inspired I may be," highlighting that involvement in the creative process itself can ignite new ideas and motivation. Fiori shares insights into her unique neo-traditional style, which features an ornamental flair, and discusses her artistic journey and the influences that shape her work. The conversation explores the pressures of the creative process and the importance of finding joy in one's craft. Tune in to discover what it takes to maintain a prolific career in tattoo artistry and the personal experiences that drive Fiori's creative expression. Don't forget to check out her stunning artwork on Instagram @fiori_lorett Chat Highlights: 00:01:26 - Fiori's Tattoo Style 00:02:46 - Early Life and Family Background 00:05:05 - It All Started with Henna 00:07:04 - First Encounter with Tattooing 00:12:00 - Opening a Shop at 15 00:18:05 - Travel and Uncomfortableness as Inspiration 00:28:06 - Gypsy Lifestyle and Settling Down 00:32:47 - Challenges for Women in Tattooing  00:43:10 - What Makes a Great Tattoo 00:46:07 - Current Tattoo Trends and Future Predictions 00:50:37 - Self-Esteem Through Tattooing. 00:58:33 - You Have to Be All In as a Tattoo Artist   Quotes: "I tell myself every day that I chose this, this work chose me, and I do it because it's fun."   "I work to have inspiration. And the more I do, the more inspired I may be."   "I need to get out there and be uncomfortable."   "The act of doing it provides the inspiration. Versus find inspiration so I can do it."   "Now you get a young person that their expression to the world is their online presence." “It's almost like sometimes I see that people are doing tattoos for people that don't like tattoos."   "If you're not all in, if you're not really passionate and talented... You're probably not even going to make a living."   Stay Connected: Chats & Tatts: Website: http://www.chatsandtatts.com⁠ Tik Tok: https://www.tiktok.com/@chatsandtatts  IG: http://www.instagram.com/chatsandtatts Chats & Tatts YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/chatsandtatts Connect with Aaron:⁠   Aaron IG:⁠ http://www.instagram.com/aarondellavedova⁠ Guru Tattoo: http://www.Gurutattoo.com Connect with Fiori:: IG:https://www.instagram.com/Fiori_Lorett        

In this episode of In-Ear Insights, the Trust Insights podcast, Katie and Chris discuss the stark reality of the future of work presented at the Marketing AI Conference, MAICON 2025. You’ll learn which roles artificial intelligence will consume fastest and why average employees face the highest risk of replacement. You’ll master the critical thinking and contextual skills you must develop now to transform yourself into an indispensable expert. You’ll understand how expanding your intellectual curiosity outside your specific job will unlock creative problem solving essential for survival. You’ll discover the massive global AI blind spot that US companies ignore and how this shifting landscape affects your career trajectory. Watch now to prepare your career for the age of accelerated automation! Watch the video here: Can’t see anything? Watch it on YouTube here. Listen to the audio here: https://traffic.libsyn.com/inearinsights/tipodcast-maicon-2025-generative-ai-for-marketers.mp3 Download the MP3 audio here. Need help with your company’s data and analytics? Let us know! Join our free Slack group for marketers interested in analytics! [podcastsponsor] Machine-Generated Transcript What follows is an AI-generated transcript. The transcript may contain errors and is not a substitute for listening to the episode. Christopher S. Penn – 00:00 In this week’s In Ear Insights, we are at the Marketing AI Conference, Macon 2025 in Cleveland with 1,500 of our best friends. This morning, the CEO of SmartRx, formerly the Marketing AI Institute, Paul Ritzer, was talking about the future of work. Now, before I go down a long rabbit hole, Dave, what was your immediate impressions, takeaways from Paul’s talk? Katie Robbert – 00:23 Paul always brings this really interesting perspective because he’s very much a futurist, much like yourself, but he’s a futurist in a different way. Whereas you’re on the future of the technology, he’s focused on the future of the business and the people. And so his perspective was really, “AI is going to take your job.” If we had to underscore it, that was the bottom line: AI is going to take your job. However, how can you be smarter about it? How can you work with it instead of working against it? Obviously, he didn’t have time to get into every single individual solution. Katie Robbert – 01:01 The goal of his keynote talk was to get us all thinking, “Oh, so if AI is going to take my job, how do I work with AI versus just continuing to fight against it so that I’m never going to get ahead?” I thought that was a really interesting way to introduce the conference as a whole, where every individual session is going to get into their soldiers. Christopher S. Penn – 01:24 The chart that really surprised me was one of those, “Oh, he actually said the quiet part out loud.” He showed the SaaS business chart: SaaS software is $500 billion of economic value. Of course, AI companies are going, “Yeah, we want that money. We want to take all that money.” But then he brought up the labor chart, which is $12 trillion of money, and says, “This is what the AI companies really want. They want to take all $12 trillion and keep it for themselves and fire everybody,” which is the quiet part out loud. Even if they take 20% of that, that’s still, obviously, what is it, $2 trillion, give or take? When we think about what that means for human beings, that’s basically saying, “I want 20% of the workforce to be unemployed.” Katie Robbert – 02:15 And he wasn’t shy about saying that. Unfortunately, that is the message that a lot of the larger companies are promoting right now. So the question then becomes, what does that mean for that 20%? They have to pivot. They have to learn new skills, or—the big thing, and you and I have talked about this quite a bit this year—is you really have to tap into that critical thinking. That was one of the messages that Paul was sharing in the keynote: go to school, get your liberal art degree, and focus on critical thinking. AI is going to do the rest of it. Katie Robbert – 02:46 So when we look at the roles that are up for grabs, a lot of it was in management, a lot of it was in customer service, a lot of it was in analytics—things that already have a lot of automation around them. So why not naturally let agentic AI take over, and then you don’t need human intervention at all? So then, where does that leave the human? Katie Robbert – 03:08 We’re the ones who have to think what’s next. One of the things that Paul did share was that the screenwriter for all of the Scorsese films was saying that ChatGPT gave me better ideas. We don’t know what those exact prompts looked like. We don’t know how much context was given. We don’t know how much background information. But if that was sue and I, his name was Paul. Paul Schrader. Yes, I forgot it for a second. If Paul Schrader can look at Paul Schrader’s work, then he’s the expert. That’s the thing that I think needed to also be underscored: Paul Schrader is the expert in Paul Schrader. Paul Schrader is the expert in screenwriting those particular genre films. Nobody else can do that. Katie Robbert – 03:52 So Paul Schrader is the only one who could have created the contextual information for those large language models. He still has value, and he’s the one who’s going to take the ideas given by the large language models and turn them into something. The large language model might give him an idea, but he needs to be the one to flush it out, start to finish, because he’s the one who understands nuance. He’s the one who understands, “If I give this to a Leonardo DiCaprio, what is he gonna do with the role? How is he gonna think about it?” Because then you’re starting to get into all of the different complexities where no one individual ever truly works alone. You have a lot of other humans. Katie Robbert – 04:29 I think that’s the part that we haven’t quite gotten to, is sure, generative AI can give you a lot of information, give you a lot of ideas, and do a lot of the work. But when you start incorporating more humans into a team, the nuance—it’s very discreet. It’s very hard for an AI to pick up. You still need humans to do those pieces. Christopher S. Penn – 04:49 When you take a look, though, at something like the Tilly Norwood thing from a couple weeks ago, even there, it’s saying, “Let’s take fewer humans in there,” where you have this completely machine generated actor avatar, I guess. It was very clearly made to replace a human there because they’re saying, “This is great. They don’t have to pay union wages. The actor never calls in sick. The actor never takes a vacation. The actor’s not going to be partying at a club unless someone makes it do that.” When we look at that big chart of, “Here’s all the jobs that are up for grabs,” the $12 trillion of economic value, when you look at that, how at risk do you think your average person is? Katie Robbert – 05:39 The key word in there is average. An average person is at risk. Because if an average person isn’t thinking about things creatively, or if they’re just saying, “Oh, this is what I have to do today, let me just do it. Let me just do the bare minimum, get through it.” Yes, that person is at risk. But someone who looks at a problem or a task that’s in front of them and thinks, “What are the five different ways that I could approach this? Let me sit down for a second, really plan it out. What am I not thinking of? What have I not asked? What’s the information I don’t have in front of me? Let me go find that”—that person is less at risk because they are able to think beyond what’s right in front of them. Katie Robbert – 06:17 I think that is going to be harder to replace. So, for example, I do operations, I’m a CEO. I set the vision. You could theoretically give that to an AI to do. I could create CEO Katie GPT. And GPT Katie could set the vision, based on everything I know: “This is the direction that your company should go in.” What that generative AI doesn’t know is what I know—what we’ve tried, what we haven’t tried. I could give it all that information and it could still say, “Okay, it sounds like you’ve tried this.” But then it doesn’t necessarily know conversations that I’ve had with you offline about certain things. Could I give it all that information? Sure. But then now I’m introducing another person into the conversation. And as predictable as humans are, we’re unpredictable. Katie Robbert – 07:13 So you might say, “Katie would absolutely say this to something.” And I’m going to look at it and go, “I would absolutely not say that.” We’ve actually run into that with our account manager where she’s like, “Well, this is how I thought you would respond. This is how I thought you would post something on social media.” I’m like, “Absolutely not. That doesn’t sound like me at all.” She’s like, “But that’s what the GPT gave me that is supposed to sound like you.” I’m like, “Well, it’s wrong because I’m allowed to change my mind. I’m a human.” And GPTs or large language models don’t have that luxury of just changing its mind and just kind of winging it, if that makes sense. Christopher S. Penn – 07:44 It does. What percentage, based on your experience in managing people, what percentage of people are that exceptional person versus the average or the below average? Katie Robbert – 07:55 A small percentage, unfortunately, because it comes down to two things: consistency and motivation. First, you have to be consistent and do your thing well all the time. In order to be consistent, you have to be motivated. So it’s not enough to just show up, check the boxes, and then go about your day, because anybody can do that; AI can do that. You have to be motivated to want to learn more, to want to do more. So the people who are demonstrating a hunger for reaching—what do they call it?—punching above their weight, reaching beyond what they have, those are the people who are going to be less vulnerable because they’re willing to learn, they’re willing to adapt, they’re willing to be agile. Christopher S. Penn – 08:37 For a while now we’ve been saying that either you’re going to manage the machines or the machines are going to manage you. And now of course we are at the point the machine is just going to manage the machines and you are replaced. Given so few people have that intrinsic motivation, is that teachable or is that something that someone has to have—that inner desire to want to better, regardless of training? Katie Robbert – 09:08 “Teachable” I think is the wrong word. It’s more something that you have to tap into with someone. This is something that you’ve talked about before: what motivates people—money, security, blah, blah, whatever, all those different things. You can say, “I’m going to motivate you by dangling money in front of you,” or, “I’m going to motivate you by dangling time off in front of you.” I’m not teaching you anything. I’m just tapping into who you are as a person by understanding your motives, what motivates you, what gets you excited. I feel fairly confident in saying that your motivations, Chris, are to be the smartest person in the room or to have the most knowledge about your given industry so that you can be considered an expert. Katie Robbert – 09:58 That’s something that you’re going to continue to strive for. That’s what motivates you, in addition to financial security, in addition to securing a good home life for your family. That’s what motivates you. So as I, the other human in the company, think about it, I’m like, “What is going to motivate Chris to get his stuff done?” Okay, can I position it as, “If you do this, you’re going to be the smartest person in the room,” or, “If you do this, you’re going to have financial security?” And you’re like, “Oh, great, those are things I care about. Great, now I’m motivated to do them.” Versus if I say, “If you do this, I’ll get off your back.” That’s not enough motivation because you’re like, “Well, you’re going to be on my back anyway.” Katie Robbert – 10:38 Why bother with this thing when it’s just going to be the next thing the next day? So it’s not a matter of teaching people to be motivated. It’s a matter of, if you’re the person who has to do the motivating, finding what motivates someone. And that’s a very human thing. That’s as old as humans are—finding what people are passionate about, what gets them out of bed in the morning. Christopher S. Penn – 11:05 Which is a complex interplay. If you think about the last five years, we’ve had a lot of discussions about things like quiet quitting, where people show up to work to do the bare minimum, where workers have recognized companies don’t have their back at all. Katie Robbert – 11:19 We have culture and pizza on Fridays. Christopher S. Penn – 11:23 At 5:00 PM when everyone wants to just— Katie Robbert – 11:25 Go home and float in that day. Christopher S. Penn – 11:26 Exactly. Given that, does that accelerate the replacement of those workers? Katie Robbert – 11:37 When we talk about change management, we talk about down to the individual level. You have to be explaining to each and every individual, “What’s in it for me?” If you’re working for a company that’s like, “Well, what’s in it for you is free pizza Fridays and funny hack days and Hawaiian shirt day,” that doesn’t put money in their bank account. That doesn’t put a roof over their head; that doesn’t put food on their table, maybe unless they bring home one of the free pizzas. But that’s once a week. What about the other six days a week? That’s not enough motivation for someone to stay. I’ve been in that position, you’ve been in that position. My first thought is, “Well, maybe stop spending money on free pizza and pay me more.” Katie Robbert – 12:19 That would motivate me, that would make me feel valued. If you said, “You can go buy your own pizza because now you can afford it,” that’s a motivator. But companies aren’t thinking about it that way. They’re looking at employees as just expendable cogs that they can rip and replace. Twenty other people would be happy to do the job that you’re unhappy doing. That’s true, but that’s because companies are setting up people to fail, not to succeed. Christopher S. Penn – 12:46 And now with machinery, you’re saying, “Okay, since there’s a failing cog anyway, why don’t we replace it with an actual cog instead?” So where does this lead for companies? Particularly in capitalist markets where there is no strong social welfare net? Yeah, obviously if you go to France, you can work a 30-hour week and be just fine. But we don’t live in France. France, if you’re hiring, we’re available. Where does it lead? Because I can definitely see one road where this leads to basically where France ended up in 1789, which is the Guillotines. These people trot out the Guillotines because after a certain point, income inequality leads to that stuff. Where does this lead for the market as you see it now? Katie Robbert – 13:39 Unfortunately, nowhere good. We have seen time and time again, as much as we want to see the best in people, we’re seeing the worst in people today, as of this podcast recording—not at Macon. These are some of the best people. But when you step outside of this bubble, you’re seeing the worst in people. They’re motivated by money and money only, money and power. They don’t care about humanity as a whole. They’re like, “I don’t care if you’re poor, get poorer, I’m getting richer.” I feel like, unfortunately, that is the message that is being sent. “If you can make a dollar, go ahead and make a dollar. Don’t worry about what that does to anybody else. Go ahead and be in it for yourself.” Katie Robbert – 14:24 And that’s unfortunately where I see a lot of companies going: we’re just in it to make money. We no longer care about the welfare of our people. I’ve talked on previous shows, on previous podcasts. My husband works for a grocery store that was bought out by Amazon a few years ago, and he’s seeing the effects of that daily. Amazon bought this grocery chain and said basically, “We don’t actually care about the people. We’re going to automate things. We’re going to introduce artificial intelligence.” They’ve gotten rid of HR. He still has to bring home a physical check because there is no one to give him paperwork to do direct deposit. Christopher S. Penn – 15:06 He’s been—ironic given the company. Katie Robbert – 15:08 And he’s been at the company for 25 years. But when they change things over, if he has an assurance question, there’s no one to go to. They probably have chatbots and an email distribution list that goes to somebody in an inbox that never. It’s so sad to see the decline based on where the company started and what the mission originally was of that company to where it is today. His suspicion—and this is not confirmed—his suspicion is that they are gearing up to sell this business, this grocery chain, to another grocery chain for profit and get rid of it. Flipping it, basically. Right now, they’re using it as a distribution center, which is not what it’s meant to be. Katie Robbert – 15:56 And now they’re going to flip it to another grocery store chain because they’ve gotten what they needed from it. Who cares about the people? Who cares about the fact that he as an individual has to work 50 hours a week because there’s nobody else? They’ve flattened the company. They’re like, “No, based on our AI scheduler, there’s plenty of people to cover all of these hours seven days a week.” And he’s like, “Yeah, you have me on there for seven of the seven days.” Because the AI is not thinking about work-life balance. It’s like, “Well, this individual is available at these times, so therefore he must be working here.” And it’s not going to do good things for people in services industries, for people in roles that cannot be automated. Katie Robbert – 16:41 So we talk about customer service—that’s picking up the phone, logging a plate—that can be automated. Walking into a brick and mortar, there are absolutely parts of it that can be automated, specifically the end purchase transaction. But the actual ordering and picking of things and preparing it—sure, you could argue that eventually robots could be doing that, but as of today, that’s all humans. And those humans are being treated so poorly. Christopher S. Penn – 17:08 So where does that end for this particular company or any large enterprise? Katie Robbert – 17:14 They really have—they have to make decisions: do they want to put the money first or the people first? And you already know what the answer to that is. That’s really what it comes down to. When it ends, it doesn’t end. Even if they get sold, they’re always going to put the money first. If they have massive turnover, what do they care? They’re going to find somebody else who’s willing to do that work. Think about all of those people who were just laid off from the white-collar jobs who are like, “Oh crap, I still have a mortgage I have to pay, I still have a family I have to feed. Let me go get one of those jobs that nobody else is now willing to do.” Katie Robbert – 17:51 I feel like that’s the way that the future of work for those people who are left behind is going to turn over. Katie Robbert – 17:59 There’s a lot of people who are happy doing those jobs. I love doing more of what’s considered the blue-collar job—doing things manually, getting their hands in it, versus automating everything. But that’s me personally; that’s what motivates me. That I would imagine is very unappealing to you. Not that for almost. But if cooking’s off the table, there’s a lot of other things that you could do, but would you do them? Katie Robbert – 18:29 So when we talk about what’s going to happen to those people who are cut and left behind, those are the choices they’re going to have to make because there’s not going to be more tech jobs for them to choose from. And if you are someone in your career who has only ever focused on one thing, you’re definitely in big trouble. Christopher S. Penn – 18:47 Yeah, I have a friend who’s a lawyer at a nonprofit, and they’re like, “Yeah, we have no funding anymore, so.” But I can’t pick up and go to England because I can’t practice law there. Katie Robbert – 18:59 Right. I think about people. Forever, social media was it. You focus on social media and you are set. Anybody will hire you because they’re trying to learn how to master social media. Guess where there’s no jobs anymore? Social media. So if all you know is social media and you haven’t diversified your skill set, you’re cooked, you’re done. You’re going to have to start at ground zero entry level. If there’s that. And that’s the thing that’s going to be tough because entry-level jobs—exactly. Christopher S. Penn – 19:34 We saw, what was it, the National Labor Relations Board publish something a couple months ago saying that the unemployment rate for new college graduates is something 60% higher than the rest of the workforce because all the entry-level jobs have been consumed. Katie Robbert – 19:46 Right. I did a talk earlier this year at WPI—that’s Worcester Polytech in Massachusetts—through the Women in Data Science organization. We were answering questions basically like this about the future of work for AI. At a technical college, there are a lot of people who are studying engineering, there are a lot of people who are studying software development. That was one of the first questions: “I’m about to get my engineering degree, I’m about to get my software development degree. What am I supposed to do?” My response to that is, you still need to understand how the thing works. We were talking about this in our AI for Analytics workshop yesterday that we gave here at Macon. In order to do coding in generative AI effectively, you have to understand the software development life cycle. Katie Robbert – 20:39 There is still a need for the expertise. People are asking, “What do I do?” Focus on becoming an expert. Focus on really mastering the thing that you’re passionate about, the thing that you want to learn about. You’ll be the one teaching the AI, setting up the AI, consulting with the people who are setting up the AI. There’ll be plenty of practitioners who can push the buttons and set up agents, but they still need the experts to tell them what it’s supposed to do and what the output’s supposed to be. Christopher S. Penn – 21:06 Do you see—this is kind of a trick question—do you see the machines consuming that expertise? Katie Robbert – 21:15 Oh, sure. But this is where we go back to what we were talking about: the more people, the more group think—which I hate that term—but the more group think you introduce, the more nuanced it is. When you and I sit down, for example, when we actually have five minutes to sit down and talk about the future of our business, where we want to go or what we’re working on today, the amount of information we can iterate on because we know each other so well and almost don’t have to speak in complete sentences and just can sort of pick up what the other person is thinking. Or I can look at something you’re writing and say, “Hey, I had an idea about that.” We can do that as humans because we know each other so well. Katie Robbert – 21:58 I don’t think—and you’re going to tell me this is going to happen—unless we can actually plug or forge into our brains and download all of the things. That’s never going to happen. Even if we build Katie GPT and Chris GPT and have them talk to each other, they’re never going to brainstorm the way you and I brainstorm in real life. Especially if you give me a whiteboard. I’m good. I’m going to get so much done. Christopher S. Penn – 22:25 For people who are in their career right now, what do they do? You can tell somebody, “You need to be a good critical thinker, a creative thinker, a contextual thinker. You need to know where your data lives and things like that.” But the technology is advancing at such a fast rate. I talk about this in the workshops that we do—which, by the way, Trust Insights is offering workshops at your company, if we like one. But one of the things to talk about is, say, with the model’s acceleration in terms of growth, they’re growing faster than any technology ever has. They went from face rolling idiot in 2023 right to above PhD level in everything two years later. Christopher S. Penn – 23:13 So the people who, in their career, are looking at this, going, “It’s like a bad Stephen King movie where you see the thing coming across the horizon.” Katie Robbert – 23:22 There is no such thing as a bad Stephen King movie. Sometimes the book is better, but it’s still good. But yes, maybe *Creepshow*. What do you mean in terms of how do they prepare for the inevitable? Christopher S. Penn – 23:44 Prepare for the inevitable. Because to tell somebody, “Yeah, be a critical thinker, be a contextual thinker, be a creative thinker”—that’s good in the abstract. But then you’re like, “Well, my—yeah, my—and my boss says we’re doing a 10% headcount reduction this week.” Katie Robbert – 24:02 This is my personal way of approaching it: you can’t limit yourself to just go, “Okay, think about it. Okay, I’m thinking.” You actually have to educate yourself on a variety of different things. I am a voracious reader. I read all the time when I’m not working. In the past three weeks, I’ve read four books. And they’re not business books; they are fiction books and on a variety of things. But what that does is it keeps my brain active. It keeps my brain thinking. Then I give myself the space and time. When I walk my dog, I sort of process all of it. I think about it, and then I start thinking about, “What are we doing as our company today?” or, “What’s on the task list?” Katie Robbert – 24:50 Because I’ve expanded my personal horizons beyond what’s right in front of me, I can think about it from the perspective of other people, fictional or otherwise, “How would this person approach it?” or, “What would I do in that scenario?” Even as I’m reading these books, I start to think about myself. I’m like, “What would I do in that scenario? What would I do if I was finding myself on a road trip with a cannibal who, at the end of the road trip, was likely going to consume all of me, including my bones?” It was the last book I read, and it was definitely not what I thought I was signing up for. But you start to put yourself in those scenarios. Katie Robbert – 25:32 That’s what I personally think unlocks the critical thinking, because you’re not just stuck in, “Okay, I have a math problem. I have 1 + 1.” That’s where a lot of people think critical thinking starts and ends. They think, “Well, if I can solve that problem, I’m a critical thinker.” No, there’s only one way to solve that problem. That’s it. I personally would encourage people to expand their horizons, and this comes through having hobbies. You like to say that you work 24/7. That’s not true. You have hobbies, but they’re hobbies that help you be creative. They’re hobbies that help you connect with other people so that you can have those shared experiences, but also learn from people from different cultures, different backgrounds, different experiences. Katie Robbert – 26:18 That’s what’s going to help you be a stronger, fitable thinker, because you’re not just thinking about it from your perspective. Christopher S. Penn – 26:25 Switching gears, what was missing, what’s been missing, and what is absent from this show in the AI space? I have an answer, but I want to hear yours. Katie Robbert – 26:36 Oh, boy. Really putting me on the spot here. I know what is missing. I don’t know. I’m going to think about it, and I am going to get back to you. As we all know, I am not someone who can think on my feet as quickly as you can. So I will take time, I will process it, but I will come back to you. What do you think is missing? Christopher S. Penn – 27:07 One of the things that is a giant blind spot in the AI space right now is it is a very Western-centric view. All the companies say OpenAI and Anthropic and Google and Meta and stuff like that. Yet when you look at the leaderboards online of whose models are topping the charts—Cling Wan, Alibaba, Quinn, Deepseek—these are all Chinese-made models. If you look at the chip sets being used, the government of China itself just issued an edict: “No more Nvidia chips. We are going to use Huawei Ascend 920s now,” which are very good at what they do. And the Chinese models themselves, these companies are just giving them away to the world. Christopher S. Penn – 27:54 They’re not trying to lock you in like a ChatGPT is. The premise for them, for basically the rest of the world that is in America, is, “Hey, you could take American AI where you’re locked in and you’re gonna spend more and more money, or here’s a Chinese model for free and you can build your national infrastructure on the free stuff that we’re gonna give you.” I’ve seen none of that here. That is completely absent from any of the discussions about what other nations are doing with AI. The EU has Mistral and Black Forest Labs, Sub-Saharan Africa has Lilapi AI. Singapore has Sea Lion, Korea has LG, the appliance maker, and their models. Of course, China has a massive footprint in the space. I don’t see that reflected anywhere here. Christopher S. Penn – 28:46 It’s not in the conversations, it’s not in the hallways, it’s not on stage. And to me, that is a really big blind spot if you think—as many people do—that that is your number one competitor on the world stage. Katie Robbert – 28:57 Why do you think? Christopher S. Penn – 29:01 That’s a very complicated question. But it involves racism, it involves a substantial language barrier, it involves economics. When your competitor is giving away everything for free, you’re like, “Well, let’s just pretend they’re not there because we don’t want to draw any attention to them.” And it is also a deep, deep-seated fear. When you look at all of the papers that are being submitted by Google and Facebook and all these other different companies and you look at the last names of the principal investigators and stuff, nine out of 10 times it’s a name that’s coded as an ethnic Chinese name. China produces more PhDs than I think America produces students, just by population dynamics alone. You have this massive competitor, and it almost feels like people just want to put their heads in the sand and say they’re not there. Christopher S. Penn – 30:02 It’s like the boogeyman, they’re not there. And yet if we’re talking about the deployment of AI globally, the folks here should be aware that is a thing that is not just the Sam Alton Show. Katie Robbert – 30:18 I think perhaps then, as we’re talking about the future of work and big companies, small companies, mid-sized companies, this goes sort of back to what I was saying: you need to expand your horizons of thinking. “Well, we’re a domestic company. Why do I need to worry about what China’s doing?” Take a look at your tech stack, and where are those software packages created? Who’s maintaining them? It’s probably not all domestic; it’s probably more of a global firm than you think you are. But we think about it in terms of who do we serve as customers, not what we are using internally. We know people like Paul has talked about operating systems, Ginny Dietrich has talked about operating systems. Katie Robbert – 31:02 That’s really sort of where you have to start thinking more globally in terms of, “What am I actually bringing into my organization?” Not just my customer base, not just the markets that I’m going after, not just my sales team territories, but what is actually powering my company. That’s, I think, to your point—that’s where you can start thinking more globally even if your customer base isn’t global. That might theoretically help you with that critical thinking to start expanding beyond your little homogeneous bubble. Christopher S. Penn – 31:35 Even something like this has been a topic in the news recently. Rare earth minerals, which are not rare, they’re actually very commonplace. There’s just not much of them in any one spot. But China is the only economy on the planet that has figured out how to industrialize them safely. They produce 85% of it on the planet. And that powers your smartphone, that powers your refrigerator, your car and, oh by the way, all of the AI chips. Even things like that affect the future of work and the future of AI because you basically have one place that has a monopoly on this. The same for the Netherlands. The Netherlands is the only country on the planet that produces a certain kind of machine that is used to create these chips for AI. Christopher S. Penn – 32:17 If that company goes away or something, the planet as a whole is like, “Well, I figured they need to come up with an alternative.” So to your point, we have a lot of these choke points in the AI value chain that could be blockers. Again, that’s not something that you hear. I’ve not heard that at any conference. Katie Robbert – 32:38 As we’re thinking about the future of work, which is what we’re talking about on today’s podcast at Macon, 1,500 people in Cleveland. I guarantee they’re going to do it again next year. So if you’re not here this year, definitely sign up for next year. Take a look at the Smarter X and their academy. It’s all good stuff, great people. I think—and this was the question Paul was asking in his keynote—”Where do we go from here?” The— Katie Robbert – 33:05 The atmosphere. Yes. We don’t need—we don’t need to start singing. I do not need. With more feeling. I do get that reference. You’re welcome. But one of the key takeaways is there are more questions than answers. You and I are asking each other questions, but there are more questions than answers. And if we think we have all of the answers, we’re wrong. We have the answers that are sufficient enough for today to keep our business moving forward. But we have to keep asking new questions. That also goes into that critical thinking. You need to be comfortable not knowing. You need to be comfortable asking questions, and you need to be comfortable doing that research and seeking it out and maybe getting it wrong, but then continuing to learn from it. Christopher S. Penn – 33:50 And the future of work, I mean, it really is a very cloudy crystal wall. We have no idea. One of the things that Paul pointed out really well was you have different scaling laws depending on where you are in AI. He could have definitely spent some more time on that, but I understand it was a keynote, not a deep dive. There’s more to that than even that. And they do compound each other, which is what’s creating this ridiculously fast pace of AI evolution. There’s at least one more on the way, which means that the ability for these tools to be superhuman across tasks is going to be here sooner than people think. Paul was saying by 2026, 2027, that’s what we’ll start to see. Robotics, depends on where you are. Christopher S. Penn – 34:41 What’s coming out of Chinese labs for robots is jaw dropping. Katie Robbert – 34:45 I don’t want to know. I don’t want to know. I’ve seen *Ex Machina*, and I don’t want to know. Yeah, no. To your point, I think a lot of people bury their head in the sand because of fear. But in order to, again, it sort of goes back to that critical thinking, you have to be comfortable with the uncomfortable. I’m sort of joking: “I don’t want to know. I’ve seen *Ex Machina*.” But I do want to know. I do need to know. I need to understand. Do I want to be the technologist? No. But I need to play with these tools enough that I feel I understand how they work. Yesterday I was playing in Opal. I’m going to play in N8N. Katie Robbert – 35:24 It’s not my primary function, but it helps me better understand where you’re coming from and the questions that our clients are asking. That, in a very simple way to me, is the future of work: that at least I’m willing to stretch myself and keep exploring and be uncomfortable so that I can say I’m not static. Christopher S. Penn – 35:46 I think one of the things that 3M was very well known for in the day was the 20% rule, where an employee, as part of their job, could have 20% of the time just work on side projects related to the company. That’s how Post-it Notes got invented, I think. I think in the AI forward era that we’re in, companies do need to make that commitment again to the 20% rule. Not necessarily just messing around, but specifically saying you should be spending 20% of your time with AI to figure out how to use it, to figure out how to do some of those tasks yourself, so that instead of being replaced by the machine, you’re the one who’s at least running the machine. Because if you don’t do that, then the person in the next cubicle will. Christopher S. Penn – 36:33 And then the company’s like, “Well, we used to have 10 people, we only need two. And you’re not one of the two who has figured out how to use this thing to do that. So out you go.” Katie Robbert – 36:41 I think that was what Paul was doing in his AI for Productivity workshop yesterday, was giving people the opportunity to come up with those creative ideas. Our friend Andy Crestadino was relaying a story yesterday to us of a very similar vein where someone was saying, “I’ll give you $5,000. Create whatever you want.” And the thing that the person created was so mind-blowing and so useful that he was like, “Look what happens when I just let people do something creative.” But if we bring it sort of back whole circle, what’s the motivation? Why are people doing it in the first place? Katie Robbert – 37:14 It has to be something that they’re passionate about, and that’s going to really be what drives the future of work in terms of being able to sustain while working alongside AI, versus, “This is all I know how to do. This is all I ever want to know how to do.” Yes, AI is going over your job. Christopher S. Penn – 37:33 So I guess wrapping up, we definitely want you thinking creatively, critically, contextually. Know where your data is, know where your ideas come from, broaden your horizons so that you have more ideas, and be able to be one of the people who knows how to call BS on the machines and say, “That’s completely wrong, ChatGPT.” Beyond that, everyone has an obligation to try to replace themselves with the machines before someone else does it to you. Katie Robbert – 38:09 I think again, to plug Macon, which is where we are as we’re recording this episode, this is a great starting point for expanding your horizons because the amount of people that you get to network with are from different companies, different experiences, different walks of life. You can go to the sessions, learn it from their point of view. You can listen to Paul’s keynote. If you think you already know everything about your job, you’re failing. Take the time to learn where other people are coming from. It may not be immediately relevant to you, but it could stick with you. Something may resonate, something might spark a new idea. Katie Robbert – 38:46 I feel like we’re pretty far along in our AI journey, but in sitting in Paul’s keynote, I had two things that stuck out to me: “Oh, that’s a great idea. I want to go do that.” That’s great. I wouldn’t have gotten that otherwise if I didn’t step out of my comfort zone and listen to someone else’s point of view. That’s really how people are going to grow, and that’s that critical thinking—getting those shared experiences and getting that brainstorming and just community. Christopher S. Penn – 39:12 Exactly. If you’ve got some thoughts about how you are approaching the future of work, pop on by our free Slack group. Go to trust insights AI analysts for marketers, where you and over 4,500 other marketers are asking and answering each other’s questions every single day. Wherever you watch or listen to the show, if there’s a channel you’d rather have it on instead, go to Trust Insights AI Ti Podcast, where you can find us all the places fine podcasts are served. Thanks for tuning in. I’ll talk to you on the next one. Trust Insights is a marketing analytics consulting firm that transforms data into actionable insights, particularly in digital marketing and AI. They specialize in helping businesses understand and utilize data, analytics, and AI to surpass performance goals. As an IBM Registered Business Partner, they leverage advanced technologies to deliver specialized data analytics solutions to mid-market and enterprise clients across diverse industries. Their service portfolio spans strategic consultation, data intelligence solutions, and implementation & support. Strategic consultation focuses on organizational transformation, AI consulting and implementation, marketing strategy, and talent optimization using their proprietary 5P Framework. Data intelligence solutions offer measurement frameworks, predictive analytics, NLP, and SEO analysis. Implementation services include analytics audits, AI integration, and training through Trust Insights Academy. Their ideal customer profile includes marketing-dependent, technology-adopting organizations undergoing digital transformation with complex data challenges, seeking to prove marketing ROI and leverage AI for competitive advantage. Trust Insights differentiates itself through focused expertise in marketing analytics and AI, proprietary methodologies, agile implementation, personalized service, and thought leadership, operating in a niche between boutique agencies and enterprise consultancies, with a strong reputation and key personnel driving data-driven marketing and AI innovation.

On this episode, Arabia Tillery is back on the show & Cam gotta know what was Stat doing at the Rodeo and does she know any Cash Money and No Limit songs for the upcoming Versus?! Then, the Baker Mayfield hype has died out for him to win MVP because Gibbs and the Lions dominate the Bucs on MNF. Next, Mike Evans suffered a rough injury, he might miss the rest of the season, is it over for the Bucs without this injury? Then, The Chiefs SMOKE the Raiders, do we even think this is impressive or nah since it's the Vegas Raiders. Justin Fields gets benched & Killa thinks he need to have a Plan B because QB ain't it. Speaking of a plan B, Stat wants to know if Killa had a plan B if Rap didn't workout and his answer might surprise you! Before we wrap the show up, Stat we gotta talk about that Bengals game last week don't think we forgot and Anthony Edwards' Award Show Please rate, review, and follow the podcast for more content.  Sign up with promo code IIWII and play $5 to get $100 in bonus funds: https://play.underdogfantasy.com/p-itiswhatitis #UDpartner Follow the show and our hosts on social media: ⁠It Is What It Is⁠, ⁠Cam'Ron⁠, ⁠Ma$e⁠, and ⁠Treasure "Stat Baby" Wilson⁠ , ⁠Producer Ayooo Nick⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Introducing the All Def SquADD Cast show “Versus". It's a podcast with the OG SquADD! Each week, the SquADD will debate topics and vote at the end to see what wins. Versus airs every Monday and you can download and listen wherever podcasts are found. Special Guest Keysha E. Brandon Broady John Grimes This Week We Discuss Run On Water vs Run Up Buildings Date Your Celebrity Crush In Secrecy vs Marry A Popular OF Model Win A Race That Your Opponent Dies Shortly After From vs Have A Video Of You Getting Jumped By Kids Go Viral S/o To Our Sponsors Indacloud Indacloud.co Promo:ALLDEF

Pastor Vince continues his teaching in James 2:14-26. The post It's a Contrast of Versus, Not Verses appeared first on Immanuel Baptist Church.

Introducing the All Def SquADD Cast show “Versus". It's a podcast with the OG SquADD! Each week, the SquADD will debate topics and vote at the end to see what wins. Versus airs every Monday and you can download and listen wherever podcasts are found. Special Guest Dion Lack Brandon Lewis This Week We Discuss Arby's vs Carls Jr Hold A Congrats On Getting Heaven Sign At Funerals vs Boo All The Kids At Spelling Bees That Lose Jason Bourne Franchise vs John Wick Franchise S/o To Our Sponsors Prize Picks Download Prize Picks App Today Use Promo Code SQUADD Better Help https://www.betterhelp.com/SQUADD New Listeners Recieve 10% Off Thier First Month

Podcast for a deep examination into the career and life choices of Eddie Murphy & Jim Carrey. Patrick gathers the whole WTHHTT family around the fire to tell them a tale about a dimension poorly utilized in cinema. To help make storytime more exciting, Gary Oldman stops by to do some of the voices. How's his little boy impression? Find out on this week's episode of 'What the Hell Happened to Them?' Email the cast at whathappenedtothem@gmail.com Disclaimer: This episode was recorded in October 2025. References may feel confusing and/or dated unusually quickly. 'Disney's A Christmas Carol' is available on DVD, Blu-ray, & 3D (if you buy into all the hype): https://www.amazon.com/Disneys-Christmas-Carol-Two-Disc-Blu-ray/dp/B003ZVJFFM/ Music from "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen & We Three Kings" by Barenaked Ladies & Sarah MacLachlan   Artwork from BJ West   quixotic, united, skeyhill, vekeman, murphy, carrey, versus, vs, disney, christmas, carol, scrooge, dickens, carey, firth, zemeckis, 3d

"Go before the people with your example, and be laborious in their affairs."This week, I'm reading from the Analects by Confucius, written sometime between 551 and 479 BC.Reflection questions:Is there any hesitancy among your leaders about giving first and publicly to your campaign? What are ways you can address that hesitancy?Are you willing to have the necessary conversation to ask a leader to give a gift meaningful to them or leave the Board or campaign committee for the success of the campaign?Reflection on quote:As we consider capital campaigns during times of uncertainty, what are ways to increase trust and giving within the community?  The first step is for the leaders of the nonprofit and the campaign to give first and be public about their giving.  This is not a new principle; instead it comes from ancient wisdom. Over twenty-five hundred years later, this wisdom still holds true. When your Executive Director, board members and campaign leaders make their gifts first and let the community know about it, something powerful happens. They're sending a signal that goes way beyond the donation.They're showing confidence despite uncertainty. Think about it. There's never a perfect moment to launch a campaign. But when your leaders step forward with their own money, they're saying, "We believe in this. We believe in it enough to invest our own money, right now, even when we can't predict everything that's coming." That kind of confidence is contagious.Board members and campaign volunteers are also demonstrating they're willing to put their own money at risk. This isn't someone else's problem to solve. They're not asking others to do something they're unwilling to do themselves. We notice this in small towns. Who talks a good talk but doesn't back it up? Versus, who leads despite the risk?Those donations signal a commitment to work hard no matter the obstacles that will inevitably come. For example, when the Executive Director makes a significant gift early in the campaign, they've just told everyone, "I'm all in. I'm going to do whatever it takes to make sure we reach this goal." Because nobody wants to see their own investment fail.The second part of this ancient wisdom flows from the first: "be laborious in their affairs." Leadership giving only works when it's connected to genuine care for community needs. Your campaign leaders need to be present and engaged. They need to show up, have conversations, listen to concerns, and demonstrate through their actions that this campaign matters because the community matters.So, during times of uncertainty, don't skip this first step. Don't ask others to give first. Start with your Executive Director, your board, your staff leadership, your campaign committee. Ask them to give at levels that are meaningful for them, and then share those stories publicly. Let your community see the example. Let them feel the confidence. Let them know that their leaders are going first, working hard, and deeply connected to the needs you're trying to meet.Because when you do, you're not just raising money. You're building trust during uncertainty.What do you think? Send me a text. To explore small town capital campaign coaching deeper and to schedule an free explore coaching call, visit ServingNonprofits.com.Music credit: Woeisuhmebop

Introducing the All Def SquADD Cast show “Versus". It's a podcast with the OG SquADD! Each week, the SquADD will debate topics and vote at the end to see what wins. Versus airs every Monday and you can download and listen wherever podcasts are found. Special Guest Chinedu Unaka  Kevin Simpson This Week We Discuss Fight 1 Kangaroo vs 3 Honey Badgers  Become Rich But Can't Help Family vs Have A Rich Family That Mistreats You Mexican Cuisine vs Asian Cuisine S/o To Our Sponsors Cash App Download Cash App For a limited time, new Cash App customers can earn $10 if they use code CASHAPP10 in their profile at signup and send $5 to a friend within 14 days.  Terms apply.

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I'm like "Just the water." There you go "Just the water." But anyhow I say all that to say the blue plate special of the day at McBee's whether you're eating healthy or not they got you covered 'cause you can do the chicken breast but today's Thursday the special is red sauce spaghetti and it is oh so good if you like spaghetti I'm not even a red sauce spaghetti fan I like alfredos- Really Okay and the chicken spaghettis and stuff But I will eat it here and there Like if somebody cooks it I'm not pushing it away But I did I wanted to try everything on the menu Yeah So I could honestly give you my my opinion on it Their red sauce spaghetti's great but if that's not your thing they do have um hamburger steak which is works great for keto They have chicken breast or country fried steak And of course the vegetables okra and stewed tomatoes black-eyed peas turnip greens rice and gravy side salad lima beans green beans mashed potatoes mac and cheese fried okra or fries So you know if you been doing this long enough you know you can create you a carb less plate lunch right there from McBee's And uh I I went a little half and half yesterday I did get the fried okra 'cause they have in my opinion the best fried okra in town It's hard to pass fried okra man It it it really is Let's uh let's take a call real quick before we jump into this conversation on the Mazda Jackson phone line Hey good morning you're on the air Good morning Clay Uh I was headed toward I-220 yesterday going to Industrial Drive take my son some lunch I live in Rankin County of course But on the way up there that going there is nothing but a junk It's trash and I was thinking since the fair was gonna be in town everybody was gonna clean up everything mattresses on the highway Uh it was just it was just unbelievable And where was that at 20 westbound going to I-220- Oh oh to Industrial Drive Oh oh yeah It was terrible Yeah it it's bad C- like of course I come through there every day and I'm just wildly disappointed I will say that at least up through the Ellis Avenue area there they do have the street lights working again Uh so kudos to MDOT for that Okay Okay but everything else it it was just terrible the fair will be here today and they would have everything cleaned up but no Ah it's unfortunate- So but hey what you know if you don't expect anything you won't be disappointed when you don't get it.That is true And I didn't expect nothing else from out of Highlands County But thank you Have a great day Enjoy the show Bye You Thanks I love- Look- I love my callers Ca- can I say this though I actually do think that Mayor John Horn's doing a good job so far I do too Yeah I mean look are are there things that people wish would happen faster Yeah But if you look at sort of the level of activity you know just getting out and filling potholes and paving streets and the stuff that's the basic blocking and tackling I think they're looking for the right police chief obviously right now Um you gotta give them a little credit compared to where we were were you know just- Oh sure a few months ago Well you know it's like I said for the the year leading up to the election whoever wins if they'll just come in and quit doing all the wrong things right they'll they're gonna look really smart Just just letting you know like a like letting a a s- a let- letting a a wound heal on your arm a scab If we just quit picking at it it'll heal Uh the last mayor and the administration in general just kept picking at scabs And for the analogy here it's like uh traditionally you know for 100 years for government to run correctly you just take a right take a right take a right Uh at every opportunity to take a traditional right chalk away to the left And if you would just get back to taking the rights just doing the right thing period You don't have to be the smartest guy in the room but it's gotten so bad if you'll just do that again you're gonna look great And I think John's getting back to just do it just let's just quit trying to reinven- vent the wheel and just let it go round and round and some of this will autocorrect Yeah and look John's smart Um I think he's surrounding himself with some smart people I mean we'll see how it plays out It's earl- it's too early to say that it's going to be a a raving success But comparatively already they're doing things and I think have kind of built the right kind of team Um and then you know you look at the level of cooperation that I think you're going to get from the legislature from the governor um they all like him I mean he had a history of working across the aisle and being easy to talk to and easy to work with And I think people are gonna want to help um you know as we come up into this next session And so I think Jackson's like if if I I know part of of your brand has been like hey Jackson's not where it needs to be and that's true I think Jackson has an opportunity right now to right some wrongs Yeah 100% Look I said it straight up Now there's gonna be some things I talk about 'cause this this is my brand this is my show I mean I'm going to talk about Jackson crime and some of the things I see that are just- Sure out of control But like just the culture rot more so But I did say I'm I'm gonna give it a year bef- unless there's something just egregious I'm gonna give John a year to find the bathrooms so to say before I start really peeling back and you know being nitpicky 'Cause I I think that there's gonna be a lot there's a lot to un- to un-F around here and I'm gonna give him an opportunity to get that get his people in place let them figure out where the bathrooms are at And I'll be honest there the these people I think the expectation is you gotta come in and start working from day one and you're seeing that You mentioned it with the potholes And so these people they're hiring they seem to be hitting the ground running and that's uh wildly impressive uh based on the last 7 or 8 years And look I I would say this too is like uh it's possible to do both things to recognize that progress is being made in a way that is at least somewhat encouraging and simultaneously not to hide from the fact that there's some significant challenges in Jackson that are gonna be hard for anybody to solve for Uh no no doubt No doubt Because I I look I'm exci- I'm optimistic for the first time instead of pessimistic that some things are gonna get done and that we're gonna start enforcing some laws around here And little stuff like code ordinance and whatnot are gonna be big things And not just Quit just going after businesses to go after How about start going after people for the broke down cars in their yard All this little stuff You know get back to the quality of life things Get back to people holding the people accountable for not cutting their grass holding businesses accountable uh illegal signage I mean let's get back to enforcing what's on the books Code ordinances to me is just like the number one thing that the last administration just said "Nah We're we're not gonna bully the citizens." Yeah I mean I think this is true not just in Jackson but everywhere but having pride in where you live is a pretty good indicator of how of of the quality of life that you're gonna have Well you know look Russ one of the things for me that really grinded my gears and I did not intend to get on this but we're here now uh there's a crew of guys and God bless them and I don't talk about them much but it's the guys they're all from like Rankin and Madison County and they've been cleaning the interstates and all that It's Casey Bridges and some other guys and they're doing they're doing great great work Uh but uh there's a part of me that wishes they didn't do it and this is just selfish I get it I should be glad they're doing it and I should I should give them their roses right But they're they're doing it for a bunch of people who really don't appreciate it overwhelmingly They the second they cleaned up the interstate pressure wash it all their stuff these people and some of the comments I've seen online from people is "Y'all supposed to be doing it Y'all should be doing it We shouldn't be having to Y'all all left Jackson The least you can do is come back and clean it." I'm like how about thank you How about that H- how about y'all clean your own city Or how about I don't know the people that we pay taxes to clean and pressure wash the interstates and bridges and everything else how about they do You know Like the citizenry shouldn't have to be uh doing Yeah look and I think there's I think there's a danger a- and I came up in churches I came up doing mission work um and part of the danger that I saw in church mission work is like you would take a group of youth to some city right in the United States presumably with the thought that you were gonna share the gospel of Christ but really it was a work trip And you'd go into a neighborhood and you'd clean up trash or you'd paint houses um and and you were helping to beautify where people lived and at some level it reinforces bad behavior right Because in an ideal world some random person doesn't come and clean Russ's yard- Right 'cause Russ is trashy Russ gets out and cleans his yard because he cares enough about where he lives whether it's an 800 square foot or 8,000 square foot house right He cares enough about where he lives that he's gonna take care of his own property And if everybody does that communities get a lot safer they get a lot closer to each other um and so at some level it's reinforcing um bad behavior if somebody else comes and does it for you when it's something that you're capable of doing yourself and should be motivated to do Yeah How about don't throw trash out your car when you're driving down the interstate That's a good start How about don't litter so people don't have to do this Yeah I mean these are real simple things You know we're we're rewarding bad behavior Well how about y'all come pressure wash my driveway cut my yard I'm doing I'm doing good You know what I'm saying And look there are there are exceptions to this right If you have if you have an 85-year-old live-in widow who can't get out and cut the grass then I think it's awesome that somebody will go and volunteer to cut her grass Amen And that should happen right And so that's that's a different scenario Like I would rather see that energy put in that direction you know find out the little who the little old ladies are that need the help the little old men whatever Let's And I'm not saying people aren't helping them but I'd rather see that than um cleaning up the interstates and all that stuff Again I think they're d- I don't want to diminish what they're doing I think it's great But I feel like you're enabling the people who are littering and doing this I don't know I'm just wildly conflicted I think it enables bad behavior as y- as kind of it rewards bad behavior as you said Well and look I mean you see this internationally and I think even progressives now recognize some of the damage that was done globally in what was a well-intentioned thing like "Hey we're gonna go feed the world," right "There are hungry people we're gonna go feed the world." Or uh "There are places where there's not indoor plumbing or running water" or whatever we're gonna go fix that We did it for people and never taught people th- that skillset in a way that even today there's reliance there And so I think the challenge has always been like how do you be tenderhearted and compassionate the way that I would argue the Bible requires you to be while simultaneously recognizing that sometimes being tenderhearted and compassionate is forcing people to get into uncomfortable situations to figure it out for themselves Yeah Uh what I feel like is kinda done too and this is just from me directly here is it's raised the price of tea in China a bit 'cause now when I get to arguing about people and the things that they've done to Jackson "Well why ain't you out there like them other guys cleaning up the interstate?" 'Cause I'm not gonna clean up your mess I'm not your mama is why God bless them that they feel moved to do that and that's their ministry My ministry is putting my boot up your ass and and telling you that you've screwed up That's my ministry I mean look people were mad at MrBeast was it about a year ago 'Cause he was going into parts of Africa that didn't have wells And was digging wells And I mean I even again even really progressive voices were saying this is counterproductive because really what needs to happen in those settings is like people have the resources and institutional knowledge to do that for themselves 'cause that's sustainable long term Yeah And those wells were already dried up and no good and been robbed and pillaged and everything else from my understanding is It was all just a big waste and look at- Although I I will say that that guy tries to do a lot of good He really does He does He does I'm not hating on him Uh he he does try to do a lot of good but he gets paid very well for the good deeds he does That's true too You know with content monetization But hey I'm not a hater on that at all Thank y'all for the uh money I made the last couple months on uh my content All right Let's take a break When we come back we're actually gonna jump into the TPUSA versus Clinton uh debacle that's going on out there Don't go anywhere here on The Clay Edwards Show 1039 WYAB This is Central Mississippi's stimulating talk 1039 WYAB Pocahontas Jackson.It's time to fall into savings at Mazda of Jackson With ball games road trips and all the busyness don't miss a thing with 2.9% financing for 36 months on a new 2025 Mazda CX-5 Or get 2.9% financing for 63 months on the 2025 CX-90 One-year maintenance is included on your new vehicle purchase And take advantage of the pre-tariff inventory that's almost gone Shop online at mazdaofjackson.com or visit Mazda of Jackson I-55 Frontage Road in Jackson Looking for the ultimate reset for your body and skin At Core Wellness and Recovery you'll find next-level services like cryotherapy red light therapy infrared sauna body sculpting and advanced facials Whether you want to boost performance recover faster or just feel your best Core Wellness and Recovery delivers real results with 0 downtime From muscle relief to radiant skin this is self-care redefined Come experience the future of wellness Core Wellness and Recovery just off Highland Colony in Ridgeland Book now at corewellnessandrecovery.com Hey guys This is KC Ellis with LS Autoplex located on Highway 471N Brandon LS Autoplex known as Little Truck City is your old-school mom-and-pop-style dealership that's family-owned and operated We specialize in 4wheel drive trucks but don't worry we have cars and SUVs too Looking to sell your vehicle Bring it by LS Autoplex where we pay fair market value and we cut you a check on the spot Need your vehicle serviced or repaired We can handle that too Shop us online or set your appointment at lsautoplex.com That's lsautoplex.com Tri-County Tree Service the Jackson Metro's premier company to handle all of your tree service needs Russ Bourland and his team specialize in large tree low-impact removal Tri-County Tree Service has the right equipment to safely handle the most technical trim jobs or tree removals Storm damage can happen year-round so let them clean it up and they'll deal with your insurance claim Tri-County Tree Service By phone at 601-TREE-GUY or online at tricotreeservice.com That's tricotreeservice.com Craving something extraordinary in Jackson Manship Restaurant is where your taste buds hit the jackpot Join us for happy hour every day from 3:00 to 6:00 PM where your wallet will thank you and your stomach will sing Indulge in half-priced woodfire pizzas because why pay full price for half the fun And for just $5 dive into our private barrel bourbon picks That's right luxury on a budget Plus beat the heat with our frozen drink specials a tropical escape without the travel expenses Make your way to the Manship where happy hour isn't just a time it's an experience Are you a wine enthusiast Are you looking for the perfect bottle to elevate your next dinner The ultimate destination for wine lovers is 042 Wine & Spirits on West Government Street in Brandon The locally owned the locally operated 042 Wine offers something for everyone from local favorites to rare vintage wines 042 Wine & Spirits can help you find your next favorite wine The friendly and knowledgeable folks at 042 Wine & Spirits will help you find the perfect bottle for every occasion 042 Wine & Spirits located on West Government Street in Brandon ......... For decades you've known the name Martin's for good times great food and the best live music Now that's happening at 2 locations downtown Jackson and Livingston Check the websites martinslivingtonms.com and martinsdowntownjxn.com for the many special events and live music lineups You can chill with friends on the big patio at the Livingston location and enjoy the blue plate lunches and nightly drink specials Martin's downtown and Livingston Broadcasting live from the Men's Health & Women's Wellness of Mississippi studios this is the Clay Edwards Show Welcome back in to the Clay Edwards Show Uh we got about 5 or 6 minutes left on this hour here 6 minutes so let's just jump straight in I'm not gonna do an ad read right now Russ TPUSA verse Uh first off this is the first time you and I have had a chance to talk since the assassination of Charlie Kirk Let let me ask you this We You're g- you're here for the next hour right Uh I can stay for a while yeah Okay So w- we can peel this onion back a little slower When when that happened man take me back to 'Cause it's it's gonna be That's the moment I'll never forget That's 9/11 like 9/11 I'll never forget who I was with exactly what I was doing the whole thing is just It is f- f- like frozen in time in my brain the way I felt and everything I'm sure you've gotten threats- Yeah uh over the years You know I know I have Uh te- take us back to the the day of the assassination t- as this all this whole thing unfolded What Where were you at What were you doing How did you feel Put us in the timeline please Yeah yeah I was just I was just working Um you know I think I I happened to see on Twitter the the closeup video and I've never seen anything like that in my life Like I've I practiced law for a while and some of my practice uh involved life insurance claims and so I've seen photos that are gruesome I've never seen sort of in real time the amount of blood that was involved in that And I don't say that to be gory or salacious but- No I know what you mean it it that that alone the injury alone impacted me I think it was an odd moment in the sense that like we had seen President Trump obviously get shot in Butler Pennsylvania I didn't have the same emotional reaction to that as I had to the Kirk assassination Part of it is that Trump obviously survived I was gonna say the immediate That would be different if he hadn't of survived or hadn't got up on his own- I I think that's right Yeah I think the other part of it though is uh and and this may come across wrong is like at some level if there's gonna be a political assassination you would expect it to be someone in Congress or a president right Somebody that actually has the ability to impact policy that impacts people Charlie Kirk had none of that He had no political power other than the fact that his ideas impacted people Had influence And so the the thing that I think was disturbing is somebody that clearly doesn't have nearly the audience or scale that he's got but who has um been involved in conversations around policy for a long time is like "Hey somebody could be killed just for what they think." Um in a country that has been built off of the idea that the free exchange of ideas is sort of bedrock to who we are as a people part of what makes us ex- exceptional And so in that moment I think there was a vulnerability You mentioned 9/11 Obviously 9/11 involved 3,000 people dying it involved wars after the fact so a different scale but a similar type of vulnerability where you go "Oh my gosh like things like this can happen." To everyday people To everyday people Yeah Um and there was also this poignant moment in my brain of he's on a college campus and if you think about the whole point of college it really should be a marketplace of ideas where you test what ideas work and what ideas don't Iron sharpens iron kind of thing And so that's the that is the environment that should be most suitable to real exploration and debate of tough issues Um and so I think it was just sort of that juxtaposition of like here's a normal guy who got killed for his ideas and thoughts on a college campus um and it created a sense of real vulnerability I think it also woke up a lot of people who said like "Hey look this is not just a words versus words thing." Like we're at a moment societally where people are so angry at each other and see each other so much as their enemy that stuff like this can happen Yeah yeah That's a great that's a great explanation of it It it was just the the vulnerability and it really made me take a a step back and I I know that my friends and family all and and audience all mean well when they're like "Hey man you really need to keep your head on a swivel." And and so on and so forth you know with all the stuff that you deal with and do and say and everything else Uh and it did it made it real You make people mad Yeah Yeah Apparently So I'm very polarizing they say Uh but it it just ki- it blows my mind I won't say it kills me figuratively that that your words can anger somebody so bad that they want to kill you Like to me I'm just talking about thugs and criminals and people who have actually killed people and But it's never them that I'm really worried about It's people who feel like they had to defend them or that they get offended by the blast radius of me talking about them It's like I we have to kill this guy I w- "Oh so why does Clay keep talking about uh Black violence and Black on Black crime I wish he would shut up Oh you know what I'm gonna commit a crime I'm gonna be violent and threaten him." Like well you're mad You're gonna do the thing that you're mad that I'm talking about Well and look you know- It it blows my mind And it ain't just them I get I get I get death threats from from White people too Sure And and so what I would say is I mean like we we grew up with this adage "Sticks and stones may break my bones but words may will won't ever hurt me." There's some truth to that but uh there's also there there's a degree of falsehood to that because we're emotional people right And things do hurt people's feelings or get people angry or or fearful Um but we bought into for a little while this idea and it really started on the the left side of the spectrum in c- on college campuses that words are violence And if you allow yourself to believe that the things that Clay says and you say some stuff I disagree with Sure Um I say some stuff you disagree with right But like if you allow yourself to buy into this idea that the words that Clay says are violence then you become justified in doing violence But they also tell us that silence is violence So words are violence and silence is violence if you're if you're not You ca- you it's it's not just You can't just be against racism you have to be a outspoken anti-racist as well So if you don't agree with them publicly if you're not a outspoken ally you might as well be an enemy and that is dangerous as well Yeah I look I just think we've gotta we've gotta get to the point again where we recognize that violence is violence Like if I walk up to you and punch you in the face you have the ability to punch me back But if I walk up to you and tell you "You're a colossal dumbass," your response should be "Well I don't like you either," or whatever Yeah But you don't you don't You're not justified in in punching me in the face So I agree And so like just getting to the point where we're emotionally mature enough to recognize there are gonna be people who say things that we absolutely disagree with And we can either debate those people or we can roll our eyes and move on I mean I think that every time I'm on Facebook I'm like "Why are these random people starting fights with people you don't even know?" Right Like you are wasting your time Roll your eyes and move on Yeah I got into a Jeremy England commented something yesterday made a post yesterday about uh people P- people starting off they wanna debate you but they insult you first Like "You effing idiot why don't you debate me?" Or "You're a douchebag why don't you debate me?" Well you've already crossed into the assaults Sure Why would Why would I debate you I dealt with the same thing uh earlier this week with some little 300 followers uh sending me all kind of nasty messages trying to get me to debate him Basically he wants me to platform him Sure You know I'm like I'm just There's no- You're smart enough to know that right Yeah Yeah Like why why would I do that Sure But even if I were to entertain it the way you started the conversation off with the insults I have Why would I want to do that for you Like to introduce you to my quarter million followers uh would be the best thing that ever happened to you if you're if you're so good if your opinions are so strong you could take advantage of that like like I've done in the past But now because you've insulted me to start the conversation I'm not gonna do that We gotta take a break We'll be right back with Russ Lateno here on WYAB Actually we're going to carry the conversation on in the uh live chat during the break Y'all don't go nowhere You gotta take the headphones off for this Okay Yeah during the breaks it it sends the radio signal whatever the commercials through the headphones Okay But uh If we But we're still alive we can talk Uh I like this conversation and I don't wanna just stop it 'cause we're gonna have like a weird run of commercials here but it it is It's like if you wanna debate I'll I will debate you I don't really like the debating thing anyway Let's just talk Like you and I met up and we talked about the school choice stuff Yeah We're on the opposite sides of the same On some of And I came out of that conversation I didn't really change my mind but I appreciated the fact that we had a logical conversation and I was a- and you were interested in why I felt the way I felt And I think that's always the best way to If you're ever gonna get somebody to change their mind is to listen to how they feel about it be respectful about that and then explain why you feel the way you do put your side out there and let the uh marketplace of ideas win the day Yeah no I think that's right I mean I think There's there's this thing called uh sunk cost fallacy in economics which is like once somebody believes something or once they've invested in something It happens in in actual trading like marketplace where it's like "Hey I've invested in this stock and it's lost 50% of its value," and instead of getting out of it you're waiting for it to somehow redeem itself And I think the problem with modern debate is too many people go into it with a thought process that says "Under no circumstances am I ever gonna change my mind." And there's gotta be a willingness 1 to hear To your point hear what somebody else has to say and consider the possibility that they might be right and you might be wrong um if you're gonna have any kind of movement And I think that used to happen at a better in a better way before social media But social media has Like this conversation we're having obviously I guess on YouTube but um social media has made it such that you have an audience now So the stakes for changing your mind have gone up It's become harder to change your mind because that's seen as a pride hit or an ego hit Yeah Um right Versus if you're just having a one-on-one conversation you might go "Hey I hadn't thought of that that way." Yeah Well even If you look like you agree with the other person you lost Yeah Yeah Like you've you've lost some reputation Yeah You've lost part of your brand Um and I would say like even like the school choice conversation that we had Yeah like we disagreed on the idea of public to public um school choice like where a kid gets to leave one public school and go to another Um but we didn't disagree on the idea of like- Mm-hmm universal What's called Universal ESAs right Where like a portion of the money that students already are getting spent on by the state that would allow them to go to a private school Like I think we agreed on that part right We agreed with that So And that and that's what you You weren't aware that I did agree with you on that And we kind of came out of that It's like really it's just like if there's 2 3 thirds here there's just one third of this thing I don't agree with Yeah And so like but being able to have that conversation in a non-combative way it was like oh wait there actually is common ground Mm-hmm We just disagree on this one thing over here Well then there's an opportunity for us to get something done Yeah Well you know at the end of the day I'm a negotiator You know Yeah I'm a dealsman And uh- Well and that's the nature of that's the nature of life It's also the nature of of legislation is like you have to have trade-offs No no a- a- absolutely circling back to the the Jeremy England thing real quick So I just commented and I told the little the little story about this guy trying to argue with me I was like he started off with an insult Why would I you know grant him the ability to come on and you know just platform this guy Why would I make him famous You know what I mean So to say Not that I have not that my platform's that big but long story short And he never fails A coup- a couple people in the comments "Oh well Clay you don't You're scared to debate people You just like to argue with people." And you know what was funny is I've never been rude to a guest on this show ever Even people I've disagreed with Uh frankly it's hard to get people to come on here that disagree with me Uh but I've always been respectful I'm I I can't even think of a time that I've shouted anybody down Yeah Uh at all Maybe argue with some callers here and there that call very aggressively So it's like so it's kind of like this myth of because Clay is an outspoken conservative he must also be scared of debate uh because he doesn't interview Democrats Well f- bro where are these Democrats at that want to come on and actually debate You know so to say Well and at at some level it's like and you mentioned that you don't even like the word- Like straw man arguments that are put- Well you don't even like the word debate right And it's like well if the point of the conversation is a good faith exchange of ideas where people are open to having their minds changed those are conversations worth having If the point of the conversation is to get famous by making you look stupid- Yeah I mean no- nobody's ever had their mind changed by being made to feel stupid No Never Never Um they might give up They might well but they're at the end of the day they're angry about it Um and they're they're even more dug in to than where they started right And so yeah I mean again there's some there's some biblical truth here which is like you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar And if you want to have constructive conversations the best way to do that is not by assuming the other person is stupid but by trying to understand why they believe what they believe That's why Shawn and I have had such a good friendship that was supposed to kind of start off as a bit of a debate show We realized that we agreed on so much stuff for the most part And we also agreed that even when we get our angriest that we're gonna be adults Yeah And not get into a shouting match And in involving Shawn you know for those couple years on the show uh before they went off and did their own thing uh was really really good for me learning you know actually finally having somebody sitting across from me that we did disagree on some stuff And learning that for the most part we agreed on like real core principle things It's just kinda like these ancillary things that we disagree on Uh that was a very healthy uh growing point for me to be able to say okay maybe I'm not as bedrock about some of these things as I thought I was And then there are some things that it made me realize that I'm even more adamant about Well and there's something different when you're sitting down across from somebody versus preaching at them on the internet and you don't have to see them or meet them or whatnot right Like and you see that in other areas of life So like as an example the conversation around immigration and that's a complex conversation and I know your audience probably leans one direction pretty heavily But I would look at it and say okay a lot of people talk about mass deportation as an example of Mexican and South American immigrants But then you say well what about the fellow that serves your lunch when you go to this restaurant Or what about the the people that come and cut your grass or the- You start personalizing it And then you're like oh well I know so-and-so Yeah Right And then it becomes a lot harder to paint with such a broad brush I think that's true in the context of like republicans democrats liberals and conservatives too is like at some level if you just sit down with somebody who's like hardcore on the other side of you and you start talking about the things that they want out of life they want their kids to have better jobs than what they had right They want a house they want a car they want a safe community Like there are all these things that everybody wants like that everybody kind of views as like this is a measure of a good life And the real the real debate or the real sort of difference is how do we get there Yeah Um and like if you start from that vantage point where you don't assume that the other person is evil but they just have a different view on the way to get somewhere I think there's opportunity No I I agree and I talk about this a lot I'll come on here and I kind of paint with a broad brush but I do tell people "Look there's obviously you know nuance here." There's there's special exception I come in here and talk about democrats are evil but one of my best friends is a democrat You know Sure And Shawn and and and a buddy of mine Marvell I mean I could 2 off the top of my head 2 of my closest friends are are are democrats and think I'm wrong about a lot of stuff And that's fine Well you know we either talk about those things or we don't We talk about normal stuff Like we don't I don't ride in a car with my democrat friends and talk about politics the whole time you know We actually both like football Yeah Like there's real life stuff too that sometimes you kind of get lost in the arguing about policy and politics and culture war stuff that you forget that there's actually real life stuff that we enjoy as well And if you- Well I mean- find that common ground it makes life a lot easier A- and I don't mean to be overreligious on on your program but at some level it's like hey the Bible says that we were all created in the image of God That means democrats were created in the image of God too right The Bible says that we've all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God That means that republicans have sinned too right And so like at some level recognizing that if you have that sort of scriptural worldview it means no matter whether you disagree on a question of like immigration or whatever it is that like that other person was created in the image of God and like you they suffer with sin.Um and if you have that kind of humility going into it I think it's a lot easier to to relate to people Yeah you know I use this analogy a lot um Christians are very hardcore about the the they love to say "Gay being gay is against the Bible it's that's against the Lord's words." I'm like "Well so is having sex before you get married." Y- uh absolutely And it was like so I that's why I'm never like I don't get on the the the gay religious thing I don't that's that's their sin let them worry about that I have my own sin and I'd be a hypocrite if I sat there and talked about uh who they have sex with It's no different than who I have sex with when I'm doing it outside of marriage My sin is just as equal as as that Uh my only problem with the gay stuff is like it's the LGBTQ agenda as I you know as I refer to it as You know the the the pride parades with all the near pornographic stuff in front of children and d- drag queen story time No that's that's a whole separate thing from just your everyday run of the mill gay people And like I don't think they're separate Unfortunately they get all dropped under this big umbrella and if you have a problem with this well you must also have a problem with the 2 gay guys No I don't at all 'cause again their sin is no different than my sin Yeah I mean look I I would look at it and say at some level what happens is that the the natural human tendency is to focus on sins that you don't struggle with right So if you're heterosexual it's easy enough to talk about the sin of homosexuality because it's not something that you ever struggle with but if you wanna get uncomfortable you know talk about uh whether or not Russ is overweight right Yeah Because then that's the sin of gluttony Mm-hmm Um or the 400 pound Baptist pastor pastor who clearly is living an unrepentant life when it comes to their their dietary habits Um again the sin of gluttony and so like there's a very natural tendency to to isolate those sins that we don't personally struggle with and to ignore the things that we personally struggle with Heterosexual lust is a great example of that too Yeah And so I I don't think as as a Christian I don't think you should uh ignore what the Bible says is sinful behavior but I do think that you should operate in a way where you don't ignore your own sin um certainly 'cause that it it is hypocritical It it is and that is the one thing when you do this for 2 hours a day you will find yourself contradicting yourself a lot and and so I've learned to avoid contradicting myself I just try to be an open book and say "Look I'm k- a complicated individual as we all are There's gonna be things that I I find abhorrent but then there's gonna be things that I do that you find abhorrent." You know I try to find the common ground and just admit yes I we can all be a bit hypocritical at times But if there's some obvious stuff I try to just b- be like "Look that's" I I try I people think I'm very judgey I'm really not I gotta let let people live but the the Overton window has moved over so much that if you just wanna be left alone or just let people live that makes you far one way or the other now because the Overton window has moved so far I don't l- yeah there the problem is that there are not a ton of people who still believe in sort of what I would call American pluralism which I think is actually one of our founding values is that people get to believe different stuff All right we're coming back from break Chicken spaghetti on Mondays beef tip Tuesday pork chop Wednesday spaghetti Thursday and catfish Fridays And McBee's blue plate lunch comes with 2 classic southern sides and cornbread or a roll McBee's specials are served every weekday from 11:00 to 2:00 McBee's buzzing the Rez since 1982 Welcome to the Clay Edwards Show More adrenaline You know it's a pretty interesting time to to be alive What's the saying M- may the times you live in be interesting We've accomplished that more test top throne for your morning drive When you know you've got a problem how about tell people and be honest What's going on Going to war on cancel culture and bringing the spotlight on issues and topics from around the city of Jackson I feel like Jackson is slapping and no one else wants to talk about it The whole system is corrupt and evil It's unreal And they don't care and and everybody knows it It's just sad And fights for the soul of America I'm gonna need y'all to explain to me what a positive solution is 'cause you positive solutions only people have been in charge for a while now and I'm too many positive solutions You never Strap in Turn up the volume and get ready Jackson for unfiltered no sugar added talk radio It's award-winning podcaster Clay Boom shakalaka boom It's hour 2 of the most incendiary show on the R-A-D-I-O This is the Clay at Birth show here live on 103.9 FM W-Y-A-B We are streaming in stunning HD worldwide @SaveJXN on Facebook YouTube and X and we're on Rumble at SaveJXN If you're watching on any of those platforms hit the Like button hit the Share button if you're on Facebook If you're watching on YouTube drop a comment hit the Like It truly truly does help us with the algorithm If you like it they assume more people who watch the things that you like will like it too and they'll recommend these videos to people on YouTube which helps us grow And it doesn't cost you a penny to hit the Like button So please please please smash the Like button as the YouTubers- Like and subscribe Like and subscribe Like and subscribe Like and subscribe And uh we did We we gained over 500 subscribers on YouTube last month which I know in the big picture that may not sound like a lot but that's 500 new people that subscribed to a little old show out of Jackson Mississippi We're almost at 10,000 YouTube subs here 5 years into this and it is a it's taken a while There's not been no big one viral moment that's got us anywhere It's been just chipping away and chipping away and chipping away And I do think we'll eventually get that We'll we'll have that moment when we get you know X amount of followers and enough people see something that resonates with them But uh guys please uh do hit that Like button This segment is going to be brought to you by our friends over at You know I've been talking about it all week I want to drive it home It starts today round one the PGA Champion- Not the PGA Championship the Sanderson Farms Championship which is the only PGA event in Mississippi But not only is it the only PGA event it's the only major sporting professional sporting event in the state of Mississippi I know we can argue that college football is now a pro sport but And it always has been It has been for quite some time Yeah it always has been But uh it's the only legitimate pro-sport uh event in the state of Mississippi and it's right here in Jackson For all the negative things about Jackson this is one of the shining uh house on the hill you know beautiful moments that we have here in this city It's something we really should all wrap our arms around and get out and support if you want to keep it whether it's Jackson central Mississippi whatever there at the Country Club of Jackson And uh the first round starts today I'm going to be out there Saturday My buddy Fred Shanks my buddy Sutton my buddy Michael we're all going We got some Michelob Ultra Pavilion passes which you can get those as well at PGA I'm sorry at sandersonfarmschampionship.com And you can buy tickets You can buy the uh the Mick Ultra Pavilion It's kind of like their VIP thing There's going to be a bunch of TVs there You can miss You can catch all the college football action the golf action It's a great socializing event Just gonna be a grand time The weather's gonna be beautiful Come join us If you can't do Saturday get you some tickets for Sunday I think you just buy the ticket and go whatever day you want They're just Whatever ticket's good for any day but it's only one You You got to If you're going 2 days you got to buy 2 tickets So just FYI It's not a weekend pass Uh I do believe they do offer those But uh it's not too expensive Uh but you know it is a nice event and it does it does cost a few bucks But I think if you buy a ticket and a VIP pavilion pass it's about 130 bucks for both Which if you bought a concert ticket lately and you try to do a VIP upgrade you're probably talking about at least 500 bucks So for the money it's a really really good deal And uh parking's off site there at North Park You park there They they they bring a shuttle bus back and forth They'll keep them running all day You're not going to have to wait long to get to or from your vehicle The weather's going to be beautiful Come out there Hang out with me Come say hey And uh Saturday wear your favorite college colors It's University Day So going to be fun Russ you going to get by Uh we're going to an event tonight uh tied to it Um kind of their opening event and uh- A sponsorship party Yeah So we'll we'll do a little bit of that tonight and we'll see I I might Uh it's a good event And they- I'm trying to angle some tickets for the sponsorship party I I've been I've been working some angles that have not worked out so far But I would love to go to the sponsorship party Well we we can talk about it off air maybe Maybe so All right Well uh look so we got Russ Latino here Magnolia Tribune one of my favorite journalists in the state if not my personal favorite And Magnolia Tribune does just phenomenal work And Russ grabbed a hold of something like a dog on a bone the other day And I'm really glad he did because he brings a level of credibility and a level of scrutiny to to this topic that I think needs to be And he shines a light on it uh as one of the most influential journalists and policymakers in the state And it's the In the wake of Charlie death Charlie Kirk's death and that's why I wanted to really get Russ's opinion on that and kind of his thoughts on the whole thing before we dove into this These TPUSA chapters which is Turning Point USA for those that don't know Charlie Kirk's foundation that he founded And they Man they The growth has been stupendous since his death Thousands and thousands of new charters popping up And in these high schools where we really need to be trying to win the culture war uh just like colleges man We if we can get ahold of them at high schools they go to colleges you know kind of ready to fight the fight or knowing how to fight it And Clinton for some reason has decided that uh it's a no-go there So I've kind of laid the groundwork for you here man Tell us kind of what happened So let let me start by saying that um obviously what happened to Charlie Kirk was a tragedy a horrible tragedy I didn't always agree with him Um and I didn't always agree with TPUSA I did agree fundamentally with the idea that we should be having open debate on these issues um and that open debate is good And so-What happened was after his death to your point thousands and thousands of new chapters high school and college of TPUSA um started to form Um a couple of Saturdays ago so uh 2plus Saturdays ago um a teacher at Clinton High School sent out an email to a handful of students um and that email essentially said "Hey I know you're interested in this sort of stuff because you've talked to me in the past about wanting to start some kinda club that focuses on patriotism and sort of the exchange of ideas and debate Um what do you think about potentially doing a TPUSA chapter?" That email said explicitly this would have to be student-led Um you would have to come up with the names of other students who are interested in spearheading the effort to start this thing And there was a plan of sorts put together Some of these kids started sharing it with their friends they came back with names of people who wanted to be involved And essentially they planned to get together the following Tuesday September 16th to have a planning meeting with the teacher Well our sources say that that email got around to a wide group of people Um and one of the- the sets of hands that it ended up in was a set of parents who were very much opposed to the idea of there being a TPUSA chapter on Clinton's campus Um and that was communicated to school officials So what happens then is that on Monday September 15th the teacher that afternoon sends out an email to these students who are ready to meet the next day just saying "There will be no meeting tomorrow." Um the following day one of the students follows up and says "Well when are we gonna reschedule it?" 'Cause they're excited about doing this Um and she emails back and says "There won't be a rescheduling you need to go talk to the principal about this." Well the backstory of those few days and the way that we got ahold of this was that we got contacted by 2 sources that said "Hey look some students wanted to start this TPUSA chapter and they got shut down by the school administration." Um and we were told that there were 3 reasons given by the administration The first was that this was too political and "We don't do political clubs it's gonna be divisive." Um the second explanation which came later was "Well this was teacher-led and because it's teacher-led it violates a district policy." And then once students voiced "Hey no actually we want this," the third explanation that was given was "Hey it's too late in the year to start a new club." And so all of this unfolds- We're a month into school we're a month into school So all of this unfolds and you start to see And the only way we know this is 'cause we did public record requests on Clinton High School Um you start to see emails directly from students to the principal of Clinton High School Dr Brian Fordinberry saying "We want this." To the point that some of them are literally pressing him and saying "Tell me why we can't have this In writing please tell me why we are unable to have a Turning Point USA club." Um we get ahold of the story break it on uh social media And the response that we got from folks who live in Clinton was "Hey we called and talked to the principal and he said the reason they can't have it is 'cause they started it too late in the year." Well that night I start doing some research All right let's figure out is that true Is there a policy in place for this Read the entire Clinton Han- School handbook Nothing in there about when clubs can start Um read the entirety of the school district's policies Couldn't find anything So I wrote the principal and the- the school board attorney and just said "Hey look I've looked at all this stuff I can't find any policies that- that says that this can't be done this time of year." Um and we had posed a bunch of different questions public record requests whatnot Well they come back um the following day and release a statement that basically says "We didn't actually shut it down We just told them that it couldn't be teacher-led and that it couldn't be this year." Which is shutting it down Yeah Um and so anyway we- we've been able to get together all these public records It really looks from my vantage point like the 2 reasons they gave are pretense first of all students individually went to the principal and said "We want this club." ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... all of the documents ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... since 2019 The Tigers are playing well against Alabama this season but they aren't winning their first game of the season The Tigers were able to win their first game against ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... Alabama on September 19th 2020 They had a 31-0 victory at home against Alabama The Tigers won their first game of the season against Alabama on September 19th 2020 The Tigers have been playing well since then but they haven't been able to win their first game of the season The Tigers were able to win their first game against Alabama on September 19th 2020 They had a 31-0 victory at home against Alabama The Tigers have been playing well since then but they haven't been able the season The Tigers were able to win their first game against Alabama on September 19th 2020 They So they make good homemade ranch at Burgers Blues Barbecue is my point Get by check them out today Madison by the way the Madison location is open right now serving breakfast Dogwood in Flowood or downtown Brandon BurgersBlues.com to book a food truck check out the catering menu or to order and have your food delivered You can do it all in one great location BurgersBlues.com Website looks phenomenal too by the way Pictures of almost every item if you wanna know what it looks like That goes a long way Yeah You know Yeah no it does Um good websites good pictures all that stuff uh is how you market stuff right Gets people salivating We eat with our eyes Uh uh yep I think that's true Our eyes and our nose Yeah Right And my my eyes are often bigger than my appetite- Well as they say Yeah no I think that's part of the problem right Yeah absolutely So Russ wha- uh your your opinion do you just think this is political with TPUSA So let me say this for uh uh to start is I think whenever Clinton put out its statement in response to our original reporting they basically said it's incorrect that we tried to shut it down but then they explained why they had shut it down so it was an odd statement The other thing that I saw that bothered me almost more than the statement was the way that the media reacted which was just to just accept at face value with no critical thinking the explanation that was given Right So they're saying "Hey the reason we didn't do this is because it was teacher-led," while simultaneously admitting in the same statement that students independently came to us and asked for Right Mm-hmm Um so one that doesn't hold water And then they said "Yeah but we explained to those students that our 'practice' was to a- approve things this year and then h- allow them to go into effect next year." I asked the question point blank "Well what does that mean that next year there'll be a Turning Point USA chapter?" And they didn't answer that question But more importantly that policy does not exist in writing Right It doesn't exist anywhere um based on our investigation And so neither one of those things hold water And if neither one of those things hold water there must be something else And our sources said that the something else was the fact that you had parents that were angry about the idea of it coming on campus and a principal who just said "Hey this is gonna be too political which is unconstitutional." So w- what I would say Russ's opinion reading between the lines looking at all the facts I know the sources that we've talked to I think the principal panicked um and was trying to find a way to keep the peace which I can respect at some level which is "Hey we don't wanna rock the boat here We don't wanna create tension We want a unified campus This is gonna create some tension so I'm gonna find a way to say no." The problem with that is yes it violates the Constitution yes it violates federal laws yes it violates state law but there's a bigger sort of fundamental problem which is the way to deal with the fact that we can't have constructive debate in this country is not to have no debate at all It's to get better at having constructive debate Yes And that starts at an early age And so if we can create a system where yes there can be a Turning Point USA chapter and simultaneously yes there can be some sort of progressive chapter on campus and students get to decide who they wanna associate with and we create an atmosphere where hopefully those groups are talking to each other engaging with each other civilly we're setting ourselves up for much better conversations in the future than what we're seeing in our country amongst adults right now And so to me instead of saying "I don't wanna rock the boat," the answer should be "How do we create an environment where people get to associate with who they want they get to say what they want and we encourage students to do so in a way that is civil?" Uh I would love to see a list of the current of the current groups on the campus And w- we've asked for that right Um I I know that there are uh at least social organizations on campus that like you know some conservatives would find uh objectionable Um you know there's a gay straight alliance club as an example I I was gonna say like it would bet but bet the farm that there's an LGBTQ alliance of some sort on there uh there's gonna be some type of civil social justice Black pro-Black group and all those are fine as long as you have the ying to the yang And and and I would say great I would say great right Yeah Um it's it what you don't wanna do is a situation where you're having viewpoint discrimination And even like the other 2 uh you know arguments which is like "Hey this is teacher-led." Well 1 I don't think that's true based on the documents that we've gotten and I don't think it's true based on their own statement at some level But the Constitution doesn't say you can't be inspired by an adult if you wanna create a club on campus right Yeah Um people can get ideas from other people And and candidly every club on campus is required to have a sponsor So one man's sponsor is another person's teacher-led group right Yeah Um and then on this this timing thing is even if that policy did exist you would have to show that it had been consistently applied and it would still have to be tailored in a way legally that it didn't deprive people of their rights So you could say like a senior uh is on campus and they're saying "Hey you're making me wait until next year I won't be here next year I'm gonna graduate." Uh that was gonna be what I was gonna say We got a great comment here on X from uh Bourbon Diplomacy which may be the best name on X by the way That's a great name It says uh "Clinton School District attends school almost year round now so when is the correct time?" Yeah I mean again what they put out through surrogates after we did our initial reporting was "Hey we've got this policy and they're in violation," but can't even point to to something in writing I mean Yeah It it seems pretextual when you can't show something in writing And when you ignore a a public record request that explicitly asked for who are the other clubs When were they formed When were they allowed to be on campus They should be able to tell us all of that unless they're just not keeping records of what clubs are on campus which would suggest that they don't actually have a policy Right So what is the next step Is uh is Magnolia Tribune uh to the point of a lawsuit Well we wouldn't be the ones to file a lawsuit right A lawsuit would have to be filed uh either by some of the students who want the club which would be the the most likely scenario if they wanted to push that far or uh you know if there were adults on campus faculty that that thought that their rights had been infringed upon at some level Um my suspicion is that neither one of those things will happen because people don't like the idea of suing their own school Um it takes a rare person Like you'll occasionally see lawsuits percolate That's like one out of a thousand people has the courage to say "Hey I'm gonna do something like this." Is is Clinton in ISD or is it part of Hinds County I should know that I don't off the top of my head Uh- Yeah yeah no I do know that 'cause they they've got their own superintendent Yeah yeah it's independent Okay I I wasn't sure I I knew I know Pearl is and I and I grew up going to Byron which is part of uh Hinds County so I just wasn't sure if Clinton was part of that or not Never actually Yeah Never needed to know that So I mean a lawsuit is poten- is possible I I don't necessarily see that You know I I think the the most likely scenario if if the high school does the right thing they're not gonna come out and admit that they violated the Constitution No government official's ever gonna be like "Hey I violated the Constitution federal law and state law." What you hear instead is the kinda stuff that you heard here which is "Oh we wanted to help you but you didn't follow this unwritten process that we expected you to follow." So they're not gonna do that But if I were the district if I was on that board of of the school uh or if I was the principal I'd be trying to figure out a way to get it started Yeah there's gotta be a way to put the paste back in the tube a little bit here before it spirals outta control I mean you're sitting here like- Well it got it got mentioned on CNN That's where I was going yeah Um so so you know Abby Phillips' program Newsline on CNN it got mentioned there Uh I expect that there will be other national outlets that will be covering this Um there's an opportunity for Clinton to do the right thing and recognize that kids deserve the right to have this kinda club on campus if they want it Um for Magnolia Tribune's part we're not giving up right We still have several public record requests that we don't feel like have been answered uh and that weren

Introducing the All Def SquADD Cast show “Versus". It's a podcast with the OG SquADD! Each week, the SquADD will debate topics and vote at the end to see what wins. Versus airs every Monday and you can download and listen wherever podcasts are found. Special Guest Dion Lack Kanisha Buss Courtney Haynes Donny Wilson This Week We Discuss Lose your Ability To Hear Music vs Ability To Taste Food Slow WiFi vs Only One Working Earbud  Deal W/ A Smelly Office Pet vs Weekly Office Potlucks W/ Coworkers You Don't Like Tour In Small Venues Only vs One Massive Show S/o To Our Sponsors Ava Download the Ava app today, and when you join using my promo code SQUADD, your first month is totally FREE.

Podcast for a deep examination into the career and life choices of Eddie Murphy & Jim Carrey. Patrick wants to be the next top chef, but not of the world, just, like, his kitchen. Joe tries to help him, but keeps setting things on fire. Lev uses a fire extinguisher to put it out, but will retardant or snakes emerge from the canister? Find out on this week's episode of 'What the Hell Happened to Them?' Email the cast at whathappenedtothem@gmail.com Disclaimer: This episode was recorded in September 2025. References may feel confusing and/or dated unusually quickly. 'Imagine That' is available on DVD, Blu-ray, & Multi-format (which is really just the first two things): https://www.amazon.com/Imagine-That-Blu-ray-Eddie-Murphy/dp/B001OQCV0Q/ Music from "South Park" by the South Park guys   Artwork from BJ West   quixotic, united, skeyhill, vekeman, murphy, carrey, versus, vs, imagine, that, ebert, carey, imaginary, friends, church, googah

In this episode a new study suggest cannabis has grown bigger than forestry and tourism, the ultimate show of cannabis stigma when an Ontario city paints over their cannabis sign, and pre-rolls are the new sales winner.  On Cultivar Corner, brought to you by Up In Smoke, we go or some budget weed from Versus and their White Widow..Pre-rolls are big sellersCannabis is bigger than tourismCity paints over cannabis billboardGrow stores left behind Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Introducing the All Def SquADD Cast show “Versus". It's a podcast with the OG SquADD! Each week, the SquADD will debate topics and vote at the end to see what wins. Versus airs every Monday and you can download and listen wherever podcasts are found. Special Guest Kelly Kelz Brent Taylor This Week We Discuss Be On A Broken Ski Lift vs Broken Elevator Be An Adult That Never Ages vs A Teenager That Never Ages Only Listen To Music From The 70's vs Music That Comes Out The Current Year S/o To Our Sponsors Prize Picks Download The Prize Picks App Today! Use Code SQUADD IndaCloud IndaCloud.co Use Code ALLDEF Better Help https://Betterhelp.com/SQUADD New Listerners Get 10% Off First Month

“Ownable originality is about creating something uniquely you—something no one else can do, even if they tried.” — Rob MeyersWhat does it mean to create something that no one else can replicate?In this episode of The Storytelling Lab, Rain sits down with Rob Meyers, Managing Director of the creative studio Versus, to explore the concept of “ownable originality.” Rob shares the philosophy behind Versus—one that prioritizes culture over style, curiosity over templates, and meaning over metrics.The result? A studio that helps brands and creators make work that is not only beautiful, but deeply aligned with who they are.They discuss the evolving landscape of branded content, how more companies are creating their own original documentaries and films, and why traditional marketing models are no longer enough. Rob also explains how a founder-led, culture-first organization can scale without losing its soul—and how his team's creative autonomy fuels both client work and original IP like films, books, and games.If you're looking for a model that balances creativity, commerce, and community, this conversation will inspire you to reimagine your own storytelling strategy.In this episode, you will learn to:Define your brand through culture, not content volume or visual styleBuild a studio or agency that empowers creativity across departmentsMake the case for long-form storytelling and brand-backed originalsBalance client work with internal creative projects to retain passionLead with values and build trust as your most irreplaceable assetFor more storytelling tips and tricks,Visit my website rainbennett.com, orFollow me on TikTok @rainbennett.storyellerFollow me on Twitter @rainbennettFollow me on Instagram @rainbennettFollow me on Facebook @thestorytellinglab Subscribe to my Youtube Channel Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Podcast for a deep examination into the career and life choices of Eddie Murphy & Jim Carrey. Patrick has a grudge against Amazon warriors and it looks like he has bitten off more than he can chew (metaphorically). Joe's schedule fills up quickly when a gynecologist with the same name opens up shop and people keep mistaking him for the new doctor. Will he keep in the spirit of this week's film and say "yes" to his new patients? Find out on this week's episode of 'What the Hell Happened to Them?' Email the cast at whathappenedtothem@gmail.com Disclaimer: This episode was recorded in September 2025. References may feel confusing and/or dated unusually quickly. 'Yes Man' is available on DVD, Blu-ray, & Multi-format (which is really just the first two things): https://www.amazon.com/Yes-Man-Blu-ray-Peyton-Reed/dp/B0DZJX2RXP/ Music from "Yes Man" by Ferry Corsten   Artwork from BJ West   quixotic, united, skeyhill, vekeman, murphy, carrey, versus, vs, yes, man, deschanel, stamp, higgins, cooper, reed, cult, carey, conspiracy

Introducing the All Def SquADD Cast show “Versus". It's a podcast with the OG SquADD! Each week, the SquADD will debate topics and vote at the end to see what wins. Versus airs every Monday and you can download and listen wherever podcasts are found. Special Guest Roxxy Haze Lawrence Killebrew This Week We Discuss Noisy Neighbors vs Nosey Neighbors Work With People 15-20 Years Older vs 15-20 Younger Attend A White Potluck vs 6 Hour Time Share Presentation

Podcast for a deep examination into the career and life choices of Eddie Murphy & Jim Carrey. An old nemesis tries to rebrand themself, but the hosts aren't falling for it. Lev thinks termites are causing issues with his soundboard and watches the film 'Mouse Trap' to get inspiration for how to exterminate pests. Why would he be using an electronic device made out of wood? Find out on this week's episode of 'What the Hell Happened to Them?' Email the cast at whathappenedtothem@gmail.com Disclaimer: This episode was recorded in September 2025. References may feel confusing and/or dated unusually quickly. 'Meet Dave' is available on DVD, Blu-ray, & Multi-format (which is really just the first two things): https://www.amazon.com/Meet-Dave-Blu-ray-Eddie-Murphy/dp/B001F7Q4IE/ Music from "Popcorn" by Music with Analise   Artwork from BJ West   quixotic, united, skeyhill, vekeman, murphy, carrey, versus, vs, meet, dave, rock, carey, old, union, banks, macguffin, johnson, caan

  Welcome to the Prehospital Emergency Care Journal Podcast! In this PEC Podcast Deep Dive, Rebecca Cash and Maia Dorsett interview Dr. Tony Fernandez about his recent PEC paper comparing initial prehospital adenosine doses of 6 mg versus 12 mg for presumed SVT. We explore the study's origins, dataset design, and results—including the finding that starting with 12 mg was associated with higher rates of cardioversion and fewer redoses without an increase in complications. Along the way, we discuss the quirks of EMS data, why some “standard” practices exist without strong evidence, and how retrospective studies fit into the bigger picture of protocol change. For those whose interest in study methods was piqued, here's a great short primer on odds ratios versus relative risk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWtzaKYFg00&t=175s Featured Article Fernandez, A. R., Bourn, S. S., Duncan, D., Slovis, C. M., Crowe, R. P., Treichel, A., & Myers, J. B. (2025). Comparing Prehospital Adenosine Initial Dosing of 6 mg Versus 12 mg for Presumed Paroxysmal Supraventricular Tachycardia (PSVT). Prehospital Emergency Care, 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1080/10903127.2025.2504521

Introducing the All Def SquADD Cast show “Versus". It's a podcast with the OG SquADD! Each week, the SquADD will debate topics and vote at the end to see what wins. Versus airs every Monday and you can download and listen wherever podcasts are found. Special Guest Roxxy Haze Dion Lack Young Deuces  This Week We Discuss Never Pay For Gas Again vs Never Pay For Electricity Again Run A Marathon On A Road Of Legos vs Be A Barehanded Cleaner At A Petting Zoo  S/o To Our Sponsors Better Help https://betterhelp.com/squadd Get 10% Off Your First Month Ava Download The Ava App Today Promo: SQUADD

How does status infiltrate all of our decisions, and how is status allocated in a networked society?Toby E. Stuart is a professor at the Haas School at UC Berkeley and also the author of the new book called Anointed: The Extraordinary Effects of Social Status in a Winner-Take-Most World.Greg and Toby discuss the influence of social status on various aspects of life, including consumer behavior, resource allocation, and decision-making. They explore the concept of the Matthew Effect (how status leads to more status), the interplay between status and merit, and the implications of prestige in different fields such as academia, venture finance, and entertainment. The episode also examines the role of status in creating inequality and the potential benefits and challenges of implementing measures to reduce the impact of status in decision-making processes.*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:The big shift why we trust the painter over the painting12:17: What do you do when you have to make a choice about something, but you have no real ability to evaluate its quality? Right? And, you know, that is true of so many things. Like, it is true of a hotel room you have never seen before, or a restaurant you have never been to before, or, like, you know, which of these things are going to be good? And in the book, I make the argument that what you do—I call it the Big Shift—is, if you walk into a museum, say, and you see a piece of art on the wall, I mean, you know it is in the museum, but you do not know whether it is high quality or not. But then you see the artist's name, and what you do know is, it is a Picasso, and I have heard of Picasso, and he is a very famous artist. And, in theory, he makes excellent art. And because of that, this is a very good picture. This is an amazing piece of art. But what you just did there is you took the identity of the artist and you assigned it to the art itself.Status exists only in relationships08:41: Status is a resource that is created in a social system. So individuals and groups give status to members, but it does not exist absent the social relationship. And right there, you can see the link to social networks, because flows of deferences are forms of relationships.Born on third base privilege and status56:16: So there is still today the prosperity gospel, and people who are successful often believed that it was a form of pre-ordination, like they were destined to get whatever they have, you know. But the other part of it is, you know, is best summed up by, you know, this quote I have always loved. I think, you know, the providence is occasionally debated, but it is often attributed to Barry Switzer. You know this one, and it goes: he refers to someone and he says, like, “You know, that guy was born on third base, and he has always thought he hit a triple.” Right? And that is what we call privilege these days—where you have all of these advantages. You were born with the advantages, you did not earn them, but you think you did, and therefore you attribute your status to your own merit. Versus what actually happened is you were born on third base; you did not ever hit the triple.Status on steroids in the digital age42:19: What happens when we have these digital platforms? When we have digital platforms, like anybody can get onto Spotify or Pandora or Apple Music or whatever, and they can find any piece of music literally created. Just like, you know, 99.9% of all recorded music exists on these platforms. And so you can find anybody's music. And so anywhere in the world, you can listen to the oboist—that one oboist who is the greatest in the world. So the globalization of the audience changes the nature of what happens in the marketplace, so to speak, and in a radical way. And then, if you have a cumulative advantage process which pushes people up to the top, that unfolds on steroids if you are looking at a global digital marketplace versus the way the world used to work.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Matthew EffectNetwork TheoryRobert B. ParkerWine RatingJohn Strutt, 3rd Baron RayleighRichard Wrangham - UnSILOed Episode 5Alexis de TocquevilleCaste SystemJohn D. RockefellerReformed ChristianityGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at Berkeley HaasTobyStuart.comLinkedIn ProfileBerkeley ExecEd ProfileSocial Profile on InstagramSocial Profile on XGuest Work:Anointed: The Extraordinary Effects of Social Status in a Winner-Take-Most WorldGoogle Scholar PageResearchGate Page

Introducing the All Def SquADD Cast show “Versus". It's a podcast with the OG SquADD! Each week, the SquADD will debate topics and vote at the end to see what wins. Versus airs every Monday and you can download and listen wherever podcasts are found. Special Guest David Murphy Donny Big Irish Jay This Week We Discuss Punched In The Face By Mike Tyson Once vs Chased By A Swarm Of Hornets For 5 Minutes Have A Permanent Injury From A Crime vs A Failed Sexual Exploit Help A Struggling Man Pastor Grow Membership vs Help Your Worst Ex Find Love S/o To Our Sponsors Cash App Download CashApp Today Use Code Secure10 At Sign Up Recieve $10 FREE After You Send A Friend $5 Blue Chew Blewchew.com Promo: SQUADD Prize Picks Get $50 In Lineups After You Post Your First $5 Lineup Download PrizePicks Today Promo: SQUADD

Jaws is back in theaters and the box office has capsized. Plus loads of movie news on a special Labor Day edition of Versus hosted by Alan Ng along with special guest co-host The Angry Badger. Hilarity ensues.

You're listening to Burnt Toast! Today, my guest is Ash Brandin of Screen Time Strategies, also know as The Gamer Educator on Instagram. Ash is also the author of a fantastic new book, Power On: Managing Screen Time to Benefit the Whole Family. Ash joined us last year to talk about how our attitudes towards screen time can be…diet-adjacent. I asked them to come back on the podcast this week because a lot of us are heading into back-to-school mode, which in my experience can mean feelingsss about screen routines. There are A LOT of really powerful reframings in this episode that might blow your mind—and make your parenting just a little bit easier. So give this one a listen and share it with anyone in your life who's also struggling with kids and screen time.Today's episode is free but if you value this conversation, please consider supporting our work with a paid subscription. Burnt Toast is 100% reader- and listener-supported. We literally can't do this without you! PS. You can take 10 percent off Power On, or any book we talk about on the podcast, if you order it from the Burnt Toast Bookshop, along with a copy of Fat Talk! (This also applies if you've previously bought Fat Talk from them. Just use the code FATTALK at checkout.)Episode 208 TranscriptVirginiaFor anyone who missed your last episode, can you just quickly tell us who you are and what you do?AshI'm Ash Brandin. I use they/them pronouns.I am a middle school teacher by day, and then with my online presence, I help families and caregivers better understand and manage all things technology—screen time, screens. My goal is to reframe the way that we look at them as caregivers, to find a balance between freaking out about them and allowing total access. To find a way that works for us. VirginiaWe are here today to talk about your brilliant new book, which is called Power On: Managing Screen Time to Benefit the Whole Family. I can't underscore enough how much everybody needs a copy of this book. I have already turned back to it multiple times since reading it a few months ago. It just really helps ground us in so many aspects of this conversation that we don't usually have.AshI'm so glad to hear that it's helpful! If people are new to who I am, I have sort of three central tenets of the work that I do: * Screen time is a social inequity issue. * Screens can be part of our lives without being the center of our lives. * Screens and screen time should benefit whole families.Especially in the last few years, we have seen a trend toward panic around technology and screens and smartphones and social media. I think that there are many reasons to be concerned around technology and its influence, especially with kids. But what's missing in a lot of those conversations is a sense of empowerment about what families can reasonably do. When we focus solely on the fear, it ends up just putting caregivers in a place of feeling bad.VirginiaYou feel like you're getting it wrong all the time.AshShame isn't empowering. No one is like, “Well, I feel terrible about myself, so now I feel equipped to go make a change,” right?Empowerment is what's missing in so many of those conversations and other books and things that have come out, because it's way harder. It's so much harder to talk about what you can really do and reasonably control in a sustainable way. But I'm an educator, and I really firmly believe that if anyone's in this sort of advice type space, be it online or elsewhere, that they need to be trying to empower and help families instead of just capitalizing on fear.VirginiaWhat I found most powerful is that you really give us permission to say: What need is screen time meeting right now? And this includes caregivers' needs. So not just “what need is this meeting for my child,” but what need is this meeting for me? I am here recording with you right now because iPads are meeting the need of children have a day off school on a day when I need to work. We won't be interrupted unless I have to approve a screen time request, which I might in 20 minutes.I got divorced a couple years ago, and my kids get a lot more screen time now. Because they move back and forth between two homes, and each only has one adult in it. Giving myself permission to recognize that I have needs really got me through a lot of adjusting to this new rhythm of our family.AshAbsolutely. And when we're thinking about what the need is, we also need to know that it's going to change. So often in parenting, it feels like we have to come up with one set of rules and they have to work for everything in perpetuity without adjustment. That just sets us up for a sense of failure if we're like, well, I had this magical plan that someone told me was going to work, and it didn't. So I must be the problem, right? It all comes back to that “well, it's my fault” place.VirginiaWhich is screens as diet culture.AshAll over again. We're back at it. It's just not helpful. If instead, we're thinking about what is my need right now? Sometimes it's “I have to work.” And sometimes it's “my kid is sick and they just need to relax.” Sometimes it's, as you were alluding to earlier, it's we've all just had a day, right? We've been run ragged, and we just need a break, and that need is going to dictate very different things. If my kid is laid up on the couch and throwing up, then what screen time is going to be doing for them is very different than If I'm trying to work and I want them to be reasonably engaged in content and trying to maybe learn something. And that's fine. Being able to center “this is what I need right now,” or “this is what we need right now,” puts us in a place of feeling like we're making it work for us. Instead of feeling like we're always coming up against some rule that we're not going to quite live up to.VirginiaI'd love to talk about the inequity piece a little more too. As I said, going from a two parent household to a one parent household, which is still a highly privileged environment—but even just that small shift made me realize, wait a second. I think all the screen time guidance is just for typical American nuclear families. Ideally, with a stay at home parent.So can you talk about why so much of the standard guidance doesn't apply to most of our families?AshIt's not even just a stay at home parent. It's assuming that there is always at least one caregiver who is fully able to be present. Mom, default parent, is making dinner, and Dad is relaxing after work and is monitoring what the kids are doing, right? And it's one of those times where I'm like, have you met a family?VirginiaPeople are seven different places at once. It's just not that simple.AshIt's not that simple, right? It's like, have you spent five minutes in a typical household in the last 10 years? This is not how it's going, right?So the beginning of the book helps people unlearn and relearn what we may have heard around screens, including what research really does or doesn't say around screens, and this social inequity piece. Because especially since the onset of COVID, screens are filling in systemic gaps for the vast majority of families.I'm a family with two caregivers in the home. We both work, but we're both very present caregivers. So we're definitely kind of a rarity, that we're very privileged. We're both around a lot of the time. And we are still using screens to fill some of those gaps.So whether it's we don't really have a backyard, or people are in a neighborhood where they can't send their kids outside, or they don't have a park or a playground. They don't have other kids in the neighborhood, or it's not a safe climate. Or you live in an apartment and you can't have your neighbors complain for the fifth time that your kids are stomping around and being loud. Whatever it is—a lack of daycare, affordable after school care —those are all gaps. They all have to be filled. And we used to have different ways of filling those gaps, and they've slowly become less accessible or less available. So something has to fill them. What ends up often filling them is screens. And I'm not saying that that's necessarily a good thing. I'd rather live in a world in which everyone is having their needs met accessibly and equitably. But that's a much harder conversation, and is one that we don't have very much say in. We participate in that, and we might vote for certain people, but that's about all we can really do reasonably. So, in the meantime, we have to fill that in with something and so screens are often going to fill that in.Especially if you look at caregivers who have less privilege, who are maybe single caregivers, caregivers of color, people living in poverty—all of those aspects of scarcity impacts their bandwidth. Their capacity as a caregiver is less and spread thinner, and all of that takes away from a caregiver's ability to be present. And there were some really interesting studies that were done around just the way that having less capacity affects you as a caregiver.And when I saw that data, I thought, well, of course. Of course people are turning to screens because they have nothing else to give from. And when we think of it that way, it's hard to see that as some sort of personal failure, right? When we see it instead as, oh, this is out of necessity. It reframes the question as “How do I make screens work for me,” as opposed to, “I'm bad for using screens.”VirginiaRight. How do I use screen time to meet these needs and to hopefully build up my capacity so that I can be more present with my kids? I think people think if you're using a lot of screens, you're really never present. It's that stereotype of the parent on the playground staring at their phone, instead of watching the kid play. When maybe the reason we're at the playground is so my kid can play and I can answer some work emails. That doesn't mean I'm not present at other points of the day.AshOf course. You're seeing one moment. I always find that so frustrating. It just really feels like you you cannot win. If I were sitting there staring at my child's every move in the park, someone would be like, “you're being a helicopter,” right? And if I look at my phone because I'm trying to make the grocery pickup order—because I would rather my child have time at the playground than we spend our only free hour in the grocery store and having to manage a kid in the grocery store and not having fun together, right? Instead I'm placing a pickup order and they're getting to run around on the playground. Now also somehow I'm failing because I'm looking at my phone instead of my kid. But also, we want kids to have independent time, and not need constant input. It really feels like you just can't win sometimes. And being able to take a step back and really focus on what need is this meeting? And if it's ours, and if it is helping me be more present and connected, that's a win. When I make dinner in the evening, my kid is often having screen time, and I will put in an AirPod and listen to a podcast, often Burnt Toast, and that's my decompression. Because I come home straight from work and other things. I'm not getting much time to really decompress.VirginiaYou need that airlock time, where you can decompress and then be ready to be present at dinner.I'm sure I've told you this before, but I reported a piece on screen time for Parents Magazine, probably almost 10 years ago at this point, because I think my older child was three or four. And I interviewed this Harvard researcher, this older white man, and I gave him this the dinner time example. I said, I'm cooking dinner. My kid is watching Peppa Pig so that I can cook dinner, and take a breath. And then we eat dinner together. And he said, “Why don't you involve her in cooking dinner? Why don't you give her a bag of flour to play with while you cook dinner?”AshOf all the things!VirginiaAnd I said to him: Because it's 5pm on a Wednesday and who's coming to clean the flour off the ceiling?AshA bag of flour. Of all the things to go to! VirginiaHe was like, “kids love to make a happy mess in the kitchen!” I was like, well I don't love that. And it was just exactly that. My need didn't matter to him at all. He was like, “h, well, if you just want to pacify your children…” I was like, I do, yes, in that moment.AshWell, and I think that's another part of it is that someone says it to us like that, and we're like, “well, I can't say yes,” right? But in the moment, yeah, there are times where it's like, I need you to be quiet. And as hard as this can be to think, sometimes it's like right now, I need you to be quiet and convenient because of the situation we're in. And that doesn't mean we're constantly expecting that of them, and hopefully that's not something we're doing all the time. But if the need is, oh my God, we're all melting down, and if we don't eat in the next 15 minutes, we're going to have a two hour DEFCON1 emergency on our hands, then, yeah, I'm gonna throw Peppa Pig on so that we can all become better regulated humans in the next 15 minutes and not have a hungry meltdown. And that sounds like a much better alternative to me!VirginiaThan flour all over my kitchen on a Wednesday, right? I mean, I'll never not be mad about it. It's truly the worst parenting advice I've ever received. So thank you for giving us all more space as caregivers to be able to articulate our own needs and articulate what we need to be present. It's what we can do in the face of gaps in the care system that leave us holding so much.That said: I think there are some nitty gritty aspects of this that we all struggle wit, so I want to talk about some of the nuts and bolts pieces. One of my biggest struggles is still the question of how much time is too much time? But you argue that time really isn't the measure we should be using. As you're saying, that need is going to vary day to day, and all the guidance that's been telling us, like, 30 minutes at this age, an hour at this age, all of that is not particularly germane to our lives. So can you explain both why time is less what we should fixate on? And then how do I release myself? How do I divest from the screen time diet culture?AshOh man, I wish I had a magic bullet for that one. We'll see what I can do.When I was writing this and thinking about it and making content about it, I kept thinking about you. Because the original time guidelines that everyone speaks back to—they're from the AAP. And they have not actually been used in about 10 years, but people still bring them up all the time. The “no time under two” and “up to an hour up to age five” and “one to two hours, five to 12.” And if you really dig in, I was following footnote after footnote for a while, trying to really find where did this actually come from? It's not based on some study that found that that's the ideal amount of time. It really came from a desire to find this middle ground of time spent being physically idle. These guidelines are about wanting to avoid childhood obesity.VirginiaOf course.AshIt all comes back, right?VirginiaI should have guessed it.AshAnd so in their original recommendations, the AAP note that partially this is to encourage a balance with physical movement. Which, of course, assumes that if you are not sitting watching TV or using an iPad, that you will be playing volleyball or something.VirginiaYou'll automatically be outside running around.AshExactly, of course, those are the only options.VirginiaIt also assumes that screen time is never physical. But a lot of kids are very physical when they're watching screens.AshExactly. And it, of course, immediately also imposes a morality of one of these things is better—moving your body is always better than a screen, which is not always going to be true, right? All these things have nuance in them. But I thought that was so interesting, and it shouldn't have surprised me, and yet somehow it still did. And of course it is good to find movement that is helpful for you and to give your kids an enjoyment of being outside or moving their bodies, or playing a sport. And putting all of that in opposition to something else they may enjoy, like a screen, really quickly goes to that diet culture piece of “well, how many minutes have you been doing that?” Because now we have to offset it with however many minutes you should be running laps or whatever.So those original recommendations are coming from a place of already trying to mitigate the negatives of sitting and doing something sort of passively leisurely. And in the last 10 years, they've moved away from that, and they now recommend what's called making a family media plan. Which actually I think is way better, because it is much more prioritizing what are you using this for? Can you be doing it together? What can you do? It's much more reasonable, I think. But many people still go back to those original recommendations, because like you said, it's a number. It's simple. Just tell me.VirginiaWe love to grab onto a number and grade ourselves.AshJust tell me how much time so that I can tell myself I'm I'm doing a good job, right? But you know, time is just one piece of information. It can be so specific with what am I using that time to do? If I'm sitting on my computer and doing work for an hour and a half, technically, that is screen time, but it is going to affect me a lot differently than if I'm watching Netflix or scrolling my phone for an hour and a half. I will feel very different after those things. And I think it's really important to be aware of that, and to make our kids aware of that from an early age, so that they are thinking about more than just, oh, it's been X amount of minutes. And therefore this is okay or not okay.Because all brains and all screens are different. And so one kid can watch 20 minutes of Paw Patrol, and they're going to be bouncing off the walls, because, for whatever reason, that's just a show that's really stimulating for them. And somebody else can sit and watch an hour and a half of something, and they'll be completely fine. So if you have a kid that is the first kid, and after 20 minutes, you're like, oh my god, it's not even half an hour. This is supposed to be an okay amount. This is how they're acting. We're right back to that “something's wrong. I'm wrong. They're bad,” as opposed to, “What is this telling me? What's something we could do differently? Could we try a different show? Could we try maybe having some physical movement before or after, see if that makes a difference?” It just puts us more in a place of being curious to figure out again, how do I make this work for me? What is my need? How do I make it work for us?And not to rattle on too long, but there was a big study done in the UK, involving over 120,000 kids. And they were trying to find what they called “the Goldilocks amount of time.”VirginiaYes. This is fascinating.AshSo it's the amount of time where benefit starts to wane. Where we are in that “just right”amount. Before that, might still be okay, but after that we're going to start seeing some negative impacts, particularly when it comes to behavior, for example.What they found in general was that the Goldilocks number tended to be around, I think, an hour and 40 minutes a day. Something around an hour and a half a day. But if you looked at certain types of screens, for computers or TV, it was much higher than that. It was closer to three hours a day before you started seeing some negative impacts. And even for things like smartphones, it was over an hour a day. But what I found so so interesting, is that they looked at both statistical significance, but also what they called “minimally important difference,” which was when you would actually notice these negative changes, subjectively, as a caregiver.So this meant how much would a kid have to be on a screen for their adult at home to actually notice “this is having an impact on you,” regularly. And that amount was over four and a half hours a day on screens.VirginiaBefore caregivers were like, “Okay, this is too much!” And the fact that the statistically significant findings for the minutia of what the researchers looking at is so different from what you as a caregiver are going to actually be thrown by. That was really mind blowing to me.AshRight, And that doesn't mean that statistical significance isn't important, necessarily. But we're talking about real minutiae. And that doesn't always mean that you will notice any difference in your actual life.Of course, some people are going to hear this and go, “But I don't want my kid on a screen for four and a half hours.” Sure. That's completely reasonable. And if your kid is having a hard time after an hour, still reasonable, still important. That's why we can think less about how many minutes has it been exactly, and more, what am I noticing? Because if I'm coming back to the need and you're like, okay, I have a meeting and I need an hour, right? If you know, “I cannot have them use their iPad for an hour, because they tend to become a dysregulated mess in 25 minutes,” that's much more useful information than “Well, it says they're allowed to have an hour of screen time per day so this should be fine because it's an hour.”VirginiaRight.AshIt sets you up for more success.VirginiaAnd if you know your kid can handle that hour fine and can, in fact, handle more fine, it doesn't mean, “well you had an hour of screen time while I was in a meeting so now we can't watch a show together later to relax together.” You don't have to take away and be that granular with the math of the screens. You can be like, yeah, we needed an extra hour for this meeting, and we'll still be able to watch our show later. Because that's what I notice with my kids. If I start to try to take away from some other screen time, then it's like, “Oh, god, wait, but that's the routine I'm used to!” You can't change it, and that's fair.AshYes, absolutely. And I would feel that way too, right? If someone were giving me something extra because it was a convenience to them, but then later was like, “oh, well, I have to take that from somewhere.” But they didn't tell me that. I would be like, Excuse me, that's weird. That's not how that works, right? This was a favor to you, right?VirginiaYeah, exactly. I didn't interrupt your meeting. You're welcome, Mom.Where the time anxiety does tend to kick in, though, is that so often it's hard for kids to transition off screens. So then parents think, “Well, it was too much time,” or, “The screen is bad.” This is another very powerful reframing in your work. So walk us through why just because a kid is having a hard time getting off screens doesn't mean it was too much and it doesn't mean that screens are evil? AshSo an example I use many times that you can tweak to be whatever thing would come up for your kid is bath time. I think especially when kids are in that sort of toddler, three, four age. When my kid was that age, we had a phase where transitioning to and from the bathtub was very hard. Getting into it was hard. But then getting out of it was hard.VirginiaThey don't ever want to get in. And then they never want to leave.AshThey never want to get out, right? And in those moments when my kid was really struggling to get out of the bathtub, imagine how it would sound if I was like, “Well, it it's the bathtub's fault.” Like it's the bath's fault that they are having such a hard time, it's because of the bubbles, and it smells too good, and I've made it too appealing and the water's too warm. Like, I mean, I sound unhinged, right?Virginia“We're going to stop bathing you.”AshExactly. We would not say, “Well, we can't have baths anymore.” Or when we go to the fun playground, and it's really hard to leave the fun playground, we don't blame the playground. When we're in the grocery store and they don't want to leave whichever aisle, we don't blame the grocery store. And we also don't stop taking them to the grocery store. We don't stop going to playgrounds. We don't stop having baths. Instead, we make different decisions, right? We try different things. We start a timer. We have a different transition. We talk about it beforehand. We strategize, we try things.VirginiaGive a “Hey, we're leaving in a few minutes!” so they're not caught off guard.AshExactly. We talk about it. Hey, last time it was really hard to leave here, we kind of let them know ahead of time, or we race them to the car. We find some way to make it more fun, to make the transition easier, right? We get creative, because we know that, hey, they're going to have to leave the grocery store. They're going to have to take baths in a reasonable amount of time as they grow up into their lives. We recognize the skill that's happening underneath it.And I think with screens, we don't always see those underlying skills, because we see it as this sort of superfluous thing, right? It's not needed. It's not necessary. Well, neither is going to a playground, technically.A lot of what we do is not technically required, but the skill underneath is still there. So when they are struggling with ending screen time, is it really the screen, or is it that it's hard to stop doing something fun. It's hard to stop in the middle of something. It's hard to stop if you have been playing for 20 minutes and you've lost every single race and you don't want to stop when you've just felt like you've lost over and over again, right? You want one more shot to one more shot, right?People are going to think, “Well, but screens are so much different than those other things.” Yes, a screen is designed differently than a playground or a bath. But we are going to have kids who are navigating a technological and digital world that we are struggle to even imagine, right? We're seeing glimpses of it, but it's going to be different than what we're experiencing now, and we want our kids to be able to navigate that with success. And that comes back to seeing the skills underneath. So when they're struggling with something like that, taking the screen out of it, and asking yourself, how would I handle this if it were anything else. How would I handle this if it were they're struggling to leave a friend's house? I probably wouldn't blame the friend, and I wouldn't blame their house, and I wouldn't blame their boys.VirginiaWe're never seeing that child again! Ash I would validate and I would tell them, it's hard. And I would still tell them “we're ending,” and we would talk about strategies to make it easier next time. And we would get curious and try something, and we would be showing our kids that, “hey, it's it's okay to have a hard time doing that thing. It's okay to have feelings about it. And we're still gonna do it. We're still going to end that thing.”Most of the time, the things that we are struggling with when it comes to screens actually boil down to one of three things, I call them the ABCs. It's either Access, which could be time, or when they're having it, or how much. Behavior, which you're kind of bringing up here. And Content, what's on the screen, what they're playing, what they what they have access to.And so sometimes we might think that the problem we're seeing in front of us is a behavior problem, right? I told them to put the screen away. They're not putting the screen away. That's a behavior problem. But sometimes it actually could be because it's an access issue, right? It's more time than they can really handle at that given moment. Or it could be content, because it's content that makes it harder to start and stop. So a big part of the book is really figuring out, how do I know what problem I'm even really dealing with here? And then what are some potential things that I can do about it? To try to problem solve, try to make changes and see if this helps, and if it helps, great, keep it. And if not, I can get curious and try something else. And so a lot of it is strategies to try and ways to kind of, you know, backwards engineer what might be going on, to figure out how to make it work for you, how to make it better.VirginiaIt's so helpful to feel like, okay, there's always one more thing I can tweak and adjust. Versus “it's all a failure. We have to throw it out.” That kind of all or nothing thinking that really is never productive. The reason I think it's so helpful that you draw that parallel with the bath or the play date is it reminds us that there are some kids for whom transitions are just always very difficult—like across the board. So you're not just seeing a screen time problem. You're being reminded “My kid is really building skills around transitions. We don't have them yet.” We hope we will have them at some point. But this is actually an opportunity to work on that, as opposed to a problem. We can actually practice some of these transition skills.AshAnd I really like coming back to the skill, because if we're thinking of it as a skill, then we're probably more likely to tell our kids that it's a skill, too. Because if we're just thinking of it as like, well, it's a screen. It's the screen's fault, it's the screen's fault. Then we might not say those literal words to our kids, but we might say, like, it's always so hard to turn off the TV. Why is that, right? We're talking about it as if it's this sort of amorphous, like it's only about the television, or it's only about the iPad, and we're missing the part of making it clear to our kids that, hey, this is a skill that you're working on, and we work on this skill in different ways.VirginiaI did some good repair with my kids after reading your book. Because I was definitely falling into the trap of talking about screen addiction. I thought I was saying to them, “It's not your fault. The screens are programmed to be bad for us in this way” So I thought, I was like at least not blaming them, but being like, we need less screens because they're so dangerous.But then I read your book, and I was like, oh, that's not helpful either. And I did have one of my kids saying, “Am I bad because I want to watch screens all the time?” And I was like, oh, that's too concrete and scary.And again, to draw the parallel with diet culture: It's just like telling kids sugar is bad, and then they think they're bad because they like sugar. So I did do some repair. I was like, “I read this book and now I've learned that that was not right.” They were like, oh, okay. We're healing in my house from that, so thank you.AshOh, you're very welcome, and I'm glad to hear that!I think about those parallels with food all the time, because sometimes it just helps me think, like, wait, would I be wanting to send this message about food or exercise or whatever? And if the answer is no, then how can I tweak it so that I'm sending a message I'd be okay with applying to other things. And I like being able to make those parallels with my kid. In my household right now, we're practicing flexibility. Flexibility is a skill that we're working on in so many parts of our lives. And when I say we, I do mean we. Me, everybody is working on this.VirginiaParents can use more flexibility, for sure.AshAbsolutely. And so like, when those moments are coming up, you know, I'm trying to say, like, hey, like, what skill is this right now? Who's having to be flexible right now? Flexible can be a good thing, right? We might be flexible by saying yes to eating dinner on the couch and watching a TV show. That's flexibility. Flexibility isn't just adjust your plans to be more convenient to me, child, so that I can go do something as an adult. And coming back to those skills so they can see, oh, okay, this isn't actually just about screens. This applies to every part of these of my life, or these different parts of my life, and if I'm working on it here, oh, wow, it feels easier over there. And so they can see that this applies throughout their life, and kind of feel more of that buy in of like, oh, I'm getting better at that. Or that was easier. That was harder. We want them to see that across the board.VirginiaOh, my God, absolutely.Let's talk about screens and neurodivergence a little bit. So one of my kiddos is neurodivergent, and I can both see how screens are wonderful for them at the end of a school day, when they come home and they're really depleted. Screen time is the thing they need to rest and regulate. And they love the world building games, which gives them this whole world to control and explore. And there's so much there that's wonderful.And, they definitely struggle more than their sibling with this transition piece, with getting off it. One kid will naturally put down the iPad at some point and go outside for a bit, and this kid will not. And it creates more anxiety for parents. Because neurodivergent kids may both need screens—in ways that maybe we're not totally comfortable with, but need to get comfortable with—and then struggle with the transition piece. So how do you think about this question differently with neurodivergence? Or or is it really the same thing you're just having to drill in differently?AshI think it is ultimately the same thing, but it certainly is going to feel quite more heightened. And I think especially for certain aspects of neurodivergence, especially, I think it feels really heightened because of some of the ways that they might be discussed, particularly online, when it comes to how they relate to technology. I think about ADHD, we'll see that a lot. Where I'll see many things online about, like, “kids with ADHD should never be on a screen. They should never be on a device, because they are so dopamine-seeking.” And I have to just say that I find that to be such an ableist framing. Because with ADHD, we're talking about a dopamine deficient brain. And I don't think that we would be having that same conversation about someone needing insulin, right? Like, we wouldn't be saying, like, oh yeah, nope, they can't take that insulin. VirginiaThey're just craving that insulin they need to stay alive.AshA kid seeking a thing that they're that they are somehow deficient in—that's not some sort of defiant behavior. VirginiaNo, it's a pretty adaptive strategy.AshAbsolutely, it is. And we want kids to know that nobody's brain is good or bad, right? There's not a good brain or a bad brain. There are all brains are going to have things that are easier or harder. And it's about learning the brain that you're in, and what works or doesn't work for the brain that you're in.And all brains are different, right? Neurotypical brains and neurodivergent brains within those categories are obviously going to be vastly different. What works for one won't work for another, and being able to figure out what works for them, instead of just, “because you have this kind of brain, you shouldn't ever do this thing,” that's going to set them up for more success. And I think it's great that you mentioned both how a screen can be so regulating, particularly for neurodivergent brains, and then the double-edged sword of that is that then you have to stop. VirginiaTransition off back into the world.AshSo if the pain point is a transition, what is it really coming from? Is it coming from the executive function piece of “I don't know how to find a place to stop?” A lot of people, particularly kids ADHD, they often like games that are more open-ended. So they might like something like a Minecraft or an Animal Crossing or the Sims where you can hyperfocus and deep dive into something. But what's difficult about that is that, you know, if I play Mario Kart, the level ends, it's a very obvious ending.VirginiaRight? And you can say, “One more level, and we're done.”AshExactly. We've reached the end of the championship. I'm on the podium. I quit now, right?But there's a never ending series of of tasks with a more open-ended game. And especially if I'm in my hyper focus zone, right? I can just be thinking, like, well, then I can do this and this and this and this and this, right?And I'm adding on to my list, and the last thing I want to do in that moment is get pulled out of it when I'm really feeling like I'm in the zone. So if that's the kind of transition that's difficult. And it's much less about games and more about “how do I stop in the middle of a project?” Because that's essentially what that is.And that would apply if I'm at school and I'm in the middle of an essay and we're finishing it up tomorrow. Or I'm trying to decorate a cake, and we're trying to walk out the door and I have to stop what I'm doing and come back later. So one of the tricks that I have found really helpful is to ask the question of, “How will you know when you're done?” Or how will you know you're at a stopping point? What would a stopping point be today? And getting them to sort of even visualize it, or say it out loud, so that they can think about, “Oh, here's how I basically break down a giant task into smaller pieces,” because that's essentially what that is.VirginiaThat's a great tip. Ash“Okay, you have five minutes. What is the last thing you're going to do today?” Because then it's concrete in terms of, like, I'm not asking the last thing, and it will take you half an hour, right? I'm at, we have five minutes. What's the last thing you're wrapping up? What are you going to do?Then, if it's someone who's very focused in this world, and they're very into that world, then that last thing can also be our transition out of it. As they're turning it off, the very first thing we're saying to them is, “So what was that last thing you were doing?”VirginiaOh, that's nice.AshThen they're telling it to us, and then we can get curious. We can ask questions. We can get a little into their world to help them transition out of that world. That doesn't mean that we have to understand what they're telling us, frankly. It doesn't mean we have to know all the nuance. But we can show that interest. I think this is also really, really important, because then we are showing them it's not us versus the screen. We're not opposing the screen, like it's the enemy or something. And we're showing them, “Hey, I can tell you're interested in this, so I'm interested in it because you are.” Like, I care about you, so I want to know more.VirginiaAnd then they can invite you into their world, which what a lot of neurodivergent kids need. We're asking them to be part of the larger world all the time. And how nice we can meet them where they are a little more.AshAbsolutely. The other thing I would say is that something I think people don't always realize, especially if they don't play games as much, or if they are not neurodivergent and playing games, is they might miss that video games actually are extremely well-accommodated worlds, in terms of accommodating neurodivergence.So thinking about something like ADHD, to go back to that example, it's like, okay, some really common classroom accommodations for ADHD, from the educator perspective, the accommodations I see a lot are frequent check ins, having a checklist, breaking down a large task into smaller chunks, objectives, having a visual organizer.Well, I think about a video game, and it's like, okay, if I want to know what I have available to me, I can press the pause menu and see my inventory at any time. If I want to know what I should be doing, because I have forgotten, I can look at a menu and see, like, what's my objective right now? Or I can bring up the map and it will show me where I supposed to be going. If I start to deviate from what I'm supposed to be doing, the game will often be like, “Hey, don't forget, you're supposed to be going over there!” It'll get me back on task. If I'm trying to make a potion that has eight ingredients, the game will list them all out for me, and it will check them off as I go, so I can visually see how I'm how I'm achieving this task. It does a lot of that accommodation for me. And those accommodations are not as common in the real world, or at least not as easily achieved.And so a lot of neurodivergent kids will succeed easily in these game worlds. And we might think “oh because it's addicting, or the algorithm, or it's just because they love it” But there are often these structural design differences that actually make it more accessible to them.And if we notice, oh, wow, they have no problem knowing what to do when they're playing Zelda, because they just keep checking their objective list all the time or whatever—that's great information.VirginiaAnd helps us think, how can we do that in real life? AshExactly. We can go to them and say, hey, I noticed you, you seem to check your inventory a lot when you're playing that game. How do we make it so that when you look in your closet, you can just as easily see what shirts you own. Whatever the thing may be, so that we're showing them, “hey, bring that into the rest of your world that works for you here.” Let's make it work for you elsewhere, instead of thinking of it as a reason they're obsessed with screens, and now we resent the screens for that. Bring that in so that it can benefit the rest of their lives.VirginiaI'm now like, okay, that just reframes something else very important for me. You have such a helpful way of helping us divest from the guilt and the shame and actually look at this in a positive and empowering way for us and our kids. And I'm just so grateful for it. It really is a game changer for me.AshOh, thank you so much. I'm so glad to hear that it was helpful and empowering for you, and I just hope that it can be that for others as well.ButterAshSo my family and I have been lucky enough to spend quite a lot of time in Japan. And one of the wonderful things about Japan is they have a very huge bike culture. I think people think of the Netherlands as Bike cCentral, but Japan kind of rivals them.And they have a particular kind of bike that you cannot get in the United States. It's called a Mamachari, which is like a portmanteau of mom and chariot. And it's sort of like a cargo bike, but they are constructed a little differently and have some features that I love. And so when I've been in Japan, we are on those bikes. I'm always like, I love this kind of bike. I want this kind of bike for me forever. And my recent Butter has been trying to find something like that that I can have in my day to day life. And I found something recently, and got a lovely step through bike on Facebook Marketplace. VirginiaSo cool! That's exciting to find on marketplace, too.AshOh yes, having a bike that like I actually enjoy riding, I had my old bike from being a teenager, and it just was not functional. I was like, “This is not fun.” And now having one that I enjoy, I'm like, oh yes. I feel like a kid again. It's lovely.VirginiaThat's a great Butter. My Butter is something both my kids and my pets and I are all really enjoying. I'm gonna drop a link in the chat for you. It is called a floof, and it is basically a human-sized dog bed that I found on Etsy. It's like, lined with fake fur.AshMy God. I'm looking at it right now.VirginiaIsn't it hilarious?AshWow. I'm so glad you sent a picture, because that is not what I was picturing?Virginia I can't describe it accurately. It's like a cross between a human-sized dog bed and a shopping bag? Sort of? AshYes, yes, wow. It's like a hot tub.VirginiaIt's like a hot tub, but no water. You just sit in it. I think they call it a cuddle cave. I don't understand how to explain it, but it's the floof. And it's in our family room. And it's not inexpensive, but it does basically replace a chair. So if you think of it as a furniture purchase, it's not so bad. There's always at least a cat or a dog sleeping in it. Frequently a child is in it. My boyfriend likes to be in it. Everyone gravitates towards it. And you can put pillows in it or a blanket.Neurodivergent people, in particular, really love it, because I think it provides a lot of sensory feedback? And it's very enclosed and cozy. It's great for the day we're having today, which is a very laid back, low demand, watch as much screen as you want, kind of day. So I've got one kid bundled into the floof right now with a bunch of blankets in her iPad, and she's so happy. AshOh my gosh. Also, it kind of looks like the person is sitting in a giant pita, which I also love.VirginiaThat's what it is! It's like a giant pita, but soft and cozy. It's like being in a pita pocket. And I'm sure there are less expensive versions, this was like, 300 something dollars, so it is an investment. But they're handmade by some delightful person in the Netherlands.Whenever we have play dates, there are always two or three kids, snuggled up in it together. There's something extremely addictive about it. I don't know. I don't really know how to explain why it's great, but it's great.AshOh, that is lovely.VirginiaAll right, well tell obviously, everyone needs to go to their bookstore and get Power On: Managing Screen Time to Benefit the Whole Family. Where else can we find you, Ash? How can we support your work?AshYou can find me on Instagram at the gamer educator, and I also cross post my Instagram posts to Substack, and I'm on Substack as Screen Time Strategies. It's all the same content, just that way you're getting it in your inbox without, without having to go to Instagram. So if that's something that you are trying to maybe move away from, get it via Substack. And my book Power On: Managing Screen Time to Benefit the Whole Family is available starting August 26 is when it fully releases.VirginiaAmazing. Thank you so much. This was really great.AshThank you so much for having me back.The Burnt Toast Podcast is produced and hosted by Virginia Sole-Smith (follow me on Instagram) and Corinne Fay, who runs @SellTradePlus, and Big Undies.The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe.Our theme music is by Farideh.Tommy Harron is our audio engineer.Thanks for listening and for supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit virginiasolesmith.substack.com/subscribe

Anthony Benenati, founder of City Yoga and That's Not Yoga®, shares his personal evolution from his earliest experiences with yoga to developing a practice that meets each individual where they are. In this conversation, he explores breaking limiting ideas about yoga, uncovering its deeper meaning, and building genuine human connection through mindful movement. He also reflects on how curiosity, learning, and purposeful steps can lead to lasting change. This is a conversation about healing, empowerment, and finding a practice that truly serves you. If you have any questions about this episode or want to get some of the resources we mentioned, head over to LesleyLogan.co/podcast https://lesleylogan.co/podcast/. If you have any comments or questions about the Be It pod shoot us a message at beit@lesleylogan.co mailto:beit@lesleylogan.co. And as always, if you're enjoying the show please share it with someone who you think would enjoy it as well. It is your continued support that will help us continue to help others. Thank you so much! Never miss another show by subscribing at LesleyLogan.co/subscribe https://lesleylogan.co/podcast/#follow-subscribe-free.In this episode you will learn about:Anthony's journey into yoga and the pivotal moments that shaped his path.Breaking common stereotypes and misconceptions about yoga.Understanding the true purpose of yoga beyond the poses.How yoga fosters authentic community and connection.The power of desire, knowledge, and action in creating transformation.Episode References/Links:Anthony Benenati's Website - https://thatsnotyoga.comAnthony Benenati's Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/thatsnotyoga Tiny Habits: The Small Changes That Change Everything by BJ Fogg - https://a.co/d/3edLCLcGuest Bio:Anthony Benenati is the founder of City Yoga, The first Anusara yoga studio in California and That's Not Yoga® , a culmination of three decades of study and practice in the Hatha Yoga tradition. Anthony's philosophy is simple; fit the yoga to the student, not the student to the yoga. He believes that it isn't about the style of yoga you practice, rather, the effectiveness of that style for your body. Yoga practice should help you transform, not cause more suffering. Anthony draws from a deep knowledge of the different classical styles of modern yoga and other modalities to construct a path of healing and transformation for their student. Anthony has trained in Kundalini, Ashtanga, Iyengar, Anusara and Viniyoga. He specializes in Yoga Therapeutics and tailors the practice so your body uses its natural movements to heal itself from pain and suffering. He has taught globally and has trained thousands of students. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure and give us a five star rating and leave us a review on iTunes, Podcast Addict, Podchaser or Castbox. https://lovethepodcast.com/BITYSIDEALS! DEALS! DEALS! DEALS! https://onlinepilatesclasses.com/memberships/perks/#equipmentCheck out all our Preferred Vendors & Special Deals from Clair Sparrow, Sensate, Lyfefuel BeeKeeper's Naturals, Sauna Space, HigherDose, AG1 and ToeSox https://onlinepilatesclasses.com/memberships/perks/#equipmentBe in the know with all the workshops at OPC https://workshops.onlinepilatesclasses.com/lp-workshop-waitlistBe It Till You See It Podcast Survey https://pod.lesleylogan.co/be-it-podcasts-surveyBe a part of Lesley's Pilates Mentorship https://lesleylogan.co/elevate/FREE Ditching Busy Webinar https://ditchingbusy.com/ Resources:Watch the Be It Till You See It podcast on YouTube! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCq08HES7xLMvVa3Fy5DR8-gLesley Logan website https://lesleylogan.co/Be It Till You See It Podcast https://lesleylogan.co/podcast/Online Pilates Classes by Lesley Logan https://onlinepilatesclasses.com/Online Pilates Classes by Lesley Logan on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjogqXLnfyhS5VlU4rdzlnQProfitable Pilates https://profitablepilates.com/about/Follow Us on Social Media:Instagram https://www.instagram.com/lesley.logan/The Be It Till You See It Podcast YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCq08HES7xLMvVa3Fy5DR8-gFacebook https://www.facebook.com/llogan.pilatesLinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/lesley-logan/The OPC YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/@OnlinePilatesClasses Episode Transcript:Anthony Benenati 0:00  One of the misconceptions about yoga is that anything goes, right, and that is so far from the truth. If yoga is about anything, it's about setting meaningful boundaries.Lesley Logan 0:12  Welcome to the Be It Till You See It podcast where we talk about taking messy action, knowing that perfect is boring. I'm Lesley Logan, Pilates instructor and fitness business coach. I've trained thousands of people around the world and the number one thing I see stopping people from achieving anything is self-doubt. My friends, action brings clarity and it's the antidote to fear. Each week, my guest will bring bold, executable, intrinsic and targeted steps that you can use to put yourself first and Be It Till You See It. It's a practice, not a perfect. Let's get started.Lesley Logan 0:51  All right, Be It babe. I am so stoked for you to hear today's interview. Our guest today is actually a dear friend of Brad and mine, and he is a person we have quoted on the podcast before, and he's someone we said, we have to get him on the pod. And guess what? We did it. And also, I can't believe this is the first time he's on the pod. I feel like he'll be a regular conversation, because it's just really fun to hear him share his perspective, and he is an amazing yoga teacher. And this is as much of a yoga podcast as it's not a yoga podcast episode, because we talk a lot about what really is yoga, and what does it mean to have a yoga practice, and what is it trying to teach us? And if you think you know what yoga is I'm gonna challenge you to listen, because I think it's really easy for us to have been fed something that it's not and then not realize, like, the amazing benefits that it has. And so I'm not gonna say anymore, because this episode is just one of my favorite it's gonna go hands down and one I'll quote in the future. And I knew that when I brought him on, I just knew that we would have an amazing conversation, and this is hopefully going to entertain, educate and inspire you. So here is Anthony Benenati. Lesley Logan 2:09  All right, Be It babe, I'm really excited. This person is actually a dear friend, like I know I've said that about some guests, but usually they're a dear friend of like, a couple moments. This person I've known for like, 10 years, and Brad has known him much longer, he's been a regular in our lives. Anthony Benenati, you are one of the best yoga teachers I know, but also so much more than that. Can you tell everyone who you are and what you rock at? Anthony Benenati 2:33  Well, first of all, thank you for having me on. What an honor. Who am I? Anthony Benenati, you said my name. I am, believe it or not, a yoga teacher, a professional yoga teacher. I've been doing this for 32 years now, which, when I tell people that I teach yoga, they they have immediate this vision of what that might be. Lesley Logan 2:56  Yes, you should be in white. Anthony Benenati 2:59  I should be in white or. Lesley Logan 3:02  With a glow. Anthony Benenati 3:04  It's not very serious or, right? Everybody has their assumptions of what yoga is, which, my job is to help educate and instruct on what the practice truly is versus what it has become. The practice that sort of everybody knows now, versus really, what it truly is and what its goal is.Lesley Logan 3:29  Yeah, I feel like we could also, like, talk about that for hours, because I had someone send me a reel of a guy on a Reformer with a, like, stationary bike in his hands and feet. And it was a joke. It was like an April Fool's joke. And he was like, okay, guys like, this class, we get cardio and core and like, he's holding the bike, he's it's obviously a joke. But like someone sent it to me, and I'm like, the fact that this is so hilarious that people who've never done Pilates before are sending this to me, tells me that what people think Pilates is has strayed far from what Pilates is. So I feel like I can understand that. And I find myself constantly educating people a little bit like, well, that yes, those are Pilates exercises and so, but it's not the inherent reality of it is. And so I feel like I understand that plight, that that journey you're on, in a little bit. Anthony Benenati 4:18  You and I have had this conversation many times before, because you're so close to the source of it, and and that's what I love about what you do, what you teach, and where I am, and what I teach, is that there's a lineage, and you're very close to the source, and the closer you are to the source, the more authentic the teaching, the further down the line you get disconnected from that core source. Then everything starts to get watered down and miscommunicated. Lots of stuff gets forgotten. Lesley Logan 4:55  Yeah, well, it's like the game of telephone, like, I mean, like when you play that game in school, like, you, the further it goes down the line. Anthony Benenati 5:03  The more warped it gets. Lesley Logan 5:04  Yes, yes. And it's funny, but also, like, that is the reality. Can we take a step back? Because, like, a yoga instructor of 32 years, that is a long time. And I think, like, there's not many of you. I mean, there's many of you, probably in India places, but like, there's not many of people who've had that many decades and and have studied the way that you have like, did you grow up like doing yoga? Did you want to be a yoga teacher?Anthony Benenati 5:32  No, this story is, is pretty remarkable. No, I did not grow up with yoga. In fact, I didn't really understand what yoga was until I was literally introduced to it after I moved here to L.A. So I've been in L.A. since 1991 before that, I was in the military. I was in the Air Force. And when I was in the Air Force, I was a competitive power lifter, and I played sports all my life. So my body was pretty wrecked in my 20s. I had a shoulder surgery and a knee surgery already, and I remember I was waiting tables, and I had met this girl, and I was taken by the way she sort of carried herself. She was she walked very upright, almost Royal. And I thought, you know, it's L.A., everyone's moving to LA to become an actress. And I thought, okay, this girl, right, she's like telling her family, I don't want your money, I'm moving to L.A. and I'm going to be an actress. So I asked her, and she laughed in my face, and she lifted up the back of her shirt, and she showed me a 13-inch scar on her spine. And she told me that when she was young, she had this incredible S curve in her back, and she was in a full body cast from her neck all the way down through her torso. And I said, oh, my God, that that sounds painful. And I said how do you move? You can't, I haven't seen you bend. She goes, I can't. The only thing I can bend is my hips. I can turn my hips, but I cannot bend my back. I said, well, what do you do for relief? And she said, I do yoga. And I was like, Well, explain what's that and how does that help you? And she said, I'd love to explain it, but I don't think I can. Why don't you just come to a class? So I did, and you know, me then, I was really big. I had all this muscle mass, right? And I went to my first class, and I could not finish, could not finish the class. It kicked my butt. And I was so, my ego got, got triggered. And one of the things that's important for me as a teacher now when I teach my students is that there is, yoga doesn't see things in good and bad. Yoga see thing, sees things in does it work or not? And at the time, ego served me, because it made me go back, and it made me go back and it made me go back. At the time, the reasons because I think I was going to get it, and that's fine for whatever, for whatever reason someone enters into the practice is fine, you're there. That's the important part. We can work on the why and the why always evolves as you get along through the practice. But for me, I tell people, ego brought me to yoga and it it kept me there.Lesley Logan 8:34  Yeah, I think, isn't it interesting, like, because I'll have I work with teachers, and they're like, oh, I don't want to work with people who want to lose weight. And I'm like, I, you don't have to promise them anything you can't do. But if, if that brought them into the space, I would much rather you a non like someone who's not going to manipulate or use them or lie to them to be the safe landing for them to find a movement practice that can help them love the body that they have, you know? So I'm not here to be I won't take you if you want to lose weight. I'll just say, here's the science of weight loss, here's how I can fit in and and here's how I don't, you know, but this is what we can do together and like building that trust. And if that's what brought them in, and that's what got them to keep coming at the beginning, but then they stay coming because of how it makes them feel, and then they become a person who doesn't worry about that, because they actually care more about how they feel than how that what the scale says. Like, to me, that's kind of like that same thing. Like, I think too often people are wanting to turn away that negative energy, that negative energy in air quotes, because that's not what something is. But really it's like, you can't just, you don't, we don't get to decide how people come to us. Anthony Benenati 9:48  Right. Lesley Logan 9:49  All we can do is like, kind of be a space for them to evolve and learn the what, what, what they wanted, what they're here, what we can teach them. Anthony Benenati 9:57  Yeah, I'm glad that you said that. I'm glad that you said that to create the space, because that's exactly what it is, isn't it? It's like we want to create a safe space for them to explore them, and not come in with this bunch of judgment that I'm putting on to them so that they feel uncomfortable. I want them to feel as comfortable as they can. Starting anything new is difficult. We all know that. Let's not make it harder. Lesley Logan 10:22  Yeah, yeah. I also like that you said there's like, there's not bad or good.Anthony Benenati 10:28  That's a radical, that's a radical idea for people. In the West, we are programmed this is good and this is bad. I can even hear, you probably hear this in your students' languages too. Oh, that's my bad side, or I have a bad leg, or I have a bad shoulder. And I'm careful with that, careful with the languaging. It's not bad. It may be injured, it may be weaker, it may be tighter, but that doesn't mean it's bad.Lesley Logan 10:55  Yeah. And I, well, I, there was a years ago, like years ago. I can remember where I was driving, but I can't remember the name of the podcast, I was in traffic on San Vicente trying to get to Wilson Boulevard, and I was listening this podcast, and they talked about how, like, we have to be mindful of how we talk about our body, because our body is listening. And they have done studies that, if you like, say, I gained weight, I'm someone who can't lose weight, like, I I'm fat. All this your bod, those people who say that they actually have seen that they produce fat cells, like, that's what they do, right? Versus like, they also, like, told people, like, oh, you had this knee surgery. And the person goes, oh, I had knee surgery, so my knee is better. They didn't have knee surgery. They literally didn't give it to them. They just pretended they put them under they had controls, don't worry there's other things, but. Anthony Benenati 11:42  The placebo effect. Lesley Logan 11:44  What you tell your body like really does matter and and I studied with BJ Fogg, who's the found who wrote Tiny Habits, and he's really the leading scientist on habits that everybody has been stealing from and, not stealing, it's the wrong word, they probably study with them, but at any rate, he said there's no such thing as a bad or good habit. Everything serves you. Every like the habits you don't like about yourself, if you don't like that you scroll on the internet. If you don't like that you binge-watch NetFlix that they'll all the habits we have serve us, they provide something because your brain actually doesn't want to be around anything that causes judgment or shame. So it, it's seeking, like, oh, like, maybe it's comfortable for you to it's soothing to just binge out and watch something you get you get to avoid the other thoughts you have, or with certainty, which we all are looking for and and so he said, If you so, you can't ever say I have a bad habit or I don't want to have good habits. They're just all habits. And then there might be habits you prefer and habits you'd like to get rid of. Anthony Benenati 12:42  Right. I think in the context of the yoga conversation, yoga would simply ask, do your habits serve you? And that's another way to say it, right, whether it's good or bad, is it serving you? Lesley Logan 12:54  Yes. Anthony Benenati 12:55  So maybe at the end of the night, you've had a really shitty night and you need a drink, and most people would go, oh, my God, you teach yoga. You don't drink, right? There's another stereotype. Lesley Logan 13:06  Yeah. Anthony Benenati 13:07  But does that drink serve you in that moment? Is it going to control you? Is it going to take over? No. May it take the edge off and allow you to process the things that you're going through? Sure. Are there other ways to process it? Yes. But not everybody can just be like, you know what, I'm super stressed, and I'm just going to sit and meditate. That's not that's not realistic. Lesley Logan 13:30  Yeah, yeah. Anthony Benenati 13:31  It's not realistic for somebody, you have to meet people where they are, yeah, yeah, and make the changes gradually. Lesley Logan 13:38  Well, I mean, do you have to meet yourself where you are? Anthony Benenati 13:41  Well, yes. True.Lesley Logan 13:44  That's a bigger, that's so huge. I just, you just mentioned something I thought it would be really good timing, like, since there is the stereotype of what yoga is, especially in the West, especially in big cities, oh, actually, even now, because the way things work in rural areas. It's just franchises so like so, what is yoga really?Anthony Benenati 14:08  Okay. How long is this podcast?Lesley Logan 14:11  We can have you back for another. We can split it up. Anthony Benenati 14:13  Part two. On its most basic level, yoga is a practice. It's been, well, the iteration that we know as yoga today has only been around a couple of 100 years prior to that, prior to the last 5000 years with yoga, yoga has been a ritual, a path, a practice to transcend the known or the physical, to transcend it to, instead of saying I am my body, yogis back then would say, I am not my body. And then they would use the practice to try and extricate themselves from their body. So, a free soul, you can think of it that way, the soul that inhabits me is limited by this physical boundary, and I'm going to use the yoga practice to liberate myself from this physical, literally, prison, is how they thought of it. But things evolved, and as things do over hundreds and thousands of years, consciousness changes, and societies evolve, and mindsets change, and even language changes. So yoga now has become a physical practice to help the body and the mind connect. So there's a saying that if you keep the body to cool the mind, most people, they start thinking a lot when they stop doing. And that's why a lot of people are just doing all the time, do, do, do, do, do, and there's no room for thinking. And then when they stop doing, all of these thoughts start coming up, and they don't know how to deal with them, so they just start doing again. Which is, I guess, a way of pushing things down so that you don't have to deal with it. Lesley Logan 16:05  Yeah, yeah. Anthony Benenati 16:06  Yoga gives us a invitation to try something else. Iit's a, it's an invitation to be like, how does my body work? And how does it work better? And not for the sake of the practice itself, but how is it going to help my life? Even if you do yoga every day, let's just say you do 30 minutes of yoga every day. There's 23 and a half other hours. What else are you going to do? Hopefully your yoga practice is serving that.Lesley Logan 16:37  Yeah, yeah. 30 minutes everyone is 2% of your day. If you want to do the math, it's 2% so if you can't give 2% of yourself to something that helps you become better, the other 98% like, I love that. I love the way that you described it. I think that it's really true. And I think it kind of like takes it away. Because I think people get caught up in the process of yoga, the poses, or the styles, and that's just all process which no one really, like, in the world of marketing guys, sells nothing. No one cares about the process. They care about the transformation, the the idea of like, you know, you said, like, breaking free of this limiting thing that would be like the thing, the promise. Let's go back. You, we kind of got, you got the ego kept you going to yoga. Why did you, like, did you know you wanted to be a teacher? Like, did you, I, because I had the same thing. I went to Pilates kicking and screaming, to be completely honest, and I thought it was a bullshit infomercial workout. And then I loved it, and then I kept going back, because I felt really good. And it wasn't till someone said I should be a teacher that I even thought about being a teacher. So how did you become a teacher? I mean, like, 32 years, take us back.Anthony Benenati 17:46  That's exactly, that's exactly, right, it was my teacher at the time that had told me. He told me after class. Now this was, you know, maybe a year, year and a half into starting with him. But he said, you know, because we've had multiple conversations, not just in the classroom but outside, we'd go and have tea or whatever. And he goes, have you ever thought about teaching yoga? And I said, absolutely not. I mean, why would I? Why would I do that? I barely know the practice. He says, I understand that, and I can get you more information, but I see something in you that I think will help other people. And I think what he saw, and after teaching a whole bunch of teacher trainees myself, the most effectual teacher is someone who understands how people get to the practice. And what I mean by that is if, for instance, if I grew up in the yoga tradition and my parents were teachers, and I had been doing yoga all my life, and I never really understood the struggle of a tight body, of not being able to do the poses, of not understanding the language, of having no connection to yoga, whatsoever. Then I couldn't offer that to anybody else coming into the practice, because I would, I, some of the teachers that I train who are super flexible, for instance, they never understand what it's like not to be so it's hard to have empathy for the student that is having a very difficult time doing the most basic movement. And I think empathy is such an important factor to be a great teacher, you have to be able to put yourself in their shoes. Lesley Logan 17:47  Yeah, yeah. Anthony Benenati 17:47  Or barefoot as it, in the yoga studio.Lesley Logan 17:47  Yeah, yeah. I agree. Like, I think, I think, you know, I used to be embarrassed by, like, how I thought so negatively about Pilates, and when I realized it was actually probably the way that made people trust to even try it out, like, I also thought it was bullshit. So, you know, I got it. And then the other thing, like, I do have one of those hypermobile bodies, but I fractured my tibial plateau right before I met and I remember, like, all this fear about, like, what that meant for my Pilates practice, what that meant for my weight training, my running, everything right? Was like, fear going on. And then I also realized in my own healing, how easy I was giving it to people with knee surgeries. Because I was just like, okay, like, don't move this in time thing and so I have an injury, I was like, oh, there's actually a lot of things they can do. There's like, so much like, and there's also so much they can't do, but like, you know, like, we don't have to, like, push them, but at the same token, like, we can challenge this body because it got injured for a reason. There was an imbalance, and that's why that happened.Anthony Benenati 18:11  Correct, correct. And we're here to address that imbalance, right? A lot of times, yoga is translated as union, which is a very simple, and it's not a direct translation. The root word of yoga is actually thousands of years old, and it's yuj, Y-U-J and it means to yoke. Now this is an old fashioned term. You know the yoke when they used to yoke the horse to the cart or the ox to the cart. Lesley Logan 21:02  I'm nodding, because I did do the Oregon Trail, and that is where I learned yoga. Anthony Benenati 21:06  Okay, there you go. So that's the image that I want people to have here, and it's very important, because what you have, so yoga, at that point, becomes an action. It's a verb. It's not just a noun. What is it? But what is it doing? It's joining. But what is it joining? It's joining two different things, right? The cart and the horse. Now, alone, these two things serve purposes, don't they? But if you connect them, then you can do incredible things that neither one of these things could do by themselves. So in the yoga practice, we say one and one never equals two. It always equals three, because there's you, there's the thing, and then there's the thing you guys are creating. So it's you and Brad as individuals, and it's your marriage, which is a living entity. And it has a life of its own. And if you don't feed and nourish that third thing, not only will it die, but then you're broken apart again.Lesley Logan 22:15  Yeah. Yeah. You should become a counselor as well.Anthony Benenati 22:18  What do you think after class is about? When people feel comfortable with you, they come after class and then they start telling you about deeper issues, right, things that not the body, but the why, the why that they're here. Why are they struggling? Why are they having a hard time? I was actually listening to one of your previous podcast this morning, as we were taking me and my wife were taking a walk, Ashley, around the lake here, and we were listening, and it was the client, or the person you had on that had stage four cancer. Lesley Logan 22:54  Oh, yeah. Anthony Benenati 22:55  And I remember you said something, and it was very astute. You said that. Well, you didn't know how many, and I looked it up, we have about 60,000 thoughts a day, and you said about 95% of them are negative, right? And it's true. It's like we have these same repetitive thoughts all throughout the day, and the majority of them, the vast majority of them, are negative or repeat from the day before and the day before and the day before. And at what point do you start addressing this and start changing the narrative? Yoga is the invitation to start learning that you can that there is an issue first and then the tools to change them. Lesley Logan 23:43  Yeah.Anthony Benenati 23:45  So I love yoga as a verb, as an action, not just a thing like we can name it, and you can't just name it and make it yo. You can't just put goats in the room and call it yoga. It's not. Lesley Logan 24:01  Yeah, I'm with you on that. I mean, like, because it's cute everyone and so don't at me. It is adorable, and if it gets people in, sure, but also, like, you're now paying attention to the goat, not you, which is like, another distraction that, you know, I think, like, I think, I think it's really easy, people want to distract themselves from all that's going on. Like, first of all, you've been a teacher since the 90s, so in L.A., which means use your studio was around during lots of things. Like, you know, I don't, I don't remember when, like, the riots were, if your studio is open, but then there was, like, 911 and. Anthony Benenati 24:46  The riots werre '92 so it was just after I got here, so I opened the studio in '99 so 911 happened for us, and that was a remarkable time. Obviously, the next, Gulf War happened, and lots of other things. And, you know, the studio became a community. It became a place for people to go, even if they just wanted to sit and be in the room, let alone practice. I remember the practice after 911 people just wanted to sit and gather and cry and talk and rage and not move. They didn't want to move their bodies. They just needed community. They felt so detached.Lesley Logan 25:24  Yeah. I mean, I wasn't any, I wasn't in a practice at the time, but I remember, because we were in California, so you're so removed, but you're not, you know? And so I can see how, like, your space can be that. And I think, like, it's so cool and also so big to have us to do a practice that can be so many things for people. It can be the community that they need, it could be the safe space that they share, and it can be a constant, like, it's there, no matter when things are good or when things are bad. And we don't have a lot of those things, right? Like, there's not there's not a lot of places or things you can do even when times are good and when times are bad, and I know you're gonna tell me good and bad, but like, you know, in the in the happier, joyful times versus, like, the sadder times.Anthony Benenati 26:09  Right, now we're in a really difficult time, and we've been here before. 2008 we were here the last time this particular President was in office. We were here. And we go through these cycles, and they're not unlike other cycles throughout the history of life, and we will have more. And it's not always positive, it's not always happy, it's not always on the incline. Sometimes it takes a dip. And you and I both know that that's really where you're tested. You're tested in the dips. You're never tested when things are great, and you're never going to change when things are comfortable either. Change only happens when you're uncomfortable.Lesley Logan 26:47  Yeah, it's really true. One of the my favorite things that you would bring up when we were in class is talking about, like, you know, you can't have love without hate, the equal opposite. And I was hoping you can, like, dive into that a little bit for us. Because I think, one, I actually think since these several moments of 2008 and 2016, and and now it's really easy for people to not see good and so it makes me go, like you guys, like you're seeing all the hate. Like, are you recognizing it's equal opposite. But I also, like, I think it's hard. I think people are always waiting for another shoe to drop, as opposed to, like, noticing when things are are also going well. But anyways, I wanted to know if you could, like, just share a little bit about that, because my listeners haven't heard that, and it was my favorite things. Like, Brad brought up your, like, Saturday morning classes today in a call with people, and he said, like, there'd be like, 50 people in this room, and you know, like you would often bring that up, and it was always around the same time that, like, something not great was going on. We all just felt it, whether it was in the city or the world. And like, you have to remind yourself of those things. Anthony Benenati 27:53  It ties into the whole good and bad thing, because it's a reframing of thought. Like, you have to really reframe this idea that even, even if it's something that you don't like, it's serving something. So it's a basic function of physics, like, things wouldn't exist if it didn't have an opposite, right? You wouldn't know joy if you didn't know pain, you wouldn't know laughter if you didn't know sadness, you wouldn't have anything to reference it to. So your capacity to love is directly related to your capacity to hate, to feeling these negative, quote, negative feelings versus these positive. They're there to balance each other out, and it's the idea is that it's your choice which one you want to feed. You remember Star Wars, right? Think about the force. The force is this, is this neutral thing, and it's how you choose to use it. They were all using the same force. But the lesson was, am I going to use this to help empower and further and engage, or am I going to use this for selfish and personal and destructive reasons? Same energy, how do you use it? So rather than wasting your time on whether something is good or bad or right and wrong, it really serves you to think, is this serving me? Because, like you said earlier, at some point in your life, it served you, whether it was to keep you safe when you were a child, for instance, maybe you were in a really bad home life, and you learned coping mechanisms. You learn, for instance, maybe how to shut it out, right, and how to go into your own cave, which is, which is very easy for me to do. If things get too much, I tend to remove myself and go back into this little cave. Well, you can't do that when you're in relationship. Yeah. Well, you certainly can't do that for very long, right? You need tools like, yes, I need to go take 10 or 30 minutes to myself, but I'll be back. It's that communication, to let that other person know I'm not leaving you. I'm not not communicating with you, but I do need to take care of myself. So it's changing, the languaging around this. So it helps me to think, for instance, this bad time that we're having right now, it's temporary. Now, temporary may mean years.Anthony Benenati 27:55  Yeah, I know I had a like, a thing, like, like, a little mantra card that's, everything, everything, everything is temporary. And I'm like, and temporary does not mean two seconds, two minutes, two weeks.Anthony Benenati 30:02  Exactly. There is no time limit on temporary, but it will end. Things always do. Things always change, but it was helpful to me to look at kind of life in that different way. I wasn't raised like that. I was raised as a Catholic, so it was always guilt and shame and right and wrong and very linear thinking, very black and white thinking, very dualistic, instead of this idea that maybe it's not so black and white, maybe there is the gray. And I think we're all learning that extremism on either end is not the path. So, far right or far left, we're not going to get anywhere because we're isolating. We have to find a way to start communicating again and finding common ground and stop making other the problem. Lesley Logan 31:41  Yeah, yeah. Anthony Benenati 31:43  That's my that's my I think that goes on and off the mat. Don't look at your body as a bad thing. Don't look at it as something that you need to conquer or change, or that somehow there's something wrong with you. How can I enhance myself? How can I make me who I am, and everything that I am that may not be somebody else, but very unique to me. How can I make myself even better, a better version of me, not, not somebody else. I don't have to be somebody else. I just have to be the best me I can be.Lesley Logan 32:18  Yeah. That makes me think of like, I interviewed a happiness strategist, and I was like, you know, I was like, this is interesting, because, like, like, can you be happy all the time? And she's like, well, of course not. She's like, like, she's like, she's like, but she said your ability to be happy is as directly related to how uncomfortable you can get, like, how comfortable withuncomfortable. You can get like, that's, can you like, what's your resilience? And she, you know, and I think, like, I think a lot of people have been outsourcing so long how they feel based on, like, what's going on out in the world, and not going back to like, how can I make myself the best version? Because we can affect the people around us more easily when you were talking about other it made me think you guys Google the Heineken commercial. It's quite long, but they literally took, like, people of opposite extremes and like, they took a guy who, like, voted against gay marriage, and then they took a lesbian and they put them in a room together, and they have to, like, build a desk, right? And like, and they, a table, or they build something. And the guy, like, this one guy is like, completely, I got this. I like, I can do these things, right? And she's like, and like, so they have to work together to build this thing. And like, each personal strengths have to do it, and then they have to sit down and have a beer. And at the end, the people who like when they interviewed them before they met the person they're building with, it would be like, I don't understand transgenders. I think they have to know rights, blah, blah, blah. And then they meet someone who's transgender, but they just built this desk together, and you watch this person go, well, let's have another drink and like, so it's really fascinating that, like, if we can actually stop, you know, being on the opposite sides, we can actually be together, and you get to know people, you're more likely to hear them and listen to them and realize we're kind of like what you think has been influenced by so much, by other people who are louder and you you actually love people who are around you more than you know, you know? And so I think that's what's so beautiful about a yoga class, or even Pilates classes, they can attract people from all sides of a spectrum and have a shared experience. And you know, because, and the more they get to know themselves, the more ideally, and this may be the idealist in me, like they think about caring for others, because they can, because once you've, once you've taken care of you, you actually have the capacity to actually care about other people.Anthony Benenati 34:45  Oxygen mask, baby. It's all about putting on your oxygen mask, right? You got to put yours on first. You can't help anybody else if you're passed out. But I like what you said there, too, because Yoga does want to meet people where they're at. I remember, I had this woman in class. She always sat up front and in the beginning of class, at that time, we would chant the sound of om in the beginning of class, just to settle the class and get things going. And she would never chant, and that's fine. You don't have to, right? It's again, everything's an invitation. But she did come up to me after class one day, and we had a conversation, and I asked her why, and she says, well, you know, I'm a devout Jew, and I feel like I'm sort of disrespecting my tradition if I'm doing something I don't understand. And I said, well, I'm so glad that you brought that up. First of all, yoga doesn't care what you believe. You can believe you know, Orange is God, and you can still practice. Yoga doesn't require a belief, it just requires a willingness. And I said, well, you're a devout Jew, so what are you comfortable saying? And she said, well, shalom. And I said, Well, what's in the middle of shalom? And she said om. And I said, exactly. So from that point on, we would chant om, and she would chant shalom, and she would just hold the om. It, for some reason, it gave her permission. It was totally fine with everybody else, and then she felt included. That was a wonderful story. Lesley Logan 36:19  I love that. I think also giving people permission, right? Like, I think that's what, you know, people can have permission to move their body, but also be in practice. Like, that's why it's called a yoga practice, and I think that's what it does so well, something that, like, I call it a Pilates practice, and there are a lot of people like me who call it practice, but there's also a lot of people who don't understand that, and they don't call it that, and they're like, I gotta get this. And it's like, no, what are you talking about, like, you're never gonna like, you don't get that. Like, it's your body. Your body's different every single day. Like, there are days like, at 6am I do Pilates, and at 8am I work out with you, and my body between those two hours is very different. And I'm like, whoa. I, what happened on my dog walk that this is no longer an option. I do, I do like that. Okay, I want to go into, because I think, like, you have had so many chapters in your yoga career, and what how you are, how you are teaching yoga now, is very different than what you did for the majority on your studio and things like that. Like we talk about some, be it till you see it moments and like, kind of like, what your what are you being till you see it, right now?Anthony Benenati 37:20  You're right. I did go through a lot when you when you have a studio for that long, you know, you go through a lot of changes, including me and my original partner, we split, and then there was that moment where you had to decide who's going to fight for this, who's going to get the studio, because we both wanted it, and that was that was all about desire. Do you really want this? And how bad do you want it? And then after that, there were other things that came up every time you're being tested. And you will be tested no matter how committed you think you are to whatever it is that you think you want, you're going to continue to be tested. And it just is a way to reaffirm, do I really want to be it? Do I really want to do this? For me now, you're right. It is different. My body is different. My practice is different, and not in a bad or a good way, just different. This is the different body than it was when it was in my late 20s. Being it now is, for me, is really being about being authentic, being authentic to the moment, being authentic to my students, but really being authentic to my own inner voice. And every time I get on the mat, the first thing I tell my students is, listen, listen to your body. It's going to tell you something different today than it did yesterday. If you come onto the mat with an agenda, most of the time, you're going to be disappointed, because you don't know that your body's ready to do those things that day, that particular day, maybe you need something completely different than you thought. We have to be open to that. And then the day I decided that my time of studio ownership was over, that was a tough one. That was a really hard day. But the moment I decided to make that shift, I felt so much more freedom. Yoga had changed, you know, it really had become corporate. At this point, it was being completely watered down. People were barely doing teacher trainings and leading yoga classes, and it just became too much of a struggle to do the business of yoga versus being the teacher. You know, when you own your own business, you never are not working. That's the thing. It's 24/7 right? You don't get to clock out and go home and forget about it. Lesley Logan 39:50  Yeah, there's a reason why I like, watch White Lotus. I'm like, because I'm not where I can't work and watch White Lotus like, this is me being awesome. That's how it serves me. Even if it, like, gives me a little stress and anxiety, I'm like, but I'm not working, so I get it, no, like, I mean, like, yeah, and then I I, I'm where I'm married to someone I work with. So it's never, it's never off. Yeah, but I, thank you for sharing that, because, I mean, like, I think a lot of people, there's an aspiration to start something or do something or own something. But as you said, you've evolved. Not only has yoga evolved, but you've evolved. Your body has changed. And I think sometimes we forget that as we evolve, we outgrow some roles, you know, and like, just like you outgrow clothes, like you outgrow, like you outgrow a role, and it's like owning a studio serves such a good purpose, like a good purpose at the time, like you had a partner and a family and, like all these things. And then it also got to a place where it's like all this is changing, and I have, too, you know, but that's so hard to like, because it's like a light switch. Anthony Benenati 40:58  Yeah. Well, you know, I had felt it, but not really paid attention to it. And you know how your body does, your body will jump in there and it'll call your attention. And I literally had my one and only panic attack at that moment. It was like, oh yeah, this is a sign you are not in a good place. This, this, this, it's time to get out. It's time this, this had run its course. And that was a hard decision to really give up the thing that you worked so hard to create. But it was also learning that that was separate from who I was, that we were not inextricably connected, that we were these individual things, and we did create a third thing, but that third thing was dying, and it was time to change into something else.Lesley Logan 41:46  Yeah, yeah. What are you most excited about right now?Anthony Benenati 41:51  Oh my gosh, we are empty nesters. That's the most, 25 years of being a parent.Lesley Logan 41:59  I had someone I just interviewed. She's like, I'm a bird launcher. She's like, I've launched all my birds. They're all birds. They're all launched. Like, the positive of that.Anthony Benenati 42:10  It is so true. We are so excited about this next chapter for us, which is freedom in a lot of different ways, right? I mean, you're never not the parent, but they don't need you every day anymore. They need you when they need you and and happy to be there when they do. Like this morning, my youngest called from college, and she stayed on the phone for over an hour. And she just needed feedback. She needed to connect. She didn't necessarily need a ton of advice. She just, you could feel that she needed connection. For now, for me, it really is about this next chapter. Your lives are a bunch of chapters, and at being, you know, 50, I'll be 58 this year. It's a very I know, right? Yeah, I can't believe it myself, but this idea now that I can make choices solely for me or solely for us as a couple and not oh my god, what are we going to do with the kids, and is this child going to come? Or are they not going to come, or are we going to do this all together, that we can make these choices for ourselves, I'm really excited about that. That's the personal aspect of it. Professionally, professionally, things have changed, you know, ever since covid, everybody went online, and which is great. It's a great way to connect to everybody, but I still feel the need to be in the classroom, yeah, and we do those in persons, and we do those yoga retreats, and we do those monthly workshops, just so that people can have that feeling of connection and community again. Lesley Logan 43:52  Yeah, I think that's why we do our tours, too. Like, I love being online, because I can impact people without having to travel as much. And also, like, I need to see bodies in three dimensions.Anthony Benenati 44:03  Right. How do you make an adjustment with you can't see and touch? Lesley Logan 44:06  No, I'm literally going so if I was there, I would hold your arms still. Imagine I'm like, is your child around? Can they grab your arms and hold them? Hold their hold their arms. Okay. Now go.Anthony Benenati 44:18  That's so good. Lesley Logan 44:19  You know, but like, I think, I think that's why, like, I like the idea of, like, really reframing what's good or bad. Because, like, I think it could be so easy, like, back before the pandemic, like, oh, online is terrible. You can't have those things. But we, Brad and I used to, like, call you just be on the phone. Because I was like, I can't handle the traffic. I can't but I want you. So just, just be on just be on speakerphone, and we'll mute ourselves, and we'll be, you know, but like, when the pandemic happened, I was like, oh, I love this, because now I can have access to the people, I don't live in the same town as you, and I, Brad and I still get to have that practice with you, and I think, but also, yeah, we miss, like, actual hugs and actually seeing people, and you have to be more intentional. But I think that that, I think then we are more intentional, you know, so that is also cool.Anthony Benenati 45:08  Yeah, we really mourned the day you guys left.Lesley Logan 45:12  When we moved from L.A. to Las Vegas was during the pandemic, and we didn't actually have a mourning, because nothing was actually happening in person, the more like it was a year and a half later when things opened back up and we were not part of the opening back up that was like, so it was a delayed mourning, a delayed grief for us. Okay, obviously, we're gonna all catch up, guys. We're gonna take a brief break, find out how people can find you, follow you, do yoga with you. Anthony Benenati 45:39  Great. Lesley Logan 45:40  All right, Anthony, where do you hang out? Like, are you on the Instagram? Or is there just a simpler way? How can people do yoga with you or learn more about what you're doing? Where do you where can they go? Anthony Benenati 45:52  Well, they can go to my website, which is, thatsnotyoga.com and of course, there's a story behind that, because that's a pretty bold statement, which was intentional. One of the misconceptions about yoga is that anything goes, right, and that is so far from the truth. If yoga is about anything, it's about setting meaningful boundaries. So if you take a bunch of energy and you narrow it, you're going to increase the flow of that energy. Just think of water. Take a lake. Narrow the boundaries. It becomes a river. Narrow the boundaries even more, becomes a raging river. So most people think that if you limit their choices, then you're limiting their freedom. But I call it the Cheesecake Factory theory. Walk into a Cheesecake Factory and you sit down, and they literally throw you down a book. And they're like, okay, what do you want? And you can have anything. The book is like, an inch thick. And I just get overloaded because there's too many choices. I much prefer to go to a restaurant where they just print the menu that day and there's six things on it, and you can have this, this or this, and I'm like, great, I'll have that. The narrowing of your choices actually gives you more freedom, because you're constantly saying no to a bunch of things while you're saying yes to a limited amount of things, right? Like being in marriage, you're saying yes to Brad and no to everybody else. It's this process that continues throughout your entire day, right? What am I letting in? What am I consciously keeping away? I love that understanding.Lesley Logan 47:42  I love that. So you guys just so you know, because he didn't say it, but I'm gonna say it for him. Brad and I can do yoga online with this man. You do it three times a week. I try to show up twice a week when I'm there. And Brad, we're getting him on the 8 am wake up call. We're working on. Do you remember? Do you remember when he used to do it 6 am? I think we have to remind him that he used to do 6 am yoga. Anthony Benenati 48:03  Absolutely. Lesley Logan 48:03  When the bed was further away from the studio was the the thing. So you guys can do that. You can find that on, on, thatsnot yoga.com. You kind of just gave us a Be It Action Item. But I just want to see like, if there's any other bold, executable, intrinsic or targeted steps people can take to be it till they see it. Anthony Benenati 48:18  Okay. The the, the the triad, the triumvirate that we like to follow in the practice, is desire, knowledge, action. Those are my Be It moments. To break it down, you got to want to do something, then you have to learn how to do it, and then you do it, this whole idea of just do it, that's not going to work. Just doing something without knowing how to do it can cause you harm doing something and you don't have the real desire to do it, you're not going to put your best effort in. If you do those three things in that order, you can pretty much do whatever you want to do. You've got to want to do it. You got to learn how to do it, and then you simply have to do it, and you have to commit to doing it over and over and over again to create that meaningful change. Those are my action items. And the thing is, is, if you don't want to do it, don't do it. That's the thing. You're, exactly, more freedom. And that's whole, that's yoga's goal. Yoga just wants you to be more free. But that doesn't mean no boundaries. It means establishing meaningful boundaries, boundaries that are going to channel you in the direction you want to go. And guess what, people, you can always change your mind. You can always change your mind.Lesley Logan 49:48  I mean, that is like that needs to be on people's walls. Because I find like, you know, like, imagine if you never gave yourself permission to change your mind. You might, you might, the world might have lost a yoga teacher that day, because you would have had a panic attack and then a burnout, you know, like, you can change your mind on your schedule, you can change your mind on your goals. You can change your mind on lot of things, like, you know, and that is for the perfectionist, listening. That might be the hardest thing you learn.Anthony Benenati 50:14  I'm speaking to you, perfectionist.Lesley Logan 50:17  Yeah, oh my gosh, Anthony, obviously I could talk to you for hours. And clearly Brad is like itching to walk in this room, you guys, so we gotta let him in so you can say hi to his friend, but thank you for being here, and thank you for just sharing so much of your wisdom. I continue to learn from you. Always. I can't wait to learn more. Someday we're gonna do a joint Pilates, yoga. That is my dream. That is my vision. Maybe on the Summer Tour. Maybe you'll be our L.A. event. So see, you guys, let us know what your favorite takeaways were. Let Anthony know in thatsnotyoga. Let the Be It Pod know and share this with a friend who needs to hear it, because that's how everyone wins. You know, we all can take away something from this, and I'd love to hear what yours are, and you know what to do, until next time, Be It Till You See It. Lesley Logan 51:02  That's all I got for this episode of the Be It Till You See It Podcast. One thing that would help both myself and future listeners is for you to rate the show and leave a review and follow or subscribe for free wherever you listen to your podcast. Also, make sure to introduce yourself over at the Be It Pod on Instagram. I would love to know more about you. Share this episode with whoever you think needs to hear it. Help us and others Be It Till You See It. Have an awesome day. Be It Till You See It is a production of The Bloom Podcast Network. If you want to leave us a message or a question that we might read on another episode, you can text us at +1-310-905-5534 or send a DM on Instagram @BeItPod.Brad Crowell 51:41  It's written, filmed, and recorded by your host, Lesley Logan, and me, Brad Crowell.Lesley Logan 51:46  It is transcribed, produced and edited by the epic team at Disenyo.co.Brad Crowell 51:50  Our theme music is by Ali at Apex Production Music and our branding by designer and artist, Gianfranco Cioffi.Lesley Logan 51:58  Special thanks to Melissa Solomon for creating our visuals.Brad Crowell 52:01  Also to Angelina Herico for adding all of our content to our website. And finally to Meridith Root for keeping us all on point and on time.Lesley Logan 52:14  I'm interviewing Anthony. Anthony Benenati 52:15  Hi, Brad. Lesley Logan 52:16  Yeah, it's an interview right now. No, we're not done. You're just interrupting. We'll put this in the bloopers. He's come in twice, and I'm like, um. Anthony Benenati 52:24  What's up, buddy? Brad Crowell 52:26  I wanted to say hi. Lesley Logan 52:27  Yeah. Okay, alright, one second, let me get to those Be It Action Items. Okay. We'll talk.Transcribed by https://otter.aiSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/be-it-till-you-see-it/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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Introducing the All Def SquADD Cast show “Versus". It's a podcast with the OG SquADD! Each week, the SquADD will debate topics and vote at the end to see what wins. Versus airs every Monday and you can download and listen wherever podcasts are found. Special Guest Dion Lack Brandi Denise John Grimes This Week We Discuss One Wish Granted Today vs 5 Wishes Granted In A Year Genius Level Intelligence vs Be A Musical Savant  Live Somewhere With The Most Extreme Seasons vs 98 Degree Location Daily S/o To Our Sponsors Ava App Credit Buildig App Get Better Rates & Pay Off Bills Faster Download The Ava App Today Use Promo: SQUADD

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