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In this episode of Welcome to Cloudlandia, we reflect on how places, people, and experiences shape our perspectives. The conversation begins with casual observations, from warm weather making transitions easier to memorable encounters like “Spam Man,” a mysterious figure spotted at the Hazleton Hotel. We also explore the impact of changing landscapes, both physical and cultural. From real estate in Toronto to how cities evolve, we discuss how development can shape or diminish the character of a place. This leads to a broader conversation about timeless architecture, like Toronto's Harris Filtration Plant, and how thoughtful design contributes to a city's identity. Technology's role in daily life also comes up, especially how smartphones dominate attention. A simple observation of people walking through Yorkville reveals how deeply connected we are to our screens, often at the expense of real-world engagement. We contrast this with the idea that some things, like human connection and cooperation, remain unchanged even as technology advances. The discussion closes with thoughts on long-term impact—what lasts and fades over time. Whether it's historic buildings, enduring habits, or fundamental human behaviors, the conversation emphasizes that while trends come and go, specific principles and ways of thinking remain relevant across generations. SHOW HIGHLIGHTS In Phoenix, during a rooftop party, we witnessed a surprise appearance of a SpaceX rocket, which sparked our discussion on extraordinary events blending with everyday life. We explored the curious case of "Spam man," a local legend in Hazleton, whose mysterious persona intrigued us as much as any UFO sighting. We shared our fascination with the dynamic real estate landscape in Hazleton, discussing new constructions and their impact on scenic views. Our conversation touched on unique weather patterns at the beaches near the lake, emphasizing the influence of water temperatures on seasonal climate variations. We delved into the topic of warmer winters, reflecting on how both humans and nature adapt to milder temperatures, particularly during February 2024. Our discussion included insights from Morgan Housel's book, which inspired our reflections on nature's resilience and adaptation over millions of years. We highlighted local activities like windsurfing and kite skiing, noting the favorable wind conditions at the beaches, a rarity in Canada's cold-weather climate. Links: WelcomeToCloudlandia.com StrategicCoach.com DeanJackson.com ListingAgentLifestyle.com TRANSCRIPT (AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors) Dean: Mr Sullivan. Dan: Mr Jackson. I hope you behaved when you were out of my sight. Dean: I did. I'll have to tell you something. I can't tell you how much I appreciate the arrangement of this warm weather. For me, it's made the transition much more palatable warm weather. Dan: for me it's made the transition much more palatable. Dean: I mean our backstage team is really getting good at this sort of thing, and you know when we were in. Dan: we were in Phoenix a couple of weeks ago and we had a rooftop party and right in the middle of the party we arranged for Elon Musk to send one of his rockets out. Dean: I saw that a satellite launch yeah. Dan: Yeah, can you imagine that guy and how busy he is? But just you know, just to handle our request he just ended up with, yeah, must be some money involved with that. Dean: Well, that's what happens, Dan. We have a positive attitude on the new budget. Dan: Yeah, and you think in terms of unique ability, collaboration, you know, breakthroughs free zone you know, all that stuff, it's all. Dean: it's the future. Dan: Yeah. So good Well he sent the rocket up and they're rescuing the astronauts today. Dean: Oh, is that right? How long has it been now since they've been? Dan: It's been a long time seven, eight months, I think, Uh-huh, yeah and Boeing couldn't get them down. Boeing sent them up, but they couldn't get them down. You know, which is only half the job, really. Dean: That was in the Seinfeld episode about taking the reservation and holding the reservation. Yeah. They can take the reservation. They just can't hold the reservation yeah. Dan: It's like back really the integral part. Back during the moonshot, they thought that the Russians were going to be first to the moon. Kennedy made his famous speech. You know we're going to put a man on and they thought the Russians, right off the bat, would beat him, because Kennedy said we'll bring him back safely and the Russians didn't include that in their prediction. That's funny. Dean: We had that. We're all abuzz with excitement over here at the Hazleton. There's a funny thing that happened. It started last summer that Chad Jenkins Krista Smith-Klein is that her name yeah, yeah. So we were sitting in the lobby one night at the Hazleton here and this guy came down from the residences into the lobby. It was talking to the concierge but he had this Einstein-like hair and blue spam t-shirts that's, you know, like the can spam thing on it and pink, pink shorts and he was, you know, talking to the concierge. And then he went. Then he went back upstairs and this left such an impression on us that we have been, you know, lovingly referring to him as Spam man since the summer, and we've been every time here on alert, on watch, because we have to meet and get to know Spam man, because there's got to be a story behind a guy like that in a place like this. And so this morning I had coffee with Chad and then Chad was going to get a massage and as he walked into the spa he saw Spamman and he met him and he took a picture, a selfie, with him and texted it. But I haven't that. His massage was at 10 o'clock, so all I have is the picture and the fact that he met Spamman, but I haven't that. His massage was at 10 o'clock, so all I have is the picture and the fact that he met Spam man, but I don't have the story yet. But it's just fascinating to me that this. I want to hear the story and know this guy now. I often wonder how funny that would appear to him. That made such an impression on us last summer that every time we've been at the Hazleton we've been sitting in the lobby on Spam man. Watch, so funny. I'll tell you the story tomorrow. I'll get to the bottom of it. Dan: It's almost like UFO watchers. They think they saw it once and they keep going back to the same place you know hoping that'll happen again, yeah. Dean: Is there a? Dan: spot. Is there a spot at the Hazleton? Dean: There is yeah. Dan: Oh, I didn't know that. Dean: So there's some eclectic people that live here, like seeing just the regulars or whatever that I see coming in and out of the of the residence because it shares. Dan: There's a lot, you know, yeah that's a that's pretty expensive real estate. Actually, the hazelton, yeah for sure, especially if you get the rooftop one, although they've destroyed I I think you were telling me they've destroyed the value of the rooftop because now they're building 40-story buildings to block off the view. Dean: I mean that's crazy. Right Right next door. Yeah, yeah, but there you go. How are things in the beaches as well? Dan: Yeah. You know it's interesting because we're so close to the lake it's cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter, you know. Dean: Oh, okay. Dan: You know, because controlled by water temperatures. Dean: Water temperatures. Dan: Yes, exactly, I mean even you know, even if it's cold, you know the water temperature is maybe 65, 66. Dean: Fahrenheit, you know it's not frigid. Dan: It's not frigid. Dean: They have wintertime plungers down here people who go in you know during the winter yeah, but this is that you and babs aren't members of the polar bear club that would not be us um but anyway, uh, they do a lot of uh windsurfing. Dan: There's at the far end of our beach going uh towards the city. They have really great wind conditions there. You see the kite skiers. They have kites and they go in the air. It's quite a known spot here. I mean, canada doesn't have too much of this because we're such a cold-weather country. There isn't the water, it's pretty cold even during the summertime yeah exactly yeah, but the lake doesn't freeze, that's oh, it does, it does yeah, yeah we've had, we've had winters, where it goes out, you know, goes out a quarter mile it'll be. Dean: I didn't realize that Wow. Dan: Yeah, yeah, yeah, but not this winter. It never froze over this winter, but we have, you know, within the last two or three winters, we've had ice on the. We've had ice, you know, for part of the winter. Dean: It's funny to me, dan, to see this. Like you know, it's going gonna be 59 degrees today, so, yeah, it's funny to me to see people you know out wearing shorts and like, but it must be like a, you know, a heat wave. Compared to what? You had in the first half of march here, right, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah yeah, so that's good. Dan: Yeah, last February not this past month, but February of 2024, we had 10 days in February where it was over 70. Dean: And. Dan: I often wonder if the trees get pulled, the plants get pulled. Dean: It triggers them to like hey, oh my. Dan: God. But apparently temperature is just one of the factors that govern their behavior. The other one is the angle of the light. Dean: And that doesn't change the angle of the sunlight. Dan: Yeah, so they. You know I mean things work themselves out over millions of years. So you know there's, you know they probably have all sorts of indicators and you have 10 boxes to check and if only one of them is checked, that doesn't, it doesn't fool them. You know they have a lot of things that I sent you and I don't know if we ever discussed it or you picked it up after I recommended it was Morgan Housel, famous ever. Dean: Did you like that? Did you like that? Dan: book. I did, I loved. It was Morgan Housel famous ever. Did you like that? Did you like that book? Dean: I did, I loved it. I mean it was really like, and I think ever you know, very, very interesting to me because of what I've been doing, you know the last little while, as I described, reading back over you know 29 years of journals, picking random things and seeing so much of what, so much of what, the themes that go that time feels the last. You know 30 years has gone by so fast that I, when I'm reading in that journal, I can remember exactly like where I was and I can remember the time because I would date and place them each journal entry. So I know where I was when I'm writing them. But I thought that was a really, I thought it was a really interesting book. What stood out for you from? Dan: Yeah, I think the biggest thing is that really great things take a long time to create. Dean: Yeah. Dan: Because they have to be tested against all sorts of changing conditions and if they get stronger, it's like you know they're going to last for a long time. Dean: And. Dan: I'm struck by it because the book, the little book that I'm writing for the quarter, is called the Bill of Rights Economy and the Bill of Rights really started with the United States. It was December 15th 1791. So that's when, I think, washington was just inaugurated at that time as the first president. But, how durable they are, and you can read the newspaper every day of things going on in Washington and you can just check off the first 10 amendments. This is a Fifth Amendment issue. This is a second amendment you know and everything like that, and it's just how much they created such a durable framework for a country. They were about 3 million people at that time and now there are 300 and whatever probably upwards of 350 million. And basically, the country runs essentially according to those first 10 amendments and then the articles which say how the machinery of government actually operates. And it's by far the longest continuous governing system in the world. That's really interesting. But that's why you know I really like things that you know, that you know that have stood the test of time. I like having my life based on things that have stood the test of time. And then I've got, you know, I've got some really good habits which I've developed over the last 50 years of coaching. Got, you know, I've got some really good habits which I've developed over the last 50 years of coaching and you know they work. You know I don't fool around with things that work. Yeah Well, I want to bring in something. I really am more and more struck how there's a word that's used in the high technology field because I was just at Abundance 360. And it's the word disruption and it's seen as a good thing, and I don't see disruption as good. I don't really see it as a good thing. I see it as something that might happen as a result of a new thing, but I don't think the disruption is a good thing. Dean: Yeah, it feels like it's not. It seems like the opposite of collaboration. Yeah, it really is. It feels like the negative. You know the I forget who said it, but you know the two ways they have the biggest building. Dan: I really mean Chucky movie. Dean: Yeah, there was somebody said the two ways to have the biggest building in town, the tallest building is to build the tallest building or to tear down all the other buildings that are taller than yours, and that's what disruption feels like to see in the real estate industry is always one that is, you know, set up as the big fat cat ready for disruption. And people have tried and tried to disrupt the real estate industry and, you know, I came away from the first, the first abundance 360, realizing that, you know, perhaps the thing that same makes real estate possible is that you can't digitize the last hundred feet of a real estate transaction. You know, and I think that there are certain industries, certain things that we are, that there's a human element to things. Dan: That is very yeah, yeah, I mean, it's really interesting just to switch on to that subject. On the real, estate. If you take Silicon Valley, Hollywood and Wall Street, who are the richest people in the area Silicon? Dean: Valley. Dan: Hollywood and Wall Street. Who are the richest people in the area? Dean: Silicon Valley Hollywood and Wall Street. Dan: Who are the real money makers? Dean: Yeah, Wall Street. Dan: No, the real estate developers. Dean: Oh, I see, oh, the real estate developers. Oh yeah, yeah, that's true, right, that's true. Dan: I don't care what you've invented or what your activity is. I'll tell you the people who really make the money are the people who are into real estate. Dean: Yeah, you can't digitize it, that's for sure. Dan: Well, I think the answer is in the word. It's real. Dean: What was that site, dan, that you were talking about? That was is it real? Or is it Bach or whatever? Or is it Guy or whatever? What was? Or is it AI or Bach? Dan: Well, no, I was. Yeah, I was watching. It was a little, you know, it was on YouTube and it was Bach versus AI. Dean: So what they've? Dan: done. You know you can identify the. You know the building components that Bach uses to you know to write his music and then you know you can take it apart and you know you can say do a little bit of this, do a little bit of this, do a little bit of this. And then what they have? They play two pieces. They play an actual piece by Bach and then they play another piece which is Bach-like you know, and there were six of them. And there was a of them and there was a host on the show and he's a musician, and whether he was responding realistically or whether he was sort of faking it, he would say boy, I can't really tell that one, but I guessed on all six of them and I guessed I guessed right. Dean: I know there was just something about the real Bach and I think I think it was emotional more than you know that could be the mirror neurons that you know you can sense the transfer of emotion through that music, you know. Dan: Yeah, and I listen to Bach a lot I still get surprised by something he's got these amazing chord changes you know, and what he does. And my sense is, as we enter more and more into the AI world, our you know, our perceptions and our sensitivities are going to heighten to say is that the real deal or not? Dean: you know yeah sensitivities are going to heighten to say is that the real deal or not? You know, and yeah, that's what you know, jerry Spence, I think I mentioned. Dan: Jerry Spence about that that Jerry Spence said. Dean: our psychic tentacles are in the background measuring everything for authenticity, and they can detect the thin clank of the counterfeit. Yeah, and I think that's no matter what. You can always tell exactly. I mean, you can tell the things that are digitized. It's getting more and more realistic, though, in terms of the voice things for AI. I'm seeing more and more of those voice caller showing up in my news feed, and we were talking about Chris Johnson. Chris Johnson, yeah, yeah, chris Johnson. Dan: This is really good because he's really fine-tuned it to. First of all, it's a constantly changing voice. That's the one thing I noticed. The second version, first version, not so much, but I've heard two versions of the caller. And what I noticed is, almost every time she talks, there's a little bit of difference to the tone. There's a little bit, you know, and she's in a conversation. Dean: Is it mirroring kind of thing, Like is it adapting to the voice on the other end? Dan: Yeah, I think there's. I certainly think there's some of that. And that is part of what we check out as being legitimate or not, because you know that it wouldn't be the same, because there's meaning. You know meaning different meaning, different voice, if you're talking to an actual individual who's not you know, who's not real monotonic. But yeah, the big thing about this is that I think we get smarter. I was talking, we were on a trip to Israel and we were talking in this one kibbutz up near the Sea of Galilee and these people had been in and then they were forced out. In 2005, I think it was, the Israeli government decided to give the Gaza territory back to the Palestinians. But it was announced about six months before it happened and things changed right away. The danger kicked up. There was violence and you know, kicked up. And I was talking to them. You know how can you send your kids out? You know, just out on their own. And they said, oh, first thing that they learned. You know he said three, four or five years old. They can spot danger in people. You know, if they see someone, they can spot danger with it. And I said boy oh boy, you know, it just shows you the, under certain conditions, people's awareness and their alertness kicks up enormously. They can take things into account that you went here in Toronto, for example. You know, you know, you know that's wild. Dean: Yeah, this whole, I mean, I think in Toronto. Dan: The only thing you'd really notice is who's offering the biggest pizza at the lowest price. Dean: Oh, that's so funny. There's some qualitative element around that too. It's so funny. You think about the things that are. I definitely see this Cloudlandia-enhan. You know that's really what the main thing is, but you think about how much of what's going on. We're definitely living in Cloudlandia. I sat last night, dan, I was in the lobby and I was writing in my journal, and I just went outside for a little bit and I sat on one of the benches in the in front of the park. Oh yeah, in front of the hotel and it was a beautiful night. Dan: Like I mean temperature was? Dean: yeah, it was beautiful. So I'm sitting out there, you know, on a Saturday night in Yorkville and I'm looking at March. I'm just yeah, I'm just watching, and I left my phone. I'm making a real concerted effort to detach from my oxygen tank as much as I can. Right, and my call, that's what I've been calling my iPhone right, because we are definitely connected to it. And I just sat there without my phone and I was watching people, like head up, looking and observing, and I got to. I just thought to myself I'm going to count, I'm going to, I'm going to observe the next 50 people that walk by and I'm going to see how many of them are glued to their phone and how many have no visible phone in sight, and so do you. Dan: What was it? Nine out of 10? Dean: Yeah, it wasn't even that. Yeah, that's exactly what it was. It was 46, but it wasn't even 10. Yeah, it was real. That's exactly what it was. It was 46. Dan: It wasn't even 10%, it was 19. It wasn't even no, it was 19 out of 20. Dean: Yeah, I mean, isn't that something, dan? Like it was and I'm talking like some of them were just like, literally, you know, immersed in their phone, but their body was walking, yeah, and the others, but their body was walking. But it's interesting too. Dan: If you had encountered me. I think my phone is at home and I know it's not charged up. Dean: Yeah, it's really something, dan, that was an eye-opener to me. It's really something, dan, that was an eye-opener to me, and the interesting thing was that the four that weren't on the phone were couples, so there were two people, but of the individuals, it was 100% of. The individuals walking were attached to their phones. Dan: Yeah. Dean: And I think that's where we're at right now. Dan: No, yeah, I don't know, it's just that. Dean: No, I'm saying that's observation. Dan: It's like Well, that's where we are, in Yorkville, in front of Okay, right, right, right yeah. No, it's just that I find Yorkville is a peculiarly Are you saying it's an outlier? It's not so much of an outlier but it's probably the least connected group of people in Toronto would be in Yorkville because they'd be out for the. They don't live there. You know most don't live there, they're and they're somewhere. There's probably the highest level of strangers you know, on any given night in toronto would probably be in yorkville I think it's sort of outliers sort of situation. I mean, I mean, if you came to the beaches on a yeah last night, the vast majority of people would be chatting with each other and talking with each other. They would be on their phones. I think think it's just a. It's probably the most what I would call cosmopolitan part of Toronto, in other words it's the part of Toronto that has the least to do with Toronto. Dean: Okay. Dan: It's trying to be New York, yorkville is trying to be. Dean: New York. Dan: Yeah, it's the Toronto Life magazine version of Toronto. Dean: Yeah, you idealize the avatar of Toronto, right yeah? Dan: In Toronto Life. They always say Toronto is a world-class city and I said no. I said, london's a world-class city. Dean: New. Dan: York is a world-class city. Tokyo is a world-class city. You know how, you know they're a world class city. Dean: They don't have to call themselves a world class city. Dan: They don't call themselves a world class city. They just are If you say you're a world class city. It's proof that you're not a world class city. Dean: That's funny. Yeah, I'll tell you what I think. I've told you what really brought that home for me was at the Four Seasons in London at Trinity Square, and Qatar TV and all these Arab the Emirates TV, all these things, just to see how many other cultures there are in the world. I mean, london is definitely a global crossroads, for sure. Dan: Yeah yeah. And that's what makes something the center, and that is made up of a thousand different little non-reproducible vectors. You know just, you know, just, you know. It's just that's why I like London so much. I just like London. It's just a great wandering city. You just come out of the hotel, walk out in any direction. Guarantee you, in seven minutes you're lost you have the foggiest idea where you are and you're seeing something new that you'd never seen before. And it's 25, the year 1625. Dean: I remember you and I walking through London 10 years ago, wandering through for a long time and coming to one of these great bookstores. You know, yeah, but you're right, like the winding in some of the back streets, and that was a great time. Yeah, you can't really wander and wander and wander. Dan: Yeah, it was a city designed by cows on the way home, right, exactly. Yeah, you can't really wander and wander and wander. Dean: Yeah, it was a city designed by cows on the way home, Right exactly. Dan: Yeah, it's really interesting. You know, that brings up a subject why virtual reality hasn't taken off, and I've been thinking about that because the buzz, you know how long ago was it? You would say seven years ago, seven, eight years ago everything's going to be virtual reality. Would that be about right? Oh, yeah, yeah. Dean: That was when virtual reality was in the lead. Remember then the goggles, the Oculus, yeah, yeah, that was what, yeah, pre-covid, so probably seven years ago 17, 17. And it's kind of disappeared, hasn't it compared to you know? Dan: why it doesn't have enough variety in it. And this relates back to the beginning of our conversation today. How do you know whether it's fake or not and we were talking on the subject of London that on any block, what's on that block was created by 10,000 different people over 500 years and there's just a minute kind of uniqueness about so much of what goes on there when you have the virtual reality. Let's say they create a London scene, but it'll be maybe a team of five people who put it together. And it's got a sameness to it. It's got, you know, oh definitely. Dean: That's where you see in the architecture like I don't. You know, one of the things I always look forward to is on the journey from here to strategic coach. So tomorrow, when we ride down University through Queen's Park and the old University of Toronto and all those old buildings there that are just so beautiful Stone buildings the architecture is stunning. Nobody's building anything like that now. No, like none of the buildings that you see have any soul or are going to be remembered well and they're not designed. Dan: They're not really designed to last more than 50 years. I have a architect. Well, you know richard hamlin he says that those, the newest skyscrapers you see in Toronto, isn't designed to last more than 50 years. You know, and, and you know, it's all utilitarian, everything is utilitarian, but there's no emphasis on beauty, you know. There's no emphasis on attractiveness. There's a few but not many. Attractiveness there's a few but not many. And, as a matter of fact, my favorite building in Toronto is about six blocks further down the lake from us, right here. It's called the Harris Filtration Plant. Dean: Oh yeah, we've walked by there, right at the end of the building. Dan: Built in 19, I think they finished in 1936. Dean: Yeah. Dan: And it's just an amazing building. I mean it's on three levels, they have three different buildings and it goes up a hill and it's where the water. You know, at that time it was all the water in Toronto that came out of the lake and they have 17 different process. You know the steps. And you go in there and there's no humans in there, it's all machinery. You can just hear the buzz and that's the water being filtered. It's about a quarter of the city now comes through that building. But it's just an absolutely gorgeous building and they spared no cost on it. And the man who built it, harris, he was the city manager. They had a position back there. It was city manager and it was basically the bureaucrat who got things done, and he also built the bridge across the Down Valley on Bloor. Dean: Yeah, beautiful bridge Right. Dan: He built that bridge and he was uneducated. He had no education, had no training, but he was just a go-getter. He was also in charge of the water system and the transportation system. And you know he put in the first streetcars and everything like that, probably the greatest bureaucrat toronto ever had, you know in the history of toronto this is the finest what year is that building from? yeah, the filtration plant was started in 29 and it was finished in 36 and wow they yeah, they had to rip out a whole section. It was actually partially woods, partially, I think, you know they had everything there, but they decided that would be the best place to bring it in there. Dean: You know it's got a lot more than 100 years. Dan: Yeah, but it's the finest building it's it's rated as one of the top 10 government buildings in north america yeah, it's beautiful. Dean: And that bridge I mean that bridge in the Don Valley is beautiful too. Dan: Yeah, it was really interesting. He put the bridge in and the bridge was put in probably in the 30s too. I mean that was vital because the valley really kept one part of Toronto apart from the other part of Toronto. It was hard to get from one part of Toronto apart from the other part of Toronto. You know, it's hard to get from one part of Toronto to the next. And so they put that bridge in, and that was about in the 30s and then in the no, I think it was in the 20s, they put that in 1920, so 100 years. And in the 1950s they decided to put in their first subway system. So they had Yonge Street and so Yonge Street north, and then they had Buller and Danforth. So they budgeted that they were going to really have to retrofit the bridge. And when they got it and they took all the dimensions, he had already anticipated that they were going to put a subway in. So it was all correct. And so anyway, he saw he had 30 or 40 years that they were going to put up. They would have to put a subway in. So it was all correct and yeah and so anyway he saw I had 30 or 40 years that they were going to put up. They would have to put, they're going to put the subway and it had to go through the bridge and so so they didn't have to retrofit it at all. Yeah, pretty cool. Dean: What do you think we're doing now? That's going to be remembered in 100 years or it's going to be impacted in 100 years? Dan: Well, we're not going backwards with technology, so any technology we have today we'll have 100 years from now. So you know, I mean I think the you know. Well, you just asked a question that explains why I'm not in the stock market. Dean: Exactly. Warren Buffett can't predict what's going to happen. We can't even tell what's going to change in the next five years. Dan: I don't know what's going to happen next year. I don't know what's going to happen next year. Dean: Isn't it interesting? I think a lot of the things that we're at could see, see the path to improvement or expansion, like when the railroad came in. You know it's interesting that you could see that that was we. You know, part of it was, you know, filling the territory, connecting the territory with all the, with all this stuff, and you could see that happening. But even now, you know, this is why warren buffett, you know, again with the, probably one of the largest owners of railroad things in the states, him, yeah, and because that's not changed in 200, yeah, or whatever, 150 years anyway, yeah, yeah, yeah, most of the country probably, you know, 150 years at least. Yeah, and so all of that, all those things, and even in the first half of the 1900s, you know all the big change stuff, yeah, yeah. Dan: Yeah. Dean: So it's funny because it's like I can't even see what categories are the biggest. Dan: Well, I think they'll be more intangibles than tangibles. For example, I think all my tools work 100 years from now. Yeah, I think all my thinking tools work 100 years from now. Dean: Well, because our brains will still be the same in 100 years. Yeah, all that interaction, right, the human behavior stuff. Dan: yeah, yeah yeah I don't think human behavior, um I think it's really durable you know, and that it's very interesting, um, and there was a phrase being used at Abundance that was used about four or five times during the two days that we were becoming godlike, and I said, no, I don't think so. Dean: I guess are they saying in that we can do things because of technology, we can do things. Dan: And I said nah, it's just the next. It's just the next new thing. You know that we've created, but human nature is, you know, there's a scientist, Joe Henrich, and a really bright guy. He's written a book you might be interested in. It's called the Secret of Our Success. And he was just exploring why humans, of all the species on the planet, became the dominant species. And you wouldn't have predicted it. Because we're not very fast, we're not very strong, we don't climb particularly well, we don't swim particularly well, we can't fly and everything like that. So you know, compared with a lot of the other species. But he said that somewhere along the line he buys into the normal thing that we came from ape-like species before we were human. But he says at one point there was a crossover and that one ape was looking at another ape. And he says he does things differently than I. I do. If I can work out a deal with him, he can do this while I'm doing that and we're twice as well. Dean: I was calling that. Dan: I've been calling that the cooperation game but that's really and that's playing that and we're the only species that can continually invent new ways to do that, and I mean every most. You know higher level. And mammals anyway can cooperate. You know they cooperate with each other. They know a friend from anatomy and they know how to get together. But they don't know too much more at the end of their life than they knew at the beginning of their life. You know in other words. They pretty well had it down by the time they were one year old and they didn't invent new ways of cooperating really. But humans do this on a daily basis. Humans will invent new ways of cooperating from morning till night. And he says that's the reason we just have this infinite ability to cooperate in new ways. And he says that's the reason we just have this infinite ability to cooperate in new ways. And he says that's why we're the top species. The other thing is we're the only species that take care of other species. We're the only species that study and document other species. We're the only species that actually create new species. You know put this together with that and we get something. Yeah, yeah and so, so, so, anyway, and so that's where you begin the. You know if you're talking about sameness. What do we know 100 years from now? Dean: What we know over the 100 years is that humans will have found almost countless new ways to cooperate with each other yeah, I think that that's, and but the access to right, the access to, that's why I think these, the access to capabilities, as a, you know, commodity I'm not saying commodity in a, you know, I'm not trying to like lower the status of ability, but to emphasize the tradability of it. You know that it's something that is a known quantity you know yeah. Dan: But my sense is that the relative comparison, that one person, let's say you take 10 people. Let's take 100 people that the percentage of them that could cooperate with each other at high levels, I believe isn't any different in 2024 than it was in 1924. If you take 100 people. Some have very high levels to cooperate with each other and they do, and the vast majority of them very limited amount to cooperate with each other, but are you talking about. Dean: That comes down, then, to the ability to be versus capability. That they have the capability. Dan: Yeah, they have the capability, but they don't individually have the ability. Dean: Right. Dan: Yeah, and I don't think the percentage changes. Dean: Yeah, that's why this whole, that's why we're I think you know, the environment that we're creating in FreeZone is an ecosystem of people who are, who get this. Dan: Yeah, well, I don't think they, yeah, I don't think they became collaborative because they were in free zone. I think they were collaborative, looking for a better place to do it. Dean: Yes, yeah, it's almost like it's almost so, just with the technologies. Now, the one thing that has improved so much is the ability to seamlessly integrate with other people, with other collaborators. Dan: Yeah, now you're talking about the piano, you're not talking about the musicians, that's exactly right, but I think there really was something to that right. It's a good distinction. Dean: It's a really good distinction that you've created. Yeah, I should say yesterday at lunch you and I were talking about that I don't know that we've talked about it on the podcast here the difference, the distinction that we've discovered between capability and ability. And so I was looking at, in that, the capability column of the VCR formula, vision, capability, reach that in the capability column I was realizing the distinction between the base of something and the example that I gave was if you have a piano or a certain piece of equipment or a computer or a camera or whatever it is. We have a piano, you have the capability to be a concert pianist, but without the ability to do it. You know that. You're that that's the difference, and I think that everybody has access to the capabilities and who, not how, brings us in to contact with the who's right, who are masters at the capabilities? Dan: Yeah, you're talking about in. You know the sort of society that we live in. Yes, Because you know there's you know there's, you know easily, probably 15% of the world that doesn't have access to electricity. Dean: Yes exactly. Dan: I mean, they don't have the capability, you know, they just don't have yeah, yeah and yeah, it's a very, very unequal world, but I think there's a real breakthrough thinking that you're doing here. The fact that there's capability says nothing about an individual's ability. Dean: Right, that's exactly it. Yeah, and I think this is a very important idea, but I'm not going to write a book on it. Oh, my goodness, this is example, a right, I had the capability, with the idea of the capability and ability. Yeah, yeah, I didn't have the ability. Yeah, I've heard, do you know, the comedian Ron White? Dan: Yeah, I have the capability to write a book and I have the ability to write a book, but I'm not going to do either. Dean: So he talked about getting arrested outside of a bar and he said I had the right to remain silent, but I didn't have the ability that's pretty funny, right. But yeah, this is really like it's exciting. It's exciting times right now. I mean it really is exciting times to even projecting for the next, the next 30 years. I think I see that the through line, you know, is that you know that a brunch at the four seasons is going to be an appealing thing 30 years from now, as it is now and was 30 years ago, or three line stuff, or yeah, or some such hotel in toronto yes exactly right. Dan: Right, it may not be. Yeah, I think the four seasons, I think is pretty durable. And the reason is they don't own any of their property. Dean: You know and I think that's. Dan: They have 130 hotels now. I'm quite friendly with the general manager of the Nashville Four Seasons because we're there every quarter Four Seasons because we're there every quarter and you know it's difficult being one of their managers. I think because you have two bosses, you have the Four. Seasons organization but you also have the investor, who owns the property, and so they don't own any of their own property. That's all owned by investors. Dean: Right. Dan: Yeah. Dean: So go ahead. When was the previous? I know it's not the original, but when was the one on Yorkville here Yorkville and Avenue? When was that built? Was that in the 70s or the 60s? Dan: Well, it was a Hyatt. It was a Hyatt Hotel. Dean: Oh, it was, they took it over. Dan: Yeah, and it was a big jump for them and that was, you know, I think it was in the 60s, probably I don't know when they started exactly I'll have to look that up, but they were at a certain point they hit financial difficulties because there's been ups and downs in the economy and they overreach sometimes, and the big heavy load was the fact that they own the real estate. So they sold all the real estate and that bailed them out. Real estate and that bailed them out. And then from that point forward, they were just a system that you competed for. If you were deciding to build a luxury hotel, you had to compete to see if the Four Seasons would be interested in coming in and managing it. Okay, so they. It's a unique process. Basically, it's a unique process that they have. Dean: Yeah. Dan: It's got a huge brand value worldwide. You're a somebody as a city. If the Four Seasons come to your city, I think you're right. Ottawa used to have one. It doesn't have one now. Vancouver used to have one. It doesn't have one now. I think, calgary had one. Calgary doesn't Because now Vancouver used to have one, doesn't have one now I think Calgary had one. Calgary doesn't Because it was a Canadian hotel to start with. Dean: Yeah. Dan: And Belleville had one at one time. Dean: Oh, really yeah. Dan: I'm one of the few people who have stayed at the Belleville Four Seasons. Dean: Hotel the Belleville Four Seasons. Dan: Yeah, of all the people you know, dean dean, I may be the only person you know who stayed at the belleville four seasons now, what they did is they had a partnership with bell canada. Bell canada created the training center in belleville oh and uh, and they did a deal four seasons would go into it with them. So they took over a motel and they turned it into Four Seasons, so they used it as their training center. Okay, so you know, it was trainees serving trainees, as it turned out. Dean: I forget who I was talking to, but we were kind of saying it would be a really interesting experience to take over the top two floors of the hotel beside the Chicago Strategic Coach, there the Holiday Inn or whatever that is. Take over the top two floors and turn those into a because you've got enough traffic. That could be a neat experience, yeah. Dan: It wouldn't be us. Dean: Oh well, I need somebody. You know that could be a an interesting. I think if that was an option there would be. Dan: Probably work better for us to have a floor of one of the hotels. Dean: That's what I meant. Yeah, a floor of the the top two floors of the hotel there to get. Yeah, there's two of them. That's what I meant. Yeah, a floor of the top two floors of the hotel there to get. Dan: Yeah, there's two of them. There's two of them. Dean: Oh, yeah, yeah. Dan: There's the Sheraton, and what's Sinesta? Sinesta, right the. Dean: Sinesta is the one I'm thinking of. Dan: That's the closest one right, the one Scott Harry carries in the Right, right right. There you carries in them, right, yeah, well, it's an interesting, but it is what it is and we're, yeah, but we have almost one whole floor now and I mean those are that's a big building. It's got really a lot of square footage in the building. That's what. Is it cb re? Is it cb? You do know the nationwide. Dean: Oh yeah. Dan: Coldwood Banker. Oh yeah, yeah, coldwood Banker, that's who our landlord is. And they're good they're actually good, but they've gone through about three owners since we've been there. We've been there, 25 years, 26. This is our 26th year. Yeah, and generally speaking they've been good landlords that we've had. Yeah, it's well kept up. They have instant response when you have a maintenance problem and everything. I think they're really good. Dean: Yeah, well, I'm going to have to come and see it. Maybe when the fall happens, maybe between the good months, the fall or something, I might come and take a look. Dan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Dean: Well, I'm excited and take a look yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah Well. Dan: I've been there. Yeah, we have our workshop. We have our workshop tomorrow here and then we go to Chicago and we have another one on Thursday and then the second Chicago workshop for the quarter is in the first week of April. Oh, wow, yeah, yeah, and this is working out. We'll probably be a year away, maybe a year and a half away, from having a fourth date during the quarter. Oh, wow. Dean: Yeah. Dan: Do we? Dean: have any new people for FreeZone Small? Dan: Don't know Okay. Dean: No one is back. Dan: Yeah, yeah, I don't really know, I don't really know, I think we added 30 last year or so it's. The numbers are going up. Yes, that's great. Yeah, I think we're about 120 total right now. That's awesome. That's awesome. Yeah, yeah, it's fun, though. It's nice people. Dean: Yeah, it's nice to see it all. It's nice to see it all growing. Very cool, all right well, enjoy yourself. Yes, you too and I will see you. Tonight at five. That's right, all right, I'll be there. Dan: Thanks Dan. Dean: Okay.

In this episode of The Building Texas Business Podcast, I spoke with Brian Freedman, president of the Bay Area Houston Economic Partnership, about the region's economic development. We explored the five major industry clusters shaping the area: maritime logistics, aerospace, tourism, healthcare, and petrochemicals. Brian shared updates on aerospace innovations at Ellington Field, including projects by Intuitive Machines and Axiom, while highlighting new opportunities in defence manufacturing. I learned about Project 11, an initiative to expand the Houston port's capacity for larger vessels. Brian explained how this infrastructure project connects to the broader transportation network, particularly the role of trucking in regional commerce. We discussed how the partnership works with legislators and industry leaders to address challenges like insurance costs and maintain economic momentum. The conversation shifted to leadership approaches and team dynamics in Texas business. Brian described how maintaining diverse projects keeps his team engaged and motivated. We explored how the Houston area supports entrepreneurs through community partnerships and mentorship programs while adapting to technological changes like AI integration. Our discussion wrapped up with a look at workforce development in the region. Brian explained how educational partnerships are building talent pipelines across industries. We covered the importance of aligning training programs with business needs while fostering collaboration between municipalities, educational institutions, and industry partners. SHOW HIGHLIGHTS In this episode, I spoke with Brian Freedman, president of the Bay Area Houston Economic Partnership, about the economic development in the Houston Bay Area, focusing on the recruitment, retention, and expansion of primary employers. We discussed the significant industry clusters in the region, including maritime logistics, aerospace, tourism, healthcare, and petrochemicals, and their impact on the area's economic growth. Brian highlighted developments at Ellington Field, including contributions from companies like Intuitive Machines and Axiom, as well as the emerging opportunities in defense manufacturing and procurement. The episode explored the scale and impact of the Houston port, emphasizing Project 11's role in expanding the port's capacity and the importance of logistics and innovation for regional prosperity. We delved into the leadership style necessary for motivating teams and managing diverse projects, underscoring the Texan entrepreneurial spirit characterized by ambition and a collaborative approach. Brian shared insights on the vibrant business ecosystem in Texas, driven by a skilled workforce, affordability, and a supportive community fostering partnerships and mentorship opportunities. Finally, we addressed challenges like insurance costs and the importance of regional solidarity, as well as efforts to mitigate natural disaster risks and promote responsible development in the area. LINKSShow Notes Previous Episodes About BoyarMiller About BAHEP GUESTS Brian FreedmanAbout Brian TRANSCRIPT (AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors) Chris: In this episode you will meet Brian Freedman, president of the Bay Area Houston Economic Partnership. Brian shares how his organization works to recruit, retain and expand primary employers in the greater Houston Bay Area region. Brian, I want to welcome you to Building Texas Business. Thanks for joining us today. Brian: Hey, thank you, Chris. Honored to be here and great to catch up. Chris: Yes, likewise. So let's start with you. You're the president and the organizational name's kind of long it's Bay Area, houston Economic Partnership. Tell the listeners a little bit about what that organization is and what it does, to kind of put the rest of our conversation into context. Brian: Sure, so BayHEP is the short version of it. So we're the Regional Economic Development Group and kind of the, as I like to say, in the Houston-Galveston region. We're three o'clock to six o'clock on the watch, face right. So we kind of go out 225, all the municipalities and cities going out east and then going down south 45. We go a little west of 45, but really that 3 o'clock to 6 o'clock and we're really focused on how do you recruit, retain and expand primary employers in the region with the idea that if you can get great companies located here and have a group of industry clusters that are cranking away every day, that we can have a great place to live. We have great involved residents that are in this area and opportunities for the folks who live here and kind of build what the future will look like for this region. So a lot of good stuff going on and, happy to get into that a little further, we do economic development, recruitment, retention projects. So how do we get companies here? We do some grants and then we're a membership organization is how we're funded. So we have about 300 members, 19 municipal members, Harrison-Galveston County, the port, the airport system. It's really how do you get the leaders of a region to work together to advance what we're doing here. Chris: Wow, I mean that's it sounds like it's easier to say and harder to do coordinating that many organizations and trying to get everybody pulling the same direction. Brian: Yeah, it's a lot of fun and we get to work with a lot of great folks. That's how we met Chris, is that, you know, through some of our mutual connections. But yeah, you know, it's really when you can get generally like-minded folks thinking about what the future of a region will look like and pretty aligned and working towards that effort, it's more of a well, it's just fun and you can create a lot of impact and we're seeing that and I'll be happy to dive into some of the specific projects we're working down here. But I mean, you guys do it too at Boyer Miller. Y'all are working with clients all over the spectrum of types of industry and you have to adapt to what's coming up, what's at you, and be ready for that kind of stuff. Chris: Yeah, no doubt. So yeah let's jump into some stuff. Let's talk first, because when I think of your area, obviously the first thing that comes to mind is NASA and all that's going on around that, and that leads me to technology and innovation. So what are some of the emerging technologies or trends that you're seeing that are kind of helping shape the future of Texas and kind of the business opportunities, at least in your region and for Texas? Brian: Yeah, so I call it kind of the big five on the industry cluster. So everybody thinks about this area for NASA, which we love right, because it really is a crown jewel out here, but I call it the big five right Maritime and all the associated logistics with the port aerospace and aviation, so nasa, but also the great work that the airport system is doing with ellington and hobby, tourism and recreation, health care and all the hospitals that have campuses down here, and then specialty and petrochemical and the energy industry partners and every one of those ecosystem has a ton of stuff going on. So I'm happy to talk about some of those more granular. But a couple of observations. One is that often overlooked in this community and really an asset to the greater Houston region is Ellington Field, ellington Airport, the Spaceport and, if you haven't seen or heard about it, the work that's going on at the Spaceport. They have three new beautiful buildings. One is occupied by Intuitive Machines who just put the first commercial lander payload on the surface of the moon. One is occupied by a company called Axiom that's building the next generation of commercial spacesuits and the next generation space station, and Collins who do spacesuit design in our building and maintaining the current spacesuits. They've set up huge facilities down there and so new stuff coming on. But I'm equally excited about just across the runway is the 147th Reserve Group. So there's a reserve unit out there, a reserve base, and the defense opportunities are pretty exciting. So that's highlighted by the 147th. But almost every branch has a reserve unit out there, save the Space Force, and we're working on that. And so the opportunities with defense manufacturing to come out to do more work in Houston and some of their innovation units and, as mundane as it sounds, some of the procurement opportunities, because when it comes to contracting, having a group of folks here would be a great opportunity for Houston businesses to then pipeline the work that they're doing into the broader defense industry, which can be really exciting. One other thing I'll mention, chris, is if you just look at the path of predictable growth for Houston, right, it keeps going out and we see that on our freeways every day. So there are growing pains that come with that, but for our region it's that steady march down Interstate 45. And so while Clear Lake Lake City are starting to get to fully built out and we're looking at what is the next generation of building look like, what's redevelopment look like For communities Dickinson, hitchcock, santa Fe, to some extent Texas City. Although they've got quite an industrial complex too, there's still space, and so it really brings up the opportunity of we can handle big projects, and whether they're industrial or tourism, there's a lot of opportunity that comes with that. And so, as folks you know, as we get built out further and further, those cities that were, they've always been important cities for the regional ecosystem, but they become major players, and so it's exciting to be able to work with them on that stuff. Chris: Sounds like a lot of opportunity for real estate development. Both residential, retail, commercial, industrial kind of all sectors are going to be playing a big part in that ongoing development in your region. Brian: Exactly right, and part of the the fun part is, you know, every municipality has different targets of what they view their economic development to look like, and so we get to work with all those cities where some may be really focused on industrial, some may want to be bedroom communities and be focused on residential. Our task is to support those municipalities in this region and identifying good players to bring to the table. So who are people that we do want to partner with that can follow through on the projects that can complete them and make them successful? Chris: That's great. I think I saw recently in the news the state of Texas, I think it's had something along these lines, but it's like a fund for the space-related projects and I know I don't know the name and you'll help me with that, but I seem to recall the governor being in town and making some big announcement right after the first of the year. Tell us a little more about that. Brian: Recall the governor being in town and making some big announcement right after the first of the year. Tell us a little more about that, exactly, right? So last legislative session, primarily spearheaded by State Representative Greg Bonin, who's also a Princewood resident he's a neurosurgeon by day and State Representative Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee during the legislative session he had this kind of vision of how does the state become a major player in the aerospace community. That's been primarily a federal and private industry ecosystem and so under his vision and with support of the state legislature and certainly the governor, they put a bill that kind of outlined a direction for the state to engage and the resources behind it. It does a couple of things. One was it allocated about $200 million that would go to Texas A&M to build this A&M Space Institute, and they've actually located that property. It will be built on the edge of the campus of Johnson Space Center, so for those familiar with this area, right on Saturn Lane. $200 million building and, as A&M's laid it out, it will have a giant lunar rock yard and a giant Mars rock yard, with the idea that everybody who's going to be doing hardware testing to send vehicles to the moon or Mars is trying to figure out where they're going to do that testing. And it's very expensive to build, obviously. And so companies are making the decision whether they're going to build that themselves and own it or go lease it somewhere. And if they're going to lease it, where do you go to find a giant brockyard to simulate the surface of the moon? And well, the state of Texas answered that question. So what was so unique about that vision was that everybody who's in that ecosystem now wants to come through Houston Texas to do that work. And so with that comes the. You know they'll be have their lab space there, but they may need offices, they're going to be hiring people, and so you know it really is an exciting project. They had their groundbreaking right at the end of last year. I've seen surveyors out there and they think they're going to have it open in 2026. So an aggressive timeline to get that bill. The other part to that bill was they appropriated $150 million for a grant program to incentivize sort of space leadership projects in the state of Texas, and so they have to set up a whole, basically administration portion of this. So they selected nine individuals to serve on the Texas Space Commission who will review those proposals and evaluate them and make awards. Who will review those proposals and evaluate them and make awards, and then they'll also help advise the state on how they can keep their leadership position in the space industry. The first of those awards about 20 million were released a little over a week ago. A couple of them were studies for best use for really cool stuff hypersonic corridors where to be landing sites. And then another one that is to build assets and capabilities for the Space Force in El Paso to have more of a Space Force presence in the state of Texas, which is pretty exciting. So I'm optimistic about what's to come for them. Chris: Yeah, that sounds very exciting, especially the concept of the $200 million grant to A&M and what that will do to attract other businesses that might relocate somewhere else and bring them here, and then all the ancillary things around hiring and jobs et cetera. So that's very exciting news and I think it'll be just around the corner. Let's maybe talk a little bit about. You mentioned Maritime and the port, and most Houstonians People know the Houston port is a significant asset for our area. Anything going on there that's new and exciting, any kind of innovation that you see when you're working with those entities and, I guess, the port authority itself. Brian: Yeah, well, maybe the first thing when you talk about the port is you're absolutely right just how important they are to this well, to all of Houston, but to the country I mean. The scale of the port is hard to appreciate when you just look at the numbers. But the numbers are just staggering. The amount of capability that comes through there and the innovation really is on the logistics and management for how they move, whether it's container, you know, container containers, the container terminal organization and how that whole orchestra is operated, and the capabilities from there is that the crane's getting stuff unloaded, then onto the trucks or rail or whatever. The mechanism to get it out and then get it distributed to wherever it's going is pretty incredible, and so we're fortunate to have them. We just hosted the new port CEO, charlie Jenkins, who's a phenomenal leader, has a career in service of the port, is the right guy to lead that organization into their next chapter. But he made this comment kind of in passing that the port's operations are about a $3 billion a day operation, you know, and you just go like a day of economic impact that go into that. The scale is really something impressive and that's all the trickle out and secondary effects. But it's amazing, the big thing that's going on with them right now is Project 11. That's the deepening and widening of the channel that'll allow additional capacity to go in there, and it's really writing the story for what the next chapter of the port's future is and Houston as a trading hub is, and so it'll allow for larger ships to come through. The additional investments they're making will allow faster turn and movement of all the goods that are on there. So a lot of good stuff going on. I guess the last thing I'll say is anybody who's driven 225 sees all those trucks and I drive it pretty regularly and see that too and as much as nobody likes driving next to a giant 18 wheeler, every one of those trucks is jobs and prosperity for our region, and so the next time you're driving there and you see a hundred trucks going down 225, that's our economic prosperity moving around our region and, candidly, around the country. It's good stuff. Chris: It's a good point. Yeah, I mean it's. You wouldn't want the roads to be empty and no trucks moving. I mean that's not a good sign. So feel blessed that we have all that you know in our area and driving all kinds of different prospects and opportunities for people. So when you are working with, let's talk a little bit about these member organizations and all the different moving parts you know what are you doing? How do you, I guess, keep things organized and people kind of moving in the same direction? Just, I would think that in itself is a full-time job. Brian: Yeah, it's a lot, but you know it's good stuff. I guess I'll start with a phrase that I kind of live by, which is we have a lot of stuff going on and so we'll find something to get on about. Right, we can always find something to work together on, and so, if you kind of start with that attitude, there's a lot of common issues that really require a lot of work but you can get maybe not perfect alignment, but general directional alignment. And so you know, one of the big issues we're working with right now is insurance. Right, we're all dealing with it. I'm sure you've gotten your insurance bill, but whether it's home or your business insurance, all those things, and so you can find a lot of commonality and ideas about hey, how can we work with our state leaders, potentially our federal leaders, with the insurance companies themselves, to try to manage the cost of doing that and find ways could it be grouping, doing kind of what they do in medical where you can have these larger groups or other mechanisms to try and help mitigate some of the costs? For that I'm getting a little granular, but you can find these little pockets where you can go move the ball down the field and get general alignment and so we spend a lot of time doing that. But we are very fortunate that our membership and generally this is kind of a Texan spirit type thing is hey, how do we go get some stuff done? Right, we want to go work on some stuff we want to go work on together. Generally it's a rising tide mentality and I spent a good portion of my career in industry and there are times where we compete like crazy and that's fun and, you know, makes great products and great opportunities for our customers. There are a lot of times where we need the tide to rise and finding alignment about that we try to be an outlet for that and keep things running. Right Is that we have not a big staff but a staff that can help make sure that. You know, our members are doing a lot of this stuff as volunteers, right, but they're bringing ideas to the table. So how can we make sure that they're staying engaged, that we're checking in on them, that we're helping carry these things and that we're creating a forum to have the right discussions and bring leaders together so we can invite in elected officials over relevant stuff, the right industry players, and bring them to the table and figure out what we can do, and then I guess the last thing I'll say is that manifests itself. We have a very active state legislative agenda. That we're going to be spending a fair amount of time in Austin, federal priorities. That we work with our congressional delegation and then very on the ground working with our municipalities and all the companies that are out down here to make movement. Probably talk all day about little one-offs. Advert Hello friends, this is Chris Hanslick, your Building Texas business host. Did you know that Boyer Miller, the producer of this podcast, is a business law firm that works with entrepreneurs, corporations and business leaders? Our team of attorneys serve as strategic partners to businesses by providing legal guidance to organizations of all sizes. Get to know the firm at boyermillercom. And thanks for listening to the show at boyermillercom. And thanks for listening to the show. Chris: Well it is. You know legislature is in session, so I know that creates a busy time for you. You talked a lot about some of the opportunities and I hope we can talk some more about that, but I do want to ask you at this point what are some of the headwinds that you see you know this region and specifically kind of where you are. You know that could be out there. That you see you know this region and specifically kind of where you are. You know that could be out there that you've got to try to deal with, to get ahead of or navigate through. Brian: I'll start with. It's a great time down here. Just the way that each one of those big five industry clusters is going about is that it's a. You know they're all doing well and have a lot of opportunity that's on the horizon or that they're in the midst of right now, but certainly you know, a few headwinds. One of the things that we're always worried about and we work actively is just natural disaster flood mitigation and storm surge and making sure that we're resilient and prepared for the future, and so the risk from some incident happening. I'm more excited to talk about, when it comes to that, all the things that we're doing to mitigate that. In terms of flood mitigation, the coastal barrier protection work that we've been spending a lot of time on. That's the Ike Dike. It has a lot of names, but most commonly known is that but a system to protect us from storm surge. So one is the risk of natural disaster I don't like it, but it's a real thing, right? The second is that we're in the you know how do we have responsible development? And so when you have a project that comes online, there are, you know, reasonable concerns from citizens saying, hey, is this the best thing to be doing with this piece of land, and so anytime you're talking about a development that's going to take a field and turn it into a thing, people get concerned about that and that's perfectly reasonable for them to be concerned and want to do that. And so part of what I spend time doing is addressing like, hey, here's why this is worthwhile, here's why this funds your local municipality and build more parks so we can have the resources and the tax base that justify expenditures that come elsewhere and make through that. But just the ability for the public's ability to impact development, as it happens, is important. But for them to do that knowing all the ground truth, knowing what the trades are and understanding that, so that if they are concerned about something that they come with that from an educated knowledge base and so that's out there. And then I certainly don't want to get political, but anytime there's an administration change, there's just priorities that get changed. And so we're still waiting to understand all of those. We're kind of watching how things are shaken out in Washington DC and we'll adapt and make sure that we're doing everything we can to put our region in a great posture with whatever those priorities are at the end of the day. Chris: So yeah, to that last point where you're kind of right in throws that change. Right now that's happening pretty fast, so you got to stay on your toes. Let me take you back to the Ike Dike, because that you know something to get after Harvey. Hurricane Harvey got talked about a lot. You don't hear much about it anymore. Any kind of updates for the listeners. That might be curious. Is it really going to happen and, if so, what's really going on down there to make sure it doesn't happen? Brian: And if so, what's really going on down there to make sure it doesn't happen? Yeah, so it's still moving along, you know, and with some enthusiasm. So a couple of big milestones. One is that in December of 22, it became a formal project of the US Army Corps of Engineers. It was authorized by Congress as a project, so that says, you know, they can now go focus on that. And so the next big question becomes how do we pay for it? To answer that, the state stepped up in a big way in the last legislative session and they had previously formed what's called the Gulf Coast Protection District. That is the local entity for that project. That will work with the US Army Corps of Engineers. So that group exists and has monthly meetings. They actually have an office in our suite. We lease an office to them them and they have their meeting in our conference room two out of every three months and then they do a rotation on that. Third, and they've been funded to the tune of about a half a billion dollars from the state of Texas. So they're ready to take significant action. We've been working with our federal partners about identifying where the big dollars come from for that project. It's going to be expensive and it's going to take a long time, but it will be likely done in phases and so that allows it. Where you don't need this one giant tranche of money all at once, you can do it sort of in a series and address the most important aspects of that, like the gates, some of the initial most highly populated areas, in phases. But we got to get federal appropriations for it. So in addition to the state entity being in our office, actually the US Army Corps of Engineers is on the fourth floor of this building and so all of the players for that project are in one building in our area right here, so that when what I'm hopeful for is if Corps moved in about six months ago, anytime an elected leader wants to come down and meet, they'll get every leader for that project in the same building and often meeting in our conference room or one of the core conference rooms. But a lot more can get done. There's sort of the opportunity for water cooler conversations between the state and the fed folks, and so I'm optimistic that the cadence just from that proximity will be helpful to that effort. Chris: Very good, that's good to hear. Let's change conversation a little bit. So, as I said, you're the president of BHEP. You mentioned your staff. Let's talk a little about leadership. How would you describe your leadership style and how do you think that's evolved kind of as you've been in this role? Brian: Yeah, well, I don't know that I can quantify terribly well, but I'm a kind of hey, all hands on deck and let's all just lean into wherever we're going. Right, and I kind of have that expectation of our team that we're have a clear set of priorities generally around the growth of this region and the projects that we're undertaking and that we're just leaning into them all the time and focusing. That I've been. You know I love getting down and into projects and so that's as I've been on this journey. That's been one of the big focus points to me is that you know you need a team to get this amount of stuff done and the size of these projects and the scope and so the ability to trust in the team and lean on them and let them go run with the ball is really important. I've been extremely fortunate that we have a great staff and we have a great membership base that we can lean on to help go bring those things to fruition. But it's a lot of fun coming to work. I think the team has a great time and enjoy the work that we do and you can see the difference that we make because there are buildings. We can point to that, wouldn't, you know, if not for the work of us and the leaders in this community wouldn't be there, and I'm looking forward to seeing that one on Saturn Lane with giant Texas A&M buildings sticking out of it coming through. Chris: It sounds like it's going to be impressive with the rockyards and all. But, you know, it made me think, though your team has a lot on its plate, I would think at times it may feel overwhelming. So, you know, what do you do to kind of help keep the motivation and keep the energy level up for a team that probably, at some points is, you know, starting to get to the end of the rope or run out of gas? Brian: Yeah, diversity of projects and lots of different stuff to work on. I'm guessing and actually I'd kind of turn that question on you, chris, because I can only imagine the type of stress that you guys live under, especially working big cases and big projects. There's one part that is, hey, we're just all in this together, right, and the esprit de corps that comes with. We're tackling big projects and that's just part of what comes with it. But there's another part where you just need to shift gears for a little bit and work on something different and give yourself a little recharge time. But how do you guys deal with it? I'm curious how? Chris: Boyer Miller, yeah that's a fair question to turn around on me. I would say it's similar. I think it's. You know to me that you can't underestimate the power of a team and if you have the right people on the team, there's some self-motivation just within that group, Right. And then I think it is the. We are fortunate to have very diverse type projects. We practice in all industries. So we may be doing a, a deal or a project, but it's in a different industry and there's different nuances that make it exciting. And at the end of the day I think it's the one point you highlighted on you can point to something and we're helping clients achieve their goals. So we can, you know, point to a deal that's been done or, you know, maybe it's a merger of two companies, or one that's grown and now has a new building and doing whatever. But you can point to those successes that you, where you've helped the client achieve, you know something really big for them and their business and their life. And so I think all of that continues the motivation. Yes, sometimes at the end of a big deal, you need just a little bit of a breather, but you just jump right back in and get going. So it makes it fun. Brian: Well, if you'll let me share. So you and I first met in person, had an opportunity to meet at one of your big forums, and that was a bunch of your customers and clients were there, and I love meeting new folks, as you probably saw, and I you know, walking around just saying, hey, I'm Brian, what do you do? And almost every one of them I would ask like, hey. So how do you know Chris, how do you know this group? You know, have you worked with them? And they all had a story. That was exactly that. You know, whatever thing it was that you helped them. We did XYZ project and it was awesome. We use them all the time for all these things. It was just very striking how passionate your customers, your clients, are with the help they've gotten from you guys, and so, anyway, that is extremely commendable and what I've seen from your team has just been amazing. Chris: Well, I appreciate the feedback. It's always good to get that, especially from different sources. So you know, like I think, we're always trying to create raving fans so that they'll keep coming back and tell their friends. So you get a unique seat and I think it's similar. You kind of analogize back to us. I think we get a unique seat to work with Texas entrepreneurs, and that's a pretty cool thing to do, in my view. What's, what would you or how would you describe the Texas entrepreneurial spirit if you could, based on your experience? Brian: Yeah well, I'm a native Texan. I have this hypothesis that part of the reason we're such a proud bunch is that when you go through I don't know if you grew up in Texas, chris but then also this sense of like we can do big things and big audacious things and we can make big asks and ask big questions and go get it done. And so we see a lot of that down here. And so you know, if you were sitting in I'll make this up Iowa and you said you know I want to have a space business and we want to go put hardware on the moon, and you know your neighbors would look at you and kind of scratch their head and in Texas they'd go oh yeah, that's intuitive machines and they're down the street, you should go. You know, go talk to them. They'd love to work with you. So that kind of spirit is really something special. When I was in industry I traveled all over the country working projects. There's something very special about this region, this community, this state, and that translates into why people want to come here. You know we keep Texas and Houston keep winning all these awards for business, new businesses coming here, people moving here, and that's not by accident, it's not by coincidence. It's because we have a great, great story to tell, whether that's workforce and the capabilities, the affordability of being here, the caliber of people you can work with and who your competitors are, and the level of intensity in the game that we play here is high and that creates the right ingredients for a really thriving community, for entrepreneurs, but also for industry any size. Chris: Right, very good. So what advice would you give to entrepreneurs out there that might be looking to start a business, let's say specifically, kind of within your region? If not, maybe beyond that in Houston? What's? Some of the advice you might give them if they wanted to get involved in some of the all the things you've been talking about. Brian: Yeah, dive in. It's a great community and a great ecosystem and there's a reason people are investing here and making a great run at it. We try to make that as easy as it can be. Now it is not easy. There's no illusions that starting a company you know scaling and growing a company all those things are very challenging. So the question I find myself asking I don't know that I'm in a position to give you know this immense amount of wisdom about these things, but what can we as a community and we as an organization be doing to help that entrepreneur? How do we help them build a relationship so that if they're having trouble with a permit, they know who to go ask, who to go talk to If they have a big idea, who might be good partners If they want to bounce something off, a retired executive who they might go talk to about that has the right skillset, so that we can create the conditions for them to be successful? And so that's really how we find ourselves interfacing that ecosystem is how do we put the right players together to go make things happen? Chris: Very good. So the other thing I'm curious to know is what do you see? You mentioned your five big industries. What have you observed of those industries working together to create innovative ideas to help each other? You got to move forward. Brian: Yeah, there's been a lot of. So workforce has been one of the biggest, especially over the last few years, where there's been this really high intensity competition amongst folks. And I wouldn't be surprised if you have been in some of that with, you know, recruiting and retaining high talent attorneys, right Is that? That's been, and so we've spent a lot of time and I've observed a lot of our members in this community go with that as a spirit of, hey, we're not really doing anybody any good If we're just poaching each other's people and you know, and creating pain points and friction between senior executives and those kinds of things. Let's go look at other communities and go figure out hey, what are the best universities and how do we get the professors that are training the students in it to send resumes to our area, right, and that we have a coalition of companies, not just one company has a relationship with one professor and that company benefits from that it's. How do we build that relationship as a community and say to them hey, we have a very strong demand signal, let's work together on things like that and so feeding that workforce pipeline so we're not divvying up the pie, we're growing it. And so, on the workforce side. I hate to be cliche because everybody's talking about AI, but we've had a couple of membership meetings about it. We've been working with partners about integration of it. We've adopted different technologies that have come out of it. But that stuff really, I mean it's the wave that we're living in right now, and so the integration of that into systems, both the how to do it and the mitigation of risk. I think I saw over the weekend that the new DeepSeek had a big not terribly surprised, but had a giant data leak and compromise, and so when you know when you're using that, I can only imagine, chris, I'd be curious how y'all are integrating it. But you know everything you put in there. You got to assume that at some point, somebody you don't want to have access will at least have the opportunity to have access to it, and so you have to be quite careful about how you integrate it. I, just as an aside, how are you guys using it much? Have you all banished it? What's the? Chris: Well, I'd say it's a little bit of both. I mean, we are definitely looking at and finding ways to integrate it. We've adopted a policy, but it starts with, as you mentioned, with us. It starts and stops with maintaining client confidentiality. So there's some systems out there through recognized kind of legal researchers. So Westlaw comes to mind, where they developed AI tool that is solely within their database. So it's secure, it's, it's all legal. You don't have to worry about we were still spot. You still have to check things right the human element of that. But if you're searching, for example, using the AI tool within Westlaw, you don't have to worry about the fake cases you've seen in the news. But our attorneys, you know, if you're going to use it, it has to be approved through the firm which are only a handful. You can't use anything outside and everything has to be double checked by a person to make sure for accuracy, etc. But so it is. I mean, the confidentiality side is a real concern, not just for law firms, for everybody, any company using it, and unfortunately that's just gonna be more and more what we see right. The more that we're moving everything to cloud, you're going to have people coming after it to try to. You know, on the bad side of that and certain countries it's not illegal to be a hacker. So it's just, you know, that's the world we live in now. Yeah Well, you know, brian, this has been a very interesting conversation and the you know, the last time we spoke I came away with the same feeling, and that is, we talked a lot about a lot of opportunity going on in the three to six o'clock region of greater Houston and we didn't even scratch the surface, I'm sure. But my takeaways have been it doesn't matter what industry again, I said earlier, you always kind of automatically think of space and NASA, but it's every type of business you could think of. An industry you could think of Sounds like you've got ample opportunity for businesses and entrepreneurs to start, grow, expand and be there and thrive. Brian: Well, perfectly said, and I think we get a recording. I may use that in some of our promotional material. Chris, that's exactly right. Great time, great place to be and welcome folks to reach out to us to help however we can if they're interested in looking at opportunities down here for that Before I lose you. Chris, one of the favorite questions that you had sent over that I wanted to ask you that you didn't get a chance to ask is what your favorite recreation vacation spot in the state of Texas is. Chris: Well, I'll answer that. I was about to ask you that. I would say if it's kind of a vacation spot in Texas, it would probably be anywhere along the Texas coast to relax a little bit and get some fishing in. Brian: Perfect. Chris: How about you? Brian: We are huge campers, like we love going camping. My kids are eight and 11 and we have state parks pass, and so any day I'm in a state park is a good day for me. But Inks Lake is one of my favorites and McKinney Falls between the two of those. Those are my top two right now, but we've probably been to Keene and we're just checking off the box to hit them all, and maybe we'll upgrade to National Parks as we get a little bit older. But I love our visiting our state park system. They're just absolutely wonderful. Chris: That's great. Okay, last question You're native Texan, so do you prefer Tex-Mex or barbecue? Brian: Oh, I feel like that question is going to get me in trouble, but if you made me choose, I'd pick barbecue. I'll eat it all day, every day, as it shows how about you, how about you? Chris: I think it's a tough one, so I've had some guests. You know, it depends on the day. I probably lean Tex-Mex more than barbecue. But I love the restaurants now that are combining the two, so brisket tacos or brisket nachos or something like that. It's a great combination. Brian: Yeah, there should be an answer all of the above there. Chris: So we're getting close to the rodeo time in Houston, so I have to go with barbecue for now and then back to Tex-Mex, I guess. Brian: Well, I look forward to seeing you at the kickoff event, where we get to go sample a little everything. Deal, that sounds good. Well, I look forward to seeing you at the kickoff event, where we get to go sample a little everything. Chris: Deal. That sounds good. Brian, thanks again for taking the time. Really appreciate your friendship and definitely appreciate what you and your team are doing for all the things business down in the Bay Area. Brian: Well, right back at you, Chris. Thanks for your leadership and all the great work you're doing with your team. Appreciate the opportunity to visit with you today. Thank you. Special Guest: Brian Freedman.

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In this episode of the Agile Mentors Podcast, Brian Milner chats with Murman about the value of attending Agile conferences, the importance of networking, and the impact of volunteering in the Agile community. They share personal stories, advice on making the most of conference experiences, and insights into how volunteering can open up new opportunities for personal and professional growth. Overview Brian Milner and Chris Murman dive into the world of Agile conferences, focusing on the upcoming Agile 2025 event and the benefits of attending. They discuss the evolving purpose of conferences, why networking and volunteering are crucial, and how approaching conferences with an open mind can lead to unexpected learning and connections. Chris also shares his journey from attendee to conference chair, providing a behind-the-scenes look at what goes into creating a memorable conference experience. Whether you're a conference regular or considering attending your first one, this episode offers valuable perspectives on getting the most out of these unique events. References and resources mentioned in the show: Agile 2025 Chris Murman Connect with Chris on LinkedIn Agile Alliance Speaker Submission Tips Webinar #105: Scrum Conferences & Neurodiversity with Brian Milner Special Episode Scrum Gathering Denver 2022 Mountain Goat Software’s Accurate Agile Planning Course Subscribe to the Agile Mentors Podcast Join the Agile Mentors Community Want to get involved? This show is designed for you, and we’d love your input. Enjoyed what you heard today? Please leave a rating and a review. It really helps, and we read every single one. Got an Agile subject you’d like us to discuss or a question that needs an answer? Share your thoughts with us at podcast@mountaingoatsoftware.com This episode’s presenters are: Brian Milner is SVP of coaching and training at Mountain Goat Software. He's passionate about making a difference in people's day-to-day work, influenced by his own experience of transitioning to Scrum and seeing improvements in work/life balance, honesty, respect, and the quality of work. Chris Murman is the Agile 2025 Conference Chair with over 15 years of experience in product management and leadership, He has directed successful launches for top brands like Verizon, NBC Universal, and Chick-fil-A. As the Executive Director of Product at JP Morgan Chase, and leads 20 cross-functional teams, driving innovative financial solutions and spearheading AI/ML initiatives that save over 6,000 man-hours per quarter. Auto-generated Transcript: Brian (00:00) Welcome in Agile Mentors. We're back for another episode of the Agile Mentors Podcast. I'm with you as always, Brian Milner. And today, a very special friend is here with us, Mr. Chris Murman. Welcome in, Chris. Chris (00:11) What's up, Brian? I don't know that I'm a mentor, but I'm here anyways. Brian (00:12) You're definitely a mentor. In fact, we're going to explain to people why you are here in just a moment. Chris is an Agile coach extraordinaire. He has been in the community for quite a while. And he is a fellow Dallas native here with me. And we connect a little bit at the last year's Dallas conference here for Agile. Chris (00:19) Okay, okay, sure. Sure, sure. Brian (00:40) And one of the things that I noted in that conference was they announced the next one, which is coming up in Denver, end of July, beginning of August -ish, we'll put it that way. And he was announced as the chair of that conference. So Chris is actually going to be in charge or leading or behind the scenes for just about everything that's going to take place at that Agile 2025 conference in Denver. So I wanted to have Chris on to talk about that a little bit. Don't think of this as an ad. It's not an ad for it because what I wanted to kind of help people understand was kind of the why behind it. When I normally talk about the conference, it's maybe a month or two before. Well, now it's next summer. So you have some time to plan. And now is the right time to kind of put that kind of stuff in your calendar if it's something that you're thinking about doing. or even maybe thinking about maybe should you volunteer or something like that for it. So Chris, how did you get involved with this kind of thing? How did you get involved with helping out with the conferences? What made you decide to help out in any way, shape or form? Chris (01:54) Well, like many, when I first started the work, I I fell into Agile backwards just like everybody else did. None of us did this on purpose. It just came along and we just started doing it and then it became something to do. in the 2010s when Agile was riding high and I... I saw these conferences as really cool learning opportunities and connection opportunities. People that I knew from the, that you and I both know from the local area, from meetups, would tell me about these conferences. I was attending DFW Scrum the last time that Agile 20XX was in Dallas. I did not go, but. cause I, was too late for me to find out and it was kind of pricey. And so I was like, so like conferences are where you just go and meet people and then they're like, yeah, you should just kind of go. So as, as with many of us who are like, well, how do I pay for these conferences to go? just said, well, I'll submit to speak. And, I don't know about you, but my first few submissions were not great. I, I, I. People always laugh when I say this, but I would literally copy and paste the headline and the entire copy of blog posts that I thought would be really cool to talk about. Because I started my blog, that was kind of how Chris Murman .com is kind of how people first started meeting me because I would promote it on platforms and stuff. Agile Twitter used to be really fun back in those days too. So I would just copy and paste the entire blog post as my abstract. And of course, now knowing what I know, like that was, that's just the worst thing to do in the world. but I didn't know what else to do. So I fell flat on my face the first few years and started getting some advice and feedback and such, and started getting accepted to speak around 2016. Spoke at. Spoke at several conferences that year, spoke at several conferences in 2017. 2018 comes along and they're like, and I'm like, hey, how do I help out? Like this is really cool. I connected with the Agile Alliance community, that specific conference community very, very well. And I'm like, well, how can I help? And they're like, here's three or four people, email them until they say yes. And I'm not. Brian (04:18) Yeah. Hahaha. Chris (04:34) I just was annoying and said, no, I'm not kidding. I want to help. And I got to chair a track. You know, I chaired all kinds of tracks for the next few years. coming out of COVID, I got asked to be on the program team. which is just when people are like, what's the difference between leading a track and leading like the entire program? Think of it as like, The track is like one tiny, tiny sliver in the program team has to go really very narrow across everything to know where everything is. Not that I know every set. I still, I'm like, that was that session was the conference that year. But, so we just have to be more broad in what are the themes that we want to talk about? What are the things that we want to do? and, and, you know, when you join the program team, you know, one of these years it's going to be your year. And then when you. when you're a conference chair, that's your final year on the program team. And then you just go back to civilian life, I guess. I don't know, which is, don't, I don't ask Dana. I don't know what civilian life is on the side of the conference just yet, but I will very soon. So I don't know. It's a, that's a rambling answer, but it's for the most part, that's really how I got going was just, I just wanted to go. You know what I mean? I just wanted to be there. And the only way I could do it was to get a free ticket. Brian (05:34) Ha ha ha. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, that's a, well, that's a great answer. I mean, I, I think I'm kind of, I mean, I probably have a little bit, there was probably a few more years I submitted before I got accepted to speak at the Agile Conference, but I probably submitted three or four years before I got something accepted. And that's even after reviewing a few years and seeing what good and bad submissions were like, you know, and trying to understand that. Chris (06:22) Thank Brian (06:25) But we were talking a little bit beforehand about just the concept of a conference in today's world. I know that we've seen sort of a decline in people who are attending conferences a little bit. And I'm not really sure whether this is a momentary thing or an economy -based thing or what. But when people ask you why attend a conference, what What do you tell people? Chris (06:55) Well, there's many things that you can get out of a conference. That's the cool part about it is that you can attend the conference for many reasons. And I would say now in 2024, coming into next year, 25, I don't know that the reasons for attending the conference are the same as they used to be, right? Because when we first started coming, there's this like, I don't mean to sound pedantic or like over inflate myself, but there's a level of like fame in our community. We have a tiny, tiny community. So you can get agile famous a lot of different ways. Like now you can just be an influencer and write like Chris Stone is a perfect example of someone who just cranks out a ton of content that it's for the most part pretty good and get the following that way. And then people meet you that way. Brian (07:27) You Yeah, yeah. Chris (07:53) there were a lot of ways that you could meet people back then. you could really meet a ton of people there. You could make a ton of connections. So ultimately, I just really wanted to learn. I love learning and I love being connecting with other people. I did theater as a kid, was performing at church as a kid. I was just that person that was always on a stage. so speaking is just another extension of that. You being in a training room all the time, again, it's just a performance. You're just giving a performance where there's hopefully... a few nuggets of wisdom. When I realized that that's all that it was, well then I wanted to do it. You know, I don't think that, but I don't know that that's the same anymore. I don't, you know, I don't hear people say, I learned a ton at this conference every year, right? Because a lot of work, we're, Brian (08:39) Right. Yeah. Hmm. Chris (08:59) we're rehashing the ideas in a new way. We're trying to explore things in a new way, but we're really kind of taking many people feel like that we're just taking the same rock and turning it over and just getting seeing if we'll be surprised the next time we flip the rock over, right? Like there's only so many times you can flip that rock over before you don't find anything new anymore. So, I, it is interesting to think about why do we What is the purpose of a conference? You know, because do you want to be known so you can get paid, right? Or get a job? You know, there's a lot of people that want a job. So can you get a job by going to a conference? I don't know. I don't, there weren't a lot of jobs in 2023 to hand out. There were some to be had this year. If you attended the conference and were looking like there were several people that had things to talk about and interviews to be had. Brian (09:28) Yeah. Chris (09:55) some of the jobs are starting to come back. like, okay, well, do you go because you want a job or if you're learning, like, well, what do you want to learn that you can't just learn from watching YouTube or TikTok or, you know, attend like, as you know, training classes are also struggling in the community. like, what is what what is learning in 2024 2025 in the agile community? I think it's worth thinking about, you know what I mean? Brian (10:23) Yeah, no, I agree. And I think, from my perspective, I think it's changed a little bit. It's shifted a little bit over time. I think when I first started to go, there was an idea of, yes, I wanted to network and I wanted to understand and meet other people in the community. But as an introvert, I, you know, that kind of scares the crap out of me. And, you know, I can only do a little bit of that before I just feel like my battery is completely depleted. But, you know, when I think when I first went, I did have the idea that I wanted to learn. wanted to kind of be on the cutting edge. I wanted to hear the cutting edge thoughts of people who were out there. And, you know, now I think I still have that mentality when I go, I still want to hear, you know, I want someone to challenge me, you know, like that's, what I really want to hear from, from a speaker is tell me something about this. don't know, or tell me something that, you know, would challenge my, my existing way of thinking about this. so that I can go back and examine it and think, huh, I never really thought of it that way, but maybe that's true and maybe I need to re -examine that. But you know, that's kind of rare. That's not something that you get from just a lot of talks. I know one of the things I try to do when I give a talk is I wanna end with something that I would say, hey, what's the one thing you commit to changing as a result of this? Like what's the one big idea? What's the one... If you left this room and don't remember anything else, what's the one thing that you wanna just star or circle in your notebook and say, I'm gonna go find out more about that or I'm gonna do something about that. And that's where I try to kind of drive toward the whole talk. But I've been in others that, like you said, maybe a little bit more of a rehash of something I've heard before. But I've never left a conference without feeling challenged in some way, even if it's not, even if it's just from a one -on -one conversation that I've had with people, you know, I've been challenged about ideas and had to go back and re -examine and think through things. I'd say it's more, you know, now my balance has shifted. It is more networking now for me than it is that challenging thought, but I still want to find that nugget somewhere in there in the conference time. Chris (12:41) So what you said is really interesting and I want to hone in on the specific words you mentioned about challenged, right? the, I do want to, you know, before it sounds like I'm not poo -pooing the idea of conferences in any way, shape or form, but what Brian just mentioned is something that I tell the people all the time. I said it from the stage this year in Dallas, which is like, you get out of it, what you put into it. If you come in with a beginner's mind intending to be challenged, intending to have your assumptions questioned and said, maybe I didn't think about this the way that... I would say that that's probably the thing that I learned every time is that something that I thought was true or wasn't true may not, right? Brian (13:11) Yeah, yeah. Chris (13:35) You know that half of the conferences are new people every year, right? There's someone new to agile every every year there are there. Thousands of people new to it every year. That's the cool thing about it is that every year there are people that like I just got my CSM like holy cow. That's so like can you imagine showing up to a conference and everybody's like this sucks. I don't want to be here like you're not going to learn anything. I don't get anything out of it like what an awful experience for. Brian (13:35) Yeah. You Chris (14:03) someone that's new and excited and just wants to, like, there will be something you haven't heard before. But for the most part, the reason why I always get something is because I show up expecting to hear something I haven't heard before. The story won't come out exactly the way you think, right? Or, Brian (14:09) Yeah. Chris (14:22) the story that they tell, because a good conference is always a great idea plus you, right? It's your stories, your experiences, how this affected you that matters. So sharing your soul, bearing your soul requires the audience to kind of be like, want to be, I want to have someone, you know, kind of bear themselves to me. I want to hear someone be vulnerable. Brian (14:45) Yeah. Chris (14:48) And those are always the best sessions that you and I always have, is when someone is super vulnerable, super vulnerable with where they are. I thought this was the only way to do this. That's my favorite is when I hear a speaker say, I thought this was the only way to do this. There are so many roads up the mountain that we have for our work. There is not one way to do it. So find a new, come to find a new one. There's a technique that you've probably not tried before or done, or if you have, you didn't do it the way that they did before, that'll seem easier. that's the whole purpose of listening to these things, but it, it, it requires you to show up with more than just here's my tray, man. I have some agile, please. Right. Like that's, this is not a buffet, right? Like you have to like, go find it, right. Seeking positive intent means I have to go seek it. Right. I have to go seek information that I want to have. Brian (15:21) Yeah. Hahaha. Chris (15:41) and then go get it. Because if I don't, I'm just going to go, yeah, it's cool. I mean, I met some cool people, but I didn't really. OK, well, then you didn't show up with the mentality of being challenged. I challenge our friends, people that have been coming for years, I challenge them every year. You will get something if you want to. Right? If you don't get something, it's because you didn't want to get anything out of it. Brian (16:01) Right. I mean, I think we're all kind of guilty sometimes of setting our conference path, choosing the sessions and things that we go to based on things that maybe we already have some familiarity with. And that sounds interesting. yeah, I researched that a little bit. Let me see what they have to say about that. I've tried to intentionally now try to find things that I have no background in. I have no experience in because those are the things that are really going to push me. Those are the things that I don't really have. any knowledge of or forethought on and I'm gonna be taken to a different place. I remember I used to be, I used to get this like really anxious, nervous feeling when I would find out I was wrong about something. You know, I'd be in a conversation at a dinner table with someone and they'd say, well, actually, you know, that's not the way to do it. They'd start to do something else and I'd start to feel kind of anxious about that. But now, now I've like, that's swapped for me. Now when I hear that, when someone says, no, actually there's another way to think about that. Chris (16:41) you Brian (16:57) I start to get excited. Like it's actually excitement in me because I start to feel like, great, wow, I didn't, this is something new. This is something I had never heard before. And now this is the point where I can grow and break through, you know. Chris (17:11) Well, there's, I mean, and there's people that we all, if we've been in these communities before, we can all think of someone that always challenges us, right? Like I can't have a conversation with Michael Sahota without him challenging something that I thought, I just thought was true. And I'm like, no, it's not like, or it might be, but not always. So there's always someone that's just like, Brian (17:20) Yeah. Yeah. Chris (17:37) sit down so that I can break your mind real quick. And that's always fun. You know, another thing to think about is like, what we get out of the conference also dictates who's going to pay the bill, right? Because we hear in the community a lot, well, companies aren't paying for conferences anymore. Brian (17:41) Yeah Mm, yeah, yeah. Chris (17:59) That's not true for some aspects of IT. Like all the developer conferences, companies love footing the bill for that. The Microsoft conference, they love footing the bill for that because they send technologists there that come back smarter and can code better and more efficiently and whatever, right? Like better, faster, cheaper, all those things, right? Like they will get something out of it. So the... think the reason why we have to say what do you want at the conference is like, it's gonna kind of dictate who pays the bill. If the purpose of Brian and I who have been to this conference many times and have met so many of the cool people, that's the best part of me going every year is I get to see Matt Barkholm again. Like one of my favorite people in the world that I do not see other than over Zoom, right? Or any number of people, right? Any number of people. Brian (18:47) Hahaha. Chris (18:56) There's always someone new that I had spoken to online but never met in person. Someone that just, again, someone that just started the work and someone that's like, hey, I read something that you wrote about this years ago and it was really cool. That's cool, right? You won't get that if you don't go out and network and stuff. But here's the thing, if you're there for connections, companies aren't interested in footing the bill for connections. They're interested in footing the bill for... Brian (19:23) Right. Chris (19:26) learn something, improve something, come away with something. And if Agilent are going to the conferences and just like, I met some really cool people, what else? I met some cool people. All right, cool. I'm not paying next year for you to go to that, right? That's what a lot of companies are trying to do. So we have to sort of imagine like, if the goal is to get companies to pay for people to go again, well, then we need to... That's something that we've asked ourselves in the program team. Like what would get, like what is a program that companies will reimburse for? I think it's, and I don't know that we've got a strong answer either. Everybody's got, I think, there's a lot of I thinks and not a lot of I knows, right? I guess is a good way to think of it. Brian (20:00) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, the other thing I wanted to kind of, because you are, you know, kind of the ultimate volunteer for this upcoming conferences as the chair, you know, I've tried to tell the audience here from time to time about the kind of the benefits of volunteering and why I do it as a speaker, why I've done it in the past as a reviewer. It seems like there's just so many different ways to get involved for something like this so that you don't have to just sit on the sidelines. You can actually be a part of this. And that's a, for me, that's an easy way to have a quick in with the community because you're interacting with people prior to it. So when you show up, it's like, hey, I know you and I know you, because we've been talking and working together on this stuff for a while. So. What kind of case do you make to people for volunteering for a conference like this, like a big conference? Chris (21:12) It's so again, going back to like, what do want to get out of it? I think the purpose of volunteering is to kind of learn how the sausage is made to a degree. if someone's like, I'm not really interested in seeing how my sausage is made, then you don't belong in the agile community. Like this is the community of people that want to see Brian (21:22) Yeah. Chris (21:32) Sausage being stuffed into its casing and just cranked out right like this is this is the community for that like I won't use any more sausage metaphors that although I The the The funny thing about how Volunteering works is that? Brian (21:41) Hahaha Chris (21:50) You can volunteer in the slightest of ways, just a few hours a week reviewing. When you're like, well, I want to review, that's fine, but I want to be a track chair. Because people always want to be a part of deciding the content. This is what I've always wanted to hear about. This is what I've always wanted to hear about. And of course, then I always ask the question of, OK, well, then someone has to submit that idea. all right, it's one thing to say, want to hear about this. It's another thing to say, how do I get that content out of a group of submissions every year, which we get thousands every year at the conference. And we got thousands, right? Like, you know, for all of the online hubbub over the conference every year over who gets accepted and who doesn't, like thousands of people submit wanting to speak every year. regardless of how they feel about whether they, when they get the rejection letter or the acceptance letter, like thousands of people want to speak at this conference. It's cool. Like it's a cool thing to do, but not everybody is a speaker, right? You can be a purple shirt and volunteer. In fact, some of my favorite people in the community are lifelong purple shirters that have done it multiple years. There are people that do it for a couple of years and meet people and then and they move on to another role. mean, there's just a bunch of different ways that you could be involved in doing something that doesn't involve speaking or deciding who speaks. And also, I will say, it's also really hard to cull thousands of submissions. into something that makes sense for everybody else. Because then you have to go find keynote speakers. There are people that are invited to speak who are luminaries in the industry. And how do you meet those people? So all of that is really like the fact that I can say I can email. any number of people, I won't use the name so I don't offend the people that I don't use, but like I can email any number of them and they're like, yeah, Chris, Agile, Agile 20XX guy. I, it would be cool if they're like, I just like Chris and I want to be friends with them, but you know, that's not the way the world works. so I, you know, networking in ways that don't always show up in a job or whatever is just, I'm, I'm just here to. Brian (24:00) Hahaha Right. Right. Chris (24:25) find good content and show the community that and the rest kind of takes care of itself, you know? Brian (24:32) Yeah. I mean, I'll say to, you know, just to give people kind of an idea of my path with the agile conference, you know, I probably submitted four or five years before I got accepted. And a couple of those years spent as just a reviewer for, you know, a track or, you know, with a certain team, not as a chair, but just as a reviewer. there's a, there's a, if you want to do that, you can do that. Right? mean, it's pretty much, it's easy to get into that kind of a mode if that's something that you're interested in. And I tell people who want to speak like that to me was one of the biggest and best educations I could have had on learning about speaking was reviewing what other people wanted to speak about. Cause you know, there's kind of two parts to speaking. There's the... the marketing side of getting your thing selected, and then there's the actual talk. But the part of trying to come up with your idea of the talk and frame it and put it in an interesting way and learning how to structure your talk in a way that would be interesting for people to listen to, that's a skill in itself. And the best way I learned about that was just reading others, reading what other people were submitting to do and... Chris is right. mean, there's so many submissions that, you know, even as just a reviewer for one track, I was sad for all the ones that I knew would not get to be heard because there's so many good ideas. it's, know, Sophie's choice about how you try to decide which one of these two things or which one of these 10 things, you know, you've got one slot and 10 of them that are 10 or 20 that are just amazing. and you can only take one, you know? So it's difficult, but reading those submissions to me was a really great education. Chris (26:33) Yeah, if you think about it this way, we always enter the room to build the schedule with, there's X amount of slots that we have plus X number of alternates and such. we always, you try to look at it like, like you look at the whole schedule and say, okay, is there an aspect of our work that we missed? Well, we didn't really get a, we haven't gotten a retro talk yet. okay, well there was one over here. So, cause you know, you're trying to balance it for like there's meat and potatoes kinds of sessions and then there's like the big idea sort of sessions. Then there's the workshops that are very engaging and meant to create something. Brian (27:16) Yeah. Chris (27:26) you know, there's a lot of, again, there's a lot of roads up that mountain. I would say that the joy of speaking now, if I could, anybody that wants to do it, the best advice I would say is like, you need to want to speak so that you can be a better presenter and organizer of your thoughts. Because, Brian (27:46) Yeah. Chris (27:49) Really, the abstract and the basic, there is essentially a formula to filling out a submission to a conference. I, with CP Richardson, who's now on the board, I did a webinar last November on what makes a good submission. It's something that I've gotten super passionate about. Again, it's recorded, it's on the Agile Alliance site if you wanna find it. There is a formula that anybody can follow and get selected, right? I had some, I had several people reach out and say, I watched your video and I follow what you said. And then I got accepted to speak, which for the record, watching what I say will not get you accepted to speak. You can follow the formula. You can, you can follow the formula exactly and still not get it because there's only so many slots and it's really hard to get in. but. Brian (28:26) Ha Chris (28:41) Once you follow the formula, then it's just down to like, does the idea resonate with the community? And I can't, I can't give you a formula for that because I'm not in anybody's brain, but, you know, I, again, it's always a great top, a great idea. Plus your stories and experiences is what really defines what a good submission is. And so you have to get that straight before you type a single word out. But then once you go through the submission process and there's edits, feedback, all that kind of stuff. Then you got to get accepted. Once you get accepted, then you got to build the session. And we find that a lot of times it's a rare breed of someone that knows how to write a good submission and can put on a good show. Not everybody can do that. And of course, a good show is a relative term, right? You don't got to be big and bombastic and loud to be good, right? Brian's not that and Brian's great in a room, right? So you can... Brian (29:16) Yeah. Chris (29:35) you have to kind of construct it in a way that makes sense. So, but again, the cool part is, that because I had people help me, mostly because I just annoyed the hell out of them and saying, please, please give me, please give me some help. I just want to keep passing it along. So I mean, I still get people at 12 months a year, I get people saying, I have an idea and I'd love to run it by you that they hit me up on LinkedIn or whatnot. So. Brian (30:04) Yeah. Chris (30:05) It's just something that I care about now. I got so much better with organizing my ideas and writing them and presenting them that it's a gift that I want to just keep passing on to people. I guess this is because I didn't intend this to be the cross that I bared, it is regardless. Brian (30:21) Yeah Well, the only other advice I'd throw out to people, there was a shift that happened with me too, where I went from, I want to be a speaker, let me find a topic. There's a very big difference from having that attitude to living your life and saying, wow, I'm really passionate about this. I'd love to talk about this. If you find the topic first that you resonate with and connect with, then it's, you you're a little more personally connected when you submit. So it can be more painful if you don't get picked, you know, when that happens. But on the other hand, when you do get picked, man, you're so excited about giving that talk. It's not just that you got picked, but it's like, I can't wait to tell people about this, this thing. And to me, that's, that's the magic. Like when that happens, you, you, yeah, you can't, you're, you're, it's not even nervous. You're, just so excited to tell people what you've learned about. Chris (31:21) Yeah, another piece of advice I tell people is as you're reading things, it doesn't have to be a book. It could just be an article or a video that you watch. As I always say, when I'm reading a book on something that has nothing to do, like I don't really buy a ton of agile books anymore. I buy a lot of social psychology, social economics, behavioral economics is a lot of my favorites. like Daniel Pink books is a tried and true. I met Daniel Pink once and he's like, what is it with you agile people that just love what I do? And I'm like, I don't know. I just, I don't know. I'm like, we just read it. So, but I read these books with looking for a lens into my world, right? I always read stuff that has nothing to do with IT. Brian (32:02) Yeah Yeah. Chris (32:16) that or leading teams or whatever it is your world, whatever you think it is. Find something that has nothing to do with your world and then say, how does that identify or how does that relate to my work? That's my favorite thing. I read a book on many years ago on, it was called The Control Heuristic. It was like where control comes from as an idea and psychology and why. We struggle with it. And I immediately turned that into a leadership talk on why we're all control freaks and here's, know, and what, what do we, what do we do about the fact that we're all control freaks? Like, again, I didn't read a book and say, I'm going to do a topic on a book. It's like, no, how does that tie into dealing with executives when I'm trying to get them to release the purse strings or release some of the control of their work, right? comes in handy, right? So you have to be looking for how does that idea sit in our world and then sort of play with that idea a little. Brian (33:22) Yeah. Yeah, this has been awesome. I really appreciate you making the time for this, Chris. And for those people listening, just a quick little shout out again. Agile 2025 is happening in Denver. It is the week of July 28 through August 1. So mark your calendars. And if you're interested in volunteering, if you're interested in being a reviewer or one of the Purple Shirt people who help out, Purple Shirt people help out at the actual conference making it kind of flow, right? They make sure it actually works. Yeah, yeah, the talks would not happen without them. Actually, nothing would happen without them. Yeah. Chris (33:54) They're the lifeblood of the conference. Yes. Nothing would happen without them. Nothing would happen without them. Yeah, if you hit me up on LinkedIn, my name is just how it appears here on LinkedIn. Toss me your idea. Yes, will, and I said, I shot my mouth off about mentoring people through their talks. That means you too. I... hit me up. Like there's no excuse for you to not because the worst thing that happens is you get to come to the conference. So, yeah. Brian (34:29) There we go. So mark your calendars, make sure that you reserve those dates, like I said, just block it off. Even if you don't know whether you can get the money to do it right now, block the dates off, and you're gonna be much more likely to actually attend if you do that, because then you'll see it coming up, and they go, yeah, that's coming up, I should do that. So Chris, thanks again for coming on, I appreciate you making the time, and thanks for joining us. Chris (34:56) Yeah, thanks for having me, Brian.

This week we talk about the election,the Olympics, and girls Dave may or may not have hooked up with years ago. Don't forget to donate to Jake's car repair fund via Venmo @Jacob-Hamel Disclaimer:This pod is for entertainment purposes only, not meant for news or factual information, any one person or organization using this pod's content for anything other than it's original purpose is cowardly, dishonest, and done by people who wish they were half as creative and funny as the guys on this podcast.   https://www.instagram.com/we_talking_podcast https://sites.libsyn.com/534757/site     @disjointedpod @jacobhamel1981   X/Twitter @disjointedpod @jacob__hamel   CO Open mics denvercomedy.net   Follow us on Rumble! https://rumble.com/c/c-1082404

In today's episode of the IC-DISC show, I chat with Jane Howze, founder and managing director of executive search firm Alexander Group. Jane shares her remarkable transition from commercial lending and law into this male-dominated industry. Her insight into culture, growth, and talent acquisition provided invaluable counsel for aspiring leaders. We explore nuanced career shifts and hiring new teams, emphasizing integrity's strategic importance. Jane highlights fact-checking credentials for ethics and vetting, referencing a shocking case of credential fabrication. Our conversation sheds light on work evolutions, from mentorship changes to communication innovations over the years.   SHOW HIGHLIGHTS Jane Howze shares her career transition from a commercial lending officer and lawyer to the founder and managing director of the Alexander Group, a top retained executive search firm. We discuss the early challenges Jane faced in a male-dominated industry and her experiences at Korn Ferry, emphasizing her success in executive search. Jane and I reminisce about shared history at Korn Ferry, including nostalgic and entertaining stories from the early days of our careers. li>Jane emphasizes the importance of integrity during career transitions, particularly when handling professional references and avoiding misrepresentation. We touch on the strategic advantages of honesty and the repercussions of fabricating qualifications, as highlighted by a CEO's false claim of a computer science degree. The episode covers the evolution of workplace dynamics, mentorship, and the practical advice Jane offers for aspiring paid board members. Crazy industry tales are recounted, such as an adventure with a $700 car in LA and setting realistic client expectations in executive search scenarios. Jane provides insights into networking and career strategy, especially relevant during the Great Resignation and for those aiming for public company board positions. We explore Dave's innovative client communication strategies and the impact of networking, as well as the significance of crafting a board-specific resume. The episode concludes with a light-hearted exchange about "tours of duty" within a firm, comparing it to conscription, and reflects on the demanding but rewarding nature of our work experiences. Contact Details Email (jhowze@thealexandergroup.com) LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/jhowze1950/) LINKSShow Notes Be a Guest About IC-DISC Alliance About The Alexander Group GUEST Jane HowzeAbout Jane TRANSCRIPT (AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors) Dave: Hi, this is David Spray and welcome to another episode of the IC Disc Show. My guest today was a very special guest. Jane Howes is the founder and managing director of one of the world's top retained executive search firms, the Alexander Group. Jane was actually my boss two different times about 25 years ago. As we talked about on the episode, she was both the greatest boss I'd ever had and my least favorite boss I ever had, sometimes in the same day. Jane has a wealth of knowledge on all aspects of culture building all aspects of culture building, firm building, growing a firm, picking the right people. We also took some stories down memory lane back from the days we worked together and when the firm was very young. This episode has a lot of great information for any executive or business owner who has any hiring responsibilities. Finally, if you've ever considered becoming a board member, jane has some great insights and tips on how to start your career as a paid board member. I hope you enjoy this as much as I did. Jane, welcome to the podcast. Jane: Well, Dave, it's wonderful to be with you. Dave: This is so. I was so excited for this, so I think I've told you this before. Jane, you were my all-time favorite boss and my least favorite boss, sometimes in the same day. Jane: And probably sometimes within 10 minutes of each other right. Dave: Perhaps, but you're the only boss I ever had twice. So I had left. I was gone a couple of years and then I was in a spot where I needed some contract work. This was before Uber, so I couldn't just go start driving my car around and you all were gracious enough to have me come back and it was wonderful. But I just want to thank you for all the opportunities you've given me, all that you've taught me. I've learned. I learned so much about business, communication, ethics, client service, so that served me the rest of my career. So thank you, jane. Jane: Dave, when you came back the second time, I was like our ship has come in. Dave Spray is back for more punishment, more reward, and I just feel really honored that our paths have crossed, because you could have been a great, you were a great recruiter, could have and still could. Dave, You're the best. Dave: Well, that's very nice of you to say so. Yeah, I enjoyed a lot of my time at the firm, so where are you calling in from today? Jane: I am in our Houston office today. As you know, we have offices in California, new York and DC. As you know, we have offices in California, new York and DC, but I will work out of Houston until it gets too impossibly hot to work out of Houston, as you know, and we'll head west. Excellent, well, that sounds great. Dave: Now, are you a native Houstonian? Are you one of those rare people born here that lives here? Jane: No, what's the saying? I got here as soon as I could, but I am from Birmingham Alabama and went to college in Memphis, tennessee, and my roommate from college was Houstonian and back in the day, you know, the Galleria had just been built and Houston was just this huge boomtown and I was glad to come here back in the infancy almost. Dave: Wow, and what did you do for work when you got here? Jane: I worked as. Are your listeners mainly in Houston, or are they scattered all over? They're all over the country in Houston or are they scattered all over? They're all over the country. Yeah Well, I worked for the largest bank in Houston and I was a commercial lending officer and attended law school at night. And then the story goes I practiced law and I left Houston and went to California and practiced law and then came back. So you know, kind of roads lead back to Houston. Dave: Ultimately, Okay, and then what? Did you just like have a dream or a vision or something that you needed to leave the law business and get into executive search? What prompted that? Jane: Well, a lot of practicing law, as I'm sure your listeners know, a lot of it is very compliance oriented, very regulatory oriented, and I'm not a regulatory kind of person. And I had gone from being a commercial loan officer, where my job was to deal with people all day, to being stuck in a law library reading compliance regulations. Oh my goodness, this is not good, this is not my personality. And read an article in Fortune magazine about Korn Ferry, the largest executive search firm in the world, and it was like the proverbial bolt of lightning went off. Dave and I was oh my gosh, I would be fabulous at this. I need to go work for Korn Ferry. And they had an opening back in Houston. So I left the practice of law in California and joined Korn Ferry in Houston. Dave: Wow, and you were, and I'm guessing that you were one of many women at the firm. I'm sure, right, this was the 80s executive search. Jane: Let's see there were 200 partners and two women, and the minorities were all in the Hong Kong office. Dave: Okay, I mean diversity was achieved, but there were like six men in the Hong Kong office. Jane: Okay, I mean diversity was achieved, but there were like six men in the Hong Kong office and that is not a knock on Korn Ferry that the executive search business was oh, we want to give a CEO search to somebody we've served in the military with, or somebody that we go hunting with, or somebody on our bowling, you know that kind of thing, and women just weren't in that place then. So it was definitely an early time and a good time to get into executive search. In retrospect at the time it seemed a little challenging. Dave: And you. So how did it go, did you? Was it all you hoped it would be? Jane: You know, the minute I started recruiting I was happy I knew I had found my calling. Before I got into search, I had always been one of the people that said I'd love to introduce you to this person, I'd love to fix you up with this person, and so I finally got in a position that you got paid for it which is great by two partners from KPMG who wanted to do recruiting of C-suite positions for their KP clients, and K wouldn't let them do it. So they formed Korn Ferry, and so I was lucky. It was kind of the early days of Korn Ferry they were maybe 15 years old by the time I joined them and global, so it was a really great move to learn the search business. Dave: You weren't there too long, right Before you felt the need to unfurl your own wings. Jane: Yes, that is true. I was wow. There are not many women partners here and I know I'm good at this and I know I can be successful at this. So, dave, I hooked up with another woman at Corn Ferry and the other big search firm is Russell Reynolds and we were like, well, let's start our own search firm, and I don't know that I would have done it by myself. But we started, really got going in 19, which is 40 years ago now. I feel like I'm the oldest living person alive still doing it. But we started and back then you didn't have the internet to do research and our first client was Grant Thornton the public accounting firm and the number two person at Grant met us and we went walking in their offices and there were no women audit partners then, or tax partners, and we went strolling in and he goes. Well, I believe in you all and I want you to help me build the firm. I'm going to do acquisitions, I'm going to do partner searches, I'm going to do campus recruiting, and we rode along for over 50 searches and practice acquisitions in our first years, which made it really a great foundation upon which to build. Dave: Oh, that's awesome. That is awesome, and that's been 40 years ago. Jane: Yeah, Dave, I probably tried to recruit you back in the days you were at Arthur Anderson. You were probably one of my recruits, even not knowing it. Dave: Yeah, you never know, you never know. And one of the is that when you started, the billing by the hour approach, or did that come later. Did you do that from the beginning? Jane: We started because, having been with a law firm where you're basically selling your time, we thought, well, we're going to be a different kind of search firm, we're going to bill by the hour. And it proved to be a great thing. And, dave, we were so cheap that people would go, you'll do, you'll take over all our campus recruiting for $50 an hour. And we were like, oh great, well, here's 10 colleges we don't want to go. You guys go, just do our recruiting for probably 10, 12, 13 years, which made it challenging because not everybody wants to fill out timesheets to the 10th of an hour, which we were. Dave: Yeah, no, but I remember when we would talk to potential clients, that was part of the pitch and the fact that they could do we could do all a card search for them. It's wrong as the source candidates, you know, we would just do that. And the other thing I loved was the independence that gave, because I know there were times that right late in the search we had three finalists and they would say, hey, we identified somebody on our own, can we throw them into the mix? And of course we were very receptive because we were just paid by the hour, like we didn't care. Whereas I think a lot of other firms, especially if there was a success fee component you know, would be very resistant to that, so I always thought that was great. What caused you to move away from that? Jane: Just the cumbers of it or just the greater tendency to do fixed. But you know, we started out doing lower level positions and as we built our reputation we were, frankly, we were leaving. Frankly we were leaving. We weren't great timekeepers and we kind of thought, well, let's still provide a win for our clients Because the big search firms you are obligated to pay the fee. Even if they find their own candidate, you're obligated to pay the fee. So what we decided was we will do a fixed fee. We will tell the client at the beginning of the search this is what your fee is. So it's not really tied to the compensation but the complexity of the search. So, for example, if we were doing a search in Fargo, north Dakota, in December, that might be a harder search. You know, with the pain in the bottom 10% of compensation ranges, that might be a harder search than doing a search in December in Florida, for example, or with the time. So we just pivoted I think it was in 2001 that we'll give you a fixed fee for the search, but it will be less usually than a third of total comp. So even if you put your own candidate into the process, you're still paying for it, but you're paying for a process, not a candidate. So we still had a competitive advantage. And it's interesting. Here we are today, in 2024, and some of the other search firms are now doing what we do. Some of our biggest competitors are going. Well, we'll give you a fixed fee if the Alexander Group's giving you a fixed fee. So it's interesting how it's turned out. Dave: But you were a disruptor in a number of ways in the industry. Jane: I mean it didn't seem like it at the time but now that I see other firms doing the same thing to try and compete effectively, they don't want to. They'd rather just get a third. But one of the things we tell our clients when they retain us is for your budgeting purposes, you're going to know how much the fee is and we'll have no reason to present the most expensive candidates because our fee is already in your budget and we're just going to be on your side of the table trying to find the best person at the most cost-effective salary compensation package. So I think it's a win and it's something that has worked for the clients. And you know the thing that and I know you know this we said it when you were there and we still say it 85% of our business every year is the same people and we're really proud of that because most search firms their repeat business is 6%. And why is that? And you know we laugh and say, well, we have an unstable product. You know and you know there's so many things that can go wrong when you're dealing with people, but we try and provide very I want to say a really strong relationship focus. I mean I tell clients. I don't want to just see you one time. We want a long-term relationship with you and that's really important to us and I think it makes a difference and I think the clients feel like we really care about being part of their team and that's really important to us. Dave: Yeah, that's great and I did experience that, and life's just more fun when you have happy repeat customers and clients Instead of people you try to squeeze for every last dollar for one time transaction. Jane: And you're well. I hope we don't have to see each other again. Right, you know it's like no, we want to be around for the long haul and I know you know this because but our first client from Grant Thornton, who's now 88 years old, is still a friend and a client and a mentor of the firm and we wouldn't really have it any other way. That means a lot to us. Dave: You know, one of the most valuable lessons you taught me was when I went into your office after I worked there about a year and a half and I just said, jane, I don't think this is for me and I don't know what I'm going to do, but I just want to set expectations. And you said hey, as long as you continue to do good work, you can stay. You know, as long as you want, right, I mean, just keep doing good work. And then the other thing you told me do you remember what you told me? You said, and it was very, it was good advice, but it was also clever on your end too. What did you tell me? Jane: I told you, no one will remember the job that you did, but everyone will remember how you leave. Dave: Yep, yep, that's so true and it's such simple advice, right? Because you work someplace for years and then all you really have to do to even make up for mistakes you made is just end on a really high note, right, you could have been a average employee, but just end on a high note and they'll all say, oh yeah, that change, she was great. She was great. We loved having her around. Jane: No, I remember that Because I mean I tell people I was not the best lawyer in the world, but I left, left. Like how do I transition my clients? How do I help train the new person? Can I be available after I'm gone? If I need to come in on a Saturday to help out? And I tell people when I make speeches no one will. You could be really bad at your job, but you can be a good, a great departing employee if you aren't a current employee. And that is just so true. And you know today, you never know when you're going to need a reference. Today, with everything so transparent, even if you don't give somebody as a reference, people will look on LinkedIn and say, oh well, I'm going to call this person and see how Betty was as an employee. So you're going to be found out, good or bad. So you might as well be the best ex-employee you can possibly be. Dave: I love it. Yeah, I know one of the things we did when I was with the team was we would do reference checks, and I think we would oftentimes do them even before the offer was extended. I forget. I think we did it both ways. Sometimes we did it subject to reference checks, sometimes we did the references first and I was always surprised. Every so often you'd find out people lied on their resume or exaggerated. But I imagine with social media and such, that's probably all gone away, right, nobody tries to get away with that anymore, I suppose do they? Jane: You know, dave, it's really interesting. Somebody asked me the other day what surprises you the most. That happens today, that happened 20 years ago. And the answer is exactly as you say. People still try and fudge. They'll say, well, I received an MBA when they did the coursework but didn't write the final paper. Or they'll be credit short of a college degree. Just last month we weren't at the final stages. But we try and check educational background and someone had on their resume they had on their LinkedIn received a bachelor's degree. And we check and there's no bachelor's degree. And they say, oh well, but I was only four hours short and I go. But four hours short does not a degree make, and I'm always surprised that. And people will have maybe a year gap where they're unemployed. And it's okay with COVID and all the changes that we have all gone through as a country, as a business community, it's okay that you have gaps, but it's not okay to misrepresent the gaps and sometimes you'll have people go. Oh well, you know, it was during COVID, I'll just kind of fudge it a little bit. And you're always going to be found out almost every single time, and I'm always surprised that people still do it, though, but even at the highest levels, dave, they still do it Like even like at the C-suite level, you mean. Yeah, at the C-suite level. You know, I wrote an article as a commentator for MSNBC 10 years ago because the CEO of, I think, hp said he had a degree in computer science, but it was a degree in history, you know, which is a pretty big difference. And I wrote an article saying and this was even before the proliferation of social media 10 years ago and I said you will be found out. This guy did, and it was very public and it was he got fired from H. It was a big deal and I was like do not let it stand. If you fudged, go fix it, fess up. Dave: The irony was, if he was, you know, at that level, he probably had graduated at least 25 years earlier. So the irony was his degree had no nothing to do with his current level. Yeah, nobody cared, except that he lied about it. If somebody lies about something that can be checked. What are they lying about that can't be checked, right? Jane: Exactly Well. And the other thing is, when you think about somebody's personal branding, wouldn't it make a great story? Hey guys, I don't know. I had a history degree and look how good I am. I'm running HP now and I had to leave the hospital. But to say he had a computer science degree. I mean it made no sense. But people do that still and I always tell people I know some of your listeners are small businesses where they don't have huge departments but one of the most important things you can do is do background checks and reference checks, unofficial and official, because people they never will stop doing it and no matter how many commentators tell them don't do it, they do it. Dave: Well, you know, I guess it's time for me to go update my LinkedIn. For all these years, jane, I've been telling the world that I was the CEO of the Alexander Group and you worked for me, so I think I'd better go fix that before it backfires. Jane: Well, you know, people always say how did you get the name the Alexander Group? And we, truly the name Alexander kind of has a masculine kind of connotation and you know, even when you were with us, dave, we would get calls once a week going Mr Alexander, please, yeah, and so so. So I think you just, I think not only did you say you were CEO, I think your name you've been passing off your name is David Alexander, right. Dave: That could very well be and I learned so much about presentation because, you know, when I was there, a lot of the the recruiters were young, you know, fresh out of college. The recruiters were young, you know, fresh out of college, and you know you and John did a great job of mentoring these folks and developing them. But it was always so interesting that, you know, we had a pretty casual environment and back then you would leave a message for a candidate and they would call back the main switchboard. I don't know we've, I don't think we even had direct dial numbers back then and they'd call back and switchboard. I don't know, I don't think we even had direct dial numbers back then. And they'd call back and here's this scruffy 23-year-old unshaven guy wearing, you know, birkenstocks to work, named you know Tom, let's say. And when the person would call back and they'd say, yeah, tom Smith, please you train the receptionist to say, oh, hold on. May I ask Mr Smith, you know who's calling you? know, just to I mean there's no harm in saying Mr Smith because that is his name, but why say, oh yeah, let me see if Tommy Boy's you know done, you know done having his afternoon tequila shot, right, I mean there's no use in. Jane: No, it was all about. It was all about the, you know, because we were so small in Scruffy and the other thing we would do would be to say I'd train the receptionist to go never say Mr Smith is not at his desk. Dave: Right, he is not at his desk. Jane: Right, he is not in his office and I will have one of his assistants call you back. Dave: Nice, nice, one of them. I like that. Jane: I know, I mean, you know, I just am blushing, thinking about what we did to make ourselves sound substantial. And there's Tommy Smith back in the back office, sound asleep at his desk, you know. Dave: Exactly. Jane: And sometimes I go, oh well, and sometimes you know candidates would call back. Well, is Tommy Smith calling me? And if I happen to be at the office late at night, you know some of it is the smoke and mirrors of making yourself sound like you're Well, I remember when I would like when you or John would be like traveling. Dave: I would try to book the mother BD. Right, you're interviewing folks in Kansas City, what other companies are headquartered in Kansas City or just other things. And one of the things that the things I did that I learned a lot about this is that even though you and John were based in Houston, if I was trying to set up Houston appointments, I would act as if you and John were based in San Francisco, like I'd say oh, you know Miss Howes will be in, you know she'll be in Houston for two days next week. You know she'll. she won't be in the San Francisco office, she'll be in the Houston office for two days Now the reality is you were going to be there for two weeks, but you were going to be there for those two days and it was what's the biblical saying you can't be a prophet in your own homeland. And I think it's still true to this day that expert from out of town and they rearrange their schedule for the person from out of town. Jane: Well, you know, there's a Buddhist saying that says the visitor from afar brings knowledge and I like that. Dave: I like that. Jane: And you know, sometimes I get asked to talk to college students about how our young people, about how do you find jobs, and my clients, kids, want to know how do we find a job. And I don't I'm not a career counselor but what I tell them is the further like if you went to NYU, say you're going to have more success calling NYU alums in Houston trying to get them to help you than you will in New York City. If you're a University of Houston graduate and you're in San Francisco, there's probably only 20 of you in the whole town and all people are hardwired to help people who come from afar. If there's a limited population and it goes kind of with that thing of being unique, like you know how many people come from Houston to San Francisco for a meeting. 20 years ago I mean it happened, but it wasn't every day that a head of human resources got that phone call right. Dave: In my business that it's easier for me to get an appointment in Syracuse, New York, if I'm going to be up there for business anyway. It's easier to get that appointment than it is with somebody in Houston, Because in Houston they're just like I'm busy this week, you know. Call me next month, you know, because you're so available. It's just like it seems like if you're meeting somebody for dinner, the closer the restaurant, the more likely you are. The closer the restaurant, the more likely you are to be late, or the more likely I am to be late, because if I'm driving 30 minutes I'm going to allow 45 for traffic and stuff, but if it's three minutes away, I'm going to leave two minutes before the dinner and then exactly a stoplight pot ad and then the parking lot's full and yeah no, it is, but it is something about the further something is away. Jane: And I remember one of the ways I built up our and some of our first clients. Most of our first clients were California companies because California had more. They were more used to women in doing C-suite searches. But you know, I was in California every two weeks for probably 30 years and I would call and go well, I'm from Houston, I'm a woman-owned search firm, I'm going to be in LA, can I come see you? And we got a lot of great clients like Wells Fargo, warner Brothers, yeah, a lot of McKesson company, because they were like oh, the visitor from afar they're coming to, they're coming from Houston and they're women in the search business Great, they're coming from Houston and they're women in the search business Great, you know. And I I spent a lot of time where people would go well, I have time tomorrow morning at 11 o'clock and I'm going to be there. And I quickly hung up the phone and called United and called Continental Airlines and started booking that airline ticket as fast as I could. Dave: Yeah, I do remember my listeners love stories. What are some stories of just interesting or amusing or candidate screw up things that come to mind where, yeah, I don't know a candidate showed up intoxicated or a candidate showed up and forgot to put pants on that day, you know. I don't know a candidate showed up intoxicated, or a candidate showed up and forgot to put pants on that day. Jane: You know, I remember way back in the early days one of my first big searches was a senior lending officer for a regional bank here and the candidate was great and it was. I was so excited and so I called the CEO of the bank after the interview and I said Rex, how did the interview go? He goes, jane, he didn't come. I said he didn't come. What the hell? Why didn't he come? He said, oh, it was okay. He drove through the teller window and passed a note to the teller to pass to me that he wouldn't. He changed his mind, you know, and you just go, who drives through the go in for the interview but drives through and says will you give this note, handwritten note on a scrap of paper I'm not coming. And so that was kind of the early days. A second story, and I mean it's crazy what we did back in the early days but one client wanted us to live in LA and take over all their staffing for it. This is when we were hourly billing and we were pretty cheap and they said, yeah, we'll get your room at the Biltmore Hotel in downtown LA. We want you there for a month and we're trying to figure out how to save money, because back then, you know, we just wanted to be and so we bought Dave a $700 car so we wouldn't have rental car charges, and we called it the gray ghost. It was a delta 80 and we drove this car and I am embarrassed to tell you, and I hope your listeners will think we were really creative rather than really cheesy but when we were done with the car, when we finished the search and the client actually is still a client in other iterations we just left the car at a Friday's Marina Del Rey and that was it, because it was on its last legs, you know, and we just that was it. We just left the keys in the car and that was it. Dave: That was it. We just left the keys in the car and that was it. You know you reminded me of something. A good friend of mine owes you his job because you just reminded me of something and I know I learned this from you. So it's really good friend of mine. Cpa, a classic, stereotypical CPA, introverted, not very outgoing but very technically sound, and he was working at a public accounting firm and he was kind of stuck at the senior level. He couldn't get promoted to manager, which usually happens after like five years. And there's a firm in town that I knew a guy there and they were looking for like a first year audit manager. So he was perfect for it. Looking for like a first year audit manager, so he was perfect for it. And so the three of us met for a drink at Papa Do's on Westheimer, over in the Galleria. But I told him ahead of time. I said Pete, he is. I'm just going to tell you right now, he's not Mr Personality. If you're looking for a glad handing, you know, outgoing salesman type, he's not the right guy for you. And so, of course, what did he say? No, we're not looking for a salesman, we're looking for a manager, right, somebody technically solid. So we met and afterwards we had a good time. And afterwards I said so what'd you think? And he said I'm glad you told me that he wasn't Mr Personality, because I was kind of prepared for it. And he did the same thing when they met with the people at the firm. He told them on the front end hey, this guy's not Mr Personality, but he's really smart. I think he can do the job. And 30 years later he's a senior partner at this Houston CPA firm and I know I learned that line from you. Now let me just tell you this person's not Mr Personality. Does that sound like something you might've said for? Jane: Yeah, well, you know what I mean. Part of what I look at a recruiter's job, an executive search person's job, is you tell the client what's wrong or what's missing, because they're smart and they're going to get it themselves. And if you tell them, you are adding value, you're being a consultant and you've managed expectations. So when we do a search, we write a paper, basically a report. These are the things that might not exactly fit, but these are the things that overcome what you are looking for. And which reminds me of one more story. I remember doing a audit partner search, for I think it was Grant Thornton up in St Louis and it was in Chicago actually, and so, as you recall, we would fly to the cities, park ourselves at a hotel restaurant and just sit there and make that our office. It was pretty soon, and so I got to O'Hare sitting down and my 3 o'clock appointment comes up at one o'clock and I go buddy, you're here a little bit early. He said, oh, yeah, yeah, I've heard great things about the Alexander group and I'm just going to sit at this next table and watch you in action. And I'm like, well, buddy, that's just not going, not gonna. And mentally I'm thinking well, buddy is no longer a candidate, but he wanted to sit and listen in on every other interview so he could get some good tips of how to interview himself, and anyway not a bad idea if he had just simply kept that information to himself. Right and not done it when I'd already started the interview. You know, I mean, I kind of lost two candidates right in one sitting. You know, you can't make this stuff up. Dave: That is something. I got a question somewhat related to search. Some of this conversation is about executive search. Right, we probably should have at least maybe a third of it about search. What about board members? So you know, I've got clients who ran, built, ran, sold $50 million revenue successful privately held companies, sold $50 million revenue, successful privately held companies. And they maybe think, yeah, I might like to be serve on a board. Now for somebody to be on a public company board do they need public company experience? Jane: You know, Dave, I think the question as I'm kind of rounding third base in my career and a lot of my peers are in their 60s and they're finishing, They've sold their private company, they retired from a public company. They, for whatever reason, they say well, you know, I'm going to retire, I'm going to, I want to be on a board. Can I get on a board? My answer is always this yes. However, it's a question of how much time do you want to spend to get on your first board? Once you get on one board, even if you're a private company executive, can you get on a public board, Asterisk, if you're willing to really work hard on at that. The average board tenure is 10 years. Board positions don't really turn over that much of a healthy company. So people get on a board and especially if it's a public board, there's incentive comp, there's options. It's not a hard gig for a lot of companies. So the answer is yes. And then what do you do if you want to get on a board? If you want to get on a board? Probably 70 percent of all board positions are not gotten through search firms. Does that surprise you? Dave: Maybe, yeah, maybe some. It's the network, the network of the other board members. Jane: Yeah, yeah, because people will say, oh well, I know somebody I'm going to, I'll go back to my UT alum group and see if they, you know, kind of knows around there. Or I'll see if, oh, I know a guy that works at Goldman Sachs, Maybe he knows somebody. I know a friend that's a part retiring from Ernst Young and I'll ask her. And so there's a lot of you know, with the call for diversity, search firms are becoming more involved but and doing more and 30% is still a lot to be putting out to search. But so the things that if any of your listeners are interested, I tell people, If any of your listeners are interested, I tell people, do a board resume. A board resume is different than a job resume. It's talking about your experience assessing risk, building a company, governance compliance, things that a board member would look at, governance compliance things that a board member would look at and the board members not looking at the details of you know, do you get two weeks or three weeks for vacation? They're looking at what's our strategic plan, the being the boss of the ceo, representing shareholders. So you want a board, one page board resume that talks about what you've done. That would be analogous to that. And then you really want to get on. A not-for-profit board Helps because, especially if it's big enough, there will be other corporate people there and you will make contacts. But it's really about making contacts. A lot of investment banks they don't use search firms when they take a company public. They have databases, they go through their contacts. Bankers know people. It's all about the three sources. I would say. If any of your listeners are saying I want to be on a board one day, do you know anybody in investment banking, private equity, public accounting, M&A law firms anybody like that and tell everybody you're looking for those recommendations. And then the last thing is a lot of your listeners are successful people who've had roles in companies that are entrepreneurial in nature, and a lot of them I know people that have taught an entrepreneurship class or a lecturer at Rice University here. And there's a lot of smart kids who are starting businesses. Let's not forget Google, Facebook, some of these companies that started from college kids, and I think that's a great avenue to think about when, if you're thinking about ways to get on a board. Dave: I like it. That's really cool. Well, speaking of rounding third base, I can't believe how the time has flown by. I have just a couple other questions for you. One is I've heard about this great resignation. For you One is I've heard about this great resignation. What has been your experience? Is this trickled up to the C-suite and the board level, or is this a problem that those people are having to deal with? People lower in the organization? Tell me about the great resignation from your perspective. Jane: Well, one thing hasn't changed. If you look at CEOs of Fortune 500 companies that are recruited from the outside, I would say they have a 50% chance of being there two to three years out. And why is that? Culture fit so the top. You will always have CEO changes, especially if they come from outside and they don't fit with the culture. What I think we are seeing and we see from our clients is post-COVID. There's been so many obvious changes but a lot of things that aren't obvious. People don't want to relocate as much as they might have pre-COVID. Why is that? Well, covid scared people in terms of my parents I've got to take care of my parents, I may have to have my kids at home for high school, and do I want to go to someplace new and have something like that happen? So I think you're having that we're coming out of. But you're also having middle range employees who aren't as loyal, and you know I always tease that a lot of the younger people today. If they have a bad Monday, they may be somebody someplace else by Friday. So I think there's not quite that dickiness of what you grew up with and I grew up with. Hey, you know we want to. You know we don't want to be a quote job hopper and I think people today don't care if they're job hoppers quite as much. And there's not that people are more willing. I think in COVID accentuated that where they're more willing to take risk. And, you know, maybe I'll be without a job for a month, two months, and yeah, I think we're seeing that. And what I tell small businesses that you know be focusing on long how do you make a culture that will keep people invested long term? And there've been a lot written on that and it's different for every company depending on where your location is and what your employee mix. But I think that's a really important thing that everybody's got to do in a bigger way. And also, lastly, dave, the emphasis on mental health, something that has changed dramatically in the last three years, where you know we've got to take care of people financially. And also, how are they doing? Because so many people were isolated during COVID and had mental health issues and people talk about that more, which we never did back in the day. You just bucked it up and, you know, kept making those source calls, dave, you know. Dave: For every six you made, you got to check off a tenth of an hour of work. Jane: Exactly. You had to make a left message with 10 people to get that six. I had it backwards. Dave: It was even harder than I remembered. That's why you get so excited if somebody answered the phone because that, even if you only talk 30 seconds, you got to put them down as a yeah, no, that's right they go no, I'm not interested and you go, that's OK. Jane: Awesome, ten minutes ahead here. Dave: That is great. So so I think the two questions left, so one. Is there anything that I did not ask you that you wish I had? Is there anything we did not talk about that you think we should have? Jane: No, you're a really good interviewer, Dave, which? Dave: I learned it from you. I learned it starts with interviewing candidates and it translates to other things. Jane: Well, I'm, you know, I'm really honored to be here, dave, because the people that you serve and that you do work for. I think it is much harder to run a smaller private company than it is a big company, because you've got to have employees who are multifaceted, You've got to have employees who have an entrepreneurial mindset, you've got to have employees who have an entrepreneurial mindset. So my hat is off to the work you do the clients that you serve, because it is a hard business. Dave: Well, I appreciate that. I love serving entrepreneurs, that is for sure. So here's the last question. This is a curveball one you may remember. When you asked if you need to do any preparation, I said no, we're just going to talk about your life story and you don't need any prep. But I promise you one curveball, and here it is. Are you ready? If you could go back in time and give advice to your 25 or 28 year old self, what advice might you give yourself? Jane: Yeah, oh, that is a great. That is a great question. Don't sweat the small stuff and it's all small stuff. Dave: Okay. Jane: And the things that you worry about about 90% of them do not materialize. Dave: Was that? Was it Mark Twain or Will Rogers? I always get their two quotes conflated. But one of them said I'm an old man, man, and in my life I've known a great many. I've known a great many difficulties, most of which never came to pass, or something to that effect yes, that's right. Jane: And Mark Twain, as you will recall from our time together, said I didn't have time to write a short story, so I wrote a long story, right? Dave: Exactly. Yeah, I learned a lot about incise writing and just I'm always amazed that people that just the simplest stuff that I never picked up in English class. Like you know, bob is a person who does XYZ, he's not. It's not Bob that does something, it's Bob. Bob's not a that, he's a who. Jane: That's, that's right and word choice, and. But you know I, you know I sound like a geezer, but you know stuff like that is. I mean a lot of people today really don't know that. I mean even you know I see at the executive ranks a lot of people who, who just, and you know, I think one of the things when I talk to people early in their career is learn to write, learn business writing out there. I mean especially now with Zoom and you can do business with people by email A lot of people. And if I get a resume from somebody that doesn't spell check or anything else. Dave, one final story, and it's so good and it reminds me. It does remind me of you for obvious reasons, but I don't know if you remember that we sent a letter out one time when you joined, maybe when you rejoined us, and we said Dave is from you know, arthur Anderson, a leading public accounting firm, but we left out the L of public. Do you remember that? Dave: I remember that does sound familiar. I remember somebody saying well, I don't know what it is, but we want some right, that's funny because, yeah, when you send out as many, as much written correspondence as the firm has for so long, it can't try as you might, it can't all be perfect. Just like I'm amazed when I read, like a bestselling book that sold 20 million copies and you find a typo. You're like but you know, when I talked to an author about that they said, yeah, there's, you know, 100,000 words in here, like you, just sometimes they slip through the cracks. Jane: Well, Dave, I the thing I remember about you and I always feel like I can learn something from everybody, even though there's an you're younger than I am. But even back when you were really young and with us, you were so effective at client communication and getting business. And do you remember that? You are the ones that taught us that people are hardwired to want to help, but you have to give them a way to help you. And you would come up with a list, Like, do you know people from any of these five companies? And people would look at and go, oh yeah, I can help you, I do know somebody from here. And what a great way to teach someone how to develop their own clients as to teach the client how to help the potential client or source how to help them. Dave: Well, that's one of the benefits of being a bad employee who changed jobs every year is I was exposed to a lot of things. I learned that in the financial services business and what made it so powerful was because in the financial services business you're always trying to get you know referrals to folks and if you just say, hey, jane, you know who, do you know who's looking to buy life insurance, probably nobody comes to mind. Nobody, because nobody's come up and said hey, I need life insurance. Do you know anyone? But what I learned in that is still helpful today. But instead, if you give somebody a list of 10 people and you say, jane, I'm going to be calling these 10 people next week, I'm just curious, can you tell me, is there anyone on this list you think's particularly great or you think really highly of? And they'd say, oh sure, let me borrow your pen. They check off the before names, you're like great. And then I would say, hey, by chance, if you happen to talk to them before next week, will you tell them I'm going to call them and they, of course, would say, sure, I haven't talked to this guy. I went to law school in five years. It's unlikely I'm going to talk to him this week, but sure, I'll tell him, okay. And then, finally, jane, when I talked to John Lamar, is it appropriate to mention that you know that we had a conversation? You know that he came up in conversation? Sure, yeah, no problem. So then, when I would call the person, it was so easy. Hey, john Lamar, by chance did Jane Howes tell you I'd be calling? No, how's Jane doing? I haven't seen her since law school. Boy, she's really wonderful, I like Jane. And so, yeah, you know Jane. Huh, yeah, I haven't known her a long time. I haven't known her as long as I've known you. Meaning I've met her for 10 minutes, but all of my dealings with her were first rate, all of them. And then just say, hey, you know, jane had some nice things to say about you and she thought we might benefit from knowing meeting one another. You know, know, when are you? It was amazing how well that. But it all started with just having a list to start with, because there's a difference between if somebody like, let's say, that conversation went poorly and john lamar called you back and said, hey, why'd you have? that dave spray guy call me. Well, if you can say, I didn't tell him to call you. He already had your name. He was going to call you anyway he just asked me. Jane: Anyway, great guy, yeah right. Dave: He just wanted to know if you were a jerk or not. And apparently I was wrong because you're gonna give me a hard time. All I did was say you were a nice guy and and now you're giving me a hard time, but yeah and and dave. Jane: What I remember the funny thing was john lamar are my 30 year partner. He went to a meeting with you and he said jane, dave pulled out the list. And I said he pulled out the list. And he said yes, and it worked and we just like we were so nervous about the list. But, Dave, it really worked. Dave: It is funny. And the irony is, the time you pull the list out is when the meeting doesn't go well. You know, like it's a brief meeting and they're like no, my best man at my wedding is a partner at Horn Fairy. That's where all of our search goes. We'll never give it to anyone else. Well, now you have nothing to lose by pulling out the list. I mean, if they on the spot want to sign you up for some searches, well, just keep the list in your pocket. But and the irony was the worse the meeting goes, the more helpful. Jane: They would seem to be right because they kind of feel bad that you flew away from houston. Dave: You flew all the way from houston out to see them and they can't help you. So now, sure, I'll look at your list. I'll give you some. Jane: But it's true, the list, dave, I mean that is a course in business development and we were like God, that list is not going to work. But it works, it absolutely does. Dave: Well, and you know when I first used that this shows what how I approach business development when I was in the financial services business right at Arthur Anderson attorneys were my best prospects. So this was like 1990, excel hadn't even been invented, they were using Lotus one, two, three. And I bought the Martindale Hubble legal director. You remember this thing? The blue, yeah. Maybe it was an yeah, but it was a blue thing and what I did that I was so proud of myself. I went through that and I created a spreadsheet and I knew one attorney in Houston and he was like a second year attorney at some place and he went to U of H and I played basketball with him and I went and I had lunch with him and I pulled out the graduates from like the top 20 law firms in Houston and I'm sorted by year in college. So the first list I gave him was all of the people who graduated from law school, the ones in his start class. And then I gave him a list of all the other U of H grads who were like a couple of years older to a year younger Same thing, who do you know? And then I made the call to them and then, jane, it got to be so crazy. I would go to like V&E and I would be there like I'd have like 12 meetings in a row, like, and they would literally walk me from one office to the next and they'd be like, hey, so who's next on your list? Oh, bob. Oh, he's a hoot, yeah, you'll enjoy meeting him. And so they would escort me into the office. It was like it was this introduction from one stranger to another one, but then the new person I would meet with. So you know, lauren introduced me to a guy who started with him that went to UT, so I would have all the other UT guys at his firm and at the other firms in town and it just exploded. Like in three or four months I was like the guy for all the third year attorneys at Baker Botts and V&E and Fulbright, but anyway, that is so fun, but it works, dave, and it's something you know. Jane: 15, 20 years later I still remember. Quote the list. Dave: Yeah, yeah, some great times. So, jane, thank you so much for not only inviting me to the 40th anniversary party that was just spectacular. Seeing some of my former colleagues, that was just great and just having the ability to be friends with you and your husband and John Lamar all these years is very special. I like to say there's only one ex-girlfriend I keep in touch with and there's only one ex-employer I keep in touch with, and that's you all when you are a VIP favored status. Jane: you work for us twice and we keep hoping that phone will ring the third time, dave, and it'll be the charm. Dave: Yeah, you never know. And I would jokingly say I did two tours of duty which you know doesn't really sound very complimentary to the firm. I must say, tour of duty has a certain negativity to it in a way, you know, conscription drafted. Jane: Yes, it's. At least it's not like prison sentence. You know I'll give you that. Dave: That is awesome. Well, Jane, I could talk all day to you. Thank you so much. I really appreciate everything. Jane: Oh, my pleasure, Dave. How much fun this has been. Dave: It has been have a great day. Jane: Thanks, Dave Bye. Special Guest: Jane Howze.

Do you ever wish you had a chance to do things differently? Prosecutor Martin Wells finds himself in prison accused of murdering his wife. Wells insists that he is innocent, but in order to change his situation he must travel backwards in time to change what happened the day of his wife's murder. Groundhog Day meets twilight zone in this episode. Check out our links below! OUR MERCH STORE: https://teespring.com/stores/ufo-party-podcast OUR PATREON IS FREE NOW! : https://www.patreon.com/ufopartypod BUY US A COFFEE! https://ko-fi.com/ufopartypod FOLLOW US ON INSTAGRAM: https://instagram.com/ufopartypod  FOLLOW US ON TWITTER: https://twitter.com/ufopartypod EMAIL US YOUR STORIES: ufopartypod@gmail.com Thank you so much for showing support so we can spread love to the only good feds in the universe.  --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/ufopartypodcast/support

Royce exposes the battle against tyranny that has been going century upon century, and how tyrants have always attempted to pass laws to counter natural human rights, "legally" granting them power over others they deem to be lesser than them.Tune in and share!Support the showBuy Paul Eberle's book "Look at the Dirt"Paul Eberle (lookatthedirt.com)Don't forget to catch Voice of the Blue podcast, hosted by Royce, and produced by the American Police Hall of Fame.Voice of the Blue (buzzsprout.com)

The Dudes are back for Episode 7! We are minus two Dudes(temporarily), but add some replacements in three Sherlock Homies. We've said this before, math is hard. We recap some previous content and enjoy a few laughs and beverages and "Bag It Up!" makes an appearance. Originally published on Jun 27, 2020.

Kev and Spencer talk about Paleo Pines Timings 00:00:00: Theme Tune 00:00:30: Intro 00:02:21: What Have We Been Up To 00:14:37: News 00:37:08: Paleo Pines 01:45:09: Outro Links Garden Buddies Release Garden Buddies Release Trailer Ikonei Island Friends Pass Farming Simulator 22 Carrots Preview Garden Galaxy Autumn Update Mineko’s Night Market Patches Paleo Pines Patches Animal Crossing Lego Paleo Pines Contact Al on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheScotBot Al on Mastodon: https://mastodon.scot/@TheScotBot Email Us: https://harvestseason.club/contact/ Transcript (0:00:31) Kevin: Welcome farmers to the harvest season! (0:00:48) Spencer: Spared no expense. (0:00:49) Kevin: Hello. See what I wanted… I would have preferred the kazoo version. Have you heard that one? The kazoo version of Jurassic Park? Oh, I’ll have to send you a (0:00:50) Spencer: I have not heard that version. (0:01:00) Spencer: Aha. (0:01:01) Kevin: link. It’s an amazing one. I’ll do that right now. But in the meanwhile, hello listeners, farmers. I’m your host, Kevin, and with me today is Spencer! (0:01:14) Spencer: Yes, they thought they could get rid of me after the last episode I was on, but I’m back, (0:01:21) Spencer: so deal with it. (0:01:22) Kevin: And why? Because dinosaurs, of course, um, we are here to talk about, uh, (0:01:32) Kevin: Heliopines and Spencer, our resident dinosaur lover, alongside me. (0:01:40) Kevin: Um, I’m also a big fan. Um, we’re, uh, we were both very excited for this one. (0:01:46) Spencer: Yeah, I remember seeing it and I was like, “Oh man, I gotta wedge my way, force my way in with Al this time again.” (0:01:50) Kevin: Yeah. (0:01:53) Kevin: Yup, yup. (0:01:55) Kevin: But before that, um, you know–oh, see, I sent you the kazoo cover of Jurassic Park. (0:02:03) Kevin: Um, but before we get into paleopines, as usual, we’re gonna cover some news and other stuff. (0:02:11) Kevin: As usual, you can find the show notes and the transcript on the website, as always. (0:02:20) Kevin: Alright, but what we- (0:02:23) Spencer: Ah, games I’ve been playing. Well, I was playing Tears of the Kingdom for a while, and then, honestly, I’ve been playing a couple mobile games, so I started playing Monster Hunter now. (0:02:35) Spencer: Are you playing that? (0:02:36) Kevin: Oh, I am not okay first off for have you played Monster Hunter not mobile version Okay Uh-huh, right Okay Okay, but you hunted some things you have familiarity, okay, okay (0:02:37) Spencer: Oh, yeah. (0:02:45) Spencer: So I have Rise, and I also have Worlds, I think it is, for PS4. (0:02:51) Spencer: I just barely scratched the surface of both of them. (0:02:55) Spencer: I think it got a little bit farther in Rise than I did in Worlds. (0:02:59) Spencer: Oh yeah, I definitely hunted some things. (0:03:05) Spencer: See, the issue with me in those kind of games is like… (0:03:06) Kevin: Uh huh. (0:03:07) Spencer: The feedback loop for that kind of stuff is actually really… (0:03:12) Spencer: I like really enjoy it, but I get stuck on like (0:03:15) Spencer: the first level, because I’m like, “Oh cool, I hunted this monster. Let me like, hunt it again. Let me hunt it again.” (0:03:21) Kevin: Uh-huh, right. (0:03:21) Spencer: I just keep on hunting the same thing over and over again, and I never end up proceeding to the next level or the next area or wherever. (0:03:23) Kevin: I mean, that’s fine. You’ve got to do that at app points. (0:03:29) Spencer: Yeah, that’s true. So I am familiar with the series a little bit, but yeah, it’s been playing a lot of now. (0:03:41) Spencer: Well, I was playing a lot of now. (0:03:42) Kevin: Oh, okay, so tell me about now, because I’m fascinated how this works, but this is by Niantic, the Pokemon Go people. (0:03:43) Spencer: kind of… (0:03:49) Spencer: Yeah, so… (0:03:53) Spencer: So basically, like, while you’re walking around, you know, there’ll just be like, monsters kind of out where you are. (0:04:00) Spencer: Um, god, I think someone pointed out… (0:04:02) Spencer: It’s almost like the movie, in that it’s our world, but the monsters have now kind of like, invaded our world. (0:04:10) Spencer: Um, so you’re just walking around, there’ll be like, lesser monsters, you know, (0:04:15) Spencer: and like, ones that would actually be like, a hunt in the real game. (0:04:18) Spencer: And, you just fight ’em, you’re kind of timed, similarly to how you would do like a, say like a raid in Pokemon Go. (0:04:26) Spencer: Um, a lot more… (0:04:28) Spencer: Intensive than Pokemon Go, if you’ll believe that. (0:04:32) Spencer: You’re still basically clicking. (0:04:34) Spencer: But you can like… (0:04:35) Kevin: Okay, sure I right you’re you’re on mobile there’s only so much you can do right uh-huh (0:04:36) Spencer: Yeah, you can like, swipe to dodge. (0:04:40) Spencer: Yeah, you can swipe to dodge, you can get perfect, like, you know, perfect dodges and stuff. (0:04:45) Spencer: Um, and then there are some combinations. (0:04:48) Spencer: ‘Cause I’m using, um, what is it, Greatsword? (0:04:51) Spencer: And you can like, kind of do this thing where you like, if you start swinging and then you swipe, you’ll do kind of that shoulder, you know, shoulder charge attack. (0:05:03) Kevin: - Yeah, yeah, right. (0:05:03) Spencer: So there are definitely like, combos and stuff that you can figure out. (0:05:06) Spencer: It would benefit from a like, tutorial, you know, like in a fighting game, you have your little like, tutorial, you know, practice area. (0:05:15) Kevin: - Right. (0:05:15) Spencer: Or something like that, ‘cause you can like, then you could figure out, yeah, training room. (0:05:16) Kevin: - Oh, okay, yeah, training room, yeah. (0:05:20) Spencer: Um, but yeah, so you walk around, you fight monsters, you collect, uh, collect different resources, your little, um… (0:05:29) Spencer: What are the little cats called? (0:05:32) Kevin: Uh, the Palicos? (0:05:33) Spencer: Palakos, yeah, you have one, so it runs around and collects resources for you. (0:05:34) Kevin: Right, right. (0:05:38) Spencer: Um, it’ll also mark monsters too, so you can like, come back. (0:05:41) Spencer: back. Yeah, it’s pretty, my understanding is it’s a little bit more leaning. (0:05:45) Spencer: towards the world’s aesthetic. So the different monsters from there and stuff. (0:05:48) Kevin: Yeah, okay, sure. (0:05:50) Spencer: It’s fun. You kind of plateau a little bit if you aren’t able to go out and get resources. I’ve needed to upgrade like my weapons for a while now but I just simply can’t find find the resources I need. So it is what it is. But yeah, it’s been fun. (0:06:00) Kevin: Ahh. (0:06:02) Kevin: Okay. (0:06:04) Kevin: Have you tried any other weapons? (0:06:09) Spencer: Well, in Rise and in World I was using Swishax, which is not in this. (0:06:14) Kevin: Right what what (0:06:15) Spencer: Unfortunately. Yeah, they left it out. So I had to go with the next best thing. (0:06:22) Spencer: They do have, you know, your like kind of daily challenges that give you experience for your rank and some of the challenges will ask of you to do things with other weapons. So they do try to like kind of get you to branch out. It’ll be like, “Oh, (0:06:40) Spencer: kill three monsters with like a hammer or something like that.” So you will inevitably have at least one of each weapon somewhat, you know, upgraded and stuff so that way those little challenges won’t be such a pain. (0:06:40) Kevin: Okay. Okay. (0:06:52) Kevin: Uh-huh okay okay I I asked because so for people who aren’t familiar with monster hunter as the name implies right you’re just out hunting monsters but there’s different types of weapons and they all play significantly differently so I wonder like is that the same here does a bow hunt player feel different (0:07:20) Spencer: They definitely do. The, you know, like the sword and shield is a lot faster. You start off with that too. (0:07:27) Spencer: So you kind of like, I think you don’t even get to choose a different weapon until you reach rank 10. (0:07:33) Spencer: Which can go by pretty quickly depending on like the area you are and you know how close you are. (0:07:40) Spencer: Much like Pokemon Go, you know, it’s a lot of it’s dependent on how close you are to like stops and other points of interest, right? (0:07:46) Spencer: So, you know, if you’re close to things like that… (0:07:50) Spencer: …you’re ranking probably go up pretty quickly within the first day. (0:07:54) Spencer: And you can get to the other weapons. (0:07:56) Spencer: But yeah, there is definitely a different playstyle to each one. (0:08:00) Spencer: You know, for as much as it is just tapping and swiping. (0:08:04) Kevin: Okay, all right, that’s interesting, but the fact that they don’t have the Switch X weapon I’ve played for Decade Plus, yeah, I know that game goes in the trash. (0:08:18) Spencer: Yeah, it was kind of a bummer when I saw that, I was like, “Oh man!” (0:08:24) Kevin: Alright, what else have you been up to? (0:08:25) Spencer: Umm, that and, oh god, this is so embarrassing for me to admit, but have you ever seen the ads for uh, that mobile game, Raid? (0:08:35) Kevin: Rage Battle Legends! (0:08:37) Spencer: Shadow Legends, yeah! (0:08:38) Kevin: Did you get your 300 free heroes? (0:08:39) Spencer: I was just, I was like, I… (0:08:43) Spencer: I did not, I just downloaded it, I was like, “What is this game about?” I keep seeing (0:08:48) Spencer: it, let me just try it, you know, if, for those of you who don’t know me, I download too many mobile games, and then my phone is just like full of them, and I don’t play them, (0:08:59) Spencer: and it’s just, it’s a bad habit that I need to stop and break, but I was like, “Whatever, (0:09:04) Spencer: they have money to hire all these famous actors to promote their game, so maybe it’s good.” (0:09:11) Spencer: And it’s not bad, I’ll be honest, you know what, it’s not bad, it is definitely a mobile game. It has everything you’d expect from a mobile game. It has… (0:09:18) Spencer: you know, timed items, rechargeable energy, you know, all the little… that bombards you with buying packs and stuff, but you know, whatever. (0:09:30) Spencer: I’m not into PvP too much, so I’m not concerned about having the best champions right away and stuff, but you know, it’s a mobile game. (0:09:40) Spencer: I don’t know what else there is to say about it. You wait for things. (0:09:43) Kevin: Okay, like okay, what do the it’s a is it a it’s it a gotcha game? I’m assuming it’s a gotcha game right to get your (0:09:52) Spencer: yeah so there are there are these like hero crystals or something I’ve only been playing it for not too long so pardon me for any any hardcore raid players out there I just called the whatever you know these crystals and you like summon heroes and stuff and you know nine times out of ten you’re summoning one that’s gonna be used for fodder for something else but every once in a while you’ll summon some epic hero or whatever so yeah it’s a gachi game (0:10:01) Kevin: Okay [laughter] (0:10:20) Kevin: Okay, are there any cool designs? (0:10:23) Spencer: » They’re all pretty cool. (0:10:25) Spencer: If you are into like, you know, very like high fantasy and dark fantasy kind of stuff. (0:10:30) Spencer: They have some good stuff, you know, like Lord of the Rings or like, (0:10:34) Spencer: I don’t know what else, The Witcher. (0:10:37) Spencer: If you’re into that kind of stuff, then you’ll probably be drawn to the aesthetic. (0:10:39) Kevin: Okay, hi, Fanny. (0:10:41) Spencer: Yeah, there are, it is a little odd, some of the designs, (0:10:46) Spencer: cuz like they lean into like fantasy of multiple cultures. (0:10:52) Spencer: There’s like a whole subset of like, you know, (0:10:55) Spencer: clearly Asian inspired fantasy people and creatures. (0:10:58) Kevin: Oh, door. Okay. (0:11:00) Spencer: Which is kind of interesting to see with more European style, (0:11:05) Spencer: more medieval style fantasy. (0:11:08) Spencer: You know, you’ll have your like, knights of the round table style knight fighting alongside like a ninja, but I mean, (0:11:17) Spencer: I can see why they have enough money to make ads like that, so it’s very solid. (0:11:22) Kevin: Yeah? (0:11:23) Spencer: I will say that, yeah. (0:11:23) Kevin: And hey, now that it’s been brought on the podcast, I’m sure they’ll approach us for a sponsorship now. (0:11:28) Spencer: Hopefully, yeah, you’re welcome. (0:11:29) Kevin: There you go, Al. (0:11:31) Kevin: I can’t wait for Al to read how much he loves rage at relations. (0:11:37) Kevin: Um… (0:11:40) Kevin: Okay. (0:11:41) Kevin: Oh, hey- (0:11:41) Spencer: What have you been playing? (0:11:43) Kevin: Ugh… (0:11:45) Kevin: Mostly- (0:11:46) Kevin: Mostly paleopines, I don’t lie. (0:11:48) Kevin: Um… (0:11:49) Kevin: This week’s been a lot of paleopines. (0:11:53) Kevin: But, uh, before that, I’m going to plug the other show, Rainbow Road Radio, (0:12:01) Kevin: hosted by my- our mutual friend Alex, and I happen to be on it. (0:12:07) Kevin: We covered Luigi’s Mansion last week, we are back from our break. (0:12:12) Kevin: And, uh, to kick off Spooktober- (0:12:15) Kevin: Well, you know, Halloween, whatever. (0:12:18) Kevin: Uh, we played Luigi’s Mansion. (0:12:20) Kevin: Um, the original for the GameCube. (0:12:20) Spencer: Oh, okay, okay, I was going to ask, didn’t they re-release it for DS, correct, or 3DS? (0:12:22) Kevin: Uh, yeah. (0:12:24) Kevin: Yes. (0:12:27) Kevin: Actually, that’s interesting because Alex played it on the DS. (0:12:31) Kevin: He did the remake, I did the original version. (0:12:34) Kevin: Um, and it’s interesting to hear those comparisons, but I will say, overall, like, that’s still a really good game. (0:12:43) Kevin: I never ha- I hadn’t played it before, actually. (0:12:45) Kevin: This is my first time playing the original. (0:12:45) Spencer: Oh wow, really? (0:12:46) Kevin: Yeah, um, so no nostalgia rose-colored glasses or whatever. (0:12:52) Spencer: I think that was the first game I got for my GameCube. That and Wave Race, yeah. (0:12:52) Kevin: But I enjoyed it. (0:12:53) Kevin: Yeah. (0:12:57) Kevin: Ooh, waveries, that’s a good one. (0:12:58) Spencer: Yeah. (0:13:00) Kevin: Um, uh, yeah, it was a launch game, I think, for the GameCube, so that makes sense. (0:13:05) Kevin: Um, I was surprised- one thing I was surprised by, because I had seen- I played the second one, Dark Moon, (0:13:14) Kevin: and I watched my brother play Luigi’s Mansion 3. (0:13:18) Kevin: So what I didn’t expect is Luigi’s Mansion 1, boy that they… (0:13:22) Kevin: Saw Resident Evil and said “What if we do Resident Evil with the Luigi?” (0:13:27) Kevin: Um, because boy that feels like a Resident Evil game, both the tank controls and the aesthetic, um, but overall very fun. (0:13:36) Kevin: Uh, so yeah, uh, check that episode out if you want more details on that, um, (0:13:36) Spencer: Mm-hmm. (0:13:44) Kevin: But yeah, aside from that, uh, a lot of the usual stuff, uh, (0:13:50) Kevin: a holly right it’s october now so every (0:13:52) Kevin: thing’s getting spooky and whatnot masters has yeah masters has Pokemon masters has spooky costumes rock sand looks great in her witch outfit Pokemon unite is getting mimic you in a week or two and Marvel snaps getting all sort of spooky cards for this season and I love the dumb monsters that they have in Marvel so I’m really happy uh but yeah that’s what I’ve been up (0:13:55) Spencer: Yeah, all the spooky updates. (0:14:22) Kevin: to like I said though a lot of paleopines I don’t think I’ve played anything else on my switch this week of the paleopines right right ok and we’ll get into wide later but before that let’s talk about the news alright first up let’s see here garden buddies. This is… (0:14:31) Spencer: Yeah, that’s been consuming my time too, as far as actual console games go, it’s just (0:14:52) Kevin: This is our previously announced game, but regardless, we have a trailer for it. (0:14:59) Kevin: Let me actually take a look at it. We have it announced for October 20th. (0:15:05) Kevin: Oh boy, that’s quite an aesthetic. I don’t remember this game at all, but these are little (0:15:16) Kevin: crops and vegetables with faces… and a bat… uh… (0:15:22) Kevin: It’s really funny. (0:15:23) Spencer: Now I watched this trailer and the voices… Man, I don’t know if they’re gonna get a cease and desist from Rare, but boy oh boy do they sound like your typical Banjo-Kazooie, uh… You know, little babbles (0:15:37) Kevin: Yeah, yeah, they do they do or for people who haven’t played rare on Animal Crossing pretty close to that, too Yeah, so you don’t remember this what is this game exactly? (0:15:45) Spencer: Yeah, yeah. (0:15:53) Kevin: yeah, because I don’t remember the trailer here, but it is releasing the 20th of October I said which oh my gosh actually that’s gonna be like almost (0:16:07) Kevin: These people are listening to this podcast. It’ll be out and it will be on Steam and on switch So you can look forward to that. Let me double check (0:16:19) Spencer: Yeah, I was curious too, because I mean, the trailer that I got here was just the release date and as far as I can tell, you’re the vegetables themselves? (0:16:26) Kevin: Yeah Yep, yeah, you are it’s a unique blend of cozy gardening simulator and mental self-care that’s Okay, that’s a lot of buzzwords The art. I don’t know how I feel about the art. I kind of like it. I kind of hate it (0:16:55) Kevin: The eyes are very (0:16:56) Kevin: Very very like Toa’i baby eyes Umm But there’s a little mushroom guy riding a frog So that looks cool Uhh (0:17:15) Kevin: heartwarming story, players accompanied by Mutzi will explore the magical world creating and building their plant sanctuary. The relaxing storyline will be filled with uplifting narration as well as unexpected twists and turns. They will make lots of friends with animals and plant creatures they encounter. (0:17:37) Kevin: So yeah, okay, it sounds like a lot, but they’re really emphasizing the de-stress and cozy feeling and whatnot, uh… (0:17:45) Kevin: I’m interested to see how this looks like. (0:17:48) Kevin: It’s definitely not your average farming game, it doesn’t look like. (0:17:54) Kevin: Just seeing, uh… (0:17:56) Kevin: From the perspective of being these little crops and things. (0:17:59) Spencer: it gives me kind of like a not to bring a prayer again but like almost like a view of a pinata vibe like you’re caring for these vegetables as like creatures (0:18:00) Kevin: Um, but, whoop. Yeah, go ahead. (0:18:03) Kevin: Yep. Yeah, it seems like that. (0:18:15) Kevin: I didn’t play Viva Pinata, and I heard it was the greatest thing on Earth, and I missed out on it. (0:18:19) Spencer: I only played it a little bit. I just… yeah. (0:18:20) Kevin: Okay. Okay, well… (0:18:24) Kevin: Regardless, people can find out more! (0:18:28) Kevin: Uh, again, October 20th. Very, very soon. (0:18:31) Kevin: Especially for the people who are listening to this. (0:18:34) Kevin: Okay, next up, we have… (0:18:38) Kevin: Ikone Island News. (0:18:41) Kevin: We have the Friend Pass release. (0:18:45) Kevin: It is out now as of recording. (0:18:47) Kevin: And so, you can… (0:18:50) Kevin: Ah! Friends… I thought it was like a battle pass. No. (0:18:54) Kevin: It is multiplayer co-op with three of your friends. You can do it online. (0:19:00) Kevin: And… Oh, what? That’s so cool! (0:19:04) Kevin: If one… only one person has the full version, everyone can play indefinitely. (0:19:10) Kevin: Um, there’s like a demo that you can find out about. (0:19:15) Kevin: Play co-op for a few hours. (0:19:17) Kevin: Uh, two hours of play, it looks like. (0:19:19) Kevin: But, uh, if you have the whole game, everyone can just play. (0:19:22) Kevin: And you don’t have to buy it or four copies to have four people playing. (0:19:28) Kevin: Uh, that is very cool. (0:19:31) Spencer: Yeah, that’s always nice when they do some kind of like, as long as just one person owns something, you know, then everyone has access to it, at least via online, you know, like connecting to each other for multiplayer or something like that. (0:19:47) Kevin: Yeah, that is cool. There is a large list of patch notes. (0:19:55) Kevin: I invite people to look at the link because they are pretty in-depth with their patch notes. (0:20:02) Kevin: But the big new other big news is that this will be launching the full 1.0 version on November 9th of this year, (0:20:14) Spencer: All right around the corner. (0:20:14) Kevin: which will only be two or three. Yeah, two or three. (0:20:17) Kevin: That’s really impressive. Wow. What a feel-good announcement. (0:20:23) Kevin: Everyone can just play together and you not having to buy the game for everyone. (0:20:31) Kevin: That’s great. And so to remind people, IKONOI ISLAND. Let me see, I don’t remember. (0:20:38) Kevin: I talk so many games, I forget which ones are which. This one is… Why is there a shark man in this? (0:20:48) Kevin: Okay, so yeah, no, it’s very Minecraft-y. Gather resources, craft tools, build your base and whatnot. (0:20:59) Kevin: So basically very Minecraft survival type game on an island. The art is cute and there’s like a shark man. (0:21:06) Kevin: That seems cool. That’s exciting though. You know, Minecraft is… or the genre, whatever you want to call it, is great for multiplayer. (0:21:16) Kevin: So this is this. (0:21:17) Kevin: It really is exciting. (0:21:18) Kevin: And yeah, November 9th, that launches on Xbox, Steam, Epic Games, and PlayStation. (0:21:26) Kevin: Yeah, alright, there you go. (0:21:30) Kevin: Good job, Ikune Island. (0:21:32) Kevin: That actually might get me to play with multiple people. (0:21:36) Kevin: Uh, that’s so cool. (0:21:39) Kevin: Next up, we have news on… (0:21:44) Kevin: Oh, do the King of Bar Mee- (0:21:47) Kevin: simulators farming simulator 22 is that a weight? (0:21:51) Kevin: Yeah, okay 22. I thought they could wind up with the years, but I guess not I’m wrong, okay Okay, so it is An expansion okay. This is an expansion that will launch on November 14th They’re adding carrots. Why were carrots not available before? (0:22:10) Spencer: That, yeah, very odd. I had to reread that to make sure that was correct, because carrots are like the most basic crop, right? In just things, in general. You got carrots, you got like potatoes, and like wheat. (0:22:17) Kevin: Uh, in life? I can’t, like, yep, yeah, yeah, that’s really surprising, um, and it’s surprising because, like, looking, all the detail they put into these other machines they’re releasing and stuff like that, um, it’s okay, but, uh… (0:22:47) Kevin: There you go, carrots, um, they’re adding a few other things, what is it, parsnips and a few other crops, but, uh, yeah, I’m curious, yeah, more machines, crops, uh, oh, and there’s, (0:22:57) Spencer: And some more machines too. (0:23:04) Kevin: yeah, there’s new machines that specifically help with these crops, like carrots, oh my gosh, like, oh, this, this is intense, like, they have real intense machine names and stuff like that. (0:23:17) Kevin: But, uh, oh, redbeat, yep, there it is. (0:23:21) Kevin: Uh, anyways, that again is November 22nd. (0:23:24) Kevin: That is the premium expansion, uh, for farming simulator. (0:23:29) Kevin: 20-20, er, just 22. (0:23:32) Kevin: Okay, next up, ah, now this is a game I do know. (0:23:35) Kevin: We have Garden Galaxy, uh, for people unfamiliar. (0:23:40) Kevin: We did an episode on it. (0:23:41) Kevin: It is, uh, you’re building a little garden, (0:23:48) Kevin: everything’s kind of randomly generated, the items you get. (0:23:52) Kevin: Um, so it’s an interesting loop of trying to expand your item and trying to get your garden and get the items you want. (0:23:59) Kevin: Um, but, uh, they’re getting an update. (0:24:02) Kevin: I am pleased to see this game, uh, continue getting support because it is a fun game. (0:24:06) Kevin: I need to go back to it probably now because on October 16th, (0:24:10) Kevin: which means when people are listening to this, it will already be out, (0:24:14) Kevin: There is getting an update with all of the other videos. (0:24:17) Kevin: Autumn themed items, we got pumpkins, jack-o’-lanterns, (0:24:22) Kevin: your fall leaves, and whatnot. (0:24:25) Kevin: So yeah, I think that’s the first set of seasonal items they’ve done like that before. (0:24:32) Kevin: Oh, no, that’s not true, they did a summer update. (0:24:34) Kevin: Either way, that actually might get me back in because I’ve been meaning to check it out. (0:24:42) Kevin: I’m sure they’ve done a lot of patches. (0:24:44) Kevin: the 10 months it’s been out. (0:24:45) Spencer: So I’m looking at this. Are you on like an island or something or are you what exactly it’s like you said Just randomly generated (0:24:50) Kevin: So, you… yeah, so it starts off… you’re basically on a floating island or set… (0:25:01) Kevin: it’s a tile-based grid-type game, right? (0:25:05) Kevin: And so it’s just floating out in space. (0:25:08) Kevin: It’s basically like an island. (0:25:10) Spencer: Okay, hence galaxy. (0:25:11) Kevin: And you’re… yeah, yeah, that’s the name, right? (0:25:14) Kevin: Yeah, Garden Galaxy. (0:25:15) Kevin: And you’re just… you’re generating items to decorate your garden, but that includes… (0:25:20) Kevin: like, new piles of terrain and land to expand your area. (0:25:27) Kevin: So yeah, it is… it’s a fascinating little game because it’s… at least when I first played it, (0:25:28) Spencer: Ah, okay. (0:25:36) Kevin: it requires some patience. (0:25:39) Kevin: I remember calling it the most frustrating, cozy, or relaxing game I’ve ever played, (0:25:45) Kevin: because the loop of how things were generated was… (0:25:49) Kevin: » Thank you. (0:25:50) Kevin: » I recommend people do check it out because it’s only like 10 bucks and it is relaxing. At least when it wasn’t frustrating. (0:26:10) Kevin: Again, that is October 16th for the autumn update. Go get your spooky garden on and whatnot. Uh, oh god, oh no. (0:26:20) Kevin: No, this next news. I don’t like it. No, that’s why I don’t like it. Go ahead. (0:26:24) Spencer: Oh, I saw it. I’m excited. You want me to announce it? (0:26:31) Spencer: Alright, well, our next thing, Animal Crossing LEGO sets. (0:26:38) Spencer: This is an audio podcast, but I’m rubbing my hands together. (0:26:41) Kevin: Can hear it I can oh we have Okay, you’re already a Lego man, okay See that’s that’s a thing right cuz I’ve managed to not dive into Lego Like it’s it’s always been there. It’s tempted me But this is the one that’s probably gonna break me I’m I’m gonna be in (0:26:43) Spencer: If there’s one thing I spend more money on than video games, it is LEGO sets. (0:26:51) Spencer: Oh yeah, I’m looking at the Rivendell set right now. (0:27:11) Kevin: So to get more specific, there’s been rumors and leaks of this and whatnot. (0:27:15) Kevin: But we have official announcements that it will be releasing on March 2024. (0:27:21) Kevin: We have a handful of sets. (0:27:27) Kevin: They are Bunny’s Outdoor Activities, Cap’n’s Island Boat Tour, (0:27:31) Kevin: Nook’s Cranny and Rosie’s House, Isabelle’s House Visit, and Julian’s Birthday Party. (0:27:36) Spencer: So, my understanding is that these sets are also modular, this is what I’ve heard through the grapevine, and they are meant to be able to essentially create your own island as if you were actually making an island in Animal Crossing. (0:27:42) Kevin: Yes. That is correct. (0:27:50) Kevin: Yes, that is correct. They come, all the sets come on this flat base or whatever and yeah, (0:27:58) Kevin: you’ll just be able to swap the positions or interlock them. You know, LEGO your way through it and whatnot. (0:28:04) Kevin: Yeah, yeah. (0:28:04) Spencer: Yeah, I mean, they’re Legos, so, like, you know. (0:28:07) Spencer: Yes. (0:28:08) Spencer: But, uh… (0:28:10) Spencer: Which makes me feel like we can expect to see more than just what’s announced in the future. (0:28:15) Kevin: Yes, so one of the kickers the there’s minifigs right of course lego that’s one of the half the fun or whatever From what I saw they’re nothing too crazy. They all look pretty standard minifigs That look like Animal Crossing characters Okay, go ahead go ahead (0:28:26) Spencer: Yeah, now I have a gripe with these minifigs, I’m sorry, but the proportions look a little off in my opinion. (0:28:41) Spencer: When you’re playing Animal Crossing, the characters kind of look very like chibi-like and they’re very small, I guess. (0:28:47) Spencer: I mean, I guess they’re not small because your character also looks like it’s half the the size of a tree, but at the same time, everything is– (0:28:50) Kevin: Yeah. (0:28:56) Spencer: everything’s pretty trunk, you know, it’s just like you kind of have a big head, a little body, (0:29:01) Spencer: and they decided to make these regular minifigs size, so now this big head is on this kind of like elongated minifig body, and I don’t know, I think they should have gone with the shorter legs personally, or something, I just think they could have made it like half-sized minifigs. (0:29:11) Kevin: Yeah Okay I guess Yeah Well, I mean yeah, this is interesting because this is the merging of two very powerful vocal fan bases, right? (0:29:22) Spencer: I realized that would be an unpopular opinion. (0:29:39) Kevin: I will say though like I played since the original Animal Crossing right and they were even more chibi like back then they got a growth spurt (0:29:47) Spencer: Oh, for sure. (0:29:54) Kevin: So, I don’t know, maybe I’m just used to it because of that, but anyways, as for the sets, (0:30:01) Kevin: we have pricings for all of them. (0:30:05) Kevin: The most expensive one is Nook’s Cranny and the Rosy House, which is 75 bucks, which is forgiving for like, no sets, let’s say. (0:30:13) Spencer: Yeah, the LEGO sets are expensive now. (0:30:16) Spencer: So, 75 bucks for… (0:30:17) Kevin: Yeah. (0:30:19) Spencer: I mean you’re essentially getting two houses, right? (0:30:20) Kevin: Yes. More or less. (0:30:21) Spencer: Every other set is kind of more of one house, so… (0:30:24) Kevin: Yes. It’s still going to look small and I’m going to feel it’s way overpriced, but am I still going to get it? Probably. (0:30:32) Kevin: I want nookscranny. Oh, it’s not actually nookscranny. It’s one of the updated versions. It’s not the little shack. (0:30:37) Spencer: Yeah, it’s not the little shack, wow. (0:30:39) Kevin: Oh, that’s disappointing. Oh, well. (0:30:45) Kevin: But yeah, I’m really scared though, like, for myself because I’m worried. (0:30:54) Kevin: That this will be the gateway and I’m going to be buying my nookcranny set and I’m like, oh, you know what? There’s that Lego Green Hill Zone with Sonic. (0:31:03) Kevin: I could just put it right next to him, you know? Sonic could visit the cranny if I wanted to. (0:31:10) Spencer: You just, you know though, like in a year from now, they’re gonna have some, I’m gonna say almost $200 museum set, and it’s gonna have blathers, and it’s gonna have different sections of the museum, and little animals that you can put in there, little octopus, (0:31:23) Kevin: No! (0:31:29) Spencer: a little fish, a little frog, you know it’s in the pipeline. (0:31:33) Kevin: Why did you- I didn’t think about that. Why did you jinx me like this? (0:31:37) Kevin: No! That’s gonna be the best one! (0:31:40) Kevin: No! (0:31:41) Kevin: We don’t have Town Hall either. That one’s gonna be big. (0:31:41) Spencer: They go, “If it’s not in the pipeline, come hire me.” (0:31:44) Spencer: Ugh, yeah, town hall. (0:31:47) Kevin: Oh, it’s gonna hurt me. Okay. (0:31:50) Kevin: But, this is just the tip of the iceberg, because we’re talking Animal Crossing, right? (0:31:55) Kevin: There is very much room for the Animal Crossing blind bag minifigs or whatever. (0:32:01) Kevin: Um, or even furniture set. (0:32:03) Kevin: Animal Crossing has a lot of items, so I could easily dip into that. (0:32:07) Spencer: Yeah, everything in Animal Crossing could be a blind bag for this set. (0:32:08) Kevin: Right? And that terrorized me? (0:32:12) Spencer: It is a little, yeah. (0:32:15) Kevin: Oh, we don’t have a K.K. (0:32:39) Kevin: So yeah, stay tuned to see my demise as I finally dive into the LEGO world, and it all ends for me. (0:32:48) Kevin: All right, so again, that is 2024, still a few months before the end of that. (0:32:55) Kevin: Okay, you know what, I have a question for you. You say you’re into LEGO, (0:32:57) Kevin: I don’t know how hardcore you are, but do LEGOs run out of stock easily? (0:33:04) Spencer: Hear me sigh as I say that, um, trying to think. (0:33:11) Spencer: So in the past I used to just, you know, back, back in the day, you know, when they were still doing kind of just their, their own sets, which they still do. (0:33:20) Spencer: I know people complain that they have like too many licensed sets now, but they have plenty of unlicensed or, you know, only Lego sets. (0:33:29) Spencer: Um, you know, I kind of just got what was there. (0:33:32) Spencer: I was never particularly looking for any kind of (0:33:34) Spencer: set. There was this Mars like Mars set that they had that I really enjoyed that I did try to get like a couple of different sets from but nothing like you know going out of my way and stuff with the advent of the internet though and being able to look all this stuff up like I am now as an adult. There are definitely sets that do you know do just disappear because they’ve sold out of them or they just stop making them. I can’t imagine them doing this with the (0:33:46) Kevin: Okay. (0:33:48) Kevin: Yeah. (0:34:04) Spencer: Animal Crossing set. You know I got to imagine that this is something that they’re planning to continue to release you know new sets for and keep updating with the old sets. For instance the Mario sets I think you can still get a lot of those you know at least if you look you might have to look a little bit harder but they’re generally like available. The set that I totally missed out on and just kick myself every time I think about it is they had a Voltron set and it came with all the different all different parts and they all like you know they all transformed into Voltron together and stuff. Yes it was and I saw that and I was like one day I’ll get it and then I just waited too long and that’s what happens but. (0:34:15) Kevin: Okay. (0:34:16) Kevin: Okay. (0:34:20) Kevin: Sure. (0:34:40) Kevin: You could, in fact, form the head. (0:34:52) Kevin: Oh, I know that feeling um well, i’m just worried because Like I said, I don’t know how the inventory issues are dealt with um in lego, but They’re drawing in the animal crossing nintendo crowd, right? We look what happened with van gogh Oh, come on Look what happened with Remember when julian was a commodity or not julian. Whatever his name was the Pat with the heterochromia (0:35:21) Spencer: Oh, yeah, yeah. (0:35:23) Kevin: And when new horizons drop If anyone could make this is the inventory problem, it would be these fans. Um, but oh boy, here we go uh but maybe the well the price isn’t even the worst for all of them, but uh We’ll see. Um I just want them to bring back by onical. That’s the only lego thing I ever really got those were cool little robot dudes (0:35:48) Spencer: Hmm, interesting. I was somewhat into Bionicle. I had quite a few, but not as much as the regular sets. (0:35:58) Kevin: All right, um, two other pieces of news album and put them on here, (0:36:04) Kevin: but I do want to mention them. (0:36:06) Kevin: I hope I, I listened to the last episode, but I hope I’m not repeating anything. (0:36:10) Kevin: Um, there have been patches dropped both for Meneko’s night market and paleo pines. (0:36:16) Kevin: Uh, last two, well, the last game I covered and the one we’re covering today, (0:36:20) Kevin: um, the Meneko’s night market. (0:36:23) Kevin: I don’t know all the details, but I’m very thankful that they’ve got these patches (0:36:28) Kevin: out quickly and, uh, and they’re already available for switch and steam versions. (0:36:34) Kevin: Um, I hope Al will find the links and maybe put them in the show notes, (0:36:39) Kevin: but, uh, go check them out. (0:36:41) Kevin: I will possibly fire up Meneko’s night market again, see how much it’s improved. (0:36:45) Kevin: Um, because I very much liked that game, just hoping for few fixes and well, (0:36:50) Kevin: they roll some out, uh, paleo pines. (0:36:53) Kevin: I read the patch notes and it’s fascinating. (0:36:57) Kevin: Uh, at least one of the items is fascinating. (0:36:59) Kevin: In general, they just kind of, you know, polished up a few edges and, and did nice things. (0:37:05) Kevin: No major updates. (0:37:06) Kevin: Um, but, uh, with that said, let’s, let’s just get on into it. (0:37:13) Kevin: Uh, let’s talk about paleo pines. (0:37:14) Spencer: Yes, paleopines. (0:37:15) Kevin: Okay. (0:37:18) Kevin: So this is available on steam switch. (0:37:22) Kevin: I don’t know what else it’s available on. (0:37:23) Spencer: I think it’s available on everything. (0:37:24) Kevin: Uh, is it? (0:37:27) Kevin: Okay. (0:37:27) Kevin: Um. (0:37:28) Kevin: So, for people who don’t know, the elevator pitch is pretty simple. (0:37:33) Kevin: It’s farming, but you have dinosaurs. (0:37:35) Kevin: Um, it’s what’s on the box, and it’s what you get. (0:37:38) Kevin: Um. (0:37:39) Spencer: It’s… exactly what you get. (0:37:39) Kevin: Yup. (0:37:44) Kevin: Alright, so let’s, before we get into the nitty gritty, what are your overall thoughts? (0:37:51) Spencer: My overall thoughts and opinions, it’s good to start off with this because I’m someone that kind of complains about things even if I like them. So I enjoyed this game. I did have a thoroughly good time myself playing this game. There are plenty of things I would change about it but ultimately this is probably a game I will come back to I might even play it after we stop talking to be quite honest. (0:38:14) Kevin: Okay, I probably will see [laugh] (0:38:17) Spencer: yeah the last episode I was on (0:38:21) Spencer: I talked about parkasaurus I don’t think I’ve touched that game since we stopped talking about it yeah but this game this game was definitely enjoyable it’s got a lot of charm you know using the dinosaurs for farming is different I guess I mean I’m not as big of a farming game player has you know you guys are so maybe this is just exactly the same you just skinned as dinosaurs but it was fun (0:38:25) Kevin: Hahaha, well there you go. (0:38:39) Kevin: » Yes, right, yeah, yep. (0:38:51) Spencer: it has a collection element to it very much kind of like Pokemon or something like that you know so it scratches a lot of different itches for a lot of different people and I feel like you can get yourself lost without necessarily doing the main kind of quest so to speak yeah there are missions that you do too in this game and you know I spent plenty of time just fumbling around doing my own thing. (0:38:57) Kevin: - Yeah. (0:39:21) Spencer: You know, ultimately that’s kind of what I like in games like this, so yeah, I had a great time playing it, great, great might be a little exaggerating, so yeah, what did you think? (0:39:30) Kevin: Mm-hmm, okay All right, um So overall it’s a definite thumbs up and recommend for me This is hard for me because I love dinosaurs very much I Was a dinosaur kid growing up. I watched Jurassic Park when I was little dinosaurs were my Pokemon before Pokemon and (0:39:57) Kevin: And so, obviously I’m heavily biased toward a game that… (0:40:00) Kevin: …explores that, but as someone who is relatively well-versed in farming games, I still think it’s enjoyable. (0:40:11) Kevin: All the points you made, I agree with. (0:40:15) Kevin: So, let’s get into the… (0:40:19) Kevin: But, overall though, I would recommend this to people to try out. (0:40:23) Kevin: If you enjoy farming games, I think there’s a good chance you’ll enjoy this. (0:40:27) Kevin: And if you enjoy dinosaurs, you will probably also- (0:40:30) Kevin: enjoy this. (0:40:31) Spencer: you might even enjoy it even more than if you were just a farming game person quite honestly. (0:40:32) Kevin: I actually agree, yes, because I do think the dinosaurs are done really well. (0:40:40) Kevin: Um, but okay, let’s start into this specific. (0:40:43) Kevin: So, I have three sections here. (0:40:48) Kevin: The bad, the good, and the ugly. (0:40:50) Spencer: OK. (0:40:51) Kevin: So let’s start with the bad. What complaints do you have? (0:40:51) Spencer: Complaints. (0:40:56) Spencer: So the biggest thing– my complaints are small things that add up, right? (0:41:04) Spencer: Accessing things. (0:41:05) Spencer: For instance, if you’re on a mounted dinosaur, (0:41:09) Spencer: for whatever reason– unless I’m just horrible at this game– (0:41:12) Spencer: you cannot access or interact with things other than the dinosaur’s interaction. (0:41:18) Spencer: So let’s say you start off with the parasaur. (0:41:20) Spencer: That’s just your dinosaur that you start off with. (0:41:21) Kevin: Right? (0:41:23) Kevin: Right (0:41:23) Spencer: And each dinosaur has a skill. (0:41:27) Spencer: They can clear debris, which is what the parasaur can do. (0:41:30) Spencer: And it can sprint. Two actions. (0:41:32) Spencer: But if you’re not doing that, you can’t interact with anything else. (0:41:38) Spencer: If you want to talk to someone, you have to get off your dinosaur. (0:41:41) Spencer: If you want to access your storage, you have to get off your dinosaur. (0:41:44) Spencer: Which just blows me away. I was like, (0:41:46) Spencer: “Come on, the person’s right there. Just let me talk to them. (0:41:48) Spencer: to them. Why do I have to get off my dinosaur? (0:41:49) Kevin: Yep, yep, absolutely, um Yeah, I I want to put just a little side note, um since we’re getting into it, uh Spencer and I are dinosaurs or nerds so we will be using dinosaur names Apologies if you if you listener might not be familiar. I invite you to look them up because dinosaurs are cool (0:41:50) Spencer: So, that would be one thing I would, you know, developers, if you’re listening, patch that, please. (0:42:17) Spencer: Indeed, and then you’ll see the name and then you’ll be like, “How do I pronounce that?” (0:42:21) Spencer: And quite honestly, we probably won’t pronounce all of them right, but it’s fun and trying. (0:42:25) Kevin: yep yes okay but um but yes that’s that’s a good point um that is annoying how you can’t talk to someone uh or gather certain points gather certain materials off foraging points and whatnot while on a dinosaur uh at the very yeah no judge say that I can kind of understand the the foraging part maybe you’re high up on a t-rex but come on (0:42:44) Spencer: That’s correct, because some… Oh, sorry, go ahead. (0:42:55) Kevin: can talk to someone while mounted on a t-rex I can say hey (0:42:59) Spencer: Yeah, I don’t really understand the decision, to be quite honest. (0:43:05) Kevin: Yeah, well, there’s a few things I don’t 100% understand, like, so there’s a handful of little things. I don’t know if they all add up to me something major, but like, one of my biggest gripes is inventory stuff. You can get big numbers of items, right? Like, you can get hundreds and hundreds of pieces of wood. (0:43:28) Kevin: Well, when you want to move between your bag and your storage or whatever, you don’t have the option of saying, “Okay, take out…” (0:43:35) Kevin: …20 or 30. You can only do the entire amount or half of it. And that’s frustrating. (0:43:38) Spencer: Yes, I was gonna ask this, I wasn’t sure if I was just like, not getting- (0:43:44) Spencer: Was there a tutorial I missed? Or if this is like, you know, just, but yeah, it’s only stacks, right? (0:43:47) Kevin: nope, or at least, I missed it too then. (0:43:51) Kevin: Yeah, you can, and what’s odd is, it exists because when you sell things at the trader or whatever, (0:43:52) Spencer: Like, I was like- (0:43:57) Kevin: you can select exactly how many you want to sell. (0:44:01) Kevin: But that’s the only time. (0:44:02) Spencer: Yeah, no, but then it’s and it gets even more deep than that because it’s Inventory management from your storage to inventory is only stacks, right? So like you have 300 wood in your storage and then you click on it and it’ll put all 300 in there but in stacks of a hundred and then now you have to go back in return 200 stacks, so you only have one stack and (0:44:23) Kevin: Yup, yup, exactly. (0:44:29) Spencer: Then when you go to sell that wood, here’s what get (0:44:32) Spencer: me. You go to sell that wood, and then you can select individually. You can select like I only sell two wood, right? And they do have a button for min and max. So like I want to sell the whole stack of wood, but they don’t have a button to increment it in tens. Also, which I feel like is something like, yeah, that really, that whole thing needs a lot of work. (0:44:56) Kevin: Yeah, it is wild and again, there’s even the trading like said it’s still missing that stacks of 10 which would be nice But the fact that that’s the only place where you can do Individual counts of whatnot. It’s baffling to me Let’s see what what other little complaints can you think of? (0:45:20) Spencer: So, I don’t know if this would be a little complaint. (0:45:25) Spencer: I don’t know where this falls on your good, bad, and ugly. (0:45:25) Kevin: Hehe. (0:45:29) Spencer: I will say there were a lot of things I was finding out about the game. (0:45:34) Spencer: I didn’t get, I’ll be honest, I didn’t get like probably end game, is there an end game? (0:45:39) Spencer: I don’t really know. (0:45:41) Kevin: I think there is. I mean, there’s the main quest. You have to find where the rest of the parasaurs are. (0:45:42) Spencer: There is, right? (0:45:44) Spencer: Yeah. (0:45:45) Spencer: Yeah. (0:45:46) Spencer: Yeah, you know, like I said earlier, I kind of… (0:45:50) Spencer: just ended up doing my own thing, which is, you know, it is what it is. (0:45:52) Kevin: Yeah. (0:45:53) Kevin: Uh huh. (0:45:55) Spencer: That’s kind of how it’s designed in the game. (0:45:57) Spencer: But so there’s a lot of things that I feel like I was finding out kind of on my own without… (0:46:06) Spencer: that would have been better maybe explained, you know, like I’ll be honest. (0:46:12) Spencer: I didn’t realize that holding what was the RZ was sprint for some of those dinosaurs. (0:46:18) Spencer: I was puttin’ around that whole area, and it was taking me forever. (0:46:18) Kevin: Yep Yeah, ha ha ha ha oh no Oh No Um, oh, that’s raw. I agree with you Um, this is a complaint I have about many games because I think it’s a critical thing to be clear and explain yourself well and whatnot Um, I am struggling to think of I had a specific example, but I can’t think of it right now (0:46:23) Spencer: It would take like a half day just to get across the place. (0:46:47) Kevin: The sprinting thing there is a (0:46:48) Kevin: prompt on the bottom of the screen, but if you don’t pay it, they don’t call it out or anything. (0:46:52) Kevin: So it’s easy to miss, because there’s other prompts that are there, (0:46:56) Kevin: and the sprinting prompt is added when you’re on the right dinosaur, (0:47:00) Kevin: but it’s not there when you’re not on it, so it’s easily missable. (0:47:04) Kevin: possible. (0:47:06) Spencer: Oh, and so here’s the thing with the sprinting thing, too. (0:47:12) Spencer: If you click on, I believe it’s just R, (0:47:15) Spencer: your character will auto run in that direction. (0:47:16) Kevin: Wait, what? (0:47:17) Kevin: I didn’t know that! (0:47:19) Kevin: She- what?! (0:47:19) Spencer: Yes, there’s an auto run button. (0:47:21) Kevin: Oh my goodness. (0:47:22) Spencer: So I was clicking auto run, and I was thinking it was the sprint half the time. (0:47:22) Kevin: Oh, there you go. (0:47:24) Kevin: Oh, case in point. (0:47:32) Spencer: And I was like, this doesn’t look any faster. (0:47:35) Spencer: I guess I don’t need to hold the button. (0:47:36) Spencer: I feel like there’s a lot of things that get fed to you at either inopportune moments or just as far as information goes. (0:47:50) Spencer: You’re just kind of like, “Huh, I could have used that information like three days ago.” (0:47:54) Kevin: Yup, there was oh the So there is I remember my example. Um, there is a help option in the pause menu and it does have some tutorials in there It doesn’t really let you know that they’re there Which is a shame because a number of them are very helpful. They explain how to use your tools The one I wanted to mentioned was the soil we’ll get into it into it in a bit but essentially how to properly fertilize and till the soil and stuff like that. (0:48:29) Kevin: That information, I didn’t realize how it worked until I happened to find it in the tutorial items in the help menu. (0:48:37) Kevin: It would have been nice if that had been called out earlier. (0:48:40) Spencer: It’s funny that you mention the soil because it wasn’t until only the other day that I was, again, I was just thumbing through the profiles of the vegetables and I was like, (0:48:51) Spencer: “Huh, they really want you to crop rotate in this game, don’t they?” (0:48:53) Kevin: Yep, yep. (0:48:55) Spencer: That would have been useful to know before I planted tons of vegetables in random areas. (0:49:01) Kevin: Yep, um, absolutely. (0:49:04) Kevin: Um, so yeah, that is a complaint, like I said, I have about many games, just lack of clarity or not explaining things well. (0:49:12) Kevin: Uh, one hopefully that can get updated because that’s not impossible to fix. (0:49:17) Kevin: Just add some more prompts at certain points, so. (0:49:19) Spencer: No. (0:49:19) Spencer: Yeah, and I will give them credit, right? (0:49:20) Kevin: Fingers crossed we get those patches. (0:49:25) Spencer: Like some games you sit through tutorials and they are like, you know, some omnipotent someone or other talking at you going, “Hit A to use the ox.” (0:49:31) Kevin: Yep, yep Yep Yeah, it does it is not very handhold be not at all you Yeah, that’s One of the pros in my book that it doesn’t really put any pressure on you in almost any way (0:49:35) Spencer: You know, and then you’re like, “Okay, like I get it.” (0:49:37) Spencer: And then you have to sit there for like an hour. (0:49:39) Spencer: Right? (0:49:40) Spencer: This game really does kind of let you play the game almost right away. (0:49:58) Kevin: And I’ll get into that later when we talk about quests I think in the more (0:50:01) Kevin: detail but one final item I wanted to add in the bad list well I guess this kind of goes in the ugly I’m not the biggest fan of the art style of the game so okay well let me be more specific I like the dinosaurs the dinosaurs look great they’re they’re very cutesy and the way they’re presented in this game where people are just hanging out they’re your pals and working with them (0:50:16) Spencer: Really? (0:50:31) Kevin: and they live on your farm they’re not intimidating or scary I think that was managed really well I think that works well and I think it’s fantastic my part problem is the people right the people also have this very cutesy art style and it’s this might just be a very personal thing but it is really (0:50:48) Spencer: Okay, okay. (0:51:01) Kevin: looks like a Disney Junior show basically that’s the way I describe it in fact I watch Bluey right so I’ve seen other ads for Disney Junior shows there is one actually called Dino Ranch and it looks a lot like this yeah (0:51:07) Spencer: Yeah, I mean (0:51:18) Spencer: Yeah, the people are, I mean, it’s an art style, that’s for sure. (0:51:24) Spencer: It’s a design choice that they made. (0:51:27) Kevin: Yeah, and everything is very saccharine, like very… (0:51:31) Kevin: Happy… (0:51:33) Kevin: No one gets angry or there’s big problems or anything like that. (0:51:38) Kevin: There’s a character who says “zippity” and it just feels very kid show… (0:51:42) Kevin: Umm… (0:51:47) Spencer: Yeah, well, eh. So there’s a couple characters. One that stood out to me as Pippin. (0:51:54) Spencer: He does kind of get a little grumpy. (0:51:54) Kevin: Yeah They they’re actually in be non-binary Which I just like a thumbs up. That’s all right. No, but I just thumbs up to the Devs for throwing that in there right and I’ll have Pippin Pippin’s a little bit of a gremlin Go ahead Oh, yeah, yeah, I forgot about that that. (0:51:57) Spencer: Oh, sorry. (0:52:10) Spencer: Ah, yeah, but they get a little like, onry about things if you ask them to make like a, they make these, yeah, they make these like treats that, that’s basically how you tame the dinosaurs and they have like very specific, “Oh, it’s my family recipe, like don’t, we don’t screw with it” and then you ask them to make other treats and then they kind of get all upset about it instead of like, “Ah, fine, take your, take your

Al and Kev talk about Mineko's Night Market Also, we talk about Stardew Valley 1.6, the recently teased Lord of the Rings cottagecore game, and a number of recent release date announcements. Timings 00:00:00: Theme Tune 00:00:30: Intro 00:02:42: What Have We Been Up To 00:15:56: News 00:45:50: Mineko’s Night Market 01:32:52: Outro Links Mineko’s Night Market Release Dates Mineko Plush Coral Island PS5 Critter Crops Delay Sun Down Survivors Update Orange Season Update Travellers Rest Update To Pixelia Kickstarter Stardew Valley 1.6 Sneak Peek Stardew Valley Joja Parrot Tales of the Shire Teaser Tales of the Shire Site Mineko’s Night Market Contact Al on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheScotBot Al on Mastodon: https://mastodon.scot/@TheScotBot Email Us: https://harvestseason.club/contact/ Transcript (0:00:30) Al: Hello farmers and welcome to another episode of the harvest season. My name is Al And I am playing the neko’s night market as we speak Fantastic we are gonna have so much to talk about this game. I think it’s gonna be (0:00:36) Kevin: I’m Kevin. (0:00:37) Kevin: Um, excuse me, I believe that is Wormburger’s Night Market? (0:00:47) Kevin: Uh, you think the game that’s been in development for eight years and has been my most anticipated game of like two years running? [laughs] (0:01:00) Al: Funny because like yeah, so like this podcast I’ve been going for like nearly five years now, right? (0:01:04) Al: And this game had already been announced four years before the podcast started So quite a while Did neko just poop on the ground It just just sat on the ground and stood up and then it was a garden block (0:01:12) Kevin: 2015 baby that’s that’s wild like I don’t I didn’t (0:01:25) Kevin: Yeah, if that’s possible, yeah. (0:01:26) Al: I think Niko just pooped on the ground. (0:01:30) Al: To give me somewhere to plant, all right. Well let’s see what happens with that. (0:01:34) Al: We’re gonna talk about the Niko’s Night Market, because somehow we managed to play this game in the five days since it came out. (0:01:43) Al: Yeah, we’re gonna talk about it. Before that, we’ve got a bunch of news to talk about. (0:01:43) Kevin: Yeah, but I played a lot so I have things to talk about (0:01:57) Al: there’s stuff we need to talk about, there’s stuff we definitely need to talk about. (0:01:58) Kevin: Is there I don’t I don’t I don’t know Not really I like going in blind [laugh] (0:02:00) Al: Have you not looked through the news? (0:02:02) Al: Oh Kevin, right, that’s fine, let’s go in blind. (0:02:05) Al: Most of it is pretty small, pretty quick, still good, but we’ve got two really chunky bits of news at the end that we need to talk about. (0:02:11) Kevin: Wait, we haven’t talked about that one yet? (0:02:13) Al: We have not talked about that yet. (0:02:14) Kevin: I- (0:02:14) Kevin: Oh my gosh, okay, we do have things to talk about, all right. (0:02:17) Al: Yep, we have big stuff to talk about. (0:02:20) Kevin: I know- I like how you know exactly what I’m looking at. (0:02:22) Al: Well, of course, of course I know. (0:02:26) Al: So we’ve recorded the last episode, I think like the day before that news came out. (0:02:30) Al: Um, was it me and Cody? I think it was. Uh, we, we’d recorded really early that week and then they came out with our news and that was really frustrating. So anyway. (0:02:31) Kevin: was it okay yes yes I didn’t know it was it good good (0:02:39) Al: Um, uh, first of all, though, Kevin, what have you been up to? (0:02:46) Kevin: Um, okay, so in the Good good old me decided to do a whole bunch of things before Monneko dropped so you know the Pokemon DLC has been out for a minute, there’s been a lot of talk and So I finally gave in and I started playing Pokemon, but I wanted to play a good one. So I’m playing sword and shield I started a nuzlocke (0:03:22) Kevin: And it’s it’s a fun one to nuzlock through Because there’s so many a wide variety of encounters and and It’s surprisingly challenging at times. There’s there’s some heavy hitters in the game One going back to that Jen Like all all joking aside I I This is a subjective opinion, but I think it looks better (0:03:31) Al: Mmm, yes. (0:03:52) Kevin: And then scarlet violet like maybe not technically there’s probably It’s… (0:03:54) Al: I mean, I don’t think I disagree with that. I mean, I’m definitely one of the Scarlet and Violet enjoyers and defenders, but I don’t think that as a game it looks better than Sword and Shield. Definitely not. But I think personally that’s generally a problem with open world games. I don’t think that any of them look amazing. Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom have some moments where you’re like, “Wow.” But those are very few (0:04:09) Kevin: Yeah yeah. (0:04:19) Kevin: Yeah. (0:04:20) Kevin: Yes. (0:04:24) Kevin: You’re- you’re ner- yep, you’re right. (0:04:24) Al: and most of the time it’s just the same rocks and grass again. I think that is just a problem with them. So yes, I agree. (0:04:29) Kevin: Yeah. (0:04:31) Kevin: That’s fair. Yeah, no, that’s- that’s- I think that’s accurate. (0:04:35) Kevin: Um, so yeah, it is an uphill battle, I think, in that sense for Scarlet Violet, but… (0:04:41) Kevin: Even stuff like just the color palettes, I think they really, really pop in, uh, Sword and Shield. (0:04:43) Al: Oh yeah, especially Balonia. Amazing, amazing town. Just gorgeous, love it. (0:04:46) Kevin: Um… (0:04:50) Kevin: Yeah, yeah, the neon mushroom town, it’s awesome, yep, yep. (0:04:58) Kevin: And also one other comment, just like, again, looking back. (0:05:02) Kevin: The gym battles are just so good in Sword and Shield, (0:05:09) Kevin: like just this whole spectacle of a stadium battle and the chanting, (0:05:11) Al: Oh, yes. Yeah, definitely. The music. (0:05:15) Kevin: which, you know, actually fits in on like Scarlet Violet. (0:05:20) Kevin: It’s so bombastic and thrilling, and again, (0:05:25) Kevin: just comparing to Scarlet Violet, like, because of the freedom, (0:05:30) Kevin: I don’t know, they just, it wasn’t as memorable maybe, but again, (0:05:35) Kevin: that’s something subjective, but point B, ultimately, (0:05:38) Kevin: Sword and Shield is still really good, really fun, (0:05:41) Kevin: and I’m enjoying going through one of those luck. (0:05:44) Kevin: Well, I was before Monetco dropped, um, aside from that, (0:05:49) Kevin: I have had a big fighting game, Inch, um, so I dusted off a game called Skullgirls! (0:05:56) Kevin: Um, are you familiar with this at all, Al? (0:05:58) Kevin: Okay, so Skullgirls was originally released in 2013-2014, (0:06:07) Kevin: and they are still developing new stuff for it. Um, not a sequel, like the same game. (0:06:14) Kevin: It’s wild, um, it was, uh, it’s no- (0:06:19) Kevin: notable in the fighting game community for a couple of reasons. (0:06:23) Kevin: One, I mean, it’s a good game, for fighting game reasons, um, (0:06:26) Kevin: but aside from that, um, it’s all hand-drawn art, so it looks really good. (0:06:32) Kevin: Um, it has like a very stylistic art deco thing going on with a lot of its environments and settings. (0:06:39) Kevin: Um, and as the name implies, Skullgirls, um, at least originally, the original eight, (0:06:46) Kevin: I believe we’re all female fighters, um, which was you know, obviously not the norm in gaming in general, right? (0:06:54) Kevin: Um, it’s an all female cast, um, and they’ve done rounds of DLCs since then. (0:07:00) Kevin: Um, I think it’s going to be up to 18 by the end of this year. (0:07:04) Kevin: Um, I think there’s two males, but the rest are all females. (0:07:10) Kevin: Um, well, I mean, there’s a robot female and an alien monster thing. (0:07:16) Kevin: Um, but so, you know, um, take that how you will. (0:07:20) Kevin: Uh, it’s, it’s dynamic. (0:07:22) Kevin: It’s fun. (0:07:22) Kevin: It’s like not even fighting game or not. (0:07:26) Kevin: It’s, it’s just very good writing comical and then vibrant. (0:07:31) Kevin: Um, so yeah, skull girls to anyone who enjoys fighting games. (0:07:34) Kevin: That’s a hearty recommendation. (0:07:36) Kevin: It’s basically out on anything and everything. (0:07:38) Kevin: Um, uh, but, uh, aside from, yeah, so those were the two things I did. (0:07:42) Kevin: And then, uh, Meneco Wednesday came and it’s been all Meneco since then. (0:07:47) Kevin: What about you? (0:07:50) Al: Yeah, well, I mean, I think basically Maneko is the only game I’ve been playing this week. (0:07:56) Al: Maneko, Maneko, Maneko. (0:07:59) Al: I did play some more Pokémon, so I think I got my… (0:08:03) Al: I can’t remember where I was when we last talked, or when I last said it on the podcast, (0:08:08) Al: but I have done… (0:08:10) Al: I’ve completed the DLC on both games. (0:08:14) Al: I decided just to do… (0:08:16) Al: So my scarlet was like basically I hadn’t done anything in it. (0:08:20) Al: So I did the DLC without having done any of the badges. (0:08:23) Al: And then I was like, I’m just going to do all the badges. (0:08:26) Al: So I just did everything on that one. (0:08:27) Al: So I’ve now completed that. (0:08:27) Kevin: Right at least it’s fast to do it unlike other Pokemon games you can just knock them out (0:08:29) Al: And then, yeah, certainly once you’ve got everything. (0:08:36) Al: And then what else did I do? (0:08:39) Al: I did the DLC on my scarlet, my violet as well. (0:08:43) Al: And I completed the decks on that. (0:08:46) Al: And there’s a couple of side quests as well in the DLC. (0:08:49) Al: I did those as well. (0:08:50) Al: And yeah, just a bunch of Pokemon stuff in there. (0:08:56) Kevin: Have you- have you not gotten a bit tired of Scarlet Violet after doing it like three four times? (0:09:03) Al: times, yeah. I mean the story, yeah, sure, right? Like, the story bit is not fun. I still enjoy playing those games. Like, I still enjoy the core loop of those games. I still enjoy collecting Pokémon, blah, blah, blah. I think I have decided that I’m not going to do the new Professor Oak challenge that I suggested. I think that’s probably going a bit far. And if I want to do a Professor Oak challenge. (0:09:30) Kevin: until the second DLC drops. (0:09:33) Al: Well, I was going to wait until that because if you’re going to do it, then do it all the way, right? (0:09:39) Al: But then I was like, actually, if I want to do it, there’s so many games I haven’t done a Professor Oak challenge of, (0:09:43) Al: just do another one. (0:09:45) Al: I’m thinking about maybe doing Legends Arceus 1, for example, which could be fun, (0:09:53) Al: because I don’t have a Legends Arceus save file just now. (0:09:56) Al: I was thinking when you were talking about Nuzlockes, maybe it would be interesting as a Nuzlock, (0:10:03) Al: because obviously you’re not using Pokemon, right? (0:10:05) Al: So they’re not going to die, but you can die in that game. (0:10:07) Al: You can get knocked out in that game. (0:10:09) Kevin: Oh. (0:10:09) Al: So doing like a no death Arceus run, that could be interesting. (0:10:10) Kevin: No. (0:10:16) Al: Yeah, that’s probably about games. (0:10:19) Al: I mean, Pokemon Go, obviously, but that’s probably about it with games. (0:10:23) Al: I have, however, been watching a couple of things. (0:10:25) Al: I’ve been watching X-Men 92 and the run-up to the new X-Men 97 coming out next year. (0:10:30) Al: And I. (0:10:30) Kevin: Alright, how’s that been? (0:10:33) Al: It’s it’s good fun. I’m surprised at how like quickly and succinctly they’re getting through X-Men story lines like Like in the first season they do like like five or six big X-Men stories Like just that’s it. Those ones are done now and you’re like, oh my word, right? Wow, that was fast Yeah Well, it’s (0:10:50) Kevin: Yeah, this was prime 90s Saturday morning cartoon stuff, so like, there’s no time for plots or build up. (0:10:58) Kevin: Go do your enemy of the week. (0:11:01) Al: That’s the thing and then there’s no (0:11:01) Kevin: You got toys to sell, man! (0:11:03) Al: There’s no filler episodes that are all action all the time So it will be interesting to see where they go because there’s still four seasons to go Just I’ve just finished the first season. So I’ve got four more to go and I’m like I feel like they’re running out of stories by now Although I do believe there is a crossover with the 90s spider-man as well that I’ll need to watch at some point Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know I know but that’s my I need to watch that as well right because it’s a crossover (0:11:03) Kevin: The- (0:11:20) Kevin: There is, but that is under the spine. (0:11:31) Kevin: Yeah, yeah, um, yeah, I If I assure you it does not matter Well, good luck with that because I’m sure it didn’t matter to the writers or whatever I will I will say like I (0:11:33) Al: I haven’t figured out where it lies in the timeline. (0:11:37) Al: I know it doesn’t matter. I know. I know it doesn’t matter, Kevin, but it matters to me. (0:11:56) Kevin: Was still pretty young when that X-Men first aired so I watched some of it (0:12:00) Al: Yes, in 1992, yes. (0:12:01) Kevin: but Yes, you know the year I was born I might be older than me So I didn’t watch it I Missed the boat a little on that one. I didn’t I watched it but just not like everything right but it’s still very much like many people was very iconic informative in my What I think of the X-Men right like that’s the theme the colors all the looks (0:12:05) Al: I was also quite young. (0:12:31) Kevin: It’s still my favorite beast of all time Yeah, but good stuff good stuff (0:12:40) Al: Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. (0:12:41) Al: And then I also watched for the first time Scott Pilgrim versus the World, (0:12:46) Al: the film that is, the live action films. (0:12:46) Kevin: Okay, I have not watched this tell me tell me Wait we’re talking the live-action right? Yes. Yes. Okay, cuz the animated one’s not out yet Yes, okay. Yes, that’s right. Okay Okay, I hear a lot of love for this movie thing (0:12:48) Al: I thought it was really good. (0:12:50) Al: I think it does a good job. (0:12:52) Al: Like, obviously live action. (0:12:53) Al: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. (0:12:55) Al: The animated one, it’s not, it’s not a, yeah, and it’s a series, I believe. (0:12:58) Al: It’s not a film. (0:13:00) Al: But so like. (0:13:02) Al: I think, I think, yeah, so I think a lot of people like it and a lot of people (0:13:10) Al: thought it was fine. (0:13:11) Al: I will say that live action is difficult to do, like, a good kind of comic bookie style film, like most, most live action comic book stuff doesn’t try and be comic bookie, right? (0:13:25) Al: But Scott Pilgrim definitely does. (0:13:29) Al: And I think they did it really well. (0:13:31) Al: I think it works like that. (0:13:32) Al: Like you, it definitely feels like a comic book film. (0:13:35) Al: It’s like, you know how Into the Spider-Verse feels like a comic book film. (0:13:40) Kevin: Yes. (0:13:40) Al: It’s not live action, but it feels comic bookie, whereas all the other ones really just feel like superhero stuff, right? (0:13:40) Kevin: Yes. (0:13:43) Kevin: Yes, yes, I know. (0:13:46) Al: It’s, it, it feels like that. (0:13:48) Al: It feels, it feels like they wanted it to feel like a comic book. (0:13:52) Al: And I think it works really well. (0:13:54) Al: I think there are a few things in the story that feel a bit odd, but that just might be me being a bit weird around it. (0:14:01) Al: I’m not sure whether it’s, because I’ve not, I’ve not read the original comic run of this, right? (0:14:07) Al: So I don’t know whether it tells it some of the bits in it. (0:14:10) Al: In a better way, or whether I’m just kind of being a bit weird with it. I don’t know. (0:14:11) Kevin: Mm-hmm Yeah, okay. All right, that’s cool Yeah, I might watch it just speak for the animated series because the animated series looks very impressive (0:14:15) Al: But I enjoyed it. It was good. (0:14:25) Al: Yes Well, that was the other thing that was the other reason why I was watching it I was like, I know I want to watch this at some point You know what why not now, you know before the animated series comes out would be a good idea (0:14:35) Kevin: Yep, yep, all right, that’s good. (0:14:43) Al: I mean bits and pieces here and there. I’m about to start the newest series of Star Trek Strange. (0:14:56) Al: There’s a lot to watch. What can I say? Have you been watching Ahsoka? Of course, as well. (0:15:01) Al: I’ve been watching Ahsoka, which I’ve been enjoying. And Loki starts this week. (0:15:07) Kevin: Oh, I i’ve got to catch up on stuff before I watch loki like I mean like the required reading. I don’t watch ant man No, I don’t think so either ant man Yes Yes, i’ve watched the original ones. I watch one division watch loki season one. So just ant man Um, but I am going to do it because yeah, I do I do too which really means yeah I just need to watch ant man, um, which uh, but i’m excited for because it looks good. Um (0:15:12) Al: I don’t think there’s a lot of required reading. (0:15:16) Al: Yeah, I’d say Ant-Man, Lokey and Ant-Man, and presumably you’ve watched WandaVision. (0:15:22) Al: Yeah. (0:15:25) Al: I suspect that’s all of it. (0:15:38) Kevin: Owen wilson’s really good in it. And so is uh, (0:15:40) Kevin: Tom loki whatever his name is it’ll it’ll stand yes tom tom loki son. Um (0:15:43) Al: Tom Hiddleston and we’ve got Kehuquan coming in as well and his character looks very fun. (0:15:54) Kevin: Yep. (0:15:54) Kevin: Alright. (0:15:55) Al: Yeah. Awesome. Well, should we talk about some news? (0:15:56) Kevin: I guess so. (0:16:00) Kevin: Hey, you wanna talk about Moneko first though? (0:16:01) Al: No, no, I do not. Let’s talk about some news. (0:16:03) Kevin: Yeah, and what’s our first news item? (0:16:07) Al: Uh, oh yeah. Oh, I hadn’t looked yet. (0:16:13) Al: I wrote all this up like four days ago. So Maneko, there’s some Maneko’s night market news. (0:16:21) Kevin: Yeah. (0:16:23) Al: So the Xbox and PlayStation versions, we’ve got dates for them now. They’re coming out on the 26th of October and the physical Switch and PS5 versions are coming the 27th of October. (0:16:36) Kevin: Uh, is it? I didn’t realize it’s already on, is it on PS5 I assume? (0:16:40) Kevin: Or wait, no, no, sorry. I’m, no, you just said that. (0:16:40) Al: No, no, so that’s the PS. Please, it’s Xbox and- (0:16:43) Al: PlayStation versions, yeah. But I think, I think, I think the PlayStation version is for PS4 and PS5, (0:16:44) Kevin: My mistake. Yes. (0:16:50) Al: but the physical version is just PS5. Well, on Switch, obviously. (0:16:54) Al: So there is a PS4 version of the game, but not physical, if that’s clear. (0:16:59) Kevin: um yeah sure it’s look by the end of october it’s going to be everywhere that’s the main but you can get it on switch or pc (0:17:08) Al: You can. You can. (0:17:10) Al: And we have it covered because you got Switch. (0:17:12) Al: I got it on PC and played it on Steam. (0:17:14) Kevin: Yup, and if that’s not enough physical for you you can get a physical manneco Well, I think you can because I’m clicking on the link and it’s not working. I don’t know why Okay, anyways, um Okay, they’re doing Okay The manneco people are doing a plush (0:17:15) Al: Oh boy. (0:17:20) Al: You can. (0:17:23) Al: Yeah, there’s a new link. (0:17:27) Al: I’ve got a new link here as far as… (0:17:29) Al: Don’t worry, it still exists. (0:17:31) Al: There you go. There’s your new link. (0:17:39) Kevin: Run of manneco. It’s a good-looking plug. It is by the it is by the (0:17:39) Al: Is that good looking plush? It’s really detailed. (0:17:43) Al: Yeah. (0:17:44) Kevin: Company called make ship which I am familiar with this is basically what they do. They do limited runs of plushies you know even They did one for Baron breakfast and I missed it I’m so sad But that’s the that’s a kicker right that it is limited. I think turn it boy had like two plushies through that but anyways So yeah make ship rise of the time recording 20 days when it comes out That’ll probably even more like two weeks left on the campaign (0:17:47) Al: Yeah, they’re doing the ooblets ones as well, I think, and stuff. (0:18:14) Kevin: So check it out if you want. It’s $30 maybe a little pricey But if you love an echo like I love an echo It’s probably worth it because you will probably never ever see any mother physical manneco birch like this again Not yet, but I will so pay day when it gets But yes and minico’s art works really well with plush I think like the the the style (0:18:40) Al: Yeah, I’m just, I’m really impressed with how detailed it is, right? Like you’ve got the eye detail, the hair detail, and the clothing detail, the ear, the backpack, it’s just, it’s all so great. (0:18:44) Kevin: Yeah, got the little mark under the eye, yeah Yeah make ship I have had make ship products before and they are quality products and yes the detail is as good as You’d hope or want or the the creators want whatever and it’s a good quality plush a decent size to not one of those tiny little things (0:19:12) Kevin: Okay, so yeah, that’s Minneko (0:19:20) Kevin: So October 20th, roughly? (0:19:22) Al: Yeah, it does actually say that on the page, you don’t have to count it. (0:19:23) Kevin: Yeah, 19th. (0:19:26) Al: If you scroll down a little bit, it shows you the date. It’s got a timeline. (0:19:29) Kevin: um okay well there you go there the look the links on the show notes click on there yeah that’s the only thing right they take forever with these limited run things but understandably so yeah oh yeah you’re oh gosh no no no that’s too close 2024 is a year away no I know I went into lone the home depot the other day and there was all the christmas decor (0:19:30) Al: “Production starts 20th of October. Shipman estimated January 13th.” (0:19:38) Al: That’s not too bad. That’s not too bad. November, December, that’s three months. (0:19:48) Al: Christmas is less than 100 days. (0:19:59) Kevin: before october that’s the norm what what else is you know what else is october (0:20:06) Al: We’ve got, we’ve got Coral Island have announced their PS5 version is coming on the 9th of October. (0:20:14) Al: I will say, you know I love a conspiracy around dates. This is a suspicious date. (0:20:20) Al: This is suspiciously close because the next update for Coral Island is the 1.0 update. (0:20:27) Al: Just saying. Now we don’t know when that’s coming, but all I’m saying is they haven’t said the PS5 (0:20:37) Kevin: once you switch there’s no going back or wait oh they mean for version well either way that still sounds very uh and they have the wean (0:20:52) Kevin: There’s the art right there. It has the merfolk in it. It’s all that looks like a 1.0 or Like a game case cover Is it I don’t know I’m (0:20:59) Al: I mean, I think that’s the same artist they’ve been using for ages, but yeah, yeah, pretty sure I’ve had pretty sure I had that wallpaper on my phone for six months. (0:21:09) Al: Yeah, so we’ll see. We’ll see whether I’m right or wrong. It might be too soon after the most recent update, but they also could have been working on both of them at the same time. We’ll find out in like a week, because that’s like a week away. (0:21:27) Al: Next we have Crater crops have been delayed to the end of the day. (0:21:29) Al: We have so many more to delay. Keep coming with your delays please. (0:21:35) Al: There’s too many games. We still have like 30 games listed that’s coming out this year. Go and delay them please. (0:21:46) Al: Would you mean no? Man alive, Kevin. (0:21:49) Al: That’s all right. It’s all right. You’ve got two weeks till you need to do the Paleo Pines episode. (0:21:49) Kevin: I want, I just want Maneko, nothing else, and I’ll leave you alone, games. (0:21:57) Al: Sundown Survivors, they’ve got their 1.4 update, which they have named “The Final Boss”. (0:22:05) Al: And I think that the update includes “The Final Boss” of the storyline. Just a thought there. (0:22:10) Kevin: What that’s wild (0:22:16) Al: It’s like, what do they call it? Bullet hell? It’s a roguelike type game. (0:22:24) Al: I’m not playing this game. I don’t know. There’s some stuff. There’s some farming, (0:22:25) Kevin: But you have Pokemon. (0:22:31) Al: right? I felt like I needed to include it, but this is… (0:22:34) Al: It’s like three quid as well. It’s very cheap. (0:22:48) Al: Okay, I don’t know what that means. (0:22:52) Al: Or was that shoot him up? Right, got you. Orange season also have an update out. The festival’s season, that is out now, (0:23:01) Al: and it adds a tomato war, the summer festival and the chicken race. (0:23:06) Kevin: These are all good, good words. I like, especially “tomato war.” (0:23:08) Al: Yeah, so it looks like it’s a festival where you’re like trying to hit each other with tomatoes. (0:23:11) Kevin: What does that mean? Oh, oh, you thought- oh. (0:23:18) Al: During the event, you and three other competitors will throw tomatoes at each other, earning points for hits and losing points for getting hit. The one with the highest score when the time is over wins. Don’t worry, all the tomatoes used weren’t apt for consumption anyway. Like it matters, it’s a game. (0:23:34) Al: Oh, there’s a swimming… Oh, wait, swimming? That is the Summer Festival. They just called it different things. They called it Summer Festival at the top and then they called it swimming festival. (0:23:34) Kevin: - Yeah. (0:23:48) Al: Let’s use swim and then there’s the chicken race, which I feel like that’s probably self-explanatory as well. (0:23:50) Kevin: just it looks good though (0:23:54) Al: Also, is that a dino chicken? Look at the colors on that chicken. (0:24:02) Kevin: I don’t… I think it’s the green-ish chicken. I don’t know. (0:24:07) Kevin: Um, there’s a whole bunch of other… (0:24:09) Al: Yes, they have the key one, I think, being that they’ve added control support, so this is good. (0:24:14) Al: Yes, yes, I do. As someone with a Steam Deck, I very much like controller support on Steam Games. (0:24:21) Al: Next, we have another update. Travelers Rest have their drinks and staff update. So… (0:24:31) Kevin: Those sound important to a game where you’re running a tabber. (0:24:35) Al: Yes. Yeah, so customers can order drinks. (0:24:39) Al: You can serve them drinks, and then there’s also… you can employ employees. (0:24:46) Al: They also added seasons to the game. Like, I feel like what was in this game before now, right? (0:24:52) Kevin: You can hire a bouncer. (0:24:53) Kevin: I’m wondering! (0:24:54) Al: They’ve added the guest room system as well. Like, there’s a lot in this update. (0:24:56) Kevin: New beverage aging system was that… (0:25:00) Kevin: There- ooh. (0:25:02) Kevin: That you’d expect in a tavern. (0:25:07) Kevin: A similar game. (0:25:07) Al: To be fair, to be fair, isn’t it? (0:25:09) Al: access. So it’s 0.6.1 update. Right, next we have two Pixellia which we’ve mentioned before but they are now in Kickstarter. Now what I want to do is I want Kevin to go and watch the entirety of this video before we talk about this. (0:25:14) Kevin: It’s a fun idea, just a little more time in the oven and it looks like- (0:25:29) Al: So I will probably cut this out listeners but I want Kevin to go and listen and then tell us what his thoughts. (0:25:29) Kevin: Alright. Alright, here we go. (0:25:32) Kevin: Are you sh- (0:25:34) Kevin: Alright, you don’t want- I can do it live as I’m watching. (0:25:38) Kevin: Alright. (0:25:39) Al: I mean you can do it live if you want but you don’t need to. (0:25:40) Kevin: Alright, based on my true story, is that what it just said? (0:25:45) Kevin: Yup, on my true story. (0:25:48) Kevin: I can live my life how I see fit, okay. (0:25:50) Kevin: Pixelian is a whole awful word. (0:25:53) Kevin: Is this just Pixel Sims? (0:25:53) Al: I know, right? (0:25:58) Al: I mean, I don’t know, I don’t think it’s Sims. (0:26:01) Al: It feels more like Pixel’s Second Life. (0:26:05) Kevin: or that short yeah oh yeah I’ll look at there’s a fashion runway yeah there’s a lot going on here well you can really do anything you can be a band basketball farmer okay you can you can decorate your space yeah okay this is just Sick in life pixel version. (0:26:10) Al: Because like, you are playing, because you’ve got one character that you’re playing. And it’s like, there’s so much going on. (0:26:20) Al: This is the thing, it just keeps going. (0:26:34) Kevin: Um (0:26:35) Kevin: Let’s embrace the thrill what you can rob banks And a hack I saw a binary oh my gosh grand theft auto actual street traffic violations Of course build bonds, what could that mean? (0:26:40) Al: Uh-huh, you can rob banks (0:26:49) Al: Yeah, you know, and then. (0:26:55) Kevin: You can’t go to jail. Yeah, i’m sure there’s I hope that jail system’s innovative Or immersive (0:27:02) Al: Yeah, I don’t know. I wonder if you can break out of it or not. (0:27:05) Al: What isn’t there? What isn’t there in this game? Like when I first saw this, I just thought it would be like another like life sim, standard life sim, but there’s an insane amount in this. (0:27:06) Kevin: Oh, you can you absolutely can oh, well, there’s a nightclub. Can you do crimes at the (0:27:20) Kevin: I mean, it is a life sim, but it’s a lot of life. (0:27:22) Al: Yeah, you can be a boxer. (0:27:24) Kevin: They really, this really is everything. (0:27:28) Kevin: Yup. (0:27:29) Kevin: Fishing, oh, there’s our cottage core. (0:27:31) Al: There’s our farming. (0:27:31) Kevin: Yeah, but who’s gonna, who wants to do that when you can rob banks? (0:27:36) Kevin: What is that? (0:27:37) Kevin: Is that the UN? (0:27:38) Kevin: Look, they have the bank robber right on the cover art. (0:27:40) Al: I think so. (0:27:42) Al: This is absolutely wild. (0:27:44) Kevin: That’s, they know that’s the good one. (0:27:48) Kevin: All right, there you go. (0:27:50) Kevin: They can’t do anything. (0:27:51) Kevin: It is. (0:27:54) Kevin: Wow, and boy, they’re so- (0:28:00) Al: Yeah, it’s not a huge goal. But yeah, still, I mean, you’ve seen ones with small goals not get hit. (0:28:06) Al: So, yeah, it’s going all right. Well, yeah, this is 2Pixellia. 2Pixellia is a pixel art life simulator game set in the charming country of Pixellia. Your journey begins with a life-changing decision to start a new life from scratch, bleh. And as you step off the bus, your choices will determine what that life will become. I wonder how much of that is like actual choice. I wonder if there’s things that you can’t actually do. (0:28:11) Kevin: They really do have politics. (0:28:30) Al: Like, do they build in, like, privilege and stuff like that? (0:28:36) Al: Is it easier for certain people to do certain things? (0:28:36) Kevin: Oh Oh, that would I would applaud them so hard if they did oh my gosh Idol I would would it be fun playing the game. I don’t know but reading it and seeing it happen and the Twitter Tweets that would come out of that. Oh my gosh, that would be the best (0:28:47) Al: I don’t know if that would be fun or not, that’s my only question. (0:28:54) Al: Yeah, it would be great as an art piece, certainly, right? (0:29:06) Kevin: Oh my gosh Okay Yeah, yeah just like the South Park difficulty slider Oh My gosh, okay. Look, you know what? They don’t even have to put gameplay in it But you like just lean into it like you can do anything (0:29:07) Al: But yeah, would that make it a fun game? (0:29:09) Al: I don’t know. (0:29:15) Al: I’m probably going to cut this bit, but like, you know, hard. (0:29:17) Al: More does your black, right? (0:29:18) Al: Yeah. (0:29:35) Kevin: Right in there. They’re added. That’s what they’re saying (0:29:36) Kevin: in their campaign. They’re advertising right. You can do anything and you can have like you could be a boxer You can be a bank robber. You can be a farmer. You can have privilege as a person of color You can do anything Oh my god, I mean there’s politics so the anarchy might Anarchism whatever you want to call it might be in the cards (0:30:06) Kevin: Dismantle the establishment Um, wow, that’s really uh, we’re very big and ambitious. That’s the word ambitious. Um And it looks the trailer looks like a game and with that small of a goal i’m assuming they’re Basically done It’s more game than not (0:30:23) Al: Yeah, so it does say that they’re expecting the final version to be out in May next year, (0:30:31) Al: I believe with the alpha coming out in December. So, I mean, that sounds to me like they, yeah, (0:30:38) Al: they have the features, right? They have the game and the alpha and beta will actually be an alpha and a beta, which is like actually testing the stuff that you’ve done rather than just going, “Hey, here’s a game without the stuff!” Right? You know, it’s like… (0:30:48) Kevin: Yep, does it work cough travelers rest cough No, I know (0:30:53) Al: “Here’s a game that has some stuff!” (0:30:56) Al: Which is… Well, I mean, that’s early on. They’re not calling it an alpha or beta. (0:31:00) Al: I just… I find it really annoying. Anyway, we don’t need to get into this again. (0:31:03) Al: What have I written in it? Yeah. It’s going to be interesting. Interesting to see. (0:31:07) Kevin: Yes, it’s big while yeah, that’s that’s yeah, you can really do anything sailing still an awful name So the there are clouds in the sky the ocean is wet Go ahead go ahead (0:31:10) Al: So, we’re going to talk about Stardew Valley. Let me start off. Let me start this off. (0:31:20) Al: Let me start this off! (0:31:24) Al: Kevin! (0:31:24) Al: So, Concern Date, like just after we recorded the last episode, posted this image on Twitter of, (0:31:33) Al: so have you ever done any Ginger Island stuff in Stardew? That was in the most recent update. (0:31:39) Al: I haven’t either, but I know that on Ginger Island, there’s a bunch of like parrots that you can use to unlock a bunch of stuff. And then, so this is an image of a parrot that is like (0:31:53) Al: JoJo branding, JoJo? JoJo? Is it JoJo? JoJo, sorry, JoJo, the JoJo branding on it. And so I’m like, (0:31:56) Kevin: Jojo, not Jojo. (0:32:01) Al: oh, interesting. Is this like another like JoJo based thing? How does this work? It’s going to be interesting to see what this is, presumably it’s on Ginger Island, or it’s in a new place that we don’t know about, something like that. And then, Concern Date just like posts a list of the features coming up in the next update. (0:32:23) Al: And you’re like, “Oh, okay.” Which includes one of the bullet points is Georgia alternatives to some of the endgame quests. (0:32:32) Al: So what I’m guessing is if you go the Georgia route for the community center, when you go to Ginger Island, all the parrots are Georgia parrots. (0:32:39) Kevin: Yup. (0:32:40) Kevin: Yup. (0:32:44) Kevin: Aw, sick. (0:32:46) Kevin: You’re gonna… (0:32:47) Kevin: Deforest that island and put on a Joja Mart there. (0:32:51) Al: I mean, I actually, I mean, I really enjoy doing the Georgia way of doing things, purely because it’s like, I like being able to just like, be a filthy capitalist, right? And just buy everything, right? Like, I’m just going to make so much money and just buy everything I need, right? Like, that’s fun to do. I obviously, I’ve only done it once, but it was fun to do it when I did it. Like, obviously, I enjoy doing the other way. (0:33:17) Kevin: - Yeah. (0:33:21) Al: But, you know, there’s a lot of my words, right? (0:33:26) Al: Okay, so let me just, let me just, well, let’s just go through this list and see if we have anything to say about them. How does that go? Because this is a lot of stuff coming in the new update. And I feel like, yeah, can we talk about this? Can we talk about this? Because, like, when Concern Date initially announced the 1.6 update, let me actually find the tweet. Because I’m sure and I can find it because he doesn’t tweet very much. (0:33:28) Kevin: Okay. (0:33:33) Kevin: Shock or… (0:33:35) Kevin: Cornsturn Day has a big update. laughs (0:33:49) Kevin: It’s also really short, like two sentences. (0:33:53) Kevin: Update coming, no release date. (0:33:54) Al: Okay, so what he said in his first tweet about 1.6 which was “April of this year” okay? (0:34:06) Al: Five months ago he said “There is going to be a StarJ 1.6 update. (0:34:10) Al: It’s mostly changes for modders, which will make it easier and more powerful to mod, but there is also new game content, albeit much less than 1.5.” (0:34:22) Kevin: This- Look, it is much less for a concerned ape by his scape metrics. (0:34:22) Al: Now look at this list. (0:34:24) Al: We have one new major festival, and two mini festivals. (0:34:36) Kevin: Wow, mini, okay! (0:34:37) Al: Right, so that’s just three festivals, right? (0:34:42) Al: Let’s not list it. (0:34:43) Al: You just added three new festivals in this update. (0:34:45) Al: He has added new late game content which expands on each of the skill areas. (0:34:50) Kevin: There’s a lot of skills in this game, so that’s the… (0:34:51) Al: There’s a lot of skills in this game. (0:34:54) Al: New items and crafting recipes. Sure, fine. We don’t know much about that. One of them looks to be a drink. One of them looks to be another warp totem. One is either golf clubs or a bag of worms. (0:35:04) Al: I don’t know. I can’t tell. Oh, could be. Oh, interesting. Is that… I wonder if that would… (0:35:06) Kevin: Quiver arrow arrow quiver Weapon new weapon I could see that (0:35:14) Al: Well, you can… There is no bow and arrow, isn’t there? There’s just… There’s the… (0:35:18) Al: The… What’s it called? The little… The little… The little kind of… What’s Bart Simpson’s thing? (0:35:19) Kevin: And this last I checked, slingshot. (0:35:23) Al: you know the like slingshot. (0:35:24) Al: Interesting arrow. I wonder how much of this is come from like stuff he’s adding into haunted chocolate here and going actually I want to add that into Stardew Valley. (0:35:33) Kevin: Other way around he’s it just adding haunted chocolates here in the Stardew I made the joke on the slack. It’s to start a 2.0 actually (0:35:34) Al: I mean I actually wouldn’t be surprised if he ended up adding if haunted chocolate here was a DLC yes and then we’ve got like I mean honestly I would not be surprised if haunted chocolate here ends up being DLC for Stardew Valley like we’ll all buy it and we’ll all love it. (0:35:54) Al: A hundred plus new lines of dialogue. (0:35:55) Kevin: Yep. (0:35:55) Kevin: That’s a lot of dialogue. (0:35:58) Al: Georgia alternatives to some of the end game quests. (0:36:01) Al: That’s what we’ve already talked about. (0:36:03) Al: Winter outfits for the villain. (0:36:05) Al: Winter outfits for the villagers. (0:36:07) Al: That’s all of the villagers are getting winter outfits. (0:36:09) Al: Now, one could say they should have already been there. (0:36:12) Al: That’s fair enough. (0:36:13) Al: But like that’s not a small thing to add, right? (0:36:17) Kevin: Sure, yes, right. (0:36:17) Al: Unique clothes for every single villager in the game. (0:36:21) Al: New type of reward for completing billboard accrues. (0:36:24) Al: Adding in support for 8 player multiplayer on PC. (0:36:29) Kevin: Oh nothing nothing big there. It’s just a player multiplayer They only on PC to be clear What is left to fall it’s a new farm that specializes in chocolate actually (0:36:30) Al: Just doubling the number of people that can play the game at once. (0:36:36) Al: A new farm! Another new farm! (0:36:42) Al: I don’t… (0:36:51) Al: I just, like, you could say this was small. (0:36:54) Al: If you want, I think you’re talking nonsense, right? (0:36:57) Kevin: I genuinely believe Concerned Ape thinks this is small. (0:36:58) Al: Like… (0:36:58) Al: Oh, I’m sure he does! (0:37:04) Al: I think he’s talking nonsense though. (0:37:06) Al: Like, this is not a small update. (0:37:08) Al: Yeah. (0:37:08) Kevin: And of course, he has the new secrets and more at the end, meaning there’s who knows what else. (0:37:14) Al: Yep. (0:37:16) Al: Do you know, I think he keeps doing this because it just keeps getting people back into the game because now I want to play stardom. (0:37:17) Kevin: It’s a blank check. (0:37:24) Al: So yeah, there’s a lot of stardom stuff coming. He says there’s no date for 1.6 yet and I believe him. (0:37:29) Kevin: Maybe. I mean, there’s winter outfits for you to celebrate. (0:37:39) Al: Well that’s exactly what’s going to happen right? Well for PC anyway, it’ll take a while for consoles but yeah, that’s going to be like “oh yeah, game’s out now”. (0:37:42) Kevin: Yeah, it’ll just look knowing him. It’s just he’s gonna have a tweet. So it’s out. That’s it Yeah (0:37:50) Al: But yeah, that’s going to be like, “Oh yeah, game’s out now.” (0:37:53) Al: You’re like, “Sorry, what?” (0:37:54) Al: There’ll be somebody who will load up Steam the moment it gets updated, (0:38:01) Al: and Concerned Date won’t have tweeted about it yet. (0:38:03) Al: Someone will be like, “Oh, he’s updated the game,” and then Concerned Date will announce it by retweeting that person’s tweet. It’s like, “Oh man, you don’t have to keep giving us this stuff for free right like I know I know we made a lot of money with stargy (0:38:04) Kevin: Oh, oh, oh, absolutely. (0:38:25) Al: right I know i’m sure he is but I mean you know dude’s working dude’s got to get paid like i’m just i’m sure he is (0:38:25) Kevin: I think he still is. (0:38:36) Kevin: I’m I’m not concerned about that. I’m sure he’s making good money Like you said like you said this every time he does this the new one point whatever number That’s that’s that’s sales. That’s absolutely sales Just you watch to just just you way you will eat (0:38:51) Al: I think I already own the game on everything. I don’t think I can buy it again. (0:38:55) Al: I just can’t decide what to play the game on again. Like, do I just continue on Switch? (0:39:03) Al: Do I play it on Steam Deck? Because the update’s probably going to come to Steam first. (0:39:09) Kevin: I don’t know. Well, I mean, yeah, it’s kind of just the first I don’t know. (0:39:09) Al: How good’s the controller I support on Steam? (0:39:19) Al: It was fine. (0:39:23) Kevin: I would like to see when (0:39:27) Al: Crazy. I’m presuming the new farm is to do with that, right? Like instead of four corners, it’s in eight corners. (0:39:33) Al: It does have full controller support on Steam. He did also say in his Steam update, (0:39:44) Al: which is different from the Tweet, he says, “I have no release date for it yet, but it will release it as soon as it’s ready. The content is pretty close to being finished, but then there will (0:39:59) Kevin: Yeah, because he’s on everything now, that tail end of development is a bit, it’s a, it’s a- (0:40:09) Al: Maybe I need to start soon so that I can actually get done with the 1.5 stuff. (0:40:13) Kevin: There you go, yeah, there you go. (0:40:16) Kevin: Look, okay, you’re debating where, here’s what you do. (0:40:18) Kevin: You have one on Switch, one on Steam Deck, (0:40:21) Kevin: one of them is the Jojo Route, one is not. (0:40:23) Kevin: There you go, problem solved. (0:40:28) Kevin: You know, look at that parrot, (0:40:31) Kevin: it’s on a stand with the J on it. (0:40:34) Kevin: You won’t get that if you don’t do Jojo Route. (0:40:41) Kevin: It’s a self-concerned game, not me! (0:40:45) Al: Also, we’ll see whether 1.7 happens or not. (0:40:48) Kevin: Oh, it… it… like… I… (0:40:49) Al: He’s only mentioned 1.7 once and that was in answer to a question as to whether there would be a 1.7 and he said, “Who knows?” (0:40:59) Kevin: I made- again I made the joke on Slack but this is almost as serious as it is a joke. (0:41:05) Kevin: It will outlive a lot of things. (0:41:08) Kevin: These Stardew updates. (0:41:09) Al: I feel like he said 1.5 was the last one, so he kind of already has failed at stopping. (0:41:11) Kevin: This man cannot stop. He’s just one of those people. (0:41:20) Al: Anyway, right, the other big news that we’ve got to talk about. (0:41:24) Al: Oh, so, Tales of the Shire. (0:41:24) Kevin: Something else that won’t stop, Lord of the Rings! (0:41:31) Al: Now, for some reason, and I think we all know the reason, the answer to that, the reason is money, right? (0:41:36) Kevin: money. (0:41:39) Al: But for some money-related reason, Lord of the Rings is making a cottagecore game based in the Shire. (0:41:49) Al: And that’s how you get the best of your own. (0:41:49) Al: I’m not. (0:41:50) Al: We know at this point. What I will say, what I will say is interesting. Weta Workshop are, (0:41:57) Al: it says to, it’s, what’s the other company? Sorry, I’m just trying to look at this again, (0:42:03) Al: because it, so Private Division, I don’t know who they are, but I know that Weta Workshop made physical props for the films. (0:42:17) Kevin: If you that trailer looks like it was filled not the set like I mean it’s a very short trailer just shows the book basically but like it you can see from that one shot like there’s a lot of love for Lord of the Rings here I am very confident that this will be a very good and Lord of the Rings. (0:42:20) Al: Yeah. (0:42:39) Kevin: Well actually actually I’m thinking about this now it’s all in the shire right like there’s a lot of important. (0:42:45) Al: Yes. (0:42:46) Al: Yes. (0:42:47) Kevin: The Lord of the Rings stuff not in the shire and how much of that is going to leak into here can you romance or on. (0:42:51) Al: Well, I’m presuming some people are coming to visit, right? (0:42:56) Al: No. (0:42:58) Kevin: I. (0:43:01) Al: So, games, the private division have worked on or with Hades. (0:43:12) Al: They worked with Supergiant Games on Hades. (0:43:13) Kevin: Oh. Oh boy. (0:43:16) Al: Ollie Ollie World. (0:43:17) Al: Skateboarding game. It’s very good. (0:43:22) Kevin: Okay, oh That’s a that’s a good one Good heavens these this is the good resume (0:43:24) Al: The Outer Worlds. (0:43:25) Al: Kerbal Space Program Enhanced Edition. (0:43:31) Al: And they’re making Tales of the Shire with Weta Workshop. (0:43:38) Al: Well, the interesting thing is, the point is, Weta Workshop have done Lord of the Rings stuff. (0:43:44) Al: Like they are, they did physically. (0:43:45) Al: This is supposed weird, they made physical, they’re not a game developer. (0:43:50) Al: They are so, so, so there we go. (0:43:51) Kevin: No, but they’re Lord of the Rings people. (0:43:54) Kevin: That’s what private division is for. (0:43:56) Kevin: They’re Lord of the… Yeah. (0:43:58) Kevin: Yeah, to be clear… (0:43:58) Al: Well, so it looks like Private Division are a publisher, not a developer. (0:44:01) Kevin: Oh, well, well, look. (0:44:03) Al: That’s fine. (0:44:04) Al: So they’re not, they are, that is correct. (0:44:05) Kevin: Weta Workshop is from New Zealand, I believe, if I’m not mistaken. (0:44:09) Kevin: Okay, well, New Zealand, I… (0:44:12) Kevin: I say somewhat jokingly, somewhat seriously. (0:44:15) Kevin: There is an appreciable amount of their GDP That is from Lord of the Rings! (0:44:21) Kevin: I am confident this will get the love and attention it deserves. (0:44:21) Al: I’m just, I am just fascinating. (0:44:26) Kevin: And it’s a lot of the rings, man. (0:44:35) Kevin: Well… (0:44:36) Al: Look, this is going to be dangerous, right? Because I love Lord of the Rings and I love Kochiko Games. I’m really worried about this. (0:44:37) Kevin: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. (0:44:44) Kevin: I think the expression of “I just want to be a hobbit” in the last video is… (0:44:51) Kevin: A little shire is a very common sentiment among people in general. (0:45:04) Al: 2024 to PC and console. I don’t think they’ve said (0:45:12) Kevin: I like how we’re excited, we have no idea what it’s gonna be like, like, no! (0:45:14) Al: It doesn’t matter, we know, we know what, like I, I trust that this will be good. (0:45:17) Kevin: Oh, I do too? No, I fully agree, I just, I just think it’s funny, like, that’s how confident we are in this project. (0:45:25) Al: Yeah. Yeah. (0:45:28) Kevin: That we don’t need any details, we’re gonna get it, and it’s gonna be good, and… (0:45:28) Al: I mean, that trailer looked good. (0:45:33) Kevin: You alright? There you go. (0:45:36) Al: So, yeah. (0:45:37) Al: Hopefully, we’ll find out soon. (0:45:42) Al: I sincerely hope so. (0:45:43) Kevin: can you have second breakfast argue right right okay okay yes yes all right (0:45:48) Al: Oh, shall we talk about Meneko’s Nightmark? (0:45:59) Al: I realised I hadn’t actually written down what things were going to talk about, so I’m just like frantically thinking up things. (0:46:06) Kevin: Well, as always, let’s start with the context of where we’re coming from. (0:46:13) Kevin: As you said earlier, you’re playing on Steam Deck, I’m playing on Switch, I’m interested to hear the comparison there. (0:46:21) Kevin: What are your overall thoughts, opinions? (0:46:25) Al: Yes, I like this game. I have some comments on things I would improve. (0:46:37) Kevin: There are definitely issues… small, like… (0:46:39) Al: Well, small in so much as like, it depends how you define a small. So one of the things I have noticed is that every loading screen is very long. (0:46:53) Kevin: Okay, I okay. Are we just gonna get into this like the bad because like All right. All right. Okay. I was yes loading This is probably the number one big issue loading times are Atrocious like I thought I was wondering if it was just a switch port, but okay, so it’s not okay Okay, I want to My very first thought about this game when I played it (0:46:55) Al: Let’s just go for it. Let’s get the bad out of the way so we can talk about the good, right? Let’s let’s go for it. (0:47:02) Al: Yeah. Yeah. (0:47:09) Al: It is not. It is the same on Steam Deck. (0:47:23) Kevin: So when you started you get the loading screen and it’s like mineko running in the corner but there’s no music or anything and I Genuinely thought my game had frozen as I soon as I’d started cuz the necker stopped moving [laughing] (0:47:28) Al: Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like there’s something weird in terms of like, there, (0:47:44) Al: cause yeah, there’s some freezes and stuff as well, which sometimes can be a bit stressful. (0:47:46) Kevin: Yep. (0:47:47) Al: We are like, Oh no, have I lost my day? No, I haven’t. I have not lost any data. Um, (0:47:48) Kevin: Ee-eesh. (0:47:49) Kevin: Yeah. (0:47:55) Al: That’s not true, there was one, what happened? (0:47:58) Al: I can’t remember, there was one case where I had to restart and I lost the day, (0:48:01) Al: and I can’t remember what that was. Did I write it in Slack? (0:48:04) Al: Oh yes, no, I remember, I remember, I remember, there’s a button on the controller remapping where you can click it and it deletes all of your mapping so you can’t do anything with the game. (0:48:04) Kevin: I don’t… I mean, yeah… (0:48:08) Kevin: See, okay, my… oh, okay, so… (0:48:11) Kevin: Yeah. (0:48:15) Kevin: Yes. (0:48:19) Al: So if you click that button, which annoyingly the button is labeled default, so I can– (0:48:21) Kevin: Oh my god, are you see… (0:48:28) Al: I kind of thought that would set it to the default, right? (0:48:30) Al: Because I’d changed a few things and I was like, “All right, well, let me reset it to the default.” (0:48:34) Al: But the default is nothing. (0:48:34) Kevin: Ohhh… (0:48:36) Al: But the problem is then, I have no controls. Nothing worked. (0:48:36) Kevin: Ohhh yeah! (0:48:40) Al: So thankfully, it didn’t autosave, right? (0:48:42) Kevin: Yes, witches! (0:

In this episode of Cloudlandia, we navigate the intriguing notion that our world as we know it is entirely constructed by individuals just like us. From the mundane aspects of traffic rules to the profound sacred texts influencing civilizations, it's all the product of the human mind.   SHOW HIGHLIGHTS The world as we know it is entirely constructed by individuals like us, with everything from traffic rules to profound sacred texts being the product of the human mind. The art of argument is discussed, with insights from Jerry Spence's enlightening book. The best argument won is one that doesn't feel like a fight. They explore the perception of change and how a single country's decision can shift the global landscape. Embracing change and moving fluidly in a world in constant flux is important. Dean and Dan take a nostalgic trip through the transformative era of 1950 to 1980, discussing the assimilation of technological advancements like electricity, radio, television, cars, planes, and telephones. Exploration of the future of entertainment includes pondering whether YouTube could be the new generational torchbearer for cross-generational awareness of stars. The evolution of work is discussed, including the importance of strategic coaching in achieving success. The right people can make a world of difference. It's not just about working hard, but also about working smart. They explore how everything is made up by specific individuals, including the fear that gripped society at the advent of automobiles and how we've evolved to take speed for granted. They discuss the importance of winning arguments and how the best way to win is to not make it feel like an argument. It also explores how people perceive change differently. The podcast compares the 1950s and the present day in terms of success, discussing how quickly a book can be produced now, thanks to the internet and Zoom. The importance of having a designer who can understand and deliver what is desired is emphasized. Links: WelcomeToCloudlandia.com StrategicCoach.com DeanJackson.com ListingAgentLifestyle.com TRANSCRIPT (AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors) Dan Sullivan welcome. We're being recorded, that's right. Welcome, always welcome. Dean Jackson Welcome to cloudland here, that's right. We're, we're always recording. Well we're always Everything is recorded. Dan Sullivan Yeah, nobody's in charge, and and life's not fair. Dean Jackson Exactly right. I'm holding in my hand my Geometry for staying cool and calm book yeah it's very exciting. Dan Sullivan Yeah, this one has gotten Kind of surprising to me anyway. Just, it sort of clicks. Those three things seem to do some Mental geometry, you know, when you put the three of them together as a triangle. Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. Dean Jackson I love it and the I was once the cartoons like that's my. You know my process for reading the book is. I like I open up the inside cover and I see the overview of the Graphical overview within cartoons and tells you the whole Everything you need to know, kind of just looking at it. I love this guessing and betting. It's very good. Then I go to the contents and I look at the titles of Chapters and I'm very interested in, and haven't gotten to yet, chapter 750 out of 8 billion. I'm not sure what that's, the cops. Yet but, then I go and I read the headlines, the chapters and the. You know your opening statements that you say about them. So, chapter one everything's made up. You realize that everything in the world is always made up by specific individuals. And then I skip to the cartoons, mm-hmm in between the chapters that I look at those and I see the Yep. Gandhi was making it up, confucius was making it up. Everybody seems to be that. They've been making it up since the beginning of time, right to three to today. Yeah, I'm making it up. Dan Sullivan I love it. You're making it? Yeah, we, we've been making it up. This whole thing got made up. Dean Jackson Yeah, but the interesting thing. Dan Sullivan I mean, the interesting thing is that I have people say well, you know what about, like sacred books? And I said well, I said, and they said aren't they divinely inspired? And I said, yeah, they're a finally inspired, but it takes somebody to write them down. Right, Right then you and you, and you hope you hope they got it right. Yeah, yeah, but what it does is, I notice in the I just brought it up as a talking point in maybe five or six workshops, both free zone, in ten times and you can see people they have this almost like little mental jolt. They get a jolt and they say, wow, that's true, isn't? I said, yeah, so you can make things up, so you're freed up to make anything. I said everybody else does it, why don't you do it? And then nobody's in charge. And they said, well, what's in charge? I said rules are in charge. We make up rules and you know, send every situation, if people are cooperating and doing things together, make they make up rules. You know, not not necessarily at one time, but they gradually put up a set of rules. You know, if we approach things this way, things work. You know, think of traffic. You know think of if there were no rules. Dean Jackson Right, exactly, that's one of the frightening things about driving in India, say oh yeah, I was just thinking of India. Dan Sullivan I mean, you don't need brakes, you just need a horn. Dean Jackson And get quick reflexes. Dan Sullivan And and a lot of determination. Yeah, exactly. Dan Sullivan Sensor. You're right, you're first and you're right. These are all good things. Yeah, I was thinking about that one day. We were going, you know, on the Gardner Expressway in Toronto and we were, you know the traffic was flowing really, really quickly. You know it was 50 of these 50, you know 50 miles an hour and you know there were hundreds of cars In sight going both ways and I said, if you took somebody in time, traveled them back a century, back to 1923, and you put them in this situation, they, they would go catatonic in about 60 seconds. Just the Motion, yeah, yeah, and but we take it completely normal. And what normalizes it? We know, we know everybody else knows the rules. Dean Jackson Yeah, I understood. I Think I remember reading that people when automobiles were first getting started, that people there was fear that your brain might explode at speed. Oh yeah, 30 miles an hour. Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. Dan Sullivan Yeah, well, and I think that there's. I Don't think that was a stupid worry, you know, we just had never, experienced. Nobody had ever experienced speed like that. You know, yeah, and I think one of the attractions of Maritime travel, let's say, two or three centuries ago, like one of those sailing ships with full sails and, you know, properly constructed, you know the whole structure of the boat was meant for speed and you know they could get up to, you know, if they had a tide with them and they have current with them and everything else, they get up to 30 miles an hour. You know, at some speeds, you know, and this were sailing ships, you know, and that must have been extraordinarily thrilling to. That was about it, for you know, all of human history, up until trains. Dean Jackson Horses, I guess I mean. Dan Sullivan Think about probably about 30 horses, horses probably about 30, you know, they would be. They would be that that fast and you know. But then all of a sudden, geez, you know, you know they were getting in. And from the Wright brothers, in 1903, I think, the Wright brothers, their first flight, you know, which lasted about 15 seconds, and and to Even the second world war, at the end of the war, they were introducing jets that could fly 500, 450, 500 miles an hour. Let's just yeah. But we've just showed you that the human brain adjusted these things, we normalize. Yeah, you know, Well, number one skills that humans have is we can normalize new situations really quite quickly. Yeah, that's true. People saying you know this, all this AI stuff, yeah, I don't think our brains. So I said we'll normalize it just like we did anything else, you know we will normalize it. Dean Jackson It's so. It's so true. I've been getting, I've been seeing a lot of you know, what I wouldn't call AI enabled. You know, you know I've been seeing a lot of AI content or outreach, and you can. I was thinking about Jerry Spence and he wrote a great book called how to Argue and Win Every Time, and he said that our brains are equipped with psychic tentacles that are reaching out and testing everything for truth and realness and congruence, and these psychic tentacles can detect what he calls the sin clank of the counterfeit. I thought that's the truth. Dan Sullivan You could tell that something was not written by a person. Yeah, I mean, on my birthday there was a company party for me. They do it all the time. Usually they lied to me in some way to think it's something else, and there's this big party. When they put it in your schedule, they're not gonna have to lie, and so, anyway, I go in and there's, this person gets up and, on behalf of the company, gives this very, very flattering talk about me. And I could tell she was five seconds into it, this chat, gpt, I could just tell. So afterwards I went up to her and I said, did you get a little art of AI help with that? And she said, yeah, I did a show. And I said, yeah, right, and you know, what's missing is that we have a feel that there's a heart there, there's a mind there, there's a soul there when it's human. Dean Jackson What do you know? You know what one of the what I take as one of the highest compliments I've ever received about an email that I sent is Kim White said to me, or Daniel said to me, that you know. He says I know that these emails that you're sending are sent to thousands of people, but when I got it I always think it feels like you're speaking right to me and that was really that was really something you know. As a guy who's a energy plumber worker, you know whose whole thing is being coming into energy, yeah. Dan Sullivan Well, it's really interesting. We went to see we're in Chicago today and Joe and Eunice and Mike Koenigs were here early, so they come in for Monday and Tuesday, but they came in yesterday and then Daniel White was with us and we went down to the theater to see personality because Joe hadn't seen it and the others hadn't seen it and there was an extraordinary actress in this play, or I don't know her last name, but her first name is Alexandria, and she plays the role of Lloyd Price's wife and she turns out to be a complete and total scammer. Like she's getting them for his money, she's getting them for his celebrity and everything like that, and when he goes through rough times she gives him a rough time, you know, and anyway and then later on. she plays a completely different person who seems great. That's actually the person depicted in the play is Bertha Franklin, who is the, who is the older sister of Bertha Franklin, okay, and she seems this great hit to actually Janice Joplin became famous for her called A Piece of my Heart, and she just knocks it out. And then afterwards I meet her and it turns out she's 19 years old. You know, she's 19 years old and she's easily portraying someone in their 30s, you know. And as an actress, as a singer, the way she moves and everything, you get a sense that she's you know. And but I was introduced to her by Jeff Mattoff, who was the producer and writer of the play, and I said I wanna pay you a compliment and I said I want you to know how much I totally disliked you as the play won you. Just, we're just a horrible person. And she said, oh, oh, thank you very much. That feels so great. Dean Jackson That feels great that you I love it, I love it yeah. Dan Sullivan Because she was supposed to. I mean, that's it calls for her. To be that type of person and she nailed it, but she's 19,. You know she's 19 years old and it was really quite you know, but you really, I mean I, but I spotted her from the moment she came on stage. This is a scammer. I can tell this person is a scammer. You know, oh, that's amazing, but I do think you're going back to the jury spent comment that you made. I'm gonna read that book. I'm always interested in winning. Dan Sullivan I'm always interested in winning an argument, you know. Dean Jackson Yeah, yeah, no, I would highly recommend. I mean, I tried to avoid. Dan Sullivan I tried to avoid them, but I said you know I can't avoid them, I wanna win. Dean Jackson Well, and this is he's talking and this is like it's like one of my top five wisdom books ever, like it's, I think, one of the biggest impacts on me and his. Of course, you know who Jerry is the attorney, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a defendant of Mel DeMarco's and the whole thing's never lost a case and the. You know he thinks in the proactive thing about. You know he's using argument in the sense of your idea. You're more persuasive, what you're more persuasive. Dean Jackson You're a person. That's what the lawyers make an argument. What's your argument for your idea? here no. Dean Jackson And this is how he's presenting things, and it's just been such a such an amazing, such an amazing thing, so I would highly recommend it. Dan Sullivan I've never experienced Dean Jackson in an argument but, maybe it's all argument. Dean Jackson It's all argument. That's what he's saying. That's exactly right, the best way to win is to win. Dan Sullivan Actually, you've never seen Dean when he wasn't arguing. Dean Jackson That's right. That's it feels like that's the point of it. It's the best way to win an argument is to not make it feel like you're in an argument. Yes. Dan Sullivan It's just, you're in normal experience. Yeah, right, yeah, but the thing of normalizing. Peter DM Monace and I had a podcast about three weeks ago and he was talking about the future and everything else. I said you know one thing I've noticed? I said and I've got I'm closing in on 80 years of dealing with the future. You know probably didn't yeah, really. You know probably didn't really have it as a mental capacity 80 years of guessing and batting Six or yes, ain't batting, but I said, you know something when you get to the future, it's always normal, it always feels normal when you get to the future, yeah, no matter how different it was from the past. The moment you get there and you're and. I go back to your, the Jerry Spence line, that every second we're feeling out what's coming next. Okay, and so it's not like you suddenly went from white to black or you went from light to dark and then you went through infinite little second by second, gradations of adjusting yourself to a new set of circumstances. Yeah, yeah, yeah you are absolutely right and that's, you've closed down your thinking and you're not taking in the new stuff. You know, I mean, that's also possible. And then you know, I say people, people sense that something's changing in different ways. Some people, some people. All you need is to touch their head with a feather and they say oh, something new is happening. Some people. Dan Sullivan you need a sledgehammer and some people need a Mack truck. Dean Jackson Yes, exactly Wow. Yeah. Dan Sullivan But the big thing is that I'm super sensitive, you know, to changes of circumstances or something I notice is out of place or something's happening. And I get that sense about the whole world right now. And I think you know I'm very influenced by Peter Zion's take that we've been living in essentially an artificial world since the end of the Second World War and it's been overseen by one country and its military just to keep trade routes reliable and on time. And now that country's decided that they've done that for enough and they don't want to do that anymore and they want to get back to their own affairs. And everything vibrates and shakes just because of that one decision. Yeah. Dean Jackson Yeah, that really is. I mean, you look at it, you think about it since the, it's true, right Since the. You know, I often think back then to that, the big change, the book from 1950. And. Dean Jackson I think if we were to look at the you know, the big change from you know, 1973 to 2023, that's been, that's really you think about all of the changes that are going to take place. And what I really wonder is are we entering into another phase of the period from you know, 1950 to 1980 where there's not a lot of, where it's more of a normalization? Right by 1950, what you were saying is it feels normal. By 1950, it felt normal that you have electricity and radio and you go to the movies, and you've got TV now and you've got an automobile and you're living in the suburbs and we're flying on planes and everybody's got a telephone. All those things felt probably normal. Dan Sullivan Why was it that I was in 1950 and felt normal to me? Felt normal to me Exactly, yeah. Dean Jackson So you didn't feel the sense of why, then, how it was to go from, you know, not having these things to having them, and you enjoyed that 30 year period where, I mean, what would you call the difference between you know, like, do you buy into that premise that from 1950 to 1980, there weren't the same level of changes from 1900 to 1950, or was it just a mass of migrations? Dan Sullivan Yeah, I mean you can take cars, for example you know, Cars were kind of stylish up until about the early 50s and then they started taking on this very, very conforming they you know, they got a lot longer, they got a lot bigger and they were like rodeoids. Dean Jackson Right, right, exactly they can't. Dan Sullivan and that continued and meanwhile they were getting blindsided. In the 60s I probably started low in the 50s with Volkswagen, but then you started getting these really small sort of stylish imported cars, you know as they came over. And then they really got their clock cleaned in the 70s, you know, but there was. I mean you don't look back at that period, 1950 to 1980, as a particularly stylish or the only one I can think of that, and they really stuck to. their look was Corvette, corvette came in around 54, I think 1954 is when it came in. And it was, and Thunderbird came in at the same time. This was Ford. You know Chevy was Corvette and Ford was the Thunderbird, and then Thunderbird went all over the place. You know it changed every and then it disappeared and then they brought it back. But the Corvette if you look at a Corvette for this year 2023, and you look back at the original Corvette, you can see that this is the same car with numerous, you know, technological changes. But no, it's very definitely a Corvette today and it was a Corvette back there. They've made the only American car that I can think of that maintained its look over that long period of time, but it was great. It was great to begin with and they didn't screw it up, you know. But planes, you know. 1950s, you were already when the first 707, the first well, you had the DeHavilland comet. That was the British plane, was the first real no worthy, and that was around 1950. And they could do 550 miles an hour. And they do 550 miles an hour. Well, they still don't do that because that's the optimum speed for the combination of fuel, passengers, cargo, and that is 550, you know, I gotcha, yeah, but I think you're right, I think you're really right. And computers were coming in, but they weren't a big deal in 1980 yet, right. Dean Jackson Exactly, there was the beginning of them. It was like you either. If you were looking back now, like on it, if you were paying attention, you would have seen the seed of everything was kind of getting into position. The transition from mainframe to personal computing. That was a big thing but it took a while to you know. It took another decade to get to that level. Dan Sullivan Yeah, really, television was still the trade networks. Dean Jackson That's exactly it. I mean from 1950 to 1980, it was really just the three networks and that's where everybody had a very homogenous experience. You know everybody watched the same. You know I love Lucy and Guns Most. Ed Sullivan Show. Dan Sullivan Ed. Dean Jackson Sullivan Show Exactly. Dan Sullivan Yeah, yeah. Dean Jackson So when the Beatles came, all they had to do was be in one place. Yeah. Dean Jackson And on the Ed Sullivan Show they're automatically a rantic. Dan Sullivan You could see it in music too. Yeah, If you look at the last 10 years, let's say, of the biggest grossing concert tours, they're all guys, mostly guys who are in their 70s. Because they became famous. Dan Sullivan They became famous when there was a national audience. Yes, that's right, there's not a national audience for any particular star these days. Dean Jackson Well, that's where I was going with this that there is, in a way, that YouTube. Is that now for the new generations, right, like they're growing up? The kids that grew up now they all know who Mr Beast is, they all know Casey Neistat, they all know the top YouTube star way more than television. Dan Sullivan Well, here's a question I have for you, though. What I noticed is that there was a continuity between the generations, in other words, that when Elvis came on, people in their 50s saw Elvis, people at five saw Elvis on the. Ed. Dean Jackson Sullivan Show. Dan Sullivan I don't think you have this cross generation awareness of great stars. Dean Jackson That's true. That's exactly right, because nobody, not everybody's gathered around the television with their TV dinners watching the same shows all three generations and one now watching them with the kids and the parents and the grandparents. Oh, what are we going to watch on television tonight? They're often in the room with their iPods and their phones looking at their own individual, everybody's their own individual. Entertainment director. Dopamine dealer. Yeah, it's interesting. Dan Sullivan My sense and here I'm kind of interpreting the predictions that Peter Zion is making about the way the world's going to go on the future it's actually going to look quite a bit like the world looked like before the First World War, so back in 1914. So what he says is. There's now going to be regional markets and regional political alliances. He gives a series of examples of that Anywhere that the US pulls its military out of, and the first area where the US has pulled its military out of is the Middle East. There's no presence of the US military in the Eastern Mediterranean or the Red. Dean Jackson Sea. Dan Sullivan The reason is the US is self-sufficient for oil. They're completely self-sufficient for oil and gas. The US is the lead exporter now of fossil fuels. I think, that's why the rest of the all of a sudden, there's this anti-fossil fuel movement. I mean it's one of the reasons. There's never one reason for anything. It's always a confluence of different forces. But the US was just doubled down on the Middle East because they needed the oil. The economy needed the oil, the world that they traded with needed the oil, so they had to protect the sources of oil. But fracking fracking is one of the great breakthroughs. They can get fuel out of the rocks and it's really good oil. It's really. I mean, it looks like baby oil when it comes out. It's like Johnson's baby oil. It's the purest, cleanest oil in the world because it's just oil. There's no grime and dirt and everything that comes up with it, just the oil comes up and then the gas comes along with it. And that changed the world. Dan Sullivan I mean that just utterly changed the world. There's one event in the last 30 years, since the Soviet collapse, that changed the world. It was the fracking, the American fracking revolution and Texas Permian basis, because once the US doesn't need anybody else's fossil fuels, then they rethink their entire military, they rethink their entire political, they rethink their entire economic view towards the world and they're the spoon that stirs the global soup. Yeah, so I think that was a huge change and I think that a lot of the changes that are taking place right now are a function of that breakthrough. Because it's a transportation breakthrough, because you saw all you want about electricity those freighters aren't electric. Dean Jackson That's true, but it's funny, the US military the staples are nuclear submarines and ships that can go forever. Dan Sullivan Seven years, seven years without I think the subs are seven years. The aircraft carriers, I think, are about the same and they've had no killing accidents with those since 1953. So it's 70 years. They've had crises, but nobody's been killed. Dan Sullivan There's been no radiation and I think that's coming back in a big way. I think that they've Mike Wanler, who is a free zone terrific guy from Wyoming, and he's in the process of manufacturing these little micro reactors. I mean, people think of a nuclear reactor and that looks like the Taj Mahal, it looks like the US capital, it's like with huge smoke stacks. These are the size of a standard carrier box. So if you think they're 40 feet or 20 feet, the ones that go on board ship or they're on trains or they're on semis, and this is about 40 feet, so you can walk into it. It's probably about six feet, six feet by six, eight feet by eight feet. I don't know what the dimensions are exactly, but and it's a nuke, it's a little nuclear station. They use spent nuclear. They use this spent nuclear fuel or they have a new kind of salt compound that they use. So think of it. You're building a factory, like outside there's a lot of factories. I see the area north of Toronto now the number of warehouses and factories that are going in. They're immense. Up the 404 and up the 400. Dean Jackson And anyway. Dan Sullivan But the US is going. Us, Canada, mexico are going through a huge reindustrialization with new factories. But you're outside the city and you got a farm line. You got 600 acres of land and you built a factory on it. What you do is you bring in the little nuclear power plant first, and then the entire energy that's needed for building the factory is supplied by that little nuclear plant. And then when it's built, the nuclear plant powers the factory and it's manufacturing thing, and you don't go to the grid at all. You don't have to pull any electricity from the grid at all. Dean Jackson Wow, that's a big deal. Totally self-contained, it is a big deal. Dan Sullivan Yeah, you're putting in a new housing development, I think it's north of Las Vegas they're building a new 100,000 person city. It's called the Galaxy City. It has put a nuclear, it has put in three or four of these little nuclear plants into it and you don't have to. You build the houses, you build the stores, you build the businesses, you build everything, but it comes from the little nuclear plant. I think that's breakthrough. Dan Sullivan I think that's a breakthrough. Dean Jackson Yeah, and that's the model of it, I guess, in process right now. Yeah. Dan Sullivan Yeah, actually, paul Van Dijn, who's a FreeZone member, has got the complete engineering contract for that new city. Wow. Dean Jackson Yeah, these are amazing times, you know, like I think. But, they're completely normal. What does it look like now in a normalized world where you can literally go? Dan Sullivan anywhere you tell people this sort of thing, they say, oh, that's interesting, that's interesting yeah. Yeah. Dan Sullivan Yankees went last night. Right exactly. Oh. Dan Sullivan Taylor Swift. Taylor Swift, you know she's got 150 million hours. Now they're having trouble getting ticket story concerts now and they're stealing the pirating live stream from her concerts and I said, oh, that's interesting. Yeah, that's pretty cool. Dean Jackson Yeah, I wonder. You know the? So if that is true, then if we're in a stage right now- where you know. I mean Cloudlandia is, less than you know, viably, 25 years old in the first 25 years of it here. Everything, all of these things are normalized here. If we equate right now 2023 with 1953 kind of thing that all the infrastructure of the big factories innovation wave. All of that was in place. We had, you know, radio, television, automobiles, movies, all of that. Whowhat's the similar playbook for thriving in this? You know, next 25 years? Where it's not, you know, I think. If you look at AI, I don't see anything on the horizon that is as big an innovation, possibly, as what the Internet and all of that has brought for us. Dan Sullivan Yeah, because AI is only meaningful because of the Internet. Dean Jackson Right, it's. I think the pinnacle achievement of the Internet is that we've gotten to a point where you know there's an artificial intelligence that knows everything that's happened on the Internet so far and can access. Dan Sullivan No it doesn't know anything that you want to find out. You can find out with a few prompts. Yeah, I think that's it. Dan Sullivan It doesn't think. It doesn't feel, it doesn't understand it just smells like sardars. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Dan Sullivan I think that's a big deal. But you know, what really strikes me is the huge difference from the 1950s because I was, you know, fully active through that entire decade of the 1950s is that the way to succeed was to kind of be good at standardized, conforming activities where you were guaranteed employment. You were guaranteed you know, lifetime employment if you, you know, got into the right place, and it seems to me that that is 180 degrees changed. Dean Jackson Yeah, yeah, that there's now. Dan Sullivan you look, just be good at just just be good at nine word emails, that's right. Dean Jackson That's the truth, isn't it? And that's it. Dan Sullivan Yeah, or little more creative new book every quarter. Dean Jackson Yeah, so I think, what's going to be fun is to, you know, track the zeitgeist with your, with your trail of 90 minute books. That's kind of a you know how many is this? Now, which one is this? Dan Sullivan This is the one. The one you're reading is 34. And, and I'm just getting to the final stages of the 35. I do it by quarters, so it's quarter 34, book 34. And this is quarter 35. I did, I started on my um in my right, you know, within six months after my 70th birthday, and I said, you know, next 25 years, I think I'll write a hundred books. A hundred books, yeah. Dan Sullivan Yeah and uh, so I'm, I'm on track, you know, and um, but the the thing about it is is that, um, and we had the conversations back then of how fast you could, you know, turn out a book, and we had a little one week contest where we both created a book and one week, and you know, and uh, and and so the the whole point is that it's just a quarterly process, you know, as part of the it's just normalized. For a lot of people, writing a book is the scariest, scariest project of their, of their life, you know you know, right, yeah, um, uh, you know. On their gravestones says didn't get the book finished. Right, I mean you know, or uh, we're on chapter 38. Dan Sullivan I said well, I saw that problem, just make each chapter a book. Yeah, right, exactly. Dan Sullivan Yeah, so the, I think the um thing is. But think about 1950. I couldn't even conceive of how you could turn out a book like that, you know yeah you know, it's all internet based teamwork. I mean, everything I do is internet. I've been cartoonist. I see him about once a year, you know personally. He lives in Prince Edward Island and, uh, the smallest of the Canadian provinces. Uh, way out, way out of these kind of Cape Coddage type of place. And you know and I see him. He's in Scotland. He's living for Scotland for two weeks tomorrow, so we'll have a little interruption. But uh, you know it's all on the internet he's, and zoom has been a wonderful breakthrough, you know. Yeah, he can actually draw the pictures. Dean Jackson Do you um? Do you storyboard the, the cartoons, or talk about what, what you're seeing for them? Dan Sullivan No no no, he just gets the rate on. You know, he gives a page on zoom so we're off to the side. You know our two little pictures are up to the side. And then he draws the two page outline, because there are always two pages in the book format. And then he we say you know, I think this starts in the center. I says I think something in the center and I think it's a person and the one thing we uh, at a certain point we just didn't pay any attention to the galley in the middle the you know the separation of the two pages we just treated it as a single page and that was a great right. Exactly, and then we um uh I have a fast filter that I've created laying out what the chapter headings are and what the context of the chapter is, and then we read it through and I talked to him and I said, okay, so what's this look like? You know what's this look like. You know where's it start. Where's the center of action? Yeah, center is a lower left hand corner, is it? And yeah, if you look through the cartoons to this one, you'll notice that the real energetic center of the cartoon moves around. Dean Jackson Yeah, yes, I love it. I mean, I'm looking at the. Nobody's in charge, you're completely free with the, the arrows in the path and it's just. Yeah, I like that idea of just treating the whole two pages as one. Yeah, one thing that makes sense, yeah. Dan Sullivan And if you um said to people you don't mind the separation between the pages and the middle because you have to do that for the book, and I said, yeah, I don't know they're, they're, they're. Their mind has eliminated that separating thing down the center of the human brain. Yeah, treats it as one thing you know. And I said oh no there's a separation down the middle of every cartoon picture and I said really, and I said yeah, look. And they said, oh my, I never saw it. Right, that's great yeah. Dean Jackson It's very obvious in the what the world is made up by you. Yeah, just big circle. But as you're looking at it, it looks like one one thing I like this I'm, you know, I have a um, you got to have a wonderful designer who, uh, you know, can do these kind of things. It's so, uh, it's so nice to be able to articulate with words what you're looking for and have somebody be able to interpret that and deliver what you're looking for, you know. Dan Sullivan Well, the interesting thing is, uh, t um, uh, we have two kind of artistic skills with Amish. Amish is Amish, mcdonald is my cartoonist name, and we've been working together now for you know long, long time, you know. But the other thing that's happened is the technology has gotten so good, okay, and uh, we were just finishing one off before he took off for Scotland and literally um, dean, I could say I said okay, let's put that into the complete color spectrum, and he hit a button and the whole background was a complete color, you know, sort of like a. It went from the colors of the spectrum and but it was sort of a continuous change. You know, it wasn't right, uh, separate colors. And I said, okay, now uh, the characters here. I said let's move the characters around a little, and he moved them around and everything like that. And I can remember first working with my first computer artist back in 1990, let's say, and the changes that Hamish and I just made in about. I would say two minutes would take two and a half days. Dean Jackson Yeah, and that amazing right. Dan Sullivan Chip speed and the great capabilities of software, you know, yeah, and it's. I mean it just goes together. I mean we used to, we used to take about um, I would say it would take about three days, three days of three, the three days work to get a cartoon done, and now we do the storyboard and he checks in the next day and he's got it almost completed. Artwork. Mm, hmm. Dean Jackson Yeah, so, uh, that's great, yeah, that's great. Dan Sullivan And I think that's a I. You know the fact that he can do that, and uh actual intelligence right? Yeah Well, evan Ryan, who was one of our panel speakers on a, he's got a neat little book and we're going to send it out. Maybe you already have it, but it's called AI as a teammate. Okay, and uh, he's putting our entire company, 130 of our team members, through uh starting in September, and it's six modules, two hours each, and all they do is analyze their work between what's their unique ability and what shouldn't. Somebody else could do, so anything a who can do. Then you find the AI who, who can actually do it without having to hire another person. Dean Jackson Oh, nice, I mean. So that's yeah, talking about being able to for people to uh multiply, you know yeah. Dan Sullivan Yeah. But he says, uh, people freak out about this word AI. He says zoom is AI. He said the internet is the AI. He said you know all the programs you use on the computer you know already from you, know from Apple or from ours are mostly Apple, you know in design is artificial intelligence. He says it's just automation. He says don't talk about artificial intelligence. He says it's just automated. Okay A machine function can do what a person used to be able to do. He says that's all that it is. And he said you know, that's been going on for a long time. Dean Jackson Yeah, well, and you still have to just think about what you're trying to do. Yeah, you still have to understand what the outcome you want. Yeah, yeah. Dan Sullivan Yeah. Yeah. Dan Sullivan That's the big skill. Dean Jackson The big skill is being able to identify what you want. Dan Sullivan Yeah, yeah, that is the skill of skills that is. That is that is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. How many years? Dean Jackson did you do that every day? You said, well, it wouldn't be the same without our appearance from theory. Dan Sullivan Yeah, Well, it just shows you that you know that there's real progress to be made in that field, Anyway, anyway, yeah, I did 25 years. Dean Jackson I have 25 years every day. Dan Sullivan What do I want? Every day for except for 12. Dan Sullivan So there's 9,131 days and 25 years. And I did it 9,119 days and you know and and and and. What I got really good at over that period is just, in any situation, kind of knowing what I want, you know and and and. The one thing I cut off of you know I want this and the next. If you wrote that down for an AI program, they'd say the next word is because. And I said I just leave the because off because I want the truth, because is some sort of fiction. I'm making it up to make it. Everything is made up. Yeah, yeah, everything is made up, yeah. And so so I got real good at that and, you know, my life changed from the first day to the 25th day. My life really changed. Coach came into existence, my partnership with Babs came into existence, strategies, strategy circle, and then a whole bunch of other tools came into existence, you know. So, yeah, it's a great skill. I mean, if you know, if, how would these? Dean Jackson is there? What were the? Were there any particular prompts? Let's call it in modern terms that you would use or or no, I just I would go through that process yeah. Dan Sullivan Well, I just had to do this every day. You know that that was I committed myself. I had just gone through a divorce and a bankruptcy on the same day, in August of 1978. And I said you know, the only way I'm going to come to grips with this is to take total responsibility for what's happened up until now. So no blaming anyone else, no saying and no going back and reworking it. If only I had done. I said, let's just accept it, that and that I wasn't. And I said, I came to the conclusion all that bad stuff had happened because I wasn't telling myself what I wanted. Okay, I was expecting other people to tell me what. Dean Jackson I wanted and. Dan Sullivan I said so next 25 years, I'm just going to get really good at telling myself what I actually want and that's it. That's. That was the only requirement and it could be a set it had to be at least a sentence. It could be a whole page, it could be two pages, but it had to be at least a sentence once a day, and I just did it for. I just did it for. I had notebook after notebook after notebook after notebook. And yeah and we had a flood, you know, in our business last August and all these files were in the basement. That got flooded and disrupted and they're all gone all the, all the files, all my notes are gone and I feel so, and I feel so freed up. Right right. Dan Sullivan Did you ever? Look at those Did you ever. No no, never went back and the and the reason is it was the skill. Dan Sullivan it was the skill I was developing. That wasn't what I wrote down, Right yeah. Dean Jackson Yeah, yeah, this is that's really but we went to Matt. Dan Sullivan if I hadn't done that, I wouldn't never been in position to me to Because you never would have started strategic coach or never would have gotten off the ground, started looking for certain kinds of people. Right. Dan Sullivan You being one of them. Well, I'm glad you're here I wanted someone who is incredibly smart, and if only he'd apply himself. Dean Jackson And a lot of them. You want a lot of those people. Dan Sullivan Yeah, and money comes easy, money comes easy. Yeah, the great ones, and once they have a purpose, the money flows, yeah. So anyway, I got to jump early because I have a little bit of a question, Okay my friend Daniel Wait in about five minutes but real pleasure. Yeah, thanks for the feedback on the geometry book. You know, this one surprised me. You know, this one caught me by surprise. Dean Jackson Well, it's fantastic, like I was curious what it was going to be about. You know, when you look at the, just the title geometry for staying cool and calm. And now, as I look through the content, this is my. I'm going to pretend I'm hopping on a flight to Chicago right now. Yeah, toronto, and read the whole book in one hour. That's my, that's my next hour right now, yeah, good. Dan Sullivan Alrighty. I got a question yeah, thank you very much. Dean Jackson Next week I'm good. Okay, good, me too. Dan Sullivan Bye, okay, bye.

In today's episode of Welcome to Cloundlandia, Dan and I dive into the power of mental images and harnessing our imagination to overcome trauma and achieve our objectives   SHOW HIGHLIGHTS Dean speaks on Implementing the 50-minute focus finder system. Which for him lead to a significant reduction in screen time and increased productivity. Setting goals, creating an optimal environment, limiting distractions, and establishing a fixed timeframe can help improve focus and efficiency in both personal and professional life. Studies have shown that mental images and imagination can be powerful tools to overcome trauma and achieve goals. Working with sleep psychologists and brain function experts can help reduce reliance on medications like Adderall and improve overall well-being. Changing sleep habits is crucial for better restorative rest and overall well-being. Entrepreneurs can create their own pathways for success by committing to their own goals and carving out opportunities. The gap between what is taught in schools and what is valued in the marketplace may contribute to declining college enrollment. Collaboration is essential for success in any endeavor. Targeted writing and AI newsletters can be valuable tools for entrepreneurs. Maintaining reserve currency status is important for the US dollar and global economy. Links: WelcomeToCloudlandia.com StrategicCoach.com DeanJackson.com ListingAgentLifestyle.com TRANSCRIPT (AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors) Dean Jackson Mr Sullivan. Dan Sullivan Mr Jackson, you're in full voice There we go. You are in full voice today for Welcome to Cloudlandia. Dean Jackson That is exactly right, and it's been a great week in Cloudlandia and, more particularly, a great week in Deanlandia. Okay, that's the reason. Dan Sullivan That's the reason that Dean Jackson creates between the mainland and Cloudlandia. A lot of people don't know that, but there's a secret territory between these two worlds. Dean Jackson That's a secret territory. I love it, and there's a secret handshake to access. I know it's a funny thing. One of the. Dan Sullivan Secret tattoo. There's a secret tattoo. There's caps, t-shirts and mugs. That's right. Dean Jackson That's so funny, but not bumper stickers. Dan Sullivan But not bumper stickers. Dean Jackson No bumper stickers. In Deanlandia I've had an interesting, I'll tell you. I mentioned to you the distinction that I discovered between less screen time and more dean time And I successfully lowered my screen time by 29% this week. Dan Sullivan What specifically did you go after? Dean Jackson I spent more time. Everything that I do, i get done in what I call 50-minute focus finders, and the basics of the idea are that I've had ADD and I would always look at, even with the best intentions. I would want to do something, but I would find it difficult to focus or to do what I say I'm going to do without any supervision or accountability. So I started saying to myself listen, is it true that I can't focus, and is there any situation in my life where I can? And I immediately started thinking about golf And I thought I can play golf for four or five hours in a row with no problem. I can do that all the time. I can go to movies. I love going to movies And I don't have a problem with that. That's a couple of hours. And I started looking at what are the characteristics of what's going on with golf that makes it so easy for me to keep my word on that or to focus on that for an extended period of time. And it developed into an acronym for golf, which is all the characteristics of why I'm able to focus on that particular activity. And I thought, ok, well, first of all, the G is there's a goal, and a goal. I'd see the goal as a decision that I've made, the decision that this is what I'm going to do. I put it in the calendar. I'm going to play golf on Friday afternoon And it's in my calendar And I work all the way around it, right, everything. It's there as an anchor. Then O is for an optimal environment And a golf course is the optimal environment to play golf. It's set up perfectly for the task. You've got all the holes are already laid out. You start on the first tee. You kind of get on that. Ned Hollamall would probably refer to it as a bobsled run. You start at hole number one and you work your way all the way through to the 18th hole And then you're done. There are limited distractions. Is the L meaning there's not no internet? no, especially if you leave your phone in your bag or in your locker, There's limited distractions. You're able to stay on track. You've got all the equipment, everything you need, right there in your bag, in your golf bag, and F is a fixed time. And so I started thinking okay, well, how can I apply those elements to getting the things that I want to get done? that might be, you know, not golf the proactive things that I want to get done, and so I came up with this idea of a 50 minute focus finder And I would start blocking two hour blocks in my calendar And in those two hours I could do two 50 minute blocks with a 20 minute break in between. So it would be 50, 20, 50, and that could be two hours. And so I started thinking okay, i'm going to block off this 50 minute focus for this two hour block. I'm going to establish what's the goal for this What is it that I'm going to do? And then what would be the optimal environment for this And so, for instance, so if I'm thinking about, if brainstorm, my new book, is the goal, then I can, i would set aside the time. The optimal environment for that is in my comfy, on my comfy white couch in my courtyard, with my light, with I'd have some water. I've got my remarkable, i've got my. You know, everything is set up for what I'm going to need to accomplish that limited distractions. I'll leave my phone in the house and not have it here as a distraction, because I want the you know distraction free environment And otherwise you know if it's dinging or flashing or there it's tempting to get distracted on that. And the fixed timeframe I have a timer. I have a visual 50 minute timer, that kind of I can see where, where I am in that, without having to use my phone as the timer because it's too tempting for me, and so that 50 minutes goes and I'm able to get into a flow and do what it is that I'm going to do, and then at 50 minutes the alarm dings and I can get up and move around and go get some water, maybe a cup of coffee, get, look at my phone, you know, do whatever I need to do, and then, after the 20, minutes. I come back, set the timer for 50 minutes and do it again, and that kind of thing. I find that, you know, brainstorming often leads to outlining and that, will you know, lead to whatever the next step is, but I can always set up what the goal of the of the outcome is. You know, like one of the great examples, i never have a problem focusing on Welcome to Cloud Landia. I've had ingrained golf outing for about you know I set it in my calendar. I know where I'm going to be at the appointed time. I've got an optimal environment. I've got all the tools that I need. I have my remarkable you know, just doodling and taking notes as we're going. I'm out in the courtyard, i've got a nice bottle of water here And it's effortless effortless. Well, I think, you're. Dan Sullivan What's interesting about what you've just described is that you're taking a great habit and a great activity from the mainland and you're moving it into Cloud Landia projects. Dean Jackson I agree. And because that's where my access portal. Yeah. Dan Sullivan My sense is that if you look at the development of anything new in the world going back for as long as we have history, the biggest breakthroughs is where somebody develops, takes something that's really well developed in an old territory and moves it into a new territory. Okay, yeah, and I mean right now we can use the terms mainland and Cloud Landia, because we're in a current old territory, new territory, piece of history. You know the historical period. But it would have been the same with the development of the industrial technological breakthroughs. You know, with telegraph, you know telephone, you know internal combustion engine, assembly line, you know assembly line, you know the whole thing that the people who really make the money are the people who have the courier service between the two worlds. Dean Jackson That's a great outcome. I mean, when you think about that especially, it's funny. I was in the reading in the Wall Street Journal yesterday. There was. I get the print version on Saturday or for the weekend version of the Wall Street Journal And yesterday there was a hard-to-call newspaper in the world, by the way. Dan Sullivan Best newspaper in the world Saturday Yeah, yeah, so in yesterday I don't know whether it was Yeah, yesterday finest newspaper in the world hands down. There's no other newspaper as good as the Wall Street Saturday edition. Dean Jackson Well, there we go. That was your recommendation. By the way, about a year ago I started getting the physical version, but there's an article about entitled Mastering Your Mental Images. Can Make. Your Day. It's a new psychological technique aimed to use your imagination and all of your senses, overcome trauma and achieve goals. Did you read that article? Dan Sulivan Yes, I did. Dean Jackson Yes, i did. Okay, well, there you go. Very. Yeah, that's an interesting I mean, it's not so that sort of breakthrough information, but it's more supporting information that really shows what you think about. You. Bring about That's kind of. Dan Sullivan Well, it's cheaper than Adderall, you know. Dean Jackson Yeah. Dan Sullivan Right, right, yeah, well, i'm on a different path right now that you might be interested in. So I'm in a 12-week program with a sleep psychologist. Dean Jackson Okay. Dan Sullivan Okay, his name is Michael Bruce. Do you know, michael? Dean Jackson I do. Yeah, we found him on I Love Marketing He's yeah pretty good, well, i have nothing to say then? Well, no, tell me I want to hear all about it because It's all been said. Dan Sullivan Oh, that's so funny Between you and Joe and Michael. What else is there to say? But anyway, I was recommended him by Paramededia, who was my My Canyon Ranch go-to doctor for 10, 12 years, and then he's gone out on his own because he's spent too much time with me And be around me. You turned him into an entrepreneur. You're going to go out on your own if you're around me too much. Dean Jackson You're going to get infected. You're going to get infected. Dan Sullivan Yep. It's contagious, it's contagious. Yeah, anyway, one of my goals. I'm working with David Hasse, who's I don't know if you've met David or not, but he's in the pre-zone Yeah. And he's absolutely our number one overall doctor who is right at the center of all of our medical network, And his specialty is everything that improves the brain, the function of the brain. And so to start the program with him which was last August 2022, I set a goal that by 2024, August of 2024, that I would be off all prescription drugs. So that would include sleep medicines, Adderall and blood pressure medicines. So I have three big ones, And so along the way, I've been looking for ways of getting off the sleep medicine and Parmdedia, who really got me into having CPAP at night, which has been great. I've been doing it for 12 years. I've missed eight nights in 12 years. I really benefited from the technology. First of all, the machine does all the work at night. I don't even have to bother breathing. Dean Jackson It controls your breathing, at least the breathing in part. Dan Sullivan You get that. Dean Jackson Yeah, but it automatically. Dan Sullivan And it lowers your blood pressure at night because you're not working this hard. And so anyway, that was great And along the way I've acquired sleep medicines which I've enjoyed Lunefta and Sonata. But the tests that Dr Assy David Assy does with me indicated that there's a long-term negative impact of these drugs. They have a neurological effects over a long period of time. And he said I know what your lifetime goals are as far as how long you want to live. I understand your goals for where you want to be 10 years ahead, 20 years ahead. And he said if we can take these pharmaceutical things out of your system at a certain point, that'd be good. And I said, good, well, that's my goal. Two years of all prescription drugs And I've made great progress. The one that was. In order to get off the prescription drugs. What I have to do is change my sleep habits. Okay, because those drugs, which are the sleep medicines at night and the Adrol during the day, totally undermine your ability to get deep sleep, which is the restorative. It's the restorative sleep. So and I'm happy for my relationship with these drugs I'm not dissing the drugs. And already I can see some nervousness on the part of the drugs that whereas they thought this was going to be a lifetime relationship, i've kind of put them on the clock And yeah. So, anyway, we started three weeks ago and he's got really, really it's a wonderful coaching program. From the standpoint. You know me being a coach, i kind of understand a really good coaching program when I see it, and so what he starts you off at is that he starts gradually depriving you of sleep. Okay, so it starts at so it started off at 10 o'clock, where we go to go to bed at 10 and we wake up at five. Okay, oh my, God. And that's less sleep than I am talking about. I'm talking about in bed time here you know, 10 to 10 to five And then about two weeks in he moved it to 1015. And it means you can't go to bed before 1015. Okay. So, 1015, but you always get up at five, and his ultimate goal is that, regardless of when you go to sleep at night, you always get up at five, because then your circadian rhythms can kick in and you know and they've got. You know, from five till the evening, they've got 12 hours. They've got at least you know they've got 12, 13 hours for your natural sleep hormones to kick in and you get sleepy at the end of the day. So anyway this. So is that difference. Dean Jackson Like do you normally, have you normally? gotten up at five, or is that new for you? Dan Sullivan No, we ordinarily go to bed whenever but we always make sure to be in bed more than eight hours. Dean Jackson Okay, so that was our room, so sometimes you wake up at seven or eight or whatever. That'd be late. Dan Sullivan That would be late Okay. Yeah, yeah, but usually we're hitting bed at around eight, 39 at night. Dean Jackson Okay, and then okay, right. Dan Sullivan And then we put both. babs and I are morning people, so we're not we're not depriving ourselves. And then whenever we go to bed, then we put the alarm for eight hours, or more than eight hours, to get up in the morning. Okay, so that's a yeah, but it might be any time between eight o'clock and 10 o'clock that we would go to bed, but then when we got up in the morning, it would be determined by by hours later Yeah. By like sound, you know so anyway, so it was a real strain in the first week or so. What we're going to do next hour, hour and a half at night, you know you're sort of twiddling your thumbs and you're saying what could I do? What could I do? And then, before you go to bed, three hours before, you can't have any alcohol. So no alcohol within the last three hours, no food within the last two hours and no water within the last hour. And because the you're asking the digestive system to stay awake you know and do certain things. And so anyway, so long story. I'm just getting the general context here of what happened. But halfway through the second week I said I wonder if I so I take two Adderall's. I take a timer at least Adderall, first thing when I get up in the morning, which is 10 megs, and then, depending on the day and what's going on in the day, i'll usually have one around two o'clock in the afternoon. Okay, because I'm I'm starting to fade during that time and bang, I take the Adderall, and you know. And I'm the immediate release, yeah, yeah. So I experimented. I said I wonder if I can go through the afternoon, get through the day. And I did it once and it was just before a meeting with him, so I'd have weekly meetings with him And I he said, well, let's do an experiment, let's see if you can only have one day during the next week when you use the afternoon Adderall, because you've already indicated that you're kind of ambitious here. So let's see if we can do it. And I made it through the whole week. So I like and it's been 15 days now, i haven't had my afternoon Adderall and it's gone. It's gone, you know, because it's not an addiction. Dean Jackson It's not an addiction. Dan Sullivan It's a dependency and there's a big addiction You know, you know, it's just a habit, just a habit. It's not an addiction that has hold of your nervous system. So so he says that that's really great. And then I take two meds. At night, i take a lunesta, which is like a five hour, five hour knockout drug. And then there's Sonata and usually at the five hour four hour I get up and I do a fundamental human activity I pee. Okay, Yeah, Yeah. Dean Jackson Remember whenever you're planning to remember. Dan Sullivan When you're planning the future of the human race, make sure that there's always time to pee. And so I'll pop Sonata at that point. And that's fast acting, and I go back to sleep. So this past week I've kept the Sonata. So instead of taking the full dose, i break it in half and I just take half, and it's worked. It's worked. So I've gotten seven days in where I've just done half and he said okay, you're going down vacation now next week, see if he can get rid of the Sonata. So I have. But the big thing, dean, is we have to do a complete diary every day. It's a seven day diary and then we have to send it to him before our next meeting with him. And then he goes and looks and he said you know pretty good. He says you're, you'll probably be about four weeks into the five weeks into the program and you will have eliminated the afternoon Adderall and the middle of the night Sonata. He says that's, that's quite amazing, amazing progress, yeah. Dean Jackson But I like. Dan Sullivan I like the structure and he's very adaptable. I mean, he's got his goals He wants you to get, he wants you to have the habit of getting up at five o'clock in the morning. But I told them Friday, i met with him on Friday, just a couple of days ago, and I said you know, you've reintroduced me to a pleasure that I have not experienced, i bet, in 20 years. And what's that? It's the feeling of being sleepy. Dean Jackson Hmm, oh, interesting, so you were using the, the, the lunesta is the one that was. kind of that was the signal or whatever. right, the behavioral yeah signal to get sleepy Yeah, and so. Dan Sullivan I was taking upper the Adderall is the upper and the lunastons and outer are downers. So I was never sleepy. Dean Jackson I would just be, i would just be up and then I was down chemically, you know what's so funny if you say those words, and Joe and I had Richard Vigory on our marketing podcast and he talked about his daily routine of you know, two uppers in the morning and two downers in the evening, and that's where two cups of coffee in the morning and two glasses of wine in the evening. He called them as uppers and downers. Yeah, rhythm right right? Dan Sullivan Well, Richard can do anything he wants at this stage. Yeah, richard's in, i think he's in his, he's in his 90s, you know. I mean he's, you know he's beyond. He's beyond warranty refund. I'll tell you. That's so funny. Yeah, he's a he's a yeah, he's really in the history of the last 60, 70 years of politics in the United States, yeah, And the person, people most responsible for establishing a solid conservative mindedness and conservative voting population. Richard would be in one of the top five of all the people. Dean Jackson I think you're absolutely right. Yeah, You said something interesting about your. You've developed the routine that when you get up to pee, you take the sonesta and that's your cue to go back and have another round of sleep And I may have no issue. I heard I heard someone say you know, if you're gonna tell yourself a lie, you may as well make it a good one. And I started. I started thinking that well, not only that, you might will make, you might will make money on it. You know, if you're gonna, that's called marketing. Dan Sullivan That's called marketing. Dean Jackson I would have the same thing again. I would wake up at five o'clock, for instance, to pee, And then sometimes I wouldn't be able to get back to sleep, right, Because then my mind would start like already you know, working on the things I'm working on for the day or whatever. But I started telling myself the the better story. I would wake up at four often 445, 450 is around the time, usually right. And so if I wake up and it's that, i smile and I go pee and I'm saying, like I'm creating this story, that this is great because I'm gonna have the two best hours of sleep of my night. Right now I still have two hours left for the greatest sleep And I started telling myself that story and, wouldn't you know it, I ended up. I had the best two hours of sleep after telling myself that story And I thought that's an interesting thing where that matches up with this article we were talking about in the Wall. Street Journal mastering your mental images can make your day And I thought, if I would really emotionally get you know, I would create joy out of waking up at 442 because I knew that I was gonna, with certainty, have the two best hours of the night. Dan Sullivan Yeah well, what you've created, mr Jackson, is a self milking placebo. Dean Jackson Exactly right, yeah, but I wonder if you tried to play. I mean, this would be interesting to try replacing your Celesta with that story. Dan Sullivan But Sonata, Sonata is the genus of Sonata And it's not called that on the prescription because it's generic. But anyway, anyway. Sure, i mean we do that. I mean as entrepreneurs we have a natural gift for this, You know, I mean, you know. I think this is a commitment to something you don't have the capability for yet. Right right right, yeah, you're committing to a future jump in, you know, in performance and which will be a new capability. But when you commit, you don't have the capability And that requires courage. You know that requires courage to and, yeah, it's an interesting. You know it's an interesting, but you know more and more. I think that whether you're happy or not happy in the 21st century is the mind games that you have learned to play with yourself. Dean Jackson Yes. Dean Jackson I think that's really. That's one of the, that's one of the core found. Imagine if you applied yourself imagining this outcome. Dan Sullivan Yeah, yeah, you just weren't going to apply yourself to her goals. Dean Jackson Right. That's right. Dan Sullivan Yeah, I can, Yeah, and I think entrepreneurs are asked in you know the early years, and especially when they're in the school system, to apply themselves to some other people's goals for them. And at a certain point they say well, i don't get paid for that, i don't get paid for applying myself to other people's goals, that's right. Why don't I just come up with my own goals and apply myself to them? Okay? And I bet doing it my way lets me make 100 times more lifetime income than the teacher would. Dean Jackson Yeah, right. Dan Sullivan I'll never make any money that way. Dean Jackson Yeah. Dan Sullivan Yeah, i mean to a certain extent there's such a disconnect now And Peter Diamonis and I talked about it on Friday that a 18-year-old today anywhere in North America probably elsewhere that if you get a 10-week course in welding, you know and you get a certificate at the end of the first year, you'll make $60,000 here. Yeah, because there's such a demand now that we get welders into the reindustrialization and re-manufacturing of North America right now. All requires welding somewhere along the line. And meanwhile, if you go to four years of university, you know, regardless of the university, you probably didn't make any money during the four years, or minimal money during the four years, and probably you're running some sort of debt at the four years And meanwhile the 18-year-old who went into welding could be making $80,000, $90,000, $100,000 by the time you graduate, and then you've learned for four years things that don't make as much as a welder. Dean Jackson Yes, that's exactly right. Dan Sullivan And I think there's a shift because the incoming freshman class in the US, the difference between 2021 and 2022 was four million fewer freshmen coming into the first year of college. That's a big number Wow is that right. Dean Jackson right compared to how many normally come into the freshman. Dan Sullivan Well, four million more. Dean Jackson Oh yeah, but I mean that sounds like it couldn't be. Dean Jackson Well, it's a big number. I mean there's a lot of college freshmen. Yeah, it's a big number. No, no it would be. Dan Sullivan probably I'll have to check the numbers, but it would be, somewhere, and then it would be at least 25% at the very least to be 25% was missing because there's a disconnect about what they're learning and what they know gets paid for in the marketplace. You don't have to have a PhD to know the difference between what you get paid for, and I think parents are seeing this and I think the teenagers are seeing this and the words passing through the ranks it's a crack for the most part, going to university for four years is a crack And they say, yeah, but there's a socializing process that goes on that's ultimately very, very valuable. And I said, yeah, but your notion of how I should be socialized doesn't agree with my notion of how I should be socialized. Wow yeah. Dean Jackson That's something. when you look at that, you'll want me to apply myself to mindsets I don't agree to. Dean Sullivan I don't agree with. Dean Jackson That's why you are in the center. Imagine if you applied yourself. Dean Sullivan Yeah, that's all part of it. Dean Jackson I think that's an interesting thing, that kids, or we as people, that you are. An integral part of this is that it's. I heard someone parsing out the words of row, row, row your boat. That's the secret to life is row, row, row your boat And gently down the stream. You know that's really the key to life. Not in the hokey pokey, i guess right, one number one. Dan Sullivan it's your boat. Number two. you're going downstream. that upstream, that's exactly right. Yeah, not much growing required to go downstream, right. Dean Jackson That's kind of. I think if you could argue that, saying you know, going in your unique ability, you know and row row. Row is to continue actually doing something. It's not just float, float, float your way down the stream, it's row, row, row. You're actually doing something, you know. Dan Sullivan Yeah, it doesn't say you're the only one rowing either. Dean Jackson Right, that's true, that's right. Get everybody on board. Yeah, it's so funny, i love other things like that. Dan Sullivan Well, you know I mean. The interesting thing is, this always happens when you have the sudden emergence of a new territory and it's creating opportunities. It's creating wealth opportunities, achievement opportunities, you know, and freedom opportunities than the old territory, did you know? But this happens repeatedly, i mean over the centuries, over the millennia. There's always the old territory and the new territory, and then the people who make the money are the people who can learn on both sides and create an entirely new value creation proposition that lets other people make the transition. Yeah, for example, you and Joe doing I Love Marketing. Well, this would have been meaningless probably 30 years ago. Yeah. Dean Jackson I mean, there was no there was no capability. Dan Sullivan There was no capability for people to take action and get results with what you were recommending, that's true. Dean Jackson That's what's encouraging, that's kind of the, you know, when I was really looking at the 25-year framework and putting it in perspective with my plus three to that three years to get to 60 and then my next 25-year chapter starting at 60, that 28 years I started looking back 28 years ago and realized every single thing that is the biggest things right now weren't even in existence then And so encouraging when you think about, you know, the richest money, the thing the richest probably five or six people in the world weren't even didn't even start on their built all their wealth in that same period of time, And so that's kind of encouraging you know. Yeah, i like that a lot And that's kind of a. That's a. So you realize well what a nice meaty period of time that is. And of course you know, looking back, there's no way that we could have predicted 25 years ago what, or 28 years ago what a podcast was, or that everybody you know you'd have an instant and available access to so much of the world's information like that. You know it wasn't even wasn't even a thing. We were definitely mainland oriented Yeah. Dan Sullivan There's no question. I mean, how many coach clients have podcasts, even though? I've you know they've been listening to my podcast, they've been listening to your podcast and but hardly any of them are you know, I think it comes down to the that it's a lack of They don't have the confidence to do it. But the only way out of no confidence is to make a commitment that you're going to get the capability. Okay, you know, by this time next year I'm going to launch a podcast series. Now, who's the how? who helps me do that? Yeah? Dean Jackson Yeah. Dan Sullivan Because you don't have to do it. I mean, there's all sorts of talent around in the world who know. I mean there's two million podcast series as of January this year and probably a lot more six months later. And all I did was start in with Joe and get the ropes And I said well, i think I can create another series. And you know and that was with Peter Diamandis I've had a couple of years with Joe to get the feel for it And we started with Peter Diamandis and you know it's great, you know it's great. And I have you know I have seven, you know seven regular podcasts, including our own here. Yeah, I mean it was like we were having lunch at Los Solect in Toronto And you know I brought up the idea of that procrastination is actually a form of wisdom And you said we should do a podcast on this. And I said and I said when will we start? He said what are you doing tomorrow? And tomorrow we had a complete podcast. And all I had to do was make a phone call And that was it, you know, and we had a podcast And you know, but podcasts are full-fledged cloud-landing capabilities. Dean Jackson Yeah, yeah, this is. I've had a great you know. You look at those, the taking action, the just doing the things I had to, thanks to my you know, more deemed on less screen time focus. Over the last couple of weeks I've had a really productive couple of weeks I was in the middle of. I already started a lead generation workshop that I do by Zoom And the focus, for weeks and we focus on setting up a lead generation system for your business And we do four Tuesdays And I decided to go through the process with the people who I'm going through the workshop with to demonstrate. So one of the things that we talk about is, once we identify who your ideal target audience is, who's your ideal, your ideal prospect, then we start thinking about what would be the book that they would most definitely want to have in their, in their possession, in their collection. And so we go through a whole process of identifying, go through a book title formulas workshop where I, you know, describe the different types of book titles And have them do the exercise of creating what I call a word palette, where they think of all of the words and phrases and hopes and dreams and fears you know, all the sound bites that are going on in somebody's head, and so one of the title formulas is what we call a just do it title, which is it does what it says And you're going to do. What it says on the cover, like stop your divorce or think and grow rich is, are the types of action. That's what I'm going to do compelling offers, compelling offers, and so yeah so I wrote a site, i did the workshop, i did the process with them And I created a book, a book called convert more leads at what to say to prospects so they all convert themselves. And had a nice cover of imagery of a guy on a boat on a lake and he's had his hands behind his head and the fish are just jumping in his back. That's the, that's the imagery that we did. So I created that as the cover And then in the next seven days I created the whole book. I did the reminder of being when we were in London, you know, having that conversation. I went through the whole process of brainstorm where I brainstormed all the content and set it up into the chapters and I made a great outline. And I then went into the studio and I recorded what was essentially the audiobook version, i think. Say chapter one, begin with the end in mind, and then I would talk through my talking points for chapter one, and then I said chapter two and the title of chapter two, and so I created all the raw, all the raw audio by just talking about what I wanted to say. I had that recorded And then I sent I didn't do it, but one at the studio, sent the audio to someone on my team, jack, who then took the audio, got a transcript, set up the Google doc, did a first pass edit to turn it into you know, clean it up for written kind of format, and sent it back to me. And then I was able to go in and in a period of 50 minute, focus finders edit the written transcript into the finished form of the book And it's nice. It's a great outcome. And all the while I was doing that, i was already running ads for it. I set up the Facebook ads and generated now 293 ads of leads of people who want the book for about $3 each. You know it's a whole thing. It was such a great like during the process to actually go through with people and demonstrate what can be, what can be done. You know, yeah. Dan Sullivan Well, you know the, you know, you know how to create the book. You know I mean the idea, do you? have a copy, yet You're going to run off 20 copies and send them out to your friends so you can get the, of course. Dean Jackson Yeah. Dan Sullivan Yeah, Send them up, because I'll you know consume it and absolutely. Dean Jackson Yeah. Dan Sullivan I'll tell you five or 10 things that reminds me of them. Perfect, i love it. Dean Jackson Send it back to you That becomes version one and then with the input and the extension I can make version two and. but it's a nice meaty book. It's really good, really good content I'm happy with that. Dan Sullivan Yeah what's the idea? So I got version. Yeah, And I tell people, you know you can call 90 minute book and you can get a first draft of your book, get 20 or 30 copies and get it out to 20 or 30 people and then make your readers part of the design team. Dean Jackson That's exactly the whole purpose. That's exactly it, yeah. Yeah. Dan Sullivan People work for five years five years writing a book and they never, let a potential reader. First of all, they're not even clear about who the potential reader is. And you know, and my you know, i always start with one person as my potential reader and I do sort of a DOS in my mind about what the dangers, opportunities and strengths of this one person and I write the book and I do it. you know I do do that. People say, well, I want the book to be forever, and I said, well, I have a different approach, I want to be for one person. Right, because if I nail that, if I nail that they, then you know, the one person I want is a, an entrepreneur who is already successful, who's talented, who's ambitious, and from now on, they want 10 times more freedom in their lives Freedom of money, freedom of time, money, relationship and purpose. I said I just write the book for that person. Dean Jackson Well, you know, about? Dan Sullivan what? about school teachers? I said, not interested What about government bureaucrats Not interested. What about corporate employees? Not interested. What about non-profit organization? I said I can't even say the two words to myself. It depresses me. Dean Jackson Right, exactly. We have doctors who have non-profits. Dan Sullivan We have doctors who have non-profits And they say, well, can I, as a non-profit organization, be in your future? I said I can't even allow those two words to be said And I'm a workshop of mine, i said non-profit in the entrepreneurial world means something totally, totally different. For you know, i didn't get that. Can you try again? No, siri, siri. You know what Siri's main saying to me is? I didn't quite get that. Dean Jackson I didn't quite get that. Dan Sullivan I didn't quite get that. They say well, of course you are, you're not a person. A person would get it, You're just an algorithm and not a very pleasant one to us, with that Never been useful. I've always been a bother, so that's my take on it. Yeah, anyway, i want to tell you a little project we've got. You know, joe Stothe, do you, did you? Yeah Well, joe came to Genius while you were there by Zoom, and he gave a really great presentation on what his AI newsletter does, and so I had about eight things I was looking for at that meeting and he checked off seven of the boxes and I told him so. And he says and I said so, why don't we get going? And so we have. So we've sent out, we've sent out three of his AI newsletters and, just for the listeners here at the newsletter, that writes itself. So you put in some input or prompts and that is that your thought leaders that you follow in the world and you have your, you let them take advantage of things that you have that are already out in the internet And they put together a newsletter and I liked the content. I didn't like the layout. So I put in a lot of input about design characteristics. That would be consistent with coach stuff And we have certain design roles for everything that we do and I just applied them to the newsletter and we have a project manager, linda Spencer, who is overall a haunch of this, and we sent it out. So in the first three episodes first episode, we got a 56 open rate. Second one, we got a 62 open rate. Third one, we got a 66 open rate. So that's the point to keep getting the open rate. Dean Jackson Yeah, where do I find up for this? Dan Sullivan Yeah, future, future, future scope. So just type in and, and it's a wonderful thing, and so it goes out, and then it analyzes all the feedback from the first article and then it designs the second one, which we scrutinize from an editorial standpoint, and make adjustments, and it goes back out. But more and more, what it's joining in Cloudlandia is who you want to be talking to with the? who you want to be talking to, what do they want to be hearing from you? Okay, so it keeps refining that the message is right for the, for the mainer, but yeah, really fun. Dean Jackson I knew about future scope and daily AI, but where do. I find up for your your newsletter. Dan Sullivan Spark. It's called Spark. We'll send it out to you. I don't, i can't do that, you know I've got a specialized who, but we'll send it out. send it out to you. Dean Jackson And, by the way, great Yeah. Dan Sullivan You're. You're welcome as a columnist because all the people I mean I have a. You know I'll have a one or two sections on the newsletter, but the other four or five are coach. They're free zone, free zone clients. Dean Jackson Yeah, yeah, love it, love it. Dan Sullivan And you can, you can put in, you know you can. For example, you can talk about your new book. You know, brainstorm, brainstorm. Yeah, so you can give a interview, you know, you can give an advance notice of what brainstorm is all about and just put it in as a blog and we'll just put it right in the newsletter. Okay, perfect, i like it. Dean Jackson Well, this is all very exciting, yeah. I like the things that can do where you don't have to do, the stuff you know where you're using well, think about dailyai as a whole. Dan Sullivan Think about producing a newsletter every two weeks, yeah, where you're starting from scratch every two weeks and you don't even have any sense how the ones you've sent out already are actually landing. You know, yeah, the only difference between a bad newsletter idea and a good newsletter is your rate of open and click through. Dean Jackson That's true, yeah, and respond Yeah. Dan Sullivan There's feedback, you know, and so. so, anyway, anyway, and I wonder what Vladimir Putin is doing today. Dean Jackson I wonder the same thing. Dan Sullivan He's got a lot of material for food of thought over the last five or six days, you know. Dean Jackson Amen Yeah. Dan Sullivan I mean they got within 125 miles, you know they had, you know, a couple of hundred in our armed carriers and that, and they got within 125 miles of Moscow and that's serious business, you know. And it goes to go the other way and the war is coming to them. So anyway, but you know it's easier to not start a war than it is to start a war, because once you start a war the enemy has a vote, you know, and anyway. But but this is a lot. He did three. He does really great YouTube. You know five to eight YouTube and he did three of them yesterday, yesterday just giving you a structure on, you know the potential uprising, probably the best military force in the Russian army, which is the Wagner group, and the head of Wagner says you know we're. We've decided that the entire military leadership in Russia is incompetent and, worse than that, they're criminally corrupt and we cannot possibly win this war unless we get rid of the top military leadership and you know demonstrating words, So follow me This way, yeah. So anyway, we're. Anyway. It's interesting. But Peter D Amonus said that he felt that Russia was collapsing as a country and that this is you know. They were supposed to have the second most powerful military in the world and it's debatable whether they would qualify to be in the top 10. And you know so lots of things, and you know so anyhow what a wonderful world, what a wonderful world we live in. Dean Jackson Did I hear you say you're going on vacation. Now It's starting. Yeah, Let's be. Let's be cottage time by now. Dan Sullivan Yeah, but from the cottage. next Sunday, if you're free, i will call you. Dean Jackson I am free. Yes, i would hope I'm going to play that Awesome. I'm very excited about that. Yeah. Dan Sullivan Yeah, yeah So that'd be good And we'll learn more about your 50, your 50, you know your 50 men Yeah. Because you had already created Jackson Jackson times, which are 10 minutes, which are 10. Dean Jackson Jack's units. Dan Sullivan Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't think this is a threat to the US dollar as the reserve currency, but I think it's substantially good for you. Dean Jackson I agree, that's what. Dean Sullivan I'm most useful reserve currency. Dean Jackson That's right, and I have it in abundance. Dan Sullivan Yeah. Dean Jackson I was talking about that. Dan Sullivan Because do you see the dollars not going to be reserve currency? And I said, well, whoever replaces it? make sure you have the greatest Navy in the world, the greatest Air Force in the world and the greatest fighting, because that's the muscle that makes the dollar the reserve currency. If you don't have the, you know, the armed force to reinforce your way around the world, you can't do the reserve currency. Dean Jackson Yeah, exactly. Dan Sullivan Yeah. Okay, alrighty, that was fantastic. Dean Jackson I will talk to you next weekend. Yep.

Bill Boyar, Founding Shareholder of BoyarMiller, joins the podcast. Bill shares his fascinating story of going from a summer associate at a law firm to ultimately forming BoyarMiller with the help of two of his partners. Through his experiences, Bill shares the importance of focusing on people and building a strong foundation for a professional services practice, rather than solely chasing growth and money. Listen as Bill explores leadership transitions and entrepreneurial advice for those looking to build successful businesses. SHOW HIGHLIGHTS Bill Boyar, a founding shareholder of BoyarMiller, shares his journey from being a summer associate at Chamberlain Hrdlicka to starting his own firm with Gary Miller and Lynn Simon. Boyar emphasizes the importance of focusing on people and building a strong foundation for a professional services practice rather than just focusing on growth and making money. Creating a culture based on core values has been instrumental in the firm's growth over the past 33 years. Taking care of people in terms of hiring and firing decisions has shaped the firm into what it is today. Investing in technology and setting a 10-year vision for the firm were pivotal moments that contributed to BoyarMiller's success. Leadership succession and remaining independently owned were also key factors in the firm's growth and sustainability. The importance of purpose, method, and outcome in organizational development is discussed, as well as the firm's continuous engagement with all of its lawyers. Boyar reflects on the leadership transition to the current leader, who embraced the firm's mission and values, rather than bringing in their own ideas. Entrepreneurial advice is shared, such as setting standards for how to treat people and dreaming big. Boyar's first job experiences, the Tex-Mex vs. barbecue debate, and the journey of building BoyarMiller from the ground up are also discussed. LINKSShow Notes Previous Episodes About BoyarMiller GUESTS Bill Boyar About Bill TRANSCRIPT Chris Hanslik Alright, so I'm excited to start what is our 50th episode of Building Texas Business, and a very special guest, the founder of our firm, Boyar Miller, and happy to call in my law partner. So, bill, welcome to the show. Bill Boyar Thanks, Chris. I'm really excited to actually finally be here. Chris Hanslik Yes, so I think the story of our firm is a pretty special one. Obviously it's near and near to my heart. Maybe start by telling the listeners a little bit about what led you to the firm that became Boyar, simon and Miller at the time in 1990, and kind of that journey that brought you in to the firm and how that influenced where you went from there. Bill Boyar Sure, My story begins. And this journey begins the campus of Tulane Law School in New Orleans when Bob Waters from Chamberlain Herlica Whiten Waters, came to interview for a summer associate when I was in my second year. We had an amazing interview experience. It was supposed to be the last interview of the day when they were 20 minutes and we spent two hours together And that ended up resulting in me coming to Houston for my summer associate experience, and back in those days it was 12 weeks, one firm. You basically put all your chips on one number and hope it worked out. It worked out great for me. So after I graduated I came to Houston. I didn't know anybody. I had dated a girl in college who was from Houston. She was the only person. So it was really quite an adventure, Started at Chamberlain and I was there for four years. After three years, Bob, who was my boss, my mentor, my friend, my running buddy, left to become a principal with a group that developed the Houstonian And he wanted to start a little law firm when he left and took one other guy with him and a year later I joined him. So we had a little three person law firm. About six months into that experience. He came to me and he said I've got too much to do and on the principal side of this relationship so I'm not going to practice alone anymore. So I was 29 years old and the guy who had all the business was not going to be practicing law anymore and my partner was a tax lawyer who read the Wall Street Journal and tax periodicals and so I woke up one day and had a law firm to figure out how to run and manage A little bit of a cold shower. It was crazy. So I had some guys that I practiced law with at Chamberlain and over time they joined me and we went from three lawyers to ten lawyers. We moved to a facility at Five Post Oak Park. We had twenty lawyers and we had thirty lawyers and we were on opening up an office in Austin. And this was over a ten year period. And the last three or four years of that experience I was unhappy and had a hard time sort of rolling out of bed in the morning. I didn't know why, other than I didn't like the way that we were so focused on growth and making money and not really taking care of our people. So I had two little kids and in 1990 I told my wife that I was going to do something different. I didn't know what I was going to do, so I resigned from that firm and I had learned a lot. I learned a lot about running law firms and marketing and we were way ahead of the game in terms of creating a brand and doing marketing before it was sort of popular. But I didn't like the way we were treating people. It sounds like the lesson there was. Chris Hanslik You said it. You were focused on making money, not your people kind of on the wrong things that led ultimately what made look successful to unhappiness. Bill Boyar Yeah, i think the fundamental lesson I learned that you and I have talked about this a lot is that growing a professional services practice and making money is the result of doing a lot of things right. If you can figure out what that is, what are those things that you have to do right and the outcome is growth and making money. It's just a much more fulfilling way to be in this business. So I decided to leave. I didn't know what I was going to do. Fast forward, i had a client that went to high school in Waco, texas, with Gary Miller. Gary was trying to poach my client. My client said you should talk to Bill Boyar. He just resigned from his firm and Gary was like no way. So Gary and Lynn Simon had a small firm, seven lawyers. I did a bunch of interviewing. I interviewed and what I thought I was going to do was tuck into one of the big firms. I had a good size practice. I was still in my 30s. I could bring two or three lawyers and some assistance and paralegal so I could pick up a practice and take it. I did all that interviewing with all those big regional firms When I got introduced to Gary and Leonard and they were like they opened their arms. And ultimately was my wife, pam, who helped me figure out what I wanted to do with my life, because every time I came home from interviewing with one of the large firms I sort of was unhappy and couldn't see myself doing that. And when I came home from talking with Gary and Leonard, i was energized and excited. And so she's the one who pointed out to me you need to go do that. So I'd say I've had two great mulligans in my life. One was Pam, was my second marriage We've been married for 40 years But two, the opportunity to start another firm, essentially, and take the lessons from that first experience. I don't think I could spell business when waters came in and told me that I, it was my firm to run and lead and do whatever I wanted with. By the time I got a chance to partner with Gary and Leonard and start what is now Boyar-Miller, i had a better sense of what it took to be successful in this industry, but not in a traditional way. So, if you think about it, there was no internet, we weren't operating on computers, barely had cell phones. We had the big ones just stacked in your car and plugged into your lighter. But we didn't have all the technology to be connected, so we had to work harder for people to know who we were and are. But they just gave me the opportunity. They plugged my name first on the door so felt like continuity in my practice And we started and we had 10 lawyers in 1990. I think that the what brings us to today, chris, is we never really have cared how big we were or are. We've never measured our value to this industry or to our clients or to our people, to each other, by profits per partner or how many lawyers we have. We've always really focused on what's the value we contribute, and I think that makes us different. Chris Hanslik I agree There will be a lot of agreement in this episode, for obvious reasons, but I think one of the things that I've always liked about that story, and can relate to it as well, is not only you're not from Houston, you're from Texas. In a lot of ways, i think it's a testament to the welcoming nature of the Houston business community. You don't have to be from here to be successful if you want to work hard and do what you say you're going to do. Bill Boyar Yeah, i've got people all the time that we couldn't have done what we've done with this law firm, with particularly me as the sort of the first name on the door and one of the founders, anywhere in the world but Houston, texas. I'm from Philadelphia, i went to school in New Orleans, i came here, i didn't know anybody And you know, here we are 45 years later, 47 years later now, enjoying the, you know, the organization that we've built together. Chris Hanslik No, So, 1990, you get settled in this new firm, based on what you had learned over that prior 10 years. What vision did you have, or at what point did you start to develop a vision of what Boyar Miller? Bill Boyar could be. So I said I think starting out I knew that you know you learn a lot from mistakes you make. I always tell people you don't learn by doing things right, you learn by doing things wrong. So the learning for me about the previous firm was you take care of your people and you focus on the right things. But I didn't under. I had no sort of connection with the concepts of mission or purpose or vision or value. I had the things that we sort of have built the foundation of this law firm on it. When I started with Gary Leonard, i was just trying to sort of rebuild my practice. I was very, very fortunate. I brought 100% of my business with me and some really good young lawyers and support team, but I didn't really know how to actually build it. Chris Hanslik Right. How did that evolve? Where did the learning come from? Bill Boyar So we started out and because of the similarity in the names of the two firms the one I left and the one that we started together there was a lot of confusion in the marketplace And we had some young lawyers that we hired And really our journey to build a culture started with sort of sourced out of the confusion we created in the market and our young lawyers not being able to describe who we were as a firm. So a couple of really young lawyers came in. One in particular said I was at a cocktail party and people asked me about where I worked and they said tell me about the firm and I couldn't answer the question. So one of my dearest friends in the world was starting a consulting practice about the same time we started the firm and he was really focused on communication, culture building things that were. You know, it was not popular, there was no internet, people weren't doing this, so they could stick something on the internet and it has a sort of a marketing, you know tool. Chris Hanslik It's more genuine right. It's like does it matter. Bill Boyar Yeah, And his name is Mickey Conley, has a group out of Boulder called Conversant, you know, really a terrific firm. But back then he was sort of just starting to develop his own body of knowledge and the way of thinking about organizational hygiene, organizational development. So I asked him to come down. We got all our lawyers in the room and we were just wrestling with who do we want to be and how do we want to behave and what's going to define us in terms of the sort of the cultural foundation of this firm. And we sat around and I intentionally sat in the back of the room and led I think we had a dozen lawyers at the time and I let it evolve and we came up with at the time five, what we call core values. To this day four of them have survived. This is probably 1992 or three. Of those five core values, Four are still core to our being and we said, okay, this is who we're going to be. And organizations evolve, as you and I have talked about a lot. You start with nothing and something is non-existent and then you start to evolve. You start thinking and developing your way of leading to what you want as your foundation. Then something becomes reliable where you have a leader who is like the cop and I was the cop of the core values from the day that we generated them and then ultimately, something becomes institutionalized. And the first thing that became institutionalized in this firm was core values, and what defines something becoming institutionalized is when that one leader is no longer the cop and everybody is given the space and everybody agrees to hold each other accountable for the behavior. So probably the thing I'm most proud of is the way that we actually work through. It developed our core values, had them evolve, had them become reliable and now as part of our DNA. Chris Hanslik Yeah, what I love about our values here is that they have become institutional. I was here at the time where I feel like that really solidified in itself. It's when we started hiring and firing from culture and it sent a message to people that this is really real. It's not no one's above the culture or the values, and it's a game-changing moment for an organization. There was not just marketing stuff for the website, but it's really, as you just said, in the DNA. Bill Boyar Well, i think a defining moment for us was we do off-sites twice a year and we do them in June and November, and we were in an off-site in, i think, san Antonio and we sat around the room and we were having some challenges with some people, including one or two that were in the room who were our fellow shareholders and we posed the question are we willing to declare that if you cannot live consistent with our values, you cannot work here, regardless of your position of firm, and unanimously around the room everybody said yes, and soon thereafter one of the people in the room was no longer in the room for that very reason, and the message that that sent to our organization was a game-changer. Chris Hanslik I think that's a good lesson for the listeners is the culture building, setting some values and starting to hold people to account for those behaviors. To define and build a culture isn't easy. It's messy work, it's bumpy, but if you stay diligent and consistent with it and committed to it, it will play out. Bill Boyar Absolutely. I mean we evolved in terms of the behavior. Some people call them core values, some people call them pillars, some people call them standards, i don't care what you call them. What ultimately is how we can treat each other, our colleagues, our friends, people on the other side of deals, and I think that defines us. The other piece of that puzzle is purpose Right, and we struggled with how to articulate purpose. And I traveled a lot, as you know. I was on airplanes a lot, i was in hotels a lot, i was in airplane lounges a lot. My travel was long distance and I was a voracious reader of business books and I wanted to use this firm as a sort of a lab experiment of can you take principles from great companies? and I never read anything about law firms, anything about the industry. I was all. My study was what can I find from lessons from great companies and great leaders that I can see whether or not it works in a flat, horizontal organization with a bunch of Taipei people? And so I would experiment. And because we struggled so much to sort of articulate a mission statement, we pulled everybody together, as you know, in a room and the question was when you get up in the morning. What are you excited about related to coming to work? You might be excited about a lot of stuff, but I was really more focused on what are you excited about about this firm, and that's how we evolved our mission statement. I don't know how many years ago that's been now. I think it was 2007. Chris Hanslik What's really? that's such a great story and I tell it as you do all the time. There was no outside consultant, there was no prompts. It was the owners of the organization answering that question for about 45 minutes and a bunch of words on the board and three themes fell out that we then kind of worked. Smith and that mission everyone here, i think, can quote it. We check in on it, as you said, at our off-sites twice a year and it still resonates and everyone's hard to get here. Bill Boyar Yeah, and it's the. You know, it's the. You asked me early what was the vision? and you know how we think and talk around here about. You know purpose, method and outcome, and I mean my philosophy of leadership or organizational development, organizational hygiene, whatever you want to call it is. You start with purpose, which is mission. You set a direction, a vision for what you want to be when you grow up, and then you connect that with method, which is really. You know who you are, what you do and how you do it, and that's where sort of values reside. And strategy and action. And if you don't, if you can have all the strategy in the world but if you're not in action, it's meaningless. But and I think we've done a pretty good job here of trying to look forward and listen to our people you know that. You know and engage everybody who's in this firm, every lawyer who's in this firm, in the process. You sit around and think and you know somebody who's a first year associate today, 10 years from now, is if they're gonna, if they last through the experience, they're gonna be a partner here, and so we let them have influence over their own destiny, their own experience and what this firm is gonna look like for them 10 years from now. Chris Hanslik So, Like I said there's pivotal moments in organizations, right If they're going to survive, and this firm's now. I guess it's about to finish year 33. Let's talk about some of the things, when you look back, that you think in the moment we're innovative, we're pivotal to keeping the firm going in its independent state, and it has helped to get us where we sit today. Bill Boyar So several. I think the first one is our acceptance of technology. So early on, when we started, I had a very large client who let me do very large deals, international deals, that I was probably less prepared for than he was but was prepared for me to do, But I did it anyway. And I had one deal where I lived in the Regency Hotel in New York for two and a half months While I was up there and this is in 1991, while I was up there I connected with a lawyer who was part of our group And he was running his practice on a little Dell laptop computer And I was handwriting things on a yellow pad and faxing them to my assistant at Houston who was typing and then faxing back to me. And he's there on this computer And I'm like I've got to be able to do this. So I got the specs for his laptop, faxed them, Faxed them to Houston And if we looked at it today, it wouldn't be that small right Chunky. It was chunky. Yeah, it was chunky, but I had it drop shipped to me in New York And I'd work all day and teach myself how to operate that computer all night. And when I came back we finished the deal very successful. I gathered all of the lawyers in the firm in a room And I said see this One year from now, every one of you is going to be operating your practice on one of these or you won't be working here anymore. And I had one. That's a big moment. Yeah, that was a moment And one of my partners said I got a D in typing, it's not going to happen. And I laughed and I said well, you're going to have to learn how to pack, because that's the way we're going to do it. And we made the investment And it started a path for us that we were not leading edge but were right behind. We can't afford to be leading edge, but we've made tremendous investments in technology And we've continued to do that ever since. I guess the other thing I would say is in 2006, which I think was another watershed moment in our firm's history. We had 20 lawyers at the time, if you remember. We had 10 shareholders, 10 associates, the firm divided in perfect quadrants senior shareholders, junior shareholders, senior associates, junior associates And we set a 10-year vision for the firm, broke up in groups and it was amazing how consistent everybody's view was. 2006, and some of the critical things that came out of that work was in 10 years. We had to be in a new facility And the lesson I got out of it was we had to look at leadership succession. So we did a SWAT analysis, if you remember, and I was a strength, a weakness, an opportunity and a threat, right right. So I listened to that And we did a lot of work that culminated in this beautiful facility that we've now been in for seven years And you succeeding me as chairman of the firm. Chris Hanslik Yeah, i think I remember that meeting well and some of the other meetings we had, about everyone wanting to remain independent at the shareholder level and then doing the work at every level of the organization, and the input was consistent about being independent, investing in the future. One of the first things that needed to happen was leadership succession, and you, i think, took a huge moment. no reason to step aside, but put in place a plan to step aside by the time you were 60. And then we embarked on a couple years of trying to figure out who that person would be. Bill Boyar Well, we didn't spend a couple years figuring out who the person was. We spent a couple years executing. Yeah Well, look, i laugh to myself when I have friends of mine who are in their 70s, who are trying to run law firms And they're recruiting and hiring professionals who are 45 years, their junior, younger than their children. The real sort of wake up for me is when we started having my kids' friends come across as candidates And I've always been open door first name. We're all colleagues. There is some hierarchy because it's natural with experience, but I've tried to always try to break that hierarchy down. We're all a team, right, And you know, i just, i just knew that part of that that if you didn't study generational differences and then respond to those differences intelligently, that we were never gonna be a multi-generational firm. I could not do that. I could get this firm. I was chair for 20 years and I got it to a place where I thought I had exceeded my ability to drive it to the next level, and that's where you came along and you've done a phenomenal job with this firm since, which is now a dozen years. I guess It's crazy, but you know, people get entrenched in positions and it's about power. I've never felt like being chairman was the source of power for me. I always felt like trying to be a great lawyer was the source of power for me, and it still is to this day. So I never. This was not about I had to retain a title. It's why I don't have a title. I always felt like the. The ability to sort of sit in the middle generationally, be able to connect with the more senior generations and be able to connect with the more junior generations, is the sort of the perfect place to be in the leadership of any organization. And when you lose sight of that, you get myopic and you rely on sort of history versus being connected to the present. And I mean God knows. The changes we've experienced in the last five years, both generationally and socially, have been tremendous. Chris Hanslik No questions. You know there's gotta be a lot of organizations out there facing that challenge. Leaders out there in organizations, the challenge of succession. Do I do it? How do I do it? Maybe let's just talk a little bit about what that process looked like for you and in us, because, yeah, i was right there with you. It was very thoughtful and disciplined about how we went about that And it. I think the results would suggest it was executed. Thought out a great plan and executed beautifully, because it was a very seamless thing for our organization. Bill Boyar So that in 2006 I was 55. So that when we had that meeting I was 55. And it took me a little while to completely digest the message from that meeting. But the message was clearly that in 10 years from that moment there needed to be another leader. And as I thought about it, i determined that 60, 860 was the sort of the tip. That was the breakpoint that the leader of this organization and all of the leaders of this organization in each of the practice groups, needed to be younger than 60. So I counseled with some of my particularly with my friend at Conversant and talked about how best to think about this. And so at the next meeting of our shareholders, i asked the group who wants my job? And there were three of you. So we did a about a one-year program where I would ask each of you to read a particular book that I thought was reflective of my philosophy of business and leadership, and we'd go out to dinner and drink really nice wine and sit around and talk about and what was the learning and how did you apply it to the firm and the future of the firm. And you know, over a short period of time I realized that you were the logical person to take that on. So I went to the shareholders and said, chris, it's my choice, and you were unanimously endorsed. And so we created a role as vice chairman for a year where the promise was, and this was when I was closing in on 60. The promise was that by the end of that year, my responsibilities in running this firm would be transitioned to you, So that by the time I was no longer chairman and you were gentlemen that you would have been doing the job. And, as it worked out, the person who was our executive director made a decision to retire, had health issues, so you were able to then recruit your own partner in the operations, which turned out to be fantastic. So by the time it was time to make the move. Now the biggest challenge is I didn't go anywhere. Chris Hanslik Right, i was still there It was very unique. Bill Boyar Yeah, i wasn't going anywhere and we had to convince our team that Bill's not retiring. We had to also convince client base, the marketplace, our friends, that Bill wasn't retiring. But here's what I did do. I made you a promise that I would stay away for about six months, as much as I could, and let you sort of find your way, because it's different when you say you're going to be the leader and the day you wake up and you are the leader. And I think the first year was a little bumpy for me because I'd been running law firms for 30 years Even though I was sort of in denial that that was part of my identity. It obviously was. But I look back now it was one of the smartest business moves I've ever made. It freed me up to do other things, do a lot of work in the community, continue to grow my practice, be a better father, because I had more time. So it worked out really great And I think that I've counseled a lot of people on succession and it's hard to let go, but what the key to it is to build the foundation. And one thing I sort of love about the way you took it on is we talked about the name and agree it wouldn't change, and you embraced the culture of this place. You took on the mission as your own, the values as your own, and you've done nothing but build on what was there. I think the risk that people see in succession in organizations like this is that the next guy is going to come in and tear up all the work and bring their own. I've got my own ideas about what the culture should be and what the vision should be, and you didn't do that. You had a strong foundation and built on it, and that's where we are today. Chris Hanslik I get asked a lot of questions about that and did at the time. So one, they're retiring. Two, so your name's going on the door. And I'd say no. And as I experienced the culture and grew here, what I tell people, told them, then tell them today is, in our business any lawyer can have their name on the door. So there's nothing unique or special about that. I've always been a team player on teams my whole life. So being a part of a really well-known, high-functioning team is really cool and unique in my view, and to be able to have the opportunity and the privilege to be the leader of that team. So I was like I want to make that brand of Order Miller something special And if I'm known as the leader of that, that's more important than having my name on the door, because there's 80-something thousand licensed lawyers in Texas that make it each go out and hang a shingle. There's nothing unique about that. The other thing I think we've proven even though I think it's a little unique because you're right, most succession plans there's a retirement involved. We've proven you can do it without the retirement If everyone involved in those leadership roles stays focused on what's important and that's the health and well-being of the organization. Bill Boyar So I think if I had to point to one thing that made it work is the promise I made to you and to myself is that I would never contradict you in public, that I would bring to you my ideas, my concerns, whatever thoughts I had, and you could take them and do with them what you wanted. I don't think I've ever mandated anything, but I've never wanted to contradict you or take you on Shareholders meeting, lawyers meeting, how I talk about our relationship in the public, so that there's no question who's the boss, who's the chairman, who's the leader of the firm. And yeah, i think people respect what I've contributed over the last 33 years to this place and the contribution I made to the foundation. But I think there's no question about who's on first. Chris Hanslik Yeah Well, it's been great. The other thing I would add to that is in our transition. You're right that first year is almost a reverse transition. I was still learning, and always am, and there was transition for you not actually being the guy in that seat. But again, there may have been a little bumpy, but it wasn't anything that felt natural and it's proven itself, i think, so far to be successful. Bill Boyar Well, i will tell you, i made a liar out of a lot of people who doubted I could do it. Chris Hanslik I should have placed a bet. So I always like guests that have had the success like you've had and through failures and learning, And you get to, and I'll say this, and anybody that knows you know you. One of the things that drives you is the opportunity to work with entrepreneurs every day and make it their dreams happen. So what are two or three things that a listener out there that has just started a business or thinking about it, what are some of the nuggets of wisdom you'd say? keep this in mind as you start that journey, or if you're in that journey and you're questioning why. Bill Boyar I'd say so. I tell people all the time It's never too early to start thinking about the purpose for which you're doing this business and it's not making money. So what is the other, what's the real purpose? It's never too early to set standards of how you want your people to be, to treat each other. And it's never too early to dream big, think big and work backwards. I'm a sort of a classic reach out, look back, thinker, set the bar, the peg in the sand, whatever you want to call it. Look back to today and really think about what do I have to do? Too many young entrepreneurs just get up, put their clothes on and take one step forward, and another step forward, and another step forward, and it can be directionless and that can create a lot of dysfunction and failure. So it's never too early to try to actually have organizational hygiene. It's also never too early to figure out who you can get around the table, who has experience, who's been through what you're trying to go through, to coach you, counsel you. That's why organizations like YPO and EO and Vistage are so valuable, because you could find a place to have, you know, get counsel or coaching from people who have been there, who are trying, who have already accomplished what you're trying to do, or all who are similarly situated, experiencing the same challenges as you're challenging. Well, bill, this has been great. Chris Hanslik You know. Love the story. Knew most of it, you know, but just love that giving you the opportunity to be able to tell it so everyone else can hear it. So let's wrap up on some personal things. What was your first job? Bill Boyar So my first real job other than catting, when I was a kid, my first real job was working in summers in residential construction. I did sheathing and roofing for houses on a non-union crew. I did it, you know, for four summers, made my way from the guy on the ground hoisting up the four by eight to the guy up on the first story, pulling him up to the guy on the roof, laying him to the guy on the roof, being the supervisor and the hammer, until it rained one day and I'd slid off the second story of a roof. And the next summer I was on a landscaping crew. Chris Hanslik Literally boots on the ground. Bill Boyar Yeah, and I've stayed on the ground since Wisely All right. Chris Hanslik Famous question Tex-Max or barbecue? Oh, Tex-Max, Yeah, you raised the kids at Nifas, right? Bill Boyar Well, you know, i got engaged at Nifas. I celebrated every birthday there, you know, between Nifas and El Tiempo, it's yeah, i love it If you could take a 30-day sabbatical. Chris Hanslik Where would you go? what would you do? Bill Boyar You know, I knew you were going to ask me this question because I listened to all your podcasts and I think I would probably go hang out in Italy. Chris Hanslik That's a pretty popular question or answer, excuse me, i mean and it sounded like to split it They say maybe two there, two somewhere else. Bill Boyar You know, so much of my travel is three days here or four days there or a week there, but it's never really immersed. I went to school in Wales my junior year in college and I really immersed. I didn't do the year-rail pass and go to every country I could go to. I actually spent a year in the UK and in Wales and something that you know a mini version of immersion is really sounds great to me, but I got a boss who won't let me leave for 30 days. Chris Hanslik I'll see if I can talk to him about that. Bill, this has been wonderful. Thanks for telling your story, Thanks for being the kind of milestone marker for us at the 50th episode. I think we've you know, hopefully proven and validated this concept and that the listeners enjoy the content. Bill Boyar So it's a pleasure to be on this and I'm proud of what you've done with this. Thank you, Thank you. Special Guest: Bill Boyar.

Get ready to dive headfirst into a heated debate about the nominees for the SNL Hall of Fame! Join jD and his esteemed panel - Jon Schneider, Andy Hoglund, and Andrew Clark - as we dissect the 15 new nominees and discuss who should make the cut. With a stacked lineup of talent to choose from, this episode is guaranteed to be a rollercoaster ride of opinions and insights.We kick things off by discussing the legendary John Belushi and Bill Murray, delving into their legacies and why they should undoubtedly be inducted into the Hall of Fame. We also tackle the question of whether the Lonely Island crew deserves a spot on the ballot, and explore the impact of other SNL greats like Buck Henry, Dana Carvey, and Christopher Walken. Strap in for a whirlwind of passionate opinions and spirited debates about the show's most iconic contributors.As we wrap up our discussion, we shift the focus to other nominees like Dana Carvey, Rosie Schuster, Jeff Richards, and Don Pardo, debating their merits and contributions to the show. We even consider the role of music in SNL's identity and touch on the possibility of an annual honorary award. Don't miss this exciting episode as we weigh in on who should be immortalized in the SNL Hall of Fame!Transcript0:00:08 - Speaker 1It's the SNL Hall of Fame podcast with your host, jamie Dube, chief librarian Thomas Senna, and featuring Matt Bardille And now curator of the hall, jamie Dube. 0:00:42 - Speaker 2Hey and welcome to the SNL Hall of Fame round table. It's JD here and I'm glad to be joining you once again on the SNL Hall of Fame, a podcast which is a weekly affair. Each episode, we take a deep dive into the career of a former cast member, host, musical guest or writer and add them to the ballot for your consideration. Once the nominees have been announced, we turn to you, the listener, to vote for the most deserving and help determine who will be enshrined for perpetuity in the hall. Well, this isn't a normal episode. This is a very special episode. We have put all the nominations up, There have been 15 new nominees added to the remaining ballot And today we're going to invite some people to share their ballots and go from there. So why don't we introduce who we've got to? my immediate right is John Schneider. How are you doing, John? 0:01:37 - Speaker 3I'm doing great, Jamie. Always great to be here. Feet are wiped and ready to go. 0:01:42 - Speaker 2Excellent, oh, i didn't say it The one time I don't say it. 0:01:46 - Speaker 3We don't just say you know like it's not like a foot fetish thing. Jamie always introduces and tells people to wipe their feet. So it's not John being, you know, having a fit thing. 0:01:56 - Speaker 4I think John just kind of a little revealing about himself. actually, That's my takeaway. 0:02:00 - Speaker 3I mean, they do call this the SNL Hall of Feet. Right, That's where we are. 0:02:04 - Speaker 4Yes, of course John's not on his show, so he's getting a little racy. 0:02:08 - Speaker 2We don't got the teens listening in. He's got the host belt off. 0:02:14 - Speaker 3Let's go. 0:02:16 - Speaker 2All right, Andrew. Hey, how's it going I? 0:02:19 - Speaker 5am super duper, feeling great. It's very sunny here in Toronto. 0:02:23 - Speaker 2Excellent. And Andy Hogland, how are you doing? 0:02:27 - Speaker 4Hey, I'm going. Good man, It's Hogland. Though I'm just going to be straight, It's pronounced Hogland. 0:02:31 - Speaker 2Did I just do it. I just asked you and then I did it. 0:02:34 - Speaker 4You just asked me, so that's why I'm calling it out. 0:02:35 - Speaker 2Oh that's great. No, you can totally do that, because No, I'm feeling good, man. 0:02:39 - Speaker 4I'm surrounded by a couple of Canadians, which is cool. I've never had that before. It's like having an orgy with Justin Trudeau. Let's do this. I'm just keeping it racy. John set the tone. 0:02:52 - Speaker 3Yeah, I thought we were just doing foot stuff. Andy, You took it to a whole other level. 0:02:57 - Speaker 2All right, let's dive into our program today. The first thing I want to do is to remind everybody who is currently in the SNL Hall of Fame We've had two wonderful seasons and we've inducted three separate classes. The inaugural class was, of course, lauren Michaels. In this class of season one, we inducted Dan Ackroyd, chris Farley, tina Fey as a writer, phil Hartman, steve Martin as a host, eddie Murphy and Gilda Radner All, if they weren't noted, were cast members. Then the class of season two we had Alec Baldwin as a host, will Ferrell as a cast member, bill Hader as a cast member, tom Hanks as a host, norm MacDonald as a cast member, seth Meyers as a writer, mike Meyers as a cast member and Kristen Wiig as a cast member. So pretty highfalutin company to be rubbing elbows with. But we've got a really excellent list of nominees and I just want to go through them for you before we kick off the show, because this is a stellar list right here. Amy Poehler, beyonce, Bill Murray, bach, henry, candice Bergen, christopher Walken, conan O'Brien, dana Carvey, dave Grohl, dick Ebersol, drew Barrymore, elliott Gould, elvis Costello, emma Stone, frank and Davis, herb Sargent, jack Handy, james Downey, jan Hooks, jane Curtin, john Belushi, john Goodman, john Malaney, justin Timberlake, lily Tomlin, maya Rudolph, melissa McCarthy, michael O'Donohue, miley Cyrus, molly Shannon, paul McCartney, paul Rudd, paul Simon, paul LaPell, prince, rihanna, robert Smigel, scarlett Johansson, the Lonely Island and Tom Pretty and the Heartbreakers Guys, this would be a great if this was the lineup for the 50th anniversary show. you would be like that's a pretty freaking good lineup. 0:05:06 - Speaker 4And how did John Belushi get out of his get out of hell? 0:05:11 - Speaker 2Oh boy, oh boy, it's on already. Well, no comment, let's jump right into it. Then We'll start to my right with John, and the way we'll do this is John will announce one of his nominees. I will tabulate it here. I've got a little sheet that I'm keeping keeping score with to make sure that everybody stays in their allotment of 15 votes up to 15 votes and to make sure that everybody elects at least one of each of the four main categories. There's been a lot of questions with Dick Abrasall being nominated and he does not fall into any of the four categories. Currently He is a producer and that's where he'll stay. So John is going to name his first ballereteer and then I'll go to Andy and Andrew to ask if they have them on their ballot and we'll go from there. That's how this show is going to work. Let's do it, john, with your first pick. Who have you got? All right, you're on the clock. 0:06:10 - Speaker 3This is a stacked lineup of people to choose from, but looking through there is one person that I looked at this list and said there is no question whatsoever that they should not be on everyone's ballot. This person has to get into the SNL Hall of Fame and it might be a little bit of a hot take, an unconventional pick, but it's Amy Poehler. And the reason why it's Amy Poehler is because she has the highest sketch per episode average among women in the history of the show. If you take out Charlie Rocket, she's actually top four among everybody in the history of the show. Before she was on the show, the show was on for 28 years or 27 seasons. There had never been a woman who led a season in sketch appearances until Amy Poehler did that. To me she is fantastic. Did weekend update, had amazing characters, impressions, blended a couple of eras. To me she is a surefire Hall of Famer. Slam Dunk. 0:07:10 - Speaker 2Wow, you heard it here first. Folks Slam Dunk, Andy, what do you think? 0:07:16 - Speaker 4Respectfully, amy is not on my ballot. Actually I totally understand John's rationale. I will say just as a bit of context you know, when Ryan Tibbs, when he circulates all the Hall of Fame ballots for baseball every year, i'm always fascinated by the rationale that individual voters give or don't give. I just think it's really fascinating color. So just for the listeners to adjust their radio dials to my frequency a little bit. I followed two rules when I came up with my ballot. The first is Justice Potter Stewart's famous phrase where he described his threshold for obscenity in his 1964 landmark Supreme Court decision, jacob vs Ohio, and I know it when I see it, which is to mean I instinctively have a very pure bar for who belongs or does not belong in the Hall of Fame, like Ted Knight and Caddyshack. But the second is also like baseball sportswriters, i'm leaning a little bit towards the historic picks, you know, and I'm a little disinclined to give it to some of the newer cast members. So Amy unfortunately sort of fell into that category a little bit where I just my mind went to more towards people in the 70s or 80s And Amy I kind of associate with some of the newer eras, even though it has been 20 years So she's not on my ballot And honestly she kind of mugs it a little bit for me So I don't like the mugging and I was just disinclined with everyone else who was available. 0:08:51 - Speaker 2Wow, shots fired. Yeah, Andrew, Mr Clark, I can do that too. 0:08:58 - Speaker 5Yes, i did have Amy on my ballot because I think that she was important for the show, for the success of that show and making it sort of, you know, rejuvenate itself when it did. And also I kind of see Amy Poehler and Tina Fey as being very important as influences in comedians who are now in their early 20s, who are inspired by those two. So I kind of number one her contributions, the characters that she brought, the writing that she brought, all of those strengths And then also, i think, her importance almost as something that people aspire to become. So now we have all these wonderful young comedians, female and female identifying comedians, who are doing a lot of work. So I kind of give her her props. But I could see and I agree 100% with Andy that you know we're going to get as we go down the list. There are some people who are very, very significant in the history of the show In the 70s. It may be people who just started watching in the last five to 10 years who recognized who. We're going to disappoint each other today, i guess, is what I'm trying to say, but I got to tell you I think Amy belongs in the whole thing. 0:10:11 - Speaker 4Can I challenge John on air right now? You can do whatever you want. John, if I'm not mistaken, I believe you and I are aligned that several of Amy's years are among the shows worse, is that not accurate? 0:10:28 - Speaker 3Yes, there are a couple in there that are rough. 0:10:33 - Speaker 4So, john, i just want to throw that out, not to call out, but being the best of the worst, that is a crazy argument, stop this. 0:10:42 - Speaker 3I'm sorry this is a crazy argument, because if you're going to say that, then we're saying anyone who participated in those two years. The fact is that Amy Poehler was not a cast member for those two years. She was a cast member for much longer, like I said, for six years in a row, from 2002 to 2008,. every single season she led the cast in sketch appearances. To me, she dominated those years on the show which, by the way, weren't just those two bad years. they led into a golden era of the show, probably for the first time in a generation. So I respect and I will have people on my ballot who were on the show in the 70s and the 80s, but we're not doing the Hall of Fame of the 70s, we're doing the Hall of Fame of Saturday Night Live and, let's be real, amy Poehler has been a major part of the second half of the existence of the show. 0:11:27 - Speaker 4Yeah, no argument, just wanted to get that on the record briefly, just for full context, that John does think Amy's era is among the worst. 0:11:37 - Speaker 3I did not know. That is not what I think, but I'll fight you on that another time. 0:11:44 - Speaker 2Yeah, let's move forward here and, Andrew, we're going to continue with you. 0:11:48 - Speaker 5Okay, well, my pick is somebody who, without whom I don't think there would be have been any history of Saturday Night Live. It's someone who, when he sadly passed away, my friends and I held a toga party for which I was roundly punished by my parents. We were at the ripe old age of 16. I'm talking about John Belushi. So I believe that John Belushi absolutely has to be in the Hall of Fame because he and that cast, and him and Dan Acroy particularly, were really what made the whole thing explode. Chevy Chase was a huge part of it, but I think they were the engine that really ran the show And he was the first true, true breakout star. He had a much brighter trajectory, if you ask me, than Chevy Chase. I'm going to. I got to say John Belushi's hands down, in my opinion, has to be in. 0:12:39 - Speaker 2Great pick. 0:12:40 - Speaker 4Thank you, andy, totally agree, yeah, i mean. any words to use to describe John Belushi's legacy on SNL or in comedy have already been uttered before, so I don't have too much to contribute beyond that. continental divide is an underrated romantic comedy. 0:13:00 - Speaker 2All right, mr Schneider, he is definitely on the list. 0:13:04 - Speaker 3I'm of the belief that every original cast member should be in the Hall of Fame just by default for what it's worth. But you know there would be. You know Saturday Live was was good and Chevy obviously brought a lot, but there was nothing like the energy that John Belushi brought to the show, like he made it a, like he made it must watch television because he never knew what he was going to do on a given night, starting all the way from the beginning with the Joe Cocker stuff, moving to the Blues Brothers stuff, like everything. He was a force. So you know, like Andy said, there's been so much written about him. If you know SNL, you know John Belushi, even if he's been gone for so many years, and that's a testament to the legacy of him. So I think it's a no brainer to put him in. 0:13:40 - Speaker 2Yeah, so that's our first, our first, well, in honor of the new Zelda game, our first try for us. So, andy, who have you got up? 0:13:51 - Speaker 4I have Bill Murray, who is arguably the the most accomplished and talented cast member to come out of the show. You know, i think you know. All all things being equal, he does have a bit of asterisk on on his legacy, courtesy of Kiki Palmer, but nevertheless his accomplishments since living leaving 8h are Unrivaled. Give or take a ghostbuster, you know, oscar nomination or Wes Anderson collaboration. But look like, even those merits aside, you know Murray is a pivotal figure in the show's history, the first replacement cast member. There's been what like a hundred and seventy cast members in the show's history. Eight or nine, like John just mentioned, are that original 1975, you know, upstart, not ready for prime-time players. You know Murray sets the mold for joining a cast in midstream, which is a path that almost everyone else in the show's history has has had to emulate in one way or another. And Look, i'll be honest, i'm not in high school anymore. The, that combination of smarm and self-aware irony that made him a legend to Letterman fans and and the geeks and freaks and geeks. It doesn't quite do it for me as it as it once did, but still honker, the nerds, nick, the lounge slinger, his, his awards commentary on update. These are essential early SNL characters. The show simply post-chevy, doesn't exist without them. So that's my argument and stick into it. 0:15:17 - Speaker 2John, how do you feel about Bill Murray? 0:15:19 - Speaker 3Yeah, i totally agree. He's definitely a shoe in for me for the Hall of Fame. His analytics are off the charts. He's also a top five sketchbook episode. Um, get her in the in the history of the show. Just, he was producing every single night once he finally found his groove, i guess towards the end of season two, and he, you know, you don't think of him as when you look back at season three, four, five, lot of people don't think of him as the star. But he really really was. He was so good and did so much. And I Totally agree with Andy. I think that the show is in a dark, dark place if he doesn't jump onto it when he did so. For me I mean, think about that, right, we talk. You know, we may end up talking about Jim Downey at some point tonight. I mean the fact that that Bill Murray and Jim Downey joined the show to add some life into it. When the show is losing Chevy, i mean it just incredible stuff. So for me Can't, can't have a Hall of Fame without Bill Murray. 0:16:08 - Speaker 5Well, we're breaking all the rules of podcasting and radio by agreeing with one another. But yeah, i Bill Murray absolutely. Some people get changed by being on Saturday Night Live. Bill Murray changed Saturday Night Live. He didn't alter himself. I don't believe at all. When he went on that show He had deep us. You know second city chops. The reports about him when he was in Toronto are legendary How he would deal with hecklers, we'll just leave it at that. He didn't take crap from anybody and he's had an absolutely stunning career, dramatically and comedically right. And I work with Robin Duke, who's just retired at Humber, and you know some of the stories she talked about. Bill Murray sort of Helping her when she was on Groundhog Day and Explaining how the cameras worked and how you had to sort of act in order so the editing could happen Shows you that it's not only kind of a creative genius, it's a real technical skill and an understanding of how movies and stuff work. So I think that all goes together for Bill Murray. I agree He's absolutely should be in there. Great. 0:17:15 - Speaker 2Wow, another try, force, boom. Where are we at then? We're back to John, right, yeah? Okay, john, create some controversy. I. 0:17:25 - Speaker 3Mean, i think, controversy was already created, when I suppose so yeah, well, even even going into last season, when the biggest travesty to be left out of getting into the hall of fame to me was Jan Hooks because that was that was insane to me. I mean you're talking about you know, andy was talking about what he sees when he looks for in a cast member. The eye test is definitely there when I was going away. Yeah, i mean this is, this is insanity. I mean she comes in season 12, just is Incredible, like, just can do everything that you possibly would have wanted on the show, and Just the heart and soul of that second generation, the second golden era of the show, and obviously we lost her and 2014 and it was just, you know, her, you know thinking about the stuff She produced with Phil Hartman, and stuff is so heartwarming, so many great sketches, so many amazing impressions to me, you know, i always, you know, hear from people who were Just obsessed with Jan hooks, absolutely fell in love with her on the show, and it wasn't even just that. She was, you know, so beautiful in the way that she performed. She was just so naturally talented and gifted to be on the show and it was so important For the generation that was to come. You hear Tina Fey and Amy Poehler and my riddle talk about how Jan hooks was so important. Tina Fey put Jan hooks on 30 Rock at some point. You know, like that's the type of thing that you know, she. She left a legacy behind and to me she needs to be in all of him. 0:18:48 - Speaker 2Yeah, i agree. She finished last last vote with like what 40%, 39.8%. She's got a long hill ahead. I'm afraid it's not gonna happen in this bet. She's round for her either. But but I agree with you, it's shameful. She's she's an all-timer. She's an all-timer, you know She's in. She's in the female rush more right or the yeah, the female SNL cast rush more. 0:19:10 - Speaker 4Everything that John said about Amy Poehler is true about Jan hooks. I'm gonna do a hot take that minus the analytics. 0:19:18 - Speaker 2Well that's. 0:19:18 - Speaker 4That's Mike Murray. 0:19:22 - Speaker 2So you have, you have her, is it safe to say, then, in your Hall of Fame, andy. 0:19:27 - Speaker 4Absolutely, and it doesn't. I don't even know why, why we should justify it. It's just, it's so clear to me that she belongs there. Why? why even let's have like like 30 seconds of dead space and then just move on. 0:19:42 - Speaker 5Yeah, i mean, i think part of what Jan hook and people in that cast suffer from a little bit is that that skip between Internet and not internet. So a lot of the stuff comes later. And so the other cast members, the later cast members, their stuff is available online a lot more easily than Jan hook stuff Because when it's getting filmed it's not been signed off copyright for Dispersal on the web and everything, so it's you have to work harder to get some of it. So I think actually there's just people who haven't seen what she did with Phil Hartman as much. You kind of have to be a bit more of a of an aficionado. But yeah, there's absolutely no question that the stuff she did with just with Phil Hartman alone is so iconic for that show. I mean, it's hard to imagine her without and the range of characters and also doing a kind of She kind of epitomized, the kind of like I don't know how to put it not po, yeah, post feminist Anxed, being run through Reaganomics and then through the Clint near and everything that kind of. You know, there was always a real edge to her material, even if she was doing like a sweet domestic character. 0:20:48 - Speaker 2Oh, she was great. She was just great. I just recently watched the diner, the Alec Baldwin diner sketch, and just So, so funny. You know, she's just natural gosh. Okay, so far we've had hooks on all three ballots. Another try force That one actually makes a triangle in my little, in my little spreadsheet that I made. Wow, that's funny. So we're gonna come back to Andrew Clark and I'm gonna challenge you to do something other than a cast member. 0:21:19 - Speaker 5Okay, well for me then I would go with Christopher Walken as host. Great, even though I spoke about Elliot Gould as host this season. I and who and I would make an argument for him too. But it's hard to make the argument over Christopher Walken because of his relationship with the show. You can almost give it to him just for cowbell, because it's become. You know that when your sketch has its own range of t-shirts Not just a t-shirt but range you know you've entered the vernacular. I think Christopher Walken Was a sort of must-watch host. People will always be attentive. He again didn't let the show really change what he did. He sort of brought what he did into the show. The fact that he has so many iconic Recur like characters as a as a host, i think is a good argument for Christopher Walken to be, you know, in the Hall of Fame as a host. 0:22:11 - Speaker 2Great John or Andy to either of you have mr Walken in the Hall of Fame on your balance, Oh right. 0:22:18 - Speaker 4Yeah, i mean, look, he has his own best of right, he has recurring characters. I mean, you know I don't remember offhand Deferred a John on the number of times that he's literally hosted, but you know, it almost gets to the point where when you have that, that body of work, you know You're, you're not, you're not a cast member, but there's just so much there that your, your, you know your tombstone deserves a reference to. You know You're time with the show. So shout out to the, the continental. And yeah, i totally agree. 0:22:49 - Speaker 3Yeah, same here He was. I'll say he was a little bit more borderline for me. Nothing against Walken, he didn't make my ballot, but he was. He was close being cut because there's a lot of really good options this time, including among those. I don't think he I wouldn't put him in the upper pantheon of greatest hosts in the history of the show. I think he's probably I mean, unless you're gonna put all the five timers there But I think he's that like next grouping and he's probably near the top of that. So for me there was a few of those on the list and he just made it. 0:23:20 - Speaker 2Oh, wow, okay, you guys have agreed a lot, so we'll go to Andy and, andy, i'll challenge you to do the same thing, something that isn't in the cast member category. 0:23:31 - Speaker 4Yeah, yeah, no, not a challenge at all. It's the, the next name on my list. Matter of fact, it's, it's buck Henry. Bring him on as a host. You know, one of the, the early, important hosts who kind of validates the show right Cuz, because buck Henry belongs in a Different comedic generation. You know, get smart and all that you know. But he's he's, he's a steady presence during those, those for five years, lending, lending a lot of credibility. And then, if I recall correctly, is the host of the, the final show of that era To. You know, and and John mentioned Jan hooks on 30 Rock. I mean, as as as Jane Krasinski's mom, buck Henry, as as Liz lemons dad was, was always so funny to me. But I think his, his tenure on on SNL throughout those first five years Definitely warrants his inclusion onto the hall and and has one of the the darkest sketches in the, the show's history. And I love when, when the show kind of makes, makes a bold play like that and it makes Child molesting part of the fun. You know, cuz you don't see that enough People are so uptight when you agree, John. 0:24:42 - Speaker 3I mean can't, can't, not watch Uncle Roy. Yeah, i mean, i got to talk. I was blessed to get to talk about Buck Henry on one of the episodes of the SNL Hall thing, so I've made my case for him. I am as big of a fan as Buck Henry, as you know. Anyone could possibly be. I think he, like, is so good He people say Steve Martin could have been a cast member. Well, i think Buck Henry could have been a cast member. He fit in so seamlessly. We talked a lot about Buck being the one who would take the sketches that no one else wanted to take. That is such an important Rule as a host and I do believe for decades. When they, you know, bring on hosts, they use Buck Henry as a template for what they look for if a host will return or not. They judge them on the Buck Henry category, like did you do the buck stuff? and I think that he is just to me. We talked I mentioned, you know, the upper pantheon of hosts. I think he's in that, that top room of greatest hosts in the history of the show. 0:25:39 - Speaker 5Andrew, yeah, you're probably gonna regret me on the show because I'm just gonna keep going. Oh yeah, that guy was great. But with Buck Henry I think the other thing that he did for the show was he lent a certain gravitas to the show because you remember, he's someone who Work, you know, adapted cash 22, he did the owl in the pussycat, he worked as a co-writer on the graduate, so he's kind of like Hollywood Hip and so being on Saturday Night Live really I think gave that element to to the show and, of course, to him as well. And then he did. He did so fantastically and he's always so game. So I agree with John's point. Like, if you know, when you talk, when you hear people interviewed who was a great host, they always seem to say cast members It doesn't matter what cast say that the host was game, they were willing to try, they're willing to do something. And you got that in spades with Buck Henry. He was obviously happy to be there and, yeah, some seminal characters and and a lot of his work later. I still love his work in the player you know it's the graduate, but with the stroke I mean he had those improvisational chops that he brought to the show or heaven can wait. 0:26:45 - Speaker 4He's great in that. 0:26:46 - Speaker 2There you go another try for Stryforce. Holy John, will you throw a Curveball here and strike us out? I'm gonna challenge you again to Pick from another category. 0:27:00 - Speaker 3Sure, I would love to other than cast members. I mean I'm gonna try and do something that I've been trying to do since this podcast started, which is get the lonely island Into the Hall of Fame. I mean, what, what is going on with people? I mean, do they not realize that they changed Saturday Night Live for the better? like, the show you're watching now is Influenced by the Lonely Island more than most of the names on this list. Like, let's just be real. So You know, and and outside of SNL was often, you know, influenced by the Lonely Island, including a lot of things you see on social media now. So, but you know, for just talking about what happened on the show, i mean, these guys came in, they wrote Brilliant pre-tape sketches. They went viral. People who were not watching Saturday Night Live came back to the show because of the things that the Lonely Island was producing. They were largely responsible for creating cast members becoming huge stars And as hosts as well. I mean they would bring in, you know, hosts into these Music videos or sketches that they were doing and then people would learn and get to know these hosts and they would become bigger Stars outside of the show. And then, you know, every now and then, they throw in this random Music video with an artist that would just come in. It's like, oh my god, t-pain this year now, like just the craziness that they would get into. I mean, for there's a lot of hyperbole when it comes to the Lonely Island, but I think it's well deserved, because they are some of the greatest writers in the history of the show. 0:28:19 - Speaker 2Absolutely 100%. The most baffling thing so far that has occurred in in the Hall of Fame is the voting for the Lonely Island 52% to start and last year went up to 62.6%, just a smidge under the requisite 66.6, but I just can't figure it out. The. I've made a correction on the ballot this year and I've included any of the group for David Frank and the Davis, for example. I have a parenthetical Al Franken, tom Davis, i have for Lonely Island. I haven't broken down by their members too, so people can see maybe Andy Sandberg and Have a better understanding. We'll see, we'll see. Does anybody else have the Lonely Island on their ballot? 0:29:07 - Speaker 5I didn't, and I think that says more about me than it does. The Lonely Island, to be quite honest, because I think John made a very strong case and I think they're heard a little bit by being a group to be honest, and not just a person. And then when I think about McGroober, which is my favorite film of all time, and that it comes out of the Lonely Island with Jorma Directing it, that I'm almost to just make the Lonely Island put them back onto my ballot just based on that, that McGroober comes out of it, yeah, i would just say they weren't on mine. I think that has more to say about me than it does to say about the Lonely Island, quite honestly, because I Don't think at the time when I was watching it that I understood how important those videos were for bringing new viewers to the show via Online, not through traditional broadcast. And then, of course, later on, i don't want to go on and on, but, like you know, never stop, never stop, stopping. It comes out of it. Yeah, what was like one of my daughter had like on a loop. So I again I think I'm gonna plead the old man card slightly here and so I will yield, if need be to put them on. I'm gonna push over, i'm afraid, but but they weren't on, but that doesn't mean they don't deserve to be. Do you have to be far too agreeable? I'm sorry, i apologize. 0:30:21 - Speaker 2I will start to be mean. Do you have space on your ballot? Did you use all 15 votes? I'd have to get rid of somebody. 0:30:30 - Speaker 5Let's see, it would have to be. It would have to be a writer, wouldn't it? Well see, i have Jackhand. Well, i shouldn't give it away, so I would have to give away somebody. Can I wait and see? 0:30:42 - Speaker 3Yes, We're gonna convince you Yeah. 0:30:44 - Speaker 5Yes, i'll put them on ice for Andy. 0:30:47 - Speaker 2Where are you at? Do you have a lonely island on yours? 0:30:49 - Speaker 4I'm embarrassed to say that they're not on mine. I I totally, totally agree with everything that John said. You know, we were definitely still in the shadow of the Lonely Island. You know, 15 years later. You know, please don't destroy P Davidson and Chris Redd, like these guys are making just really pale imitations of what Lonely Island did. And you can't write the the history of YouTube without Lonely Island, right? like you really can't. I'm embarrassed, but my philosophy going into this was it's they'll have time to to make it into the Hall of Fame. You know Buck Henry won't. You know Buck Henry's dead. He's not coming back. 0:31:27 - Speaker 3The list is not on the show anymore, andy. I just want you to know that they're not producing new content. They're both Buck Henry and the Lonely Islands. Their careers at SNL are done. Come back and host like there's, but this is not an. Andy Samberg hosting thing. This is the Lonely Island writers on the show as writers on the show See okay, Well, all right. 0:31:46 - Speaker 2Well, let's get cute about this, You know okay so you're gonna be nominated at some point, i'm sure. 0:31:51 - Speaker 4Hold on, let's, let's, let's just double check for a second. So it says Lonely Island as a writer. So that means it's not really the videos, right, it's about they wrote all the videos? Well, yes, but when you watch those videos you're like the writing is really what makes it here. You know, or is it Andy Samberg's performance, or is it T-Pain singing? So if we want to get cute for a second, maybe it's not that at all. 0:32:16 - Speaker 3It's. It's the writing. What this is insane. 0:32:18 - Speaker 2This is what you're. If you're a sketch troupe, you you know you're you're likely going to be Attributed writer status to everything you do, whether it's you know Performance or or not you know. 0:32:34 - Speaker 4I guess my point is maybe Right. It would be a Hall of Famer as a cast member. Maybe Lonely Island, maybe it's not their time yet, i don't know. There's there's a lot of, there's a lot of competitive people here and You know, if I want to justify myself Which I do, it's it's maybe the categories not right. Maybe they shouldn't be here as a writer right now. 0:32:56 - Speaker 2Interesting. 0:32:57 - Speaker 3Well, this is the most insane thing I've ever heard. I love Andy, i this is insane. Okay, nobody is walking around being like oh yeah, i love it. When Rihanna was like that, like oh yeah, that was that, you know. Like it was the Lonely Island It wasn't the people appearing in the sketches with them Like that was great, that was a cherry on top, but this is an insane take. Well, i'm not sure what that meant, but, okay, sorry you, you drove me nuts, that's what. I don't know who Rihanna is. First of all, sorry, canadians. 0:33:31 - Speaker 4Look, look, i mean, this is an important argument to have. I just wonder. I mean the McGroober thing that almost if you guys want to call me out on my BS here, you should say they wrote McGroober, they should be in, you know they wrote McGroober They should be in. 0:33:49 - Speaker 3There you go. 0:33:51 - Speaker 5I'm easily pushed around. I just want to establish that. I hope I've established that for anybody watching, listening at the moment. Yeah, i'm gonna come up tough soon, believe me. 0:34:00 - Speaker 4It was Samberg as a cast member, i'd be like, hmm, but I don't know. Does the whole group deserve to be in? yes, maybe maybe not a couple of cobley Maybe, so I think so. 0:34:11 - Speaker 3Sorry, jamie, i know, i know we don't like to do 20 minutes on the Lone Island, but I just have to ask just one more question. Yeah, just just just as sink Lee explained to me your thesis statement for why the Lonely Island should not be in the Hall of Fame right now. 0:34:24 - Speaker 4Absolutely So. As I said at the start of this podcast you know, if, john, you want to rewind a couple minutes I said that my approach is similar to the sports writers who, philosophically, have blinders on and say I'm not, not anyone from the stair from the steroids era. You know, there's sports writers who say Clemens bonds, they just don't deserve to be in. Or they say, oh well, maybe this person will get in on a later ballot, but right now, historically, i want to get Michael O'Donoghue in, or I want to get Harold Baines in, or whatever you know. So it's just that my argument is more philosophic than it is a Representation of their legacy on the show, because what you said actually was very eloquent and well put. But this is a competitive Conversation and there's a lot of other people who I think aren't in the Hall of Fame yet, you know, including Bill Murray, including, you know, for God's sakes, dana Carvey. They pick up the slots. The slots get eaten up, i'm sorry, by people who've been waiting for years, john, years. 0:35:29 - Speaker 2They've got the call now, though. 0:35:31 - Speaker 4Exactly. Think of Dana Carvey at home right now. You know with his sons What, how he's gonna feel when Jamie calls him and let him know. Do you want to deny? 0:35:39 - Speaker 2him that, no that he can win one of these. 0:35:42 - Speaker 3Oh wow. Let me just say to all the listeners as we wrap up this conversation Andy Hogan is unequivocally wrong about this. Please think about the history of the show and how influential these guys are. 0:35:55 - Speaker 4Think about how Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds aren't in the baseball Hall of Fame. That's where I'm coming from. 0:36:01 - Speaker 2Listen, they potentially cheated. They did cheat, but who? 0:36:07 - Speaker 4cares. So did Willie may. Willie mays cheated who cares? 0:36:10 - Speaker 2Yeah, I remember all right, all right. 0:36:12 - Speaker 3We were covering the show and then we found out that Yorma was doing steroids. Like how crazy was that. 0:36:16 - Speaker 2That's right. That's right. 0:36:18 - Speaker 4I'm sure they were cocaine is the steroids of Studio 8. age Balushi out Yeah right, all right, andrew. 0:36:26 - Speaker 2Who have you got next? 0:36:28 - Speaker 5I'm gonna make things a little controversial and I'm gonna pick Prince as the musical guest. Oh okay, i believe he was on four times. Every time is a home run. It's Prince, he's the greatest, like he should just get in on virtue of having been Prince. I'm a little bit of a fan, but I also think that Prince always brought a little bit of a sense of humor about himself, even when he was being the most Prince like, so to speak. And I also speak as someone who saw Prince live and He wasn't an absolutely Unquestionably probably one of the greatest performers I've ever seen. So I'm gonna say Prince as As musical guests. I want to put it out there Everybody, vote for Prince. 0:37:17 - Speaker 2Does anybody else have Prince on their ballot? 0:37:20 - Speaker 3I don't, i mean I love Prince, prince, i would die for you, but I just. But, yeah, i mean the musical guest category for me is as limited as possibly be because there are so many Like stacked people in the other categories. Yeah, so for me I had to pick one, maybe two, one that I think is at the top of that list, and fortunately there are other people that did have more influence on SNL than Prince did. 0:37:46 - Speaker 2I should think Prince has a career that the trajectory is similar to SNL. It's a few years off. But that first performance in 79 I think it is is like really, really good and He's sort of unknown. You know he's just this, you know Performer, one of those cool ones that you get to see on SNL and turns out they turn into you know A really big deal. And then the right parenthetical on the on the end of his career is just the legend of him playing the. It was the 40th right. 0:38:20 - Speaker 5That's right. 0:38:21 - Speaker 2The after party you know, so really interesting. Cool, andy, who have you got up next? 0:38:27 - Speaker 4My next person is Actually we talked about this briefly Dana Carvey. How is Dana Carvey not in this hall of fame yet? Is this really his first ballot? 0:38:36 - Speaker 2This is his first ballot. Yeah Well, because we produced the show where we You know having a lot of him every year. Right, it's staggered. It's just staggered across the board because I Didn't do, i didn't think of this idea in 1980. If I did, you know that would have been well, that's not here, nor that I mean to me. 0:38:54 - Speaker 4Dana Carvey, you could argue, is the best pure cast member in the show's history. So the fact that he's just now on the first ballot and isn't yet in the Hall of Fame, it raises a lot of Troubling questions. 0:39:08 - Speaker 2Do you think he will get a higher voting percentage Than the current holder, which is Will Ferrell? 0:39:17 - Speaker 4Probably not just because Will Ferrell came of age as a cast member with, with people who you know, maybe Participating this a little bit more. I mean, that's the only argument that I could really understand is that Carvey's, you know, made his debut 37 years ago, you know. so maybe people don't quite appreciate, but when I started watching SNL in the 90s I mean Garth Hansen, franz, Oh my god, absolutely, that's. 0:39:42 - Speaker 2That's why I started watching in 86. It's 91.8% is what will Ferrell got last year. 0:39:48 - Speaker 3Here's. The major difference, though, is that will Ferrell dominated his era, whereas Dana Carvey didn't. He's definitely on my ballot and I agree with the notion that he's one of the best Cast members of all time, but he is among a group of elite cast members, including Phil and Jen, and he slides into that generational group really well. But, yeah, the reason that I loved how Andy said best is because best is typically defined as having like the skill set to succeed on the show. Right, it's like are you a naturally born sketch performer that it was just built in a lab to do Saturday night live? Yeah, and a Carvey is that. 0:40:23 - Speaker 4So there's impressions. Yeah, i mean to John's point and this kind of goes back to our initial Conversation about Amy Poehler. You know, will Ferrell is on at a time that I wouldn't consider a golden age, you know. So he dominated. Yeah, dana Carvey is probably the best, or among the best, cast members of, obviously, a golden age, a second golden age Like murderers row, though it's like. 0:40:52 - Speaker 2You know how do you pick between Gary and and babe, right, you know what I mean. 0:40:56 - Speaker 4Yeah, i mean, they're both first balladers. 0:40:58 - Speaker 5Yeah, Yeah and he also. He's also working with Mike Myers, that's right. This is who's also and he's sort of garth to Mike. I mean that I would agree that he's definitely should be in, because if you try to order an SNL cast member over the phone and Then Amazon shipped it to your house, it would be Dana Carvey, right, right. He literally epitomizes all of the things that you would want and you know, i think he's, he's for me, he's, he's unquestionable. 0:41:26 - Speaker 2Cool, back to John. 0:41:28 - Speaker 3Yeah, so I'm gonna round out my cast category, if that's okay with you, jamie, with someone who I think was so important in the history of the show and that's Jane Curtin. She comes in to host weekend updates right after Chevy Chase and Jess absolutely crushes it, see. You know, shows everybody why. You know She was meant to do that job and it was. You know it was a man's world. Unfortunately, at the time a lot of people felt like it and like for her to break through that mold was so great. I mean, let alone not not not only the stuff on weekend update, but the fact that she would anchor sketches the way that she did and have like play that straight woman role so well, where she would be like you know, think about, like looks at books and sketches like that, where she would be side-by-side with Gilda Radner And Gilda would be doing a crazy character. Or her interactions with Emily Latella or Rosanna, rosanna Dana. She was like to me, the host of the 70s among the cast and She is one of my favorite cast members of all time, if I'm being completely honest. Just her ability to just show like the strength and poise that she did on that show when all this craziness was happening around her, so for me a she went as well great, nicely put Andrew. 0:42:38 - Speaker 5I got. You make some great points And I didn't have her. And again, it's no knock on her, but she wasn't there only because, although I think she was an integral part of that cast, if I had, if there was one person that maybe it's a terrible thing to say, honestly, it sounds like such an awful thing to say, but if she had not, if she, if she wasn't there, would it? would things be that much different? I don't know necessarily that they would, but you know, again, she's incredibly talented. Nobody we're discussing here is bad, let's put it that way. So if they're not getting it, it's not for any deficit on their part, and I think you're making some great points about her And I've heard those arguments made like, hey, jane Curtin was great. She's not getting her props by other people as well. So I don't think you're in a minority, john. So you know you make a good case, but she wasn't on mine. 0:43:33 - Speaker 3Can I? can I push back Andrew for a second? Because please? yeah, you discussed the like your argument is based in value, right? If you were to take Jane Curtin out, how does that change the 70s? So if you were to remove her from the cast? and then everything happens as is, so Chevy Chase leaves the show, who, to you, then replaces Chevy on update? and would that be better? Because I can't envision a scenario where that happens. 0:43:55 - Speaker 5Neither can I. I don't know how to answer that question. I think you make a good point. I guess it's more on the lines of I'm looking at my list and thinking who might? who would I bump for Jane Curtin? If it happens, i'd be happy. You know what I mean. If she gets in, i'll be super happy because I think she's absolutely brilliant. I guess you use the word host in a way. I think maybe she hasn't getting, hadn't got some of her credit because she was an anchor and maybe that's literally and figuratively, in an improv sense. She was an anchor at a lot of those scenes and the anchor doesn't always get all of the attention. You know, she's a little bit I hate to put like football analogy like the offensive lineman. They only get noticed if they make a mistake, if they do their job really well. It doesn't always get seen And I feel like in her cast maybe Jane Curtin was a little bit like that. There were other people getting all the press and she wasn't getting in the press for bad reasons, like bad behavior and those sorts of things. But I can't answer your question. I don't know who I would put in. 0:44:52 - Speaker 3I'm at somewhere right now. Jane Curtin is flashing her bra at the screen just hearing about getting some attention. 0:44:59 - Speaker 5Well, perhaps I hope so, John. she has Jane, I agree. I'm just getting dirty. 0:45:10 - Speaker 2All right, Andy, where are you with Jane Curtin? 0:45:13 - Speaker 4Well. So John detected I flinched a little bit when he brought her up and it's because, to be candid, about 10 minutes ago I realized, with the quirks of us picking one from each category, like Noah's Ark, i'd inadvertently left off a musical guest. So as we were talking, i had to remove Jane Curtin from my ballot. She was on there and I needed to add a musical guest. So, elvis Costello, today's your lucky day, but Jane Curtin unfortunately gets the stick, not the carrot. 0:45:46 - Speaker 2Wow, i'm pretty stunned. This is going to be an interesting vote this year. if you three are representative of the majority, i love to keep her on. 0:45:58 - Speaker 4But it's just the way this is set up. We have to include a musical guest Because, like I said, philosophically a part of me is like if Eminem's not on, i don't know if anyone deserves to be on. 0:46:10 - Speaker 2All right, andrew, your next pick. 0:46:13 - Speaker 5So then, I will be picking from the writer category because I picked a host, i picked a performer and I picked a musical guest, correct, right? And this is going to be very, very difficult for me because I spoke, i was happy enough to speak, about someone who I don't think I'm going to nominate Because does that make any sense? 0:46:33 - Speaker 2I mean, I think what you, the way it's put is, there's what? 45 nominees? 0:46:39 - Speaker 5Yeah, yeah. 0:46:40 - Speaker 2Something like that There's a lot of really talented people and you got to nominate one, but it doesn't mean that when you nominated them, maybe you were influenced by a couple of the other episodes. 0:46:49 - Speaker 5Well, no, i've got to. I got to go with James Downey as a first pilot. 0:46:54 - Speaker 2Yeah, I think so. 0:46:55 - Speaker 5I don't think there's. There's no show without him. He was the guy who also brought a certain impartiality to it And by that he always pushed back, whether it was left or right of center politically. He came to Humber and did a workshop for us and it was great to hear him talk about the work. And one thing I remember him saying was was student asked him about Norm MacDonald and the OJ Simpson jokes And why did they keep going? And I think he compared it almost to Thelma and Louise, like driving off the cliff, like they just couldn't stop. They didn't even dislike OJ or Embersol or any of those things, they just had to keep going. When you look at his influence, particularly on American elections, just some of his, yeah. So to me it's, it's Jim Downey for sure for the writer category, even though I would love to mention Jack Handy, who I'm a huge fan of. But I'm going to go James Downey for my pick today. 0:47:48 - Speaker 2Okay, well, you can have more than one writer. You can, you know you can do whatever you wish, but but I will say James Downey. I'm really interested to hear what Andy and John have to say to. Either of you have James Downey on your ballot, absolutely. You both do So, andy, tell us, tell us why he's on your ballot. 0:48:06 - Speaker 4Yeah, i mean, andrew, hit the nail on the head. You know Jim Downey was on the show. For what? Over 30 years. You know he's he's one of the most important writers in the show's history. He's one of the most important, you know, political, satirical minds or whatever However you want to put it. I love that. He's, even technically a former cast member. You know he just checks so many of the boxes and probably behind the scenes contributed to so many of the cast members that we love too, like he's talked about. You know his, his role helping Chris Farley with, with some of his characters and moments on the show, and not for nothing. Also want to shout out his, his role in there will be blood. Love his little part as Al Rose as well too. So I'm a huge Downey fan and he 100% gets my endorsement. 0:49:00 - Speaker 3John greatest writer in the history of the show No doubt gets in. 0:49:04 - Speaker 5Great, okay. Do you think that there will be blood appearance? was it was influenced by his appearance in? was it Tommy boy? 0:49:12 - Speaker 4or Billy Madison, billy Madison. 0:49:15 - Speaker 5That wonderful speech you know, I wonder. 0:49:18 - Speaker 4PT Anderson is a huge SNL fan, right Like he was there in those early 2000 days when he was courting Maya Rudolph. So yeah, probably I mean he's cast his smigol too in a in a punch drunk love. 0:49:30 - Speaker 2So oh wow, I didn't realize that was smigol Andy. Who have you got next on your ballot? 0:49:38 - Speaker 4The next person on my ballot and I apologize, i'm going alphabetical is Dick Ebersol, actually, who I don't know if that's going to be contentious or not, but you know, a part of me is like you can't write the history of the show without you. literally, he helps create the show in 70 and then he, you know, is such an important, you know voice behind the scenes that that allowed the show to exist until you know, norman Michaels came, came out of his hibernation, you know so there's no Eddie Murphy without you know, dick Ebersol, and just an important person in the history of American broadcasting. 0:50:17 - Speaker 3So why is there no Eddie Murphy without Dick Ebersol? 0:50:21 - Speaker 4Because while Eddie is under Gene Dominion's tenure, technically you know, ebersol is the one that doesn't fire Eddie and then allows Eddie to become as big as he does during his time of the show. But I appreciate the the pushback there. 0:50:41 - Speaker 3I was just gonna say like if you got delivered like a really good steak and it's like sitting on your desk like you're not going to eat it, Right, right, But he doesn't he doesn't, can Eddie either. 0:50:49 - Speaker 4You know, And I just I don't know. I think that it's still, you know, nevertheless it still exists, But I kind of think of it. As you know, the Hall of the Baseball Hall of Fame you got to, you got to have some executives in there too, you know. Or Melvin Miller should be in the Baseball Hall of Fame as well, Absolutely, And Ebersol, I think, is that kind of figure. 0:51:13 - Speaker 2So, yeah, that's my take An architect. 0:51:15 - Speaker 4Yes. 0:51:16 - Speaker 2Yes, john or Andrew is Ebersol on either of your ballots. 0:51:22 - Speaker 3He's not on my ballot for what it's worth. I do think he should be in the Hall of Fame and I think he should get the Lorne Michaels Honorary Award that you gave to Lorne to put in there, because I think he's of the category of his own. But I didn't put him in because, as he is known as his first name, he's kind of a dick, so I sort of left him off. 0:51:42 - Speaker 4Oh, that's the bar. 0:51:43 - Speaker 3Yeah, that's the bar. 0:51:45 - Speaker 4Isn't John Belushi on your list? 0:51:47 - Speaker 3Yeah, look, it's really hard to Oh Murray. No, the real reason, to be honest, is just, I'm looking through this and he makes no sense to put him in any category with any of these other people. So for me it's like his contributions are so different than everybody else here. It's like comparing apples and oranges to me, So I couldn't put him on my list, but I also know he needs to be in there. 0:52:09 - Speaker 5All right, okay, yeah, i didn't have him. I didn't have him, and you know there's some good points, but I don't know. I'd almost say, well then, maybe Rosie Schuster, only because she played an important part of those first few seasons. 0:52:24 - Speaker 4When did she run SNL? 0:52:26 - Speaker 5She never ran it but she certainly played a huge role creatively. I know It was Mary Delorn And this very funny wrote for Larry Sandershow, but I would demure, but I do think he should be in, so I just don't know where you put him. So I think an honorary exec category, maybe we should start. 0:52:44 - Speaker 2The Miller category. That's a great idea. All right, there's a lot of behind the scenes. 0:52:48 - Speaker 5People are for sure. 0:52:50 - Speaker 2Yeah, well, i even think the announcer. I can't think of his name right now off the top of my head. Don Pardo, don Pardo. 0:52:57 - Speaker 4Jesus. 0:52:58 - Speaker 3Louise, right, like Don Pardo, should be in for sure I would recommend to the committee at the SNL Hall of Fame to consider a once a year award to just give someone an auto pass in. 0:53:09 - Speaker 4Yeah, dick Ubersol, don Pardo, jeff Richards, patrick Weathers, eminem, eminem. 0:53:14 - Speaker 5Yeah, james Spoons, but I mean Andy's making a good point, because it was Dick Ubersol, along with Barry Dillard and a few others, who approached Lord Michael's a bit. So he's sort of like is the opening of the door, so to speak. Yeah, i don't know how influential he was in giving Lord Michael's a long run. I think it was 17 episodes or something that they guaranteed. But yeah, it's hard to imagine. but I guess it's spoiled for choice a little bit here. 0:53:40 - Speaker 2John, who have you got next? 0:53:43 - Speaker 3So I'll put somebody in from the musical guest category who, to me, is going in just for being for really fitting into all categories, and that would be Paul Simon. He is not in the Five Timers Club, but he is an amazing host and musical guest in the history of the show, also very influential and, a lot of you know, creative, i'm sure, but he's becoming very good friends with Lord Michael's. But yeah, i mean, paul Simon hosts the most unique episode in the history of Saturday Night Live. The second episode of the show has some really, really great appearances. You basically retire. 0:54:18 - Speaker 2Paul Simon variety show. you mean Yeah, yeah, basically exactly. 0:54:23 - Speaker 3Basically retires on the show, most recently when Seth Meyers hosted the show. He pretty much retired from music after that. But you can see his entire career throughout the history of the show And you know I wouldn't necessarily if someone says, hey, like John, who's the greatest musical guest in the history of the show, paul Simon wouldn't be top of mind. But because Paul Simon is in the musical guest category and he also has those hosting appearances and additional cameo appearances, for me just his contribution to the history of the show would lead him to be my number one musical guest choice. 0:54:51 - Speaker 2Does he appear on any other ballots? 0:54:53 - Speaker 5No, not mine, Just Prince. 0:54:57 - Speaker 2Because he's Prince. You already know. 0:54:59 - Speaker 3No, no no, Why not Paul Simon? Like? what's the reason for not putting Paul Simon on the ballot? 0:55:05 - Speaker 5I guess I just like Prince better, but I can't make any rational argument against Paul Simon, so I'll just plead the. Instead of pleading the fifth, i'll plead the Prince, but I think that next to Paul McCartney, maybe Lord Michaels has a thing for Paul's, but I think as a musical influence. And I think when and I don't want to speak for obviously I'm not speaking for Lord Michaels, but when you I think he always saw the show as part of that whole experience for that generation which was so music being so important. Paul McCartney and Paul Simon, the two Pauls, are the sort of musical anchors of that show, so to speak, and of course, sir, i think, part of his identity as a baby boomer and a member of that waves. 0:55:51 - Speaker 2How about you, Andy. 0:55:53 - Speaker 4I did not have him on my ballot, as mentioned. I'm just sort of disinclined to have musical guests on here. It's just not where I went. The one that I have is Elvis Costello, like I mentioned, but John makes a excellent historic argument in favor of Mr Simon. 0:56:11 - Speaker 2Okay, Let's move forward, then, with Andrew's next pick. 0:56:16 - Speaker 5I've got somewhat of a I think we'll be controversial pick, which is Maya Rudolph. 0:56:23 - Speaker 2Oh okay, Why do you think it's controversial? 0:56:26 - Speaker 5Well, i guess when we start looking at everybody, i mean everybody's so impressive. So maybe I'm just getting starstruck. But for my money Maya Rudolph should be in the Hall of Fame because of her unbelievable character work and her range. Especially the musically Bronx beat was always one of my favorite Sketches that she did with Amy Poehler. So I see her as someone who belongs in the Hall of Fame. But I think if you're looking, you know, and I'll leave it to Andy and John but historically I think you can argue for other people. Like you know, john could say how can you have Maya Rudolph in if you're not going to have Jen? or like how does that make any sense whatsoever? So I'm going partly on my own instinct and intuition, which is not always rational, but I'm going to say Maya Rudolph, i have that I, and she was pretty quick for me to pick her, so I'm going to go for Maya Rudolph. 0:57:21 - Speaker 2How about you, gentlemen, is Maya Rudolph on either of your ballots? No, and is there any remorse here There? 0:57:29 - Speaker 3is I mean like some what? you've heard or Yeah, i mean, look, personal taste, she's definitely on my ballot. I love her on the show. She was, you know, the you know actually watching it growing up. Her leaving the show was one of the most impactful losses I felt while watching the show because I think that she's so important and such a great cast member. But just in terms of where we are at right now in the SNL Hall of Fame voting, there are a lot of cast members I would put above her And even in her own era I don't think she was ever the number one cast member And right now I'm voting in people who are really like dominated the field. 0:58:05 - Speaker 2Yeah, And I mean you've only got what? four votes left as well At this point. You know it becomes, they become more valuable, sort of right. Right, All right, Andy. 0:58:15 - Speaker 4Yeah, i mean, look, i like my Rudolph Again. I'm just a little disinclined to have someone who you know is part of this millennium. That's just again how I went about it. I'm a little bit more slanted to people from the 70s, 80s, 90s. Actually I have a lot of writers on my ballot, to be honest. But that said, one other historic host that did make it that we've talked about briefly is Elliot Gould, again kind of similar to Buck Henry, just someone who you know gets the show early on, kind of brings some cashier when the show needs it, helps, makes it hip, and I think generally people just forget about what a big star Elliot Gould was in the 70s. Long goodbye and whatnot You know. So he's next up. You know, i'm not sure if my comrades are with me on this one, but I think you think about the Mount Rushmore of guests outside, steve Martin and Buck Henry in the 70s. You got to go with Elliot. 0:59:19 - Speaker 3Gould, i think in the 70s, is what is key here. That's why I don't have him on my list right now. I do think he is definitely a Hall of Amor, but I just think that there's hosts that are above him, that transcended multiple eras, that I think are more impactful. 0:59:34 - Speaker 4I would say Well, let's not forget about his season six stint where he's in bed with Denny Dillon and Gail Matthias and whatnot. 0:59:42 - Speaker 3I'm not forgetting about that, but I think like you know him hosting. Thank you, my best. I didn't. I just think in a span of you know those, i guess like five years in one episode. It's still like all in the same generation for the most part. So for me it was a debate for me between Christopher Walken and Elliot Gould, who would take that last spot on my ballot, and I'm pretty sure that Elliot Gould would make my next year's ballot. But I have other hosts that I think are more important or personally ones that I think are more impactful. 1:00:11 - Speaker 5Yeah, i mean, i was between Christopher Walken and Elliot Gould for me and I actually was able to talk about Elliot Gould on the show And I think you know your points are great. The other thing, of course, was you saw his musical chops. Like he had a musical theater background. I think every one of his opening model was as a musical number And he was the first one where the female cast members pretended to have a crush on him. He was the one who came on the show and canceled Star Trek. So he's a lot of really great stuff. And I

Central Asian tin in a Late Bronze Age shipwreck at the bottom of Mediterranean raises questions like, “who brought the tin thousands of kilometers west from what's now Uzbekistan,” and “who's tin was it when the boat sank.” Ok, they're not questions like, “what is best in life” or “are you going to eat that sandwich” but they're what we've got.

The Tempests have a new home. Snail was set to work and managed to clean the whole of the kitchen area during the night, only to be thrown into the pantry of death to start working on cleaning out all of the rotten food. Kasumi found a weapon called Bah'Saito, an extraordinary weapon from her home country, and claimed it as her own. Once they were all awake, the Party paid a visit to Fern who informed them that their meeting with the King and the Archmage would take place around lunchtime. They also had the pleasure of meeting Emma, a gorgeous Half-Elf girl who was Fern's assistant in his shop. To say they were shocked to discover that she was a princess of the kingdom would be a bit of an understatement. The meeting went fairly smoothly, the King seemed to like the group and their odd antics between themselves and the Archmage had a bit of fun messing with Brick's mind. A contract was signed that permitted the Tempests to continue using the quasi-portal in the interests of furthering the Kingdom's influence, trade, and information. Fern also arranged for a shipment of supplies to be delivered along the road to their location. Including wheels for the cart, food, and a pack animal to pull it. The party returned to the wagon to continue their day and plan their next steps.   If you'd like to join the community and get updates for when we go live on twitch, considering joining our discord! https://discord.gg/bWSgjAdMbp

An ex-Navy Seal turned cook is the only person who can stop a group of terrorists when they seize control of a U.S. battleship. Steven Seagal, Gary Busey, and Tommy Lee Jones star in Under Siege. We also review the (INfamous?) action movie trailer we created 10 years ago as a bunch of teachers with too much time on our hands. It's confusing without the visuals, so the audio is edited out of this episode. You can see the full video here:  The Band Director (2012 Trailer) Trailer:  

Never challenge a person on the spiritual mission it's not going to work out for you he lost I won and the children and the underprivileged personnel and all who want to learn God for free are winners if you donate pennies from heaven on the GoFundMe pages the first one go go golf. The second one is called golfers of little faith we need to help them Big Nate I'm out of here go go golfing baby. You sir are an idiot....!!!!??? --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/nathan-james81/support

We're joined this episode by special (and invisible) guest, Sac Snark! In California media news, Gil Duran is mysteriously stepping down from his position as Opinion Editor at the Sacramento Bee. This comes in the months after his high-profile Twitter spats and bizarre opinion pieces targeting the region's leftists, followed by weeks of uncharacteristic quiet from the former press secretary for Governor Jerry Brown. Duran has a long history of fighting against working class Californians in favor of capitalists and establishment politicians (a history we'll happily discuss). He's also ruled his opinion pages with an iron fist, which is why it's notable that, the day he announced his departure from the Bee, the paper published a great piece by a young opinion staffer on the importance of demilitarizing the region's police.   Who is the interim head of the Editorial Board? We thought you'd never ask.   Over the weekend people throughout the world took to the streets to protest the war crimes and genocide being committed by apartheid Israel against Palestinians. Demonstrations in California saw unprecedented numbers come out in support of Palestine, including in Sacramento. Skyler tells us about what he saw here locally.    The United States gives Israel nearly $4 billion in military funding annually, so we are directly connected to the atrocities taking place abroad. That's why it's important to finally see prominent politicians speaking out against it. Even Sacramento, we had both councilmembers Katie Valenzuela and Mai Vang (who retweeted this) come out in support of Palestine.   You know who didn't? President Joe Biden. But we shouldn't be surprised; the man has for decades supported the apartheid Israeli state's actions.   Thanks for listening, defund the police and, as always: Twitter: @youknowkempa, @guillotine4you, @ShanNDSTevens, @Flojaune Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/voicesrivercity Sacramentans can hear us on 103.1 KUTZ Tuesdays at 5 pm and again Wednesdays at 8 am. Also, if you require a transcript of our episodes, please reach out to info@voicesrivercity.com and we'll make it happen. And thank you to Be Brave Bold Robot for the tunes.

Calling out some of the supposed World's Greatest Hoax Secrets Revealed. you can find the Above names special on Amazon Prime   Don't always believe what they say and just because someone says its a hoax doesn't mean it actually is now some on this video yes without question they are all you have to do is use your common sense. 

Nostalgia will ruin you..if you allow it to...TUNE IN.

The Asylum is split into two factions as Darkness and Big Vicious reside from Darkmanor II while Zack is broadcasting from his JO closet. This week's discussions include... Terry Funk and Dusty Rhodes' love affair, Wandavision episode 8, Richard Ramirez, Paramount plus and their funding of a new "Beavis and Butthead" movie, CBBC review of "The Butcher of Paris", a new listener country is added to the ranks that pleases Darkness, The best N64 wrestling game, Big Vicious get's his spine aligned, Bill Burr on Gina Carano, the new Superman movie and more! --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/darkasylum/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/darkasylum/support

Tara Parham, the daughter of a disabled USMCS Veteran, eighty-sixed her 6 figure income career in Government Healthcare and Lean Six Sigma, after falling ill with the first of 3  rare diseases that are associated with her dads exposure to Agent Orange, a dioxin used while he was serving in the Vietnam War. Her goal is to shed light on those who are struggling with the many debilitating conditions from Agent Orange and other Rare Diseases; to advocate for  those who are struggling to find Help, their voice, and are unable to advocate for themselves.  TRANSCRIPT s8e10- PodcastDx- Agent Orange   Lita T  00:10  Hello and welcome to another episode of podcast dx. The show that brings you interviews with people just like you, whose lives were forever changed by a medical diagnosis. I'm Lita. Ron  00:22  I'm Ron Jean  00:22  and I'm Jean Marie. Lita T  00:23  Collectively, we're the hosts of podcast dx. Our guest today is Tara. She is the daughter of a disabled US Marine Corps veteran who had to leave her position in government health care after falling ill with the first of three rare diseases that are associated with her dad's exposure to Agent Orange. It's a dioxide, Jean  00:48  dioxin Lita T  00:50  used while he was serving in the Vietnam War. Her goal today is to shed light on those who are struggling with the many disabling or debilitating conditions from Agent Orange and other rare diseases, to advocate for those who are struggling to find help their voice and are unable to advocate for themselves. Jean  01:12  Hi Tara. Hi, Tara, Tara  01:14  Hi, Ron  01:16  Tara to give our audience some background on Agent Orange. Birth defects are showing up in children of veterans who served in America's military during the Vietnam War. The mil, the military actually sprayed more than 20 million gallons of the powerful defoliant in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia to deny the enemy food sources and cover 10s of 1000s of American military personnel handled, sprayed or were sprayed by the herbicide. The chemicals in Agent Orange are known to cause a variety of illnesses including several types of cancers, among other diseases. The list of illnesses tied to Agent Orange is posted on the Department of Veterans Affairs website, and they include and I may struggle with some of these Lita T  02:09  good luck Ron. Ron  02:12  Al amyloidosis. Chronic B cell leukemia, Jean  02:18  leukemia, Lita T  02:19  leukemia, Ron  02:19  leukemia. Told you I was gonna struggle Lita T  02:24  mmhhmm Ron  02:24  Chloracne, Is that right? Lita T  02:26  Well, we could try. Jean  02:27  And actually I was just watching there's a Netflix series on now about spies. And one of the individuals who they attempt attempted to assassinate with dioxins has this and it's very, very it's a very visual type thing you can really you can definitely discern that. That's what that is. Ron  02:48  Wow! There's also Lita T  02:51  diabetes type 2 Ron  02:52   Yep. Thank you Hodgkin's disease, ischemic heart disease, multiple myeloma, also non Hodgkins lymphoma, Parkinson's disease, peripheral neuropathy, at least the early onset of it. Porphyria Cutanea Tarda. I hope I got that right. It also includes prostate cancer and other respiratory cancers, such as lung cancer, cancer of the larynx, trachea and bronchus. Also soft tissue sarcomas other than osteosarcoma, Chandrosarcoma Kaposi sarcoma, or mesothelioma. And a group of different types of cancers in the body tissues such as muscle fat, I'm sorry, muscle, fat, blood and lymph vessels, and also connective tissue. And it took decades for the Department of Veterans Affairs to admit that the powerful herbicide poisoned 1000s of their military members. Jean  04:00  And that's right, Ron, Tara  04:01  Yes Jean  04:01  and the children of the men and women that served and were effected by Agent Orange have a possibility of being you know, like the children might be born with spina bifida that's quite common. And that's a birth defect that occurs while still in in utero, and where the spinal cord fails to close at the bottom. And then children of women that served in the same situation have a larger set of possible birth defects that the VA does recognize. And that's because women are born with the same number of eggs, you know, they they carry those with them their entire lives, whereas men are constantly producing new sperm. Lita T  04:37  Right. And we are going to get to our guest in a minute. Tara  04:40  I know Lita T  04:40  I hate to put you off, but we're just trying to save you some of the background information here, Tara, According to... Tara  04:48  No, I appreciate it. Lita T  04:49  (laughter) That's okay. According to the VA that covered birth defects for children born to women who served in Vietnam and the Korean demilitarized zone. Include. Okay, now it's my turn. Ron  05:02  Exactly Lita T  05:03  Achondroplasia, cleft lip and cleft palate, congenital heart diseases. congenital talipes equinovarus Oh, that's called clubfoot. Okay, I should have just said clubfoot, esophageal and intestinal atresia, Hallerman-Streif or Steiff? stryfe Hallerman-Streiff syndrome, boy  Jack's gonna have fun editing this one Jean  05:30  Or Dom Lita T  05:31   or Dominic, whoever gets lucky, Ron  05:33  Dominic's shaking his head no. Lita T  05:34  (laughter) Hip dysplasia, Hirschsprung's disease which is a congenital mega colon, hydrocephalus due to aqueductal stenosis. Hypose, hypospadias, hypospadias. We'll say hypospadias, imperforte anus, neural tube defects, Poland syndrome pyloric stenosis, syndactyly or fused digits. Oh, that's like webbed feet. Is that right? Okay. tracheoesophageal fistula? I did pretty good on that one, undescended testicle. Williams Syndrome, Jean  06:24  and we laughed at the fact that we can't pronounce these things. Lita T  06:27  Yeah, we're not laughing at the disease. Ron  06:30  the sad part about is this agent orange causes all of this. Lita T  06:33  Yeah, Jean  06:33  Right, right Lita T  06:34  Yeah. Jean  06:34  And I mean, Tara, you must have become like an, you know, you have to know so much and learn so much. Because these are things that people normally Lita T  06:44  normally don't even think about Jean  06:45  haven't even heard. Lita T  06:46  It's not in our everyday vocabulary.  No.  So, Tara, (laughter) back to you. Thank you for taking the time to speak with us today. We really appreciate it. Now, can you start our listeners out by telling us what conditions are you personally dealing with? Tara  07:01  Yeah, well, thank you for having me. I'm really grateful to have this opportunity to speak about this. Because, as you just mentioned, all of those conditions that I'm gonna put in, quote, air quotes recognized as being caused by Agent Orange, there are a slew of other conditions. And along with medical research out there that support connections between Agent Orange and these conditions, although they're not identified as being recognized. I myself have just in the past three and a half years been diagnosed with three of those. The first is a vascular necrosis, which I have in both knees, both hips and both shoulders. A Vascular Necrosis is the the first that I was diagnosed with, which is technically called multifocal, because I have it all over. There are many citations out there that support the association between Agent Orange and a vascular necrosis. And the second diagnosis that I had was intracranial hypertension, which I actually caused me to go blind, Lita T  08:17  Ohh! Tara  08:17  completely blind, and I was never supposed to, I was never supposed to see again, ended up having to have a brain operation and a VP shunt, but that it's a central nervous system disorder that affects your your ventricles, your vessels, which is linked to the agent, orange dioxin similar to spinal bifida,  Chiari, which there's literature out there supporting the connection to that as well. Lita T  08:44  MMhhmm Tara  08:44   And the third that I was diagnosed with last year was interstitial lung disease, which causes doctors to ask if I've been around birds. But it's not just me. My sister also gets it. And there is also a slew of research out there showing the connection between respiratory conditions, not just lung cancer, respiratory cancers that are related to Agent Orange. And as recently as July 21 2020. There was a research article on that by is on the VA website for lung diseases, saying that additional research needs to be done for the veteran. So if all this research still needs to be done for the veterans, there's still so much that has to happen just for their descendants, their offspring Ron  09:41  Right, Lita T  09:41  Right, right, because I've heard that it's also being passed on to the grandchildren. So it must be doing something Tara  09:48  Yes Lita T  09:48 in the genetic links, right? Tara  09:50  Yes. Yes, it's multi generational, and it can lie dormant for years like mine didn't. It didn't show up until I was 40. Ron  10:00  WOW! Tara  10:00  yeah. And and my sister, my sister was actually born with webbed feet, which they recognized as one of the Ron  10:09  conditions? Tara  10:09  things that correct that can be passed on to descendants. That and she also has the same lung condition that I have. But so we both have it. Lita T  10:18  Wow Jean  10:19  and dioxins are also found in other areas. I mean, it's something that if you're, you know, say your your family wasn't exposed to Agent Orange, but you know, you should be aware of it, Lita T  10:30  like landscapers, are you saying? Jean  10:31  No, like on paper mills, Oh, there they are found in other areas in in industry. And this actually does kind of hit close to home because, um, Agent Orange was originally developed at the University of Illinois as a means to help grow soybeans. And it wasn't it used it Lita T  10:38  as a chemical weapon Jean  10:42  originally, very low doses, and then the military Lita T  10:53  weaponized it basically. Jean  10:54  Yeah, yeah Lita T  10:55  Well thank you, Tara. I think our listeners have a better understanding of what we're going to be talking about now. Since we only discuss one one diagnosis per episode, we would like to discuss your battle with multifocal avascular necrosis, also known as AVN. Perhaps you're willing to come back on another episode and talk about the other problems individually? Would that be okay? Tara  11:19  Absolutely. Lita T  11:20  Great. So we could make this into like a mini series? Jean  11:24  Yes Yes. Cuz I mean, it's, it's Tara  11:26  absolutely. Lita T  11:27  That would be really, really great. Jean  11:28  Yeah Well, and yeah, we can kind of understand that when you when you volunteer for the military. You know, there's a lot of things that you're going to be exposed to that normal, civilians...  Yeah. Lita T  11:28  And I don't know if you're aware of, but Jean and I are both veterans. And we always support any veteran activity that's out there. Because it's also supporting us. Jean  11:49  Actually we just, you know, we were just saying this morning that, you know, the vaccine for COVID is not mandatory, they can't really make it mandatory. However, in the military, it would be mandatory, because you're giving away your life for your country. Tara  12:04  Yeah! Lita T  12:04  However, does that mean you're giving away your children's lives, your grandchildren's lives, this is where this topic is going to be important. Jean  12:12  And there is there is the onus on them to keep their personal safe. Lita T  12:16  Yeah. Jean  12:16  And whenever possible, prevent, you know, disease and illness Lita T  12:20  Right Jean  12:20  that kind of situation, Lita T  12:21   right Tara  12:22  Yep. I completely agree. And oftentimes, you know, the military families, the sacrifices that they make when their loved ones are off serving, or the sacrifices, in this case, their health. So I completely agree. Lita T  12:39  Well, yeah, we never would have expected this type of a reaction based on Agent Orange, but now we're learning Jean  12:47   Yeah. And Tara  12:48  I know, Jean  12:49   Tara, can you tell us? What is AVN? And which bones? You said that you have it? It's multi Lita T  12:55  shoulders? Jean  12:56  Yeah. Shoulders in everything? Can you tell us which exact which joints are affected in your body? Lita T  13:01  And what is it Jean  13:01  in? What is it? Yeah, Tara  13:04  sure. Well, avascular necrosis is It's the result of reduction of the blood flows to the bone. I, I have it in both knees, both hips, both shoulders, which basically means my bones didn't get enough of the blood, which caused them to start to die. And once the bones start to die, they don't just regenerate themselves. Now, here's an interesting fact. I was diagnosed with this three and a half years ago, my dad, the veter... the Vietnam veteran was just diagnosed with that three months ago. And Jean  13:41  Oh my gosh, Tara  13:42   and there's multiple, like I said, there's multiple citations out there of so many other veterans and their descendants, who have also been diagnosed with avascular necrosis. But what it does is as the bone dies, it brings the entire joint with it. So oftentimes, it's missed. It's not diagnosed until it's until at a later stage, which makes it a lot more complex. And it's very hard to find. Lita T  14:14  Does it start out? Yeah, the symptoms as they start out, is it does it feel like a arthritic type of a feeling or how did the symptoms start with you? Tara  14:24  Well, what started interestingly, I woke up one morning and I thought that I had twisted my knee and my sleep. So it felt like a torn ligament in my knee. And I ended up going to the emergency room and I was misdiagnosed with bone cancer. Because Ron  14:44  Oh Wow, Tara  14:45  it Yeah, it looks like bone like white specks all in my bones. Jean  14:52  Mhhmm Lita T  14:52 Ohhh! Tara  14:52  And that's the dead bone marks. They're called bone infarct. So I have that as well as, as the death on the end of the bone, which is the a vascular necrosis too. So that was the initial diagnosis. And I, it took me all over the country, I ended up going to Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota to trying to find a diagnosis and help, which ultimately landed me in New York City at New York Presbyterian, where I found a doctor to do a bilateral hip procedure on me to try and slow down the progression. Lita T  15:31  Okay Tara  15:32   So, and maybe I should touch more on, I guess, how do you want me to touch more on the connection between avascular necrosis and Agent Orange? Lita T  15:42  Sure, sure. Tara  15:45  Okay, hold on, let me get let me get there, my notes... Lita T  15:49  she that's what Jean was saying. You have to become a expert. Jean  15:53 Subject matter expert  I think there should be honorary doctorates. Lita T  15:56  Yes. Jean  15:57  For patients like you. Yeah Tara  15:59  Yeah, you have to you have to be your own, like advocate. And that's the biggest challenge especially says it's considered rare. There's not a lot of doctors who actually have the knowledge that you need. So you get Misdiagnosed, and you get misinformation, which causes you to lose time, and your options for treatment diminish. Ron  16:25  Absolutely Tara  16:25  So hold on one second. Sorry. Jean  16:29  And I think Mayo Clinic is very interesting in Rochester, Minnesota, because the weather gets so cold there. I like to call it mole city. I don't know if they would agree with me calling it mole city Lita T  16:39  (laughter)  the tunnel. Jean  16:39  But there's tunnels underground that connect the hospital to like the hotels, the hospital to the grocery store, to the library. So you don't have to go out there. freezing cold Lita T  16:49  It's very nice. It's very nice Jean  16:50  It's unique. It's it's kind of fun. Lita T  16:52  Right? Jean  16:53  And there's little shops all along the route. Lita T  16:55  Yes. Tara  16:55  Okay. Here we are. So the connection with the a vascular necrosis, and Agent Orange. So Avascular Necrosis, like I said, it's a result of the reduction of the blood flow to the bone. And Agent Orange has an adverse effect on blood vessels. So there's medical literature, literature that support Agent Orange, and the dioxin is capable of lying dormant and the effects that it has on the blood vessels. So it's actually the result? Yeah, hold on one second. Lita T  17:32  I know I read the word stenosis and a couple of the different results. Tara  17:37  By patients? Lita T  17:38  Right. So stenosis is is reducing in size, so possibly, the blood vessel size is reduced at the at the bone. Could that be part of it? Tara  17:49  Yeah. It's because it's not getting because of that the blood is not flowing the way that it needs to. Lita T  17:55  Right. Jean  17:56  And I guess most people don't think of their bones as first of all even needing a blood source. Lita T  18:00  Yeah, yeah Jean  18:01  but you don't realize that the osteocytes and, and everything inside your bone that you know that there's constant growth in bone and that it's still... Tara  18:07  I know. Jean  18:08  Yeah, because you think it's like set in stone. But really, it's, you know, part of your living Lita T  18:14  body, Jean  18:14  it's part of your body that's, you know, it's constantly Lita T  18:16  most people don't think about it Jean  18:17  regenerating,  yeah. Lita T  18:17  Right, right Tara  18:19  It is. And a lot of people also kind of confused a vascular necrosis, which is also called osteonecrosis, but they confuse it with osteoporosis. Lita T  18:30  Right, right Tara  18:32  Like, Jean  18:32  ohhhh, Tara  18:32  Oh, they're like, you have Ron  18:34  brittle bones? Tara  18:34  osteoporosis. I'm like, it's not osteoporosis. Lita T  18:37  No, no Tara  18:39  It's osteonecrosis.  And it's completely different. I went through that, initially, to once I found out that it was the a vascular necrosis, it was very challenging to explain to people actually, what it was, who had assumed that it was osteoperosis, Ron  18:40  Right Lita T  18:40  Different Ron  18:40  Right, right  you know, as we're talking, I just, it reminds me and this is going way back, when I was in college, I had done a paper on the banning of chemicals and Agent Orange. Jean  19:14  Mhhmm Ron  19:14   It was done like in the mid 70s, or something like that, because they knew it was bad. They just didn't know how bad Jean  19:22  Mhhmm Lita T  19:22   Oh Wow. Ron  19:22  And this is where the stuff that we're talking about now is the result of all the research from that but way back in the 80s when I did this paper, they knew that this stuff was bad and that's why they said no more of these chemicals. Jean  19:39  Well, it kind of reminds me of lead in fuel. Ron  19:41  Mhhmm Jean  19:42  And you know, like to prove that it was perfectly fine, which it's not the someone actually dipped their hands into it, and then later on, developed all sorts of cancers in both arms. But you know, like we I guess it takes time and research and, you know, you have to think about the effects down the road. Ron  20:00  The long term Absolutely. Jean  20:01  And it's not. Yeah, it's a challenge, Lita T  20:03  right? Tara  20:04  Yeah. And I remember reading somewhere that the amount of chemical that was used over there covered the span of I think it was like Kentucky and another state combined. And it was actually the the combination of the chemicals in Agent Orange. The thing is tcdd tetrachloride benzodioxine, dioxin tcdd. It's the chemical group of compounds named dioxins. And that's what makes Agent Orange as notorious as it is. And it's actually considered the most toxic of all dioxins, which is saying a lot, because dioxins are notoriously toxic. So, yeah, it's, um, I don't know, if you guys watched Chernobyl, that show? Jean  21:01  I haven't seen that one yet. It's on my list. Tara  21:03  Oh, I'm wondering how come they haven't done something like this for Agent Orange? Jean  21:08  That's interesting Tara  21:09  I'm like, yeah, Jean  21:10  yeah. And I've been to see, oh, what has it done to the population? Lita T  21:13  in Vietnam? Jean  21:14  Yeah, in Vietnam? Because, um, you know, it's a long lasting chemical. And it's, yeah, it's got to have long term effects. Lita T  21:22  Right. Jean  21:22  Yeah. And then it's also in the environment at large. Tara  21:25  Yep. And there is actually I've read a lot of things about the effects of the what's happening in Vietnam because of this. It's still being in the soil, so... Jean  21:37  And, and there's probably, you know, if your going to have does have research and information, that's probably a good source as well, because they have a probably a greater population from the exposure. And actually, I think that takes us to Ron's question... Ron  21:50  exactly. Can you tell us how common is a vascular necrosis? And actually, how is it treated? Tara  22:00  Sure, so a vascular necrosis is probably anywhere from 10 to 20,000 people a year are diagnosed with it. So in order to be considered a rare disease, it's 200,000 or less avascular necrosis is 10, to 20,000. Jean  22:20  Okay Tara  22:20  So to treat a vascular necrosis and I need to give a plug here, because a lot of my information, Dr. Michael Mont, at Lenox Hill, who has, I was scheduled to have surgery on both knees, both hips in both shoulders in September of this time here, but due to COVID, and all of that, a couple of other mishaps, I actually kind of got sick with my lungs, too. We're postponing it, but he is phenomenal. He is a avascular necrosis guru, let me say that. So a lot of what I am speaking to is from literature that I've read that he wrote and talks about. So as far as treatments go for a vascular necrosis. As I mentioned earlier, a lot of people don't get a diagnosis until later in stage three, to give a little background on this, there is different staging, I guess, models that are used, there's ARCAT, then if you use the ARCAT, there's ARCO there's four stages, the first two stages are only identifiable on an MRI. So most people aren't going to be if you go to the doctor and you have knee pain or something they're not they're going to do an X ray. And when they don't see anything, it's like I don't, you're fine. Most, a lot of times, you don't go for an MRI for multiple reasons. So you don't get diagnosed until the pain progressed, and it gets really bad. Well, it's during those first two stages, where you have the less invasive procedures that are options that could help prolong you, possibly your bone completely dying and needing total replacements and it's becoming mobility issues, as well. So Another interesting fact here, too, and I'm kind of all over the board, but you know, Lita T  24:29  yeah, you know, it turns out to be like a spider web, you know, one thing leads to another but go ahead and take your time.  Tara  24:35  I know avascular necrosis, there are a couple kind of well known people that had it A-Rod had it in his shoulder, Mike Napoli. Oh, the Red Sox play for the Red Sox, but theirs were caught. It was caught really early because they had to go through rigorous physical. So they had really high success. But I can't stress the importance of especially If somebody has history of Agent Orange, and they're having hip pain or something of that nature and their knees, hips or shoulders or something, especially if they have underlying health issues that prompts them to need prednisone or steroids, cause that contributes to that. It's like a perfect storm, Lita T  25:24  okay Tara  25:24  with the agent orange to cause a vascular necrosis. So did I answer your question?, Lita T  25:32  Yeah that makes sense. That makes sense. Right? Tara  25:35  I didn't finish answering the question though, Lita T  25:37  no, that's okay. But at least that gives some background. Right. Right. Tara  25:41  Okay, Jean  25:42  well, yeah. And I think, you know, if you go to, you know, your orthopedist, and I don't think you know, is it typical for them to ask you? So did your parents, you know, serve in Vietnam? Are they exposed Agent Orange, it's, if it's not on their intake information, you really do have to advocate for yourself. Lita T  25:58  Right? So the treatments again, the the initial treatments are, are what? Tara  26:06  Okay, there you go. See, I didn't even answer it. Ron  26:09  (Laughter) Tara  26:09  So there's a there's, there's quite a few different treatments for the stage. And it's a little bit controversial, too, because, because it's rare, and most people don't get diagnosed until stage three and four. That means that there's not a lot of people to actually do tests that are trials on Lita T  26:35  Oh Okay Tara  26:35   stage one and two, or phase, the earlier stages. But very popular and somewhat controversial, depending on who you talk to is a core decompression, where they use bone marrow efforts that stem cells. So what accordi compression is, is they take and drill holes into your bone. And they inject stem cells into the bone marrow in hopes of regenerating the bone. Lita T  27:10  Would they be your own stem cells? Tara  27:12  Yes Lita T  27:13  Okay? Tara  27:13  Yeah, yes. But I also have for earlier stages. Do they also do PRP for protein rich? The Lita T  27:21  plasma Tara  27:22  stem cells? Lita T  27:23  Okay. Okay. Tara  27:25  But as far as treatment for the later stages, and that so.... So why I said it was controversial is because some orthopedist will say that, if you have a core decompression, you're kind of wasting your time, because it might buy you a little time, but you're still ultimately going, it's still going to collapse in the long run. And you're still going to have to go through all of the other things. So why even do the core de-compression? Lita T  27:58  So it's just it's just a temporary Jean  28:01  stop gap. Lita T  28:01  A stop gap Yeah. Ron  28:03  How much time? Jean  28:04  Yeah, Tara  28:06  it varies. And it's not always, that's not always the case, I had the bilateral hip core decompression in January of 2018. And I mean, I had tremendous relief after I did, and so far, like, it's, it hasn't gotten to the point to where I would need like to have it again. Like the pain hasn't gotten to that point to where it was before I had that surgery. So it's but there's other people who have had success and haven't had to go on and have any further surgery. So it's, it's not a, everyone will will have to it's there might be some that do and some that don't. And so the some that that do ultimately have to go on and have it that causes them to say that not to have it I don't know. So it is controversial. Lita T  29:05  Okay Tara  29:06  If you ask anybody, you'll get mixed reviews on whether you should or shouldn't. But the the guru, Dr. Michael Mont will tell you yes. To do the core compression, and I'm right there with him. Lita T  29:18  Okay. Tara  29:19  A majority of the time, I guess it depends there are things that so so let me just kind of say this. There's it depends on how much of the articular surface though, is covered with it has dead bones. Like if there's 75% or more, that has dead bone or if it's less light, so there's so many different,  "if that, then that" Lita T  29:47  Right, right. Tara  29:48  And so Lita T  29:48  like with cancer, you know, they treat cancer based on how much progression there is, are they going to use radio radiation or chemo? So I'm sure that they base it based on like, you're saying how bad it has progressed, right? Tara  30:02  Correct, correct? Yeah. But that's for the first on the stage one and stage two, stage three and four get more complex. Jean  30:14  Okay Tara  30:14  So you have a variety of different options depending on, like I said, how much dead bone there is, as well as where it's at, where the dead bone is at. I have dead bone. It's 75% on one side, 85% on the other, my hip, and my knees are actually stage three. And my, my, my right, left shoulder is stage three, my right is stage two. And what that means is that some of the more less, the less invasive procedures, maybe don't have a high success possibility. It doesn't mean that it wouldn't possibly work, shall I say? Does that make sense? Jean  31:04  It does, but is is like a replacement of the joint possibility. Tara  31:15  Is the what I'm sorry, Jean  31:16  can can they replace the joints? Tara  31:19  Yes. But you wouldn't do that until stage later? Well, it depends on how much pain you're having to and a lot of it is derived by it by that. But yes, replacing it is an option. So and let me just explain this. This is the best explanation that somebody gave me on how to explain a vascular necrosis. So a vascular, a lot of people think that a vascular necrosis is like your joint. Something happened because you get a joint replacement. But what's happening is picture like whenever they lay of road, paver road, they lay sand down first and then they lay asphalt on top of it. But as you get a pothole, what happens is that sand settles and as the sand settles, then it pulls that asphalt down. So that's the same thing that's happening with the bone as the bone is dying because that's what a vascular necrosis is, is the bone dying as the dying is pulling down and that's what pulls your joint down and all of that, and it pulls all your ligaments and cartilage down and that's why you had to have all of it replaced. Jean  32:35  So it's like sinkholes in the bone. Okay. Tara  32:38  Yeah. Because your bones they're dying and they're, they're collapsing. And so as it does, it's taking everything with it. Lita T  32:45  It's not just the not just the bone at the joint itself, but could it occur anywhere along the bone? Tara  32:55  Yes, I I actually have it that called bone infarct, I have a vascular necrosis at the ends of my bones. And then I have bone infarct, which is dead bone patches throughout the long parts of my bones to which is where a lot of the the cancer that's where the cancer misdiagnosis came because it looks like that it shows up white in the images. Lita T  33:25  Okay, Tara  33:26  but yes, Lita T  33:27  wow, Jean  33:28  yeah, Tara  33:28  for stage three and four, they have multiple different options, like there's an OATS procedure, a vascular graft procedure, ultimately, yes, a total replacement would be, I guess, that I want to say worst case scenario, but before the meet at that age, is a replacement for your hip would only last 10 years. Jean  33:55  Okay, so they try to hold off. Tara  33:56  Now it's actually lasting longer. Sometimes I think it's different if you have a vascular necrosis because the bones especially if they continue to kind of die after you've had the replacement, Jean  34:09  right? Like after the bone isn't. Lita T  34:12  Right. Jean  34:13  Okay.  I was just gonna say this, the shaft of the bone is supporting that joint. And so eventually, like, you'd have to place the shaft and the joint itself. Lita T  34:20 Right So Jean  34:21  and you're Lita T  34:22  Why can't they get to the point where they're actually just solving the cause Jean  34:27  the, stopping the necrosis. Lita T  34:28  Right So in other words, like, Jean  34:30  right, Lita T  34:30  feeding the bone with the blood Jean  34:32  Right, Lita T  34:33  they can't. They can't come up with something where they can actually Jean  34:36  I'm sure somebody's researching it somewhere.  yeah. Lita T  34:38  yeah, Ron  34:38  Yep Lita T  34:40  Wow. Tara  34:40  Yeah. No, Lita T  34:41  sorry. Tara  34:41  Yeah. Lita T  34:42  Yeah. Are they? I hate to interrupt you, Tara. But are there are there things that you could do to relieve the symptoms or improve your quality of life as you're going through this, you know, like as a person, not medical, Jean  34:58  as an individual Lita T  34:58  as an individual thank you Jean  35:00  No I think, I think we do want medical. Lita T  35:02  Okay. Alright Tara  35:02  Yeah. Well, I can tell you. I can tell you from research that I did as far as exercise goes, low impacts. aquatics is really good. Lita T  35:15  Okay, Tara  35:15   yoga. Another good thing that I found actually has been tremendous for me. Is is keto. Lita T  35:22  What is keto? Tara  35:25  What I eat. Lita T  35:26  Oh, I'm sorry. Okay.  I thought it was a new. I thought it was like a karate. (laughter). Jean  35:32  Okay, okay, stop. Lita T  35:35  I'm sorry. Tara  35:36  No. Keto. So one of the things of one of the challenges is, you know, with your bones, whenever you have a vascular necrosis, it makes it really challenging to be able to work out and get exercise or to go on a hike or things of that nature. Because it's kind of like a tire your bones are, the more you drive, the more your tire wears down. And so with avascular necrosis, it's the more that you walk, the more the bone collapses. Lita T  36:05  Sure, sure. Right. Tara  36:08  And so previous literature, I'd probably have to say and there might be some orthopedics that still recommend it, although I wouldn't.  That say non weight bearing, like Don't, don't walk, try and limit your, your walking and as much as possible, because that will prolong the collapse. But what I found changing my eating too  has allowed me to drop 36 pounds last year. And Jean  36:37 congratulations, Tara  36:38  when I wasn't able to work out and do those things that I used to love to do, like running. You know, Jean  36:47  do you still run in your sleep in your dreams? Is that just me? . Tara  36:52  You know what I do sometimes from from scary PTSD doctors that I've had from my experiences, but yeah, yes, I'm running. Lita T  37:02  Okay. I'm sorry. Is it my turn? Jean  37:05  Yeah, it's your turn Lita T  37:06  Oh okay (laughter) Jean  37:07  go fish. Ron  37:07  Yeah. Lita T  37:08  What? Tara, what role have your family and friends played in your health care journey? Jean  37:13  Yeah. Especially your sister. Um, Tara  37:17  okay. So, my family has been tremendous. Um, my dad and my mom have been my rock. I don't, I would not have been able to make it without them, which I'm not going to go into, like, my past or anything. But it's, it's different from how I grew up. You know, my dad was fighting his demons with the war. But now, he's, he's my rock. Luckily, with COVID because he was in a war veterans home for the past 17 years. And then COVID happened. And I found out that they weren't allowing their workers to wear masks.   And so I had him. Oh, yeah. Yep. Lita T  38:02  Oh! Ron  38:02  What? Wow. Tara  38:05  in April. Yeah, I have that recorded. But anyway, um, Lita T  38:10  what state are you in? Oh, what state are you in? Tara  38:13  I'm in Louisiana, Louisiana right now. So, um, I had him discharged. And so he's been able to be here with me. Although it's been extremely challenging with my stuff, but we've been able to support each other. Lita T  38:31  Support each other Right. Jean  38:32  And it's nice to meet your parents again, as adults, Lita T  38:36  Yes Jean  38:36   you know, to get to know them again. As an adult. Tara  38:39  Yeah, exactly. Yes. And so it's been, um, my family has been amazing. is I don't even know how to say this and dance around it. I probably should have prepared better for that question. Jean  38:57  You could leave in skip it, you can skip it Tara  39:00   Okay, Lita T  39:00  Whatever is comfortable for you. And if you want us to edit this out, we could also edit that part out Jean  39:05  sure. Tara  39:05  Okay, well, let me just say this. I fell into probably one of the darkest places of my life that I've ever been in. I am honestly lucky to be alive. There were days that I didn't know if I would make it if it wasn't my health, bringing me to the brink. My physical health, it was my mental health. And so every single relationship in my life was affected. I'm currently where we stand. My mom and my dad are my support system. And I'm rebuilding everything else. Jean  39:44  Okay. Lita T  39:45  Okay. Ron  39:45  Gotcha Lita T  39:46  All right. Jean  39:47  Yeah. And I talk about mental health and physical health definitely go hand in hand. Lita T  39:51  Yes, for sure. Definitely. Tara  39:53  Absolutely. And when you're fighting for your life, you don't have like a lot of the energy to use On those relationships, so work on those. Lita T  40:03  We understand that Tara  40:03  And so everything is affected, you know, Lita T  40:06  we understand that, yeah. Jean  40:07  And you're in your friends and family have to be very understanding you're not able to do the things you used to do. And they really do have to make an effort. Lita T  40:14  Right? Right. Tara  40:15  Right Lita T  40:15  And some people just can't really put themselves in the shoes of another person that has a chronic illness. Tara  40:23  Right  Yes Lita T  40:24  And it's difficult.  And, you might have to just excuse them and say, well, it's just not within their  Yeah. purview Jean  40:33  Purview?. Tara  40:33  Yeah, wheelhouse Lita T  40:35  right. Right. Right. Ron  40:36  Look, this isn't really part of the script. But I'm just curious in you don't have to answer if you don't want to. Have you been able to see someone or talk to a therapist? Or? Tara  40:47  Oh I have a yes. Yes, Ron  40:50  Okay Tara  40:50   I have. I've had a therapist for probably, like 10 years. Um, who? I call her my life coach, actually. Jean  40:59  Sure. Sure.  Ron  41:00  Right Tara  41:00  She's Wonderful. Lita T  41:01  Yeah. Anybody with a chronic illness? It's causing pain on a non stop basis, I think, personally, should consider a therapist,  Right I know, Ron  41:11  but people look, view it differently.  That's my opinion, But people dance around the question Tara  41:11  Absolutely Lita T  41:17  but personally, Yeah, yeah. My opinion is that it's needed. Jean  41:20  Yeah. Tara  41:20  Yeah, they're, they're such that there is still a stigma, in many ways about therapy and mental health. But honestly, there isn't, even if you don't think that you have a mental health, you know, reason to seek help. We all have things that we could improve on, Lita T  41:39  Sure Ron  41:39  Certainly Tara  41:40   and why, you know, why wouldn't we want to? Lita T  41:43  Right Tara  41:43  That's exactly what a therapist would help you do? You know? So that's just my thoughts. Jean  41:49  Oh absolutely Ron  41:50  Some people have that thought of, these are my feelings I hate for anybody else to know what I'm feeling. I'll just deal with it internally. Tara  41:59  Yeah. Ron  41:59  And, you know, again, I mean, people look at it, people view it, people process it differently. I'm in total agreement with what Lita and Jean Marie and what you're saying about, it's great to talk with someone. But again, because of the stigma and all that a lot of times there's people out there that say, I don't want anybody, Lita T  42:19  right, Ron  42:20  know  what's going on, Jean  42:21  But it is coming into play in more. For example, like with organ transplant, getting counseling is not an option. Ron  42:31  Right Jean  42:31  It's a requirement, Ron  42:32  right? Jean  42:33  And because they realize that you really you, you need assistance, and you need some help. Ron  42:37  Right Jean  42:37  And it's a big deal. And I think the more and more we integrate health and take it in is part of the whole health package, the better it is for everyone. Lita T  42:47  Right. Jean  42:47  And this way it reduces that stigma Lita T  42:48  better. If we would have started that way back when medicine started, Jean  42:52  right, Lita T  42:53  and said, mental health and physical health are hand in hand. And if you go to a doctor, and you're being seen for something that's chronic, I mean, if it's something that's that's short lived, and the doctor fixes you, there's probably but if it's chronic, I think that you should automatically say, well, because of this chronic illness, you automatically, you know, should go to Jean  43:14  it should be included, Lita T  43:14  right? It should be included. Tara  43:16  Yep. No, I was just gonna say I think there needs to be like some type of chronic illness case manager, care manager, and whenever somebody is diagnosed, that they're referred to that person, and there's information that is given to them based especially based off of that condition, and it includes all of what you're saying. Absolutely Lita T  43:34  right, right Tara  43:35  because there is a huge gap, in many ways on in chronic illness, especially rare disease like that. I mean, it takes a good year for somebody just to get their bearings for any condition, Lita T  43:52  right to process it Tara  43:53  You want to make it a rare, a rare disease, and then that it adds to it because there's only a handful of people who actually have the knowledge that you need in order to find the treatment that you need. And oftentimes you have to travel extensively. I've had to travel across the country and figure out financially how you were going to afford it. I've had to get extremely creative. I found a lot of my doctors based off of research articles that I've read, because there wasn't actually an organization for my condition. So it there's so much that needs to be done in this this arena. But all of what you're saying would be great, too. Lita T  44:37  Well, that leads me to my next question. Tara, what is the best advice that you've received for coping with a rare disease and what advice would you give to somebody recently diagnosed with a rare disease? Tara  44:52  The best advice that I received was you have to be kind to yourself and take one day at a time and I know that That really, it really sounds cliche, because you hear, you know, one day at a time, but you get so exhausted, trying to just trying to find the most simplest thing. And all you want to do is like, just find the answers. And you can't even find an answer. That won't even get on people who are misdiagnosed. But it's really easy to get discouraged, and you beat yourself up over things. So I think that that was the best advice that I received for coping, and that to surround yourself with people who will help you see a side of you that you can't see, Lita T  45:43  like to bring out the positive from you. Tara  45:45  Yeah, well, that will remind you of the good in you because you're going to be struggling really hard. You're not going to feel like that person at all. Lita T  45:54  Right. Good advice. Ron  45:56  Yeah absolutely. Tara, how can our listeners learn more about you? And also about AVN? And do you have any, any social media accounts out there that you want to share with us? Tara  46:11  Absolutely. Um, can I go back and answer the rest of the rest of that question though? Lita T  46:17  Oh sure, go back, backtrack! Tara  46:19  Okay. Okay. So, um, because what advice would I give to someone recently diagnosed with a rare disease is, I would say, research online to see if there's a nonprofit for that condition. One of the best places that I have found support is on social media support group. Facebook has so many support groups, and specifically about the a vascular necrosis support group. That's where Dr. Michael Mont, the one that the avascular necrosis guru, every two weeks, he goes on, he does a live q&a, invite anybody on that support group to participate and ask him any question that you want whatsoever? Lita T  47:08  I love that Tara  47:08  Send him your Yep, you can send him your, your, your discs, to look at it, develop a treatment plan for you do all of that for free? Like he is? Yeah, it's amazing. So for any rare disease, I don't know. I wish my other conditions had that type of interaction. But the a vascular necrosis support group does and it's amazing. So I would definitely start with support groups. Social media, look for the nonprofit, associated National Organization for rare disease Nord, is a place to start to, that will lead you to any nonprofits, potentially, to finding help. And another option is research articles. That's how I found a lot of the doctors that I've met and saw, but based off of who wrote the research article, though, but that was my advice. Lita T  48:13  Okay, thank you. How can we learn more about you then? Tara  48:17  More about me, I will, I will send you my social media contact information. And I am actually starting next weekend. I'm going to start documenting my journey. Lita T  48:30  Oh good Ron  48:30  Okay. Lita T  48:31  like a blog. Tara  48:31  Yep Lita T  48:32  And a blog. Okay, great. Tara  48:33  Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, on a blog. Lita T  48:37  Excellent. We'll make sure that we put a link for that in our website. Tara  48:40  Yes. Because I want to hopefully, share and hopefully I can help others that have maybe experienced the same things that I have. Even especially with the surgery that I'm going to have to have too Lita T  48:54  To get ready for, great, excellent idea. Thank you very much. Well, Tara, thank you so much for taking the time to join us today. And we're looking forward to speaking with you in the future about the other issues that you're dealing with. So we'll be scheduling, we'll be scheduling other appointments for you in the future. Tara  49:16  Great, and I'm like, I got my first podcast down and there's nowhere to go, only improve. Right Ron  49:22  (laughter) Tara  49:22  like I'm only gonna get much better. Lita T  49:24  Yes, Ron  49:25  Oh you did fine. Don't worry about it yet fine. Lita T  49:28  We're gonna definitely Tara  49:28  I didn't even Lita T  49:31  we're gonna definitely be pushing this episode into our veterans network so that other veterans and children of veterans will be aware of this as well. Tara  49:42  I'm going to too and that's why I was going to ask you guys for your social all your social media Lita T  49:47  Sure yes Tara  49:48   because I'd already created like the post and I want to post it and Lita T  49:52  Great, great Tara  49:53  report although although I'm really reluctant because I so I wrote down all my answer, like I've rehearsed it. A lot of what I said is not even on what I wrote. Lita T  50:04  Okay, alright  Ron  50:06  Maybe we should  do that Lita T  50:07  (laughter) Tara  50:07  I don't know what happened. I don't know what happened. And I'm like, what I wrote is probably like, a lot better than what I said. And I was like, Oh my God, why did you do that? Lita T  50:16  It always goes that way? It always goes that way. The only reason we use a script is, well, I think it's because of me, I have early onset Alzheimer's. And if I don't have a script in front of me, I forget where we are. I forget who we're talking to, I forget quite a bit. So it keeps me focused. And I think it helps keep us from talking over each other. Because when there's three of us on this side of the microphone, talking to you, it kind of limits how much we're talking over each other. So it helps us Jean  50:48  And I tend to ramble. Tara  50:49  Okay Lita T  50:51  (laughter) Ron  50:51  And I guess I tend to interrupt. Jean  50:53  Yeah. Tara  50:56  So if I tell you that I had the script in front of me, will that scare you? Lita T  51:00  No, Ron  51:00  not at all Jean  51:01  no, no, no. Tara  51:02  Ok Cause I had it in front of me. And I still rambled and went off topic. And I'm like, and I didn't even do it. And I was like, Oh, my God, Ron  51:09  You're all good. Lita T  51:10  I'm glad you did, because it turned out wonderfully. Ron  51:13  Yeah, Lita T  51:13  Thank you very much. Ron  51:14  And actually, we do appreciate you coming on the show this morning and sharing your story with us. Quite interesting to say the least. Lita T  51:22  Oh yeah! Ron  51:23  And I'm sure that all of our listeners out there, learned a lot from this episode. Lita T  51:27  I learned a lot. Jean  51:28  I did too! Ron  51:28  And we're looking forward to having you come on in the future to talk about some of the other conditions that you had mentioned earlier. Tara  51:36  Yeah. And I have like, so I have so much better documentation that I could provide? Lita T  51:44  Well, you know, what you could do is you could send me those links through email. Jean  51:48  We can add them to our Pinterest Page Lita T  51:50  When I when I build the website, I don't know if you're aware of this, but you'll get your own page on our website. And then I put links for everything that you would like, on our on your website page. And this way people Tara  52:03  Awesome! Lita T  52:03   can go right there. Yes, Jean  52:05  Yeah And then we'll have a Pinterest page for you as well. And it'll have direct links to any research that you'd like to cite or any documents or articles. Lita T  52:13  Right, right. Jean  52:16  Awesome, so good because I have all of those, like, I have the whole slew of medical, even research and citations and everything Lita T  52:26  exactly Tara  52:26  and even stuff about Agent Orange, so. Lita T  52:28  Right Very important to include. Yeah, Ron  52:32  right. Right, right. Okay, well, thank you again. If our listeners have any questions or comments related to today's show, they can contact us at podcast dx@yahoo.com through our website, podcast dx.com on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, or Instagram. Jean  52:50 And if you have a moment to spare, please give us a review wherever you get your podcast. As always, please keep in mind that this podcast is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or a qualified healthcare provider with any questions you may have regarding medical condition or treatment before undertaking a new health care routine and never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking you because of something you've heard on this podcast. Lita T  53:09 Till next week.  

有些时候当别人询问考试成绩、感情状况等等时很多人喜欢回复一句“so so”表示一般般，就那样子呗然后大家就以为英文里也可以用“Just so so ”来回答“How are you”“How is it going”...等等一些问句？别再错下去啦跟Lydia 来看看“一般般”的正确表达吧01I'm okI'm ok. 是英文里的高频出镜用法可以表示还好，一般般例：So if that sounds like I'm okay, okay, then you can tell them I'm okay, okay?如果这说明我还好，那好吧，你就告诉他们我还好，好吗？Yeah, I'm OK, I have been having a lot of mood swings lately.是的，我还好，最近我的情绪有些拨动。02Not so hothot 是表示程度很高很好not so hot就是没那么好表示一般，不怎么好而不是表示“不太热”例：How do you feel?你感觉如何？Not so hot. I think I have a cold.不怎么样，我觉得我感冒了。03Just as usual一切如旧没有什么特别的事情发生就可以直接这么回答了例：Well, you know, it's just as usual.你都知道的，一切如旧。04All right这是一个老外们常挂在嘴边有着丰富含义的高频用语有满意的，平安的、允许的、确实等含义但它也可以用来表示一般般、还行的意思例：How was school? 在学校还好吗？It was all right.还行。不过all right虽然常用但是不同语境下表达的意思不一样如果单独使用还隐约透露出一股不耐烦的情绪所以大家用的时候要主要场合哦05其他常见用法①Yeah例：Well, what's up? Is Phoebe okay? 怎么回事呢？菲比还好吗？Oh, yeah, yeah.喔，还好，还好②Oh well,yes例：Oh well, yes, I've had a bit of a bad morning.哦，我还好，我今天早上有点倒霉。

有些时候当别人询问考试成绩、感情状况等等时很多人喜欢回复一句“so so”表示一般般，就那样子呗然后大家就以为英文里也可以用“Just so so ”来回答“How are you”“How is it going”...等等一些问句？别再错下去啦跟Lydia 来看看“一般般”的正确表达吧01I'm okI'm ok. 是英文里的高频出镜用法可以表示还好，一般般例：So if that sounds like I'm okay, okay, then you can tell them I'm okay, okay?如果这说明我还好，那好吧，你就告诉他们我还好，好吗？Yeah, I'm OK, I have been having a lot of mood swings lately.是的，我还好，最近我的情绪有些拨动。02Not so hothot 是表示程度很高很好not so hot就是没那么好表示一般，不怎么好而不是表示“不太热”例：How do you feel?你感觉如何？Not so hot. I think I have a cold.不怎么样，我觉得我感冒了。03Just as usual一切如旧没有什么特别的事情发生就可以直接这么回答了例：Well, you know, it's just as usual.你都知道的，一切如旧。04All right这是一个老外们常挂在嘴边有着丰富含义的高频用语有满意的，平安的、允许的、确实等含义但它也可以用来表示一般般、还行的意思例：How was school? 在学校还好吗？It was all right.还行。不过all right虽然常用但是不同语境下表达的意思不一样如果单独使用还隐约透露出一股不耐烦的情绪所以大家用的时候要主要场合哦05其他常见用法①Yeah例：Well, what's up? Is Phoebe okay? 怎么回事呢？菲比还好吗？Oh, yeah, yeah.喔，还好，还好②Oh well,yes例：Oh well, yes, I've had a bit of a bad morning.哦，我还好，我今天早上有点倒霉。

Hi everyone, and thank you for tuning in to another episode of the We Make Books Podcast - A podcast about writing, publishing, and everything in between! We Make Books is hosted by Rekka Jay and Kaelyn Considine; Rekka is a published author and Kaelyn is an editor and together they are going to take you through what goes into getting a book out of your head, on to paper, in to the hands of a publisher, and finally on to book store shelves. We Make Books is a podcast for writers and publishers, by writers and publishers and we want to hear from our listeners! Hit us up on our social media, linked below, and send us your questions, comments, concerns, and tell us your favorite novel covers! We hope you enjoy We Make Books! Twitter: @WMBCast  |  @KindofKaelyn  |  @BittyBittyZap Instagram: @WMBCast  Patreon.com/WMBCast   Episode 45: Formatting Cover Art for Publication transcribed by Sara Rose (@saraeleanorrose)   [0:00] R: Welcome back to another episode of We Make Books, a podcast about writing, publishing, and everything in between, and this episode definitely leans more toward the publishing end of things and cement boots and everything. Right down, drowning you in information.    I’m Rekka, I write science fiction and fantasy as R.J. Theodore and Kaelyn’s making a face at me.   K: I’m Kaelyn and, uh… My job is to make sure that Rekka maintains her sanity a little bit while trying to explain very, very complicated things here.   R: I’m totally sane. The question is, am I making myself understood?   K: Yes, this is sort of rounding out our discussions on cover and book art. We’re getting into the technical nitty-gritty of how you now take a lovely picture, that someone has done for you, and actually get it on the cover of a book so that it looks right.   R: We are going into the weeds! A wild book-cover template has appeared!   [K laughs]   R: How do you make it become your friend?   K: So Rekka is particularly disposed to talk in great detail about this because Rekka is a designer. This is one of the things that Rekka does. Beyond just knowing how to set up and lay these things out. Rekka knows a lot about color and composition and accounting for how things look on a screen versus how they look in print, and how all of these terrifying details actually work.   R: There’s so much information that I wanted to communicate. I hope I do a good job. I hope it’s clear, I hope it’s not overwhelming. I feel like this is important, because there’s a lot of stuff that, just generally, people don’t understand about the process and when they have a cover illustration that they’ve commissioned, the now what? This is the episode for the, “Now what?”   K: I think the key takeaway from this cover art and artwork series we’ve been doing, is this is way more complicated than you ever thought it was. I’ll leave it at that. [K laughs]   R: Yeah, and I struggle to allow the word complicated. It’s just, it is a specialty.   K: Yeah.   R: I mean, every step of this process is a specialty. You, the author, are exercising your specialty in writing, and then an editor exercises their specialty in editing, and then a copyeditor does theirs, and then a cover artist creates a cover with their specialty, and then a designer uses their specialty to lay out the book and the cover. And these are all specialized parts of a process that, in the past, have been teams of people. In this day and age, where we expect to be able to self-publish and Do It All Ourselves has become less of a specialty-based thing and more of a I Can Do This Myself, I Am Empowered, therefore I should do this myself. Which, you know, should you? It’s… ehh. Listen to this episode, I dunno, you decide.   K: As we say many times here, it’s not easy and there’s a lot more that goes into this than you would think. So, Rekka, takes us through all of that. I think this is a really good resource episode. So take a listen, hope you enjoy, and we’ll see you on the other side of the music.   [into music plays]   K: Speaking of looking at things—   [R and K burst into laughter]   R: That’s tenuous at best.   K: Not all of my transitions are good ones, Rekka.   R: Maybe the worst ones are the prize ones, though.   K: Hey, look, radar displays images in certain ways, we’re talking about displaying images in certain ways today. No… alright.   R: It’s so weak. It’s so weak.   K: Come back to me.   R: No, don’t. Can we just move on?   [K laughs]   R: So we spent September talking to you—well, August and September, a little bit, with one small deviation, talking to you about cover art. So one thing that I’m always good for is a long, droning episode about how you would formal something. So we thought about, maybe, for people who have received cover art that they’ve commissioned, how do you now turn that into a file that you can upload and provide to a printer, to create a book cover?   K: This is kinda the last step, if you will. You’ve got this file and you’re ready to have a book printed. Now, there’s a few things here.   R: The first point is, you’re not ready to have a book printed. Not yet.   K: All of the real fun, especially difficult technical stuff, really comes from, then, trying to figure out how to get this on a cover where it’s not accidentally zoomed in on a square of a hundred pixels and all you can see is the corner of one of the letters from the title.   R: This is why we don’t let Kaelyn format the covers.   K: Look, stuff happens sometimes, Rekka. [Both laugh] So, Rekka, as we’ve—hopefully, if you listen to this show regularly, you know by now Rekka is a designer by trade… is it by trade?   R: I am technically a designer by trade. Yeah. I chose this on purpose.   K: And knows how to do all of this stuff. And you will notice that I said Rekka is a designer. Rekka has a degree in this. I am saying this because this is not easy to do.   R: At the very least, it is easy to mess up.   K: Yes! Yes. So, Rekka, I am a cover artist. I have sent you files. Probably multiple files, actually.    R: Um, well, that depends on our contract.   K: Yup.   R: You’re going to get a file, either with or without your cover lettering already in place. As we’ve talked about in past episodes, in the past few weeks, the cover artist may also do text treatment for you, or you may need to find a designer to do that for you.    The file format that you receive is going to be dependent on what was agreed upon, and part of why I started with whether or not it has text in it is because if you need to manipulate that text in the future, you really hope that you have a layered file from your cover artist. And by layered file, I’m talking, probably, about a .psd file or a .tiff with layers. More likely, you’ll get a .psd. I think, unfortunately, Adobe’s got the stranglehold on the market and their filetype with layers, by default, is .psd.    If you’ve got a .tiff I would find a way to open it and check really, really soon because you do wanna make sure that that text treatment is on its own layer. Because every time I’ve received a file from a cover artist with text in it, it’s not in a good position for the final layout file.   K: And just to be clear, and part of the reason I was asking this is, if you’re planning to do stuff to this and mess around with this, and you don’t have Adobe, and it’s a .psd, you’re not really gonna be able to do a whole lot with this.   R: Right, you’re still gonna need to be able to open the file and that means Adobe. And if you only open Adobe files when you’re preparing your cover for the final, live version that’s going to go on the cover, you can subscribe to Adobe and get Creative Cloud for a month and then cancel after you’ve gotten what you needed to and then come back the next time you have a cover.   K: Mhm.   R: If you are an author who’s releasing ten books a year because you self-publish, you probably are going to need to have a running subscription with Adobe. I would definitely suggest that you, well, okay, so here’s the thing. If you know that you don’t know what you’re doing with this, pass it on to a graphic designer.   K: Yeah, so let’s be clear right from the start here. This is coming from me, who, I have very limited experience and ability, with Photoshop, with .psd files. Dealing with this, even just sometimes I had opened files for books just because I needed to check something, and I have never been more afraid to click on things before in my life.    R: You should be afraid. Definitely be afraid. If you don’t know what clicking on something will do, be afraid.    K: I just wanna emphasize, you know, for Rekka, she looks at this and she knows everything that she’s looking at. The widgets, the buttons, the gloopity-globs, and what they do. I look at this and just see lines on top of lines on top of objects, that if I move something now and the entire thing is ruined.   This is not easy. I think we think like, “Oh, it’s Photoshop, whatever. I do that and make memes all the time.” This is not the same thing.    R: Um. Depends on how lovely your memes are. I mean, if you really get complicated you might be already half-way to doing your own title treatment.   So when you get a file from an artist, anybody else who’s created it, they’re probably going to have done so in their own mannerisms. The way you would create a .psd file is not necessarily the way someone else will create a .psd file. So you have to take a minute to acclimate yourself to their thought process. So you have to find where they hide the layers that have text on them. You have to hope that they labeled layers with filters so that you understand what that filter was trying to do for the image itself.   K: And, by the way, if you’re going, “What the heck are layers?” Do not try to do this by yourself.   R, giggling: Yeah.   So you’re probably not going to get a lot of layers, like all of the artist’s layers, because again, they might be illustrating digitally and so they do a little bit of touch-up on one layer and when they got what they wanted and it looks the way they wanted it to, then they flatten it to the layer below so it’s not just like a tiny little glob of whatever color they were working in that could accidentally be removed from the other thing if you start moving elements around.   [10:00] R, continuing: So, the file you receive from your artist is likely going to be a flat illustration, unless you arranged otherwise, like I said in the episode with… Colin, I think. When I commissioned Julie Dillon to do the Flotsam cover, I did specifically ask for certain things to be on their own layers so that I could use them as elements in a video and move them around a little bit, just for some subtle motion.K: I’ll jump in here with the non-designer take on this. For those of you listening at home, and you know I joked earlier if you’re going, “What the heck are layers?” If you are wondering what this is, in an Adobe Photoshop file, certain—whether they be colors, images, objects, text they’re on what’s called layers. And they’re literally images or, well images primarily, stacked on top of each other. And—    R: Think of them like transparency sheets. So if there are colored pixels on that transparency sheet, that layer, then you will see something, and if there are no colored pixels on that layer you won’t see anything, unless it is the background, in which case it is the background color that’s set for that document.   K: Yeah, so each of these—so these layers, when they get stacked on top of each other and, as Rekka said, when they’re flattened, what that means is you’ve taken all the layers and pressed them down into one new layer altogether, at that point. Now those objects are bonded together for the rest of their lives.   R: For life, yeah.   K: And there’s no separating them.   R: So the artist probably has a version of that file with layers, and what they sent you was flattened because you asked for an illustration, you didn’t ask for the entire process. It’s not show-your-work, it’s please-provide-me-with-an-illustration. So if you did get lettering on it, if you’ve got your title treatment from the artist, it’s probably on its own layer, one hopes, and you hope because the artist isn’t working with your cover template and they don’t know your final spine width and they don’t know all the text that you might need to put on there.   So, hopefully, they’ve put it on a layer so you can move it around a little bit after the fact. Because, like I’ve said, I have gotten many covers from clients where the text was already in place and it was too close to the edge when I sized things up for the final print version. Because you need some space to be able to trim off the edge. Because if you don’t have image past the edge of the paper, then you get a white like around the edge rather than a nice, crisp end that comes in the middle of the image. So you want your trim to be smaller than your image size, and you also have margins around the outside and you want the title, usually, to be centered on the front cover. But if it’s too close to the outside margins, then the only thing you have left to do is make sure that you have enough resolution that you can enlarge it so it centers, but then it might be too big—   [K laughs]   R: So if you’re stuck with an image where the lettering is on the same layer as your illustration, you’re probably going to run into trouble. So, when you open up your file that you get from your artist, that’s one of the things to check. Make sure that the titling can be edited separately from that background illustration. And, if it can’t, write them back real quick. Hopefully it was in your contract. I bought a fifty-dollar premade cover, just as a placeholder for something, that I wanted to deal with later. And the text was provided and it was eBook shaped only. It was vertical, it wasn’t a full wrap-around cover. And the text was not editable in my file and I was like, “Oh. Now I know why it was so cheap,” because I wasn’t getting a file I could really work with.   Colin also mentioned, in that episode, make sure you are allowed to edit that file as you need to.   K: That’s exactly what I was gonna say is, Rekka, some people are probably wondering, “Okay, well, why wouldn’t they just send me the layers and, if I know how to do this, let me flatten everything myself?” And you know, the thing is, as we talked about in the real cover art episode, this is this artist’s work. They don’t want to give you something that you’re going to mess around with to the point that they’re not okay with their name being on it anymore.   R: Right, right. You know, if you have an illustration that’s on one layer and then you’re just messing around with the text that you probably—   K: Wrote anyway.   R: Yeah, well you were slightly involved in picking the font or whatever. Then, chances are they’re going to give you that title treatment, at least. Now the text might not be editable, so you might not be able to say, “Whoops, I gave you a typo and now it needs to get fixed.” You might have to go back to them for that, and then pay them more because that’s your fault.   So, you hope that you get to at least move the text around so that you can make small adjustments later. The next thing that I would check is your print size versus your resolution because it is possible to get a 300 dpi image, 300 is standard printing high resolution, but it’s also possible for that image to only be four inches across, which is smaller than you need for your wrap-around cover.   It’s still 300 dpi, so if you only specify 300 dpi, who knows what you’re getting? You need it to have a certain print size. So it’s probably going to be 8 ½ - 9 inches, 10 inches, depending on your cover size. If you have a 6x9 cover, you need to make room for the spine, you need to make room for the back cover, you need to make room for the trim size and the bleed. So your 6x9 cover is probably going to be something more like 13 ½ x 9 ¼ overall.   K: Rekka… you just threw out a lot of terms there. All of which—   R: Nah, it’s fine. Everyone understands what I mean.   K: No, well, all of which seemed to relate to the anatomy of a book!   R: Yeah.   K: So, backtracking to that, this is something—you’re not getting an image that then you just slap on into a template and then it prints the book. As, Rekka said, there’s the back cover, the spine, the front cover, there’s bleed. I’ll let Rekka talk more about what bleed is. But then, you have to think about, you have to line up everything that—Okay, I want this on the front cover, I want this on the spine, I want this on the back cover. Then, of course, there’s also: Is this a paperback or hardback book? And then that starts to get tricky. R: Hopefully, you’ve made all of these decisions before you hired your artist so that you could give them this information.   K: Yes, yes.   R: Because, as we’ve mentioned in the past, if you have a dust jacket with a wraparound inside flap on both ends, now suddenly you need an extra six inches on your landscape image that your artist is giving you. And that’s a much bigger image and they might charge you extra for it, and that would totally be reasonable because you’re asking them to create more. And it’s almost another back cover, so it’s like a wraparound around.   K: But there was another word, Rekka, that we talked about—one of my favorites—the bleed. What’s that?   R: Um. Sadly it’s not about blood...letting.   K: Yeah, sort of disappointing—I mean, it is actually, in an abstract way, kind of some blood-letting.   R: Well, there are blades involved. Basically, you don’t want your image to only be exactly the size of the cover, you want the cover image to extend past the area you’re actually going to use, and then they trim off the extra. And what they trim off is considered the bleed, and that’s usually a standard amount of extra image that they require and, typically, it’s about an eighth of an inch all the way around.   K: So let’s say this is a paperback book—   R: Mhm.   K: —and they’re getting, they’re printing whatever is sent to them.   R: Yeah.   K: This is, assuming that a human looks at this before somebody takes it out of a box to read it—    R: And these days, with POD, there’s probably not a human looking at it.   K: Yeah, exactly. Printing presses, yes, they’ve changed a lot, but really they haven’t changed all that much because it’s stacking up pieces of paper, putting them in this cover. The edges are not going to be uniform on a lot of these. They’re gonna be close, but maybe not exact, so you’ve got this giant cutting device coming down and slicing the edges off.   R: Three edges, not all four.        K: It’s gonna be like, “Listen, I know you wanted a book, but here’s a pile of loose paper that’s kind of in the same order, I guess?” Pick up a paperback, or even really a hardback book, if you look you’ll see marks on the side of it where you can tell where the paper was cut.   But what this bleed is providing, extra background essentially. Nothing that is central focus to the cover, be they pictures, people, or words, should be in the bleed area.   R: There’s a safety area away from the edge where things are going to get trimmed off because there is no guarantee that the trim is going to be perfect every time, so you want to make sure that if it wiggles, and I think they allow for, like… they promise you a hundredth of an inch but it’s really more like a tenth of an inch and the wiggle is different every time.   K: Yes.   R: Especially for POD. You want to make sure that your text is well-enough away, not just so that it doesn’t get trimmed off, but that it still looks like it's in the position you wanted it in when the whole book is assembled and trimmed and standing free.    K: And this is exactly why I’m terrified of this. There have been times that I’ve had to order short runs of advance copies of books and I’m messaging Rekka like, “Is this right??? Is this right??? It doesn’t look right!! Why is there so much black around the side??” “No, that’s supposed to be there, Kaelyn.” “Are you sure????”   [R laughs]   It was very stressful.    R: Yeah, if you saw the flat file for an ARC copy where we have the ribbon across the top in a special color to make it stand out as an ARC and it has the date and everything like that. When you’re looking at the flat file, it looks like that text is not centered because of the bleed above it and around the edges.   K: Yeah, it’s very disorienting and I was a little worked up. So, Rekka, let’s say you either know how to do this, you’ve done it yourself, or you’ve hired a designer to do it for you. You’re gonna send these files to a printer. Let’s say you’re gonna do print-on-demand. What are some things you need to know about the files? Before you’re sending them and then when you’re getting something back?   R: Right, so if you’ve already checked that you can move your stuff around and maybe you’ve already positioned it so you can, I definitely recommend, if you know how you’re doing your print-on-demand, that you use that same service to get a proof print right away.   K: Mhm. Yeah.    R: And it’s trickier with Amazon because I don’t think you can do it until you submit your final files because they don’t want to spend a whole bunch of time correcting things in the printing process for you. So if you’re sending through KDP, before you publish your book, it’s covered with Do Not Sell or Print-Proof or Author Copy Only, or some kind of text. And it’s very sad looking. It’s hard to get excited about looking at your print proofs from Amazon.    You can go through IngramSpark—   K: Or Lulu.    R: You can go through Lulu. So IngramSpark is actually a book distributor, so if you go through IngramSpark, you can get those books into Barnes and Noble, libraries, whoever orders it from a catalog, they’ll go through the Lightning Source catalog and they will get the IngramSpark version of your book. If you upload to Amazon, nobody else is gonna buy that book because they know Amazon’s profiting from it.   K: Yep.   R: What I do, is I distribute for Amazon through KDP and I distribute everywhere else through IngramSpark. So, if you go through IngramSpark, you know that’s how it’s going to get printed when it goes out to other bookstores. If you go through Lulu, unless you decide that you’re gonna set up a Lulu storefront and actually sell your books through Lulu, you are getting an idea of how it’s going to look. But Lulu’s printers are not Lightning Source’s printers are not KDP’s printers.    So the colors might not be exact. So if you have a really exacting eye for color, you’re gonna want to get as close to the final printer as you can. And that’s what it is. But there is something that you do want to be looking for, and this is why I suggest you send it off, even if you send it off to Lulu at first, and that’s how the colors are going to shift from what you see on your screen to what comes out on paper, because your screen is backlit. So all the colors on your screen are built using red, green, and blue (RGB) light.    K: Yes, and this is exactly what I was going to say, is Rekka, why is it so important to see what this looks like once it’s actually printed?   R: Because everything you’ve seen on your screen, on your devices, everything backlit is subtractive light and everything you see on paper is additive light. So paper is made with cyan, magenta, yellow, and black ink (CMYK). Sometimes you have two different shades of yellow and two different shades of magenta, to get extra rich depth of color. It depends on your printer. When you look at light coming out of your screen, the light is the image coming into your eye.   K: Yes.   R: When you look at paper, the image is the light reflecting off that paper into your eye. And they are not perceived the same way.   K: Think about if you have a smart TV or even a digital picture frame and you put, you know, pictures up there. You’ll notice that they look different than if you printed them.   R: Mhm.   K: Let’s say, not even just you got the pictures printed at CVS.   R: But even a print from a photo shop is going to look different than the version you see on your screen. The colors. The darker colors might be more dark, but the neon colors might not be as neon. So it’s not like colors get more by being printed. Some colors look better as backlit and other colors look better as printed.    K: In my experience with this, what I found is that if you want colors to be very vibrant printed, you need to over-vibratize them before they go to print.   R: So certain colors just will not print in a four-color process. So when you get your file and if you’ve either hired a designer who has Photoshop, or you have Photoshop, you want to take this file that they sent you and look for the gamut warning. And the gamut warning will emphasize the image areas where the colors are out of gamut. And what this means is like, “ink ain’t gonna do that. Now, a gamut’s not gonna tell you how they’re gonna shift. It’s just gonna tell you which colors just aren’t gonna happen.   K: There’s a reason that we have so many animated movies that are meant to look like traditional, flat animation but are actually done by computers. Because you can get a richer color and texture in there. You can emphasize—you can brighten and emphasize certain things, as opposed to, there is a certain limit to what you can do with a piece of paper and a paintbrush. Or a printer, in this case.    R: You think about Batman: The Animated Series. The reason that that animated series looks so different from so many of the cartoons that were happening at the same time, is because that was done on black paper—  K: Yes.   R: —versus everyone else who started on white paper. So these are just things to know that, you know, understand how light and color and reflections versus projections, and all this kind of stuff, how they work. It doesn’t really help you if you have a color out of gamut, though.    K: Yeah.   [25:53]  R: The only thing you can do is take that back to the artist and say, “This color. I love what you did,” make sure you’re complimentary, “I love what you did, but this color isn’t going to work. How do we push this so that we get the same effect without changing the color entirely?” I mean, sometimes the only thing to do is change the color, but sometimes you can shift things.    So if it’s supposed to be a neon green, but you’re not gonna get that neon green out of a print press, what you can do is darken the areas around it and try to make it look more neon than it actually is by contrast. This is stuff the artist is gonna know. You don’t have to tell them the solution. Just say, “Hey, this area’s out of gamut, if I print this, it’s not going to look as good as you made this look on screen.”   Because chances are, if you get a file from your artist, they were working in RGB because you want them to work in RGB. Even though this print book will be printed in CMYK, the colors on screen for CMYK mode are not accurate, so when you work on screen, adjusting colors, you adjust them in RGB.   So this artist probably sent you an RGB file. So you can go back to them and say, “I need this to work in print, please.”   K: A good cover artist will know what this is and what they need to account for, when creating this stuff—   R: Or an experienced cover artist, you know? Someone might be an amazing illustrator but not really understand how a printing press works, if they haven’t worked with printing things themselves. Now, if they’ve ever worked printing posters of their work, they’ve probably run into this before. It’s incredibly frustrating. But it can be adjusted.    So you work with them and, frankly, you get your final cover art and sometimes it’s the first time you’ve seen these colors in this image. So it’s not out of the question to come back and say, “These colors are a problem because, as we’ve described in the contract, this is for print as well as eBook. I need this to look good in print,” and they’re not gonna want it to look crappy in print, either.   K: Yeah, of course not. Their name is on it.   R: Yeah, they might have asked you for a copy, you know? And they want to put it on their shelf and they wanna be proud of it. But one thing you can do, to improve the way color looks, is choose the finish on your paper when you are setting up your cover. That’s something that you can sort of do to brighten colors or adjust colors based on an effect that you want. I think you’ll see spot lamination sometimes on offset printing presses and such because it can do this and it looks really nice.   So we’ve looked at resolution and print size, and we’ve checked for gamut warnings. Hopefully now your image is all set, you know it’s the right size. It’s going to print out without pixelating and it’s going to print out without color-shifting too much. And now you want to actually set it up for layout because during this process you’ve also been working on the book.   You’ve probably gotten your copy edits back. You’ve been making adjustments. You had to add a chapter. You realized your glossary wasn’t in the file. You’re finally getting to the point where you’re like, “Alright, this thing’s ready to go.”   K: Ha. I am… coming close to being maybe done with this.   R: I sure hope.   [K laughs]   R: So you have your final page count and now you can get your final spine width. And once you have your final spine width, then you can really make this cover done. Because up until the point where you know your final spine width, everything is just guessing or adjustments or whatever. You might have sent it off to print through Lulu and you had a slightly less done version of the manuscript that you wanted to see in print, and sort of see what this might look like, even if it wasn’t the final. Now you have the final manuscript and you know this is gonna be 495 pages.   K: Yep.   R: This is what it’s going to be, because I am so done with this.    And now you go to your printer and you say—   K: “Hello, here is this thing that I am sick of looking at. Can you give it physical form so I can look at it all the time?”   R: Well, yes, but you do need to know that spine width. So the way that you calculate spine width is by taking the pages per inch of the paper stock that you’ve selected. Now, this is… I’m starting with the nitty gritty and I’m starting with the off-set printing method where you actually have a relationship with the printer and you have chosen a paper stock.   K: Yes.   R: And they tell you it is this many pages per inch. You take your total page count and you divide it by your pages per inch.   K, exhausted: Rekka, you didn’t tell me there was gonna be math involved in this.   R, sympathetic: I know, I know. I was a graphic designer. I wasn’t supposed to have to do math. But I have to do math with alarming frequency. I’m gonna pull up some actual specs. How’s that sound?   K: Uh, while Rekka’s looking up some… some specs here. So when we went to the Nebulas last year, we wanted to get some advance copies of Salvage to hand out there, except that the printer that we normally go through was not going to be able to have them finished and shipped directly to the hotel in time. So instead, what we did was we found a local printer in Los Angeles, had them print it and then they actually just delivered it right to the hotel. They didn’t even need to ship it. Except that they used a really, really nice paper.   R: It was so nice.   K: Beautiful. It was gorgeous. The book ended up about an inch thicker than the actual finished book because the thickness of the paper was so much bigger.   R: I’m pretty sure we have photos of this on Instagram somewhere already.   K: Probably. We have joked about this a lot, yeah.   R: So, a sixty-pound paper, and I’m not even gonna go into how they determine what’s a pound of paper, that is listed on these specs, is 435 pages per inch. So your 495 page book is divided by 435 fo the pages per inch, and the resulting spine width—I go for the thousandth—so 1.137 and that will give you your spine width. So in the center of your page layout is your 1.137 inch-wide rectangle which represents your spine. (This is in your template.) And to either side of that, you’re going to add the width of your total trim size.    So my books are 5 ½ inches by 8 ½ inches, so the width is 5 ½ and you add that to that number twice, and now you have your total width of your cover, if it were flat and had no pages inside it.   K: So what you’re getting, then, is if I pulled the cover off a book—   R: Don’t you dare.   K: I would never. But if I did. If I was a soulless monster and I did that and I laid it out flat, that is the total measurements of what this is.   R: From right to left.   K: Okay.   R: Okay. So that is the spine width, plus the cover of the trim size. In your image itself, or your layout file, you’re going to have to crop out parts of the image that don’t fit because most artists don’t give you exactly the right size. Because you don’t know your spine width. They’re just going to give you a roughly book-shaped thing from their experience. I’ve gotten final cover art from people, as I said, from clients, and they give me the final cover art from the artist, and they give you too much space. And you want too much space, but you are going to have to decide where that space is coming off from in your final layout.   So what I use is a program called InDesign, and I set my InDesign layout to the trim size, 11.758 and I’m just giving you these hard numbers—if you’re trying to follow along and you actually try to create the file, you’ll see what I mean. So that’s the width, and the height is the height of the book trim size, for my books like I said. They’re 5 ½ wide by 8 ½ tall, trimmed. So my trim size is 8 ½ tall.   K: It’s funny because we’re throwing out all these measurements and there are people probably sitting at home going, “Oh, okay, so that’s a book size.” If you own a lot of books, like I do, I want you to go to your bookshelf and try to figure out how many of those books are exactly the same size.   R: Right.   K: There really isn’t a standard size for books. And some of them—I’ve seen books that, sometimes the book is a little taller than what I would normally expect of a book and I imagine that’s because it was a really big book and they wanted to maybe have to minimize some of the pages because those start to get expensive to print after a while.   R: I mean, that’s where the 6x9 trade paperback size came from, is an attempt to reduce the paper needed to fill a book.   K: Mhm.   R: If you have large print books, you’re going to find that they’re generally also larger-sized because that reduces the need for paper once you increase the font size and it takes more pages to tell the story.   [35:06]    K: That said, though, that’s the reason why they’re more expensive.   R: Yeah, and you don’t want it to feel cramped just because you got a larger font size. So, yeah, you pick your book size by going through your bookshelves and finding a book that feels like you want your book to feel. In your hand, what size, and all that kind of stuff.   I picked 5 ½ by 8 ½ and the process that I’ve described is how a layout for that size book, with this thickness of paper that we’re discussing, is how that would work. And it’s going to be different the more of these elements that you change and go with, you know, different options.   Just to finish setting up this file, the trim size is the size of the file layout. I also specify in my file set-up that I want an eighth of an inch, .125, bleed all around the edge.   K: Mhm.   R: Then, when you output the file, you can specify that you want to include the bleed and add crop marks and all the things that the printer needs. And that will be in their specifications, so you want to pay attention to the specifications for the printer you are using because they’re all different.    Some are very similar, but they’re also all different.   K: They’re not all—it’s snowflakes.    R: Yeah. So if you’re using a printer and you know who they are, I would definitely suggest you just go and see if they have a template. If you’re using an off-set printer, then that printer will help you set up a file. If you are going with IngramSpark or KDP or Lulu, they will all provide you with a cover template. There’s usually a form and you put in what paper you choose, what binding size you’re going with, and how many pages you have and they’ll give you a file that you can use to set this up.   K: Yeah, they’ll do the calculations for you, essentially.   R: Yeah, and they you can take that and you can either use those calculations in a custom file that you set up, or give it to your designer and they will either use that or set up their own file the way they like it set up.   Now you have this layout and, let me tell you, the spine should be centered in it. If your spine is slightly off-center, then your spine is going to be slightly off-center, and I don’t mean the part of the book that folds, I mean where your title in the spine shows up will be off-center. So, the easiest thing to do is just start from the spine and work your way out.   K: Books and people, we want the spines to be nice and centered.   R: And then, again, go to your books on your shelf and take a ruler and measure how far things are from the edge of the book. How far they are from the edge of the folds. How wide the title is across. How far away the byline is. Stuff like that. Use that to guide you if this is your first time doing it—but if it’s your first time doing it—   K: If all of this sounds really complicated to you, it is. And maybe consider paying someone to do it for you. R: There is nothing wrong with recognizing that the amount of time it would take to learn to do something properly is worth a certain amount of money to you.   K: Absolutely.   R: It’s absolutely true.   K: And by the way, if you decide, “Hey, you know what? I’m gonna do this a lot, I really just wanna learn this,” there’s online classes. There’s ways, there’s tutorials, there’s resources out there to do this. That said, you can watch all of the tutorials and YouTube videos you want, if you can’t draw a straight line using a ruler, maybe this isn’t the right thing for you to be doing.   R: I’ve always said that somebody shouldn’t make the first website they build a website for a client. And I don’t think you should make the first cover you print, the launch of your debut novel. You know?   K: Yeah, well. R: There are other things to consider for your cover, such as—we’ve already mentioned what if it’s a hardcover with a jacket?   K: Mhm.   R: Then there’s something to consider, which is the stamped cloth underneath that jacket. What is that going to look like? Are you going to go for foil printing? Are you going to go for UV printing? Are you going to go for embossing? What other treatments are going to happen to your cover? And then you need to pick a printer who’s capable of doing them. And you’re also going to need to be able to provide them with any of those stamps they need, you need to give them a guide of what that’s going to look like.   Now, if they are a very full-service, off-set, traditional art house printer, they may include all of these kinds of decisions and such in their pricing of their package to you. But you need to know what’s on you to come up with and what’s on them, if it’s print-on-demand, they expect you to provide everything.   K: Yeah, and just to be clear, when Rekka’s talking about an off-set printer, this is somebody who you’re going to, in theory, do a run of books with. You’re not doing one here, you’re doing like five hundred.   R: At least.   K: At least. Minimum. Yeah. And in that case, you’re gonna have somebody at the printer who gets these files and looks at them and checks and goes, “What about this? What about this?”   You’re gonna have sort of a consultant there, if you will.   R: Yeah, they’re gonna give you paper samples and you’re gonna feel them and you’re gonna go, “Oh my gosh! That paper manages to feel like leather, how did you do that?” Those aren’t options you’re going to get from even IngramSpark who will do a hardcover with a jacket wrap for you, print-on-demand, but print-on-demand is not going to give you these bespoke, very luxurious options that you can get from an off-set printer. Like, Saga Press has some amazing covers and they also do amazing things with the print treatment of them.   So if any of the books on your shelf are Saga Press, just go hold them, you know?   K: Yeah, just to be clear. I apologize, I think we didn’t quite define this at the start of this episode. If you’re unaware, POD is print-on-demand, it is the most expensive way to generate a book because what’s happening is someone is going online and saying, “I want to buy this book. I want it in paperback.” And if it’s set up for print-on-demand, it’s just going into a computer, essentially, where it’s saying, “Yes, one of Book ABC,” printing it, going into a box, and being mailed to someone.    It is very possible the first person to physically handle that book will be the person that bought it.   R: Right.   K: There’s no quality check there, there’s no control, there’s no consultation with a printer.   R: I mean, there’s supposed to be, but let’s be real.   K: There’s not. So, just be aware. Look, print-on-demand is a fantastic thing that’s really made it great for a lot of self-published and small prints.   R: Indie, yeah.   K: Indie. To get paperback, and even hardcover in some instances, books out into the hands of their readers. But it is not the same as going for making a large print run where you actually sit down and talk with someone and design this and figure out what the book is gonna look like.   R: You could always take this to an off-set printer. A printer in your area will happily print your book project for you, and any time in the future, past, present. But POD meant you could list it on Amazon and not have to pay upfront for warehousing and printing for this book. Because if you keep the book at a distributor, you’ve gotta pay that distributor to hold onto your book because that’s precious space they could be filling with New York Times Bestsellers, you know?   Print-on-demand meant you didn’t need to pay for warehousing for copies that may or may not ever sell. And you’ve heard the stories of people who had their own books printed and then they sat in the garage for years until they’d discovered they’d gone moldy and they threw ‘em all out, or they just moved and threw ‘em all out because they weren’t selling.   There was a time when printing your own book meant you were hand-selling out of the back of your car, or taking them to events and trying to sell as many copies as you could, just to get rid of them basically, to get your life back, get your house back kinda thing. So POD has made all of that a luxury. People who can afford it might still do that, but you don’t have to anymore.   So, yes. A copy of your book might suddenly jump from $1.36 to print, to more like $5.46 to print and that all comes out of your cut, but it still gives you a share of the profit, as opposed to, “Well, my garage still has 736 more copies. I haven’t profited on this book yet.” You know?   K: Yeah.   R: Obviously, there’s a lot more to this than I’ve described. I apologize, it’s hard for me to describe it because I do a lot of it automatically these days. And a lot of it also depends on the book itself. So the page count, the trim size, the treatments you’ve decided on and how late in the game you’re doing all of this.   K: Yeah.   R: But what I do recommend is that at any point that you are stopping and waiting for the next stage, as I said, it might only cost you six bucks to print the thing, send off for another proof if you’ve changed anything. Don’t be surprised. Because you don’t wanna find out when you order your first ten author copies that your title is off-center. Because you forgot about trim size and safety zones and all that kinda stuff.   I definitely recommend, as many times as you make what you think are the final change, that you send off for a print proof. And then track the changes because you’re probably gonna keep fiddling with the thing. Track the changes you make so that when that print proof arrives, you know what you might have already changed, so that you’re not adjusting your more recent file based on what you see on that cover, forgetting that you already fixed that your title was off-center or whatever.   K: So, you know, this is another theme of this show. Read the contract. Track your changes.   R: And get proofs often.   K: Yeah. But there’s one thing we didn’t really talk about that is still relevant to formatting and displaying covers, which is what if you are just doing this digital only or what if you need digital images?   R: So, the eBook cover is essentially a crop of your print book on the front side of it. But there are things to consider beyond just, “Okay, I cut off the spine and the back cover.” You also want to make sure that it’s legible.   K: Yeah.   R: So, in this digital age there are a lot of different thumbnail sizes that are out there and you can look up the various—You can basically just go by Amazon because they have like five different thumbnail sizes, depending on where it’s going to appear.   K: Exactly, just scroll through. There’s a big difference, now. We’ve just spent all of this time about, talking about making your print book look beautiful and everything so somebody will see it in a store and pick it up and go, “My goodness. I find myself attracted to this book. I think I am interested in it.” Now it’s one of however many thumbnails are splashed across a computer screen.   R: Yep.   K: You’re trying to make the cover look appealing in a different way now.   R: Not only appealing, but legible.   K: Yes. Legible is important, yes.   R: The smaller you go, the more of your tiny details are handed over to pixels to try to render them. And if you’ve ever seen pixel art, you know how roughly things get translated as you shrink down in size. You want to, potentially, come up with a slightly different version for your digital product than you might even include in your eBook itself.   And I’ll use the anecdote from Parvus is that Annihilation Aria, which came out from Parvus this summer, has a different print cover than it has for its digital product image in the online stores.   K: Speaking of neon and trying to make sure it shows through well.   R: Speaking of gamut warnings.   K: Yeah.   R: We had to deal with that. But also the cover for the print book, the text is outlined.   K: It’s meant to look like neon sign, yeah.   R: But on the thumbnail size, it almost completely vanished.   K: It was very difficult when we were putting covers up for advanced purchases. It was funny because I knew what it said and was supposed to look like, and your eyes start playing tricks on you because you’re seeing exactly what you expect to see. But then—yeah.   R: And that’s a lesson for you, as the person who’s been staring at this for a really long time, is: show it to someone else. Chances are you already know what you think you want it to look like, and you might not notice the things that are either mistakes or not translating to that size as well as you want them to. So you can get a list of the different sizes that Amazon will reduce your image to and that’s all from the product image, which is the eBook cover you upload to KDP, for example.   K: Okay.   R: Or to Draft to Digital, or if you directly to Barnes and Nobles, to their publishing service for eBooks. But it’s not the cover that’s going to be in your eBook when somebody loads it up on their eReader. So you can set the eBook cover to look as close to the print cover as you want, and keep that in your eBook file, associated with that package of files that you’ve created for your eBook. We have a whole episode about that, go check that out.   But your product image that you upload separately is going to be the one that gets reduced to those thumbnail sizes. So you can control how that image displays. Now, granted, when somebody goes to your product page and they’re now looking at the big version of your image, yeah, now you’re getting an image that might not look like the version that’s on your print cover or inside your eBook, but it’s worth it if it brings people to the page because they are attracted to that thumbnail size in their search results.   K: Just go on Amazon and look through, go on the top bestsellers and just scroll through. And I want you to think about how many of those, even though those ones are probably a decent size, you’re having to stop and squint at.   R: Right. So in the case of Annihilation Aria, what we did was we filled in the outlines with the color and we just made it a solid block neon text.   K: Much easier to read.   R: It worked out much, much better. It looks great as a thumbnail, it still is beautiful on the print cover, when you’re holding it you’re like, “That’s a nice cover!” But the thumbnail is doing its job and the cover is doing its job and you don’t wanna confuse or conflate what those jobs are.   K: Yeah. It’s, um… tricky is a word for it. No, it’s, what I was saying is I was looking at this, “I don’t know what you’re talking about, this looks fine.” I knew what this cover was supposed to look like, my brain was filling in the gaps. So, as Rekka said, get somebody else to look at this and make sure that these are things that, to somebody who doesn’t know what they’re looking at, are legible, are getting across the message or the image that you want it to.   R: Right. Exactly. Also, there’s the audiobook version. And your titling from your artist being on a separate layer is definitely going to come in handy now because the audiobook preview, as set up by the tradition of printing these on CDs, not even the cassettes.    K: Yeah.   [50:33]   R: I mean, you could go back to cassettes, but it was the CD that sort of set the standard.   K: And they were square.   R: And they were square.   K: I remember that audiobooks sometimes had different covers, if you will, than the actual book itself. If you went to the library, I remember it was like the paper cases with all the CDs in it?   R: Mhm.   K: So then they’d just take that image, that was set up for the CD case, and put that as the thumbnail online.   R: A lot of the time, our first audiobooks that we played digitally, were getting played in an .mp3 player or in iTunes. So they were already set up for square images. Because, again, CD covers.   K: Yes.   R: So, part of the reason that a lot of audiobooks have different cover artwork, just completely different, is because of rights management. So, if a different company made the audiobook than printed the book, they might not be very friendly and share the rights to the cover art, as Parvus did.   Dreamscape is the audiobook publisher for Annihilation Aria and Parvus was happy to share the artwork because it looks more professional if everybody’s using the same artwork.   K: But that’s not always the case. Or, sometimes, maybe the publishing house says, “Well, we’ll license this to you, but it’s gonna be a ridiculous amount of money.”   R: Right.   K: And then, you know, the audiobook production side of things go, “Oh, well. That’s cool. We don’t feel like paying that.”   R: “We’ll make something that’s kind of similar,” you know, and then they go off and they do it themselves. To better or worse effect.   K: Yep.   R: And other times you’ll see an audiobook where, clearly, they didn’t have a wrap-around cover art or they didn’t have the layers, so you get this weird blurry effect to either side. Or I know The Aeronaut’s Windless, if you look really closely at that audiobook cover, somebody went in with the Photoshop stamp tool and made the cover art as square as they could. It survives a brief glance, but it’s not ideal.   So, if you have your cover and the spine copy isn’t already in the way, or whatever, you can just move the text to somewhere a little more central. SOmetimes the central figure on your cover, if you want it to be in there, now has to be off to the side, a little bit, of your title. Or some things gotta move and that’s fine. You can do that, make those adjustments, do a hundred iterations until you find what works, but only if you have layers and your text treatment isn’t flat on your background illustration.   K: Yeah. So, well… I can’t say that’s everything, because that is not everything. That is not even close.   R: It’s really not. I mean, we didn’t even get into back-cover copy placement and all this other stuff, but…   K: Yeah, but, this is sort of to give you an idea of how this happens. Print books don’t just magically manifest after you finish writing it. There are a lot of people that go into putting together a book and making sure that it looks good after it’s done.   R: I mean, there’s sometimes a very small, very hard-working tiny team of people. It’s not always a ton of people and, if you’re a self-publisher, don’t think that you can’t do this by yourself—   K: Yeah, absolutely.   R: —but you do want to get some experience before you commit to saying that you are good at this and you should continue to do it.    K: “I am making a good decision.”   [Both laugh]   R: Yes.   K: But, no, and it’s true and the thing is that someone like Rekka can do all of this, you know, on her own. But, again, Rekka went to school for this. This is something that took her years of time, experience, and learning to master.   R: I mean, and I didn’t go to school for book cover production—   K: Well, no, but yeah.   R: I mean, I made book covers as part of my college education, but it was more about understanding what makes things legible and what makes thing attractive to the eye. What makes a person’s eye move across the page the way you control. And all those things are now instinctive and go into what I do when I set up these files, which is why I can’t even describe, sometimes, what my process is. Which is kind of like, you know, you walk up to an artist and you say, “How do you draw like that?” Well, they can’t answer that question.   K: Yeah, yeah.   R: So there’s a lot that goes into it and, yes, if you are willing to put the time in to learn, you can do this. Just like I could have illustrated my own book cover, but I knew the time that it would take me to develop a style that I wanted for my book cover, was not worth taking that time away from my writing.    K: Mhm.   R: This has always disappointed my mother, that I didn’t draw my own book cover illustration.   K: Eh, there’s still time.   R: And—But! The point was, the style I wanted was not my inherent style.    K: Mhm.   R: And so I would have to spend months and years developing the style that I did want, or I can make an investment to have a professional whose style already was what I wanted do the cover for me and allow me to go back and do what I was good at. It’s okay to not be amazing at everything.   K: Who said that?   R: I dunno, I just did.   [Both laugh]   K: So that’s kind of rounding out book cover production. If you take away anything, I hope it is that this is not the easy part of this.   R, laughing: No.   K: I think everybody goes, “I’m just gonna have the cover and it’s gonna be so awesome and it’s gonna be on the book.” … Yes. But there’s a lot of steps to get to the part where it’s on the book and you can actually hold it in your hand.   R: And there’s a lot of steps to get to the part where it’s awesome.   K: And that, yes.   R: Yeah.   K: Well, I think that’s our episode.   R: I think it’s gotta be our episode, because we’re now running a little bit long. So, yeah! There’s a lot here and if you were trying to take notes, I apologize. But I wanted to get in this habit of, every now and then, let’s just get real technical about this.   K: I think we think about a lot of making books in very non-quantitative terms. Where we’re like, “Yeah, and then you have to figure this out and you’ve gotta decide about this character and this plot point,” and there are some parts that are technical about this. Where it’s like, “Listen, you have to do this,” and this is how you measure it.   R: You know, unfortunately, some things just, if you want the book to not look like a pile of messy paper glued into a vaguely book-shaped thing, then you want to follow this process because that’s the way that it’s all set up. That’s how you get that result. There aren’t too many ways to be extra creative about this aspect of things.   K: Yes. You know, this was more of a technical episode, but hopefully it was, as always, educational and informative. And entertaining.   R: And slightly overwhelming.   K: And overwhelming, yes.   R: It’s important that I sound like what I do could only be done by me. I mean, that’s how I keep food on the table.   K: And hopefully this hasn’t scared you off from trying to do this.   R: I mean, play around with it! Like I said, Lulu’s there, you can order one book at a time. See what happens.   K: And if you do, let us know how it goes.   R: Yes! Show us your books, if you’re a publisher. What covers have you put together and formatted and, you know, sent to fulfillment yourself? We’d love to see them!   K: Yep, and you can find us…   R: Oh, you can! Can’t you? We are @WMBcast on Twitter and Instagram, and you can find us at wmbcast.com for all our old episodes, and you can also find us and support us at Patreon.com/wmbcast, where you can thank us for all our technical, helpful, overwhelming knowledge.   K, laughs: Or you can just scream at us.   R: Yes. And you can share these episodes or any episode that you think would help a friend out and leave a rating and review, please, on Apple Podcasts, because that is just how this apple pie is made.   K: Feeeeed the algorithm.   R: Yep. Absolutely. Oh, speaking of which, we are now on Amazon podcasts.   K: Oh.   R: Did you even know that was a thing?   K: I didn’t, no.   R: Well, we are there. We got listed.   K: Okay!   R: So wherever you go for your podcasts, please feel free to listen there. But, when you leave ratings and review, at least for now, Apple podcasts is still where we want them. Once Amazon gets in the game, you know how it goes, but…   K: I’m looking forward to an Apple-Amazon Deathmatch.   R: It’ll be like the Fast Food Wars only it’s just like the Algorithm Wars.   K: Yeah, I think that is where we’re going. Yeah… Well, everyone, thanks very much for listening and we’ll see you in a couple weeks.   R: Take care, everyone.   [outro music plays]

It's turning out that the pandemic could be a "dress rehearsal" for retirement. On today's show we'll outline six reasons that is true.

The Dudes are back for Episode 7! We are minus two Dudes(temporarily), but add some replacements in three Sherlock Homies. We've said this before, math is hard. We recap some previous content and enjoy a few laughs and beverages and "Bag It Up!" makes an appearance.

I Don't Wanna Hear It PodcastEpisode 074 – Cool To Hate: Save It For Your Tumblr"All that hate's gonna burn you up, kid." Yeah? Well, I'm rubber and you're an idiot, so you'll be the one who's on fire. Idiot.Check out more of our stuff at I Don’t Wanna Hear It and join the Patreon, jabroni. I mean, if you want. Don’t be weird about it. Oh, and we publish books now at WND Press because we want to be bankrupted by a dying medium.Episode Links:Ass LifeSanctionMusical Attribution: Licensed through NEOSounds. License information available upon request.“5 O’Clock Shadow,” “America On the Move,” “Baby You Miss Me,” “Big Fat Gypsy,” “Bubble Up,” “Here Comes That Jazz,” “I Wish I Could Charleston,” “It Feels Like Love,” “I Told You,” “Little Tramp,” “Mornington Crescent,” “No Takeaways.”

>>KRAFT FOODS WILL BE MAKING VENTILATORS TO FIGHT COVID 19 ..UNFORTUNATELY WHEN YOU BREATH IN, IT COATS YOU LUNGS WITH MAYONNAISE >>THE NEW M191 SURGICAL MASK WILL BE MADE BY STARKIST, THE ONLY DOWNFALL IS THE MASK WILL SMELL LIKE TUNA ... >>GOVT SAYS IF YOU ARE HUNGRY, COUGH A LITTLE MAYO SPUTUM ONTO A PIECE OF RYE BREAD, WET THE NEW M191 MASK AND LAY IT ON THE BREAD, AND WALLAH, JOE BIDEN SAYS YOUR NOT STARVING ANYMORE.....!!

I guess that's just the way it is.

Send it to heydickface@mail.com or to jcuf@mail.com. This podcast is powered by ZenCast.fm

“There’s never a point in the entire developmental process of a child that you’re ready.” - Guy & Ilan Ferdman (click to tweet) Wisdom develops with age and experience. We all know that. No matter how smart you are, life has hidden nuances to it that you simply can’t grasp without the appropriate experience. Remember how there was that one thing you were told not to do as a child and it made absolutely no sense to you? When you look back at that thing years or even decades later, does it make sense to you now? Yeah? Well, that’s wisdom. On today’s episode of Personal Development Without The Fluff, we reflect on various experiences of ours that only life could teach us. We hope this is something that will give you a scope into what your growth might be like. Tune in to this conversation to gain some knowledge from us that will hopefully become wisdom for you. satoriprime.com/meditatesatoriprime.com/talk “I’ve gotten to make a distinction between sleep and rest. So when I sleep, I’m not always rested. And when I rest, I’m not always sleeping.” - Guy & Ilan Ferdman (click to tweet) The Cliff Notes:Having a child is like a love you’ve never experienced but also a sense of pain and fear you’ve never experienced.No matter how prepared you try to be with parenting, there will always be unexpected challenges.We are able to adapt to changes when we are willing to adapt to changes.Sometimes all you need is someone to show you a structure that will move you forward.If your relationship is failing, DO NOT expect to solve it by having a child.Not only does having less equal more, it can also lead you to more of what you need.Learn to make the distinction between sleeping and resting. Acting out of avoidance of pain ultimately sets you up to experience more of that pain.Life tends to work more in favor of you when you stop trying to fight your alignment.Acting out of scarcity and fear is will probably cause a greater sense of scarcity and fear. “I continuously find myself laughing at how life works out for you when you get the f*** out of the way!” - Guy & Ilan Ferdman (click to tweet)  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Yeah Well if it's true Then she'll force it out of her mind Congratulations Fucking up for the umpteenth time They say it's wrong Spaceships guns and boobies ain't got no home But it's a song Can't forget the future when the past ain't ever known She has an Elvis on her dashboard and a Dawn in pendant heart And a dog tag of a fella who was there to play a part When she spreads her legs and kisses everything goes down in flames Just because it's life and death don't mean that this here ain't a game Well had she known She never would have entered but then she did anyway Infatuation That's for little punk ass mealy mouth with nothing much to say But then that's us Just a bunch of followers just glad to be alive It's in the rulebook Right after the chapter that says how to shuck and jive Gimme a one shot dagger Destined to blow my mind No in between Either the top or the bottom line Singing on down the line Spaceships Guns And boobies

Let me give it to you straight: Retargeting is the secret to Facebook Ads success. Wondering what on earth I’m talking about? Let me clarify for you. Ever jumped online and ogled a pair of shoes on a fave brand’s website, only to be tracked around Facebook and Instagram for days with images of them - until you bought the damn things? Yeah? Well, my friend, that is retargeting in action. And, it’s incredibly powerful. ------WANT TO START A PODCAST? Free Masterclass: bit.ly/podcast-classREADY TO LIFT YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA GAME? Steal My Strategy: bit.ly/sss-social-media-masterclassWANT TO CREATE AN ONLINE COURSE? Free Checklist: bit.ly/sss-online-course-checklistSHOW NOTES (including a transcription of this episode and all links and resources): https://www.steviesayssocial.com/75DM STEVIE OVER ON INSTAGRAM https://www.instagram.com/steviesayssocial

Want some tips and tricks for Facebook Ads success from someone in the trenches running them every day? Yeah? Well, you’re in luck because that is exactly what I’m going to give you!Cat Skreiner is a self-confessed tech nerd who - after 20 years in the marketing space working for some of the biggest brands around - now focuses on Facebook Ads strategy and digital analytics.In other words, she knows her shiz when it comes to running killer Facebook ads. So, I decided to get the DL on Facebook Ads from someone in the knowAKA? From Cat!------WANT TO START A PODCAST? Free Masterclass: bit.ly/podcast-classREADY TO LIFT YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA GAME? Steal My Strategy: bit.ly/sss-social-media-masterclassWANT TO CREATE AN ONLINE COURSE? Free Checklist: bit.ly/sss-online-course-checklistSHOW NOTES (including a transcription of this episode and all links and resources): https://www.steviesayssocial.com/74DM STEVIE OVER ON INSTAGRAM https://www.instagram.com/steviesayssocial

You ever wonder how many times Usher says "Yeah" in his hit single "Yeah"? Well, neither did we until Nick presented it to the group. (Hint: it's too many times). Other notable notes include figuring out how many licks to the center of a tootsie pop.

Hosted by Cassandra Dallet. Poet Joel Landmine talking with BaBw about his book - Yeah, Well..., being a Punk Hostage, learning to be a human, and how Things Change

Look, we all know it, we all have an opinion about em, and this is mine. IPAs…

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Welcome back for test episode 3 of the Make America Garett Again podcast! Today's show is a change of pace from the typical pros-and-cons format of the last two test episodes. We'll talk about Jussie Smollett, cognitive dissonance, the latest developments with North Korea, and the border wall emergency. This is THE test episode you don't want to miss. Smash that download button!http://news.antiwar.com/2019/02/28/after-trump-kim-summit-ends-in-failure-conflicting-accounts-of-what-went-wrong/https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/03/04/rand-pauls-big-rebuke-trumps-national-emergency-why-it-could-actually-matter/ See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Craig is on with Jack Heath talking about the midterm elections, the voting machine hacking, and China hacking our telecoms networks. These and more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com --- Related Articles  China Has Been 'Hijacking the Vital Internet Backbone of Western Countries' --- Below is a rush transcript of this segment, it might contain errors. Airing date: 11/12/2018 Florida Election Technology - China Hijacking Networks Jack Heath: 0:00 Craig Peterson, our Tech Talk guy. His show Tech Talk. Craig Peterson joins us now at the Auto Fair listener lines. Good morning Craig. Craig Peterson: 0:05 A Good morning. I've been following what's been going on with the Florida week count of ballots. The technology behind all of that stuff Jack, it's really kind of interesting. Jack 0:16 Yeah? Well, interesting is one way to put it. And who knows what the outcome will be Craig. Your guess is probably as good as the people counting the votes. Craig 0:24 Yeah, exactly. Well, the problem here really seems to be related to what happened in 2014. Of course the hanging chads, the ballots, and problems back then. Florida and a lot of states around the country after the federal government put some funding in in '02, but Florida bought a bunch of equipment and the equipment they bought to count the votes was out of date when they bought it. So now they're trying to count the votes in Palm Beach County and a few other states have the same stuff. And Jack, they can only count one the election at a time. In other words, they have to run all of the balance sheets through the machine that counts for governor and then they have to rerun, reprogram the machine and rerun all of the ballots on the machine again, now to count the votes for Senator, etc, etc. So it's really crazy all of the work they have to go through. And then the machines themselves are having problems. Because, you know, Florida has this whole humidity thing. And you know what humidity does to paper. And with these old machines that are kind of nearing the end of physical life, as well as technical life, they are jamming up the machines, and that caused voting problems, and it is now causing problems with the recount. So there definitely seem to be some reasons outside of the politics for these counts, taking so long and being done so poorly, Jack 1:55 Could be a coin toss at the end of the day might be as reliable, I just think they could have three different recounts, get three different results. Is that close? Craig 2:03 Yeah, it does go that way. Many times in some of these recount, and there's talk now in Florida, that there could well be a manual recount. But you know, on top of all of this, there appears to be some incompetence, mixing in folks that were already deemed to be invalid with valid votes. And we know from two years ago, destroying ballots even though the court order they not be destroyed. So there's the person side of all of this, as well as the technology side. I think more than anything else, in order for people to feel confident that the votes count, we've got to keep up with the technology, we have to be secure. In fact, these machines in Florida two years ago in 2016, were known to be vulnerable to attack and not be secure. So we've got to keep this up so that we can count on our election results being but at least partially valid. Jack 3:03 Yeah, well, who knows? Who knows where that's. I'll tell you it's gonna be quite a process can be quite some time to in the Lago coast, you know, imagine being these candidates and their campaigns and the intensity in and around this is going to show and not dissipate anytime soon. What else is catching your eye from a Tech Talk point of view? Craig 3:19 Well, we've got some more evidence about China and China hacking. In fact, right now, we're seeing that China has been involved very, very heavily in hijacking networks of US, not just corporations, but internet service companies. China Telecom, you've been involved in this for a number of years now. And the bad part about all of this, and the way China's doing it is people just won't notice some of these hijacks that have happened, have taken all of the data that was going to or from a company, the websites, their emails, everything else, routing them through China breaking encryption and doing who knows what with that data. So again, this is something that the course the Trump the whole Trump Organization is looking into now and the government but just trying to figure out what's happening? Why is it happening? And I think the administration's on the right track China has been really taking advantage of our US corporations and I picked up a new client a few weeks ago they are small manufacturer right here in New Hampshire and their intellectual property. All their designs are everything that they've worked on for decades now is in the hands of the Chinese. So now they get to compete against their own designs from a manufacturer in China because the Chinese People's Liberation Army hacked their systems and they have no idea. This is a huge problem, Jack and something I've been doing some training with the FBI on on those webinars that I run, but it's happening every day. We gotta be careful not to do something more about it. Jack 5:07 All right. To learn more, go to Craig Peterson with an O-N.com. http://CraigPeterson.com. Thanks, Craig. Craig 5:12 Hey. Thanks, Jack. --- More stories and tech updates at: www.craigpeterson.com Don't miss an episode from Craig. Subscribe and give us a rating: www.craigpeterson.com/itunes Message Input: Message #techtalk Follow me on Twitter for the latest in tech at: www.twitter.com/craigpeterson For questions, call or text: 855-385-5553

Hey. Hey you! Yeah, you. Have you been looking for a podcast episode with poor audio quality, annoying chewing, and the rustling of paper? Yeah? Well….LOOK NO FURTHER. This week we review The Thirteenth Year and eat sandwiches. While we record. Like podcast professionals.https://archive.org/download/dttdpodcast_gmail_Ep27/Ep%2027%20-.mp3

Don't you hate when someone acts like they can't reach out to you but blame you? Yeah? Well, so does Kee. And she's here to let you know! Tune in and listen to our lovely host chat it up about protecting your energy, not being apologetic and letting people know that it's not just up to you to call or text first.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听 Todd: So, Joel, how was the bowling match?Joel: Not bad, I won the first one but I lost the second one.Todd: Yeah. How's your arm feeling?Joel: Not bad. My hands are a little tired but my arms fine.Todd: OK, so, are you going to go home and put some ice on it or?Joel: No, I don't think so. I think I need to get a beer.Todd: A beer. OK, actually as soon as we finish this I'll be right with you. Why is bowling so popular do you think?Joel: It's cheap and you can spend as much time here as you want. That's what I like about it. I noticed like, we can sit there and talk and we're not under a time limit or anything. We can just take our time. And you don't need any special skills to play it. Anybody can do it.Todd: Yeah. How long have you been bowling?Joel: Not long. Maybe I've only been ten or fifteen times in my whole life.Todd: Oh, really. (Yeah) Well, you look pretty good for only ten or fifteen times.Joel: That's so good.Todd: Ok, thanks a lot, Joel.Joel: Thanks.

LnR 024 Whaddaya wanna do? (Replay) OK, I have to admit it . . . I talked too much in this one! :-) Two university friends are talking about their summer plans: A: Hey, whatcha gonna do this summer? [This is how it's pronounced. Remember, NEVER EVER write this in an essay for your English teacher or an email to your client or customer! We don't write this way, but we speak this way. I'm writing it here so you see how we say these words.] B: Well, I failed calculus, so I have to take it again during summer school. That's six weeks. Then I have the rest of the summer off. A: I've got a job at a summer camp, but it ends three weeks before school starts. B: So we  both have three weeks to play with at the end of the summer. A: Whaddaya wanna do? [This is how it's pronounced. Remember, NEVER EVER write this in an essay for your English teacher or an email to your client or customer! We don't write this way, but we speak this way. I'm writing it here so you see how we say these words.] B: I wanna go to Russia! I'm a math major and Russia has some great mathematicians. A: Yeah? Well, I'm a business major who loves wine and good food. I wanna go to France! B: Sounds good, but we both know we don't have enough money to go to Europe this summer. A: Yeah, but it's nice to dream. So, whaddaya wanna do instead? B: Yeah, you're right. I think I'll just kick around the house, take my little brother to the local pool, and start learning Russian online. A: And I'll try to find another part-time job and see if I can sign up for a beginning French class at school. B: Yeah, and maybe we can drive over to my aunt and uncle's house and spend a weekend on the beach. It's only four hours away. A: That sounds like a plan!

This week on Game Crunch: Mike comes to the cruel realization that the Civilization VI expansion isn’t coming right away for Mac.  Brandon tries out the alpha for Hunt: Showdown. Nick gets back into the world of gaming tournaments.  Thankfully, news is hopping this week with Kingdom Hearts 3 tidbits, Metroid Prime 4 rumors and […]

In our last show for 2017, Cat, Kevin, Steve, & Tim do a deep autopsy on tactics & troubleshooting for the MLS cup final. We talk Expansion Draft, Ozzie's Protection Racket, the upcoming CCL draw, light S2Tacoma chatter, and ad hoc karaoke.

Do you have friends? Do you want to keep your friends? Yeah? Well, you probably better just wait for the next episode then, because this won't help you gain any friends. Unless you're a spy... maybe you need to deal with an insufferable king. Well, regardless of why you stay, whether you're not interested in keeping your friends or you and the Black Rose are plotting against Brago, Kyle and Andy will break down Kyle's Brago Stax deck. Kyle will tell you he didn't build Brago with stax originally, but power corrupts. Kyle and Andy dig into how Brago maximizes value for basic things like card draw and ramp and then turns that into on oppressive board state that is difficult to overcome. (http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/kyles-brago-know-the-definition-of-sovereignty/) The dark beats this episode are by Dan Terminus. The song is Rust Titan from The Darkest Benthic Division. Please check out his music, for we have received his kindness, as he lets us use his music.  Find his work on  (). Big shout out to Mikey Patch for all our art work!  ().

Mike doesn’t like his neighbors… so don’t ask him if you can borrow his toilet plunger. Also, do you like podcast interruptions? Barking dogs? Jangling little kitty cats? Yeah? Well, you’ll love this episode! Kaz also finds a new home in a pile of cardboard boxes. The guys then derail the discussion a bit and talk about those weird Arnold Schwarzenegger watches that came out a few years back. Plus, we get a quick Rivkah Watches update, Mike has a new diver in for review, and the snobs finally announce the WINNER of the Seiko SKX007 giveaway! Finally, Mike sends out a very special watch to get serviced and the guys talk about what goes into choosing your watch servicing center. Is it better to go through the brand directly? Do you prefer going with someone local and independent? Listen in and tell the snobs what you think! Show Notes The Legend of Zelda Majora’s Mask: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Legend_of_Zelda:_Majora%27s_Mask Orient Watches “Christmas Chrono”: https://www.instagram.com/p/BV2UcDelNbt/?taken-by=twobrokewatchsnobs Melbourne Sorrento Diver: https://www.melbournewatch.com.au/sorrento-so-42-a-3hn-01/ Arnold Schwarzenegger watches: http://www.ablogtowatch.com/arnold-schwarzenegger-watch-brand-debuts-2015/ Montegrappa Watches: http://www.montegrappa.com/en/collections/orologi.html Omega Seamaster 30: https://www.instagram.com/p/BT9Mr3CljE0/?taken-by=twobrokewatchsnobs Smiths W10: http://www.broadarrow.net/smiths.htm Tudor Pelagos: https://www.tudorwatch.com/watches/pelagos/m25600tb-0001 Grand Seiko Spring Drive: http://www.grand-seiko.com/about/movement/springdrive/ Nesbit’s Fine Watch Services: http://www.nesbitswatchservice.com/ Omega Speedmaster 3570.50: https://www.instagram.com/p/BO-aNLYD_ra/?taken-by=michaeltpenate Lunar Oyster: https://www.lunaroyster.com/

Doc passes out.

You know what it's normally like? Yeah? Well it's like that again See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

DE: Every day I read a story, or see a video, or read a new study just to see that, you know, it really is pretty bad. And the so-called “Land of the Free” that we live in is really not so free. It’s a marketing term more than it is an actual description.   JF: Right.   DE: But the ideal is still there, and I think people are waking up to it in a lot of ways.   JF: I think people are waking up to it now, too. And it’s unfortunate that it took it getting so bad that it ended up in the back doors of everyday regular citizens to finally get jazzed up. If that’s what it takes to start making a legitimate change in our communities, both on our side—meaning when I say “our side”, I don’t mean the criminal side, as much as I’m a criminal defense lawyer, but I defend the people, right—and on the people’s side and citizens versus law enforcement, it would just be an incredible world to live in that it wasn’t like that, that it wasn’t so inherently adversarial at every single encounter.   DE: Well, and it’s not only adversarial, but it’s fraudulent. And so, here we have this system that’s supposed to administer justice, but then you go and look at the court dockets, and how many people there actually have a victim? How many people actually victimized somebody by what they did? And how many of them are on there for some—the only person they victimized was the State itself by—   JF: I offended the dignity of the State of Oklahoma…   DE: Right. By not turning my turn signal on or something like that, right?   JF: And now that should be an arrestable offense.   DE: And that kind of stuff—it makes me think that there’s just a bunch of crazy people out there, because the Sandra Bland thing happens in Texas, right? And the rationale given for pulling her over was that she didn’t use her turn signal, then it turns into this stereotypical kind of police brutality encounter, which ends up with her death in the jail. And then, not a week or two later, Oklahoma City Council’s response to that seems to be, “You know what? We need to make it easier for our cops to pull people over for not signaling when they turn.”   JF: Because clearly enough people don’t die in the Oklahoma County jail.   DE: Yes, and clearly, this cop is being questioned about the legality of pulling Sandra Bland over for not signaling, and we need to make sure that our cops don’t have to face that kind of scrutiny. And what in the world does that create in the minds of the public?   JF: It really is crazy! Right? And you sit there, and I read them every day, too, and I get on social media, and I read newspapers, and I try to keep myself really informed, but I find myself pulling my hair and thinking I can’t be the smartest person in the room! I just know that I’m not. So who are these people running our world?   DE: Right. And here we have this philosophical discussion, right? And so, I’m trying to put myself into your shoes because the discussion you and I are having right now is full of solutions. I mean, we’re looking at education. And it’s also full of respect for the actual role of a police officer.   JF: Well, sure.   DE: I mean, in my mind, it is.   JF: I don’t want my police officers to have to be, number one, trained and actually be in fear of being murdered on a traffic stop. I wouldn’t want to live in that environment, either.   DE: Right, but I think, on the other hand, I can imagine when you’re in front of the system and trying to navigate a client through that system, it’s a very different conversation—   JF: It is a very different conversation.   DE: Because it’s not based in reason. It’s based in the statutory law that’s made by crazy people who make laws like “You need to signal one hundred feet before you change lanes. Otherwise, a man with a gun is going to pull you over and assume that you’re going to try to kill him.” I mean, because that’s the situation.   JF: And when you die in jail three days later, the world will say it’s your fault because you should have signaled.   DE: So here we are having one conversation, and if you sat a police officer in the room with us, he could join the conversation and add to it. There would be a lot of just really great, reasonable solutions come out of it. However, you move this conversation to the courtroom, and now all of the sudden, it becomes this unreasonable thing that’s detached from reality, and its motives are completely suspect. So you don’t trust it, and you’re just praying that it doesn’t kill you. Literally. And something tells me that this isn’t the system that our forefathers envisioned.   JF: Certainly. You would hope not, right? And it’s sad. My clients go through this process afraid of the known, afraid of the unknown, and more often than not, I hear myself saying, “Nobody’s telling you this is fair, but I’m telling you this is legal.” And we have conversations with juries, you know? We’ve got a no-jury nullification. Why I can’t argue jury nullification is the most obscene thing in the entire world, because if we have a crazy law that, in application, is affecting the community in a manner we know it was not designed, then why then should the community—the actual citizens—be able to say no more?   DE: How about not even a crazy law? How about a law that, on the facts, apply, but in the spirit, don’t? And let the community decide, right? So you bring a guy who, the facts of the law all say that he’s guilty of breaking the law, but the jury can sit there and look at the extenuating circumstances and say, “You know what? We don’t care. We acquit.” And that’s the whole idea of our system of government is that it never assumes that the lawmakers were all-knowing and all-powerful—   JF: And able to see every possible outcome.   DE: That’s right. And so that’s why the power was given to a jury, but also that jury wasn’t given a power that can create precedents. So one guy can let go of a law, and another guy can get convicted of the same law based on the standards of a community, which is represented by the jury. And you say, “Well, that’s subjective,” and yeah, it is subjective because the only law that isn’t subjective is the law of gravity. The law of—the physical science laws. And nobody has to enforce those laws; they enforce themselves. But when we’re trying to live in a just society, when we’re trying to maintain justice and make sure people aren’t victimized, that’s upon us to put some effort into it. We need to have some flexibility to do that because the situations are different. And like you said, for it to be forbidden, for you to tell the jury that that’s their right is ridiculous. It’s not justice at all. It doesn’t serve justice at all.   JF: It’s the imbalance of power, and I think it kind of goes back to what you said. They can only have as much power as we give them, and we can’t give them more than what we have, so we’ve got to start taking the power back.   DE: And power, in my philosophy, is born of dependency. You know, you don’t bite the hand that feeds you. So if one hand on the body is feeding you, and another hand is beating you, you might not fight the hand that’s beating you because you’re dependent on that other hand to be fed. So government knows this; they know how to establish their power. However, when we become more self-sufficient, when we start taking care of our own communities—little things like doing our own charitable things, getting out to know people—the hand of force becomes a little more inappropriate. We begin to see it as something we don’t want. So, for instance, right now if a lady were making tortillas or something on the side of the road and selling them, literally a cop could walk up and shut her down. And if she resisted, he could lock her up for making tacos without the proper paperwork.   JF: And we see it with the little kids in their lemonade stands. It’s happening. These aren’t extreme examples; they’re not theoretical. It’s actually happening.   DE: To me, it looks ridiculous. Why not just let her sell those tacos or whatever she’s doing?   JF: Why can’t I assume the risk to take the taco off a truck?   DE: But the other question is, when I see that happen, why don’t I step in and stop it?   JF: Well, you know why. Because you’re getting arrested, too.   DE: Right. And nobody will support me because we’re all a little dependent on the system. And we’re all a little bit afraid that we don’t have each other’s back, too. And, you know, my life’s pretty good, so why would I want to get caught up in your drama? So what that does, that apathy just begins to create more room for the state to do the things they do. And they start with the poor, the marginal. You know, every population that is oppressed is some population the rest don’t care about that much. That’s where the roots of state power are established. So if you look in Oklahoma, the homosexual population, or the Muslim population, or the minority population, the drug users—these are people who are marginalized in some way, and when they’re oppressed, people don’t really care, because they’re not me.   JF: And it would never happen to me because I’m not black, I’m not gay, and I’m not poor, or whatever.   DE: Exactly. But what we don’t realize is that, by tolerating that or allowing the state to entrench itself with force into our communities—that force at some point, if you come up against it, you’re not going to have a chance. And nobody’s going to be there to back you up, either.   JF: Well, and it’s tough to defend yourself. My clients learn the hard way that innocence costs extra. We say it with a smile on our face, but it’s a fact. “I’m falsely accused. Can’t you just call the judge?” No, I can’t. It doesn’t work that way, and it’s not meant to continue profiting on the back of bad policies, but I find myself—if I’m really honest, I am really part of the system, and law enforcement doesn’t want to call me part of the system. But I remind them all the time that I’m law enforcement, too. I enforce the law against the government while the government enforces it against the people. But it’s a sad truth that the innocent person has to pull me up to go defend themselves more than the guilty guy who wants to just go in, get a good deal, and get out of town. It doesn’t seem like it should be right until you understand that the justice system is an unjust system, and to get the right result requires ten times the work and a lot more resources—judicial resources.   DE: And everything is pitted against the innocent person, even down to what we talked about before with the jury not being allowed to consider anything but the law. Or the facts of the case. They can’t look at the law and say, “We don’t like this law. It doesn’t apply.” They’re instructed not to do that, in fact, which to me is like, we do we even have a jury? Why not let the judge decide? But you do create that kind of…where the innocent person is at the disadvantage. Where it’s a lot quicker and cheaper to plead something you didn’t do and go on with your life.   JF: It’s a terrible reality of the criminal court system.   DE: And it’s something we need to let people know about and work on changing. We live in a new age of information. Like you said, if you’re not aware if the police violence is worse today or if we just know about it more? We do know about it more. It’s easier to get the information, and it’s also easier to get the information out. Take for instance, that civil asset forfeiture hearing that we went to, we had quite a few people show up that, in the past, before the internet, nobody would have shown up to that thing unless they were personally invited by—   JF: Somebody in the inner crowd.   DE: Right. And they would have had it at the Tulsa Police Academy, and the Police Academy would have rah-rahed their idea, and it would have gotten done. But because they can get information out to people and because people begin to see these stories, and to read these things, and to understand, I think that the human mind is a rational engine. And when it’s presented with truth that contradicts the paradigm that it’s living in, it really doesn’t like that, and it will deal with it and it will change how it sees the world in order to accommodate that information. So getting that information out to people is absolutely the most powerful thing you can do. It’s more powerful than passing a law, especially when you’re trying to pass a law in an environment where it’s not going to get passed. The goal should never be to pass the law. The goal should always be to change minds and to use the opportunity of the public battle, of the hearing, to present a truth and to get that into people’s minds so it begins to break the—I call them mental firewalls.   JF: Fair enough. I like that.   DE: So we live in these constructs in our minds, and most of them were given to us by somebody else.   JF: Parents, teachers, pastors…   DE: Yeah, these are constructs that we’ve been given. It creates our culture. Most of them we didn’t create on our own. So we don’t know why we think this way; we don’t know why a cop has more authority than a regular person. They just assume that’s the way it is because that’s the way it’s always been, but then when you start planting little nuggets like, well, is a cop a human being? Yeah? Well, where does a cop get these rights? Is he a special kind of human being? Does he get special rights from God? When you start to logically work these things out, all of the sudden, it doesn’t make sense. And this thing that I’ve held as true and as part of my identity now has a glaring contradiction logically. The human mind will not deal with that; it will either resolve it by changing its mind or it will find some way to deal with it like through drugs and alcohol. One of the funny things is, when you start talking about drug policy—we’ve been so enamored with this idea that drugs are bad and the drug wars have just cause—that when you start to challenge people on it, it’s like you’re challenging their religion. It’s a sacredly held idea that “just say no” and all of these ideas they grew up with. But when you start to work through things logically, and it starts to not make sense, I like to say that they’ll actually develop a drug problem getting over their drug problem. Because they only have one of two choices. They either have to accept the reality and adjust their frame of mind accordingly, or they have to figure out a way to cope with the cognitive dissonance, and drugs and alcohol actually work pretty well for that. So they can anesthetize themselves to the cognitive dissonance.  And so, kind of in my worldview and in what I do, it’s a lot easier for me because I live in that worldview and that philosophical, real world solution where I can just spout off ideas and people can listen to them. Sometimes they get them, and sometimes they don’t. But at the end of the day, the world changes just in little bitty increments versus you who have to go up in front of a judge and convince somebody, not according to reason, not according to logic, not according to right and wrong, but according to the law, which may have been written by crazy people who don’t even have a connection to the cultural context that this case is being presented within. And that’s a much different kind of skillset. I don’t envy the stress that it has to bring—especially with a person like you who I’ve heard speak about issues and see as an activist. Having to reconcile those two worlds has definitely got to be a challenge.   JF: It certainly is, but I think we’re doing it. I always say, “Be the change you want to see,” right?  And as much as there are many days I want to go bury my head in the sand, and plead ignorance, and turn up the music, and not pay attention to reality, I think what we have to do, and what we’re doing, and what I appreciate from you, for you helping us do it today, is educating people and keeping the conversation alive—not just when it’s hot, not just when the senate meetings are happening, but keeping the conversations alive and in the forefront. Because that’s what I think is how we change people’s minds, too. It’s the whole ‘90s version of Rock the Vote. I remember getting empowered and inspired to be informed by MTV! And, thank goodness, because from that, at a very young age, I rocked the vote in my little community. And I think Anna, my assistant, will tell you that I’m the reason she registered to vote. I just lit into her when I realized she was 20-something years old and wasn’t registered and wasn’t voting in local elections and things like that, because we have to be the change we want to see and keep the conversation alive and keep progress moving forward. Because we have to move forward, right? We can’t move backward, and we can’t stay still, so…   DE: We have to at least be a bulwark against the encroachment of the state onto the individual rights. And for a long time, they’ve been allowed to do it, kind of under the cloak of darkness. They had control of the media, the newspapers, the television, so the narrative was theirs. And so, all of the stories of injustice were word-of-mouth and almost like a conspiracy.   JF: Well, yeah, it was everybody’s Crazy Uncle Dennis, right?   DE: Right. Or they all looked so anecdotal that you couldn’t see any kind of systemic problem. But now with the Internet and with our ability to see things on a bigger level, we see this is a systemic problem. There is a problem with policy in our country that’s creating an adversarial relationship between the people and the police, and between the people and their government in general. It’s not healthy, and it’s only benefitting a tiny fraction of the people in our country, and it’s victimizing everybody else. You know, as more people become aware of it, it doesn’t mean the bad guys out there who are doing this on purpose—that are actually promoting these systems because they want power—it doesn’t mean they’re going to stop, but it does mean they have to adjust their tactics to be more palatable to us. And so the smarter we are, the more aware we are, the more outraged we get, the more they have to shrink back and say, “Okay.” So it’s this ongoing ebb and flow, this back and forth between people who want to live peacefully and people who want to aggressively live at the expense of other people. As you kind of do that, the more we know, the brighter we become, the more people are able to think rationally with good information, I think the better systems and policies that we’ll see implemented.   JF: Thank you so much, Dax. I appreciate it.   DE: I had a great time.

Matt-Man and Jayman are a bit concerned about some of you people. Apparenlty, some of are willing to just let your fears run your lives. "I would have called in, but I was afraid to." Really? Why? "I'm afraid someone will say something mean about me?" Yeah? Well what if they do? Why do you care? Some anonymous jerk on the internet doesn't like you? Fuck 'em! Look, we get it. It's hard to put yourself out there. There are lots of trolls and a-holes out there looking to say mean things. Maybe you WILL say something stupid. We all do! That's part of life. We have to stop being so scared of every little bitty thing. We have to overcome our fears and just do it. IWS is here for you. Matt and Jay are going to help you overcome your fears and finally do whatever it is you've been wanting to do. Want to write? You're welcome to post on iwsradio.com anytime. Want to speak your mind? 661.244.9852. What to record it or maybe record a song? Hit us up. We'll help you do it and play here on IWS. Matt and Jay understand your fears cause we have them too. Sometimes fear wins, but you can't just give up. We'll be talking fears from the very real to the imaginary, but real to us. Call us up and share your fears and how you overcame your own fears. This might be our most inspiring show ever. Or something.

Have any men or women been worthy of God's praises? The answer to that question and the key to earning a compliment from the Most High.

Hey, remember when you were a kid, all those years ago? Remember little Sally Neidermeyer next door? The little freckled kid with braces and patchy rosacea? And remember when you went away to camp one summer and when you came back it seemed like little Sally had grown up? The rosacea was gone, the braces were gone, and her mom stopped cutting her hair at home and sent her to Blanche for a perm instead? Yeah? Well that's kind of what this show is. We've been gone for a while, and now we got makeup and boobs.

A Lindsay Lohan update, vacation malaise and the sock scourge, drawing lines in economic sand, the alternate Tobias Funke, triangles, snort-worthiness, all the important people, inaccurate Krokus namedropping, Jesus chortles, Liam's manmeat, and the inevitability of "cute results" in a base 10 number system.

We begin this episode with a foody goody segment in which John suggests a pizza innovation. Flavoured crusts! No, not the kind you already heard of, because that's NASTY! Our discussion gets a bit derailed by trying to define "stuffin' it with the NASTY", and after that, by a strange decision to substitute definitions of adverbs (and then later, adjectives) with their dictionary definitions. Try it with your friends, or possibly with your political representatives, but maybe not with poets, or singers (it's too annoying to talk to them, obviously). If you want to swear at us in Italian, or in any other language, send us an email (maskedman@limitedappeal.net). Theme music courtesy of General Patton vs. The X-Ecutioners and Ipecac Recordings.

Ready to Unload: with Cal & Sanpete NY SPORTSTALK RADIO SHOW / PODCAST Episode #3.19 - 5/17/12 Here's a bit of what we talked about: -- THE BIG UNLOAD: After heartily welcoming ourselves back from our week off, reminiscing about our first cars,  discussing what reality shows Bishop Pop Culture PJ was working  on and Sanpete unveiling a (what he thinks is) a solid Scottish dialect, we finally got to Big Unload, a great discussion about how fans of certain teams defend themselves when challenged. Example: Me: The Yankees rotation is really suspect.  Yankee Fan: Yeah, well the Mets suck. Now is that justice, your honor? -- We got into Rangers- Devils series, but good, and discussed what John Tortorella owes the NY media. -- A big Cal Unload about beat reporters, twitter and antagonism. Fantastic stuff. -- RTU FUNLOAD: NHL Playoff beards, Matthew Perry as a sports talk show host. Go.

My ex-partner is a sociopath. No really. I hope you believe me. But then I also hope you doubt me too. A sociopath has little or no conscience, and "the little" in that definition is a very big problem. How little is little enough to warrant the diagnosis of sociopathy? Conscience is expensi...