This week’s guest is Jeff Severns Guntzel, an investigative researcher with 20 years of journalism and humanitarian work under his belt. He joins Brett to talk about the juvenile detention system, prison abolition, activism, good deeds through hardware hacking, and trips to the garbage dump.

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Brett

Brett: [00:00:00] [00:00:00]This week’s guest is Jeff Severns Guntzel an investigative researcher with 20 years of journalism and humanitarian work under his belt. How’s it going? Jeff,

[00:00:16] Jeff: [00:00:16] It’s going very well. Thank you.

[00:00:17] Brett: [00:00:17] do you know when the last time you were on the show was

[00:00:21] Jeff: [00:00:21] Oh, I had just left a job in public radio, so I want to say it was like 2013 or something.

[00:00:28] Brett: [00:00:28] 2014, very close.

[00:00:30] Jeff: [00:00:30] 14. Oh God, I should’ve listened back. Or I only have so many things to say.

[00:00:35] Brett: [00:00:35] Well, it’s been long enough that if anyone still remembers the last time you were on, I’m sure they won’t mind a refresher, but we have new stuff to talk about since then, too.

[00:00:45] Jeff: [00:00:45] Yeah, I haven’t heard anything about people still talking about it to this day. So I’m just going to assume we can call this a clean slate.

[00:00:51]Brett: [00:00:51] So this just for listeners this will be the last official episode of [00:01:00] systematic on this. We’ll call it a season. I’m going to take a little break after this. There might be a bonus episode. Jeff May have something to say about that, but at least a month or two we’re gonna go dark and hope to be back soon.

[00:01:14] But anyway, that sounded like I was finishing the show, but

[00:01:18] Jeff: [00:01:18] nah,

[00:01:19] Brett: [00:01:19] I

[00:01:20] Jeff: [00:01:20] it’s just, I buy it as a season finale.

[00:01:23] Brett: [00:01:23] So you have the distinguished honor of being the season’s final guest.

[00:01:30] Jeff: [00:01:30] I thank you.

[00:01:31] Brett: [00:01:31] SSo what do you do for a day job right now?

[00:01:35] Jeff: [00:01:35] What I do for a day job is what I call investigative research. There is a thing called investigative research in the sort of academic research world, which I am not a part of. But it seems to have, it seems to have fizzled a little. So I’m just like borrowing it for a little bit. So I don’t have to explain, like, I’m not a journalist anymore, but I’m still doing journalists, like things with that said I’m not a journalist anymore, but I’m still doing journalist-

[00:02:00] [00:01:59] like things. I started working on a project with a small team of people in Omaha, Nebraska about four years ago. And the purpose of the project is to. Really get inside the experiences of the kids there who are going through the juvenile justice system and their families and their siblings.

[00:02:20] And to really kind of understand how how experience with the system ripples through an individual’s life, but also through their family life and their social life and all of that stuff. Because we don’t spend too much time talking about that. And so the way that project works is I am not interviewing kids.

[00:02:37]Instead we have a team of people. I have these amazing colleagues in Omaha who have been interviewing kids who have experience working with kids who themselves have experience with the system. So that it’s not, I mean, in my case, it’s not a white guy coming in from Minneapolis, gathering up stories, tucking them under my arm.

[00:02:59] And flying [00:03:00] back to Minneapolis, right? Like that model should die. And this model we felt was like going to be something a little different. So we started this project called the lived experience project, and it was initially to collect stories and then figure out what the stories or the kids were telling us should happen next.

[00:03:17]Where my job comes in is, you know, it only took us about a dozen interviews to realize that if we’re going to be having Frank conversations with kids about their experiences in the system, that we’re going to start hearing about ways in which the system harms them.

[00:03:32] And we didn’t want to be in a situation where things like that were being shared with us. And we were just filing it away in our database of interviews. We wanted to be sure that we took those cues when they came, even if they were implicit, like if someone said something subtle about a certain facility, but it kind of matched something subtle.

[00:03:52] Someone else said about a facility, my job was to go, okay, what are the other ways of knowing here? Right? We’re not going to, [00:04:00] we’re not going to put it on this kid to tell us everything that happened, because that puts them in a really It puts them in a potentially dangerous situation and it puts a lot on them.

[00:04:08]When I was, you know, doing reporting the kind of main rule when you got information from a source was, first thing you do is go try to get it from something else so that you can kind of shield your original source of that story or that document or whatever. So I was taking that approach and I had to kind of start from scratch because in a way, like in these interviews, we weren’t learning super specific things, right.

[00:04:32] But we were learning types of harm in the system. We were learning ways you can be harmed. We were learning how kids defined harm, which is very different from kid to kid based on whatever their sort of norms are. And so I, in a way kind of broke off of all of that and just focused on how can I see into this system, which is very opaque.

[00:04:55] And in some cases necessarily opaque, but in some cases, [00:05:00] That opaqueness kind of protects people who are doing harm in the system. So how can I see in? And so my job became working with public documents, pulling whatever data I could about any given facility from like 911 data to tracking down court records that discuss what life was like in that particular facility.

[00:05:19]I would cold call former staff of different facilities. I would talk to state agencies, all that stuff all as a way of sort of. Seeing into the system so that I can start to see patterns and red flags which was something that was not previously possible in Douglas county, juvenile justice system, or actually just wasn’t previously done, I guess.

[00:05:38] And so that’s what I do. I’m like, I’m a journalist in this very, I’m an investigative researcher, investigative journalists in this very narrow sort of scope that is not even my hometown that I’ve been doing for a few years now. And that I really hope when we’ve really kind of nailed down this model can be not scaled from us, but can be like toolbox can [00:06:00] be, you know, borrowed like a little to have a little tool lending library for these things we’re creating.

[00:06:05] So anyway, that’s the long answer of what I do. Next question, please.

[00:06:09] Brett: [00:06:09] it’s an hour long podcast. You can take as long as you like for answers. So with the lived experience project, now that you’re, you’ve been doing this for a while and you’ve been gathering data and you’ve been analyzing, it has the mission statement of the lived experience project changed at all.

[00:06:28] Now that you’re kind of in the weeds.

[00:06:30]Jeff: [00:06:30] Where I stand. No the idea for me was if what we were doing and learning was going to become part of a reform conversation. And by the way, we’re funded by a private foundation. Who’s interested in reforming the Douglas county juvenile justice system. We are not in and of ourselves a reform project, but.

[00:06:53]We are supported by this foundation so that we may use, you know, youth voice and lived [00:07:00] experience to contribute in a hopefully meaningful way to a discussion about how the system can stop harming kids in it. And so, for me, the first thing that, you know, I worried about when we were only collecting stories and not collecting data yet was like, you put.

[00:07:18] Any story of a kid. Who’s saying that while I was in the system, after I got in trouble, I was harmed. And the first thing that the system is going to Do just instinctively is knock it down, you know? Oh, well, okay. So they say this place was rough. Well, of course it’s rough. That’s where we send the rough kids, that whole idea of the rough kids as if there’s any such thing.

[00:07:38]Just kids. And so we wanted to be sure that we were standing alongside them a little bit of ground under their feet, if that was helpful, whatever, with data that said, yeah, here’s a story that suggests a pattern and here’s some data that actually expands our sense of that pattern. And in some cases, highlights a pattern that is far worse than what we [00:08:00] might’ve assumed was true based on this one story.

[00:08:02]And so. My mission in this work has not changed. It’s just to be sure that we can create as much solid ground under the feet of these kids who have been harmed as possible so that their stories can’t be ignored or pushed aside or erased by, by the system itself.

[00:08:21] Brett: [00:08:21] Do you consider yourself a prison? Abolitionist?

[00:08:25]Jeff: [00:08:25] Yeah.

[00:08:27] yeah.

[00:08:28] abolitionist generally. Which of course, like, let’s just remember. I mean, we’ve had to hear so many versions of this since George Floyd’s death, when abolition. Sorry. We’ve had to hear so many versions of this since George Floyd’s murder. When the abolition conversation became something like mainstream I am an abolitionist.

[00:08:51] I believe that these systems are rotten at their core. I believe that these systems harm people and [00:09:00] especially black and brown people at an enormously disproportionate rate. And that in some cases, most cases they’re designed that way doesn’t mean that everyone who takes a job in the system says, I’m going to go take a job in that system that hurts black and brown people every day.

[00:09:18] That doesn’t happen for everybody. Probably. I’m Sure. there’s a couple candidates who have that in the back of their mind in some maybe less direct way, but. This thing that people chant here all the time. No good cops in a rotten system. I think it’s a really profound chant and it brings you a little further than all cops are bastards ACA B.

[00:09:38] This is the other thing that kind of goes with it. I’m not critiquing people use what they got to do to try to kind of push this conversation forward. But the idea of no good cops in a rotten system, I think is really powerful because it focuses you on the system. And so much of where the conversation about what happens to people [00:10:00] like George Floyd or Philando Castiel to name a couple of local cases. So much of what happens in that conversation is it becomes about the bad apples, or it becomes personal. Like people start taking it personally, cause maybe they’re thinking of the police officer in their life. Or they’re thinking about a time when they were in danger and they relied on the police.

[00:10:21] And it’s become this sort of personal thing. This idea of no good cops in a rotten system says, Hey, you can go in wanting to be a good cop. Sure. Of course. Everybody goes in with different motivations. And only they really know what they are. And probably some people don’t even know what do you know, your motivation for everything key.

[00:10:41] You do know, but you know what you tend to gravitate towards. Right? So anybody who goes in thinking I’m going to be a good cop. And I think there’s a lot of people who do that. The point is not no, you can’t go in and be a good cop in a rotten system. You become part of a system that is just habitually and systematically harming people every day.

[00:10:59][00:11:00] And so for me, that’s what makes me an abolitionists. Now I work with people who are formerly incarcerated and are abolitionists and what one of them, my colleague, Dominique Morgan will say, it’s like, look, yeah, I understand having been in prison that you can’t just burn the damn thing down because then what?

[00:11:18] Right. You can’t just burn the whole system down and eliminate all the supports, the ones that are mostly broken, but still acting as supports and not hurt a lot of people. So what is powerful to me about abolition? Is it forces my brain to imagine a world where this system doesn’t exist and then to imagine what would have to take its place.

[00:11:43] And that is why in the work I do around juvenile justice. Like I’m really focused on qualities of hurt and qualities of help, essentially. So qualities of harm, qualities of help. And for me, those are abolitionist concerns. Like we know that the system [00:12:00] hurts people, but there is a real need to lay out all the ways in which it hurts people, because there are small ways.

[00:12:06] The system hurts people that we never talk about. Someone who’s been in prison and comes out and can’t turn the lights off at night and they have to sleep with the lights on every night or can’t put their, you know, they have to put their back to the wall and the restaurant, or, you know, back in the day when you were on a pay phone or something like these are other, these are also ways that people are harmed.

[00:12:24] So there are all these ways that you want to be able to sort of lay out how the system harms people. And then you want to be able to look as well at how interactions with the system have helped where they’ve helped. And for me, that’s an abolitionist line of inquiry.

[00:12:40] Brett: [00:12:40] Sure. So I’ve gotten to know you pretty well over the last year. It’s been about a year, right? Since we started kind of working together.

[00:12:49] Jeff: [00:12:49] like August of last year, I think.

[00:12:51]Brett: [00:12:51] I would say that you are a person who is exceptionally sensitive to the suffering of others. Has that always [00:13:00] been, is that like just an innate personality trait or did experiences like your early work in journalism instill that in you.

[00:13:09] Jeff: [00:13:09] So yes, I have had a sort of drive to find light in dark places, essentially, since I was pretty young, I just didn’t really know how to act on it then. And my first real, like my first real, almost like job experience in the world while I was like, I was a lawnmower and a dishwasher for a long time.

[00:13:38] But then in 1998, I was born in 75. I don’t remember how I don’t want to do the math right now. What is this? A math podcast? So I was some years and I realized like I was in this punk rock band. I was traveling around. I really loved it, but I did not love the. The sense of just where am I [00:14:00] going with this?

[00:14:00] Right. Like, I just didn’t know where I was going with it. And I knew that I had all these things I cared about. And so I decided that my first step was going to be, I was going to start a zine, cause you know, it was 1998, right? gotta start a Z and it was going to focus on prisons. And so I put an ad in prison, life magazine, that was great magazine called prison.

[00:14:19] Life magazine back in the day, started by this former prisoner Richard Stratton. And and they focused on issues in prisons, but they also just focused on prison life. And then there was like, there were classified ads, people looking for pen pals or whatever else. And I was like, Hey, I’m this kid. And I want to do a, you know, like zine about kind of experience in prison for like a young adult audience, essentially.

[00:14:44] Right. And it was incredible because I must’ve received 80 or 100. Letters and pieces of artwork and advice and all of these things from prisoners across the us. And I [00:15:00] started corresponding with them and my little zine never came to fruition, but it was a moment to sort of step out of my own life, which I was in a certain sense, looking to do and engage the world, engage places that I knew were kind of hard to engage.

[00:15:21] And once I did that and had the benefits of corresponding with people. I was like, I wanted more of that. Like I just felt like that’s where I wanna be. I wanna, I want to be part of hearing voices that are otherwise very difficult to hear and if possible, be part of amplifying those voices.

[00:15:40] And so that’s like my very first sort of worky, like thing and everything after that, followed that pattern. I did work in Iraq for, from like 1998 to like 2001. I went to Palestine during a war there in 2002, a [00:16:00] Israeli invasion of the west bank. I started visiting death row around that same time in Illinois with the Illinois coalition against the death penalty.

[00:16:08] And it was like almost this pathological drive to be in dark places. And what. We’re in places that we tell ourselves are dark. Right. And then the, like the real power of recognizing over and over again. Oh, I’m in this place. That’s supposed to be a dark place. And it is in many ways, like if you take death row, but like realizing in all these different scenarious that I don’t feel any different as a person when I’m in them.

[00:16:37] It’s not like, I feel like I’m in somebody else’s life or in a movie or something like that. It’s like, I can be right in the middle of an act of war zone. And I still feel like myself and the people standing across from me still strike me as. People standing across from me. And this is also silly to say it’s also simple.

[00:16:55] It almost sounds absurd, but I was completely changed by [00:17:00] the experience of recognizing in a really felt way that everything on earth, every conflict we read about every anything is people trying to figure out how to manage a situation that has gone from ordinary to extraordinary. And that has been fascinating to me.

[00:17:18] Now, the story you asked me about traumas. It is also, I believe the case that I was sort of hiding behind other people’s traumas. Cause I had my own to unpack which I’ve done over the last couple of years thanks to therapy. But it doesn’t mean I want to step away from this, so yeah.

[00:17:34] Brett: [00:17:34] so do you clearly, you were an activist in your youth. Do you still consider yourself an activist?

[00:17:41]Jeff: [00:17:41] I mean, I’m happy to be called an activist. I mean, in journalism, what sucked about being in journalism was that thing where even as journalists in the, like, what. Early mid-2000s started recognizing that this [00:18:00] voice from nowhere thing is is just utter crap. This idea that you are talking about an issue, but bringing nothing of yourself into it, because of course you are, you’ve chosen who you’re going to talk to.

[00:18:11] You’ve chosen, which of their words they’re going to use. You’ve chosen, which people you’ve talked to. You’re going to put into conversation with which ideas. And then of course you’ve chosen all the things that will be left out. And so the idea that like a journalist who is, for example, doing like a really powerful investigation about it, let’s say a juvenile justice system and publishes a five-part series about abuses in that system.

[00:18:33] Like. For me, I don’t think it’s dirty. I would say that’s good activist work. They like to use the advocacy word more often than not. And sometimes that’s meant as a positive and sometimes it’s like, you’re too much of an advocate here. Right? Like, but like, man, if you’re clean about it, if you find ways to be transparent, not just with your audience, but with the people you’re speaking with about what it is you’re trying to do and what it is you think you understand that to me [00:19:00] is just like, that’s all I need from journalism or anybody trying to tell me about a truth.

[00:19:05] They think they understand. And so do I call myself an activist, which is question I’m not really doing a good job of answering. It’s like, no, I just don’t call myself on anything really. Because I feel like all words are so. Loaded, you know, these days, but look, if you want to start over and say, this is, you know, I’m introducing my guests, Jeff Severns Guntzel, he’s an activist, like fine.

[00:19:26] Good. I’d rather be that than not.

[00:19:28] Brett: [00:19:28] Sure. So I think the common image people have of an activist is someone out in marches and protesting in the street. And I feel like you found other ways to support those who do that. And to be, can we an ally perhaps without actually marching in the street?

[00:19:50] Jeff: [00:19:50] co-conspirator.

[00:19:51] Brett: [00:19:51] Yeah, I like

[00:19:52] Jeff: [00:19:52] Yeah. Yeah, I you know, so what I did in my twenties, when I went to Iraq to Palestine, like I. In both [00:20:00] cases, I was in active war zones and I really you know, I almost died and I was scared and I was, you know, shot at or whatever. like I was almost hurt. I almost died. And, you know, I have these nights where I’m just like, why?

[00:20:13] Like, there’s a lot of ways to care about Palestine or Iraq. Why am I choosing this particular one? Right. And, you know, I came out of a phase like that really burned out doing that.

[00:20:22] kind of work really burned out. But I also felt like, I just felt like I, I understood so much more by being there and I had an ability to communicate it to other people.

[00:20:34] And so just started to feel like it almost felt like I was obligated to do it. No one was telling me I was, and I don’t mean that with any hubris, like this is a gift I can give or anything like that. I mean, like literally there was an engine in me that was like driving me into those types of situations.

[00:20:50]And at some point I recognized that it was hurting me quite a bit without really helping anybody else. I mean, maybe, I don’t know, but I don’t really think in [00:21:00] any significant way. It was more about making sure we were shining some light on some aspect of suffering or life or whatever. And so I had to kind of sit with that. Like, what does it mean that. I don’t feel like I can do the things that I’ve done for the last, you know, five, seven years, because it’s hurting me.

[00:21:20] Like, what do I do? Cause I still have this drive to gather, and CCC and tell. And that’s kinda like how I entered journalism. Like I was really hiding in journalism. I loved it at times. I loved some of the people I worked with, but I felt like I was always I felt like I was always kind of both hiding from the people I worked with in the sense that like I did have this like activist heart and past.

[00:21:43]And it was significant. Cause like when I would go to Iraq with this group that was an anti sanctions group. This is the long story back in the nineties, the U S and and the UN had sanctions on Iraq as punishment for the Gulf war in 1991. And then Saddam Hussein’s ongoing [00:22:00] or apparently ongoing chemical weapons program.

[00:22:02] And those sanctions were so. Intensely strict in terms of what could come into the country that that the infrastructure of the country was just crumbling. It’s a long story. It would be its own whole podcast. But the point is the group I hooked up with was going to Iraq against us law. Like it was against the law for Americans to spend money in Iraq as part of the sanctions.

[00:22:26] But it was also against the law for Iraq to import some pretty basic medicines that the U S said could also be used for a chemical weapons program. And so there were all these UN reports about how, you know, the elderly and children are being affected and how, you know, the infrastructure which had been bombed so severely by the U S was.

[00:22:46] And so we were taking these trips against us law as an act of civil disobedience and doing it very publicly. And so when I went into journalism, like I never highlighted that. Right. But like there’s an internet [00:23:00] and I don’t really feel like. I know that anybody that hired me all the way up to like public radio, which would be extra sort of itchy about something like that, never bothered to like Google that part they knew I went to Iraq and they knew, you know, whatever, like they knew this stuff, but, and so so why am I saying all this? I don’t know. It’s like a, it’s like a trauma ramble maybe, but like the point is when I was in journalism, I both felt like I was hiding from whatever part of me said.

[00:23:31] You’re really supposed to be getting hurt right now. And at the same time I was hiding from. The people I worked with, who I felt if they really knew like the full, you know, body of my work prior to becoming a journalist. Cause I was an anti-war activist. I was on TV. I was on like the layer NewsHour or like, whatever, right?

[00:23:52] Like. That they would not want me anymore. That may not have been true, but that was where I was at that time. And so for in journalism, I just hid and hid and [00:24:00] hid. And then when I finally got out of it and started doing this research work, I realized I could be an activist again. Like if things went down, I could be an activist again.

[00:24:08] And the first time I recognized that was this isn’t funny at all. This is the anniversary of the killing of Philando Castiel and there was a March and the March was one of these big marches in the twin cities that was destined to shut down 94 and. I felt really moved to go. And when I would go to big protests or something, while I was a journalist, I always found ways to just be a journalist.

[00:24:34] And it’s not like I was chanting and taking notes or something. Like I was never much of a good protest person. Anyhow, I like, didn’t like holding signs and I don’t know what to chant and, you know, whatever I was just kind of, I would just be there, you know, and just be like, be witness. So I could do that as a journalist.

[00:24:51] And then when I wasn’t a journalist, I would still bring her a Porter’s notebook and put it in my back pocket, which you can always see. And I just felt like I wasn’t being honest with myself. Right. And [00:25:00] this was the first time I went to something and I did not bring a reporter’s notebook, which for me, nobody would have noticed that I’m a guy walking around without a reporter’s notebook.

[00:25:07] But for me, I felt like I wasn’t wearing pants and I’m walking along and all of a sudden, the whole crowd veers towards 94 and I’m like, oh, We’re going to go shut a highway down. And I just follow the group because I was frankly curious how that all works because I had been seeing it happen on the news.

[00:25:24] And So as I’m walking down the entrance ramp, I pass a photo journalists here with one of the big newspapers that I know. And he’s like, Jeff, what are you, doing here? And then next to him is a reporter from Minnesota public radio, who I hadn’t met yet. And he’s like, oh, you’re Jeff. Hi. You know, I had worked there.

[00:25:41] So it’s like, I’ve heard about you, you know? And then that one, the guy, I didn’t know, goes, what are you doing here? And I kind of choked and I looked at him and I said, nah, you know, I’m just looking around and then proceeded to walk down and help shut down 94. And that was like a huge breaking point for me.

[00:25:57] Cause I was like, it’s okay. Like you can leave the [00:26:00] people on the sidelines with their microphones and their cameras and everything aside and just like do what your heart tells you. You want to do, you want to follow all of these people that are going to go down and put themselves in danger in order to make a really important point about the murder of black men by police.

[00:26:14] Right. And that’s okay. Jeff, like go for it. Right. And so back to your question about finding ways to be more of like a co-conspirator and less of a sort of direct action type of person when George Floyd was killed when George Floyd was murdered, which is not far from my house We were essentially like invaded by police.

[00:26:36] And then later military, like I saw more military on lake street, the big thoroughfare in Minneapolis that burned on the news. Last year, I saw more Humvees and military presence in one day there. Then I saw in my first couple of days in Baghdad after the invasion, like. It was [00:27:00] of course more concentrated, but the point is like I had to drive and look in Baghdad a week after the invasion to find Humvees, but here they were at my pharmacy gas station.

[00:27:11] They were, you know, on lake street, which again is a main thoroughfare near my house. And I had to make a decision because my experience in the past had been to sort of be in these sort of conflict areas and have a comfort level in walking through them and being helpful in them. Despite the fact that people are pointing guns at you or whatever else.

[00:27:30] And I just thought I was kind of done with that. It never occurred to me that I’d have to revisit that decision in my own neighborhood. And that was really intense. I made the wrong decision initially, but it was a really quick and low consequence, wrong decision, but I recognized what it could mean for me to sort of put on, you know, the hat I wore through my twenties.

[00:27:55] And that I would hurt myself and that in this case I would hurt my family as well. Because if you go [00:28:00] all in, you become, I mean, if I go all in, I become detached from anything that feels warm and loving around me. And I knew that, and I was like, there has to be a different way to be helpful. It’s like I said, it’s like, why the war zone there’s other ways to care about this place.

[00:28:16] I’m glad I went, don’t get me wrong. Like the relationships I’ve built have been lifetime relationships. But I had to find some other way. And what I have settled on is like, I’m kind of the supply guy. I’m like a supply chain guy. So like when Dante Wright was killed here, When Dante Wright was murdered here and all of the activists in the cold and in the snow were out there at the police station in Brooklyn center.

[00:28:44] And they were teargassing that first night. So hard. I called a friend the next day, who I knew was always down there, kind of organizing things a little bit. And I said like, what is needed? You know, for tonight when people go back there and she said, you know, we [00:29:00] need safety goggles. We need dry shirts.

[00:29:02] We need we need, you know, masks. We need like those kind of like a mask you’d wear in the workshop, but has a couple of filters attached to it. I mean those things. They’re expensive. And so I just went out. And started rounding this stuff up, earplugs, all this stuff. And as I’m rounding it up, I’m texting people.

[00:29:18] Do you want to donate some money on donate some… You know, so you get a big old pile of stuff and you drop it off. Where there, that stuff is being collected. And for me, knowing that I was helping to protect people who were being so incredibly brave was extremely meaningful. And I was home with my kids who after the city burned last year and we had neighborhood watches and we had scares right in our neighborhood and all of that, like they needed me.

[00:29:47] And wanted me to be home and I wanted to be that for them. Cause it was good for me too. And so I’m all about support. So we have all these homeless encampments here right now. And when COVID first started, when we [00:30:00] were all super obsessed about hand-washing, which is like still a good idea, don’t get me wrong.

[00:30:04]I kind of built this model for a hand washing station that had like a foot pump based on some things I found on the internet and started just pumping those out and getting them out to camps and stuff. And like I just was, I’m still in this phase of learning how to help without hurting myself.

[00:30:19] And it’s awesome.

[00:30:21] Brett: [00:30:21] So you build stuff in addition to hand-washing stations,

[00:30:25] Jeff: [00:30:25] I love to build a thing.

[00:30:27] Brett: [00:30:27] what, tell me about this I guess survival kit, almost like in a utility box. I don’t know what call it. Yeah. Cyber dek. Tell me about

[00:30:37] Jeff: [00:30:37] Yeah. Okay. Okay. Okay. So, again, I’m really close to where George Floyd was murdered, close to lake street, which was burning and, you know, my own pharmacy burned down and, you know, like it was all right here. And that was such an interesting experience for me as somebody who really likes to be prepared not like prepper prepared, but just like, I know what it [00:31:00] feels like to be in a really dangerous situation and completely lose your situational awareness and really not know what’s going on down the block.

[00:31:08] Right. I mean, like I instantly having had war experiences, like every morning of the George Floyd uprising, I would sort of drive a perimeter around our neighborhood to just see how much closer it got, you know, just so I know I’m not going to bail unless there’s a real good reason to bail, but I’m more likely to stay behind, but like, That’s situational awareness is like a way of caring for me It’s like a love language. And I started seeing these things online and I like, I mean, like my areas of making are they go from like working at the table, saw to like copying someone’s code and doing something cool on a raspberry PI or whatever. Right. Like, it’s like, I don’t really care about the tool. I just really liked to build a thing.

[00:31:50]And so I started seeing these things, these cyber decks that people were building and they were inspired by science fiction. And the idea was like, you have this small container [00:32:00] computer essentially that has like access to all knowledge in it. And so people were like putting all of offline Wikipedia into these things.

[00:32:08] And all of you could put all of like offline stack overflow into it, or you could put all the Ted, they were making like apocalypse machines, which like is a really cool. Cool like game, but like as a thought experiment to me, it felt really like, it just felt really like why are we doing this?

[00:32:26] Like, we’re having like real problems right now. We’ve got a global pandemic, right? We’ve got cities burning. I actually don’t know where any of this is going to go. And I wonder if we could like, imagine something more practical than just a well-designed little computer machine that lets you look up, you know, Wikipedia.

[00:32:44] And so for me, I was like inspired by those things and thought like, Okay.

[00:32:48] I’m going to think back to like the two kind of most uncertain nights during the George Floyd uprising here in Minneapolis. And those were nights where our [00:33:00] governor had come on television. To say that white nationalists are believed to be inside of the city and that they may be planting incendiary devices in alleys to use later on in the night.

[00:33:12] And so our governor was on TV telling us to hose down our fences. Anything that could be burned, bring it inside, bring your trash cans inside. And people were organizing like neighborhood watches. Right. And there was like, Based on where some power stations are in relationship to where everything was burning on lake street, there was some real questions about, would we lose power?

[00:33:32]Which would mean we lose a certain level of communications and what does it mean in a situation like this to not have landlines anymore. And anyway, I just started thinking of these questions and I was like, okay, what if there was a cyber deck that like, yeah, I had a lot of useful knowledge right on it, but also was really a situational kind of awareness machine.

[00:33:50] So like what if it was also a police scanner, right. And you could be listening to what was going on the police scanner to help you understand a little piece of what’s [00:34:00] going on around you. It’s all dangerous data because police scanners can. Majorly kind of send you a skew, but the point is it’s a line of information coming in.

[00:34:11] If everything else goes dark. Right. And then I was like, what if you don’t have internet? Like, how do you deal with that? And I found this cool like modem for something called other net. And it’s like a very basic internet. They’re very basic satellite internet that if you buy this little modem and a little like piece to put onto a satellite dish, you can actually pull in the news of the day, you can pull in various information.

[00:34:34] And then I started realizing you can make like local neighborhood networks, right? Like you could make your own kind of private neighborhood wifi networks. And the way that neighborhood watch was going, that appealed to me neighborhood watch was very scary here because it was a lot of scared people deciding very suddenly as we do as humans, that their block.

[00:34:56] Is a place to defend and no longer [00:35:00] part of a sort of interwoven community, right. And people who were untrained were observing and people who are untrained in some cases were confronting. And I remember a neighborhood meeting after two nights of that, where I said to people, I said, I’m really scared because this has basically worked, but it’s worked because the people were watching out for are white people, white nationalists that we’re told are driving around.

[00:35:27] If we were told to watch out for any kind of person of color, this would have been people getting killed. Like it’s just, it’s too scary of a thing to have it be completely Isolated blocks. Right? So I was like, is there a way that you can kind of have communication? Anyway, the cyber deck, my idea was like a civic media, cyber deck, where like you have access to information, including information about what the police are doing.

[00:35:53] And you have ways of communicating with at least a group of people in a very [00:36:00] specific area. If you’re all kind of stuck in your houses, which we were, there was a curfew, right. There was like a curfew all night. And so you actually can’t go wandering about, or, you know, you’re told that you shouldn’t be necessarily going a block over, and if you do go a block over, let me tell you, the people on that block have decided their block is the thing to defend.

[00:36:21] The first thing they’re going to do is freak out. The second thing they’re going to do is maybe take the time to recognize that you’re the guy from down the block that they see every day otherwise, right? Like it was. Super scary. And what I was doing with this, like civic media, cyber deck was just saying, all right, I’m looking at an, I bought one of those Pelican cases, like an orange Pelican case that you use for like cameras, like waterproof cases.

[00:36:45] And you got a raspberry PI and a monitor, and I’m looking at that and I’m going, what all could you do for me? If like what happened during the George Floyd uprising was just turned up maybe three or four notches, [00:37:00] right? Cause that is the point where things start to really kind of crumble and it becomes hard to know what’s true and hard to get just basic important information.

[00:37:08] And so I am working on this thing kind of longterm as part of a fellowship I’m in, at the Annenberg civic media lab. And the point of it is changing all the time, but it’s really this like. What are the ways this machine could help with situational awareness and help people who are trying to help people who are trying to keep communities safe, help people who know that they can’t at this moment, trust law enforcement. What what kind of machine, what kind of functions would a machine have?

[00:37:37] Just continue to like build out the ideas, like, you know, I told you about the internet thing. There are also just like meaningful ways to track planes. We’ve had surveillance planes up here and it’s nice to know when the surveillance planes are up and circling and and so it’s like a dark way of thinking.

[00:37:53] And I joked earlier that the people making the cyberdecks were doing apocalyptic thinking, I don’t mean for this to be actual [00:38:00] apocalyptic thinking. Although as I explain it to you now, it sounds like it I just. I just know that when we lose our ability to know, when we lose our ability to sort of have information that we trust, we turn on each other.

[00:38:15] So God damn fast. And I’ve seen that happen in different places around the world. And I saw really clear signs of it in my own neighborhood and in my own city last year. And it was humbling. And. A little bit terrifying because I feel like we had police shot a young man just last night. It’s not clear what the story was, but like we’re just one more away from everything kind of becoming a light again.

[00:38:47] So that was not a pitch. I would give to somebody trying to give me money. But but I’m also not trying to get money. I’m just trying to, I use this thing as a thought experiment and I let myself go a little off the [00:39:00] edge and then I bring myself back, you know, as I just did in this conversation.

[00:39:05] Brett: [00:39:05] why I love it. Like when I was young, I marched I was in Minneapolis, I was big on the activism scene. There was basically like two or three marches a week. And I was always out there with signs and different causes and like enough that I could barely keep up with what I was protesting at any given time.

[00:39:24] And when I got older, I just, I no longer had the. I didn’t like standing around with a sign. I didn’t like chanting in unison with people anymore, but I still believed in the causes and the idea of finding ways to support whether you’re a delivery guy, whether you’re hacking in your free time to make preparedness easier for everybody.

[00:39:51] Like that’s heartening to know that there are ways to support your causes without having to stand on the street with a sign. I [00:40:00] love that.

[00:40:01] Jeff: [00:40:01] I like how you described that because it doesn’t, it, there was No.

[00:40:05] judgment for people who do stand on the street with a sign and that it was just that recognition of like, it’s not for you, which is something I relate to. I feel like the people who are going to go straight out to the streets are the ones that will over and over again, save us.

[00:40:18]And what’s important once they’re out there is just what you said is like, okay, so what else can be happening? Like everyone has a role they can play. Everyone has seasons in their lives. Right? Like my season of going to every protest, it’s not exactly over, I still go here now it’s right here in my neighborhood.

[00:40:34] Like, but I sometimes decide not to go. right.

[00:40:36]And instead I think to myself, like, I wonder if there’s something else I can be doing right now. And I think that’s really, I think that’s just so, so, so important. Like there always, what was the, I’m not going to use that example. I mean, look, here’s the thing.

[00:40:51] Someone needs to clean the toilets, right? Like that’s kind of how I think of it. Like there always needs, there, there are always support needs and oftentimes there are [00:41:00] support needs for things that are like, Hey, you don’t need to bring any special skills in here. My friend, you know, you just need to bring a brush and some soap.

[00:41:09] Brett: [00:41:09] Yep. So I’m going to take a sponsor break and there’s really no way to segue this smoothly into talking about credit card debt. But I’m going to do it because that’s what I get paid for. So, this week’s episode is brought to you by upstart. When it comes to paying off debt, it can often feel like an uphill battle, high interest rates resulting in minimum monthly payments.

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[00:43:11] Jeff: [00:43:11] me. Well, I mean it weirdly. Yeah. It’s somebody, I kind of say to myself as I try to go to sleep.

[00:43:17] Brett: [00:43:17] It’s a tongue twister. So that brings us to the top three picks.

[00:43:22] Jeff: [00:43:22] Okay.

[00:43:23] Brett: [00:43:23] I feel like we’re going to get nerdy now. Are we going to get nerdy?

[00:43:27] Jeff: [00:43:27] We’re definitely going to get a tiny bit nerdy. I’m going to have to do my own transition from like that epic ramble about cyberdecks, which you know, let’s keep going someday to my top picks, but I’m ready and I’m ready. I’m ready. I’m going to get succinct.

[00:43:42] Brett: [00:43:42] hit me with number one.

[00:43:45] Jeff: [00:43:45] The dump. I I have been taking my youngest son to the dump. They call them transfer stations now and, you know, whatever, you’re cleaning doing some remodeling, you got some junk to bring over there, whatever, but our dump is amazing. It’s not one of those [00:44:00] dumps. That’s like. You know, massive piles, right?

[00:44:03] Like it’s not that kind of dump. it’s the kind of dump that has a little section for metal, a section for mattresses gross a section for wood and a section for like tires. Right. And then there’s also a section for electronics, like the kind of stuff that has precious metals in it. And I love digging through the dump.

[00:44:21] Like always come out with something from the metal section. Often I get weights that I use for woodworking, like when you’re doing glue ups, right. Lumber’s really expensive right now, like two by fours, the prices quadrupled. And I got like 10, eight by eight, like, beams at the dump the other day, I felt like I am going to flip these.

[00:44:40] And and then my son and I were looking at the precious metals kind of computer area, there was a pristine iMac. Was it, is it the from 20 what? 13, there were white. They were white and boxy and you can take it apart with three Phillips screws. And you got the whole damn computer [00:45:00] apart and you can go in there and you can fix it up just like we used to do in the old days when you actually like had some agency over, like how over the life of your computer, right.

[00:45:08] And the health of your computer. So this was amazing to just like take apart an iMac and have everything just be kind of modular and you can pull it out. So the dump man, and there’s a guy at the dump. There’s always a guy at the dump that knows everything that like literally knows where the bodies are buried.

[00:45:23] So there’s a guy there that I always talk to. He’s got great history of the dump. So the dump that’s pick one.

[00:45:27] the dump go find your dump.

[00:45:28]Brett: [00:45:28] That is one of the most unique picks that the show has ever been privileged to host. I don’t know if I mentioned it, but I no longer do my own top three picks. So it’s straight on to number two for you

[00:45:40] Jeff: [00:45:40] Whoa. you

[00:45:41] don’t do your own like, like you just don’t do picks

[00:45:43] Brett: [00:45:43] moved I’ve moved beyond topics. It’s it’s just you

[00:45:47] Jeff: [00:45:47] grown. You’ve grown a lot. All right. My second pick is is a Udemy course which is one of these places where you can pay a little money and, you know, get a little money to the creator of the course.

[00:45:58]Patrick McDonald has has [00:46:00] a course called dot files from start to finish ish and it’s on Udemy. And it is fantastic. And what dot files, if you don’t know, dot files are like, they’re literally the files with dots before them in your computer, that they’re invisible files, they’re configuration files.

[00:46:17] They’re the files where all the action happens and dot files, like just creating sort of your own like dotfile universe. The intention of it is to be able to create something that allows you to rebuild your system as it is now, like instantly basically. So if your machine breaks down and you need to.

[00:46:37] You know, start a new machine up, you’ve got your top files and you can just like put them in and install your computer as it had been. It’s So once you get it, you know, ironed out, it’s extremely smooth. And I use a few computers for different projects. And so for me, I want them all to be identical and that’s always been something I’ve been extremely messy about.

[00:46:58] And now [00:47:00] I can just use my collection of dotfiles and a really important tool called dotbot to basically, you know, boot up a brand new computer, run a script. And it just becomes the computer that I knew the day before. Hopefully I’ve known for a long time because I used to have a situation where like I only ever had one computer and I had a great system going.

[00:47:21] And like I had my apps that I just had totally tweaked when I started operating with different computers, for different projects or different employers or whatever, all that stuff fell apart. And with dot files now.

[00:47:32] I can really just like I can build kind of a lasting configuration for my computer. And Patrick McDonald is an amazing teacher.

[00:47:40] And I personally, like, I’m not like a super sharp guy at the terminal. Like I can kind of my way around, but there were a lot of pieces I missed as I kind of taught myself how to be like a power user and a programmer. And Patrick McDonald does a beautiful job of just like walking you, right, [00:48:00] right.

[00:48:00] Through this whole process of understanding how your computer works at the configuration level from the terminal and really setting you up to be kind of confident in how you use that side of your machine. So anyway, it’s fantastic. Patrick McDonald, you’ve done a great job, sir.

[00:48:18] Brett: [00:48:18] All right. I thought was going to be a pick on its own. So I’m looking forward to seeing what number three is.

[00:48:24] Jeff: [00:48:24] oh man, hold on. Can we just say something about dotbot though?

[00:48:26] Brett: [00:48:26] Yes.

[00:48:27] Jeff: [00:48:27] Cause like dotbot basically gathers up. You’re yeah, Gathers up your dot files. Not exactly, but the point is dotbot is the glue. Dotbot is the thing that makes it possible to recreate your machine in minutes. And if you use Homebrew at all, a great example of like what dotbot folds into it.

[00:48:45] If you use Homebrew at all to install packages or apps through the casks or whatever you can create something called a brew file, which has all of the formulas and casks and everything that you’ve installed on your computer. It’s just a list of them. And it includes max Mac app store apps [00:49:00] through a fancy utility called MAs.

[00:49:03] And it can just take that list. Like if I did nothing else, I could just take that damn brew file and a simple dotbot set up and say, Hey, put all this stuff on my machine and it’ll look back at me and go, Hey, no problem. It’s beautiful.

[00:49:15]Brett: [00:49:15] I got bit, I tried to do it and I mixed in the utility called Mackup

[00:49:21] Jeff: [00:49:21] oh yeah.

[00:49:22] Brett: [00:49:22] And it was Mac up on its own would have worked for me, but I did a lot of my own kind of Dropbox SIM linking. when I tried to run the magical incantation to set up a new machine I spent a good two days of repairing all of the mistakes I’d made.

[00:49:44] Jeff: [00:49:44] Yeah. That’s the thing about liking to control your computer? Isn’t It

[00:49:49] Brett: [00:49:49] It is.

[00:49:49]Jeff: [00:49:49] My third pick man, my third pick is all this like steady, increased drum beat of UFO news. [00:50:00] Like, I have been interested in UFO’s like many since I was a small child. Right. But I was sort of. I was sort of deep in the like big green people with big eyes and whatever, like that whole scene. And it took me away from feeling like it could be something that’s real, just felt like I was, it was like being in the D&D I was like, I’m super into aliens, you know?

[00:50:24] And now have you seen this, your phone news that continues to come up now? Like the new Yorker had a huge feature piece about about sort of the history of the people who held the UFO, sort of who held the banner of, we have UFO’s and nobody wants to tell us right. All the way through to some of the more serious journalism and leaks of the last few years.

[00:50:45] So the Navy’s like officially even released footage of what they call, what they don’t call me up bows. They call them like they call them like unidentified aerial events or whatever,

[00:50:55] Brett: [00:50:55] That’s right.

[00:50:55] Jeff: [00:50:55] which is also the United

[00:50:57]Brett: [00:50:57] Emirates, that’s why it sounded familiar to me. [00:51:00] Maybe

[00:51:00] Jeff: [00:51:00] right. That’s right. But anyhow just today I was reading, there’s like three stories in the New York times today.

[00:51:06] And it’s because during Trump’s last days, I can’t believe, I just said his name. I’ve been trying not to do that. Anyway during dude’s last days there was a bill passed that called for government agencies to share in an unclassified report. What they know about UFO’s now I’m not so into UFO’s and I’m

[00:51:25] like, yeah, but are they going to do this and this?

[00:51:27] And we’re going to do area 51. And you know, I’m not, that’s not my deal, but like, I love the idea that we’ve reached a point. And if you just go search this stuff right now, and I can get some links for the show notes, we’ve reached a point where there are just videos circulating that are not from kooks.

[00:51:42] They are from Navy fighter planes. And you hear the pilots and this came from the Navy. And you hear the pilots going just as you or I would, dude. Did you see it? Whoa, you know, like it’s like, that’s the narration and it’s these things without wings or anything that are going [00:52:00] against wind and going faster than F18s

[00:52:02] and apparently we are not saying they’re not UFO’s, but we are saying we have no evidence that they are alien technology. That’s apparently how this report will come out. We’re not saying they’re not, we’re not saying they are, but man, it’s pretty exciting for me.

[00:52:16] Brett: [00:52:16] Sure. I it’s. The odds that an advanced alien race would find us travel light years to fly around in our atmosphere without making contact are pretty slim that said some of that stuff is very hard to explain. And I’m very curious.

[00:52:39] Jeff: [00:52:39] embrace the mystery brother. Embrace the mystery. That’s all. That’s all there is to it. That’s what makes me wide eyed and happy is just the kind of like, wait, what, like, even if we find out it’s the Russians, that’ll be kind of exciting. But anyhow that’s me and UFOs. Have flows.

[00:52:54] Brett: [00:52:54] So if people want to know more about all the crazy stuff you do, is there anywhere they can [00:53:00] find you online?

[00:53:01] Yeah.

[00:53:02] Jeff: [00:53:02] Well, the project I work for and with with Lived Experience Project is that discoverlexproject.com. I’m on GitHub, but all my stuff’s private. Oh, except I’m about to put a gist in there called kill your masters. And it’s how you can make sure that git doesn’t automatically create a master branch instead of, and instead creates a main branch, which is

[00:53:24] Brett: [00:53:24] They default to main for all the repos now.

[00:53:27] Jeff: [00:53:27] no GitHub does, but get doesn’t.

[00:53:29] Brett: [00:53:29] Oh yeah.

[00:53:31] Jeff: [00:53:31] So it’s only in your little private, personal git situation, you know?

[00:53:34] Brett: [00:53:34] Yeah.

[00:53:34]Jeff: [00:53:34] But that’s not that’s, you can find me. They’ve got a Twitter, jsguntzel. I retweet mostly Instagram at forestofthings there. I do my own content creation. That’s it.

[00:53:45] Brett: [00:53:45] All right. Well, thanks for being here today.

[00:53:49] Jeff: [00:53:49] I really appreciate it. I definitely have that feeling I have after any party I go to where I’m like what did I just say? And did it make any sense? And so there was something in there you liked [00:54:00] Brett or listener. That’s fantastic. And if you feel like this was a huge waste of your time, I’m sorry.

[00:54:05] You did that.

[00:54:08] Brett: [00:54:08] It’s not on you.

[00:54:11] Jeff: [00:54:11] All right, brother.

[00:54:12] Brett: [00:54:12] Thanks a lot.

[00:54:14] Jeff: [00:54:14] Take care.

This week’s guests are Betty and Colleen McCluskey. Betty is a Licensed Professional Counselor in the State of Wisconsin with a special interest in Autistic Spectrum Disorders. Colleen McCluskey is a graduate student with Asperger’s Syndrome attending the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire (UWEC) and pursuing an English Master’s Degree. They join Brett to talk about autism in females, living with autism, and where research on Autism Spectrum Disorder currently stands.

Upstart is the fast and easy way to pay off your debt with a personal loan –– all online. Visit Upstart.com/Systematic to get your fast approval with up-front rates.

Betty:

Colleen:

See you on Discord!

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Check out more episodes at systematicpod.com and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcasting app. Find Brett as @ttscoff on all social media platforms, and follow Systematic at @systmcast on Twitter.

Brett: [00:00:00] [00:00:00]My guests this week are Betty and Colleen McCluskey. Betty, you were on the show back in 2017 and we talked about autism and autism spectrum disorder. And since that time autism has become part of my life. A loved one in my life is going through the we’re learning a lot about ASD right now.

[00:00:27]So I definitely wanted to have you back and you brought your daughter Colleen with you. So I’m going to let you guys do your own intros buddy first just who you are and what you do.

[00:00:40] Betty: [00:00:40] Betty McCloskey. And I’m a clinician in private practice in Tomahawk, Wisconsin. I have a master’s. Degree in guidance and counseling and a licensed professional counselor in the state of Wisconsin since 1992, I think my journey into autism is personal and has turned professional. My husband, who is a [00:01:00] Rutgers PhD in earth, science was diagnosed with autism and our lovely daughter who’s joining us today.

[00:01:06] Colleen is also diagnosed in third grade with autism. I’m sure my cat has autism. So self-defense first off, got me really into the autism community. And the more I learned about this amazing group of people, the more I spend more time in there, I’m a member of the board of directors, of the state of Wisconsin autism society.

[00:01:30] I work with Wisconsin facets for mediated. IEP is for children who are underserved in public schools. I do all kinds of volunteer work in the community, but my passion is autism because the people I’m passionate about live there.

[00:01:45]Colleen: [00:01:45] Okay. So my name is Kelly McCluskey and I’m actually just graduating from the university of Wisconsin, Eau Claire with an English master’s degree, specifically in literary analysis and textual interpretation. That sounds like a mouthful, but [00:02:00] basically it’s a. I get paid to read about comic books.

[00:02:03] So that’s fun. No, but currently I have a BA in English from the university of Wisconsin, green Bay and associates in ethnic studies from the university of Wisconsin marathon County. I also have a teaching license earned through UWA green Bay. And like Betty said, I am autistic. I was diagnosed in third grade with Asperger’s syndrome, but as of the DSM-V Asperger’s syndrome has kind of been folded into the rest of the autistic diagnostic criteria.

[00:02:28] So I feel a little bit more comfortable just saying autism now. I consider myself a really strong advocate for people on the spectrum and people with Like sort of sister diagnoses ADHD and add tend to manifest with autism other instances of socio communicative disorders, which are basically higher than normal difficulty with neuro-typical social conventions which can be caused by just about anything, honestly.

[00:02:52]That’s very similar to so during my advocacy stuff I’ve presented at a lot of different conferences most [00:03:00] notably IWC, which is international writing center association. And that I believe was about two years ago. And I presented on how you might talk about autism in the college writing center.

[00:03:10]One of my big things is again, I’m an English major, but I also have a background in forensics and theater speaking forensics, not the crime kind. But. I think that being able to talk openly about autism and to acknowledge its existence along with any other mental health struggles, it’s like if we can acknowledge that it exists and kind of talk about it, frankly, then we’re one step closer to not just autism awareness, but autism acceptance.

[00:03:38]I’ve also presented at ASG w autism society of greater Wisconsin conference. Gosh, it’s, I think I’ve done it like probably close to five times now. Maybe more. I can’t remember. But we go every year. It’s very cool. It’s also awesome to see all of the new research and stuff that people have to talk about because it kind of keeps you on the ball with stuff like that.

[00:03:58]But yeah, that’s mostly [00:04:00] me. Apart from that, I’m really into like, drawing making art in general hiking. And my academic interests are, you are like comic books and experimental storytelling specifically, like with hypertext and stuff.

[00:04:12]Brett: [00:04:12] So, I’m curious about where autism research has gone in recent years. I’ve got a good kind of history I guess a rough background of what ASD is and how it was diagnosed, but I’m really curious about what’s fresh and new for autism research.

[00:04:29]Betty: [00:04:29] There’s not a lot, you know, there, there is a lot, there’s always something that’s new, but a lot of what we think of as new is repackaged old. And there are a lot of a lot of the newer things are based on ABA, which has been since the 1960s. Love us, L O V a S introduced us to applied behavioral analysis and it’s kind of a touchstone.

[00:04:54]There’s a lot of controversy surrounding it. And I re I was introduced to it in graduate school, of [00:05:00] course, in the early nineties. And we had what we had the, we called it the toast and jelly video because it was a little girl and they were showing us how to do applied behavioral analysis treatment.

[00:05:13] And the third, I would say, would you like some toast and jelly? And the little girl had echolalia, can we say, just repeat what they hear? And she would say, would you like some toast and jelly and therapists would be holding the toast with jelly and say, no, like some toast and jelly. And she would say, no, would you like some toast and jelly?

[00:05:32] So until she would say, I would like some toast and jelly, she couldn’t have her toast in jail. So think about Pavlov’s dogs and training them and to the bell and the food and the saliva. That’s kind of how ABA works. And while it’s very good in theory BF Skinner influenced love us to start this program.

[00:05:53] And if you remember BF Skinner with a Skinner box where he had the rats that pushed the little [00:06:00] levers, some people don’t know that BF Skinner also raised his daughter in a BF Skinner box until the age of about two and a half. Isn’t that frightening. And there are pictures. If you choose to look online, you will find BF Skinner’s daughter who spoke about it later as an adult.

[00:06:15]But let’s not go there. So what ABA does is it reinforces behavior through presence in treats and positive interaction. And there’s a lot of controversy surrounding that. So it’s morphed because we need a kinder, gentler way because everybody who doesn’t fit into that box pivotal response training is play-based, it’s interactive.

[00:06:40] It kind of sidesteps that one behavior, one reward thing. And it integrates the whole child into that type of therapy. So it’s a pivotal area of development, maybe, please. And thank you. So we’re working on social skills, maybe taking turns at recess. So interactive [00:07:00] skills. The early start Denver model, ESD M is another play-based therapy focuses on children ages one to four, lots of success with that.

[00:07:10] It’s a natural environment. It’s a playmat, rather than that therapist across the table from you format it looks at floor time where kids spend their time and how to help them interact depending on what their needs are. It’s a buffet, basically. You can go. I said, it’s like it’s the early Denver start model. There is a book called evidence-based practices and treatments for children with autism. And this is from fat Fred Volkmar V O L K M a R. He’s done a really nice job of laying out the different therapies that are available and for whom they work best.

[00:07:47]Colleen: [00:07:47] So some of the stuff that I’ve noticed especially as a fairly young adult on the autism spectrum it’s very cool because I’ve kind of been able to watch this focus go from children, which is still a major focus [00:08:00] because of course, early intervention is very important for identifying the struggles that can come with autism and helping someone who’s autistic interact with a world in which they’re a minority in the neurodiversity pool.

[00:08:10]But I’ve kind of been able to watch Everything evolved because I’ve been going to conference and kind of keeping an eye on the research. Ever since I was in high school and now I’m doing my master’s degree in college moving onto a PhD or year after next. So something really interesting that’s emerged that really interests me as a person who is interested in I’ve used, interested like 87 times.

[00:08:34] But no who kind of has this fascination with language is how the conversation around autism has become slightly different over the years. I feel like when I was much younger there, it wasn’t really quite felt out yet. Because the diagnosis only became like common or. Like noticeable within like the nineties.

[00:08:57] So one of the things that I think is really [00:09:00] interesting is the way that people have kind of gone back and reclaimed the word autistic in terms of, Oh, I’m an autistic person rather than a person with autism. And so it’s this identity first language movement. And the reason that people seem to be doing that is it’s like autism is part of who I am.

[00:09:20] In fact, it’s so ingrained into my personality and consciousness that it’s like, if there were a magical button you could push to suddenly take the autism away. I don’t know. I don’t know if I would be left at all. So instead of person with autism, like the autism is an object, like maybe a handbag. It’s autistic person, the autism is part of the person.

[00:09:41]And that goes interestingly against person first language, which is, which has been commonly employed in educational and therapeutic settings for a long time, which is person with autism. This is kind of unique to autism and other elements of neurodiversity because it’s like generally we wouldn’t say a [00:10:00] cancerous person.

[00:10:01] We would say a person with cancer because that’s a more malignant difference. And it’s something that we do want to go away and it doesn’t like inform their life positively. But identity first language is kind of this movement to reclaim the term, autistic it, take it back, make it ours. And the whole, like.

[00:10:21]There’s nothing wrong with a person first language. It really depends on what the person prefers, but I personally like identity first language. There’s also some really interesting stuff going on with functioning labels versus levels of assistance. One of the ways that autism is typically visualized is as a spectrum.

[00:10:39]But people tend to think of it as a spectrum from black to white, not like as a color wheel. And if we’re looking at it on a spectrum of black to white we could say that black is being very autistic and white as being closer to neuro-typical or vice versa. But that places, people who require more assistance on the low-functioning [00:11:00] end and people who require less assistance on the high functioning end, but really it’s more like a color wheel where anyone can be on any color at all.

[00:11:09] And color doesn’t really like inform good or bad because with that sort of dark to light continuum, we have, Oh, this is low functioning. This is bad. This is high functioning, this is good. This is close to neuro-typical. And it’s like the further towards that dark end, you get the less positive it is when really it’s like all that the functioning label really does is it makes people who are counted as low functioning.

[00:11:33]It kind of demeans them and infants and infantilizes them. And it’s like, Any success they have is ignored. And then when people are helping to the standard of being high functioning, it’s like, Oh, they’re basically neuro-typical. I don’t know why they would need that. And so it diminishes the needs that autistic people who present better have.

[00:11:58] And ultimately it’s better to just [00:12:00] kind of view it as the circle where it’s like fluid and you can move around. It’s like, I do that very well with public speaking. I do very well academically when it comes to social situations. I’m not that good when it comes to other situations like I do not have a driver’s license I’m working on that, but I’m 27 and I’ve, I haven’t been able to pass the test a lot.

[00:12:24]It has to do with blind spots and a lot of it has to do with my interpersonal relationship with the driving instructor or who’s T or the person who’s testing me, but it’s like, If you can’t drive, does that make you low functioning? No. If you can’t talk, does that make you low functioning? No.

[00:12:42]Betty: [00:12:42] Going back to the DSM-V when we talk about, and Colin keeps putting high functioning and low functioning in quotation marks as she speaks. And I think that’s important for people to understand because those aren’t excepted labels, if you will, any longer. And the DSM-V, the diagnostics and [00:13:00] statistics manual fifth edition has changed to the autism spectrum disorder.

[00:13:06] And then it’s requiring level of service at one, two or three, and one is requiring less service in three is requiring more service. So when we diagnosed now, We say that someone has an autism spectrum disorder requiring X number of service. And then there’s another part of it that comes with the schools.

[00:13:28]And we’re in Wisconsin and schools have their own way of diagnosing what we call educational autism, which is not a DSM five diagnosis. What it does do is it allows the school to determine if that student needs additional support in the educational system to make the level playing field with other students who are not neuro-diverse.

[00:13:57] It gives them an opportunity to say we can’t [00:14:00] provide those services, or we need time to provide those services. Here’s what we can do educationally for your child. So the idea of diagnosing autism versus a pop psychology diagnosis for autism is really different. And. When we look at those two things together and I’ll have parents in my office talking to me about, well, do you think my child is autistic?

[00:14:23] And of course they’re terrorized. I mean, who wouldn’t be? There’s so much information. That’s good. That’s bad. That’s out there. And I say your child meets criteria for an autism spectrum disorder requiring level two services. Here’s what that looks like. Well, we have to call the school while eventually, yeah, we do have to call the school, but we can’t do that today.

[00:14:45] It’s Friday. And it’s after three o’clock, but I think it’s important to know that the diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder is something that is made in one day, but he evolves over time and he can’t just jump right in [00:15:00] and cure it. All right. Now today.

[00:15:01] Brett: [00:15:01] So that makes a lot of sense with with children. There are a lot of people, multiple people in my life that didn’t find out they were autistic until they were in their forties or fifties. And have like, basically, and this is all the people in my life that I’m speaking of are female. And as I researched it, it turned out that women are better at masking better at developing the coping skills to go undetected.

[00:15:33] Y okay. How does autism manifest differently between men and women or boys and girls?

[00:15:41] Betty: [00:15:41] Actually it doesn’t manifest differently and that’s, what’s confusing. The symptomology is symptomology because that’s what matches a diagnostic criteria. But what happens is, and Colleen and I were actually talking about this afternoon is that girls are taught to be nice. Girls are sugar and [00:16:00] spice and everything nice.

[00:16:01] And boys are rats and snails and puppy dogs tails. And so when a boy comes in and he’s lost, I don’t know his tetherball tournament to his best friend. He might throw that tetherball and say, I hate tetherball and I’m never playing again. Okay. Well, if a girl comes in and does that, her mom says, Shane, that’s not nice.

[00:16:22] Susie is your best friend. We don’t talk to our best friends that way. And if the boy does it as like, yeah, that’s my boy. He’s going to get even next time. It’s socially acceptable in our gender specific society for that male to act out in different ways, to be more upset about transitions in environment, to be more upset about a foiled social interaction.

[00:16:48] But girls, we are taught to be nice. And especially in the Midwest, we’re really taught to be nice. So when, yep. When we look at women on the spectrum, it’s not [00:17:00] that they don’t have the symptomology. It’s been conditioned out of a lot of us, especially by the time we reach adulthood and things. Wait a minute.

[00:17:07] You people are all talking about how I grew up and told me I was wrong. And this was not what my life was supposed to be like. So you taught me to wear skirts with scratchy, underskirts and shoes. I didn’t like, and you taught me that I had wear makeup and hair heels. And now I’m finding out that there is now like all those things.

[00:17:28] It’s cause I have sensory difficulties and it’s hard to walk in heels. And I don’t like makeup because my skin is sensitive and the smell of it, bad boys don’t have to wear makeup. They don’t have to walk in heels. So we’re expecting more of females on the spectrum than we are of males, but it’s part of our society.

[00:17:47] It is gender specific.

[00:17:49]Colleen: [00:17:49] we talk about diagnostic criteria, my diagnosis Asperger’s syndrome is from the work of Hans Asperger who primarily studied [00:18:00] males white males specifically. And so the rates of diagnosis based on that criteria in females and people of color would be they’re not the same.

[00:18:09] That’s why male, autism or male Asperger’s usually presents itself more, obviously, because it’s like not only are girls kind of conditioned to be the nicer, more quiet, more. Okay. I don’t want to say submissive, but you could argue that. It’s like, for example, I think we all know about the special interest area of autism.

[00:18:30] And if a boy has a special interest in trains or dinosaurs, that’s like a normal boy thing. If it continues into adulthood, it’s like, okay, that’s a little funny.

[00:18:40]Betty: [00:18:40] Brett, when Colleen was diagnosed the person who did her diagnosis was someone who came to the school system once a year in our little tiny town of Tomahawk. And she said, well, Colleen, what’s some of your favorite things. And she started down the dinosaur and list and Dr.

[00:18:58] Chest and said, Oh, [00:19:00] you’re a dyno kid

[00:19:02]Colleen: [00:19:02] it’s common enough that it has a little name. I love it.

[00:19:05] Betty: [00:19:05] It does, but not typically in girls, typically in boys, girls do Barbies and my little pony and my, what are they? The pocket pals or whatever they are. There’s all kinds of little girl tiny toys.

[00:19:18] Colleen: [00:19:18] pet shop, Polly pocket,

[00:19:19] Betty: [00:19:19] Polly pockets.

[00:19:22]Colleen: [00:19:22] If someone has an obsessive interest in horses, for example, if that person is male, people are gonna be like, why do you like horses so much? But if that person is female, they’re going to be like, Oh, okay. Yeah, she’s a horse girl. And it’s like, if a girl has a special interest in makeup and if they can like list all of the new colors from Sephora, or like they have this encyclopedic knowledge of every foundation brand known to man, it’s like, that’s like, Oh, that’s a girl thing, not a wow.

[00:19:55] You know, a lot about that. And that’s a hobby. And so for a lot of feminine [00:20:00] interests they’re considered normal for girls and that’s That’s why a lot of it gets overlooked in terms of that particular piece of criteria.

[00:20:09]Brett: [00:20:09] So in girls with autism what type of masking do girls growing up? Let’s say girls who are diagnosed at a young age, like you were Colleen. What coping skills did you develop growing up in like grade school and middle school? What were the big things that you had to compensate for?

[00:20:31]Colleen: [00:20:31] Some of the stuff I had to compensate for was and I learned this retroactively, but one of the big things was the fact that people with autism do not have, again, I do not have I’m not hard wired to automatically pick up on social skills. Basically all of my social skills are learned. I like to use a computer metaphor here because it’s like some computer systems come with like a video editor or something built in, [00:21:00] but if the computer doesn’t have that, you have to install a separate program to do that.

[00:21:04] So like, technically it can do that, but you need to put that on first. And so it’s like, Colleen doesn’t know how to make eye contact. And so I noticed that people were really weird about that. And so I learned that you can look just beyond the head in the middle of the eyes at the clavicles, anything like that.

[00:21:25]As long as you don’t do it too long, but that was another one. It was a lot of, it was mimicry without a true understanding of why. And that was one of the most frustrating things because it’s like, all right, why do we do small talk? Why are we talking about. Breaking up with such and who’s dating who and all of this stuff.

[00:21:44] I’m like, I should not be private. And I just kind of want along with a lot of things that people said, and I kind of kept to myself because I’m like, you know what? I don’t want to get embroiled in all of this [00:22:00] teenage angst and nonsense. So, when I was in middle to high school I just, I kinda stayed away from that.

[00:22:07]When I got into early college though I got a much better understanding of how to interact with people. And I had kind of been building that over middle of high school, stuff like that, but I was also able to be a lot more open about my diagnosis because in college people are much more accepting.

[00:22:24]Instead of as cutthroat as middle schoolers and high schoolers can be

[00:22:28]Brett: [00:22:28] and Betty, you’ve talked mostly about children that you work with. Do you work with adults as well

[00:22:34] Betty: [00:22:34] I do, and I love working with adults.

[00:22:36] What’s so cool about working with adults who’ve been recently diagnosed is that there’s that realization that you’ve been living a really great and normal life, all things considered, but here’s an explanation for the difficulties that you’ve had all this time.

[00:22:55]I took my car to the shop two months ago for its 40,000 mile checkup and it was running really [00:23:00] rough really rough. Well, this isn’t good. I want share my, I won’t share what I drive, but I love my little car. And so the guy who’s been working at the shop for, I don’t know, eight years says, well, I can’t imagine why it’s running rough.

[00:23:16] It’s not that old. So he opens up the hood and he says, well, you have an oil leak. And I said, Oh my gosh, seriously, why would that happen? And then he’s he fixes me with that, look that mom, what did you do to your car look? And he says, did you do anything to this oil cap? I said, yeah. You know, as a matter of fact, it did one oil, about six months ago, he said, well, you didn’t put it on tape.

[00:23:39] We’ll clean it up the best we can. So I’d been running my car for a couple of, and it was going to chunky. I’m thinking I got to get it in. I got to get it in. And when I finally get it in, it’s so easy as yeah. If I had a tightened up that oil cap when I put it in that half a court a couple months ago.

[00:23:56] And I think that when adults get that. Autism [00:24:00] diagnosis. It’s like, Oh, that’s what it was. Well, it’s not as easy as tightening the oil cap and cleaning up the mess, but it certainly is. It’s such a, it’s such a wonderful explanation for what’s gone on for so long and being able to say, here’s some great resources here.

[00:24:19] Watch this movie, talk to these people, join this conference. You can figure it out too. Cause we all did. And I think that’s, what’s the best thing about working with adults is because it’s just, it’s so great to see that Dawn

[00:24:33] Brett: [00:24:33] What do adults who are diagnosed later in life, do they make changes or is the diagnosis moral way to explain the way they are?

[00:24:43] Colleen: [00:24:43] I think that it evolves as the person evolves. When I was diagnosed as a child, I was like, okay, there’s a reason that I can’t get what everyone else does. There’s a reason that I’m not like everyone else, but as an adult sometimes I’ve just been like, I don’t feel like I need [00:25:00] to change anything right now.

[00:25:01] I don’t think that there’s a need, but if I notice something that I’m having difficulty with, I’ll be like, okay. So I noticed that like, For example, I used to not be as good as at reading facial expressions as I am now. And I asked my mom one time. So what is this? And I’m doing like, like the little polite cat smile.

[00:25:22] If we if we’ve seen that meme where it’s just like corners of the mouth, go up, smile, doesn’t reach the eyes. People do it when they pass each other in the hallway or the grocery store. And she’s like, that’s just a thing people do. Here’s here’s what I know about it. And I’m like, okay. And then I I was taking a socio-linguistics class, so I asked my professor like, what is this?

[00:25:42] And she’s like, Oh, that’s a closed mouth, non douchey and smile. And people do it to establish a, I see you. And I am not a hostile. And in fact, I’m happy that you’re here. But it’s more of a performative thing and I’m like, Oh, interesting. And actually that socio-linguistics [00:26:00] class really kind of changed my life because it showed me that there’s like a manual for social interaction.

[00:26:05] It’s like, all of these things that we do, like small talk serves to kind of it’s conversational foreplay, basically. It says I’m all right. You’re all right. Is there anything really bothering you? No, let’s engage in conversation. It’s kind of just testing the water and there are all sorts of things like that.

[00:26:23] Like adjacency pairs. Hello. How are you? Oh, I’m doing good. How are you? Oh, I’m good. But there’s the expectation to answer in a specific way that folks on the spectrum don’t always get. And so sometimes other autistic people that I’ve worked with or talk to they’re like, Oh yeah. So I noticed I was having a lot of trouble making friends or socializing at work or.

[00:26:46]Again, there’s other parts too, other than being social, or like doing my planner or figuring out where to put stuff now that I live on my own and that’s the executive function. And it’s like, okay, if it’s hindering your life in [00:27:00] some way, then you might need to address it. But so there’s the component of wanting to get services, which I’m sure Betty can tell us a little bit more about.

[00:27:07]Betty: [00:27:07] W I find that when I work with adults with a recent diagnosis, the changes that they make are not so much personality or personal changes, but usually we’re working on changes that we make in lifestyle and maybe in employment. I might have somebody who’s been a formal referral from an employer for whatever kind of difficulty they have in the workplace.

[00:27:33] And as we start to talk and I say, wow, let’s do some screening here. Cause you’re sounding kind of autistic to me. And with, you know, years of practice, I kind of can see it right away. And I can say, okay let’s talk about your work environment. And the fans, but the fans, like what’s that blowing air?

[00:27:52] What does that do to you? The sound of the fan goes through my head like a knife. Great. Can we put you out [00:28:00] in the stock room? Cause maybe that’ll make your life so much easier because that’s got a different heating element or I had somebody who worked for the U S P S for awhile. Great. At delivery.

[00:28:12] Rural route delivery was fantastic. Cause love to speed. Had a great vehicle. But what we don’t know about postal carriers in a small community is that you’ve got this little tiny cubicle that’s maybe. Four feet square. And it’s got all this tiny slots for all the mail on your road, and you have to put all the mail in all the slots and then you deliver it from there.

[00:28:34] That’s how you start your mail. Claustrophobia didn’t work for this guy. So can somebody else do that? And then he can drive the route. Sure. Why not? There’s other people who like small spaces, but really getting the explanation that it is an autism diagnosis. And then being able to look at some of the symptomology and say, this one’s made this.

[00:28:57] One’s not, this one’s me. No [00:29:00] wonder I have trouble with my nephew who can’t seem to put down his deodorant made by the ax company. And he smells terrible to me. So I can’t go near this teenager. He’s trying hard, but it doesn’t work for me. Can we just go unscented on the weekends? We spend time together.

[00:29:19] And learning those things about you and why your environment is so difficult makes changes that makes you living in the neurotypical world so much easier.

[00:29:29]Brett: [00:29:29] Like I have ADHD and I was diagnosed in, I think my late twenties and it didn’t require like I was with ADHD. I use stimulants, I get treatment. It’s manageable because of that. But just having that explanation for why things had been difficult for me up to that point was a huge relief. Like that was even if I had not done anything else with it, if I had not researched, if I had not treated it, [00:30:00] just having that explanation.

[00:30:01] So I could go back to all of the rough parts of my childhood and say, that makes sense. It makes perfect sense. Now.

[00:30:09] Betty: [00:30:09] It does it, it gives you a permission. Or absolution to be the person that you’ve always known you were, and that’s what the adult diagnosis does. It’s funny you say that Brett, because one of my favorite ADHD books is written for teenage boys and it’s called human. I’m not crazy, lazy or stupid.

[00:30:29] And I love that so much because it’s what they tell you from the moment that you act inappropriately and impulsively. And it is such a beautiful way to say, look here, this was written just for you. And when I give those to teenage person, like, where’s my name in here on page one introduction, you’re there.

[00:30:51]So it’s really it. Isn’t so nice to know the explanation for the behaviors and the thoughts and the difficulties.

[00:30:58] Brett: [00:30:58] Well, because then you can also [00:31:00] not see those things as character or like moral defects. You can see them as a personality traits instead of character flaws. And I think that’s important in both ADHD and ASD.

[00:31:13]Betty: [00:31:13] It is. And you know, if you think about it cause ASD is a development, a neurodevelopmental disorder, so is ADHD and they’re both invisible disabilities. But if we think about someone who has a physical disability that we can actually see, then we say, well, of course, John is not going to try out for the bowling team.

[00:31:35] He has to special Olympics for that because bowling was special. Olympics uses a wheelchair and we can’t. So we, if we could see that invisible disability in people with a neurodevelopmental disorder, then we can know that here’s an explanation, but we don’t do that as neurotypicals we just say, well, that’s kind of weird, but did you realize that person ate their entire [00:32:00] salad with their hands?

[00:32:01]Did it occur to you that perhaps they can’t stand the clink of the metal against their teeth and you didn’t offer any other kind of silverware, so they had to use your hands.

[00:32:09]Brett: [00:32:09] I hadn’t even considered that possibility.

[00:32:12]Colleen: [00:32:12] Yeah it’s a big mood. I think that if I had been in a situation where I’d been diagnosed as an adult the feeling that I had when I was a child would have been even stronger. And sometimes I actually do have to go back and remind myself that these are not moral failings. These are an autistic trait that you can’t change.

[00:32:32]And it can be very frustrating sometimes because it’s like, okay I’ve done as much as I can do for today. And I can’t go to the supermarket because the buzzing of the lights and all of the people and the sound of the cart will make me go into overload. And I’ll just probably. Have a meltdown after I get into the car and I don’t want to do that to myself.

[00:32:55] It’s like, God, what’s wrong with me that I can’t do that. It’s like, [00:33:00] there’s nothing wrong with you. It’s just that your brain is built differently. And other people have trouble with different things too. It’s like everyone has things that are easy and things that are difficult. And because of the architecture of your mind, going to the store is difficult for you.

[00:33:16]But things that other people would find difficult, like reading a 10 page paper in the span of 24 hours come incredibly easily. And it’s like, that’s one of those things where it’s this isn’t bad. It’s just something that exists that you have to work with. And I find that’s really positive for me cause I’ll go like, okay, I can’t, I’m very frustrated because I can’t do this thing or I don’t understand why I can do this so easily.

[00:33:44] And my friends or partner can’t and it’s like, Brain’s built differently. You wouldn’t expect a motorcycle to do what a Jeep does. Like they’re both vehicles, but they work slightly different. So that’s the vibe.

[00:33:58] Brett: [00:33:58] When you talked about [00:34:00] how it was easier for you to talk about ASD in once you get to college when you’re meeting new people now, at what point do you. Bring up ASD in the conversation. Is that, I mean, do you lead with higher I’m Kelly and I’m autistic or is that something you have to get to know people before it comes up?

[00:34:18]Colleen: [00:34:18] There are some parts of it that I have to share immediately just for practicality sake. One of those things is face blindness or prospect nausea. I believe I’m pronouncing that correctly. I haven’t ever actually gotten a official diagnosis of that, but it’s pretty obvious. And what face blindness is it’s like, okay.

[00:34:39]So here we have Bob and Steve and Bob and Steve are both about the same height. They both have Brown hair. They both have light skin. I could go for like a whole week without realizing that Bob and Steve are two different people. It has happened and it continues to happen. And it is very strange. Um, I do, I have to say.

[00:34:58] Okay. [00:35:00] So something you need to know about me is that I have trouble with faces. It’s actually face blindness. It’s a symptom of a diagnosis that I have. I don’t always specify that it’s autism until I kind of understand where the person is with their understanding of autism, because it’s like when I was in, gosh when I was going into fourth grade

[00:35:22] Betty: [00:35:22] Should I tell that

[00:35:23]Colleen: [00:35:23] Please tell the story. You do it better than

[00:35:25] Betty: [00:35:25] I went to talk to her teacher to say, okay, because she was born in 93, when the Asperger’s diagnosis first came in. So fourth grade, our small town doesn’t have a whole lot of information. So I got to talk to the teacher and say, you’ve got this kind of a child coming in.

[00:35:42] Let me give you a few of the positive things in a few of the concerns that I have as a parent. And she says, Oh, I know all about Colleen. I’ve been expecting her now. I think I’m going to put her in this area of the classroom because I understand that she’ll need five feet of personal space on either side.

[00:35:59] And does [00:36:00] she have any special appliances or anything? Is she in wheelchair? I was like, Oh, Carol, you’re so wonderful to think of all those amazing things. You’ll never know that she’s autistic when you look at her or when you listen to her, but here let’s talk about things that might be a concern for you because people think they know what they know and trying to determine what level of understanding they have of that diagnosis can be tricky at best.

[00:36:27]Colleen: [00:36:27] Sometimes, if I’m working with someone who I know will not understand like I had a job working as a waitress a couple years ago. And one of my colleagues was an older gentleman and he was our cook. And I had to tell him I was hard of hearing. Because Tory processing difficulty due to autism spectrum disorder is not something that is going to be in this guy’s vocabulary.

[00:36:51]And sometimes it’s easier to just say, okay, I’m really bad with faces. It’s a thing. It has a name, or, you know, I [00:37:00] can be hard of hearing. It runs in my family. It’s not bad enough to have a hearing aid, but just make sure that you repeat stuff if I ask. But if it’s someone who I know has an interest in neurodiversity, if they have an interest in education and they probably have a decent base of knowledge, I can be like, okay, I’m what you would call low assistance, autistic which might be called high functioning or Asperger’s syndrome, depending on what you’re familiar with.

[00:37:25]And by that point they usually know me pretty well, so it doesn’t really influence their perception of me as a person. But of course if I’m like at a conference or something and I’m talking to a guy who is very obviously flapping or some lady, who’s very obviously chewing on something, I’m like, Oh, cool.

[00:37:41] So when did you get diagnosed? And they’re like, Oh, fourth grade. And I’m like, Oh, big mood. And then we just go from there.

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[00:39:36]Top 3 Picks [00:39:36]

[00:39:36] Well, we have some extra top picks to get to today. So I want to switch over because I assume this conversation will continue based on the the topics I’ve seen already. So let’s do it. Let’s start with Betty and we’ll do two from Betty and two from Colleen. And then if there are extras to spill over, we’ll go back.

[00:39:58] Betty: [00:39:59] W [00:40:00] one of the things I’m loving right now is Jennifer Cook. O’Tooles book called autism in heels, and she’s much lotted, much publicized and widely spoken about females with autism spectrum disorder. And her work is a personal memoir. So I’m loving her book right now. It’s been out about two years and of course my first and foremost, favorite is Tony Attwood.

[00:40:27] Asperger’s because he is, he’s not Australian. And he’s an amazing, amazingly intelligent man who talks so much about it. And this book, while we don’t always like the title is. Probably the Seminole work on, put it in quotes. High-functioning autism. He’s done such an excellent job of explaining it. And for parents and people who support those on the autism spectrum, especially those requiring less services.

[00:40:56] This is an excellent book.

[00:40:58] Brett: [00:40:58] It’s mentioned real quick. [00:41:00] Why the title makes people uncomfortable these days? The Asperger’s word.

[00:41:04]Betty: [00:41:04] Well, Hans Asperger was a German who studied Kelly was talking about him earlier, who studied young boys and why they were so different. But if they were different enough, they were institutionalized and not always allowed to live. And so Hans Asperger has fallen out of favor with the autism community as so many of those early German scientists have his work was still invaluable, but the Asperger’s label may sit really hard for a lot of people. What to admit that they have it and makes it hard for clinicians who are sensitive to give that diagnosis as well.

[00:41:45]Colleen: [00:41:45] So it’s very fortunate that the Asperger’s diagnosis has been absorbed into autism as a whole. There was also kind of a thing where people thought Asperger’s and autism are two separate things. Whereas today we know [00:42:00] that they’re all part of the same thing, but you would have what some presenters have called ASPE supremacy, where it’s like, Oh, we’re higher functioning than those autistic people.

[00:42:12] And it kind of. Did its job, like the way that Hans Asperger had planned it, like if these autistic kids are high functioning enough, they’ll get saved. If these autistic kids are low functioning enough, they won’t get saved. And it served to divide the community in a way that just wasn’t cool. And I’m glad that a lot of people are more aware of it now, because that means that we can be stronger together.

[00:42:38]But yeah.

[00:42:40] Brett: [00:42:40] So, but that was too in rapid succession, Betty, faster than I thought you want to throw one more in.

[00:42:45]Betty: [00:42:45] The temple Grandin movie is a made for television movie from, I don’t even know how many years ago, maybe 10 and Claire Danes played temple Grandin to a T, but I think what’s so awesome about that movie is [00:43:00] not just that it’s a movie about temple grand and she’s probably the most famous female in the United States.

[00:43:06] Ways with autism, but the fact that she was the director and in that movie, she has been able to give such a really excellent depiction of the visual thinking. That’s so very common to people on the autism spectrum. And she talks about her ability to understand things in different ways, because of her visual thinking style.

[00:43:33] And that’s a hard concept for most neurotypicals to get, because don’t, we all think about pictures. If you tell me you have a dog, I say, what kind you say, I have a black lab. I have a picture of a black lab, but for someone who has that type of visual thinking, it’s you have a dog. Now, I’ve got every Google image in the world instantly flashing through my brain until you say, I have a black.

[00:43:59] Now I have [00:44:00] all the black dogs and they do say lamb, and then I can get it down farther. So my search engine works at top speed more than yours has too, because I don’t do words, not like you. I do words like a visual thinker. So in that movie, when she shows the visual thinking process, it’s really incredible and so helpful for us.

[00:44:23] Neurotypicals who don’t think visually to understand the people we support. So the movie awesome. Totally awesome. Colleen and I watched it together the first time we watched it and it’s sad and poignant at the same time. I think maybe you were in high school. And as I look over at her at the end of the movie, tears raining down her face and I’m like, are you okay?

[00:44:47] You know, it’s the mom, it’s the, I need to comfort my baby mom. And she goes, You mean I’m normal mom. I could be normal. Like, yeah. I didn’t know. You didn’t think you [00:45:00] could be. But it was such a really nice realization for her that here’s someone who’s so very famous and so very common at the same time.

[00:45:10] So very down to earth and living her best life the way she wants to. And for Colleen to sit there and go, I could be normal said to me, this is a great movie because now I’ve learned that I can live my best life too.

[00:45:24] Brett: [00:45:24] Well, that had to be kind of emotional for you too, to hear that she didn’t up until that point realized she could be normal.

[00:45:33] Betty: [00:45:33] Oh, really. And I’d been, this is my job. I’ve been using best practices and doing everything I could to encourage the social skills and all the things we need to do. And I like to think I’m pretty good at it. But there, she was still with everything we’d done together and she’d accomplished on her own going.

[00:45:53] I could be normal, like, wow. Obviously I’ve missed something here. Haven’t I?

[00:46:00] [00:46:00] Brett: [00:46:00] Well, it’s sounds like a movie I need to see though. Do you know if it’s streaming

[00:46:04] Betty: [00:46:04] It is I might be on Netflix. I’ve looked at it recently and I saw it, but stuff doesn’t stay there forever.

[00:46:10]Brett: [00:46:10] All right. Well, Colleen, give us a couple top picks.

[00:46:14]Colleen: [00:46:14] Okay. I would like to second Betty’s recommendation for the temple Grandin movie. Just because it doesn’t really, it doesn’t romanticize what it’s like to have autism, and that can be common because it’s like, Oh, autism is a superpower. Autism is unique and excellent. And I’m like, it can be in a lot of very good ways, but the reality of it is that not all people are as accepting as they could be and the world is not built for people with autism.

[00:46:44]We can make it better. We can use that nice universal design approach to either create spaces and services or to improve spaces and services retroactively. But there are a couple of scenes that are very emotional. One of them is When temple is experiencing [00:47:00] bullying from her coworkers at the meat plant, and it’s just brutal.

[00:47:04] It’s incredible. And that really resonated with me because I had similar experiences when I was in middle and high school. And I really enjoy that the movie doesn’t throw or it doesn’t pull any punches. It provides a very unbiased look at what Temple’s life was like through childhood and early adulthood.

[00:47:25]So it doesn’t sugar coat things, but it’s not completely hopeless either. I feel like it’s a very balanced depiction. And again for folks watching you’ll want to check out like any content warnings related to it because there is a lot of ableism. There is a lot of misogyny that she faces as she goes through her life.

[00:47:43] But again, It’s excellent. Another thing that I would recommend are any of temples autobiographies, including the one that the movie is based on. One that I really like is the autistic brain helping different kinds of minds succeed. And this [00:48:00] was written back when we had more of the high functioning, low functioning dichotomy.

[00:48:04] And so it’s aimed a little bit more at people who have skills within the social sphere as opposed to people who may be non-verbal or challenged in other ways, but at the same time, it’s important to realize that everyone has different needs. And this book helps with that, but she goes into how people in Silicon Valley may have autism people who Work in these jobs where it’s like different kinds of intelligence, different perspectives are necessary to succeed.

[00:48:33] And she talks about these are the basic skills that any person should learn. It’s like learn to be clean and learn to be on time. Learned to say, please, and thank you. And. I just think that’s so important because it establishes a baseline of respect for the people around you. And in turn, hopefully they’ll respect you, but it shows that you’re trying and that you’re on their wavelength too, because this may be a bit [00:49:00] controversial, but I think that sometimes we can be, so open-minded that our brains fall out a little bit.

[00:49:05]It can be easy to say that, Oh, this person has this diagnosis. They can do whatever they want. It’s an explanation, not an excuse. And it’s like, yes, I understand that you went into meltdown. And I do know that you couldn’t control what you were saying, but you said some very hurtful things. And I need to know that you’re not mad at me.

[00:49:29]And so it kind of establishes this baseline of just respect. Cause it’s like. I understand that I can be hard to work with. I know I can per separate on lots of things and not everyone is good with that. And so I always ask, okay. I feel like I’m talking a lot. Do do you want to take a break or if you ask me this question, I’m going to go on and on about one of my interests.

[00:49:52]I hope you’re ready for that. And sometimes I even give people like a little clue and they can be like, Colleen, I need to go take a drink now. [00:50:00] Preferably non-alcoholic. But we never know. But it’s the same kind of respect I would expect for anybody else. It’s like, okay. I Bette can you jump in with an example?

[00:50:13] That’s more generalized please?

[00:50:14]Betty: [00:50:14] You mean for per separation?

[00:50:16]Colleen: [00:50:16] No, just a thing that someone does that might be annoying

[00:50:20] Betty: [00:50:20] Oh my goodness.

[00:50:21] Colleen: [00:50:21] or disruptive.

[00:50:22]Betty: [00:50:22] I actually gosh, there’s so many to choose from. Isn’t there. I had a little boy for a while. And I have permission to tell some things about him and he did the keening, which is that high pitched kind of, and I won’t do it cause it can be so annoying. It’s a kind of a high pitched, wail or scream.

[00:50:42] That’s really hard. And then would STEM with his hand, flapping his hand directly in front of his face. And my office is in a small suite of offices and he would do that out in the main office. And people in the other suites finally came to me and said, listen they’re our customers are kind of scared here.

[00:51:00] [00:51:00] They don’t know if they should call social services or they should go home. Can we work on that? So helping him to recognize that behavior was not appropriate in this place was really a nice developmental milestone for him. To learn that other people can see him in a different way. So it was really effective to help him learn more about himself in the, in other words, people’s environments and how he fits into the narrative fickle world.

[00:51:27] But there’s all kinds of things. I mean, shoot. Yeah, everybody has something they do that annoys someone else. But in the neuro-typical world, we accept things in different ways, hand flapping, gum chewing, which one’s worse. I don’t know if you’re going to snap your gum at me three times every minute, I’m going to be pretty annoyed.

[00:51:47]If flap and it’s going to be quiet and you’re behind me, I don’t care. So it depends on the situation. It depends on the people.

[00:51:54]Colleen: [00:51:54] At autism conference, one of our keynote speakers gave an absolutely excellent analogy for [00:52:00] this. Just like understanding that your particular quirks may not be conducive to people around you and being just respectful of them. The idea of guide dogs, it’s like if you have to have a seeing eye dog or an emotional support animal, and it has to go everywhere with you, that’s negotiable, but also you have people who have been traumatized by dogs.

[00:52:24] Maybe they’ve been bitten. Maybe they’ve been barked at perhaps there’s been a police incident that scared them. Or they might have a very strong allergy. It’s all about negotiating, what works and what doesn’t, because it’s like, Okay. If this is incredibly annoying, maybe I can do this instead under the table, it’ll still get the need met.

[00:52:46] Or if I feel the need to spin around in circles, I can take breaks to do that. We do that with our kids. In elementary school, it’s like, okay, Bob, you need to go to the sensory room. Okay. Let’s go in there and you [00:53:00] can blow off some steam and come back. And it’s like, if you phrase it the right way, most people are all right with it.

[00:53:06]So that’s kind of what I was getting at there. But apart from Temple’s book, I would also recommend near a wonderful asking autistic video series by amethyst boy Scheiber and amethyst is non-binary. And they do an excellent job of talking about a lot of major issues in their asking autistic series.

[00:53:25]Like what is masking? What is stemming what are things you should never say to someone who was autistic? What is X, Y, and Z? It’s a series of probably 10 or so videos. And it’s very excellent. They are also autistic. If the title wasn’t something super obvious, but it’s very cool.

[00:53:42] They’re also active on Twitter and tumbler as well. If you go to their YouTube channel, which I think we can link in the description they have a link tree just like kind of, they also do speaking engagements and stuff, so very cool.

[00:53:54] Brett: [00:53:54] Awesome. All right. Well, thank you both for showing up today, Betty. It was great to talk [00:54:00] to you again and Colleen, it’s great to meet you.

[00:54:02]Colleen: [00:54:02] And thanks for having me on as well. I really appreciate it.

[00:54:05] Brett: [00:54:05] Yeah, no, your insight was excellent. I really appreciate it. And and thanks everyone for tuning in. We’re actually coming to the end of a season. So stay tuned for the last couple episodes of systematic before a little break.

This week’s guest is Patrick Rhone, writer, blogger, technology consultant, mental health advocate and home restoration enthusiast. He joins Brett to talk mental health, home restoration, and some of his favorite tools.

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Patrick and Brett

Brett: [00:00:00] [00:00:00]

[00:00:07] This week’s episode is brought to you by PDF pen and upstart.com. My guest this week is Patrick Rhone. It’s been, uh, since about 2016, since you’ve been on, what are, you introduce yourself these days?

[00:00:26] Patrick: [00:00:26] Um, well, I guess I’m still a writer. Um, I am still a blogger. I am still a technology consultant. Uh, I am, uh, still, uh, very, uh, deeply involved in, um, um, mental health as a, uh, as a passion, um, and a, and an advocate and, uh, and a, um, you know, mental illness, survivor myself. Um, and, uh, I [00:01:00] also, uh, found on now and the home restoration game, uh, Where, where, uh, I, uh, my wife and I have long been an interest in property ownership and whatnot, but now we are actively like, like looking for properties to purchase and to fix up and to themsel.

[00:01:26] But one at a time, at least I’m trying to hold her.

[00:01:32] Brett: [00:01:32] Yeah, well, uh, you have, uh, you have, you’ve journaled your, uh, your kind of, uh, progress through at least one home. Now, how many, how many homes have you done?

[00:01:43] Patrick: [00:01:43] So this really started back in 2011. We bought a house for $7,200.

[00:01:54] Brett: [00:01:54] Wow.

[00:01:55] Patrick: [00:01:55] Um, and that was all on closing costs and everything, $7,200. [00:02:00] Um, and, but it was a category, two vacant building. I E what that means is, uh, you know, the, the system, the city had listed it as a vacant building, and there are certain things that had to be done within a certain period of time in order to purchase this property.

[00:02:19] Um, you had to pledge to get these things done in that period of time. Um, and, uh, uh, Kind of had to be done, you know? Well, um, yeah, you know, it was going to be inspected and the, he was going to be watching and that sort of thing. Um, and so, uh, and so yeah, $7,200 and we, the nice thing about buying a home that needs a lot of work, um, is that, uh, especially for very little money is that you can kind of.

[00:02:54] Learn how to do a lot of this stuff by diving in and trying it, bring it up [00:03:00] and trying again, because you know, what do you have to lose? It’s only somebody $200. So if you make a $500 mistake, well, you know, Hey, you’re, you’re still way ahead. Um, Hmm. So, uh, and so, yeah, we, uh, we still own that house. Uh, it is currently, uh, the one that my, the one my dad lives in, um, Uh, and we kind of bought it with that in mind with the idea that, Hey, one of our parents may need, may need some help, you know, coming up, they’re not getting any younger and you know, who knows they might need a place to be and, you know, and, uh, at an affordable price or maybe even no price at all.

[00:03:44] And we may need to put them up somewhere and we’d rather not have them live with us. Uh, so yeah, we kind of bought it without purpose in mind, but we live in an 1886, a Victorian home. And [00:04:00] so, uh, that my wife purchased in 1993 as a HUD home. Um, And, uh, and so once again, uh, it was in a major disrepair. Got it.

[00:04:12] Very cheap. Uh, she, and, uh, and Mr. Gladhill number one, uh, put a lot of time into it, fixing it up, and then, uh, they divorced. And then when I came into the scene, uh, you know, we continued on projects around here.

[00:04:27] Brett: [00:04:27] So like I’ve watched you like gut, uh, some of these homes that you’ve worked on, have you done the same to your own home?

[00:04:35] Patrick: [00:04:35] uh, well, I mean, certainly two rooms, uh, in, in my, in the home and, and really with, with the, the one I’m working on now, you know, we’re, we’re gutting rooms, right. That need to be the need to be gutted. Um, you know, but there, and the nice thing about the house we’re doing now is that there’s only really.

[00:04:59] Really [00:05:00] three of those rooms that really need that kind of gutting the rest of everything else is pretty. Okay. And it’s going to be mostly, yeah, mostly kind of clean up and cosmetic stuff, but, um, but certainly with the, with the new one. Um, but, but yeah, certainly in this one, um, the room that is currently our library, um, had, uh, You know, the plaster literally falling off the walls.

[00:05:26] And it was, I mean, it was, it was pretty bad, you know? Um, and, uh, same with, uh, what is currently, um, are mine and my wife’s bedroom, similar sort of thing. I mean, it was, you know, cracked, plaster, everything everywhere and, you know, just the original, the pine floors, um, because it was not, it was not an unusual, um, cost saving measure in Victorian times to, um, uh, put a fair bit of [00:06:00] money into the public spaces in the home.

[00:06:03] I E the first floor, um, you know, and the dining room and the living room of the parlor and that sort of thing. Um, and then not put as much money into the second floor. And the non-public spaces. Um, and so, uh, it was not unusual. Uh, we’d like to think, Oh, they, you know, had these beautiful hardwood floors throughout not, was not the case with a lot of Victorian homes.

[00:06:28] Those nice floors on the second floor were they usually added later. Oh, and, uh, originally we’re just a, um, um, pine or, or, or, um, or Alder or Poplar. Poplar was very, um, uh, very popular choice, um, for, uh, for floors. And it was just kind of standard plank flooring that then they would put, um, um, a four cloth over, um, which was, um, basically think of it like, um, like carpeting, except it [00:07:00] was, it’s kind of the mid point between carpeting and a rug is essentially a rug that, um, that you tack down to the floor.

[00:07:09] Um, so, um, it would take up the whole, the whole room, the whole space, but it would just be tacked down, uh, along the edges. And it would usually

[00:07:20] Brett: [00:07:20] opposed to glued.

[00:07:21] Patrick: [00:07:21] As opposed to glued. Yes. Um, uh, and, and that’s usually what you would find on the second floor of many middle-class Victorian homes. Um, and that’s your history lesson for the day?

[00:07:35] Brett: [00:07:35] I got it.

[00:07:36] Patrick: [00:07:36] benefit from the fact that my wife’s master’s degree is in historic preservation. So that’s how I

[00:07:41] Brett: [00:07:41] That does help. I got to ask about this powder room. You posted a picture of a three foot by 10 foot room where the toilet was positioned on the long wall. So you basically, you had like a foot, it was like being on an airplane.

[00:07:57] Patrick: [00:07:57] Yes. Where you literally like [00:08:00] walk in and like you couldn’t close the door, like behind you, like, as you would, like, you had to walk in step to the side, close the door and then use the toilet. Otherwise you just used it with the door open. Yeah. That one.

[00:08:17] Brett: [00:08:17] did you fix that?

[00:08:18] Patrick: [00:08:18] Um, well, we’re on, we’re on the road to fixing that.

[00:08:22] Um, yeah. Yeah. We’re going to move it down towards, towards the, uh, towards the end of that room. But, but that also speaks to a lot of the progressions that have happened. Um, and that, that is part of a house’s history too, right? Is, is those sorts of changes. And so, um, from what we can tell that room used to be part of where the kitchen was originally and where the door to the kitchen was originally, um, is actually on the other side of the, you know, the far short wall of that, of [00:09:00] that room and has been turned into a built-in in the dining room.

[00:09:05] But that built in didn’t use to be there used to be a door into that room, which was the kitchen. Um, oftentimes kitchens in Victorians homes were relatively small. Um, you know, it wasn’t like today where, Oh, you know, I need all this room and counter space and open concept and all of this other stuff, you know, I mean, it was a utilitarian room.

[00:09:27] It was for one thing. And that was for your mate to cook, you know, and quite frankly, you know, you, weren’t gonna make it very nice because that’s your maids, you know, your, your maid doesn’t care, you know, she’s coming in and she’s cooking. Um, and so, uh, And so yeah, uh, over time, uh, and changes the kitchen, moved to a different location that, that, what is now that powder room has I call it, uh, was probably a pantry for awhile.

[00:09:57] Uh, after that, after it got closed off [00:10:00] and only later in life, probably sometime from what I can guess in the seventies, 1970s, it got turned into a bathroom.

[00:10:08] Brett: [00:10:08] Huh. So you’ve been, uh, I think of you as a tools guy, even if you have kind of roots in, in minimalism, but you’re very opinionated about your tools and you’ve been, you’ve been documenting these, uh, these homes and these restorations. What tools have you been using to document.

[00:10:29] Patrick: [00:10:29] Um, well, uh, you know, besides keeping, um, keeping the blog, um, I I’m keeping the blog on my progress there for a very specific reason, which I’m going to get to. Um, but I’ve been using micro.blog for that. Um, for those that aren’t familiar with it, microdot blog is actually kind of hard to describe, uh, take a take, take a blogging system, tie it [00:11:00] together with a social network.

[00:11:02] And you start to get an idea of kind of what microdot blog is. Um, micro.blog is a excellent, uh, way to post to a blog, especially kind of short form and medium form posts, um, uh, to a blog. And they will happily host your blog, but it also works with WordPress, uh, as well. So you can host your own WordPress blog and kind of tie it into microdot blog, but then there’s kind of this social network aspect to it too, where they’re very Twitter, like kind of experience, except for, um, your, your posts to that social network are actually posts to your blog as well.

[00:11:44] If that makes sense, not the replies, but the, but the original posts or posts to your blog. And so I like to think of it as like a, you know, at least in my case where. Where, um, you know, in some instances, you [00:12:00] know, cause I have two micro microdot blog things, uh, I’ve got my main blog, which is Patrick rhone.net, but then I’ve, and that is on WordPress.

[00:12:08] Um, and then I’ve got a woe to wow, which is my, the blog I’ve been keeping for the homeless ration stuff and that’s actually hosted on microblog. So I get to see and try both experiences. And the thing I like about it is just like, you get to have comments and conversation around the things that you post, except you don’t have to host your own comments system and deal with all the spam, uh, which is fantastic.

[00:12:32] Um, so, uh, uh, if you go to woe to, wow, uh, w H O T O w O w um, that is hosted on microblog. Um, I’m using, uh, if this, then that, um, you know, a little free service that can type one thing to another thing. Um, as long as it’s using a flexible open format or API for doing so, [00:13:00] um, to pipe, all of those posts, I post the water wow.

[00:13:06] Into a journal in my day, one application day, one being a journaling piece of journaling software. Um, but what I love about day one, amongst the many things I love about day one, it’s just a really elegant, really beautifully designed app, um, uh, that you can easily pipe things into using if this then that or other ways to, um, is that it also has a feature built in where you can print.

[00:13:42] A book out of it. And so I use this in a couple of ways, but I’m just going to describe the way in which I intend to use it for this,

[00:13:56] those posts about the Hague house, which is what I call that [00:14:00] project. Cause it’s on hag Avenue, St. Paul, um, all of the posts about the Hague house go into his journal in my day one called hay house. And when I am done with the project, um, and we’re ready to put the house on the market, I’m going to print off three books, um, of that journal.

[00:14:25] Uh, one of them is going to be for me, you know, for my own memories and safe keeping and you know, just a record of my life because so much of my life right now, so many hours of my, of my days are actually being poured into, um, rehabbing this house. Um, number two, I’m going to print off a copy for my friend, Jason, who I’ve hired to help me with a lot of the stuff with this house, because well, you know, picking up a 12 foot green treated two by eights by yourself, uh, is, is isn’t no joke.

[00:14:58] And so you actually have to have [00:15:00] somebody else on hand to help you with a lot of this stuff. So I’m going print off copy from him. Cause he’s, he’s been a tremendous help, but I’m also gonna print off a copy to go with the house. And I’m going to make clear to the, to the new owners that, that, that copies for the house.

[00:15:18] Um, so that even if they don’t keep the house, don’t live it for the rest of your life, which I really hope they do. Um, and I’m really working hard to make it the sort of place that someone could see themselves in forever, um, that when they go to sell it, they will pass that book along with the house so that people can see.

[00:15:40] Basically the before and after. Sure. But also I’m kind of doing a fairly good job of documenting, like here’s how we’ve done the put the sub Florian in the case kitchen. And here’s we had to, you know, use four jacks to provide stability [00:16:00] underneath this section of floor. So it wasn’t so squishy because it was, it was beginning to dip and then we had to cut custom shims to go underneath the floorboards and that other people may have just like, I don’t know, patch it up with just junk, you know, that we actually worked hard, uh, to, to get, uh, you know, to, to make it really nice and to do it right.

[00:16:24] And to do it in a way that makes sense. Right. Um, so that, you know, Hey, they want to make a change down the road. They want to like, you know, they can like, even if they don’t do the work themselves, they can show the people they hired and say, okay, this is, this is how, how the floor is constructed, you know?

[00:16:44] Oh, you know, here’s, here’s where all the floor joists are in the mudroom. They are exactly 16 on centered, but doubled up in these, in these stress areas that are going to be under the washer and dryer.

[00:16:55] Brett: [00:16:55] So that no one has experiences like you’ve had, as you pull off layers of [00:17:00] poorly laid flooring.

[00:17:01] Patrick: [00:17:01] Right. Or, you know, or, or, or things that have kind of been randomly put in, or just kind of like, you know, patch jobs that were right for like fixing the problem right then and there, but weren’t really like a real fix. Right. Um, Uh, weren’t, weren’t a long lasting fix are weren’t and weren’t intended to be so right.

[00:17:22] Um, whereas the work I’m doing, you know, this is an 1890 house. Um, I have no doubt in my mind that a hundred years from now, every single thing that I’ve done will be there just as good as it is today because I’m too busy. I’m doing it right. I’m doing it the way it should be done.

[00:17:45] Brett: [00:17:45] Printing these books from a, uh, from a digital journal. Uh, you are, you are printing hard copy books, which it can seem like a novel idea, but you have opinions that go beyond just these books when it comes to, uh, to [00:18:00] digital versus paper.

[00:18:01] Patrick: [00:18:01] Yeah. That is, that is, um, digital is, is, is, uh, is not lasting. Um, and, and I could pull up countless examples of that countless of, of formats that are no longer, no longer supported. And can’t be read by anything. I dare you. Uh, any long-time Mac user to go dig up an old Claris work file and try to open it with pages will not work. We used to work with Apple works, but it does not work with, uh, does not work with pages, right? You used to work with pages, uh, Oh nine, I believe, but it does not work with the current version of pages. Right. Um, and so, uh, these digital formats that we save things in our finite about the only, the only one we can count on that will likely last far into the future.

[00:18:54] And that’s largely because well, pretty much the internet and is built on it, uh, [00:19:00] is, um, text. Um, you know, and so I suppose if you really want something to last digitally, if you’re not using plain text, as far as I’m concerned, you don’t care enough. Um, and so, um, but if you really even care more than that, if you care about the idea that, um, you know, that maybe you want something that lasts for a thousand years or 2000 years, or maybe even 10,000 years, well, 10,000 years, you probably want to, you know, save this stuff on like a cave wall,

[00:19:34] Brett: [00:19:34] Right. Yeah. Carved in stone.

[00:19:37] Patrick: [00:19:37] carved in stone somewhere, right.

[00:19:38] But at least for a thousand years, you can guarantee, um, with a high degree of certainty that paper properly preserved and properly stored will last that long. And we know this, we have, we have evidence of this. And, and, and [00:20:00] what we do, I have any evidence just because it hasn’t been around as long that digital will last as long.

[00:20:07] But what we know from, from even recent experience is that it won’t, it can’t, it’s not designed to.

[00:20:14] Brett: [00:20:14] There’s like, to me, there’s a delineation between the, I can’t think of anything I’ve written that I care to see in a hundred years. And for me, I, I don’t put a lot of stock in what I write for me. Most of what I write is spur of the moment. Note-taking things I want to remember for us for a finite period of time.

[00:20:35] And it’s more important to me to be able to search and rapidly use that than it is to preserve it. So what’s the, what’s the delineation for you between what is a truly useful in a digital format and what should be preserved?

[00:20:52] Patrick: [00:20:52] Um, I guess for me, um, it’s, it’s history, you know, things I write [00:21:00] in my journal or in my, in my daily log, I keep both. Um, and, uh, just for, uh, so people understand the journalists for thoughts and feelings that daily log is for, you know, action and things I did. Right. Um, and so that’s kinda how I delineate the two and eh, sure.

[00:21:19] These things, you, you may not think are valuable or important, but I don’t know, you know, the way I look at it is that that’s not for me, for me to really decide that’s for whoever comes a hundred years from now to decide whether this was important to keep or not. Right.

[00:21:39] Brett: [00:21:39] a lot of what historians dig up, probably wasn’t written with the intention of historian, sticking it up.

[00:21:45] Patrick: [00:21:45] Nope, not at all. And a good example of this is I, um, happened to have, um, uh, a copy of the letter, um, that [00:22:00] was written by my great great uncle too. My great, no, I’m sorry. My great, great uncle to my great-grandfather, if that makes sense. Um, uh, and it basically says, uh, Hey Pat, by the way, uh, I am the sixth Patrick oatmeal Roan in the line.

[00:22:29] Um, Uh, you know, and so he was Pat too, you know, Hey Pat, I know that you probably have heard some of this stuff in bits and pieces around family reunions and whatnot, but I thought it important to sit down and to write this in a letter to you and proceeds to tell the history of that line of my family, going all the way back [00:23:00] to slavery, to our arrival in bondage in this country, I’m black, by the way, uh, to, to their present day.

[00:23:12] And it’s absolutely fantastic. And it’s rich with detail and information. Um, my, my great, great uncle was, uh, was a newspaper man who was a journalist. And so he was a really, really good writer and knew how to write things away. That was, uh, that was both descriptive and distinct or, uh, and, and, you know, and in short, right, you can put, put a lot of information to a short amount of space because that’s what he did for a job.

[00:23:39] Um, and, uh, and so it’s great, but there are, there are certain things in there that raise as many questions as they do, um, answers. So he put down, um, in one case it was talking about relatives and, and who gave birth to who and, and, uh, [00:24:00] you know, he was like, you know, and Mary was the, was the father of John Sally, Sue, Rick, and.

[00:24:08] Brett: [00:24:08] there are entire books of the Bible like that.

[00:24:10] Patrick: [00:24:10] Right, right. And the Rastas blogger, blah, blah, blah. And I’m like, wait, what harassed us? Like, wait, you have all of these normal names. And then there was a kid called Erastus like, I want to know more about Erastus, but what he goes on to say, like, he goes on to explain what all of those people did and then he gets to Rass.

[00:24:37] He’s like, and I’m sure you know, all about around that was just like mother Fricker. I’ll get you do that to me because he didn’t think that was important. Right. Because he figured, Hey, Pat knows this. You know, I don’t need to get into the details about arrest us and arrest us or our [00:25:00] long time, you know, besides being cousins, they, they hang out all the time.

[00:25:03] They’re good friends. They drink beers the whole nine yards. Right. But they like. Like, you know, to him that was not important as it were. Um, and, and to, to me, it’s extremely important. I want to know more, you know, I can’t tell you how, how much, uh, luckily it’s been, you know, it’s fairly easy to dig up information about some black person with the first name, arrest us.

[00:25:32] Brett: [00:25:32] Yeah.

[00:25:32] Patrick: [00:25:32] So just throw that out there. So, yeah, I haven’t had necessarily any trouble finding out all about harasses, but you get what I’m saying, right. It wasn’t, you know, that, that we, we don’t decide what’s important.

[00:25:47] Brett: [00:25:47] I will say I was, I just got a new, a new gig, uh, like a job, easy job. And I was looking for a, uh, a birth certificate so that I could get [00:26:00] through the background checks. And I stumbled, I didn’t find the birth certificate, but I did find, uh, uh, one of my good friends in the late nineties. Uh, we had gone through addiction and recovery and everything together, and he had sent me a picture.

[00:26:18] He was a photographer. You had sent me a picture along with a photocopied page from his personal journal. That was just about a moment in time when I had shown up when, when he, when he really needed me and how that made him feel. And it was like, I had totally forgotten this ever happened, but finding that page.

[00:26:38] Patrick: [00:26:38] yeah.

[00:26:39] Brett: [00:26:39] It was, it was deeply meaningful and I was really happy and I wouldn’t, I never would have that if that was in a Facebook post or something, it would be long gone.

[00:26:49] Patrick: [00:26:49] Right, exactly.

[00:26:50] Brett: [00:26:50] see the value.

[00:26:51] Patrick: [00:26:51] Yeah. And I think too, um, You know, this really changes as you get older. Right. You know, I think [00:27:00] when I was 20 or 30, I would have asked the same question. Like, what’s like, what’s the big deal, like really? Is that really important? But now that I’m 53, you know, and thinking a little bit differently about things and also looking back at my own legacy and also, you know, with houses and being married to somebody who is, you know, deeply involved in and, and, you know, historical preservation and things like that.

[00:27:24] I think a lot about this stuff. I think a whole lot about this stuff. Cause I’m dealing with it every day. I’m dealing with it. You know, I I’m, I’m dealing with it with the house where every time I, I got a room, I’m just like, well, why did they do it that way? Like there must’ve been a good reason cause that is completely messed up.

[00:27:43] But, but maybe there’s a good reason for doing it that I can’t just assume that it was just stupidity, you know that, Oh, it’s because of this or, Oh, they couldn’t do this. And so they had to do that. Right. Um, and [00:28:00] so, and so, yeah, I think, I think that’s part of it. Right. But we, you know, we, what matters, you know, I th I think.

[00:28:13] To me and to, and to us in general, if you really care about this stuff, um, the, the main reason that you preserve it in a way that you can always kind of get to it and access it, um, is because, um, because it is everything else is just so fleeting and so unreliable. And so, uh, undependable, you know,

[00:28:40] Brett: [00:28:40] Great, uh, this, this great hack. Where people were writing notes about room renovations on the back of switch plates. So like the colors they use for the wall, why they chose a certain types of flooring and leaving it, like in this place, that in the future [00:29:00] was very likely to be discovered even by themselves, that kind of, that kind of note taking makes sense to me.

[00:29:07] Patrick: [00:29:07] Oh, yeah. Yeah, totally. I mean, I’m, I’m, uh, uh, being very careful to put, um, uh, keep track of where the, uh, where the studs are, um, in, in a wall. Um, and especially in any wall that I didn’t build because the, it, because a lot of times in an old house, um, Yeah, certainly put in evenly. I either they’re not 1216 on center or 18 on center or 12 on center, which is kind of standard depending upon, depending upon what you’re dealing with.

[00:29:50] Right. Um, and, and so you can’t just walk into an old home and assume that you can find the stud [00:30:00] furthermore, um, because this they’re not using dry wall, they weren’t using screws because this plaster on laugh that laugh was, uh, is nailed, you know, in, with fairly small nails. Um, and so even stud finders, oftentimes don’t work because you have this other layer of wall in the way.

[00:30:23] Of laugh in the way. And then you have plaster on top of that. So you can’t even necessarily use a stud finder and guarantee. You’re gonna, you’re gonna find a stud when you want to go to hang out heavy picture or, or hang that new cabinet. Um, and so what my plan is is to, um, actually leave a discreet little Mark, um, uh, on the, uh, kind of hard to explain, but there will be a discreet Mark between the countertop and the tile as to where [00:31:00] the studs are in the kitchen. So you so you’ll know.

[00:31:06] Brett: [00:31:06] Nice. So I’m going to take our first sponsor break here.

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[00:32:24] Brett: [00:32:24] I do feel like there’s. A a, a poetic, uh, transition to be made here from, uh, from home improvement into mental health. But, uh, last time, last time we talked was a, it was a rough year of 2016, which, uh, in retrospect actually seems a little quaint, uh, to, to consider that, to consider that, uh, the, uh, the, the low point in, in our history.

[00:32:51] And we had both had some rough personal stuff and, uh, some tragedy even, how have things been [00:33:00] since then is 20, 20 and 2021, uh, worse or better?

[00:33:07] Patrick: [00:33:07] Well, I, you know, I don’t know that it is an, an either or competition or anything like that. I would say it’s just different, you know? Um, that, yeah, 2016 was rough. Not just because of, you know, what was going on politically and whatnot. But also just from a, um, you know, like you said, a personal standpoint, we, we both have a lot going on.

[00:33:31] Um, but, uh, you know, I especially had some really rough stuff going on. I’m not going to rehash it here. Um, if anyone wants to listen to that hour and a half podcasts that we did on that, I’m sure you’ll link to it in the show notes or whatnot. Um, easy to find, um, and, uh, B be warned it’s, it’s full of profanity and it is a really, really dark, um, that’s it.

[00:34:00] [00:34:00] Um, you know, uh, all, all turned out as well as could be expected with, with that whole situation. So, I mean, I’m not going to get into updating, you know, 2020 is kind of been weird, right? Because not only have we’d been dealing with the pandemic, but you know, you and I, Brett living in, we both live in Minnesota and, you know, as I’m sure the world, many listeners know Minnesota has been going through some particularly rough times around, uh, policing, um, and the death of George Floyd and now, uh, many others, uh, and, uh, the kind of social unrest, uh, that has, uh, cost around our, our cities.

[00:34:44] And, you know, certainly it’s not like, Oh my God, it’s all burning in this chaos here or whatnot, but, you know, Hey, there have been moments of that. Um, and, uh, uh, you know, and. Yeah. You know, that’s been rough on [00:35:00] top of all of the, all the pandemic stuff. And what’s, I think especially kind of rough for me and something I’ve been kind of grappling with the last several days is, you know, we should be feeling so much hope, right.

[00:35:20] Enjoy. I mean, I’ve gotten my two shots, so I’m fully vaccinated. My wife has, um, I don’t know where you’re at with it, but you know, people are out there. They’re getting vaccinated there. You know, that that’s hopeful. That’s, that’s promising, you know, restaurants are opening up and even though our numbers aren’t perfect yet, you know, I mean, the number of the number of folks that are vaccinated is just increasing exponentially every single day.

[00:35:49] Um, and, and, uh, that should be good. Um, there was a guilty verdict in the, uh, in the. The their Shovan, uh, trial, um, uh, [00:36:00] three of them, three guilty verdicts. Yes. Um, which, you know, we should be celebrating and that’s fantastic because he really did get what he deserved. Um, and you know, we, even, if, even if you’re, you know, pro police and blue lives matter or whatever, um, that was one of your bad apples.

[00:36:17] And the reason that his fellow caps threw him under the bus so quickly and so easily is because they hated him too. He has a long history of, of, of, of being a bad guy. Um, and so even if you support the police, you want guys like that gone. Okay. And you want them to get what they deserve. Um, so, uh, all of this is great.

[00:36:41] Yeah. Right. We should be feeling fantastic, but gosh, I’m not, I’m not, I’m still on edge. I still feel like just getting started every day is kind of a, kind of a [00:37:00] struggle. Um, and, and quite frankly, having this real kind of physical work to do has been a blessing has been a godsend because, you know, unlike everything else, like there is like, Oh, this was broken.

[00:37:16] Now it is not like it’s a binary. Right. You know, and you, and you can point to it and you say, I did that. I fixed, I fixed that. And I feel good about that. Right. And, and, but you, we can’t do that with the pandemic. We can’t do that with, you know, uh, Police targeting of, of people of color. Right. You know, we can’t do that with, with voting rights in Georgia.

[00:37:48] We can’t do that with, you know, the slow pace of change that’s happening, you know, elsewhere around the world. Like we can’t, you know, we can’t. And [00:38:00] so we still have this thing where, you know, where, and I want to talk about this. There’s a really fantastic article, um, in the, uh, in the New York times, um, that, uh, I’ll make sure to send a bread so he can put the link to it in the show notes, but I’m sure it’s good.

[00:38:22] It’s one of those things, I’m sure we’ll go quote, unquote viral and that you’ll see posted many other places, but it’s it’s this and that is, um, that. There’s actually a, a mental health professional term. That’s been coined for this kind of feeling that many of us are having where it’s not actually quite depression, but the certainly not like joy, inhalation, you know, it feels like what we might kind of feel if we were starting to get depressed, but it’s, it’s not that acute.

[00:38:58] It’s not that it’s [00:39:00] not quite there. And that term is languishing. And I really, I really liked that because I feel that’s where so many people are right now. So many people I know right now are, are languishing, right? It is it’s this, this kind of blah, this kind of

[00:39:28] not hope less, but less hope.

[00:39:30] Brett: [00:39:30] Yeah, that, that, that point where we should be feeling hopeful on paper, but we have this form of like almost PTSD.

[00:39:40] Patrick: [00:39:40] Yeah. Or, or just like, or even just kind of that feeling that another shoes got to drop because we’ve just been hammered over and over and over again. And every hope that we keep our hopes have been continually getting dashed. And so why is this one, any different.

[00:39:58] Brett: [00:39:58] I mean, just to look at the [00:40:00] examples you brought up, w w w based on my conditioning, it’s really easy for me to see that, uh, like the Derek Trovan like that was, um, it, it, it was, uh, accountability, but there were, there wasn’t justice and it didn’t because they throw them under the bus so quickly. Uh, it doesn’t lead to any overall condemnation of the MPD.

[00:40:21] Uh, our numbers are going, are our vaccine, a vaccine count is going up, but if States are hitting a point where now they don’t have enough people to use the vaccines, because there’s so much disinformation while our numbers at best are plat showing. As far as new infections, like there is always another shoe and we’ve really become accustomed to seeing that.

[00:40:43] Patrick: [00:40:43] Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, and it just, it seems like there’s so much more work to do, and that work seems insurmountable. Um, and you know, um, someone [00:41:00] asked me yesterday, like when, you know, when I would kind of know, was kind of start to feel that things were really changing, uh, you know, police wise. And I said, when I’m driving in traffic and this just happened to me on Tuesday, And then we’re, we’re recording this on a Thursday, um, where, you know, just regular traffic driving around there’s, there’s a cop in back of me, right.

[00:41:34] Just to please current back at me now, you know, just, you know, as part of traffic he’s driving, just like everyone else’s driving. Right. Well, I don’t ever have a police card back of me without immediately tensing up without immediately thinking, going through my head about all the things I could have done wrong thought immediately thinking in my head, like, are my tail lights [00:42:00] working?

[00:42:01] Is my license plate light working? Like when was the last time I had that looked at, um,

[00:42:06] Brett: [00:42:06] air freshener hanging from my mirror.

[00:42:10] Patrick: [00:42:10] hanging from the mirror, do I, you know it, you know, and, and if I do get pulled over, okay, where am I going to put my hands? Should I, should I take my wallet out right away and like put it on the dashboard? Um, like before he starts walking up to the car, um, and then put my hands on the street. Like I have to go through all of this every single time.

[00:42:34] There’s a cop behind me and the, because I’m black. And I know from talking with friends of mine who are not black, that they don’t do that when I do that. Right. Um, so when will things start to feel like there’s real change when I stopped feeling that way, and guess what? [00:43:00] I’m probably not ever going to stop feeling that way.

[00:43:02] Right.

[00:43:02] Brett: [00:43:02] Retina, not in this generation, not, not that change could come, but it it’ll be slow. And even if everything changed right now, that kind of stress, especially in communities of color is not going to just disappear. When the, when the problem itself goes away.

[00:43:21] Patrick: [00:43:21] Oh, and I’ve, and I’ve written about this, right? Because I have no reason to feel like if anyone should feel, um, You know, I’ve, I’ve, I’ve mentioned this before, I’ve written a blog post about it and I’ve, I’ve, I’ve joked about it that like, um, I’m probably one of the few black people, you know, that experiences white privilege, right?

[00:43:44] Because I am fairly light skinned, even though both my parents are black and all of my grandparents are black and all of my great-grandparents are black. We were just, we’re a light-skinned. Folk that marry other light-skinned folks. So we keep having light-skinned folk. Um, and so, and [00:44:00] so I happen to be light scan people look at me and they’re not quite sure, like, are you black?

[00:44:05] Are you maybe, maybe you’re maybe you’re Jewish, you know, maybe you’re Lebanese or, or, uh, you know, I mean, and what’s really hilarious is like, you know, Latino people who automatically assume I’m Latino and Lebanese people who automatically assume I’m Lebanese. Right. You know, and black folks that, you know, while they assume I’m black or I’m mixed.

[00:44:26] Right. You know that, cause we have a lot of that here in Minnesota. Um, and they’re just not sure what to make of me. And because of that, I I’ve never just been pulled over by the police for, um, for lack of cause like so many other darker skin folks that I know have been and are regularly pulled over for lack of cost, um, or with lack of cost.

[00:44:51] Um, Uh, you know, and so I’ve never actually experienced that myself yet. [00:45:00] Here I am with this, with, with, with these fears and these worries and leasing anxieties around it. Right. Um, because I know it could happen to me. Right. Just, just because, because I do look up her, you know, if anything, I do not look white, how about that?

[00:45:21] I look like anything but white. Um, so, um, and so yeah, there’s that, but yeah, I think there’s also, like I said, there’s kind of general sense of just like, gosh, without this, without this house to work on, did you just go and just, you know, pour my head into, uh, into pounding for Joyce into place and, and, you know, making them level, uh, without my, my head into, you know, thinking about.

[00:45:52] You know, the, the complexities of, okay. You know, after we do this, we’ve got to do the electrical and we have to do the electrical before we put in the floor. [00:46:00] And, but once we put it on the floor, we have to, we have to do the plumbing because we can’t eat. I’ll eat like, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s, uh, you know, I’m, I’m playing general contractor.

[00:46:10] And so it’s my job to keep all of the dependencies in my, in my head, as we’re, as we’re moving along and to keep all these pieces moving. And I love getting lost in that stuff, because that’s about the only thing that kind of gives me a sense of like, okay, I did something today.

[00:46:26] Brett: [00:46:26] Right. Um, so you are, I believe president of the board of mental health, miss Minnesota. Tell me what mental health Minnesota is.

[00:46:36] Patrick: [00:46:36] Uh, mental health, Minnesota is a nonprofit, um, that engages in, um, advocacy, um, policy, um, and, uh, direct assistance, uh, for those with, uh, lived, um, mental illness, uh, and, and, uh, mental wellness experience. Um, [00:47:00] one of our, the main things that we, that we do and operate kind of the three main things that are public facing are, uh, number one, um, our online mental health, uh, screenings, which have increased, uh, about, uh, 1100%, uh, since the beginning of the pandemic.

[00:47:23] Um, uh, but if you go to, uh, mental health, Minnesota, Dot org. Um, you can, uh, take, uh, take a online mental health screening and it, you know, it’s not meant to be medically add is not a diagnosis, but it certainly will give you some indication that yeah, you probably may want to get this looked at further or no, you seem okay.

[00:47:53] Um, and we’ll pray at the end of it provide resources and next steps and things you can think about and [00:48:00] do, uh, from there, um, kind of mainly meant for people living in Minnesota, but it also, uh, is available and is access by many people outside from Minnesota. So that’s not a problem. Um, uh, we also have a mental health.

[00:48:17] Health helpline. And the helpline is really for folks that are looking for resources and also to kind of be the second, second step after that screening. So you go through the screening and says, yeah, you may want to get the looked at, um, because you, you look like you could, you have some signs and symptoms of depression.

[00:48:37] Okay, great. Then, you know, what, what do I do next? Well, you know, you can call the helpline and the helpline will help you. Um, Find those resources will help you maybe find a therapist or a psychiatrist or, you know, to kind of, uh, take that on further. We’ll help you connect you with other resources that you may need, and that may even be specific to your [00:49:00] industry, right?

[00:49:00] Th th you know, right now that we have a lot of resources for healthcare workers and first-line, you know, frontline responders, right. Um, that are specific to them. Um, there’s a lot of those that are available and free, um, that were not there before. So that’s kind of what the help line does, but, um, and once again, um, you know, uh, calls to that and engagement with that has increased exponentially.

[00:49:28] Um, uh, but kind of one of my favorites and one of the key things we do is we operate what’s called a warm line. Now what a Warmline is, is you just like, there’s a suicide hotline for those that are really actively to having suicidal thoughts, you call the suicide hotline, right? You, you are actually actively having thoughts where you may, you know, harm or injure somebody else.

[00:49:56] And you’re like, you know, there’s hotlines for you to call. [00:50:00] Um, but there really isn’t anything for somebody who is having a, having a down day, you know, maybe, you know, they’ve been diagnosed with depression or, or, or anxiety or, or whatnot. And they are, if they’re not having a crisis, they’re not in crisis.

[00:50:19] They just, they’re having, they’re having a day where they need to talk to somebody, but they don’t want to talk to their friends. They don’t want to talk to their, to their significant other. They, they really want to talk to somebody who gets it. They want it to be anonymous. Um, And, and they, they don’t want someone who’s just going to try to fix it for them.

[00:50:38] They just want to be heard. Well, that’s what the warm line is for. And the warm line is staffed by, uh, by peer, uh, specialists, uh, folks that have lived mental illness experience that are mental illness survivors, themselves who have been trained to assist others [00:51:00] with mental illness and who are mental illness survivors.

[00:51:02] And so you really are talking on the other side of the phone to somebody who really kind of gets it and I’ve called it. Right on. I have days when I wake up and, you know, I’ve got, I’ve got the piggyback guy on me as I like to call it. Um, you know, I have a post about that, just Google my name and piggyback guy you’ll find it.

[00:51:23] Um, but you know, it’s just like one of those days where I’m just, I woke up and I’m just feeling, feeling like it’s all hard. It’s all just really hard. And, and I need to talk to somebody and I know if I talked to my wife, you know, she’s going to, she’s going to try to perk me up. And that’s the last thing I need.

[00:51:42] I, you know, I know if I talked to a friend is not going to be the same, but he, but you know, I, you know, being able to call somebody anonymously and they don’t know that they’re talking to the president of the board of the organization. They’ll and I’m just, I’m just, you know, some anonymous Schmo on the [00:52:00] other end of the line who needs to, uh, you know, she just needs someone to talk to, to, to listen to me and who gets it.

[00:52:07] Brett: [00:52:07] who might be a languishing.

[00:52:09] Patrick: [00:52:09] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, and also, um, you know, the other nice thing is, is that if they sense that, Hey, this is, this is feeling a bit more than, than us. Like maybe you should be calling a hotline, um, you know, let me transfer you. Or maybe you should be, you know, looking, you know, looking into some, you know, hospitalization or looking to talk to a psychiatrist or, you know, maybe it’s a problem with your meds, you know, and maybe you should have that looked at, you know, there you go.

[00:52:45] I mean, they’re really, really well-trained in all of that and, and have the resources and ability to get you to that help too. If they, if they are not the ones, if they identify themselves as yeah. You need more.

[00:53:01] [00:53:00] Brett: [00:53:01] I just had this horrible, uh, the hair club for men guy.

[00:53:07] Patrick: [00:53:07] Okay.

[00:53:07] Brett: [00:53:07] I’m not just the president of the board of the mental health, Minnesota. I’m also a client.

[00:53:13] Patrick: [00:53:13] Yeah, exactly. That’s exactly it. Right. Um, you know, but, uh, but it’s, it’s, it’s a fantastic, fantastic, uh, thing in a service that really no one else is, is providing, uh, in the state and the way that, uh, in the way that we are. Um, and I think, um, it’s, it’s, there’s such a need for it and we’ve just got, that’s exploded too.

[00:53:42] Um, if you think the, the explosion of the helpline and the online screenings is, is something you should see what’s going on with our warm line and the number of operators we’ve had to add to support that. Um, uh, but, but yeah, um, it’s, it’s really needed [00:54:00] right now. I think. Yeah, especially because there’s a lot of people who are, who are languishing.

[00:54:05] And a lot of those people don’t necessarily have lived experience with mental illness, that this is all new to them and they don’t know what to call it, and they don’t have a name to put on it. And the, you know, the best way to, to, uh, have power over your demons is to, is to have a name for them. So I think, uh, that article does a good job towards giving a name and making you understand that mental wellness is, is a spectrum.

[00:54:35] It’s not a binary. You’re, it’s not, I’m either happy or depressed. Uh I’m either, um, uh, I’m either anxious or I’m manic. Right. You know, it’s not, it’s not like, you know, uh, you know, it’s not that kind of binary. It’s it’s, it is a spectrum and everybody is somewhere on that line. Everybody is somewhere [00:55:00] you’re you’re you’re along that spectrum somewhere.

[00:55:02] Um, and so it’s, it’s just a question of, of, uh, identifying where you are on that spectrum, so that then you can do what’s needed to be done to either a get to a better place, the maintain where you are, because where you are is just, it’s just honky-dory and fine. Or, or, you know, see, um, you know, get the help that you need to be able to kind of, you know, make it from our day to day, week to week.

[00:55:36] Brett: [00:55:36] Well, that sounds like a fantastic resource. I, uh, I, I always feel awkward going from mental health discussions into sponsor reads

[00:55:48] Patrick: [00:55:48] but it has to be done.

[00:55:49] Brett: [00:55:49] it. It does. We got to pay the bills.

[00:55:51] Patrick: [00:55:51] to be paid. Yeah.

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[00:57:09] Brett: [00:57:09] Well, that brings us to our top three picks. Um, I, since the last time you’ve been on, I have stopped doing my own top three picks because there are only so many things in the world that, that I can truly love. And after a couple of hundred episodes, I’ve run out,

[00:57:25] Patrick: [00:57:25] There’s not enough new new,

[00:57:27] Brett: [00:57:27] but I’m excited to hear what you’ve got for me.

[00:57:29] Patrick: [00:57:29] Okay. Well, um, so, uh, we were talking a little bit about this before we started recording the show today, but, um, but I’ve, I’ve joined the, the cool kids club, um, and gotten, uh, one of these clickety keyboards that, uh, that all the, all the nerds seem to like, um, Uh, I kind of reached out on the, on the Twitter, um, and you know, said, Hey, I might be interested [00:58:00] in, in one of these clicky keyboards, what do people recommend?

[00:58:04] Um, and I got a lot of recommendations back for this particular click of the keyboard, but it just so happens that, uh, an online acquaintance, uh, said, Hey, if you’re, if, if you’re looking at one of those clickety keyboards, I’ve got one here. And if you want it out, I’d be willing to let go of it. A it’s unused and it’s just not my jam.

[00:58:26] And, and, you know, so, yeah, so I, I got one of those clickbait keyboards. Uh, this is the key Cron, uh, K2, um, and it’s got the Brown, uh, MX switches in it. Um, for those nerds that care nerds really, really, really care about this stuff.

[00:58:49] Brett: [00:58:49] We do.

[00:58:50] Patrick: [00:58:50] Oh, my gosh. Um, you know, and, uh, there are, there are opinions, uh, but, uh, I, I like the Brown, the Brown has the, just [00:59:00] enough cliquiness and feedback with, and, and noise without it being too annoying.

[00:59:05] Um,

[00:59:05] Brett: [00:59:05] not like they’re blue or anything.

[00:59:07] Patrick: [00:59:07] well, you know, blue or light, you know, I mean, you know, you, you you’d rather eat nails

[00:59:15] Brett: [00:59:15] You know what, you know, what I’m into now is the box white. I had never heard of box white until recently.

[00:59:20] Patrick: [00:59:20] wait, wait, box white.

[00:59:21] Brett: [00:59:21] Yeah. Instead of like the standard MX switch, their box switches, you’ll have to look it up next time you get nerdy about it, but anyway, please continue.

[00:59:30] Patrick: [00:59:30] Okay. All right. Well, you know, I’m, I’m still, I’m still got the training wheels on, you know, and, and, and our little chat back and forth before the program, uh, Brett can tell you, uh, it is, it is type of city around here, but that’s okay. Uh, I’m, I’m getting used to it. Cause the other thing about it is that I’m not a, I’m not a typist typist.

[00:59:49] I never took a typing class, um, in high school, in my life. In fact, uh, I’m just, I’m a really fast hunting pecker. I’m, uh, I’m a two finger typist. Um, [01:00:00] and I’m a no look hog hunting pecker to now. So my typos are not necessarily, um, it’s, it’s it’s depth and travel right related more so than it is clickety keyboard related.

[01:00:16] Uh, because I’ve gotten so used to the depth and travel of say, uh, the, uh, Apple keyboard I was using before, which has really shallow keys as you know, and thus, and, and, and wider travel, um, or different travel. So I, you know, it’s, it’s that? All right. So key Cron, K2. I got the one with the all white, uh, LEDs, but they also make one with like jumpy color LEDs, uh, whatever, whatever suits your fancy, they, they can make an apparently.

[01:00:48] Brett: [01:00:48] So I’m the version, two of the ultimate hacking keyboard right now. And it came with RGB lighting and I’ve never cared about RGB lighting. I still don’t [01:01:00] really like, I would never intentionally buy a keyboard, but the way that this keyboard works, like there’s no function key row. There’s no number pad.

[01:01:08] Every it’s like a, I think it would be considered like a 70%, 60 something percent keyboard and you hold down modifier keys and it changes the behavior.

[01:01:19] Patrick: [01:01:19] Right.

[01:01:20] Brett: [01:01:20] an arrow key. I hold down the mod key. And with this RGB lighting set up the way it is when I hold down a modifier key, it highlights the keys that are affected by that layer, which is actually,

[01:01:34] Patrick: [01:01:34] that’s really cool. That’s really neat.

[01:01:38] Brett: [01:01:38] that’s a useful, useful use for RGB back lighting.

[01:01:41] Patrick: [01:01:41] right, because normally as it is, like, it is on this keyboard, even just the plain white cycling through those options, it’s like, well, you can have it just straight on all the time or straight off all the time, or it can do this wave pattern every time you type, or it can highlight each key individually as you type, or it can do this woo up [01:02:00] and down, sort of like an, or it can blink.

[01:02:02] It’s like, no, I just want, I just can’t. I just get a backlight, like I have on my Mac book air, like, can I just do that? And yeah.

[01:02:12] Brett: [01:02:12] is asking for. Yeah.

[01:02:13] Patrick: [01:02:13] Right. You, you can do that too, but in any case, uh, so that that’s, that’s a pickle one. Um, pick two, um, uh, uh, Ugmonk uh, U G M O N K. Uh, Jeff is the, uh, is the founder and a proprietor, uh, there, and, uh, originally started off making these kind of cool t-shirts that were, uh, that were popular amongst the hipster crowd that has grown into, um, more and more things, uh, recently had a successful Kickstarter and those have all been shipped out.

[01:02:52] And so now, uh, they’re available on his store for, uh, this new, uh, Uh, [01:03:00] productivity system with product, um, uh, called analog. And, uh, what analog is, is it’s a productivity system that’s based on three by five cards. Um, and he has these nice analog cards to go with this really nice holder that he has. And the holder like is really cool and kind of part of the system and that, you know, you have like a today card and like a tomorrow card and then like a, uh, a someday card.

[01:03:32] And there’s a little card holder slot built into the card holder storage thing where you can have this card kind of standing up in front of mind. Now I’ve used three-by-five cards for my productivity system, uh, along with the dash plus system that I developed years and years ago, I think back in like 2006, um, uh, for my, for my stuff for a long time.

[01:04:00] [01:04:00] Um, and with the Kickstarter, you could only get like the cards, his index cards with the holders, and they kind of had his system kind of baked into those things of the printing on the cards, which is great. And his fantastic, except for I’m kind of picky about the index cards that I use for my system. Um, I won’t get into the history, but like I’m so picky about it that when these cards were about to stop being made, which they were, um, I bought out the remaining stock of these cards so that I have enough to last me for a very, very long time to come.

[01:04:32] At least I would guess about 10 years. Um, And so, uh, and so I was like, you know, I, I don’t, I don’t need the cards. I’m happy with my three by five cards. Well, what’s nice about now that they’re available on the Ugmonk shop versus the Kickstarter is that you can get the card holder thing all by itself, which I did.

[01:04:56] Um, and I love, and I think it’s fantastic and I just use it [01:05:00] with my own three-by-five cards. So I think that’s, that’s what I like about it too, is that you don’t have to buy into the system to get the nice card holder thing is you can get the nice card holder thing separately and use your own damn index cards.

[01:05:12] Wow.

[01:05:13] Brett: [01:05:13] That’s uh, I, uh, the first, my last guest was Aaron manky. He’s been on a few times before, but

[01:05:20] Patrick: [01:05:20] Okay. Well then I guess, I guess we can bring up with cards I’m talking about.

[01:05:26] Brett: [01:05:26] Are the frictionless cards too.

[01:05:28] Patrick: [01:05:28] course, of course they

[01:05:29] Brett: [01:05:29] I still use those myself. I bought a ton of them back in the day three by five cards are like, I’ve never done well with a moleskin notebooks or, or other like bullet journals and stuff. But yeah, my three by five cards I have, I have all these different ways of storing them and holding them.

[01:05:46] I have little, a little safe looking things for like locking them away. Yeah. Um, I do, I do, I do appreciate them. And I always like those frictionless cards and I, I dig [01:06:00] this, uh, I think this holder.

[01:06:02] Patrick: [01:06:02] But when I, you know, before Aaron became famous and you know, when, when he was closing down that business, because he was becoming famous, um, I, I, I re I said, I will buy every last one you have, if you’re willing to sell, just I don’t send it, just tell me a number and I’ll pay it. And that’s what I.

[01:06:24] Brett: [01:06:24] Yep. That’s a interesting, interesting synchronicity there.

[01:06:28] Patrick: [01:06:28] Yes, very interesting synchronicity. Um, and so, yeah, I’m, I’m, I’m a big fan of those cards and if you can’t get them anymore, uh I’m part of the reason why. Um, so, uh, so yeah, that’s, that was, uh, that was picked number two. Um, pick number three, um, is actually, um, uh, I’m reading this really fantastic book right now.

[01:06:56] Um, and it’s actually not one book, three books. [01:07:00] Um, uh, it was a trilogy, uh, release as a trail trilogy originally. Um, but it’s been, um, that Trilogy’s been young. Combined into a, into a new, a new, beautiful new volume of the three books all together. Um, and it’s, uh, area X, uh, the Southern reach trilogy, uh, uh, by Jeff VanderMeer.

[01:07:28] Um, and I can’t really talk too much about it without giving it away, but because the three books is rather thick is rather big. One of my reading goals for this year, which I post up on my blog at the beginning of every year, usually on January 1st, every year. Okay. Here’s my reading plan for the year. Um, because I’m a really slow reader and I, I, if I have a plan, if I have kind of some constraints, um, it helps me narrow my choices down, um, because we have a lot [01:08:00] of books, a lot of books.

[01:08:02] Um, um, my wife is a, is, is, uh, she, she’s an amazingly fast reader and she is a voracious reader. She reads easily 75, 80 books a year. Um, Um, and, but this one is just, it’s so much fun. And even though I’m a slow reader, and even though it’s a great big book, I’m just kind of plowing through it. I’m picking it up whenever I have a free moment.

[01:08:29] Um, it is that kind of, um, uh, that kind of pastime, uh, and it’s, it’s definitely kind of a, sort of. Thrillers sort of book, um, uh, essentially, uh, a large, uh, section of the coastal United States, um, has been, uh, cordoned off, uh, because of, well, what the government is telling, uh, the people, um, is, you [01:09:00] know, some variation of natural disaster contamination, that sort of thing.

[01:09:05] But in fact is something that they don’t even know what the heck is going on there. And this is really all about the, the various teams and people that they have been sending in to try to figure out what’s going on there. Um, and that’s as much as I’ll say about it, um, get it is fantastic. The cover is beautiful.

[01:09:25] This is one of those books that you will be proud to have and display on your shelf.

[01:09:30] Brett: [01:09:30] You know, what I got really into in 2020 and explored was a black female Saifai authors

[01:09:37] Patrick: [01:09:37] Oh, yeah. Octavia Butler

[01:09:39] Brett: [01:09:39] and Nettie, a Cora for an NK Jemisin and I read so much black female Saifai and it was, there was some great stuff I

[01:09:48] Patrick: [01:09:48] Oh, there’s some fantastic stuff.

[01:09:50] Brett: [01:09:50] you read Nettie, Cora for the Binti trilogy and stuff like that? Yeah.

[01:09:56] Patrick: [01:09:56] Yes. Very, very good. Um, well [01:10:00] and well, so, uh, my goal last year was, um, that I never, I didn’t, what’s interesting at the beginning of the year I tried, I said, I’m not going to tell you what my goal is. I’m going to see if you can.

[01:10:14] I have one, I’m going to see if anyone can figure it out along the way, because I, um, post, uh, Patrick rhone.net/reading. Um, I have every book I’ve read since 2012 with a short review. And, uh, and so last year was, I didn’t read any white male authors. It was only people of color by trans you know, women. You get what I’m saying?

[01:10:47] Right. it was, it was, you know, it was BiPAP, LGBT, um, you know, female. Um, and it was [01:11:00] specifically about avoiding, uh, white men, nothing against white men. I love white men. Um,

[01:11:09] Brett: [01:11:09] My best friends are white men.

[01:11:10] Patrick: [01:11:10] With some, some of my best friends are Aaron fact white men. I’m talking to a white man right now. Um, so, so that proves, I know at least one, um, and, uh, you know, my bookshelves are filled with, with, uh, with these white men.

[01:11:25] Uh, so that tells you that I’m not adverse to reading, uh, the white men. I just thought, Hey, this would be an interesting experience experiment for a reading goal for a year, just to kind of see, you know, how difficult or easy it was to do. And, and honestly, there were a ton of books, a ton. So here’s the problem that you make a goal like that.

[01:11:46] And then like some of your favorite white male authors start releasing like great books that you want to read. And you’re like, Oh, No, no. Uh, you [01:12:00] know, uh, Neal Stephenson came out with a book last year. Uh, you know, that I still want to read this year because this is about big books, you know? Um, my friend Kelly McCullough came out with it.

[01:12:11] You know, I had a book last year that I had to put aside in this part of a series that, that, uh, that I adore. Right. Um, yeah. I mean, so many, so many great

[01:12:23] Brett: [01:12:23] You know what tempted me back to white man fiction was this nostalgia for William Gibson. Neuromancer MonaLisa overdrive. So I’ve, I’m almost back through Neuromancer right now. And it feels weird to be back on the white guy train.

[01:12:41] Patrick: [01:12:41] Yeah. How is it revisiting that? Because I imagine when you first read it, you probably read it like, you know, when you were a punk teenager, like me. Yeah.

[01:12:52] Brett: [01:12:52] it, I, I love it. Like he, he was so prescient about, I mean, this is the guy who coined the [01:13:00] term cyberspace. Like he knew this stuff was coming and, and I’ve read all of his work since then, but going back and reading Neuromancer is it’s a trip. It, I. It’s a definite, uh, it, I have a different appreciation now than I did back in the early nineties when the internet was just, just a, a baby of a thing. Yeah. Anyway,

[01:13:24] Patrick: [01:13:24] Yeah. It’s always interesting. Um, uh, that actually was going to be one of my, you know, reading goals will be for a future year is, you know, going back through and reading all of those books, rereading all those books that I loved as a teenager and seeing how I feel about them now. Wow.

[01:13:42] Brett: [01:13:42] snow crash. I bet I should revisit snow crash.

[01:13:45] Patrick: [01:13:45] Oh yeah. I’m almost afraid to reread snow crash.

[01:13:48] No seriously, because I’m, uh, I’m afraid. I won’t like it as much.

[01:13:52] Brett: [01:13:52] Oh man.

[01:13:54] Patrick: [01:13:54] I loved that book. Oh my God. I love that book. Um, you know, uh, I [01:14:00] mean, in the end, even self-helpy stuff, right. I’m looking, I’m just turning around here at my desk because I’ve got, uh, I’ve got a large bookshelf behind me and um, uh, you know, the road less traveled.

[01:14:11] I read the road less traveled, uh, as, as a, as a teenager. And I, I, it, like, I remember just having the obsession with that book for a good six months to a year. And it’s like, would I still have that now? You know? So it doesn’t have to be like scifi fiction. A lot of it’s like, self-helpy stuff that like, as a teenager, I like, I was like, Oh, this guy’s really onto something.

[01:14:34] It’s like, would I feel that way now? I don’t.

[01:14:37] Brett: [01:14:37] I feel like the self-helpy stuff probably has a greater chance of, of wringing differently in your adult life than some of the, like the scifi stuff is easy to wax nostalgic about and still appreciate.

[01:14:51] Patrick: [01:14:51] Yeah, I think you’re right about that. I think the, I th I think the kind of nonfiction and the self-helpy stuff, uh, uh, [01:15:00] probably, uh, well, I mean, but there’s, there is still stuff with like, just fantastic advice, uh, your, your money or your life, I’m looking back. And another, uh, uh, like completely changed the way I looked at at money and how I dealt with it.

[01:15:15] And like was the first book to really have me understand, like having a long term, um, understanding of, of, uh, of investment and money and savings and all of that stuff. And all of that practical advice, I kind of flipped through it. We are today. Cause I was thinking about, uh, would this be a good, good book for my daughter?

[01:15:39] Beatrix who’s 13. Um, you know, who has a problem? Uh, well, you know, you put a 20 in her hand and it almost disappears immediately into someone else’s hands.

[01:15:52] Brett: [01:15:52] Are you how that works,

[01:15:53] Patrick: [01:15:53] Yeah. And, and since, and so, you know, I was like, you know, huh, I wonder, I wonder what she, how [01:16:00] she would take this at this age. Right. So yeah, it’s, it’s things like that.

[01:16:05] So I think there is much to be said about, uh, about going back and revisiting some of those things and seeing if you still have the same feelings, uh, seeing if you have different feelings, I’m a big fan of rereading books.

[01:16:17] Brett: [01:16:17] that, uh, that third pick of your stern did like seven links in the show notes. So

[01:16:22] Patrick: [01:16:22] Oh, I’m

[01:16:23] Brett: [01:16:23] no. Well done well done. Um, so let’s recap, we’ve, we’ve mentioned a bunch of places. People can find you, uh, if you were going to put two or three at the top of the list, where would you say people should look you up?

[01:16:36] Patrick: [01:16:36] All right. Well, um, Patrick rhone.net, uh, is my kind of main blog. Um, I logged there daily. Um, uh, what is interesting about that blog is that it is kind of my social blog and other words, uh, I will. Have very short, less than [01:17:00] 280 character posts there. Um, uh, I use it like I might use Twitter, um, and I rarely post to Twitter.

[01:17:09] Um, and, and so if you’re looking for, Hey, what’s going on with Patrick? I haven’t seen anything from him for a while and you’re on Twitter or Facebook, which I almost don’t ever engage with at all. Um, I avoid it like the plague. Um, but I keep an account there for, I don’t know. I don’t know why I do it to be honest with you.

[01:17:28] Cause my wife needs me mainly. Um, Uh, so yeah, uh, that’s where you can find me even including like, you know, it’s, it’s, uh, it’s a place worth a daily visit, I guess, is what I’m trying to say. And I’m not saying that for my numbers, cause I don’t even look at my numbers. I don’t care about stats. Um, but you know, that’s where people come.

[01:17:48] If they want to see what’s going on with me, what would a wow. Um, is the home improvement blog. I’m also posting there very, very regularly because they’re very, everything’s like in like [01:18:00] right when I get off this call, I’m going to have to run and get wood and you have no idea how much time I spend thinking about would these days.

[01:18:07] Um, and, and the, and the price of wood and the cost of wood, which is just insane right now. Um, and so, uh, yeah, so I gotta, I gotta go get some wood, uh, but what a while. Um, and you know, if you go to Patrick rhone.com. That will lead you to other things. It will lead you to where my Twitter is. It will lead you to, you know, my books.

[01:18:32] Um, if you’re interested in that sort of thing, it will, you know, uh, it, it pretty much is kind of the business card to everywhere else. I am. So, uh, so that’s kind of a good one.

[01:18:45] Brett: [01:18:45] All right. Excellent. Well, thanks for your time today. It was, uh, it was a, a wide ranging and, and in depth conversation, I really enjoyed this.

[01:18:55] Patrick: [01:18:55] Yeah. Thank you so much, Brett. You know, I, I love you man. And, [01:19:00] uh, I, I really think the world of you and I really appreciate you having me on, um, and you know, I, I look forward to seeing you in PR. I mean, we don’t live that far away,

[01:19:09] Brett: [01:19:09] We really don’t

[01:19:11] Patrick: [01:19:11] so we, we, but because we’re introverts, we never actually see each other in person

[01:19:15] Brett: [01:19:15] even before the pandemic.

[01:19:17] Patrick: [01:19:17] even before the pandemic.

[01:19:18] So I would very much like to change.

[01:19:20] Brett: [01:19:20] Yes, we should. Uh, we should get together.

[01:19:23] Patrick: [01:19:23] All right.

[01:19:23] Brett: [01:19:23] All right. And thanks everyone for tuning in this week. We’ll see you in a week.

This week’s guest is Aaron Mahnke, the creator of the Lore podcast and the small empire that’s grown up around it. He joins Brett to talk about Lore, podcasting, and how life can change when you least expect it.

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Check out more episodes at systematicpod.com and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcasting app. Find Brett as @ttscoff on all social media platforms, and follow Systematic at @systmcast on Twitter.

Systematic 258

Brett: [00:00:00] [00:00:00]My guest this week is Aaron Mahnke he’s the creator of the Lore podcasts and a small empire. That’s grown up around it. How’s it going, Aaron?

[00:00:15] Aaron: [00:00:15] Hey, Brett, I am doing well. I’m doing well. How are you?

[00:00:17]Brett: [00:00:17] I’m good. I haven’t talked to you since 2016 and at that point a lot had happened since the last time I talked to you before that, and I feel like things have only exponentially grown for you since then.

[00:00:32] Aaron: [00:00:32] Things are indeed busy. Yes. And I like it that way. It’s been really fun.

[00:00:38] Brett: [00:00:38] Yeah. So I think we talked about this back in 2016, but when I first became aware of you kind of cross paths with you, you were of tossing ideas against the wall with frictionless workflow stuff and kind of putting out things like index cards and whatnot. And then all of this sudden. [00:01:00] You put out a podcast that I don’t think you had like strong, a strong inclination that it was going to change your life. And it, it did.

[00:01:12] Aaron: [00:01:12] It did it really did. Yeah. I tell people when they ask me, you know, how did you start lore? I say, have you ever seen one of those detective movies where the. You know, the clever detectives in the library of this English Manor and he sort of leans on a bookshelf and a door swings open because he leaned on the right thing.

[00:01:28]That’s how I fell into this. It was all complete happenstance and I have just been making it up as I go ever since.

[00:01:37] Brett: [00:01:37] Laura gained more and more popularity. Eventually got. Optioned as an Amazon show. What other Lore specifically, we’ll talk about some of your other shows soon, but like what other major avenues has Laura taken since then?

[00:01:51] Aaron: [00:01:51] Shortly after the TV offers rolled in, I had a number of literary agents reach out they’re these mythical [00:02:00] people that a lot of authors don’t think actually exist because. It’s so hard to attain. And I had a lot of them knocking on my door, which was super great. So I teamed up with one of them sold a three book lore series to penguin random house.

[00:02:12] The first of the books came out the same. I think the same. It was the same month. I, it might’ve been the same week as the first season of the TV show. So it was sort of a big October, 2017, I think 17 and 18. I think that was the 2017 was the, was like the big month where everything landed. Yeah. And and then, I don’t really think of it as a spinoff, but I’ve taken Lore on the road, you know, we’ve done.

[00:02:35]Chad who composes music for the show. He’s a amazing classical pianist. He’s got an album out now. That’s just tearing up the charts in his category. He recorded at Abbey road. He’s signed on with Decca records legendary. Record that. Yeah he’s the bomb and we’ll go on tour and do 15 or 20 cities across the country over the course of a few months, just, you know, go out and do a few come back home recuperate and do lore live in front of an audience of a [00:03:00] thousand or two people.

[00:03:01]It’s always a really fun time.

[00:03:03] Brett: [00:03:03] That’s amazing. So you started production company, I think is what you would call it grim and mild.

[00:03:09] Aaron: [00:03:09] Yeah. Yeah. About three years ago, was it three years ago? Two and a half. I, heart radio approached me and they said, Hey, we love what you do with lore. And we want you to make more shows. And so what we want to do is we want to Pay you for your services, but also provide you with production, muscle, and staff and people who can take your ideas and make them into shows.

[00:03:29] And the first thing we launched was a show called cabinet of curiosities which is my love letter to Paul Harvey and the rest of the story and a little bit of uh Ripley’s believe it or not. And it comes out twice a week. Each episode has two tiny five minute stories in it that are these little.

[00:03:44] You know, delightful, wonderful, curious, vignettes about inventions are amazing people. And then after that, it’s just been that’s the same model for every show. And when I went to re up that deal a year later, or two years later, I guess it’s been three because I just hit the year [00:04:00] Mark on grim and mild.

[00:04:01] Anyway, I needed a more of a. I needed to hire people I needed at the time I was doing cabinet with contracts, Unobscured. And then unobscured, that was another show I brought on. And I was doing that with paid contractors, but I wanted to hire people and, you know, give health insurance and all those benefits and have people on staff who could do other things too.

[00:04:19] So I started a production company to sort of be the umbrella for that expensive venture. And and now everything is sort of bundled up under that umbrella that I guess it’s a network in a sense of grim and mild.

[00:04:31] Brett: [00:04:31] How big is your team now?

[00:04:33] Aaron: [00:04:33] I have five paid staff members. And I have another, I think three contractors who still, they’d rather just be contractors, they’re doing it, you know, around a day job or things like that.

[00:04:43]I think, you know, Harry Marks he’s floated in our circle for years. Harry writes cabinet for me. He’s my main guy for cabinet. Yeah. And he does that around a full-time job. So there’s no need to hire him and all that. Yeah, it’s great. So yeah, th the team grows as it needs to and, you know, [00:05:00] there’s seasons for a lot of these shows and ebbs and flows, and so people can move around and, you know, we’re developing other stuff and working on other shows that haven’t come out yet.

[00:05:08] And it’s exciting. We do team meetings every month, every every Monday and writers’ rooms for different shows on a regular basis. It’s it feels like a. The production company.

[00:05:18] Brett: [00:05:18] Like I’m just. I did not succeed at being independent. Like I recently took a day job after a decade of doing my own version of throwing things against the wall and seeing what sticks and I feel like I am the typical story of people who try to make it independently.

[00:05:35] And you are the very atypical story of of independent success.

[00:05:41]Aaron: [00:05:41] Yeah. I like, you know, I’ve said it already and I’ll say it many times today, but I am making this up as I go. I. There was no manual to tell me what to do. It did help that I was running A small one person designed business for about seven years, but that just taught me about things like taxes and how to handle clients.

[00:05:58] But I did take a lot of those [00:06:00] skills, you know, how to sell a logo to a local plumber who doesn’t necessarily think he needs one to going out to sponsors, you know, in those very early days, it was like me knocking on doors. I remember just a couple of months after lore. Came out. And then the numbers were screaming up and I thought, Oh, it’s getting to the point where I can go get advertisers, but I didn’t know how to do it.

[00:06:22] So I just went to contact forms on websites, for places like Squarespace or Casper and sent messages into their customer service team and said, Hey, I’ve got this show and here’s its numbers. And I don’t know who in your company to talk to, but could you point me that way? And they always would. And and it worked and I started selling ads and I’ve continued to sell my own ads on Lore for the last six years.

[00:06:43]Brett: [00:06:43] That’s a time suck in and of itself.

[00:06:46] Aaron: [00:06:46] Sounds like it. My ad sales, I do it for the whole calendar year in one shot. I don’t do like quarterly that look, Laura is six years old. I’m beyond the point where I’m going to grow exponentially from quarter to quarter. It’s a [00:07:00] steady show and that’s fine. And it makes selling easy. So I can take a week out of my August or September.

[00:07:05] And I can put together my numbers put together my prices. I know that I’m going to put out like 28 episodes over the year. Every episode has three spots, so there’s 84 spots I need to fill. And I just go out to the agencies that I have contacts with. And I say, here’s my availability. It’s first come first serve.

[00:07:21] Here’s the pricing. Let me know what dates you want, but hurry up because they’re going fast. And they do within a week. I sell out the year. I dust my hands off and I move on to the next task. So

[00:07:30] Brett: [00:07:30] be nice.

[00:07:31]Aaron: [00:07:31] It’s been really great. It’s. You know, I’m grateful there. When I launched lore six years ago, there were, I don’t know, maybe a quarter of a million podcasts out there, and there are over 2 million now and granted, most of them don’t have enough downloads to get sponsors, but there’s more competition for ad money now than we used to be.

[00:07:51] So I’m grateful that I can sell out.

[00:07:55] Brett: [00:07:55] I have budgets for podcasts advertising than they did six years ago, [00:08:00] too.

[00:08:00] Aaron: [00:08:00] Yeah and I think over the six years, a lot of new startups have come out and written into their DNA is we’re going to go, you know, advertise on podcasts.

[00:08:09] Brett: [00:08:09] Yeah, exactly. So when you’re out hiring for your your team what kind of credentials, how do you hire people?

[00:08:17]Aaron: [00:08:17] I have hired very haphazardly. I’ve sort of let fate t ake the wheel. I’ll give you an example. My wife and I were this is pre COVID. We’re on a train in Boston on a subway ride that we’re on the T in Boston, heading to the house of blues to see the racantours and as a side note, the show is incredible.

[00:08:36] Jack White knows how to put on a good show. And the Raconteurs tour that year, it was just an insane, and we’re on a subway car and we’re in the corner back corner. And there’s these two I can tell from their accent, they’re Midwestern. I grew up in the Midwest and there are these two older guys, probably in their late fifties, early sixties.

[00:08:54] And they have this college age girl trapped in a corner and they’re peppering her with questions and [00:09:00] she’s, you can tell the smiles are polite, but they’re forced. And my wife and I just sort of edge our way closer to her. And we were listening and waiting for an opportunity to sort of help her out. If we need to.

[00:09:11] Then we heard her mention that she is she’s in grad school and they said, Oh, what are you doing? Are you an education major? Because of course. All old white men think that women who are in grad school have to be going to be a teacher. And no she’s actually in for history. She said, and my ears perk up because, you know, at the basic level, Lore is a history show and they said, Oh what do you study?

[00:09:30] American history? And she said, no, I specialize in medieval, which trial manuscripts. And that was the moment where I just sort of leaned forward and put my hand out and I said, Hey, I’m Erin, do you listen to podcasts? And that’s how I met Allie. She is one of my five teammates and does insane work.

[00:09:47]Her, you know, graduate school studies were about medieval, witch trial manuscripts, the documents that came out of these trials and court documents and all that. And she’s been invaluable. She’s. It’s amazing. So that’s how [00:10:00] I meet. That’s how I meet my folks.

[00:10:01] Brett: [00:10:01] And she’s full-time now

[00:10:03] Aaron: [00:10:03] Yeah. Yeah. She’s full-time

[00:10:04] Brett: [00:10:04] I bet that story would be fun to hear from her perspective as well.

[00:10:09] Aaron: [00:10:09] I know, right? Yeah. I think she was, I would hope she was grateful for the chance meeting, but she, you know, she’s she just, she loves the job. She tells me frequently, she can’t believe this is what she does for a living. And yeah. Basically I paid people to research and write and. It’s very cool.

[00:10:25] Yeah.

[00:10:25] Brett: [00:10:25] So has the pandemic affected Lore slash grim and mild in any way?

[00:10:31]Aaron: [00:10:31] You know, it’s funny. I decided like February of 2014, maybe even January that I was going to bundle everything up into a company, I was going to hire people who are needing to be hired. Like Carl who helped research and write unobscured. I wanted him full-time he’s an old friend and I wanted to get him back from the West coast to the East coast.

[00:10:51] And so I leased office space. I bought furniture. I went to article.com, you know, an old sponsor, and I just furnished the place out, lots of desks and built a sound [00:11:00] studio in there. Got it set up where three people can sit down and do round table conversations and we were ready to go. And then we were ready to launch in March and I’m like, all right, let’s let’s move in.

[00:11:10] And March was when the world shut down. And so for the last year, plus one or two people have been going into the office and working in separate rooms with masks on and you know, Allie doesn’t live, she lives in the area, but she lives far enough away that she’s just been working from home the entire time.

[00:11:27] And I go in from time to time just to see how the office is doing and if I have to have an in-person meeting, but yeah, it just sort of shut down these exciting launch plans, we’ve got our show artwork on the wall. You can walk through and sit down and have conversations about the story in an episode, or where are we going with the series and just have them right there.

[00:11:46] And we don’t get to do that right now. And that’s been frustrating, but I’m amazed at how easily zoom filled in for a lot of those functions. You know, my kids have to do school over zoom. We’re not sending them to school. It has proved itself to be a valuable tool for us. But [00:12:00] yeah, it would have been nice to meet in person for lore though.

[00:12:02]I sort of, I keep it compartmentalized lore on its own. I’ve got researchers digging in to future episodes and I just write every day and I record from home in my booth where I’m at right now. And it, I know COVID disrupted a lot and I don’t want to downplay it at all for a lot of people’s lives.

[00:12:17] But for me as a work at home guy it didn’t really impact a lot of my life. Yeah,

[00:12:22] Brett: [00:12:22] Yeah. I’m in the same boat there.

[00:12:23] Aaron: [00:12:23] yeah, I was going to say, I bet you probably experienced the same thing.

[00:12:26] Brett: [00:12:26] Yeah. No, there really hasn’t been, other than I now go to yoga over zoom, literally nothing else in my life changed other than I didn’t have to see people as often, which is totally fine with me.

[00:12:38]Aaron: [00:12:38] Yeah, I’m an introvert, so um not seeing people has been, it’s been right. All right. I’m fine with,

[00:12:44] Brett: [00:12:44] Do you have any anxiety about that changing and expectations going back to to in-person meetings.

[00:12:51] Aaron: [00:12:51] I don’t, I know a lot of people that do and I feel for them I have learned over the years that I’m sort of a chameleon when it comes to the introvert extrovert thing, having to [00:13:00] go. And I can go back and. It sounds like I’m bragging. I’m not trying to brag, but like you go through enough press things for TV shows or a book tour, you go do live shows.

[00:13:08] You get really good at flipping a switch and turning that extrovert part of your brain on. And it burns a lot of fuel. And I go to my hotel room and crash when I’m done, but I’ve gotten good at flipping back and forth. I’m not as worried about going back out in public, because for me, it’s, you know, it’s always been an uncomfortable thing.

[00:13:25] I’ll just flip the switch and I’ll do my thing and then I can turn it off and go back to the hotel room. But yeah, I know people who are, they’re worried,

[00:13:35] Brett: [00:13:35] Mansplaining. If a man explained something to a man.

[00:13:37]This comes up. This comes up now. And then I do have a lot of introverts on this show, but an introvert is really good at social stuff for limited periods of time. And what makes you an introvert is how long it takes you to recharge after being on? Yeah,

[00:13:58] Aaron: [00:13:58] an introvert re [00:14:00] yeah. Introverts need to be alone to recharge. That’s how they feel back up. My wife’s an extrovert and so she fuels up by being around people. Let’s have some friends over. That’s a, that’s an Oasis for her, for me. That’s a hell that I have to get through. And then we’ll, then I’ll recharge afterwards.

[00:14:16] Brett: [00:14:16] Yeah. I grew up with a very extroverted mother who did not understand why I knew I needed alone time after just half an hour of hanging out with people.

[00:14:27] Aaron: [00:14:27] Yeah. Yeah. I’m with ya.

[00:14:28]Brett: [00:14:28] So I’m going to switch over to some psychology questions. Do you consider yourself? Neuro-typical

[00:14:36] Aaron: [00:14:37] I will tell you a couple of things. I have a bachelor’s degree in psychology and I don’t know what that question means. How’s that for honesty? Yeah.

[00:14:45]Brett: [00:14:45] So and it’s a word that I’ve heard more, more recently, but I like the idea of a neuro-typical are people who don’t have problems with things like ADHD or autism just function [00:15:00] as normal human beings. People on the autism spectrum would be neuro atypical or neurodiverse.

[00:15:09] Aaron: [00:15:09] I the biggest challenge that I have is I can be dyslexic with numbers. That’s the, and it doesn’t pop up all the time. I notice it mostly when I’m, that’s why I use spreadsheets, because if I don’t use a spreadsheet, I make mistakes. It’s not a bad math thing. It’s literally a dyslexia with numbers kind of issue.

[00:15:27] And that’s the one thing that really hinders me. I have become very disciplined over the years. And so I don’t really feel like there’s anything. Personality wise or hardwiring wise holding my production back.

[00:15:39]Brett: [00:15:39] I ask mostly because people I know that are on the autism spectrum and most of them very mild just like certain social behaviors and things that have led them to get a diagnosis. But they by and large love research and they love going in depth. On a topic and can [00:16:00] compile they an attention span.

[00:16:01] Like I will never understand but an ability to deep dive on things, which is something I see as a prerequisite for the kind of shows that you produce.

[00:16:11] Aaron: [00:16:12] I’m going to say that the people who work for me, that, that are research oriented, they are wired a very specific way. But they’re also. Very socially normal. I don’t feel like they they work through any challenges on a regular basis. I think that they manage really well.

[00:16:26] Brett: [00:16:26] Like you personally, do you enjoy research?

[00:16:29] Aaron: [00:16:29] I do. I do. Th I think the most frustrating thing about research for me these days is that I want to go so much deeper on a lot of things. And I can’t, because I know that there’s a goal for every episode we have, you know, you can fall down every rabbit hole in the world on Wikipedia and you know, Oh, this connects to this and do that 17 times and you’ve lost three hours.

[00:16:49] So for me, I have to be very focused on the particular story we need to tell. And just the context that helps that story. Yeah I love research and I don’t do as much of it [00:17:00] as I used to because I have people who do it for me. So my, my, my time is spent elsewhere.

[00:17:05] Brett: [00:17:05] So a lot of your Laura specially. It’s even in the name of your production company skews dark. Why do you have a personal attraction to things that are a little bit dark?

[00:17:18]Aaron: [00:17:18] I grew up on, you know, properties like unsolved mysteries the X-Files I, yeah, I think I do skew that way. I often tell people that where I discovered that I really wanted to tell stories was when I was a kid and my mom bought me a book from the what was it called? The. That paper catalog.

[00:17:37] We would get, you know, like once a month in school, Scholastic readers club, no Scholastic readers club. And she picked me up a book of like weird, but true stories. That’s, you know, just captured my imagination and, you know, things like people, a farmer who vanishes into a field, you know, never to be seen again.

[00:17:56] And just, you know, and then to be told as a ten-year-old and this really [00:18:00] happened, it’s a true story. It just blew my mind.

[00:18:02] Brett: [00:18:02] Yeah, I can relate. It doesn’t show up as much in my work as it does for you. But I definitely, as a kid like unsolved mysteries, I think that was the name of that show. I absolutely, I loved it. I loved things that left me with more questions than answers. That was always a fascination of mine.

[00:18:26] Aaron: [00:18:26] Yeah, I think that one of the things that I pulled out of that was that it’s healthy to not have answers. I think as humans, we really want to have all the answers. And it’s good to go looking for them. I certainly want people to figure out how to cure cancer someday. Like I want us to have answers.

[00:18:42] But I think that there’s a power in mystery that not knowing the answer to something is okay, and can be entertaining. And that’s where I’ve sort of parked myself over the years.

[00:18:53] Brett: [00:18:53] Do you consider yourself a religious person

[00:18:56] Aaron: [00:18:56] yeah,

[00:18:56]Brett: [00:18:56] Christian faith.

[00:18:58] Aaron: [00:18:58] yeah. Have been since I don’t [00:19:00] know, in middle school or so.

[00:19:01] Brett: [00:19:01] Okay. I went the opposite way. I was. Christian until middle school, but I feel like the idea of needing to explain the big mysteries plays in a lot too, like any religion and that need to have something, have an explanation for big questions that without religion you know, where did we come from?

[00:19:26] Can be inexplicable. Or like the scientific community has to say, there are a lot of things we just don’t know. Do you think that religion for you serves to answer those questions or is it something else?

[00:19:40]Aaron: [00:19:40] I’m not sure that it serves to answer that. Particularly I know, you know, Laura is a. No creepy history, storytelling, podcasts, but at the same time, I spend a lot of time sort of reflecting on the human condition, but what it means to be human on humanity, right? Like [00:20:00] how and we find a lot of this in folklore from culture to culture how, the things we build into our belief systems whether it’s, you know, a main line.

[00:20:10] Religion or it’s an archaic folklore belief, like whatever that mix is, it’s there to compensate for something or to explain something or to help us get through something. And that’s the stuff that fascinates me.

[00:20:22] Brett: [00:20:22] So are you still writing novels?

[00:20:25]Aaron: [00:20:25] I’m not there’s a asterisk next to that. I, I wrote and self published three of them before launching Lore. In fact, Lore was meant to be like Oh, like an email newsletter giveaway Hey, I’ll give you these five, you know, historical essays that I discovered this stuff while researching my novels.

[00:20:43] If you just sign up for my mailing list. But over the years and deepening my relationship with iHeart. I’ve been able to dig into the fiction realm. So last year I came on late to the project, but last year we launched a show in October called 13 days of [00:21:00] Halloween, which was sort of, sorry sort of it’s, it was like a hybrid of anthology style storytelling.

[00:21:04] Every episode was a new story, but it was all wrapped up in a larger meta story. And the idea was that you were. You are a visitor to a hotel and the caretaker was taking you from room to room and introducing you to the other guests, to the hotel. And each one had a story to tell you that the caretaker was voiced by Keegan Michael Key, which was insane to watch him perform and do that I didn’t have a lot of creative input in the show.

[00:21:26]did get to pick some of the stories and kill some of the stories. But this year, we’re, we’ve already started, you know, pre production on the second season of that. And I’m a lot more involved in it this time around I’ve concepted the season and instructed the writers on where to go with it.

[00:21:41] And we’re having fun. I’ve also got an audio fiction show coming out late summer, early fall, probably August or so that I can’t talk about, but it has an insane cast. And it’s it’s my first like full production audio drama. I came up with the story. Pitched it to a friend who writes screenplays for audio dramas [00:22:00] and they wrote the actual, I don’t know how to write like that specific language of screenplays.

[00:22:04]That’s not something I know how to do. So they did that for me and gave the thing an incredible life. And so that’s that’s been a labor of love for about a year and a half, and we’re hoping to get that out in August. And then there’ll be more fiction from me after that. But I think it’s going to be in the audio space at this point.

[00:22:18] I, my literary agent would like me to write. Fiction. They would specifically like me to write like middle grade slightly younger than Y a I just, for the time involved for the ROI. For me, it’s so much better to do audio. And and it’s where people are at audio is where people are at. Audio book sales are so much higher than print or ebook sales because you can listen in the car on the way to work, or you can listen.

[00:22:43] You know, on a subway. So anyway, all that to say, I don’t write novels anymore, but I’m still working in fiction.

[00:22:49] Brett: [00:22:49] So one of the things that happens when anything gets really popular is you get more criticism. People tend to be harsher. The more popular something is [00:23:00] have you dealt with. With kind of the pitfalls of fame in that regard.

[00:23:06] Aaron: [00:23:06] Yeah. Yeah. It’s interesting. You bring that up and I don’t know how closely this relates, but this, if this feels right to me. So again, I launched lore six years ago and I was making it up as I went. And so that meant that I recorded episode one in a. And an old new England house on the third floor, in an, in a room that had no straight walls, they were all like angular because it was in the eaves of the house.

[00:23:32] Horsehair plaster is really hard and reflective with sound hardwood floors. The furniture was from Ikea. So really hard composite wood with cheap plastic veneer, everything was reflective. It was like, Shining a light into a fun house at a circus. And and then I talked into a microphone that was between me and my glass IMAX screen.

[00:23:53] So acoustically, I did everything wrong. And that’s why from the very beginning, there was music in the background because. It’s like [00:24:00] taking a bad photo and putting it in Instagram and adding a filter. And it sounds okay. Or it looks okay. Those early episodes of lore, if you listen to episode one and then listen to episode one 67, which came out last week, they’re night and day in quality.

[00:24:12] And I also, I was learning to be a narrator. I’d never done it before. All those pieces, I was learning to edit audio. For a number of years, lore grew and there weren’t complaints about those old episodes, but I’m watching numbers on places like Spotify, where I can see how many people start listening to this show, but don’t follow the show.

[00:24:30] They don’t tap the subscribe button. And there’s a big gap there. And my fear has been that’s like a, non-verbal non expressed complaints about the quality of the early episodes. So just today I launched a new I basically made a new episode called episode one same title, but after the title in parentheses, it says remastered.

[00:24:50] And it’s me recording the same script, but on this mic, in this booth today with this voice and this experience, and then editing it and producing it with Chad’s music [00:25:00] and all these, you know, it’s a modern version of what episode one could be. I didn’t want to take the old one away cause I got a lot of hardcore fans that are super attached to them, but I wanted to provide something that’s new people who find the show for the first time and they want to start at episode one, they have an option to take the high quality path.

[00:25:17]That’s me sort of responding to that. I take an attack with criticism. That is if it’s if there’s no pattern to it, if it’s rare in a category, you can ignore it. But if it pops up frequently about the same thing, then you should probably take a notice of it. Early on, I had some bad reviews that said your music volume is way too loud compared to your voiceover volume.

[00:25:39] And I thought you’re dumb. I know what I’m doing. I didn’t, but I, you know, and so I ignored them, but I watched a number of them hit iTunes. It was iTunes at the time. And so I went in and I lowered my music volume and I’ve never had complaints ever since. So I look for patterns and complaints. And if it’s blowing up, I’ll take care of it.

[00:25:56]Brett: [00:25:56] You take all criticism constructively [00:26:00] unless you’re just letting it pass it. Doesn’t it doesn’t affect you negatively.

[00:26:05]Aaron: [00:26:05] I think it’s human to be affected by that stuff. I’ve heard Adam Savage refer to reading the reviews of your own stuff as cutting. And it is in a way you’re harming yourself when you. When you put that in your brain, but we also want to hear what people have to say. Yeah, it’s a weird place to live.

[00:26:23] Brett: [00:26:23] I I went back and read. Reviews of my other podcasts over tired. I hadn’t looked at it for years and there was this one review that just went off. He said, I would give this one star, but I’m going to give them two for trying these two people have nothing to say. They’re wandering and boring.

[00:26:46] And it sounds like they haven’t slept. And the show was called overtired. I feel like. I feel like that’s the point, but it was the first time I’ve read a bad review and just been able to laugh. Like it didn’t. I [00:27:00] have a very thin skin. Like I have to take, I have to step back and take a breath.

[00:27:04] Anytime someone criticizes me. It like cuts me deeper, I think, than. A normal neuro-typical person. So that’s, it’s dealing with that kind of criticism. I just, I’ve always been a little bit grateful that my things aren’t so popular that I have to face that much, but

[00:27:22] Aaron: [00:27:22] Yeah. Yeah. Certainly w the more popular, you know, just statistically, you’re gonna, you’re gonna reach more people. And that means that same 1% or 10% just becomes a larger population and they’re going to be. They’re going to complain, but you know, the complaints that bother me the most are the people that complain about ads at podcasting.

[00:27:42] know Oh your show is great but you ruin it with ads And I want to sit them down and walk them through how incredibly thoughtful I really am about my ads and how I use them compared to other podcasts that’s one random person on the internet and I’m not going to spend my time doing that. So [00:28:00] I’ve had to learn to just walk away.

[00:28:01] Brett: [00:28:01] Yeah and those random people who complain about advertising very often are the same people that wouldn’t pay for it anyway. Yeah.

[00:28:10]Aaron: [00:28:10] Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for the free show, but boy, your ads suck, you know, and it’s just a, it stings a little bit. Yeah,

[00:28:16] Brett: [00:28:16] All right. Speaking of sponsors,

[00:28:18]Aaron: [00:28:18] you want to pay the bills?

[00:28:20] Brett: [00:28:20] I do.

[00:28:21] Aaron: [00:28:21] Awesome.

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[00:30:30] that brings us to some top three picks. I know that you don’t have a hard list in front of you. We’re going to wing this Tell me the first thing that kind of Springs to mind as your favorite thing right now.

[00:30:42]Aaron: [00:30:42] I’ll pull it out of my pocket right now. I’ve taken to the world of nice pocket knives. Little everyday carry and I have in my pocket Chris Reeve. Sobenza it’s got you can look him up. He’s a really, it’s a company that makes really respected easy to use pocket knives.

[00:30:59] And [00:31:00] it’s the one that has Ebony inlay on both sides, sort of a polished titanium on most surfaces. It’s just, it’s really nice. It’s always in my pocket.

[00:31:08] Brett: [00:31:08] How do you spell the name of the knife?

[00:31:09]Aaron: [00:31:09] So Benza S E B E and Z a.

[00:31:14] Brett: [00:31:14] All right. Is it airline safe? How big is

[00:31:17] Aaron: [00:31:17] Oh no, it’s not it’s. I think the blade is probably like just under three inches. It might be like 2.9, eight inches or something.

[00:31:24] Brett: [00:31:24] What’s airline regulation. Isn’t three inches. Okay. Yeah.

[00:31:28] Aaron: [00:31:28] Oh, I don’t know. I’ve just assumed I can’t get on a plane with a knife.

[00:31:31] Brett: [00:31:31] Yeah, no, I made that assumption. I got this great thing called the the Gerber artifact. And there’s two versions of it. One of it has a number 10 X-Acto blade that folds out of it and the other one does not have any blades. So I always assumed that if I wanted to travel with this thing, I had to get the one without the Exacto blade.

[00:31:52] But then I came to learn that a number 10 Exacto blade is totally okay. At least it was at the time that I looked it up.

[00:32:00] [00:32:00] Aaron: [00:32:00] That’s amazing. I’ve spent the last, you know, 14 months not traveling. I just, I don’t want to, it’s not a cheap knife and I don’t want to have it taken away. But I’ll have to look into that because I like to, I like having something with me to open things.

[00:32:15] Brett: [00:32:15] Let’s clarify for our listeners that not a cheap knife is over $400. Yeah. That’s fancy. You’ve really made it.

[00:32:28] Aaron: [00:32:28] I blew every penny I earned on that knife.

[00:32:31] Brett: [00:32:31] Saved up for years.

[00:32:33] Aaron: [00:32:33] That’s right. Um, Yeah, number two. I will tell you, I have just wrapped up. I wish there was a ton more of it. Like a Nintendo switch game called immortals, Phoenix rising. Have you heard of it?

[00:32:44] Brett: [00:32:44] No, I’m not a

[00:32:46] Aaron: [00:32:46] is. Okay. I would say it is, it feels a lot like Zelda breath of the wild.

[00:32:51] It’s an open world, you know, cartoon character that runs around in battles, creatures with weapons. I really love it’s simple system for, [00:33:00] you’re not collecting like a thousand different swords and then having to upgrade each one, you just upgrade your sword ability and no matter what sword do you use.

[00:33:08] It has that power it’s really it’s been a really fun game. It’s all Greek mythology based. So I had a lot of fun with that and it’s got some comical writing to it. It’s been a really fun game and I wish there was more.

[00:33:18] Brett: [00:33:18] Now is having a team, is that opened up enough time? Was there a period in the growth of lore where you would never have had time to play games?

[00:33:29] Aaron: [00:33:29] Yeah. Yeah. And then I found that other people could do research better than me. They took on a, you know, 40 hour per episode burden and made the show better. And I was able to, for the most part, I spend my spare time focusing on things like other shows and meetings and more meetings, but every now and then I get to play a video game.

[00:33:50] It’s nice.

[00:33:51] Brett: [00:33:51] Yeah, I I have time to play games and somehow I don’t I play. I like threes on my phone.

[00:33:58] Aaron: [00:33:58] I still have threes.

[00:34:00] [00:34:00] Brett: [00:34:00] I saw Christina and overtired. We w for us, it’s a fidget toy. Almost. We just almost absentmindedly play threes while we do other things.

[00:34:08] Aaron: [00:34:08] Yeah.

[00:34:09] Brett: [00:34:09] But but as far as more involved games with storylines and even levels, I just I lose interest very quickly.

[00:34:18]Aaron: [00:34:18] If you want a game that we can consider this number three, or we can consider this a tangent to number two, but you want a game that you can just kill time with on your iPad or your iPhone, although it’s small on the iPhone. It’s a game called poly Topia.

[00:34:29]Brett: [00:34:29] Taking a note. Tell me about it.

[00:34:31] Aaron: [00:34:31] It is polygon based whatever that tilted 3d world view, but it’s essentially. Like civilization, like you build a city and then you, that city can create a soldier and then you send them out to, to take over a campsite that nobody else has gotten to yet, or defeat your enemy and take their city from them.

[00:34:49]But on a super high level, it’s not don’t think like civilization where you have to dig down and do all these crazy things. It’s a very basic game and I can play a game in half an hour. And [00:35:00] it’s great. My wife and I were watching TV or killing time during the meeting, you know, that kind of thing.

[00:35:04] Brett: [00:35:04] my girlfriend is a card player and has multiple times tried to get me into settlers of Catan. And even that I don’t there’s something wrong with me. I talk to so many people who talks about like games enriching their lives in so many different ways. And I had I’ve had multiple episodes that were with people specifically related to the video game industry to try to get them to explain to me how to get into gaming so that I can try to achieve this level of satisfaction that other people seem to have.

[00:35:41] We’ll leave it at that though. I just doesn’t matter enough to me to really put in the effort, for

[00:35:48] Aaron: [00:35:48] and that’s fine.

[00:35:49] Brett: [00:35:49] like coding, I think I get the same satisfaction from coding and and you know, writing complex, regular expressions that other people get from playing video games. I think it has [00:36:00] this, I think it triggers the same reactions in my brain for me.

[00:36:03]Aaron: [00:36:03] Yeah. That’s and that’s the thing I, I don’t really have a lot of. Quote hobbies outside of work because I took a hobby and I turned it into my job and I, it doesn’t, I’ve heard people say that means you have to find a new hobby. And I don’t think that’s true. I think that I just turned my hobby into a job and I now get to do the thing that I love every day and I still work my ass off, but it’s doing something for myself that I love and it works out for me.

[00:36:27] So if coding is what trips, the endorphins for you like that, you just lean into that man.

[00:36:35] Brett: [00:36:35] Like my bills are paid month to month by selling apps. And, you know, and that involves a lot of like customer support and other kind of tangential things. But I really did manage if there’s a measure of success for an independent developer, that basically says you’re doing what you love and you’re paying your bills.

[00:36:55] Then by that measure, I succeeded and I’ve never felt like a [00:37:00] failure. I just also don’t have a retirement fund. And that’s a goal right now. I’m 42. It’s time to start preparing for retirement.

[00:37:10]Aaron: [00:37:10] Yeah, I hear ya. I remember being in design and I did not earn a lot and I worried yeah, I can pay the bills. I can hit my goals. Barely but what does 65 look like for me? It was rough for a long time. That’s awesome to hear that’s working out for you like that.

[00:37:24]Brett: [00:37:24] I just took a job with Oracle. I’m going to be, I had a couple of guests over the last year that talked about this the idea of developer advocate, developer relations, like the people who basically they’re almost hype men for people for. Like a big tech company and interface with the developers who use the company’s products.

[00:37:50] And I immediately said that would be. That’s like exactly what I’m qualified to do. And then I did an interview with a puppet. My friend Victor has [00:38:00] a, he’s starting a little video podcast where puppets interview real people. And I was interviewed by a puppet. And as a result of that interview, indirectly, I suddenly had a job offer from a big tech company to do exactly.

[00:38:19] What I had envisioned. So things did fall into place. It’s yeah. Anyway, we’re going to call poly Topia side pick and see if you can come up with a number three.

[00:38:32] Aaron: [00:38:32] number three. I went through a phase for a couple of months where I wore one of those Oura rings. Have you seen those, it’s like, o U R a, but it’s a Bluetooth enabled ring that you wear and it tracks your heart rate.

[00:38:47]It’s 90% made for sleep tracking to know how well you’re sleeping. And if you tag your activities and your diet and things like that, you can actually find ways to sleep better. Cause that’s my, if I have one problem that I [00:39:00] want to fix, it’s I just don’t always sleep the best. And. I would like to fix that.

[00:39:05] Brett: [00:39:05] Yeah, this is, I did not know these things existed, so I’m browsing a webpage right now. How much do those cost?

[00:39:12]Aaron: [00:39:12] I th I want to say it was like 300 bucks. But there’s no ongoing services, you know, it’s just, you buy it and it’s yours. So I was cool with that.

[00:39:20] Brett: [00:39:20] Do you have an Apple watch?

[00:39:22] Aaron: [00:39:22] I do, I wear it for my mornings, so it’s on my wrist while I write and then I go for a run. Which is on a treadmill because I live in, sorry.

[00:39:31] I live in new England and it’s it’s crappy most of the time out there. So I run on a treadmill and then after I’ve showered and changed, I switched over to a mechanical watch.

[00:39:42] Brett: [00:39:42] I wear mine mostly for the purpose of sleep tracking. So if I charge

[00:39:48] Aaron: [00:39:48] have you found that? Is it good at that for you? I’ve gotten frustrated with wearing a ring on that finger because I basically mirror my. Yeah, like wedding ring on my left hand. And so the same ring finger on my right hand. I’m wearing that and [00:40:00] it just bothered me. It got in the way.

[00:40:01]I’d love to use the watch for that.

[00:40:03] Brett: [00:40:03] I have. So I don’t have one of the latest models that actually has like the blood oxygen sensors and everything. The built-in Apple tools do not do. A great job. There is an app called I think it’s better sleep or it’s an, I’ll find it though. I’ll put a link in the show notes, even if I can’t remember the name of it right now, but it does an amazing job of watching for movement and a pulse rate.

[00:40:32] And being able to determine based on different thresholds when you are in deep sleep, when you’re in light sleep and when you are awake and can give you a graph in the morning showing like a full year, last eight hours how much of it was actual deep sleep and how much of it was fitful and, you know, give you actual statistics in the morning, which the default Apple tools do not do a great job of.

[00:41:00] [00:41:00] Aaron: [00:41:00] No, they don’t. Do you have to launch the app on your watch before you go to sleep?

[00:41:05] Brett: [00:41:05] Nope. It’s the app actually runs on your phone and it just pulls all of the data that the watch is collecting anyway. So you don’t have to think about it at all.

[00:41:16] Aaron: [00:41:16] That’s good. All right. I’ll wait for your show notes and then I’ll I’ll look into it.

[00:41:20] Brett: [00:41:20] Yeah. Let me I should’ve just while I was talking, I should have been doing this, but it’s right here on my phone. It is called it’s called auto sleep.

[00:41:29] Aaron: [00:41:29] Okay.

[00:41:30] Brett: [00:41:30] Yeah. Highly recommend

[00:41:31] Aaron: [00:41:31] will check it out. Yeah. I’ll check that

[00:41:34] Brett: [00:41:34] All right. People shouldn’t have any problem finding you on the internet.

[00:41:39] Aaron: [00:41:39] Don’t tell them where I’m at now. I am kidding.

[00:41:41] Brett: [00:41:41] We’ve got Aaron mankey.com anywhere else you want to mention.

[00:41:44]Aaron: [00:41:44] You know, grimandmild.com, M a N D not an ampersand. Is the production site and there’s links to all the shows and descriptions and all that stuff there. And I’m on all the social stuff as a M A H N K E. Yeah, most of the [00:42:00] social stuff I’m on Instagram and Twitter and clubhouse. Now I’ve been playing around with that.

[00:42:05]Brett: [00:42:05] I don’t even know what clubhouse is.

[00:42:09]Aaron: [00:42:09] This is the best way I can explain it. Have you’ve been to a conference before, right? Where you go and like WWDC, right? You go and it takes place over the course of a day or two days or three days, but there’s a schedule and you can go to this room at this time and you can hear somebody talk about.

[00:42:23]You know, this type of developing, and then you can go across the hall after that one’s done. And you can catch somebody talking about app sales. Clubhouse is an audio only version in an app form of that. You open it up and at any given moment, there are sessions going on around the world with topics listed.

[00:42:38]You can tell the app what you’re interested in. So it only suggests sessions to you that. Fit your needs or your interests. And then you you just tap on the room and you go in and you listen, you it’s like listening to talk radio, but it’s a limited run, like an hour long session that somebody has set up.

[00:42:55] A lot of people do Q and a I’ve gone in, and I’ve done some Q and a before about, you know, [00:43:00] production stuff and storytelling and whatnot. It’s interesting. It’s interesting. Yeah.

[00:43:04] Brett: [00:43:04] Random aside last year at max stock which is a grassroots attempt to fill the void that Mac world left when it closed. They did, it was virtual and they had this cool app where you would log in with your web browser, put on a pair of headphones and it would give you like a.N audio space and the closer you moved your avatar to other people, the louder their voices would get. And you could like huddle with people and have private conversations while it’d be like, you’re in a room with groups of people talking, and you could hear like the murmur around you. And as you walked closer to things, you would get.

[00:43:44]You would pick up more of the conversation and then you could have like speakers in a room and you could go into the room and hear the speaker. And it was really cool. I think there’s a, I think there’s a real space for that. Especially pandemic era.

[00:44:00] [00:43:59] Aaron: [00:43:59] Absolutely. Yeah. It does sound in a lot of ways, like a clubhouse. So maybe it’s worth checking that out. I, it might be invite only right now, but I’m sure somebody in your network has has already been on there.

[00:44:12] Brett: [00:44:12] Yeah, I’m sure I can find something. All right. Thanks for taking the time today. I know you’re a busy guy.

[00:44:18] Aaron: [00:44:18] Happy to. This was fun.

[00:44:19] Brett: [00:44:19] Is it driving you nuts that I’m typing on a mechanical keyboard while podcasting.

[00:44:24] Aaron: [00:44:24] That So That’s a thing that I don’t get that. Are you talking about, like the build your own replace, the keys. Like the popular thing. The kids are all doing these days. I don’t get that. I don’t get that hobby.

[00:44:35] Brett: [00:44:35] Thinking more about the noise as a professional poest, or it’s got a bug, you and people, it just, their mic while they’re talking or type on keyboards.

[00:44:43] Aaron: [00:44:43] you know, Hey look, it’s your podcast. You put out whatever you want. I My, my setup in my booth is an old Mac book. That’s running like old garage band, like five, 6.0 or something. Cause I like the way it looks and acts better. I added on the new one cause it can, anyone can open the old ones. In the booth I use an iPad, so it’s [00:45:00] all silence, I just that’s where my script is. And I just scroll through silently on the iPad. All my scripts are written in pages and they sync through iCloud. iCloud D rive. So I literally like I can be typing. I finished a section for the day. I leave that open on my desktop and I pick up my iPad open it, and I get the little handoff at the bottom and I tap that and it opens a script and I walk in the booth and record it.

[00:45:22] So no typing noises.

[00:45:26] Brett: [00:45:26] All right. Thanks again. And thanks everyone for tuning in we’ll see you in a week.

This week’s guest is Tris Hussey, a freelance content marketer. He joins Brett for a wide-ranging discussion about writing, mind mapping, software tools, and Cadbury Cream Eggs.

Nebia: The Nebia by Moen Spa Shower uses 45% less water while providing a serious upgrade to your shower time. The first 100 people to use code overtired at Nebia.com will get 15% off all Nebia products. Just head to Nebia.com/systematic.

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Check out more episodes at systematicpod.com and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcasting app. Find Brett as @ttscoff on all social media platforms, and follow Systematic at @systmcast on Twitter.

Systematic 257

Brett: [00:00:00] [00:00:00]

[00:00:06] this week’s guest is Tris Hussey, a freelance content marketer. How’s it going, Tris?

[00:00:12] Tris: [00:00:12] Brett, It’s great. And we were just talking last week about stuff. So it’s, it’s an honor to be on this podcast.

[00:00:18] Brett: [00:00:18] that the,

[00:00:18] Tris: [00:00:18] So flattered.

[00:00:19] Brett: [00:00:19] the easiest way to get on systematic is to have me on your podcast first.

[00:00:24] Tris: [00:00:24] All right. So then if I want to be on again, do I have to have you on again? Which would be fine, but

[00:00:30] Brett: [00:00:30] I don’t think it works twice.

[00:00:31] Tris: [00:00:31] no. Okay.Ok.

[00:00:33] Brett: [00:00:33] you have to wait for the rotation, come back around. Like after I took a year off of systematic and then. Since starting it back up. Most of my guests have been people that were on like five, six years ago and like catching up with them. But, uh, it turns out you’re okay.

[00:00:52] So I, I feel like we’ve known each other in a digital sense for a long time. And I had it in my head in my head that you had actually [00:01:00] been on systematic before, but you haven’t.

[00:01:02] Tris: [00:01:02] But I haven’t. No, but we have known each other in the digital sense for a very, I think probably almost 10 years.

[00:01:08] Brett: [00:01:08] How did we, how did we first connect?

[00:01:10] Tris: [00:01:10] Oh, it was, I think it was, well, I was still a professional blogger and tech journalist and doing a lot of writing and I think I, I might’ve stumbled on nvALT. And, uh, then quickly saw Marked, the first version came out and scoop that up in a heartbeat. And then when Marked 2 came out, I grabbed that and then I’ve just kind of followed the stuff you do.

[00:01:39] Not that I understand all of it because when you and Christina Warren were talking in your last overtired episodes, like, wow, I have no idea what they’re talking about, but it sounds so cool. I wish I could do those things.

[00:01:52] Brett: [00:01:52] Yeah. That episode, like w our audience is by and large super nerdy. But then [00:02:00] again, when I say things like that, I realize I work off of assumptions. And we don’t get a lot of like data on who actually listens to the show other than like random tweets. So, you know what? I don’t even know what my, my primary demographic for this show is.

[00:02:18]Tris: [00:02:18] I would say humans who are interested in learning new. Things, if the, if, if the episodes that I’ve seen

[00:02:25] are any indication. Yeah.

[00:02:28] Brett: [00:02:28] Curious humans. That’s that’s my, that’s my target demo.

[00:02:32] Tris: [00:02:32] Curious humans, they’re, they’re all usually the most fun humans. So

[00:02:36] Brett: [00:02:36] So what, uh, how do you define content marketing?

[00:02:40]Tris: [00:02:40] Uh, I, I think it is the, the teenage version. Of professional blogging, which means you’re, you’re creating content for a business to help them meet some kind of, [00:03:00] some kind of business goal. Whether it’s more leads or more app downloads or just thought leadership in general. Um, any, any of those things. And I really do it.

[00:03:12] It did come right out of professional blogging. When I’m asked about that as well, I’ve been content marketing for 16 years and people look at me or, you know, the raised eyebrow goes up. It’s like, well, I know it wasn’t called that back then, but that’s what it was when we were business blogging. It really was, it was content marketing.

[00:03:27] We just didn’t realize it yet.

[00:03:29] Brett: [00:03:29] So w w what is teenage version mean?

[00:03:32] Tris: [00:03:32] It means we still have a lot to learn. And I think we have a lot of angst. Um, yeah, I think content marketing is, it’s kind of, maybe we’re almost ready to graduate from high school as in content marketing, but I don’t think we’ve hit our stride. And I think there’s a lot of experimentation going on, which is great, which is what all your teenage years are about.

[00:03:57] Um, there’s certainly the emo crowd in [00:04:00] the, in the, the, the popular kids crowd and, uh, the, you know, the drama and band group in, in the geeks, in, in content marketing who are. Seeing where this is going to go. Cause I think it’s too early to really pigeonhole it because we’re still figuring out what really the best things are.

[00:04:23] Because not that long ago, people only thought about content marketing, I think as blogging. And they didn’t look at the whole picture, which is like podcasting and audio, um, and webinars and those expanded versions, or even, you know, posting on LinkedIn, um, and other social media, like people didn’t think they thought, uh, early on, you know, Twitter, you know, like I’m going to share this on Twitter.

[00:04:50] And it’s not really part of my content marketing, but it is, it all has to be part of the same story. The story has to be all part of the same thing. So we’re still figuring it out. And I think once, you know, we, we [00:05:00] finished high school, we’re getting into college and we, uh, go into our, maybe our, our philosophical phase.

[00:05:09] Right. We’re going to hang it around drinking, um, obscure imported beer or smoking clove cigarettes. And, uh, talking deep thoughts about the true meaning of content, then we’re going to kind of mature and be… Have things figured out because I think everyone’s still figuring stuff out, like where, you know, how, what metrics to measure and how to measure them and what are important, what are just the vanity metrics versus actual metrics, you things that things that we don’t.

[00:05:42] We don’t really, if you look at the digital marketing world and ads, that’s pretty mature. I mean, we’ve been doing it since the late nineties. I mean, we’ve, we figured that one out pretty well, but content I think is still evolving.

[00:05:54] Brett: [00:05:54] Do you, if you had to pick one medium that you thought [00:06:00] if a client could only afford to hire you for one medium, is, is it still blogging? That’s kind of the primary, uh, most effective.

[00:06:09] Tris: [00:06:09] Yeah, I think so because it has the most potential to spin off into, in support other things. So if you have a really good solid blog and you. W, uh, set up a good story. What’s your brand story and what are the value propositions that are going to connect with your customers? Then as you expand into, let’s say you wanted to start a podcast or you want to do a video series or webinars.

[00:06:33] That blog is a good foundation that you can then use to promote. And reuse the other parts of, of your content. So if you, if you can, only, if you can only hire me for one thing, uh, it, it would be blogging. It would be for writing. Absolutely.

[00:06:51] Brett: [00:06:51] To you, uh, do you find email marketing is, is email marketing, part of, uh, what you do part of what you provide.

[00:06:59] Tris: [00:06:59] Um, [00:07:00] I would, yes, I guess, yes, because I would think of it as a newsletters. Um, And I see newsletters as an extension of blogging and as an extension of content, it’s just the same things that you can write about in your, in a blog, um, in a, in, in a format that everyone just gets. I mean, literally right.

[00:07:23] Everyone gets email manners and they understand it. So yeah, if someone is going it’s I think part of any blog strategy, any content marketing strategy I do, I would absolutely say all right now, how do you have a list of people that you can email and they go, well, yeah, we’ve got customers, so they go, okay, cool.

[00:07:42] We’re going to start emailing them a blog, the blog posts, and maybe some curated links. If they’re. You know, if the, if the blog posts seem a little thin or they’re not publishing very regularly. Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s part of this. This growing up is seeing this entire universe as being connected so [00:08:00] that you can repurpose and reuse and re-enhance all of your content.

[00:08:05] Just add ad infinitum or maybe ad nauseum, depending how, how it is.

[00:08:11]Brett: [00:08:11] trying to strike a balance myself. Like I have as an independent developer, I have to market all my own apps and I’m good at marketing stuff for other people. If you ask me to put together an advertising plan, Do market buys, uh, come up with a voice, come up with a strategy, even come up with jingles. Like I can do all that for someone else, but doing it for myself has been, uh, I would much rather be coding than marketing.

[00:08:38] Um, but I’ve started doing email newsletters and I

[00:08:43] Tris: [00:08:43] I love, I read it this morning.

[00:08:45] Brett: [00:08:45] I have fewer people on my mailing list than I have, like RSS subscribers, but I see a bigger financial impact from the email newsletters than I do from blogging, which is to meI

[00:09:00] [00:09:00] Tris: [00:09:00] think it there I think email newsletters got a really bad rap And we as geeks really loved RSS I can’t remember I think I haven’t opened up an RSS reader in over a year at least And I used to be hardcore like like like a thousand feets suds, subscribed because that was my job I was a professional blogger and I needed to be like get tons of information and I don’t do it anymore And I rely on about six newsletters that I read Beginning to end every day And I think email has really come back because people are realizing they live in their email already And if you write a nice tight useful newsletter that someone can read on their phone And then you know Mark as unread or pinned or whatever So they they check it back when they get to their desk there’s a tremendous amount of value Um when in that so I’m not [00:10:00] surprised at all that the people who are reading your newsletter brighter Brettpeople who really want to know about what you’re doing And they’re most engaged like this morning I you you read about the the very thing we talked about last week which was Hey did you know Marked and Marked can natively read Mind map files from these two really popular mind-map tools MindNode and iThoughts 10 or is it X

[00:10:24] Brett: [00:10:24] I believe it’s X

[00:10:26] Tris: [00:10:26] X And you put that in your newsletter And I immediately shared it because it was compelling and it was interesting

[00:10:33] Brett: [00:10:33] you’ve shared it on LinkedIn which leads to a whole other line of questioning

[00:10:38] Tris: [00:10:38] Yeah

[00:10:38] Brett: [00:10:38] So I have known people who take LinkedIn very seriously In most circles that I run in LinkedIn is kind of considered a you you you have a LinkedIn account because some employers expect you to but people don’t use it much And the only people I’ve ever known who were really active on it [00:11:00] were people who were doing uh content marketing So is that do you have like a LinkedIn community How many are there like enough followers that it’s a like a viable uh marketing platform for you

[00:11:17] Tris: [00:11:17] It is And uh my my my journey with LinkedIn is actually really interesting I was an early early Starter in LinkedIn I think I joined in like 2004 when it was brand new and when they’re kind of their guideline was you know don’t you you connect to people you actually know in real life

[00:11:34] Brett: [00:11:34] Right And you had to like verify or they had to verify that they knew you and everything before

[00:11:39] you could

[00:11:39] connect Yeah

[00:11:40] Tris: [00:11:40] exactly That whole thing And then one day by accident they had one of these features like you can upload your contacts list

[00:11:47] Brett: [00:11:47] I did that accidentally too

[00:11:49] Tris: [00:11:49] and then send out all these invites And I was in I was human. I was so embarrassed. But then the interesting thing was a lot of those people who I never would have had the guts to ask, actually accepted [00:12:00] the connection request.

[00:12:01]And then I’ve kind of let LinkedIn go just really for when I needed to get a job. Um, but recently. Uh, I, in that, I guess since I started getting back into freelancing a little more towards the fall, um, I would say actually it started the pandemic. Was when I really started spending more time on LinkedIn, really doubled down in January.

[00:12:28] And I’m on there every day, several times a day. And I do have enough people in my network that I’ve gotten business from LinkedIn. And I think it’s a really growing community, not just of content marketers, but everyone who wants to share new and interesting things with people. So, yeah, but it is like, I was a huge Twitter person for years and years and years and made the mistake.

[00:12:56] I think a lot of, a lot of people made was I started following tons of people and my feed [00:13:00] got really noisy. And then I got to the point where I couldn’t care less and, um, and I just stopped, stopped interacting with it. You know, I, I, I will get a little ping when it’s like someone at mentions me. I’m like, Oh, that’s cool.

[00:13:17] But that happened I mean, that happens so rarely now it’s of course it’s, you know, it’s a double-edged sword or chicken egg thing, whatever you want. However you want to put it that, um, if I’m not on there interacting, of course, no one’s gonna interact with me, but I really like LinkedIn. Um, and I think there’s, there’s a whole community of people who see LinkedIn as a really great extension of content marketing.

[00:13:39] And one thing I started doing was I was posting things on LinkedIn. And you have, you don’t have a lot of space, um, to do stuff you only have, I think like 500, uh, it seems like only 500 characters, but it’s, it’s gotta be more than that, but it’s not a lot. And I would spend time writing them and then realized, you know, that would be a decent enough blog posts just as it is.

[00:13:58] And I would copy it [00:14:00] into my blog and just paste it there. And it was, it was, it was weird to realize I was posting on LinkedIn first and then copying it and putting it on my blog. And now I’m seeing people who I’m reading their LinkedIn posts and it shows up the next day as part of their email newsletter.

[00:14:15]And so this is, this was a gap like that. Teenage joint, going into college content marketing. We’re now seeing as like, look, it’s not just one thing, you connect all the dots and it gets re you hit all of all the audiences in different ways.

[00:14:30] Brett: [00:14:30] Interesting. I, uh, will LinkedIn tell me when I joined? Cause I feel like it was. The, the profile photo that I have on LinkedIn is from the early two thousands. So I must have been an early adopter.

[00:14:48] Tris: [00:14:48] I don’t know. I haven’t looked at one when I joined LinkedIn.

[00:14:51] Brett: [00:14:51] don’t see an easy way to see that, but anyway,

[00:14:54] Tris: [00:14:54] But anyway, I would, I would check, but my, my mechanical keyboard is so clacky that you would have to mute me [00:15:00] and go be like, Oh, Tris, seriously,

[00:15:02] Brett: [00:15:02] I’ve been, I’ve been typing. I had to type my, uh, 2FA password or like code to get into LinkedIn. And I only have my mechanical keyboard hooked up, so I very slowly pressed the keys. So they wouldn’t click. Um,

[00:15:17]Tris: [00:15:17] like here I have to type this whole household. Can you type.

[00:15:21] Brett: [00:15:21] But my keyboard with the loud blue switches is in need of soldering, which is what I’m doing after this conversation. Uh, so I’m using the Brown switches right now, which is a little better for podcasting.

[00:15:33] Tris: [00:15:33] Okay. See, soldering is something I need to learn. Cause I, my blue Yeti, my original one, I got well over 10 years ago, um, suffered from a bout of gravitational deceleration disease.

[00:15:45]Brett: [00:15:45] I don’t know what that means.

[00:15:48] Tris: [00:15:48] yeah, it fell off a desk,

[00:15:50] Brett: [00:15:50] If I had to guess that was what I was going to guess.

[00:15:53] Tris: [00:15:53] Yeah, it fell off a desk. My, one of my wife’s voice students accidentally pulled it off the music stand and it hit the floor and it dented the grill.

[00:15:59] And [00:16:00] then a couple days later, the little USB plug broke off inside and it’s a two door it’s like $2 and 50 cent Canadian piece. And I could easily fix it if I knew how to solder. So I’m probably gonna have to either pay for someone to solder it or beg someone I know to solder it.

[00:16:17] Brett: [00:16:17] I haven’t soldered since I was in high school, I used to like take apart police scanners and do crazy things with them. But, uh, Yeah, I, I got really good at welding, so I’m hoping my welding skills translate back to soldering I don’t think they’re at all related I’m going to be um I’m going to be making a mess and I hope I don’t destroy this keyboard but

[00:16:40] Tris: [00:16:40] Yourself Yeah I think I learned welding in middle school grade seven metal shop I learned how to weld and I haven’t done it since

[00:16:48] Brett: [00:16:48] Uh yeah I I started welding in college uh when I was at art art school uh I did a whole 3d Uh sculpture [00:17:00] curriculum And I got really into like I found like uh settling welding with just like running long beads and making like seamless welds And I got just super it was cathartic for me just to put on the goggles and just Push a bead you know for like a three-foot seam and just make it perfectly smooth Uh like I I loved it It was fun

[00:17:27] Tris: [00:17:27] I would say I can I can relate to that I can absolutely relate to that feeling Um when when I I guess probably when I’m cooking

[00:17:36] Brett: [00:17:36] Yeah Yeah I

[00:17:37] Tris: [00:17:37] and and and like I’ve I’ve perfectly diced the onion And it’s just like Oh they’re all even there’s no blood Not that I cut myself very often but you know

[00:17:48] Brett: [00:17:48] I didn’t So I guess when I first started getting into cooking which was a few years back now um my knife handling skills were just awful And I [00:18:00] was going through like a box of band-aids a week

[00:18:03] just

[00:18:04] blood everywhere I ended up buying You ever heard of like liquid bandage like Like I had to keep that on hand for the really deep cuts It’s basically like putting super glue on your cuts

[00:18:15] Tris: [00:18:15] It is what super glue was invented for was wound closing.

[00:18:18] Brett: [00:18:18] Yeah, and I feel like liquid bandage is just slightly less toxic than super glue. Um, but anyway, I, uh, I started, I watched some YouTube videos. I read some books on just basic knife handling and I got really good at it for a couple years there.

[00:18:35] I never cut myself once, but then I figured out how to do the real fast chopping and I am. Good at it, but I also have shaky hands and every once in a while, like every like 10th chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, I’ll stutter and lift the blade too high. So I’ve been slicing off the middle, [00:19:00] middle segment of my middle finger, which is what I use as the guard. And I’ve been just slicing these neat little, uh, chunks of skin off of it. So I, I permanently have a bandaid on my middle finger these days. I don’t know when I got bad again, but I did.

[00:19:19]Tris: [00:19:19] As soon as you said, and I lift the knife up, it’s like, Oh yeah. Yup. That is my biggest fear. You got the claw. I got a good I’m working, I’ve been working on my claw. And that’s the thing I’m most afraid of is, is doing is, is lobbing off part of my finger. But on the plus side, you know, if at least you’re lopping parts of your knuckle off cleanly, your knife is sharp.

[00:19:40] I mean, there’s you look at it that way.

[00:19:42] Brett: [00:19:42] Yeah, you know? Yeah. Linings. Um, so anyway, you mentioned mind mapping and that’s a, that’s a topic I love, uh, we talked about it on your podcast briefly, but then your next guest was going to be Chuck fry, who is well known for [00:20:00] his, uh, mind mapping prowess. How did that conversation go?

[00:20:04]Tris: [00:20:04] Besides the end that I totally screwed up. It was great. And. It was, it was great to be able to finally talk with Chuck because like you he’s, you know, we’ve known each other digitally for 10 years. And the thing that, that Chuck is so fantastic about, and he just wrote an ebook about mind mapping for writing books is the idea of taking mind, mapping into directions where you never thought it would go.

[00:20:31] Things like mapping for project management. Wow. Oh, okay. Hold on. Tell, tell me more about this. I’m confused. Cause I would usually just do it as a brain dump and if that would be it, or, um, when I learned how to originally, you know, export mine manager, mind maps to word outlines, and that was, that was what a book chapter would become.

[00:20:52] Um, those were, that was cool, but he’s taking, he takes it to a whole nother level of how you organize [00:21:00] thoughts and ideas and rearrange them and just let things flow that is truly, um, truly brilliant and made me like, okay, I gotta, I gotta get back into doing much more mind mapping. And in fact, the next post I wrote for a client, I mind map the outline first and it’s like, well, okay, well that was a lot less painful than usual.

[00:21:21]Brett: [00:21:21] And, and like you said, I wrote about this, uh, just on my blog just yesterday. But, uh, I start, if it’s going to be like a four paragraph quick hit post it, I don’t mind map it, but if it’s going to have more than one, like sub-headline in it. If it’s going to be a longer piece, I always start writing with a mind map.

[00:21:44] I start my projects with mind maps too

[00:21:47] Tris: [00:21:47] Well as you mentioned it um I’m working with a coach and he gave me this assignment to develop a project plan for how I’ve envisioned myself to be successful as as a as a coach should [00:22:00] And uh he was like well he just do it in word or docs pages was like, and then we had our talk and then I talked with Chuck, like, no, no, no, no, no.

[00:22:10] This is going to be a mind map and I’m going to like unleash the whole power of mind manager has Gantt charts and, you know, dependencies and all of this. It’s like, if I’m going to do this, let’s just do it and do it really well. So, uh, just before we call you, call that’s what I was doing. I was setting up the project in my mindmanager.

[00:22:33] Brett: [00:22:33] I, uh, I decided quite a while ago that mind-mapping just wasn’t for everybody, because I would talk to people who heard, who, who would say they had tried it and it just didn’t click for them. And I thought. Maybe it has to do with my ADHD. Maybe I just think better in nonlinear formats. Uh, but then there have been people who have started off saying they didn’t like it.

[00:22:57] They’ve read some of like how I use them [00:23:00] and decided they actually love mind maps. So do you think, do you think there are people who just can’t work in a mind map?

[00:23:10] Tris: [00:23:10] I think so, because I think it, it, it has this weird, you know, you have to get used to the, depending on if the default structure is like that clockwise, right. You start with the central theme and then it goes clockwise, clockwise around in it. And I, and I know. I thought everyone kind of just knew about mind maps, especially in technology.

[00:23:28] And I would show someone it’s like, well, here’s my mind map of this project. And it’s like, how do I read this? So please just read it clockwise. Oh, I still don’t get it. I think it’s maybe just that the idea of. Non it is maybe the non-linearity of mind maps, but I think it’s just maybe the visual aspect.

[00:23:47] I think people maybe don’t take a visual, visual representation of ideas as seriously.

[00:23:54] Brett: [00:23:54] As an

[00:23:55] Tris: [00:23:55] Um, as an outline,

[00:23:56] Brett: [00:23:56] the same.

[00:23:57] Tris: [00:23:57] they’re technically the same. The, the one [00:24:00] mind map tool that I think is the weirdest. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried Scappel by the folks who make um Scrivener And I loved using that for things where I was doing a project plan or whatever And I actually didn’t want things can all the things connected by default And wanted a lot of like floating globs of information and people got that. And that’s that’s, I think that’s applying the idea of mind mapping. Like this is how my brain thinks, but I have to play to my audience

[00:24:28] Brett: [00:24:28] just to be nitpicky, Scappel is a concept map, which is a different, it’s similar to a mind map, but it, it does not follow the idea of a central node and then the clockwise, uh, child nodes. It has a far more free flowing structure where you can have multiple floating nodes and everything just, it’s more of a brain dump to me.

[00:24:53] And I find concept maps. I can’t work with those.

[00:24:57]Tris: [00:24:57] Oh, yeah, it took me, [00:25:00] um, several tries just to get a good feel for how to use scalpel and when, and if I were like, I would not use Scapple outline a, um, a project. Or a book or an article? No, not at all. It was really good when I had to do something like I had to visually represent how we were, how I was restructuring the websites for my last gig, because I could like, okay, this, this big blob.

[00:25:29] Is is the, is the corporate site in this big blog is one product and this other blog is another product, et cetera, and so forth. Um, because it works in that completely disconnected concept, mapped world. But yeah, for a lot of stuff, it’s just way to me, it’s way too scattered. I want, when I hit return to connect to something that’s connected to the thought and move it around

[00:25:54] Brett: [00:25:54] And in most mind-mapping apps uh you can create what are called floating topics which [00:26:00] become like entirely separate central nodes disconnected from the center center node And you can you can use that to create like basically multiple mind maps in one page And that I can work with that That’s a clear delineation for me I can I can do that part of it

[00:26:19] Tris: [00:26:19] Yeah I do I do a lot of floating Sometimes I create them by accident oh maybe idea. Chuck talks about that actually in his, when you’re like you’re riffing on, on fiction and you kind of get this weird plot twist or side plot, pull it off as a floating topic. So you can, you doesn’t mess up the rest of your outline, but you can kind of like set it aside and it’s like, okay, this is important.

[00:26:39] Maybe it will be something else later

[00:26:41] Brett: [00:26:41] Have you ever used Curio?

[00:26:44] Tris: [00:26:44] No, I haven’t.

[00:26:46] Brett: [00:26:46] you should check it out

[00:26:48] Tris: [00:26:48] Is it Curio with a C or a K.

[00:26:50] Brett: [00:26:50] See.

[00:26:51]Tris: [00:26:51] You never know these days, everyone’s spelling things weird.

[00:26:55] Brett: [00:26:55] Um, yeah, no, it’s, uh, it’s kind of a, it’s an all purpose [00:27:00] brainstorming project management app. It has, uh, mind maps built in, but mind maps become part of a larger space they’re called spaces. And, uh, you can have a freeform notes. You can have clipped web pages. You can have outlines. You can have mind maps and they can all connect to each other in different ways.

[00:27:21] And it’s, uh, it’s, uh, a total, uh, idea board kind of space where everything can, you can move things around and position where you want, but then you can add all of those things like MindManager has, you can have like resource allocations and due dates and. And, and then it gives you like an overview of like, if you’re using it for project management, you can get an overview of all of the resources allocated all of the due dates across all of the different spaces and everything.

[00:27:50] It’s a lot, it’s a huge app that you could easily say is, um, feature bloated, but it [00:28:00] constantly thrills and amazes me with what it can do.

[00:28:03] Tris: [00:28:03] All right, I’m going to have to try it, but then I’m going to get it. I’m then I’m going to get into. Another tool that I decide to use. And like, it seems like every, every, every few months I go through which markdown editor do, I like the best at this moment in time rotate through, rotate through all of them, you know?

[00:28:22] Multi multi Mark down. And, you know, you’re, you’re, you know, nvUltra, Ulysses, just by word, as you know, and that’s why they all have different, really cool things about them. Um, and now, now I have like three mind map apps. Now on my machine and now Curio is going to be the fourth. I was like, Oh God, which one do I settle down and learn?

[00:28:45] Because I’m one of those people that like, I have to pick a pro pickup, pick one app to do a thing and not in trying not to waiver.

[00:28:57] Brett: [00:28:57] Well, if you’re curious, my, [00:29:00] my picks for these two topics are multi markdown composer, and I thought.

[00:29:06]Tris: [00:29:06] I figured that I figured both of those from our last company, like multi markdown composer was I think that might’ve been the first one I bought. That was really the first one I bought and enjoyed it. And I, but I literally tried all of them. literally bought every single markdown editor available at one point or another to just to try all of them and how they just do different things Like what happens when you drag from Chrome or Safari into your editor what happens Um

[00:29:36] Brett: [00:29:36] Or when you drag an image in or when you paste it when you when you select texts and paste the ink does it overwrite it or does it turn it into a link for you

[00:29:44] Tris: [00:29:44] Yeah exactly exactly And like one thing I I’ve been using bear Uh a little bit And the thing I liked the most about it is that Bear, the Bear extension Um either in Firefox and Safari or Chrome is I use it to capture [00:30:00] entire webpages but as markdown which is brilliant I mean it’s like that makes my life so much easier to manipulate text Um when I say wanted to have an archive of something where someone asked me Hey we really need you to edit this This old post instead of trying to copy and paste it out of WordPress or wherever web browser pulling it into bear then I have it as Markdown and I can actually work with it in a sane fashion

[00:30:26] Brett: [00:30:26] So webpage to Mark down has been an obsession of mine for a long time Like I I built I don’t know if you know this but if you hold down option while dragging a web URL to the notes list it will create a note That’s a Mark down version of that webpage

[00:30:44] Tris: [00:30:44] No way

[00:30:47] Brett: [00:30:47] and. And I built an app called gather that, uh, takes you, it just pops up a little HUD with, uh, a field where you paste in a URL and it does the markdown conversion for you.

[00:31:00] [00:30:59] Um, but the one that I use most often, well, and then I built Marky, uh, heck yes, markdown.com, which is currently broken, but it was a web API that you could send. You could create like bookmarklets or use it in shortcut workflows and it would do that kind of conversion for you. Uh, but what I use these days is pop clip.

[00:31:22] I wrote an extension called web MD, uh, trademark and it’s web markdown. Uh, I just thought web MD would be funny and hope. I didn’t hope I didn’t get sued.

[00:31:34] Tris: [00:31:34] Yeah, I was going to say web MD is Hmm. Um, that seems to have something to do with health, but okay. W w we’ll we’ll go with this. Yeah.

[00:31:41] Brett: [00:31:41] But, uh, but you can select any text on a webpage and then in pop clip, you just click the web MD button and it puts a Mark down version of just the selected text in your clipboard. It’s it works almost perfectly every time.

[00:31:57] Tris: [00:31:57] All right. See, this is the thing I was looking at some of [00:32:00] the, uh, the apps that have kind of let go by the wayside. Um, and one of them was a type it for me, I had a bunch of different clipboard manager, a clipboard managers, so I could have. Different, you know, five or six clipboards. And I could, I still missed that.

[00:32:15] It’s like, Oh man, I can only copy and paste one thing at a time. Why don’t I just get one of the clipboard managers again. Oh yeah. Because my Mac so old now that I really, I don’t know if I could, it could handle it, but that’s

[00:32:30] Brett: [00:32:30] but as a, as a freelancer, you get to write off a new Mac. So one of these days,

[00:32:36] Tris: [00:32:36] One of these days, I will, I will. That’s on the list of a need. I need a new Mac. I mean, I will say I got this Mac book air probably about

[00:32:47]nine, 10 years ago. Maybe a little, maybe a little less, maybe eight years ago. And it’s still doing okay. Doin’ okay. Knock on wood,

[00:32:58] Brett: [00:32:58] Yeah, I can’t, I [00:33:00] can’t do 10 years old. Even, even when I can’t afford it, I find ways to make sure I have a Mac that’s no, no, no. Older than five years old.

[00:33:08]Tris: [00:33:08] Oh no, I I’m. I’m I know this one is, is, you know, reaching the end of its usable life though. I was really surprised it did, um, load the latest OS 10, or I guess it’s OS 11,

[00:33:22] Brett: [00:33:22] Yeah, that’s a, that’s a, for someone who’s worked in, uh, in. Professional blogging for long enough, you get a very used to the kind of paradigms of OS naming and breaking the OP 10 habit when they change it to just be macOS and we were all used to writing O S space X every time then I had to go through and retag all of my blog posts that were tagged that were tagged Mac OSX to macOS

[00:33:51] Tris: [00:33:51] and then they ran out of big cats. So, and they had so then we’re going to call things stuff in California … sure. [00:34:00] Whatever. Okay.

[00:34:01] Brett: [00:34:01] You’re in Canada, right?

[00:34:03] Tris: [00:34:03] I am. I am, um, outside of Vancouver, BC,

[00:34:06] Brett: [00:34:06] Nice. Is it there

[00:34:09] Tris: [00:34:09] um funny you should say spring usually comes really early to Vancouver This area is the most annoying part of Canada to the rest of Canadians because usually our flowers come up in February

[00:34:21] Brett: [00:34:21] Oh wow

[00:34:22] Tris: [00:34:22] Right with like daffodils and crocuses are all up in February and tulips start soon on And we have we’re we’re switching out to our spring jackets by the beginning of March It’s been a very long winter So it was it was um we had frost yesterday so let’s see Um about 32 maybe 30 Is what it got down to in Fahrenheit So it was like minus one here and this morning uh it was about one centigrade And then when I took the dog out just before we sat down it was a whopping six So it’s like in the forties Fahrenheit I think so spring has been a little laggy [00:35:00] Uh I don’t know maybe it’s afraid of social you know it needs to have more social distancing from winter I don’t know But

[00:35:06] Brett: [00:35:06] It sounds like experiencing very similar weather right now. I mean, I’m in Minnesota, not that far off. It’s 43 degrees.

[00:35:15] Tris: [00:35:15] So, but see that one, I would expect that from Minnesota this time of year, cause I spent seven years in, you know, six, seven years in Maine going to school. And I know it’s mud, it’s mud season there in Maine, which is, you know, all the snow is melting and, and anything, any road that is not made out of tar is now soup.

[00:35:34] And I would be, I would expect that for here. I I’m hoping I was thinking I would be in a t-shirt maybe not shorts yet, but you know, we’d be able to go to the park without a coat.

[00:35:44] Brett: [00:35:44] So, this is, this is how it works. When you have, uh, an interview with an ADHD podcaster, you go from talking about, I don’t even remember where this conversation started, but I know it ended up talking about the weather. Which is usually how my conversations [00:36:00] begin. So I guess it was bound to get there eventually.

[00:36:04] Tris: [00:36:04] Yeah, of course.

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[00:38:18] and that brings us to our top three picks. Uh, what do you have for me?

[00:38:23] Tris: [00:38:23] Okay. Well the, the one thing that my number one is I love Snowpiercer on Netflix. Um, have you, have you watched

[00:38:31] Brett: [00:38:31] So I, I have not watched the show. I, I was not a fan of the movie, but I had heard that the show was something quite different.

[00:38:40] Tris: [00:38:40] Very different. Very very different. Um, the only, I think the only similarities between the movie, um, and the show is very long train scientists thought we could cure global warming by doing something stupid with the atmosphere. Oops, freeze [00:39:00] entire planet. Rich person makes train circles, globe people who didn’t have tickets take over the back of the car back of the train.

[00:39:09] That’s kind of where it ends and the earth is still frozen.

[00:39:12] Brett: [00:39:12] I feel like that was the whole story in the movie.

[00:39:14] Tris: [00:39:14] Well, it was, but then, then, then there’s the plot twist at the end, but the show takes it to a very, a much, they get into the class things a lot more and the privileges of class. Um, I think there’s a little more, there’s a little more of the brutality.

[00:39:31] That isn’t in the movie as much. Um, the, you know, the brutality of the cold and the brutality of the class system that they’ve established. And so it’s, I, my wife and I really enjoy it. Um, the second season, the two final episodes dropped, um, yesterday and I, I would. and we haven’t been able to watch them yet.

[00:39:53] So hopefully this weekend we’ll be able to watch them. I mean, we’ll probably save them for the, well, okay. I don’t want to give any spoilers, but Sean Bean [00:40:00] appears in the second season and I’m just waiting for him to die because he seems to always die in all of the shows he’s ever in

[00:40:06] Brett: [00:40:06] I’m afraid. I don’t know who that is.

[00:40:09] Tris: [00:40:09] Uh Game of Thrones.

[00:40:10] He was the, you know, Ned the, yeah, he was, he was in one season. He was the big like character that everyone, you know, Well, and then he died and like the second to last episode of the season.

[00:40:24] Brett: [00:40:24] In my memory, Ned stark gets beheaded in like episode two, because it seemed very sudden

[00:40:30] Tris: [00:40:30] Oh yeah. So, but he always, it seems that every movie he’s in, he like kicks it early on unexpectedly. Um, so

[00:40:39] Brett: [00:40:39] as the guy who dies.

[00:40:40] Tris: [00:40:40] he’s the guy who dies. Yeah.

[00:40:43] Brett: [00:40:43] have you seen invincible on Amazon?

[00:40:47] Tris: [00:40:47] no, I haven’t.

[00:40:48] Brett: [00:40:48] I have been told, I need to watch that I’m looking for opinions.

[00:40:51]Tris: [00:40:51] I haven’t watched that right now on Amazon. My daughter, who is six, is really loving this show called just add magic. It’s about these [00:41:00] tween girls who discover a magical cookbook, and it has things like teleporting, tamales and stuff, you know, popcorn that makes you see through the eyes of another person.

[00:41:13] And we’ve, we’ve gone through three, three or four seasons of it now. And I find it strangely engaging and I tried not to get engaged, but then I want to know how the weird magic mystery wraps up, but, you know, and I’m watching mash again on Disney plus. That was

[00:41:33] Brett: [00:41:33] a good idea.

[00:41:34]Tris: [00:41:34] Yeah, that’s a blast from the past was like, Oh,

[00:41:38] Brett: [00:41:38] that was such, it was such a good show.

[00:41:40]Tris: [00:41:40] I remember, like, I, I remember watching the, I think I watched the finale live, but I’ve watched everything else in reruns because I was too young. was like two or three when it first came out And but I’ve watched all of these things in reruns now I’m watching them in order and it’s like Oh that’s Oh now it makes sense

[00:41:58] Brett: [00:41:58] I think I my [00:42:00] first episode of mash when I was probably like 16 or 17 years old, which would have been almost like 94, 95 and it had just never been part of my life before that, but it was awesome.

[00:42:15]Tris: [00:42:15] Yeah, it was just, it was such a great bit of television. I mean, I, but the weird thing is when you, as an adult, I’m looking at this, it’s like all the people are way too old to have been doing what they’re doing. Um, At that time, like Klinger, if you look carefully, even in the first, first, second season, when he shows up, he’s got some gray hairs, it’s like he

[00:42:35] Brett: [00:42:35] crow’s feet,

[00:42:37] Tris: [00:42:37] Yeah. It’s like he would not have been drafted at. That age, like, you know, in your late thirties, early forties, even back then in the fifties, they wouldn’t have drafted you. I mean, come on. Um, people are showing and like no one has, you know, even anywhere close to a military haircut. Um, I mean the, of course they probably couldn’t have, you know, people [00:43:00] cut high and tight, um, in the seventies as actors that would just not have gone over.

[00:43:04] But no, one’s got a really military haircut. You just notice those things now as an adult, Okay.

[00:43:11] Brett: [00:43:11] All right. So what’s your second pick.

[00:43:13] Tris: [00:43:13] We already talked about the second one, which is spring. And I feel like this has been the longest winter ever between the pandemic and just spring seems to be late. Ugh. I just cannot wait for nice warm weather. And flowers and leaves on the trees again. And maybe we’ll be able to get out and do things with people because, um, we weren’t nearly in BC, wasn’t nearly as bad for lockdowns as some of the other parts of North America, but, you know, we, we definitely need to see some other human beings and that would be nice.

[00:43:48] Brett: [00:43:48] Winter here felt short to me. We had a very, it was a mild winter. We only had like three big snowfalls and even those were like six to eight inches, [00:44:00] which is right. Uh that’s like you plow the drive twice and you’re, you’re good. Um, unless you have one of those really. Big heavy duty plows. And you can just plow once when it’s done.

[00:44:13] Um, I have, uh, I have a small electric snowplow, so I have to be like proactive. And once there’s two inches on the ground, I got to go clear the driveway so I can get the next two inches later without clogging up the machine.

[00:44:27] Tris: [00:44:27] You know, it’s, it’s funny. You talk about that. Cause you know, like I was, I was born in new England and I went to school in Maine and um, my parents were from the Northeast and when I lived in Virginia, we would be out shoveling snow long before the storm ended. And all of our neighbors thought we were insane.

[00:44:44] And then out here we had, we had one good snow in BC, which is kind of normal for Vancouver. We have, we might get one good snow. And I was out there before it stopped going, shoveling the driveway and shoveling the walk. And the thing is like, no one else is out there. W [00:45:00] what am I doing? It’s like, Oh yeah.

[00:45:01] Cause like you’re used to, if it snows, you know, like it would usually, you don’t want to be trying to shovel two feet of snow off the driveway. You will die. You will have a heart attack in the middle of the driveway and become, you know, Oh yeah, well, that’s that too. That’s a given, given Thankfully we don’t get that much snow but

[00:45:21] Brett: [00:45:21] our last big snow started with ice Uh

[00:45:24] so

[00:45:25] Underneath the snow There was about a quarter inch of glare ice my dad who like I live in the same city as my parents Um and my dad ed had gone out to mailbox and had slipped and split his head open like

[00:45:44] Tris: [00:45:44] Oh my God Oh God

[00:45:47] Brett: [00:45:47] Yeah Yeah He he had he had like it was serious He had amnesia like he got into the house and couldn’t remember why he was covered in blood And so they got him to the hospital they got him stitched up [00:46:00] So I went over that evening to plow the driveway for them And he happens to have one of those big fancy plows So It was kind of like it’s huge And it has um like a big plastic shield that goes around the person who’s plowing

[00:46:18] Tris: [00:46:18] Oh my God this is hardcore is hardcore serious

[00:46:22] Yeah

[00:46:22] Brett: [00:46:22] I’m get down to the the ice on their driveway and it’s good thing This thing’s so big because I’m I’m doing like the running man behind it and it’s enough. It’s big enough to hold me up. I can like grip onto the handles and not fall down, but I get down to the bottom and there’s all of this blood just like frozen into the ice, it was crazy.

[00:46:43] Tris: [00:46:43] Oh God. It’s like the shining. Oh my God.

[00:46:46]Brett: [00:46:46] Yeah. Yeah.

[00:46:49] happy spring,

[00:46:51] Tris: [00:46:51] Happy spring. I mean, I mean, it’s like Easter is this Sunday, you know, we’ve, we’ve had, we’ve had the one full moon after the spring Equinox, [00:47:00] therefore Sunday becomes Easter. So, you know, I don’t know. It wasn’t for like years, I realized, you know, found out that’s what the rule is and why Easter just moves seemingly randomly all over the place

[00:47:13]Brett: [00:47:13] I just knew it was always on a Sunday. I never really paid attention to why it was on which Sunday.

[00:47:19] Tris: [00:47:19] I’m just, I’m just a geek that way. I love the natural world and science. So I have to know. So it’s the first Sunday after the first full moon, after the Spring Equinox,

[00:47:27] Brett: [00:47:27] Probably a case of a pagan ritual that the Christian Church wanted to overwrite with something

[00:47:37]Tris: [00:47:37] it’s one better because of Passover. Well, because of last supper was last supper was Passover

[00:47:44]Brett: [00:47:44] What does that have to do with the Equinox?

[00:47:47] Tris: [00:47:47] because, well, they figured out like if the last supper was Passover and you want to do it at the right time of year, you got to time it. That’s why Passover and Easter always are pretty close together. Yeah.

[00:47:57] Brett: [00:47:57] Cool. Learn

[00:47:58] Tris: [00:47:58] That’s that’s, [00:48:00] that’s the deal. So anyone, my, my third thing relating to Easter. Okay. Cadbury Cream eggs or peeps.

[00:48:08] What’s your what’s your Easter candy? Go-to

[00:48:10] Brett: [00:48:10] Cad Cadbury. Like I honestly, some people hate peeps. I like peeps. They’re great. But Cadbury Cream eggs are, I, I wish they were on sale all year long, but I love the sale after Easter and I will stock up and I will eat those things like crazy.

[00:48:28] Tris: [00:48:28] all right. I’ll see. I knew you were going to say this. So up here, Cadbury creme eggs are around, are here year round. Including the crunchy mini eggs. And not only that we have Cadbury, we have, um, you know, like, well, I guess they’re called Caramellos in the States, but they’re Caramilks here. So Cadbur Creame egg filled with caramel.

[00:48:50] They have Oreo ones. Um, what else? Uh, Oh, Henry, like we get, we get those, those cream egg variants year round. [00:49:00] You want a cream egg cross the border? Well, when you can cross the border. We got them year round, you can get crab, cabaret cream, eggs, and various

[00:49:08] Brett: [00:49:08] I don’t want, don’t want any of those variations I just like yellow and white cream

[00:49:15] Tris: [00:49:15] you got to try the caramel one

[00:49:16] Brett: [00:49:16] Oh I I D I have enjoyed the caramel ones but if I’m in the mood for a Cadbury Cream egg I’m not looking for the caramel ones

[00:49:24] Tris: [00:49:24] do do you do the Cadbury Cream egg um milkshake at uh McDonald’s

[00:49:31] Brett: [00:49:31] I haven’t been to McDonald’s since 1992

[00:49:36] Tris: [00:49:36] That’s probably a good thing then Yeah Or it’s actually it’s not it’s what it’s a McFlurry It’s not a milkshake It’s a Cadbury Cream egg McFlurry another

[00:49:44] great

[00:49:44] Brett: [00:49:44] It does sound delicious but no I

[00:49:46] Tris: [00:49:46] Oh yeah it would it would probably it you you see it displayed in your your blood sugar just spikes You don’t even have to eat it and your blood sugar spikes So

[00:49:56] Brett: [00:49:56] I wonder if you can just get like a bottle [00:50:00] of the cream filling

[00:50:01] Tris: [00:50:01] Oh I don’t know I bet you could In the UK I bet someone in the UK Cadbury is a Cadbury just make a tube of Cadbury creme egg filling

[00:50:12] Brett: [00:50:12] Oh and then you could you could wet it down a little bit so that it it was like uh could go through a straw and one of those beer hats.

[00:50:22]Tris: [00:50:22] Yeah.

[00:50:24] Brett: [00:50:24] Filled with Cadbury creme that you just sip through a straw while you walk around. I’d be into that.

[00:50:31] Tris: [00:50:31] Oh, my God. I think someone would have to be chasing you with, with a diabetic crash kit because, and then followed by your dentist. Who’s going to like, well, he’s going to, I was like, how many more cavities does he have now? It’s been about an hour. It should be about three.

[00:50:47] Brett: [00:50:47] Yeah.

[00:50:49] Tris: [00:50:49] Yeah. I

[00:50:49] Brett: [00:50:49] my dentist would be pleased.

[00:50:51] Tris: [00:50:51] Yeah, I can do about one or two true cream eggs in the Easter season, but then it’s the caramel ones that I go for [00:51:00] or the Oreo ones

[00:51:01]Brett: [00:51:01] I’ll let you have that.

[00:51:03] Tris: [00:51:03] Yeah. Uh, and, but my favorite jelly beans, it’s actually, that’s, that’s really by the handful jelly beans.

[00:51:09] Brett: [00:51:09] See, I don’t like, I don’t like jelly beans and I don’t like most licorice. Like I don’t like the shiny hard licorice. I like the kind of the like artisan licorice is a little more fun for me. I

[00:51:22] I don’t hate a niece I just hate the licorice.

[00:51:27] Tris: [00:51:27] Yeah, that’s not real licorice. That’s just gross. No, I like, we get a lot of really good licorice. The Panda Panda brand is one of my favorites.

[00:51:36] Brett: [00:51:36] What, uh, what color jelly bean,

[00:51:39] Tris: [00:51:39] All of them.

[00:51:40] Brett: [00:51:40] all of them.

[00:51:42] Tris: [00:51:42] I, I, I don’t pick and choose a jelly bean. I just eat it by the handful and get this melange of jelly, bean flavors, and hope that, uh, uh, black jelly bean works in there so I can get a little licorice hit, too.

[00:51:54] Brett: [00:51:54] why I don’t like jelly beans. I like, I love candy. I don’t know. What about jelly beans? I don’t like.

[00:52:01] [00:52:00] Tris: [00:52:01] No, they’re they’re awesome. I mean, I know it’s like the totally the Reagan era thing. Cause that was, that was Ronald Reagan’s big thing was. Jelly beans on his desk. And then I don’t remember what George Herbert Walker, you know, HW Bush had. I know his son had pork rinds. That was his thing. Um, but I don’t, I don’t remember what the other presidents had for snacks.

[00:52:21] Obama, I think was just too healthy. I mean, he had to quit smoking once he, once he went into the, went into office. So I don’t think he had, even by, I bet he had a secret stash in the bottom of the,

[00:52:32] Brett: [00:52:32] Oh, I bet he had something. No one quit smoking without getting into candy. that, is just, I don’t think it’s possible to get to quit smoking and not develop some kind of a snack habit.

[00:52:45] Tris: [00:52:45] No. I wonder if telly Savalas was the person to kick that off. You probably don’t remember. Telly Savalas was, he had a cop show Kojak and he was trying to quit smoking and he always sucked on a lollipop. That was the shtick for his character. Not only was he bald, [00:53:00] but he was at a lollipop. Cause he was, he was trying to quit.

[00:53:03] He was quitting smoking, but he, and that was how he dealt with it the lollipop

[00:53:09] Brett: [00:53:09] Yeah Oral fixations

[00:53:11] Tris: [00:53:11] Yeah you got it Yeah You know it’s why you gain a lot of gain weight When you when you uh quit smoking

[00:53:19] Brett: [00:53:19] All right So if people want to uh to find you get in touch with you see what you’re up to where where can they look

[00:53:26] Tris: [00:53:26] you you can go to Trishussy.com Or if you want to use uh maybe an easier to think spell ink by the barrel.ca is my sort of alternate domain As I decided when I relaunched freelancing that I would call myself you know ink by the barrel writing services

[00:53:46] Brett: [00:53:46] And you also have a podcast

[00:53:48] Tris: [00:53:48] And I do a podcast which also ink-related is my ink stained fingers

[00:53:54] Brett: [00:53:54] And if someone was like you know this LinkedIn conversation is really intriguing Where can I [00:54:00] find Tris on LinkedIn

[00:54:01] Tris: [00:54:01] Well that’s the best thing is you can just search for me and I’m there That’s thankfully there’s not many there’s no one There’s not other Trisses It’s pretty easy to findTrits So uh yeah you just search for me and you’ll find me on LinkedIn And um I do connect with a lot of people Um just please don’t sell send me a direct message selling me something right away that that really That’s just not cool

[00:54:25] Brett: [00:54:25] Well while we were talking and I was looking at my own LinkedIn account I logged in and realized I had like 20 happy birthday messages from last year My birthday was in July That’s how often I’ve been on LinkedIn

[00:54:36] Tris: [00:54:36] Yeah You know that’s the one I don’t do I don’t have my birthday on LinkedIn I keep that to Facebook And I cause I think it’s weird to get happy birthday messages on LinkedIn I still have that business personal split going on that I want to like okay LinkedIn I’m more businessy people who are friends They can wish me happy birthday on Facebook but not not on LinkedIn And I [00:55:00] don’t think I’ve ever wished anyone happy birthday on LinkedIn

[00:55:03] Brett: [00:55:03] And uh do you have a neglected Twitter handle

[00:55:06] Tris: [00:55:06] I do it’s Tris Hussey very simple It was early on that Uh I was able to get I didn’t get Tris I didn’t think that far ahead Like I just thought well everyone knows me as Tris Hussey so I’ll be and I could have gotten probably gotten Tris, know but I I didn’t And that’s that’s where I am I mean my Twitter is somewhat neglected but um I if someone messages me and I’ll I’ll pop in and interact but that’s that’s where I am

[00:55:37] Brett: [00:55:37] Cool Well thank you for uh for your time today

[00:55:40]

[00:55:40] Tris: [00:55:40] Okay Oh thank you for letting me be on the show And I guess I guess I can wait for the next invitation And what about three four years when you come back around

[00:55:47] Brett: [00:55:47] Yeah w w we’ll see what happens. You’re definitely on the, on the, this was a blast. Like I love the ADHD kind of flow we had going here. So yeah. You, you didn’t [00:56:00] disqualify yourself from future episodes that’s for

[00:56:02] Tris: [00:56:02] Oh, that’s good. Well, that’s good. Yeah, I do. I do have a touch of the ADHD so I can, I, my, my brain can go like, just change topic. Fine. I’ll jump though. No problem whatsoever. No problem whatsoever.

[00:56:16] Brett: [00:56:16] Well, thanks everyone for listening and we’ll see you all in a week.

[00:56:19]

[00:56:19] Hey, thanks for tuning into systematic. Check out more [email protected] and subscribe on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Find me as TD scuff on all social platforms and fellow systematic at system casts, S Y S T M C a S T on Twitter. Thanks for listening.

This week’s guest is Tiffany White, an independent software developer. She joins Brett to talk about getting started in a tech career, some indie filmmaking, and some classy Top 3 Picks.

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Tiffany White

Brett: [00:00:00] [00:00:00]My guest this week is Tiffany White, an independent software developer. Thanks for being here, Tiffany.

[00:00:11]Tiffany: [00:00:11] Thank you for having me, Brett.

[00:00:13]Brett: [00:00:13] So when did you first start to code?

[00:00:17]Tiffany: [00:00:17] early 2015. I just was. Thinking that I needed a career change. And someone mentioned the Brico camp to me and I started learning right there.

[00:00:31] Brett: [00:00:31] What were you doing before that?

[00:00:33]Tiffany: [00:00:33] I was doing absolutely nothing before that. I was going to school For a long time, just basically a professional student who was trying to get a degree in English and perhaps, get an MFA in writing. But as someone who didn’t have any money, I felt like that wasn’t an appropriate career choice at the time.

[00:00:57]Brett: [00:00:57] Need them, you need to have money to be here. And [00:01:00] MFA and lit.

[00:01:01] Tiffany: [00:01:01] Oh, yes. Oh yes. So I I lived in Pittsburgh at the time and there were a whole bunch of techniques out there and I went to one coding supply is one of the biggest ones out there learned a little Ruby and decided that’s what I wanted to do.

[00:01:15]Brett: [00:01:15] And you went to school for a little while

[00:01:19]Tiffany: [00:01:19] Yeah. I went to the

[00:01:20]Brett: [00:01:20] For a code.

[00:01:21] Tiffany: [00:01:21] Yeah. Yeah. I went to Pitt on their university of Pittsburgh for computer science for two years. It was interesting to see how different that environment was compared to me learning on my own. There was just, I don’t want to say. That it was a bad experience.

[00:01:43] It was a different experience because you’re learning more theory and more algorithms and data structures and things like that. That things that you aren’t really going to use on the job? At least when I was working as my previous job, I didn’t use [00:02:00] any of that stuff. It did teach you how to think how to learn, how to think about abstractions.

[00:02:07]But I just, I found that the courses that I need to take along with the computer science courses that I was taking just did not, I just didn’t want to, so to take those, I was getting older and I just, I didn’t want to continue to go through that route. So I decided I was just going to do it on my own plus Pitt is expensive.

[00:02:28] So there was that.

[00:02:30]Brett: [00:02:30] So do you feel like going through things like free code camp that you got perhaps a more useful education that way?

[00:02:37]Tiffany: [00:02:37] Yes, I think so. They do have their, algorithm and data structures. Part of the pre co camp that’s really invaluable. So when I started free code camp, it was right at the beginning of Ricoh camps existence. So they were basically, aggregating different. Different sources for you to learn.

[00:02:57]Then they made their own curriculum [00:03:00] and then have improved upon it for the past six years. And it’s just, it’s an amazing resource and it’s free, and I learned a good bit there and I would recommend it to anyone starting out, like wanting to learn how to code it’s. It’s great. And it’s not just web development.

[00:03:16] It’s not just JavaScript. They have Python now and machine learning. So check it out.

[00:03:22] Brett: [00:03:22] So you were able to parlay that then into an actual industry job. You went from. A an English major to working in tech. W did you, was there an uphill battle to try to get that first job without a college degree?

[00:03:38]Tiffany: [00:03:38] There was and it wasn’t so much that. The lack of a degree for me, I got, there were people who reached out to me from like Google and Twitter and things like that. I think what it was for me was my lack of building anything useful. When you [00:04:00] go to free coop free code camp, and you work on the curriculum, there are projects that you need to do, are things you need to do projects to actually want to the next section to get a certificate or whatever.

[00:04:12]And I wasn’t doing that. I was going to different tutorial sites and, Feeling like I was doing things by doing code alongs and things like that. And that, that hindered me more than not having a computer science degree.

[00:04:30]Brett: [00:04:30] What would the recommendation there be if someone were following in your path, what would you say to do differently?

[00:04:36]Tiffany: [00:04:36] I would tell them to. Build things learned a little bit from safe Rico camper. You Demi course learn whatever you can. From there, you don’t need to finish those things. Learn the basics and start building a project and continue to dip in and out of. Tutorials, but don’t just spend time spinning your wheels, doing [00:05:00] these things because you’re not actually learning anything.

[00:05:02] You’re not synthesizing the things that you’re learning and applying them to something real, a real world project. And not just a project that you get from like a Demi course. But a project that you’ve thought of. On your own, like even take a, an idea from a repo that I found on GitHub called app ideas, you can take an idea from there and then start building it with the stuff that you’ve learned from whatever tutorial you have been doing.

[00:05:32] So I think that building a project and several projects is going to help you in the long run, learn how. Programming works and learn how to be a developer and landing your first software job.

[00:05:51] Brett: [00:05:51] It’s interesting that you say that I, because that’s the only way that I. Can learn. I don’t think I’ve ever finished an [00:06:00] online course of any kind. I dropped out of a computer science degree after a year. Like I only learned by creating my own projects and like my GitHub has a hundred, some repositories.

[00:06:13] And if any employer has ever wanted to know what do I know? It’s literally all there get hub repositories. And that has served me pretty well.

[00:06:23]Tiffany: [00:06:23] Yeah. I, yeah, I wasted so much time. And I’ve never finished an online course and part of, I think I finished one and it was the course that I learned the most in. But I think a lot of it for me was fear. It was fear of the blank text editor. And not knowing where to begin when I was thrown into the fire.

[00:06:47]And it’s, it was scary to me. And I did not like when I was growing up I, there were, I w I was in quote unquote gifted [00:07:00] classes and honors classes and things like that. Things came easily to me. When I was growing up in, in school, I never skipped any grades because my mom wouldn’t allow it, but. When I started programming those things just not come as easily to me. And it scared me for a long time. And I didn’t want to quit because I needed to get out of the poverty that I was living in, but I did fear not, not being smart enough to actually learn how to program.

[00:07:31] Brett: [00:07:32] So how did you first get started in tech?

[00:07:34]Tiffany: [00:07:34] I just started, I like before I was in tech officially, even though I loved technology as a kid in. The inner city where, you know, central Pennsylvania in a city called Harrisburg growing up it in the eighties, it wasn’t something, even though I loved tech, it wasn’t something that I thought I could do.

[00:07:59] No [00:08:00] one around me was doing it. I did have a computer when I was 12, my mom she got a hammy down. She worked for the state and she worked as a computer operator, which is not. It’s not a programmer. It’s just someone who sits at a terminal and does some data entry. So she worked with people that.

[00:08:20]Program computers and things like that. And she bought a Commodore one 28 off a guy for $500 because I was into it writing at that time. And she thought that I might need something to write my poetry on. And so she bought the, and Peter and I basically played games on it. I didn’t really program too much.

[00:08:44]It was, it used basic and at the time I was in a bad place mentally and too foggy to understand how basic worked. And the guy that was going to teach me programming. He never, we never got a chance to sit down and learn it. But [00:09:00] so I didn’t really. No, that tech was a thing I could do.

[00:09:04] I basically just wrote, I wrote poetry sort of fiction. And things like that. So when I first started going to college back in the early two thousands I was basically going for writing English major. And it wasn’t until, I was in and out of school for a long time. And it wasn’t until I moved to Pittsburgh where I decided that I would, I was already, I already didn’t have any money and it was hard.

[00:09:30]To li like to live in that city without a whole lot of money. And I decided that I wanted to make some money. And I decided to switch it up to to, learn coding and things like that. So that’s. That’s where I was coming from. Initially there were periods in between the time that I was going to college in the early two thousands.

[00:09:53]Between them and me choosing to, to learn how to code I had an Android phone in 2010 [00:10:00] and I decided to it was really slow. And the only way you could fix that at the time was to download a custom rom, like basically route your phone, download a custom rom and try to fix the lag that was on it.

[00:10:13]And I found that to be incredibly enjoyable. And so I started doing that a lot and it kinda opened up a world to me that I would have liked to have. No more about before then. But it did get me interested in tech as a whole. So

[00:10:31]Brett: [00:10:31] How have you afford the last five years or so? How many jobs have you had in the industry?

[00:10:37]Tiffany: [00:10:37] I’ve had to, I had an internship all three. I had an internship in 2017, a four month internship at I think they’re called forum now, but they were the deaf community at the time. I was there for four months. I learned a little bit on the job. We were using Ruby on rails for the, for most of the app.

[00:10:59] And [00:11:00] there, I learned that I was not really prepared at all to work in the industry because. I, my mid internship review was terrible. And it couched me for a while. Like I wasn’t able to respond well to that feedback on I withdrew. From the team and into myself. And part of the issue with that with me in that internship was that I didn’t communicate very well.

[00:11:27]And it didn’t Dawn on me that. Being in a team like even when you’re programming, you think programming is something solitary and it’s absolutely not. And I wasn’t prepared to communicate with my teammates, especially when I got that that bad performance review. It just it felt like I wasn’t good enough.

[00:11:49] And so I would throw into myself and didn’t communicate hardly at all after that. And then I had my job in 2019 I got a job at a [00:12:00] government consulting firm, which was my first real quote unquote real developer job. And yeah, I wasn’t prepared for that either because it was so fast paced and the budget was constrained because it was government consulting.

[00:12:16]And I just, it wasn’t like I could, they didn’t have the resources to help train junior developers. And I suffered a bit because of that. And then in 2020, early 20, 20, the whole world basically sat down and they laid people off and I was a casualty of that. And so I had to figure out, what am I going to do now?

[00:12:41] Like I moved out of my apartment and into a new one and I was scared that I wasn’t. I was curious, going to be homeless. I had someone reached out to me to do a little freelance work for a startup, a FinTech startup called bumped. And we worked on their landing page together. And that was [00:13:00] probably one of the most valuable experiences I had working in tech up until that point.

[00:13:06] So yeah.

[00:13:08]Brett: [00:13:08] All right. So it sounds like one of your biggest obstacles has not been the actual learning to code, but more. And phrase it as like the mental health of the industry. Do you think that the tech industry as a whole has accommodations for that kind of for those needs.

[00:13:28]Tiffany: [00:13:28] It depends on the company you are at. I think. There are a lot of startups that don’t have that. There are a lot of big companies that don’t have accommodations for this. And I was a part of one of them and I think. That tech is more progressive in this area than other industries, but there’s still a lot of work that needs to be done.

[00:13:54]And I follow a lot of smart people on Twitter that are trying to make [00:14:00] headway into this discussion of mental health and technology and imposter syndrome and getting beyond that that stigma in. The workplace.

[00:14:11] Brett: [00:14:11] In the startup kind of environment, they work people very hard. Tech is notorious for expecting a lot and expecting long hours. And and then the burnout that, that causes have you experienced any of that?

[00:14:25]Tiffany: [00:14:25] Yes. Yes I have. And it’s. Yeah. I mean at my last job, my last full-time job at the government consulting firm I was on four different teams doing four different projects. I was responsible for the front end for those different projects. And each one of those projects had a ton of tickets and I was expected as a junior to move.

[00:14:51] Really quickly through four different projects, I had the team lead the tech lead, I should say to me, he said, you, this is too much. And I [00:15:00] agreed with him. But for that type of work, you need to be billable. And I had to have a hundred percent. Oh, my time being billed. And so I had to have those four projects and it was difficult.

[00:15:15] I remember the day before Thanksgiving of 2019, like the night before Thanksgiving, I had a really bad panic attack. Cause I felt like. I was doing a lot and not getting anywhere. And I also felt like I was going to lose my job if I didn’t, if I didn’t pick up the pace. And if I didn’t, if I didn’t take on more work and it wasn’t healthy.

[00:15:42]And it didn’t help that I was new to the industry and it didn’t help that. The company knew this. But didn’t seem to care too much about that, about my experience or demential health of the people that work there. The tech lead was constantly. Yeah, it was a bad situation, [00:16:00] not just for me, but for a lot of the folks that work there.

[00:16:03] Brett: [00:16:03] So that sounds like for anyone who’s like currently. Looking at getting into tech. That’s the kind of story that I think makes people nervous, scares people. Do you have any advice when you’re scoping out a company, when you’re applying for jobs, what would you look for in the environment that would that would maybe prevent that kind of burnout?

[00:16:24] Tiffany: [00:16:25] I would say, look at the about page of different companies that you’re applying for. And I would do some research. Now you could say glass doors and the best place to research, but I found because you get disgruntled employees and stuff like that, but I found that researching on glassware helps.

[00:16:44] A little bit to decide whether this company is something that you want, like a, this is a company you want to work for looking at their about page and what, what their mission statements are, things like that. And then if you can find someone who works [00:17:00] at the company at the moment, at the time that you’re applying give them a If you can find them, try to contact them and ask them, some general questions about the company and how their culture is.

[00:17:13] And what the work-life balance is. If there is such a thing as work, life balance, but ask them what it looks like to work there. For a day for a week and see whether that is something that is going to be helpful to you and keep you healthy while you’re trying to make a living basically.

[00:17:30]Brett: [00:17:30] All right, so you’ve dabbled a little bit in filmmaking. What kind of stuff have you done there?

[00:17:36] Tiffany: [00:17:36] I’m just beginning. So I’ve been following a lot of, YouTube channels on filmmaking. And I just, I. Don’t have a whole lot of experience. And unfortunately being locked down, it’s been really, truly hard to get out and do what I want to do with filmmaking. But I shot a little short on my iPhone.

[00:17:58]Just a little short to, [00:18:00] to experiment with light and shutter speed. I’ve done that. I’ve done a blog. That I took down off of YouTube because it, the way I edited it I used. A thing called a lot, which is a lookup table where you can apply certain effects to the look of your video.

[00:18:17] And I didn’t know what I was doing in final cut and I apply three different Lutz. It looks awful like when I’m in my mom’s house, like her. Her house has already had full tungsten light. And then I layered three lights on top of it and it’s really orange. Yeah, but yeah, I I want to get out and do more this summer if people get vaccinated and we open back up a little bit.

[00:18:39] I definitely want to get out and do a little bit more filmmaking because I enjoy it.

[00:18:45] Brett: [00:18:45] Are you using any particular apps on your iPhone for shooting?

[00:18:49] Tiffany: [00:18:49] Yes, I use the moment app. I have some peripherals from moments like lenses and stuff like that, that I have yet to use. But I do use moments [00:19:00] and I use filmic pro and things like that. But I do have a, I don’t know, proper. Quote, unquote camera that I use for photography and videography as well.

[00:19:12]I want to utilize that more as well. I shot a video with my friend. She is a. Six generation Weaver and she wanted a little promo thing for her hand woven stuff. And I shot that video. I’m I like the video but the audio was really bad. Just experimenting with stuff like that.

[00:19:31]And yeah, it’s. It’s fun. I enjoy it. I like telling stories and I like technology and, gear and telling stories is my sweet spot.

[00:19:42] Brett: [00:19:42] So you have a background in English and writing does that apply to are you baking a transition from a written word to filmmaking in that way?

[00:19:53]Tiffany: [00:19:53] Pretty much. Yes, I haven’t written fiction in years. But I find that [00:20:00] I think where most of my storytelling comes is when I edit videos. It, when I shoot the The footage. There’s things you have to keep in mind when you’re doing that things that I haven’t really learned until just recently how to think about framing, your shots and The S the through line for the story when you are shooting a sort or whatever you’re doing, and then bring it into final cut or Adobe premiere pro and understanding the story that you’re trying to tell and, chopping up the footage so that it tells us something tells a coherent narrative.

[00:20:37]And that is something I’m learning too. To take from the things that I learned as an English major and applying it to editing footage and shooting footage. I’m not there yet. But I’m getting there.

[00:20:50] Brett: [00:20:50] Yeah, I feel like that’s a skill that you hone through practice for sure. So on the list of topics that you sent me, but I didn’t ask [00:21:00] you about this before the show. What drones is just on that list? What about drones?

[00:21:06] Tiffany: [00:21:06] I have, I watch a lot of YouTube videos. That’s basically my, I don’t watch too much TV and the only TV that I really watch is sports. So mainly my entertainment is YouTube and I’ve watched a lot of different photographers and filmmakers, user drones effectively to help tell stories.

[00:21:29] And I thought maybe I want to, try to do that, but I’m not willing to spend a lot of money on drones. So I bought two. Relatively inexpensive drones that I haven’t been able to fly yet, which really it’s geez. And I don’t want to fly them in my neighborhood because that’s creepy.

[00:21:48]Brett: [00:21:48] I am at someone else’s neighborhood.

[00:21:50] Tiffany: [00:21:50] Oh, yeah. Yes. Yeah, I just love, I love the aerial shots that people get from drones. Where I [00:22:00] live currently, it’s not the most, I don’t live in the Pacific Northwest, it’s not beautiful like that. But if I can get. Two different spots in Pennsylvania. I feel like I want to get some area for the there I’m not just, Film, but like photos as well.

[00:22:17]I’m part of a a group on Facebook called Harris burgers with cameras. And it’s a group for people in my city that take a lot of, images and there’s a guy on there who. Who has a lot of drone photography of one of the most popular spots in our area. And I absolutely love those shots and it’s something that I want to do more of.

[00:22:41]So I have my drones and I just recently picked up a DJI mini too. Which is DJI is. Really drones. When you think of drones and you want to buy a drone, DJI is the. The major player. And so I picked up a very [00:23:00] small drone from them. And I don’t plan on flying it right away. I put on fly, flying my cheaper more disposable drones because, I’m, I’ve never flown one and I honestly don’t want to crash a drone that costs as much as the mini did.

[00:23:15]Yeah, I just, I want to get out there and do it. Just can’t do it right now because of everything that’s happening in the world, but yeah,

[00:23:22] Brett: [00:23:22] I would think getting out into vastly uninhabited areas would be ideal for a pandemic, a drone flying, but all right I’m going to take a quick sponsor break before we get to our top three picks.

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[00:25:18]Brett: [00:25:18]

[00:25:18] Okay. That brings us to the top three. What do you have for me?

[00:25:22] Tiffany: [00:25:22] I can’t recommend. This camera enough, especially if you are big or beginner with filmmaking and videography and even photos. I recommend the cannon there is a newer version of this camera out right now. It’s the, does. So it’s the camera. It’s the Canon in 50 is the camera that I use for most of my photos and videos.

[00:25:49]It’s not. Expensive. It’s like you can get the creator kit for like $650, which comes with a mic and all this other, do you have other things that you would [00:26:00] need to take photos and videos? It served me well for the past year, with the video that I created with my friend and taking the photos of my desk that I take every other week.

[00:26:11] So that’s my first pig.

[00:26:14] Brett: [00:26:14] I have actually I’ve enjoyed the the pictures of your desk on Instagram.

[00:26:18]Tiffany: [00:26:18] Oh God it’s it, it gets a little bit like I don’t, I see a lot of that. I had a lot of that coming through my Instagram feed and I tried to follow along, but eventually it’s just like, how many pictures of a desk? Can you take a And I just got tired of it. I was like, I just, I don’t want to be part of this rat race.

[00:26:37]BF that’s my first big my second,

[00:26:39] Brett: [00:26:39] you, how much does the M 50 cost if you buy it new?

[00:26:42] Tiffany: [00:26:42] Without the kit it’s around $500, I think.

[00:26:45]Brett: [00:26:45] Not an inexpensive camera.

[00:26:47]Tiffany: [00:26:47] No, but it’s probably for the things that you get. With it as far as controls and things like that that’s if you want to go further I [00:27:00] think that’s a good beginner camera. And even in an even cheaper camera in that same line, it’s called the Canon M 100. They did come out with a newer version of Zac camera called the M 200.

[00:27:12]But that camera is like 300 and. The DM 100, like $350. It’s not too bad. So if you want to start with that, then you can probably do that. I, that’s what I started with. The first camera I started with, when I started to do this, they are mirrorless. They’re not DSLRs per se. They’re smaller.

[00:27:28]But yeah that’s definitely I’m a Canon girl, so I liked that stuff.

[00:27:32] Brett: [00:27:32] All right. All right. So what’s your second pick.

[00:27:34]Tiffany: [00:27:34] My second pick would be the the Hi-Fi man drop, I don’t know how to say this. Like it’s mass drop, which has now dropped, sells all kinds of. Gear for relatively well, less than what you would buy elsewhere. And I’m currently using a pair of headphones from Hi-Fi man in collaboration with drop [00:28:00] that I got for one 65.

[00:28:02] And they would be much more than that if I had bought them from Amazon. So I recommend these. These are just they are well-built well constructed. They sound good. The ear cups are soft and they don’t cost as much as some other ones. And I use them all day every day when I’m sitting at my desk.

[00:28:21]I wa I have several different types of headphones, but these are my favorite out of all of

[00:28:28] Brett: [00:28:28] Are they wired or wireless?

[00:28:30] Tiffany: [00:28:30] They are wired. So that’s the thing you’ve got to, you have to take into consideration. If you want to move around a bit, I wouldn’t choose East to take out anywhere. But basically sitting at your desk is what,

[00:28:42] Brett: [00:28:42] Yeah. I actually need new headphones. Get me after the show, your drop affiliate link so that if anyone wants to buy this, you’ll get a, you’ll get some drop credit out of it. You get 10 bucks here and there. If you get enough people to sign up.

[00:28:56] Tiffany: [00:28:56] Yeah. Okay. Cool.

[00:28:58] Brett: [00:28:58] I like drop. I use it [00:29:00] mostly for, keycaps but.

[00:29:01]Tiffany: [00:29:01] Yeah, I saw that they have key gaps. I have a mechanical keyboard, but I don’t, I’m a little afraid to take off the key gaps.

[00:29:08]Brett: [00:29:08] Aye. I just today, I I have the ultimate hacking keyboard and I’m beta testing the version two of the uhk. And I just got it set up today and spent some time changing key caps around because for me, it’s not my keyboard until I’ve. Customize the keys.

[00:29:28]Tiffany: [00:29:28] Yeah, I’ve got a wasp WASD. I’ve got one of those where I just changed the colors of the key caps, but I want to start like getting more key caps and fiddling around with them. And I saw that drop has really good ones. So I might have to learn how to replace the key caps and then pick some up at

[00:29:50] Brett: [00:29:50] All you need is a key cap, polar, and you can buy them for a few bucks. You’ll have

[00:29:55] Tiffany: [00:29:55] Oh, really? Okay. Okay. Cool.

[00:29:57] Brett: [00:29:57] just pop right off. It’s it’s fun. [00:30:00] It’s fun. All right. What’s your third pick?

[00:30:02]Tiffany: [00:30:02] My third pick is a hue, light strip. I like having light, like led lights, smart lights and stuff like that. I really like Having a light strip on the back of my desk, on the back of my TV for bias lining, things like that. I was using a brand called life ex but they are so fiddly and so like the connector to actually get it.

[00:30:31]Into a to connect to the power cord. Like you can bend it the connectors really easily, and then the whole light strip stops working. And I had, I decided I’d go with Phillips hue and So far so good. So I like a lot of smart home stuff. A lot of it, it’s ridiculous how much I have in here.

[00:30:52] And I connected basically all with a free open source Tool called home assistant which I’ll be writing more about that [00:31:00] later on the one blog that I have, but yeah, basically light strips, Philip hue definitely a little pricey cause with you, you have to have the hub. And that’s why I chose like X in the beginning because I did not want to spend the extra, 60, $70 per hub.

[00:31:15] I paid the price for not doing that. So I picked up some Phillips. You.

[00:31:19] Brett: [00:31:19] I I had a, an Ikea light strip and you could get them for think they were 15 bucks and it had a 256 color wheel for RGB lighting. And I had that. Hacked into my home automation system using Insteon stuff. And it ultimately, all it ended up being for me was an, a nightlight. I had a strip under the edge of my bed because I tended to get up in the middle of the night a lot.

[00:31:50] And my. Ex-wife now, but at the time happened to be my real wife and I didn’t want to wake her up. So I had it so that [00:32:00] there was a motion detector under the edge of the bed. And when I would stand up and then build the night, just this small strip of red lights would come on and like light the floor around the bed without waking anybody up.

[00:32:12] That was useful. I’m not sure what I would do with a light strip now. Like what kind of what specifically do you have that light strip doing?

[00:32:20] Tiffany: [00:32:21] I have it across the back of my desk and I, whenever I’m in here and act in my office at night and say, I want to watch some baseball or. YouTube or whatever. I turn off all the other lights and keep the light strip on on my desk to give it some ambience. And then I have two light strips on the back of my two TVs.

[00:32:45]For bias sledding. The one in my living room I use when I’m gaming because I have a PlayStation four and whenever I want to play games, I basically turned the two lights off in the in the living room and then keep the light on behind that CB the [00:33:00] light strip on behind the TV and the one TV in my bedroom.

[00:33:03]There’s a. There is a another TV by sliding strip behind there that I use for nighttime watching. But yeah, that’s it.

[00:33:11] Brett: [00:33:11] I gotta say for someone who says they don’t watch much TV, you have a lot of TVs.

[00:33:15]Tiffany: [00:33:15] I do. And I don’t even I have one in my living room and I don’t even spend time in my living room. It’s just there. Like I’m basic. I basically, I feel bad because I have that TV and I have home pods hooked up to that TV. And I’m not even in there. I just use that TV for gaming and then the TV, like I don’t have cable.

[00:33:37]I just have that Apple TV box in both my bedroom and my living room and I watch YouTube, like that’s basically

[00:33:43]Brett: [00:33:43] Yeah.

[00:33:44] Tiffany: [00:33:44] Or baseball, whatever,

[00:33:45] Brett: [00:33:45] don’t have cable. I watch a lot of TV, but all through streaming services and I do watch a lot of YouTube. I PBS Ian’s man. History of the world that, yeah, I enjoy the [00:34:00] educational YouTubes good

[00:34:01] Tiffany: [00:34:01] me too.

[00:34:02] Brett: [00:34:02] All right. So where can people find Tiffany White on the internet?

[00:34:05] Tiffany: [00:34:05] You can find me at at Tiffany White dev on Twitter, you can find my blog at. Tiffany white.dev. And you can find my other blog that I write more about personal things and Apple tech and smart home tech and things like [email protected].

[00:34:28]Brett: [00:34:28] And what’s your Instagram.

[00:34:30] Tiffany: [00:34:31] I guess I’ll give you my photography. And so making Instagram it’s C R white media on Instagram.

[00:34:39] Brett: [00:34:39] Awesome. All right. Thanks for your time today, Tiffany.

[00:34:42]Tiffany: [00:34:42] All right. Thank you, Brett.

[00:34:44]Brett: [00:34:44] It’s been good catching up with you and we’ll see everyone in a week.

[00:35:00] [00:34:48]

[00:35:24]

This week’s guest is April Herndon, an English professor and author (and many other things). She joins Brett to talk about fat advocacy, her Appalachian roots, and the joys of punching bags.

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Top 3 Picks

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April

[00:00:00] April: [00:00:00] Okay,

[00:00:00] Brett: [00:00:00] Hi, I’m Brett Terpstra and you’re listening to systematic. My guest this week is April Herndon, a professor of English. How’s it going April?

[00:00:10] April: [00:00:10] good. I mean, as well as it can be in a pandemic. Thanks for asking.

[00:00:13] Brett: [00:00:13] I feel like there’s a lot more to your introduction. You are in my mind a lot more than just a professor of English, but I wasn’t sure where to go with it after that.

[00:00:22]April: [00:00:22] It could go a lot of different places. I appreciate you sort of letting me be all of the different. Things I am. You know, in addition to teaching English, I have an interdisciplinary degree. So I’ve taught science and technology studies. I was a director of a non-profit organization called the intersex society of North America, where I did medical advocacy.

[00:00:42] For children who are born with mixed reproductive and or sexual anatomy I’ve been on a steering committee, started a union at Michigan state, or help start that union. That certainly wasn’t a solo effort. So yeah, I’ve done a lot of different things and have finally settled here in Winona as a professor of English.

[00:01:00] [00:00:59] Brett: [00:00:59] Did you go to Michigan state?

[00:01:01] April: [00:01:01] I did.

[00:01:02] Brett: [00:01:02] And why did I assume you had gone to school in the South?

[00:01:05]April: [00:01:05] Well, because I’ve still got a really, really strong accent, even though I haven’t lived in Appalachia since I was 18. So I was a Michigan. Let’s see, how long was I in Michigan? I was in Michigan for seven years and then came to Minnesota and I’ve been at Winona state for 15 years and still the accent lingers.

[00:01:25] So yeah, you think if I’d gone to school in the Midwest a little bit more of this would have faded, but, uh, it’s got some pretty good sticking quality.

[00:01:31] Brett: [00:01:31] So you are, we’re going to talk a lot about how I know you through Facebook, because that is where I, I learned the most about you and you are a, you. Frequently use colloquialisms, but you never use the same one twice. Are the colloquialisms you use? Are they real or are you just really good at making up Southern sounding colloquialisms?

[00:01:56]April: [00:01:56] A mix of both. Um, I do have my own phone [00:02:00] for things. There’s no doubt about that. That’s a family inherited trait. My dad was incredibly quick with it, but a lot of them really are Appalachian sayings. And I think one of the things that people really forget about when they think about that part of the country and the poverty comes to mind, um, the coal mining industry comes to mind.

[00:02:20] But they forget that for a very long time, Appalachia has had an incredible oral tradition. These were people who, although they were not formally educated, love to tell stories, passed on all kinds of really important ideas and skills and all of that was done through language. And so from an Appalachian perspective, you know, why would you say that the road outside is slippery?

[00:02:43] When you could say it’s a slickest, greenhouse, not. Right. I mean, it’s waving more vivid people. Remember that, you know, that makes an impression. I mean, somebody says that to you. You think I better get my ice cleats on you? Don’t just go run out there, like to check it out. You already know it’s rough. [00:03:00] So yeah, I do have a lot of those.

[00:03:01] And like I said, that that’s part of the Appalachia that I wish people knew more about.

[00:03:06] Brett: [00:03:06] Did that kind of a fascination with the oral history play into your, uh, eventual education and English and professional life in English.

[00:03:18]April: [00:03:18] For sure. Um, one of the things that was really interesting to me is I didn’t really have an incredible appreciation for Appalachia when I was still in high school. Um, you know, for me it seemed like a place to get out of. I looked around. I saw people who were living in poverty and I loved my family, especially my maternal grandparents and my maternal grandmother, like huge influence on my life, taught me more stuff than I can even start to count up, but I wasn’t sure what I would do if I stayed there.

[00:03:50] And that was sort of my main impression was. Leave when I got to college and I started taking English classes and had professors who were teaching Appalachian literature. [00:04:00] And I really started to understand that we had our own culture. We had our own dialect. Um, we had this really rich tradition of telling stories.

[00:04:12] It really made me want to learn more about it. And I do think that’s one of the biggest reasons that. I went as far as I did in terms of my education. And in terms of studying English, is that for me, the literature was a window onto a place where I had actually lived and it still made me see a different, and that’s.

[00:04:33] That’s a really a powerful statement about the effect that words and storytelling can have on someone to take somebody that grew up there and show them a different set of stories and help them see that thing that they’re so familiar with in a different way. That’s amazing.

[00:04:50]Brett: [00:04:50] Yeah. That’s awesome. So one of the topics that, uh, that I know you post on frequently and have even written a [00:05:00] book about is fat advocacy. Is that the right word for it?

[00:05:04] April: [00:05:04] Yeah. That’s one way to say it. There’s a, if you want to think about it from a medical perspective, there’s a movement called health at every size. Um, and most of us who are in the health at every size movement and that’s more medical professionals. And then folks like me who publish in a field that we call fat studies.

[00:05:21] Um, we’re all people who are trying to help other folks understand that fatness very much like gender or race or class or disability that these are constructed social categories. And although there are things about people’s bodies that underlie all of those, the meanings that we attribute to those things, those are social constructions and we choose.

[00:05:44] How to construct those meanings. And so we’re all working for a world where, when we talk about fatness, we’re talking about it, not as a stigmatized trait, but more, just a neutral descriptor of how people’s bodies happened to be in the world.

[00:05:58] Brett: [00:05:58] Yeah. So [00:06:00] the, uh, the title of the book is fat blame. The war on obesity, victimizes women and children. Um, so first of all, let’s define, there’s been how, how long has this idea of, uh, the, um, PA UPenn and not pandemic

[00:06:17]Epidemic! I got pandemic on the brain.

[00:06:20] April: [00:06:20] We all do, which is an interesting thing to think about just that term. Right. Um, and maybe part of the reason, like it’s hard for you to recall it tied to obesity is that that’s normally a term that we use to refer to something that’s contagious. So rhetorically the war on obesity is a really interesting moment when we’ve taken language that we would normally only use.

[00:06:41] If we were talking about a virus or a bacterial infection and we’ve actually applied it. To the state of people’s body that is not contagious. So in and of itself rhetorically, you know, we can sort of see already that we’re stretching. A little bit, when we talk about, um, the [00:07:00] current rhetoric around obesity and referring to it as an epidemic, um, in terms of when people started talking about it as an epidemic, you can go all the way back to the seventies and find references to it.

[00:07:12] But really in the eighties and nineties, the concerns started kicking up. Um, much more. We had the presidential fitness test and all kinds of movements. And then we had several surgeon generals who were worried about it, and you can follow it all the way up into the Obama era. When Michelle Obama took up childhood obesity, um, as a cause and started her let’s move program, which interestingly enough, focused on kids having good food and having safe places to move.

[00:07:43] Which is actually not something that has to be tied to obesity. That just seems like a general sort of thing that we would want all children to have regardless of their body size. So I’m also always fascinated when people use obesity as a tool. And every time I say that, by the way, I’ve got scare [00:08:00] quotes around it because in fat studies, we sort of understand that as one of those terms, that’s really like a question.

[00:08:06] So when I say obesity, I’ve got my. My air quotes going here. Um, but that sort of drive to tie what could be really good social programs to people’s body size rather than just having those social programs is interesting too. Um, it, it sort of puts this burden on. You know, these kids who are fat, that they’re supposed to then lose weight.

[00:08:30] If we give them access to food and we give them, you know, good places where they can exercise and feel safe doing that. But the truth is some kids won’t, their bodies won’t change as a result of that. And so my concern is always, if the reason we tell people we’re doing these things is so people will lose weight.

[00:08:48] Does that mean when people don’t lose weight, that they become further stigmatized because that doesn’t seem worth it to me.

[00:08:54] Brett: [00:08:54] Or that they stopped doing the things that are honestly good for them.

[00:08:58]April: [00:08:58] yes. That’s another [00:09:00] huge concern and lots of folks in the health at every size movement, right? About that explicitly that when we make the goal of eating nutritious food and a variety of foods, and that doesn’t mean cutting out whole groups of things, unless you have an allergy or some sort of medical condition, that means you need to avoid it.

[00:09:18] But when we make the goal of nutritious food and food that tastes good and movement. Weight loss when people don’t see that weight loss, there’s a tendency to think there’s nothing beneficial coming from doing those activities. And that’s real danger that we face in this sort of moment when everything seems to be tied to weight, like everything about food and exercise and our culture is tied to weight.

[00:09:42] And the truth is there’s all kinds of benefits to exercise in or eating well that don’t involve in your body size.

[00:09:49] Brett: [00:09:49] Yeah. A lot of the articles that I’ve read, both that you’ve posted and that I’ve found elsewhere have talked about how, obesity is viewed in the medical community and [00:10:00] how difficult it can be for people who are overweight to get the same level of health care as skinny counterparts. How does the medical field get obesity wrong right now?

[00:10:13] April: [00:10:13] Yeah, well, there are a couple of things to think about. Um, one thing is that the recommendation to lose weight is in and of itself. Not something that we would normally, if we were. And about the success rates. We probably wouldn’t really recommend it. So for example, as you know, going as far back as 20 years ago, doctors were acknowledging that 95% of diets fail and by fail, I mean, people might lose weight, but most people.

[00:10:41] Gained back within the next five years, the weight they lost and for quite a few people, they gained back even a little bit more. And so if you think about, you know, if we had a medication that had a 95% failure rate, we probably wouldn’t recommend it to folks, but yet we go on recommending weight loss [00:11:00] to people and thinking back to like our previous.

[00:11:03] Discussion about what happens when people don’t lose weight. Um, some of what happens for fat people in the medical environment is that when they don’t lose weight, they’re really afraid to go back to doctors. We have lots of studies that suggest that for women in particular, that, that fear of that fat shaming speech that they’re going to get from a doctor for not losing weight actually keeps them away from wellness visits.

[00:11:28] So that women actually avoid a lot of what we would consider a really baseline screening, you know, things like pap smears, breast exams for fear. Of being fat shamed when they go into a medical environment. And so I think one of the things that I always try to get folks in the medical field to slow down and think about is would weight loss really fix this problem?

[00:11:53] Because some people’s knees hurt even when they’re thin. Right? So you really got to stop and slow down and ask yourself. [00:12:00] What’s the actual problem here. And does this address it? I think it’s really great for medical providers to ask themselves the question. If I had a VIN patient who presented with these symptoms, what would I suggest for them?

[00:12:13] Because that’s a really good, critical thinking exercise, you know, am I. Reacting to this patient’s body weight, or am I actually focused on the problem here? And then I think that issue of making people comfortable with medical care is really important. And this is everything from having gowns in your office that fits larger patients chairs without arms on them.

[00:12:36] So we’re not squeezing in between the arms using language that as much as you can manage is weight neutral. These are all things that will encourage anyone, um, to have a better relationship with their doctor. And that’s something that’s really important in terms of people’s long-term health and good outcomes.

[00:12:55] So, you know, I think that a lot of doctors, [00:13:00] you know, do a really good job with this. I think there are plenty of venues for doctors to get more education about this. And my hope is that. We can kind of slow things down and not always attribute everything to someone’s weight, but just asking those few critical questions about what am I really treating here?

[00:13:18] What’s the real problem.

[00:13:20] Brett: [00:13:20] All right. So I’ll get back to the book topic, which is less about, um, medicine. It’s about the effect of this war on obesity and, um, marginalization. That splits across gender and age lines.

[00:13:37] Uh, can you give me a 10,000 foot view of what that looks like?

[00:13:41]April: [00:13:41] Yeah. So the book really looks at the fact that as a culture, when we talk about the war against obesity, we often do now talk about social causes. So people will talk about things like food deserts, um, lack of sidewalks in neighborhoods, lack of, you know, safe places for people to [00:14:00] exercise, but. The interventions that we take in our society, you’re all at the individual body level.

[00:14:08] So most of the treatment, and again, I’ve got my scare quotes up there for obesity are not fixing sidewalks or putting in playgrounds or making certain that everybody has food. And again, we could do that without tying it to anyone’s body size. So many of the interventions are at the level of people’s bodies.

[00:14:26] So we have things like bariatric surgeries. Where literally, um, people’s stomachs are reduced. They hold a couple of tablespoons of food, food. Their intestines are for the most part bypass, so that what nutrition they do take in their body can’t fully process. So most of these surgeries, especially some of the more popular ones actually require that a person be on a really regimented set of vitamins and supplements for the entirety of their lives.

[00:14:54] We don’t always have the best outcomes studies. About these surgeries. [00:15:00] There are a lot of women who get them and we even performed them on children in the U S um, there have been surgeries performed on eight and nine year old kids. And thinking about, you know, whether or not. This will affect them on down the road.

[00:15:17] You know, we don’t really have the best outcomes studies in place for that in terms of thinking about how this also affects children. We have several cases in the U S and there was just another one in the, the news last week. And I haven’t read everything about that yet, but. Um, you know, kids are taken out of homes because their body size is construed as a sign of neglect.

[00:15:44] And, um, the one that I started doing some research about that happened last week, as far as what I could see from just the first glance. The authorities agreed that on every other front, this was a loving home. And that’s what I’ve found for the [00:16:00] US-based cases. When I was doing the research for the book is that these really seem to be loving homes and the parents fought to get their kids back.

[00:16:11] And in the cases where the kids were taken out of the homes, Most of them didn’t lose what anyone would consider a strong statistically significant amount of weight. So you’ve got a kid who’s been traumatized, taken out of their home and for what, in the end, when they don’t even lose weight. And I would argue, even if they do lose weight, that’s not a reason to pull a child.

[00:16:35] Out of what is an otherwise loving environment. And so out of that also comes this pressure on women who are mothers to have small children, because just imagine walking through the world and thinking that everyone looking at your child is thinking that you’re a bad mom, because they’re a heavy kid.

[00:16:53] And I was a heavy kid myself and. My mom didn’t have anything to do with that. I mean, she’s, you know, sticks in, [00:17:00] but I know she felt that that burden and it wasn’t until I started doing the research for the book that I really stopped and thought about that and what that must be alike as a mother to have all of this scrutiny about fat kids.

[00:17:14] And then you have a fat kid, and then of course there’s what that is. of just living in the world is like for that fat kid where you’re constantly hearing about childhood obesity, childhood obesity, childhood obesity, I can’t imagine what it would be like to be a kid in this environment. I didn’t have to listen to that all the time when I was a kid and I still felt it.

[00:17:33] So I can only imagine growing up with social media and television and all of the ads, now that it must be terrifying for kids.

[00:17:43] Brett: [00:17:43] So speaking of ads I’ve noticed, uh, I can’t remember exactly which one. Companies, but I have noticed several commercials that would normally be all skinny, white women with a token person of color are starting to include, uh, [00:18:00] fat models. Is that something you see as moving in the right direction, as far as the messages we’re sending to kids?

[00:18:09] Or is that a, is that just pandering?

[00:18:12]April: [00:18:12] It’s a good question. Um, I guess I would say those two things. When I think about it, maybe they’re not always mutually exclusive. Like sometimes I think what starts out as a kind of pandering can still have a positive effect. Um, of course, you know, these are corporations, right? So I’m always thinking, well, they’re trying to sell stuff.

[00:18:31] And then the other part of my brain kicks in and says, well, But if in they’re trying to sell stuff, they’re actually helping people see larger bodies and especially like larger bodies of color. Right. Cause this has been one of the things that communities of color have pointed out, um, is that they’re especially invisible when it comes to those kinds of representations.

[00:18:54] You know, one of the things that I think is really interesting is that we live in a culture where we don’t see [00:19:00] a lot of fat. Bodies. Um, most of our advertisements are not filled with them. We don’t see a lot of people who are large, like out on beaches and stuff, because a lot of people feel, um, like that they don’t belong there.

[00:19:13] They’re afraid that they’re going to be harassed. So part of me really does appreciate those moments. When there’s someone on a screen who looks more like me or looks more like other women that I know and. I hope that even if the corporations are doing that, to sell another bar of so that even if people don’t buy that bar of soap, it kind of opens their mind a little bit to the diversity of human bodies.

[00:19:38] And that body size in terms of weight is no different than height or hair color, or eye color. Any other of those traits

[00:19:47] Brett: [00:19:47] So you, you’ve dedicated a lot of time to advocating for that kind of acceptance both, uh, for people of them. Selves and for society of people. And then along comes a pandemic [00:20:00] and has, has the pandemic changed, our perception of obesity, the problem of obesity, medical treatment of obesity, have there been specific things that kind of the quarantine and lockdown has caused.

[00:20:14]April: [00:20:14] Well, I think one of the really interesting sort of conundrums with it right now is that obesity is listed as one of the conditions. One of the medical conditions. On the checklist. When you go to get your vaccine, they ask you, do you have, you know, even when you’re scheduling, do you have one of these underlying medical conditions?

[00:20:34] So for me, this has been a really interesting experience. I’m someone who identifies as fat with a capital F like I actually see it as a part of my identity in the same way. I see being a woman or being Appalachian or work in class. Um, but you know, obesity is not a label that I have applied to myself in forever.

[00:20:53] Like. As soon as my consciousness became, you know, heightened about, um, [00:21:00] trying to get people to think through body size as a piece of human diversity, rather than a stigmatized category, I dropped the O word as we often call it in fat studies. But you know, here I am looking at this form and I’m like, well, I guess I’m going to check.

[00:21:16] You know this box and I kind of made light of it and was like, Ooh, I got the obesity. You know? And when I went to get the, my first COVID vaccine and she was the gal that was like, you know, setting up my next appointment, asked me, you know, do you have any of these underlying conditions? And I was like, well, I got the obesity.

[00:21:33] Right. And I realized I’m making fun of it. But at the same time, it’s one of the only ways I can kind of get it right in my mind, because. I’m not quite certain why obesity is a risk factor for COVID. And we’ve had one sort of meta analysis that came out that kind of hypothesizes that, um, obesity is a medical condition that causes general inflammation.

[00:21:58] And that, because of that, [00:22:00] perhaps part of what happens when COVID enters that system is that the inflammation gets kicked up. But I had serious concerns about, you know, are the worst outcomes for people who are larger. Because we don’t have medical teams who are used to working with larger bodies, you know?

[00:22:17] So one of the things we found out early in the pandemic is that flipping people onto their stomach rather than lying, the prone makes a huge difference in terms of fluid, not gathering at the back of their lungs. Right. And so I kind of think about someone who lives in and with and through a larger body.

[00:22:34] And we all know that. There’s been a lot of studies done about discrimination in the medical field, around larger bodies. And I think, you know, is part of it that people weren’t turned over when they should have been is part of it that somebody thought, you know, we don’t have enough people here to turn this person over.

[00:22:51] Like how do we, how do we actually start to sort through at the end of all of this, whether or not obesity in and of itself. [00:23:00] Was the cause of this. We also know that obese people because they’re like subject to constant, um, harassment and that sort of stuff, that it actually, that social stress increases all kinds of other risk factors for things.

[00:23:13] And so, you know, if it’s the case that fat people had, you know, weaker cardiac systems and COVID was a problem. Well, is it the fatness that caused that weaker cardiac system or is it living under the daily stress? Of being in a fat phobic society. I’m never quite certain how we separate the threads of that blanket out, but I kind of feel like we need to

[00:23:34] Brett: [00:23:34] Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, so you are based on everything I know about you, you are probably the healthiest person. I know, uh, you exercise, you exercise more than I ever even aspire to you eat healthier than I can imagine. Eating. Like the, the vegan meals that you post pictures of are [00:24:00] fascinating. Like your diet is amazing, your everything that you do seems, um, like a doctor would give you a big Pat on the back and to then turn around and say, uh, that you are, uh, th that it’s a co-morbidity that anything about you is then.

[00:24:19] Uh, detrimental seems like a mis-characterization at least in a case like yours.

[00:24:26]April: [00:24:26] Yeah, it’s kind of fascinating. Like I do often think about that and I’ll tell you my first sort of experience with that was when I first moved to Minnesota. Um, I taught at another school and then I had a year when I worked for the non-profit. And during that year, um, the nonprofit was small enough that we didn’t have group insurance.

[00:24:46] So I had to apply for private insurance. And so I had to send, you know, my cholesterol readings and my blood pressure and all this stuff in and. One of the really fascinating things that happened was that I got turned [00:25:00] down based only on my weight and Minnesota at the time. Thankfully had a program in place where if you got declined by three insurance agencies, you went into a high risk pool and someone had to pick you up.

[00:25:13] And that’s the only reason that I could get health insurance. And every letter told me explicitly that I was turned down because of my weight, even though all of the other parameters for marking health, in terms of blood pressure, blood sugar, um, cholesterol readings were all fine. It was just that one thing.

[00:25:33] And it’s really fascinating to think that we’ve got one of the biggest medical, industrial complexes in the world. Sitting in the United States. And we think about multi-factoral, you know, analyses for all sorts of other things, but when it comes to body weight, when you look at one thing and we think that must be the only thing to look at, and that’s really fascinating to me, and I don’t understand why other people don’t immediately [00:26:00] think to themselves in what other incidents do.

[00:26:03] We only look at one thing as a determinant of health. I mean, even people who smoke, right. A doctor will be like, well, you seem to still eat your vegetables and you do this other stuff. It would be great if you quit smoking, but they still understand that there’s more to that person then the smoking. And I’m not sure that that happens with body weight.

[00:26:23] Um, so yeah, it is really kind of fascinating to be somebody who, you know, I don’t know if I exercise. Yeah, maybe I do exercise a lot. I don’t know. Um, I like it like that. It’s one of the funny things like that. Maybe it’s because sometimes it doesn’t feel like exercise to me cause I really dig it. Um, and that’s one of the things I’ve always been really grateful for is that, and I don’t know what this is and if I had a, if I had a wand and I could go around and I could give.

[00:26:51] Almost anything away. I’ve often said, the thing that I would give away would be for other people to feel as comfortable in their [00:27:00] skin, as I sometimes feel not all the time, cause I’m not made of stone and the world is a hard place for a bigger person, much less, a bigger woman, but. For the most part. And I, I honestly don’t understand why.

[00:27:12] I think some of it might’ve been my maternal grandmother who was just a really strong figure in my life. But for the most part, I just don’t really care very much. What other people think about my body? So movement is something that feels good to me and I am okay going to the gym or, you know, putting on a swimsuit and going and doing laps and.

[00:27:32]I’ve always been kind of thankful for that and I love food and I’ve never had any shame about telling people how much I love food or as, you know, posting pictures, you know, of the stuff I’m eating. And I just think there’s gotta be something healthy about that too. And that’s another part of this that we don’t talk about.

[00:27:50] Is that feeling bad about yourself all the time? Can’t possibly be good for anybody’s health mentally or physically. And I don’t think we take into account. How [00:28:00] all of that fat stigma harms people in those ways.

[00:28:03] Brett: [00:28:03] so I, uh, first, okay. I have a bunch of anecdotal things to add. Um, when I first tried, like I got out of, uh, I got into my adult life, started working and I needed to get insurance. Employer didn’t provide it. And I tried to get insurance, but because I had a rehab stint within the last, like four years, I couldn’t get insured by anyone.

[00:28:30] And I went into a high risk pool and ended up paying a thousand dollars a month for my health insurance,

[00:28:36] April: [00:28:36] Well, it isn’t that it, in that interesting Brett that you actually got penalized for having been someone who went to get help.

[00:28:43] Brett: [00:28:43] And all of my other health market, like I was in good shape. Like it, it wasn’t like my blood pressure was good. My cholesterol was good by weight was good. Like just that one black Mark was enough for them to say, Nope, we can’t do you. Um, I, as [00:29:00] far as exercise goes, I will from memory repeat a recent Facebook posts to you.

[00:29:05] Um, You decided to do your crunches with a 25 pound plate that day and your stomach was sore afterward. Just the fact that that was like I was doing, you know, my daily crunches and today I decided to do it with a 25 pound plate. That is what I’m talking about. When I say you exercise more than I aspire to.

[00:29:26]April: [00:29:26] That’s pretty funny. So let me tell you that hurt. I think what I actually said on Facebook is that my upper abs felt like somebody beat me with a pillowcase filled full of rolled nickels.

[00:29:34] Brett: [00:29:34] Yes. And this is the type of colloquialism that, that I wonder.

[00:29:39]April: [00:29:39] That one was totally just for me. Um, but yeah, that, it, it still hurt last night when I went to do them. And that is some of those deaths that I, I think is kind of funny sometimes. Like I said, on that Facebook post, I got ahead of myself and there are times when I think, Ooh, I feel good tonight. I’m going to see if I can do this with a 25 pound plate.

[00:29:58] And then, you know, a lot of times the next [00:30:00] day, I’m kind of laughing at myself. Um, and I guess that’s another, you know, sort of thing that keeps me going back to it is I do have a sense. Sense of humor about it. And I’ll try almost anything just to see if I can, you know, do it. And if I can’t do it, that’s fine.

[00:30:16] And if I still enjoy it, even if I’m not good at it, I’ll keep doing it. So I suspect, you know, sometime in the next few weeks I go back to the snake that bit, me and pick up that 25 pound plate again and see if it still hurts. And if it does, I probably won’t do it again. And if it does and I’ll be like, Oh, you know, I did something I didn’t think I could do.

[00:30:35] Brett: [00:30:35] All right. So, uh, I’ve read a couple of articles that talk about how, uh, since the pandemic started, men have been publishing, uh, in academia, they’ve been publishing 50% more. Than they were previously and women are, are publishing less. Uh, have you seen that type of in your own life since the [00:31:00] pandemic started?

[00:31:00] Has that affected you at all?

[00:31:02]April: [00:31:02] No, I’m a little bit unusual in that. And I think it’s because I don’t have kids. And so, whereas so many women have had to take on childcare duties because you know, childcare has been closed. School has been closed or in a hybrid model. Um, I’ve actually had the opposite. Happen. Um, I have a writing partner, Cassie Griff, who is out at Gonzaga now.

[00:31:25] She was here at Winona state for a year and she and I have written like themes, um, during the pandemic in part, because I think not having to go into an office, freed up. A lot of time for us and gave us like a really different kind of experience, um, in terms of our, our bodies. Like we’ve, we’ve got an article coming out in April about teaching on zoom and having like home offices and the way that it’s taken so much of the pressure off of us as teachers, but not [00:32:00] having to always present in the classroom as like, you know, a fat woman or that, you know, And I talk a lot in that article and it’s a back and forth, conversational piece.

[00:32:10] I talk a lot about, you know, somebody who’s got some chronic conditions to manage that. Being able to be in my own house and always have water and tea and a way to like take a nap for five minutes. If I need, it has actually meant that my energy has been increased and, um, you know, I wasn’t expecting any of that.

[00:32:34] And, and I have, you know, really terrible like clinical level anxiety. And my anxiety about catching COVID is through the roof, but there are other things about my publishing career, um, and my ability to produce writing that have actually been much better. This last year. And, um, I always hesitate a little bit to say that because I know so many people have suffered.

[00:32:58] And as I said, I [00:33:00] mean, I have to like, I mean, I go outside and at least scooting down the sidewalk makes me jump like six foot off the ground because I’m so panicked that somebody is close to me. But as long as I’m in my house, I’ve actually done quite a bit of writing. But again, I think that’s because I haven’t had kids to take care of.

[00:33:16] Brett: [00:33:16] Yeah, same. Um, do you, what do you hope that universities learn from, uh, from experiences like yours and others as we go through those?

[00:33:27]April: [00:33:27] Well, that’s a great question. Um, my fear is always that everybody wants to rush back to what they talked about as the normal, but I think one of the things that I’ve found in this is that. The normal wasn’t working for everybody. Like, I didn’t even realize it wasn’t working for me until all of this happened and it’s been really eye-opening, you know, how much more energy I’ve got and how much more focused I can be and what I can accomplish in a small window.

[00:33:54] Time. I also think I’ve seen some of that with my students. Um, I’m somebody who [00:34:00] really, I kinda like multitasking. I know that’s not a popular thing to say, but I do. And you know, when I’m on zoom with students, um, I’m totally comfortable if they’re. There’s one group of students talking and I’m typing notes.

[00:34:14] I share my screen cause I think they actually really liked to see their thoughts shared with the class on that screen. So I’m asking them questions and taking notes, their students using the chat. Um, I have students who have never turned on their mikes. Who’ve never turned on their cameras, but who. Put really amazing things in the chat box.

[00:34:35] I mean, they are thinking some seriously deep thoughts about literature and the issues that the books that we’re reading bring up. I don’t want to lose that. And I don’t, I don’t, I’m not sure that these are students who would ever speak in a brick and mortar classroom. And so I’m actually really dedicated now to spending my time looking for platforms that I can use in a brick and mortar classroom that let those students who liked to use that chat [00:35:00] on zoom, continue to participate because not every kid wants to use their voice.

[00:35:05] I shouldn’t say kids they’re young adults or university students, but not every student wants to use their voice. And I don’t, you know, I didn’t realize this until I talked on zoom and now I feel like I’ve seen this whole other side of our students. I don’t want to lose it.

[00:35:20] Brett: [00:35:20] Do you think there is a place for a hybrid approach moving forward, uh, with zoom and brick and mortar.

[00:35:28] April: [00:35:28] I really hope so. I mean, I also think for our students that went on a state, you know, we have so many first-generation students and so many students who have not one, but sometimes even two jobs. And so, you know, my class schedule is laid out for them. Completely from the beginning of the term. And I told them if you, you know, if you’re working and you’re trying to make your way through, you know, now which days we’re meeting on zoom and which days you can just do the work on your own and you get to determine those days, you can balance your [00:36:00] time, set your schedule work when you need to, on those days.

[00:36:04] I think that’s actually really important for students. I think we probably have. Um, and I don’t know if anybody’s collecting data or tracking this, but it’s hard for me to imagine that we don’t have some students who would prefer some more options like that because they are trying to work their way through.

[00:36:21] Um, or maybe you’re a student who needs an eight, eight, you know, you need a class, but the only time it’s offered is 8:00 AM. And you’re just not somebody that’s going to be able to get awake. At 8:00 AM, right? Like maybe there’s an online, an option that’s better for those kinds of students. Um, I hope that one of the things we can do is have that hybrid model, make things a little bit more personalized so that people can have a little bit more control over what their learning environment looks like because not everybody learns in the same way.

[00:36:51] Some folks are better at certain times, a days than others. We’ve got all this technology. Why not use it to individualize it a little bit more?

[00:36:59] Brett: [00:36:59] Yeah, [00:37:00] that all sounds great. I wish, uh, I had the option to attend, uh, two of the classes out of my four years of, well, five years of school, I had the option. Two of them were online and I jumped at that option. Uh, partly for scheduling reasons, partly because I. Right. Drugs were easier when you weren’t in a classroom.

[00:37:22] But, uh, but I did find that that kind of, um, separation for me as a person with ADHD and some anxiety, like being able to attend a class through a chat room, really worked well for me. And I, I think having that kind of having at least a channel for that kind of thing could be really beneficial too, to certain students.

[00:37:46] April: [00:37:46] Yeah, I’m glad you brought that up. You know, there was a, um, an article that came out last week about kids with ADHD in particular, and that the online format had actually really worked well for a lot of them. And so, you know, [00:38:00] again, I think if we’ve got all of this technology, shouldn’t we take forward what we learned out of it.

[00:38:06] And I mean, I know zoom fatigue is real, and I know it doesn’t work for everybody, but there’s gotta be a way that we can get. All of those, you know, sort of platforms working in a classroom. I haven’t figured that out yet, but I’m committed to working on it.

[00:38:19] Brett: [00:38:19] Yeah. I worry that if things go back to quote unquote, normal, too fast, people won’t take the time to really. Consider what actually was better over, over the last year. What, what could, what lessons could we take with us before we all rushed back to the way things were?

[00:38:38] April: [00:38:38] I agree that that is my biggest fear because I. You know, I’m somebody that understands that bad things happen in life. But, um, I always try and I don’t always succeed, but I will always try to figure out, okay, this crappy thing happened. But given that it happened, is there anything I [00:39:00] can learn? From this and I’m with you, I’m actually really afraid that people rush back to what they knew before, because this was imposed upon them residents sort of taking that breath and saying, okay, we can go back, but we’ve also got a chance here at a do-over right.

[00:39:16] What can we do better this time around like, that’s where I really hope things go. What can we, how can we do this better?

[00:39:23]Brett: [00:39:23] All right. Well, I’m going to take a short sponsor break and then we’re going to get to our top three picks.

[00:39:29] April: [00:39:29] Sounds great.

[00:39:30] Brett: [00:39:30] I will actually edit this in later. So, all right. That brings us to the top three picks. Tell me what you got April.

[00:39:39] April: [00:39:39] All right. So you said I could do abstract concepts. I’ve got one of those which is thinking about, um, choice. And I’ve been thinking a lot about that question of choice lately. And some of this is tied to my work on obesity. Um, I also would like to say that one of my top three things right now is my punching bag.

[00:40:00] [00:40:00] I am really enjoying that punching bag in a way that I didn’t think I would. And then lipstick I’m really back into lipstick, which quite frankly is a little bit sad given that we’re all wearing masks. So that’s why you see a lot of pictures of me on Facebook with lipstick.

[00:40:17] Brett: [00:40:17] All right. So let’s break these down a little bit. Uh, let’s talk about choice first. Uh, what, what exactly? Explain to me what this means for you right now that makes it a top pick.

[00:40:30] April: [00:40:30] Yeah. So I think for a lot of people, when they talk about, well, that’s my choice or that’s that business is choice. They think that’s where the conversation ends. I’m actually the opposite. I actually think that’s where the conversation starts, because choice to me is really fascinating. Um, and it’s hard as a, as a person, you know, I often spend time literally sitting around thinking, you know, did I really [00:41:00] choose that?

[00:41:01] Like if we talk about choices, something where every option is absolutely open to you. If that’s how we think about choice, I’ve never actually made a choice. Right. And I know this is like an odd sort of philosophical thing, but for real Brett, this is the kind of stuff that at night I’m laying around thinking of right before I fall asleep.

[00:41:18] Right. Or, I mean, you know, or when people will say things like, and I think right now we’re in a political moment where this is a really interesting discussion. So people will say things like, well, you know, that business gets to choose. Um, you know, to give money to the Republican campaign and I’m like, you are absolutely right.

[00:41:36] They get to choose that. That also means I get to choose not to give that business, my business. And there seems to be this odd thing happening where when people say that like, well, that business gets to choose to do that. That somehow my choice goes away because the implication almost always is. And you now have to go do business with them.

[00:41:56] And, you know, I got like really riled about this a while back, [00:42:00] um, because of a Facebook conversation. And I thought, I mean, I literally was like reading this and thinking about Appalachia. And I was like, you know, my grandpa worked for the coal mines during a time when miners got paid in script, which meant the only place it could be spent was the company store.

[00:42:16] And you went to the company store and you paid the company prices and you had no choice of where to spend your dollar. I go back to those times. I absolutely get a choice of where to spend my money and to decide whether or not a business that I’m about to turn over cash to has values that echo my own.

[00:42:36] Or if they’re doing things that I think are unfair with workers, um, or the folks who produce the goods, like, so that. That idea of choice. I spend a lot of time thinking about, and I just think like I have a really different understanding of this than other people. And that’s part of the head scratching for me is, huh?

[00:42:54] How come the companies get a choice? But I, as an individual, don’t it doesn’t make any [00:43:00] sense.

[00:43:00] Brett: [00:43:00] there’s a flip side to this too. Uh, last week when Texas kind of decided to open up, uh, restaurants and bars, and they said that it was entirely up to. The store owners to then make a choice as to whether they would allow full capacity, whether they would open at all. And they put the choice onto individual businesses without it in a way that I think is very detrimental.

[00:43:31] Like I think that there are times when the choice is almost onerous, uh, and shouldn’t be given to the businesses.

[00:43:40] April: [00:43:40] I, I think you’re right about that. I mean, one of the really hard parts about that is that. You know, what do you, you know, do you choose if you’re a business owner between watching the place across the street, fill up every night and they’re making money, but you’re not able to pay your mortgage. Right. I mean, that’s a [00:44:00] really you’re right.

[00:44:00] I mean, that’s an unfair situation to plop someone down in and you know, you’re sitting there thinking, you know, if you’re somebody that takes the virus seriously, maybe you’re like, well, I can’t open up, like. You know, it’s people are going to get reinfected. If they come in here and we packed the restaurant full and they eat, but then on the other hand, you have your mortgage to pay.

[00:44:19] I mean, you’re right. Like who needs to make that decision? And I do worry about sort of the, you know, this kind of government, well, you know, let’s just let everybody make their own choice and. On one hand. I like the idea of autonomy, but on the other hand, I’m with you sometimes I think there’s a reason that we need leadership to make choices that, you know, sort of set up policies that everyone’s following so that people aren’t, you know, sort of forced into that rock and hard place position you’re describing.

[00:44:49] Brett: [00:44:49] Right. Well, and also being forced into being on their own too. It’s way easier for an employee at a hardware store to say, you have to wear [00:45:00] a mask to come in here. If there’s a government mandate that they can just say, sorry, all buildings in this state, we require a mask to enter, uh, as opposed to, Oh, we don’t allow people in this particular store without a mask.

[00:45:13] And then you have to defend that on your own. Like, that’s a really bad place to put somebody.

[00:45:19] April: [00:45:19] It’s terrible. Yeah. And if you think about most of the people who are left in that situation you’re right. That these are like minimum wage earners, right? These are folks at the opening, you know, of a store or, you know, the vegetable of a restaurant and you’re right. It’s one thing to say the governor says we have to do this.

[00:45:35] Or the president, you know, we have a federal mass mandate in place right than it is to say, You know, targets is you can’t come in without a mask. And I, you know, fill in the name tag and the person having to tell someone that. And I mean, we, we saw this, right. I mean, we actually saw minimum wage workers being physically assaulted and even shot for telling people [00:46:00] that they couldn’t enter stores with, uh, you know, without a mask.

[00:46:04] And the other thing that sort of fascinates me is that around this issue of choice is that. The, the weight that, you know, not wearing a mask has taken on as some kind of like a, a brave choice, right. Or, you know, I’m going out in the pandemic without a mask on and, you know, eating in a restaurant and, you know, looking all the gumball machines out in the waiting area, you know, on my way out and are not brave.

[00:46:34] And I’m like, Hmm, I don’t. That’s not how I would define that, but yet that idea of, you know, this is my, this is my right, not to do this. And I’m so intent on defending my right, not to wear a mask that I’m going to, you know, push this person at the front of the store. Who’s telling me, I need to, it’s just fascinating to me that that choice has taken on this much weight in this pandemic.

[00:46:59] Brett: [00:46:59] Man, we, we, [00:47:00] we took that. We took that, uh, abstract concept of choice. We kind of wrapped it around a bend and then you brought it back home.

[00:47:07]April: [00:47:07] Look at us, we should do this for a living.

[00:47:11]Brett: [00:47:11] All right. So now tell me about your punching bag. Is there a particular brand.

[00:47:16] April: [00:47:16] I haven’t Everlast one. I don’t know why. I think they, because they had free shipping to tell you the truth and it had decent reviews. Like people kind of said that they had really weld on it, you know, and it had held up and I, I kind of knew ahead of time. It was probably going to get a good beat down when it came to my house.

[00:47:32] So I didn’t want to buy anything that would. You know, like spreads sand or whatever they’re filled with these days all over the basement. Um, you know, I had ordered like at Christmas time, this thing where it’s like, and this sounds so goofy, it’s like the nerdiest thing. It’s literally a rubber ball. On an elastic string on a head band.

[00:47:52] Okay. And you put this on and you punch it and you build like your speed and you build your coordination. And I had really gotten into that. I [00:48:00] mean, like I do it for like 30 minutes and of course there’s no real weight to it. And I thought, well, maybe I, you know, maybe I want like a heavy bag. So on a whim, I ordered it.

[00:48:09] Um, I did not think that I would like it the way that I do, but man, do I really like it after a frustrating day, it’s amazing to go down to the basement. And just, you know, let, go on that saying, um, you know, oddly enough, maybe because I’m the kind of person that thinks about everything ahead, a few moments where I was like, is this training my body to deal with negative emotions through physical aggression, perhaps this is saying right.

[00:48:33] And then I was like, Oh, good Lord. Get out of your head. Like just go down there and beat on that thing. It’ll all be okay. But I really did have that moment, but no, I am loving the punching bag.

[00:48:43] Brett: [00:48:43] I don’t know the words for punching bags, but this is like a full-size like body bag. Like.

[00:48:48] April: [00:48:48] It is, although I only bought the one that’s like 60 pounds, I kind of wish I’d gotten a heavier one. Cause I didn’t actually think I’d be able to like really make this bag move the way that it moves when I punch it, [00:49:00] which probably says something about how hard I’m punching it. So I’m trying to back down from like, just, you know, Beaten it relentlessly to like, actually, you know, like I’ve been on YouTube, watching videos.

[00:49:11] I mean, that’s when you know, stuff has gotten serious and there’s this one fellow on YouTube. I can’t remember his name, but he’s like, he’s a quiet talker, which I like. Cause I don’t like people yelling at me during my exercise. Right. But he’s a quiet, tall green. It’s like, okay, so now we’re going to do a combo.

[00:49:25] You’re going to do two jabs with your lift, with your right. That’s right. That’s right now, we’re going to do two jabs and hook, and you’re going to duct. You’re going to duck and I’m actually doing this as I’m talking to you. That’s why my, my desk chair is squeaking. That’s how into it. I am even talking about it.

[00:49:40] You know, I’ve got my fist up, but yeah. I mean, I really love, but yeah, it’s like a, a legit heavy bag.

[00:49:47] Brett: [00:49:47] nice. I, I, I’ve never, I’ve never had a good expert. I’ve I’ve punched. I punched a punching bag and I’ve even done it with gloves on, so it, it hurt a lot less, but. Uh, [00:50:00] I, I do not think that I am physically, uh, fit enough to actually get exercise and not just pain out of punching a punching bag.

[00:50:10]April: [00:50:10] I had to work up to it. I will totally own that. That the first time I hung that thing up and put the gloves on in five minutes, you could have run my t-shirt out. I mean, I was just like, what, you know, and my hand hurt the next day, but this kind of like that 25 pound plate where like, You know, once my hand kind of quit hurting even a little bit, I was like, Oh, good.

[00:50:31] Enter, try that again. Maybe one of the best things and also worst things about me, because it also means like, I sometimes don’t quite understand when to be like, okay, that’s enough of that. You know, like that kind of stubbornness is like, it’s, it’s good. And it’s bad. Um, you know, one of my life mottoes is that strengths and weaknesses are the same qualities.

[00:50:52] It’s just when the context changes. That’s all. That’s the only thing that dictates whether they’re strength or weakness. So in some ways that stubbornness is good [00:51:00] and in other ways it’s not so great, but I haven’t hurt myself yet, but I worry about it sometimes, which is part of why I’ve decided not to whale on it quite as hard, and to try to work a little bit more on technique.

[00:51:11] Brett: [00:51:11] all right. Um, so I have to admit that I was surprised that you picked lipstick over tight, just because I, I do follow you on social media and I know how much you love. A well coordinated outfit with a bright pair of tights.

[00:51:30] April: [00:51:30] I almost did pick tides. I will tell you. And, and I really did, and I’m not sure why I went with lipstick, but the not, not that I can match it always, but I will say that sometimes I take a lipstick you from a tight, I think the thing that the two of them have in common is that. Colors make me happy and they always have, and it’s one of the reasons why Ellis Walker, the color purple is one of my favorite, like novels ever.

[00:51:57] Um, this, I, you know, the, the, the title of the [00:52:00] novel comes from this line when these two women who, you know, are talking about God. And one of them says that, you know, one of the ways you can tell that God wants us to have pleasure is because it made the color purple. And it actually gets upset with us if we walk by a field and don’t notice it.

[00:52:17] And that that’s the only thing that God gets upset with humans about is not taking pleasure. In their senses and not taking pleasure in the color purple and I have always like, loved that novel and I’ve always been somebody that was really drawn to color. It’s part of my daily sort of thinking through of.

[00:52:38] My outfits with the tights and the lipstick, and it actually has such an influence over my mood. I can not tell you to like, look down and see bright tights or turn on my zoom camera and see my favorite shade of red lipstick. And in, you know, in the pandemic world where our worlds have gotten so much smaller, [00:53:00] having those moments of joy have been.

[00:53:02] Really key. I think for me, maintaining what small bit of sort of mental health that I’ve managed to maintain, you know, like the rest of us it’s been a struggle, but something about those bright colors every day has really helped me.

[00:53:18] Brett: [00:53:18] So, do you have a favorite brand of lipstick? Yeah.

[00:53:22]April: [00:53:22] Tell you that right now, my favorite Rihanna has a brand called Fante F E N T Y. And she’s got this amazing liquid lipstick, um, called Stunna S T U N N a. I’m not cooling enough to say that. Yeah, but I saw, I spell it for ya. And she’s got a color called uncensored, which is what they call this universal red.

[00:53:44] And it really does look good on everybody and it’s amazing, but you put it on and you can like eat food and stuff. And it’s still there. Now this may be something that I should be worried about. We’ve been talking about health, right? Who knows? I don’t know. What’s in this stuff. But it, it goes on and it [00:54:00] stays and it looks like good, you know, through meals.

[00:54:04] And I don’t have to worry about it during the day when I’m like doing multiple zoom classes. And even some of my students, you know, will write things and say like, I really liked your lipstick today in the chat. And I think, well, it makes them happy to, you know, to see. And that’s one of the things I decided, you know, when I was doing the zoom stuff, I was like, I really want to, you know, Where, what I would wear if I was going into the office and I would have lipstick.

[00:54:32] And so I’ve done it on zoom too. And yeah, that, that, uh, that stun a lipstick from Rihanna has become my favorite of all time during the pandemic, which is kind of odd given that I also really am like grooving on a box and bag. Sometimes it’s still on my lips. When I go downstairs to hit the boxing bag, I will say, which is probably extra weird.

[00:54:52] Brett: [00:54:52] The lipstick and back in punching bags, uh, as far as product safety goes, I mean, if you can’t trust Rihanna, who can you [00:55:00] trust though?

[00:55:01] April: [00:55:01] I don’t know. I don’t know. I mean, I, I’m just going to assume that whatever’s in, that has been tested at some point, so that it’s safe, but you know, if I start having effects and we’ll come back and edit this right.

[00:55:13] Brett: [00:55:13] Yup. Um, all right. So if people want to learn more about you, where can they find you?

[00:55:19] April: [00:55:19] Well, they can always, um, give me a holler at when I going to stay, where I teach. Um, I’ve got my there’s a faculty profile there and my email address. That’s probably the best way. That’s probably the only public sort of existence I have left these days.

[00:55:36] Brett: [00:55:36] Really

[00:55:37] April: [00:55:37] blog, no web page. I should probably get on that.

[00:55:40] Shouldn’t I.

[00:55:40] Brett: [00:55:40] well, you know, to each their own,

[00:55:44] April: [00:55:44] Fair enough. Fair enough.

[00:55:46] Brett: [00:55:46] you don’t feel a need for it wa yeah. That feels like something. If you’re just doing it for other people, why bother.

[00:55:55] April: [00:55:55] That’s true. That’s true. You’re right. And at this point it would feel [00:56:00] like one more thing to, uh, have to be kept up in the world. Yeah. And I’m pretty much at my limit on that front. So I think you’re right. We’ll we’ll just, we’ll just let that go.

[00:56:10] Brett: [00:56:10] All right. Well, if, if you want to find April, you can also find her on Amazon. Uh, and I’m sure there are independent booksellers that carry fat blame, uh, and you have another book coming out, right?

[00:56:24] April: [00:56:24] I do. I’m working on a second one. Um, I’m in talks with a couple of publishers. Not sure who’ll take it on yet, but I’m working on a book specifically about fatness and pregnancy where I’m looking at in vitro fertilization and some other issues that, um, fat women face when they’re trying to get pregnant or become pregnant in us society.

[00:56:45] Brett: [00:56:45] All right. So, uh, I, when that becomes available, I will also add a link to this in post, but, uh, but yeah. Thanks for your time today, April.

[00:56:54] April: [00:56:54] Thank you so much. It’s been a pleasure.

[00:56:56] Brett: [00:56:56] And thanks everyone for tuning in. We’ll see you again in a week. [00:57:00] Excellent.

This week’s guest is Dr. Steve Daviss, a consultation laison psychiatrist. He joins Brett to talk about pandemic psychology, addiction, ADHD, note taking, and a bit of making music with code.

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254 Steve Daviss

[00:00:00]Brett: [00:00:00] [00:00:00] This week’s guest is Dr. Steve Davis. He’s a consultation liaison psychiatrist. Hi Steve.

[00:00:07] Steve: [00:00:07] Hey, Brett. Uh, thank you for a vitamin onto your show.

[00:00:11] Brett: [00:00:11] Oh, absolutely. Uh, tell me what a, uh, consultation liaison psychiatrist does.

[00:00:18] Steve: [00:00:18] Uh, that’s a great question. Um, so. Uh, consultation, liaison psychiatrist. Uh, the words in that phrase, essentially refer to psychiatrists who work in typically medical settings. Um, often hospitals emergency room. Sometimes it might be nursing homes, um, and. Uh, the focus is really, I’ve got somebody here with some sort of problem, and I need a psychiatrist to, uh, evaluate and see if they have a psychiatric problem that might be contributing or, uh, the person has [00:01:00] psychiatric symptoms.

[00:01:01] We think it might be XYZ, depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, uh, alcohol withdrawal. Um, but we know we want a second opinion. So that’s, that’s really what we do. We work in hospital settings generally. Um, and that’s where I spent most of my career, I guess, working in either hospital settings or other kind of primary care setting.

[00:01:24] It’s like a FQHC federally qualified health center or primary care offices. Um, so that in essence is what a cl psychiatrist, uh, does. Uh, I’m also, uh, an addiction psychiatrist, um, frankly, It’s hard to do psychiatry without also doing addiction. Uh, and I’ve done a lot of, um, uh, work around addiction. In fact, I’m currently the president of the Maryland DC society of addiction medicine, which is a chapter of the larger national main addiction [00:02:00] organization, which is a, or the American society of addiction medicine.

[00:02:03] Brett: [00:02:03] So you do a lot more, um, uh, consultation than actual long-term seeing of patients, at least in your capacity as a consultation liaison, then.

[00:02:14] Steve: [00:02:14] Um, I had been, um, my career has kind of, um, O taken a winding path. I, you know, I started off doing, uh, actually frankly, schizophrenia research way back in the day. Um, and. Uh, I wanted to go into, uh, research, uh, primarily because it that’s what attracted me to psychiatry and medicine in the first place. I, um, uh, growing up, I had a, um, uh, family members who developed schizophrenia at a young age in their teens, uh, which is oftentimes when it develops and the.

[00:02:54] Uh, just to see, you know, these loved ones of mine transform [00:03:00] with hallucinations and seeing numbers floating in the air. And it just kinda made me made, you know, I was younger than them. I was probably 11 or 12 and made me wonder how does the brain do this weird stuff? Um, and I was kind of a geeky kid to begin with.

[00:03:15] Uh, so that just was something to focus on and, um, I never let go of it. I mean, that’s really, what’s driven my. My, my career is how does, how does it happen that the brain gets broken like that and how to fix it?

[00:03:32] Brett: [00:03:32] do you think it’s a typical fo it surprises me that you’re still fascinated now by what you were fascinated by when you were 12.

[00:03:43] Steve: [00:03:43] yeah, well it reminds me of, um, you know, so I, so I went into. Uh, kind of a research research career. I actually started out as an MD PhD candidate. Um, and then, uh, [00:04:00] Uh, when I was driving around to, um, residencies, you know, you go to four years of medical school after college, four years of medical school, then internship and residency for psychiatry, which is, uh, uh, typically four years.

[00:04:15] Um, and then maybe a fellowship or, or start your career. And as I was driving up to Dartmouth, um, and New Hampshire, um, for my interview on the radio, Um, there was an NPR, a story about how they found the gene for schizophrenia. And, um, I remember kind of shouting, you know, and exclamation as I’m driving. Um, Oh, this is great.

[00:04:42] And then my next thought was, Oh, well, I guess they solve that problem. Maybe I won’t go into research. Um, as we know, it’s never as simple as it seems. Uh, there are, you know, a bazillion genes that seem to. I have something to do with, uh, schizophrenia and, um, [00:05:00] it remains, uh, mental health in general, um, remains, uh, to me a very interesting, challenging area.

[00:05:09] Um, although over the years, my interest have gone from research, you know, causes it, how to treat it, um, to more mundane, but probably much more important things like, uh, we know what good care looks like. We sometimes don’t know how to get it to people. You don’t know how to get it to them, where to get it to them, how to make it affordable, how to make it effective.

[00:05:36] So a big part of, um, psychiatry nowadays is often, uh, uh, implementation research, how to. Get people, the care that they need, it’s a little sad, um, that it is like that. Cause we don’t seem to have as much trouble getting diabetes treatment to people and blood pressure treatment to people. Uh, but it continues to be a problem.

[00:05:57] Brett: [00:05:57] Do you, I think that, uh, I mean, there’s been a lot of [00:06:00] talk over the last couple of years about mental health, especially mental health in America. Do you feel like things are changing, uh, that there actually is more of a light being shined on those problems?

[00:06:12] Steve: [00:06:12] I do. Um, you know, it’s been something that’s been changing, I think over the years, but, um, over the past, I would say five, eight years or so there seems to be an increasing. Recognition of the centrality of mental health and by, and when I say mental health, I mean like mental health and addiction, I, I, a lot of people split those two things separately.

[00:06:39] I think of them, many of us think of them as, as together, it’s all brain stuff. Um, and so, uh, the, uh, th the recognition that if you don’t. Address those issues, then somebody’s health, physical health suffers as well. And so you’ve got to [00:07:00] do both and if you don’t do both, you’re not going to do a good job.

[00:07:04] If you’re just focused on physical health, like diabetes, you won’t do a great job with that, unless you’ve got the mental health stuff under your control.

[00:07:12] Brett: [00:07:12] So you talked about, uh, genes for schizophrenia and I, over my life, heard a lot about, you know, the various mental illnesses being passed on genetically has, has that kind of research resulted in any, um, actual therapies? Um, it does knowing that it’s genetic help in treatment.

[00:07:36] Steve: [00:07:36] um, it, it’s not a direct answer to that. Um, overall, you know, a blunt answer would be, um, not greatly, uh, but, uh, there’s more nuanced answers. So. Um, knowing that the target of the gene. So what does that gene do, you know, does it code for, uh, a certain neurotransmitter receptor [00:08:00] or, um, some other piece of the receptor, uh, ecosystem?

[00:08:06] Um, if you will. Uh, so there are different things in the, in, in the neuron, in the brain cells, um, that either make neurotransmitters and neuro-transmitters are generally the, you know, the messenger. Um, uh, the lingua franca, if Frank gua rank God, if you will. Um, and, uh, so knowing about what is broken, you know, if a gene has an error in its code, um, that helps you understand, well, maybe we should design a drug or find a drug.

[00:08:41] That targets, that particular receptor and tries to work around the defect. So it does, it does help to define the targets, the, uh, the drugs that, uh, drug companies, um, uh, think about and look for. When they’re trying to figure out, okay, what, what else will work? [00:09:00] Um, so that, that does drive. Um, those, those types of genetics do drive some of the research, but there’s still, I think a lot more that we don’t know then there is that we do know.

[00:09:13] Brett: [00:09:13] So what’s, uh, what’s new and exciting and the field of addiction and psychiatry.

[00:09:21] Steve: [00:09:21] Um, so those, those things. Um, certainly as I said, go together. Um, and, uh, what’s new is, is what’s really old, unfortunately. So, um, we talk about whole person care. Um, you know, uh, whether it be physical, uh, mental, uh, addiction, uh, but there continues to be a lot of separation. Between those three things. And even between addiction and psychiatry.

[00:09:53] So some of the new stuff is, uh, finding models of care that knit [00:10:00] these things together in a way that where you can get treatment for both types of conditions, uh, mental health condition, and, uh, addiction condition, and ideally even your physical health, all in one place. That’s the big, um, The, the big thing right now is putting all that together.

[00:10:19] Um, so that there are not these silos or, or wrong doors. It used to be instilled as sometimes where you might go to, uh, your doctor or to mental health clinic and say, Oh, I’ve got this problem with, uh, opioid use. You know, I, I wanna, I wanna, I wanna have that taken care of, um, And be told, Oh, well, we don’t do that here.

[00:10:43] You got to go somewhere else. Uh, which is pretty frustrating. Um, same with, if you go to your primary care doctor and you want help for depression. And she says, um, Oh, I don’t treat depression. You have to go to somebody else. Um, so trying to, [00:11:00] uh, put these things together so that you can get your treatment for all your conditions from one place.

[00:11:07] And they can bring in specialists when needed. Um, uh, that’s uh, unfortunately that’s kind of a new thing. Um, relatively new, but people are starting to pay for it. That’s the key is, um, insurance companies, Medicare. It wasn’t too long ago that Medicare, um, did not cover, uh, treatment for mental illness more than.

[00:11:31] You know, a small amount, 20 visits a year or something like that. Uh, and then they didn’t put limits on other, you know, conditions, uh, that, that has gotten better. So, uh, so these are, these are new things. Um, you know, there’s always some new medications. Uh, there are some sexy things I would call that sexy, I guess.

[00:11:51] Um, new interventions, like TMS transcranial magnetic stimulation. It’s been around a while, but it’s still, it’s newer compared [00:12:00] to other treatments, but it’s a non-medication. Form of treating various conditions. It’s approved for treating, uh, treatment resistant depression. So depression that doesn’t respond to medications after, you know, a decent trial, uh, and, um, TMS involves essentially a big electromagnet that gets essentially held over your, your, your head, your scalp, and a certain type of physician, um, positioned in a way that, uh, they’re deep narrow beams of magnetic.

[00:12:33] Energy, uh, that in a focus way, try to go to parts of the brain that are involved in depression. Um, and, um, uh, I don’t know, uh, zap them, if you will. It’s you’re not killing anything. It’s just, you’re sending a magnetic pulse that causes a current flow, um, uh, an electrochemical current flow. And we don’t know exactly why that.

[00:13:00] [00:13:00] Helps. I mean, I’m sure there’s lots of theories and so forth, but, um, it’s a bit of a, Oh, you know, um, there, there’s a far side cartoon with a wooly mammoth laying dead on its back. And there’s a single arrow, like in his stomach somewhere. And I think the caveman says something like let’s write down where that spot is.

[00:13:21] Brett: [00:13:21] um,

[00:13:21] Steve: [00:13:21] of like that,

[00:13:22] Brett: [00:13:22] there’s so.

[00:13:23] Steve: [00:13:23] yeah, go ahead.

[00:13:24] Brett: [00:13:24] There’s like a whole pseudo science around magnets, which I feel like, uh, having actual clinical uses for magnets is only going to lend strength to this craziness with all these magnetic, uh, like necklaces you’re supposed to be able to buy and they’ll fix your life.

[00:13:42] Steve: [00:13:42] Oh, yeah. Um, yeah, so there there’s some good research to show that these strong, um, uh, electromagnets. Um, do something, but these are strong. Like if you, if you turn on the magnet [00:14:00] and you’ve got, uh, something metallic, uh, um, uh, near you, it can, it can hurt you. I mean, it can fling across the room. This is, uh, a serious, um, uh, uh, type of, uh, uh, electromagnet, um, that costs you can buy these machines, these transcranial magnetic stimulation machines they cost about, I guess, a hundred thousand dollars.

[00:14:24] Um, and it’s not something that, um, you’d buy and keep it in your house next to your treadmill. Right. Uh, but, um, uh, there are certainly plenty of psychiatrists that are using it and it’s pretty effective. It does require though. Um, daily treatment about five days, five days a week. Um, you know, for most forms of it, there’s a couple of different forms forms of magnets now, but the most common one you’re getting this treatment for about 35, 40 minutes, five times a week for about six weeks.

[00:14:57] That seems to be the dosage that, [00:15:00] um, makes a difference. But I have definitely seen people who have not responded to your usual types of treatment. Um, who do respond to this? It’s not a magic bullet. Uh, it’s about a 30, 40% or so response rate. But if you’re in that 30 or 40%, you’re going to be pretty happy that it works.

[00:15:21] If it does.

[00:15:23] Brett: [00:15:23] So I’ll, I want to offer some background before I ask this. Um, like I, in, uh, in my late teens, early twenties was addicted to all kinds of things. Um, like to the point of homelessness. And, uh, when I got, uh, diagnosed for bipolar in my twenties, Uh, that wasn’t the turning point, but at the same time, like as part of getting my life together, I started going to N a and I found that, um, mentioning my addictions to my [00:16:00] primary care physician led to, uh, bad things happening to my care, uh, mentioning or trying to treat, uh, addiction via my psychiatrist was just, she would just refer me to.

[00:16:15] He at the time would just refer me to a, like, they didn’t want it. They didn’t have any solutions for me. It all had to go through 12 step programs. So what I’m really curious about is this is 15, 20 years ago. Uh, w what would there be help for me now, if I were in a position, uh, that I, if I were actively abusing drugs or was recently clean, Would psychiatry have new answers for me?

[00:16:49] Steve: [00:16:49] they would have better answers. Um, some of the, some of them are new. Some of the answers are new, uh, 12 step programs, you know, uh, those, those [00:17:00] started back in the 1930s, um, by, you know, a couple of guys, uh, I’m sure, you know, the story, um, and really focused on, on alcoholism. Um, and. Um, that sort of, uh, social support.

[00:17:15] Um, and there are a number of factors. I think that, that make that helpful, but, um, there are treatments that are more effective even than say 12 step. Um, so for example, as we learn more about the biology of addiction, which is actually pretty well mapped out, um, What you learn is that there are types of treatments, either.

[00:17:40] Some of which are medications, some of which are more, some people will call them psychosocial treatments, um, like, uh, motivational enhancement therapy. Um, there are, um, The, the, the [00:18:00] medications for it though, I think are pretty helpful. You know, this is the United States. Everybody wants to take a pill to fix a problem.

[00:18:07] Um, and, um, we look for those things, but for some types of addiction, we, you know, there are medications that have been shown to be effective. More effective than placebo, at least. Um, and, um, an example of that would be for, for alcohol, the main medicine for many years was, um, deisel for, or an abuse. And, you know, that’s a medication that mucks up your liver’s ability to break down alcohol and kind of blocks the pathway so that a certain chemical builds up and makes you really sick.

[00:18:47] I mean, it makes you feel lousy, vomit and so forth. Um, and, uh, that was more of an adversive type of

[00:18:56] Brett: [00:18:56] Positive punishment.

[00:18:57] Steve: [00:18:57] treatment. Yes. Yeah. Um, [00:19:00] you know, I’ve, I’ve used that some, um, it’s not the most popular as you can, as you might imagine, but I’ve had people tell me that, um, without that they wouldn’t have been able to stop.

[00:19:10] Um, but even that is kind of, I would say fallen. More out of favor, um, for, uh, you know, other substances like other medications. Uh, now Trek zone is a good one. Um, now Trek zone, um, also goes by the name of Revia or Vivitrol. Um, it is a opioid antagonist, so it blocks the opioid receptor. Um, and in, so doing, um, if you were to take.

[00:19:41] You know, like oxycodone or heroin, um, it wouldn’t have much of an effect because you’re blocking that receptor and, and the opioid that you took would not be able to bind and do its thing. Um, so. Taking a medication that blocks that, [00:20:00] um, also helps with alcoholism because when you drink your body releases, you know, your own internal, um, opioids, the endorphins that you’ve probably heard of, um, and those endorphins make you feel good about drinking at least early on.

[00:20:18] Um, and so by blocking those receptors, then when you drink. You don’t get quite the same, feel good out of it. You don’t get the same buzz out of it. And because you remove that kind of reward, then, um, you develop a habit of, ah, you know, I don’t care so much about the drinking. That’s the thinking behind it.

[00:20:41] And it seems to work, but it doesn’t work for, for everyone.

[00:20:44] Brett: [00:20:44] so like the, the thing that got me. Was, I could get off of any given drug and I could go completely clean and sober, but my addictive behavior would show up in completely non related areas of my life, [00:21:00] like, uh, obsessions and, um, unhealthy behaviors, uh, that had nothing to do with, you know, sticking needles in my arm anymore, or, or even like drinking, like completely non drug related.

[00:21:11] Uh, and it seems like all of those treatments that you just mentioned were very much about the physical. About turning off like pleasure centers. Is there, is there anything new in the area of actually treating the, uh, not the chemical dependency, but the addiction.

[00:21:32] Steve: [00:21:32] Um, yeah, so, you know, addiction is sort of a S a cycle. And in fact, if you look at the. The, the, um, reward systems in the brain. You’ll see, it actually looks like a circuit, um, you know, uh, kind of a three-way circuit, if you will. And so the trick to treating and stopping addictions is to block that circuit because it’s this pathological feedback loop.

[00:21:59] Um, that [00:22:00] just kind of spins and spins and spins, and you’ve got to do things to block it. So some of the things that people do would be to, uh, use a medication to block that cycle, but there are non-medication. Ways to block those cycles. So, um, learning, um, essentially how to, uh, change your behaviors, you know, uh, you can learn as I’m sure you already have.

[00:22:27] You’ve probably learned that there are certain things that if you, if you do those things, they might be more likely to facilitate, uh, escalation of an addiction.

[00:22:40] Brett: [00:22:40] yeah.

[00:22:41] Steve: [00:22:41] Um, you know, and for some people that’s, uh, uh, go into a bar and hanging out with their friends. Oh no, I won’t drink. I won’t drink. I’m just going to see here, sit here in the bar and be with my friends.

[00:22:53] Well, you know, um, our brain associates senses things, um, seeing, [00:23:00] seeing the, uh, people drinking, uh, hearing the clinking of glasses. Um, back in the day when people smoked in bars, you know, cigarettes smoke all these sorts of cues and these cues, um, train your brain to go, ah, I want the thing, the feel-good thing that’s associated with those cues.

[00:23:19] So just learning how to block that cycle by avoiding those cues and, um, you know, a big part of the problem sometimes is. Just teaching people how to identify those cues in the first place. Uh, you, you probably hear of, uh, you know, in 12 step, they talk about people, places and things. These are all, um, you know, things that you associate with with using or with feeling good while you’re using substances.

[00:23:48] Um, and those things require changing, um, to, uh, break, break that cycle. So it is a combination of. You know, uh, the, the best treatments probably [00:24:00] try to hit that cycle pattern in multiple different ways, you know, uh, like, uh, uh, let’s say for opioid use disorder, um, buprenorphine, Suboxone, that is a medication that, uh, is an opioid itself.

[00:24:19] Um, but it is, uh, it seems to be associated with less. Um, uh, less of a reward feeling from it. Um, it has a bit of a ceiling effect, so you can’t like take more and more and, um, feel better and better. Oh, that reminds me that, um, the other thing that the brain is really good about, uh, although sometimes that good can be bad is, um, if it starts to see.

[00:24:47] Um, experience, uh, a, let’s say, um, you know, some sort of opioid on an ongoing basis while your, your brain already makes its own endorphins. [00:25:00] Um, but if you are supplementing that on a regular daily basis, then your brain starts to go out. I don’t need to make those endorphins anymore because I’m just getting too much as it is.

[00:25:11] So I’m going to stop that. Well, if you were to then stop. Using your opioid. It takes a little bit of time for your brain to kick in and go up. I see. I’m not getting any of that anymore. I better start making more of those endorphins. Um, and then you’re going to have a deficit of those endorphins. And when that happens, that can be an uncomfortable feeling.

[00:25:32] Uh, the other thing that your brain will do is, uh, because the, the endorphins or the heroin or the opioid that you take, um, Uh, does its thing by binding to receptors. The other thing that the brain is really good at is going, Hmm, I’m getting too much of these opioids. I’m going to make less receptors. So that way I’m not getting stimulated so much.

[00:25:57] Uh it’s too much hyperstimulation. So I’m going to [00:26:00] tone down those receptors and make fewer of them. Well, that’s fine. As long as your dosage of opioids always stays the same, um, Uh, but what will happen is if you’re making fewer receptors and then you take away the opioids, it takes about two weeks to make new receptors.

[00:26:20] So that means for two weeks, you’re going to have, you’re going to your, brain’s going to be starving for what it’s used to getting. And that’s what go through withdrawal and, you know, shakes and tremors. And, um, it’s a very extreme vomiting, a very uncomfortable feeling. Which is why if you’ve experienced, you’ll know that, um, people will do just about anything to avoid feeling that bad.

[00:26:46] And that’s that cycle of addiction that gets you, you know, the brain, the opiod is really hijacking your brain and its own regulatory processes. Uh, and doing it in a way that you’ve lost control. Once you get to that [00:27:00] point, it’s really hard to, to regain control. Some people are able to do that. Um, without a lot of intervention, I think those people are.

[00:27:09] Far and few between, um, others need more help. Um, and still others just never quite get to the point where they get the help. And I’ve seen people who are, you know, using opioids off the street for, you know, 30, 40 years or so. A big problem nowadays of course, is that we have a toxic drug supply. Um, With the fentanyl that’s out there.

[00:27:31] It’s, you know, it’s, fentanyl’s super strong. It is easy to a small amount. It’s easy to get in to the country from different places. Um, and, uh, if you’re in the business of, uh, of being a street dealer and selling, um, opioids, usually it’s heroin. Most of the heroin that’s sold on the street now has no heroin in it.

[00:27:54] It’s fentanyl. And then a bunch of like sugar and other white stuff.

[00:27:59] Brett: [00:27:59] Yeah, I’m [00:28:00] glad I got out when I did, I guess. But, uh, so you, you, I don’t mean to stick on this topic forever, but you T you talked about opioid disorder. Um, and the way that it was always presented to me, mostly through 12 steps is that there aren’t different kinds of addiction. It’s all just addiction. Are there different?

[00:28:21] Are there different kind of, uh, brain patterns between different types of drug users?

[00:28:28] Steve: [00:28:28] um, more, I, I’m not a, an expert on, on the, the fine points of, you know, the, the brain’s reward system with respect to different types of addictions. But I, I do know that, um, Those addictions are much, much more alike than they are different. There may be some differences, like for example, cocaine addiction, um, is much more focused on the dopamine reward system as opposed to the, [00:29:00] um, endorphin the opioid receptor system.

[00:29:03] Um, so there might be some subtle differences, but much more alike than they are different. Absolutely. And that goes with other types of addiction too. People are, have sexual addictions. Um, some people gambling, um, there’s a lot of, a lot more similarity there than there are differences.

[00:29:20] Brett: [00:29:20] I cured my cocaine addiction by starting to use heroin. Um, I feel like I’m, well-versed

[00:29:27] Steve: [00:29:27] Well, and, and so that is very old school because back in the late 18 hundreds, early 19 hundreds, that’s exactly what people did. You came in with cocaine addiction. We will treat it with heroin. You come in with heroin addiction, we might treat it with cocaine, um, or cannabis, or, you know, um, you know, if you go back far enough, they were using all sorts of things.

[00:29:52] Um, Uh, lead for example, or I think maybe I want to say arsenic was [00:30:00] also used sometimes. So, uh, of course that those were the, there were days when, I guess it was, uh, leeches and all sorts of weird things.

[00:30:09] Brett: [00:30:09] humors. Yeah. Um, so how has, uh, I’m gonna, I’m gonna try to get off my, uh, my obsession with the addiction thing. How has, uh, how has COVID affected your, your life, your daily job?

[00:30:25] Steve: [00:30:25] Uh, for, for me, um, uh, personally, I mean, it certainly it’s disrupted the whole country, the whole planet, um, and in various different ways, um, you know, the work that I do. Uh, right now, I’m not doing direct care. Um, I, uh, I guess in December of 2019, I started working for, um, an insurance company. Optum. I’ve never worked for a payer before.

[00:30:53] Um, but they had a contract to do, uh, take care of, uh, people with behavioral health problems, um, in [00:31:00] Maryland who are, uh, who have Medicaid and, um, I, you know, I’m the sort of person that I like to know how things work underneath the infrastructure, the gears that make everything turn, which is probably what attracted me to psychiatry and to, uh, research initially.

[00:31:18] Um, but that’s true with all sorts of systems. I like to know what makes everything, um, uh, tick and we’ve got a lot of problems in our healthcare. Um, if you haven’t noticed, and some of those problems, you know, aside from COVID. Um, just again, the whole, um, how to implement a treatment to people and get those, those services, um, you know, available to them.

[00:31:48] Um, that whole system just isn’t working well here. So I decided, well, let me, you know, the job opportunity came up to, um, to work on the payer side. And I think a big part [00:32:00] of it is how. Healthcare is financed and paid for and the incentives they’re in. Um, so I wanted to take this job to learn what’s going on on the payer side.

[00:32:12] How does that work? Cause I had my, my vision I’ve, uh, I’ve cursed out insurance companies for enough, enough of my career that I decided, well, let’s see if I can figure out what’s broken on that side. Um, and uh, so I can do my work. Uh, remotely, um, you know, I was driving to work, um, every day, uh, March 16th, they think was the last day, last year.

[00:32:36] And haven’t been back since, other than maybe sometime in the summer, I went and got some, some things there. You know, when we left, we didn’t, we didn’t know that we would be gone for a year. Uh, so, um, I’m able to do my work remotely at home. So I’m blessed that. Uh, th that I can do that. There are a lot of jobs where people cannot, um, but the [00:33:00] impact on people has certainly taken a toll.

[00:33:04] Obviously there’s the physical toll, if you get COVID, but, um, a lot more depression and anxiety, uh, we’re certainly seeing during COVID, um, uh, addiction and use of substances has gone up. Um, you know, it’s like, well, some people have a lot of time on their hands. Um, others are self-treating maybe, uh, the rate of alcohol consumption has gone up tremendously.

[00:33:32] Um, and so that has had, you know, a very significant impact. I think just the loneliness. There’s a lot of people that are lonely, a lot of social disruption. Um, obviously all the other. Negative consequences of COVID financial problems, loss of jobs, um, you know, kids in school, um, people going to college and kind of uncertainty about all those things, uh, losing friends and family to [00:34:00] COVID, uh, people that, that have died.

[00:34:02] Um, so these are a lot of, um, uh, consequences that are hitting us, um, kind of in, in, in the brain, if you will. Um, I think, uh, you know, some groups are hit harder than others, uh, indigenous people, people of color, uh, people that don’t have access to a broadband, um, you know, uh, it used to be before COVID that you could not provide treatment just over a regular phone, um, and get paid for it.

[00:34:37] Uh, and that changed with COVID and we’re still trying to figure out how are we going to keep that change? Uh, you know, I would argue that we should, there are lots of people that even without COVID, um, have limited access to treatment, if you’re working three jobs, uh, just to keep, um, your family fed pre COVID.

[00:34:57] Um, you don’t have a lot of time to [00:35:00] take three buses to get to the doctor’s office for your regular, you know, medical checkup. Um, and so having other ways to do that, um, ways that are more convenient, um, uh, I hopefully will go a long way. It certainly seems, it certainly seems that way. Um, so we’re, we’re, it’s, it’s odd though, that something so terrible has caused such. Positive changes in our healthcare system. It shouldn’t have to take that, but it did.

[00:35:29] Brett: [00:35:29] Yeah. W do you think that, uh, as things quote, unquote, head back to normal, uh, that there will be. Uh, w we’ll we’ll the things we’ve learned in the advances we’ve made in medical care, uh, move forward or what they revert your prediction.

[00:35:49] Steve: [00:35:49] I predict it’s going to be hard to put that genie back in the bottle. Uh, so I think that, uh, tell the, all the telehealth, um, advances that we’ve made. Um, [00:36:00] I think most of them will stay with us. I think that, um, we will see much more. We’re seeing it now, um, uh, digital therapeutics, uh, different words for it, but essentially using technology, um, and, uh, data population, health concepts.

[00:36:22] Um, using those sorts of tools to, uh, get help to people identify who needs help, um, make them available. I think we’re gonna see a lot more of that in COVID we’ve had to, we’ve had to change gears. Um, otherwise there’s no way to, uh, get people the help. Um, I think it will be overall positive changes. I sure hope.

[00:36:48] That we’ll see a reduction in the cost of care. You know, uh, our country spends, you know, two to three times more than any other country does, uh, per person on [00:37:00] healthcare. And a lot of that goes to, you know, well, some of it at least goes to like administrative costs and so forth. There’s a lot of overhead.

[00:37:07] Um, and it’s long been argued that we spend, you know, for what we’re getting we’re spending way too much. Um, But it’s been hard to figure out. Okay, well, where are you going to cut without losing quality, without losing access to care. We’re kind of forced to figure that out now.

[00:37:27] Brett: [00:37:27] yeah. All right. So last question, before we get to some top three picks, uh, I assume that as a practicing psychiatrist, you take a lot of notes. What is your favorite way of taking notes?

[00:37:44] Steve: [00:37:44] Uh, for, I don’t know how long it’s been. Um, so you, your product a and V out. Uh, actually I use notational velocity before, um,

[00:37:55] Brett: [00:37:55] be clear. This was not me fishing.

[00:37:58] Steve: [00:37:58] I know, but, but, but, [00:38:00] uh, you’re, you’re going to get the fish anyway. Um, you know, uh, I use that every day. That is my main note taking tool. Um, you know, so I use Mark I type in Mark down.

[00:38:16] Um, so I use a lot of asterisks and other, um, uh, markdown tools. Cause it just makes a lot of sense. Um, to me and, uh, uh, what I, what I really like about it is that, um, you know, I’ve developed kind of a workflow for note taking, um, and, uh, that workflow has certainly evolved over the years, but having some kind of tool that allows me to immediately, um, find all the notes that have certain words or phrases in it.

[00:38:50] Um, is, uh, incredibly helpful, um, as well as having a tool that allows me to hyperlink between notes to connect [00:39:00] those threads. Um, so, you know, th th the concept of a Zettel Castin, uh, is something I certainly read, uh, a fair amount about and learned. You know, picked up some tips about, um, how to write notes in a way, you know, back in, uh, medical school.

[00:39:19] So here’s, uh, uh, you know, you’ve talked about your, um, uh, your ADHD and how that has affected your life. Um, so, you know, I have been diagnosed with ADHD as well. Um, I’m not taking any medications for that now. Uh, but, uh, I have had, you know, uh, I’ve been, uh, kind of, uh, a high performing kid, um, and never at least in high school and college didn’t really need to work too hard.

[00:39:50] I’m not trying to brag. It’s just kind of how I found it to be. Um, I nearly flunked out of medical school, uh, because of, because of this, the F uh, [00:40:00] in, in the first year of medical school, I used the same stuff. Poor study habits that I had in college, which was, um, a lot of last minute cramming, um, uh, procrastination, um, uh, you know, being in a lecture, listening.

[00:40:19] I learned a lot from that, um, reading, um, I, you know, I would sometimes get into it, but I, it was just very easy to get distracted. And so I had poor study habits. Um, and in medical school your first year, you’re, you’re like, you know, a typical, uh, semester in college is like, um, 15 credits, five classes, right?

[00:40:44] Uh, uh, three hours a week. And in medical school, instead of taking like five classes, it’s more like taking 20 classes. Um, all at once, all through the same time. Um, and I use the same techniques I use, I [00:41:00] used in college and that failed me terribly. Um, and I started to do poorly and it really took, um, uh, you know, kind of a, okay.

[00:41:10] Either figure it out or you’re out of here. Before I finally said to myself, okay, I’m doing something wrong. I’ve got to change. I’ve got to do something. Um, and at that time I wasn’t thinking it was, um, it was, um, ADHD or anything like that. I just thought I had, you know, uh, bad habits, bad study habits. I just needed to try harder, try harder.

[00:41:32] And so that’s what I did. I tried harder to try harder. Um, and. And that did work. I mean, I, but it meant that I always had a book in my hand. I was always writing notes. I wasn’t typing notes back then. I was, everything was handwritten, a lot of highlighting and so forth. And I just overdid all of that stuff.

[00:41:53] Um, just to, uh, you know, finally, um, uh, succeed, but I was eight, but I [00:42:00] was able to, um, and, and after I, but, but I had to do some sort of. Mental gear shifting. And I can’t even, it’s hard for me to define what that was, but that’s what it, but that’s what it took. Um, and, uh, you know, I have tried, um, uh, myself, a few of the medications that are used to treat.

[00:42:20] Um, ADHD, um, at times in my life when, um, I thought, well, maybe that would help. Um, it did help, but I did not like how it made me feel. I felt very speedy, kind of wired feeling on stimulants. Um, you know, I, I tried, uh, some other medications like, uh, uh, Wellbutrin or bupropion, um, Effexer, which has Venlafaxine’s, which are sometimes used to treat these conditions.

[00:42:47] And, um, they gave me kind of odd side effects that I didn’t like. So, you know, after I tried a couple of years different medicines, but I just didn’t find that I was too, uh, too helpful. [00:43:00] Um, w w w tell me about, you know, your experience with those types of medicines and side effects.

[00:43:06] Brett: [00:43:06] this is really funny because the question was about notes, but I’m happy to talk about this. Um, so like as a, uh, former. Cocaine. And at some point meth addict, uh, the idea of feeling speedy wasn’t, uh, I’m not sure reverse to that. Um, I definitely, I S uh, I was on a med called Vyvanse for a long time, and Vyvanse did not give me that speedy feeling, but it also wasn’t terribly effective.

[00:43:38] Um, The, the drug that has been the most useful to me is Focalin, which is closer to, uh, uh, Ritalin Vyvanse is in the Adderall family. Um, so like I don’t function without, uh, ADHD medication. And [00:44:00] part of it is, uh, it’s combined with bipolar depression. Um, I just, plus when I’m not medicated for ADHD, my addictive tendencies, uh, I have lower impulse control.

[00:44:12] So that leads to just general problems. Even if it’s not drug abuse, it’s just addiction in general. Um, so I’ve been willing to accept the kind of physical side effects of ADHD medication because they allow me to function the way I see everyone else functioning. Which

[00:44:33] Steve: [00:44:33] Well then. Yeah. Um, so the, the connection to me with the note taking is that I find that. Um, like I did back in medical school by focusing on the process of making notes, writing notes, typing notes, um, that, that becomes almost like a focus for me and [00:45:00] helps me pay attention more and improve my memory.

[00:45:03] Cause if I write something down, if I’m typing something, um, um, especially if I use it soon afterwards, Um, I find that I remember it better. And that was one of the tricks that I learned in medical school was just by doing more of this kind of note-taking highlighting, make things yellow and pink and so forth.

[00:45:23] Um, it, it, for me, it kind of built a bit of a mental map, like a geographical map almost and helped me, like I could envision a page and where certain words were on the page and that somehow helped me. Help me remember, um, uh, what it was I was trying to learn. Um, and so using those types of these types of, uh, tools, like, you know, uh, like envy all for example, and by the way, okay.

[00:45:52] I’m going to, uh, envy ultra, which is like your, how, I don’t know how you would describe it, but, um, [00:46:00] is that something that’s going to be coming out?

[00:46:02] Brett: [00:46:02] I should hope so it, so, I mean, basically right now, uh, Fletcher my partner on this. Is, uh, he’s going through a lot of stuff that is not related to NBA ultra, uh, in addition to being an ER doctor in the middle of a pandemic. Um, so things are moving slowly, but we are absolutely like on the precipice of release.

[00:46:26] Uh, I just need him to find a little more time and, uh, and we’ll get that out there. We are pretty much anyone who directly asks me to be on the beta at this point. We’re not mass adding anybody, but. You and anyone else listening who wants to be on the beta? Just email me and we’ll get you up and running with NBA ultra.

[00:46:48] Steve: [00:46:48] Well, that’s cool that the name is funny, cause it makes me think of a certain CIA

[00:46:52] Brett: [00:46:52] I know MK ultra it’s. We, we did the, they was supposed to be a code name. It was just supposed to be a [00:47:00] temporary envy envy ultra wordplay code name. We never found a better name for it, or I should say we never agreed on a better name for it. I thought I had some great ideas. He thought he had some great ideas.

[00:47:12] We couldn’t, we couldn’t come to a two person consensus.

[00:47:20] Steve: [00:47:20] Um, um, uh, that, that is something that I’ve been in fact, I’ve, I dallied with a couple of things. Um, uh, I thought I thought Rome was gonna, um, kind of fit the bill, but, um, I, I haven’t found that I got very frustrated with it and, um, it hasn’t been easy to use. Uh, and I think they, they’re not using text-based notes.

[00:47:42] Um, you can’t just save a bunch

[00:47:44] Brett: [00:47:44] They’re not actual files. Right.

[00:47:46] Steve: [00:47:46] Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And, and the whole idea of getting something, you know, I’ve gone through, I don’t know how many computers, um, in, in my, in my life so far, but, um, uh, you know, to have things on, in formats that [00:48:00] down the road, uh, I won’t be able to access is just not something I’m willing to

[00:48:04] Brett: [00:48:04] Yeah, that is very much the philosophy behind notational velocity and VL MBL. Is this, this idea of portable portable notes in regards to what you were saying before. I have a hundred percent found that if I take notes on something while it’s happening, I rarely even need to go look at my notes because just the act of taking the note helps me remember what happened.

[00:48:26] Steve: [00:48:26] exactly. I find, I find the same thing, um, as well. Uh, and, uh, I, in fact, I sometimes will. Uh, like I might be listening to a podcast, um, and somebody is talking about something and I’ll pause it and go, you know, do what I need to do so that I can take some notes about it. Cause just listening about it. Um, you know, I’ll hear it and I’ll think, Oh, I wanna check that out later.

[00:48:52] But if I don’t write it down, it’s out of sight out of mind and it’s gone before, you know, it. So I’ve got to stop and [00:49:00] do something to capture it. Just that capture is almost like taking a picture and then I have it.

[00:49:05] Brett: [00:49:05] you use mind maps at all?

[00:49:08] Steve: [00:49:08] I’ve tried to mess with mind maps a number of times. Um, I can’t get into it. I don’t know why. But it, cause you would think from some of the things I’ve said that, uh, um, that would work well. Although most of the, my maps I’ve done have been, um, you know, like on a computer rather than on a piece of paper, I’ve done it on a piece of paper and I get frustrated cause I run out of room.

[00:49:32] Brett: [00:49:32] Sure. Yeah, Tony, Tony Pizan was a huge proponent of like, you have to do it on paper, up until. Uh, probably the mid two thousands, but like I never enjoyed doing it on paper because I like to be able to move things around. That’s part of the magic for

[00:49:50] Steve: [00:49:50] Yeah,

[00:49:50] Brett: [00:49:50] is as I choose to like jot down these notes and dump out ideas and, and, and concepts that are coming up, I just.

[00:49:58] I can just dump them [00:50:00] onto the screen and then I can organize them and then I can start to make the connections and see what relates to what, and like it’s perfect for me. And it’s very much, uh, it’s uh, there are two kinds of people. There are people who mind map and people who don’t. And for some people, like I would never push mind mapping on anybody because it just doesn’t seem to click for some people the way it clicks for me.

[00:50:27] Steve: [00:50:27] Yeah.

[00:50:29] Brett: [00:50:29] All right.

[00:50:29] Steve: [00:50:29] Uh, I I’m, I’m conscious of the time. And, uh, top three picks.

[00:50:35] Brett: [00:50:35] yes. Let me do a quick sponsor break.

[00:50:38] Steve: [00:50:38] You got it.

[00:50:39] Brett: [00:50:39] Actually. I’m just going to add that, edit that in later, but all right. So now top three picks. Tell me what you got. Uh,

[00:50:47] Steve: [00:50:47] Um, so, you know, it changes every time I think about it. Uh, so the first thing I thought of, um, is something I keep coming to, so I do, uh, [00:51:00] photography, I’m a hobbyist, um, but, um, uh, really enjoy, um, photography, mostly landscape. Um, nature, um, you know, some street photography and, uh, I came across, um, a book by photographer, David Lubbers, um, and the book is called persistence of vision.

[00:51:23] You can, if you just Google it, you’ll find some, some of the pictures out there. And what he did in this book was. He found he’s a, you know, a professional photographer. He makes his living doing photography. And, um, he went through his photographs and he found, uh, you know, dyads of photographs to photographs.

[00:51:47] The technical word for this is dip tick, um, and, uh, put. Them, uh, one on the left and one of the rights. So each time you flip a page, you’ve got a new set, a new pair of photos [00:52:00] and the one on the left and one on the right. Um, Jay, what he does is, um, matches photos that have elements that are very similar, but they’re different photos or like from different times, like different years, different locations.

[00:52:18] Um, but there might be, for example, on the left, there might be an S curve of a stream. And on the right, there might be the same exact location, everything S curve, but of sand, um, in a desert. Um, and it’s a series of these pictures. And what I really like about it is that he doesn’t tell you what’s the same.

[00:52:41] So this is really something that the observer, the reader is looking at and noticing, Oh, Oh, look, there’s a rock over here and there’s that same type of rock over here. And, um, you know, it, it makes you think, um, and it makes me think I’ve got, I don’t know, [00:53:00] probably 30,000 photographs, um, all on, all on backed up hard drives, so I don’t lose them.

[00:53:06] Um, uh, but this concept of finding photos that are similar. Um, and tell a bit of a story is just fascinating to me. So I started to try to do something like that myself. So, um, uh, any photographers out there? Um, I would suggest take a look at his book.

[00:53:26] Brett: [00:53:26] nice. Um, it’s kind of like those, uh, those funny pages spot the difference between the two photos, but opposite.

[00:53:34] Steve: [00:53:34] Yes. I remember going to the dentist and reading highlights.

[00:53:39] Brett: [00:53:39] of course.

[00:53:40] Steve: [00:53:40] Well, there were some things in highlights like that, where you’re trying to find what’s changed.

[00:53:44] Brett: [00:53:44] Yup. Yup.

[00:53:46] Steve: [00:53:46] Um, okay. A second thing, um, is, uh, something kind of more general, uh, the internet archive, the way back machine and all the other things that are associated with that, [00:54:00] um, you know, just in the past week, Um, I went in there to, you know, I, me and two other psychiatrists did a podcast for several years called my three shrinks.

[00:54:12] And I think we’ve got about 70, um, episodes. Uh, we haven’t done them for a number of years, but, uh, I had, you know, I didn’t, um, renew the, um, the domain and then all the files went away. And where are my files while they’re on some hard drive somewhere? Well, it turns out, um, uh, way back, caught them all, including the audio files.

[00:54:36] Um, and, um, I, uh, I’ll share a link with you, uh, so that readers that they want to listen to any of them, they can, but that got me digging deeper into what is on the internet archive. Um, and, uh, some of the, you know, so during COVID, um, there were, they’ve really doubled down on. Um, [00:55:00] get making more books available, um, through, uh, the archive.

[00:55:05] And so there’s a lot more, um, uh, uh, books, I think there’s, you know, there’s obviously it backs up webpages like nobody’s business. I think there’s like a half a trillion web pages on there that are all searchable through keyword searching and so forth. Um, and, uh, lots of audio recordings, music spoken, word sound effects.

[00:55:26] Uh, Podcasts, uh, videos too. There’s old, you know, movies and things like that. Um, there’s just so much there. Um, and it’s a, uh, it’s truly a treasure trove. Uh, and if people don’t know about it, um, uh, you know, we’ll, you’ll put a link in the show notes too, that, but, uh, there’s just amazing stuff in the internet archive.

[00:55:51] So, um, that definitely deserves a, a strong mention.

[00:55:54] Brett: [00:55:54] Absolutely. I, uh, when I first, this, this podcast started on the five [00:56:00] by five network and not to malign anybody, but, uh, within a week of me moving to a different network, Uh, the first a hundred, some episodes were just gone from the internet removed. And, uh, I went back a couple years later and realized that they were all in the Wayback machine and I was able to retrieve.

[00:56:21] So the, the website’s current pot, uh, podcasts, current website at, uh, system, what is it? Systematic pod.com now has like the full archive. And it’s only possible because of the way back machine.

[00:56:35] Steve: [00:56:35] It saved our podcast too. Um, really, really, uh, you know, really amazing that that’s there. Um, and, uh, uh, just awesome. And lots of, um, uh, I, you know, like for example, I think there’s, they’ve got, um, Several million books, a lot of Saifai. Um, although it’s curious, they had, so I looked at for Isaac [00:57:00] Asimov, right?

[00:57:01] Um, at least a hundred of his books are in there. Hi, uh, Robert Heinlein, none. Why is that? I don’t know. Uh, so it’s got some quirkiness to it. Um, but, uh, uh, very useful. And I think I also found. Did I find that there? I think I did, um, our, you know, so the two psychiatrists, I mentioned, um, uh, Diana Miller and Anne Hanson.

[00:57:27] We also, you know, we, we had, uh, a blog, which we no longer write for, uh, which was called shrink wrap. Um, and then came the podcast, uh, my three shrinks, you see a theme here and then, you know, Diana had this great idea. Well, let’s take the hundreds and hundreds of blog posts that we did and make a book out of it.

[00:57:48] Um, and, uh, if you ever tried to do something like that, it doesn’t work the way you think it would you, she thought, Oh, you just stitch stitch them all together and it’d be fine. No. Uh, and [00:58:00] three of us, you know, um, arguing about, uh, okay. Uh, writing what we’re going to put in, what we don’t put in, but that book.

[00:58:08] Is, um, also, um, in the way back machine. So if you want it to buy, it’s still, I think it’s still, um, there’s some still print copies that are, um, um, out there. Uh, it came out in 2011, uh, but I was very pleased to see that it’s also right there. Um, you know, uh, in the Wayback machine, well, it’s actually not even part of the Wayback machine.

[00:58:29] It’s part of open library.org, uh, and, uh, they allow you to borrow a book for an hour. So it’s really interesting to see that the three that even on the internet and the Wayback machine psychiatrist, um, you know, are doing their thing one hour at a time. I had to reach for that one. Sorry.

[00:58:53] Brett: [00:58:53] all right. What’s number three.

[00:58:55] Steve: [00:58:55] Uh, number three is Sonic PI. Do you use your [00:59:00] musician? Have you used Sonic by.

[00:59:01] Brett: [00:59:01] I have not. Is PI P I or P I

[00:59:05] Steve: [00:59:05] T I, yeah, it’s not Python. It’s PI like the Greek letter. Yeah, Sonic I, um, it is a, a downloadable executive bowl, um, that, uh, allows you to, um, make music by coding. So you’re essentially, um, writing code that, um, uh, spits out music. And as you tweak the code, the music changes. Um, if you’ve ever used like, um, uh, like a Jupiter notebook, it’s something like that.

[00:59:40] And the sense that by changing it, it, uh, the output immediately, um, um, comes out. And, uh, the, I think the guy that, that, that wrote it is Sam. Aaron, I think is his name. And he’s got a number of, um, YouTube videos. Of him, you know, jamming with his computer, uh, [01:00:00] music, people dancing and so forth. Um, and you know, what I like about it is that, you know, you’re using code and mathematics to, uh, right to make sounds.

[01:00:12] And, um, there are some folks who have used Sonic PI to turn data into sound. Uh, and that concept just fascinates me. I haven’t quite figured out what to do with that. That’s a patient, but it’s just asking for something, check it, check it out. I’d love to, um, I’ll bet that you’ll get turned on by this and, um, want to do something

[01:00:35] Brett: [01:00:35] Yeah, I’m worried. I’m worried that you just killed between one and a hundred hours of my productivity.

[01:00:40] Steve: [01:00:40] w well, that’s why I got into it one weekend and, and, um, haven’t been back to it yet because it. It’s hard to stop once you start. Um, there’s uh, on the, um, are you familiar with the calm app? So in that I there’s a, um, I [01:01:00] found a segment of, um, there’s an astrophysicist by the name of Matt Russo who took, uh, kind of the data of the stars and when they come out at night.

[01:01:14] So when they become visible as. Dusk settles tonight. Um, and, um, took a file with all of the star information and the intensity and the color. Um, and, um, when they come out, you know, kind of as, as it gets darker and darker and darker and created. Um, essentially there there’s one of the sound system sounds, I think it’s called and the call map is that recording.

[01:01:44] And so for an hour, it starts off with a little thing Thing as stars become visible. And then over the course of an hour, it becomes kind of this Rawkus white noise sound. Um, but as [01:02:00] it’s, as it’s unfolding, it just has a very calm, soothing feel to it. And so, you know, taking data and making sound and music out of it.

[01:02:09] I love that, that concept. I just want to do something with it.

[01:02:12] Brett: [01:02:12] awesome. I’ll have to I’ll let you know how it goes. I’m absolutely going to play with

[01:02:17] Steve: [01:02:17] that. Yeah. Yeah, it’s hard. It’s hard not to, once you start messing with it.

[01:02:22] Brett: [01:02:22] All right. Well, if people want to, uh, learn more about you or reach you, where can they look for you? Yeah.

[01:02:30] Steve: [01:02:30] Um, Ooh, probably the best way the best places are. Um, uh I’m so I’m on LinkedIn. I’ll put a, uh, a link in the show notes for my LinkedIn page. Um, and I’m on Twitter. I’m hit shrink. Those are the best two places.

[01:02:46] Brett: [01:02:46] All right. Cool. Well, thanks for your time today.

[01:02:51] Steve: [01:02:51] Really great to, uh, to have this extended conversation with probably one of my favorite software artists. So, yep.

[01:03:00] [01:02:59] Brett: [01:02:59] Thanks for putting up with my, uh, my, my addiction obsession and the, uh, in the questions.

[01:03:05] Steve: [01:03:05] My, my pleasure. Some things you want to feed.

[01:03:09] Brett: [01:03:09] all right. And thanks everyone for listening. We’ll see you again in a week.

This week’s guest is Victor Agreda Jr, a polymath for hire. He joins Brett to talk startups, poker, comedy, and mental health.

Nebia: The Nebia by Moen Spa Shower uses 45% less water while providing a serious upgrade to your shower time. The first 100 people to use code systematic at Nebia.com will get 15% off all Nebia products. Just head to Nebia.com/systematic.

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Victor

[00:00:00] Brett: [00:00:00] This week’s guest is Victor Agreda Jr.

[00:00:02] A polymath for hire? How’s it going, Victor?

[00:00:06] Victor: [00:00:06] Uh, it’s going well,

[00:00:07] Brett: [00:00:07] What’s a, what’s a polymath.

[00:00:10]Victor: [00:00:10] you know? Uh, it’s it’s funny. So I’m, I’m actually in a startup right now. We’re we’re in stealth mode. Uh, I don’t know when this will air, but we might be out of stealth mode by then. But the thing is, is that one of our, uh, one of our teammates was putting together, you know, the requisite investor deck, and they put me as polymath.

[00:00:26] I actually had to look it up and it’s basically a nice term for Jack of all trades master of none.

[00:00:31] Brett: [00:00:31] Oh, that is, that’s a way class. Your way to say that. Huh? Yeah, I had that. I had the actual job title, Jack of all trades for awhile. Uh, when I worked at agile, because I couldn’t, because there wasn’t really good at any one thing.

[00:00:48]Victor: [00:00:48] Well, you know, it’s, it’s sort of like, uh, nowadays in it, there’s a bunch of different job titles that will earn you money even like more money, even though you’re kind of doing. A similar thing that maybe 10 years ago [00:01:00] would have just been it admin. Right. And so it’s sorta like that. If you say polymath versus Jack of all trades, I think you can, you can.

[00:01:07]Brett: [00:01:07] So last time you were on systematic. I was 34 years old.

[00:01:12]Victor: [00:01:12] Holy cow.

[00:01:13] Brett: [00:01:13] It has been eight years since, since we’ve talked on the show, we have talked in person even since then,

[00:01:19]Victor: [00:01:19] That’s right.

[00:01:21] Brett: [00:01:21] it’s been eight. I like, I vividly remember talking to you. About, uh, magic and comedy. And I did not realize how long it had been until I looked it up just before we said

[00:01:33]Victor: [00:01:33] Time flies, man.

[00:01:35] Brett: [00:01:35] so, uh, so what are you up to these days?

[00:01:37]Victor: [00:01:37] Well, uh, it’s funny because I’m picking up magic again. Uh, comedy is obviously kind of off the, the. The plan with the pandemic. What I do know people who are doing comedy shows, there are still open mikes, believe it or not in my area. Um, but I’m not going to any of that stuff. I’ve, I’ve picked up magic is kind of a side thing to just kind of play with.

[00:01:59] But that [00:02:00] routed me towards a couple of other things that are somewhat in my wheelhouse as well, which is, uh, puppets. And, um, I’ve, I’ve long been a fan of the Muppets last year. I read the well actually year before that I read the. Biography of Jim Henson and it was very inspirational. And so, uh, aside from my work as a writer and, and doing some PR and doing some other sort of side stuff, I’ve, I’ve really gotten into puppetry, um, and working on a little show with puppets that really talk about feelings and kind of the human condition.

[00:02:34] Brett: [00:02:34] Wow. Yeah. So where I was on, uh, I didn’t interview with a puppet. I believe the name was Maddie. And so that was for this show. You’re speaking of.

[00:02:47] Victor: [00:02:47] That’s correct. Yeah. Maddie is the station manager for QTF M and this is a group of puppets that have come from another dimension, uh, in this weird looking sort of tugboat, this interdimensional tugboat. Uh, I figure if [00:03:00] Dr who can ride around in a police box from the 1950s, uh, these guys can be in a, uh, a tug boat.

[00:03:06] And, uh, QTF em, is this sort of pirate radio station from another dimension. And they’ve come here. Uh, somewhat accidentally, but also kind of on accidentally on purpose, uh, to study human beings and to learn about human beings.

[00:03:19] Brett: [00:03:19] all right. And is this, is this live yet?

[00:03:23]Victor: [00:03:23] Not yet. No, I’m, I’m, uh, I’m going to be slowly working on this, um, in my spare time and I’ve, I’ve conducted, you were actually the second interview that I did. And I’m working on about, I think, six more interviews and then we’ll have, I think four episodes, uh, that we’ll have all kinds of different things.

[00:03:40] So I even have a little bit of magic that I practiced on Instagram live over the summer. When the pandemic really hit the lockdown hit, I was like, Oh, let’s try out some of this, you know, video magic stuff. And, and that was a fun experiment.

[00:03:54] Brett: [00:03:54] Complete. Absolutely. Coincidentally, my last guest was David Wayne, who was also doing [00:04:00] magic on Instagram.

[00:04:01]Victor: [00:04:01] Oh wild. What are the odds?

[00:04:04] Brett: [00:04:04] And, and talking to you right now is making me realize there’s a friend of mine owns LARC toys in, I think it’s Kellogg, Minnesota. But it’s one of the, uh, one of the premier toy stores in the country and, uh, as kind of a creative outlet, he designs all of these puppets.

[00:04:26] And, um, I, I guess they’re all, they’re all puppets. Even if you don’t put your hand in them, right. Like, So these big animatronics and like he has a blast, he has a, a huge troll puppet that controls a smaller puppet, like Maryann that style I should show you this stuff. You guys would get a kick out of each other’s work.

[00:04:48] I’m sure of it.

[00:04:50] Victor: [00:04:50] Yeah, that’s amazing. Well, I I’ve got some, I’ve actually got a raspberry PI and some servo motors and stuff. And so my son is, is really he’s on a robotics team and that’s [00:05:00] something that I think once the robotics season is over, we’re going to play with. Some possible robotic puppets are like assisted.

[00:05:06] There’s actually a guy named Mario the magician. Uh, well, Mario, the maker magician, I think is actually his title and you should check out his stuff because he kind of reminds me of, I can’t remember her name now, but the one who did like the crazy robots, you know, that would like fling cereal and that kind of thing.

[00:05:23] Um, it’s very kind of low tech stuff like that, but he uses them in a magical context and they’re wonderful. It’s, it’s a true merge of electronics and puppetry, but in this sort of cute DIY, you know, low tech, uh, uh, sort of almost like folk art way.

[00:05:38] Brett: [00:05:38] I will find that for the show note. Sounds fascinating. So one of the topics that you pitched for this conversation was poker. Where does that fall into your life? Right now?

[00:05:50] Victor: [00:05:50] So I can say even still in stealth mode that that’s, that’s something that the startup that we’re involved in. And I didn’t know a lot about poker. I mean, I [00:06:00] knew it, I played poker a little bit here and there, but I’ve never, I was never one of those, you know, you went with me to see yes. Uh, I think once or twice maybe, and I’m not a big poker player, I’m not a big gambler.

[00:06:11] And so poker was never a thing that I really got, uh, into, but, uh, a buddy of mine from high school, Called me up last year. And it was like, Hey, I want to, you know, I mean, it’s the pandemic, right? So people were not, especially during the full lockdown, people were not going to poker rooms. And even now, if you look online, uh, I just watched somebody last night, call a poker game and it’s kinda, it’s kinda sad.

[00:06:35] It looks like a moose lodge or something like that. You know, it’s just, it’s not a very. Enjoyable experience. And so we, uh, we got involved in sort of an online poker idea and that’s what we’re fleshing out right now. So I’m kind of getting this crash course in poker, and it’s really fascinating from a psychological standpoint, from the sort of game theory, standpoint and whatnot.

[00:06:57] There’s just a lot of facets to it. And it’s [00:07:00] also a uniquely American game.

[00:07:02]Brett: [00:07:02] sure. So it was funny when, when our check came, when this came up in our chat, I was in the middle of an episode of star Trek, the next generation. And, uh, it was, there was literally a poker game going on. One of those, one of those poker games that they used. It’s like object lessons for data. And it was, it was just funny, the coinciding of a conversation and television at the same time.

[00:07:30] And it made me curious, if poker in this conversation was going to hold a deeper human meaning than just the game itself.

[00:07:40]Victor: [00:07:40] Well, that’s, you know, that’s sort of, what’s interesting, right? Is that you can be mathematically adept. In fact, one of the people that I’ve, I’ve had the privilege of getting to know and work with is a guy named Barry Greenstein. And he, interestingly enough, he started in Silicon Valley. He was one of the early members of Symantec.

[00:07:57] And for people who remember that [00:08:00] company. And as a matter of fact, he wrote a word processing, one of the first word processing programs, and bill Gates tried to snag him from Symantec. He was like, I don’t, I don’t want to go. I don’t want to go to Microsoft. Um, and that’s sort of the stubborn character that Barry is, and I love him for it because he was known as the Robin hood of poker, because he’d already made his money in the Valley.

[00:08:22] And he didn’t need all this tournament money. He just loved to play poker and he’s very competitive. And so when he would win, he would donate most of the winnings to charity. Um, and you know, it’s really cool to work with somebody who’s both. Adept at poker, but is also like their ethics are beyond reproach.

[00:08:39] You know, they really believe in giving back to the community and this kind of thing. And, um, it’s been cool. It’s also been great just to hear his stories, both of poker and Silicon Valley. So, um, but the thing is, is like, he’s obviously mathematically very skilled, but it’s not just about math. There’s a whole human element, you know, that plays into it.

[00:08:59] So it’s like you can [00:09:00] calculate the odds, but people constantly defy those odds.

[00:09:03] Brett: [00:09:03] Yeah. Yeah. Which was kind of like, always like data could understand all of the technical, uh, technical aspects of cards. But bluffing was always like, just out of his grasp, the idea of like, of lying, the idea of trust in betrayal. Like it’s all, it’s all part of the game.

[00:09:26] Victor: [00:09:26] Exactly and, and not to tip our hand, I guess, punted it, but, but th that’s, that’s sort of the crappy thing about online poker right now is that it. Is very much a math game and people play like 20 tables at once and they have these head-up displays that can help calculate the odds. And remember, Oh, this guy is always bad on a certain, you know, before the river, this guy always does this thing or whatever, and it just sucks the fun out of it.

[00:09:54] So it’s a mathematical thing. I mean, you could, I think that you could pretty easily create a bot that would just go through and [00:10:00] play thousands of tables perhaps at once, you know, Yeah, and it, it’s just not, that’s not enjoyable. I mean, that’s not a game at that point. That’s, that’s like Bitcoin mining or something, you know, it’s, it’s just, you’re a node on a network and you’re just running the odds.

[00:10:14] Um, and so we’re really trying to bring the fun back and the human element back to poker online.

[00:10:20] Brett: [00:10:20] all right. I will be curious to see how you do that because I do see these, uh, these commercials for these big online tournaments and they, they do not seem to have any of the appeal. Of the, the real, like I’ve watched professional poker. I’m not a huge fan or a follower of professional poker, but there is a lot of, uh, kind of suspense and a strategy that I don’t see a well conveyed in online poker.

[00:10:50] So this’ll be interesting to see.

[00:10:52]Victor: [00:10:52] I can’t wait. I can’t wait to take the lid off this thing and show people cause it’s super fun.

[00:10:58] Brett: [00:10:58] nice. [00:11:00] Um, so they’re you on social media? Uh, have talked a little bit about depression and I you’re, you’re a very open person and I’ve been, uh, anxious to kind of broach this topic with you to just hear, uh, what what’s going on in your own life. How are you, uh, how does depression affect you?

[00:11:21] Victor: [00:11:21] Yeah, it’s interesting. And I don’t know if it is a function of age or maybe just awareness. But, know, I started going to therapy, I think about less than 10 years ago. Which is kind of remarkable, but, in my family, we never really talked about feelings. We, we were not, I wasn’t even allowed to express negative emotions really in the home.

[00:11:44]And it was just, so I think a lot of people have had that experience, you know, where, where we weren’t. Certainly generation X in particular, if you’re raised by baby boomer parents, then like there was this definitely in a lot of cases, I’ve looked at this, there’s this sort of [00:12:00] aversion to dealing with your feelings, and expressing the feelings in a certain way, in a positive, you know, or in a.

[00:12:06] I should say, uh, just an expressive way, you know, and, and, and talking and working through that stuff. And so, uh, if I did feel depressed before that, I just didn’t acknowledge it. Maybe I drank it away or smoked it away or something like that, or just repressed it with other, you know, uh, mechanisms. And so really confronting when you feel a certain way and understanding that, um, you know, this is, I don’t want to say it’s normal, but it’s, it’s natural.

[00:12:35] You know, it’s something that’s going to happen. Um, and in my case, um, in the past few months, I wound up in a very tumultuous relationship that, uh, was with someone who was alcohol dependent and, you know, you get into situations like that and you think like it’s going to work out, right. You know, you have these positive feelings of like workout and then when it doesn’t work out, [00:13:00] that can really send you down a certain road.

[00:13:02] And, um, We had not communicated in a long time. And then I posted something on Valentine’s day and she responded. And I think that that was a big trigger for me, uh, because I kind of worked through a lot of the emotions and it’s little stuff like that. Maybe not little, but, you know, it’s, it’s things like that that you, uh, you don’t even think about until they happen.

[00:13:25] And when they do, it’s like everything around your world has to kind of slow down so that you can take care of you. Um, but it’s difficult. You know, we live in a very fast paced 24, seven world. So it’s really hard for you to, to justify sometimes taking time for yourself to just exist right. In that moment of sadness.

[00:13:46] Brett: [00:13:46] so are, are, do you have, uh, what would be considered like clinical depression or do you just have highs and lows that you’re not are that you’ve had to learn new skills to deal with?

[00:13:57]Victor: [00:13:57] Yeah, I think, uh, I don’t know. [00:14:00] I have not been, uh, fully diagnosed, uh, with that. And I will say to my credit that I don’t, um, I probably haven’t engaged with healthcare. Professionals as much as I should, you know, to, to get proper diagnoses. Cause I think everything I’m looking at nowadays tells me I have ADHD as well.

[00:14:19] And the stuff that I’m learning about that through Tik TOK videos of all things, um, which I, I will say, I mean, like that’s been remarkable. My, my daughter who’s now 19 has shown me a lot of this stuff and it’s like, Holy moly, there’s so much good information. That’s actually being shared on these things.

[00:14:36] Um, but yeah. You know, it’s, it’s, it’s highs and lows and I’ve been very fortunate to have more highs than lows. Uh, but it is also one of those things where it’s like, you have to learn coping skills because the world doesn’t stop, you know, when, when you need it to,

[00:14:52] Brett: [00:14:52] Yeah, no kidding.

[00:14:54]Victor: [00:14:54] okay. Yeah. As freelancers we know, especially, you know, it’s like, you can’t just be like, Oh, I’m sorry, can [00:15:00] we move this deadline a week?

[00:15:01] Brett: [00:15:01] yeah. I, so I’ve had to engineer my, my own kind of work life around the fact that, uh, with bipolar, I, I, I have to take. Like a week off now, and then, uh, sometimes longer because I just become incapable of, of functioning for, you know, one to two weeks at a time. And, uh, and the world I don’t, because of that, I don’t function well in, uh, even, even, uh, like remote work environment that doesn’t, that isn’t willing to accommodate that kind of, work schedule and that’s, I mean, that’s a big part of why I independently published software and work towards passive incomes that can withstand bad weeks.

[00:15:55] Victor: [00:15:55] yeah. Yeah. Time off. Absolutely.

[00:15:57] Brett: [00:15:57] Yeah. Um, I would [00:16:00] say based on knowing you, uh, for years, that I’ve always wondered if you were ADHD.

[00:16:08]Victor: [00:16:08] Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I, there, there, there is no question in my mind. Uh, I, I just really need to get to my doctor, which I haven’t seen in a while, partly because of the pandemic, you know, and all that. It was just a lot of questions about, uh, I actually had just changed doctors. Um, I think about a year before the pandemic kit.

[00:16:28] And so, you know, I’d done my. Physical and all that. And I was like, okay, cool. Everything’s great. And then, so I didn’t really, no, if they were following protocols, you assume, right. Because they’re healthcare professionals, but let me just tell you where I live. That’s a false assumption. Um, there, there are plenty of healthcare professionals where I live, who are very brazen.

[00:16:46] We have a whole group that says, yeah, these guys are following protocols, these aren’t, and I’m appalled by how many just recently have basically fallen off the wagon and said, we give up. Um, and yeah. And so, um, you know, I was [00:17:00] concerned about that and you don’t know, I mean, telemedicine was still fairly new when the pandemic hit, so it’s like, you don’t know if they’re even set up to do, you know, some doctors are technology phobic, and, um, so it’s been one of those things where I’ve just not gotten a diagnosis.

[00:17:15] And I will say that I am, uh, sketchy about getting on new medications and, um, You know, it’s one of those things where it can be a little scary to say, well, I’m going to, I’m going to have to take a pill, you know, to feel normal. Right.

[00:17:30]Brett: [00:17:30] Yes. I understand that fear very well. Um, in my own life, uh, I never felt like myself until I was treated for bipolar first and then really discovered. What it felt like to feel like everyone else when I got treated for ADHD, um, I began to understand, Oh, this is how normal people do what they do. All these things that had baffled me my [00:18:00] whole life.

[00:18:00] How can people, how can people do the things they do, uh, when it’s so hard for me. So I, yeah, getting diagnosed. It’s a big step.

[00:18:12]Victor: [00:18:12] It’s it is an, it’s a, it’s a journey that I think I’ve just started, you know, just learning some of the coping techniques that people have said on, uh, uh, Twitter. Tick-tock whatever. I just discovered, uh, an author, uh, this past week, as a matter of fact, Who I’m looking into and she’s got some great books and, you know, it’s, I’m just trying to educate myself and then we’ll go for a medical diagnosis this year.

[00:18:36] And, you know, if, if medication is called for that’s, what I’ll do and I’ll see how it goes. But I’ve always been impressed by like, people like my dad, I will say who, I don’t think have ADHD and you know, he’s so studious. Like I remember I was a little child while he was getting his PhD and. You know, just the, his ability to sit there and basically memorize a chapter.

[00:18:58] And he’s not got a great [00:19:00] memory, but he would just slog away at it. And you know, for me that was like some kind of alternate reality or something like I can hardly remember what happened six months ago. You know, I joke that my brain is like Swiss cheese and I don’t have a lot of continuity. And I thought that that was some kind of weird thing.

[00:19:18] I mean, maybe it is weird and that’s statistically, right. But it’s, it’s apparently a thing, you know, and some people don’t have that continuity of memory. Uh, yeah, it’s weird.

[00:19:30] Brett: [00:19:30] It was mind blowing to me as I kind of, as I learned more about ADHD after my own diagnosis, uh, and talking to my father, finding out that it he’ll, he’ll probably never get tested, but by all measures that I know of, he has ADHD and he grew up and became a mechanical engineer. Uh, despite. So what w uh, uh, pretty serious learning disability.

[00:19:57] Like, I always knew him as [00:20:00] someone really good at math and really good at detail and really good at remembering things, but like turns out that takes a lot of effort for him. Like, those are very, uh, intentional learned behaviors that he had to struggle through. And that was it’s fascinating. Like, it’s no wonder that I wasn’t diagnosed as a kid, because to him that was just normal difficulty.

[00:20:21]Victor: [00:20:21] Yeah, that makes sense. I think mine has gotten worse with age and I mean, I don’t know, maybe that’s years of drug use, maybe that’s just, you know, normal decay or something like that.

[00:20:30] Or, or maybe it’s just me being more aware. Uh, but yeah, it’s, it, it is something that, um, you know, people try to tell you, it’s like, Oh, maybe it’s this. Maybe it’s that. And it’s like, they don’t, but they don’t know you. So you, you have to figure it out on your own, especially if you’re, you know, you’re not talking to a doctor about it.

[00:20:50] Brett: [00:20:50] Yeah. So one of the other things you mentioned on social media that I, I think that makes it public knowledge, but you’ve, uh, you’ve gone, uh, since [00:21:00] new years without drinking alcohol. Is that right? what, what went into that decision?

[00:21:06] Victor: [00:21:06] Well, you know, I was, I was never much, uh, I mean, I, I enjoyed a drink. I remember you and I had some drinks at a club DNA and, uh, San

[00:21:17] Brett: [00:21:17] much more than you, but yeah.

[00:21:19]Victor: [00:21:19] but that was the thing, right? Like I, and I remember, uh, getting drunk. You’ll appreciate this Brad Hill. Um, who is one of the most patient human beings? I think I’ve ever met.

[00:21:29] Um, the first year I went to South by Southwest with AOL, Brad was there and I think a couple other people from download squad and, um, I remember getting really drunk. The first night we were there and feeling so embarrassed the next day that, you know, I was like, this is a work trip. What the hell are you doing, man?

[00:21:49] But, you know, I was in an awful marriage and I never got to go out. So that was like me finally getting to enjoy life. Right. And, um, [00:22:00] away from the screaming kids. Now, my kids are great, but. But the thing is, is that I, it just doesn’t, it just didn’t serve me anymore. Um, and with, with bars, you know, sketchy right now and whatnot, and honestly that relationship that I was talking about, uh, that ended on new year’s because she drank too much and she attacked me and I was like, If this is the road that I’m going to go down, it’s not going to end well, you know?

[00:22:29] And so I was just like, you know, for me, it’s an easy decision to just not drink anymore because I don’t like to get drunk. And if I’m going to drink something, that’s going to put pounds on my gut. It’s going to be sweet and it’s going to be bubbly. And you know, it’s going to be bad for me in other ways, I don’t need add the alcohol to it.

[00:22:49] Yeah.

[00:22:49] Brett: [00:22:49] Yeah. Oh, yeah, I I’ve lost count of how long it’s been since I had a drink, but, uh, I did go sober again sometime in the last couple of years. [00:23:00] Um, it hasn’t been, it hasn’t been difficult for me. Uh, I do have, I absolutely am an alcoholic and a drug addict and all kinds of addictive things. Um, But so it’s a, like you, you’ve never struck me as someone chemically dependent in any way.

[00:23:18] So I was just curious, uh, what your, your personal reasoning was. Mine is definitely more of a, if I don’t do this, I’ll probably die kind of thing. Yeah.

[00:23:30] Victor: [00:23:30] Yeah, no, I, I never, uh, I don’t think I’ve ever been alcohol dependent. Um, I was a binge drinker in high school. Uh, and that was weird because again, I lived in a very repressive household. So when I would go out to a party, I would just grab every, I would just smash cans over and over, you know, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

[00:23:51] Like that. Right. Yeah. And a little bit into freshman year in college. And then I discovered pot. I didn’t discover it, but I, I decided to wait until I was 18 to [00:24:00] start smoking pot. Uh, yeah, because I was trying to be responsible. Um, And, you know, my brain was still developing and I was, I think, which the alcohol was really great for my brain, of course, in hindsight, uh, nevermind that whippets and all that kind of crap, but, uh, but yeah, so I didn’t start smoking pot till I was 18.

[00:24:17] Um, and I would say that funnily enough, even though I write about cannabis, it’s one of my freelance gigs is I write, uh, some marketing copy for a cannabis company and, uh, or a cannabis marketing company, I should say. Um, I, uh, I would say that’s the closest thing I have actually to a chemical dependency is, is weed.

[00:24:35] I can put, I can stop for weeks on end, but there’s something about, and it’s not just the, like getting high, what it is for me. It’s almost like the tea ceremony effect, right. Where there’s like a, a, a physicality to grinding it and packing it or rolling it or whatever. And it’s like, I like that sort of a natural aspect to it.

[00:24:58] Um, that’s, that’s sort of, you know, [00:25:00] pattern right. Uh, is very soothing to me, but that’s also where I discovered building models. Again, it’s like, there’s something to that working with my hands. That’s just very calming and maybe that’s tied to the.

[00:25:11]Brett: [00:25:11] uh, yeah, it very well could be, uh, uh, sensory, any, anything that, uh, self-soothing and sensory stuff can be, but that’s also true, pretty much all kinds of, uh, neuro atypical behaviors. Yeah, let’s just, let’s just call you, uh, since no one hears the doctor. We’ll we’ll just call you neuro atypical.

[00:25:33] Victor: [00:25:33] There we go. Yeah. Yeah. Actually, and you know, it’s interesting. My daughter lived with me for a little bit last year and she introduced me to a show called atypical, which is actually about a

[00:25:41] Brett: [00:25:41] so good. Yes.

[00:25:44] Victor: [00:25:44] in that. Great. I love that show and it’s just wonderfully written, wonderfully acted. Uh, and so, yeah, it’s about a young man who has autism and I think they do such a fabulous job of, of sort of showing you his world, you know?

[00:25:56] Um, so yeah, it was that, that was really cool. And she, and I really [00:26:00] bonded over that. I think.

[00:26:01] Brett: [00:26:01] I do think it’s renewed for another season, but I haven’t heard anything about it since the last season.

[00:26:06] Victor: [00:26:06] The production has been delayed. Uh, but they are going to wrap up a final season. They announced last year. So this, this will be the ultimate, you know, season for it. And they’ll kind of, cause you know, I think he was going off to college, you know, he, he had spent a year in college and so I think they’re going to show kind of.

[00:26:21] How that’s progressing and whatnot, but yeah, I love that show. And funnily enough, I was watching a little bit of Chappelle show last night and had completely forgotten that Michael Rappaport was on that too.

[00:26:31]Brett: [00:26:31] Yeah. I forgot that as well. Oh, yeah. I’ve been listening to, uh, Keegan Michael keys, a history of sketch comedy on audible. Who’s not a sponsor of this particular episode, but full disclosure. Um, but no, it’s pretty good. I think it’s a 10 episode series that he does on, uh, kind of the very beginnings of, of sketch comedy in, uh, we’ll call it ancient history [00:27:00] up through.

[00:27:01] Up through the state and modern, like the, the birth of more modern streaming era sketch and yeah, no, it’s good. You should check it

[00:27:09] Victor: [00:27:09] Oh man. Yeah. I’m going to have to check that out because I mean, that’s what I’m doing really with the puppets is like it’s all little bitty sketches and I’ve been watching the Muppet show. It just came out on, on streaming. Uh, and, and that too, you know, it’s little sketches with puppets. And so I, luckily I can call that research.

[00:27:26] Brett: [00:27:26] Speaking of sponsors.

[00:27:28]

[00:27:28] So that brings us run to the top three picks. Are you, uh, are you, did you do your homework?

[00:27:35]Victor: [00:27:35] I did do my homework. Hold on. Let me find my notes here.

[00:27:39] Brett: [00:27:39] Oh, he has notes.

[00:27:40]Victor: [00:27:40] Well, okay. Hold on. Where did you message me about that? Was that in an email?

[00:27:46] Brett: [00:27:46] believe we have most of our conversations on Facebook messenger

[00:27:50] Victor: [00:27:50] Ah, yes. Okay.

[00:27:51]Brett: [00:27:51] and occasionally on Twitter, DMS.

[00:27:54]Victor: [00:27:54] that’s right. Yeah.

[00:27:56] Brett: [00:27:56] I also have your cell number who knows.

[00:28:00] [00:28:00] Victor: [00:28:00] Well, that’s the thing, you know, I have people who have like 20, I think Mike Rose, I have like 30 emails or 30, uh, uh, uh, phone numbers for him or something. It’s so crazy. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:28:12]Brett: [00:28:12] All right. Well, uh, this is going to be all you, we’re going to discuss your three picks in whatever order you want to present them. So, uh, what’s your first pick.

[00:28:24] Victor: [00:28:24] Okay, wait, hold on. I got it. I just realized I have these in Google docs and I’ll bring it up here. She’s the lease.

[00:28:32] Brett: [00:28:32] so Google docs is the first pick

[00:28:35]Victor: [00:28:35] Yeah. Um, well, okay. Uh, well, no, that’s not it either. Okay. Hold on. Here we go. Okay. Yeah, I can do this, uh, my top three. All right. Number one, I will say. And, and I think you’re going to appreciate this because, uh, you could call it a toy. Um, it was definitely something I did not necessarily [00:29:00] need, but I really, really wanted to have.

[00:29:03] The first one of these and because it’s been a long time since I bought the first-generation of anything from Apple.

[00:29:11] Brett: [00:29:11] okay.

[00:29:12] Victor: [00:29:12] And so I had to get me a Mac book, air, and the M one Mac book air,

[00:29:18] Brett: [00:29:18] Nice.

[00:29:19] Victor: [00:29:19] and dude, it’s awesome. I, I absolutely love it. Uh, big servers still have some problems, but every macro West has some problems.

[00:29:27] What are you going to do? And God knows I’m going to find the problems, but, uh, but the Mon Mac man, the touch ID, the like the, the, just the heft of it, like you can tell there’s a crap ton of battery in there. Uh, the battery life is ridiculous. The speed is, I mean, I put, I haven’t played with final cut pro on there yet, but I’m going to later today I did put logic pro on there.

[00:29:50] And it just, I mean, man, it’s just, it’s like butter as Steve would say, you know, it really is wonderful.

[00:29:56] Brett: [00:29:56] I, I did have the, I had the first gen of [00:30:00] the Mac book air. And to this day I consider it the best computer I have I’ve ever had for its time. Like I couldn’t run it today, but still as far as form factor and speed and capability, it, it was in its day. Hands down my favorite machine ever. And, uh, I am getting a $500 credit from Apple to, uh, to spend towards my next M one max.

[00:30:26] So I will take this, uh, I will take this under advisement. I was leaning towards the mini. Partly because a $500 gift certificate certificate would almost cover it. Um, and I love that they made like a $600 machine to go out with these first M ones, but what’s, what’s the, uh, what’s the starting price for the air.

[00:30:47]Victor: [00:30:47] I got in the very, very cheapest one I could get. Uh, but I also bought a little adapter, um, from Apple. So it was like a little over a thousand bucks, uh, you know, and some change, um, which you know, is fair that this computer is broken. Gonna [00:31:00] last me a long, long time. Now it’s two 56 onboard, uh, storage. But, you know, with, with music being mostly streaming now and all that kind of thing, I’m like, eh, no big deal, you know?

[00:31:12] Brett: [00:31:12] I highly recommend these, uh, these one terabyte, SSD externals, like the USBC ones. They’re so fast. Like

[00:31:21] Victor: [00:31:21] Okay. So yeah, I got a little sand disc and I’m holding it in my hand right now. And it’s a 500 gigs, but I used it. I’m using it mainly as a time machine backup, but it’s got enough room, you know, for other stuff. And dude, this thing is it’s. It’s the size of a, uh, Oh gosh, what was that little tiny, uh, phone?

[00:31:40] The pebble it’s like the size of a pebble. This thing is amazing. I cannot believe it’s so small and cute. And it’s like, you can put it on your key chain.

[00:31:48]Brett: [00:31:48] Yeah. Uh, like it, uh, I remember the days of FireWire externals, where if you wanted, if you wanted 500 gigabytes and they were so slow compared to [00:32:00] these SSDs, but all right, what’s your second pick.

[00:32:04]Victor: [00:32:04] So my second pick would be a book that, um, uh, I’m actually listening to right now that is called magic is dad. Um, and I’m looking up the author right now. It is, uh, is going to show me. It’s not going to show me, is it? Yeah. Ian Frisch, Ian Frisch, uh, magic is dead. And, um, it’s really interesting. It was a little bit controversial in the magic group that I I’m in.

[00:32:32] Um, that includes like amateur magicians, all the way up to full-time professional magicians that have been doing stuff for like years and are sort of legends in the field. Um, and it was written by a guy who’s a journalist who started in bed, you know, he was just going to write a story and he had. I think had a little bit of a experience.

[00:32:51] Now, he actually played poker with his mom. His dad died when he was very, uh, fairly young. And so he and his mom, uh, just the two of them grew up and [00:33:00] she loved to play poker. And so he had a little bit of experience with cards, but he got into the sort of secret society, uh, of, of underground young magicians.

[00:33:11] And these are the folks who were very inspired by like Penn and teller and. You know, pushed aside all of the top hat and tails and all the sort of, you know, old school, uh, things about magic. And, uh, it’s, it’s really good. It’s, it’s a very intriguing view of somebody who’s an outsider coming into, uh, uh, a group of people who are really trying to innovate in a field that is very anti innovation in some ways.

[00:33:36] And yet in other ways, magicians have been traditionally really good about. Embracing new technology and that stopped happening about 30, 40 years ago. And so they’re trying to kind of bring that back. So it’s, it’s a really engaging book, I think

[00:33:49] Brett: [00:33:49] Nice. All right. Non-fiction right.

[00:33:51]Victor: [00:33:51] non-fiction yeah.

[00:33:53] Brett: [00:33:53] Yeah. Cool. I’ll check it out. So,

[00:33:57] Victor: [00:33:57] All right. So the third thing,

[00:33:58] Brett: [00:33:58] yes.

[00:33:59] Victor: [00:33:59] so [00:34:00] the third thing, uh, is something I just started, uh, this week and it is ukulele.

[00:34:07] Brett: [00:34:07] Oh my, that, for some reason that adds up for me.

[00:34:11]Victor: [00:34:11] Well again, the funny thing I’ve been watching these Muppets show episodes, and there’s a, there’s an episode I just watched where, uh, Arlo Guthrie is playing a ukulele. That is, that is made to look like a Flamingo. And it was Gonzo’s ukulele and he’s like, Hey, can you play this sport? You know? And they do a little number together and whatnot.

[00:34:33] And so, but there’s a great masterclass, uh, with a guy who’s teaching ukulele. And it’s just like, you know, 10 lessons. I mean, not that ukuleles like that difficult to pick up and learn, which is what I like about it. Uh, but I really needed something musical in my life. And, um, and this kind of scratches that itch, plus I can use it with puppets.

[00:34:54] I can use it with magic. I can use it with comedy. Um, I mean, I know that there’s a magician who does a trick with a [00:35:00] ukulele. It’s like his opening trick. That’s really cool. Um, and of course, you know, like I said, Gonzo plays ukulele. Why not me? So yeah. Yeah. Ukulele.

[00:35:08] Brett: [00:35:08] Are you a fan of Amanda Palmer?

[00:35:11]Victor: [00:35:11] Oh yeah, yeah. A long time fan of Amanda Palmer. My ex-wife actually, when she came to Knoxville back in like 2005, 2006, made her a cake, this cool cake with like her signature. I. You know, makeup stuff like on it. And, uh, and so, and she got a tour. She didn’t get to meet her, but she got the cake to her. And so there’s this great photo of Amanda, like biting into the cake, you know, just like taking a big chunk of it with her mouth.

[00:35:37] And it’s pretty cool. Yeah,

[00:35:38] Brett: [00:35:38] There are very few artists that are as good at, uh, connecting with their fans as Amanda Palmer.

[00:35:45]Victor: [00:35:45] absolutely. Yeah,

[00:35:47] Brett: [00:35:47] Well, she’s really good with ukulele, which is why I mentioned her. Um,

[00:35:52] Victor: [00:35:52] I grew up with tiny Tim also, by the way. So it’s like, I, I remember that being very popular when I was little bitty and my [00:36:00] parents used to sing that stuff. I think, uh, when I was a little kid that tiptoe through the tulips and silliness like that,

[00:36:05] Brett: [00:36:05] I don’t know, tiny Tim to me is just a character from a Christmas. Carol. What is, uh, what is tiny, Tim? Okay.

[00:36:12]Victor: [00:36:12] there’s definitely a sort of generational divide there. I think that tiny Tim, uh, was like, Well, there was, Oh, I’m sorry. There was a tiny Tim ukulele playing singer of the 1920s. Um, and then there was a, uh, Herbert calorie. Yeah, tiny Tim, 1932 to 1996. Uh, This is very confusing that I am DB, uh, information here.

[00:36:40] But if you look up tiny, Tim he’s like this long haired guy with curly hair, he kind of looks like weird Al’s brother. Uh, a little bit. Yeah, it looks like a cross between like weird Al and Howard stern or something. But, um, he, he was this just very quirky 1960s. Um, You know, performer who kind of made his Mark by playing [00:37:00] the ukulele.

[00:37:00] He was one of the, I think, first people to really popularize it, uh, after the guy from the 1920s, I suppose.

[00:37:06] Brett: [00:37:06] all right. All right. Cool. Well, Victor, thanks for being here today.

[00:37:11]Victor: [00:37:11] Of course, Brett. Hey, thanks. Uh, thanks for having me on here. And, um, I don’t know if, uh, we discussed anything that’s relevant to your listeners, but I’m hoping they got something

[00:37:20] Brett: [00:37:20] Oh, totally, totally. Um, where can people find you?

[00:37:25]Victor: [00:37:25] They can find [email protected]. Um, and that’s, that’s probably the best place to just find all my managers. You can look me up on, uh, Twitter at super pixels and on Instagram at super pixel five,

[00:37:39]Brett: [00:37:39] Oh, how many were there? Four other super pixels?

[00:37:43]Victor: [00:37:43] It was actually super pixels on Instagram. And when my daughter was, I think, 11 or something, she had an Instagram account. Somebody ratted her out because they had the rule. You had to be 13 and they deactivated her account, which was useful for me because as a divorced [00:38:00] dad, I was able to see her stuff, et cetera, et cetera.

[00:38:01] I got mad and in a fit, I closed my account down. But if people know, once you. D like once you deactivate a Instagram account, you can’t get that username back.

[00:38:12]Brett: [00:38:12] Yeah.

[00:38:14] Victor: [00:38:14] So super pixels is just gone forever, I guess.

[00:38:16] Brett: [00:38:16] So, so it’s soup. It’s, it’s a five instead of it. Nass is that?

[00:38:20] Victor: [00:38:20] Hey exactly. Lead speak.

[00:38:23] Brett: [00:38:23] Gotcha. Leete. All right. Well, I, uh, that it’s, it’s a slightly shorter episode than usual. I guess we didn’t spend as much time on top three picks as I expected, but that’s okay.

[00:38:36]Victor: [00:38:36] Well, I mean, I, I would play ukulele for your audience, but I think it right right now I can only play one chord. So it was very boring.

[00:38:44] Brett: [00:38:44] Cord and you’re on AirPods, which don’t pick up a

[00:38:48] Victor: [00:38:48] Oh,

[00:38:48] Brett: [00:38:48] well, as well as one might think.

[00:38:50]Victor: [00:38:50] that’s true.

[00:38:52] Brett: [00:38:52] All right. Well, I hope to catch up with you again in less than eight years.

[00:38:57] Victor: [00:38:57] Definitely. Thanks, Brett.

[00:38:59][00:39:00] Brett: [00:38:59] All right.

This week’s guest is David Wain, a writer, director, actor, comedian, talented musician and amateur magician, among other things. He and Brett talk about getting a show to Netflix, quarantine content production, and some great Top 3 Picks.

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David

[00:00:00] Brett:This week’s guest is David Wayne. He’s a writer, director, actor, comedian, talented musician, and aspiring magician among other things. That’s great. We’ll have you back, David,

David:always great to be back, Brett, how are you

Brett:is it like your fourth time?

David:could be, you know, I was just, I was just talking to a friend of mine that said, because people do ask me a lot to be on random podcasts and I. Basically usually say no, but when it’s somebody sort of nerdy like you I’m like yeah, of course.

Brett:Wow. Thank you. Thank you. That is a that’s an honor. Why don’t you have a podcast?

David:I haven’t gotten around to it. I will. I’m sure

Brett:feel, I feel like if there’s one thing the world needs right now, it’s another white guy doing a podcast.

David:exactly. That’s sort of the problem.

Brett:So.

David:Sort of the problem with anything I want to do these days, but

Brett:I have to think, though, if you were going to do a podcast, you would [00:01:00] do something I’m going to say it would be a clever heartwarming and slightly uncomfortable,

David:Could be. I mean, although I’ve thought about doing podcasts about. Uh, topics that are completely outside of what people think of me as you know, like using a podcast as a, as an Avenue to talk about something totally different,

Brett:but

David:you know, or do it, or do a podcast just about like Rubik’s cubing or something.

Brett:Of actual interest you or just so out there, it throws everyone off.

David:no of interest to me, but just on different slice. But then again, maybe I’m not as widely. Uh, I don’t have as much breadth as I think I do. And so it would be pointless.

Brett:All right. Well, so last time we talked, uh, what had American summer first day of camp was I think just coming out,

David:Oh, my goodness. That must been like four years ago.

Brett:this was 2015.

David:Okay. Six years ago.

Brett:Um, so w since then you’ve had your IMD peep, [00:02:00] your IMDV page, uh, lists a lot of things. I know that, uh, you did a Netflix, Netflix, what do you want to call it? A pandemic comedy thriller

David:Well, well, I mean, after that, I actually did two other things on Netflix before that made a movie, which was a biopic about, um, Doug Kenney, the founder of national Lampoon. And the maker of animal house. And then I did the wet, hot American summer 10 years later. Mini-series um, and then not too long after that, we did this show that you’re talking about called medical police, which is sort of a spinoff of our other show from adult swim children’s hospital, but is, uh, Action comedy globe trotting, mission, impossible James Bond kind of show that we made for very little money about a worldwide pandemic and two doctors who are recruited to become CIA type agents to help figure out the conspiracy.

And they have to go all over the world with guns and, and, uh, and their medical smarts and it’s [00:03:00] called medical place. But it’s very silly and funny.

Brett:and you’re released, you released it just under the wire to not be current events.

David:Correct? Yes. It was about a worldwide pandemic and we, you know, it aired on Netflix in January of 2020. Um, so timing was not great on any level,

Brett:so I know that wa uh, March, April, uh, the number one movie on Netflix was contagion

David:right?

Brett:and it showed up at like top movies on iTunes. All of these pandemic movies did, did, uh, did the. Uh,

David:Medical police. I don’t think, I don’t think we received that sort of bump. I think people didn’t, weren’t aware that, uh, of the topic of our show. I mean, it really isn’t. Um, as much, it’s not really an exploration of what a pandemic is, like as much as it is just a dumb, funny comedy. Um, and it’s a very funny, very dumb comedy and I highly recommend everyone check it out

Brett:so [00:04:00] well, okay. What is your, what’s your kind of pitch?

David:to watch the show. Um,

Brett:I, I get what it’s about. I get the, I get the

David:I would say, well, I would give you two, I’ll give you two pitches. One is if you’re at Austin, no you with any of my previous work, whether it’s wet, hot American summer or role models or children’s hospital or the state or anything like that, then you will definitely, definitely love this show.

It’s a great. Addition to the Canon of very, of a very specific comedic sensibility that, uh, you will like if you liked any of those things. I just mentioned on the other hand, if you’re not familiar and also if you ever saw the show children’s hospital, this is a direct spin-off of that with the same characters.

Um, if you’re not familiar with any of that, I still recommended on this regard, which is to say, um, it’s a uniquely funny, very fast paced. Fun to watch 10 episode action comedy series with a one storyline that takes [00:05:00] you in a suspenseful way from beginning to end, um, where you’re kind of involved in the storyline as well as being, you know, entertained with comedy from beginning to end and, um, is also got an incredible all-star cast, including Henry Winkler.

And, um, I mean, there’s just a.

Brett:Chris pine was in her, right?

David:Chris pine is the wet hot

Brett:hot American summer. That’s right.

David:Um, but it’s, it’s a, it’s an incredible ensemble cast and it’s a Jason Schwartzman. Isn’t it. And it’s, it’s um, it’s fun for anybody who likes anything funny.

Brett:yeah, I binged it right after it came out and I thought. Oh, he doesn’t need to hear from some random podcasts or who, who enjoyed the show, but I did enjoy the show

David:I’m glad. I’m glad you checked it out. I’m glad you enjoyed it. It got great reviews. It did not do great in terms of people watching it, a lot of them, but you know, whatever.

Brett:Yeah. So how, what goes into, uh, okay, [00:06:00] so it wasn’t a smash hit. It didn’t make anyone millions of dollars,

David:Well, of course, on Netflix, they, you never really find out any specific numbers. Anyway. That you just sort of goes on and then that’s the end of it, even if it does well. Um, but they probably would’ve ordered another, another series if they loved it, if it did really well, which it did.

Brett:So how do you get a show from, from your laptop ideas sketches to a Netflix show? Like what’s the process there?

David:well, I’m sure for every show, it’s a very different answer. Um, I could certainly answer in the case of this one, we had, there’s four of us that created this show together. Um, and we created it as an idea of how can we. We had ended children’s hospital in 2013 and we wanted to find, figure out a way to, we missed it and we missed the cast and we missed the, the whole group of, of creative people that worked together on it.

[00:07:00] And we also missed the world that we had created, but we also felt like the show we had done for seven seasons on adult swim, which was a 15 minute. Hospital drama, hospital comedy in the form of a drama, um, had done it was done. And what could we do that was new and different, but kept what we loved. And so we just brainstormed for awhile, um, sitting in the backyard and ultimately landed on this idea of doing what I described this bigger palette action, half hour long comedy that has a.

Uh, a much wider scope to it. Um, and, and, and the children’s hospital as a joke kept mentioning, Oh, by the way, this is all takes place in Brazil. And then we decided in the medical police to open that up in a real way and actually make it feel like it really was in Brazil at least to start. And then it goes all over the world during the series.

Anyway. So to answer your question, [00:08:00] we brainstormed it and then we pitched it to the. Production company, which was Warner brothers that we had done children’s hospital with. They liked it. And then we wrote a script. I’m trying to remember now that was, um, that was passed on by another network. I can’t remember who he wrote it for.

Um, and then w w even though. Uh, that happened after that, we were able to make a deal. Warner brothers studio was able to make a deal with Netflix to, to make the show for, for a certain price. And so it doesn’t sound very glamorous or fun of a story, but that’s how, that’s how that came to be in terms of going from idea to Greenlight.

And it was everything I just said was like three years going, like it was not [00:09:00] a quick process by any stretch.

Brett:So once you, once Netflix picked it up, then you go straight into production. Like you, you are the producer on that show, right?

David:I’m the producer. I mean, basically the four of us that I mentioned, we were all producers and myself and Chris Johnson, Johnson and Rob Corddry. And, uh, we each did different. You know, we had different sort of specialties. John stern was also more than nuts and bolts production company that, that got the thing done in a certain way.

Um, but yeah, essentially once we got a green light, the four of us started to hire people, uh, look at, start figuring out casting and then start writing. We had, we had written the pilot, which was the first of the 10 episodes. And now we had to write the rest of the 10 episode long story, which we really didn’t have any clue of when we wrote the pilot really.

Um, and so we really had to, we got, uh, writers together in a room and put up a bunch of index cards and a ton of [00:10:00] Google docs and just started piece by piece, trying to, um, assemble what is essentially a five-hour long movie. Um, and then at the same time, trying to figure out how we’re going to shoot it because we didn’t have, we had the budget of essentially a public access show to shoot a big wide scale action story.

And so called on a lot of my experience and all of our experience too. Um, Find all the tricks in the book too, to make one location, look like 20 and to make our backyard look like Africa and on and on and on. And we ended up figuring out a way to shoot a quarter of it in, uh, Croatia, uh, for very little.

And that was an amazing experience. We were there for 10 days of shooting, um, and it gave the whole show a ton of production value to, to shoot there. And it was really fun.

Brett:so how many people, uh, [00:11:00] I guess how many writers were there?

David:well, it was really the four of us that did a lot of the writing. And then we had, um, this room of, I guess I think it was probably four other writers that were with us for a limited time. Um, and so they helped us brainstorm and they wrote some drafts and then we came and we did a lot of, we did the four of us did the work of figuring out everything before and after the writer’s room.

Um,

Brett:it were a huge budget show, how many writers would there be? Just for comparison.

David:Oh, I think on a show like this, probably at least 10, if not more and much more importantly, all of whom would be on for much longer. Um, and so we basically, yeah, we, we got everything we could out of these talented people we hired, but they were really only there for a relatively short time.

Brett:so did everyone get paid? Like, was this a good experience, whether it was a huge smash hit for downloads or not? What did everyone come out?

David:Well, I mean, everyone got [00:12:00] paid a salary to do the work. It was, nobody got paid. What you would think of is, I mean, you know, working in television is very, there’s great variance and it’s all relative. Uh, you certainly get paid better than doing a lot of real quote normal jobs. Um, uh, But compared to pretty much any other TV show, anything like this, we probably were right on the bottom scale of what everybody got paid, but it’s okay.

I mean, certainly no complaints from me or anybody on that. And a lot of people though, that we had worked with on other things like children’s hospital and other shows couldn’t do this because the pay was too low and we understood, you know, that’s just, this is just, this was one of those crazy shows where we’re like, We’re trying to shove a square peg of this show into this budget, which is not the best way to work.

Normally I’m usually try to get the budget. You need to properly make the show. Um, but [00:13:00] often it’s the opposite. They’re like, here’s the number, make it work. And so that’s what we did. And a lot of peoples were like, you know what? This just doesn’t work for me, money wise. And we’re like, we get it and then find somebody else.

But, um, at the end of the day, everyone who worked on it did it. Largely, you know, at least in part, because they just enjoyed this experience and this group of people. And, um, so it was, it was a joy.

Brett:can you give me one example of a trick that you dug deep and pulled out to, uh, uh, to, to make something look bigger budget than it was?

David:Sure. Well, um, there’s so many, but for example, the show takes place in part in the sense that it begins and ends in Brazil at the home based hospital. Um, And then there’s one episode that takes place in China. Um, and so we’ve, we [00:14:00] realized that. You know, when you’re making a TV show, when you’re moving locations from one to another, that costs money and time that we didn’t have for the most part.

Um, and so we had to limit the number of different locations you could shoot in LA a lot. We couldn’t. In fact, I think we only did four total. Um, and so we found a hospital that was in Chinatown. In LA so that we, and in fact, literally right out the back parking, lot of the hospital was the edge of the touristy Chinatown district.

And so that was a way that we were able to, without even moving one vehicle. Be able to shoot China and stuff and hospital stuff all at once. Um, and then we would, we did all the tricks in the book. We redressed rooms in the hospital to be different scenes from every episode we w we also shoot bits and pieces of every episode every day, um, in order to amortized [00:15:00] costs and, you know, keep everything together.

So we never have to go return to a location. Um, And we just faked every which way we would shoot. Sometimes many times we’d have a scene where we had an actor talking to another actor, but the one actor was in LA and the other actor was in Croatia. So we didn’t have to fly anybody one, one direction or the other.

Um, and we did a ton of things with VFX and where, you know, we, we were, for example, I mean on most shows, do this now more and more, but every time anyone got in a car, uh, we just put up a screen behind them. So we didn’t have to do any green screen or anything. And you would just see the, the background moving and get it all done, you know, in one day.

Uh, and, and, and just basically, we, we, we wouldn’t find a location unless we could shoot, shoot it to look like 10 different locations.

Brett:sure. It sounds like a [00:16:00] lot of planning, like in the, in the writer’s room, once you have the script, do you end up then like dissecting it to try to figure out the most effective way to shoot everything?

David:Yeah, well, that’s that’s me. And in this case, there was another director, bill Benz, um, working with, um, our first day D Doug, who, and first assistant director. And that’s his job too. Take the material, break it into pieces and then start the puzzle. And the puzzle involves not just locations, but, uh, actor availabilities, which is huge when you’re not paying people, because then you’re not their first priority.

And so you have to take actors whenever they’re available. Um, and also working with, you know, a million different factors and. Moving it around like a jigsaw puzzle until you’ve got a board that makes sense. And then of course, in a show like this, then when you’re done, you’re like, okay, but then when are we going to shoot the rest of it?

And you’re like, well, fit that in there too. Somehow in the, in the very [00:17:00] short shoot schedule, a typical show like this on a sort of in the real way to do it. W each of these episodes would probably be, I don’t know, eight to 10 days shoot. And we did each of these in four days.

Brett:so with a show like this for a service like Netflix, do you get a deadline or is it you just turn it over when it’s ready?

David:No, we had a deadline. We had, I mean, we had a deadline, both for just what we agreed on with Netflix. And also if we went any over schedule, we also ran out of money.

Brett:Uh, yeah, that makes

David:So yeah, we definitely were racing the whole time, but we knew it, you know, it was. I think with all these things, I learned this on my first movie.

If you look at these things, literally like a puzzle, like a game or like a video game, instead of something that gets stressed out about then that’s how you’d get through it. And, um, that, so that’s, that’s, that’s what, we’re what I try to do mentally.

Brett:so was it fun?

[00:18:00] David:It was mostly really fun. I mean, you know, sometimes.

Obviously, I, you know, I would get stressed just like in any job. Um, but I also got very sick during parts of it. Weirdly. I, I, there were a couple of days that I had to leave early and somebody else had to fill in while we, uh, it was, it was a grueling amount of work, but, um, for the most part, it was super fun.

It was playing, you know, making comedy with friends and running around and coming up with funny ideas and. And, uh, and also, as I said, the travel to Croatia was just a really cool experience.

Brett:awesome. So aside from a movie and a TV show and all of the things that you’ve published, kind of in the, we’ll say commercial world. Since lockdown, you’ve been doing a crazy amount of content creation on Tik TOK. I think I saw your stuff on YouTube, but I think it was maybe from Vimeo.

David:Well, I [00:19:00] would say it’s the original content, right? Tend to put out as on Instagram or tick top on. And I guess it’s on my YouTube too. It’s all sort of doubled on YouTube and Instagram, but then Tik TOK kind of has its own set of things. But I mean, I’m not nearly just to be clear, like not even close to as, uh, productive in terms of making stuff as so many people are.

Um, I don’t have a YouTube channel that I’m pumping out stuff all the time or every day, but I have, I have been just keeping busy.

Brett:know it’s not polite, but you are 50 years old. And I don’t think anyone, I think the amount of content you put out is, um, very respectable for someone who is even older than I am.

David:Well, let me.

Brett:Tik TOK. Okay.

David:I guess it’s all just where you put your emphasis. I mean, I, I have two kids at home who don’t go to school, you know, they have on zoom school. Um, and you know, the lockdown has its mental [00:20:00] toll as to the election. Um, and I went through some other personal things this year. And so, yeah, it was, uh, juggling all that with trying to figure out how to make a living.

Uh, and in many ways the making little videos. Wow. Was a little bit of a respite for me, an outlet or something fun to do that, um, gave me some pleasure, uh, during these challenging times and, and, uh, uh, which has kind of always been the case. That’s, that’s how I had to fund when I was 11. And it still is when I’m 51.

Um, so one of the things that happened during the, when the lockdown first began, I saw all this. Kind of unstructured time in front of me. And for the, I said, I’m going to just start making coverup songs on like playing the drums and getting my friends to do different parts and with absolutely no thought as to whether there [00:21:00] would be any reason to do.

I mean, I, to this day I ended up making 17 of these covers so far and they’re gone Instagram people like them, but that’s it, you know, there’s no, um, There’s no financial backend for me doing this in any way. And it’s not really what I do, but I have a blast and people seem to like them and that’s the end of it, you know?

And that seems to be a lot of what social media is these days. It’s just, it’s just for its own sake here. I did this. Here you go. Okay. Next.

Brett:the cover songs are great. There’s a lot of, uh, there’s a lot of energy and love in those, the, the, the series that was most, um, I guess, most intriguing to me in a, in a very kind of weird way was the, if they sucked kind of series that you

David:what if they sucked? Yeah. I bet you want me to say what that

Brett:yeah, I’ll let you explain.

David:Uh, basically, uh, it just says there, I think I made like [00:22:00] six of them. I take a band that I love from the old days, and I say, I love this band, but what if they sucked? And then I have a video of one of their famous songs, but I’ve taken apart all the pieces of the video and shifted them around.

I mean of the S the music and I’ve shifted them around just enough. So it sounds awful, like, so it makes you want to kill yourself when you listen to it.

Brett:right. But like the ACDC want, especially some of, some of the, like the, the lyrics will start in. On a beat, but it’ll be two beats early

David:Right, right.

Brett:you won’t immediately be like, Oh, well that’s off. It’ll just feel like the Joan Jett one was way more. Yes, no worries. And

David:Yeah. They’re they, they vary in levels of obviousness, but yeah, it just, it’s just taking and sometimes if you, but the subtle ones will bug you even more, sometimes in a funny, in a fun way. Yeah. If you just take like the vocal track and move it a quarter of a second [00:23:00] early on any song, and it’s just like, Oh God, I can’t do this.

And it’s, it’s really fun.

Brett:so are, while you’re doing that, are you, I’m trying to imagine what your face is like, are you very serious? Like trying to perfect the imperfection or are you laughing the whole time?

David:Both. I mean, I always, you know, I have very, uh, selective ability to focus depending on what I’m doing, but when I’m sort of dicking around with that kind of thing, video editing on the computer, I can just. Twiddle with it for hours and hours without ever even remembering to go to the bathroom or anything.

Um, so many other things that I have to do, it takes a lot for me to sit down and focus. Um, but I love doing those little weird experiments. So like, what if I could do this? You know, I just started a new thing on Tik TOK where I’m. Playing on the piano songs from the nineties that I never [00:24:00] heard of that most people have.

And just looking at the lyrics and chords and seeing what comes out, because I do that for my kids. Sometimes at night, they’re like play this song and I’m like, I don’t know the song. And I’m like, well, they just played, played anyway. And then what comes out is so disastrous. And so try to

Brett:I would have enjoyed those videos more if I had ever heard the original original songs,

David:right there. Definitely. That’s why, that’s why they’re on Tik TOK.

Brett:I would have to go look up the original, listen to that, and then go back and hear your version of it to

David:Yeah. Not, not, not worth it.

Brett:So you’ve also, uh, you’ve been getting into magic. How long has that been going on?

David:Magic has been always since I’m five years old or younger even, um, definitely been sort of an ongoing, uh, obsession that comes and goes and how completely dominant is in my life. But. It’s been now maybe 15 years that I really stepped it up. I just started really studying [00:25:00] cards and wanting to, wanting to get good and understand it again, just really for my own enjoyment.

I, I don’t have any particular professional outlet for it, but I, uh, I practice all the time. I just am learning moves and effects and, and. Subtleties and just studying and reading. It’s just a hobby. It’s something I enjoy.

Brett:what’s your favorite trick

David:Oh my well, um, I don’t know. I’m just I’m I, I just, I just actually bought a trick that you can like buy offline that I really have been having fun with called a killer in Manila.

Um, where you, uh, give somebody a deck of cards and they can pick anyone they want and they sign the card. And then very clearly put it back in the deck, shuffle the deck, spread it out. And the whole time they are holding this envelope that you have, [00:26:00] and then you open up the envelope and inside is a smaller envelope.

And inside the smaller envelope is the card that they just signed. That’s pretty cool.

Brett:nice. Um, my friend Victor Gretta Jr. Uh, does, uh, uh, Instagram, I think it did it on Instagram. Where he would like a demo, some of the famous tricks you could buy and kind of explain, uh, explain the trick, not how it’s done. He wasn’t like giving away magician secrets or anything, but like kind of demoing classic magic tricks.

It was fun to watch.

David:Well, the magic review, uh, space on social media has exploded in the last few years. There’s many, many magic trick review channels, and it’s a fun little subculture to pay attention to. Okay.

Brett:Oh, well, uh, I’ll have to look that up for the show notes. What else has kept you sane aside from content creation and, and missing your shooting schedule and having kids at home?

What’s your, what’s your go-to [00:27:00] uh, Saturday measure.

David:I mean, I’ve just been doing kind of the classic stuff. I’ve tried to meditate. I’ve been playing tennis. I, uh, tried to do get some yoga here and there. I tried to turn off my screens and spend time with human beings and animals as much as I can. I know you’re into animals. Um, but, uh, you know, it’s just been, um, I try to really connect with my friends, uh, in ways that I can.

Um, but it’s challenging. It’s been a tough year, I think for everybody in different ways everyone’s been dealt different versions of horror this year.

Brett:I assume you played tennis in person with people. Do you do yoga over zoom?

David:Uh, yes. Or just by myself. Yes. Um,

Brett:You’re your own personal practice.

David:Well, I mean, or I just like go do a YouTube like this morning, I did a YouTube yoga for 10 minutes, you know, don’t get too impressed when I was in my I’m I’m, as we mentioned more than once 51 years [00:28:00] old, but in, uh, in my twenties, uh, I was into Ashtanga yoga in my mid twenties for a very short time.

But for that period, I was going six days a week for 90 minutes session. Um, Yeah, unguided yoga, insanity. And I was in great shape, but it kind of was the only thing in my life.

Brett:sick, 90 minutes, six days a week. Wow.

David:it was. And then, you know, and then going and coming back, you know, I was unemployed at the time, um, as I am now, but I couldn’t do that again.

Brett:Wow. Yeah. I love yoga. I’ve been doing yoga for years and I could never, I could never imagine even I don’t eat. I do one hour, three to five times a week.

David:That’s massive. Yeah. But that’s great. I mean that, that’s all you need. That’s wonderful. You must be in great shape.

Brett:I, I have gained weight over the last year.

David:Yeah.

Brett:I’m not super sect about, but I’m also [00:29:00] kinda, it is what it is. This is what my body is society to be. I’ve maintained my flexibility. I, I feel good. So yeah, I’m

David:Yeah, that’s feeling good is definitely better than looking good.

Brett:Yup.

David:Despite what Fernando used to say on Saturday night, live.

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Brett: What’s the first thing you’re going to do once, uh, once things get back to a semi-open state, like what’s what got put on hold that you can’t wait to get back to you.

David:Um, there’s so many things, uh, and of course the, the road back is going to be so gradual and slow. I don’t think there’s, you know, we all know it’s not going to be like, everything’s open now. Um, but I would say going to the movies, going to the theater are big ones, both for me also, um, going to live music, going dancing.

I mean, not that I do these things that often, but I would say [00:30:00] also just like freely congregating with my friends is probably number one, just to like hang out friends, you know? And then. Um, also just other things I like to do that I haven’t been able to do or this whole time play squash, for example. Um, we have a, we’re a weekly Frisbee game we do with, with, uh, families.

They’re like an ultimate Frisbee game. That’s been on hold for a long time and, um, yeah, just normal life and end. Just the, I mean the biggest one in my life by far is having my children be able to go to school. Um, which will affect them and me very enormously.

Brett:I, I will say that. I don’t know you well, but I did not expect your answer to be sports and partying.

David:Well, I guess maybe that’s twit since that’s the first thing that came to mind. Maybe that’s where my true art is.

Brett:Oh, very revealing. All right.

David:It’s not sports, it’s not watching sports. [00:31:00] Certainly.

Brett:okay. Here’s a random question for you. What would you say your sense of humor was in middle school or junior high, depending on your school curriculum?

David:identical.

Brett:Yeah.

David:I mean, I know it is because people who knew me back then, who I still talk to will tell me that. And I just know, I mean, I’ve sort of in many ways, I I’ve, I’ve largely spent my professional career and just my adulthood just honing the sense of humor I had when I was 12.

Brett:what, uh, what TV shows, where, what, what comedic TV shows were, uh, kind of top of. Top of list for you? Middle school, high school age.

David:It was really Woody Allen movies and Steve Martin specials from NBC that I watched on beta max over and over and over. Um, and I mean, I [00:32:00] also watched Saturday night live reruns a lot and, uh, SCTV, but, um, It was, it was those twin poles of Woody Allen and Steve Martin that just sort of got in my craw, I think

Brett:all right. All right. Yeah. I asked, cause I was at that age, I was watching. Like the state and kids in the hall and, uh, yeah, I’m 10 years younger than you. Um, so I was just wondering what you were watching

David:Yeah. I mean, SCTV was the one that I watched and was like, that was the most direct mirror of like, I want to do that and then ended up trying to do that. And I think when we arrived at this, doing the state in our early twenties, I felt like we all came to it with a certain. Idea of what kind of thing we wanted to emulate.

And for some, it was more specifically money Python and more specifically SNL or something. For me, it was [00:33:00] SCTV I’m like those guys look like they were just like in the middle of, you know, out, outside the mainstream of anything, just dicking around and having a blast and being so funny. And I was just like, that’s, that sounds great to me.

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Brett:All right. So since the last time you were here, I have stopped doing my own top three picks. We only talk about your top three

David:Cause you ran out.

Brett:I did, I did a few years of a few years of three picks a week. Uh, I, I did. I think I picked everything.

David:I feel like that’s very that’s. I don’t know. I think you’re being lazy.

Brett:here’s the thing is I keep a few in my back pocket,

David:Yeah.

Brett:so I’ll, I’ll slip them in where, but I don’t have an official, these are my three.

David:I mean, Tim Ferriss figures that out every week. No offense.

Brett:I never claimed not to be lazy.

David:Um, by the way, I’m reading off my list, uh, in [00:34:00] envy, ultra.

Brett:You want to say anything nice about NBA ultra.

David:Yeah, that’s going to be my bonus. I’m going to say it right now, which is that, um, I waited for, what was it like 14, 15 years for you to finally get this stupid thing out and then now, but now that it’s here, I love it. It’s uh, it is my daily everything.

Brett:that the beta is here. It’s still not commercially available

David:And how long has it been in beta?

Brett:a year, at least now

David:Might say more? I’d say too.

Brett:is that, is that, yeah, it’s not my fault at this point. Like the guy Fletcher, penny, who I am partnered up with on this project, he’s also an ER, doctor. And yeah, he, he’s an ER doctor and he’s in the middle of adopting a child.

And, uh, while he loves NBA ultra, and we have like, we’re absolutely going to finish it. His schedule tends to be, um, a little more hit and miss [00:35:00] than mine does.

David:And there’s no one to delegate to.

Brett:Uh, no, there are there. Each of us have parts of it that can’t go on without us. And

David:I get it.

Brett:if he were to die, if something were horrible were to happen to him, I would be in trouble

David:God forbid.

Brett:NBA ultra would be in trouble.

So thoughts and prayers let’s keep it going.

David:Um, well I’m honored to be among the beta testers then. And, uh, I honestly would not be happy without it. I would figure something out, but, uh,

Brett:to hear. I, I w I w I would hate to you, I would hate to be so indispensable that you risked losing anything if I failed.

David:Well, that’s part of the design of NBA ultra is that it’s not a Roach motel. Um, anyway, good job. Uh, all right. Do you want to hear some other things?

Brett:Yeah, let’s hear your first pick.

David:First pick is five years late, but. [00:36:00] None, none the wiser, the TV show, the leftovers. Um, I just watched the entire three seasons in the last couple of weeks. Um, and what can I say?

It’s it shot up to my top five favorite shows of all time. I would say

Brett:What is it about? I don’t think I’ve seen this.

David:it’s it was an HBO show starring Justin Thoreau. Um, about a moment in 2000, in 2012, 2%. Of the entire world’s population disappeared without explanation. And the show is literally about the aftermath of that event and how this well, the main character is the, is a local sheriff in a town in New Jersey, but then it goes from there into the most unexpected, unpredictable places.

But it’s. An amazing, amazing TV show that does everything you wanted it to be showing. It keeps you on your toes the entire [00:37:00] time. It’s always surprising. It’s always interesting. It’s always thought provoking. It’s always fun to watch

Brett:I think when I saw the original trailers for this, I was worried that it was a left behind situation.

David:in terms of what

Brett:you ever see left behind or read those books? I grew up in a very fundamentalist home where this series called left behind about like the rapture. It’s this like fictional fictionalized idea of like half of the world disappears one day because they got called back into heaven.

David:right, right.

Brett:like the life of the poor sinners left behind. It was, uh, it, yeah, I have, I have scarring from, from that

David:there are people, there are characters in this show that think that’s what this is or what, or what it might’ve been. Um, or that it’s discussed by some in the show. But one of the things that’s so interesting about it is they never say what happened or why. Um, and they never quite, it’s [00:38:00] never quite a lot of people.

Are exploring or trying to figure out, or there’s people who feel like they’ve gone into some other side or, but, but it’s entirely grounded story. There’s nothing in it that indicates anything magic or supernatural happened, except for this one thing that has no explanation.

Brett:is the series over now.

David:okay. Yeah. It was only three years on, um, HBO and it was one of those shows sorta like the Americans that just didn’t get the, the kudos it was supposed to, it was just so.

Under scene. Um, but it was for anyone who discovered it, they’re like, yeah, this is like, are you kidding me? This should win every award. There is.

Brett:so just asking as someone who is likely to binge it, does it have a satisfying ending?

David:Yes. It’s got a great ending. Did you see the Americans?

Brett:I didn’t

David:Oh, another SIM similar in that it’s one of those shows that not enough people saw and it’s just so satisfying. And the Americans after seven seasons, I think [00:39:00] has one of the greatest, last episodes of any show I’ve ever seen.

Brett:duly noted.

David:And that I remember watching.

The last episode of the Americans on my laptop under the blankets. Cause I was in a hotel room with my kids while they were sleeping in some ranch in Colorado and crying my eyes out.

Brett:Wow. All right. All right. That’s two shows I have to binge now.

David:okay. The next one, you ready for? The next one?

Brett:sir.

David:It’s a band, uh, called hello forever. Um, And a friend of mine found, sort of discovered this somewhere. And we just started listening to all of their music and they have some videos and stuff, but it’s the music to me. That’s just so they’re from Topanga, California, and they have this sort of, um, hard to describe, uh, [00:40:00] sensibility where it feels sort of it’s so gloriously happy in a certain way.

Uh, in a way that you feel very needful of these days. Um, it has a very optimistic flavor to it, but it’s also not simple music. It’s, it’s complex and it’s very kitchen sinky. Anyway, it’s got a lot of stuff going on. Um, and I think there’s a ton of people in the band, um, and I’m just really enjoying watching them.

They, I think they’re relatively new on the scene. Uh, and I think they just have one album out and they’re great. Okay,

Brett:came out in 20, 20

David:there you go.

Brett:rough time to rough, rough time to tour after an album release.

David:Yeah. I think, you know, I have a lot of friends who make their living entirely by being actors on stage and on Broadway, you know, that’s just, there’s still no real roadmap as to how that comes back or when [00:41:00] among many I’m among a million other things that can happen right now.

Brett:Okay. What’s your third pick?

David:The VR game 11, um, which is why I have it on the Oculus quest. And it is as close to an actual replication of a real life game as I’ve ever seen. And it’s a, it’s a table tennis game, um, and the physics and the movement and the whole way it works. You.

I just don’t know that there’s that much difference between that and really playing table tennis. And except for that, you can play anytime 24 seven with anyone in the world. And, um, You can also practice on, you know, it’s just, it’s really fun. And I’ve, I’ve, I’ve had it on my Oculus quest for, since I’ve had the Atlas quest for almost a year, but I have just recently started to become [00:42:00] truly obsessed with it.

And I even bought on Etsy a little handle so that it makes my VR controller feel exactly like a, uh, a ping pong paddle, um, and, uh, It’s really fun. You just go on any time and there’s always someone there who will play with you and you can say hello, and then you can just try your hardest. And I’m pretty much not.

I’m usually lose. And so I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me, which is fun.

Brett:this is you are the third guest in the last three months in the second guest in a row to talk about the Oculus quest. And every time I hear about it, I’m a little more inclined to try one out.

David:Um, ch I can’t believe you, you you’re waiting.

Brett:I’m not, I’m not, uh, I don’t play a lot of video games.

David:I don’t either. I’ve never been, I don’t, I’m not a gamer. In fact, my kids broke me down and we finally got a PS five in this house, and I’m not even interested in, I’m not going to turn it on, but [00:43:00] the quest is kind of a different world.

Brett:yep. That’s one, one more, one more straw.

David:I also enjoy the another thing I really like on quest is that I get connected to friends that I otherwise can’t see even, you know, whether it’s geographical or quarantine reasons. Um, I’ll I get a text from somebody like, Hey, you wanna play around a mini golf? And then yeah, let’s go. And then we just get to chat for 20 minutes and play a game and then we’re done, you know?

Brett:Yeah, that’s actually really nice.

David:Yeah.

Brett:Cause it’s a pain to like, just, Hey, do you want to have a zoom call and just sit and look at each other and talk

David:Right. Exactly. Well, there’s a, um, there’s two very distinct genres. I think of things on the, on VR games in general, there’s this super noisy like, um, you know, uh, electric, Daisy, carnival inspired. Insane in your face games, which are most of them. And then there’s a [00:44:00] big growing slice of just like relaxing games, um, like mini golf and table tennis.

And they’re really fun.

Brett:awesome. Yeah, I really I’ll wait until my next paycheck, but I’m going to have to check this out. Cause I’ve heard about it. I’ve heard about it from multiple people who aren’t real, who are in no way, like gamers.

David:Right. It’s definitely the game system for the rest of us. Um, and I think that for me, when we shut down and I saw that my kids aren’t going to leave the house for very long stretches of time. That’s when I was like, screw it. This is happening. And, uh, you know, there are there also. There’s movies and other three 60 experiences that you can have on the quest where you get us feeling like you’re somewhere else, which is kind of nice,

Brett:So where should people look for you?

David:I mean, the best [00:45:00] sort of central thing is David wayne.com w a I N. Um, and then from there you can find my Instagram and Tik TOK and whatever the hell else I’m trying to do these days,

Brett:all the things. Awesome.

David:things, um, always great to check in with you. Yeah. Um,

Brett:me posted on, uh, on how things go with NBA ultra. Your feedback is important to us.

David:I do, I do post feedback all the time.

Brett:Yeah, you’re awesome.

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David:Um, but what any other new software stuff coming?

Brett:Oh, well, I, I P I w I went down this rabbit hole. I wrote this app called bunch.

David:Yeah.

Brett:is like, uh, like batch automation for Macs. Uh, like you can, you can write a text file and just. Write out the names of five different apps. And when you click the bunch, it’ll launch those five apps, but it can also quit apps or launch apps in groups at delays, run commands, like turn on, do [00:46:00] not disturb or switch to dark mode.

Like you can do all of this with just a text file. And, and you just have a bunch of textiles in a directory and it gives you a menu up in your menu bar, you click it and you get a list of all the bunches that you have set up and you click one and it runs. And I got a little, a little insane with, with expanding on that. It’s it’s bordering on unhealthy right now. it was awesome for a, for a while. And I got a lot of, uh, I got a lot of users and a lot of people were offering me feedback and even sending donations cause I put it up for free. but then I, I don’t know. I, the last week I feel like I created more bugs than I have time to fix, but it’s become an obsession.

Like I lose sleep over these bugs I’ve created.

David:I get it. We all go down those rabbit holes. I don’t know that I, I don’t know that I’m itching for that [00:47:00] use case for that particular app, but I know that there are people that would probably

Brett:Yeah.

David:just like, I don’t do enough things regularly to have systems like that. Not for the same thing.

Brett:See, and now, now, like my instinct is how can I make this useful for David Wayne?

David:dope. Try just, I dare you to try.

Brett:my addiction

David:Did you, um, do you do sorted,

Brett:sorted.

David:I saw that you mentioned on your website once the, um,

Brett:Oh, the sorted cubed task manager. Um, I, no, I didn’t do that.

David:no. I mean, did you, have you tried it or do

Brett:Oh, I’ve I’ve, I’ve opened it and played with it enough to, to feel comfortable giving a recommendation for it.

David:I think I tried it and I think it doesn’t work for me.

Brett:No.

David:It’s too weird, but I do still think there’s a, there’s a, there’s still a hole or they could fix it maybe, but I think a good time blocking software that [00:48:00] is easier to use than sorted or more straightforward would be better. Okay.

Brett:define time-blocking. Uh,

David:For example, what I’ve been doing lately is I, I, you know, occasionally I like to. To look at tomorrow and say, okay, minute by minute. Here’s here’s the plan. And so, you know, I’m going to work on this thing for 20 minutes. I’m going to do this for 45 minutes and blah, blah, blah. Just so I feel like I have structure when I don’t actually have structure and sorted is exactly designed for that, but it’s, I don’t, I just don’t like the way it works in almost any way.

Um, and.

Brett:And this week sponsor.

David:Well, there you go. But then, and then fantastic. I’ll Cal is closer in terms of just being a simple calendar program where you can, what I like about the concept is you’re taking your tasks for the day and your calendar items, and they’re in one place in one [00:49:00] view, you know, cause your tasks, all tasks take time.

And so, but some, some tasks are tasks that are truly. You know, they have to get done, but if they don’t get done, when you’re planning on it, it’s fine. And others are like really calendar items that are like, it’s something’s happening or it’s not on that moment. So seeing it all in one place is so much better.

And so like, this is what’s missing from something like things, but works in just a calendar app, like Fantastica, where you can then see your reminders in there. Um, but it’s still not really designed for that kind of time-blocking and it’s still. It’s th th th somebody could make one that’s really works for this particular way of thinking, which I know a lot of people do and they would get my money.

Brett:right. If anyone listening has a suggestion or wants to take on the project, you know where to find us.

David:Thank you.

Brett:Yeah, I, I don’t like, I like [00:50:00] my task lists to be a little more abstract. I tried like, actually like writing out today’s tasks on a calendar and saying, I’m going to do this for an hour and this for an hour and this for an hour and this for an hour, even though they didn’t have due dates and they weren’t time-sensitive and it did not work for my brain at all.

David:You gotta do what works for your brain. That’s number one rule.

Brett:uh, that’s for me, that’s the only rule

David:Yeah, true.

Brett:I absolutely cannot. I cannot make my brain do things. It doesn’t want to do

David:Well, I realized after a while of proselytizing to a lot of people, about a lot of things that, you know, everyone is so different in the way their brains working. You cannot overlay your system on somebody else. And when I let go of that, it made my whole way of working with people and living with people much easier.

Brett:Did it make it harder for you to listen to other people sell like their, their, uh, like market. They S this idea that they can [00:51:00] fix people if you use their system.

David:well, to be honest, I was the biggest one who was doing that all the time in my world. So no one was ever as loud as me. And so when I shut up, I just, there was nice, quiet.

Brett:went silent. Okay. Yeah. All right. Well, good talking to you.

David:Listen, always a pleasure and, uh, you know, try me again in, uh, 20, 26.

Brett:2026. We’ll we’ll get you your, uh, your fifth, fifth episode jacket.

David:I feel like we’ll be, we’ll be just grounding the end of COVID 19. And that’ll be a good time to talk about how we’re going to move on with life at that point.

Brett:okay. Are you ready for a COVID 20?

David:Yeah. Every so often though. I, yeah, every so often I just pull up your website cause I know there’s going to be something that’s going to be like, Oh, that’ll, that’s, that’s a rabbit hole. I’m going to go down.

Yeah.

[00:52:00] Brett:All right. Well, I will, uh, talk to you again soon.

David:I want, I want to say one thing to you, to your listeners directly to them, not to you. I hope that all of you have a great day. That’s it.

Brett:All right.