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Evangelism on SermonAudio
A highlight from Introduction to Philippians
"Brothers and sisters, I would encourage you to open up your Bibles this evening to Philippians. We're going to be taking a look at Philippians chapter 1 and verses 1 and 2. We are beginning the book of Philippians. Today will be more of an introduction to that particular book than anything else. I will attempt to talk about the author, the themes, the aim of the epistle, the things that we can learn from it without spoiling too much of the content so that later on as we preach on individual portions, it becomes anticlimax after anticlimax. I don't want to give away the entire book, but I do want you to have an idea of where it came from, why it is so very important to us today, what we can learn from it, and to see the similarities that exist between this book and indeed our own time. As I'll be discussing in the sermon, Philippi was actually a military colony, and you may have noticed we live in a military colony for the most part. So the resemblances between us and the Philippians, apart from the fact that we have microwaves and cell phones and things like that, and they did not, are very strong. They are still the same kind of people who deal with the same kind of difficulties. They too had a state which was sometimes nice to them and sometimes which oppressed them very badly. They also dealt with the problems of relationships and all of the things that the fall has brought in. So as we look at Philippians and we hear Paul writing to this beloved congregation of his, let us seek to apply it to our own time, but before we come to the word of God, let go us to the God who has given us this word and let's ask him to bless it. Please join me. Oh sovereign Lord, we do pray now that you would be the illuminator of our minds, that you would help us to understand your word. I pray that you would help me to divide it to write, that you would give me liberty and power and unction as I do so, that oh Lord, I would not say anything that goes against your word. I know I am a man with feet of clay. I am capable of interpreting the word or wrong, but I pray Lord that you would prevent me from doing so. I do pray also Lord that you would give me the sustaining power to go through this book, a right, and to apply it to your people. May you give us ears to hear and hearts to receive all that you have to tell us. We pray this in Jesus' holy name. Amen and amen. Philippians chapter one and I'll be reading verses one and two. It says the word of the Lord. Paul and Timothy bond servants of Jesus Christ to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi with the bishops and deacons. Grace to you and peace from God our father and the Lord Jesus Christ. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever. I wonder if say 10 or 11 years from now, if I was in jail in Washington for my preaching of the gospel and possibly facing the federal death penalty and this congregation had sent me a gift in jail to help me along and I was writing a letter in reply to your generous gift. What would that letter sound like? What would I say? How would I come across in writing to you? Would it be complaining about the government and my situation? Would I be going on and on about the unfairness of it all? And speaking about how my liberties had been infringed or would I be writing to you to know a little about how I was doing and then spend the vast majority, not talking about myself and my own situation as dire as it was, but to spend the vast majority of my letter attempting to stir you up to joy and in the Lord to encourage you to be full of peace and grace and joy even in the midst of adversity. Would I think so little of myself that my letter would seek to lovingly correct problems of disunity that I knew about in the congregation? Would I push back against those who perhaps were on the fringes or in the congregation itself who were teaching bad doctrine in the community? And above all, would I urge you to keep the person and power of the Lord Jesus Christ at the center of everything you did? I hope that I would. I hope I would not send you a letter merely of whining or a simple thank you note that said very little. In my case, though, we're going to have to find out. But in the case of Paul and the Philippian Christians, we already know how he spoke in the midst of those circumstances because that is the letter that we have in front of us. Paul is in the midst of serious adversity, serious difficulty. He is struggling, we know, with loneliness, with persecution, and he writes a letter to his much beloved Philippines that is full of joy and encouragement in spite of all of those difficulties that stood against him in the world. So much so this letter is so full of joy that it has been often called the epistle of joy. Paul writing from jail, remember, and a Roman jail was not like the jails today. We speak today of jails as being three hots and a cot. You have TV, recreation yards, things like that. In Paul's day, that was not the case. You either had to pay for a place to stay if the charges weren't that serious yourself or if you were thrown into a Roman dungeon, you could often die of exposure. You went in with the clothes on your back, and if your friends and your family did not provide you with the things that you needed, including food in jail, you could die very, very easily while awaiting your trial. But Paul, writing from that kind of jail, he uses the Greek words for joy and rejoice, imploring the Philippian saints to rejoice. He uses those words kara and kairo more than a dozen times, and this is just a four -chapter letter, remember. So joy is one of the most prominent themes in what he is writing. He is, as I said, in a Roman jail. This is possibly the second time. I think it's probably the first time that he was there. He is waiting a trial on a capital charge of treason, and the people who will judge him are members of Emperor Nero's brutal and corrupt administration. And as we know, Paul was not somebody who was going to give them a bribe, so there's no way out of his imprisonment that way. And yet, as we shall see, Paul is able to look well beyond the circumstances that surround him, and he's able to actually see Christ in heaven and the work that Christ is doing in the world and indeed in Philippi and throughout the church and to know that God throughout is in control and that all of God's promises are coming to pass. Let me just stop and ask that question right now of you. Do you know those things as well? Do you have that solid trust no matter what your circumstances are in the Lord Jesus Christ, that no matter what afflictions, adversities, difficulties, diseases you're dealing with today, yet still you know that the Lord is in control and that his will is coming to pass and that none of his promises will ever fail. I pray that that is the case, and if not, I pray that you will take encouragement from Paul. He was writing to encourage the Philippians, but we remember that he wasn't writing just to the Philippian congregation. Through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, he was writing to us as well. And so I pray that he would be encouraging you in whatever situation you are in. But we see him trusting absolutely in God, trusting in the Christ whom he knew and that therefore there was this inner principle of joy in his heart, an inner principle that no one could take away and that he still wants to share with others. He wants that joy inexpressible that we heard about this morning to overflow to others. The Romans might take his life. They could do that, but they cannot take away his joy or his peace. That is one of the great promises that is given to the Christian. Nobody can take away the Holy Spirit dwelling within you. Nobody can take away your salvation, and nobody can steal your joy and your peace in those things. But let's take a moment now to discuss how all of this came to pass, how he came to be writing this letter from jail. Where is Philippi? What was it like? Who were the Philippians, and how did Paul come to know them? Incidentally, this is a picture of the Philippian ruins that you will find in Macedonia. I am told they are amazing. It is a UNESCO historic site. Maybe one day as I got to see Ephesus, I will also have a chance to see Philippi. But in the meantime, let's talk about the city. Philippi was originally founded as a colony in northeastern Macedonia by colonists from the island of Thanos. They were called Thacians in 359 BC. But it was captured by Alexander the Great's father, Philip, and renamed Philippi three years later. So it didn't have much of a long run of independence. But in saying that, I have told you very little about Philippi itself. Because the Philippi that Paul knew came along much later on. It is like me telling you that Fayetteville was settled by colonists from Scotland. Because almost 400 years had passed between the founding of Philippi and the time that Paul was writing. Just as almost 400 years have passed between the time of the founding of Fayetteville in our own time. So the Philippi that Paul first visited in around 51 or 52 AD was a very different place. The Romans had captured it from the Macedonians in 168 BC. And in 42 BC during the Roman Civil War that brought an end to the Roman Republic. It was the scene of the final defeat of the forces of Brutus and Cassius by the forces of Anthony and Octavian. Who later of course became Augustus Caesar. And that final battle occurred just outside of this city. This was critical because after the city Octavian turned Philippi into a Roman colony and a military outpost. They released some of their veteran soldiers. The war to defeat the men who had stabbed Caesar had finished as far as they were concerned. And they released some of their legionaries from Legion 28 to colonize the city. Which was founded and I apologize for my terrible Latin here. Colonia Victrix Philippensium meaning the colony of the victory of Philippi. From that point onwards it was a place where Italian veterans from the Roman army were given land. And it sat upon an important Roman road called the Via Ignatia. Which was a road that was constructed by the Romans in the 2nd century BC. Incidentally I learned while we were on our trip that the Greeks joke particularly in Cyprus. That the only roads in Greece that last were built by the Romans. The modern ones all fall apart. It crossed through Illyricum, Macedonia, Thracia and runs into the territory that is now part of Albania. North Macedonia, Greece and European Turkey. Why is that important? Well it's important because it meant that Philippi was a center not only of trade. And they had mines we'll talk about in a little while where they mined gold and silver. But it was a place where it was possible to go from Philippi to other areas of Macedonia. Or to turn south and to go into Greece. They had their own route 95 so to speak running right through the city. That allowed them to have concourse with all the people in Greece and up in Macedonia and into the Roman Empire. This meant that the Lord in founding his church there. Put it in a place where the inhabitants could as they did their daily trade. Carry not only letters to Rome but they could also carry the gospel to the surrounding areas. Now the citizens of this colony were regarded as citizens of Rome. And they were given a number of special privileges that ordinary inhabitants of the empire didn't have. It was in many senses a miniature Rome. Literally because they were under the municipal law of Rome. It was as though they were a colony that was in Italy actually attached to Rome. That was the way the law functioned. And they were governed by two military officers the Duumviri who were appointed directly from Rome. And the colony itself although it was relatively small. It was only about 10 ,000 people when Paul reached it. It was very wealthy as a general rule. They had gold and silver mines just outside the city. And those mines were still productive in Paul's day. It was as I said a little Rome in the midst of Macedonia. And not just in the government. It was laid out like a Roman city. And so to this day you can see that they have a Roman forum in addition to a Greek Agora. But how did Paul get to this city? How did he get there? Well let's read a little from Acts 16 which actually tells us. So if you would turn in your Bible to Acts chapter 16. And I want to begin with verse one which will tell us that Paul was actually when this all started. He was in Asia Minor. He was over in modern day Turkey on his second missionary journey. We read then he came to Derby in Lystra and behold a certain disciple was there named Timothy. The son of a certain Jewish woman who believed but his father was Greek. He was well spoken of by the brethren who were at Lystra and Iconium. Paul wanted to have him go with him and he took him and circumcised him because of the Jews who were in that region. For they all knew that his father was Greek. And as they went through the cities they delivered to them the decrees to keep which were determined by the apostles and elders of Jerusalem. So the churches were strengthened in the faith and increased in number daily. Now when they had gone through Phrygia and the region of Galatia they were forbidden by the Holy Spirit to preach the word in Asia. After they had come to Mysia they tried to go into Bithynia but the Spirit did not permit them. So passing by Mysia they came down to Troas and a vision appeared to Paul in the night. A man of Macedonia stood and pleaded with him saying come over to Macedonia and help us. Now many people have speculated just as an aside that this is Luke who was speaking to Paul in a vision. Now after he had seen the vision immediately we sought to go to Macedonia concluding that the Lord had called us to preach the gospel to them. Therefore sailing from Troas we ran a straight course to Samothrace and the next day came to Neapolis and from there to Philippi which is the foremost city of that part of Macedonia, a colony. And we were staying in that city for some days and on the Sabbath day we went out of the city to the riverside where prayer was customarily made and we sat down and spoke to the women who met there. Now a certain woman named Lydia heard us. She was a seller of purple from the city of Thyatira who worshiped God. The Lord opened her heart to heed the things spoken by Paul and when she and her household were baptized she begged us saying if you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord come to my house and stay so she persuaded us. And we know that Paul and Timothy stayed with Lydia for some days. They had some other encounters. I'm not going to read the rest of chapter 16 but I would encourage you to actually read all of chapter 16 tonight. It won't take you that long but you will read about the exorcism of the demon possessed slave girl which unfortunately got them into trouble because the demon allowed her unfortunately to know about things that men didn't know about. And so her owners used to get money from her that way. We'll also tell you about Paul and Silas's unjust imprisonment and then the household baptism of the Philippian jailer which is marvelous and of course one of those household baptisms that shows us that we are to be baptizing not just parents on their confession of faith but also their children. This was the first church established in Europe. Note that. And that at the explicit direction of the Holy Spirit who made it very clear that Paul was to turn the direction of his labors from Asia Minor which is modern day Turkey to Europe. He goes through Macedonia and then after that he goes into Greece and brings the gospel into Europe. Now the bond as you will read through the Philippi you can't help but notice the friendship, the love that exists between Paul and this congregation. It was peculiarly close though others had abandoned him in his imprisonment as we shall see these Philippians had not. They continued to pray for him and they continued to provide for his needs in this world. They sent him a gift. As I said I don't want to give away too many spoilers but they had sent a man by the name of Epaphroditus with a gift for him in jail and then he had sent Epaphroditus back to them with this letter. That's how he got it. And as I mentioned this letter was written from Rome during his imprisonment. The beginning of that is related in Acts 28. The reference to Caesar's household which you will read in Philippians 4 22 and the palace in Philippians 1 13. In the Greek it's Praetorium. It was probably the barrack of the Praetorium guard attached to the palace of Nero and that confirms this. So I tend to think it was during his first imprisonment at Rome. That would tend to sit with the mention of the Praetorium and that he was in the custody of the Praetorium prefect and his situation agrees with the situation in the first two years of his imprisonment that you can read about in Acts. In Acts 28 30 and 31. It's not that important whether it was the first or the second imprisonment. The fact is he's in prison. He's in prison for his faith. He's in prison for his preaching. But he does not allow that to destroy him or even to to drive him down or to change the nature of his ministry. Many people might have switched over perhaps to a martyr's ministry at this point in time and yet he does not. He continues to encourage the people to go about their their business preaching the gospel and being members of the church no matter what the circumstances are. Now the tone of this letter as we go through it you'll notice this. It's unlike most of his other letters. It contains no long doctrinal discussions. It contains no rebukes of evils that were festering in the particular church. But it is an outpouring rather of happy love and also confidence in these brothers and sisters. He loves them. He is confident in them and he wants them to be confident not in themselves. He wants them to be confident in Christ and in his promises. Like all of Paul's epistles, as you saw, it starts with a salutation. Our letters, of course, and with the identification of the person who's sending it. But the letters back there started with who this letter was from. And like most of his letters, it also starts with a prayer for the people that he is writing to. He isn't just in intending to give them information. He wants to bless them, to bless them with his letter and to bless them with his prayer. And one commentator calls the entire letter a long gush of love towards the Philippians. And it is. There's nothing wrong with that. Verses 1 and 2 that we read there, they contain an apostolic greeting. The senders are identified there. Timothy is associated with Paul. Timothy was with Paul, therefore, in his imprisonment. We remember from 2 Timothy in his second imprisonment that Paul noted that only Timothy had stayed with him. Or rather that he wanted Timothy to come to him in his imprisonment to bring things to him. Timothy remained loyal to Paul no matter what. Timothy also, you remember, was going to become very important to Paul in the Ephesian church and building them up and so on. Timothy was a genuine, he was more than just an amanuensis or a secretary for Paul. He was a helper to Paul. He was a brother in Christ, somebody who would stand with him in thick or thin. Now, Paul mentions him and he often does that. He brings the friends who are about him into prominence. That also indicates that the people in Philippi knew of him and would be interested to hear how he was doing. Timothy is in Rome with Paul when the letter is being dictated. And although Timothy is not the one who is inspired to write the letter, Paul is using him as his secretary to take it down. It's very possible that Paul had an eye disease, which made it very difficult for him to write. He calls Timothy and himself, he addresses himself as a bondservant of Jesus Christ. Now, that's a nice little word, bondservant. It conjures up the idea of indentured bondage, the idea that we're just working off a debt. But when he says bondservant, he's actually using the Greek word doulos. Doulos means literally slave. He is a slave of Christ. Some prefer the translation bondservant to kind of neaten it up. We don't like the idea of Paul calling himself a slave of Christ because of the bad connotations of that. But we remember that most of the Roman Empire, in fact, 20 % of the city there, and this would have had, as a Roman colony, a military colony, Philippi would have had a lower than normal slave population, more free men than slaves. But they still speculate that at least 20 % of those 10 ,000 people within the colony were slaves. And here is Paul saying, I too am a slave. But who is he a slave of? He's a slave of Jesus Christ. He and Timothy are slaves, and they aren't complaining about that. They understood that they were bought with a price by the Lord Jesus Christ in his sacrifice for their sake, and therefore they were owned by their master. They are completely dependent upon him, and they give him their undivided allegiance. They love this master of theirs, the Lord Jesus Christ. In fact, Paul clearly, he views it as the highest honor that we can attain to serve Christ, to have his light yoke upon us instead of the heavy chains of sin which he takes away. And he is bound to absolute submission to this Lord who is all worthy and who gave everything for his sake. Paul, note in all of his letters, never forgot what Christ had done for him, never forgot where he was when Christ found him, how he was an enemy of the church, a persecutor of the church. Somebody whom Christ, you remember, addressed on the road to Damascus saying, Paul, Paul, or rather at that time, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? Jesus associates himself so keenly with his people that to persecute them is to persecute him. I was thinking about that as we were hearing about how the Pakistanis are wretchedly persecuted. What their persecutors in Pakistan, the Muslims, do not recognize or realize is that in persecuting them, they are persecuting God the Son. And it will not go well for them to be counted amongst the persecutors on the last day. But he had once been a persecutor. Now he is no longer. He is a slave, a willing servant of the Lord Jesus Christ who loves him with all of his heart. Now note also at the beginning, he doesn't mention that he's an apostle. And so there's a great contrast here between letters like Galatians where he asserts his apostolic authority when he's teaching them. This is a very friendly letter. He doesn't actually need to. He knows they know that he's an apostle of the Lord. Jesus greets all of the saints in Christ. Jesus, who are in Philippi, and he abused them. He calls them saints. And what is he talking about there when he calls them saints? Haggai, literally holy ones. These are people who he considers as they are in Christ. Have you ever thought about this? We may think of ourselves as wretches. We may think of ourselves as people in whom there is nothing worthy of praise. And yet the way that the Lord looks at us is his holy ones, his ones who are set apart. His chosen ones who are even now being conformed to the image of Jesus Christ. If you are in Christ, that is who you are. You are one of his special people. In the Old Testament, the word was segula, his special treasure. Brothers and sisters, the devil wants us to think of ourselves as only what we can accomplish by our meager efforts. And let's face it, that's not much. Isaiah, at the end of his long, his long prophetic letter in Isaiah 66, he talks about righteousness, the righteousness that a holy man like himself might be able to accomplish by himself. And he says these things, our righteousnesses are but filthy rags. But Christ, what does he do? He endows us with robes of righteousness. He enrobes us, as Luther put it so very well, so that when we stand before God on the last day, the saints are seen as they are in Christ. That is who Paul sees them as. They are people who are called to be holy and who are being made holy. We have been saved by grace through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, but we are also, and this will come out from this letter, we are also being conformed to the image of Christ. It is as that example that was given to us a little while ago of the, as we were going through the Bible study of the princess who had been made, or rather the commoner who had been made into the queen. She was given the title, but then gradually she was taught the courtly graces and made into somebody who everybody understood and saw was the wife of the king. They are the people of God. They are the saints of Christ and that because of their union with the Lord Jesus Christ. All of the saints together in their communal sense are being addressed by Paul. This letter would have been probably read just as we read it in the midst of worship and so on, and then copied and passed on to the other congregations, the other saints throughout the world.
The Dan Bongino Show
Caller: We're Doing Today What We Did in the 1970s'; It's Horrific
"The show. Hey, good afternoon, Kara. You know, my turn is this we are we're doing today what we did in the 1970s. So the 1970s, we tried to appease the Soviet Union. We tried to negotiate an arms agreement. We've lent them 80 billion dollars. We've raised the cost of oil today. We've given money to to Iran. We've raised the cost so the Soviet, so Russia is benefiting from more revenue. We tried to appease them. Our president reminds me of the character from Dr. Strangelove, Peter Sellers, the president, a mild and meager and timid man. Can I tell something? you We are spending right now the same amount of money in real terms on defense while China and other countries are there in a boom, militarily. And it concerns me that we're not getting prepared. When Trump was in office, he forced NATO to spend more. They backed away from that. You know, interesting that Harold Brown was defense secretary in the 1970s. He said something I always remember. I was in my 20s. And he said, these would be the Soviet Union arms agreement. He said, we build, build. We stopped building. They built. That's what's going on. Our enemies are not stopping. Our enemies are moving forward with their, they're bent on destruction and we're timidly sitting back letting it happen. Neville Chamberlain, World War II. Remember that, guys? We're there. Yeah. Thank you so much for that call, Alan. What a great commentary. That was, that was fantastic. You hit the nail head. on the Absolutely. I actually share your concern about what's happening. And you're absolutely right. Our enemies are building while we're voluntarily tearing down. Is China using green energy? No. What the hell can you use green energy for? You can heat and cool your house with it. Great. I live in California. I live an in area that is dedicated to solar farms. If you've never had the opportunity to see
Woz Happening!!!!
A highlight from Parasite (South Korean) (2019) Movie Review
"What's happening everyone, Keira and Ben back again. This week we will be covering Parasite. Now this film won in 2020, 2019, 2020, maybe I should look it up, but it won the Academy Award for Best Picture. It is a great film. Bong Joo Ho directs it. There is a lot of fun themes to talk about. So we're going to dive in. But Ben, what's your history with the film? So, again, it was a listener suggestion and you had told me that you had seen it and it was a great film. So I was like, oh, okay. And Bong Joo Ho is the director of, what was the movie you just watched with him? Anything Everywhere All At Once? Okay, so I forget what movie we watched. Did we watch the movie with him? All right, I lied. So we're not going to talk about that. I actually liked it. I thought it was good. I can't wait to talk about it. Yeah. So for those who haven't seen it, it is a story about wealth and class and I think they do it and the way that they paint it, I think they do it in such a good way. So basically it's about this one family who is lower class trying to make a living and how they con their way into working for this ultra rich family. And then obviously things are going good and then they go very, very bad. I will say that twist, did not see it coming. What about you? No, it was shocking like when the, well, I don't want to get too far ahead, but like when everything came about, I was like, oh, oh, okay. Like this is like something I wasn't expecting. And then like when it all came to a head, I was like, oh no. So yeah, it was a surprise. It was definitely a surprise. So the story starts off with, we have our main protagonist, I would say the son is our main protagonist. He's the one that kind of starts all this. He's the catalyst for a lot of this film. So he has a friend who was tutoring this family and he was like, yeah, just pretend to be a student and you should just like go and tutor too for this family. So his sister who, as we were saying off screen, was the best character in the movie. She so smart, doctors up a little diploma for him and he cons his way into teaching English to their daughter, their eldest daughter. So they have so this ultra rich family, it's a mom and a dad and then an older daughter and then a younger son. So now the brothers in the house and he's like, hmm, maybe I can get other people in this house. So first he gets his sister in claiming that it's actually not his sister and just someone that he knows who is an art therapist because the young son is spooked by a ghost that he saw in the house. So she's like, OK, I'll be I'll do I'll do this. And so she does that. And then to eliminate the driver and the housekeeper, they kind of pull these elaborate like schemes. So like they frame the driver for having sex in the car and then they explore I would use the word exploit. They exploit the housekeeper for being allergic to peaches by putting like shaving peach dust on her. And then when she's having a coughing fit, telling the woman of the house, the mom that it's tuberculosis, I was like and then the mom's like such an idiot. She was like, OK, bye. I don't know. I thought that was funny. So now the whole family has schemed and conned their way into the house with no one knowing that they're a family. These are just all they can't be bothered to ask. And OK, so I thought that this was really interesting because they can't be bothered to ask anyone that works with them anything about their life. Because if they did that, these people weren't smart enough to lie about their relationships. And I feel like their family would have been exposed way sooner if these people weren't such rich assholes. Oh, I 100 percent agree. Like there's one part where the sun says they smell alike. And I'm like, I'm like, because they live in the dark. So where they live is like this this basement, like awful place. And like people walk by and they're peeing in the alley and the flooded floods. And like they basically live in this like rundown neighborhood and it's just really bad. So like they all smell of this sewerage and like smoke. And like it's just like, like I said, it's a really bad area. So for the youngest son to catch on and well, the husband kind of says something about it when he says he has a smell to him about being the driver. But that's like the most he gets out of it. And then the son is the one that's actually pretty smart. That honestly made me so mad and sad that whole like poor person smell like that really pissed me off. OK, a lot of the things that family does like piss me off. So one of like the big the biggest like critical scenes that happens is there is a very big flood or not. I don't want to call it a flood, but it's like this very crazy rainstorm and their little basement apartment gets flooded. They are soaking wet and they're just like, I don't know. It was really sad because you can see that, like, even though they're like working and getting this money, like they're still stuck with like in their poverty because like class systems and like trying to like break out of poverty is so hard. Yeah, 100 percent. I mean, you can see the struggles even when they're getting money. But I think for them, a lot of it was the fact that they were just blowing the money. They weren't like trying to get out of it. They were just like, you know, so excited to have the money that they were eating lavishly. They were doing all this stuff instead of being smart about it. Like they were just like pissing it away. And like it kind of like catches up to them in the end. Agree. But at the same point, like I feel like if you didn't have money and like you weren't eating well and then you were exposed to that, like obviously you're going to treat yourself because like life is hard and like it is like sometimes about like the little things that are like that like make it worth it. And I think that like since they were in such poverty for such long, like being able to drink like this slightly nicer Korean beer and like eating like the better cuts of meat at barbecue, like I think that like that's like important because it's like a sign of like how far they've come. Obviously, they conned their way into it, but still so. And then I think like so back to like the mom and the smell. So I think one of the things that is like so indicative of how like rich people and upperclass people like don't understand poverty or like understand like the working class is when so they they their whole apartment is flooded. Right. And then the next day he's driving her and she's like talking in the back like, oh, we're planning the birthday party and the sun is shining and it's not raining and everyone is happy and like so crazy. And like, meanwhile, their apartments basically washed out and they've had a very traumatic night. Yeah, 100 percent. I think like the rich are oblivious to the poor. I mean, it kind of reminds me of the French queen where she's like, you know, they're like, oh, they're starving. And she's like, let them eat cake because she's so oblivious to like how it's going on, like what's going on with these people that for her, it's nothing. She's like, oh, whatever, just let them eat cake. You know, these people like starving and dying. She did pay for that comment, by the way, but she got decapitated for that. But, you know, I'm just saying like that's how like the rich get rich and the poor get poor and the rich overlook the poor because they're not in the same classes as them. So they don't see them. So they don't care. Agree. And I think too, like and I don't know, like they're so dumb and oblivious. So, OK, so let's talk about the fateful night of the rainstorm. Right. We've kind of talked about the flood. We talked about her arrogance. So what happens, though, is since they go since the rich family goes away for the weekend during this this rainstorm, the family decides to just move into the house while they're gone and just live in the house. Now, while they're doing this, they're having fun. They're eating food. They're being crazy, being themselves, being with each other. The housekeeper that they got fired comes to the door and she's like, you got to let me in. I got to talk to you guys. She discovers that they are a family and that they are conned and that she's going to she's taking photos. She's going to expose them. She's going to get her job back. All because, dun dun dun, they go down into the basement. First, also, first of all, like you wouldn't explore the house that you're buying and know that you have a bunker in the basement. That to me was like how how much money and how arrogant are you? You're like, oh, I don't go into the basement. That's the help. I don't do that. So there's a whole bunker in this basement that's kind of like kind of hidden. But like it's it's there. And this woman's husband is living in the basement because he's hiding from loan sharks. And I was like, what? So this is so she like obviously works in the house, feeds him, takes care of him. She snuck him in there to live so he could live there. And then he's actually the ghost that the youngest son saw. So one night he was like, I'm going to leave my cave. I don't know. And then he's like walking up the stairs. And honestly, I will say that scene is so well done. Like you see him just like slowly like ascending up the stairs. It's like all black and then it's just like the light of his face. And like, honestly, I thought that scene was beautiful because you kind of see it earlier in the film. You see it when the mom is walking up the stairs and she sees the housekeeper having this like fit, the like coughing fit. And that's not tuberculosis. It's allergies. And she's kind of like coming up the stairs. I like watching that like ascension. It's kind of like this like ascension to truth or like ascension to epiphany, which I thought I thought was really well done. Yeah, I agree. The husband that's in the cellar was actually the first owner. So he was the owner of the house originally. So he knew the bunker was there. And then the loan shots go after him. So he sells the house to try and get out of there. And the family takes over and he recommends this housekeeper to this family. But it's his wife so that they can have connection with her. So when she gets fired, she's freaking out because her husband's down in the cellar and he's kind of gone stir crazy because like he turns the lights on and off, like to tell the man thank you that's living in the house now. It's it's really crazy. But like the son ends up like thinking there's a ghost in the house because of this guy doing Morse code. Yeah. So he sees him and then the lights flicker all the time because of the Morse code, which honestly. OK, so then what I like about a film is when things come full circle. And this movie very nicely comes into a kind of a cool full circle. So now everything's coming to a head. The son decides. So in the beginning of the film, I forgot to mention this in the beginning of the film, the son receives a rock. It's called like the Rock of Success or like money rocker given to him by the friend that tells him to calm this family. And he's like, please like this is going to bring you wealth and success. So then the brother or the son looking at this rock of success decides that he's going to protect his family. They're going to keep their jobs and he's going to kill the man in the basement because at this point they have tied them both up in the basement and they because they have to get back to their jobs. And then I thought that part I thought was kind of weird that like also how oblivious are you that you don't notice a full family of people hiding under your table? So the family comes home from the because of the rainstorm. The family comes home. Our poor family has to hide in the house and sneak out, which I thought was very funny. And then that's when like we hear the conversation like about his smell, like he has that poor person smell. And then I thought it was so sad to when he like turns to himself and like kind of sniffs himself, like I don't smell bad. I don't know. That made me kind of sad. Yeah. And like it was kind of sad that like the lady that was trying to protect her husband, they slammed the door on her and she falls down the stairs, like smashes her skull and gets like a concussion. And then she ends up dying. Like she's like, you know, take care of yourself. You know, I have a concussion. I'm dying. You know, the husband is stuck down there with his dead wife. I mean, I was like, oh, my God, that's awful. Like, that's terrible. Like you just do nothing. He was tied up and he watches his wife die. So like when the guy comes downstairs with the stone to kill him and he turns it about on him, I was like, oh, you know, turn about fair play. Honestly, fair play, fair play. I would do the same thing. Also get me the F out of this basement. So now they're in the middle of this party where it is very culturally inappropriate for Native Americans. They're making the dad, the poor dad, the driver wear like this like crazy headdress. And like it is I mean, I guess that's what the rich do. They can just cherry pick parts of history that they like for the aesthetics and then they can exploit it and have fun with that at a birthday party. So this is happening. And our our what should we call him? Our captive, our prisoner, our ghost, the ghost, the man. He comes out into the party, starts causing all this crazy havoc, stabs the dad and stabs the daughter. And now the daughter who we've already established is the best character in the film dies. And then we see the dad kind of have his loyalty, not like questioned, but come into question for him, because it's like, you got to drive my son to the my son. You got to drive my husband to the hospital. And he doesn't because he goes to be with his dying daughter. Yeah. So like the guy that come out of the cellar, he's like trying to tell the owner of the house how much he cares for him after he just killed the daughter, like stabbed her in the chest. And then, you know, the father like of the daughter. Finally, like I forget what happens, but he said, oh, he says the owner of the house says that the guy smells and it triggers him and then he loses his shit. And then he ends up killing the guy that comes from the cellar and then he owes and he kills the owner and like then he runs off. And no one can find him. So now we have a dead daughter, the mom who's just fled. And we have an unconscious son in where is he? In the cellar. Yeah. So he's unconscious in the cellar. And then partygoers fleeing everywhere. And then in voiceover, we hear that he is regaining consciousness, trying to work and get enough money so he can buy that house because he goes and he sees the lights flickering. And what his dad is the new basement person and like a nice like German family, I think, like buys the house or something. So like I was going to con his way in. But so, OK, so that's like basically the movie in a nutshell. Obviously, we're going to talk about some themes in it. The biggest theme being wealth and money and success and what it means to be successful and what it means to have money and what you're looking for, like in life. So I believe, like in this film, obviously, when you are poor, your motivation is money. You want to be able to live. You want to be able to survive. And when you're rich, you already have that. So now you can deal with all the frivolous, stupid things of life. Right. That some people like are just don't have the time to like under not understand, but like to deal with because they're not thinking like, oh, I don't know, like, oh, we get to. Oh, our vacation was ruined because of the rain, but we can still come back to our beautiful home, like not like, oh, my house is underwater because I live in a basement apartment and it's flooded and I have nowhere to go. And my employer says that I smell like it's it's like two different worlds that they live in. Yeah, 100 percent. I think like people born into wealth are oblivious to what people go through in poverty. And then that's why you see like a lot of people that are born into wealth. Like they just don't understand if they lose everything, they just they kill themselves because they don't know how to be poor. All they ever know how to be is rich. And then you have the poor people that become rich and then they don't know how to be rich. And then they end up blowing the money like a lot of NBA stars, a lot of NFL stars. I mean, they have to actually have courses now and people to come in and help these NBA NFL players deal with their money because they don't know how. They're uneducated on how to make the money last. So they just pee through it and they buy these fancy automobiles, fancy houses. And then when it all says and done and the career is over, their money's gone and they end up having to sell everything and then they become poor again. And then they end up committing suicide because they've lost everything. So it's just a never ending cycle. It is. And I think, too, like, I don't know, I don't have extreme wealth. I work all the time. I live well within my means, I think. I mean, I am in crippling credit card debt, but that's because I'm addicted to shopping. So maybe I don't live within my means. I don't know. But I I don't know. So but I I wouldn't I I don't think no matter how much money like you get, it definitely has to be like a mindset that you're born into. Like you just like don't you just don't view things in a certain way. You kind of have this mentality like, oh, everything will work out and I'm not that worried and everything goes my way. And I'm like, I'm I'm like, I have all this money. I don't know. And I think, too, like you just become so arrogant and self -obsessed that like you do view people as like, oh, what do you do for me? How do you work for me? And like not saying that these people were like monsters to this poor family that they worked for, but like they didn't talk to them. They didn't get to know them. They didn't try to understand like any parts of them. They just were like, OK, you're here to work. And I don't know. I feel like it should have been. I mean, I've worked in a house before, so I I used to work in a home for a very wealthy family before I in my career now. And to see to to be working for someone and to see the amount of like waste and like wealth, but also just like, I don't know. I don't know how to like put it. But like there is just this like mentality of, oh, whatever we want, we can have. And like, obviously, like we're right because we have the money. I don't know. It was very it was very eye opening to me to be in a situation like that. And I and I learned a lot from it, but I felt a lot of parallels. Like, I don't know. Like, I don't know. It was very interesting to me. Yeah, I think that's why I like a lot of movies. Like when you watch them, they really hit home about wealth and poverty, like Brewster's Millions, The Toy, the movie with Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd. Trading Places. So you see these things and you go, oh, OK. And you like it and you you start laughing and you think it's funny because you see the person that's rich doesn't know how to be poor and the person that's poor doesn't know how to be rich. So like it's like it's like, you know, the flipping of the situations and like they're so used to being in a certain situation that they don't know how to act the new situation. Exactly. And like, I don't know. I feel like what was I just watching? I was just watching something and they were like they were talking about having having every having money versus not having money. And it was like, well, you're lucky to not have money because you have family and you have someone that like actually cares about you and to like share things with him when you have money, you just have things. And it's like, OK, I can I can see that. But at the same point, like you don't have to be poor and happy. You can have money and be happy. I always think that the two get conflated somehow. And it's like you can I don't know. I've met good, rich people, but I've also met rich assholes like that. Everything can be true. I just think I don't know. I just don't think that I just I don't know. I just don't believe I believe how money corrupts people. We talked about this in our last episode. And I think it just kind of sucks because they're every day that we live this in this world, the class divide is getting bigger and bigger. And the gap between lower class and middle class to upper class is is growing every day. And there's not like who thought trickle down economics was really going to work? Like, are we being stupid here? Yeah, I agree 100 percent. I mean, the divide is definitely there. I was just watching. I think it was called. But they were talking about like how it was about American Indian women being murdered and how you don't hear about it. But there's like a lot that get murdered because they're on reservations and the law is not the same as it is on, you know, in the country. But there's no focus on that because they're poor, like they're viewed as poor. And then like whereas, you know, the rich white person is always thrown into the spotlight, if there's a murder or if something happens to the child, it's always the rich children or the rich white people. And it's never like, you know, the poor black person or the poor Spanish person. It's never the minority. It's always the majority that gets the focus. And, you know, and that's true. I mean, and it's always going to be money over poverty. It's just always going to be that way until, like, I don't know. I don't know what can make a change. It's just, you know, maybe eye opening, like maybe the wealthy look down and go, you know what, maybe what was that movie with the Morlocks and Time Machine Time Machine, where the Morlocks were on the ground and they were like the the the people on top were living this lavish life. But in reality, the Morlocks were eating them. So, I mean, it's like society. Like, you might think you're living this power, but without the people that are poor, you wouldn't have the money you have. Exactly. And I don't know, like I have a lot of thoughts about this. And I think this movie obviously is framed like as a satire. Right. And but like the the ultra rich, like watch this movie. And they're like, oh, what an interesting movie. Not like, oh, maybe you should look at yourself and see what's going on. And also one thing. I mean, the daughter, I so sad that she died. Loved her. She was my favorite. But if she was as clever and as smart and as good at Photoshop, I feel like she would have had a better like like I feel like she could have just like conned her way into a better job than this like this like art therapist. I mean, but it felt like she did like actual real work with the son and like really was like trying to like help him and stuff. Yeah, I don't think in the beginning any of them wanted to be in this situation. But when the opportunity came, they jumped at it. So I think the daughter would have probably done something better with her life, had this opportunity not to count. So like, you know, it was an opportunity knocks. Are you listening? And I think that's the situation. Like they were like, oh, wait. And, you know, they even said it like, oh, we can all get in here. We can all get these people's money and we can all live lavishly. And it's a family. So you want to do what your family is doing. So, you know, it was the mother, the father, you know, the daughter. So they're all together as a family. And I think that was the thing that really bound them was the fact that they had that such a family tie because they came from poverty. They struggled together. They they did everything together. So like they did this together, which I really liked, because I think, too, when you live in a situation that is more that is more poor than what we see within the rich family, you do create those bonds because all you guys have is each other. Whereas in this family, they had art therapists and English shooters and drivers and housekeepers. And they're obviously they love their children. I'm not saying that, but there is a different kind of connection there when you're not always with them doing everything and like learning from them. Like, I don't I don't know. I feel like it's very I feel like it's a different kind of relationship. Not saying it's good or bad, just different. Yeah, I think it shows with the father when the child outside the tent and he's trying to bond with them and he's trying to be that guy. He's trying to be the father. You know, I think like always be in a way at work and always being in the office. It was like one of those situations where he knew he wasn't there, like he kept on like he says to him, I'll do whatever it takes to make my wife happy and I'll make I'll make these sacrifices. And it's the opposite of the movie we just reviewed, where where the husband had no desire to help the wife notice. This guy really wanted to try and be a father, try and do the right things. But he kept on like not being able to because he didn't know how, because he's been away for so long. I think that's what we saw with that. But the other father loved and cared about his family so much when, you know, when he sees that his daughter's dead, like he loses his mind. Yeah. Whereas in the in the film that we just covered, the dad never talked to his kids again. No, but this movie is very, very well done. I would highly recommend it. I know there are probably a zillion things that we have not even started to touch on with the symbolism. This movie is very rich and it's awesome. Like we can even talk about like the wealth stone. Right. So if we look at this wealth stone that he gets, it's like the success stone or whatever. And he like uses this and this is like his idol, basically. But what does it bring him? Nothing but tragedy. Like it doesn't bring him success or at least success in the way that he thought. It brought it to him for a little bit. But then ultimately he's lost. He lost half his family from it. Yeah. And it basically almost kills him because he gets smacked in the skull with it. And like, like I thought the amount of blood he lost, I thought he was dead. I was like, oh, he killed that boy. And he wouldn't have been wrong. Like the thing is, the guy in the cellar wouldn't have been wrong if he killed the son. He wouldn't have been because like they killed it. They killed his wife. And then like he wasn't wrong for anything he did except hiding being in the cellar and avoiding his his basically his responsibilities. He made a mistake. He messed up and, you know, he was scared for his life. He was fearful of this. You know, people that are loan sharks are coming to get him. But you know what? If you didn't put yourself in that situation, you wouldn't be in that situation. A hundred percent. And I think that, too, goes back to like poor, not poor people, but like lower class people, poorer people on that search for money. Like, obviously, you can be rich and be addicted to gambling, but you can also be poor and addicted to gambling. And loan sharks don't care either way. So he he got what was coming to him, which was like really sad. I thought, I don't know. I can't imagine living in a basement like legitimately like that. Sounds so awful to me. Yeah, you could tell he was probably like lost his mind because some of the stuff he was saying and he was just acting like, you know, someone that has been cabin syndrome. I think like he was down there for so long, he had cabin syndrome and he didn't know how to be the person he once was. And he was just so like he was appreciative of the guy having the house and having electricity. So he's flickering the lights to give him more school to show his appreciation. So he clearly lost his mind. But when his wife died, I think that was like kind of took him over the edge. Oh, 100 percent like that was the absolute like tipping point, because at least like he had his wife and we have to think he didn't see his wife for what, like four months or something or however long that she was out of the house before she came back in. Maybe not that long. I don't I don't time I didn't understand in this film. So but I don't know. I thought it was I thought it was really interesting. I thought it was really good. Definitely watch it. It's a fun watch. Like I said, it's Oscar winner. And don't be afraid of subtitles. We do a lot of subtitle films. I feel like we do more foreign language films than any other film. Yeah. And like it's been showing from our listeners like they appreciate it because, you know, Pakistan, Ghana, these are the countries that like, you know, they have great movies and like American society just like goes, oh, I'm not going to read subtitles. But that's stopping you from watching amazing movies like a who believe drive my car. These are great movies. And if you're not like, oh, I'm not going to watch subtitles, then that's you missing out on great opportunities because these movies have been amazing. There's a bunch more in the queue for us that are coming up that have been recommended from people from Ghana, people from India, people from Pakistan. So we look forward to this. And, you know, right now we're going to be taking a break from this. So your requests are still in the queues, but it is Halloween season. And well, you know what? Kara loves scary movies and Ben loves scary movies. So we're scaring the movies. All right. We're going to get some nasty, scary movies. We're going to review them and we're going to tell you how good they are, how bad they are. And we're going to do the whole ball Halloween. Yes, yes, yes. So all those things, please send a request. So if you have any good like hometown horrors that we wouldn't know about, though, the gorier, the better, the more vile, the better. We can stomach basically anything. Please watch this movie. And back to your point, Ben, real quick. When Bong Joo Ho actually won the Oscar for this, he did say if Americans can get past two inches of subtitles, their whole world would open up. And I full heartedly agree with that. I think this was if this was a movie that introduced you to foreign films. I'm so glad for that. It is an incredible film. Please check out some of the other films that we've covered on this podcast, as well as just like looking online because the strike is still going on. And our support is with the writers and the actors. Please access things that are that maybe have come out five, 10 years ago, maybe even a few months ago. Appreciate and watch those films that have already been made and created. And yeah, let's get let's kick off spooky season. Thank you guys so much for listening. Like we always say, we can't do it without you. We are here for you. Because if not, it would just be Ben and I talking at each other. So October 21st at two thirty, me and Kara will be live at the Lynn Public Library promoting my book Hodgepodge. So come see us. And that's all I got. Thank you very much for listening. All right, everybody. Catch us next time on What's Happening.
Woz Happening!!!!
A highlight from The Lord Of The Rings Verus The Rings Of Power
"What's happening world? I'm your host The Wizard of Woz, Benji Wozniak, and this week me and Kara are going to switch up and I'm going to be lead mic and we have special guest Dorvins who was on before. He's the movie producer. So what we're going to talk about this week is everything Lord of the Rings. Dorvins has a certain thing he wants to start out with so Dorvins take it away. Okay, so I think that the Rings of Power is utter and total garbage. It's the most generic thing on the face of the planet. It doesn't do anything in terms of inspiring you or providing anything of interest when it comes to the genre of fantasy. Which again, we all understand that Tolkien has had a very large mark on the fantasy genre. So the fact that this show based off of his material is so generic and so bland and so devoid of life is actually an achievement for Amazon Studios to achieve. Because they've sucked any kind of individuality out of this show. That's sort of what I think about the Rings of Power to start off with. Ben? Okay, so I actually thought the season one was just, it was okay. It was good. I mean, you needed to have this descriptive situation of the different races and how the Rings came about and the building of Sauron. And you needed this to continue like the first six movies. So you go back in time to figure out how this all came about, how he tricked humans, dwarves and elves to wear the rings and basically come under his manipulation. So I thought it was okay. I just think that it was a decent beginning. It was a season one. So basically you're looking at the introductions, the tellings of the tales. So yeah, it wasn't jumping off the screen like, Oh my God, this is amazing. But it was good enough to get to season two. Okay, look, Ben, this is not really the best kind of selling point you're trying to do here. You're saying that we would have to watch, what is it, eight hours of this show to get to the good stuff in season two? I mean, that's just not, I mean, most people are not going to commit that much time just for the hope or the possibility that the later seasons are going to be better. Like, no one's going to be doing that. And I mean, again, another show that released during the same period is set in a fantasy world with medieval culture and society as its backdrop, right? House of the Dragon had the same kind of issues. And you could probably say more issues leading into its release than the Rings of Power did because House of the Dragon was coming off of the heels of horrible finales for that entire series because season seven and season eight were not the best seasons of that entire show. And there is a large portion of the fan base was not happy how the show ended. House of the Dragon had an uphill battle. But I would say that House of the Dragon did a better job of introducing characters, giving you compelling drama, giving you incredible backdrops to layer on the scenes and just everything you would want in terms of good storytelling, visual storytelling, right? Because in the Rings of Power, besides all the other crap that they were doing, they were doing a lot of telling you rather than showing you what this show was supposed to be about. Because aesthetically, the show looked like a bunch of video game cut scenes and not that great cut scenes either. It just looked like it was just a hoshposh of a bunch of different elements and things put into one show to make it seem epic or to make it seem like it's that it has more gravitas than it does. Now, for me personally, I'm more of a Middle Earth fan than I am a Westeros fan personally. But when you compare House of the Dragon and the Rings of Power, honestly, there's just no comparing the two because House of the Dragon beats it wholeheartedly. Now, on another hand, what Rings of Power tried to do in order to hold on to the meagre viewers that it had towards the end of it is that the show constantly tried to mirror certain scenes and certain moments in the original trilogy and did it poorly. Now, there is a number of scenes that I can list here, right? But the things that are coming to mind initially is the things like with Isildur essentially having a voice in his head when we first meet him, sort of alluding to how, you know, the ring is whispering to him and trying to get him to do things that he doesn't want to do. And there's just a whole bunch of other things littered throughout the series that do that constantly where it's like, ooh, let me dangle this Easter egg or this moment that you're familiar with from the original trilogy without giving you anything of actual substance. It's like junk food, and it's not even that great junk food. It's bad junk food. That's essentially what the show is. No, it did. I think a lot of it was them thinking, all right, you should know who these people are already. Like by watching the other trilogies, you should know who Gladriel is. You should know who Sauron is. You should know who Gandalf. You should know these characters. I mean, Gandalf, of course, they haven't actually said it's Gandalf, but it's Gandalf. Right. But this is the thing. Even though this is a popular IP, a lot of the point of the show is to introduce this to either a newer generation of viewers to this particular show or this particular world, and also to appeal to anyone else who isn't familiar with the story itself. You're trying to get newer viewers because you know, I mean, they spent all this money to acquire the rights to this popular IP. So they know that those particular people are going to be almost guaranteed viewers to this, at least the first episode. Right. So the whole appeal is to attract new viewers because that's the same thing that Game of Thrones did when it came out. It didn't just rely on the core fan base of the books. It also had to attract outside viewers and spectators to the show. That's what made it a very popular show at the time. So the same principle applies to the Rings of Power. They can't sit there and assume that everyone knows what this particular show and what this particular series is about. There isn't a single IP out there that has that kind of totality appeal to everyone. You can say that there's probably a number of them, and I would say the Lord of the Rings is probably one of them, where it's like there's a mass appeal, as in there's a lot of people who know sort of what the story is about -ish. But going into the show, assuming that your viewers know what you're talking about, especially if you're trying to get newer viewers and newer subscribers to your subscription service, then you have to do the work of making sure that you cover those bases. Because I know it's shocking, but there are people out there who have no idea what the story of the Lord of the Rings is. And again, the show made it so obvious it hurts when it comes to the things like with the wizard that fell from the sky. Because again, we all know he's a wizard, okay? Whether he's Gandalf or not, or if he's some blue wizard, we all understand that he is most likely a wizard because he's coming off like a wizard. He has a beard, he has a like, I'm the old wise person, right? Even though he has amnesia or whatever. That stuff is totally obvious. And the other thing that's also obvious is how much we all knew that Howard Brand was Sauron. They made that so abundantly clear from the get -go, it hurt. It was like, you don't need to slap us that hard with that piece of information. At least make us work for it. Because everything with him coincidentally meeting Galadriel in the middle of the ocean, when they arrived in Numenor, him walking by a blacksmith area and you see the suspicious music playing in the background as he passes that. Because we all know that Sauron is very skilled in the art of crafts and craft making, obviously, because he did the ring. So when we see him pass by there, we're like, okay, now I can put two and two together. What you're trying to do with this guy? Either he is Sauron or he is a very close associate of Sauron. Someone we're very familiar with, right? So those kind of things were very, very obvious. Even if you don't know anything about the story of the Lord of the Rings in general, you know that this guy is most likely either not who he claims to be and is either going to be evil or is going to be turned into evil. But we know that he's going to go down a dark path. Like that was clear and obvious as anything could ever be. So that wasn't an issue. And oh man, and I blame you for this, Ben, because I had to watch the show again and I watched it on double speed and it did not help. But oh my God, the show felt like it went on forever. Everything just felt a sludgy mess that I had to crawl my way out of just to get out and away from a scene. It just took forever for anything to happen. And as an audience member, you should not be feeling that, especially with a story this familiar. You shouldn't have to feel like you're wasting your time in your life watching the show because things just did not happen. And I watched it again at double speed and it did not help. Well, I mean, of course it helped because I got through the episodes quicker, but it still felt longer than it should be. And that's just May I ask, it sounds like this series is chalked up to a lot of like poor writing and adapting from the original source material. Do you find if there was a different team behind it, it would have been better? Or do you think that these this story this prequel story that they're trying to tell is so lackluster that it doesn't matter? Honestly, it's going to sound like a bit of a cop out, but I think it's a little bit of both because the production itself had a lot of issues behind the scenes with a bunch of different creatives going in and out of the project. And usually when things like that happen, especially in big budget productions, it's generally going to harm the continuity of the story being told. There were so many people who either were let go or decided to move on because they can kind of sense and feel that the show that they're trying to tell isn't going to be faithful to the source material. And again, for me, I'm not like super hardcore about being super faithful to the source material. I'd like it to be as close as possible because generally you would tell a better story because we can see this mirrored again. I'm going to keep bringing up Game of Thrones as an example of this. Right. People notice that the better seasons of the show was when George RR Martin was involved in the show. Right. Because, again, he is also involved in the first season of House of the Dragon. Right. And it made a difference because you're sticking closer to the story of the creator of this world. Now, are we all realistically expecting them to do everything verbatim? The original trilogy didn't do that. It didn't do everything verbatim. But you get the initial story and the themes, the plot, the characters, all of those key things were intact for the most part. That's what's going to keep the attention of those who are fans of the books and will keep the attention of those who know nothing about this world that they're trying to create. With their production of this popular IP, they're going to put their own spin on it. Right. Now, people are going to be more open to the spin if it stays faithful to the core idea and principles of the story being told. Because if they don't, then why even buy the property and try and make a show out of it? If you're just going to change it into something else, it kind of defeats the purpose of what's happening here. In short, yes. I think it's both. Do you have any thoughts about that then? So I see what you're saying. I really do. I've heard numerous things about the production of this movie, this show. I heard that it was thrown together because a lot of people were saying that the Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit series was basically predominantly a white, non -female lead. They were like, oh, everybody in there is white. Everybody in there, the leads are women. So we're going to do this thing where it's going to hit that demographic of viewers. And I see what you're saying. It was thrown around and then other people jumped in and out. And I think they might have had a vision at first of how they wanted to do it. And then they felt pressured with all these things thrown at them. Like, well, wait a minute. We have to hit this demographic of people, this demographic of people. And it kind of got away from the original story, whereas they're more focused on like, let's have, you know, Gladriel is the star and then let's have this elf as the star. And you don't really know who's the star because it just bounces back and forth about who's the lead in this series. Of course it's Gladriel, but it didn't seem like it because I was more interested in the elf story than I was in hers, if that makes any sense. You know, like him being a ranger and being stuck on the plane, having to watch over Mordor and wait for the coming of the evil and, you know, watching the people that were Sauron's minions. Basically, they were people that fought with Sauron. So he had to watch them, but he ended up falling in love with the girl and the people. And then the people end up basically doing exactly what they thought they were going to do and go to Sauron's side. So I just thought that that was more of a story I was more interested in than Gladriel's brother dying and her wanting vengeance. And they kind of made her out to be like this not nice person I couldn't get behind. I was like, oh, you know, she's kind of like whiny, complaining. And she was supposed to be like this general of like the elves and like this really great leader. And then all of a sudden they get her like by herself and she's just like kind of wishy washy. OK. OK. Finally, there's something we can agree on, because I think that the portrayal of Gladriel was just it felt nothing like the original character. She wasn't ethereal. She didn't command the room when she walked into it. She was very bland and boring and very whiny, very entitled to think. The thing that I keep going back to and keep thinking about is how in the very same time period, House of the Dragon came out. They had similar issues where they were, you know, changing the ethnicities or the backgrounds of certain characters, right? Generally, people stopped caring about any of that kind of stuff, because, again, when you make drastic changes like that, they have to be justified. You can't just do it because you want to please a certain section of the audience. So House of the Dragon faced the same issues as the Rings of Power in a lot of ways. They managed to deal with those issues in a captivating and interesting way for the viewer, because who was it? The Valyrian? I forget his name, but his character was changed, right? It only added to the story because it made it very clear that Rhaenys, Rhaenys, Rhaena, Rhaenys, whichever one of the Rs, the daughter of the king, it made it even more clear to the people of Westeros that she had been unfaithful to her husband, right? Because she's about to be the queen of the Seven Kingdoms when her father dies, right? So it was an interesting addition. It made the plot and the themes that they were going for in the series a little bit more compelling and a little bit more clear for the characters within the show and for, of course, us watching the show. So it added to the story is what I'm trying to get, is the point I'm trying to get at here, right? Those changes to the story add something to the story. They don't just exist for existency. When you make certain changes like that in a story that are superficial changes, people are going to notice and people are going to be reacting to that because you're changing the story, A, and the changes that you're making to the story aren't really enhancing the story you're trying to tell. So naturally, people are going to be angry about that, because if you're not going to tell the story that you purchased all this money to tell, then when you make changes that do not work, just be ready for criticism. So, yeah, I mean, that's essentially what I have to say about that. And the thing is, is that all of these points that we're talking about, we only start seeing these things and start noticing these things and start nitpicking at these things when the story that is being told is not engaging. If your story isn't engaging, then you're doing something fundamentally wrong, especially if you have this ginormous budget at your disposal. If you're going to ask questions like, what's wrong with you? And where's the leadership in this thing? No, as a reader of the books, I see where you're coming from. I do. I see how they're supposed to be portrayed and how they were portrayed in the show. So as far as my take on the Fellowship of the Rings, so for me, I didn't like it. I know everybody's shocked at this. I didn't like it. I just I didn't like it. And I think there's a part of me that didn't like it because I was ruined on the Fellowship of the Rings years and years before when I went and watched this awful, awful Lord of the Rings movie where they had like it was animation and animation, like the screen in the background where they have the people walking behind it. So it just ruined me for this. And then there was a part in the Fellowship of the Rings where Frodo dances and it looked just like that part from the from the fellow the Lord of the Rings movie I saw. And then after that, I just couldn't get into it. I was like, I just can't. I just can't get into this movie because it seemed like they followed suit to that. And if you watch the Lord of the Rings cartoon that I'm talking about, Frodo looks exactly like the character he is now. So it was like they took the the cartoon person and they pictured someone to do it, Elijah Wood, and they just were like here. And they made him look exactly like they did on the cartoon. And it just it just ruined it. OK, I'm going to I'm going to do some pushback on this because I don't really see what you're talking about when it comes to Frodo looking like the animation animation cartoon. Although I will agree that Peter Jackson himself said this, that he was inspired by that film, can actually see certain scenes that he sort of expanded on in the trilogy itself. But to say that Elijah Wood looks like that cartoon, I just don't see the comparison there. Listen, he looks exactly like him down to the hair. If you Google him, if you Google him, you'll be like, oh, I see what you're talking about. He looks just like Elijah Wood. You know, I'm going to have you talk. Yes. So for me, the comparison doesn't hit all that well. I mean, obviously it's the same character being portrayed, but I would definitely think that Elijah Wood's Frodo was definitely much better than the animated version. Because, again, I can obviously understand the similarities in terms of some of the scenes you might see. And because I was watching them back to back, not back to back, but at the same time, you can kind of see the similarities in the scene structures. But yeah, I just I don't see when you say that Frodo is essentially like, I don't know, like a carbon copy of the animation version. I just don't I don't see that. I'm talking about the look, the hair, the dress. I thought it was like he just looked and said, all right, I'm going to get this guy to look just like this character from the from the cartoon and I'm going to put him in the lead. Fine. Let's just say that you're right about that. That the look is what is putting you off to the character, which I don't get because I would still look at the performance of the actor and the performance that he has in totality in the entire series and base my opinion off of that. But I'm just thinking, where's your criticism of that when it comes to the rings of power? I mean, every characterization down to how they're dressed, how they look was completely different from what we understand of the characters in the source material in the legendarium. They are literally night and day comparisons. So I don't get Elijah Wood's Frodo in the trilogy is comparable. Well, OK, I guess on the look fine, but I don't get how that is a major hindrance to to the Fellowship of the Ring. It's like, where's the criticism about how the elves are portrayed in the series? Galadriel, for instance, why is she not a ethereal? Why doesn't she feel like a being from another world? Why isn't she six foot? Why is it that the Numenoreans and their armor looks like it's some 3D printed crap attached to them? It's like, where's the criticism about that? Instead, you're going back and criticizing what I would almost say is a near perfect. It's probably going to be the best version of that trilogy that we get going back to the original trilogy and criticizing those minor, minute things. You know, these kind of criticisms I would have about the rings of power, mainly because their story isn't all that interesting. So I would go around nitpicking all this stuff because there is anything of interest in the story that's being told. So, of course, I would go back and nitpick on that. But with a near perfect adaptation of the series, the best around hands down, I find it hard to go back and criticize a manimation cartoon that came out in the late 80s or whatever and try and compare that to the to Elijah Wood's performance.
Thinking Crypto News & Interviews
A highlight from HUGE HBAR NEWS! FEDNOW HEDERA DROPP - COINBASE CRYPTO REGULATIONS, ARGENTINA BITCOIN + COREUM
"Welcome back to the Thinking Crypto Podcast, your home for cryptocurrency news and interviews. If you are new here, please hit that subscribe button as well as the thumbs up button and leave a comment below. If you're listening on a podcast platform such as Spotify, Apple or Google, please leave a five star rating and review. It supports the podcast and it doesn't cost you anything. Well, folks, I want to start off by giving you some perspective about all markets and bad actors and good actors. You know, quite often we hear Gary Gensler say there's a lot of scammers and hucksters and whatever else in the crypto market, right? He's painting the whole industry and asset class with broad strokes. But we know that's a lie and he's just gaslighting, right? But if you look at all markets, there are bad actors there. For example, UBS, one of the largest banks to pay $1 .4 billion for fraud in mortgage backed securities. So great example that even a established, fully regulated industry still has fraud happening, JP Morgan and all these banks, Wells Fargo, they all get billions of dollars in fines almost every year because they're doing something shady. And that is because in civilization and humanity, there are bad people looking to do bad things. So it's not that the technology or the asset class is bad, but rather there needs to be proper regulations and we have to weed out the bad actors. Now one could argue it's not possible to weed out every bad actor because we don't know what's happening in the minds of people. We're not mind readers, but we at least have to have proper regulations. So when you see the likes of Gary Gensler and others who are anti -crypto, gaslighting and putting out sensationalized headlines, don't be dismayed and realize what's happening. They're trying to put out a narrative. And we know crypto is here to stay. There are a lot of folks building with the technology. Are there bad actors? Of course, just look at Sandbank -Meerfried, right? But Sandbank -Meerfried is crypto's Bernie Madoff. So you just see these things when you line up all markets, you see the bad actors and of course the good actors. So a great example here. Now folks, Michael Burry, the big short Michael Burry, apparently he is running some shorts here and it's at a market value of $1 .6 billion. Apparently he bought $890 million of the SPY puts, bought $740 million of the QQQ puts Now, we don't know what the expiration dates are on these. So we don't know what the timeline is here, but he's looking to short the stock market and we'll see how that works out because look, he was right with the 2008 mortgage backed security situation and everything that took place there. He was absolutely right, but he hasn't been right every time. And we'll see where this goes. But I think he's seeing something on the horizon that what many of us have been tracking, many analysts is that the stock market is retracing. I don't know if this is a move to all time highs. I honestly don't know. I took some profits recently because I'm like, I don't know. I'll walk away with some money on my stocks, but we'll see what happens. And, you know, as far as the stock market and we know Bitcoin and crypto has been correlated to it, you know, Bitcoin is at a pivotal moment right now. So one of analysts tweeted out sideways at $29K has run its course. So it's decision time for Bitcoin this week. Is our next significant move up or down? You all know. I'm hoping it's upwards. Right. I've been sharing a chart with you guys for over a year now where we've been following Bitcoin's retracement. You know, certainly it's going to be a roller coaster ride upwards, just like it was in 2019. Nothing goes up in a straight line. But boy, I hope there's another leg up that takes us to, you know, 40K plus. And that will be a nice retracement move, at which point I'll take some profits. But there's no guarantee of that. And right now, Bitcoin is still holding support here with this trend line. But boy, like I said, guys, I'm hoping for another move up. We'll see what the catalyst may be, maybe some bullish news, some other big player entered in the crypto market. But let's keep our eyes on this. Hopefully it's not a dump. All right, folks, we got some very huge Hedera HBAR news. You all know I hold HBAR in my portfolio. I am bullish on it. I continue to dollar cost average, you know, not financial advice. Please do your own research. So here's the headline. FedNow showcases DLT powered payment system as service provider. The United States Federal Reserve's instant payment system FedNow has added a company powered by the distributed ledger technology platform Hedera Hashgraph to its showcasing service providers. On August 14, FedNow's official website added DROPP, a micro payments platform built on Hedera to its FedNow service provider showcase section. The section aims to connect financial institutions and businesses with service providers that can help them innovate and implement instant payment products using the FedNow service. Folks, this is really huge. I mean, the Fed endorsing micro payments provider that is built on the Hedera blockchain. That is huge news. If you hold HBAR, remember, they don't necessarily have to be using the HBAR token, but we're talking about Metcalfe's law, network effects, right? The more building on a network, the more adoption, the more participants, the stronger the network becomes, the more valuable it also becomes. And of course, in this digital realm that we live in, in the token economy, the native token will increase in value, folks, because the tokens grease the blockchain, right, help to process and fund the blockchain. So this is huge news. I'm very, very bullish on HBAR. Once again, not financial advice. Please do your own research. According to the FedNow site, DROPP is a digital solution that was made so that merchants can accept payments at low cost. The company uses DLT and regulated banking tech to build its solution that allows merchants to accept payments without paying huge transaction fees. While the new updates seem like the Federal Reserve is warming up to the DLTs, the FedNow service also wrote on its website that materials are only presented as convenience to potential FedNow service participants. So huge news, folks. And remember, the folks who are part of the governing council for Hedera, their global governing council includes Boeing, Dell, Google, IBM, LG, ServiceNow, Standard Bank, much more huge, huge brands. This is one of the projects I think will come out of the whole speculation bubble and enter the utility phase and be one of the crypto blockchains that have lasting potential. So I'm very bullish on this. All right, let's move ahead. We got some updates here from Eric Balcones of Bloomberg around Cathie Wood's ARK Invest crypto ETFs. So he said new filing from ARK for a digital asset and blockchain thematic ETF will hold equities. So this is interesting. Cathie, we know she's trying to get a Bitcoin spot ETF. She's in line with BlackRock and the others, but they're also looking to build new ETFs, too. So here, Nate Geraci of the ETF store said, odd filing, given how saturated this space is. He's talking about the equity ETFs. Wonder if there is anything to read into here regarding ARK's confidence around spot Bitcoin approval, which if it happens, these blockchain ETFs would face an additional headwind in terms of competition. So maybe ARK is not that confident. So we shall see. Look, I think it's certainly almost guaranteed that BlackRock is going to get approved because of their record and because they pretty much run the world for the most part. But let's see what happens. There's no guarantees here, folks. And look, there could be a buy the rumor, sell the news event around these ETF approvals. So just be prepared for that. If an ETF is approved, that doesn't mean billions of dollars are coming in overnight. They have to set up the marketing, the structures. They have to get the RIA's onboarded, right? It doesn't happen overnight. They'll probably need a few months. If you look at the when the gold ETFs were approved, it didn't pump instantaneously. It pumped maybe like six months later the gold market. So something to keep in mind, folks, and, you know, know how to strategize. So I think there will be, once again, a buy the rumor, sell the news event. Now, quick word from our sponsor, and that is Uphold, which makes crypto investing easy. I've been using Uphold since twenty eighteen, one of my go to exchanges, so I can vouch for this platform. They have ten plus million users, two hundred and fifty plus crypto currencies, and they're available in one hundred and fifty countries. You can also trade precious metals and equities on this platform. If you'd like to learn more about Uphold, please visit the link in the description. All right, folks, let's move ahead because we got Jay Coward Clayton. Yes, former SEC chairman that I call a coward because he's the one who filed a lawsuit against Ripple and ran out the door the next day. He did not approve a Bitcoin spot ETF. And of course, we know he was doing some corruption in the back room with Bill Hinman and Ethereum to get them the free pass, nothing against Ethereum, but rather the SEC corruption, because guess what? These are the people who are supposed to have integrity. They're funded off our tax dollars and they're supposed to be stopping the bad guys, but they themselves are the bad guys doing fishy corruption in the back room, getting paid millions of dollars. So Jay, of course, making his biweekly appearance on CNBC Squawk Box this time, he was talking about Sandbag Refreed and of course, the Bitcoin spot ETF. And of course, the Joe Kernen, Becky Quick, Andrew Ross Sorkin and these folks failed to do their job. No questions about the Ripple ruling. Of course, there was no question when he came on the show, I think last week or the week before, because they're clearly and probably Jay doesn't want to answer anything and they're kowtowing to that. So it's pathetic. It is not how a journalist does their job trying to bury a story when the man who filed a lawsuit is sitting right in front of you. Right. And this ruling, we know how huge it is. Members of Congress are using it as a president to push their crypto bills through and much more so pathetic. Jay's a coward. And of course, he doesn't want to talk about it. Pathetic. They won't even ask him the question. It's not like they ask him the question. He's like, you know what? Good for Ripple, but I don't want to talk anymore. You know, it could have been that much. But guess what? No questions. Zero, zero questions. So, you know, there's a big cover up. There's a big Jay is just a coward. Like, don't even ask me that question. So screw Jay Clayton. He's a coward. Let's move ahead. Coinbase launches nonprofit to advance crypto legislation to stand with Crypto Alliance will prioritize supporting and advancing legislation in the US that supports the industry and investors. The stand with Crypto Alliance is something Coinbase obviously is trying to get going and they want you to participate and sign up. This is great, guys. We need need more of this, more advocacy, more education, more getting the word out there so that we can bring more folks together and unite against folks like Gary Gensler and corrupt bureaucrats and regulators like Gary Gensler. So the alliance is a 501 C for organization under the internal revenue service, meaning it is an exempt social welfare group. The current discussion around crypto policy in Washington, D .C., between centralized players and other big groups. Kara Calvert, Coinbase's head of US policy, said Monday during a Twitter Spaces event, but the stand with Crypto Alliance hopes to bring new voices into the picture. Here's a quote. The alliance completely embodies exactly what the crypto industry is all about. Calvert said it's all about decentralized efforts, decentralized power, decentralized access. And that's, I think, really what the stand with crypto movement is about. So this is great. I love it. I wish more crypto companies would unite and do this. And get the once again, the word out there. Education is a big key in D .C., getting our representatives educated about blockchain and crypto. We're seeing more and more bipartisan support for crypto. So our efforts are paying off, but we need to do more, of course. Now, folks, there's some interesting news coming out of Argentina. So pro Bitcoin candidate Triumph sees Bitcoin reach historic high against Argentinian peso. So we got a presidential candidate. I honestly don't know much about this person, but, you know, a lot of people are bullish on this because his name is Javier Mele, if I'm saying that right, won the country's primary presidential race. He's pro Bitcoin. And we know the folks there are dealing with insane inflation. Many have been moving to Bitcoin as a store of value, as well as stable coins. So hopefully, you know, some things could happen here where they can maybe make Bitcoin a legal tender, something along those lines like El Salvador. But there is something else happening in the mix here. So Mele's unexpected triumph is seen as a rejection of Argentina's entrenched political establishment. The pro Bitcoin candidate became anti establishment after proposing the dollarization of the economy and call for the abolishment of the central bank due to the country's economic woes. So they want to certainly use the US dollar over the Argentinian peso. And I don't blame them. So this could be a really big move. And once again, this guy's pro Bitcoin. So let's see where it goes. Moving ahead, new indictment alleges Sam Bankman -Fried gave more than $100 million to politicians. Bankman -Fried and his associates donated across party lines to various candidates and political action committees. Boy, look, I am not a conspiracy theorist, but man, this guy donated a lot of money and it's probably why he's been getting the easy path, right? Being able to stay at home in his parents' house. And obviously recently they were like, no, dude, you're trying to, you know, game the system. He released Caroline Ellison's diary. So witness tampering and all that. And they were like, all right, we're going to put you in jail. So that's a good thing. He's in jail. But look, there are some people saying he could have an Jeffrey Epstein situation, if you know what I mean. And that wouldn't surprise me, folks. This man has a lot of dirt on politicians. He made them all look like fools, right? And that's, I've often talked about it. Optics is a big thing in politics. It's narratives and optics. So right now he's not making a lot of people look good and they want him gone. As you can imagine, like get the hell out of here, whether it be in jail or you know what else. So it looks like they may try to bring back some of the campaigns, finance charges that had been previously dropped, but we shall see what happens. And hopefully, you know, he sits in jail for a long time because he committed the crime folks. He's the one that was committing fraud. He's the one that was okaying funds, leaving FTX and going to Alameda, which was his firm. They were trading that money and losing it. So straight up fraud, as I said earlier in the podcast, he's the Bernie Madoff of crypto. But let's hope justice is served here and we'll follow this as it continues. Now, here's some not so good news. Coindesk lays off 45 % of editorial staff as an eyes deal to sell company. Look, it's not so much that they laid people off, but it's in conjunction with what else has been happening with Digital Currency Group. So Digital Currency Group owns Grayscale, Coindesk, Genesis Trading and much more. And we all know what has been happening with the Genesis Trading and Gemini situation. So Barry Silbert and these guys, it's not looking good. And I would not be invested or involved in anything Digital Currency Group, guys. If you're holding Grayscale shares, just be careful. I don't know what's happening here with this whole parent group and they could be in big trouble. So especially with the Genesis Trading situation and who knows if there's going to be cross contamination, the fact that Genesis Trading is in a hole and they are going to have to pull money and sell Coindesk and all these things, it's just a mess. So I don't think these guys are running the business well. Once again, it doesn't have anything specific to do with the blockchains or the crypto currencies, but rather, you know, the risks that you take and how you run your business. So we shall see. Finally, guys, our partner, Quorium, and I highly recommend you check out this blockchain. It is a third generation blockchain. They announced here new wallet integration. Frontier is now supporting the Quorium mainnet, prioritizing security through real time fraud prevention. It says Frontier Wallet offers a swap aggregator and cross chain bridges, a key partner to manage Quorium assets effectively. So once again, guys, check out Quorium. They're doing some great things and they got a new wallet support here. And I personally hold a Quorium tokens, not financial advice. Please do your own research. As always, don't blindly invest because you hear me holding a token or somebody else, any influencer or any YouTube or a podcast or whatever it may be, always do your research. So definitely check out Quorium. They're doing some great things. All right, folks, that's the news. Let me know what you think. Leave your thoughts and comments below, hit the thumbs up button and leave a five star rating on the podcast platforms. And I'll talk to you all later. Bye.
The Hugh Hewitt Show: Highly Concentrated
Chris Christie on His 2024 Strategy and America's Political Silos
"I'm back now with former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who's rising in the polls. Governor, how often are you in New Hampshire? Well, I'm just finishing a two day trip here. The last time I was here was about two weeks ago. And I'll be back in New Hampshire the next time after the debate on August 23rd. Are you competing in Iowa or are you focusing everything on the Granite State? I'm competing in New Hampshire. I'm competing in South Carolina as well. And that's where I'm spending the bulk of my time is are in those two states. Now, Governor, you did POD save America and I got nothing against those guys. They're wrong about everything. And I get under their skin. But I don't mind you doing POD save America. Why did you do it, though? Because I want to show those folks our arguments. You know, the problem with America right now, in one respect to you, is that we all stay in our own silos. You know, liberals won't come on Hugh Hewitt or Guy Benson or other shows that I think would treat them very fairly. And it would allow conservatives to hear what the Republicans, the liberal arguments are. And on the other hand, with folks like POD save America and others, I want them to be exposed, those listeners, to what the arguments are by conservatives like myself. And that's why I go on those shows. I went on Kara Swisher as well. I go on those places because I want those folks to hear our arguments. I am not ready to give up on the fact that Americans can't listen to other Americans they disagree with. We need to stop having negotiable truth to
Monocle 24: Section D
"kara" Discussed on Monocle 24: Section D
"I'm meily Evans. Frog is the creative agency arm of the global consultancy firm, Capgemini. It started out as an industrial design practice and has since transformed into an agency that uses designed to help a large roster of clients, including the likes of Apple. Monocles Helsinki correspondent petry butts off met up with frog's vice president of regenerative design, Kara pecknold, at the Arctic design week held in Finland rovaniemi. Techno began by recounting frog's history. Frog is over 50 years old. Back in the beginning, we started as a company that was predominantly industrial design, founded in Germany, over time we got invited to the table at Apple to help redesign the hardware of the Apple computers and that really transformed us and made us a much more globally recognized company. Today I would say we're doing a lot more things like digital and physical experiences, which we often call convergent design so that relationship between those two things. But we have people who are architects and our teams, we have people who work in various capacities like organizational design. So really reframing what the organization can do today. So it's a broad scope. We're much bigger, almost, I want to say 2800 frogs across the globe in 38 locations. So an exciting time to be part of the company. Your title is global vice president of regenerative design. What is regenerative design? It's a great question and it's probably more ambitious than anything. Regenerative design, if I could draw a two by two matrix and I would say sort of that bottom left quadrant is business as usual. And the center of that two by two is sustainable design. We've met our net zero targets, regenerative goes above and beyond. It means giving back more than we take. So that's a really complex system, but for me, it is ambition that we are starting to really look at nature as our key impact driver for the design we do and how can we make sure we're not just doing the bare minimum or the essentials, which is a sustainable future, but one that pushes us to a regenerative future, we take a lot of inspiration from regenerative architecture. We take it from regenerative, farming, and agriculture. It's really looking at how can you keep repurposing what you have and keeping it closed loop in your systems, keeping that design, not having any waste, if at all possible. Can you go into more detail maybe name some of the cases, clients that you work with and so our listeners get a better understanding of what this means in practice. Yeah, I think it means for us that we're really looking at how can we reshape not just the product but the business and the whole ecosystem. So we often talk about we're not just building products anymore. We're building systems. So an example of that would be looking at how we can build a solar home system and how do we really get not just a product, but how is that product modular? How can the materials that we use be more sustainable, more regenerative, more repurposed? How can we actually think about the take back system of that solar home system enabling people to be able to have it for a period of time, but have a business model that enables that to keep that loop going. So it's really looking at the entire ecosystem and this is an example of one. We do many others where we work with clients who are looking at new kinds of materials that reshape how do we design furniture in the future. How do we make a hotel or an experience really vibrant but also how do we make it sustainable and ideally regenerative? Next I asked Kara who has decades of experience in working with some of the leading global businesses if the companies of today have embraced the power of design more than in the past. Definitely, I've lived in Germany for ten years. And when I first moved there, I would say, you know, the Silicon Valley design thinking there were tours that people would take to look at how design thinking could impact their business. I think then we got to a place where Europe really started to gravitate to that and it blossomed. Now I think there are many courses. There's masters programs. There's trainings that are really transforming when I think ten years ago, I was having to maybe advocate a lot more than I am today. Today, people assume it's at the table, often they assume that design is a critical part of a good return on investment, a good experience for their customers. I think the people who are involved in client side are actually well versed in this space. I think where it gets tricky is to move from the design thinking to that design doing. Sometimes we can think differently. We can expand and open up many opportunities, but we're in a period of history, I believe, in the design industry where we have to think more in a more actionable way that can't just be we have lots of ideas and lots of creative ways to address this. We have to start thinking a little bit more practically about the fundamentals as I've said supply chain regulation impact on the land impact on people in ways that I think we liked to think about, but I think we are today much more aware of and much more activated on when it comes to answering these kinds of challenges. From monoclonal in the Finnish Lapland, I'm Peter Puerto. My thanks to Petri butts off and that's all for this week. If your eager for more design stories then listen to Tuesday's edition of Monaco on design, or if you prefer print, then pick up a copy of Monaco magazine on or could you stand now. Today's episode was produced by me, mainly Evans. Thank you for listening..
AP News Radio
Russian opposition activist given 25-year prison sentence
"A Russian opposition activist has been given a 25 year prison sentence. Vladimir Kara murza has been convicted of charges of treason and denigrating the Russian military, receiving the harsh sentence after a trial that marked the latest move in a relentless crackdown on the opposition Quran Mercer a prominent opposition activist who twice survived poisonings he blamed on the Kremlin has been behind bars since his arrest a year ago. He has rejected the charges against him as political and life the judicial proceedings to the show trials during
Marathon Training Academy
"kara" Discussed on Marathon Training Academy
"And even though I've had some really crappy experiences and I know the darker side of the sport, I still can get in that mindset of me being 14 watching Lin Jennings. And I love it. And so being able to commentate has made me feel like I have purpose and I really, really enjoy it. It makes me feel like I get to keep living my love of the sport. So it's been really fun. And plus, the podcast that you co host, the clean sport collective, and now nobody asked us with Dez Linden. So I think you've got a lot on your plate. I mean, plus another book here. Yeah, it's funny. If you ask my son, what does your mom do for a living? He's like a million things. She is a million jobs. And I'm like, none of them are that big, but yes, I hope to be involved in the sport until the day I die. I just love the sport so much. And I know what it can do for you. And I know what it can do for people and how it can change their lives because it's completely changed mine and even though some of it was negative. The overwhelming part of it has just been amazing and positive. So I hope to be like my grandpa, my 80s running on an alternate calling my grandchild will be like, yeah, grandma, we know. Yeah, by that time, every runner will have one. Everyone will have, you know, we used to have one when I was a part of the organ project, and then when I left, they told me I could keep it. So when I was running for Schumacher, I had one in our House. And then when we left to move here, we couldn't move it. And we were moving into a little apartment and everything. And so we gifted it to the bowerman track club. But I got to say, sometimes I wish I still had that. A lot of times, actually. I'm like, oh, sure would be fun to feel fast again. It takes 30 pounds off and let her rip, but yeah, don't have it anymore. I haven't had it for a long time. Oh, well, we've really enjoyed the book and this time talking with you. And we encourage everyone to run out, literally run out and get the longest race. You're going to love it. Yes. And when you said the book might get you fired, I think now people need to go read it. See what's in it. Yeah, it's funny. It's the truth. It's what I experienced from my own words. And somebody asked me as the book controversial and I said, no, it's only controversial if you think I'm lying. And then I guess it's controversial, but the reality is this is what I lived through. This is what I experienced. And I'm hoping that by putting this out there, the next generation knows they don't have to put up with that kind of behavior. Knows that they can be believed, knows that it's not their fault if something happens. And literally I say this and I genuinely mean it. I will fight for you. Yeah. Awesome. Well, if people want to connect with you online, Kara, where can we send them? Instagram or Twitter is where I do the most. I do read almost maybe I won't this week, just depending on feedback.
Marathon Training Academy
"kara" Discussed on Marathon Training Academy
"And of course, it didn't go anywhere. I still ended up being suspended, but it really was the beginning of me questioning. Do I want to represent something that I don't believe in? Has the same beliefs as me. But yeah, I was crazy because my picture was everywhere. Yeah. And a lot of it that was orchestrated by Nike, but I was not being paid. So hypocritical of them, they're using you as a marketing asset. They're expanding the brand to women and to pregnant athletes with you as the face of it. Right. And then they don't pay you, and they don't even tell you. No, they don't even tell me. And then when I was meeting with different people from Nike, they would say, well, you know, we pay you to run, not do appearances, and I'm like, but actually appearances are in my contract. So it has to have some value, or it wouldn't be in my contract, but also I was told, do what we ask you in this won't be an issue. And it was a big business learning lesson for me because they kept saying, well, I kind of remember that, but it's not in writing. But again, I thought that I was in this family and I didn't think I needed to get anything in writing. Alberta was telling me that I was fixated on money and I needed to just move on and it was just a really icky, icky time in my life, but that is when I decided that I would not resign with Nike. And it was still years away, but I was like, my contract's up, I'm leaving. And that was kind of the straw that broke the camel's back. So in a way, it was, you know, it was good because it kind of gave you that impetus to take your power back. But the fact that Nike still, I don't know what the terminology exactly, but if you decided to sign with someone else, they could match that.
Marathon Training Academy
"kara" Discussed on Marathon Training Academy
"Looking inside the mirror. Okay, we're on the podcast now with Cara goucher authored the longest race. Kara, welcome to the MTA podcast. Thanks so much for having me. Off Mike, I was just talking about how I'm such a fan girl. I started distance running in 2007 and so you were one of the first people I kind of started following in the running world. And you've just been hugely inspirational to me. One of the things we always like to ask guest is how they got started as a runner because everyone's story and the journey is so different. So maybe you could talk about that a little bit and talk about who were some of your early influences as you continued running through middle and high school. Yeah, well, my grandpa, papa, he got me into running. He took me to my first race, and he was a lifelong runner, actually this is kind of funny. This isn't in the book, but when he was in his 80s, he ran on an alter G and he called me and he was like, Kara, I just ran on this thing. You have to try. I was like, yeah, papa, I know I've been running on one for like 5 years. But he just loved the movement. And he's the one that got me into it. He took me to my first race and he loved to tell this story. I mean, the people at the retirement community would literally roll their eyes to my grandma would too because she's like so tired of hearing this story, but that he's the reason I'm an Olympian because he brought me to my first race and I fell and he thought I would be upset and said I was like everyone's getting away from us and he was like for the first time he realized I was competitive, right? I was always really shy and stuff. So he got me into running and I just looked up to him so much my whole life and he loved running and he wasn't eraser, which I think is kind of interesting.
Marathon Training Academy
"kara" Discussed on Marathon Training Academy
"As you can imagine, this would be really helpful for rehabbing and training through injuries, especially for professional runners. Basically, you put on a pair of these specialized shorts that attach to what looks like an inflatable structure surrounding the treadmill deck. I can't imagine how much they cost. Yeah, I'm definitely cost prohibitive for the average person. We don't have one in our basement. But I know a lot of rehab facilities do have them probably some college programs, and so I'm sure there's places where you can go and rent time on them. Okay, she also mentions the Foot Locker national cross country championships, like foot lockers like the Super Bowl of cross country. For high school runners. Yeah, it's a 5 K cross country event that is held annually in San Diego's Balboa park for high school runners. Basically the top ten male and female runners from each region, there's four different regions, are invited to the national championships. Some winners that people might recognize include Molly Seidel in 2011. Jordan has say in 2005 and 2008, dathan Ritz and heim in 1999 and 2000, Sarah hall in 2000, of course she was Sarah bay back then. And Adam goucher in 1993. Unfortunately, there are a lot of high school runners, particularly females that win Foot Locker, but then struggle with injuries and so forth during college. So there's a book about that called how she did it by Molly huddle and Sarah slattery. We had them on the podcast last year and they talked a lot about why the sport has in the past struggled to help these female runners transition to college into professional careers. Yeah, there's something called the Foot Locker curse. So if you ever run across that in the running world, that's what it is. She's also going to mention the U.S. 88 usada, which is the United States anti doping agency. And then of course, the Nike organ project real quick Angie, what was that? It was an elite training group created by Thomas Clark of Nike and Beaverton, Oregon, and it was coached by Alberto Salazar, basically Clark was unhappy with U.S. distance running results after there being few top performances by American runners in a couple of decades. And so the training project started in 2001 and was closed in 2019 after an investigation resulted in the ban of coach Salazar. Angie real quick, let's share who is Alberto Salazar. He is an American distance runner who won three consecutive New York City marathons in 1980, 1981, and 82, he also won the 1982 Boston Marathon, which is known as the famous duel in the sun, where he and dick Beardsley were battling it out on a super hot day in Boston.
Ethereum Daily
Cairo 1.0 Is Here
"Released the first public version of Cairo 1.0, an upgrade to the project's native programming language for writing stark provable programs, developers can now write compile and test Kara 1.0 programs. The release includes a new rust inspired syntax and enhanced features for writing code that is efficient and safe. Chiral 1.0 also includes Sierra, a safe intermediate representation layer between Cairo 1.0 and chiral bytecode, Sierra provides a robust denial of service protection and censorship resistance for stark net in the coming weeks, starting at alpha will upgrade to version 0.11 .0, which will include support for deploying Cairo 1.0 contracts, some features from older versions of Cairo are also not supported in Cairo 1.0, but will be added in the coming weeks. Cairo is also used for building applications on stark net Star Wars permissioned layer two network with over a half $1 billion in total value locked, according to DeFi Lama, Cairo is the fourth most used blockchain programming language. The privacy
hacker1337
"kara" Discussed on hacker1337
"Unlimited, it's really a field where the opportunities are amazing. I mean, there are plenty of ways of doing business in that industry. It's really something that the economy will be a great change for our country. And when it all starts being completely working in enough fluid is very. Modern. You know these kind of weird because I don't know how I'm looking at CBDC, CBD co dot com, and they're saying that in your authorized 40 companies to operate with industrial hemp. And that the Euro allows hemp crops to contain up to 1% THC giving them a competitive advantage compared to most other countries. I mean, Kara is in our country like for him, but you have zero zero 8 or some of THC. Percent THC is allowed for hemp derived. That's good. But it's by weight ratio. So if you're working with edibles, then you can wait, you can make the ratio to CBD to THC higher like 100 or 100 milligrams of CBD to ten milligrams of THC is okay. And I think it has to be a ten to one ratio or more to be able to be legal federally. I want some skin care from your reading. They have 1% TAC in their stuff. That sounds fun. Yeah, I know somebody who is actually. Part of what is called a club of travel cannabis that they're call it where people can be part of that because also itself out of our cultivating for self consumption and cannabis is allowed with certain limits. And there are certain crafts where they have other.
Daily Whispers
"kara" Discussed on Daily Whispers
"That torch. We become the torch for others to see all. Look at Kara yes Kara, Kara, I need to tap into your daily whisper today or care can you point me somewhere, I'm not talking about I'm just talking to myself here. We need all of us to be torches. And it starts right here with you. So I know that I'm kind of blurting out a lot here in these last couple of days, but I need to get this out. If you're going to spend money, right? If you're going to buy and consume out there, put your money into building up your core practices, move, nourish sleep, connect, explore. If you are going to consume out there, let's stop consuming crap and filling our houses with more stuff. Let's put our money into building. Building the rocket ship, our own rocket ship. Fueling it up. I getting the engine revved so that we can be launched so that we can be of service out there. This is it my work is to help you to share with you these mental, fitness core practices. Move, nourish, sleep, connect, explore every single day. That's what I'm here to do. You're going to be here, you are here with a unique expression. I'm not here to tell you what that is. The most productive thing you can do is to focus in on your core practices every day. The room of your own? How am I going to move? How am I nourishing myself in supplementing? I am big on supplementing because we can't get it through food alone. How am I sleeping? How am I connecting every day? When do I know I need to connect in? And how am I exploring and challenging? What I already know. How many stretching myself? That's all. That's all I have today. Next week, I'm going to break all this down. We're going to take it to another level. For today, grab the mental fitness protocol. Just go to the show notes, opt in. That way it gives you a good, starting place. For knowing how to get these practices, these core practices launched. Share this with a friend, that's all I ask. Thank you. Thank you for being here. I am so pumped. Let's go..
Home Gadget Geeks
"kara" Discussed on Home Gadget Geeks
"And overseas product development for Kara water. And Cody, welcome to home gadget. It's great to have you. Jim, thanks for having me. Appreciate it. We are looking forward to getting into the nitty Gritty here. Yeah, you know, the device we're going to talk about your car pure device fits right into the home gadget geeks world. This is one of these things where seeing more and more of these kind of water, water purification, and in your case water creation devices make their way, they're getting more sophisticated, they're getting more gadget, they're getting apps associated with them. Whatever, right? Ed Gallup. We just had a summit last year. We gave everybody these water bottles that tracks the amount that you drink, and then it buzzes you during the day if you're not drinking enough water, those kinds of things. And so you're in the water business. Let's take a second to get to know you a little bit. Can you give me a little bit on your background and just a little bit of how you ended up where you're at today? Yeah, totally happy to. So now my background, I'll start with my professional career. Before I transitioned into car water, I had always wanted to be an architect growing up. And I went to school for architecture, which is actually where I came up with this idea for car water when I was in my second year, myself were here. And when school for architecture, graduated, and then I went to work in New York City. Luckily got a great job at one of the biggest firms KPF and was able to work on the largest project. The largest development in New York history since the Rockefeller center, which is Houston yards. That was straight into the fire, but it was great. Good learning experience did that for two years. And then I went to had an opportunity in London. It was actually like a temporary placing somebody who was supposed to be permanent person. I ended up becoming the permanent person. Stayed there for four years. And London helped build out the first ever international branch from my architectural consulting firm that I worked for. I was 22. And helped build that out client facing production admin hiring, whatever you could think of. I had to do it. And did that for four years. In 2018, I replaced myself as I wouldn't say I was director, but I was director. I didn't want to be because I went to a full-time on car water. Hired the director. And then left the company to go full-time on car water. And that was again 2018. 2019, during 2018, I took a lot of time to really, really develop the company, no longer just the technology over the previous years. I had spent a lot of time developing technology, I spent 11 years doing this so far now. So it's been a long week coming. So really happy to get here. Finally. Yeah. You released a product on IndieGoGo late last year, right? And it's now, and we're going to talk some more about that. But congratulations, it's not easy to get a get a product all the way from an idea to a concept to engineered to develop built deployed sold, right? All those things, are you sleeping at all? Are you getting any sleep? I mean, you know, I was just saying, I want to get my first tattoo to commemorate all the nights and evenings and days and years that I didn't sleep. Yeah, well, let's talk a little bit about this. Let me show this device so people know what we're talking about. Just streaming the video right off your website at Carl water. Dot com. Can you talk a little bit about this device that we're seeing here? Yeah, I would love to. This was actually our first ever professional video that we did. And I remember I had to find the actors producers, find the editors, all of it was fantastic. Find their location. It was great. But the product itself car pure takes humidity from the air and produces alkaline drinking water from it. So alkaline mineral drinking water from it. And again, that was by choice. Primarily it produces drinking water purely, but we wanted to make it a very, very healthy drinking water as people just don't drink enough water. So we wanted to make sure you're getting something good when you drink it. So the technology itself is really, really cool. I mean, we can get into a little bit later, but two different ways to do this. There's compressor, which is like refrigerant so you get to the dew point by lowering the temperature and you condense the water. We use desiccants. And the desiccant is like a little packet of your shoebox that keep the box dry. And that's a natural phenomenon that an accidental oil force is to like a magnet, positive and negative water, and the molecule attaches to the track like a magnet and it captures the water out of the air. Just from airflow. So that's what we employ such highly sustainable, a lot quieter. And it's also a lot more affordable compared to the technology itself there is just better for the environment, which is great. Now, wait a minute, those little packets that we get inside of our tech gear to keep things those aren't snacks. I thought those were snacks. Yeah, it's funny. I thought about the same thing when I first started doing research into this technology. And you know why they say not to eat it. It's not that it's not that it's silica silica, it's not harmful. It's the most abundant element on earth. What is harmful is that they add cobalt to silica. So it turns blue. So that you know it's wet. So the cobalt is actually what's harmful, not the silica. Is the harmful process? Well, that's my kid said that joke to me at Christmas time. That we opened something, one of those packets fell out and they were like snacks. And we all thought that was the funniest. I had never heard that before. So when you mentioned on the website, you mentioned this kind of the alkaline or the, what is that? Why is that important? Why can't it all water the same? But why is that? That's a great point. You know, we always have to defend that point. And I, myself, I'm not a bad person. I'm not a person that likes to do trendy things. I don't wear name brand anything. So when we understood that what people were looking for was healthy water. And we looked into it and we see that there's the essentials of the world. There's the Fiji waters of the world and these guys sell a 1 million 100 $1 million a year. Blah blah blah. And if that's who we got at work, if that's who we're competing against, you know, to reduce plastic all the waste, we had to match that, right? So we did some deeper dive research into alkaline water. And I don't mean by WebMD or health magazine. I'm talking about scientific studies that were peer reviewed. Creditable sources. And I wanted to make sure that I could defend any claim that I put out there. And I didn't want to put something out that that wasn't defensible. So one of the claims about alkaline water and the ability to reduce the acidity, the acidic environment in your body. This is the simplest way I like to put it. You know, if you eat acidic foods, drink a lot of coffee, eat a lot of meat, get S reflux. You get heartburn, right? Plain and simple. We all know this is a common thing. The inverse of acidic is alkaline. So if you drink a lot of alkaline water or have an alkaline diet, you reduce the acidity in your body, which can reduce heartburn, which you can reduce as a reflux. It's the most simple way to explain it. When it comes to the ability to have an alkaline diet or drink alkaline water, there's tons of other benefits. That's the easiest way I like to explain it. And is there any processes? Walk us through kind of from the because you're pulling this out of the air. I mean, what if I'm in Arizona? And it's a naturally dry climate. You're there in San Francisco. You have the benefits of the fog rolling in on a fairly regular basis. It's pretty.
America First with Sebastian Gorka Podcast
Kara Frederick: Companies and Government Are 'Ships in the Night' When It Comes to National Security
"Companies aren't thinking about national security. Governments are companies thinking about profit margins and liability. As a result, aren't you always going to have a lack of capacity to actually speak the same language? I think you're right. I think you are right. Because one thing that I learned at Facebook is they cared first and foremost about three things that bottom line at all costs growth. Again, at all costs, and then their brand and reputation. But the American government, they have a charge of securing the homeland for the American people. So you're right. They're always going to sort of be ships passing in the night in that regard. It is that brand and reputation element. I think that makes them sort of think, okay, when we have our true liability considerations, we can lie and work with the government because we want our brand and reputation to be solid. We want to be able to say if there was any sort of operational planning conducted on our platform by a foreign terrorist that we did our due diligence. We investigated it. We made sure to the best possible degree that this couldn't happen in the future. So I think it's very important for them from a liability, brand a reputation standpoint, and that's when those goals converge, but only
America First with Sebastian Gorka Podcast
Kara Frederick on Identifying Security Threats and Tracking Bad Guys
"First things first. Let's talk about the state of play, staying open source how good or how weak is the collaboration between government, the intelligence community, CT professionals and the private sector when it comes to identifying threats to America and tracking bad guys. Are you satisfied where are we at? So my knowledge is a bit stale. I left Facebook in 2017 and we were actively building out that apparatus since going to a smaller national security think tank called the center for a new American security. I'm now at heritage, but I cut my think tank teeth at a smaller national security focused one. And what I advocated there for was more integration. So not just integration at higher levels where you have formal appointees and liaisons in the top offices of some of these intelligence agencies, but mostly on the ground. So when we worked overseas with places like you mentioned before, when we were doing our counter terrorism operations overseas, we had these fusion cells that we would call them. So we would integrate analysts at the lowest levels. And that exchange of know how that information sharing that trading of best practices, I found that that was great and very organic at those levels because the higher you get the more strictures there are on what you can and can't say. People are very concerned about keeping their jobs and their reputations and the next place that they go. So I found it to be a lot more there was a lot more utility at the lower levels, analysts to analyst exchanges. So
The La Jolla Cosmetic Podcast
"kara" Discussed on The La Jolla Cosmetic Podcast
"So there's always times that patients will bring to my eye that there's a line that bothers them or there's something that I didn't particularly even see. So at that point, it's like them guiding me is what I like to start with. And then we can look as a whole of the facial symmetry as well as kind of trying to balance out things that we can do to help with their overall goals. So I was just reading one of your reviews. And they said, this was my second visit, saw Cara both times. She was so knowledgeable on what she was doing. She was careful and precise. Kara has such a welcoming effect and very comforting aura made me feel comfortable with receiving lip fillers and absolutely love the results. Carrot is amazing in her work and made the whole experience for me easy and comfortable. I love hearing that you make them feel comfortable, because I think if it's your first time getting a filler, you can have some anxiety. And so it's really nice that you have that kind of calming presence that makes them feel comfortable while they're having that procedure. Thank you. I know my stepmom was when she came to visit recently and we did some threads and filler on her. She goes, how do you know? Because sometimes when I would inject her, I'd say, it's gonna feel like I'm in your tooth. Give me a second. And she'd say, you know exactly what it's going to feel like. 'cause I've had it done, too. So it's nice having procedures done yourself because then you kind of can firsthand tell patients, you know, this is what you can expect. And I really am conservative and I think that gives patients a little sense of relief of knowing that we can always have them come back to do more if necessary. And I really appreciate that patient sleep good reviews like that because that's nice and makes you feel like you're doing the right thing. They're happy. Yeah, I'm scrolling through and you have a 97.6% patient satisfaction rate. There's all 5 stars. I just scroll down the whole page. It's pretty amazing. Thank you. So, yeah. Well, we are lucky to have you on our team. So last question, which is for people who haven't maybe listened to our podcast before. If you subscribe to our podcast, you'll get $25 off of 50 or more. All you have to do is just show us proof you subscribed. And so if you had 25 off of 50 Kara to spend, in the med spa, what would you.
Out of Bounds Podcast
"kara" Discussed on Out of Bounds Podcast
"Time to get extra work done if the weather is that bad. Where keeps you pretty busy? The dog always entertaining. I was joking, I don't need TV because I have a dog, whether he's, you know, whatever acting silly outside or hanging out with me and so it's usually quite entertaining. So I do want to shove look sometimes, not a lot, though. Sometimes I'll download movies if I'm off grid with no service for a while. So I can have, you know, sometimes you just want to take a load off and watch a movie. So that's nice. But I don't ever find myself awards, like ever. It rains for multiple days. I get antsy, but I always find something to do. Oh yeah, and I forgot baking. I finally got a stovetop omnia oven to Swedish company that makes these circular ovens and it is amazing to be able to make brownies and stuff and what else might make, oh, I made a cake the other day for someone's birthday. So it's really cool to be able to bake again in the band. Yeah, for anyone listening doesn't follow care for any other reason. Follow it for her baking because she makes Gourmet meals on this, I don't know what it is. It's a stovetop oven is what it is. But it's at Carolina, right? Yeah. Yeah, oh sorry, the dot caravan. The dot caravan. Kara with a K for anyone who doesn't, I don't know. I assume cares are the K but some people. A lot of people you think it's a Sierra. I think I'm Karen or Caroline or other variation, but yeah, I frequently post some recipes and I have an instant pot too. So if you have a van and you want to do some more, I guess involved meals. The instant pot is amazing the mini one has hardly any power draw. So I was kind of surprised by that and you can make so much in there. It's amazing. What's your favorite van meal?.
Out of Bounds Podcast
"kara" Discussed on Out of Bounds Podcast
"Camping, which is so nice that the forest service does that. And it's great that for the most part, people who can't they're in the summer keep them clean. There's never any trash around the one I stay at. Love bend. But usually like I was just in the saw tooth and I stayed for like ten days, did some hikes. And a lot of things drive you out of a place like the weather, smoke has been weird the last two years. I feel like the first year in a deal with it much last year in this year, the smoke is really determined where I go. And then sometimes you get that feeling like, okay. I've been here long enough and you just need to change its scenery because it gets to be kind of get like cabin fever if you're in like one camp spot for a long time . Do you feel like you're always on the move or do you feel like you are, you have a sense of home with the van? I think I found a good balance. When I first started, I was like a classic thing that a lot of people do, and they start out. They're like, I got to go here and here. And then I'm going to go to this band life gathering. And on the way, there's like 16 stops I'm going to make and I'm going to do it all in like ten days. And, you know, it's only like an actual 8 hour drive here, but he's like things. You have to stop and have like a day to work. And a day to go, do laundry and ends up taking so much longer than you think. Like laundry grocery shopping, water filling and all that stuff. I think that goes back to you not being on vacation too. This is your life. So it's not it's different when you like if someone rents a van and they have ten days to pack it all in. Which totally makes sense 'cause if you're on vacation, you're not working. You have like all your time dedicated to recreating and doing what you want. So yeah, that's totally different story. But yeah, when you're living in here and oh yeah, just to clarify, I actually only worked part time. So I work about 20 hours a week. So that's hats off to these people who live in vans and work in actual 9 to 5. I met a gal, who primarily is in the West Coast. Her office was on the east coast. So she had to work on east coast time. And she had to be like online the whole time, like 9 to 5, so 6 to two..
Out of Bounds Podcast
"kara" Discussed on Out of Bounds Podcast
"Questions, but I don't know where they are anymore. So we're just going off the top of my head. No, let's just keep this shit and chat. How long do you normally what we're talking about? What's that? I was gonna say, well we're talking I'll drum up some the good stories in the back of my head. Oh, it's all good. You're doing great. You're doing great. How long do you because when I'm in the van and I spend 70% of my year in the van? And I travel a lot for work via hotels, but where do you stay and how long do you normally stay where you are? Because when I travel in the van, I'm chasing snow. So I stay in the van for like, I'll go to different ski resorts and that's what I'm chasing. But you don't have I mean you're a climber. But yeah, I'm chasing snow. So what's the longest you've stayed somewhere? Do you stay somewhere for like three months and just live there? Or how do you manage that side? It's around the gamut. Yeah, you have a really an interested to hear. I'll have to listen to some of your podcasts with the skiers who do what you do and chase the snakes. That's like almost a completely different lifestyle because you're not like, you know, van doors open, chilling at a camp site when you're banning too. It's totally different. So I was looking at some of your past episodes and I was actually like, oh man, I'm not a mountain biker skier in my lap to be honest. Yeah, but that's why it's fun because I think and we talked about it. We talked about it a little bit prior to recording. But you're a super normal human with a really normal desk job. And the best way. I mean that in the best way. I'm kidding. But sure, a pro skier can do this or a pro mountain biker can pull this off. But I think your story is so interesting because you're like the rest of us who have normal jobs. You have like a 9 to 5, and you can make it work. You don't have a bathroom or a shower. And we talked about it. But you're a taxpaying citizen who doesn't make their living by having fun. We all pay tax and quote unquote. But that's why that's why you're on here. No, I get what you're saying. You're totally relatable. Career. Yeah..
Out of Bounds Podcast
"kara" Discussed on Out of Bounds Podcast
"Like it's tight. Yeah, so he was very aware of that when I was building the van because I didn't want to be tripping over him and, you know, him feeling like he didn't have his little space 'cause he loves to burrow. He likes he likes being in small spaces. So I built him, there's no video, but I'm sitting at this little booth and table I have and I made under the table, his little cubby. So it's like a perfect four by four space probably, and he's a 65 pound dog, but about 65 pounds compacted into a lot of muscles. He's not like a huge dog. He's kind of stout and smaller. So he fits perfectly under there and he's currently in his little fleece jacket and under his police blanket, just enjoying himself in this 50° weather today. So it's not too bad. The only thing is when it gets too hot, I try to chase like 60s, 70° weather, but sometimes you're just stuck in a spot on the heat wave comes through the other day, craters of the moon, national monument. It was, well, I haven't talked this much in a long time. So part of me. I'm gonna grab some water. That's another thing about van life. When you been off grid for a while and haven't interacted with people for like a week or two and all of a sudden, you know, you start talking to someone who pulls up your trips and you're like, not used to it or have to jump on a work clock because I'm really on work calls. It's all emails. And chats, so it's really catches you off guard sometimes. And you're like, wow. I'm not used to having this much. This is perfect. Anyway, brain for what were we just talking about? Chasing warm weather versus cold weather. Right, right, right. So creators of the moon, it was 92°. And I can't take him with me around there because it's the national monument. You can't take your dog in national parks or monuments or any national whatevers. So I was just hanging out in the van. It was smoky as hell, too. 90 some degrees. There were like flies everywhere. Turns out the campsite that I pulled up too. I didn't realize the later had a half rotten deer carcass sitting there like 30 feet from where I was parked. And that was already like settled in with all my coffee stuff out and like the window shades in the driver's seat and didn't feel like packing up and finding another one. So there we are. 90°. Just chilling in the van, you know? Trying to wait it out. But there are that being said, there are tons of things I can do to make it bearable. I have one of those max air ceiling that fans. And when you put that on a 100% power, I think somebody called it ludicrous mode, which I thought was hilarious..
Out of Bounds Podcast
"kara" Discussed on Out of Bounds Podcast
"We've been chatting for a minute and I've been recording for a minute. But let's just backtrack a little bit so people know who you are. Yeah, yeah, we're just launching into the first one. We're just the intro shower talk. Tell everyone kind of who you are, what you do for a living and what kind of wire on here, what led you to van life yeah, my name is Kara, and I am from Baltimore, Maryland, where I spent most my adult life, originally from upstate New York, actually. But I lived in Baltimore for 7 years and really realized how much I enjoy the outdoors and hiking, climbing the mountains and there's just not that in the Baltimore area. You might get some in western Maryland, but I just kind of realized it wasn't my place. And my friend, I'll give her a shadow of my friend Catherine, took me to rock climbing gym, and they're in a bunch of people who either lived in vans part time or full time and I really developed a love for climbing there. And realized that I could, you know, do this my job remotely. And go travel and get out of this area that isn't really for me and explore the west. So I felt like I was always shoving my vacations out west into these two, three week sad periods of time for vacation. And web designer and developer. So that's obviously a job that I can do remotely. And I just went for it. I bought a van one day, brought it home, empty. It was like the wildest feeling driving that home was like well I'm really, really jumped on this quickly. So I just began building it out with still with a full-time job. I was working at Stanley black and Becker, a tool company, so that was quite helpful to get free tool rentals as an employee. And take them home,.
Out of Bounds Podcast
"kara" Discussed on Out of Bounds Podcast
"Hey, everybody. It is your host, at mister max. And this is the pursuit podcast on the Audubon's collective. Last week was wild, I hope all of you guys listened, John krumm show, deep cuts. We're getting really serious on the network. Amazing stuff. I mean, that guy is tackling stuff that real real topic. So if you haven't listened to John's podcast, please listen to it. And then we have big stick energy. Everyone's talking about big stick energy. It's one of those things that it started as a joke. Yeah, big stick energy. But they're using the girls are using it for a platform to show, like, hey, give us the equipment, give us the gear and these girls can rip just like you and me. They rip part of them. Who am I kidding? I can't rip like them, and I never will. But the point is, big stick energy's a badass podcast. And they're highlighting things that need to be spoken about. So please check those out. Then of course, you have the pursuit, which is my show. If you're listening, I appreciate you, continuous listening. Like, share, subscribe, blah, blah, blah, blah blah. And then we have jabber, the OG, the mastermind behind all of this. I don't know. Now he's just obsessed with eBay, selling hats. He's killing it. I don't know. What do you guys want to talk about? You want to talk about me for a minute? I don't want to talk about me. I got really into mountain biking in the last month. So that's awesome, but also terrible because now I don't want ski season to happen yet. I just ordered a new bike, which means I'm getting a new bike, which means I'm really excited. But also means we have to wait. I have to wait I have to wait and I'm getting a new bike and it's gonna be rad. The really rad part is that that company is jumping on to sponsor a couple episodes. So I will have a new episode sponsor soon with that bike. I'm trying to wait till I get the bike and get some cyclists to kind of release it all at once. But that's what's going on in my life. Things are good. Work is busy for me right now. Hope everyone's doing all right. And put everyone's enjoying September. It's my favorite month by far. I don't know. I think the world's okay right now. It's a mess, but I think we're okay. And I think we should continue to be okay, and it's okay to be okay. Anyway, long intro, I apologize. My guess this week is Kara Anderson. Which might not ring a bell to anybody. But her Instagram handle is at the dot caravan. And it's upon, I love puns. Cares amazing. She lives in a van, full time..
Hard Factor
Israel Searches for 6 Palestinian Terrorists Following Prison Break
"Six palestinian prisoners. All terrorists escaped a prison in northern israel on monday morning. An incident that the prison is calling quote. Totally very rare so Yeah a day before the break out the most senior prisoner of the group zach. Kara zoo be requested. A transfer into the cell. The five other prisoners were located two which prison officials obliged saying. Yeah totally the escape has launched ended. Big game a. Yeah oh yeah. We'll move you right over bed snow problem. Why don't you ask earlier. The escape has launched a nationwide manhunt. And there's a lot of people asking how did this and that question is not rhetorical There's an answer. And the answer is the blueprint of the gilboa. Prison was available online on the website or the architectural firm that designed the jail. Nice
10% Happier with Dan Harris
Using the Buddhist Concept of Vedana to Improve Your Relationships
"Pick up on the fourth of the pillars there which is sort of using this as an opportunity to practice improving our relationships. Does that bring us to this notion of feeling tones or vaden us exactly exactly because i think we can nearly get a bit tweeted in relationship to perceive the other and often to him. The other is this person. Give me plays feeling tool. Or is this person giving me feeling toward always person giving me neutral philly and then thinking that the tonality in the other person because we have the impression that into all the person who gives it to me. And that's why i begin very interested in mindfulness of feeling torn. Because what is it. mindfulness Feeling tour vandana the e. n. a in the ancient language actually referred to the Upon contact through the senses the simplest example is actually kara. Like war paper if we look around us is green blue red n. If we see green than give us a certain personality if we see raid another two ninety if we see creamy give us another to ninety and so what is interesting. Is that colors. As far as i know as not done anything to you. Green has now jumped at you read. That's not kind of giving you a nice present. But why is it that we see green red or cream or yellow and suddenly op. We feel something so vidana for nineties. When can you contract immediately. You of this is very important is to see that the tonality is conditioned by the perception.
CodeNewbie
How to Do Remote Work Well With Kara Luton
"Thanks for being here. Thank you so much so carry. You are a career transition or who was pursuing dancing. Tell us how you got into development. Yes so i had done ballet my entire life. When i was three and i kind of started taking it more seriously. When i was in high school. I started going to summer intensive by different ballet companies and those are kind of just like summer camps for kids during ballet and the summer before my senior year of high school i went to the joffrey ballet summer intensive in new york city and they offered to let me do a so actually ended up moving there my senior year of high school finishing high school online. And doing that and when it was coming time for me to think about college. That's kind of what i was like. Kay do wanna keep pursuing ballet. Do i to do something different. So i'm moving back home to nashville. And i studied public relations and after graduating i got a job in the music industry. Doing pr in. I done that for a few years as getting really burnt out. I was really stressful. A time anxiety was at a high. And i was like i need to figure something out so i actually stumbled upon code academy and started teaching myself to code and enrolled in a boot camp. And i've been in tech ever since. Wow that's exciting. So you went from ballet. Pr music to to coding. That's really add clyde a transition. Yeah so when you first started. Coding what did that look like. What were you doing. I went to the iron yard. Which was the boot camp. It was twelve weeks long. And i was studying front end engineering so it was a lot of it. We're learning h. Two miles css melodramas script and then my cohort studied view in number as our frameworks so it was a lot of in the morning class. Time learning about new topics and then in the afternoon applying those and working on various projects. And what was that boot camp experience like tons of people who are maybe considering it thinking about it. What was your experience like there. I mean it's like a fire hose of information conflict. You i feel like once. I kind of got the grasp of wine concept. We were like. Here's a new one. Gotta learn this and i mean it was twelve weeks long. It's hard to learn anything twelve weeks but it kind of preps you for the basics of what you need to know and then obviously most people coming into software engineering or currently in it know that we're always constantly learning so kind of just prompts you to how to teach
Sway
Kara Goes to the Olympics
"Dick pound welcome to sway. Thanks days to be with you. So i wanted to start by breaking down this decision to go forward in the tokyo olympics in february twenty twenty told associated press. That was more likely the games would be cancelled rather than postpone. Did you want to cancel. Or was that a prediction noah at the time i it looked like the organizers in the iot were in one of these school picnic things with a three legged race marching resolutely towards this precipice. And you have to. It's not going to happen. In twenty twenty and the old system was kind of binary a lighter went ahead or you cancelled. But the tokyo organizers were so good that they said look maybe there's another alternative which is to postpone and we think we can hold this whole bowl of jello together for a year but no longer than a year and we said well. Listen that's certainly preferable to canceling so let's explore that option and that's where we've been ever since both jello and also could raise his over cliff. That's kind of interesting metaphors to use. When you were thinking about it. Why not just cancel and move on a man you got if nothing else you've got thousands and thousands of athletes from two hundred six countries who've been training for this event for years and years and years and we've never faced a postponement before we face cancellations due to wars on three occasions and thought was that you know within a year. We would know an awful lot more about kobe than we did. In february or early march of twenty twenty which is true. Why isn't important to the olympics in play. i think it's important for the athletes. Be for learning how to respond to game changers. Like a covert. I mean. it hasn't been as something on the scale for century. Nobody in living memory can remember the you know the spanish flu as it was called and frankly the world at large needs some good news of this
Learn to Buy and Sell Cars
Medical Expert: Breakthrough COVID-19 Cases Are 'Vaccine Win, Not Failure'
"DT narrow Kara, Harvard Medical School physician and co director of the Harvard Medical School, clinical clerkship in community engagement. We're talking about the latest developments in the pandemic and something that more and more people are seeing our breakthrough cases. Friends, family members, coworkers getting infected with Covid 19. Despite being vaccinated. What do we know about those situations? And how much do these vaccines help in those instances? That's a wonderful question at the start. When we were seeing the Delta variant emerged. There were many concerns on whether or not this would what we call evade the Community that is provided by the vaccine, which means that would we see more breakthrough infections up till now. We may be seeing some breakthrough infections here or there, but for the north part, the vaccines are doing their job. And we are not seeing as many breakthrough infection as we anticipated, so that is very good news. There are many questions, though, so when someone does have a breakthrough infection, which does happen, what is the authority of that infection? We are learning more and more that if people have briefing infections, they are often mild. When these Patients. What when these people are vaccinated We also wonder if someone has a breakthrough infection might they develop long covid symptoms, which is a real concern among young and healthy people again. That is a big question mark. The key thing to remember is that breakthrough infections are not a vaccine failure. It is their vaccine success is because The school of the vaccine is really threefold. The first is to prevent severe illness. The second is to prevent hospitalizations and the third is to prevent death. And so these three major benchmarks have all been met with the vaccines. They're incredibly efficacious and all of these metrics, so that is very promising. Hopefully, breakthrough infections are mild. It's not much of a concern, and it is still considered a vaccine win and not a vaccine failure. Now that we're a year
On The Verge
What Are You Hungry For?
"Question is what are you hungry for. What are you hungry for keira. This is what. I ask myself right now in this current moment in this time. What are you most hungry for. I think it's important. It's important to know what your yearning for because it will help. Direct your attention. It will help. Keep you focused. It will help you go deeper. It will help you commit so. I'm going to reveal a couple of things. I'm hungry for and i encourage you to sit with this question yourself. I though let me let me offer you a little bit of advice when it comes to inquiry practice recognize that and this has been my only experience that some of these questions are not comfortable in. They're not meant to be. You may even see the titles of some of these podcasts and be like not going there. I'm not ready for that. And that's okay. There's going to be a slew of inquiries that you're going to be able to choose from and in fact some of them you may want to go back to and to again. It's why i try to keep these things real short. today's inquiry. what are you hungry for. Kara i asked myself that and i thought about this before i hit record and there are three things i think right. Now that are that are front of mind that a really holding my mind. The first one. I'm hungry to be pain-free pain-free. I've been dealing with a hip slash groin injury for six months. And i honestly i'm in pain most of the time so sometimes every step i take. I'm in pain. And i've been working with some specialists and I every single day. I'm practicing yoga. I'm doing mobility training on rolling it out. I am working for working with it. Because i am hungry to be pain-free so it is front of mind for me and i'm really committed to getting on the other side of this however i can
The Jump
Boston Celtics: Becky Hammon and Kara Lawson Are Ideal HC Fits
"The celtics per soccer practice facility in boston this billboard went up campaigning for becky hammon or terra lawson to be the next head coach again. Keira has worked on the celtics staff. She is just fantastic. Monico who do you think is the best bit to code the celtics. I don't necessarily have a name yet right. Although i liked the connection that care has but i have three cs. Candidates should have they've got to be able to connect with this squad. They got to be creative in the offense and the talents of these guys and they've obviously got to be able to convert in terms of everything that they're doing practice. I'm behind the scenes. Has the translate on the basketball court. Care i kind of liked that idea so this answer. I am no way shape before trying to take this coach away from the current currency. Which is nate. Mcmillan from. The atlanta hawks. Because i think the hawks likely will try to keep him. But i think what mcmillan has proven and shown what he can do with trae young. Just imagine what he could do. Because he's defensive money he has all the pieces. He has all the young talent offensively. Mcmillan would be good candidates as well as becky hammon. I think hammond that she can handle a team. I think she won the something. Many years back spurs obviously and she took control. That team did a great job. So i mean. I think there's some great candidates out there ought always chauncey billups after-sale. Who's put his time in as well. But i think make is showing that he can handle superstars and and take them to the next level. If the hawks don't take him snatching maybe it's up
Slate's If Then
Tim Apple vs. Mark Facebook
"One actually start by going back three years ago to this moment when tim cook of apple goes on msnbc. We're looking at every app in detail. What is it doing is doing what it's saying it's doing. Is it meeting the privacy policy that they're stating right. You're nodding so. I know you remember this. You guys ic he covers tech for the new york times he knows this moment. Well because in this interview tim cook. Does something unusual talk. He's talking to chris. Hayes and kerr swisher about privacy. This is just after people's personal data from facebook was exposed in the cambridge scandal. Speak scandal and kara says but would you do what would i do. i wouldn't situation would. What did you think then. Because i was like whoa is aggressive for ceo to say i mean both been carrying business stuff for a long time and it feels really out of the norm for a ceo to just lobby. Grenade vat aggressively at another ceo. You know that is not necessarily at least at that time. A direct competitor look cook was doing was starting a fight between facebook and by extension between himself and mark zuckerberg over privacy. I think tim cook does actually believe at least some of this philosophy around privacy and that How the ad tech companies work in particular is more invasive. Been he would ever want his own company to be. This fight. came to a head this week. When apple released its new operating system system that could begin to change the internet that we've all largely given into the one where we trade our personal data for free services.
NICE WORK! A Super Nice Club Podcast
"kara" Discussed on NICE WORK! A Super Nice Club Podcast
"Today today we're joined by my dear dear friend. Kara lancaster as far as her. You know nice work goes. Career-wise car is a globe-hopping director based in portland oregon. She's ridiculously talented and has directed several my favorite music videos but more recently. She's found herself and she found herself transitioning into an entirely new sort of at long last holy authentic life. And it's from this new place that kara is now finding her voice as a human as a woman and as a fiercely. Intelligent compassionate advocate for the lgbtq plus community. I mean look if you don't get the transgender community this podcast. This episode is totally for you. Because there's nothing related get after. You're done listening to this talk. I think i understand that. This also means that there's nothing to fear find strange or do anything other than just support you know like you support People who drink apa. Which i totally don't get at all i don't get it. I don't like not remotely. But i support their right to spend wild money on their bitter beer. Just compared transgenders the bottles of i mean it in a really good way though. Sorry i'm super tired. Last night was to cb hours a great conversation. I'm so tired. I think you get what i'm trying to say. I should totally script these intros instead of just trusting off the cuff them so people can't i can't really and who carmen i crack myself up card. I talk about her. Transgender journey started at the end of twenty nineteen. I remember when she when she told me it was a total surprise. But i also remember being super excited and super curious about everything. And it's a really big deal and i had no idea how to best support one of my very favorite people a year and a half later and i'm still learning. I'm still putting both my feet in my mouth all the time but i'm also sort of making a whole new friend. You know you know what it's been. It's been fucking delightful. It's been delightful. Her journeys been delightful for me as a friend. We talked about a journey Oh we talk about her facial feminization surgery which is just also a really big ordeal Did you know there's there's such thing as pretty privilege i didn't. I did know about the white male club card. My gets used every day and kara had hers revoked At which point she realized the need to transform from in her words. Lazy ally to engaged activists We talk about the red at transgender community. I am db shame on you..
KQED Radio
"kara" Discussed on KQED Radio
"Been speaking with Kara McClure, co founder of Black Lives Matter, Birmingham, Joshua Thompson and activist with Alabama students against Prisons and Lamar Black, Co founder of Faith and Works in Alabama. They were instrumental and causing Regions Bank of Alabama to divest from private prison operator Core Civic, which is being tapped to build two new men's correctional facilities in their state. We did reach out to core civic but have not yet received a response. This'll conversation is part of our one A across America partnership with WB. Hmm. In Birmingham Still to come. It's one of the most popular movies on Netflix and critics. Well, they're not crazy about it. We'll talk Malcolm and Marie I'm Jenn White. This is one A from W A. M. You and NPR. Here's one of those phrases that has become so overused. It's almost lost its meaning. Cancel culture. They call it cancel culture threatens the very principles. Cancel culture is a real thing. People are tired of the cancel culture. The term cancel culture has been overstretched and bleached of its original intent. How that happened tomorrow on morning edition from NPR News tomorrow from two until nine. All right. The House impeachment managers have begun to make their case for convicting former President Trump Join US for Day three of the Senate impeachment trial of Donald Trump from NPR News..