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heartofether · 3 years

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Episode 16 - Lorelei TRANSCRIPT

[You can listen to the show wherever you get your podcasts, or go to our “Listen” page if you’re on desktop.]

VAL

Warning: This episode contains discussions and descriptions of child abuse, and may not be suitable for all audiences. For exact time stamps and a full list of content warnings, please check the show notes. We suggest you check the content warnings regardless, since this is a bit of an intense episode, and contains instances of panic attacks, screaming, and violence. Listener discretion is advised.

AUTOMATED VOICE

[VERY SLOWED DOWN] Please state your message.

[THEME SONG PLAYS.]

VAL

Three-eyed Frog Presents: The Heart of Ether.

[THEME SONG FADES TO A STOP.]

[PHONE BEEP.]

[INT./EXT. OUTSIDE OF LORELEI FOSTER’S HOUSE, DAYTIME.]

[THE SOUND OF A RAVEN CAWING IS HEARD IN THE BACKGROUND.]

AGENT JUNE

Jeez, this place smells like a zoo.

AGENT MAY

I need to introduce the recording. Interview with Lorelei Foster, at her home. Part of Operation Saturn, phase 1.2. Conducted by Agents May and June. All— [CUTTING HIMSELF OFF] June, hey, stay in the car!

[AS HE TALKS, AGENT JUNE IS HEARD OPENING THE CAR DOOR AND STARTING TO STEP OUT.]

AGENT JUNE

What? Come on, dude, I’m getting impatient.

AGENT MAY

We’ll go up to her door in a minute. There’s just—I need to ask you something first.

AGENT JUNE

Oh. Why didn’t you just say so?

[HE CLIMBS BACK INTO THE CAR, CLOSING THE DOOR. AGENT MAY SIGHS.]

AGENT MAY

[SLIGHTLY NERVOUS] You are aware of the case of Lorelei Foster, correct?

AGENT JUNE

Uh, obviously. She was a part of some coven and they all went missing except for her. She moved to this house way outside of town and refused to show her face.

AGENT MAY

Well, under the naming conventions of Valencia and Wood, the Foundation believes that Lorelei Foster is what is known as a “Beastly.” What she could be capable of—it’s not something to play around with. Okay? She could be dangerous. Not deadly, per say, but still potentially devastating in her power.

AGENT JUNE

[PANICKED SARCASM] Wow, that’s super comforting, Agent May.

AGENT MAY

Just don’t say or do anything stupid, alright? Also, if when we see her, she looks, you know, different, don’t comment on it. Act like you don’t even notice.

AGENT JUNE

That’s all? Well, don’t worry about it, then. I’ve never judged a book by its cover. I’ll just stand there and act as well-behaved as I always do.

AGENT MAY

[UNDER HIS BREATH] That’s what I feared.

[THEY BOTH GET OUT OF THE CAR AND WALK UP TO HER FRONT DOOR. IT'S A LOVELY DAY OUTSIDE, WITH BIRDS CHIRPING AS IF NOTHING IS WRONG. AGENT MAY KNOCKS.]

AGENT MAY

Ms. Foster? This is Agents May and June. We’re with the Harper Foundation. We’re here to ask you a few questions.

[A RAVEN CAWS AS THERE IS NO RESPONSE.]

AGENT JUNE

Maybe she’s not home?

AGENT MAY

I don’t believe she ever leaves her house. Look at her car. It’s untouched. I’m sure she even gets her groceries delivered, somehow.

[HE KNOCKS AGAIN.]

AGENT MAY

We do not wish to harm you or bring you into custody, Ms. Foster. We won’t tell anyone what you are or what you’re doing here. We simply believe you may have some helpful insight on Ether. Just let us ask a few things, and then we’ll be out of your way.

[THERE’S A LONG PAUSE.]

AGENT JUNE

Maybe it’s a lost cause. Well, at least we can say we tried. Guess we should just—

[AS HE’S TALKING, THE DOOR CREAKS OPEN JUST A CRACK.]

LORELEI

You do not plan on taking photographs, do you?

AGENT MAY

We’re recording this over audio. Nobody will see your face except for the two of us, we promise.

AGENT JUNE

Yeah, don’t sweat it. We’re not gonna—[STARTLED] Oh my god!

[AS HE SPEAKS, LORELEI OPENS THE DOOR THE REST OF THE WAY TO REVEAL HER TRUE FORM.]

LORELEI

Is there a problem?

AGENT MAY

Not at all, Ms. Foster. Apologizes for my colleague, he is—

AGENT JUNE

[NERVOUSLY BLUFFING] I have a fear of new people. Yup. Terrified of ‘em.

AGENT MAY

[PLAYING ALONG] It’s tragic, really. Makes our job incredibly difficult.

LORELEI

[SUSPICIOUS] Quite.

[A BEAT.] Well, you said you had questions?

AGENT MAY

That we do. May we come in?

LORELEI

I would advise against it. Terrance is a pacifist when around me, but I am unsure of how he would react to new people.

AGENT JUNE

And who is Terrance, exactly?

LORELEI

A bear. [SADLY] Used to be a friend.

[A BEAR GROWLS IN THE BACKGROUND. AGENT JUNE MAKES A WEAK NOISE OF FEAR.]

LORELEI

I am still unsure whether his calm nature is because he maintained his human consciousness, or if I have some level of control over him that makes him do as I wish. Perhaps a mix of both.

AGENT MAY

Did you make him this way?

LORELEI

That much should be obvious, don’t you think? Assuming you really know what you’re talking about, and you’re not just bluffing.

AGENT MAY

We are somewhat familiar with your kind, but we’re always looking to learn more.

LORELEI

[SHE SCOFFS.] Is that what this is? You view me as a learning opportunity? Like a sample dragged in by the biology teacher for lab day?

AGENT MAY

Of course not. We’re just trying to learn more about Ether.

AGENT JUNE

I am very curious about how you managed to do it, though, if you care to indulge us?

[THERE’S A PAUSE.]

LORELEI

[SOLEMN] I never asked for any of this. When we attempted the ritual, our hope was that by the end of it, all of us would obtain the same level of power. Valencia told me it would never work. I had quite the rebellious streak back then, though. I didn’t believe him. Perhaps I should have.

If I had known that all of that power would have been channeled into me, I never would have attempted it. Now that time has passed, I realize how useless of a power it even is. What made Ether decide to curse me with it, I’ll never know. Perhaps we didn’t speak clearly enough when we did the ritual.

I had no idea what my limits were, or how to use my abilities. The consequences, of course, were far greater than I could have ever imagined. Terrance and Abigail were both accidents. Clementine, I turned her into a spider in a fit of rage. Scott happened when I was sobbing my eyes out, and he made the mistake of trying to comfort me. I am unsure if I intended to turn him into a snake or not. By the time River was the only one left, they came to me and asked to be turned into a cat. They said they knew I was bound to do it eventually, and they wanted to choose what animal they became. I did as they wished.

[JUST AS SHE SAYS THAT, A RAVEN FLIES OVER AND SQUAWKS. AGENT JUNE STARTLES, YELPING AT THIS.]

LORELEI

[SHE GIVES A DRY CHUCKLE.] I don’t think Abigail likes you.

AGENT MAY

You mentioned the consequences were far greater than you could have imagined. Was that in reference to the loss of your friends?

LORELEI

Oh, don’t make me say it. It would have been one thing if I simply turned my entire coven into my own little petting zoo. Now, however, I can never escape my own errors, even if I were to leave them all behind. I am forever haunted by the marks my ability has left. The bear paw that has become of my left hand. The raven feathers in my hair. The spider eyes sprawled across my face. The venom that drips from my fangs and burns my lips. And oh, how disappointing having the tail of a cat is, despite how elegant I thought it would be when I was a little girl. Cats used to be my favorite animal. They aren’t anymore.

AGENT MAY

Don’t you think River would take offense to that?

LORELEI

Hm. Perhaps you’re right.

[A CAT MEOWS FROM INSIDE.]

AGENT MAY

How did you access Ether’s power?

LORELEI

The same way I’m sure most people have. We did a ritual. Just as most of them do, it went wrong.

AGENT MAY

Do you know where exactly it went wrong?

[A PAUSE.]

LORELEI

Can I be honest with you? I have had years to think long and hard about the events that transpired that night. I read through our plans over, and over again, hoping to find a way to undo it all. After all of that, I came to the conclusion that whatever fault it was—whatever slip of the tongue or missing ingredient it could have been—none of it would have mattered.

Ether chooses who to favor and who to damn by the luck of a draw. Flip of a coin. It knows no order. It will do what it pleases. It is not a person, or a sentient being—it is a random number generator that can grant unlimited power if you get lucky. It’s a lottery of stones, however. Nobody is ever really winning, even those as fortunate as the Forget-Me-Nots, or those well-off enough to never hear about Ether at all.

[A PAUSE, THEN] Do you have any other questions? I’m rather sure my pets are looking forward to their dinner.

AGENT MAY

Just one: where is the heart of Ether?

[A PAUSE.]

LORELEI

I would be careful, if I were you. I’ve heard things, rumors, about your little project. Though I doubt you fully understand the dangers, seeing as you’re just the worker bees, hm?

AGENT MAY

It’s not my place to question, I’m afraid.

LORELEI

Perhaps you should. Never does anyone any good, blindly following orders.

[AS THEY TALK, RIVER MEOWS, PURRING AS SHE RUBS AGAINST AGENT JUNE'S LEGS.]

AGENT JUNE

[WHISPERING TO THE CAT] Ah—hey! Go away! Shoo!

AGENT MAY

If you could answer the question, I promise we’ll be out of your hair.

LORELEI

Hm. I’m afraid I can’t be of much help. For years, people believed Ether resided in the sky, but that is untrue. Though, during the brief window Valencia was willing to speak to me, he did tell me he had a theory—

[AGENT JUNE CUTS HER OFF BY SNEEZING.]

AGENT JUNE

[MUTTERS] Stupid cat!

[RIVER HISSES.]

LORELEI

[OFFENDED] I would appreciate it if you did not insult my animals.

AGENT JUNE

[CONGESTED] Then tell River to leave me the hell alone. Can’t you control them, or whatever? At least use your freaky powers to—

AGENT MAY

[OVERLAPPING] Agent June—!

AGENT JUNE

I just want this damn—

[THERE’S A TENSE PAUSE AS HE REALIZES LORELEI IS GLARING INTENTLY AT HIM.]

AGENT JUNE

I mean, uh, this lovely cat, to uh…I’m so sorry, ma’am, this has been incredibly rude of me.

LORELEI

[A BEAT.] What was your name, again?

AGENT JUNE

Juh—uh, Agent June?

LORELEI

Agent June. [SHE SAYS THE NAME WITH DISDAIN.] Agent June, do you have a favorite animal, by chance?

AGENT MAY

[WHISPERING, PANICKED] Don’t say anything. Just thank her and let’s go before—

AGENT JUNE

[OVERLAPPING] I don’t know. Uh, have you ever heard of Sonic the Hedgehog?

LORELEI

[MIXED WITH CONFUSION AND DISGUST] Sonic. The Hedgehog.

AGENT JUNE

[NERVOUS RAMBLING] Yeah! I was obsessed with those games growing up, and so I went through this whole phase where I wanted a pet hedgehog really bad, but my parents never let me have one. Said I was too irresponsible, or whatever. That dream kinda, like, carried over into my adult life though?

LORELEI

[NODDING] So, hedgehogs.

AGENT JUNE

Um, sure.

LORELEI

I see.

[A PAUSE.]

LORELEI

I do hope you’re happy with that choice, Agent June.

[A HIGH-PITCHED RINGING IS HEARD AS SHE REACHES HER HAND OUT. AGENT JUNE STARTS SPUTTERING IN FEAR.]

[EERIE AND TENSE MUSIC BEGINS TO PLAY.]

AGENT JUNE

[TERRIFIED] What the—?

AGENT MAY

Shit.

[AGENT MAY IS HEARD PULLING OUT A DART GUN AND SHOOTING A TRANQUILIZER DART AT LORELEI. SHE CRIES OUT A BIT, BEFORE STUMBLING, AND THEN COLLAPSING.]

AGENT JUNE

Did you just tranquilize her?

AGENT MAY

I didn’t have a choice. Come on, get in the car. The full effect only lasts forty-five seconds.

[THEY BOTH FRANTICALLY CLIMB INTO THE CAR, SLAMMING THE DOORS AS THEY GET IN.]

AGENT MAY

Are you okay? Did she change you at all?

AGENT JUNE

[HYPERVENTILATING] No, no! But it—this really weird feeling washed over me, like, like my body was trying to fit into a smaller one, I—that was the worst thing I’ve ever felt, oh my god.

AGENT MAY

[ATTEMPTING TO SOOTHE] Agent June, calm down. You’re safe now, okay?

AGENT JUNE

Yeah, only because of you. You just saved my life. I mean, technically, I would have survived, but I would have had to live out the rest of my days as a hedgehog!

AGENT MAY

[FRUSTRATED] Maybe if you had been able to hold your damn tongue for thirty seconds, this wouldn’t have happened.

[AS HE TALKS, AGENT MAY STARTS THE CAR AND SPEEDS AWAY, THE TIRES SQUEALING.]

AGENT JUNE

I’m sorry I was having an allergic reaction!

AGENT MAY

That’s no excuse for you to have said the things you did. I told you to keep it together.

AGENT JUNE

Stop trying to blame all of this on me. I don’t care if it’s my fault, I almost just lost my humanity. Do you know how horrifying that was?

AGENT MAY

[HE INHALES SHARPLY.] No, you’re right. You’re not entirely to blame for what just happened.

If only she had at least finished her sentence about Valencia’s theory.

AGENT JUNE

[GUILTILY] Yeah, that was pretty poor timing, huh?

AGENT MAY

We’ll find out one way or another. Might have to go back to Irene Gray.

AGENT JUNE

Ah yes, the other enemy we’ve made in this town.

AGENT MAY

I guess we’re going to have to find a way to change that, then. [A BEAT.] Turn off the recording, please.

[SOME SHUFFLING AS AGENT JUNE MOVES TO TURN THE RECORDER OFF.]

[PHONE BEEP.]

[RECORDING ENDS.]

[ANOTHER BEEP.]

[EXT. LEMONGRASS PARK, NIGHT.]

[IRENE IS SITTING IN HER CAR. THERE ARE CRICKETS HEARD IN THE BACKGROUND.]

IRENE

I’m parked in front of Lemongrass Park. To be honest, I’ve never actually been here, even though it’s so close to my house. It’s small, but it’s a nice park. There’s a swing set, a seesaw, one of those metal slides that would always burn my skin during the summer. Some nice trees, too.

[REMINISCING] Do you remember when we would go to the park late at night? It was really stupid of us to go there after dark, honestly, it’s a miracle nothing ever happened. Well, I mean, you did hurt your leg that one time you fell off the swing, which I still feel bad about. It felt so serene, though. Like we were the only people in the world. We were still clinging onto our childhood innocence, and you, you were so fond of that park near your house, and I was so fond of the way you laughed. You’ll love this park, too, I think, if you ever get to see it. You always loved places where—

Wait, hold on, I think—I think Sadie’s waving at me. She’s sitting over on one of the swings. At least, I think it’s her? Not quite what I expected her to look like, but then again, I don’t know what I was expecting. She’s wearing all black, and has a striped shirt underneath her t-shirt, even though it’s hot as hell. Is this how emo kids dress these days? I think Aden said something about “e-girls” or something. [SHE SCOFFS.] Jeez, I need to start keeping track of these things. I feel so old.

She’s also wearing a black fabric surgical mask, with a white design? I’ve hardly seen people wear those outside of the medical profession—I mean, there was one time, but that was an outlier. [SHE SAYS THIS PART UNCOMFORTABLY BECAUSE THIS IS REFERRING BACK TO THE FIRST TRAILER.]

It must be her, though. Otherwise, why would she be waving at me? I have the box of film in the passenger’s seat. Avery and I talked today, and they were incredibly vocal about how bad of an idea this was, but they said I’m an adult and can make my own choices.

Avery is…well. I think they have good intentions at heart. They act indifferent all the time, and they’re incredibly mature, but they seem…I don’t know. Sometimes, there’s this, fear, maybe? That bleeds through when they speak. I think they try to hide it. Reminds me they’re still, technically, a kid.

Right, I feel kinda awkward sitting here while Sadie is staring at me. Guess I should get this over with.

[IRENE GRABS THE BOX OF FILM AND STEPS OUT OF HER CAR. SHE WALKS TOWARDS SADIE. WHENEVER SADIE TALKS, HER VOICE IS JUST SLIGHTLY MUFFLED.]

SADIE

[FROM AFAR] Irene, right?

IRENE

Yup!

SADIE

Wonderful!

[SADIE WALKS OVER TO IRENE.]

SADIE

I’ll take that.

[SHE'S HEARD TAKING THE CARDBOARD BOX FROM IRENE.]

SADIE

Looks heavy! How many photos did you take?

IRENE

[HANDING THE BOX OFF] Thank you, uh, I didn’t take these, though.

SADIE

I see. That’s a bummer. I thought I’d met a person of similar passions.

IRENE

Sorry to disappoint.

SADIE

Don’t stress it! Where did you get the film, then?

IRENE

[LYING] It’s from one of my dead relatives.

SADIE

Mm. Sorry to hear that.

IRENE

It was a while ago, so it's okay.

SADIE

They sure took lots of photos. Do you have any idea what they photographed?

IRENE

No clue.

SADIE

Well, I’ll do my best to get this developed. I’m staying with my uncle for part of the summer, and he never uses his dark room, so I have it all to myself. You know, he has this massive house, spends lots of money on rooms he never uses every time he gets a new hobby.

IRENE

Odd he chose Daughtler of all places to stick it.

SADIE

You know, that’s what I said! My professor went green with envy when I told her about it, though. She said this is a perfect town to take pictures.

IRENE

You’re a student, then?

SADIE

Yup! Majoring in photography, in case that wasn’t already clear. [SHE GIGGLES.]

Anyways, I’ll try to get this developed for you as quickly as possible. It may take a while, ‘cause there’s so much of it, so would you like me to give it to you in batches?

IRENE

That would be great, yeah. Um, thank you. Are you sure I can’t pay you?

SADIE

Oh, please, don’t worry about it. Like I said, I’m just thankful for the opportunity.

So, any other questions for me? I’m happy to answer them.

IRENE

Um, I have a bit of a weird one.

SADIE

Hm?

IRENE

Why are you wearing a surgical mask? Is it, like, a germ thing, or are you sick?

[THERE’S A PAUSE.]

SADIE

I should go get started on this.

IRENE

Um, you didn’t—

SADIE

[AGGRESSIVELY CUTTING HER OFF] Pleasure working with you, Irene! I’ll get back to you about your first batch ASAP!

IRENE

[TAKEN ABACK] Oh. Okay, then. Um, bye.

SADIE

Later!

[IRENE WALKS TO HER CAR AND CLIMBS BACK INSIDE. THERE'S A PAUSE.]

IRENE

Well, that was interesting, for lack of a better term. Sadie seems fine? I guess I just got a bit too personal with the mask thing. I mean, if it makes her feel comfortable, I don’t see why she can’t wear it. I’ll try not to worry about it. As long as she can develop the photos, that’s what matters.

Though I am kind of worried. I mean, Valencia could have taken, well, suspicious photos, assuming they’re connected to his research. I have no idea. I guess we just have to hope? Sadie seems pretty okay with minding her own business, it seems, so if I’m lucky, she won’t question it.

[HER PHONE STARTS VIBRATING.]

IRENE

Oh, hang on. Avery is calling me.

[A BEEP AS SHE ANSWERS.]

IRENE

Hello?

AVERY

Just making sure you didn’t get murdered.

[AS AVERY TALKS, THERE IS THE SOUND OF MASHING VIDEO GAME CONTROLLER BUTTONS AND JOYSTICKS.]

IRENE

[SHE SCOFFS.] Well, I didn’t. Sadie was fine. You really had nothing to be worried about.

AVERY

[DISTRACTED] I mean, it’s still a really bad idea to be meeting someone in the park this late. Daughtler is a small town, but even if we don’t have much of a problem with normal creeps, weird stuff is still kind of the norm, you know?

IRENE

Yeah, I’ve gathered that much, I—wait, hang on, are you playing video games right now?

AVERY

Dude, it’s just Stardew Valley. It’s not like I’m fighting anything.

[A RAVEN CAWS FROM THE GAME.]

IRENE

[AWKWARDLY] I don’t know what that is.

AVERY

That’s because you’re old.

IRENE

Hey.

AVERY

[OVEREXAGGERATED, FAKE] Ah no, I just got attacked! I gotta hang up, sorry Irene!

IRENE

You just said there’s no—

[AVERY HANGS UP.]

IRENE

[DEFEATED] …combat.

[SHE HUFFS.] Talk to you later, I guess.

[PHONE BEEP.]

[RECORDING ENDS.]

[ANOTHER BEEP.]

[INT. THE APARTMENT ABOVE THE OPEN EYES BOOKSTORE, NIGHT. A BUDGIE IS OCCASIONALLY HEARD CHIRPING OR FLAPPING ITS WINGS IN THE BACKGROUND THROUGHOUT THE SCENE.]

[HOLLY IS HEARD SORTING THROUGH A GROCERY BAG AND SETTING THINGS ON THE COUNTER.]

HOLLY

Is it recording?

PHOEBE

Yes, it is.

HOLLY

Cool, cool. I got eggs, by the way. I know you talked about wanting to try to make pie at some point, and you were running low, so.

PHOEBE

[SLIGHTLY OVERLAPPING] Oh, um, thank you! Um, why were you out so late, anyways?

HOLLY

Hm? Oh, just a nighttime stroll.

PHOEBE

[WARY] I see.

[HOLLY WALKS OVER, AND SITS ON THE COUCH NEXT TO PHOEBE.]

HOLLY

Alright, then. You have the next letter? I guess all that’s left to do is open it.

[THERE'S A PAUSE AS HOLLY HESITATES.]

HOLLY

You sure you’re okay with me being in the room for this? I know her letters to you were, well, personal.

PHOEBE

It’s okay, don’t worry. I—I trust you. I’m sure Grandma Doe would, too.

HOLLY

[TENDERLY] That…that means a lot.

[A BEAT.] Go ahead, then.

[PHOEBE OPENS THE LETTER.]

PHOEBE

Phoebe, If you are reading this, I assume you have successfully completed the ritual. If it was not a success, well, I have a separate envelope marked for you to read. I suggest you find it.

HOLLY

Almost want to read the other one just to see what it says.

PHOEBE

[UNSETTLED] I don’t think that’s a good idea. If the alternative was that bad, well. I don’t want to think about what could have happened to me.

HOLLY

Fair, yeah. Continue.

PHOEBE

[SHE CLEARS HER THROAT.] If everything worked as well as I hope, then you have now stepped into your role as a Forget-Me-Not. I could not be more proud of you, little wildflower. What a lovely Forget-Me-Not you will be.

I have already warned you of some of the dangers, but now that this is your reality, I am going to begin to describe it all in more detail in order to prepare you. It is nothing I have not already mentioned in previous letters, however.

Now, let us start from the beginning: why did I name them the Forget-Me-Nots? Valencia thought it to be a rotten name. Too flowery, he said it was, too delicate. I believe it to be a sophisticated name. Better than the Hungry, or whatever other titles he’s come up with.

HOLLY

The hell is the Hungry?

PHOEBE

Um, I’m not sure. I’m sure we’ll find out?

HOLLY

Let’s hope.

PHOEBE

It goes on: Anyways, I called them the Forget-Me-Nots because it is not just about their quest for new knowledge. It is about the knowledge they already have. Sure, they know where to find any and all information, but what about that which is already within them? A Forget-Me-Not cannot forget anything. Even the tiniest detail, they will cling onto for the rest of their life. I still remember what I ordered at an Italian restaurant twenty-seven years ago. It was some mediocre chicken parmesan. The sauce was a bit too bitter for my taste, but I went back there because they had delightful breadsticks.

However, this is a double-edged sword. It is not just new information you will begin to retain. If only it was that simple. A Forget-Me-Not also remembers all which has happened before. This includes all of your life up to this point, from your early childhood, to more recent events.

When I chose you to be my predecessor, this is what I dreaded most. Your mother and I always considered it to be a blessing in disguise that you did not remember much of your childhood. I know you are aware of what happened, but the specifics are far worse than I think you’ve ever processed. I would not wish memories of that horrid time upon anyone, especially you. Your poor mother, my dear Agnes, she lives through them every day.

You may be forced to confront some of the memories of your father. The sick, rotten, vile man he was. I am eternally grateful I was able to save you from some suffering when you were a child, though I am deeply remorseful for all your mother put herself through. I wish I could be there to walk you through it all, to comfort you as you remember, but the circumstances are not in my favor.

You are stronger than you give yourself credit for, however, and you do not have to do it alone. Please do not hesitate to reach out to your mother if you find yourself needing the support. You could also talk to a friend—I’m assuming you have an abundance of those, you’re far too charming and sweet to not have any. Like I’ve said, isolation will only drain you of all you are. Nothing about this process will be easy, but I would not put you through it if I did not believe you could handle it.

Take your work slowly. Do not rush into it. Allow your mind to process the—

[PHOEBE SUDDENLY STOPS TALKING. THERE’S A LONG PAUSE.]

HOLLY

[A MIX OF CONFUSED AND CONCERNED] Phoebe?

PHOEBE

I— [A PAUSE, THEN] Sorry, sorry. Sorry. It’s just. [SHE TRAILS OFF.]

HOLLY

Is something wrong?

PHOEBE

Th—the letter, it’s just, um, got me thinking, I guess. About my father.

HOLLY

[CAUTIOUS] How much do you remember of him?

PHOEBE

[SHE GIVES A SHAKY CHUCKLE.] Oh, I’m trying to avoid that train of thought. I’m scared it will all come flowing in at once.

HOLLY

Oh, right, yeah. Try not to focus too much on it, okay?

PHOEBE

No, I’m okay, I just—I remember bits of it. More vividly, now, than I did before.

[WHAT FOLLOWS IS THE AFOREMENTIONED DESCRIPTION OF CHILD ABUSE. VIEWER DISCRETION IS ADVISED.]

PHOEBE

Have you seen the stuffed cow sitting on my bed? It’s so old and worn, but it’s one of the most precious things I own. Its name is Baby. It’s, um, a silly name, I know. I used to play pretend with it, though, and act like I was its mother. I cradled it, pretended to feed it. So I named it Baby. [A BEAT, THEN] I didn’t remember why I named it that until now.

My dad hated Baby, though. He hated that I was so attached to a stuffed cow, of all things. He would constantly use Baby to threaten me, holding his ability to take it away over my head, because he knew that was a quick way to make me upset. If it was his choice, I’m sure he would have destroyed it. Not sure why he never did.

One day, when he was in a bad mood, and my mom was at work, I hid Baby inside my closet. He stormed into my room, and demanded for me to give it to him. I lied and said I had no idea where Baby was, but of course he didn’t believe me. He tore through my room, ignoring my pleas for him to stop, until he found Baby and took it away. I was forced to clean up the mess he made before my mom got home.

When she did get home, I instantly went and hugged her legs tightly and sobbed. I told her that Daddy had taken Baby away, and ruined my room. She asked me to take her to my room, so I did, only to find Baby sitting on the bed, staring right back at me.

My dad came in. “Of course I didn’t take the stupid toy,” he said. “She probably just misplaced it.” My mom didn’t argue. I was outraged. How could she believe him? Looking back, however, she knew something was wrong. I know she did. Even as a kid, I could read it on her face. He didn’t give her a choice, though.

[A BEAT.] He let me keep Baby, at least. Though he warned me not to try to tell mom what he did ever again. Otherwise, he would be very upset with me.

[A WET CHUCKLE.] And I didn’t even face the worst of it. I would spend days, weeks even, here with Grandma Doe when my dad was especially bad. That’s why her and I were so close, and why I didn’t remember so much of what my dad did. My mom had to endure most of it, though. That is, until she was finally able to get a divorce. He was arrested for a few years, I never learned what for, but I hope it was for the right reasons. When he got out, my mom got a restraining order against him.

The last time I saw him was my eighth birthday. He didn’t get me anything.

[THERE'S A LONG PAUSE.]

HOLLY

I’m going to kill him.

PHOEBE

[NERVOUS CHUCKLE] I—I appreciate you caring, but—

HOLLY

[A BIT TOO ANGRY] No. I mean it. If he’s still alive, I’ll kill him.

PHOEBE

[SLIGHTLY STARTLED] I don’t know if he’s still alive. I mean, it’s not like I’ve made an effort to reach out to him, heh.

HOLLY

[A PAUSE, THEN, SINCERE AND EMOTIONAL] I’m so sorry.

PHOEBE

It—It’s okay! Really. I promise. It was a long time ago. It’s just…I’m not sure how much I’m going to remember. As time goes on. I mean, I’m sure I would have been forced to confront my childhood eventually, this is just kind of speeding up the process.

HOLLY

You can always come to me, you know. If it gets to be too much.

PHOEBE

I’ll keep that in mind. Thank you, Holly. Really.

HOLLY

Of course. Anything I can do. [A PAUSE.] Would a hug be okay?

PHOEBE

[SHE TAKES A SHAKY BREATH.] A hug would be nice.

[THERE ARE FABRIC RUSTLES AS THEY ARE HEARD EMBRACING.]

[PHONE BEEP.]

[RECORDING ENDS.]

AUTOMATED VOICE

Today's quote is: "In every couple there is one who is the historian of the relationship."

Susan Sontag in Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963.

[OUTRO MUSIC AND CREDITS PLAY.]

[AT THE END OF THE CREDITS, THERE IS A BRIEF, HIGH-PITCHED RINGING NOISE, THAT BEGINS TO BREAK UP BEFORE STOPPING ABRUPTLY.]

#heart of ether transcripts

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Two Canadians, an Australian and an American walk into a linguistics conference… what is this? A crossover episode? Transcript

MEGAN: Welcome to the Vocal Fries podcast, the podcast about linguistic discrimination.

CARRIE: I'm Carrie Gillon.

MEGAN: And I'm Megan Figueroa.

CARRIE: Today we have a few housekeeping items before we begin. The first thing is, we recorded this episode during the Linguistic Society of America, or the LSA, conference this year, and so it was in a hotel room. So the sound quality might be a little off.

MEGAN: Yes. We were sitting around a table in a hotel room and it was freezing outside.

CARRIE: Actually that day it was not yet freezing. Later it did freeze, it did snow, which is exciting for those of us who live in the desert.

MEGAN: Yeah and who didn't have altitude sickness and was stuck in a hotel room the whole day. Anyway.

CARRIE: Yeah, so this episode's gonna be more like what our bonus episodes are gonna be like. And that gives us the opportunity to talk about our Patreon!

MEGAN: Yes, so we joined Patreon, and we already have a few subscribers.

CARRIE: Yes! Thank you Ann, Daniel, Lingthusiasm, and Suzanne.

MEGAN: Yes, thank you so much.

CARRIE: There are three levels, if you are able to support us we would love to have you as supporters. We have a $1 level; we just thank you for supporting us. We have a $3 level where you get a sticker and your name is announced on the air. And then we also have a $5 level where you get the sticker, your name announced, and also you get access to the bonus episodes. So this episode is kind of in the vein of what those bonus episodes are going to be like, and we are going to record a real bonus episode this month about Word Of The Year, which was part of the LSA as well.

MEGAN: Yes and the sticker that you get features the adorable fries. It's very cute. I think we -we tweeted it out, right? A picture of the fries? of the sticker?

CARRIE: I think we did, if we didn't: shame on us.

MEGAN: Yes. It's very cute.

CARRIE: This episode we had a chance to interview the Lingthusiasm hosts, Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Which we all pronounce incorrectly because we don't have the correct vowel.

MEGAN: Yeah. But she's nice and says it’s ok to pronounce it like “gone” as in “Gone Girl”.

CARRIE: We also want to tell everybody that most of our episodes are on YouTube now. So if you prefer to access episodes that way, or if you know people who prefer to watch a video as opposed to listen, you can do that. And we're also slowly adding transcripts for our episodes. We don't have a paid transcriptionist, so we're just doing it ourselves, and so it will take a long time. But we are slowly adding them. And our first one is up.

MEGAN: Yeah and we're very excited about doing that because we are of course really trying to make this as accessible as possible. And ultimately I think a Patreon goal of ours is to pay someone to do it.

CARRIE: Right. Yes.

MEGAN: Yeah so bear with us. Carrie did the first one, thank you so much Carrie. But yeah. It's definitely a goal.

CARRIE: Right. And we also want to remind people of our email address [email protected]. Okay so now we have an interview with Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne of Lingthusiasm.

MEGAN: Today is really exciting. We are sitting in a hotel room with the Lingthusiasts.

CARRIE: The Lingthusiasms?

MEGAN: I don't know. Do you -

GRETCHEN: The co-hosts of Lingthusiasm?

MEGAN: Ah, but that’s too long!

LAUREN: I like Lingthusiasts.

GRETCHEN: We call our listeners the Lingthusiasts too. But that's good.

MEGAN: Can you and your listeners be the same name?

GRETCHEN: I don't know.

MEGAN: I think it's okay. I mean we're all on the same level. We're all people.

CARRIE: We’re all friends here.

LAUREN: We’re all enthusiastic about linguistics and that’s all that matters.

MEGAN: Exactly. So we have Gretchen McCulloch…

GRETCHEN: Yes, hello.

MEGAN: Hi.

GRETCHEN: You weren’t enthusiastic about that.

MEGAN: Well it’s because I was staring at you to see if I said your name right.

GRETCHEN: Yeah I say McCulloch [məkʌlɪk].

MEGAN: Okay, cuz other people, there are other -

GRETCHEN: Other people say McCulloch [məkʌlə] but I don't know. It's complicated.

MEGAN: Yeah. And then we have Lauren grai….?

[LAUGHTER]

LAUREN: For such a short name, my name is complicated. It's Lauren Gawne [gɔn].

GRETCHEN: I don't have that vowel.

MEGAN: I was never gonna get there.

LAUREN: You can say, like homophonous with g-o-n-e is fine as well.

MEGAN: Like “Gone Girl”? Like Ben Affleck?

LAUREN: That is me.

GRETCHEN: I say Lauren Gone and she says that’s ok.

MEGAN: Lauren Gone. But it's the sound in like, what?

CARRIE: It’s the open o [ɔ].

MEGAN: Okay.

CARRIE: Which we talked about before.

MEGAN: We have talked it about before.

CARRIE: And none of us, except for Lauren have that one, so.

MEGAN: And she's Australian.

LAUREN: Yes. So Gawne and gone - Lauren Gawne watched “Gone Girl” - they're two different vowels for me.

MEGAN: For you, but not for us.

LAUREN: Yes. But I make it easy for you.

CARRIE/MEGAN/GRETCHEN: Thank you!

LAUREN: That’s fine.

GRETCHEN: I can’t unmerge just for you.

LAUREN: Unmerge on that one word only.

CARRIE: Yeah. So today we're gonna talk about American and British hegemony?

LAUREN: Sure. Well we were actually just gonna suggest that we talk about Australian and Canadian English, because they're the Englishes we speak and have the most experience with.

CARRIE: Wo the American is outnumbered this time.

MEGAN: Yes. I mean as we should be.

[Laughter]

MEGAN: I mean, we’re really fucking things up.

[Laughter]

GRETCHEN: I forgot to ask if this podcast had swearing.

CARRIE: Oh yes. We have the explicit rating. It's all good.

MEGAN: I mean our tag line is Don't Be An Asshole.

[Laughter]

MEGAN: Even just with that, we need the rating.

GRETCHEN: Well yes, there is that.

MEGAN: Like all of our other episodes, I will probably learn the most here.

[LAUGHTER]

CARRIE: This time definitely I think. Alright, so where did you guys want to begin?

LAUREN: I think we want to begin with keyboards. Because that’s where a lot of our frustration manifests. So when you have to select in a spell checker on a document, it's almost always “do you want British or American English” as though they are the two. And even if you choose something like Canadian or Australian English, often it's like it was made by someone who has never actually spoken to a Canadian or an Australian. Some of it is orthographic convention stuff, so it's the we both use ISE, instead of IZE.

GRETCHEN: Oh I use IZE a fair bit.

CARRIE: Yeah.

LAUREN: Yeah I mean there's this whole other diglossia thing we can get into.

GRETCHEN: Canadians use Zed, but in terms of words like realize or analyze, I would tend to use IZE, but when I choose Canadian English from a spell checker, it will try to correct me too ISE on those words, but you get the opposite right?

LAUREN: Yeah so Australian English follows British conventions in this regard, but on a lot of spell checkers, if you tick Australian English, they’ll tell you that it should be IZE and it's like “no”.

CARRIE: Interesting. I didn't realize THAT.

GRETCHEN: So there's like this kind of delocalization problem where they're if you pick Canadian English it just maps you onto British English instead, or vice versa for Australian English.

MEGAN: Wait and that's gonna be widespread in Australia that you use the S.

LAUREN: Yep.

MEGAN: Okay, so they're not people that some of them use Z.

LAUREN: No. Unless I'm writing for an American publication, and then I will tailor it. So we become very good - and I've noticed that's the thing Canadians do as well - is flipping back and forth between.

GRETCHEN: Yeah, I would use both, depending on who I’m talking to and what I’m feeling like. I feel like spellcheckers don't reflect that stylistic choice. They're like “you must pick a thing and do it”. Some words I'm more likely to use ISE on, and some words I'm more likely to use IZE on. I'm okay with that.

LAUREN: Or it should just figure out, in this document, I'm clearly writing for an American audience and it's gonna be IZE throughout.

GRETCHEN: Yeah. We run into this problem - so we also have a podcast, as you all know - and we do transcriptions for the podcast, and we do that by uploading our episodes to YouTube and having YouTube's autocaptioner figure out what we're saying in a very bad version, and then we have a human go in and edit that, rather than have a human try to do it all. So it's faster that way. But we have to pick a language that it thinks the talk is in.

CARRIE: Right.

GRETCHEN: And our choices, along with a couple other languages, French and so on, we can pick between British English and American English. A show that's hosted by a Canadian and an Australian. And what we'd really like to be able to do is say a) there are two speakers here, one of us has r’s and the other one doesn’t.

LAUREN: Two speakers of two very different dialects of English.

GRETCHEN: Of two very different dialects and, if they could detect two different voices, because our voices sound fairly different, and then also say, you should be mapping us onto two different standards. Because for me, and I think American English is mostly okay, but for you, you're going to get a better job with British English, because it doesn't expect you to have r’s.

LAUREN: Yeah. And I should point out, we both speak highly standardized, highly educated varieties of the English that we speak, and in terms of the scale of linguistic discrimination, we are not really complaining about IZE over ISE, it’s not really the kind of discrimination that a lot of people face and is really bad, but it's really frustrating to be invisible in global English and you see - if we can't even get people talking about more than British and American English, how are we going to get people to talk about kind of lower status varieties of British English or varieties of American English that are negatively stereotyped, if we can't get people to think more broadly about the varieties of English there are.

CARRIE: Or Indian English or Singapore English.

GRETCHEN: South African English is a whole other -

CARRIE: I love it. Sith Ifrican.

GRETCHEN: There's lots of Englishes and other languages are also also multipluricentric. This is a problem that comes up with French in particular, because I live in Montreal, and French has this very high prestige associated with especially Parisian French, European French. Montreal kids, Quebec kids get taught in schools European French, because that's the “better” French. Kids in a lot of the former French colonies get taught France French even if the French that’s spoken there is a very different variety. English is double - has two centers, and THAT’s a problem. French only has one, and that's ALSO a problem. Spanish is very different in very different countries. A lot of the languages that we think of as major world languages are actually more - have more complexity than we think.

CARRIE: Yeah, it's interesting: two things have already come up that we've talked about before. The AI automatic speech recognition stuff, so we talked about that with Rachael Tatman, and what she was looking at with the YouTube comments was just gender and how women's voices are less well transcribed. And then we also talked about Canadian French in our last episode.

GRETCHEN: Oh yeah! With Nicole! She’s so great.

CARRIE: She is.

MEGAN: Well this reminds me that I guess it wasn't too long ago that Microsoft Word added grammar as one of the things that it'll underline for you.

CARRIE: Wait. That's not new.

MEGAN: It’s not new?

CARRIE: No.

MEGAN: WHAT?

CARRIE: No.

MEGAN: In the last ten years.

CARRIE: No the whole time I've been using Word it's had it.

LAUREN: It's just that you automatically disable it because it's so terrible.

CARRIE: It used to be worse. Now it’s

MEGAN: So maybe I got a new computer and then I had it again.

CARRIE/LAUREN/GRETCHEN: Yes.

MEGAN: Okay. Well we solved that mystery. But okay. So if we're thinking about the grammar, what if you use double negatives, or what if use the passive! Cuz I think it would mark double negatives.

CARRIE: Of course it would yeah. It’s very standard.

GRETCHEN: It marks the passive, even like - so I was reading this book by Anne Curzon who's also here at the LSA Annual Meeting, and she's got this book about the history of standardizing English - “Fixing English”, I think it's called - about the history of English standardization. And one of her chapters is about questioning the authority of Microsoft Word to underline your words. By what right and by whose rules do you get to underline this.

MEGAN: Yes.

GRETCHEN: And people who think a lot about - she surveyed her colleagues in the English department and even though they have advanced English degrees they've never thought about where does Microsoft get its ideas. And what kind of outdated, and never correct in the first place, grammar stereotypes is it perpetuating.

CARRIE: Very good. We should read that. We should talk to her too.

LAUREN: You should just talk to her anyway.

MEGAN: I know.

CARRIE: She’s on the list.

MEGAN: She’s definitely on the list.

GRETCHEN: But yeah, it's something that interests me as a as an Internet linguist, I guess, because looking at Twitter data, what are people saying on Twitter, and how are people using creative respellings to represent their speech more closely than a standardized representation does, which people definitely do.

LAUREN: It’s like a new era of early Old English manuscripts, where you could trace them to the region that were from because of the accent. It just makes me so happy to read something and feel connected to that person because they are doing a great kind of I dialect impression of Australian English. So good.

MEGAN: Well it makes me think of how I used to teach quote/unquote developmental English at a community college and many of my students were African American English speakers, and they would take the G off of words that - you know the “ing”, which is very typical pattern in African American English. But I was expected to mark that as something that was incorrect.

LAUREN: Apparently that used to be an affluent form of British English, to g-drop in Southern [England] English, which just shows how arbitrary the social values we impose on particular sounds.

GRETCHEN: and there's another one too, because apparently - so English used to have two “ings”, two things that have now become the modern “ing” ending, one of which was a gerund and one of which was a noun, so the one in “thing” and stuff like that. And even people who have - I don't think anybody says “thin” for “thing”.

CARRIE/MEGAN: Right.

LAUREN: Yeah.

GRETCHEN: Even people who are really, really robust quote/unquote g-droppers never quote unquote drop it there.

CARRIE: Right.

GRETCHEN: So there's a thing that's going on that's grammatical about that, and one of the endings - and I don't remember this exact story, but - one of the endings was originally “ende”. And so the “in” ending kind of reflects this historical ending that didn't have a g in it in the first place.

CARRIE: Interesting.

GRETCHEN: And so what people are doing has really old roots in many dialects of English, and just became stigmatized when the orthography switched to g, and there was this idea that “oh it should have this g, because the g’s there in the orthography”.

CARRIE: Huh. That also reminds me of the ask/aks thing because the aks is older than ask.

LAUREN: Yep.

GRETCHEN: Yeah and I have this idea that English was like - that older varieties of English were just one thing, because that's what was written down, but it was always multiple ways of talking.

CARRIE: As soon as you have more than one person.

LAUREN: And this dialect anxiety is - there's this pronounced discourse in Australia of “American English is ruining Australian English” and “Australian English is becoming less Australian and more American”, and the examples people point out are often things that were really transitory and didn't actually stick around, and no one ever points out that - so for example we don't refer to “lorries” for trucks. So there are things that we've - we refer to trousers as “trousers” and underwear as “underwear” and pants are a form of trousers, rather than a form of underwear, whereas in British English they're pants. So don't do what someone I know did once as an Australian and email your British employer and ask if there's a particular color of pants they want you to wear.

[LAUGHTER]

LAUREN: Because they'll be very confused about why you want a uniform for your underwear. But it speaks to this fact that we DO have a lot of things that we have in common with American English that we've never had in common with British English, really, and no one ever points to those as “American English is ruining Australian English”.

CARRIE: Why is it always American English that's ruining English?

LAUREN: Well I mean this is this thing, right, is this anxiety that we have about the cultural hegemony and we do have a lot more exposure to American English than Americans have to us, which is why -

CARRIE: That’s true.

LAUREN: Australian actors can go to work in America and do a tolerable job of an American accent, and Americans just have vowels all over the place, because suddenly you have to unmerge all this stuff that you never knew was different anyway. You can pick a bad Australian accent so far away, it’s great.

GRETCHEN: Yeah. Canadian actors have to learn how to do an American accent and there's dialect coaches and stuff like that, but nobody even tries to learn a Canadian accent properly because it's close enough.

CARRIE: No, they just fake a North Dakotan accent.

GRETCHEN: And they get Canadian raising wrong. And it drives me bananas.

CARRIE: Yeah. It’s not that hard, guys.

GRETCHEN: Well it is if you don't have the phonemes probably.

LAUREN: And you don’t have the thousands hours of exposure.

CARRIE: Well, they do, right?

GRETCHEN: Well they don’t have the diphthongs. The “about” they have uh [ʌ] and they have the I, but they don't have that as a diphthong. And I don't know how to describe that to somebody who doesn’t have it.

CARRIE: Yeah I guess that’s true. But some Americans have the ‘I’ [ʌɪ] one and not the ‘ow’ [ʌʊ] one. And no American ever points out the ‘I’ [ʌɪ] one actually. They never hear “mice” as funny, but they hear “about” as funny. I always thought that was interesting, but I think it's because some Americans have they have the raising with the ‘I’ and not the ‘ow’.

GRETCHEN: Yeah I think it's acquired like a stereotype.

CARRIE: (TO MEGAN) You have it too, I think. ‘mice’ [mʌɪs] as opposed to ‘mice’ [maɪs].

MEGAN: Oh no.

GRETCHEN: I learned surprisingly late in life that ‘I scream for ice cream’ supposed to be ‘I scream for ice cream’ [aɪ skɹim fɚ aɪs kɹim] and not ‘I scream for ice cream’ [aɪ skɹim fɚ ʌɪs kɹim]. It was created by someone for whom those are the same vowel. But because I have Canadian Raising in ice-

LAUREN: Hang on, can you do it again, because they sound like the same vowel to me.

GRETCHEN: That's cuz you don't have Canadian Raising.

LAUREN: But you do it, Canadian-

GRETCHEN: I scream for ice cream [aɪ skɹim fɚ ʌɪs kɹim]

LAUREN: Okay

GRETCHEN: It's slightly shorter and higher.

LAUREN: Right. I'm just gonna have to believe you on that.

[LAUGHTER]

CARRIE: We could show you the spectrogram.

LAUREN: That would be great.

GRETCHEN: I even have ‘high school’ [hʌɪ skul] - ‘high school’ [haɪ skul].

LAUREN: Australian English has pretty high high vowels anyway. So ‘high school’ [haɪ skul] is already pretty high.

GRETCHEN: No it's not high.

CARRIE: No, it’s not as high as ours.

GRETCHEN: How would you say the ice cream thing.

LAUREN: I scream for ice cream [aɪ skɹim fɚ aɪs kɹim].

CARRIE: Yeah, it's almost the same.

GRETCHEN: It’s almost the same. Yeah: ‘I scream for ice cream’ [aɪ skɹim fɚ ʌɪs kɹim], those are two different vowels.

MEGAN: I scream for ice cream [aɪ skɹim fɚ ʌɪs kɹim]?

GRETCHEN: Yeah, you have raising.

CARRIE: They’re different.

GRETCHEN: Dear Vocal Fries listeners. Please say ‘I scream for ice cream’.

MEGAN: This is what linguists do when they get together.

CARRIE: So nerdy, it’s insane.

LAUREN: Yeah, you get four accents in a room and-

MEGAN: That’s the beginning of a terrible joke.

LAUREN: Hours of entertainment.

GRETCHEN: I’m sorry, I’m trying to pay attention to what you said, but I got distracted by your vowels.

[LAUGHTER]

CARRIE: It’s what we do.

MEGAN: Yeah, don’t go on dates with linguists.

[LAUGHTER]

GRETCHEN: Or do, if you like that.

CARRIE: If you’re already a linguist, maybe not.

LAUREN: Would you date someone for their accent?

CARRIE: Oh yeah, totally.

MEGAN: Ohhh yeah.

LAUREN: I feel like it's such a deep linguist thing saying “oh yeah”. That is definitely a different thing to people being like “I think French accents are sexy”. Linguists are like “ ah yeah, guess what, he's got some quality Canadian raising”.

GRETCHEN: “You merge these two vowels and I've never seen someone merge that way before.”

MEGAN: Exactly. Literally everything is data.

CARRIE: It’s true.

GRETCHEN: You need to keep your friends and family naive linguistically, because then when your grammaticality intuitions get shot, because you've been thinking about something too long, you'll be able to go ask your roommate or something like, “hey, can you say this? For me? Just to make sure if it sounds right to you?”

LAUREN: Having lived now in the last four years, we've lived in Singapore, southern England, and Australia, and then working all the time as I do with you as a Canadian and a bunch of American colleagues, especially lexical intuitions, I have no intuitions about words anymore. I can’t remember where I use that or if it's normal.

CARRIE: Yeah, the dialect surveys where they’re like, “how do you pronounce this word?” Is it leisure [liʒɚ] or leisure [lɛʒɚ]. I’m like -

LAUREN: Depends on who I'm talking to.

CARRIE: Both sound okay to me now! I don't even know in that case. I think it's leisure [liʒɚ]?

EDDIE IZZARD: You say aluminum we say aluminium. You say centrifugal [sɛn’tɹɪfʊgəl] we say centrifugal [sɛntɹɪ’fjugəl]. You say leisure [liʒɚ] we say layzhuraia.

GRETCHEN: A lot of stuff that I think of as a change in progress is actually “I just moved to a different region”. Or vice versa. I go to different region and it's actually a change in progress. I grew up in Nova Scotia and then I moved to Ontario for undergrad and then I moved to Montreal for grad school. In Montreal, I don't have a lot of pressures on my English, because most of the English speakers that I interact with are from a variety of locations and have moved to Montreal. The Montreal English is also a bit pluricentric, but Montreal French, my French has gotten very Quebec since I moved to Montreal, which is great. I've been trying to make it more Quebec, because why should I speak European anyway. It’s because of the French cultural hegemony. Maybe I should speak Quebec French.

[Laughter]

CARRIE: Yeah, damnit!

GRETCHEN: Damnit!

MEGAN: Thanks to Nicole Rosen, I know there’s a difference.

GRETCHEN: Do you know what the difference is?

MEGAN: No.

GRETCHEN: So now I say, instead of saying like - oh fuck. I wasn’t expecting to be saying French. If I'm saying tu sais I have [tse], I have frication on the high vowels, which is really fun. I can't even do it and not fricate it now. I used to do them not fricated but I can’t do it now.

LAUREN: It's been really great working with you and discovering - I did, just to bring my own biases in here, I definitely had this view that American English was all of North American English, and I do tend to forget that you are also part of the Commonwealth. Like a surprise I go and same person’s on the money. Which is problematic in other ways, but I've learnt so much about Canadian English and just how different it is.

GRETCHEN: And a lot of Canadians orient towards a more British standard as a way of not seeming American.

LAUREN: Oh my gosh, can you tell - cuz we talked about this in our - well we didn't talk about it in the color episode, but we did an episode about the semantics of different color terms, and then when it came - I was like “oh no Gretchen, we have to write the episode description and whose color spelling are we going to use?” because I c-o-l-o-u-r, which is definitely spelled correctly just then -

GRETCHEN: And I was like, “no I have o-u-r”, labour and colour and favourite

LAUREN: And I did not know that about Canadian English, but it's a thing that-

GRETCHEN: So we've decided for the podcast all our descriptions are - our house style is Canadian/Australian, which is basically whatever we think it is, because we don't have adequate spellchecks for it, and so just whoever's writing it writes it the way they want to, and that's how we do it. And we ran into some controversy about this, because we made t-shirts and mugs and with “not judging your grammar, just analysing it” and on them, because this is a common linguist sentiment that we have to correct.

LAUREN: And I didn't even think about it when we did it, but we obviously spell analyse with an s.

GRETCHEN: And since then, we've gotten a bunch of people, Americans, being like but do you have one with a zed or with a zee on it and we're like, “no? Doesn't have to be about you?”

LAUREN: No.

GRETCHEN: If you can’t wear a shirt with an s on it, you don’t deserve to wear this shirt.

LAUREN: Especially that shirt, of all shirts. If you can't be non-judgey on a mug

GRETCHEN/LAUREN: that says you're not judgey

LAUREN: then you don't get the mug.

GRETCHEN: You’ve missed the entire point of this exercise. And I think we would have faced a lot less flack if we had done the zed spelling.

CARRIE: Oh yeah. Sure.

GRETCHEN: Because people who aren't Americans are more used to the world not caring.

MEGAN: I was gonna say: Americans expect things to be the way that we want them to be.

CARRIE: Well also in this case, I would spell this with a zed as well.

GRETCHEN: I would have spelled it with a zed too, but Lauren had made it with the s and I was like, “I'm not changing it”.

CARRIE: Yeah.

GRETCHEN: That's fine. Yeah no, I would have filled it with a zed but I was like, yeah I'm amused by this.

LAUREN: Yeah, it's one of the times I didn't think about it.

GRETCHEN: Yeah no, and I think it would be an interesting conversation piece, and those people were like, “you could make both versions” and I was like, “I don't think you see the point of, here's our house style. It is whatever we say it is.” And maybe it's not your style, but you're wearing this as a way of participating in a particular type of thing, and we're trying to not make the podcast too American in a world where a lot of media is centered around the US.

LAUREN: We love you, American listeners.

[Laughter]

GRETCHEN: We say this IN the US, we love our American listeners, but we want to expose them to things outside of their-

MEGAN: We have the advantage where I AM an American, so we can just say it and the listeners can assume that I don't really mean everything I say.

GRETCHEN: It's very easy, because, especially as a Canadian, I go to a lot of American conferences, I have a lot of American colleagues who I like very much, but it's very easy to start getting in that bad patterning of everything's -

CARRIE: Yeah, even when I was in elementary school, we were allowed to spell words the Canadian way or the American way.

LAUREN: Yeah. Was it you telling me the anecdote about zed and zee? And flipping?

GRETCHEN: Yeah! There's a thing that happens that Jack Chambers, who's a Canadian linguist, has documented, where Canadian children will generally sing the alphabet song with zee at the end.

CARRIE: Ah! I never did.

GRETCHEN: Like a lot of them. I should have done a test run on it for you, anyway. Like “Carrie, how did you sing the alphabet song?” Canadian children will often sing the alphabet song with zee at the end, and they'll often say zee at the end when they were citing the alphabet, up until around the age of like 10 to 16, and then they switch to zed. Which is a weirdly late age for acquisition stuff.

LAUREN: It must look like change, like it's changed.

GRETCHEN: It looks like it's change in progress. It looks like the kids are becoming Americanized, and watching Sesame Street, and adopting this thing. Except you can keep doing it a decade later, or two decades later, and still little kids are using zee, but the 20-somethings, who were your teenagers or your little kids, have now switched to zed. My mum, when she was a kid, I asked her, she would have said zee, and now she says zed. When I was a kid I sang the alphabet song with zee and then I switch to zed.

CARRIE: Okay. I know why I didn't. My mother would have yelled at me.

[Laughter]

GRETCHEN: Yeah so once people acquire it as an identity token they switched to zed, and they're very adamant about it. I almost wouldn't admit that I had ever used zee, because that's this thing that -

CARRIE: It’s a shibboleth.

GRETCHEN: distinguishes us from those people to the south.

LAUREN: Sometimes language contact can drive change apart, as well as change towards.

GRETCHEN: Yeah. They did this study on - I think it was Buffalo and Windsor, Ontario? Buffalo, uh … where is Buffalo?

CARRIE: New York.

GRETCHEN: No, that’s not next to Windsor. Anyway.

LAUREN: Two places.

GRETCHEN: Two cities -

CARRIE: Oh, Niagara?

GRETCHEN: Niagara, St. Catherine’s, no.

CARRIE: Yeah, St. Catherine’s is right there.

GRETCHEN: What's on the US side then?

CARRIE: Buffalo is right at the border.

GRETCHEN: Oh, so it is Buffalo.

LAUREN: None of this means anything to me.

GRETCHEN: Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo.

CARRIE: I hate that sentence!

GRETCHEN: So those two cities, they've done linguistic dialects surveys in them, and people - they actually talk more differently from each other than people who are further in from the border. Because people really want to identify where they're from.

CARRIE: That's interesting.

MEGAN: And I guess I should be the American and ask what the fuck zed is.

MARIA DE MEDEIROS: Who’s Zed?

BRUCE WILLIS: Zed’s dead baby. Zed’s dead

CARRIE: It’s just zee.

LAUREN: It's the last letter of the alphabet.

MEGAN: So it's a synonym.

CARRIE: It's just our name for it versus your name for it.

MEGAN: Okay.

GRETCHEN: It's like, I don't know, like pop versus soda.

MEGAN: Okay.

GRETCHEN: It's just other other names for it. Most of the letters of the alphabet only have the one name, but this one, it has two.

MEGAN: Alright. Cuz I heard you say zed, and I was like, “that's just how you say zee so that everyone understands you're saying zee”.

GRETCHEN: You have it as a disambiguation, like International Phonetic Alphabet, no, like the NATO alphabet thing.

CARRIE: Ohhhh.

GRETCHEN: I've never encountered that use, that’s interesting.

CARRIE: Me either!

LAUREN: It's like saying zero instead of oh on the phone or something for you.

MEGAN: Yeah.

GRETCHEN: Or Alpha Bravo Charlie Delta. M as in Michael type thing.

MEGAN: Yeah, that's what I thought it was.

GRETCHEN: Huh. I didn’t realize anybody did that.

LAUREN: The zed of the NATO phonetic alphabet is Zulu, just if you’re curious.

GRETCHEN: Yeah so they don't have zed. They could have zeta or something there, but I don't know. They don't. Cuz zed comes from Greek zeta.

CARRIE: Got changed over time.

GRETCHEN: Anyway. I think more of our letters should have real names for them, rather than just like sound followed by ee. Because then we wouldn't have this phone problem in the first place but.

CARRIE: It's true. But it is kind of fun to have this code.

GRETCHEN: It does make it easy for the alphabet song to rhyme. I tried to write an alphabet song in IPA once, and it did not go well, because nothing rhymed. Also the stress was very difficult.

CARRIE: Oh yeah.

MEGAN: Yeah.

GRETCHEN: It was like, “p, b, t, d, k, g … glottal stop!”

CARRIE: UH! GRETCHEN: Do you say the name of the sound, or do you say the sound itself. The symbol? Some of the stuff, even linguists using a p will generally just say “pee”. But glottal stop doesn't have a name other than “global stop”. So it did not go well.

CARRIE: No. I can imagine.

MEGAN: I just got worried for you guys. Are you going to the thing?

GRETCHEN: The Word Of The Year? Yeah.

CARRIE: Do we have a last thing that you wanna-

LAUREN: Thing we wanna-

CARRIE: What do you want to tell our listeners?

GRETCHEN: Um.

MEGAN: While you're thinking about that, I'm gonna say that: I'm an American so I didn't think about these as issues. So sorry. The keyboard and the spellcheck works for me. Never thought about how it wouldn't work for other dialects. Even American English.

GRETCHEN: You succeeded in not being an asshole.

MEGAN: Thank you.

[Laughter]

MEGAN: I was being an asshole before.

LAUREN: That’s the thing. I don't necessarily want to ensure that everyone does spell things a certain way, although obviously it would be preferable. It's just one of the things. In Australia, life goes on even though I did read a bunch of books that had American spellings and even lexical items. I still don't really know what “pumps” are or “bangs” are, but they were in the Baby-Sitters Club books. We just got on with lexical variation and those things are actually really common things, but I don't really have a visual for them in my head, but I do - it's a very specific Baby-Sitters Club aesthetic, and I think allowing more people to have more of that exposure then makes them more open-minded about - we get exposed to a lot of American and British accents on television, and a little lexical variation, and I think when Australians travel they do a better job of adapting to that variation they're exposed to. I think just exposing -

GRETCHEN: I had a difficult time with your vowels, because I don't have any Australian tv that I’ve been exposed to since a young age.

LAUREN: You should’ve watched more Neighbours, Gretchen.

CARRIE: I didn't watch Neighbors, but I watched Home & Away a lot.

GRETCHEN: I watched Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries.

LAUREN: Good one. That's good.

CARRIE: That's pretty good, but that was much later.

GRETCHEN: Yeah. I'm just thinking, because we're gonna be heading to the Word Of The Year vote, there is no one declares a Canadian word of the year at the moment.

CARRIE: No… yeah.

GRETCHEN: Yeah. So that's something that has been kind of on my radar, because we did a Word Of The Year episode last year, and I was like, the Australian National Dictionary had done that, and I thought geez no one -

LAUREN: We have the Australian National Dictionary and Macquarie. We have two.

GRETCHEN: Oh they each declare a Word Of The Year?

LAUREN: They do, yeah.

GRETCHEN: Oh, good for them. So there are two Australian Word Of The Years, there's a bunch of American ones-

CARRIE: No Canadian.

GRETCHEN: And there's no Canadian Word Of The Year. We've gotta get somebody on that, Carrie, lets do this.

CARRIE: Let's do it!

LAUREN: And the British of course have the Oxford Dictionary, which just presumes to name the Word Of The Year for everyone.

MEGAN: As they do.

LAUREN/GRETCHEN: As they do.

LAUREN: So it's not necessarily about changing YOUR English, or the way you spell, or the way you use words, but just being open to exposing yourself to podcasts by people who don't speak the same accent as you, and it is a bit harder at the start, but it's really worthwhile.

CARRIE: Agreed.

GRETCHEN: And something that more languages can be pluricentric, and standardization isn't an inherit good when it comes to language.

CARRIE: It's definitely not.

GRETCHEN: It's, in fact, terrible.

MEGAN: yeah think that's what Americans should take away, as I'm hearing y'all, that we should think about how so much of the media we can see - we don't have to worry about fitting in when it comes to that.

LAUREN: Well standardizing, just accepting that Harry Potter was written in British English.

MEGAN: They switched things!

LAUREN: Yeah they did.

GRETCHEN: We got the British versions, so I had deal with “trainers”, and I didn't know what trainers were. I guess there's just things that Harry Potter wears, I was like, “oh you mean sneakers, okay”.

CARRIE: Oh we killed them “runners” where I grew up.

LAUREN: Oh I’m a “runners” person as well! Nice!

CARRIE: Commonwealth, represent!

GRETCHEN: But I’m a sneakers person, cuz I’m from the Maritimes. There's all this stuff - and I think having space for multiple different varieties of speaking, even within something that we call a language is something that there isn’t enough attention to.

CARRIE: Agreed! Well I think that's a good place to end.

MEGAN: it sounds like a great place to end.

CARRIE: So thanks for being our guests!

LAUREN: Thanks for having us on!

GRETCHEN: Yeah, thanks for having us!

MEGAN: We HAD to take this opportunity.

CARRIE: Alright, and thanks again, and

CARRIE/MEGAN: Don’t be an asshole!

EDDIE IZZARD: And you say basil [beɪsəl], we say basil [bæsəl]. You say herbs [ɚbz] and we say herbs [hɚbz], because there’s a fucking h in it. [Applause] But you spell through t-h-r-u, and I'm with you on that, as we spell it thruff, and that's trying to cheat at Scrabble. How can we get that ‘oo’ sound. Well a u will work. What about an o as well. No, we don’t need it, we're fine. No I think I an o in. Alright. And a g as well. What?! Yes a g would be good. Yes. Yes, we need a silent guh, just in the background in case of any accidents or something. Well alright. And an h as well. Fuckin hang on. An h in case some herbs come along. And a q, and p, an a zed. Look it's a word in Scrabble that's 480 points.

CARRIE: The Vocal Fries Podcast is produced by Chris Ayers for Halftone Audio. Music by Nick Granum. You can find us on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram @vocalfriespod. You can email us at [email protected].

#transcript #linguistic discrimination #Australian English #Australia #Canadian English #Canada #Australian #Canadian #linguistics #word of the year #American English #America #USA #English #dialect #Canadian raising #zed

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thewestmeetingroom · 3 years

Text

Ep 49 Hart House Conversations Reunion

Broadcast Feb. 13, 2021

SPEAKERS

Nour, Kitsa, Rebekah, John, Sabrina

Rebekah: Hi everyone and welcome to this week's episode in The West Meeting Room. It's your host Rebekah. Today you will hear a round table reunion conversation that took place on zoom at the end of January 2021. But it is a follow up dialogue from a conversation that first took place during October of 2017. Four undergraduate students Kitsa, Nour, Sabrina and myself gathered with John Monahan, the warden of Hart House for a recording of Hart House Conversations almost four years ago as first year students, where we discussed our hopes and fears about our upcoming academic careers at the University of Toronto. Now, almost four years later, as we near the end of our academic programs, we all joined together once again in a very different world than when we first met. And now join us as we talk about the changes that we've undergone our revelations and as we open the audio Time Capsule to speak alongside our past selves.

John: Hi, everybody. Good afternoon, and good evening to some of you. How is everyone doing? Feeling? feeling tired? Well, I am. Yeah, I'm in a state of perpetual tiredness myself these days, kind of a fogginess. But I'm really grateful that the four of you are here. We have this really exciting opportunity this afternoon, to pick up a conversation where we left it four years ago, which is a fairly rare opportunity, but a really exciting one. And I'm delighted to be here with Sabrina, and Nour, and Kitsa, and Rebekah, all of whom were first year undergraduate students at the University of Toronto, when we sat down in person at the time to talk in the radio studio at Hart House at the University of Toronto. And now it is January 2021. And, as I said, almost four years have gone by, and the world is in the grips of a global pandemic. So, we are meeting virtually, we’re all relying upon the technology of zoom, and our headphones and our computer screens to have a conversation. But here we are, nonetheless. So, I just want to plunge in and ask all of you for the benefit of the viewers that didn't necessarily meet you four years ago. Would you be willing to introduce yourselves to whoever's listening? So, Rebekah, since your head is currently the largest on my screen?

Rebekah: Sounds great.

John: Will you introduce yourself?

Rebekah: For sure sounds good. Um, so my name is Rebekah, I'm a fourth-year student at U of T. This is my last year at U of T, it's hard to believe. That time has zipped by incredibly fast and also not at all in some cases. And yeah, I'm a double major student in History and Russian Language and Literature. And I have a minor in Practical French. And I also work as part of the Hart House Stories team as Podcast Producer on campus, helping to put together this little project. So that's me in a nutshell.

John: Thank you for your nutshell, Rebekah. And because you and Sabrina are both podcast experts, you're not allowed to judge me even though I'm technically working for you this afternoon.

Rebekah: No problem.

John: Kitsa. Kitsa, so you're next on my screen? Would you introduce yourself please?

Kitsa: Sure. My name is Guershom Kitsa. I'm a fourth-year architecture student - for moment I forgot what year - was like I'm in my fourth year? Ah, yeah, I think that's it. I don't know if I should say anything else. My name and my program.

John: Well, we'll, we might drag more stuff out of you later. But that's a good beginning. And I'm sure there's, there are many more layers to Guershom Kitsa that we will be peeling back over the span of the next little while together. Nour, please introduce yourself to us.

Nour: Hi, my name is Nour Bazzi. I am an Immunology and Physiology student double major and I'm in my fourth year. And I'm so excited to be here today.

John: Excited that you're here with us. And last but not least, Sabrina. And I, I'm looking at this picture of somebody who looks like they're on the top of a building and a red parachute outfit. Is that you?

Sabrina: Yeah, that is me and I think this is interesting because I was listening to the original tape and we also had kind of an aside conversation in the introduction then as well but that is me on top of the CN Tower when my brother bought Edge Walk tickets for him, myself and my mom two summers ago. So that's me hanging over the Toronto skyline.

John: Wow. So, we know that Sabrina is someone who loves to court danger. Introduce our listeners to the rest of you.

Sabrina: Yeah, So Hello. My name is Sabrina Brathwaite. I am in my fourth year and two credits away from completing my degree, a major in Philosophy and a double minor in French and Political Science. That is French and Political Science, not Political Science in French. That's a question I get a lot. And for anyone who listened to the original audio or the original episode, you would notice that my degree selections changed. So, I feel like that's going to be an interesting conversation coming up about changing hats and trying new things.

John: Absolutely. Now, I wonder if this would be a good time for the five of us to spend a few minutes listening to a mashup from our recording four years ago. So that we can all kind of be reminded together of what we said and what the vibe was. And we're not going to hold you to anything, if you want to completely change your story. You can. That's the beauty of this. This is a free form technology. But I'm going to ask our producer Braeden to play the mash up. And we'll all listen to it. And then we'll talk about it after that.

[The following is a selection of clips from the 2017 conversation with the speakers]

Kitsa: Because I came here earlier than, before the school opened about a week or two, two weeks before the school opened, okay. And it was extremely lonely, I had no one to talk to. I didn't know anyone, I didn't know anything. I couldn't go anywhere else. I was just in residence in Whitney Hall, all on my own, but then after a while, able to speak to different people, sort of like you kind of get what people are about and what they care about. And that's really amazing. Being able to connect with that. It's amazing. And I was having this, a whenever you're able to reach out to these people, not only do opportunities open up for you academically, but also so many possibilities are opening up to you. I was having this conversation with my success advisor. And she just, I had this thing that I really wanted to do. I was saying I wanted to change the world. And I was like, how am I going to change the world? And she actually put me on a path where I could see myself impacting other individuals and sort of like, sharing, I felt that at Toronto, and U of T specifically, it's the best university in Canada, one of the best in the world, there's so much diversity that is brought into place that we need to share this. And so, like having conversations with these people in power, it can, it kind of opens us up to how we can be able to reach out to more people and to new possibilities, more than just looking at a lecture slide or writing notes in class.

Nour: I think I speak for a lot of international students or students coming from abroad when I say the transition from childhood to adulthood, even when you're not, especially when you're not around your family, like you're so, when you're back home, you're so used to like, “yeah, I can mess up, it's fine.” You know, you have people that can pick you up. But now it's like, every action has a consequence. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. I mean, it's part of the transition, right? It's part of, of growing up. It's part of, it's exciting. But it's also something very intimidating. So, it's a little bit of both for me. No, I mean, like this is huge. This is like, the weather is different. The everything is different for me. And it's very, very exciting because I've never been so exposed to so much diversity, and it's very exciting. So, the learning here is not just limited to like textbooks or like, you know, facts, figures, you know, whatever you learn in class. It's like, just socializing and speaking to people kind of like this. You see people from like, all around the world, and it's so fascinating for me. Yeah.

John: And what are you studying?

Nour: Right now, I'm a Life Science student. I'm hoping to specialize in Human Biology next year. My end goal is medicine and hopefully surgery.

Rebekah: Being on a campus in another country, like outside the US was something that was really exciting for me because I wanted to be able to interact with people from all around the world. And of course, the universities in the states also have like international students. But I feel like in terms of, I heard a statistic before I came here that like more than half of the population who lives in Toronto was born like outside of Toronto, or even outside of Canada. So that seems super exciting to just get to like, get all these people's different experiences and just hear their stories. And I attended an international student orientation week before school started and just sitting around and talking with people and just hearing like, their life story and like where they grew up and stuff was something that I like never really thought that I could ever experience and it was definitely eye opening to me. I came to U of T in hopes of studying International Relations. But over the course of going to classes and you know, just figuring out the work, I found that like, my favorite class right now is Russian. I studied Russian in high school. So, I joked with my parents that I might end up becoming a Russian Language Literature major only because that's something that I really enjoy right now.

John: I mean, would it please them or tick them off?

Rebekah: No, I think they'd be, I think that's something they expect, actually. Because like, I love languages, so they they'd be pretty down for it. But I know they'd be more excited if I was an International Relations major.

John: Well, life is long.

Rebekah: Exactly.

Sabrina: So, coming to U of T, my intended major, hopefully, is Ethics, Society & Law, which is headed by Trinity College, with a double minor in Spanish and French. Something that I'm excited to kind of hone, I suppose is like networking and networking skills, which sounds really superficial on the face of it.

John: Oh, I don't think so. I don't think so at all.

Sabrina: Some people say like, you know, it's, you're just going to meet people, whatever. But if it's actually, I wouldn't call it an art. But it's a skill to be able to talk to people and be able to connect with someone in a way that like, you can get their number, get their Facebook and contact them even after months or years of not talking,

Kitsa: I need to learn that. I need to see you for that,

Sabrina: Especially in kind of this -

John: You've just networked. This is it you're just doing it.

Sabrina: in this job market and just kind of like financial climate, and I don’t want to throw too many buzzwords out. But a lot of the times with jobs and just opportunities, it's not so much the skills you have. There's 50 other people with the skills you have, but it's the people you know, and it's what the people you know know of you and what you in particular can bring into that position. The things that they know about you that the interviewer can't get out of a half hour, you know. So I'm just looking, really looking forward to just be better at talking to people and taking in what they're saying to me and remembering names, remembering details, and making actual viable connections.

[The end of the clips from 2017. Now back to the present conversation]

John: Thank you so much, Braeden. So, let me ask for first reactions. My question would be, do you recognize yourself?

Sabrina: Yeah, I do recognize myself. Even though there is there's like changes or the way that things have manifested themselves are different than now, I kind of stated them there. I think the energy behind those words is consistent in who I am now too.

John: Consistent energy. I like it. Kitsa - do you recognize yourself from four years ago?

Kitsa: I mean, it's always weird listening to a recording of yourself. You're like, “Who's that guy? Do I sound like that?” I hate listening to myself. But yeah, it's interesting how, Yeah, it's interesting how the dots kind of connected themselves over the last few years, because I think when I was saying those things, I really believed what I was saying. But sometimes through university, I kind of felt like I was not going in that direction at all. And now looking back, I'm like, Oh, hmm...

Rebekah: Yeah, I think for me, it was kind of interesting because I've listened to this tape before, before we started recording. And I could hear how young I sounded. Or at least in my brain, I feel like I sounded younger. I also could pick up a little bit of maybe shift in my accent, I don't know. Like, that's something that I also could hear listening like very finely. But I think there's just so much excitement behind my voice. And I'm, not to say that I'm not still excited, I just think that the excitement has kind of transformed into something else. Because I had no idea of like what the next three or four years is going to look like for me. And I could have never predicted that we were going to be in a global pandemic. And so just hearing the hopefulness that my voice is trying to make me think that maybe there should be some more hopefulness in my voice right now. Not knowing where I'm going to end up after this year, but just trying to be comfortable with that because she sounds excited and I want to channel that.

John: She does sound excited. Nour - how does, how does the Nour on the tape sound to the Nour who's part of this conversation today? Do you recognize her?

Nour: I feel like I sound so excited and maybe even naive in my excitement. Like, I was like, you know, trying to, I was trying to, like postpone listening to this to like the very last minute before the meeting because I didn't want to cringe. But I think it's like so much, I think um, so much has changed for sure. And I agree with Rebekah that I want to kind of channel that excitement and that energy and hopefulness because you know, I think we all need a little bit more hope during our times. And it's, it's good to think about I guess.

John: Absolutely. Just as I was listening again to the recording, a couple of things jumped out at me. Some commonalities between Kitsa and Nour, and then between Rebekah and Sabrina. And I could listen to it another time and pick up completely different things. But this time around, I really was struck that both Kitsa and Nour, you talked about the palpable excitement of being around such diversity, so many different people have different identities that you were encountering at the university, living in Toronto. And both of you have - Nour, I think you were born in Canada but spent most of your time growing up outside Canada, and Kitsa having been born in Africa and being raised outside Canada. This being a new experience for you four years ago, you both were excited about the variety and diversity of people. Has that excitement, or how has that excitement evolved, at all, if it has over the last four years?

Nour: I think I'm still very excited. But also, like, as I was settling into Toronto, I feel like I had this tendency to talk to or spend more time with people who reminded me of home, who can speak my mother tongue and who I can talk to about, you know, um, culture and, you know, just connecting on that I feel has brought me closer to feeling like I'm safe. And especially during times when I'm feeling overwhelmed with all the differences and, you know, all the differences between home and between Toronto, which slowly started to feel like home to me. But you know, just at the beginning, just sometimes you need to feel that things are not changing too fast. And I think if you connect with people who remind you of home, it can be a great way to slowly transition into a new environment.

John: Right. And diversity doesn't necessarily mean unfamiliar, right? So, it's, you can, you can still, I guess, appreciate the diversity and the variety of people and identities and stories in a particular place, but still kind of gravitate, to sometimes gravitate towards what feels comfortable, or what feels more familiar for, for that sense of home. Which I think everybody, or most people are looking for at some level. Kitsa, what about you, you talked about your appreciation of the diversity of Toronto, but before you talked about that you talked about the loneliness that you were encountering when you had, you know, in the first little while after you had just arrived in Canada. And you know, Canada is this frozen northern country and we're not known for being, you know, super emotional, or effusive people. And I'm just wondering if, well are you willing to share? What is your, how have your perceptions of the people in Canada? How have they evolved over time?

Kitsa: Yeah, I think one thing that I have learned to do, I would see - I'm an architecture student. So, I think I tend to get very picky about the most random things, like oh a new condo came out. It looks terrible. I don't like it. And so, I think, the only thing that really draws me to this city is its people to be honest. Like, thinking back to where I came from, I think one of the most - anyone talking about diversity, it's one thing to refer to diversity in terms of the people. I think the landscape, at least in the GTA is not very diverse. It's just flat and there's like pretty much nothing happening which was rough to adjust to. I remember driving to London, Ontario and for a solid three hours you are driving on a straight line. The sun was up, it was like 10pm at night. I'm like what's going on? And so, I think over the last three years, I have been sort of caught. I've been caught in between this tension of really feeling discontent with being in Toronto, but also really admiring the fact that in Canada, and I think this is not a common thing. You can really be 100% Canadian and one 100% true to your culture and where you come from. And I think that's what gets me really excited about Toronto. That's what really draws me back to this city, is that you get to meet many different people who are just as Canadian as whatever background they're from. And one of my favorite places, I think, is Chinatown. I just love getting through Chinatown and a lot of good food. But yeah, so yeah, in response to being lonely, I think everyone goes through it. It's just different people learn how to deal with it differently. And I do recall in first year, meeting a lot of different people. And that was a lot of excitement. Like Rebekah said, I think it kind of goes away. And so, in second year, I had to, in a sense learn to, have to relearn what relationships mean in the context of Canada, I think. And so, when I came here, I was coming with expectations from back at home. And I wanted, being I wanted my relationships with people here to look like what they did back at home. And so, the different value systems. I think a very simple one is that when you ask someone out back at home, you're like, “hey, let's catch up.” It's given that you're taking care of them. So, you pay for the food, it's all on you. But I think the first time I went to a restaurant with someone near the end and we were getting the bill. The person was like, “yeah, we're splitting the bill.” I'm like, then why did you ask me if you wanted to me pay for my own food? It was so weird. But I think once I learned what the culture was, and once I allowed the culture here to change some aspects of me, then I was able to appreciate it more. And I was able to appreciate a lot of these people who really did care for me, but because my, let's call it a love language. My cultural love language is very different than the cultural love language people use here. Yeah, it was just a bit of a learning process.

John: That's, that's really rich. And by the way, it's been so long since I was in a restaurant, I just want to say that I would pay for all of you just for the chance to be in a restaurant, happily.

Kitsa: I'll keep that in mind.

John: Yeah, no, listen. This is recorded, so you can hold me to it. And Rebekah and Sabrina as I was listening to the two of you, and maybe I was listening for it to be quite honest, because I know a little bit more about some of your interests as they've evolved over the last four years. But you both talked about the importance of stories. In that little clip that Braeden shared with us, Rebekah, you talked about how exciting it was to be around so many different people and their stories. And Sabrina, you talked about wanting to develop the skill of networking in order to be able to talk to other people and to exchange stories with them. And I guess I'm wondering from the two of you, if your appreciation for stories, you know, how has that evolved over the last four years?

Rebekah: I think that's a really interesting question. Because I've always loved talking to people. And I used to joke that if there was a job where I could get paid to travel and talk to people, that's like my ideal job. Because that's all I want to do for the rest of my life. But I've gotten to meet a lot of people from a lot of random experiences, like pre- COVID days, when you can actually meet up in person and like stroll into a random event. Like that was my favorite thing was to just, you know, meet other people and just hear more about like their lives and like what makes them themselves. But I think another thing that I've kind of learned more about storytelling is like learning more about the history of like how stories kind of evolve. Because when I came to Canada, I was really ignorant to most of Canada's history, didn't know anything about it. And I could feel things like through osmosis. Like as I was navigating, you know, life in Toronto, like, Oh, that feels different, or that feels weird. Like picking up on these different nuances, but not really having like the knowledge or the receipts for lack of a better term of like why those interactions and why those encounters kind of situate themselves in that way. And I think through like coursework and through talking to other people and learning more about how they are situated in this place, I've kind of learned more about how history informs storytelling and how people go about expressing themselves with other people. So that's been really eye opening to see kind of coursework and like real life work overlap in that way.

John: Sabrina, what about you? What's your, how has your relationship to stories evolved over the last few years?

Sabrina: Yeah, I think my reverence for stories has only grown over time as exemplified by the fact that I keep reapplying and working as the Hart House Student Podcaster. And also, have just completely changed my career path towards like collecting, gathering and distributing stories. I think I've kind of come to a realization that like pretty much everything is a story. The way that we live our lives are informed by stories that we tell ourselves or that we've been told by others. And that's where a lot of sense of community and identity and self-exploration can come from. And also, I've seen what happens when you completely, when you create structures that are completely devoid of stories as well. And it kind of just turns into like goal-oriented, trying to hit the next milestone, but like not really knowing why. And I think there's like, there's not a lot of life in that. So yes, my respect and relationship with stories has grown a lot, I think, in the past four years.

John: So, Sabrina, you said something intriguing. So, let's stay with you for a minute. You, you mentioned that your career path, your career plans anyway, are changing. So, I'm going to ask each of you recap for us four years ago, what you thought you were going to be when you grow up, or what your plans were four years ago? And then tell us what your plans are now, and maybe account for that shift. So, Sabrina, you first. Four years ago, what did you think you were gonna do? What did you think all of your studies were going to lead to eventually?

Sabrina: I was dreading this question, because I feel like I'm gonna sound like a cliche. But four years ago, if you asked me where I was going, I would have looked you in the eyes, I would have told you that I'm going to become a criminal lawyer. And I'm going to work in the International Criminal Court in New York. And after U of T, I'm going to go to Harvard Law. And you'll live this like life helping people and like, I don't know, like taking names and like breaking down barriers.

John: Marry George Clooney, is that – or does - someone has that life already, I think.

Sabrina: [laughs] I think that that is someone else's life. Yeah, I just looked up Amal Clooney's whole biography and was like, wow, this could be me. And that is not what I would tell you today.

John: So, it's - so don't leave us hanging today. You would...

Sabrina: Yeah, I didn't remember. I didn't remember if that was the second part of the question. But today, in contrast, I’d probably tell you that I am very tired. And don't want to be in another academic institution for like, at least half a decade. So, I'm going to work in media and create audio and like, reconnect with plants and go on hikes, and hopefully get paid to do that, too. And just do like a bunch of things that make me happy on like a soul level. And like, take a nap too. That's kind of what I'm where I'm going now is to like restore my energy and take care of my body.

John: It is not the purpose of this conversation for me to give you advice, but if it were, [laughs] I would say taking a five-year break to reconnect to the soil and plants and yourself and build your soul could eventually make you a much, much better lawyer. And I say that as someone who took a number of years off between undergrad and law school. So, as I said, four years ago, and I've learned nothing in between, I keep saying it - Life is long. Nour, how about you now? Four years ago, you just told us on that clip that you were thinking about medical school, and you were studying Life Sciences? And tell us how that's evolved? You're now doing a double major in Immunology. And did you say Physiology? I forget.

Nour: Yeah, it was physiology.

John: Physiology. So where do your, how have your plans evolved over the last four years? And how do you account for that evolution?

Nour: Um, I was just listening. So, when I was listening to the audio recording of four years ago, I didn't actually remember that I had an interest in going for human biology. So, a lot has changed. I think when I started my undergrad studies, I thought of it all as a stepping stone to my journey into medical school. But it's not that anymore. And I think I came in with this blueprint. And as the years went by, this blueprint kind of changed. And now I want different things. And I was surprised to learn that I just love the science of it all. Like not just as a means to an end, but just in and of itself. And so, I'm hoping to start my master's in Applied Immunology this fall. And I'm really excited. And just to research. I think that's what really makes me so excited. And I really like talking about it. And I just feel very strongly that this is my calling right now.

John: Understanding that I've never taken a science class since grade 12, would, if I asked you to tell us what your area of or your research interests are, would I understand your answer?

Nour: I could try.

John: I am, I am very thick headed. So yes, you'll have to try, try really hard.

Nour: I came in wanting to be an OB GYN. I came into academia wanting to be an OB GYN and I had a very, like, I had an interest in, in children in the first few moments of life and in just the reproductive system of women. And, um, and I still do. And I just think I wanted to, like, do some research about the immunology of that. Like the immune system in relation to the uterus, the placenta. How, just how the microbiome affects fertility. And that's an area that's not very well researched. So, I think there's a lot of work to do there. And I want to be part of that. So, it's exciting.

John: It's, well, it sounds exciting and pertinent. And, like, you know, you - it sounds like a variation, but kind of a close cousin of what you were talking about four years ago. But a really important almost like a honing in on more of a focused way of doing what it is you wanted to do four years ago. Kitsa - What about you? And I remember four years ago, if I'm not mistaken, you were taking architecture related courses and hoping to get into the Daniels Faculty. And now you're a fourth-year architecture student? Am I right?

Kitsa: Yes, you are.

John: So, this would suggest that you are having some success in pursuit of your, your intention. Is that correct?

Kitsa: Debatable success [laughs]

John: Well, you tell us, you tell us. I don't want to put words in your mouth. But how have your, how have your aspirations evolved?

Kitsa: Yeah, um, I applied into the Daniels Faculty at end of first year. Got in. It was exciting. And since then, I've been in this weird situation of being in two years, and sometimes three years at the same time. So, I remember, I think, two years ago, I was like, I think it was last year, in my third year, I was taking classes with third years, fourth years, first years. And second year was basically taking the whole curriculum at the same time, and that was painfuI. But when I was coming to U of T, I felt strongly that I needed to take architecture. That was what I was aiming for. I'm glad that I got in. And I didn't quite know what I was going to do with it. But I think over the years, I've been drawn to storytelling, which a lot of people have been talking about in in this podcast. I think this year, especially. No, I just think of really random opportunities to tell stories and to listen to great stories over my four years at U of T that I would like to do some more of that and yeah, just tell stories. Not very specific. So, I'm hoping John, you can help me tune my answer so that people get something out of this.

John: Well, do you see architecture as a means of telling stories?

Kitsa: I think yeah. I think architecture is, and maybe to geek out about architecture for a bit, I'm more interested in architecture as a cultural object, as an object of shared meaning and what stories we tell through the spaces that we live in. And so that means that I'm drawn to certain types of architecture more than others. And I'm impressed about the more informal, the more organic. I think one of the things that really inspires me is that a couple of years ago, in a lot of different cultures, people designed and built the spaces that they lived in. And I'm always drawn that. Maybe I could end up doing some of that. So, I hope to apply for grad school in 2022. Because I need to finish my degree, and hopefully get in. But I think something that's become even more important for me right now is to, in a sense, create a platform for telling stories. And so just this week, I did a video. Like I did my first film, which was like a five-minute documentary on my background and, and on culture and on race and on why that is important. And it was being showcased during the Relevant Talks that were happening this week, the week of January 18th. And that was great. That was, that pushed me really hard. I stayed up a lot of late nights trying to get that going. And, yeah, that's what I’m trying to do now.

John: I'd love to see that if you're willing to share it after this conversation, I'd love to see. No, definitely, that would be amazing. And architecture, you know, like law, like medicine, it's a long-term commitment, right? Because now in order to practice, as an architect, at least in this part of Canada, I know, you have to have a graduate degree, right? It's no longer, I think years ago, it used to be a five-year undergraduate. And now you've got to have an undergrad and graduate degree. So, it's, you have to really commit to it and presumably love it, at least at some point, in order to make that commitment, right.

Kitsa: I love, I love architecture. I think I love this. I love space. I love how space defines and creates opportunities for people to connect with each other. I'm looking forward to that commitment. I think architecture really opened me up to seeing how objects can sort of be cultural markers and how I want to be part of that story. Or like, Yeah, can, creating that legacy through the objects in the spaces that we use. And I think - so architecture for me, I mean Nour has an amazing experience going into life sciences, and then really zooming in on this one specific area. I think, for me, architecture kind of opened me up to like, a million possibilities. And it's like, so what am I gonna do next? I think the options are limitless. Yeah.

John: Wow. That's exciting. And what about you, Rebekah, tell me about your options. Are they also limitless?

Rebekah: I'd like to believe so. We'll see how that actually pans out. But I guess if you'd asked me four years ago, um, it probably would have been in like the framework of working as like a linguist or translator. Or my parents really wanted me to come back and work for like a government agency and do like, you know, those kinds of analysis type of things. I'm realizing that's not something that I'm kind of reaching for as much. And I'm actually in the process of applying for a Masters in the journalism program. Because I really enjoyed the storytelling that I've gotten to do this year, and like the connections that I've made over the past couple of years in storytelling. So that's kind of where I'm at. But really recently, I think, maybe last week or so, I went to a Black Careers Conference online, that was hosted by the Rotman Commerce Student Association, and listening to some of the people, you know, talking about their trajectory, their, their careers, their platforms, and things like that. I encountered a consulting group, and I didn't know what consulting was. So, I was like, oh, I'll entertain this and see what they're talking about. But the more they were talking about their jobs, and like, how they get to problem solve and like travel and still meet a bunch of different people, I was like, am I now considering a career in consulting? Like, possibly, but not fully firm on that. But I also don't see myself having a career for like 40 years. I see myself like, pursuing these different like passion projects and getting a lot out of them, like for myself, and while also trying to like help other people. And then just kind of redirecting myself based upon like, where my whims go. So, I'm not sold on like being a journalist for 40 years, necessarily. I've just like Oh, maybe we'll try that out, see if it feels good. If it doesn't, then we'll try something else and see where that goes. Because I study history, and my parents really asked me, they're like, so what are you going to do with history? And I told them, I can do anything I want. Because I will be able to write research, critically think about all those things. And I think those are skills that I could apply to any kind of job. But kind of like what Sabrina was saying, like the idea of rest sounds really good. And I really would love to take part in that this year. But in this economy with this pandemic, um, grad school seems like the move because I'm not sure if I'll be able to find a job right after I graduate.

John: Yeah, and I cannot - listen, my heart goes out to everybody who's trying to figure this stuff out. Right now, in particular, there's lots of very accomplished people that have made a career out of consulting or at least have used consulting as an important stepping stone to the rest of their career. Um, I'm curious about, and Rebekah because I know that you are originally from the United States. That is your, your country of birth. I'm, and because as we record this, it happens to be the week in which the Biden Harris administration was, was sworn in. Thank God. And I'm just curious to know what, you know, at this point in your lives - I mean, U of T, university or not, I'm just curious to know, what are your perspectives on the world and how the world has been over the last four years? And how has that affected you? Just, you know, the events of the last four years. Could be the pandemic, could be, you know, political actors. Any number of issues, the climate crisis, which has really been attenuated. The heightening awareness of anti-black and anti-indigenous racism and violence. There are so many things that have really marked the world for all of us over the last four years. I'm just wondering, and Rebekah, maybe I'll start with you. How has the world affected the person that you are now compared to four years ago?

Rebekah: I think that's a really cool question. Because obviously, like 2020 was a whirlwind of a year and so many different things happened. And that's not to say that, like, other things didn't happen the years prior to that. But I think especially what I realized this year, looking back, but like the world, I mean, it's as cliche as it sounds. Like the world is a lot smaller than people tend to make it out to be. And there's a lot of issues that kind of translate across different boundaries and imaginary boundaries, and things like that. And something that comes to mind is like anti blackness. Like anti blackness is a thing that exists literally everywhere, across this entire planet. And so, seeing that kind of come to a head, especially over the summer, was really surprising to see that like, okay, maybe these are conversations that people are going to be more open to having. Maybe people are going to kind of not necessarily, will hopefully check their behavior, but also like, kind of check those assumptions and things that we've kind of just come to rely on as being fact without necessarily questioning where that comes from. Yeah, I've also like, you know, being an American in Canada, like I don't want to take up too much space, and not like kind of, you know conversation. But it's really interesting to see how Canadians sometimes position their own Canadian identity as like an opposition to like what Americans are like. Of course, America had its, all of its own issues happening over this last couple of years with the pandemic included. And I often hear like, oh, at least we're not like the Americans, or at least things are not happening here the way that it is there. And I'm like, a lot of these issues are also very deeply rooted in Canada's history. And they're also very intertwined. And so, I'm listening too, that has been sometimes like, kind of interesting, because even from an American context, like we don't learn too much about Canada, as like part of our history courses. So, there's an extreme lack of - ignorance, I feel like of where we come from on both sides of this coin. And they are a lot more connected than maybe people care to realize. And so, yeah, I just think that over the last couple of years, that's how my framework, I feel like I've just opened my eyes to how a lot of these problems are interconnected. Like, and a lot of them are deeply rooted in colonialism and like imperialist practices. And as a person who studied history, like that's something that I'm always thinking about. And that comes up in my own conversation. So, I think that's really impacted how I think about things.

John: And don't you think that Canadians can use that, that distinction between themselves and Americans as a bit of an escape hatch? Right, like, Oh, we don't have to face up to our own history, or our present practices of oppression, because of this ongoing comparison to the United States. It really is. You know, I think a lot of people fail to hold themselves to account because they have someone else they can point to. I'm curious, Nour, what about you? Someone who has, you know, lived on two sides of the world. And as you speak to us now, you're currently in the Middle East or in Dubai. But with so much that has happened in the world over the last four years, how has that affected you as you've lived your life as a student?

Nour: I think coming to Toronto, from the Middle East, I was mostly surprised by how people as individuals can be very - I mean, they can talk about whatever they want, right? They're allowed not to like the Prime Minister. They're allowed not to like certain things. They're allowed to advocate for social justice. They're allowed to say anything they want to say. And I know it sounds super like obvious to I think a lot of people listening but that this is the case because this Um, I think, like it's it just the way it is there. But in the Middle East. That's not the case. You know that transition, I found was very surprising, and in a good way, right? Because, um, I mean, there is, like, it's just very different I think and just being there, and being part of that and hearing all these different political views, and, you know, just made me feel like I'm being exposed to a whole different world of thoughts and rules, I think, about how to what you can and what you can't talk about…

John: Did the last four years seem particularly kind of tumultuous to you? Like, did you, have you had a sense of worry or, or kind of like existential angst, or? I'm just, I'm just curious to know, with so many dramatic political movements and economic movements and climactic issues, if you have felt those things affecting your ability to live your life, or do they seem kind of removed from you?

Nour: Um they did affect me. Because it's just a dramatic change, like in terms of everything. It's not just geographical, but also in terms of, you know, culture. Just, the weather. It was the first time for me to see snow in Toronto, just so many different things. And that huge transition is stressful. And I think a lot of us have experienced a lot of stress over the past four years, with everything going on. And yeah, I mean, it was it was something very different for me.

John: Sabrina, what about you? What about being a citizen of this particular globe over the last four years? Do you shut that off when you're focused on your schoolwork? Or does it all kind of blend together, and it's hard to escape the craziness that's going on?

Sabrina: Um, it does blend together. I feel like it would be disingenuous to say that I could shut it off. But I can - it's kind of like a yes and no, because I have a lot of privilege and access to resources. And that like, me for example, we've been in zoom University for almost a year now, or a couple months shy and like, I've had a fairly easy transition because of who I am as a person, but also because of like my financial status, and like my housing and all these things that other people don't have access to. So, I feel like even if I, myself were to say, I can shut it off. I don't know, I wouldn't want to also negate the fact that there are people who need more support and resources that they just aren't getting. And then it's, it's not, it's not an easy thing to kind of separate schoolwork from everything that's happening in the world. And I feel like a lot of workplaces and lectures and like even the university itself, is implying that, like, resilience is having the same output now as we had pre-pandemic. And I think that's, I don't know that is, is not taking into account that like, we're all like, this whole society is just made up of human beings, right. And we all are, like, super stressed and working through this kind of unknown time. So that's my answer, which is kind of all over the place. Because like, it's been all over the place, the experience has been all over the place.

John: Does that help at all? Knowing that, as you said, we're all going through this at the same time, given that we're also all very isolated, right? So, we can all, we can often normally say, Well, at least we're all going through it together. But it's hard to develop that sense of maybe going through it together, when we're all isolated in our own little rooms with our own little computers.

Sabrina: No, I agree. And it's like, it's kind of the post that I've been seeing mostly in response to celebrities being like, Oh, COVID is the great equalizer, and then Kylie Jenner is going to France. I mean, I'm like, I can't even walk to the grocery store. So, it's like, we're all in the same ocean. It's like the Titanic, right? Like some of us got on the lifeboats. And we're like, on the way to shore. Some of us are like, on that one door that Jack couldn't get some reason. And some of us are like, in the water, you know what I mean? So, it's like, we're not the same depending on where you are and where I am. And I think as like I relate to the rest of the world. I think it's part of why you were like, well, where are you going to go from here? And it's like, I'm going to rest and return to the land. I feel like there are ways in which I've been playing into a system that like, especially during the pandemic I'm seeing is not, it's not helping those who need those resources the most. Even in Canada, as much as we want to claim like, we're socialist and we do have like social safety nets, but it's still not. It's still failing a significant amount of people that I feel like would be easier to reach out to and help. And seeing the ways that like actual grassroots, like community movements have shown up for those people. And also the ways too that I've realized that like, the reason why I can pursue like, university and like, look at all these theoretical things and like, go on my computer and edit podcasts and stuff is like, even my own survival has been kind of offloaded onto other people, even with the like the fires in California and people not caring about like migrant farmers also, Canada, talking about like, Rebekah and how Canadians kind of ignore our own stuff, right. So, everyone's talking about the migrant farmers in California. Meanwhile, we have Trinidadians here and migrant workers that Canada was trying to kick out of the country with no support in the middle of a pandemic, right, so. And then we had like the Mikmaq Indigenous fishers on the eastern shore. And how all this stuff and me just realizing like, I don't have a connection to the food that I need to eat to like survive, right. Like a lot of my shelters, though, has to do with like other people and other institutions. So, like, due to, through work, I made friends with a Black queer farmer who's super cool. And like part of me returning to Earth is like literally starting to farm and like get back to like stuff that I need to survive that like I've been offloading onto other people, and also largely until like vulnerable populations as well. So that's been me just learning through the pandemic. Like you want to talk about essential workers are, you know, doctors who do get paid relatively well. But then also, nurses, like nurses in long term care homes aren't necessarily getting the support that they need. Personal support worker, also grocery store workers.

John: Grocery store workers, caretakers, the people responsible for all the cleaning protocols, right? I mean, yeah.

Sabrina: So I’m just sitting here up in my house, um, you know, not really worried about my finances. And I see all kinds of posts on Facebook of people who are like, I'm working mad hours at Loblaws, right? Or wherever. Maybe I shouldn't be paying rent, I'm working mad hours at insert store here. And like, you know, my managers just told me that like someone just tested positive for COVID. And then you send me an email, like, I came into work, and then they brought us into this room. And then they told us, and now I need to decide what to do. And I just feel like, yeah, a lot of things are happening in ways that they shouldn't be. And the people who should be, like respected not just in a performative way, but actually in like, a concrete way, are not being respected. Yeah, and I'm trying to figure out where I fit in that and how I can like change things. That was a long answer. I have a lot of thoughts.

John: Listen, it is a complex question and Kitsa, now I'm going to ask it of you. How has the world affected you? And your life as a student over the last four years? How have you managed to separate the world from your own life? Or have they blended together for you?

Kitsa: Yeah, I mean, I feel like I’d write a sort of like a hybrid or like a collage of everyone's experience before me right now, all of a sudden blended into one. I mean, the difference, moving from Nairobi to Toronto, to discovering that the world is so much bigger than I expected it to be, contrary to what Rebekah said. And then having to sort of like, pretend to bear the weight of all of that. And, and then dealing with, with my Blackness, which means a lot of different things to me coming from Africa to someone who's grown up in North America, and also means different things to someone in Canada versus the US versus the UK versus I mean - I think - I took sociology that was a class I was taking when we recorded the first section, and I'm really grateful for that class, grateful for that. If you ever listen to this podcast, I'm shouting you out again, because I remember I did it the last time. But intersectionality really, and I think something that I've been distressed about has been the way that we are socialized, or the way that we are taught to learn and believe the things that we learn and believe. I think, so this brief period of time, during the pandemic, after I finished watching the Social Dilemma on Netflix, where I had like this mini existential crisis and I was like, what if everything I believe and know is not me? What if I've been fed all of these things and that's just what I believe in? That's what I know? Sort of wrestling with that. I think I have been more overwhelmed than I would like to be, But I think at the same time, I have learned to be more grateful, to share gratitude. I have been overwhelmed because I think you hear about stories, you hear about people's experiences, and you feel so powerless, because you don't know how you can sort of begin to help and offer assistance or you can like, and I think when you hear one or two heartbreaking stories, you're like, Okay, I hope it goes well. But when you hear more than just two, and when this story starts to sort of pile on and you're like, wow, there's a lot of people going through a lot of different things. Though, I think the one thing that I would just focus on was the Black Lives Matter movement, that people were coming around during the pandemic. And I think I learned quite a bit from that because, for me, my relationship with race prior to coming to this country was non-existent. And my focus has always been on culture. And so, I think when things were happening, and when people were seeing things, I didn't know how to respond to that at first, because I did not have a type of a conversating, not knowing how to relate to that. And I think I went through this process of listening and learning and allowing myself to feel the extent of it, even though like, it's still somewhat a bit disconnected. And I think on to your comment, John, on Canada sort of offloading things because we are not as bad as the US. And I think that's what a lot of people like to see is that, hey, I'm, compared to this other guy, I'm decent. And I was seeing a lot of posts on Facebook, and they're like, I'm not that racist and, and a bunch of other stuff. But I think when we choose to really take upon other people's pain and let ourselves feel that I think it can change someone. I work at Starbucks right now. And so, every once in a while, I'll be in a store, and we will see some great people and we will see some not so great people. And I mean, oh wait, Brands... Sorry, I'll stop. But there's this training session we had last week, where we got this guy from the US. What is his name? I can't remember, he started the Home Boys initiative, if I'm not wrong. And industries, I think, and it's like I think it's a type of an organization that sort of tries to reintegrate people who have been previously incarcerated into society. And I think it's Home Boys Industries. And like, I think he's a, he's a priest or something. Anyway. So, this is what he said, he said that, when you go into the margins, when you're going to the minorities, when you're going to this group of people sort of being kept at the fringe of society, you're not going there so that you can change them. You’re going there so that they can change you. And that really blew my mind. Because I think that's the first thing I say even at our recap series that I want to change the world. But the truth is, the world needs to change me, and I'm the one that needs to change. And so that's how I've been processing and responding to a lot of these things. Yeah.

John: Wow. I just want to say I want to be all of you when I grow up, I really do. I'm learning so much from each of you. I really, really am. I mean that quite sincerely. I want to ask about success and failure. I'm wondering if your perspective on what success means has changed over the last few years. And then I want to know, if you have learned about failure at all during your time at the University of Toronto, and I'll – it’s not even confessing, but I'll just say that when I was an undergrad, I you know, I read the brochure that said U of T was great and smartest people go there and the smartest people graduate from there. And then I arrived here at the University of Toronto as an undergrad, and everybody was way smarter than I was. And I ended up doing really, really poorly in some of my early classes. And things evened out over time, but I really did have to kind of redefine what success and failure looked like for me over the course of my time at the University of Toronto, and I'm wondering if any of you have any thoughts to share about success and failure and how your understanding of those concepts have evolved over the last few years,

Rebekah: I would say for me, I think I've learned to kind of just like stay in my own lane, if that makes sense. So, like, not trying to compare myself as much to like other people, but comparing myself to like what I know that I'm capable of. So, the success for me would be like, turning in the paper that I feel really good about, and like, also getting a good mark back, but knowing that, like, I actually like worked on it. And then there's papers that like, I know, that I haven't worked really hard on and that I get marks that reflect the work that, like the energy that or the lack of energy that I put into those papers. And that kind of, you know, makes sense to me. But I'm also a residence Don. And so when I talk to my students about like, success and failure at New College, it's like, you know, finding things that you're really passionate about, those are going to be things that you tend to put more energy into, and you'll see more success in those areas. And then things that you maybe are not as passionate about you might not spend less energy on doesn't mean that you're necessarily bad at it, it just means you're not as passionate, and that might sometimes be reflected in how marks work. So, I think when students are choosing programs, I think it's important to pick something that you're passionate about, something that you actually enjoy, and like want to study because I remember first year I was taking an economics course, and I didn't understand it. Didn't like it, didn't want to like actually put energy into it. And that really reflected in my grade. But, you know, I realized that that path that I thought I was set out to be on, that I had come here for, was not actually what I wanted to do, was not what was meant for me. And so, I kind of redirected myself into a place that I actually felt more successful because I was, I felt good about the work that I was producing. And I felt good about, you know, how it made me feel, and it opened my mind to things. So that's kind of like where I'm at with success and failure. It's like a personal journey for me and try not to compare myself as much.

John: Yeah, and even finding something that you're passionate about, that in and of itself is success of a kind.

Rebekah: Absolutely.

John: Anybody else have thoughts on success and failure now that you are veterans at the University of Toronto, Nour How about you?

Nour: Um, well, my dad always told me that sometimes one step backward means two steps forward. And I really believe that and when I struggled with school, I told myself that I was going to measure my progress, not by my GPA, or what marks I was getting, but by just how much I was learning. And that was a game changer for me. Because this is what university is about inherently, it's about learning and just reminding ourselves, I'm just learning that that's what it truly is. And, you know, I had to let go of preconceived notions of who I was and what was expected of me and to understand that I'm a work in progress. And sometimes things will take a detour and my, you know, our paths are not linear. And while this is uncomfortable, it also enables us to build resilience and growth. And that really stays with us for a long time to come I think.

John: That's great. Kitsa, any thoughts on success and failure?

Kitsa: Um, I have learned to take them both. To accept both really high highs and really low lows and to keep going. Yeah.

John: And you need both.

Kitsa: And you need. Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't. I guess you need both.

John: Like, I mean, in the sense that if you've never experienced failure, you can't really appreciate success.

Kitsa: No yeah, definitely. I think I have seen people, really, and I have struggled with bad results, I think. And sometimes it feels like you put in a lot of effort and a lot of energy into something and it just doesn't come through. And I think I've learned to be at peace with myself. There's a question I asked myself in second year, and I was like, hey, if you were to fail everything for the rest of your life, would you still be enough? And that was a difficult question to ask. But I think I came to the conclusion that if the answer is yes, then I can move forward. I can move forward knowing that my worth to myself is not dependent on the results that I'm getting. And then maybe I will get great results. Maybe I'll get terrible results. But I am enough. Yeah.

John: You’re enough. Sabrina, what about you, success and failure? What are your thoughts?

Sabrina: Yeah, I think I think I had a similar reaction to you. Or it's like, you come to the University, and then you feel like, you don't belong. Like everyone else is so much more prepared. I think what helped me in relation to how that manifests in failure is once I started talking to people, and not just other students, but also like, relationships I had with profs and like, actual like faculty, and they would also be like, I don't know what I'm doing. And I'm like, what do you mean you don't know what you're doing? You are like, 10 years older than me, like established in your career. Like, if you don't know what you're doing, like, when am I gonna know what I'm doing? And I think it's helpful to remember that it's like, I feel like no one really knows what they're doing. And we're all just trying to figure this out like one day at a time, whether you're 18, or 25, or 38, or 42, or whatever, or wherever you are in your degree, I think failure too is a learning opportunity, particularly about yourself. I think you get a lot of messages coming into an institution like the University of Toronto about how you should study and how much time you should spend on things and where your GPA should be at if you want to go somewhere else in life. And I think what was super helpful when I would face circumstances where I didn't, the word I'm thinking about is in French, and not in English, but where I didn't -

John: Impress us. put your mind to good use.

Sabrina: This happens every time. It's the word, réussir, I always -

John: Succeed.

Sabrina: Sure, yeah, to succeed - or not - where I haven't succeeded is looking up uncommon ways that other people have gotten to like where I wanted to go. So like with my example of like Harvard Law, if you don't have a 4.0 GPA, and you can think to yourself, like that's what you need. Like, go research other ways people have gotten into like top law schools, if that's really what you want to do. But you feel like you've strayed off of that path, because there's always that one person that's like, I don't know, I just kind of walked in and like, I went to class, and then they enrolled me. So now here I am.

John: Yeah, and they gave me a full scholarship. And here I am. Exactly.

Sabrina: Yeah, yeah. And then thirdly, I think, something I struggle with even today is like, just because you say something, and you tell people you're gonna do something you set your mind to do it, doesn't mean that you're not allowed to change course. Like it's not set in stone. I have problems with that. And like, everyone's gonna think I'm a fraud if I changed my mind. No one cares.

Nour: Yeah, you feel like you'll disappoint them, right? I feel the same way.

Sabrina: Yeah, no, exactly. And I think it reminds me that it's like, no one cares about the trajectory of my life as much as I necessarily think they do or judging me as much as I necessarily think they do. And I know like, like I, especially families can be overbearing, and like this may not really be someone who's like parents are like banking on like your life to be a certain way. But I'm talking about like, even just like friends and acquaintances, like someone that I talked to once on the first day of class, and I'd be like, well, I told them, I was going to be a lawyer. So, if I run into them five years from now and find out that I'm something else, they're gonna think I'm a fraud. Like that is not a rational thought. That's my advice.

John: So speaking of advice, and this is where I want to end, I wonder if very, in fairly quick order, each of you could give a word of advice to yourself before you started school four years ago. So think back to when we spoke, and then a few months before that, when you were just about to embark on your studies at the University of Toronto, but knowing what you know now, give a word of advice to that younger version of you.

Rebekah: Younger Rebekah, I would tell her to not talk so much and to just listen, because I love to talk. I could to talk to a wall. But you know, just take that time. Listen to what other people have to say before you jump in with your thoughts. Still working on that.

John: So Kitsa a word of advice to younger you.

Kitsa: Yeah. Sup Kitsa. You're cool. No, I'm kidding. Ah, yeah.

John: You're allowed to say that!

Kitsa: I mean - debate- Okay. You're gonna be okay. You're gonna be okay. And treasure, the friendships and the relationships that you have now. If, and if they don't last forever, even if they're not what you thought they would be.

John: Nour, what about you, advice to yourself four years ago?

Nour: I would tell myself to please talk to my professors one on one. I would want to go to office hours and get to know them. And I think this is especially important when the time comes when you need a recommendation letter. But not only if you need a recommendation letter, I think in and of itself, it's a very enriching experience to speak to your profs and, you know, they were once in your shoes, and a lot of them are very, or they're very happy to help. And I think I urge anyone listening to take the time and, you know, get out of their comfort zone. And especially if you need a recommendation letter. I personally struggled to get some people to write for me. So, I would go back and I would talk to my professors.

John: Very practical and very valuable advice for everybody. But particularly for the younger. Nour. And what about the younger Sabrina?

Sabrina: Yeah, if I could speak to myself, four years ago, I would probably tell myself to, or I’d definitely tell myself to share my struggles and open up to where I was having issues, especially as a fourth year like navigating my own studies and the university as a whole. I think speaking to failures that I, that wanting to not appear like a fraud and wanting to feel like you fit in, I think makes a lot of people feel like they can't talk about where they are failing or are struggling, because then they don't want people to think that they're struggling like a struggling person. But I think, where I did fail, or where I did need, or where I didn't succeed where I wanted to, it would have been less painful and less permanent, if I was just like open about it. And I reached out to people and I was like I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know what's going on, please help me. And I learned that the hard way. So definitely be more open about when you need help.

John: That's great advice from you. And from all four of you. You know, just recently, the film director Michael Apted passed away at the age of 69. And he was famous for a series of films that he made called the Seven Up series. And he was based in the UK. And he had a group of children that he interviewed, the same group of children. He interviewed and filmed them and did a documentary about them every seven years. So, when they were 7, when they were 14, when they were 21, 28. And he did that all the way up into their, I think into their 40s, 50s, at least. And then he passed away just recently, and in tribute to him, and I may not hold you to this, but I'd love it if you would all come back. in four years.

Kitsa: Let's do it!

Nour: Yeah, let's do it!

John: So that we can, so we can find out where you are. And we could check in on things like success and failure and give advice to, to the 2021 version of you and all of those sorts of things. And wherever you are, I hope that you are healthy and happy. And that you're smiling more than you're not. And I'd like to thank all of you for your time. You're being, you've been so generous with us. And on behalf of everyone at Hart House. We're very grateful.

[outro music plays]

Rebekah: Thank you for listening to this week's episode. I would like to extend a sincere thank you to John and the team over at Hart House for inviting us to participate in this conversation a few years ago and for agreeing to join us for this reunion piece. To Kitsa, Nour and Sabrina for reflecting on their experiences over these past few years. And of course, our amazing producer Braeden for interweaving this audio time capsule. Be sure to check out our other episodes @harthousestories on Soundcloud and Instagram and follow us on Twitter @hhpodcasting. Take care.

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afterspark-podcast · 3 years

Text

G1 Episode 39: Transcript

[This can also be found on AO3!]

[Stinger]

S: I didn't say it was calming. It's just, like, whale noises didn't work.

O: [Laughter]

[Intro Music]

O: Hello and welcome to the Afterspark Podcast, an episode by episode recap of the Generation 1 Transformers cartoon. I'm Owls.

S: And I'm Specs.

O: And today we're going to be talking about episode number 39: The God Gambit. Let's talk about giant robots today, shall we?

S: Yep.

O: And today IN SPACE!!!

S: Aliens. Multicolored aliens, even.

O: One group of aliens seems to be controlling a giant idol- I mean, a god???

S: It looks pretty rocky. The high priest yells at a twink as other not priest-like aliens offer their harvest offerings to the so-called god.

O: We see a stylishly dressed pink lady running around behind the scenes, spying on the shenanigans before she and her diverse cadre destroy the giant stone god.

S: Apparently to join this group you must be either: a woman or ‘mustache’ some extremely fancy facial hair.

O: Those aliens had magnificent mustaches.

S: Yes, yes they did. The pink lady yells at the high priest for being a dick.

O: I like her already but then again I like most women who look like they can yeet me into the sun.

S: Oh, and she very much looks like she could do that to like everyone she comes across.

O: Pretty much. Probably not the giant robots but that's a sheer size thing not because I don't believe in her power.

S: Yep. You know, I almost like the high priest’s ceremonial robes but he apparently likes the breeze because there's very little leg coverage.

O: It is all business at the top and party on the bottom.

S: The high priest, whose name is Jero, rants about punishment from ‘sky gods’ to Talaria who is our badass pink lady.

O: But Talaria tells him, “There are no ‘sky gods’!” Oh my, I wonder how giant transforming robots from the sky are going to come into this?

S: Hint, hint. Now about those giant robots.

O: Cosmos is flying around in space, running away from Decepticons, evading laser beams. He calls the Ark.

S: No one's manning the computer- no, wait, they run in from screen left.

O: I really do think they would just have somebody who would stay there and keep an eye on things but no. Prime, Jazz, Perceptor, and Red Alert all run in and answer his coms.

S: We see Astrotrain is the one pursuing Cosmos.

O: Oh! A carryover from the last episode, perhaps?

S: That would be a very rare instance of inter-episode continuity.

O: Probably not that, then.

S: Apparently the Cons are trying to get data from Cosmos, so Prime tells them to transmit the data but Red Alert stops them.

O: Red Alert is the only one here considering cyber security.

S: Well, very fitting considering his job.

O: Makes sense. Thrust and Starscream are sitting shotgun in Astrotrain and overhear the Autobots’ transmissions.

S: Immediately proving Red Alerts fears absolutely correct because apparently Astrotrain can just tune in onto the Autobot comm signal with, uh, no problem whatsoever. And Thrust either cares about his comrade's well-being or has a healthy dose of self-preservation as he expresses some concern about Astrotrains’ dwindling energy levels. But Astrotrain says ‘fuck that’ and continues to shoot after Cosmos.

O: You know, considering Ramjet in the previous episode, are the Coneheads just a lot nicer than I gave them credit for?

S: Maybe? Maybe, maybe. Astrotrain manages to hit Cosmos and poor Cosmos bounces off an asteroid before hitting the planet that was in our episode opening.

O: So, turns out that isn't a planet- it's one of Saturn's moons: Titan! Courtesy of the TFWiki, it seems like, uh, Titan having life on it wasn't too far out during the time frame [the episode was made in] considering it has a substantial atmosphere and it became somewhat prevalent in popular culture due to the Voyager spacecraft sending back a decent amount of data on it a few years earlier.

S: Fascinating!

O: The more you know.

S: A bunch of aliens are sitting around outside as Talaria espouses that the ‘sky gods’ aren't real.

O: The high priests are all tied up, too, so she's clearly gotten shit done in the meantime.

S: Yep and in an unfortunate coincidence Talaria points at the sky and says, “Show me a ‘sky god,’” just as Cosmos is, ah, crash landing.

O: Jero's a dick about this, of course.

S: He knows when to take his opportunities with both hands and run with them. We cut to the Decepticons landing in front of the giant temple containing the idol from before.

O: Starscream claps his hands together and goes, “Here's the church, here's the steeple, open the door, where's all the people?” Where the fuck did he learn this and why??

S: Oh, obviously they learned at the same time that they learned what a guinea pig was.

O: I love how proud of himself he looks here, too. I also feel like this lends credence to our toss away comment about Starscream actually making an attempt to learn something about Earth culture, which is super weird.

S: It's Starscream, man.

O: He does what he wants.

S: Yup-

O: Which includes learning children's nursery rhymes or whatever the hell you want to call that.

S: Astrotrain tells Starscream to stop ranting.

O: Thrust points to the smoke in the distance as to where the people probably are.

S: Or where Cosmos might be, at least.

O: The high priest who has been untied, of course, he proclaims: “Behold! A sky god!” over Cosmos' prone body.

S: This man is going to take what he's given and run with it. A true con artist.

O: The other aliens, aside from Talaria, fall down in worship.

S: She must be so done with everything.

O: I would be so done with everything.

S: Astrotrain’s like, “Hey, they worship Transformers! I'll just tell them I'm in charge.”

O: Starscream, unsurprisingly, does not like this plan.

S: He wants to be the boss.

O: Starscream never gets to be the boss.

S: Well, he always declares himself the boss and then he gets demoted right, like, immediately.

O: This is why you should stop saying you're the boss while Megatron is still alive.

S: Yep. Astrotrain promptly goes for strangulation and then Starscream is just, like, “Okay, okay.”

O: That that'll usually do’er. Uh, Jero tells Talaria to bow down just as Astrotrain drives through the trees in train mode.

S: Choo-choo-cachoo?

O: Astrotrain then transforms and proclaims himself as the mightiest of the gods.

S: Astrotrain has the other two carry Cosmos into the temple saying, “Prop up that hunk of junk over there.”

O: Why does Cosmos just keep getting regulated to junk?

S: Because he's small, round, and full of love.

O: All the things Astrotrain hates.

S: Yeah, Starscream whines about, “Why do they have to listen to Astrotrain?”

O: To which Thrust replies, “Because he'll vaporize us if we don't.” I'm serious, I'm really loving the Coneheads on this watch through. They're way more competent than I gave them credit for.

S: Yeah, well they care about not dying.

O: Which, honestly, counts for a lot in the show.

S: Yeah, yeah. Astrotrain props Cosmos up as an idol for the people to worship and grabs the energy data off of him.

O: He then sits there and talks really loudly about how if Cosmos could only reconnect one wire he'd be able to call for help. Thankfully, Talaria overhears this.

S: Thrust points out that Astrotrain burned up most of his fuel chasing Cosmos and they had better call Megatron, you know, for help.

O: Astrotrain’s, like, “No! Not until I crack Cosmos's code!”

S: ‘I want to be king of this mud ball!’

O: Uh, he's going to be king of something. They walk off and Talaria does the smart thing and reconnects Cosmos's wire, allowing Optimus to communicate with her and activate Cosmos's signal beacon so, basically, the Autobots can find him.

S: Starscream shoots at her and then we cut to a commercial.

O: Starscream misses and, thankfully, Cosmos wakes up and shoots him, allowing Talaria to escape.

S: Astrotrain then shoots Cosmos and poor Cosmos collapses again.

O: He's taken a lot of abuse in this episode. On Earth, Perceptor and Jazz volunteer to go with Omega Supreme to save Cosmos.

S: Unfortunately, once they get there Omega will not be able to transform and help them.

O: By- due to lack of energy, basically, he's not going to have enough energy to get there and back.

S: Mm-hmm. And back on the alien planet [Titan] Jero leads the Cons to the fire god's lair.

O: Which consists of giant ass crystals that are apparently full of energy. Like most giant crystal things in this show.

S: One of Jero's followers is like, “Aaah! This is taboo,” Jero's like, “God's gonna do what a god's gonna do, who cares about your taboos?”

O: And Astrotrain wants energy.

S: Yep, never mind that it's the sort of energy that makes things go boom.

O: Hey, I mean, they are what they are. They are a chaotic explosive uh, faction. The Autobots arrive just as Omega runs out of energy and they crash land.

S: They decide that they need Cosmos to move the poor crash-landed Omega and Jazz tells him to, “not move,” and Omega replies, “Sarcasm not appreciated.”

O: [laughter] Be careful there, buddy, you're making a joke and after the other two walk off the cliff they were on partially collapses leaving Omega balanced precariously on just the teeniest, tiniest bit of rock.

S: “Situation critical.” And frankly, Mr. Omega, that is an understatement.

O: Yes, it is. In the cave, the Cons are now forcing the aliens to harvest the giant crystals for them.

S: Starscream confirms that they are quite unstable.

O: Yeah but- I'm shocked, shocked to tell you, shocked.

S: Jazz and Perceptor are walking around outside when Talaria shoots arrows at them and then Jazz asks her to, “Hey, calm down,” and Talaria leads them to Cosmos-

O: While riding-

S: With a bit of explanation.

O: While riding on Jazz's shoulder, no less.

S: She has the best seat in the house.

O: She does, Jazz is a delight.

S: The Cons walk in on Jazz and Perceptor seeing to Cosmos and cue a firefight with a bunch of explosive crystals.

O: Like a sane person, Thrust wants backup.

S: Yep, but Starscream tells him to stand and fight because if Thrust doesn't then Starscream doesn't have anyone to stand behind.

O: Pretty much and it's Porche and rock versus warplane, as Jazz chucks the rock at Starscream, making him fall to the ground.

S: [Sighs] Starscream yells for help but Thrust runs out and tells Astrotrain.

O: Astrotrain then has does the humans [aliens] shoot crystals at Jazz.

S: They've got them on the ends of, um, arrows. They're using them as arrowheads, I think. The aliens pull out a catapult and begin shooting huge chunks of crystals at Jazz and Perceptor, blasting them into a crevice.

O: Astrotrain captures Talaria and we cut to another commercial, you know, because a woman is in mortal peril and if we have an episode with a woman this is required.

S: We need all that suspense. Thrust, again, calls for common sense as he and Starscream fly over looking for the Autobots but Starscream laughs this off.

O: Naturally, Jazz and Perceptor are fine.

S: Back with the aliens, Astrotrain and Jero continue to be dicks.

O: And then back to Jazz and Perceptor, because we can't focus for more than three seconds in this episode.

S: They don't have time to have to do all of this stuff in 23 minutes.

O: Of course. The two enter the cave with all the crystals. Perceptor examines them and realizes they're unstable crystallized energy. Jazz then bangs on one with a rock for some reason.

S: I think he might want a sample?

O: Well, thankfully, Perceptor stops him before any explosions can happen.

S: Yeah. Meanwhile some of the natives are realizing their religion is a lie and confront Jazz.

O: Jazz is like, “We ain’t gods!”

S: The aliens inform them that Talaria is about to be sacrificed so off Jazz goes to save her and he tells Perceptor to go refuel Omega with the crystals.

O: Which apparently don't need to be refined or anything.

S: Yeah, we just see Perceptor running through the forest with a bag of crystals.

O: Where did he even get a bag?

S: Subspace? Maybe the aliens had something that he borrowed?

O: Maybe.

S: The natives- he finds Omega in his precarious situation and Perceptor tries to reach him by Indiana Jones-ing some shit.

O: Back in the temple, Talaria is being tied up just as Jazz pops out of the floor.

S: The inexplicable hole in the middle of the floor leading down to the pit of doom.

O: You know, normal temple stuff in an 80’s cartoon.

S: Elsewhere, Perceptor is quickly shoving crystals into Omega Supreme as they're falling.

O: And Omega's able to take flight, saving both of their afts, with Perceptor hanging on for dear life.

S: Jazz goes in guns blazing to save Talaria, as they duck and cover from the Decepticon fire.

O: Jazz proves to be an excellent shot, too.

S: Omega and Perceptor arrive in front of the temple.

O: Perceptor looking much worse for wear as he stumbles off from their wild ride.

S: His- Perceptor is just very done with today.

O: He's a scientist, not a- not an adventurer, damnit!

S: I think a lot of people are very done with today.

O: Omega punches through the wall and Starscream and Thrust flee.

S: Astrotrain falls down the pit- into the pit of doom, narrowly avoiding the electric lava at the bottom, and then the Cons and Jero meet up in the crystal cave, and realizing they can't fight Omega Supreme, instead decide to blow the crystals up, and fly off with the Decepticons leaving Jero to die.

O: Because, as previously mentioned, Astrotrain is a dick!

S: The volcano explodes or, I don't know, the electric lava explodes-

O: Something-

S: And the aliens are like, “Save- save us and we'll worship you.”

O: Jazz is like, for the thousandth time, “We're not gods,” but they do save the aliens using Omega's tracks.

S: Why didn't they just get in Omega and fly off, it would have been interesting if they just brought everybody to Earth.

O: Uh, the Prime Directive would have been broken?

S: Fair.

O: The aliens are rebuilding as Perceptor is finally able to fix Cosmos.

S: Well, Cosmos just seems like he got a nap out of all of this.

O: Quite frankly, my poor boy deserves a break. He's got to do all the flying through space except for, periodically, when they grab, you know, Skyfire to do it.

S: Yeah.

O: So something I thought was funny that we found out after we watched the episode: This is actually the first episode- and it took 39 episodes- that Frank Welker does not voice a single character.

S: That's pretty funny.

O: Because, again, he voices like, oh, what? 70% of every single Decepticon and this just happened to be three Decepticons that he does not voice at all! Like, even in the- even in the last episode, he was voicing Rumble. I know Megatron was in there a little, but he was voicing Rumble that entire time, too. So I thought that was hilarious- took 39 episodes for that. But join us next time for: The Core! Megatron wants to journey to the center of the earth and the Autobots engage in a questionable amount of mind control.

S: Yep.

O: And we do have some fanfic for today.

S: So the first fanfic is “From A Distance” by PuraJazzBot, it's from the G1 cartoon continuity and it's rated K. It's gen, there's no pairings, and our lone character is Cosmos. And, in summary, “Being in outer space is not always as exciting as it sounds. Cosmos can personally attest.” And so it's Cosmos in space and it's a one-shot. And I believe you chose our other fic today.

O: Yes it's getting near Halloween so I thought this was appropriate! Our a wild card pick for today is: “Who's The Big Bad Wolf” by LittleMissSweetgrass. It is in the IDW continuity, is G, it is Gen, there are no pairings. Our characters are Verity, Springer, Ultra Magnus, and Minimus Ambus, and in summary: “Verity is trying to get Magnus to wear the costume she worked so hard on,” and it is a one-shot. And they're celebrating Halloween. I know that summary didn't say that but it felt relevant. I'm pretty sure this is going to go up in October- this will definitely go up in October so here's a Halloween fic for you!

S: Nice, that one sounds fun.

O: It's really cute, I like anything with Verity and Minimus in it and, like, quite frankly there's not enough of it. And I- our fan art recommendation for today is: Text from More Than Meets The Eye, which is a Tumblr and it is basically IDW comic edits. It is completely inaccurate text photoshopped into IDW comic panels.

O: Uh, today is all Ratchet and Megatron. I would apologize for this but, uh, let's face it, we all know I'm not sorry. And these are quite frankly some of my favorite ones, um, which is basically, um, Ratchet is very sure he doesn't give a fuck. Megatron reserves his right to go outside and scream at 2 AM, and, uh, Ratchet hopes that one day he can afford the surgery to remove his head from the ass- from his ass. [Ratchet’s] talking about somebody else, not himself, obviously, but, uh, I love this blog. I- I don't think they've been posting recently, which is always a bit sad but- but definitely worth looking into because I laughed so hard at some of these, and they are great!

And, also, if the- especially with Ratchet, if that is not word for word things I think he would actually say in a, you know, um, more profanity ridden, um, circumstance, I don't know what to tell you because I think they're perfect.

S: That was nice, thank you.

O: Again, highly recommend, very funny. I always laugh my butt off.

S: Yeah, it's been a while since I've seen any of those but I do enjoy them too. And that about wraps it up for us today. Remember to check us out on Tumblr or Pillowfort as Afterspark-Podcast for any additional information, show notes, or links we may have mentioned. You can also find us on Facebook and Twitter at AftersparkPod (all one word) and various other locations by searching for Afterspark Podcast such as AO3, iTunes, Spotify, and Youtube, just to name a few. And feel free to send us questions on Tumblr, or Youtube, or AO3! Till next time, I'm Specs.

O: I’m Owls.

S: Toodles.

[Outro Music]

#g1 episode 39 #transcript #afterspark podcast #podcast

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kentonramsey · 4 years

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Are You Still Listening to Podcasts? Which Ones?

Every Sunday, a podcast saves my little life—at least for the past two Sundays it has. The pod in question is “Sugar Calling” and it is a follow-up, or rather an evolution of, the “Dear Sugars” podcast (and former column), transposed so that the one-time advice-giver (author Cheryl Strayed) has now become the advice-seeker. The format is simple: Every week, Strayed calls a literary elder and asks them how to think and feel and cope right now. The episodes are released each Wednesday, but I wait till Sunday to listen when I have more mental space.

On week one, she called George Saunders, and during their conversation, he read part of an email he’d sent to his students about the Covid-19 crisis (which was also published by The New Yorker on the same day the podcast episode was released). Here’s a part I really liked:

Are you keeping records of the e-mails and texts you’re getting, the thoughts you’re having, the way your hearts and minds are reacting to this strange new way of living? It’s all important. Fifty years from now, people the age you are now won’t believe this ever happened (or will do the sort of eye roll we all do when someone tells us something about some crazy thing that happened in 1970). What will convince that future kid is what you are able to write about this, and what you’re able to write about it will depend on how much sharp attention you are paying now, and what records you keep.

Also, I think, with how open you can keep your heart. I’m trying to practice feeling something like, “Ah, so this is happening now,” or “Hmm, so this, too, is part of life on Earth. Did not know that, universe. Thanks so much, stinker.”

And then I real quick try to pretend that I didn’t just call the universe a “stinker.”

While listening to the episode, I felt the same sensation I feel every time I hear, watch, or read something I desperately need: Thank god—a silky wave of gratitude. After I listened once, I put on my nearly-retired ‘outside clothes’ and took a walk to listen again. Same feeling: Thank god. As I headed back home, I viewed my surroundings differently, thanks to George and Cheryl. First I passed a red barn so rickety you can see flashes of the sky through its wooden slats. I’d noticed this feature a few times already this week, but only then did I catch the metaphor–there’s some kind of life on the other side of this, even if I can’t see it clearly yet. I let the wave wash me all the way back to my front door.

The following Sunday’s guest on Sugar Calling was a little less tender: Margaret Atwood, with a stern directive: “Roll up your sleeves, girls.” Atwood recounted for Strayed how she was spending her time in self-isolation with the unflappable resolve one might expect from the woman who wrote The Handmaid’s Tale. Where Saunders’s episode left me feeling like a softer version of myself, Atwood’s encouraged me to toughen up and restabilize, even as the 80-year-old author made me smile while recounting her exploits scurrying around on the roof of her house because of a “squirrel problem.” (Strayed cautioned against this quarantine activity.) Pico Iyer is featured on this week’s episode and I am rubbing my Airpods together in anticipation.

When self-isolation began, I thought it would be good news for podcasts, but it seems it’s actually been the opposite in large part, with many people’s commuting and exercise routines now disrupted. I’ve personally always listened in the morning as I get ready for work or during other routines that busy my hands, like cooking or folding laundry. Still, I’ve been listening less often.

So, I want to know: What podcasts are you still listening to? Are there any new ones that have broken through? Are you using them as a news source or as an escape? What feels really worth it right now? In addition to Sugar Calling, I’ve continued listening to The Daily, have enjoyed Leandra’s micro-Monocycles, and have also loved comedian Megan Stalter’s new show “Confronting Demons” when I’m feeling a little more unhinged-in-a-good-way. I’m also looking forward to Karley Sciortino’s new podcast, about love in quarantine, which is coming out next week.

Okay, all ears for yours!

Feature photo by Alistar Matthews. Prop Styling by Sara Schipani.

The post Are You Still Listening to Podcasts? Which Ones? appeared first on Man Repeller.

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rayman-25 · 6 years

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Podcast 2017 Episode 1 Shadows of the night (part 1)

Warning

I do not have the characters Gravity Falls, Phineas and Ferb, the Loud House, teenager mutant ninjas turtles, Tekken and youtubeur (Moketo, Squeezie and Kirbendoworld)? With the exception of John, Marc and Alice.

Chapter text

Arc 1: Hero in a Fort-Shell! Episode 1

"shadows of the night (part 1)"

I walk around Central Park It was dark I have a newspaper that I bought in the afternoon. I read the journal. There was written « Manhattan Monster Hunt Contest’, Which states that whoever can find monster sighting wins a $ 100,000 reward. » I was stunned. Monsters in New York? Like the demons of the Mishima. One day, while eating a hot dog, I saw a young girl running in the park. I finished my hot dog, and I follow it. Arriving near the girl, I saw four strange creatures that look like turtles. So, I hide and take pictures without him seeing me

TODAY

It was a typical Saturday lunch at the Loud's house. Some of the Loud sisters (Sans Lori, Leni, Luna and Luan) did their daily routine, the parents were in the kitchen preparing dinner, John Christivoiren read his manga and Lincoln and Clyde were playing their favorite video game Battle Moles, by beating against the enemies.

"Try to support me with your blue mole, Clyde!" warned Lincoln.

"Do not worry buddy, I will not let you down!" Unfortunately, as he said a random enemy became critical and destroyed the blue mole. "Okay, eat that."

"Boys, can you speak softly, your father and I are trying to prepare dinner!"

"Saturday Succotash requires exceptional care and delicacy!" says Lynn Sr.

"Sorry, let's try!" shouted Lincoln back. He returned to his video game but then turned to the audience: "I know what you think of what happened to the attitude towards New York? Let's say things have worked pretty well since we've been here. The new school has been nice, making new friends in the area, including Clyde, Dipper, Mabel, Irving, Marc and the new house is much more spacious. "

"Lana, give me back my cart!" Lola threatened.

"NEVER!" Lana shouted.

"Of course the more things change, the more they stay the same," says impassive Lincoln. The binoculars descend the stairs in a cloud of dust and the fighting can be heard.

"Give it to me !"

"No way, my reptiles need something sweet to sleep!"

"The children shut up!" shouted Lynn Sr. angrily.

The twins had ended their fight, "Sorry dad!"

" As I have said. But lately, odd things happened in the city: there were strange disappearances of stolen objects, then we saw monsters circulating in the city, then ... "Lincoln was interrupted by Lori, Squeezie, John’s friends and the rest of the girls entered the house through the front door.

Clyde just caught the eye when he saw his 'soul mate' come into the house.

"L-Lo-Lori!" He quickly had a nosebleed and fainted as an anime character.

"Auggh, Lincoln's weird friend still has blood on the carpet!" Lori shouted.

Lincoln goes on: "So yeah my best friend Clyde has a weird behavior for my sister Lori, who gets pretty filthy to see ..."

"So it was shopping malls? Asked Dipper

"Yeah," Squeezie said, "we're going to a video game store ..." He stopped and he saw John reading a manga with Charles, Cliff, Walt, and Geo watching "you're still reading the dbz manga, you"

"Oh yes, I want to introduce the newcomers from Soos and Thomas. The girl who is on her phone is Tambry, the teenager who wears a shirt with a heart soaring, it's Robbie Luna's boyfriend and the teenager that John hates is Squeezie is a French youtubeur- »

It was interrupted again when April came through the next door. "Thanks for the trip to the malls, I really love this new notebook to use for my journalism class."

"No problem guy, I heard the teacher could be pretty rough," commented Luna.

"Yeah, because he only sees black and white ah ah ah!" Luan joked. She looked at John "Greet my valiant prince charming"

"Get out, Luan," said John, reading his manga.

"On the other hand, Luan is in love with John. Which is amazing, as this one hates her, "says Lincoln

"Always makes the best student in the class." April said seeing Lincoln leave her and decided to give him a friendly wave and smile, "Hello Linky, what's up."

"Hi Angel, I mean APRIL!" said Lincoln with a sigh of lovers, his heart and his head in the clouds. The older sisters just rolled their eyes at Lincoln's love, and he thought Clyde's behavior was trustworthy.

April clumsily laughs, "You're so cute Lincoln."

"I thank you." sighed Lincoln with embarrassment.

"Are you still having trouble, little brother?" Lynn teased Lincoln in the middle of the stairs holding Lily kissing.

"Well, you're lucky to have a boyfriend like April," Marc said as he exited the bathroom.

"But it's ridiculous!" said a familiar voice.

The others had their attention on Lisa who saw that she was upset.

"I know, the red hair clip does not match Lori's hair, it's ridiculous, but she does not listen to me," Leni said absently.

"Hey !" Lori exclaimed hurt slightly to her fashion pride.

"No, no, it's an idiotic contest that a paper company is watching, look!"

Everyone takes a look at the newspaper and the bed « Manhattan Monster Hunt Contest’, Which states that whoever can find monster sighting wins a $ 100,000 reward. »

Lincoln shouted, "A monster hunt ?!"

Clyde shouted, "At $ 100,000!"

Leni shouted, "A sale of shoes!"

All the kids seemed excited to hear that, except April, who looked worried for some reason. "You do not really plan to participate in this monster contest, are you?"

"Hum," said Marc, who turned around

"You know John, if we find these monsters, we'll make money and win a house with Moketo, Alice, your brother Tambry Thompson and Lynn. We can win a pool, we can order pizzas. We can invite everyone from New York kids, teenagers, night club dancers and even Mr Lee and Mrs Johnson. "

"Fuck you, Squeezie! John shouted, closing his manga

"John! Your language! Albert shouted "There's Lily, Lisa Lola, Lana Lucy, Dipper, Mabel, Linky, Clyde and my brother who are hearing from you"

"Yeah, I could always use the money for my animals!" Lana shouted.

"We are not going to waste money on these dirty things, we should use it for more clothes!" Lola shouted.

"Guys, do you realize we could make another coin with that money, right ?!" suggested Lynn.

"It's ridiculous, these obscure monsters are just rumors." says Lisa

"I do not agree," said impassive Lucy appearing beside the children of nowhere.

"Aaah!" The children (except Marc) jumped at the sudden appearance of the Goth girl.

"You will stop that!" yelled Lisa has her heart beating.

"I saw one of them wandering around the city in search of spirits," Lucy quantified.

"Seriously, no one wants to hear about your phantasmagoric vibrations," Luna said.

"If I had to guess I would say it would be a Kappa." Lucy guessed.

"Kappa?" Leni asked confused by the strange word.

"A former demon of Japanese water who used to scare children away from dangerous water." Said April surprisingly responded shockingly to everyone.

"Um, she's right," Lucy told everyone, she was so surprised that she forgot to add monotone to her voice.

"Well, April, you're telling the truth," John says astonishingly reading his manga

"But Lucy, why could a demon of Japanese water be in the middle of Manhattan?" Lincoln asked confusedly.

"Easy, the sewers that run all the time there is enough water for them to fill up." She explained,.

Clyde had also remembered something "You know I've also heard rumors that these creatures were coming out most of the time during the night."

"Really, it must be nocturnal monsters," Lana said to no one, and she thoughtfully looked at her face. "So, what kind of plan someone?"

"Here's my plan, we'll take Vanzilla tonight so we can wander the city in search of monsters, we'll carry a disposable camera every time we spot them, and Luan will use his video camera," Lori warned.

"We will also need bait, to try them in the cameras," says Lana.

"Oh, it's a good plan, Lori," Squeezie said.

Moketo Approved this idea "me, I am"

Oh yeah "said John" How are you going to do, if we go to film the monsters, without the permission of your parent, grumpy princess

"John, you! I'm going to ... "Lori said.

"Sorry, I did not say anything," John said, picking up his page 140 from his manga

But April looked rather nervous, "Hmm ... actually guys I ..."

Lynn interrupted, "Wait, I have an idea, April, why do not you invite your four brothers whom you talk to us about, I think it's time we met your family to help us in our research!"

Lincoln, her friends and sisters Loud begged April to invite her "brothers" to help them in their search.

"Hmmm, um sorry, they're with my dad for a martial arts tournament, they'll be gone for the better part of a month," April told the Loud family while breathing lightly.

"Girl, it's been 3 months and we have not met them yet, what are they doing ?!" Said Luna with irritation.

"They just do not feel comfortable meeting new people or making new friends," she says.

"So, do you mean they are recluse?" Lincoln asked.

All right, but one of those days, April, you're going to have to introduce them to us, "said Lori with slight suspicion, April calming down a bit but still worried about what awaits them.

"You're not going to die anyway," says John, reading his manga

Miss in profile: John says to April "You're not going to die anyway," Tambry said, sending a text message.

The sisters Lincoln approached John "So you pay us what you said April" said Lori

"I'm not talking about April, I'm talking about Goku," said John, "I'm going to see what time it is ... noon? Well it's not all that, guys we go back we will eat pizzas »

"You are so lucky! Shouted the sisters of Lincoln

"And you, Luna, what are you going to eat with your brother and your sisters? Asked Robbie

"Succotash," said Luna.

Can I eat pizzas with you? April asked.

"Of course, but you have to ask your father," says Moketo

"He said yes," said April excitedly

In the first floor Albert discusses with Wendy

So uh ... I was wondering ... if you can go out in the garden tomorrow to talk about your family, Wendy? "

"Yeah, why not," she says

Albert jumped for joy and went down the stairs. But Dipper, down the stairs, had heard the conversations.

Later, that day, in the lair of the sewers, the turtles examine the painting which analyzes all the places where the strange disappearances of goods took place everywhere in the new ones.

"So, there were robberies at a Mom and Pop store at a Palmart and all they took was electronic stuff?" Leo asked to the resident brain of their group.

"Apparently, all the activity seems to be mostly activated around these areas," Donnie analyzed.

"So, what are we going to do, we still have no idea where they are hiding!" shouted Raph for the moment that a group of punks had taken over.

While Raph was raging, Mikey entered the kitchen lab with a pizza on his hands, "Who wants special jelly candies, insects and garlic pizza!"

All gave the pizza disgusted looks. "People who are crazy enough risk death," Raph leaned.

Mikey had a very irritated look, "Very funny, so what are you doing?"

"We are looking at the sources for all stolen objects, which you should be part of!" Donnie said with irritation.

Raph intervenes, "Mikey is part of planning? Hilarious!"

"What about that old warehouse on 8th Street?" Mikey asked.

"We've already looked at the warehouse," Donnie told Mikey.

"So, how do we know that the purple dragons are not the ones who did that?"

"Because those shit piles were smart enough to pull something like this." retorted Raph.

"Wait, that makes no sense, why did not I see that before?" Asked Leo

while his brothers look at him strangely.

"Oh, great, he lost it," said Raph.

"What are you talking about Leo?" Asked Donnie.

"Thoughtfully, we and the cops checked all their hiding places, but someone steals technology."

"so what ?" Raph asked, thinking that Leo had finally broken.

"And if they return to the hiding places after checking them!"

"What do you mean brothero? Mikey asked.

"I say that after the research, they come back right away and we are not wiser because we have already checked them!"

"Do you mean they use the same hiding places that have been searched by the authorities?" asked impassive Raph.

"It has a point if we have already searched them, we would not know they are using these hiding places because they seemed abandoned," Donnie said, supporting Leo's theory.

"It's a possibility," said a voice from the boys, revealing to be Splinter.

Raph seemed rather confused, "Really Sensei, no disrespect, but how in the world would these purple thugs be so smart?"

"We do not fully understand our enemies, some are like meerkats, who stay in their habitat and leave only for temperate reasons, others might look like hermit crabs, they leave to a new shell of time in time, "said Splinter wisely.

"Ok," Mikey said, not really understanding what his father had said.

"What I'm saying is that although Leonardo has a good theory, we should not be too sure if the purple dragons choose to stay in the same hiding place or if they are behind the disappearances." explained Splinter.

"Well, I could use all the reported crimes to determine more precisely where the stolen technology might be hiding," Donnie suggested to the group.

"Ok, while Donnie does that, Mikey and Raph can join me for a patrol in search of the hiding place." Leo planned for a strategy.

Raph was on board with the plan and Mikey was all excited, "Great, I can not wait! COWABUNGA!"

Everyone was looking at Mikey with their eyes. "Cowabunga? Really guy?" asked impassive Raph.

"What I need is something to be my slogan."

Raph said sarcastically, "So you got it in the book Catchphrases for Dummies?"

Leo then had another suggestion, "Maybe we should also have April's Tag to work with the light?"

Raph then gave a quick response in a rude tone, "No Tag, she's with her new friends who are doing all that crap drags!"

The turtles gave Raph a smile on their face, "It looks like someone is a little jealous because his 'girlfriend' has human friends!"

Raph cried irritably, "Shut up, it's not that, it's ..."

"Hi guys." Right away, April entered the room with a worried look on her face.

"April?!" Says the turtles.

"What's wrong with April? Why are not you with your friends?" Leo asked April.

April sighed, "Guys, we have a problem."

Mikey was quick to answer, "Do you need a new bra because of another growth spurt?"

April blushed furiously as Raph slapped his head. "Oww, was it for fun?"

"Did you say April?" Raph asked while watching Mikey.

"It's really about my friends, ten girls, their brother and their neighbor," April asked.

"Donnie's worst fear?" Raph taunted his geek brother.

"Very funny !" Donnie said ironically.

April then takes out a newspaper from her backpack and shows it to the turtles.

"Oh my god," said Leo.

"Shit." Said Raph shocked.

"Well, it's bad." Donnie said worried.

"Cool, there will be a new pizzeria!" Mikey excited.

Each of the brothers rolled their eyes, but are concerned that there is now a $ 100,000 bonus on their heads and most New Yorkers will look for them.

April continued, "And apparently, my friends are also participating in the contest."

"Well, that puts a damper on the plan." Raph supposed.

"I think maybe you should stay down for a while until it all ends," suggested April.

The Turtles considered that the options of choice were weak and waited for the heat to decrease. But if they do, more and more people will be stolen, or come out and risk being caught on camera or in a trap.

"Sensei, what do you think should be a good approach?" Leo asked, hoping to ask his sensei for wisdom.

"So basically, do the opposite of what Mikey does," Raph joked.

"In rude terms yes."

"Hey!" Mikey said offended.

Leo thought of another idea: "And April, maybe you could get your friends away from where we are."

"Okay, I'll try but most of them are determined to find you guys."

Raph intervened, "Then give them false information about our locations, and if not, call us by T-Phone if they are in our area."

"Okay."

"Great, now let's move the ninjas!" Leo ordered.

The Turtles will gather their weapons and begin to leave until Master Splinter stops them.

April asked, "Something is wrong sensei?"

"Yes, I feel that your brothers can be seen but he can become an ally."

"Do not worry master, we will not be seen!" Mikey said without any worries.

"All right, now let's go!" They cross one of the tunnels and start navigating on one of the hidden exits.

As night falls, John plays Rayman 3 where he is in The Bog of Murk . He wanted to show his friends if the Hoddlums Stumbleboom can go down alone.

"And then someone to a plan? Asked Wendy

" That's it ! I think I know what they eat it's a monster "says a brilliant idea from Moketo

" Oh yeah ! Asked the others except John

"That's it I got it! John shouted. But when it was hovering in the air, Rayman got shot and died in the water "NOOOOOON! WHORE ! "

Suddenly someone knocked on the door. It was Albert and his brother. "Hey guys, what are you doing? Asked Albert

"We discover what they like to eat, it's a monster" says Tambry

In the girls' room, Mabel spoke with her little pig "Ok Waddle we are going to prepare the operation Monster city" Waddle does not understand but he soot

As for Moketo, he spoke with Tambry's snake, "that will be our walk. Do not worry, Amikuto. I promise to come back to play Mario Kart with you. I love you my friend

But the snake who read the third volume of Naruto, mounted his head

"Hey, you speak with Tambry's snake! Says Thompson, smiling

"No, shut your mouth! Moketo said angrily

" This is so cute ! Thompson continued

"You saw it your shit! Moketo runs behind Thompson to silence him.

"Ok I think everyone is here and where is Moketo and Thompson? Asked Albert

But Soos intervenes "friends, or are you going? "

"At the pizzeria to eat pizza" says Dipper

" Oh ok. Good luck, guys, "said Soos

Thompson tried to run in front of the exit, but Albert blocked his way. "Moketo and Thompson, stop fighting. Otherwise, you would stay at Moss and Kirb! It's clear ?! "

"Stop Albert, it's good they understood the massage" says Wendy

"Ok but not 10:30! Kirb shouted

Meanwhile at the Loud's house, the kids were preparing everything to chase the monsters while Lori was going down to talk to their parents.

"So, are you okay if we go every ten to Spunk E. Pigeons tonight with our neighbors?" Ment Lori.

"Of course, but why do you all want to go to a pizzeria?" Lynn Sr. asked her daughter.

"She's right, we usually need a lot of bribes to get everyone to the same place," Rita said suspiciously of her children's sudden agreement.

"We just need something to do this Saturday, we have nothing to do." Lori still.

"Okay, but not 10 hours later and you're all on time," Rita told her daughter in a strict voice and her face hard as steel.

"Okay, let's go!"

Very quickly, April and Lincoln and her sisters were out and went to Vanzilla.

"So where should we start first?" Lori asked April, his brother and sisters.

"Well, I'd like a slice of pepperoni with a stuffed crust and ..." Leni was trying to tell her big sister.

"We're not going to eat pizza, Leni," Lincoln said.

"I think we should start looking in 5th Avenue," says April.

"Very good." Lori said he drove the Vanzilla out of the alley and hoping to find one of the monsters.

Lola just shouted, "$ 100,000 is coming!"

While everyone was clapping, April had secretly her T-Phone on the speaker all the time.

"It's good guys, they're leaving," said Albert, "you have to follow them. But before, little music "he puts the radio to put a music to his friends" NEW YORK, NEW YORK by FRANK SINATRA 1977

All we moaned “seriously, Albert?” Asked John

"Ok I'm going to change my music," said Albert and he changed the music and he puts Digital Underground - The Humpty Dance 1990 and his friends love it

In another part of Manhattan, the turtles listened on the T-Phone.

"Ok, guys, you know what to do," Leo asked.

"Yeah," said Raph.

"Certainly," Donnie said.

"Of course not." Mikey confused.

"Ugh, go in the opposite direction of one and the Loud sisters and their neighbors and try to stay in the shadows."

"Can do!" Mikey exclaimed.

The four brothers leave from building to building, planning to catch the Loud behind the disappearances once and for all.

Meanwhile, in a nightclub, there were members of Purple Dragon in a discussion.

"All right boys, you all know why we are here, are not they ?!" said the group leader.

"yes because monsters hurt your ass?"

"Exactly, they always interfere with our plans and we did not even see them, it's like they're not even human!" he said bitterly in his tone.

"So, what are we going to do with this problem, boss?" asked one of the thugs.

"All the members of our faction are walking in the alleys, they like to appear in the dark and everything else, so they would probably be there!"

The thugs nodded and began to catch an assortment of weapons. "Do you expect if they come here?"

"In case you did not notice Nelson, there are other people here in this Club who are not Purple Dragons, they would not want to make a scene, right? Asked the chef.

"Good point but what about the warehouse?"

"They might suspect it if we use the warehouse."

"Yeah, but we leave him helpless, do not we?"

"Do not worry, any clues they find have already been removed."

"No matter what you say, Dragon-Face," said Nelson.

"Well, now to other things, do you remember those two trainees?"

"Do you mean the two juvenile delinquents of high school?"

"Yeah, bring them a minute."

"Ok, Dragon Face."

"Douglas, leave the beginners!" He told the guy who was guarding the door.

"Okay." He opened the doors and two people entered the club. One of them was a tall, dark-haired 16-year-old boy wearing a black t-shirt and a gray sweater.

The other was a 14-year-old girl who had a black spot and a purple lock on her hair. "Has anyone ever been drunk and died here?" questioned the girl.

"But why would an Angel have asked that?" Casey asked.

"My name is supposed to be ironic."

"Casey and Angel, I heard good words about you two." said Dragon Face.

"Yeah, what do you want?" asked Casey.

"Watch out what you say Jones!" said Nelson with irritation.

"It's ok, Nelson," said Nelson Face Nelson said. "Now both of you are about to become Purple Dragons in their own right."

The two teens really did not know what to say. But Casey seemed a little suspicious.

"You only have to do three more tests and you are officially members!"

"So, what are the three trials?" Angel asked.

"You will see, for now, just sit until later." He then takes out 2 pocket knives. "In the meantime, you won them."

"Are we supposed to bite our teeth with these things?" Angel asked.

"We have all of these, not going home and waiting for our orders the next time we see you."

"Very good." Both are out of the club.

Nelson did not seem to agree with them. "Boss, kid Casey seems a bit disrespectful."

"I know and I also know you do not like the kid, but the boss seems pretty close to him so try."

"Ugh, okay, but do not accidents happen around his hood part?"

"Noted."

Meanwhile, the turtles were outside the warehouse waiting for someone to enter the warehouse and Raph was losing patience, "Good glorious leader when are they showing up?"

"They'll show up," Leo was patient.

Raph and Donnie seem rather bored to death. Mikey, meanwhile, was gaffing on a pole: "Yo guys, look how boomy is this boom!"

"Mikey, I really do not do that," Donnie warns his brother.

"Why ?"

"Because it breaks any moment and you can break your head, or make it more broken than it already is!" Now, get out of this damn thing! He asked as he went on the pole to catch Mikey and he threw it back to the roof, but the post made a crackling noise, "crump"

The post broke in two and Raph and he started to fall to the ground. The pole breaks and Raph falls into a garbage truck

"Sorry not to try to catch you Raph!" shouted Mikey, hoping his brother was crazy.

Before Raph could comment, the truck's engine started: "Are you kidding?" Raph asked angrily, and the truck left carrying Raph with him.

"Dude, today is not Raph's day." Mikey commented on the events that occurred.

"Come on, we have to go get him." Leo ordered Mikey and Donnie to jump after the truck.

The truck rolled at a very fast pace.

Meanwhile, April, the Louds and the others were near Central Park, having set everything up.

"Ok, did everyone install the cameras?" Lori asked the group.

"Yes, we all have our disposable cameras including Luan's video camera," says Lincoln. "These monsters are going to have a close-up today!"

"Psssh, forget the false ghost hunters, imagine a crowd of people who cheer us as we showed them the monsters!" Said Lola with green in her eyes.

"I still think it's pretty dangerous," Lisa says, ignoring rumors of monsters.

"Come on Lisa, with that money, we could finally have another room!" Lincoln said trying to excite his sisters.

Ok, guys as soon as we filmed it's creatures, we'll be able to win the $ 100,000! Albert shouted

"Yeah great idea Albert!” Jean shouted, "and how do you want the movies?"

"Miss in profile ..."

"And you stop sending SMS!” Squeezie shouted

Luna then looked to April "So April, what will you make money since you help us?"

"Oh, I'll probably put it in the bank, it'll help my family save for my college in the future." At that moment, April's phone vibrated in search of Leo's text. "Oh no." April gasped with surprise and concern.

Lincoln saw April's worried look: "What's April?"

April hesitated to answer: "Nothing, it's just ... I'll be right back!"

She runs away leaving Lincoln and Luna confused. Lincoln, however, saw that April had dropped his notebook, "Luna, April dropped her notebook!"

"I guess she dropped it when she took out her phone."

Lincoln thought of wanting to gracefully return the notepad to his crush: "So maybe I should go make it!"

Luna raised an eyebrow, "And I hope she'll kiss you, brother?"

Lincoln was nervous and had a broad smile on his face, "Pfft, of course not, I just want to do a selfless act, that's all!"

Luna did not buy it. She would be the only one with Lori, Leni and Luan, who would be most worried about her only brother. But she is content to play: "Do not bother little brother." Lincoln nodded and left to follow April

Dipper approached him: "Do you want me to go with you? "

"If you want, Dipper," said Lincoln, "you four, do you want to come?"

Marc returned to Lynn, then returned to Lincoln, Waddle, Irving, Mabel, and Dipper. "No go 'y guys," says Marc "I'm going to stay with my brother, Squeezie, Lynn and my brother's friends"

"Okay see you later, Marc," Lincoln said.

Lincoln and the kids ran to follow April

The other girls did not seem to notice because they seemed to be starting the plan again. But John had an idea "maybe I should ..." But he's bothered by the sound of the helicopter.

"Why is there a helicopter landing in the park? Asked Robbie.

"I do not know, but we must go see! Said Albert, "here is my plan. John, Wendy, Thompson and Tambry are going to hide in the tree while Marc ... "Then he saw that Marc disappeared" ok. While me, the sisters of Lincoln, Moketo, Squeezie and Alice are going to follow the helicopter "

All bowed their heads and ran

Soon, behind the big tree, John Wendy, Tambry and Thompson waited for Albert and the others to arrive in front of the big lake. But Wendy saw a creature with giant horns next to her head and three others upstairs. She had one eye, she was pink-white with a dark pink cape.

"But it's Pyronica! Yelled Wendy, "How did she get to New York City ?! "

"You mean, you know her. Thompson and Tambry remember her,” says Wendy

"Here is my plan. First, go around the lake, then we'll kill her. "Thompson and Tambry approved the idea except John.

Robbie, Albert, Alice, Moketo Squeezie and Lincoln's sisters were hidden behind the hot dog stand.

"I know that one," said Robbie, "this is one of the creatures that Dipper fought.

"Robbie," said Alice

Perido? Not Perido. Bayonetta...

Robbie. ROBBIE! Alice shouted

"What!” Robbie shouted

"Lu ... Luna and her sisters approach her"

When they saw the sisters Loud approached Pyronica and the four men with weapons. "Who are you?" Says the creature, seeing these girls

"Are you the creature trying to kill Robbie? What is your name? "Asked Lola

"My name is Pyronica and no, I did not kill your Robbie"

Robbie runs in front of the sisters of Lincoln "You are stupid! Why did you get out of your stamp ?! Robbie shouted.

But they saw something moving in the lake and someone jumped Pyronica. It was Wendy "PYRONICA! Wendy shouted

Pyronica used her power but too late. Wendy threw herself on her. She hit it ten times on the creature.

"DO NOT STAY PLACE THE IMBECILE, PULL! Pyronica ordered his men.

His men aimed at Wendy's head. But the latter began to shout "GO TO KILL ME! "

"Stop fighting both! John said running. Wendy, Albert and the others, saw that John is shirtless and even Thompson. As for Tambry, she wore the top of John and Thompson's clothes

" And you who are you ? Pyronica asked.

"My name is John, John Christivoirien and I see you have met Squeezie, Moketo and Alice"

Pyronica smiled a little. She tries to use her fireball, but are phone rang "two minutes" says Pyronica "yes! Four people ! Well, then shoot them! What? Four children and a little pig ?! Alright, let them pass I said ... let them go, finished "

"Four children? Albert said

"I think it's Dipper, Lincoln, Mabel, Waddle and Irving," says Moketo

"All right, the pose is over. Ahhhhh! Jean shouted, running to three of Pyronica's men. The three men shot Jean, but he dodged the bullets and rushed towards them punched them.

"The pines? The little children of Stanford? Pyronica thought she called the solda sound: "Foolish are the grandchildren of Ford! Dipper and Mabel »

"PYRONICA! John shouted and ran in front of her to give him the neck of grace. But this one dodged sent him the ball of fire to John.

Meanwhile, Lincoln, Irving Dipper, Dandinou and Mabel ran to warn April to return his notebook. But he stopped and they saw a soldier wearing a gas mask and his eyes were red.

"Excuse me sir, we want to go!" Said Dipper

"Stop! The soldier shouted

"But what if ..." Irving said. But he stopped talking. He remembers this man "I remember you! You are one of those soldiers when you capture civilians in the basement of the subway! "

" You know him?” Asked Dipper

" Uh no "

"Listen to me sir, we're a little squeeze," says Lincoln

"Stop right there! The soldier shouted

"Okay," said Mabel, "we just want to shoot monsters in the park."

"I have four civilians in front of the playground entrance. Please advise," he said, calling someone with his walkie-talkie

But Irving released a weapon in his pocket

"Irving, what are you doing? You are crazy ! Dipper shouted

"Do not worry, I'm not going to kill him," Irving said with a smiley face

"Sir, there are four children and a little pig," said the soldier "but ... yes, sire"

then he turns off his walkie talkie "kids, you can move on. The children walked past him, but Irving tugged on the soldier's head and fell to the ground

"Irving, did you become sick or what ?! Mabel shouted

“Wait, guys. I did not kill him I just fall asleep with a non-lethal weapon: it means no kils »

"So what did he do with him? Mabel asked.

"We have to stay here for the watch, Lincoln, you're going to get April, then tell him what's going on here," Dipper said.

"All right," says Lincoln

Soon, April arrived at the old playground, "Ok guys, I'm here!" Two of his brothers, Leo and Mikey, fell from the trees around the playground. "Donnie, you too! "

"Is it you April?" Donnie asked in a slightly shaky voice.

"Yes, Donnie no Loud girls did not follow me!" Leo replied.

Donnie came out of hiding and was relieved.

"Are you lost, Raph ?!" April seemed very concerned.

"Yeah, but it was not my fault!" Mikey said by instinct.

April had fumbled with disappointment, "What am I going to do with you guys?"

Mikey was about to give a literal answer, but Donnie stopped him, "DO NOT DO IT!"

April shook her head at the difficult situation of her brothers, all unaware that a certain guy was looking at them: "giant turtles ?! April found them ?! Lincoln thought and was panicked. He was ready to run to his sisters, then he accidentally stepped on a twig.

"And crump," said Lincoln

April and the turtles spotted Lincoln on the side of the building, "Lincoln ?!"

Lincoln tried to run away but a bola quickly closed that idea. Leo then came right in front of Lincoln, "You're just a kid!"

"AAAAHHHHH" Lincoln yelled back panicking about it until he fainted.

"Oh no," April said, worried that Lincoln spotted her turtles.

To be continued…

Notes from the author: So now Lincoln has spotted the turtles, how is he going to interact with them? Will Raph be safe? How will purple dragons capture their enemies? Stay tuned for Part 2. So, this is the first official chapter. Casey and Angel will make more appearances later.

0 notes

succeedly · 6 years

Text

Shattering Perfect Teacher Myths

Aaron Hogan on episode 181 of the 10-Minute Teacher Podcast

From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis

Follow @coolcatteacher on Twitter

Aaron Hogan shatters myths about teaching. Empower yourself as a teacher with the knowledge you do not have to be perfect. Learn how to build collegiality and support other teachers.

Today’s Sponsor: WriQ from Texthelp is a new FREE Add-on for Google Docs that helps teachers easily assess student writing and track progress over time by automatically scoring students’ spelling, punctuation, and grammar errors. It also incorporates rubrics so teachers can provide meaningful, qualitative feedback to encourage the writing journey.

This handy free Google Docs add-on tracks things like: time spent writing, spelling-grammar-and punctuation error rates and pulls it into a clear graphical view in your teacher dashboard. To learn more about Wriq go to http://ift.tt/2y91EpU

Listen Now

Listen to the show on iTunes or Stitcher

Stream by clicking here.

Below is an enhanced transcript, modified for your reading pleasure. For guests and hyperlinks to resources, scroll down.

***

Enhanced Transcript

Shattering Perfect Teacher Myths

Vicki: Today we’re talking to Aaron Hogan @aaron_hogan about shattering the “Perfect Teacher Myth.” He has a book of the same name that we’ll be sharing in the show notes.

So Aaron, you know, as a teacher… You know, sometimes I feel like I have to apologize. People will walk in my room, and everybody’s going crazy. We’re learning! But it doesn’t look like what we think we’re supposed to look like. Why are we as teachers so uptight? Why do we feel like we have to be perfect?

Aaron: Right. So I think that first — you’re not alone. I’ve run across several people who’ve had that feeling. I think teaching is is one of those professions that is unique in a lot of ways. One of those unique qualities about teaching is that you’re the only adult in that room, making the magic happen while you’re in there. So it’s hard to know what’s going on on the other side of those walls. I worked in a building with brick walls, and those brick walls are pretty thick.

It’s hard to know what’s going on on the other side and so when something happens that maybe has been explained to you as kind of a quick fix, “Hey, just do these things, and the kids will do this in response.” When it doesn’t work, then you feel like, “I must be the variable in the room, right? It must be me that’s leading to this not going the way that I would hope.”

And I think that’s not true but I think that almost every educator has had that feeling, that, ”You know, some things aren’t going right. It must be that I’m the problem in this situation.”

And wouldn’t you agree — I mean I’ve been teaching six years — and every year has its own unique problems.

Aaron: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Vicki: I mean, we don’t arrive at perfection, do we?

Aaron: No. No. Never. I think it’s one of the things that keeps it really fun — that there’s always something new there for in the classroom.

Even though those things worked great last year, you get to figure out, “OK. It’s going to work great for these kids this year, but maybe not for for this group.”

And then you’ve got that new challenge of, “How am I going to reach that next group? What am I going to do to take care of them and to meet their needs? How is that going to build that arsenal of ways to really reach kids the way that we want our own kids to be reached in their classrooms?”

Vicki: So, how do we shatter the “perfect teacher myth”?

Tip to Shatter the Teacher Myth #1: Know the Myths

Aaron: OK, so the first thing, I think we’ve got to know what the myths are before we get out there to shatter them. And I think even before that, know that there are these myths that are taking over.

When these myths start to creep in, they make teachers feel like it’s time to lose all their self confidence. It makes teachers feel like a failure, when really it’s a measurement that no one could actually stand up to.

Myth: Do this and then kids behave

It’s things like, you know, that feeling of, “If I do these sorts of things, then all the kids will behave.”

Myth: Buckle Down, I can do it alone

Or, “if I just just buckle down, then I can do all these things on my own.” Then that’s some level of perfection.

But those things aren’t true.

The reality is that when we go in and we realize that maybe those behavior expectations need to be taught. And they’re going to be forgotten, just like other things — the academic content that people might forget.

We realize that, and then we have a different sort of standard to live up to. It’s just that we need to be responsible and teach those expectations.

It’s the same thing with that isolation. When we realize, “I can’t do all of these things on my own. I’m so much better when I lean on the other people who need me just as much as I need them.”

When we work in collaboration with other people, we can reject that isolation that makes us feel like we are the only one who’s going through these sorts of circumstances.

Vicki: We are not alone. I think it’s important to learn that.

Aaron: Ah, but it can feel that way.

Vicki: Goodness knows it can. Because you know that when you close the door, it’s you and them, you know?

Aaron: Right.

Vicki: So what other myths — you’ve talked about two or three now — what other myths do you think can paralyze us as teachers or even make us want to quit?

Aaron: Sure. I think there’s a couple that I want to hit on here.

Myth: You have to be perfect.

One is this idea of value in vulnerability. That, for me for a long time, and even now I have to fight against valuing that that idea of looking like it I have it all together.

And really, when I can get past that, when I get to that point where I can say, “You know what? I don’t have it all together. I’ve worked on some things. I know some things, but I have a lot to learn. What can I learn?”

It opens you up to the space where you can learn from someone else. And they feel like they can learn from you — because you’re not the person who just has it all together. It’s a “We’re in this together learning from one another.”

Let’s be kind to beginning teachers

Vicki: I know somebody who is coming in from the business world who is teaching. And you know, some people can be very impatient with beginners. It’s I don’t know why we expect people who are beginning teachers to have it all together and have all their classroom management. But I kind of think that sometimes those of us who are a little more veteran might not be fair to beginners.

Myth: We have to learn how to teach on our own – we don’t learn from other teachers

Aaron: I think so. Some of that, it may be a sense of, “f I had to work through it on my own, then other people might need to also.” But I think that’s flawed thinking.

If we are people who’ve had to work through those things on our own, we need to pay it forward to those teachers who are working through through now. Say, “Hey, when I was a first year teacher, these are all the ways that I blew it. Or I felt like I blew it, at least, in front of my students.”

Realize that others struggle too

Any time we can open up ourselves to that powerful response of “Me, too,” where somebody else can realize that, “Hey, this other person from down the hall, during the passing period, it looked like she has it all together. But really, she’s been through the same sorts of struggles I have.”

We want that community of learners for our kids. That brings us together. We can extend empathy to others. That brings us together as a staff in a way that’s just really powerful.

That’s when we can see some transformation, moving forward, and people believing the right things about themselves.

Vicki: So What’s another myth?

Myth: You have to be monumental to change lives

Aaron: One of the other myths is that it takes a huge, monumental-like, life-changing act to be one of those memorable teachers for kids. What I really believe is that it’s those everyday things that make a kid remember teacher for a lifetime.

All it takes is being that person who’s consistently there, giving somebody a high five, giving somebody a fist bump, even just at that smile every day in the hallway. Those are the things that end up making a really big impact for a long time. We can still have those big impressive things that people will remember, “Oh, that one day…”

But students, I think, are much more likely to remember the impact that you made over 180 days, rather than over one or two really impactful days.

Vicki: Well, I’m thinking back on Tuesday. We showed this movie. We kind of have them Chapel time at my school on Tuesdays, and I had a student who kind of sits behind the screen.

I said, “don’t you need to need to come in front of the screen?

And he said, “No, I watch your laptop.”

Well, I took the laptop and just pointed it at him and just kind of nodded.

He nodded back at me.

But the look on his face was, “You didn’t get on to me for sitting behind the screen. You noticed that this is kind of where I want to sit because I kind of want to be by myself and be over here. and you just turned your laptop so I can see it better. And that was thoughtful.”

Because you’re right. Sometimes, it’s the little bitty, ordinary things and noticing somebody that makes all the difference.

Aaron: Right. I had a student once — I came back from being out. I was just out doing some district training, and I came back to school the next day.

She said, “Mr. Hogan, I was having a bad day yesterday, and you weren’t here, and you always notice, and it made me sad that you weren’t here.” a

And I still don’t know what I did on the front end, but that’s the outcome that we want. I like it that I don’t even know what I did it’s just, “Be there in those everyday moments to really engage with kids. That leaves a lasting impact.”

Vicki: If you have to pick one big myth that you haven’t mentioned yet that you think could be life-changing if we busted, what would it be?

Myth: That someone can tell us what to do to make us a great teacher

Aaron: This idea that we can imagine better for our kids. I think the myth, sometimes, is that the best teachers excel at by meeting those existing expectations. “Just tell me what I need to do and I’ll do it well. I’ll do better than everybody else, and that will make me successful.”

But I love this idea that JK Rowling shared. She says, “We don’t need magic to change the world. We carry all the power we need inside ourselves already. We have the power to imagine better.”

And that idea of looking past what we’ve always done, looking past what the status quo has been, looking past what maybe even expected of us… and trying to figure out how we can do the best for our kids — not in like an “I’m going to work my myself for 80 hours a week and exhaust myself,” way, but, “Just with what I have to give, how can I do the absolute best for those that I serve?”

That’s really important to me that we’re not thinking through change for change sake, but just thinking about what is the best experience that we can provide for students if you’re a classroom teacher, or for your staff if you’re that campus leader. What’s what can we do to imagine better for those who we serve.

Vicki: Teachers, as we finish up — I’ll we will link to Aaron’s book in the show notes — but I just wanted to give you a, “Me, too.”

You know, I have bad days. “Me, too.”

You know we all struggle.”Me, too.”

We all sometimes feel like, “Why are we doing this, and are we even important?” That’s a ”Me, too.”

These are things that we feel as teachers. We struggle. We have hard days. We mess up. But I will tell you this — there are those moments where you realize that we’re doing something that is really, I would say, one of the most special impactful professions on the entire planet and I would say, ”Me, too.”

Aaron: Absolutely.

Vicki: I’m making a difference too, just like you, Aaron.

Aaron: There you go. That’s what it’s all about, finding those ways to connect with kids and do what’s best for them.

Bio as submitted

Aaron is a husband, dad, educator, blogger, speaker, and author. His recently published book, Shattering the Perfect Teacher Myth: 6 Truths That Will Help You THRIVE as an Educator, highlights a few myths that many teachers don’t even realize are there and replaces each myth with a truth that will help teachers get out of survival mode at school.

Blog: Aaron Hogan

Twitter: @aaron_hogan

Disclosure of Material Connection: This is a “sponsored podcast episode.” The company who sponsored it compensated me via cash payment, gift, or something else of value to include a reference to their product. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I believe will be good for my readers and are from companies I can recommend. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.) This company has no impact on the editorial content of the show.

The post Shattering Perfect Teacher Myths appeared first on Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis @coolcatteacher helping educators be excellent every day. Meow!

Shattering Perfect Teacher Myths published first on http://ift.tt/2jn9f0m

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strivesy · 6 years

Text

Shattering Perfect Teacher Myths

Aaron Hogan on episode 181 of the 10-Minute Teacher Podcast

From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis

Follow @coolcatteacher on Twitter

Aaron Hogan shatters myths about teaching. Empower yourself as a teacher with the knowledge you do not have to be perfect. Learn how to build collegiality and support other teachers.

Listen Now

Listen to the show on iTunes or Stitcher

Stream by clicking here.

Below is an enhanced transcript, modified for your reading pleasure. For guests and hyperlinks to resources, scroll down.

***

Enhanced Transcript

Shattering Perfect Teacher Myths

Vicki: Today we’re talking to Aaron Hogan @aaron_hogan about shattering the “Perfect Teacher Myth.” He has a book of the same name that we’ll be sharing in the show notes.

And I think that’s not true but I think that almost every educator has had that feeling, that, ”You know, some things aren’t going right. It must be that I’m the problem in this situation.”

And wouldn’t you agree — I mean I’ve been teaching six years — and every year has its own unique problems.

Aaron: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Vicki: I mean, we don’t arrive at perfection, do we?

Aaron: No. No. Never. I think it’s one of the things that keeps it really fun — that there’s always something new there for in the classroom.

Even though those things worked great last year, you get to figure out, “OK. It’s going to work great for these kids this year, but maybe not for for this group.”

Vicki: So, how do we shatter the “perfect teacher myth”?

Tip to Shatter the Teacher Myth #1: Know the Myths

Myth: Do this and then kids behave

It’s things like, you know, that feeling of, “If I do these sorts of things, then all the kids will behave.”

Myth: Buckle Down, I can do it alone

Or, “if I just just buckle down, then I can do all these things on my own.” Then that’s some level of perfection.

But those things aren’t true.

We realize that, and then we have a different sort of standard to live up to. It’s just that we need to be responsible and teach those expectations.

When we work in collaboration with other people, we can reject that isolation that makes us feel like we are the only one who’s going through these sorts of circumstances.

Vicki: We are not alone. I think it’s important to learn that.

Aaron: Ah, but it can feel that way.

Vicki: Goodness knows it can. Because you know that when you close the door, it’s you and them, you know?

Aaron: Right.

Vicki: So what other myths — you’ve talked about two or three now — what other myths do you think can paralyze us as teachers or even make us want to quit?

Aaron: Sure. I think there’s a couple that I want to hit on here.

Myth: You have to be perfect.

One is this idea of value in vulnerability. That, for me for a long time, and even now I have to fight against valuing that that idea of looking like it I have it all together.

Let’s be kind to beginning teachers

Myth: We have to learn how to teach on our own – we don’t learn from other teachers

Aaron: I think so. Some of that, it may be a sense of, “f I had to work through it on my own, then other people might need to also.” But I think that’s flawed thinking.

Realize that others struggle too

We want that community of learners for our kids. That brings us together. We can extend empathy to others. That brings us together as a staff in a way that’s just really powerful.

That’s when we can see some transformation, moving forward, and people believing the right things about themselves.

Vicki: So What’s another myth?

Myth: You have to be monumental to change lives

But students, I think, are much more likely to remember the impact that you made over 180 days, rather than over one or two really impactful days.

Vicki: Well, I’m thinking back on Tuesday. We showed this movie. We kind of have them Chapel time at my school on Tuesdays, and I had a student who kind of sits behind the screen.

I said, “don’t you need to need to come in front of the screen?

And he said, “No, I watch your laptop.”

Well, I took the laptop and just pointed it at him and just kind of nodded.

He nodded back at me.

Because you’re right. Sometimes, it’s the little bitty, ordinary things and noticing somebody that makes all the difference.

Aaron: Right. I had a student once — I came back from being out. I was just out doing some district training, and I came back to school the next day.

She said, “Mr. Hogan, I was having a bad day yesterday, and you weren’t here, and you always notice, and it made me sad that you weren’t here.” a

Vicki: If you have to pick one big myth that you haven’t mentioned yet that you think could be life-changing if we busted, what would it be?

Myth: That someone can tell us what to do to make us a great teacher

But I love this idea that JK Rowling shared. She says, “We don’t need magic to change the world. We carry all the power we need inside ourselves already. We have the power to imagine better.”

Vicki: Teachers, as we finish up — I’ll we will link to Aaron’s book in the show notes — but I just wanted to give you a, “Me, too.”

You know, I have bad days. “Me, too.”

You know we all struggle.”Me, too.”

We all sometimes feel like, “Why are we doing this, and are we even important?” That’s a ”Me, too.”

Aaron: Absolutely.

Vicki: I’m making a difference too, just like you, Aaron.

Aaron: There you go. That’s what it’s all about, finding those ways to connect with kids and do what’s best for them.

Bio as submitted

Blog: Aaron Hogan

Twitter: @aaron_hogan

The post Shattering Perfect Teacher Myths appeared first on Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis @coolcatteacher helping educators be excellent every day. Meow!

Shattering Perfect Teacher Myths published first on http://ift.tt/2yTzsdq

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athena29stone · 6 years

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Shattering Perfect Teacher Myths

Aaron Hogan on episode 181 of the 10-Minute Teacher Podcast

From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis

Follow @coolcatteacher on Twitter

Aaron Hogan shatters myths about teaching. Empower yourself as a teacher with the knowledge you do not have to be perfect. Learn how to build collegiality and support other teachers.

Listen Now

Listen to the show on iTunes or Stitcher

Stream by clicking here.

Below is an enhanced transcript, modified for your reading pleasure. For guests and hyperlinks to resources, scroll down.

***

Enhanced Transcript

Shattering Perfect Teacher Myths

Vicki: Today we’re talking to Aaron Hogan @aaron_hogan about shattering the “Perfect Teacher Myth.” He has a book of the same name that we’ll be sharing in the show notes.

And I think that’s not true but I think that almost every educator has had that feeling, that, ”You know, some things aren’t going right. It must be that I’m the problem in this situation.”

And wouldn’t you agree — I mean I’ve been teaching six years — and every year has its own unique problems.

Aaron: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Vicki: I mean, we don’t arrive at perfection, do we?

Aaron: No. No. Never. I think it’s one of the things that keeps it really fun — that there’s always something new there for in the classroom.

Even though those things worked great last year, you get to figure out, “OK. It’s going to work great for these kids this year, but maybe not for for this group.”

Vicki: So, how do we shatter the “perfect teacher myth”?

Tip to Shatter the Teacher Myth #1: Know the Myths

Myth: Do this and then kids behave

It’s things like, you know, that feeling of, “If I do these sorts of things, then all the kids will behave.”

Myth: Buckle Down, I can do it alone

Or, “if I just just buckle down, then I can do all these things on my own.” Then that’s some level of perfection.

But those things aren’t true.

We realize that, and then we have a different sort of standard to live up to. It’s just that we need to be responsible and teach those expectations.

When we work in collaboration with other people, we can reject that isolation that makes us feel like we are the only one who’s going through these sorts of circumstances.

Vicki: We are not alone. I think it’s important to learn that.

Aaron: Ah, but it can feel that way.

Vicki: Goodness knows it can. Because you know that when you close the door, it’s you and them, you know?

Aaron: Right.

Vicki: So what other myths — you’ve talked about two or three now — what other myths do you think can paralyze us as teachers or even make us want to quit?

Aaron: Sure. I think there’s a couple that I want to hit on here.

Myth: You have to be perfect.

One is this idea of value in vulnerability. That, for me for a long time, and even now I have to fight against valuing that that idea of looking like it I have it all together.

Let’s be kind to beginning teachers

Myth: We have to learn how to teach on our own – we don’t learn from other teachers

Aaron: I think so. Some of that, it may be a sense of, “f I had to work through it on my own, then other people might need to also.” But I think that’s flawed thinking.

Realize that others struggle too

We want that community of learners for our kids. That brings us together. We can extend empathy to others. That brings us together as a staff in a way that’s just really powerful.

That’s when we can see some transformation, moving forward, and people believing the right things about themselves.

Vicki: So What’s another myth?

Myth: You have to be monumental to change lives

But students, I think, are much more likely to remember the impact that you made over 180 days, rather than over one or two really impactful days.

Vicki: Well, I’m thinking back on Tuesday. We showed this movie. We kind of have them Chapel time at my school on Tuesdays, and I had a student who kind of sits behind the screen.

I said, “don’t you need to need to come in front of the screen?

And he said, “No, I watch your laptop.”

Well, I took the laptop and just pointed it at him and just kind of nodded.

He nodded back at me.

Because you’re right. Sometimes, it’s the little bitty, ordinary things and noticing somebody that makes all the difference.

Aaron: Right. I had a student once — I came back from being out. I was just out doing some district training, and I came back to school the next day.

She said, “Mr. Hogan, I was having a bad day yesterday, and you weren’t here, and you always notice, and it made me sad that you weren’t here.” a

Vicki: If you have to pick one big myth that you haven’t mentioned yet that you think could be life-changing if we busted, what would it be?

Myth: That someone can tell us what to do to make us a great teacher

But I love this idea that JK Rowling shared. She says, “We don’t need magic to change the world. We carry all the power we need inside ourselves already. We have the power to imagine better.”

Vicki: Teachers, as we finish up — I’ll we will link to Aaron’s book in the show notes — but I just wanted to give you a, “Me, too.”

You know, I have bad days. “Me, too.”

You know we all struggle.”Me, too.”

We all sometimes feel like, “Why are we doing this, and are we even important?” That’s a ”Me, too.”

Aaron: Absolutely.

Vicki: I’m making a difference too, just like you, Aaron.

Aaron: There you go. That’s what it’s all about, finding those ways to connect with kids and do what’s best for them.

Bio as submitted

Blog: Aaron Hogan

Twitter: @aaron_hogan

The post Shattering Perfect Teacher Myths appeared first on Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis @coolcatteacher helping educators be excellent every day. Meow!

from Cool Cat Teacher BlogCool Cat Teacher Blog http://www.coolcatteacher.com/e181/

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jeroldlockettus · 7 years

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Bad Medicine, Part 1: The Story of 98.6 (Rebroadcast)

We think modern medicine is pretty advanced, but what if we’re wrong about something as simple as the average body temperature? (stevepb / Pixabay)

Our latest Freakonomics Radio episode is called “Bad Medicine, Part 1: The Story of 98.6 (Rebroadcast).” (You can subscribe to the podcast at Apple Podcasts or elsewhere, get the RSS feed, or listen via the media player above.)

We tend to think of medicine as a science, but for most of human history it has been scientific-ish at best. In the first episode of a three-part series, we look at the grotesque mistakes produced by centuries of trial-and-error, and ask whether the new era of evidence-based medicine is the solution.

Below is a transcript of the episode, modified for your reading pleasure. For more information on the people and ideas in the episode, see the links at the bottom of this post. And you’ll find credits for the music in the episode noted within the transcript.

* * *

We’re taking advantage of August to replay you a special three-part series we did last year, called “Bad Medicine.” Today, Part 1: “The Story of 98.6,” and it starts right now …

We begin with the story of 98.6. You know the number, right? It’s one of the most famous numbers there is. Because the body temperature of a healthy human being is 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit. Isn’t it?

Anupam JENA: So I’m going to take your temperature, if you don’t mind. Just open your mouth and I’ll insert the thermometer.

Jackson BRAIDER: Ah!

JENA: Perfect.

The story of 98.6 …

Philip MACKOWIAK: … dates back to a physician by the name of Carl Wunderlich.

This was in the mid-1800s. Wunderlich was medical director of the hospital at Leipzig University. In that capacity, he …

MACKOWIAK: Oversaw the care and the taking the vital signs on some 25,000 patients.

Pretty big data set, yes? Twenty-five thousand patients! And what did Wunderlich determine?

MACKOWIAK: He determined that the average temperature of the normal human being was 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit or 37 degrees centigrade.

This is Philip Mackowiak, a professor of medicine and a medical historian at the University of Maryland.

MACKOWIAK: I’m an internist by trade and an infectious-disease specialist by subspecialty. So my bread and butter is fever.

There’s one more thing Mackowiak is …

MACKOWIAK: I am by nature a skeptic. It occurred to me very early in my career that this idea that 98.6 was normal — and then if you didn’t have a temperature of 98.6 you were somehow abnormal — just didn’t sit right.

Philip Mackowiak, you have to understand, cares a lot about what is called clinical thermometry. And if you care a lot about clinical thermometry, you care a lot about the thermometer that Carl Wunderlich used to establish 98.6.

Wunderlich was using this thermometer to measure axillary temperatures, not temperatures in the mouth or the rectum. (Photo: The College of Physicians of Philadelphia)

MACKOWIAK: His thermometer is an amazing key to this story of 98.6.

So you can imagine how excited Mackowiak was when, on a tour of the weird and wonderful Mutter Museum in Philadelphia, the curator told him they had one of Wunderlich’s original thermometers.

MACKOWIAK: I said: “Good heavens, may I see it?” And she said: “Would you like to borrow it?” And I said: “Of course!” I was able to take this thermometer back to Baltimore and do a number of experiments.

The Wunderlich thermometer, Mackowiak realized, was not at all a typical thermometer.

MACKOWIAK: First of all, it was about a foot long, fairly thick stem. It registered almost two degrees Centigrade higher than current thermometers or thermometers of that era.

Two degrees higher — centigrade? Uh oh!

MACKOWIAK: In addition to that, it is a non-registering thermometer, which means that it has to be read while it’s in place. So it would have been awkward to use.

Mackowiak noticed something else about the original Wunderlich research.

MACKOWIAK: Investigating further it became apparent that he was not measuring temperatures either in the mouth or the rectum. He was measuring axillary or armpit temperatures and so that in many ways his results are not applicable to temperatures that are taken using current thermometers and current techniques.

As it turns out, the esteemed Dr. Carl Wunderlich …

MACKOWIAK: … was not the most careful investigator ever to come on the scene.

The more Mackowiak looked into the Wunderlich data, and how the story of 98.6 came to be, the more he wondered about its accuracy. So he set up his own body-temperature study. He recruited healthy volunteers, male and female, and took their temperature one to four times a day, around the clock, for about two days, using a well-calibrated digital thermometer in the patients’ mouths. What did he find?

MACKOWIAK: Of the total number of temperatures that were taken, only 8 percent were actually 98.6. If you believe that 98.6 is the normal temperature, than 92 percent of the time, the temperature was abnormal. Obviously that’s not even reasonable.

In his study, Mackowiak found the actual “normal” temperature to be 98.2 degrees. Not a huge difference — and yet, the whole notion of a “normal” body temperature was looking more and more suspect. Why? A lot of reasons. Temperature varies from person to person, sometimes so much that one person’s normal would nearly register as nearly feverish for another person.

MACKOWIAK: It’s almost like a fingerprint.

Temperature varies throughout the day — it’s roughly one degree higher at night than in the morning, sometimes even more. And an elevated temperature isn’t necessarily a sign of illness:

MACKOWIAK: In women it goes up with ovulation, during the menstrual cycle. The temperature goes up during vigorous exercise and this is not a fever.

And so, Mackowiak concluded …

MACKOWIAK: Looking at a rise in temperature as a reliable sign of infection or disease is inappropriately simplistic thinking.

Inappropriately simplistic thinking. It makes you wonder: if the medical establishment believed for so long in an inappropriately simplistic story about something as basic as normal body temperature — what else have they fallen for? What other mistakes have they made? I hope you’ve got some time; it’s a long list:

Jeremy GREENE: You take a sick person, slice open a vein, take a few pints of blood out of them …

JENA: Drilling holes into people’s skulls.

Vinay PRASAD: It was literally taking someone to hell and back.

Teresa WOODRUFF: It would cause a whole series of malformations and probably a lot of fetal death.

JENA: Lobotomies.

Keith WAILOO: The overuse of a mercury compound.

Evelynn HAMMONDS: The Tuskegee case.

WAILOO: Losing your teeth and having your gums bleed.

WOODRUFF: DES and thalidomide.

PRASAD: We use a cement.

WOODRUFF: Hormone replacement therapy.

WAILOO: The oxycontin and opioid problem.

MACKOWIAK: As a medical historian, it is patently obvious to me that future generations will look at what we’re doing today and ask themselves “What was Grandpa thinking of when he did that and believed that?” They’ll have to learn all over again that science is imperfect and to maintain a healthy skepticism about everything we believe and do in life in general, but in the medical profession in particular.

On today’s show: Part 1 of a special three-part series of Freakonomics Radio. We’ll be talking about the new era of personalized medicine; the growing reliance on evidence-based medicine; and especially — pay attention now, I’m going to use a technical term — we’ll be talking about bad medicine.

* * *

We have a lot of ground to cover in these three episodes: medicine’s greatest hits, the biggest failures, where we are now and where we’re headed. In the interest of not turning a three-part series about bad medicine into a twenty-part series, we’re not even going to touch adjacent fields like nutrition and psychiatry. Maybe another time. Let’s start, very briefly, at the beginning. Nearly 2,500 years ago, you had the Greek physician Hippocrates, who’s still called the “father of modern medicine.” You’ve heard, of course, of the Hippocratic Oath, the creed recited by new doctors.

And you know the Oath’s famous phrase — “First, do no harm.” Even though, as it turns out, that phrase isn’t actually included in the Oath. It came from something else Hippocrates wrote. Nor do many contemporary doctors recite the original Hippocratic Oath; there’s a modern version, written in 1964, by the prominent pharmacologist Louis Lasagna. The pledge begins: “I swear to fulfill, to the best of my ability and judgment, this covenant.” It’s a fascinating, inspiring document — and I think before we go too far, it’s worth hearing some of it …

Louis Lasagna adaptation of the Hippocratic Oath: “I will respect the hard-won scientific gains of those physicians in whose steps I walk, and gladly share such knowledge as is mine with those who are to follow. I will remember that there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon’s knife or the chemist’s drug. I will not be ashamed to say “I know not,” nor will I fail to call in my colleagues when the skills of another are needed for a patient’s recovery.

Above all, I must not play at God. I will remember that I do not treat a fever chart, a cancerous growth, but a sick human being, whose illness may affect the person’s family and economic stability. My responsibility includes these related problems, if I am to care adequately for the sick. I will prevent disease whenever I can, for prevention is preferable to cure. May I long experience the joy of healing those who seek my help.”

It’s comforting to think about the thoughtfulness, the nuance — the massive responsibility — that doctors pledge before they attempt to diagnose or heal us. How well has that pledge been upheld throughout medical history? We’ll talk to a variety of people about that today, starting with this gentleman.

JENA: My name is Anupam Jena. I’m a healthcare economist and physician at Harvard Medical School.

So Jena, as both a practitioner and an analytic researcher, is especially useful for our purposes. Because one of the themes we’ll hit today, several times, is that medicine, even though it’s scientific, or at least scientific-ish, hasn’t always been as empirical as you might think — and sometimes, not very empirical at all.

DUBNER: Here is an easy question: can you tell me please the history of medicine, or at least Western medicine in three or four minutes?

JENA: Let me first answer the meaning of life.

DUBNER: Is that going to be easier?

JENA: That’ll take about five to six minutes. How about three words: trial and error. If you think about medicine and how it has evolved — let’s just say in the last 100 to 200 years — the practices that at some point in history people thought were actually medically legitimate included drilling holes into people’s skulls, lobotomies. Even as late as in the 1940s – 1950s, lobotomies were thought to actually have a treatment effect in patients with mental illness, be it schizophrenia or depression.

The practice of bloodletting, which is basically trying to remove the “bad humors” from the body was thought to be therapeutic in patients. Things like mercury, which we know is downright toxic, were used as treatments in the past. That was in a time and place when it was very difficult to get evidence. Not only that, there was probably a perception of the field that didn’t allow for the ability to question itself.

In the last 50+ years, probably 50 to 75 years, we’ve seen tremendous strides in the ability of the profession to constantly question itself.

DUBNER: It’s easy to get indignant over the idea of these treatments that turned out to be so wrong. But understanding wellness and illness is hard, obviously. When you look back at the history of medicine, do those interventions strike you as shameful — you can’t believe you’re in the profession that tried things like that — or is that just part of the trial-and-error process that you accept?

JENA: I certainly wouldn’t call it shameful. The only thing that’s shameful is when someone doesn’t believe that they have the potential for being wrong and they don’t have that desire to inquire further about whether something actually works or doesn’t work. But the idea of trying things, particularly trying things that have a really strong plausible pathophysiologic basis, there is nothing wrong with that. In fact, that’s what spurred scientific discovery and many of the treatments that we have now.

DUBNER: I have a broad question for you: the human body is and extraordinarily complex organism. Over history, doctors and others have learned a great deal about it. But if we consider the entire human body — from the medical perspective only, let’s leave out metaphysics and theology and what have you — how would you assess the share of the body and its functions that we truly understand and the share that we don’t really yet understand?

JENA: That’s a tough one. We’ve made a lot of headway, but to put a number on it … I would say maybe 30 percent, 40 percent that we don’t know.

GREENE: That’s a tough question for me to quantify.

I asked the same question of someone else.

GREENE: My name is Jeremy Greene. I’m a physician and a historian of medicine at Johns Hopkins.

So what’s Greene’s answer?

GREENE: There is a Rumsfeldian answer of the known knowns, known unknowns and unknown unknowns. A different way of answering that question would have to do with what the idea of relevant science of medicine is.

For example?

GREENE: For example, the moment in Renaissance, the Vesalian moment: the opening of cadavers, and [describing] and rendering precise three-dimensional chiaroscuro engravings of the human body was an exciting area for research that actually this humanist process of opening up cadavers, showing that the innards were not exactly what the ancient Greeks had described. As a historian, rather than giving you a fixed percent of where we are, I can give you a Zeno’s paradox that we keep on getting close to that finite moment and then reinvent a new broader room for us to inhabit.

And that’s because there’s been a lot of progress in how we’re able to explore the human body.

JENA: There is the gross anatomy of the body, which you can see with your own eyes.

Anupam Jena again:

JENA: Then go a layer further and we’re now at the microscopic anatomy of the body. What do the cells of the body look like when they are diseased under a microscope?

And now …

JENA: Now go a layer further where you are now trying to understand things about the body that you can’t even see with the microscope. That’s at, let’s say, the level of the proteins in the cell, or even further down, the level of the DNA that encodes that protein.

GREENE: By the end of the 20th century, there’s a very strong genetic imaginary, which really helps to then fuel the excitement behind The Human Genome Project. It’s thought once we know the totality of the human genome, we’ll know all we need to know about bodies and health and disease.

Of course we already know a great deal. And, to be fair, for all the mistakes and oversights in medicine, there’s been extraordinary progress. What are some of medicine’s greatest hits?

HAMMONDS: I’m sure every historian of science medicine would give you a different set of hits.

That’s Evelynn Hammonds. She’s a professor of the history of science and African-American studies at Harvard.

HAMMONDS: The ones that I typically think about are the introduction of more efficacious therapeutics and medicines.

WAILOO: I would put something like the discovery of insulin right up there near the top.

That’s Keith Wailoo. He’s a Princeton historian who focuses on health policy.

WAILOO: It transformed diabetes from an acute disease into a disease that you live with. To me, that is much more the story of what medicine has been able to do in the 20th century.

JENA: The medicine that comes to my mind is statins. They’ve been shown to have benefit in preventing heart attacks and prolongation of life among people who have had heart attacks and the same thing for stroke and other forms of cardiovascular disease. But there are many, many drugs that are like that.

These are, truly, awesome interventions, for which we should all be thankful. One of the most remarkable developments over the past century and a half is the unbelievable gain in life expectancy: in the U.S., and elsewhere, it nearly doubled! It might be natural to ascribe that gain primarily to breakthrough medicines. But in fact a lot of it had to do with something else.

WAILOO: A lot of the advances in mortality and morbidity have come from, really, changes in the nature of social life. Infectious disease as the source of high mortality in the early 20th century began to drop long before penicillin and the antibacterials came along in the mid-century because of improvements in housing, sanitation, diet, and [the] tackling [of] urban problems that really created congestion and produced the circumstances that made things like tuberculosis the leading cause of mortality.

HAMMONDS: For example, if you think about the reversal of the Chicago River — it used to flow into Lake Michigan, in the 19th-century. People were dumping their waste into it, and every summer, there would be hundreds of deaths of babies and children from infant diarrhea because the water was so contaminated. They reversed the flow of the river so it flowed downriver towards the Mississippi. That significantly improved the health of the people who lived there.

So we’ve got public-health improvements to thank. And yes, better therapeutics and medicines. Also: new and better ways of finding evidence.

PRASAD: The technology that really revolutionized how we think is the use of controlled experiments.

That’s Vinay Prasad. He’s an assistant professor of medicine at Oregon Health & Science University. Prasad treats cancer patients. But also:

PRASAD: The rest of my time I devote to research on health policy, on the decisions doctors make, on how doctors adopt new technologies, and when those things are rational and when they’re not rational.

Which means that Prasad is part of a relatively new, relatively small movement to make medical science a lot more scientific:

PRASAD: For thousands of years what was medicine but something that somebody of esteemed authority had done for many years, and told others that, “It worked for me so you better do it.”

Even though medical science seemed to be based on evidence, Prasad says …

PRASAD: The reality was that what we were practicing was something called eminence-based medicine. It was where the preponderance of medical practice was driven by really charismatic and thoughtful leaders in medicine. Medical practice was based on bits and scraps of evidence, anecdotes, bias, preconceived notions, and probably a lot psychological traps that we fall into. Largely from the time of Hippocrates and the Romans until maybe even the late Renaissance, medicine was unchanged.

It was the same for 1,000 years. Then something remarkable happened which was the first use of controlled clinical trials in medicine.

Coming up on Freakonomics Radio: how clinical trials began to change the game.

PRASAD: It really doesn’t matter that the smartest people believe something works. The only thing that really counts is what is the evidence you have that it works.

How some people didn’t have much of an appetite for actual evidence:

CHALMERS: There was a great deal of hostility to it from the medical establishment

And, in a strange twist, how better science is pushing medicine not always forward, but sometimes backwards:

JENA: It is quite common to see practices that end up getting reversed. The best estimates are that [it] happens about 15 percent of the time.

* * *

JENA: All right, take a deep breath through your mouth, in and out. Good, okay. One more.

Anupam Jena is an M.D. and a healthcare economist.

JENA: I’m going to lift up your shirt and listen to your heart.

In most developed countries, we tend to think of medicine as a rigorous science, and of our doctors as, if not infallible, at least reliable.

JENA: The typical patient probably does look to their doctor for answers and they value very highly what that opinion is.

But as we’ve been hearing, the history of medical science was often “eminence-based” rather than “evidence-based.” When did evidence really start to take over?

JENA: Evidence-based medicine has become hugely important in the last 25 to 30 years.

The movement is a result, Jena says, of at least two factors: Number one:

JENA: We’re doing more randomized controlled trials and that tells us more information about what works and doesn’t work.

And, number two:

JENA: Improvements in computer technology have now allowed us to study data in a way that we couldn’t have done 30 years ago.

There’s also been a movement to collect and synthesize all that research and all those data:

Lisa BERO: Our vision is to produce systematic reviews that summarize the best available research evidence to inform decisions about health.

That’s Lisa Bero, a pharmacologist by training, who studies the integrity of clinical and research evidence.

BERO: I’m also a co-chair of the Cochrane Collaboration.

The Cochrane Collaboration was founded in Britain but is now a global network. The “systematic reviews” they produce …

BERO: … are really the evidence base for evidence-based medicine. We’ve been a leader in so many ways in developing systematic reviews. We were the first to regularly update these reviews. We were one of the first to have post-publication peer review and a very strong conflict-of-interest policy. Actually, we were one of the first journals that was published only online.

Which means that whatever realm of medical science you’re working on, you can access nearly all the evidence on all the research ever conducted in that realm — constantly updated, available on the spot. Compare that to how things used to work — looking up some 5- or 10-year-old medical journal to find one relevant article that may well have been funded by the pharmaceutical company whose drug it happened to celebrate. How is Cochrane funded?

BERO: We are primarily funded by governments and nonprofits.

What about industry money?

BERO: We don’t take any money from industry to support any official Cochrane groups.

Which means, in theory at least, that the evidence assembled by the Cochrane Collaboration is pretty reliable evidence. As opposed to …

Iain CHALMERS: … a whole variety of things. Opinion. What the doctor had been taught 30 years previously in medical school. Tradition. What they had been told to do by, or advised to do, by a drug-company representative that had visited them a week previously.

That is Sir Iain Chalmers, who co-founded the Cochrane Collaboration. He’s a former clinician who specialized in pregnancy, childbirth, and early infancy. He was a medical student in the early 1960s. When Chalmers observed his elders in practice, he was struck by how much variance there was from doctor to doctor.

CHALMERS: Some doctors — if a woman had a baby presenting by the breach — would do a Caesarean section, without any questions asked. Or they may take different views about the way the baby should be monitored during labor. Or the extent to which drugs should be used during pregnancy for one thing or another. Lots and lots of differences in practices. It’s as long as your arm. It’s madness isn’t it?

When he became a doctor himself, Chalmers worked at a refugee camp in Gaza. And, as he discovered …

CHALMERS: … some of the things that I had learned at medical school were lethally wrong.

Like how you were supposed to treat a child with measles.

CHALMERS: I had been taught at medical school never to give antibiotics to a child with a viral infection, which measles is, because you might induce resistance, antibiotic resistance. But these children died really quite fast after getting pneumonia from bacterial infection, which comes on top of the viral infection of the measles. What was most frustrating was that it wasn’t until some years later that I found that there had been six controlled trials comparing antibiotic prophylaxis given preventatively with nothing done by the time I arrived in Gaza.

And those studies suggested that children with measles should be given antibiotics. But Chalmers had never seen those studies.

CHALMERS: I feel very sad that in retrospect I let my patients down.

This led Chalmers to embark on a years-long effort to systematically create a centralized body of research to help attack the incomplete, random, subjective way that too much medicine had been practiced for too long. He was joined by a number of people from around the world — many of whom, by the way, were more versed in statistics than in medicine.

CHALMERS: We embarked on these systematic reviews, about 100 of us. That resulted, at the end of the 1980s, in a massive, two-volume, one-and-a-half-thousand-page book. At the same time, we started to publish electronically.

And so the Cochrane Collaboration became the first organization to really systematize, compile, and evaluate the best evidence for given medical questions. You’d think this would have been met with universal praise. But, as with any guild whose inveterate wisdom is challenged, as unwise as that wisdom may be, the medical community wasn’t thrilled.

CHALMERS: There was a great deal of hostility to it from the medical establishment. In fact, I remember a colleague of mine was going off to speak to a local meeting of the British Medical Association, who had basically summoned him to give an account of evidence-based medicine. “What the hell did people who were statisticians and other non-doctors think they were doing messing around in territory which they shouldn’t be messing around in?” He asked me before he drove off, “What should I tell them?”

I said, “When patients start complaining about the objectives of evidence-based medicine, then one should take the criticism seriously. Up until then, assume that it’s basically vested interests playing their way out.”

It took a long while, but the Cochrane model of evidence-based medicine did become the new standard.

CHALMERS: I would say it wasn’t actually until this century. One way you can look at it is where there is death, there is hope. As a cohort of doctors who rubbished it moved into retirement and then death, the opposition disappeared.

PRASAD: That’s been the slower evolution.

That, again, is Vinay Prasad, from Oregon Health and Science University.

PRASAD: The very first studies with randomization concerned tuberculosis.

This was in the late 1940s.

PRASAD: From then the end of the 1980s, we did use randomized trials but they weren’t mandatory. They were optional.

One big benefit of a randomized trial is that you can plainly measure, in the data, the cause and effect of whatever treatment you’re looking at. This may sound obvious but it is remarkable how many medical treatments of the past were conducted without that evidence. Anupam Jena again:

JENA: Some of the biggest mistakes in the last century, let’s say from 1900 to 1950 — things like lobotomy used to treat mentally illness, either depression or schizophrenia — those strike me as being some of the most horrific things that could be done to man without any really solid evidence base at all.

This is one of the trickiest things about practicing medicine day-to-day. Let’s say you’re a doctor, and a patient comes to see you with a persistent headache. You make a diagnosis, and you write a prescription. What happens next? In many cases, you have no idea. The feedback loop in medicine is often very, very sloppy. Did the patient get better? Maybe. They never came back. But maybe they went to a different doctor. Or maybe they died? If they did get better, was it because of the medicine you prescribed? Maybe.

Or maybe they didn’t even fill the scrip. Or maybe they did fill the scrip but stopped taking it because they got an upset stomach. Or maybe they did take the medicine and they did get better but … maybe they would have gotten better without the medicine? Like I said, you have no idea. But with a well-constructed randomized controlled trial, you can get an idea. Vinay Prasad again:

PRASAD: The moment that set us on different course was a study called CAST.

CAST stands for Cardiac Arrhythmia Suppression Trial. It was conducted in the late 1980s.

PRASAD: One of the things doctors were doing a lot for people after they had a heart attack was prescribing them an antiarrhythmic drug, that was supposed to keep those aberrant rhythms, those bad heart rhythms, at bay. That drug actually, in a carefully done randomized trial, turned out not to improve survival as we all had thought, but to worsen survival. That was a watershed moment where people realized that randomized trials can contradict even the best of what you believe.

It really doesn’t matter in medicine that the smartest people believe something works. The only thing that really counts at the end of the day, is what is the evidence you have that it works.

The rise of randomized controlled trials led to a rise in what are called medical reversals. Vinay Prasad wrote the book on medical reversals, literally. It’s called Ending Medical Reversal.

PRASAD: What is a medical reversal? Doctors do something for decades, it’s widely believed to be beneficial, and then one day, a very seminal study — often better-designed, better-powered, better-controlled than the entirety of the pre-existing body of evidence — contradicts that practice. It isn’t just that it had side effects we didn’t think about. It was that the benefits that we had postulated, turned out to be not true or not present.

For instance …

PRASAD: In the 1990s we would recommend to postmenopausal women to start taking estrogen supplements, because we knew that women before they had menopause had lower rates of heart disease, and we thought that was because of a favorable effect of estrogen. And then in 2002, a carefully done randomized control trial, found that actually, it doesn’t decrease heart attacks and strokes; in fact, if anything it increases them.

I asked Prasad what first got him interested in studying medical reversal.

PRASAD: I started to get interested in this even when I was a student, and I saw that there [were] some practices that had been contradicted just in the recent past but were still being done day in and day out in the hospital. The example that comes to mind is the stenting for stable coronary angina. A stent is a little foldable metal tube that goes in a blocked coronary artery and the doctors spring it open, and it opens up the blockage.

Stents are incredibly valuable for certain things. If you have a heart attack and there’s a blockage that just happened a few minutes ago, and the doctor goes in and opens that blockage up, we’re talking about a tremendous improvement in mortality, one of the best things we do in medicine. But stenting, like every other medical procedure, has something called indication drift where it works great for a severe condition, but does it work just as good for a very mild condition?

Over the years, doctors has used stenting for something called stable angina. Stable angina is just slow, incremental, narrowing of the arteries that happens to sadly all of us as we get older. But the bulk of stenting was this indication drift. We thought it worked and made perfect sense. Then in 2007, a well-done study showed that it didn’t improve survival, and didn’t decrease heart attacks, which were, even to this day studies show that most patients who undergo this procedure believe it will do those things.

In fact, it’s been disproven for eight years.

And yet: while stenting for stable angina did decline, it didn’t disappear. The rate of inappropriate stenting, Prasad says, is still way too high. This obviously starts getting into doctors’ incentives — financial and otherwise — and we’ll get into more in Parts 2 and 3 of this series. As Prasad makes clear, there’s a long, long list of medical treatments that simply don’t stand up to empirical scrutiny. Some common knee surgeries, for instance, where orthopedic surgeons take a tiny camera …

PRASAD: … take a tiny camera, make a tiny incision, and go in there, and actually debride and remove those scuffed and scraped knees. In fact, people felt a lot better. They had improved range of motion. There’s no argument there. But you’ve studied against just taking ibuprofen, or maybe just doing some physical therapy … What if you studied it against making the patient believe that you were doing the surgery, but you don’t actually do it?

In fact, they’ve done those studies. Those are called “sham” studies. We give the appearance that we’re going to do this procedure. The only thing we omit is actually the debridement of the menisci and the cartilage. In fact, when you do it that way, you find that the entire procedure is a placebo effect. There’s another example where we use a cement that we inject into a broken vertebral bone. That, again, was found to be no better than injecting a saline solution in a sham procedure.

The cement itself cost $6,000, and I said, “At a minimum you can save yourself $6,000, and you don’t need to use the cement.”

DUBNER: What would be the incentives for me to do the study that might result in a reversal? Because we know how publishing works — whether it’s in your field, in any academic field, or in the media as well — it’s the juicy, sexy, new findings that get a lot of heat. It’s the maintenance articles, or the reversal articles, that nobody wants to hear about. I would gather there are fairly weak incentives to doing the studies that would result in reversals — which also makes me wonder if there is a woeful undersupply of such studies, which means there probably would be even more reversals then there are.

PRASAD: Yeah. That’s a fantastic question. One of the things that we did in the course of our research was we took a decade worth of articles, [from] probably one of the most prestigious medical journals, The New England Journal of Medicine. There was about 1,300 articles that concern things that doctors do. About 1,000 of those articles were something new that’s coming down the pipeline, the newest anticoagulant, the newest mechanical heart valve.

If you tested something new — exactly as you’d expect, 77 percent of those published manuscripts concluded that what’s newer is better. But we also discovered about 360 articles tested something doctors were already doing. If you tested something doctors were already doing, 40 percent of the time, we found that it was contradicted or, a reversal.

DUBNER: I’d love for you to talk about the various consequences of reversals, including perhaps a loss of faith in the medical system generally.

PRASAD: If you find out something you were doing for decades is wrong you harmed a lot of people, you subjected many people to something ineffective, potentially harmful, certainly costly, and it didn’t work. The second harm we say is this lag-time harm. Doctors, we’re like a battleship. We don’t turn on a dime. We continue to do it for a few years after the reversal. The third is loss of trust in the medical system. We’ve seen it in the last decade, particularly with our shifting recommendations for mammography and for prostate cancer screening.

People come to the doctor and they say, “You guys can’t get your story straight. What’s going on?” It’s a tremendous problem. I’m afraid that we are making people feel like that there’s nothing that the doctor does that’s really trustworthy. I’m afraid that that’s the deepest problem that we’re faced, this loss of trust.

DUBNER: Okay, so how do you not throw out the baby with the bathwater? What are some solutions to a practice of medicine and medical research that results in fewer reversals?

PRASAD: That is a million-dollar question. One is medical education. We have a medical education where for two years, students are trained in the basic science of the body. Only in the latter years, the third and fourth year of medical school, are students trained in the epidemiology of medical science, evidence-based medicine, in thinking not just how does something work, but what’s the data that it does work? I’ve argued that needs to be flipped on its head. That the root, the basic science of medical school is evidence-based medicine.

It’s approaching a clinical question knowing what data to seek, and how to answer that in a very honest way. That’s one. The next category is regulation. This is where you get into, “What is the FDA’s role, and what does the FDA do?” Many people in the community hope that products that are approved by the FDA are both safe and efficacious for what they do. But we were faced with a problem in the ‘80s and ‘90s that we had never faced before, which was the HIV/AIDs epidemic. Advocates rightly said that we need a way to get drugs to patients faster, maybe even accepting a little bit more uncertainty.

I think that was right and that’s still right for many conditions that are very dire, for which few other treatment options exist, and, which sometimes have very low incidence, so it’s very hard to do those studies because very few people have it. But what’s happened is that mechanism has been extrapolated to conditions that are not dire, that have very good survival, that don’t have few options, have many options, and that many people do have. We’ve had, again, a slippery slope for what qualifies for this accelerated approval.

There [are] ways in which regulation can be adjusted. Then, the last thing is the ethic of practicing physicians. We have to have an ethic where when we offer something to someone, and there’s uncertainty, we should be very clear about communicating uncertainty. It’s a tragedy today that no matter what you think of stenting for stable coronary artery disease, that so many people who are having it done believe something that is clearly not true, that it lowers the rate of heart attacks and death.

That’s just factually not true, and the fact that many people believe that speaks to the fact that, as doctors, we allow them to believe it.

DUBNER: Let me ask you one last question: I have a pretty good sense, of having spoken to you for a bit, of what has prevented in the past medicine from being more scientific or more evidence-based, but what do you believe are the major barriers still that are still preventing it from becoming as evidence-based as you want it to be?

PRASAD: We should be honest about what medicine is. In the United States, medicine is something that now takes, nearly or over 20 percent of G.D.P. It’s a colossus in our economy. We spend more on medicine than any other Western nation. We probably don’t get as much from what we’re spending. Because it’s such a large sector of the economy, the entrenched interest for the companies and the people who really profit from the current system are tremendously reluctant to change things.

We see that with, just for one instance, the pharmaceutical drug-pricing problem we’re having right now. No one will doubt that the pharmaceutical industry has made some great drugs. They’ve also made some less-than-great drugs. But does every drug, great or worthless, have to cost $100,000 per year? I [didn’t] invent that number. That’s actually the cost per annum of the average cancer drug being approved in the United States in the last year — well over $100,000 per year of treatment.

There’s got to be a breaking point and people are recognizing that.

Next week on Freakonomics Radio, Part 2 of “Bad Medicine,” how do those great drugs, and the less-than-great ones too, get made, and then how do they get to market? We’ll look into the economics of new-drug trials and how carefully the research subjects are chosen:

Ben GOLDACRE: Now that’s very useful for a company that are trying to make their treatment look like it’s effective, but does the population of people in this randomized trial really reflect the real-world people out there?

We look at who’s been left out of most clinical trials:

WOODRUFF: It suggested that women shouldn’t be included in clinical trials because of the potential adverse events to the fetus.

And how sometimes, the only thing worse than being excluded from a medical trial was being included:

HAMMONDS: The use of vulnerable populations of African- Americans, people in prison, children in orphanages — vulnerable populations like these had been used for medical experimentation for a fairly long time.

That’s next time, on Freakonomics Radio.

Freakonomics Radio is produced by WNYC Studios and Dubner Productions. This episode was produced by Stephanie Tam. Our staff also includes Alison Hockenberry, Merritt Jacob, Greg Rosalsky, Eliza Lambert, Emma Morgenstern, Harry Huggins and Brian Gutierrez. You can subscribe to Freakonomics Radio on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also find us on Twitter, Facebook, or via e-mail at [email protected].

Here’s where you can learn more about the people and ideas in this episode:

SOURCES

Anupam Jena, health care economist and physician at Harvard Medical School

Philip Mackowiak, professor or medicine and medical historian at the University of Maryland

Jeremy Greene, physician and historian of medicine at Johns Hopkins University

Evelynn Hammonds, professor of the history of science and African-American studies at Harvard University

Keith Wailoo, health policy historian at Princeton University

Vinay Prasad, assistant professor of medicine at Oregon Health & Science University

Lisa Bero, pharmacologist and co-chair of the Cochrane Collaboration

Sir Iain Chalmers, co-founder of the Cochrane Collaboration

RESOURCES

Ending Medical Reversal, Vinay Prasad, 2015, Johns Hopkins University Press

The Cochrane Collaboration

“A Critical Appraisal of 98.6F, the Upper Limit of the Normal Body Temperature, and Other Legacies of Carl Reinhold August Wunderlich,” Philip Mackowiak, Steven Wasserman and Myron Levine, 1992, University of Maryland

Effective Care in Pregnancy and Childbirth, Sir Iain Chalmers, Murray Enkin and Marc Keirse, 1989, Oxford University Press

“A Decade of Reversal: An Analysis of 146 Contradicted Medical Practices,” Vinay Prasad, et al., 2013, Mayo Clinic

“Mortality and Morbidity in Patients Receiving Encainide, Flecainide, or Placebo: The Cardiac Arrhythmia Suppression Trial,” Debra Echt, et al., 1991, New England Journal of Medicine

“Optimal Medical Therapy with or without PCI for Stable Coronary Disease,” William Boden, et al., 2007, New England Journal of Medicine

MUSIC CREDITS

Paul Avgerinos, “Times a Tickin”

Jack Miele, “Otis Theme” (from Jack Miele)

Christopher Norman, “Emerald” (from Strange Games)

Paul Avgerinos, “Ladies Day”

Nicholas Pesci, “Feeling Quirky” (from All The Feelings)

Baba Brinkman, “Seed Pod” (from The Rap Guide)

Morella and the Wheels of It, “Vincent” (from Shipwrecked)

Lerin Herzer and Andrew Joslyn, “Roots” (from The Girl and the Ghost)

Judson Lee Music, “Snoopin’”

Mike Barresi, “It’s All Good” (from Mike Barresi)

Additional Scoring by Jay Cowit

The post Bad Medicine, Part 1: The Story of 98.6 (Rebroadcast) appeared first on Freakonomics.

from Dental Care Tips http://freakonomics.com/podcast/bad-medicine-part-1-story-rebroadcast/

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Transcript of The Impact of Dynamic Communication

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John: Want to know the secret to growing, leading, managing? Whether it’s your life, or a business? It is dynamic communication. That’s what we’re going to talk about today on this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing podcast, check it out.

John: This week’s episode of the Duct Tape Marketing podcast is brought to you by Klaviyo. Klaviyo is truly a game changer. Unlike traditional email service providers or marketing automation platforms, Klaviyo offers powerful functionality without long implementation or execution cycles. It gives ecommerce marketers access to all the relevant data from a variety of tools and it makes it available to power smarter, more personalized campaigns. Bottom line, Klaviyo helps ecommerce marketers make more money through super-targeted, highly relevant email and advertising campaigns. Learn more at klaviyo.com. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing podcast. This is John Jantsch and my guest today is Jill Schiefelbein. She is an entrepreneur, a former college professor, professional speaker and communication expert and also an author of a book we’re going to talk about today called Dynamic Communication, 27 strategies to grow, lead and manage your business. So Jill, thanks for joining me.

Jill: John, thanks so much for having me!

John: So you’re book which is out in March of 2017 dependent on when you’re listening to this. It’s coming out on Entrepreneur Press, I wonder if you could talk a little bit — I know I have a lot of aspiring authors, I have a lot of authors that listen to this show. I interview a lot of authors. But, I don’t know that I’ve specifically spoken to anybody who has gone through the process with Entrepreneur Press, so I’d love to hear how that experience was.

Jill: Honestly it’s been better than I expected it to be John. I have done the publishing — the self publishing route, the academic publishing route back when I was doing my professor thing. But for this one I had heard from so many people that going with a traditional publisher is just complicated and there’s going to be so much push-back on ideas and content and formatting, and honestly? That wasn’t my experience at all. So I feel incredibly grateful to have been picked up by Entrepreneur Press because they’re a smaller publishing arm, they don’t choose as many books. But the books they choose they genuinely do believe in and what was great for me in choosing them over a couple of other publishers that I looked at, is that with them they have a whole marketing arm and a whole marketing enterprise behind them that they lend to the book and that was really my deciding factor.

John: And they are still very tied to the magazine right?

Jill: Very much so. It’s all the same. Entrepreneur media is a parent company and then there’s the magazine, Entreprenuer.com, Entrepreneur Press and now Entrepreneur network which is their video arm.

John: And they will likely get you maybe some speaking gigs at some of their events I’m guessing?

Jill: Yep. That’s a plan. They got me a full page ad in the print magazine in the March issue which was probably one of the most surreal moments I’ve had in my life where I’m flipping through the magazine and I’m like, “Oh my gosh! That’s my book in there! This is so incredible!” And they’re doing lots of promos on the website, we’re doing stuff together in collaboration with video etcetera. It’s just a lot of stuff going on but again to have that support infrastructure behind me really distinguished them in my mind from any of the other presses that I could have gone with.

John: So maybe I want to back up a little bit. How did it differ from writing a book in — that was a textbook in academia. Did you just kind of — I mean do they do the same thing where you have an advance and you get royalties or do you mind sharing that?

Jill: Oh not a problem at all. So in the academic world it is very different because there’s a certain amount of credentialing that goes on that other, you know in the trade press or the commercial press where all your credentialing is tied to your ability to market and have an audience. And in the academic world it’s largely tied to your name and your academic accolades. So for me, when I came in on the text book I was actually a co-author and I was chosen by the original authors because I actually taught the class using a version of a text book and I went to them and proactively told them why this book didn’t work in reality for students. And they were, you know a little shocked at my candour but they realised I was right and they needed to bring in that perspective. So doing that, you know there’s advance, there’s royalties, there’s all those things too but you don’t have to worry about marketing at all, there was never a single marketing conversation that I ever had being part of the academic press route. Whereas from day one, even before day one when you’re putting together your proposal for a more traditional or commercial press, your proposal is about half of 50-some pages I submit are on marketing.

John: Yeah. You know I sound a little cynical when I say this but I think sometimes the traditional publishers care less about what you had to say and more about your platform.

Jill: No I actually don’t think you should sound cynical at all because I think that’s pretty factual.

John: So you are you know… kind of heading now into the next phase of the book and you had mentioned you wanted to talk a little bit about this. What has been your approach now to you know, coming full face knowing that I’ve got this book now I have to market it and I’ve committed to marketing it. What are some of the things you have done that you — obviously you don’t know the ultimate results at this recording. But what are some of the things you have done that you think are going to set you up for success?

Jill: There’s a number of things that if I may John, can I kind of give everyone a back-story in context so this makes a little more sense?

John: Totally.

Jill: I think a lot of people and this is myself included so it’s pot calling kettle black? 6:04 and then I finally realised what I was doing and changed it mid-course. But when you are thinking about writing a book, you’re thinking about what ideas you want to get out, what IP you have, what methodologies you have and you want to get out there because you know it’s good information. And it’s great to have confidence in that. And that’s what I did with the proposal and it ended up being picked up. But mid way through it, in fact about 45 days from the manuscript due date for the entire book I had this ah ha! Moment. And this moment came to me because I thought how am I even in this position in the first place? And if you rewind the very long story short, is I launched a YouTube series, 52 videos back in September of 2012, a year later it wasn’t doing what I wanted so I really got geeky with YouTube analytics and figured things out. Now that thing is at about three quarters of a million views for that series and it keeps growing, it got picked up by Entrepreneur’s video network where I was one of their original partners, which spawned then me writing for the magazine and for the column, and doing live stream personality and ultimately, them asking if they could have an opportunity to view my next book proposal. And when I go back to the roots of what attracted them to me in the first place – it wasn’t some fancy model, it wasn’t some methodology or some IP or me pushing ideas out, it was me giving bite-sized pieces of information that people could easily digest. And when I got back to those roots about what attracted people to me in the first place, not exactly what I was pushing out but what attracted people to me, I realized I need to scrap the entire book and start over. And my editor thought I was nuts, but she loved the idea so instead of writing about this one major concept within business communication and making a whole book about that, I decided to scratch that and instead put together a book of 27 strategies across 8 different areas of business communication that can really be more of a reference guide for people. So you pick it up, you know where you’re having a problem, you find that chapter, you read it maybe five to ten pages and boom, you’re done. And it’s so much more impactful that way, when I go back to the roots of how my customers, how my audience wants to access that information. And I think a lot of us lose sight of that when we’re so stuck in our own heads with our ideas.

John: So that’s where it became the 27 strategies as part of the subtitle. So quite frankly that sounds a little scary to me too, going back and rewriting because you know, I know those last 45 days on the books I’ve written you know, I’m just trying to get the darn thing done. And so the idea of starting from scratch must have been a little scary.

Jill: It was a bit intimidating. And at the same time once I realized that I had already written or presented on so many of these ideas, I ended up going to my recordings, going through past articles, sent old speeches off to get transcribed and started going through to see what content I already had that was valuable. So it was starting from scratch in terms of the pure sense, but it wasn’t because I’ve done this teaching before, I’ve done these presentations, I’ve done these keynote speeches. And it was really fleshing them out and then what I did was every day to try and have some semblance of health because let me be honest, I was very unhealthy and staying up late and eating food I shouldn’t have been eating during this process because you just need to crank it out. But every day I’d go take a walk, I live right by central park and I’d get up, I’d take a walk in the park and I would voice dictate a chapter during that hour walk almost every single day, and then come back and edit and fine-tune it.

John: That’s funny my — I’ve written five books now. My first book was actually the easiest to write and I think that’s because of that same thing. I — It took my 10 years sort of to write it but all I was really doing was just doing the stuff that I put in the book. The actual writing I think I did in about 90 days, because it was just what I had been living.

So should everyone write a book? Jill: No. Absolutely not.

John: I love asking everybody that question because everybody is writing a book. So why do you say no?

Jill: There are… if you feel the need to write a book for you, that’s great do it. But that’s not a need for a consumer, that’s your own personal need and when you’re thinking about the marketability of a book, what happens I think so often is that everybody who is a business owner, who’s into entrepreneurship, or who wants to be a thought leader or a speaker, or anything like that you’re told you need to have a book, it’s creditability, you need to have a book, it’s creditability. But people put out these books which are quite frankly complete crap. They’re not professional edited, they’re not professionally formatted and they sell next to no copies. So it’s really not doing you much of a service to have that. If you’re in business, and you’re not thinking in your gut that I know a book is the right thing for me, I think it is much more impactful from a marketing perspective to have a lot of short-form content out there that is more engaging to help you build that audience and then maybe after you’ve been in it for a while that book that you need to write – not just for you but for your audience as well will come about.

John: It’s funny I actually received an email a copy of days ago from somebody who had written a book and that book had actually been out for about 30 days and they were now inquiring whether I could help them market that book. And I felt like saying you’re about six years too late, no. Really the marketing of a book starts just as you described there. In many cases, most of the best selling business books took years to write because the marketing was building community and as you said, doing the videos and finding out what resonates with people and in a lot of ways kind of having the built in audience before you even start writing the book – I mean what’s your take on sort of, now that you’ve kind of gone into it head long, how do you start that marketing process?

Jill: I think it’s essential. And again for me you heard my short story just about the video content. Well alongside that video content there was short-form content, there were other videos, webinars, blogs, whitepapers, e-books, blah blah blah. All those things that let me gain an audience over time. Which I think is important and it also tells you how your audience likes to best consume your information. Again, what I was doing wrong with the initial book proposal was I was doing it the way I wanted explain it, but not the way that my audience necessarily wanted to hear it. And the other thing you can do to kind of — I don’t want to say shortcut the process because there’s really no shortcuts. I mean, I’ve been studying what I’ve been studying for, you know a decade and a half and then some. And I’ve been doing my own business for over five years and in the grand scheme of things that’s not that long, but I’ve built up a good critical mass. But one of the things I did for this book that is a strategy that anyone can replicate, either before they write a book and put it into the book or doing it afterwards, was for me once I identified these 27 strategies that I knew I wanted to write about, I reached out to 27 people who I think are brilliant in different ways and had them add commentary to that. And I got 20 – 30-minute interviews from all these people, I put those as excerpts which I think put on my YouTube which then got syndicated on entrepreneurs video network. And you can see the snowball impact that would have. But it’s also getting other people that aren’t your client community but are your peer community, or people who would attract a slightly different audience to contribute, to make the idea bigger than just you.

John: Yeah and that works on so many levels too because I mean in a lot of ways you’re helping create an asset for them, you’re helping promote them. Obviously, they’re going to extend their community to some extent to you. So it works on so many levels and it really has a kind of amplification element to it, doesn’t it?

Jill: It does and I want to be clear that I know that with the press that I have chosen and being affiliated with a major business publication like Entrepreneur magazine I have a bit of a different way to go about it when I was going and talking to the people who have you know, very very internationally known names in business, I had an ask for them that wasn’t just hey can I interview you but in exchange this will also be released on Entrepreneur’s video network that would be something on Entreprenuer.com. I had something that I could give back. And I realized a lot of people listening are not going to be in that same situation where you have this long-term relationship with a media company. But what I would challenge you do think is even if you’ve already written your book, and maybe you’re just thinking about marketing now or you’re thinking about how you may want to do it in the future is this interview approach is money in my opinion. Even if you already have a book out and maybe you want to breathe new life into it, interview people who speak, think, serve, produce, have a product in the same area in different aspects of your book and have a conversation with them. Where you agree, where you disagree, what are tips and have that really collegial conversation and view them not as competition but as collaborators. Because then you can post a nice quality video asset, you can get that transcribed, repurpose it into blog posts, into mini audio columns etcetera. That will spread the love for both of you and give your book new life.

John: This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing podcast is brought to you by Active Campaign. This is really my new go-to CRM, ESP, marketing automation, really low cost, any sized because can get into starting at like $19,00 a month. You can keep track of your clients, you can see who’s visiting your website, you can follow up based on behavior. Check out Active Campaign there will be a link in the show notes but it’s ducttape.me/dtmactive.

So are you doing anything to — in the actual launch window, some of the promotional you know, premium content things, joint ventures, anything along those lines to really give it that kick in the pants?

Jill: Yeah I mean I’m doing the what seems to be pretty standard now, the thunderclap campaigns and then I have a small — not even a small — a list of about 100 some really dedicated advocates who are doing things on their own end to push words out with personal emails, personal videos, that type of thing. But what I also have done is with all of these interviews for anybody who pre-buys the book and of course, anyone who purchases it after the fact, pre-buying just gets you this content immediately. All 12+ hours of interviews are uploaded with links and additional resources in a master members site for anyone who pre-buys the book and the benefit of that is you get access to that right now instead of having to wait until later. And then for anyone who buys the book one of my big things you know, my heart is an educators heart, I just don’t do it in a traditional education setting and so I’ve created a workbook resource that you can use alongside you to actually help implement strategies. So whether you’re facing a sales or presentation strategy or maybe a teamwork challenge or something with really cultivating feedback for your teams that actually gets followed through on whatever those challenges are that you’re facing in your business capacity, there’s actionable worksheets to help guide you through for those who need that additional step-by-step implementation.

John: Awesome. Let’s talk a little bit about the content of the book, we’ve spent a lot of time talking about marketing. But — so let’s break the title down first. What is the definition of dynamic communication as opposed to good communication?

Jill: When I think of communication and I think well most people think of it, we think of the words and maybe we think of the delivery of the words, but good communication doesn’t just mean your ability to put together a grammatically correct sentence or to speak without saying the words umm or uhh. To me, good, great communication is communication that delivers results so I pause at dynamic communication as something that is communication aimed towards to being proactive to delivery action orientated results and we judge the efficacy of our communication based on outcomes instead of the input. So many times we think oh look I have this very beautifully crafted message so the input is great but you’re not getting the outcomes you desire so to me, that’s not impactful or affective.

John: So you tying – since we’re talking about results — you’re tying dynamic communication to leading and managing and growing a business. So how does somebody take that leap — I think a lot of times people think of communication like they see it in a sales environment, you know pretty easy to measure that you’re getting the sale or you’re not getting the sale, that might be the measure of result. But how about leading and management? How do you measure the effectiveness of communication there?

Jill: There’s so many different ways. Depending again on what the venue and what the goal is. But for example in the book, it’s 27 strategies divided into eight different topic areas. Eight different areas that you will face at different points in time in your business. So yeah, there’s the basics, there’s sales, there’s customers service, there’s marketing generating materials, videos, webinars, all that type of stuff. But then there’s also public communication. So we’re talking about communication during a crisis, we’re talking about communication to public audiences, communication in bigger speeches to mass audiences, internal, external and consumer. And then you’re look at how internally do you communicate? How are you managing your globally dispersed teams? The virtual teams that we have, how are you giving feedback to employees when you’re having those sessions when you’re wanting to create change, are people actually following through? Are they buying into your ideas? Are you seeing those things developed and of course are your employee’s staying around?

John: Sure. Yeah I think a lot of people underestimate the communication, the storytelling that is a big part of leadership and building a culture where everybody feels a part of it. So great. We often think in terms of communication as the you know, what I said. But you present in the book that one of the biggest skills in communication is how you listen. In fact you have something called the four stage listening matrix, so you want to dive into that one?

Jill: Yeah sure. The listening matrix. So this is an example though. I could write a whole book on the listening matrix right? But let’s be honest, me fleshing that out for 250 pages is way more than needs to be done which is why doing in my opinion, this more short form content that as a book was a strategy shift that I made. So just for people out there who are fussing with ideas in your head you can think of it in that way. But the listening matrix to me is all about really understanding the current sales economy that we are in John and to me that is an information economy. We have more access to information than ever before. But there is a growing gap from my perspective between information and knowledge. And the gap itself isn’t necessarily the problem but it’s when your consumers, your employees or people are mistaking information for knowledge when a problem arises. So the listening matrix is a way to understand how other people are listening to you. So for example, if you’re in a sales conversation, are people listening to you for information? Or are people listening to you for knowledge? And the different is between action and inaction. People don’t make decisions based on information, people making buying decisions based on knowledge. But our sales teams are overwhelmingly trained to give out information and not to help the consumer co-create knowledge. And so the matrix walks you through four different stages so you not only can identify how someone’s listening to you, but the questions that you can use to transition them from information to knowledge listening.

John: Yeah I think that is so crucial for salespeople, you’re right. I even think about my own buying experiences anymore, I have all the information already, I just need somebody to put some insight into it or to help me figure out how it might actually work in my particular situation and I think that’s the job of sales people today it’s — because everyone is going online and getting the basic information.

Jill: It’s absolutely true yet so many companies are still hiring based on the old definition of an old sales person, to me it’s not a sales person anymore. I would call the role a product integrator for example or a service integrator. These people are actively helping you gain the knowledge of how a company’s product or service would integrate within your business, would integrate in your needs. It’s not about sales, it’s showing how something would actually work in your world.

John: Yeah I’m seeing more and more companies, particularly if they have anything that does take — it’s not an off the shelf kind of product. I mean there are almost engineers or almost… some of the best sales people because they’re designing a solution based on what’s there as opposed to a sales script, that they were taught to deliver.

Jill: It’s so true. And I think I’ve worked with a couple of sales engineering teams for software products and a lot of the challenge there is then getting them to communication with what I call common communication denominators, another chapter in the book. And get out of their jargon, get out of their acronyms and figure out how to explain these more technical processes to people who are not IT based people. Customer service for the IT world used to be I’m a customer service person and I’m talking to an IT person because we provide a hosted solution. With cloud based solutions that’s no longer the case, your end user the person you talk to is typically a marketer or a salesperson, it’s very different.

John: Yeah and nine times out of ten they’re trying to figure out how to integrate what you have with the three other things they have —

Jill: Exactly.

John: So it’s a whole matrix every time you go into it. So you actually proposed since we’re on the topic of sales that throughout your you use a call outline, what’s a call outline look like?

Jill: A call outline to me is where you have the key objectives that you want to accomplish during the call itself, if you’re doing a sales call. So many times you know, I had a call earlier today actually you know, hi is this the owner of DynamicAcceletator.com? Yes it is. Hi, we’re a website designing company — and they’re just going through this list instead of just right off the bat saying you’re the owner of a new domain, do you already have a web development solution? Just get right to the point and asses the information that you need because for me, I do all my own site development. I am a programming geek in the background, that’s something I like to do for fun. So you’re wasting my time going through a script. Same thing goes for — I’m sure most people out there have had this experience when you fill out a form online because you want some more detailed knowledge about a product. You’ve gotten the information but now you need a free demo, a free trial. You get on the line for that demo and they walk you step by step through ever little feature of their product, not even taking the time to understand how it goes for you. Well that’s done based on a call sheet. Instead using a call outline, you can divide your product or service into different you know, silos or parts and ascertain right at the beginning if that customer or potential customer needs information or better yet, knowledge on that portion. And if not, address their immediate needs first before going into any type of additional features and benefits. Because when people have questions, they want answers and if you’re a person who doesn’t waste their time and provide them with the answers, they’re more likely to let you spend time explaining some other features or benefits that you have. But if you waste their time in the beginning going through things that aren’t relevant to their situation you’re going to lose them. And so then an outline is way more beneficial than a script.

John: Yeah and I love that idea of an outline but boy does it also — you shake your head and think commonsense would be nice too.

Jill: It would be but unfortunately as we know common sense is not all that well, common.

John: I can’t tell you how many times I’ve done that where I’ll have the pre-call, I’ll tell them exactly what I do, what my level of knowledge is, what I’m looking for and then you get on the call and just as you said and it’s just basically okay, first you turn it on, then you’re like seriously? We just went through this.

Jill: It’s unbelievable but you know what? Again it’s part of the institutional training that’s happening in these companies and again, companies are you going to need to start shifting how they hire sales people, it’s not anymore your ability to follow a script word for word, but the ability to improvise, the ability to anticipate, the ability to be proactive, all those things in my opinion are way more important now and in the future.

John: I’ve actually seen — there was a little bit of a trend about a year ago that people were sending their sales teams to do improv.

Jill: Yes.

John: And I think that’s — so there are people that are getting that I guess. I want to end on one last topic. First off, before we get to it, where can people find out more about dynamic communication and about your work?

Jill: The Dynamic Communication book is the absolute best place to go to find out information about the book and of course it links to all my other stuff as well but dynamiccommunicationbook.com and you can find me anywhere on social @dynamicJill I would love if you’ve been listening, love to hear your favourite take-away or any questions that you have.

John: So I want to end on public speaking. A lot of people are doing that more and more. I think it’s a tremendous way to generate leads in the right environment, certainly a great way to enhance your thought leadership or your perceived expertise. So how do you make your presenting, I don’t know if you have a model for this but how do you make your — what do you tell people as kind of a strategy for making your presentations more dynamic?

Jill: When you think about making a presentation, again it’s the same thing I’ll go back to the same philosophy, it’s not about you and your ideas, it’s about what your audience needs and wants to hear. So I like to think of presentations in a couple of different ways but the first thing I would say to someone just starting out is, reverse engineer it. Think about what you want your audience to leave the room with or doing or what action you want them to take, and then go backwards and really start to understand what your audiences wants to hear the information or the knowledge they need to take that action step. And then figure out how you can best match what you know with what your audience knows and wants to hear. I mean there’s a lot of different frameworks for organizing it but I think the most important is, especially if you’re doing a presentation with a sales objective or an immediate action objective, which most of us are if we’re giving a presentation, especially if it’s for lead generation, is going in there and making sure it’s very clear in your presentation what the need is. Establishing the need in a very clear way and not in a way that’s jargony to your product but in a way that’s more universal that’s related to the human element. You know for example, if you were talking about trolling on the internet, so let’s say you wanted to get into that and how people view all of these people who post negative comments online as trolls and as evil people well, you know what let’s back up a little bit, let’s contextualize that so people can actually be in the minds of these people. So I could say John, have you ever been in a situation where you were stuck in traffic and you either laid on your horn or showed a certain finger, or yelled in some way that you know what? Is really not indicative of who you are as a person, it was just that situation. You give some kind of analogy that gets everyone understanding the bigger concept on a personal level and then once they do that you have them hooked into this idea in a way that they understand it. And then you can deliver satisfaction steps and more.

John: Awesome. So we’re out of time for today but I’m visiting with Jill Schiefelbein, she’s the author of Dynamic Communication, 27 Strategies to Grow, Lead and Manage your Business. I really appreciate you taking the time to stop by today and next time I’m in New York hopefully we can bump into each other.

Jill: Absolutely. Thank you John and thank you Duct Tape Marketing audience.

from Duct Tape Marketing https://www.ducttapemarketing.com/transcript-dynamic-communication/

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