Hi everyone, a very very good evening to all of you. I am back again with another video where in I'm going to be talking about a few aspects which a lot of students have been asking on WhatsApp and calls. Before that a quick check whether all the devices are working perfectly. So just a second. I would really want if you guys can comment down if you guys can see my screen and can hear me clearly so that I can move ahead and talk about the topics that are displayed on your screen. I'm going to quickly cover a few topics today because a lot of students are worried and are awaiting the net result. Hi everyone, hi Zubi, hi Neho, Harsh, History of English, Anshika Kumari, hello everyone. Okay, so I'm going to quickly start if you guys can just comment if I'm audible to you. Great. Thank you so much Sarthak and History of English for the comments. Okay, so in today's video what I'm going to do is I am going to talk about a few things we are first going to look at the result date regarding the hassle. We are going to first talk about that. Secondly, I'm going to take you through the entire paper very quickly to tell you exactly how the paper was and we have received feedback from so many students. So we are going to quickly talk about that feedback as well that what is the overall market condition as of now what how many people are qualifying and what is going to be the qualifying marks for paper one and paper two what is a safe score so to say. I'm also going to talk about the expected cut-off and towards the end if time permits, I'm going to take you through the paper analysis as well. I am going to skip a few topics which are mentioned here because I've already covered this in detail in my last to last life. Okay, so if you've not seen it you can check this out. I explained the entire criteria of how the UGC net cut-off is calculated. I also spoke about the expected cut-off which we are going to quickly talk about but before that I want to take you through the result date. So as you guys know that the last exam happened on 14th of December 2023. The provisional answer key was released in the first week of January and the correction window opened right after that. So the final answer key and result that we are expecting the date range is going to be 16 to 20th of January and very 2024 that is from tomorrow onward. So you have to brace yourself up and fasten your seat belt because any time this week the result can be out. So if you guys are anxious and do not know what to do next, we are going to quickly take you through the expected answer key as well. Now without any further delay, I want to take you through the expected cut-off list. Okay, so for general category as of now our prediction is that the net qualifying percentage would be 58% and the GRF qualifying would be 64% and then I've also listed down the cut-offs for EWS, OBC, SC, ST and PWD. The paper in general wasn't tough at all. The paper as you guys who have been following the trend of UGC net are already aware that every time they kind of have different weightage to, they give different weightage to different portions, different units. This time surprisingly, just like 2017-18, they focus too much on post-colonial European and Indian literature. British literature no doubt has always held about 40 to 50% of the paper. I'm going to quickly talk about those key insights as well. Though I've not listed it down in PPT, but then I'm going to type it out on the screen so that you guys can see it. But as far as the expected cut-off list is concerned, for general category 58% is what we are expecting. And a lot of students are asking that, okay, how many questions needs to be correct in order to fall in this rain?  And I would want you guys to also calculate how many questions are you getting correct out of 150. Okay. So as you all know that there are 150 questions, each carry two marks of weightage. So total the paper is of 300 marks. And if we want to achieve 58% of 300, I am doing the math right in front of you. 300 into 58% is 174 divided by 2 is 87. So if you are getting near about 85 to 90 questions correct, that means it is a safe score. So Mila K-paper 1 and paper 2 may, if you are getting somewhere around 85 to 90 questions correct, so it is a good score for net. Though as far as the market condition is concerned, the number of students who have appeared for the exam, a lot of students have crossed more than 90, 95 questions. So the students that we spoke to in the last one week time, we found that about 170 students from our course are getting in this range of safe scores. So we are expecting that and we are still, you know, in touch with a few students, we could not connect to them or counsellors are still getting in touch with them. So we are expecting that about 200 students are going to qualify from our batch. I remember last time the number was 165. This time, since the paper was even more, I would not say easier, but it was more from what we have taught. We were able to analyze that, OK, these are the portions where they might focus and we kind of consciously added those lessons in our course. Because of that, I think that about 200 students are going to qualify net from our course because we've been in touch with the students and we are trying to find out that how many questions are they getting correct. So as for the analysis of that data, we have reached a conclusion that about 200 students are going to qualify this time from our batch and all of us are very, very happy.  OK, so these are two things that I wanted to talk from this particular PPT. I did take this live a few days back. So this PPT is from that particular life. I just wanted to take you through these two topics expected cutoff and result date. Now, let us, OK, before that, I want to also give you an example. This time I saw that about 10 to 12 questions directly came from chronology and a lot of students who are not a part of our course and have recently joined us have been talking to us on phone and are asking that, OK, how do we prepare chronology? Because we have given all the PPT and everything. So if I show you, for example, let's say, OK, so these are few PPTs that I also showed in the last live where we talked about, you know, how to make notes. So, for example, let's let's take Francis Bacon for that matter. So Francis Bacon's work is publishing dates with him so that when you remember, you remember dates. But a lot of students have a very good question. How do we remember the chronology dates? So for that, we always suggest you that this time we are starting with this new series where we are going to teach chronology with the help of stories. OK, so this is one sample. This is Charles Dickens' full chronology. We put it in a story format. Similarly, in the story format, we are teaching chronology in our courses so that you can remember it in a story form. Like if you remember the sentence from My Very Educated Mother, you remember all the planets in the solar system in the same way. There's a job, we can see in Pickwick paper, Oliver Twist applies for it. So you have a story set in your mind. So this is one sample that I wanted to show you guys so that you exactly know how to do it. In this way, we are going to be sharing with you very soon. Our entire team is working on it and we have some amazing subject matter experts who have recently joined our team and all of us together are planning these kind of new lessons where students can grasp information quickly, can retain it for a longer period of time. So I wanted to share a sample with you. Those of you studying on your own, please ensure that you make such stories so that you can absorb the material even better. Or if you wish, you can even enroll in our program. So if you go to arpathakarva.com and you go to paper two, there's a video course on which we are right now giving 50% off, direct off on one month, one year and six months package. OK, so the entire demo material is mentioned here. You can check out all the lectures, everything from here. Then there are different pricing and we are giving it right at 50% costing. The entire syllabus is also displayed here, which I have explained in detail in my last YouTube live where I discussed the entire question paper. So I would really, really request that if you're actually serious to prepare for UGC net, please avail this offer. I'm also going to show you the poster. So this is a Makar Sakranti offer that we are running where you're getting flat 50% off on paper one and paper two both. So we are giving a complete video course where you don't have to study from any other source and these kind of chronological material we are going to provide you with. Other than that, you can also check out, you know, our video lectures, which is there. This is a sample PDF that we give to our students.  Okay, so all these, you know, for all the writers, we have these kind of PDF, you name your work and we have a PDF for this. We have a separate video lecture where we talk about each and every character and right now this course is available at flat 50% off. So if you guys are really, really looking forward to clear this exam. See, we all know after looking at the cut off list that whether we fall in this range or not. If, let's say you are getting only 60 questions right out of 150 to very, very, it is very clear that you're not passing net this time. But that does not mean that you cannot pass it next time. So it is very important that you enroll a little earlier and qualify the exam. This is the last offer that is going to be there on the, you know, on our website where we are giving this flat 50% off. And this offer we are just giving because Makar Sakranti is very, very special to me because I really believe that just like kites, we all should fly high. And a kite can only fly high in the sky if it is attached, it is attached to a string and that string in our life is discipline. So if you have that discipline cast ring, you can fly really high. If you cut that discipline cast ring, then your kite might land in some barren land and you cannot enjoy that entire sky view. So just like kite, we have to rise high and dedication, consistency, our two, three beautiful virtues that you can keep with yourself and achieve the heights. So keeping that in mind, we are giving this 50% off. And if you're really interested, you can enroll in our course. These are the kind of PDFs you'll get. Also, there's an entire brochure in a course trailer that you can get. You just have to WhatsApp my team on this number that is displayed here. And my team is going to give you all the information. All the information is also available here on our website at Pratakarwa.com. Also, those of you who are not aware, we have uploaded all the past year papers. On our website as well. So the December paper is also here. You can directly check the entire paper with Ansaki, which is released by NTA and not just this time's paper. All the papers since 2004 is available. So, all the official papers with Ansaki is there, not just paper two, but paper one in all the other exams that we provide coaching for. One interesting thing is that this offer that we are giving is going to help you to also prepare for a gate exam, which is happening next month. OK, so if you buy our course, you can not only prepare for UGC net English, but you can give all the other competitive exam because UGC net English curriculum that kind of covers MA entrance, PhD entrance, UPSC and gate English literature, of course. So you can do all these exams with one course. So it is very, very important. The offer was valid only till 13th January, but because we were receiving heavy demands from students, we have extended the offer and it is going to be applicable for tomorrow as well. So if you are interested, please ensure that you buy the course by tomorrow. So this was something that I wanted to share with you now moving forward. I just wanted to show you the expected cutoff thing a little more clearly. You can have a look and if you are not falling in the cutoff range, that means if your answer like the total number of questions that you're getting right is below 80, then I would wholeheartedly suggest to you that please enroll or start preparing on your own. Don't wait for the result to come out because NPA at times takes 10 to 15 more days or sometimes a month more to release the result. They are busy with a lot of other formalities and that is why they're not able to like focus so much on the result. So that is the reason I don't want you to waste your crucial days and please focus on on the June attempt. OK, now moving forward to the next important topic, which I wanted to mention here. So overall, if we analyze the paper, I wanted to share some key pointers with you. Number one, so if we talk about British literature, British literature say, as usual, 50% questions I think one thing that you have to also understand British literature says if canonical writers say questions that he I think there are writers like John Clare, Jaha say questions that if you go to my syllabus, I would really recommend that even if you're preparing on your own, please ensure that you cover all the writers that we've listed here. We are giving you close to 450 video lectures on just British literature because we cover each and every topic. As you can see from past two, three years, they have stopped focusing on William Shakespeare, then there was not a single question from Shakespeare, but instead they focused on the Elizabethan Theatre. So here we have a lecture where we talk about early Elizabethan play. I'll just show you. So this type of information is that you don't have to miss out on. Just as John Clare asked a question this time. So John Clare, as you have to cover the writers, then there was a question on early Elizabethan play where they asked a question on the interludes. John, Heavard, Gore, Budak, these are all important things that you need to know. That is the reason why you cannot just focus on the canonical writers. So when I'm writing here, 50% questions came from British literature that includes for you to cover writers like John Clare, to cover important quotations, to cover subtitles and to also cover important magazines. So this time I think it's right here. I'll just show you this time. There was a question from Yes. So literally journals and only question questions, these are the journals, the important magazines. You need to know this is very important. So if you have only covered important writers, you have read T.S.Late, Virginia Wool, Charles Dickens, that is not enough. You have to know a lot of other information as well. I'll just show you one important thing. So let's say if you're talking about William Blake. So you know the main works of William Blake. But then these are some other minor works that he has written, which many people don't know. So it is very important that you know a few things about them. That's when you can get extra marks that many students miss out on. OK, so this is one thing. Another interesting thing is this time they focus too much on post-colonial Indian and European writers. So once a trend came out in 2017 to 2019 when post-colonial Indian and European people used to ask a lot of questions. Then after 2019, a trend shifted when they stopped focusing on these three literatures. Again, they have come back to this. Because see, if we talk about literature, then overall, that's all. The 13 modules that I have listed here, there is nothing outside of it. Anything that is written or translated in English is covered in this syllabus. It is so vast. So they shift their emphasis every time. They do it on a topic. Then suddenly a trend shifts, in which they take a little less importance to British and come to post-colonial. There are many times post-colonial questions are coming from Americans. So a good student who qualifies net in first attempt is the one who prepares all the 13 modules very thoroughly. That is the reason we have made this syllabus free of cost available so that you don't miss out on the important writers. So this time, if you see, they have asked a lot of questions. Specifically, if we talk about African writers. I can also show you, so let us, so in the literature, they have asked a question here. See, they have asked a question from post-colonial theory, Jean Reyes and Homi Ke Baba. Then I have kept all of them here for this reason. This question paper is available on the website. So if you have any questions, then please feel free to ask them in the comment section. This question paper is available on the website as well. I have kept it for my mother so that it becomes easier for you. Leo Tolstoy has actually asked three questions. I was surprised that he had less writers than one writer. He had to ask three questions. Chancellor Billion, one of the famous American writers, has asked a question there. Then if we talk about matching characters here, that is the reason why I always believe in giving you these diagrams. So that your brains are setting the characters. It should never happen that you have read a lot of novels, but you don't remember the names of the characters. Okay, another interesting thing, if we talk about any literature, be it British, post-colonial, Indian, American, so you know very important that what were the literary groups. That is the reason why I give you a different entire list where all these literary movements and schools are, and you should know all their writers, you should know their important canonical works. But it was a question from transcendentalism, it was a question from university with. Many times I have seen they have given question on naturalism, impressionism, once or twice I lost generation, they have asked a lot of questions. In an ordinary group, they had asked a few years ago. So keep on shifting like this. They know that literary movement, even though syllabus is not specified from there, they are going to give you two, three questions. Sometimes they will ask from university, sometimes from Sanok Ben, sometimes from KitKat Club. If you remember 50-50, then you can never get it wrong from anywhere. Okay, so chronology of this type, we don't just give it in this, even we give you sub-stories for remembering the name of all these writers. So if we talk about KitKat Club, we give all the writers in KitKat Club in this type of story format, so that you know the link of all of them. And we are starting a different, a whole different video lecture series is starting, where how you remember these details quickly, for that we will give you morning stories like this, so that it becomes very easy for you to memorize all these stuff. So our 900 video lectures series, where we do all the works of each writer in detail. Let's say Charles Dickens has great expectation. So you get all the videos of each section. Everything important, opening, closing lines, you get them all. You will not only get all the writers, but you will also get them on how to remember the authors. Okay, so this is another interesting thing that we are starting this time. Now, another important thing that is very, very common this time was chronological questions. For which I told you that such stories help a lot to retain it very, very quickly. Now, one very important thing that I have seen, if you are studying from the surface, that means you are only studying major British writers, all the major writers. So it is next to impossible for you to clear an exam as difficult as net. Why so? Because if you observe the whole paper as well, I have highlighted this whole paper so that you know from where the questions come. I have given you two boxes. One is self-preparation if you are doing one, if you are in our online course, then where will you get this writer? This is your topic, this topic is covered. So that you exactly know what to study and what not to study. So if you analyze the whole paper, then you will see very evidently that they were major writers. They asked a lot of in-depth questions and very tricky questions. And a lot of minor writers also asked questions. Okay, so let's say, if we talk about Virginia Woolf, which book has said this? Now, the one who has read Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway and Let's Say To The Lighthouse, he might not be able to answer because you have to have knowledge of the rest of the novels. The rest of the non-fictional work that Virginia Woolf has written, it is very important to know about that. Okay, then if we talk further, so let's say he has asked the question of Partition Narratives. Then he has asked the questions of chronology. He has asked the questions of characters from novels. There are so many questions from literary theory and criticism. I think he has not left any theory that has no questions. That is the reason why if you look at literary theory, then I give you nearly 80 lectures on literary theory only because literary theory is very, very interesting and very simple. If you are taught in the right way, you can read a book and cover British literature with a book. You won't get a summary of every novel. You will miss a lot of facts and information of novels. He will give you an overview of the literature of that period. But still it is possible that you should read British literature. But literary theory is very impossible to understand with books for beginners. That is the reason why it is important. I always say that you should read the videos, go to YouTube, try to look out for lectures on literary theory from where you will get to know what is actually literary theory. And I would suggest you one thing. You can go and search for this on YouTube. If you look at my crash course on literary theory, you will get a basic idea on literary theory, which is a 36-minute video in which I have provided a lot of overview on literary theory. So if you don't know what literary theory is, please go and watch that video. If you understand it, then you can think of enrolling in the program because in that program, we cover literary theory in much more detail and much more depth. And as far as I have talked to the students so far, everyone has said that the reason why they were able to get beyond 90 questions right is because literary theory and criticism were their strengths. That was the strength, so they could get 10-15 extra marks, which they might not be able to get if they didn't read the literary theory in so much detail. Okay, now moving ahead, if we look a little more. So again, this question is from Ezra Pounce. They have touched upon American writers. John Clare is a very minor British writer, which we cover in our course under Romantic writers. You will find him there. So right here. So we all stop here. John Clare is a Romantic writer, a writer of Romantic age. It is very important to know the basics about him. Okay, then if we talk about Simon Lacra's concept again, literary theory. Charles Dickens's Tale of Two Cities, I was telling you that Charles Dickens's Tale of Two Cities is a lot of people who read it. But the first thing you need to know when you read it is that it is written in London and Paris. So it is set in London and Paris. What is the opening line? What is the protagonist's corner? What is the backdrop? If you know the details, what are the names of the three books? After that, you should go to the summary of the novel. So there are some basic details that we cover in the course, which we really recommend that students who are reading it themselves should also take a look at our sample PDFs and make their notes according to them. Okay, then he has talked to Transcendental Colab American Literature. Then he has asked questions from cultural studies. If we talk here, then again the characters have to match with the work. She stoopes to conquer very, very famous play. She has talked about Antonio Grams' very famous literary theorist. Then she has talked about post-colonial and feminism. Then again, she has talked about the treat-card name Desire. She has talked about the play of Afra Ben, the novel of Afra Ben, and the work of Leo Tolstoy. So if you look at these questions that I have just highlighted, then you will be able to understand that somewhere, if the paper has not come from a very major writer, then if someone is reading the route logistic of English literature and thinks that he will clear the net, then the whole paper will look out of syllabus. But when you go through this list, you actually know that it is not out of syllabus, you have to read all this. But because you are not reading it, that is why you are looking out of syllabus. It is just like you are living in India. You don't know that there is another continent, you know, named Australia. So if you ever land on Australia, then you will feel that it has been created all of a sudden. It is not like that. It is from centuries. But you have never read about it, so for you, it is of any new thing. So similar to that is that if you are reading a book and you think that it will become so net, then when you look at the writers of literary theory, literary criticism in the paper, like Norm Chomsky, this time they have asked a lot of questions. I think they have asked Raymond Williams, Stuart Hall. So if you look at them, you will think that the paper was out of syllabus. Okay, now we are talking about Raymond Williams and the question is here. Amitabh Ghosh has come to the question. Then the intellect that I have told you that it is very important to know the historical background. We don't have to read the writers. Whenever we read any writer, so the very first thing that we do is we talk about the age, historic cultural background, political background, social events, what happened. They tell us and after that we study all the writers of that age. Okay, then again chronologically they have asked questions from Indian literature. They have asked from Indian aesthetics. In Indian aesthetics, I would really, really recommend that all the writers I have written here, you should read all these schools carefully. There is a whole series of them which I have given in English and India. So you can read them as well. They are free of cost available on YouTube as well. So if you want, you can watch those videos and you can prepare from there as well. Then we move on. So again, they might have asked a tricky question because they don't know who these writers are. They don't know who Dante is, Thomas Aquinas is. Now if you go here, then in European literature, if you don't read Dante, then you can't move forward. I mean, in Italian literature, the first writer we teach is Dante. If you know the works of Dante, then this question becomes easier. Okay, because you can set up chronologically. Similarly, if you talk about criticism, then we won't just study Dryden or Pope. We study Edmund Burke, Adam Smith, and Thomas Hobbes. So you need to know a lot about these works as well. And one of the works that you will get from Thomas Aquinas, Thomas Mallory, we all know, is from the Old and Middle English literature. I gave it to him as well. I think I gave it to him as well. So he wrote about Thomas Mallory. So these are some things that we tell very quickly in the course because you can solve these extra questions from here. Many people can't clear the net from these two marks because they miss out on these important information. So my suggestion to you would be very, very simple, that if we talk about clearing the net, then you should keep this cut-off in mind. The result will come in 4-5 days. So if you are doing the correct answer below 90 questions, by combining paper 1 and 2, so it is a high time that you start your preparation. Before starting the preparation, I would really recommend that you visit the website once, visit the syllabus, and then cover the syllabus chronologically. When you are covering chronologically, make stories of this type. And another interesting thing, if you are really, really eager to clear the net in the first time and if you want more such chronological stories just that you can remember things. So I would really recommend you to join our course because in our course, we cover all these topics in too much detail. I mean, I teach students in so much detail that no matter where the question comes from, they always feel that 90% of the paper they have read has come from there. And that is what they claim also. I would really recommend that 50% off is going on. If you are actually interested, please enrol because I would never want you guys to pay more than what you should. So if there is an offer and you actually want if you are not in cut-off range, you are not answering 85-90 questions. So it is very, very important that you start your preparation from now on. Paper 1 and paper 2 costs are also valid. If you just want to buy paper 2, that option is also available. Okay, so with that note, I would like to take your leave. I am really, really interested to know in the comments below that what is your result, your questions, what range are you calling? Are you able to clear the cut-off? Are you not able to clear the cut-off? Because there is this very, very interesting thing that I would want to share with you. So anybody who is not fitting in that cut-off range, I would want you to go through this particular slide, pause the video and absorb what I have written. It is very, very important that we do not criticise ourselves. We say to ourselves, okay, it is fine that we did not do good but it does not mean that I have no potential. I can prepare well this time and I can definitely clear net in the next attempt. So do not criticise yourself. Do not keep yourself in a state of denial. It is better that we face the reality. We learn from our mistakes and then we decide to be the best version of ourselves. Okay, so with that positive note, I would like to take your leave. That is it from my side for this video lecture. I will meet you very soon in the next video lecture. Till the time we meet next, happy learning. Keep loving literature.


Okay, thank you so much. Thank you for the introduction and for inviting me to share our work with you today. Let's see. Okay, can you see that? Yes, it looks good. Yes. Okay, great. So I decided to title this lecture Unnatural Materials because one of the things that we have been doing over the course of the last would say 12 years at emerging objects is developing materials for 3D printing and additive manufacturing. And some of the materials that we've developed are all of the materials that we've been working with in developing our natural materials that you can find such as salt or sawdust or wood, for example, but they have to be modified for 3D printing and additive manufacturing. And when they go through that process and come out on the other side, they are in some ways very unnatural. So that's a way that we've been thinking about these materials and the transformation that occurs through additive manufacturing. One of the materials that we started printing with many years ago was coffee. This is a material that I at least enjoy every day at home. And it's on my kitchen table every morning. And this is a material that has a huge waste product associated with it, coffee grounds, of course. And one of the things that I was wondering one day as I was grinding my coffee was, can I 3D print with this material? And the answer is yes. So the coffee grounds can be dehydrated and pulverized and used in powder based binder jet 3D printing to create objects like this coffee, coffee pot, kind of meta material and object, which you can see here, the form of which references a traditional Ethiopian coffee pot. We're also able to use an agricultural waste material, which comes from the coffee bean itself. And we can 3D print with coffee flour. So when when coffee is made, you know, the bean is harvested and, of course, eventually goes on to be roasted and used in the production of coffee. But the cherry, which is the fruit around the bean, is just left in the field to waste and to rot. And so we started working with a company that takes that cherry. And again, that fruit and dehydrates and pulverizes it into a flour. And we can print with the agricultural waste from coffee production as well, which makes this very fine, very beautiful, very aromatic coffee cup. Other materials, which are inherently sticky, such as sugar, can be 3D printed. So these spoons are printed out of sugar in volumes that correspond to one teaspoon, two teaspoons, one tablespoon and beyond. And that the 3D printed sugar spoon can be stirred down and dissolved into your cup of coffee to enjoy and flavor. And tea, similar to coffee, also has a large amount of both consumer waste and industrial waste. So, of course, tea leaves can be dehydrated and recycled and used for 3D printing. But there's also a material called tea fluff, which is the kind of powder that's left on the floor of the place where teabags or tea is being for the industrially manufactured and produced to be shipped throughout the world. So these spoons are quite literally teaspoons. They're 3D printed out of tea-based solids. And, of course, cups can be printed out of tea as well. And here is a teapot. And this is actually a 3D printed teapot based on the Utah teapot, which was one of the first digital objects created by Martin Newell at the University of Utah back in the early 70s. And it is, of course, I think it was the first open source digital model, and it has been used by many computer scientists and artists over the last 50 years to think about how the digital can be, I think, progressed through thinking about different rendering techniques. Of course, here we bring it back into the physical world through the production and use of 3D printing tea itself. Curry, this is another edible material that we were excited to experiment with in terms of 3D printing and additive manufacturing. And and I wanted to print with this material because of its color, just this incredibly vibrant yellow orange color that comes from the turmeric and the curry, and I thought it would be so beautiful to explore that. But what happened was we were able to create an incredibly aromatic and fragrant object, which wasn't something that I had thought so much about beforehand. But as I was making this furry curry casserole dish, the entire laboratory smelled like curry. And it is, I think, a material that or an object, this 3D printed curry object that literally seasons the room in which it is placed. And we also had this idea that you could put rice or noodles in this 3D printed object and it would season the food itself. So we're experimenting with ways that this 3D printed object could inform the context in which it was placed. And it would not just be something that you could look at or use, but it would have the sensual quality to it as well. And here's a photograph of it. You can see the exterior, the coloration on the exterior is different than the interior. So all of these powder based prints are a little bit friable and delicate when they come out of the printer. And we do coat them with an epoxy resin. In this case, we did not finish the interior of the object because we wanted the aromatics and the fragrance of the material to be perceived by guests and viewers to the museum. Chardonnay, this is another material that is quite easy for us to gain access to here in the Bay Area. Of course, we're surrounded by vineyards and navvents, Noma and Santa Clara. The grape seeds and the grape skins are not used in wine production. So they are agricultural waste materials and we can take the seeds and the skins, dehydrate them and pulverize them into a grape flower, which can be used for baking and it does in part a kind of fruity, a woody fruity taste to cookies or breads that you might bake with it. But it's also a very suitable material for 3D printing. And we use the Chardonnay grape skins to 3D print these Chardonnay wine goblets. And this building block, which has a texture on it, that is reminiscent of a raisins, a dried grape. And we use that block to radially array it around a form to create this wine bucket for Pierre Jouet. And of course, it's always important to finish with something sweet. And we wanted to experiment with printing other materials. Again, the sugar, but in this case, the sugar has the strawberry scent added to it. And this is so quite literally a cotton candy jar. Salt, you know, one of the most ubiquitous seasonings in the world. Again, it's a local material for us here in Oakland, California. The San Francisco Bay has been a place where salt is literally farmed and harvested annually for over 150 years, and up to, I think, around 150,000 pounds of salt are still harvested each year in the San Francisco Bay. And we can use salt, again, because it's quite sticky and neighborly to 3D print objects such as these functional salt shakers, which have a binder around the perellumeter, but the salt on the interior is less loose, so you could shake the salt out of these objects. One of the things that we love most about the 3D printed salt is that it's always translucent. It has very beautiful optical qualities, no matter how thick or thin you print with this material. And we've experimented with different ways of interlocking and stacking these salt objects. Here you can see a model. This is a 3D printed salt. A model of an architecture designed by Tom Foulders, a local architect here in the Bay Area. But we also imagine that these 3D printed salt blocks could be used at one-to-one scale to make walls and screens and partitions and actual buildings, not just representations of buildings. This is an example of the salt harvest here in, it's in Fremont. So I mentioned this happens every year. The salt comes into different crystallizer fields and slowly dehydrates over the course of the year. And in October, they start to harvest the salt. So this is just to give you a sense of how much salt is available to us in the Bay Area. And I think traditionally, at least in powder-based 3D printing, some of the proprietary materials have been incredibly exclusive and maybe thousands of dollars to buy maybe like five gallons of material. And we decided to 3D print the salt because it was local and easily accessible, but also because it was incredibly inexpensive. So we could buy a five gallon or a five pound bag of salt here from a local supplier for five dollars instead of a thousand dollars, which is what a proprietary material is. A thousand dollars, which is what a proprietary material might cost, which is what kind of led us on this path, I think, to hacker printers and use local materials that are readily available and inexpensive. These are the crystallizer fields that I was talking about. And this is what they look like at this time of year, October, November, when the harvest is happening. They're able to scrape about six inches of salt off of these fields. The company that owns these fields has given 16 and a half thousand acres back to the state for wildlife development. But they've also set aside about 1400 acres, I think, for the development of a housing community around 30,000 people, which for us, because we're architects, kind of raised this question, could this material, this material that is literally there, the ground underneath your feet be used in the construction of buildings and housing? And so we looked at these traditional building forms that are using literally the material that is right beneath your feet, these igloos. And we started to question if we could make a salty glue or a kind of salt igloo. And so we were inspired by these very traditional forms that we found, which were associated with the boiling and the creation of salt from the brine. And we made design for a kind of 3D printed salt igloo or or tenses, ultimately, what we created. This is the 3D printed salt model or representation of what that building form would look like. And we designed a salt block, the geometry of which is inspired by the forms that can be found in salt crystals themselves. And we regularly rate about 330 of these salt tiles into this larger structure, which we call the salty glue. And we really imagine this as a building material, starting not just to print small objects, but how thinking about how to take these small objects and put pieces together to make larger structures and assemblies. And of course, here in the interior, you can see the beautiful quality of the light passing through the salt tiles and through the openings and the pours to give this diaphanous quality. And here it is in a museum, the design exchange in Toronto. Cochinio, this was a kind of a departure for us from working with so many agricultural or geological materials and starting to think about what might it be like to print with an animal. So you probably know or are familiar with Cochinio. It's an insect that grows on cacti in the American Southwest and Central and South America. And we did this for an exhibition at the Cooper Hewitt and Design Museum in New York. And we were able to take the Cochinio, which I think are traditionally boiled and dried and then pressed and the color is extracted from the insect and use that extract to combine it with resins, which can be found in stereolithography printing. So in this particular object, the Cochinio extract is combined with a clear resin on the top, which gives this translucent, vibrant red color. And in the bottom, the Cochinio is combined with a white resin, which gives it this pink color. But the color is integral all the way through. So in this case, it's not dyed, it's integral to the 3D print itself. And it is quite successful. In this case, the Cochinio is added to the nylon. It is dyed. The nylon absorbs the Cochinio quite nicely. And we've combined it with a 3D printed Mycash's clay base here because we felt like this clay comes from the same region where the Cochinio can be found. So we paired these materials together for this particular object. Rubber tires. This is one of the world's biggest waste materials. Over a billion tires are sent to landfill each year around the world. And they're really hard to dispose of because of the durability of this material itself. This is the largest rubber tire landfill in the world. It's in Kuwait, and there's over seven billion tires here. It can be seen from outer space. If you look here at the bottom of the screen, there's some little white buildings just to give you a sense of the scale of what you're looking at here. So we felt like this is the material that really needs to be developed for additive manufacturing because we as a society need to figure out what to do with this material and how we can not downcycle it, but upcycle it. And so we worked very hard to develop a formulation for 3D printing with rubber tires. And we worked with a company called Lehigh Technologies that cryogenically freezes the tires and breaks it up into a rubber crumb, which is probably a material that you're familiar with. You might have seen it on like using curbs with asphalt or on playgrounds. But they take the crumb and they grind it up into a really fine micro fine powder, and we're able to 3D print with that powder when we combine it with other more sticky materials. So this is one of the first objects that we 3D printed out of the rubber. And you can see the resolution is not really great. And we've had to combine it with other materials that are organic, that are sticky because the rubber itself is just incredibly inert and it doesn't want to stick to itself. It's still super strong. But we were eventually able to refine that recipe so that we could more predictively and reliably 3D print this material. And ultimately, we decided a good application for this material might be to think about outdoor furniture, for example. So we were able to 3D print this rubber poof out of rubber tires. And it's a larger object. Here's here. I show it myself holding it so you can get a sense of scale. But it's eight parts that we've printed kind of within the maximum boundaries of the build bed of the printer. And then those parts are adhered together to make this larger structure out of the rubber tires as an in use material for 3D printing and sawdust. So we have developed a recipe for 3D printing sawdust, which again, of course, a huge industrial and agricultural waste material, largely from the construction industry and the furniture industry within the United States. So this is a material that now almost always is used with subtractive methods of manufacturing.  So there's almost always sawdust. So for us, this material is essentially free. People will give it to us. Sometimes we have to pay to ship it. But no one knows what to do with all of the sawdust that's being produced. So here, just an example of sawdust. On the right, you can see the 3D printer that we've been putting it in, the size of the build bed, which is a little bit over eight and a half inches by eight and a half inches by 10 inches. And then in the video at the bottom, you can see the the inkjet head spraying the binder on that powder. So you can start to understand the powder based printing process if you're not already familiar with it and how we excavate a part from that powder. So instead of using the white powder, as you see in the the video, we're replacing that with a wood flower. Again, a really finely ground sawdust material. And so we're able to work with wood in an additive way instead of a subtractive way for the first time. And sometimes we add fibers to our recipe to give the material of this powdery matrix a more tensile strength. It also gives a little bit of a furry texture. And one of the things that I love the most about wood is that there's always a wood grain that you can achieve, kind of depending on the orientation of how the digital object is placed inside the printer itself. And we've experimented with the different species. This is pine and this is walnut. So of course, the coloration and surprisingly, even the strength comes through, even though everything has been pulverized. And because this material has been so successful, we have started a company called Forest, because our forests are for us. And we're attempting to commercialize this material and kind of take it out of the realm of the novel and the unique and into large scale manufacturing. So here we're starting to scale up so that we can print larger objects or many hundreds of small objects at a time. And we actually believe that this material and this method of manufacture 3D printing is probably going to become quite prevalent in the future. And another sort of normative way of making things and working with wood itself. And then finally, as Martina mentioned, I wrote a book called Printing Architecture a few years ago, which has a lot more examples of these novel materials that we've been working with over the last 10 years in the book. And there are also recipes. So if you want to know more about what goes into the printing matrix itself, there's some examples in there. Thank you.


It hurts the narcissist more than these three words. These three words hurt them more than anyone else. It irritates them. It confuses them. They don't like it when you say these three words to them. And the three words are I don't care. When you say that to the narcissist, I don't care. They don't like it. It may even cause a narcissistic injury, which you should expect to be followed by narcissistic rage because it will make them very angry. Narcissists want you to care. They want you to see them. Narcissists want to be seen and they want to be heard as well. They want your attention, your validation. They want you to notice them. They want to be something significant and relevant to you. They want to matter to you so that they can feel like they exist because they can't generate that feeling from within. They have to get it from you or someone else and that is why they always need to have supply because they can't generate it from within. If they could, then they wouldn't need you. They wouldn't need you to care so much, but that's what they do. What they do is design to get your attention and lock you in to make you notice them. To make you care because if you don't care, then that means no supply for them because that's what this is all about. It's all about supply. Remember they need supply. They can't just be on their own to themselves without anyone. They need to have that supply on tap 24 hours a day and that may come in the form of primary supply, secondary supply, tertiary supply. It's all supply. That could be an intimate partner, a family member or friend, a boss or co-worker. It could even be, I'll actually forget that, but it could be anyone. It could be anyone at all and sometimes you may not even know who it is, but they always have some supply. They always have someone who cares. They have to and it could be positive attention or negative attention. Some of them that might prefer positive attention, but if they can't get that, they will set off a negative. They will try to provoke you.  They have no power of their own.  So when you say these three words, I don't care. You can't just say the words. You have to mean it and feel it because they're going to know. The narcissists are predators. They prey on you. So they're always looking at your facial expressions and body language. They're listening to the tone of your voice because they want to know if they get into you. They want to know if they're bothering you and then that is what gives them supply. It's not always about what you say or even what you do. It's more about what you don't say or what you don't do. That sends a message to them as well but when it all comes down to it, that's all they really want to know. They want to know if you care about what they're saying or doing to you because that then tells them that they matter. They make some feel like they exist just by getting that response out of you. So yeah, this video is meant to empower you by giving you these three words and as I said, when you say these three words you have to really mean it because when you feel it, trust and believe that they will feel it too. They will feel it vicariously through you and then it will begin to affect them and it will get to a point where you are affecting them more than they're affecting you just by you not caring because that is their motive. That is their objective to make you care about something they're saying or doing. That's really all there is to it and you can stop that right now by paying attention to your reactions and reminding yourself what are they trying to get me to do. All they're really trying to get you to do is to react. That's all they want is an emotional response because that tells them that you care. That's where they picked you because many of you are empaths and many of you automatically give your emotional response and when you do that it tells them that you care.  You should care about people just as much as they care about you. The person who cares the least in a relationship has the most power. I'll say that again. The person who cares the least in a relationship has the most power. Keep that in mind when you are dealing with a narcissist. Just like to thank you all for watching. This video was helpful. Please give it a thumbs up down below. Share the video, subscribe and if you'd like to book a one-on-one with me you can do that from my website. It is NarcseFiver.co.uk just how you're at this lake today. It's pretty cold so I'm wearing my jacket. Thank you all for watching and I will talk to you in another video very soon.


So we're now reaching the end of the conference, and I hope that you'll take back many happy memories of the conference and the wonderful city of Oslo. This is fantastic what we heard all the last two and a half days. So it was exhilarating two and a half days of learning so many different aspects of domestic revenue mobilization and also a chance to meet old friends and make, hopefully, new ones. So I want to offer a vote of thanks to my colleagues who have put this wonderful show at the conference together, and I'm going to start first with my colleagues who acted as chairs, panelists, as well as many other roles backstage. Most of you've seen them working so hard in the last few days, and actually, our conferences are a major logistical exercise. We start a year in advance in planning, and I'm grateful for the work that my colleagues have put in in different constituent parts of Univider over the past one year. It was a tremendous collective effort and so well done to all of you who did take part in this preparation of the conference. Secondly, the academic leads of the different works teams of the DRM program, and I'm going to name them, Tony Addison, Amina Ibrahim, Rose Ngugi, Yuka Pitila, Pierre Rattenhuber, Antonio Savoia, Abraham Staggim, and Fin Top. But Able supported also by several research associates, Yesi Lastune, Maria Yoste, and Roderick Oliveira, and also excellent research assistants, too, for the work that's been so wonderful, the wonderful work you've done in the last four years, and which was presented in ample measure in these last two and a half days. So we've heard so many of you have heard of all the different work we've been doing in different work streams in the last two and a half days. I would now like to particularly thank Yuta Stenholm, who played a key role in organizing the conference and making sure everything works smoothly. I don't think I see Yuta anywhere here. There you are. So let's all thank Yuta. So, fantastic job, Yuta. Absolutely amazing. So while this conference brings the first phase of the Domestic Devening Moderation program to a close, our work in this area is going to continue into a second phase. And we're very grateful, Gaurad, for continuing to support our work so generously. So please do stay tuned in, visit our website to stay a bit of a many exciting project that will come now for the next four years that we have planned for the second phase. And just so this is going to be really exciting that we're carrying on the work we're doing already in the first phase, which you heard in this conference. I also want to say that please do follow us on our social media accounts. Subscribe to our newsletter if you haven't done so as yet, link to our website to learn more about our work and upcoming events and opportunities. We'll be sending our feedback form. This is important as feedback form after this conference. Please fill that out so we can continue to improve our conference experience. You get to hear from us shortly on the feedback form. I would like to invite undersecretary general of the United Nations and the director of the United Nations University, Professor Sillidzi Marwala to make some closing remarks. Thank you. Good afternoon. I don't want to stand between you and lunch. So I am going to be quite quick. Kunal, you were thanking everybody and of course you have not thanked yourself. And I would like to start by thanking Kunal. United Nations University has 13 institutes in 12 different countries. I think I can confess silently that WIDA is definitely my favorite institute. It is the only institute that I have visited you twice and not in Finland. Of course here in Oslo and in Pretoria a few weeks ago. In Shakespeare's 1599 tragedy, Julius Caesar, Cassius a Roman nobleman, tells his friend Brutus and I quote, it is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves. Close quote. Shakespeare's prose perhaps best concludes this development conference. In recent years only partly attributable to the pandemic we have fallen off the track. Across the board we are faltering in our quest for a more inclusive, just and equitable future. As we inch closer to the 2030 deadline for the Sustainable Development Goals we need actionable solutions. We need will. And of course we need finance. The Second30 General estimates that for us to be able to meet Sustainable Development Goals by 2030 will need in excess of a trillion dollar. Of course this is huge amount. It puts some of the development institutions at an inadequate position. This comprehensive blueprint for addressing global challenges, the Sustainable Development Goals include dealing with the issues of poverty, issues of inequality, issues of climate change and environmental degradation. And of course this will require a cashier-like approach. We always say we were talking about global warming. The Second30 General now is calling it global boiling. The temperatures are at record levels. This year has been quite bad. And the situation is not going to get better unless we actually act and we act now. In fact acting now is already too late and therefore we cannot afford to postpone this issue for another day. As the invaluable contribution from the last two days have demonstrated, domestic revenue mobilization is an important facet of development. And I come from Africa. And I always say that Africa is not a poor continent. There are many, many people who have become rich, many, many nations that have become rich because of Africa. If we were to close Africa from the rest of the world, the global production system will stop working. I mean, this is a fact because it is really a primary source of raw materials. And of course many of those resources, and I've had people saying this, are exported elsewhere to tax havens. And of course the consequences of that are dire to many of us. So poverty is a man-made phenomenon. According to the International Monetary Fund, this mobilization of revenue is essential for low income and emerging economies to suitable finance their development needs. I will have to add, it is more than essential. This is essential in order to sustain high and inclusive growth while preserving debt and macroeconomic stability. Achieving the SDGs requires concerted efforts from all nations, particularly those in the global south, which often face significant economic, social, and environmental challenges that are skewed in the overall global picture. And of course if we look at climate change, even though the global south gets the large share of the consequences it actually contributed very, very little to global warming. As the revolutionary Walter Rodney wrote in 1972, and I quote, in a way, under development is a paradox. Many parts of the world that are naturally rich are actually poor. And parts that are not so well off in wealth of soil and subsoil are enjoying the highest standards of living, close quote. Yet there are solutions to this very paradox that not only address developmental hurdles but encourage agency in this process. When implemented effectively and transparently, domestic revenue mobilization can contribute significantly to a country's socio-economic progress and development goals. However, the effectiveness of domestic revenue mobilization in promoting development depends on various factors, including the tax systems design, the administration efficiency, and the government's ability to allocate resources wisely. The World Bank warned earlier this year that since the onset of the pandemic, tax revenue dropped by 12% in real terms. And in many countries, ratios of tax to gross domestic product have fallen below 15%, which is considered the minimum necessary to finance a state's basic functions. We are in a dire need of actionable solutions. As the IMF declared, this strategy against the socio-economic context of low income and emerging economies serves as a wake-up call. It is within these very corridors that we have teased out the arguments, analyzed the challenges, and posited tangible and lasting solutions. And I am reminded of a statement by Max when he was writing to Engels. And if I were to quote, you know, philosophers have analyzed how the world looks like, but the aim is to change it. And I think all these things that we have analyzed, they have to become actionable solutions. And for them to be actionable solutions, all of us have to play our part as citizens, especially those of us with opportunities of exercising renewal of tenure of office every five years. We have to also be wise. The path to achieving the sustainable development goals requires proactive and strategic actions by countries in both the global south and the global north. This also calls for a reframing of leadership with an emphasis on transparency and good governance alongside the prioritization of key development areas and metrics. And of course, I come from South Africa. And about 15 years ago, during the tenure of Taboombeki, we introduced the Africa peer review mechanism in order to bring about good governance, including the prevention of illicit flow of capital. The big question that we have to ask ourselves has the Africa peer review mechanism whacked? Given the scale of the problems that we face and given the wealth of the African continent, I don't think we have succeeded. We need to design mechanisms or perfect this mechanism or improve this mechanism so that we can be able to deal with this issue, which is really illicit flow of capital to the detriment of all of us. Indeed, this efforts tailored to each country-specific context and challenges can help bridge the financing gap and lead to a more sustainable and equitable future for all. As Caroline Bellden, the author of the Inclusion Solution, appropriately phrased it, and I quote, equality is leaving the door open for anyone who has the means to approach it. Equity is ensuring there is a pathway to that door for those who need it, close quote. Indeed, domestic revenue mobilization is one such pathway towards achieving sustainable development. In closing, this was a very successful conference, and you can give yourself a round of applause. Thank you very much.


Thank you so much, Peter, for the reading and for the essay about the origins of Banished Children of Yves in particular. I'm wondering if you can say a little bit about how you balanced the historical figures in Banished Children of Yves with the ones or the one that was based on your own personal history. You've talked elsewhere about how Margaret O'Driscoll is based on your grandmother's as a kind of composite. What was the seamstress and what was her maid, and that was the well, you know, there's that history of what I just mentioned before. It was astounding when I began to do this research and you know, I know about the famine vaguely, but the more I dipped into it, you know, a million people die and two million people leave in a ten year period. It's an astounding event in the middle of 19th century Europe, and a million come into New York and I said, well, let me look at the records. What are these people leave behind? And there were no records. You know, there were no voices. And then I said, well, the Irish love to write, right? So this is a defining event in their history. I'll go down to New York Public Library. I'll read all the novels on the draft riots and the Irish famine immigration, and I read them very easily because there was one Harman Melville's Redburn, which is actually about its Immigrantship. That was essentially it. So, you know, I thought I had free reign with these characters and it was a frightening kind of thing never having written fiction except political speeches, which I guess don't count. But I had to let go and I, you know, and then the one thing about these people historically coming to New York, when the Irish came into New York and the ports on the east coast of the United States, there was the three-mile rule. Most of them had never been three miles from their home parrot. And they were suddenly 3,000 miles away. And for the first time they were in total contact with other cultures. They had to see themselves in different ways. And they said, I can't really write the story of the famine immigration unless I have African-Americans and Anglo-Americans. So I had to go to try to write about African-Americans. And I said, I can't write this experience. You can't write the famine experience without writing it about women. The only immigration to the United States where there are more women than men is the Irish immigration. And I see Ifa Murray who wrote a great book out here made his muse about Emily Dickinson's maid. My grandmother was made, my wife's grandmother, you know, and this female experience is so important. So I had to bring all this in. And then I took these characters, historical characters. But what I find is even the most exhaustive biographies just really touch people's lives. There's so much we don't know. You can write nine volumes about somebody and really not get to who they are and not know where they were on a certain day. So I had one thing in there. I had Stephen Foster becomes one of the, his music goes through the whole book. And I really, it was Foster who led me to write a novel because I went down to where he committed suicide in the Bowery in 1864. America's first grade songwriter. And I thought I thought I knew who he was. And there's wasn't a lot written about him. So I tried to follow his life and I tried to figure out why among all the songwriters in America, why was he the one who listened to black people's music? In some ways he paraded, but in other ways he reproduced it. And but why would he listen? So people, all the great popular culture in America comes from the margins, comes from, you know, Irish Jews, Italians and gays. So I thought to myself, Stephen Foster had a two week marriage that he was gay. So, you know, I did this, I take liberties with all these characters writing a historical novel. And of course I get letters from people attacking me. And I always remind them it says novel on the front, you know, it means it's a lie. So to get back to your question, you know, it's a balance between I never distort what's known, but there's so much that isn't known that I feel you can go in the shadows. And you know, as a novelist, you can do that. Honest historians can't, they have to stick with the facts.  So you pretty much say whatever you want. And if it's not. And my other theory of novel writing is, you know, if you make the reader believe it, then it doesn't matter what it is.  And that in reading Elizabeth Colonone, you was the first time that you recognized people like us in a book. Well, growing up in the Bronx, there was not people writing books. I wasn't around people who wrote books. My parents had gone to college, but we were encouraged to get civil service tests. And I always had the feeling that our lives weren't the stuff of literature. And you know, the whole Irish American experience, they talk about great writers like O'Neill, Fitzgerald, O'Hara. Most of the time they wrote nothing about Irish America. They wrote about things they never looked at their own experience. O'Hara did a little O'Neill's great play. But otherwise, it was off the record. So I didn't have the sense that this was something we did. I took a civil service test. I was a court officer for three years, because that was an ambition that you had. And my father's thing was get this job, get the pension put in 40 years and then raise your family. And I think that was a legacy of Irish poverty and immigration. We didn't have big ambitions like that. But this woman from my parish, St. Raymond's, wrote a wonderful, kind of forgotten novel, House of Gold. And her two uncles were Jesuits at Fordham. And it goes into the dynamics of the family.  And I remember my parents were horrified. How could she do this? How could she write a novel about her? You know, expose the family to this. So that was the other sense I had that, you know, you didn't write about your own experience. It was something shameful, insignificant. You didn't put the dirty laundry out. And I remember when I published Banished Children, my sister called and said, my mother was 88.  So I knew it wasn't good. So I called and I said, well, what do you think? And she said, well, you know, it's a little disappointing to become 88 and realize you have a son with a pornographic, imagine it. I was going to tell her I hired a French graduate student to write those parts, but I didn't believe it. So I said, actually, I don't think it's that bad. There's not that much sex in it. And she said to me, well, it was a great Irish American question. What are my friends going to think? And I said, my only have two left. And Rosemary's blind. So I'm not going to worry about it. Go ahead. Sorry. You talk about the reticence to, you know, to tell what happened to tell your own story in a sense as part of this inheritance. And yet you turn to memoir, right after Banished Children of Eve in looking for Jimmy. So I'm wondering if you can say a little bit about why you made that choice. Well, it's actually a collection of essays, personal essays and research that I did on Banished Children. I was serious. I researched for six and a half years, Irish immigration to New York. And I did try to find my family. You know, I'm not a genealogist. Genealogy kind of bores me. Because again, you're not, you find birth dates and things. It doesn't mean anything. But I wrote these essays as I wrote Banished Children of Eve. And I published a number of them. And there's nothing like taking research and getting paid for it. So that was part of the motivation of doing this memoir. But I also wanted to say, because I think this is true about every family, you know, not just Irish American families, but here's what history is. Here's the uber story. And a lot of us don't know the unto story down here of our own families, who we are. And I was trying to show, this is the context that I wrote this novel out of. And there's a very rich history here, a beautiful history, an important history, a defining history in the American immigrant experience. And just to give my experience to other people, say, you know, Hilary's talking about the oral history out here. And it's just amazing to me the way stories are constantly lost. And, you know, and there is no, I remember I worked 23 years at Time Warner. And it was like a day job. I was around a lot of serious people, accountants and lawyers and things. And the more I worked at it, the more I began to say to myself, you know, the most important occupation there is is a storytelling. That was at the center of Irish culture, because there is no family, there is no nation, there is no religion that's not organized around a story. You know, America has a story, France, Catholicism, they're not facts, they're stories. And telling stories are what's the first thing we did after we gathered around fires in Africa. You know, after cooking the food, what made us human was we started to tell each other's story about where we came from, who we are, where we're going, what the meaning is. So, you know, I just don't think it's an occupation. I think that was one of the problems with people's education they're given. Well, these are writers and this is everybody else. Everybody should be trying to tell. Everybody has this story. We're all on the same journey out of, you know, we've been on this journey for 150,000 years. And I always say the good news or bad news depending on how you're sitting next to, you know, the whole genetic thing is they're your cousin. We're not that separate. As a species, we're so recent. I want to read a quick quote from Looking for Gin. Jimmy, that I think ties into this and ask you to talk about it a little bit. You say, perhaps no force in human history is more persistent or less appreciated than the tenacious persistence of traits, customs, and attitudes that embody a group's values and beliefs and that resist almost every effort to uproot or pull them down. The cabins are raised. The people move on and are scattered, but quietly without fanfare beneath the radar of history, they carry the stones of memory and understanding with them in their souls and minds to some new place to be reassembled as the foundation for a new life. Sometimes you don't have to be told a memory to have it. That's one of my theories is that if you grew up in a certain community or culture, it's filled with those stories. It's shaped by those stories. I never really related the famine story to my own life until I began to look at the expectations we had, the culture we lived in, the nature of the religious practice that was raised in, and the more I looked at it, the more obvious it became, the intense catholicism that I was raised in. Well, in 1800, there were 100 nuns in Ireland. In 1900, there were 8,000. As a result of this demographic catastrophe, the country changed in its religious practice, and as the culture died, the religion became more important, and it became the dividing line between the Irish identity, which was under such stress, and the English attempt to destroy this identity uprooted. It became the organizing principle. The only institution the Irish had transatlantic institution, this immigration, the famine immigration, was chaotic. Irish rural society dissolved. It fell apart, and the poorest people died or left. The British government really, in one of their blue papers said, the problem in Ireland is 8.5 million people, 3.5 million barely live every year. Well, by 1855, 3.5 million people were gone, either dead or scattered. But the one institution that they had on both sides of the Atlantic was the church. The Irish are the only immigrant group to create their own whole set of social institutions, universities. I grew up in the Bronx. There were three Catholic colleges, hospitals, grammar schools, political organizations. It was this process of reorganizing of a people, rural people who had dissolved. I often think that the church's role in early social services is overlooked in this country. It is. As well as there was a book several years ago talking about there were 500 social workers on the Lower East Side in 1900, and there's a woman scholar in Chicago that said there were actually 2,000, but 1,500 and were Catholic nuns. And they were. They were nurses. They were teachers. I'm still a practicing Catholic, but I think it was a tragedy for the Catholic church to become, once you mix nationalism and religion, you're not going to get a good result. I don't think it's been proved anywhere. We kind of know from experiences all around the world that you make the religion, the source of political authority. It doesn't turn out well for either group. So the church is the one institution that the Irish bring with them and set up here. Well, it's actually created in the process of the famine. There's this thing called the Devotion Revolution. The first Irish political leader in America is not from Tammity Hall. It's John Yu, the Archbishop of New York. And he's the first one to say, he recognizes that these people are totally disorganized. And he's the one who insists before they build the church, they build the school and he makes these political demands. At one point, the largest third party movement in American history is the American party of the 1850s, which was dedicated to stopping Irish immigration. And you had these nativist riots in Philly where they burned Catholic churches.  And Yu's went to see the mayor and the mayor said, Archbishop Yu, are you here because you're afraid some of your churches will be burned? And he said, no, I'm afraid some of you as will be. Because if one Catholic church is touched in New York, New York will become a second Moscow. Now, that's, you know, how many religious leaders in the history of American cities are threatened to burn the places down if they weren't. But again, this was a churchman saying this, and this was Yu's putting the church at the head of the reorganization of the Irish in the United States. And I think that immigrant experience for 150 years afterwards reflects this emphasis on reorganization. It was the story of the church, it's the story of Tammany Hall, it's the story of the labor movement, how do people who don't, who come into the country where they don't, two thirds of them didn't know the language. The oldest tradition in Anglo society was anti-Catholicism. All these pressures that they faced was this process of reorganization that the church was part of and led in many ways. Tell me about how you move from the journey of Ben Shornaviev and looking for Jimmy into the trilogy and how you fix on detective fiction as a vehicle for that journey?   His stuff, his stories are tremendous. And I said, you know, I liked Philip Malo and the LA setting, but I said, this story belongs in New York, and Malo is really an Irish Catholic, I could tell just by his attitude. I know, you know, a lot of cops, and they had that same street-wise mixture of cynicism and idealism at Kennedy. So I said, I want to create a character like that in New York. And then I said, you know, as a plot method, well, what's murder that every murder has been described? There aren't a lot of new murders, but what about a feat that stumbles on the greatest murder plot in history, which is eugenics and racial science and is the basis of the Holocaust? So then I said, I can't tell a story just in New York, I have to go to Berlin, because that's what Nazism was. There was no political theory to Nazism really between totalitarianism, besides totalitarianism. There was no economic theory besides state capitalism. But it was innovative in the idea it was a state based on racial biology. So I have a plot in Berlin with Admiral Canaris and a plot in New York, and then the simple book I was going to write first took eight years. But we had three foreign sales, and I really like Finn Dunn, and my publisher said, well, why don't you do another Finn Dunn book? Now the guy who sat in back of me in Manhattan College was James Patterson, who writes about nine books a year. He's a friend of mine said Patterson Schitt's books.  I don't want to spend the rest of my life writing Finn Dunn books. And I wanted to use Dunn. Dunn is a detective, and all the stories stand on their own. They're not told chronologically. But to me, he represents, I want to tell a story of Irish American urban life between 1918 and 58, which was really, really, I think, defining a period in Irish American life from the First World War to the height of the Cold War. And the election of Kennedy in 60 is really, in many ways, the period at the end of the sentence of the famine immigration. And, you know, I wanted to write out of my own experience. So Dunn goes, part of Dry Bones in Slovakia, part of Ireland, Kettys in Berlin, but it always comes back to New York. And these characters, how I think a lot of, you know, I knew a lot of these people. My mother would be horrified by that thought. I've heard you say that you think maybe Finn Dunn is a descendant of Jimmy Dunn in Banished Children of Eve. So can you say a bit more about that idea of telling the story of Irish American urban life and how this, how this period fits in with your sense of where the Irish have landed, you know, between those two periods? Yeah, well, you know, it's Finn Dunn is a descendant of Jimmy Dunn, but I don't know how. Because that, to me, was part of the, in a little genealogy I did about my family. And I discovered a family genealogist where people disappeared. We thought there were five manning children. There were seven.  And then there were illegitimate children. I had an uncle who was shell-shocked in the First World War, who this was a deep-dock secret, probably committed suicide in 1939. I had another uncle who was murdered by Willie Moretti in Hoboken, New Jersey, which another deep-dock family secret. So, you know, Dunn was my key to this, to that world, and the sense of people weren't, I don't know what the experience of other families are. We didn't keep a lot of family records, you know, hit and miss. We were not concerned about, my parents' accent was on America, getting on in America. My mother was, why would you be interested in this past? She was kind of baffled by it. Her whole, her life had been moving into America, and suddenly I'm turning around and becoming obsessed with all this stuff. As she once said to me, it's a lot of baggage. You know, you don't need this baggage, but I become obsessed with it. What is your sense of Irish-American writing now in comparison to where you started your journey? Where do you think we're going? And how do you think about Irish-American writing as a category in general? Yeah, it's interesting because in my lifetime, I mean, college we didn't, there was no such thing as Irish-American literature. And now you have the winner of the Pulitzer Prize, William Kennedy, who's written this incredible series of novels about Albany investigation of Irish life, just an amazing, the stuff wasn't written before. And then the other great novelist is Alice McDermott, who, you know, she writes these exquisite novels about very prosaic Irish families in Brooklyn. So in a way, I think it's the golden age of Irish-American writing. I don't know, I have no idea how long it will last, but a lot of the energy that went to the church and other things, it's now looking into Irish-American culture the way it's never been looked into before. I don't know how long that will last, but they've certainly put on the record. I mean, you read Alice McDermott with her ordinary working-class Irish-American people, and you read William Kennedy's gangsters and politicians, and you have this broad spectrum of the Irish-American experience. It's never been put on the, it was never literature before. And between the two of them, and there are other practicing writers who, Maureen Howard and other people who, for the first time, put the Irish-American experience made it literature. And what lasts more than anything else in human experience are these stories, literature. When it becomes literature, it becomes part of the human consciousness, and it lasts. So, you know, I think it will inspire other writers. We'll keep looking into that. And what I feel with those writers, too, you know, the great novel, Him to the Common Man of the 20th Century, the great anti-fascist book is Ulysses. And what Joyce did was, what Joyce said, if you went deep enough into an experience, the particularity of a group, if you wanted to double in people in one day, you'd find the universality. You'd find all the myths that were in Ulysses and ancient Greek. You know, it's not ethnic naval gazing. It's, you're writing about this and looking at it to find not what separates you from other people, but connects you. And that every culture in the world, at all times, is, again, they define themselves with these stories. And I think you find common threads in all those stories. So, you know, I think that's part of the great thing about Crossroads. It's not just a one a week great, and you know, it's about connecting ourselves to all the other immigrant experience. That's my two cents. Well, on that note, I'm going to open it up to questions from the audience. Hillary has a microphone. So, if you have a question, can you put up your hand and she'll find you. Hi. Thank you, Mr. Dunn, for the very humanizing message you've woven into your own story. I'm curious about your movement to Albany, if that was a long way for you to go. And when you researched the mid-19th century flood of immigrants, did you see anything in particular about the group that went beyond New York City or that flooded through it, filtered through New York City? I didn't look much outside New York City, but I know, you know, the Irish are the most rural people in Western Europe in the first part of the 19th century, and then they're the most urbanized people in America at the end of the 19th century. So, I think there were a lot of common experiences. I've met, you know, talked to people in different cities and gone to other cities, and there were this cohesion that came. The churches, you know, you were Catholic education in Baltimore, Chicago, New York, or San Francisco, you were essentially getting the same, it was more standardized than public education was. And the religious practice was the same everywhere, and in a lot of ways the music was the same everywhere. The Irish had this cohesion, although they were spread all around the country. That's what I found. Well, I was getting a PhD in Irish history at Fordham, and this is 1979, I was facing permanent under-employment as an adjunct, and I wrote an article in an America magazine that somebody gave to Governor Kerry, and they asked me to write his Fordham Law School commencement speech, and I had never written a speech before, and if I knew then what I knew now, I probably wouldn't have tried, but I did, and they liked the speech, so I wound up, and then I stayed with Governor Cuomo, so I was six and a half years in Albany, and, you know, one of the great things William Kennedy is that he makes Albany an interesting place. Well, after about two weeks I exhausted all the cultural and theatrical possibilities of Albany, so I began to read books. I stayed in my hotel room, and, you know, it's about 40 below in Albany in the winter, so there's not a lot to do, so I just read voraciously at night, and I read Thomas Carl Isle's History of the French Revolution, which actually influenced the writing of Banished Children, and you could tell this epic story. I wanted, Banished Children was 600 pages, I mean, I never crossed my mind I could write 600 pages, and I couldn't, somebody please stop me, I would cry in the mornings, and then I had a day job, after Time Warner I went to, I was 23 years of Time Warner, but the thing was I had this urge I wanted to write, and I had a friend, he was a novelist, and he was divorced, and he was successful, and I'd say, I can't find the time, Bob, to write, and he'd say make the time. I said, well that's easy for you to say, and then one day at dawn on me he was right, nobody was going to give me the time, so I started to get up at 5.30 and write for two hours, and I did that for 17 years, and that became, you know, writing, I don't know how writing ever got a reputation as this romantic Ernest Hemingway fishing thing, because it's very lonely, it's very isolating, it's very frustrating, and it's, you have to commit yourself, writing a book is like, you know, it's a year, two years worth of work, and a lot of mornings you wake up and you read what you wrote the day before, and it really stinks, and then you have to go back to that, and these people would tell me at work, you know, when I retire I'm going to do what you do, I'm going to write books, and I was, yeah, it's such a good, such a fun thing to do, you want to give yourself a sample, just take a nail and drive it into your head every day. We have time for one, or maybe two more questions? I was curious how you treated the draft riots in that book in regards to the complexity of that situation within other groups, it's very much been simplified and reduced down to Irish Americans are racist, and I'm sure that's not exactly how you handled that complex situation, could you talk about that a little bit? Yeah, well they say, you know, there was no uprising in Ireland in the famine, it was a very small one, but I think the great post-feminine uprising is in New York City in July 1863. When I was in this Rick Burns documentary, I said one of the important things with the draft rights that nobody has ever pointed out is they, the draft starts in New York, this is a civil war where you could pay $300 to get out of the draft, it was the first military draft in American history, you could pay $300 to get out of a substitute, so J.P. Morgan sends the substitute, Theodore Roosevelt's father paid the $300, but if you were an Irish working person you couldn't, so the draft starts on July 11th, Sunday July 12th, which if you know anything about Irish history, you know it's the most volatile day of the year, the riot starts the next day, it's not accidental, and it's this uprising against the upper classes in New York, it's an insurrection, they bring the regiments back from Gettysburg to fight in the streets, and they have cannons in the streets, it really is an urban, it resembles the Paris commune, and it's also a race riot, not for the first time in America, the people at the bottom attacked the other people at the bottom, and the Irish knew they had stood a good chance to remain at the bottom, and they took part of this rage out on Irish Americans, on African Americans, but the amazing thing, the draft rights are also its hest because the police department was heavily Irish, even that early, and the thought was well what about if they go over to the other side, then the city is really screwed, so it is, you know, I found it was a terribly complex event, and I agreed it had been simplified, and I was offered the job to be a historical advisor on gangs in New York by Mont Scorsese, my wife and I were in Vermont, and I got a call from my assistant at Time Warner, I said, she didn't know who he was, she said there's a Mr. Scorsese trying to reach you, so I was like, we're rich, he's going to make banished children into a movie, but he had already had the script, and he gave me the script to read, well he actually took me to see the version that they filmed in Rome, and I saw it without the music, and he said what's wrong historically, so I sent him a six page memo single spaced, I said essentially everything is wrong with the story, and he called me up and said what's this, you know, this is, so I said well you write operas, Scorsese's movies, they say he writes Catholic movies, they're not Catholic, they're Italian operas, you know, Raging Bull is a great American opera, but Goodfell is a great American opera, I think the terrible thing about Gangs of New York is it's a bad movie, and he killed any chance that they'd make my book in a movie in my lifetime, so I'm really very resentful. Well Peter, thank you so much, it's a real honor to have you here at the festival, and I want to make sure that everybody knows that Dry Bones is for sale in the back of the room, so please pick up a copy, Peter will be signing books, and if you have any questions, you can ask him there, so please join me in thanking Peter Quinn.


Hey everyone it's Missy! Thank you for watching! Today's tutorial is this infinity style updo. Make sure to like and subscribe and click the notification bell so you'll be notified whenever I post a new video. And let's get started! With my hair brushed straight back I'm going to divide out a section of hair at my crown and then divide it into two sections. I created part lines using a comb but you don't have to be this precise if you don't want to. So then between the two sections of hair I'm just going to divide off another smaller section right in between them and this is going to be my wrapping piece. I'm going to take this middle piece and wrap it over the right section in a clockwise pattern so it's back in the middle again. Then I'm going to wrap it over the left section in a counterclockwise pattern creating a figure a or infinity shape around the two sections. Then I'm going to repeat those steps again and now I'm going to start adding hair into the braid so I'm wrapping the middle piece around the right section. Then I'm going to pick up a new section of hair and join it with the wrapping piece. Then I'm going to take it and wrap it counterclockwise around the left section. Pick up a new section of hair from along the hairline and join it with the wrapping piece. And these are the steps for the rest of the braid so again I'm taking the middle piece and wrapping it clockwise around the right section. Then I'm picking up a new section of hair from along the hairline and combining it with the middle wrapping piece. Then I'm going to wrap it over and around the left section.  And I'm just going to repeat those steps wrapping this middle piece over and around the two side sections in opposite directions while picking up new sections from along the sides of the head, joining it with the wrapping piece until I've brought in hair from above both of my ears. Then I'm going to continue the braid a little further down, wrapping the middle piece around the two side sections in a figure 8 pattern or infinity pattern just so the braid is tight and doesn't come loose. And then I'm just going to grab a bobby pin and pin down the wrapping piece underneath the braid. So now I'm going to combine the rest of the hair together and tie it into a messy bun. So I'm going to wrap the hair tie once over the hair. And then before the second wrap I'm going to first spread the ponytail around the hair tie. Then I'm going to wrap the hair tie over the hair so it forms a little mini donut shape. Then pulling on the edges of the donut, this will make the bun larger while also tightening the hair against my head. And then with the hair left sticking out I'm just going to divide this into two sections and take one section at a time tucking the hair back into the elastic. This will form two more little looped sections of the bun. Then as the final step I went back over the infinity braid and pulled on the edges just a little bit. This will make the braid look a little bit bigger and more full and it'll also help the braid stand out a little bit better. Thank you so much for watching. I hope you enjoyed this video. If you did make sure to click the thumbs up or if you didn't click the thumbs down either way let me know. If you're new to my channel be sure to subscribe and click the notification bell so you never miss a video and I will see you next time.


Good morning, folks. Steve Rhodes coming to you live from the shores of sunny Delray Beach, Florida. This year, 11 a.m. update. We got all the U.S. indices that we track as well as all the sectors with inside the S&P 500 trading lower dows down 359 points. That's 1% eight tenths for the S&P or 32 points. Four tenths for the NASDAQ 146 points. One is six tenths for the Russell 28 points there. Some ice off 38 trainees down to 26. It's a little bit of a bloodbath. Spot follow-tutics is now trading well above its 50-day exponential moving average, but we do have a one-day rate of change above plus 10%. That's going to be important at days in, not at 11 a.m. You've got gold trading up out at 2064. Silver's trading at 2584. Lights recruit at 6808. That's back 53 cents right now. Natural gas is down 7 cents. The 30-year Treasury up 26 ticks. Print out 132.22. Let's try to figure out what all that means by looking at that nine-panel market update chart. We begin with the ESMini upper left-hand side. What I see out here is a likely consolidation pattern. I think that'll be confirmed today. Well, it'll either be confirmed or not confirmed today. I'd like to see at least two touch points out here. We've got one right now. Possibility that we just have a little bit of a consolidation going on. Spot follow-tutics, you can see it's well above the 50-day exponential. The 50-day is 1919. He closed above it today. Preferably from the bearer standpoint, a close above it, but less than a 10% one-day rate of change. That would keep things solidly in the hands of sellers out there. But we do have this potential. In fact, we've got consolidations all over the place. Really, if we take a look at the NQ upper right-hand chart, first it's consolidating with inside its new bullish structured profile. It would need a close blow 12, 9, 14, before it could even signal potential change and trend out there. And then we've got the other sideways consolidation. U.S. dollar index also in a consolidating pattern, also trading with inside its daily profile out there. The same can be said for Goldilocks, although it is attempting to bust out of its consolidation. I'll have to wait for today's candle to confirm before we can determine whether it's a consolidating pattern in here. I don't like to use two candles in a row out here for the top of a consolidating pattern. So for though, same kind of scenario. This also may be in a consolidation. So even though price is trading above the top of its daily profile, it's just this sideways consolidation. Let's include, pulled back, tested and rejected that bullish hammer swing point. That was from the trading session of March the 20th. It's still below profile out there. We'd really have to look at the intraday charts to see if there's any kind of a bottom signal. And natural gas today, the close blow 214, I don't negate. It's rose mid-diminicator bottom. And you can see a consolidation in the 30-year treasury as well. So these markets out here right now, I think consolidation, consolidation, and a little bit of consolidation. Folks, day two for the Trader Zed Show. If you opt to start your Thursday, please have a terrific one. Thanks for joining us. We'll look forward to speaking with you again soon. Take care now.


Yeah, so I was channeling all of the things that I love about making opera into this project. I was making costumes, I was researching characters, I was getting into character and stepping into the frame and actually performing these people that I was encountering. Sometimes imagined, sometimes real, and we have names for them.