I think we can go ahead and get started. First of all, I'm so impressed that there are so many of you, and it is dinner time. So thank you for coming to this session today about how to make your website faster by saving images correctly, or at least better. There are multiple ways to save images, and I hope today we'll just give you a glimpse in how you might be able to make better decisions when you're saving images for the web. My name is Jessica Tate. I am an art director at ThinkShout based in Portland, Oregon. At ThinkShout, we do strategy, design, UX, and development for mission-driven organizations. So as an art director, I touch a lot of the strategy and the UX in the design and help partner and implementation in building websites for clients like the Humane Society and the Southern Poverty Law Center. Those are my Instagram and Twitter handle if you want to connect with me on social media. So this is what our internet looks like today. If you notice, there are lots and lots of images. In fact, if you look at the statistics right now, the current internet weight every time you load a page, about 60% of all of the internet is bogged down with images. So I think we have a social responsibility as content creators, developers, designers, strategists, whatever it may be, to get our images as small as possible so that we can continue to make sure that the websites that we're building are quick and fast. Especially if you look at the United States versus the rest of the world, the United States has a lot of desktop traffic where often you're plugged into Wi-Fi so you don't notice it as much. But as soon as you go to other parts of the world, most of the traffic comes through mobile devices, which I'm sure we've all had that experience on our phone where we go to a website and it loads really, really slowly because the images aren't optimized for that particular device. So I wanna start us at the very beginning, right? Like if we're gonna talk about images, it's helpful to really understand when you're saving images, what the different rules are, what the file types are, and hopefully, having a level setting will give us an understanding for you to be more knowledgeable when you're going to upload images to your website or digital platform. So I wanna start off with what is a JPEG? Specifically, does anyone know what it stands for? Yeah? Yeah, close, Joint Photography Experts Group. It has that missing E that sometimes appears or doesn't appear if you're on a Windows machine or a Mac machine, although even then sometimes that E magically appears or disappears. This is just a really fancy name. I don't really know why they called it this. But what I do know is that the JPEG came into the scene in 1992. Really no purpose to that fact other than I think it's interesting to watch how we're continuing to evolve as our industry continues to grow. So when do you use a JPEG specific to all other file types that you could use on the image or on the web as images? And you wanna use it with full color photography. So that's kind of the first takeaway. Whenever you're working with photos like any of the screenshots that I showed previously of browsers, anytime you have full color photography you wanna select JPEG because in general, as a rule of thumb, it's gonna compress the image the best out of like PNGs or GIFs or other types of file formats. Now as soon as I say JPEG, I myself come from a print background as a designer and a lot of designers get kind of wary about JPEGs because there's this thing called lossy compression which is just really fancy to say if you open a JPEG and save it you're gonna continue compressing that image every time you open and save, open and save, open and save to the point where if you do it enough times your image could look really, really bad. Every time you open and save it it compresses it 10 to one so you can imagine the multiplying effect if you continue to edit and save that image. What I will say is I've been building websites since 2007 I've used images on all of the websites since 2007 and I've saved JPEGs multiple times and not really ever noticed the effects of the lossy compression so I would just be wary of it but as like a general rule of thumb I don't think that should steer you away from using JPEGs because it will compress if you have to open it and save it again. So now that we understand JPEGs the second big file type is PNGs. Does anyone know what a PNG stands for? Yeah, portable network graphic. So there are two common types of PNGs, technically three, I'll talk about that in a second but the two primary common types of PNGs are the PNG8 and the PNG24. The PNG8 only holds 256 colors and it does also have an alpha channel associated with our transparency channel. Compared to JPEGs, PNGs do support transparency and JPEGs do not. So you might pick a PNG8 if you're trying to do something like a simple graphic versus a PNG24, the 24 means that it gets to be able to hold a lot more color. In fact, it's very comparable to a JPEG in that sense that you get the full spectrum. There is a third type of PNG that is PNG32 and apparently it has more color than the human eye can perceive so my question is why would you use it? The goal is to get the website as fast as possible but certainly if you wanted to you could both the eight and the 24 also have the option to have transparency associated with it. Now I will know if you are using transparency in your image it does tend to make the image more weighty sometimes. So when do you use a PNG8 specifically? When you need small flat graphics that don't have a lot of color associated with them. You'll notice in this image it has a white background but if you needed to have a transparent background you could. One thing I'll also know about the PNG8 when it's selecting that 256 colors it's not picking 256 of the same color every time you save.  So it is specifically customizing those colors based on the image that you were trying to save. I mention this because this is actually the same with most images in that the more color density you have in an image, same goes true for the JPEGs, the weightier the image is going to be because it has to have actually more physical data to make up that image. So one of the tricks if you're trying to make your website really, really super fast is pick an image that doesn't have a ton of color variation. We were actually just working on compressing a website with a GIF that had a ton of color in it and I was like oh it's so weighty and there was nothing I could do about it because it just had literally every color of the rainbow. In fact it had a rainbow in the image. The other type of PNG is PNG24 which we briefly started to talk on. This is when you need to have a full color photo. So often you're left with the decision between do we need a JPEG or do we need a PNG? And the PNG24 specifically you want to use when you need to have an alpha channel but it's still like kind of a full color photo. It means that your image will probably be a little bit more weighty than the JPEG will but often that need for the alpha channel weighs out, weighs out, ha, it's more important than using an actual JPEG without a transparency. PNGs offer lossless compression. So this might be why I think the internet was really focused on PNGs a while back and it was because of this idea of lossless compression compared to the JPEG that tends to have the compression that saves every single time. PNGs do this really cool math algorithm where every time you save that image it runs the exact same algorithm every time so you're gonna be left with the same compression result every time. What this means in simple terms is if I do two plus two equals four every time you add two and two together it's going to be four and it's not gonna be three or two or one. So that's kind of the difference of what a JPEG does versus a PNG. So it's kind of a cool like math thing of how the lossless compression works. We have GIFs or GIFs which I'll talk about in a second. So does anyone know what a GIF stands for? Yeah. Really, really close? Yeah. Graphic interchange format. I think most recently the internet has seen a huge arrival or revival of GIFs because of delightful things like BBA and his little lighter. You can also have really cool interactions for GIFs like swirling animations that just keep going on forever and ever. Today we use GIFs primarily for animation and I'm gonna stop that animation in case it makes anyone dizzy. Kind of a fun history of GIFs and PNGs is actually they had a battle a while back. GIFs came in, I had to go rogue and not use my speaker notes because I'm gonna share my screen in a second but I believe it was in the 70s, don't quote me on that but that's really when GIFs came to life and they were under some sort of trademark or they were in a closed source environment so no one could actually use GIFs and continue to build upon them. So the people that started PNGs actually came as a result of needing to work with something like a GIF and wanted to continue to build upon it as a community and because of that PNGs ended up being more successful and when I mean successful I mean they actually compressed better than GIFs do. Now if you notice I didn't talk about animation when I talked about PNGs because PNGs don't have animation associated with them. So today we really only see GIFs use when you need some sort of animation, potentially SVGs which we'll talk about in a second but really that's where GIFs tend to shine so you can show really cool visual things through just an image format without having to use a video. So when you use a GIF we kind of already talked about this but you use it with animation and maybe potentially really really simple graphics although I would recommend when you're using maybe Photoshop to export an image just double check like try to export both a PNG and a GIF to see what is actually smaller when you export it because that's the goal. If we want to make our website faster we have to make all of our images as small as possible so that we reduce the actual weight and the low time of the page. So what is an SVG? Anyone? Yeah, scalable vector graphics. They are used for things most commonly like social media icons now. I'm sure you are all very familiar with an SVG but if Photoshop is to JPEGs like raster images then Illustrator is to SVGs. As a designer SVGs makes my heart very happy because it means I can have really crisp icons and really clean logos as opposed to the days when you had to have like a PNG logo and it was always really fuzzy and you're like, why can't I get more quality in the typography? So I personally love using SVGs for a little bit of time SVGs weren't supported on all the browsers. Nowadays it's supported everywhere except for IE8 and lower. If you are using IE8 you probably are missing out on a lot of the internet but I will say check your analytics. See if you do have a user base that's using the IE8. I know some companies like force employees to stay on like older systems for one reason or another. So potentially have a fallback of a PNG if you are relying heavily on SVGs. It also supports interactivity and animation what's really fun. So I personally don't have a lot of experience animating with SVGs but I'm really excited to see where our industry is gonna take it since it is kind of a new idea. SVGs were also developed by the W3C which I think is kind of interesting and fun. And personally I also like SVGs because of the potential it has to partner with CSS. So you can take one icon that's a white and upload it to a website and you're able to change the color dynamically through CSS. Once again keeping the page low time down because you're actually only uploading one particular graphic. Now what? So we have a base understanding of what our image file types are. Hopefully that was a helpful refresher. JPEGs use full scale photography, PNGs, some graphics, SVGs for fun awesome crisp vectors. But how do we actually start saving for the web and what are our rules that we should be following when we're saving for the web? So I mentioned all this already but the goal, we need to get images as small as possible into the story. The smaller we can get our images the faster our page is going to load especially because so many of the websites that I know I'm designing for right now really rely on images because the trend of modern web design likes a lot of nice white space, clean typography and images to convey emotion. So when I say small as possible I mean both weight so what is the actual weight of the file and the actual size of that image. So I'm here to recommend there are three golden rules when saving images for the web and if you stick to these three rules you will be a pro at saving images for the web as well. The first one, I want you to save with the correct file type. Hopefully this should feel somewhat familiar since we just talked about what all the different file types are and how you should be saving images. That will give you a good like first initial gut check of how you can start to get your images smaller than, like for example if you have a PNG and a JPEG and you have a full color photo the JPEG is probably gonna do a better job compressing that image. Once again, just a blanket statement. It might not always be true so just double check it but that's a good rule of thumb. Oh yeah, BB8. The second rule is save at the correct size. So this starts to get pretty complicated when we talk about responsive design in Retina so I'm gonna do my best in the next kind of two minutes or five minutes to talk about that. The first thing I'll mention is that when you are saving an image the designer or whoever has built the site there's probably an intended max size for that image but with responsive design there is this idea of wanting images to be forever big and they can go on billboards. I would like to recommend at least one of the approaches that I say is that there is probably a size by which you don't need to make it any bigger and it's okay if the image starts to get a little bit blurry. So right now kind of the rule of thumb that I recommend is no larger than a 2000 pixel wide image. Only because I see a lot of the websites being shown on like conference room TVs and conference room TVs tend to be like 1920. Of course there's 4K. It keeps getting more and more complicated but in general if you start to think about okay what is the max size that this design can support and if it has to go bigger and start losing some quality then maybe that's okay. So if you are for example saving a hero image on travel Oregon you might save out your image at 2000 pixels by 1000 pixels. As you start to scale down your site and as you start to have those various break points kick in like a smaller desktop screen or a iPad or a phone you will want to re have those images display at the correct size for that particular viewpoint. Now you can imagine this means that we might be saving thousands of images so you can have it at each particular size. Probably just a few break points is at least a great starting point. So generally when I am designing and recommending break points it's around three to five different break points depending on the client's budget and really the approach and actually quite honestly the design and what the design requires. So that will continue down. So if you have a grade of images like seen here you want that image uploaded at 300 pixels by 240 pixels. You don't need to upload it any bigger than that if that is the max size that that image is ever gonna be at say like a max break point of 2000 pixels. So especially when you considering having a page like Amazon where there's just pictures upon pictures upon pictures if you've ever I'm sure you have gone into the inspector you'll notice that the pictures that they're displaying aren't any larger than what that particular viewpoint is giving you. So this is just a caution in that make sure when you are designing and building sites that you're not trying to squeeze a like 7000 pixel image there because no one's ever gonna see it and it's only gonna add to the weight of your page. Retina comes into play I recognize. So we talked about saving it at the exact size for a standard device. Now we all maybe know that retina and the general rule of thumb is to save it double. So in this particular example you might want to have like a 600 by 480 image. The question I would ask is why are you supporting retina? I don't think every website needs to support retina or needs to support retina everywhere. For example a really heavy image website like a news website the images are definitely important and add a lot of value but you don't need to load every single image as retina potentially. If you are showing an art gallery website where the images are really important are the main type of content then maybe you do wanna support retina or maybe you wanna find places where you optionally support retina. So maybe you support retina for a hero image because it's gonna see and get a lot of traffic but for other images throughout the website or the page you don't support retina. There are a couple different ways that you can support retina. So I mentioned you can save out the image double. The viewport will still remain the same to still for everyone else it will still look like a 300 pixel by 240 pixel image. So you could do that everywhere on the site. The risk is that everyone is downloading twice the images. I think probably the preferred path would be to use like an image source set where if someone has a retina device they are seeing those images versus other people who don't get to see those images. So that's kind of like the one downfall and where I personally start to struggle when I think about creeping a website as fast as possible. I of course am displaying right now on a retina computer but I don't necessarily know if I want my pages to load slower just because I have a retina device. So really think about when you support retina images and maybe it is the right decision but maybe there's a reason why you might not want to support it everywhere. The last rule is to use pixels to crop your image. This feels kind of obvious but actually there might be some hidden kind of thinking behind here. So there is this great DPI myth that exists and I think it becomes from people like me who come from a print design background that pixels are not related to DPI. So as print designers we hear that you need to save images at 300 DPI as developers or as people that build for the web. There's this word or this magical number of 72 DPI. I'm here to tell you that that's a myth. 72 DPI doesn't exist and I'm gonna prove it to you in case you think I'm crazy. So this is why I couldn't have speaker notes because I'm gonna show you my screen. Okay, so this is Chrome. I just dropped images into Chrome so that you can see it actually in a browser and showing it in the flash. So this image that we're looking at right here has 5,000 DPI associated with it. It looks nice as you would expect with an image that has 5,000 DPI. The size is consistent. But would you believe me if I went to this tab and said this image has 36 DPI. Same size, looks just as great. Seems okay. Here is a 300 DPI image. And here is a 72 DPI image. So the funny thing is when you're actually saving images for the web and you run it through things like optimizely or the Photoshop Safer Web, it actually discards the DPI information because it doesn't actually need it. DPI is only related to actually printing out the image. So if I open Photoshop, I can show you what these images look like with image size. That kind of like thing I'll show you in a second. Just in case you still don't believe me. So this is the 72 JPEG. I apologize, it's really small. I wish I could make it bigger. I'll just talk you through it. So if I go to image size here, you can see here that the resolution is 72 pixels per inch. But if I come up to the dimensions, we can see the dimension of this image is about 5,100 by 3,400 at 72 DPI. If I hit cancel, this is the one that is the 36 DPI. You do image. Oops, not canvas size. This one also 5,100 by 3,400, but the resolution is 36. I think you get the idea. We're running out of time. But the point is that when you are looking at images for the web, the only thing you care about is the width and height resolution of the image. If you were trying to put a hero image that isn't a wide enough resolution. So for example, say, someone gives you a 500 pixel wide image and they're like, can you put this in that 2,000 pixel space? That's not gonna work. There's not enough width resolution to put there. But this image would work just fine in a hero space because you could crop it down to that 2,000 pixel size. Speaking of, I feel like this wouldn't be a demo if I didn't actually show how to save an image for the web and how I think you can get images optimized even smaller than what we just talked about as the three rules. So I'm gonna open this image right here. This is an image we're gonna pretend that we're uploading a new hero image to that travel Oregon example that we saw. So we want this image to now be the new hero. So just to look at what this image currently is, it's probably really small for you. But for me, I can see that this image is about like 4,800 pixels wide and an ungodly amount tall, like 5,000 tall. So if we're gonna save it for that hero space, we know we wanna save it using the three rules. The first rule, we wanna save for the correct file type. So because this is a full color photo, we want to save a JPEG. We want to save at the correct, no I'm forgetting the rules, correct size. So we want to make sure and crop this photo to exactly 2,000 by 1,000 because that's the space we have available to us in the hero. If we were going to save this photo out for also iPad and a phone and other desktop sizes, we would want to go ahead and save out those as well unless you're using some sort of integration technically that will automatically give you those other sizes. And then the third, we wanna make sure that we are using those pixels to measure this image and that we have enough crop pixel to be able to do so. Knowing that this is a 4,800 pixel wide image and a 5,000 pixel wide image that's tall, we have plenty of pixel to work with. So because we don't care about DPI and because we don't care about all of the print stuff that I was previously taught, all we have to do in Photoshop specifically is go to the crop tool. You'll see mine is defaulting to width and height resolution, which is great because that's all we care about when we're saving images for the web. So I'm gonna put for my width 2,000 pixels because once again, we want to use pixels to measure and then I'm gonna do 1,000 pixels tall, then I can adjust my crop so it'll have a nice crop. Hit return twice. And now we have an image that is following our second rule which is saving for the correct size and really the third rule because we're using pixels to make sure that the image is working just fine. If I were to go up to image image size just to show you, this resolution is at 300 but that's not affecting our dimensions at all. So hit cancel. Now I'm going to save this image. So Photoshop, gosh darn them, is starting to put safer web as legacy. Why? I don't know, but the safer web is my personal still favorite way to save images. You can use export and select JPEG, which we know this is and you can adjust the quality but I don't love this option because you're not actually able to get the image as small as like optically possible. I'll show you what I mean by that. So if I go for a safer web legacy, we get this two up view. The view up at the top is the original image and the view at the bottom is the going to be exported image. So right now my Photoshop has defaulted this to GIF because I was saving out GIFs earlier. So we know that we want this to be a JPEG. So I'm going to select JPEG. And just for this purpose, I'm going to put this quality at 100 because most often the quality will default to 100. If I look down here in the left, which is going to be really small, but this image, if I just hit save right now, it's going to be 1.3 megabytes. That is a huge image and probably way, way, way too big for our websites. I recommend targeting between 100 and 200 kilobytes for an image. You can imagine even if you have five images on a website all at 200 kilobytes, that's one meg, which still to me feels like a lot. Luckily with smaller images, like we saw in that grid, you can get those images down to like 30 kilobytes. So it feels a little bit better when you start to use more images, which I assume is how Amazon is able to use so many images because they're really making sure that even the smaller images are as small as possible. So the way that we can make sure that this is small as possible is I'm going to zoom in. And this projector is decent. So I think we're going to be able to see it. So our goal is to optically match the original to the exported version the best we can without making the quality too bad. So if I start moving this quality slider down, instantly you'll notice even to just go to 67 quality, our JPEG has dropped to 387 kilobytes. That's pretty good for a hero image at 2000 pixels wide, but I think we can make it look even better. Optically on my retina screen visually, these two don't look any different. I'm looking at kind of the pixelation in the sky that feels the same. I'm looking at her jacket and the hair and the details, especially like around hair parts, you'll see pixelation start to come through. So our goal is to drop the quality as much as we can before we like optically start to see like pretty significant pixelation. So I think we can get this even smaller. And maybe just for, okay, so right here at 33, you can definitely start to see artifacting around, it's hard to see up there. I can definitely see some artifacting around her head, which I can imagine this photographer probably wouldn't be very happy about. So I'm gonna pull the quality back up. And that's pretty good. This might be because of this image, once again, the amount of color that's in an image. We have kind of a rainbow sky going on. Means that the weight of the image might actually be a little bit weightier than we would like. And that's just simply due to the nature of this having a lot of color. So at 45 quality, we're looking at 200 kilobytes. If I'm zoomed back out to, that's 100% on my screen, it looks optically just the same. So we've gone from like this original image before even saving it is 5.2 megabytes and we're now down to 200 kilobytes. So I'm gonna hit save, call it something smart. And then I can show you, I pull it in a browser what our image would look like. Oops. So that is our 200 kilobyte, 2000 pixel wide image saved, optimized for the web. So one of the questions I always get is why do you use Photoshop? I personally like to use Photoshop because I can optically do that. A lot of the other tools that you integrate doesn't give you that ability to get the images as optically as small as possible. They'll like discard metadata information which certainly Photoshop Safer Web does as well.  And now we're out of time. So hopefully that was really helpful and hopefully that empowers you to start saving images for your websites and your digital platforms.


Okay, all right the first top secret is a 30-second video It is a sharp display and I mean sharp in a few different reasons in a few different ways might look familiar at the video I tell you what is this? Hey, this is me testing out a 2.7 inch diagonal sharp memory display These are these really beautiful low energy faster than e-ink, but very daylight readable displays from sharp This is the same display that's in the play date, you know that yeah cranking game That's coming out shortly and I found the part on did you key and I thought I'd make a little break out and our library Works with it perfectly. I just did a little bit of speed up so you can see how small and Readable the text is really beautiful screen Very cool Okay, and then next up we're gonna show the block lives matter learning board yeah, and I Thought the other thing that's cool about this is it shows up as a USB drive So you can put PDFs you can have Learning information you can have specific actions. You can have a list of people that we need to make phone calls to How many days has it been since Breonna Taylor's? The murder the the the Kentucky the latest was they the Kentucky Attorney General They called in the now they're gonna have the mayor's office. Yeah, look into it So as long as this pandemic has been going I know that is when Breonna Taylor was murdered at home Which is the most terrifying thing you can think of someone kicking down the door shooting you and all of the things that are This is one of the longest worst things ever So one of the actions we have on Adafruit comm slash black lives matter is the places you can call the people that you can email Yeah, sure petitions. We have to do more than that because obviously it's not enough So there has to be action. So look at our website, but anyways, that's the other benefit of this is you have a USB drive You could put all that stuff on there. Yeah, so it's just really frustrating and so like we're electronic company What can we do? It's all well here's a cool board that you could do with workshops So what are some of the features of this okay? I'm glad you asked so you you actually kind of tasked me with Making a badge. It's low-cost. She said you want to be like $15 or $20 So I had to like think about how to make it inexpensive One of the things I wanted you to make it inexpensive. He also said you wanted to be about three or four inches high Yeah, so it's about four inches high. It's got a lanyard loop. So it's a wearable. So you can wear it as a badge yeah, and then to make it inexpensive I Used alkaline batteries because they're common. I thought we charge all batteries I can add a lot of complexity and cost and makes it difficult to ship whereas everyone's got triple a alkaline batteries But when I made it with a three, you know, I we wanted to use this you know black lives matters, you know fist of justice and When I wanted to use three triple a's which is what I normally use to generate about three point three volts It ended up being way too big. So what actually this is interesting I have a boost converter, which normally I wouldn't be able to afford on a on a board of this Price point I want to keep it expensive, but the mini boost that we just came out with The chip on that the TPS 6123 is very low-cost boost converter And this inductor is only like 10 cents actually the boost converter is like, you know only a couple cents Maybe 30 cents total and cost So when we chat about it, you're like, oh, yeah, it's worth it to make it run on two triple a batteries This is a new thing. I usually don't include boost converters on things, but I'm starting to find low-cost versions It's got USB-C And in it's at samd21 e18. It's the same as the trinket and zero gem and zero in fact right now It's kind of programmed to think it's a Gemma It's got a light sensor that's pointing at the outside. You wanted to make it so when it got dark out You would light up more. Yeah Because we see a lot of people protesting at night and then there's a microphone a PDM microphone. So when loud sounds are detected it's people cheering you can have a It can it can blank. So I thought that'd be really cool I was thinking like what are some projects that could really inspire kids who are going to protest or want to I Guess that's one other thing too. So for all for all of you tuning in at home Lady and I go you could what on our Adafruit Chronicles post that we do you can see like our our GPS route so Probably would have gone to the Union Square protest tonight, but we're doing a show We go to a lot of these protests. We've given PPE to a lot of the protesters You know one of the things that we noticed is this is a family event I know if you're living if you live in a big city, this is people. This is this is why this is not just a Moment it's a movement people are bringing their kids. There's activities. There's everyone is listening and educating themselves about the changes that we all want to see so we're like well Obviously there's gonna be more to this obviously there's you know, there's gonna be Learn to code make that website that that is the thing that you want to get your actions out make Electronics that you know, this isn't this is never going to end if we all keep working on stuff And so I thought this would be a neat workshop thing to get more young specifically for badger desk usage And then there's an on-off switch which is really handy for battery-powered stuff Because I wanted to make it so people could like turn it on and off really easily just conserve the battery And then we had a little bit of room so I put four capacitive touch switches We'll chat about this. Maybe I have two and once power on the ground I know you we can we can chat about what makes sense, but right now it's four capacitive touch buttons So you could use this to change like LED modes I'm using these side light LEDs, which are the same as used as the Halloween M4 and That's kind of it It's really simple. I will you know, we chatted about like What did we like about the circuit playground? But what would you know make it better as a badge and then it also you can't you know see it easily But because of the way the batteries placed it sits upright like on a yeah, like it'll stand up So it stand ups on and on the other thing is this is the second BLM based electronics project. I've seen This one I got from Tindy and these are the Osh Park ones and has people's name on the back where police brutality needs to be Addressed and these are their names say their name if you're in New York City You see that hashtag you see at art you see the people in the streets saying it and saying their names So we wanted to have something in the electronic world. Yeah, and we'll probably be giving these away Sponsored projects, but this is kind of fun. This is my first revision. So I just put these together last night I have a couple mistakes. I got to fix them But and then we're going to chat about what we want to change in it But hopefully it'll be in the shop soon. That's not secret Don't ask all right


Hello, I am Shereem Ureddin, the ambassador of the Black Forum of this month. First Base has helped the students to convert their innovation and creativity into sensible and visible things using AR and VR. The program has many features such as a huge library that contains many 3D objects, the ability to add 3D objects from outside the library, adding sounds and videos to your projects. The most important feature is co-blocks that facilitates working with the program. The ease of using cospaces makes students more interested in using e with joy, excitement and suspense.


Welcome to the British Library and the big news here is that our epic new exhibition, Unfinished Business, The Fight for Women's Rights, is now open to the public. So if you live in London Town, what are you waiting for? Tonight though, we're online. I'm B Rollat of the Cultural Events team and we're bringing together both sides of the Atlantic to celebrate a new book. It's called Wake, The Hidden History of Women-led Slave Rebels by Dr Rebecca Hall and artist Hugo Martinez.  It's an extraordinary piece of work as you're about to hear, not only for the important story that it relates, but also for the story behind that and of what this cost Dr Hall to research and to write and to guide us through this double story. I'm delighted to welcome back a friend of the British Library, the renowned critic, playwright, broadcaster and a non-stop beacon of brightness, Bonnie Greer. Over to you, Bonnie. Thank you. Thank you, B. And it's really always great to be back at the British Library and thank you everybody for joining us. I just want to say that this is a great honor to be able to do this tonight, not only because it's the British Library, but because I did a podcast in 2019 called In Search of Black History for Audible UK. And one of the contributors was Dr Rebecca Hall whose book we're talking about and celebrating tonight, Wake, The Hidden History of Women-led Slave Rebels. I always show the book and the illustrator artist Hugo Martinez is with us as well. And I just want to say and I never say this, Rebecca changed my life. And so I'm sort of trembling in a way to do this and sure I will mess up in every capacity, but she changed my life and changed my thinking about Africa, about my ancestors who like hers were enslaved Africans and about the slave ships. And I do mean totally changes. So I want to just get right into this. I just want to also say Rebecca's at the Schaumburg in Harlem, the great library of African American history and research is the British Library of African America. And Hugo is in New Orleans where we all wish we was, except the hurricanes come. So anyway, this is the difference and the link that we're doing. So let's just get right to this. And Rebecca, you begin this book and I want to say that this book is your journey and becomes Hugo's journey as well as he takes on the job, the task, the work of rendering you and your feelings and what you see and your stories into visual. And I want to talk to him about that just a bit. But you begin this by saying I am an historian and I am haunted. What do you mean by that? Yeah. Well, yeah, like you said, you know, being the descendants of enslaved people. I have my paternal grandparents were actually born in slavery. My grandmother was born on a plantation in Missouri, and my grandfather was born on a plantation in Tennessee, both in 1860.  You know, it's kind of unusual to be, you know, my age, which is like 58 and have grandparents who were born enslaved. But the fact that it's possible should let people understand that we're talking about recent, recent history. And here, in the United States, like it's hard for me to speak about the UK in particular, but here in the United States, the whole country is haunted by the legacy of slavery and being in the wake of slavery and, you know, not having had any kind of truth and reconciliation or any kind of coming to terms with this history, you know, really kind of poisons this country in a lot of ways. You know, when you talk about the complications of it, you know, I always tell people never go on ancestry.com because it's just the worst. And I found out that one of my ancestors who was a man of African descent actually owned African people himself. So, you know, that's a whole other voyage down the horror, horror trail. Hugo, tell me about yourself because you're new for me. I know, I know a bit about Rebecca, tell me about yourself. You mute it. I had to unmute myself. There are texts coming by and I didn't want that to invade the sound. I was born in California to Nick Rogwin family, you know, part of what was really fascinating to me about this story is just, you know, I have had women in my life that were revolutionaries. And, you know, there is a kind of a kindred ship that I saw in this story with regards to that. And I would think about that family often when I read the script and read Rebecca's papers. And anyway, that's part of my passion for this book. But I grew up in California. I lived in Nashville, Tennessee for almost 20 years and then I moved to New Orleans about seven or eight years ago. And in that period of time, I guess I was always interested in telling stories visually. I did a graphic design for a while and that was some of what helped shape how I did things in this project. And then I delved into doing illustration, doing that just kind of on my own, a lot of like, a lot of independent publishing on my part of stories that I felt had resonance with resistance and with issues addressing a lot of the aggressive foreign policies that the U.S. has created. You know, this book, thank you for that, Hugo. This book, I forgot to also add that Rebecca is a lawyer and law is in my family. So I'm always interested in lawyer heads, you know, lawyer minds. Lawyer minds always fascinated me and fascinate me. And this book is got not only the dogged sort of intensity of an historian, it's got a lawyer's intensity. You have cases you want to examine. You're knocking on doors. You're going up and asking people, you know, what happened to this and the precision and the preciseness of your asking about these records really takes it out of the historian's quest into you're trying to, you have a case that you're trying to prove and you start off with being a lawyer and you start off with looking at how your African American women plaintiffs, the plaintiffs were treated in different cases. Can you tell us a tiny bit about that and how that sparked you to go back and get your PhD in another area? Yeah, so I practiced law for eight years in Oakland, California. I did, I worked with... You need to talk about Oakland because that's very special place to practice. Yeah, I moved there from New York because I went to Berkeley Law and I stayed there.  But I thought that there would be some sort of basic justice and, you know, I'd have cases where I'd have white plaintiffs and black plaintiffs and it'd be the exact same fact. And the black plaintiffs would get half the damages. And, you know, things like this where, you know, I would go into a courtroom and I would not be read as the attorney, I'd be read as like some criminal defendant.  And so I went back and did seven more years of postgraduate education to get this PhD. But Bonnie, if it's okay with you, I'd like to respond to what you were saying about building a case. You know, that's a historian's art as well. But I appreciate you sort of teasing out how the lawyer part, because it really is about interrogating these sources. You know, you know, if we want to talk just a little bit about the of slave ship revolts and women's involvement in that. Before you get there, because that's the creme de la creme of everything, that's really what changed me. And I want to get to that.  But they haven't got a lot of facts. You know, they have a lot of facts mixed with fantasy, mixed with people's ideas about things. And you've been very dogged about facts. You really want to know what are the facts, what really happened. And to go back to thinking about you in that lawyer head, I just loved you pursuing Dom Regina. Can you explain that? Because a lot of people don't know what that means and what it means in relation to not only our ancestors, but to the United States of America itself. Yeah. Well, okay. So I look the book opens. I look at two revolts that happened early in the 1700s when in New York City, when it was a colony of England. And the main, the primary sources I had were court records. Dom Regina, the queen, who at that point was Queen Anne, I believe. Yes. Her name is repeatedly invoked in legal documents, almost to create some kind of jurisdiction, some kind of power, you know, where the language becomes an instantiation of the power. And the crime against the state is the crime against the queen. And, you know, the crime of revolt. So there's an image in the book where, I don't know if folks can see this, where, you know, I'm looking through the documents and there's so much of the text is spent just talking about Dom Regina, you know, Defender of the Faith, you know, paragraph after paragraph about, you know, oh, and then so little, you know, actually to none of the voices of the enslaved people. And that tells us, and that's what was so moving to me, is that you're piling through these documents looking for human beings, looking for voices, and it becomes even more in the book so powerful. And Hugo's drawing of you like just, you know, fighting this through, that it best becomes very obvious that this is property people, we're talking about property and we talk. We talk a lot about, we use the term slaves as property.  And so she's executed.  So all of this sort of complexity starts to come in. As you explore slave revolts in New York City, mostly we think about slavery as happening and slave revolts as happening in the South, you're up north. Right. Or we don't think about slave revolts at all.  But yes, and that's one of the reasons why I focused my research on New York City, besides being a New Yorker, I'm from New York. But it's so important for people to understand that slavery was all over British America. And that slavery was also an urban phenomenon. It was a northern phenomenon. And that enslaved people were, they were a fifth of the population in the time period that I'm looking in the early 1700s. And they helped build this, this, this city. And it's, and it's, you know, it's the financial capital of the United States, you know, some are through the world. And, you know, it's important for people to understand the role of the enslaved in creating this city. How can you tell us one story about New York? Because that again, that really changed me a lot when I learned about these women and what they tried to do and what happened to them. In New York? Sure. There's a revolt that happened in, in 1712. And there are a few articles written about it, and there's a book chapter here and there written about it, that all describe the people involved as men. But what I found was correspondence with the colonial governor of New York to the privy council, describing the revolt and talking about a one woman who was pregnant, whose, whose execution was suspended because she was pregnant, because that baby belonged to somebody, right, its property. And I was like, well, if there was one woman, maybe there were more women. And I went to look at this at the court records. And yes, there were, there were more women involved in that revolt.  And they lit a building on fire. And as people, which was, you know, fire was a really big deal in that time period, you know, level an entire city.  And, and then they fled.   How did you draw these women? They have a very particular look.  So I, I think there was a combination of what's inside and then looking at reference as well. You know, there was a lot of reference that, that, you know, Rebecca sent to me of what the clothing in attire was for enslaved people of that time. And then I had to delve a little bit to like, to try to create variety within that or, or try to find different varieties of style because it wasn't all uniform. And we need that also to just depicted individuals. And so there was that. And then I tried to look at images of women from West Africa and try to just design characters that, that would fit the description of who, who they were in the story. Their faces, you go with what struck me what really is such a perfect kind of, it was, it's not illustration, it's a text itself. The, the women look like they're lit from within, almost as if they are lit. Like you put a fire or lamp inside of them, which I found incredible really. Because there are a lot of, I mean, I'm not, I'm not illustrating, how do I know, but I mean, there are a lot of ways you could, you could do a lot of stuff with this.  But you know, because I did, I just thought, I just want to read it. But what you've done is you haven't illustrated it. You added another layer to Rebecca's quest, her story, you even made her into this part of these women as well, because she does begin saying she's haunted. And she's haunted all the way through.  And knocking on doors and pursuing. And you create all of these women, especially with this light. Am I overstating that in a sense? Because I did do that. I mean, it's so flattering to hear that that's how they're perceived. I think they became characters internally, for sure.  And I, yeah, I think they had to have, you know, some kind of expression. And I think, you know, for me, I think that a lot of that comes through in their facial expression. And, and their, and their gesture. They're amazing. They're amazing. I want to say, yes, I just want to say about the title, because a lot of people are getting messed up over this, because you know, it's like over here, like it is in America. I don't even want to say the word, because I'm tired of saying it, because it's a beautiful word. Woke is a beautiful word. It's one of the, one of the signs of the underground railroad that people use, and it's just been debased. But this book is called Wake. And it is, and at first, before I understood Rebecca's explanation, I thought Wake was the wake of the slave ship. Oh, I mean, that's the thing. It has multiple balances, right? And also the wake of slavery. You say that in the wake of that. But for me, visually, I saw the wake of the slave ship, which is where I feel I live. Right. Wow, that's powerful. And that's, that's what we're trying to, to, to convey. So Wake has this multiple balances, right? It's the wake of the ship. It's living in the wake of slavery. A wake is a way to honor the dead. And so the book does all of, all of those things that was, was, you know, was the, was the goal. And can I just say one thing about graphic novels? Yes, ma'am. You know, I, I, I think that particular medium that, that allows for, you know, text, which is linear and then art, which is kind of all at once, lets you do things you can't do in other mediums. And some of the most powerful works like Mouse by Art Spiegelman or Holocaust. Yeah. I mean, and in order to tell these intertwined stories, right? Because I'm telling the stories of these women and revolt. And I'm telling the story of my researching the revolts. And I'm telling the story about living in the wake of slavery. This is a lot of intertwined things. And so, and the graphic novel medium is really important for that. There's, there's an image of me kind of almost like passed out in an archive and reaching for me. I think we have this image. But I mean, I'll just show it in the, in the book. Before this, there's a revolt on a slave ship and, you know, these women end up overboard. And and their hands sort of reach for me and in the archive and it and where, and I say I'm a historian and I'm haunted. And so this layer of past, present, and future, the graphic novel medium is perfect for doing that. Can you tell us, Rebecca, thank you for that. Can you tell us the story of the Negro thing? That's a very frustrating story. So I uncovered a revolt that that I had discovered myself that occurred in what's now Elmhurst Queens, but at the time was called Newtown. And it was led by a woman. The records are sparse. And there are big gaps but you know, we have correspondence from the colonial governor again to the privy council explaining what happened. There's newspaper articles. And they refer to the woman who read this revolt as the Negro fiend, or sometimes the Negro wench. And I was really wanting to find her name. And I thought if I could get hold of the court records, I could find her name. And there was a trial and she was found guilty and she was burned at the stake. And her name would have been documented in those court records, but I could not get access to those court records.   I don't know if it was in relation to the Negro fiend, but you just said at one point you were caught up in the historian's worst nightmare, which is what? It's just like trying to find, trying to put the story together. Trying to bring these people to life and just having huge pieces of the record missing. The records are missing for a lot of reasons, but if you're going to talk about enslaved women in the 1700s, there were very few records of them at all. They weren't considered something that you would even create a document about. And you know, what changed me before we talk about coming over to these shores, which was one of my favorites of your adventures.  I don't know who would play you. Maybe you should play yourself. It's just, it's amazing. What really changed me and really made me rethink Africa, maybe rethink black history, made me rethink black women in history and women in history period was when I was growing up in the 60s, you know, all these movies were coming out of our slave revolts on ships and it was all guys. So the women were like tied up underneath the boat and being very frail and frightened. And the men were up at the top fighting. Now, what you made me rethink is that's actually illogical. If you think about the fact that why would they want men unchained on the top of the ship when they were the strength? They were, I mean, you got these young guys, why would you want them unfettered?  And that's that whole idea of womanhood. What are they going to do? Right. So yeah, this is a really important part of the book and an important part of my research. And first of all, it's very important to understand that the slave trade, the British slave trade was a business. It was highly regulated. There were business practices. And in those documents exist. And historians, you know, once the internet was available, historians who studied slave, the slave trade, you know, some, some quantitative historians came together and created this incredible database that's free to access online, the Atlantic slave trade database with over 35,000 voyages of slave ships. And you can search that database. And the, you know, these historians searched it, and they found that there was a revolt on one in 10 of these ships, which was completely unexpected because slave ship revolts are mainly almost the kind of suicide. And then they compared the ships that had revolts with the ships that didn't have revolts. And the only difference they could find is that the more women there were on a ship, the more likely there would be a revolt. Let's freeze that for a minute. No, let's read that for a minute, because I want you to say that again, because that is the turnaround point for me. That was the icebreaker. That was the revolution. When you said that in your research talk with my for my podcast, can you just say that again, because people need to hear that is very important. Right. The more women there were on a ship, the more likely there would be a slave ship revolt. And these historians who did this research dismissed this as some kind of fluke because they they knew that women didn't weren't involved in this kind of activity. So when I came to England to research, you know, records about slave ship, which were captains logs and surgeons logs and all kinds of, you know, paperwork documenting slave ship voyages and slave ship revolt. Why are they documenting this? Because slave ships are insured. They're insured, you know, there's actually was an insurance provision that Lloyds of London and other, you know, slave ship insurers created that was called the insurrection of cargo. So if there was a revolt on your ship, you needed to turn in the documentation if you're going to get your insurance claim. No, no, no, no, this this this is what changed me to know this. I may name my production company insurrection cargo because of that. And the fact that the fact that Lloyds of London and this is what I try to say to people. When you're talking about tearing down statues, that's well and good. But you have to understand that every brick, waterfall, and the stuff under your feet is imperial and colonial, everything that this country was built on it, literally brick by brick by brick. And and Lloyds of London, uh, which came literally into being to ensure slave ships well against well partly their policy came into being. Yeah, I mean, they they were a very early maritime insurer and slave ships was a big part of that business.  I think in order to understand what's going on on these slave ships, it's really important to understand the business practices of the Royal African Company. And the way it was set up was that once a ship left the coast of Africa, before it left the coast, every enslaved person all the captives were below deck and chained. Once the ship left the coast, the women were unchained and brought on deck. And so when I kept reading these captain's logs and would read actually sort of, you know, detailed stories of revolts, there were things like everything from we had another revolt today, but we keep checking the men's chains. I don't understand how that's happening. I mean, there were no men who got free or or more specifically like the women got the men free of their chains or, you know, the women grabbed the weapons from the armory chest, which was also on deck, you know, and started this revolt. And there was a revolt on the ship, the unity. There were four revolts that happened on that one voyage. And there were women involved, you know, documented in the captain's log in all of them.  That's all. I mean, not trying to cause any problems.  And it's, it's, I mean, that's a movie in and of itself. I mean, I love when you went into the Africa gallery at the British Museum and called it a crime scene. And I thought, you know, that is really incredibly ironic because you've inspired me to actually go back to the British Museum and do my project there with the director of the British Museum. So, you know, we're in there and you're one of the genesis and he sends his greetings to you. You know, it's incredible. It's, so you walk through London, you know, with your same dogged, intense, scrutiny, and passion about trying to just find the story, trying to find the story as an historian, trying to find the story as a detective, trying to find the story as a lawyer, and trying to find the story as a descendant of enslaved people. And you talk a lot about what I feel about the duties of the ancestors, the ancestral duty. Can you talk us through that a bit? Yeah. I was at a protest, well, I was at a lot of protests last summer, and I saw this woman wearing a t-shirt, and I think I've seen these t-shirts in other pictures, but the t-shirt said something like, this isn't my, this isn't my ancestors uprising, you know, and, you know, the idea being that, you know, we are going to be more radical and confrontational than our ancestors who were not.  That is how we survived 400 years and thrived. And the part of the book that's about awake, about honoring the dead, you know, about us needing to have a memory that's longer than our lifespan, this is like a crucial part, you know, of this book. And there was an image, it was actually of a woman emerging from the water after she went overboard in the unity, and I actually had, I dreamed that. There it is, there it is. I dreamed that image. And I woke up and I called Hugo, and I was like, I had this dream, can you draw it? And he kept trying, like over, like he would put something, and I'm like, it's not quite it, it's not quite it. And then, like, you know, then he got it, he got it.  And I think it terrifies me a little bit, and I'm glad you brought up that march, and it's the terror of an elder. And at one point, you watched the gen, I watched generations now, young people, and, you know, I stand back, you know, because I know everybody's got to go through their own definition of the moment that they're in, and the historical moment that they end, that I took that moment in 68 when I was a teenager, and they're taking that moment now. But, you know, the fact that there's so, it's so ahistorical that it's shocking in a way. And you think, you know, how are we going to go forward if people don't know about the past, if they don't know that our whole history is resistance, our whole, our whole life is about resistance. I worked with Fred Hampton, the Black Panther Party, and you couldn't tell me 50 years ago that I would be talking about some of the things I'm talking about now. So it's, you know, the arc of history is, as Dr. King said, is a long one. And I feel one of the contributions that your book has made, and what, and your, and Hugo's work, is to remind people of the legacy of resistance. That's how we're here. That's how we're breathing.   This, this, and even, even, even, exactly, but even, even the people who played and gone with the wind, they were warrior women. They just took the money and took that thing. But I, I, you know, I want to, I love the fact that you made a book about warrior women, and you made a book about women being erased from history as a systemic, systematic part of what the historical record is, where historians would look at this, this, this information and go, no, it's women. I don't believe that I don't buy it. Or in my time, let's keep the women down, because we need to bring the brothers up a little bit more, because all this stuff is happening. And women still were sort of put in their, their body. That's not an or. That's the cause. What you're describing of, of, of, we've got to keep the women down and put the men up is why all of this historical work written about slave revolts, like this was the first generation of historians, you know, black men writing about revolt in the context of the late 60s and 70s, when all of the discourse was about how black people had dysfunctional gender roles and black women were emasculated. And so the, so the discourse back against it was this, no, black women are, are behind and quiet and et cetera, you know, and, and so these historians who are writing these history, this history in this time period are writing things like, of course, women weren't involved in this revolt, women in Africa were in a separate private sphere, like they were here. It's like, no, they weren't like, you don't know what you're talking about. You know, and, and, you know, there it's very developed martial tradition of women in Africa, you know, not in all nations by, by any means, but the homemade which you taught in Dahomey.   Dahomey is a very intense case because, you know, they were feeling an army of 10,000 women. That, that's something that, yeah, it's, it's, it's a unique case. Is it true that they, they were the women who wound up in Haiti and actually the French had to take them on?  Yeah, you know, so there, there's been some recent work done on that where, you know, a lot of the people who were sold as captives were war captives.   And then they would get to Cuba or Haiti or Jamaica or whatever. And, and yet you, there's definitely more, I mean, this is sort of beyond the Caribbean is beyond my, but there's been some interesting work done in that area. You know, one last observation before we go to questions if we have any. Your work, particularly about women on slave ships developed, helped me develop a theory that I'm working on at the British Museum and I call it Meta Africa. And to me, the user word diaspora is too dainty in a way.  It's too genteel. And, and for me, the fact that these were nations on these ships, these weren't just black people and they were anonymous. These were nations and they, some of them were enemies and they were on these ships together and they were starting to, they had to find a way to survive together. They had to find a language together. They had to find a way to be together and to survive. And it creates within all of us, I think, who are of African descent outside of Africa, this incredible I call crisis competence where we just, we survive, we make it, we know how to do that because we survive that passage. And I want to thank you for that because that, that really, that's the part that really, really changed my whole way of thinking.  I mean, that's my hometown. You did you?  Do you remember? Yeah, I remember this is a crazy, right? Okay. At the end of I think chapter six or chapter five, where, where your grandmother is moving to Chicago from Nebraska. Yes. Yes. Okay. Yeah. Sorry. I'm halfway through another book. This is a lot. You're right. Chicago is in this book. Thank you Hugo. I thought so. I thought it was going crazy. Right. Yeah. But I wanted to, I just wanted to respond just a little bit to what you were saying about Meda Africa. I think, you know, historians really, you know, are studying the Atlantic world, like understanding the relationship between Europe and all of its nations and Africa and all of its nations and the Americas. It's a very complex interwoven history that can't be broken down into what we see as nation states.  It's intriguing. And there's always more, always more to learn. And that's how, and uncover, and that's, that's the historian's craft, you know, the historian's craft is to uncover the history. And also to, to uncover the history, but also to tell the story in a way that you have to honor the story, which you do brilliantly, both of you, both of you. But also you leave the door open, which is what somebody like me, even though I read history at the undergraduate level, and have always been a student of history, you left the, you leave the door open for investigation, you leave the door open for adventure, and you leave the door open for, I'm going to use a baseball term, left field thinking in some kind of way. Because, because in a sense, we are all children of a kind of line about being, you know, the descendant of enslave. And some of those lines, some of that line is necessary to have in order for, I guess, the narrative to keep going. But there's so many, there's so much nuance. There's so much layer, there's so many layers. There's so much hidden history that I think would change the game if it came up. I mean, it's particularly about what women and the, and the role of women on those slave ships, I think would be a total revolution. It totally revolutionized me. Bonnie, get me into Lloyds of London. Get me into the archive, and we're, and we're going to uncover some more, more stories. We have to, because I think those stories and, and to look at the role of women in this whole story of enslavement is key. Rebecca, what was the hardest thing for you to do?  I think reading, reading so many slave ship captains logs when I was in London, like doing that, like seven, eight hours a day for, you know, two months.  I don't know if somebody can, can pull that up. But, you know, this is a diagram I think that people might be, you know, familiar with. But what people don't understand is that diagram that shows, I'm trying to find it in the book, that that shows, yeah, that shows, thank you. You know, the proper stowage of captives or cargo on a slave ship. Can you talk us through it, Rebecca? Can you talk us through it? Yeah, it is actually, you know, people think this was some kind of abolitionist document to show how horrible the slave trade was. But it was actually created by parliament to regulate and ameliorate the conditions on slave ships. And this was the law about how many captives you could put on a ship and how you could quote, store the cargo, you know, and then abolitionists took it up to show, you know, how, how, how horrible, how horrible that was.   So I, you know, I went over the images several times, and this one was particularly difficult to go through. I mean, there was a lot that was, that was very just impactful and hard to express. And that went in particular, you know, I read, you know, I read the book as a reader. And, and I, you know, I was hearing up, just, just looking at it. And the same went for when I was depicting that image. And just, you know, what you're saying about, about, oh, this is just the, this is what was intended to be the safer and better practices of, of, of using people as cargo. And seeing, I don't know, there was something about seeing what people were experiencing as they were treated as cargo. That just really was overwhelming for me to, to experience and, and, you know, looking at it and drawing it. I kept, you know, I don't know, I think this one took me a long time to, to. I was going to ask you about that. But you chose to do it. Yeah. Well, I asked him to do it. Right. Right. But, but he showed, but he did it, you know, he did it. And, and, and, and he went through that voyage. Hugo, do you have another image that you like to show us that, that tells us a bit about your process as well? Because I love the images you have of Rebecca, which I think are just amazing and captures her inner self as far as I understand that to be, but. They're, they're honestly a lot. You want to show the burial, the one, I think the last image. Yeah. So this is part of the, the valence of wake as an honoring the dead. Right. And so that's me in the, in the center.  And that was destroyed. Did that go at 911? Is that still there? No, no, no, no. And Hugo and I went to, it's now a national monument. Hugo and I went there and, you know, took photos and spent time. And, and I think that really informed, right, Hugo, the way that you, that you depicted that. And to be, and to be in the middle of that, to put her Hugo in that, in that image was kind of an expression of where or how you felt actually about her, Rebecca's, I guess I was going to say role, but her movement through this story, through history. I think, you know, we actually took a photograph of, of Rebecca where there's an installation at that museum where, where there are like figures standing around a burial site. And it's, it's really a really moving photograph that, that, you know, had to be captured in this book I felt. And, and, you know, Rebecca referenced it in the, in the script when she gave it to me. And, you know, I agreed that this, this was the image that, that really connects that, that image of the past and the present as, as coexisting. And so much about this book is about how the, the present has not left the past. And, and, and we need to, we need to reckon with it continually. And, and, and I think that image is one of those that, that really is able to capture that along with this, the, this, this loving connection that Rebecca has with, with all of these historical people that, that, you know, are, that she and other historians are trying to bring to bring back to life. Can we see one of her images of the one you got, you got several that are very striking of Rebecca, who's sort of standing in, it's not a void because there are things around, but her, her quest is evident. And, and, and that I've never seen that before in, in any kind of a book that's illustrated and the author's involved. I've never seen that kind of, I guess, nakedness in a way where she's standing and she's stuck. And she's also raging at the same time. And you draw her body and, and, and her head in a particular way. And she's looking almost at us saying, we have to do something here. But I don't even, but they're stopping me. But, but why, oh, you got one, you got one. But what, but while you're looking, I, I think I would like to say as we were wrapping up that and, and, and to show the drawing, show the image is that Rebecca, for me, you are role model because you got on this path by yourself. Now you have people, there are people on it, there are people who've done things before, there are people who are doing things. So you weren't alone in that sense. But you did get on that path from another space and you decided, as you said at the beginning of your book, I am haunted. And you followed that haunt. And I think it's an inspiration for anybody, particularly women of color, particularly black women, to start where you are, start where you are and do your work if you feel what your work is, do it. And there it is. That's that. And that, that's the one where he's standing there basically asking the question into the ethos, into history, into the void, into the future.  Where are the records? What's happening? What's happened? Why is this erasure? And you talk about erasure and I talk about erasure too. They're part of what's, what the intention of, of our, of historians in relation to us is erasure. The slavery was erasure as well. Yeah. I mean, this, this image here about being in the wake of the slave ship, where I say, you know, I was born to tell these stories. And I think, I mean, it kind of addresses what, what you were saying. I think a lot of the kind of haunting of history, we experience it like almost, you know, like I talked about in the book, like catching something out of the corner of your eye, but you can't quite see it. And in order to really be able to put it front and center, so you can see what's going on, you know, for me, that meant studying it. And staring it in the face as much as you, as much as you were able to do it.    And you guys recorded these basically guys saying, you know, I'll tell, I'll show you what I want to show you. Or I don't know what you're talking about. And their English is quite interesting. But do you have, you have, you have an image of one of these guys standing there.  These belong to us, not to you. And these records, you know, I will divulge what I want to divulge. Are you talking about the Lloyds of London experience? Yeah. Yeah, very, very frustrating experience. I tried to use all of my legal and historical skills to talk myself into this archive. And it didn't work. They don't let people in there who are studying slavery. They just don't. And I understand that they've hired an internal archivist to, to reckon with this legacy. And sorry for being, what's the word? There's a word. I don't believe them. I mean, I'm sure they're gonna, I'm sure they're gonna, you know, pull up a couple records and say, see, we, we, we dealt with this. But if they really want to reckon with the history of their involvement in the history of the slave trade, they should let in historians like myself. And, and I guess in a sense, one of my big arguments is that the thing with systemic racism and, and what's so dangerous about systemic racism and so elusive is that systemic racism can pass out a couple of ice cream cones and people think something has happened. And, and it hasn't because we haven't been able to burrow in to the structure, to look at the sinews, to look at the, the, the stuff that makes it what it is. And until we're able to do that, and our allies are able to do that, then the system just keeps perpetuating itself and perpetuating itself and becomes a different shape, a different color, a couple of people get more jobs with more wars, whatever. But the same structure. And that's what exactly, exactly, exactly, exactly. And you want to go into the structure. And that's the issue for them is the structure. Is there one more thing, is there anything that the two of you want to say before we wrap? Because this is, this is, this is a discussion that is the time we had is too short to actually go into everything. The forensic activity, the, the kind of thinking about it in the legal way, and also in the historical way, and also in a poetic way that both of you did in the pursuit. And that, that above all is the most important thing for me. This is the journey of also two artists. And they use their tools and everything that they have, they try to bring to the story of uncovering particularly the story of African women and enslaved African women, and our ancestry of revolt, resistance, and survival. I want to say that Hugo draws everything by hand, right? So all of that is like pencil and then pen. Yeah. You know, and he poured his all into that, into that work. I can tell. I can tell by the way I can tell by the strokes. You can feel it as well that it's like that. It's very, very sort of, that's what I meant by the manuscripts in the, in the. Right. And that's what, that's what Hugo was doing. I am, I'm, this is an honor to meet you and I know we're going to meet each other in person. And your inspiration for me, even though I'm in a place that you call the crime scene, you know, sometimes, sometimes yes, you know, but sometimes you got to be there, you know, and, and it's, it's, it's really important to, to be in places, I think, to engage with the people who are there who want to be there and who are doing the kind of work that we need.  Oh, this is interesting, because I know the people involved with the Reich Museum's big exhibit called slavery.  So we don't talk about other museums at, at one museum, but it's massive. And this person wanted to know, have you ever looked at Dutch slavery? That's our last question. Yeah. So my, you know, when you get a PhD in history, you have to specialize.  And I haven't spent, I've read books about it.  But it's not my area of expertise.  So I just want to say thank you personally for inspiring me as a black woman, as a writer, as a former deputy chair of this, this great museum to see its beauty and to find the things inside of it that I can work with. Thank you very, very much for that. And Hugo, you're, I, you know, you're incredible personal work and you can feel it when you, when you look at every page. It's personal. It's involved. It's deep. And you extend Rebecca's story beautifully.  I just urge everyone to get it. You will not look at black history again, in the same way, after you read it. And so I thank the British Library for this privilege of meeting one of my heroes. And thank you all for being with us tonight. Thank you, buddy. Thank you, Rebecca. Thank you, Hugo.


Oh I'm ready for the Instagram Twitter for juicy content It's called Jaffee Nahlou Yeah, close enough for hand grenades. Jaffee Ratanalu And then Jaffee Ratanalu Jaffee Ratanalu Translated Joules of the Nation is a 2021 Indian to legal language comedy drama film written and directed by Anu Deepkivi The film stars Navian Polisheri, Priya Darshi and Rahul Rami Krishna and Faria Abdullah While Morali Sharma, Brahmaanadam and Naresh play supporting roles the plot follows three Happy-go-lucky men who arrive in the city for a better life, but land up in jail for a crime. They didn't commit It's a Telugu film. All right as well. So Happy-go-lucky men Happy-go-lucky. It's a great term. What? He's a happy-go-lucky kind of guy I just think that means they're like Stupidly optimistic you would Yeah, I don't take it as an endearing term.    Just know that you wear that shirt. Here we go No French wine This is the first time I've seen a crime like this. What are you saying? This is the first time I've seen a crime like this. The best batch is our batch. The 2008 batch. What is the name of that station? I don't know. What? Do you think it's a police station? I don't know. What will our enemies do to us? The enemy of Ajat. You'll become friends. If you don't come near me like this, I'll beat you to death. Jyothi Ratnal. You have power. I have a brain. I don't have a brain? I don't have a power, sir. Is there anyone who can hurt you? Yes, we'll hurt you, sir. Take care of yourself. Our enemies are here. Let's go. We've tried some current comedies. I think we're getting better. I really do. Part of it, for example, part of it is older is more difficult, especially if it's not like just stupid, like some of the scenes we've seen.  I think a lot of people thought it was funny, and it wasn't very funny to us. True. But watching this, I noticed there's some things we've become acclimated to, we've gotten used to, that when we first started watching it, like when he said, you bloody idiots, certain vernacular in ways that they say things, that we thought were just... originally we were like, weird affectation, I don't know why you're saying it that way, and you realize that's just how they say that. You're used to it now. I think we're a bit more likely to appreciate the comedies now than ever before, but I agree. I don't think we're anywhere near yet fully grasping them. It's a gamble when we watch a comedy, that's for sure. And maybe one day we'll watch some more Masala films. Apparently we've watched a couple, but I don't think... because some people said Sholay was a Masala film. Some people said Three Idiots was a Masala film. And then War is a Masala film. And so I'm like... Pink, love. So essentially what they say it means, I mean that for sure, is like it's a mix of genres, is what they say. That's my understanding, but that's a lot of Indian film that we've seen, that I don't consider Masala. I thought it was more like, it's fun, but it's like leave your brain at home, kind of, right. So I think War, except for, I think most Masalas are supposed to be humorous and light hearted, and now it's taking itself very seriously. Right, but if you're talking about it being a mix of genres, War doesn't fit that criteria, because War kind of stuck to an action film. But it has big dance numbers, I guess. But I think most Indian films that aren't artsy are like it goes from like Cumbulonji Nights, where you're watching this film, spoiler alert, and then it goes off the rails. It changes genre, you know, big way. But that's only toward the, yeah, trying not to spoil it for those of you who haven't seen it. So I honestly, I still don't feel safe saying or knowing what a Masala film is. I'm not saying that this one is. This is just a comedy. Maybe there's not like a strict definition. I will say this. I'm a little hesitant to watch a comedy that's got a two and a half hour run time. Is it two and a half hours? No, I understand kind of normative. You got to have an interval. I get it. But... I don't remember the run time. If it was two and a half hours, then rock on. English, English, because I consider that a wrong calm. Yeah. Daily Belly is probably by far the best one we like the most in terms of comedy. Yeah. That's definitely the one we... a pretty good run time. What else we've seen of comedies? Badajo, but that wasn't as funny as... I consider Stria comedy. A dark comedy. Yeah, no. Daily Belly was under two hours. An hour forty-three. Well, this looks good though. So if it's out, let us know how it is. Is it a comedy that we could wrap our heads around if you've seen it, you know. Where does that phrase come from? Wrap your head around it.  Obviously, it's not physically clear. I think it's more like your mind. You can't wrap your mind around anything either. Well, you could. You can touch your mind. You couldn't. You shouldn't. You can touch your mind. You can drill a hole in your... So you think the mind and the brain are... We're getting now metaphysical. The mind and the brain are just completely... Well, the head and separable. The mind and the brain as well.  Anyways, let us know how this film is. What should be the next two? It's only going to be... Mhmmm Mhmmm Mhmmm Mhmmm Mhmmm Just a 2. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.