And welcome everyone to another episode of We Are Being Transformed. Contrary to popular opinion, this is not a Transformers podcast, so I am sorry to inform here there will be no Rodimus Prime unboxings here, however we do talk here about the intersection and exchange of ideas of people with their culture, their myth, and their lore. And joining us today is a figure who needs no introduction, but in case you're not familiar, Garrett Ryan has a YouTube channel called told in stone. And this is one of the best examples of forward-facing scholarship I can think of. He releases weekly videos, discussing a myriad of topics from the daily life of Greeks and Romans and antiquity. So Garrett, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for having me, it's a real pleasure. The honor is all mine. So Garrett, I thought I'd start with just a little bit of my own estimation of how sometimes we tend to, when we study history, we get preoccupied with the macro aspects, like Julius Caesar was assassinated on this day, the Roman Empire fell on this day in 476, etc. We get preoccupied with these things and sometimes neglect the everyday aspect of the people on the ground.  In it, you have tons of sketches and anecdotes about the day-to-day life of the people of antiquity. So I didn't know if you had any further thoughts on this and wanted to elaborate on why you approached the book this way. Oh, sure. I mean, as a scholar, so I was trained as a historian, an ancient historian, before I left and went off into the weird and wild world of YouTube. And we're going to do the same thing, you know, we always tend to focus on, you know, these famous events, famous people, you know, big history, which is a great thing in many ways. It answers questions we couldn't answer otherwise. And it gets students in the doors, frankly, for our survey classes.   And so at Toldenstone, my goal was to try to capture some of that granularity, you know, these details that make antiquity more than just a register of great names and famous dates. And in my book, I try to do the same thing. It was just answers 36 questions I was asked by students mostly in my various courses about everything, you know, from, you know, did they wear underwear, you know, these kind of seemingly strange questions that get you at, you know, everything from, you know, what clothing did and what it was meant to present in antiquity to kind of these grander things like do they believe their myths, which again gets us into these, you know, very far-reaching questions about ancient religion and which is practice, but not really asked typically in, you know, survey courses. So that's my hope, both what I do on YouTube and what I do as an author is to try to make, you know, the, the vividness, the reality of antiquity a little more real. Well said. Thank you for that answer. So like I was saying in the in the book, you have these amazing, like sometimes very insane anecdotes in the footnotes. One of my favorites is about Alexander the Great's body. You talk about Augustus, he's going to pay reverence, right? And it's almost like a scene out of like a Judd Apatow movie. Like he's going in there and he's going to like plant this kiss and pay reverence and OBS sense to the body.  It's like that's one of my like favorites. It's very, a very surreal scene, like I'm on sketch. So I didn't know if you could talk about maybe one or two of your favorite anecdotes you have in the book. Sure. Yeah. I mean, Alexander's body is a great one.   But right, you know, the body of Alexander is this wonderful example of a very famous artifact, essentially, you know, this mummified corpse of the great conqueror that is revered as by Augustus, you know, throughout the classic worlds, but experiences some thoroughly ridiculous side quests along its journey to oblivion at the hands of an earthquake or tsunami and late antiquity. You know, even before Augustus had his little, you know, incident with the nose, the body was hijacked at one point. It was not its way to Macedon when the Ptolemy shows up with a whole troop of horsemen says, no, you're going to Egypt now. So they turn the mules around and off it goes. It's put in storage for a while for like 15 years. But they're trying to build this giant tomb. Then, you know, the one of the later efforts to side of one of the later talamis decides that the coffin is worth so much, he just has to have it. So they pop the body out of the coffin, like, you know, pop it against a wall, I assume, melt the coffin down, but a new coffin in. So it really did a caracala, supposedly tried to pretty much caress the thing.  And it's a wonderful set of stories. But what my favorite part about writing naked statues. So each question, the answer rather is going to be pretty self-contained. It's usually two to three pages or rather two to five pages, you know, a couple of thousand words. And that's to be pretty coherent and pretty fast moving. But I would stumble upon all of these wonderful asides, things like Alexander's body and its, you know, misadventures. And to incorporate those into what I was saying. And I would put these footnotes on the page. And usually footnotes, you know, people are soured on footnotes by them usually being lists of authorities.  So just even in the first the first chapter of Naked Statues, which is about the recent Romans wear pants, trousers. And I talk about how that came about basically through soldiers who were on the station in the northern frontier, getting awfully frostbitten in their tunics and meaning to wear first kind of these knee britches and later on actual full blown pants. We have things from, oh, boy, like a few emperors, you know, shocked the world by wearing pants kind of prematurely. It was a fashion statement that no one was ready for. Nero, at one point, presided over a sting for purple dye in the form of the forms of Rome. So you want to see that Mr. Nome was wearing his shade of purple, the imperial purple. Another footnotes about how pants were outlawed in Rome twice, actually three times, they had to keep banning pants from Rome, because they were so unseemly, so barbaric.  You'd hang it from your belt or from your neck, how often in Greece, especially people would carry coins in their mouth, which are called other mishaps, as you might imagine. So things like that, you know, these little nuggets of information that I would stumble upon when I was reading, I think makes the text, the experience of the text so much richer. I really hate the fact that in the audio book, people don't have access to that. So I was encouraged people to read the book, you know, in print, if they can, just to get the footnotes. Right, I have it on Kindle, I have it on my Kindle. And I just kind of, I always love to go through through those anecdotes. Oh, yeah. You can read about that. You're going to click on the note. Yeah, you just click on the note and hyper hyperlinks everything. Oh, but yeah, it's just yeah, they were really weird about that purple dye, weren't they? Yeah, they made laws later on about it. Nobody could manufacture it. It became almost like a cartel racket for the very much. So yeah, for the empire. And again, you were talking about the body of Alexander. That went through a lot of very interesting weekend at Bernie's situation. Very much so, yes. But the sunglasses pretty much. Yeah, exactly. It was almost like it was like a totem. It was like a like almost like you would think about like the body of a saint or a martyr before the concept. I mean, the concept existed in hero cults. But yeah, his body was very much like a totem for a lot of these emperors and groups. Well, just to break in there very quickly. So people would wear medallions with his face on them to ward off illnesses. They deal with this great conqueror, a kind of apotropaic function that he had been such a successful person that by extension, something of that would imbue an image of him, that wearing it gave you this this invulnerability. And one theory about what happened to his body, actually, is that it was literally pulled apart by relic seekers.  At some point, the casket was cracked open. And if it wasn't spirited away, which is, you know, the folks have very several madcap theories. It was quite likely pulled apart. People took little bits of Alexander as a talisman, very much like a saint's body would be, you know, a century later where it became so you have in the church. It's imbued some way. Some extension of that person's holiness for a saint or greatness for Alexander could become yours. If you had your possession, I don't know, a bit of his fingertip or something. Yeah, very, very Greek, magical papyri. Oh, yeah, the same era, of course, that those are being written as when this is happening. Absolutely. And just one more thing before I get on to my next question, but you mentioned it briefly, but pants, people, we don't think we don't think about this, but pants were considered a feminine and barbaric for a lot of the time. Back then, like, you know, we don't wear pants, like those those purgants wear the pants. Right. Look at things like the Sabbath, the Sabbath day on all these depictions of imperial victories and all the all the barbarians, quote, unquote, who are subjugated. All the mills are wearing the pants, like, quote, unquote, sissies. So yeah, it's a very, very strange kind of thought world. Yeah, for instance, so internalized that pants are, you know, if anything, a masculine article of clothing, or at least were until a generation ago. And right, yeah, for the Romans, that it was it was other, you know, was something that we don't do, but those people north or east to do it. And so that that, you know, made a whole thing taboo. Yeah, just hilarious stuff. It's like just as a history major, that was always one of the things that really grabbed me, like when I was studying this stuff. What I wanted to talk about briefly was something that you touch on your channel a lot, which is numismatics. So you talk a lot about coins and maybe people who are more focused, maybe like people like me nowadays who are interested, laypeople who focus more on the text, we don't understand the full importance of numismatic, numismatic evidence for the historian of antiquity. So I didn't know if you could briefly touch upon the importance of numismatics. Sure. You know, and that's true among historians, too. You know, all too often we are, you know, texts become almost a sort of cult because, of course, that they are the most important aspect of our evidence for antiquity. It's only through them we access the thought world of antiquity. But, you know, all too often our training as an historian is like when I was going through my doctoral program, everything I did was texts, even though, you know, my dissertation had been very heavily archaeological in various respects. You know, I received no training on how to deal with that evidence. And even people who do do archaeologists tend to leave numismatics aside in its own weird little sub-discipline, where, you know, these people, you know, study the coins as artifacts and as products of antiquity, but it's almost banished to the field of our history or something that's just not quite classical enough. And that's ridiculous because, you know, for many aspects of ancient history, coins are the most important category of evidence we have. So I can give you a few examples. So Bactria, the famous Greek kingdom in Central Asia and based on what's now Afghanistan and the other stans north of the Tejikistan, Uzbekistan. So that we have only a few texts that record what happened in Bactria because it was so far removed from the Mediterranean.  And that's it. But we have these glorious series of coins, silver coins, admitted by the Bactrian kings, which tell us both who those kings were. And a great deal about how they wanted to project themselves, you know, so they wanted to be warriors. We have them, you know, on horseback spearing, you know, these nomadic horsemen. We have them, you know, as as Hellenes, all the legends are, of course, in Greek, despite their subjects for mostly Persian speakers. And then later on, when they spend it into India, we have these fascinating examples of cultural fusion, where one side of the coin might be in Greek. The other side will be in Sanskrit, or in some language derived from Sanskrit, or it might have a Buddhist image on it. And so for Greeks in the East, coins are absolutely crucial for understanding how these kingdoms functioned, what their cultural policies were, who they wanted to be, essentially. In the Mediterranean worlds, where we know more from texts, we still know quite a bit from coins. Things like the Great Inflation Crisis of the third century in the Roman Empire, we can track the declining silver content of the Denarius and the Antoninianus, and that tells us exactly how bad the crisis was, how much silver is in the coins. Look at their legends, you know, what they're putting on the coins. And again, that's the most important propaganda the emperors had was their coinage, you know, nine-tenths of the population is illiterate. They're not reading Virgil, they're not reading Horus, but they're using coins.  The legends themselves are important too, but even as having the goddess or that abstraction or the emperor being crowned by victory is our most important window, in many ways, into imperial iconography.  And we know actually about a half dozen emperors only from coins, they're not recorded in any text.  So coins should be used alongside texts and alongside archaeology for a full picture of antiquity. And it's too bad that very often we neglect that. Well said. I was in a discussion with Dr. Edward Watts the other day and we were talking about not just the numismatic aspect, but inscriptions, things like monuments. These are, and yeah, like you were saying, in a population that's majority illiterate, these are functioning as divine text as well. These are projecting not just propaganda, but like the divine ordainment and provenance of Rome's rule, right? So they should be taken an equal measure. And this is something that's also being recognized increasingly in New Testament scholarship. There was a scholar named Davina Lopez who took Paul's letters and she intersected those with the iconography of things like the Sabbath stand and these depictions of the barbarian other as subjugated females, you know, and the sexual violence inherent in the Roman founding myths. And she said the same kind of thing, you know, we need more art historians and more people who focus on archaeology to intersect with history and New Testament studies to give a fuller picture because these are functioning just as much these monuments and these coins are functioning just as much as texts as the written word itself. So yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I mean, my own dissertation and my first book actually was just about that. You know, I talked about how Roman governors, you know, their chief duty was trying cases was being the most important judge in a given province. And so they would travel from city to city. It was called Conventus. It was their asizes pretty much. They were circuit judges and so they would ride their circuit over the course of a year going to city to city spend a couple of weeks in each city trying cases in the most important place in town, typically either in the forum, or in the Basilica or by a temple beside it. And my entire project, my dissertation was about how these spaces in which they tried cases were part of a dialogue between Roman imperial power and provincial elites and that they were in many ways talking through these landscapes surrounding them, the statues, the inscriptions, the great colonnaded facades.  But the space can say that. And when it comes to religion, of course, right? The, you know, the medium is the message, right? In a lot of ways. And that's true of a temple as well. There's a reason that it's so conservative which is architecture. That they use the same kind of assads for millennium after, you know, there's all kinds of innovative ways to use concrete to do crazy interior spaces because, you know, that's kind of assad connotes a millennium of tradition. You know, that's how the gods have to be addressed architecturally. And that's also, of course, by rituals or so conservative because if it's worked once, well, why wouldn't it keep working? And yeah, it is fascinating. And I would love to see much more cross-palonization between archaeology and classical philology. But, you know, it's not, it's hard to do well. And I believe that I left academia speaks to how it's not terribly sellable either sometimes. But yeah, no, no. So in other words, full agreement with everything you just said. Absolutely. Thank you for that. So I think my next question is a little bit might be loaded, but let's go for it. This question sounds simple, but actually it's much more multifaceted than at first glance. So it's gonna touch upon the myth concepts and Greco-Roman society. So mythos and lore are an integral part, not just of the everyday life, but of Pidea. Intellectually leads like cornutus paving the way for allegorhesis.  But, you know, at the end of the day, did the Greeks and Romans believe these myths? Yeah, although that's, it's a chapter of naked statues. And as I'm sure you know from looking at that, there's obviously no single or simple answer to that. You're right to say that the myths were always important to how the Greeks and Romans saw themselves, that they could never jettison the myths until they became Christian. And even then they retained the myths as a sort of cultural knowledge. You know, the question of course is whether, for the elite especially, if they had always been a sort of cultural knowledge only, or if this is part of how they understood the gods. And of course, this changed over time. So the beginning for the era of Homer, which is our first real window into the classical world. So this is the eighth century BC. You know, Homer and Hesiod, we assume that the myths are being taken, if not necessarily literally seriously in this period, that this is part of how you know the gods. It's also very clear from the very beginning though, that there's no single set of myths. You know, Homer and Hesiod become the canon in a lot of ways. Their texts become part of Pidea, become part of education, and become for Greek children for the next 1,000 years and more, their first induction to the gods, or at least, you know, their first system egg introduction to the gods. But always there's this uncontrolled, incredibly diverse galaxy of local cults, each of which presents its own interpretation of the gods through practice, through cults, and through a dazzling array of local myths. And only those local myths that are taken up into the texts become iconic, become canonical. Whether those are taken more seriously than local cults by some of the lives in Thebes, or in Asparta, or in Athens, it's kind of hard for us to grasp, because what we have are these very intellectualized texts, often they're philosophical, when they discuss the gods, or they're historical. And so it's, religion becomes tangential to them, or at least becomes, it's talked about in a very stylized way that divorces it from lived experience. And so, you know, we have, in other words, what the elite is saying to other members of the elite about the gods in these very particular contexts, these certain generic contexts. So if you're Plato, for example, you're talking about how the myths are harmful because they're part of the gods in negative light, which tells us two interesting things that Plato both believes in the gods very seriously, and that he thinks that's not crazy iconoclastic to say that you can disbelieve the myths. You know, and he's part of this, or coming at the end of this couple of generations of ferment in Athens, the Sophists, you know, who call the question traditional religion and seem to in some ways leave a lasting legacy in Greek intellectual tradition, mainly through Plato and his answers to the Sophists. But I guess all we can say is that from the time of Plato, from the 53 BC onward, for the Greek and Roman elite, it's okay and in some ways expected to disbelieve the myths, or at least to think that they are allegories, that they are not necessarily, for instance, the gods, you know, raping nymphs or doing other, you know, morally reprehensible things, that they are in some way, at best at least, a way of perceiving that God's fear of influence and influence on moral affairs. And at worst, they should be just entirely, they're just, you know, ancient superstition, the gods exist, but they're nothing like their myths and it's all there is to it. And so it seems that, again, for the elite, a lot dependent on which philosophical tradition you subscribed to. If you were a Stoic, you were much more likely to take the allegorical route, to do often write very slap-dash allegories, you know, where, you know, a famous one, the God Ares sounds kind of like the Greek word for harm, so therefore, you know, is the principle of harming, you know, philosophize for 10 pages thereafter. It very much seems that, you know, the Stoics want to have a cake and eat it too, keep the myths, but also say, no, they're just allegories. The Epicureans famously said that the gods, if they exist at all, are divorced from mankind and the myths, therefore, have no meaning for us, say best stories. Platonists, you know, again, later on the, we tend to think of them kind of through the Neo-Platonists, you know, the Imperial Platonists, who tended to keep the myths, but allegorize the absolute hell out of them. And so they're almost unrecognizable. The gods become these higher demons who stand between mankind and the one supreme God. And so in other words, for intellectuals, there's a dazzling array of approaches you can take to the bits, where you both know them, because you know them through the text, you have to know, as an educated Greek or Roman, you have to know Homer, you have to know Virgil, and to know them is to know the gods. But at the same time, they're not necessarily something you believe. For the vast majority of the population that's not writing philosophical texts, we really don't know.  Does that mean they believe the myths as well?  You know, we don't actually know in most cases, you know, the fact that we have things like votive offerings, where you dedicate, you know, a small statuette or some other, an altar base to a god. Yeah, they believe in the gods, it seems. Most people did or we assume they did, but you know, how much the myths were part of how they understood those gods. You know, again, we throw up our hands as historians because all we have, you know, are the texts which are opaque, the inscriptions, which tell us only this act was transacted between worshipper and god and archeology, which is susceptible to a huge range of interpretations. So, yeah, probably. Yeah, we'll probably never really know. No, that's the thing, you know, what we have to often say as historians of antiquity is, okay, thus far, no further.  Yeah, absolutely. I think one thing that I've kind of come out of these interviews so far, thinking as that, we really need to read texts like Plutarch hand-in-hand with the technological Greek magical papyri, because the Greek magical papyri really shows what people on the ground were doing when they're consulting these ritual specialists. And I mean, we can't always pause it like you were saying, whether they believe it or not, but obviously they're interacting in a transactional sense with these deities and daimons. So fascinating, thank you for that. This is a content creator on YouTube. Is it sometimes, you almost feel like Sisyphus pushing the boulder up the hill, eternally to bring the academic content to the masses, and it's such an accessible, but also scholarly way that you do, especially what you do, which I find very admirable, that you do it in six to 10 minute video segments, which is, you know, like people don't realize how hard it is to succinctly digest the stuff into palatable kind of bits for people to understand and also do it in an entertaining way, which you do very well. So I wanna commend you for that. So I think as a content creator, you're dealing with, for lack of a better term, conspiracy theories, right? Especially on YouTube and TikTok, you have everything from the Roman Empire never existed to, you know, Jesus never existed. So I just thought, I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about your experiences as a content creator, and if you have some crazy encounters that you've experienced in your journey so far. Oh yes. Well, let's lead off with the first question. Yes, Sisyphean is an apt adjective sometimes, because it's not so much that the writing is quick enough. You know, that's something you kind of get into the habit of is writing these kind of succinct scripts. And the visuals, I work with a video editor now, who takes a lot of that part off my back, which is great.  And it can be exhausting when, especially I'm doing something else, which I almost always am. You know, I'm writing a book.  And when you're not treating it like a full-time job that it is, it can quickly pile up and just bury you. And so yeah, like anybody, I think like most content creators, you kind of live in this love-hate relationship with your medium, where, you know, YouTube makes so many things possible for me. It allows me to do what I love outside of academia, which I would not be able to otherwise, because you know, people don't buy enough books, frankly. But at the same time, the nature of the medium, right, exposes, makes you present that material and what feels like, you know, kind of a slap-dash way. It feels minimalist. It feels irresponsible sometimes. You know, dealing with, right, these absurd conspiracy theories sometimes. But my favorite one is the mud-flood. I don't know if you've encountered this before. It's the idea that somehow, for reasons completely unknown to the people who subscribe to this too, about a century ago, the world was submerged by a biblical-style flood that covered everything in, you know, like 30 feet of well mud. And that is the greatest continuity in history. And so everything you think is into history is actually a lie. It's much more recent. I don't know where this comes from, but I did a video once about how why Rome was buried, you know, how it was buried by its own debris, essentially. And a lot of mud-flooders came up in the comments. I also got an email from somebody who was absolutely convinced that Jesus was crucified in the Coliseum. Don't know how they came to that particular conclusion, but it wasn't built yet for one thing when that happened. But yeah, they sent some very long emails to me on that subject to which, you know, I pointedly did not reply, but well. Someone helped me find a lost mind at one point. That was fun. So you end up with, yeah, being a public-facing historian can be a wonderful thing, but sometimes, right, you know, that the public you're facing is a public you're not expecting. It's sort of that way. Right. Unfortunately, it seems like it's easier to be Graham Hancock these days than to be Karen Ryan. Yeah, that's right. Both in terms of views and in terms of, I guess, monetary rewards. But that's another subject. Let's move on. So as you mentioned before, you are working on a new book. Is it a sequel to Naked Statues? Or is it something different? I didn't know if you could tell us anything about it at this stage. Sure. Yeah, no, I'm doing the grand announcement in probably about a month and a half when the page proofs are done. I can, you know, send to you a more full picture of the book. But yeah, I'm done with it now. I finished writing about a month ago. I finished proofing everything about two weeks ago. It is a sequel to Naked Statues, called the same vein as Naked Statues, insane emperors, sunken cities, and earthquake machines. And before you ask, the earthquake machine was an early steam engine that I'm talking about. And so, yeah, it's the same deal. And it answers 40 questions about the recent developments in that short kind of pithy style that I tried to use Naked Statues. Many of the answers this time began actually from something I was doing for YouTube and they're kind of extended versions of a video script where it's like the real answer, you know, in depth with the footnotes and everything. And it almost killed me, frankly, to finish the book while I was doing all my YouTube stuff because I had essentially conjured up from nothing in the course of about two months, which was a lot. But it's done now. We'll be out in the world October 1st and I'm thrilled to see it, you know, finally approaching the light. You know, it really is, yeah, if you enjoyed Naked Statues, you'll enjoy this book too, I sure hope so. And it's been, it's always a pleasure, you know, for me writing scripts for YouTube, you know, I really see myself as an author, first and foremost.  It's a visual medium, it's the nature of the beast, so be it.  And so, yeah, I enjoyed the process despite the exhaustion of writing the book and looking forward very much to announcing its launch on Toad and Stone in about a month and a half. Yeah, so very much looking forward to that Love Naked Statues. And I definitely wanna hear about this earthquake machine. Sounds fantastic. So Garrett, I think this is gonna be a super complicated question. So feel free to skip it if you need, but I think it's the most important. Why didn't Romans use their aqueducts as water slides? You know, I feel like the Empire would never have fallen if they had discovered that last key component, you know, to classical civilization. One of my favorite videos ever, of course, was on this very topic. And it was asked on Reddit actually initially. I used to be very active on Ask Historians on Reddit and someone asked this question and I loved they asked this question and so I just went full bore on it. The short answer is that there was usually no gradient in aqueducts, you know, a very slight gradient. You know, so if you're building an aqueduct, you know, your goal is to economize on material. And so you wanna keep your source as low as possible.  Or if you do have a lot of gradient, you wanna bring it down right away and then have a decline very, go very slowly going towards the city. Also, there's too much gradient. It'll, the water will road the channel on the inside, the mortar in the inside, so you have, you know, water coming out, you know, from the side of the aqueduct. So most Roman aqueducts only go down a foot or two every mile. So you really can't slide very well. You get in maybe like a slip and slide deal, but you know, it wouldn't be very satisfying. There were, however, I discovered things called aqueduct cascades. So when there was a spring located, say high up on a slope, and they wanted to bring it down to the level of the plane and have that channel going out towards the city, they would bring it down very rapidly through a series of often open slide-like channels with water coming down. So there you could have slid, but if you had slid, you would have gone into this dark channel that was never accessed and probably would have died down there. Often they weren't very deep. Typically you're talking about a foot at most of water with kind of a slow flow. You know, they were cleaned out pretty routinely, so they weren't too slippery either. And of course, they're dark. You know, the channel is normally about wide and tall enough for a man to walk down for the maintenance people to scrape out, you know, in crustaceans and stuff. So you could do it theoretically, but it wouldn't be very comfortable you're scraping the walls on both sides. And of course, ultimately they didn't do it because it's their water supply. They didn't want people playing around in their drinking water. Nero famously took a bath in one of Rome's main springs and there was an outbreak of disease right afterward. People blended on Nero, taking a bath in the springs, you know, where they had the aqueducts coming down from. So long and short of it is they could have done it in the Cascades at least, but alas, we have no record of it being done. Yeah, it seems like a missed opportunity. I can really see like, Commodus or Julian really putting on their floaties and stuff. Right, right. And down those. Perhaps we should learn from their mistakes and invest in that. And actually that there is, I discovered in Florida a resort that tried to recreate parts of Pompeii and then have a water slide go down through it. And I tried hard to get them to sponsor my aqueduct water slide video.  But a really experience of water slide. Alas, they weren't cool. That would have been the most epic thing ever. And yeah, that's one of my favorite videos of yours too. There are so many great videos. And I just wanna thank you again for all your hard work in bringing these stories and, you know, the people who live them to life. It really is a service to, you know, interested laypeople like myself to otherwise, even when I was in college, I didn't hear about a lot of these things unless I did independent study. So yeah, I just wanna thank you again for that. So Garrett, you have obviously told in stone, you have told in stone foot notes, your podcast. Just feel free to take this time to plug whatever work and people find you, you know, the floor is yours. Well, thank you. And let me say it has been a pleasure to talk to you as well, you know, because the really, the best thing about being a kind of creator on the internet is that you get to meet, you know, virtually at least thousands of people who love the same things you do. And that's the most rewarding part of what I do on told in stone. So yeah, so I have my YouTube channel told in stone. I have actually two other YouTube channels as well. One told in stone foot notes for the podcast and other live stuff. One called Sneakroots to the Past, which is for my travel content. But of course, my baby, the thing that I'm most keen to publicize is the upcoming book, which is titled in Stain Emperors, Sunken Cities, and Earthquake Machines, published in October 1st, available for pre-order now. And if you go to my website, toldinstone.com, you'll see a link to buy it there, or some Amazon as well. But that's the thing, of course, that as an author, I love that people read that books. I think if you love antiquity, there's a lot of stuff that you'll find fascinating there. I sure hope so. Gareth, this has been an absolute pleasure and honor. Thank you very much. We hope to speak to you again soon, and best of luck. I appreciate you, Jason. Have a great time.


Everybody forced here being 22 23 prison basketball hobby 12 bucks full case number nine. It's here random team style Find the random results anytime late sports cards calm. Let's go ahead and get started Smack what's up, man? What is up smack? Let's do that backwards wash first Kyle's trying to give me to buy some Xander on eBay. No, it's like one one from triple threads like triple patch Ruby wave deer and Fox Kings Silver Scotty Barnes Raptors Soha and Wendell Moore What's up to smack? We working right now the workday. Oh, we got a black and gold three of five black and gold rookie Mavericks Jaden Hardy Yeah, but that would do. Yeah, I Mean to get this dusted off though, dude, Jake is laughing at something. I Don't know what he's laughing at man. I'm laughing good joys like joy I He's laughing at me. Yeah, I was uh, I got two packs in. All right, silver. How many are the yellow pistons? Malachi brand. I'm like, I can't Keegan Murray. Oh my god We've had some big cards tonight blue Montage LB to 199 spurs Redemption AJ Griffin rookie signatures Hawks pulsar kid cutting him pistons Eason well We're gonna keep pulling heat y'all may as well get some mixture spots he as well Sunday fund a 25 boxes silver fireworks into the Edwards T-Wolves Silver dirt in a vitsky Mavericks Ruby wave Rudy Gay Jazz Hyper Liddell rookie for the pelicans J-Dub Yeah, it's been pretty good smack. It's been pretty good Trying to fill up a football mixer keep pulling some heat silver widescreen Steph Curry warriors Silver rookie Tyree smarten for the Hawks Orange wave down of a Mitchell calves number to 60 His Mitchell 39 is 60 silver porzingus wizards Johnny Davis Yeah, Bruins one today, so I'm having a good day Red Malik Beasley jazz number to 299 with a Magic mojo rookie Otto Caleb Houston to 25 That's magic nice hit 2025 Caleb Houston hyper go barrett T Wolves Yeah, that was a palo. We would uh We dancing Dancing gently come play Purple eyes Hachimore to 149 wizards Pulsar Trey young Hawks Do I'm gonna do a wake-up call prank on Sean when we're in Boca have the hotel Call his room at like 5 a.m. Blue ice garrison Matthews Rockets to 125 He'd be like dude, can you believe what like what dude silver LeBron James Lakers? We're gonna hotel called me a I don't need to do that anymore. They probably make sure it's from the same room Ruby wave Dominique Wilkins for the Hawks hyper Hayward Hornets. All right Well, that was a very good first box. You can tell the hotel to call you to wake you up Yeah, like we go Paul Yeah, it's gonna service every hotel offers. It's more of a yeah, it's more of a Jigs jigs too young to remember Every time we're at a hotel the way to get around my dad would my dad would do like a wake-up call They'll call your room at like a certain time Purple ice pj Tucker Sixers to 149 Johnny Juzang jazz base auto base rookie Otto hyper Novitsky Mavericks Watts in there Silver fireworks James Harden for the Sixers silver rookie Jane and Hardy Mavericks Ruby wave Kobe white for the bulls with a pulsar. Oh shag Baji jazz rookie. So Han Purple wise men warriors number 299 that silver Markel folds magic Walk the Kessler Palo Ben caro Like backup for you Ruby wave Ray Allen for the Sonics with a hyper dog McDermott Spurs Silver Patty Mills Nets you spawn a Jang Josh Minot Pulsar John Wall for the Clippers Isaiah Mobley Dyson Daniels Silver Fearless Steph Curry silver rookie Marjoram po-champ for the Bucks Blue for the Sixers PJ Tucker number to 199 Next up is a hyper Dorian Finney Smith Mavericks Loco in brown rookie base cards blue ice to soon move bulls number to 125 Silver Harrison Barnes Kings Rad for the heat is a Duncan Robinson number to 299 Nuggets Dan Issell base auto Got hyper Aaron Gordon nuggets Like Wesley McGowan's Wilkins Ruby wave Terence man Clippers Silver Darius Garland Cavaliers All right moving on to box three Everybody 14 to go on the mixer 14 to go Red Prism Sixers Tobias Harris number to 299 with an auto for the Thunder Jalen Williams rookie silver signatures hyper Steph Curry warriors Mark Williams Yeah, 14 to go everybody silver fireworks Julius Randall Knicks breaking tonight rookie silver tight-tie Washington, Jr. Rockets Ruby wave Anthony Edwards Timberwolves with a hyper rookie Jalen Doran pistons It's a Keegan Murray David Roddy blue ice Reeves for the Lakers to 125 Silver eight and sons Ruby wave magic Cole Anthony. They severed a soon move bulls Ruby wave rookie Jalen at Williams for the Thunder Pulsar Basely Thunder Silver on a nobie Raptors. Hey guys, not often we're breaking 2020 immaculate 2020 immaculate football Burrow Herbert and Hertz rookie years and to a purple ice Jordan pool warriors number to 149 a Cole sweeter rookie out of the Lakers Pulsar rookie Nemard Pacers Sorry, Eason Justin Jefferson as well CD lamb Big names potentially pulled tonight you can pull true RPAs of Burrow Herbert Hertz to a got a hyper RJ Barrett Knicks fields and Fields mag Jones Trevor Lawrence in the 2021 glass 2022 picket Silverlock of the lottery Dyson Daniels pelicans Silverville Chamberlain Lakers Red Lamella Baltic to 99 for the Hornets got hyper Cody Martin Hornets Red Power Rockets operant Shengyu nice second-year Shengyun there 46 to 75 That's silver Shengyun now for the Rockets also So Hanna Wendell Moore Yeah, great lineup overall to 2022 honors first off the line also Pulsar Justin Holliday for the Hawks Yeah, it was like a Traffinite thing no Anthony, but it is still crazy Silver widescreen Lillard for the Blazers silver T Mac Raptors so on base Red you banks Blazers number to 299 with an auto here Mac McClung Warriors Ricky Silver Auto Mac McClung for the dubs There we go hyper Patrick Bobbin Jr. Rookie Warriors Keegan Murray Silverlock of the lottery Doran Pistons Silver rookie Jabari Walker Blazers For an em base Well, we need some more nice color here Ruby wave Malik Beasley jazz Pulsar Paul pierce Celtics Harry Eason Blue eyes Ricky Mark Williams for the Hornets number to 125 Silver Middleton Bucks It's crazy because Shengyun is really good Ruby way of Jaren Jackson jr. Grizzlies Not criticizing the Thunder we're just saying it's crazy that Shengyun is that good hyper Jonas fountain as pelicans Thunder could have gotten could have been even even better, which is crazy But yeah chats upside is crazy Silver Evan Mobley for the Cavaliers. Yeah, press. He knows what he's doing. She's crazy. They were able to trade him away Now I have to worry about it. Red Marcal folds to 299 magic hyper Clay Thompson Warriors Orange Cody Martin for the Hornets number to 49 silver Jonathan Isaac of magic Who said the abate purple ice John wall to 149 Clippers Darian Sebron silver rookie auto for the pelicans hyper Deros and bulls J-Dubb there Ruby wave Isaac for the magic with a silver Gary Trent jr. Raptors Blue Prism Derek White Celtics Number to 199 25 Kenneth often jr. Rookie mojo auto awesome hit for the Grizzlies now You know Kenneth often jr. To 25 got hyper Bertans Mavericks get that mag for you for the Grizzlies there Silver fireworks Kawhi Leonard Clippers silver rookie who's money jank thunder Screw on in the Celtics game got Ruby wave John Stockton jazz Pulsar Malik Monk Kings Chad Holmgren Pulsar rookie so Hans burrs Silver feel a shack silver rookie Chad Holmgren there you go Thunder Palo base Rad Rockets Jay Chantay number to 299 Hyper Jamal Murray Nuggets Walker Kesser Aigley Silver Deros and bulls Caleb Houston shade on sharp blue ice marketing and jazz number to 125 God silver cow kuzma wizards Still 14 to go everybody coming up in a bit the Sunday funny mixer Ruby wave Nurkich Blazers Pulsar Jared Allen Cavaliers Gallens Yovitch Purple Suponis Kings nice color match to 99 Silver Cameron Payne Sons AJ Griffin Blake Wesley haunt for more big cards red kispert wizards at 299 Points card to follow that 400 points random to everybody at the end hyper pat Ewing nicks Ruby waves Steph Curry Warriors got a silver siacum raptors Bari Walker Isaiah Mobley Red Zach Levine for the bulls number to 299 Got hyper Dyson Daniels rookie pelicans Palobin Kero rookie Red Power James Harden Sixers number to 75 Silver Cole Anthony Walker Kessler Ruby wave Brogdon Celtics followed by a hyper McDaniels T Wolves Purple Wiseman Warriors number to 99 Got silver Terence Mann Clippers Blue Russell Westbrook number to 199 for the Lakers And a Roy Hibbert Pacers base auto Pacers Roy Hibbert Pulsar Westbrook for the Lakers as well Ruby wave Terry Rozier Hornets with a silver James Harden Sixers Hyper Miles Turner Pacers And hopefully Chad's ready to go Got some work to do Silver Fearless Lamello ball Silver Zion Williamson Ruby wave Richardson for the Spurs Got a hyper Nyang for the Sixers Silver Okoro Cavs Chad Holmgren rookie Got a red the 299 Chris Weber Kinks with a Jane and Hardy Mavericks auto now Your ads Mavericks Pulsar Daniels rookie for the uh For the pelicans Cherby Sohan base Silver Fearless Edwards T Wolves Silver David Robinson Spurs All right halfway through How's going Yarla? How is it going? It's still 14 to go everybody 14 to go Sunday Funday NFL Mixer 25 boxes with honors first off the line 2020 Immaculate 2022 Immaculate first off the line 2021 as well A lot of potential with some RPAs in there red jaymond green warriors at 299 Benedict Matheryn now rookie auto Pacers That's Hardy last box and we got Matheryn now I'm doing okay. I'm hanging in there got Pulsar Donovan Mitchell for the Cavs I'm hanging in there tonight Silver Fearless Steph Curry Silver rookie Andrew Nemard Pacers Keegan Murray Hyper Jay Sean Tate Rockets Donnie Davis Silver Prismatic Celtics Jalen Brown rookie Silver Lakers Max Christie Blue Prism Kevin Love Cavs number to 199 The Hyper rookie Diabato Clippers Sohan Orange Wave Brandon Ingram Palakins nice card to 60 on this one number 10 of 60 Brandon Ingram Silver Denwoodie Mavericks Ruby wave rookie Paolo Ben Carrow Magic with a nice Paolo Pulsar rookie Agbaji Jazz Silver Bagley for the Pistons McGowan's Andy Jovic Ruby wave Caldwell Pope for the Nuggets got hyper rookie Taitai Washington jr. Rockets Malachi Brannum Purple rookie Max Christie Lakers number to 99 They silver Lou Williams for the Hawks Atari Easton rookie I guess we're still at 14 on that a football mixer guys. It's coming up at about an hour Got blue Julius Randall Knicks numbered to 199 with the Sixers Julian Champagne rookie auto There's some dents in this champ Champagne So I'll send a box strapper out to the Sixers spots Hyper PJ Tucker for the Sixers Diabato Yeah, I'm excited more just anxious to go do it honestly Ruby wave Will Barton for the Wizards can be long day long couple days Silver Boucher Raptors It's gonna be a long week The next day off is Tuesday after this one Ready to get ready to ready to get it going Silver Crown of the New Towns T-Wolves Add Austin Rivers T-Wolves number to 299 Then Austin Reeves base auto for the Lakers nice The Lakers second-year Reeves Hyper O'Coro Cavs Jaden Ivy rookie base card for the Pistons Uh sold out in like three or four hours Yeah, it's sold out a couple weeks ago Silver fireworks the Malo Ball Hornets Silver Steve Nash Sons Ruby wave Gary Payton the second for the Blazers Hyper Namie Esquita Kings Yeah, Anthony S. You see breaks sold out a couple weeks ago It was listed at like 1 p.m. One day sold out by like 430 or something like that Purple eyes sub honest Kings color match number to 125 to 149. Sorry 149 Jalen Johnson Hawks on the base auto Pulsar Patty Mills Nets Red Power Deer and Fox Kings is 75 Solid Fox there 35 is 75 Silver Franz Wagner magic Jalen Williams G-Botte Ruby wave rookie Ryan Rollins for the Warriors Yes, like three and a half hours just about Pulsar Keeta Kings Purple for the Warriors Jordan pool that's number to 99 Got silver Pat Bev Lakers Mets giving the game away bad bullpen Ruby wave Garrison Matthews Rockets Silver Van Vleet for the Raptors Mets raised World Series Hyper for the Nets TJ Warren got Branham Keegan Murray Silver widescreen is a John Morant Grizzlies Silver rookie Scotty Pippin jr. Lakers Tyree Eason Red Tyler hero heat number to 299 Hyper Kate Cunningham Pistons All right four more boxes Red Sox and 23 Bowman other than Blake They have I think Roman Anthony is the is the top red Sox name They have a few though. They have like four or five autos Blake doesn't have autos though. I think his will probably be in Roman's room Blue Prismarket Jabari Walker Blazers number 2199 Hyper Gary Payton the second Blazers Purple Yogich to 99 Nuggets Silver Bridges Sons Mixers down to 13 now All right 13 to go guys. Let's get it filled up We got two breaks after this one Just two and then it's mixer time Ruby Wave Jazz Taylor Norton Tucker Got Hyper Jimmy Butler heat Blue Isco Bear number to 125 and the T Wolves Silver RJ Hampton magic Chet Holmgren Jang Allen Iverson Red Frank Jackson Pistons number to 299 with a son's auto Jeff Hornetschak Silver signatures Jeff Hornetschak sons Hyper Rookie Liddell Pelicans Shade on Sharp Rookie Blazers Ruby Wave Daniel Tyce Pacers Got Silver Grayson Allen Bucks Benedict Matherin Houston yep 13 to go everybody We got so we got a couple of football breaks and then we get to the mixer pulsar Tim Duncan Spurs Silver Prismatic Lamello for the Hornets Silver Kenneth often the third or sorry Kenneth often junior rookie for the pelicans Oshe Agbaji Kendall Brown Ruby Wave rookie Chet Holmgren nice card for the Thunder print line on that one pulsar Bullock for the Mavericks Hardy base Dillon Terry Silver Aaron Gordon for the Nuggets Arjan Bochamp Red Wiggins for the Warriors at 299 August Saul Lakers Otto Lakers Congrats on that It's a black and gold Jaden Hardy and a mojo rookie Otto of Kenneth Lawton jr. Hyper Gary Payton the second for the Blazers rookie Bancaro magic Silver fearless Luca Donchich Mavericks They silver spurs Keldon Johnson Kessler Three more blue prism nicks 748 that one's number to 199 They spurs rookie Otto Malachi Branham silver hyper Quentin Grimes nicks Mobley Dyson Daniels Silver prismatic Bradley Beale wizards with a silver rookie Christian Brown Nuggets Pulsar 20 Parker spurs Shade on sharp Chet Holmgren Yeah, I'm just gonna we pull some some really nice cards on Tuesday Hopefully we got we got some good three cases Silver fireworks and bead Sixers silver rookie Coloco Raptors Blue prism K PJ Rockets number to 199 Got a hyper PJ Tucker Sixers Jalen Jordan and Benedict Matherin Dole ball is in for the save Don't heat Shade on sharp 17 to 75 Portland What a sick hit Congrats Portland do that is a sick color match Steven B. Holy cow, man That's a beauty that looks pretty good too Back turning is not the best but the front looks pretty good Silver Luca Donchich Mavericks Oshe Agbaji Down to 12 on the mixer now too Down to 12 nice. Thanks Zachary for grabbing a spot. Appreciate you man. That might be Zachary second spot Let's get it filled y'all rookie Ruby wave AJ Griffin for the Hawks Oh, yeah, this is your number hyper Clay Thompson Warriors Good call Silver Donovan Mitchell calves I was not thought he was like 15 I don't know has a run on the card Ruby wave Jalen Brown Celtics Hyper Lou Williams Hawks Purple rookie Jake LaRavia. There you go Grizzlies to 99 Silver Deandre Hunter Hawks Walker Kessler Palo Ben caro Red McCollum for the Pelicans number to 299 They clippers Otto Reggie Jackson base auto Hyper rookie Mark Williams for the Hornets Yeah, it's yours. Remember Ruby wave Deandre Hunter for the Hawks and a Middleton for the Bucks Silver and Yang Sixers One second. Let's see this email. Is anyone else having trouble checking out recently? Saw a message like that another mixer spot in So we're down to 11. I believe Yeah, down to 11 I'm getting there y'all Two boxes left. Let's pull some more heat Doing well so far. Blue Prism Bagley Pistons to 199 Got Lakers Max Christie rookie Silver Auto Hyper Animes Keita Kings Kenneth Lofton Jr Walker Kessler Silver Luck of the Lottery Agbaji for the Jazz Silver Jalen Brooks Grizzlies Hyper Shengyun Rockets Oshe Agbaji Silver Prismatic Scotty Barnes for the Raptors with the Silver Rookie Jalen Williams Thunder Ruby wave Evan Forney a Knicks with a Hyper Yobitch rookie heat Nice one for the Heat, Chet Holmgren, Usmane Jang You gotta change your channel Jake I don't know what to but That was all good Got Orange Lonzota 49 for the Bulls They're talking to Jack Peterson. What did he do? Nothing Slid it, slid into home. Wow. Silver Deandre Hunter Hawks. They won the game. They did one Shade on Shark Oh Probably hockey. I think I think nuggets are gonna sweep pretty easily Brad Magic Johnson to 299 Lakers followed by a Nuggets rookie Otto Cullen Gillespie Hyper Kyrie Irving Nets Yeah, man, King's looking to take a 3-1 lead. Ooh Matheryn Rookie Is anyone in the west? There's some good teams. I just they don't have the same firepower as the east Ruby wave Deontay Murray for the Hawks Silver Bruce Brown Nuggets Jalen Doran Blue Dinwiddie for the Mavericks numbered to 199 Got Hyper Rookie Scotty Pippin jr. Lakers Got a blue ice Harrell numbered to 125 for the Sixers Got silver Luca Donchich Mavericks Marjahn Bochamp, Jaden Hardy Ruby wave Pistol Pete for the Jazz, Pulsar Vince Carter Raptors King's up 3-0, geez dude Silver Caruso Bulls Jibari Smith Hyper Rookie Nuggets Christian Brown Jibari said junior rookie for the Rockets Silver widescreen to Damian Lillard Blazers with a silver Kimalajewan Rockets Jaden Ivy Purple John Collins for the Hawks numbered to 99 Silver DFS Mavericks I think it's 11 to go on that mixer. It's coming up in just a bit 2022 honors first off the line 2020 Immaculate 2022 Immaculate first off the line 2021 Immaculate Got Origins, Mosaic Choice, Prison first off the line Silver Luck of the Lottery Durian for the Pistons, Silver Rookie AJ Griffin for the Hawks Red Brandon Ingram Pelicans to 299 Del Curry Hornets Auto Del Curry Without him we would not have stuff Hyper Gordon-Hayward Hornets, does that make Ken Gryffy senior the GOAT? Yep Marshawn Bochamp Ruby Wave, Jake Crowder for the Suns, Silver Scotty Barnes Raptors Also makes a Blatt senior of the... Sure too Kate Cunningham second year blue prism to 199 for the Pistons Hey Christian Galoco 21-25 Rookie Mojo Signatures Nice card Raptors There you go Mojo Rookie Auto, Rookie Hyper Dyson Daniels Pelicans Osha Agbaji Ruby Wave, Al Horford Celtics Hyper Josh Hart for the Blazers We don't even have a topic Rory so you can't even go off topic Doesn't even... it wouldn't even happen Del Curry was the good one because... yeah Yeah that's that I got no traction Blue Prism to 199, Dearon Fox for the Kings I tried Pulsar Rookie Jovich for the Heat Nobody wants to talk tonight Jake Trash and Burn Nobody wants to talk tonight Cameron Payne a Red Power to 75 Suns Silver Devin Boker Suns Maybe we should put on Jon Fennar who's 2020 Highlights That really depends Rory That really depends Ruby Wave, Kelden Johnson Spurs Got Hyper Dianthena Melton Sixers Silver Gobert T-Wolves We have our guy like Holland The club cards are gonna I think always be worth more than the uh... Than any Norway cards that he has Yeah buyer as well All right recap time So we had Ruby Wave Rookie of Palo Ben Caro Redemption of A. J. Griffin Hawks Other Autos of Del Curry Jalen Johnson Dan Issel Reggie Jackson Roy Hibbert Paul Gasol Austin Reeves Cole Sweeter Jaden Hardy Benedict Matheran Colin Gillespie Julian Champagne Johnny Juzang Jeff Hornacheck Max Christie Mack McClung for the Warriors Malachi Branham Jalen Williams Darian Sebron Mojo Caleb Houston Magic 25 And Mojo Christian Coloco Raptors 25 Well his Dormant cards are like considered his rookie cards Like the find uh whatever finest I think is 19 Find his Dormant All right so we had Mojo Rookie Auto Kenneth Hoppin Jr for the Grizzlies Red Power Rookie Shade On Sharp for the Blazers 17 out of 75 Jersey Number Color Match Red and Black Jaden Hardy I'm sorry Black and Gold Sorry 3 and 5 Mavericks That'll do it On to some football


It adopts a grassroots, community-centered approach to documentation and research, and forms part of a revitalized effort to understand the evolution of culture within solution communities. Corsit Common aims to engage the community in an open discussion on matters tied to cultural and national development. It aims to provide a platform for communities to be heard and be connected with the FRC. To discover the unique cultural attributes of solution communities and to promote the queer language within the community.     Ka di tute mon bienvini a d'un pommier qu'on cite, comine, qu'on cite, comine, nuka organisé issia, eq en laboïe aussi, en même temps.  FHC nil habiti, chak l'année, nuka organisé, ayon conféonce aso langa, eq kote nuka invité mon qui sorti d'autres pays, d'autres pays a kawa hibla, koi oka palé koi olla osi.  Be mou langa, langa, nuka palé di langa, ka di lang mama no, lang dominiti, lang tunida, lang totel tel pays. Be mou sala lang, nuka pedi, aske l'animo a lot mo, an koi olla, koi langa ju, ka di langa ju. Langa ju, il a adan koi olla. Be mou ka di, langa ju ti mamae, si an façon palé, adan langa. Be mou ka di, langa ju ti mamae, o bien pas servi langa ju sala du venti mamae. Nuka servi mo sala langa ju kon sa, ebe se demo a adan koi olla. Be an shai mou nuka servi mo langa ju, le o vledi palé di langa. Be mou, si an bagai mo e observé, ek mo e di makai meni sa du venti osoia, lani mo nuni a koi olla nuka pedi, ek nuka pedi sasla, voe sasla, se mou sala. Sasi an mou, lang, sasi an mou important, paske leni nuka palé di lang mama nou, makai tan peson ka di langa ju mama nou. Si an lang, ebe tan nou, ite nou gade, kontine ka servi lang, leni nuka palé di langa ju koi olla. Langa ju koi olla, po mo e sasse an mania de soka wledi oka, masav le oka di langa ju po langa, paske langa ju se kon mo e diya, diferon mania, diferon fa son de palé, adan an langa. Langa koi olla, se an lang kon tutte le oka langa asu la terra. Si an lang kini goa me, si an lang kini weg, si an lang kini an shai vocabile asu sas di tutsa nou wledi, adan lang sala. Ebe si an lang kija, kini palé. E si moun avant, lang i lang tan, pas te koi, koi olla te an lang. Ebe jordi ju, nou edike, nou ha kopon, nou ha apon, hi lang sala, nuka palé asu an lang, an voe go lang, an voe lang, kon tutte le oka lang. Mika wume sezot. Kutte mo e, et pi, nuka i komose. Nougat de difu an situasion, kutte yote ka discrimine, kont lang kui olla. Nougat de ini anfamio, hi pe te ni, pi te te mama, pi te te papa, hi pe te kai kont, hi ki te se mama i la palé, kui olla. Paske kui olla se an langage, kont yon se muna masone. Yoko se te langage, moun ki esklave. So, so se papa kui olla. Moun te ka protege ish yo, akod i moun vle ish, moun pal angle. Piske, paske si a le doa la, e rek se kui olla ka palé. Moun pa kai kai me te yate, moun kai kai kui i se muna i si poze. Moun i difu kilte kui olla, a kai moun emo si. I paske le moun kai palé kui olla bai mama i la, pa de moun kai kui olla las palé kui olla bai mama i la. I moun kai i me kontos ote, u se moun kui olla. So, pi la, hi pe piti kui piti, i ni po a moun langage. E opa bize palé i ma li, yon me mou ka a panui. E kle itre ni yo kai palé, papa kod kai kui olla. So, moun kai i meno, meno, meno. Mama i la si langage, i si langnu. E tut moun si poze a moun langage. Moun apan kui olla si, hod, komi mna. Si la moun apoze, moun kai kui olla. Kui olla, moun pa de sa kui olla palé kui olla. A moun i difu kilte kui i la. Yes, ma moun i pas kai sa. Mou i sote yo komi moun poze li. O kastui, tut moun sa vkastui, se moun plas la. Am, am, tut, tut, tut. J'ai un cercle si, ni po a le e fe. E pi, tut business, tut go a mezon. Tud go capital, tut am go. Rotem moun, se la, tut l'oia se la. Me gozi li, se ta, ti plas. L'osote gozi li, anglais opa tell moun fin kon kastui. E pi, se la, ta la opa a fea, because l'o pa le anglais, la moun i osa opa sote kastui. E pi, moun, esperien se sa a le le moun a le l'okrol anglican. Mou i apprecie sa osi e, because l'e moun i teka po nonsi e po nonsi e po nonsi e yo nom. Yo ka ga re yo na lote peki. Yo ka wi, because mou kastui je nom a. L'e moun di finish, the word l'angaila, finish. L'e moun di finish. O i sote gozi li e, because i finish. Yo ga de moun, yo ga de yo na lote peki o wi. Mou, you ka correct to your writer, if you finish. So say, l'e sote la discrimin, l'e sote l'e, because i gozi li, because i pa ka pa le anglais bier. L'e moun di nom a, 6.  L'e moun di, 6. Yo ga de yo na lote, 6 to 6. So l'e sote la discrimin te jala kastui eibi je ti kot yukaku yo na ti kot. We wy kote moui pa le ba'i mamamoui. Ang ka ele, ang kuyo ebi i pa di yania wi, iki te moui pa le. Ebi mou pa ti pi'e aso sa eka. Kosa mou komo se pah lé i mou komo se pah lé i pti. Pbis avant i rea bak mou pa sin i pa le kuyo. Speak English, speak English, speak English. But it started to change. And this time, I also started to learn how to speak outside with my friends. And then my mother started talking to me. And then it developed. And then this time, I started to learn how to write, how to speak English. And I did that for several years on TV. I think that I can speak too much English. But my grandmother can speak English. So we can speak English. Because we can speak English. But when I go to school, I can't play with my friends. I can't speak English. I can't speak English. Because I can't speak English. But when I go to school, I can speak English. My mother can speak English very, very, very well. I think that in my community I can speak very well. But I can't speak English. Because I know that in the past, people could speak English very well.  I have a problem with that. I can't speak English very well. And when I go to school, I can speak English very well. I can speak English very well. I can speak English very well. We have a public service. I can speak English very, very well. Every one can speak English. Because I am Spanish. I don't speak English very well. We can speak English very well. We can speak English very, very well. Everybody can speak English very well. But if I go to school, there are people who can speak English very well. As we were saying, a lot of the government agencies, when you approach them, people are afraid to go to these buildings, to these people simply because they think that they cannot speak or they cannot address the way. And I think it's time we teach people that the way that they speak is their right. If CRIOL is your first language, it is your right to speak that language in any way, in any situation. I think that is where we struggle sometimes, even as government workers. And as you've seen in the situation, in the housing, where a lot of people just shy away, they do not attempt to because they see government as something official, rather than seeing that they have a right to be who they are before government. I just wanted to add, on the subject of government work, there is a similar study, observation in Jamaica where they have people calling the National Housing Trust for assistance for various things. There was a student who was studying, they got the same student called one day and speaking fluently on the following day in English, and recorded the kind of assistance that they received and everything. And it was disgusting for lack of a mental word because, you know, when the students spoke CRIOL to the person on the phone, there would be suggestions like, how are you getting here? The assumption being you're getting a taxi, you're looking for housing in a certain price bracket, all of those things, whereas somebody calling, speaking in English would be offered directions by car or in certain assumptions. So really, it's understandable why people want to approach ATH because that stigma does not go away so easily as to say, well, this person is approaching me whichever CRIOL, whichever island, whichever nation we're speaking, the stigma is so deeply entrenched. And it stretches to the education system as well. I'm a linguist also, and studies upon studies upon studies also teach somebody in their first language and that will improve their outcomes that has been done here, that has been done on various islands in the Caribbean Sea, teach people in their CRIOL, if that's your first language, whatever it is, and the outcomes will be better, the literacy will be better, the confidence will be better, all of those things are improved. The language If the people were to speak to the people, they would have to speak English. If they could speak English, they would speak English. The people who were waiting for the bus to arrive, This month, the government has been fighting for the wealth of the world, the country, and the people. This month, the government has been fighting for the wealth of the world, the country, and the people. So, what is the purpose of this government? To inherit it, to prove it to the people. We just leave this government and leave the country. This is the purpose of this government. This is the purpose of this government. Is this the university of the university? Somewhat. Yeah, somewhat. Is there a time when we get rich? Yes, we get rich. We get rich. You get rich. You get rich automatically. You get rich. You get rich automatically. You get rich. I say this in English, but not in English. Even in English, even people who don't speak English can understand. You don't even pay details because you don't have to go there to register. I work in the media in Shaitan. I've been working there for 20 years. I've been working directly in the media. I have a press conference. I have a conference on all the issues that I have to deal with. All those people who are working there, all those technical people, all those people who are working there in English, before, they started to call me to call me, to call me to start calling me, they all disappeared. For me, it's a bad, bad, bad discrimination. I play with the numbers. I have questions before, before calling me to call me, before, I play with the numbers, but these people who who aren't working there at the level of the minister. Minister. With the work that is going on, we've also got radio station, television, which has brought new things. We don't want to keep our children in school, but we also have a problem, because we want to teach these teachers before we change the attitude of these teachers, so that even if they go there, they can teach their children in school. The school is not really necessary the first place, but the home. The home. If a child can get these values from early in the home, when they come to the school, they appreciate it more, they appreciate it more. So I'm just saying we need to reach a point where we teach people the heart. But I'm saying that we can't make it an official language, but you have to do that along with the children. My mother used to come to the school, and she used to say, the second language. Because she used to say, the first language. And she used to come to the school, she used to teach her children, who cannot speak the Korean. Or who cannot even understand to communicate with this child. This child is disadvantaged at the school, because this teacher is not able to translate what the child wants in Korean for the child to understand. Because in English there is the child's second language. So there are times you have to repeat in Korean for the child to understand. So what I'm looking at is, the school is important that the teachers can't speak the Korean at the school. So in the programs that they're putting together, there should be classes for the teachers. Yes, what I was just saying, we had our Wednesday assembly for Creole. And I was leading the Creole assembly. And I attempted to do the whole assembly in Creole. I used to attempt it. And it was amazing to see, and even the teachers at the school, the majority of them, were not even familiar with some of the things that I was saying. And at the end, they were like, Miss, I didn't know you know so much Creole. The students were watching me like blank places, like no kind of understanding of what I was saying. Very few, and I think these are students who maybe the grandparents are. But we know in the school system, most of the students, they know Creole as well. Because their parents don't speak it to them. Even in the class when I'm teaching, I would try to incorporate some Creole. And Miss, what are you saying? Miss, I don't understand what you're saying. Like, I would take it for granted that those everyday things that we say that they would know. They would say, Miss, what are you saying? We don't understand. If in all these situations, people who were in power, people who spoke Creole themselves, people who spoke Creole themselves, they would change. Who would change? Because they would say, but in school, if they started in school, they would be able to learn Creole. But who would learn Creole? It's the teacher himself. If he himself spoke Creole. If he himself spoke Creole. That's difficult, isn't it? No, no. In the church, and then... We have the difficulty because we cannot... In the family. If the family themselves didn't speak Creole, if it wasn't for one, we wouldn't have understood it very well. If it wasn't for one, we wouldn't have been able to speak Creole. We wouldn't have been able to continue speaking Creole. That's why we don't speak Creole. Look, it's not today. I'm younger, I'm younger. There's no need to speak Creole. There's no need to speak Creole. There's no need, there's no need. I'm going to say to everyone, in the US, you have to follow. You have to follow the US. There are many cultures, and you can talk about culture, not only the speaking of it, the language, but the culture, the way you cook, the way you move. How can you bring that into these young people, you know, to grow? We grow. We grow. We know the culture. We know the cooking. Like I said, I have spoken English in school, but my people lived in Cayenne and the Creole, so they really knew the Creole, and we followed Creole. All these foods that we do, all the things that we do, like coconut cake and all them things. Young people right now don't know these things. So how there is something, there's a strategy, a big strategy that has to be put together. We're learning that poem there now. That's a problem for two. Peter from England, from England. No, it's a poem about the world.  You go to secondary school, you have two languages, French and Spanish. Up to three you have to choose between one. Now you're learning those two languages at the same time you'll get confused. You speak French and Spanish, Spanish and French. Introducing the pre-old two schools, that is three languages you're trying to learn. Now government forces you to learn the two foreign languages, not our language. So you only have the problem for you to learn the two foreign languages. It depends on which continent especially. So when you have the problems in Bangkok you still have to choose back to government for that. So now that's where the matter lies in schools. Now if you want to introduce it in secondary school that would be a problem. If I don't start from primary school then go to secondary school. So you say because you have to learn the two foreign languages in secondary school. That's a compulsory subject. Yes compulsory. You can learn the two foreign languages at the same time. You can introduce only two subjects and learn the two foreign languages. Now when I left school, I had three compulsory subjects which I'll show you after this. I had to do this one. That was compulsory. When you enter you have to do French and Spanish. You have to form three until you choose one. Now I chose French but I was getting too confused and I dropped. Because of the weight or structure then you have to mix Creole with French because I know my Creole. Right now certain words in French you can say in Creole. French and French. Now the spelling of French and Creole words is two different. So now we also have the matter of the spelling. The writing would be difficult for us as you learn this. That's another one. Now I saw the dictionary. The reason for that is a different writing system. Right. That would be a problem if we now want to introduce it in only secondary school. So it's better to start at a younger age and you grow with the language. Because as I went to Bogies primary, the language was there. Especially for the teachers who want to talk English. During April we will speak Creole for the week. But we need to understand that Creole is grammar, it's law, it's everything. Even if it's in English, even if it's in the direction of the situation in Creole. Creole is a language that is developed in the same way. It's a language that goes anywhere. And when it's in the direction of the situation in Creole, it's here. And we need to put more importance. We need to understand that the language is in the direction of the situation in Creole. We need to understand that the language is in the direction of the situation in Creole. But as I mentioned earlier, it doesn't matter because the language is in the direction of the situation in Creole. So another solution is that most of the students council and the international youth council advocate for more youthful students to speak the language and learn the language at the beginning. Then rather do things that's not helping us in the solution. Advocating for stuff that doesn't make sense. Because you look at the policies on Instagram and stuff and things they advocate for doesn't make sense. Then our language dying out. Can we look at the language, language is dying out, especially with youth? My solution is that pre-organization is not to be sacred or to avoid youth. Having said all of that, we have to be cognizant of those who are taking over now. And if they're not interested, we can blow hot air because the people who are here talking and advocating are the people who are interested in keeping the Creole. The 99% of them out, they may not be interested. So is that something we put to a hold? Because they may not be interested. We may be hitting our heads against a blackboard. We may have grown up with it. But if the young people, because they are on Instagram and keep saying whatever, Gram and Facebook, they're not interested. And they are the ones taking over. Is that something? 20% of us understand Creole. 20%? Yeah, it's true. They're not interested. Let me take a study in Canada. In French, two parts. Everywhere you saw English, you saw French. Because the country speaks both language and French. When you go to a Spanish country that has English as well, it's the same thing. Everywhere you see the English, you see the Spanish, right? So in solution, this is what we need to know. It has to be institutionalized. Right, you see push, pussy, exit, sortie. I was listening to the gentleman's contribution. They were saying that the impolite reason introduced English into Parliament. The amazing thing about it is that the amazing thing about it is, you'll be surprised to know that in our law, up to now, it seems to be colonial, that the official language to be used in courts, the official language to be used in particular institutions, they have it in black and white, shall be English. So from there we have that discrimination from day one. It's a trait. When I was in Thaler, it was a language that was not allowed in society. It was a language that was always used to make sure that the people who had so much privilege were allowed. But that's what I'm trying to say. It's Valle Quiolla. All the time, not being able to speak physically, in a way, I don't know how to say that, in a way that is called Valle. For Quiolla. All the time it's just about speaking. And it's also about being able to say, yes, it's Valle, it's moral, it's not about money, it's about money. It's not about money, it's about society. It's money. And everybody is money, money, money. And who is making money? Who is making money? Who is making money? Who is making money? Yes, yes, yes. If you had money, you would make money, and what would you do? We would say, I'm not saying that I'm the richest because I don't know what to do. But if you had money, what would you do to make money? That's what I'm trying to say. What would you do to make money? That's what I'm trying to say. I'm trying to make money that is what we're counting on. But all the time, Valle is spiritual, it's family, it's for people who are like that. People who are like that, it's not about money, it's about society. That's what I'm trying to say. That's what we're trying to say. For example, if you were going to make money, if you are going to make money, it would mean money. That is pretty much what I'm trying to say because we can't keep it. It's enough for everybody because that's what we're trying to do. It's not the money we're trying to do, it's about money. It's in the situation where money is used. It's in the situation where money is used. But it's not about money. You can't go there, you'll meet a lot of thugs. But all the time, last thugs are for these people. Are there a lot of thugs? The whole time, last, last. We aren't allowed to go here, because... Oh, when was the last time? There was a meal, we'll have drinks, there's a group of thugs.  She'll use that, use it for the people. who are selling oil. People who use oil and use white oil. So, the white oil depends on the use. Because the black oil which is important for the people who use oil who are selling oil too. But then, then, black oil is a must! But we have to change this because this is so young and people who are growing up also consume your oil, you and the oil. So, for example, No, I'm telling you, that is how it comes across. It comes across like that because that's why some of us do not place any emphasis on learning it. We are okay with our friends and we can jab there and jab there and jab there and somebody tells us something, we can use a curse word and so on. And that satisfies us, but the queer language is much more than what we see there. It's deep. It's a language of the heart that expresses who we are. A queer dictionary on my phone that, like, what I want to know about or what is something like pronounced it on my phone to, you know, hear about it and stuff like that. So I'm really interested in this world, but just that I cannot really pronounce the words and stuff like that. A people say, You need to be comfortable. You need to be comfortable.  Well, Mama, you don't have to explain it well. But we, as citizens, we don't have to play everything. Because if you don't speak queer at school, What do you want me to do?  It's for us. We don't have to speak queer at school, we don't have to go to school, we have to go to the other side of the country to speak.   The queer literature has started before. If you don't speak English, you will be punished. But we can't say that again. But we can't say that again. But the reason we're telling you to learn, a month only, is that we can play it to develop. Because if we don't know a language, or don't know a language, it's not what we speak queer. So we can study. If folk research is considered for the government, It was organized so well, even though the government tried to bring Kweyol to school, all the schools that said to play it were playing Kweyol, they taught Kweyol, they spoke Kweyol. It was a great contribution, thank you everyone. I am Nisi Nubolo-Changy, Kweyol is a language.


Tens of thousands of fires have ravaged parts of Sumatran Kalimantan in the past two months. Indonesia estimates some 1.7 million hectares have been affected. The economic costs may rise well into the billions, and the country's greenhouse gas emissions could reach record levels. Scientists from the Centre for International Forestry Research, C4, found high levels of noxious chemicals in the haze. Since the fires started, more than half a million people have developed respiratory symptoms. Seasonal rains have begun, but 2015 is an El Nino year, so the threat is far from over. Some parts of this country are going to be naturally drier in February and March. Eastern Kalimantan, parts of Sumatra. And in an El Nino year, that dry season is going to be even more pronounced than it normally is. I expect that there will be another surge of fires. Putting out the flames is an enormous task, even with international support. Science can play a vital role in ensuring the right measures are put into place, unless effective steps are avoided. The reason that the government is digging ditches is to get access to water, but that water comes from within the peatland. Peat is organic matter that has a very high water table in it that slows down decomposition. And that's why the peat accumulates. When you dig a ditch, all that water comes out and into the ditch, which means that the peat now is drier, deeper in the profile, so it burns more. C4 is working with experts from Palancaraya University to measure the long-term effects of drainage and fire on the peatland. They've installed 22 field-based tools known as R-Set MH to show what's happening underground. We're doing measurements in the field, so we can read the elevation changes caused by fire, if there was fire before, and we can aggregate or extrapolate in our study area how much carbon loss is due to the peat fires. The second objective is we want to see the carbon loss due to the drainage. We want to see how many carbon losses are caused by drainage because of the underground processes. This research is just one example of how science can support strategies to help overcome the problem. But Vershaw warns that long-term solutions need to be implemented sooner rather than later. This fire and haze event was totally predictable. This problem can be solved. It's going to require strong political will. It's going to require a lot of people doing things differently. It also requires the incentives and creating the opportunities for people to do something different, to move off these peatlands and still find a way to make a living, to ensure their livelihoods and ensure the future of their families. That's what this is really all about. It has to be much more of a human story here, and solving it is really going to have to mean putting people at the center of the solution. Vershaw says long-term sustained finance is needed to provide these new opportunities for communities and to protect and restore forests and peatlands, something high in the agenda of the upcoming UN climate change conference in Paris.


Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to CSIS. Good morning. My name is Peter Deschezzo. I'm the director of the Americas program at CSIS. It's a great pleasure to have you here for this important event, the launching of the book, Unequal Partners, the United States and Mexico, by Sidney Weintrop. As I was a teenager in the 1960s, one of the things that we paid a lot of attention to was the launching of a new Beatles album, which used to come out about every year. It was something that everybody looked forward to, that it was always going to be creative and different. And you could almost depend on it that within about a year, there would be a new album out, and everybody'd be interested in acquiring it. Since I've been at CSIS, I sort of get the same feeling that about every year there's going to be a new book by Sidney Weintrop. And it's going to be provocative. It's going to be really interesting. It's going to take sort of a different path every time. You never really know what it's going to say until it's out. And I think one of the impressions that I've gotten since I've been here, and I admit I didn't know Sidney until I'd come to CSIS, was the unbelievable work ethic, creativity, productivity of Sidney Weintrop. And it's really quite remarkable. So I guess I sort of get that same feeling as I had when I was a young man. We are very honored to have with us today to make introductory remarks. Ambassador Carla Hills, the chairman and chief executive of Hills & Company, a former U.S. trade representative, and also a trustee and counselor of CSIS. And Ambassador James Jones, co-chairman, Manat Jones Global Strategies, former ambassador to Mexico. Following the introductory remarks, we'll move to a panel discussion, and then all of you will have a chance to ask questions of Sidney and we'll go deeper into the book as we go along. So let's begin with Ambassador Hills. Carla, it's a pleasure to welcome you. Thank you, Peter. It's a pleasure to join you this morning, and it's a pleasure to say a few words about Dr. Sidney Weintrop's book, Unequal Partners, United States and Mexico. Most of you know that Sid holds the William E. Simon chair on political science here at CSIS, and is also professor emeritus at the London School of Public Affairs. But you may not know that for a quarter century, he served as a foreign service officer and as deputy assistant secretary of state for international finance and development, and as assistant administrator of aid. And that his current book is only the latest of a long list of bestsellers on economic activities and literally hundreds of individual articles. In Unequal Partners, he assesses how the United States over many, many years had dealt with important issues of trade, investment, narcotics, energy, migration, and the border. And in each area, he's highly critical. Critical of the United States for its indifference and critical of Mexico for its inability to deal with structural deficiencies that hamper its growth and prosperity. And he closes his analysis, noting that in his words, Mexico and the United States are still attached at the hip. This is deeply understood by Mexican officials, but the reality is only vaguely grasped by US authorities. And I would add that it is not grasped at all by many American citizens. And that is why Sid's book and the expert panel, that is to follow, are so important. When leaders of Canada, Mexico, and the United States signed the North American Free Trade Agreement, it was the most comprehensive trade agreement that had been negotiated anywhere. It created a more competitive regional market of roughly 450 million people by erasing industrial tariffs, removing restrictions on agricultural trade between the United States and Mexico, opening a broad range of services, including financial services and telecommunications, providing world-class protection for intellectual property and protecting investors against expropriation. The three governments did not intend this agreement to deal with domestic structural issues. The objective was to promote economic growth through enhanced trade and investment, and this was accomplished.  They do not know that as a result of the agreement, total merchandise trade since 1993 has more than tripled for all three nations, and foreign direct investment has quadrupled from both within and without the region. And they aren't aware that Canada and Mexico are two of our largest trading partners and that they supply nearly 30% of our nation's energy needs. They do not know that since the NAFTA became effective in 1994, the GDP of all three participants has steadily grown. Between 1994 and 2008, the United States, Canadian, and Mexican economies grew respectively at an average annual rate of 3%, 3.1%, and 2.9%. Mexico's growth was below its potential, without question. But most economists agree that that growth rate was deeply affected by the Peso crisis of 1995 and that the NAFTA insured access to the US market expedited its recovery. Americans have been told that the NAFTA has cost our nations millions of jobs and are surprised to learn that a study of the bipartisan congressional research surface finds that to be false. Instead, the data shows that until the recent financial crisis, which cannot be blamed on the NAFTA, overall employment between 1993 and 2008 rose substantially in all three countries. US employment rose from 120 million to 143 million. Canadian employment rose from 12.8 million to 17.2 million. And Mexican jobs in the former formal sector grew from 31.3 million to 43.8 million. And in fact, US unemployment dropped from 6.9% to 4.7% prior to the Great Recession. They have also been told that the NAFTA made Americans worse off because Mexicans lower wages depressed manufacturing wages here at home. They're unaware of studies like the one conducted at the Peterson Institute for International Economics by doctors Huffbauer and Schott, economists who examined the manufacturing wages in our four largest states that trade most with Mexico and found that they recorded higher wages than the overall wage growth of our national average. In short, the NAFTA delivered precisely what was promised, but unless we can generate stronger support for the value of an integrated and cohesive North American market, we will not be able to realize the NAFTA's full potential. For the rest of the world has not stood still. Tariff barriers have come down all around the globe and global competition has increased. Other regions, including the European Union and Asia are far more integrated today than they were in 1993. Today there are actions that our three governments could take together that would make the North American community more competitive, more prosperous and more secure. For example, we could start by trimming unnecessary regulatory costs. To qualify for tariff-free treatment in North America requires proof that the product was mostly produced in North America, the so-called rule of origin. The task of documenting that most of the product's components originated here in North America has become extremely onerous. For example, a car imported into North America, say from Germany, faces one customs transaction. In contrast, our industry is highly integrated and a car produced and sold in North America may go back and forth across our borders as many as eight times. Each crossing constitutes a customs transaction. The gains in productivity that come from our integrated supply chain are lost because of the costs required with each crossing to establish North American origin. Studies show that a common external tariff would reduce transaction costs by $100 billion annually and eliminate regulatory distortions that favor goods coming from outside into North America that only have a single border crossing. Now trying to establish a common external tariff regime in today's political environment would be a step too far. But we could incrementally focus on specific tariff lines where the difference amongst us is quite small but still create a costly drag on our competitiveness. The NAFTA commission, which is comprised of our respective trade ministers has identified this as a priority. And in 2008, Congress approved changes to harmonize our respective tariffs affecting about $100 million worth of trade. And we should urge our government to move forward on this initiative. In addition, we have an incredible number of regulatory differences that unnecessarily hamper our trade and these range from rules governing the size of boxes to product safety. By harmonizing these differences, we could achieve our regulatory goals and avoid unnecessary costs. And the refusal of our government to permit Mexican trucks to cross our border in accordance with the agreement is more than a national embarrassment. It generates inefficiency, waste energy, and contributes unnecessarily to pollution. And finally, there are a number of areas where our three governments could partner to find joint solutions to global issues. Take for example, the complex mix of climate change and energy security. The House has passed the American Climate and Energy Security Act that would seek to reduce emissions from the 2005 levels by 20% by 2020. 20% by 2020 and 83% by 2050. And it includes both cap and trade and renewable energy requirements. Many Americans worry that U.S. firms will be disadvantaged if our policies governing greenhouse gases are more rigorous than those of our trading partners. Our northern and southern neighbors are major suppliers of energy and specifically oil to the United States. In 2007, the energy trade was about $100 million with Canada and $10 million with Mexico. In addition, several states obtained their electricity from Canada. To avoid trade distortions of vital energy supplies, all three NAFTA governments have a mutual interest in harmonizing how they deal with climate. Now with all that is at stake, one of the most important things we can do is to educate Americans about the economic and security benefits that our nation derives from a strong and close North American community. And books like Unequal Partners and the expert panel that follows is just one wonderful way to do just that. So Sid, I congratulate you. I think that you've made a real contribution and it's a pleasure to join you here today. Thank you very much, Carla Ambassador Jones. Peter, thank you very much. I will start by saying I subscribe to everything that Carla Hill said and hopefully we can all move forward in that same common spirit. My interest in Mexico really began with my first job out of law school at the White House because my boss, Linda Johnson, was very close to Mexico and Mexicans and we had two or three trips there during those four years I was at the White House and I became affected and had great affection for Mexico and Mexicans. Then in subsequent to that when I was in Congress for 14 years in Congress, I paid very little attention to Mexico because Mexico wasn't important to the United States. It didn't affect the East West Cold War issues other than the fact that Mexico City and Vienna were the two major crossroads of spies in the old Cold War days. But Mexico was not important to us. It was not a part of the world trading regime. Didn't really affect our economy that much. We had a relationship on temporary workers that seemed to suit us, seemed to suit Mexico so I didn't pay much attention to it. When I left Congress and went to New York at the American Stock Exchange, it became important again because we were looking at developing markets and the year I left Congress, Mexico joined the World Trading Order, the GATT, the General Agreement on tariffs and trade and all of a sudden I started paying attention to Mexico again and at that time everyone said, well, if you want to know about Mexico, read Allen Riding's Distant Neighbors. You have to know it to know where you're going. You have to know where you've been. Well today I'm going to tell my clients if you want to know about Mexico, read Sidney Weintraub's book, Unequal Partners. Because what he has done is to blend the history of modern Mexico, the latter half of the 20th century and the first part of this century, blend the history to where Mexico is and where our relationship is and it gives you an idea. If you want to know where you're going in Mexico, you have to know where you've been and the issues that's going to affect where you want to go. And that's what I think Sidney's book does. It is an unequal partnership still, although that partnership is becoming closer and closer to a real partnership. Many of us have tried, myself, when I was ambassador and the subsequent ambassadors have tried to point out that we're here as partners and not as preachers or paternal parents of Mexico. But I think when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton went down in the first part of the Obama administration and just laid it on the table that a major cause, if not the major cause of the drug trade, is the demand for drugs in the United States, that really helped to equalize the partnership because that's something that had been rankling the Mexican officials for many years that we were able to preach very strongly about what Mexico needs to do. And yet the real draw of criminal organizations and the money where the drugs are sold, we neglected. And so that partnership is becoming more equal. And I think that Sidney Weintraub's book points out the still inequalities and the potential equalities that have developed. So I think it's a very important book, but he also points out that what we need to do on both sides of our border. Mexico clearly needs to invest more in education and to reform its educational system. And as an ex-politician, I don't minimize that challenge when you're taking on the largest trade union in the country and trying to really seriously change it and reform it, but they do need to do that if they're going to be a competitor. In this global world of particularly where Asia has done that and is doing more of it, Mexico needs to do a number of other things and it's judicial and systems and rule of law. And Sidney points that out because you have to have a trust and a confidence both within Mexico as well as among foreign investors in the rule of law and in the fact that disputes are going to be fairly met with and decided. So Mexico's got a lot to do yet. It needs to invest more in infrastructure in that half of the country that has experienced none of the tangible benefits of NAFTA that Carla pointed out. Only the other half seems to have recognized and benefited from NAFTA in a tangible way. Mexico has to do more and the United States has to do more. We still have to work on the fact that we really are partners in this whole economic security and global situation and we have to start acting like partners. We have to do our part in less preaching and more doing on things such as the Merida Initiative and to help Mexico in this valiant fight against criminal organizations that have grown in some cases stronger than the government itself in certain parts of Mexico. So we have a lot to do to do that to create an equal partnership. Sidney Weintraub's book in a readable and concise manner points out why that partnership has been unequal and what it takes to make it more equal on both sides of the border. So for my, what I'm doing most of my line of work these days is to take companies, foreign and direct investors into various other markets. Mostly for me it's Mexico. Our clients alone have had foreign direct investment of about six or $7 billion in Mexico over the time we've done that. But in order to help them be successful they need to know where Mexico has come from. They need to know where it's going and what needs to be done. And Sidney Weintraub's book really points away in a concise manner. So I'm going to be recommending not Alan Writing's book but Sidney Weintraub's unequal partners if you want to be successful in doing business in Mexico. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.