Okay. This is Alan Marr. Welcome to our webinar this afternoon. Thank you for joining us. We got a very interesting topic this afternoon on corrosion of buried steel. This is a new report out in draft form that we were going to hear about today. Thanks for joining us. I am chair of Coggy and served in that role for a few years now. Coggy is a standing committee of the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine. And it's a part of the Board on Earth Sciences and Resources. Coggy was established to be a focal point within the National Academies for government, industry and academia on technical and public policy issues related to earth processes and materials. Soil and rock mechanics, responsible human development and mitigation of natural and human hazards. As we go through this, if you have questions about Coggy or the, the, the, you can get a hold of Sam Massano. She's on the National Academies staff. You can get her on the website. This webinar is part of a quarterly webinar series that is produced by Coggy through the support of the National Science Foundation, which we appreciate. We are also supported by NIOSH and Federal Highway Administration and some of our undertaking. This webinar will be posted on YouTube shortly after we ended here. Announcement will be sent out to you when it becomes available. So you should watch for that. You can use the chat line to monitor messages that are going on and to get more information about our speakers. And you can also use that to input. There's a Q and A part down at the bottom of the screen. You'll see that you can submit questions as we go along and we'll try to answer as many as we can. Assuming we have time. Before we begin, I'd like to thank Sam Massano and Emily Bermudas for helping put this together. They've done a great job pulling this together and getting it organized. Here you'll see that it will run smoothly due to their efforts. With that, we've got a lot packed into this hour and so I'll get going with it right away by introducing to you Scott Anderson, who will lead off the presentations. Scott actually was the leader and had a very difficult job of making this project a success. I'm sure you'll see that as you hear the presentation. He's been a member of Kagi for some time now and serves as a principal geotechnical engineer at BGC engineering in Golden Colorado. He has over 35 years of experience in geotechnical design and construction involving transportation, water resources, mining and pipeline industries. In addition to working as a consultant, Scott is a former researcher, professor and governmental agency leader with 15 years of leadership positions at the Federal Highway Administration. So with that, Scott teaches some things about buried steel. All right, Alan. Thank you for that introduction and thank you everyone for joining us today. As you can see on the slide, there's a few different things on here. One's the cover of our report, which we're very proud to be releasing. And next to me up on the top on the right there are a couple of co-speakers today, Susan Burns and Gerald Frank are, and I'm very happy to have them as part of this presentation today. They're going to help with some of the content here and also be available for some Q&A at the end. You'll also note that the title of this webinar is different than the title of our report, Improving Engineering to Manage Corrosion of Buried Steel. Corrosion might be something like, you know, gravity or weather. I mean, it happens, right? But there is something we can do and we do see room for improvement in our engineering practice on how we can manage corrosion. And that's what we'll talk about here today. Next slide, please. So I want to introduce just by one word or so, we had a very great committee with very diverse experience and they're listed on the screen and more about them as our background is in our report. And Mercedes brought experience from a practice in the pipeline industry. Susan is soil mechanics and soil behavior kind of experience. So Merrow is works in the laboratory doing corrosion modeling and testing and Ken Fishman is, has a wealth of experience in geosivil industries and looking at corrosion and Gerald frankly who you'll hear from here today again is a material science perspective on corrosion and as you can see she brought excellent perspectives from soil and site characterization electrical resistivity geophysical methods and so on. And Brenda, you know, brought a lot to the table in terms of microbial influence corrosion and Randy Poston brought experience with forensic designs for geosivil infrastructure and and Liz Rutherford she brought in the experience as a pipeline operator so there's a wealth of experience and different kinds of perspectives come to the table through our committee here. There's almost as many nasum staff over there on the right hand side I want to really thank them for all that they did to being kind of a diverse group of cats here we did need some hurting at time to time and they were awesome at doing that. Next slide please. Thank our study sponsors, as you can see on the screen here we had several of them, you know, without without their sponsorship, we couldn't make this advancement that we're sharing here today so thank you. Next slide. Okay, the statement of task that we're operating under and again this is explained in the report more but I'll just summarize it real quickly. The first is kind of a summary of the mechanisms so what what what is defining the problem. And that sounds rather simple, but it was anything but simple and I think the less simple it became the more valuable. It became and it became clear that this was a really important contribution of this work to have such a diverse group of people being able to describe this problem similarly and that's what we did is the first part of the statement of task. The second two bullets or assessment bullets and one is about assessing the practice for characterizing the earth, the ground where is the steel buried. And the second assessment bullet is is about assessing modeling predicting it brings in the element of time into our work and recognizing that we are again back to the title of our webinar we're managing something so it's for a period of time. And we made these kind of assessment actions as part of our task. Next slide please. So, as part of our work we did a bit of information gathering and we did this through a number of different ways different engagements with people and so on but I would say we have we held a two day workshop which was extremely formative for the committee. I can't thank the people who contributed to this workshop enough we had people who prepared material in advance for the committee members to look at some that contributed during the two day workshop it was international we had many time zones engaged. Maybe some of you on the on the call that were participants and asked the right questions and led in different ways there and so that was extremely formative for our work I kind of liken it to a, you know, getting the roller coaster up to the top of the first grade and now we had lots of lots of energy and we went up to the top of the first grade and while you might not see the actual contributions or the sections or the outline of the workshop in our report. I can assure you that the deliberations happened as soon as the, the weapon that webinar was turned off everything here was remote of course this is an entirely within a coven 19 kind of environment and everything was remote, including that workshop. Yeah, so next slide please. And this for the workshop and so on and the participant lists are all in the report by the way and then headaches of the report, and the report is organized as shown on the screen right here pretty logical organization of things. And so, with that kind of general introduction of why we're here and what we're doing. I want to pass the microphone over to Gerald Frankl who will talk about some of our initial recommendations. Yeah, thanks Scott. So, the next slide please we're going to start with some definitions. We're dealing with steel that's buried in soils and different types of steel infrastructure is given the bottom in the asterisk but soils needs to be defined also for those of you who aren't soil people soils in organic mineral grains with void spaces occupied by gases and liquids those liquids in particular water, then with soluble ionic species becomes an electrolyte and together with organisms that might be present in the in the soil, create an aggressive electrolyte that that can cause corrosion. And the important thing is that there can be spatial variations in the aggressiveness of that environment from centimeters to kilometers that become important and time variations that might be seasonal or much longer associate for instance with with global warming. And all of these factors are important in assessing corrosion. So the next slide please we. In the report we have a short tutorial about the fundamentals of corrosion and the forms of corrosion, but suffice it to say for today's purposes that corrosion involves oxidation which is an anodic process and reduction which is a cathodic process those are half reactions that together are the phenomenon and it's the anodic process that creates the loss of metal, as shown in the schematic above and, in particular, this pipe that shown on the left corroded to form pits that you can see there that's one form of corrosion. In the next slide. We know that we know about steel corrosion and in fact, the different grades of steel don't have vastly different rates of corrosion in soil in the same soil environment. The complexities of that environment, the variations the details of the environment and the variations in space and time, make the prediction of the corrosion rate, in particular over long times, very difficult so we don't know where in a large structure corrosion will be worse necessarily and when failure might occur. So it becomes really complicated as a result of this environment. So next slide we described two different approaches that are taken in in industry so there are geo civil industries that build structures, and they deal with corrosion with the approach that we have defined as corrosion allowance. So they, they design with extra thickness to allow for the expected loss of material by corrosion. They also have redundancy built into the design, such that a corroded member doesn't necessarily cause failure of the whole structure. On the other hand, there are other industries such as pipeline industries and storage tanks that take what we called a corrosion avoidance approach. So in this case there's little or no redundancy a failure such as a whole could result in in a catastrophic environmental disaster, actually. And so they in that in these industries they prevent or minimize corrosion using coatings and cathodic protection, and they're often required by regulations or even law to to monitor the, the effectiveness of that protection. The dichotomy and approach is is quite important. The next slide we have some overarching conclusions. And I think we found that practices are not always informed by the best knowledge to deal with corrosion, and they don't account for all of the factors that can impact corrosion. Data that are used to generate the models that that people use for for prediction of the amount for instance the amount of material that would be quite required to last the expected lifetime of a structure. Well those data were collected in the mid 20th century. And there are some issues with the with the, that data set will say, I'll talk more about vocabulary shortly. So we found, as is not a typical some silos that prevent people from adopting new ideas or even learning about them. All right, so our first recommendation is on the next slide it's actually could be recommendations zero, I would say, because it's really about communication. So, we found that there are different vocabularies in these different fields that are listed in that sub bullet on the right. And we encountered this early and often in our discussions in the on the committee, because indeed we came from, you know, a number of And this impacted our communication and we believe will impact the any interaction moving forward so our recommendation is that perhaps standards making bodies could lead an effort in collaboration with other interested parties to develop a common lexicon to deal with steel in the corrosion of steel in soil. And in fact in the next slide, we have a statement, a common lexicon with more technically precise terminology will increase effectiveness of communication and collaboration between and within disciplines and industries. So this is a sort of obvious statement or a tautology. In fact, and you might think that this is an issue that could sort of simple, but actually addressing it is hard and complex so each community has its own vocabulary and is happy with it. So, you know, I can tell you that in my community, which is corrosion, the term corrosion potential. Scott describes a very specific scientific term. And, you know, when Scott in would talk about corrosion potential of a certain situation being high. You know my interpretation would be much different than his, and it took a long time to train Scott to use different words, such as the potential as sorry the possibility for corrosion, or the corrosivity of the of the condition. And so this is not a simple straightforward matter, but we believe is actually critical to accomplish, for instance, the next recommendation, which in the next slide please is that yeah we need, we need more data and and better models. Okay, so we are recommending multi disciplinary longitudinal research and experimentation to identify, you know, the key aspects of the environment that I discussed, you know the synergies between them, and to be able to come up with better predictive models. And so this would involve multi disciplinary researchers, researchers funded from various means, and to address the multiple variables in steel corrosion in in control and characterize conditions. And had come up with we have some thoughts about how this is done, and we have detailed those in the report. And in fact, in, I'll describe a few of them such as in the next slide. We suggest that there would be long term multi varied experiments that would deal with all the different important properties that would use monitoring electrochemical testing and removal of coupons for destructive testing. And to deal with issues that could be impacted by climate change. And in particular, this aspect of microbial influence corrosion, which can be, which can have a huge effect in the corrosion of buried steel. We believe that this approach will allow the development of models that will be very useful for designers operators owners of structures, etc. More detail in the next slide is that, you know, time wise, we have to make observations more rapidly at the beginning but then have long term experiments. We, we recommend lab based experiments with very controlled conditions, as well as field based experiments that that use extensive characterization and monitoring. Okay, so this is difficult and long term work. In the next slide we talk about how this would be done. So, multiple, you know, I, in my own personal experience, I had the, if you could go back to the previous slide please. Sorry, that one right. I've had the pleasure to be involved in multiple, multi disciplinary projects, and they're hard, but when things come together, they can be very productive and, and, you know, with great results and impact. And it's really required here because of the range of expertise that's needed. And we believe that partnerships between various entities will be required to set this up and get it in motion. So, you know, it seems to be actually an ideal topic for this type of approach, multi disciplinary collaborative research and development. So with that, what I would like to do is hand this over to another committee member, Susan Burns, her bio has just appeared in the chat, and she is a professor of civil engineering at Georgia Tech. Excellent. Thank you, Jerry. So Emily, if you could go to the next slide will move to recommendation three. And from the committee we spent a lot of time looking at the data that was available. The range of data as Jerry and Scott have alluded to some of which was gathered in in the early 1900s, even so some of the most reliable data sets we have can be quite old. We also have new data which is being collected to the to be used today, and we've got some good studies which have looked at statistical analysis of these data. However, we need to continue to expand this work, and the committee recommends that we apply techniques such as cluster analysis or Bayesian theory to both the existing data that that has been statistically analyzed in some studies say by NIST but we have all the new data that are being gathered, looking at the influence of different types of soil properties on corrosion, especially so that we can better understand the relationships between specific individual individual components as well as their their synergies that come together. We believe that this will allow enhanced site characterization and better monitoring because we can better target problem sites. We also bring insights into relationships between physical properties and those that are causing corrosion in specific locations. We also believe that this is an area which is rich for understanding microbially influenced corrosion as well. So next slide please. So essentially what we know is that we need improved estimates of corrosion rates that's clear and clear from the work, the review work that we perform. These improved estimates are going to come about if we are able to consider all relevant subsurface properties. This also will give us the chance to use data driven approaches to apply weighting factors as opposed to intuition. And that is what will help us come in also and identify synergies between these relevant and related subsurface properties. Next slide. In addition, as we worked through the year or two that we spent on this looking in depth at the different ways that we make decisions, both in terms of site characterization and design as well. We came to think broadly about decision support systems. So we know here that when we look at parties who are responsible for managing buried steel. There is a lack of a framework that will tie together these multivariate properties and also allow us to guide prioritizations of repair work right and we especially want to do this using risk informed approaches. There are protocols that are specific to some and some specific industries but those are relatively few also in order to guide our site characterization data collection oftentimes site characterization is driven by say mechanical properties of strength or deformability, and not necessarily driven by gathering information about corrosivity. Now we're going to see here that we use simplified and empirical methods for modeling corrosion, corrosion rates as well. We know that these are limited and effective only in some specific conditions. So what we want to do is develop a larger framework in order to do some of these assessments. Next slide please. The support systems are nice for this these are tools that will guide us through a variety of different alternatives and let us make decisions based on fairly complex input parameters. The chart that you see on the right hand side is an example of a relatively simplified 2d flow chart so this was developed by Fishman at all in 2021. And you can see here that the decisions are being made in terms of corrosivity based on soil properties such as whether or not it's a well graded or upper open graded soil, looking at things like pH resistivity common parameters that we think about when we're looking at the corrosivity of soils. We realize that we need more complex systems these more complex systems or databases that can handle multiple inputs and we believe that this can help mitigate some of these uncertainties that occur when we're making decisions about implementation for buried steel design and monitoring. We know these are particularly helpful when we've got large volumes of data and we can combine them with predictive models, which is the ultimate goal we're looking at here. The example of an active decision support system available today is geotech tools which helps you make decisions on ground modification. Next slide please. So as we moved into here what we would suggest for decision support systems is that these be developed based on standards for multiple industries. So here that there are multiple points along the line of design for any kind of buried steel. First of all, a decision support system that would that would help sort out site characterization questions we feel is very important. So let's just look at a look through a comprehensive set of characterization tests, and then look at the ones that are temporarily and spatially variable in order to do the characterization that's needed over time and also over depth. The decision support system which is focused on risk informed decision making to help us guide the corrosion management processes. In all of these cases will have multiple inputs, those can be selected and uniquely specified for the sites which which are being designed or being monitored, and then looking at a range of comprehensive monitoring tech techniques as well. So the circling back to Jerry's point about the lexicon. Again, this is another location where the need for a common lexicon across industries is very great. Next slide please. So the site characterization here we want to highlight the things that are important we need to capture lateral and vertical temporal spatial variability here and let us do combined site specific subsurface characterization. And then we need to produce a minimum field and laboratory characterization program right and this is this can be tailored to changes in time take changes in land use, any kind of climate changes, those types of issues. And then on the corrosion management side here we're interested in what actions can managers take one investments, how do we do this in a risk informed model. Next slide please. So we understand that these decision support systems can start small and to date we've gathered a great deal of information, although not consistently but we do have studies that have measured moisture content saturation resistivity pH, and a variety of practical parameters in addition. So we can start with an initial focus on properties that are currently commonly used, and then in the future expand these to more promising, or hopefully more promising technologies as well so things that, for example could be helpful to us when we're looking at microbial the influence corrosion as well. So we want to include this both in terms of the lab work and the field based methods as well we understand that some lab methods are designed to replicate field conditions, while other lab based methods are designed to be more of an index test. So we want to capture all of this and the related usefulness in the decision support system. Next slide please. So with that we feel that there are lots and lots of questions with monitoring and how to best use the resources we have in order to gain sufficient monitoring data. We understand that it's infeasible to directly monitor all buried steel right it's just not possible economically or logistically. And so we recommend looking at changes in land surface so for example, have there been changes that might affect surface water groundwater flow. So what kind of chemistry do we have some influences there. And we feel this could be a cost effective early indicator of detrimental changes within the subsurface. Next slide please. Surface monitoring, for example, can be done from from relatively simple desktop considerations so changes in land use for example, we can look at changes in land cover as well are we changing from say forested regions into paved regions. It will affect surface water run off it will take affect moisture content of the soil, all of which in turn then will affect the crossivity of the soil. So it's an indirect indicator. Anything that alters surface groundwater or geochemistry. We oftentimes can monitor through a change in land use. And that concerns about any type of installation that could produce stray currents are an issue as well, or any type of issue that might feed the microbial potential for corrosion as well to so changes in fertilizing practices things like that. And as always, we know that climate change here will come in and produce changes in temperature and precipitation which will also influencing to have influence in these monitoring decisions. Next slide please. We encourage again the use of publicly available resources, we can see that there will be other opportunities as well so anytime when we install a retrofit infrastructure. We have sensors that could be installed in order to measure things relatively inexpensive sensors exists these days for measuring moisture resist resistivity pH for example. We also understand that a systems management approach is needed to be able to track these relevant practices across infrastructures buried steel infrastructure is often separately managed by different agencies. Next slide please. So then we, following on from this we also feel like there is an opportunity for what we'll call opportunistic data collection. And that is that when we are at a point of partially or completely decommissioning buried steel infrastructure say for example during maintenance, or replacement or say in the case of a ruptured water pipe if we're doing a repair. So here that we've got the asset uncovered, we can apply standardized protocols to collect this opportunistic subsurface property and infrastructure data. This, this type of monitoring we think could be a source of information but we acknowledge that it needs to be systematically saved to in order to properly inform longitudinal research so believe also here that our decision support systems can can take some of this as well and help influence future decisions. And with that, I will turn it back over to Scott. Thank you Susan. Next slide, please. The observation that led that led to our, our last specific recommendation was that as much as we're recommending new data be collected and collected in a systematic way with common terminologies and so on and so forth. There are a lot of data out there, and the data aren't reaching their value potential because they're not reachable. And so we came to this idea that some sort of a data clearinghouse would be a valuable recommendation. Next slide please. The clearinghouse terminology may not be all that common or familiar but this basically a way of placing data publishing data it's publishing data is becoming a more common practice and in other parts of the country that uses engineering and sciences and medicine and other other disciplines as well. You know, in fact there's this idea that's expressed in the first bullet there of findable accessible interoperable and reusable data. So these are data that they can be reached by a number of people as needed. We found that even among the committee that there were some folks who had access to a lot of data that could be used in various ways of be valuable to others, but it really wasn't shareable. And we recognize that in a lot of the industries that we work in that that there is some privacy concern with with some of the data and these are regulated industries these are industries that are in the business of business. And they're also government entities as well. And not all data can be shared but there are ways of keeping private private and proprietary data can be we believe could be shared in a private kind of way. As a case in point I'll remind folks that yesterday was Cyber Monday it turns out and there were 11.3 billion dollars of transactions made yesterday all in a private way so we're kind of thinking that there are ways and we don't need to just sort of dismiss this one so easily. Next slide please. So the report gives some ideas on on how we might implement this data clearinghouse. And that's what's kind of listed on these these bullets here. And that's probably sufficient for here the next slide please. And the value. You know this is a value slide so you know data aren't information data need to be transformed into information so so a lot of what the value of having a data clearinghouse will be is for research, but not solely research and you know but but the data would be used in a lot of different ways to produce information that's useful for specific projects and that's where we see the value of the clearinghouse next slide please. So that's our seventh recommendation now just some some some concluding thoughts here and we'll go to a question and answer period, but but you know really. I think it's the committee's opinion that we need to be cautious about complacency, the corrosion does happen but there are things that we can do that would greatly improve our practice and make us better engineers and and if we take advantage of them we know there's no doubt that we have some really, you know, fairly rare but very dramatic and very costly and impactful failures that result from corrosion buried steel, whether it's a pipe or a bridge foundation or so on. And there's also, you know, things that are less visible to us but there's a lot of buried resource in the ground where perhaps we're being over conservative with our designs and we're not taking full advantage of the kinds of things that we've talked about here today to to provide a more accurate design. And so with those concluding thoughts we'll move on to the last slide which is kind of a visionary way forward and I think that our committee found that the collaboration was the key really. And it's always the case of course but this is a corrosion study has always been a very interdisciplinary kind of area. It's an area that maybe gets left behind a little bit because of that fact but we found it in our committee the importance of collaboration and I think to a broader extent in the industries we all work within that if we can find ways to collaborate and these input these recommendations that we've provided here today, almost all require that kind of collaboration. We can we can make some great advances and and and save lots of money building safe infrastructure for for a long period of time. That lasts a long period of time. So with that I think that's the last slide that we have here and Alan I think I'll turn it back over to you for some moderation of the questions that we have. Thanks very much. Scott, Jerry and Susan, and thank you for being concise here. It's a big, big topic. Well done to stay within our time limits. I'm going to start kind of with a question, maybe. You know, how might I mean what your recommendations are really pointed at more work is needed. How might that work be organized and how might it be funded.  I think that that are if I'll start on that and I welcome any contributions from others there too but I think that one of our recommendations and Jerry maybe called it recommendation zero is a place that does need to happen early in the process right so this could mean that we need to communicate clearly with one another we need to have a common lexicon we need to be talking the same language and and and that is not an easy task but it's not an expensive task either I suppose so it opens it up to lots of forums where these kinds of discussions could be could be had initially and get that that kind of thing rolling we all in our respective more or less to be doing that kind of thing and and and and bringing and recognizing through through this work recognizing the importance of doing it and then bringing it together later on. Many of the other recommendations can happen in parallel they're not they're not sequential type things and any bodies that you know found a particular interest in those could pick them up and start there. Any comments from others where we might might find sympathetic partner and funding this kind of long term work. Yeah so we were trained to not specify where funding would come from exactly, but it does seem that that you the government industry partnerships would be useful for this type of study. You know, there are I think there are various mechanisms that exist already funding mechanisms that could be applied to this topic. I'll second that I think that the the cost to the US GDP is somewhere on the order of about three to 5% every year for metal corrosion right so that's about a two and a half trillion dollar global GDP so this is not. It's not a by not funding it, we are already spending the money as well too. It gets down to whose pocket is that coming out of it's hard to sometimes allocate those out and get somebody to fund it. But I think your work will certainly be helpful to us as we talked to various folks about our agencies or groups about where to go with this. Kind of related to that might be. What would you all recommend as the next big step here. What are your recommendations but what would be the next big step. Well, I think you know what we what we plan to do with this work and maybe this could get the the next big step started. Alan is that we will have a workshop in the coming year to describe this work with the sponsors of the work who have already sort of expressed an interest in it by way of their sponsorship and we'll have. Sponsors and other participants in these workshops details of which will be released, you know, shortly but we do plan that in 2023. And these may be ways to float, you know, sort of pilot ideas for how to get started on some of these recommendations. That's good, because that might flush out more clearly where support for this might might go. I'm curious. In your work. Have you been able to identify immediate steps that you would take into your own engineering practice. Different than what you might have done before you started this study. I have but I'll let someone else go first if they want to. Yeah, I'll jump in I think to me I think I before we started this study I appreciated the complexity of the process. But I did not understand the depth of the complexity here right so looking at the range of parameters that were currently measuring right which may or may not give us good results. I guess for me the next focus is more clearly identifying the role of the soil parameters and how they interact in order to cause corrosion so and by soil parameters I'm including the saturation the fluids the geochemistry the microbiology. I think there's lots of places where we can see conditions where we would expect corrosion to occur but it does not. And so understanding the synergies in those relationships I guess for me as a researcher would be would be the next step that that I find very interesting. Yeah, that's that's a great lead in Jerry I don't know if you have something you want to say but I'm going to go off of Susan's lead in here because it goes to one of the things that I've been thinking about it and that is as much as I like to think about time and life cycle and so on in the work that we do. I've always thought of corrosion is fairly static, you know, there is a certain. responsibility of the environment Jerry I got it right there you know that I can characterize but but I don't typically think about how that might change your time whereas you know like, and other things I'm doing right now maybe working on a dam that's not intended to hold water except for an extreme events but I know it has the potential to hold water so I designed it as though it's full water and and I don't I don't think that way with respect to I didn't any have before working on this for the last couple years. I don't think that way with respect to corrosion but I do think that's really an important thing is that the environments change and that if it has the potential to hold water so to speak it might hold water and that's true with the buried steel environment as well as you know a reservoir. Well, I think you know Susan and I are professors and we do research that gets funded, and I can guarantee everyone that if funding is made available that there will be great interest in the academic research committees to join in and participate.  So, I think we need a, you know, a spearhead of activity to initiate interest. The point you made was the need for central data repositories. I think you use a different word but you know I worry a lot about these aggregations of data, having all types of data quality from high to very low. Have you thought, or do you provide any guidance as to how, how that gets managed and dealt with, or is that something that data science people have already sorted out for us. I just think for example that a lot of the testing that gets done today might be itself suspect. Any response from anyone. No curating data is is complicated. But you know what we talk in in the, in the report about, for instance, machine learning approaches to addressing this issue, and you need large data, you know so if we have large data sets, which we think could be created in this area. Large data sets can have varying quality and, you know, there are ways to deal with that. You know, if there, if there aren't large data sets then bad data can be impactful. Yeah, it's a good point to write because one of the primary data sets which is used to guide decisions today was based was developed over 100 years ago or on the order of 100 years ago before statistical design of experimentation was really a thing So, so I think we've had the data issue for a very long time we relied on data sets that aren't necessarily ideal for a very long time as well. Yeah, well we have mechanisms journey volumes more data, maybe including continuing volumes of it being. Yeah, I think the down to all that we did to address that really goes back to this, you know, common lexicon common terminology I mean a lot of quality, you know, could be attributed to misinterpretation misunderstanding of what's being reported and what the metadata are on that you know so so I think is as we build clarity there we're doing something to improve the quality and consistency of the data we collect, but it's a good point though. Yeah. And I keep wondering are we collecting all the right data for example, fundamental to corrosion is oxygen. That word wasn't mentioned in any of this presentation, nor in any of the measurements suggested so are we missing something during maybe that's a question for you. Yeah right I think well, you know we understand what the critical parameters are that will impact corrosion so oxygen content is critical, the degree of saturation of the soil is critical right so resistivity is a. A property that's easily measurable and commonly used in design of structures but is not really sufficient because resistivity does not equal corrosivity. So, you know, pH is important temperature, all of these things are important in, and of course the ionic content in the electrolyte, as well as the local microbes that are existing. So all those things can be controlling, and you know are important to characterize and to understand. And that's again part of the challenge is that those, those conditions can change over space and time. Yeah, to your point to Alan we do mention redox potential right but that it's a tricky thing to measure and that's part of the right that's part of the, the place where we run up against what can we measure well and what what is still fairly challenging to measure and then in situ condition. Yeah I was going to ask my next question of you just kind of on that point. Given what our practices are today, primarily to measure cross measure conductivity, pH, maybe sulfate content. What are we missing, what would be the next thing to add to that list of common laboratory tests that we should consider. I think it's a hard question right, I think what we're missing is the synergies honestly, I think that we probably have, we have the soup. I'm not sure how, how the taste is yet though right how did those parameters come together and mix. And what is it that that identifies where corrosion will occur versus where corrosion will not occur. That's really well said, we should get that in the report, I don't think that's in the report.  Yeah, that's that's that is a very good point. I think it's a good one worth capturing. Kind of related to that as a question popping up here is there a need for revising current best practices for assessing corrosion that can be implemented by why we wait the results of this recommended longer term research. Well, I'm not sure. I'm not sure that can be done in the interim. I'm not sure that's a shorter step than getting started on some of our recommendations here. I think revising current best practices in my mind is a is a long term goal, and not an interim step, but I think that the kinds of ideas that we put forward in this report do lead to to how we would want to revise those practices and, and I think, you know, just getting getting right at it is I think we're probably measuring the right things more or less but but we're not looking at how they work together or work opposed to one another in a sufficient way like these tests you listed out there Alan. I think we just look at them based against some reference values individually and make in the geo civil space anyhow make some kind of assessments of the aggressiveness of a site or a ground based on them individually. And that versus some kind of combination which I think the practice is moving in that direction, but moving there faster could be, you know, something we should, we could pursue. If you look at all those data that are presently out there in a given plot correlation plot. There's like two orders of magnitude at least on corrosion rate scatter in the relationships. That's, that's, that's a lot. Maybe us being able to close that with more and better data models, or does more data just add more uncertainty. I think we could gather better data for sure. So we can run controlled statistically designed experiments and get better data which will help us generate better models. I think we can close that. If your report does address that importance of better data. If it doesn't you might want to drop a couple of words in on that. It does include that you know it does specifically address that. I think even some of the details in the slides I presented, talk about how to go about collecting good data. Very good I look forward I have to admit I haven't read the draft yet but I'm looking forward to it. So we're about out of time here. We had a very good participation here. 180 people listening in on this that's that's quite significant webinar on such a focused topic. I want to thank each of the three of you and pass our thanks back to your committee members as well for a job well done, and especially Scott for shepherding this group of diverse folks through very difficult times with COVID. Getting us to a result that I think we can be proud of. So again there is a link available to you on a, where you can freely download this report just as a guest, and this webinar will be posted online you should get an email soon to tell you where, where to log on to find it. I want to remind you that we have a very interesting presentation coming from December 15 by Professor Lord Meyer from England. A fascinating man who's had a lot of involvement in the development of the Elizabeth line, which was called Crossrail in its earlier days. He'll describe some of his experiences working in that, but maybe also a little bit of comment on the politics in England as he is currently serving as a member of the House of Lords. So, I really look forward to to that. And with that, I think we're pretty well done I think our speakers again for excellent job presenting this material and staying within our time limits. Any other comments from anyone we do have a couple of minutes. But I think we're in good shape. Any of the panelists want to or speakers want to add anything as a close out. No, just once again, thanks to everyone for their participation, you know, just in the Q&A is here today and also for the helping the committee through deliberations over the last couple of years and. Yeah, it's been a pleasure. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you, Emily has posted a couple of links in the chat that you can go chase down more. And thanks again, everyone. Thanks for your participation and look forward to you in our next weapon. Thanks Alan for moderating.


And we welcome you in to go Mustangsports.tv and the Stevenson Athletics YouTube page. It's the Ed Hoddle coaches show. We're here with the head coach of the Stevenson Mustangs, Ed Hoddle talking Mustang football and coach. Season opening victory against St. Vincent. You come home for the first time able to knock off Salisbury after reviewing the film, an emotional game. What's kind of your final assessment of an energizing victory for the Mustangs? It's great win for us, obviously. But looking at it, the emotional part is something we have to manage better. You know, we took the field on the final drive of the game with 10 guys. You know, we've got to be able to mature and grow and understand that we can't be distracted by emotion. So, you know, it gives us things to work on. It gives us things to improve upon, which is certainly important at this stage of the season. So as a coaching staff, what kind of goes into managing emotion? Obviously, you're talking about some young players, 18 to 20 year olds. How does that process work? Kind of from a coaching staff, trickling it down to your players to say, hey, we've got to be able to sort of ride that emotional wave? Well, if you have any tips, I'll take them. You know, it's an ongoing challenge. You know, it's understanding that in the storm, so to speak, you have to remain calm. You still have to go out and execute. And we talk about it a great deal. We talk about it in the team setting, in group settings, in an individual setting. So it's just a constant reminder that no matter what's going on around you, we still have a job to do. Let's take a look back at that game. Obviously, back and forth in the first half, and in the second half, your team really came out with kind of a different level of intensity, so to speak, especially on the defensive end. Was there any particular thing that maybe changed from half one to half two, or how did your team, you know, sort of be able to ride that storm and come out and deliver like you did on the defensive end, forcing three turnovers, holding them to under 40 yards, rushing in the second half of onto triple option attack? What kind of went into the success that you had on the defensive end in the second half? Well, I think that you look at the first half and it was a lot of adjusting to the speed of the triple. Our scout guys did a phenomenal job all week, but they're not Salisbury. And, you know, when you see it real for the first time, it was fast for me to even follow.  So, you know, watching it unfold in person is very, very different than seeing it in practice. So I think as you go through the game, you get adjusted to the speed of it. I think our guys did a great job making adjustments at half time, you know, a few schematic things that we changed. They did a great job doing that. And I think they really started to believe in themselves that, okay, we can, you know, we we'd had some stops in the first half, you know, in adjusting to the speed and started to believe that they that we can play, you know, that some of this stuff is it's not that hard. Just do your part. And we talked about that all week is just do your job. Don't do the guy besides his job. Just do your job. And, you know, I think they really bought into that. And I think we played with some confidence in the first in the second half that I didn't necessarily see in the first half. Flipping it over to the offensive and really some success in the passing game in the first half, obviously, with senior quarterback Ryan Sedgwick setting the new career touchdown passing record here at Stevenson. He's a veteran guy, and you were able to get different receivers involved in addition to Steven Smothers as well. What sort of led to that game plan of being able to distribute the ball around offensively and kind of use the run to set up the pass and vice versa? Well, I think, you know, people are going to zero in on Steven, you know, he's an easy guy to find. He's a big target for us. And, you know, we work that throughout the week, you know, that people are going to work to take Steven away. And we've got to have other guys step up. And they did a mirror and Brandon and those guys did a remarkable job.  And, you know, that was kind of the plan all week was to spread the ball around be multiple as we could be on offense.  I mentioned this, you know, post game, they run the same thing that we do all the way down to the nuts and bolts. And so we had some familiarity. We kind of knew and, you know, what could what hurts and, you know, what's tough to cover. And I think we did a good job of taking advantage of some of the experience that we gained, you know, throughout the preseason going against our guys. And then I'd be remiss not to mention special teams as well. Obviously some big plays in the kickoff return game, the PAT game was a little bit more short up. That's another phase of the game that when you're beating a ranked team like that, all three phases have to contribute. That's exactly what happened. What was your assessment of the special teams play? I thought we were solid, you know, aside from the couple of penalties we had that took away some of the return yardage. I thought they were vastly improved from the prior week. Brody, you know, goes out and goes five for five, you know, when he had struggled last week and, you know, really proud of his ability to kind of bounce back from that.  So he did a nice job. Kevin did a great job punting the ball.   We tweaked some things and did some nice things there. And, you know, coverage wise, I thought we were pretty solid. I think there's still some things we can improve upon in the teams. But again, you know, big step forward for us, proud of the effort. And now as we turn the page to Alvernia, that's a group with a new head coach coming in here as we begin conference play, played really well against Oberlin for three quarters and had to kind of hold on for a victory. What has your assessment been looking at the Golden Wolves so far this week? Well, I think you look at them and it's easy to see the recent history. But when you start to really delve into who they are, there's a lot of experience on that football team that plays. You know, I think that the new head coach and I are actually really, really good friends. Spoke to him this morning. You know, he's going to do a great job. You know, he's doing a great job and he's going to really do a good job building their program. I'm excited for him every Saturday, except for this one coming up. So, you know, they're an experienced football team. There's a lot of snaps and a lot of minutes under their belt. And I would expect them to be ready to roll Saturday. All right. That is the head coach at Hoddle. We'll have Stevenson and Alvernia coming up here on GilmustangSports.tv. Also on Stevenson Athletics YouTube. Appreciate you being with us and coach. We'll see you next week. Thank you.


Welcome to a new press plastic video So in today's videos, we're gonna talk about business and this is actually something we never really covered before People always had to figure it out themselves. Like how can you make money out of recycling plastic? Whereas it actually quite a crucial element for us that we like it if people make Business out of recycling the plastic because then they can actually continue to do it on a daily basis and sustain themselves in the future So we had to develop a few tools to help people to actually get there but We just not very good at business or me So that's why we have Joseph our business guy coming in to help us out Thanks, Dave. Hey So Joseph is gonna show you in three videos very clearly on how to start from nothing to having a business So I would say have fun in his videos Okay, so we can't give you the perfect business plan or the secret formula for being successful with your business Because a lot of that depends on your ability as an entrepreneur your motivation your local situation But what we can do is give you the tools and resources to empower you to be successful Based on our knowledge working with different precious plastic workspaces around the world But do please make a plan This is gonna help you clarify things for yourself as well as communicate your ideas to other people So we've created three tools the action plan, which is like a quick and dirty business plan for you to plan your business model The workspace calculator, which is a financial forecasting tool for you to understand the financial viability of your workspace and The business plan template, which is where you kind of roll everything together and create a more long-form Business plan so the action plan is really about boiling down your idea and business down to the most important Components so you can see how everything is interacting together Because many people when they get started with precious plastic they want to do too many things at once They want to build all the machines. They want to open up their space for the community They want to make everything mobile or design a bunch of products and while those things can be good The most successful businesses are the ones that really focus on what they want to deliver to their customers So the action plan is a tool that you actually print out and write on It's even something that you could hang up on your workspace wall to keep you focused on your goals over time And remember that it's not really a tool about how to plan how to get started But it's how your business will actually work once it's up and running you can find this tool in our download kit and for now Let's get into it Okay, so you're concerned about the plastic waste problem and maybe you've heard about precious plastic And you'd like to start building a plastic recycling business in your area But hopefully it's not just you but a small group of dedicated people with a diversity of skill sets willing to start the project together The first step to planning your new operation is to write out all the components of your business model using the precious plastic action plan The first step here is to think about your mission or why you are wanting to start this business Try to be clear and concise here Maybe it's that you want to educate tourists about the impact of plastic waste on your community through beautifully crafted products Or maybe your mission is to build custom precious plastic machines to build up the recycling infrastructure in your city Okay, now that we know our mission you can move to the right section of the action plan Which is where we will define the sections of how you'll interact with your customers First think about what products and services you want to offer. Are you focused on workshops building machines? Collecting and shredding plastic or products. What kind of products? Now think about your target groups Or the groups of people you're aiming to sell your products to your future customers and the people using your products and services Who are they and how can you group them? Next think about how you're planning to engage these groups Engagement is all about how to make your target groups aware of your products and services This could be through a website social media group canvassing at your weekly market or some other way Your sales channels are the ways in which you will sell your products to your target groups These could be physical channels like a shop or a festival or a digital one like the precious plastic bazaar Now that we figured out the customer-facing side of the business We should now think more about the most important ins and outs of actually running the business on the left side of the action plan We start with our key resources or the tools machines people or other things that are a must-have for you to successfully Deliver on your mission. Maybe that's a certain machine a space to run your workspace or specific people that you need Okay, we have our resources now think about your key activities or actions There's probably a lot of things that you could think about that are important But try to boil it down to the few that you must absolutely do right to succeed If you're producing a product a fish in production would be a good one Finishing your products can also be what makes them stand out to your customers Because your machine is the backbone of your business machine maintenance might be crucial as well It all depends on the type of workspace that you're planning Your running costs are the top three to five costs that you expect to face once your business is up and going These are the costs that you will see every month because they come from the core ongoing operation of your business often in precious plastic businesses This is the rent of your space if you have to pay for it electricity and paying your employees The last section on the left side is our collaborators because successful businesses are not made alone These are the key people businesses and other organizations outside of your workspace that will be crucial to your success Lots of precious plastic businesses get help from a fab lab or a business incubator to help them get started But there could be other key suppliers community leaders or government agencies that could be critical to your success That could be because of the financial support they offer you or simply being a champion for your business and spreading the word Now let's move to the impact section of the action plan The community section is for you to think about how your business will impact your community You can think about this locally So maybe because of the jobs that it will create in your village or the education that it will provide people about the plastic waste problem You can also think about it in terms of what you will bring to the precious plastic community Such as open sourcing the molds that you design so that others can also produce your products Next up the planet I'm guessing because you're interested in starting a precious plastic business that you also care about the planet Here's where you write down exactly how you're doing it Is it because you're cleaning up your town or keeping plastic waste from entering the ocean? This is your chance to connect your business to its environmental impact The last section is your income streams Or all the ways that you plan on bringing in income to your business This isn't your startup or investment money But all the ways that you'll be bringing in revenue month after month once you're up and running Is it product sales hourly machine maintenance fees or workshop ticket sales? Try to narrow it down here to the sources of revenue that you think are most realistic You can always add additional sources of revenue as you develop Congratulations. We're now done planning your business model Now let's move on to the numbers behind starting a financially successful precious plastic business Yes, so this is where it's going to get interesting talking about the numbers to make sure you can sustain yourself in the long run Um, and I would say if you have any questions so far make sure to visit our online community where you can get an answer Joseph might be there as well to answer them And for now, thanks for watching and see you in the next precious plastic video Oh and before you go we just wanted to let you know that precious plastic runs on the support and funds of people just like you Everything we do and develop is shared online open source for free So that people can continue to tackle the waste problem in their locations around the world If you're able and willing to support us, please visit support dot precious plastic dot com Where you can donate some money or find another way you can help us Thank you. Goodbye


All right says go so I guess we could go It's really aggressive go It's a demand. I will not be bullied. Yeah I'm not ready to go. Yeah, it's right. I'll go when I'm ready Anyway, welcome back everybody. We're here for a fire and ice here.  It's humor in recovery right right here as we call ourselves fire and ice for no apparent reason except for You have a history of playing hockey and I live in California. That's it.  So I like it. I like it Fire nice. What's with them? What are they? I hope so Anyway for those who do not know fire nice Is Lauren Rosen LMFT therapist in California and a friend of mine. We do these on a pretty regular basis We talk about anxiety and anxiety recovery different topics that you guys want us to cover. So welcome back Lauren Welcome back. And if you're joining from from my platform, that's drew lintelata right there. He's great The anxious truth. He's got a podcast. He's got books. He's got an instagram platform. He's got it all I don't know when this turned into a you commercial When exactly right when did it turn into a commercial a drill? I like it though because Oh, thank you. Well, we're always joking around which brings us to our topic today Which is humor where does humor fit in in the whole anxiety disorder and recovery complex? We're both kind of jokesters. We spend a lot of time just cracking ridiculous comments to each other so Clearly because life gets way too serious and sad if you don't if you don't bring a little humor into it, right? Yeah, so where do we think it fits in?  I was like, oh, yeah, that's a good point Actually really good. I never would have thought of that exposure, okay expecting That good things will happen is scary Yeah, because there's no protection in that I'm not already against the bad if I'm just allowing good things or I'm expecting good things right Right. So having this levity this playfulness this Yeah, maybe the bad thing does happen and and treating it lightly in and of itself is I think an an adjunct to support to exposure work Rather than keeping it always in this the the dark things Possibly gonna happen like yeah, maybe maybe that happens and maybe the good thing happens. I really don't know Okay I guess it's not really humor per se, but it's connected in a roundabout kind of a way Yeah, I mean at least it tends away from the dark clouds You know for sure if you're gonna let's optimism in I think like the humor for me I know in my own personals Humor is a lot easy to come by after the fact. I don't know if you found the same thing Like in the heat of the moment, there was no nothing was funny. I mean there's nothing You know when you're actually racked with it But sometimes it was funny the next day like in the you know when rationality got a chance to come back It was a little bit funny Down the road now the things that I did to me just cracked me the hell up I can't even imagine there's no logic behind it, but I did them anyway Yeah But even at the time the one that I and I tell the story often So I'm sure you guys some of you guys have heard this but I had this irrational fear that the the any new Food in the fridge had been tampered with so Hey, I would sure love some orange juice, but that's a brand new carton of orange juice and clearly it's been poisoned So I would just yeah, no natural. So what would you do about that? You would you throw it away and make sure that nobody gets poisoned? No I'll just let somebody else in the house drink it first Right so Now that is hilarious It was like What kind of a monster am I like these thoughts would be in my head button And the next day if I wasn't feeling it I would see the humor in that like that is patently absurd and the fact that I would let someone else drink it first Was just like really like I had to just roll my eyes at the absurdity of it and there was a little bit of funniness in that Absolutely Yeah, and allowing some of that did help me I think For sure and I think over time it gets closer to the moment of extreme anxiety when you can access this humor. So I was for instance, I can't even remember what it was about but That's probably six months ago and I I noticed an anxiety spike and I have a pretty solid mindfulness practice And so I noticed that my anxiety was starting to rev up and I texted my friend And I was like wow my anxiety. It's like it's spectacular right now. It's like a fourth of july firework show I mean wow The charts, you know, and it did it made me laugh While I was anxious I got to have both of those experiences I like that's the further down the road you get in your progress the closer the humor can get to the actual Distress so the humor in the stress sort of mix that could coexist. Yes. Yes Okay, it's a good No, I I don't disagree It's only the objective view of what's going on or a more objective view allows you to see the humor in it When you're entirely mired in the subjective and the judgment and this is the horrible and bad things are going to happen There's no humor Right when you can see for what it really is it does get a little funny There's a little bit more playfulness and I I think also as you Back off of the all-or-none thinking and the sense that life can only be good if it is without anxiety As you get a little further from that and recognize that no the whole point is to live a life that's full and anxious that there's a there's more Capacity to hold both simultaneously things can be funny and anxious or funny and terrifying and funny and sad All at once So there's a degree of like the psychological flexibility that is reflected and being Ready to laugh that even when things Yeah being able to do that. I think in the moment I know one thing that I've heard and to me. This is brilliant. I never thought of this But I've heard some people tell me that You know when you had the repeated experience of I'm in a crisis. I'm in a crisis Nothing happened when a crisis in a crisis. Oh nothing happened once you have that experience enough I've heard people who are able to say I can almost look at it as future me Like tomorrow me when this has passed I can almost see what tomorrow me will see and then they could start to almost make fun of it as a As a diffusion tool not a use but a diffusion tool So an acceptance and commitment therapy kind of diffusion de Pretty much like okay. I can think about what I'm gonna I can imagine what I'm gonna think about this episode tomorrow when I'm I know that nothing happened And now I can almost laugh at what I'm afraid of Yes, I think there's an important caveat to that which is if you don't take action Based on so the second that you start to do a safety behavior or the or a compulsion Your mind is then going to attribute your safety after the fact to the behavior And so if you do that then you don't get the learning right the learning that Oh, I guess I was okay. I was able to tolerate the the feelings. They ultimately passed It seems like the bad thing hasn't happened yet. So I guess I don't know It seems like I don't need to do that thing in order to survive And I think at that point you can then project in the future go. Oh, yeah, I've I know I've done this before and it's In the moment terrifying and if I accept this terror It it's you know, probably gonna benefit me overall based on my experience So that makes sense. Yeah, it does make sense. I see where you're getting at. So the concern there would be that The the attempt to inject humor can become its own Like a tool a compulsive tool or a safety behavior, right? I call I have to make jokes to knock this down to be okay Yeah, and just that you never get to the place of recognizing the Or having that space from From the anxiety if you're not able to stop doing the compulsions Just independent of the humor. You're not going to understand that that Space between oh, right. I've been through this before and I know what this is like and if I don't do anything it's scary And I'm likely to have more objectivity in the future and then you can be like, right. Okay. Well tomorrow me is probably In my my reserves I know that tomorrow me has a little bit more objectivity and then can inject the sort of humor into it a little bit more easily However, I think your point is really well taken and we were kind of touching on that before the episode So I'm gonna I'm now put it on you in a go aggressive kind of a way Talk to us about how how humor can become a compulsion or a safety behavior drew I think you could become a bit of a safety behavior Well, it can become a couple of other things it could be The best disguise ever for what I like to call covert reassurance seeking, you know now I always like to say like assurance is okay. We're allowed to learn and we're allowed to ask questions That's okay. Not everything is is bad reassurance, but when you've already heard the answer 16 times and you want the 19 That's where the problem is But so humor often gets used as a gloss or cloak around that reassurance seeking So i'm gonna make a funny joke I I see no humor in the way i'm feeling right now, but I will make a joke to you my friend Hey, lauren, let me tell you this funny thing about what my body's doing right now Oh my gosh, I did this in a meeting the other day. Actually I did I like i'm just gonna close straight up call myself out Uh, sorry, I feel like I interrupted your oh, no, no. This is exactly what we're talking about bring it So I I was talking with a colleague and I said something that I realized in the aftermath could have been interpreted as somehow unkind or insensitive for or as a a criticism of her and I found myself Sort of reading her facial expressions and trying to determine right compulsively as we do Okay, sometimes from time to time. Oh, what is she thinking as if I could actually determine? But I I found myself at a certain point going Oh, I'm just gonna I'm I'm gonna do my best to accept uncertainty right now that so and so is not Upset with me and it was in a so it was in a joking manner completely and then she laughed and I was like see I'm good that's I'm gonna make a joke to get what I want. So yes when you're in that scary situation and you're feeling like I want to ask somebody about this or I I need to be told it's okay But you know, you're not supposed to making a joke about it, huh?  I did it too. We all do it.  I don't know how old everybody is watching but I was doing this when Reagan was president.  I did all of those Well, I know I know exactly why because I did all of them I was doing them before a lot of you guys were born sadly, but like okay that that's a thing That's part of how humor can become a safety behavior Yeah in one way. Yeah Absolutely Yeah, yeah, also that or sometimes it becomes A frustrating attempt at a safety behavior that doesn't work Like oh, I'm just gonna start cracking jokes and huh try and make myself laugh Which we know we can't do can't demand that to feel something that is funny So I seem to get really frustrated when humor is their default coping mechanism and it doesn't work in the face of this thing Sometimes a little like discouraged. I'm like, it's not working Yeah, yeah, that's a thing Well, and it's an indicator that you're using it compulsively because if if you find yourself trying to Do something and then it re triggers you If you're trying to get that Which compulsion safety behavior so often do re trigger us, which is one of the major issues with them, frankly I mean, you're gonna make it worse potentially um But I think the other thing That we were talking about before we started is that sometimes you can try to laugh off your anxiety as a a means Of discrediting it Yes Yeah, I'm so sure that that you know that doorknob has germs on it. Good point brain, right? Which Look, I don't even think that that's inherently a bad way To react. I think if you have a balance in your recovery practice of of recognizing that I do at The bottom of it have to accept the uncertainty That that's it's not a problem However, if that's your main go-to and you're trying to use it to convince yourself That your anxiety is full of it and that the bad thing isn't going to happen We've lost the thread. I think I think so too and that's the difference between you don't use it as a Convincing or a reassurance again.  I am scared, but okay.  I'm being playful with it in in In the service of that and maybe talking about the humor part This is where it's funny that you brought up diffusion earlier because diffusion techniques I think can be really great for this and like singing a little song like While you're terrified, right? So totally accepting that you're the fear is pumping through your veins. It's like I am gonna touch this doorknob And it is gonna give me a disease, right? Like at least You're like you're dancing to it 80s disco acts a little bit. I forgot. See it's happening. It's happening So, you know, but there's there's at least like, okay. Well because we're riding this feeling and at least I might as well just Try and play while I'm at it because otherwise it's just gonna be miserable In that respect, especially in your specialty where you're trying to take the bite out of those thoughts and those discussions You would think that being able to do that in it at least an attempt at a humorous way Has to start to try to take the bite out of that. I'm gonna sing a song about my contamination And it often does I think it's all down to your That's the way that I'm looking for Your intention Yeah And if you're intending it to talk yourself out of it, then that's a problem But if if you're intending it to just recognize that the thought's happening and that you're uncertain and and trying to Ride the wave with a little bit of Yeah Yeah, I get that. It's such a funny line. So much of this is The fine line between what's useful and what's not and what's useful on tuesday might be counterproductive on wednesday But then useful again on thursday, so It's you have to be contextually aware and sometimes we make mistakes and that's okay. We'll blow it two times Yeah, I think another cool thing about humor and recovery is it does foster that sense Look, nobody wants to feel alone and I mean god knows instant therapy is all about making sure you're not alone We know this so Yeah, like you're not alone. We get it. There's millions of us. We get it But everybody wants to feel like they're the only one and humor is a good common threat So when I tell the silly orange juice story people crack up, but they also Oh my god, I thought I was the only one that did that and then people can come together and understand like, okay I'm not I'm not really broken. So that's always nice Yes, we also see that pop-up around. You know, what about bop one of my favorite movies? Yes Anybody watching us right now loves what about bop? I gotta find a way to get permission to stream that to like everybody one day We'll watch together. I know we should that's what I would be in for that and like a real-time watch session I don't know who owns it, but maybe I'll make a note about that. Maybe I'll reach out It's an educational thing We have a community full of people dealing with anxiety disorders that love what about but what about bop Can we stream at once? Totally Maybe they'll give us the okay, we'll see but I that humor could be a really bonding Tool a tool as people bond and understand they're part of a community and they're not alone and other people actually share their struggles So that's a good thing about humor. I think if you can indulge in it a little bit absolutely, I think that I've found that humor is easier to access when you've got other people that you're connected to who understand Really, but that's sometimes it's easier if you're talking to a friend to have a laugh than it is if you're just sitting alone in the experience and i'm not talking about as a tool to reassure yourself excessively but as a you know as as just a It's the common humanity piece, right? There's so much comfort in just to your point knowing that you're not alone And this is you're not the only person to ever experience this thing And maybe sharing the experience in a humorous way is certainly a lot more accessible Maybe safer less threatening than look we're talking about, you know, I I went to the er again for the 16th time in the year I'm embarrassed. I'm ashamed But if I talk about it with the community humorously it makes it's a softens blow a little bit Like i'm wrapped by thoughts of harming my my children Nobody wants to talk about that that's a terrible topic, but if there's some humor possibly woven in it becomes a softer Conversation, maybe Actually, it's so funny. Uh, and I don't know if this was his content or somebody else's but I saw a post From anxiety josh, uh, just today. Oh, yeah, that guy that guy your buddy So he was saying something about you know, those the captures the the things that you have to do to prove You're not a robot It's so good because he he basically Somebody said do you overthink things right? So the meme is do you overthink things me? And there's a picture of one of the captures and is there is there a streetlight in this in this square? It's like this much of the And anyone who's anxious has been there, right?  Yeah, I really do take things to an extreme I think it just supports mindfulness ultimately the ability to really witness it without judgment Um and and with a heaping dose of self-compassion for sure. Yeah, that's true I'm sure you get this too. I know because the content you put out is outstanding How many times has somebody replied in your comment section? I feel personally attacked by this Yes And that's why you know for somebody like like lauren for somebody like me when you say I feel personally attacked or get out of my head He's freaking me out And we know we did it right. So yes, totally becomes a great thing People can express that that way truly I also like when you one of the things that I like is using Humor in exposure. So if there's a content area that is anxiety provoking to you and There's some sort of a stand-up special about it that tends to bring up your anxiety That's a great exposure because there you are having both of those experiences simultaneously That's the same time So do you think though because I have had people who try to use Specifically stand-up sometimes or funny movies like oh if I'm really anxious. I'll put a funny movie on but they're trying to Force themselves into that jovial kind of thing with the movie and that doesn't work out so well But you're using it as an actual exposure tool. Yeah It could go away like no, no, no, no, let's listen to this guy tell jokes about this for 20 minutes Yeah, exactly I'm trying to think because I did not watch it and I can't remember who special it was But somebody recently did a stand-up comedy special that talked about michael jackson Wait and the the sort of allegations of of child abuse And who yeah, do you know who it was? I can't remember No, but i'm sure it's been talked about often by comedians, but I could see where that would be a real triggering thing Very truly I had I had clients come to me and say this is really triggering. And so we ended up turning it around and be like, okay Well, let's watch it This is great. Um, and I I do think it's not I think that if you're trying to to cultivate anxiety in order to or cultivate anxiety cultivate laughter In order to mask anxiety and train in order to try and like push that out That's a problem. If you're saying, okay, I'm feeling anxious. I'd also like to cultivate this other experience to have while I'm feeling anxious That's great because you're under no obligation to Exclusively feel anxious for the duration of your anxiety. In fact, quite the contrary. That's probably going to keep you stuck Yeah, true. That's that even if thing even if I am anxious I can watch this I can read this book I can have this conversation even if even while Yeah, that's a good idea. I never really thought about that using stand-up or or movies or anything like that that has that subject But I've seen people do that in my community for sure. Like, oh, I'm really triggered by such and such. I'm watching reruns of er Yeah, people tell things I would go and watch, you know, hospital medical dramas and stuff And it's really hard for them, but they do it and it helps them. So yeah, why wouldn't a stand-up special? That makes good sense Yeah, no, it's a good way to shake it up. Let's wrap it up with a I think an important thing because we know that This is a big issue for so many people in recovery that they come into the process Full of negative self-belief and self-doubt and a poor self-image and a lot of You know harsh judgment about themselves When does humor become we can all laugh at like, oh, I can't even believe I was afraid of that You know, I'll laugh at my orange juice thing. I can't believe that I was actually afraid of blah blah blah I was on I was on someone else's podcast Jen Kirkman's podcast and she is the I was jumping up and down She's second person ever said this to me. She had the fear and she talks about this openly It's in her podcast. She was afraid that gravity would stop working. That was her obsession Right like how terrifying is that? She was that's a second human being I've ever heard with that particular fear And so we got talking about it, but she laughs about it, you know, at the time not so much when does that go into self-deprecating and And really harsh self-judgment because I've seen that the humor almost gets too far Yeah, I laugh at the fear, but now I'm actually laughing at myself and there's a difference Yeah That's such a good question. I don't know that I have an answer for it Answer more than observation probably Yeah, no, but it's so important I think maybe the answer to some extent is in that making sure that the self-compassion is there that it's not It's that it it's in the intent again. It's in the flavor of it and if you're using it as a whip to lash yourself versus If you're recognizing like wow life is funny I think The the thing is one of the the beautiful things about humor is that it's all about I don't know taking the whole Experience that we're a part of this whole experiment of life that we're in a little less seriously And if we can use it in that way Then it softens the whole thing and it's not about oh, we're bad.  Yo, it's less sarcasm and less Uh Yeah, I don't know pointed and it's it's hard. It is a hard thing to oh last time I said that we got remixed We did in the best way we got completely remixed and it was hilarious. Um So I I think there's that fine line and just maybe being aware of it There's no answer here, of course like in many instances don't answer just being aware that like well When are you going over the line where now you're actually Making fun of yourself as opposed to let me see the humor in what I thought As opposed to let me make fun of myself by making jokes about who I am Yeah, or claring that thought to mean i'm broken So let me make fun of being broken and I've seen that and it's it's heartbreaking So sometimes the humor gets used as a weapon It's so true and and I do think that that mindfulness piece of just taking a step back and Witnessing yourself instead of making it about you as a person I know that and I'll share this because as we round this out, but I I laugh now at some of my obsessions in particular My obsessions around relapse with alcoholism, right because I spent two years of my life trying to Trying to figure out whether or not I'd relapse by eating a piece of tiramisu Right like this was my life and this is my reality and Honestly, it is it's it's sort of like whoa I really I really took that and went with it, you know, and that is humorous to me now and I think It was to your point earlier wasn't humorous to me at the time but I can really and and that injecting that humor into my Reflection on that in this very not it was horrifying and terrifying and I have so much Like respect for myself in trying to navigate that and if I can look back and inject a little humor into that moment I'm more able to inject humor into these present moments Where it might be more challenging Yeah, which is great and then you can look back at the process that you went through as somewhat ridiculous in humorous Not that you were ridiculous That's that's the difference right there Totally just nailed it. That's that's the the difference is the process is funny Not I'm funny or I'm a joke or I'm Stupid Which are some of the same principles you find with with guilt or regret you can regret what you did Without actually passing judgment about who you are. So this this all different discussion, but anyway See we were worried maybe next time. Maybe next time. That's what we're going to talk about We're 20 minutes without even banning eyelash So I'm very self-aware of the fact that I don't feel I was very funny during this episode and I'm gonna accept that discomfort of like, oh, wow, this is about humor and people may be expected to laugh more Uh, but you know, whatever. It's fine. Yeah, sometimes it's you just some days you're meta and some days you're not today We're not that's okay. That happens. That's right. I like it All right, folks. Thanks for coming by as always always good to have you We'll do it again next month. We seem to do these every month We're gonna be really good at that. So if you are not aware of who lauren is are following her then It's right on the screen follow on instagram at the obsessive mind So, yeah, that's how you get to lauren and then if you'll pull yours up You're sure you got all the tools remember Follow drew because he's awesome the dot anxious dot truth That's very serious. There's lots of periods in there the period anxious Because there's a ready somebody that has periods and that guy got really popular in the last two years Really? Yeah, it's he has it's an anxiety account of some kind So if you guys want to go follow the anxious truth with that period, he'll wonder why but he's gotten Accident, yeah I'm sure he's a good guy. So go follow him. Anyway, thanks for coming by We'll see you guys again next month and if you have comments or questions Send them out. Let us know what else you want to talk about and we'll do that and we'll see you next time Thanks guys later. Let's end the recording