Today we're gonna talk about Ben Affleck defending an interview. Greg, why don't you tell us about the video we're gonna watch? Yeah, so a couple of weeks ago, Ben Affleck went on a two-hour interview with Howard Stern. He talked about his breakup with his ex-wife and family, and he had some fallout from it, so here we go. Here he is, Ben Affleck! Dog! Yet another indignity, you know what I mean? I thought, at least I come this far. Thank you for being here. I know you're very busy promoting the Tender Bar. Yeah, it's cool, man. It's like, I love this movie. It's really about stuff that's really close to my heart. I mean, it's about how the heroic work of single moms and how important dads are and about how, like, whatever the kind of constellation of your family is and how flawed you are, sort of, you have to work through this stuff and be present in kids' lives and love them and give them a sense of self-worth so that they can sort of be good, happy, healthy people, you know, and it's been a lot of fun. And the soundtrack is really good, too. This is a good soundtrack, yes. You make it sound so serious, man. I love this movie, too. I didn't read any of that stuff. It is, well, yes. It is so close to my heart, and I had a chance to do an interview with a friend of yours, Howard Stern. I listen to you. It's a really cool, like, long form, in-depth, you know, it's a two-hour interview. And because the movie is about family and all this stuff that's meaningful to me, we talked a lot about my family and, you know, the divorce and alcoholism and struggling with real things and how you have to be accountable and loving and how I work with my ex-wife and how I'm so proud of the way that we work together for our kids is the best that we can for them. And, obviously, I was really happy with it. You know, I entered the interview. It was a great interview.  And I started seeing all this stuff come up on Twitter and I was like, well, what is this? And I sort of researched through it and then saw that one of these websites had done the clickbait thing of like, you won't believe what he said. Click on this. Come to our site. Right. And I looked at it and they had literally taken the conversation that I had had for two hours and made it seem as if I was saying the exact opposite of what I said. I had gone on and said, like, how much we respect each other and cared about each other and cared about our kids and put them first and went through our stuff. And he said that I had blamed my ex-wife and my alcoholism and that I was trapped in this space. Just made me out to be like the worst, most insensitive, stupid, awful guy. And I, look, I know people do this. I get it. Me, I'm happy to be sad Batman. I'm happy to be the Dunkin' Donuts and the mean. I understand. You have to get married to Jimmy Kimmel sometime. Really, like, it's about my kids. I gotta just draw a line. Right, of course. You know, I'm really clear. Like, that's not true. I don't believe that. It's the exact opposite of who I am, what I believe.  I mean, obvious. It hurts my feelings, man. Yeah, I noticed that. I saw that online.  Wait, are you saying the media sometimes takes things out of context? Occasionally, yeah. For an effect? It feels like it used to be like, you know, okay.  You had to go in the talk show and say like, well, you know, I'm being, you know, the famous... Is that what you're telling me? Wow, this is gonna be some clickbait tomorrow. I know. Yeah, and then you have to think... But now it's like you can have the most pleasant, honest, real conversation and be kind of on... And no matter what you say, someone can just say- They make you regret. The three words, put it up there. And I know we've all read the thing. You won't believe what they said.   And this is just boring. But, and even being the subject of that is just sort of the cost of doing business a little bit as an actor. But like, not with my kids. Don't do that. It's wrong. It hurts me. And your family. Stop that. It's your culture. Chase, what do you got? Right here, when he's talking about the movie, every key point that he wants to loop into his talk about all the media issues, he's saying that's what the movie's about. I read the synopsis. It's not that much about that. And when he says the words, good, happy, healthy people. Good, happy, healthy people. I think that's a strong point right there. His eyes shift down and to his left, which suggests that a person is entering some internal dialogue. They're talking to themselves. He tosses his hands and notice the difference between him tossing his hands out and this kind of cradle gesture that he uses before that and you'll be able to spot it when he uses it. And they can sort of be this kind of person.   Then he goes into a full shoulder shrug and his face almost goes into a wince. So throughout this whole thing, there's a ton of regulators. He's stopping Jimmy from talking at every point almost. Kimmel starts talking, this huge open arm gesture comes out to make him stop. And there's a ton of other regulators he's using with his body to keep Kimmel from talking. I think it's interesting that he is very expressive with his hands and he's very articulate in expressing himself with his hands. And noting that he punches his hand, his fist into his hand exactly at the word loving. Right when he's saying the word loving, I think that's an interesting point there. But when he says the word ex-wife, that's the furthest his hand travels away from his body throughout the entire thing. And Kimmel starts talking again, you'll see a full stop gesture when our fingers extend all the way, you'll see that from him. And then when he's talking about the Twitter stuff, he's holding the phone, he's holding an imaginary phone, which tells us that he narrates stories really well and with precision with his hand movements. But when he says click bait, it's the same hand gesture as the ex-wife. When he says insensitive, stupid, awful, those three words, same exact hand gestures. So click bait ex-wife and insensitive, stupid, awful, he uses the exact same hand gesture. So we're looking at individual things here, not just some body language from an online article. So finally here, he's explaining, this article is the exact opposite of who he is and what he believes. And we see a blink rate, which is how often a person blinks. And his average for his media appearances is 21. His blink rate goes up to near a hundred. And I think it was 98. And a high blink rate suggests a high degree of stress and I think there is some stress here with him describing that. And secondly here, there's a pepper grinder gesture that he makes throughout this at a few different key points. And one of you guys might cover it, but if you spot what those points are and how they might be related, let us know in the comments and we do read them. So overall, he exerts a very powerful control over the conversation to ensure that his message is out there and he uses his body to stop Kimmel from talking almost the entire time. Scott, what do you got? All right, usually these things follow structure.  So up to that point, everything's going smoothly. I think he's nervous, he looks a little bit nervous as anyone would be going on a talk show or most anyone would be going on a talk show. When he sits down, he does this big adjustment. Once he sits down, see a lot of adjusting in here. He completely skips the small talk. There's no, there's no, hey, what's been going on? What are you doing? None of that at all. He just gets right into the movie part of it, which is sort of uncomfortable because it seems so soon. But again, he's nervous because he's, you know, everybody thinks he said something horrible about his ex-wife and his kids are watching and all that and he's gotta straighten all that out. He uses these big illustrators, big gestures, but they're very close and they're really stiff. They don't, they don't move very smoothly at all at first. So, and you're right, Chase, when he starts talking about his wife, his hand starts to go, that's when you see it go the furthest. But the more he starts talking about his family, the wider his gestures get and they get a little bit more smooth or smoother. However, you would say grammatically correct.  His elbows get closer to his chest as he's talking about that. He's probably embarrassed, I'm sure, when he starts talking about the problems like with alcoholism, because when he says, and discussing my alcoholism, he doesn't whisper that much, but he does, he gets really, really quiet when he does that by some stickers. Then, then he gets to a point where he starts the whole thing again. It's that uncomfortable thing, everything's really small, then everything starts to get big again and his gestures get really large and much smoother than they were at the very first. When he talks about being in memes, like being the sad Batman and those kind of things, his illustrators get really big, but they get really smooth because that's funny and he understands that's funny. And with the structure of this, everything seems to be going fine. Now, when he gets to the part where he talks about, where Twitter is talking about how bad he is and whoever else is talking about how bad he is, this is when we see that anger being, him holding back that aggression and anger at that point, because that's when he starts that twisting thing Chase was talking about earlier. I can't remember what specific words he's talking about, but that's when he starts those things.  He makes a little snake thing and that little chopping movement right there. So that makes sure every point he wants to make gets made in that one section. That's the reason he's here is for this section. Jimmy Kilder did a great job because dealing with someone who's so uncomfortable as he is during this and it's got to be just the worst at that point. He does such a good job of making him laugh and making the audience feel okay about what's happening because it's obvious this guy's really nervous as anyone would be in this situation. So I think he did a good job getting all of his points across and I think he tried to follow the structure. He got it, but he was so focused on what he wanted to say. He couldn't be, you know, hey, I'm here and talking to you all because he rarely looks at the audience except when he gets down to his point and he starts to chop and stuff. That's when it's the first time he really connects with the audience. And he doesn't look at Jimmy Kimmel that often. He doesn't connect with him, doesn't lock eyes with him very often at all. Again, that's from nerves. Doesn't mean whether he said these things they're saying or not or whether he did or didn't but it just shows he's being really nervous. He's really uptight about what's going on at this point. Okay, Greg, what do you got? Yeah, I think any of us who go into this situation where we're defending something we've said we're gonna have some apprehension as we go in and we're seeing some of that in his body language. I'll also say he clearly has in his mind what he is going to deliver at which time. And if you pay attention to that you'll see telegraphing at times what's coming.  When he starts off talking about good and happy and love and healthy and mom and dad those words are stressed. You have to work through this stuff and be present in kids' lives and love them and give them a sense of self. So that they can sort of be good, happy, healthy people. And he has a specific normal speech pattern he's following. The things that he cares about he speaks more loudly and he emphasizes those syllables a little more. And we see that as a setup. I think as a setup to what's coming next we has to talk about that. When he starts down the path my favorite regulator and you hit some really good ones my favorite regulator in the entire thing is when he takes his hand and he places it on the desk to stop the conversation so he can transition to what he came to talk about. And that regulator is really powerful.  He does, when he's something negative his hand does move off to the side but most of the time his hands are in his field of vision which I associate with someone being mostly honest. People who are doing their hands out over here or over there to get out of the picture I usually think something's up here but he's illustrating his thoughts. That structured transition he came to deliver when he puts his hand on that desk. He does kind of an awkward barrier and he leans back when he does it as well. His forehead goes up like a request for approval when he says a friend of yours and he's talking about Howard Stern of course. And then we see it again as he starts talking we see regulators again as he starts to touch the desk talking about it was a long good conversation he's talking about a lot of things that mattered. He shows some emotion and concern and some concern in his brow when he's talking about the relationship and how it ended. What I think this is is the work we did to try to make things happen. When he talks about getting through the situation with her and working on making the relationship work then when he gets to one or other hard place he twists his hands. I think that's work. I think it's his brain working. His messaging still congruent. My favorite two things in the entire video and I could have just stopped here is request for approval that's not true. That's not true. His brow is up, that's not true. And he immediately transitions and goes to the exact opposite with his brow down that's not who I am telling. I think that tells me what his intent was when his words came out of his mouth was not what people have perceived it to be. That's what I see in his messaging. His elbows are open away from his body and he even reaches over for some water which we usually associate with being stressed. I'll leave it at that and say, oh, the last one Chase is I love your body narration thing. He's doing Twitter, moving his hand on the phone, all of that, it's a beautiful thing. So that's what I got. Mark, what do you got? Yeah, so lots happening here because he does gesture a lot. He does really perform and illustrate and draw pictures of what he's talking about.  So I went back, took a look at some of those. He would tend to normally walk on way prouder, way taller, big smile on his face, lot of confidence. Whereas here, he kind of ambles on a little bit, downcast eyes, lots of shoulder shrugs as he kind of ambles along, kind of moving from this shoulder area rather than his center of gravity kind of cutting through the air. So a lot less powerful than he'd normally be. An eyebrow raised to the audience as he sees them that look of, you recognize me, it's me. So a look of approval, maybe there as well. It seems like he's coming on with maybe a little bit of shame, a little bit of an apology, maybe a bit of sorrow. As Kimmel says later on, maybe an element of regret that he comes on with. So unusual for him. And Chase, I think he has that New York chin boss movement. I can't remember, what is it you call that? Or it was called by some... The researchers call it a shared grief expression. Lovely, lovely, a shared grief expression. I think he has that as he comes on as well. Anyway, so he sits down and not so many illustrators right from the start, but he gets to close to my heart and that's the point when he talks about, as everybody said, moms, dads, families, that he starts to get more gregarious. You see him, this idea of holding up his children when he talks about sense of self-worth. So that thing of he as the father is there to support that sense of self-work. He gives a hit there in a place that we maybe wouldn't want to expect it. There is this twisting gesture that we see as well. It's interesting in watches, the more complicated the watch gets, you call it a complication within the mechanism. And so it is this kind of thing of twists and cogs moving because I think that what he's talking about is how complex, how complicated, how frustrating maybe dealing with this situation of families and mothers and is for him. Interesting that when he talks about the exact opposite, he doesn't do the exact opposite. There's this, the positive and the negative. He flattens out the gesture. He goes the exact opposite. So he does what I would say is a flattening or negation gesture around that. So his opposition to this I think is a negation. He wants it negated what was said. Oh, actually, before that talks about that he was proud of what he said or he was proud of the interview and he goes down and he touches his ankle. Interesting and exposed joint a long way from his body and he goes to his kind of almost self-soothe or protect down there at the ankle. I agree with what everybody's saying there.  Same place where he's put his ex-wife as well. Same place as where he's put Twitter. So he really wants to say, those bad ideas are at arm's length to me. Quite an emphatic denial, linguistically. A lot of aggression comes up from his well. When you're seeing a lot of kind of lower teeth from him uses the water as a barrier and calms himself. So I think the aggression is growing with him. We see some pointing gestures there. So real aggression. I love his cost of doing business gesture as well. It's a little brush away gesture. So he brushes away. Look, I don't mind the odd Twitter thing. That's the cost of doing business. But then stop that. He goes back to that negate chop gesture. In this case, stop that. We see bottom teeth in anger. Closed eyes as well that you tend to get when you're getting targeted and somebody's going into some kind of violent action. The eyes will close and targeting. Stop that. That's not the right thing to do. Quite aggressive there at the end. So, ambles on at the start. Very regretful, I think, but then gets quite aggressive at the end towards the social media or the media agency that in his mind has created this short form version of what he said, which is the opposite of what he believes he said. There, that's what I got for you on that one. Here he is, Ben Affleck. Yes. By Snoop Dogg. Yet another indignity. He's saying, I thought at least I come this far. Thank you for being here. I know you're very busy promoting the tender bar. Yeah, it's cool, man. It's like, I love this movie. It's really about stuff that's, really close to my heart, it's about how the heroic work of single moms and how important dads are and about how like, whatever the kind of constellation of your family is and how flawed you are, sort of you have to work through this stuff and be present in kids' lives and love them and give them a sense of self-worth so that they can sort of be good, happy, healthy people, you know, and it's been a lot of fun. And the soundtrack is really good too. This is a good soundtrack. You make it sound so serious, man. I love this movie too. I didn't read any of that stuff. It is, it is, it is, it is so close to my heart. I had a chance to do an interview with a friend of yours, Howard Stern. I listen to you. This is a really cool, like long form, in depth, you know, it's a two hour interview and because the movie is about family and all this stuff that's meaningful to me, we talked a lot about my family and you know, divorce and alcoholism and struggling with real things and how you have to be accountable and loving and how I work with my ex-wife and how I'm so proud of the way that we work together for our kids is the best that we can for them and obviously, I was really happy with it. You know, I ended the interview. It was a great interview. I thought, wow, I should do more honest exploratory, you know, self-evaluating things. And I started seeing all this stuff come up on Twitter and I was like, well, what is this? And I sort of researched through it and then saw that one of these websites had done the clickbait thing of like, you won't believe what he said. Click on this, come to our site. Right. And I looked at it and they had literally taken the conversation that I had had for two hours and made it seem as if I was saying the exact opposite of what I said. I had gone on and said, like, how much we respect each other and cared about each other and cared about our kids and put them first and went through our stuff. And he said that I had blamed my ex-wife and my alcoholism and that I was trapped in this marriage. Like, just made me out to be like the worst, most insensitive, stupid, awful guy. And I, look, I know people do this. I get it. Me, I'm happy to be sad Batman. I'm happy to be the Dunkin' Donuts and the mean. I understand. You have to get married to Jimmy Kimmel sometime. Really, like, it's about my kids. I gotta just draw a line. Right, of course. You know, I'm really clear. Like, that's not true. I don't believe that. It's the exact opposite of who I am, what I believe. And I would never want my kids to think I would ever say a bad word about their mom because I would never say that. This really upset you. I mean, obvious. It hurts like hell, right? Yeah. Did you guys see that part where his head goes back and his arms come up and it's when he's transitioning from one thing to something else and he gets all squishy? It's almost uncomfortable. Well, for sure, it's very different from what you see him normally do in these kind of interviews. So different. Yeah. Well, I love the one shins out. I left it out too, because when you talk about showing teeth, there's a profound shins out of frustration or anger there. You can't. He's talking about his kids or something there at that point. Yes. Yeah, he's saying, leave my kids alone. That's not who I am. Yeah, his shins out pretty hard. Yeah. Yeah, I think the most uncertainty that I saw here when we saw a big spike in uncertainty is when he was communicating about how he's raising his kids. That's the highest level of uncertainty there. Where we saw the most shoulder shrugs, the up talk, the request for approval with the eyebrows going up. All of the uncertainty, not all it, most of the uncertainty was probably right there. And I think he had a crystal clear message and he wanted to pull people along into that story. So he starts talking about clickbait and how we can all relate to that. You one of those clickbait things. So he did pretty well in pulling people into the story. Yeah, I mean, that's a tough. My guess is some of his uncertainty there will be about mentioning his kids again, because that's that's the issue. If you go and mention your kids, it's very hard for the media not to mention your kids. You know, you just did it, Chase. I just did it. Well, why? Because he mentioned them. I didn't bring them up. He decided to talk about them. And so, unfortunately, they become part of the media fodder that that's out there. All right, well, let's roll around the room one time and sort of give a wrap up if we do 30 seconds or less and let's see what happens. Mark, you go for a go from Mark to Chase to Greg. Mark, what do you got? Yes, the biggest thing for me is just how different this is from his usual interview usually comes on powerful, confident, big smile, you know, one of those people that you want to be around. And now we've got somebody who is sorrowful, regretful and even touching his ankle as as a barrier gesture of feeling unconfident. So very, very different from his usual showbiz self. Chase, what are your thoughts? Yeah, I think he had a message. He wanted to push forward. He came out and I think he was so determined to do it that he just kind of bulldozed through Kimmel. We could see that with all the body language, the gestures, the behaviors and everything communicates that there was a very sharp message that he wanted to put out there. But I think overall, mostly honest, all the behaviors since we're kind of a lie detection team, this is mostly honest. Greg, what do you got? Yeah, I think when a guy goes out and he's promoting a movie, he's going to make great eye contact. When he has good things to talk about, he's going to make great eye contact. He's going to try to romance the audience, if you will. When you're apologizing or defending something, you've said exactly the opposite.  Even if he did not intend for people to perceive it that way, he's now got to do damage control and he's running around doing this now. I think we see that, we see stress in him, but we see honesty mostly. I agree with you guys. All the body language in front of him is about positive things and negative is over here. That's the way we all talk. So I see mostly honest here and I think he's trying to do the right thing and there will be fallout for him and he realizes it. Scott, what do you got? All right, yeah, I agree with all that. And if you set this thing up like if it was in song form because these things are structured, we cut the song in half and didn't worry about the bridge or anything. He comes out with his intro, that's when he comes out and says hi and all that. It's a little bit nervous. Then we sit down like Chase was saying, just bowls right through and it starts talking about the movie. So that's sort of like your verse part there. And they go through and batter out a couple of the things about the soundtrack and some other stuff. And then on the course comes up, he gets in there and digs real hard on the points he wants to make. The reason he's there, really hardcore. And then so the end would be where he brings that to a crescendo and it cuts off with everybody clapping at the end. So I think it was structurally, it was all there, but it was all just kind of squished down into a very short amount of time from him being so nervous. But then again, I think Jimmy Kimmel handled it very well because that's got to be tough to deal with that with somebody who's, they're not trying to take over but they don't know what to do at that point. So his molding that and kind of keeping him in the right lane, that's got to be tough to do. All right, well that's another good one fellas and I'll see you next time. Oh, subscribe. Yeah, be sure and I forget every time. Be sure and subscribe.


Hello, I'm Alex Hoensark. I'm the Chair of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, otherwise known as the CPSC. I'm thrilled to kick off the countdown to CPSC's 50th anniversary. Over the next 50 days, across our social media platforms, we'll highlight some of the tremendous achievements this small but mighty agency has made over the past half century to protect consumers from product hazards. From reducing crew-related infant deaths and residential fire injuries to promoting pool safety, over the past half century, there is no doubt that CPSC has made everyday life better and safer for millions of Americans. As I approach my own one-year anniversary as Chair, I'm honored to be able to build on this legacy to drive our mission forward as CPSC addresses a changing marketplace with new products and greater reliance on e-commerce. Every day, CPSC is working to put consumers first. We are working to make our safety messages more accessible so we can reach consumers where they are, including on social media and mobile platforms. We're targeting communities that are disproportionately impacted by product hazards, including African Americans, Latinos, and Indigenous Peoples. We're improving our tracking systems at the ports to better stop the import of hazardous products. We're monitoring e-commerce platforms for recalled and other hazardous products. And we're increasing product recall responses by driving direct-to-consumer notifications, easier access to recall information, and greater transparency. Finally, we're stepping up our rulemaking and enforcement efforts to guide firms in making products safer and to hold them accountable if they fall short. I want to take a moment also to thank the dedicated team here at CPSC who make all of this possible. All of CPSC employees from engineers, scientists, port inspectors, accountants, economists, support service specialists, attorneys, investigators, and communications professionals to name a few continue to impress and inspire with their commitment to our mission of public safety. I am honored to work alongside them. I want to thank you for your time today and I look forward to sharing more news with you as our work progresses. In the meantime, I encourage you to sign up for recall alerts at cpsc.gov or report a hazardous product at saferproducts.gov. Also, please consider following us on social media. Thank you and please be safe.


Hello, hello Everyone out there. I'm here with Kathy Nava who was the captain for mark camels week and Cheryl who was a helper and participant in his week of the wiki tree challenge So anyone even here? I know Thank you John because I was starting to think nobody showed up for us and there were a lot of wiki tree I was in there at at 10 o'clock Hi Christine glad you made it Hi, you know we haven't even really gone over who's gonna do what I want to go over the Top five of the survey though and I think Cheryl's gonna do a couple of stats And then Kathy's still got all kinds of stuff to pick from so Cheryl says no, I'm not I can't bring them up I'm having oh well. Maybe Kathy will if not I will We're disorganized as what we're telling you, but we're having fun being Relaxed yeah, we're having fun being relaxed just like we had a lot of fun with the week discovering mark camels ancestors and I'll tell you what everybody had so much foam of the research that we didn't have the usual amount of Star Wars memes that we should have had or Voices of the Joker there were a few jokes in there But people really were really involved with the research and it was fun to watch everybody collaborating So Kathy, how do you think that we went? I? Think we did awesome I Think we had the highest number of participants on the score sheet that at least I've seen While participating in these the number of edits was insane I One I felt honored that you asked me to be captain just because I'm a huge You know Star Wars, but I don't have all the memorabilia and stuff my youngest daughter has quite a bit though I just love watching the movies and Growing up on Star Wars So but I think we did it awesome job and there were people I Had fun watching the top Ten change a little bit and then it seemed to be the top five kept changing for a while until Martha just ran with it and blew everyone else away there at the end I know Martha did so much incredible work this week But so did a lot of other people and I think we did for points We only had two weeks that That beat out this week for the whole year and that would be Elon Musk's week And then all of our wakeman, of course, he has a huge fan base, too You know of wiki-triers and other researchers So but as far as edits, I think that that I can look but I think Nope, it's the incident Third, let me look again. What was our total edits for this week? I don't have that showing Um No 5720 edits, so yeah, that was the highest amount of edits that we've done all year long Crazy crazy amount and so many and people involved there, too. Oh Tommy you can't miss us. You're supposed to like have your alarm set for it So Cheryl, how did you think the week went I thought it went great it was a very interesting week to be participating in Was my first week that I experienced being cut My branch it my branch was cut off and there would have been a lot more edits if it hadn't been Yeah, and I was hoping you would want to share with people a little bit that didn't participate and so they don't know Why that happened? I mean, how does that happen where you have a bunch of points and all of a sudden you get up and they're gone.  So I'm kind of a background person and I let the other people do sourcing although I love sourcing profiles But during the challenges, I let the the other people do the sourcing And I like to go in there and clean up the profiles But this week I actually got in there and I was sourcing the profiles and was in 13th place And I woke up in the morning and I saw I had zero points and I thought what the heck is going on So I told Mindy. I said Mindy. I went to from 13th place to zero And we started looking and all of a sudden we found the there was a Wrong father, I think it was in the the tree and somebody found the actual correct father and because of that My branch got cut and every all the work that I had done is Out there some floating in wiki tree land And you know, it's important to say that all of Cheryl's research was really sound It's not that there was anything wrong with her research It's that you know, sometimes we get to looking and we add somebody at you know We say oh Elizabeth is the daughter of Mark and then we add her spouse and her kids her speculative parents And once we start all looking at it and we find out that oh wait a minute this daughter to this father his daughter married somebody completely different then we have to detach those but Cheryl just happened to have had somebody else's work detached right below her So all of her branches went away not just like part of her branches all the branches. She worked on Went away and it's still really great though because like she said it's floating out there around the tree in a little floating leaves and Somebody's gonna come along one day looking for that particular Elizabeth and get really excited Because it already has several generations attached and they're all fully sourced and it's great and you know adding those Speculative answer ancestors is so important because we need places to put the research notes And you know we need to have the the profile where you can go Hey, can somebody else come in and take a look at this? I'm not sure and they can come in and look at the sources and look at the relationship and then determine if it's correct Or you know if it isn't What's so interesting about that I found is that everything matched The father match the the city matched the mother matched the this everything matched and For these people that are so great at doing The research and actually finding a correct father when everything put together like a finite puzzle That I thought was right and somebody ahead of me who had worked ahead of me found that that was wrong And there were two people in the same city and everything that worked didn't work That's amazing to me. It's amazing Yeah Whoever ruined my week You did a fabulous job And we did have a lot of those common names though, you know, and of course you're gonna have that in anybody's branches And you start looking at it and you're like, oh wait a minute All of a sudden you're like, I don't think she married this guy So yeah, and we wind up getting we call it we get the chainsaw out is what we say So a lot of chatter goes around in discord Yeah, Steven says good job and all was not lost. So yeah, Cheryl lost her points It does take them away when we have to detach people But it was for a worthy cause it allowed us to fully research and make sure we get it, you know accurate That's what we want. We want everything to be accurate and once again She's gonna make some future wiki tree are really really happy when they stumble on those those branches that she built up Because those are all correctly attached So in the future if it happens to you don't get upset About it. Just smile and know that Eventually all of that hard work Is going to make somebody very very happy Yes And I know I don't Go ahead Kathy. Oh, I was going to say yeah dawn said he connected his swedish ancestors And We did have just some really amazing growth in those swedish lines. It was just incredible how far they went back on there Really fun to watch and you know, I know Marta. I know donald There were a few people working on those lines and when you look at the oh, I was going to show this anyways Let me full screen this when you look at the branches of Why does it not tell me she's screen-share maybe I won't be able to When you look at the The branches that have expanded those swedish lines are just solid I mean it takes up like one fourth of mark's trees and really really solid and so there was just a lot of great Great work done on those Why is it not going to let me screen-share?  What who was your favorite profile of the week this week? The one that got disconnected Besides the one that got disconnected The guy that was in jail and and left the message saying not to connect or contact him for two years But I thought Yeah, I thought that was really awesome too and you know, I kind of wondered about it though because You know, you're kind of wondering is the guy really just being honest and saying I'm just going to put it out there Don't go to my house. I won't be there for two years while I'm in jail or was he kind of wondering Hmm if I tell people this I wonder how many will come visit me While I'm in there without me having to ask You know, I put it out to all those friends. They're going to be like, oh, no, I need to go talk to him and see what's going on but okay, I'm going to go ahead and share this real quick and At the end of the week and so you can see That, you know, a lot of his ancestors were filled in but that purplish section you see here is his sweden part And it just a huge massive line and it goes way back It goes way back there. So Really really great job on those speculative ancestors somebody has a civil war pension file with a common name Oh and no connection yet And I love those pension files because sometimes they have so much information in them Kathy, who is your favorite? Oh yours was the guy with the thing, huh? Um, the one that I found that his paternal great-grandmother's first cousin John Haggart Had operated a grocery store for 30 years while his wife Rose Stolberg was the postmaster for 30 years in marvelhead, Illinois. I I just A female that was a postmaster for 30 years. I mean it was there no one else to do the job or Was it just that his house was really set up for it already? So they went well go ahead I mean, yeah, they didn't give women important roles like that Back then Yeah, so I I thought it was really interesting just to have a female postmaster, you know back Back then Okay, I'm gonna go ahead and show This seven degree chart and that would be all of the people that were put on his branches Which is incredible and there's 1541 connections There's a few that don't show up on here because you know, we do want to protect the privacy of any recent ancestors um John says reminds me of a postman Pat Patriot, maybe the children's tv series the postmistress was a woman Oh, Christina had a great grandmother that was a postmaster.  You just don't have it in your family. That's right Okay, and this one here This is for Christopher frick And you know, he was an american sports writer and baseball executive, which was really cool And um, he married in colorado. So this was part of the us ones and his claim to fame was He was the public relations director of baseball's national league in 1934 and then the nationally So he also was instrumental in founding the baseball whole of fame in the late 1930s You know, which eased tensions During the racial integration and the major major leagues and I mean really these are you know, do you think you like sport you guys? I'd say Let's say he was really into sports there and then another one that was found quite interesting was Hiram hall and he was on a several things, but yeah, he was the one That said the friends and cousins, please don't visit me for two years Because i'm in prison and I don't know kathy. Did you figure out what he was in jail for because I didn't have a chance to follow up on that No, I Didn't follow up. I should have but I didn't yeah I just thought it was interesting though, too And then the other interesting fact about him was that he wrote about His war of 1812 service and it survives in his pension file His daughter martha had written a letter in that file and she said Father was called the handsomest man that walked the streets of old bennington So and there's a couple of them in this family family lines that have that claim to being handsome So I thought that was very interesting And he was a harness maker so even his occupation was unique And then we have dr. Omar Burton pan coast In his obituary it said he was a professor of surgery at john hopkins And he was the one that invented an operating trunk for when operating rooms were unavailable So, you know, he made this portable Supplies this trunk of portable supplies so that they could do the surgery Where wherever they had room or where the patient was and then For poor miss and mary ross you can see on the right exactly what she was known for And we're not really sure why she was unplugging the heater while she was in the bathtub But you know nowadays they all come with warnings for stuff like that like please do not use your blow dryer in the shower I mean they have they have warning notices for everything, but this unfortunate unfortunate woman Did not know and she did electrocute herself And so you know those warnings are for a reason And sometimes, you know, that's the only reason that we really hear more about them as if something really tragic like that happens And then we have hakan larson ripe And He was born in sweden and he was the oldest one on the sweden line It actually was when sweden was still dead mark for that area and he was born in 1475 So where we were showing you those purple lines, you know, that whole section of his tree Some of those lines go back to the pre 1500 era, which to me is just incredible And then the last one i'm going to do is mom's nielson And he was the fifth great-grandfather of mark And also his sixth great-grandfather was olaf johnson And i can't say the word but it comes from the swedish roostar meaning to armor equip And what they did is this was, you know, a wealthy farm owner or landowner and instead of paying taxes to the crown They supported a cavalry soldier So they supported the the soldier and you know the horse that he needed to ride on And they figured that was equal to what, you know, it would be if you were paying taxes So those were just a lot of fun john said the pat was short for patrick clifton Okay, thank you I wasn't quite sure what the um the abbreviation on that was And then we have donald here who says, you know, I like the guy named johnson who changed his name to conrad because there were too Many johnsons in his town And we kind of had a good laugh when we did our wrap-up in zoom for that because uh the marta we've been talking about so much Our surname is johnson and so Yeah, that is a very very common one So did we have any questions from the audience? No personal questions, please Oh Come on charol. No Not answering them today Kathy, do you have the um score page where you can tell us who the top people were? Yeah, you want the top five? sure Okay In fifth, I'm going to start at five and work up and you'll see what the big difference is drum roll Donna bowman had 130 points Don Lindgren who's here had a hundred thirty three Homer a hundred sixty three then erin brian 222 and then marta johnson three hundred and fourteen And number one so yeah Huge Points for that And we did have a tie for top bounty though and that would be donna bowman who is one of our other challenge captains And then homer thiel who is um incredibly good at fighting these newspaper articles And so we had two that tied for top bounty hunter yes Kathy was in the top what? Kathy you were in top what 13 10 11 um i was top 10 for a while and then At the end there You get asked to No, I ended up in 11 Yeah, she's she's less than 10 points behind karen low. So karen Yeah, I was minus 13 this week I was my usual. I was zero. Let's see. How many edits did I have though? I had 65 edits. So Way to go But with everything you're doing doing during the week, I'm surprised you're even in there I know I sneak in once in a while and fix something The the commander in chief is number 46 the last place on the score sheet with one edit But every edit counts, you know every edit counts Just like when we do our thongs, you know every profile that we can get out there that is good You know, we do want to see sources on them But every profile we get added that is sourced is you know better for the tree So even if you only have time during the week to spend, you know, say an hour All week long then even that hour is appreciated Yes and Someone had just mentioned in discord that they didn't sign up for the week yet They were still showing up on the the score sheet um So i'm like you're on the score sheet Yeah, and and we've kind of talked about this a little bit in our zoom chats and we do two zoom chats if you don't know We do one at the start of each week and there's actually two that day There's one at noon on eastern and then I do want to 8 p.m Eastern And then we do one at the end of the week too for a wrap up so we can kind of talk to each other but You know the reason that some people show up anyways is because we changed it a little bit this year with registration So if you've signed up for any prior week this year And you go out and participate without registering you'll still be on the The score sheet the difference is you probably won't get the emails because we make the email list up out of the people that have registered So, you know, those people are getting a daily update on You know what's going on or like when the brick wall bounty ancestors come out You know those are sent out to the people on the email list and you miss out on those things if you don't register But you can still participate and you will still show up on the score sheet if you've participated before this We had a lot of participants this week We did I know it was starting to look like we were going to hit the 50 mark. We got 46 We just needed four more people to come in there and pop in one edit four people made one edit and showed up on the Score sheet we would have hit 50 So we should make that a challenge for the upcoming week We are going to have roger federer and you know, of course famous for tennis And if you have participated at all this year Once the week starts on thursday at noon eastern time Then you know go in there and let's see how many people we can get on the score sheet See if we can top this week Postman pat had a black and white cat That's not sure when you remember john I'm used to john replying to me Face to face. I know I know Um, I will say real quick that kevin bacon's week. Oh, sharyl. You were captain that week was our highest participant participation week And that was 80 people Which is crazy We have some we have some awesome awesome, um captains here. We really do awesome awesome Kevin the first one that we went over to just doing the the working on the tree without being a live guest um I know Elon musk was Oh, okay. Yeah, elon musk was the week before him and he was our first nine let Uh non-live, you know a focus we featured him instead of him being an actual guest But kevin was the first week that we started going out to the seventh degree Because before that we were only doing direct line ancestors And so there weren't as many possible points available And now we can either do the direct line or you can work sideways out to the seventh degree So it gives us a lot of profiles that we can create And I promised I'd dance to cut loose if we got that many Oh kathy we have witnesses You got to promise stuff kathy She says oh no, I don't have anything I can promise Well, if you haven't looked in the highlights in the g2g yet Um, of course, you'll see that wonderful fan chart that we have that shows his lines But it also shows you how far some of these went back now You know, we we talked a lot about the swedish profiles, but the england lines were really worked on as well It's just that they weren't as full when we got done as the swedish lines But those actually some of them reached really far back also to pre 1500s And the oldest one we have in the england line was ralde dolpheas lift coats and he was born about 10 30 Wow, and that would be 1,030. That does not mean 10 30 in the morning He was he was way back there the swedish lines. Of course. We talked about it Was when it was still considered dead mark back to 1475 We had uh Some of swedish lines on his mother's side that went back as far as 1663 or earlier Also on his mother. We had just a small just a smidgen of canadian and holy roman empire, which is now canada and um We had some ancestors that were part of the swiss lines So all together people added 1,255 family members. Um once again just crazy crazy incredible numbers but um, oh John says sorry he would have answered quicker, but His mom needed help We had a crazy amount of profiles added. It was just really fun to watch all the collaboration. I think Including the removal sorry, Cheryl Everybody collaborated nicely It's always fun to watch uh discord and how everybody works together Yeah, and you definitely don't have to be part of the challenge to um hop in there You just have to be in the wiki tree server So, you know anybody can stop in and go great job everyone or just hi how's it going Or just even peek in there and read and kind of see what people are talking about Um, you know, I can tell you these challenges are pretty addictive once you start doing them, right ladies Right. Yeah, it's really hard to to stop Definitely is When you start working on it you get and you learn a lot too. I think we're doing the challenges Especially in other in other areas um But I have noticed like when we have English ancestors and we get some members from the england project going discord is Running practically 24 or 7 in the guest Challenge and when we don't have english profiles. It kind of gets a little quiet there for a few hours Yeah, it kind of really depends on what countries we're working on because you know, some of those are are busier than others as far as uh, you know, not Not that people aren't working on the profiles for other countries, but not everybody is a chatty person in discord And you know, when we get going with a country that they like to get in there and chat with us And it's really a lot of fun Stephen says he just wishes he had a bigger screen to work on He would like my setup. Stephen you go. He does those well transcriptions And so he probably wants to really be able to zoom in and make those big And I'll tell you what when I do my um, my portuguese ones It's awesome because I can put one of my screens for just that the you know the register And then a different screen for my transcription or translation of it. So it really helps out a lot Yes, having two screens is wonderful But Mindy Mindy has three I have three and I have room to put my laptop which I used to keep my laptop up too But um, I kind of like having that as my coffee space coffee and snacks So and I don't really need four at a time since I can split screens for these big ones But yeah, I like having all the different screens I want to say conny knocks from genealogy tv has four screens She has like two kind of in the front and two up a little higher. I'm like, whoa I don't know if I could work with four You guys Look There were several people though that took source of thon pictures last year Um that had multiple monitor setup and I did put some of those in the intro for this year source thon you know, so Remember if you're participating in this kind of stuff, uh, you know Take a picture of what your setup is or have somebody take a picture of you with your setup And you know, maybe in one of the future intros your picture will wind up in there It's fun to see what everybody works on and you know for those of you that though that work off of just a smartphone I mean my hat's off to you because I couldn't do it I need to have my mouse and I want my you know, big screens That's a good idea, steven. Yeah Yeah, I I think I need to Do that all I have is my laptop at home and then when I go to the family history center, I have Two monitors, so I'm a little spoiled there Yeah, that makes it nicer Well, it makes it nicer for the rest of us though, too. Kathy because you find a lot of records for us. So We appreciate it We sure do Kathy I try and I enjoy it so I wish I had one close to me Yeah, I'm like why try to get the library being affiliate when The family history center is closer to me than the library. So Yeah Yeah, for us, I don't have a really close one The closest library to me is not an affiliate Actually, the first few closest libraries are none of them are affiliates And so I have to go into a larger town To use a affiliate library and it's kind of a pain to get into And I know, you know, some people say just hook your computer up and then it'll stay online for a couple hours and drive home, but That's a lot of driving just to just to get online with them Yeah Steven says always fun to find records and documents to read them without transcriptions I don't think steven liked the one will that I gave him that was old english I Was sad that that um was it and that found that pension file that really really big pension file um I was I was sad that that wasn't found before the weekend Because that would have made an awesome space page and it was like 81 pages or 61 pages something like that It was incredibly big and those are just so much fun to find and you know Especially if you want to get the different letters from the family members and what not then Um, you know, it's fun to go and flesh that person's history out How is my wi-fi? Um, they have not fixed by My internet yet john Um, this is the hotspot on my phone which is through a different company and so it's working rather well Uh, the one that i'm supposed to be using is not that great yet. So I'm hoping they'll get a fix put in for that Now is steven's response and to john I don't know steven. What are you referencing? We're waiting to see steven's not gonna answer He's like i'm not explaining if you didn't get the joke right I was thinking joke john is kind of walk walking a tight wire with that question there Yeah He says yeah, you have all the monitors, but can you use your internet? Mindy? No, so it doesn't help you Oh, can they put it again and say the will Oh, okay Yeah, I had a Will that needed some transcription and he did a great job on What steven's the best when it comes to transcriptions Can't beat him and we did get sidetracked the other day talking a little bit about um the Extension and you know, I know that was pointed out to me that that isn't exactly have anything to do the challenge But actually it really does in my mind because there are so many of us right now that use the various You know browser extensions to help us get these profiles done And you know take some of the tedious workout for us so that we can do the fun part where we just You know untangle the family Lines or you know, we get to add people and finding people and the tedious stuff is really just click click and it's done So once they get all of these if you don't know You know we're in the middle of Hacktoberfest month where the coders all get together and collaborate on one big project And so what they're doing is they're taking all of those fun extensions that we have now are so spoiled Like a tree for our tools and toys that we have They're taking all of those and rolling Almost all of them into one big extension. So you'll just have one extension that updates every month Um, you know, it'll be some of them will be easier to find because they were around already but people didn't necessarily know about them and Um Steven's pointing out like the auto bio button, you know, there's a lot of people that do that now to add a stub bio So, you know, if you haven't seen yet what they're doing with this big extension Then you can look in our g2g forum or you know, you can get in on the The thursday livecast that we do for it where you know, we talk about what the changes are this week And then, you know, I'm sure there will be some new instructions and new tutorials out for people Um, I think a lot of bind will have to be redone now because they're all set for the extensions how they are now And you know, now they're all being rolled into this bigger one But it really does help us like I said, you know, we get to do the the fun part and focus on the fun part of Doing this challenge So Kathy can share a both of you I mean, you guys have been doing this for a long time with me now Not necessarily as captains, but as researchers during the lucky tree challenge What do you like the most about the challenge your challenge experience? for me, it's the learning of the different Countries and you know, how they have their records And how to research and the collaboration and discord If you're not sure about something you just put it in there. Hey, I need a second set of eyes on on this What do you think of this? You know, and and people are there to help you Yeah, and usually just really really friendly and nice about it So charo, what would be your favorite part? I think my favorite part is in discord where If you ask questions in the g2g You might get an answer But the answer isn't as clear as it is when you ask a question in discord In discord when you ask a question, you have the opportunity to immediately Say, you know, I really don't understand that Can you be more specific? and so I have I have learned more During these challenges than I have anywhere else on wiki tree More about sourcing How to set up my profiles how to collaborate Using the autobio All those little extra things that you just don't find Anywhere else on wiki tree I guess you could find them, but you have to really search But on discord people will tell you, you know, have you have you used the autobio or Each challenge is different because you give us a set of records where we can find like the german different german links different dutch links things that Are really very helpful And I I think those are the For me the most important things that I've learned And the most helpful to make me a better sourcer or In a wiki tree or Yeah, and all good points, you know, and for that I mean for like the live conversation that you're talking about and it's not voice chat You know, it's text chat where you're typing But you know, if you go out and you post on our forum I mean we have a ton of helpful people that are always looking at the forum to answer questions But it's exactly that it's a forum So, you know, if it's late at night and you get out on the forum and go Hey, I need somebody to look at this record and I think it's for this person. What do you think? You know, it may not be till the next day and then you get a comment You know instead of like what you're talking about where you can go into discord There's almost always somebody in there and you can have an actual conversation back and forth, you know Or they may want to ask questions really before they can give you a good answer You know, and then also where you were saying About the sources and I love that part too Where you know, we are always learning from each other I learned new stuff that can be done on wiki tree or that can be done in genealogy research all the time And I love having somebody pop in and go. Oh, have you tried looking at this set of records and you're like I've never even heard of that set of records. No, let me bookmark that And then I'll go check it out. You know, we all we all learn from each other And I think the other thing that is really very cool about working in discord is the fact that While I might have um A subscription to a certain Like ancestry or something somebody else might have a subscription to newspaper.com Somebody else has a subscription to another source and when you get everybody together if you don't have um a source To go to somebody else does and they're so willing All you have to do is go in there and say hey, I'm looking for an obituary for so-and-so Man, they jump on it and they've got it for you And then you have steven who's so great at transcribing wills All you gotta do is say steven. I need this will transcribe. I mean everybody is good at something And they're all willing to work with you and you don't find that. I don't care what site you go to Yeah, don't find that anywhere, but on wiki tree. Yeah, we are definitely, you know, we're all about collaboration And just everything we do it's a free site and we all work together You know there and there I know there are some people that prefer to stay off on their own and be a little bit quieter Um, you know, but they're always going to have some interaction with somebody And really to me, you know the more I interact with people on wiki tree I think the better my research is because it's more informed and You know the more resources are used and it's just an all in all better experience for me anyways And in discord, I'll say one thing else one more thing. You don't really have to Be active in discord to learn You can go to discord and see questions other people have asked And learn from what other people have have asked On discord and learn just from from that and I have I have done that And it's a blessing blessing to people on wiki tree to have discord no matter If you're in a challenge or if you're in the england project Whatever project you're in You need to Appalachia And Kathy comes in and goes quit posting everyone. I now have 153 comments before I can Say anything This morning I was jumping in post something more This morning I woke up and I looked and I was scrolling in appellation. I think it said over 300 Oh my goodness during the time that I was asleep because it counts Like each post somebody Does so somebody comments and hits enter and then they comment again and hits enter Even though their posts may be you know this long on discord They could have typed four or five six different sentences and so that Yeah, and you know and not all projects are like that That just happens to be a particularly busy one and it's busy pretty much round the clock And you know and then the other nice thing is you don't have to get notifications at all You know like what Kathy's talking about is you just wait till you get ready and you go in and then you can see How many comments are there? Not everybody reads through them all when they get to the room But you know if you're trying to make sure you are staying in touch with what everybody else is doing And sometimes it's a lot to read when you first get in and in the morning Get your coffee park review and start scrolling Is that because it's fairly new Mindy or You mean the popularity or the chat The chat The amount the sheer amount of comments Part of the reason is because most of the projects we stay pretty much on we try and stay on track With conversations. So you know where we might make an occasional brief joke in discord in the challenge room The rest of it is all research And um, it's really easy. There's just so many people with different backgrounds And the Appalachia project one of the other things is it's a culture. It's not just a location And so, you know people like to share their Views or their background their history with the different parts of the culture. And so we get into anything from, you know What type of Maybe do you put on your biscuits to? You know, who knows where to find this cemetery record in Burial record in such and such tennessee You know, there's just a lot that gets talked about and it just happens to be you know People that are really sharing people and I know we do have some project members that don't come into the chat Probably for that reason or you know, some of them just can't run discord on their computers But the ones that we do have are just very very chatty Yeah, I I have never lived in what's considered Appalachia And so by me being in there and them talking about food and all this other stuff I'm learning part of the culture And I do have direct ancestors that were born in a county that qualifies as that and so It's an insight in for me into you know, my direct Biological ancestors so even being part of a project In learning stuff like that is helpful for me Yeah And I think you know when you are learning the background and the history and the culture of a set of people Um, you know of a family it helps you bring that person to life better You know, because you better understand how they may have viewed the world around them And you know, that's what we want to do is we want to bring these people back to life and document them fully for future people so I think do we have any last minute more questions because my winds really starting to howl out there So I don't want to I don't want to lose my internet before we can close this out Don't forget to um, oh and made it just as we're leaving. That's a bummer and Um, you know, don't forget to like the video about the video and you know as well as the highlights post and the g2g forum And join us back here on thursday when we start roger fetters Week and that should be interesting um, switzerland and south african records and you know, so Areas that we've visited in the past will get another chance to work in those areas on records and of course the awesome wiki tree Oh Awesome wiki tree collaboration and says seems my usual lately sigh She is just one of the busiest people I've ever seen and she works way too many hours We appreciate every little bit that you know, she can give us During the challenges So, you know, just like we were talking about before if you can only show up for an hour one day You know, we even love that kind of help so Yes So I guess we will wrap it up Kathy you did just such an amazing job of keeping everybody updated and interested and informed Over the week and keeping your team motivated.  Kathy. Thank you. I I tried and I know sometimes the challenges Some people may take it serious as a competition type thing. So I Figured I kind of like try and lighten it up a little bit. So very nice. Yeah, it was a lot of fun Tommy's asking if roger will be connected to the main tree before the start on thursday Is he not connected right now roger's tree is how it will be when we start on thursday So he does have his first great grandparents on it I believe there's one or two lines that it has been pointed out some of the lines that he will connect to are already on wiki tree We don't want to work on those before the challenge week starts, of course And we don't want to add to the greats before, you know as the before the challenge week starts So I think a couple of lines we're going to wind up, you know, we'll probably get them connected to the global tree pretty quickly Um, but you know, we just don't want to make those connections until We get the challenge week started So I think yep, we will wrap that up and thank you all for coming and watching like the video. See you next week


Up until now we've been talking about ecosystems as networks through which energy and resources flow, but in this module we will be defining more clearly what we mean by this as we talk about ecological networks and active area of research within contemporary ecology. Since the 1970s when networks were imported from physics and the social sciences into ecology, they have grown increasingly popular among ecologists and today offer a potential for advancing our understanding of ecological processes. From the metabolic networks in our cells to the food webs within an ecosystem to the global networks of animal migration, network models are a powerful tool for quantifying how ecosystems work. Network analysis can provide precise metrics that quantify community structure and models for analyzing ecosystem resilience and stability in a formal and rigorous fashion. A network contains nodes and links between those nodes. An ecological node may represent an individual plant or animal, a whole population or species. Interactions between them take many forms, but are generally divided into antagonistic trophic interactions, what are called food webs with interactions such as that between predator and prey or mutualistic symbiotic interactions such as that between pollinator insect and flowering plant. As an example we can take a look at this trophic network with data taken from 12 Galapagos islands indicating the interaction between the different creatures in the food web. This network here considers 19 land bird species and 106 plant species. Network structure describes patterns and structures within the overall ecological network. Here we're asking such questions as how many nodes are there in the network, how connected is the overall network? The overall level of connectivity to a network is a primary factor determining the nature of any network. In an ecosystem this is called connectance. Connectance is a measure of the number of links or connections between species expressed as a proportion of maximum connectance. This will also tell us something about the linkage density which is the average number of links per species. For any given creature their degree can define how much of a generalist or specialist the species is within the food web. Both in its role as a consumer and as a resource. Previous network analysis studies have revealed that ecological networks exhibit the important characteristic of clustering that is found in many different networks. Clustering or modularity describes to what extent the network can be divided into non-overlapping groups of highly interacting species within their local neighborhood in the network. A module or cluster then is a set of species that have a disproportionate number of connections with their module as opposed to connecting to other modules. This illustration of the food web with a number of different ecosystems illustrates prominent clustering. Here the food web structure and sub web frequency distribution for a number of different ecosystems is shown including a park, estuary, lake and coral reef all exhibiting a high clustering coefficient. More recently attention has shifted from network connectance to the idea of degree distribution. Degree distribution is a measurement to the variability in link density. It is asking about how equally or unequally the connections are distributed out within the system. For example koala are very specialized feeders feeding on a very few species of eucalyptus whereas raccoon feed on a wide variety of species, 17 birds or eggs, crayfish, plants and various other invertebrates. Thus they would have many more connections within the food web as consumers. Degree distribution goes a long way to tell us how centralized or distributed the network is. These networks are those with a very high degree distribution having few central hubs with very many connections or many other nodes have very few links. This may also give us what is called a scale free network which are surprisingly common in our world. For example the metabolic network of a biological cell follows this centralized scale free model where the essential molecules of ADP and ATP that provide the energy to fuel the cell play a central role in interacting with a very many different other molecules thus forming hubs in the metabolic network. But equally we can find distributed networks that have a low degree distribution where the connections are distributed out relatively evenly across the network. Keystone species is a measurement of how central a node is within a network and thus how significant it is within the system. A species with a high centrality measure within an ecosystem would be called a keystone species. Keystone species are generally understood as those species that play a role disproportionate to their number in the dynamics of their ecosystem. A classical keystone species is a predator that prevents a particular herbivorous species from eliminating dominant plant species. Since the prey numbers are low the keystone predator's numbers can be even lower and still be effective. Yet without the predators the herbivorous prey would explode in numbers removing all the dominant plants and dramatically alter the dynamics of the ecosystem. Another more concrete example of a keystone species would be a beaver. Beavers can engineer whole wetland ecosystems in their capacity to build and maintain dams which have a major effect on the environment in that they can transform the territory from a stream to a pond or swamp which define a different set of biotic and abiotic elements and interactions. As such these keystone species are described as playing a critical role in maintaining the structure of an ecological community and we could say that they have a high centrality measure within that network. The centrality of a node within an ecological network is quite a complex metric to define as it is a product of a number of different factors such as how connected that node is that is to say the immediate connections it has with other nodes either as a predator or consumer of some resource. Equally we need to think about how critical the creature is to the network. Do they serve some role that no other node in the network could perform and thus they form what we call a bridging link. Without other redundant components to fill their role they can be critical to the ecological network not because of the number of links they have or the size of the population but instead because of their uniqueness and irreplaceability. We can also note that critical ecosystem processes will not always be under the control of individual species but may be mediated nonetheless by a small set of species that thereby form a keystone functional group. For example the groups of microbial species that fix nitrogen can control processes that play a fundamental role in the preservation of ecosystems. With their high influence on the system keystone species can trigger nonlinear responses that lead to cascades of local or global change in the formation of the ecosystem. More generally we may also have abiotic critical elements in the system such as the level of precipitation, pH level of the soil or other geological factors that form critically sensitive values within the network. Network analysis is a key tool for modeling the resilience of an ecosystem in terms of the integrity of its network of connections. Connectivity within networks can both enable robustness but also represent pathways for disaster spreading. It works both ways. On the beneficial side the resiliency and robustness of the network can be correlated to the flow through the system as described by the theory of ascendancy where ascendancy is defined as the level of functionality to the ecosystem's trophic network. One way of interpreting ascendancy is to regard it as the organizational structure of connections that enables resources to flow through the network. The magnitude of the power that is flowing within the system towards particular ends. As such ascendancy is a key index in determining the ability of an ecosystem to prevail against disturbance by virtue of its combined organization connectivity in size. This can be illustrated by analogy to the difference between a living and dead organism which may be interpreted as simply the volume of resources flowing through the system. The greater the flow the greater the vitality meaning more ascendancy. Thus we can use network theory to analyze how integrated the network carrying the resources is and this will give us some interpretation to the robustness of the ecosystem on aggregate. This network integrity is traditionally understood in terms of habitat fragmentation. Habitat fragmentation describes the emergence of discontinuities or fragmentations in an organism's native environment causing population fragmentation and ecosystem decay. It is a process during which a large expanse of habitat is transformed into a number of patches of smaller total size isolated from each other by a set of habitats unlike the original one. It includes discontinuities in the spatial patterning of resource availability affecting the conditions for species occupancy and ultimately individual fitness. Migration can arise via both natural and anthropogenic processes in terrestrial and aquatic systems. This graphic of the river network in part of Denmark illustrates anthropogenic fragmentation along the country's waterways where every red dot indicates physical barriers to fish migration such as dams. Connectivity among fragments, the characteristics of the matrix, the availability of corridors for movement between fragments and the permeability and structure of habitat edges are all important in this context and affect the structure, persistence and strength of the ecological network. In the same way that connectivity can enable ascendancy and robustness, it can also enable large food web disturbances in the form of cascades. As food webs become more interconnected, this creates more pathways for disaster spreading and cascading effects. An ecological cascade effect is a series of secondary extinctions that is triggered by the primary extinction of a key species in the ecosystem. Secondary extinctions are likely to occur when the threatened species are dependent upon a few specific food sources or some other mutualistic interaction. One example of the cascade effect caused by the loss of a top predator is related to the sea otter. Starting before the 17th century, sea otters were hunted extensively for their pelts. Their decline caused a cascade effect through the kelp forest ecosystem along the Pacific coast of North America. One of the sea otters' primary food sources is the sea urchin. When hunters caused sea otter populations to decline, an ecological release of sea urchin populations occurred. The sea urchins then over-exploited their main food source, kelp, creating ecological collapse in those areas. No longer having food to eat, the sea urchin population became locally extinct as well. Also, since kelp forest ecosystems are home to many other species, the loss of the kelp ultimately caused their extinction as well. Thus, the loss of sea otters caused a cascade effect of secondary extinctions due to their interconnectivity within the system. In this video, we've been talking about ecological networks, the application of network theory to modeling and analyzing ecosystems in terms of their network of connections. We talked about some of the overall features to these networks including the overall level of connectivity, linkage density and degree distribution. We discussed network modularity as describing to what extent the network can be divided into highly interacting local clusters, how centrality can be used as a measurement to how central a node is within a network and thus how significant it is within the overall system. Finally, we looked at ecosystem resilience in terms of the integrity of its network, noting how this can both enable robustness by enabling a greater flow of resources through the system, but also how it can add to vulnerabilities as it gives rise to the possibility of cascading food web disturbances.