Right, bonasillo, how are you? Very well. You're looking amazing. Great day today. Are you excited? Talanda hella. Talanda ni pesa. Talanda hella. So maybe just brief us what is happening, what are we expecting today? Well, of course a bouquet of programs are being launched today under the umbrella Talanda hella and we are of course celebrating the diversity of our creativity, the sportsmen, the musicians, the content creators, everybody. This is the day. This is like a national day for the creative industry. Moving forward? We cannot look forward to better things. Wasir yesterday said it's a new dawn. It's a new dawn in terms of monetizing our creativity. We have such amazing phenomenal talent in this country, but it has never been put in the right trajectory in terms of turning it into money so that our artists can contribute to the economic development of our country. Moving forward, I expect that when we have the next event like this in another five years, the choppers that will be flying around here will belong to artists. There will be money. The billionaires that I promised out of this industry will become real. It couldn't get better than bringing them together today, creating a policy framework and getting a presidential statement, pronouncement that endorses the work that our creative industry does. One what to create is? I want to tell them they are great. They define our country. They define our character. Let them focus on one, ensuring that their talents are used to promote values and morals in our culture and patriotism. Number two, ensure that they create quality standards that are so high that diamond will have no place to hide. That will be the talk of town in Africa. Not diamond, not the guys from Nollywood. We are better than them. We have a robust ICT infrastructure. There is no reason why our creatives should not be the billionaires defining our creative economy should work in this country. Thank you so much. Thank you. You are most welcome. Yes. Mustafa, just to ask you, are you excited for today? I am very happy as we know it is a national day. It is a national day for Kenyans and we are very happy to be here. We know Kenyans are very happy. We are very happy. We know Kenyans are very happy. Do you feel it is the right time, the right direction for the upcoming generation? Yes, this is the right time for the upcoming generation and for us to promote Kenyans in the culture to the next level. This is the time. So this is a quick win, if you ask me, it is a low hanging foot and we're going to pull it down, yeah. Mustafa, just to ask you, you among the few veterans invited for this amazing launch today. What is the feeling? Excited, humble, very happy, more than happy to be here. It's my first time to be in at Cess House. What do you mean? The first time to be here. I've never been here. I don't know. The first time? I'm shaking. Maybe just a message to Ababu Namombo and the president for this amazing project. Thank you very much Ababu, the great Aziri and our president Wilhelm Ruto for this opportunity. It's a showcase, artist, platformiao, watapata malipo kupitia kipaji chao. Ni kipaji chao kita kupatia malipo yako. So kifanya kazi vizuri, tupe leke mziketu to the next level, I'm here to help o avidja na wasani kupatia advise, nili sema kitambo, wana itadi ushauri mwingi, nili sema kuna wasani wengia, hana ilimu wa tukwenda shule, kuna ilimu wana faku ipitia. Sila zimo hende shule, kini kupitia mitu ame pitia. Ono na mini me pitia na najiwa. So tutasai dizana, na vile mese maizekil, ni kwa mba kenya ni kikipaji kubwa. As you can remember Sindotulianza 2002. Najiwa tukwada tukwapotea pakatikati batia mese na tutarudi, na tunetaji sana sapotiao, na musada sana turudi kwa genu. Mama sayi anarikava, ya ya tunafakukutena kwa hospitali, in one week kufanya tena kimo, tunekotu kifanya kimo, back and forth. Alright, shukran sana musaba chana, kuleiski rogana, tomato city kuzungu zaiti. Shukuru bro.


It's year number four for us and it's really sad to think our times come to an end. I graduate in three weeks so literally every little thing I'm just like this is the last. I may cry in the stadium honestly. Football season's always been a good time so just sad to see it go. Who am I sad to see leave the team? I would say Rayquan. Probably Rayquan Davis. I'm gonna have to say Trevon Diggs. Probably Anthony James for me. Everybody and welcome to Brian Denny Stadium. It's the Alabama Crimson Tide and the Catamounts of Western Carolina. Devonte on the right side. He'll stop. He'll cut back. Touchdown! Now is a screen left side. Nice grab. Down low. Stiffon. Alabama's gonna win 66-3.


the reenactment of myths in American history that's provocative here on history is here to help with history professor Peter Hoffenberg and likewise with our special guest who comes and makes contributions to our discussions Gene Rosenfeld thank you both for showing up today we are so interested in this discussion so Peter at the risk of doing something you've done before why don't you introduce Gene Rosenfeld. Well I've done it before and each time it's a pleasure I hope to do it in the future. Dr. Rosenfeld among many things is a scholar of the history of religions and among her interests are the relationship between religion, religious ideas, practices as we'll see today myths and political movements particularly movements of the extreme. What I've read of her is generally of the extreme right I'm sure she'll have some things to say about the extreme left as well but we invite her back as our local expert in matters of religion and politics so Gene good to see you. I should add that she's a published scholar as well and I encourage people to google she has a superb book about New Zealand and edited and contributed to volumes about terrorism. Okay now you can define the scope of our discussion Peter. Oh no okay I was concerned to see that okay let me just briefly suggest the scope and then I do want to defer to Gene. There are a lot of discussions both in and outside of the academy about how to think about movements like fascism or totalitarianism that movements were all familiar with and there has been I think an increasing interest in looking at these as religious movements. That goes back at least to Rousseau and his concepts of civil religion and all modern political thought as a footnote to Rousseau and Gene in particular is interested in the right and in fascism and the way in which they self-consciously I assume although she may decide it's not self-conscious enact their understanding of the past and reenact their myths. So very exciting very controversial and we have exactly the right person to discuss it. So Gene you want to do a rebuttal on what Peter said you want to agree or disagree with the way you framed it? I've never disagreed with Peter I always learn from Peter. That's a different Peter. That's my twin brother but thank you. It's a difficult segue but let me just begin by saying that American history is replete with what is called the great awakenings. It started before we were a country in New England with Jonathan Edwards and it continued in New York State in the burnt out district of northern New York and then it today it is happening with an obscure movement which is becoming much more important in terms of religion and politics and that is called the new apostolic reformation and there's a line that connects up to all these dots I'm not going to connect them it's a library of information I'm not fit to do that anyway just to let you know that this is nothing new what and these awakenings are characterized by outbursts of emotion this is the key word emotion and you know what happens when you get emotional your thought processes thought processes your rational processes turn off and your emotion takes over but it's not a disorganized emotion it is utilized in ways that religious I should say formations or organizations or new religious movements can utilize and take advantage of by employing really sophisticated techniques and the new apostolic reformation does do that it's located in Texas there's a church that was just profiled in the news called mercy culture it's got 4500 adherents and there it's spreading throughout the country um it does not have the ball and chain of racism but it does definitely have overtones of what you would expect in something like the handmaid's tale and they are hell bent hell bent heaven bent heaven sent and basically taking over the political process as you might imagine these people were appealed to by Donald Trump and if you're interested in knowing more about it just google his speech to the miami religious group I don't have the exact name of it but it's one of the churches one of the nar churches um about a year and a half ago and watch him um I don't want to say manipulate but watch the crowd interaction he himself is in the tradition as much of elmer gantry as he is in the tradition of Benito Mussolini and you put those two together and what you get is let me go once in a lifetime personality that tweaks history that I'm not an aficionado of the great man theory of history that great men make history I think rather that history prepare the the soil for great quote great men men who have an I say man it's most thing that it can be a woman um who sees the moment Trump sees the moment he did this in his inaugural address his inaugural address is strikingly like the opening paragraphs of a myth which I think underlies the whole trumpets phenomenon called the fourth turning and most people have never heard of it but it's probably the most efficacious effective myth that we have today and it's an apocalyptic myth of course but as you read it you won't understand it as an apocalyptic myth except it keeps returning to this notion of crisis and total war and revolution and millennial kingdom and prophecy and the two authors are respected by many people who should know better historians economics professors and other important people actually Neil Howe and William Strauss and they themselves I don't think consciously set out to provide a program for Stephen Bannon but Stephen Bannon saw the potential and if you look at a little film that Stephen Bannon made called generation zero it's on the web you will see how this apocalyptic vision was lifted from the fourth turning and how he lifted the opening chapter of the fourth turning into the inaugural address which is now loosely called American carnage oh so there's intertwining of our own history of enthusiastic movements of new religious movements like NAR of politics and of all coming together in an administration of a once in a lifetime charismatic leader you get you get quite a phenomenon that we've been dealing with well it's terrifying as a matter of fact thank you for that I I feel more terrified than I I felt you know 10 minutes ago look a lot paler don't be terrified I'll tell you why okay we've been through it before maybe not as intense because we have more tools at our disposal the social media and the dark web and all of that but also because I just recently came to this aha conclusion donald web is I mean donald trump is finished he's a failed charismatic leader he can never regain the status he had the influence he had all of the parts that he brought together whether it was the extreme right the neo-nazi movement the racist movement the new apostolic reformation of the far right whatever the conservatives in the republican party you name it all of those will continue on their own trajectories but they won't have donald trump why what's your analysis okay I was you know I've been doing a long-term research project on fascism and trump fitting trump into that and I was reprising the history of hitler's rise to power now I've never seen donald trump's hitler let me just say that I don't pay to see him as Hitler however there are some striking parallels and what hitler did to come to power most people don't know this but hitler was the head of a very powerful party but it was not a majority party this is true in fascist movements they seldom come to power by being the winner of a majority go he was given the chancellorship by chancellor von hindenberg who was president of germany at that time and the democratic government had already failed by that time the right to fact parliament had already been shut down so hitler was chancellor but he didn't have total control and he wanted total control so what he did to make a long story short for total control is he made a secret pact with the military the army and the navy and he gave them what they wanted he had a million man strong army they say up as sturm up to them up to him and he agreed with them they could eradicate it they hit the leaders that the leaders on the night of the long nights the leaders one of whom was his best friend or it's trump were assassinated they were executed and then hitler had the army behind him completely the state army the second thing he has he did he made a silent pact a quiet pact on a ship with the leaders of german corporations the big leaders the titans of industry and he in eliminating or it's trump he also eliminated the northern political leader of his own political party who was a socialist he totally wiped out socialist wing of the national socialist democratic workers party that he had it so he consolidated his power with the army behind him the titans of industry now what did trump do he tried to enlist the army during black lives matter he tried to enlist the army after the election he failed our system worked then with respect to the titans of industry who are the titans today they're usually the billionaires and social media and of course the media he's got to have because that's his megaphone and all fascist leaders have to have a megaphone and they did not they did not comply he was kicked off twitter twitter and there's begun to be some some response and control by the heads of the media and he did not have silicon valley behind him so without the big industrial leaders without the state army and then having lost the election we've forgotten he actually lost not only the popular vote but the electoral college he was reduced to being a subliminal leader and he can never go back now the thing about charismatic leadership that we've learned from the theorists is that once you can't win once you fail and are seen to fail and i'll get back to that in just a minute you can't you you're on a slide you can't recover from that that happened to Mussolini that happened to Napoleon who are sort of you know the the models for charismatic leader and of course it happened to Hitler but the thing was if you remember when when trump got covid this is so interesting he had to look like the virus wasn't going to get him so even though he was dangerously ill he insisted on walking to the helicopter and then he defied his doctors and he went out in the automobile and greeted his supporters to look like he was perfectly okay he left the hospital too soon he made that trip up the back stairs and he paused on the portico in that Mussolini pose of his and took off ripped off his mask and stood there like in duchy that was the moment at which he failed and he could not regain it and he knows it now he's reduced to being in his elbows in new jersey and florida and his rallies which can he can mount an insurrection against the capital with his forces but that's weak power you can never overgrow the american government with something like that and you know that it stimulated the national security agencies who hated him to go after these guys and now they're under uh they're under pressure that is causing them to break apart so i think we need to take a deep breath not fear know that we're going to have lots of squabbles and things they're going to go on but without trump well that's that's a blessing to know that but at the same time you know his legacy is a mess isn't it you know he undermined so many initiatives he made so many wrong decisions um and right now uh joe biden is having a terrible time getting things through um you know the fragmented congress um and the result is we're going to have to live with that legacy for a long time and it is undermining our our viability don't you think um i think we'll deal with it i think things were a mess after the civil war pretty bad mess you know remember reconstruction there was an assassination of the president then ulysses s grant took over he tried to and he tried to install reconstruction and then johnson who was extremely weak uh when he came right after lincoln johnson was extremely winked but then us grant took over but ultimately the southerners won and uh we're paying the price for that today isn't that true i mean those things so peter you want to jump in here and and make remarks about what gene has revealed so far i think the the main point that i would suggest and gene is absolutely accurate about uh hitler as a fascist leader and political theorists uh and historians religion might focus on hitler as a charismatic leader and i can just say it's a complementary not a not a rebuttal not a uh criticism just a complementary friendly amendment um that whereas hitler died uh nazism continues and whether or not trump is elected re-elected and i am far less optimistic than gene is about trump's possibilities i actually see him being re-elected um trumpism exists so my conversation with gene is again it's a complementary one um less so the specific political leader more so the social movement and yes joe biden won the election uh but we still exist with the big lie and this big lie still exists in germany about whether or not germany lost the first world war so big lies outlast political leaders and as far as the major corporations uh we have to remember that this entire big lie campaign that is for example the review of balance in arizona is all being funded by non-tech populist giants this is a very expensive process i highly recommend you read jay mire's piece in new yorker last week where she pulls uh really the carpet from under this she reveals that uh big money is behind us and we're dealing with big money that can manipulate and exploit social values so for example whether or not trump wins we quite clearly see a revived anti-abortion movement whether or not trump wins if we see more people buying guns than ever before so it's a social historian i mean gene and our friends and we have this is what academics do right we fundamentally agree we but we have just a different point of entry right so everything gene said i completely agree with i learned a lot my concern would be with the ism though not necessarily the leader and i think let me just finish that one of the myths which we still live with in the united states and we are going to live with it again in afghanistan is that we could have militarily won the war and i think that the consequences and i don't agree with that that's a myth that's a that's a myth which is no fabrication reality u.s unless u.s we're going to turn to nuclear weapons right it wasn't going to do but the sense of a military victory that eluded one right destroyed france with the dry pits affair led to the rise of nazism and when you look closely at the right and its sense of toxic masculinity it's gun wielding it's unbelievable anti-asian sentiment they very much have in their collective psyche the vietnam war and i fear that we're going to redo that when people start thinking about afghanistan as well well gene i want to talk about more about myths what is a myth what is a national myth and what is the you know the verb to reenact what does that mean and how is that playing with us and i you know i i only from you i heard about the fourth turning and steve bannon and all that what what is that myth is this all kind of an expression of american exceptionalism or is it more or less what are the myths we have to cope with you know to to get rational if you will going forward well again i'm going from theory you know heuristic useful theory scholarship how to put it every viable nation and not every nation is a state we talk about a nation state a nation is a group of people who have in common a language a territory and a history and even though they may come from other shores they buy into it you pluralist unum is what we've got that's a very succinct uh phrase that describes our national myth out of many one that's our aspiration as a nation as well as michelle obama knows the mythology of the united states has a lot to do with what we learned in school but now we're learning that what we learned in school wasn't the whole story and why are we learning that now because the tables are beginning to turn there's a big demographic revolution remember at charlotte's bill the the refrain was juice will not replace us well you could put blacks you can put hispanics you can put whatever you want the whole theory is called the great replacement theory which is embraced by the far right and the racist right and the fact is that the united states is becoming browner you know and we're under marrying and all you have to do is look at the commercials on your tv so this is the time when the national myth of the puritans and the christians founding america is being contested and other founding stories are coming in it's 1619 with the black slaveships coming in for the first time but it could be the akkadians from louisiana it could be the hawaiians with their founding myth it could be the spanish california you know we all have founding myths because that's what binds us together in our civic religion you really can't separate religion and politics as it comes down to it because that's what we all buy into and that's what keeps us together okay so these chaotic elements that peter has given us a litany of and i totally agree with peter they're going to go on and they were they were already going on before trump was president he took advantage of him he's a good con man he's a good elmer gantry he can rev up the troops he knows how to put it all together and it's all about him but it's all about him because he's the embodiment of them and they buy into that go back and read the inaugural address that will show you that the fourth turning the fourth turning is a wonderfully seductive systemic notion that there are cycles in history that history does not progress that civilization does not progress rather we're based on the seasons winter spring summer fall and by the way oh my goodness that's human life isn't it childhood adulthood maturity and old age okay so they take this quad quadruple construction and they give it a history and a scholarship which you can really contest the theory inconsistent and it's not very accurate but it really comes across strong and steve bannon was attracted why because they say that history is divided into these cycles of four 20 year units and the whole 80 year cycles called the secular which is like a human lifetime or a year and what what this means is that each part of that is characterized by historical events culminating in a catastrophe in the fourth turning the fourth quadrant brings about a challenge to its generation who are called heroes in a way that nothing else in history has and they go back and they completely schematize british and american history for 500 years to prove that this is true they don't do it for the world though they don't do it for china they only do it for the history they know when we're taught in school and the fact is they now see a fourth turning from 2005 to 2025 calling forth the heroes and it's going to be even more intense than the other ones and what were the other ones well the last one we had was second world war and the depression and previous to that you know the civil war what they don't include though are some other very important things that any historian would include like the first world war because it doesn't fit their schema so the whole thing is clever but it's not very smart but people buy into it both they what bannon has bought into is that we're in precipitous decline all the things that the litany that peter stepped forth can make you feel very down but in fact if you read history you get a broader view you see it's happened before not the same thing history doesn't repeat itself in the specifics there are patterns but this is not the pattern not the cyclical thing we do have a linear history we don't have a cycler so what is the difference between a relive and a reenactment okay if you this is the best thing i can use to explain it i was struck by it when i saw the videos of january 6th of course i was struck by everything but the thing that focused my attention where they were costumed and they were carrying flags and they would have logos on their shirts it reminded me of what happens in all the little towns in the summertime in the united states in the heartland and in the east part in the small towns these are historical reenactment reenactments everywhere you stand in the united states there's a history you know barbara fritchie or the green mountain boys or you name it and the towns reenact them and there are people who are do this this is this is what they do this is their avocation when they're not working they reenact well that's very interesting because they're all about the myths the founding myths of these little towns everything has to have a founding myth this is a religious principle by the way and so they reenact them and they brings up the emotions of feelings and it finds the audience together and it's mine i'll give you another example when trump celebrated july 4th and he went to um you know the the mountain with all the presidents on it and then the next day he was at the white house what did he talk about he talked about the united states white man's founding myth you know and and when when he had his acceptance of his candidacy in the second election everybody got up and testified they testified to that myth okay and and anytime you try to change that myth like gearing ash did in the 1990s with a whole bunch of national historians and include some of the people who founded los angeles who none of whom were white by the way and other such things are the 1619 that's a challenge that has to be beaten down because that's not a myth but this reenactment revives a sense of belonging finding civic religion and patriotism in the in the generic sense of the word well they're not particularly healthy then these myths and the reenactment isn't particularly healthy so where does it all go do we need new myths do we need to debunk old ones do we need to stop reenacting them we don't do anything with myths myths are something that arise from people out of their living it's it's something human beings do they they have to explain how things came into being how did this happen there's a founding story in in israel it's masada you know the heroes at masada here it's the heroes of the revolution and and the tea party and all of that so every people has to have it it's not negative it's it can be very positive in binding but it can be negative if it becomes exclusive and racist and just generally so it can be interpreted reinterpreted misinterpreted and people will follow it they will reenact inaccurately the true original founding myth no there's no true original founding in mythology mythology is true but on a different plane from history myth and history are two separate phenomena myth is something that gives meaning to your life and it's true i mean people do bible study they do Torah study they you know who who just believes that the gospels and what they convey what they convey is more than the history can ever convey to a person it's values it's belonging it's a truth of a different order okay and it answers different questions so we shouldn't try to mix the two okay well peter let me turn to you this is something that professor sunday schwarz has discussed and that is you know every empire um so far as we know in the world and certainly in the discipline of history has ultimately come to an end like every bacterial colony we know ultimately comes to an end so the question is what where does that fit uh in terms of the um what is it the fourth turning in terms of the various factors that you and gene have been talking about as far as whether an empire is going to survive as an american power i'm not quite sure what you're asking me sorry that that's it okay so um i think the jury is out on the chinese empire it certainly hasn't declined and that may be the next major empire i'm not convinced of the u.s having an empire in the traditional sense of an empire but if it if the empire is uh exercising overseas influence the u.s will continue to exercise overseas influence if that's the question you're asking most empires have a great difficulty reconciling uh domestic and overseas values this is what the ancient world called imperium at libertas there is no empire in history who's exercise of foreign power has not sacrificed domestic freedom we live in that today right the war against terror is a good example uh the fact that the united states turns to the civic islands for military recruiting right and none of those kids get a chance to vote they don't have citizenship so i would to answer your question is if the u.s continues this kind of overseas intervention whatever if you want to call an empire or not it will continue to deny domestic freedoms now as far as the reenactment i love gene's description um there is an excellent book about civil war reenactment a wonderful book in which the person embedded themselves with the reenactors and um whereas i can entirely agree with the notion of a myth there's some other things going on there as well there's a tremendous amount of masculinity in these myths in the way they're reenacted and what worries me um i don't mind the small village reenactments but i think january 6 is different because this was reenactment with live ammunition and reenactment with the intentional intent of violence most of the small reenactments even the civil war reenactments the exercise is in fact not to be violent so something else is going on here and you know my concern about militarism and violence and that that worries me a tremendous amount so i don't equate january 6 with folks in ohio uh going out walking around a little bit hold hold there's gene gene would like to uh interpose i totally agree there's the reenactment that we talked about where they wear the revolutionary war costume or the civil war uniforms right that does not characterize january 6 january 6 is what i call an enactment of it and the type of myth they're enacting they're very open about it's the apocalypse it's gutter donor run it's uh the revolution that they want to set up tim mcbay tried revolution by bombing oklahoma city the right wing is full of revolution and their model of course is the turn of diaries absolutely so this this was an attempt to stimulate a revolution not only by attacking the capital but remember the fears we had that every state capital was going to have the same thing right and do you believe do you believe gene that we will have a revolution and if we have a revolution by virtue of these reenactments um will that threaten the future existence of the american empire i am not in the business of prediction unlike strauss and howl who call their work a history but admit that they are profits i am not a prophet and no historian would ever seek to that but how we can say maybe peter's an exception i happily sing don't worry i'm happy to sing we can only look at what's happening and having the background of the past can be calming it can also be instructive but this i will offer history always surprises we never know what's around the corner if you were to ask me personally what i think i would say give it 10 years maybe maybe a little more it won't matter it won't matter why we have a bigger crisis the climate crisis and that is going to have such incredible fallout on politics and and and what happens internationally and what happens locally i mean it's when it happens locally and it happens internationally people finally get it and this is going to cause havoc that's a whole new discussion but i i that is absolutely over our two points but the two are absolutely linked absolutely yes they are and you don't even need to be grandiose and existentialist they're linked around much the world as far as access to fresh water that's been it i mean water access to water is the crucial strategic issue change everything so peter wow what a discussion we have gone from pillar to post on this one i'm gonna do it again gotta get back to it again gene has to come back whoa so peter can you can you take a moment and summarize and and you know close the show i will i will try to summarize gene left us with a lot um if i had say three points and and samuel johnson always said to focus on three points uh dr rosa belch suggested the power of a text the reading of the fourth turning to generate a a mythic reality or as she would say a mythic truth and that seems to have been spreading and seems to have enabled uh the former president of the united states to make up a populist link uh that'd be one one takeaway for sure uh secondly uh gene's important comment that uh all communities in all nations have something we would call a myth but that what's not about and that myth is a particular view of the past which should be distinct from the historical past so as she concludes it really doesn't do much good to try to punch holes in myths based on history that they're they're different enterprises okay and the third i guess conclusion would be we need to discuss this even further and i would like to see uh her comments and discuss the connections with the political left because a lot of what she suggested can be applied also to the political left and i say that in a loving term as you know so it's not a derogatory term but if we look at the nature of myth and religion and political movements as religious movements we can also i think have a very fruitful discussion discussing the role on the left and we will find out my final point for you is that i do worry not about an organized revolution but in a country where every 17 year old can get an ar-15 i do worry about violence and violence connected to what might be perceived as a revolution and i think we all have the stark point of data of a young white kid going into a church worshiping for several hours murdering everybody in that church and telling the police that he wanted to restart the civil war so it's not as if the entire south is going to come into warfare but and i'm sure gene knows from religion and myth there are copycatters right there are lone wolves that aren't really lone wolves so i'm going to leave you with a depressing point which will make you even paler than you are now okay well i'm pretty sure i worry about the violence that's coming i worry a great deal about the violence well it's always encouraging him all of our shows lead to other shows you cannot ask you have you have left traces on the ground for us to follow in the next discussion you and your audience cannot ask a German Jewish European historian to break into grouch remarks that ain't gonna happen you know me okay sorry about that and we know gene gives us some optimism i i have to be a little more skeptical okay we know two things that we have learned history is here to help and also may i say history is full of surprises ha ha ha history sometimes cannot help uh as we're here as we're going to go we're going to start all right we'll talk about you know hoffenberg and gene rosenfeld thank you thank you both of you for joining us today wonderful thank you of course


to my channel. Thanks so much for tuning in and watching another video. In this video I'm going to be bringing to you guys products from the main choice. It's a tropical Moringa line. It is now a Walmart and get it in Walmart. At my Walmart the whole line is not there. It's only really just two products which is the restorative spray and the pearly braid glaze, the pearly braid out glaze. But these are the products right here. So the reason why I got these products is because I was reading some of the hair benefits that they have and these are some things I think my hair can really use and that my hair needs. So a few things that stood out to me that kind of caught my attention about these products as far as what they offer the hair, your natural hair, is it improves the less sissy, a less sissy, I can't even talk. It improves the less sissy and I know my hair lacks a less sissy, it's just kind of limp. It also fights frizz and of course you know in the summertime and the temperature is starting to warm up and the humidity here it is really bad on my hair. So as you can see this is a poofy mess right now. It's very soft and it's very moisturized. It feels very conditioned but it is just so the purpose of my whole hair journey is to grow my hair in a healthy natural way and I just like to find products that aid in that and that help in those areas that my hair needs. So with the breakage and the split ends and the the limpness of my hair, the dryness, just so many things that's just going on. Just looking for products that's going to improve these things in my hair. So when I see products that, excuse me, when I see products that specifically talk about fighting frizz and promotes elasticity and hair retention and hair growth and things like that, that's what I look for in these products and these products actually say that on here. So let me just tell you some of the things that it says on these products and also let me share with you some of the ingredients that are in these products as well. So the first one I got is the Sweet Oil and Honey Endless Moisture. This is the Restorative Spray. It helps to support natural growth and retention and you know growth is my thing. Trying to get my hair to grow and it also says that instantly delivers and locks in lasting moisture. It helps to provide elasticity and definition. It also helps to improve definition and refreshes and reboost your curls. It fights frizz, softens your hair, hydrates your hair, enhances natural shine and luster and it helps to strengthen, condition and protect your hair. This is a 8-fluan ounce bottle. It's infused with biotin and the Moringa Seed Oil. I'm hoping I'm saying this product correct but this is what it looks like. So my initial reaction of this product when I picked it up is it's very liquidy.  It smells amazing. It smells very tropical. It definitely has this tropical sweet smell to it so I really like that. I like sweet smelling hair products.  I think my hair may like this one. I don't know so I'm excited to try it. So just to give you some ingredients of the restorative spray, these are just some ingredients. The first ingredient is water. It also has aloe vera juice in it, celery seed extract. It has asparagus, root, biotin, green tea. It's kind of hard to read this bottle. It has vitamin D in it, horsetail extract, ginkgo, bolova leaf extract, honeysuckle extract, the Moringa Seed Oil, vitamin A and it also has vitamin E. It has nettle in it. It has the palmetto fruit oil in it. So it's got a lot of great stuff in here. So the reason why I got the restorative spray is because I was not 100% all that impressed with the last two sprays or leave-in conditioners that I got. One of the sprays, it was just hard to get out of the bottle. The other one, it was just too thick. And I also got the, this is the sweetened honey, endless moisture, pearly braid, pearly braid out glaze. And the ingredients that are in the glaze include water, castor oil, hydrated castor oil, I should say. It also has aloe vera juice, the celery seed. A lot of these ingredients are pretty much the same. It has beta-carotene in it, biotin, green tea, horsetail, coconut oil is in here, the salt, palmetto, fruit oil, grape seed extract. I don't see any shade butter in these products. So for those that may be allergic to shade butter, there's no shade butter in any of these products that I'm seeing here. At least it's not listed on the ingredients. So the contents in this jar is very liquidy so I can't lean it over too much because it will run out. But it kind of shapes around and they're like jello. This product too smells very tropical, very sweet scent, very appealing and pleasing to the nose. My nose likes it at least. It's the maringa seed is derived from the maringa tree which is known as the healing tree that deeply penetrates the hair shaft to infuse it with vital moisture and nutrients. It's power packed, improves shine, strength and manageability. So the pearly bright out glaze delivers definition, flexible hold, it restores and locks in longer lasting moisture, it's smooth, smooth softens, minimizes frizz, helps reduce breakage and minimizes shedding. So the glaze is like a, let me show you because it's kind of hard, it might be kind of hard to see on camera, but just watch the consistency in the texture of this product. Very jelly, it's almost got like the shimmer inside of it. It looks like it's got some type of a glitter just very lightly, but it is, it does have kind of like a tackiness to it a little bit, but it's it's it's kind of sticky. You can see it kind of stretching there. I don't know how my hair is gonna feel about this product because it does leave like this stickiness to it. I don't know that could be the honey that's in it because it does have honey in it. So this is used for like braid outs and twist outs, but I just want to just see how it looks defined, just defining my curls first because I don't know how it's gonna do with a braid or twist out, but with this humidity I'm probably gonna need that stickiness to really hold my hair intact.  So I'm gonna go ahead and use the restorative spray and see how this feels on my hair. So we're gonna spray this on first and it comes out like a mist. It's not this straight string that's like knocking you inside the head and it easily pumps, which I love. It's just the nice quick pumps. Alright, so I'm just gonna work that through. It's got a little sud to it. A little sudsy. It's very moisturizing. It feels very conditioning on my hair. It's got maybe I sprayed too much. I don't know, but either way it feels very conditioning on my hair and it's gliding through so it's definitely got some slip. So the product that's worked in is very soft, very conditioning, feels good, definitely has slips, smells great. My hair does not feel rough or hard at all, so that's good. Okay, so so far I'm impressed. I like it. So we'll come to the end of the video. I just want to show you my initial thoughts and reaction to these products before I did a whole head, a full head using these products. So I hope you enjoyed the video. Stay tuned. I will be bringing the full tutorial of the whole twist out or braid out, whatever I choose to do with these products. So stay tuned for that. So if you like this video, don't forget to like, comment, and subscribe. Don't forget to turn on your notifications so that way you'll see that video coming soon. It's just Janina. I will see you guys on the next video. Bye guys!


Appalachian Wireless is Appalachian Advantage. Unlimited text talk and two gigs of data for as low as $45 a month. Or if you like, get five lines on eight gigs of data for just $145 a month. See store for details. Better service, bigger savings. That's today's Appalachian Wireless and East Kentucky Network Company. Approximately 50 new jobs are coming to the city of Pikeville. A 60,000 square foot speculative building is planned to be built at the Kentucky Enterprise Industrial Park. The Pikeville City Commission announced Monday a tanker truck manufacturing company Silver Lining LLC will be housed in that spec building. That building was designed to attract tenants to the industrial park and before we've even started construction on the building we have a tenant. Within the first year the company is expected to employ 50 people with an average salary of $50,000. Within five years the company is hoping to employ two to three hundred people. It's good for our tax revenue. It's good to put people back to work that desperately need jobs and it measures very well with the skill set that our you know laid-off coal miners have. Machinists, welders, pipe fitters, things of that nature. So it's putting local people back to work. Construction on the spec building will begin at the end of the year likely in November and will take roughly 18 months to complete. The city hopes to have a few more business announcements in the near future. In Pikeville Shelby Porter, EKB News.


Pauling and Coray predicted a second type of secondary structure which they called beta sheets or generally they called that beta confirmations. This is a more extended confirmation of polypeptide chain as compared to alpha helix. So in this beta sheets the backbone of the polypeptide chain is extended into a zigzag structure. So a polypeptide chain that is arranged in a zigzag manner and the zigzag polypeptide chains are then arranged side by side. For example, one polypeptide chain that is zigzag and the other one is also zigzag and these two chains they are arranged side by side. So when they are arranged side by side they resemble a pleated sheet. That's why these structures were called as beta pleated sheets. So here you can see these three polypeptide chains 1, 2, 3 and these three chains are arranged in zigzag manner. And when these three chains zigzag chains they arrange each other side by side. They make a sheet and in this sheet these you can see these are the pleats. So this is called beta pleated sheet in which the chains are arranged side by side. In this sheet the R groups in the adjacent amino acids they protrude out from the sheet from the zigzag structure in the opposite directions. So if this is a polypeptide chain the R groups lie here, here and here. As you saw in case of alpha helix the R groups they lie outside the helix. So here too the R groups lie outside the sheet. This is because the R groups may not create any sort of hindrance. As you can see in this demonstration this is polypeptide chain which is zigzag arranged and the R groups they lie outside. They are actually protruding out of this sheet. And when another polypeptide chain will come to the side of this and like this they will also have their R groups protruding out. So these R groups will not create any hindrance in joining these polypeptide chains. Hydrogen bonds are formed between adjacent segments of polypeptide chains. So when two zigzag polypeptide chains come close to each other hydrogen bonds are formed between different segments of these two polypeptide chains. The adjacent polypeptide chains in a sheet can be either parallel or anti-parallel. So this arrangement of polypeptides is either parallel or anti-parallel. That is meant by parallel and anti-parallel. First let us see the arrangement of hydrogen bonds. So here you can see this is one polypeptide, this is another. They are arranged in a zigzag manner and the hydrogen bonds here you can see these are the hydrogen bonds. And these are present between the adjacent polypeptide chains. So this is anti-parallel polypeptide chain. Anti-parallel means at this corner you can see this is a minogroup and on the other chain here is a carbonyl group. If you see on the other side same one is a minogroup and the other one is carbonyl group. So the direction of these polypeptide chains is like this one is moving in this direction and the other one is moving in this direction. So this is called anti-parallel beta-plated sheet. If we see the parallel beta-plated sheet you can see a minogroup, both are on the same side. So the direction of these polypeptide chains is parallel. Look at the difference between the hydrogen bonding in anti-parallel and parallel beta-plated sheets. The hydrogen bonds are comparatively straight in case of anti-parallel beta-plated sheets while they are slightly distorted in case of parallel beta-plated sheets. That's why anti-parallel beta sheets are more stable as compared to parallel beta-plated sheets.


Hey everybody, welcome to another talk at Product School. Thank you for joining. My name is Eden and today's topic is Essential Politics for Product Managers. I'm not sure if we've ever at Product School touched on this topic of politics in such an explicit way, but it is the kind of thing fearsome and nebulous as it might be that we just cannot ignore. We have to come to grips with it. So we're going to help you do that. We're going to help you figure out what it means. In fact, by the end of this session, I expect that you will know exactly what we mean by politics, why it matters, how to succeed at politics, what to watch out for, how to manage relationships, and how to gather organizational knowledge that will help you succeed and a whole lot of other additional political concepts. So definitely stay tuned. Before we kick it off, just a bit about myself. I'm originally from a small and dynamic country called Israel, but my home is the United States. I live in the greater Seattle region, working for Google in product management. My specific area at Google is consumer hardware, where I manage features related to privacy, security, and a big vision that we call ambient computing. Before this, I held product and people management roles across other big tech companies, and my formal education is in computer science and business strategy. If after this session you have any feedback or any questions, you're more than welcome to connect, get in touch with me on LinkedIn, and love to hear from you. So let's dive straight in. Here is our agenda for this session. We will first define politics and see why it matters in the workplace. Then at the risk of sounding cliche, we'll go over the good, the bad, and the ugly sides of politics. And as you might guess, because we're dealing with politics, both the good and the bad are recommended. We'll understand why. But we also have the ugly, and that includes some seductive political behaviors that are just plain harmful. And one quote that I really appreciate in this context of politics is from Peter Drucker, one of the prominent management consultants of the 20th century. If your brain for any reason is running out of memory and you can really only store one piece of information, then please do me a favor and make sure it is this statement from Drucker. And let me read it out loud for those of you who are consuming this only as audio. Quote, the most important thing in communication is to hear what isn't being said. Unquote.  When we talk about organizational politics, we're referring to attempts by employees of an organization at influencing others to promote their causes, ideas, or decision. After all, the world is still governed by people. And we know that people are messy. They're emotional. They are often irrational. And so influence plays a big role, more than facts and logic put together in determining what organizations do and how they do it. It's just not a rational world. Even data-driven decisions, they're seldom made rationally.  This is all decided by individuals. Same thing for big business decisions like which projects your company will invest in or which markets they'll go to or what technologies they're going to use. What their product ad spend will be, these are the type of big decisions that people shape and influence through the use of politics. Employees very widely in their levels of influence. We all know that. Some of this is simply because most organizations are hierarchies where managers formally have influence by authority or by decree. But we all know that's only one side of the coin. Even if we look at people in the same role at similar levels with similar authority being managers or individual contributors, doesn't matter. There is always going to be a difference. Some people are just more influential. Maybe because it comes more naturally to them. Maybe because they've made it a priority. But we see that everywhere. And these differences tend to be remarkable. For example, it's not uncommon at all for one software engineer to have 10 times the influence as their colleague, working in exactly the same team and having very similar skills and experience and formal authority. Researchers in this field of organizational behavior, they actually see this wide heterogeneity across different industries, different roles, and in fact, different countries. So the question is why? What explains this? What special insights or understandings do these much more influential employees have? We'll try to answer that today. Politics is, if you think about it, it's in a way an art of understanding who thinks what about which and then acting on it. So questions like what do people think about certain issues or other people? What are people's relationships with others? What are their preferences? What are their who are their adversaries if they have such? It's about developing a kind of mental map of what the big issues are, what options are being considered, and where key players stand on these issues and options or policies. Now, political employees are the ones who develop and use these insights to wield greater influence. Being political in the office just means being politically cognizant of what's going on, having that mental map, if you will. And it doesn't at all mean being a player or being insincere or being manipulative. It just means developing a perception or a sense of what's going on and using it to increase your own impact and to steer things in the way you believe is right. Of course, there are roles like PMs that are expected by definition to be more influential and therefore more political.  And together, we will figure out what this means and how you can do that. But before that, let's talk for a moment about organizations that are free of politics, also known as optical illusions. Look, politics happens when people collaborate and not everyone sees things exactly the same way. In fact, the more ambiguous the work environment is, the more likely it is for politics to emerge.  Likewise, if you happen to work for a company where everyone wants exactly the same all the time or where the rules are so clear-cut that there is no room to make free choices, maybe on an assembly line, then you can probably skip this training too. But for everyone else, if you work around other people and you get to decide at least partially how to do your job, politics is simply a fact of life. And as a PM, you can't afford not to care about it.   But not to cause you too much worry, I want to say that we also have some good news. I know this word politics is justifiably loaded and it's gotten a lot of flak or a lot of bad reputation, in part because of big politics or government politics. But I can reassure you all that being politically engaged at work has nothing to do with any of that. The politics that we're talking about begin and end with the people and processes in your workplace. You can do great in this type of internal or small politics and at the same time be completely disengaged from politics at the public or national level if you choose to. So just be sure not to confound these different types of politics. Now that we know what politics are, how do we do it? Let's first take a look at the good side of politics and it's good because it's safe, it carries little risk and these are just great behaviors to adopt even if you, for any reason, aren't looking to shape and influence opinions. What I'm referring to is you caring about your colleagues, connecting with them, relating to them and developing a perception of what is going on with them. As we've noted, the most important thing is to hear what isn't being said. And the way to do this is to establish relationships, to ask questions, to observe and to listen. This is something that we should be rather strong at as PMs because we should already be doing this with our users and customers. Likewise, we should be well trained at leading without authority because the engineers that implement our product requirements, they're usually not under our direct supervision. This concept applies to politics too. The ability to lead comes from influence rather than authority. So how do we become great leaders without authority, which will also pave the way for political influence? It begins with knowing which people we need to connect to most. Of course, that includes the people whose work we want to influence. So if you're a PM for an app and you have this vision of a brand new user interface, surely you will want to prioritize the UI designer and the front-end team lead, the people that will ultimately have to do this work. But just as importantly, we should also connect with two other types of people. The connectors and the mavens, as Malcolm Gladwell calls them. The connectors are social hubs. They are the best connected people around you. They've been there for a while, they have excellent social skills and they can introduce you to people that you didn't know existed and you didn't know irrelevant to what you're trying to accomplish. These are the connectors. The other type you want to know on a personal basis and on a close basis are the mavens or the experts. They are just people that have a lot of subject matter knowledge and usually they're recognized as such. So they'll be able to give you both constructive feedback on what you need to rework in your idea and if they're on your side, you'll have a much stronger hand when it's time for the senior vice president to make a decision on your proposal. Connect within and across the organization. Make sure you reach far and wide across the company as you build your network and your relationships inside the company. To know what's going on, you will need the big picture and that means extending outside of your group or business unit. Think of these more remote connections as you planting seeds in different soils. The more soils, the more likely it is that one of these seeds will take root and sprout and to improve the odds that they will in fact flourish, make it a mission to provide value to your connections, provide information that they will find useful. Maybe you can volunteer to review and leave comments on documents that they wrote or that they care about and please do all that without expecting anything in return. Be unconditional in providing them with real value. And sometimes not always, but often enough you might get much more back. In the end, the more relationships you foster, the more topics you're gonna have for potential chit chats with the women and men in the back room and that's typically where the big decisions are struck. Do things to show your connections that you care about them as individuals as well and that you're gonna help them succeed. That means get to know them personally, make sure to have some non-work related communication, some small talk, know something about their family, their hobbies and also, more importantly, maybe, is make sure you know what they're trying to achieve and what they care about. If you can figure out what their boss cares about, that will be very useful too. And as you build that trust, you can now afford to ask more sensitive questions. You'll be able to ask what they think about so and so and what they think about the proposal for X, Y and Z or why they think the VP of marketing is no longer allocating any marketing manager to work on project, dead beef, whatever. It never stops to amaze me. Just how much sensitive information you can get by simply being honest and asking. Knowing your boss's politics, this is another critical one. Who are your boss's confidants? Who are their friends? Who do they trust and distrust? What's their relationship to their peers? Their other direct reports, their direct manager, the more you understand the kind of environment your boss operates in and how they fit into that environment, the better you're gonna be at getting on their good side and being able to influence them. For example, let's say you've noticed that your boss gives a lot of respect to what Mary from Corporate Strategy thinks. Well, maybe you have to build a relationship with Mary first and get Mary to support your idea so you can win over your boss. And this matters because your boss is usually the single most consequential backer or a detractor for anything that you're trying to achieve. If they have your back and they're willing to take risks for you, that's like that red and white power-up mushroom in Mario.  Follow internal communications and announcements. Look, you're not supposed to study it by heart but you are supposed to scan through them periodically and know what's being telegraphed. I would also add to that the corporate website for any interesting news. When you're around people in the know, typically more senior and better connected folks, I bet you they're gonna know what's in these memos and emails even before they've been broadcast. So at the very least, don't dismiss them and read between the lines. These announcements often tell additional stories. Where is the growth? If someone is moving to some new department, are they being shoved aside or assigned to the next big thing? If a certain product is becoming very successful and the CEO is bragging about it to customers, who do you know who's working on it and how can you get in on the action? And what if they mention a promotion for someone that you know even vaguely? Send them a congratulations and recognize the achievement because who knows when you might need something from them. Executive Town Halls, they're like announcements on steroids. They include a ton of information both spoken and that which isn't said. And they can give you a great idea of what the executive priorities are and what gets leadership's attention. If Town Halls are done in person, then just looking at the audience who sits where, push mooses with whom, who's in the first and second rows, there's an enormous level of high-fidelity signal in this data. So make sure to observe and not let this go to waste. Finally, unless you're an all-powerful CEO who ideally has majority control over the company, you can only be a successful influencer if you're willing to compromise and fuse other people's opinions into your own. My personal formula is that if I get 50% of my idea implemented, then I've had a real impact. And that's because most ideas, most of the time, they end up at not 50% but 0%, nothing ever comes out of them. The more people you will need to do something in order to carry out your proposal, that means the more opinions and resistance you're going to face. That's simply the second law of thermodynamics. The amount of disorder in a closed system can only increase. And the only way to break the resistance and encourage collaboration is to embrace the feedback and show people that their opinion matters and truly affects the outcome of things. People that have skin in the game because they've influenced the narrative, they're much more likely to stand behind it. And believe me, I know that sometimes it really aches to compromise on an otherwise perfectly thought-out plan or to deal with people that are resistant to change just because it's changed. But in a world of ego, competition and many emotions, compromise is necessary to overcome these human obstacles. Compromise is our friend. Next up is politicking. This is when you're working to influence a big and important outcome or decision. It's not something you'll do too often but from time to time, when there's a high stakes decision, we made it to roll up our sleeves and get into the mode of politicking. I consider it to be the bad side of politics because like Angel Eyes in the famous Western movie, it requires some sleight of hand, some shamelessness and sometimes even ruthlessness. You'll likely have to take some hidden pleasure in seeing competing ideas struggle and that's because we need you to be fired up about your cause. This is the part of politics where you have to throw your hat into the ring and stand up and campaign for what you want. Very often you'll have to justify why competing ideas are plain wrong. Politicking is about putting diplomacy and neutrality aside and I know that for some of us this doesn't come naturally so let me help you out by breaking down how to do this. The key to successful politicking is understanding where the decision will get made, by who and based on what parameters. Some decisions are formally made in dedicated meetings where you have key stakeholders but other decisions are made on the go, bit by bit. Sometimes it's simply through slow changes on the ground and likewise you may have a clear decision maker typically the most senior person in the room or you may have a very decentralized model of decision making by consensus. I'm not gonna grade these systems today but I want you to know that they do exist including many other forms and they vary by organizations and cultures. Unlike in democratic public politics, in organizations we don't enjoy the clarity of having a designated election day or one vote per one person. So it's critical that we find out how the decision will get done in our particular environment and context. Who is going to make it? Will it be made in a distinct time and place or evolve over time? And just as much what factors are gonna be key to the decision maybe it's what your top customer asks for possibly what can get done the quickest or maybe the option with the lowest risk that people fear the least. The way to find out what it is in your case is through the relationship building exercises that we just went over. The number one thing to take away is that to build a winning political strategy you have to understand how decisions are made. So acquiring this knowledge if you don't have it is the first step to politicking. Venue shopping, this is a term from political science and it refers to finding a decision setting that optimizes our chances for getting what we want. Now you won't always be able to control for this but if you know of a favorable time, place or forum where you're more likely to get what you want then by all means please go shopping and be creative. Maybe you need to travel and be there in person. Maybe you want certain people to attend or maybe to change the timing so that it happens before the quarterly results are out. Whatever it is, the decision venue is hardly ever set in stone. So don't be afraid to engage in venue shopping which is an important part of your preparation. Controlling the decision parameters this is another recommended tactic to influence the decision before it ever gets made. This is you trying to ensure that the strongest parts in your proposal receive significant attention in the process and that the weaknesses of your proposal and trust me you have some too, they don't become major detractors. So let's say that you found out that diversifying the revenue mix is a big thing for leadership and only your proposal would really tap into new revenue streams which promotes what leadership supposedly wants. In this case you'll want to make this a central consideration in the decision-making process and you'll want to incorporate it into your messaging. Now, if in this case the decision setting is the monthly review say with the corporate VP you might want to contact their admin or their chief of staff and ask them to add diversifying the revenue mix into the agenda under the relevant discussion topic. In other words, we want to shape the parameters ahead of the decision so that they emphasize the strength of our proposal and downplay its softer sides. Counting votes is about as straightforward as it sounds it's simple math, but you still have to know the answer of who is with you and who is against you. Of course business is not democratic not all votes are equal or carry the same weight life isn't fair, but make sure to focus on the votes that matter most and try to flip them using various means of persuasion. However, while you do this I want you to have a very good sense of the kind of support and the kind of opposition that you have. Put differently, you're going to be both campaigning and polling at the same time. And part of being bad is not being shy about directly polling the stakeholders to see if they are with you or not. If it takes them too long to say yes, then well, you probably haven't won over them yet. And that brings me to my next point. You will need to refine your proposal and even redefine the parameters as you campaign for it. There won't be a point in time where your proposal is frozen. It needs to respond to the feedback that you're getting along the way so that A, it addresses the key concerns and B, your stakeholders have a vested interest because now it's also their proposal and you've earned a vote of confidence if that's what you can get to. That's skin in the game that I mentioned. And finally, it's not always that easy. Sometimes you're just up against far more powerful forces or far more experienced political actors. Sometimes the parameters have shifted in a way that your advantages have become irrelevant. It's also possible that you're scouting and fact-finding neglected certain insights that are critical to the decision and by the time you find out, it's too late. If this is the situation, if you realize that the odds are against you, that's not the end of the world, but it also means that there is no point in trying to win support in a meeting with hostile views. If you know that you have a lost cause, the faster you back out, the better it is for you and for everyone. You might just realize that switching sides and joining the winning team is a superior way to exert influence and to remain relevant. That's legitimate. In fact, it's something that seasoned politicians regularly find themselves doing. In the famous Western film, Tuko, who is the ugly character in the trio, is in fact a very clever and enterprising gangster.  And we, as the audience, unlike with the other two characters which are shrouded in mystery, we get to know all about ugly. So I wanna make sure that as you become politically savvy and engaged, you don't leave behind a growing trail of political misdeeds, enemies, and other career damaging artifacts. And sometimes that's easier said than done because politics and especially political success can become very seductive and can lower our guard when it comes to acting professionally and responsibly. So what are the tempting behaviors to avoid? Let's start with this. Don't withhold or restrict information, especially to try to maintain some advantage over others. And that applies to every kind of information. Whenever you know something that someone else doesn't and it would improve their effectiveness, then unless this knowledge is confidential, share it with them. This will help you build a great network of supporters who will be at your disposal when you need them. Look, reality is if you refuse to share information or you pretend not to know sooner rather than later, your colleagues will find out and your presence won't be very welcome. Next, don't speak negatively of other people or situations. There will be delicate moments when you're asked to talk about some difficult person or team or situation. It could be during a review with management. It could be in a one-on-one with your boss. And look, it feels good. You might feel like you're sharing, you're providing information that maybe only you have. It's very emotionally rewarding, but it's not going to help your career when some of the people you talk negatively about or people involved with situations that you talk about will hear or infer in one way or another that you spoke ill about them. If what you're going to say is actually useful to the people you share it with, then you should expect for that to echo around the organization and might just reach the people you're talking about. So what's the right approach? Don't say much if anything. Keep it to yourself. Avoid negativity. Say something like, I'll need to think about it or I have nothing to point out or I can't think of anything bad to say. Do not ban opposing opinions or prevent topics from being discussed. Sometimes we can get away with muscling other people or blocking topics that we don't like from the agenda, but these tiny tactical wins never pay off because they harbor deep resentment and create bitter political rivals. To influence people, we need to make friends, not enemies.  Credit, don't claim it when you don't deserve it. When you immerse in politicking, you will need to take on some shameless self-promotions. But you have to be wary about overstating your contribution when it really isn't yours. Don't take credit for something where your contribution was just marginal. Instead, use it as an opportunity to praise the people who are responsible for this by name. And believe it or not, they're more likely to become your future supporters even if they're not there when you give them that credit. We talked about avoiding a fight when it's a losing battle. Let's also talk about avoiding a win when it's not important. And usually it's not that important. You don't always have to be better than others and show it to them because on the other side, it's very annoying. Instead, make others feel good by letting them convince you that they are right because, well, sometimes they are. So be sure to acknowledge their accomplishments and give them your respect. As a rule of thumb, winning is only important when it carries strategic significance for us. I think of winning as the result of a struggle where you ultimately get to a desired outcome. But unlike in competitive sports, in real life, winning is not the end in itself. The best workplace politicians, they know that if reality is pretty much what they wanted it to be, that's the win right there. There's no brouhaha. They put on a solid face and they refrain from going on a victory lap. Next up, don't gossip about people. And I mean talking about people when they're not around in a context that's not strictly professional. Sharing information about people's work, that's fine. Talking about how people are doing their work, if it's done professionally, that is fine too. But details about people's personal lives or the type of sensitive information that you wouldn't want others to discuss about you, that's truly to avoid. And if you're pressed to respond, simply say no offense, but I'm not interested in that kind of stuff. Finally, please don't forget what the ultimate goal really is. Politics and influence, they're crucial in allowing us to contribute more and to have a lasting positive impact on what the organization does and how it does it. That is the objective. In contrast, influence that leads to undesirable outcomes such as uncontrolled spending, infighting, or excessive arguments is bad for the organization and ultimately it's bad for our brand and our careers. So let's definitely engage politically and do this responsibly and always with positive intent. We are getting closer to the end, but for those with access to the video, this table is a cheat sheet for PMs that juxtaposes product management and politics. You can print it out and it can serve as a good reminder for what organizational politics involves from you and how it's in many ways similar to the traditional product management that you're familiar with. Just a nice quick way to capture the many ideas that we've been reviewing. With that, thank you so much for attending. And if you found this to be useful, then please be sure to share it with your friends and with your professional network. And I hope to see you again next time.


Well, let's continue to track the motion of our object. Well, suppose that after it leaves the tube, it goes into another tube, 10 meters in length, and while there, its velocity decreases by kt meters per second squared, where t is the number of seconds after it enters the second tube. Here we want to find k so the object stops before it splats into the end of the tube. Well, finding when the object stops, that says something about its velocity, and so our velocity is going to be the anti-derivative of this acceleration, and we do know how rapidly the object was moving at the start, so c is going to be 13.4. So the object stops when its velocity is zero. So we'll set up our equation and solve for t. And since t has to be positive, we only need the positive square root. And so depending on the value of k, the object will stop sooner or later, and the important question is, will the object stop in time? What will determine whether the object stops in time is whether or not it's traveled more or less than 10 meters by the time it stops. So we need to know the distance the object travels. Well, distance is measured in meters. We have a velocity in meters per second, so distance will be the anti-derivative of velocity. And again, we can calibrate and find this constant since t is the amount of time since the object entered the tube. We know that s of zero is zero, and so our constant is also zero. So remember that we found that the object stopped moving when t is equal to the square root of 26.8 over k. So let's figure out where the object is at the time it stops. So if we want the object to stop before it splats against the far end of the tube, then we might reason as follows. If the object doesn't stop until t equals square root of 26.8 over k, and it only has 10 meters in which to stop, we need to find a value of k so that the distance of the object at this time is less than 10. So we'll drop this value into our formula for the distance, and we'll do a little bit of algebra and arithmetic to solve for k. And after all the dust settles, we find that square root of k has to be larger than 4.6247, and so k has to be greater than 21.3876. And if k is greater than this amount, then where the object stops is short of the 10 meter distance, and so the object will stop in time.


The study aimed to compare the thermal performance of a cavity surface contour on a Schaeffler type parabolic dish collector with that of a plain surface contour. The cavity surface was found to produce a more uniform temperature distribution and a higher heat absorption rate, resulting in a higher overall efficiency. This article was authored by Ramalingam Centiel, Arvind Chejian and Zakhar Husainaj Malarsath.