the best place you've visited so far in terms of conference and just the climate. The climate in Malta is pretty good. The weather has been fantastic here. I think my favorite conference each year to be honest is Anarcapulco, which happens in Alcapulco, Mexico each winter. And it's really a fun group of exciting people. Technically it's not even a cryptocurrency conference but it's a bunch of volunteers from all over the world get together. And those were the people that really got excited about Bitcoin and digital currencies earliest on. And so I really feel it's like a bit of a homecoming gathering there to go to Anarcapulco each year. Tell me the story about you getting into the crypto industry. So my background as a young man was using computers and studying computer science and studying economics. If you think about it Bitcoin is convergence of both of those two things. So when Bitcoin came along I could understand the computer science side and I could understand the economics side. And I knew that people were going to start using it as money. There was absolutely no doubt in my mind that people were going to start using it as money. And like anything the price is set by supply and demand because the supply of Bitcoin was limited. As more and more people demanded to start using it as money the price would have to go up and go up a lot.  My next step was to start investing in the businesses that would make Bitcoin easier for people to use as money and building the tools and infrastructure for people to use it as money. And sure enough that was a pretty successful strategy. What year was that? You said that you bought Bitcoin. That was February of 2011. I remember very clearly and I was the first person in the entire world to start investing in this ecosystem. There were no projects back then. So my first step was to buy Bitcoin. And then I started working on building projects myself. And then the first project that even had any sort of a semblance of structure to it was a company called BitInstant that allowed people to buy their first Bitcoin at Walgreens and Walmart and 7-Eleven and places like that. And so my first investment paid in Bitcoin was in BitInstant. Last year you seemed to choose another side. You decided that you would believe in Bitcoin Cash. Why? So I would actually take issue with the question itself. So I didn't choose a different side. I'm on the exact same side I've always been on, which is peer-to-peer electronic cash for the world. And sadly using a bunch of censorship and propaganda and personal attacks and trolling on the Internet, the BTC version of Bitcoin has morphed from having the goal to be peer-to-peer electronic cash for the world into being a peer-to-peer science project or store-of-value project. But I'm someone who wants to enable every individual, everyone on the planet to be able to send or receive money with anyone else, instantly, basically for free and not need permission from anybody else. A peer-to-peer store of value doesn't enable that. Bitcoin Cash does. So if you look at it objectively, Bitcoin Cash is the same version of Bitcoin described in the Bitcoin White Paper. It's the same version of Bitcoin that I got involved with in 2011. It's the same version of Bitcoin that I started investing in. So I'm investing in the exact same version of Bitcoin that I've been involved in for almost eight years full-time. And the thing that everyone's calling Bitcoin in the media today, it has the name Bitcoin, but it doesn't have any of the characteristics that made Bitcoin popular to begin with. And it doesn't have most of the entrepreneurs that made Bitcoin popular to begin with. Bitcoin Cash has those characteristics and Bitcoin Cash has most of those entrepreneurs. Is that how you usually react to criticism that you get? Because a lot of people see, saw you as a Bitcoin Jesus, pardon me for the... And right now a lot of people feel like you've chosen another way. So is that the way you respond to them? I think anybody that thinks that I've chosen another way should stop and look at the situation more deeply. Because I'm having the exact same speech about Bitcoin that I've been giving since 2011. And that's that it enables anyone anywhere on the planet to send and receive any amount of money with anyone, anywhere, instantly, basically for free. And there's nothing anybody can do to stop it. And that speech that I've been giving since 2011 is still completely true about Bitcoin Cash. It's no longer true about the version of Bitcoin that everyone's calling Bitcoin. So that means I'm promoting the same version of Bitcoin. And the thing that has the ticker symbol BTC, it's Bitcoin in name only at this point. It's essence is no longer Bitcoin. Why do you think Bitcoin failed you and your trust? A bunch of people managed to hijack the project using censorship and literally deleting posts of anybody that advocated for the original Bitcoin. And that's why you have almost all the original early adopters of Bitcoin. People like myself, the first investor in the entire world, in the ecosystem is busy promoting Bitcoin Cash today. Gavin Andreessen, the person that Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin, turned over the project to when he left, is a big fan of Bitcoin Cash and is busy promoting Bitcoin Cash today. Almost all of the early entrepreneurs, the Coin Basis, the Blockchain.Info's, the Bitcoin.com's, the Bitcoin Twitter account, all of those people are busy promoting Bitcoin Cash because it's the version of Bitcoin that we fell in love with back in 2009, 10, 11, 12, 13. And Bitcoin Cash is Bitcoin, if you look at it objectively. So in your opinion, Bitcoin Cash is the Bitcoin. Is it perfect right now? No, there's always room to improve anything in the world. There's a thousand and one different cryptocurrencies out there competing for market share. And at the end of the day, that's a good thing. It's a Darwinian evolution of cryptocurrencies. And at the end of the day, we wind up with stronger, more robust, you know, more useful cryptocurrencies for the world to use. And Bitcoin, BTC is not guaranteed to be the winner in the end. Neither is Bitcoin Cash. And if something better that comes along, that brings more economic freedom to the world and has the ability to give more people more control of their own finances, I'll gladly promote that. I'm going to promote whatever I think is the best tool to bring more economic freedom to the world. And today, I think that tool is Bitcoin Cash. But tomorrow, if it was something different, I would promote something different. So but today, it's very clearly Bitcoin Cash. You've mentioned recently that adoption is has been failing in so we don't have mass adoption right for BTC. Yeah. So the BTC version of Bitcoin has literally been having reverse adoption. You have businesses that used to accept it. Stop. And then you have these BTC nutcases cheering and saying this is success when people stop using the BTC version of Bitcoin. That's just absolutely mindboggling to me. And I'm glad not to be a part of that community any longer. I'm glad to be a part of the peer to peer electronic cash system community. So and if there is mass adoption for other cryptocurrencies, I think the ones that are the most useful will be the ones that are used by the most number of people. So I'm a fan of the of the privacy coins. I think are fantastic. The the Monero, the Zcash, the Z coins, those are really interesting. The ICO platform tokens of horse ethereum is incredibly interesting. Bitcoin Cash has tokens on Bitcoin Cash now as well, which ICOs are happening on Bitcoin Cash. So anything that's useful, people are going to use. And I'm not married to any one single cryptocurrency. I'm used to the ones that are most useful to me in my life. And today, that's Bitcoin Cash. But I'm not hostile to anything else other than maybe the people that hijacked the Bitcoin brand name, the people like myself built up into the ecosystem that it was today. And they've morphed it into something that's not Bitcoin. I'm a little bit upset and annoyed by that. But Oh, well, there are a lot of jurisdictions that tend to accept crypto or be very friendly to blockchain and crypto systems. New York is not one of them. Yeah, so my question is actually about the United States. What do you think in general about the crypto regulations there? Are they fair, given the fact that they're regulated by the 1913 year? No, they're they're not fair. They're they literally have secret undercover government agents going on local Bitcoins, and then trying to buy Bitcoins from people when they sell them the Bitcoins, they arrest the people and toss them in jail for years. This is madness and needs to stop. So a shame on the US for doing that sort of thing. No civilized country would lock people in jail for years for selling Bitcoin to another person who wants to buy it because they didn't get permission from some politician. It's madness happening in the US. And man, you're living on the edge doing business in the US when it comes to cryptocurrency, you're living dangerously to do so. So what is the most friendly crypto ecosystem? We're filming this here in Malta. Malta is definitely towards the top of that list, if not at the very top. So of course, it's the countries that have the most economic freedom around the world. So it's the Singapore's the Hong Kong's the Switzerland's the Malta's the Cyprus's the US is falling farther and farther down that list of countries with economic freedom around the world. And it's sad as someone who's originally from the US, it's sad to see that. But the truth is the truth regardless of how it makes me feel. What is the future for the crypto industry and blockchain industry? The future is more and more adoption, more and more usage, more and more integration into the society that we live in around the world. And the regulations can only slow it down. It can't stop it. What about the price of cryptocurrency? They are very volatile this year. BTC basically had it on lock where they could they were going to have 99% of the market share around the world until they committed economic suicide by limiting the ability of people to use BTC version of Bitcoin. And so now there's a thousand one different cryptocurrencies competing with mark for market share. There's more than a thousand one different tokens competing for market share. It's really, really hard to know. But as an investor, you should look for the tokens or the cryptocurrencies that are the most useful. And the ones that are the most useful are the ones that are going to be used by the most number of people. And the ones that are used by the most number of people that have a limited supply are the ones that will have the highest price. So that's what you should look at for as an investor. coin telegraph like subscribe and hodl


How the hell did you end up here? You're probably thinking that right now. I had this experience where I was talking with a 43 year old man and he was basically on the verge of tears saying that even though he has these kids and this beautiful wife and all these things, he thought he would be somewhere else. He thought he'd be further. You know, he was saying there were problems with his marriage and his kids were incredibly stressful and sucking up all of their money. And even though he had this beautiful hallmark picture perfect life from the outside in some ways, he didn't feel that feeling of satisfaction of I am where I want to be. I am where five or 10 years ago I dreamt that my life would be. And that was a really upsetting thought to him. Now, in reality, a midlife crisis can happen at any point in life. And it happens due to one thing. You are not where you thought you'd be at this exact moment. What's up guys? It's Alex Hine. Now let's jump in and PS. A lot of the concepts in my book, Milk the Pigeon are going into how to prevent having a quarter life crisis or midlife crisis. So check it out. So this is the only reason why you are feeling unfulfilled. That feeling occurs due to the gap. The gap is on one side where you are and on the other side is where you thought you'd be or where you want to be. So we have this moment and that moment is preceded by any number of things. It could be a health crisis. It could be a breakup. It could be you graduate college or it could be a new career starts or a career ends. The start of relationship, the end of relationship. But regardless, the facts are the same. You feel like you should have been somewhere else. And so you wake up every day and you're wondering, well, why am I here? I thought my marriage would look like this. I thought my finances would look like this. I thought my career would look like this. I thought my travels would look like this and they don't. And it's the sobering reality of looking at where you are, the ground zero facts. This is where I am and this is not where I wanted to be. And that can be a really painful reality to come to terms with. You know, a friend of mine posted something on Facebook a couple of years ago about a very short marriage and a very unhappy divorce. And she said, you know, this long message about I'm so embarrassed and I'm so depressed because I thought my life would be different by now. I thought I would be married to the love of my life in a stable home. We love where we are. We're happy where we are. We have a cute dog and maybe our first cute kid on the way. I'd be working at my dream nonprofit doing something that changes the world and something that really, really helps people. And I would have lots of friends and family and community and I'd feel a lot of peace where I am right now in my life. And she said, none of that has happened. And now I'm entering my mid to late 30s and I'm starting to feel like those things may never happen for me. And for her, this experience of all of these dreams sort of coming crashing to a halt was that sobering reality of doesn't mean that it can't happen, but that it didn't happen. And I'm nearing that 40 year mark. Now, like a lot of people I've gone through many of these phases in my life. And in fact, that's why I have so many videos on this channel about journaling. I mean, I've showed you, I've put together that free goal setting and journaling worksheet right below this video because the whole point is to think about what you want all the time, every damn day. Because if you're doing that, you are this much more likely to take action on what you really want in life. You are this much more likely to prevent drift in your life. You are this much more likely to not get to that point where, yes, it doesn't mean all your wildest dreams will come true, especially in the timeline you want. But the point of this worksheet is to help you understand you can very likely make at least a few of them come true if given a long enough timeline with enough focus and enough clarity and alignment day to day. Now I wanna give you two strategies that have helped me a lot to prevent this. I had this once, my quarter life crisis run 25 and I've never had it since. Now, while my life has not gone totally according to plan, there have been health crises and breakups and friends lost and all of that, that's life, what it has done is it's gone steadily and slowly up into the right and has generally gotten better and better and better.  This is a metaphor from Stephen Covey. He wrote The Habits of Highly Effective People and he talks about the dangerous aspect of life if you're working hard is that you're working hard towards a goal that you don't even really care about. So inevitably you've climbed and climbed and climbed and climbed and climbed the ladder, could be the corporate ladder, could be going to medical school but you're not passionate about medicine really. It's for money or status or to look good to mommy and daddy. You end up grinding and climbing this ladder for years. You get to the top and you realize this was not even what I wanted to be. This was not even what I actually wanted to do. And so as a result, now you've done all that work to get to where you wanna be and you're more unhappy than ever before because you've lost that time and that money that you've dedicated to that. So how do we make sure this does not happen? In my first job, I was a teaching assistant in a school in New York and I knew even though the job was okay, at the end of the year, my gut was screaming, this is not what I'm born to do for the next 40 years but the difference compared to most people was that I listened to it and most people do not out of fear. So let me jump in and show you this journaling exercise, the what I want three year vision. So this first exercise is basically just what I want, right? I'm just gonna write three years from today. And basically I want you just to write down in two columns what I got, meaning where I am and then here what I want. The reason this is so important is because people want a lot of things but inevitably it's difficult to have self-awareness if what I'm doing today will result in me getting what I want as opposed to what I don't want. So let's write down what I got. 45K salary, what I wanted was 100K salary by 30, right? Let's just say that's the constraint. What I got an eh relationship, what I wanted was an exceptional one, right? Exceptional or let's just write loving one, right? What I got was no real friends and what I wanted was best friends. What I got was let's say job with this salary and what I really wanted was self-employment. And finally, what I got was just write no excitement meaning there's not much in your life right now that really excites you. And what I wanted was life of excitement. So you'd be surprised how few people actually write this down. This is basically your year, right? This is like the starting point in the treasure map of this is where it all begins but this is what I wanted it to end. And yet what happens is we never take the time to even write down this is what I want, this is what I am and this is gonna have to take me on some kind of journey to get to what I want. It doesn't just happen, right? If you never ever leave the starting point, if you never move out of home you will never go on this epic adventure which is the life most people want to live. So just doing this exercise and carrying it in your wallet every day is one of the most underrated and simple exercises you can do to make sure you're always making progress towards the things you want in your life. Now, phase two is all about alignment as I call it because one thing that I've learned coaching a lot of people in their 20s and 30s is that people have a lot of dreams and not a lot of actual concrete plans to make those dreams happen. So people have this fantasy of when I get to 30 I'm gonna be married, I'm gonna make six figures, I'm gonna have lots of friends, I'm gonna be well-traveled and yet what happens is we're 22 in that job-making 40K and for five years we're not driven about learning new skills, applying to new jobs, trying to find ways to move up that ladder, not at all, we just think it's gonna happen because we wrote it on a piece of paper or we just had that thought. People say, oh I'm just gonna find love and fall in love and God will provide me with the right mate at the right time. Well, there are a lot of women in their 30s that are incredibly depressed and feeling scared and anxious because now they're 33 or 35, still single and they have to get married and have kids in the next three years because they haven't changed anything about their daily habits so they aren't meeting anymore men potentially to marry. For a lot of us, we have a mismatch between our daily action and the goal. That is the fundamental premise of my book, Master the Day, that is the whole point that I wrote it and if you can focus on the daily rituals, you will naturally achieve that goal. So let's jump in and I wanna show you an exercise. Let's break this down now into what I call alignment or congruence, right? Alignment and congruence is a lot like someone who says they wanna be a better friend and then they actually do that or the team member you work with that says I'm gonna work on this project and they actually do that. Now in reality, people like that are unfortunately not that common. We tend to fall somewhere in between but if we say what I want is here and what I got or where I am is here, that gap is an alignment gap because if you had the skill set and you had the drive and you had the position, literally, you'd be making 100K in a job. If you were the person with another the person, you'd be in an exceptional and loving relationship. If you're the kind of person who doesn't tend to make a lot of friends, there's a reason for that, right? It's not, you're not cursed. There's something about your habits or your personality traits or your actions or lack of actions that results in that. So we need to figure out how do we make what we want and what we do align because we all want a lot of things. We say we want a lot of things but they have to align in terms of action. So if let's say we want the 100K job because this is the gap, right? What are the daily, daily rituals that you have to do to turn this into a reality? So you're not waiting another five years. It may mean taking courses or training. It may even mean going back to school for some kinds of careers. It may mean flying or even networking to meet people in those industries, right? It may mean even researching, like for example, if you wanna go from making 45K to 100K marketing job, you need to probably go on LinkedIn and figure out what are those people doing day to day? What are their actual skills and where are those positions that pay that much? And then you have to change your strategy, right? If it's the friends thing, no friends or not the kind of friendships you want, we have to figure out what that alignment is, right? It may mean literally initiative, right? After a certain age, it's very rare that you just meet people and your friends and then your besties forever. So it may mean your daily ritual is I am going to be the one, me. I'm gonna be the one that invites everyone out and tries to build the community. I'm not gonna expect anyone to reach out to me. I'm not gonna be upset if people don't reach out. I'm gonna be the one that initiates. It may mean new hobbies, right? Picking up a dance class, picking up a programming class, beach volleyball, whatever. And it may mean just constant nurturing and not expecting it to be like how it was in grade school or college. So these daily rituals produce alignment. And if you focus on these daily rituals and you forget the goals, these goals will still end up happening.  If you're the kind of person always taking courses to grow and increasing your skills, applying or networking and meeting people, learning what is the next position, you're always gonna be getting bigger jobs that are more capable. So the clarity of the three years from today and the daily alignment with what you want is how you make sure that gap. You never fall in this position again and you are always taking little steps towards the kind of person and life that you want it to be and have. So if you have a couple of these big goals, the fundamental real talk question is, do any of my daily habits actually line up with making that goal happen?  That is the fundamental easiest question. All right guys, that's what I have for today. Again, I'm launching this brand new thing which is incredibly exciting. It is the Monks Courtyard, which is a collection of online courses on how to design your dream life going forward. Now I wanna share one of those courses which is the journaling course, the strategy pages journaling program. This is something that I've used to build out my channel to this point, to reinvent my life, to write all these books that I've written, et cetera. And it started from a simple journaling exercise that I did every week for years. Now that is a part of the strategy pages journaling program which is one of the links right below this video. So check it out if that appeals to you. And again, before you go, I have one more video that will help you reinvent and design your life going forward right there.


the Nazis just made a big mistake and that mistake may well have been the biggest mistake they've ever made in their lives and that mistake is letting you go because you were the gray day source of supply when they said jump you said how how you did everything you could to meet the unrealistic expectations to do what they want to do to do you were always there for them and you were quite possibly the only person who they've ever known who actually cared about them and loved them and they might not ever meet someone like that again someone who actually cared so yes they made a big mistake quite possibly the biggest mistake of their life losing you letting you go because maybe they thought the grass was greener on the other side maybe they were looking for the next shiny new time the next bigger better deal maybe they thought they had something better than you but most often what happens is they downgrade they go down they find someone who is less than you in more ways than one but this person they just be good at talking maybe they know how to sell them a dream they may run into another narcissist someone who's manipulating them someone who is deceiving them using them doing the exact same thing that they did to you because remember how they sold you a dream they led you into this fake relationship where there was nothing but lies and future faking remember how they did that to you well it's only a matter of time until they get a taste of the own medicine because someone else will do that to them it's just a matter of time until that happens if it hasn't happened already because when they leave you they want to prove to themselves and to you that they don't need you but they can find better and do better they want to prove that to you and to themselves but unfortunately for them it never works out that way you can't just go from one thing to another and find something else that's equally as good or better it doesn't work that way of course they have this magical thinking they underestimate you your value and importance because towards the end they devalue and degrade you they reduce your worth but that's only in their minds it doesn't change your actual value but narcissists are surrounded by a lot of people who are just like them people who are fake people who don't really care about them people who don't really have their back people who aren't really in their corner they've got a lot of people like that in their lives and it's only when things go wrong for them that they realize no one's really on their side and you may have been the only person who actually cared for them who would have been there for them when things went wrong but they threw you away a garbage or should I say they tossed to a side like a winning lottery ticket they threw the winning lottery ticket in the trash they lost the jackpot because you were the best thing that ever happened to them they're not gonna find any better or do any better than you no matter what they may think in their minds doesn't work out like that in reality if you can't stop them you can't control them just as you look just as you wouldn't like them to control you you've got to let them move on and do what they want to do they've got to go for it on their own they've got to experience it and then maybe they will learn from it or maybe they will just try and come back to you by that time you should have moved on but this is just how they are they under appreciate you they take you for granted and then they got to deal the consequences of doing that and there's nothing that no one can do to help them you just got to let them do what they want to do as I said in a past video you will experience arguments and disagreements with them they will always want to be in opposition to you whatever you want they always want the opposite even if it's just a sports team they've always got to like the opposite team I don't try to change them just give them these four words have it your way let them have it their way and let's see how things turn out let's see if things get better for them let's see if you were wrong let's see if let's see if the let's see if let's see if I'm wrong because if I am wrong and they didn't just make the biggest mistake of their life then things should get better for them after leaving you have to let you go they should be a lot happier and while it may look that way in the beginning give it time let's see how things are after a few months because I can guarantee in every case no matter who the narcissist is that you're dealing with they're all gonna go down after let you go things are about to get a lot worse for them I can promise you that I can guarantee it even though you may not always see it because they're not gonna let you see that they don't want to give you the satisfaction after you've moved on and things have gotten better for you they don't want you to see it out they want you to think that everything's okay they've just made the biggest mistake of their life by letting you go because you were the best thing that ever happened to them whether they realize that or not thank you all for joining me on another narc survivor live video as you can see I am out here at the beach living my best life and I hope you all are too again thank you all please give this video a thumbs up down below if it was helpful share your thoughts in the comment section I read your comments every day subscribe and if you'd like to book a one-way session with me you can do that from my website it's not survive that could okay check up my Instagram as well the new pictures and videos of my travels on there every day but it's not to have it not to have a YouTube and Instagram again thank you all and I will talk to you in another video very soon


Hi everyone, Joe for Jaspy's casebreaks.com coming at you with the random number block randomizer for the following teams right here Oh, just missed you. That's good. The hurricane just missed you I got some friends that are in New Orleans and they wrote it out But crazy times though. Hopefully everyone's okay out there. I know we got a few people in that Louisiana area Thanks to thanks to Daniel a few other people right here Sean Tyler and Brian for getting in on this number block Those are the numbers right there. Let's do it roll it randomize it four and a six ten times for names and numbers one two three four five six seven eight nine and 10th and final time After ten got some Daniels down to a Daniel Four and a six ten times for the team for the numbers see you Jesse. I'll see you tomorrow man. Oh nice. Go Dodgers Four and a six ten times. That's one. There's two three four five six seven eight nine and 10th and final time easy Eight down to one. So now everyone members per the item description Zero gets any and all redemptions for those four teams down there including one-of-one redemptions But Daniel you'll get live one-of-ones Daniel also has eight three seven and nine Sean is four Brian with five Daniel with six Sean with zero Tyler with two and Daniel with one Let's sort this by column B and Coming up in a in a different video a separate video will be the break itself Jasper's case breaks.com


At Audiology Associates at Prestonsburg, you can live your life the way you want and find the freedom of better hearing. With 40 years of being in the hearing care industry, you'll experience patient care that is specific to you with exceptional follow-up care that ensures your hearing and balance needs are being met. Audiology Associates at 1428 Northlake Drive in Prestonsburg. On Friday, October 20th, an accident occurred on Kentucky 1428 in Prestonsburg when a coal truck collided with a fire engine after an initial accident.  Prestonsburg police chief Ross Shurtliffe gives more details. So we had fire and police that have responded to an initial injury collision, single vehicle injury collision on Kentucky 1428 here between the Lancer four-way intersection and the Gover Roberts community at Prestonsburg. While they were in the process of clearing that scene, a loaded 22-wheeler coal truck came around this curve, was unable to maintain control of that truck, crossed into, once they saw the scene, crossed into the opposite lane of traffic, a Prestonsburg fire engine that was unoccupied was parked in the roadway working that first collision when the 22-wheeler struck it in a head-on collision. During the incident there were no injuries. Prestonsburg fire rescue was able to react to the oncoming coal truck and evade it before the crash. No injuries to any personnel. The driver of the coal truck is un-injured at this point. The Prestonsburg fire engine was unoccupied at the time of the collision and the responders on the scene were able to see the impending emergency and get out of the way of the collision. Both vehicles suffered pretty significant damage. We'll be tied up here for a little while or we'll get these cleared and take care of the investigation. We've got Kentucky State Police Division of Commercial Vehicle Enforcement on scene here where both vehicles were considered commercial vehicles. They'll be taking care of the collision investigation. Reporting from Mountain Top News, I'm Nick Collum.


While creators of a popular podcast series visited the Brainerd area yesterday as part of a traveling series put on by Minnesota Public Radio called MPR Connects. Madeleine Barron and Samara Fremark of the podcast In the Dark talked about their experience with the Peabody Award-winning podcast. The first season of In the Dark covered the investigation into the Jacob Wetterling case. The second season released last spring followed the case of a Mississippi man tried six times for the same crime who now sits on death row. Barron, the lead reporter for the podcast was joined by American public media reports senior producers Samara Fremark to talk about how they chose and pursue their stories. I hope that people, it gets people thinking more about these sort of core functions of our democracy, you know, the police, the prosecutors, the criminal justice system, so that when we make decisions in our own communities, we have the right kind of questions to ask and we sort of know to not always accept everything at face value. The event was part of a four-part series by MPR put on throughout greater Minnesota. The speakers answered audience questions and highlighted the importance of investigative journalism. The podcast is currently planning a third season but they've not yet announced the subject of their investigation. To me, it's like the most important kind of journalism. It's the journalism that tells people what they don't already know and you know, there's so many things we wouldn't know about if there weren't investigative journalists. And so I think to us it feels really, it feels absolutely indispensable. I mean, it's, it's, it's expensive. It takes time. It takes money. We recognize that but it feels very worth it to us. The event was MPR connects last stop in the series after previously holding events in Rochester, St. Cloud and Duluth. If you enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News, please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to Lakeland PBS.


Hello everyone, welcome to the NPTEL course on groundwater hydrology and management week one, lecture two. We are very still very early in the lecture series for groundwater hydrology and management. So the first week, as I mentioned in my breakup slides for the week, we would be looking at what will be offered in the following course and also stressing on the importance of groundwater. Groundwater is a very valuable source, but unless we understand why and why is it used so much in India, it will be difficult to manage it properly. So the understanding first comes, follow that, we will take you through the management path. The hydrological cycle would be explained in most civil engineering, earth science courses. In general, there are multiple components and this is the overall hydrological cycle. Let me explain the hydrological cycle for those beginners. It is a cycle which can start from any point and then be cyclic in nature. So for ease of teaching it and understanding, let us start from the atmosphere, which is the clouds. So in the atmosphere, we have clouds and clouds have water vapor, which is being condensed. Once it condenses, especially after cooling down and multiple other processes, what happens, you get precipitation. Precipitation can come as ice, snow and glaciers. It can also come as rainfall. Since in India, most regions receive rainfall rather than snow, we will focus on groundwater hydrology estimations based on rainfall. I will mention some other things, for example, Ganges River gets rainfall plus snow melt, but we will focus on rainfall for the most part of the course. Some part of your ice and snow melts down and joins with your rainfall and then converts into your streams and rivers discharge etc. So you could see water falling on the slopes of the mountains and then it collects along the stream network and flows down into the freshwater lakes and rivers. After that, it can also flow down if there's no lakes and rivers. It can also flow down to the oceans, seas and base. This creates a loop from the atmosphere to the ocean, where again it gets evaporated back into the atmosphere. But before that, the very, very important parts in the hydrological cycle, which is important to understand the groundwater hydrology. This figure is a very informative figure, which has been widely used from USGS. Even in government records, we can find this image. Those who would like to have more information can go to this website and read about the different cycles, but I will explain most important ones here. So once you have your runoff, which is a conversion of precipitation into running water, you get it infiltrated and goes into the groundwater. So this component, what you see is a process higher than the precipitation because once precipitation occurs, there's only one process. The higher process is the water has to get down into the ground through infiltration. And once the infiltration happens, there is relocation of water into different groundwater compartments, which we will discuss in the future parts of the course. So water flows through as groundwater, not like a river, but it flows through pores and soil and solid materials and then comes out into the surface water storages, fresh water, springs, seepage, etc. Part of it goes into the deep aquifers and then stays there, deep groundwater zones. But most importantly, it comes back to the ocean. So even the groundwater zone here, the deep ones, you can see water can come out and seep into the oceans. So somewhere, your salty water or saline water is evaporated. Only the water vapor goes up and while it goes up, it cools down, forms clouds. Further condensation leads to rainfall, which is fresh water. You start with saline water, you end up with fresh water. Then what happens? Your fresh water goes through multiple processes and then comes back to the ocean. For groundwater, it goes to different groundwater components and either gets stored or flows through into the ocean. So now you have water coming back to the ocean, the cycle doesn't stop, evaporation happens again. Some of the groundwater is taken by plants and goes as evapotranspiration. We'll go through all this in detail, but just telling you in the hydrological cycle, where does groundwater play a role. So either it can get stored, it can flow, or it can be taken up by plants and then mixes into the ocean. After it mixes into the ocean, it can come back to the atmosphere as clouds, precipitation. Again, the cycle goes on and on. And this is driven by the sun. So you see the sun here, it is very aptly placed because if the sun doesn't work, the sun shuts down, plant life doesn't work, there's no transpiration, there is no evaporation from open surfaces. Most of it would be gone. And so your cycle, which is your rain cycle, will not happen. Too much of that is also bad, which is what we are seeing in climate change scenarios, that too much heat or warming can increase your evaporation, thereby increasing floods and droughts, droughts because there's no rain and floods because too much rain can come at a single point. So we've seen the different components and for groundwater, it's very important to understand that is groundwater storage, there's groundwater flow, and then groundwater mixing into the ocean bank. So this is an introduction for a hydrological cycle. We will get back into the groundwater hydrology, which is a focused hydrological cycle within the overall hydrological cycle. So what you see is an overall hydrological cycle. Let's see why it is very important to manage groundwater. First, let's take a step back and understand overall water resource management. Where is our water coming from? Where is it stored? So we'll answer these questions now. Overall, all of the water if you take in the planet and do an analysis, this is the results. Out of the 100% of water that we have on the planet, 97.5% is in oceans, which means it is either saline or not usable, not accessible, because how do you access water from the Pacific Ocean? Are you going to put a big pipe and then pump it out? No. First, the energy, etc is there, but most importantly, the quality of water, which is saline, salty, you can't use it. Then comes this 2.5% which is fresh water. So out of the 97.5% or 100%, 97.5% is salty water in oceans, 2.5% is fresh water. Not all this fresh water is usable. So now off the 100% of fresh water. So this circle is 100% of the 2.5%. So don't think it's another 100%. So off the fresh water, ice caps and glaciers have 79%, which means on top of the Himalayas, the big Alps and all the big snow regions, Finland, Iceland, etc. And then you have your glaciers and Arctic Artics. So you have all this together combining to be around 79%, which leaves us to 21% of available fresh water, easily available fresh water, or relatively easily. Of the 21%, only 1% is easily accessible surface water, whereas the remaining 20% is groundwater. So now comes the big picture. In the fresh water, the accessible water is groundwater, the biggest component because you're not going to sit and melt ice caps and glaciers. There are some countries which are thinking of taking glacier water for drinking, but how do you sustain that? So groundwater is kind of decentralized. It is everywhere, so you could easily access it and then take it out. But is it sustainable is the question. So that's what this whole course is about. So the 1% which is easily accessible is in the form of lakes, soil moisture, atmospheric pressure, rivers, water, within living organisms. So whatever you see as big, big rivers, Ganges, Indus, Brahmaputra, the Kaveri, etc., all, this is not only for India, for the world. If you combine all the big rivers, all the lakes, dams, etc., which are storing water, it is only within the 1% of fresh water. So how much percent will it be on the total? With such a very small portion. So of the water resources, if your demand is high for fresh water, what do you do? You'll have to even say go for groundwater because it is 20% of your fresh water. So mostly water is salty in the oceans, even fresh water is locked. For example, in glaciers, ice caps, snow, it is locked. It is not easily accessible. Easily accessible is a very small portion. And of the portion, groundwater ranks highest, which is 20% of fresh water. Not all 20% can be easily extracted because sometimes groundwater gets locked into the soil, the rock materials. You can leave that part. But science and technology has increased the access to groundwater. Let's see another record. Similar percentages by different study. And you will understand that of the fresh water, around 96.5% is an ocean season base, ice caps, glaciers, permanent snow is 1.74. So 1.69 is the actual percentage of groundwater, of the total. Of that, as I said, fresh groundwater is only 0.76, whereas 0.93 is salt, saline groundwater. You cannot use it. It's locked, either locked or it's too salty. You would have heard that people say groundwater is color. It has a color, it has a smell or it has a salty taste. It's because it is from the regional groundwater aquifer or from the parent material rock. The rock characteristics will come into the water. Either way, if you look in the previous figure, you have, if you do the calculations, around 0.5% of your total fresh water is in the form of ice caps, glaciers, etc., etc. If you take just the groundwater, it equates to roughly around 0.05% of the total water in the world. As per that estimate, here it is 0.76. And even the 0.76 you have around some water, which is fresh, but not accessible. Coming back down, soil and moisture, ground ice, permafrost, lakes, etc., you can see that the percentage is very, very, very small, 0.007, 0.006 in your lakes and atmosphere, etc. Rivers is only 0.0002, okay, biological water is 0.0001, which is in our bodies, the animals, etc. So the driving note here is the groundwater is the next biggest available water resource on the planet for fresh water, which is easily accessible. So first would be your big, big lakes, ice caps, glaciers, melts and snows, but it's not accessible. So if you do the accessible calculation, then groundwater ranks high above your lakes, rivers, etc., as the biggest contributor for fresh water or bigger source for storing fresh water. On this note, so we have understood where the water is, how the bifurcation is for the water. On this note, water stress looking at, let's take the WRI report in very 30, you could see that baseline water stress is pretty high in India. So most course material would be focusing on India because we would like to produce more groundwater manager, impersonals, professionals, capacity in India. So the course would be tailor made for Indian regions a lot. So if you look at India here, the subcontinent, you could see a big red color which shows that the water stress is going to be high and very high, extremely high. So is this good for India? No. And there are multiple reasons why this is happening, why you see the color pattern you have because some regions are low, some regions are airy and low water use or no data, etc., etc. But most of India is in the red color, which is kind of concerning. Why is this stress different between different countries? You can see U.S., China, Australia have better water resources whereas the developing nations do not have that much water. This high stress is there. Why is it? It is important to understand the disparity in water to better understand this question of resources in water stress across the globe. Let's analyze the competing water resource users. You have domestic use, you have industrial and agriculture. There are multiple more users but let's focus on the key high water consuming sectors. One is domestic, what we drink, what we use for bathing, clothing, washing, your maintenance, sanitation, etc. Many of your industrial purposes and then agriculture for your farming, livelihood options, etc. What you see here is of the world, almost 70% of the water is used for agriculture whereas you have 22% used for industries and 8% used for domestic. This is the world average. If you give the world 100 liters of water, 70 liters is going to be used for agriculture. 22% would be used for industries whereas 8% would be used for domestic. So it's a good standard. If you come to low and middle income countries, the 8% is the same. So we are almost on average to the world average but then the industry of demand is less, only 10% and agriculture demand is more, 82%. So most of the water is spent on agriculture in developing and low income countries, not only for them because they're going to export the food to developed countries. For example, Vietnam, Philippines, Thailand that can grow rice for the entire planet and send it to Russia, US, the Europe countries, etc. So that water that effectively can be used for industry is being more consumed for agriculture in lower income countries, India included. If you come to the high income countries, they don't use that much water for agriculture, only 30%. And that too, it will be for very specific crops like your almonds in US, sugarcane, and then you have corn which are giving some value for the industries also, brewing industries and other industries. Table grapes and other wine vineyards, so those kind of industry related agriculture they have. Most of the other food is kind of exported, I'm sorry imported from other countries. They export very less also. So 59% is used for industry. So now you could see that high income countries are smart in using the water for industry, which can create more jobs, which can create more income for the country, whereas low and mid income countries use most of the water for agriculture, which is a sole purpose of feeding the public. And it has very less profits compared to the industry. So the same water you can look at how a high income country uses. For example, Singapore would buy all the food, materials, crops, rice, chicken, anything related to food, they can source it from neighboring countries like Malaysia and they can put all their water into industries or banks and those kind of things. Whereas the agricultural countries, low income countries are keeping low income because they don't use their water for high end products. I'm not saying that these countries should also get into industries. What I'm saying is the profit and the value of agriculture is kind of low. And that is why low and mid income countries become low because either way you still have to eat. So if you have an industry which can give good water related profits, why can agriculture become that too? So we need to think in those terms to bring up the nation because India itself is an agricultural nation. If you use now this understanding in this figure, you can see wherever the red marks are are the regions where agriculture is predominant. For example, even the US, this is where you have your almonds and orchards growing. And almonds are exported to every country including India. And then you have your rice and other cultivations in the subcontinent and Southeast Asian countries. And then you have agriculture happening in some parts here. And Middle East is always highly stressful water because of high temperature and desert kind of an ecosystem. So we cannot compare that, not much agriculture here. But most agricultural countries here, you could see very high stress because most of the water is used for agriculture, not industries, and they do not get much profit out of it. So that's why the income is still low. Moving on, within India also, let's now take a case study for within India. 54% of India faces high and extremely high water stress. Same report if you look at just for India, you could find astonishingly that above 50% of India, let's take the population more than 500 million people are going to be under high or extremely high water stress conditions. This is not a good news because we need to push further in conserving water. And if you look at where this is more prevalent, you could see mostly the states with high agricultural activities, Punjab, Haryana, and also the desert ecosystem kind of regions, and mostly your rice wells in the south. So there is a big need to push for better water management resources. And this is also the reason why your groundwater is being abused. So this is a report from the Central Ground Water Board, the very recent one, which dates to 2017. And they've categorized the blocks in India where water depletion is pretty high. We will not get into the details of how it's characterized because we'll have different lectures. For now, let's understand that over exploited and critical are very, very concerning, especially the red color. And if you look at it, it is almost following your water stress conditions, which means groundwater is also being stressed in these regions. And along the regions where there's tremendous amount of pumping, pumping for agriculture. There's not much pumping for industries. There are one or two blocks you'll find. So one block in maybe Bangalore, Burban, Chennai, you can find a lot of water being used. But most of the water is used for agriculture. So if you see a combination of blocks like this, that means there is high demand on groundwater, and they're extracting more than they should, which is over exploiting. On this note, I think it is clear that we should understand where groundwater hydrology comes into picture from the overall hydrology. We've also understood where groundwater fits in in the overall water budget of the planet. There might be different estimates, but still it's less than 1% of the total water in the planet is groundwater, less than 1%. And within that 1%, some are not accessible. So there's still a very small portion of accessible groundwater. However small it is, it is the biggest easily accessible freshwater resource in the world. So on one hand, it is already less. On the other hand, it is the biggest source easily accessible. And on the third, it is accessed everywhere for agriculture. Because of these and accessing groundwater through pumps and science and technology, a lot of people have started to overuse the groundwater. So this forms the base of this course, why groundwater has to be taken away from hydrology and studied in focus. So this discussion what we had now forms a basis for it. So we would have to look at groundwater in a separate lens and to understand that how to manage it. It is very important to understand the physics behind groundwater, the equations behind it, and put it on track for better management activities in the years to come. The multiple agencies that work on groundwater management and groundwater monitoring. But there is a big need on local hands-on participation so that we could all combine, collectively use it on the same way, all combine and collectively manage groundwater. With this, I would like to conclude today's lecture. Thank you.


Cinco de Mayo is coming right up and that makes me think chips and salsa. Not that I need an excuse to eat chips and salsa but it's always nice when a natural opportunity comes up to eat that. So today I'm gonna show you how I make my black bean and mango salsa. And it's easy to put together, you can make it ahead of time and before you know it, you'll be dipping your chips into a delicious, sweet, salty, tart and spicy salsa. So I'm gonna start by just mixing a little bit of a vinaigrette-type mixture in my bowl and I'm going to start by putting a couple tablespoons of honey into the bowl and that's going to give it the sweetness that will balance with a little bit of tart balsamic vinegar. And then to help it just kind of coat all of the ingredients, I'm adding a little bit of oil, a couple of tablespoons of oil. You can use olive oil and just mix that up a little bit. And I've got one chubby clove of garlic that I've minced up. I'll add that to the dressing.  I like to put in a couple of tablespoons but I usually only start with one and then afterwards I'll taste it. If I need a little more lime juice, I can always squirt it on the top of the salsa when I'm ready. So there's all of the little dressing ingredients and then I'm going to start adding my veggies. So I've chopped some red bell pepper and you can see that I've chopped my peppers and my red onion really fine because I wanna be sure that it's easy to get all of the ingredients onto one chip when I start eating. Some red onions that are also chopped very fine and a little bit of minced jalapeno pepper and that you can do to taste. It depends on how hot the pepper is and how much heat you like in your salsa. And then one can of black beans that I've drained. I'll add that. And then of course I need the mango. And then when you're ready to serve it, you can add some avocado. And the reason I'm not going to do this right now is because I'm not ready to eat it and if you add the avocado it starts to turn a little bit dark. So you can either add avocado or another way I like to serve this is to spread a layer of guacamole on a platter and then put this on top of it and then have a big bowl of chips out. So I'll add the avocado and a little bit of cilantro right at the end.  I'm Sue Dodin sharing Good Food for Good Life 365.


August is hot and so are the savings at Appalachian Wireless, where all smartphones are 50% off. Even the 64, 128, and 256-gauge models, two-year agreement required. Better service, bigger savings. That's today's Appalachian Wireless and East Kentucky Network Company. Due to a rare condition, 14-month-old Olivia Jude has spent her entire life in the hospital. Until today. As Olivia's parents brought her home for the first time, the Martin County community of Lovely was there to welcome her. She's brought joy to everybody, even though, you know, a lot of us, we haven't even met her besides like FaceTime and stuff. She brings so much joy. She don't have to do nothing and she just brings so much joy to us. Everyone that you see here is from Big Branch or the Wolf Creek area and we just, we come together for Princess Olivia. She was about two or three months old, I got to get to see her and hold her. And it was the last time I got to see her and I'm so excited for her to come home. I can't wait to get to see her when they bring her. I've got to wait a week before I get to see her. So I don't, I just hope and pray to God she don't get sick and have to go back. Now that the whole family is under one roof, their house is now a home. Me and Brandon usually come home every so often to check on our house. And, you know, it's hard for me to come home or Brandon to come home and her being Cincinnati or one of us being Cincinnati with her. And we kept being home as a family, but now we are. They say don't judge a book by its cover and that's exactly the case with Olivia. An amazing amount of strength lies within that little body. She's definitely one of the toughest kids I've ever come across in my life. She, she's been through so much and still striving. It seems like when we was in the hospital, something would happen. You know, it would, it would take her a little bit, but she pulled her out through it. She just, she's truly amazing. Olivia's family would like to thank everyone for their support and ask that you continue to pray for them. Reporting from Lovely, I'm Shawn Allen for EKB News.


Well, hello and welcome everyone to the year end wrap up of the crisis conversations live from the better life lab. I'm Bridget Schulte, the director of the better life lab. And today we reflect when we started the these weekly live interactive conversations. It was at the beginning of the pandemic. No one had any idea what was going to happen how long it was going to last. I anticipated we would do six. I thought we would do six episodes. And today this is our 26th. So the crisis continues the pandemic drags on. And what we wanted to do when we started these conversations was to create space. We all felt so isolated and the changes were happening so rapidly and so much was being disrupted in work and care. That we wanted to create space to come together and share stories to understand what was really happening to real lives. And what we needed what we were learning and what we needed to do to not only survive this pandemic, but really to help all working families thrive. How could we have real work, family justice and gender equity in the pandemic and beyond. So with that, what we've done is we've listened to all of these episodes and we've come together based in the stories that we heard, and we put together what we're calling a bold agenda for work, family justice and gender equity in the pandemic and beyond. We're releasing that today. And we're really excited to be able to share that. But what we wanted to do today was to have a minute to a minute to kind of talk about well what have we learned over the past year so this is a better life lab roundup. And let me turn it over and have every team member introduce himself so Vicki let's start with you. Sure. Hi, I'm Vicki Shabo senior fellow for paid leave policy and strategy at the better life lab. Hi, I'm Robin Miller and the policy analyst for the better life lab. Hi, my name is Josiah St. Julian and I'm a research associate at the better life lab. Hi, my name is Emily Halgren I'm a PhD intern working on our better life lab experiments project. Hi, my name is Stavrula past and I am a PhD intern working on our communications. All right, so what I've asked everyone to do is to bring a clip an actual clip or a story that really stuck with them that can really help us understand where we are and I want to begin by grounding us in the moment, because here we are nine months into the pandemic. I'm sitting here I, you know, I've had COVID and recovered I've given plasma I don't think I've worn shoes in nine months. But at the same time, you know jobless benefits are at their highest levels in a long time cases are rising again hospitalizations are rising. There's so many programs that were designed to help work and family. And I'm going to combine it that are expiring if Congress does not act in the next week paid leave paid sick days unemployment protection student loan protections all are expiring unemployment protections have already expired in July childcare, which we've talked a little bit about which is an enormous crisis before COVID and certainly in COVID. It got $3 billion in March advocates and economists and lawmakers have said it needs $50 billion just to survive, and it's never happened, we've got one week. Congress does not act. There's a world, you know, things could go from bad to worse. So to really ground us in what people are really experiencing. Let's start with the clip from an episode where we featured a number of parents and we had Justin Rubin, who's with parents together a group of parents from all walks of life. So let's hear what Justin had to say. This is the hardest thing that's happened to families in 80 or 90 years right so absolutely parents feel abandoned and desperately in trouble right now, either because in some cases they don't have enough to eat but they can't make rent, or they've had to cut back on work or quit work entirely to do childcare or because they're doing remote learning and it's not going well or the kids are getting the services they need or they're just doing remote learning and it's going okay but it's still breaking them all this incredible squeeze total desperation and frustration. So Vicki, let's start with you.  We've got one week and these emergency paid family leave and paid sick days bills. You know, these programs are expiring. You know, talk a little bit about what's happening and what you're hearing and really what's at stake. Yeah, I mean, what's happening in Congress right now is a mess. There is, you know, there's an effort earlier this week to reach a bipartisan agreement starting last week into this week to reach a bipartisan agreement. And even within that framework of the agreement, these key essential, very inexpensive provisions that guaranteed up to 10 paid sick days for workers that had to quarantine or self isolate, or get a COVID diagnosis or care for a family that they did, and a total of 12 weeks to care for a child who was out of school or doing virtual school or child care was closed. These provisions were in the act that were passed in March, but they expire at the end of this year. If you think back to that time in March, who would have known that we would still be in essentially the same place that we are that cases would be rising that parents would have dropped out of the workforce in record numbers to be able to care for their children, they just didn't know. Those provisions they were in the family's first Coronavirus Response Act, they were imperfect. I did only limited paid sick time and almost, you know, no paid family and medically for serious health issues they carved out about half of the workforce, but they were something and for people who they have helped and businesses who received reimbursement they were a lifeline. Those provisions run out at the end of the year and what that means if Congress doesn't act is that about 87 million workers that received protections or should have received protections through the emergency paid sick and family leave provisions will not have those guarantee that guaranteed leave anymore. There's about 60 million private sector workers whose employers were also getting help by getting reimbursed for that time. 31 million parents of an estimated 50 million children. Wow, access to that emergency paid leave, according to Sarah janglin at the Center for American Progress. And so what we're doing is cutting off a policy that has been proven by researchers academic researchers to prevent about 15,000 COVID cases per day. cases are rising. We're cutting off benefits to parents who are still at home who are running out of time if they've used it.  And what this does is push people into the unemployment system. Again, those provisions to are expiring, although hopefully they will be part of a package they're not guaranteed. It pushes people into other programs that are funded through either federal state or local revenues which are starting to dry up. It pushes people into precarity with respect to food and homelessness, and those provisions to and so what we're doing is through an action really defining down what it is that we expect people to be able to make do with. And for women and for communities of color in particular this is devastating these are the communities that have been hardest hit by COVID. These are the communities that are most in need of paid leave but may not have it through an employer. And these are the folks who are most likely to be hurt as this pandemic continues and until we have a vaccine that's available to everybody.  One of the clips that we brought is of Marissa Corbell she is a lawyer in Portland, Oregon, and she felt like she was about to, you know, she couldn't do it all and so what she described was that this paid leave was a was a lifeboat. So let's hear what she had to say. I had to realize for myself is that me not taking this leave isn't going to fix that for anybody else. So it's not like by taking this leave that means that, you know, some working single mother doesn't get to take it. It's really, they're sort of independent problems. And it's frustrating and terrible that we have a system that would create a lifeboat that really only helps people who are somewhat privileged. Which the point she was making just the point that you had made that there were these carve outs for so many, so many workers if you worked for a large company that had over 500 employees. You, you were not covered by this if you work for a small company there were all sorts of exemptions you could claim. And what so much of the research showed is that the people who were carved out were the very essential workers who worked at, you know, large big box real retailers and people who were out there all the time. And most exposed to the virus, they were the ones that did not have access to this paid paid leave. So we're talking about, can we, can we even protect this, this imperfect program, but what are the prospects for for fixing this for really making paid leave really work. Well, I mean before the pandemic we were seeing tremendous momentum in Congress on the issue of universal paid family and medical leave program similar to what exists and now, soon to be 10 states. One of the good things that happened in 20 in 2020 was new state, so two new states got their programs up and running another new state Colorado past its program in the 2020 election through the ballot for the first time ever. Congress was looking at this I think the other interesting thing is that organized business groups are starting to think that it might be better to have a national standard as well. There's a lot of a lot of daylight between what a strong universal comprehensive affordable and accessible paid leave program would look like that guarantees a baseline to everybody. And what some of the other alternative proposals look like the fact that there is cross you know business and consumer and advocacy conversations. But there is some interest on the Republican side, although I would say that this this series of negotiations that happened has really to me shown a light on you know the difference between lip service to an issue and actually being willing to provide support families by providing paid leave. We haven't seen a Republican step out to champion the extension of this family's first emergency paid leave notwithstanding the lip service that some paid when that they voted for and that some paid when a lot first past. So, you know we need a national paid family medical leave program that guarantees leave to all working people no matter where they live or work or the job that they have or whether they're a traditional employee or an independent contractor.  The states that had paid leave in place actually were able to handle people's needs much better at the beginning of this pandemic than every other place. And there's fascinating research that shows that people who you know what in places that did have universal paid sick days. The number of cases was actually much lower so that it was actually good for everyone it was a good public health benefit. So I want to just really briefly play a clip of Maryland Washington she was that she's a home health aid she's 71. And when I had this interview with her I her comments have just stayed with me all through the pandemic. Just heartbreaking let's let's listen to. So Maryland did not have any access to paid leave. She was exempted from the paid sick days proposal.  Nick you feel like you just we're not worth it.  Even if it means you're risking your own health and and you know potentially your own life. Yeah. So that's just it's one of those it's just one of those comments it just as as hung with me. Ross let's turn to you you tell us about the clip that you introduced the clip that you want to play and then we'll listen to it and talk some more. It's interesting to see how benefits social policy benefits have actually been able to support people and looking at the ones that are going to expire at the end of the year. One of two benefits expiring our pandemic unemployment benefits and pandemic emergency unemployment compensation. So Latrice Wilson was a furloughed payroll supervisor and advocate for unemployed action who spoke on our crisis conversations podcast and her story just really resonated with me so we can play that clip. So I think it's interesting to hear from Congress stating that it would keep people from going back to work. Well I don't have a choice but to wait because I am furloughed unless I choose to go find another job and lose my health care benefit. And that I need medication for my autoimmune disorder. So I have a choice but I don't have a choice. Right now about 20 million Americans are receiving some form of unemployment benefits and about half of those people will lose benefits at the end of the year when these programs expired and we know that that's going to have huge equity implications as well with black unemployment rate changing at almost twice at almost twice percentage points for every one percentage point change in national unemployment rate. You know the thing that struck me so much about Latrice is she was really stuck. So she had been furloughed which means she could not go and look for another job. And she had an autoimmune disorder so she needed medication. And so she had to end up paying her portion of her health care that her employer would normally pay if she were employed. So she's picking that up and then she had that the $600 supplement $600 week supplement that helped her do that. And then she was already worried that expired in July and she was already starting to dip into her savings. So here's somebody like Latrice who was in a you know in a real dire situation in August. And now the supplement has gone and like you say these extended benefits are gone that also cover gig workers. You know so you know talk a little bit about kind of what we need to what are we learning from this that that not only do we need this short term. You know some kind of response but but what do we need in the long term. And, and we know that like the average American family can't afford $400 and emergency expenses so this $600 at unemployment is really important. And the short term we definitely need to extend and expand emergency unemployment benefits and longer term we need to work on looking at the unemployment system as a whole and the infrastructure for which we used to support families. We heard from Violet Moya, who was a retail worker in the beauty industry. She was part of a mass firing she called 800 times to try and get someone on the phone to get these unemployment benefits which she needed immediately. And a lot of that is the tech infrastructure so long term we really need to invest in how we deliver these benefits how we implement them to make sure that we have equitable access to all communities.  The Republicans want to take out aid to state and local governments and yet just braslin to your point. So many we heard from so many people who came on and shared their stories that the technology is, you know, it is kind of old and doesn't work all that well and so many of these state and unemployment systems were just overloaded. And so you did have stories of people calling hundreds of times and still not getting through. You know, in interest of time, let me move on to Jezaya. Jezaya talk a little bit about the clip that you brought today. Yeah, so the clip that I brought today is from Dr Michelle Holder, who is a labor economist and when she came on to the show it was for the episode around why we need to center women of color when we're thinking about the pandemic and we're thinking about policy solutions to help workers and families. And so she shared her story about what it was like to grow up in New York City and watching her own mother struggle to make ends meet in a nation that had more than enough wealth so if we could just share her story really quickly. That'd be great. I basically watched her struggle in a country with so much wealth, and I was really trying to understand why public policy seemed to be failing my family, especially a woman who wanted to work who did work, but because she didn't have a college degree she didn't make very much. And because she had three children she also had caregiving duties so sometimes she lost the job because she had to take care of a sick child. So to say, you know, we did, we've had an episode around why we need to center relief, you know, on women of color. We've had episodes really looking at racial justice reckoning. You know, and that's a big part of the bold agenda that that you and Rosslyn helped put together and we put out today. So, so talk a little bit about sort of what we've learned and what we need to do now. And also what we need to do moving forward, you know, to really center equity in these in these work family justice conversations. Right, definitely. So I think something that we've all learned, and something that the pandemic has revealed is really the disparate economic and social outcomes that are most harmfully impacting people of color and women of color. And very clear ways in which we can see this during the pandemic is just the mere fact that the brunt of the unemployment numbers have been impacting not only women but women of color who are in sectors that are most impacted by you know the pandemic in terms of service sectors and food sectors. And you think about the people who are on the front lines and those people being disproportionately again, women of color and so they're either losing their jobs, or they're, you know, exposed to the virus in unprecedented ways. And so that is really just forcing us to think about okay so when we're thinking about policies like paid sick leave and paid family leave. And we're thinking about the fact that millions are excluded. You have to wonder who's being excluded and it's women of color. And the thing is, you know, these exclusions from public policies that should be benefiting everyone have been impacting women of color. Historically, this isn't necessarily a new phenomenon, but it's something that we're being exposed to and we're being forced to reckon with. And so when Dr. Holder is talking about watching her mother, you know growing up in Bedford, New York, and just seeing not only her mother but a neighborhood of women struggling to make it. It is because those public policies that we're talking about today, we're also failing women of color in the 70s and the 80s and the 19th century right and it's let's think about for example the unequal pay right women of color making less money than their white and male counterparts thinking about the racial wealth gap what should be helping people, you know, stay afloat during this pandemic savings assets income which helps fuel wealth and people of color coming short each and every time. Thinking about Latrice Wilson and unemployment extensions and supplements the $600 that is supposed to help her right make ends meet and supposed to, you know, try to address the compounding effects of racial inequity, as it pertains to what it looks like in the labor market what it looks like in the housing market, which you know informs wealth. And so these policies really are about economic justice at the end of the day they're about racial justice at the end of the day. And so I think that's a really crucial part of the conversation that Dr. Holder was, you know, drawing our attention to is this is an opportunity for us with immediate legislation and long term legislation to address inequity across craze, excuse me, craze class and gender. Yeah, so I think that's like a huge takeaway point. Yeah, that's so important. You know and that's been our mission all along, you know to have really focus on equity across race class and gender as you say.  It has really laid bare so many cracks in the system. And you know I said once I don't think we can unsee what we've seen. I hope that's true. You know, I hope that it doesn't, we don't kind of fall back but at this moment we are seeing, I think we are seeing the reality for so many people so much more clearly, and we're seeing so much more clearly what we really need to do to really support we say we're a nation of family values what we really need to do as Vicki says to really make that real more than lip service. So, another thing that's also become very, very clear and I think all of us it's with our work we know this but Emily, talk a little bit about the the clip that you've chosen and why and then we'll play that quickly. Yeah, thank you. So, it was actually in early April that there was a crisis conversation looking at how the pandemic has affected the balance or the imbalance of labor at home household labor. And so, I chose a clip featuring Eve Robsky the author of the book Fair Play which talks a lot about, you know how families can create systems to fairly balance the the labor in their home care work housework and it just really spoke to this sort of crisis of invisible labor and how invisible labor can no longer remain invisible right and that this unprecedented time is really is really pointing that out so should we go ahead and play it. Yeah. The core premise you brought up before was really important because while we're all fighting over from guys jackets who's picking up the you know the broken beer bottle or the sponge in the sink, or who's setting the table for dinner. The small details right now are the dirty dozen are causing huge problem, but the real finding of Fair Play and it's really more important even now was this idea that society and men view women's time as as infinite, like Sam, and we view society view men's time as finite like and we know that the people pay because even in the same job right women are paid less, especially women of color, but what about women. So this is what I want to say to any women who are on this fall. It was women who were devaluing their time the most. You know, I'm struck by that, you know that that was, you know, the whole idea that for, you know, for so long we've thought of women's time as as not as important as not as value. It's also true with care, we have not valued care in a way that the pandemic has really shown us is so short sighted and how how central time and support for care is for making everything else work. So, staff, let's let's let's let's go to you for the final clip, because it's really right at the center of care and making time for what for making time for what matters with family and also supporting that. Oh, yeah, that sounds great. And essentially, yes, that's why I picked this quote. I think this quote kind of encapsulates a lot of the problem for me in the sense that, you know, a lot of people don't even think about care in their day to day lives, despite the fact that you know, I think about 21% of Americans are in fact caregivers. I think this quote does such an excellent job of showing that discrepancy I suppose. Let's go ahead and play it and then I'll comment. Okay, great. We think of caregivers as a critical element for our social sector, our healthcare sector, and yet we don't see very many opportunities where the caregiver is the center of that conversation. They're usually the afterthought. So that that was Jennifer Olson. She's the executive director of the Rosalind Carter Institute where they do a lot of work for on supporting family caregivers.  They've really been under a lot of pressure without a lot of support. I actually picked that quote because in some ways it relates to my own life and I think I think a little bit about the caregiving that I've seen in my own life and I don't think that I realized how important it was until my grandmother who passed away last year. My grandmother was really doing a lot of the work and taking care of her throughout the rest of her life and, you know, for me it wasn't afterthought to until it became something personal. You know, and she also talks a little bit about how complicated some of the tasks are in caregiving and how we're not really addressing any of this, you know, when my grandmother was ill I mean my dad would go there to her house, two or three times a week he would drive her house, you know, he would make sure her groceries were done he would make sure the lawn was mowed all these types of things, but he would do a lot of more complicated things one of them was making sure there was no kind of tax fraud and my grandmother's identity wasn't stolen. It's very difficult work and, you know, it's kind of unbelievable that we don't even think to address it in a lot of public policy considering the reality of the matter is that many caregivers don't even have time to work. You know, I picked the quote because there's some amount of I suppose it's somewhat personal but it's also just like, wow I can't believe this this major phenomenon that many of us go through at some point in our lives isn't even part of the conversation and I think this kind of encapsulates some of the problem our economy was never structured around understanding care should be at the center it was never structured to allow for that. And I suppose if there's one thing I think I and I think I'd like to think we'd all we all hope is that coven 19 at least brings us a new opportunity to discuss this and say look. There needs to be restructured so that care actually can be centered more meaningfully in public policy but also in public life it's unbelievable to me that I wasn't treated to take it. You know that seriously until it happened to me and my family so that's really all I have to comment on it. Yeah. That's probably a great place to leave it we try to keep these to 30 minutes because we know that everyone's busy and we respect their time. And so I think, you know, the sort of the big takeaway for me and I think from our conversations from many of you is, is really just how central care is and how central it is to not only our lives what makes life worth living, but it is central to a healthy economy central to families central to communities. And so now is really the time, you know, can we learn this lesson can we can we make these changes quickly. And in the in the immediate moment, and can we all work together for real equitable work family justice and gender equity moving forward. So with that, I want to thank all of my wonderful better life lab team. I also want to recognize that our wonderful deputy director is out on paid sick leave so she needed it and thankfully we were able to help give her the support that she needed to while she's working. But I want to thank the better life lab team thank you all for being part of this and for being so wonderful to work with. It's just a place that I'm excited to work every day and honor to be working with you. I want to thank David showman our amazing producer who's really made these crisis conversations podcasts happen, even in the craziest times when we have people calling in in the middle of the show and I have to use my phone and the technology falls apart. It's been amazing. Thank you to the new America events team who have really helped us through all of this and they're juggling a million different things and they've made time for us. You know, thank you to the people who tune in and give us, you know, ask us questions and share stories. And I want to thank all of you for for listening. So please take some time to rest and reflect at the end of the year. Wash your hands where a mask and recognize. We'll get through this together and let's work together for work family justice in the coming year. So we'll see you next year. Thanks everybody.