EVP at IFC as well as the CEO of IFC, it's the private sector arm of the World Bank Group. I have a very good friend of mine, Peter Woike, who's the former managing director of the World Bank Group as well as the former EVP at IFC as well as the former CEO of IFC. And he has a senior advisor here at CSIS who's going to introduce Mr. Jin Young-Sai.  And I want to welcome you all to this discussion, which is a chevron form. And I want to thank my friends at chevron. Thank you very much. And so I think I'll leave it at that. Peter, please come on up. Thank you, Dennis. It's a usual pleasure to be here at CSIS. And I think we're very lucky and happy to have Jin Young-Sai here today. As you probably all know, the IFC is by far the largest provider of equity and loan capital to the developing world of any development institution. And the CEO always can influence very much what the IFC does. Let me just start with a very brief story. When I received a hot-hunter call in 1998, whether I would like to run the IFC, first thing I called my wife and said, would you move with me to Washington? And the second one was to an ex-managing director of the World Bank, who J.P. Morgan had hired to introduce us to governments. And I said, look, I might have the chance to run the IFC. What do you think? Should I do it? And he said, no, I wouldn't do that. Having worked for 29 years at J.P. Morgan, you don't want to enter a bureaucracy. And then he said, but you know, on second thoughts, do it, because you're actually sitting on top of the democracy. Thanks a lot. And you can achieve a few things. I actually believe that most of the IFCs have put their imprint on the IFC over the years. I was very lucky to change the business model at the IFC. We were forced to do it because our revenues were disappearing slowly but surely from companies in the developed world into the emerging markets to provide political risk. We massively went directly into the emerging markets. We transferred our people there and started making investments directly to local companies. And we provided loans to local companies. That was actually much more fun, much more exciting, but also made the IFC interestingly much more profitable than it had ever been before. Now, of course, it's not that easy for a CEO because you have to watch out for important stakeholders. The stakeholders are the shareholders in the form of a permanent board here in Washington. And I think if you convince these shareholders and if you convince the board and if you are nice to them, you can achieve quite a bit. Then, of course, the powerful NGOs as stakeholders and I felt always that it is important to listen to them because what they had to say about our projects in terms of sustainability was important and I think the IFC has done a lot in terms of fostering sustainability of companies in developing countries. And of course, then there's the World Bank as a stakeholder, the president. And here I'm particularly looking forward to hear from Mr. Sai what he has to say because as you are aware, there's an effort which will merge the IFC into the World Bank or the World Bank into the IFC, however you look at this. This has been tried for many years. When I was head of the IFC, there were also efforts in the World Bank to work closer and I would almost call it to absorb the IFC. I think a very good integration is probably an excellent thing for the World Bank Group. At the time when I was head of the IFC, I refused to do it because our thoughts were still far too much apart. In fact, when I started the IFC, there were some serious people who thought that the private sector could not much contribute to development in poor countries. That of course has changed dramatically. Jin Yong has already, I can see and what I've heard, made his imprint of the IFC. He started as a young professional at the World Bank and then worked over the last years as an investment banker. He has experience in developing countries and from all what I've seen, he's a powerful, not totally uncontroversial dealer in the IFC, but I think one of the important ones for the future. Jin Yong, it's a pleasure for us to have you here. Thank you. You either sit here or do it there either way. Peter, thank you for that kind introduction. You know, I started in IFC October 1st, 2012 and before that about 10 months ago, I got a call from Headhunter as well saying, hey, there's an interesting opportunity. Are you interested? And I didn't spend any effort to convince my wife. She was very happy to come back home, so I have an American wife. We actually met in the World Bank, so in a way, the World Bank group kind of made my career. And so coming back to this institution, I think there are a few things that have changed. I remember I grew up in China and at that time in the early 80s, under Deng trying to find a way on economic reform. And the World Bank was instrumental and there was a couple of gentlemen. I always remember not only kind of a help Chinese in navigating the reform and also really helped a lot of them to me on my career. Peter, you would not remember him. And also Kyle, right now he's the vice chairman of Deutsche Bank. So fast forward, almost 20 years, I returned to IFC. The world is a different place. And I just want to give you a quick snapshot on what we are doing. I remember when I just started, I looked at all these great leaders before me. I thought I got to find a way to further build this great institution. And when I started, you know, 2012, IFC I think has a historical year in terms of what we call the commitment volume. Basically, you know, the commitment where we prepare to finance. It's not the same as how much money you send out the door. It's about $20 billion a year just roughly. We had about $70 billion balance sheets at that time. And, you know, right now we have $85 billion. So over the last couple of years, we increased $15 billion. And about $20 billion, I was just roughly about a quarter, about $4 to $5 billion equity. You know, that would put us into one of the larger investors as a equity investor in emerging markets. And the rest of it is a loan in the fixed income products. And at the beginning, it's about $15 billion. It's pretty impressive. But we look, we analyze it. And I would say about 60% of that is long-term financing and 40% is trade finance short-term. And these are all interesting products. So for me, I would look at, this is where I start. What would be the thing new, useful? And how the institution to build to make IFC even more impactful?  The World Bank, I have IBRD, you know, the group has IBRD, which really they lend money to the government. The government has to provide a guarantee. IFC, we have different balance sheets. It's totally not guaranteed. We do finance based on commercial terms.  If we screw up, you know, we would ruin our, the quality of our credits. That not the AAA is one of the myths in my view. We look at the risk of our investment projects and look at the geography and the product we get in. We are, you know, pretty lucky, we get the AAA and we have good performance year in, year out. There are only one year in 2009 we lost money. And most of the year, you know, like last year, we made more than billion dollars net income before contribution to AIDA. So that would put us, you know, kind of a return on ISS between 5% to 6%. It's a good, not good, if I were a private equity player I said this is pretty mediocre performance. But as a development financial institution, I think we have established a track record thanks to Peter and other leaders in the past really move the institution from, at the beginning, pretty much a simple lender to private companies to a institution with multiple products. So for us, the challenge or the opportunity is really what will be the next for IFC in the new world in which I will say there are several key features which is different from the past. One is the world is truly connected. Even in the most, you know, the poorest country, mobile phones there, and people can see the picture, the lives of someone in Paris or New York. So they use the poor people, in spite of their living condition, their aspirations are very different. They know what's going on. Second is the inequality, and for that matter, lack of opportunity. You know, the tolerance for that is much, you know, kind of less tolerant in this way. People have much less patience. When you think of what happened in Arab countries, for that matter, even in Ukraine, you see this disease in society, corruption, inequality, lack of opportunity. So when I think of all this new world and I think of the role of development institution like IFC, I think we have just critical role in terms of providing that opportunity, not necessarily just bring the money to the table. To be honest, $20 billion is tiny with the needs. It's more of using our brand, using our credibility, and to bring different pieces together to deliver the solution. So that's really how I see the future for this conversation. And I think we have done well, but the future, given the challenge, we still have a lot of work to do. And Peter mentioned about the World Bank change process. Jim, I don't know how many you have met him. He's a very inspirational leader. He looked at the world. He wanted the World Bank to become much more focused on providing solutions than just how many loans I send up. So how many times I went to the board to approve a project, which is still quite pervasive in our institution. We're still quite inward looking, even though the World Bank not only IFC and also MIGA and the Bank, we have a great brand. I think what Jim wants to do is to really try to figure out a way all the players in the group, we leverage on each other's capability to deliver more impactful solutions. And so that's really what's going on. I know we will talk more about this a little bit later. Great. Thanks a lot. Thank you for being here, Jin Young. So I thank you very much. I think, as I was saying earlier in the green room, I think that what IFC is doing is the future of development and it has the opportunity to meet the challenges of the future of development. And I think some of what Peter was saying earlier about the fact that there's been a total mind shift both in the developing world but also in development institutions about the private sector, I think has partially been a result of the success of organizations like IFC. And I think about what IFC has done in the microfinance sector, for example, or where you're the largest, I think the largest investor in the world in microfinance institutions. And if I think about the cell phone telephony sector, I think you all helped Moe Ibrahim become a billionaire by helping set up cell telephone, if I recall correctly, as well as setting up one of the first cell phone companies in Afghanistan. So you have been an important enabler of much innovation and connectivity around this issue of the world being more connected. One of the things I wanted to ask you is about the issue of infrastructure and logistics. We were also touching on that beforehand. When I think about IFC, it was an organization that was sort of built on project finance historically. Talk about the need for infrastructure, how you're supporting and catalyzing the role of the private sector in infrastructure. Perhaps I think there are synergies, certainly with MIGA and the World Bank as well. If you could talk a little bit about that, the need as well as how the bank group or IFC is responding to that need. Yeah, I mean infrastructure, particularly in Africa, actually beyond Africa, several very basic elements. Number one is access to energy. We have so many people, really just aggregate. 1.2 billion people in the world has no access to electricity. And in Africa, if you take South Africa away, less than, I would say, 30% people have access. So the rest, you know, 70% plus has no access to electricity. You can't do anything. I mean, really, I have been to quite a few countries.  We got to deliver the electricity, which, in my view, is not like lack of money. There are plenty of money out there. And frankly, there are a lot of different ways to do it. And certainly, there are multiple elements needed to make this happen. So for IFC, since I spent a lot of time in investment banking, particularly I spent about 13 years in Goldman Sachs, I like to do projects which truly have real impact. And certainly, I'm not saying this smaller project has no impact. We got to do things in a coordinated way. And like in Africa, it's not just turning on the lights. It's important turning on the lights. We got to create an environment where Africans can develop their agriculture, manufacturing, they got to create jobs. So sometimes I get people saying, this load is hydro. And you can only do solar. As a solar, it's important. There's no question, let's put solar there. But solar cannot power real jobs, right? Let's be honest about it. And we need to find a solution, short-term, medium-term, long-term. At the end of the day, we are in the job of eliminating poverty. The best way to get rid of poverty is to create opportunity, sustainable opportunity, so people can make a living. So what do we talk about electricity? Another thing very critical is logistics. It's transportation. Africa, as a continent, there's literally no functioning in the real way except South Africa. You can't move stuff. I've gone through so many different forums, talked about, oh, let's do intra-Africa trade. And I have a lot of pineapple. You have this and that. You can't move the thing. This good agricultural product is rotten. No one's going to grow it. And certainly, with a huge amount of young, a lot of youth and a very young population, you need to create real jobs. So I think the sense of urgency for me and for our institution right now is really, I think, it's so much more than before in the sense we are focusing on a lot of projects we have been doing for years, but we are also waiting to spend time and efforts on some of the much larger and more risky transactions, such as Inga, I don't know how much you know. This is the dream for Africa. If we somehow can harness the power there... This is in the Congo. It's the hydro dam in Congo. It's a Congo river before it gets into the Atlantic Ocean. You have about 20 kilometers distance. The water drop of 150 meters. It's just the most ideal place to build a hydro. There's virtually nobody live there. And because the water is so rapid, you can't do shaping or navigation either. So this has been a dream for African for, I don't know, three decades, four decades. And if we somehow get this thing done, it's take about 80 to 100 billion dollars, two and a half times as three gorgeous. And Africa's energy, 60, 70%, 70% will be met with this one transaction. So we are spending time with our workbench colleagues and I hope if there's one transaction in my tenure in IFC, if we can break the ground on this, it will be fantastic because it has no emission. It's clean energy and it's just... It's not only... It's about three cents per kilowatt hour at a generation. If you add another five cents on transmission, it's the most competitive clean power you can imagine. It's a fabulous project. We stand ready to help you here at CSIS to help you get that done. That's fantastic. I hope that does happen. I've heard about Inga and I didn't realize how massive it is. It's massive. It's really... It's one of the things I hope with the World Bank group, all of us play a role. Frankly, we are going to finance a small portion of it. It's more of using our convenient power to bring different players together to make it happen. You may use the conversation on infrastructure, perhaps to have a couple of... To build on that on a couple of topics.  It's important just meeting the needs of countries where they're at and there's increasing demand and I agree with you. Could you talk about how you think about state-owned enterprises because I think this is also... Because I think this is relevant to this discussion. This is an issue particularly given... I'm very sensitive, conscientious about this because I'm from China. Some of the partners we're working with is Chinese state-owned enterprises. They're a lot of nervousness. This is how I look at it. I'm much more focused on what is the solution. In five years, can I deliver the electricity to Guinea? I was in Guinea as well recently. The whole country has about 120 megawatts. They've installed capacity. About 20 is only about 100 functioning somewhat.  There was a project, apparently some other people tried, and then certainly this happened before my time and a Chinese company eventually took over this project. It's a hydro. They literally finished ahead of time, six months ahead of schedule. So this 240 megawatts hydro power plant, about 110 kilometers away from the capital city. So we're scrambling, trying to figure out how can we build a distribution network. Otherwise, you have power ready, but there's no distribution. So the president is very nervous and asks for help. So in a situation like this, to be honest, I don't even care who is the state-owned, not the state-owned. People looking for solutions. If there is a power already built, I'll be very happy actually to work with EDF. We're trying to bring them in to really take a stake. IFC and EDF, we take a stake. In the distribution company. In the distribution company. And stop the stealing. To be honest, it's about stealing. 70% of electricity is stolen. As simple as that. So I'm much more focused on what is the solution I can deliver. We can deliver to the people, in Guinea or other places. Using the infrastructure as the... I'll use African infrastructure as just a key outfit again on a couple other questions. When I talk to folks in the U.S. government context and they talk about OPIC or catalyzing American investment in power infrastructure in Africa, one of the issues is the enabling environment or the rule of law. And one of the ways in which the World Bank contributes to that is through its investment climate work and the related doing business indicators. Could you talk a little bit about how the World Bank group thinks about investment climate. I think you have a window into that. If I recall correctly, there's Amiga, IFC and World Bank joint department. I don't know if that's been changed.  Actually the joint IBRD, IFC, undertaking. We found that department really improve on corporate governance on doing business environment. It has been really making a huge contribution to build capacity. We'll continue to do that. Actually, if anything, this unit will be in the global practice. Actually, I think we are going to even continue not only support it and enhance it. Sorry, it's the minister, the former minister of commerce from Costa Rica. Exactly, exactly. So this is a big part of our offering and you mentioned doing business report. It's a very useful exercise and it's a product that's been going on for 10 years. What I found interesting is it gives a concrete target for the government in the area where they need to improve environment. Basics such as how many days do you take to get a license? How many days will take to get electricity connected? You know, there's no perfect measure but at least there's certain measurement in this exercise really helping the government to really get their focus on improving what I call actually it's not doing business, starting a business environment and we will continue to support it and about a year ago after Jim assumed the position because there are a lot of controversy on the ranking and there was an external panel did the evaluation, they made some recommendations. I think right now this will continue actually the 2014 report will be published in a couple of months in October and going forward there could be even more refined methodology and ranking and so on and so forth. So I think like all the other things we do it's not a panacea to solve all the problems but it's a useful tool for us to really guide the government in improving the business environment. Just again on infrastructure and I think about one of the innovations that your predecessor Lars put on the table which was the asset management company. Could you talk a little bit about what the asset management company is because I think it's related to this issue of the World Bank Group and IFC's ability to catalyze investment and to bring other players to the table and I think it's related to this conversation about infrastructure and power for example. As an asset management company has been around for about four years and now we have about $6.3 billion under management. And where is that money coming from? Well it's coming from some of the most the bluest chips investors. Literally you have some of the best some of the most funds and some pension funds and all in all I think has been a great success and the challenge for us is I mentioned about our balance sheets side of our balance sheets $85 billion our book value on equity only about 22, 23 billion is to be honest it's small vis-a-vis the risk we take but doing capital increase for IFC I think it's a complicated process. Meanwhile we want to kind of find different ways to be able to mobilize additional capital. So as a management company I think you know quite innovative in the sense it's the first time a multilateral institution managing third-party money it's required bigger culture change. You know for a lot of us in development financing business we think always result you know impact but actually you also have a fiduciary duty if you manage other people's money even though in our current business model without ASM management company we also have a fiduciary duty sure but because we're our fiduciary but a lot of time we forgot about it the AMC has been very helpful to put that dimension of thinking into our team and we have under the $6.3 billion we have different regional funds you know industry funds we recently closed the $1.2 billion global infrastructure fund which is equity fund I think in this environment particularly people are very nervous about emerging market to be able to raise that money and deploy it and it's a pretty good testament of the brand power. Absolutely, could you talk about the role of small meme size enterprises and how you all think about it I mean you used to have it in years past there was an SME department there's been technical assistance work to support small meme size enterprise how do you think about small meme size enterprise today? It's the critical focus remember I mentioned earlier what do we do? We create opportunities for people for creating jobs most of the jobs in emerging market are small and medium enterprises and the way we do that there was a very good piece of work completed a few years ago called the job study so we did a survey of more than 40,000 I think enterprises the conclusions could not be more clear and simple job creation requires broadly four things access to infrastructure particular power access to finance and business environment and skill training if you get these four things right in sequence and the jobs will be there because I always regardless you know that's very tweetable by the way I found it's a very simple summary on what we do what we do is the bottleneck each of the category what need to be done we have logistics we talk about business environment and by the way we invest in education the most recent example we invest in the school bridge school this is a fascinating story it's a school operated by a couple American couple and I remember when I got this document said we're going to go to the board we said Shandong may I notice lady once upon a time when I was in Goldman Sachs we were doing a community team work supposed to have to build a school in a bunch of Goldman Sachs band in China. I went to that remote place suddenly to saw this blonde girl I said what are you doing here she was teaching she was doing a PhD dissertation she you know she was in the education department in Berkeley on education for the poor kids now and she and her boyfriend now Jay and Shannon they build this bridge founded by Bill Gates Foundation a few others and us too and right now they operate a school with more than 100,000 students in Kenya $6 per month and the best thing they did is using technology to make sure the teachers teach as simple as that they observe in many of those rural schools teachers they are not inspiring they get bored they are not paid so they are quality of teaching is bad and the kids lost interest study so what they did is they have this technology with iPad every morning they gave them the teacher new contents and only when the teacher finished teaching there's a feedback on if they did their job or not so this school is doing great so events absentee exactly and really just it's fabulous and also invest in laureate which is doing a lot of vocational training so we invest in variety of things so come back to the job creation the four key elements you know we want to be playing a critical role at least taking a risk trying to not only invest in creating good business model also in kind of disseminating good practice into different parts of the world now recently this couple was awarded by the WEF as they you know the year of social entrepreneurship of the year or we're going to go with them to Nigeria to other parts of Africa we see our role is really to build that foundation for job creation which eventually you know come back to your SME question because there's nothing better by helping people to learn they can become their own boss and hiring people you know recently another example we did was we are very big on gender financing yes so we just together with Goldman Sachs and they have a 10,000 women program pretty well known yep so we are in the process of reaching 600 million dollars facility through multiple investors purely land to women entrepreneurs so they can with Goldman's training and come to us we give them the finance so they can go out to create jobs it's fantastic I really want to applaud what IFC has done over 10 plus years in the area of private schools and your example of I think Peter I think you were very involved with helping get that started at IFC where there's been a I think traditionally a little bit of a bias in the traditional development community about supporting private schools and slums and elsewhere I think IFC has taken a very brave stance in providing financing or business training to these institutions so I think it's very important and it's in line with what you were describing earlier I also think the sort of thought leadership you've done like such as the let's work report or some of the other reports that have been done on the side the role the for-profit health care sector in Africa and then other reports after that whether it's youth training in in the Middle East or with a water footprint work it's it so I do think this issue of thought leadership best practice your convening power it's it's it's very important to development could you talk about I suspect you get called into broader multilateral conversations whether it's the G20 or other sorts of multilateral for I suspect it certainly when I was at IFC there was sort of an increasing amount of demand for sort of either IFC's brand its catalytic finance power its advisory services or its thought leadership how are you being pulled into those into those sorts of conversations well I have never been used so many meetings in my whole life since I joined and much more a I think you know these are the interesting forum to discuss issues and to be honest there are way too many talkers and doers that's my observation so I want to make IFC not only be part of that process so we were in B20 and we are in variety of you know forum talk about you know what we do and also on some no public global issues that climate change no it's important issue and I have been working with my team we feel okay talking is great but not enough and so we are also kind of a based on the what we think where we can add most value to start to do things one example I give to you is I don't know if you follow much about climate change you should want the most amazing thing is the gas flaring in Nigeria you know this is perhaps Nigeria has one of the top maybe tops 10 at least top 10 maybe even you know higher ranked gas reserve in the world okay if you go to labels sometimes you know in the weather permit you can see this huge fireball if you fly over it's Nigeria has so much gas and the you know the oil companies Chevron maybe you re-injectively in the field but there's enough limit and so the flare and then you look at Nigeria as a country has no power something has to be done and apparently there has been different forum talk about how to stop the flare my own view is I told our team as a look they're having a lot of discussions and they're always at each of the conclusion of those meetings if the government is ready to do something we're ready to help so we have observed government has not been ready for a long time let's help us make them ready so I this is quite Peter I don't know if you know this we usually don't do this so we have have our team both the energy team and the local teams and look let's bring all the people together to figure out what do we need to do Nigeria has undertaken pretty brave reform on power sector they break the monopoly unbounded the power sector and based on my own experience I spent a lot of time in the industry as I look you can do whatever real reorganization at the you know power part of value chain if there's no incremental gas supply what you're gonna end up is yeah there are a lot of more players in it and it was my monopoly no power right now you have multiple players there's still no power guess what the price will go up it will be disaster for the population so I went to the president to and goes he said look there's critical thing we need to do we gotta fix this gas problem otherwise we're all going to be in bad shape guess what they are responding so fast so we were able to literally convene a meeting you literally have everybody yesterday in London still going on I have the minister petroleum everything we got to get this thing down so we have an action plan I take about maybe five to ten billion dollars just do some pipeline infrastructure there are a lot of other things I don't want to get too too much complication the thing I feel on this what you said there are a lot of interesting ideas I'm looking forward to working with my team the IFC in the area we can add value we don't become a discussant there also the executing doer the door so that's what we're hoping we'll get there you know it's nothing is easy you know otherwise this thing would have been down long time ago well I do think one of the great things about IFCs I think it's an institution that's often kept its head down and just done deals and sometimes hasn't gotten the full credit it deserves it certainly its shareholders know who they are and its partners know who it is but sometimes some of its broader stakeholders don't realize the importance of what it's doing I think in the last several years maybe the last five or six years it's certainly increased its profile and I'm so pleased that you're leading the institution because I think you have an important role to play and the institution itself has a very important role in the future of development so I think it's very heartening to hear all of this thank you I know we have time for a few questions and I know you've got it we got a hard stop at three o'clock you've got you got to go back to doing as opposed to talking so we should let's see who we've got here let's see so I'm gonna ask this gentleman here my friend back there and my friend from Palacio y asociados there so we'll start with those three hey I'm Nicola Montbriand the head of the Oxford International Office in Washington mean the same of the discussion is about the future of the IFC and sorry to talk about bad things but I just wanted to know from you there was this big case in January but the IFC investment in the non-tenant in Honduras the CAO report and things about the failure to implement your own standard I just wanted to see how this case change your vision for the IFC and how you're gonna change why don't we take this World Bank style and we'll capture three questions and then you have a chance to respond to this so then back there Dana Marshall with transnational strategy group I wonder if you could talk a little bit about the IFC investor excuse me the advisory services and creative ways that you may be able to reach out to private sector advisors here to sort of move in mutually beneficial directions and my friend here Eileen Boniface with Palacio and associates thank you Mr. Cy for your presentation and for your transformative role in including the private sector and the development world here in Washington how would you view the role of the U.S. and as we approach the end of the fiscal year and the appropriations process especially in light of good luck in Congress and the specific amendments that infringe upon priority projects especially DRC and how you anticipate changes in the next fiscal year. Let's talk about the end okay this is one of the quite famous case you know the story I don't know how much you know it was a loan we made to a client who owns multiple line business the loan we made was for a facility expansion to make soap okay on the existing site just additional capacity expansion and the discussion happened before there was a military coup so you know everything was agreed everything was fine you know things were stable and then there was a military coup certainly you know the new regime the government and a lot of farmers came back saying hey there's a problem there's a land dispute although that land has nothing to do with this particular facility and apparently if you listen to you know there are different version of stories and you know the owner of the land and the farmers eventually had a conflict and certain people quite a few people were killed if you listen to the owner said the farmer killed us first so we had a defense vice versa it's a tragedy no question about it and so looking back you know certainly you know it's a bad case we committed about 30 million dollars I think we only dispersed half of that and NGOs everyone was just really I understand the the kind of people are very upset and basically the headline uses IFC finance killers look we do about 600 all 600 transactions a year once in a while you make mistakes on this particular case I could say that we could have looked at the broader context certainly we could not predict the coup but we could have understood better on the dispute of the land you know really assess what are the risks right so that's really the lessons learned but the challenge for us is Honduras is one of the poorest country in Central America there are many other places really for those countries which can have a viable business most likely will be in agriculture because you know they have special kind of comparative advantage you know so and so forth so how do we deal with helping agriculture sector to grow become commercial credit wealth need a lot more thinking and need a lot more help from the World Bank colleagues that's where you know Peter mentioned about how this whole World Bank World Bank Group thing I'm not too sure we can solve all the problem but honestly if we were able to assess the land issue better we could have avoid a mistake okay on the advisory service we have over the years built a quite a diversified offering some of I have to be you know honest some are better than others you know we have some of the best expert in certain sectors they can not only advise on structuring on financing but they are true industry expertise they can literally help the small farmers or small companies to grow and you know if you know I have Lucas standing there you know if you have any particular you know just contact him he'll connect you are organized a little bit I'll say complicated but we do have a advisory service team not only in a standing alone stand alone form and also in each of the industry verticals so that's what I can tell you on the US I think you know US business in my view is our some of our best partners you know I talked about Inga my I keep I've been talking to quite a US company United States represented the United States is the world leader there's no question about it when US is there US companies is there there I feel the project will be structured better and that will provide a better transparency and it just could be a better deal I mean our US companies are going to be in all the transactions no we have to understand what their interests are and so we have to be selective we have to be able to what I call pitch the right idea to the red company and I'm not too sure in the US government has always been a USAID we work closely and you know other US governments agencies they're all very supportive but given our role is really working with the private sector our task is really working with US companies you know in places where you know I understand US companies are not going there for charity reasons and they are expanding their business market share that's that's perfect actually we feel you know we have had a good relationship we can do much more you know we are we have a active what I call the client coverage model we're going to cover more US companies to really demonstrate explain to them what's going on in different parts of the world and not only working with them we can also help the US company to build partnership with others good take a couple more questions okay my friend Bob Berg and Peter Bob Berg serial talk talk offender this the government to government aid industry has a club where they exchange information lessons learned and so forth but I'm wondering whether there's an adequate way of learning between particularly the China the Brazils the really some major players where in the private sector I'm wondering whether there's a way of sharing the lessons across the donors private sector work that could be more transparent and more interesting Peter I have a question perhaps because I'm not up to date anymore but I have to say that I'm kind of jealous when I listen to you talking about for instance Inga and your optimism I inherited a project when I took over the IFC which was called Bujagali I spent five years on it myself and it was killed in the end by the president because we had a slight corruption case there in the meantime it has been built how is your relationship with the NGOs I refer to it I had a sometimes rough relationship sometimes very helpful sometimes in the case of Bujagali not very helpful so why are you so optimistic so so let me just add to Bob's question I around this issue of a learning community I'm thinking of the development assistance committee which is the FIFA of the of the development world of the Major League Baseball Commission of the development world there is something like that in the development finance there's been some attempts at that maybe you might just also talk a little bit about that as well you know I came from a world where you know my education business is very much you have to think I have your clients and that you figure out who would be the most likely you have to think what they want this I'm talking about woman sex right I literally I know who are the potential partners I'm not saying I know 100% of them at least in this industry I'm focused on I don't know I mean they're all kind of forum right you can always go to Africa power and you know to be honest a lot of time people going to those conferences they're not a key decision-maker now they will go back to reports hey I just went to a conference and wonderful basically same message you know we you know as I mentioned earlier the IFC we but we go to a lot of conferences I said well you know I have never heard one person said I didn't have a good meeting a conference but that's not enough I'm very much focused on do you have the year of the CEO I have this thing I say knowing assistant treasurer is not enough okay assistant treasurer his mission in life is to squeeze you give you the lowest margin that you compete against others okay you got to go to CEO you got to understand what are the strategic imperative why they need to go to Inga for that matter okay I told some of the US manufacturers I said look this is going to go on for a long time how many turban you want to sell right and how many tractors trucks you need to sell you got to pitch to them even look all our businessmen they have their mission in life they work for the shareholder to whatever the reason we have to be able to really understand why they should come with us to the things which good for them also for our countries this is similar to Peter to your I'm still learning to work with NGO I believe they're all to a large extent there's a common purpose to help to deal with some of the most challenging issues do I agree with them on everything I don't think so I don't think they would agree with me on a lot of things as you know I guess I just feel when the things they're right they should be done I don't know what is the alternative you know talk about in the budget galley finally you know thank you you're persisting eventually took ten years took ten years to build a 240 megawatts power plant now I'm coming from a country that can be done in two years maybe even shorter and certainly we should do something differently I'm not saying we'll copy that I said as I said earlier we do need to have a sense of urgency because the world is moving forward if we don't really help I don't know what the world will be I mean I have to say every time I go to you know I remember I just give you one example I was remember in a car ride going to the airport with the minister finance you know there are a lot of kids playing I won't name the country you know kind of a playing soccer really I said wow this case just so much muscle and the minister finance I have to feed them help me that's the basic I mean literally no one you know you hear from this you know person literally they're desperate for help and this Liberia president I was in Johnson's yeah I was with her and Jim came meeting her she literally told Jim said I need electricity because the whole country has no I mean they distributed all the copper were taken away there's nothing left virtually and what she told Jim was look all these young people the only thing they knew was fighting I gotta give them a chance so help me I mean these are the things I see it as a wow very powerful and by the way this is not like we have seen this in other place can be done it's not like that it's challenging from getting things done but not challenging from technical you know solution aspect so that's how I feel I feel you know the development financial institutions and particularly you know myself and my IFC team we are very much have this sense let's can build on what we have been you know good foundation we have been successful but let's have some sense of urgency and let's figure out the way to at least you know try it I can't guarantee everything we perfect I can't guarantee there won't be another demand I hope not but the truth is unless they try you know the alternative is not much better right the stakes couldn't be higher thanks very much thank you please join me in thanking Jinyoung Sa


Hi my name is Andrea and today we're making bacon cheeseburger sliders. This recipe uses simple ingredients that produce big results and as always I'll make sure to leave the recipe in the description box. So let's get started. First we're going to start off by browning our ground beef and onions until that ground beef is cooked through. So while that ground beef is cooking we're just going to cut our rolls in half without separating that top from the bottom. I'm using a serrated knife which has the ridges. It'll make it a lot easier to slice through that bread and once you've got that bread separated you're just going to put it on the bottom of a greased casserole dish. I'm using a 9x13 dish and I greased my casserole dish with butter and then you're going to layer that bread with half of the cheese slices. Next you're going to pop it in the oven at 350 degrees for about five minutes or so. So my ground beef has finished cooking and I used a lean ground beef so I didn't have to worry about draining it. So I'm adding in my salt and pepper, Worcestershire sauce, drained diced tomatoes with garlic and onion and Dijon mustard and I'm just going to give this a good stir until everything is combined. Next I'm just pouring that meat mixture right on top. Next we're going to add our bacon and I did cut my bacon into one inch slices and we're going to top it with that remaining cheese. Next we're going to add on our top buns and then we're just going to set this aside so that I can make the sauce. Okay so in my microwave safe bowl I have one stick of unsalted butter. I just added in some Worcestershire sauce, got some brown sugar and Dijon mustard. I am going to microwave this for a minute, two minutes until that butter is melted. Okay so I just took the melted butter mixture out of the microwave and I'm just pouring it right on top and then you can just spread it out a little bit and sprinkle it with sesame seeds and now I'm just going to bake this in my oven at 350 degrees uncovered for about 20-25 minutes. Okay so here are the sliders. I did let them bake for 23 minutes and I took a couple out so you could see them close up and here they are and I have some on the plate serving them with a side of garlic fries. I hope you all enjoyed this quick and easy recipe. If you did please make sure to give us a thumbs up and subscribe to our channel. I have an entire playlist of quick and easy recipes that I will link in the description box. Thanks so much for watching and we'll see you all next time.


In this study, it was found that chronic cough is prevalent in China, affecting approximately 3.6% of the population. It was also observed to be more common among people aged 50 years or older, those with cocked and those with small airway dysfunction, sad. People with chronic cough have a lower quality of life, as well as higher rates of emergency visits and hospitalizations. This suggests that chronic cough should not be overlooked, and that further research into its causes and treatments is needed. This article was authored by Ke Wuhuang, Xiaoying Jiu, Ting Yang, and others.


Hi, I'm Catherine Bowers, a Future Tense fellow and the author of Wild Hood and Zubiquity. Welcome to another social distancing social from Future Tense, a partner of Slate, New America and Arizona State University. Today, we're talking about what we can learn from our pets while in quarantine. I'm joined by Clive Nguyen, the founding director of the Canine Science Collaboratory at ASU, and the author of Dog is Love. Hi, and how your dog loves you. Hi, Clive. Hi, Catherine. Great to be with you. Yeah, it's so great to be with you too. The last time I saw you, we were at a beer garden in DC doing a live event at which people were allowed to bring their own dogs. So we're a little more virtual this time, but I think we're still gonna have a great discussion. Yeah, that was wonderful. I would love, it was so fun. I would love to know how you and Zephos are coping with quarantine and lockdown. Well, I'm coping fine. We're business more or less in some sense as usual. And you know what? I think Zephos is just loving us. I think she's absolutely loving it. I think when she comes to write her memoirs in a few years' time, there's gonna be a whole chapter on this period of her life because it's just... What are some of the things you're doing with her? Well, we're doing... We're doing all of her favorite things. We're hanging around the house. We're watching TV together. We sometimes go out in the backyard and throw her a toy around, which I confess we are generally speaking too lazy or busy to be inclined to do because we humans don't find it really all that satisfying, but she loves it to pieces and we've been doing more of that. And she's been getting so many walks from all the people in the house who otherwise have no excuse to go outside that she's become... I don't know whether your social media feed has had the same cartoon in it that mine has of the dog who's hiding on top of the cabinets because he doesn't want to be taken out for any more walks. I haven't seen that one, but I did see the joke or maybe it was true. I didn't fact check it about the dog who sprained its tail from it wagging too much. I haven't seen that one. But I also... I mean, I have... When this lockdown started two, three, four weeks ago, we were all in a different point of it, there was sort of a trend of the dog... This is great for the dogs. Maybe they even engineered it so that their owners could be home more, their people. But there does seem to be a trend more now toward is enough enough, like have they had enough of it.  No. No.  I mean, when I talk about dogs, I have my own dog often in my real eye now and often in my mind's eye. And no, I don't think she could ever have too much of us. I mean, I guess we're going to be halfway serious about it. Dogs do need to sleep more than people do. Dogs need to sleep maybe 14 hours a day. So it is possible to sort of stimulate your dog to a point that they would find too much. That is so interesting. I just thought that my dog is... He's sort of naturally low energy, but I thought he was just being an extra much of a slacker while we're all hanging around watching TV. But no, he's just a little bit low. No, it's good for them. They need more sleep than we do. But that doesn't mean to say that...  I mean, she's a very social being. I mean, she's clearly somewhere way up that scale. But you know, dogs typically enjoy company. Yep. I want to pause for one moment to introduce our two K9 guests on the screen. We have two Corgis named Victoria and Elizabeth. They are in DC enjoying our talk today and enjoying their chance to lounge more on the couch. They are both rescued from a puppy mill and living the happy life with their people in DC. So welcome to them too. I had a couple questions of if a dog is maybe not wanting to sleep as much and maybe you're both going a little stir crazy in a small environment, are there some games or activities that you've experienced either with your own dog or in the work that you do at ASU that we can use to enrich our pets' environments at the same time that we're kind of trying to keep our own sanity? Sure, Catherine. Well, I like to say that dogs are individuals just like people are.   I mean, there are dogs that are completely nuts for that.  Sampos, we don't throw balls. I mean, it's not that she wouldn't take a little bit of interest, but she's never understood. She's not the smartest. She's never understood that if it's going to be a game and we're going to keep doing it, then she needs to bring it back. She's never grasped that side of it. So it's not something we do a lot of. It's all going out. There's none of it coming back.  There's no purpose in me saying, well, you know, Sampos loves to do this because your dog might not like that. What do you do with your dog, Catherine? We've been like, like I said, he's on the older end of the age range. He's 11. Still has a lot of energy when he's outside, but he really likes to just kind of lie around. He's a golden retriever. But what's interesting is that he had been really enjoying going out into off-leash areas. We've just moved to a place where that's possible. And he could run on the beach and he could run on the cliffs and through meadows. And there was this moment where it was like just as things were starting to be taken a little bit more seriously here in the US. And he was off-leash and he went running toward this other dog. And that dog's people kind of pulled back. It didn't really want him to come near. And that was my first indication that we are going to have to be changing not only our own behavior, but the behavior that we were doing with our dogs as well. So we've changed to some more indoor.  But I've also been doing something called nose work. Have you heard about nose work? So what my dog loves, cheese, and the idea behind nose work is that you take a piece, little bits of some high value treat, some piece of food that your dog really likes. And you hide them around a room and then you allow your dog to go find them simply by using his or her nose. And at least the course that I took on it, you weren't supposed to give it praise or sort of corrections or anything. Just let your dog experience the sense of that smell in its own unique way. And it's kind of fun to see your dog do that. Zepos did this some years ago. I'd forgotten all about it. But now that you mention it, she did a class some years ago. And to my total astonishment, she was really quite good at it. I'm always the one saying, oh, I don't know, sorry. She greatly enjoyed it and was very good at it. And now that you mention it, it would be a good thing to do when you're stuck in the house with your dog because it doesn't, you know, chasing a ball or whatever you could end up with a lot of broken glassware. The nose work thing is relatively gentle and certainly intellectually stimulating for the dog. I mean, Zepos just likes, you know, or at least Zepos and I, we just like watching television together. I mean, she's often facing entirely the wrong direction and asleep, but she's like a ritual. That's so funny. My mom, Dreilly, commented when she saw a video of my dog doing some nose work that he's not quite ready for the airport. But that is the sort of the basic idea and training behind what service dogs do in airports and other places, sniffing out various things. Oh, it's quite a bit. And another thing Zepos loves doing is she loves barking at people who come and deliver things to the door. And it's a simple, it's a simple skill, but now that we're in lockdown and I haven't been to a store for over two weeks, it's very exciting when deliveries come and the fact that she relishes this too, it gives us that feeling that we're all in this together, you know. When somebody comes to the door, we cheer and it makes us feel good. That's such a positive outlook on that behavior because that might not necessarily be behavior that everyone would want their dog to do. Well, we're lucky. I would not claim credit for this, but we are lucky that Zepos just decided for herself that there was no need to bark at somebody who stays on the sidewalk. It's only when somebody turns on to the short pathway to our front door that she feels the need to alert us. And that only happens at most a couple of times a day. And indeed, it is usually something that's pretty interesting in our lives, too. So we're happy to be a set up and for her to tell us about this. If as, you know, when when I walk her around the neighborhood, there are any number of homes where the dogs bark just because you're going past on the sidewalk. And that would happen dozens of times a day.  Yeah. I wish I could claim some credit for it. But no, she just she just, well, I mean, maybe I explained it to her early on and she grasped it immediately. She's a quick study. So I would love to hear a little bit more about the work that you do at ASU in the in your in your lab and your in your study and research. And maybe we could talk about it by taking a look at the subtitle of your book, which is why and how your dog loves you. So maybe you could start off with how dogs love us and then get into the why they love us. Sure. Sure. So how they love us, I mean, it doesn't take. It's not rocket science, right? It's not rocket science and it's not brain surgery. Remember, there's science, probably. It's not rocket surgery and it's not. Yeah. Remember, Catherine, when we used to be able to leave our homes, you remember those days? We used to leave our homes and go off to work or whatever we were doing. And you would go away. And sometimes, you know, so it was tough. Sometimes you'd be away six, eight hours, 10 hours, and you'd come home.   And over there, you get maybe a grunt from your child, you know. But the dog, you know, the dog is absolutely thrilled to see you. And that's a real thing, right? That's a real thing. Sometimes things that we experience almost every day, we take them for granted and we don't stop to think about this, that here is this animal expressing in its whole being as thoroughly and completely as it can possibly do with every fiber it's being, expressing its pleasure to be reunited with you. And we've actually turned this into a fairly simple experiment where we set up a scenario so that when a person comes home, we actually set up outside the door, the person, one location, and an equal distance and the same angle in the other side of all of food so that and we don't give the dog any food while we're out of work and the home is empty. So the dog is now deprived of human company, let's say eight hours and deprived of food for the same exact same length of time. And then here's a choice. Does your dog love you or does your dog love food? And well, most dogs, most of the time, the person is more important to them, not that they won't eat sooner or later. Right. The immediate choice situation. They want the person, they need their human being. So you can take a more or less every day experience, a very straightforward thing. And you can show that this is this really shows us how our dogs love us. And of course, you can go beyond very simple things like that. And I was saying, it's not it's not brain science, but actually people have done neuroscience on dogs. There's a professor at Emory and Atlanta, Gregory Burns, who actually trained dogs to lie perfectly still in MRI scanners. I saw those photos and some of the videos. It was amazing. It's absolutely amazing, right?  This won't work on people. Understand what they listen and whatever. But how do you explain to a dog? Well, it takes a lot of very careful training. But ultimately, all positive reinforcement, just food treats. Ultimately, they have now quite a number of dogs who will keep perfectly still in the scanner.   Yeah. And then you show them a second sign. And this sign means in a moment, you're going to get to see your beloved human being. OK. And you can look and find that, not all dogs, but most dogs, the reward centers light up more when you tell them, hey, you're the love of humans just around the corner. When you tell them, you're going to get a bit of sausage. So you can you can see how it's programmed into their brains. It's really quite amazing. That's so. And is some of that, some of that have to do with the evolution of dogs? I mean, is it and I've also heard over the years that a human that like the dogs that live with us today are sort of puppy ish. Is that help clarify some of that? Sure. Sure. Sure. So so absolutely. So. So yeah. So now we're sort of segueing from the how the dogs love us to the why the dogs love us and, you know, why questions like how questions can be answered at many different levels. And one thing is the yes. How are the dogs that we live with today show maintaining to adulthood, many of the behaviors and many of the signs that you would only expect to see in wolves. And all our dogs are descended from wolves. You only see in wolves when they're due. So dogs have this kind of childish manner, which is part of their job. Part of why we love them back is because they're so loving and dependent like that. And ultimately, why do dogs love us? Ultimately, their love for us is the secret of their success. I mean, very, very few dogs on this planet survive without people somehow helping them, even though only a minority of dogs are pets in First World homes. Nonetheless, the majority of dogs need people to help them along. Very few populations of dogs succeed as hunters, as true wild animals. So they're dependent on us and their interest in us and their capacity to form affection of bonds for us is what gets them in the door, right? I mean, some people are interested in having as pets, I don't know, snakes and various other animals that don't show much sign of affection towards people. But ultimately, most of us want to believe that our pets love us. That it's dogs affection and nature, which is the secret of their success. They're an amazingly successful species on this planet. The most widespread, large mammal left on the surface of the earth, aside from ourselves. And the answer, how is that possible? What makes dogs so special is that their affectionate interest, their capacity to love us, you can't help. You know, what kind of a heartless person can resist that entreaty?  What kind of heartless person can say, well, I don't care, you know, well. So love is the answer. Love, yeah, absolutely. I am in my research for Wild Hood, my book about adolescence. I learned a term called puppy license, which is the the leeway that we give to younger animals. Puppies are easy to imagine, but there's also something with monkeys. That's monkey license or, you know, whale license, where the older animals are a little bit more forgiving for social transgressions or mistakes in judgment than they are at a certain point in animals development. And when they hit that kind of adolescent period, their puppy license expires and they're suddenly meant to to act more and more like a mature adult. OK, that's so interesting. I mean, obviously I've I've noticed the phenomenon, but I never realized it had a name. Yeah, yeah, I learned it from a behaviorist, James Haw, who teaches at the University of Washington and he's an applied animal behaviorist and used that term a lot. And what's what's interesting about that is that there is this adolescent period in that we see in humans, you know, when they become a little bit harder to to live with as a, you know, can be found in other species because no animal just is born mature. So some of the things that you find in adolescents, the the risk taking, the kind of socializing, but even the volubility, the talkativeness. You can find in other animals and it it turns out that animals are most likely to be surrendered to shelters when they're in this adolescent period because through no fault of their own. It's a normal development. They're suddenly doing things that their owners showing behaviors that are hard for their owners to handle. And their and their puppy license has expired. So I guess I just think that's really, really interesting that just because they're adolescents, it becomes a very dangerous time for them sort of socially and in our own human created communities. But that actually leads me to another phenomenon I've seen over this lockdown, which is people fostering dogs. I know you've worked a lot with shelter communities and dogs and are a proponent of fostering and sheltering. And would love to hear if you have any experience or thoughts about that.  So we're actually in the middle of a large study that we're doing across the United States for a Charity Called Maddie's Fund, where we've been looking at the benefits of fostering for sheltered dogs. And the benefits are definitely very real. The dogs are in a much better position, both in terms of their psychological health and in terms of their chances of getting adopted into a permanent home if they are out in the community in a fostering situation rather than stuck in a shelter. And then when everything happened, that's the new circumstance in which we find ourselves, we rapidly pivoted towards helping shelters get some emergency fostering going because shelters are having a lot of trouble keeping their regular operations going. They cannot bring the public into the shelter to invite adoptions. And it's just difficult getting staff and volunteers to take care of the animals. So we've been helping a number of shelters through Maddie's Fund to get some emergency fostering up and running. And fortunately, it's going really well. It's going really well. But we certainly we certainly need more help on that. And if I was just a tiny bit more organized, I would have the web address at the top of my head to be able to deal with people. People could probably search Maddie's. Is that? And P-T-I-E? M-A-D-D-I-U-S. Let me maybe if I'm very quick. Well, you're doing that. What what is sort of the process of fostering? Would you do people, I mean, is it what kind of commitment is it on for someone? Well, so in in the normal run of things, shelters can adapt fostering to suit the capacity of the people coming and volunteering to help. So we started out studying weekend fostering programs. And we've been moving on to study longer term fostering programs where people take dogs for weeks or even months. In the present emergency situation, it would be kind of difficult for people to return dogs. There would be little value, let's say, in people taking dogs just for a weekend. So really in the present emergency situation, we're looking at longer term longer term fostering options. And I was able to find the the web page. It's just Maddie's fund dot O-R-G slash foster hyphen care. And that's in Arizona. That's in the Arizona area nationwide. That's nationwide nationwide. All around the country. OK, fostering is a wonderful thing. I mean, we have to, I think, move away from taking it for granted that pets should be in animal shelters. Animal shelters were started in the late 19th century. And I don't want to say they're in the state. People in animal shelters do wonderful things and put so much into helping the animals that end up in their care. But I think as communities, we would be much, much better off if we avoided having warehouses where spare pets were kept in kennels. It would be much better if as communities, we could work to, you know, so supposing, you know, as somebody is no longer able to care for a pet, couldn't we have communities where instead of pushing that animal into a shelter and then letting it, forcing it to wait there until somebody comes for it, couldn't we use like social media to advertise, hey, these families no longer able to care for this dog? Would somebody else, could somebody else help there? So we minimize sheltering. That would that would be my dream. And to do that in a more organized way than just the sort of, you know, someone's email thread or something about the day. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting. Well, maybe something like that will come out of this lockdown where we've got some time to think about doing things in that kind of way. Yeah, I think we might have some questions coming from the, from the audience. Let me just check here. Do you have any thoughts about if somebody has a very high energy dog that they just can't run as much during this time?  Well, I'm not an animal trainer. So so I have to be careful not to go beyond my expertise. But one thing to keep in mind is that there is there has been a belief that because of course, in the short term, it's obviously true. If you exercise an animal, the animal is tired at the end of the period of exercise. But it's not possible to exercise an animal forever and ever and ever. I'd always have it physically tired. And one thing is if an animal is very if a dog is very high energy, try boring that animal. Responding to energy with energy, try responding to the energy. So we actually did a study where in a shelter, in a shelter, where we compared what happened if volunteers came in and every time a volunteer came in, they exercise the dog. And what happened if we had volunteers come in and instead of exercising the dog, these were students, they sat down on an upturned bucket in the kennel and got on with their homework, like reading. Which again, and what was interesting was that the dogs that were exercised every time a human showed up, the dogs got very, very excited because they learned the relationship human equals excitement. Whereas the dogs who had a student come in and just read a boring textbook, not that the dogs understood quite how boring the textbook was. The dogs who had a student come in and do something uninteresting, those dogs over time, when a person came in, they were not so excited to see human being. So I think it is possible to respond to energy with calmness. And that can be helpful in teaching an animal to remain more calm going forward. What an interesting idea. That's I like that a lot. It's also putting me in mind of those wonderful photos you sometimes see of programs where they match children learning to read with pets and shelters. Oh, I love that. Yeah. Yeah, seems like a nice thing to do. Let's see. So we've got some questions. We have Carla Etherington and she's wondering, do you think the large amounts of time many of us are spending with our dogs will result in increased levels of separation anxiety when we go back to work? And if so, how can we reduce this? That's a great question. And I've seen that come up on social media and I was wondering about it as I was out walking with Zephos this morning and it's possible, it's possible until we come to that day, we won't know, but it's a possibility. But I think the solution is not so terribly difficult either. And that is we can just we can just start small. We can just practice leaving our dogs alone. I mean, right now, I don't think Zephos has been alone for more than while she goes sunbathing. So here it is already quite warm. She likes sunbathing. Black dogs. So apart from 10 minute periods where she's sunbathing, she has not been alone for about three weeks. And so there will come a time where. And so so when that day comes, I mean, I guess we'll just go for walks without her. And we'll start small. I mean, well, wouldn't it be fantastic when we can go to bars and cafes again? And so we'll just start, we'll go out for an hour or two for lunch without her and, you know, she won't be too happy about it. But it's it's not a psychological trauma that we need to be ashamed of exposing her to. It'll do her good here. And we'll see. We'll see. We have a device that actually detects when she barks. So you see if she barks or if there's anything else. I mean, just knowing her, I don't expect any trouble. But I think if people if people have dogs that have shown separation problems in the past, then here is an excellent opportunity in normal daily life. Of course, sometimes you're forced to be out of the house for 10 hours and your dogs traumatized by that. Well, here's an opportunity you can start gradually building up your dog's tolerance to being left alone. Not that I think it's fair to leave dogs alone for long periods of time.  What's so wonderful about having a dog is that they want to be with you. And that's, you know, every dog is a therapy dog, at least in my view. And we take these beautifully social animals into our lives and we enjoy them for their highly loving natures. And then we leave them in solitary confinement for hours on end. So I really think it's a shame that people do that. And I don't advocate it. Maybe maybe they can get some of their sleeping into while we're gone. Maybe that can be. So we did once do a study where we had a webcam on dogs that were left home alone and it did turn out that most of the most of the time do just sleep. Yeah, interesting. OK, we have another question from Diane Sylvester, and it is, should we be worried about animals getting COVID-19 like the tigers in the New York Zoo, the Bronx Zoo? Let's talk about how not to catch COVID-19 from your tiger. I think that's something people need to get. I think step number one, don't over-tie it. I would say if you're within six feet of a tiger. You have bigger problems. COVID-19 is your problem. I mean, what's interesting to me about this is my first book, Zubiquity, was about the overlap between animal and human medicine. It was more medical focused and one chapter was on zoonoses, these diseases that cross between animals and humans. And it's important to note that the tigers got the virus from their handler, who was asymptomatic from the person who was working with them. And so it wasn't being transmitted to humans from these pets. I recommend that anybody watching this, if you really want to know what the kind of official word is on this now, you can go to the American Veterinary Medical Association website or to the Wildlife Conservation Society website, UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine also has a lot of information on this. And what they're saying is, is that if it were easily transmissible between people and their pets, there would be a lot more infected pets at the moment and there isn't a few animals here and there. Dogs and cats have tested positive for it. And so they recommend using good hygiene when you're around your pets that you would anyway, you're washing your hands after you play, maybe not have them up in your face. And if you know that you're infected to isolate from your pets as you would any other member of your family. But again, for the latest on the public health information on that, I would suggest contacting those other, going to those other websites that I mentioned. Do you have any other thoughts on that or does that seem... I think that's great advice. I think that's great advice. And I was thinking the exact same thing, that there must be by now millions of cats and dogs that have been in close contact with people. And the fact that we don't hear about any cases of transmission, except for the tiger. Even the tiger hasn't infected anybody. Right. Well, and it is, I mean, it is true that we can. I mean, we can pass flu to pets and when I've sat in on some of the procedures at various zoos around the country where we're helping animals that need to consult from the human side, we've always worn masks and gloves to protect the animals from us and anything we might be carrying, not to protect us from the animals as much. Yeah. Yeah. OK, I don't see any other. Oh, here's a question. This is from Eva Pazikowska. How can people socialize puppies during this period of isolation? Oh, well, that is. That is a very, that's a really tough question. I mean, one thing is the... Well, I mean, ideally, puppies should be socialized to a variety of different human beings and to other species, too, if they're going to be expected to live alongside those species growing up. That's really tough. And I'm not sure I know a good answer to that. I mean, I think we do need to expect our pets to keep the same six feet distance from other people as we are ourselves. And that's surely going to be a problem for those pets. I don't know, Catherine, do you have any thoughts? You know, it's so funny. I was just thinking of how great it would be to have those few months of not having to go to work. I mean, obviously, trying to work, but maybe not having to leave the house. And I had only thought about the human side of that. But of course, puppies need to be socialized with lots of others, although I have also heard to avoid the dog park when they're very, very young. But I guess that would be... Yeah, well, it's a certain... I mean, in normal times, there's a certain level of controversy with veterinarians advising people not to take their puppies to a dog park until they've completed all of their vaccinations, which, of course, is good advice in itself. But there is something of a problem there because all animals early in life go through the critical period for socialization. And if you don't meet individuals of different kinds when you're in that critical period, then it's much more difficult to learn to form social connections with those kinds of beings later in life. And the problem is, dogs have an exceptionally long critical period for socialization. But even in dogs, it doesn't go on forever. It's all more or less closed up by 12 or 14 weeks of life. So if you keep puppies isolated for the first 12, 14 weeks of life, then they're not going to be comfortably socialized. Yeah, yeah. I found that in my research on adolescents, too, that kind of important early socializing during that time is it can determine whether an animal has friends later in life and is able to court other animals more or even if we were speaking in human terms, be happy in a way to understand how to fit into groups, when to be on top, when to not be. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Interesting. So I feel that this is going to be tough for puppies growing up at this time. It's going to be tough because I cannot think of a workaround. I mean, for us humans, we get some social satisfaction from what we're doing now, although it's nothing like giving a friend a hug, but it's still something. But I don't think our dogs get anything. There's no evidence that our dogs get anything out of this dog. Except the case when you're in a business meeting and your dog starts barking and then some dog through your Zoom meeting on the other side of the country starts barking as well. I love that infectious barking virtually. Yeah. The Future Tense team wants to know if one of us has watched the Tiger King TV show and what we thought of it. No, you haven't. I haven't either. Why have you decided not to tune in? Because what I've read about it, it just sounds like the kind of thing that would so make my blood boil. And that's really not what I need right now. Yeah. It reminds me when I first came to the United States, which is getting on 20 years ago now. And I was on the faculty at the University of Florida and I had a journalist from Miami phoned me up asking whatever the Miami paper is, asking, did I have a professional opinion on this thing that a tiger had escaped from a backyard in the outer suburbs of Miami, where it turned out that there was a guy, a retired actor who had a collection of lions and tigers and one of them had gone out and I hadn't even heard the story. So the journalist had to explain to me, weren't you, tiger gets out of the backyard roaming the outer suburbs of Miami. The police have been called, wildlife control have been called. And one of the wildlife officers spots the tiger and hides behind a tree, calls for backup, calls for the guy with the dart gun. He didn't have a dart gun. He had a real gun. So he calls for the guy with the dart gun, but before that guy shows up, the tiger spots him and starts coming towards him. So he shoots the tiger dead. Now, obviously that's a tragedy, but it seems to me, it's an incredibly defensible thing to do under the circumstances. A tiger coming towards you, that's one of those rare occasions where using your deadly weapon is entirely appropriate. And the reason the journalist was phoning up was because this guy, the wildlife control officer, was now getting death threats. Because there were so many people who were furious with him for killing this tiger, which was itself turning on him, right? And the guy whose tiger it was, was getting a great deal of sympathy from the public because the wildlife control officer killed his valuable animal. So I really just thought that was an amazing story about misplaced priorities regarding caring for exotic wildlife. Yes, yeah. It seems to me don't have a tiger in the first place would be the place to start. Let's start with that. Let's start with that. Isn't it the case that there are more tigers in captivity in the United States than wild in their native lands? I heard that, but I think it was in the sort of the media surrounding Tiger King, which I haven't watched. So now I feel like I can vouch for that. Let's see. Oh, here's a good question from Alan Brown.  Might they want to break from us? I doubt it. I mean, again, allowing of this individual variation. Okay, so I mean, there are dogs that are indeed a loof and by and large, I doubt it with the proviso that they're getting enough time to sleep, keeping in mind that they need maybe 14 hours of sleep a day. And that I think if you're hanging out with human beings who are only gonna sleep for eight hours a day and the humans are stuck with you, perhaps in a small apartment and are relying on you, the dog for entertainment or whatever you want to say, then I think it's possible that the dog may just get physically tired, want to sleep, need to sleep. I think aside from that issue, I doubt that they tire a company. Okay. Okay, again, the answer is love, right? Yes. We have time for maybe one or two more questions. Tina Cummings is asking, I have an 11-year-old standard poodle. When he is asking for treats by standing in front of the treat cabinet, is it possible for him to understand me when I say, you want treats, you have to finish your dinner first while I am pointing at his bowl? Sometimes it seems like he understands, but maybe it's just the coincidence. What do you think? So if we generalize the question, is it possible for a dog to know that to get something it wants, it first has to do something it is less interested in doing? Yes, I think in general, there's no reason why a dog could not learn that relationship. Whether this particular dog in this particular home, under these particular circumstances, is learning that relationship depends, well, it depends on the individual dog, and depends on how consistently the message is put across. So if you only say those words under those circumstances, and if it's always true that you don't ever give in and just let him have a treat anyway, then I think in time he should be at a level. Certainly within the realms of possibility, but so much depends on consistency, otherwise, you know, otherwise why should be learning? And she did say it's a standard poodle, which I've heard have, I wanna say a certain kind of intelligence, maybe more of a recognizably human intelligent qualities than other breeds, but can you speak to that? Are there, is there a range of cognitive abilities across breed? Oh, Catherine, you've come back to that old chestnut of a question that people always ask, or rather phrase as a statement in an upturned tone of voice, because everybody has read this online and elsewhere that this breed is smarter than that breed. Well, here's the thing, as a scientist, as a professor, there is no evidence one way or another. Nobody has ever done a study, relative intelligence of different breeds of dog. Should we do it? You know, well, if somebody gave us the funding for it, we would certainly do it, but on the other hand, it doesn't strike me as particularly important, so I've never made it a particular priority. Interesting, interesting, because I know there's a lot of work going on, sort of genomically and genetically on breed characteristics, and it's extending into behavior. Because would you call cognition an extension of behavior or are cognition and behavior separate? Oh, absolutely. But the thing is, Catherine, you're quite right, you're quite right that there is behavioral genetics going on in dogs and in dog breeds. Behavioral genetics tends to focus on behaviors that are fairly clear-cut, right?  And that's very genetic and people have identified genes that are involved in that. And it's very clear-cut. Whereas intelligence, cognition, problem-solving, reasoning, well, that's extremely much more difficult to pin down and surely involves a very large number of genes. So it's always gonna be at the far stickier end of thing that you could try and investigate from a genetic point of view. I also, it seems like it might have more of a human overlay to how we define it too. That too. One thing I can say to contradict myself is that in the history of the world, there have been, I think, four or five dogs that have been proven to understand more than 100 words of human language. Oh, wow. Four or five dogs and a whole history of dogs, 15, 20,000 years, that have clearly shown that they understand hundreds of words. Every single one of those dogs has been a border calling. Oh, interesting, interesting. I love watching them work. So I think we're about at the end of our session here. Was there anything else you wanna leave our viewers with in terms of sit, stay, and lock down with pets? So I would encourage people just to enjoy their dog's presence and company.   But there's also so much, especially because we're all living under kind of constrained circumstances, so let's not set ourselves challenges. You know, let's just enjoy the beauty of K9 Company. I think that's a great place to wrap it up. Enjoy the beauty of K9 Company. Thank you so much, Clive. It's been great talking to you again. I wanna thank Victoria and Elizabeth for sitting in so patiently and adorably in on this. There are more future social distancing socials coming every Tuesday and Thursday through Future Tense. And thanks for joining us today. Bye, everyone.