American issues take two, I'm Jay Fidel, this is Think Tech, and we're talking about polls today. How are the polls being affected? How will they affect the election two weeks away and beyond? So let's talk to our regular co-host, Kim Apachele, our regular contributor, Stephanie Stull Dalton, and our special esteemed guest who joins us from a hotel lobby somewhere in the former USA, Jeffrey Portnoy. I welcome all of you to the show. I'm not sure the folks in Warsaw really care about the election, so I don't know why we're doing the show. Well, we'll find a reason. Though the first question is- You're talking about polls, right? Yeah, polls, why- Oh, polls, I got it, I'm sorry. This is gonna be a very co-efficient show. I'm a little slow on that one. Kim, let me go to you first. What are the polls saying right now about the elections two weeks away? Well, it shows that those Democrats that had a more comfortable margin of favorability in September, that margin is eroding. Although many of the Democrat candidates for Senate and governor of various states, they still are up two points, maybe three points, but they enjoyed a higher margin back in September, so they are tightening. And I'm starting to think that, the recent attention on the polls and advertising the fact that these are neck and neck is not to have Democrats get complacent, stay at home thinking, okay, the polls show that my candidate is gonna win, therefore I don't need to go out and vote. I think they're doing this on purpose to say, it's a horse race, it's neck and neck, and every vote is required and needed if you want to preserve democracy. That's the sense I'm getting on all the CNN and MSNBC type shows. You know, and Herrick, then your answer is the notion that the polls want to control the vote. That's what you're saying. Well, I'm saying that the media that takes the polling data is spinning it. Yes, it's not the polls that are doing it, it's the media that's reporting on the polls, and I'm seeing some spin room effects going on here.  Do we know who the pollsters are? Do we know how they conduct these polls? Are we supposed to attach the credibility of the media to the polls? In other words, if you believe the media, then therefore you believe the polls. And one of the thing is there are a lot of pollsters out there. Some of them are more left than right and some of them are more right than left. You have to pick a poll, don't you? How do you do that? And how do you know it's a good poll? Well, the polls in general are considered the most successful political development in the century. And that presumably they show us what it is that the public wants. So I suppose some of the polls are gonna show that better or be more to your liking than others. But as I watched it on the shows, so CNN, et cetera, I mean, they always identify the pollster. Sometimes they even interview the pollster. There's usually a date on the poll. Usually some numbers, usually about 1,000. They've got all of that statistics down about all the methodology for how many they need to contact and get data from so they can run it through their algorithms. So presumably they give voters the chance to compare where they stand against where others stand that they wouldn't have otherwise. I mean, it really was a breakthrough from what information was available before. So it's a very powerful tool and it can influence decision-making and it can influence voters, you know? And they also can give journalists a boost. They give journalism a huge boost, the polls do. So their tools for journalists to really make a difference in the way they're reporting and the specifics that they're providing for the public. And the other advantage of them is that they keep government honest, I guess, or not. But I mean, all of these advantages and features of polls and how their contribution to our democracy can be tweaked other ways. Now we know, now we know that the misuse that can come in too. So you're asking, well, what's the misuse? Do we know who these people are that are doing the polling? And I don't think we do get any systematic introduction to, you know, who they are and how good they are. They just say that it will be the journalists, you know, this is a really good poll from Quinniaciac or wherever it is that the poll is from. So I don't think that answers the question. I don't know if there is an answer question. I'm thinking maybe we don't know the answer, Jay. We're not getting enough information. It's a good question. Jeff, Jeff, do you think polls are really necessary? No, I think they're ridiculous. I think they're ridiculous. And I don't think anybody that thinks they serve any purpose, sorry, Stephanie, is just dead wrong. First of all, we know from 2016 that the polls are not accurate anymore. They couldn't have been more inaccurate. And they're inaccurate in state after state and in race after race. They're inaccurate because the 100 years of polling, whatever Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, doesn't work anymore. Some huge percentage of people don't have phones, you know, landline phones, they have cell phones and they don't respond to pollsters. And they're a very significant part of the community either because they don't want to respond. And we saw that with Trump voters and we continue to see how undercounted they are because they don't believe in those people and so they will not respond. Or they're of a different generation and don't think they're of any value. I think they hurt. I think they hurt because I think they give out misleading information about how close or unclose a race may be. And yeah, I mean, the last, it's a horse race, right? People can't wait to get the polls because the polls apparently give us a snapshot. That's what the pollsters say, right? It's a snapshot of the days they took the poll. And then when the polls are totally wrong three days later they go, well, we told you there was a snapshot. So, you know, they're fun to talk about and they do show shifting voting sentiments, quote unquote. But if I had to bet over under on any particular poll, I think I'd probably take anything that said the polls will be off by three or 4% at least. Yeah, you make it sound like a horse race and maybe it is a horse race. Maybe it's a big bet. It's the national paramutual. See if you agree or disagree with it. You got a better chance betting on a horse race. So, Tim, how much does it affect you when they say that the Democrats were ahead or more ahead, say in the house a couple of weeks ago and less ahead now? Does that affect you? Does that affect your vote? You think it affects anybody's vote? What's the point? I think it's a field-goed moment if your candidate's up in the polls. It's a field-good moment. Does it affect you? Sure, I mean, if the data shows that your candidate is way ahead, you may just stay at home going, they got it. It's in the bag. I don't need to disrupt my shopping time or I don't need to disturb my personal time after work. I don't need to vote because my candidate's gonna glide through the finish line. I'm with Jeff. I mean, the sampling is horrible. Who has a landline anymore? I don't know anyone, but apparently they're out there. The bottom line is the data's horribly skewed and sure enough, I mean, 2016 was the major year where they got it completely wrong. And so there's a lot of damage to the credibility of pollsters. And that's evidence by saying the margin of error is at least two and a half to 3%. That's a wide margin. That's huge. Or sometimes over 4%, they'll tell you that. Yeah, I mean, why have a poll if you're gonna have a swing of 4%? That makes no sense to me. So Tim, I asked you how you react, but I'd like to ask you now how you think the electorate reacts. Some of them may not be as akamai as you and they see the polls the same way. Do you think it changes the effect? Does the effect have a change on the election? In other words, okay, they may stay home because they think their side already won. Or they may say, oh, gee, I gotta vote right now to help my side or oh, gee, I don't believe any of this. I mean, how does the average person in average middle America react to a poll? I'm gonna go to Jeff's statement. I completely agree with Jeff about the mega GOP going, we don't trust these people, we don't like these people and these people report fake news. And so there we're not gonna participate or we're going to lie on purpose. We're gonna skew the polls. So it's a sabotage effect. And then you're right, the Gen Zs, do they see any value of the polling? Maybe the millennials do, but Gen Z, I don't think they do. And certainly Gen Z, they don't have a landline. So you're not getting the opinions and how they're leaning towards a candidate because they all have cell phones. So I'm not up on polls at all. I may be a little more lenient than Jeff is on the criticism of polls, but I'm not for them either. I think they're a bad idea. I mean, I think they serve two purposes. One, I think internal polling is a good thing done by a candidate. And I've been involved in a lot of elections where I see internal polling compared to external polling and they don't match all the time. And in fact, most of the time they don't match at all. But what polling has become, and if you get a thousand texts a day like most of us do, it's become a fundraising tool. Every day I'm getting polls now from every Democratic candidate you can think of, uh-oh, we're down to 2%, we need another 25 bucks. That's the only value of polls now is to get money. Frankly, as far as I'm concerned. Yeah, well, that's a really good point. I get the same email and it turns me off completely. I would never give money and I wouldn't believe the polls to either. So Stephanie, let's, well, let me ask you this. Do you think that polls had a big effect in the 2016 election by which Trump was elected, arguably? And do you think that whatever effect they had in those days is gonna be repeated here while was repeated in 2020 and will be repeated in the midterms coming in two weeks? Well, I think people are, as you all have said, I mean, the polls are less valuable. I mean, as long as we don't know the sampling frame, we need to be informed as much by that and even more than knowing what the standard error of measurement is, even for these close races, but we need to know where they're getting that information from, we need more information to understand if they can be helpful to us to know what is the picture that's out there.  Nobody's filling, nobody's due diligence here on what's the quality of this data, okay? I mean, junk in, junk out. Data depends on having high quality input. So where are they getting all this information from and how can they even begin to be useful for us? And so, I mean, like what is written about them is that they're very important to the whole democratic process, but like everything else we've got that's so important is now being shown to be double edged sword. They're learning how to use these things whichever way you want. Yeah, they're tools. And so is social media. And I wanna go to social media now with you, Tim. The polls, and I think Jeff's point was really good about how they have become fundraising instruments, but social media has entered the arena and if we were not aware of it back in 2016 and reading retrospectively, we should be aware of it now. Tim Snyder, his book a couple of years ago was The Road to Unfreedom. And in that book, he goes on at great lengths about exactly what Trump did for social media and how we worked with Cambridge Analytica, how we worked with Putin, how Putin used the Internet Research Agency and created these phony posts and retweets by the millions, by the billions actually, and bots all over the American landscape. And this is 2016 I'm talking about. We may not have been aware of it at the time. I don't think the press caught onto it right away. And then we find later that that's what happened and Snyder wrote this really interesting review of it, scary review of it. And then as I recall, back in the middle of Trump's administration, it was made clear that whatever was happening with social media, trying to affect changes in public sensibilities was still happening and did happen in 2020 and will happen in 2022, a couple of weeks from now. So this is, I guess you could say it's a kissing cousin of Paul's because it's an attempt to get you in your bubble and it's an attempt to change your sensibilities to extend possible. So what about social media? How would you compare social media with polling, Tim? I wanna compare social media with polling. You know, Jayce, now and then you ask me a question I don't have an answer to. I will say that the service of the former head of security of Twitter, and I'm trying to look up his name and I can't recall it, he did great service to all of us to say what Twitter has in control and what things they don't know about. And to a certain degree, they don't know still how many fake bots they have in their accounts. Elon Musk said I'm not gonna go through with the deal because you can't disclose the number of fake bots. My deal, my purchase of Twitter was contingent upon I think 5% or less. So we don't know to what degree fake bots exist. We don't know degree Eastern block countries or Russia has infiltrated Facebook, Twitter in the 2022 election. We know what they did in the 2016 election and the amount of bots and fake messages and fake accounts was astronomical. And did it help Donald Trump? You bet it did. So social media is as important as the election in 1960 between Nixon and Kennedy. It was a tool that was never used before quite effectively. Kennedy took advantage of it, Nixon didn't. Social media is no different in those days and whoever can grab hold of the most effective way of advertising on Twitter and Facebook, better their campaign does. Usually you spoke before the show about, one second, Jeff, you spoke before the show about algorithms that are used by social media and how they tend to keep us or connect us with our respective bubbles. Can you talk about that now? Sure, well, it was highly used in 2016. The public now is aware of the term and that is you're going through your social media and you click on a news article and it's pertaining to a certain specific subject and you click on another one that's a little bit similar. Now Facebook and Twitter knows exactly what you're interested in. They start crafting other news stories that are related to that and start sending them to you. You start seeding them on your feed and lo and behold, you start clicking on those and before you know it, you're now considered either a liberal Democrat or a mega-GOP and Facebook and Twitter are going to feed to that and you're going to get more of what you like, more of which is filtered for you and you now found yourself in your own silo, your own bubble with other fellow mega-GOP or liberal Democrats. Well, Jay, that algorithm, we don't know enough about that. They're not reporting out on how they're using it and it may be that we are into a synonymous situation here. The overlap of social media with polling. We don't know, but that those algorithms may be feeding the polls or polls may be resourcing algorithms. Or I want to add one point. You know, I don't know about you guys but I have on occasion sat at phone banks for given candidates. And the rule in the phone bank was you don't call the other side. You don't call people on the other side of the question of the election because you won't be able to convince them. You call people either on your side of it or people in the middle and you're trying to confirm them to be sure to go down and vote for the person they think will win, that is the person you think they will vote for. So it's the confirmation aspect. And I think we have to build that into the discussion. The polls were to confirm. Likewise, the social media has been designed through these algorithms to confirm. It's the same principle as the phone bank. Anyway, Jeff, you were gonna say. Well, I was gonna say that social media reports the polls and so it gives them much greater import than they would ordinarily have. Most people don't read the newspaper. And so they're not gonna see the poll results or they watch a particular television station whether it's left or right and they see the polls that that particular outlet wants to produce. But on social media, you can find every single poll you're interested in. And I think social media drives whatever importance polls have. And I think they have importance. I just think it's all negative importance. I mean, in many ways, I think drives people to either vote or not vote, as Tim said. I mean, if you candidates up by eight points, you'd rather go to Walmart. So you try to make a horse race between one or 2% and hope that the people on either side decide, you know what, my vote's important. But unfortunately, just take a look at the number of people who vote.  And that's another problem with polls. It doesn't accurately reflect who's going to vote. Who's your preference means nothing. It's not your preference. Your preference means nothing. It's who you're actually going to cast a ballot for. That makes the difference. Well, there are all these experts out there, you know, who give... Like us? Like us? No, no, we don't give counsel to candidates. No, no, but experts, you said. Experts who give counsel. Oh, okay. And there are all these experts who give counsel about polls, you know, they're well-paid, they're part of the campaign team, for sure. And there are experts in social media. And it's, you know, the same idea. Let's change the way the vote will come out.  It is really scary how powerful social media and the bots and the algorithms and these retweets coming from Vladimir Putin and Cambridge Analytica and Mark Zuckerberg and Donald Trump all in a little cabal in 2016. And it was, it worked. And I don't think we should forget for a minute, they were using, what do you want to call it, the social psychology to them, to the end's degree and using polls and social media in order to swing the vote. And that still exists. You know, I'm reminded that there were a couple of years in the middle where Congress was going to have, going to take some action. They were going to investigate this. They were going to have hearings. But nobody knew how to frame a question. Mark Zuckerberg could dance around and confuse them. And nobody could figure out exactly how this worked, either on the Cambridge Analytica level or on the internet research level or on the social media level. Yeah, but don't forget, and I don't have the statistics in front of me, but correct me if I'm wrong. But 45 to 48% of the electorate is locked in. Regardless, you're talking about four or 5%. I don't know what percentage of races are 52 to 48 or 50. Most of them are, you know, or else they're over before they even start. So the polls to me are a joke anyway, because 46, 47% are already in one camp or another when the race starts. And you're fighting for that 5% that haven't yet said they've made up their mind. I mean, that's my view. Okay, well, let me go further on, you have you. Congress has shown an interest, shown a concern about this, recognizing that these ways- Which Congress? The same 90% that get elected every two years? Those people? The same Congress. Oh, okay. They have not, you know, they have not done anything. But my question to you is, could you legislate a solution to this? No. Could you say we don't want polls? Could you say we don't want social media on political issues? What happened to free speech at the congressional level? No, what happened to free speech? I mean, you're talking to the wrong guy. As horrible as all these things may have turned out to be, it's free speech. It's not the speaker, it's the reader or the listener. Some readers are incapable of reading. Well, I understand, but, you know, they can listen. Yeah, go ahead, I'm sorry. No, no, no, that's okay. I'm interrupting you. I'd like to highlight a point you just made. And that is the electorate is locked in. But why is that? I mean, in years past, you know, people's attitudes and values would change depending on what news was coming in, coming in about a candidate or a policy change that candidate had. But what's happening in our electorate now is, in some ways, politics has become the way of religion. And how often do you change your religion? Not very much. And so the more embedded politics are, and as akin to a religion, you're talking about a very narrow slice of electorate that may change their opinion about one candidate or one party, one policy or another. I mean, I think that's why polling is kind of useless now. I mean, just look at Herschel Walker. All the stuff that's come out. Correct. The polls haven't moved that much at all. And in fact, some polls haven't moving in his direction. That's what tells you. I think that's a really good point. Here's something really dramatic. And the polls haven't reflected it to the people who are responding to the polls are oblivious to Herschel Walker. So you can't give credit to a poll that doesn't respond to an obvious change in circumstances, which takes me to my last area of discussion with you guys. And I'll go to Stephanie on this. Stephanie, we have two weeks left. And if you recall, the Hillary Clinton affair with the emails and James Comey with the investigation at the FBI on or off or off or on, it did have an effect arguably. Not so much because he turned on the investigation or turned it off, but because the social media and the polling capitalized on it. And everyone got on the bandwagon and attacked Hillary Clinton and arguably that had an effect on the 2016 election. So query, we're two weeks out now. How likely is it that we're gonna have another Hillary Clinton James Comey affair either in the polls or the social media or in an interactive exchange between the two of them? Well, maybe polls are doing more than we ever thought they were supposed to do. I mean, in other words, you said that we're no changes in the polls after all that came out about Walker. But that may be what the polls are now needing to be considered to do, which is to bring us information that we didn't have otherwise. That actually it doesn't matter anymore. And all of these accusations, everything certain categories are across the board or whatever, that people are not influenced by that. They're voting for their power base. That's all. Let me ask you this, let me ask you this, Stephanie, what about the delay factor? So I see what goes on with Herschel Walker and nobody calls me for a week. I just don't get a call. The poll is not recognizing any change in my thinking. So we don't have the result yet in polls from Herschel Walker. You remember, you remember, you remember, and it's so true, so sadly, Donald Trump's famous quote that he could walk down Fifth Avenue in New York and shoot somebody and he wouldn't lose a vote. I'm paraphrasing. That's where this country is right now. That's every race. Yeah, what about the bus with Billy Bush on it when they come up and right there on the screen, we see a movie of a person that is completely moral-less. So I think that there's information to be had, maybe not what we expected, but I was gonna say that there's bias in these polls and where do they report on the bias of the polls? And as you were saying, Jay, who you were supposed to call at the call bank. So what role does that play in? What's the control on that and what's the measure of it that should be reported with the poll? And then of course, the huge big constructs that have to be considered are the validity of the poll and the reliability of the poll. Up until, go ahead, I'm sorry. I was just gonna say, because of reliability you've already discussed under the issue of who's going actually to vote. So after they report to the pollster, do they ever go out to vote? So what's the reliability? And that deals with the poll. 20 years ago, elections were decided on real issues. You know, the Cold War or the economy, and I mean really the economy. Now, since Trump, they're decided on personalities, one, and social issues, second. That's what this whole thing has turned into because of Donald Trump. Yes, there's always a few other things that come up. This election is between abortion and Trump. Really, I mean, that's what it's come down to.  It's whether you believe in Trump, or you don't believe in Trump. I mean, and so it's not good for democracy. No. It's like voting whether you like Nero or not as to whether the Roman Empire continues. Yeah, let me add one thought to all of this and that is you talked about the First Amendment, Jeff. You know, when the First Amendment is so problematic as it is now, you wonder if it's sustainable. And the whole thing about crime, fire and crowded movies theater, because there's an alarm quality about it. Well, how about crime, fire, and a crowded social media where the result of the election can be dependent on that? It's equally alarming. And I'm afraid to tell you that I think the First Amendment is under this kind of reverse echo effect attack. We don't have enough time. We don't have enough time to debate that. But where we are? I said 20 years ago, I want to be more accurate. We're back to the early fifties in the McCarthy era where you're either a communist or you're not and that's how you vote. Seriously. So I think we're really out of time because we have another show to follow. Let me go to one. Oh, it can't be anywhere as good. The next show can't be anywhere near as good as this one. Cancel it. No, I would certainly agree at least in part. So, Tim, give us a closing comment, will you? How do I do that after what I just heard? Closing comment is this. Our polling is, our polling now is being used as news entertainment. The problem with the news is it's become blended with entertainment and over opinions blended with news. And that's the value of polling now. I think it's useless. And I guess if you are going to use polling then focus in on registered voters versus the term likely voters. Likely voters means nothing to me. So if you're going to poll, poll those who are actively registered. That's my final thought. Okay. And Jeff, how about you? Can you do something in 10 or 15 seconds? No, I have nothing more to say because I want to get on to the next show. Of course you do. Stephanie, I know you feel the same way, but why don't you make a closing statement? I can make a call. I want to just say that one of the arguments for polls is that totalitarian government do not ever take polls because they don't want any of this information out. They don't want voters to be able to compare or to know what's out there. But I think that that's all turning around now because it's not servicing our democratic republic in the way that it was assumed that it was going to do. I only want to add one thought before we close, and that is we have two weeks to go. And if I was a Maga Republican or one of those counselor people, advisor people in the Maga Republican camp, I would try to think of something akin to the email issue with Hillary Clinton and let that go at the last minute and let it go in polls, let it go in social media or in an interaction between the two so I can wreck the election and get both houses no question. We'll see what happens. You mean the Hunter Biden indictment? Is that what you're waiting for? I think I mean exactly that. Okay, you guys, thank you very much. This is Think Tech Hawaii, and we're talking about American issues. Take two, we'll see you next week, aloha. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn and donate to us at thinktechhawaii.com. Mahalo.


Hello everyone, welcome to this special Cube conversation at the Intel Tech Lounge at the Sundance Film Festival. I'm John Furrier with theCUBE. We're here with Ari Kushner, who is the founder and managing partner of Missing Pieces, doing some really amazing work on the future of filmmaking. It's got a great entrepreneurial spirit and creative desire to deliver a great product. Welcome. Thank you. So talk about Missing Pieces and what's going on in your world since context. Take a minute to explain what you're working on. Well, the premise is to be at this intersection of storytelling and technology and to make stuff people actually want to watch. And VR and AR are parts of it, but not the whole. So I know some of the conversation focuses on VR and we're just as excited about where storytelling is headed in terms of what technology allows us to do. But the key for me is I'm just passionate about a new thing comes out and I want to figure out how to make something really great but meaningful and powerful with that. We were talking before you came out about filmmaking, I'll see training in the discipline, I'll see variety of other things. But I want to get your perspective. We've been talking about this new generation. What does that mean to you when you hear that new generation, a new creative is coming? What does that mean to you? Yeah, I feel like I've ridden the wave of the thing as it's happened, I mean, and the company has too. So I went to film school in the late 90s and it was the first time you could buy the first final cut and the first wave of that so you could make our little movies on the weekend you no longer needed even to go to the school itself to borrow the equipment that was revolutionary in 1999. And then 2005 when we started thinking about the company, Vimeo, YouTube, Video iPod all come out within five months of each other towards the later part of the year and it's a revolution. It's clear that the distribution, not only can we make it and edit it in our laptops we can put it out and millions of people could watch it. And that was the first time that was possible and it was revolutionary. I think it still is to some degree. So we've just, you know, as it evolves what I see is that it's not, I've always felt like it's not enough to make the sausage as they say it, you know, the directors that I, the talent that I signed now like the project that we have here at Sundance, Young Jake. Young Jake is a great example of a creative who you can't fit in a box. He's a internet artist. He's a rapper. He's an interactive video maker. He did an app called emoji.ink and he does celebrity emoji portraits. He has 100,000 followers on Instagram so he can command his own audience. So when a brand or an agency comes to him it's a very different approach than when they come for a very straight up work for hire, direct as commercial kind of thing. That is the future. I mean, the future is about having a passionate audience, making things for that audience, understanding it and being able to communicate with them on a daily basis or weekly basis in a powerful way, right? Through story. I mean, you're right on the wave and the waves are getting bigger. One of the things we do, we do a lot of tech coverage and we see this in cloud computing where software changed from waterfall to agile and now the craft's coming back on the software side but still now software is eating the creative world because now a new wave is coming. So speak to that because you're, this is, you can almost look at the old ways you mentioned the commercials and films almost like the waterfall. Craft, craft it up and you ship it and you hope it works well. But now you have this new model of iteration where it's more agile creative. How do you do agile like your artist and not lose the craft? Yeah, well it's a challenge. Look, I've had so many opportunities in our 10 plus year career to kind of go in that direction of just like quantity over quality and we just could never do it. I mean, we're just not cut out for it but at the same time, I never ignore how to optimize the content based on data and based on what the landscape is looking like. So an important thing for example that we consider in every project is context. Like what, how is this project gonna be released? Oh, it turns out that it's really a big social media push, it's not a TV thing or it turns out specifically it's Facebook versus Instagram and that's a very different type of edit and a very different type of way you start the video because you've got a certain, even a different format and a different way of looking at the content. So you start to get into and then you start to iterate and look at the different ways in which you can repurpose and re-release the content but customize it for each thing. So you get into this really interesting place where the data is driving the story and the feedback is driving the story in real time. And the audience is part of the journey. Yes, and the comments and the way in which people are taking the thing that you made and re-interpreting it is really interesting and part of the story. Yeah, I mean, you trigger a lot of emotion in me when we're talking because as an entrepreneur, I started media business as turning into it and no one's ever seen this kind of media business before but I have no media training of any kind. You could be a science major. So there's certain and I've observed that there's dogma in the journalism business and this, but how dare I challenge that or others. You're doing the same thing. And so I want to ask you, what is the dogma of the old world? Because the naysayers are usually the ones with the dogma say, oh, that'll never work. So you're on the front end of this new trend but you kind of have visibility into what they're thinking. What is that? The dogma is the whole like, there's only big name directors and it's a certain caliber of work and that craft is the ultimate thing and that you just have to make the thing great and it'll do the thing that it needs to do without any thinking in terms of context or media buy or how it can actually become a socially engaged piece. So the thing that we're always fighting is some version of that. And then because we came from a scrappy place but we're now a pretty legit thing, I think people, some people still be like, well, that's kind of like, the problem solving sometimes gets interpreted as scrappy which is a word I really don't like. And I think we- It's compliment on one hand but some people look at it as an insult. Oh, he's just scrappy. He's not legit. You never want to be the cheap solution. You want to be the solution that people call because nobody else can solve this problem for you. And I think there's a strand of the company that's like the kind of like pick up the phone and we'll figure it out and the impossible project that nobody else can do. And then there's another strand where it's just like you just want to make stuff people actually want to watch. How hard is that? You know, the thing where you could just buy the media and expect the results is trickier and trickier. I mean, you could be different and innovative but that might not be good but if you're good doing it, you're differentiated and you're innovating. That's right. What's the filmmaking track on that line because certainly there's a lot of innovation and with innovation comes failure but people are trying to be different and being different actually is a good thing. What are some of the trends that you're seeing where people are having some success and where are people stumbling? Yeah, that's a good, I mean what I see is the things that do well take cultural context into account and again speak to the people in that way. So it's like a feedback loop that it's creating with its own audience and we almost always, there's almost always a time in the process when we're dealing with an agency or a brand where if things start to go a little bit like too much in a direction that you all wanted to say somebody usually me or someone will say, look if we make these changes or if we go in this direction, we won't want to share it and if we don't want to share it, nobody's going to want to share it. So that becomes a key thing while as before you could sort of get away with some of that. Now it's like, well, it has to pass a certain kind of litmus test in terms of like, are you comfortable sharing this thing because it speaks to you or not? All right, so I got to ask you the hard question. We're here at the Intel Tech Lounge. Obviously Intel is doing a lot of tech things. They're trying to get all this new tech and I see that on, whether you watch the NFL playoffs with the camera angles and the games on basketball games. You see in them using the first power technology. We're actually working on an Intel Olympics VR related project that got a little tease at CES so I can just say that. Yeah, so what's the tech? What's the cool new game changer in your mind as a tool that you need to be more successful and other artists could use? Well, you tend to, yeah, I mean, I think we've heard... Four horsepower, more compute, more... No, I mean, it's really the return. What happened with the AR was really interesting which was everyone realized, oh, the phone's already in our pocket while the headset needs to be something that really needs to be standalone, it needs to be $200. You know, there's different kinds of headsets, of course, that do different kinds of things but that's an extra hardware. The phone we already have in our pocket so everyone started taking AR seriously, including the big players and what that allowed was a rethinking of what the possibilities with story would be. So in some ways this last year has been a readjustment and a rethinking of, well, what can you do with the phone that you've already got in your pocket in terms of expanding the storytelling or placing a story in the middle of your living room, a layer, using the phone as a window and a layer but I'm equally as excited about what's coming in VR and interactive VR, room-scale VR. The project that we have here is an interactive 360 project with the phone. It's called On My Way and the artist is Young Jake and the original conceit of it is it's Jake, there's four jakes in a car and every time you move the phone to a different Jake, it changes the Jake. So as soon as it passes the quadrants of the four quadrants, it kinda swaps the Jake and that creates a really fun and interesting thing and he actually designed it for the phone vertical because that's the way most people are gonna experience it but it's playing on a headset as well. Well, you're definitely new creative, love chatting with you. Final call, I have two questions. First one is Sundance, what's the story this year? What's your report? If you had to go back and from your friend to ask you to give him a report, hey, what happened? Ari, what's going on Sundance this year? A combination of really interesting high-end VR projects, some of them leaning into this kind of like more psychedelic, less narrative-driven stuff which I really like, kind of like really embracing the fact that it's another world and taking you there and then the AR stuff, there's a thing called Tender, Tender AR or Tender Tundar which is a play on Tinder by Tender Clause which uses augmented reality and emotion and machine learning, everything that you could hope for in a really interesting way so that's kind of showing you where it's going. So I think those two things. The psychedelic's interesting, I always, I mean, this is kind of tangent but I've been saying on the CUBE interviews, I think we're gonna have a digital hippie revolution and it's coming, I mean, you can feel it. It's a different culture.  Yeah, and there's a piece about this female shaman that rose through the tribe in Ecuador and became the first ever female shaman of her tribe and there's a piece called Chorus that within it, which is super weird and trippy and almost has no plot but is amazing. All right, now you gotta run. Quick sound by, what are you working on? What's exciting you these days? Share a little bit about what's happened. A variety of, you know, again, it's the full spectrum of storytelling so it's not one thing. It's really pushing experiential, pushing branded content, pushing original content. We're getting a lot more into that game long form series, VR series, really that's kind of the next way for the company is to set foot much stronger in the original space and create our own original IP, our own original content. Awesome, Ari Kushner, managing partner and founder of Missing Pieces, check them out, a lot of great work and again, there's a whole new game changing from storytelling to the tech, the collision between technology and artistry and creative is happening. It's here at Sundance at the Intel Tech Lounge. I'm John Furrier with theCUBE Conversation here at Sundance, which is part of our coverage of SiliconANGLE Sundance 2018. Thanks for watching.


University of Utah, Dr. Travis Mack. Dr. Mack is the Associate Professor with tenure at the University of Utah's Department of Orthopedic Surgery. He graduated from the Yale University School of Medicine, has done postgraduate education and training at the sports clinic in Hanover, Germany, hospital for special surgery in New York, New York, and the University of Ghent, Belgium. Dr. Mack is the medical director and head team physician for the Utah Jazz NBA basketball team and also is currently the associate editor for clinical orthopedics and related research in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Welcome, Dr. Mack. Thank you so much for inviting me to speak with you today. I'd like to specifically thank the Steadman-Philipon Research Institute and the USOPC for allowing you to present on the relationship between hip morphology, function and injury prevention. The elite athlete hip playing field is very different from that of the recreational athlete. FAI syndrome surgery occurs more typically in higher level athletes when they're younger. It occurs more often in males increased bilateral surgery frequencies. It is more often found in soccer, hockey and football, as well as cutting sports that occur at a younger age oftentimes result in surgery with higher level athletes. Higher level male athletes have a two to eight time risk of cam deformity, and this is specifically notable in hockey, basketball and soccer during early adolescence. FAI syndrome surgery fortunately results in approximately 74% or even higher return to sport. In my own and other experiences, this can be as high as 90-95% return to sport at the same level. Unfortunately, over 90% of individuals have an contralabeled injury that's noted at the time of surgical intervention. Males and FAI syndrome with sporting participation has been suggested to have an increased premature hip risk of osteoarthritis and this is something we would like to avoid. FAI syndrome surgery and sports participation requires us to also look at the individual sports and athletes in different positions. Hockey goalies have a notable severe internal rotation requirement and intraoperative simulated butterfly fly positions have been utilized to appropriately ensure adequate resections in these unique population individuals. And this is something we need to apply more commonly as it pertains to other sports. Female athletes have improved outcomes as compared to non-athletes following hip arthroscopy and this is obviously a positive perspective as it pertains to the group we're talking about today. We need to preserve and repair or placate the capsule in specific sports such as dancing, gymnastics and figure skaters and be very, very cognizant of either borderline or true dysplasia which allow these individuals to have super physiologic motion and be excellent at their sports but it also produces an increased risk of instability either a micro instability or post operative instability. Wrestlers may also fall into this group and we all need to pay close attention to that. Overhead athletes with FAI syndrome do very well fortunately after surgery. 97% have a return to sport which is excellent. Condrial injury unfortunately results in worse outcomes and some studies have suggested that because of this early intervention is important with individuals having symptoms less than three to six months should be having surgery with better outcomes as compared to those who wait longer. This video represents a patient of mine who had a large full think discontrol defect from the acetabular rim to the fovea representing 40% of his acetabular surface area. The goal of our research today is to try first to prevent this from occurring and second when it does occur to try to optimize the treatment so that we can improve the post operative prognosis of this young individual. The playing field of biomechanics form and function is important. Can we predict which athletes develop FAI syndrome based on the shape of their hip? Do athletes with abnormal hip anatomy compensate biomechanically? Should we operate in the asymptomatic athlete? Do certain athletes or sports create a hip at risk? Are there non-surgical measures that can mitigate this risk? And most importantly results of the data trying to answer the aforementioned questions. Can they be applied to screening a treatment program for these at-risk athletes? Shape modeling is also being used by our lab as well as others in attempt to objectify the diagnosis of FAI. We're trying to subgroup individuals with respect to sport and morphology and assess their severity as a percentile along a distribution curve. We're hoping this will allow us to template surgical resections and ideally optimize outcomes. Currently we're placing the femoral shape along what we call a hip T score and effectively mapping them as its variability in terms of severity in a volumetric fashion in three dimensions and comparing them to the relative current control shape which is a normal sphericity of the femoral head neck junction. Here's an example of mapping three different individuals along the control to the cam severity T score. We're hoping that this mapping technology allows us to start to quantitatively identify individuals and subdivide them into hips at risk. Of course it's not just a morphology it's also a function. With that we're then using motion capture analysis to qualify these individuals during athletic activity specifically the aforementioned sprint through the drop landing tests. We use EMG to record their muscle activity to quantify for neuromuscular and kinematic deficits. We're hoping to use this data to calculate true sport specific kinematics and we're doing this within different sports as not every sport is created equal nor is every individual within every sport. We're hoping this benefits our athletes by improving the understanding of the hip shape and biomechanical functions will ideally improve diagnostic accuracy and illuminate new treatment approaches. We're hoping that our results can inform the development of screening programs to identify at risk athletes and this data may support modification or elimination of sport specific training exercises that are currently employed to ideally promote muscle strength and kinematic control but may lead to symptomatic impingement and surgery. Ultimately our question is do athletes with abnormal hip anatomy compensate biomechanically and the answer is we believe yes but we're still studying this specific. The condor labral injury is specifically unique to the hip and that the concentricity of the femoral head and acetabulum is very different than any other joint in the body. Prior data suggests the condor restoration techniques may result in improved outcomes as compared to debreatment although ultimately the best scenario would be to not have the injury in the first place. We know microfracture amic and other condor restoration techniques have reasonable outcomes but unfortunately 98 percent of athletes that had hip arthroscopy had noted acetabular cartilage lesions and that was our data as well. Can we identify lesions pre-operatively using MRI if so can we stop these from progressing? We're hoping we can identify lesions that require treatment in a pre-operative status using a specific cartilage sequencing MRI. We're hoping we can optimize the treatment based on the size severity and location of the lesion and ultimately we're evaluating the role of the labrum and the condor labral junction regarding the progression of these injuries given the unique concentricity of the hip and the anatomy as a result of this. This MRI shows images of the hip that you saw previously. Notably he has subcondrocystic formation at the acetabular rim superiorly and anteriorly which has a negative impact on his post-operative outcome. It's something we'd like to avoid and if we can stratify this individual prior to this happening we can potentially impact the health of his hip for the long term and maintain his career as a professional snowboarder. Currently are trying to evaluate these types of condor injuries using two different types of cartilage specific sequences on MRI. One is called dual echo steady state or DES and the other is T1 row. We currently use a custom traction device to slightly distract the hip to allow us to specifically delineate between the femoral and acetabular cartilage. We do this on a three teslas semen's prisma and perform both sequences on each athlete. We get the athletes both from as football players, dancers, soccer players, basketball players and the cross players both male and female. We're evaluating them as freshmen and again as seniors to try to quantify the effects of sports specific injury or lack thereof on the asymptomatic athletes over a four-year collegiate period in each of those sports with the hope that we can identify at-risk individuals and improve our counseling of them during their sport. Moreover we are also trying to improve our ability to identify these condor and condor labral injuries using cartilage specific mapping. As a window to the future what we've identified currently is DES is much better and more consistent across different MRI machines and different institutions. Taking a single individual on two different machines with T1 row gives two different answers whereas on DES it's far more consistent and this is likely what we'll be using in the future but we will continue comparing both in our specific collegiate population. What about with the location of the condor labral injury? We evaluated this in a hundred of my own patients and what we found is it's very consistent. The image damage occurs between 12 and 3 o'clock in approximately 80 to 90 percent of our patients and the severity has the same location pattern. What this allows us to do is formulate a three-dimensional model and use finite element analysis to quantitatively calculate the effects of these condor labral injuries without actually having to injure patients or use or instrument on patients as in terms of our algorithms we can implement these algorithms in finite element analysis and evaluate what the potential effects will be. We performed this in a dysplastic hip using a large 15 millimeter defect in an area where we believe to be a hotspot it's more posterior than a typical FAI patient but the effects are still notable. What we found is decompression of certain areas while overload of other areas occurred and what we believe is the ultimately defects in certain areas in the subsequent transition of pressures in different areas may be why individuals get progression of osteoarthritis in the hip despite the concentricity. It's not a perfect hemisphere but rather there are undulations and pressure changes occur on an individualized basis. We then looked at an FAI model and looked at the role of contralaboral mechanics as far as the fluid and interstitial pressurization within the labrum and what we identified is one of the labrum's most important effects is controlling the interstitial fluid translation within the cartilage. Because of the concentricity of the femoral head in the acetabulum the fluid pressure within the cartilage is part of its ability to buffer the femoral head in the acetabulum during loading. When that fluid tries to squeeze out it is contained by the labrum itself and what that requires is an intact contralaboral junction. We found that the location of a defect significantly impacted the area of the pressurization within the cartilage resulting in higher loads in different areas. We also found that a labral tear resulted in significant increases in stress and strains and this isn't just with a full thickness defect but even with a contralaboral delamination that we see very frequently clinically that increased stress occurred when the labrum was involved even if the labrum and cartilage were delaminated together. What we concluded from that is preservation of the contralaboral junction was important. Transchondral strain catavaric evaluation has also been performed to ensure that this isn't just a biomechanical model but rather is applicable to human cadavers and that we can confirm our results. We took five human hip samples from four donors and cross sectioned them. We rotated to align the load vector plated them against a plexiglass window to control the femoral head in its normal anatomic position applied the load along a femoral neck axis. We used a speckle pattern to microscopically evaluate the transchondral tensile stresses and strains both within the cartilage the labrum and the bone. We statically loaded at one times body weight and then did a dynamic sinusoidal weight form and what you see is the very concentric hip controlling the normal patterns of tensile and shear stress loading with the exception of changes occurring at the chondralaboral junction on the top left of the cadaver. Specifically quantifying that what we identified were compressive and shear strains were highest near the osteocondral interface. Interestingly the tensile loads took a completely different trajectory. These were the highest near the articular surface of the cartilage and the normalized distance from the osteocondral interface was literally the opposite. Interestingly tensile stresses ultimately result in fissuring and cracking whereas delamination typically is due to compressive and shear stresses and those were at the level of the the chondralaboral junction. It is for this reason that we believe those chondralaboral delaminations occur. What we concluded from this data so far is that high strain chondralaboral junction exists and that chondralaboral preservation during labral pair is crucial. We used to completely remove the labrum from the acetabular rim and fortunately this has changed so now we're trying to preserve the chondralaboral junction and we believe based on our data that that is the most one of the most important things we can do surgically. In some cases it's not possible and we have to do things like label reconstruction but ideally if this can be avoided it ultimately probably will be better for the patients. As far as this impacting loading techniques what we found was dynamic loading may protect the cartilage and our suggestion so far is that cyclic loading may be more beneficial and safer and healthier in the post-operative phase than a static loading condition at least in the physical therapy realm. What about if prevention fails? Well we do have options microfracture, osteocondral autographed and allographed transplant as well as cell-based techniques have been utilized with good success. My perfect my preference for go-to as far as treatment for these is a single-stage arthroscopic amect which stands for autologous matric enhanced chondral transplantation. It allows single-stage arthroscopic implantation without pre-operative lesion detection which hopefully we're trying to avoid in the future and allow these to be detected detected early so our planning is more specific. Good results are preliminary and this is what it looks like in terms of the transplantation. This is cartilage that's removed from the femoral head at the level of the cam deformity prior to the osteocondroplasty and then retransplanted into the defect in the acid to the acetabulum and then added to grill factors and fixed with fibrin glue. As far as the data that supports this we've looked at the cartilage on the femoral head at the level of the cam in seven female and five male patients with mean ages of 33 and a BMI which is from the normal range. What we found is the viability of the time of isolation was approximately 52% but with a two-week culture it went up to 96% which is consistent with the growth factor mil-U which we applied in our lab. We're hoping that in the normal human environment we transplant these cells that they will have the same result with a 96% viability two weeks inside the body which will ultimately ideally anneal to the acetabular surface and allow us to truly restore these defects and ideally improve patient outcomes. Does any of this work was a question of mine and others and fortunately the answer is yes these are all preliminary studies without control groups or large numbers of patients but suggest studies would suggest that there are positive outcomes which can occur and it's definitely better than not treating them at all. Ideally we'd like to predict the future and stop it. We're hoping to use the biomechanics 3D acetabular and femoral morphology sport specific kinematics to allow us to modify sport specific activities, training regimens and reduce and eliminate symptoms and injury. A thorough understanding of conjural injuries and optimized treatment algorithms will be important and we're hoping to use clinical research including patient reported outcomes and cartilage specific imaging as a feedback on these algorithms. Last but not least remember the dreaded red dot the hip is attached to an athlete no matter how good we are at with our research and with the data-based algorithms that we have ultimate we have to listen to our athletes and if we are not helping them achieve what they want to achieve or feel like they need to then we need to reassess and question our ultimate results. Thank you so much for allowing me to be here today.