Welcome to Free Thoughts from Libertarianism.org and the Cato Institute. I'm Trevor Burrus. And I'm Aaron Powell. Joining us today is Naomi Schaefer-Reilly, weekly columnist for the New York Post and former Wall Street Journal editor and writer. She's the author of the book The New Trail of Tears, How Washington is Destroying American Indians. Welcome to Free Thoughts, Naomi. Thanks so much for having me. You're not a Native American yourself, correct? No, I'm not. I'm a member of the Jewish tribe. No, it's a different tribe, yes. Yeah, exactly. But what got you interested then in writing this book? Well, there are a couple of different things. But back when I worked at the Wall Street Journal, I was an editor and periodically I would try to commission pieces from other writers on the subject of Native Americans.  And I really was curious about what was going on. And so I typically got two responses from writers, either they didn't know or they said, I wouldn't touch that topic with a 10-foot pole. And so you can imagine that sort of got me even more curious. And in school we learned that, I mean, there isn't a lot of discussion of this, which I think is why your book is very important. But in school we learned about Native Americans, of course, and we learned that they were famously abused by the American government, most famously the original trail of tears, and then put on reservations. And then after that, we don't kind of learn anything, maybe wounded knee and some of the protests in the 60s, but we don't really learn that much about that. How do you think that has affected how we deal with the situation on reservations? Well, I think that's certainly true that most Americans don't know much about Native American history. Certainly nothing really after the turn of the 20th century. There was a story I put in my book from a college professor who was about to teach something to her students about American Indians, and she did a poll, and about half of her students apparently thought all Native Americans were dead. So I think that gives you some sense. I think that the fact that we don't have a good sense of this history has kind of led to two things. First, it's a lack of understanding about what a reservation is, which I'll get into in a few minutes, but the other thing I think it's led to is a sense that nothing can be done to help them, that essentially the history of war and forced assimilation that we put on these people has kind of rendered them helpless in this deeply tragic way, and nothing we can do today will be able to fix this problem. Before we get to what reservations are and the history of them and the history of how we got to the fairly negative point we're at today, can you maybe just give us the quick thumbnail sketch of what's bad right now? What are things like on these reservations? Yeah. Let me just sort of give you a little bit of a depressing statistical rundown. So American Indians are the poorest racial or ethnic group in the United States. Some of the reservations I visited had unemployment rates upward of 80%. American Indians are more likely than any other group to be involved in gang violence. Their youth are more likely than any other to have alcohol use disorders. Suicide is the leading cause of death for Native American boys aged 10 to 14. Native American women are two and a half times as likely to be sexually assaulted, and Native American children are twice as likely to be abused as the national average.  Specific professors about why that might be the case, you probably would hear something like it's a legacy of what we did to them, which seems like a sort of damaging narrative that's not very helpful and you push back against that. Right. I think that's definitely the case. It is a narrative of victimhood. It is about what we did to them, and it's not just things like putting them on reservations and taking them away from their land, but there are other points that they often make, especially when you bring up the issues of sexual assault and sexual abuse that go on. A lot of them claim that this is the fault of boarding schools. Many Indian children were sent away forcibly to boarding schools, which were specifically designed in many cases to force them to give up their language and learn English, and also to force them to give up their tribal customs. They also happened in some cases to be hotbeds of sexual abuse and sexual assault, and one of the things that I think probably is true is that the graduates of these schools then went back to these communities and they did not know how to interact in a normal way with other people, and that's probably one of the causes here of some of those statistics. On the other hand, I do think that the boarding schools kind of take a lot of the blame for everything that goes on, and in addition, as you said, it sort of leaves you with nowhere to go. You could say, you know, this is the fault of a history of policies, but then what? Is there anything that we can do to help these people get out of their tragic situation? And of course, we did do a lot of horrible things, the boarding schools and even more, but a lot of your book is about how we're continuing to do horrible things, to letting them thrive as communities in the form of different policies. So the first one you talk about in the book is private property and essentially the lack of it, which was shocking as a lawyer who does a lot of property rights stuff. Of course, I had no idea American Indian law was very complex, but how bad it is in terms of securing and using property on our reservations. Right. So most people, I think, don't really understand what a reservation is. They, of course, started as a way to simply push American Indians out of our way while we pursued, you know, manifest destiny. And we specifically, in many cases, chose the least valuable, least fertile land to put them on. What's odd now is that many Americans see reservations as a way of protecting American Indians. In fact, the way the reservation system works is this. American Indians don't own their land. Their land is held in trust by the federal government for them. And as a lawyer, you probably know the only other people that we hold things in trust for, generally speaking, are children or the mentally incompetent. So I think it's pretty shocking in the 21st century that this is the way we even talk about our American Indian policy. But the effect, essentially, of this land trust is that American Indians cannot buy and sell land among themselves without the permission of a bureaucrat in Washington. They can't go into a bank and get a mortgage. It's funny, people talk about housing shortage on reservations. And if you visit these reservations, they don't look like New York City. I mean, people are not crowded onto these reservations. So why the housing shortage? Because they can't get a mortgage to buy a home. So you have more and more people crowded into temporary temporary trailer homes, excuse me. And the final problem is that many Americans, if they wanted to start up a small business, use their home and their land as equity in order to do so. But again, American Indians do not have access to that capital. And finally, they also cannot develop natural resources on their reservation land. It's funny, as I mentioned, originally, this land was thought to be was thought to be unvaluable and infertile. But today, much of the country's coal, oil, and natural gas resources are actually located on Indian reservations. So there's this huge amount of untapped wealth on these lands that we do not allow them to develop or that Washington bureaucrats don't allow them to develop. Two questions about the response to this that I think are related. If things are this bad and they don't have the kind of basic legal rights that Americans do off of the reservation and these statistics paint the life on the reservations as so overwhelmingly bleak. First, why do we keep these reservations? Why not just give them the land and call it done? Because we clearly don't need the reservations to enable the U.S. government to spread across the land. The manifest destiny is kind of done. And then, relatedly, if it's that bad, why don't... Is there something stopping them from leaving? There's lots of places in America that they could move to. So with regard to the first question, the reservation arrangement is simply deeply entrenched in American law and it will be very hard to undo. But right now, I really don't think that there are enough factions that are looking to undo it. So as I mentioned, a lot of the American people simply think of reservations as a way to protect American Indians, to make sure that white people don't take their land. And I think a lot of the tribal leadership has actually also bought into this. It's funny the way they talk about how reservation life is so deeply connected to preserving tribal language and history and culture. Reservations were an invention of white people and now to talk to the tribal leaders, you would think that if we decided to undo the reservation system that somehow their culture and language would be in danger. To answer your second question, many Indians do leave the reservation. It's certainly not unheard of. But I think that there are a lot of things that are preventing them from leaving. First of all, the people who do leave are the most educated and the most aware of opportunities elsewhere, which leaves, of course, the most vulnerable people behind. But the second thing I think is simply the kind of geographic and cultural isolation that many of these communities experience. One of the things I tell people is that during my travels to different Indian communities over the course of about a year and a half, I began to understand the difference between rural poverty and urban poverty. And I think that if you go visit the South Bronx or some of the more impoverished sections of Los Angeles or Chicago, you'll meet people who are extremely poor and disadvantaged. But chances are that they will get on a subway or get in a car and they will see people who are wearing suits and going to jobs. If you go visit the Pine Ridge Reservation 100 miles from Rapid City, South Dakota, you might meet a young person where nobody in their family even has a high school degree. Nobody is employed. Nobody comes from a two-parent family. Alcoholism is rampant. The whole idea of middle-class America might as well be another planet for some of these people. And so I don't think there is that sense of being tempted to leave in the same way that you might see in an inner city. Your discussion of the lack of property rights and particularly the lack of collateral reminds me of Fernando De Soto's work about the sort of poorest slums of different cities and all the informal property rights that people do not have legal title to and so they can't use it for mortgages or collateral in places like Brazil and Kenya and India. Is it a similar type of situation? I think it is. I mean, I say in the book we have a third world country in the middle of the wealthiest nation on earth. You know, people will talk about there's actually a similar system in Canada called the reserve system and the first nations there have many similar problems. And one of the chiefs I was talking to there just said, you know, we basically have to have a cash economy because we cannot get credit. And so if you could imagine, you know, if the United States were forced to go back into that kind of system, you know, it would be all cash or bartering, which is ridiculous that this is the situation we have put these people in. With the nature of the property ownership, it seems like everyone kind of owns all the land and then they have to go through the Bureau of Indian Affairs to, I guess, authorize transfers between people or especially if anyone wants to buy land who's not a member of the tribe. Is this just a huge bureaucratic rigmarole that's a tragedy of the commons where everyone owns everything? And so therefore no one really kind of takes care of anything. So the problem is really two tiers. First, there's the issue of the land trust. And then there's the issue that much of the tribal land is also communally owned. That being said, there are individuals who have claims on land. And what happens with those individuals is that the Bureau of Indian Affairs interferes whenever they try to transfer, sell or buy land to each other. So for instance, I spoke to a man in Montana. He's part Crow, part Northern Cheyenne, and he and his neighbor had agreed that he was going to buy some land to graze some cattle on. He and his neighbor agreed on a price and then a representative of the Bureau of Indian Affairs came in and said, no, you can't do that because that's not fair market value. I'm trying to think of anyone else in any other regard ever encountering that if you, Aaron and I ever agreed upon selling something who was not on a reservation and the government coming in being like, you can't do that. So that would be, that would be astounding. Yes, minimum wage, I guess, for a piece of land. Yeah, it would be astounding. It's, it is kind of shocking. And the punchline, by the way, is that just before this had happened, the BIA had actually paid someone to do an appraisal of reservation land and had, I heard, specifically told the appraiser to jack up the appraisal of the land, so as, quote, not to screw the Indians, which is, of course, exactly what happened because they couldn't transfer this land. But there are 9000 employees at the Bureau of Indian Affairs who need something to do every day. That's approximately one employee for every 110 Indians living on a reservation. I liken it to each of them being kind of principal of a small school. And these are their awards whose lives they must interfere with. They make it very difficult for even the most basic economic activity to go on. One day when I was on the Pine Ridge Reservation, I was staying at this motel and I was supposed to drive one morning 40 miles to a local school to visit. And the diner at the motel was not open because it wasn't a hunting season. And so I got in my car, I figured, oh, I'll I'll just drive and I'll find a cup of coffee or something to eat along the way. I drove 40 miles and I did not see anything. Now, there are parts of the American West, obviously, where you can go a long way without seeing a McDonald's. But I think it's actually pretty hard to go this far without ever seeing anything. And I spoke to someone about this and they said, oh, well, there used to be a coffee shop across from the motel. But the BIA wouldn't let them put up a sign, so it had to close. If they said at the beginning, I think they had 80 percent unemployment. Yes. And so if they've got 80 percent unemployment and these kinds of basic transactions are, if not prohibited, then awfully hard to engage in. What does the day-to-day economic life for people living on a reservation look like? Like, how are they paying for their food? What are they doing with themselves? It's all basically government transfers. The federal government gives billions of dollars to Indian reservations for everything from housing to food to health care to education. The only jobs on reservations are essentially public sector jobs.  This leads to all sorts of secondary problems, which you also see in third world nations. For instance, of course, widespread corruption and nepotism. You know, if the best job on a reservation is being the third grade teacher and you're completely unqualified, but you happen to know someone on the tribal council, you will get that job. It leads to a complete undermining, of course, of quality in these positions. And the nepotism and the corruption go further than that. I spoke to one teacher who was telling me a couple of years ago, she had an eighth grade student who wasn't showing up to class. And she called the student's mother and said, you know, if he doesn't show up to class, I can't pass him through to the ninth grade. The mother called someone she knew on the tribal council who made this teacher pass him to the ninth grade, even though he wasn't prepared. So you can see, I mean, it just completely, like I said, undermines the quality. But it also, I think, really leaves people deeply disheartened about, you know, the ability for people who want to put in effort and work hard, the ability for them to see any kind of results. Some people might be thinking that one of the reasons that the reservations are run this way, particularly in regards to private property, is because we have this story, or some people have this story, that the Native Americans never really believed in private property, that they believed in communal ownership. So even letting them use private property is some sort of a culture Western colonialization that is not very good for the pure Native American type of life. Yeah, I think that that's a very popular impression that reservations are essentially socialist environmentalist utopias. And to the extent that we want to give them private property, it would really be an imposition of Western culture on them. In fact, a lot of the research that's been done over the last two or three decades has really pointed to something entirely different, which is that American Indians have long, many tribes do believe in private property. Again, I spoke to another chief who is up in British Columbia, and he said, you know, the notion that we don't have a tradition of private property is absurd. His own family migrated to different places depending on the time of year. And he said, you know, if you think that we would come back to the hut that we built in the summer and expect to find someone else living there, you're crazy. You know, American Indians are not only American citizens, they're also rational people who behave in the ways that rational people behave. And they have a tradition of individual private property, of nuclear family private property and tribal private property. So the idea that we are just bringing this in from the West and trying to undermine their culture with these ideas, I think is not borne out by the research that's been done in recent years. What is the legal relationship? I mean, we talked about the holding the land and trust, but between the federal government and the tribes, the status tribes, the recognized tribes, because there's a word that's used all the time in Indian law and relations, which is sovereignty, which sounds like we should be dealing with the Indian tribes like we deal with France, but it's much more complex than that. It is much more complex. And I think the word itself is sort of presenting all sorts of problems because the truth is, no, these are not sovereign nations in the sense that every American Indian is an American citizen. They have the same rights that every other American citizen has. And the federal government has a duty to protect those rights for them as American citizens, even if they happen to be living on a reservation. That is not true necessarily in France. But the other thing is, I think that we have essentially in this sense, the federal government has relinquished some of its control that it really should be exercising the tribal court system. For instance, in many cases, it's a complete disaster. I mean, I would I would talk to people who had, you know, sat in on trials where the judge was presiding over parties and he was related to one of the parties involved. Well, actually, interestingly, the first time I got involved with the Native American law, she was because I received a prisoner letter from someone who was tried on a reservation. And half the jury was related to the victim and he had no recourse within the sovereignty system. I was just like, this is astounding, but there's nothing I can do for you. No, I wish I could say that that's uncommon. But for my interviews, it doesn't seem like that's the case. And again, some people would say, well, you know, there's a lot of this kind of thing that goes on in small town America. I think that might be true. But at least people have the recourse to appeal it up the chain. It's much more difficult to do that in Indian territory. There's a policy whereby a defendant might have to exhaust all of their options inside the tribal court system. There was actually just a decision in the Ninth Circuit Court about this. Judge Alex Kazinski wrote the majority opinion, which was against the tribe, but then he felt the need to also write a concurring opinion in which he lambasted the tribe for its, you know, terrible miscarriage of justice. And I think that that happens more often than you think. Now, another aspect that holds or I guess controls or is highly influential on Native American life has to do with one way that maybe people have found themselves interacting, going on to reservations or found themselves interacting with the tribes, which is through casinos. And you call this a loophole economy. How do the casinos thing arise and what is the loophole economy? So one of the things that's happened is that because of this quote unquote sovereignty that Indian reservations have, they have sort of made the case over the years that they should be able to engage in certain kinds of industry that states might have outlawed. And so what happened starting in the 1970s was that Indians started to open casinos and they kind of had a monopoly in certain states, which did not allow this kind of gambling to occur. So they actually, many of these tribes made a huge profit. A lot of Indian casinos are very dinky affairs and the only customers are other Indians because they're so far out of the way. But for those of us in the northeast and in California, we're aware of the, you know, the success of some big tribes in this area. And I think one of the things that's unfortunately happened is that, you know, when you're engaged in this kind of monopoly, which is really on the whims of the state government, what happens is a lot of the state governments woke up a few years ago and realized the tremendous amount of money that could be made off of gambling. And so they started to let everybody else in on it. And the result is that now there's tremendous competition and it's much harder for these tribes to make a profit. This has happened before with, with cigarettes and gasoline, which they had a kind of advantage in as well when it came to taxes and regulation. So this, that loophole closed up, the gambling loophole opened and now they're sort of engaged in looking for other loopholes. But what you don't see is any kind of diversification of the economy and you still don't see any kind of private sector really growing. This was one of the most shocking things to me when I visited the Seneca territory in upstate New York, which has made over a billion dollars on their gaming facilities over the course of a decade or so. And yet their standard of living has barely improved. If you go to the main, one of the main streets on the territory, you'll just see a lot of shuttered businesses. The healthcare has improved slightly. They're still going to pretty bad public schools. And I asked them about this and they said, well, we've sent some extra security officers to the local public schools with our money. So I think one of the lessons here is not simply the problems of the loophole economy. It's also that this money is all earned by the tribe and given out in annuities. Essentially, it looks like a welfare check or a lottery check, depending on your perspective. But either way, the money is kind of blown and it just doesn't seem to do much to encourage people to work. Keep talking about how much is controlled by the tribal leaders and how much of the resources, say from the casinos, flow to them. And so I'm just curious how the tribes are governed. How are these leaders chosen? So the leaders are chosen mostly by elections. Again, there is a lot of nepotism and corruption that goes on in some of these tribes at that level. But really a lot of the, especially with these casino tribes, what you see is that they're sending out checks with annuities. So for instance, on the Seneca territory, when you turn 21, someone sends you a check in the mail for $30,000. Up until that point, you've probably had a pretty dismal education. You've probably never worked. No one has taught you how to save or invest. And so the tribal leaders acknowledge that the best case scenario is these young people will buy a new truck. The worst case is they'll spend it on drugs or alcohol. It's like all those studies that they do of lottery winners who turn out to be no better off a few years later than the day they won the lottery. And in part, that's just because money earned is different from money that just falls from the sky. And if you wanted to take that $30,000 and start a coffee stand, you'd have to and buy some land. You'd have to go to the Bureau of Indian Affairs and everyone else to do that. So you're hampered across the board. But you mentioned education, which you have a large part of your book is devoted to the education system and its horrors. You talk about Pine Ridge Reservation, which is the second poorest county. It's in South Dakota. It's the second poorest county in the U.S. And at one point you write that in 2013, the five police officers assigned to patrol the area received a staggering 16,500 calls for emergency assistance, which is just something you have to wrap your brain around. And the school is no less astounding in terms of the sort of crisis level. And there's one fact that blew my mind that I think puts this into perspective. What is lock in at the Pine Ridge Elementary? So this is at the Wounded Knee Elementary School in Manderson, South Dakota. And I visited there. They'd recently received $600,000 in turnaround grant funds from the federal government. So it was actually clean and the halls were relatively quiet. We went into one classroom. The principal took me into one classroom. And there were second graders in there doing math. And she actually proceeded to help one of the students with the math problems. She gave the student two incorrect answers to second grade math problems as I stood there. And then she explained to me that she had recently fired the whole staff and only rehired people who were not from Teach for America because those people she did not feel were a good fit. Of course, those people happened to have math degrees from Ivy League schools, but they weren't a good fit for her school. Other tribal leaders told me that the Teach for America people were simply too white for them. But to get to lock in weekend, we're standing there in a kindergarten classroom. And she says, one weekend a month, we have lock in. And I said, what's lock in? That sounds like a terrible punishment for these poor kids. And she said, oh no. She said they come and they can stay over in our gym and do kind of cultural programs for the weekend. But it's time to coincide with the day that the government checks go out once a month because that's the weekend that we know their parents are most likely to drink. And abuse their children. Yes, that's astounding. And you mentioned that a lot of the rhythms of life on the reservation are timed with welfare check dispersals. Yeah, when there is no private sector on the reservation, everything happens or doesn't happen because of either the tribal government or the federal government. Their whole, the whole way of life is determined by how to get money and when you get money from the government. Now, there's another thing you discuss aside from the schools. And there are people doing good things with schools occasionally, but we're running out of time. So I wanted to get to, because I suggest reading the book. The book is absolutely excellent. Our listeners should definitely read it. Talks about Ben Chavis, who has actually spoken at Cato a few times or I think at least once. But you also discussed something called the Indian Child Welfare Act, which is something that's quite shocking. And Americans learned probably maybe a few years ago due to a Supreme Court case. But what is ICWA as we describe it and what are the sort of wrongs that it perpetrates? So ICWA was originally passed as a way to combat the problem that social workers were taking some Indian children off reservations and sending them to live with white families because they thought that the reservations were simply too poor and too deprived and the children would be better off being raised elsewhere. How widespread this problem was, I think, is still a little bit questionable. But that's the law as it is now. And so the problem essentially is that now the tribes actually have a say in the future of children who are in any kind of custody case, whether it's a divorce case or a case in which someone's parents have died or someone has been given up for adoption. If that child has essentially a certain amount of Indian blood in them, and it's amazing, again, that we still talk about American Indians this way, then the tribe, regardless of whether that child has ever lived on a reservation, actually has a say in the custody of that child. And they can say, we'd prefer that child be raised with an Indian family, even if an American Indian mother actually gives the child up for adoption and thinks that child would be better off raised off of a reservation. Which is, by the way, not uncommon. I mean, some of these reservations, literally, children are unsafe. There is widespread abuse going on of all sorts. And it would not be unheard of for an American Indian mother to say, no, I want to give my child up for adoption and have them raised elsewhere. But that woman's tribe could actually have standing in court to object. The American Indians are actually the only custody cases where race is taken into consideration. Why does this persist?  And in a lot of ways, they sound like the stories that we hear about really repressive communist regimes, about North Korea or the Soviet Union before they collapse. Or developing countries in Africa. Yeah, but this is happening here in America.  It's not hidden. But there doesn't seem to be much interest or movement in changing it. I think there are a lot of people who have a stake in the status quo. I think the tribal leadership, just like a lot of the civil rights leadership you see perhaps in the black community, is not necessarily representing the best interests of American Indians on the ground, the people that I interviewed. So for instance, the tribes do not want to see charter schools open up in South Dakota. And I heard of a case where a bunch of parents were actually taken to see high-performing charter schools in Denver. And they came back and I interviewed them. And the parents were both shocked and livid to find out that their kids could have such opportunities if only the tribal leadership and the state government allowed charter schools. But that is not what the leadership wants. And then you have the problem of simply the representatives in Washington. Of course, you have this huge civil service, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which is, by the way, mostly Indians, is actually just this huge bureaucracy looking for things to do. It's very hard to dismantle any kind of bureaucracy. And then the congressmen and senators who go to Washington, their job essentially is to bring home the bacon. If they are representing tribes, if they live in a state where there's a significant Indian population, the tribal leadership promises them votes in response to them bringing home money. So again, they have a stake in things being the way they are. But I think perhaps the most disturbing, especially when you're thinking about these cases that involve children and abuse, widespread abuse, I think is simply a certain amount of political correctness that has been accepted. I know that term is thrown around a lot lately. But here we have cases where there were actually whistleblowers working for the federal government who were actually fired or demoted as a result of reporting on these widespread abuses and saying that nothing was being done to prevent them. I think that Americans feel so guilty and so horrible about things that happened in the past that we are very reluctant to blow the whistle on things that are going on now. And in the name of tribal sovereignty, there are people who are getting away with horrible crimes. So it seems that we've overreacted to what we did, which of course was horrible. We took their property and now we want them to own it all communally.  And now we're forcing them back into the schools or using IQUA to solve that. And then we're giving them a ton of money, which all just seems to perpetuate the problem. So what can we do?  This is an ignored and horrible problem. What can we actually do? So I think the lowest hanging fruit here is I think education. Some of the states that have the largest populations of American Indians don't have charter school laws. And so the kids have no alternatives essentially to the kinds of schools that I was just describing to you earlier. There are a few Catholic schools, and I think for individuals who are just looking to help out donations to these schools, which essentially do not charge any tuition and are the only schools that are getting kids through high school and in some cases onto college are certainly worth our resources. As far as Washington goes, I think it is very hard, as you know, to think about dismantling the trust system. But private property really is the key here and it's really hard to figure out how Indians can move forward without it. As I mentioned, I spent some time in Canada. The parliament there is actually considering something called the First Nations Property Ownership Act, which would give the underlying title of the land to the tribes and allow individual tribe members to buy or sell it or develop it as they see fit. And I think that's what American Indians deserve as well. And there was one person in the interviewer who thought that maybe turning them into states. I mean, this would be very difficult, but it would at least stop this sort of, this farce of sovereignty and letting them have equal footing as American citizens. Right, essentially, right. Because we don't, you know, the state of Massachusetts is a real state that has a real government. But we don't allow the state of Massachusetts to violate the rights of people who live there because they can't claim that they have some kind of power over Washington. And I think we need to really delineate kind of what the levels of power are here of the government in order to make clear who is ultimately responsible for protecting the rights of these citizens. Thanks for listening. If you enjoy Free Thoughts, please take a moment to rate us on iTunes. Free Thoughts is produced by Mark McDaniel and Evan Banks. To learn more about libertarianism, visit us on the web at www.libertarianism.org.


Hey everyone welcome to the latest edition of Nets post game plus Chris Sheeran and Frank Isola with you the final score of Tuesday's game in Detroit the Pistons 122 Nets 111 and it was Detroit from the outset in the first quarter where they scored those 38 points the most points in the first quarter all season long for the Pistons and it was Steve Nash after the game Frank who said we didn't start having any kind of fire try it until they were down by 20 I really thought it was a discouraging performance by the Brooklyn Nets in this game they trailed the final 47 minutes against the worst team in the NBA record wise but guess what Detroit didn't play like that tonight they came out with some energy and some fight and it took the Nets until the second half to try to match that and they never really could get close Nets playing with that bullseye on their back and they're playing through Kyrie Irving playing through a spring right index finger that kept him out of Brooklyn's previous game he led Brooklyn with 27 points but the Nets fell to 7 and 11 this season against opponents with records under 500 with points off turnovers being a huge problem afterwards Steve Nash was asked what his post game message was to his team and what he saw out there on the court my message was personal pride connectivity and coming together just resistance we can't start the game down 10 be down 20 in the second half expecting it to come easy you know this is professional sports the other team is talented and capable and we're shorthanded we're small we got to come out extremely sharp extremely competitive and we're the real fire and it takes us getting down 20 to find that fire is it is it any more disappointed or troubling when you had a rare couple of days off you know and it to be locked in for this front end of a back-to-back and have this type of a performance you know no matter what it's frustrating you know no matter you know if it's a back-to-back if it's a week off you know you come to the gym you know you got to want to fight with your teammates and make it extremely hard on the other team make them miserable and you know we we didn't do that we did it in the stretches improved that we can do it but we got a lot to clean up and the number one thing is is just you know that attitude and that competition level and that connectivity you know those are things that you can't draw up those are things you can't practice you just have to bring it in and I didn't feel that for 48 minutes Brian Lewis with the New York Post Hey Steve obviously there were a lot of issues to go around when you're discussing that kind of effort level and intensity but I'm curious I mean there were a couple occasions where where James took DJ aside there were other occasions where it looked like you were having long talks with him were there things that they were doing that were kind of picking on DJ and taking advantage or was it just making sure he was clear on what he should be doing and what the assignments were yeah I don't think they're necessarily picking on I mean it's it it's an emotional sport you know you know we find ourselves in a hole and get a little emotional and it happens but you know I don't think we get there if we come out with the correct intensity to start the game Brooklyn will be right back in action Wednesday with the home game versus Indiana coverage on yes begins at 730 with the pregame show presented by Fandle sportsbook for Frank Isola I'm Chris Sharon thanks for watching Nets Post Game Plus


Hello and welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of Splunk.com here in the virtual studios in Silicon Valley broadcasting around the world's virtual event.  Got a great guest, Zach Brown, Chief Executive Officer of McLaren Racing. Really looking forward to this interview, Zach. Welcome to theCUBE. Well, thanks for coming on. Thanks for having me. So we have a huge fan base in the tech community. A lot of geeks, a lot of the nerds, they love the tech behind the sport and Netflix's Driving to Survive series has absolutely catapulted the popularity of F1 in the tech community. So congratulations on all the success in that program and then on the track. Thank you very much. It's been a good run. We've won our first race in a while, but we still have a ways to go to getting that world championship that we're hunting for. So for the techies out there and the folks in our audience that aren't familiar with the specifics of the racing team and the dynamics line, take a minute to explain what you guys are doing. So McLaren Racing, which has a variety of racing teams, a Formula One team and IndyCar team and Extremee team and an Esports team, were the second most successful Formula One team and the history of sport. Now 183 wins, 182 when I joined 20 world championships and we're close to 1,000 people to run a couple of racing cars and currently third in the championship with Lando Norris and Daniel Ricardo. So talk about the dynamics of the sport. Obviously data is a big part of it. We see a lot of the coverage. You can see anything can happen overnight, it's very quick. Technology's been playing a big role in the sport. What's your vision on how that's evolving?  Yeah, some interesting stats. So the car that qualifies first at the beginning of the year, if you didn't touch it, would be last by the end of the year. So that's the pace of development of a Formula One car. We change and develop a new part on the car every 14 minutes, 365 days a year. And technology plays a huge role. It's probably the most technical evolved sport in the world. Both safety, data, the innovation, it's awesome. And what a lot of people don't know is a lot of what we develop on a Formula One car ends up in other parts of the world, whether it was the ventilators that we helped develop for the UK government to working with our various partners or safety and innovation in the automotive industry. You know, I love, I always love the IoT Internet of Things story around cars because sensors and instrumentation is a big part of it. And it all comes together. So it's pretty, it's not simple. No. Give it a taste a little bit about what's it, how complicated is it, how you guys pay attention to the details, what's important. Take us through some of the inside the ropes around the IoT of the sensors and all the data coming together. Yes, we have over 300 sensors on our race car. We collect the one and a half terabytes of data every race weekend. And we have a thousand people. And the strong majority of those are working around data and technology, as opposed to physically touching the car out of those thousand people. You probably only have about 60 or 70 that actually touch the race car at a race weekend. We've been doing connected cars for about 25 years. So that's kind of a new thing here to most people, but we've been communicating back and forth with our race car for decades all around the world. And what a lot of people don't realize is it all starts in our mission control back in our factory in Woking, England. So wherever we are around the world, the racing team actually starts in England. So I want to ask you about the personalities on the team. How big is the staff? What's the makeup of the personalities? You've got the drivers, they're critical and they're a very dynamic personalities. We'll come to that slide question on that later. But what's the staff look like on, when you guys put this together, so you get race day and you got back office support. What's the team look like? Yeah, so you've got about a thousand people that make up the collective team. You'll have about a hundred in marketing. You'll have about a hundred in finance, HR, and then you kind of get to the racing team if you'd like, 800 people. You have about a hundred people traveling to each race. About 50 people back at the factory working with data and communications at a Grand Prix weekend and then everybody else is designing, manufacturing, production, laminating. So we run 24-7 shifts, three shifts in certain parts. We develop 85% of the car changes of what's allowed to be changed from start of the year to the end of the year. So the development is unbelievable. I know you're here in the U.S. for the U.S. Grand Prix in Austin. Coming up, I'm just curious how the cars get transported. So when we're traveling around the world, they travel on 747s and are flown around the world. And then when we're in Europe, we have about 18 trucks that we're communing around when we're kind of in the European part of the circuit is usually the middle of the year, but when we're going to Australia, Singapore, Bahrain, those are on planes. Formula One actually does that. They give us an allocation of space and then we have to write a check if we need more space than we're allowed. Yeah, and that brings up the security question because obviously there's a lot of fans. A lot of people are into it. Also, there's potentially security risks. Have you guys thought about that? Obviously like physical moving the supply chain around from event to event, but also technology risk. How do you guys think about security? Yeah, it's critically important. We've had, fortunately, we've not had any breach of our technology. We have had a breach in the late 90s of our radio communications. And it was in Australia, Mika Hakkinen and a fan who I think was probably having some fun and were able to break into our radio channel and actually asked Mika to pit. He pitted. Team wasn't ready. And fortunately we were running one too but we actually had to reverse the drivers so security is critically important. Yeah, probably Kitty Scrivner in there. Oh, look, I just hacked the radio, I was talking to the driver. That is like a funny story, but it could be serious. I mean, now you have all kinds of stuff going on. Yeah, and there's a lot of money at stake. So we were fortunate in this particular instance it didn't hurt us because we were running one too so we could reverse the drivers and the right guy one. But that could decide a world championship and you have tens of millions of dollars online but even besides the economics, we want to win races. You know, what's funny is that you guys have a lot of serious on the line stakes with these races but you're known for having a lot of fun. The team, team dynamic, I have to ask you when you finish on the podium one and two you did a shoey with the drivers, how'd that go down? It was pretty big spectacle online and on TV. Yeah, it was good fun. That's something obviously Daniel Ricardo has kind of developed as his thing when he wins and when we were, before we went on the podium he said to me, you're going to do the shoey. Yes, of course I'm going to do the shoey. You got to do the shoey. So we acted like a bunch of 12 year old kids on the podium but we're just big kids going motor racing at the end of the day. Well, I got to say, you guys come across really strong as a team and I love the fun and competitive side. So congratulations on that, it's always good. On the competitive side, take me through the advantage driving the advantage with data because that's really the theme here at .conf which is Splunk, which they're a big partner as well as your other sponsors. Data's big and it's driving an advantage. Where do you see that coming from? Take us through where you guys see the advantages. Yeah, so everything we do is precision. Every second, every 10th counts and you can get all this data in but what do you do with this data and the humans can't react as quickly as people like Splunk who can help us not only collect data but help us understand data and typically there's one pit stop which can be the difference between winning and losing. You have all these different scenarios playing out with weather, with tire wear, competition and so we live by data. We didn't win in Russia when we could have and it was because we got a bit emotionally caught up in the excitement of trying to win the race instead of staying disciplined and focused on data and so it's a very data-driven sport. When I'm on the pit wall there's a thing called racer instinct which is my 30 years in the sport and your experience and your gut to make decisions and every time our team makes a decision that I'm sitting there going I'm not sure that was the right decision, they're staring at data, I'm not, I'm trusting my 30 years of experience, they beat me nine out of 10 times. Yeah, and this is a huge topic too in the industry, explainable AI is one of the hottest trends in computer science where there's so much algorithms involved, the gut instinct is now coming back, what algorithms are available, knowing when to deploy what algorithms or what data to pay attention to is a huge new gut factor. Can you explain how the young drivers and the experienced folks in the industry are dealing with this new instinctful data-driven piece? Yeah, that's what we have 50 people back at the factory doing and they're looking at all sorts of information coming in and then they're taking that information and they're feeding it to our head of strategy who's then feeding it to our racing director who's getting all these data points in from tire to performance to reliability and then the human data from both drivers coming through their engineers and then he gets all that information in, he has to process it immediately and make decisions but it's a data-driven sport. I saw Lando walking around, got a selfie with him, it was great, everyone's loving it on Twitter, my family's like get on autograph. The future of the sport, he's a young driver so that instinct's coming in. The future of the sport comes up all the time. The tires are a big discussion point but also you got a lot of presets going on, a lot of data, a lot of going on. You see the future where there's remote, you know, kind of video game, you're in the pit wall and you can make decisions and deploy on behalf of the drivers, is that something that's- Well that technology's there and we used to do that but now it's been outlawed because there's a real push to make sure the drivers are driving the car so that technology is here, has been deployed in the past, we could do it but we're trying to find as a sport the balance between, you know, letting the driver do it so he or she might make a mistake and add a little bit of excitement to it. So we now, there are certain protocols on what we communicate. We can't, everything has to be driver fed into the car so we can now hear all sorts of codes that we're talking through which there are about 300 different adjustments the driver can make on the steering wheel which is unbelievable and so that's us seeing information, getting data in, coming to conclusions that we're giving him or her information that we think will help make the car faster. A lot of new dimensions for drivers to think about when they're being successful with the gut, the track, data, everything's kind of coming together. Yeah, it's amazing, when you listen to these drivers on the radio you forget that they're going 200 plus miles an hour because they sound quite relaxed in this very, you know, open and easy communication of here's what I'm feeling with, again we're talking all those codes and then we all, because we can hear each other, there's a lot of trickery that goes on. So for a driver to be going 200 miles an hour, taking this information and then know what code we're talking or we kind of throwing a code out there to throw the competition off is pretty amazing that they can take this all in. You know, I wish I was younger again like we're old school and the younger generation I've been having a few conversations with a lot of the young audience. They wanted me to ask you, when are you guys going to metaverse the tracks? When can I get involved and participate and maybe even make the team? Or how do I become more active, engaged with the McLaren racing team? So that technology is almost here. We're actually, that's in development. So I think it won't be long before, you know, Sunday you can log on and race Lando around Monaco and be in the race. So that technology is around the corner. That's the shadow thing too developing. I see that eSports just quick. I know you've got a gun, but last minute we have here. eSports, what's the future of eSports with the team? eSports been great for the sport. You know, it's gone from, you know, when I was growing up, it was video games and now it's real simulation. And so we've held, I think we're going four years into it. Now we were the first team to really develop an eSports platform and we've had competitors go on to help us with our simulation. So it's real race and we developed the race car before it goes on the racetrack. It's in simulation and that's where eSports is. This is the new advantage. This is a new normal. This is where you guys see the data driving the advantage. Definitely. And I think the other thing it is, you know, stick and ball sports, you can play in school and motor racing is historically been carding, which can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Now with eSports, you have a less expensive platform to let young men and women around the world put a steering wheel in their hand and go motor racing. So I think it's also going to kind of bring that younger generation a fan into the sport. There's so much collective intelligence, potentially competitive advantage, again data coming up. Final word to end the segment, Splunk. Big partner on the data side, obviously helping you guys financially as well as you do need some sponsorship support to make the team run. What's the relationship with Splunk? Take a minute to talk about the plug. It's been great. You know, they're two big contributors. We need a lot of money to run the racing team. So they're a great partner in that respect, but more importantly, they're helping us with our whole data journey, making smarter, quicker decisions. So their contribution to being part of the race team and we use their technology has been great. And I think, you know, if I look at our technology partners, we have many that all contribute to making us a better racing team. I mean, it really is nice. It's data inaction. It's teamwork is competitive. It's fun. That's kind of a good rubric. I think fun is the center of everything that we do. It's the center of everything that Splunk does. Because I think if you have fun, people enjoy kind of working a little bit harder, we're seven days a week and, you know, a lot of teammates, you got to work well together. So I think if you're having fun, you enjoy what you're doing, then it doesn't feel like work. Congratulations on climbing up on the rankings and everything on your team. Two great drivers. Thanks for coming on theCUBE. We appreciate it. Thank you. All right, we're here at theCUBE. We'd like to have fun here and get all the action on the tech side. Obviously F1 is technology enabled, data driving the advantage, and driving to survive is a great Netflix series. Check it out. McLaren's featured heavily in there and got a great team. Zach Brown, see you. Thanks for coming on. Appreciate it. Thanks for having me. I'm John Furrier, your host. Thank you for watching.


and welcome to the launch of the Amplify V community sector audit. I'm Maaren Digwell, and I'd like to introduce you to my co-speaker. Hi, I'm Emma Foxalleg, great to be here. Hello, Emma, how are you doing? Good, thanks. It's great conference so far, isn't it? Absolutely, I've been enjoying the last couple of days, it's been fantastic to see so many people from FE contribute presentations, and I absolutely loved Lou's keynote this morning. Did you catch that? I did. It was wonderful. So lovely to hear about all the joy for things. Joyful things indeed. Well, we're looking forward to adding to the joy, particularly for vocational education and further education participants. I was so excited to launch today the Amplify FE sector audit, and we're particularly thrilled to follow in this session on from a fantastic plenary discussion that just happened on the future of learning technology, in which we were delighted to have Rebecca Garret Walters, the CEO of the U of I Trust, and with us as part of the panel. So, Rebecca has given us a fantastic bit of food for thought. And Emma and I are now looking forward to launching the sector audit with you. Emma, what do you say? Are we ready to jump in to our key findings from the sector audit? Absolutely, let's go for it. Okay, brilliant. So everybody without further ado, here are key findings from the 2021 Amplify FE community sector audit. Emma, can you hear the sound? Hello. Welcome to the key findings of the Amplify FE sector audit report 2021. So excited to show you all the different findings and hopefully, but you're at the time to read the whole report. The Amplify FE network is led by the Association for Learning Technology in partnership with U of I the Vok Tech Trust. We launched Amplify FE in October 2020. And since then, we've connected over 1000 professionals in further education, and vocational education, providing a strong networking community for them to share, collaborate and learn. This sector audit that we're talking to you about today is a key part of the work that we do to support the sector. Now, when we did our first audit last year, it was very much at the beginning of what was a very dark and turbulent year, one with seismic upheaval for the sector. So from getting through the darkest days of the global crisis to keeping services going, while scaling up blended and online learning, the pace has felt relentless to so many colleagues and communities out there. In this audit, we feature many grassroots networks and communities who have often had to fill the gaps left by too little funding and lack of formal support, such as grassroots efforts that are really led by passionate individuals who give above and beyond to support their colleagues and learners.  We want to acknowledge and celebrate your efforts. But we also want to note that the need for structural changes, which professional bodies and sector organizations campaign for is more urgent now than ever before. So in this year's audit, we've really focused on what's happened to the 100 communities of practice that we've looked at a year ago and how things have changed. In particular, we focused on communities that have stopped or started their activities, important changes to the sector landscape and tracking where the conversation is moving on social media. And Emma, I'm going to hand over to you now to actually look at some of the key findings. Thanks, Marilyn. So we conducted the audit recently, and we found that there's been an increase in number of communities within the audit to up to 130. That's a 30% increase in community surveys. We've noted that there's a number of different platforms that communities use, most of them use at least two. And that the one where we've seen numbers decline has been mostly with the disk mailing lists. The most notable community that's disappeared are the TES forums. So when we originally looked at it, there were 74 individual forums with three of them dedicated to FE and vocational education. So all of those have now gone. Twitter remains one of the most popular platforms. We looked at a total of 96 different Twitter handles, and we've included 17 new hashtags to the community map. So Twitter really is one of those kind of platforms that where communities start out. In that process of looking through it, we've identified a total of 36 new communities. And we've noted that with COVID-19 that there has been a push towards communities using teams and Zoom. Obviously, because people need to move to have meetings online available to kind of connect with people. Since the last audit, Amplify FE has been used across Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram. And the community has generated a total number of 9,823 tweets, which is absolutely amazing. And we would really recommend that you do check out us on social media. So we have this option where you can add your own hashtag to our community map. And during the process, since we opened it back in December, last year, we've had these additional hashtags added. So you can see all of the ones here listed on the right hand side where they are in regular use across Twitter. And obviously, we would really love to connect with you. So please do find us on social media. So we're on Twitter, we're on Facebook, we're on LinkedIn and we're on Instagram. We've got a mailing list that you can sign up to as well. So find us, start that conversation and just use Amplify FE to help share and grow the network. Thanks Emma. So we hope we've given you appetite to go and check out the whole audit at AmplifyFE.ALT.AC.UK forward slash audit and follow the conversation and hashtag Amplify FE. All data from the audit has been anonymized and made openly available as part of our wider commitment to the open COVID pledge for education. And it's Creative Commons licensed to please do reuse and adopt to fit your own purposes. The audit had such a great response last year, we hope this year's will be even more useful. Thank you very much for joining us for this launch of the Amplify FE sector audit. And with that, it's goodbye from me and goodbye from Emma. Thank you very much.


In this video, we will discuss the purpose of the literature review in presenting a research project. First, what is the literature? The literature can be understood as the collection of academic and peer-reviewed writing on any given subject. A literature review, therefore, is an articulate summary of the most important and salient aspects of that literature for your field and the most pertinent or relevant to your research project. However, a lit review can be an arduous and frustrating process because it involves many hours reading and researching. So, in the first instance, it's important to understand why we include this process in our research. The following six points are articulated by Diana Ridley in her book, The Literature Review, a step-by-step guide for students. Number one, the lit review provides a historical background for your research. This is critical for two reasons. First, you need to know what has been written about your research so that you can present something new and significant to the field in which you are studying. When you come to write about your research significance, you can be confident that you are contributing, even in a small way, to the existing understanding of the field. The second reason that providing the historical background for your research is critical is because it demonstrates to your reader or examiner that you know how to read theoretical concepts and translate them into your own words and that you understand your field. Number two, it gives an overview of the current context in which your research is situated by referring to contemporary debates, issues and questions in the field. This is important because your field of research is constantly updated and expanded upon through new and exciting work. Moreover, the ideas about your field might have a different meaning in a new context. For example, historical background about feminism in Australia might discuss the impact of the contraceptive pill in the 1960s. However, what discussions are impacting reproductive rights now and how does the contemporary research talk about these issues? Number three, the lit review includes a discussion of relevant theories and concepts which underpin your research. There are countless ways to approach research. For example, if you are researching the relationship between the subject and the state, you need to explain how different theorists have approached this research and where your approach fits in. Are you following a Foucaultian approach or perhaps you're following a Marxian approach or a mix between the two? Number four, the lit review introduces relevant terminology and provides definition to clarify how terms are being used in the context of your work. Clarifying how you use your key phrases is absolutely critical and to do this you need to explain where and how you developed your definitions. For example, there are countless ways to define feminism, so you need to develop a definition that suits your needs and explains how others may have defined it in the past. Number five, the lit review describes related research in the field and shows how your work extends or challenges this or addresses a gap in the field. Understanding a broad array of literature gives you the opportunity to identify what might be missing in an academic dialogue of your discussion. It can help contribute to your field by pointing this out and filling it in. And finally, number six, the lit review provides supporting evidence for a practical problem or issue which your research is addressing, thereby underlining its significance. This means that your literature review also works to show the reader that your area of research is reputable and that you are developing upon already solid work that is important to others and that it would have a resounding impact for those researchers who also work in the area. Understanding why literature reviews are important will help you write your review because now you know what readers and examiners are looking for and why they are looking for it. Undertaking your literature review might feel laborious at times, but after it is completed you will have an expert understanding of your field and you will be able to discuss your work feeling confident and articulate. Thank you for watching.


Welcome. Thanks for joining us today. We wanted to talk about a couple of things that are going on in the city during this special period, but first how are you doing and how's your family? We are well, Lauren Glenn. We started out this whole episode with a little bit of colds and we're really glad that that is over and everybody's healthy and I think that's our first question to everybody we we talked to. So how are you, Lauren Glenn? We're good. You know I have a college child and she's home from college and you have a child that's about to go. How is this interfering with her plans for choosing a college? Well I think at some ways we're really lucky because she she applied early decision in the fall so her decision was made she knew where she was going and then she she technically she'll graduate in June but she finished all of her requirements in December though she still has an online gym requirement. I don't know what that means and perhaps it'll prevent her from graduating but we think we're pretty good. So as the as the city counselor for the southern part one of the southern districts of the city tell us your perspective on the city's response to this environmental and health emergency. I am proud of our community's response you know the directives we get changes day to day the problems just everything has to be done with the best judgment that you have today and we really have a team of people working to solve problems keep their wits about them and just get through this and I'm really proud of the city team and how they're pulling together and how people are stepping up you know people are being asked to do things that are way outside of the range of what they usually do and our our city workers are really stepping up and saying you know okay I'm not that familiar but I will figure that out and they're taking the ball they're running with it. And can you describe a couple of innovative problem-solving examples because I know people are thinking very creatively very quickly solving problems that sometimes we couldn't for years we haven't been able to solve but during this period it's just getting done. Are there any examples of that that come to mind in the city? I'm not the best one thinking about these things on the fly but I think generally the Resource Center is really taking a group of people that have all been working on different things and just putting them on the you know people are calling in with different issues and every every day they're trying to resolve the issues that arise and those are different issues you know in a lot of cases you're saying you know some some of these things are problems that we've always had maybe you think you know things like the homeless finding them housing and using North Beach you know we were able to get trailers for homeless people because we don't want to aggregate people in shelters to the extent possible we want people to isolate and it's one of the problems that we have and in our nursing homes and elder care facilities people are aggregated and that is going to be a problem with this disease so for people that we can you know short term we can solve this problem this way I don't know that it's really a long-term solution but it's definitely a good solution for this moment. So you're part of the Lyric Theater effort to create masks we need masks it's a big crisis tell us about that project. Yeah so this was a project I came into it the city was working with Lyric Theater on getting masks made and the city had procured the the resources that first of all they had worked with some other experts in hospitals outside of Vermont on you know what's the best mask to use and I don't know you know you could you could work all day and all night every day and the the true answer to that question you may never have but this is a mask that is being it's being tested and worked on by the chief medical officer at the Leahy Clinic is the one who has come up with the designs for this mask and so we worked with them to to come up with the designs of specs and then we had to source the materials and so we have done that then Lyric has a large facility where they make costumes and they can cut all of this fabric so they are cutting all the fabric making the kits and then they have volunteers who are making the masks from the kits that they're cutting we also have another group of volunteers from the Milton Artists Guild and so they're taking large numbers of kits from Lyric bringing them up to Milton and developing their own volunteer source up there and then all of these masks get laundered by Gadju's dry cleaners so that we know that the masks that we're delivering are clean and ready to go for for a facility also I should say we were able to procure a lot of these materials through Rags to Riches who gave us deep discounts on everything that that we need and we will as we work through we just got the first 60 masks today and so those have been distributed to a few places we're going to have them use them and make sure that that's working they are being used in hospitals in Massachusetts they are put on patients there I understand so then we're going to get some feedback on how everything's working and eventually we we hope to scale up the once we're sure that we've got everything right then we can scale up production and we are looking for more volunteers I will say that some people have had problems the fabric we're using is a very it's a it's a very stiff denim and that's hard for some sewing machines so some people have had trouble getting their sewing machine to work with this stem and denim but there are a lot of people who in their homes have like industrial type sewing machines and are serious sewers and those are the people we really need to help make these masks how many are you hoping to make how much material have you procured or plan to we have enough fabric well in theory we have enough fabric to make 20,000 masks we'll probably have a little bit of loss you know that assumes that you know where you was we're using home sewers you're supposed to get 15 masks out of each yard some people will only get 12 so there will be some loss there but we have enough fabric to make 20,000 masks and how what's the math on that how many volunteers are you hoping for and how long would it take we haven't done all of the math yet we're getting as many volunteers as we can and we're then distributing them I've been reaching out to residential facilities and you know finding out how many masks that they want and then when I have I now right at this moment I have requests for 1200 masks so I stopped making those phone calls we need to work on the production end of things to meet the demand and we do want to know from people and facilities and other frontline workers working in grocery stores and other essential businesses the you know we want them to have these masks so they are also on our list for getting the masks when we are ready to scale up we're hoping to enlist the help of some production manufacturers who can help us you know professionally make the mass and then we could probably produce possibly like 2000 a week and so these are not medical quality masks meaning they're not designed for medical workers they're designed for civilians well the n95 they are not n95 masks they're not n95 quality masks so for a healthcare worker that is working with a COVID patient this is not the mask that they would use but my understanding is that in the hospitals where they're being used they're being used on patients so you can put a mask on the patient and that's going to make the patient it's going to make the healthcare environment safer and I think we're more and more we're starting to hear the CDC today say that they're going to relook at this recommendation should we all be wearing masks so this is this is a notch down I would say from that n95 and 95 masks and how can people obtain the kits how are you recruiting volunteers what should where do people go what's the public information on that and up till now I've been I've been kind of intaking the people who want to make masks having a brief conversation with them and then sending them over to Lyric as of today we're asking people to contact the Burlington Resource Center okay and let them know that they want to volunteer to so and then they'll they'll feed that information over to me and is there somebody there they should talk to or they could call anyone yeah they can call anybody okay and then folks would come to Lyric and pick up the kids or they would yeah yes we can also arrange drop-off if they needed we can kind of coordinate that if some people some people want to help and they're really very homebound because they just don't want to take any any risks going outside and we can we can drop a kid off for them they can let it sit outside you know if they have a place safe place to let it sit outside for 24 hours and then take it in we've also tried to be really careful we didn't touch the fat when we first received the fabric we didn't touch the fabric for more than 24 hours Lyric then brought it in and they do their best to cut it all in a very safe environment and wear masks so but I think at each level if we can try and and protect ourselves we're not hearing the fabric is really a transmitter of the virus but at the same time it never never hurts to take extra precautions so it sounds like you're looking for a thousand volunteers to do this a lot of people to turn out 20,000 masks is that right yes probably not a thousand a probably less than a thousand volunteers but certainly we could use a few hundred volunteers and we can also use the professional manufacturers got it all right so so if you have a menu and you know people have these manufacturing businesses that aren't necessarily on our radar and I think we are in a phase of retooling businesses so if you have a business that has sewing machines and you can help with this effort we definitely need you and if you have an industrial sewing machine at home or something that's got a good motor on it we definitely need you to awesome all right Joan so we'll direct people to the Burlington Resource and Recovery Resources and Recovery Center correct okay that sounds great well thank you for this organizing do you have any other messages for your constituents or the people of Burlington hang in there you know I think this is more of a marathon than a sprint and we all have to keep just encouraging each other and I have really enjoyed getting to know zoom we have our our friend groups on zoom and it makes you feel a little bit more in touch so thank you to channel 17 because you're also one of those great resources that helps us all still connect and we are new learning new ways aren't we new I wonder I wonder what it's all gonna look like when we come out of this I know it'll be fascinating well keep in mind that zoom does scrape your calls for personal information and resells it so just be careful what you you know don't meet with your therapist if you can avoid it that is good to know I did not know that but what about all the all the cocktail party conversations I'm having with my friends well look up look up zoom and privacy and you can see basically that they make their money by reselling content like pretty much every online provider of content so do you have a recommendation I think well I think there should be a statewide public switch network like a Vermont interactive TV that's adapted for this purpose but that I think we have to build that for the next time that this happens so well I think we have to work on a resilient connectivity network that's publicly available for education work government telemedicine and that's what we're doing it's what we're doing in our spare time is working on that design well you know I actually had I did a show on channel 17 I think it was like 2009 when we had the previous pandemic scare with Wendy Davis and and Seth Blasker and so we were talking about that it's odd to think but we were talking about pandemics on channel 17 ten years ago all right well look it up because it's in the files it's in the file yeah we've learned Glenn thank you Joan so much we'll talk with you soon just get in touch with us anytime okay take care bye bye


Hey everyone, today we're diving into one of the biggest most influential country artists out there, Garth Brooks. His career has been nothing short of a wild ride, from humble, small-town beginnings in Oklahoma to selling more albums than any other solo artist in US history to walking away from it all, to be a father, and sieging an epic comeback years later, he has really done it all. Garth and his wife Trisha Yearwood are one of the most powerful couples in country music, with a reported, combined net worth of 400 million dollars. So of course the homes they live in are pretty impressive. The couple has called Nashville home since 2015 after relocating from a 3.5 million dollar mansion in Oklahoma, where they lived to be closer to Garth's three daughters after his history making divorce from his first wife. Garth Brooks' story is the ultimate rags to riches, to taking a step back to family first to rich again tale of chasing your dreams without wavering. You know the kind of story that makes us say, I've got friends in low places but they've got Garth in higher ones. Garth was actually born a few hours away from Oklahoma in Tulsa in 1962. Music was quite literally in his blood with a mom who was briefly on Capitol Records herself in the 50s. Still, young Garth wasn't fully focused on tunes early on. He was an athlete in track and field before eventually landing at Oklahoma State on a sports scholarship. Garth was here that he linked up with the guitarist buddy and they started playing gigs at local bars and clubs. Just planting those first seeds of what would grow into an unstoppable career. After graduating in 1984, the hustle continued as Garth tried and failed to crack into the Nashville scene initially. In classic Pursuer Dreams fashion though, he circled back a few years later. And let's just say the rest is history. In 1989, saw Garth's debut album drop setting the stage for an absolute onslaught of number one hits, record breakers and history makers. Who could forget classics like Friends in Low Places from 90s No Fences which was the first country album to top the Billboard 200. Just a game changer for the whole genre. Crossing over to the mainstream in a way few before him had. After taking over the country music scene, what did Garth do? He walked away. Calling it quits in 2001 to be a hands-on dad after divorcing his first wife. Putting family first just like that. Luckily for fans, wife number two fellow country singer Trisha Yearwood had other plans. Once his youngest was 18, Trisha helped coax the legend out of retirement in the late 2000s for an epic comeback run. Complete with a smash Las Vegas residency, another record-breaking world tour and all the awards you could dream of, Garth made it happen again. Now, since I am sure you're wondering, let's talk about his history-making romances. I'm talking about the split hurt around the world between Garth Brooks and his first wife, college sweetheart Sandy Maul. You see, their romance began in the most bizarre of ways back in the 80s. Garth first locked eyes on the future Mrs. Brooks after she got her hands stuck punching through the wall of a bar bathroom. Well, they bonded over shared musical dreams, got hitched in 1986 and, before they knew it, Garth's career had exploded into megastardom just a few years later.  Friends in low places sold out arena tours, prestigious honors. By the mid 90s, they were living a real life fairy tale, complete with three adorable daughters. But as Garth's white-hot star continued burning brighter, the strain of his insane schedule and endless time on the road started weighing heavily on his home life with Sandy. The fairy tale facade soon began crumbling. In Sandy's own words, the couple simply grew apart really, really quickly during those grueling years. The endless work obligations long stretches away on tour. It all proved too much for their high school sweetheart romance. And so, in 2000, after 15 years of marriage and three kids together, Garth and Sandy decided to throw in the towel and end their storybook union for good. Just like that, it was over. Of course, when you're as wealthy and famous as Garth was at that time, getting divorced isn't as simple as signing some papers down at the courthouse. Oh no, this thing, it was dramatic. We're talking court battles, heated negotiations, and ultimately one of the biggest celebrity divorce settlements ever. But, despite that wildly lucrative settlement, both Garth and Sandy have worked super hard over the years to keep their relationship as amicable as humanly possible, especially when it comes to co-parenting their daughters. In fact, Garth recently opened up for the first time about his deepened love and level of respect for his ex after hearing her side of what went wrong in their marriage. But where one storybook love story ended, another incredible romance was just getting started for our country king. You see, even as Garth was becoming one of the biggest entertainers in the planet, in the 90s he actually first crossed paths with his future second wife, Trisha Yearwood. Trisha is a fellow country singer and over a decade earlier when they were just two struggling Nashville newcomers, they actually crossed paths. The stars aligned when they worked together during a demo session back in 1987, just a year after Garth tied the knot with Sandy. Trisha says she felt an immediate connection, later admitting I had no idea he would turn out to be Garth Brooks. At the time Garth was committed to making his marriage to Sandy work so these two soulmates were forced to keep things platonic as friends and they ended up being frequent collaborators over the next 13 years. You know what they say though, if you love something set it free and if it's meant to be it'll find its way back to you. Because just a couple years after his devastating divorce, the universe finally brought Garth and Trisha's romantic sparks back together in the most meant to be way. They said themselves there was just an undeniable magnetic pull between them as soon as Garth was officially a single man again in the early 2000s. It was like 15 years of built up friendship and mutual admiration from their early Nashville days blossomed into a full fledged fairy tale romance. In 2005, four years after his split from Sandy, Garth and Trisha made things official by tying the knot in a private Oklahoma ceremony. The bride's simple statement perfectly captured the magic of the moment saying we could not be happier, it's the perfect Christmas gift to each other. Over the next decade plus and counting, whenever you saw Garth Brooks, you saw Trisha Yearwood, his trusted duet partner, opener on tour and promotional co-pilot. Now let's take a look at the incredible homes that have played host to all the milestones in Garth and Trisha's lives. We're talking multi-million dollar mega mansions fit for country music royalty. From the house that saw Garth's historic rise to superstardom to the sanctuary where Trisha filmed countless episodes of her show Trisha's Southern Kitchen. While we will start in Owasso, Oklahoma, a small town about an hour outside of Tulsa that ended up playing host to a huge chapter of Garth's story, life and career. This incredible 14,000 square foot seven bed 9.5 bathroom French country style mansion is where Garth shacked up after his 2001 divorce from Sandy. At a staggering 3.5 million dollar price tag it was the perfect refuge to regroup and refocus on being a hands on dad to his three daughters while still laying relatively low. Can you imagine the pivotal family memories made here as the Brooks girls grew up and Garth prepared for his massive comeback? Keepover's birthday's backyard barbecues this place was their true home until Garth's youngest headed off to college and he decided to make good on a promise. That promise? To return to Tennessee with Trisha once his parenting duties allowed it. A deal that they made when first becoming a couple in 2005. Now let's head east and check out the lavish Nashville palace Trisha called home for over two decades. This house saw her blossom from rising star to country queen next door. We're talking 6,500 square feet of resort level luxury on a massive 4.5 acre lot in the area's most prestigious Brentwood neighborhood. Five bedrooms, seven bathrooms, a pool all you can imagine. More importantly this 4.5 million dollar property is where Trisha achieved many of her big career milestones. For 11 seasons her popular food network show Trisha's southern kitchen called this place home base. Filming right in her stunning state of the art main kitchen that any home chef would dream of.  Well they happened right here. But even beyond its television fame this Nashville Sanctuary was the sentimental backdrop for over two decades of Trisha and Garth's lives together as a couple. We're talking holidays, family gatherings, private date nights, major career celebrations, you name it, they lived it all here. In Trisha's own words while listing the property in 2023 everyone who entered the house felt that sense of welcome and sanctuary. So many unforgettable chapters in their love story permanently set in these walls and gardens. Of course after calling it home for 23 amazing years Trisha knew it was time to move on to the next stage by passing the keys to someone else. However it was with a heavy heart saying it's bittersweet to sell this place that means so much to me. Currently Garth and Trisha call Nashville home still more specifically the area of Godlet'sville Tennessee which is near Nashville. Their family home was actually built on land bought by Garth back in November 1990 for $432,500. After they wed the couple spent years building a spacious property but they only moved into this home in 2018 after Garth wrapped up his three year comeback tour. This residence dubbed Blue Rose Estate occupies 5,551 square feet within a 300 acre piece of land concealed by a negated entrance and a lengthy driveway ensuring the best privacy. It's made up of a total of 13 rooms including 7 bedrooms and 6 baths. In addition to its upscale features the property boasts several living spaces, dining areas, a swimming pool, a spa, a 1500 square foot garage and a 746 square foot basement. Wow what a journey we just went on through the incredible homes and real estate empire of Garth Brooks and his wife Trisha Yearwood. From their humble beginnings to those jaw dropping multi-million dollar mansions that hosted so many career moments and family milestones, their properties are just as legendary as they are. If you enjoyed this video don't forget to give it a like and be sure to answer this question for me before you go. Would you have the desire to build your home from the ground up or would you prefer to purchase a dream home that's already made? Let me know in the comments and hit subscribe so you never miss a video. I'm Karah the Vampire Slayer, thank you all for watching, follow me on Instagram if you want to chat and I'll see you all next time. Bye. Hey everyone, it's Karah or Karah the Vampire Slayer as you might know me and given my love for all things house and home, I recently wanted to get more hands on myself and I started tackling DIY projects at my own house. Being a new homeowner there are plenty of unexpected things to fix and it's cool to learn what you're doing and hopefully be able to fix it yourself. There are also plenty of DIY projects suitable for beginners like me to do and ones that improve the look of your space drastically. Follow me and I'll teach you what I'm learning and motivate you to join me.  Follow me on Fix It with Karah and we can chat.