All right, we're gonna get started. This is the first of our lunchtime conversations for this year of Great Plains Theater Conference. I'm Ron Zank. I'm an assistant professor at Culver Stockton College. This panel is Found Spaces and Beyond. We're gonna be discussing immersive theater if the rest of my panelists would introduce themselves, please. Thomas Richio from the University of Texas at Dallas. Justin Townsend, assistant professor at Brooklyn College. Jack Frederick. I'm with the St. Fortune Collective in New York. I'm John E. Gasper, also with St. Fortune Collective. And I'm Danny Carroll, also with St. Fortune. All right, so just to get started, I think a lot of us are aware of the notion of theater and found spaces, that is theater in existing spaces and sort of the sort of resonance that that has. And we've sort of moved beyond that a little bit with immersive theater. Tom, would you like to talk a little bit about how you maybe see immersive theater being a little bit different than what people may have been thinking of in the past? Okay, my approach to immersive theater comes from my work with indigenous people. So they, in a sense, they've been doing immersive theater for thousands of years. The immersiveness is, the fact that it is very site-specific, it's a virtual specific. It's when they perform, they perform the animals, the spirits, the elements that are around them. And they bring them into the conversation. And it's a marked difference from the Western perspective, which basically is a social remediation use of performance and drama, where theirs is a remediation and a celebration of a totality. So in a sense, when they perform, it's an immersiveness. So I've brought that idea into, I'm too hot? Are you waving at me? I'm waving at Alistair. Oh, okay. Hey, Alistair. I see someone waving. Too hot. And so I bring that to my work. I have a theater company, a performance company, called Dead White Zombies in Dallas. And I bring ritual and immersive elements to what we do. Which, I don't know, is that a good start? That's a good start, man. That's a good start. Justin, would you like to talk a little bit about the projects that you've worked on that might be considered more immersive than, say, just traditional theater? We were talking about this earlier on the panel, just as now, and this idea, Elaine and I were speaking about, of playwrights, essentially, through language are creating an immersive environment, right? And so to say, you know, what is this new idea is a bit complicated, and perhaps I worry about it. But to say, let's say, okay, so maybe visually immersive, but again, we've been building playhouses for a long time. But somehow this idea of decorating or making something that one might tunnel through, the audience might travel through the experience, or perhaps that the theater itself is handled in a different way, aesthetically, or how the audience even interacts with the space. So in that sense, there's actually a sort of fuzzy line, as to say, you know, when are we doing work? That is strictly, I'm going to sit in the audience, and you are going to sit in the other side of the proscenium and make something, and I'll perceive it with a sort of unacknowledgment of the space between us. And when are we starting to actually acknowledge the architecture and space and worlds as a part of the event? And I would be, it could be a long list for us to start to say, well, this slides on, here it is on the spectrum of those spaces, that perhaps it's that it is the space between us that for me is what's exciting as a visual artist, making performance work. All right. I'll just speak to St. Fortune collectively. You can answer as you will, because now you're going to interrupt each other anyway. We were joking that we're all going to answer at the same time. Yeah, like the pre-cogs. So just a little bit about your immersive work and how you see it and what you've experienced. Both as creators and even as audience, because I think that's important too. All right. Well, one of the first things that we did was ejected this play called Unloaded for Bear. It was about a safari expedition in Africa, and we ended, and he staged it in our backyard at school. So it was, so the audience like walked through like a forest in a way to arrive at the stage, which was just a tent and like a campfire. Yeah, and it just something about the season at that time it actually kind of looked like the African savannah. And so we were, but that was a really, saying like a having like a proscenium arch in nature going on, you know. And ended its own lighting effects too. Like with the sun setting, I mean was something that you really can't duplicate in a building, so. Right. There were, I think some of the most immersive qualities of that performance, two of the characters as the audience started to walk through a field entered into the forest, they arrived as guides. So they met the audience to then bring them forward to the rest of the camp. And then as the sun set, there were effects that we used with cars, headlights, far off in the distance using the extent of the space around us to create a sense of foreboding, I think at that moment. Yeah, when you get out of a theater, a lot of opportunities open up for you as far as what you can use, you can use real fire, you can use full automobiles, you can use anything. And there's some drawbacks to using an outdoor space.  Cause they were just like, there's people out here doing a play, let's mess with them. So, sorry. But then that becomes part of the play.  And I was like, yeah, I would plan that. And then, but now we found that we're moving towards more of a dealing with the audience and getting rid of the space between the audience and the actors. So we're working on this on wood music on Friday night, which we should all attend because it's gonna be fantastic. But I can't tell you anything about it because it's a secret. How very informative. Tom and Danny, well, anybody, if you wanna talk, since we are at a playwriting conference, maybe about some of the challenges or some of the differences in terms of working, writing in a more immersive form as opposed to maybe more traditional script, what you find, what opportunities, what presents. Well, I think one of the main things about using found space and immersive theaters is looking at the space you have and deciding what you can do there that you can't do anywhere else and writing the story in the vein of that inspiration. I did a piece that I wrote for Gavin Price, who is usually at the conference, usually a fixture, but is unfortunately not here this year, on the Highline in New York City. And for those of you who know the Highline, there is a section that has these windows that overlook 10th Avenue. And so we not only set it in a situation in an apartment where you'd be looking over 10th Avenue, but also use the fact that we had sort of an endless fly space to do some effects with balloons in front of those windows, and people actually down on the street a couple of blocks away from where the action was happening, filling that backdrop in a way that you could never fill a backdrop in a traditional theater. And you peek in audiences' curiosity when suddenly they realize that these things going on in a busy city far down from where their perspective is, is actually part of the drama. It's titillating, and I wanted to use that. And so I think it is challenging, but it is sometimes even more freeing to write for something that is unique in that way. As far as writing, maybe I'll talk about TNB, which is a performance we did last year this time. And it took place in a former crack house. And the previous owner had just vacated the space few weeks before we moved in. And the man I developed actually, the play had his first reading here at the Great Plains several years ago, I think it was in 2011. And from there I enlisted the assistance of a friend of mine who is a convicted felon and also a gangbanger. And what we did is we worked together and we developed a piece on paper and then we put it into the house. A local developer was gracious enough to give us the house for a dollar. And what we did was we shaped the performance to the house itself. It had several rooms which we could only bring in like 25, 30 people, which was fine. And the whole notion is that this man, this African-American man, is coming home from a botched robbery attempt. And in the house, there was his brother. He didn't know this, his twin brother, who was a white man.  Is there an act you're putting on because you don't know any other options? And then there was issues, like technical issues, like if I'm in the living room and there's action happening in the kitchen, it's like not everyone can be in the kitchen, it's just too small of a house. So what we did is we devised the idea of creating close-circuit TV cameras in each room. So you can be in any room, like in the botched robbery attempt, and like a 7-Eleven, the liquor store, where your attempt took place, you can watch anywhere you like the events in the other room. So we used that kind of like coherent to the piece, but also as a practical solution. And the fact that you're in a house, which was decorated as his mother would have left, now we find out that she's deceased, but she's cooking in the kitchen. You can smell collard greens. In fact, she would serve collard greens, anyone who had asked, in washing dishes, et cetera. So it's a very live action. And you're sitting in a living room and it feels like you're at home. Like you would if your parents in the other room or someone else and you just hear the conversation. And so it has this home-like quality, which basically offset the very aggressive style of the piece in this man's life.  And so basically he calls him on it. And so this essentially is its unraveling of his life. And then he realizes at the very end that he's died. He was killed in that Bosch's attempt. And he came home basically. And I mentioned earlier about how I use ritual. Essentially the diagram was not a dramaturgical diagram of the West beginning, middle, end as much more emotive and much more based on a very consciously of a ritual healing, shamanic healing.  And he has to reconcile all of the things in his life before he can move on. So once he discovers this in the dining room and served up in the dining room, it's not food, but are bullets at the dining room table. And so once he finds out that he actually had been killed, he leaves onto the street.   Storm Crow and then his brother, they're all waiting there. And it is a chalk line of his body on the concrete. And so the entire audience goes in the street. And at the end, Storm Crow, who's a 350-pound spoken word artist, first time acting, calls him, says, let's go, man. And it ends with him walking down the street and pulling this young man named Spooky, the characters named Spooky, because he is a ghost, down the street. And then the audience leaves. And so the writing for us is, I hate acting. I'll put that out there. I despise it. I like and I think part of this whole immersion consideration, which is evolving, is a reconsideration of what acting is and what acting should do. I try to do is to make it very real. When you're that close, you're right next to someone, to act is very, unless you want to artificially create that sensibility, it's very false. And we want a reality now because there's so much artificiality in our life. And this may be something for a larger discussion, but we have to ask ourselves why immersion and why now? Why in our world? Why if immersion is a manifestation of a necessity, as all art is and a marking of our time, what is that saying about our time? We want to be involved. We want to be immersed because you look at our world and we're immersed and we're realizing we haven't been immersed. And because of that, our global ecological systems are failing. And you look at the structure of the traditional proscenium march, which has been talked about here. It's basically the illuminated mind speaking to the passive body. We could no longer be passive bodies. That era is past. And yet we're still kind of like caught up in the dramaturgy and the bureaucracies in theaters, people being employed in such a way that they don't want to give it up.  This is how we structure our performance. We have a black box, a proscenium. We spend all this money on it, so we have to make sure it works. It doesn't work, just like our systems around us, capitalism, for instance, another symposium here. But it's all interrelated. And it's immersive. It's all interrelated. And we have to consider all these things. So in a sense, it's not just about the architecture of putting something in a space. It's about a whole another way of creating a narrative. And it's the artist who must lead and create new narratives. And this is only part of a composite, a larger picture and a larger puzzle piece that we have to put together. And that's the charge. So we're in a very interesting place historically. And for me, we have to jump in very knowingly. Because I think or I worry that in the best light, that's the version, that it's a civic, it's a proactive, it's an engaged society that comes to immersive work. I worry on the other side of it that it's no more than our internet experience. I'm a single point of camera traveling in the world where I may or may not pick up an experience. I didn't see this performance. But other performances, immersive work, can be on its bad day. I get lost staring at the structure of the closet because I'm interested in the architecture of that, but never in fact engage in the story. Which I wonder about as we create these things, how we continue to adjust them. Because I think that immersiveness is an extension of, is a continued pursuit of naturalism or realism, let's say realism, on stage. That it's the next step beyond that. Well, and maybe that's your perception of it. For me, again, going back to indigeneity in the indigenous world, which is my model, we tend to think that story is only told by humans. That story is only told through text. Stories told by a multiple, this room has stories in it. If you're doing site-specific, what's the story, what's the character of the room saying? What are the histories there that need to be unbundled? What do animals, how many times on stage do we consider animals or spirits in a way that is of equal grounding? In a sensorial way, we don't. We look at them basically in this old, kind of like Western perception, human-centric perception. We can't look at the world like that anymore. So in my immersive work, I try to basically, it's an exploration. I don't know. I have no idea if it will work or not. But I'm trying it, and what's happening is audiences are responding. Because whether conscious or unconscious, we're sensitized that we have to kind of change, that things are happening, and we need to fundamentally rethink how we do things, and not just propagate older ways of being in the world, older forms. But you're right, there are issues that this is an important discussion that's much longer than a few tidbits we can give here. Justin, what about turning back to that design question in terms of, I mean, because it's a very different thing to craft a design for something that's more immersive as opposed to, you know, okay, the audience is gonna be in a proscenium space, and they're gonna sit here for X amount of time. Yeah, yes and no. I mean, right, like again, the idea that we're sitting up here, and we have, maybe you all are sort of scooted onto a small table, right, in a series of other tables. So I propose that we actually never lose track of where we are, this idea that we can go, we can, in the olden days, we might turn out the lights, and really, when the lights come on, we're in your subconscious, right? It's just one I don't feel connected to, right? I just, I'm like, no, I'm still sort of in these uncomfortable chairs, I'll pack in all these people. I wanted that seat over there, but okay, this'll be pretty good, I'll take this. You know, that's part of the experience of my playmaking and play watching and engaging with the thing. So, okay, now we can extend design so that, well, should it just be framework, right? And we saw our friends of generations and ago where we said, American theater needs to, what we really need is to be in the thrust. That will save the world. Because everyone will get closer to the performance, it'll feel realer if we're in the thrust, or the round, right? And across the country, we can go and celebrate those theaters that are still there. And now we're in this big idea of we are gonna make a black box that could be anything you ever wanted. And it turns out that's frightfully expensive to adjust every single time to make whatever we want to make. So, I think there is a process where we can engage or open our hearts to say what would be the most exciting way to perceive this story, to engage with this story. But I do wonder these empty boxes, these frames of space that we have, are we always investing our stories or having a relationship with a story in these civic structures that have certain histories to them? Yeah, there. No, I think that's great. Well, and I think it kind of responds to something that Tom was talking about. There was an article I was looking at that talked about site-specific theater in terms of productions being placed within a particular space. But they said that's really some of the most powerful, or I think more of what Tom was referring to, which is site-responsive theater where you're really taking into account the space that you're in, the history of that space, whether it's its use or its architectural placement, something like that. So I think those possibilities are really great. And actually guys, I think with your piece coming up on Friday, I think you're doing some of that. Can you speak to that abstractly since you don't want to? Yeah, definitely, yeah. No, basically everything that is being built and has been built and will be seen on Friday is about activating some part of the history of this mill that we've learned about. And whether that be through things that they have in the mill, a prop, a song that we would supply. Anything, there's a lot of different ways you can tell that history. So we're really interested in all those different ways and exploring with that. Site-responsive I think is a really good term for what we're doing here because again, it is a place with a great deal of history. And so going into this as outsiders, of course, we have to be examining that history very explicitly and making sure that that is a loud voice in how we interpret and use the space. And it's essentially like Tom said, like making the space a character. It's like the mill is the main character of this play. I mean, there are like actors. I know you don't like actors, but there are actors who are walking around in it and they're interacting with it as if it were an actual breathing thing, which I mean, maybe it is. Maybe you can hear it sometimes, like speaking to you and establishing a dialogue with that. I mean, I just got here, so I'm really eager to get up there and work it. But before we came down, we wrote this whole script of what we wanted to do in the theater. Or in the theater, look, I'm even talking about it, it's a theater. It's not a theater. But so like trying to reconcile those words that we wrote with what the mill is actually saying to us, like we need to listen to it and we can't just be like, oh, we're just gonna force these things onto you and we're gonna like pack all these people into this little space because that's what we were going to do. Yeah, exactly, we've rewritten this show countless times at this point. How many times? I don't even know. And like basically we were working off a video, which was the thing is that you should really ideally build a site specific piece off the site, having been there, but we were working off a video that Kevin sent us. And so the technical problems of a video is for some reason the perspective might be off when you're standing in a different area. So it was very funny because we built this whole thing on what we thought the mill was gonna be. And then we got into this space and it's been an incredible experience, like reconciling something that was completely in our subconscious now with like, well, what would this actually be the night of the show? To go off of some of what Tom and Justin were talking about in regards to site responsive, these concepts. I think you can also be site responsive in rebellion to a space when we're asking about like, why immersive now? Why are we calling for it? I just remember very early in our company, we had a black box that we always used in our undergraduate and one of our last performances, we really made an attempt to change how everyone was approaching the space. You know, everyone for every show would enter through the same double doors and for this show, we had them go through this back corridor that we lit this way because we wanted to make that space a bunker. And that was just immediate and instinctive because it was a rebellion against what was constant in that space. And I think, you know, that is why immersive now is a good question because I feel as though theater in contrast to all of the other media story, especially story delivering media, we wanna know now how theater can function for a population so affected by that. And I think visceral, visceral is really what it's all about. When you boil it down. Maybe it's the internet ruining everything. Like we're kind of just living in these digital spheres so we just crave actually seeing somebody up close.  But from theaters, that's why you sit there and you see real people at a distance and that was real. But now, since we have TV and film and it's like immediate in that way, maybe that's why we're turning to immersive now is because it's like you're so close that you can touch them and you can touch them even though they are performing and they're doing something that you can't experience on a daily basis. Just. I think too is an issue of the relationship with the audience. I found that our audiences become characters. In fact, in our next performance, we're deliberately moving more towards that. And also our audiences in the main are very few traditional theater people in Dallas, which has a very thriving theater scene. I'd say only maybe 20, 25% of our audiences are traditional theater people and the majority are people who basically have given up on theater. Visual artists, people essentially saying that theater doesn't really respond to the world. It's kind of old fashioned and stodgy and it's like it's dated. These are things I hear. And our audiences tend to be young. Whereas most audiences and most theaters tend to be middle-aged to older. We get young audiences and they're very hungry for it. And they like the fact, not that they're going to perform, it's just that they realize, and I'm thinking of one anecdote. This is a man who's a partner of a major law firm in Dallas. He and his wife, Kang, and we had another performer who did a 36,000 square foot former welding shop. And it dealt with the journey of two souls after the fall of Troy throughout multiple lifetimes. And so we limit to like 50 people in the audience. And essentially it can go from an hour and a half to four hours, this durational and loop depending on the interest of the audiences. And so you can never see the entire thing in one night.  In fact, as a director, sometimes I would go to one space and not having been there and realizing that they evolve something. So they have room as performers too, and I use performer rather than actors because that's what a broader span of like a spectrum. But they're encouraged and we evolve it in a way that it's part of what we do, that they're encouraged to evolve it. But this lawyer was with his wife, guy in his late 60s, and he realized that he says, I was watching others watching me as well as watching the scene. And in a sense that's a wholism which I really aspire to, that we're all part of this. There is no exclusion. That we're all part of a condition now. And we are disenfranchised and our media and the internet is manipulating us in a way. And more and more if you just look at the business page of any newspaper, more and more large corporations are gobbling up smaller corporations which basically wanna control the story. So it's like, where do you go for real story? Where do you can go to even have like a free internet that's not, you know, things popping up from research from two years ago? Where do you go? I mean, so in a sense, it's a grassroots kind of activist approach is how we perceive it. And people I think are sensing that that is an alternative. And it's a way of reimagining and invigorating the imagination and creativity for our community. Right, you're encouraging people to actively participate in it rather than be passive, you know? And to be aware of who they are. Right. In the TNB show, it was interesting that we allow video, all of our shows. So you wanna take video, fine.  People go out, have a cigarette and go back in. It's like, it's kind of relaxed. And it's based on things I've seen. One inspiration was this event in Burkina Faso where there's major like a ritual but there are events over there, over there, over there. It's like, I didn't know where to go but I went to where I needed to go. And that's what I needed to see. So chance is how the spirit speak. That's how the perception. So if I go there, if I go looking at the door, that's what I need to see. I need to see that door. That's my story. That's what I need to see right now. So it's kind of breaking our concept of like how we function and what we present as artists. What our vocabulary is. What our responsibilities are. Yeah, and I think as a theater maker what is most exciting about immersive theater is it's a type of thing that you can only do with theater.  Like, why does the story have to be told? This, in a theater, well, it only seems to follow that. Why not use the medium in a way that only, that you can only use it for. Questions. Do we have a microphone around her now? We do. Once I, vamp, vamp, vamp, vamp. Thanks.  And, What's your name? You name it. And with all respect for immersive theater, because I do love it, attending it and doing it. But when is it just a gimmick? When is it an actual response to the fact that we can no longer sit in a theater and just listen and having that in immersive experience and that creating a full world for us? How is it that we become such a visual society and the need for physical simulation and visual simulation all around us that we are forming our theater in response to that? I'm not saying it's a bad thing at all. But when have our attend, is immersion theater a responsive fact that our attention spans are too short? Well, I do think gimmick does have a bit of negative connotation. So, but to take that away. I wonder. Maybe hook? Hook, yeah. Is there something about, maybe part of, for me, the experiences to break it away from, to make it event versus story? That somehow, for me to see an immersive event is to see the event of the thing that many things can happen, that I can get lost staring at the door and maybe miss the fact that, oh, this is all based on Macbeth. I didn't realize that. Because there were so many people walking around in white masks. That the there becomes a different experience. I do wonder though how it continues to be specific. That the event continues to be unique and link us to a, I'm a theater artist because I'm interested in story. So, how does story layer itself back into that? I'm not entering anything. I want to further that question actually that Elena had to go off of the example you just used. You were mentioning Sleep No More, I think there, which is the probably the most famous immersive theater in New York right now. It's based on Macbeth, but it came up early in our talks about the mill. And I think very quickly we decided we didn't want to maybe use Sleep No More tactics. I've never actually seen Sleep No More, but I am wondering how much of that is composed of things that are gimmick and how much of that speaks to what you were talking about before about the individual, like they travel through the internet, having such a subjective experience that it is detrimental because they can take their, they can walk their way through and perhaps only skim the surface because they're not an immersive theater person. I'm not sure, but Sleep No More is an example, I think. Well, I think Justin mentioned like story versus events is like the perfect way to phrase it because I mean, I've seen Sleep No More and it was, yeah, it was like there wasn't much story.  But we did, but both the examples on the table, Tom, you really talked about a story. I mean, there's a real clear beginning, middle, and end. I think it's conceptions of what can tell a story. Again, we're very alphabet culture minded, which is a part of what civilization is and part of how we got where we are right now. But it doesn't mean we always stay there. So maybe I don't see a visualization as a negative. It's maybe we're at the onset of something, a kind of a new consciousness. I see, so everything is a text in a sense. I see the whole world is like a force of symbols. So when I see a tree, it's like that thing is seen so much as an elder. It's saying things. It's just that we're not hearing them because someone has to write a poem about it or make an alphabet documentation of it. Then we hear it and then we see it. It's been speaking. Having worked in Asia a bit, it was very interesting. He has a designer, maybe appreciate this. We had a production meeting in Korea and the designer was coming in and so he just held up some paper and he did like this dance with this paper. It was beautiful, like a hand printed paper. And everyone just sat there and we were all feeling that it was the right paper. We think, and I've worked in Alaska, Alaska Native people, oftentimes I had to caution my non-native students who might be working with us that, and I'm a fast speaker, I love life, I wanna share what I have, but Alaska Native people and the many indigenous people, they, when you say something, you have to give them time for them to respond. So there are sometimes there were students, there were performers who would, they would leave the room and I go, is everything okay? And I go, yes, there's just so much feeling that I had to leave the room. And so it becomes very, almost meditated the communication. So it's a very different way of looking at it. We're kind of thinking that it has to be worth to communicate and that means we're alive and thinking, I don't feel that's a necessity. There are one component equal is the way I see it. With sound, with movement, sensorial interaction, with emotion, they're all equals. And as a director, as a creator, as a performer, you have all these things to work with. So that's how I'm approaching it. So again, it's a reconfiguration, a reformalization of like, and a way of like conceiving performance and how it functions is where I'm at with it. And as the more it has a lot to do with the type of story you're trying to tell, because as we learn more and more about the mill, the reason that we structured the initial project, the way that we did was because it was learning about the mill. It has an incredibly rich history, but it's not a history that is particularly interesting if you tell it start to finish, I think. I think that there's really fleshed out sections of the mill's history that are worth looking at. And so how do you tell that story that's so episodic but doesn't really have an arc necessarily? It's been so interesting listening to you guys talk. I was wondering, I'm struck that the title of this panel is found space versus site-specific space. And I'm interested in hearing if any of you have made work where instead of being inspired by a single space or creating work that is site-specific, that you've created a work that either has wandering, which kind of, there's a lot of theoretical interest now in wandering and sort of revolutionary construct or structure, right? Or that you're interested in found audience, which would have a moving, because we're in a medium of time and space, right? So I don't know, are you thinking about space and beyond just being in a non-theatricalized environment? Yeah, I was part of this project with the Institute for Psychogeographic Adventure, is their name, last year, that my role in it was essentially to sit on a roof and give people tarot card readings. And the audience chose to go on, they didn't know where they were going, but they knew they were going on a journey. And so each new location was a new story in a way. A new story in a way.  So they became, I guess, unwilling audience members, in a sense. And then also there was a pretty violent altercation on one path, and somebody intervened and stopped it and was like, this is wrong. Like, stop hurting this person, leave her alone. And everybody was like, can we go on with the play now? But that was, like I said, that became the play, you know, that this person interacting, like an unwilling performer in a sense, you know, like they became part of the play. In years past here at the conference, actually, I think some of what we've done with the Fringe Festival that will be happening again this year has involved maybe delivering a reluctant audience, if you will, into our hands. You know, one of the first things we did for the first Fringe Festival, we built this just frame story around the entire Fringe Festival, just involving birthday clowns, because at the time we had all been making our money by doing some birthday clowning. And so we had just gotten so much from that that we created this piece that wasn't necessarily a play in and of itself, but was a guiding force through the rest of the festival. And we just called it, what was it? Don't feed the balloon animals or something like that. And that, it again, it was just having these characters that were not in relation necessarily to the themes or the stories of any of the other shows in the Fringe Festival, but instead this rogue force that was going to bring things onto you at some point, whether it be an interview, you were gonna get a balloon animal, you were gonna get a birthday cake, Spider-Man came in, he was at the party. Yeah. Your question was about found audiences? Is that, is that it? In a way, I mean, is this a site-specific performance right now or what we're experiencing? I mean, and what would make it, quote unquote, a bracketed performance? What do you need to make this a performance? This event right here, right? Programs.   I was recently in Turkey and at an artist residency and the area I was in was really nice except that it was big area for demonstrations. So I was tear gas several times and water cannon and there they put this orange stuff in the water and it marks you for arrest, but also as a skin irritant so the police are pretty nasty over there. But it was really performance in the streets and having performed in the streets in the 70s against the war in Vietnam, et cetera, was kind of like charged. I mean, the performance aspect was also, it was alive and the feelings there and the garbage burning and the canisters shooting back and forth and the students and demonstrators throwing the canisters back and then the entire neighborhood and these small streets opening their windows and banging pots and pans so they would distract and make communication for the police very difficult. It was like spontaneous and what activated them was in a sense abstract. It's something going on in the air, a current, meaning the political situation, how it's becoming more fundamentalist Islamic as opposed to the secularist tradition in Turkey. So that's a big issue. And so these ideals, so in a sense it's abstract. So these actions basically refer to and activated and abstract like a myth in a sense you could say or story that's in the air and in everyone, but never spoken yet highly powerful and very performative in many ways and very involving, very immersive. So, you know, is that performance or where do we draw the line? What do we call it a performance or how do we validate that? There was, there are little texts at all. A lot of visuals. All right, and that is our time. Thank you very much to our panelists. We can continue the conversation. That's our time. Thank you.


Everybody forced here ripping a box of 21 22 prism basketball fast break for Landon H Thank you Landon Come on now big Franz Wagner big Cade We'll see a bones Highland one of one. How about that? That's prediction right there bones Highland one one Starting out with a Moses moody fast break rookie Otto a nice start Yeah, I know Chris Hockey markets kind of small, but it's it is real is good most moody to start autumn the first pack red Jay Chantate 76 of 100 rockets color match Fearless disco Zion Williamson Bruce Brown disco It's a bassy rookie Silver Ray Allen as a buck Purple Najee Marshall Seven of 75 Najee Marshall purple disco Jade Springer Come on big rookie color. Come on Fireworks step curry disco Isaiah Stewart Beef stew disco there Santiago Dama key on Johnson nice purple rookie Trey Mann The color behind it to purple rookie Trey Mann can't move it there 27 to 75 and Wendell Carter Jr. Blue disco color match 30 of 150 Carter underrated underrated. I'll say Ben Simmons disco prismatic a kispert rookie disco Tray Murphy the third few more packs. I'll have the photo variation coming up as well There it is. I hear Williams rookie photo variation disco Disco Chris Paul Shin goon Jalen Johnson. Yeah, I just got a weird refraction of the light Mind said disco Kevin Durant a Sabin Lee last couple packs here fireworks Kalei Leonard purple shake Milton 57 of 75 I had a Sun Moon All right, here's the one of one. Come on fearless LeBron rookie disco Brandon Boston Jr No one of one All right, there you go Landon nice side on the box for you decent box. We will get the cards out to you shortly


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Two charges A and B are fixed 25 centimeters apart as shown below Where should a third charge be placed such that it would be in equilibrium? So what does it mean for a charge or for anything to be in equilibrium? What does that mean? Well equilibrium in physics means that there is no net force acting on that object. So no net force So we need to find where should I keep a third charge in this universe Where the net force due to these two charges these two charges are gonna pull or push on it But the total force on that should become zero Now you may be wondering well Why don't A and B push on each other and they are doing that but it's given that it's fixed in place Right so that you can imagine their nail down But our third charge you need to figure out where should I keep such that the net force over there should be zero Now before we before we start another way to think about it is we could say look if the net force has to be zero That means the electric field at that point The net electric field at that point must be zero right if an electric field at a point is zero It means the net force over there is zero So our question now is slightly changed it our quick our goal now is to figure out where in this universe is The total electric field due to these two charges zero Now you may be wondering how do we do that? Right, I mean we know the formula to calculate electric field due to each charge I mean let's begin over there We know that electric field equals k q or r squared and we know if there are multiple charges Then we use the superposition principle and add them up But how do I know where are they gonna add up to become zero? I mean how do I even begin thinking about it? So here's how we can start For two because there are two electric fields for them to you know together cancel out They have to be equal and opposite to each other think about it If two vectors electric fields are vectors if two vectors have to cancel out There's only one way for that to happen. They have to be equal and opposite Based on just that we can narrow down we can narrow down where our where that point is going to be For example, I know for sure with 100% certainty that at this point electric field won't be zero You know, how do I know that because just think about it the electric field created by charge a would be away from it along the line Joining and from B would be again away from it along the line joining and forget about their magnitudes These two are not in the opposite direction. So they will not cancel out So I know electric field over here won't be zero similarly electric field here also won't be zero same reasoning here Also won't be zero the only place electric field can be zero is when the two Forces or two electric fields are along the same lines Along the same line and that can only happen on the line Joining a and B. So that's a good start. We now know it's not not anywhere in the universe It's got to be somewhere on this line Joining a and B only there there's a possibility the two field lines the two field vectors can be equal and opposite Does that make sense? Okay, but even here we can further narrow it down. See on this line. There are three options It can be somewhere towards the left of a it can be somewhere in between a and b and it can be somewhere towards the right Where do you think it's going to be and I here? I want you to pause the video and think a little bit about this use the same idea and see in which Which of the three regions can the electric fields be equal and opposite pause and try All right, let's start in this region if I pick some point over here Then what would happen when I add up the electric fields due to these two charges? Well, this charge is going to produce an electric field away This charge is also going to produce an electric field away and notice there in the same direction They're not going to cancel out. So there is no way electric field can be zero over here So it's definitely not in this region and Similarly, I hope you agree it cannot be in this region as well because again if you consider any point over here This is going to push away Electric field is going to be away. This is also going to put electric field away Both are positive charges. So anywhere you go on the right electric field is now going to become zero But what if you consider somewhere in between again pick some random point in between and Now if you consider the electric field due to this charge and let's be a little bit more careful now Due to this charge at this point. It's going to be away from there So it's going to be away and Electric field due to this charge over here is going to be away from that charge. So that's going to be away and look They are in the opposite direction So it can cancel out Somewhere over here Therefore now we know that the electric field can be zero only somewhere between a and p. It's incredible Right even without doing any maths just by logical deduction. We know in this entire universe Electric field can be only zero somewhere between a and b on the on the line joining them Which is I don't know super powerful, right? Super powerful. Okay, but now let's figure out Exactly where that's going to be. So let's do the math So let me get rid of all of that. So now I need to figure out. Let's say that point is P Let me call that point as P That is the point where the electric field is zero. The question is Where exactly that point is going to be how do I figure that out? Well, whenever like, you know always like how you do it in maths or physics whenever you don't know something We take that as X So we want to know where this point is that means we need to know its distance from a or its distance from B So let's call that distance as X. So let's take this. Let's let's call this distance from a as X and our goal now is to find what X is But how do I do that? Well, I know the condition For point P the electric field has to be zero, right? And that means the magnitude of the electric fields have to be equal to each other So if I call this is the electric field due to a because a is producing this and I call this as the electric field you to be EA in magnitude EA in magnitude should equal EB I'm only considering the magnitude. I'm not considering the direction. We've already taken care of the direction They're opposite So the magnitude has to be equal to each other and for that and how and what do we do next? Well, we know electric field formula so we can plug in and we can hope to calculate X So again, good idea to pause and see if you can try and arrive at the value yourself All right, let's do this. So electric field you to a is going to be KQ by R square So it's gonna be K. I'm not going to substitute.  There are too many distances over here Let's not get confused R is the distance from the charge to that point we're considering a so from a to that point That's X. That's what we want.  Can you can you see now? Divide by R square. What's R for for this charge? Well, again, R is a distance from this charge to that point and That distance is well, the whole thing is 25. So this is X. So this is gonna be 25 minus X So that's going to be 25 Minus X or the whole square. I forgot to square it. There's a square over there KQ by R square. Okay, and again, notice that this is in centimeters We need to be always careful about the units But I'm not gonna worry about it and you'll see why now when I'll do it I'll tell you why now because when you're equating you can cancel stuff out. So K cancels Nano cancels the centimeters square and the centimeter square over here also cancels So I don't have to worry about anything the coulomb cancels all the units cancel out. Okay, so that's great So all of those things cancel out. So what remains now is just pure algebra So I have let me read that over here. So I have two over X squared equals 18 divide by 25 minus X the whole squared and so I can do goes nine times and I can take square root on both sides because there is a square. So I get one over X Equals three over 25 minus X And just to save space, I'm gonna do it over here now. So just algebra 25 minus X equals 3x so 25 equals 4x So X equals 25 divide by 4 and that is 4 6 are 24 or 0.10 for two zero eight six point two five six point two five what Well, we cancelled everything or it has to be centimeters, right because because the distances were in centimeters So we know this is six point two five centimeters and there we go We have our answer X equals six point two five centimeters so that point P is two point six point two five centimeters from a and that's the place where if you keep a Third charge, it's gonna be in equilibrium. It's gonna stay in equilibrium. And if you notice something you can see that that point Like we drove we drew over here. We didn't draw it properly. It's not at the midpoint It's very close to point a that point actually somewhere should be somewhere over here And then if you think about it that kind of makes sense Because for the magnitudes to cancel out because B has a higher charge You need to be farther away from it So hopefully it kind of makes sense that our point that we were looking for is actually closer to a compared to B All right, how about we try one more just to check our understanding and this is fun also, right? So almost almost the exact same question except let's say I make this charge negative Okay, what do you think is gonna happen? Let's do the same process again But a little faster we now know you can guess that has to be the point of equilibrium where the electric field is Zero that point has to be again somewhere on the line Joining these two charges, but again, where is it gonna be? Do you think it's gonna be the same as before or maybe somewhere else again? Can you try and pause and think a little bit about this? All right, let's do the same exercise again. Let's start with this point somewhere over here If I take some point over here now this charge Well, it's gonna electric put the electric field away from it and This charge because it's negative. It's gonna put the electric field towards it. Hey, so it's possible It's possible that they can cancel out over here, right? So this is one possibility What about in between? Let's let's check in between if I check somewhere over here from a the electric field is going to be away from it and Due to be the electric field is gonna be towards it So over here now in between they're gonna add up so electric field cannot be zero now things have changed dramatically Interesting so this is not gonna be the place. What about over here somewhere? Let's see due to a electric field is Gonna be away and Due to be electric field is gonna be two words. So yeah, even here they may cancel out So now comes an interesting question. Where do you think in which region do you think the electric field would be zero? Maybe it might be zero in both No, if you if you see carefully, we can use something that we learned earlier. See in order for the electric field to be zero Not only is it enough that they are They're in opposite direction their magnitudes have to be equal as well, right? So if I consider This point over here Notice that this point will always be closer to point B the bigger charge Compared to the smaller charge since the bigger charge since this point is always bigger to the big closer to the bigger charge This electric field will always be Always be bigger than the electric field produced by this chart. Does that make sense? Think about it Wherever you go, I will always be closer to the bigger charge. These two will never cancel out. So this is impossible This can't happen But over here it's possible I can I can have some point where it is so close to that this small charge even though the charge is small It's close to it so that the electric field due to this one and this one can cancel out Okay. Now again, the next question is where exactly is it going to be and we're gonna do the same exercise And we're gonna do it a little quicker now So let's say that point is P and again, we don't know where that point is We're gonna call that distance as X X and now again the condition over here is electric field at P to be 0 We need electric field due to a in magnitude should equal the electric field due to B And in the spirit of time I already done my calculation. I'm just gonna show you what we get and again feel free to do this yourself first So just one thing you might notice over here is I haven't put the negative sign because I'm only considering the magnitude The negative sign is only to check the direction So for magnitude, I don't have to consider the signs and over here It's gonna be 25 plus X because it's so far away from B And then if I simps if I simplify which you can just pause and see you will get the answer to be 12.5 centimeters. So that means X in this case is 12.5 centimeters to the left of a that's where the electric field is zero So if I keep any third charge over here, it's going to be in equilibrium


So all of this is about exploitation of data and of course these data needs to be protected to be so what do we do inside the security? Thank you Patrick and thank you theory for this opportunity. We live in very interesting times The security aspect has become a bit compounded with many conflicts And in the allotted time I will speak about seven distinct things One will be the premise second will be the threat the third at the strategy as we see it for Will mentioned about quantum technology, but not quantum computing, which is what Franco would be speaking AI and cyber some examples in the future the premise Let me lay down the premise first We may all agree that there are no air gaps in cyber security be perimeter cloud space or edge number two the surface area of Cyber vulnerability has expounded many folds with the adoption of IOTs and sensors This is particularly true because we are a living in the world where most of our Critical infrastructures are connected three Encryption is everywhere and securing our encryptions is the key to our digital future or success Today, we are more an encryption economy The an example would be to look at digital signatures Everything that we validate are based on digital signatures And if there is a vulnerability on digital signatures, then we can imagine how our future might be compromised Now, let me talk briefly about the threats global trends in cryptography are Heavily compromised powerful algorithms like the shows and the grovers Come are using equally powerful computers that can crack down any encryption standards. They do that with Quantum simulators, which are very powerful computers that can compromise encryptions quantum computers That is something. It's like, you know, we all know when there was the The advent of y2k. There was a date, but nobody knows when quantum computers will come in. It's it's knowing the unknown third The majority of encrypted web data relies on an encryption standard called RSA 2048 a quantum computer with four zero nine nine qubits will break it in a few minutes This we don't see going beyond 2028. If not, it has already happened Systems using today's cryptography for long-term author Authentication is at risk. Just look at your health data. If that is compromised Well, that's why many of these hospitals are being hacked because their data has very long tail and cryptography built on mathematical algorithms are Vulnerable to brute-force attack Finally the grid will become the first in the line of attack when nations conflict or there are other Compelling economic narratives. This includes national defense systems critical infrastructures It's most of us most of what we have today banks financial institutions healthcare army navy. They all critical infrastructures The strategy let me put out two or three of these broad strategies, which are being employed now The first one is hack now Vaporize now. So if you have the algorithm, you have the cryptography to break these encryptions You vaporize it now or you hack now and store it store it and weaponize it later When you have the ability to break the encryption So basically what we are trying now trying is to move from Mathematics to quantum physics which according to pure science is it's much much more difficult to crack And this rest on two principles. One is the Heisenberg's principle of Uncertainty which enables the identification of eavesdropping actually the the pipe falls as soon as somebody comes into the chain The second is the no cloning theorem prohibits copying of data From quantum states these are two and the third there is a third one, which is the Bell's inequality principle which prevents implanting attacks on Fizz on physical systems Let me speak about quantum technology. I'm not going into quantum computing. See the this arises of the second quantum revolution Incidentally the first quantum revolution was much of the touted technologies that we have nuclear Semiconductor and laser the second is more characterized now by manipulation Individually manipulating individual quantum systems. For example eavesdropping using quantum key distribution Quantum computing breaking the RSA code. I Will now all you to AI and cyber AI systems will be vulnerable to adversarial attacks From any domain where AI augments action, which means the moment you use AI there is a vulnerability It's like a boomerang it can come back to you These attacks will involve evasion data poisoning Manipulation there thereby rendering AI Much ineffective. For example, let me give you a conflict scenario The let's say the field use is in AI is supercharged Intel, which is ISR The AI use case in this case case will be object detection, which is asset Person and weapon and the AI attack in this case would be extraction Annivation so if you look at what the Russians were able to do with their military fields In this current attack, you will see a lot of this exploitation happening where they were able to mask most of their Places where they had kept their aircrafts examples I would give of AI in a in a Is the combination of AI and being used with haps You know using satellites would be a little more challenging, but you have a haps which operated a much Lower altitude and these become aerial data centers So tomorrow when you are moving into autonomous areas of conflict You would be using more of haps and haps would act as area day Aerial data centers, which will ensure quick communication to people who are on the field and the second is it's not a fiction It's human enhanced Enhancement technology which is cybernetically enhanced Human beings which means that the human being you know Has implants in his body and he's able to connect to a haps and he's able to you know Take decisions much faster than Then having to call to a command center now finally I would look at the future which is the AI based Neural systems, so you have AI you have quantum But the challenge of AI Or the success of Building quantum encryptions is based on how much complexity you can build with AI you are able to increase this complexity Using a technology which we call cipher text Currently the highest standard that NIST has agreed is about to raise to the power of 256 but with AI Based neural systems you can increase this complex complexity of the cyber bit text to about to raise to the power of 2.6 million so that's how the future of The complexity of AI encryptions will be there are pluses there are minuses But this is how I see the the technology evolving There are you know I have emphasized more on the military part of it because the earlier adapters of all these advanced technologies We believe are Difference forces and it is only after the difference in the military use it would become much more applicable in the civil world Thank you. Thank you to be good point connecting with what Sorry Katsu to mention about the need for distinctive policies I would take two point here is a when it comes AI and cybersecurity You describe the complex system and it increase the attack surface what we call the attack surface The more complex your system is it increases notably what you've seen from Amina and what to be explained means a Lot of identities will be created all these machine will be identity and you know in Cybersecurity one of the biggest point is manage the identity And then the access based on the identity to the systems So that that's a big complexity and also you use AI for the attack Which is done there is a kind of try to neutralize Fortunately the parallelism is not yet in place. So we have a few challenging times ahead of us So thank you to be for this overview


Longtime subscribers will know that I have a particular quirk. Well, many quirks, but one in particular, and that is I do not have internet at my home, and that is a conscious choice. It happens sort of accidentally, but for the past two years I have had no access to the internet at my home whatsoever. And it's been a great experience and I recommended on occasions and people have asked me to talk about why. So that's what this is for. It's pretty simple. So first off, when I moved off to Arizona I moved into a place where there were really no good internet companies. I mean there was like Cox and it was way overpriced and something else and it was all DSL. And you know I sort of had the idea you know what? The place I was living I was so close to my office and so close to you know getting internet there. So I just figured you know what? If I really won't need internet I can just walk ten minutes to campus and do what I need to do and come back. So for a month or so I tried that out and it actually works out fine. I mean there's a little inconvenience but it's pretty effective. It's pretty good at getting what I need done. But then I started having like real benefits of this and that might be a little confusing. And let me preface it by saying this. A lot of people have the idea that you know when you're living in the current year, when you're living in the modern world you know we're also busy. You know I had classes to teach, I have classes to take, I had work to do, you know I had assistantships, I had to you know talk with students and other things. I had a personal life, I had all the stuff to do, all the stuff on my schedule. But when you subtract well let's put it this way we're all busy. But what happens is we all have, we develop these reflexes where when we actually do have free time we just reflexively fill it up with junk. And usually the internet helps us to do that. That is you get home, we all have that reflexes where you get home, you plop down, maybe you turn on the TV, maybe you go pull up your browser and scroll through your Facebook feed.  And we all live in this time where like no one has time to just think or like stop and like contemplate what they're actually doing or spend any kind of quality quality time doing what they need to do. So when I had no internet what started happening is that I had a lot of nothing time and no matter how busy you are I guarantee you there are gonna be hours and hours that you can spend at your house that aren't sleeping. And so what I started doing is started just tinkering, just tinkering with my computer, tinkering with my academic work, tinkering with other things just I actually started reading a lot of the books that I had or you know when you don't have the internet you start investing your time in better things. And of course when I first stopped having the internet I had no YouTube channel the in fact this YouTube channel would not exist if I didn't not have or didn't not have whatever if I had no internet or if I did have the internet I would have never started this YouTube channel.  So why is that the reason why is the reason I started really getting into getting into Linux configuration the reason I really started getting into Vim I used it superficially before I use LaTeX superficially before I I was interested in computer stuff superficially before but when I actually have a computer that's highly configurable that has Linux on it and that has this nice little command called man where you can look up you know how to use any of these programs you really start spending quality time with your computer really getting to know it or really getting to know not just your computer but anything else you're actually interested in because if I didn't have you know if I did have the internet we'll put it that way if I did have the internet what would happen is I'd be minorly bored for 20 seconds and then I'd be like oh I'm gonna play a game online I'm going to you know just sort of drone through YouTube videos I'm gonna go on the you know 4chan or Reddit or something like I don't Twitter whatever people are using Facebook go through my feed for like the 30th time in the past five minutes and yeah that's once you get rid of that reflex you realize you have so much more that you can do so I spent hours at my house just figuring out how do I how do I do this more effectively on my computer or let me think about you know what I'm actually doing in my job let me read more let me like actually I don't want to say improve myself because that sounds a little wanky but that is that is really what it was it was like I'm actually doing I'm actually maturing in a more real way than if I were just messing around and you know I there's no way that if I wanted to I could not watch a bunch of vine comps till 2am I just you know I also even if I wanted to I couldn't watch porn even if I wanted to I couldn't you know do all of these things and once you take that away it's just it's fantastic so this is again this is where my YouTube channel came from I started messing around with my system messing around you know people you know every once in a while I get like but hurt comments you know you get but hurt comments for all kind of things but one of them is or you do this stuff so well so you must be obsessed with it and you know blah blah blah I mean even the stuff I do my YouTube channel on like I don't really give that much of a crap about it like you know I could probably live without a computer or anything else but since I've had all this free time I've really been able to excel or at least dabble in things that you know look really look maybe difficult but they're actually really easy and accessible and if you could get yourself away from having that reflex that reflex to just crowd your brain up with like you know the superficial pleasure of going through your Facebook feed or all these other internet things if you could get rid of that you would be in a better better position as well and I feel like it's something once you really have this sort of freedom I don't feel like it it leaves you I mean so now in the past month or so I have I've actually moved into a new place with you know a roommate and all and we do actually have internet by default we have we don't have Wi-Fi so that is another limitation but we do have internet and I still feel like I have cultivated so many good habits that it actually doesn't matter like I don't really feel as distracted by the computer anymore I can get on it I can you know play around with it every once in a while maybe check my email but like it just it's not something that distracts me like it used to be it used to you know I can do other things I can read books and when even when I do have the internet here I'll be doing something else on my computer I'll be writing something some kind of little program to do something or it's just you know better it's it's it's once the cat is out of the bag it's an improvement and let me tell you the best times were those where I not only didn't have internet but for whatever reason my phone was broken or lost or something like that so even if I you know even if I wanted to see the internet on this little phone I couldn't do it or even if I wanted to call or text someone I couldn't do it like I'm stuck like you're anchored to a place where you you have to get things done I don't necessarily want to put in those words but you're anchored you know in a place where you can really spend your time in a depthy way so what I ended up doing I mean you know what I what I my sort of workflow I guess is that I would really have to think about the things I wanted to invest time in let's say you know I wanted to learn so you know even if I wanted to watch YouTube let's say oh there's a really good YouTube channel that puts out good content and I'm going to learn about this well what I do is when I'm at work I would have YouTube DL just download the whole channel or you know if I wanted to see some you know a movie or TV or you know if I wanted to read something I'd like just download the web pages and then when I got home that's when I you know basically consume all this content and what that causes is it it makes it so like you don't have ADHD on the internet instead you're thinking about the things you are you're consuming and you're spending your time in and investing you know investing your effort in so it makes it so you don't really waste your consumption of the internet you're actually you know because the problem with the internet is not that there's not good stuff there or it's that like there's so much noise there's so much junk not in the sense of just bad content but there's so much distraction there's so much getting in your way that's you know driving you away from actually spending good time so anyway I do recommend to all of my subscribers not just to like limit your exposure to the internet but really everything else in modern life because a lot of it is just it's just like the equivalent of junk food like your brain your brain is looking to be occupied and when you're doing something like going through your feeds and just sort of browsing you know Reddit or something or 4chan just without any mind to it you you're just sort of giving it junk food and you could be you could be doing a whole lot more so yeah that's that's really I just wanted to do a video on this just because people ask me I highly recommend it and I really highly recommend cultivating a mindset where you're not drowned by drowned by the little nagging things of modernity that's something that I recommend but yeah I guess that's about it so you know so we think do whatever you want but that's my recommendations so I'll see you guys next time have a good one


I teach all the Indigenous Studies courses at the college here, and I also teach the language course, Introductory 1521 and Introductory 1522. Plus, I'm also doing the Indigenous Education in the Education 211 course, which is for the 10 program. It's giving the teachers all their training to be teachers in their third year of teaching, and it's giving them that knowledge that they need involving Indigenous Studies and history, and how to teach that for the TQS that's coming up. Every teacher has to teach to a certain quality standard, and so Alberta a few years ago set the limits to what teachers have to teach. It's actually become effective that they have to teach Indigenous history, as well as teaching all students the residential schools, the effect it's had on Indigenous students. So we have from kindergarten all the way up to grade 12 have to be taught that history now. And you had a system where it was so vague that you could teach pretty well anything you wanted on Prismations People, but now because of the Constitution Act that actually has identified the Indians, Inuit, and Métis as different groups, but they have rights also. They're acknowledging that and saying, you know what? Because they've been recognized as a group of people and they have human rights, and they do have rights under the Indian Act, and of course the treaties that were signed. Then what we're doing is we need to get that information out to the people, because students are not even learning it until university level, many of them, many. So I have students that are a little more mature, and out of the whole entire class, I think I had five people that put up their hands that said that if they had taken it in high school, those were the only five that I noticed out of 38 students. Wow. That's amazing. In the five that put up their hand, the areas that they were coming out of were in areas that were pretty well in the areas where it was prominently indigenous population. First day I think it was, I was there. I said, out of all of you that are sitting in this class today, I said how many of you would have taken this class if you didn't have to? Three people put up their hand. Oh my. So I asked each of them what their background was. One was Métis. The other one was, she just said she's from, I think, Prince Edward Island, and then the other one, he was pretty confident that he actually, he just enjoyed it. He just wanted to take it, but the rest of the class wasn't. No, they wouldn't have taken it probably. Well, the courses that I teach are the indigenous way of knowing. It's just connecting the students to the land and our culture and how nature is such an important part of our culture and how we use all animal and plants and take it with of course pride and respect. And then we have the indigenous governance, which teaches students about governance at the bound levels, how it ties into the Canadian society, how we have been basically run by the Indian Act, many First Nations people, and how the indigenous governance now we're taking that step saying, hey, we did once have our indigenous governance, and it's only been recently taken away in the last hundred years, right? And so now what we're trying to do is we're trying to revive that. And then the other one is the indigenous community development and leadership. It's taking the students into the issues that First Nations people are dealing with, but not just First Nations people, but indigenous organizations even. Even when you look at Métis locals, you look at Métis settlements, all the different problems that they're actually experiencing at their communities and trying to take a look at what problems we have in our communities and how we're trying to get away from that, bringing in community development programs and using our leadership to take that role and step, I guess, out of that stuckness that we find ourselves in. And I have so much fun in them. And then the other course I'm teaching is the introduction to indigenous research on, of course, history, and that one takes, and that's been here for years, because I took it back in 2001, and it was taught by Duff Crear at that time. I remember him telling me when he was teaching me, because I said to him, this was in response to what I said to him, right? I said to him, I said, you know Duff? For the first time in my 39 years, I've been on this earth.  Wow. I said, that's the first time. I said, I tried to hide my background. I didn't want people to know I was indigenous. I tried to blend in with Canadian society. I said, yes, people always knew, especially if they were racist. I said they'd hide, and they'd do it in subtle ways. So I tried to blend in and it never worked. It worked for people who weren't prejudice, but for the ones that were, I said it didn't matter.  And he said, you know, darling, it should be people like you that are teaching this course. Wow. I'd like to see you up here teaching this. Wow. There you are. Here I am 18. Actually, it's been 16 years, 16 years later teaching. I know it's compressed because I've got, what, three and a half months, not even really half a month, to teach these students the history of indigenous people, why we are the way we are, why we have such low numbers in the university and colleges. And taking a look at our history has has a huge part of our success. You know, now that our life is changing for the better, people are now going to school. They're becoming more comfortable in these schools. The intergenerational trauma is lessening every year. We're not there yet, but we're getting there. Well, indigenous education to me is all about learning the history of the indigenous organizations or people in the area and really taking a step back and learning about the culture. What types of practices do they have in reserves? How do they tie into nature? Like we take a look at our environment right now, and Alberta, of course, as we all know, is huge on oil and gas production. And it goes against indigenous people in their way of knowing, like we honor Mother Earth and we treat her with respect and the exploration.  However, the way in which we treat Mother Earth in reclaiming her back to its original state I think is what companies need to take a look at and say, hey, you gotta respect Mother Earth. Mother Earth is an important part of our life. If we disrespect her, we're then the Zalida, so we need to educate the public. We need to educate Canadian society and say we need to honor Mother Earth. We need to be educated on, we have lived here for centuries, and we know how to live off the land. We have adapted. We have been resilient to everything that we've experienced, and we're still here. We're still standing. We're a very strong people, and people need to know that part of us, I think. And that's where I think the education comes in. Teach them about our cultures, how we're not all one group. Education is about getting the information out there that Blackfoot and Cree, Sue, Beaver, Denne, those are all different groups, different native groups, Métis, they all have their own form of culture, although, yeah, they're distinct, but over the last few years, as everybody knows, in the 1800s, we were banned from participating in ceremony, and in 1951 that ban was lifted. And so, if you've got a half a century where you had an Indigenous, people did not practice their culture, you know, you're going back now and all of a sudden, hey, we have to go and relearn or find people that are still fine in their practice. Yeah, they're practicing the traditions, and so some people were resilient, some people maintain that. So I think we're getting that information across culture, culturally learning. So I know the Cree people have adapted the Sundance into our traditional practices, which it never, to my understanding, from what I have read, I haven't read anything about Cree people participating in Sundances, yet now they do, and it's because they're adapting them. Who owns it? I don't know, because you have an argument between the Sue and the Blackfoot that say, hey, we owned it, but in reality, who cares? Yeah. You know, who cares? Yeah. So I think about, do you follow those beliefs? Because if you take religion, for example, if you take the Catholic religion, opposed to Christianity and the differences, well, Christianity followed the Jesus Christ model and the Catholic followed the God, right? Yes, Jesus Christ is a part of that, but that's not who they pray to. And you take a look at that, and if there's certain things within that culture that you like, or within that religion that you like, then take it and use it. Take those. So I'm saying that if you like something in the Cree culture, then it should be open for people to accept that. You don't have to incorporate the whole belief system into your life, but take segments of it, and maybe that works for you and use that. And I think that's what education is, just bringing that and saying, hey, this is our education. If you want to use it, use it. My vision is that every Canadian will have knowledge of the impact, the Indian Act, the treaties, the residential schools. All of those negative impacts have had on First Nations people. And rather than sitting there and judging Indigenous people for living in homes that are breaking down their family or whatever their reasons, right? Looking at us in the negative, hopefully being empathetic to say, hey, I'm empathetic and I understand now that you are going through that because of the intergenerational trauma of the residential schools, because of the Indian Act and their restrictions and their rules that they bestowed upon you. Not being allowed to leave the reserves in 1895 unless you had a pass, which was called the pass system. All those different things that were playing a huge role in our lives, Canadian society doesn't actually understand that. And I hope that one day, everybody will know that and they'll be learning it from kindergarten. And I think the TQS, the Teaching Quality Standard, is a step towards ensuring that teachers teach that. However, what they teach, though, will never know. Because they could teach whatever they want. But I hope that they'll teach the not only just the basic truths, the truths, the facts of what really happened.


Ladies and gentlemen, this is Jack Benny. If any of you have visited a hospital anywhere in America recently, you know there's a serious, a critical shortage of nurses. At least 65,000 new students must enroll this year, if we are to care for our fighting forces and our civilians at home. So please think about it. You can do an important war job as a cadet nurse, and you can become one with all expenses paid. The U.S. Cadet Nurse Corps issues scholarships, which pay all expenses, plus a regular monthly spending allowance. As a cadet nurse, you can help your country right now, and you receive training for a respected and well-paid lifetime career. So if you're from 18 to 35 years of age, with a good high school record and good health, why don't you join the U.S. Cadet Nurse Corps? Apply for complete information at your local hospital, or write to the U.S. Cadet Nurse Corps, Box 88, New York City. The Grape Nuts and Grape Nuts Flakes Program, starring Jack Benny with Mary Livingston, Phil Harris, Dennis Day Rochester, and yours truly, Don Wilson. Folks, Wilbur Brown is on a diet.  You know what Wilbur does? He goes on a starvation diet for breakfast. Then, of course, eats like a stuffed owl at lunchtime. Doesn't the poor guy know that breakfast is the stoke-up meal, the most important meal of the day? We've been without any food 10 or 12 hours. That's why dieticians tell us we need at least one quarter of our entire day's nourishment in the morning. And they say we need a whole-brain cereal. So make it Grape Nuts Flakes, folks. Delicious? You bet. Crisp, toasty brown, molly rich, and nourishing.   Eat a good breakfast, do a better job, and feature tempting toasty brown Grape Nuts Flakes, America's most distinctive flake cereal, Grape Nuts Flakes. Let's turn back the clock a few hours. It's Sunday morning in the Jack Benny household. A Sunday, a Monday, and always I would be in heaven if I could roll a seven Sunday, Monday, and always My poor heart pound Rochester, Rochester, whoever told you you could sing. There was only one man who told me I couldn't. Well, I'd like to meet him. He's dead now. Well, grab up another pillow behind me, so I'll be more comfortable. You can bring me my breakfast now. Okay, but this is the silliest thing I ever heard of. There's nothing silly about it. Lots of people have breakfast in bed. I know, boss, but not in the kitchen. Well, it's warmer down here than it is up in my room. I hope you haven't any objection. No, but it sure was a strain on me, carrying your bed downstairs. It was a strain on me, too. You almost shook me out of it. Now, how about some, uh, some orange juice? I'm fixing it for you right now. Let's see. Here's the orange. Now, where's the knife? I got it. Now to give it a good squeeze. What? What was that? Juice! That looks good. What else, what else should I have, Rochester? How about some breakfast cereal? Yeah, what kind of breakfast cereal have we got? Oh, boss, come now! I'll have the flakies this time. The flakies? And, uh, would you like some? Uh-oh.  Shh, quiet, Rochester. You'll hurt his feelings. Good morning, Mr. Billingsley. Good morning, Mr. Benny, taking it lying down, I see. Yes, yes, breakfast in bed is one luxury I always enjoy. You know, I always used to have my bed in the kitchen, too. In fact, I lived in the kitchen. You did? Why? Oh, it was one of those things. I was married to a cockroach. To...to a cockroach? Her name was Gwendolyn. We used to argue all the time over who was boss. What was that, Mr. Billingsley? I say we used to argue all the time over who was boss. You and the cockroach? You did? Yes. One day I put my foot down and that was the end of it. Hmm. After that, I stayed single for a long time. Well, I got tired of being a bachelor, so I remarried. What's that, Rochester? A trap. It finally caught that mouse. Oh, well, what do you know? I'm single again. One tragedy after another. Would you, uh, would you care for a cup of coffee, Mr. Billingsley? No thanks. I must be leaving now.  But you can't get a T-bone steak at the barber shop. I know, but I can't get one at the butcher's either, so I might as well get a haircut while I'm waiting. I see. Well, goodbye, Mr. Benny. Goodbye. How did that get by the censor? That's what you... You know, Rochester, I feel like laughing, but he scares me so. Rochester, I think you're right. He has been acting a little eccentric lately. Well, have me my robe. I'm going to get up. Okay. Say, boss, you better hurry. We've got to pick up your camera at the freight company today. That's right, Rochester. I invited my whole gang over. And remember, don't breathe a word about it. I want the camel to be a big surprise. I'll get it, Rochester. You clean up the dishes. Oh, hello, Mary. Hello, Jack. Well, you told me to come over here. Now, what's the big secret you're going to spring on us? Mary, you'll never guess.   Don't be silly, Mary. I'm over 38. What are you laughing at? That's what kept me out of the last war. Mary, I'm only a little over 38 now. Go on. You've got a brother that's 50. I know I have. Your twin brother. So what? We had a slow doctor. Anyway, the idea of my being in the service isn't so ridiculous. Well, you know what Fred Allen said. The biggest laugh you ever got was when you appeared before your draft board. Oh, yeah? Well, all I know is when Allen went to his draft board, they looked at the guy in front of him and said 4-H, the guy in back of him and said 4-F, then they looked at Allen and said, what poor? Which, incidentally, the same thing his father said to the store. So don't tell me about Allen. All right, Jack. Why, that weakling? He had to take a local anesthetic to get his elks tooth cleaned. So don't tell me about Allen. All right, Jack, I won't. He had to go to Charles Atlas for six months to get enough muscles to hiccup. Don't tell me about Allen. All right, Jack, all right. And you're lucky I can't think of anything else. Jack, will you please forget about Allen and tell me what the surprise is? Mary, I'm not going to tell you. You'll have to wait here until it comes. Meanwhile, I'm going upstairs and get dressed. Okay, I want to use the phone anyway. I forgot to tell Butterfly what to prepare for dinner. Go ahead. I'll be down in a minute. The operator number, please. Give me crass few five, two, seven, one, seven. Just a minute. Does Mr. Benny know you're using his phone? Well, of course he knows. Oh, yeah? Well, what's the password? The password? Well, of all the... Alphanelomide. You have to get a prescription to make a phone call here yet. Operator, it's Alphanelomide. Okay, I'll get your number. Miss Livingston. Oh, hello, Miss Livingston. You called. You are Butterfly. Why? I was lonesome. Butterfly, the reason I called is I forgot to tell you what to prepare for dinner tonight. Mm-hmm. I'll have dinner at seven o'clock. So let's have vegetable soup, salad with thousand-dollar dressing, lamb chops and rice pudding. Have you got that down? I haven't even cooked it yet. Butterfly, I mean, did you write it down? No, ma'am, but I will. Would you mind telling me again, Miss Livingston? All right. Vegetable soup, salad with thousand-dollar dressing, lamb chops and rice pudding. Now, have you got that written? Not yet, Miss Livingston. I'm having trouble with the spelling. Oh, uh, what can't you spell? The words. Never mind, Butterfly. I'll come home early and help you out. Thank you. By the way, Miss Livingston, when you get home, would you mind coming in the back door? I'll try and be careful. Goodbye. Goodbye. Say, Mary, Mary, I'm going to rush out now and bring back the surprise. So you call Don, Phil and Dennis and tell them to hurry over. All right. Rochester, get the car out. Okay, boss. Oh, Jack, are you still driving around in that yellow cab of yours? Mary, it doesn't look like a cab anymore. I had it painted a different color. Oh. That's right, Miss Livingston. If we didn't stop to pick up passengers, no one would know it's a taxi cab. Rochester, stop lying and let's go. Oh, darn it, there's the phone. I'll get it. Hello? Mr. Benny, this is the operator. Yes? What's the password for tomorrow? L-S-M-F-T. You better hurry, Rochester. I want to get to the freight office before it closes. Okay. And when we get the camel, I want you to be nice to her. Boss, I don't want to have anything to do with those wild animals. I'm having enough trouble with your polar bears. Oh, you're always afraid of Carmichael, just because he shows his teeth once in a while. For heaven's sake, he's only smiling at you. Smiling at me? Yes. You want to know something, boss? What? Yesterday, when I was feeding him, I happened to turn my back and he smiled right through the seat of my pain. Oh, Rochester, stop exaggerating. Carmichael's just playful. Playful? What happened to the gas man? What are you talking about? That was two years ago. Well, we haven't had a gas bill since. All right, Rochester, drop it. Anyway, here we are at the freight office. Oh, boy. Won't the gang be surprised when I come home with the camel? I guess we'll have to go over to that other window. Where? Over there, where the man's on the phone. I'm sorry, but we don't make deliveries. You'll have to call for it yourself. I'll be with you in a minute, sir. No, no, I can't break the rule. You'll have to call for it yourself. Goodbye. Can you imagine a guy like that sending a mountain goat all the way from Denver? A mountain goat, huh?  But there's nothing. You know what I got waiting here for something to do with? What? It's... It's... What is it?  Oh, yes. Rochester. Well, what's waiting here for you, bud? Well... What is it? Pets in North Africa. Now, you have got my camel here, haven't you? You don't think I got these windows open because I love the great outdoors, do we? Never mind that. Bring her out. You'll have to go get her yourself, mister. Every time I go near that crazy animal, she spits at me. Your old Paul camels only spit at people they don't like. Come on, Rochester. We'll go get her. Oh, there she is, Rochester. There's the camel. Isn't she cute? Oh, you sweet thing. We're going to be pals, aren't we? We're going to... There's nothing, Rochester. That's through me a kiss. Well, I've got some of it on me. Let me put this rope around her neck. Okay. Gee, Rochester, I can hardly wait to get her home. Boy, will the gang be surprised. I'm keeping Jack so long. I'm getting kind of anxious to know what the surprise is. Me, too. What do you think it is, Phil? I don't know. Maybe he broke down and finally decided to give us Christmas presents. Oh, I don't think so. I told Jack it's better to give than to receive, but he didn't hear the first part of it. Now, I guess it isn't that. Oh, I know what. Why?  Dennis, I just said that. You did? Yeah. Copycat? Oh. Say, I'll bet I know what the surprise is. No, Don. No. No, Don. No, I don't see why not. Don, please. Gee, Mary, why couldn't the surprise be a violin? Maybe a real strat of areas. Oh, for a minute, I thought you were going to say greatness flakes. So did I. I didn't. Why, of course not. Now, what kind of a surprise would greatness flakes be? There's nothing unusual about people coming home with greatness flakes. And why shouldn't they? They're moldy, rich, sweet as a nut, and they're a whole grain cereal. Mr. Wilson is right. It could be a violin. And not only that. They're a basic seven food. Violins? No, greatness flakes. And they're a thrifty buy in the big 12-ounce economy-sized package. That could be a small violin. Nothing. Yeah, we'll just have to wait with greatness. I mean Jackson gets back. Hey, Dennis, while we're waiting, how about giving us a little entertainment? OK, take a card. I don't mean card trick. Oh, this isn't a trick. This card I want you to take is from my singing teacher. He's looking for more business. Oh, well, we'll talk about that later. Yeah, let's have that song, kid. Well, she can pull in her neck and pull up her leg. But she won't get in. She keeps shying away. You should have taken a minute out, boy. She knows it's a touch again. Don't be silly, Rochester. But put the flag up anyway. Now let's see. I'll tell you what we better do. You drive the car home and I'll ride the camel. Give me a boost. OK. Is that it, girlie? Gee, this feels high. Would you people ever see a camel before? Hey, sonny, stop that. We'll make him stop riding his bicycle under us.  Rochester, start the car and let's get going. I beg your pardon, sir. You know me and don't deny it. This happens to be a camel. I'm not talking to you. Let's get away from this crowd. Come on, girlie. Get it out. Careful, boss. There she goes down the street. Don't worry, boss. There's a red light. She'll have to stop. Don't be silly. Well, I better call up the house and tell the gang not to wait. Donna and I wanted to surprise them with the camel. Oh, well. Rochester, you try to catch her. I'm going over to that drugstore. I can't hang around here any longer. I got to get home before the broadcast and bring Alice my radio script. Oh, does she rehearse it with you? No, she explains it to me. Well, I can do that, Phil. Hey, that must be Jack with a surprise. Yeah, maybe that's why he's ringing the bell. I'll open the door. Girlfriend Gladys Obisco, when he wanted me to come... Say, Mary, maybe they're engaged. Come on in, Gladys. Thank you. Oh, so you're the surprise. Oh, Mr. Visco. Yeah. They're trying to be a wolf.  Yeah, I wonder where... Oh, excuse me, Gladys. I'll be right back. Hey, this is Jack. I've got some bad news about my surprise. I know I've... You mean she found her way all by herself? Well, what's so wonderful about... I knew she had a tag around her neck, but I didn't know she could read. Being so funny, and I think it was rude of you not to come with her. Mary, I was bringing her home, but the rope broke and she got away. At the time I saw her, she was running down the street, waving her tail at people. Look, she must be thirsty by now. Would you mind giving her a drink? Of course not. Oh, look, you'll find a pail on the back floor. Fill it up with water and set it on the floor in front of her. On the floor? Yes. She'll get down on her knees and drink it. You know what you're talking about? Of course. She was trained that way.  I don't want anything to happen because I got a good offer for her from the zoo. Jack, I think she's got a good offer. Jack, I think you're nuts. Oh, I know she looks kind of dirty now, but when I get home, I'm going to give her a bath. If she heard you say that, she'd slap your face. Slap my face? Mary, what are you talking about? Your girlfriend, Gladys Obisco, she's here. Well, what of us? Isn't she your surprise? No, the surprise is my camel. She remembers the one that I said I was going to the Rochester calling me. What is it, Rochester? I found a camel. Good, where'd you find her? In the next booth. In Egypt, they'll be a three hour. I just stopped making up such silly things. Okay. Now tell me, where is she? She's over at the counter having a cherry coke. Well, that's different. Let's go get her and go home. Most folks are sort of contrary. Why, if a law was passed, no more breakfast, everybody'd holler for breakfast, but as it is, far, far too many people are skimping the most important meal of the day. And you can't expect to do a man-sized job on a canary bird breakfast. Eat a good breakfast, do a better job, and feature those two leading favorites, Grape Nuts and Grape Nuts Flakes. If you've enjoyed the distinctive, molly-rich goodness of these two delicious cereals, you know why they're favorites, because theirs is the luscious flavor of sun-ripened wheat and malted barley, expertly blended. Grape Nuts, crisp, crunchy kernels, Grape Nuts Flakes, delicate, toasty brown flakes.  One type of nourishment recommended as a breakfast must by nutrition experts. Yep, they're as good for you as they're grand to eat. So feature Grape Nuts and Grape Nuts Flakes on your breakfast table every morning. Well, folks, we'll be with you next Sunday night at the same time, broadcasting from the Marine Air Station at El Toro, California. Good night, everybody.