So, I thought we'd begin by casting as far back as your memory serves to the very earliest days when, in fact, we didn't even call it AIDS. And if you could just give people who weren't around then a sense of what you were feeling, what you were discovering, what life was like. You know why? It's just an era of the history of the world that for anyone who lived through it, who was able to live through it, was just the worst. All your friends were dead or dying. I would make speeches and I would say to the kids, two thirds of the room, stand up.  It was that intense how many people were dying. You could not walk down a street in Manhattan without not only seeing people who were sick, but learning about people who had died literally in the last week. It was and still is a plague and it was, they were very harsh times. This was not in any way helped by anyone. Certainly the government didn't want to know and the mayor of New York didn't want to know and President Reagan certainly didn't want to know. And gay people who were terrified with good reason didn't want to know. It was interesting to watch the denial that set in among so many of us and very hard to break through that. The virus had not been discovered and would not be discovered for a few years after 81. And so without the actual causative proof of a virus, a lot of gay people, a lot of gay men chose not to believe that that's what the problem was or to change their way of living. And for those of us who were there in the beginning and who were saying not so much give up sex but just cool it, be careful. We were the pariahs among our own people and it was very hard personally for me to overcome that to literally have people cross the street rather than say hello to me. It was a number of years before that changed. I have learned so much about everything, the world, human nature, not only just gay people being involved in all of this so much as I have over these years. In many ways the irony of it all is that it gave me my life work as a writer and I was quite frankly I think I was intelligent enough to realize that I had been given a great story that no one else wanted to write or that few people wanted to write and that few people still want to write.  I don't think I have ever seen anything so sad and so awful and so tragic and so indicative of how we are as people that's reflected in every aspect of HIV and still is. That's gone on too long. No, it's great. Thank you. Can you recall the literal first time that you realized that there was something afoot? Before we, before any CDC notices before any of that. And what was that like? Well, the back story on that is that we were an exceedingly promiscuous population with good reason. We had been imprisoned as you were for so many centuries, shunned by everything. We only had each other. And when the sexual revolution for gay and straight people came into being and remember this is the Playboy era, Hugh Hefner, all of that, which was giving men and people everywhere really permission to enjoy your body. But that led in the case of the gay population to an enormous rise in STDs, sexually transmitted diseases, and in true stalwart fashion, we sort of made it a game of it in the sense that you would sort of, everybody would talk about, oh, what have you had lately? No one was noticing that what was happening was escalating in virulence. You know, it's one thing to have a dose of the clap, and then the amoebas, which everybody had amoebas, and you would trade secrets about which doctor you went to who was able to get rid of them in the least obnoxious way, and there were doctors who could do it faster than others. Those medicines were quite harsh, but it was really conversation fodder for Sunday brunches, and then the hepatitis began, and they weren't as differentiated then as they are now. It was basically just hepatitis, and I think hepatitis B came along, somewhere along there, but that was more serious. And a very good friend of mine, Dr. Laurence Mass, who was one of the six of us who founded Gay Men's Health Crisis, I had known him since he was a young man. He went to Harvard Medical School and had a practice in New York, and one of the great unrecognized heroes of all of this, who wrote a health column for the New York native, which was a gay newspaper then, which wasn't, I wouldn't say read widely, but it was read, and he would fill me in on things that were happening, and where, and a lot of things were happening earlier on in various places, particularly the arrival of pneumocystis pneumonia, which was something that had not happened to, basically been something for kids, for babies, and sort of strange things that no one quite knew, and he would write about all this.  And I just, I just said, it's the beginning of something, I just knew it instinctively. And I went and Larry arranged for me to meet the doctors at NYU, which was the only hospital, the only medical center that would touch it with a barge pole, largely because of Dr. Alvin Friedman Keane, who was the dermatologist who first saw the Kaposi's lesions on his patients, and the incredible woman that I used as a character in my play, Linda Laubenstein, who was in fact in a wheelchair. Larry, let's dig into a little bit the question of gay people's initial suspicion of AIDS and whether it was real. I remember maybe 83 listening to Quentin Crisp talk, and one of the things that Quentin Crisp said was in his, in the way that Quentin could spin anything, he said, oh, I don't believe in this AIDS thing, they've always been trying to get us to stop having sex and now they're just found a new way of doing so. So could you sort of talk about what challenges AIDS represented and how in some sense it felt familiar to be told? In some cases, what?  Well, I mean, I got a cue, the thing that really set me off, the one thing that happened that made me an activist more than any other thing was a playwright, a friend, in quotes called Robert Chesley, who after I wrote my first big article in the New York native, 1112 and counting, which was sort of the cry for alarm and it was published all over the country.  Instead of listening to the doctors who quite sensibly said, it's the virus. We haven't found it, but it's a virus. It's acting like a virus. Hepatitis acts the same way. We didn't know what caused hepatitis, but we knew it was there. So you've got important doctors at important medical centers who are basically saying that, so I would choose to believe them rather than Quentin Crisp. But that's what you were up against. And when did it occur to you that a medical battle was a political battle? When did that first, when did you first realize that the response had to be a broad activist engagement? Well, the development of our response falls into sort of two eros. There's what the Gay Men's Health Crisis era and the Act Up era. We started six of us, what became Gay Men's Health Crisis, in literally the end of 81. And there were very few of us, very few would show up, and it was hard to know who was going to come from meeting to meeting. And slowly, as friends died or lovers died, or you visited enough people, we grew. But the first time I had to try and find, no one would rent us office space at all because of who we were and what we were about. And when I, I had been very successful in the film industry.   If any of you have seen the normal heart, everything in the normal heart is true. Every incident is true. Every character is real. Everything that I dramatized is nothing fictional in there. There's a scene between that man, Herb Rickman, and those of us from Gay Men's Health Crisis who came there begging him for an office, because we had no office. At the same time that San Francisco's mayor had given their population, I don't remember, $15 million. Finally we got out of Ed Koch, no office, but $9,000. I mean, it was just an insult.  But that call, I'll never forget that.  I'm not going to be treated like this. And thank God I felt that way and was able to keep that anger through all those years. Because not only was the city not doing anything, no one else was doing anything either. And Dr. Laubenstein was there yelling at me, I can't get anybody at NIH to pay any attention. I can't get any medical journal to publish any of our reports, literally. By the time, again, this is in the normal heart too when she makes that monologue speech in the second act, every word of which came out of her own mouth, it was three years from the first case. By the time the NIH showed up for a site visit at NYU, which again was the only medical center that would openly deal with this. Not that they were happy about it, Saul Farber, who was head of the medical, of the hospital medical center, hated it, and he used to yell at Linda. And fortunately, I mean, you didn't yell at Linda. And she was in a wheelchair and she was, don't you tell me I can only have 20 patients in this hospital. What do you want me to do? Put them up in my room, in my apartment. I mean, she gave as good as she got. And it was like that. You have to also remember the first decent drug didn't come into being until 19, already getting my dates, until 1997. So from 81 to 97, you have got a population now all over the world that is not only infecting each other constantly, which is still going on, but dying like flies. And Gaiman's Health Crisis did not want to be an activist organization. The first group of guys were too concerned with the dying and they couldn't do what I wanted them to do, which was, you know, do what these kids are doing on Sakati Square. And they wanted to be caregivers. And it was hard for me because we needed caregivers and to keep criticizing this struggling organization as I continue to do didn't help them. So I wrote The Normal Heart and then by 80, which was put on in 85. And you started at what year? When did you start writing The Normal Heart? We had a fight at Gaiman's Health Crisis and I was thrown off of the board in 8083. And I didn't know what to do. I was just beside myself and I went on a trip to Europe and I went to Dachau by chance. And I saw a sign that said, Dachau opened in 1933, 1933. They had a concentration camp for Jews in 1933. I never knew that. And I said, hey, it just seemed to be so relevant to what we were going through. And I came back to America and bought a little dog. We moved up to a little house in Welfly and I wrote the play and it took a while to get it on. I couldn't get any director, major director to do it. I couldn't get any. It was turned out, I can't tell you how many places it was turned out. And finally, Joe Papp took it on. And then it was delayed again for various theatrical reasons. But by the time it opened, it made a certain stir. Any initial reviews? And what were the initial reviews like? I think the play was treated as agitprop, which is sort of a dirty word in the theater, in this country anyway. The New York Times, which is criticized mightily in the play, sent lawyers to the previews who would sit there with their flashlights, writing down what I was saying about them. And when Frank Rich's review came out, which had enough quotes that were useful, the times for the only time in its history put an addendum at the bottom of his review saying that they denied all the charges that I made. The play ran for about a year, mostly because Joe came to love it so much and kept it going. The comparison of the responses to the two production has been very moving, if I could jump ahead. This last production on Broadway, the play was taken very seriously as a piece of theater, it was a piece of writing, and we won a lot of Tonys and we got great reviews. The first reviews were good enough. The second production with Raul Julia in whatever year that was, they've always managed to get rid of, you know, they're all written by loudmouth Larry Kramer, but you leave crying. Fine, I'll take that, because I wrote the play to make people cry. I still cry. But then the second chapter in all of this was Act Up. You want to jump to that? I want to jump to it, but I have one other question before we get there, and that is that it strikes me that AIDS may very well have been the first illness, at least in modern times, that was fought in part through different representations, competing representations. I'm remembering back to when I first saw the normal heart early on in its first incarnation. It felt like a glass of water in the desert because all there were at the time were representations that made us out to be quasi-animalistic. Still do. Yeah, absolutely. And so I wanted you to reflect on sort of the place of the normal heart within the context of AIDS and how people were talking about AIDS at the time, because I think us old folks have forgotten what it was like, and younger people of course never knew. Can you cast back that far? That's too academic a question for me. Rephrase it. Okay, broadly all I want to know is when the normal heart first came out, when the normal heart first came out, it struck me as very different from the way AIDS had been talked about, had been addressed previously. And I wanted you to talk about what it was like before the play emerged, how people were talking about AIDS, and whether you saw any change after the play was produced. I'm not very good at questions like this. I don't think in many respects things have changed that much or enough. When I turn on my computer and have to watch stories about these congresspeople who are saying these just awful things about gay people to this day, and it's legal for them to say that, you can't talk that way about Jews or black people, but you can about gays. And I say that's, I identify more with that as a lack of progress than when things got rosy. I'm not a negative person and I'm amazingly hopeful, but I am a glass as whatever, half full or half empty. I'm a half empty, still, is that answer anything? Yeah, fair enough. So talk to us about the founding of ACT UP. Well, I think ACT UP, I know ACT UP was the greatest thing that any gay population has ever achieved, ever in history, that any population has ever achieved in history.  It was, I will never go through such a miraculous six or seven years of feeling this strange dichotomy of feeling useful, well used, couldn't get up early enough in the morning at the same time, everybody's dying still like flies, but we had a cause and we had a target and we had troops and we had smart people all working together and we knew what we had to do and we did it and we had meetings in New York City alone that would vary between 500 and 1,000 people every week that showed up and they went to different meetings every other night of the week. We learned and this was men and women, gay men and lesbians for the first time in our history working together, these are not two groups that had previously paid much attention to each other and we had really smart people, you know, lawyers and doctors and then statisticians and scientists and very early on a straight woman showed up at a meeting, Iris Long, she was a biochemist who had worked in the fields and she was essentially a Queen's housewife now who was moved by all of this and she got up and said in no uncertain terms, you guys don't know shit and I'll teach you, I'll teach you, you don't know about the system, you don't know about grants, you don't know about science, you don't know about pharmacology, you don't know about statistics, you don't know how the government works, you don't know about the NIH and she listed all these things and she's right, we didn't know and from that day on we learned and the smart or the ones who wanted to would meet with Iris and we formed this thing called the Treatment and Data Committee and we educated ourselves so effectively that I could take some of these kids to meetings with the drug companies whom we came to confront and the doctors from the drug companies would turn to me and say that Harrington, that's Dr. Harrington, isn't it? Because they were so impressed with him and I had a lot of people, we had a lot of those people and we had committees that dealt with every pharmaceutical manufacturer, we had committees that dealt with every branch of anything just like we knew more about what was going on than they did and when the time came to set up the trials for the drugs, we had doctors who were able to prove to government the biostatisticians who were running the clinical trials that they were doing them all wrong and that's why they were turning out so bad and we showed them how to set up an effective clinical trial. These are basically dying kids who are doing all this and slowly and that's why Dr. Fauci who is the man at NIH who has been presumably the head of all this since he took office at NIA, National Institute on Infectious Diseases at the National Institute of Health in 1985, he had to let us in because he didn't have any ideas. All his ideas and all his principal investigators were coming up with nothing, failure after failure on every clinical trial and I took a group of our smartest kids, it started in Montreal, whatever year the conference at Montreal was and I made Fauci meet with us for lunch and then we came back and I took this group to Bethesda and they presented a program which they had laid out at Montreal, a very thick report on what everybody was doing wrong and how it could be righted. Exceedingly, exceedingly impressive piece of work, it was 60, 70 pages and you could not fault any of it. No scientist could fault any of it and Fauci saw that and Fauci saw that we knew more than they did so slowly he let us begin to participate in the system. He got in a lot of trouble because of that. That was by then it was sort of 91, 92 and it was those years from 92 to 97 or eight when the first drug came out that all the first decent drug because there were some earlier ones that weren't any good. AZT was just awful and that was where all our work bore fruit. And Larry, can you give us a sense of what the people on the other side of the fence were thinking? In other words, I remember those days and I remember those protests and thinking these are evil bastards that were protesting but now as I'm older I'm trying to figure out why there was such resistance to what we're doing. Do you have a sense? Listen, I mean look at the resistance to these these kids now. Activism is, you know, you're either liberal and understand or you're not and most people aren't.  You have to be angry and you have to be afraid and you only had to come to a weekly meeting and look around at the audience and see how sick people were and yet they were there to go to a meeting, yet they were there to go to a protest and it was hard but I would go, there wasn't a meeting where somebody wouldn't come up to me and say, tell me don't you know anything about something that I'm going to be able to take soon that you can't talk about because this this guy didn't have law and that was major motivation for everybody, the straight people who worked for us as well and that's again why we're success.  You know, we handed out fact sheets about all of what was not happening to the cars as they went through or wherever we were protesting. With that we had to get, you have to also realize that newspapers wouldn't write about this. Want to talk about the New York Times? The history of the New York Times is heinous. Starting with, I don't know when, I mean they didn't even report Stalin and starving all his people together in Russia in the 30s. The New York Times reporter won a Pulitzer Prize for completely, who was stationed over there, for completely ignoring all this. The first New York Times article on HIV after the first one was, you know, a year and a half later, Abe Rosenthal notoriously vitriolically homophobic. He fired gay reporters rather than having them there. This is a known fact. The managing editor of the New York Times didn't want this written about and so if he's not writing about it, no other paper in America or the world is writing about it because that's the New York Times, hey? You couldn't get television. You know, if I got a story on the radio, I was lucky. You know, Tom Brokaw to this day gives me the credit for finally, you know, practically, well, we have mutual friends and go to the same parties and I finally just gave it to them. And that's what you had to do. Remember the days when we would look through obituaries to determine cause of death because they wouldn't even say the word AIDS in the obituary? Yes. Well, I mean still there's a little bit of that now too. Yeah, nobody, they wouldn't say. You would always say died from pneumonia, which was the buzzword for AIDS. You know, it's there drugs out there, but and we are, of course, hey, I'm alive, right? But just this past week, the Global Fund for AIDS, which has been trumpeting their great successes, announced that the money has run out and that all the countries who had pledged so much money to it are not giving the money and that they will not be able to make any more grants until the year 2014. So all these people in Africa who were supposed to be getting all these drugs now and Obama, not my favorite person, is made a speech today or tomorrow telling the world how wonderful America's been giving so much money that these people are going to get drugs in Africa lies. Read. Well, I don't know where you read it. Bob Bezel on it on on on his blog from for NBC News has written a brilliant piece about it. Lori Garrett has written the piece at the Council on Foreign Relations, but you're not seeing it again in the New York Times. You know, there's no one out there. There's no one objecting to this. There has never been anyone in charge of this, which has always been a problem. Fauci, Fauci's like like the Jew who is put in charge of the of the ghetto and has to somehow keep these people alive, but keep the Germans from murdering everybody. I never made that analogy, and it's much too, it's much too kind to him, but he had to walk many tight ropes, literally to stay in office. You have President Reagan literally saying that he would not endorse anything that could be remotely connected to homosexuality. If his people said it once, they said it a thousand times. He did not say the word AIDS in public for seven years. So we are an expendable population. Gay people, black people, not so much Jews anymore, but certainly they were. We are expendable. They don't care about us. They don't. And one of the things the major lessons that I have learned is that we refuse to face up to the fact that we are hated. I do not mean disliked. I do not mean make people uncomfortable. We are tangibly hated when you come to the bottom line, still and continuing as our black people. And until we learn to absorb that fact into our being and respond to it, we will continue to be expendable and be denied the rights that the bill of rights presumably entitled us to. Thank you, Larry. I thought we'd open it up to the audience. If anybody has any questions or comments that they would like to ask Larry. Can you all hear me now? My name is Barry and I not happen to be gay, which is the same. It's true of the disease. I'm Barry.  But the disease is no longer gay. Age is no longer. And when you're talking about those poor people in Africa, this is no longer a gay disease. It's changed dramatically to be a disease mostly of heterosexuals passed on in Brussels. And you know, it should also therefore change because the gay population reacted appropriately.  Now why is your thinking changed because of this?    And I want you to address that. I'm not sure I understand. But yes, but it is still perceived primarily as a gay problem by the people who don't want to do anything to help us. And we have never been able to escape that. And if it's not the biggest percentage of cases of AIDS in America now are in black men who are the figures keep rising. So that's the figure that gets put out that it's happening in Africa. And the rest of the world, let me tell you, is not of major concern to many people here. And they take great pride on saying that drugs are now being provided not free of charge, but at low cost to, I don't know, it's up to three million people when there are, you know, 20 people, 20 million people who need it. You don't want to talk about greedy drug companies. You know, they've all made fortunes out of these drugs. They could afford to give them out to free to dying people, to starving people. The only drugs that they'll give out free are the ones that we've long discarded, which are hard to take. There's not a good word to be said about anybody, for anybody in all of this. Of course, this is what they all wanted. And that's why it's even more important that those of us who are alive and capable of fighting have to. And the same, I was going to say in the same way that, of course, gay people are considered expendable, so too are other parts of the world. So the metaphors are the same. It's a population that is not worth fighting for.  The mayor of Moscow and St. Petersburg have issued dicta that anything can't be written about. They call it propaganda.  Russia, where the people who take drugs to constitute the majority of cases, is so overwhelmed with AIDS. I was in Moscow a couple years ago. You can't get anybody to talk about it. They're a huge percentage of the population. They don't know what to do about it. Same with China. The war has been lost. The war was lost a long time ago. It advances faster than we can prevent what's happening. Now, there have been in the last months some marked scientific discoveries toward a cure. It's going to be a long time before any of it. It can be a fruit, but they've discovered certain things that have given them hope that if they can continue along these lines, there are several people have survived bone marrow transplants and gene genetic transplantation of certain cell lines that prohibit replication of HIV. It's needless to say enormously complicated, enormously expensive, but they have lived. How they can take that to the next step, I don't know, but our wonderful generous National Institute of Health or National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Dr. Fauci, has allotted the grand sum of some five million dollars a year toward looking for a cure. Other questions? Hi, my name is Ann. You've brought so much of this time back to me. I have to tell you, Mr. Kramer, I was actually working at the Public Theater in another show when your show was up. I was doing the human comedy at the Public Theater when your show was playing there, and I was 14 years old, and I remember at the time, I mean I was 14, and at the time two of the actors in my company were sick. The stage manager of the play I followed was sick. The marginalization that was happening and the infighting that was going on within the gay community, within even that company of actors in that theater where your play was taking place. The debate between as is, which was the warm and fuzzy play compared to your play, which had such passion and such anger in it, was such a flash point at that time. And then the next thing we knew, you had left act up, and you alluded to this argument, and I just want to know what that was, because it was, when you departed, I remember that time very, and I mean I was 14 years old, but I remember that, and I'm so honored that I could actually ask you, what happened? What was it? Can you talk about that? What happened? Yes. When? When you left act up. I've never left that time. Well, no, I'm sorry, when you left the board, when you got your dog and went to Dachau. When what? When you left gay men's health crisis. I'm sorry, they threw me out. But what was it? What was it? What had happened? Well, because I was, I was calling the mayor gay publicly for a start, and I was, and I was criticizing Reagan, and I was criticizing the New York Times, the big three. And I wasn't, and they were, they were, you know, they were just guys, they were uncomfortable with this. The irony is that my brother's law firm incorporated gay men's health crisis, and, and I had to find a board to put on the papers. So, you know, I pulled in my friends, knowing nothing about boards, and knowing not that you put on boards, not your friends, but the peoples who will support you when push came to shove. And I terrified them. I truly terrified them. I tried the letter that is read to me in the play, word for word, is the letter that was read to me. They didn't want me. And it was talk about painful. Talk about having, you know, 15 messages on your answering machine one day and none the next day. It hurt. I can't believe that actually was real. I can't. And that's why I ran away to you. I didn't run away. Just, I went to Europe, and that was the birthing of the play. I tried four times, three times to get back on the board. They didn't want me. So, it was life. Well, it was, we got a great play out of it. And that has endured. Thank you. Other questions? Hi. Hi. I'm fascinated by this point in history where the artists and the activists knew what this, you said the scientists were doing all the clinical trials wrong, and that you went in there with a group of artists and activists, and they were able to tell the scientists how to do a clinical trial. And to me, since that's sort of like a point of hope for me, you know, that somebody, an artist or an activist could tell a scientist what to do, like to say, ongoing to go into where this crisis is in Africa right now. So, I was wondering if you could give us like a specific example of what you told the scientists. Like, how did they run that clinical trial? What, what particularly, what particularly in terms of the scientists when you were first having your meetings with ACT UP, did you tell them to do? Oh, I told you we had prepared these smart kids had prepared this 50, 60 page report that we gave out. It was very detailed, scientific statistics, things that had to be studied in terms of what we knew about T cells, and why they weren't, and they weren't studying any of these things. It was very specific. Drug testing protocols that were... And the protocols that would prove such things. Yeah. And we also got rid of the, for the first time in history, the placebo. In a clinical trial, every clinical trial, I had always had a plus, some people got a placebo and we said, uh-uh. You know, people who are dying aren't going to take placebos because what we would do is the minute you got your drugs on a clinical trial, first thing you did is you went to the pharmacy or a chemist and he studied to see whether you were getting the real thing or not.  And the trials were showing up very poorly. Pardon my French. So that kind of thing. We... Go ahead. Is that okay? So I'm not the person to talk. I don't own anybody from whatever. But it's interesting when you don't know and you're exposed to a lot of people who presumably do.  Jonathan and I had wanted to talk about something a little different if we have time for that. Sure. It might be a bit of a long one, but it was kind of both of you. It's about this hatred idea about that still happening that's continued and about how you say that, you know, you're not allowed and politicians aren't allowed to talk like that about Jews now or about Black people. I wanted to ask if you could hash out some of the ideas about why it is like that. What are the roots of some of those issues of hatred that exist so much? Like why do you think it is or what are some of the roots? What are the roots of homophobia? What? What are the roots of homophobia? Why? People don't like people who are different. I think it's as simple as that. This... I've been right working for the last 30 years, whatever, on a book called The American People, which is my attempt to write a history of America putting gays in it from Vigetco because we were here from the beginning, whether we had names or not. It's about 3,000 pages long now, down from 4,000. Frere Strauss has bought it and we're editing it. It's appalling what you discover when you go back to early American history. The great men like John Winthrop or the great preachers like the Mathers and the Hookers and and were as bigoted as they come.  And that's... law stayed on the books.  I like to think he did it uncomfortably, but he did it. And people don't like different people. I think it's as simple as that. We scare them somehow. I think gay men scare straight men because it's some kind of challenge to their masculinity. It's amazing how many politicians who are so rabidly anti-gay are found in men's toilets and get picked up. Wide-legged stances. With wide-legged stances. Yeah. Do you read about the sheriff of the year in Arkansas who's retired, who was literally chosen the sheriff of the year, of all America, the sheriff of the year, and he's retired and he's just been thrown into jail for trying to buy sex from guys with methamphetamines. Jonathan and I first came to know each other around the year... when did we start it? 2000? 2000. My brother, Arthur Kramer, the most wonderful of brothers, said he would give a million dollars to Yale to do whatever I wanted them to do. We come from a long line of people who had gone to Yale, which was a big deal because we were all Jews. And when my father and uncle in 1912 and 1916 went there as Jews, it was a big deal. Anyway, it took a long time to get Yale to agree to doing any of a number of things gay that I suggested to them. A long time.  And it took, I would say, two years until we arranged this plan for, they wouldn't even call it a center. We weren't allowed to call the Larry Kramer Center for Lesbian and Gay Anything.  And what I wanted and what they wanted became increasingly obvious were different things. I was writing this book about, I had discovered George Washington was gay, and I had discovered Abraham Lincoln was gay, and I hadn't discovered that. Others, before we had, but I had become convinced that they were, along with many, many other people. Like J. Edgar Hoover.  And I wanted that. That's my idea of gay studies. You know, you should learn who we were. Black history was changed overnight when it could be proved that Thomas Jefferson really did have a black mistress. It was no longer just gossip. And the minute that happened, you could start talking about black people. You could start talking about their history in ways that had simply not been allowed before there anywhere. Well, I wanted that to be at Yale. Fortunately, the provost with whom I did become after calling her many names a good friend. And she found Jonathan Katz to be the first head of LKI. I mean, how that happened, I don't know, because you were so, in their terms, unsafe in big letters. But somehow you got the job. And then began our journey into hell, basically, where we discovered that no matter what we wanted to do, they didn't like it, somebody didn't like it. And that somebody who didn't like it was always invisible. You didn't know who it was. They watched when Jonathan went to the toilet. He had to practically get permission anytime he wanted to go on a trip anywhere. This did not happen for any other department at all.  Of course he should be there. They had to know everything. One of the first things that we discovered, there's another Jonathan Katz, in addition to this Jonathan Katz, who was Jonathan gave a fellowship too early on, discovered that one of the great benefactors of Yale, one of the greatest benefactors of Yale, of John Sterling, the founder of the famous law firm Sherman and Sterling.  Not only did he discover this, he discovered it in the Yale library where Sterling's papers had been there all these years. And it was a gay librarian who said to him, I want to show you something. The minute we found it, Jonathan put it, this Jonathan put it out to the world. Well, you could have no idea the hell that caused from Sherman and Sterling on up or down. People would threaten to give, to stop giving money to Yale. The Yale alumni magazine was filled with hateful mail and they certainly were not about to teach that Abraham Lincoln and George Washington were gay.  Theory. Theory is very safe. Jonathan is indescribable in his greatness to how hard he has fought this exhibition upstairs of gay art. That exhibition in an embryonic form was presented at Yale. On the night before his departure, after having been fired, he presented this unbelievably brilliant lecture at the Yale Art Gallery with a lot of these artists on display. The discovery about Sterling and other things were then put up on an exhibition that we did in the Yale library called the Pink in the Blue, Blue being the color of Yale. And one of the objects that we discovered in investigating the archives of Yale for evidence of same-sex life, going back from the very earliest days, was a book from 1843 about Yale men. Of course in those days there were only Yale men. And it said on page 57 that one of the great concerns of the administration was the flourishing of the vices of the Greeks and that the Yale administration was working very hard to stamp that out. And I just think they haven't changed all that much. Anyway, and I have found out even equally damning things about my alma mater which I'll deal with in my book. Basically having to do with the Cold War and where the philosophical permission to behave as we did all started at Yale. All those professors who went over and became OSS men during the war promulgated America first. Many of them were gay. Most of the major spies were gay anyway. All those Brits. James Jesus Eagleton. Eagleton, yes, Eagleton. Eagleton, I get him. Anyway, who was head of the of the new CIA.  Anyway, I don't even know if coots are gay, but whatever. What's a coot? I have no idea. Larry, we're out of time but I want to I want to ask everybody to join me in thanking Larry Kramer.


What's going on everybody welcome back to another drop preview and this is actually the last drop preview of 2020 It's the ATV finals And this is probably I think the most even final series we've ever had Anybody could win it. We know that over the last couple of years anybody can win this of course defending champion So final city pass who beat Dominic team in the final last year the groups are set. We've got the London group We've got the Tokyo group Let's go to the groups and have a look at who got put in what group Okay, so the Tokyo group, which is the jockovic group he has to play Danum Evadev number four in the world number six seed Alexander Zverev and Diego Schwartzman the number eight seed Tough group for jockovic, but lucky for him. He does have a good record against most of those guys now Rafa Nadal, he is in the London group. He has got a play against Dominic team Number three in the world US Open champions to final city pass the defending champ number five seed And then Andre Rubelev the number seven seed who's probably Well, he's won more matches than anybody going into London He's won more titles than anybody going to London. So he's probably the most informed player going around in 2020 So tough groups for both guys, but like I said, anybody can win this Let's start with The London group, which is the Rafa Nadal group. Let's start with the best player of 2020 so far Andre Rubelev so number seven seed coming in. He's the number eight ranked player Of course Roger Federer is not playing. That's why he got bumped up a little bit No, it never played this tournament before so best result nothing to speak of there now Like I said, he's got Nadal team and city pass to contend with and he's got a decent record considering It's his first time playing so He's never beaten Nadal that played once he lost that match Team number three in the world. He has beaten twice, but he's also lost twice Two and two, but that he won their last meeting in Vienna. Remember that a couple of weeks ago We watched that and team was injured But it was entertaining that first set and then Sidze pass who he's played a couple of times this year He's got a two and two record against Sidze pass the number five seed so Rubelev has a chance he has a chance to get some matches and we know he's been like I said one of the best players of 2020 He's won five titles. He's won more matches than anybody going into this tournament And he's got some wins over those big guys, especially team and Sidze pass and that's recently. He's got those wins Let's go now to Safana Sidze pass defending champion the number five seed coming in best result here was last year when he won the whole thing He lost one match last year now his record. This is his second time being in this tournament By the way, he won the first time he played how crazy is that? His record is four wins one loss. The one loss was against Nadal who is gonna have to play in this tournament So first up he's got to play against Nadal the number two seed obviously number two ranked as well One win five losses against Rafa and the one win actually was on clay, which is kind of a bit crazy Like I said, they played here last year and Rafa got the win Team he has a three and four record against team. So he's won three lost four against Dominic team That could be an interesting matchup if they play of course They played here in the final last year and since he passed one Roublev number seven seed in this one. He's got a two and two record against But he does have a recent win. I think he won at the French Open against Roublev So under a bit of an injury cloud as well Steph So we've got to keep an eye on him physically To see how he does Because he did lose early in Paris and he said that there was a leg injury going on So we'll keep an eye on his fitness, but he is the defending champion And has a pretty decent record against a couple of guys Rafa being the exception. Let's go now to Dominic team the US Open champion number three seed number three in the world His best result. He was the final last year. He's he's been here This is his fifth time being here his results Six six wins eight losses So not great at this tournament a lot of those wins coming last year when he made the final here to great great tournament last year He beat Djokovic and Federer To get to the finals so he played very well to play to get to that point last year and had a chance to win at all Rafa he's got a five and nine record against Rafa a lot of those on clay court If they play on a hard court, maybe team has an advantage. We'll keep an eye on that match That'll be interesting since he passed. He's got a winning record against four and three And against rubelev it's two and two so again Anything could happen in this group team could get through he could win the whole group The rafa match will be crucial because you think He probably well, he should beat The lower-ranked guys, but again those guys are in form. So who knows But he has to beat rafa. I think to get through. Let's go now to the man himself rafa Nadal who's never won this tournament He's made the final twice back in 2013 2010 But he's never won this event the elusive atb finals that he never he's never won You never get the win here. There is his best result 20 2013 was the last time he made the final of course 2010 as well. This is the 10th time he's playing this event 10th time and never won it which is rare because rafa wins everything 18 wins 14 losses Not a great win-loss record there considering how many times he's played. He's only made a couple of finals And he's got a tough group, but a winnable group rafa fans. He's got a winnable group He's got to play dominic team who he has a nine and five record against but like I said, a lot of those are on clay So we'll keep an eye on that one since he passed He's got a five and one record against including the win here last year at this event So he has that confidence there and of course rublev. He's only played the one time and he won that match That match will be interesting because we don't know How is rublev gonna play it rublev 2020 you're gonna play against rafa nadal We don't know yet because we haven't seen rublev be tested by the big two guys Since being you know being a part of this New top 10 group It's the first time he's been in the top 10. So we'll keep an eye on him there but that is The the london group the london group. It's called uh in probably because of we're in london and it's a Part of the the whole tradition of the atp finals. So rafa nadal, he's got a tough group But a manageable group like I said anybody could win that that's probably the hardest group out of the two Either group either anyone in that group could get through if you get rublev get through no surprise Since he passed wins no surprise team gets through doesn't matter because it's obvious He's a us open champion now and of course rafa nadal the highest ranked player Let me know down in the comments below who's getting out of this group Remember the two top uh the two top win loss Records get through to the semi finals the other two go on vacation So let me know in the comments below who's getting through in this one. Does rafa have a chance? Let me know like the video if you haven't already don't forget to subscribe as well And I will see you guys in the next one


Ah yes, don't you just love that theme? No? Well, I mean, it is kinda cringe, right? But that's okay because sometimes in pro wrestling, the things that don't make sense from the jump turn out to be just fine. But of course there are other times, especially when it comes to some questionable entrance music choices that are still quite baffling to comprehend. That being said, I'm Kevin Callis. This is Wrestling Behind The Themes. Please do subscribe because here are 10 entrance theme songs that left fans really confused.  I know that when John Moxley used Wild Thing by the Trogs for his entrance on the May 12th, 2021 episode of AEW Dynamite, it was done as a tribute to Atsushi Onida, the Japanese hardcore legend and pioneer of wrestling death matches. However, if you had no backstory or context like I just explained and were in Jacksonville that night, you were probably utterly confused and saying to yourself, what the flippity flub is this nonsense and where is Moxley's violent and edgy bad-ass theme song? Yes, it was indeed super awkward, but Tony Khan and AEW remedied the situation by basically saying, up your butt, Jobu, and switching to a cover of Wild Thing that was popularized in the film Major League. What's more awkward than being one of the 12 people to actually attend a DiBiase Posse tailgate party? Well, probably having your last name associated with said soiree. Growing up, Ted DiBiase watched his father, the Million Dollar Man, prove that everyone had a price and dreamed of one day taking the DiBiase legacy into the next millennium. But this couldn't have been what he had in mind. Ted Jr.'s dream becoming reality should have been easy money, but the brutal truth was that the kid lacked the charisma his daddy had. Now, one of the things about most of the entrance tunes we've heard is that they lean more towards rock. But the confusing part about the younger DiBiase's I Come From Money theme with its auto-tuned rap tracks was that it was too fun and upbeat and didn't match the gimmick of a trust-fun baby who wanted to hang out with the unwashed masses and grill some meats. A majority of Randy Savage's career was all about glitz and glamour, pomp and circumstance, and of course, macho madness. However, what really drove Randy Cuckoo was during the twilight of his WWE career when he was spending more time in the broadcast booth than inside the squared circle. So a frustrated Savage said, see you later Vince, and relaunched his in-ring career by signing with WCW. But upon his return after an injury layoff in 1999, Savage was suddenly a lot more muscular, his wardrobe changed to all black, and in a surprised move that confused fans, he also had completely different entrance music. Gone was pomp and circumstance replaced by the edgy industrial rock track What Up Mach, which did wind up endearing him to a whole new set of fans. If anything helped fuel the term X-Pac Heat, it had to be this awkward entrance music for the X Factor back in 2001. I guess someone honestly said, hey, let's let Uncle Cracker do a song for a group of our guys, and absolutely no one punched that person in the face until their hand broke. I mean this theme is all over the place, none of it was good, and as soon as it hit, fans were ready to boo for all the wrong reasons, starting out like a boy band tune before transitioning into a strange mix of hip hop and early 90s club classics. The only factor this song had was ensuring this faction was a joke from the very get-go. Let's be honest here, okay, when you think of cool gangster rap, Teddy Long isn't someone who immediately pops into your head, am I right? Of course I am. Teddy is basically 100 pounds soaking wet and not gangster at all. So what confused fans who weren't in the know is that prior to Long becoming the general manager of SmackDown Playa, he was a regular manager and his final protege was a guy by the name of Rodney Mack. In fact, this theme song is named after Rodney and called Mack Militant. Well unfortunately Mack wound up getting fired, but Teddy dug the song so much that he kept it for himself, even when it came time for him to be a babyface authority figure.  Somewhat remembered for his smooth 1980 Yacht Rott hit steal away singer-guitars journeyman Robbie Dupri no relation to Max or Maxine wasn't exactly the type of music act you'd peg for the world of sports entertainment in the late 1980s. But as a favor to his buddy and the real real American Rick Derringer, Dupri performed the wusiest wrestling tune ever, Girls in Cars. Now somehow a cheese-dick song about one man's love-hate relationship with, well with girls in cars, became the most awkward theme music for the white meat rah-rah babyface tag team of Rick Martell and Tito Santana known as Strike Force. How this adult contemporary composition wound up accompanying the Strike Farce to the ring is beyond me, but it left all three fans of Robbie Dupri absolutely confused when Jimmy Hart sang the song at the 1987 Slammy Awards. I guess Robbie had nothing better to do. If you would have told me at the beginning of 2022 that daddy-ass Billy Gunn would be the most over-wrestler of the year, I would have kicked you straight in the Jimmy. Now even though the creative wasn't always perfect, Billy was someone that received multiple opportunities in the WWE during highly competitive eras and with iconic performers, but just couldn't get over the hump as a single star. But let's forget about Rockabilly for a sec. Gunn's 1999 solo push remains the catalyst for his mid-main event run due to the ease insistence on calling him Mr. Ass all the time, including his awkward ass-man theme song. As if emphasizing his rear end constantly was a good thing, it was the over-the-top lyrics outlining the many ways in which Gunn took his love for the gluteus to the max.  For all the legendary entrance theme music that the mouth of the South Jimmy Hart has created during his wrestling career, his tremendous body of work was almost erased entirely because of this stinker of a song for the WCW tag team of Buff Bagwell and Scotty Riggs aka The American Males. Now I don't think the fans were necessarily left in a state of confusion as to what the name of this ambiguously gay duo was because throughout its two and a half brutal minutes of torture, the words American Males are repeated about 4 million times.  Kenneth Slick Johnson is one of the most influential African American managers sports entertainment has ever seen. Now while the self-proclaimed Doctor of Style was certainly cooler than the other side of the pillow, unfortunately his hit entrance theme song Jive Soul Bro left many fans confused when they saw the Slickster with the one-man gang and his awkward African dream gimmick. Once a huge burly biker, the big man transformed into Akim began speaking solely in Jive and claimed to be from deepest darkest Africa all the while as a very obvious fat white man. His dancing was also awfully cringe as he tried his best to boogie down the aisle, matching Slick dance step for dance step before squashing his hapless foes. Eventually gang would drop the funky persona and return to his roots but not before awkwardly embracing his inner soul. Of all the millions and millions of matches and thousands of theme songs played over the years, unfortunately the only thing anyone ever remembers about the Sandman as a pro wrestler is that he bashed a beer can across his forehead and then stumbled his way to the ring as the sinister sounds of Metallica's Inner Sandman blasted from the arena speakers. However, simply put, when your whole existence is defined by one single piece of music and then suddenly it's no longer available for you to use, pardon the pun, but you might as well bury your head in the sand. The Sandman's run during 2006's WWE CW Reboot was a waste of time without his iconic song, leaving fans confused but also enlightened as it showed that perhaps no other entrance theme was as important to a wrestler's career as much as Inner Sandman was to this ECW hardcore legend.


Good morning. We start from where we left last time. Last time we, in fact there were two lectures in which we looked at the basic methods and formulae for estimating the static lift generated by any LTA system. First we derived the basic formulae and then we tried to simplify them and also apply them to specific LTA systems like rigid airship and then a balloon and also a super pressure balloon. Now what is more important for us is to know what happens to this static lift when there are variations. So today we are going to look at several operational parameters and their effect in the changing values of static lift or to be more precise what is the methodology to calculate the variation in static lift as these parameters change. The first parameter that we will look for is infraction fraction, this inflation fraction. The first parameter that we will look is inflation fraction. This I hope you remember is the ratio of the lifting gas occupied in the volume upon the total volume of the envelope. So if there is no balloon, this fraction is 1. Then we will look at the change in the atmospheric pressure. I do not call it as PA but PS because PS is the standard pressure. We will look at the effect of change in super pressure PS which if you recall is the pressure above the atmosphere which is or if the envelope is filled with gas at a higher pressure than ambient that pressure is the additional pressure is the super pressure. We will look at what happens when there is a slow increase in the ambient temperature. When I say slow increase I mean we give time for the system to come into equilibrium and we assume that the heat transfer takes place through the envelope. We will look at the effect of super heat which is exposure to the envelope to temperatures higher than ambient. Then we will look at what happens when you suddenly bring an LTA system into high temperature without giving time for the system to equalize that is called as rapid increase in the ambient temperature. We will look at the effect of humidity. We will look at the effect of lifting gas purity and finally we will look at the effect of changing the lifting gas volume. So our mandate for today is for all these 9 parameters 1 by 1 what is the variation in static lift as 1 by 1 these parameters change that is our mandate for today. Remember that when these parameters are changed except for the you know the second last and the third last that is the humidity and the purity of the gas when these parameters change the amount of air inside the envelope will also change either because the amount of air in the balloon A increases and hence or for some other reason so the infraction for the inflection infraction I will also change when these parameters change okay and when that happens the weight of the air in the balloon A will also change. So for every case we might have to calculate the effect of the change in the balloon A air also. Let us look at the first of these factors which is the inflection fraction I. Now apply a simple gas law which says that P V by T equal to constant for any lifting gas inside a closed envelope we can always say that P lifting gas into I into V upon T lifting gas is a constant why do we say this because I into V is the multiplication of inflation fraction with the volume. Now in my previous slides I have used V E and V for the envelope volume because there is a mix up with velocity also. But then we are in aerostatics so therefore whenever you see capital V from now on you understand that that means envelope volume so I have dropped the superscript E and V. One reason is it makes the formula very large unnecessarily as you will see the formula with which we will be deriving are anyway very large. So if I remove E and V there should be no confusion there is no velocity here there is only volume. So P lifting gas into inflation fraction into V divided by T of lifting gas that will be constant for the lifting gas and if there is any operating condition 1 and from there you go to condition number 2 then P L G 1 that is the pressure of the lifting gas in condition 1 into I 1 into V upon T L G will be equal to the same things for the second condition. But keep in mind there is a very very big assumption we are making when we equate these two quantities. So can you now think and tell me what are we assuming when we are saying that P L G 1 I 1 V upon T L G 1 is equal to the values for the second operating condition or if I ask you a specific question under what condition will this equality be invalid? Density variation will take place no density variation is implicit. So you cannot say that this will be true only at the same altitude or at the same so density variation is permitted envelope volume will not change because there is V on both sides. So yes you can say that assuming envelope volume remains constant in all our analysis we are assuming envelope volume remains constant externally the volume remains constant internally the volume available for the lifting gas might change correct. So mass of the lifting gas is the same. So even though the ballonet is insulating or deflating the volume available for the lifting gas may change but its mass is not changing under what condition does the mass remain constant. But which operating condition will ensure that mass does not remain constant one is leakages so with time there will be leakages. So we are looking at the quasi-study situation so we cannot take care of time dependent changes in the mass. So that is another assumption that we are looking at a particular instance we are looking at constant outside envelope volume okay. So can you recall is there any condition operating condition which makes you throw out the lifting gas if you want to exceed the pressure altitude. Do you remember the concept of pressure altitude when you are at ground you have air in the envelope and a ballonet the ballonet is full on the ground as you go up the ballonet air is being pushed out you reach an altitude at which the ballonet is flush if you still want to go higher up then the only option you have is to throw out some gas. So we are assuming that we are below the pressure altitude so that is a key assumption that we do not exceed the pressure height during this analysis. So as far as operating from any operating condition to pressure altitude this equation is valid for a constant outer envelope gas shape envelope shape hence volume okay. Now let us continue so the same formula I have reproduced here for continuity. Now what you can do is you can take the ratio of I2 by I1 by rearrangement in the formula. So I2 by I1 so I1 will come this I1 will come here down this TLG will go there so you get PLG1 TLG2 upon PLG2 TLG1 this is the ratio of the infraction inflation fractions okay. Now PLG is the pressure of the lifting gas that will be equal to the pressure at which you are operating plus the super pressure that you will provide. Now why do you provide super pressure to maintain the shape? Yes to give the pressure slightly more than atmospheric so that in case of any dynamic pressure acting on the balloon the shape so if you want to keep V constant you need to ensure that there is some pressure inside. So that is why P of the envelope will be ambient pressure or the standard pressure at operating altitude plus delta PSP similarly T of the lifting gas that is the temperature of the lifting gas will be equal to the ambient temperature plus any super heat that is present. So reproduce it so do not look at the screen just do it yourself so in this particular expression you replace PLG1 and PLG2 with PS1 plus delta PSP1 and PS2 plus delta PSP2 because at two operating conditions the super pressure may not remain same similarly the ambient pressure also will not be the same it will be P1 and P2. So if you do that the expression becomes as shown on the screen and further if I plot the variation from C level to higher altitudes. Now this is a double scale figure so the figures on the right side are in feet pressure altitude in feet and those are shown by the dotted lines or the scale dotted lines. The figure the number on the left pressure altitude in meters so from 0 to 5000 meters or 0 to 16000 feet approximately is the altitude variation here and on the x axis you have the inflation fraction varying from 0.6 to 1. So will someone tell me if the inflation fraction is 0.7 what will be the percentage volume occupied by the ballonet at C level if the inflation fraction is 0.7 look at this point if it is 0.7 or let us say 0.6 at C level the inflation fraction is 0.6 you are at C level 0 altitude and inflation fraction is 0.6 what will be the volume occupied by the ballonet percentage wise 40% inflation fraction 0.6 means 60% of the envelope is full of the LTA gas therefore remaining 40% is full of the ballonet which is the air and as you go higher up if you move along this line we see that for an airship with inflation fraction 0.6 at C level as the altitude is increased or you can also say as the ambient pressure level is decreased you reach a stage here at around 5000 feet where the inflation fraction becomes 1 which means what has happened Sunira what has happened volume okay which volume is 0 the ballonet correct the entire envelope is full of the same amount of LTA gas we have not increased the LTA gas LTA gas mass is the same but the volume available to it has been changed we did that because we pushed out some ballonet air we pushed it out because we wanted the envelope not to get over stressed okay. So what can you say about the pressure height of this particular airship 5000 meters is the pressure height of this airship because the inflation fraction becomes equal to 1 at 5000 feet and therefore in normal circumstances we should not go beyond above 5000 meters if you have to go you have to throw some LTA gas out okay only then you will be able to go up okay. So keep this in mind inflation fraction 0.6 C level condition it becomes 1 almost 1 at 5000 meters okay. So that much is what we have to learn about the effect of inflation fraction. What we have learnt is that as the ambient pressure decreases because of change in the altitude or increase in the altitude the inflation fraction increases till it hits equal to 1 and the line which it follows depends on from where it started these are almost parallel lines almost okay. So it follows a non-linear but as I should say a slightly non-linear variation.


5 things that stop narcissists in their tracks. There are certain things that shock narcissists and prevent them from continuing. Things that cause them to suddenly stop because they don't know how to react. They don't know what to do. There are 5 things that stop narcissists in their tracks. 1. When you reject them. Narcissists think they are very charming and attractive. They think they can have anyone they want. Because everyone wants them. They think they're everyone's ideal choice. So they expect you to chase them. They expect you to want to be involved with them. But when you pull away, it challenges their false reality. It makes them feel irrelevant and unimportant. It triggers them to question their worth. But they don't like to reflect on their own insecurities. It's too painful for them to deal with. So they will get very angry and they will turn against you.  Because they want you to feel how they feel too. When you do something they don't expect. Narcissists want you to be predictable so that they can be 10 steps ahead of you. Because that makes it easier for them to control you. So they will try to learn you. They will try to learn what you like and what you don't like. Because then they can determine what type of response they're going to get from you. They can learn what makes you happy and what makes you sad.  But if you do something they don't expect you to do. Or if you react in a way that they didn't expect you to react. It catches them off guard. They're unprepared for it. They don't know how to respond. Three, when you go no contact.  Because they see it as something that's outside of their control. They want to be the ones to discard you. Because then they're in a position of power. But when you do it, it makes them feel small. It bruises their ego. And when that happens, they may try to hoove you. But it's not because they love you or miss you. They see you as an object. And they're trying to use you as a form of self-medication. As a bandage for their wounds. To prove to themselves that they're not as unimportant as you made them feel. Four, when you become successful. The narcissist may have told you you're nothing without them. That you'll never find someone else who will love you. They had to paint this picture of you. They had to create this false narrative.  But if you went on and became successful without them. It causes their false reality to crumble. Because they always have to be right. They have to be in the know. And they think they've got you all figured out. They think they know everything they need to know.  It destroys them. They don't know how to react. Because they see it as though you've won. But they can't accept it. Because they're meant to be superior. They're meant to be better than you. It causes their reality to not make any sense. Five, when you give them a compliment. Narcissists are miserable. And they expect everyone to be miserable just like them. But when you give them a compliment. You are showing them love and kindness. Which catches them off guard. Because they can't do that. They're too miserable to recognize anyone else's accomplishments. They're too wrapped up in themselves. So when you give the narcissist a compliment. It will stop them in their tracks. The only thing they may do is give you a compliment in return. Because your compliment has triggered them to reflect on their inability to appreciate you. But it won't be a genuine compliment. It's just something they will use to regain their sense of reality. But it will completely catch them off guard. Because deep down they know they're no good. They know they're not providing anything of value to you. And it triggers them to reflect on that. It makes someone to prove themselves. Which may result in them complimenting you. Thank you for watching. I hope this video resonates with you. Please like, comment, share and subscribe. If you would like to donate, my PayPal link is in the video description. Coach the Inquiries, you can email me at coaching.naxabiver.uk. Thank you for watching and I'll talk to you soon.