As many of you know by now, the most progressive members of Congress are all facing competitive primary challenges by well-funded opponents, and we now know that at least one of them is in serious danger of losing. That individual is Cory Bush. The New York Post reports a new poll by GOP firm Remington Research finds Bush losing by 22 points to rival Wesley Bell in the August 6th contest. While the poll was a small sample size of just 401 voters, the results are stark. In the survey conducted last week, 50% of those polled said they were in favor of Bell, a former prosecutor with just 28% saying yes to Bush. The margin of error was 4.9%. So obviously this is very alarming as somebody who supports Cory Bush, but there are a couple of caveats. As the article mentioned, the sample size was relatively small, and yes, this is a GOP pollster, but they are fairly reputable, not as reputable according to 538 as pollsters like ABC News and New York Times Ciena College, and their transparency score is comparatively low, but they have produced relatively accurate results, and they're certainly more trustworthy than Rasmussen, which skews heavily towards Republicans, but I mean, this poll is the only gauge that we have at this point of this primary race, and I think we would be foolish to not take it seriously. And as Josh Krajnar of Jewish Insider and Fox News puts it, this is a big red flag for far-left squad lawmakers. Now as you can see, he's also framing her as being anti-Israel and is implying that her position there is the reason why she's in this predicament currently. Now I think that him calling her far-left is a stretch because even though it's easy to think that's the case when the Overton window in the United States is so far to the right that anyone who's left of center seems like a commie, but I mean, in actuality, even though she's one of the most left-wing members of Congress, that doesn't make her an extremist. She's just a social Democrat. There's nothing extreme about any of her policy positions, but I think that there is something to be said here about him saying that she's losing because of Israel. It's not because of her stance, because I mean, what she's doing and calling for a ceasefire is the position that's supported by a majority of Americans, including a strong majority of Democrats. But the reason why her position has got her in this predicament is because of all the money being spent against her, and I think that he's also correct to point out that this isn't just a red flag for Cory Bush. It's also a red flag for other members of the squad as well, particularly Jamal Bowman and Elon Omar, who are also possibly in danger of losing, although we'll have to wait to see the polls. But I mean, this is really sad to see because she was bold and she chose to come out and do the right thing and call for a ceasefire. But now she is possibly going to be punished for it. Now, a couple of months ago, we learned that APAC is planning to spend more than $100 million to unseat progressives like Cory Bush, who called for a ceasefire and dared to criticize Israel. But before that, we learned this. Westley Bell announced that he would be abandoning his campaign for the U.S. Senate against Republican Josh Hawley to instead run against fellow Democrat Cory Bush. And it seems like he made the right decision for himself for the fact that he managed to raise a lot of money in comparison to Cory Bush, whose campaign is reportedly in debt with just $20,000 of cash on hand. So run against the Republican with unlimited funds or run against a Democrat who exclusively is raising money through small grassroots donations to remain principled. Which one's going to be easier here? So he made the easy choice. Now, this primary challenge is about Israel. But Bell, ironically, after choosing to get in this race because of her position on Israel is desperately trying to not make this about Israel. But I mean, it makes sense if you think about it, because defending a genocide isn't necessarily the most effective strategy. So instead, what he's trying to do is portray her as a bad representative, who I guess is not looking out for the interests of her constituents and is doing bad constituent services.  But this isn't what the election and the primary is about. This is about Israel. And he's only running against her because it'll be easier to fundraise against the progressive critical of Israel than it would be to fundraise against the Republican, right? So for him to try to pretend as if Israel isn't the number one issue here shows you how disingenuous he is. And Cory Bush is sounding the alarm about what this race is actually about, despite his attempts to deflect. The New York Times reports, unlike many of the primary contests fueled by various groups, like the American Israel Political Affairs Committee, its political affiliate, the United Democracy Project, and the independent Democratic majority for Israel, the Bush-Feebell battle in Missouri's first district pits progressive against progressive, each with a considerable record to write on that has little to do with Israel. And though driven by money from pro-Israel groups and firm Israel critics, the fight over Missouri's deep blue first district is likely to hardly mention the Middle East. Instead, it will be a battle over representation and what that should look like for troubled St. Louis. Quote, I'm being targeted by APEC because not only do I believe Palestinians deserve to live freely and peacefully just like Israelis, but because I want to protect our democracy from Republican extremism, Ms. Bush said Monday. I want to codify abortion rights. I want to pass meaningful gun violence prevention legislation. And I want to raise taxes on billionaires. All things APEC, their GOP donors and the insurrectionists they endorse oppose. And Cory Bush is exactly correct. This is about Israel. And I think that it would behoove her to at least point out why he's challenging her in the first place. But I mean, it's so infuriating to see Wesley Bell Larp as a progressive during the campaign. And he's only able to do this because he's able to control the narrative since he's raised hundreds of thousands of dollars, right? Even though Cory Bush is an incumbent with that incumbent advantage, he has so much money that he could flood the airwaves and get voters to think whatever he wants them to think about this entire race. It's really, it's really frustrating. But unfortunately, this is the way that US politics works. But as much as he wants to downplay his support for genocide now, he already gave away the game in an October 31st interview with Jewish Insider. Quote, he said that the Israel Hamas war and Bush's comments about it had factored into his decision to challenge her for her house seat. Quote, it contributed to my decision for the surface reasons that those comments were offensive on many levels, but also from a national security level as well. Bell said, but wait for it, Bell declined to say if he had been in conversation with APEC or Democratic majority for Israel, the pro-Israel PECs working to recruit challengers to squad members. But it gets even better. Quote, Bell, who traveled to Israel in 2017 with the American Israel Education Foundation and nonprofit Link to APEC said he'd seen firsthand the importance of Israel's iron dome missile defense system. Bush voted against supplemental iron dome funding in 2021 after the last war between Israel and Hamas. He is so dishonest, it's almost hilarious. Well, you know, yeah, I have this affiliation between APEC, I'm at least linked to them in a roundabout way, but I'm not gonna tell you if they're funding me after I literally decided to get in this race to challenge her because I know that the Israel lobby is gonna be spending big to defeat progressives calling for a ceasefire. I mean, this is just, it's so comical how people can run for Congress and be so deceitful about their reasoning, right? I think that if you run for Congress for opportunistic reasons, like I don't expect you to say that, but really we want people to run for Congress for selfless reasons, not selfish reasons, right?  It's just, it's so frustrating. Now the reason why Cory Bush rightfully voted against the funding of Israel's iron dome is because they are overseeing a state of apartheid and that bill that she voted against had zero protections for Palestinians. But of course he didn't explain that because why would he? But he did use that vote to imply that she supports literal terrorists, which is something that Republicans have also done. Jewish Insider continues in a press conference announcing his candidacy, Bell said, quote, we cannot give aid and comfort to terrorist organizations. Pressed on that comment by Jewish Insider, Bell noted that Bush had voted against funding for the iron dome missile defense system and said that the US's foes, including Hamas, pay attention to public divisions in the US. Quote, they want propaganda to try and create confusion and disinformation, he said. I think it matters a lot. And then obviously how one votes, there's certain things that we cannot politicize and that's one of them in my opinion. And as we see, Republicans and Democrats like one of the few issues that we all come together on. Oh, so it's the squad who wants to propagandize the conflict and not his donors, I see. Makes total sense. And I love how he says that he is proud to come together with Republicans for this particular issue. Yeah, the same party who called for Gaza to be turned into a parking lot and to be wiped off the map. That's the party who you're proud to align with on this issue, really? I mean, why not just join them? It's astonishing to me that he is pretending to be a progressive here. I mean, you can't be progressive and pro-genocide at the same time, but I guess if you have enough money, you can make people think anything about you. It's just, right? Now, when he was confronted about this morally indefensible position by a non-Zionist Jewish woman, take a look at how he responded. I would like to first speak as a Jewish anti-Zionist because I do think it is important that we make it known that not all Jews support the violence, the genocide, the ethnic cleansing of the state of Israel. So please just make sure that you do not treat all Jews as a monolith as if all Jews support the ethno-state of Israel because we certainly do not. That is number one. But number two, when you talk about that you don't wanna be divisive and clearly you are insinuating there, you're implying that you believe Cori Bush is somehow divisive. You think somehow she's too divisive. I mean, I think that a lot of people could have said the exact same thing about you when you ran for your current position and based on that same mentality that it is quote unquote divisive to speak up for marginalized, oppressed, colonized people. A lot of people think that that is divisive. And so I think that's how that is gonna be interpreted when you say that. As you have chosen this exact moment to run while Cori Bush has been criticizing Israel's genocide and you are saying that sometimes we do need to hold, police officers accountable when they use excessive force but then I'm asked what I wanna ask you is about this contradiction when you say we need to always, always stand with our ally Israel. You keep saying ally but you don't say Israel. I think we got the question now. Why can we not hold them accountable for their very, very excessive force of over 10,000, 11,000, 12,000, half of which are children are killed. So tell me why that is not the same thing that we don't ever, ever, ever hold them accountable. Thank you for the question. So first and foremost, it's offensive to me that you would say that Israel defending itself is genocide. Genocide is intentionally trying to wipe out a people and no reasonable person would say that that is Israel's intention. Israel was attacked. Israel was attacked by Hamas and let's just, since we're gonna put this out and I'm not gonna take up the entire time with this but I do wanna make this point. Israel was attacked by a terrorist organization who in their charter says that the destruction of Israel is their goal that they stated after this attack that they were going to do it again and again. They contact, they attacked people at a concert. Those were not military targets. And so to call this ethnic cleansing, it is just wrong. It is misguided and her statements and your statements are wrong on that, period. And so- Wesley, did this begin on her purpose, Sally? I listened to it. Everything that you said Sally and I listened to everything you said and I did not interrupt you and now it's my turn. No, Sally, we're not gonna do this. I listened to your question and now it's my turn to end and now it's my turn to speak. And so here we are. We're talking about accusing folks who we know were victimized by genocide and ethnic cleansing during the Holocaust and throughout history. And we're gonna say that this country cannot defend itself against a terrorist organization that literally says they want to destroy Israel. No, I am not gonna sit here and play these word games and try to reinvent what actually is happening on the ground and what is actually happening historically. Did it start on October 7th, Wesley? Did all of this begin on October 7th?  Of course you're not, of course you're not. Yeah, I think that that exchange speaks for itself. Very, very telling in how he just wouldn't answer the question directly. He won't engage honestly with the question because doing so would force him to acknowledge war crimes Israel has committed. And if he did that, his donors wouldn't be too happy. So he's dodging questions like Neo from the Matrix and trying desperately to make this about anything but Israel even though that's the entire reason why he's in this race in the first place.  But you know what, let's play the game that he wants to play. Let's actually put aside both of their positions on Israel for a moment and look at actual policy positions that both candidates support. When you go to Corey Bush's campaign website you can see policy priorities. And when you click on one of them like Medicare for All for example, you can see thorough details about specific changes that she wants to make to our broken healthcare system. You can go to housing for all and see a plethora of practical solutions to one of the biggest crises facing the country right now. On the other hand, when you go to Wesley Bell's page you find no policies, zero. In fact, he doesn't even have a policy page and he's been in the race for months now. There is a page about him but there's not a peep about what he wants to do for you if you live in that district. But yet he wants to make this about constituents and not the candidates. That's hilarious to me. I mean the choice couldn't be more clear and if voters in Missouri's first congressional district get tricked into voting for this vacuous shill that would be incredibly sad for them because they'd be losing a representative who actually gives a damn about them. So I'm gonna put the donation link to Corey Bush in the description box and if you live in this district and you support Corey Bush, do what you can to help her. Text bank, phone bank, Canvas because if she were to lose that'd be a really sad day for America.


Blue, back for Pharrell, my play is Crosses, and I feel like my story is so much more cheesy. More cheesy than I say. More cheesy than I say. Because I feel like when I finally was like, all right, yeah, I was in college, I majored in psych, and I literally went to my psych advisor and was like, so how do I concentrate in theater? And that was because I saw a peer prevention troupe performing, I was like, yeah. Oh, wow. I'm gonna do that, and I did that, and I was like, we're gonna minor in theater now. Those shows hit hard. I love that, I really, really love that. That's beautiful. I just directed the University of Minnesota's peer prevention orientation play, so maybe we're gonna find some theater kids and future blues. Clarence. Hi, I'm Clarence Koo. I wrote chapters of A Floating Life, He, Him. And I guess the moment I knew I wanted to do theater was it was also a show. It was not the touring production of Wicked, it was actually a community theater production of Big River in Alexandria, Virginia. And I mean, for high school, me, I was like, wow, this is so cool. In terms of the stage craft and the music and the magic that happened on stage. And the fact that it went through so many different locations on the same place, and they had to use our imagination. And it's funny, because now that I think about it, it was a road trip play, which is funny, because I'm not thinking about Charlie's play, which is also a road trip play. I love that. Yeah, so yeah, the magic of theater. Yes, Noah. When did I want to do theater? I guess, well, I did a speech and debate in high school, and I was on the speech side.  And so I saw that and I was like, I didn't want to act. I figured out I wanted to make that piece of writing that could help move somebody in that little high school classroom. And when I went to undergrad, I took a survey where, I mean, this is an amazing class, which is like, we go around LA. I went to Loyola Marymount, and we would just go see theater. Every week we saw something different every week. So we saw black box, we saw devise, we saw musicals, we saw, and some of the best things that I've seen are we're at Atwater Village Theater. I love that, I love that play. Oh, good, thank you. Our team from Dr. Silver, Nick had to fly back to Canada today for production, and it is Britta Johnson's birthday. And so her and her sister and half the cast of Dr. Silver are currently at Disneyland. And Eleanor, of course, is preparing for tech to go into our next show. So I want to thank you all for being here and sharing those memories and those moments. I'll offer up that the first moment I knew I wanted to do theater, I was in New York with a performing arts troupe, and I watched the classical theater of Harlem do a production of the Cherry Orchard with Wendell Pearson. That man said, my God, my God, the Cherry Orchard is mine. The play, and I said, ooh, there's something going on here. I like it. I wanted us to start with these moments that we knew because I wanted to sort of, my first question to you is sort of about a theme that I feel like I've noticed picking up throughout PPF. It's nothing that we planned, but we've been touching on memory and remembering. In chapters, some people write in order to remember. We got the writing of memories and experience into story and novel. Crosses, you don't want to remember. One character says to another, children and adults hunted by their past. Coleman, you are remembering the bad. I am remembering it all. A group of siblings piecing together their memory. And of Oz, Roya is overtaken by her memories. And I actually really love the plea of connection in you don't remember graduation, this beautiful moment there. Galilee, you'll see, I remember, now you'll be listening for it. And Galilee, I remember is a group of people trying to piece together the memories of a man they loved beyond belief. And Dr. Silver, a new line that we heard, it wasn't even in the script, I had to get Nick to send it to me. He says this thing about memories anchor us to reality. We got these memories, we got this remembering. In the staircase, I honestly didn't remember it until you just told me just now how a mother is losing her memories. Why? How is memory impacting your work? Why does it matter? What are you thinking about when you start writing and talking about what we remember? I mean, I think we can all go home now. I mean, like. That's what I do, now you. Memory stumped them, my favorite version. All alone in the morning light. This is the only room where that will end. I mean, I guess this is just a purely theoretical, but I don't know, I don't know when you wrote your plays, but I think that, so I wrote Coleman the April 2020, so the first months of the pandemic. And so there wasn't, I wonder if there was something about doing a play that is deeply about looking back and kind of the, and trying to make really active the process of looking back because I was super sedentary. I wonder if just we're in this life cycle right now where we've all, these plays all kind of came out from them. I don't know, that's maybe just me, that's just a theory. We'll take it. No, this is actually, I don't remember when I started this, I just know that it's the play that's taken the longest to come to, you know, give birth to. So it's been years, I've been working on it. And I think that memory is such an interesting thing because you can't trust it, but you also need it to work through the things that you're carrying. And so like that was really important when I was working on process is like, if you have trauma and pain in order to move through it, in order to face it, you actually have to sit with the memories that you don't want to remember. And so it's interesting because also not knowing all the things, I feel like that probably speaks to all the things you were talking about. But it's a great device anyway. Come on, just the technique of it. Anybody else on memory? It doesn't make me think about why I'm attracted to theater. I suppose the other art forms and the one I write for the theater. Because theater is something that we work so hard on playwrights writing and then rehearsal and then the production and then the designers. And then the audience comes and sees it and then it's over. Like there's the run and then it's gone. And then it just lives in people's memories. And as theater people, we embrace that in a way. People who write novels, they have their book and people who do film, they have the film that you could people, generations and generations of the future can watch. And I guess we're just, we have a trust, I guess, in the present experience and enjoying it and being in it. And then just letting go and letting it be the memory. That doesn't really answer your question, but it's more like a reflection. Oh, it answered it, it's down. Noah Michael, any offers? Theater is so ephemeral, like a memory is there and then it's not recorded, you'll never see it again and then you just take it with you. And memory comes down to interpretation because we're all not gonna remember the same thing the same way.   And she's like, I didn't say that. You know what I mean? They just, it was the same event, but maybe you two interpreted it a different way. And my professor used to say like theater is a seon and you can bring back people and you get to say something to them that maybe you couldn't say in real life and that's your own thing, that's your own memory that you get to have of them that I never had this person in my life in real life, but I get to have them here in this place. Yeah, I mean, I, well, I'll talk about the car ride.  She's like, mm-mm, that was not. I'm like, girl, this is my place, okay? But what's amazing about it is like, well, or, you know, what's interesting about it is that I'm, this is the play that I'm writing. I am embodying her story and I'm putting her story into my body and sort of taking on her history and my family's history and that long sort of tradition. But also, it's through, it's ultimately through my lens. You know what I mean? It's through, it's the way I process those events. And so like, people will see the play and they'll be like, well, how much of this actually happened? Even though I'm telling my mother's story, I'm still interpreting it through my eyes and there's a scene in the play that takes place in an underground party where my mother, the character of my mother is, has a very intimate moment with another woman and it's sort of, it's open to interpretation and it's, there's this deep intimacy where my mother was like, that's not how it is. I'm like, but for me, it was like, I see the way Iranian women are so intimate with each other as just as friends, as, you know, at parties, right? Like the festivity of an Iranian party. It's intimate with everyone, not just women, but also men. What's happening right now in Iran, there is this deep intimacy between people that are out on the streets and it's just like all, they're all joined together in this cause of woman life freedom. You know, it's like we are in this together and we're not giving up the fight and so I wanted to sort of bring that intimacy into the play and sort of just pay homage to it and honor it, yeah.  What's that process been like? Being a writer and a performer, how has one changed or altered the other? Well, it's been quite intense and fabulous. I mean, I will say, you know, I had, I mentioned like I was doing magic and so I was on stage for a lot of my life. This is the first time I'm actually in a play of my own, you know. I have another play that I'm writing at the Geffen, which is a magic play. That's a whole other conversation. But this is, and I'm in that as well, but this is like, this was the first, I started writing this a couple of years ago and I mean, it's beyond, it's just like, it's so meaningful because I get to, I really get, I feel like I get to call my ancestors into the room, into this sanctuary. Like it really feels like being up here with 500 seats in the theater, it feels like a sanctuary and like, you know, we have Iranian women coming to the show, Iranian people coming to the show. Many of whom have never stepped foot inside a theater. You know, people will come and tell me.  I mean, lovely, but like my 83 year old grandmother, it's not speaking to her in the same way. And so it's really just an honor. It's like, and also the last thing I'll say is like, they come and they'll say, you know, this part of your story is also my story, you know. And that's like amazing for these women, for especially for Iranian women coming to me. I'm like, it's so beautiful. Zora Neale Hurston says, tell a story, get a story in return. And there's always something really powerful about that. It shapes so much of the way I think about theaters, how we tell a story and we get one back. It's why we love panels. It's why I actually love post-show conversations because people just start nodding. They're like, wow. I'm like, you are moved by someone else's story. There's something really special in there. Noah, you weren't in your play, but you were in your play as we were doing the readings, right? My favorite story was last night at the bass, somebody came up to me, they're like, oh man, I really love that staircase and the percussionists. I thought he just was so good and so focused. I said, well, you know, he's also the playwright. What? So I'm just so curious, the music, the instrument, the chanting, integral to the staircase, why? You know, that drum, it's called an ipuheke and it's a very, it's an old instrument in that like, this is the same sound you would have heard 2,000 years ago. Come on. You know what I mean? It's just, they grew, it's too gorge, so they grow out of certain oblong and then there's like a head shape and it's put together and it makes this sound, that's not like a timpani, it's not a snare. You know, it's what we call kahiko. It's just old, it's old world. And so that's kind of where I want to build all of my plays from is how to honor that side and being in the play is like the rarest thing for me because I never want to be a one man show. I couldn't do it, but it was an honor to be on stage to support the cast that was already there. So it's not like, oh, go do it and I'll watch. It was like, I'm right there with you. I'm warming up with you, we're doing all the things and I was comfortable only in that like I was third chair trumpet in band so I had a music stand, I had an instrument, the conductor, the director says go, I go, but I had to just think about staying neutral on stage because that first night I was kind of like, you know, taking notes and things are going, but then my, you need to relax, enjoy it because I didn't watch it the first night. I was just like so, but then the next night I watched and I enjoyed and people said, oh, that helped. So they got to enjoy the piece when I enjoyed the piece, but it's very rare to have the playwright. It's weird. I love that you were there. We've got music, Clarence, your characters, I mean you, your characters are talking about language and you got a writer writing about the process of writing and you yourself are a writer. I'm just curious what drew you to writing about language and telling the story of chapters of A Floating Life. Gosh, I guess to tackle the idea about writing, I guess I'm just fascinated by some people feel like they need to write like this and then other people like people in my family who don't and they lead happy lives. And so I think for me part of this play was trying to figure out like why do we need to write, need to write and how do people who don't write look at us and how do we who write look at people who don't write and again I respect people who don't write. You guys are living happy lives. And so that's why I think in that play there are people who are really into like language and like nerdy intellectual stuff and people are more practical. I love that, I love that.  I've read it three times, seen it twice now and it's sort of it really, I mean you've in many ways particularly in the reading we got to see with Lillian Brown, a ritual of a sorts comes forward to sort of bring this sort of story forward. Why? Why'd you feel like you needed to write that story?  Ooh, let me answer that. Well, it comes from a cultural place. It comes from living and being around secrets and having to piece things together to see a full picture. And I really just kind of heard these characters, these kids in my head at some point where I was like, oh, that's my family's land and these are aunts and uncles. I don't actually know because they're not with us anymore but being around these little bits and pieces and crumbs all my life and no one wanting to like talk about it and talk about something that is not just affecting the family but the country as a whole. I kind of, I just wanted to honor that in a very real way that can land and sit what's up because like you said, it's very heavy and it's very daunting to get into that play. I tell you every time I go like work on it, I'm like. And so yeah, really it comes from like wanting to take care of my people. Yeah, the body remembers. And even the body remembers even if we don't want to talk about it. And there's just something really beautiful about that ritual of release, you know and to say the thing and to get the thing out and then sending that young girl on. I just, I'll never, I don't always be stuck. The image of hands on the back, hands on the back. Charlie, you and I have talked about Coleman 72 and multiple, Charlie's been here so we've been doing lots of Q and As but one thing I haven't told you about the play that I really love and Coleman 72 is the dad basically is like, listen, you can't be no cheerleader. You can't be doing this art stuff. You need to be a doctor. Everybody's like, oh, that's so and then some but your father says a thing that has stuck with me and I will never forget.  And I have never, the idea of like, I just want you to be secure in the world so that they cannot toss you away. And the only position is that of healer. So they're like, I'm just curious, where did that come from? What are you, what are you thinking? What are you processing there? I mean, that specifically, that sentiment was, is really frankly a direct pull from my grandfather. That would pass down, I didn't hear directly from him but was passed down to my father and my father told me about how this kind of philosophy, my grandfather was grew up in two wars, you know, and came to America right after the Korean War. And he had this belief that if you are a doctor, that is, when societal disruption happens, when there is war, when there is relocations, when you are a refugee, like if you can, like a human life is always priceless. And so if you can be a doctor, that means that you will never be someone who is sent to the front. You know, that means that you'll never be somebody who is disposable.  And it's, and it's- It's a logic of survival. It's the logic of survival. And so I think that a lot of working on Coleman 72 has been an empathetic exercise in trying to understand these people that I'm related to. But, you know, my grandfather died when I was in high school. I didn't get to really know as an adult. And just last night, I was at the PPF bash. There was, I was talking to a couple of people who saw the play that night who born and raised in Korea. And one actually still lives in Korea and one lives in Los Angeles. And we were, they were commenting on, I thought it was really interesting about how they thought that Coleman could have only be written, could only have been written by a third generation kid. Because first and second generations too, they're like, we're too close to it. You know, we are like, you have that, they felt that kind of translation and kind of the distance of that perspective. Which was interesting to hear. I hadn't thought about it in that way before. I love that what our elders give us to help us sort of make it through. My father was born in 1946. And so it always sort of blows my mind. I grew up in Detroit surrounded by blackness and then I moved to Minnesota. But it's interesting cause I tell you like they talk about Detroit hustle. But my father always sort of like, I ask people like what, what's a piece of advice that you've been given this is the question to you. What's a piece of advice that you've been given that shapes you? And often like my father sort of, I do a lot of work around anti-racism, equity, diversity, inclusion. And you know, I'll just say it boldly. Why people don't scare me in the same way that they, in the same way that they scare or sort of create a lot of tension in ways. Mostly that's cause I was born and raised in Detroit surrounded by blackness. And then my father also sort of just told me, he like, they just don't know no better.  And it's made my job easier. And there are some white folks who have got it together and thank you for that. I'm just naming though that like that piece of advice is part of the reason why I'm really good at what I do is that my dad like in 19, since 1946 is like nah, and that's been really helpful for me. It may not be something like that, but what's a piece of advice you've been given by someone that's really sort of shaped you as a writer or as a person? I told them they would be stumped and they have permission to sit in silence. No need to rush. You know, I do, I help out with traditional tattooing, traditional Hawaiian tattooing. And he's a Sua Suape. And that just means he's a master at what he does. And he told me that, you know, just pursue the cultural and the rest will take care of itself. And so I think what he meant really was like, you know, you can go for this job for the money, you can go for this job for the whatever, but if it's not serving culturally, then it's not gonna benefit you in the long run. And that's what he did. That he was, he's able to build out his life just by pursuing, you know, all of his knowledge that he has was literally sitting at the foot of other old folks and just taking that in. And, you know, he wants for nothing at this point because he just gets to do what he does and it serves the community. And so I feel the same way now where I don't do theater in Hawaii, there's not a big scene. So I do, I'm in education, I work at a Hawaiian language school just as a tutor. It's a full immersion, that means it's conducted in Hawaiian, the kids all speak Hawaiian. And I also go to the university, I went back for a second undergraduate degree in Hawaiian language and Hawaiian studies. And I felt compelled to do that after graduate school because I went to USC and I was, you know, the only native Hawaiian in the room and I had nothing to say about it. And I felt like this deep deficit to be on the A to be on the mainland and have no authority on what I'm even writing about. So I was, and my professors asked me, are you gonna keep writing after you graduate? And I said, no, I'm gonna go back, I'm gonna pursue culture. And it just so happens that I'm able to do both. And so that to me means that his advice is meaningful and works, you know. Pursue the culture. I was trying to think of something from my family and I couldn't, instead what came through, it will pop into my head is from the bestie, shout out to bestie, Abby. Which is living authentically and being unapologetic about that and coming to the work in the same way.    Like, is it problematic? Should I, and she'll be like, well, does that person exist? And I'm like, you day in my days, that's all right. And if you move in the world that way, there's less space for fraudulence and dissonance. And so that is the thing that I try to do in my life and that is the thing I try to do in my work with my characters is move in the same way. Come on. Okay, so that was beautiful, both of you. I mean, what it brought up for me is expect miracles. And I've heard that a miracle is a shift in perception from fear to love. And I love what you said, Noah, about service because I feel like that is theater, to be creating a collective experience where people can get together in a visceral bodily way, feel their feelings, feel the celebration, feel the joy and to follow that. And for me, like expecting miracles, I started working on this play a couple of years ago. We had Maritz Von Stupnegel who was directing the play and absolutely brilliant collaborator. And we've been working on it for a few years and we did a reading right before the pandemic.  And then I did PPF, like right when it, I guess last year. And it's sort of, we've been on such an insane journey with it, which I could not have anticipated or I could not have explained to you how that was gonna unfold, but we went to Ohai Playwrights Conference. We were invited to Sundance Institute, a theater aspen all over the place. And that wasn't necessarily, yes, like we are showing up and doing our part, right? We're doing our part. But there are also other forces at work, whether you wanna call it nature, whatever you wanna say is at work, whatever that means to you. But it's like, it does feel miraculous to be doing this play right now as there's a movement happening in Iran right now, like literally right now. And the SCR programmed the show sort of before that was really part of the dialogue. And this is, I'm actually told this is the first major production of an Iranian play ever in Southern California, which is crazy. This is the biggest home to Iranians outside of Iran. And so that is definitely not my doing. You know what I mean? I could not have said, let's do this play now, but the star sort of align. And I think it's partly because, you know, like I didn't set out to write a play about like what's going on in the moment, you know, three or four years ago. I just set out to write a play. I didn't even really set out. I just sort of like listened to this character that was in my head, like you said before. And it was like my mother telling her story. And then the miracles happen. So I, you know, I really come to believe in miracles, you know, expect miracles. And like, and then the last thing I'll say is like, it's not a, it's not like a woo woo thing. It's actually like kind of guaranteed. You know what I mean?  It's, it's attractive. You know what I mean? It's literally attracting opportunities, people, and the people that might need to be there in that moment. You know what I mean? Like, I don't know who's going to be, I was just having a conversation yesterday. Like who's going to be in that theater that needs to hear this play? Maybe there's one person. I don't know, but that's not up to me to decide who's going to be in the theater. All I need to do is show up and do my part and the rest is miraculous in my experience. Clarence, Noah, any advice? You know, it's funny, I'm just going to say the first thing that gave me really good advice is Michael. Because, because 10, 10 minutes ago, we were just catching up and I was telling him that I left my job, my full, my day job. I was an administrator at a university for 11 years and I left it last year. And so I'm just like living off some savings and not knowing what my future will bring. And that was his advice, expect miracles. I love it. We're on message, baby. We'll take it. We will take it. I'm taking it, I'm holding on to that. I love it. Noah, Clarence, Charlie. Third time's a charm. Right. Fail. I'm still thinking about expecting, I think that's amazing. And that made me think of, I had a teacher in high school. I had a drama teacher in high school who would tell us, live your life as a work of art. And I think that that really struck me, which is that you can, yes, we can all write a play. We can create art. But there's just a fundamental way of engaging in the world with curiosity, with grace, with empathy, with a sense of play that is an art form in and of itself.  And it's not always easy to live that. It's easy to get caught up in the doldrums and kind of a reactive fear to the world, to the kind of ups and downs of the business that comes with art and everything. But to live your life as a piece of art and to kind of have that type of engagement with a creative relationship with yourself kind of throughout has been really a meaningful piece of advice that George Keating, Chicago actor, director gave me. Thank you. Speaking of curiosity, we're gonna invite your curiosity. We're gonna open it up to the audience for questions. A few things you need to know, whether in a panel or a postural conversation, I always offer up this idea. These are opportunities for you to sort of have the courage to embrace your curiosity, which means you get to ask any questions or any ideas or thoughts that you want. It does not mean that your thoughts or questions will be answered or that they will not be met with challenge. Your curiosity is welcome, but you might find yourself being challenged in your curiosity. I may say, oh no, we won't answer that question, or I may push back against your question. None of the people up here have to answer your question. They will if they so feel moved to answer your question. Now that I've scared you enough, by making boundaries clear, I open up and encourage your curiosity. Please raise your hand and I'll call on you. There's always a dramatic pause once I open up for questions, that's normal, except my good friend in the back came through for me and that's what I'm talking about. What's your question? I'll repeat it, yes. Sometimes I'll take a question and direct it. I'm gonna toss this one to Noah first because it was untitled, then it was a small man and now it is indeed the staircase. This is my own personal thing, but a title is how you meet the play, so it is important and I always felt like the title should be the metaphor of the play. I mean, it doesn't always have to be, but it's there so that when you get to that point where it's uncovered, you know, I watched The Glass Menagerie for the first time and it was on the car ride home, I was like, oh, it's a metaphor because she's like, and then I was like, it all kind of came together and so you don't want to have a play that, I mean, a title that kind of misdirects either and you don't want it to be obvious about why it is that thing. You don't want that thing to appear on the first page or I don't know, but it is, for me, it has to be the metaphor, so my title changed because the metaphor in process changed. Excellent. Anybody else on your title? Maybe one more? I would say the same thing, like, one of my things is like, we need to make this short. I remember the first full-length play that had a placeholder title and it was like the Lorraine Hanbury School of, it was so long, it was just like, girl, you are doing too much, there's a way to capture this, to capture the essence of the play in a very quick way for people to remember and to like, when they watched you're like, oh, oh, I get it, PS 365, there's a double median here, it's a school, but also this happens every, all day, every day. Crosses, you'll discover you don't know what it means if you're not Jamaican, but as you watch the play, you sure as hell will find out and you'll, ah, get it. So like, I'm very much like, what's the shortest, quickest way to have an aha moment as you watch the play? Excellent. Gonna open up for more questions, we'll answer a few, we won't hear from everybody as we go, because we got a little bit of time. Coming to you, Ova. Questions about the journey of your pieces there? Clarence, could we start with you? Yeah, I've been working on this play for maybe about four years now. And, yeah, it's alternating between like writing by yourself and then working with actors, because I think a play is really like writing music, you know, you really have to hear it to understand it. And it's only once you have actors that you know that, oh, I've written too much. So I should maybe cut back on some of the words or something still aren't clear. So I'll move this phrase here or there. So, yeah, so for me, it's just alternating between being by myself, working with actors, coming back, working by myself and then working with actors again. Yeah, I mean, I think that's right. Clarence, and I think also like, this is why development is so important and being able to have opportunities like PPF and conferences and all of this like, it's critical. And we've been, I mentioned we've been doing Ava's. We had a number of different touch points. We had a longer rehearsal process because Maritz is, first of all, this guy's like doing like 10 shows at once. You know what I mean? Like he was doing a show at the Geffen, so we were rehearsing in LA while he was at the Geffen. After this, he's going back to Broadway with Danny DeVito and Lucy DeVito. And so like, we're like in the sort of middle of this conversation, we had learned a lot about the play working up to this point. But then it was really when we started getting into the production that it's like, okay, so now we need to think about blocking and movement and how does the character actually move and how do we interact with the audience and how do we think about this in a dynamic way. So that's been another point of unfolding and it will continue to unfold. Like, you know, we're actually taking the play on tour. There'll be a national tour that happens after this in the next year plus, which is exciting. We're setting that up now.  An actual genius. Like, he'll have a play published, like, done at the public. And then I'll like be talking to him and be like, I'm doing edits on, edit this out, right? I'll be like, why? He's like, no, because it's responsive to the community that you're in. So, you know, even as we've been in Orange County and Costa Mesa, you know, it's not like I'm writing the play to this audience at all. But, you know, you do find ways that different sort of parts of the play take resonance in new ways. And also the urgency of what's happening in the world also informs the play. So, I think it's always in process, always in motion. We'll stop there and we'll come back to you all. Questions? I'm coming back here, yes? Go ahead, Zaza, Zaza. Question about what happens when you change a play? Do you grieve what you lost? Is it easy? I always ask, playwrights are kind of amazing.  I'm like, whew. Like, dang, I'm like, but you wrote it, they're like, I can write better. I'm like, go ahead, do you? I could never, everything I write, I'm like, it's brilliant as it is. It can never change.  But, so I'm just curious. You were just in revisions. I just, you just opened a play. There were revisions constantly. What's it like? Grieving, how do you make cuts? How do you revise? No, I'm ruthless, to myself. No, I actually, I rarely had a moment where I had to cut something and it's been sad. I'm like, yes, goodbye. Like, I just like, in, out with the old and with the new. I mean, yeah, I mean, there was a couple of days during our process where I was, there was like a week where I was bringing in like 15 to 48 new pages a day, you know. Look at Blue's face. I'm like, here's my, here's my new word for today. No, but also, not all pages are created equally in that for the, you know, like, that might be a, you have to reference a page because there's a line or whatever, but. No, I really like revision. I really like revision because I don't know, I have negative self-talk or something and I can convince myself that it's better. I don't know, but no, I embrace it. And I've never had to go like, oh my, I always feel like very, I feel like there's always like a justification and also a confidence, I guess, also, which is like, if I cut this and I think I realize I'm wrong, it's just in a older draft. I can go back and find it, you know. It's like, nothing feels permanent in that way. Just like, like, at least can change out of a cell array, like, you know, wait on the line. Like, you can always go back. So that's, which is, that's, you know. Noah, you're vibrating with that? You know, I had a, in graduate school, the last, the last, I was the first year, this was the last year's student and he'd come in and he'd give 100 pages and we'd read the thing. And then next week, he's like, oh, I did a page one rewrite and he brought in an entirely different play. And as a first year, I was like, there is no way that you did it. But what I learned from him, his name was John Alice. And he said, he just, he would strip it down. And he would say, okay, if I were to like, trash the whole thing, could I start? Like, what I, what remains from that new draft? Yeah, yeah. So I had a, I had a draft. And then, yeah, it wasn't working. And then so I went back and I said, I stripped it down and what remains. And what did remain was father was mother son. So I like, let's, let's go back and let's start from that thing. And Ola and Lani who are in my show, they know like, yeah, if I could be a, if I could do it myself, I would do it myself, but it has to work also for them and what they are bringing. And they're the ones performing it. So they're the ones that were able to tell you like, no, it's not working.  It's always working in your head. And then you hear it out loud and it's like, I thought I had it. So let's just go back and strip it and start again. Can I say something? Oh, something that's actually really exciting about cuts is as a writer, you think that you have to go from like a, or, you know, in your first draft, you're writing it's like, I have to go from a to b to c. And then when you realize that you can cut b and then just go from a to c, it's like so exciting because when people talk, we actually talk that way, right? Like we jump from subject to subject. We're thinking that they're unrelated, but they actually are because of a subconscious link.  You guys are so like, you must be amazing to work with. What's your process, Blue? I'm writing it down. I'm writing it down. No, I think like, I like to think that I'm not super precious, but I know that I'm a little precious. I'm like, hold on. My process, I'm not turning out pages like that. It takes me years. To like get this thing out. So I'm like, do you know how long I thought about this? Like so long. You need to explain to me, like convince me how this is going to like, make the play better and work in the way that I am trying to do. And then I'm like, all right, cool, I'll do it. But I will say the biggest grief I have ever had wasn't about editing. It was why I was writing and I had finished and I had lost the draft. And I had a complete meltdown. Absolute meltdown. Like literally my partner, I called on him. He's like, what is happening? Is someone dying? I was like, you don't understand. Someone did die. Someone did. All of my characters. They're dead. You're gone. Excellent. I'm gonna open up. We got time for maybe one or two more questions. We are gonna go five minutes over since we started five minutes late. The next play does start at 10.30. Luckily it's in a different theater, so we're okay, but we will end shortly. I saw a hand, yes? Right here. Okay, go ahead. Advice for a new playwright. Surrender. No. Okay, I think, so I was not, when I started writing, I got so, I'm sorry, I was an actor before I was a writer and I took some playwright classes in college and I had so much anxiety about sharing work when I first started that before I would go into class on my days at The Share Pages, I would dry heave in the bathroom beforehand. I just would get so nervous. In a way that I never felt nervous about acting because it felt more like I'm sharing a piece of me and that's so terrifying. And I felt that same way, having to sit down and look at a blank page and there's just like a, and my only advice is like, there's like a practice of sitting in discomfort when you're writing that I think is really, it's just a practice and like learning how to sit and just move your fingers and not really judge what comes out for as long as possible is I think, is a muscle that I think can be worked and it's not fun but I mean that would be my advice or what helped me was to get that down. I have a writing exercise that ties back to the idea of memory so we can come full circle. Hey. So one of the exercises we did in grad school which I thought was really interesting and fun is our teacher had us go eavesdrop on a conversation. Like you go to a public place and just listen to a conversation.  That's really interesting.  You're actually just working from your memory and how you heard that conversation becomes what you write. So playwriting is actually about listening and also kind of like, but also your voice, right? So what you heard and how you have reinterpreted it when you try to remember that conversation will help you kind of figure out what you're, how you listen to the world. Looks like it. I transcribed a conversation at a coffee shop across the street like two weeks ago. Oh. Because there was a- You transcribed that? Yeah. Well there was two women and one of them was recruiting the other to a multi-level marketing team. Oh yeah. Nice. I just started, I literally just, I completely abandoned what I was working out at the coffee shop and just took her for an hour and a half. It's going to be a good play. As soon as I could down. Yeah. Nice. Any other advice? Go ahead. Yeah, sure. When I said surrender, I was partially joking, but also for me, surrender is a big part of it and what I mean by surrender is not giving up. It's, I've heard surrender is joining the winning team and so when you're writing and you're facing the blank page and what surrender means to me in that moment is, if I'm in a moment of struggle or anxiety about it, I'm not on the winning team because I'm on team anxiety. I'm on team fear. I'm on team, I don't know what's going to happen with this piece. I'm on team, is this going to get picked up? Blah, blah, blah, right? That's the team that I might, that I can risk being on. But when I surrender and I say, I don't know what this meant to be. You know? Universe, whatever you want to call it again, just sit still, listen and say universe, just show me what it's, show me, give me the words. You know? And I don't know, it doesn't matter for me like to what I'm asking that question really. You know? It's just like, I just sit still and listen and I know that it's in me but it's not necessarily from me. You know what I mean? It's this other thing. You know, it's like channeling. You know, when we talk about, a lot of people I've talked about today like listening to the voices inside your head. It's like, if I surrender my own ideas about what it's supposed to be, I'm a lot more available to what it is already. Cause the play's already been written. That blank page, the play is already there. It's actually already, there's a 90 page document or 120 in some cases. But it's like, it's already there. I just have to be in the space of openness to receiving it. Kind of. I know again, that sounds like, it might sound woo-woo but it's actually not. It's one word at a time. You know, I'm writing it one word at a time. I'm listening to it one word at a time. But it does sort of appear if I open myself to it. Anything blue? Oh, I was like, can I curse? Yes. Cause I was like, honestly I didn't go to school for writing.  Like who cares? Just do it. Yeah.  There really isn't anything. So yeah, just to be like, block it. I love it. All right, last questions are for me and they are the lightning round. All right, we're gonna walk right down the line, lightning round. What playwright do you think we should know about? What playwright do you think we should know about or a playwright we should revisit? It can be a playwright or a play. We're lightning round. We got three minutes on the clock. A playwright or a play. What do you think these people should go back and read or what do you think these people should seek out? Charlie, are you ready? Yes, I am. Go. They're related. Enid Graham is an incredible playwright. Everybody should be reading her, programming her. She is a genius. My favorite play of hers is a play called Pathological Venus, Find It. And that play is actually in conversation with who I think should be revisited in American theater right now, which is who is Naomi Wallace and onefully spare Slaughter City. Just an absolute genius playwright who is actually so prescient for the moment and she looks at the dynamics between labor and capital.  Lightning round. Michael, look her up, look her up. Or anybody else, if you got it. Oh, my classmate is Amanda Andre and so we made a blood pact where I go, she goes. Amanda Andre, next up. All right. Mia Chang, she's the first playwright that comes to my head. There are many, but yeah, that's the first one. I love it. Anybody else? I'm John Blank. No worries. But all black women playwrights. Come on. Yes.  Luis Alfaro, I named Caitlyn Kenney, Bailey Williams, Noel Villas.  Cherry Lusai.  And now I'm like, when you name one, then you're like, now I have to name them all. We can always, I love the naming of the playwrights. Pacific Playwrights Festival is normally seven playwrights and out of so many, many, but we know that those seven playwrights are very, very special. Their voices are very, very unique for that moment, but we make that decision, right? So there's so many playwrights and so many people out there. And I just always like the beautiful thing of calling forward the people who inspire us, the people that give us life, that give us breath, that give us memory. We wanna thank you for gathering for this panel. Thank you for being here for the 25th annual PPF Festival. Be well, see these folks in the lobby.


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I know you guys Similarly unless you were competing same thing for you Yeah, so we should talk about the strategies that we take and use for our self That we find the most success. I like this idea because as soon as I start to kick up on the Share in our training together and talking more about us Motivating. Yeah. Well, people then start DMing. You want to know exactly what it's funny Like I know that there's a lot of memes made around this and there's a lot of jokes Outside of the fitness community made about the fitness community about you know sharing food and meal I tell you to this day Nothing drives more viewers on my stories than sharing what I'm eating It is the funniest thing ever But I just I also think that that people are curious I mean there's a lot obviously most people that are following us are interested in health and fitness and training and building muscle and dieting And so you just want to know, you know, we could sit here and Write ebooks all day long or talk on a podcast But then they want to see what you're actually doing Yeah, I have a question for you guys because uh for me this happened for me I want to see if this happened to you for you guys as well A lot because obviously I got into the fitness space because I was a fitness fanatic And oftentimes what fitness fanatics do for themselves Is not what would work with the average for the average person because obviously you're a fanatic about fitness so much So that you made it your career So but as I continued to train clients I actually started to learn more from them I learned from them as well And so what I mean by that is a lot of the things that I do now are behavior based When I first got into fitness. I was such a fanatic. It was formulaic It was like do this eat this many calories Follow this meal plan But as I started training clients, obviously I would try that doing that for them didn't work for them What worked for clients was behavior based when I started applying that on myself It also worked better because it was easier and it was much more easier to sustain and I wasn't such a maniac I feel like that's kind of the natural progression for almost any good trainer Yeah, right. I think we you go through the schooling whether you went through the a formal traditional four-year degree Or you have you've acquired a bunch of national certifications And they teach you all the x's and o's You know, they teach you how to how to handle somebody who's trying to build muscle lose body fat sports performance Um and mechanics you get in and so it's a lot of the technical stuff So you have the answers to the test But what we what you find after you've trained, you know hundreds and then eventually maybe even thousands of people you start to realize Oh, shit, like even though all these x's and o's Are important to know The things that really move the needle for most people are creating good behaviors Yeah, it's so funny thinking back when I used to train clients Like when I was first getting started and would just look at food as Like numbers and they have these type of macros in them And so because it was like so popular back then to really have a meal plan attached to your training services You know, that's something I really tried to dive into and figure out and it was just it was so frustrating because I would come back And they're like, well, I didn't like that. I didn't like to give any of their options It was always do you have any other options to swap these out and do this and do that and do the other? And really like later on in my career I'm like, okay So I have to explain this in a way where it's relatable and it's something that they're already actually doing But now we're just tweaking little things. Right. So here's I'm going to paint the context. Okay When we say these are the things that work. Here's what we mean by that They work in the sense that they get you leaner duh So they should get you leaner But they also work in the sense that they're sustainable. These are things that tend to they last a long time It's not short lived results. It's sustainable because it works on the body in a long-term way But also sustainable because psychologically speaking It's sustainable and then third These things that we're going to we're going to talk about preserve muscle preserve the metabolism They're healthy approaches. So those are the three things that will paint the context kind of what works Well, that's the problem with the the x's and o's approach is it it creates a on and off the wagon Exactly. So I mean it and and I also want to be clear about this, right? So there's levels to this So right now I am not following a meal plan or tracking my food and weighing and measuring and doing so that but If I want to see 3% body fat and get in the the best shape of my life I would have progressed to that But when I'm talking about getting in good shape like really good shape like better than what most people would Not unhealthy lean. Yeah. Yeah, just lean just lean like lean very fit and good in good shape I don't need to do all that stuff to get there just by all I need to do is change some habits or behaviors in my Own life what I'm currently doing right now To start heading in that direction and I can always if I want to Ramp it up to like this really structured diet But even that it's just it's not long term for me and it's not sustainable and I'm a fitness fanatic So that's why and it took a while for me to piece that together If I have the on and off the wagon attitude by following the x's and o's and you work in for this Yeah, and I love it and I'm into it Imagine what that's like for somebody who hates it or it's a struggle to get to the gym or it's a struggle to say Yeah, that's why it always fails. All right. So the first thing that I do Is I just aim to hit my protein targets. Yeah. Now. Here's why this works so well, okay? First off, let's talk physiologically eating a high protein diet does preserve muscle It does help with the muscle building process indirectly it speeds up the metabolism which helps with fat loss But here's what it does psychologically We know this now for a fact and I've experienced this time and time again Not just myself But through with clients but also the studies support this When you hit a high protein diet when you aim for high protein Your app you tend to eat less you actually tend to eat less calories Overall, I know it sounds counter because you're like my god.  But when you prioritize protein and you eat the amount of protein that you need to for high protein It's very satiating. It does blend your appetite and you end up eating less carbohydrates Yeah, especially from whole food sources. Oh, yes, you know, and that's the thing It's like it does seem counterintuitive to now up your protein But really it's just Reprioritized Reprioritizes your focus and that way when you're eating that first like a lot of times like I'm pretty much satisfied I don't I don't really need the excess of of carbohydrates that I would Otherwise well on the same way south. So this is how I start off too and what I always recognize for me It's to get that much protein. I have to I have to make choices that I normally wouldn't make so for example, like, you know really easily I would I would love to swing by a Chick-fil-A and have a you know Three, you know chicken sandwich, you know breakfast sandwiches without that but real quick I I I take in a thousand calories and a bunch of that is fat and it's low protein Even though it's a chicken sandwich or it's hadn't hit your target Yeah, it's still low on protein and I fill up a lot of my calories or something And then when I look at the end of the day, I go, oh crap I still didn't hit my protein intake So I got to get a meal that's much higher even more high or even higher on protein than what I was doing Having to prioritize that it just naturally eliminate some of the other choices that I would have made totally So if you're listening right now essentially you're aiming for anywhere between I don't know 0.6 0.7 grams of protein per pound of body weight All the way up to about a gram of protein per pound of body weight So for me, I try to do four meals of 50 grams of protein each and because I'm prioritizing protein That's the centerpiece of my meal. So when I start my meal, it's okay Can I get 50 grams of protein and I need to eat that first build around that And I know exactly and I need to eat that first Usually what ends up happening is it really it really blunts my appetite and I just eat less of everything else My calories and by the way four meals of 50 grams of protein is a lot of protein It takes a lot of effort to go get that so and real easily you get behind So if you decide you have like literally having uh four Four scrambled eggs a couple pieces of bacon and some toast is not enough It's not 50 grams of protein So even a meal like that that sounds like a relatively high protein meal If you ate that for your first meal and then you go into lunchtime having your second meal You're now 20 grams behind now. You need a 70 grand. So getting ahead of protein is is key So one of the things that I used to give as tips to clients Is whenever you make dinner, uh, whatever dinner you make The I always would make more with the meat and I would use that meat and I would add it into like a scramble It was like one for the next day. Yeah, because eggs are always an easy thing for morning time Right.  They don't want to eat six seven eight Yeah, not a lot of people are eating Yeah, seven or eight eggs right to get enough protein to hit like the targets that you're talking about So an easy way to do that is to throw like four ounces of meat in there with two or three eggs And now I've got like this scramble that it's closer to 45 50 grams of protein, right? So that's same thing. So what I do is I'll go, you know 50 grams for breakfast Then I'll have 50 grams for for lunch. I'll have something before dinner and then 50 grams For dinner and again if I eat that first and that's the priority I end up eating less calories and the higher protein tends to contribute to more muscle gain which speeds up the metabolism Now the second thing uh that I do um and this I like this because it's it's individual for the person, right? So we'll call it just cutting down on bad habits You know yourself very well. So think of the bad habits that you have for me One of the bigger bad habits that I have that contributes to eating too many calories is eating out So eating out when you when you eat out the typical Meal that you'll buy at a restaurant is around a thousand calories. It just is thousand plus or more, right? Even salads, you know, it's like you go to go to a cheesecake factory Because they actually list the calories, right?  So the first thing that I do for me Is I just start eating out much less and so it's a bad habit that I cut down But this is different from person to person. Yeah, and it also to me it also matters on how bad you abuse this, right? So like I'm with you mine used to be I'm signing more I used to be a big soda drinker Definitely eating out is one of them Um and even just eating sweets like, you know, we're on the holiday time right now And so there's a lot of sweets around the house and you know I tend to graze or pick right now and because I'm not following anything or I'm not strict on my diet And so I become aware of how much of that I'm doing If you're somebody and I've had clients I know Sal you've talked about your client. They used to drink like multiple cokes a day and stuff like that No water Yeah, so I don't when I when I say cut down on the bad habits It doesn't look like this doesn't go like oh, I drink three sodas a day and now it's a zero Exactly like I I'm I'm smart enough to know that doing that cold turkey is going to be really really tough for me To be consistent and stick to that. So I'm just realistic with what I do. I just look at oh, okay I was eating out like to your point Sal because that's one for me I'm eating out four times a week right now. I'm gonna cut that in half It's gonna I'm too.  They were five guys and you know pizza and something else like Okay, I'm at least going to make that shift from five guys and pizza to like chipotle and nick the greek You know, I'm gonna make a better choice If I that might be my first phase and so depending on How bad of a habit it is or how much of it you're abusing Will be how I would recommend where you go from here and you slowly start to change that and And this goes just like what we talk about with training I'm always trying to do the least amount as possible to elicit the most amount of change when we talk about exercise Well, the same thing applies for nutrition I'm always trying to change my nutrition with the least amount to elicit the most amount of change I just wanted to adjust a few things if I tighten up increase my protein Get rid of some a little bit of the processed food or eliminate some of these treats that I was doing Just that little bit of adjustment of increasing their protein and eliminating some of the other crappier foods My bot and I'm training my body will start to see change. Yeah, totally now I know I'm going to be alone here, but uh, you know, I'm the drinker of the group and uh, So this is something that I'm very conscious of you know, when it's when it's been, you know More frequent when I've been, you know, kind of backing off but You know, especially on the holidays, it's around a bit more and so I'm just more conscious of Not necessarily completely eliminating it But if I am drinking like I'm noticing too that like all the the mixed sodas and you know stuff with like even more sugar that's involved with that versus just I've kind of trained myself to to have a glass that I'm slowly sipping And that could be just like with whiskey on the rocks or something like that where it's just You know, you get you get sort of the feel from it But it's not quite as damaging in terms of calories and everything else for me the next day That's great advice, uh because uh mixed drinks have a lot of calories straight alcohol Especially if you just enjoy the taste of it, right Jessica used to do this, right? So you know, obviously before she got pregnant, she's breastfeeding She's not doing this but before that if we did drink that's what she would do She would have like this much whiskey she likes it without ice She's like it's straight in the glass and it would last her de straits straight straight I'll get you a hangover. Oh, bro. She drinks like it.  No, but she likes it So she'll have a little bit of I don't remember what her favorite brand She's gonna be mad that I didn't say it but like she'll have this much and it lasts for the whole night She enjoys it and it's way less calories than having a bunch of mixed drinks And that's exactly along the lines of cutting down on bad habits Another one that I do is I stop having the the trigger snacks in the house. So like for me Potato chips potato chips for me are it's drugs if it's in the house I'm gonna eat it and I'll buy it occasionally because I'll enjoy it with you know with the kids or I'll have a little here and there I just stopped buying it as much. So instead of having chips all the time I'll buy it maybe once a week and I'll buy out quick calories are so fast to consume. Yeah, because that's my bad habit This is where I see this I know this is in the bad habit category that to me even falls in the protein target because this starts to happen Like I always catch myself when I start paying attention to protein and going after it That part of the reason why I'm struggling hitting it or why I was truly is because of things like that Because sitting down and having you know, a couple handfuls of chips Which ends up being 500 calories and fills me up for a little while and get no protein from it or relatively no protein from it I know if I do that once or twice a day, there's no way I'm hitting my protein intake So just simply by targeting the protein I feel like those type of things have to kind of fall off and that's what I love about that That is the first step now the next step sounds like dieting, but it's not so you got to listen and give us a chance to explain So the next step is to track your food Now, here's what we mean by when we say track our track your food literally Just track it. Don't hit don't worry about calories. Don't worry about Fats and carbs. Just conscious of what you're doing. It's exactly what it is Studies show that when people simply track so they simply just write down or they have an app now apps I should say right I should say apps because that's easier Now when people have apps and they actually enter in the food and they see the calories and the and the grams of everything Just becoming aware people tend to Eat less or eat more consciously and make better choices Literally, it's not dieting just simply tracking it makes a huge difference I mean, I love this step no matter what because even if you are somebody who's going to progress and eventually die And get really serious about this. This is still the process. I take you through You still have to start so yeah So even if you're somebody who's like, I want to get ready for a stage out of I want to look like this like We still are going to go through these same phases and the first step of or the first step before you get to even considering dieting Is tracking and just becoming aware and that's really all it is Is just you becoming aware of what you're putting and it's funny that just people knowing that They make better choices even if you're not a dietitian You don't know everything about proteins fats and carbs just becoming aware of like holy crap I didn't realize that that thing I just had was 700 calories or was that much fat or that much sugar They start to you start to see that and becoming aware of those choices automatically starts to curb some of the things Well studies that compare mindfulness practices to diets show that the mindfulness practices actually are outperform Trying to hit specific targets really tracking is a form of a mindfulness practice So mindfulness practices are like not being distracted Paying attention to the taste of the food how you feel You know mindfully chewing every single bite tracking slows people down. It's the same thing It's just slowing you down your stop You're not just eating mindlessly your stop and if you look at here's a deal If you're somebody that eats mindlessly while you're watching tv or you're bored Driving or you're at a party and there's food you want to grab if you track everything you eat You're much more likely to stop because you're like, I don't want to write down I think that's a huge point on its own is to just slow down And I think that uh, we just get caught up in a lot of our our patterns throughout the day of what We usually do and to just now kind of like slow down Be conscious of what you're doing.   I'm eating an extra 600 700 calories at that time Wow, I wonder if I just didn't sit in front of the tv and had my dinner if that would make a difference So you'd be blown away. Well, what's funny is when I would recommend this to clients They would struggle to track the snack foods and it wasn't because It wasn't because it was hard to do it's because they literally didn't want to yes, and I'd say well Why don't you lock it out? I'd say why don't you want to know because then it's real then they actually really did it So really it's a mindfulness But if you just make the rule that you track everything with no targets no goals nothing like that no judgment You just naturally start to make better choices Now the next step is by far the most effective way I've ever gotten anybody to do cardio Throughout the day. It's the most effective thing Rather than scheduling cardio rather than doing a 30 minutes when you wake up or whatever Just make this rule right here that you go for a 10 minute walk after each meal. That's it 10 minute walk after breakfast lunch and dinner. By the way, it's very easy to do this 10 minutes doesn't is easy to find right after breakfast or lunch or dinner It's very very and just make it 10 minutes But obviously if you do it for breakfast lunch and dinner what you've done is you've had 30 minutes Of walking cardio in your day, but there's some additional benefits to this When you walk right after you eat it speeds up and helps with digestion studies prove this It also improves insulin sensitivity So down the road by the way when your body's more sensitive to insulin You're less likely for your body to want to store body fat and of course Probably reduces your risk of getting issues later on like diabetes or insulin insensitivity problems. So What 10 minutes that's all it is 10 minutes after every meal Super easy rule and it injects just the 30 just 30 minutes of cardio and behaviorally if you you know attach it to something like that Like where you you're always eating, you know And this is something that now is a ritual after you're done You're a lot more likely to keep repeating the process of this and then we've just seen this over and over again I love this one. I mean, this is one of my favorite things And I also we didn't touch on this and this has nothing related to losing body fat But I mean the opportunity to walk with your partner I mean the opportunity to walk and do some activity like that and have that alone time. It's a I don't know. I think today it just it's so hard to find that with All of us having our phones attached to us all the time and constantly getting dings from Emails and social media and whatever work stuff Just to completely separate from that and be right there with your partner having a conversation Yeah, you're getting your you're digesting your food better like sal saying you're also burning your burning calories You're walking you're moving so there's benefits there too. So I've just I had so much more success Teaching clients to do things like this than I ever did to getting them to like get on elliptical for, you know 30 minutes every single day and that actually becoming it's also just easy to Digest and I don't mean the physical sense. I mean just the processing sense like think about 10 minutes You just simple. Yeah, you just finished eating lunch. It's 12 30. I can walk till 12 40 I mean, it's it really is that easy rather than saying 30 minutes If I say go do 30 minutes of cardio be like, I don't know 30 minutes That's a big commitment 10 minutes after each one. Well, and you know what and I love that and What it leads to though many times you go much longer That's what's great about because you're only committing to like I just got to do 10 minutes That's all I have to do and there's gonna be times when you're pressed And you only and you don't really want to do anything Which you at least do your 10 minutes and then you're done and whatever But then there's gonna be a lot of times when you're like enjoying the walk Or you're enjoying the conversation that you're having with a person that's on the walk with you And 10 minutes turns into 20 to 30 to sometimes 40 or an hour And now you've got this great activity that you probably wouldn't have done had you not made that commitment And now you can multitask with this too So if you're gonna be on a phone call for work or a meeting you could do it in the 10 minutes You can meet with people over 10 minutes. Hey go for a walk with me. Let's have a conversation Or if you're learning something Put on your your headphones or whatever your earpods Earpods and walk for 10 minutes after each meal and listen to something that's gonna, you know inform you Now the next one is is is also one of my favorites and again It's really it's the way it influences your behaviors that makes it so effective And that is to aim for a half to one gallon of water every day now Physiologically speaking if you're more hydrated, you're less likely to eat more Your appetite's better so you tend to eat less being hydrated gets your body to work better less inflammation It's better for your health less joint pain But here's really what ends up happening when you drink half a gallon to a gallon of water every day You're not drinking anything else.  Yeah, and it's because they go up to go to the back And you know, it might sound funny, but it actually makes a big difference just that little bit of activity So literally what you do and this is how I I end up doing it for myself and how I would do it for my clients I would have them either have a container that was a half a gallon to a gallon Or uh, they would go buy one you can buy water in the gallon And that's how they'd start their day and they know they need to finish that by the end of the day There's just so many benefits that like it's weird like once you really start focusing on being hydrated Like what that does in terms of even mental clarity a lot of times like having this brain fog a lot of times being dehydrated Like there's this achiness and in my joints and that's being hydrated And there's just all these things that you don't really consider But I mean your body is is mostly comprised of water and let's you know, make sure that we're keeping it Fueled up many times people confuse hunger with that right?  It's a good simple target shoot for a gallon of water a day Keep yourself busy all day long if being all day long all those things have its benefits And I love it as from the behavioral angle like you said Sal is that Even though it's it has other benefits to it just simply having a habit of drinking that you Naturally start to eliminate all the other things without telling them they can't have it Yeah, you know, it's funny when I would have this is this was like clockwork This is my own experience. So this might not happen for you But like clockwork when I would have clients successfully hit about a gallon of water every single day Like clockwork they would lose anywhere between four to seven pounds Like almost everybody would lose weight just from drinking water And it was funny because they think it was magic like oh, yeah water's making my metabolism burn more calories I'm like without realizing it. You're just not drinking anything else And and also here's the other thing too when you drink and you're well hydrated and you drink a good amount of water You probably will hold less water less bloat in your body And so you tend to lose water weight. I know it sounds counter because you're drinking more water But this is what ends up happening. You end up holding less water in your body And the interesting part about this is we didn't even talk about resistance training, right? So I mean this whole thing is about how to lose fat just easy steps Yeah, just if you just did this heaven forbid you add in a resistance day training or two or three in there And that's only going to accelerate the results you get from this But this is without following a strict meal plan This is out telling you you can't do a bunch of things if you just make these if you just follow these five steps And you're really good about it, you know 99 percent of the people are gonna see some results 100 percent You will and my experience just clients doing this what we just said consistently would typically result in Around 15 pounds of fat loss. That's no joke 15 pounds and that's pretty good And we're talking about pure body fat just from doing these things that we just talked about right here So again a little recap step number one hit those protein targets step number two Just start cutting down on your bad habits. You know, which ones you have so make them personal individual step number three Just start tracking don't aim for anything in particular Just pay attention track use a an app like fat secret On your phone super easy to use step number four do a short walk after breakfast lunch and dinner aim for 10 minutes That's it just 10 minute walk after breakfast lunch and dinner Nothing in addition to that and then step number five aim for half a gallon to a gallon of water Every single day if you just do those things You will see some fat loss Look mind pump is recorded on video as well as audio come find us on youtube mind pump podcast You can also find all of us on instagram You can find justin at mind pump justin me at mind pump sal adam at mind pump adam and dug the producer at mind pump dug Bar and i'll show you this whatever and i'm like, oh i can't i can't go to bars Like oh you don't drink because of fitness like no, i'm not old enough.  He almost fell out of chair. Do you know who they thought i was? Oh 32 I teach yourself, bro. I thought i was 32 years old. That's funny. Uh, it's not that funny. You're mature. Yeah, i know


We know that they need to develop language skills, and that means talk to them. And so coming to school and hearing stories and singing songs and interacting with others is so very important. It's a privilege to go to a pre-K and know all the work that went behind it, but what I love is being able to read to the children and see them get engaged in the stories. And they will grow up to be our governors and our presidents and the heads of all of our different organizations. And of course, our major goal is to have a good educated workforce for this state of Georgia. You know, it's not enough to bring jobs into Georgia. We have to educate our people to take those jobs.