They've got the accent down and you're like, okay, you're American or the other way around, you're English. Yeah. And then there are other actors and actresses where you're like, I think you need to go back to school. Right. Or there'll be somebody where it's like, okay, they're doing a perfect job. But I know they're Australian. So you kind of were like, oh, I heard it just then. Yeah, really though, I don't know. There'll be like one word that's just to go the way.  Like that was the problem for me with so many Tom Cruise movies, because every time I saw one, it's like, oh, it's Tom Cruise, you know, the Mission Impossible guy or Tom Cruise, the last samurai or Tom Cruise, the NASCAR driver or Tom Cruise, the top gun. Like it was just Tom Cruise first and then whatever character he was second.  No, you're not the last samurai. It wasn't his greatest role. But you know, I saw it in the theater. Hey, so just before we get started, we've got a few minutes left, but just to remind everybody, the quick hits, the stuff in blue, I kind of go through real quickly. If you've got anything to chime in on, please feel free to do so, but it's not much of a discussion. We're just sort of getting through them and more of a headline thing. And then we'll unpack all of our top stories. So this is the chatter story and everything below it. Then we will get into our story that Erin, I'm going to lean on you for, for some of these very fascinating factoids about geographical and demographic implications for AI and how should we all, we should all be super scared. Some of us more than others. And Kiki, of course, I'll throw it to you as much as possible and please chime in as much as you can. And we will read an email. This is actually from somebody who was responding to Tom's editor's desk column, which is something that we offered patrons. So I'll set that up a little bit. The gist of it is that people have brand loyalty, sometimes for reasons they can't even explain. I might just go around the horn a little bit and say, you know, who are all the brands that we feel loyal to, if any, then we'll, you'll be able to plug both of what you've got working on and we'll say goodbye. And that'll be our show. Like if, if you have the rundown open, you'll notice at the top, the line one will change color either to like an orange or yellow and two are red. If you see it changing now.  Red is like, oh, we really need to move on. Yeah. And Roger and I will be looking at that stuff. So don't worry about it too much. But yeah, just, it's just sort of a little thing to keep in the back of our mind. If we have a healthy discussion and it turns red, it means good. We had a lot to talk about.  Like, if you guys have a lot of really interesting things to say, no, I'll, yeah, please don't, yeah, don't hold off on anything you really want to contribute because of the colors. Just a, just something to keep us on track. Yeah. And it's, yeah. And Sarah will push things as they need to go. Yes. You just say, stop talking, Kiki. Kiki, that's enough.  You should write a book. Take it to the speaking science, too. Oh, and Sarah, you're cool with reading. Yeah. I just changed it a little bit at the top. Yeah, I see it. So I'm recording and then I'll bring up the music, but you will need to catch it whenever you start. Okay. All right. Good stuff. I'll count myself in then. It's 130 and let's do a show. All right. In three, two, many folks in our audience have supported independent news directly for up to five years. Be like them. Become a DTS member today at Patreon.com slash DTNS. This is the Daily Tech News for Monday, January 28th, 2019. From Studio Feline, I'm Sarah Lane. And I'm the show's producer, Roger Chang. Tom is out on vacation this week. So we are going to be joined by... Yeah. Tom is, thankfully, have a little downtime this week. Roger and I are super excited to have not only Kiki Sanford, host of this week in Science. Hey, Kiki. Hello. It's great to meet you. Thank you. Good to have you. We also have Erin Carson, reporter from CNET. Hi, Erin. Hello. It's a full house today. We got Roger and the three ladies. We had a spirited conversation before the show started about insects. Which we'll just go ahead and leave in the pre-show. But first... I'm just crawling. Yeah, exactly. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. Dropbox announced plans to acquire the electronic signature company, HelloSign, for $230 million in cash, which is the largest acquisition in the company's history. HelloSign will operate independently with its CEO, Joseph Walla, reporting directly to Dropbox SVP of Engineering and Product, Quentin Clark. Dropbox says, don't worry, it will continue to work with other electronic signature providers as well. For now, anyway. In a note to investors, Nvidia lowered Q4 revenue guidance, citing, quote, deteriorating macroeconomic conditions, particularly in China. We've heard this one before. The company now expects Q4 revenue of $2.2 billion, which is down 19% from their original $2.7 billion guidance. Nvidia said both data center and gaming divisions would see declining revenue, specifically citing crowded channel inventory, following the end of the cryptocurrency mining boom.  And the Bluetooth Special Interest Group, also known as SIG, which is a nonprofit organization that has overseen Bluetooth development since way back in 1998, announced the upcoming Bluetooth 5.1 for developers that integrates new direction finding features into Bluetooth-enabled products. So this is a little bit more similar to GPS. The new feature can pinpoint exactly where another Bluetooth 5.1-enabled object is down to the centimeter, rather than to within a few meters, as it has been thus far. All right, let's talk a little bit more about Apple and gaming. Alex Heath over at Shutter site sources that report that Apple is in the early stages of planning a subscription game service, which would offer potentially unlimited access to a bundle of games for that typical subscription fee. Apple reportedly began private discussions with game developers to join the service in the second half of 2018. The report also stated that Apple has had talks with developers about exclusively publishing titles and assuming distribution and marketing and other related costs. No word on pricing or the types of games that the service might include. So Erin and Kiki, I am the resident kind of non-gamers. Don't subscribe to any subscription services for gaming at this time, but there are a few. If Apple wants to get into this game in a serious way, it's already a fairly crowded market. What are your thoughts on what the pricing would be and if Apple is a little late to the game here? Yeah, I'm kind of like you, Sarah, where I'm mostly I play the free mobile games on my phone. So that was one of my big questions is the types of games because I think for the crowd of folks who's just there to play something, maybe on their phone and the bus when they have a few minutes, there's a lot of offerings out there already. That said, but the ability of a particular game distributor to get into a deal where they don't have to advertise like through the app store, they potentially do now to get customers to know about their new games that they're putting out on the store. If they are throwing them into a subscription service through Apple, it might make it easier for fans of certain game developers and distributors to access them. I mean, it still has a long way to go to show whether or not they can do it though. It's very interesting because Apple for the longest time is always kind of downplayed gaming aspects on their platform. It's not that they say, no, games can't be played, but it wasn't something like, hey, this is going to be the thing you want to play games on. They've really stressed that over the years. I'm wondering if there is an ulterior motive that they had with implementing this or do they have something bigger down the line? What platform are you targeting? Are you targeting the iPhone? Are you targeting the Apple TV? Are you targeting their laptops? I mean, because it's not like in the same way in Xbox or PlayStation 4 where you have a defined target hardware and you can just write for that and you can unleash whatever shovel where you want.  If we get enough people to play a variation on Farmville or Clash of Clans or whatever, we just get a little bit of a percentage of the microtransactions. It could pat out our bottom line. Well, I think the timing is interesting. If this pans out to be at all in line with Apple offering original content, we're still sort of waiting for how that rollout's going to look like. Gaming and original content as far as the video side, two different things. But if you start thinking of them as something that is offered as a bundle, we all know all of us who work in the podcast world, getting something featured by Apple can be really beneficial, potentially very lucrative. If Apple and a game developer are working together for promotion and visibility and pushing certain games to the forefront, perhaps even working on development in some capacity, that can be really advantageous no matter who you are. And if they're making more money from this game development stuff, maybe it'll balance out some of those loss in sales on the iPhone. All right. Let's talk a little bit about Facebook. We have a few Facebook stories today, but we'll start with Facebook video. Last year, Facebook committed about $1 billion to buying shows for Watch, which is its streaming video service that shows up as a tab within the overall Facebook timeline experience. It's kind of changed a little bit since it started, but it's there. Research company eMarketer estimates that Facebook could take in almost double what YouTube's $4.3 billion in video ad sales made this year when it reports its quarterly earnings on Wednesday. It would be for the year prior, rather, but it expects Watch to account for only a sliver of that whole number. Unlike the Netflix's of the world Facebook has said in the past, it doesn't expect to pay up front for shows in the long term. The ideas that shows will be able to attract enough viewers on Watch so that the producers share of Facebook ad revenue will account for their compensation. Well, I have not personally participated in Watch. I know several individuals in smaller companies that have with varying results. For the most part, I'm still wondering how serious Facebook is about Watch. I think the idea that it would take on YouTube, take on, I don't know, wherever you're seeing a lot of your content, whether it's original programming, something that me or Aaron or Kiki or Roger might upload, all of that stuff. It doesn't seem to be a thing yet in any capacity. Maybe I'm wrong. Aaron, have you been, have you had much experience with Watch thus far? Personally, not a whole lot. I think that it's still kind of at that stage where if it wants to be spoken in the same breath as places like Hulu and Netflix, it kind of needs to produce some type of a buzzwordy hit. The kind of stuff that kind of keeps us going back to those larger platforms to see what else they're offering. I also wonder how much Watch suffers from being part of the overall Facebook experience. For example, Instagram, arguably one of Facebook's most crown jewels. It is certainly owned by Facebook, but it operates independently. You could say the same thing about WhatsApp. In fact, some of Facebook's more interesting products, many people don't realize are Facebook products. I don't know if that means that Watch needs to be bundled in some way that really separates it from the Facebook timeline and also gets it away from people saying, well, I don't want to watch stuff on Facebook. That's weird. I want to watch stuff on yeah, my Apple TV or my cable news subscription. Kiki, as a video producer, how does Watch resonate with you? Well, if they become something similar to YouTube where I can upload my content and then it gets given out to people according to some algorithm and it increases the number of views I can get for content, then that's great as long as they're sharing revenue. Otherwise, if they're trying to develop very specialized deals with producers, I think that the idea that eventually they're going to be asking for those deals on spec is a little unfair to producers who might want to be doing something at a fairly high quality that takes a high budget. It's a double-edged sword. I think Facebook still has a long way to go before they can actually show that they're a good place for video. Canalist published a report showing that smartphone shipments in China, which we know have fallen, fell 14% in 2018 reaching their lowest level since 2013 for a total of 396 million units. This marks the second straight year of decline after a 4% drop in 2017, so much bigger drop last year. The Chinese smartphone market also consolidated with the top five manufacturers claiming 88% of shipments in 2018, which is up from 73% the year prior. Huawei and Vivo bucked the trends and grew their shipments by 16 and 19% respectively. Oppo and Xiaomi each saw single-digit declines with Apple declining 13% on the year and maintaining the number five spot in the country. We've talked in the past about the fact that a weakening Chinese smartphone market has hurt Apple, and we've spoken about that. Of course, there's also the Indian market that Apple has not necessarily seen declines in has just yet to get a foothold in. When it comes to the largest economy in the world, go ahead, Raj. But what you kind of see is a maturing of a market, but also kind of like where consumers are at the plateau. They're like, I got a phone that does everything I need it to, don't need anything new or shiny to replace it. But you also notice that the companies that have seen unit growth were probably eating into the market share of their competitors. So it's not so much that the overall market has grown, but that they've been able to etch and pull market share away from competing like Huawei from Oppo or Apple or Xiaomi. But part of this is this kind of this story that China is kind of the one and only place where you can sell stuff and people will buy. Like, oh, we're going to buy it, we're going to sell it, we're going to make millions in China. At some point, a market could saturate. Eventually, it will get saturated. I think this is where we're at. And they might have to start focusing on not just hardware, but services, something that Apple has been pushing hard towards because once everyone has an iPhone, even if it's not the latest and greatest, they might not need a new phone, but they could definitely use a health service or video watching service or something else. And I think like any economy, look at any economy around the world. If you get enough people who start having, in this case, smartphones that are good, some are fancier than others, but good enough that you're going to get a bunch of people who now have smartphones that don't need to upgrade once a year. Of course, you're going to have a slow in market. Of course, that's going to happen anywhere. So yeah, I think any company who's sort of like, well, don't worry, once we get the Chinese market, we're good to go. It's going to slow no matter where you are. Or do that. We're kind of there as well. Let's move back to Facebook though. A lot of Facebook stories today, recent changes by Facebook also restricted the ability of political transparency activist groups to monitor political ads. So Facebook says that this change was the result of unauthorized access of data by third-party browser plugins. Two companies who targets me and ProPublica say that their web extensions get full consent from users before accessing data. Now in late 2018, Facebook launched a political ad archive to be more transparent. But who targets me co-founder Sam Jeffers says that Facebook's effort was inadequate because it doesn't provide meaningful information on why users are targeted or who's behind the targeting. Oh boy. Facebook targeting. Kiki, how much does this book you? How much do you follow these stories? Because there are many these days. There are so many. And it's just another nail in the coffin for Facebook, I think. I think at this point, Facebook has the onus on them to do better, right? To show the world that they are not this evil company, if that's what they, you know, the face that they want to show. And if they are putting practices into place, putting authentications into place that get in the way of some of these transparency watchdogs, maybe they should be talking to those watchdogs and working with them to make sure that everything can be transparent. Because at this point, it seems like Facebook is still trying to hide stuff. Erin, what are your thoughts on this? I mean, Facebook says we want to be transparent. We're working to provide more transparency. I think a lot of Facebook users don't necessarily understand that's happening or where they can get that information. Yeah.  If you see news story after news story come out, showing that maybe that's not the case and that there's all these kind of unsettling things happen and kind of erodes at the general trust. So, yeah, it's a, that's a problem. Well, in the same vein, and this one's pretty interesting, the company, we're still talking about Facebook, released a draft charter as part of a plan announced last November to revamp the way that content policy decisions are made. So this is Facebook specifically, but you might say, well, maybe other companies might adopt the same thing if it works well. Here are the deets. The proposal states that the board will have about 40 members and include experts with experience in content, privacy, free expression, human rights, journalism, civil rights, safety and other relevant disciplines. The member list will be public. Members serve one three-year term automatically renewing just one time. The board will have final say and can reverse Facebook's own decisions when necessary. Cases will be referred through a user appeal process and also directly from Facebook. The board will not include former or current Facebook employees, contract workers or government officials. Kind of sounds like politics. So, okay, so this is on the surface you say, this sounds pretty good. Facebook's going to create this independent board. These will not be Facebook employees. They'll be people who have disciplines in lots of areas that we all care about. This will make Facebook stronger. How much do we feel that this is posturing versus a real new strategy for Facebook going forward considering that so many people are on the platform? I think it's going to take actually showing it, putting it into place and seeing if it works. In a way, it's kind of both. It is posturing, but it's also posturing in a way that says, hey, look, we've created, we're going to plan. And grand, this is still a proposal. It's a draft stage. We're waiting for feedback. It's not finalized, so this is set in stone. But what they want to have essentially is a way to offload political hot potatoes onto someone else that, you know, they say, hey, look, you know, the board's going to handle this particular issue because it involves various countries and political parties that we don't want to deal with it. Let someone else think about it. And when you get mad, we'll say it was our independent board. Yeah. And it's like, you know, in a way, it's kind of building up your own whipping boy, right? Like, I'm going to just set this up. And if anything bad happens, well, you know, we tried our darnedest, but we gave it to this independent board filled with, you know, the finest people we could find or that would be willing to work with us on this board somehow. And I don't know, it'll be interesting. And like what Kiki said, I mean, the proof is in the pudding whether or not this gets implemented and how it gets implemented will be the determining factors. Erin, do you imagine a world where a Facebook independent board can reverse something that Mark Zuckerberg wants to do? I think so much of it just remains to be seen. I remember when the kind of news of this broke in November, I did the write up for CNET and I talked to a few analysts and I remember one of the kind of the main quotes I got was an analyst who was saying, this is all going to come down to structure and substance because right now when we don't really know anything, it does sound like posturing and like, well, we've got to do something. We've got to say something in order to, you know, look as if we are like pushing forward in this matter. So it's, yeah, I think that there's a long way to go. Yeah, we, if I could channel Tom Merritt because he's not here today, he'd say, listen, what they're doing is better than doing nothing. It doesn't mean that this is all posturing. It might actually be extremely helpful. And that's very true. I think we're all in agreement that the way that this shakes out and how effective the board is and how seriously something that the board might disagree with Facebook's own internal executive team on and be able to make real change that affects the general public in ways that we would all agree are good ones is the proof in the pudding. All right, before we get into our discussion topic of the day, or want to remind everybody that we, you can get all the tech headlines each day in about five minutes or even less if you subscribe to daily tech headlines at.com. In fact, I'll be doing them tomorrow. Okay, let's get into our discussion story. We mentioned it a little bit earlier in the show of the idea that robots are taking jobs and everybody's worried about it. But what does that really mean? How much jobs that are performed by humans can become autonomous tasks? And how does your geographic location or your demographic area of expertise get affected by this? Erin, you wrote up a really interesting story for CNET that noted a few studies, one in particular that came out last year, that gives us a little bit more insight on who might want to worry and what kind of jobs are specifically affected. Yeah. So the Brookings Institution just put out the study as you mentioned that had this kind of scary number that by 2030, robots could replace humans in about a quarter of all US jobs. And so that's the kind of, we get these studies from time to time that talk about job loss and the future of work. And I always kind of say, you have to look for the gray area between all of them because a lot of it does sound very dire. Okay. Well, doom and gloom aside, if we shouldn't be worried about the fact that, I don't know, a quarter of the jobs that people are performing and getting paid for each day are actually going to turn into autonomous jobs, where do people go from there? And who is at a disadvantage when you're talking about certain demographic groups or where they live? Yeah. So a study like this is interesting because like you said, it starts to break down what kinds of jobs are more or less safe. So they talk about these jobs in terms of high exposure to automation or medium exposure, some of the key things that came out of this were that in this study, it was kind of interesting that I think men were a little bit more exposed to automation than women. I think it was something like 70% of workplace job exposure. I just don't, yeah, that women comprised about 70% of the workplace with low job exposure. It also talked about how folks in more rural areas or smaller metro areas could have a higher risk of being exposed to automation versus folks in big cities, not that if you live in a big city or entirely isolated from the threat of automation. And also kind of the idea that automation could potentially widen some of the inequalities that we see in society already, where certain underrepresented minority groups could stand to be kind of further disadvantaged as automation takes a hold. Kiki, I know as a robot-loving human, you've probably thought about this. No one's going to take your job at this week in science, but what are your thoughts on, especially what Eric had mentioned? There are some studies that point to males being more at risk, but then those studies also say, well, but that's because historically more males are in managerial roles that might be automated because they're potentially higher paying roles and that's where companies can make more money. It's quite nuanced. It's very nuanced. I mean, I think we're going to see areas where income inequality is going to play a major role there. Educational inequality will play a role and also these potential for automation type jobs. And so women, for example, even though they maybe have less of a fear of automation in some places, a lot of the jobs may be secretarial or assistant type jobs that could easily be automated by AI programs. And there's a big question there as to who is going to be able to withstand the automation revolution that is coming. Well, what's fascinating in all this data, and I added one more bit at the bottom with a journalist and a Boston University professor, Ellen Shaw, who wrote a book titled Job Work and its Future and the Time of Radical Change. She makes the point that a lot of the AI, the machine learning that a lot of firms are developing, aren't targeted toward the low end jobs. They're targeted to what Kiki was saying, like middle managerial and upper managerial because that's where they pay the most bucks and that's where they would realize the most savings. And so you have this kind of weird outcome where the stuff on the very bottom probably won't be automated out of existence of the stuff at the very top, but it's everything in the middle. And so... Well, in a lot of us, anybody who's worked at any sort of mid to large size company, you hear that mumbling grubbly about middle management, what do they do? And I think that that does play into this, not that all middle managers are ineffective, not at all, but there is, yeah, there's sort of this swath of the workforce that is somewhere in the middle that can be replaced potentially. And it's not because those people aren't highly skilled, it's because they're in a position that's not actually as skilled as they could be. But then you get to the point of like, okay, well, then what do these people do? Or is there just less of a middle management structure? You know, that's interesting because that's kind of the economy, the disconnect is that even if you're skilled, like your degree for your university degree, skilled, doesn't mean you're safe. I mean, it's both worrisome, but also very eye-opening in that how people perceive jobs isn't necessarily a fix to the number of years of schooling you have or the amount of education, it's this type of education. If you do something creative, you do something very unique that's very hard to automate, you have a higher chance of withstanding on themization versus like, hey, I'm a CPA. I went to school to be a CPA. CPA is all I do. Oh, great. You have a program that can, you know, it's a virtual CPA. I'm kind of worried now, kind of thing. It's such a mixed bag. And I think, and we have what we're having this session earlier, just telling people to skill up, go get an education isn't necessarily the answer. It depends on the education. And I feel like the story that's being told to people to say, hey, this is great. Automation is going to be so good to us because it's going to free up people for those more creative pursuits and different questions. So maybe it will lead to a change in how we think of what work is. Yeah, Erin, in your research, I know the medical industry is something that gets pointed to a lot. Like, doctors have to spend all this time looking at complicated x-rays that a machine could do better so that the doctor can take their expertise and heal this patient that much more quickly. Like this is a good thing. We want automation because we keep some, I don't know, paper pushing out of the equation. But I don't think all industries can look to that and breathe a sigh of relief. Sure. And I think that, you know, I mean, for example, with the medical industry, the report mentioned, you know, you can look at the sort of the paperwork, you know, aspects of it that would be really good to automate. But at the same time, there's a lot of that's that is dependent on social skills, things that we don't really want to automate that you might not necessarily care for the bedside manner of an algorithm. Although I've had some crappy doctors over the years, maybe I would prefer the robot. Hard to say.  They never yell, they never judge. They just tell me what I need to do. That's right. Hey, thanks, everybody who participates in our subreddit.  You could never be automated. You can submit stories and you can vote on others at dailytechnewshow.reddit.com. I had a lot of Facebook stories today and we've got a Facebook group as well. If you want to hang out with us on Facebook, facebook.com, slash groups, slash dailytechnewshow is where to go. All right. In the mailbag today, we got one from Aditya who was actually commenting on Tom's editor's desk column called Too Much Choice. It's his latest column. This is for patrons. If you're not familiar, it is a wonderful companion article that goes along with our news that Tom Merritt is doing with great abandon. Aditya said, I moved to the US from India as an adult. Walking into the grocery store was the exact same experience that Tom spoke about and so is my experience now buying electronics in India and that's about having brand loyalty. Whenever I have to buy a new phone for my dad back home, I just end up buying a Samsung. It fits my budget. There's so many choices within Samsung, of course, from other companies like Xiaomi or Oppo or MicroMax. I'm sure they make great phones, but I just want a reliable phone without spending hours researching them, which will only probably have small differences. I end up going with a brand I trust and even within that brand, my deciding factor is usually just price. Just a thought. I'll add to Tom's thoughts and also use this opportunity to compliment you guys on the amazing book. Cheers. Well, thank you, Aditya. I thought Kiki and Erin, I certainly have brand loyalty. Sometimes it doesn't make a lot of sense. I mean, I'm still loyal to Sony, even though I haven't bought a Sony television in years, but it's still something that I kind of hold onto and it's just one of those things. I'd probably say the same thing for Apple, although that's changing a little bit, but I think Aditya makes a good point. Unless you work for the Wirecutter, how many hours do you really want to spend researching this stuff? I think that becomes something that it's not because we're ill-informed, it's because we simply don't have the time. I think that's the way it is for many people and not having the time is a huge reason why branding and brands are so important. You create a brand that people can trust, that they know they can always come to you for quality, and people will. Apple computers, I still love. I've never been an Apple phone fan, but I have my Samsung and I have had several of those in a row. Erin, what are your thoughts? Are you a brand loyalist or does your line of work keep you honest? I try and use a variety of things if I can. I get tied into ecosystems. I think that that most often is the thing that keeps me buying the same thing over and over, but in the non-tech world, I have my car preferences and my guitar preferences and all that kind of thing. Yeah, absolutely. I'm actually in the market for a new car now and I will say, I agree with Tom, there's simply too much choice. It's an embarrassment of riches, certainly, but I'll find a way to complain about the fact that there are too many cars out there. Hashtags for old problems. Exactly. Poor me. Well, speaking of keeping me honest, thanks to Dr. Keegan Sanford for being with us. Keegan, we missed you. It's so nice to see you and let folks know where they can keep up with your amazing work. Thank you for having me on. It's always such a pleasure. You can find me at twist.org, T-W-I-S-dot-o-r-g for my podcast and you can subscribe on YouTube, Google, and what's the other place? iTunes. Yes, that other one. Perhaps even Facebook Watch. Yes, perhaps. We'll see. You can find me on Twitter at Dr. Keegan. Excellent. Erin Carson, thanks also for being with us all the way from Kentucky. Besides Keepin' Warm, let folks know where they can keep up with your work. Yeah, you can always find me on CNET.com and on Twitter. I'm just at Erin Carson. Excellent. Well, thank you both for being with us. Also, thanks to our patrons. Our goal each month, you know it, is to get at least one more patron than last month. Just one and more is even better, but just one. That's all we ask. You could be the person that puts us over the top. You can become a DTNS member or be a recruiter. Get an ad-freed RSS feed, special episodes from Tom on how we do the shows and behind the scenes stuff, special episodes looking back on tech news of yesteryear and lots more. You can sign up at Patreon.com slash DTNS. We also have a store. If you want a mug, maybe a sweatshirt, maybe a hat. Got good hats. DTN at dailytechnewshow.com slash store is where to go or buy somebody a gift. They're real nice. Our email address is feedback at dailytechnewshow.com. We're also live money through Friday. If you can join us live, please do for the 30 p.m. Eastern 2130 UTC. You can find out more at dailytechnewshow.com slash live back tomorrow with Patrick Beja. Talk to you then. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more shows like this at frogpants.com. Diamond Club hopes you have enjoyed this program. Excellent show, ladies. Thank you so much. You guys are the best. Yeah, it was fun. It was very fun. Good stiff. You pressed all the right buttons. You pressed every button right, and it's so nice to hear more of Roger. Oh, sorry. I didn't realize it was that loud. Sorry. No. That's not what she meant. I meant I'd like to hear you pipe in more. Oh, no, not that I heard you at a higher decibel. I'm sorry.  Just take the compliment. It's fine. I broke Discord's audio because I cranked up the audio too much.  Okay, we're talking about two different things. And you know what, play the guitar in that rift. Oh, those Discorders can handle it. They love volume. That was a great show. What do we want to call it? I can't do anything with the show until after GDI. So because I have to cut it out. Well, let's talk about some show title options. Facebook says this will work. Just watch. That's funny. Apple's Oregon Trail has not died of dysentery. Oh, at the gaming store. I was like, what? That's very clever. Almost. No jam has to be more FOMO, Fear of Machinery Output. Oh, that's good. That's good. Or have such a good day. Well, that's sort of, that's almost a show across everything. Oh, Strike It Rich. Just giving it a go. A show without merit. Yes. Well, that's right below Roger, the three ladies. That sounds like a fairy tale. Right. Knock, knock, knock. Have any porridge? I don't actually remember how Goldilocks and the three bears, like there was, what was the moral of the story? Oh, go bust it into someone's home and eat their stuff. No, no, because it wasn't the thing, though, that the mama bear and the daddy bear, they were too big or too much porridge, but then the baby bear was just right. The daddy's porridge was too hot. The mama's porridge was too cold. The little bear's porridge was just right. They found her, right? Didn't she like, she was sleeping in the bed because she was so comfortable. And then depending on which one you read, she either got away or she got eaten. Yep. I don't remember her ever getting eaten. I thought it was just the like, the brother's grim. I think she was eaten. Yeah. Oh, okay. So that is the moral of the story. All of those versions are like significantly darker. Right. So Roger was right. It's don't go into a bear's home. They're not using waterfalls. Stick to your cracked food.  All these things that belong to somebody else, they ain't yours. Don't sleep in that bear's bed no matter how you get out. Yes. I remember a very different version where it was like, yeah, it's like, what, what was the takeaway? I don't know. Find the thing that fits you best and go with that. Maybe it's the baby bear's stuff. But yeah, that doesn't make a lot of sense. Brother's grim. Everything in moderation. I suppose. Yeah. I like fear of machinery output. Cool. FOMO it is. Yay. FOMO. Erin and Kiki, please stay with us as long as you like. But I know you're both busy. So I gotta run in about a minute or two. You had to balance. Okay. Whatever. We're so happy that you were with us today. Yeah, it was great. Especially all the traditional stuff. Part of the spider. Yeah, that's right. We're putting this to our pre-show. You're going to have to catch Good Day Internet to find out what you missed. What did you miss? It was all the creepy crawlies. You know what? We learned something about a jellyfish or wasn't a jellyfish. Right. The jellyfish that wasn't. The, you know, the mosquitoes we talked about. Right. Mosquitoes potentially actually being useful. Who knew? Yeah. I'm still, I don't know. They're still pretty horrible, but, you know. It's a challenge. You know, the next year versus helping the environment. Yeah. You know, it's funny. Yeah. I'm not ready to embrace the mosquito just yet. You know, it's funny that I, I hear a lot of people, rather I think you're one of them actually saying, you know, there's more mosquitoes around the LA area than there used to be where the people recall having to deal with. I, I'm lucky. I don't, I don't think I've been bitten by a mosquito. Well, I'm sure I have. I was eating a live last year. I had so many flies on me.  I think it's also because they stopped spraying for fruit, fruit flies that might have had a knockoff effect on mosquito. It depends on the toxin that they use. I don't know if the toxin for fruit flies is the same. I just remember like my uncle, my friend used to have to cover up his pool, his kitty pool in the back because it would spray. It would fly over. They just spray everything. I, I think the thing about mosquitoes that is the most almost more than getting bitten, which obviously it's horrible. Nobody likes that, but it's that sound when you're sleeping, where it's like, you know, next to your ear. And once you know that mosquito is there, it's like all the lights have to go on.  Can't go back to bed. I mean, you can't just fight it. Like, you know, it's just like, okay, now it's war. All right. I went to go look on Amazon for a good like indoor mosquito zapper. Nothing. Really? It seems like you could find 70 browns. You know, the best, the best brand. We, I have a video somewhere of my son, Kai, when he was probably like one and a half, maybe two years old, and there was a mosquito in our house. And we had all the lights turned off in the house and he's running around with a, with a flashlight trying to find the mosquito. Go like, mosquito, mosquito. But he had the flashlight. It's all about having the dark and then using a flashlight to highlight the mosquito and smack him. Does the mosquito want to go toward the light? Is that the thinking? They fly around. It's like when you turn the lights on, they stop moving and they end. Right. And so if you sit quietly in the dark, you can wait for it to, you kind of kind of hear where it is and you can see, triangulate where it is. Okay. Yeah. Got it. And it's turning all the lights on in the room. I find having a flashlight is my handy tool. It sounds challenging. I don't know. Erin, do you have any tips for a mosquito tip?  I bought, I bought, like I moved into a place that has like a porch swing and a porch. And so I like to sit out there in the summer and read. And, and I think they're like citronella candle resistant at this point. Like they just like end up driving me inside. Yeah.  And I only noticed because I saw it in the mirror, like when they bite you, they inject that little venom or whatever makes you numb so you don't feel it. Right. Until later. Yeah. But the other time they get them is after they bite you because they fly very slow. Like you can just grab them with your hands. And it's messy. Yeah.  It's my blood on my own hands. Everywhere. I know. It's just, it's just carnage really. And they're all female, you know. Yeah. The men, the men mosquitoes go and pick on flowers. They're just, they're just nice. They're fine. They're just females out to get you. All the time. Nature's up to the floor. All right. I need to run. Thank you so much. Thank you again. Great to see you. Come back soon. All right. Great to see you. I hope to talk to you all again soon. Nice meeting you, Erin. Thank you. Bye. Bye. Bye. Erin, do you have an exciting week ahead? More or less. Yeah. I'm working on like this crazy story about kind of like a weird dating app sort of thing that I will tell you about. I like it already. When you say dating app, is it like Tinder Grindr or is it a lot more? Kind of, but conceptually like very different. And so I think we're doing like a video shoot tomorrow. So I've been just kind of running around. Is it like Pandora where it finds like what you looked for? Just tell us about it before the story comes out. That's the kind of app that would make sense. That's the one that picture dates for you. Just like you're going on a date tonight. It's like, who is it with?  I wouldn't trust that. I wouldn't. No. But yeah. So, so just kind of like running around doing that kind of kind of thing. I know that sounds fascinating. I did not have to go on dates or anything to prove the efficacy of this whatever product. No, this is this is more of the look at this. This is happening. It's weird. Sort of thing. In the future, we can all just have our autonomous robot friends to do that first initial date. And then get us through the phone tree of dating enough where we're like, okay, let's get on the, let's get on the horn with this other representative. We might like each other. I would love to send my robot proxy. My robot will be on a fact checking mission to find out if your robot is indeed pleasant. No, it's funny. Like, I just finished watching you on Netflix. Have you seen that? Uh-uh. What is it? It's like, I think it's like 10 episodes or something, but it's this thriller series about this guy who works in a bookstore and he meets this girl and he just like stalks her through social media, you know, and, and it's a lot of ways kind of realistic because it's a ton that you can, you know, figure out about who people are and where they live and where they go and all that just from, you know, Twitter, Instagram or whatever. But, but a couple of my friends and I were joking. Like, after, after watching that whole mess, like, I'm done. I'm not talking to strangers anymore. Yeah, you know, there was, um, speaking of dating apps, it's a, it's a, something I wrote up on, on a newsletter for DTNS back in the day a few months ago. But there, there was kind of a loophole that somebody had. I did not match with a person and I won't, it doesn't matter what the app is really, but they could figure out my Instagram account and then DM me through there, which is not in itself that big of a deal because you're going, okay, you know, that's, I'm pretty public. But the problem was that the reason that I showed up for this person in the first place on this dating app was because I was geolocated close to them. So it wasn't just like, oh, this person that I didn't match with, I'm going to, you know, match with, I'm going to try to get them a different way. It was, I know she's down the street for me. Creepy. Yeah. And that was something where I was like, data point that, you know, in this particular instance, this person was perfectly friendly and pleasant, but that's like, that is dangerous. It's incredibly dangerous. You know, it's, it's like, that stuff works. If you need to find the closest Taco Bell or the closest Walgreens or whatever, where you live, that's a good, if you want to find someone else. And it's just like, no, you need, I think that's kind of the disconnect. A lot of people look at this and they, they, they lose the force for the trees because all they see are data points that they can use. Right.  And it even, you know, as somebody who like, obviously we all talk about tech and apps more than the average person, but it's like, even I was like, wait a second, should that happen? Why did that happen? Oh, I see what happened here. I don't think enough people are complaining about this to the company because when you really think about it, it's like, hmm, you shouldn't be able to get ahold of me. Even if I do have public, you know, I don't, I shouldn't have to like, make my Instagram account private just because, you know, anyway, it's a, it's a, it's a small part of a larger story. So Erin, I look forward to it. And you can follow it on the audio channel for your Patreon subscriber. For the YouTube viewers, we say, see you tomorrow.


history is here to help. If you wondered if we need help, we do need help, and history can help. I'm Jay Fidel. This is Think Tech at the noon block on a given Thursday, and that's Sandy Schwartz. She is a special guest, and this is a continuation of a conversation we had a couple of weeks ago about the transmission, if you will, of democracy from ancient Athens to ancient Rome. She's a history professor in the classics, and she can help us. History is here to help. Hi, Sandy. Thank you for helping us. Hi. Well, thank you for allowing me to help you. I want to ask my transitional question. In our last discussion, we spoke about Athens. It was very, very interesting to hear how it all came together in Athens. Then somewhere along the line, it transitioned from Athens to Rome, and I would like to know from you how that transition worked, and what parts of the Athenian democracy were passed over, were carried over to Rome, what parts were not, and how ultimately that gave birth to a new kind of democracy in Rome, and ultimately, the death of democracy in Athens. This is all a fabulous transition. We can learn so much from both sides of it. Let me know about the transition, Sandy. Speaking about Athens, we have to take the bigger picture of the Mediterranean world, mostly in the Eastern Mediterranean world. The Aegean Sea is where Athens had grown its empire, and then further towards the West in Italy, there were other peoples who were beginning to settle around the Italian peninsula. One of the major groups that came into the Italian peninsula were the Etruscans. They were from some area in Turkey in the Eastern part of the Mediterranean, and they came and they settled in Italy. Italy was populated by many different groups. Some were like just tribal groups, and others were more organized, and the Etruscans were really the first civilization in Italy. We don't have a lot of writing from them, but what we do get are many of the forms of religious religiosity. They found a fertile field where the Etruscans could take over and expand their empire. What happened was that the Romans at that time were also trying to carve out a space in Italy where they could try to extend their population. A lot of what we talked about in the Mediterranean history and ancient history is very much about geography and demography. Land is the most important commodity in the Mediterranean world. This is a little bit not as linear as Athens, but the story of Rome really made a mark on what would happen in the middle area of the Italian peninsula. The Romans began to try to push away their enemies because there were many peoples in Italy and people were fighting all the time, and they had different kinds of fighting. The Etruscans were able to absorb some of this early Roman culture, and so during that period of time, when you see the image that I have in back of me, this is an image of the earliest forefathers of Rome. Much of what the Romans found was taken from the Etruscans. The Etruscans were where Tuscany is obviously today. The Romans at first didn't have a real structure, but the Etruscans gave them a structure of consolidating their society. What happened was that the Romans began to try to take over other places in Italy. That really sparked a new kind of existence for these little people who were living in huts on the hills of the rivers of Italy. The Romans began to take what the Etruscans gave them, and then they moved throughout the Italian peninsula. I mean, I might be getting too much in the weeds and just tell me if you're not... No, I'm just remembering that Tuscany, I guess, which was the Etruscan's home, is probably 100 kilometers away from Rome. It's a distant place. There was a town on the Tiber River where the Etruscans came to this river. The river Tiber had an island in it. We could forward your cattle from the Etruscany to Rome. It was a meeting place. It was a common denominator among these two civilizations, the Etruscans and the Romans. They met in the middle, and they traded and they exchanged ideas. And so the Romans then began to understand that they could probably create a city that they could have. So there are many myths about the exchanges between the Etruscans and the Romans in the early period. Give us an idea of what periods we're talking about. Okay, the periods that we're talking about are about 600 BCE. But we do have the stories of the historian Livy who wrote about these incidents in early Roman history. One of the most important incidents in early Roman history had to do with a Tarquinian king, that it was a king who was, his name was Tarquinius Supervis, and he acted like a tyrant. And so he lorded it over the Romans, and then the Romans broke away and claimed their freedom. There are lots of stories about Livy, and Livy was a very melodramatic storyteller. And these stories were the basis of ancient Rome. One of the signal events was when Tarquinius Supervis went to a dining party with his fellow Romans, and at the dinner party, Tarquinius Supervis raped the host's wife. Now that's melodramatic. Yeah, seriously. It's like, I mean, it's so great. It's so great. It's all so proper. And the way that Livy tells it, he loves it. He loves the story. So anyway, so these, so the Romans, actually I should say, I should backtrack that Livy wrote these stories during the time of Julius Caesar, or Augustus Caesar. So what you're seeing in the backdrop is from the Aropachis, and that is a creation of Augustus Caesar. So several hundred years before. Right. So the Romans had a motto saying that they never threw anything away. They kept all their traditions. The Romans were very, very traditional. Even what they brought from the Etruscans, they kept. So for example, the Romans would have, they would have Haryus specs, which are diviners of looking at the livers of sacrificial animals to get a sense of what their gods wanted. And that was, that is part of the Roman consciousness of really looking towards the gods. So we have, so and actually in, if you go to Rome ever, there is the Villa Giulia, which is a museum now. And you can see these model livers where the priests would go and look at the entrails of the animals that were sacrificed. And it's kind of weird, because when you think about the Romans being upstanding politicians, and they were, but they also had these kind of, these strange ideas. Okay. So it's, but people took these things very seriously. There was the story of Romulus and Remus, the two brothers who fought against each other. Romulus sat on one hill. Remus sat on the other hill. And Romulus came and killed his brother. So Fratricide is another storyline for Roman history. Okay. All right. Do you have a question? Any questions? Yeah, sure I do. So here, you know, last time we talked about these Poles, P-O-L-I, type community, Poles, communities that were in the hills, the hills around Athens. And they developed a kind of a community organization, a community pre-democracy, if you will, kind of community organization. And then it came together in Athens and Presto, you know, we have democracy functioning for the first time in the world among humanity that we know of. And it built an empire. So okay, some of that must have been transmitted to Rome. But I'm sure that Rome had its own process with the Etruscans and otherwise, where just as you say, they held on to everything. They never forgot anything.  Can you talk about that? Okay. So what happened is that throughout the western Mediterranean, there were communities that were kind of becoming, you know, the Poles, the city states. There were when, so let's go back to 600 BCE. The population was growing. Iron was available. People could use tools, stronger tools. And so throughout the eastern Mediterranean, there was communities figured out that they could that they could organize themselves on the pattern that the Athenians had done. Some of the people who lived in Greece moved to Sicily. Sicily and southern Italy were populated around the Sicilian islands and southern Italy. And why? Why did people go there? Because they, because it looks like Greece. And in fact, if you go to Sicily, you will see some of the most magnificent and oldest Greek temples in Sicily. And there are also Greek temples on the west coast of Italy as well. And Greeks, I mean, when there was a demographic explosion with the advent of better agricultural tools and techniques, there were a lot more people who could get on a boat and go to Sicily. And that then created actually the name that the Romans gave to the Sicilian islands, what's called Magna Grecia, which means bigger Greece. So Italy and Greece were very connected during the 600s. Okay, now let's go back to what we were saying about democracy. There were cities that grew up around southern Italy and Sicily. The Athenians had a war, the Peloponnesian war between Athens and Sparta. Athens went to Sicily to try to take over that island. And then the Spartans came, their enemies came and destroyed the Athenian city. Athens was very resilient. And there was a series of problems, there was a plague in Athens. So Athens was very resilient. Now the Greeks and the Romans, who settled along the coastal areas of southern Italy, had the opportunity to get larger pieces of real estate where they could settle and build cities there as well. So and when that happened, the people of Rome noticed that these Greek-like settlements were beginning to invade southern Italy. And so that is how the Romans, the Romans were one of these groups of peoples around the Tiber River, so in the middle part of the Italian peninsula, they were beginning to absorb many of the ideas of the Athenians. And so what we have is, for example, going back to the story of the Etruscans, it seems that there was a kind of coup d'état among the Etruscan culture. And the people who took over started a proto-democracy in what was the Etruscan territory. So we don't get a lot from the Etruscans because they didn't write a lot through us. We don't have a lot of writing. We have kind of stretching on pots, but not really full. Actually, there's a gold-plated leaf of like some sort of writing in it. And we don't really know about it because we don't know a lot about it. And a lot of people who worked in Tuscany, they looked for especially things that had writing on them. Well, a moment on language. So I take it that the Tuscany language was different than the Roman language. And they were both different from the Greek language. And when the Greeks came over and settled the east coast of the Italian Peninsula, as well as Sicily, they were speaking Greek. But those communities were like colonies of Greece. Exactly. They colonized southern Italy. So when you go back archaeologically and look for writings from the Tuscany Etruscans, there's a language issue as well. It's not going to be as simple as looking for old Roman lettering, which we have a certain amount of expertise in these days. I don't know about Greek. It's Greek to me. But the Etruscan may be a little more difficult now. Yeah. A few decades ago, people thought of the Etruscans as this mysterious culture. But it probably wasn't. I think that the most recent theories about the Etruscans were that they were from Anatolia. That is Turkey today. And they got on their ships and they sailed just like the Greeks were sailing. And they planted their culture there. But we don't have a lot of their writing, unfortunately. You think their language was similar to Turkish at the time? No. Turkish is completely different. It's an Altaic language, which is like Mongolian and things like that. So what I heard you say is that the Etruscans up there in the hills had their own version of small community democracy before the Romans did. And that somehow passed from the Etruscans to the Romans, no? No. That's not true because the Etruscans had kings. Actually, there was a federation of 12 cities and each of the cities had a king. And so that was when the Romans began budding against the Etruscan Empire, they eventually with what I mentioned earlier, the rape of the wife of the king, Tarquinius Herbis, who came to the Roman area. And these are just, again, stories. But it shows that there was some sense of grievance between that border along the Tiber River. And so the Romans who were dominated by the Etruscans, they then began to try to fight back. And they did, eventually. And so the Romans, as their populations were growing, and as the Romans were beginning to develop more advanced battle plans, that then pushed the Etruscans further away. So the Etruscans gave to the Romans, and the Romans took it. And when you see in the backdrop there, those were the flaminas. These were the priests that really descended from the Etruscans. So they became part of the Roman Empire then? They were merged into the Roman Empire? We're not really talking about the Roman Empire. We're talking more about the Roman Republic. Let's talk about the Roman Republic instead of the Roman Empire. The Roman Republic, as scholars of ancient history call it, the Roman Republic was the nascent civilization of Rome. Later on, there would be a Roman Empire. And that Roman Empire built itself through capturing all of these hillbillies in the Italian peninsula. And the Romans got to be really good at fighting. They also had great farmland. If you've gone to Tuscany, you can take my word for it. Very rich farmland, because it's volcanic soil. So that's where people just are able to graze and use our agriculture all over Italy. And it was very easy for them. And so the Romans, again, they had a demographic boom. They brought armies to these hillbillies in Umbria and all those places that you probably see in all the movies and stuff. And so what happened was that once the Romans began to figure out the system, they could push out all these other tribal peoples and then they would consolidate the peoples by offering a kind of contract. So there were a lot of different cultural groups and the Romans, when they defeated their enemies, they brought their defeated enemies into their system. It was very clever. The Romans chose to offer perks in exchange for peace. Well, this was a matter of expansion, wasn't it? It was a matter of building an empire. And they probably used that in all of their adventures up through pretty much all of Europe. And I just wonder what motivated them. You mentioned before that in those days it was largely about geography. What motivated the Roman people, the Roman culture, the Roman civilization in Rome to acquire so much territory? They got to be everywhere. What was driving them? What was driving them? Good. Okay. So there was a rival empire called the Punic Empire. It was on the coast of North Africa. And that and the Punic Empire was originally from the Levant. So the Eastern Mediterranean. So there was a group of colonists from North Africa, or from Tyre and Beirut. And they were doing the same thing that the Greeks were doing. And so the Phoenicians and or the Romans called them the Punics, they created another empire that in Spain in particular, Spain had rich mineral deposits which made the Phoenicians very powerful. They had ships just like the Greeks did. And the Romans didn't really have, they did not have ships. They were land lovers until the Romans realized that the Phoenicians were going to go take over their new kind of nascent empire. And so they then decided that they needed to wipe out the Phoenicians. And so the... So in a way it was defensive or competitive. Right. So everyone knows from the textbooks, you know, that Hannibal, the great general of the Phoenicians in the Punic War, he brought African elephants to the Alps. And his plan was that he was going to take over Italy. He was because the Etruscans were waning, the Romans were a little bit not completely consolidated. And so Hannibal took his opportunity to break up all of the alliances that the Romans had made with these other peoples. And so Hannibal actually is probably the person who really shaped Italy as it was. So eventually what happened, I mean on the west coast of Italy, there's a sea that's called the Terranian Sea. So it's, you know, the French Riviera and then the coast of Spain. And that was kind of a zone of trading and exchange. And the Romans began to worry that they were going to be taken over. And so eventually the Romans began to think of themselves as people who could create their own empire. And that had to do with an amazing moment in the Roman Senate. The Roman Senate, one of the senators of the Roman Senate said, we have to learn how to build ships. Because if we don't get ships, we're doomed. And so, and the Romans really didn't even know how to build ships. They actually saw a shipwreck and they tried to reverse engineer it. And very quickly, the Romans were able to mount a campaign to build these ships. And the Senate got together and said, we're going to do this. We have to do this. And if we don't do this, we're going to be taken over. So what I get when I get is that there's parallel things happening. So they realized that their own destiny is interlaced with traveling, with making territorial grabs outside of Rome. And you can't do that without ships. At the same time, this collaborative effort required them to invent a system of management of government. And that management of government, which was, you know, which was focused, that visionary senator created focus. And they stayed focused for a few hundred years. And that gave them a period of time in which they could build an efficient, effective government, namely democracy that would be sustainable. Am I right and all that? Okay. So what happened was that to be a Roman senator, you had to have military experience. That was a sine qua non. And so the, you know, Rome had a boundary that made sure that no one could bring weapons of war in the city of Rome. But outside the city of Rome, it was fair game. And all these men who were ambitious about climbing the what was called the corses in Orum, the ladder of honors. That's what it was called. There was the Senate was very much a conglomeration of very ambitious men. And when a general would defeat an enemy, that general would get all sorts of laurels and recognition. That was how you built your career in Rome. And so, so we have both the the government, and we also have the military. And they're woven together. You couldn't climb up the ladder unless you could prove that you could lead an army. What does this teach us about the relationship of military exploits, military conquests, territorial expansion vis-à-vis the perfection in those days, it was perfection of the system of government in the Senate. Yes. Okay. All right. This is a big story. I'm sorry, we're, you know, it's okay. Okay. So, so the, so the military strategies were cynical and on. And we also had, or what the Romans did is that they offered alliances to their defeated foes. So that gave them more power. And so, so the, so the Roman Senate was not just a political, a political organ. It was also a military organ. The Senate was the supreme. Well, actually, I should say that there were two bodies in the Rome, in Rome. The Senate was one. And originally it was supposed to be the most, there was the 300 wealthiest men who were supposed to be in the Senate. That was how the first kings ordered that. And then later on, there was also another organ in the Roman government. And that was called the Cantoria Curiata, which means the assembly of soldiers. Is that like the House of Representatives? Kind of, sort of. All of, all of the men in the Cantoria, in the Cantoria, Cantoria Curiata. I'm sorry. It's rolling off these weird words. But you could, all the men in that popular assembly, they were all the soldiers. Because the Romans had to have the, they had to have the soldiers be part of the ideology, right? Again, it was making a deal, wasn't it? We'll bring you in. We'll give you some authority and you'll be loyal to us. Yeah, absolutely. That's what it is. And that, and that really put the idea in the hearts and minds of the Romans on that they were Romans. And they could, they really stood up for, you know, what they were.  But I shouldn't say that. I mean, I guess I should erase that. But it was a system, then it on the one hand and the soldiers on the other hand. And then there were other assemblies. And I won't go into those at all. But so Rome had these moments when they could, especially in the Cantoria, the military, the Cantoria media, though that was the beginning of, I guess you could say, popular Roman democracy. Okay, hold there, hold there, Sandy. We're kind of out of time, but I want to see if I can make more time. And you and I will talk about another extension of our discussion. So for now, I will say aloha, but we'll be back, we'll be back shortly and see what we can do about continuing this conversation. Very interesting. And we're just now getting to the essence of it just now. Thank you, Sandy Schwartz, history professor at UH in the classics. We'll be right back, aloha. Okay, we made arrangements. We're back. We're back with Sandy Schwartz, a history professor in the classics at UH Manoa. And we're talking about the origins of democracy from ancient Rome. So we took more time here to extend the show called history is here to help. And we're going to get right into it with, you know, the emergence, which we were just talking about the emergence of democratic systems in Rome. Very interesting stuff, because this is where, in my view, and you can correct me, Sandy, the modern world politically really began. These guys figured out how to work together. It was all visionary and interestingly enough, it was, it was all an extension of the military arrangement in Rome. So please continue with how these shreds of democratic organization grew and flourished in Rome once they got the notion. Okay, well, I should say don't be duped by the white statues in the background. Things were wild in Rome during the Republican period. So when I talk about the Republican period, we're talking about 350 BCE. Okay, so there were a lot. Rome was consolidating Italy. And then Rome built its ships and crossed over to the Mediterranean and went to the northern coast of Africa, which was a very fertile area. And it was very important for the grain trade. There were other places. Okay, let me let me backtrack. So Italy was growing, the population was growing. The soldiers were on duty most of the time. And that meant that the farmers, because farmers are always usually the men who fight on for their land, right? But in, as the Roman Senate pushed for more and more warfare, that meant that the soldiers had to leave their homes. And then they would have to go to faraway places, like some place like Carthage, for example. So more and more soldiers had longer tours of duty. And in that time, people would coach on vacant lots. Sometimes the families, the women, had to work the farm. There were, sometimes there were slaves, but, you know, it was hard to keep slaves when the, when the Potter familias wasn't around. So during this period of what we call the Roman Republic, we see a breakup of what happened with this militaristic society. In the eastern part of the Mediterranean, there were a number of wars that were sparked by Alexander the Great and his, and his successors. And the, and as the Senate kept thinking about how great our system is, why don't we just keep pushing it and expanding our network. And the Romans weren't colonizing the eastern Mediterranean. They were actually going to take away some magnificent provinces, places that, for example, Pergamum was one of the great kingdoms of Turkey. And these are all Turkey. Most of the action for Alexander the Great successors is in Turkey and during this period. So at the time, though, Greece was pretty active. It was very active. What had happened was that Alexander the Great went on his expedition to the east. A lot of people came and followed after him. Some people never came back to Greece. But, but there were Romans, of course, who, you know, could fill in the hole, right? They could, they, they could move to these areas. And, and, you know, there were, there were a lot of moving parts. Did they eclipse him? Did they eclipse, you know, the Greek move, move into, move to the east? Yeah, well, the, the, the exploits of Alexander the Great. There were, there were towns. Actually, there were, I think the count was that there were 27 cities named Alexandria after Alexander's conquests. The most important part of the Mediterranean for the Romans was Alexandria. Now, Alexandria was a kingdom. It was the Ptolemaic kingdom created by Ptolemy, who was one of the successors of Alexander the Great. Okay. Maybe we should say a relative picture of whether the Romans were becoming more powerful, supplanting Alexander, supplanting Greece, or whether they were operating at the same time. What was the dynamic there? Okay. So the dynamic was the Romans saw an opportunity to go attack some of the weaker kingdoms. So for example, Macedonia was one of them. And so the Romans went across the Adri, the Adriatic Sea, and they came and they took over Macedonia. Now, Macedonia was the kingdom of Philip, Philip II, and his son, Alexander the Third. So there were some teetering kingdoms in this area in the Balkans, as you can imagine, you know. And so there was a general who requested from the Senate a mission to take over Macedonia. And his name was Emilius Paulus. And he brought his armies across the Adriatic, came to Macedonia, trashed the place that was the, you know, the kingdom of the Macedonians and Philip, Philip at that time was the big man in the Aegean area. But when Emilius Paulus came to Macedonia, there was no way that Philip or the Macedonians had no, they could not stop the Roman, sorry. The Romans came to Macedonia and the Roman armies were so skilled, they were so well trained that they, it by bit, any kingdom that they could get their hands on, they would take everything apart. So Macedon was one of the first kingdoms that the Romans came to. When you take, when you say take everything apart, you mean the sack? Literally, they took everything they could. Did they rebuild it? Did they rebuild it? Did they make a deal with the remaining population? Did they remake it in the Roman image? Eventually, yeah, they would, yeah, they would do that later on. But in the first blow, when Emilius Paulus came to Macedonia, he, he and his army took all the spoils of Macedonia and they brought them all back to Rome. Emilius Paulus was the first man to get a triumph. Triumph was, I mean, we talk about triumphs casually, but for the Romans, the triumph was the most, for any ambitious general, a triumph was what they wanted. They wanted to be seen as a king, as a god. And it was like a ticker tape parade in Rome when Emilius Paulus brought all the spoils of war into the forum. The people of Rome were waving and shouting and showing how glorious the Romans were, that the Romans did it, the Roman soldiers, Roman senate, and the Roman generals. And Emilius Paulus got, he got permission from the senate to have a triumph. Now, a triumph was a parade. All the, all the soldiers came marching in to Rome. They brought all the, all of the stuff that they could take. That made Emilius Paulus one of the richest men in Rome. And I think that that was the first of the triumphs. And then afterwards, of course, you know, you have a senate. A senate is an aristocracy that has a lot of competition among, among themselves. And people started wanting their own triumphs. How are you going to get your own triumphs? You know, it's like trying to get to be the top dog in, in Rome. You get it by getting, you know, permission to send an army someplace. You have to convince the members of the, of the senate that that would be a good idea. And, and, and before you knew it, there were a lot more people who got to be very, very, very rich. Well, this doesn't sound very altruistic. It sounds, it sounds self-interested. And it sounds very competitive within the members and, and highly political within the members of the senate.  Had they already, you know, crested and were they coming down into this? Yes. I mean, the, the answer is yes. I mean, and then we move towards the end of the, the, of the Roman Republic, where then there were social problems, a lot of social problems in the city of Rome. And most of that had to do with the fact that they couldn't feed the population. So the Romans, the Romans were buying grain. I mean, they had, they needed grain. That was what kept Rome growing, because at this time there were no more farmers. And so people gravitated toward the city of Rome.   At this time Rome was a very large city. And there were a lot of people, desperate people in Rome. And so there would be grain shipments and people, you know, and people who were wealthy, they would, they would try to, you know, make sure that everyone knew that so-and-so was giving them the grain. But it was a giveaway though. It was a giveaway because you know what the quid pro quo was? It, it was votes. So the members of the Senate who were, who were ambitious, they would try to get food for votes, for votes for food. I mean, they do care. They needed food. Their families needed food. There's a corruption in all of that, isn't there? Yes, there is. There was, yeah.  And what the problem was was that, you know, when you have a hungry populace in a big city, you know, there's a lot of desperation. And, and so the, so there were other assemblies, you know, there were many different assemblies in Rome. But there were some people who began to criticize the Senate, that the Senate wasn't doing its job. And instead, you know, they were gallivanting in the East, right? And so, so the, the Senate wasn't doing its job. And the Senate being an aristocratic assembly, you know, didn't really connect to people who were the common people.  But then, you know, whoever is hungry.  And so there was, there were mobs in, in, in the Roman Forum.  And, and that was how many people in Rome subsisted. It was, it was a real problem. There were two factions. There were two factions. One was called the optimates, which were the, the betters and the popularities, which were the popular party. So there started to become this factionalism. And people who were opportunistic would drive a wedge in between the, the different factions. So I guess I asked the same question again. This demonstrates as these, these are badges of decline relative to the way it had come up. Now it was on the way down. And it did not, it did not bode well when you have this divisiveness, when you have this corruption. This is a big problem. So where is democracy at this point in time? I, I, I guess what I hear you're saying is that at some point they reached an apex and it was as democratic as it was going to get. It was altruistic. It was, let's take care of the people, you know, as a, as a, as a charitable matter. And then after a while it declined. And then I guess why I would conclude that it was not as democratic at some point in decline. So when was that? I guess all these factors are working in that direction, but, but when was that, and what was the ultimate effect? I mean, we, we're talking about a long slide in which Rome, the empire of Rome ultimately disappears. Is, are we talking about that now? Um, well, it's, um, okay, we can, um, so let me, let me talk about Caesar Augustus and maybe Julius Caesar. Everyone knows Julius Caesar was stabbed in the Senate. When Julius Caesar died, he, he only had one heir and his name was Octavian. He was adopted posthumously by Julius Caesar. Julius Caesar at that time had control over France and, and he also built a very loyal army in France and Gaul, which is France today, Gaul then. And he, he began to build his empire, his personal empire in Gaul, whereas his son-in-law, whose name was Pompey the Great, um, you didn't see how Pompey the Great, always the Great, you know. But Pompey, um, Pompey, um, snuggled up with the Senate. So he was with the Senate. Julius Caesar was in Gaul and, um, Crassus was in the Middle East and he also was in Southern Italy. So there were, there were a lot of social wars in, in the Roman Republic. And as the Roman Republic began to fall apart, um, the, the three triumvirors, the three men got together, the three richest men in Rome got together and divvied up, um, the, the, the empire. I guess we can call it the empire now. Uh, and, and these were, um, uh, it was a cooperation. Uh, there was, um, there was the first triumvirate, which was when Julius Caesar died. And then the second triumvirate was when, um, Auguste Octavian took over, uh, with Mark Antony and, um, and I forgot the third one, I'm sorry. Uh, so, um, so these, um, these very powerful, very wealthy men were like giants. Like, you know, if you think about in the United States, you know, these, um, these humongous, um, corporations, you know, that, that's what the triumvirate was like. Um, it was a funny way you're drawing a parallel for me, um, to Cosa Nostra in the same way. You divide up the territory, uh, you make a deal, uh, you can get this part of it. I can get that part of it. And you rule ultimately by, by, by threat and violence. Right. That, that is right. Yep. Yeah. Like the Cosa Nostra. Yeah. But, but this was really serious because there were, you know, militaries or armies all over, um, the Eastern Mediterranean. And so eventually what happened, um, uh, Julius Caesar and his son-in-law Pompey, um, they, they, uh, had a large battle, um, in, uh, Southern Macedonia. Um, Julius Caesar won, um, and Pompey, uh, lost. Um, Pompey fell into the hands of one of the Ptolemaic kings. And he, uh, um, bestowed this prize, um, to Julius Caesar because it seemed that Julius Caesar was going to be the last man standing. And so, um, one of, uh, one of Pompey's, uh, you know, Pompey's pinch men, um, uh, brought the head of Pompey to, um, to Julius Caesar. And Julius Caesar had a, a short dalliance with the queen of Egypt, Cleopatra. And we've seen that in technicolor in all the movies with, you know, the tailor. Um, uh, so, um, and, but, but Alexandria was, was the key to pacifying the Roman, um, people in Rome to feed it, to get, to feed them. So Julius Caesar wanted, um, wanted food. He wanted an arrangement so that he could have, um, he could be able to feed the people. And if he can feed the people, he can win over anyone else. Yeah, it's, it's a really kind of, it's a difficult, um, timeline. And it's very, um, very complex. But you know what? It sounds just on that, on the four corners of that, it sounds unsustainable because they had left the, uh, the landscape outside, uh, the city. Now they're conglomerated in the city. Um, it doesn't sound like there was a, a middle class. It sounds like people who are waiting for that, for that, um, that feed that, that, that, um, the wheat that are coming from other ways. So you require geographical domination in order to feed your own people. How sustainable then can that be? And your own people are not capable of feeding themselves. So you are completely dependent on these emperor soldier people, um, to dominate other places. It sounds, it sounds like that dynamic cannot last very long. Yeah. Yeah. No, it can't. It can't at all. So what happened next? Um, um, the late Caesar dies after, um, the battle with Pompey. And, uh, and then, um, by his, um, his, uh, his nephew, his name was Octavian, his adopted nephew. Um, he then takes over all of the riches and privileges that he had as a general, one of the top generals. Um, Augustus, uh, took, took, uh, start, he took a play, uh, the playbook from Julius Caesar. And, um, but he inherited a very volatile situation in the Eastern Mediterranean. Um, Mark Antony was trying to get help from the Persians. Um, Cleopatra was, uh, um, potentially someone who would go with Julius Caesar. And, um, Mark Antony just botched it all. Um, and, uh, Julius Caesar ended up taking, um, most of the prizes. And they botched it up, um, Mark Antony botched it up, uh, because he, um, he tried to have a naval battle at a place called Actian, which is on the west coast of, um, of Greece. And, um, and during that battle, Cleopatra turned around and went back to Alexandria and she left her lover hanging. And so Mark Antony was kind of out of the equation. Um, Julius Caesar was still there. Cleopatra was still there. Um, Cleopatra had that dalliance. She had two, um, she had one son whose name says Zaryon and he, and she also had two children by Mark Antony. But of course, once, uh, once, uh, um, uh, once when they think about this, I have forgotten about the, the, what happened to the children. Uh, eventually, um, the, um, yeah, I was studying. You know, it all, it all sounds like the stuff of rich, good movies or interesting movies. Yeah. Yeah, I know. It's, it's, and somebody, somebody wrote it down and carried a couple of thousand years and Hollywood picked it up. And, um, you know, from, from what you say, this is the movies are at least in a rough outline. They're, they're an accurate, you know, uh, re, remembrance of, of what was going on. And I can imagine the local people in Rome were all captivated by hearing these stories come back from the front, um, about all the machinations and, and the successes. And, and this must have built a kind of nationalism or reinforced a kind of nationalism. But at the same time, query, you know, were they being properly represented? Could you say that with all these fellows out there dominating and sending wheat back, um, that, uh, bringing wheat back and spoils back?  Um, well, okay. So what happened was that, um, Augustus Caesar ended up with the, with all the prizes. And he, and then after this, uh, dynamic period where there were different wars, um, Augustus Caesar, um, managed one way or the other. He was 18 years old when he got that, when he inherited, um, Julius Caesar's fortune and his name too. Um, and so, um, so Caesar, Augustus, or I'm sure Octavian, um, began to consolidate. And, you know, there were people who were like Mark Anthony was out of the picture. Um, Julius Caesar was out of the picture. He would, August, Octavian was basically the, the last man standing. And he began to consolidate. Um, he, uh, of course, bribed a lot of people. There was a lot of bribery going on. Uh, and, um, and over the course of his life, Octavian, later he was called Augustus, um, he, he rebuilt Rome. In fact, you know, if you see most of the Roman remains in the, in the Forum of Rome, most of those were, were built in, um, as a dedication to, um, uh, Augustus. Augustus, um, after all of these wars, people needed a respite from the, um, promotion in Rome. And, and Augustus gave that to the people of Rome. And it made people feel that there was someone driving the, the, the car. Um, and that, you know, that people could maybe get some continuity in, you know, their living positions. Augustus came to be the one man standing. And he lived for many decades. Um, so we, we, when we talked about the Augustan period, this is the period when the, uh, social unrest of Rome kind of came to stop. It was, it was managed better. And it was managed particularly because Augustus made sure that he had all the grain. You got to give him credit for that. He was a, um, a positive leader. But at the same time, uh, I would, I would imagine that as he got more powerful and more beloved by the people, uh, the Senate lost power. Uh, the Senate became ineffectual. So that must have come a time when he was out of power and, um, somebody else took over and tried to take over. And that was a recipe because, because the Senate was no longer functional. And so you don't have a government. Am I right? Right. You don't have a government. Um, the, the, the senators who were in the Augustus Senate were handpicked. There were no elections or anything. I mean, there were, there could be staged elections, but they didn't mean anything because Augustus had all the cards. So here we are. Uh, and it's, it's, it's right for a fall and it does fall. Um, and yet a couple of things. Uh, one is that it left such a huge mark on Europe and the world. I mean, even in describing it, Sondi, you've used a number of Latin terms and it's not because that's an essential way of describing it, but because that is in our language. Um, and the language all over Europe and therefore all over the world. And so these guys had more of an effect on human civilization than, than you could shake a stick. Um, and I guess in a funny way, they also had an effect on democracy. Um, except it seems like it's elusive because although they had a Senate, although they had the army as a kind of House of Representatives, I haven't heard yet. Maybe you can help me. Um, how this was a democracy that, that would influence democracies using the term democracies, um, you know, in, you know, through the, through the millennia that followed. Uh, it doesn't sound like, it sounds like their aspirations for democracy are greater than their actual contributions. What are your thoughts? Right. Um, the Roman army was a very important social phenomenon.   Um, but throughout Western Europe, you can find fragments of what the Roman soldiers in the army, the Roman army, left behind. Uh, there's, for example, there's, um, in England, there's a, um, a museum about that has shoes of Roman soldiers and women's shoes and, uh, shoes of children. Um, because when the, it wasn't just the Roman soldiers who were marching across, um, the, the continent, it was also the families that were trailing behind.  So, so there were lots of men or women and children who were going back. And so I, um, the, the Roman army really created what we know as, as, um, Western Europe because the Roman army had that stand that had its, uh, cookie cutter approach all over, um, uh, all over Europe. Um, you can see it from, you can see it in, in, um, in North Africa. You can see it in Spain. You can see it, uh, in Northern Germany. Um, all of that, you know, we see the, the, the importance of these, you know, unknown people. Actually, there, many of these people are, are known because when they got out of their military service, they were given a diploma and that showed that they were then full Roman citizens. Yeah. So, so if you look around Europe now, you see, um, uh, a common denominator of parliaments, some more freethinking than others. Um, some, some have, uh, you know, just kind of conceded to authoritarian dictators, tyrants to use the term that we discussed in Greece last time. Um, and, um, you know, I, I don't think that's just coincidence. Uh, I would suggest that I'm interested in your analysis of this. The fact that they had, they have today parliaments, some, some better than some worse, uh, and voting for people and political parties, um, that engage in politics, um, and negotiation and compromise. Those are concepts that at least some of them anyway from this discussion were invented in, in the Roman Republic. Am I right? And it's not a coincidence. There was a short window, uh, in, in the Roman Republic where things were functioning as we would like to think they, they functioned. But it, things fall apart and they fell apart in, um, and, and you know, it rec, it created a new kind of, um, empire. Which is, um, empires are nice and they leave long shadows, but the bottom line is that you, you'd rather live in a democracy than an empire because I'm sure there's plenty of brutality, atrocities, not only in the far reaches of the empire, we know that, but also in Rome itself. Um, but if you look at, so the, um, the image I have is from the Arpoches, the altar of peace. And this, and Augustus had the strength and the power to bring peace together again. Um, now, is there a democracy? I don't think so. I think, I think the democracy in Rome, you know, maybe the democratic, um, ideas maybe come through the army, but you know, army soldiers don't necessarily sit down and try to, um, write any constitutions. Um, you know, the, um, I don't think Augustus, um, you know, Augustus didn't, you know, he would, he would help to, he would, he would stand up, he would be called the pater patrias, that is the father of the nation. Some people like it. Some people like the security of that. And I think that's what Augustus brought to the table. And he was, he intended to be altruistic and he was altruistic. And it's like, it's the, it's the, it's the aspiration of humankind, the, the hope of humankind always to have an altruistic leader. You know, hence we have histories of kings even today. Hence we make democracies into authoritarian governments because we're still looking for that altruistic leader, although it's hard to find it because of the old, the old slogan about how power corrupts. And, uh, it's remarkable that, uh, Augustus didn't get corrupted over a long period of rulership. But I want to ask you the operative question here, though. This is the hard one. How much of that is reflected in the American system, in the American constitution? Because there were a lot of things that happened in the meantime. You know, the development of Western Europe gave us so much that in, in, you know, as, as lessons to learn in the development of our system, our constitution. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, Thomas Jefferson, um, read, um, uh, the, the works of Plutarch in Latin. I mean, there you go. You know, and he, he, um, you know, the, the concepts that we have from ancient Rome, you know, still live today. Well, the other, the other thing that, um, maybe it lives even stronger today, and in the 19th century, the lessons we can learn, uh, this, the seductive lessons we can learn from the decline. Um, I suppose that means a decline of Athens and the decline of Rome, um, that we have to be careful, mindful of, uh, as we, as our great American experiment lurches forward or maybe backward for some people. Um, so what are those lessons? What are the, what are the things, uh, the decline points, if you will, that we should be careful about, uh, that, that have proven to be common denominators for the decline of all relatively successful governmental systems? Yeah. Um, I guess I don't know how to answer this. Well, I mean, for example, did they really have to, did they really have to go far and wide to dominate other countries? Was that necessary? Uh, could they have done without it? Could, could the human experience have done without it? Uh, did they have to bring the people into the cities and, um, separate them from agriculture? Do they have to do that? Um, and did they have to, um, you know, essentially dismantle the authority of the Senate, uh, in favor of, of, of, of one, even altruistic leader? Uh, have we shown, have, has history shown that that's dangerous business or are we doomed to limit again? Yeah. The other author, um, that many of the founding fathers read, um, in their schooling, um, was, uh, was the, um, uh, the, the speeches of Cicero. Um, Cicero was, was not, he, he eventually became part of the Senate. Um, he was considered a new man, which meant that he didn't have the kind of, um, family ties. Uh, and he, he wrote these speeches during this time period and during the fall of the Roman Republic. And, um, he was a, he was a, a lawyer and, um, and much of what we know about, um, Cicero was that he was extraordinarily brave. So there were the, you know, there were of course the soldiers, there were the, the generals, even Augustus, but what we see, what we have now today, what's the most precious thing is are the speeches of Cicero because he was the one who was laying out a, a sketch of what, um, what Rome should look like.  He was really laying down the, the principles of what it means to, to live under the law.  Um, yeah, it's, it's, it's an amazing story, but, um, uh, Caesar, I'm sorry, not Caesar, uh, Cicero is, is a, a, a book that's worth reading because you can see not just a dry legal thinker, but he was a true patriot. I mean, he was willing to lay down his life when he, um, when he found a, a conspiracy among the Romans and, and it, it would, and we have his words. He even wrote letters to his, to his brother and his friend who were living in Athens still. Um, so, it, it, we have so much precious writing that, um, that, that, that we can kind of get a sense of, of how people before us, um, were able to kind of scrape together, um, a, a system of law that would be fair to the citizens. That's a, that's a fabulous answer and comment to my questions on the, because, you know, the Romans is not a perfect experience, but they had an experience and you always learn from experience. And what we need is an observer, a fair witness on the experience who can translate all of that into universal lessons. And that's what it sounds like Cicero is. And, uh, you make me want to go read him immediately, uh, because I think his lessons, you know, sound so appropriate even now, even today, this very day in terms of courage, um, and avoiding corruption, um, and avoiding cynicism and, and bringing the, you know, the people back together again for, uh, a democratic experience, um, with high moral fiber. Um, I really have to, I really have to read it, but I also, I would like to have another session with you about Cicero. Um, and we can examine, you know, what he said, uh, why he said it, uh, and what it means, what it has meant over the years, the millennia, and what, and what it means today right now in the U S of A, that would be a really fabulous, uh, conclusion to our adventure here. I will, I will, I will suggest other dates, uh, for us to do that. I want, I want you to know, I really appreciate this is actually, um, a momentous discussion we have had very valuable. Oh, I love it. I love talking about this week now. I'm here anytime you want. We can talk about it. Okay, Sandy. Thank you so much for all this time and all this, all this so much great information. You take care. All right. Bye Jay. Bye, Sandy.


Fy roi o'r awr y cyfrifredu ffyrdd ymlaen yw'r wahanol yma, yw'r Fy roi o'r awr yn Cymru yn Brachsburran. Fy rydw i'r ffyrdd cerdd, rydw i'r Pwgol ddechrau. Fy roi'r fyrdd cyfrifredu, Sint Andrews Day, ddwy o'r awr, dwi o'r ffrindiau, drwy o ffyrdd o'r awr, ddwy o'r awr o'r awr o'r ffrindiau, ond we have traditionally remembered our loved ones who have died, including the war dead. And now we have entered the Christian season of Advent that ends with the celebration of Christmas. Some things we wish in life that they would never end, like the perfect summer's day, or that winning round of golf, or the reunion at the bedside of someone you love who is dying. There are other times we wish it was all over, like the disastrous football match, or the delayed flight home at the airport, or the boring meeting, dare I say, that is going nowhere. Through it all, the human heart is restless, or yearning perhaps for that which is better than is being perceived at that very moment. Maybe even perhaps reluctant to take time for reflection because we believe we have too much on our minds at present. How often do we allow ourselves merely to take time to think about nothing, but just to be content to be where we are? How hard it is for busy-minded people to be calm, to be still, and to be open to the unexpected, or just to treasure life itself? The short phrase that expresses the golden moments is having the time of our lives. Now is the time for you MSPs to debate the key issues that affect the nation of Scotland and beyond. I hope and pray that you are able to value this time together, and that it will not drag or fly by too quickly. It reminds me of a brave lady I once met in St John's hospital in Livingston. I was giving her the last sacraments, and she said to me, thank you for taking the time to come and see me. I hope you get the chance to appreciate your life. And the memorable moments before they come to an end. Members of Parliament try today just to be content to live here and now. I could end with the words of St Ignatius who said, take, O Lord, and receive all my freedom, my memory, my understanding and my whole will. All that I am and all that I have, you have given me. And I give it back to you to be disposed off according to your good pleasure. Give me only your love and your grace, for this is sufficient for me. Amen.