one. Hello, I'm JJ Joaquin, and welcome to Philosophy in What Matters, where we talk about things that matter from a philosophical point of view. Now in this episode, we will explore life and works of some of the world's greatest women logicians. Now, logic is often thought of as a male dominated field with the likes of Aristotle, Boo, Piers, Fregge, Russell, and Whitehead as acknowledged founders of this area of inquiry. But as our guest in this episode suggests, we should also acknowledge the contributions of women in the development of modern logic. Now, to celebrate these contributions in a way why they matter, we have Sarah Acomman, assistant professor of philosophy at Durham University. She's also the associate editor of the Journal of Logic, Language, and Information, and the Doctor of Logic in YouTube. So, hello, Sarah. Welcome to Philosophy in What Matters. Hello, and thank you very much for the invitation. I'm looking forward to talking about these topics. Okay, so before we get into our main topics, let's first discuss your philosophical background. So, how did you get started in philosophy? It's very interesting because I got into philosophy via logic. So, I had one or two brushes with philosophy in high school. My mom had taken an introduction to philosophy course at university, and her undergraduate textbook was just a collection of articles sat on one of the shelves in our living room for years. And at one point, I pulled it off and I opened it randomly. And I read What the Tortoise Said to Achilles by Lewis Carroll. And I remember reading it and thinking that that's what I want to do. I want to learn how to think like that. And then my senior year of high school, I had the opportunity to take courses at the local university, one of which happens to be Introduction to Logic. And I chose that course because I knew deep down inside that I was not a logical person. Comparing myself to my father throughout my whole life made this very clear that he, well, the picture of rationality and logic. And I was not that. So, I went into this logic class, convinced that I was going to fail, but I was going to enjoy learning about it anyway. And a couple of weeks in, discovered I actually really like this. A few weeks later, discovered I'm really kind of good at it. This is cool. I want to do more. And so when I actually went off to university, I chose my courses and I chose my kind of degree program specifically to maximize how much logic I could do. And as a result of where I went, I was in a philosophy program. And so I also had to take other philosophy courses. But for a very long time, I identified first and foremost as a logician. And if people would call me a philosopher, I'd be like, I'm not a philosopher. I'm a logician. And even after what six years as a professor of philosophy in a philosophy department, I still don't like really being called a philosopher. Okay, so who influenced you to pursue a career in hadamic philosophy or hadamic life? So the probably the most major influence on kind of where, how I got to where I am now was one of my professors at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Mike Bird. He, one of the like actual philosophy and non-logic courses that I took that I really loved was an upper level class on Frege Russell and Wittgenstein. And that was my first introduction to analytic philosophy. And again, I took this class and I remember thinking this is the way that we should be thinking about things. And so even, even though I'm not necessarily kind of much of a philosopher, I do have a lot of thoughts about philosophical method and like ways of thinking about things and ways of asking questions and ways of answering questions. And this, it fed into my desire to do logic. Professor Bird was amazingly supportive of my desires to do logic. I was in his office hours a lot and he was always happy to answer my questions. And this set me up in a position so that when I went on to do my graduate work at the University of Amsterdam, I was lucky enough to fall into the into the capable hands of another person who was very much interested in kind of supporting people who wanted to do what they wanted to do, even if it wasn't necessarily the mainstream thing to do. So was willing to support somebody who wanted to do logic in the context of a philosophy department. At the University of Amsterdam, my supervisor, Benedict Lever, was much supportive of somebody who wanted to do history of logic in a logic program. And so both of both of those people had a significant influence kind of on what I have enjoyed doing and even my ability to have the opportunity to do it in the first place. Okay, so you specialize not only in logic, but also in the history of logic. So before talking about the history of logic, let's talk about what logic is in the first place. So Dr. Lager, what is logic? Yes, what is logic is what I ask my undergraduate students in their very first logic class, because a lot of them either have no idea what it is, or they have gotten this very pat answer, something to do with valid arguments and things like that. And so they will tell me things about necessary truth preservation and stuff. But actually, my favorite definition of logic is something that belongs to not anything that you'd find in a modern textbook, but in a textbook written round about 1215. So Roger Bacon wrote a book called The Art and Science of Logic. And in it, he gives a definition of logic, which I absolutely love. He says that logic, as a science, is the habit of distinguishing what is true from what is false by means of rules or maxims or dignities, by which we can comprehend the truth of a locution through our own efforts or with the help of others. And logic is so called from logos, which means discourse and lexus, which means reason or understanding. And so as it were, the science either of reason joined to discourse or discourse joined to reason. And what I love about this definition, and I think really kind of encapsulates what I think is the heart of logic, is that it's about separating truth from falsehood. So in order to determine what things are or can be true, we need to know how truths and falsity relate to each other. It's rule governed. There's a systematicity about it. This isn't blind searching. It's not ad hoc. There are features in language that you can look for, features in the world that you can look for. And there is a very close connection between these things and determining acceptability of arguments. But then there's two more things that Bacon includes that a lot of modern logicians might not necessarily, and that is that it's a joint venture, and it's related to discourse. And I think that this is something incredibly crucial to understand about what is really going on in logic, that we are involved in a collective enterprise in trying to figure out what is true and what is false and what are the appropriate rules to be used. And it cannot be separated from the ways in which we communicate with each other. So discourse not just in verbal communication, but in broader ways of exchanging and communicating information. So if I have to give kind of the short answer, I just go to Bacon's answer, I think his is an excellent definition of logic. A longer answer involves a lot more time than we probably have a lot of thought and a lot of study, but the idea that I try to get my students to understand is that broadly speaking, what brings all aspects of logic together is that it is a way of helping us determine what are good arguments. And good can be defined in many different ways, and this is why we have many different types of logic and many different approaches. But at the center, that's what it's all about. What are good arguments? I like the idea by Roger Bacon with regard to the social dimension of logic. So you have discourse, not only the formal thing, but also how we communicate and how we argue with one another. Is that the idea here? That and also the collaborative aspect, the fact that a lot of times people have, maybe philosophers more than others have this idea of logic as being this kind of God given a priori science and that you can sit in the logician or the mathematician, they sit in their office on their own and they have their axioms and their definitions and they derive their theorems. And yes, you can do that, but logic, studying, learning, teaching, researching it is always going to be so much more accessible and easy and understandable if you're doing it in combination with other people. So one of the kind of life lessons that I learned from Professor Byrd UW-Madison was for his lower and upper level logic courses, he encouraged people to submit homework in groups. So two to three people would submit one homework assignment. And this is how you learn to ask questions of other people and you learn to explain things to other people that you understand this is by talking about it and helping other people understand it.  Okay, so you coded Roger Bacon, so that's a 12th century or 13th century philosopher. We're talking about logic, right? So why do we code still medieval philosophers or philosophers in the olden days? That is, why does the history, does the history of logic really matter here in understanding what logic is? So there's the trite answer, which is that yes, of course, the history of a subject always matters because what's that kind of overused quote that everybody always says, those who don't know their history are doomed to repeat and you can see this in the history of logical developments in the sense that propositional logic was independently discovered or independently defined three different times, first by the Stoics, then by Peter Abelard in the 12th century, and then by Frege in the 19th. So if Frege had been reading medieval monks, maybe he would have known that this had already been done. But that's a very trite sort of answer. One of the reasons why the history of logic matters is because I like to make a distinction between history of logic and historical logic. So history of logic is asking questions like who are the people who are working and what texts did they write? Who did they study with? Who did they teach? What were their dates? When were they born? All of these sorts of like things that a historian would do. Now, I have a deep interest in history, but I'm not really a trained historian. So I try not to do as much of that. Historical logic, on the other hand, is logic first and foremost rather than history. It's just logic that happens to be kind of temporarily remote from us. So it might use different methodologies. It might use different vocabulary. There might be different techniques. But it's still logic. And this is something where I think that logic differs from a lot of the other sciences in that you can pick up Aristotle and read the prior analytics. And if you don't know anything about the syllogism, but you're trained in modern logic, you can read the prior analytics and be like, yeah, this is the sort of stuff that I do. This is logic. And same with medieval developments. Again, they might be using different techniques and vocabulary, but at the root, they're still interested in the same sorts of things. And I mean, you might say, well, this is going to be true of like biology or chemistry, that they're interested in like how life works or how chemicals and things work. But logic differs from other sciences in that what the historical people did in these topics is still relevant for today. So you wouldn't necessarily tell a doctor to go out and read Galen or to read a 12th century medical textbook because the sorts of things that you would find in those textbooks are not necessarily things that we would want doctors to be doing nowadays. Whereas you go back and you read historical logic and they're dealing with the same sorts of questions and they're dealing with the same sorts of problems. And sometimes they have things to say that are different from what modern people have figured out, or maybe they have a different emphasis, or maybe there are sometimes there are approaches that they take that seem entirely natural as soon as you realize that this is something that you can do. It's just that nobody has done it that way in the modern period. So history of logic matters for questions of, you know, you don't want to reinvent the wheel, but also because there are genuinely novel developments that are still applicable for nowadays. So I think every logician should have to read a bit of Aristotle, have to read a bit of the Stoics, and then read some of the 13th and 14th century commentaries and textbooks because there's so much to learn, not just about history, but about logic in them. Actually, if you read Aristotle and all the rest of the gang, you see the same themes like moda logic, epistemic logic, and so on. So the developments that we see now were, so to speak, were discovered by them. Yeah, and also multi-agent logic. The Medibles were entirely steeped in this idea that logic is a public discipline. It's a public activity that happens between multiple people, usually with an audience. And so questions about what am I committed to in the course of a disputation, or what can I assume my opponent knows given what has already gone on.  All right, the theories of obligations. Okay, so let's move to our concern in this episode. So your current project is to showcase the contributions of women logisticians in the field. So who are these women and what were their contributions in the development of logic, as we know it now. So it's interesting that you asked me a little bit ago what is logic, but you didn't ask the follow-up question, which is what is a logician? Because that's the question that I am grappling with in the context of kind of trying to answer the very broad question of who are the women in the history of logic? So first you need to say what logic is, and I have a fairly clear conception of that. But then if you ask, well, like, what is a logician? There's a number of different aspects and answers that you can give. You could say, well, a logician is somebody who is practicing, somebody who writes textbooks and does research and logic and proves theorems and does all of these things. And this is a legitimate answer to take, but if you take that sort of answer, then of course it's going to end up excluding large portions of history and large numbers of women from ever being able to count as logicians, particularly like up through the Middle Ages and into the early modern period. But if you want to say, well, who are the women who were taught logic or studied logic, even if it didn't necessarily, even if it wasn't something that they went on to kind of do explicitly or publicly, maybe they were working in other philosophical fields or related fields and through reading their work, you can learn about how their training and logic influenced the rest of their ideas. So kind of, if I narrowed my definition of logician to kind of practicing logician, then there probably would not be many women logicians before the 19th century or so. So I like going with the more broad definition because it allows me to stay a lot more about the relationship between women and logic in history. If I allow myself to ask questions like what kind of opportunities were there for women to study logic, but it really is kind of in like the 19th century that women start participating in logical discourse and kind of academic logic spheres in a way that is kind of like clearly identifiable as these women are logicians. And this isn't surprising because it's in the kind of the course of the 19th century that women get to participate in most academic fields. So it's not like this is something unique to logic or mathematics. This is part of a kind of wider trend of women moving into higher education and things like that. Okay, so would you consider, because you have a broader notion of who a logician is, so would you consider Heliouis as a logician? She is a very interesting case. We know explicitly that she had access to a fine logic teacher. Yes. We know that, yes. So at the time that Heliouis would have been being tutored, the kind of the primary set of subjects that were being taught are what are called the trivia. So they are the linguistic sciences, grammar, rhetoric, and logic or dialectic. The two words are kind of used interchangeably. We have explicit evidence that Heliouis learned grammar and rhetoric because the sorts of texts that were used as texts for those fields are texts that she quotes in her letters and things like that. We don't have the more, we don't have kind of explicit evidence that she was taught logic, even though her tutor was one of the most evident logicians of his period, and perhaps in the history of logic. And it's very interesting to see the ways in which she characterizes logic or logicians as being at a very bellicose and very belligerent and very militaristic. And I said earlier this, I highlighted the fact that logic was a very kind of public activity which would not have been accessible to women throughout much of the Middle Ages because they were not involved in these sorts of public activities. So it could very well be the case that she was taught grammar and rhetoric and not logic. It's certainly, even if she did, her later attitude towards it is not very favorable. So while it would be a lovely way to be able to call her a logician, I'm not sure that she is on either of the two possible definitions of logician that I've given. Okay, so let's jump many centuries after and let's talk about this woman philosopher logician and perhaps the mother of computing herself either lovely. So is she a logician in your case, in your definition? Interesting case because on the one hand, the idea of this, you know, the field of modern computing science being founded by a woman is a great idea. And it's the sort of things that people would love to be true. But I'm not, I am not sure that modern kind of historiography of computing science hasn't overstated her role in the developments. It's certainly clear that she, you know, contributed to the, you know, the development of kind of early computer programming and that she was an integral part of that. But the extent to which what she was doing counts as computer science. I mean, all of the questions I've been asking about logic and logician, you could do the same with computer science and computer scientists. But I don't think that I would call her a logician. I don't see evidence that she was kind of formally trained in logic of the time, or that she was talking with people who are logicians, or that she was generating logic. So kind of the question then would be, well, where's the boundary between computation, computing and logic? And I think that actually kind of these two fields at in the early part of the 19th century were not yet connected to each other. That was a more later development. So really cool, not necessarily a logician. Okay. How about Christine Ladd Franklin? Absolutely a logician. Absolutely. I've been working on her specifically for a couple of years now, because there's this kind of reputation that she has of having stalled this long-standing problem in Aristotelian syllogistics, something that's plagued people for 2,000 years. And the first time that I came across this characterization of her and her word, my first thought was, you know, I have no idea about this. But this is kind of embarrassing, because I'm interested in the history of logic, and I'm a champion for women in logic, and I'm not familiar with what her contribution is. And so I found her PhD thesis, downloaded it, started reading it, and wanted to find out. And it's very interesting. So I've got a paper almost done, but it's been almost done for a very long time. But a paper looking at what her solution was, and then going from that back to the question of what was the problem that everybody says that she solved. And the short story is it wasn't a problem of Aristotle's that she was solving. It was a problem of a contemporary algebraist, Jevons. So Lab was very much a logician. She studied under a logician. She studied under a purse. She was interacting with the, she was working in algebras, Boolean algebras, and extended Boolean algebras in the context of other people working in this. And it's also quite clear that she had a significant impact on people after her. So the solution to the problem that she came up with, this antilogism picked, you know, kind of its utility was recognized by other logicians almost immediately. And you can still find a huge amount of kind of later authors referring back to it, citing on it, citing it and building on it. And so she's very easy to identify as a logician. Okay, so some more logicians. How about this particular Vienna, member of the Vienna Circle? Yeah, so Ola Hahn is particularly interesting. People who know about her might primarily know about her as the wife of Otto Neurath. And in fact, a lot of kind of the people who were working in, so kind of between about like 1870 and 1920, I, you know, it's a nice 50 year period, it works good to kind of think about that as a, as an era or an area. Specifically kind of working with logic or foundations of mathematics or foundations of kind of geometry more broadly. A lot of the women working then were closely related, both kind of academically and meritably to other logicians. This isn't surprising. Logicians like talking to other logicians, we get along well with other logicians, you know, so this isn't too surprising. But what's unfortunate is that a lot of these women then end up only being known as wife of so-and-so. Olga Hahn's work, much of it is still only available in German, though a colleague of mine at Tubingen, Justin Vlatsitz, is working on translating some of her work into English so that it can be more accessible. One of the reasons I want to highlight her is she also worked with lads untilagism. So here's a nice case of not only of an earlier woman logician producing something that kind of influenced logic more broadly, but was something that was picked up by another woman. And so you can kind of see this, you know, passing on of development. And when there aren't that many women in a field, you don't often see that sort of kind of academic connection. So it's nice when you do. Okay, so you have another, well, Cambridge woman philosopher and logician. Consider this founder of Cambridge Wood of Analysis. And actually the first editor of Analysis, the journal? Yep. She sends Steving. Yeah, Steving is interesting because she's, again, people who are familiar with her are probably more familiar with her philosophy. So she was kind of steeped in logical positivism and it kind of related fields to that philosophy of science, these sorts of things. But she was actually one of the, one of the first people to write a logical textbook incorporating the new developments of Russell and Whitehead. So Principia Mathematica is not an accessible text. You can't, I mean, you shouldn't use it as a textbook for undergraduates or graduate students or anybody, but she was one of the people who kind of recognized that there's actually really crucially important things in there and took it and created something that could actually be used. So textbooks for the importance of the development of a field should not be underestimated because a lot of people, this is what they're going to be getting as their first introduction to something, not some big research volume, but some textbook that says, here's what this topic is.  Textbooks are incredibly important. Actually, she, her textbook seems to bridge Aristotelian logic with the current Russell Whitehead logic as well. Yeah. So one thing that you see kind of in, you know, the 19th century and even kind of into probably about like the 1950s or so, the Aristotelian syllogistic was still considered a fundamental aspect of logic. And I don't, I don't really know why it's kind of fallen out of favor. You know, in at least in American philosophy departments, you often get logic courses that teach propositional and predicate logic. And then you have critical thinking courses. And that's where you stick the syllogism and Venn diagrams and fallacies and things like that. So it's, it's a weird kind of sociological question of why the syllogism lost its central place in the role of logic. But even, you know, even in the early part of the 20th century, if you were going to know logic, you had to know that. And with the new 20th century developments, things like Russell and Whitehead's logic. Okay, speaking of textbooks, here's another, actually, she's not working on a textbook, but she developed recursion theory. How about Rosa Peter? Yes. So, I mean, she's, she is somebody who is a delight to talk about because she basically founded a field. So prior to her work, there wasn't really something that could be identified as kind of recursion theory in modern day. Now, her inclusion here might be considered kind of controversial because you might want to say, well, is recursion theory really logic? Or is it, you know, computer science or mathematics or something else? And this is a point at which I think it's less helpful to try to make disciplinary boundaries to say this person is a mathematician.  This person is a logician because in the intellectual and academic context that they were all working in, these weren't distinctions that were being made. Whereas, so, you know, I made this distinction with Lovelace saying, well, maybe she's an early computing scientist and not a logician. But that's because at that time, these, these developments were happening separated from each other. Whereas by the time that you get to, you know, the early 20th century, where the people who are doing logic are the people who are doing foundations of math are the people who are doing things like recursion theory. So I, I'm happy to call her a logician because notions of recursion are so fundamental to basic logical approaches. So even if you aren't doing mathematical logic, if you're not doing, you know, piano arithmetic or girdle and completeness theorems or anything, one of the first definitions that you get when you are studying propositional logic is the definition of a well-formed formula. And that definition is recursive. So if you don't have recursion, you can't even get started in logic. So yeah, I'll count her as one of us. Okay, here's the other person who wrote a textbook that introduced analytic philosophy and the modern logic, Alice Ambrose. So what's her contribution to logic? So she was very, she was also a student of Wittgenstein's and so is interesting because of the kind of, the ways in which Wittgensteinism could be again made more accessible. One thing that's interesting is how many of these women were writing textbooks, as opposed to say like research papers. So there's very much this sort of sense that I don't want to say it was like women's jobs to make things accessible or things like that, but it certainly is the case that a lot of these women would have had their access to being in academic circles via teaching. So this is kind of what gives them their their credibility to be a part of these kinds of academic contexts as if they were part of the educational side of things. So Ambrose is somebody that I don't know as much about as I would like to, but the kind of close connections between her studying with Wittgenstein and her expositions of his work and also she had connections with GE Moore. So she's kind of on the list of people I need to read more about because there's definitely something in there, the extent to which it will end up counting as logic. Again, depends on how you're going to define logic. And finally, of course, the woman who has her name in a formula, Ruth Barken Marcus. So you know that you've made it when you get a formula named after you. Barken Marcus, she's reached the pinnacle. The other reason I really like her is that she has some absolute wonderful smackdown responses to Kwan. And I think Kwan needs to be smacked down. I think that he introduced far more false issues into the study of philosophical modal logic than he ever solved any issues. So Barken Marcus is kind of the aspirational ideal of whatever you would like a kind of, if you're thinking of women in the history of logic, she's probably going to be one of the first people that you name. In fact, I with my introduction to logic students, the first assignment I give them every year is they need to find three logicians who lived before 1000, three who lived between 1000 and 2000, and then three who were alive after 2000. And when we have our small group discussions meeting, we collect all of the answers, we put together a great big timeline, and then we stand back and end up looking at like, where are all the Chinese logicians? Where are all of the African logicians? Where are all of the women? And kind of interrogating people's biases and blinkers. But if a woman is going to be mentioned, it's going to be Barken Marcus. Okay, so a lot of women philosophers and logicians are working right now. So where do you see academic work on logic heading in the next few years? And who are the leading women logicians paving the way to these developments? So there's, there are plenty. So there's the, there's a new initiative specifically for women in logic. So there's a Slack channel and a Facebook group and a Twitter page for women in logic. And this is very, very broad. So it includes people like me who are kind of on the history and philosophy side.  So nowadays, at least you look for women in logic and you'll find them all over the case. I, I don't really want to highlight any because there are so many and so many leading figures. I don't want to highlight out any one of them because it would give kind of the false sense that here is somebody who is kind of unique or special. While women in logic are still underrepresented, I mean, the, the percentages that you have for kind of women in logic are often lower than women in STEM and women in philosophy. So we kind of inherit the worst of both worlds. But just because the percentages are so bad doesn't mean that our absolute numbers are small.   Renika Vabruga, Valeria De Piva, Sarah Negri, Nina Geer, sorry, I can't pronounce Polish, I apologize for missing her name. Audrey, Katarina Dutil-Nawaz, Graciana Ciola, I could just go on and on and on. So we're out there. We're not hard to find. Okay. So, but what's the new development coming from women logicians? Katarina Dutil-Nawaz is working on multi-based logic, a lot of stuff on the theories of obligation as well. You're working on a lot of stuff in philosophy and give a logic. And what else? What else is the current trend in logic? Again, it's, it's hard to single out any individual trend because there's so many of us doing so many things. So there are, you know, people working on multi-agent systems. So another name I could have mentioned is Sonya Smets at Amsterdam, who is very much in kind of dynamic epistemic logic, multi-agent logics. There are people working in foundations of AI. So basically one of the brilliant parts about logic in the 21st century is how diverse and prolific it is. So you can be doing kind of hardcore history or hardcore computer science, and it all falls under this umbrella of logic. And in any one of these areas, you will be able to find kind of women at the forefront. So whether you are interested in temporal logics for program verification or an understanding of the role of imagination in logical reasoning in the 14th century, you know, there's, there's going to be some woman working on that area. Okay, so on a personal, on a more personal level. So what's your advice for those who want to get into professional philosophy and logic in particular, especially for women? So yeah, I'm not going to give advice for philosophers because I'm not the right person to do that. I almost feel like I am ill-equipped to give advice to women in logic about being a woman in logic because I was very lucky and didn't really realize this until many years later how lucky I was with the support of the mentors that I had. So most of the classes that I took as an undergraduate or as a graduate student were round about 10 to 15 people. And it was usually like me and another girl and the rest were guys.  But for me personally, it never really had any, any effect. I mean, I, I liked working with my colleagues. They were interested in the same things I was interested in. They were willing, they were interested in collaborating. I ended up marrying one of them. So, you know, it's not all bad. But I think that's kind of recognizing it. So what, what I would say to, you know, a young woman today who wants to study logic is to recognize that women in this field are underrepresented and that this is just something that they're going to come across. So if they are not happy in kind of all male situations, then this is something that they will probably get more of in, you know, if they were studying logic than if they were studying, I don't know, English literature. On the other hand, it's definitely getting better. So last year, I, one of my small groups for my intro logic class, I suddenly stopped looked around the room, there were eight students and me in the room, four of the students were women. And I paused and I said that in the 20 years that I've been doing academic philosophy, this is the second time that women have outnumbered the men in academic logical context. The other time was at a workshop on feminist philosophy and formal logic where all the invited speakers were women. So not a typical situation. But I had another class again this year where just looking around the room, who was all there, there was like six women and two guys. So it's getting better. And while I never felt the lack of like a female role model, I had plenty of good role models. So I didn't need one that had the same gender as me. I understand that for a lot of people that is important. And so one of the kind of two things that I would say is like, if this, if you want to do logic and this thing is important for you that you have a strong female mentor or strong female role model, well, there are plenty of people out there. So pick where you want to go to graduate school or even where you want to do your undergrad and look for places where there are women teaching logic and then kind of set yourself up for success. But the other thing is that this being in this field provides people with a chance to be that role model, even if they never expected to be in that sort of position. And this can start right away in an introduction to logic class. Find out what you're good at and then help other people to become good at that. So talk with your colleagues, discuss the homework assignments, go over the answers to the exams. And there's, it's not always going to be easy, but there are, it is definitely getting better. I will say that. Okay, but it's an academic career worth it. Would you say that your career is worth it? I mean, I would say yes. But I am somebody who got into grad school, completed my PhD without significant financial or mental burdens. I, you know, I have a job. It's a permanent job. So I am in the best possible situation. Of course, I'm going to say it was worth it because it all worked out for me. I am very hesitant to recommend academia to anybody right now. Because, well, many, many, many reasons, including the financial costs, the mental costs, the lack of job prospects, the fact that it's only going to get worse, the neoliberalization of academia, the increasing workloads. So you name it, it's probably getting worse. On the other hand, if this, if this is what you want to do, and you have the capacity and the support and what you would need to do it, it's, it really is the best job in the world, getting to do research and to think about things that I like and talk about people about things I find interesting and then get to teach them to students. I mean, could it get any better? The best of all possible worlds. Okay. Thanks again, Sarah, Dr. Logic for sharing your time with us. For you guys, join me again for another episode of Philosophy and What Matters where we discuss things that matter from a philosophical point of view. Cheers.


So, I am just going to state this lemma and this is called Chernov bound. So, this let me state this let. So, it is just saying that let be x i be a sequences i d random variables where each one is Bernoulli distributed with parameter mu and let mu had denote the estimates using t samples ok. Then we are going to say that then take any epsilon which is between 0 to 1 minus mu then it is saying that the estimate the sample mean mu hat being larger than mu plus epsilon is upper bounded by minus t divergence between mu plus epsilon and mu. So, now just let mu let us say what is my parameter epsilon range 0 to 1 minus mu. So, when epsilon is 0 this guy is simply mu and when epsilon is largest like 1 minus mu this guy is going to take value 0 ok. So, this mu plus epsilon is now never going to be larger than mu here in this case and similarly when epsilon is between 0 and mu we can argue that the mu hat being less than or equals to mu plus epsilon is exponential minus t again the divergence between mu plus epsilon and mu. We will not go yeah show. So, yeah it should be mu minus epsilon and also this is mu minus epsilon maybe that is I do not know it is all clearly visible let me just write it again here. So, what we are just saying is for epsilon between 0 to 1 minus mu we are just saying that 0 to 1 minus mu we are just saying the probability that mu hat greater than mu equals to epsilon is upper bounded by e x p minus t divergence of mu plus epsilon and mu ok. First thing is this bound this concentration bound we have is it any better than what we had then using my Hoffding's inequality. What was the bound we had in Hoffding's inequality? So, this bound we have e x p minus t. So, now if you are just going to apply the pin square inequality what we have on this divergence this divergence is lower bounded by delta k in this case is going to be epsilon right mu and mu plus epsilon. So, this is going to be I have a lower bound on this, but this is the minus sign here. So, I am going to get. So, you see that like the if you have if I can restrict myself to Bernoulli rewards then I have a deviation bound which is slightly better than what I would have got using my Hoffding's inequality. So, the k l you should be exactly exploit this and that is why it is going it is able to give all the bounds in terms of the divergence and this then they happen to be tighter than what we have are the UCB bounds. So, let us quickly go through the proof of this one ok. This is it will be a good exercise like for us to just repeat some part what we have already done in the last class not last class the class before that. So, what we have? We have probability that mu hat being greater than or equals to mu plus epsilon. So, what I will do is I will just unravel this quantity and this is like x t equals to 1 to capital T then mu and this is going to be I want this to be larger than n epsilon right. I have just multiplied this the denominator t I have taken it on the other side and also let us multiply both sides by some lambda positive. This is what we have done in the last class also and then exponentiate both sides it will if I do that it will not change my probabilities. So, is this manipulation correct? What I have done here is simply I have substituted the value of mu hat which is nothing, but this sample mean divided by t, but I took t on the other side x t minus mu on the whole thing. So, then I just multiplied this thing by lambda yeah lambda greater than 0 and then I exponentiate both sides. Now, we I am going to use our usual bound what was that like the Marker inequality. So, what I will get if I apply my Marker inequality? So, Marker inequality give me e x p lambda c minus mu this whole divided by e x p minus lambda t. Now, this is exponential of this sum and what is our assumption this x t's are IID sequence. So, this expectation of this exponential sum can I write it as product of expectation of this exponential terms. Now, I am going to expand this what is this expectation? This expectation is about I know that this x t is going to be 1 with probability mu and this is going to be 0 with probability 1 minus mu. So, if I just do that this is going to be e x p. So, this is with probability mu with e x p lambda 1 minus mu and with probability 1 minus mu this is going to be e x p minus lambda mu and then we have this e x p minus lambda t x lambda. So, what is this going to give? Now, you notice that this term here within the square brackets now they are the same for every capital T every t going from 1 to capital T. So, this is now going to be simply mu times e x p 1 minus mu into lambda plus mu e x p minus mu lambda times and then there is also 1 t, but I am just going to what I will do is there are capital T time. So, if this lambda e I can assume that this is I have been added capital T times and then I can take each lambda e inside. So, this is going to contribute lambda e here and also minus lambda e here and then this entire thing is raised to the power capital T. Now, this is a function of lambda and this holds for any lambda positive right. Now, what I can do? I can look for a lambda that minimizes this quantity. So, now, you can just look at this quantity and you can just differentiate and see that if you are going to set lambda to be log of mu plus epsilon 1 minus mu times I am just writing it this is the one that is going to give you that is going to minimize this exponent and then once you are going to plug in this you are going to get. So, once you are going to get this I am skipping the details like you can now when you plug in this quantity and then simplify you can get it this quantity to be upper bounded by mu plus mu plus epsilon. So, here I have written equality, but this is not equality right this is inequality here this is the Markov inequality here.  So, I have just what I have just done is just lambda this quantity I have plugged in this and just simplified then just going to get this. Now, you can again go back and notice that this quantity here is nothing, but the divergence between mu plus epsilon and mu and this is what we wanted to show. So, I have just skip this like whatever this bound we have you can just again manipulate it and write it as divergence between mu plus epsilon and mu. So, you know the formula for divergence between mu plus epsilon and mu right just go and see that that could can be expressed in this form. So, that is why and this is what we had made a claim ok fine. And similarly for and make sure that for the choice of epsilon if epsilon happens to be in this range it is going to be less than 1 minus mu here that means, this quantity here 1 minus mu minus epsilon is going to be non-negative already. So, so every quantity here is a positive quantity and you could write this and now similarly for this case you can again show that when epsilon happens to be between 0 and mu you can come up with a similar one ok fine. So, I just want to stop this discussion about KL UCB at this point here. So, what we have just discussed about KL UCB is we have given the algorithm and we have just discussed that it is based on this tighter concentration bounds and this tighter concentration bound is happening because we are using only Bernoulli distributions there. And now once we have this bound then in the analysis we can expect that if you are using this bound divergence will come and we have we have stated now already that the expected number of pools upper bound is coming in terms of this divergence and this happens to be a tighter bound and what we have for the UCB. So, but you need to note one point here is that in the case. So, what was the primary difference between UCB and KL UCB? The way we are choosing the index right. So, let us rewrite this. So, the index in the case of UCB was mu hat plus some alpha log t by number of pools. So, this is let us say for arm i this is for UCB. Whereas, for KL UCB what is this? This is max over q belongs to my range and what was this? And I wanted to see n of a this is for i let us say i t minus 1 divergence between n i t minus 1 comma q and this is less than or equals to. So, earlier finding the index of arm i is just doing this. Now, to find an index of arm you are basically trying to solve a optimization problem right. This is an optimization problem right. You are trying to find a q which maximize which is the one which is satisfying this condition. For q I already discussed for q which are larger than this quantity that is where this condition is going to be violated because this quantity is going to be increasing in q sorry this quantity is a increasing function for q larger than this term. So, we are saying that for q greater than r equal s i t minus 1 divided by n i t minus 1 this guy is a increasing quantity when q equals to exactly this this is 0, but if you increase q beyond this it is increasing. So, we know that at some point if you keep on increasing it has to violate this condition and the point right away it violates that is the maximizer. So, but so in general like if you just want to implement it a plane optimization problem it could be pretty computationally intensive. So, when you are doing it in the code you have to be careful like if you just write this it is going to take a lot of time to run. So, you need to exploit the fact that this guy here is increasing in q and c at what point it is going to be violated and then find the index based on that. So, this actually this is like for a given p if you look it as a function of q it is a convex function ok. So, let us say it is a convex function. If it is a convex function you can always try to see at what point it is going to cross violate this condition, but you should not just plainly you call some module which implements the convex optimization and tries to find a q here. If you just give it to some module which is finding uses convex optimization methods it could take quite some time to solve this. So, try to exploit the monotonicity property of this divergence and based on that quickly try to find out this q quickly. If you do that you should be able to reduce your run time of the algorithm significantly. If you are just going to use some convex optimization module to run this it could take a quite some time. At q equals to 1 1 minus p. So, I am not following where it blows up yeah q equals to 1, but no like every arm why should you. So, t is changing in every round right and this is also increasing function as you increase q. So, at some point it should be exceeding this. So, that is the point. So, yeah that whatever is the maximizer that is we are going to call it as an index of the term right. So, this is like q star is the arg max let us say which is that value that is the index for me. If it is increasing it right. Yeah it will be increasing for like ok this since this is fixed if you are going to increase in q it is an increasing function. So, fine like yeah you can write like exactly at what point, but we can just write less than or equals to till this point ok. So, maybe even if you want to just find exactly what is the q that is going to exactly equals to this that is like a finding a 0 crossing of a function right even that could take quite some time or maybe like maybe just see if you can use that property to quickly figure out what is this q. So, all I am saying is try to find a good way to implement this like it could it could take some time just use the monotonic properties may be like you can just equate it to 0 and find a 0 crossing if that gives you faster q value or you can just do a kind of a search yeah you can just rapidly increase your q and see if it crosses then bring down your step size ok. So, I think even if you are just going to call a 0 function that is it will maybe do similar thing, but that module can be if you see if you can fasten it somehow by your own method yeah yeah yes on the other side right that could possibly happen right. So, what is saying is so let us say this is my that ratio let me call this as simply mu hat mu i hat at that time this ratio that is the mu i hat. So, I will have something like this at as q goes and this upper bound is a constant let us say this is my log t plus log log t whatever it is. So, the point at which it is violating may be beyond this point or beyond this point. So, which one you are going to choose upper point. So, that is why like just why not the lower point also yeah you are just maximizing over all the points. So, you just know already you have to take the lower point. So, just focus on this part yeah. So, another one thing like if you know if you just do not exploit this property and then just see ok and give the constraint like this is my constraint I want to keep it below this and look for the maximum value of this function. It is going to find this extrema, but if you just to call a standard optimization model it could take a quite some time to do this, but now you know the property you have to just like you do not worry about this you are increasing and just want to see where you are going to cross that point just quickly find it out yeah. So, yes you need to like keep that tolerance very small yeah. So, otherwise I mean do not even if do not go for arbitrarily small and also do not keep it too large. It is not specified that is that is we leave you to your judgment what should be a good value ok. So, if you are going to choose it very small right even then you have to do too many halve wings and it is going to take a too much time. If you keep it the tolerance very large we will quickly find it, but it may be pretty off it may just end up here ok fine. So, I want to just quickly discuss this Thompson sampling and we will not go any much details into its algorithm. So, there is another set algorithm called Thompson sampling which is based on Bayesian approach. What does that mean? It assumes that the parameter. So, when I say environment it is nothing, but a set of parameters right which are defining the means of that distribution. It assumes that those parameters is itself drawns from some distributions and it is going to assume some prior on that and based on your observation it keeps on updating that prior and then draws parameters from that prior and then looks for the parameter which has the highest value. So, I am just going to quickly write the algorithm and we will discuss it. So, all of you know beta distribution what is a beta distribution? So, beta distribution with parameter alpha and beta has a pdf which is as following yeah x to the power alpha minus 1. So, beta distribution with parameters alpha and beta. So, this is a pdf of a beta distribution with parameter alpha and beta has a distribution which is given by alpha minus 1 and with the power beta minus. So, you understand this notation gamma function all of you know what the gamma function. So, it is and it is a proper pdf and defined for all x what is that x between 0 1 ok. So, the Thomson sampling uses this beta distribution. So, this is a simple version I have defined here for the case of Bernoulli reward distributions ok. What it is doing is for every time it keeps a track of how many 1s or a 0s I observed from a particular distribution. So, 1s corresponds to success 0s corresponds to failure. So, then it what it is going to assign a beta distribution for each i with a parameter s i plus 1 f i plus 1. What is this? This is a s i corresponds to number of failures and f i corresponds sorry s i corresponds to number of successes number of 1s it has observed f i corresponds to number of 0s or number of failures and now it is going to pull an observe a sample from that beta distribution and then it is going to see which is the one which has the highest value of the sample and then it is going to play that and if it observes 1, it updates the success of that arm by 1 otherwise it updates the failure of that arm by 1. So, what it is basically doing is it is going to assign priors to each arm through this beta distributions and every time it is going to upgrade update those priors based on the success and the failures I am going to assign observe for those arms and then it just repeats this process every time playing the arm which gives me the highest sample reward from each of this beta distributions.


What killed Michael Brown is that liberalism, that put him in public housing, that expanded welfare payments so that his family broke up, the fatherless home, terrible education, terrible schools. This is what victimized Michael Brown. Before George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, there was the 2014 killing of this 18-year-old black man by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. Michael Brown's death energized the fledgling Black Lives Matter movement, and hands up don't shoot. A line derived from accounts of Brown's final words has been a rallying cry at protests against police violence ever since. Hands up! Don't shoot! Don't shoot! But Michael Brown probably never spoke those words. An exhaustive Department of Justice report later concluded that the claim that Brown held his hands up in clear surrender came from sources who later acknowledged that they didn't actually witness the shooting, but rather repeated what others told them. And that account was inconsistent with the physical evidence which instead corroborated Officer Darren Wilson's claim that Brown attacked him and tried to grab his gun. In contrast to other police killings that have energized the Black Lives Matter movement, including that of 12-year-old Tamir Rice, shot while wielding a plastic gun, of Eric Garner, who died while an officer held him in a chokehold, and of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. There's no reason to believe that by shooting Brown, Wilson was acting unreasonably, as Barack Obama's Department of Justice concluded, because the officer was under attack. The difference between the reality and this magnificent story of victimization is poetic truth, a truth designed to win power, not a truth to reveal reality, but to win power for, in this case, Blacks and the entire American left. Later in filmmaker Shelby Steele went to Ferguson to investigate the meaning of Brown's death and the reaction that it inspired. His new documentary, A Collaboration with His Son, Eli, is called What Killed Michael Brown? What happened in Ferguson was more about America, the very same America that would explode in 2020. If Michael Brown valued his life, he wouldn't take the chance of risking it. Where does that dispiritedness come from? It comes from the fact that Black America having come to rely on its victimization as its power. It was the worst deal we've ever made in our history, and it destroys us. Born in 1946, Steele was a former college professor who specialized in Russian literature. He's the son of a truck driver and the grandson of a man born into slavery. His views on how to correct America's racial injustices are deeply influenced by his experiences in the late 1960s and early 70s, working in a poverty program in East St. Louis. And I could sit there in the afternoon and write a grant bringing $20,000 to set up a library. Money came, it came, it came. People who ran it began to drive fancy German automobiles. In other words, I began to see that white guilt made a space for Black corruption. Our grievances paid off. They paid hard cash. It wasn't just that we could claim racism, it was that we could get paid for it. This began to establish a paradigm, I think, in Black America that created what we now call a grievance industry in Black America, which basically lives by claiming racism. Why did the programs that were instituted under the Great Society, why do you think they didn't work to uplift people, regardless of the motivation of why whites were doing it? One reason.  They said, you're poor, we victimized you, you're therefore underdeveloped backward. We will take responsibility for your uplift. You will achieve uplift not through yourself, but through the things we do for you, the new programs we create, the use of racial preferences and affirmative action and so forth. We will socially engineer you up to parity with all of the groups in American life. Steele says that virtuous struggle of the civil rights era was perverted to serve the needs of white Americans. At that moment in history, America made what I call the great confession. It finally, after centuries of woeful oppression of blacks, America finally and quite bravely and quite honorably confessed, yes, we did it, and it was wrong. It was we colluded with evil. That's what white America lives with now. So what motivates social policy, the government action, welfare, war on poverty, great society, so forth? Those are programs that we say are designed to uplift the people that we once oppressed. But in fact, those programs have nothing to do with uplift. They have to do with regaining moral authority for whites. The liberalism based on this created the first black middle of underclass. When I was growing up in segregation, there was no black underclass. Everybody worked. Everybody. Steele says that the mythology surrounding Michael Brown's death was a reflection of that narrative. Hands up, don't shoot. It implies that Michael Brown was murdered in cold blood by a white cop for no more than walking down the middle of the street. In other words, it expands the sense of black victimization. If you can prove that blacks were victims, then you sort of invoke that long history of oppression, racial oppression in America, slavery, segregation, and so forth. And suddenly this little shooting of one young man makes us accountable to that entire history. It's as though the one incident is going to be made to pay off for all this history that precedes it, that gives it a context. The best path forward, says Steele, is to focus on the commonality of all Americans. One of the things I would love to see is citizens understand that identity is the enemy of citizenship.


Around Dodge City and in the territory on west, there's just one way to handle the killers and the spoilers, and that's with the U.S. Marshal and the smell of gun smoke. Gun smoke, starring William Conrad, the story of the violence that moved west with young America, and the story of a man who moved with it. I'm that man, Matt Dillon, the United States Marshal. The first man they look for and the last they want to meet. It's a chancey job, and it makes a man watchful, and a little lonely. Government spend any money up there? Tell me about Dodge, Chester. Anything been happening here this past week? Nothing much. One fella kindly got killed last night, but outside of that it's been dull as winter. Oh, who got killed? Why, I don't know. Some wandering cowboy. Who killed him? There's a man called Pape to tell me. You have a self-defense mist done pure and simple. Did you see it? Well, no, sir. Well, who did? Well, I believe the only man who's seen the whole thing was that gambler, Ben Sissel. Sissel? He's new here the last few days. Been playing cards throughout the long brand. You don't seem to know a whole lot about it, do you, Chester? No, sir, I don't, but I was just starting to find out I want to see you riding up the street. Uh-huh. And where were you last night, Chester? I wouldn't be no gentleman to tell, Mr. John. All right, I hope you had a good time. Oh, yes, sir, I had a fine time. Just fine. All right, you can put my horse up if you want. I'm going to go with the long brand. Yes, sir, I'll come along when I'm through. I'll wait for you there. When did you get back? I just rode in, Kitty. What's it on? Thank you. Out the tip. Yeah, pretty good. Tell me something, Kitty.  Oh, you're thinking of a killing we had. Yeah, I was here. Where did you see it? Most of it. I was standing there at the bar, and Pate and Ben Sissle and the cowboy were at a table in the back. Chester heard that it was self-defense. Oh, a cowboy drew a first map, but I don't know that you'd call it self-defense. Oh, why not? He wasn't after Pate. He was after Ben Sissle. What? Yeah, he wasn't even looking at Pate's map. He was looking at Sissle. Even so, when he started to draw, it was Pate that killed him. Pate caused that self-defense? Well, he claims he thought the cowboy was drawn on him. Besides, he said the cowboy knew Sissle wasn't even on him. Wasn't he? He never was. I see. Tell me, Kitty, is this Pate always around when Ben Sissle was dealing? He sure is, Matt. Always. And he's pretty handy with a gun, is he? Too handy for an ordinary man, Matt. Yeah, I thought so. Ben Sissle's another crooked gambler using a hired gunman to protect him when he's caught. I don't know how you can prove it. Why would I find Ben Sissle now, Kitty, you know? Yeah, standing at the bar over there on a long black coast. Oh, good. I'll see you later. Ben Sissle? That's me. My name's Dylan Sissle. I'm the U.S. Marshal here. Oh, I thought you were out of town. I was. Well, what do you want, Marshal? For your prom, Sissle. Oh, all over, Marshal. You know how gamblers are? Yeah, I know. Where'd your gamble last? I, uh, back east. Why? How long's Pate been working for you? Working for me? Mm-hmm. What are you trying to say, Marshal? I'll make it real simple.   There are plenty of witnesses to that. Where's Pate, Sissle? I don't know where he is. Why should I? I want to talk to him, and I want you with me when I do. Getting kind of pushy, Marshal? I can get a lot worse. I suppose we go outside and wait for a friend who's coming here to meet me, and then we'll go talk to Pate. Shall we get moving? Today ends the country's 100th anniversary observance of National Boys Club Week. This great organization dedicated to juvenile decency looks back on a century of progress in building the nation's youth into better citizens in replacing hopelessness with guidance and accomplishment wherever boys clubs serve. But looking ahead is more important to today's youth and tomorrow's. New boys clubs must be built to serve whole new areas of the country. As former President Hoover, chairman of the Boys Clubs of America for 25 years, has said, the boys clubs are the greatest cure for delinquency in our country today. 175 individual clubs serve over 600,000 youths in 383 communities. These groups work actively to promote religion in the home, brotherhood throughout the community, community beautification, and many more valuable programs. A word of gratitude now from the CBS Radio Network and all its affiliated stations to the Boys Clubs of America, entering their second century of service to youth. Pate's room's up here, Marshal. I don't know if he's in. If he is, would you start thinking of someplace he might be? Sure. Sure. I wouldn't blame you for not being here, Mr. Dillon. This is the worst hotel in Dodge. That's the room. This is it. All right. Knock on the door. Tell him you want to talk to him. Okay. I bet you're going to wish I hadn't knocked. These two. This is Marshal Dillon, Pate. Marshal Dillon? What's he doing here? We'll come inside and tell you, Pate. Now wait a minute, Marshal. Get out of the door. Now you look, Marshal. If you come here over that cowboy last night, it's no use. Everybody saw it, knows I killed him in self-defense. Of course he did. There's plenty of witnesses to that.  That's why you need a hired gun to help you when you're caught dealing crooked. You'd better watch what you're saying. Why? I don't carry a gun, Marshal. But Pate does. He happens to be a good friend of mine. Sure. But right now, Pate's gun belt is hanging on that chair over there. You see it?   Chester. Yes, sir? Go get his gun belt. Yes, sir. That's pretty brave of you, Marshal. Arresting an unarmed man. I'm not arresting you, Pate. I wish I could. And what are you doing? Chester unbuckle that belt and hand it to him. Here you are. All right. Put it on, Pate. Put it on? That's right. All right. You got your gun on now. Yeah. Get out of dodge. What? I said get out of dodge right now. I ain't done nothing, Marshal. I got no quarrel with you. What kind of gunman are you, Pate? You afraid of him? The kind of gunman that can be hired isn't the kind that's going to take any real chances, Cecil. I said I got no quarrel with you. I don't like this. You know, you let me out of here. Out of dodge, Pate. Yeah, sure. It's no good town anyway. The door's open. Marshal's right, Cecil. This job don't pay enough. Do you win, Marshal? You won't find any gunman here who'll hire out to you now, Cecil. So you might as well learn to deal straight. Well, I always do, Marshal. Come on, Chester. Let's get out of here. Yes, sir. There's a lot of dodge, too. I'd rather he stay, Chester. Maybe next time I can arrest him and see him hung like he deserves. It didn't take Pate any longer to leave dodge than to find his horse and get mounted. And for the next week, there was no trouble from Ben Cecil. He went on dealing cards, and although everybody was watching him pretty close, nobody found any reason to complain about him. He didn't win much money, but I began to think maybe he decided that being honest had some value anyway. Doc and I were talking about him in my office one noon. Yeah, yeah. A man like Ben Cecil doesn't change, man. He's a crook, and he'll always be one. He's worse than a crook. He's practically a murderer. He's also a coward, Doc. That's why I think maybe I got him stopped. Well, the way I got him fixed now in order to stay free, he's got to stay honest. Oh, that must be a hard choice for a man like that. Hey, Mr. Gilliam.  Mr. Gilliam. I just seen the doggone staying out on the street there. Yeah, what was that? Well, sir, who would you say is the last man in dodge you'd ever expect to start carrying a sixth gun? I am. Yeah, no, no. Besides of you, Doc. I can't think of anybody except Doc who doesn't carry a gun now, Justin. Well, what about Cooter Smith? Cooter Smith? If I hadn't saw him, I wouldn't believe it neither. Oh, what's he doing with the gun? Just leaning on a post down the street there. He shouldn't be allowed to wear a gun to a man like him. No. It's time to go bring him in here. I want to talk to him. All right. I'll get him. Things will get mighty bad around here when even Cooter Smith decides to arm himself, man. Oh, Cooter's pretty harmless, Doc. Well, you never know. A man like that could be harmless one day and dangerous the next. What's the matter with Cooter anyway, Doc? Well, I don't know for sure. I did examine him once and it looked to me like he got kicked in the head by a horse at one time. He won't say so for some reason, but maybe he doesn't even remember. Whatever it was, it sure made him half simple. I've seen men worse off. Hey, Mr. Jones. Hello, Cooter. Come on in. Hello, Cooter. Oh, Doc. Why, come here like Chester said, Marshall. Good. I wanted to talk to you, Cooter. Well, you never told me to come here before. You never wore a gun before, Cooter. Oh, that. Well, that's for my job, Marshall. Your job? What job of work I got. What kind of a job is it? Well, I don't rightly know yet, Marshall. Well, can you tell me what you do know then, like who hired you? Well, the fella that gave me this gun and he hired me for an awful lot of money, he said. And who was that? Ben, something. Ben Sissle? Yeah, that's him. He's going to pay me for wearing this gun. He is. He'll tell you why. This afternoon. What? Well, that's why he's going to tell me everything I got to do. He's going to talk to me some more this afternoon. He sure talks a lot, that fella. Yeah. Okay, Cooter, you can go on now. But I hope you don't let Sissle talk you into any trouble. It ain't that, Marshall. Why don't you don't try to make a fool out of me? Sometimes people do. I don't like that. Yeah, sure, Cooter. I think I'll go talk to him now and make sure. Goodbye. Bye, Cooter. Well, what in the world do you make of that? I think maybe Sissle's crazier than Cooter is, just... I'm going to be at the long branch tonight to make sure. When humorous Sam Levinson switched careers, the teaching profession lost one of its most amusing school masters to show business. Tomorrow and all next week, smile on Sam serves as guest host of the CBS Radio Network's Arthur Godfrey time, a duty he's been known to carry off in high style before. He'll be introducing you to some fine guest entertainers too. Be listening for Sam and his friends tomorrow and throughout the week on Arthur Godfrey time. Just as every weekday, tomorrow the CBS Radio Network will shuttle from shore to shore to bring you top stars of the broadcast entertainment world. Beginning in New York with Arthur Godfrey time, the network then takes you to Hollywood for Art Link Letters House Party. Then back to Manhattan for the Gary Moore radio show. Again, a return trip to the coast for the Bing Crosby-Rosemary Clooney show. There are stops in between, of course, for CBS News from everywhere. Be listening for them all tomorrow and each Monday through Friday. Right where you've got your dial set now at the Star's Address. Evening, Kitty. Hello, Matt. What are you doing around here so early tonight? I'm looking for Ben Sissle. Over there. Is there trouble, Matt? Yeah, maybe. Hello, Marshall. Sissle.  Yeah, I was. And he'll be here in a minute. You can talk to him some more. Fine. Oh, I don't know, Marshall. Maybe it won't be so fine. Oh. Cooter's not as easy going as most people seem to think. He hasn't. No? Ah, for example, you tie a gun on him, it kind of changes his whole character. Makes him mean, Marshall. You'd be surprised how mean. Yeah, I guess I would.  I'll show you.   What?  Now look, Cooter, you know better than that. Is this what you've been putting under his head, Sissle? Don't, don't you look at him, Marshall. You look at me. Just, don't you look at him. You just look at me. Oh, so that's it, huh? Okay, Cooter. Go ahead. I'm going to. You look out, Marshall. I sure am. No, you're not, Cooter. You haven't got a chance. Now watch this! See, you're too slow. I got my gun out and you haven't even touched yours. No, I, I haven't touched mine. Your gun pointed at me. I, Ben, Ben. He's not going to help you, Cooter. Yes, he is. He is, too. It's him that's going to shoot you. It's him. You think so?   I, I can't stand that. I, I can't. Good devil.  I, I didn't do nothing, Marshall. I wasn't going to shoot you. I don't even carry a gun, you know that. Yeah, sure. But Cooter didn't know it.  You told him he'd be safe. That ain't so, Marshall.  It wouldn't look so good for me to kill a man like Cooter. But if nobody had stand for that, they'd laugh me right out of town. That's what you were figuring on, wasn't it? I, I, I had nothing to do with it, Marshall. I wasn't thinking on nothing. You're not as smart as I thought you were. Leave in town, Sissle. I'm going to give you one hour. And I hope you take longer. But what you made me do to Cooter is going to be a real pleasure to drag you out of town. This will leave yet, Mr. Dillon? He's still saddling up in the stable over there, Chester. I'm going to give him about one more minute. What did Doc say about Cooter? Oh, Cooter's fine. Doc gave him some powders and stuff. He's real calm now. Where is he? I don't know. He left Docs quite a little bit ago. You explained to him what Sissle was trying to do. Oh, yes, sir. I made it real plain like you told me. You think he understands now? He understands everything, Mr. Dillon. You know, it's funny, but like Doc said, getting scared so bad he fainted to help Cooter think straighter, at least about what happened. He ain't near as a fuzzy as usual. Sissle's time is up. I'm going on that stable now and run him on. He won't give you no price. Now he won't, but I kind of wish he would. You could have run him on a large long time ago. I wanted to catch him, Chester. I wanted to bring him to try. That's inside the stable, Doc. Come on. It's done. It's Cooter. He's killed Ben Sissle. All right. Drop the gun, Cooter.   He lied to me. He made a fool out of me.  I was running him out of dodge.   Honestly, I wasn't.  Sissle told me I wasn't doing anything bad.    All right. All right, Cooter. I know that. Now just calm down.  You're pointing that gun at me? No. The gun's back in my hole, Chester. Look at it. See? I am looking at it. And I can't stand it. No, I... Cooter. Cooter! Ain't you going after him? That's scary. I'm even worse. That's bad enough now. But he killed a man. He murdered him. He won't run far, Chester. I'll find him when this trial comes up. Done enough to Cooter for one day. Well, it ain't your fault, Mr. Dillon. No, that doesn't make me feel any better about it. The personal message about cancer is author Godfrey. Thank you. Cancer is a subject I know something about, but for the grace of the good Lord and some wonderful, courageous doctors, I'm here to talk to you about it right now. I want to do everything I can to help save other people. Let me pass on to you the best advice the American Cancer Society has to offer, and that is to see your doctor at least once a year for a health checkup. It could mean the difference between cure and tragedy, and we almost do even more than that. We've got to help our scientists conquer this thing. Dig deep, my friend. Remember, this is cancer we're fighting. We've all got to give that much more. Thank you, author Godfrey. Remember, when an American Cancer Society volunteer, your neighbor calls on you, give generously. Gun Smoke. Produced and directed in Hollywood by Norman McDonald, stars William Conrad as Matt Dillon, U.S. Marshal. The story was specially written for Gun Smoke by John Messon. Featured in the cast were Frank Cady, Barney Phillips, and Vic Perron. Parley Bear is Chester, Howard McNeer is Doc, and Georgia Ellis is Kitty. This is George Walsh inviting you to join us again next week when CBS Radio presents another story on Gun Smoke. Don't ask her Godfrey every weekday on the CBS Radio Network.


Yes, meet the needs of the young people, do it in a responsible way. And since young people do care about things like the environment, young people care more about the, you know, equality between the sexes and ethnic groups and things like that, do it in a green, responsible way. And then hopefully you'll make a fortune. And you will remember to help people when you're filthy rich.


Sakeen. Yes. Tell us where you're from. I'm from Kathmandu, Nepal. Kathmandu, Nepal. Yes. That's not a suburb of Albuquerque, is it? No, not at all. Not at all. Yes. How long does it take to go from there to here? At least 24 hours. Yeah. Yeah. That is far. You have several businesses in Nepal. Yes. Roughly how many businesses do you have in Nepal? Roughly, I think eight. Eight businesses. Yeah. And so you just, you look young, but you're 77, is that right? No, not 77. You have eight businesses. Yeah. And not all eight businesses are technical. Yes. They are out of technical as well. So one of your businesses is an agency. Yes. Yeah. Tell us about that business. That business is more about we initially started off, there's two businesses which does agencies. It's like Catch Internet and WebExports. So they do agencies, initially we started up with ODEX, the freelancing site. And then after that we went to the referral and we have existing clients and all, so which is, which keep us giving the projects. So you've done, ODEX changed your name to... Upwork. Upwork. Yeah, upwork. But when it was ODEX, you were picking up jobs from there. Yeah. And then did you end up stopping at some point? In Catch Internet, I end up stopping. I was once doing a lot of ODEX work and even we got big clients like Mogulam Media Group and Music Business Association here in states. So we even hosted those sites in WordPress.com VIP. And at the time it was really tough. So you got projects on ODEX that were big enough to host on... VIP. And I work with Jake. He was in Nob Ten Up at the time, different company. So he was also handling the same project with me. Wow. Off ODEX. Yes. That's not normally what you think of when you think of an ODEX project, right? You think of like a $12 effort or $60 effort, but this bigger project. Yes. And I was the full-time developer for them. And we even had lots of other people working. So you built up that agency off of taking different-sized projects. Yes. And how big did you grow that agency? I'm like, if you talk about Catch Internet, we grew really big at the states that I couldn't sleep that much because there was lots of work. And that's why I took a vacation and went to Australia and had a one-month vacation. And so I thought, like, what I'd do the next. And it happens to be what camp. Melbourne, which I attended. And then I got the idea of some meeting themes and all those things. That's how the team started up. But then I met a few other people who can handle the agency's work. So we hand over those to my friends, which are running businesses. But I'm also one of the partners over there. Got it. Yeah. But that still didn't tell me how big you got it. Yeah. I'm like, now we have all the technical companies in the same building. Okay. So what we do is it's so easier to manage. Yeah. How big is that? It's 70 people. Seven-zero. Yes. You have 70 people that are all doing WordPress work. Yes. And how do you get the leads for those projects? I don't know. It would be surprising to say that ODEX gave me all the agencies. And after that, it's just referral. Like, like, more of them referral, these people, music associations, people referral, that people, that people. I was like, it was coming even, even not doing anything. They just said, like, do you want to work in this project? I said, yes, why not?  Right? Because you're basically like, I did nothing. And then people just threw money at me. Yeah. Because I did one thing good. One project well. And that just cascaded from there. Yeah. That's the only thing that I did. Even in the theme, I did one thing good. Everything came back. I even didn't do SEO. I still haven't done SEO in my casting. Still, I think WordPress is awesome. It's doing great. So the theme, you have a theme company. Yes. And you have several themes. How many themes do you guys have? We have about 40 free themes and about more than 40 to 50 premium themes. Okay. 40 free 40 to 50 premium. And where do you distribute the 40 to 50 premium? I exclude in my own site, cast theme.com and also one theme in WordPress.com. And two themes in theme forest and various themes in mojo market place and creating market. So you have, you know, using a couple of different places to do distribution, but it's, you don't have all of them over at mojo or you don't have all of them over at theme forest. So how, how do you get the word out?  So how are people finding these themes? It's more organic kind of thing. For cats themes, what we do is like we are in a premium business. So we submit most of the free themes in WordPress.org and some of them don't have in.org, but like we submit free themes that free themes are organically captured our users. And once when I was starting at least 10% used to, 10% used to come and then 1% used to buy it. So it was a great conversion, but now it's more saturated, but then again, it's, it's worth great in my own site. But in 2017, I already told in my presentation that, okay, we had a very saturation point like it was not growing. So I entered the marketplace and tried off different marketers and I liked the WordPress.com. It's awesome. So you have a theme company. You have a development WordPress agency. Yes. But you do more. And one of them is T-shirts. Yeah, we do T-shirts. How did you get into T-shirts? It's again, I like to thank community like WordPress community. So great. We're organizing what camp I'm the founding member of WordPress and Nepal community. And we always had a problem of T-shirt quality in Nepal. Like they were like a little rough and thick. And whenever I come to what camp you ask what camp, then I have like little slick T-shirts. And I see Jetpack T-shirt, WooCommerce T-shirt. It's a nice quality. It's not 100% cotton, but it's like mix of cotton and polishers. And so I like that. Like it can go really well, it's soft and nice and easy to carry because it gets reason. So I thought like why don't I have those kind of T-shirts. And I just search around, nobody sells that. So most people just so you know in terms of feedback, most people and they're like I like that kind of T-shirt and there's no company that sells it. They say bummer, there's nobody that sells it. But you, you're like why don't I start a T-shirt? Yeah, that's what that's like. Why don't I start a T-shirt? My first customer is Woodcamp. That's right. I will be my own customer. So how did you go about starting a T-shirt company? What did it take?  They were really excited about getting T-shirt and we have designers which in team business we don't have. Our design doesn't get packed all the time. And there's really good fine artists as well. One of them made Sam's portrait, family's portrait I think. So there were three kind of things. So like I said, that would be good opportunity for them to design T-shirt as well. And then sell. So that's how I felt like. So that's the design. So you had your own staff that had some free space to design. But you have to print T-shirts, right? How did you do that? Yeah, that's what like the other partners, they, I saw them the match fields. I want this and this and the other partners resource about it and they import the match fields. And we started the stitching and all those factory, creative factory and stitching. See how it just rose off his lips? We just started a factory. Yeah, you know, what am I going to do this weekend? How about I start a factory? So I get that you import materials. I get that. That doesn't break my brain. I'm just trying to figure out that part right in the middle. The designers, I got material. No, but you have to actually, you have to make shirts. Yeah, it's like the manpower is not that expensive in Nepal. So that's always a good point. Did you have to go out and find and hire people to be T-shirt makers? Yeah, I'm like, in the first we started on with just outsourcing it. Yeah. The stitching company. Then we started in-house. Then you started bringing your house. You also have to buy equipment for that. Yes. You know, which equipment is the light equipment? Oh, that was not my part on that. No, you just gave that to someone else to figure out. I cannot figure out everything by myself. Yeah, no, no. I'm doubting that, but I'm willing to go with it.  You make T-shirts for the WordCamps. Where did you take it from there? We started targeting more corporate clients. We didn't want one-to-one customers. So first we went B2B, business to business. We focused on events. We focused on the company's own T-shirt because everyone is nowadays branding their own T-shirts and everything. So we started on that and now we have a physical store with sales. Your own designs? Yeah, directly to the personal. Okay. Yeah. That's awesome. How's that business doing? Right now it's just picking up. I don't say it's highly profitable, but it's profitable enough to run a store because we didn't have a store before. So it's profitable enough to run a store. So we just opened this year the store is live. Now just we are offering to personal people. Before that we were just B2B only. Yeah. So you got a web agency, you got a theme store, you got a T-shirt store. Supports and all. Yeah, but then at some point you decided after school programs, how did that come about? I came from a management background. I did my MBA in Singapore and then after that the education system in Nepal was not good. So I teach MBA students in Nepal back home for seven years. In your free time? Yeah, in the morning time like I was like. So from the morning seven to nine I used to teach in MBA program then I go to office and then I was working hard. Starting day job. Yeah, day job and then all those things. So I knew that there was something not working. And after I had my child I know that okay what's there's something missing again, you know. There's no after school work and I send my child to. And I said okay there is a problem again. So whenever I see a problem I try to create a company to solve that. So we are the first company to establish after school in Kathmandu. That's incredible. And that could have been enough, right? But I think you're working in a preschool now. Yeah, so from April we were starting up with a preschool and we just posted on Facebook and all that. We are now open for admissions and all. And the construction is full face. Because like the after school is mainly three to six. But those places where like our staff were free from morning. So it's like okay what do I need to do it. And also the preschools either we have to go for expansive school which has good preschool. And that's not everyone cup of tea. Or you have to go to like really bad, bad preschool. So there was not anything in between which can. And most of the people in Kathmandu is in between stays. Not that high stays. So we wanted to capture that in between stays people. So there's really two dynamics going on, right? You're always looking for what's the problem and can I solve it. We're also talking about targeting specific market sectors, right? So it may be that there's a solution for the high end or it may be a solution for the super low end. But in the mid-market you're like hey, there's a gap. And so let me go address it. And you normally are listening for those issues from your own employees. Yeah, own employees, my friends. Because like I established after school after giving birth, right? After I have my own son. Because now I have a circle of new parents. And then everyone talk about things working in Kathmandu or things not working. So that's how whenever I talk like even like there's other examples like team review as well, same thing. I was reviewing a thing and that Emile proposed me do want to own a team review company. I said why not, sure. That's slide to the script. That's it. That's right. Why not? Because an opening will go after it. Yeah. And that's how you have eight companies. Yeah. How many total employees do you have? All around. I cannot count because like I just overlook on the management side and both sides. But in the IT only I look around because I'm in the same building working. So that's why I know 7 to 75. But it's hundreds. I think yes. It has to be hundreds. And I'm really glad that I could make that changes to Kathmandu. Because that was the only reason I flew back to home so that I can at least contribute something to the community itself. Otherwise I would have stayed here in states or in Singapore. How often do you make it back to the US? I come here at least once a year. Yeah. Yeah. But it's easier given all the different stuff you're running over there to live out there? Yeah. Somehow I got to manage. I started learning to manage that. Okay. Now I can leave. And last year I took two months vacation. This year I'm taking one month vacation for US. So I'm trying to love like taking more vacations and checking out if they can do it or not. And I'm flexible enough. If they can't do it I'll fly back. If they can't do it I'll just relax back. What are you learning as tips in terms of how to get it so that they can take care of it without you there? So I'm giving them more of a leadership kind of thing. So they try to like if someone's looking at the operations I'm trying to make like a design team, operation team and also like we have our own kitchen team. So everything is more operated. We have operation team and we have production team and design team. So it's more like functional. Everything is working smoothly on that scale. So nowadays only for like if they have any discussion or measure confusion then I need to be there or I can do it virtually nowadays. So that's easy. I talk with them once a while even when I'm here. So I talk with the leads like are you doing okay? And even if they don't call me I just make sure and I just talk with them and say is everything okay? Do I need to help on anything? I keep asking them and thanking them like okay you are doing great job and I'd like to thank you very much. And so do you need anything from here? And you have partners that are in some of these businesses right? Are they active in any part of running it or are they only financial partners? No they are active in running as well. So there's several of you running all of these companies together? Yes. How did you find those partners? Oh that's a tough question again. Find the partners like the education partner I find while I was teaching and all. So I have a group. A t-shirt is like the same like my friends circles. And for the IT is like more about what camps. So I went to the work camps. I organized the work camp. They have more trust in me. And then they said okay okay I can do great with you together. So it's just like they really trust me and so I'm so thankful to them. Whenever I said I want to start this time everyone gets excited. Okay let's do it. Wow that's nice. That's good. That's good. Do you have any people in your world that every time you come up with a new idea to start a new company that they go, hey slow down this is crazy? I haven't faced that because I don't tell people unless I'm really prepared. Unless I have a really good idea and I draft them I try to. First thing I always explain to my wife like okay this is the thing I'm excited about. Do you think it works? And she's very supportive and she said I think you can try. Otherwise there's always options. There's nothing months to lose because we already have businesses going on. And so and then after I get convinced with that then I talk to them. So after it passes the wife test then you take it to some friends. Yes. But you also prepare for those meetings right? It's not a crazy idea. No no no. You're actually doing some research and work. Yeah yeah because that was taught to me while I was studying in Singapore. Like you have to have a proper business plan to show it to the people before starting any businesses. So I have a proper plan. So what's next? What next is again a big question. Next I was thinking of bringing in organic farm because Nepal is very good at farming and we have a lot of good natural herbs and everything. And even my sister-in-law they have just established Nepali tea traders which import tea from Nepal and sell it here in the US. So I was thinking like maybe I'll go on like I got the idea I'm getting so excited like maybe farm organic kind of farms or something like that. But that's just going in my mind. I haven't prepared at all. Here's good news. I heard it from Sam that he wants to potentially stop working on a map and just live on a farm and run one right? So there's a potential business partnership there in the making. Yeah yeah and what can be great for all those farmers. That's right you find partners. Did you want to be in a Nepali farm? Well I can bring you some great tips. So in the midst of all this right? Are there ever quiet moments when you get nervous about everything that you're building? Any insecurity that seeps in and nervous about anything? Yeah I had nervousness about the catch themes like whether it will go on downsides or like whether it will go more on sets because it was in saturation point. Right you started seeing it get flat and no growth and that starts to worry you. In those moments what do you do to get through it? I scratch my head first of all. I was like what's wrong with it? You know when I developed like in 2012 I just developed I think two or three themes. And it gave me like a whole year of profit. And I was like wow that's a great profit. But now it's like I'm making every month one theme and still getting. A year's worth of profit total. I'm like what's happening you know? And that gives me really worried and that's why I concentrated with different people and from the WordPress community itself. And then we changed from development centric theme to design centric theme. So in mid of 2017 we started to the design centric theme and that paid us well. And then two of our themes which did really good like ferrity in WordPress.com and photography in WordPress.org gave us like really boom to ourselves. And that got me excited. So part of that dynamic is you have a group of people you can go to to talk about your head scratching. Yeah I'm like there's lots of good friends in WordPress community. I just scratch and tell like what's happening. How do you know which, like do you develop a core set of friends that you talk to? Do you just ask the questions to everybody? How do you figure out that support group to help you run your businesses? I know some of things are instinct. Like I just because like I was trying to do the dot-com stuff and that was like targeted. I wanted to David. I wanted to contact David exactly because he's handling WordPress.com premium theme. I was not instinct. I was like precisely I want to meet him. I want to network with him. I want to talk to him. I want to find the solution to go to dot-com. And even I talked with various people but he was the one.  Yeah I have to make it to him. So I followed him. I talked with him. And then in 2016 I was a WordCamp US speaker. At the time speaker dinner was a great moment to talk to him. So I talked with him throughout and he gave me good idea of design centric theme. And I would like to thank him. Like we got in dot-com and we are getting good themes after his feedback. That's the thing. But taking people's feedback means you also have to potentially change what you're doing. Yes. Is that hard for you? I'm not that resistant to change. Especially if revenue is flat. Yeah I'm like... Yeah when your business is going flat... Try something. Change something. Yeah I changed something. You know the cash theme was the one of the main cash cow for my business. It was giving me a lot of money. When it goes flat it was really a serious problem. So I had to reach out. But all the business are really picking up slowly and everything going good. But now I'm more confident even cash theme will do okay then I'm fine with it because other companies are picking up. That's one of the things when you're talking to business owners. That diversification so that you're not relying on one revenue stream but having multiple revenue streams. You can use the one to help start the others off. But you want the others to grow so that you're not relying on one. Ends up being a very very helpful model. Yeah I do that. And as earlier I talked about I used a community based model for cash theme. But now with my studies and everything I'm trying to mix around with the management style. So I've now free some of them on for the operating. And even if I go for a loss for like one year I should be able to survive. Those are the things now I'm making senior replanings and all those things. Before I was like so confident like okay I can do anything because it's still rock on. But now it's like okay I need to plan this. I need to plan that. Yeah creating contingency plans. Yeah. Yeah no it totally makes sense. We have time for a question or two. Does anyone have a question? Yeah right there. Mr. Pierce I think you said it but I missed it. The t-shirt you know we never really knew the company. Do you market that only in Nepal or also here in the US? Or where is your market? Currently only in Nepal. We are not that big enough to market here in states. And secondly in terms of potential businesses have you thought about travel agencies? Yeah there are lots of travel agencies. I didn't find a problem in travel right now. If I find a problem in travel definitely I will start. Because like there are lots of online businesses which is I think destroying the existing travel agency. And I don't think I can go on that segment. Maybe planning travel trekking sections can be a good. Like trek and a proper guide kind of things. But not on travels because it's more it's like online businesses. It's like taking everyone put in. It's booking from XPD booking from TripAdvisor Lonely Blind School. Well I was thinking more travel within Nepal. Yeah within Nepal also they are doing that. Oh no XPD. They're trying their growth too. XPD is like they are even doing it within the cities and within everything. Even I booked everything from XPD over here. So it's like okay. So I'm like those are the big players already playing in there. I think it's not a good idea for me. At least I'm not convinced about that. We had a question over here. Yes. You said that you know your themes are several different markets. Was that right design? Or was that just being at this halfway point? So did you when you put your some of your themes in different. When you put you know Summon and Vato and Summon. We're putting a common Summon mojo. Was that on purpose? Were you trying to put some in different places? Or was it by for some other reason? Right now I'm trying. It's an trial phase like I'm trying different markets. You're doing it on purpose. You're trying to see get feedback on what's going on. Yeah I'm trying to see which type of theme sells where. Yeah. So I'm looking at what looking at WordPress.com. What type of theme is needed there. I'm looking at theme forest. What type of theme they are looking for. Somehow find out like okay WordPress.com needs very niche theme. Very focused designs and very very good quality design. But if you go on theme forest they just need visual composer. And 10 and 15 pages of home page, different home page.  If you are niche then you are already 10 cells for one theme. So I found out what are they. Every marketplace has their own market. So it depends on what you focus in. If you have to choose the marketplace. I think you shouldn't sell it in all the marketplace. But I didn't know which one to go. So I tried it all the marketplace. It's awesome. Let's give Sakina Ham. Good stuff. We're going to take a little break and then we'll be back with John.