Anthony Smith is on a jet plane right now flying from the USA to Manila through Tokyo. He will be here tonight and would you like to see him as soon as he arrives? Tell me in the comments below. Do you know who Anthony Smith is? He's one of our most loyal staff. He's been with us from the very beginning. Anthony is a role model for me because he never gives up and he's always taking initiative trying something new. He's trying to get you Minecraft servers for free. He brought you the hitbox deal where you can partner your live stream with freedom. Isn't that amazing? Thank you Anthony for being such a good guy and that's why you earned a trip all expenses paid to the Philippines to live and work with me, with the freedom team in the Philippine offices that we have is that you next. Are you coming to the Philippines to join the freedom family and will you join us here to work and live in Eastwood City? We can only pick a few people right now who are the most deserving. If you feel you qualify, head on over to jobs.freedom.tm and link your LinkedIn profile and then fill in why you want to come to Eastwood City. Be specific. Tell us exactly why you think you need to come here to be more productive and to be helpful to the freedom family. For those of you who haven't received a response yet who have applied, please be patient. We have now shortlisted 10 people to come to the Philippines. Five of them are already here. Who is that? That's Mirko, my brother. That is Michael and Sebastian from Quebec. That is Doug McKenzie from Australia. Sorry Doug. And now Anthony. So he's the fifth person. We are waiting for five more people to come but we're always queuing up more people. My goal is to bring 100 of you here to the Philippines to live and work with freedom. Isn't that exciting? What other MCN gives this kind of opportunity to its partners or its staff? The opportunity to live and work in an exotic new country to get a life experience that you don't get living at home or working down the street. This is about helping you grow as an individual. It's also about helping us work together as a team from one central location so we can both learn and grow together as a family. That is the spirit of freedom. We are the freedom family and we help each other grow by giving each other tips and advice and doing things that are always helpful and positive down there in the comments below. This is Freedom. And who am I? I am George, CEO and founder of Freedom and my daughter released her first video. The first ever Avienda video is now on the Avienda channel. Yes, my five year old daughter has her own channel and you can check it out from YouTube, sorry, from Freedom Kids. YouTube Kids is a separate concept. It's a mobile app for kids. So how do you get to Freedom Kids? Well, head on over to Freedom Central, youtube.com slash freedom and then click YouTube Kids right there on the right hand side or you can just click the link down there below. That'll take you to YouTube to take you to Freedom Kids. Freedom Kids. And then you'll see Avienda's channel on the right hand side. Click that. She has 30 subscribers right now. Will you subscribe to Avienda's channel so you can keep up with her videos? A kid reviewing toys for kids and doing other things like singing. This is Freedom. I am George and you've been watching and we will grow together as a family because this is the Freedom family. You are part of it. We are all part of it and we're all growing together. So grow with us and partner with Freedom. That play now button right there on the video bar is all you need to click to get started.


Aviation Ordnance Technicians attached to the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit store, build, and load ordnance on Cadena Air Base. Squadron puts in a request, we come back up here, build it, we deliver it to them, the rest is theirs from that point. If it weren't for us, the pilots would just be on a scheduled flight without ordnance. Providing ordnance for the pilots is their priority, but it also helps the Marines to remain efficient in their specialty. It's good training for us as well as the pilots, you know, the squadron gets good training as far as hanging everything, so it's all around, just very good training. We're giving them a lot of ordnance, they're flying it. These Marines are currently deployed in support of Marine Attack Squadron 214, based out of Yuma, Arizona. Marine Corporal Chelsea Steinbrusher Hoffman, Cadena Air Base, Okinawa.


Welcome back to Brathford City. You're back for after maybe eight, nine years away and you've signed on long until the end of the season. How did the move come about? I think it's the last week or two I think the manager got in touch with Blackpool and I'm once I heard of the interest. There was only one place I wanted to come. I wanted to come back here and sort of finish what I started. What will you bring to the club that we currently do up? I don't know because I think the team's doing really, really well at the minute so hopefully I can just add to that and keep the run going that they're on at the minute. You look at the recruitment over the summer obviously you'll know Gary's done quite a lot. What do you make of the squad? It's a really, really good squad and I think the gaffers recruited a lot of experience for this league as well so I think it's a really good squad and I think there's only one thing that we need to do and that's get promoted. You talk about the division. You know a lot about this division. You played in it with Bradford and most recently with Carl Isle.  Although we started the season well it's a long one isn't it? Yeah it's always a long season. You go to some ups and downs but I think if you look at the teams that get over it's consistency. You need a goalscorer and I think the gaffers brought in a couple of really good additions going forward. Now I think it's just consistency and doing the right things and stuff like that. What does it mean to you to be coming back here? Is there any sentimental value for you? Now I think I'm coming back as a different person really. I think I was young and immature the first time I was here. Now I'm looking to fresh start and I'm looking forward to it. What do you remember about the club from last time? Obviously the fan base is something that this club is quite famous for and you might get a taste of that tomorrow if not next week. No it's massive and the club shouldn't be in league too. I think everyone knows that and we need to get out of this division this season so the fans don't deserve to be in this division and I'm sure the fans want to see us getting proud. Who do you see as the key rival clubs in this division? You know quite a bit about the other teams. I don't think we should be looking at any other clubs if we just go about and win our games. That's all that matters and if you don't take too much interest in everybody else let them worry about us.  Yeah I can't wait it feels like I'm sort of just getting my season started now so I'm excited and hopefully I can contribute with some goals and assist. Just on that you joined Blackpool in the summer obviously you now with us. Has it been a difficult summer for you? Is it perhaps a little bit frustrating you're looking to get that behind you now? Yeah I think it's been a bit unfortunate really that Manjid has signed me a Blackpool sort of left the week after I signed so it's never a good thing but it's a fresh start now and I'm just looking forward to getting going. And what do you know about Gary the Gaffer here? All the lads at Bradford are at Blackpool sorry I only have really high things to say and other people that have worked with him in football as well so he seems brilliant this morning and I really can't wait to get going. And you look at the results, wins and draws on the board we are unbeaten but there are some very difficult games coming up and they're coming thick and fast in all competitions. Yeah but I think that's something we should look forward to, I think it's a strong squad and it's not just the 11 it's going to be everybody so I think everyone's looking forward to the challenge.


Good evening, everyone. My name is Alyssa Stone. I am the senior director of programs and community engagement here at the Kennedy Institute, and it's my pleasure to welcome you all to our fine establishment for this very special evening with one of our fabulous trustees, Arnold Grisham, in conversation with our chief executive officer, Kathy Bella. I'm very excited for this wonderful conversation. Before we get going, and I pass it over to Kathy, who will introduce our special guest. I wanted to just give a brief introduction about Mechanics Institute. Who is here for the very first time? I know there's lots of new faces in the room. Welcome. And who are some of our members in the room? Thank you, members. Love to see it. Mechanics Institute was founded in 1854. We are a cultural center on a historical landmark, a gorgeous multi-story accessible general interest library, world around chess clubs, and events center. We do upwards of 10 to 15 events per week during Mechanics Institute. There's always something going on that will keep your interest. We have both groups, writer's groups, chess classes and tournaments, author talks like this evening, film series, concerts, and much, much more. I hope you'll check us out by visiting mylibrary.org to learn more about how you can engage with our community and consider joining us as a member here at Mechanics Institute. I'd love to highlight a couple of our upcoming events that I hope you'll come and consider checking out. Tomorrow evening we start our March Cinema Lit film series. We have women screenwriters and directors on women's lives. Tomorrow we start with a piano, a very exciting film. And then next Friday, March 8th, we have an evening tour. So if you're less familiar with our space, please join us for one of our evening tours, both on evenings on some Fridays and every Wednesday at noon. And we'll of course follow this Cinema Lit on March 8th with the film Julie and Julia. Also celebrating Women's History Month next Thursday, March 7th, we have our Power and Progress of Women's Voices panel in collaboration with the Women's National Book Association. We have a fantastic set of five authors who are joining us. So we have lots going on here at Mechanics Institute. Please visit mylibrary.org to learn more. With that, I'm very pleased to introduce our CEO, Catherine Bella, who will be in conversation with Arnold this evening. Please give them a warm welcome. Thank you so much, Alyssa. It is my pleasure to be here tonight to interview Arnold for this very special book. And I want to tell you a little bit about both him and this terrific piece that he's put together called Making a Way Out of No Way. Making a Way Out of No Way is Arnold's first book, a memoir, though he is currently outlining ideas for his next writing project. He shared with us, we had a Zoom call together earlier this week, so I know he's busy at work doing that as well. He also recently became president of the CEO of Gateway Bank in Oakland, a community-based bank. And he is my colleague and I, who is in the audience, colleague of our very own. We're very pleased to have Arnold as a member of our Board of Trustees, as Alyssa alluded to, here at Mechanics Institute. And he also serves on the program and chess committee, chairing the latter of the committee. So we're very lucky to have him in all of those roles on a regular basis to advance the mission of our terrific organization. My story is not a single story, but a series of connected narratives woven together into one life, you know, Arnold shares in the book. And isn't that the like this? A series of connected narratives. And I know you'll enjoy reading not only about the trajectory of Arnold's life, but the reflections he's made along the way, and his philosophy about what living life in full is truly needed. There's factual information, and there's a lot of philosophical information, and herein I know he's going to share that during our conversations tonight. Making a way of no way is a unique and inspiring success story that is both authentic and philosophical. It details the life and experiences of a child born to a working class black family that she traveled in the 1940s, and all that entailed. His family and the neighborhood within which he grew up helped a young Arnold to become, against all odds, a graduate of Paul University and an MBA in the field of finance. Arnold's career in banking is a testament to his courage and commitment to breaking through racial barriers and redefining possibilities for those who would follow. He's been an inspiring example as one of the first black executive vice presidents at Wells Fargo Bank, and one of the very few black senior executives in the country running a major financial institution's corporate and institutional banking business. Arnold also was one of the country's first banking executives to create the run in multicultural community ethics. The book tells about the personal as well. He's upbringing, the influence of his mother and his grandmother, the courtship and marriage, and building a life with his former wife, Jane. They were married for 50 years, and she unfortunately passed from Kansas a number of years ago. And the personal story is also one of renewal. Meeting and marrying his current partner in life, Dr. Paulina Roosevelt, and the sharing of the adventures that they enjoy together on their life path. We'll also learn about Arnold's hobbies, specifically his appreciation for a collection and donation of African American American literature, much of which is now housed at the DePaul University John T. Richardson Library. So thank you for being with us tonight, Arnold, and let's get to the conversation. And we look forward to opening up that conversation to Q&A from the audience later in the program. Arnold wanted to start tonight with a reading, so we'd like to give you an opportunity, and you may have a couple that you're going to do throughout the conversation, and he's going to start with one that's particularly meaningful to him. First off, I'd just like to thank Paulina McBride for joining me on this journey. I came here 35 years ago to be my wife. I think I must have colored a wee moment, but lucky for me. And so thank you, thank you for continuing to be on the journey, and we'll have parallel journeys together going through. And so what I wanted to do, and that's, I'm naturally discouraged with the envelope. I had an editor, and what he wrote about me, he said, you have to understand what it's all about. What does it mean? It's all about the hundred things that you did. And so he told me to write an envelope, and he said to me, my life is going to study and make it a way out of no way. I made it a way out of no way, but my father lost his job, and I had to figure out how to complete my education. I made a way out of no way by getting into the Paul University, B.S. and N.B.A. that gave me the confidence and credentials to become one of the first generation of African American business executives to enter an unwelcoming and unfriendly world. I made a way out of no way when I was stopped at every turn by the institutional racism in 1970 Chicago as I tried to navigate a banking career and moved to California for the first time. I made a way out of no way as my family adjusted to the increased cost of living in California as we worked to create a better life for ourselves. I made a way out of no way as I navigated through my imposter syndrome to life ago as well as by the way I had more confidence in my abilities than I did. I made a way out of no way by starting a bank and saving another bank from failing and thereby creating opportunities for others and myself. I made a way out of no way as my family suffered through losing the glue that held us together in the loss of Jane. I made a way out of no way as I redoubled my efforts in being of service to others as I dealt with new survivor guilt and out of living Jane. And finally, I made a way out of no way in marrying Paulina who's going to be new purpose and who has enriched my life through academic and personal journey to help others. Because what's past is prolonged. I'm confident that if necessary I can continue to make a way out of no way because my journey continues. And it makes me proud to see how that journey, that way, has impressed on my 19-year-old, 20-year-old now, granddaughter who seemingly, as she came out of the world and was wise beyond her years, has been driven in focus, has been a driven and focused person. She's now a role in UCLA and recently she's said to me, before reading my novel, can I tell you a secret grandpa? At first I just had a will, but I didn't see a way. Then I willed myself into a way and now there is a way. For there's a will, there's a way. Should be a way out of it. Thank you, Arielle. Let's start a little bit with those early days in Chicago. Here's one play as we have some things that's common. I also grew up in a working-class family. I was the first in my extended family to ever go to college and I went on to grad school as well. It's always great when you read it. I'm already teaching in the way.  Between college and grad school I moved to Chicago with a good friend who was going to grad school at the University of Chicago. We lived in Hyde Park on the south side. I worked for Chicago Urban Lake on the west side of the project. I kept it related to your story as I was reading about your family of origin and the path that you moved down and what it was like as you did that. So can you share a little bit about your mother's influence because she was certainly very, very critical and you're operating and brought opportunities to you and was such a great support? And some of the challenges you had. You had some health challenges early on in life and there were other challenges in your neighborhood and so on as well as support. Can you talk about that a little bit? Sure. My mother, her job, she put landings in the coast and she made $8 a week. And my father was a shipping clerk. He did $120 a week. And we lived in a two-story walk-up. But you know, we felt like we were doing okay. Yeah. Everybody was a state senator. In fact, John Telling Lynch, sitting right there, grew up in Chicago. I said he grew up in Chicago but literally blocks from where I grew up and had a senator experience. I think his dad was a public servant. He was, was he a policeman? He was a police officer. Right, right. But my mother, my mother took me to, to take me to the public library. You know, back then, the public library had three movies. And you know, Senate polling chairs and a real projector. And in my mind's eye, I could still see scenes from, you know, from some of those movies. Well, for eight bucks a week, she took me on vacations. She would take me to different places. But she was, she was just, she was big on reading. She would, she'd put me on her lap and she'd read me a story. And then I'd say, you know, I'd say, when I read it again, and there were times when I could, I did not read it, I was still young. But I could, I had heard her read the story so many times that I could, I could actually read it myself. Absolutely, I am. But she was, she was really big on reading. In fact, she didn't care about the kind of books as far as she could, as long as her reading sounds good.  So that was, you know, that was, it was very, very fortunate. And I was also fortunate to go to a high school that was only two or three years old. And everybody was shiny and everybody had high pictures and students, everybody had high expectations. And so yeah, so that was my story. And Tony and I, I think we moved out to California. We actually made no, no, no, each other. And she kind of moved, moved out to California and similar times and had relatives and lived, lived with blocks away from each other. Great. And. Yes, yes, it is. And so that love of reading and also I'm curious about when you started to learn to play chess. When, when did those things happen? You know, I think I was probably 11, 12 years old. It was right when Bobby Fisher was in his day and we couldn't wait for the latest chess game to be played. Yeah. And then you could read about the game. I mean, we each wrote that would be detailed in the Chicago Tribunal. So, and so we used to set out a stoop in this thing. Set out a stoop and a stoop is by the, by the, by the side. It's kind of a concrete next to stairs. You could set up, you could set up a stoop and you could have a large, so-called prop that used to come in, in a back-to-tape shift and you could play chess all day long. Great. That's great. So, here you are in Chicago.  So, mom, you're moving toward college. You end up at DePaul University. Tell us a little bit about that and what was that like just at that time with your family and what your opportunities were beforehand? How easy was that? What were some most important memories of that time in your life? Well, I ended up going to DePaul because I was a, I really love math and I'm a very good at math and I was trying to go to schools and programs and I had a program with seniors that you could go to during your college and take college courses and then colleges like DePaul would have seminars or math students so I just happened to go to one of their seminars at High School Students and I really, I felt it had fit me so I ended up going to DePaul and DePaul was one of two institutions that really changed my life and the priests at DePaul really looked out after us and I really didn't realize how much we were being taken care of until, you know, in the 1950s when I was asked to get trusted at DePaul and that's when I learned that the mission at DePaul was to educate kids for my friends in the Chicago area and for me, I guess I was a solid C student I was a C plus student I was a solid C student and my friends, my friends were starting to apply to grad school they were getting accepted and this was in grad school and I had the nerve to go and register as a business and say that I like to be admitted to the MBA program and they didn't even like they let me in the MBA program and getting an MBA for DePaul just absolutely set the stage and changed my life and then having an opportunity to go back and be a trustee was also a really, really big deal and how has that institution changed since you were there and what were the many ways you you had the ability to look at through different vantage points what do you think is different about it now it was a much smaller institution I was there now it's the largest Catholic university in the country I think it has something like 27,000 students it has back then when I was a trustee it had revenues I think of 500 or 600 million but DePaul never had a large amount he could use the cash flow to give scholarships to students and I'll never forget it was one year, one junior year my father became ill the tuition was $450 a semester and DePaul had changed to a court system and then $450 a quarter and we took out our first national epithecalum and nobody gave them a national epithecalum except for these two guys right here and the national epithecalum was that the interest rate was 3% and you had to start paying it back until 7 years after you graduated and then you made quarterly $45 a day and it was so entertaining that we couldn't wait for the bill to come yeah that's great well that gives opportunities for people that never would have been able to go otherwise I'm not supposed to go now that's great okay so you're there you are, you graduated with your MBA and then walked the group through a little bit of your career trajectory in the banking industry how you decided on banking it was very interesting I thought to read about your kind of old startup and then how did you move through your career and what that was like well even though I had an MBA I still didn't know what I wanted to do and I had a friend who was invited in commercial aid where you're dealing with companies and he said you should come and do this job because from that purge you see all these different industries and then you can choose one you know to the price of life and so I'm still trying to figure it out yeah if you're not still trying to figure it out something's wrong right we want to keep growing and changing and learning our whole life that's great as a part of all of that it seemed to me that education your love of it and the opportunities that it gave you also turned into your philosophy about giving back for example you turned to Joe Marshall's organization Alive and Free and another place where we connect because they were a long time client of mine I was their consultant and they had done such tremendous work I think they were in these 37 years and they have graduated so many young people from college and given them a chance and I wouldn't be able to figure out how to live that's a big part of how you turned that life experience around and then gave back in a similar manner chatting a little bit about your thoughts on education what it provided for you and how you came to make that turn I always believe that you need to pay it forward unless you need to figure out how you're going to use some resources to help others and I also believe that you have to have purpose one of the things when you get to be my age you see a lot of bad things that happen to people some of those bad things I've seen happen to people it's been when they retired I think of my father's my father's generation work was so hard and healthcare wasn't as good when they turned 65 we needed to retire for us people have to be 90 or 100 and so what are you going to do with your life and I've seen so many people that you know they go to Hawaii they send a big picture of what I have in six months later they can put their phones and they can put their locks in and I think sometimes when you stop your body says okay we're done so I think it's so important that we keep active that we have purpose that we have purpose and it was one of the things that one of the most important questions in my life is what are we doing for others thank you I know you wanted to do a second greeting and you alluded to it when you first started here about imposter syndrome and you told us a little story on the zoom call earlier this week yes well for me I think it's a step in my life I went to two journeys one was going to the outward journey to the pole and whatever and then the other journey was the inward journey and one of those inward journeys is dealing with I guess I called it imposter syndrome my father was the kind of black sheep of this land and he kind of he kind of transferred that to us I spent a lot of my life saying they were okay but I really they also said that some people that had the imposter syndrome are very successful because they work like dogs because they're so worried about being bowed down in the start so one day I was to see a vice president in the fall and I was going across the bridge and my boss said to me Rich you're worried you're supposed to be in my office and I said come and he said the directors at the long square go and elected you and exactly the vice president you know get your butt in my office and so I said to myself I didn't answer that and I said I don't think I'm going to be the general vice president and I said I'm going to be bowed out now I'm going to be bowed out and fire me when the pole gets out of private schools we're going to have to sell the house and get the trailer and go back to Chicago and I pulled this is where it really was crazy I pulled into the right of the arrow line and I said I'm getting promoted so the other syndrome is the positive signal was run and I couldn't do it right now but anyway so finding the inward journey for me has been much tougher than any outward journey yeah and it was very it was very interesting and very impressive to see all of it that takes work to do that and some of it is painful and some of it is very reflective and energizing it takes courage and it takes a lot of work to do the inward journey the other thing I could say was what we call survivor guilt and the neighborhood we're talking about we do people that were smarter than us and we do people that worked harder than us but they didn't get out and so here we used to get a free supply and they could feel this responsibility and okay that if I've been allowed to do more what am I supposed to do what am I supposed to be doing to make this a better place so the survivor guilt is part of the inward journey and still do it I'm 77 years old and I feel like in fact the Walter Johnson very close to the night we've had good times and we've been in tough times and he reminds me that the biblical passage in the pre-score tip is we're past the promise and so what are we supposed to do to make this a better place family a huge thing we talked about the family and the words of your life and the bed we built with Jane and your kids and the family times that you had from the grass that are in your book about spending time with your kids and your grandchildren as well and then children grandchildren and moving on to building a wonderful new life with your new life talk about family theme and what it's been like in terms of the importance of your life it's family is everything and I've really been blessed to have a great family and to have a second bite at the apple and have a new wife and for the two of us her journey is different from my journey but we've been able to we've been able to learn from each other's journey and it's really it's sometimes our place kind of looks like an academic place because she's got books, I got books she'll ask you about some issue that she's built by us about some issue that I'm dealing with and it's really been it's really been a big deal also it's been great to have great friends there's a guy sitting in the back waiting for a day of treatment who there have been times in my life where he has thrown me a life and didn't have to and so we've been we've been back and forth in each other's lives we know a lot of each other's secrets and it's been great to to have him and then there's a young person sitting next to him that's a kind of better than a man tea of mine and he's so young I think I have ties I have ties that are over than he does well those long standing multi-decade friendships are also very key in your story and in fact Walter is Walter one of the people I highlighted in my book in terms of people that there have been times when you know we've got kids and you know you're trying to do the right thing with kids and we've got to lean on each other we lean on each other because there are different issues and it's been really great to be able to work together I remember the first time we worked together with our kids we went to a Catholic grammar school and the school we had so much money so we put together a few parents and we were buying books and that's that was the first time that we we worked together as a citizen glad we're here to support you that's just terrific I do I do I always want them close by I'm going to ask just you talk a little bit about one more piece and then we'll kind of open it up for some questions deciding to write a memoir so we were talking again on the Zoom call earlier this week about how it's becoming ever more popular to write a memoir especially for many of a certain state in their lives and it's about different things for different people some of it's about putting down on paper your life journey so it helps you reflect and take stock of your life for some it's something that can be left to family members so they've got that written history and others to really do something like you did which is to publish a book that can be shared for a number of reasons so say a little bit about what motivated you to write a memoir and what did you learn along the way well first thing I did is I find success, what is success? What does success mean in this endeavor? and I made a decision that if no one read the book other than my kids it would be a success and there's a saying that if you don't tell your story somebody else will and you may not like their version so that's what caused me to really want to do this and I think those are the two that's great, thank you I know each table here one other piece that Arnold was talking about when we spoke earlier in the week he learned quite a lot about writing a memoir he's got some tips and we're sharing some of that information and it's also available in other formats as well so thank you for doing that there's one thing I'd like to share about the essay is that I'm trying to remember the name of the author who talked about the $10,000 book that every successful athlete writes a lot and he said you need to spend at least $10,000 and whatever your craft is if you want to become good at it and for writers the $10,000 is ringing it's probably $20,000 and people that are good writers they have read everything and there's a reservoir of stuff, knowledge and empathy that they can draw from when they write the other thing that I've learned that makes a good writer is you have to love rewriting and great writers they can't wait to get to the rewriting part of it and they just want to get their thoughts down in paper so they can get to rewriting and sometimes what they'll do is when I pass it they'll come back a few hours later and they'll look at what they've written and they'll see a better way to write what they've written and so and I follow them all from pre-writing and also the other issue is you can't have a deadline it's finished when you get finished and I mean sometimes the writers they carry the weight and they never finish because they're perfect for the writer lots of potential teams do you see a good in that situation for sure let's open things up to the audience and we have some questions out here of Arnold and we'll come around with the microphone for anyone who does have a question thank you I'm a member I'm a chess member thank you for sharing your story and I appreciate it I almost don't feel like I have the privilege I didn't read the book and I guess I just have to wonder for someone with the responsibility that you hold what is it that you fear and then what do you hope about it sure and I have an answer actually I fear that when I stand in front of Saint Peter or whoever and he asked me what did you do with the life of the living whatever I say it's going to be in that way and I hope that I still get a pass other questions Arnold thank you for your kind words you like to rewrite do you rewrite your life do you do anything differently because my outward journey I have been just tremendously blessed in my outward journey and I think it's been about the inward journey that has been harder for me I'll give you an example of how my outward journey has been blessed my first wife passed and we sold we sold the bank and I was lost absolutely lost and David he saw me from a distance and invited me to come to see the consultant at First Public Bank and he gave me something to do and that's an example I hope that my worst day is not a bad day others I'll have a good question you have played with finance and you're playing with writing how do you serve one another I looked at my what and I had another profession that I love to I love to hear someone else's story and and when you can get another person to talk about your story they'll tell you and I guess with writing so much comes to me from building a life I guess it's similar in that regard and that's what I find I love hearing someone else's story and I love reconnecting with stories in the past and getting them to come forward that makes sense I was really interested in hearing you talking about the inner journey having devoted myself to that since my retirement and I was curious at what point in your life did you recognize that there was an inner journey and perhaps really put some effort into developing and that's when I started reading Howard Thurman oh and Howard Thurman he has a trilogy of essays and one of them is called the inner journey and so that was when I first started focusing on the inner journey and for those of you that may not know Howard Thurman was probably the second most famous person to graduate from Morehouse College behind the King and he is a well known emotion who has written lots of books about Howard Thurman classes and he talks about the inner journey first of all I want to say you did good I just would like you to talk about this transformation that I've seen in you when I met you you were retired and recently a few months ago you became CBO and there's been this transformation this research of energy and the bank doors don't open until 8.30 he's up at 5.30 or 6.00 fully dressed at 7.00 with nowhere to go sorry can you talk about this renewal that you feel? what's going on in your head? I think David is also a good person to talk about this and to have a big life and then for whatever reason it stops you really appreciate what you have anymore and then to be blessed to resume that life makes you really appreciate even more and for me when I have a purpose and I have complicated problems that are difficult to solve I feel energized and I actually feel a sharper I feel mentally sharper and complicated problems that are difficult to solve you want to wake up at 2 o'clock in the morning say how am I going to make a point in the morning? that's not a problem it's one of the things I'm learning in writing is that sometimes I'm trying to express something and I learn to walk away and when you walk away then your mind is still working on the problem you go to sleep your mind is still working on the problem and then the solution comes to you so I feel that I'm more in tune I'm more in tune to what the universe brings me and part of it has been Mary Alina because most of you probably don't know that besides being a nursing professor she's written five books of poetry and she's never tried to write one poem she's never before she's never been coming to her she's never owned a poetry book never read poetry and she has fully formed poems that come to her and it's because somehow she's incredibly she's become open enough that this comes to her and so I've learned I've learned in my journey to be to try to be more open because more open I am more confident and I feel like it's 77 you don't even 37 and I feel like there's so much to do there's just so much to do and I think that being married to somebody who is an intuitive helps to make you more more open to all that the universe brings thank you one thing I like your thoughts on is you talked about the 10,000 mile rural and somebody who's been vanishing all your life it sounds like you've become really good when you're doing your kids you've stayed with us you know when they retire and have non-corporary going to something totally different I know for myself as somebody who's working in two different fields that each different field I've got into is loving to develop a different part of myself and I want to know your thoughts about staying with the same thing or doing different things with one's life it's really a struggle I've got a great thinking job that's coming to me from a writing standpoint and I go back and forth between the two and I want to say one time with one and the other I want to let the other know but that's to have that situation it's an unlivable question to have two things that you're trying to separate from one another which one do I want to focus on at this moment and I just feel like I feel like I'm living I'm living my best years great way to feel I just wanted to thank you so much for talking about a new life at your age because as I approach any kind of thinking new things are happening and I'm thinking, how can this be perhaps you just told me how it could be any other questions any other questions before we close tonight and Paulina can I say where is she she is taking up acting acting classes and explaining I just feel like I'm bombarded with my family bombarded with all this new stuff and just trying to keep going focus what have you there's a young man are you 42 yet yeah yes he has a lot of talk he's talking about this and he's he's a big talent that has a lot of stuff in this way that can do a lot of things it's interesting it's interesting to live vicariously with all the good opportunities Arnold, you're well known in our fraternity Sigma Phi 5 for mentoring and bringing in a lot of younger people and you've talked a lot about ways to help others and I just wanted to make that comment that a lot of the younger people in our organization look up to Arnold in an easy way that is relationships and I know for a fact that one of the keys to your business success is relationships and a question that I have if you had to name three mentors that were truly pivotal in your life and career is that something you're willing to do right now to make a brief comment on why yeah it's hard I mean part of what I'm doing the most is that a number of people have shown up at a critical time a critical juncture many people have fought a lot many people lost their lives in our community when I came to California the community that we live in I was embraced by so many people and the two of you are two people that have embraced me so when you come when you take the 2,000 mile trip it's you basically take the trip and you burn the boat it's not easy to go back and to be accepted and I think it's a community that we live in I think being in size of more than three people that are might have had the same experience but it was something about our community at that time that was a very very accepting token I'd love to a fraternity where you meet people from different disciplines and what happens to a lot of people especially in this community you know, this technology is a lot of times people are cycled you know, they don't have an engineer you know, they don't have a computer a scientist or what have you it's hard to meet people outside of the earth outside of your cycle and we've been blessed because we've been able to meet people and are doing things that are very different from what we were doing very emotional any other questions? if you look back on this outside Chicago talking to a young person their way out more guys I would tell them that if you grow up applying a lot of resources you do need to get some sort of career you know, just going to pay the rent for a fuller than a table but I would tell them that the great today is trying to become an entrepreneur technology makes it easier to become an entrepreneur you know, you don't need you don't need server racks and what have you you know, Google and Microsoft can bring you all the technology that you need I remember when I got involved in the construction business video conferences and you paid 200 dollars on both sides for a video conference today you can have a video conference on your phone so if you have a bright idea the cost of being an entrepreneur is a lot less than it used to be and I just think that if you figure out how to be an entrepreneur you create more independence for your family some of us have been fortunate enough to make a career out of corporate America but if you can if you can somehow become your own boss that's what I would encourage always be on the lookout what is the idea that you might be able to turn it into a business and you don't need that much money to deal with these things so and in fact there's the saying that you know, we typically don't trust someone that hasn't failed in something and so you need to get that question out of the way and figure out how to be an entrepreneur and figure out how to be your own boss that's what it feels like alright, I think that's the thing there's wisdom and his book with us there will be copies in the back so we'll tell you a little bit more about it and thank you all for being with us tonight we appreciate you coming out in the wind or the rain and it's just lovely to have you here I hope you'll consider coming back for other programs during the Cannons Institute and perhaps even becoming a member already so again, thank you if you have time take the tour this place was started in 1854 I think it's the oldest private library in the country and just seeing the grass railings downstairs just around the corner here you can see the chess room which is really a dramatic place knowing that there have been chess masters and grandmasters it's an extraordinary place a hidden jewel in the city a big wonderful thank you for Arnold Grisham trustee, author, inspirer and thank you to our CEO Katherine Vella for being our moderator and interviewer this evening thank you all so much for joining us here at the Cannons Institute please, if you haven't already visit Andy who will be helping us to sell Arnold's books in the back we've also got hard coffee and paperback and we would love to invite folks, if you'd like to do a quick tour I'll help guide y'all out or guide y'all out and then back out to this room if you would like a quick tour of the Cannons Institute thank you, please join us again and we'll see you next time


Good morning. My name is John Sutherland. I am the Phasenfeld Head of Environmental and Ecological Engineering And I'm very pleased to welcome you all here to the College of Engineering distinguished lecture panel discussion The topic for this morning is on policies strategies to Protect the public from exposure to chemicals and other waste streams We are very pleased this morning to have four outstanding panelists one of whom in fact is our distinguished College of Engineering lecturer Dr. Paul Anastas. So let me tell you a little bit about Paul first and then I will introduce the other panelists So Professor Paul Anastas is on the faculty of Yale University He has appointments in the Department of Chemistry the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences The School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and the School of Management He is widely known as the father of green chemistry and has published 13 Books on sustainable technology. He has experience in business. He's co-founded companies He's founded NGOs the Green Chemistry Institute and he served in government in a number of positions including In the administrations of the last four U.S. presidents He worked in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and the Clinton and Bush administrations And he was the assistant administrator and the chief scientist at the US EPA and the Obama administration So let's all please welcome Paul Our other panelists who are also very distinguished Are Otto C. During the third who is a professor? Professor and public policy specialist on agricultural and environmental issues in the Agricultural Economics Department at Purdue University He served in the US Department of Agriculture and worked on several farm bills He's been an advisor to the USDA's natural resource conservation service on conservation programs He was the economic analysis team leader for the White House's National hypoxia assessment for the Gulf of Mexico He currently serves on the the EPA science advisory board and chairs the agricultural science committee He's worked on restoring the Mississippi River's water quality And we all know him as a long-serving director of Purdue's climate change research center. So let's welcome Otto Next up we have Jennifer Freeman dr. Freeman is an associate professor of toxicology in the school of health sciences And is a faculty affiliate in environmental and ecological engineering She's also a member of the public health graduate program here at Purdue She received her doctorate environmental Toxicology and molecular cytogenetics from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign And was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School in Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston She researches the genetic and epigenetic mechanisms of toxicity of environmental stressors and currently is looking at pesticides metals and other Contaminants and legacy Chemicals she received the Society of Toxicology Kokei palm olive awarded for research in 2012 and received major awards from Purdue for both her teaching and research She is a Purdue University Teaching Academy fellow. So let's welcome Jennifer Last but certainly not least is Professor Andrew Weldon Andrew is Andy is an assistant professor at Purdue joint appointment environmental and ecological engineering and Civil engineering he earned civil environmental engineering degrees from Virginia Tech He is doing research on plastics technology for for energy and infrastructure systems He's leading a multi-state research study focused on infrastructure repair technologies And also as a leading a study on drinking water safety and buildings in 2017 his Purdue team of faculty students and staff completed a rapid response NSF backed study that worked That looked at worksite and public safety issues associated with CIPP use in 2014 the governor of West Virginia called upon Andy to help his state recover from a chemical spill that affected a Large segment of that state's population. So let's welcome Andy We have a number of Three by five cards at your table. I If you have a good question for the panel Please write it down forward it up front. I have several questions to start the day off with But at some point I would like to transition to these Audience suggested questions if possible So why don't we why don't we start? Question number one for the panel And and I did give Nina and professor knives a little bit of a hard time because I think they Deliberately dropped in some of these chemical names just to mess me up. So I Apologize for mispronouncing some of these Neo nicotinoid Insecticides came into widespread use in the 1990s Substituting for organophosphate and carbamate insecticides which have in turn replaced many persistent halogenated insecticides from the post-World War two era There was emerging evidence that Neo nicotinoids are depleting bee populations loss of insect pollinators would adversely affect food production Yet use of these insecticides has been a boon to large-scale farming So the question to the panel is what strategy should we be pursuing in terms of insect past management? Perhaps green chemistry as a suggestion while protecting beneficial species and And maybe we can start with Oh, I'll be happy to but I know that there's a lot of folks with a lot of knowledge. So first of all Thank you John for for having me here. It's a pleasure to be with you all I I guess I'd start at the at the highest level because we could ask this question about this particular class of insecticides just as we could ask it about a Set of plasticizers just as we could ask it about a set of dyes And I think the fundamental point is that what we want to get is Function without hazard you want to get performance without the adverse consequence Now we talked about the evolution of you know the the organo halogens the organophosphates and neonicotinoids and and what comes next No one wants to go from the frying pan into the fire so What the strategy needs to be as we're developing new classes of chemicals is how do you define? performance to not just be that narrow functionality of Killing all the bugs right that will be pretty silly, but rather how do you get the performance that you need? killing the or eliminating the damage from pests to crop production while not having adverse consequence to to other Other species the ecosystem, etc. Etc. So there are a lot of to be more specific There are a lot of different strategies that you can use that quite frankly aren't limited to to chemistry We know and certainly there's lots of folks in this Purdue that know all about integrated pest management and different types of types of strategies But even when it does come to molecular design of an of insecticides How do you identify? those will say physiological property specific to the pests that you need to eliminate that is not shared by other Beneficial insects other other parts of the ecosystem so that you can target very specifically those those processes going to be a particular There's a number of different attributes, but the thing is Targeting is is going to be very important and just coming back to you need to understand that it's the job is not narrow function, but just Broadly defined performance of function without harm I think it's also important just to chime in that we need to remember to Expand the toxicity assessments when we're looking at these different chemicals that we're putting on the market and not only focusing on What the toxicity mechanism we're going after with the insecticides? But also remembering there might be off-target effects or there might be other types of toxicity events that are happening that we might not expect and we've seen this before in the past with Different chemicals that we've put on the market Especially for a lot of the chemicals that we're using that are end up being these endocrine disrupting chemicals for instance that end up having Harmful adverse health outcomes for us for humans or other animals once we're once we're using them And so I think it's we have to just keep remembering that we need to run through a full battery of toxicity assessments When we're creating these new types of chemicals and look beyond just that one specific Maybe mechanism of toxicity we're looking for for these insecticides to make sure we're covering the full gamut and protecting our health overall Let me broaden this a little bit That the the questions we're talking about are I'm not a chemist Are relatively narrowly chemical? But a lot of these questions have much broader impacts and I think one of the things we really have to do is Think what kind of a problem are we really dealing with? Are we dealing what some people term a tame problem that is subject to the scientific method? Or are we dealing with what the business literature started calling a wicked problem? which involves human values and the Political systems decisions in a wicked problem people can't even agree exactly on the problem They don't tend to agree on the way you deal with the problem Experts are not listened to Because this is a value judgment and if you just want it Putting a man on the moon is a tame problem You've got enough Purdue engineers and astronauts and enough money and you can do it The goal is clear the process is clear the problem is clear healthcare is a wicked problem and They're very very different kinds of problems and you've got to tackle them very very differently I'd go back to DDT There is an interesting discussion going on now as to whether we should in essence relicense DDT for certain places in the world where malaria is endemic and If used carefully, we're going to save a lot more lives getting rid of the malaria mosquitoes Inexpensively and relatively easily and are you willing to take the collateral damage? These kinds of questions You know come on you before you even realize it. I'll stop there having muddied the water So I'm a civil environmental engineer and the only thing I know about bees is that they sting me So I'm gonna kind of segue into infrastructure and then come back to reinforce something that Professor Anastas said but I think one of the issues and to bring up what Otto said as well You know, we're facing wicked problems across many issues If if if we could just do the science and the engineering and money was an option and politics were an option and Emotions weren't an option. I think we could solve a lot of things pretty rapidly But that's not how the world works and so across many sectors whether it be in in agriculture for pest control or Other like infrastructure Toxicity is extremely important, but also historically has been narrow focused until recently where they're trying to kind of Figure out which products may be potentially hazardous later on and they'll have to pull it off the market And there'll be a whole bunch of development money. That's lost Going back to what what Professor Anastas said we want products that Have great function and no hazard, right? We don't want to know where that we're using a product now that in 20-30-40 years will wipe out certain populations of really important species or will cause The applicator's long-term health impacts or in case of infrastructure, you know for asbestos It was used in mine for years and as the toxicology data kind of started to bubble up It was still used and mine for years and you can go on TV now and see the consequences of that with these lawsuits and mesothelioma outbreaks disease Fatalities so I think whether it's infrastructure or or Pest control What I really am amazed about is that it's bubbling up to the surface I think some of the work that dr. Anastas has done and dr. Freeman and auto have done needs to Transition to the infrastructure realm because in the engineering community and civil and environmental engineering Historically that's not been there. It's does it have a function does it stand up? Does it stand up for a long time? If so, then we're good So I think hoping that the science community can help permeate into the infrastructure world Can I just add one more point of it because I am in complete agreement with my with my fellow panelists And I just want to add one thing about the DDT point Which is which is such an important point because we do hear this being raised and one of the things you'll hear is Whether it's with DDT or or other types of Hazardous substances as well, you know it has this function And so we need to we need to use it and almost as if Well, we wouldn't be using it if there were anything else Available, let's just be clear. There's give or take a hundred thousand chemicals in commerce today That's the rough number that's thrown around give or take if you look at the number of Potential so there's about 75 million Chemicals that are on the chemical abstracts registry known chemicals 75 million okay, if you look at the potential theoretical chemicals that will be made that can be made with a With a molecular weight of a thousand or less The best estimates done by Barry Sharpless who won the Nobel Prize a few years ago is ten to the sixty-third I'm told that's about the number of water molecules in the Pacific Ocean So have we even scratched the surface of chemical space? No, so before we go saying oh Well, it's just except I think there's a whole lot more work to be done in Exploring the the molecular space that's possible and and getting the kind of functionality that we need without all of the harm So Andy you brought up infrastructure, so let's talk about an issue that's near and dear to your heart cured in place pipe CIPP Has emerged as a technology of choice For rehabilitating undergroudened water and and sewer piping This technique avoids intrusive Excavation and reduces costs as you know Andy's research team has shown that the steam emissions actually contain Toxic chemicals such as styrene and other compounds So the question to the panel is do we have some suggestions on how we achieve the convenience? economic and engineering benefits of CIPP But also improve Or actually protect the human health and the environment So why don't we start with Andy to get his thoughts? So Professor Anastas said something that I hear from engineers municipalities worldwide Well, if there was something better, we would use it, but there isn't so that's the best we have and The function of the technology is basically to take a basically a t-shirt that you saturate with resin That you've normally handle inside a fume hood and inside a building and you drag that into a sewer pipe and you blow steam in it And white stuff comes out at the other end and sometimes can go up into buildings hospitals daycare centers elementary schools and residences Or you put hot water in it and emissions come out or you put UV light But you have to blow air through that and emissions come out And so the process is really an amazing technology about creating a new plastic pipe inside an existing damage pipe I mean we've been doing this for years creating stuff inside manufacturing facilities But now the manufacturing facility is going to neighborhoods without fume hoods without certain PPE and So the principles of green chemistry here don't seem to have been considered in the application of the technology and that's resulted in children becoming sick people needing oxygen in their homes and states and in worker safety agencies now paying attention and Worker safety agencies and states didn't know about this because they're new technologies And so unless somebody tells them and makes them aware of it. They're not there as I Stop talking Let me just mention that the only reason why we at Purdue were able to do what we did and Determined that the emissions were not steam as assumed for 30 years Was because we worked with toxicologists. We worked with their quality engineers. We worked with civil engineers and worked with material scientists that actually make this stuff and That introduced my approach is really important And I think we need to kind of commoditize that approach for all these Wicked and non-wicked problems moving forward. I Guess the only thing that I'd add again a complete agreement with Andy that There will be many material solutions for how you patch pipes and things like that. That's that's really Probably not the biggest the biggest issue so When When one of our pipes gets punctured, you know, how do we deal with it? You know the the the whole area of self-healing materials is going to be tremendously important Personally, I'd like to see them Develop so that the self-healing whether it's in roads and bridges that part of the the healing part of the cloth That's formed would be from from carbonates That would be wonderful and and there's good work being done on that that quite frankly needs to be funded at a much higher level That aside, but the real point that I just wanted to make is around awareness so I've mentioned a little bit about ubiquitous integrated sensors and being able to they hear about See and sense whether it's emissions coming out of a pipe out of a pipe or the various air quality issues we're moving into a time where this kind of awareness of Not only our environment, but a pipe sensing when it's ruptured and and when it's broken and having reactions in real time is going to be All around us So how do we? Make Decisions, how do we put in place processes with this level of awareness of yes What we're being exposed to but also what's going on with our infrastructure and that's A new time. It's a new it's a new set of questions, but I think it's huge opportunities as well I think there's a great need for the communication just kind of what you're marrying before and the I mean the area of public health We're always dealing with this issue of how do we get our message out to the public about these different health issues that arise Whether they're at your workplace or if they're in the environment from your everyday exposures, and it's really difficult I think it also kind of goes back to the point that was made earlier about who does the public decide to believe and I think it's really important for all of us as Scientists and experts in this field that we need to be aware of how we're Communicating this message to the public and making sure that it's we're putting it in language that people can understand And that hopefully we're being approachable in these types of questions just to make sure that this communication is out there and helping To raise the awareness to the other thing here is We're also having the problem of determining when is a problem a problem I had come on my email this morning a new study from the US geological survey on our be chemical Okay, trying to determine how persistent the chemical is in the ground and moving through the water course in the ground and Potentially being taken up by adjoining plants This is a systemic chemical. So when the insect lands or or eats the leaf of the plant That's when it when the insect may be killed or damaged And we're still not a hundred percent sure on this thing and you know, when does the this communication thing? when does the public decide a problem is a problem and Are they really identifying a real problem that has scientific merit or do we have a lot of emotion involved? Bees are now seen as being cute and fuzzy rather than stinging you Okay, he has had one experience and has one view of bees. I view bees as cute and fuzzy And we will approach this problem differently in terms of whether it is a problem Depending upon how we view the poor bee who is in the middle of this argument without much of a voice You know, I just want to add one thing because I think the point you made is so important. They were talking about The data that we have and how we communicate that and I'm guessing that everybody Gets a sense that so data is not information data needs to be Transformed into information information needs to be transformed into knowledge and ideally knowledge into wisdom, right? but those things but data is not wisdom and That that transformation process is becoming critically important now since we are swimming and perhaps drowning in Data slash information, right? So some of what we are drowning in the Internet We are not There's not evidence to suggest that we're very good at curating this information to be able to tell what's True or untrue valuable and valuable so your point about Communication is so important and of course critical part of that communication is is curating and being able to show that that judgment and insight on The value of data. I don't know that we've shown that yet I don't know so here. I am espousing the the opportunity and the potential of more and more Awareness coming in but it doesn't have to be all good. It's it's something that is is only going to be as good as we are at Inflicting that that judgment curation and wisdom upon it. I have a question from the audience I have several questions, but I will Use this to inspire a question Paul You were just talking about self healing plastics and there is a great deal of discussion about plastics and composites For the reasons that they're lighter very often than alternatives Yesterday you talked about about a gradeable plastics Are there some things that we should be thinking about in terms of pitfalls to avoid? as we move forward and Maybe in terms of not only research, but you know some perhaps some wise policy steps that we should be taking As we move forward There's a range of things and questions that need to be asked even the ones that are You know put out in the 12 principles of green chemistry green engineering so those are Fundamental design questions the important thing to always think about is coming back to Yes, something can accomplish a narrow goal And if you if you stop there and don't think about the unintended consequences, then you're going to you know Keep on progressing on the trajectory that we're on so reductionism, you know Holding all things constant and moving one parameter has transformed our understanding of the universe. It is Been completely revolutionized Our modern life and it also has been largely responsible for so many of our unintended consequences Because quite frankly the real world doesn't hold all other parameters constant while you change one These are systems nested in systems So are there are there questions and levels of awareness that we have to do and we invent the next generation of self-healing polymers or you know You know jet-packed or whatever it is absolutely and if we if we don't ask those questions if we don't build that into our design frameworks then Sadly we're going to stay on this trajectory. I'd suggest Otto I guess one of the questions that relates to plastics is the use of petroleum as a source for So perhaps you have some some thoughts along those lines or that the big debate Within the agricultural and food community has been Materials or fuels from from biomass materials This is an older debate than you realize When I first started at Purdue At the time of the first Arab oil embargo, which none of the rest of you in the room are old enough to remember There was a big push in agriculture that every farmer would make His or her own ethanol and run the farm on ethanol and there were salesmen running around Tippi Canoe County and for ten thousand dollars They would drop a still at your back door and you could make ethanol and I got involved in the economics of this which was absolutely terrible Along with a wonderful Agricultural and biological engineer by the name of Bruce McKenzie who would point out if you're going to make ethanol Stop you're going to have to stop managing a farm and become a junior chemical engineer if you're going to do it at all decently The big push more recently has been food or fuel But there's a there's sort of a whole array of things that cascade from this One of them for example being soil erosion if you're going to use the corn stalks and leaves To make biomass from that organic material you will leave Remove this from the soil and you leave the soil open and much more subject to soil erosion What's the trade-off you are not returning the organic matter from this? Corn stalks and corn leaves to the soil so your soil may start losing organic matter even the technical reductionist trade-offs Cascade and become almost infinite and then how do you put that in the context of a wicked problem? Where people know darn well there are people starving in the world and there's no way we should make fuel out of corn and You know it's infinite in terms if you want to cascade a problem like this Which makes life easy for all of us Jennifer have you been exposed in? Are you familiar with some of the toxicology issues that you've seen some of those in your work? For plastics or composites. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I mean there's a wide array a lot of these plasticizers I think BPA bisphenol A was the one that made The notoriety out there with the public when they gained on that and being able and it's interesting that story I think of BPA as of which Chemicals a public picks up on and decides to kind of be behind it and move forward with and the BPA story if you're not familiar with it It was really led by young moms who were whose children were using baby bottles that had BPA in it And when the studies came out showing that BPA was a potential endocrine disruptor and the worry was once you heated up the plastics that The BPA would leech out into the into the formula or the milk if you're heating up breast milk and having that concern And so it's interesting we're here. We have the public really behind this push where we haven't had the band But now we have Alternatives coming into which kind of brings us back to that green chemistry part of it of what do we replace it with and how? Do we go about making smart decisions about our alternatives that we're putting into place and the alternatives that have been put into place for BPA now we have these same toxicity studies going on and they're showing very similar types of endocrine disrupting effects going on as BPA did and so unfortunately That's we have a number of those examples throughout history where we seem to make these quick decisions not necessarily Intelligent or educated decisions about where we come up with these alternatives, and I think it's important The basics of it of trying to come in to put of trying to create these chemicals that are safer for us and the full Understanding and that the full gamut of the understanding of what their toxicity is for us to How do we begin to? infuse or popularize or Start getting people to think more about green chemistry green engineering Designing something from the outset to be environmentally friendly How do we make that happen? when I was a little Little young boy my dad used to say to me always speak the language of the tribe you're talking to and What he meant by that and what I've found that he's meant by that he he you know Dear old dad. God bless him. He's He's gone now, but you know, he becomes more and more right every year older I get and what I what I realized what he what he meant was that You know if you if you're trying to persuade a board of directors Who's in business to make money you don't go up here appealing to their moral and ethical You know values if you if you're talking to the to the clergy you don't tell them how they're going to make a whole lot more money if you if you're talking to a Person that's wants to save the earth. You don't necessarily Tell them why this is a wonderful academic scientific challenge In other words, you put things in terms that people can understand what they're motivated by and most consumers are Motivated by the performance that they want things to to do So you want to you want to wild them what this is just plain better So if this is If this is a car. Oh, yeah, you make a Tesla. That's what you do because it's just plain better I Owned a Prius how many people own a Prius? You're lucky if you don't I'm sorry, but I Smart smart I'm sorry, but it that is that is not going to be this now I'm fortunate enough to own a Tesla and oh my goodness. I would never own anything else Yeah, it's eco-friendly. Yeah, but I'll tell you this thing rocks the street. Okay You can go right on through Virtually anything that organic food it just tastes better. Oh, yeah, it's healthy and it's not Not not killing the earth. So I think you have to lead with with that. I think you have to lead with just plain better Now don't get me wrong I'm actually sad that you have to do that I'm actually sad that you know you can't go into a boardroom generally speaking and say this is the right thing to do But I guess if I had only one strategy I'd say you know appeal to the to the whiz bang and amaze people by making sure things Just work better and and quite frankly We talk about well what we need is behavioral change. We need to change the way Consumers behave. All right. I I'll beakers in flasca. I know how to make a lot of molecules I know how to do a lot of them. I do not know how to change the the consumer behavior of folks So I've been one that said how about this how about we just make the Material infrastructure of our whole economy, you know, but I'm in helpful for people and we won't tell them It'll just be better. How about that? You know, so that's my strategy for what it's worth When Paul is talking, I thought he was gonna go one way and and I'll just go that way liability determines legal liability and Determines a lot of what corporations and even politicians do in terms of what I've seen in my experiences and so talking to an organization that a person in their home Who has a a newborn baby has been affected Doesn't cause that company to go in and give them money and take the child to the hospital it causes them to back off and and Shelter in place and wait for everything to kind of die down At least in my experiences and that's primarily because I think They were not aware that their technology that they're using could do that or could cause certain consequences To the degree that they've seen and so liability from a corporation standpoint. I think the more that It is not good business practice to to to operate that way You may see cultural changes in the business sector. There are certainly some good actors out there That are trying to do the right things that are that are anticipating and making changes without having legal actions taken against them Once you have a technology that's out there, that's a commodity There's a lot of money into keeping everything in the same way keeping moving The other side is the people aspect of this and how do you get people to embrace or kind of facilitate? substitutions alternatives better saver inherently benign technologies and That's what we've focused on with my group and team. We've been interacting with homeowners We've been interacting with Department of Health. We've been at NIOSH OSHA to try to get the Kind of the the pendulum to slide towards more public health protection Which then industry would have to respond to if they want to stay in business and make money Which they can do is just going to cost them more and anything that affects the bottom line cost. We've seen from some organizations causes them to go out and hire people to Issue disinformation and try to corrupt that whole public information Campaign so there's a lot of play and if corporations did the right thing if politicians did the right thing There was no money involved. There was no motion involved. I think everything would be great But that's not the world we live in so we had to find ways to come together to work together And you all are going to be the ones that make that change If I could I don't know go ahead Just one very quick thing because I I think that the points any makes is important when I Spent a lot of time at the Environmental Protection Agency and when you take a look at the the entire arc of environmental regulatory enforcement I Would be really hard-pressed to find many maybe any maybe a handful of Any actions that had been taken to enforce any finds that had been levered That rise to the level of beyond the cost of doing business the the harm done Versus the fines that are levied are in the margins So this idea that there is just widespread draconian the regulatory Enforcement the enforcement office has been reduced to the level where if it tried to inspect all of the Facilities that it is responsible for inspecting It would take Centuries at the current rate It's not happening So if we if we think that there's this image out there that there are you know Jack-booted EPA thugs that are going into every plant and we are finding them and we're shutting them down a way That is that is so divorced from reality that the I think it's important that Through you know taught liability and things like that that those things exist But right now our regulatory enforcement infrastructure the floor that has Supposed to be there since 1970 I'm going to suggest is not what it needs to be in order to just have that minimum floor and This is coming from a person who always thought and still believes that the best of environmental Protection comes from innovation, but you do need that regulatory floor in my opinion Yeah, you do need a a two by four as well as a carrot And and the two by four Need to be effective need not be able to cover absolutely everyone As long as you can have enough cases And the best example of this is the IRS and income tax enforcement Which has also gone downhill and I'm I'm sure that tempts more people to To disobey the thing if you talk about Enforcement on the one side the other thing that really discourages me from my much more limited experience with EPA is the innocence Defunding of the EPA labs The EPA labs were initially for many years for decades considered the sort of gold standard of environmental toxicology chemistry whatever else And they have been over many administrations including the Democratic ones as well as Republican ones defunded and and the real thing there is is what is scientific truth and How do you establish trust in that scientific truth? And if you don't have trust It doesn't work Just plain and simple And let me just add As a researcher not paid by a company or financial interest You know your your your duty is to the public if you're paid by federal tax dollars state tax dollars And if you come upon something That is a public health issue or potential public health that your duty and ethical obligation to say something about it now generally You don't it's it's not like you discovered Something major and it's definitive. I mean it may be one study you do that leads to other people to get in that space But when you start having financial interest of other organizations in play Some of you may not know this when they give you contracts. It says thou shall not Disclose any information until our basically executives review it and then we will provide edits and that edits will then Be integrated into the report that then you make public And so there are these other issues that a lot of people don't know about that when they hear information coming from certain organizations They assume that well because the person or group that conducted it is this therefore it's at this level of transparency And so I think that's an educational aspect. We have to do with this public outreach We need to make people more aware of Certainly they know they can get a lot of information. We need to make them more aware of What types of information may be generated by Under what conditions and then let them make the decision best for their family and friends about what to do moving forward? We have a few minutes left and I I didn't want to I had a few questions here But I thought there might have been some other ones that came up. Are there any questions from the audience? Before we run out of time Yes I'm There's Where The answer is I don't know, and I'm former director of the Climate Center here at Purdue. And the other one is I'm not sure you can separate these things out in a very clean way. I'm not an atmospheric science person, okay? I'm an economist. I got hauled into climate stuff by a colleague at Indiana University three decades ago, and that's how I started getting involved. I do not really know climate science as I look at the way climate scientists work. And that in essence began to give me confidence that there was a high degree of truth in what they were talking about. The basic physics of the greenhouse effect is fairly clear and fairly provable. Alternative explanations like increased activity of the sun have been proven to be not true. To some extent you have to take these things again. I go back to the word on trust in a community and faith. How you convince the public generally that this is important enough is really difficult. And one of the things that makes this one of the most wicked problems is when we talk about trying to deal with and maybe mitigate climate change, we are talking about intergenerational transfer. And what I mean by that, things that I am willing to do today that may cost me some money, all right, or some inconvenience, and the only beneficiary or the first real beneficiary will probably be my great and great grandchildren. Am I willing to do this in the sense of looking forward to the future? And in essence what you're talking about is the willingness of a society to give something up now for a benefit that we're not 100% sure of, I'm only 98% sure of it, at some future date. And this is an incredibly difficult thing to bring about in a society. And if anyone knows how to do it, let me know. I do and have spent a lot of time on the climate science issue. And I'll ask the question, say it's a politicized issue. Why isn't astronomy politicized? Why aren't there pitch battles around astronomy? Why aren't there pitch battles around geology? Why aren't there pitch battles? Because there's not winners and losers. There's winners and losers economically, politically, and so it's not that the science is politicized. The science is being used as a tool in a political battle because there are winners and losers, right? And so when you're drawing a scientific conclusion, if you have a stream of evidence that leads you in a particular way, and the weight of evidence of that conclusion, the weight of evidence is overwhelming, you say, that's a pretty strong argument that something is happening. But, okay, CO2 levels go up and it gets warmer and et cetera. If you have many, many different threads, different lines of argument that all line up in the same direction, whether it's habitat change, acidification of the ocean, all of them pointing in the exact same direction, that's not a scientific issue. That's a scientific slam dunk. Now, there's lots of great scientific discussions around climate. You can talk about the rate, the role of water vapor, feedback loops. Great scientific questions that we can and should be asking. But the whether or not, no, no, that's a... So what this comes down to is about what's the end there for? If this is happening, what's the end there for? So there's a great study by a colleague of mine, Kahane at Yale University, that says if you ask people to identify themselves in terms of philosophies and just various backgrounds, and then you present them with the same set of data, they will come to different conclusions, same set of scientific data. They will come to different conclusions based on how they self-identified. That makes a scientific explode because we've been saying, oh, if they only understood, I don't know, it's not about understanding. It's what you're willing to accept and what's the end there for? There's this great New Yorker cartoon, and then I'll stop talking, but there's this great New Yorker cartoon of a speaker who obviously is just completed as talking, has a bullet point list of clean jobs, healthier habitat, things like a big long list, and the person stands up in the audience and says, yeah, but what if this climate change stuff is all a big hoax and all we have is a better world? So he starts saying, what's... So why would you argue against these things? It comes back to the winners and losers economically of the immediate term. And the last thing I'll close with is, I love the way you phrased it, that the only beneficiaries will be grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and you put it in those terms. Are we willing to give up for the benefits of children and great-grandchildren? But the flip side is also true. Are you willing to take? Are you willing to be so selfish as to have the only victims be your children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren? Is that really who we want to be? I think realizing the economic side is one thing, but I still think as a scientist there's something we can do, and I think about the examples in environmental health where most of where these issues come about, they're public-driven. And so I think as a scientist, one other way that we can go about it is just making sure that when we're working with the public of making sure that we're working together with them. And there's a lot of cases, unfortunately, of scientists going in in the environmental health area, going in and doing types of studies, and really kind of taking advantage of those public or the communities that were there, and then just leaving, and just leaving out. And there's this big push now, and it has been for the past few years, of, you know, this isn't the right way to do it. This isn't how we build public trust in things that we're doing. And so I think if we always remember when we're going in and we're asking these types of questions and we're working with the public and making sure that we're a team and trying to get the message both ways and listening to what they have questions about and trying to work towards, you know, those specific questions and not just our end game of what we're trying to do with some of our studies, I think that we'll see that public backing even more. Maybe I'm being more optimistic, but I just think, I've seen that over through, like, I think about Superfund. And it's a Superfund movement with the EPA, and really that was a community that got that going. It wasn't the economic, it wasn't any other factors, but it was the community members being active about it and wanting change for that. And I think we've got to just keep working with the public and making them aware of these issues and that we're trying to be on the same page with them as much as possible about what's going on, too. Anything to add, Andy? So I would say that much of the work that I've done deals with disasters and very personal things, people choosing their plumbing to determine if it's going to be safe. And I've had people preface their conversations with, I made this politically, but I have to make this decision. And in disasters, when the water's handed out or people have, you know, a parent is sitting on the floor with their two kids running around asking if their kids are going to get cancer, drinking the water that the city, county or state told them could be toxic, puts everything into perspective. And I've seen a lot of action taken with the political barriers down because people's direct connection to that primal urge to survive. And I think if we can find a way to link these big, wicked problems to people's everyday lives or health or well-being, it would be less likely and there'd be public support behind it than it's possible more productive things may rise to the surface faster than they would with the muddy water and the muck that takes a long time for something to emerge in today's climate. That's excellent. The time has flown by. I want to have all of us thank our panelists. And thank you, Paul, for making the time to come visit us here at Purdue. It's been a pleasure. Thank you.