Okay, we're back. We're live. I'm Jay Fidel. This is Stink Tech, more specifically at Stink Tech Global, and we have the honor of talking to Matt Jacobson. He is with Dusserre Global Business School. He joins us from Australia. I didn't get to city. What city is it, Matt? Melbourne, of course. Actually, of all the cities in Australia, Melbourne's my favorite. I'll tell you why, because it has that eight block business grid there with the trams that are free and all that, and so much vitality. My wife and I really loved that we went there earlier this year. So good for you in Melbourne. So tell us about Dusserre Global Business School. What is your association with it?  Okay, great. Thanks. Well, and also thanks for the positive and kind words about Melbourne. It is absolutely the greatest city in Australia. Great fashion, design, food, so it's a really vibrant and great place to be, and very cosmopolitan, very friendly. So I think that's why Americans in particular love it, because like Americans, we're very friendly and kind of easy going down here. In terms of Dusserre, I founded Dusserre about seven years ago after I just sold a previous education company to a publicly listed organization and was really trying to take a little bit of a backseat and think, what do I really want to do that's going to create significant impact? I wanted to do something that was going to be quite meaningful. So I set up Dusserre from the beginning, essentially as a social enterprise. So we have a business of delivering higher education, which then fully funds the Dusserre Foundation, which provides education resources to 24 countries in Africa as a self-funded, self-sustainable philanthropy. So I can tell you a little bit more about that maybe, but I know that's not the focus of what you wanted to chat about today. The focus around higher education, what we do with the Dusserre Global Business School, is to really tackle a fundamental problem of access and relevance of higher education. You can't go anywhere in the US without hearing the problems relating to higher education, which are fundamental and widespread. Problems of affordability, problems of access to higher education, but even if you can afford it and you can get a university place, there's an even bigger problem. And that is that you spend four years attending lectures in university, only at the end of that period after many years and a lot of debt to be told by industry, pretty much nothing you've been doing learning in lectures in a campus is relevant to our job in the workplace. Yeah. So there's this really, really big fundamental disconnect between higher education in terms of the traditional education delivery model and what employers are looking for. And so that's a real problem because who loses out in that model? It's the students that lose out. Because universities are still getting paid and there's a lot of revenue around that model. It's a massive industry, but the problem is the students who don't really know that there's a problem until the end of the process because they don't think they're doing all the right things, right? They're working really hard in school to get good grades and get entry into a university. So, you know, thumbs up, they've worked really hard and they've got into university. Then they work really hard in university, take on a lot of debt, spend all that money thinking again, I'm doing all the right things, what my parents tell me, what the community tells me, setting myself up for the future. And then they realize they graduate and they can't even get jobs. Or if they do get jobs, they're getting an entry level job that's not even really relevant to the course they study because of that disconnect. So, that's really what we need to do.  I should not study, you know, French literature? I should not study the history of Europe? Because that takes a lot of time and a lot of effort. And when I come out of college having that, you know, it makes me a rounder person. I grant you, it doesn't help me in the business world, but at least as a human being, I'm probably a better, I appreciate the world better, you know, the old story about, if you don't know history, you're doomed to repeat it. And so, don't we need that? Maybe you're, are you talking about undergraduate or graduate? Where do I get the skills that make me marketable? Okay, so that's a really good question. And the threshold question always is, what is the purpose or what is the intention, right, of university? What is the intention for students?  But are they actually communicating with the students? Because the vast majority of students, over 80% of you asked them the question, they'll say they're at university because they want to get a job and they want to get a career, not to get this kind of broad liberal arts style education. So there's already a disconnect between what the supplier is providing and what the consumer actually wants and is asking for. But that question of should we be teaching philosophy or sociology or history and does that provide a more rounded student? It's really interesting because we have very, very industry relevant. We win awards around the world having the most industry relevant, industry engaged curriculum, very, very tied to corporate objectives. But I, when I studied the first things I did were a degree in literature and a degree in philosophy. So I certainly am not going to advocate that broad arts and humanities are not a good idea. The problem that I have, and this is actually very unique to the US market, that in the US market, you actually force people to do those things. In most countries, it's an elective, it's a choice. So America is bastion of freedom, free will, free speech. But ironically in the education space, you say you have no choice, you will do these broad based courses and you will pay for them. Now, if the government thought this was good for the community and was going to fund that on a good will basis, maybe that's okay. But to tell students they're going to have to pay tens of thousands of dollars for the foreign language, the history, the philosophy that they don't believe necessarily is going to help them in their career. That's putting students under an immense burden that they're not necessarily asking for. So the question you ask, are these good, well rounded pills? Sure. Should students have to pay enormous amounts of money for them? Absolutely not. Why don't you join a book club? They're free. You can be joining a book club meeting every week and reading literature, right? You can do online philosophy classes for free. So there are lots of ways to get a well rounded education without a huge burden on the student. Well, let me let me throw this thought at you. You know, we've been talking about it a lot lately about the failure of American education, whatever the coursework is, not only, you know, to prepare people for for industry, but also to prepare them to be citizens and to do critical thinking on voting and to understand the Constitution and the compact, the social compact between the citizen and the government. You know, over the past several decades, both undergraduate, well, high school education and undergraduate education has failed to provide those lessons to our population. And there are therefore tens of millions, maybe more, people who don't understand the compact between the citizen and the government, don't understand the Constitution. And when somebody comes into power, who sets those things aside, they have no background, you know, with which to deal with with that with that change, which is what we're having now. So can we as a country, can any country as a country fail to educate its students with the things that are necessary to be a citizen? Yeah, I mean, I think that's just a fascinating topic and such an interesting topic that, you know, is very pervasive in terms of the areas that it impacts. It's actually even far more basic than the example you gave. So you'll have students coming out of high school that said they have to memorize the and identify a parallelogram. And like, how many times in business am I going to need to know what a parallelogram is? And they don't actually come out of school or university knowing how to open a bank account. They just aren't taught the most basic things about interest, about investment, about taxes, about good communication skills and networks and the fundamentals of what you need in life are very disconnected from the sorts of things like memorizing the periodic table. I mean, you can just look it up on your iPhone, right? Why go through this intense process of having to memorize those things. So it is really important to be thinking about broadly, which is what we try to do, to think broadly about what are the skills that are necessary? What are the skills and competencies that are going to actually help students? All the other stuff, the broader stuff they can get in other ways. We are trying to be very, very focused on the skills and competencies and networks that will help students in their careers. But this is something that's really interesting that, you know, being in the US, you might find interesting. We operate in multiple continents. We work with numerous universities and we operate in multiple continents around the world. And everywhere we work, we partner with major public universities. We provide the curriculum, we deliver the education, and it's accredited by public universities. In the US, we're planning to launch in the US in 2019. And we are not intending to partner with universities in the US. We're planning to just go it alone. And the reason is, even if a university decided that they could really redesign and rethink what education will be for the 21st century, they literally can't do it. The bureaucracy and the accreditation procedures will not allow a university to do that. For example, what about delivering a degree in a shorter period of time? The UK market, a bachelor degree is three years. In the US, it's four years. In the UK, they're actually the government is incentivizing universities to do it in even shorter than three years. And who pay you more money if you can deliver an undergraduate degree in two years? So they're going in that direction. The US regulated, even if a university thought four years is too long, it's too costly for students, the actual accreditation requirements require an undergraduate degree to be four years. Now, that's just one example. But my point is universities can't really just sit there and think we're smart guys and girls here, we can design something to be really meaningful. They're blocked at almost every level where every time there's a good idea, but our stated creditor won't allow it for this reason. What about this idea? Well, the regional accreditors got this regulation we need to meet with. So there's just such a level of bureaucracy that we tried to navigate that for a while. And we came to the conclusion that we're going to totally disrupt and innovate in the US market. I think that's quite going it alone. But aren't you going to be subject to the same accreditation problems? If you go say for three years or two years, that's a great idea, very, very 21st century as it were. But you're going to run into the same accreditation problem. So can you tell me the model of the school that you're going to build where and how and, and how does it compare with the college that's accredited down the street? Perfect. So what we're creating for the US market is called IQ University. And IQ University is the intention is that it is not actually academically accredited by any Education Department authority, because it's not a requirement to do that. We will be accredited essentially by industry.  But actually for us, IQ means industry qualification. And so what we want to create is an academic school, if you like, but the degree is approved and accredited, not by some regional Education Authority, but accredited by NASA, and Space Air, and Bank of America and Wells Fargo and Goldman Sachs and Price Waterhouse Coopers and Ford Motor Company. And so we want the industry to be partnering with us in the design and curriculum in the actual delivery. So we do practical projects where students assignments are actually solving real challenges of these organizations. And you get an IQ piece of paper at the end, which is essentially an endorsement from industry, saying you have done all the skills that we as industry believe are relevant and necessary and providing you with the networks and competencies to get a job. Yeah, the proof is in the curriculum. It's selecting the curriculum. What it sounds like is you go to industry, you talk to them, what do you need for an entry level job, or maybe not a maybe a higher level job. Tell me what you need. And I'll give these kids a diploma with a curriculum with those subjects. But that means you got to go industry by industry, company by company. That's a lot of work, Matt. A lot of work. Have you done that work? Yeah, so that's what we do. So we have partnership with global banks with global telecommunications companies with PWC with KPMG. That's essentially what we do. And we're designing not just asking them what do you need. We actually build the curriculum with these organizations. So they help us and give us advice and instructional design and information so that we're actually building the curriculum with industry. So we have as one example of what we do, we have what we call a global leaders faculty. So again, this tries to battle the disconnect between academic learning in the lecture room and real life. So normally, the stereotype is you learn from an academic in university in a lecture room from someone who's probably never actually even worked in a business that they're lecturing about. They're a pure academic and they spent their career in academia. So that's fine at one level. It's fine for the underpinning knowledge in the theory, but it's not fine for any terms of practicality and competency and skill. So we have a global leaders faculty that is hundreds of people that are presidents, prime ministers, Nobel Prize winners, billionaires, entrepreneurs, and we design and build the curriculum and case studies with these world leaders the best in the world at what they do. Well, this is getting more and more interesting. Let's take a one minute break Matt. We'll come back with Matt Jacobson and we'll talk about more about Ducere Global Business School and how it finds the faculty and connects these high level faculty members with the students wherever they may be. We're going to come back in one minute. You'll see. This is Think Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. I just walked by and I said, what's happening guys? They told me they were making music. Hi, I'm Ethan Allen, host on Think Tech Hawaii of Pacific Partnerships in Education. Every other Tuesday afternoon at 3 p.m. I hope you'll join us as we explore the value, the accomplishments and the challenges of education here in the Pacific Islands.  We came back. That's Matt Jacobson. He's the founder of Ducere Global Business School in Melbourne and he's aware of things happening all over the world because A, he's global and B, he travels and C, he has got connections in terms of faculty and university connections everywhere. So this is really interesting. And let me add a point. I have found that Australia and particularly Melbourne has a lot of innovation, a lot of a lot of global creativity over and over again. I keep on finding that. You're part of that, Matt, aren't you? Yeah, absolutely. And thank you for that. I think one of the things that's interesting is that because Melbourne and Australia is so far away from the world, we actually have counted that by instead of staying isolated and remaining kind of at the end of the world, where just this really, we have this enormous culture of traveling and getting out into the world and seeing the world. So anywhere you go, you'll always bump into Australians and we have this fascinating desire to really push the boundaries and open new frontiers. And I think that's what leads to innovation. Yeah, it's fabulous. Anyway, so I mentioned during the break that I would like to talk about MOOCs and compare MOOCs against what you do. MOOCs is a massive open online course. It was all the rage 10 years ago. I'm not sure what it's global status is right now, but the idea is you get the best instructors, you get people to sign up everywhere online. Sometimes you have classes of hundreds of thousands of people, and they learn, you know, the most sophisticated subjects imaginable on MOOCs. So how does that compare with what you do with your high level faculty? Okay, really, really great question. And MOOCs is, you know, a huge area that's got lots and lots of media and publicity and big question marks around what actually it's achieving. So one of the issues with MOOCs fundamentally is the marketplace, the industry doesn't know how to get its head around it. Okay, so if I came to you because you were looking to employ someone now for your fantastic show that you put on, say as a social media content developer, social media writer, and do some of that marketing work, and I came to you and said, Oh, I did three MOOCs online. Your response will probably be, What are those MOOCs? And how do I really know what you did in them? And how do I know what the quality was? And you can't really get your head around what that means from an industry perspective. So the content is out there, but it's hard to make sense of it. So we actually use MOOCs as part of this model that I was describing to you earlier, because we're a believer in curating content and using the best content that's out there, rather than reinventing the wheel. But we still embed that within the structure of a university degree. So you're still doing a full curriculum that is the equivalent of a full university curriculum. You have all of the subjects that you would need to do all the courses for a full degree. And then elements might be, Okay, we're going to get you to go to NYU to do this MOOC on this particular topic within this course. We're going to get you to go to Washington University to do this MOOC within this unit. But we're building that in to a structure that makes sense that it's a full credit equivalent of a university degree and all of the subjects and endorsed by industry. So when you do our program, you not only will come out with a university degree, you'll also have certificates from a whole range of different MOOC providers. So you'll have certificates from Harvard, NYU, Washington, et cetera. But it's part of an overall package that makes sense. Well, I'm glad you mentioned NYU. That's my school. I went to the law school twice over there at NYU. I have a great, great feeling for NYU. And I, I agree that NYU is a top school. Anyway, if I if I get into this program, I don't necessarily have to be in New York or whatever you decide, whether you have decided to set up the Ducere point, so to speak, in the US, I could be anywhere, right? I could be any country. And I can still deal with that online. And I can still take those courses, whether they're dedicated MOOCs, MOOCs, you know, that you find or maybe MOOCs that you create, so that it's easy for me to do that. And gee, it sounds very attractive if I if I want to be qualified for certain industry. I suppose as a student, I tell you, Matt, I want to be qualified for NASA. That's what I want. Now tell me what NASA wants and what you can offer me. And then you will train me to be qualified for NASA. So you're asking me those questions, you're asking NASA those questions, and you're making a sort of intersection where I get what they want. Yeah. Right. So we we essentially are very similar in the sense that overall what we're doing is a range of bachelor and master's degrees. So in various fields from entrepreneurship or marketing or management or business or digital communications and digital design, data security, data management, whatever the qualifications are. And then you don't really have a choice as a student to just say, I'll go up and do a few different things that I find interesting. You actually have to go through the structure and the rigor of a full curriculum. The difference is simply that we believe our curriculum is much better because it's built and designed with the best people in the world in industry. And the delivery is better, because we don't have theoretical essays. The projects and assignments students do is actual assignments of these companies, real projects. So a company says, we've got this challenge, you know, our historical demographic for our product is, I'm making this up, a company that says our historical demographic for our product is 30 to 45 year olds. We want to work out how we can be attractive to 18 to 25 year olds. And a student team would be formed and working on that project as part of their assessment for their degree. Now that does two really important things. It means the theory and the knowledge they're learning has to be applied in the real world. So it's more relevant. It's more practical skills based. And they're learning the team play too. They're learning to be a team. They're learning absolutely collaboration, team skills, working in the real world. Because like you said, you could be in New York, you could be in Canada, you could be in Melbourne as a team working together. They got to look at things like time zones and, you know, setting meetings and communication with that industry partner. So they've got to create all of those real world skills. But the second thing that's vital in that process of going through an industry based qualification where you work on lots of projects with lots of different businesses. You've heard the saying before, it's not what you know, it's who you know. And that's to a large degree true.  And if I didn't meet that person, you know, there's, you know, a good chance that I wouldn't have been able to get where I am today. But the networks are critical, not just the knowledge. So when you go through and do this industry based curriculum, by the time you graduated, you've worked on 30 or 40 different business projects. You've networked with hundreds of people from industry. Now you want a job. And I call up Jay and say, hey, Jay, I've just graduated. Remember that project we worked on 18 months ago. And you like, yeah, you're actually pretty sharp. And you really came up with some good ideas on that project that we were, you know, having a challenge with. Sure, I've got some part time work. We think that is as important as the fundamental and underpinning skills that we're teaching. So, you know, a question about this is, I guess you're saying that you can do a team. You can do a collaboration with people in different cities. I mean, what, for example, I think about video. So I want to make a film making team. Okay, well, they're in three cities or five cities. Can you do that?  But is that is that what happens? Or does the team have to physically get together in order to perform under the program? Yeah, so keep in mind that we're talking really about a business school. So there might be greater challenges if you need to actually produce a physical product or do something like a film. For us, we're talking about a business school, and we're not only talking about those students interacting and working together, which they do in different locations. No, they don't have to physically get together. They work in remote locations as a team, but not just as a team on their own. They're then working on a project that might be with, say, Bank of America. And so they're going to have to engage with that organization. The bank says, this is a challenge that we have. We're looking at launching a new kind of youth style brand. This is what we're trying to achieve. And we want you, the student team, to come up with an analysis report and a set of recommendations that you think will will work for us. So it's very much leading into practical experience, apprenticeship based learning, almost like consulting. And it's a win-win. The companies love it because they're getting really talented, young, interesting cross section students working on real problems that they have. And the students love it because they feel like the work they're doing is much more practical and relevant. Everybody wins. The students get paid for their time. It's not like an apprenticeship, if you will, or an internship. And that always raises the question of whether they're paid for their time and effort and the contribution they make to the company. Are they? No. So they're not paid, but it's also not an apprenticeship or an internship in the traditional US sense. So I know that there's a little bit of discussion around whether it's appropriate that interns are not paid. But I think there is a problem in the current US market the way internships work because students are expected to turn up to work, work on actual just day to day activities of a business for say three months and get no money. That's not what we're doing at all. So you could be based in Honolulu working on a project for Bank of America, as I mentioned, with the stakeholders being in New York. You're not going into that business. You're not there day to day and not working on daily activities. You're working on a strategic and complex project for them. And then you're submitting that as part of your actual university work. A internship really is disconnected from university. You're not really handing in your internship work as part of your assignments, whereas with us, it actually is the core of the way we deliver the assignments for your university. And as I work on my team, as I work in the project, you have faculty that's going to be advising me and coaching me and teaching me how to do it better. So it raises the bar for everyone now. Correct. Do you have academics assigned to each of the projects working with the team of students working with the industry? And then you get to really, I guess the end of the line outcome that we're trying to achieve. What is the end goal that we're trying to achieve? What we want is that ultimately when a candidate, if I'm being interviewed for a job with you, instead of just handing you a Word document as a CV, doesn't really tell you very much. Here's the list of units I did and the scores. So, you know, you've got an 82 in organisational behaviour. What does that really mean? It doesn't tell you much about me. What we really want is the creation of a digital portfolio for students. So what a student is actually doing is showing you they're thinking their skills and their competencies. An analogy I use is let's say you wanted to renovate your house and you want to find a great interior designer to renovate your house. Would you go through three or four paper based CVs that talk about what university the interior designer went to and what subjects and courses they took? That would be irrelevant, right? Show me your portfolio. Let me see some samples of your work and what you can do. You'd look at that and say, you don't really like that guy's work. Oh, that girl's work, she's awesome. I really like her great style. I can see that kind of fits with. So we're trying to replicate that. But in a business world where employers and industry can really see the projects that students worked on. What were the problems within that project? How did you tackle that? And what were the solutions you came up with? Do I also get grades? Yeah, absolutely. So it's graded just like any other qualification would be. But the other big differences that are vastly different to typical university are the entry and the cost. So we want to deliver education in the US for full degrees for between $7,000 to $9,000. Not per year for the full qualification. So that is incredibly affordable. Yes. And the second part is that there's an enormous challenge. All these deficiencies with university education now and not meeting industry needs. And part of the irony is it's so hard to get in. And there's so much work in your, you know, grade point average over years at school and entrance exams. And it's so difficult to get in for something that's not really that useful to industry at the other end anyway. We actually have no entry requirements for what we're launching into the US. So it's a university degree with no entry requirements. Now the first question you probably think is well, hang on, how do you have any quality control? If anyone can just go in and get this qualification, then essentially you have no standard of quality. But that's not correct. Because what we're simply saying is we have open enrollment to the first two courses. We don't need some external SAT or GMAT or whatever to tell us if a student is competent. We just say we'll allow you anyone to take the first two courses.  You could be really bright as an individual, but for some reason life got in the way, challenges, problem, something happened. You couldn't even finish high school. So we say well, we'll allow you to take the first two courses. Now if you complete those courses at a sufficient standard, well that means you're at a competency level to do the career. And then we give you full enrollment into the university. So once we break down that barrier, now all of a sudden we can be thinking about team mums. We can be thinking about undocumented migrants, all the people that don't fit the standard mold, we can now open up to a huge marketplace of very bright individuals that could have succeeded, you know, had they had all the right backgrounds of, you know, great family with money, with good schools, with private tutors, and maybe life could have been different. But for someone who grew up would say a single family income in New Orleans with struggling finances, and it was hard even just to finish high school. Well, we think that that's a really unfair situation, and everyone should have access to great quality education. So this democratizes the whole system. That's really a social contribution. What if I, what if I don't do very well in those two courses? Do I flunk? Am I finished? Or will you allow me some other pathway? So for us to, for doing a university degree, you would need to get the right level of competency completion for those two courses to then get a full enrollment. So that's to actually get a university qualification. What we would recommend is various things that you can do in various support services. So we're actually working with in the US foundations and associations for people who have been victims of abuse or maybe teen mums or maybe, as I said, undocumented migrants. And so we want a very broader support base, not just about the academic learning. So the point to your question is, depending on what the deficiency is, we can then provide recommendations and pathways because it could be that one person didn't succeed simply because their English proficiency wasn't high enough. So what we can say is, look, here's a couple of English language programs, go off and do those programs and you can come back once you successfully complete that. Boy, this is really depending on it's really 21st century what you're talking about. And it's innovative, incredibly innovative. And and I agree with you that the American system is a little bit calcified after all these years. And it's into when you say education industry, you really mean industry here because it's all locked into money. So this is maybe a model that would be catchy. And one of these days, Matt, somebody else is going to copy you and then you're going to have competition. That's my prediction, Matt. Anyway, it's a great idea. How do I sign up for this? Where do I go? OK, so in terms of anyone who's got any interest in looking at this at the moment, you can simply go on to the IQ. So just the letters IQ dot university website and send through an information request or go through to DeSera Global Business School. But you'll see a lot more information in the marketplace early next year when we actually launch into the market. Well, thank you, Matt. This was a great discussion, a great idea. I'm so I'm so pleased to meet you and hear about this. And I think I'll be hearing more about it. And maybe we'll connect with you again, find out about your progress and especially how it how it how it deals with other changes in the world coming soon. Thank you so much. Brilliant. And thanks so much, Joe. Really appreciate it. As they say in Australia, cheers. What are they saying in Australia? Ah, cheers. Can I anything really that's friendly with a smile? But I haven't mentioned the fact that because you talked about Melbourne a bit and your base in Honolulu, that this initiative is actually going to be headquartered in Honolulu. Oh, I'm really excited about that. Oh, major point. OK, well, we have to talk again when more comes down the pike on this, you and I will connect. We'll talk about the detail here. Thank you so much. Awesome. Matt Jacobson. Have an awesome day. You too.


I mean, he's in line to start, so that's good. I mean, being able to get him back and continue to get this work and help us find a way to win a road game within the division. We think so. Chig, maybe the last four or five weeks seemed to be more productive. Just trying to be consistent. And sometimes you go through a stretch so you have some plays that don't necessarily go your way or things happen in, again, life and in sports and everybody's professional world and life that sometimes you're going to have to battle through and work through. So I think that the consistency and his attitude and preparation has helped in just being available and continuing to work and make the plays that come his way and not forcing anything. I think, you know, we're co-writing the five new guys in and kind of getting them up to speed. Oh, good. I mean, I think if we have any of those guys come up, feel like they've worked hard in a short amount of time and we'll see where we're at as far as elevations go. How's that gear done in terms of having to match up against guys he's given away seven, eight inches of height in due? All right, competitive and challenges. I mean, it's not going to get any taller. But like his competitive spirit and gaining great knowledge of what we're doing and has had some real positive snaps. What's the challenge with Stroud? And what's made you impressed about watching him this take? There's a calmness to him in the pocket. I think that he certainly believes in his arm and when they've given him time to wait things out, you know, being able to put the ball in all different spots in the field and operate under center, operating a gun and use his legs when he's had to. Was there anything that stood out about him getting to know him in the pre-draft this year? Thought he was good at Ohio State, he's good in the pros. Mike, when there's a guy on the other side who has like an intricate knowledge of your offense in tier, how cognizant maybe are you guys of that? Maybe in the preparation and just knowing that he knows what you guys like to run offensively. I wrote 17 games in, 16 games in. So a lot of tape. So I don't think that's going to be an issue. They watch a lot of tape and whatever tier tells him, he tells him. How much can you do differently in the run game against him? Well, we better do something differently. We better be more successful. Thanks, guys. Farley's out. We're guessing. Oh, Farley, OK. You're guessing what? I said we're guessing the zero outs. Well, I think we have. The season, what does that mean to you after not getting the last couple of games? After not getting what the last couple of games? You said last couple of seasons you meant? It doesn't mean anything to me, honestly. I'm about my team success, team winning. And that's really all that matters to me. Return to Houston, is that kind of something that you're keeping in the back of your mind that you get a chance to get back where you started your career? No, not really. I still, I live in Houston. So I don't really put too much emphasis on playing against you or the Texans. I played against them in Arizona. So when they're in the last game, it's always fun just playing against any NFL team to me. So I really don't put any emphasis on me playing there. You've talked in the past though about the teams that I guess didn't want you or didn't think that you still had elite receiver capabilities. This is a team that traded you away. So there's no level of going back into the place where the team traded you away, proving that you're still that guy? No, I'm a man of Christ. I forgive. Love all, serve all. It probably made me stay at the hotel. I would love to sleep in my bed night before though. Will it be different going in the opposite locker room, seeing people, whether it's support staff at the stadium, people you knew well from down there? Maybe you thought about what that might be like and you're looking forward to seeing some face. Oh yeah. Forward to the most just seeing familiar faces and the good folks that work there. You know, and obviously some of the fans as well. A lot of, you know, loyal Houston fans. My first year was 2014 and I remember that place still, you know, having an audience. You got any spots or restaurants you want to take people to this weekend? Man, I got some spots maybe after the game. You know, Houston food a little heavy.  What about recommendations for us? Any place better than El Tiempo? El Tiempo, any places better than El Tiempo. Yes, place called Turkey Leg Hut. Man, that's a lot of good food in Houston. Shoot, man. It's a lot. Turkey Leg Hut, who else? Freaking, and I don't know if y'all like steak. This place called State 48 is pretty good as well. What do you think the reception, barbecue or risk at place there? Killin's Barbecue to me. They got one in Perlin. Got a couple of spots everywhere. But Perlin's probably the closest if y'all going to be in the city. What do you think the reception, what do you expect to hear from fans? And you've always spoke highly of how people treat you there. What do you think it'll be like when you come out of the other team's hut or wearing a Titan's logo on your helmet? You know, hopefully it's still love and support. You know, so I think it'll be, I think it'll be a lot of support and love still there for me, you know. Sorry, I think you're quieted a lot of critics this year, DeAndre.   So, you know, only one team won a Super Bowl. And, you know, a lot of teams have been in that category. So, you know, this is what it is, man.  How often do you get your hair done and what do you look for when your barber's working on you? Well, I got lux, man. And, you know, all I do is wash and condition and moisturize these, you know, once or twice a week. But, you know, I get a haircut on the side here and there maybe every other week. Nothing crazy. I usually do it myself.


A long-standing art gallery in the Bemidji area reopened its doors today for a soft opening of its new location. Gallery North is a non-profit cooperative art gallery that provides its members with a place to display and sell their artwork. The gallery's new fourth street location in downtown Bemidji provides not only more space but better access to the public. This space includes a large gallery to showcase local artists' work and a classroom for demonstrations, trainings and seminars. Compared to the gallery's former location, the new space is considered a prime location. I think people will see us because they'll see our sign and they'll and they'll see what we have in the window and they'll come in so I think we'll be more visible and hopefully we'll get more foot traffic. The gallery will be open Monday through Saturday until from 10 until 5 Gallery North will have its official grand opening in June. If you've enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News, please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to Lakeland Public Television.


Two Russian missiles struck a restaurant in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk on June 27, killing at least three people, a senior official said, and emergency services combed through the shattered building in search of casualties. Andrey Yermak, head of President Volodymyr Zelenskyi's administration, said on Telegram that 25 people were injured, including a child. Emergency services scurried in and out of the shattered restaurant as residents stood outside surveying the damage from the strike, which occurred just before 8 p.m. local time. Kramatorsk is a major city west of the front lines in Donetsk province and a likely key objective in any Russian advance to move westward to capture all of the region. The city has been a frequent target of Russian attacks, including a strike on the town's railway station in April 2022 that killed 63 people.


Going on everyone Sam here with late in sports cards ripping two boxes of 23 pinning origins football international blaster boxes for Kyle B So good luck here Kyle see what we got the pedigree in the big bang. I realized pedigree was exclusive to this this year Yeah, yeah, this is the first time I open them this year You have no orders coming to me. We're close. Yeah We're literally this and one more and that's it if nothing else comes in All right, good luck here Trey Tucker Devon a chain and Dorian Thompson Robinson on the OG To us certainly not terrible. That's uh, that's some haters right there Hey, the lefties Will Leviss rookie Roshan Johnson startups Jameer Gibbs Yeah, that's that'll happen for sure shady. Yeah, any anything to do with social media is just disgusting Yeah, nobody's afraid to be a chain to 299 Every fan base is bad on Twitter Had an hooker Let's let's be a hundred percent honest with ourselves every single fan base of any sport in any league at any level is awful Ravens fans. I want to punch myself in the face when I see you see what Ravens fans say Have a go on mill There's Davis will Anderson and Jordan Addison OG pretty convinced all the FSU fans on Twitter fake FSU fans, right? Jalen Carter UCF fans trying to complain so they get an O'Connell so they can probably Say oh FSU fans are saying talking just like us start up Sean We're not Thanks for national right never will we Michael Wilson 149 just like you see it Sam LaForte's up Stetson Bennett and Luke schoonmaker. That's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying It's makes you feel like makes you look bad as a fan Right, you're almost like not a true sports fan if you don't hate your fan base on social media Like I probably hate the Ravens fan base more than I hate any other fan base on social media. It's awful, dude I can't do it Just like you were saying with FSU dude like it's the same thing It's like no one no one's actually You should have seen how many people were getting so tight that like about not it Can't we shouldn't extend them are we need to pay blah blah blah? Yeah, you pay this guy every single time somebody doesn't have a good okay. We're done Gotta move on from him trade him caught him Anthony Richardson I'm maybe true Rishi rice. I think you're right shady nice one there cuz they're maybe the easiest to hate on yeah Josh Downs Michael Meyer startups Quentin Johnson. They're the same thing though. Yeah, like Dallas Cowboy Right, I don't think real cowboy fans are like immediately. Yeah, I mean obviously Tanner McKee to 49. I know exactly what you mean though There's fake Right DTR is a flowers rookie and Jalen high at OG. Let's go Brandon picking up a couple of personals. Hell, yeah Yeah, it's exactly like it's our year Has to be yeah, Jets fans are CJ Stroud Sharon Hall Bryce young and startups of Michael Meyer. I do I was gonna say I don't I just feel bad for Jets fans more than anything Like one of my best friends the biggest Jets fan you'll ever meet. He's just like He's like he just hates it man. Yeah, we're still accepting personals Brian. Do you want to throw something in case you're on boot seats? It's you 99 Tyree Wilson and Michael now do it for your break there Kyle. Thanks again for the sport buddy get him right out to


The Alliance Against Political Prosecutions is appalled at the treatment of award-winning journalist Julian Assange. It is clear that Julian Assange did not commit espionage. He published material provided to him about war crimes committed in Iraq in 2010 about Guantanamo Bay, Afghanistan and other things we had a right to know about. What else could he have done? Surely we don't encourage people to keep silent about crimes, but since publication he has suffered extreme persecution. With the time in the Ecuadorian embassy and in Belmarsh prison where he remains to this day it is close to 10 years that he has not seen freedom. He has suffered isolation, deteriorating physical and mental health and torture as assessed by the UN Special Torture Niels Melzer. For a man not convicted of any crime this is extreme injustice and in humanity which is clearly, seriously, adversely affecting his health. Julian's prosecution is a great danger to press freedom and human rights everywhere. The assurances given by the US government about his treatment in US prisons cannot be relied upon and should not be relied upon since he has not committed any crime. We urge Prime Minister Albanese to put an end to this persecution of an innocent courageous man and to speak loudly and clearly to the UK and US governments to free Julian and drop all the charges. If the friendship between our countries cannot stand that, what is it worth? Julian Assange must be free.