J-E-L-L-O! The Jello Program starring Jack Benny with Johnny Green and his orchestra. The orchestra opens the program with, don't say a word, just dance. We all need bright colors to keep our spirits up. When it comes to colors, that's where Jello shines. It's the liveliest, gayest dessert you can find. Sunshiney orange, shimmering green, the deep, rich tones of rose and crimson. Six different colors from which to choose. Everyone lovely, clear and glowing. And when it comes to taste, ah, that's where Jello shines again. For it's packed, crammed, full of delicious, real fruit flavor. Flavor is truly luscious as the fresh ripe fruit itself. No other gelatin dessert can equal Jello's extra-rich flavor. So don't accept any substitutes. Insist on the one and only genuine Jello. Fit monotonous. Now, can't we make some kind of a change in this program? I don't know what you mean, Don. How? Well, why don't you introduce me? You take the commercial and give me the opening build-up. Oh, that's awfully silly. Well, it can't be any worse than it has been, so why not try it out? You know, I'll take your lines and you take mine. All right, Don, but you'll see, every man to his own racket. Hey, Green, take the finish of your first number again. Okay. That was Johnny Green playing the Lost Core. And now we bring to you our master of ceremonies, that stage and screen star, Jack Benny. Jello again. This is Jack Benny, the funny man of this program. How am I doing? Fine, Don, that's a great idea, and I'll take your part. Tell me, Jack, how did you do at the Stanley Theater in Pittsburgh last week? Well, I'll tell you, Don, I had a wonderful week.  Well, Jack, the way you played Love and Bloom, they should cheer at the finish. Yeah. Oh, yeah, well, one day we turned away 5,000 people. Say, this is a cute idea, isn't it, switching parts? Oh, yeah. Come in. Well, well, if it isn't Kenny Baker. How are you, Kenny? I'm Mary.  Oh. Well, how are you, Kenny? Gee, it's a thrill. Well, Kenny, I see you finally bought yourself a suit of Eastern clothes. Yes, I got to pair of pants with it.  No, the pants do. Say, Kenny. Yes, Jack? How do you like New York now? Great. I went to see the six-day bicycle race last week. Even Kenny must be lying. That's all right. Well, you went to see the six-day bicycle race. Who won it? I don't know. I only stayed five days. And speaking of the six-day race, let me tell you about Jello, with its six-daylicious flavor. Not yet, not yet, Don. Not yet. Oh, pardon me, I think. Well, see you later, fellas. I've got a date. Look out of the window. OK, Kenny. Hello, Jack. Has the program started yet? Very limited. Might be a good idea, but Mary needs a shave. Oh, Mary, here's Don Wilson. Hello, Mary. Hello, Tut. Want to hear a poem or wrote Don? No. All right, then. Maybe Jack will listen. Here it is. It's entitled Spring. Mmm. Spring is nearly here. Oh, spring is nearly here. Birdie's singing everywhere. People changing underwear. So have a care. Oh, have a care, cause spring is nearly here. How's that, Kenny? One of us is rotten. And speaking of spring, why not spring over to your nearest grocer and ask for the big red letters on the box? Not yet, Don. Not yet, please.  Now you know how it feels to be interrupted, you mug. I realize it, though. Well, anyway, tonight, folks, uh, see who's at the door, Kenny? Uh, come in. Well, well, Johnny Green. That isn't me. I'll leave the orchestra here, and I won't stand for this. But, Johnny, we're just changing the program around. Just for a novelty. You get tired doing the same thing every week. When? You keep out of this, Wilson. Well, I didn't say anything. Who said you did? Then what are you talking about? Say, who started this anyhow? Pascanini over there. He thinks he's Johnny Green. Oh, that guy. Play, Jack. I know that many of you listeners are a little confused with the blanks you have to fill out, but we'll try to help you. That's the least we can do. And now we take you to the income tax office, which is not unlike a bank. Only the paying teller is missing. All right. Music, John. Miss Livingston, uh, what are the collections here so far? Uh, let me see. Uh, $79.20. That's $280 behind last year. I know what the trouble is. This office looks terrible. I'd expect people to come in and pay their tax in a dump like this. Put some flowers on my desk. Take off that picture of George Washington and bring in a few easy chairs. Make the customers want to come in here. Maybe now we'll do some business. Good morning. I'd like to pay my income tax. What did I tell you, Miss Livingston? Well, sir, this is the place. What's your name? Johnny Green. Occupation? Orchestra leader. Mm-hmm. Were you born in this country? No. What orchestra leader was? Now, Mr. Green, what was your gross income for 1935? $325,842.09. I see. And what was your net? $12.  Everything but my shirt. Oh. And it won't be long now. Did you have any bad investments last year, Mr. Green? Yes. I bet on Max Baer to beat Joe Lewis. Mm-hmm. Any dependence? Max Baer. Oh, Miss Livingston, uh, what is the owe so far? $0.85. Oh, fine. I'll pay it. Just a minute now. Are you married?  If I had one, I'd sell. I see. Well, here's your $0.85.  All right. Head. Tails, you lose. Well, it isn't the first time the government took it on the chin. Goodbye. So long. Nice fellow, wasn't he, Miss Livingston? Come in. Please, I'd like to pay my intercom tax. Well, you couldn't find a better place. What's your name? Giuseppe Andoni Parmigino. How do you spell that? You know spell. You just put them down. How are you, Mr. Washington disease? Uh, what, uh, what business are you in? I'm a 60-day basic rider. I'll just put down a peddler. Are you married? Yes. How many children have you got? How many flavors you got? What's the owe, Miss Livingston? Let's see. $1,500 divided by six children. Add one loving cup. How much have you got now? Just what you owe us. Thank you. Well, that's at least a promise. Have you ever filed your income tax yet? Did I? A big country like me sings. Uh, how much do we collect, Miss Livingston? Yes. Thanks for calling me an orange deck. Don't mind him, Kenny. He's always kidding. Oh, I know. It's just a scheme to mention two of our flavors. You're right, Kenny. I'm with you. Oh, well, thanks. It's very sweet of you. Say, what are you doing tonight, Mary? Oh, nothing. Why? You like Chinese food? Oh, I love it. Not me. I'm going to a dance tonight. So long. I'm in New York, and I'm talking to him. What's the matter, Mary? Oh, nothing. You like Chinese food, Jack? Certainly, why? Kenny's going to a dance. What's funny about that? You know, I notice you look kind of sad tonight. What's the matter with you? Oh, I don't know, Jack. I'm homesick. You know, New York is the loneliest place in the world if you don't know anyone. Why, Kenny, I thought you were having a great time here. All I do is look at tall buildings. Gee, Jack, you're so familiar with New York, how we should show me around. Why, certainly, Kenny, you should have mentioned this before. I didn't know you felt that. We haven't just been to Greenwich Village or Grant's Tomb or the Central Park Zoo. Oh, the zoo? Gee, I've never been to the zoo. I'd like to see a wild animal. Why, haven't you seen any animals in California? Oh, just the MGM lion. Well, that's too bad. You've just got to see the zoo. I'll take you right now. Come on, Mary, you two don't. Hey, play something, Johnny. We get back. We're going to the zoo. They isn't marvelous how they hang by their tails in the sun. They just see some of the oddest animals in the world. Do you? Gee, I'd like to see an algebra. An algebra? How about some wild arithmetic? Hey, boy, give me a bag. How much is it? Seven cents. Seven cents for a bag of peanuts? Yeah, there's a two-cent deposit on the bag. Just a little round. Show us around and see the place right. Let's call one of the attendants. Yeah. Oh, you with the uniform, will you show us around? Sure, and that's what I'm here for. Yes, sir, here's the master of ceremonies around here. We'll see him after the strike is over. I have to take this club and beat him over to the back. Hey, what are you hitting that giraffe for? I'm trying to raise, make a camel out of him. Hey, uh, keeper, we want to see some elephants. Where are they? Yeah, we want to feed them some peanuts. Oh, the elephants. Where are those elephants? That's funny, they were here just a minute ago. I hope you don't think we have them. Hey, Kenny, you didn't take an elephant, did you? No, Jay. Come on, now, who's got those elephants?  Here's some peanuts. Here you are, sir. Imagine an elephant not wanting peanuts. Then why not try Jell-O with the most tempting gelatin dessert in the world? No one with feathers. We'll show the bird that brings the babies. Gee, that one looks all broken down. That's the one that brought the quintuplets. He was retired on a pension. Talk must be Freddie Allen's bird. Like him. Well, now, Polly, I'll give you $10 more than Freddie, Beja. Come on, Polly wants some Jell-O. We'd like to see the different wild animals. I got anything what you want. Look, here's the lion that brought Beck. Hey, Keeper, have you got any... Keeper, have you got any raccoon? Yes, sir, I could show you something very nice. Here, try this on. And if you like it, I'll take out the animal. I don't like raccoon on Kenny. It makes him look too calidious. Thank you. Have you got something in tiger? No, but I got something else in a stripe. Here, feel this fish good. Hey, what is this? A zoo or a clothing store? That's up to you.  Porcupine? How much is it? The pork you can have for nothing, but you'll have to charge you for the pine. Hey, listen, Benny Rubin, don't you think we're overdoing this? It's your program, but it's my animals. Say, if you'd like to see something more, come this way. Oh, wait a minute. I'd like to see something in mink. I'll have you meet my wife. What cage is she in? Very quiet. Ask him if he's got any wild pigs. Well, in this case, I'll have to turn you over to the other Keeper.  Oh, and believe me, those little devils can do everything but speak. They can?  Who's that big one in front? That's if the head monkey is not used to the cage yet. Yeah, yeah.  Gee, this is the best I've seen yet. Hey, listen, I've been installing enough on this program. Come on, open up this cage. I better leave before he's getting out. Hey, let me out of here. Let me out of here.  I'll be darned if I can. You'll have to prove it. Play, John. See, an informal about Sunday night supper for everybody, growing ups and youngsters alike. So here's a suggestion for next Sunday that will make it a special occasion. Sunday night pudding, it's called, and you make it like this. Dissolve a package of strawberry jello in warm water. Chill until slightly thickened. Then add half a cup of chopped walnut meats and one cup of chopped dates and a chilled firm. Serve with whipped cream. Gee, you have a great dessert because strawberry jello has delicious as real ribber to use genuine jello. Look for those big...


I got some green beans and some bacon. Check out what we're making. Cut the ends off your beans.  After a quick boil, we remove from the heat and we strain. Now you need some bacon and a bowl. And we're gonna start out by melting half a stick of butter. So we got our melted butter. We're gonna add us a couple tablespoons of soy sauce, maybe a fourth of a cup of brown sugar. And last but not least, you need the spicy danoes. Hold on. I'm back. I had to run to Walmart to get me a fresh bottle. That's my favorite part. Give a healthy tablespoon or two danoes. Mix that all together. Grab your five or six beans, then you wrap them. Just like that. Now we simply baste on our sauce and we top with a little bit of the danoes crunchy and our 400 degree oven they go. And we're done. Now that's fantastic. Yum yum, get yourself.


Hey, Aloha everybody and welcome to the Think Tech Hawaii studios for another episode of security matters today. We have Amanda utter with us from VTI security groups. She's an account executives there and I'm really glad she could take some time out to join us in the studio. Well virtually in the studio anyway. Amanda, thanks for coming on today. How you doing? Thanks for having me. I appreciate the opportunity. Doing well. Staying home. Good. Are you staying home? You have kids at home as well? I do. Two kids at home. So we're kind of doing shifts and my husband and I and you have to make it work, right? Yeah, are they getting schooled online as well? No, they're two and four. They're two and four, so they're busy in a whole different way. So we just have to manage that. I need my mommy time. Is that distracting when you're trying to work? I've seen a lot of people have their kids on their lap while they're doing video. All kinds of stuff is really cool. Thankfully, we've managed that pretty well. We take two hour shifts. So I go and I lock myself away in the office and my husband has the kids and then we switch and we kind of plan it around conference calls and meetings and obligations. We figure it out. That's awesome. Good job. Let's let our audience get to know you a little bit. We first met down at security next and we'll talk about that later. Kind of give a bit of your history as much as you care to share and sort of feel about how you end up getting into security and getting associated with VTI security where you are today. Yeah. Well, as far as getting into security, I can't say I think like a lot of people, I didn't know I was going to get into security. And then once I got in, you kind of stay in, right? It's a small world.  But I started at VTI about 13 years ago and I went to college for mass communications. So again, nothing security related. I have always been in some form of sales. And so when I started at VTI, I started as an account manager and I started with different accounts than I work with now. Of course, over those 13 years, it's migrated into more national accounts, more enterprise accounts, some more complex accounts, which I love. I love the pace of it. I love the interactions and the relationships and the longer term planning and opportunities to to deal with some more complex issues for customers. So that's where I am at VTI and very active in our local ASIS chapter as well and different, you know, CIA events and things like that, which you and I have talked about. So I think that's really helped to really get visibility and into the industry further and deeper as far as from an overall perspective. So yeah, that's some of my history. So you're not bragging very well on yourself. You're one of our 20 under 40, was it award winners? And I think you were the president of ASIS chapter out there as well. That is true. I was the president of the local ASIS chapter and before that I was the vice chair. And then before that young professional liaison and very active in women's security initiative here locally for ASIS. That's awesome. We put on the event every year and we're very, we have a large attendance and people look forward to that event each year. And so the whole goal is of course to inspire and promote and empower women in the industry. Wow. It is that is it geared your session specifically towards women insecurity that is it that sort of thing, but it's a local ASIS chapter focus. That's awesome. Yeah, correct. It's an alignment within the international women insecurity initiative, but it is a local chapter focus. And we do outreach to different colleges and student organizations because part of the initiative is how do we get more women into the industry? How do you keep them in the industry? How do you help to elevate them and give them the education and inspiration they need to move forward? Yeah, yeah. And that's the thing.  You know what I mean? So we, I think we felt too closed up for a long time and it's, I think it's kind of hurt our industry right now when we're competing for a technology workforce.  There's a lot of fun ways to go play. And you know, security is kind of like, you know, if you don't know about our technology and all the really great things we do to sort of service our customers for tech lives, for tech property. You know, you think we're guards and guns and all that kind of stuff, right? And so are your events, what sort of messaging has resonated, you know, when you put those on? Yeah. So the events, we don't want to focus on the technical aspects as much of the industry. We focus more on more of how do it's, it's maybe tactful self promotion at work. It's leadership skills. It's learning more of the business and how to, you know, communication business challenges for women. But it's all a positive tone. And so it's just really with the goal of to inspire we keep, we don't, we don't look at any product specific content in those events, you know, it's really just around how can we help bring women together in a community, and help them to give them the tools that they need to advance really in their careers. But in this case, it's in the security industry and how do we highlight any, any women that are in the industry now who have helped to pave the way we have a panel discussion and we have, we'll bring in a keynote, but it's around how can we learn from other women, how can we learn from experiences and take things away to apply to our own lives, and kind of bring that into what does that look like in our work life integration as well. Right. So, Sure. And that foundational stuff is kind of missing for a lot of people was there if they're younger and just getting into the workforce or been out of college for a little while, trying to find a career path. They haven't often gotten due date due day. I'm sure you probably get feedback. Do they have they come across some of that empowerment from other women in other places before or for some time for some of them is it almost new like wow this is amazing. Thank you. It is. It's new and we found we've been doing this for a number of years that I think we're on our like our ninth event, and the women keep coming back and they're telling other people in their companies and you have large corporations that are knocking down our door to sponsor. You know, they get one of it and they're saying we want to sponsor this we want our name tied to this kind of to your point this is becoming an initiative, not only in our industry but in business right in general. And so these women are I think you're on to something where it's something that it's not like that that leadership, the leadership skills and the communication skills and the ability to, you know, promote yourself and not feel badly about it or whatever it is that stuff isn't talked about. And it kind of goes to what we'll talk about in a little bit here but it's it's beyond the technical side of things that needs to be focused on in order to bridge that gap. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean the hard skills can all be taught right the technology you can learn once you get in the role the tricks to bring your whole self to the road be rewarded for it be willing to share. It's it's all those ideas that we're missing out on if we don't have a different voices in the room you know as I alluded to our industry got, I think, really sort of just top heavy and I'm not sure if it was because it was like exiting law enforcement and are exiting military and I don't I don't know where it's probably the 70s or 80s or how it's got the way it is, but it just it there just wasn't I think, open arms or open invitations to other diverse members of the workforce out there until it seems like these last several years out you guys are if you've been doing this for nine years you're way ahead of the, at least the national curve. Right. Definitely. When we are and so I think a lot of the other chapters have looked to us to say you know what are you doing. We want to look at setting up our own event or organization around women and security initiative. Can we tap into you for some ideas and how did you get that started so yeah to your point we're kind of on the front end of that curve. Yeah. Wow, it's amazing. It is. So how is representation there in the companies around like at VTI and the other companies in Minneapolis and that you know since you've got this sort of little bit of a lead I think on what some of the other you know national organizations have done. Would you say compared to other companies that you run into it are women better represented in the companies there or do you know if you have a sort of visibility on that. I think as far as the I think overall what I can say is the trend I've seen is women are more represented across the board right like there's the attendance has the attendance has grown the number of women from any given organization that's in attendance has grown. I think we have people from all aspects of business from integration from manufacturers from end users whatever it is and the overall the presence continues to grow. So I think we're seeing a curve there which is encouraging overall. Yeah that's excellent. Wow we have this is I think it could be some good data to share with the you know the women's security forum group and see you know some of those successes so we can maybe get some guidance for you guys like what kind of what's going to work what are the what are those hot topics that were I love the mentoring thing you know I've talked to guys and we had this discussion last year the steering committee you know that there's there's a lot of guys like afraid to mentor women like really like what are you afraid of like you need to pass on your your connections in your you know the things that you've learned that you know the people you know the glue that makes you part of the industry you've got to be able to hand that off to other people what does it matter if it's a man or a woman like you've got to do these things are you just going to sit in that desk till you're 90 I mean security people are passionate right so that I know why they keep working but it's like fishing or something I want to retire my wife so that retire any day but she's not going to be okay no border yeah that's not going to happen yeah but I'll say you know the the at this event and just in general what I'm seeing out there is there are so many men who are huge advocates huge mentors of these women and who are totally just completely promoting this sort of event and who are completely on board and so that it's so great to see you have that mixed bag and you know a lot of men I shouldn't say well not a lot but a number of men attend the event yes you know and are really engaged and are actually on the committee to help plan and feel passionately about it you know so it's it's fun yeah it's so good we have as men we have to be taught how to talk as well and how you know how to have these conversations because we can't I've talked about this before none of us can really leave our biases behind this right so if we have them we just need to acknowledge them and that's it's okay to have them and we talk through those you know but it's um I think men are some men I've talked to you are just afraid they'll be they'll be taken wrong or they'll be mistaken and are mistakenly out of context it's like you just you just ask questions about those things and you can work through it you know we want to find this ground where we can all be productive right definitely definitely yeah that's awesome well it's uh we're getting about midway let's uh we'll take a break we'll pay some bills and then we're gonna come back and talk about some good to great stuff we'll be back in one minute with Amanda Utter Aloha I'm Keisha King host of Crossroads in Learning on Think Tech Hawaii on Crossroads in Learning our guests and I discuss all aspects of education here in Hawaii and throughout the country you can join us for stimulating conversations to enrich and liven and educate we are streamed live on Think Tech bi-weekly at 4pm on Mondays thanks so much for watching our show we look forward to seeing you then Aloha Hey Aloha welcome back to Security Matters we're with Amanda Utter today from BTI Security and if you're in the industry across this country you know what a great company this is so I think we might get some of the secret sauce of how they got to be so great from Amanda if we can coax it out of her today Amanda thanks for joining us today um you gave a great presentation at Security Next down in New Orleans uh I was sitting next to Marine Carlo we just kept we kept everybody's like oh my gosh this is exactly what we need to hear so um give me a little bit of the genesis of of that talk where it came from and I didn't know if it was something that you did internally or let's talk about sort of the background of how you ended up on that stage that day sure I'll try to sum it up a little bit so I started I was asked to speak at the young professional um the new young professional event at SIA in Minneapolis Oh SIA rise okay Accelerize yep so I spoke on I was approached to speak on exceptional customer service and so I ended up talk I did a talk there on exceptional customer service and then from there that talk led to me going to New Orleans and speaking on broadening it up a little bit talking about exceptional customer service was part of the talk but it's really what bridges that gap from good to great and it's it's exceptional customer service along with a couple other things that really kind of you have this pool of companies that are really good and then you have those companies that are looked at as great and not only the companies but individuals right now what can what can we do as individuals to bridge that gap as well yeah sure exactly and then yeah and and so what was the what was the sort of pushed it did Paul reached out Paul did you see you'd Accelerize Rabusa and say hey you got to come down and talk or did you did you come up with the topic or did he have an idea in mind we kind of collaborated on it to come up with the topic to take what I did at SIA and expand it a little bit further to kind of that overall good to great concept so yeah we just kind of went back and forth I know Paul from the past and that you know 20 under 40 and so you knew that event was coming up and so he's like yeah you know I'm putting together the speaker roster and getting things together so yeah it's good timing let's let's do it that's awesome and so give us a let's let's talk about let's talk about the good companies versus the great ones the good ones they get the they get the let's just say they get the what the 42 to 46 sort of grades on their on their survey monkeys from their customers or whatever right they don't get the 5 0 very much right they might get a 5 0 on a person or 5 0 on a certain service outcome or something but you know by and large they're good you know they're good they're doing good work they're keeping their customers happy what's what's what's the impetus for them to you know what would push them to want to really be great well I think you ultimately you what we have is our reputation right and so your reputation what you have to do in order to maintain that's I mean especially now more than ever that's highlighted right so I think getting back to basics getting just back to the basics of I mean let's face it we're in the industry of technology like we provide technology solutions to fit a need but that's not enough because so does so does the next company we all provide technology technology solution I'd say in my case an integrator so what do we need to do and it's a lot of that how are you delivering those products and what makes you different and it's focusing on it's not rocket science it's focusing on a few things like exceptional customer service and building your brand and being aware of your brand and then how are you how are you managing the work and integrating that into your life and there are some of these overarching concepts that if you focus on those and are consistent with those that's what bridges the gap and I think so many times we can lose sight of it and because they are such simple things but they're not easy to do to implement you know say 80% of the time and be consistent with it but the companies that are when they're when you're practicing that daily that ultimately becomes your identity that's who you are that's what people are talking about when you're not around that's your reputation and so right now right now more than ever that's highlighted and so that's going to show and so I would say if you're getting if you're a 4.2 out of 5 you have got to get back to basics and you have got to start delivering and focusing on these few kind of key key concepts is I this is my habit I should talk about it so my habit is to not ask questions first right I tend to walk in I've been doing this so long I know what you need to do terrible approach obviously right this the questioning of free I myself people don't let me in the room anymore just so we're clear the but the questioning approach to to anything actually to get to know someone first find out what's important to them what makes them tick is that teachable to someone like me that struggles with it you know and in that first thing to want to know about other want to know about what others concerns are instead about what my technology can do to solve your problem yeah you know I think so and I think another way to reframe that to is whether it's asking questions or listening to what it is that they say first or the question they ask you because here's the thing and somebody gave me this example and it couldn't be more right on let's look at like Disney right so here's an example of that somebody in a Disney world asks a Disney world employee what time is the parade and instead of saying 12 o'clock the parades at noon they would say well the parade starts at noon but you'd want to be you know over the hill by that tree by 1130 before it gets too crowded I see you have a couple of young kids and so you want to make sure that you cross the street by 1245 just before the parade is over so you get you know get out of the mass amount of crowds or whatever it is so instead of just saying the parade starts at noon you hear their question but you're able to then anticipate what's what they're really asking what is really going to how can you take it to the next level to give them really what they need because if you say at noon you know they're going okay well now where should I go where should I sit when should I take my kids across the street so I don't get bombarded by the people when it's over think it through further don't just give them a one word answer and make them ask you next because if you do that you are going to be way ahead of the person behind you and the person that was there before you and they're going to that's immediately going to put them at ease and say that that's going to establish some immediate trust and some immediate credibility that's the quickest thing to do so if you can not take some work and that takes some training of yourself to do that but if you're aware of that and can start trying to practice that that's a skill that will take you that'll take you far yeah that's great advice I am reminds me of the you know yes somebody hey where's this place they go go up two streets take a right yeah oh where's the place yeah exactly tell me where it is yeah exactly like so weird that's good advice how do companies teach that you know internally I know I don't know what you know the experience at DTS been but obviously been there a while must be you know a good great place to work the other folks I've met that I know from the industry that work there great and so is it is this something that you guys practice and teach like when you onboarding people hey here's the here's what our core values are this is the way we enact them or bring them to our customer how do you how do you make that a culture wide sort of practice yeah so I think you hit it cultures huge core values are huge VTI as you know has we speak about our core values we write about the core values are talked about consistently but the thing is is that everybody has to carry those out then in their own way yet still representing the company right and so you can have that's the risk is that you can have you could have an employee that completely poisons the pot because they're not living those core values and then your reputations at risk right so upon hiring you have to I think and VTI is very good about this as far as how they approach interviewing but really making sure that this person is going to fit the culture and it's going to be the right fit for them as well versus focusing on yes they have to have a technical aptitude and they have to you know have depending on what what they're interviewing for technical skills but more importantly I think this is me this is me saying this but is that are they a good fit culturally because they have to be able to live those core values and then how those come out on an individual basis or I'm in sales so on a salesperson basis is different we all might approach our book of businesses a little bit different but our core values remain the same and so that's kind of the glue that holds it together let's talk a little bit about that poisonous person first of all how how long do you tolerate that you know when you see someone runs a foul some core values and offer them a little training how quickly do you need to weed that out because I think a lot of businesses fire too slowly yeah yeah I think so too and I can't take you know I'm I think from my perspective I think you have to weed it out quickly because again especially regardless of a role there and even if they're not external customer facing I think sometimes we discount that well they're not external customer facing so maybe it's not as important I would argue that it still is extremely important because they're they're then poisoning internally right as well yeah they're reaching out and you have valued employees that are now being impacted by this by this poison but certainly also if you have people that are external facing that's a whole another challenge because now that again is the face of they are off face of your company and then and your reputation it all goes back to your reputation and people talk this industry is small business in general is small your name and the name of your company is out there and it's associated with whatever it is you're doing so good I love the I love the insight about the internal customer you know we serve our our clients but we also serve each other and those core values have to have to resonate in you know in both directions right or it's just nobody has a off day you're allowed an off day or an off moment but overall yeah everybody's going to have that but we need we need those values intact so we're getting down near the end give us some if you could take a minute or so and give us the see what do I want to pull from this like the I guess the top line advice that you would have for companies that are sort of struggling you know that they're a good company but they really would like to be great maybe the couple couple couple tasks they could focus on or a couple things that they could do things you think might be helpful for them to do better in our industry. Yeah I think I'm going to go back to basics around focus on that customer experience focus on being accountable and reliable and problem solving for your customers focus on building a brand that is consistent focus on building that around some core pillars and values and make sure that you have the employees that fit that mold and I would say really focus on how you can help support your employees in kind of just that work life integration and that because then you'll have happier employees you're able to be flexible while establishing some sort of means to measure performance and metrics and what people are responsible to do for their jobs but I think really getting back to some of those basics and focusing on being reliable doing what you're going to say you're going to do every time both internally and externally again. And that accountability and being problem solvers for your for your customers and you have to add you have to add value you have to be able you can't be hard to do business with that's the other thing. That's the other thing deliver an exceptional product and product but if you're hard to do business with people will move on and you'll do is custom awesome. Thank you that's that's great advice be easy to do business with me to thank you so much for your time today I really appreciate it. I appreciate it sounds good. All right hello everybody take care out there be safe wash your hands.


I decided to leave early cuz I didn't want to Okay He's just gonna let me get that punch him There's nothing to grab I hate everything chat Okay, that was too late. So that is that a proximity thing he does there. Let's see if spider bro can do some damage here Okay, maybe not freaking spider, bro. You just killed. Okay. That was a mistake. That was a mistake spider bro was a mistake Oh Okay, it's the dodging which has always been a problem for me in this game. I'm not good at the dodging Okay, that's proximity All right, this tactic is not working so when the force field comes up that's when I thought you dodged but Seems it's a little bit earlier than that.   I was like, why isn't it working? Come here boom smacka Do the face in the face that greedy chat to the dodge So he's as three before he jumps to the center. I have feeling the QTE is coming up I don't see anything to do. Oh, I saw it too freaking late. I'm like, what do I do?  Wasn't that bad? Shocking on I get it. He was scared and desperate These demons are everywhere all of a sudden. Okay, Yuri shockers all yours now Good work. We have a special cell waiting for him at the raft. We'll make sure he stays behind bars this time Also, we'll pop them in the bottom. I'm sure he was working for the demon gang Demon gang Sounds like a daily bugle headline. Hey, the bugle is a perfect for fine news organization. Not sure I call it Well, I've heard they have some really good reporters Anyway, have you had any more reports on demon guys with masks? Let me get back to you By the way, how much of a mess did you make inside that bank? You probably don't want to know Shouldn't have asked You shouldn't have asked lady I mean here's backpacks calling my name all these delicious side quests new skill points new suit new suit new suit Heck is this electrically insulated suit aka bubble spider-man able to stay afloat and all Aqua aquatic pools and oceans Insulated kit bash hide this start capacitors temporarily temporarily electrify gauntlets electrifying enemies Okay Can't say I like the design looks kind of weird skills. I got three skill points now Yank and throw you can hit them with their own weapon. Oh, that's just cool This is perched takedown. I probably should do this and Still takedowns generate more focus now, but we'll do Wait hold and then press L That's cool Long strike. Oh Yeah, that's cool. Let's do that man. Night time looks so good in this game The shocker took a while and to catch up on what I've been missing out in the city I kind of like at this part. They're kind of telling you to do side quests and To upgrade your stuff before you get to the next story part Climbing in this game. I just I Struggled to just do a simple climb. I probably should do more of that Huh, the message tried mixing up a prototype web fluid at Oscorp while Harry had his internship there Didn't work That place has always been bad luck for me. I got a voicemail. Where'd it go? Wait All right, we got the backpack Feast what's feast ain't doing that My apartment Well, I haven't anything near my apartment Yeah The indomitable auto Octavius That's great news. What was plan works? I knew you'd come around They've been pretty busy tonight hitting a lot of fish properties. They're going after fish damn you thinking what I'm thinking Brewing gang war. Let's try to get ahead of it. Are there any fish properties that haven't been hit tonight Let me see patrol reported a bunch of activity at one of his shipyards in Portside. Thanks, Yuri I'll check it out. Hi guys Oh Oh Let me send an officer to meet you there. His name's Jefferson Davis. That's his beat He's a good cop been working the fist case for years. If anyone knows what's going on at that shipyard. It's him Confucius Plaza Confucius Plaza These crime points chat Can use some of his wisdom right about now How'd you get off the ps4? fizz out So I got a picture I want to use as a wallpaper Hey, dudes, what's up? Oh, I don't have my thing yet. I don't have my ability.  I get off me. Oh, what the deuce was that?  There's too many. There's too many So my suit gadget is I got one okay, okay, I got Do it do it do it do it do it spiders do it please Occupy them Yeah Nope, you can't hit this What I dodged that You can oh you can oh that hurt We did it go to library the applications capture guys are to your game and then press options button option to transfer the USB Oh, I got transferred USB. Okay. You can also share the Twitter and Facebook. Yeah, I don't want to do Facebook Or Twitter second chat We're gonna Do this thing so Go to library applications and Gallery I Guess I can show you this. I still know what's on my USB stick. So I'm gonna This under capture gallery Yeah, okay, I don't know why these other ones are here. This is the one. All right, so So I have to share a button to upload if I hit share does have share does okay copy the USB storage. There we go flopping on one of these Would you fit copy to USB device? The USB device storage is not good. I just connected it You win. Oh The device's file system is unsupported. Well I'm like you either Let's try another one.  Oh, I Might not be able to do this then I Think they're all like windows Hasn't popped up that it recognizes it yet. Oh, I think I did recognize it Okay, copy Okay Okay, I'd like that one. Okay, cool USB sticks chat. It's the future. All right ps4 share looks like this was the OS Spider-Man Cool. All right, so open Excellent copy it to my wallpapers holder.  Oh, wait a copy to the USB phone, you know, I open that set as well. Oh, that's beautiful. Oh, oh Oh Said it's back. I'll tweet it too. I don't want to give I don't want I don't want to associate my Twitter account with what the paid ps4 loving Spider-Man That's nice. Well, Spider-Man ps4 photo mode I Can see a ton of wallpapers Coming from this and got the pictures wallpapers Spider-Man Capital s I just I thought what's called spider-man something spider-man Maybe I put them pictures and not wallpaper Spider, I don't know where I put it. I guess we're gonna I heard this. Oh It's called Marvel spider-man All right, we're just gonna say it the dumbest decision ever is to put Marvel in the name of this game Alright, I was just here right now dumbest decision ever Dumbest I just started Programming I want to start Okay, who's at me? Let's just take it right off of my USB because I can't I can't Share Hey All right, I put it in gaming on discord chat So if you're on my discord check the gaming channel That was me messing around with photo mode. Good stuff Me likey We're going to get a back fat and we're wait. What's this? Let's do this first Williamsburg bridge There we go So, I don't know so this is probably I'm gonna restart voicemail his voice meters was used to redirect that to my headsets Can't believe I unplugged that I was trying to unplug my elite dangerous joysticks and I end up unplugging the wrong thing Okay, I hear it now. I think that fixed it But she said do the hand thing I take a selfie Where'd she go? Where'd she go chat? I don't like it. Anyway Yeah, I heard about I was hearing from some other streamers that the harder difficulties You just can't take any damage. That's what it seems like. I don't know if the enemies are any I don't know if they're any Tankier, but I think you just can't take damage underneath No, it's a brute chat. I know I came running the button My boss took care of them chat. Nothing puts a pep in my step like halting an illegal drug All right, we're back on track. Hey what texted Yuri to pick these guys up. I wish there was a spidey emoji I could put at the end


Now on the surface, it may seem that being a data scientist is all sunshine and rainbows, at least that's the vibe I hope you get from my videos. High pay, great benefits, flexible hours and interesting work are just some of the key things that come to mind when you think of a job in data science. While these are definitely true, every job has some struggles behind the scenes and data science is no exception. Don't get me wrong, it's a fantastic job and I absolutely love the field but not every day is completely glorious and euphoric. That's why in this video, I want to go through several of the harsh realities that I face as a data scientist and some that you may face as well. This is not to put you off becoming a data scientist but just some of the things or feelings that you may expect to have over the course of your career and hopefully it will help you decide if data science really is a choice for you. Let's get into it. Unless you've been hiding under a rock, it's no secret that last year AI took the world by storm. Until 2023, most people would simply roll their eyes if you mentioned the word AI but now Chatchapiti is a household name. The rise of generative AI is just one example of how dynamic the field of data science and machine learning truly is. Back when I started as a data scientist in 2021, there was no texted image generation using Dali or github codepilot to help you write cleaner code or even Chatchapiti as a general AI productivity tool but now these are my go-to tools that I use on a daily basis. The problem is as a data scientist, you're directly involved in this field so you kind of feel obliged to keep up all these latest trends and developments so you're not behind the curve. This can be tough especially if you haven't got much time outside of work hours to upskill in these key development areas that are booming at the moment. Obviously the popularity of generative AI is an extreme example and it's kind of like a revolutionary technology. However I can give you one a bit closer to home. Last year I carried out a project where I had to migrate one of our models to a new package because the existing one didn't work on M1 Max. I won't go into all the details but basically the existing package didn't install on M1 Max because the chip architecture is different to the regular Intel ones you get at most computers. Anyway halfway through the migration the existing package or the old package that we used for our model released M1 Max support so basically all the work I did was made completely redundant. As annoying as that was it does going to show you that data science and tech in general is such a rapidly moving field and it's hard to stay on top of everything all the time. You literally can't complete data science there's so much to learn and also there's so much research going into it that it's got to keep on evolving so there's always going to be something new for you to understand and delve into if that's what you want to do. Now that can be both scary and also very fun because like I said you can't learn everything and so if you want to be the type of person where over time you slowly accumulate all this knowledge and there's nothing left for you to learn then data science is not the field for you but if you're more like me and I love continual learning then it's probably the best field for you because like I said there's always something new to delve into or a new area or a new skill that you really want to pick up and develop that it'll take several lifetimes to really learn everything and even that other thing is enough. As a data scientist you have to accept that you won't learn everything you may be aware of everything but it'd be impossible for you to know every single bit of the field. With this constant change in the field imposter syndrome is very real for data scientist. I feel an imposter at least once every two weeks and while I can't speak for other practitioners from my anecdotal conversations others often have this feeling from time to time. By immediately opening up LinkedIn or Medium you're bombarded by people building these cool projects and these fancy models to solve weird problems. Someone may be doing you know a deep reinforcement learning agent to predict the weather or a chat GPT time series forecasting algorithm to measure stock price returns. Now obviously these are just fictional examples but they are based on some ground truth that I see frequently on these platforms and it's quite difficult not to look at all these cool things people are building and not think that you're behind. It often feels like people are creating things all the time whilst you're not keeping up with them all your knowledge is not as in depth as them in that certain area. It's important to realize that this is not the case and that you know people aren't constantly creating and building things all the time while some people are like this the majority of data scientists are not. One data scientist may be really good at reinforcement learning but have really weak knowledge on combinatorial optimization or vice versa. What you often find is that people really only speak about things they're really good at or they know a lot about and less about their areas than they know least about.  The main point is that if you want to be a data scientist be prepared to feel like you don't know enough or that even like your failure sometimes but remember that's not the case and I promise you a lot of data scientists out there definitely feel like this from time to time as well so you're not the only one. Now data science is quite a new field and the term is still not very clearly defined and this often leads to inconsistencies with job postings the people you speak to or even if you work at company people may not know exactly what you do as a data scientist. If you are a divorce lawyer it's very clear what you do likewise if you're a doctor or a dentist however the data scientist is way more diverse and people have so many opinions or at least views of what you actually do. A data scientist at one company may be completely different to a data scientist at another company at one company you may be a data scientist that does a lot of machine learning however at another company you may be a data scientist that does just completely analytical work again it varies so much it also depends on the structure of your company if you're the only data scientist at your company then you can expect to be doing things from data engineering all the way to the analytical side and even maybe a bit of software engineering depending on how many developers you have at the company this ambiguity around data science often leads people to not understanding what you do and not utilizing your skills correctly this can be both good and bad the good is obviously that you learn a lot of useful skills away from software engineering to analytics and the business side the bad is that it's quite hard to find a job that aligns your skills because like i said at different companies you may develop certain specialties in certain areas but this data science specialty you know one company may not translate to another company so it may be quite hard to find a job in that respect however over time as data science becomes more established i feel like this become less of an issue as i'm sure you know the fundamental skills for data science are statistics maths and programming now on their own these skills are quite tough to learn but as a data scientist it's expected to know all three of them to a good standard in other jobs extending at least one of these skills is one of your key standout strengths but in data science this is far from the truth it's the baseline that most data scientists have so you have to have some sort of extra dynamics or an extra thing that you're really good at to really stand out from the crowd this sets the bar very high for data scientists and so there's a really high entry requirements just to break into the field and also be really good in your profession like i said you gotta have some other skills that makes you really stand out everyone has good maths statistics and programming skills so what can you do that really makes you different from the other data scientists out there there are a few things you can do to stand out such as be a specialist in one set of domain so you're the go-to person when any problem in that area comes up people will come to you to solve that problem you can even go the other way and become more business focused so you really know your domain well and how your company functions so you can quickly solve the business problems and have in-depth understanding of how the whole operation runs and another way is that you develop your soft skills so you're a great communicator writer and you can explain technical concepts in a really digestible manner and that's again a very useful skill set to have particularly when dealing with non-technical people now the problem comes in in that these extra skills outside your normal job take time to develop and it can be quite hard particularly if you haven't got time outside of work hours to work on them if you want to learn the required skills for data science machine learning i have a previous video which i'll link on screen here that'll tell you the roadmap i would do if i was learning machine learning from scratch again now i hope you enjoyed this video and i hope it shed some light on some of the problems i face as a data scientist and i really hope it made you decide if this career it really is for you because these are some of the key principles or you know realities you have to accept if you want to be a data scientist if you enjoyed this video and i see more content like this on this channel then make sure you click the like and subscribe button and i'll see you in the next one


Well, it's that time of the week again. It's time for Chitchat Across the Pond. This is episode number 770 for June 22nd, 2023. And I'm your host, Alison Sheridan. If you're a fan of the Big Bang Theory, you may remember when Dr. Amy Farrah-Fowler became only the fourth woman in history to win the Nobel Prize in physics. While that fictional show aired in 2019, in 2020, a fourth woman in real life actually was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics. I have the great pleasure of introducing you to Steven, my friend, Dr. Andrea Gez, as our guest today on Chitchat Across the Pond. Welcome to the show, Andrea. Thanks, Alison. It's a pleasure to be here. I've been dreaming about this so long that last night I won the Nobel Prize in physics. Awesome. I was marching around telling everybody, Nobel laureate here, Nobel laureate here. So, Steven, I've been lucky enough to hear Andrea give lectures about her work four times, once in Iceland and once in Antarctica, both while traveling through UCLA alumni. Go UCLA. Anyway, Andrea is currently a professor of physics and astronomy at UCLA. And I'm really excited to talk about your work, but I want to start us off with kind of a softball question that I asked you on one of the trips. What's the difference between an astronomer and an astrophysicist? Snob appeal. Well, when I was in graduate school, I used to say it's the difference on an airplane between a short conversation with your neighbor and a long conversation. And in fact, you could ask between physics, astronomy, and astrophysics. So the shortest would be physics. The longest is astronomy, and astrophysics is somewhere in the middle. So everybody thinks they understand what astronomy is. Well, aren't you? They've looked at the stars. Softball science. I like it. Well, in rereading your bio, I saw that your field is observational astrophysics. Now I've heard of experimental physicists and I've heard of theoretical physicists, but what's an observational physicist? How do the three of those play together? Well, in studying the universe, we can't do controlled experiments. So in many fields, astronomy, call it astronomy and astrophysics, so you can pick your flavor or geology. You can only observe the natural world. So that's why we call it observational astronomy. You can design your experiment. So you can talk about experiments, but they're not experiments in the traditional way in which you get to control and change the variables. So you do it by looking at different places. So that's what we call observation or an observer. Time and planets. You just hold still for a minute while I go to this other one. Okay, that's interesting. I hadn't actually caught that. Now you were awarded the Nobel Prize for providing evidence of a supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy. Is that a correct statement? Yes, although if you look at the citation, it's very carefully worded. It's for the discovery of a supermassive compact object at the center of our galaxy. And I think it's always interesting to see how the Nobel Prize is described and curated. And I think it's a nod to the fact that while we've improved the evidence for these supermassive black holes by a huge amount, like a factor of 10 million, there's still room to get even better evidence. So they're leaving. So many people make that assumption and make that leap, which is she should interpret it as the discovery of a supermassive black hole, because it is the best evidence that we have today, but the citation really does leave an opportunity for more recognition. Oh, that's kind of cool. I like that. Well, is science, if nothing else, should be specific? Right? Yeah, this is. Very. So now my audience is pretty nerdy. I've run a more complex version of chitchat across the pond. This is the light version where we just discuss astrophysics. But can you start by explaining what a black hole is and what makes one supermassive and why is that important to us, the difference? So what is a black hole? You can start off with a really simple definition, which it's an object whose pull of gravity is so intense that nothing can escape it, not even light. So that's actually the definition. And then we're gonna talk about supermassive ones and, as you might imagine, they're really massive. And the reason we use that as the descriptor is that people thought about the idea of black holes that came from the evolution of stars. So they're roughly 10 times the mass of the sun. And the ones that we're talking about are almost a million to a billion times larger than that and hence the supermassive. The origin is quite different. At least we think it's quite different. So we think those kind of black holes reside at the center of a galaxy. So one supermassive black hole per galaxy is the... So it's not like there's a continuum of sizes of black holes and at some point you cut it off and say from here up. It's because they are formed at the center of the galaxy or vice versa, depending on your perspective, right? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, there's a gap. And in fact, people talk about the mysterious or elusive intermediate mass black holes because there's a big gap between those two. And today it's a big debate, but yeah, there's a huge gap in terms of the masses. So it's the debate that we haven't developed experiments that can have observed them. Like so we can't prove they exist, but that does mean not existing. Right. So it turns out for, it might... We haven't found one. So that's a true statement. And the question is, is that because they don't exist or because they're hard to find? That the techniques that people are using oddly enough are insensitive in this regime because actually kind of coming back to your original question about observational astrophysics, you have to look for the system that will reveal that kind of object. Okay, okay, interesting. Well, speaking of that, so there were theories that there were supermassive black holes or a theory that there was one at the center of our galaxy before you started looking or there wasn't? Oh, there were hints that these things might exist, but I would say the theories were not clear. So there was the notion that maybe these supermassive black holes do exist at the center of galaxies. But there weren't, well, there were sort of, what do I wanna say here? There are some supermassive black holes that light up because matter's falling onto them. So remember, black holes themselves can't emit light. So how do you detect them? Do you see it go away? The light disappears? Well, you see it get this material that's right, that's very energetic right outside where light can escape. So there's this endemic phenomena that led people to think about these supermassive black holes and these galaxies are called active galactic nuclei because their nuclei or centers are very active. And people started to talk about them and there was a wide variety of ideas about how they might form in the sense that there was a debate about whether or not, if you're gonna talk about supermassive black holes, did they form before the galaxy and seed the galaxy or did the galaxy form first and then seed and drive the formation of the black hole? And that was interesting. It's kind of like a chicken or the egg question, but today we understand that that's actually not even the right framework. So most... It's the wrong question. It's the wrong question. Today we see that the mass of these supermassive black holes seem incredibly well correlated with the mass of the central part of the galaxy over large range of masses. So from a million to a billion and over a large range of time scales. So the earliest galaxies in the universe to galaxies that are much closer to us. So we're looking at the more recent history of the universe. And that suggests that there has to be whatever formed one form the other, there's a synergy and there has to be some feedback mechanism to keep that in lockstep. So to come back to your question about was there a theory? There was a theory that they might exist but there wasn't clarity about how you would get them to form. Okay, okay. Now, when you set out to do this you set out a very long time ago to start figuring it out. And I believe you were told it can't be done. Yes. Lovely word, no.  Of course. I've been told no a lot in my life and I've been up learning to ignore it. So like can't escape a black hole, supermassive or not? And I'm pretty sure electromagnetic energy of any kind can't escape either, correct? Correct. Okay, so nothing escapes. So now here's the wide open question. How are you able to observe the existence of this theorized or supermassive black hole? So actually the way we've kind of gotten to this question is nice because one thing that's different about our galaxy is it's not one of these active galactic nuclei. So there's no evidence from activity in the middle that pointed the way. But so in asking this, in looking, we're looking to make sure that we understand do these supermassive black holes exist? And in all kinds of galaxies because there's nothing particularly special about ours. And the way we've done this is to look at the gravitational influence from the black hole on the things around it and in particular the stars. So gravity is gonna force these stars to orbit whatever mass is inside its orbit. So very much like the planets orbiting the sun, you can weigh the mass of the sun by measuring the motion or measuring the orbit in particular of these planets. So you do the same thing. Basically that's what we're after. And in the beginning, we did it how many people think about these experiments which is just to look at the speeds of stars. So you look for fast moving things really close and slower things moving further out. Smart, actually let me say that more grammatically correctly. You look for things moving faster closer to the center of the galaxy and then you look for the evidence of the fall off of speed as you get further and further away in a very specific way. But we're inside the Milky Way. Makes it a little tricky because we're looking at the Milky Way edge on, right? So you got to look through everything in the Milky Way towards the center of the galaxy. Right, so it's a little tricky. It's a little tricky. So it's in our backyard, but our backyard is messy. So we're in this galaxy, the Milky Way. So it's a flattened disk-like structure. The sun and our solar system is about halfway out from the center. And so we're trying to look towards the center of the galaxy. And so in that plane, so not only are there a lot of stars in the plane but there's a lot of dust. I like to say I'm in Los Angeles. I get the effect of dust. It's like smog. It's really good at blocking optical light. Because optical light has a wavelength that's roughly the size of the dust particles. So it just reflects off right off of it in optics. It absorbs.  And both things are actually happening. And what our trick is, is to go to the infrared. So to look at light that has a longer wavelength. So it's larger roughly than the size of the dust particles and therefore can penetrate through all this dust that's in the plane of the galaxy. So having technology that allows us to perceive infrared radiation or light is super important. And that's a technology that's really undergone and huge advancements over the last 30 or 40 years. In terms of instrumentation that we have today? Yeah. And to think night vision goggles. Those are actually taking pictures in the infrared. You glow at infrared wavelengths. One of my favorite things in one of your lectures was when you talked about being in the area of where all the aerospace engineers are and having been an engineer in the aerospace industry who worked on a helicopter night vision system. I'm like, yeah, that's it. That's right. You're welcome. I wanted to be at UCLA because UCLA really understood. Well, actually, let me back up for a sec. Part of the technology of how we did this is we're doing this with really big telescopes. And when I started my faculty job, the reason I wanted to be at UCLA was twofold, really. One is it gave me access to the largest telescope in the world, which is really what I wanted more than anything else. But it's co-owned by the University of California in Caltech. And what UCLA did, which is a campus of the University of California, they looked to invest in an area that was emerging right at the beginning of this, when this telescope was opening up. This is Keck Observatory, it's out in Hawaii. And UCLA recognized that they're in the middle of Los Angeles, like the aerospace industry. So there's lots of investment in infrared technology here. So they hired a bunch of faculty interested in the science and technology associated with infrared work. So I'm part of that effort. I was the third hire. And I feel super lucky because that strategy means you have colleagues that you wanna talk to. And it's both the people part and the technology part that has really enabled this project to be so successful. So let's talk about the Keck telescope itself. You said it's the largest telescope in the world. And you're including anything we put in space has to be smaller on account of you gotta lift it and everything, right? That's one of the stumbling blocks so far until we fix that gravity issue. So how big is the Keck telescope? So we talk about the size of telescopes by describing the diameter of the primary mirror, which is the element that collects all the light. So the diameter of the mirror for the Keck telescope is 10 meters, which is like the width of a tennis court just to give you a sense of scale. Okay, so like this sensor on a digital camera, the bigger it is, the more light it can collect. Yeah, it's like a rain bucket is the way I like to think about it. It's like a big opening. So the bigger the opening, the more light you're gonna collect or rain that you're gonna collect. So, yeah. And in this case, we're talking about infrared energy, but- Right, but that's actually not why, for my work, the Keck is so valuable. So there's two reasons that big telescopes help the business of studying the universe. I mean, first is this idea of being a light bucket. So it makes you very sensitive to faint things, but the second aspect is it helps your ability to see fine detail. So the larger your telescope, the finer the detail that you can see. So the analogy I like to give is, if you think about that technique, the painting technique of pointillism, where you paint rocks, and if you walk closer to the painting, you see the individual dots. So having a big telescope is like walking closer to the painting. Okay, okay. So you've got this giant telescope, we're doing infrared so we can see through the dust, but there's still problems since the telescope is on Earth. Oh yeah. We've got to see through the atmosphere. And we're out in Hawaii, so we're up high on a volcano and maybe not a lot of smog in Hawaii. Also plus. Still got atmosphere to deal with. Oh yeah. So the atmosphere makes that second attribute of seeing fine detail not so easy to achieve. It's the atmosphere distorts our images. So rather than being nice and crisp, they're blurry. And there are two ways of thinking about this. The atmosphere is like a river that's moving over across the telescope. And that's like a river of water when you're trying to see a pebble at the bottom. So a lot of my work is focused on how do you undo the blurring effects of the Earth's atmosphere so you can get back to that promised resolution of these really big telescopes? You know, one of my, as a mechanical engineer who worked on with voice coil actuators to move mirrors and I worked for Hughes Aircraft Company and I'm pretty sure this is a correct statement. I think we invented the laser. Wow. Your next part of explaining how you compensate for this waviness of the atmosphere with lasers, just warmed my little mechanical engineer's heart. I can see why it's so much fun to talk to you, Allison. We resonate on so many levels. Yeah, so the technology like the infrared detectors has evolved a lot in terms of how can you do this correction business? And so when I started, we used a very simple technique which was much more software intensive. So you took lots of short exposures and then you, through data analysis and clever code, you could figure out what the atmosphere was doing versus what the underlying object is. But today- This is kind of an estimate, right? It's no, it's a- It's called, it's a, the process is called deconvolution and we, so what would be the analogy or good analogy? You take thousands of frames. So one, this is not totally accurate. So this is a total cheat, but I'm gonna use it anyway. You know the object, underlying object is constant, but the atmosphere is always changing. So by taking thousands, you can figure out what the atmosphere- I mean, all these things are estimates. Actually, that's fair. Actually, Allison, you're totally right. Let me just back up and say, yes, it's an estimate. You try to model what the atmosphere is doing versus, and take it out. But today, there's all this advancement with hardware. So mechanical engineers and then the laser people, as you put, are really key here. So the technique is called adaptive optics. So it's a way of putting a mirror that's segmented in the path of the light coming in from hitting your primary mirror between that and your detector.  It deforms in a way that's trying to counteract the effects of the atmosphere. And the mental picture I like to have here is if you think about a circus funhouse mirror that makes you look all warpy, that you're trying to put a second mirror that has the opposite shape of the mirror. Or the conjugate shape so that you look flat again. But that first warp is changing a thousand times a second. So you gotta keep up and figure, well, first of all, figure out what the atmosphere is doing and then continually update it. So as you mentioned, this laser business was the trick because you gotta look at something bright. And it turns out there's not that many things that are bright enough in the sky to do this trick. So you look at something you understand through the atmosphere. And then you use that to say, ah, I know how to make that deformable mirror move. I think it's like 1% of the sky has a natural star that's bright enough to do this game. So you, I mean, this is an incredible fluke of nature that up at 90 kilometers, there's a very thin layer of sodium atoms from all the meteorites. So when people like go out camping and see the shooting stars and we say, make a wish, I'm thinking, thank goodness, that's re-supplying my layer. The sodium layer? My sodium layer. So you shine a sodium laser that's tuned to a transition of these little atoms and you make those atoms shine like an artificial, well, it is an artificial star that you can then look at and correct. So basically- And it's a star right where you want it to be. Right where you want it to be. To point towards the 1%, which isn't maybe where you need to look. Like 1%, that's just too little. I want to look at the center of the galaxy and there's no, and it doesn't work there very well. So that, that was transformative when that technology became scientifically mature is I guess how I would put it. And that happened in roughly 2005 at the center of the, at Keck Observatory. That was the first big telescope that for which this really worked well. That is, I love everything about that. That is absolutely terrific. The steering mirror that I worked on was on this helicopter night vision system and it was called the image motion compensation mirror. So it's four little voice coil actuators like what's pushing on your mirror. But I was simply rotating a mirror to take out the vibration of the helicopter. Wow, that's so cool. I'm destined to have this conversation. It's so similar. Yeah, yeah. So, okay. Now let's talk about what you've found. You look at the center of the galaxy you've now got these clear, you can see clearly. I can see clearly now. And now what did you see? We saw stars. And in terms of like not getting the initial telescope time there were three critiques. One is that the technique wouldn't work. So it did. And then the second is you wouldn't see stars and you wouldn't see the move. So three. So it just was so exciting when we first went to the telescope and got our first images. It was clear that things worked and there were so many stars. And then by year two, because you basically would go back once a year in the beginning years. And these stars were hauling. I mean, these stars are having, a small fraction of the speed of light. And anytime you can talk in those units you're moving pretty fast. And that's important because you can watch them for a long enough time to see are they going around something? Well, in the beginning we only proposed to do a three. So three year project. This is the project that was turned down to begin with because we were only looking for speeds. So you don't know how long the orbits would be because that depends on whether or not there is a black hole and how massive it is. So the beginning thing is let's just see if you can see fast moving stars in some part of the area and then a fall off of those speeds away from that location.  So you don't know exactly where the black hole is.  And what's so exciting is it was so clear. I mean, it could not have been clear that things were moving incredibly fast and the speeds fell off with the exact relationship. So it's very simple relationship that goes one over the square root of the distance. So in other words, it's further slower. And at that point, you can estimate how massive the black hole is already from that from in a statistical way. So you had to make assumptions about the kinds of orbits that these stars are on. And the great thing about science, I mean, I love this, I mean, you have to love this aspect of science. It's negatively constructed in the sense that people, our job is to be cynical. So what else could it be? And so the minute we put out this paper, people started pushing back and saying, well, it could be this or it could be that or this other force could make these things move fast. And of course, what do you do as an observer or an experimentalist? You say, we gotta do more. We gotta go the next thing. And freshman physics or first year college physics will tell you the next thing that's gonna happen is these things are gonna go from moving on straight lines because you're just moving measuring a small segment of the orbit to accelerating. So velocity turns into acceleration. So you say, let's see those accelerations. And sure enough, that was our first three years. We got the velocities, two more years, we get accelerations. And because you were able to observe them longer, you could see. We basically just asked for more telescope time.  And at that point, the evidence, oh, I should say already with the velocities, the evidence for the existence of supermassive black holes, if you believe that that's what we were seeing had gone up by a factor of 1,000 compared to any other evidence for a black hole anywhere, supermassive black hole anywhere in the universe. So that was the late 90s. And then the accelerations told us that the orbits could be as short as 10 years. Now you're talking human lifetime for orbits because you don't know. And just like, I mean, there's a reason why people wouldn't have accepted the idea of orbits to begin with. Our sun takes 200 million years to go all the way around. Like you're not gonna watch that. We don't live long enough. You're never gonna get past that straight line segment. Exactly, we're on straight lines here. So it was super exciting to realize that this was a reasonable experiment to propose. And so we kept going and indeed made that next leap of actually making those measurements and measuring the stars. And now we have thousands of them, but it's the closest ones, those speedsters that are really gonna drive your knowledge. Me, you need everything, it turns out. They all play together. Everybody has to act like a team to get everything registered, but the power of the experiment comes from the really fast moving stars that are on the shortest orbit. So those things go hand in hand. And my favorite star, as you know, SO2. Those are the t-shirt that says SO2 on it. I need a t-shirt. I don't have a t-shirt. I'd like that, like no other explanation, but if somebody knows, they know. SO2, are you in the know? Of course, it's also sulfur dioxide and a massive free-buff group. And then you'll get all those nerds. So what is special about SO2 then? Well, it goes around every 16 years and it tells you that there's four million times the mass of the sun inside a region that's the size of our solar system. And that... Wait, let's say that again. Four million times the mass of our sun inside something the size of our solar system? Yeah, and that's amazing. If you think about like our own solar system where the mass of that is one. And so in this region of the space, it's a million times higher or four million times higher. And in fact, if you think about density, that's really enhanced the inferred... Well, I'm gonna call dark matter density. Okay. Up by a factor of 10 million. And that's why we say the evidence for a supermassive black hole goes up by a factor of 10 million. So the first factor of 1,000 came when we got the velocities and the next factor of 10,000 comes from orbits. And the thing I do like to say, like just to... I mean, that's a huge number. Like think about anything in your life that you'd like more of. I mean, I don't know, free time, salary. And if you could multiply it by a factor of 10,000, you would notice. Yeah, so, and that's in... Okay, 10 million. Not 10. 10 million. 10 to the seven, 10 million, yeah. And that change was in what length of time that you found that? Well, 1995 was the beginning of the experiment. And you could sort of say step one, the velocities took the first three years. And then the next step got announced in the early 2000s. And then of course it just keeps getting better and better. So it kept going. This time next year. Well, the way I like to think about it today is that every time you go through what I call a turning point, which is like the closest approach and the furthest approach or half of the orbit, you get a chance to go deeper into the physics. So now we're going to the business of testing how gravity works near a supermassive black hole. And kind of while, like if it really is a black hole, you should be able to see those kinds of effect. And in 2018, those became, the first ones of those things became visible and now we're kind of on the next stretch. And again, things are emerging and emerging in a way we could not have anticipated. Yeah, so it's- I think one of the things that you talked about that just really struck me was how delighted you were when you found out what we were wrong about. About the age of the stars at the center of the galaxy, right? Or at the center of the orbit, orbiting around the supermassive black hole. That to find out you're wrong is like, ooh, yay, new puzzles. Yeah, it's like being a kid in a candy shop. There's so much more to do. And I guess it's one of the things I love about technology advancements is that it gives you a new opportunity to see, well, to derive new information that you didn't have before. So in this case, as we were talking about at the beginning of our conversation, we were in that early technique where it was sort of make your computer do all the work. You could only take images, which means you didn't know what kind of stars you were looking at. They were just bright spots. So the other thing about the more advanced technology of adaptive optics, which allows you to integrate for more than a 10th of a second, you can get, take spectra. So you can break up, look at the components of the light, which is what allows you to figure out, well, what kinds of stars are we looking at? What's the temperature of these stars? And that's what allows us to figure out from, I mean, it is from models to compare to models, how old they are.  I mean, things just did not make any sense. And it never dawned on to me, to never dawned on me that this, this idea that I like mysteries, that scientists in general like mysteries is a surprise. I was talking to some reporter who just said, you seem most happy when you're confused. Because otherwise I have nothing to do. It is, it is absolutely true. I mean, it is fun to solve the mystery, but it's also the process of figuring it out. And the, you know, in some sense, the hardest part of the work is figuring out what is an interesting question. What do you, so having observations that say things aren't working points you to your next step, to your next endeavor. And figure out what that question should be so that you can figure out what experiments to do next when observations make. Exactly, how do you advance the frontier of knowledge? I mean, you can be very deliberate, like I need something and therefore I'm gonna try to develop it, but so much of basic research, you're just trying to understand how things work.  I mean, I get that question all the time, but there's lots of examples. Like if you look at your cell phone, almost all the technologies in there started as basic research where people were saying, why should we care? Like, this is a- Right, satellites, GPS. Yeah, just for a few, like electricity, yeah. You know, some of those things. Steve asked me to ask you a question that might require a lot more background than we have time to cover, but he did want to know whether any of your observations have advanced our understanding of dark matter. Now, you bleakly referred to dark matter density, but I'm not sure I could even start to explain what dark matter is.  The definition is really simple. What it is is not. The definition of dark matter is it's matter that, and matter just means it has a, you know, it interacts gravitationally. Mass is okay. And dark means it emits low light. So dark matter simply means you have matter and it's not going to emit any light. So black hole is an example. In other words, we can't find it. Well, you can if you were just a grab, you know, if you just looked at the gravitational attraction, but you're not going to see it by taking a picture. Okay. With a camera, like an infrared camera, an optical camera, you name, you pick your favorite kind of light x-rays, gamma rays, you're not going to see it. So worse, the stuff that's emerging right now that I just alluded to, if we're right, and of course we could be totally, we could be making a mistake. I mean, that's always the interesting thing about discovery, when things don't work or something's emerging that you didn't expect, it's either a discovery or a mistake. And you have to work really hard to convince yourself. Which one? Which one? And that's, you know, that's part of the discipline of science. And in our case, I'm still nervous, but I'm kind of excited as well, because we can't make this result go away. So the shape of the orbit, over time, the orientation of these orbits should shift. It affects both of how gravity works near a black hole, like how Einstein predicts it as opposed to Newton, as well as if there's extended dark matter. Like, and you expect that actually, there are theories that say the black hole should be surrounded by little, smaller things that also don't emit light. And there's two possibilities, but the orbit going the other direction would be a detection or discovery of dark matter around the black hole. So we're excited about it. We may be sensing it. And that's what we're working super, super, super hard on. So you're saying right now, really observations that are emerging is that the orbits are orienting themselves in the opposite direction of what you would expect if there was no dark matter. Yeah, around the black hole, yeah. Around the black hole. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so you've got little hairs tickling on the back of your neck thinking about it, right? Oh yeah, absolutely. And in terms of where this conversation is gone, closest approach happened last in 2018. And so you expect the signal to start emerging post-2018 and to become strongest or your sensitivity to it is gonna be sort of optimized in 2026. Cause that's eight, yeah, eight years, I can do math and talk to the same. So that's where we are today, in 2023 is that climbing out to see, and we're kind of right where we expect to be in terms of the sort of the next stage of the evolution of this kind of work. Oh, that is so exciting. This is really, really cool, I love this. I'm gonna switch gears on us a little bit.  You still teach undergraduate astronomy, is that correct? That's right. Why do you do that? Well, for a couple of reasons. One, well, when I started teaching at UCLA, I was really, with very few women around in my field, and I really felt strongly that one of the most effective things that one can do as a woman doing science is to be a role model. Cause I think role models are so important. And I'm not an expert in this, or topic. So the most effective thing I could do is just teach at the undergrad level, at the introductory under. To be seen. To be seen, to be just somebody who doesn't look like what we think of as a scientist. And I think that's healthy both for the young men and the young women, and anybody who's not part of the mainstream demographics where you are. So that's sort of how I got into teaching at the introductory level. And I also discovered I love it. I mean, it's really fun to teach the undergrads. Today, my favorite class to teach is the Introductory Astronomy and Astrophysics for majors because you're kind of hitting them early on and you have the opportunity to encourage them into the research world, to not only teach them the disciplinary stuff, like how, you know, the tools, the homework, but also to encourage them to get this opportunity that they have at a research university. So that's, you know, it's part of the wonderful thing about doing research in a university setting. You know, our job is to create new knowledge by our research, but it's also to create new knowledge through creating new scientists. So you work in the farm team is what you're saying. Yes, I guess I am. You know, I always try to recruit some of the students from the class into the team and that, you know, that's it. Wait, wait, you didn't do this all single-handedly? Oh yeah, no, absolutely not.  Right now, you know, we started with a team of three. Now we're about two dozen core members and because they're students, they keep graduating. So since this project, we've had roughly 70 people who have been involved in a meaningful way over the 29 years that we've been going at this. How exciting for all of them. Now, there's so many stories about actually getting the Nobel Prize, but one of my favorites was your description of you got a call from another woman when you won, another woman who had won the Nobel Prize in physics. Yes, I did. That was one of my favorite communications with somebody that day. So this is Donna who won it in 2018. And she said, welcome to the club. There's now, it's a club of two, which is the number of women who won the physics Nobel Prize who are alive. That is just so sad. Yeah, it is sad, but it's also... But it doubled. It doubled, I mean, in terms of the number of women who have received the Nobel Prize in physics, we're now at 2%, but I have to say, boy, the standards were high with Marie Curie winning the first one. I mean, she won two and her daughter also won one.  Oh, well, I would consider you're a rock star as well. I think one of my favorite things is that you are so young that you have so much runway coming to delight us with science. And that really excites me. No one else is looking at you right now, but I know that you're young and it's just really fun to know that there's all these puzzles out there that are gonna get you excited and things you're gonna solve for us. I think it's just amazing. Thanks, Allison. I'm super excited about the future and I look forward to what's in store. Now, I've put a link in the show notes to the UCLA Galactic Center Group. That's where people should go if they wanna go learn more about the science, more about the technology. There's even a really cool animation of SO2 going around and you can download it for your own so it can be your desktop screensaver if you want. All right. Lots of other pictures, yes. Yeah, very, very cool. Andrea, thank you so much for spending your time with us. Like I said, I've been looking forward to this for a long time and it was even more fun than I'd hoped. No, well, for me too. Thanks, Allison. It's a pleasure talking to you.