Okay, let's find out about this thing called the skyscraper curse some of you have already heard of it Everybody else probably thinks I'm crazy But I think you'll find this very interesting and hopefully informative the skyscraper curse was first discovered by a real estate investment analysts named Andrew Lawrence in China in January of 1999 and Basically what this skyscraper curse is is the unlikely correlation of building the world's tallest skyscraper and an ensuing economic crisis or collapse and Based on the research that I've been doing over time. I've expanded Mr. Lawrence's Index Historical index as he calls it His period went from 1907 through 1999 We've been able to extend that backwards in time into the late 19th century and then extending it forward to the present Andrew Lawrence focused only on record setting tall buildings So only when new records were set on Buildings of a height of usable livable space. So we're not talking about giant antennas or Floating balloons or anything else. We're talking about real buildings with real space for example in New York City the once called the Freedom Tower and is now called the The trade tower Has set a record-setting height But the 400 top feet of the building are just a spire just a Ornament that was placed on top of the building not real Usable space and you'll see why that's important Record-setting skyscrapers are started During a an extended period of economic growth or a boom In the economy very often a bubble in the economy and then these record-setting tall skyscrapers are usually finished after The economic crisis is readily apparent So we're not talking about just overall construction spending or overall real estate investment It's very specific and you'll see why it has to be a record tall building of usable space so after Lawrence the skyscraper index successfully told us about the dot-com bubble and it successfully told us about the housing bubble and We also have a new world record-setting skyscraper That's under construction in Saudi Arabia that would set a new world's record Some examples of these curses are the panic of 1907 was Coincided with the building of the singer building and the Metropolitan life building Okay, life insurance and singer sewing machines were very big back then and so we had a cluster of two record-setting skyscrapers in In 1913 The Woolworth building set a new world's record Now what's the problem with that? No crisis So this was always thought to be by Lawrence an exception to this correlation and then we had the Great Depression where 40 Wall Street set the record. That's now the Trump building Then the Chrysler building surpassing that and ultimately the Empire State building Surpassing that so we had a cluster of three records That all began in 1929 and we're subsequently completed in 1930 and 1931 and then it takes a while but in the early 1970s the the bubble economy of the 1960s came to an end There was trouble in the labor market. There was trouble In stock markets and there were several recessions It's referred to as the stagflation of the 1970s that lasted up until 1982 when the United States finally Got rid of the grip of stagflation and really economic depression because in the early 1980s Unemployment rate was 10% or higher Inflation was 10% or higher Interest rates at one point were 18% Then the 1997 Asian financial crisis Coincided with the Petronas towers in Asia and then Taipei 101 Was lined up with a dot-com bubble in effect the technology bubble of the 1990s started really in Asia and Then due to currency changes That bubble transferred itself from countries like Thailand Vietnam and so forth to the United States and elsewhere and Then finally We have the housing bubble in the financial crisis the bourgeois Calafi Tower in Dubai in the Middle East Set the world's record. We'll talk a little bit more about that as we go on But when I saw this skyscraper curse or skyscraper index of curses. I thought to myself This is the embodiment of the Austrian business cycle theory This has all of the ingredients that we typically discuss with Austrian business cycle theory So I wrote a paper. It was finally published in 2005 in the quarterly Journal of Austrian economics. It's called skyscrapers and business cycles and basically what it does is it provide provides links from Austrian business cycle theory to the skyscraper curse and basically as you know in Austrian business cycle theory, it's all started off by Artificially low interest rates, right and these artificially low interest rates I contend Caused three different types of Cantione effects now Cantione effects Simply put is it when there's significant changes in the money supply that's going to cause Changes in prices in the economy It's going to lead to real effects in the economy and it's going to lead to Changes in the distribution of wealth in an economy The first Cantione effect shows that the interest rate increases land prices Now why would a lower interest rate increase the price of land? Just want to make sure you've got your thinking cap still with you Yes That's certainly one of the the factors, but when you have low interest rate You also lower the opportunity cost of Holding on to the land But there's a lot of different channels in which lower lower interest rates raise Land prices and one thing if yes It Yeah, the discounted value of the flow of incomes and If you're observant What you'll notice here in the US and elsewhere is that you see a lot more signs along roads and interstates saying land for sale in The reason there's more signs now is that the price is higher and people have been holding on to land for a long time See this as an opportunity To unload those properties at much higher prices Now what would hire Land prices have to do with record-setting skyscrapers Yes You Perfect Perfect if you have if you buy a piece of land when it's a at a higher price It means you have to somehow be able to get Income or rental income in order to justify that higher purchase price And so instead of building just one story you might build three stories In order to justify that higher Land price and if you look at Auburn nowadays, you'll see a couple of very large projects One down just down the street on Glen And you'll also find one on campus. I noticed that there was a super high construction crane at another spot on campus And so Higher land prices lead to taller buildings. Okay, the second can't you own effect? Is on the size of companies lower interest rates Make it more feasible to pull off Mergers and acquisitions now. This is something that happens naturally in an economy When I was a boy the dairy industry was like, you know one farmer 30 cows Little teeny tanker truck that would pick up the milk and deliver the milk And actually back then It was such direct production rather than indirect roundabout production That I could see the cows Out there Across the street across the street from where I lived was farmland so I could go and sort of visually inspect the cows that I was drinking from and We had three dairies in my hometown 20,000 people three different dairies So the little truck would come out from the dairy and pick up the milk bring it back to the dairy and then they would package it and A guy would come to your house about five o'clock in the morning Dressed in a white suit and he would put bottles of milk in a little insulated box next to your back door By the time I was going off to college The dairies had all gotten much larger There were excuse me the dairy farms got much larger all three dairies in town were out of business And so what happened would be a very large Tanker truck Would go to these much larger dairy farms and pick up much larger amounts of milk in a truck That was similar to like a gasoline truck Cut it off 30 miles to the east of Syracuse where it would be Processed in a huge factory dairy and then it would be transported back To my hometown where that would be delivered to supermarkets and You would have to go and get the milk yourself So everything I completely changed so these types of changes Where you go from like a hundred car companies in? 1910 To six or seven after World War two now to three. I guess it's three American auto companies in the United States There were hundreds of types of things competing against Coca-Cola But eventually the market came down to just Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola and a few others So ultra low interest rates Tends to lead to quick increases in the size of companies now. Why would that matter? Why would that matter to skyscrapers? That's right bigger companies build bigger buildings because all of a sudden now This nationwide chain of dairies they have to have Research departments. They have to have human resource departments accounting departments marketing departments Personnel all these different things the headquarters has to get bigger and bigger and bigger the bigger the company The bigger the headquarters And that means it increases the demand For office space in the central business district and the third one is a little more traditional with respect to Cantillon effects artificially low interest rates and Which lead to? taller buildings and record-setting high buildings creates a need for Brand new construction techniques so in this modern era of ultra-high ultra tall skyscraper building They've had to come up with new crane systems new concrete pumping systems Imagine trying to pump concrete a Couple of thousand feet up into the air It's very difficult. We didn't have that technology Until recent years You have all sorts of systems That have to be created brand new. I mentioned a couple of them here the elevator Before elevators the highest of building was Really anywhere in our economy was four stories high if it went up any higher Without elevators think of what a pain in the butt that would be walking down Up and down carrying your groceries and all sorts of things. It would be an immense headache with the advent of Steel beam construction and elevators. We were all of a sudden we were able in the late 19th century to be able to build taller and taller buildings air conditioning systems You know the air conditioning systems in here is done with very large duck work Okay In the old days they used to use hot and cold water pipes through the buildings so you've got stairwells you've got Escalators and elevators you've got air conditioning. You've got water systems sewage systems fire suppressant systems You have electrical systems. You have communication systems And all of that has to go from the bottom of the building to the top of the building That's why we talk about Usable livable space rather than just the ultimate height of a building So if you have all these systems Going through every floor and you want to build taller Then each of those systems has to have a bigger capacity and yet these bigger capacity systems Go through every floor so they take up square footage on every single floor. I Calculated than in a hundred-story building One additional elevator standard-size elevator eats up enough space The equivalent of like a dozen efficiency apartments Again, so that's lost rent So The companies who build these systems Whether it's the construction equipment or whether it's the systems in the building They've got to go back to the drawing board and come up with brand new ways of doing things and so in this sense The skyscraper even though it's just an example of what's going on in the economy You can see how it sort of is going to impact various other industries In the economy and that's really what the skyscraper curse is about is Looking at a tangible example of what's going on throughout the economy for example with with elevators in order to use a traditional steel cable To pull the elevator from the bottom to the top The cable would have to weigh 24,000 pounds So recently within the last 10 or 15 years a European company has come up with a way of Reducing the weight of that cable to less than 2,000 pounds by using Something that's nearly equivalent to the stuff in the bulletproof jackets that they produce for police and military Kevlar, I think it is it's a version of Kevlar a Japanese company came up with a way that instead of running duck work through all the buildings through all the floors and Then throughout the floors, which of course takes up about two feet in between every floor Then they came up with a system that uses a very teeny pipe so instead of Moving around hot and cold water or hot and cold air. They're moving around freon and that freon can takes up very little space and Can more accurately heat and cool Abilities it can actually take heat from the sunny side of a building and move it to the shady side of the building To balance the heat in rooms throughout that floor So there's a technology effect going on here As the skyscraper curse is coming very important here I'll emphasize this point a few times Record-setting skyscrapers are merely in an illustration of what's going on throughout the economy So many of the same things that are happening with it are happening with that record-setting Skyscraper are happening throughout the economy. So you see Not just this one building out in Saudi Arabia, but you see you can see the same thing happening here in Auburn Where a record-setting? Building is happening. You can see the same thing happening in Silicon Valley Where a record-setting? Building is being constructed New York City China Are all setting local? records for skyscrapers in their area and it goes well beyond skyscrapers So with the aid of Austrian business cycle plus the skyscraper index As the housing bubble was developing it actually helped me to understand on an early point in time What was happening to the economy? So with regards to the housing bubble I wrote an article in 2004 on mises.org called housing too good to be true question mark That got me a lot of invitations in the local area to give talks to student groups and business groups I was at one particular Talk where I was talking about Luxury game-day condominiums in 2004 they were building these luxury game-day condominiums Some of which are just right over here and I was surprised to find that bankers and construction Company executives showed up to my talk and they weren't very happy with what I had to say And it was very uncomfortable because it was in the four union and there was no doors on Where I was lecturing the doors were all in the back So I really couldn't make a run for it at that point and I talked about the people I had interviewed who were buying these luxury game-day condominiums and And I would just tell the audience What people would say I said you know You're paying a lot of money for these luxury game-day condominiums sure would be a lot cheaper if you just Got a hotel room and ate at restaurants You'd save a lot of money and you know what everybody just about everybody said to me when I interviewed these condo owners They said well, we could always sell it for more later on Well, they still haven't gotten back to those prices 2005 An article is the housing bubble topping or popping and that's really when the housing stocks did top I wrote an article called the economics of housing bubbles in June of 2006 and it was for a book on housing and I got the distinct Impression that the editors were kind of setting me up because they knew I had been writing about bubbles and they didn't believe in bubbles They thought it all it was all zoning laws and land-use restrictions and things like that and then By 2007 I Wrote an article called we told you so for lu rock will calm later Later on I wrote a blog post called new records skyscraper and depression in the making August 7th 2007 now at that point nobody was thinking That there's a housing crisis or you know people were using the words housing bubble But they didn't think much of it or that much would come of it and then another article on lu rock will calm and You know not that I like to rub things in people's noses or whatever And then after the fact in 2010 I wrote a longer article which was just published on quarterly journal of Austrian economics called deception excuse me transparency or deception what the Fed was saying in 2007 and this is a that was a very Illuminating article, but all I did was I read the speeches of the top Federal Reserve Board members and they were basically saying everything was hunky-dory in 2007 that they didn't see any possibility of A crisis or a bubble or anything So it's a for an academic article. It's pretty funny stuff So with all this in mind I was happy to note that when the bourgeois Calafi Tower Did open in January 8th 2010 that CNN was kind enough to write this The one person who wasn't surprised by the economic woes greeting the dedication of the building Was Auburn University economist Mark Thornton He predicted tough times for the emirate two years ago in a blog entitled new record-setting skyscrapers and depression Now I'm not going to go through this literature But since that time there's been an emerging Academic literature on this subject Greg Casa Gunther Luffler Jason Barr is one of the main persons in this area. He's a real estate economist at Rutgers University and so he's written extensively on this subject and each paper he seems to find out different causes for variously measured Measures of real estate and record-setting skyscrapers and Then in 2015 he teamed up with two of his colleagues in Rutgers and Published a paper called skyscraper height and business cycle separating myth from reality This was not a welcome site basically They said that I was wrong about the skyscraper curse Because They found That skyscraper building did not cause the economic crisis and that some other factor was causing both skyscrapers record-setting skyscrapers and crises Yes, yes, I am serious and so The Economist magazine picked up on this and they agreed The skyscraper curse is just an illusion and you know it It's bad enough to be criticized like that, but then for the Economist to pick up and Pound you down So I wrote a letter to the editor of the Economist Saying that you know this is this article wasn't right You know the theory of the skyscraper curse is that a third factor like artificially low interest rates Causes both record-setting skyscrapers and in economic crises they Their empirical evidence in other words supported what I had been saying and So I figure you know well finally I'll get a letter to the editor in the Economist But it never came out and then three months later This was the article was March 28th 2015 In the first week of July I Think it was July 2nd. I get an email from the Economist saying that My letter had been misplaced and it's too late to run it now so I Teamed up with Lucas Engelhardt in the back and we decided well Let's send a comment to the journal in which Bar and his colleagues published the original article And we're thinking well this is slam dunk that they got to accept this But they came back and rejected the comment which doesn't really happen very often and The rep one of the referees Was one of these three men and I think it was this I think it was Jason Barr who they sent it to and who? Wrote up the referee report condemning the comment Even though it was pretty clear what we were saying But we realized it was one of them at least because it says it's hard to reject a comment That is favorable to your own paper, but he was pulled together enough energy and courage to pull that off and so that's basically when I started thinking about writing a book on this subject which I have Completed the Institute is going to publish it and and It's dedicated in part to the editors of the Economist magazine And the editors of that journal Economic papers. What was it economic? Applied economics applied economics And you know, it's really remarkable With respect to the economists because they had been citing my work in favor of The skyscraper curse prior to this and they even mentioned that in their editorial and they actually although they did not refer to me in their editorial they did Reference my papers skyscrapers in business cycles But I get this That's the art that's the graphic that they put with their article Where you have the various Crises the panic of 1907 the Great Depression that's 1970s the Asian financial crisis and then the Bush calafi Okay, which are all you know pretty much the crisis starts right before the buildings are completed So they start during the boom prior The crisis happens Usually right after it reaches record height and then the buildings open shortly thereafter Now if you draw up a graphic like that and then you say there's there is no such thing as the skyscraper curse That's literally beyond my comprehension Okay, so our takeaways today is That the skyscraper curse is an illustration of what the Fed is doing to the economy the Fed effects are Pervasive throughout the economy doesn't affect every last little teeny thing But it affects the productive side of the economy In a significant way and it actually affects the government as Well because governments are seeing their revenues increase during the boom so they start spending and investing And by the time their projects come online and their revenues are also greatly diminished They find similar problems in the public sector as well The skyscraper curse has a good record of prediction and actually it's you know where you don't see exact Dating of things But the one example of The Woolworth building in 1913 We don't remember any economic crisis at that point, right in the United States Know what was happening in World War one. Yeah, World War one So in 1913 right before the Woolworth building was completed the US economy went into a severe contraction but in early 1913 as the Europeans were gearing up to fight the war demanding our raw materials and our goods it was World War one in Europe that led to a revival of the US economy from the steep slump that it had been experiencing So where there was no economic crisis in the US economy There's a perfectly logical reason Why none appear and that's World War one the largest configuration of War in the history of man 20 million casualties Were actually counted and it was probably a lot worse and then if you add in the pandemic that followed Which is related to the war It was an enormous loss of human life and capital mainstream economists resort to all sorts of things psychological factors Technological factors, but really they fail to come up with it Economic explanation for this phenomenon Well, the only line that's left on my presentation is that the kingdom tower tower in Saudi Arabia is under construction The construction is currently stalled But it's expected to resume shortly and it is expected also to hit a record Height it's supposed to be one kilometer tall But it's but the top part of it is not usable space. So it only sets the record by By about 12 stories over the one in Dubai The Saudis actually wanted to build a tower that was one mile tall But the engineers calculated that if they were able to build one one mile tall that it would simply Break through the crust of the earth. It would be so heavy Okay. Thank you very much. We have a few minutes for questions. Yes, Ted Yes, yes, I have I have not looked at it, but the last cruise I was on Was ironically the world's largest cruise ship. I don't remember The allure yes, that might have been it massive Got lost a couple times didn't think I was ever gonna resurface again, but I think there that would be an interesting project for someone to do. Yes, Zach Yeah, I don't in fact, I didn't know much about skyscraper construction when this whole thing started But fortunately my brother is is in a big-time construction. So I have like a tutor I'm there, but I don't know much at all about The technological requirements of getting bigger and bigger as far as cruise ships are concerned I'm sure there must be some but the fact that it You know, it just seems like It might not be as daunting Technological task as Going up into the sky and trying to elevate well just even elevating your workers Think about you know that I mean getting your workers from point A to point B You know when the original steel frame construction You've probably seen pictures this of guys walking along beams and stuff like that Well, one thing they couldn't do When they were once they were got up there is you couldn't go to the bathroom So, you know, there's all sorts of constraints like that Like for instance cruise ships have bridges to Yeah, and when you Yeah, when you build a much larger cruise ship than there's ever been built before I would imagine you certainly would need Stabilizers of a lot much larger magnitude for just is just one example Perpellers that have to be larger or you have to come up with some way of Constructing the ship so that it's lighter Or more balanced, but then of course if it's more balanced then you can get through fewer Waterways canals and so forth and as a matter of fact the The Queen Mary to Took the Queen Mary to over to Europe and back from Europe and On the way back you pull into New York Harbor and you have to cross under a bridge and Literally it feels like the bridge is like right there. It's so close It's like you don't want to put your hand up there Yes, Ryan Now Yes But bracing yourself as a relative concept, I mean it's it's it's delayed it's been delayed several times It's currently I believe delayed the information on this is not easy to get and and so initially it was supposed to be completed in 2018 but the word completed can mean different things I've also seen that it's supposed to open in 2020 that's pretty clear what that means So It could be you know could be tomorrow it could be two years from now so It's a very relative term and there's nothing precise about the skyscraper index You know hitting it in a certain month, for example, I was just very lucky that I had information about the tower in Dubai and Was able to write that the end was near Really about a month less than a month before things started It's the slow steady decline Before it hit more rapid declines in 2008 Yes No, I didn't really I Contacted him after the paper had been published. He had never contacted me and I wrote and asked him for a copy of the paper and Said I'd like to read it and I did mention something about you know if I come on on You and you come on and me then we both get more citations to our work and I'd not that I need citations, but he he does It's just the the reality of I'm working at the Mises Institute They don't care how many citations someone gets But if you're working at Rutgers, that's all they care, you know, you could be They don't even read your papers At some universities They just count citations It's a very good question the skyscraper index and curse is related only to record-setting skyscrapers and That has to do with the fact that the artificially low interest rates have to be very long and very severe in order to create the type of economy and psychological euphoria that cause people to set new records and Normal in normal business cycles Sure, real estate does good construction does good, but they don't typically set new records As a result you get a more normal bust in the economy rather than an economic crisis Yes Yes, we do and for two reasons one is We've seen clusters of records in the past and we also see clusters of skyscraper building In the present and in historically You know, so there's clusters of tall skyscrapers being built in China in the Middle East In Manhattan they're building some very narrow but yet very tall buildings and the One way to measure the amount of skyscraper construction is to look at The number of super high construction cranes. This tells you a little bit about where our current bubble is because The city of Seattle has more of these cranes currently active than both New York City and Los Angeles combined So it's not the traditional business That's being impacted here Although New York is part of the financial business obviously but Seattle is really a hip Place and the businesses that it has Are leading our leading companies so Amazon's there Boeing is there Nordstrom's is there Starbucks is there and then down in California where they're building the tallest building west of the Mississippi Of course, you've got Google. You've got You know all the tech companies all the social media companies Are there so it's indicative of the type of you know, what's really bubbling Well, it's Facebook. It's Amazon. It's Netflix and it's Google and a Lot of those companies are headquartered right there where that building is going up. Okay. We're past time. Thanks


Elizabeth Arden was born on December 34, 1884, in Woodbridge, Ontario, Canada, as Florence Nightingale Graham. She happened to be the fifth of five children raised by a farming family that struggled to make ends meet. Her family was so poor that Elizabeth had to engage in odd jobs from an early age to help support her family. Elizabeth was finally able to attend school in her late teens, but she eventually dropped out of the nursing school in Toronto because she was too broke. She got a brief job as a bookkeeper from the ER Squib Pharmaceuticals Company, where she spent hours in their lab. Learning about skincare, she later worked for Eleanor Adir as a treatment girl. During this period, Elizabeth was able to save enough money to start a salon in partnership with another woman called Elizabeth Hubbard. When the partnership was dissolved four years later, Elizabeth decided to remain in the beauty industry. She launched her salon, named Elizabeth Arden. To grow her new business, Elizabeth hired a team of chemists to develop the face cream and lotion that became the first items in her new line of beauty products. However, there was a problem. Makeup and facial treatments were more often associated with prostitutes than with respectable women at the time. So, Elizabeth came up with a strong marketing campaign to change people's views of beauty products. She also taught women how to apply makeup and pioneered such concepts at the scientific formulation of cosmetics, beauty makeovers, and coordinating colors of eye, lip, and facial makeup. In no time, Elizabeth was able to establish makeup as being proper and appropriate. Even necessary for a lady-like image, she targeted middle-aged and plain women for whom beauty products promised a youthful, beautiful image. Her brand became so established that she opened her business in several locations and countries. By the 1930s, her company did so well that it even flourished during the Great Depression, bringing her over $4 million a year. Elizabeth ventured into many other businesses, such as horse riding, but the beauty product business was her major stake. Before her death on October 18, 1966, Elizabeth had turned her company into one of the most recognized and successful brands in the world. With over 300 beauty products and over 100 saloons, worldwide, Elizabeth died a successful, wealthy, and fulfilled woman at the age of 81. Here's the thing, Elizabeth could have otherwise remained poor and unsuccessful, blaming her failure and her poor background just as many in her shoes would have done. But, as Stephen Covey once said, I am not a product of my circumstances, I am a product of my decisions. Most of us were born into poverty. Some of us were unfortunately born into both poverty and sickness, but you have to get to a point in your life when you start blaming the person you see in the mirror. Yes, some people may say, but it's not my fault. Yes, it's probably not your fault that you were born by poor parents or into a poor country. But what can anyone do about that? The easiest strategy for most people is a complaint. But as you and I know, complaining about your problem doesn't solve your problem. Roy T. Binnette said, the majority is when you stop complaining and making excuses in your life. Anyone can complain as much as they want. Making an excuse is easy and cheap, but either excuse or complaints would make you a dollar richer. Let go of yesterday and focus on tomorrow. Let go of your background and focus on your future. Let go of excuses and focus on the execution of your plans. If you like this video, watch more videos on our channel. We love you.


She, she, I first was introduced to her because she's the first recipient of our PAL Mother of Color Child Care Grant for her work with Blackboard plays who you should also look up, incredible. Here in New York City, those are some of the new playwrights that we all need to get behind supporting. And she has also recently come on board as the New York City PAL Chief Rep for the whole city. So we're so excited to like, yeah, just hear where her heart goes is going to be a wonderful opportunity for us to see what the vision can be for this city. So thank you all so much. I know that right now my wonderful event producers are like here, they can talk about these women all the time, but it is my absolute pleasure if my friends can go and join their seats and join their little mini pod communities, which you'll see what those are for in a little bit. Plot twist. And now I would like to introduce someone who I, I have also grown to admire. This is someone who has made such a wonderful impact in the conversation of gender parity when it comes to composition and music direction. And that's, I would like to start introducing, you can come up whenever you're ready, but Georgia Stitt is with us tonight. It is such a pleasure to have her. She is a composer, lyricist, music director, and pianist. She has written several musicals, including Snow Child and Big Red Sun and Samantha Spade, Ace Detective, and has produced several albums of her songs. She's the founder and president of Maestra Music, an organization that was created to provide support, visibility, and community to the women who make the music in the musical theater industry. Incredible, more musicals by women, please. And I have invited her to speak for two minutes just on Maestra and the importance of that before we move into the next piece. So, Georgia, thank you so much for being here. Is this on? Yeah, is this thing on? Thank you. Thank you, Rachel, for having me. I have worked for a long time in this industry in New York City as a music director, a pianist, a composer, and a ranger, orchestrator, all of the things under the umbrella of Jack of all trades, Jill of all trades, musical theater person, and many, many, many, many times over the years, I've been the only woman on the team. In parallel, I also had a girlfriend who was doing the same thing, my friend, Mary Mitchell Campbell, who's a music supervisor of Mean Girls, and The Prom, and basically everything. She's one of the most working women in the music industry in Broadway. And she and I are roughly the same age, and we sort of came up the industry together, and we said to each other, I can't do this job, but I'm gonna recommend you whenever I can't do it. So if they can't get me, they can get you. And so we just watched for two decades now. We've watched our careers grow like this. And I thought, who would I be, and what would I be if I didn't have a girlfriend having my back? And similarly, and our paths diverged, I became more of a composer, she became more of a conductor, but we still meet for lunch once a month of breakfast, usually, because that's the 9 a.m. time, is when we have available. And so I thought the thing that's missing when you're the only woman on the music team is that sense of girlfriend, that sense of partnership, and the woman who has your back. And so I thought, what is this community? Who are the women who are doing this? And I realized that I didn't really know who they are. I had a few pivotal moments. I performed a concert of my own music, and I had a female composer come up to me at the end of it and say that she was overwhelmed watching that because she'd realized she'd never seen a woman at the center of the conducting, playing the piano, my piece being performed, she had never seen that, and she thought, how can I do this for a career if I can't even imagine it? I can't even see what it would look like. And so watching you do it, I thought it's the first time I've seen that. And then I had another young woman and a female composer reach out to me and say she was starting grad school to write musical theater, and she got the syllabus and realized there were only men on the curriculum, only male composers. And so she went to the professor and said, why are there no women on the syllabus? And he said, who do you think should be on the syllabus? And she said, I don't know, that's why I'm in grad school. And he said, you should call Georgia Stitt. And I think he said that because he didn't know either. He didn't know the answer. So I got those two women together and they met each other and we're both like, oh thank God, someone else who does this. And I thought, okay, this is what's missing is the sense of community. So I started basically a cocktail party and invited the women that I knew who were composers and prominent music directors. And we met a few times and then I started bringing in guest speakers to speak to us about things musical. We brought in orchestrators and we brought in arrangers and producers and every conductors. And a cap scouring, like who's winning the awards? Who's graduating from the programs? Who's getting a show produced? Who do I not know? And then those women started inviting other women. The group has grown, we have about 140 women on the mailing list now. And we meet every month and there's usually about 40 women that come every month. It's a rotating group depending on who's available. And an offshoot of that is that we now, we have, we built a directory. So if you're trying to hire more women on your creative team, you can go to maestromusic.org and you can say, I'm looking for an arranger in the city of Washington DC who's a member of the union who works in finale who also plays a piano. And all the search filters will give you names of people who qualify in those categories. So I just don't ever wanna hear, well we wanted to hire a woman but we couldn't find her. We are trying to solve that problem. And then from our community, we have a group called Maestro Moms that we started and you're gonna be lucky enough to hear from Tina DeVara in a few minutes. But Tina is the head of that with her partner Lauren Craiger, the two of them co-chair of that program. And we have been trying to build community among the women musicians who often are trying to figure out how do I have time to make music? How do I have time literally to put my brain on this thing but also to go to the other place where I have to work to make music? How is that even possible? And so we're trying to build the community there too. So anyway, that's me, Maestro Music and we're officially a not-for-profit and we have a number of big initiatives coming up in the next year. So thanks for paying attention and for supporting Moms. And I'm also a mom, how do I leave that out? I have two daughters, they're 10 and 14. Anyway, thanks for having me today, thank you. So definitely look up Maestra and if you know women who want to get involved in musical theater, send them George's way because there's a wonderful community that's building to support them. And then that's a perfect transition into the first part of our performance programming. I'd like to welcome to the stage Tina DeVara and Jennifer Blood. As Georgia mentioned, Tina is one of the co-founders of Maestra Moms and she was one of the first people who reached out to me about Maestra and I learned that she has written numerous songs on the topic of motherhood and that I had heard because of the nature of our business. And so once we connected, I was like, well, this is definitely gonna come into play at some point.   So please enjoy, please give it up for Tina and Jennifer. What's your life in truly costumes? You dye the eggs. You hang the decorations. You bake the cake. And in between, you work for pay. When you get tired of standing up, sister sit down and say, mom is not my real name. Mom is not my real name. There's somebody else. I used to be with the name walk away. If there's trouble at school or if you have a bad day, but I want you to know it's got room for everything. It's got room for everything. And by the way, mom is there's somebody else. I used to be Avenue and a young woman pushing a stroller comes into view and she's thin and she's blonde and she's beautiful. She looks so rested. And I wonder as she passes me pushing that stroller, when her babies get just a little bit older and she's stirring the oatmeal and she's doing the dishes and then she's wiping noses and washing out lunchboxes and cleaning out voicemails. And she's answering emails and she's answering texts and she's answering messenger and she's answering children, mom, what? She's answering children, mom, what? And she's answering children, mom, what? Thank you so much. You all sounded incredible as well. If I may be so bold, this is wonderful. I mean, just the energy putting into this art that was put into the messaging that connected with all of you.  I know some people who are not even parents and we're laughing at this because I think that there's so much connection and opportunity for that incredible piece. If you want to find her, she's on SoundCloud, Tina DeVeron, mom is not my real name and it's from the motherhood song book. So there are many tracks that you can find and also Jennifer Blood is a professional as you could tell from her sound. So find her and go see her anywhere you can. I'm gonna invite Mary Hodges to the stage right now. If you could come up, Mary Hodges. The talent does not quit tonight. You may, you may. Honestly, I needed that song and I'm like jazzed, absolutely. So I was able to connect with Mary through pal, actually. But it was when she was in the middle of, this is like part of the loose introduction, my exposure to Mary, she was in the middle of tech for a little piece that's doing kind of well called Slave Play, maybe you've heard of it. Yeah, you can clap for that. Mary is the assistant director on this incredible piece of work. You can clap again. This isn't school, this is a happy hour and I am very happy to say that I connected with her and she started to tell me her story and the story is that this is a woman whose resume includes TV, film, theater. She's incredibly gifted. When she spoke to me about the passion of what she was working on and what she wanted to engage with and her trajectory that was about her as a single mother taking every opportunity possible to continue her work, I was moved in a way that I'm continually moved by learning these stories but I was also inspired because of what they gather around. No, no, it's fine. This is for you, this is all for you. Where she was able to, in just one phone call, capture, I was able to capture her passion for this entire industry and what she wanted to do and what was so special about that was she was saying, look, this is where I am, this is the opportunity, I know that I'm ready to give it but this institution isn't ready to support me the way that I need and that's the truth. That is that you can clap for that too. So I'm very proud to say that it was from that conversation that we were able to identify Mary as one of our institutional match grant recipients from PAL for our childcare grant but here's why, it's because we knew that she was giving so much to the field. She was giving so much to the institution that we wanted the institution to learn how to support her in return and I think that they got a pretty good end of the deal and this brilliant artist, that was so much promise and so I wanna start off actually the question that's not on the sheet but you seem to be pretty cool with that. When I Google you, I Google all of you. When I looked you up, there was a two line bio that was on Broadway World and I loved it. It said assistant director of Slave Play and then the second line was and proud single mother to her two line bio included two incredible accomplishments. So I wanted to ask you, what is your heart behind that bio? Those two lines say so much. Yeah, injects a position with the art, right? I think it was just ironic how my first credit on Broadway is triple fold in many ways that it was as an assistant director and first not as an actor and then the title of the show and then at this point in my life. So I wanted to make a bold statement by saying this is part of my identity and let the chips fall away where they may because some people would say, you don't need to put that there, right?  So if that answered your question. Absolutely, I think it does for me. I think for many of us we still feel that it does have to be a choice. Like, am I going to lead with this? Am I gonna let it slip into the conversation naturally or am I gonna choose maybe to not mention it at all? And there are many, many, many, many times where I don't mention him on my bios in the playbook because it's like, okay, it's just professional, professional, professional, professional. Or what is professional, right? To not say that, right, yeah. But for this particular occasion, for my first time, I was like, I'm gonna just put that footprint right there. I think it's beautiful. I think it made quite the impression. It did on me to read that on Broadway World. I wanna start at the beginning. So what is one of your earliest memorable experiences as a parent in the theater? I think she's so prepared. This is part two. Yeah. So I have to really have my way. So what was the question again, Rachel? The one of your earliest memorable experience as a parent in the theater when those two circumstances were juxtaposed? Theater. I have to say, like one of them, I was actually, I went into labor and I didn't know I was into labor. It was like one of those checks where you have to start checking in every week with the gynecologist. And I forgot what week I was, maybe 36 or what have you. And I go in and she said, oh, you're in labor. You need to go right to the check-in at the Children's Hospital. This is Washington Heights, Presbyterian. And I was like, what? She said, you need to go check in. You know, you're in labor. You don't feel anything. I was like, no, I don't feel anything. My water didn't break. I didn't have like, you know, she's like, well, you're in labor and you need to go. And it felt like, you know, monopoly do not go past go. You have to keep going. I was like, you mean I can't go home and get my back? No, you need to go and check in. I really wanted to cry. I'm proud of myself. I didn't, but I was like this close. And so because I was also, there was a show going on. I was, I directed a show for the Downtown Urban Theater Festival. And it was going to go up, I'm gonna say the next night. And so I wanted to cry and I'm like walking with my son's father. We're in the corner. We literally had to walk around the corner. It's like, do you think she really met like not gone? She's like, no. So we go and he checked in and got me situated and then he left to go get the bag. And I just felt really alone at that point. But then I got on the phone and I had to contact the playwright. I was like, Sessy, I'm checking in. I'm going to labor. I won't be there at the show because it's one of those things where it's like, you said all the sound cues, everything was on my computer and I was going to do it. So then what happened was, making a long story short, memorable, was they got me set up, got me a room and then the playwright and then her friend showed up and I was there. Somebody took a picture. There's a picture out there in the world of me and hooked up to tubes and everything. And I'm going through the sound cues and transferring stuff. I literally gave her my MacBook that I had at the time. So she could go run cues for the show the next night. Yeah. So that's one. Make your MacBook show, baby. Yes. In their care. But I had to explain it. It wasn't like just here. You know, you had to go through the script because, you know, I knew it and this was where the sound cues and things, yeah. I would say that's pretty memorable. I know I'm not going to forget it. Thank you. I mean, but also like what you did for that show, how wonderful that you're like, both of these things are existing as an event in my life. Yeah. Right now. We got second runner up for that. Hey. Second runner up for that, yeah. Come on. Yeah. You explained the cues really well. That's great.   Joy. Yeah. I did ask for it. Joy, that's loaded. You can change the question. Yeah. There are no rules. You know, let me see. What did I write down? Oh, hmm. That's weird. You know, it's unique. I think being an artist and being a parent. And I wanna say, because there are men in here, so I don't wanna just say moms, you know, as being a parent. I think you, even though we complain and we mind about like, you know, how tired we are, I think there's something a little jazzy, a little something that's extra that we bring into the space and a sensitivity. And speaking of which, I was working on a show, new perspectives, theater company way over on the west side, actually not too far from here. And we were in rehearsals. And that's why I wanna make clear that we just don't make sure careful about just saying moms, because it was a parent.  I was like, well, I took him aside. I was like, you need to bring him? Bring him? Because I've brought my son to rehearsals. Or let me know, we can stagger your call, whatever you need so we can get you here. So I think there's a different awareness that we come in whatever our hat is. And at that time I was wearing my director hat. And then, so I think that brings in the look on his face by having a director acknowledge that he's a parent. And this was his concern and that he was heard. So he didn't have to feel like he needed to hide that. So I think there's a sensitivity and an awareness when we're in spaces. It also, you know, the word legacy was talked about a lot today in your conversation with Emily. And what I love that sounds like it's an effect of this sensitivity and this awareness that you have is now you're creating a new standard for him. Yes. Of what that empathy and care should be for him in the room. Yes. And then also, you know, the part of also what we talked about earlier is there's another set of the word in the question is joy, right? I make fun. But then there's a joy also of having relief knowing that your child can be welcomed in the space or the joy that your child brings to other people, artists in the space that they weren't expecting to get. So, you know, it can be spread, you know, in many different ways. And then there's also like just conversations because, you know, my son, you know, the director of a show I was just in when I switched and I wore my after hat not too long ago. The Hope Hypothesis is a good example because Omri would come often to rehearsal and, you know, he loved the show, you know, and there was some inappropriate words in there, but he's a theater baby. So you just say, you just say, you can't say those words at school, right? That's what I say. Fair enough. And he'll come into rehearsals and he's the first to memorize. He'll memorize the play and the script. And then sometimes there was one show, we'll have a conversation about the show.  And he'll say, you know, you were really good. Thank you. Because he would tell me if I wasn't and be honest about it. And he'll talk about, you know, other, so that's another sense of joy. Absolutely. Yes. I love that you mentioned that because so often when we do try to identify the obstacles of motherhood or parenthood, it comes in that feeling of being divided, that your art exists here and your motherhood exists here, but they all exist in one person. And so how do you amputate that part of yourself to enter a new space? And it sounds like the joy for you is when you can enter as a whole person. Yes. Into the room. Yes. Which also goes back to not hiding it. Yes. And keep trying to keep those things separate. I hear some ums in the audience too. Thank you. I bet I hear some ums through the live streaming as well.  The question I had was, you know, what support have you received? You kind of already answered that. I would love to know, you know, where can we go from here though? This all sounds like wonderful and simple, but I'm not the type of personality to ever settle. So I don't want to stay here. What happens when we ask the question, that's wonderful, where should we go? If you could vision cast for what you would love support to look like for yourself as you grow, as a mother and as an artist, how can the support for parents grow as well? Well, I see a world. And this is where we'd have the piano go, right? Toot, toot, toot, toot, let's see a world. Where we talked about the word surprise, you know, being thrown out or this is part two to our day for some who weren't able to make it earlier, the conversation that we were having with Emily Mann about not being surprised about the struggles, the ongoing struggle of the parent and not getting support, whether it's monetary or friends or colleagues with our children. Where it's just a norm where if we're offered a job and they'll say, do you need any, do you have any concerns or do you need assistance with anything that we can arrange for you, right? Because we're still in a place where you're not, you know, saying upfront as far as discrimination, whether you have children or you have spouse or you have this or you have that, right?  So then I would say, as a matter of fact, there is, I'm going to need some assistance with my son. He gets out of school at this such and such a time and I'm going to have somebody pick him up or what have you. Is there room for you to, can we have, is there a space where he can be, where he can sit and do his homework or what have you? And then that person would say, of course, misogynists, we can provide a space for your son to come in. You can clap for that too. You can stand up and dance for that. Of course. Of course.  It's like, oh, I don't know if we can do it. But what we're talking about is when you ask for something like that, like support, and they're like, oh, wait, what, what, what's a room? What, I don't know what walls are.  Oh, you're going to have to find a waiver. Yeah. People have been having children since the dawn of time. Like if we haven't figured this out, literally, that's how we came to be. If we haven't figured it out by now, it's because we haven't thought it through, right? So I love this idea where you're like, it's, yes, I'm just going to jump on that and say I would love that to be the vision too. That it's more of a surprise when they don't know how to support you than it is a surprise when they do. Yes. Right? Yeah. You can go over that too. Yeah, and I'll take it a step further. Please? As far as like regional world, right? Because there's theater beyond New York City. And that's where some of us make our living if you're able to go out of state, which is a challenge for me right now. So what I foresee is we get a job offer to go to, pick a state, anyone? Minnesota, all right? So, and they say, you know what? And I'll say, I need to bring my son with me. Can you provide me, he's in this grade. Do you have a short list of schools? And they can go, I'm gonna put you in touch when the company manager, they have a short list of schools because we have a relationship with these schools in our community. And so, here are the schools that parents who have come to work with us have enrolled their kids in. Now that is stepping up. Yes. Versus, oh, you go and do the research. And also it puts the obligation on the institution to have a relationship with the community. Which they should. Which he, hello. These words that you've said. Yeah. Yeah. That's my last question. But like, let's put that out there again. So, they have the resources for you. Yes. Already. Because they have a relationship with the community. Yes, they have a relationship with the community, but they also recognize that they're bringing in artists from all over the country and artists are parents too. They're not just like. Mary Hodges, ladies and gentlemen. Hi, Anne. Brilliant. We're moving into the next section of our programming, but there is time to mingle a bit after grab her, talk to her, talk to her about her, talk to her about her work. She's on fire. We're gonna move into the next portion of our programming, but this is not the last you're gonna hear from Mary if I have anything to do with it. So I just wanna send everyone to the PAL website who's at home, P-A-A-L theater with an R-E dot com. Our hope is that these events become more regular so that you can all find community. You can find Mary, who is awesome. I was supposed to do this at the beginning. It's my mea culpa, but I'm not gonna miss the opportunity to do it because I also find it an imperative to do. So if you will join me in a bit of a deconstructed programming exercise of Angard, where we say, pretend it is the beginning, before we begin today's summit, we would like to acknowledge that we are gathered on the lands of the Lenape people in their ancestral lands, Manahata. We are the guests of the land and we wanna take a moment to acknowledge and honor the indigenous stewards of this place, past, present, and future. Following this acknowledgement and with gratitude to the history of activism and preservation undertaken and led by native and indigenous communities, we'd like to acknowledge today's climate strike. You could be engaging with that vital movement today, but you're here with us. However, climate action and parent inclusion are intrinsically linked. We cannot create a better world for families without actively seeking to preserve that world. We urge you to take a moment to reflect on your relationship to the land today and offer gratitude to those who are leading the movement for climate justice. Thank you so much. And thank you all too. Thank you to Lenape people on their ancestral land, Manahata. You can clap for that too. It is my absolute pleasure to introduce to you the next individual who is going to be taking us into a really exciting, now you know the purpose of your pods, it's great. I would like to introduce Karina Shillenberg, Director of Communications at TCG. She is a playwright and creative partner at Flux Theater Ensemble here in New York. Without further ado, please help me welcome Karina. Hi everybody. Thank you, Rachel. I wanna start by just saying how meaningful it is for me to be here with you all tonight. As I'm not just your facilitator, I am also a parent.  So for me, the song would go, mama is my real name, right? One of them. And so I don't take it for granted to be in community with you all tonight. The invitation is deeply meaningful to me. I also wanna say that it's deeply meaningful to share this practice with you. And it's important for me to start by naming where the practice comes from. So this story circle practice comes from John O'Neill. Is that name familiar to any folks here? Yes. So John O'Neill was the co-founder of the Free Southern Theater, also Gene Broad productions. And Free Southern Theater was in many ways the cultural arm of the civil rights movement. He founded it in the early 60s. And this story circle practice really comes from the struggle for black liberation. And in John's work with Free Southern Theater and as an artist and as an educator, and later with Gene Broad productions, which is thriving right now in New Orleans, he's been very generous in sharing this practice with others, we're going to use it today. But we're gonna do so understanding the sacred tools that we are using and the reason for which they were created, which was black liberation. So, charged with that sacredness, here's how it works. You are going to break into these little pods, although for reasons that will become clear soon, if you can do a little bit of visual tracking, and notice if your pod is...


I'm Staff Sergeant Carney with the Pavements and Equipment Shop. I'm a Pavements and Equipment Supervisor with 31 CES. Every day we do your base maintenance from sidewalks to roads to potholes to the fences. We pretty much cover everything horizontally and we're your heavy equipment operators of the Air Force. Today we did our Rapid Airfield Damage Repair Exercise. It's just an exercise we do pretty much quarterly to make sure we're up to par for any threats. So step by step we pretty much had everything from our FOD walk to check-in for UXOs. And then after that we have our up people marking team. They'll come out and they'll mark our craters that we have to repair. After that we'll have our cutting crew come through. They'll come and cut the crater out. After that our jack hammer comes in, jacks out all the concrete, all the destroyed concrete. Our excavator will come and level out the subgrade. After that we'll have our volumetric mixers come through. They'll lay down our flowable fill, which essentially fills our subgrade back up to par. And then we'll have our Rapid Set Concrete come in as our top layer of concrete. So the differences between our concrete is we've got our flowable fill and our Rapid Set. Our flowable fill essentially fills the main gap to our base of our concrete. Our Rapid Set, it's thicker aggregate, it accelerates quicker and has the strength to be able to take off and land on with our fighters. Yeah, we had some reserve come out from Dobbins Air Force Base. They came to watch the Raider exercise and get a little hands on with us. The Army came to watch us as well, see how we do things just as it's a little bit different for the Army. And hopefully we can get our relationships to the point of them actually being integrated into our exercises later on. My favorite part about my job is it's pretty much like growing up with Tonka toys, except you got the real life toys. Everything is fun pretty much in our job. There's not a whole lot of bad days necessarily. From anything that you touch really, it goes to the point of you're fixing something or you're creating something. So we're building roads, we're doing repairs on the runway. It goes to every little aspect, I mean even from your HVAC, we're out there crane lifting your HVAC unit in, say for the dorms or the defect. We get to touch a little bit of everything on the base and I don't know, it's just something to take home. You get a little bit of solid pride with the job. Being covered in concrete sometimes isn't the best day, but it's still all part of the job and it's a good time. Every day is a good day.


Hey everybody, what's going on? I am Greg Salschman. Enjoyed today by Jim Sinis of Fandall who is here to break down the players for that a week 14, whose stock are rising. What's going on Jim? I'm pretty good Greg because it was a fun week 14. There were like four or five different mid-range running backs who all became either relevant or more relevant where they were previously. Cam Acres, Jonathan Taylor, Miles Sanders, Alvin Camara kind of back. Maybe we could drew Breeze back a week 15 too. So it's always good to have more options that are dispels from a running back perspective. You could put Ronald Jones in that discussion as well. There were a lot of positive changes in giving us more choices in DFS and I will take that every single time I have the chance to do so. So will I, you know, this list that we have in front of us today, if you would have asked us back in August, like who are the players that could be league winners for you? These three players may have all been on that list and it's crazy the road that we took to get here but we are now here. In the fantasy semi-finals, in that final stretch with DFS, you're there and it begins with Jonathan Taylor who stopped Rose and fell and Rose and fell. And yesterday he had 65 yards on the first drive in the first quarter. And I'm like, this is going to be the day we've been waiting for. Then basically didn't play in the second quarter because it was all about Naheem Hines and I was livid. So much so I got a text message from one of my partners who was like, I hate the Colts. How does he text that message to me? 62 yards later, Jonathan Taylor's scappers into the end zone and the rest was history. Jonathan Taylor finished with close to 30 fan duo points yesterday and the stock finally rising for the top pick for the Colts. It is rising right before a match with the Houston Texans. So here we go, Greg. Arrow's up on Jonathan Taylor in a big way. And at some point when a player is effective, you kind of have to commit to that. And we haven't seen the Colts fully do that yet with Jonathan Taylor, but it doesn't matter. He's getting enough volume where with how good he is, he's paying off consistently now with that volume. He's had at least 114 yards from scrimmage and now three consecutive games that he has played. He had a buck 65 yards from scrimmage on Sunday. So he's being effective and we're seeing increases in his workload as a result of that. That doesn't mean it's perfect obviously because like you said, Naheem Hines is still mixing in. He's still not getting all the red zone work. So there's still some flaws in Jonathan Taylor's game, but we're already getting production from him at this current volume. If they were to increase that volume, which they could because of how well he's playing, he could go totally nuclear. And I think that's within the range of outcomes here. So I think that what we've got here with Jonathan Taylor is a player who is still slightly flawed but is a very relevant piece for DFS, a piece we can use I think fairly aggressively and feel really good about. And that's where he's at right now. But there's also the potential for that role to get even better if they do decide to cut down the roles for Naheem Hines and Jordan Wilkins. And honestly like that's very possible with how well Taylor is playing. So right now we can do him as still being a little bit flawed but with room to grow. And I think that is definitely intriguing to me. Again, Houston on the doggie next week, you don't need 30 carries to go off against Houston. So I think that Jonathan Taylor, even if his role does not expand right away, still someone who wanna buy aggressively with where his role is at right now. Jonathan Taylor coming out of Wisconsin, we thought could be the most effective rookie running back. And yesterday he was just that. And there's more opportunities out there for him. That's the exciting part. That's why he stopped. Isn't just up, but it's rising, especially with a date against the Houston Texans on tap for week 15. But if you didn't like Jonathan Taylor as the potential top rookie running back on the board, maybe you were a Cam Akers fan. And finally, Cam Akers broke out as well. He had over 20 final points on Thursday night against the New England Patriots. And Sean McVeigh, we talked about it last week, he finally committed, right? He finally gave it to Cam Akers and said, you're my guy, going away from Daryl Henderson for the most part, going away from Malcolm Brown for the most part. It was all Cam Akers. And it's exciting if you've waited and waited on this rookie running back. Yeah, we had Akers on this show last week too. And we said the time was buy Cam Akers cautiously because there was still this chance that Sean McVeigh might not fully commit to him. He wasn't getting some targets. And someone on Twitter was like, buy him cautiously, you fish and hey, Twitter person, you're right. I was a fish. Like we should have been buying aggressively here with Cam Akers and it paid off big time on Thursday. He had 29 carries in that game. He had three targets again, as I said, just four targets the entire year before that. That was a really good roll over Cam Akers there while playing 79% of the snaps. That is an awesome workload. But it's also a team where we wanted buy into the volume because the Rams have a tremendous defense. They were an efficient offense. We combine those two things, the running back volume on that team is even more valuable than what you get for either team, for other teams. So Cam Akers, we can get rid of the cautious label. Be aggressive now in buying into Cam Akers. And the salary change for Cam Akers was not aggressive. For week number 15 against the freaking Jets, he is $6,700 on FanDuel. And we're gonna be pretty heavy on Cam Akers that we do wanna target running backs in tight game scripts. So we're probably not gonna be getting targets on Cam Akers late in the game. But as he showed on Thursday, he doesn't need that. He had 20 FanDuel points without a touchdown, which is really, really hard to do unless you're Ross Neckler. And Cam Akers did it. So I think we can now just take down all of our guards, take down our walls, let Cam Akers into our life and feel really good about this backfield for the first time all year, buying Cam Akers as much as we can right now. Take that caution and throw it to the wind, Jim, because Cam Akers is our guy facing off against the freaking Jets this weekend. Akers, led by Sean McVeigh, will be rolling into the end zone along picking up all of those yards, just like he did last week against another AFC East bow. Cam Akers and the Rams, certainly someone whose stock is rising and hopefully will lead you through a fantasy championship. And I was hoping this last player we'd chatted about would be another rookie running back to just kind of fill it out for us, but Claude Edwards-Alarre, stock's not really rising, same with Deandre Swift, and then you get to J.K. Dobbins and who knows. So instead, we'll go with another young running back whose stock soared yesterday with Jaylen Hertz as the quarterback, and that was Miles Sanders. Sanders had over 27 FanDuel points. I had another 70 yard run. I believe it was his third of the season. Now, people will question Miles Sanders. I know some people that not only didn't play him in DFS, they had him on their bench in season long yesterday because they didn't like the matchup and who knew with the quarterback. They think it's a great Saints defense and Miles Sanders still went off. Jaylen Hertz has seemingly changed everything for Sanders, which is one of the reasons why his stock is rising. Yeah, I think being low on Sanders heading into week 14 was justified and correct because in the three games before that, he had a pretty bad role. He was not getting yardage. His snapback was around 60% and like when you're running behind a bad offensive line with bad offensive weapons against a tough defense, it's hard to have a lot of faith in that, but his role changed dramatically in week 14. His snap rate shot up 20 percentage points from where it was in his previous three games as our 80% this time, 14 carries in five targets. Now, the effectiveness has been there all year long. Even when Carson Wentz was in there and he was struggling, Miles Sanders when he got the ball was running really well. The problem is they didn't give him the ball for whatever reason they wanted to keep on dropping back, throwing as much as possible, and they wouldn't commit to Miles Sanders being the focal point of this offense, which normally should not do to fair, but like the passing game was struggling, Miles Sanders being good, but they wouldn't give him the ball. Now at Jalen Hertz, they're more willing to run the football and they're more willing to have Sanders be the focal point there. We know that with running quarterbacks, it opens more rushing lanes for the running back. That's a good thing for Miles Sanders. Not that he needs the increase in efficiency, but if it leads to more volume as well, it's really hard not to get excited. Now with Sanders, there are still some downsides. His offensive line is really, really bad. The pass catchers are really, really bad. Jalen Hertz definitely did open things up, but we only have one game of sample on him. He exceeded my expectations. I feel really good about what Jalen Hertz did on Sunday, but it's still just one game. We can't overreact to just one game. So it's not as if Miles Sanders suddenly has a perfect profile, but if we get an 80% snap rate out of a guy who has talent, is playing with a quarterback who will open up rushing lanes for him, that's pretty valuable. So right now I would say bump Miles Sanders up, but if we continue to get more gains with Jalen Hertz being effective as a quarterback of the Eagles, he will shoot up even more. So increasing the stock on Miles Sanders with the potential for it to increase even more, I think that's a good blend for him as they head out to Arizona for this weekend. Miles Sanders has the talent, no doubt, and now that he's healthy with a quarterback and an offense that kind of fits his skill set a bit better, it's a good spot to have his stock rising for the rest of the season. He's gonna put himself on the map for drafts in 2021, but hopefully he'll win owner's championships if they're still alive here in their fantasy playoffs. That's gonna do it for us here on The Fandal Hurry Up. Jim, we appreciate the time. Enjoy Monday Night Football. I will Greg, should be a pretty fun game tonight. We get a Thursday game, two Saturday games, a three game Thursday through Saturday slate. So I'm pretty pumped about this week as a whole. Could be a fun one for sure. Yeah, yesterday's window was kind of weird. It wasn't, there weren't any close games until a four o'clock spot, but hopefully tonight we'll wrap up the week with some excitement before we get to those Thursday and Saturday games next week. For Jim Sotis, I'm Greg Sosman. Thanks so much for watching. Enjoy the game tonight, and we'll see you back here tomorrow for another edition of The Fandal Hurry Up.


Welcome back to morning baraka and this is a nutrition portion of portions We are going to make a date smoothie this morning. Brother Bilal is going to make it. Looking forward to this date smoothie. So shall we What are the ingredients firstly? What are you going to put into the smoothie? So we've got a quart of well, I'm so habitual with the ingredients but check the Facebook page for the details So let me tell the viewers that this is for weight gain actually rather than weight management loss So weight gain So there must be things in there that are obviously going to help somebody who perhaps needs to put on a few pounds Is that does that affect a lot of people we always talking listening hearing on you know Sort of the news and current affairs how obesity is you know taking place What's the sort of proportion of people that actually need to gain weight no I've did that people that need to gain weight are definitely in the minority But there are some who need to gain weight They some that need more specialist intervention because they have like eating disorder specifically You know like anorexia and bulimia things like that put in those to the side there are some people this is high metabolism and They for example don't take care of themselves in a sense of they may neglect that aspect to them You know people that work hard Demanding lifestyles, but they don't take care of their nutrition Perhaps not feeling well Yeah, yeah as well. Yeah, there are people with different medical conditions that may require them to have a and those A couple people we always would say to them seek medical intervention speak to a specialist and nutrition is right a Dietitian that can prescribe you, you know they can do a full assessment and a prescribe you detailed tailored You know meal plans and things that nature. This is not what we're doing here. We just are you putting in this? Oh, this is a vanilla Vanilla vanilla vanilla yogurt sometimes we use plain yogurt, but for this one Yeah, in particular, we have the vanilla yogurt very nice if you like vanilla a date date Smoothie oops, here we go Right, so you've added milk and there are milk ordinary milk Half as in cow milk. Yeah, no more cow milk and as I said I've said we you know people with Intolerance, yeah Today really you can use almond or there's always various alternatives. Yeah, okay, so we have one banana, right? Which we show add bananas are really cool fruits. I find them to be like slow release of you know the nutrition and so it's not really a Effect you especially if they're not brown and speckled but they have more sugar in them And then that can affect your your blood sugar levels if you eat that type of banana And particularly early in the morning to be careful with those if you're if you're trying to monitor your blood sugar for whatever reason then You know speckled brown bananas make really good cakes. They're super sweet Oh, they are super sweet like the sweetness. Not that we're talking about cakes. No. No, no But they are very because they're rather than throwing them away. Obviously. We're not recommended waste food in this. No Different loaves they make different loaves don't they of um, excuse me Some type of right. So you're adding your bananas we do we do we do And now we just need the chopped dates and a cup of water And they look like the medjool dates, right big massive Hey, but that's live TV man, you know So you're gonna chop those. Yeah D dates are again something that's very recommended We'll leave that there We chop them up cut them up So fun. It's interesting seeing somebody chop dates up Although this is what the blenders for so and my chopping will be minimal because that's the whole point of having that the blender So, okay, but it's fun. It's fun. So generally if somebody was trying to gain weight Eating few dates a day is that a good sort of natural way to gain weight And you step up a little bit on your carbohydrates as well. That's one way as well You know like some people say you just reverse like when you're you know You cut down on your carbs because you're trying to lose weight. So it's a little extra You know where you might use olive oil. You could say all right I'll have a little butter things that you cut out to lose weight. You just add a little you have to go mad Yeah Okay, well it's excessive isn't it not to go? Yeah, yeah one way or the other Okay, then I know I think if people adjust if their food intake Little by little they they'll see the changes as opposed to like doing anything drastic Exercise is always there. Good way to gain weight. Um, yeah Cardio vascular tends to be something that people do to either, you know get their heart rate moving and You know keep fit keep the heart fit, but resistance training, you know exercising with weights or your body weight press ups or different types of Training physical activity training can help you to bulk up You know nothing like the deadlift as they call it In weight training to all-over body exercise to you know get you Get you in good shape and so there's Holy Prophet peace be upon him said that when you Plenty of small meals to keep keep the weight up as well. Okay, so he the Holy Prophet has said that it's always important to try to have Make was all keep was all when you're eating and to face the kid look so we're kind of that way, aren't we? Yes Courtesy of yeah, and again, it's actually sharing food is very very recommended to eat with others It brings baraka to the food Yeah self and and I think Islam focus a lot about sharing doesn't it sharing is caring You would share with people if you care about them or if you didn't and you shared it would it would it would in them It would increase your capacity to share, right? I think even I'm the hospitality. I was reading I had these last night about Just add a bit of extra water. Oh, it's just adding water, okay? So a group of people came to visit the Holy Prophet. He was busy in his supplication and prayers And so his companions the Prophet's companions Sat the the guests down and after a while the guests said well We we didn't realize that he would be preoccupied will say a salon and we're leaving and then so when the Holy Prophet peace be upon him went To see the guests His companions and then he said they narrated that you're some guests come and he was quite upset that they hadn't offered food to them And so that's when you just think you know the emphasis on you know being hospitable Serving your guests and you know, so you're going to serve the smoothie to me Charlotte and when you think about Muslim Communities and societies foods plays a big role eating together I think it's a new phenomena of the kind of microwave my meal on my own in front You know most of center to come together and share right We're in a hedge or Ziyara or whatever kind of activity or just at home somebody knocks the door We're about to eat. It's a shame to tell again. Oh, we're actually having dinner. It's a bad time It's more like an ideal time. Hey, you know when I was when I was a child many bachelors Would knock around in the time with them, you know the friends and associates of the family would it seemed to I didn't understand as a Kid these guys were just pop around just around we'd have a table, right? And so they were always welcome Right, here goes wish me luck Your dates are hopefully gonna Yeah, the dates and in the sun of the elevator, you know, even if you're you don't have you know sufficient funds to cook a big spread But you're gonna offer somebody to Break fast, you know, even if it's a date or some water, you know, the dates always mentioned lots of different contexts, right? Yeah, yeah, I think nursing mothers as well. It's quite helpful, right? I wouldn't normally do it as much but because of dates, you don't need they have a certain type of consistency when I make sure They give it a little extra You have you have the bananas as well I can't wait Do you do you make you know when you make your own do you what do you tend to go for once like I tend to keep it simple. I use a lot of Porridge porridge and banana and stuff like that because I tend to use this move for a pre-workout meal Makes me sound like a gym for that. I don't train that often But it is a it is my downtime. Yeah So do you not have them when you say you have a routine you come home and Somebody doesn't have time to eat a meal before they go for the gym. This is an ideal substitute Yes, and then you come home after gym and have a meal or yes or sometimes to make Sometimes I train at home or what I'll do is because you said time is a lesson so you can what I tend to do is Smoothie porridge banana so and so forth make this high protein High carbohydrate meal, but I know I'm gonna exercise I'll take it and then maybe go shopping or go out and do something else in between because you can't train straight away So give yourself a couple hours. Yeah, and then come back boom Okay, so in terms of when you want to gain weight Is that is it good for people to regularly eat Yeah regular small meals your brown rice your sweet potato I still say although you want to have an extra carbs triangle for that what they call the healthy carbs the brown rice the quinoa the Sweet potatoes these type of carbohydrates Maybe even some some of your starches like your yams and things like that as opposed to polished white rice or bread And these have a sugar to put the weight on the wrong areas. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, they don't they don't Not fluttering. Yeah type of areas. Yeah, so here goes See for the Pelosi Your magic hands are made Looks quite looks good We go So Dates movie coming up one dates movie coming up. Thank you so much All right, I'm gonna just go for this Miss me Really good That's quite sweet. That's quite sweet. I like it That's one I would I would probably make probably healthy for people who have a sweet tooth But you're trying to get away from the chocolates the candies of the sweet sweets. It's still So not your Oreo milkshake and just no no we've had a request for that. We might have to explore that In the next episode. No, that's really that's really tasty. And I think you can there's not a taste That's actually too over empowering in this It's it's an even mix, isn't it? It's an even mix you can taste a little banana You can taste a little bit of the dates the vanilla yoga. It's all it's all there Oh, they're balanced the yoga and the banana. Yeah, and you can't tell the date actually And these are really cool like really good foods not too much Processed added sugars, but like these are natural sugar the dates have their own natural sugar Yeah, and even milk has lactose, you know, it has its own natural sugar as well So no need to then a lump in a spoon of brown sugar or any too much additives But we did bend the rule a little bit or was a bit flexible with the vanilla yoga Why well you've said previously that yoghurt's not too bad So what would it be in the vanilla version that you're saying it's not so no just a Taste, you know just to give it a different taste to the plain yoga for so for more for the consistency So what else would you recommend somebody who wants to gain weight? What kind of other foods? I'm also made a smoothie here, but what would be the sort of ideal kind of food to eat? That's yeah So food food wise I would look at things like brown rice a little bit extra brown rice A little bit extra sweet potato some of the starch is You don't need to cut off the trim you know like sometimes they advise you to trim the meat because of the fat and the fats You know like cook the meat if you're cooking some beef or whatever Go for it, go for it, yeah, if you have a chicken So you won't put the weight on it where it might be unsightly or anything that would Even say for example one time they say remove the skin off the chicken Yeah, if you're trying to put on weight chicken, you know the natural animal fats are quite healthy And is it better for people to so we're also encouraged in proportion that is But healthy fats in proportion are good for your is fried chicken good less than ideal So you'd have to still cook it in a healthy way. Yes, which would be sort of grilled or grilled oven roasted Yeah, oven baked. That's fine. That's fine and anything that you'd recommend that's not a nice recipe quickly Stew chicken stew chicken is one of my favorites Some secret ingredients I couldn't I couldn't disclose but I said we need to let our viewers know they might want to make stew chicken But if they ever if the viewers ever Have a chance to go to a Caribbean restaurant and it's a halal Caribbean restaurant. It's brown stew chicken Do we have a halal in London? There's one inside. There's two in South London. I know of Okay, well, that's really good. And what else from the Caribbean cuisine?  You've got pepper steak. Oh, wow.  Yeah, yeah Thank you so much. That was actually very delicious Facebook page absolutely Yeah to get the exact