Mystery House, that strange publishing firm owned by Dan and Barbara Glenn, where each new novel is acted out by the Mystery House staff before it was accepted for publication. Mystery House. Come on on in, gang. We're waiting for you. Hi, Mr. Glenn. Got a good story for us back down tonight? Well, how you have to ask Barbie about that? How about a Barb? It's an unusual story. The kind that tells you holding your breath. Say that's old stuff for a lady on Arthur's barter. Now they have to be able to hold their breath for smooth sentences. How do you know, Tom? Well, it's kind of hard to explain, but, uh, well, listen to this. Okay, places, everybody, except scene, Tom. Danger, man of day. Tonight's story opens in the living room of a pleasant home. Walt Marvin has just come in and talks to his sister. Lock it, boy. But, Walt, what are you doing here? You read the papers, didn't you? They're after me. Don't come here the first thing. You'd do right to come here. You'll get me into trouble. Trouble? You don't know what trouble is.  Well, they did, huh? Don't you can't stay here. You've got to get out. You don't say so. Don't listen to me. Frank and I have our reciprocations to worry about. That's too bad about you and Frank. You've done nothing but get into trouble ever since you were a kid. You've disgraced the whole family. I remember how mom...  This is no time to talk about mom. Where can I hide? I don't know. Oh, so it's going to be like that, huh?  Yeah? Don't say it to me. They know. They're smart guys, aren't they? But if you hadn't killed him, you wouldn't be running away.  You've taken care of that for the whole family. I'm going to get thrown in a minute, Mary. If a guy's own sister can't give them a break, I don't know who to... I've got my own life to live, Walt. It's been bad enough people knowing you were my brother. How the trouble you've been... I've never been in any real trouble before, see? This is it. The works.  This is the showdown. It's me.  You should have thought of that when you killed that man. So is there. You don't care any tears over him.  Well, you killed him. Listen. That difference doesn't make whether I kill him or not. The cops say I did. They're after me. They got their guns loaded and they're all set for a little marchmanship practice. You say I'm a killer. You are.  I'm your brother, ain't I? You're the only person in the whole luggie world I can ask to give me a break. But first, that is right, human. If we'd get into trouble by helping you, oh, Walt, this is terrible for me. Don't worry about that, bum.  He's done a lot better than you've had. He isn't hiding from the police. Cut it out. I don't even like to hear you talk about that guy. I've given you money. I've lied to him. I've got the out of chance. And now I have to think about myself. Think about yourself tomorrow. Tonight, think about me. Oh, just this once, Tamalee. It'll be the last time I'll be honest. Honest. You couldn't be honest if your life depended on it. Oh, look, kid. Remember how I bought you a doll on your 10th birthday? You never had one. You're so remember the better? Oh, what if I did? That's what I didn't even think that a kid had. Brought up on charity, supposed to be grateful for the scrapped people through us. The point is, I took chances for you. I've always taken chances for you. You never learned to live honestly. I didn't have to be a cook just because we were poor. I've gotten along all right. I have a nice home. I'm happy for the love. I haven't cut it out. As soon as they've done that, they'll think they're not going to come here. Franco just loved that. The whole neighborhood ain't on the verge of getting filled with lead. It's too late. They're coming here. Go outside. Get out of here. What are you going to do? I'm going to shoot it out with them. It's a lot more than four. I might have a chance. Well, you can't murder anymore people. That kid is yours. Go on. I'll have faith in your goodwill. If you didn't kill that Joey Bay, I'll see that you... You still believe in fairy tales, don't you? Listen, I could walk out of here with my hands over my head, and they'd still plug me. They'll ask of me. They... Look. Look, they're getting out of the car now. Up at the corner. Smash that kid back on the metal, quick. Smash it. I don't need money. What I need... Smash it. But I... I told you I don't need money. Now, take it quick. Put it in your pocket. Now, hit me on the head with your gun. Hurry up. What? Do as I say. There's a big shooter chest with a couple of blankets in it. In my bedroom. After you hit me, get in and close it. I said I couldn't prepare the police. Right, too? Do as I say. Hit them. Right. I couldn't hit you, my lady. Oh, no. It's not your business. Oh, hit me on the head. Hard. You've got to do it.  I don't... Hurry to the head with your gun. Yeah. They're sisters, ain't it? They're same. Well, let me spin it all right. And take a look on the floor with a busted china bank.  Yeah, we'll see, Burton. But the little lady needs attention.  Well, can't the doc take care of her? I'm anxious to get that Walt Marvin. Yeah, we'll get him all right, Burton. But get the little lady a glass of water first. Uh, to the nest. See, boo, she has done her part. Poor thing. Okay, Flannery. Okay. But you Irish are all alike. You let your shimmery get you into the dinest messes. All right, all right. The guy could be getting five blocks away while we're fussing around here.  Get it! Okay. Okay. Ah, poor thing. He hurt you bad, kitten. Must be pretty good to have a lass like that for a brother. To have him to be decent with his own sister.  Here's the water. Don't hurry it up. I'll put it on the forehead and the resting amount. Ah, that's the girl. Ah, you see? She's coming to already. I... There now. You'll be all right. We'll have a doctor here in no time at all. He... He's... gone, isn't he? We'll take care of him all right. Now tell us, what happened? He... He... He... He's gone in his hand. He wanted money. He... What do you want to go for, did he say? Yes, he... He said he had to get to Texas tonight. He was in trouble. Had to get out of town. He wasn't lying about that. I told him I didn't have any money. He... He's had a little time at his bank on the mainland. And good for it. I tried to stop him. He screamed at me. I got to get out of town. I reached out to the bank and... All right, that's all I remember. You think he left here then? He better not come back. He knows what's good for him. I don't blame you for feeling that way. Hitting his own sister like that. Well, it's already a bit of mine. Not after that.  Me? Listen, he's the only cook in our family. How long ago was this? Well, I... I don't know. A friend. That's my husband. Carl said he had to work for him. He said he'd be having about an hour. Then his job came in right after that. You don't know what time it was, huh? No, I... I didn't look at my watch. I think... Oh, thank goodness you're home. Oh, police, huh? Molly, don't tell me that brother of yours has been here. Dad, he has, Mr. Garmin.  I'll get that woman out whipping within the niche of his life. All right, now, Mr. Garmin, the police will take care of that in fine cheer. You got home when you were expected, did you? Well, yes, of course. Why? And that means our little paging has got nearer than hours. Head start on us. Hmm, we've got to find out when their train's leaving for Texas or that general vicinity. And maybe that was a trick. We'll find out when their train's leaving for any place at all. You're sure he isn't here? No, we ain't looked yet. You'd better think of a look around. But, Frank, do you... You'd better be sure now, darling. If you like him, I'm not anxious for any more trouble. Just give the place a once-over. That's a good idea. Burton, you run along back to the station with the reinforcement for covering the railroad and bus station. Okay. And I'll find another squad car out to pick you up. Okay. Well, let's get busy. I'll take the clothes. Mr. Garmin, if you look out in the kitchen... Right. ...and no sign of anybody in these closets... I don't think he's here. He wouldn't have cared. Well, you never know, ma'am.  There's no sign of him in the kitchen. You'd better try the bedrooms. That's a good idea. This way, officer. Wouldn't it be silly for him to hide in the bedrooms? There's no way of getting out of the house from them without going down this hall. Well, he doesn't have the mentality to figure out a thing like that. There are two bedrooms, officer. Let's try this one first. You look under the bed. I'll take the feet in the clothes closet. Right. And out in there, that's your... Say, I wonder now... I wonder if a man could squeeze into that seated chair. I looked under the bed in the office this January, but it's sort of a kettle, and I'm afraid it's not so tidy. Oh, don't mind me. I'll just take a quick look. No, no. Nothing there, officer. Except the rather untidy bunch of blankets. I'm sorry, ma'am. I'll get them starting up tomorrow. Well, that leaves one bedroom. Let's see it. Let's go back down. This way. All right, here we are. Look it over. Not much space to hide in there. There you go. I always feel sitting looking for a person under the bed. Not in the clothes closet. Well, it just about takes care of this. I don't know if you hear anything from a litter snow. Yes, we certainly will, officer. But it might be a good idea for you to keep a man posted in the neighborhood just in case. Yes, I will. Well, I might as well wait out in front of the squat car. No need of me disturbing you folks any more. It's quite all right, officer. Well, all right. Goodbye. That's all. You can't imagine how frightened I was when both came in and hit me over the head. You can quit after me now, Molly. Huh? I saw that bump on your forehead. I thought perhaps you actually had refused to give that bump any help. And I looked in the cedar chest. I knew it was all right, Molly. Is this Molly? Of course I saw him. Well, then... Why didn't I say anything? If you didn't trust that cook, you'd have told the police the whole story. You'd have been thrown into jail right along with him. You had an affidavit, a neighbor. I didn't want to help you, Frank. Honestly, I didn't. I had to... That is a business of a skunk. Yes, you're writing this with him now, Molly. Well, it was my friend. Well, let's call the police and say that he turned back. But... He wouldn't take... I have a gun, dear. And I heard what had happened. I knew just about what to expect. This is any better way. No! Don't! I wouldn't reach for that gun if I were you, Frank. There's nothing I'd enjoy any more than putting a bullet right through your head. And don't think that I have anything to lose. Is Walt Marvin going to kill his sister's husband? And will the police catch him? We'll find out in the second act of tonight's story. Meanwhile, here's a brief message from our sponsor. And now, act two. A dangerous man at bay. The scene of the living room of the Frank Gorman home. Frank and his wife, Molly, are seated in two easy pairs. And a third voice comes from behind the... Yes. Keep all the lights on and the curtains up. Let everybody see that we're sitting in your living room.  Here, I'd like to talk about fighting like a man, you yellow pup, going to turn into the cops without giving me a chance. I'll turn it all over, Walt. I'm going to give you enough money to clear out. Get out of the country. You're a bad man. Cut it. You must think I'm an awful chap, Frank. I'll give you a thousand dollars' cash. You can ride a long way on the trains for that. You sure like to see me try it, wouldn't you? You know that gets her lined up all over the railroad station. Don't you think you owe Molly a little something?  Well, I guess she is at that, Frank.  But if she goes, people are going to be whispering that Smiley Gorman, her brother, Walt Marvin, you remember the killer, tough. I guess it's asking too much to expect you to see it. She can't stay behind that piano forever, Walt. My police are going to be watching this place day after day. Sooner or later, they're going to get you. Once they decide you haven't left town on one of the trains, they'll really concentrate here. And that's going to embarrass you, ain't it? I shouldn't have said that. Embarrassing me seems to make you very happy.  You came from the right side of the tracks. You had the chance to be a quite a guy. And you're the loveliest heel I know. Walt! Answer the doorbell. I know funny stuff. I thought for you, too, Frank. Oh, wait. Did you sign him off of this planet? No, we're stuck. And nobody that answers his description has been seen near the railroad stations. He's still in town, if that were sure. But then he might come back here. And then he might. That's what I come to warn you about. I'm afraid we need more than a warning, officer. Oh, don't worry. There's two men outside right now. One in back and one in the front of the house.  That's some assurance, I suppose, but don't you think you should have a man inside the house, too? But that's silly. What for would I put a man in here when we already got men outside? I don't know. I just wondered. You look tired, officer. Molly, why don't you play some music for us? Well, I... I don't feel like playing, sir. Oh, come now, darling. I'm sure Officer Flannery would love to hear some good, lively Irish music. You know, that's one thing about the Marvin Flannery. They all love the piano. They say most of the Irish is musical. They say if I never could distinguish your harmonica from the sither. Oh, you don't know anything about pianos, then? Not a thing. That's too bad. I've been wanting someone who knows about them to examine ours. Officer Flannery, tell me. Who is this Jerry Derry that my brother's supposed to kill? Well, ma'am, exactly what he is, is hard to say.  And we got evidence, and after satisfy us, that was his business, now that he's gone. Oh, then we need to... Sorry, sir. Well, there he did. A smooth operator day was with high-up connections. How do you know he walked in? Not much mystery about that one. Your brother was eating lunch with a bunch of hoods when he got a phone call. He'd come back to the table and said he had to go over to Joey Day's office and collect some money. Well, that hardly proves that he murdered the man, does it? He was seen going near to Gray's office. His day called the station saying that he was expecting some trouble from one of his truck drivers and to have a man around handing. And then he came running out. Our man Hollis was going to stop and what does Walt Marvin do but fire a shot at him? Did he hit the police? No, but he knocked the gun out of his hand.  Our reality went into Day's office and found a guy with a bullet in his head. My brother... and he isn't afraid to show to them. Oh, he's desperate. Up to now, he's been what you might call a nuisance test. Petty rackets, more bodies than anything else. For him, he gets cornered with a big rapidism. From now on, he's got nothing to lose. I see. He hasn't a chance in the world. We got his fingerprints. He's in our file complete. He's a murder man. But they haven't found him yet. So what if we don't get him for a couple of days? None of his hoodlum friends dares do anything for him. He's too hot. Wait, Frank. But thanks for trying to tip him off anyway. Walt Marvin, listen, Marvin. Hold on to safe, Molly, so I can come out into the room. Hurry up or I'll shoot. All right, all right. So, you were here all the time? Are you full? What do you think I asked you about putting a man inside the house? What do you think I kept talking about the piano? You mean you wasn't hiding him? I didn't.  He was back there with a gun on us. That same gun I have on you, Flannery. Put your side kick around. He's back at the station. All right, I want you to call him. Tell him to bring the squad car at you. There's a barrel of this gun against your head, Flannery. You won't feel it long unless you make that call. What do you want? You won't get away with this. I kind of think I will, Flannery. Now make that call. And don't try any tricks. Here as fast as I could, Flannery. Step right on in, Burton. No, I wouldn't reach above you. I thought you was Flannery. And it's not head, Burton. Nothing but his feelings, that is. He doesn't seem to like my clothes. Nearly as well as his uniform. When we finally get you in, Sonny Boy, you're going to get everything in the book. I'll worry about that when the time comes. Let's have the gun, Burton. I won't argue with you. Thanks. Okay. What next? I worked it before we ran the doorbell, Burton. You stopped to talk to the man out in front.  Of course. Flannery called. Only because he had a revolver barrel right against the back of me, head Burton. There was nothing I could do. Absolutely nothing, Flannery. And I don't think there's anything Burton can do about the next part of our little performance. What's that? I'm dressed in Flannery's uniform. I have his gun, yours and mine. I'm going to have one of them in my hand in my coat pocket, trained on you. I'll have to knock Flannery and my dear brother-in-law out before we leave. You mean it. Exactly. I mean that you and I are going to walk out to the squad car arm and arm. When we get it, I'm going to drive. And it's going to be quite a trip. You. What do your Flannery's have to do to me? When we get far enough away from here, I'm going to give you a slight tap over the head. Burton. And up to make you sleepy. Once I get outside you're dragging it, I'm not interested in you. You'll be interested before you get through all right. Your description is as broadcast all over the state. That's real flattering, Burton. Okay, Flannery. Ready for your sleeping pill? You keep away from me. I'll tell. Either you take it nice or I'll have to shoot. Stand back, Burton. I'll get even with you for this when we pull you in. And don't think I won't remember. I bet you will, Burton. Kiss? I think I can trust you. I don't know, Walt. Just remember. Any alarm you give is a bullet right through my heart. Remember that and... Well, I don't think I'll have to worry. Okay, Frank. Okay, what? I'll have your gun now, too. I don't have any guns. Don't worry about me, Frank. You start to pull one out when I walk in. I'll hand it over. All right. Sure, here. Yes, quick, Frank. Of course, I'm fooling you. Stand back, Burton. I'm still on my feet. Nice, yes, quick. I got it. Yes, quick. Get...bullet. Got to throw away. Got it. I don't understand it. Hurry. Hurry, got to...got to get bullet. I...I didn't want you, uh... cops to know. To know what? Bullet and me and... and one and date will be same. Frank's been... been with me a long time. He's a fan.  Didn't want you to... didn't want you to know, sis. But had to... had to get the gun. Right. Is this true? Of course not. He's trying to get even with me for shooting him. If it isn't true, give Officer Burton your gun. Give it to him. That's a good idea, Mr. Gorman. I'll give it to you, right in our hearts. Give away for me. Listen, you're going to get it anyway.  So, you've known all along I was friend in your world. Sure.  Sis, I'm crazy about you. Yeah. You've got much insurance, right? Better for a sis this way, Frank. That was pretty nice shooting for a man with a bullet to his stomach wall. Of course, yes. I can't. Always got to get you to the hospital. Burton, call an ambulance. Get a doctor. I don't even... I guess it's no use, Mrs. Gorman. I don't know. I know. You just lost yourself. Quite a guy.


wouldn't you like to be able to predict the future or at least try to guess how things are going to happen very soon. One way to do this is with using scatter plots and associations between two quantitative or scaled variables. In this example, I'm looking at the number of sales in quarter one and the number of sales in quarter two, these are totally made up numbers. But I want to show you how to build a scatter plot and get some predictive value out of it. Now, when I take these data, and I just click on insert chart by default, it gives me the two line charts, which is definitely not what I want. I want to see how they connect one with another. So I click here on chart type. And one of the suggested charts is a scatter plot. And this lets you see the connection between sales in quarter one and sales in quarter two. So for instance, we got one quarter here that was really low in quarter one, it's about a 90 but super high in quarter two. So things went better. A lot of the others, it was just kind of uniform that quarter two seem to be pretty consistent. Now I do want to show you a couple of ways to modify these charts that might make it work better for your presentations. The first of these is that I'm going to come in and I'm going to change just for instance, the colors, I'm going to change it to red. And then I'm going to take this option right here and add a trend line. What this is a straight line that goes to the data that summarizes the relationship between the two. And because we've got this really unusual score over here that's super low on x and super high on y, we end up with a downhill pattern overall. I can make that a little thicker if I want to make it to four point. And you can change the color and the opacity. But I'm going to do one other thing here is going to say show our squared now. This is a little more than I really want to do when I'm talking about visualization because this is getting into actual data analysis. But this is a statistical measure of the strength of association between two variables that goes from zero to one and you read it like a proportion. So the fact that this one says trend line for sales and it says r squared equals zero point zero nine one, that tells you that 9% of the variance in quarter two sales can be accounted for by the variance in quarter one sales. It's a technical thing. But it lets you know there's an association there, but it's small. I'm going to do one other thing and then call it quits on this. I'm going to come back to this trend line, but I'm going to go to series because what I want to do is I want simply want to change the title for this, it gives custom label trend line for q two sales, I'm just going to remove that. So we just have the r squared there. And then that is a good final chart for looking at the association between two variables. If you're familiar with scatter plots, and if you understand how regression works, then this is the best way to look at the association between two quantitative variables, you can repeat it for lots of different possible associations to find the variables, they can give you the best predictive insight into what's happening in your organization.


Hello and you're very welcome to MPS Goals 2. I'm here at Westport Festival with the wonderful Paddy Casey. So Paddy, can I bring you back about 15 years ago to your first album? I'm tired. That's it. It was voted Hot Press' debut album of the year and by due most promising act of the year.  Have they never followed through? Well that's fair enough what you did with this and one of the songs was picked off for Dawson's Creek. It was, yeah, I never knew that for a couple of years. I only found that now because it was on the compilation when it came out of Dawson's Creek compilation. So I actually never knew. Until that? There was a few things I didn't know about. I mean actually when I started touring in America a lot of people who came to the gigs had heard me true. Yeah, true that. And you do quite a bit of touring don't you? I keep most of the time. I try and keep all the time. I mean it's my bread and butter I suppose. And you were saying to me there as well that not only Dawson's Creek but you've had a few hits taken on for... Yeah, over the years there's been Cougar Town and Roswell which I never watched before. I'm not into aliens so I should have watched it. But I thought it was cool that it was on that. I think it was even in Coronation Streams on the hills which I wouldn't probably never have watched. And are they all from your debut album or are they from the... Funnily enough actually the songs were. Even though it was like 10 years on they actually picked songs from the first album. That's amazing from your first ever album to have that much coverage worldwide is just amazing. So can I bring you of order then to probably be the album you're most known for would be the album that bagged you, album of the year in 2004. Yeah, Living Dill and Raining really well. I mean I'm still making a Living Off Living. Yeah, now Living is kept at home for me you know. I mean Saints and Sinners which is is my biggest song was and yeah it's completely surprised for me because I didn't even want to release it as a single. Every time and even today you know like it was the first song where everyone just got up. It was amazing you know even whatever it's in 10 years on. Like it is 10 years on. It is yeah yeah 10 years on and still it's a household known song. Yeah it's a great song great song and you never get sick of singing it would you? No I never get sick of the reaction. I mean you know I do I enjoy it like it's good it's good rhythm and it's good. I thought about you recently enough when Ed Sheeran and Passenger released that No Diggity and oh yeah and that was that was Paddy Casey way before that. I heard on the radio once I think and yeah. You had that you had that done way before that one with grandma's hands and I was doing that actually back in the first time I did Oxygen our witness actually back in the beginning it was 99 or whatever that was the first time I played it. You were doing a jungle book earlier on as over into the King of the Swingers. Our cover is a big part of your set or? No I I started I played the jungle book by accident at the end of the night just ran into it I don't know how I think the rhythm reminded me of the song I started singing it and it was amazing like just the feeling of singing it was brilliant. Yeah and I just went kind of on that and the same. Yeah that was great and it was a great reaction from it as well. It's a good way to close off because if everyone's already up and they're kind of into it it's like why not just stay up and have a exactly yeah have some fun. So Paddy you've a new single coming out can you tell me a bit about that? And yeah I recorded a song with a girl called Kim Haydn Kim was on The Voice and she was really good and I didn't think she should have been knocked out or whatever so I sent her a message saying I taught you a way or whatever and then she got back to me and asked me would would I write some songs with her or whatever you know and I think we wrote we wrote a few but I think this was the first song we actually finished and we both loved it and why don't we just release it as a duet or whatever so so we're not we're not really going to make an album together or anything but we're going to maybe make a little EP you know. Cool just a small one. Small. So this is this is a duet and what kind of a song is it? It's a big super power ballad I mean it's kind of a sad song like but I think it's I think it's one of the biggest songs I've ever written. Okay cool. And when should we expect to hear it? It's it's going to radio now as we speak. Cool. As a man in the van. No I mean it's on it'll be on itching. So thanks a million Paddy. It's been wonderful talking to you and enjoy Tyrone. I was Paddy Casey here with MPS Goes To at Westport Festival.


Glossary. Add key terms. A glossary would typically contain key terms and definitions in a subject area. For example, this theatre glossary. With a Moodle glossary, you can browse by alphabet, category, date or author. And you can also search for particular key terms. Because Moodle encourages collaboration, learners can add terms to a Moodle glossary so you could create a glossary where they can build their knowledge together. Let's make a glossary in a Moodle course. To do that we need to turn the editing on, either by clicking the button top right or by scrolling down and in the administration block, clicking the link turn editing on. Then in the section where we'd like a glossary, I'm going to add mine in the writing section, we click the link add an activity or resource. This brings up the activity chooser. Glossary is an activity because learners interact with it. And so we can click the button twice to open it straight up or wants to get some information about ideas for using the glossary and then the add button at the bottom. The name is important because this is what the learners will see on the course page. In the description, add the instructions that you want to give them for adding their key terms and you can display this description on the course page if you want to by checking the box. There are many other settings and you can find out about these and explore them by expanding the links. So for example if we click entries, we can decide as the teacher whether to allow all entries to appear immediately or whether we want to moderate them first. Whether we want duplicate entries, in other words, can two learners post the same key term and whether we want to allow them to comment on each other's entries. Linking glossary entries means that if a key term is added to the course page or items within the course, then it's automatically hyperlinked to the glossary entry and this makes use of filters which we will look at in a separate video. Likewise, if we click on appearance, we can decide how we want the glossary to be displayed how many entries to show per page for instance. Once we're happy with all of these settings, if we scroll down and click save and display, that takes us straight to the glossary where we can add our first key term and we do this by clicking the add a new entry button. This is what the learners will do when they contribute to the glossary. For concept, we type the actual word and in definition we type what it means. It's possible to add keywords and also to add attachments such as images to the glossary. And you see that as we go through each entry we can decide whether it should be automatically linked or not and whether to match whole words or just parts of words inside the glossary entry. This is quite important to think about. Finally, we save the changes and we have a glossary with one entry already there. If you are considering trying a glossary activity, it is worth also exploring the random glossary entry block.


I'd like to start with Mr. Gallarducci. We'd ask you to provide us with an update of OES's transition back to the governor's office, including the incorporation of public safety communications and how that's going. The status of OES and its budget given the declining federal homeland security dollars. What's happening on the federal level that we can look forward to or be concerned about or at least be able to anticipate so that we can try to address those issues. And an update on the emergency management assistance compact and resource sharing between the states because I know we're going to hear about the fires that are going on in other states in California. To which I believe we're probably responding among other things. And then your priorities and goals in the near and long term. And so, pleasure to have you. It's a great pleasure to see you here and if you'd go ahead and proceed. Great, well thank you so much, Chairwoman Jackson and Vice Chair Lowenthal, members of the committee. It is really my pleasure to be with you today and particularly a great pleasure to be sitting here with my great interagency partners. General Baldwin from the Guard and Chief Pemla from Cal Fire. We work so closely together in addition with Commissioner Farrow as CHP to make sure that the public safety programs of California. Occur and that we keep everybody as safe and prepared as possible. So I really appreciate the opportunity to be here today. Our principal objective really is to reduce the vulnerabilities to hazards and to crimes here in California through a series of programs that ensure for a resiliency within California which include things like emergency management and homeland security programs and grants and criminal justice programs. This last year we actually have had quite a few exciting changes. As of July 1st, you had mentioned, Chair, that we have moved from agency back into the governor's office. And I have to say that as far as that transition has gone so very smoothly, our authorities and the regulatory part of us, our responsibilities have not changed. In fact, as a part of GRP2, we assumed the responsibility of managing and integrating the Public Safety Communications Office which was previously with the California Technology Agency and now is in with us. So it actually increased our roles to around 900 or so full time employees at Cal OES. And Karen Wong who's sitting to my right here is the director of our Public Safety Communications. She came over, thank God, with the whole team because she's very, very good at what she does. And she's going to brief you a little bit in a minute on more specifically how that's come together. So this last year we also did some significant things. We actually, when I came in, really needed to evaluate the department. A lot of good work had been done, but as you may remember, we had two organizations, the Office of Homeland Security and the Office of Emergency Service that were merged together. And to create the emergency management agency. And a lot of work really had been done to make that happen, but there were still gaps that needed to take place. And part of my role after talking with the governor was to sort of be the last mile, I guess you could say, with regards to getting that in place. So what I did is to fully integrate both entities and make us as robust as possible. I did several things. First, I implemented a reorganization within the department that merged the two entities completely together. To have a much more integrated and effective response and recovery capability. And also built it around the incident command system so that now instead of us rolling in from a day to day operation into an incident command structure to manage an emergency. We as a department, a little bit different in the way normal state government departments are set up. We as a department are now fully set up under the incident command system so that we are in it every day. We are operating that way and when we transition into an emergency it is seamless and people understand their roles and responsibilities better. With that, we tied in an extensive update of our strategic plan and objectives. Built in a performance measurement system, which will be measuring performance at every level based upon our strategic goals and objectives tied to federal guidelines, federal granting, particularly in the context of the reduction in federal funds. We know through Homeland Security reductions in grant funds that as time goes on, we need to be thinking smarter and more effectively and efficiently to be able to account for the loss in these federal dollars. And so far the transition into this new organization has gone smoothly. All the months of planning and the work with the CTA and with Karen Shoppe have allowed for the integration of PSC to go very smoothly and so far so good. I would say that things are operating fairly well. That doesn't mean that all the eyes are dotted and a teaser crossed. We still have continual work to do and we need to be prepared for that emergency that is inevitable, that disaster that is inevitable. So we have worked very extensively to build in and complete catastrophic disaster plans for the Los Angeles Basin, the San Francisco Bay Area. And now just recently the Cascadia Subduction Zone, which is basically Mendocino County North. And we just started, we just launched a catastrophic disaster playing initiative for the Central Valley for a catastrophic flood. So we are really laying a very, very firm foundation in place that is all hazard and all risk and being able to really address. What is that super storm sandy scenario going to look like to California? As you know, the last biggest disaster we've had that really stretched us with a lot of infrastructure damage was the Northridge earthquake. And we really haven't had something to that size and that by comparison to other big earthquakes wasn't that big. So we need to really think about the big one that's going to happen and that really is the greatest risk to California, not just to the people, to the economy, infrastructure, etc. So a little bit about our funding. We provide funding to our communities to address their unique challenges through the use of federal Homeland Security funds through grant funding sources, which includes both emergency management performance grants and Homeland Security grants. However, these resources are not as robust as they once were. For example, in 2010, California received $268 million in Homeland Security grant funding. But in fiscal year 2013, California received only $168 million in Homeland Security grant funding, roughly $100 million less in just two fiscal years. So while the 2013 numbers are slightly higher than what we received in 12, it's still well below what we received just a few years ago. And this results in us having to really have an efficient operation, re-prioritize, make sure that every dollar that's coming in is effectively used. And that also means that we need to have a greater connection with our local partners that are using those dollars, so that they can make whatever programs they have more resilient. Not just one-offs, not just a widget buy, but how do we make those programs long-term and more resilient? And of course, despite the significant funding reductions, what I would say in the Homeland Security side, for fiscal year 2013, the emergency management performance grants, which come directly from FEMA, are relatively stable. We received about $26 million in that California share. We passed roughly 55%, so it's like $56 million. And then we pass about 55% to local government, and then the other remaining amount stays with us. And these funds support programs such as the performance programs, assistance to tribal and other state agencies and local governments for emergency preparedness and protection of life and property for all hazards, including tsunami and earthquake hazard reduction programs. So, and of course, with Proposition 30 passing and the governor being able to stabilize the budget as he has, we have been able to have an opportunity where we haven't had an enhancement of our funds. But we've been able to stabilize our budget after all the budget cuts to be able to now have a better sense of long-term strategic planning and what I can count on and how we can then move forward. With the addition of PSC, it's been an interesting dynamic. They have a little different budget model, so we're working to integrate their budget model into Cal OES to make a more streamlined system. That said, we're learning that down the road there are things like infrastructure enhancements that need to take place. We have a very aging telecommunications microwave system. Some of them are over 50 years old in our towers and in our communication systems. If you go to what we call the Network Operations Center or the NOC, which is really the heart of the entire state system, they're still working on telephone wiring that we would have seen back in the 1950s. This is not a good thing and we need to really think about our resiliency because if that goes down, the state goes down. And that's not a position that we want to be in. So we're learning about that and we're kind of gathering it up and looking at what our next generation's going to be. And I know that in the next generation 911, Karen's going to talk about that as well. But there's a lot of great exciting things and really now with PSC and OES coming together, it really builds that complete picture of full public safety from emergency management and fire and law enforcement, homeland security and communications all linking together. What else does that give a better picture for you on really what the needs are and how we need to be able to approach it? In the area of security, I want to mention that really kind of one of the biggest threats we're facing today, that were challenges, I should say, that we're facing today. And this is not just in California, but it's a national, international challenge. It's that of a challenge of cyber crime and cyber security. It is one of my top priorities as we move forward in addressing this in the coming years in Homeland Security. And what I've done recently is I partner with Director Ramos over at the California Department of Technology. And we've established a California Cyber Security Task Force. And this task force is really an unprecedented alliance made up of state and local, private sector, industry, universities, other senior officials and experts in the field of cyber security. To be able to come together to identify California's gaps, what our needs are, and how do we need to move the state forward to make the protections, identify the low hanging fruit, then the more complicated things. But because Silicon Valley sits within California, they are the engine that can help us get what we need to get done. So I'm leveraging every aspect of that to be able to get them engaged in our cyber security task force. Eventually, what I see is guidelines coming out, maybe through executive order, that will allow both private and public institutions, universities, et cetera, local governments to have a set of guidelines on operating their computer systems that will then harden them against any future attacks. We are, for lack of a better term, a sieve of information going out. Not just the state of California, but in general. And we are getting pinged and hacked, cyber-crimed each and every day. So this is a great concern and we want to be on top of it and we're moving forward. So the goal of the task force is to position California in a way that we are more resilient and protective for all of our state. I mentioned the performance measurements. One of the areas where we've also enhanced is we've taken, as you may have remember when I came on, there was a budget change that would basically eliminate the California Specialized Training Institute. I had pulled that back because I saw that really you cannot respond and understand the emergency programs without having a robust training program. And in the absence of having big disasters overall, you have to have good training and exercises to be able to get the job done. So I wanted to resurrect CSTI, but I wanted to build it in a new way. So we're building an enterprise. It's not a specific location, but it's a statewide enterprise. We're seeking federal support through the National Training Consortium for Center of Excellence. We have partnerships that we're reaching out to with Cal State, with UC, with the private sector, with various other state agencies. So that we've got this sort of joint powers authority, joint powers agreement coming forward to move training forward in a very robust way. All of that will be tied to performance measures, not just at the state level, but in our local partners as well. So that we know that all the local emergency managers, and everybody's dealing with emergency management at the local level, all the way up to the top, to the federal level, all are meeting a performance measure. And then I can tie the performance grants to those performance measures. So that's kind of ongoing as we move forward. And then lastly, let me just say that our mutual aid system in California still is bar none, the best, most robust mutual aid system in the world. That said, we have actually had an impact due to the budgets on local governments who support the backbone of that mutual aid system. We roughly have about 25% less capability in our ability to get resources to respond immediately to these big fires and other kinds of disasters. Now, you may think that, okay, 25%, it's resilient, we can handle that. We can relatively handle that, but understand that with every percentage drop of capability and participation in that system, it makes it for a slower response, which then allows fires to get bigger. It allows problems to get more complex. So we really want to keep that system robust and supporting those responders, those first responders, the people that participate in the mutual aid system to ensure that we have that capability. As we sit here today, we have deployed mutual aid assets, both from local government, state agencies, the California Guard in support of Cal Fire and US Forest Service Operations for fires throughout California. And then the emergency management assistance compacts, Chairwoman mentioned. This is a national emergency management compact agreement system. All the states and the United States are signatory to it. Basically, the concept is state helping state. And it's designed so that the state that's requesting goes through a process and makes a request for a kind of resource and then reimburses the state that's providing. And it's been very successful. We have been a receiving state in the past. But more than often, we are a deployment state. And in fact, as we sit here, we have resources in Alaska supporting the state of Alaska with their flooding that they have going on up there. So with that, I mean, just say I'd be happy to answer any questions. I really appreciate the opportunity to sit in front of you. I know you may have many more questions for me and I'm open to answering any. And look forward to working with all of you in the coming year. I have some great ideas of how the legislature can support our efforts, particularly on some new programs that are coming up right around the corner. And I look forward to talking to you about those soon. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, very helpful.


So, let's get to the main event. Tonight we have Dr. Tyrone Wells in. He has a PhD from Georgia Tech and is a biochemist and he's going to talk to us a little bit tonight about street epistemology and how to talk to people. Let's give him a big hand. He promised he was going to tell the story about how I saved his life. It was very risky. I had to use all my Iron Man powers. By the way, I'm also Iron Man. Yeah. Anyway, I just want to let you guys know thank you so much for turning out. I really appreciate it. This is way more of a crowd of people that I would ever expect to ever be able to talk to about this hobby. I fell in. Deals with just talking to people, having good time with them, actually having good conversation with them and trying to figure out how they arrived at their deeply held beliefs. I guess what we can probably start with is some basic introductions. How about that? Hi. My name is Dr. Tyrone Wells Jr.  I'm working on a way to talk to anyone about anything. What that means basically is that I will take a table and set up at parks, campuses, churches. I've done pet shelters. I've done rallies, political festivals, you name it. I'll go there and I'll have conversations with people about what they deeply believe is true. My goal is to try to have conversations about these really sensitive topics with people in a way that doesn't turn the conversation into a debate or an argument, fist fight, whatever have you. I'm looking into trying to find a really good way to have people critically assess how they arrived at their conclusions without turning anything into a philosophical fight. You can still have those philosophical, critical thinking opportunities, but you don't have to do it in an aggressive format. There's ways that you can do it in a really positive and productive way. I want to tell you guys about that today. It's easy and it's actually really fun. It's a fun hobby to get into. Before we begin, just big thanks. I'll take an atheist, Jim, Greg, where's all my grows? Chris, on the mics. Appreciate you, Matt. Everybody else who helped me get over here really appreciate it. Jim gave me the Google Maps address to come up here. When I looked on Google Maps, I was like, show me nearby places. They said there was an event nearby here. It was like for separation in church and state. It was on the same day. I'm like, oh my gosh, I want to totally check that out, but it's not the same time I'm talking. Dang it. a guy talking about street epistemology too. That's fantastic. Oh, his name is Terran. Oh, it's me. That's fine. So when I say I'm in the right place, I really mean it and I really appreciate it. Anyway, also try to stay free thinkers. You guys are great. And I met you guys, a lot of familiar faces that I was seeing from the last time I was doing talks at the ARC Museum protest. Yeah. In fact, I got to talk to some of you guys here and I'm just really happy to see you guys again. I just want to make one quick point. This talk that I'm having isn't like a lecture for me to you. If you see anything that I can prove them on, if you see anything that I can elaborate better, make more clear, please let me know. I'm a really big believer in critical feedback growth and I want to try to get better at this. This is only about the second time that I've done a street epistemology talk. And anything you guys think that I can improve on, let me know. I'm open doors on that. You can get in touch with me. I have a card for like a business card, a hobby business card, whatever you guys want to call it. And on the back is my details and you can feel free to get in touch. It also has a link to the YouTube channel. You can check out all the rest of the talks that I do and approach one out every week. Yeah. All right. So let's get to the real meat and potatoes of the conversation. So the way how I turned into an atheist is kind of cool. I was originally very much a Christian believer, very much deep in the cloth all the way into my graduate experience, graduate school, where I was going to Georgia Tech as graduating or getting my degree in biochemistry. I realized that I had a lot of religious answers, but not a lot of religious explanations. Do you guys know what I'm talking about? You know what I'm talking about? Okay, cool. It's nice crowd here. But this was the issue for me because I was, I liked, I was beginning to like the explanation that I was getting from a secular, not necessarily secular, but a scientific point of view. And I was having a hard time fitting them into my religious perspective. I was trying really hard to figure out how could how I could stick that how into like my biblical frame. And I couldn't do it. And so I was just like, Okay, well, then I'll just put the religious point aside and have two basic minds that think about things. I can say sciences here and religions, you know, somewhere else. Hey, what's up? I appreciate it. I appreciate it. Yeah. What really did it for me is when I started meeting other people from different faiths as part of my graduate school experience and starting to get exposed to different kinds of new perspectives, new people, new religious ideas. And I'm realizing a lot of people are confident about something, but they don't agree with each other. And only one of us can be right. And that's what I'm starting to realize not only that, but the answers that I would had were no longer satisfactory to the standard of evidence that I now was beginning to develop and that scientific explanations that I was getting raise or improve my standard of evidence. And so what I was looking for was this brilliant moment where I told all my friends, Hey, guys, check it out. I'm an atheist. Look, science is best. Isn't this great? No, no. Didn't work out very well. Didn't work out very well. So what I actually realized I didn't have a good reason to believe in a God anymore. It was a troubling moment because it was a really big realization of my part realization that I didn't have a good reason to continue to believe not so much that God didn't exist, but that I couldn't get to that belief via reliable thinking process. And when I tried to tell my friends that it really kind of even in a scientific setting, this is like, again, a scientific lab, a lot of those people had religious beliefs or were spiritual, had some sort of supernatural holding that kind of challenged them when I brought this up to them. And I couldn't no longer have a peaceful conversation with them. In fact, conversation starts to turn bates, arguments, and, you know, whoever came out of the winter of that we both kind of lost because there was always that heated environment. And I realized that it wasn't worth the trouble anymore. It wasn't worth the stress to talk to people about what they believe to be true. And it started to make me feel more isolated because I felt like I couldn't get to anybody. My mom was still Christian at the time. My sister was also Christian. So I had my family that I couldn't talk to co workers I couldn't speak with. I was afraid to bring it up to my friends. And I started to feel like those this invisible wall that separated me from all the other people that I cared about my friends, my family and co workers, people I respected. And I didn't know what to do. I had an issue that I needed to connect with people, but I couldn't have a way that I didn't know a way to do that. And so what I'm here today to do and I know this is a long time for the cell. But what I want to do is show you a really cool technique that I found to talk to people that helped me get out of a hard situation when I was an atheist, particularly after I just transitioned. But I think it'd be really helpful for you to help you get make those connections with other people as well. Anyway, so methods called street epistemology. What we're going to do is talk about it in this really cool outline. Well, I want to do the animation one more time. Check this out. Isn't that cute? Okay, so what we're going to talk about is what is street epistemology or SE? Why use SE? Why empower yourself with this conversational technique that allows you to be able to talk to people again, without making debates or arguments, but let them critically assess how they actually reach their conclusions. And then finally, we're going to talk about how SE works. And it's really, really simple. You don't need microphones. You don't need a camera. You don't even need duct tape on pedestals. You can do this and it's easy and it's fun. So what is SE? When I first saw this word or I first saw this term, I was like, okay, well, the thing that's sticking out to me the most is this bottom word right here, epistemology. I mean, what's going on there? I don't know, special club, moon speak, what's going on? It turns out it's just a fancy word for basically the study of how we've come to learn things or how do we figure out stuff that we believe is true. And the street part is just a reference to informally asking someone how they figure that out. You don't need to wear a tie. There's no suit. When I'm doing my stuff, I will go out to a park, run some laps, and then set up afterwards. And I'm sweaty. The people I'm talking to are sweaty. We're just having a fun conversation. And what we're trying to do is basically combine, find a informal way to talk to people about what they believe is true or how they reach the conclusions. Questions in street epistemology look kind of like this. How did you figure that out? What's a good way to reach that conclusion? Is that method reliable? How can we test that? These are all fantastic questions to ask. And what they begin to do is start to make the person that you're talking to feel invited into a conversation where they can start to critically assess how they arrived at their conclusions. And it's not so much you try, you can't change a person's mind, but you can empower them to do so when you give them the opportunity to. And it turns out a lot of the people who have these really deeply held beliefs never have the opportunity to question how they arrived at their beliefs. And if you do that, you can do some really amazing things in very, very short periods of time. Let's see. Why use SE? Why have this chance where you can allow people to think about how they arrived at their conclusions and do they use a reliable way to get there? Well, for one, it's an unbiased approach. SE doesn't have an ideology behind it. It's not a tool for atheists. It's not a tool for any kind of religion out there. It doesn't have excites. It's a fair approach to try to get two people to really come to terms with how they understand what things are true and what things aren't true. And it's always good to ask questions, and it's an unbiased approach, as I said. Always good to ask questions. And it can work for any belief. I've had the longest talk I've had was a five-hour conversation at a park that ranked the worst and best Marvel movies that have come out over the last seven years. And it only lasted long because I'm very passionate about it. But we came up with a definitive list. I'm actually really proud about it. The other guy, complete stranger, went from 5.35 p.m. to like 10.35 p.m. When we left, he was like, I feel like I'll never see you again. We came really good friends in that short moment. But from that to, you know, hey, I believe in a God. I believe... The question-and-answer period is after the top. But keep it in mind. It really goes to how reliable the rest is. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely. This is going to be a great after-party. I can tell you that.  You can get through all of them with this really cool unbiased approach. Let's look at this other point. SE works really great. One-on-one, one on a large group of people, you could have even SE done on yourself by yourself. I use SE to self-examine beliefs that I have that I may not necessarily be as confident in, or that I might be absolutely confident about. And I found that it's a very good way just to assess if I'm using a good way to get to that conclusion. Is that reliable or not? And then, of course, my favorite part, it avoids drama. I am not a fan of drama. I am anti-drama as it gets. And I found that SE is a very good way to have productive and positive conversations with people, particularly about religion. I know that there's a lot of examples where we don't necessarily have the best street cred of having those. I'd love to show some examples of what conversations look like. Typically, on YouTube, when I searched Atheist conversation, it kind of looked a little bit something like this. I'd be a lot freer if people like you were put in prison as retaliation for the collective crime of racism, anti-Semitism, misogyny, and homophobia. God blesses me. You judge men all. How do you deal with sharing your life? People like you perpetrate this every day by telling people what their rights are and what they aren't.  You judge men all. Christians are responsible for slavery. Do you know why you're getting upset about it? I'm getting upset because you are stepping on the right. This is a freedom to me. You judge men all. You are lost in a fantasy. Preach what? I'm... Sir, you can't spit on me, sir. Well, I know this. I can look at that sun. I can look at the sky. I can see the trees. And I know there is life. So if there is life, there has to be a creator of life. No, there doesn't. All you have to do is provide evidence. Can you provide evidence? I'm about to. Okay, provide evidence. Evidence. Providence. Providence. Providence. Providence. Who calls God? Listen. That's the key point. Right. I can accept you every time. But of course you know what I'm saying. Your arrogance is a Christian. You know how old are you? You don't have to believe it if you don't know it. If you don't know it, then think about it.  Again, how do you deal with the new breaking the law of God? How do you deal with that? How do you deal with this delusion of yours? There's some invisible man in the sky sitting on a cloud. Well, it's not just that. So you don't believe that Jesus walked the earth? No! Impressions are responsible for slavery! Absolutely. To mock. Okay. Yes, that's exactly what I mean. Mock your religion into extinction. That's exactly what it should be. It's already happening. It's already happening. It's not a fairy tale. It's a fairy tale. I'm a born again Christian. Oh, born again. Baptizing Jesus' name. How old are you? Phil with the Holy Ghost. Jesus too. It's God who works in me. Jesus too. It's a bull sport. It's not true. It is wrong. Then your parents teach you men. Is he right next to you or are you holding his hand? Yes, I am. Oh, you need some medication, my friend. Thank you. Hitler. Who designed God? You're caught in a trap now. It's a logical trap where you would listen.  I use reason and logic. The Bible is no more proof than God exists. Then a comic book is no more proof than Superman exists.  You need Jesus.  Thank you very much. You're welcome. You judge mental. It's not going to be a two-way conversation. There's no point. Why? Why? He is a brother. What is interesting here, actually, is that we've got people from different faiths and who all believe in some kind of heaven in a different sense. But every single one of them believes in this heaven on the basis of faith. And faith, by definition, is believing in things without evidence.  Whoa! Ow! So whenever I show that video, I'm always, like, in the back of the room, just crossing my fingers, hoping that you guys laugh at it. Because that means we kind of probably see some of ourselves in there. I know I do, especially, like, three or four-ish years ago. I see... I've done that before. I've looked at people and said, I caught you in a logical trap. Don't you feel bad? It doesn't have any effect. Why? Like, right? What I want to do is show you guys what Essie looks like, what some examples are. And there's people doing this all around the world. This is my friend, Reed Nice Wonder, and myself, cut together some clips of us doing a variety of different talks with various people. I want to highlight the change in the tone and the degree of productiveness that you might notice. All right, that's right. Yeah, so, yeah, I just have this hobby where I chat with people about anything. Is there a particular belief you want to chat about? Is there what? A particular belief that you want to chat about. Something you really think is true? Christianity. All right, anyway, yeah. Ty's my name. I've got a five-minute timer. Okay. I believe if any two people can talk about anything, is there anything that strongly motivates you? Anything that you think is true? God. God? Yeah. That's a heavy topic. You want to talk about that for five minutes? Sure. Yeah? Yeah, I can talk about...  My background is Christianity. I was raised Southern Baptist. I believe in God. So that would be the thing I'm the most certain about. Okay. First, got to get a sense of your confidence that God exists. Okay. Say on a scale from one to ten? Ten. Ten for sure. Ten. I mean, I am 100% certain that the higher power exists. Okay. Um, 95. 95. All right. Very confident. From like zero to 100%. 100%. 100%, you don't need any more evidence. You're absolutely close on the position. I think that's absolutely true. Yep. Okay. 100%. What got you to that 100%? Really, well... So I go to a Christian school and I've learned I've taken a bunch of classes on theories and all these different things and it just makes sense to me. It kind of like hits home. I... And for me, it's just a meditation thing. Okay. It's just a full on total goodness of the earth, all the plants. I believe that there is something that has been working on my behalf in this universe. Whatever is here had to come from somewhere. Okay. It's hard to imagine coming from somewhere without some sort of first cause. Okay. Yeah. I know it's hard to think that, yeah. Okay. How does something making sense to relate to the actual truth of it? Like, could someone actually be mistaken about a belief that makes sense to them? Yeah, I think they could. Okay. That is a very good point. I would say... So you... Oh, that's an interesting perspective. So you believe that, wow, I've never ever heard that before. That's an interesting... You know, we've come around to an interesting point that... Oh. I've never verbalized to myself before, but I do see that, you know, I'm starting to see just from this discussion. And the benefits I get from it? Right. Right. Right. That's good. Yeah. That's a good perspective. I would like to believe it if it's true. Right. But because nobody can question it, nobody can prove it. You can't prove faith. You can't prove any of these things. It's like, why am I believing this? Hmm. You may be onto something, man. Yeah, so... That's powerful stuff, man. Thanks, yeah. It's just stuff to think about, maybe. Yeah. Absolutely. Thank you for that. That's really enlightening. I never thought about it like that. That's true. Right. That's a good way to look at it. I like to think about it that way. And anything that puts you in a more reasonable position. Well, thanks. Yeah? All right. Have a good evening. It was good chatting with you. Good chatting with you as well. All right. Have a good one. Excuse me. If you're in an environment that doesn't train you to, you can't be expected to. And coming from a person who was religious, even went up to, like, my second year of grad school, there are things that I realize that I've never been expected to do. And critical thinking isn't just something that you're given or you wake up with and you have it. You have to exercise it in order for you to use it well. And if you never get the opportunity to use it, particularly in an unbiased environment, you never get a chance to be able to ask yourself those questions in an environment where you feel safe. And what has he kind of specialized himself in? Again, I'm not trying to sell that they're wrong. I'm just trying to give them the opportunity to ask those questions to themselves. Do you guys see any difference between those two kinds of videos? What stands out the most? I'm always interested. Don't be shy. Come on. Absolutely. Exactly. And when people feel that you're not listening. Listening is like the biggest thing. Yes, it is. But it's so important if you want the person to at least be able to consider why they think. Because sometimes people will say stuff, but they never process it. And they need to have someone stand in front of them and they'll be like... And then they're like, oh, maybe I shouldn't say, what are these words that are coming out of my mouth? It's a really, really cool thing to just be able to listen to someone, maybe even rephrase back the things that they've said. And give them a chance for them to process what they've been saying with their mouth, with their ears. And see, is that really what it sounds like? Is that really what my beliefs are? Let's actually get into how SE can work for you guys. So how does SE work? The way I see it, and there's a lot of different kind of models for this. This is my personal model. This is the way I've made sense of it. But there's the person, the method, and the conclusion. The person is the people that we're talking to. The conclusions are maybe the God belief that they have. But the method is the thing that connects those two. It's the through line. And the way how I see this isn't so much in a straight line, but actually a curve like this. And I know it's like this because people tend to closely identify with their conclusions, almost to the point where they will identify with their conclusion. You'll hear that when you see these people say, well, I'm a Christian. I'm a Baptist. I'm an atheist. It goes both ways. But because they invest so much in themselves and their conclusions, they basically become one and the same. And when you ask or question the conclusions, you'll get responses as if you had targeted the person specifically. It's very, very similar. You get that kind of backfire effect. What's available to question or target is the methodology that they use to reach their conclusion. The methodology has very little ego invested in it. And as mentioned, not many people invest a lot of time examining how they got to their conclusions. And when you ask questions about the method, how the person reached their conclusion, one of two things will happen. One, they'll either get a better method to get to their conclusion. And as atheists, I think we should be totally open to that concept, that people are getting better methods to reach their God of belief. Even if we don't necessarily agree, they are getting better at finding better, more verifiable, testable ways to reach their conclusion. I think we should be open to that. As an alternative, they drop the method completely. And now there's nothing connecting the person to the conclusion anymore. And then what you end up with is a person that no longer has an ability to reach that conclusion anymore. They are now a person that's still very much happy. They can be believing in most things that they had before. But now they have a higher standard of evidence. And they're working to try to figure out what can meet that and won't accept anything less. Let's look at some examples of questions that target the person, the method, and the conclusion. This is Tim. He was one of the first people I spoke to when I was doing my SE talks. He believed in a God very much so. The reason why he believed in a God was because of his personal experiences. He says, I know my God is real because I had this very personal dream that was really true to me. And I felt like God was talking to me one-on-one and I know it was so real. And if you never experienced that, you will never know what that's like. I'm like, okay, that's cool. There are a lot of different ways you can tackle that.  What does questions look like if you target the person? Remember, we don't want to target the person. So these are examples of common pratfalls. But if I were to target the person with my question, I'd be like, well, you know, your personal experiences doesn't make your God real. That's a common response that I used to give. The reason why it doesn't work is it doesn't really extend the conversation much. Another example is, hey, people say that all the time. What makes you any different? Some experiences for Hindus, like, what's the difference there? It's a judgment that the person who you're talking to is going to see or feel or react to as if you're challenging them. And they're going to close up. They're not going to have that opportunity to critically assess how they came to their conclusion if they feel like they've been challenged. Another example is, you're not making any sense from a top of a mountain just echoed. It doesn't do a lot of work either. Okay, so what if you were to target the conclusion? For example, by targeting the conclusion, you could say, hey, that's not good evidence. Your personal experiences, that isn't really reputable good ways to figure out that. It's true, and I agree with that point, but it's not a good way to get that person to critically assess how they came to the conclusion. Remember, Etsy's not about changing someone's mind. It's about giving them the opportunity to do that themselves. And the way you do that is by opening up the conversation, peeling back layers of how they believe and trying to figure out, can I give you an opportunity to think about how you came to this conclusion? And can we assess together if this method's reliable or not? You can't do that if you target their conclusion because they'll treat that as a personal attack. Another example is, well, I don't believe that, but I respect it, but we can both go along ways. It's fine. Again, it can be seen as another judgment. What you're trying to do is, again, be open and make comments that are like an open door, things that continue a conversation and extend the amount of time that they'll have to discuss how they got to the conclusion. And, of course, you can say, hey, that doesn't make any sense. Again, it doesn't really get anywhere. So what does it look like when we target the method? If we were to target the method, if someone said, hey, I know my God is real because of personal experiences, you can say, hey, could that method ever lead someone to a false conclusion? That's a fantastic question because now we're not targeting the person themselves. We're not targeting their conclusion. We're asking them, what is that method that you use in a richer conclusion? Can it ever lead you to a wrong one? And if it can lead you to wrong ones, are we really justified in being so confident in this method that can potentially lead you to a wrong conclusion? Do other people use personal experiences and always get to right conclusions? What do we really know about this method and can we verify how reliable it is together? That's an open thing that both of you guys can work on. Another example is, hey, is there a better way to reach that conclusion, the personal experience? Get them thinking about alternative methods to get to the same conclusion. If they're out there, maybe they'll drop the bad ones. Here's another one. Different personal experiences affect your belief. I love this one because if they say that no matter what the different personal experiences or the different things that they claim that they rest their belief on, if we change that and they would still believe it at the same exact level, that's not the foundation of their belief. They're just saying it, but it's not really what they're resting their belief on and what you're trying to do is peel back the layers and figure out what is that foundational belief. So if they say, hey, if I had a completely different set of personal beliefs, I'd still believe in the Scott. It's like, okay, it's clearly, whether we keep them the same or change them, it's not the personal beliefs that's keeping you to this God conclusion. What's really getting you to that method? What's really justifying that level of confidence that you have? So if you're open about this, we'll change the dynamic of what they're talking about. It's like, okay, well, maybe it's not personal experience, I know my God is real because of science, right? There's a lot of science backs up my God. And when I hear things like this, there's alternative things that you could do. One thing that I like to do is just rephrase back the exact same thing I heard from them. I'll ask them, like, hey, what do you mean by that?  And a lot of times, they'll come back to you and be like, no, no, no, no, no. That's not what I said. I meant there's a lot of scientists that believe in my God. And that is a completely different claim. And that's a different route that you would go through. But I like to ask clarification questions when I get to this point. Clarifications, questions, what do they look like? Hey, what do you mean by that? Oh, science? Could you elaborate? How did you figure that out? Or could you tell me a little bit more about that? Get them talking about it. What does science actually mean when they say these, you know, hot word topics? Do they really know what they're referencing? Do they want to have an opportunity to actually explain it to another person? And is science a reliable way to test supernatural? A lot of times I'll ask them if they give me a God belief, we'll try to define what God they're talking about as best as we can. Like what kind of sect of Christianity are you or what kind of sect of religion are you? What kind of aspects of this God are we talking about? This God's very supernatural. He writes every law of physics known to existence. I'm like, great, great, great. Is science a really good way to test if a supernatural thing exists? Like what kind of test do we have in science that can test supernatural things? And if they give you an answer, you know, that might be right. Hey, you've got to be open to that because, you know, you guys can write a paper. You can get a Nobel Prize for that, right? But in the event that they can't, they'll realize that on their own accord. And what you can ask that overall is, hey, if science is limited, what's the real foundation of this belief? Are you really using science to get to this foundation? Or is there something else that's getting you there? Oftentimes they'll rephrase again. And this is when you start to get the foundational levels. When you get to the foundation, you'll start hearing phrases like, I couldn't come to this belief without X or my confidence would drop if I didn't have this thing. Without faith, I couldn't believe in God. A common foundation. When you reach this level of questioning, when you just reach the point where they say, okay, this is in fact the thing that would change my mind if it turned out not to be true and not reliable, try to understand what they're talking about. Don't rush. Ask them, what do you mean by faith? You know, I have an idea of what faith is, but they might have a different one. If we're using different definitions for the same vocabulary, we're going to be talking past each other. So try to figure out what they mean by it. When they just try to define the foundation themselves, they'll realize that they may not have put as much thought into it. And they might give you a definition where it's just like, hmm, is that really what you think it is? It's like, let me think about that again. But is faith a reliable way to reach a true conclusion if they give you a definition for it? Well, it's just trusting no matter what. Is trusting no matter what a reliable way to come to a true conclusion? Is that a good way to reach a true conclusion? It's a simple question and it can have a really powerful effect on the people that you're talking to. Then they start to assess, hey, well, maybe it does. Maybe it could get to a true conclusion. Do different people use faith and come to different God's beliefs? Can I use faith to believe that there's no God? If I believe that there's no God using faith and someone believes in God using faith, can we both be right? If we're both using faith to get to that conclusion and we can't both be right, is faith a really good method to come to a true conclusion? There's like very, very, very simple questions that you can ask to help them assess whether or not that foundational belief that they have is reliable. Or that methodology that they have is worth having. Are there more reliable ways than faith? Can we still reach that conclusion? Like I'm not saying it's wrong, but can we just find a reliable way to get there? Because that's really what we're trying to look for. Good ways or good reasons to believe in things. And do you have one? If you have one, you can explore it if you have it. And if you don't, maybe there's a better answer out there that's more intellectually honest. Maybe I don't know might be the best answer out of everything. When you ask these kinds of questions, typically they end on really positive notes around the lines of like, hey, you'll get comments like, oh man, I'm really thinking. That was really, really great. I'm thinking, I'm thinking. Or hey, you know, that's a really interesting point. I'm gonna have to really think about that. Or you might get one of the best answers, in my opinion. I don't know. In my opinion, I don't know is not only just a thing that you could say or an out, it's the best answer you can offer when you don't have conclusive information to determine if something's true or not. And if you can get to the point where someone can realize that they don't know on a deeply held belief that they have that might be supernatural based, or based in like a god belief that's unattainable by, you know, think about it. And if you do figure out something really awesome, I'm willing to continue this conversation with you. And a lot of people end on that note very happy with the recognition that they may not have the best methodology before, but are more accepting of the concept that they may not know and it's okay. Because a lot of times, they're raised in an environment where they're saying, I don't know isn't a good thing. Anyway, so let's see. I want to show an example of a conversation that I had more or less in full. This is Jacob. I met him when I was running around in Lexington. There's a place called Arboretum that's a running track. And after I did my run, sat down, set up the table, and Jacob was like, hey, what's going on? I was like, hey, I do five-minute chats. You want to hang out? And he said, yeah. And it was a really cool conversation. I'll show you guys full. That should be flashing. So hi, Ty. Nice to meet you. So I got a hobby where I set up a table to talk about whatever they want to talk about. I think it's really cool to show that, you know, any two people can talk about anything regardless of the color, whatever. Big size, how rich they look, doesn't matter. Normally the conversations that we have are really cool when they're centered around what someone really strongly believes or a philosophy they have or something they wrap their lives around. If you want to talk about that, we can talk about Marvel movies or your favorite junk food. But is there anything that you really strongly believe is true or something you're confident about? I'm going to ask your name again. Jacob. I'm Ty. That's a big question. Well, I'd say I'm a Christian. So that's probably my biggest belief. There are a lot of beliefs in this movie. Did you just say the Christian God exists, maybe? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I believe in one God and that is my son. This is a really heavy topic. Yeah, it is. Okay, yeah, yeah.  I'd say 100%. I wanted to find 100% and just let me know because it's a number. You can change the number, I don't care. But 100% to me is like... No doubt. There's no way I can be wrong. I'm not asking questions anymore. I'm certain close-minded on the position. I'm closed on the position. 100%. Let's go 98%. I mean, everybody has those periods of doubt, right? I think so, and I think it's actually healthier to not be absolute about what you believe. What got you to the 98% confidence on this God? And Jesus. I'm just going to combine them both. Or on the existence of the Christian God. So I'm actually a medical student and I found a big interest in biology when I was in high school. There's like one big hypothesis out there called the RNA hypothesis. RNA world theory? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that because RNA can act as like a catalyst and also as a way to store information, biological information that might have been what was initially used as protein and DNA. Right. But like when they... Do you know the Stanley Miller experiment? Yes. So they show that if you put like RNA in one tube and make it rapidly produce itself, it can make like a little tiny monsters of itself. Well, simplified versions of RNA. The one I'm thinking of is that they put a whole bunch of... Nucleotide? Well, you know, you're fine. It's been a while since I've read it. So like they try to recreate the oceans of the earth in this small environment and then they would like zap it with electricity to kind of simulate the... simulate the environment and atmosphere of the earth four million years ago. And they show that they can actually make some molecules that are central to life, some amino acids. Right. And like urea, bromide, stuff like that. However, the amino acids that they make are only like lysine and very simple, nodular amino acids. They're very complex amino acids that are needed to sustain life. And they also never show that they could create DNA or RNA. Can I ask you, how does this get you to the god-belief? Like how do the experiments lead to 98% confidence in God? I just... I don't see a way of life spontaneously generating. And I don't see a way if you... like if you were to talk to my astrophysics pal. Sure. And if you talk to him, I cannot see a way of the world or the universe spontaneously generating. I'm wondering, so you have this... you have this theory that's presented in the scientific model and it sounds incredible. And you say, that sounds... I can't see how that's feasible yet. Therefore, this is my other thing. How did that... How is that your foundation? How did that become... I wouldn't say that's my foundation. That's just like part of... Or how does this being hard to believe make this 98% confident? How did that become the alternative? At a 98% confidence level? Was that the reason why you're 98%? I think that's just part of it. I think if you look into other parts of my faith, it's kind of hard to explain. It's kind of all feeling, right? From a skeptic's point of view. There are some things in your life that you just kind of... you have a gut instinct. Gut instinct? That you know it's true. Are gut instincts ever wrong? Oh, all the time. If they can be wrong all the time, does it justify supporting a 98% confidence? From a logical standpoint, no. What is getting you to that 98%? I'd say... So, a belief in certain things in the Bible. One of the big arguments in apologetics is why would 12 people who followed Jesus around heard what he said and then saw him die lie about him coming back to life only to know that they were going to be persecuted and put to death for saying that. Does that get you to the 98%? That's kind of like the main thing. It's like the biology aspect and then that as well. I'm just going to test. If it turned out this is kind of weird. Again, I'm just stimulating conversation. If it turned out that there was substantial evidence to a criteria of your satisfaction that they were in fact lying, would that reduce your confidence and maybe 70%? Probably. Can I ask you a question? Say I had a... I don't know. I have a cat. I do have a cat. His name is Vinny.  He's super cool. I used to look overseas for a while. It's very common over there. In Sweden, everyone's walking their cats around. In America, they keep them locked up in doors. That cat wants to be outside. That's why he's on the window. If you leash train them really young, they're super cool about it. But it's not so much the leash training. It's just, would you believe me if I told you how to cat and I showed you a picture of the cat and I'm holding the cat? If I told you I actually have a tiger and his name is Marshall and he's a full-blown Bengal tiger and I have a picture of him and it would be tougher.  Would you believe that? It seems like the more incredible the claim the better the standard of evidence improves. Would you say that God is more incredible than a purple dragon from Jupiter? I would, yeah. So the thing isn't so much that I think the apologist's angle is hey, what's the likelihood of these 12 people lying? It's like maybe it's not even that they're lying it's just that that's a really low bar of evidence. It's basically 12 people saying Tyrone has a cat, you believe that. Tyrone has a tiger, 12 people say that. Maybe you believe it, maybe not. 12 people told you, hey, Tyrone has a purple dragon from Jupiter. You need more evidence to support that with. What if it is a case of not so much that they might be lying but that just may not be enough evidence to reach that conclusion as a definitive claim for at least 98% certainty that a God exists since it's way more incredible than from a dragon? What do you think about that? Can you restate that question? Yeah, it's kind of a long question. Do you have enough evidence to justify 98% confidence in God? And if it's not a 12 Apostles story, what else is getting you to that point? I'd say I can't answer that just right now. I'm totally fine with that. Can I throw one last one?  If I had a coin, it's a quarter. It's not a trick coin. If I flip it and I catch it put it on the back of my hand I don't know if it's at your tails. Do you know if it's at your tails? No, that's the best answer. Until we have that for evidence. Jacob. Alright, wonderful talking to you. Nice talking to you. That was really cool. So... Yeah. Oh my gosh. So, more or less. Yeah. Oh my God. Same here. Same here. Talk to me five years ago. Yeah. Almost done with the presentation. Almost done, almost done. In fact, guys, we're in the summary. I remember when I was in church and the pastor would be like, in summary and I'd get off that pew I'd be like, yeah, let's go. I still got those vibes in me. Anyway, you guys are awesome. I just want to let you know, hey, there is a bunch of people around the world who are doing these kinds of talks. On my YouTube channel alone, I have done one video every week. There's 54 examples of guys who have those kinds of positive talks with me. Who come with me with a really hardcore religious belief or a belief that's in the supernatural realm and we have a very short conversation and by the end, they're happy. They're had a chance to think about how they arrived at their conclusion. They realize that may now have the best reasons and they're more likely to say, hey, I don't know. Or I'm going to think about that. Or you gave me an opportunity to really think about something I never really had a chance to. My entire life, I've been looking for a way to talk to people about things like this and this gone even when I was a Christian. I still had questions but I didn't really have explanations and so what I'm trying to do is show you guys a cool method that anybody can do. If you just ask questions that are focused on the methodology of how people arrive at their beliefs you don't need a camera, you don't need a microphone you can have these really engaging conversations that invite people to critically think about how they got to their conclusions. There's a quote on Facebook there's a lot of quote on Facebook. There was one that I found kind of meaningful way back when it was something like the three things that you can't talk about in public are like money, politics, and religion. Not so much that they're a taboo, but because we just don't have a method to talk about those things in a productive way. For a long time I used to believe in that but I don't anymore because I think we now have that kind of method. I think we figured out the secret and I think there's a really cool way to have these conversations with people that don't get the person challenged. Keeps them not feeling that they have to be on the defensive end and can actually get through to them in a really short time frame and allow them to critically assess how they arrived at the conclusion and if they used a reliable way to get there. My name is Tyrone Wells Jr. and I'm working on a way to talk to anyone about anything and I think you guys can too. I think we all can. Thank you.