Hello everyone. Hi everybody.  So Anvita, I picked this really interesting question out of all the ones that came today. I felt that this one was fascinating. It comes from a young girl. And it says, dear Seema, my question is, what does the Karma Sutra say about the concept of squirting? Is it real? Can women actually feel such orgasms? Is it good for female health and metabolism? And are there any bad side effects of squirting? Now, in all the questions that we've received up to now, this is a hard to say over the years, the first time that somebody's actually asked about squirting. And I'm absolutely delighted because I have a story to tell you. Now, very quickly, just before I start, for those of you who may not have come across the idea of the concept of squirting, squirting is a form of female ejaculation. Anvita, of course, will explain it much better in a little while, but it's a sort of form of female ejaculation. Now, the Karma Sutra itself does not say anything about squirting. The Karma Sutra does not talk about any kind of sexual fluids at all. It does not talk about ejaculation, about semen, not even about bodily fluids like sweat or urine or whatever. However, other ancient texts do. Squirting, I am told that it was one of the high points of female pleasure. It was supposed to be a very intense form of female pleasure if you could actually make somebody squirt. And where I heard about it first was from a young man called Habib Akande, who was actually written a book on this. He tells me that apparently this was part of the tradition of female pleasure in ancient Rwanda. So in the African countries, squirting, in ancient times at least, squirting was a very important part of female pleasure. And it was believed that a man, unless he could actually bring a woman to that kind of pleasure, you know, where she would squirt, he was not a good enough lover. Of course, over time with patriarchy, that story has changed a little bit. And now it's become that if the woman cannot squirt during lovemaking, she's not a good enough lover to have. But it didn't actually start with that. And what is even more interesting, it was such a big part of ancient African tradition that at some stage about 20 years ago, a politician in Brazil, when he heard the story for the first time, he was so taken up with it. And he said that he felt so guilty that he hadn't considered that his wife was capable of so much pleasure. And to make it up to her, he actually decided to institute a world female orgasm day. So an international female orgasm day as an acknowledgement to the amount of pleasure that women can feel. And incidentally, that is on the 8th of August, which is coming up very soon. But Anvita, talking about it from a purely psychological point of view, what would you like to tell us about squirting? Well, I definitely want that lover from Rwanda. I have to make sure that I squirt. Like, that is definitely, and from this video, I just want to say one thing to all the men and women listening to it. Please do not feel the pressure that you now need to have an orgasm with squirting. It's difficult enough for women to have an orgasm, and this is just going to be an added issue. But just to explain what squirting is, squirting is a type of orgasm. When women reach their climax or when they're having an orgasm, they discharge a fluid. There are two different types of fluid that could be discharged. One is called sporting, and the other one is called the female ejaculate. The squirting fluid that comes out comes out from the urethra, and it's very diluted. It's very watery, and it's like diluted urine, basically. But it's a decent amount that comes out from the urethra.  The female ejaculate, which comes out of the vagina, is a thickish, milk-looking whitish fluid. So just to distinguish between the two, but they're both types of orgasm that women have experienced. And women say that it gives them a different type of pleasure when they squirt. So just a quick question. You said that the squirting actually comes out of the urethra. It has some content of urine in it. So how would one react?  Or what is that like? Yeah, so you can't really make out. It's fluid. You would see fluid on your sheet. It doesn't have a smell. It doesn't have a taste. It doesn't have any like strong features like it's yellow or something like that. So it just feels more like water that comes out. But when in laboratories it's been tested, there is urea and there, you know, one can feel sea traces of urine in it. So please do not feel like, oh my God, it's diluted urine. Women do really enjoy squirting. They think it's a very pleasurable experience when that happens. If you're somebody who's okay with fluids and fluids on your sheets, you will enjoy that experience. So apparently what Habib said to me was that in Africa, in a lot of the hotels and so on, they actually have under the sheets, there are really thick like plastic mattress covers because they expected that anybody staying over there would be feeling that level of orgasm. So they protect their mattresses with this, which I'm kind of in two minds. I love the idea that there's just this enormous tradition of female pleasure, but it makes you kind of think, oh my God, do I really want to be sleeping on those mattresses that might have experienced all sorts of fluids coming out? I'm sure the hygiene levels have been taken care of. But I'm very actually fascinated by this idea about female pleasure being taken care of. I do, women very rarely speak about squirting. And so it is fascinating that this woman has asked about it. Not like we said at the beginning, women reaching orgasm can be a complex thing. There's a lot involved in it and a lot of women, until a month later age, haven't orgasm. A lot of women will talk about enjoying sex, but not reaching orgasm. So it's not really, I feel like it's not a box that needs to be checked or women need to take the pressure saying, oh, I haven't orgasm, I haven't orgasm.  So squirting just becomes another type of orgasm in some ways. Sounds absolutely amazing because I know that a lot of women, when they actually are finding pleasure during penetrative sex, when they're enjoying it, this desire to we does come into most, I mean it is sort of very natural. And most women will stop themselves at that point because they feel that they're actually going to just urinate. But maybe for those of you who are trying to, who experience it at this point, it might be worth just letting go at one point and seeing what happens. Do you think that that would be a good way to explore this idea? I think, you know, when we talk about orgasm, one of the things we say is that it is about letting go and vulnerability because it is the most, you have to be in a very vulnerable place to finally orgasm because you kind of have to let go of everything.  So the letting go becomes really important. That's interesting because I know that with any kind of friction, whether you're trying to pleasure yourself or whether you're having sex, with the kind of friction, particularly on the clitoris, there is generally in women a desire to urinate.  That might be an interesting way forward in experiments. Absolutely. And if you do try sporting or pleasuring yourself that way, we do write to us because, you know, the more power to you if you are trying it and you are experimenting with it. What I have found from people who've spoken to me personally about it.  And a couple of the other women were, got almost sort of cross with the idea and they kept insisting that it's not an orgasm. It is simply a case of urinating and not being able to control yourself, that it's a weak bladder and so on. Will you actually just tell us whether that's definitely not the case and that it is, it's more than that? Yeah, absolutely.  But when we're talking about squirting and female ejaculate, it cannot happen without an orgasm. So, there's two different things in some ways because this is happening when you have an orgasm because if it's happening other than that, that would be, you know, that you couldn't control your bladder. But because this matches the orgasm and it happens at the time of the climax, squirting and female ejaculate is always connected to an orgasm. You know, that is absolutely fantastic. It's fascinating because you have just opened up a whole new world. I did not know because like I said, a lot of times I've heard this, this sort of thing in the groups about, no, no, no, no, this is not real. It's just urine, it's just a weak bladder. But you've actually clarified that. And for me, you've opened up a whole new world of female pleasure. And I cannot tell you how delighted I am to actually hear you say that. Yeah, as in, you know, it'll be really fun that women are exploring these ideas more and asking those questions more and really, and you need to be very, you know, I say this, I feel like I say this each time. But when women take their sexual pleasure in their own hands, they can experiment with these ideas. And what, you know, she mentioned a couple of other things like, is it good for female health? Does it have any bad side effects? Anything like that? Not that we know of. There is no, like, there's nothing about metabolism or side effects.  So it is a positive experience. But do remember that if you're pressurizing yourself or feeling like, oh, I haven't reached this level of orgasm or your partner now feels the pressure to give you that kind of orgasm, that can actually be problematic. So keep it natural, keep it organic, you know, keep it joyful and fun rather than adding pressure to the whole process. That's wonderful. So like Anvita says, play with it. Play with the idea. So as always, we say that we are not over here to tell you what to do or what not to do. That is entirely your decision. But if you choose to do this, we are behind you. We think it's fantastic. And so long as you are not being aggressive or hurting yourself or your partner, it's a great thing to do, to experiment with your pleasure and with your sexuality. In the meantime, we want you to try and explore your pleasure, whether you do it through the mind or through the body. Happens quoting ladies. As always, on the video, like, comment, subscribe, and send in your questions at info.seema.anand.gmail.com. But don't worry if you haven't caught that email address. It does appear at the end of the video. And we'll see you next week. See you next week.


Item Number – SCP-215 Object Class – Safe Special Containment Procedures – SCP-215 presents no threat unless worn, and so shall be kept in Dr. Namdi's office until studies are concluded. SCP-215 is to be kept in its case when not in use, so as to prevent scratches to the lenses. Description – SCP-215 is a pair of prescription glasses designed to correct myopic vision. When worn, SCP-215 induces a belief in the wearer that inanimate objects are sentient and capable of communication with the wearer. The severity of this delusion varies from wearer to wearer, but generally strengthens over time if SCP-215 is worn regularly and in the worst cases manifests as a severe case of obsessive-compulsive disorder, culminating in an irrational fear of all machines. There is no definite safe amount of time to wear SCP-215. While the onset of delusions generally takes at least 24 hours, a great deal depends on the psychological disposition of the wearer before SCP-215 is put on, and persons who have already known varieties of obsessive-compulsive, synesthetic, or technophiliac disorders have been known to begin suffering SCP-215's effects, less than an hour after donning it. Removing SCP-215 does not remove the delusion, although normal methods of therapy have proven to be effective in less severe cases, so long as SCP-215 is not put on again. A full recovery can turn to a full relapse in less than a day by the return of SCP-215. By the end of the second week, wearers tend to violently resist any attempt to separate them from SCP-215. Case Study 215-99983-D 99983-D displayed a typical progression of SCP-215-related symptoms. The subject had no record of mental illness before the commencement of the test. Week 1, Day 1 99983-D is given a temporary position as a research assistant to Dr. Namdi, and is issued SCP-215 to replace a pair of his own spectacles that were destroyed by Foundation personnel. Subject complained that SCP-215 didn't match his old prescription, and stated that he was suffering from blurry vision and headaches by the end of the day. Week 1, Day 3 Subject stopped complaining of blurred vision and began referring to SCP-215 as Steve. Subjects stated that, Steve and I get along alright, it's not exactly a match made in heaven, but we get by. Subject did not assign names or personalities to any object besides SCP-215. Week 1, Day 6 Subject began to assign personalities to complex electrical and mechanical devices that he regularly interacted with, including the computer that he logged data entries in, the break room coffee machine, refrigerator, microwave, and a PDA he was issued by Dr. Namdi. Most interactions involved complaining about the general uncooperative behavior of these devices. Week 2, Day 1 Subject began having prolonged conversations with the aforementioned mechanical and electrical devices, giving all of them names and sometimes speaking of them in personal terms with other foundation personnel, almost always to the effect that the devices were somehow antagonistic. Subject reported that while he could not hear the machine speaking, their body language was very clear. Week 2, Day 5 Subject began assigning personal qualities to less complex objects in his work environment, starting with his office supplies. Week 2, Day 7 Subject began minimizing interactions with living people and talked almost constantly to his inanimate companions. Discussions with staff psychologists indicated a sophisticated web of relationships between 99983-D and the objects. Week 3, Day 3 Subject had a violent altercation with the break room microwave after a burrito came out of it undone. Subject reportedly cursed and shouted at the machine before attempting to destroy it with a break room chair. Subject was restrained and subdued and later apologized for his behavior to the microwave in the chair. Week 3, Day 6 Subject began personifying set pieces in his environment, referring to floor tiles and ceiling lights as people. Subject would stop the thank each inanimate object he interacted with, including each individual floor tile, for permitting him to use it. Week 4, Day 2 Subject began displaying signs of stress when asked to interact with any complex electrical or mechanical appliance, claiming that the machines had become hostile and threatening. Mechanical failures or faulty performances by any machines in 99983-D's presence were interpreted as signs of impending rebellion. Week 4, Day 3 Subject refused to come to work. His PDA had been smashed. 99983-D claimed it was an act of self-defense. After being coerced into coming into the office, the subject began screaming and showing other signs of acute stress at the sight of his computer, which was turned off at the time. He attempted to force his way past the security guards at the door and had to be sedated. Week 4, Day 5 Subject destroyed his table lamp, alarm clock, watch, and ceiling fan.  When Foundation personnel forced their way into his cell, they found him dead, with severe burns on his hands and arms. He is presumed to have been fatally electrocuted while attempting to disable an electrical outlet in the room. Addendum I've been asked many times now if SCP-215 enables the wearer to actually interact with machines in any meaningful way differently from how normal people do it, and I'm pretty confident the answer is no. I've done every test I can think of, and all the evidence I've seen suggests that the living machines only exist in the wearer's head. There are things in this Foundation that can make what you believe real, but this isn't one of them. Dr. Namedi Lesson complete. If you missed the previous orientation, go watch SCP-214, hematopian virus, right now. Or for the complete course, watch this playlist.


Nice try brother, too fast.


J-O-Win, I think it's about time that you play me some pimping, please. Play me some motherfuckin' pimping. Summoned. I like that. Oh, you got some wings? Oh, what?  Man. No, go ahead. Eat your food, man. I don't think I can do this if you hungry. I'm dragging this right now. It don't matter. I'm hungry. No, man, you eat, baby. But we got wings, we got fish. I see. No, we try. Man, don't put y'all over here. This ain't the first time. Hey, man, you know how we do that. Can't catch fortune. I said that. That nigga don't offer his food to no fuckin' bro. Yeah, right. Right. Right. We done had 100 gifts.  No, you appreciate any boy. No, he say, what it is you got over there? I tell you, he's on the wings. You ain't time to see something golden fried. You better say something. Come on. Yeah.  Yeah, my food, yo food. Need whatever you want. I appreciate you. Whatever you need. Y'all need, huh? Nah, we straight. Ain't no more. We finna have us a fish. You know what this is about. Managed boy, hunchin' behind the house. Yeah, hunchin' behind the house.  We used to hunch behind the house. If a mama gone, go win, hunch on the couch. Love in her mouth. What was that really about? Then I got grown and start pullin' it out.   See that be tragic and tragic. That's what I'm coming with.  I came through and I'm whippin'.  She be dummy thick.  She's a crash dummy.   She be thicker than the tension in the room. With a big booty and two big old booze. You might see me on the Channel 6 News. Just bein' a nigger, just doin' what I do. Like breakin' in the footlock or still a display shoe. Or gettin' to it in the lunch line.  And they done caught me with some drugs on me. And then they say I had them guns on me. The judge don't wanna put no bond on me. He leaves some info from my other homie.   And go to court with the lawyer. Beat the fuckin' charges. And then take the rest and buy two piranha dodgers. Like a challenger or a motherfuckin' charger. I be ridin' like a motherfuckin' dodger.  Yo, you better get off it and go home, Roger. Nah, I'm thinkin' that ain't just this 85 South Show and the vision comin' true.  But give me a little time. I make it all make sense.  We in both the studio. And welcome back to the 85 South Show.   I felt that in my spirit. That was all right. Man, come on, bro. Let's go. Come on, man. Come on. All I'm comin' for in 2023 is what's probably already old to me. Right. Yeah. I'm comin' for it, bro. Well, I know y'all comin' strong in 2023. 2023, roundup time. This studio is impressive.   I'm havin' it. Now, this is all like Top River. Shit, you like this? I mean, man, what I respect is I'm seein' growth. I'm seein' evolution. You know what I'm sayin'? I'm seein' black entrepreneurship. I'm seein' black access. That's what we brought you in here, man, cause you are legendary. Man, I appreciate it. And then you're legendary. Some of the most. Appreciate y'all.  Now, everybody, I could name off... I told them over there. I told you over there. You the Black Forest Gump there. You always seem to slump on new places. It's great time. On his feet and in the right position. When it's all said and done, man, you gon' have... Hit movies. No cap. Hit songs. Hit TV shows. Hit TV shows. It's up.  Facts. Nigga, and this is the highest honor of all. This is how I wanted to introduce you to the 85 South Show. I appreciate it. Nigga, you so cold. They let you play Black Michael Jackson. Come on. Come on. Come on. Come on. They did. Hey, the man's song for Simba. Yes, he did. Come on, man. Nah, man. The song for Simba. Yeah, I know. Y'all know about that. This was the second oldest boy. That's right, man. That's right, man. That's right. We were only on for nine episodes, but... Nigga, they're nine episodes. That's when Brandi had braces. Come on, man. Brandi had braces. Yes, she did. Brandi, come on, man. Come on, man. Real observing. I remember that. Because I remember when she got the movies and I was like, I was worried about her. That was her. But she came out on time. Before all that. Before all the people in D.C. age bracket. Nobody look left. Look right. See that. He did all that. Come on. Come on. Come on. Come on. Come on. Look at her. Come on. Yeah, man. Nah, man. Nigga. I love y'all. I love y'all. Thank y'all so much. Hey, to everybody out there too. Even before we start talking. Hey, man. Thank y'all, everybody. Seriously. Especially my community. You know what I'm saying? Everybody that I have kind of grown up with indirectly. In some kind of way. You know, people out randomly running to the grocery store, the airport or whatever. And people take time out of their day to stop and acknowledge you and your work. I know I'm not going to get the opportunity to meet everybody individually out there. So I just want to take this opportunity on 85 South. Yeah. Yeah. My favorite show. I'm so honored to be here. So I want to take this opportunity on 85 South to just thank everybody out there for supporting my career. And especially my black community. My brothers and my sisters. Because throughout this whole journey, y'all have stood by me, man. And supported me.  But my community is always. Always. We definitely. No. My community has always stood up for me and been down for me. So thank y'all, man. Yeah. Come on, man. Come on, man. Come on, man. We'll see. Let's take it from the top, bro. How did all of this come about? How did you start? What was your introduction to the game? Man. When did your people recognize your talent? You know what? My talent was recognized. I've always had a passion. You know, for people that don't know, I'm born and raised in Chicago. Shout out. Shout out all day. You know, I've always had a passion for the arts. I come from a musical family. My mother started off singing jingles and stuff like that.  What was her number one? Her biggest dream? Don't tell her you know some of the jingles. What is she doing? If the tribute to Dr. King, if we could light a candle, it was something that McDonald's did. It was their main campaign every year. And that was actually my first recording session. I was four. I was on the backgrounds on that record. And that was my first recording session at Chicago Recording Company on Ohio Street. And I was a little kid. And my mother's saying to lead on that. So that's what I came up under.  Shout out to my cousin Tricky Stewart. People may know his work. From like Beyonce with Single Ladies to the new one up. What is it? Something my soul? Break my soul. Sorry Tricky. Your cousin produced that? Yeah. My cousin produced and co-wrote that record with Dream. Shout out to Dream.   And the other hit that she got out. Shout out to Dream.  Tricky's my blood. But Dream's an extended part of our family. But yeah, I come from a musical background. And so I just grew up looking at movies. And the E.T. And seeing Drew Barrymore and all them like little kids acting. And it just, it was fascinating to me.  I want to try that. And just, you know, based on the relationship she had been able to develop over that period of time and being in the jingle industry. It was kind of natural for me to start auditioning for commercials and stuff like that. Because Chicago in the 80s was a hub for that. Like all of the ad campaigns were created on Madison Avenue in New York. But the music and the energy that would drive people to buy the products. It was coming from Black. And it was coming from Black creators, producers, songwriters, musicians. Still. Still. Shout out to Burrell, Burrell Communications. For people that don't know that history, you can look it up. You can Google it. But Tom Burrell and Burrell Communications was the first major Black advertising firm in the country. And it was based in Chicago. Is that what Boomerang based off of? It might be. Loosely. It might be loosely based off. I mean, just the company, not the story. No, no, it possibly could be. Because they were the only Black advertisement firms. So everybody in Chicago that was a singer, actor or whatever, we all got our start through Burrell Communications doing commercials and jingles. That's how it happened. So shout out to Burrell. Yeah, and I definitely got to make sure I get him props. Because they don't get enough props. It's firms like that to where a performer is like myself and others. We still don't have shoulders, man, to where we could get our opportunity and where we could springboard and have careers. And they don't get the credit that they rightfully deserve because they were just doing their job. But now I'm in a position where I can give them their flowers. Like, I do want to tell them, thank you publicly. I hope y'all see this. So y'all know that people from the city that took advantage of the opportunities that y'all provided, especially young Black kids, like, we still here. So, man, thank you.  And so, man, from there, I started auditioning for, you know, for films and stuff like that. Where was your first film? The Long Walk Home with Whoopi Goldberg, Sissy Spacey. That's how you jump out the gate in your first film with the motherfuckers. That's like 91? Yeah, that was, no, that was 89. Okay, damn. I was 89 because that's when I do the right thing and come out. And we had all gone to the theater and see that.  Yeah, we shot that in Montgomery, Alabama. It was a period piece. It talked about the two families during the start of the civil rights movement and the Montgomery bus boycott. And it was a phenomenal film to be a part of because I got to work with Whoopi. Got to work with Sissy Spacey. And I got to do a period piece that meant something, you know, to our story, our particular struggle. And so I got a chance to like even meet people. You know how you have background actors and extras on set and stuff. So usually a lot of those people that's on set that's in these movies, they don't have a connection to the story that we're telling. With this film, it was actually women that were there, women and men that were there who were older, but they marched. They were doing the sit-ins. They were, you know, part of the freedom rider. So it was like I was getting the experience of being on set and training as an actor, but I was learning more about who I was. Like embracing my identity more as a young black boy that eventually is going to come into the world as a black man. So it was like this. My first experience in film was just this shit, man. It was incredible. Man, incredible. God's been good. What would you say you start seeing the early success in first, the musical to acting? The acting. And it was after... But let's see what I'm saying. I always talk about this. How did you parlay... Since you said you got the acting first, how did you parlay and bring the music around to your acting? I did it. All those opportunities as it relates to me doing music were like organic opportunities and blessings that were just brought into my life through God because there was a time, and see it's different for you now. And I love that because it's guys like yourself that in that regard who have a multi-skill set. It's still hard. But man, it was so much harder because you had people on the music end who were trying to discredit you and saying you're not really a singer because you're not devoting all of your time to this. But then you had people in the film world who weren't really respecting what you were doing in music because they were going, well, you can make so much more money over here.  And so I was always in this weird position of trying to balance myself within that and constantly trying to prove myself. And even as a young performer, you were already going through adolescence and your body switching up, your voice had changed. Well, mine didn't. But in most cases, your voice changed. So you deal with all these different insecurities coupled with the pressure of trying to maintain a career in both of these different genres of entertainment. But again, I give God the credit for that and my mother because no matter what, it was like she always supported me. So anytime that I would doubt myself, I get to that point where I get discouraged or disheartened. She remind me of who I was like in our legacy and the family that we come from and also reminded me too that, you know, me being in the business, that doesn't define who I am. That's just a part of who I am. You know what I'm saying? So I was able to in my mind put it all together and find a way to still be able to be constructive and like, and be productive and do my thing without losing myself in the process. At the Johnny Mercer Theater I've been having a ball in Oakland I love this goddamn city. Y'all got the funniest homeless people I've ever seen.  He act like those were the three he needed to not be homeless no more. Soon as I gave him the money you didn't put me back in the motherfucking game. Niggas tried to whistle at me didn't even whistle just made the noise. Now if you come here, I'll ask you right quick. Johnny Mercer Theater February 18 at the end of the day Carlos Miller 8 o'clock is going down in Savannah. Hit the link get those tickets man you already know. February 18 at the Johnny Mercer Theater I will be in Savannah because at the end of the day you need to come see me. What's up y'all show girl next P and it's your girl Drayna Cole and one thing about us baby we gonna be outside.   And on top of that not only is it just me and Lex we got music so child too.  Now there's only a few slots available. You have to be in Atlanta. This event is that City Winery in Atlanta on March 1st. So you have to be in Atlanta to participate.  Send the tapes in. And mind you this is a competition so me, music, Andrea will be judging you. And on top of that if you win you get a grand prize. So make sure y'all come and see us and even if you just want to come turn up come on City Winery. Come watch the show. Link below. See y'all soon. Period. What was the first track like when you finally displayed it and they started taking you serious as both? It was it was the Cheney record. No, yeah it was the Cheney record man. I wanted to say the Cheney but I felt like it was something before that. So it was the Cheney record because okay let me keep it real.  It was a record that they played and they knew it was you and it got it was love ambition. It was love ambition produced by Keith Crouch and written by Rosson Patterson and Uncle Kipper. Shout out to those guys Kipper Jones. And that record was released during my ten year Motown but it didn't reach national ten year. I'm sorry. But you was on Motown but I wasn't on it that long. But what ended up happening was is that the record didn't really take off on the national level but Chicago because it was a stepper's record and it had that groove to it and in the city like we support our own. We may look crazy sometimes on the news but when it all boils down to it Chicago we support our own. So when that record came out it was like radio kind of got behind it but it was the people that got behind it and so when you hear Chicagoans talk about love ambition that's a very personal record for us. Especially with the stepper crowd. That was like my coming out party as an artist and at that time Chicago was the only city with the exception of like New Orleans maybe a couple others that really embraced me man and made me feel confident in my journey moving forward. We ought to throw a stepper's ball. Y'all should. That will be hard. Talking about like a stepper's ball. We can have the people who want to come like we can come and do like some sessions with like the stepper coach. But you can only come you gotta bring your own girl.   Y'all got Chicago looking at this right now and then we'll talk about your way. The dance is stepping where you got a party. We talking about stepping. We talking about like no. That just goes to show how old I am. No. No. Like stepping the name of Lil. Okay. Okay. So that's a big thing. You gotta have your own partner. Like we not letting no singles in. You gotta have a routine. It's real classy. It's something that you do with your lady. You have a nice leaving it out. Y'all have a little matching suits on. You go dance and step. You got your fly gators on.  Shout out to the crib. I wanted you to talk about Chicago a little bit because like you said it's so much negative press out there. Like they can put on for the city basically right now. Let me know from somebody who really from there. Let me tell y'all something man. Chicago in my opinion is the most beautiful city on the planet and it's not just the city landscape and all of that. It's really the people and especially the black community that exists there. The families on the south side and the west side. That's what gives Chicago its identity. Chicago is a working class blue collar town filled with people that keep their head down don't complain. They go to work every day. They support their families and they try their best to get to different points in their life where their view is being successful. But they're unsung heroes but they're not haters. If they see somebody else coming up and doing a thing and especially if you're from the city man you'll get the support. You'll get the love. And it won't be a thing where you have a bad trip. Like regardless of whatever it's going to be some folks still in Chicago that's going to play step in the name of love regardless of however you feel about them and that's your individual prerogative but there are some people that are going to continue to support his music and what he does because he's from the town. That being said there is a lot of violence that happens.    They was listening, we weren't. We weren't. It's on the app. It's on the app. The rest of this, listen, the rest of the audience was on the app. Apple TV, wherever you get your subscription. No, it's not. It's just available directly where they sell apps. Boy, they don't sell apps on Apple TV?  It is on the app.   Oh, we do. I have full of real coupes. They're real coupes most everywhere. Yeah. So subscribe to the app. It's only $8.99 a month or $85 a year. So you get a whole year for $85. Did you know that? It's $8.50 and then you gotta pay taxes. Yeah, so, you know, it's $8. You know, we get them all type of content. You know what? We gon' tell them who you got your glasses for. Until they get on the app. I mean, hey, you gotta watch this. The app, the app is available. All of these people that say we should keep putting this on YouTube for free. What about the years of freeness that we've already provided upon you? We gave this away for free for years. Let's move together $85 a year. Why would you let somebody come invest in the show and put it on another network and you're buying their subscription? You don't ask them why you're buying their shit? So don't ask us. We're putting it on the app. Who's over the app? We saw what you said in the comments. We saw it. We saw it. The good, the bad, and the ugly. So you know what? We folding under this pressure. We hear you. We hear you. We win indeed.  Just for an hour though. That's all you get is an hour. So though you can't complain about it, we're the rest of it. You think they should get 37 minutes? I don't see. We gotta hurry up. We just put a whole bunch of ads in between. Like long way in there, like five minute ads. Hey, how you doing? How you doing? Slow motion ads. Slowest doing now. Waste a motherfucking time. Yeah, let's just go ahead and make sure. Channel 85.com. I wanna make sure I read what they wrote.  These niggas don't know how to spell or type proper sentences, but they trying to get us to get y'all to buy the app. What you think we wanna read this shit? Channel 85, man. So we can talk that shit, man. Ladies, don't shoot like this. That's right. On the app, uncensored, unfiltered, and edited. Can you believe that? I'm talking about with actual production in it.   That's on the app. Yep. Chico got a handwriting class that he teach.  But we're working on it, and you can see it on the app. They didn't even tell them about the tax course that we had uploaded on there. They don't even know that we got a whole show about Wall Street. And a $5,000 on the app. Right. And we got the arts in the end until the color purple up there. Oh, man. We got the raw dishes, all the uncut, all the bloopers. We got all that. Right, it's on the app.  I'm leaving, though. Channel 85.com, go get the app. You got an hour for free. We gave you what you wanted. Now give us some subscriptions to the app. We are going on the app. 50, 899 with tax, $85 a year. Channel 85.com, 85 Sound Show. Get the app. You see, this is what they don't know. The app, really $3, but adjusted for inflation, is 8,000, yeah. Well, low C, get the app, man. Stop bullshitting. We out of here, man. We're not about to keep working all this time for. We're working free. We're not going on app media. We on your way to fly. On app.


My name is Ambrose Brown, retired scene chief from Albany, Georgia, now with Public Works in Naples, Italy, and in honor of the Navy's 239th birthday, I'd like to thank all our service members serving overseas, especially our CBs. Thank you for your support, and we look for you, your safe return home. Thank you.


Hey everyone, I am so excited to be here with you all today. I am a long time product con fan and attendee and now second time speaker on the stage. So I'm super psyched to be here. For those of you who didn't get to attend my talk last year, my name is Penny Zito and I lead product development at Amazon's Prime Gaming Division. So I have a really fun job where I get to give anyone who is an Amazon Prime member access to a huge library of free games and game content and a monthly Twitch subscription. So if there's any game music out there come connect with me. We do have a few select roles open. Today I'm here with awesome guests to talk about a topic that really resonates with me. We're going to talk about how to break down silos between products and product-adjacent teams. For the purpose of today's talk, we define the product as the product development team. So that happy trinity of product engineering and design and product-adjacent teams are going to be those cross-functional teams across marketing, business development, finance, etc. that we really need a partner with. I think this topic is really, really important especially for PMs out there because when you first start off in your career you're really focused on launching a set of features with a core team. But as you advance and you level up you're going to be potentially overseeing an entire suite of products working on something that's increasingly complex has a higher, larger audience and at greater scales you're going to have to be managing partnerships with more and more teams. And when that happens you risk things like misalignment, miscommunication, misconception basically a lot of misses across the board. So my awesome panelists are going to help us today mitigate some of that. So with that I'm going to kick off with introductions. I'd love for you each to introduce yourselves talk to us about what products you're working on and I'll talk a little bit about why this is such an important topic and what are some of the challenges and requirements you've seen in terms of silos across products and product adjacent teams. I guess I'll go first. Hey everyone, I'm Hasthu from Mowingage. I lead the growth efforts for us in the region and at Mowingage we're essentially an intelligent customer engagement platform. I just heard myself get louder there. But what we do is we help brands like Poshmark, Ally Bank and other leading both consumer and B2B businesses better engage with their customers. So in a way break down the silos of email marketing, SMS marketing, mobile marketing, transactional and product-led communications because to the end customer it's all communications from your brand. So as a platform we're helping improve the experience that you're able to deliver to your customers and do that in a way that's very automated. Why this is a topic that we feel is really important and I feel is really important is as a customer obsessed organization as a platform and a SaaS based solution that is building to deliver more value to our customers. The silos often just lead to a loss in translation almost of what the customers are saying to the customer-facing teams and what the takeaways to the product teams are. And I think that breakdown in silos means that we're building products that don't fully solve the problems that our customers are coming to us with and we're delivering more to industry standards and lesser to innovating solutions for the unique needs of each of our customers. So I think that's why this is a really important topic to us. Awesome. Thanks Hasu. Shantaro. Yeah. Hey folks. Shantaro Matsui. Super excited to be here at my first product con. Quick background. Started my career in management consulting.  Then wanted to work at a company that's actually building something. So moved to the Bay Area in 2018 to join Uber Eats right before they raised their series E-Round. I think there saw firsthand how important it was to break down organizational silos. Post-IPO wanted to join a smaller company at the time, had a lot of really sharp PM friends in the Bay Area that were all using amplitude and telling me how helpful a tool is in making their day-to-day decisions. So moseyed over to their job board, saw they had an opening to build out a product operations team from scratch, which was really exciting. One, because it was really cross-functional and two, was the perfect bridge between the ops work that I love to do and then the product world. So then an amplitude for two and a half years now is really cross-functional. It's around planning, it's around launch management, it's around voice of the customer. And one of the big impacts that I see when we don't break down silos is around decreases in shipping velocity, which is something that we're pretty maniacal about at Amplitude. I'm sure a lot of us have experienced here being days away from a big launch only to have a product adjacent team, be it legal or another product team, put the emergency brakes on, really causes impacts to delays, frustration. We try our best, doesn't happen all the time to invest a lot of time up front to get everyone aligned so that way we could move really quickly and ship fast. Awesome, thanks Shintaro. Adam? Everybody, Adam Dilley. I work at Quantum Metric. I'm the Senior Vice President of Product and Engineering there at Quantum. And a little bit about what we're working on right now, what we do is basically break your applications down to say a task that can mean something like buying a product on Walmart, changing your flight on United, maybe signing up for a new account on US Bank. Basically, these are all the tasks that you create your applications to get your customers to and through in order to drive success for your business. And we basically tell you what is causing users to succeed at those tasks, what's causing users to not succeed there, and when we can tell you what we look like and try to drive more success through task completion, then we find success for the people that we're working with. This particular topic, I was really happy to see we're talking about it because it keeps me up at night from the perspective of leadership, I think about the impact that it has on our people and employee morale and kind of employee engagement. And I think that comes from sort of this environment of maybe competition instead of collaboration can detach us from our shared goals. We're all trying to drive success for the business and for our customers, but when you're sort of working in silos and all of a sudden you become detached from those common goals and one of the things I love that our customer success team does is every month they drive a monthly meeting where they talk about success that we've driven for our customers in the last 30 days. And so many times I've had engineers at that meeting and say this is the absolute best meeting that you can have me attend each month and it's because they see the things that they're working on day to day in the product driving success for the customer and when you kind of make that connection between I put my work into this saying and here's the end result of it here's something that I did win for the customer that's that shared goal that shared vision that we all have to work together to be from breaking down silos. Awesome, thanks Adam. Alright, we'll jump right to it. So my first question is what are some of the best practices or mechanisms that you guys have employed to help foster more cross-functional cohesion in your teams? Yeah, I could kick off. So I don't believe in best practices I really think it really varies on the context of your organization, but something that's worked really well at Amplitude is actually embedding go to market team members be it a support agent, be it a customer success manager within product teams and have them meet with their product counterparts on a regular basis and what that's done is two things. One, it's really tightened the feedback loop between what the field is hearing on the ground and what product is building and I think most importantly it's actually shifted who is giving the product information and who is the messenger of that. So we actually have these go to market representatives actually share roadmap updates and these upcoming launches with their respective teams and when you do that and you're a customer success manager it really resonates a lot more when you have a fellow colleague in your team sharing that versus hearing it from our product manager. Fair point. Adam, did you have something to add? Yeah, kind of similar idea. One thing that we've done is shadowing at Quantum Metric and this is really to kind of drive the R&D teams knowledge about the rest of the company the customer and other departments we have our product team members our PMs, our designers, our engineers shadow customers sometimes shadow members of the customer success team basically just sit with them and do their job. They can run the gamut from something highly technical they're writing JavaScript code all the way to business consultant type of role so understanding what the success at this particular business look like what are those customers trying to do to succeed what can Quantum do to help it just drives so much deeper understanding of the customer and also really empathy for people who might struggle internally or customers with our own product because that's going to happen and when that empathy of the struggle is there then they're going to do their job better in the end. One of the things I love to see is a change that comes out of this kind of shadowing environment so when a PM or designer engineer makes a connection with something from one of those shadowing sessions and says you know I get the customer need and I can do something about it I can make a change in the product they make that change they deliver that out to the customer out to the market just as like the best indicator of success for me it's like you really get it you get the customer and you get how in your role you can do a better job to make that successful. I love that breaking down kind of the silos bringing folks closer to customers so another question I have is on the product adjacent team side if they wanted to more proactively gain a better understanding and increase their knowledge of products what are some suggestions that you have for those partners? Yeah and probably is the most product adjacent person on the panel I'll give my perspective there and it's actually to talk to something both of you said which is bring the product teams in front of the customers and I believe that's a great way of also improving the understanding that product adjacent teams have of the product because it's finally helping customer success teams and sales teams and solution consultants go beyond what the product does and really enable them to understand how it does it and I think that's why I really like having product managers and our product team on calls with customers with prospects actually solution together rather than say this is what we can do this is what we can't do so I think that's a great way of just bringing product teams into actual real life customer situations and letting customer facing teams experience that and learn a little bit more of the how and not just the what I guess we're unanimous on this but it's a common theme to embed those teams together this direction so it's kind of the outside teams outside of product getting more knowledge about the product itself two things on this one one one kind of for the masses and then one that I wish I could do for everyone but I haven't quite figured out how to make it work so it's like do for the few what you wish you could do for everyone the first one is product updates so you're all hands meetings your product monthly updates that sort of thing we do a dedicated one hour a month on the product and we try as hard as we possibly can to not skip these to not let them go to always be giving some kind of update in the all hands meeting about what we're doing when you're you're dedicated to that the rest of the company can kind of follow the story arc of these different things that you're building because you're going to give them an update one time about you know an idea we have or something that's in the product discovery phase but then you've got things in the execution phase and things that are getting close to go to market and you want their help with that go to market process and all succeed together and when you keep up that pace people are remembering okay this is I heard how this thing was generated what the problem was for the customer that we want to solve I might have even heard about an internal roadblock that we ran into and how we kind of overcame that and all of a sudden they're building up the background in their mind of how these things came to be and then the other one that that I'd love to be able to do for more folks and kind of mention this entire is we do embedding as well so we take team members from outside of R&D and we put them into our product pods so you know our small teams of folks that are working together day to day building the product and we have them even attend standouts what they're seeing the prioritization how we're kind of choosing this thing over that thing and it's back to the empathy but it's kind of the other direction now the rest of the company can understand how all of your jobs are super complex you know the work that you do is not easy there's not one code to write to solve a particular problem it's a very creative endeavor we find that that just kind of builds an understanding of this is an art more than a science product is and so it also drives a lot of value back into the product as well because you have those stakeholders from outside of R&D saying we could do this better there's a different way to solve or this would be the thing to really nail that problem for the customer so embedding and I think quite similar another thing that we do a lot of also is getting the product adjacent teams to participate even at the PRD stage getting them to write the user stories getting them to actually talk about the challenges that they're seeing out in the market and be a part of the product development roadmap itself and that's something that's helped quite a bit too so it sounds like getting folks involved a lot earlier I think that everything you're sharing we as product folks can apply as well and the other way around in terms of better understanding other functions and their roles and what they have to deal with too so I think these are the same things that we can all apply so the next question is around leadership because leadership themselves can sometimes be a silo so I'm really curious around if you guys can share any challenges that you face with leadership as a silo and what are some of the techniques that you've leveraged to kind of bring them along to ensure product success yeah absolutely and I think often the toughest silo to reach and get some time with and present your case too but we essentially see it as two key things the quantitative measure as well as the qualitative from the quantitative perspective it's periodically giving leadership a view of any new feature updates or product updates that we have their adoption their impact on everything leadership cares about which could be just usage of the solution billing anything of that sort so I think some of it's quite quantitative and fairly reasonable asked to be able to present the impact that it's had but on the qualitative front it's again talking to the customers it's taking just some of those key customer stories often in their own words and presenting the impact and with that the kind of further enhancements that we want to try so often times honestly I feel like it's the qualitative aspects that matter a little bit more than the quantitative it could just be us focusing a lot more on each of our customers but yeah those are some of the probably the two key ways we're trying to address that yeah that's great I think yeah leadership definitely a tough group to crack I think an amplitude one thing that's been really helpful for us is actually having joint rituals with different leadership groups so one example of that is we have a quarterly executive retro where we actually have go to market sales vice presidents vice presidents of pre sales post sales come to the product leadership team and present top thematics that they're hearing from customers but also we get them to create a stack rank of all of their product asks and that's important because I'm sure often times we've experienced silos and different leaderships and in terms of the priorities across go to market so that's been really helpful in terms of creating clarity around what the priorities are for go to market but also really fosters a really healthy discussion if there are tradeoffs to be made and what product will build and commit to and not I think that's interesting kind of bring those different leaders in the room and they probably each have their long list of things that they want so when they hear each other's long list they're like well actually you know this is a backlog the size of a crazy amount of course you guys can't do it all. Adam do you have anything potentially to add to this? I think what you just said is the key there it's like I can I can have blinders on about the things that I want and need in my role but all of a sudden when there's three or four other people sitting next to me giving their needs as well then you do all of a sudden realize maybe there is this other thing that's more important than mine and it's about it's again back to kind of understanding of the complexity of what we do it's really easy to kind of shoot an ask over Slack or email and be like hey by the way customer needs this go do it but when you have to get in that meeting and make tradeoffs and prioritize things and understand this job is hard there's a lot of work that goes into these things and we only have so much bandwidth and everyone's strapped for resources then it just really like breaks down the silos and it builds that more team atmosphere we're working together we should do the absolute best thing for the customer together that makes sense and I'll share my input on this so I think we talked a lot about why it's important to do this techniques in terms of bringing people in earlier some ceremonies and rituals that we can have cross functionally but one of my favorite at Amazon we had these things called leadership principles and one of my favorite ones is called learning be curious and a lot of folks think that's like okay you know continually learning in an academic sense or continuing to build subject matter expertise but the way I internalize it is just being curious about whether it's people or things and I find that it's really valuable because oftentimes silos exist again because of misunderstandings lack of knowledge if you kind of just seek to first understand why is this silo happening is there a fear in terms of territory is it just because the person just truly sees it as a black box first understanding that just kind of understanding where it's coming from talking to folks will help foster vulnerability and trust and I think that's foundational before even a lot of these techniques that we apply because once you have that and there's an equal place that you're coming from and that shared goal then the rest of this will flow really nicely so we are actually near time but I'm curious if the group has any closing dots for the audience no I really like what you just said Penny I think it really starts with personal connection first if you build that I think that that really helps break down a lot of the silos just so it's really worth investing time in building those relationships and yeah I think joint rituals clarity on roles and responsibilities and joint accountability is really important to break down silos absolutely I think something you just kind of touched on but the intent you know there's no usually no negative intent one of the things I love to live by in day to day work is like assume positive intent all the time for all the people that are around us and you know no one no one builds silo on purpose usually it just happens because we're all like heads down we've got our role we've got the things that we need to do to succeed and it doesn't you know it doesn't create a purposeful division but you do have to be purposeful to kind of bring people back together and do all the things that we're talking about here to make sure that we're staying close to one another trying to do the best thing for the customer that's company yeah and I think from from my perspective one of the most annoying things that our product team does is why why yeah why and I think it's also the most useful thing for product adjacent teams to ask why can you do this why can't you do this why is it going to take time and I think that is something that really helps build perspective really helps build an appreciation across the board and across teams for why and as annoying as that question is it's it's one of my favorite ones you know irrespective of context agree so in terms of my awesome panelists here they're going to be hanging out they all have boots on the X4 so definitely feel free to connect with any of us on LinkedIn we can jam on this some more or if you want to chat with them in person we've been hanging out backstage and they're awesome so you guys can have a chance to do that but that's all we have for you guys today thank you