I remember one day sitting in rehearsal and I was so grateful to myself, to my ancestors, to my grandmother, to my family, to my mom for making sure that I always showed up as myself. Because here I am sitting in this rehearsal room, being who I am and showing up 100% as Nicole, authentically Nicole.  And we get to create what theater is. Nobody's gonna tell us what it is. We get to say what it is. You're listening to Building Our Own Tables, a podcast produced for HowlRound Theater Commons, a free and open platform for theater makers worldwide. I'm your host, Yura Sapi, and I'm the founder of various organizations and projects, including a 501C3 non-profit, a six-hectare farm and food sovereignty project, an LGBTQ plus healing and art space, and I've helped numerous creatives, leaders, and other founders unleash their excellence into the world through my programs, workshops, and coaching services. In this podcast, I'm showcasing the high-vibration solutions for you as a visionary leader to implement into your own practice and thrive. Stay tuned this season to hear from other founders who have built their own tables for their communities and for the world in this evolutionary time on earth. You are here for a reason and I am so honored and grateful to support you on your journey. So stay tuned and enjoy. Community Unlocks Abundance. We have gone through this in the podcast before. Bonus points if you can identify which episodes. In today's episode, I got to interview Nicole Limon and we discussed all kinds of leadership tips and strategies as usual, really centering around the opportunity that comes from what it means to build your community, what it means to support your community, support community to give and to receive from community and to operate from this community-centered way of leadership. Nicole is such an amazing example and role model in this way with her new theater company, Matriarchy Theater. Go ahead and enjoy this episode. We discussed the fundraising strategies and tips, the power of mantra meditation for you as a leader and founder, and the journey of finding your name for the project or organization you are creating and the journey overall of what it's like to really go from an idea to a manifestation of your idea into this 3D earthly realm. So I hope you enjoy this amazing episode. Before we get into this episode, go ahead and hit subscribe on this podcast. This is the best way to stay updated on new episodes and helps build a thriving planet where all beings experience joy and harmony with each other and mother earth. So go ahead and hit subscribe and keep this good energy flowing. Welcome to the podcast, Nicole. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for inviting me. I'm really excited to talk to you. Yes, me too. So my first question is, tell us about your superhero origin story. So what is the pivotal moment that led you to forge your own path and build your own table? Yeah, that's a great question. I think it was probably both a long and immediate process because I was raised with such unconditional love in my family. I knew my value. I knew I was loved. I knew I was cared for. As a young person, I felt like I was smart. I think when I got to college, there was this instant invisibleization of people who looked like me and walked through the world looking like me. And to me, that was a very kind of shock. I wasn't used to that sort of an experience. And that was in the theater department and not getting cast, not getting called back, just to do what I love, which is telling stories. And very quickly after that, I met a friend and we started our own little company. And it was called Movimiento Molcajete and it was a duo, two performers. And we started writing our own work and touring our own work. And we realized immediately that there was an audience for our stories. There was an audience for people who look like us that there was no lack of embracing of our stories. And I was probably in my early 20s at the time. And we did that for several years. We were able to sort of make a living just going to small communities, to community colleges, to tribal communities, to festivals and to art galleries, et cetera, being invited to share our work. We knew there was value, right? And that it was directly for our community. And I think that was a really important fast forward many years. I wanted to create a larger theater company to give that sort of an experience to other theater makers. And other people are just curious about the theater world or performing or storytelling. And so, matriarchy theater was kind of a kernel for many years before it became matriarchy in what, 2020, 2021. It was really just the having other people be seen too. That's, so I feel like that's the superpower is like, I see you and I want you to see yourself. That's the gift. I love that. I'm curious about having started in 2020, 2021 at this transformative moment for the planet and for humanity, also marking a future that's here and coming in terms of a lot of the ships that we have seen and are going to see for the planet, for humans on it and theater as a specific community of that really representing the human experience. So I'm curious about this time that you decided to come out and now how has that been and what are you reflecting on since that beginning? So like I said, it had been a kernel for a long time. And actually in 2016, I left my full-time gig, like my day job where I was making a living and taking care of my family and my children. But really just not, my soul was not happy. I had been there for almost 10 years and I left because I wanted to just focus on my art and my teaching. I was also teaching part-time at Sac State at the time. So working full-time job, teaching part-time, doing my theater and I just wanted to focus on building my art world and really reconnecting to that. And so my intention was to start matriarchy back then. I didn't have the name yet. I still just knew it was a theater ensemble or a collective or a company. I didn't know what it was gonna be, just something. And at that time, my dear friend and mentor and former professor Manuel Pickett asked me to help him kind of save and sustain his company, Diatro Espejo, which is celebrating 50 years next year. And he's just like, I need help. And I thought that was a really beautiful thing to reach out, to ask for help. And he asked me to direct the next main stage show. He's like, I'm tired. As leaders, we're often doing this by ourselves, even though we have a lot of people come to the table to collaborate on the show. Behind the scenes, it's often just us running it. So after conversations with him and other folks, I decided to really commit some time to that. So I said, kind of internally, I was like, okay, I'm gonna give this maybe five years to just help save this company. It had been a company that was a part of Sacramento State University on campus until 2012, when he retired, he then moved it out into the community. And so I helped to create 501c3. We founded a board. I was the first board president, recruiting people, outreaching, bridging the gap of generations between him and the people under me and just kind of coming under the generation and really working to sustain that and grow that while still wanting to start my company. I knew that there was so much value in Diatro Espejo and it was where I was sort of like born and raised as a teatrista and where I really learned about theater for social change and community care. And so it was just such a joy and such a passion to do that. And then at some point around 2020-21, when theater started going into these little, you know, podcasts in cubicles and in Zoom rooms and I did about, I think I directed about three or four Zoom plays, I think I just finally had some time to settle because Diatro Espejo had taken a break from being, you know, in a theater, we were still doing Zoom theater, but I had some time. And I think it was that time that at some point the name came to me. I never really knew what I wanted to name the theater company and one day I just was like, hmm, matricule theater. And so I remember immediately just doing a search, right? Checking it, Googling it, seeing, you know, is there already a matricule theater? Is there the dot-com available? Because I didn't want to step on anyone's toes and I would want to uplift their work, right? I was surprised that I was like, wow, there isn't one yet. Of course, there's lots of matriarchy projects and everything, which is like to me, it's community. So I immediately went and like got the domains, you know, and I remember the next day, during the pandemic, there were, you know, we had the racial uprising and I was supporting a lot of my students of color who were going through it and themselves becoming leaders and activists and creating organizations around social change and racial injustices and calibrating those injustices, right? Because of that, I had formed a beautiful collective, formed under my friend Nicole Manker called the Communities of Color Collective and it was primarily adjunct faculty from the university and we would meet every week on Zoom, every week for almost two years. And so the next day that I came up with the name, I remember meeting with them and I said, I have a name for my theater company and they were like, what is it? And I told them, and I just remember I still get a visceral feeling of their reaction to the name landing with such resonance and such power and those celebration emojis in the Zoom window.  And so that really, I felt like it took that time of the colonel and then those years dedicated to Teatro Espejo for I think the universe and ancestors to give me the gift of matriarchy theater and then I can go forward with what my mission is. Yeah. That's so beautiful, yes. And I love everything I'm hearing, bridging this ancestral wisdom really of the power of a name, the power of receiving a divine kind of information coming through that just is a knowing of when it's the right time. When that information comes through for anybody who's listening who maybe is thinking about starting a project and you don't have the name yet, being able to kind of flow with that journey of getting the name and knowing what it is that you're doing and also meant to be doing. And then when it comes through really going ahead and taking the steps to follow this vision. And I love too the offering of community as a part of it this community group that you had been a part of in providing a space for others to share and a space for you to share and be heard. So I feel like that's also a really important thing to note for others who might be in this process to really have that community, have that space of people that you can go to and share and celebrate wins and also have that space to be supported. And then also the tips I'm hearing around too going forth and getting those domains and searching to see if it's something that legally and in this way that we operate other people have already been doing both for yes, the whole trademark and legal side of it but also the community side of it is that wanting to uplift what others have already been working on. So I just wanted to reflect back all this amazing wisdom, suggestions and experience that you've gone through to share with listeners. Yeah, thank you. It's nice to have that because sometimes we don't see it ourselves we're just in the doing. So in the sort of receiving that I appreciate that. Yeah, and definitely, there's a lot of questions that come through and I'm sure you still have questions I still have questions about things that we are doing. So it's always good to be able to find those spaces to ask. Yeah. Because you're listening to this podcast I'm going to assume that you care about the future of our planet and all beings who live here. You are a visionary leader who sees possibilities for our future that are beyond what others around you may be thinking and taking as the status quo. You have the ability to see another option and see a different way to do things than before. You're bridging ancestral practices with the modern and you know there's a reason you're here on this planet in this body with this voice in this moment. So I want to invite you to join our free network of visionaries an online platform and community forum cultivated by me, Yura Sapi to support other visionaries who are building their own tables. Join us and gain access to weekly self-care tips guided by the astrological occurrences that reflect in our socio-political day to day as well as resources to grant opportunities and business tools curated for you to thrive as a new Earth leader. Get access to my special meditations, teaching videos and giveaways for one-on-one coaching sessions, courses and more. So what are you waiting for? Join us on the network of visionaries and let's manifest our thriving planet. The link to join will be pasted in the show notes and I can't wait to meet you. So my next question, imagine if you are giving a pep talk to this younger version of yourself. What are the words of encouragement and wisdom that you would share? That's such an interesting question because I feel like part of me does that with my students, right? In retrospect, where we're able to see, like, we could have done X, Y, Z and been just okay. You know, it wasn't as scary as I had thought it was and so I really try to empower my students with those things. So for me, I think I would have told my younger self, particularly like maybe my college age self, is to speak up more. I think it was a process I had to have for my life because in my real life, when I'm not in my theater or my teaching, I'm pretty introverted and very much just sitting back and observing. I feel much more comfortable speaking maybe in front of 10,000 people than on a one-to-one. I've gotten much better with it, but I think that's what I would tell my younger self is to speak up more. You know, right now, for example, I tell my students, like, go talk to your professors. You know, there's people and they want to help you. They want to connect with you. I tell my son that too. Go talk to your teachers. Go make a connection. He sees how much of a difference it makes, even though it's scary for him to make the connection. So for me, it's just making connections and I think it's still a lesson that I'm learning, right? So I can tell people, do this, but still having to practice that for myself because I think one of the things that we do, I think as community folks, I feel like I'm always uplifting other people. Like, I love that. And then sometimes I'm like, oh, I can uplift myself too, right? I can open doors for myself as well. And so I think this last year, I was able to do that. And that was probably the older version of me telling the younger version of me, like, you can do this for you too, right?   So yeah, speak up. Speak up. Yeah. Well, tell us more about what this last year has brought you. Yeah. I mean, abundance. So, and I would say probably from 2022 and 2023 we're just overwhelmingly abundant and joyous and just seeing things come to fruition and offerings coming in in a way that I hadn't really experienced before. In 2022, I actually, we finally staged our first full performance for Matriarchy Theater, a play called Quantum by Tara Moses. And it was a beautiful experience. And I would say that at that time, I had finally, you know, launched Matriarchy. And Matriarchy said, we're here. We've been born. Here's the name. And then I did a small go fund to me. And I hate asking for money. I'm not a good fundraiser. I just don't like doing it. And so I put it out there, you know, which was a huge ask for me was it's the speak up thing. And that we didn't do too well. It did pretty good. I mean, we had a little bit of donations and I was so grateful for that. And, but we didn't get anywhere near the ask that I was hoping for. And we still ended up getting that by other means. So at some point, the board of the after a special came to me and said, we would like to fund your first production for Matriarchy Theater. And so they gave me a lovely budget to put this show on. And I thought that wasn't me. I cried. I wasn't expecting that, you know, I wasn't expecting that. And I'd still gives me tears. I was able to do every single thing that you need to do for production. All my artists were paid. All the designers and creatives were paid. We rented the venue. We paid for the rights. We did publicity. Everything that you need under the sun, they even paid me like the other aspect who paid me to direct my show for my company, which, you know, that was not some, yeah, that was not something I was expecting. And it was, it was again, a gift that I did. I didn't, I didn't do things for theatrical to get things back like that, but it was just started and all of this abundance really started snowballing in such unexpected ways. I also started doing mantras just around welcoming those things and, you know, the abundance and the care and I'm cared for and the universe will do what's right for me as long as I'm putting good out into the world. And that was 2022. And then I also, as much as I don't like asking for money, I also am not really a big fan of writing grants because I want to spend that time making my art. Right. So, but I did. I finally applied for a grant and I received an NEA grant, which was huge. It was probably the first, yeah, it was probably the first grant I had applied for in years. And I got the grant and I have to give big props to the grant advisor I had talked to prior to applying. He gave me some really good advice. And then I was able to put that funds towards a project that we put on stage in 2023. And kind of a long story short in 2023 at some point, I did that thing where I took my own advice and spoke up for myself. A director put a call out for a dramaturg in the community. And her name is Dina Martinez. And she's such a trailblazer and such a beautiful human. And she's a director and an actor. And I immediately answered like, oh, I suggested somebody, you know, and I said, I can do it. But also there's this other person like I don't want, I don't like putting myself out there. But she immediately messaged me back and said, I want you as my dramaturg. Oh my God. You know, I've been doing dramaturgy for a long time, but never like quote unquote professionally or where I'm actually being credited for my work. And so her bringing me on board to do that opened a bunch of doors for me to continue doing dramaturgy, to continue doing my intimacy choreography work. And I told, I, she actually came to speak to my class the other day because I'm doing dramaturgy for her production of fade right now.  And I said, I want to thank you so much for opening doors for me because I'm usually not putting myself out for opportunities like that. I'm always just making sure that all my people have opportunities. And so I said, I'm so grateful for you at my ripe old age, giving me the chance to do that. And so, yeah, it's, you know, it's, and that's to me, that that's the community care. That's the community care. And it's also a testament to women, right? Having each other's backs. Yeah. Women of color having each other's backs. So it's been an amazing two years. Yes. I'm so happy for you. I love everything. All of this manifestation work. That's definitely something that I really resonate with and understand and just, you know, what you were saying about, you know, putting the go fund me out there and still getting everything you needed just in a different way. So I think that's a big part of, of manifestation of when you have a vision and you create a plan, being able to flow with what the universe gives you that actually can sometimes can sometimes be even more than you could have imagined than what you kind of planned for. And then I love the use of the mantra meditations. That's something also that I have gotten into and even gotten trained in now as a rotation teacher. Yeah. Nice. Meditation uses mantras in this way because so some of the science, if anybody is interested, it's called the reticular activating system. And basically it's this part of our brain that allows for a type of signal, a type of GPS coordinates input for us. Yeah. It's like when a dog gets a scent and then is able to kind of have that scent available and what it's able to be looking for and finding outside in the world. So in that same way, when we use mantras, when we use an affirmation, when we visualize something very specifically, we are calling that energy into our own. And therefore start to notice it when it's around us. So maybe it always was there. Maybe there was always someone who had information or who was the next step to something that you were looking for, but you never had the conversation about it. Or maybe you end up going to an event that just intuitively calls to you and you sit next to the person that exactly is needing, is giving you what you need. So that's the beauty and the work of this affirmations of this meditation of this kind of calling in and really focusing in our power as humans. Yeah. So I'm so happy for you and all of the amazing success you've had, the abundance, the shift into that perspective. And I also will say Tara Moses, amazing person. We've had her on the podcast. Oh, nice. Episode two. I totally will. I totally will. We did an interview or what do you call it? Instagram live with her. I think on opening night when we did her show. I love her. Yeah. And I've read all of her plays at our NPX. I've read every single one. They're just so great. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I also would love to tap more into the conversation on fundraising. I think, yeah, let's like get into a little offering of tips because you have some information on grant writing and I can definitely share it on the individual giving. So the crowdfunding actually have an article that I wrote a couple of years ago interviewing the movement theater company and giving 10 tips for crowdfunding campaigns because actually the successful campaigns worked in a similar way that you ended up working with in terms of having people that were already organizations or people that were already kind of committed to the project before launching the crowdfunding campaign. And this actually functions a lot in the way that individual and fundraising strategies and departments work. This is from my learnings from graduate school and from working at the public theater actually. Yeah. Oh, nice. So there's basically strategy that goes on before you even go public about fundraising campaigns. So this is where also if you're able to secure a matching gift, so someone who is going to match a certain amount of donations, you're able to then actually bring that in into the crowdfunding space. And a lot of people are very motivated by the idea and the knowing that their donation will be worth double in terms of if they give this money will be matched. And so there's that tip. There's also letting people know about your crowdfunding campaign before you launch it so that you have people that are already going to donate in those first few days. I'm going to write these tips. They're such good tips. I'll add the link in the show notes as well. Yeah. There's so much strategy, so much support that you can have over individual giving and really all of these aspects of leadership. I think with this community aspect too for listeners to really open yourself up to receiving support, receiving wisdom as leaders, as founders, we are often called to do a lot, if not everything. So there's plenty of things that we can turn to people who have done these things, who have experienced, who have the wisdom and receive that. So now I'll pass it to you. And if you'd like to share some of the tips you got on grant writing. I mean, I would say, because I'm not a huge grant writer and I'm not, I would say that particular grant, the reason that I applied for it was because it was an individual artist grant and you got to just propose the project you wanted to. You didn't have to fit into a box, which for me is really challenging. I want organizations that I work with to organically create from the heart what they want not to try to check off boxes. And so that's what drew me to that particular grant. So I had an advising session and going in, I knew that I had two ideas in mind. And I knew that whether or not I got the grant, I was still going to do those projects. And I think that for me was like, you know, we either are going to get this support or we're not, but we're still going to forge forward and we're going to do the project. We're going to figure out how to do it. So I proposed two projects. And I spent most of the advising session talking about one particular project and the advisor was so generous with their time and advice. And that project was quantum, right? By Tara Moses. That was that. I think it was before I set up the GoFundMe. I don't remember. And I said, so I want to do this play. And the very end we're about, our advising session went on for a while because we were having such a great conversation. And then at the end, I said, oh, let me just tell you about my other idea. I propose the idea and he goes, that's the one apply for that. And I was like, okay. So he gave me, he talked to me for like maybe a minute and then he had to go because we had already been going over time. And I was like, okay. So I think one, it was a clear idea. Two, it was like such, from such an authentic place. And three, it was, I already knew I was going to do it regardless of whether or not I got external funding or this particular grant. And that ended up being my project, just to pinch the uterus play about health advocacy around women and women plus people with uteruses, reproductive care, you know, at outpatient appointments. And so yeah, so we got the grant for that. And again, I knew it was a project that I was going to do regardless because it didn't check off boxes for others. It was aligned with what we wanted to do with matriarchy theater. Yeah. I love that. Yeah. It also kind of reflects back to this manifesting speech I was talking about in terms of, you know, you have what you are wanting to do. And so with that core, you're able to attract the things that will help you by sticking to that, you know, that core thing of what you're looking to manifest. Yeah. And I love the tips of, you know, seeing if you're the right fit energetically, you can kind of almost know when you read a description, is this right for me? Are they looking for something else, you know, kind of almost scanning through if it's something that, you know, has some red flags or, you know, all kinds of things that you might want to be aware of when you're applying for a grant in terms of what do they require for the reporting. Similarly, the match, like a matching aspect to it where you need to be raising funds for it to be able to get that, which I think also ties to your second recommendation around really knowing that you're going to do a project and having other options out there that can actually, for a lot of grant opportunities, really support your application because whether they have a matching component to it that you do need to be able to, you know, have other funds coming in. So there's this aspect of saying, you know, these are the other ways that we're getting support for this. These are other partners that are already with us. These are the ways that we're going to do this. And so a lot of times grants and organizations and people want to support something that is being supported by others. And so kind of joining in on the community aspect of being able to co-produce something. So, yeah, I love those tips. And I really hope that it helps for people who are listening. Yeah, also, I really love that you were talking about, like, you know, scanning the grant to see if it's right for you. And I think one of the things I always say, my favorite thing about being an artist is that I get to be around other artists. So when we're scanning those, a lot of times I know that if we aren't the right fit that we're sending it to other people because there's enough for everybody. Like there's going to be times when I don't get the funding, but my friend or organizations that I love are getting the funding. And I feel like there's enough for everyone to go around. And so if it's not right for you, send it to the person you think it is, right? Because we're all working to do the same thing, which is bringing beautiful art into the world. Yeah. I love that. And that goes back to what you were saying, too, about the jobs that come around. It's beautiful. Yeah, actually, I have this network of visionaries free community forum that I've started where I can post all kinds of healing and teaching information about this type of work for leaders and founders and visionaries. And then also, there's a one for grant opportunities where I just post all kinds of grant opportunities. I used to have a newsletter, but this I found is a little bit easier for me to just kind of post it in there and then it's on there and anyone can see it, you know, the past straight, too. I always feel so loved when somebody sends me a link to a grant, even if it's like, even if I look at it and I'm like, oh, it's not for me. I just feel so loved when they're like, here, you might qualify for this. I'm like, thank you. I appreciate you thinking about me. Yeah, it's like good energy. It's like receiving that support, that prayer from another that you want to see. Yeah, that belief in faith in your work. Yeah. I have another question for you about your ideas and thoughts around the future of the theater industry as the theater industry evolves. What do you believe it's asking of us as creators and leaders? Your questions are so good. I mean, I think the theater world is such a big entity because the community is so important to me. I don't care to answer to the theater field or the theater world. I care to answer to my community, right? And theater is the means by which we get there. You know, the storytelling is the means by which we get there. I will say that as leaders, when I'm thinking about people who are part of our community, whether they're youth or younger people or older people, you know, they want us to be, for me, when I'm leading, I kind of usually start with like, I'm fallible. I will make mistakes. I don't have all the answers, but I know what my goal is and I know what my mission is and I know that I come with good heart to try to do this thing, you know, and you're welcome to come in and bring your energy, you know. So I think leading in a way where we're human and we show up as our authentic selves and that we're willing to, you know, apologize if we make a mistake and be that human person, but also try to hold ourselves up to a standard where it's not the regular thing that we're making a mistake, but that, you know, we don't have all the answers. I think that's one thing. And I think another thing as a leader is to get out of the way so that other people can lead, right? So I've said since I started Matriarchy is that I'm not building Matriarchy for me, right? I'm building it so I can give it away five, 10 years down the road. We've built this thing together. Now take it if you want it, right? It's just carving out a space that we get to collectively create. And so that we're leading together. Like I might be the person who kind of started the thing, but I can't continue it alone. What is even the point of that? We talk often about the notion of decolonization, right? And I also talk sometimes about a pre-colonized space, right? Where we are flattening the hierarchy. And that's something that I try to do within Matriarchy is we definitely have people who have roles as the director or the artistic director or the lead or whatever the case may be. But when it comes to the community care, we try to flatten the hierarchy while also having channels in place should, you know, we just did just a pinch and we had a wonderful artist, Bessie Zoldo come in and talk consent and boundaries and mental health advocacy and conflict resolution.  You know, if it's an issue with Nicole, you can go to the board. If you have an issue with the board, we don't have a board. We have a, we have a, we have Guiding Matriarch. You can go to a Guiding Matriarch. If not, then you can go talk to Bessie so that everybody feels truly cared for and that they have a voice. And so I think it's about, you know, getting out of the way of these notions of what is a leader. Just like I like to get out of the way with the notions of like, what is professional actor? What is a professional theater? My standards are not the standards of a PWI. Like I don't try to align to that. Professional is what we want it to be. What we want it to look like. And so as the theater world evolves, right? I don't think we answer to it. I think the theater world answers to us to a certain degree. Yeah. That's beautiful. Thank you so much. Right. I have one more question for you. So reflecting on your journey, what has been the most rewarding aspect of carving your own path and building your own table? Yeah. I would say, man, it's been a long journey. Yeah. But very, very intentional. I think one of the things when we are building our own tables or creating our own path, it's because we know that the other tables don't fit. Like I didn't even want to be at the other tables. You know what I mean? A lot of us aspire to the X, Y and the Z because that's what it looks like. I never really did. I just wanted to show up as myself. And so I said no to a lot of projects because they didn't align with my core and my heart. And I've had conversations with other theater makers where it's like they feel like their career suffered because of having to say no to things that they believed in. And I certainly feel like, yeah, I had an intention to show up a way that I wanted to show up. And so I had to say no to a lot of things. And I'm okay with that because I also have the other end of the spectrum where I have friends that say they're doing well in their career, but they had to kind of compromise who they were. And so they're in a place right now where they're really, really going up against a battle with a lot of just different things. And I think that we can all understand that. And I didn't want that to be my battle. I was like, that's not my battle. Why should I be battling that when I could be creating something beautiful? And so for me, the biggest reward, and I've really recognized this the last couple of years as I've been pushing forward with matriarchy and also in my freelance work as a director and a dramaturg and an intimacy choreographer, I remember one day sitting in rehearsal and I was so grateful to myself, to my ancestors, to my grandmother, to my family, to my mom for making sure that I always showed up as myself. Because here I am sitting in this rehearsal room, being who I am and showing up 100% as Nicole, authentically Nicole. It took me a really long time to get here and get in this room. But I'm me. And they're embracing me and accepting me and seeing me as me. And that is the biggest reward. And that's what I want for my other theater workers, community in matriarchy theater.  And we get to create what theater is. And nobody's going to tell us what it is. We get to say what it is. Yeah. Yes. Amazing. Thank you so much, Nicole. Yes, everyone, please go ahead and follow, subscribe, like, matriarchy theater. You can find them on Instagram, right? And thank you so much again for joining us today. It's been such a pleasure and honor. Thank you. It's been such an honor and I'm just really grateful for this time with you. Thank you so much, Yura. Have an idea for an exciting podcast essay or TV event the theater community needs to hear. Visit howlround.com and submit your idea to this digital commons.


Hello everyone, this is financial author Amit Dhan of amitdhan.com. On this channel you'll find financial travel and more videos just like the one you're watching right now. If you like what you see, please give it a thumbs up and consider subscribing. We've got basically good stuff. What is it called? And then essentially down from the police college, we've got the black things in here. It's kind of an X-ray technician. They're very heavy. We've got normal X-ray sources. So we've got an X-ray and different systems. And all sorts of different threats. And then we also do all the chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear response as well. So we've got different equipment later. The hazmat ID, this thing will pretty much tell us any solid, any liquid. It's in the library, right? Our personal protective equipment for breathing apparatus. And that's the thing. If it's just a bond call, we're wearing this helmet. But if it's a chemical call and we have to wear a CBA, we wear this helmet. It buys us a little bit more room and the mask could go on. And I like how you said, well, if it's just a bond call. It was so cute. But it's so... It's so much more dangerous for the kids on the road than it is...


Good evening. We welcome all of you back, and we are continuing our series in eschatology. And we're going to be looking at the eschatology of first and second Thessalonians. So I'm going to preach this sermon, and then I won't be back for like a month. So I hope you have good memory. You remember all these things. Let's begin with a word of prayer, and we will get right into our study. Heavenly Father, we thank you again for gathering us together this evening. We come to you knowing that we need your spirit. We need your spirit to help us understand and apply and preach and explain your word accurately. Help us this evening. Help me to communicate these things with accuracy and may your Son be honored in my preaching and in our hearing. Amen. So I want to begin sort of lecturing at first and then preachy the second half. I want to give a little bit of the historical background for the Thessalonian epistles. A little bit of the history and set the letters in their context so that as we get into the various texts, we have some framework, some idea of what's going on in the epistles, and we're not just jumping into texts and making assumptions. So first, the historical context. The city of Thessalonica. We'll start with the city of Thessalonica. In the first century, the city was identified as the metropolis, or the mother city. Its location was a major factor in the city's prominent status. But the city had one of the best, if not the best, natural harbors in the Aegean Sea. Cassander, the king of the ancient Greek kingdom of Macedonia, from 305 to 297, brought 26 villages together in the town of Thermes, or Thermi, and he named that new city Thessalonica after his wife. The city also enjoyed access to major travel routes. It was situated near the Via Ignatia, and it connected to many major cities in the Macedonian region and to ports that traveled directly to Rome. So it had a port, it had this major road running through it, but not only this, additionally, geographical contributions to the city's wealth were abundant. There were fertile plains, there were abundant rivers, rich mineral deposits of gold, silver, iron, copper, lead, and vast forests that provided timber for building. So we're not looking at Galilee. This was a major metropolis. The estimated population of the city is in the tens, 200,000, making it one of the largest cities in the Roman Empire. With these factors in mind, it's no wonder that Rome had a very strong connection to the city. And because of this connection to Rome, because of its wealth, because of its location, it was a center for wealth, culture, and cult. Religiously, pluralism was widespread. Over 25 different god, heroes, or personifications were worshipped in the city so that Paul can say in 1 Thessalonians 1-9 that the Thessalonians, they turned from serving idols to serve the living and the true god. So very wealthy, very wealthy, a very large, a very influential, and a very religious city. Missions in Thessalonica. Thessalonica was the second major city visited by Paul for evangelistic outreach on his second missionary journey. His time there was short. Turn to Acts chapter 17. In Acts chapter 17, Paul arrives. And most commentators believe that immediately we receive the timeframe Paul arrived there. So in Acts chapter 17, beginning at verse 1, now when they had passed through Ancipolis, or Anphopolis, and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where there was a synagogue of the Jews. And Paul went in, as was his custom, and on three Sabbath days, he reasoned with them from the scriptures. So more than likely, the amount of time Paul spent in Thessalonica was three Sabbaths, maybe a little more. He spent a few weeks, three weeks, four weeks maybe, and then had to leave town because of persecution. Let's read verses three and following, two and following. And Paul went in, as was his custom, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the scriptures, explaining and proving that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead and saying, this Jesus whom I proclaim to you is the Christ. And here are the results of his preaching, verse four. And some of them were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas, as did a great number of the devout Greeks and not a few of the leading women. But, and this was from the very beginning of his time doing ministry, the issue he's going to pick up in the epistles. The Jews were jealous and taking some wicked men of the rabble. They formed a mob and set the city in an uproar and attacked the house of Jason, seeking to bring them out to the crowd. And when they could not find them, they dragged Jason and some of the brothers before the city authorities shouting, these men who have turned the world upside down have come here also. And Jason has received them and they are all acting against the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, Jesus. We would be afraid if we preached and this happened, but this is what regularly happened when the apostles preached. They turned cities upside down. Verse 8, and the people and the city authorities were disturbed when they heard these things and when they had taken money as security from Jason and the rest, they let them go. Verse 10, the brothers immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea. And when they had arrived, they went into the Jewish synagogue. So very brief time spent there. Immediate results of the preaching. Some Jews are converted, a great number of Greeks, a substantial number of leading women.  The apostle made at least two other visits to the area on his third missionary journey. Acts chapter 20 verses 1 through 4 records that. Also, he may have visited the Thessalonian church after his first Roman imprisonment. So Paul was there a very short period of time.  That's what sums up his period of time there. Preaching the gospel and persecution. Paul writes first and second Thessalonians, more than likely from Corinth, where the apostles spent about 18 months on his second missionary journey. So soon after leaving, he writes. He's in Corinth in Acts chapter 18. The date of that he wrote the two epistles are very close. He wrote from anywhere from 49 to 52 AD. The epistles are written, both of them. Paul's 18 months in Corinth can be dated pretty accurately because of the ruler during that period of time. If you look at chapter 18 verse 2. I'll read from verse 1. After this, Paul left Athens and went to Corinth. And he found a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla. Because Claudius had commanded all the Jews to leave Rome. A very specific dating there. So we know when he was in Corinth, chronologically, after his time in Thessalonians. And this is about the period of time where he writes back to them. Now the purpose. Paul is writing the epistles to address three issues. The first is persecution. They're still being persecuted. So if you turn to 1 Thessalonians chapter 3. 1 Thess chapter 3. I'll read verses 1 through 4. Therefore, when we could bear it no longer, we were willing to be left behind at Athens alone. And we sent Timothy, our brother and God's co-worker in the Gospel of Christ to establish and exhort you in your faith. That no one be moved by these afflictions. For you yourselves know that we are destined for this.  Just as it has come to pass and just as you know. So they saw that Paul's time there. When he began to preach, when the first converts of the church came to Christ, it was in the midst of persecution. They warned them about these things when he was there. And they see that when he left, the same things continue to happen. It's picked up also in 2 Thessalonians. You go to 2 Thessalonians chapter 1 verse 5. There's steadfastness in faith, he says in verse 4. Paul says to the church, Therefore we ourselves boast about you in the churches of God for your steadfastness and faith in all your persecutions and in the afflictions that you are enduring. So this is happening to them now. They're currently suffering these things. But there were also some ethical concerns. Whether it was because of Paul's instruction, or maybe just because of their own personal inclination, the Thessalonians were big on eschatology. And they felt that there was this Christ in return at any moment. And because of this, this had a negative effect ethically on some in the church. Look at 1 Thessalonians chapter 4 verse 10. I'll read from verse 9. Now concerning brotherly love, you have no need for anyone to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another. For that indeed is what you are doing to all the brothers throughout Macedonia. Macedonia is the region, and that's the region. But we urge you brothers to do this more and more, and to aspire to live quietly, to mind your own affairs, and to work with your own hands as we instructed you, so that you may walk properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one. So they were very charitable, but here you have a small hint and reminder, remember to work. Don't just stay home reading your Bible, waiting for Jesus. You have to work. Look at chapter 5, 1 Thessalonians 5 and verse 14. And we urge you brothers, admonish the idol, encourage the faint hearted, help the weak, be patient with them. So in 1 Thessalonians, you have these sort of hints, right, about their ethic. Now look at 2 Thessalonians chapter 3 and verse 6. Now we command you brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you keep away from any brother who is walking in idleness and not in accord with the tradition that you received from us. For you yourselves know how we ought to, how you ought to imitate us, because we were not idle when we were with you. Nor did we eat anyone's bread without paying for it, but with toil and labor we worked night and day that we might not be a burden to any of you. It was not because we do not have the right, but to give you in ourselves an example to imitate. For even when we were with you, we would give you this command, if anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat. For we hear that some among you walk in idleness, not busy at work, but busy bodies. Now such persons we command and encourage in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly and to earn their own living. So there was this ethical concern. So first issue is persecution. Second is ethical concerns, ethical concerns. And then third, eschatology. And our focus for the next three, maybe four sermons, will be the eschatological concerns. Paul was confident in their knowledge of the times and seasons of the coming of the Lord. Look at verse fast five. Now concerning the times and seasons, brothers, you have no need to have anything written to you. For you yourself are fully aware that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. So they knew, they were instructed, but there may have been some nuances that weren't clear in their mind, some things that they didn't quite understand. The wording in the text that we'll look at this evening highlights that. So they were knowledgeable. They knew Paul was confident. They had received repeated instruction by Paul about these things. Their knowledge of these events was not intended to be solely intellectual. But their knowledge of the future was intended to bring comfort, purity, and hope to the church. Look at verse nine, chapter five, first test five. For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us. So that whether we are awake or asleep, we might live with him. Therefore, encourage one another and build up one another just as you are doing in light of these eschatological teachings. Look also at second test two, second test two and verse 13. In light of his teaching concerning the coming of our Lord and our being gathered together with him. Then in verse 13 he says, But we are always to give thanks to God for you, brothers, beloved by the Lord. Because God chose you as first fruits to be saved through sanctification by the spirit and belief in the truth. To this he called you through our gospel so that you may obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. So then, brothers, stand firm and hold to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by our spoken word or by our letter. Now, may our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father who loved us and gave us eternal comfort and good hope through grace. Comfort your hearts and establish them in every good work and word. You see, comfort, good works, purity, all of these things is what a firm grasp on eschatology should do for the believer and should do for churches. It's not so that we're able to argue with each other about times and seasons. No, the purpose is purity, hope, comfort. Paul addresses three specific concerns related to eschatology in the epistles. First and second test.  And 1 Thessalonians 4.13 in following addresses this particular issue. The coming of the Lord in 1 Thessalonians 5.1 in following. And the events that occur at the coming of the Lord. 2 Thess 2.1-2. We'll take them one at a time. And this evening we're going to look at 1 Thessalonians 4.13-18. 1 Thessalonians 4.13-18. I'll read the text. But we do not want you to be uninformed brothers about those who are asleep. That you may not grieve as those as others who do not have hope or who have no hope. 4 Since we believe that Jesus died and rose again even so through Jesus.  For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord. That we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord. Will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command. With the voice of an archangel. With the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive or left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will always be with the Lord. Therefore encourage one another with these words. So first the concern. In verse 13 we have the concern and then the need to address the concern. So the concern really if we wanted to make it a question.   And Paul wants the believers to have assurance, assurance of the truth. So he says, but we do not want you to be uninformed brothers. Theocritous, a Greek poet said, hopes are for the living. The dead are without hope. The gospel shatters this earthly platitude. Even the dead in Christ have hope. What a wonderful savior. Some unbiblical thinking crept in among the believers there. So they're picking up some bad theology somehow. It's not clear how this may have happened. There was fear that their brothers and sisters would not partake. They would not be partakers of the glory to be revealed at Christ's advent. Second advent. Paul wants the Thessalonians and then by inspiration of the spirit. He wants us to have confident assurance about those who have fallen asleep. That's the terminology that he uses about those who are asleep. Commonly refers to the dead in Christ as having fallen asleep as he does here in 13. He uses it again in verse 14. At the end there have fallen asleep again in verse 15. For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord will not receive those who have fallen asleep. And in chapter 5 verse 10 he uses it again. Who died for us so that whether we are awake or asleep we might live with him. And then throughout the other Pauline epistles this is the terminology that he uses for the death of believers. As one commentator notes it implies existence, rest, and eventually awakening to refreshed activity. That's what it implies. Yet he never uses this language to speak of Christ. Never. Christ doesn't fall asleep. He says our Lord died. He died. So in chapter 14 and chapter 5 of verse Thessalonians verses 9-11 Christ died. In our greatest pains and most grievous temptations let this truth support us. We have to learn how to draw comfort from biblical propositions. Biblical truths carry weight. This truth carries a massive amount of weight. Christ died. You know what that means for the believer?  I will never, never walk through that curtain of wrath. He bore that wrath for me. As he hung on the cross, as he died, as he was buried, the Lord crushed him. He became an offering for our guilt. My guilty soul was delivered from the wrath of God because Christ died.  For the believer we sleep when we die. Death has no sting. It is the door to permanent sinless fellowship with God. That's what death is. Death is just a door and it ushers us into the presence of God. Our sinful flesh is put to death and we enter into everlasting life. We must not fear death, not our own death, not the death of any other saint. Christ died that we might never taste death. We can say with Paul, death, where is your victory? Death, where is your sting? God has given us victory over death through our Lord Jesus Christ. So Paul adds, and then really here in the second part of the verse, the need to address their concern. He has a particular concern because of their bad theology, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. Do not sorrow as those who have no hope. If you're here this evening and you are not a Christian, I do not know how you can live in hopelessness. The unbeliever is quintessentially the hopeless. You have no peace in this life and nothing but eternal terror to look forward to in the life to come. It doesn't matter how old you are and you're sitting here today. The oldest person, the youngest person in here. If you are not a Christian, you have no hope. Your intellect, your wealth, whatever it is you think you have is done. It's worthless. Why would you stay in such a wretched condition? God has provided hope in the person of His Son.  In addressing the believers in Thessalonica, in verse 14, we receive some instruction. Look at verse 14. So He says, don't be like those who have no hope since we believe that Jesus died and rose again.  For since we believe or since we have believed that Jesus died and rose again, this is the prerequisite for being hopeful in this life. Faith in Jesus. Faith in a person and faith in the work that He accomplished together, not separate. Faith in the person. We believe that Jesus died and rose again. Because of that, we can have hope. If you are not a Christian, that is the only hope you have. Turning from your sins, believing upon the Lord, trusting with confident assurance that His death and His resurrection give you a perfect standing before God. Find peace for your soul in the person and work of Christ. He was raised to justify sinners. Resolve today to come to God in Christ. Have all your sins canceled. Enter into everlasting life freely by the merit of Jesus. And as He was raised, Paul says in verse 14, even so, or in the same manner, the destiny of the Christian is certain. I don't know what's going to happen tomorrow, but I know what's going to happen when Jesus comes back. And so does every believer. Those who have fallen asleep in Christ and those that will be alive at His coming have the same faith. Resurrection glory. Glory. So Paul then, Paul now in verses 15 through 17, he gives us the order or the sequence of bodily resurrection. So granted, when we die now, we enter directly into the presence of God and of our Savior. And are there with all of the saints from history worshipping and praising, but we anticipate something better. The intermediate state isn't it? That's like, well, the spirit is our down payment now, but that's like an extended vacation before we arrive at our permanent home. That's what the intermediate state is. Verse 15. So here's the sequence. Listen to the words of Paul. He says, for this we declare to you by a word from the Lord that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep.  That's what Paul is saying. Verse 16. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command. It's going to be loud with the voice of an archangel. And with the sound of the Trump of God, it's going to be loud. Everybody's going to know, right? Everybody's going to know. And the dead in Christ will rise first. So at that point, then the earth, as it were, is going to give birth. And all of these dead saints are going to be joined to glorified bodies. I don't know how that's going to happen. If like their skeletons come out of the tumors, I don't know how that's going to happen. But they're first. So Jesus comes in glory, right? And I forget the name of the hymn, but it's my favorite hymn. The site is glorious, right? The vault of heaven is already like it's ringing. It's exploding with praise. The angels. Everybody up there is praising the Savior. And then heaven is going to rip open one day and He's going to come.  It's glorious. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will always be with the Lord. Amen.  I don't know exactly how that's going to look like, but they go first and then we come. And we will always be with the Lord. When He is revealed from heaven, those who have died in Christ and we who are alive will be like Him, for we will see Him as He is. Think about this. It goes with our sermon this morning. Today, if you want to grow in Godliness, if you want to be sanctified, what must you do?  And it's in this word, right? So we study the scriptures to see the Lord Jesus Christ. To see, to understand with greater clarity the perfection of His work and to learn how to apply the benefits of His redemptive work to our own lives. We search the scriptures. On the day He returns, we will see the manifestation of His glory. We will see it. And what happens is sanctification to the nth degree, glorification. The way we are sanctified today is the way we will be glorified on that day by beholding Jesus. But there will be so much glory that we will be transformed. This is sure and certain. As sure as I am that this pulpit is here, I am certain that I'll be raised this way. This is sure and certain through Jesus Christ. God declared Him to be His Son in power according to the spirit of holiness by raising Him from the dead.  So every Christian, Nosa, James, Taxidora, Spurgeon, maybe Whitfield, well, maybe Wesley is what I meant. Maybe Wesley, maybe Wesley, but every saint. And then look at verse 18. This is comfort. Therefore, encourage one another with these words. This is what we need to encourage each other with right here. This kind of stuff. Man, brother, I'm doing so bad. My health, my toes, my hair is falling out. I've got all these problems. Do you know one day Jesus is going to come back and He is going to be so glorious that He will transform your lowly body into a body like His. That's glorious. That is glorious. And we should comfort each other with these things. I'll finish with the words or with the comments of John Gil on verse 18. Nothing can yield more true and solid comfort under all the trials and troubles of this life, under all diseases and disc tempers of body, under all afflictions and persecution for Christ's sake, under the loss of near and dear relations. And in the view of death and eternity, this is solid comfort. Here, let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank You for this time together. And we ask that You would comfort us with these things and teach us how to comfort one another. In Christ's name I pray. Amen.


This is Guillermo Sabatier, your host for the show. I am the Director of International Services for the Health and Safety Institute, and this week I am coming at you from Bacaville, California, and I was here for work. I'll be flying back home tomorrow, back to Florida. We were fortunate enough to have avoided the effects of Hurricane Ian, but some folks on the other side of the state were not. So again, thoughts and prayers go to them, and by the time we get back home, we will probably be doing some work in order to assist. So along with those topics today, we're going to be discussing what's next with distributed energy resources. It's rather interesting the fact that we're looking at a potential use of a resource that could be useful in these sort of situations, such as a hurricane or a system-wide blackout. That's the first thing that comes to mind, right, is having the ability to be able to be self-sustaining, the fact that you're a resource, you have both solar, the ability to generate, and then you also have storage, whether it's a battery or in the form of an EV, like your vehicle, or something like a Tesla Powerwall, for example, that ends up, you have that deployed in your house. Either way, combine those together and you have yourself a pretty reliable resource that should keep you running for a few hours at least, sometimes longer. One of the things we're seeing now is a lot of incentives, especially here in California, for example, I'm seeing quite a bit of rooftop solar everywhere, and I see the effects of that as far as how that is dispatched and how they operate that from the perspective of a bulk electric system. So PG&E along with other larger utilities are currently in the process of carrying out some testings of pilots on how to dispatch distributed energy resources and integrate that into the grid, more so like a partnership between the prosumers, which is both a consumer and producer of energy, and the utilities themselves. So right now they're undergoing that pilot and ideally what they're going to end up doing is using those resources as another virtual power plant. Now in Florida, one of the larger utilities, Florida PowerLite, has currently been offering an incentive program that will pretty much cover the cost of a level two charger and meaning the materials, the installation, the permitting, the labor, and they will give you unlimited off-peak charging, and all they require is a commitment of 10 years and the monthly payment of that. It's about $36 a month, between $35 and $40 a month. So that's really a bargain because an example would have been like a Tesla Model 3 at about 2,000 miles a month, daily charging, where I'm at, it'll run you about $120 a month charge, and that's your energy expenditure, right, for charging that vehicle pretty much every day. So at 2,000 mile commute monthly, for example, that's about, on that EV, it's about $120 a month. So even at that rate, being charged $36 a month for that unlimited off-peak charging is an incredible bargain. Now, the incentive there, of course, is they will be able to control the time and rate of charging, especially off-peak charging, but what I anticipate will be the next step in the revolution will be coming up with a partnership and agreement with the automakers that will allow them to then dispatch those devices. And I say the word devices, meaning the EV batteries, right, they'll be able to dispatch them using some kind of software that they'll agree on, and ultimately use that as a resource, depending on what the utility needs. Well, of course, that could be anything from supplementing their generation resources or the way to even providing voltage or frequency support. The other stream case would be naturally using that far off into the future, perhaps as a black star resource or something to recover from a blackout, which becomes interestingly important during these events where you have natural disasters. Now, on the other side of the spectrum, of course, is the challenge and the risk of having an energized conductor from the customer side back into the system that definitely presents a certain level of risk for utility personnel, especially when they're working in restoration. So there will be some kind of interlock or lockout where they will have to be somewhere in the some breaker, some breaker on the customer's meter side will have to be opened automatically, and that will prevent that backfeed from getting into the system. So there we see that particular case for that. And I'm suspecting a lot of different utilities are going to start doing this as well. We just saw some of the co-ops were also taking advantage of some of the incentives offered as well, not just the level to chargers, but also so they were getting into the fiber communications business. So when they're deploying fiber optic communications systems out in the rural areas through their distribution circuits, and then they're getting involved with the telecommunications part of the market, then there's definitely an opportunity there for not just the ability to get into the high speed internet, but also the ability to control all of these resources, much more efficient. Clearly, the ability to do this depends a lot on high speed internet and getting the telemetry back and getting the control from the control centers down to the individual prosumers or distributed energy resources. So where does this leave us as a, I guess, as a nation, right? Ideally, what we're looking at the transition from where we're at today to eventually having zero admissions generation. And that is impossible to do right now with the step change. You just cannot go totally also or all wins without having a certain type of mix in your portfolio. So some of the viable transition generation resources could be natural gas like we're using now, and we're using a lot more of it. But the idea in the next few years, we'll probably be looking at small modular reactors, which the Department of Energy had just approved several designs. So we'll be seeing a few of these deployed the next few years, particularly smaller SMRs, small modular reactors, SMRs that will be probably about the size of 20 or 40 megawatts. And those could be deployed pretty much anywhere in the country, close to load centers, specifically, and varied on the script and not a large footprint. The other interesting thing about them is that they're completely modular, which means they'll be able to be once the fuel expends and those fuels last over a decade or more. They'll be able to pull that modular reactor out replaced to the new one and so on and so forth. The other thing is that technology is going to be improving. We are quite a bit behind the rest of the world when it comes to nuclear technology development, along with training that the personnel that comes along with that. So as we progress forward, hopefully this will be a change for us as we're better positioned globally to be a major energy producer. Now, as we're looking at other events throughout the world, and I'm sure you're familiar with what's happened with the Nord pipelines up in the Baltic Sea, for us as an opportunity to be able to help Europe with our natural gas or even our LNG, which has to be shipped over there in maritime commerce, which of course adds greatly to the price of that commodity. So for them, getting natural gas from Russia was inexpensive and always available, whereas now their natural gas has to come in the form of LNG literally shipped from the US to Europe. So that makes a price way more expensive. So hopefully with that, that'll give them a better chance of doing well this winter because they do expect a rough winter. Now, given the fight that, for example, Germany has had some severe issues with their expected energy supplies, France has stepped up and has been providing them with a lot of electricity, mainly from their nuclear fleet. I mean, France, I think it's the majority of their portfolio runs on nuclear energy. And those generators are dispatchable, meaning that they don't sit at base load 24 hours a day for months at a time. They are dispatched a lot of cases just like a conventional internal combustion or fossil fired plants, which natural gas or anything else like that. So usually a lot of resistance from that in nuclear, but France is really at the cutting edge of nuclear energy. So the South Koreans have done a credit good job as well. Now, they installed two reactor unit over there in Dubai and they're doing the same thing for Saudi Arabia pretty soon. So as this begins proliferate, you're going to see the resurgence of nuclear energy back again, mainly because of the fact that we don't have the resources to be able to look or rather the reliability and the renewable resources that we have right now. Now, that being said, I mean, it's not every place will be as inviting for a large nuclear site. So that's why the SMRs may become more attractive in markets like ours throughout the country. And so what else can we do in really reality, right, rather than relying on gas, trying to build up a nuclear site that's dispatchable, or dealing with the variability of renewable resources? Well, one of the answers here is the distributed energy resources and as as more and more buildings have them, the fact that they'll become more of a viable resource when they're aggregated throughout the country. And a lot of utilities just seem to start are looking at that with a serious application as a as a reliable resource. Now, that is challenges. I mean, for an EV, you can probably run run a whole house for quite a quite a few hours and looking at the example of the Ford Lightning pickup truck. And based on the capacity of that vehicle has, you know, they can they can run the house typical 1500 kilowatt load, right, and then household for a few hours, which really is enough to get through like a minor disturbance, right? But something like what happened in Florida, it's going to take a whole lot more to be able to manage that. I mean, possibly if if the solar panel survived the wind damage, and that's a big if then you can then hopefully you charge your batteries on a daily basis, and then you can rely on that the rest of the day. But unlikely that you'll be able to sustain yourself 24 hours, not in the current state of technology or efficiency of panels, or unless you have a large enough battery bank, you continually charge but with motor loads like running air conditioning, or or something else that may take a long time. Which brings me to my next point. There is the possibility of using a lot of heat pumps out there in colder environments. So those heat pumps themselves become a potential source of stored energy as well. So a lot of different options that can be used at this time and they're being looked at. And one of the challenges that that we see, of course, is the the ability to dispatch these resources. So currently at this time, I see rooftop solar or or the utilities where they're using where it comes to storage is naturally it's being viewed as negative load. So when you have when you have the load during the day and the your resources are putting up energy from that regarding all you'll see it is a decline in load and sometimes that load drops pretty low between the hours of 10 and three and 10 am and three in the afternoon. Well, that's when the sun is brightest. So the challenge there is to treat it as a virtual power plant, which again, is the aggregation rule of FERC issued an order last year about a year before last, I'm sorry, about order 2222 allowing aggregation. But no, that's yet to be seen as far as that develops. So having so next question that we have, right, is running off of these distributed energy resources, right? So the dispatch ability is one aspect of it. But what happens when when all this flow coming in for the distribution network is flowing its way back into the transmission system or the bulk electric system, right? So eventually, that's going to cause either some kind of instability, or it's going to prove very difficult to be able to plan or run system studies with that particular resource in mind. So especially when almost every house out there is going to have this, right? Sooner or later, a lot of the majority of homes here in California, from what I'm seeing, you know, have have solar panels. I mean, it's only a matter of time before they begin to install batteries, or they begin to hook up their use their EVs as a resource. And they combine all that together and you have the ER distributed energy resource. So the next step in this case really is coming up with really it's getting the automakers to agree to be able to dispatch the cars as a dispatchable resource. Naturally, you know, that could that could affect the way they they apply warranty, so those devices that make sure in the life of the certain batteries. So of course, that there's going to be an incentive where the utilities will probably pay for availability. And they'll certainly pay a little more perhaps for the use and the dispatch of that resource at that time. But right now, not a lot of automakers have agreed to to make to make this available, much less agree on a common protocol to be able to run these resources. But that's coming. That's that seems to be next on the horizon. And once that hurdle is overcome, I think it's going to be the next phase in the evolution of this particular resource. Now, that's all well and good. But how do you control all these resources? How do you collect all this data real time, manage it, give yourself turn this data into useful information, and then make decisions based on that meaning you have to control the system and that happens second by second, 24 hours a day. So that in itself is going to be a big challenge when it comes to communication and bandwidth for having this sort of visibility and control of all of these resources. So for now, it seems like one of the one of the companies that I think is ahead of the game when it comes to developing this, this is perhaps OATI. They're they've always been ahead of everything else when it comes to managing energy transactions. And they themselves are already quite involved in the distributed energy resource management systems, software. So my bet will probably be beyond them. I mean, Siemens is doing its work. National Renewable Energy Labs has also done quite a bit of work with that. And there's at least for any other other organizations that are competing for that, that particular protocol that that will win out over everybody else. So, so we'll see. I mean, there's still some time before we see any viable and useful come out. But no, but I think open access is company is probably going to be ahead of everybody else in this regard. Now, on the topic of the ERs and where we're headed, right? I think to me what's next is really is going to be a partnership. Once all of those technical hurdles are ironed out and overcome, the really is going to be more of a partnership between the utilities. And ultimately, the customers and in the middle of that, it won't it won't longer be just the transmission operators. It'll also be the distribution providers. So now the distribution providers won't only be so watching flow go from from top to bottom in their direction. Now it's going to be flowing both directions. And occasionally, there'll be something as granular as customers buying and selling power from each other on the secondary bus. So that would be interesting. And a lot of those applications will more than likely be run on a mobile platform, or at least you'll be able to access it on a mobile platform. Clearly, there's going to be some hardware that operates behind the meter at the customer side. And that, of course, always links up to the utility. And at the same time, you will need a lot of bandwidth. But one of the things that that that is being foreseen is really having that kind of flexibility and availability to be able to sell and share or do peer to peer energy trading between neighbors, so to speak. The next stage of that will be, of course, selling buying into or participating in a larger aggregator market, where you are one of thousands of people that are throwing your few kilowatts into this larger pool. And that aggregator is a virtual power plant that will be deployed somewhere in the system. So we'll see what happens then. Of course, my biggest concern of all really with all these developments is first and foremost will always be cybersecurity. Once you begin to introduce always different access points, you know, now you have a real challenge when it comes to not just keeping everybody out, but the sort of damage that this could this could incur on a system, meaning you have one dominant platform that runs all of these aggregators or even all of these smaller DERs. Can you imagine that particular platform being compromised and then they're able to control the input and the output of those resources? That could really cause some damage in the system. So hopefully that's that's what I think would be one of the one of the biggest risks at this time. I mean, once we get past all those hurdles and then we get the technology ironed out, we get the agreements between the automakers, the battery manufacturers and the utilities, you know, and to the point that you get customers on board with that partnership where they're getting in some kind of equity in that in that participation, whether they're being paid for the energy they sell back or they're being paid for them to absorb all this energy as excess or even being paid to be available, right, for this batch in a system. It could be a matter of both the support or frequency support. Once all that's figured out that that next hurdle really will be will be cybersecurity and hopefully that's being looked at way ahead of everything else because a lot of those competitors that are buying for those protocols, I'm not going to mention the names right now, but a lot of those are working in an open source platform, which is great. We want to share a lot of answers and resources, but that also can introduce the potential for a lot of accidental or even deliberate vulnerabilities that can be later on accessed and used against us or even weaponized. So, I mean, there are a lot of bad actors out there. Some of those are individual hackers, but some of those are also nation states that are that are causing them looking at ways to be able to affect us as a nation. So this could easily be one of those things that gets rolled into the whole national security. I mean, treating energy as a national security policy. So I mentioned that before in previous shows and it's something that they store resonate with in the fact that as we move further along with this tech, it's going to be something even more significant. So, and ideally, we shouldn't completely do away with fossil fuels. There should be like a small minimal base load requirement to have that in order to give ourselves that kind of to give ourselves diversity when it comes to the way we generate energy. Relying too much on one thing is also dangerous. I mean, a lot of utilities right now have a large reliance on natural gas. Of course, natural gas is only makes a fraction of the emissions that oil used to make or carbon for that matter. A lot of utilities have used natural gas to move away from these large emission producing resources. So again, that's been the transition of fuel. And as the years go by, they get a lot cleaner and the natural gas is rather abundant and expensive and it's a lot cleaner than oil and natural gas. But eventually, there is a pressure to get away from that entirely. So we will see where that leads. Right now, we're in a business apparently of selling a lot of natural gas to Europe. So for now that, you know, we're going to be in that business for a while, it seems. Hopefully, nuclear over there makes a comeback. I know that I have it completely retired or dismantled some of the nuclear plants. I think they can still be brought out of mothballs and brought back online, but that wouldn't be, that's not something that will happen right away. So it could be take some time. But along with that, though, I am pretty optimistic that these DERs will be a very viable and significant resource, especially when treated as a partnership between the utilities and all of the consumers. So it seems like a bright future and I really look forward to. Anyway, that's all I have for today. I want to thank you all for taking part and if you have any questions, just make sure you like us, subscribe and write questions and comments and I'll try to get to them and answer them if I can. So thank you again. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. 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