My name is Jen. I'm an assistant audience editor for local here. And I've worked closely on LRM projects for the last two years. I'm joined by Sarah Plustain, who's our deputy editor for local. I'm gonna ask Sarah some frequently asked questions. And if you have any additional ones at any time, please drop them into the chat. We'll either answer them live or Erin Smith, their engagement reporter who's helping run the call will help us get them answered. As an FYI, I am recording this call and you'll receive a link to it after we're done. So Sarah, to kick it off, could you clarify which newsrooms are eligible to apply to this round of applications? Sure, so different rounds of LRM have different criteria, but this one is the best because everyone is eligible. If you're in a local newsroom, you can apply. Great. And when are applications due? So the applications are due on July 5th at 11.59 p.m. So that's one way to spend your holiday weekend. We do have an internal deadline of June 21st, which is not required, but is an opportunity for people to take advantage of some feedback. So if you have a draft ready before June 21st, and wanna send it through, someone on our reporting or editing team will read it and send you a few paragraphs of thoughts about how to strengthen it. Can you talk more about what we're looking for in a project proposal? Sure, so there's a lot more information on our how to apply page, which you should have all received when you got notification about this webinar, but Erin can put, yes, Erin just put the link in the chat, so you can find it there, but I'll run through it anyway. The first thing is we're asking ourselves, is this an accountability project? Do you know that's the harm here? Who's responsible and what needs to be changed? So if you can answer those questions, you're well on your way to developing a proposal that could work. The second thing that we're looking at is local impact. Will this make a difference to your community? Why should it be told there? And why should it be told now? What we're not really looking for is a story that's happening everywhere. That is also happening in your community. So as an example, the first year that the LRN launched, there was a lot of national coverage of opioid addiction and I wasn't in this job at the time, but I understand that there were 18 proposals about opioid abuse one form or another, and they were important stories, but not unique to the community that they were coming from. And so we didn't sign up to work on any of those. I would say a third thing that we need is a clear hypothesis. It's tempting to say, I want to do my reporting and find out whether something's happening, but we want to know that you know that something is in fact happening and you have an idea about why. The fourth thing I would say is having a reporting plan. How are you gonna do this? What kinds of sources do you have? You don't need to tell us who your sources are or what your sources are, but is this a story about documents? Is this a story about public records requests? Is it a story where the human beings are at the heart of it? Is it a combination of both? Is it a data story?  And the last thing that we want to hear about is a little bit about your newsroom, why your best position to tell this story and what you think you could get out of a collaboration with us. Like how would this make the project better if you are gonna work together with ProPublica? Timothy Pratt asked a question. Are freelancers eligible for this funding? So the answer is yes, but the freelancer needs to be working with a newsroom. And if you look on our materials, the how to apply page and screen door, we ask that the application come from a newsroom on behalf of the reporter. And that's because this is really considered a partnership undertaking between a local newsroom and us. So you may have the big idea, you may have done a lot of pre-reporting, but you do need a newsroom to sign on and to submit on your behalf. And Sian Kopp asked, do you accept applications from a newspaper in the US Virgin Islands? We are US territory that is part of the US. Yeah, I got a Slack message just before this saying that we're checking on that. Someone else had asked that or maybe you asked that in another form. So we will get back to you about it. Sian, if you wanna send your question to local.reporting.propublica.org, we will get back to you. Another question we often get is, what should winning reporters expect if they get selected? Sure. So, I mean, first on the nuts and bolts, we pay the salary of the reporter up to $75,000 for the one year starting September 1st through the end of August of next year. Plus there is an allowance for benefits if you're receiving them. You will be assigned an editor on the LRN team, on the Republic of Staff who will work collaboratively with you, with your editor in your newsroom and also work with other members of our teams, whether it's the audience team, that Jan is on or the engagement team, which Erin is on or the data team or other assets that we have that can bring your project forward. What I would say is the goal here is to give each project the individual resources that it needs to be the best project that it can be. And that will take a lot of different forms. But broadly speaking, you're gonna meet once a week with an editor, at least once a week with an editor on our staff to plan out the reporting. It's the project arc. We will help you with public records requests, anything you need, the editor is there to be going to bat for you and for bringing resources that you need. Just to clarify another question that we often get, it is the editor who has to submit the application, right? Yes, so the editor has to submit it, but we understand that you're working together with that editor. It's not like we care who actually wrote it. Anybody can write it. It just has to come from the newsroom because again, this is considered a partnership between the LRN, ProPublica's LRN project and that newsroom. So the worst thing that would happen would be for a reporter to submit and then their newsroom would say like, no, we don't actually want this to happen or whatever. So we need to know that that backing is there. Just one other thing about that too is, we really anticipate this as a 12 month commitment from the reporter and the newsroom for the whole year of the LRN. We know that things will come up, but just in terms of what to expect for the LRN year, our hope is that this opportunity clears the way for reporters to put their energies into this project for the full year and to not be doing other reporting and to really focus for the most impactful reporting they can do. And how much pre-reporting do you look for in the applications? Yeah, that's like my least favorite question, Jan, because it's so complicated. I mean, nobody is going to be able to do a year's worth of reporting before they do their application. On the other hand, you really do need to know enough about your subject to know that what you wanna cover is in fact happening. So for instance, if a source says to you, this terrible thing is happening, you probably need more than one person telling you, you need an idea of, is this true and how will I pursue it and what are the sources that are available to me? It doesn't mean you call every source or request every record. It just means you know that they exist. So then when you're trying to create a pathway forward and talk about it with us as we think about it, there aren't surprises as you go into the project. I mean, I know that it seems like a year is a long time to do reporting on a single subject, but actually it flies. And if you go into it, and then it turns out that your hypothesis was completely wrong, like you're starting, you're set back pretty far.  That doesn't mean there won't be surprises along the way. There will be. But you wanna feel pretty stable when you submit. I'm gonna switch over to the chat real fast. Arno Patreon asked, I applied to the Abrams Fellowship but didn't get in. The EIC of the newspaper I wanna work with this land because of the municipal elections. Can I send the reporting proposal I set for the Abrams Fellowship and get feedback on this already? Or do I need to send it all formally to the application portal before June 21st with the EIC? Oh, sorry for any confusion. No, if the proposals, the draft proposals that you'll get feedback on can just come by email to that same email address local.reporting.propublica.com. And then we'll just email back to you with our thoughts. And so you don't need the editor involved at this stage. I mean, I would say it would be nice to know if the editor is in favor of your doing that. Just internally, that would be a good thing to know. But no, you can just send it through. And can two reporters work on the project or must it only be one? This is from CMCOP. So we can only pay for the salary of one reporter and one reporter will be announced as the LRN member. That said, there are all kinds of permutations. So the newsroom might want two people working on it and have another staff reporter. So what the proposal would put forth is one person's name but in the narrative part of it, you could easily say we intend to do that. We intend to include another, sorry, we intend to include another reporter on this project for the duration of the year. There have been all kinds of different arrangements including freelancers working with the LRN reporter, sometimes a ProPublica staffer will end up reporting with the LRN reporter. There's a lot of flexibility in how the work gets done but the thing that's not flexible is that we only choose one reporter to be the announced kind of winner and we only pay the $75,000 for the one person. And that money goes to the newsroom as like a reimbursement for the salary. And this is from Timothy. Also, Sian, I think I might have been pronouncing your name incorrectly if it's shot, I'm very, very sorry. But another question from the chat group, if you're a freelancer and locate an outlet to work with, how are all the details, resalary, et cetera, determined? So the cap of 75 is as high as we can go but on the application form, which you all have the link to, it says what is your current salary? So basically the freelancer would need to work out an arrangement with the newsroom. One option would be, and this sometimes happens, that they bring you on staff for the year. They pay your benefits and then we pay the 23% benefits amount plus the salary, whatever they agree to pay you directly to the newsroom. If they wanna keep you on as a contract basis, then we would pay the salary as listed on the application up to 75,000, but the benefits would go to the freelance reporter. So it kind of depends on the situation and it just means like talking to that newsroom about what works best for them. Or any editors on the call, they might be wondering if the reporters will keep working for them. Can you speak a little about that? Sure, I mean, this is a question that comes up a lot because partnerships are a little bit complicated. The editor is still the editor, right? It's still your newsroom. This material is not only showing up on ProPublica's website, it is a true partnership. We will be talking as much as the editor wants to be involved and it ranges quite a bit. Some editors are on every call every week and really in the weeds of the reporting, some come to meetings once a month. We always are going to need the editors sign off on the stories and they're bringing their specific knowledge of their communities and their audiences and their needs to the project. What we bring are some of the skills that ProPublica is good at. And so we really do think of it as a collaboration and work together. But yes, I mean, the short answer is the editor is still has the same relationship. The reporter is not on loan to us for a year. We're really getting into this because we know that we can work together and make a bigger and better project together than we could separately. Going back to your project proposal, this is a question from Ulyana in the chat. Does it have to be one reporting idea? Can we submit more than one? It doesn't have to be, but only one project will be selected. You know, we're going to go into the project year knowing what it's going to be about. It sounds to me like a lot of work to develop too, but if you actually last year, I think the last round, I think one newsroom did submit two different proposals with two different reporters, but only one is going to win. So I mean, one thing you could do in that situation is email to the local dot reporting email address and float those ideas and see if you can get some feedback before the deadline. So, you know, that might save a little bit of work on the front end. Another question from Ulyana, which I think you kind of answered and we can also give you an answer directly, Ulyana, but what if for one of the ideas I have, I have the data, but the public record search, but did the public record search, but do not have sources yet? So the question is, she has the idea and did the public record search, but she doesn't have sources yet. You mean like human sources? I mean, everybody who applies is going to have some work behind them and some work ahead of them. I think the proposal is to just put together, you know, to the best of what you know, what you want to investigate and how you'll go about doing it. Of course, like over the course of the year, you will be getting new sources and the story will change and they will take all these kinds of directions. I think it's very good to be transparent about what you know, what you don't know. And if you don't have human sources yet, it's fine to say I don't have the human sources yet, but I would go about getting them. Like that's the part where we need to see that there is actually a pathway forward. Like if there's no one who can talk to you about this, that's gonna be hard to do. So knowing that you have something in mind to get you from here to there is really, really helpful. Another question in the chat, approximately, how many applications for this are received annually? Is this opportunity more competitive than the Abrams Fellowship? I don't actually know about the Abrams Fellowship. I know that a lot of people did apply, but I can't speak to that comparatively. I joined the LRN project in January. So this is the second time I'm going through it, but I understand from my boss that we typically accept five to 10% of applications. So that's sort of a ballpark of what you can expect. And I mean, I should say there are always more applications that we want to take on them. We can, so, you know, it's definitely, there definitely is a lot of need out there. And this goes back to salary compensation. Liana asked, I've spent the past year in grad school and my salary was obviously zero. What is my compensation range? So, wait, so is this person a freelancer or?  If not, you're more than welcome to also email us at local.reporting and we can give you specific advice. Yeah, I mean, I think the thing is that, you know, the reporters are going to be working in partnership with a local newsroom. And I, you know, I think that's something that the person would talk to the newsroom about who, you know, where, what is the local standard? Like I can't possibly know. Like, you know, it would be hard for us to say, like there is a slot on the application and the newsroom would have to work with you to come up with a compensation amount.  A question from Ingrid, by any chance, do you have relationships with that desirous news organizations in different parts of the country? I'm a freelancer and approached a news organization about a month ago. I know the person there a little, the story proposal is a good match for the material. I have bothered her a couple of times since then and still heard nothing about it. I am in Southern California, any counsel? I mean, it's obviously a big country and we know some people and we don't know other people. If you want to send the proposal to us with, you know, a summary or whatever and, you know, and say like I'm having trouble finding a partner for this, you know, we can, you know, put our heads together about whether there's anybody in your region that we could help with between all of us. We do know a lot of people, but we don't know everyone. So all I can say is probably just send an email with the draft proposal. And, you know, if we can help make a match, we will. Pablo asked, when will the final decision on the chosen proposal be announced? I work for the NPR member station in Alaska and brainstorming on an infrastructure story related to the state's ferry system. I'll be traveling on the ferry between Washington, Alaska and mid-July on a pre-planned trip and plan to bring my car here. Long story short, I'm thinking about making a story out of my trip. Would that be too soon before a decision is made for the proposal in mid-July? Yeah. That would be too soon. I mean, the applications are due July 5th and, you know, I would think it typically takes four or five weeks for us to go through all the applications. We do a very thorough process of reading them, all of narrowing them. We do interviews with all the finalists. So I don't think there's any way by mid-July that we would have notifications. It would be sometime in August that you would hear. A question from Michelle. Does the type of publication matter? For example, my story relates to a scandal at the VA hospital and vessel funds, are military news outlets okay? Yeah, I think most outlets are okay. We have a whole cohort of radio outlets now that we're working with. There are small nonprofits with one person working there. There is just a huge range of, and then there's larger newspapers. One of our partners right now is the Philadelphia Inquirer. So I would say, we don't try to limit what kinds of publications are involved. Can the pitch repose stories that are in different beats? Example, police accountability and prison stories, or do they have to be of all one beat? So the point here is to go deep on an accountability story. It's a little hard to tell from the question, Jan, if the beats are overlapping because there's something going wrong there and it is partly whatever, a prison issue and partly a policing issue, obviously formulating a story that's complex is not a problem, but we're not looking for someone who wants to do a little reporting on this subject and then a little reporting on that subject. The idea is to spend the year going deeper on one accountability story. I shouldn't say that, one accountability topic that may turn into multiple stories with multiple angles. And there could be different beats as the question asked that relate to that subject. So I'm trying to sort of explain that they should be connected in some way. Would ProPublica help with legal appeals or denied or delete public records requests? Yeah, so we do have a legal team that does libel review for all of our stories. We do help with those appeals if we need to. We can't do it for all of the projects all of the time. We're not bringing lawsuits for every project. And one thing to be aware of there is that when records requests are not fulfilled quickly and you have one year to do the project, it's often good to have a backup plan because otherwise you're in a situation where you're waiting six months and half of your year has passed. But more specifically to the question, we do ask newsrooms that have legal supports to use those first because we don't have a massive team. But if you do need our help, we will kick in and we are also always happy to consult on what's the best course of action here. Is it to write a legal letter? Is it to do something else? Is it to have a getting to knew you phone call with the public records officer? We try to strategize because our goal here is to get the stuff moving quickly enough that you can use it for your reporting. And how many times a year do you accept applicants for this opportunity? So typically it's two to three times a year. I don't have the specific date yet for the next round after the July 5th deadline, but I anticipate it will be in the coming half year. Do freelancers have to apply with an outlet already committed? Yes. So we can't do this just with a freelancer without a publication partner. So you do need to find an outlet. I'm now to pitch. And for freelancers who are interested in this, this is really value added for a newsroom. If you bring them a proposal and say, I want to do this and I want to apply, are you interested in this proposal? Will you back it? They're potentially looking at having a whole new staffer for the year. So I think that there's a lot to be said for giving it a go. Andrea asked a question about the scope of the project proposal, but what kind of stories does the public take? Do they take stories from Africa? So a number of things. First of all, the LRN is only open to partnerships with US media at this point. So it's a little bit hard to know how stories based in Africa would relate to that, but it's possible that a business in one state or community has an arm in Africa that relates in some way. Like I can't say specifically, I would say the best thing you can do now that the LRN has been around for a number of years is just to go to our LRN page, our project page, which you can find on the public website and just peruse through the different kinds of projects. What you'll see is that there are projects there that have one or two stories for the whole year. Sometimes that's what they produce. It's like one big story and a couple of follow-ups. Sometimes they come out earlier and really get into a rhythm and there could be many, many more stories. There's a lot of variation with the LRN. Just in terms of the scope, it's hard to tell, but I do think in proposals it's useful if you know, well, here's my topic area and I have this idea to go this way and this idea to go that way. And we could have like one investigative profile and one data story and one, just to break it down into the different ideas or the different elements or the different accountability angles. It's useful to think about what you wanna produce in the proposal period. We talked a bit about the project proposal. Arnau wants to know, what are you looking for in a reporter's personal statement? Well, we wanna get to know you. It's gonna be a relationship for a year. We wanna know how you work, what you're good at, why you care about this, what's your passion, maybe something about your relationship with the material, like how did you come upon this? What does it tell, what does knowing you tell us about how this project would work? What kinds of sources you like to work with? If you're proposing a date and you have like this huge long history of working with data, like it's good to know. It's really about just understanding who you are, your relationship with this project and what it means to you. A question from Tim. Are investigative pieces on something that happened in the past a better fit than an unfolding story? Example, something we know will happen in upcoming year. We'll have a major impact on community and require newsroom focus. So that is a tricky question. I think our main matrix, metric for what we're trying to do with these stories is bring new facts to light that could make change. So with the historical pieces, it could be that there is like some historical injustice that has not, has still not been righted. So are there new facts, everybody was talking about the Tulsa riots this year, are there new facts that we could bring forward that could lead to some kind of impact, right? Sometimes there are, sometimes there aren't. That's a little bit difficult to say. With an unfolding story, that's a little bit harder to know. I mean, it depends on how quickly it's moving. Like if there's a bill that's being debated or a court case and it's going to end or be voted on before the LRN year is up, that's a kind of scary situation because you're basically racing the news events to try to bring forward the new facts before whatever is decided. On the other hand, like if there is an unfolding news story, like there's this big debate over some kind of regulation that's going to take a couple of years and the LRN project is going to look at, for instance, facts related to how that regulation should be written, well, that's good timing for it. What you don't want to do is have events overtake your reporting because then you're kind of stuck. Question from Aurora, can a development manager submit on behalf of a nonprofit newsroom? Yeah, we have had as opposed to an editor, I guess that is. I think it's just someone who is representing the nonprofit as an entity representing the newsroom in addition to the reporter. So different people have sent in the applications but we will do interviews with the submitter as well as the reporter if you are a finalist and so that person should be able to speak to some portion of the project as well. But we understand there are some various rooms out there and people are wearing lots of different hats. So whatever makes sense for you to represent the newsroom perspective and also the reporter perspective. This is a question from our Q&A window. Should the reporter be an expert on the topic, meaning they have had significant experience with reporting on this topic? You know, in our experience, a lot of good investigative work comes out of prior reporting. It's just how you know what's out there and what your sources are telling you but it's definitely not a prerequisite. And of course, like reporting always takes us in new directions that we've never seen before. What I would say, and this is something that I would really urge people to think about as they write their proposals is know what has been written before. That might be in previous media coverage. It might be in a government accountability report. It might be in a nonprofit, like major investigation into an environmental issue or whatever, but you don't need to have reported and published on the subject, but you definitely need to know the landscape that you're trying to go into. What has been written and how are you advancing it? I think some really good Googling is gonna get you far just in terms of defining what it is that you bring to this project to advance it beyond what's already known. A question from Candace. How many levels of the application process are there? What is involved at each level? So the way that the process works is we will get all the applications by July 5th and we will sort through them. For some portion of those, and it's not an exact science, we may come back to you with some questions like this is a really intriguing idea, but can you tell us more about what's known about it already and how you would advance it? Like what I was just saying or other questions, like this is very intriguing, but we're not sure like, do you know where the sources are for this or whatever? So if we have questions that go to the heart of the doability of the story or questions about the facts in the story, like is this what we think it is? Are we understanding this right? We'll come back to you and ask you, just send an email with a bunch of questions that you can clarify. At a certain point, we will narrow it down enough that there will be a set of interviews that will be done in order and with the editor or whoever the submitter. And after that, that's it. So the application is the main thing that's gonna happen. There will be this more informal opportunity for us to ask some questions and clarify things and then there will be the interview process. Another question with Q&A, do applicants need to plan to be working full-time as a journalist for the year? Or would it be okay to plan to work, say 20 hours a week on the story while working 20 hours a week at another job slash on other work? Yeah, so the purpose of this is to put someone in it full-time. We really have found in our experience that you need that full-time effort in order to make sure that you can go deep into this reporting and pull off a number of stories on it and really understand it and really formulate it in a way. So we don't accept part-time applications. Michelle asked, you mentioned that the primary story can have or should have several sub-stories which focus on a particular perspective. Is there a rule of thumb to consider, say like no more than three or five sub-stories? I think this kind of ties in with our other frequently asked questions, basically how many stories is a reporter expected to write each year? Yeah, there's not a quota here. Like I said, there's some that are very few and some that are many. I would say, there's sort of a sweet spot in the like three to six range, but it's very tricky to answer this question because what you want to do is come out with like a story that gets the ball rolling, but once you do that, it's very hard to know like what kind of follow-up is there gonna be? Is there gonna be impact follow-up or is there gonna be individual stories about who's at the heart of the reporting you're doing? So I would say there's a ballpark there, but it's very variable what happens after the first piece comes out. Could this lead to opportunities to work with ProPublica in the future for freelancers? There are people who have gone through the LRN, I'm thinking of one in particular who have then become staff reporters with us. I mean, we are obviously always looking to develop relationships and to hold on to these relationships after the LRN year ends. So more broadly, we don't use outside of the local reporting network, we don't use freelancers that often because it's a staff-based model at ProPublica, but we do sometimes and we also do just to keep up the relationships after this year and figure out like how we can work together. So I wouldn't say there's a sort of formal official pathway post-LRN, but we definitely have gotten to know you and your strengths and wanna stay in touch. This is a question from Jarvis. If I have a reporter on staff who's already receiving a salary, is the expectation that I use that reporter's salary to replace what she's doing for that year? You know, that's the individual newsroom manager's decision. I would say a lot of newsrooms do do that, right?  You don't have to spend the money and bring someone else on. But if that reporter was doing, say some investigations and also some daily news reporting or weekly news reporting or other tasks, it's definitely the expectation that they would be relieved of those other tasks and only focusing on this project for the year. So in that case, you wouldn't have to use all the money, but maybe you wanna use some of it to bring on someone who can help with some of those things. So it's really a decision, but many newsroom managers do kind of replace that person with someone else who can take on some of their jobs. This is a question from Lizzie. Can a freelancer journalist with less than five years experience be qualified in this application? Yeah, we have people with a huge range. I mean, we've had LRN folks who are decades, veterans and MacArthur grant recipients. And we've had people who were very new to the field. We're really looking for that sweet spot of a sharp story idea and a pathway forward. So, I think honestly, anybody is eligible. Is this project for all countries? So it's only open to newsrooms in the United States right now.  I'm just gonna pivot back to some of our frequently asked questions. What if the story we pitch ends up not working out, i.e. we drill a dry hole? So that's a question about a proposal that is accepted by us and we're working on it. I mean, our experiences that doesn't happen that often because the proposals have already been reported before they're accepted. And you're on a pathway to looking at something that's a problem that you know exists. That said, nothing ever goes exactly as planned in journalism and that's completely known by us, known by you all and it's to be expected and it's part of the stress and it's part of the fun but our editors are working with LRN reporters every week to figure out which direction to go in next. So I would say it's unlikely that the hole will be dry entirely, but excuse me but if it is, you will work with your newsroom editor and with the proposal editor to come up with a new direction. I mean, the commitment is for the year, it's not for the project. So the goal would be to still come up with something new that you could do within that calendar year. For all the editors on the call, what if the editor has a project idea but they don't have a reporter yet? So you can submit a proposal without having a reporter exactly attached but we would need to know who the reporter is within a few days of the deadline. So like if you've had this like dream project for all these years and you just wanna submit it, that's fine but I would say if the deadline is July 5th, by July 10th or something, we would need to know who the reporter is that you're attaching to it. There's a little bit of wiggle room there but we can't make a decision about a project without knowing who the reporter is because that's the person we're gonna talk to the most. Like we're gonna be working with them. So we need to know how do they write? How do they report? Who are they? How do we get along? It's a close relationship. So I would say it's better if you know at the front end but definitely within a few days we'll meet and answer. I believe we have answered all of the questions that our attendees have asked. Thank you guys so much for attending. We hope that this was useful. We've dropped in a lot of links into the chat. So if you have any questions, feel free to access those links and chances are we've answered them. And as always, you can email us at local.reportingatpropublica.org. Sarah and I will stay on for about three more minutes in case people wanna continue to ask some questions. And then at 3.50 we will call it. So it looks like Arno is asking in the chat, can the same pair of freelancer editors send two different applications to the two? I guess so. I mean, it seems fine to me if you have two that are under development, there's no problem. We're gonna read them all and make assessments about what's there. But thank you, Jan and Erin so much for helping answer all these questions and ask all these questions. And yeah, we will just hang out here for a few minutes and just so you know, local.reporting goes straight into my inbox. So it's not just going into like never, never land. I see it. Oh, and also a shout out to Jim who really helped with the tech end of this. He is also on this call. So thank you, Jim. Thank you, Jim. Erin. Andrea just asked about being informed about when stories from the global south are open for applications. One thing we haven't said is people can sign up on our newsletters page for the LRN newsletters. And then as soon as you'll get an email from us. So like when new rounds open up or if there's changes to the program or whatever that, you know, everybody will know right. It is 350. There are no more questions. So I think we can call it. Thanks everyone for joining us and we hope you apply. Hi guys. Bye.


Since the financial crisis, a number of groups have called for remaking or restructuring economics, especially the way it's taught in colleges and universities, to make it more useful, more applicable, more relevant to the real world. The Institute for New Economic Thinking funded by George Soros and a group in the UK called the Post-Crash Economic Society have been in the headlines in recent weeks for their calls to change the economics curriculum. Now their argument is that economics is dominated by a kind of free market orthodoxy that cannot explain the financial crisis, the recession, and other important economic phenomena. And they want to overturn mainstream economics with something else built more to their liking, relying heavily on the writings of Karl Marx and John Maynard Keynes and other interventionists. Now from my point of view, adding more Marx and Keynes is just sort of making a bad situation worse. Certainly the mainstream of economics is not at all dominated by any kind of a free market orthodoxy. Nonetheless, I sympathize with the frustration that these groups feel towards some of the economics they get in the textbooks and they see in the nightly news and in the mainstream newspapers and so on. Indeed, there is a need to make contemporary or mainstream economics more useful, more relevant, more applicable. And I think the way to do that is to embrace the teachings and writings of the Austrian economists. Now Austrian economics is often described as a theoretical discipline because Mises emphasized the a priori and because Austrians have spent a lot of time and effort developing a well-coherent, a nicely coherent body of economic theory. But it's sometimes forgotten that the great Austrian economists were very practical people. Karl Manger was a financial journalist before turning to economic theory. Eugen von Bomberwerk was the Minister of Finance on three separate occasions in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. And Ludwig von Mises himself spent most of his career, not as a theoretician, but as the staff economist for the Vienna Chamber of Commerce, where he spent most of his days working on very practical business problems, policy problems, trade problems, and so on. So Austrian economics is very useful and relevant and applied. Take for example the business cycle and the current economic crisis. Some critics of Austrian economics like Paul Krugman, for example, have offered a number of very naive arguments claiming, for example, that because we have not had hyperinflation since the expansionary monetary policy and quantitative easing and so forth were really put into full gear in the last few years, therefore the Austrians must be wrong and the notion that monetary expansion causes booms, which later become busts, has to be thrown out the window. But if you look more carefully at Austrian business cycle theory, it does not at all say that an increase in the money supply immediately and automatically leads to a certain rate of increase in prices and the price level. There are a number of different ways in which the malinvestment that the Austrians talk about can take place. And we've seen a lot of that just in the last few years with the prices of other assets rising, land, commodities, and so forth. Even if the consumer price level itself has not gone up by very much. Now my point in using that example is simply to say that without some kind of theoretical lens, without some theoretical understanding of how money affects real economic variables, we cannot simply stare at the data.  However, if we're armed with that body of theory, we can make very good sense of what we see in the real data, what we see real companies doing, how entrepreneurs are behaving, why the stock market is doing what it's doing, how the economy as a whole is performing. In other words, a little bit of economic theory goes a long way in understanding the real world. Now does that mean that to be successful in the real world, one has to have an advanced degree in Austrian economics? Well, obviously not. There are many successful business people, investors, entrepreneurs, managers who have a very solid intuitive understanding of how markets work, even if they haven't been formally trained. Yet at the same time, thinking through Austrian economic principles, more systematically and a little bit more detail, really helps us to know what to look for in the data. It helps us to know what relationships, to examine what is cause and what is effect, and it really helps us to understand the real world, as in my business cycle example. And that doesn't mean that studying Austrian economics will make you rich. It might help, but there's no guarantee. Nonetheless, it's important that we always remind ourselves and our friends that Austrian economics is a very practical science. As it turns out, I'm going to be teaching a course in our Mises Academy program starting just in a few weeks on applications of Austrian economics for business, specifically for management, for finance, for human resources, and so forth. If you're interested in learning more, please sign up for the course or just look at Mises.org for many of our articles, books, lectures that deal with practical problems of business, of entrepreneurship, of finance, and of course of public policy.


There are 26 letters and they make so many sounds I use them to read and write those consonants and vowels I love the sound of every letter that I've met and now it's time to see the alphabet We start with A for Apple B is for Bear C for Cat D is for Double Dog Dare E is for Elephant and F is for Friend G is for Go, Go, Go to the End H is for Hats and I is for Igloo J is for Job He is for Kangaroo, L for Lion and for Mad and is for Noodle O is for Octopus, P is for Poodle O, Q is for Quick, R is for Bun, S is for Singing Silly Sounds in the Sun D is for Tiger, U says Umbrella on Furl, V for Voice, W says Wonderful World X is for Xylophone, Y is for Yaw, C is for Zebra now, U sing along A, B


Any Republican who would sign on to that should be exiled from the party. If you vote in favor of the idea that society has an obligation to recognize male-male or female-female dyads in the same way that society has an obligation to recognize male-female, you should not be in the Republican Party. You shouldn't. You just got a little bit of a taste of right-wing theocrats throwing hissy fits over news that the Senate has found enough GOP votes to overcome a filibuster and vote to protect same-sex marriages in the event the Supreme Court votes to overturn Obergefell v. Hodges. Now we'll get to what they have to say in full later on, but first, let's get to some of the details here. As HuffPost reports, the Senate is expected to vote this week on legislation to codify same-sex marriage, and more importantly, the bill has enough GOP support to pass HuffPost has learned. Quote, we have the votes, a source close to negotiations confirmed Monday. And because the Senate plans to take the House bill and simply amend it versus Senators introducing an entirely new bill, the House only has to vote to accept the changes to their bill versus starting the process over again. So this is good news for sure. It is a little bit of frustrating to me that Tammy Baldwin, who's been basically the one in charge of trying to get votes for this bill and get it passed, she allowed Republicans to kind of hide their position and let them not vote on this before the election because they were too afraid to make their positions known. So now that the election is over, they're ready to state their true feelings. And that's a little bit embarrassing, but nonetheless, it is still a positive development. But let's be clear about what this bill is. It doesn't in actuality codify Oberg-Felvey Hodges contrary to popular belief, but it is still good. Now, CNN's Manu Raju actually tweeted out the specifics here and he goes over a lot. But what I want to direct your attention to is the key things here that it does. First, it legally repeals DOMA by requiring the federal government to recognize same-sex marriages in states where they're performed. So remember that DOMA actually prevented the federal government from recognizing state same-sex marriages until, that is, it was struck down by the Supreme Court in 2013. Now, the second thing that it does is it guarantees full faith and credit to all marriages, same sex, interracial, et cetera. But, and this is key, in the event the Supreme Court struck down Oberg-Felvey Hodges, this bill wouldn't actually require states to issue marriage licenses. Rather, those states would just be obligated to recognize marriages from other states. Now, it's a little bit confusing, so let me just try to clarify here. So imagine the Supreme Court voted to strike down Oberg-Felvey Hodges, meaning that states, once again, can ban same-sex marriages. So this bill doesn't prevent them from doing that. They can ban same-sex marriages in that instance. However, those states, even if they ban same-sex marriages, have to recognize those same-sex marriages from other states. So if you live in Mississippi and they strike down marriage equality, you can simply go to a different state, get married, come back, and have your state recognize your marriage. So it's still deeply bigoted and unconstitutional because this is an additional hurdle that you're not subjecting straight people to. Having said that, though, in the event Oberg-Felvey Hodges were to be struck down, there is still this protection for same-sex couples. They would still be able to be married. They just have to go to a different state. And it's sad that it's come to that. And this is basically them watering down this bill to get Republicans on board. But it's better than a pre-Oberg-Fel America, right? So in the event Republicans wanted to take us all the way back to a pre-Oberg-Fel America, they'd have to strike down this law first and then strike down Oberg-Fel. But in the event that that did happen, well, at least there's some protection. It's still just really gross that same-sex couples would have to jump through hoops to get married. It is what it is. But again, it's a positive step in the right direction. Now, who are the Republicans who are supporting this? Well, we don't actually know yet. We know Susan Collins, Ralph Portman, and Tom Tillis are going to vote for this, but we don't know the other Republicans. And Mitch McConnell is stating that he will vote. And that's when you're going to know. So in other words, they're kind of holding their cards close to their chest here. But I do want to get to the responses from Matt Walsh and Ben Shapiro, because they are very angry that there's enough Republican votes to codify marriage equality, or at least protect same-sex marriages in the event Oberg-Fel is overturned. And they're kind of making some threats to Republicans. And they're saying, if you support this, you should not be in the party.  So let's listen to Ben Shapiro first. So with the Democrats taking the Senate, they're now going to move ahead with a vote on a gay marriage bill. Now, what is the purpose of a gay marriage bill? There is no purpose to a gay marriage bill. Oberg-Fel has already been ruled upon.  So it's not even bobbin' beyond the Supreme Court ruling. The Supreme Court ruling is still the law. If the Supreme Court ruling were overturned, a quick majority in the Senate could quickly overturn this law. But the idea here is that you're going to get all the Republicans on record as to whether they support or do not support same-sex marriage. Now, let me just put this out there for the Republican senators. If you vote in favor of the idea that society has an obligation to recognize male-male or female-female dyads in the same way that society has an obligation to recognize male-female, you should not be in the Republican party. You shouldn't. Hey, the reason I say this is not because I wish to shrink the size of the Republican party. Because if the fundamental basis of human society is male-female child, and you think that by passing a law you can change that reality, you do not belong in government. This is a very simple proposition. Men and men are not the same as a man and a woman who are capable of becoming one flesh and producing a child. This is not difficult stuff. Many Republicans will be tempted to vote for this simply to avoid the conflict. So that people don't yell at them, oh my gosh, you're not respecting love is love.  Look, I've just got to say this.  So what's good? So anyways, now that that's out of the way, had to get it out of my system.  And essentially, you know, marriage is about having children. Except if that were true, then we wouldn't allow couples who were infertile the privilege of getting married. So these arguments are so old. These are pre 2010 arguments. And they're just not persuasive anymore. Society has moved on. We've had marriage equality in this country now for the last seven years. And people realize that it's not actually a threat to heterosexual marriages.  As heterosexual couples. And that's what Ben Shapiro is essentially saying here. And he says that there's no purpose of a gay marriage bill. Obergefell's already been ruled on. He's being purposefully obtuse because he's pretending as if there's no threat to marriage equality, even though Clarence Thomas in the Dobs decision said that we should revisit these cases. And he's specifically named Obergefell Vihages. So Republicans are doing this. Ted Cruz did the same thing where they're pretending as if voting to, you know, protect same sex marriages is unnecessary because it's unfathomable to think that the Supreme Court would overturn Obergefell Vihages. That's kind of their way of dodging.  So if they say they support it, then evangelicals aren't going to be happy with them. But if they just dodge and say, well, I don't have to support this because it's not going to happen, then they kind of get to ride the fence. But we see you. We know that you're bullshitting. We know that you're just too afraid to state your position.  He also said, if you vote for this, you should not be in the Republican party. That's a really good way of saying I would rather lose than move on and grow with society. I mean, imagine if the Republican Party never adapted and never got on board with interracial marriages. I mean, there's certainly enough GOP voters that think that it shouldn't be a thing. But imagine if the GOP never adapted to that. This is somebody who thinks that the Republican Party should continue to lose in perpetuity just so that way they can continue to own same-sex couples and not allow them equal rights. Well, I think that the GOP senators who are voting for this are savvy because, I mean, regardless of how they feel personally about same-sex marriages, and again, I don't think you're a reasonable person if you're against it. But regardless of how they feel, they understand that to be a bigot is turning off independence. And extremism in this last election blew up in your faces. So are you going to continue to hold strong and try to dig your feet in, or are you going to grow with the times? Do what society wants you to do? Well, Ben Shapiro doesn't want them to do that, but too bad. Now, Matt Walsh kind of said the same thing as Ben Shapiro, but regardless, let's listen. Obviously, if you do this, it is to begin with, it's not just this, but it's also to begin with a threat to an attack on religious liberty. That's where it ultimately leads. Because if you're codifying on a federal level that two men have a right to get married, that's a human right, a civil right, then that would mean by extension that a church that refuses to marry a gay couple is depriving them of their basic human civil rights. They may not be putting that language in the bill exactly because they want it to pass, but that's what it means. And that's how it will be used, no matter what the bill says. And I'll tell you this, any Republican who would sign on to a bill like this, I don't care if they have this weak, they've created this Trojan horse now where they're pretending that they're protecting religious liberty, doesn't matter. Any Republican who would sign on to that should be exiled from the party. It won't happen because this is the direction the whole party is going, but that's what should happen. These are Republicans who are signing on to something that only 10 years ago would have would have been too radically far left for even the farthest left people in the Democrat Party. It must be so frustrating to see society leave you and your antiquated way of thinking behind Copenseeth, Matt Walsh. So he says that this is an attack on religious liberty, simply giving gay couples the right to equal marriage protection under the law is an attack on religious liberty somehow. We've had gay marriages and religion didn't implode in this country. It's going down, but that trend was consistent before marriage equality became a thing.  And we know that Matt Walsh is one of the biggest hate mongers in the country. But he wants to make it seem as if in the event this law is passed, then religious liberty will go the way of the dodo, because if a church doesn't want to marry same sex couples, then they're going to, I guess, be banned from existing. First of all, the law explicitly says that churches can be bigots. They don't have to marry same sex couples. And that's where I disagree with this law. I actually think that if you are a church and you offer marriages, then you should be required by law to offer marriages to same sex couples and interracial couples as well. In the year 2022, I don't think that churches should be allowed to keep their tax exam status. If they say, sorry, we're only going to marry white couples, no interracial couples allowed. Like, can you imagine letting that fly in 2022? But yet this is effectively what they're arguing for. They want states or they want churches to be able to keep their tax exam status and states and be able to explicitly discriminate. And the law is giving them that privilege to do something like that. But yet they're still not happy. They're still claiming it's going to destroy religious liberty.  So it seems like marriage equality isn't really a threat to you. Has your marriage been affected, Matt Walsh, aside from your wife probably being very dissatisfied with you? I mean, it hasn't, right?  He also says here that any Republican who signs onto this should be exiled from the party, but it won't happen because this is the direction the whole party is going. And ask yourself, Matt Walsh, why do you think that is? It's because you lost and society has moved on. Let's look at the poll again from Gallup. 71% of Americans support marriage equality. You've lost. The overwhelming majority of Americans think that same sex couple should have the same rights as heterosexual couples. And good, this shows that most Americans are actually reasonable and that gives me a little bit of hope. Now, what you can still try to do is create a little bit of residual bigotry based on homophobia.  But for the most part, when it comes to the issue of marriage equality, that's solved and you've lost, son. So it's time to move on. But I love how he acknowledges that the Republican party, because they want to win probably, has to abandon this issue. Because even people like Joe Rogan, who's a bigot when it comes to trans issues, is right on the issue of marriage equality. So even bigots who aren't allies to the LGBTQ plus community acknowledged that this issue is an issue that they don't agree with the GOP on. But people like Ben Shapiro and Matt Walsh want to keep the GOP in this homophobic era where they just explicitly deny them equal protection under the law when it comes to marriage rights. And that's just not going to fly anymore. So that's why you're losing. And that's why the Republican party is slowly but surely too slowly, in my opinion, moving away from this bigoted position. So you can continue to cry, but it's not going to change the fact that society is leaving you behind and you can either adapt or not.


Hello, this is Laptop Media, and today, we will show you how to open the Acer Aspire 3A31543 and what's inside of it. To access this notebook's internals, you need to undo 11 Philips head screws. After that, pry the bottom panel with a plastic tool, starting from the front. Please remember, it would be of great help to us if you just hit the like button and subscribe to our channel. That would motivate us to make even more and better videos for you. Inside, we find a 42Wh battery pack. It lasts for 10 hours of web browsing, or 9 hours of video playback. Since there are no screws securing it in place, you only need to unplug the connector from the motherboard to remove the battery. In this case, there are 8GB of DDR4 RAM soldered to the motherboard. In addition, you get one Sodom slot. Storage wise, the laptop has 1 M.2 PCIe X4 slot. For cooling, the device relies on two heat pipes, a heat sink, and a fan. If you'd like to see more disassembly videos of the latest notebooks we would highly appreciate if you hit the like button and subscribe to the channel.


Family Theater presents Lucille Ball and John Howard. From Hollywood, the mutual network and cooperation with Family Theater presents something in the air starring John Howard. And now here is your hostess, Lucille Ball. Thank you, Toni LaFranco. Family Theater's only purpose is to bring to everyone's attention a practice that must become an important part of our lives if we are to win peace for ourselves, peace for our families, and peace for the world. Family Theater urges you to pray. Pray together as a family. And now to our transcribed drama, Something in the Air, starring John Howard as James Tracy. Weather Bureau. Yes, you can expect rain beginning at 7.50 this evening and clearing at 11.05 tomorrow morning. No, madam, if you hang your washout tomorrow morning, it'll be rained on. Well, I'm sorry, madam, we don't make the weather. Weather Bureau. Sorry, no rain for the Salinas Valley till Wednesday. No, not this Wednesday, next Wednesday. It'll begin at 6.45 in the morning. Weather Bureau Wineman. Who? Los Angeles Sun Telegram? You want an interview with the forecaster? Well, there'll be a press conference at 2.30 this afternoon here at the Bureau office. Excuse me, please. Hold the line a moment, please. Yes? Perhaps you can direct me to Mr. Tracy. The chief? I'm Dr. Torkerson is expecting me. Oh, yes, Doc. Let's see. He was right. There he is. Oh, chief, chief. Yes? The doctor's here. Oh, yes. How do you do, doctor? How do you do? The LA Sun Telegram is on the line, chief. Can't talk to him now. Well, you kind of hold things down while the doctor and I have our little chat, all right? Sure thing. Incidentally, chief, the American Society of Umbrella Manufacturers have been waiting on line two for about an hour now. They say something about a testimonial for you. Can't talk to them now. Tell them thanks, but no thanks, huh? Sure. How about Desert Rock? They're waiting on line four. Oh, I'd better talk to them. Excuse me, doctor. When you said your office was snowed under, I thought you were exaggerating. I wish I were. Oh, hello, Desert Rock. Yes, this is the chief meteorologist. You'd like to set one off when? No, I wouldn't do it then. Your best time would be the 24th at about six in the morning. No, on the 22nd, you're going to have high winds starting at 4.35 PM. Make visibility very poor. No, the winds won't stop until late afternoon of the 23rd. 6 AM on the 24th will be clear and calm. That's the best time for that sort of thing. You're welcome. No trouble at all. Oh, Jerry, if the American League calls, tell them I worked out a schedule that'll ensure them against getting rained out. I put it in the mail last night. Right. Now let's go into my office, doctor. All right. Sit down, doctor. Thank you. You certainly have a busy office. That's part of what's worrying me. Sorry I couldn't get over your office. There's just so much to do. It's perfectly all right. Frankly, I think I would come out of curiosity anyway. You've been making quite a stir with your fantastic weather predictions, you know. I know. Maybe I'm foolish to worry about it. Perhaps not. Suppose you tell me the story and we'll see. Well, I hardly know where to begin. Well, let's take it right from the beginning, from the first deviation from the normal routine, from the first unnatural occurrence. The first deviation. Well, I think that was about a month ago, just a little after I came into the building one morning. I noticed there was an odd-looking little man running the elevator instead of the regular boy. Going up? Yes. 23rd floor, please. 23rd. Where's George this morning? George? Or the regular operator. Oh, George. Well, he's ill. I'm just filling in for him. That's too bad. You're James Tracy, the weatherman, aren't you? Well, yes, I'm James Tracy. Got a little cold, haven't you? No. No, I feel fine. Oh, no. Be good bobsledding whether soon. You like bobsledding? Bobsledding? Skiing, maybe. You ski, or it's a great sport, especially ski jumping. No, I don't ski. And I don't ice skate either. Now, why all the questions? Oh, no reason. I was just curious. This is your floor. Well, thanks for the ride. Don't mention it. Oh, Mr. Tracy. Yes? Toboggan? No. No toboggan. There's an odd one.  Morning, Jerry. Ah, good morning, Chief. Jerry, who was running the elevator when you came up? Night watchman. I came up early. Why? Nothing important. Well, anything new or interesting? How's Marcia? Well, we're not getting too many reports, but it looks like she pooped out. Got no reinforcement or stacked up in some island or something. Too bad. She had the makings of a fine little storm. They don't make weather like they used to. Well, at least we were right on the prediction, no, Trace? Good enough. Well, we better line up the data and start on today's map.  A lady? Yeah, says she edits the woman's section for the paper, wants to do a feature about us for the ladies. Some days it doesn't pay to get up. Where is the lady? She came in while I was putting a report on the wire, so I put her in your office. Well, I'll talk to the old girl, Jerry. Let's get it over with. I've got a lot of work to do. Well, she's not exactly an old girl, Trace. You'll see what I mean. Miss Dillson? Oh, are you ready for me now? I do hope I'm not being too much trouble. Oh, none at all. It's a pleasure to have you. That's what we're in business for. Miss Dillson, may I present Mr. James Tracey, our chief meteorologist. How do you do, Mr. Tracey? Pleasure, Miss Dillson. Trace, since you have so much to do, I could explain our organizations and proceed. No, no, it's your area. I wouldn't hear of it. It's your day on the map anyway, isn't it? OK, you're the boss. Excuse me. Of course. Now, where would you like to begin, Miss Dillson? Ask anything you want. Well, Mr. Tracey, I'm afraid I don't even know enough to know how to ask an intelligent question. Well, then let's start with what weather forecasting is. All right. It's really nothing more than the practical application of meteorology. That's fine if you know what meteorology is. Oh, it's simply that branch of physics which treats of the atmosphere and its phenomena. Oh. Wind, rain, hurricanes, lightning, and so forth. Through meteorology, we determine the weather, sometimes months in advance, plotting the winds, keeping track of pressure areas around the globe. You certainly have to know your work to do something like that. Oh, it's not so much. Oh, it's so big. It's frightening. You must have studied a long time, Mr. Tracey. Oh, it took a little while. This is really fascinating. Oh, what's this big map? Oh, that's today's weather map. Well, actually, it's for the week. You see, we mark the changes as the data comes in. The data? Well, weather outposts all over the world send us reports, even ships at sea. If they have a change in wind direction or barometric pressure, they report it and we use the information in compiling forecasts. Oh, here, look here. This little storm was reported three days ago by a grace line ship. That little egg shape? That's a storm? A moving low pressure area. Oh, it's a storm, all right. Oh, it's so small. Yeah, it's a little disappointing. I had such hopes for Marsha. You name your storms after girls? Yes. Got the idea from a book by a fellow named Stuart. Storm. Maybe you've read it? No. Well, you missed a good one. But I'm afraid our storm isn't going to amount to much, though. Mr. Tracey, this is the most fascinating business I ever heard of. Why, I'll bet you could give a forecast right now, couldn't you? Certainly. You see, right here we have the Pacific Coast. And this area in the circle is the Pacific High. There's a slight drop in pressure here, but in view of the circumstances, it doesn't mean much. So I'd say the weather tomorrow will be generally fair with just a little morning fog along the coast. Winds from, say, five to 10 miles an hour. It's amazing, Mr. Tracey. Your family must be very proud of you. Oh, I have no family, Ms. Stilson. I'm what you might call footloose and fiance free. Now, would you like to see how we put our information together? Now, come along, I'll show you. Very, very interesting, Mr. Tracey. Tell me, does this seem to have some bearing on what happened? Well, I'm coming to that. I'll just have to tell it in my own way. All right, fine. Tell me what happened then. Well, then I showed Jean, uh, Ms. Stilson, how we make up the map. And one thing led to another. And, well, we made a date for the next day. But we would have lunch together at one of those little sidewalk cafes on Pearl Street. I remember that next morning vividly. Of course, it's only been a few weeks, but I know the picture will stay in my mind as long as I live. I was in a good mood when I woke up. And for me, that's unusual. But then I got off the bed and went to the window. I don't believe it. I just don't believe it.  Well, I was humiliated, doctor. But I was not about to call off my date. In fact, I called her at her hotel at the time we'd arranged. I'll wait till I tell you about that. I walked into the hotel and crossed the lobby to the desk. Good afternoon, sir. May I help you? Well, would you say, haven't I seen you before? Well, I will. Of course. Of course, you were the operator in my building when the regular boy was out. Yes, yes, yes, that's just helping a friend out. But good old Hank. George. Oh, that's a good old George. Well, he's better now, so I'm working here. May I help you? Yes. Would you call Ms. Jean Stillson's room, please? She's expecting me. My name is Jane. And James Tracey, certainly, sir. Operator, would you ring Ms. Stillson's room, please? Thank you. Mr. Tracey, you don't, by any chance, have a galloping consumption, do you? What? Well, I was just asking. I was just asking. I just happened to know of a good polar bear club. I thought you might like to join. Oh, it's a great sport. Polar bear club? Yes, you cut holes in the ice and go swimming. Oh, it's a fine sport, invigorating. Now, see here, you. Ms. Stillson doesn't seem to answer. With you around, I'm not surprised. Want me to try again? First the rain, and then you. And now, she doesn't answer. Well, in view of the rain, I guess I can't blame her. Bad luck always comes in threes. Sometimes fours. You want me to ring again? No. If she asks, I'll be at the bureau. I'll tell her. Polar bear club. That's all I need. Hello. Am I late? Oh, hello. Is something wrong? It's just that hotel clerk of yours. Say, how long has he been working here? Who do you mean? Well, one at the desk, right? There's no one there now. Must have stepped out. Well, what happened? It's not important. I'm sorry I'm late. I got caught up in the... I got delayed. It's all right. This isn't the first time I've been wrong. You can say rain if you want to. Well, then, if it's all right with you, I got caught up in the rain. Now, what about that lunch you promised me? Good idea. Well, let's go. Trace, let's save the sidewalk cafe for another day. All right? Now, what a man says and what a man thinks can sometimes be very different things, Doctor. Well, what do you mean? Well, actually, I was pretty sensitive about the forecast. I wanted her to have a good opinion of me. You know, I wanted to impress her. And the first time I tried... It turned out wrong. Didn't seem to bother her, but it bothered me. And running into that odd little man again didn't help much either. This is very interesting. Go on. Well, we stopped by the bureau after lunch and I looked over the map. Then I stuck my neck out again. You made another prediction? I did, for clearing and generally fair weather. Then I suggested we take a drive up to Putnam Observatory on the following Sunday. She liked the idea, so we left town about Sunday noon. We've gotten about 25 to 30 miles out of town. I can't understand how it clouded over so quickly. Oh, let's not talk, Shop Trace. But there's just no excuse for this overcast. Take things so seriously. After all, just a couple of clouds. Uh-oh, what's this? Looks like a road block. I wonder what it's for. You got me. Uh, what seems to be the trouble, officer? Is something wrong? Well, no, no, not if you got chains, ma'am. Chains? You mean tire chains? Why would we need chains? Well, it's snowing pretty hard up in those mountains, ma'am. Snowing? I'm sorry, Jack. It's snowing. But it just can't be snowing. Oh, road's almost blocked up top. One single bit of evidence pointed to snow? Not one. Well, it's snowing all right. I wouldn't advise you to try this road without chains.  Oh, not true. Well, for your information, it couldn't possibly be more than a light snow. And furthermore, we're going on with or without chains. Okay, buddy, okay. If you want to risk your neck, go ahead. But don't blame me. I didn't make the snow. If you want to go, I go. I won't stop you. Thank you. I couldn't believe it. You see, the way it looked to me, nothing on Earth could account for snow at that particular time. The more I thought about it, the faster I drove. Trace, don't you think you're going a little fast? It's just not right, that's all. We've always had a fairly accurate forecast in our bureau. And now, all of a sudden, everything's backwards. Storms without warning. There it is, up ahead. Trace, please. Look, look, see it? Snow all right. Well, that means the pavement might be slippery. Trace, you're going too fast. Trace, that curve! Look out! Who is this? James R. Tracey, sir. Is that your name? That's my name, all right. But who is this little man and what's this all about? Am I dead? Not yet, your nap. I'll handle this. Oh, I'm sorry, sir. No, Mr. Tracey, you're not dead yet. This is just a processing point where we make the final checkup. Yeah, but so just have a little patience, please. This won't take long. Well, what about the girl? I was with a girl. The girl? And not a scratch, but the car's a total wreck. Car? According to my list, John R. Tracey is to die of natural causes, compounded by exposure to severe weather. His car skidded on icy pavement and went over an embankment. Oh, the whole thing looked very natural, sir. Well, I suppose an auto accident is a natural way to die these days. Let me see your activities report. Me, you are, sir. You would almost think it hadn't been his time. I hope you didn't tamper. You didn't, did you? You know we're not supposed to tamper with human life. Tamper? Oh, heaven forbid. That's what I meant. Well, I just like everything to be, well, neat. What do you mean, neat? Well, I mean, if the list says to pick up a person for processing on a certain date, I just like them to be ready. That's all. It kind of sets things up, so to speak. It isn't as if I were really tampering, though. You didn't try to coerce, intimidate, or exercise any action which might interfere with his free will? Oh, my no. You didn't exercise any influence which might have tended to alter the course of his life? Oh, certainly not. Oh, now wait a minute. Well, not any that you'd notice. I'd better have a look at your activities report. Well, what's this? Distorted signals on 11 teletype rider circuits, burned out rectifier tubes on three ships' radio transmitters, made of racers on weather maps. What's all this about? That's what I'd like to know. Well, I had to do that so he wouldn't get his weather data. Weather data? What's weather data? Well, sir, according to my list, James R. Tracy is to die as a result of causes compounded by severe weather storms and the like. That tallies. Well, how could he get caught in a storm if he knew it was coming, sir? I had to keep him from getting any word at all about approaching storms. Yes, he's a meteorologist. A weatherman. Weatherman? He's supposed to be a retired locomotive engineer. A retired locomotive? Oh, no. You and your enthusiasm. You tamper. Well, how was I to know, sir? Now, hold on a minute. Hold on. What's all this mean? It means a terrible mistake has been made. You have our sincere apology for the inconvenience. You'll be returned immediately. Oh, no. No? What do you mean?  Now you think you're going to get off with just an apology? You're right, sir, but what did you have in mind? We can't turn back time. Well, just correct some of your mistakes. The past is gone, but we can see that your future makes all these mistakes seem unimportant. All in the natural order, of course. No miracles. That seems fair enough. Then you'll return. I'll return. Trace. Trace, please speak to me. Jean? Trace, are you all right?  Are you all right, Jean? I'm fine. You just about scared the wits out of me. You went over the embankment, huh? I guess we're lucky to be alive. Oh, look at your beautiful car. Not much left, but don't worry about it, honey. I think everything's going to be all right. And that's a forecast I'm pretty sure of. Come on, we better get back up to the highway before we get snowed in. Trace. Yes? You said something when you were unconscious. I did? Uh-huh. You said that I was the only girl you ever really cared about. Well? Well, I just wanted you to know that that goes both ways. Ah, you see? My forecast is panning out already. We got back to the highway all right, and the highway patrol gave us a ride back to town. It was the next morning when things really began to happen.  We've had reports from weather stations I never knew existed. And there's not a ship in the Pacific that hasn't sent in an observation. That kind of thing just doesn't happen. Oh, it's not out of the natural order. People doing their jobs. But it's strange, all right. Strange? Man, what an understatement. Look at this, Trace. Here's an example. Sloppy ships like the general Henry B. Morrison. Here, take a look at this. Exact temperatures. Wind direction down to half a degree. Wind speed to two decimal points. A barometer reading with decimal points. Trace, what gives? Well, Jerry, let's not look too closely at this gift horse. At last, we've got a chance to see how a weather bureau can operate with all the information. We might just make a little history. Hello, Clarion Dispatch. This is Tracey at the Weather Bureau. We've got your forecast ready if you want it.  Make it good. I will. The forecast. Fair. No, not generally fair. Fair in this area only till 7.30 a.m., followed by overcast. Light snow flurries will begin at 11.15 and continue through the night till 3.30 a.m. No, I'm not being smart. That's the forecast. You're welcome. Well, that's telling them, Trace. Now we'll see what happens. Well, that's about it, Doctor. You saw the office when you came in. I've had to increase the staff 600 percent and we haven't made a wrong forecast yet. It's been four weeks. It's amazing. We've been getting calls from all over the world. Of course we don't try to handle anything much past the Mississippi. Doctor, I need an explanation. This whole business just isn't natural. Well, that shouldn't be too hard to supply. When you started your story, it sounded like you were priming yourself for a nervous breakdown, but now the facts are fairly obvious. You had a very serious concussion, Mr. Tracey. Concussion can be a dangerous thing. It could have produced a subdural hematoma that might have killed you. But in your case, I think something else happened. There's so much about concussion that is not known, but I would say that in your case, the blow tended to stimulate areas of your brain which have been out of use. Oh, but what about those exact reports from weather observers? They've probably been coming in that way for a long time. You've just forgotten what to do with them. The knowledge was just brought forward once again from your subconscious. Well, conceding that, but only for the sake of argument, what about that odd fellow in the elevator and behind the hotel desk? He never existed. Concussion once again. Sometimes it produces amnesia, a loss of memory. Sometimes it produces illusory memories. You remember things that never really happened at all. Believe me, Mr. Tracey, your little man does not exist outside of your own very imagination. Oh, I don't know. I want you to come to my office tomorrow. We'll go into this thing a little more thoroughly. All right? I'll be there. Fine. Oh, in the meantime, I certainly wouldn't worry about it. Oh, here, doctor, I'll show you out. Thank you. Oh, hello. I was just about to come in and see how you two were doing. Oh, Dr. Torkelson, may I present my wife, Jean? Indeed a pleasure, Mrs. Tracey. She's a beautiful woman, Tracey. Well, thank you. Well, did you make any progress? Oh, there are a few things to iron out. We shouldn't have any trouble. Oh, thank goodness. Just a moment, please. Oh, Chief, the Navy's calling. I'll be right there. Excuse me. I'll see you tomorrow, doctor. Don't forget. Doctor, is it anything serious? No, no, no need to worry, Mrs. Tracey. Almost all is the result of the concussion he suffered in that accident. It's all in his head. Well, I must be going. My, I'm glad my office is not this busy. Goodbye, Mrs. Tracey. Goodbye, doctor. Very interesting case. Odd little man. Dr. Torkelson? Dr. Andrew J. Torkelson? Yes. I've been waiting for you. Oh, I do keep office hours, you know. Oh, I don't need a doctor. I'm the elevator operator. 23 floors, you know. Wouldn't want you to walk down. I just thought I'd wait for you. Well, I must say that's very, very kind of you, very thoughtful. You like elevators, doctor? Like elevators. You like elevators, doc? You know, some people like the Otis. And then some people like the Llewellyn. Oh, yes. But they're all alike to me. Invigorating, don't you think? How do you feel about express elevators, doc? Express elevators. Come on in, doctor. Come in so I can close the door. Just a moment, if you don't mind. Tell me, are you the regular operator? Oh, no. A good old Jack. No, no, George. Oh, yes, George. A good old George. Well, he's sick today. I'm just filling in for him. Hey, doc. Where are you going? This. This is impossible. Absolutely impossible. Mr. Tracy. Mr. Tracy, please. May I have a word with you? This is Lucille Ball again. You've probably heard it said that Hollywood is the crossroads of the world. Well, it's true. You meet people here from almost any place you can mention. People with all kinds of ideas. People with problems. But once in a while you meet someone with a good solution to a problem. I'd like to tell you about someone I met who has a wonderful idea. A simple yet perfect solution to the unhappiness, misunderstanding, and disruption that occurs in family life today. The solution is this. Pray together as a family. Why? Because in a prayerful home where there is respect for God, there is also respect for one another. A respect that brings harmony and happiness. A respect that brings understanding, forgiveness, and unchanging love. That's why Family Theater asks you to make family prayer a daily practice in your home. For you too will discover the solution. Family prayer brings happiness and harmony into a home. For the family that prays together stays together.  From Hollywood, Family Theater has brought you Something in the Air starring John Howard. Lucille Ball was your hostess. Others in our cast were Lillian Bief, Howard McNeer, Pat McGeehan, Herb Ellis, and Leo Curley. The script was written by Robert Hugh O'Sullivan with music composed and conducted by Harry Zimmerman and was directed and transcribed for Family Theater by John T. Kelly. This series of Family Theater broadcasts is made possible by the thousands of you who feel the need for this type of program, by the mutual network which has responded to this need, and by the hundreds of stars of stage screen and radio who give so unselfishly of their time and talent to appear on our Family Theater stage.  This is Tony LaFranco expressing the wish of Family Theater that the blessing of God may be upon you and your home and inviting you to be with us next week when Family Theater will present the Kadrimans starring Jimmy Durante and Barry Sullivan. Join us, won't you? Family Theater is broadcast throughout the world and originates in the Hollywood studios of the world's largest network. This is the Mutual Broadcasting System.