Good evening. We're live. It's 525 and I'm Lauren Glendavidian. I'm so pleased to be here with Henry prime my co-host today We're celebrating 25 Christmases of CCTV and 20 Christmases of Channel 17 Henry. I bet that's older than you are. Yes quite Henry has been working here as a volunteer and he also is a director and a community producer and we're gonna be talking to a number of community producers today and We'll also take your calls if you have any but in the meantime Henry tell us a little bit about how you started to work here at Channel 17. I've been volunteering here for a little over a year and a half now And I started just by volunteering and doing care work on the live shows But since that I've been helping out. I helped out at the summer camp, and I've been Going out the community and taping from events. It's really awesome. It's a great group of people here and You know you did that great piece with Megan where he went out on the street you asked people about public access TV Yeah, that was really awesome. Were you surprised at whether people knew access or? It was a lot more people that I thought I actually watched some access TV Almost everybody we talked to knew about it So we're gonna where to interview James Drew now He has been doing a great show the artful word for many many many episodes and and then we'll talk to Jen Berger who from the Peace and Justice Center and a couple of other folks and then we'll give out some awards and you Can help me do that. Okay. All right. Good. So James.  We're gonna I'm gonna have you come stand right here next to Henry Henry's gonna sort of be our standby guy welcome Thank you so much for the work you're doing on the artful word. Well, thank you for having me at channel 17 It's been quite an experience for me It's been great to have you know this is a half-hour show that you produce every week pretty much, right? Well, they're letting me go to 55 minutes and they're telling me to keep it to 55 minutes But sometimes I've got away. We're doing a two-hour show I go anywhere from a half-hour to quite a few bit within about 55 minutes But they give me a lot of slack here for some reason Well, we we give people slack because it's public access Well, it's government access, but it's all access and it's really all about you having the opportunity You see equipment and tell the stories of the community, right? And it's been really great to get out in the community and I Feel that you probably don't have any favorites here But I just like to say I come in here every Monday and I'm Not one of the staff here, but I'm coming in working with professionals and I feel like I fit in here And it's just been a joy Just been a pleasure to work here It's been great to have you and I understand one of the one of the things that you really appreciate is that because over time you've had Encountered a lot of different people and now they recognize you and they'll work with you And they're probably a lot more cooperative than they were at first right I've got to know in the governor Senators congressmen the mayor Art critics Actors dancers as you know, I have a traveling road show So I'm covering a lot of things that aren't necessarily political But that's one of the great things about channel 17 is we see all aspects of the community here And I think through my lens and it enables me to experience the community and I love to volunteer in the community James your programs are really great I'll just remind people it's your program is called the artful word and it runs on channel 17 And also you have some episodes that run on channel 15, right? Yes I've been at channel 15 in March for 13 years and I've had the great good fortune to be here at channel 17 in July 5th for four years and I've done a show once a week for four years and It's quite a workload, but Really gives me something to do and I love doing that you really qualify as one of the most prolific and Intent community producers that we have so thank you so much for being here and have a great holiday Well, Merry Christmas and have a wonderful holiday So James throw it really very valued valued member of our community here at channel 17, you know, we have behind the camera We have two young young ladies Stella Rose Johnson who happens to be related to me and Allison Simons who's running the camera and They're running and we also have Greg who's on the the other camera here We have a studio full of people and it's kind of a fun night, isn't it? Yeah, it is so last year You got an award, but you didn't get here entire remember so this year you're gonna help me with the awards But first, why don't we interview Jen burger? Do you want to do the interview? Okay, hey Jen burger peace and justice center, how are you darling? Thanks for being here So Jen burger works with the peace and justice center and you've been doing video on and off different projects What's the most recent project you've been working? I just completed a 40 minute DVD about with military recruitment with interviews done at soldiers And veterans at Winter Soldier a few years ago. Oh, so you finally got that done. It took a little while didn't it? Yep, son You surprised when you produced your video at how easy or hard it was to do the work Yeah, it turned out once learning about putting Using the equipment and how to kind of storyboard and then figuring out the programs But I had a lot of help from you guys actually Tell us why in your justice work How does free speech fit into that scheme and your values? Well, we're in a day and age where we're not getting a lot of the information out to the people in the media is Filtered, you know through government and through a lot of funds And we don't have the voice of the people or the truth of what's actually happening in the community Television really gets the information out there and makes it available to people So they can actually make up their mind about what's going on I Think that's beautifully put. Thank you so much and thanks for all your support So, um, you know you may not know this Henry but when Nat air and I and actually I'll say this the governors here This is Governor Huff. Hello. How are you? I'm just fine This is Henry prime. It's one of our stars He's worked his way up into the director's room Wow, you're important I think he'll be running the place in a couple years Well, that's what I'm hoping maybe So the story I was telling Henry is that one of the first programs we ever did in the decision-makers series We got to interview you And that was a long time ago 25 24 years ago Is that the Time that they an awful lot of people decided they wouldn't subscribe to your station I think you helped viewers chef. In fact, I think it you know at that time we were probably We did this very extended interview with you We did an hour-long interview and I don't think anybody was doing Lengthy interviews in the media at that time. I don't think so either It's unusual Long format we were experimenting with do you have any thoughts about why community access channels like this are important for for democracy? Or for any other reason So What do you think about the healthcare debate that's going on right now? In fact, I think I agree with Howard's either They've taken the guts out of that bill and so they might as well forget about Terribly disappointed Well, there was so much momentum and hope behind it.  Well, I didn't come here to be Thank you so much governor. It's just a pleasure to have you with us. Thanks very much So we're gonna give out some awards now. Oh, yes, we have to have received great good news Doug, how are you? Thanks for joining us. It's so nice of you to come to this party Oh, it's great to have a great party going on. So I love the holiday season. So thanks for doing this Yeah, some great people. So, um, are you going to be on the road a lot in 2010? I'm gonna be on the road a whole lot I think people know that I have a candidate for governor go to go through the next legislative session That's my job in the state senate share the health and welfare committee But politics will be part of it. People are going to get to get to see more of me We're going to talk about where Vermont's going to go after we get past the next election And when you think about these the public access channels that now serve vermont, there are 23 centers and 44 channels It's been your experience and when you go to those community centers What I what I see in channel 17 and the others is a real opportunity for vermonters to to be really connected With government and what's going on in their communities. It's just another way for people to hear from those of us Who are in office running for office? See what's going on with their local government and if we want democracy to work, which we do People have to be informed and whenever I'm on one of your programs or one of the other programs at the other Stations around the state. I hear back from a lot of people that they saw it. They were interested Sometimes they agree. Sometimes they disagree and that's fine But it's a real public service. So I thank you for that. Well, thank you so much and good luck this year Thanks, Doug Doug Racine who is um a member of the senate chitney county delegation and also is going to be running is running for governor He announced really early in in the session. So maybe we'll give some awards I'm not sure everyone people are going to really be able to hear me so I'm just going to sort of talk through these awards because um, There's some pretty there's some pretty good ones We've got we've had a lot of good neighborhood planning assembly coverage Right as you know And a lot of the community producers have come and been doing these shows including sarah flash Who's been doing some great npa coverage steve norman who's an outstanding community producer and um And maybe actually if you ask megan if you can find megan to find steve norman Maybe we'll get him up here. Okay, that'll be good. And we also have um, there we go. Thanks allison ryan davis from the The metropotin planning organization who's been covering their meetings and opening the door to regional planning And lee turhune phil levine chuck selene and carol levine and niche's surprise who host produce and do the camera work For the word four and seven live npa show. That's a really neat show We also, um, we've got some wonderful supporters and longtime volunteers and one of them is jonathan mccanlis who's a longtime live show volunteer and um Ivan who is his Cohort was a volunteer for many years too and the two of them have been delightful to have here behind the cameras Melinda molten has been doing on the waterfront for many years. She's a very reliable live show host And then um, jennifer wallace broder who I think is with a a rp. I want to say Who works and cooperates with other organizations in her show, which is burlington sustainable Communities. We also have a sustainable transportation show. That's by the ccta. Do you ever cover that one? That's when you're doing the live show there. They come. Yes What are the kind of things they talk about? Um, they talk about car share vermont and ccta and the bus new bus for us and and um The bike bike case I can't remember the name of that right up like a Local motion is about a lot of great sustainable transportation. Yeah, it's a really interesting show. Well, that's good That's chris kohl and annie borden and chapein spencer and they model how partner organizations can Share a live show spot and then we've got the woodchuck report Those they're friday night show and body scott and roll wheelock maintain a live live show every month But they also have a little baby that comes to their shows And um sort of sits on the set with them while they do their work and then um in The last two people that I want to recognize and maybe well, we can bring nick here I'm not sure if andy's here as well But nick carter and andy crawford who are two cctv staff people who they're new this year and they're really just It's been fantastic to have them here with us. So maybe you can find nick and we'll interview him after michael wood louis So those are the uh folks we have awards for and we're going to hear now from michael wood louis front porch forum Which is really the an online counterpart in a lot of ways to channel 17 michael. Thank you for coming It's nice to see you. It's really great that you came. I appreciate it So front porch forum is a real international model for bringing people together in their communities and online It's really gotten a lot of attention in the last couple of years, haven't you? Yeah, it's done great It's um, you know, we're we host a network of online neighborhood forums The blank is chitin in in grandisle counties and starksboro and anybody can sign up It's free and it's a great way to connect with your nearby neighbors And grandisle is new this year, right? Yeah, recently grandisle South hero grandisle north hero isle amant and allberg all have joined from porch forum and there's several hundred households who signed up I know of at least one lost cat that's been found and Several other things have been going on there. So is it sort of picking up or people using the resource? Yeah Yeah, it's it's starting to catch hold, you know wintertime in the islands It's a little a little tough to get out and see your neighbors So I think it's a you know offers a lot of potential there and we're looking forward to get more and more people to sign up So have you been surprised at how your project has grown? Sure, it's uh, it's really been remarkable in a lot of ways You know, we started this out just in our own neighborhood in the south end Many years ago and then a few years ago we opened up more broadly to anybody who lives in the area And now there are 17,000 households Um in the region who subscribe to front porch forum including nearly half of Burlington And half of communities like Huntington and westford and really any of these towns are 25 towns now that have it and it's a great place like I say to Find a lost bed or to sell a car or to voice an opinion about the select board or what have you How are you finding the um the I guess the revenue model that ad selling and I mean are you finding on that side? People are interested in getting out in front of those folks Yeah, well, of course, you know make an ends meet on the internet is really challenging and so we primarily we sell ads to local businesses and Our local advertisers have done very well and um You know because people pay attention to their neighborhood news and if your ads right in there they tend to pay attention So we're getting close to breaking even you know, we're well on our way, but it's it's a it's a challenging Um undertaking I want to say thanks to everybody We had a recent appeal to our membership to become a supporting member and um all the many people who who Sent in a donation. Thank you. That was great. Great. That must have been heartening this for the wikipedia model. Yes So, um, how do you see public access as an adjunct to the work that you're doing or as a value to the community? Well, what we've found is that when people Many people don't feel very connected to their to their neighborhood and community And oftentimes we hear back from people who use front porch form that they They they they sell their bicycle or they give away They're used couch or whatever and in that process they get to know some neighbors And then they get to know more neighbors and more neighbors and pretty soon. They're feeling really connected And um and the step after that is they get more involved in their local community They go to green up day or or they pitch in and help shovel out a senior citizen who lives down the block And so, you know, I would think that's the same spirit of public access And so people getting more involved in the local communities. So I see front porch form is kind of the minor leagues Maybe and you're the major leagues We're all the leagues, you know in a way because we're we've got a lot of the same People who watch and who participate. I mean, it's a particular kind of person You know in a way it's an active citizen active citizen person I guess that's why I might describe it. So thank you so much for joining us and your support of our work and all the work you're doing Thank you very much All right, michael with luis really great ally of this project now you found nick carter. Yes. All right, let's bring the man on Let's bring them on nick carter Nick carter congratulations. Give me a hug there, buddy. Hey On the other side of the camera, would you like to hold that? Hello? Hello, berlington happy holidays Whatever your persuasion. We're all welcoming. What's my special award? What do we got here? Let's hold that up for the viewing audience Nick Carter came to us out of a political campaign and he has brought his skills and enthusiasm and great dedication An incredible ability to work hard to the project and it's just been a pleasure to work with you So thank you so much. Well, I just wanted to say it's been a pleasure to work with everybody at channel 17 cctv Can ask for a better group of people and they really encompass the spirit of community media Thanks for a great party by the way anytime. Yeah, I mean not only is he a great co-worker, but he can make some real mean stuff Mushrooms, so thank you That's great Say that one more time Steve norman's next.  I think 25 years ago. He was in on the ground floor I have these mailing lists with his name on it 25 years ago. Let's see what he's got to say Steve norman, we've got an award for him Steve thanks for coming How are you? I'm fine. Thank you. How are you? Thanks for all your work? We have a little award and recognition for your great contribution as Well, there's a great community producer and um, there you go. You got your name on that An outstanding npa coverage. That's what you've got that award for We love those npas. Npas were so lucky to have people like you covering Well, uh, it's a privilege and an honor and I enjoy the production work What motivates you to cover those meetings? um Somebody needs to do it and I don't even get cables so I don't get to watch it except online, but I can watch them online and uh And people people who can't make the meetings come you know watch it too So we need to get that and we need to get people to the meetings We need to reach people who can't make the meetings and a lot of good stuff goes on there The neighborhood planning assemblies are a long time legacy of the berlington political structure. Aren't they? Yes, they are and uh They need constant reinforcement. We need to build the audience get people out get Topics that get people interested I'm trying to uh Make sure that the city council does not allow Development projects to have ad hoc neighborhood meetings. We want them to bring those issues to the npa meetings Which is where they should be where so people don't have to go to multiple meetings find out what the plans are to build new Infrastructure in their neighborhoods um So We try to keep it happening there Thank you so much for your work. We really appreciate it. Yeah, okay. All right. You know you want to interview ivan Yeah, you can do it. Okay. All right. I'm gonna let henry interview ivan. Ivan's the best. You got my favorite shirt on there, buddy Hey, ivan So, how long have you been here at shale 17? Six years What have you been doing over those past six years? Um, hold on just a second Oh my gosh Okay, what was the question again, what have you been doing here at shale 17? Oh everything Oh everything from wearing my own show to um I'm maintaining the equipment and stuff like that and uh writing the camera Put out some of your favorite things about channel 17 My favorite things about channel 17 Well, it's a great place to just practice your craft and just learn camera work and stuff like that It's very good for if you want to get involved in the animation For all your great contribution as uh as a volunteer many how many years did you do that live show? I do a live show here Live show the volunteering on the camera Well, thank you for doing that. We love you ivan. Thanks a lot Sure a little too much Megan emory we're gonna interview. Yeah, Megan. How are you? This is henry prine. I'm one of our star volunteers 17 Great that you came thanks so much Tell us a little bit about why it's um you like being on the channel 17 trustees and why you feel that's an important thing to do Oh, when I started out as city council, they asked me what I wanted to do is my service and Channel 17 was on the list and I think that having free access to media is key to Good government that is transparent and accountable And I think a lot of people in south burlington really rely on channel 17 on the clickable agendas online, especially But also they watch sunday evenings and even Tell me about them or they you know or other meetings that I attend to so it's it's very useful I think and it's a way for people who can't get to the meetings or too busy Since they're on week nights that they can go on the weekends or anytime and click on the agenda and Take a look at what's going on This year coming up. We're going to be renegotiating with Comcast for a new channel 17 contract So what are you thinking what what should we tell people about what to look forward to with that? Oh, let's just keep channel 17 moving ahead with The funding it needs in order to to access more people and to train more people and To be able to put all of this valuable programming on the air Uh, this is a local community where for not very much money. We can get a lot done with channel 17 and cc tv in general So I think it's really worth Those few pennies for Comcast which mean a whole lot more to us You know, we're so grateful to the cable cable subscribers of of Comcast and burlington telecom because They're the ones who support this channel and people across the community whether they're cable subscribers or not use the channel And so we're very fortunate to have that level of support from the community A lot of people use television as their main source of information these days newspapers are struggling to to stay alive And it's important for us to have that real access direct access to the people who make the decisions who are Using tax dollars and all kinds of important resources in the community. It's important for people to have that access Thank you so much and thanks for your service on the trustees. We really appreciate it Happy holidays Okay All right, you know, we have greg beso who's behind that camera and I know he's just dying to be interviewed So how are you? Were you just dying? Well, I guess I guess you could say I was I was uh Well, uh, I haven't working here for quite some time, you know Since how old were you? I was 14 when I started here And so what do we got now? We got a great award for you for all your work Oh Yeah, I've uh Ella It's the experience see I was playing on going to linen state college, which is a top-notch television studies program and This has given me quite a good experience with it. I'm sure I'll continue my work Back behind that camera and do all that great work you're doing. We love that. We love what he's doing So, um, you know, we're we got a couple more minutes and I just wanted to recognize scott moody And maybe we'll bring him over because he worked at cax for a long time and now he works here channel 17 So why don't we bring him on over? All right, here we go. So henry's going to go get scott.  We had an april retrospected We have a june holiday party. We've been doing cctv rewind all kinds of great programs and then in 2010 cctv and channel 17 have about 280 things going on next year not including all the programs we produce So you're going to want to check out our website www cctv Dot org or channel 17 dot org And find out the amazing events that we're going to have lined up for you starting the first of january Including the media maven series which are continuing And of course a new series called the npo mavens. So scott we got three minutes. So why don't you come on over here? How are you fantastic fantastic? We're so happy that um, we snagged you from channel three. Well, I'm happy to be here It's been just a wonderful experience with cctv and I um, I've it's been a learning experience for me going out and shooting all the um municipal meetings and Board meetings and stuff like that. I'm just learning so much about how our government works how The municipalities work how the different utilities work. It's it's a wonderful experience. I'm happy to be here And we're just so glad that maybe you bring a real high level of skill to the camera work And we really appreciate that I try to you know, I try to and try to try to get the The word the government out to the people and that's what we're all about and I'm just happy to be Grateful to be part of the team. Well, thank you so much for joining us and happy holidays Yeah Yeah, thanks for watching So henry we're about to wrap up here buddy any closing words for the people out there Well keep watching channel 17. It's great. There you go That I mean you couldn't stand any better than that and then one more minute or you have something to say one more minute That was a one more minute. Oh, we have a phone call on line one. Okay Hi, we've got a couple seconds left. How you doing? Oh, I don't know if I can hear you Hello, are you there? We're there. We're about to go off the air. But how you doing? Happy holidays from dale great great on channel 17 for the years. Thank you very much Thank you. We love that you're you you probably are gonna get a caller of the year this year dale So thank you. We have a little thank you very much any time you want to come over See you soon. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Thanks everyone here channel 17 Thank you, henry prine my trusty co-host Thank you to allison simons and to greg and distella rose for being here and running the camera and being part of this great great Great operation. We've got kevin in the studio We've got all kinds of fabulous people here and we really couldn't make public access television happen without you So stay tuned for 2010 channel 17 will be renegotiating its contract with compcast We have all kinds of great events lined up and of course here at 5 25 We always have the live show so stay tuned and have a great year


Okay, this is James P. Madonna of the Facebook group everything is food Please somebody explain to me why beekeepers Screw screw you and in the posterior. We're no lubrication No matter where you go. All right. I'm at all these Wonderful market. I like it. I Needed some blue agave for my whole grain waffles, which are It's really a great Replacement for high-fructose corn syrup toxic pancake syrup. All right Excellent, but please somebody explain to me. I Notice is cheaper than other stores, but what is the deal with beekeepers?  What is that? The deal with beekeepers with when it comes to raw honey All right kind of pricey It's insane Crapitalism in a conch shell crap it elism in the United States today It's just a legal license to steal from the consumer No regulations no consumer protection nothing raw honey All right 649 for a pound and a half which is cheaper than what I've seen in other stores, but it's still high Consumer advocate for progressive discussions James P. Madonna signing out


Welcome back to the channel. In today's video I'm going to show you how we connect our HTML form so that when we click this button we are going to get the information that is submitted here, use Ajax and JavaScript to be able to query our API in PHP and then put the two together so that at the end of the day we should be able to have information displayed here that this domain is actually available and we have a button that says you can register this. So if this is something you're interested in then let's jump into the code. So the first thing that I'm going to do is comment out checking the API because we don't want to keep querying and running out our credits or available units available per hour depending on how your API reacts but also we don't need it at this point until we get to the part where we need to check the API. The next step is I'm going to use WPNQ scripts and this is a function from WordPress that allows us to add JavaScript inside our own code and this is the right way to do it in WordPress. So the first thing I need to do is actually pass an ID and the ID that I'm going to have here is take a press XML form, check that will be the ID for our JavaScript. The next thing we need to do is actually pass in the JavaScript file that we are going to use. So API XML search dot JavaScript but this particular file is going to be relative to our folder here called assets slash JS and inside here we're going to create a new file API dash XML search dot JS and then when we come back here we should be able to use something like plugins directory URL which is a WordPress function and in here we shall pass in file to say it is relative to this particular file that we are using here then we can connect here and say let's append slash assets and then we're going to say slash JS and then slash the name of the file so after doing that we need to add the dependencies and in here I'm going to use jQuery because jQuery makes it really easy for us to do Ajax searching for the DOM and manipulating it really easy so the next thing we need to do is add a version and say this is version 1.0.0 and then the other thing I'll say let this be true let it load in the footer but I need to make one correction here this should be wp and q script we are loading only one script not using the hook so once we have this I'm going to go back to our browser I'll open up my inspector tool check the console.log and in the code here in our XML search I'm going to just say console.log semicolon and say this is loading so I'll save this come back to our browser hit a hard reload and you'll see that we have an error it's saying domain, assets is misspelled so I'm going to come back here and then just check this this should be assets this is assets save this come back to our browser reload and this is loading so this is perfect this is what we want we're going to write some JavaScript from this point on forward first and foremost when we click on this button right here I'm going to just add an ID so that we can be able to quickly reference this I'll also do the same thing here and say let's give this an ID similar to the class name so that we can quickly reference it so when we click on this submit button we should be able to get the value that is coming or that is input in this particular box so I'll remove our console.log let's first have some jQuery in here and when we have jQuery loaded we're going to check for the document and we're going to say when the document is ready that is the DOM we need to then have a function that's going to run and this function will have the dollar sign passed to it as an argument will add a semicolon and basically saying whenever we have this reference of the dollar sign we want to reference jQuery in that case so instead of writing jQuery every other time in here we can just say write the dollar sign check for example and say let's look for the ID of domain such as submit and we're going to say every time this is actually clicked we're going to add the method of click or the function of click we should then run this function and this is an anonymous function and let's have the event being passed in here so I'll just denote it with the letter E and say first things first let's stop everything that would be by default that is a function inside of JavaScript so essentially what this is doing I'm going to first comment it out so that you can see what happens if we don't have that line of code I'll reload this when I click this button and you'll see right here that we have a new URL with an expectation of text in here so I'll say let's just say text click search you'll see that it passes this to the URL as a parameter but when I come in here and say let's prevent this as a default reload this every time we click the search box nothing actually happens let me remove this hit enter every time we click this search button you'll see that nothing actually happens because we've prevented the default behavior of this button so what we want to do here at this point is let's say let's console.log and what we want to log is the value that we get from this input field so I'm going to copy this ID here and say let's now get dollar sign let's get the value of this and we want to get the value of this let's say let's search underscore text equal to what we get here so once I get that value we should be able to console.log it right here so I'll go back to my browser I'll give this a hard reload I'll type take a press dot juji whenever I click search you'll see that we actually get this console.log right here we can now move to the next step because we're getting everything working perfectly once that button is clicked we've gotten the value that we need we now need to use our Ajax so I'm going to say dollar sign dot Ajax which is a function in jQuery we now want to do some stuff in here inside our Ajax function it allows us to pass a URL we can also pass data which is a data object we also have the type of Ajax query that we are making which can be a post and this is a string it can be a post it can be a get method so we have post in this particular case because I'm going to send back information I'm going to send this search text back to the Ajax query so that we can get feedback now the next thing we do have is we do have a success and once we have success we can actually pass a function and we can also have an error at this point so I need to add a comma here so that my editor stops shouting at me now in here when we have a success we can have a result you can call it anything that you want to but I'm going to call it result and the same thing here inside our error now in both cases you can console log the result and I'll copy this and pass it here as well in our data here we want to be able to pass an action and this action is going to be a function inside our PHP the function that we'll be able to trap our data that we're sending as a post and then run it through PHP and then use it to query our API so in this particular case I'm going to call this query XML API that will be the name of our action and then I can pass some other things to it for example I want to pass the search underscore text and this is going to come from here so we pass this value as well and then we need to define what our URL is going to be in here we need to pass the URL which is going to basically be HTTPS slash slash domain dot local slash WP admin slash Ajax dot PHP every time we change this plugin and put it on another site they'll have to define their particular URL like this this is not a nice way to do it so what I'm going to do is I'm going to save this and I'm going to come back to our PHP here and I'm going to pass some values to this particular JavaScript file and the way we do this is by using WP localize script which is a function inside WordPress that's why you see the WP before it and I'm going to say let's localize this particular file with this ID we want to pass an object and we're going to say this is Ajax values and I'll just pass this with an underscore we say those are the Ajax values we want to pass and finally we want to pass an array of data and in this array we want to pass the URL which would be the Ajax URL and of course this is going to be a string and we need to map our URL there and we can say let's use the admin underscore URL which is the WordPress way of getting this administrative URL and that is the first part of the string and inside this function we're going to pass one parameter which is admin-ajax.php so I'm going to change this into a comma not a semicolon and what we'll do is I'm going to get Ajax value and Ajax URL I'll come back in here and say every time jQuery is loaded let's console log we want to get the Ajax underscore values and we want to get the Ajax underscore URL from that so let me save this but we haven't defined the URL variable here so we'll be getting errors in our browser console so it's best that we define it right here I'll say const URL is going to equal to that this is the URL let's console log the URL so that this does also not error out when it runs this so I'll just cross check because we have an issue here we fixed that our editor is not shouting let's go back to our browser let's reload this page and you'll see that now we're console logging the correct URL here when I click on this you'll see that it actually opens up the Ajax URL and it shows zero we're just not doing anything but something is happening so if we go back to our editor now we have the URL working correctly I'll remove this comment I'll remove this console log we have our search text working properly I'll copy the name of our action and then go back to the PHP file and the first thing that I will do is function with this name I just want us to error log so I'm going to error log I want to get all the values that are passed to the post now in order to use this action here I need to use the wordpress actions which is add action and in this action I'm going to use the WP Ajax and when we write underscore we can pass in the action now this action should be the action of this please be careful and just pass in that right there so after doing that we can now add a callback function which we've basically named this here so I'm just going to prefix it with take a press so that you can see a difference so the function we actually want to run at that action is this particular callback using this on the front end and sometimes some people would not be logged in we need to come back to our code and say we need to run this same action but we need to add a no preve for no privileges so someone is not logged in but they can still run this particular action right here so I'm going to save this I'll come back to our browser here and I'm going to type take a press dot ug when I click search here you'll see it's telling us that xml api is not defined and that is an error in my code because in the javascript I use this as a variable yet it should be a string so I'll click save here again come back to the browser give this a hard reload when I type take a press dot ug click search you'll see that we console log this zero on line 25 we're hitting our ajax something is happening when I come back to our editor and then scroll down all the way you'll see that we have this action being passed in the post here and we are also getting the search text also showing up in our post so I can come back here and say I'll press the values that we got back here and reuse them let's add some conditions to make our function run well we'll say if and what I'm going to do is just comment this out so that we stop having errors shouting here let's carry on by saying if empty and this is our post object if this is empty the global is empty we should just echo and we'll say this should be json encode and say add post items missing that would be the first thing that we'll do we'll duplicate this and we'll use this function of wp die to stop ajax from running over and over again I'm going to do the same thing here and say if empty and basically what we are looking for here is the search text we should have the same message passed for both conditions so what I'm going to do is just join up these two and say let's add an o symbol here those particular things are missing and I'll duplicate all that is above and say let's get the reverse of this and say if it's not empty at the post and not empty in the search text then what we need to do is actually run our query that we had here so we're going to check for the XML data and bring this here and say let's query this and what we want to pass in here is this particular search text so let's pass back this search text from the post object into our function and we'll pass the function as a variable of results and then we shall get these results and then pass it through into our json encode and this is the data that we'll send back to our javascript this means every time we call this action we're going to check our API for the data, we'll pass this text and we're going to get back the results from here so let's go back and try that I'm going to save this come back to our browser I'm going to hard reload this I'm going to pass in techiepress.ug click search you'll see that we get back techiepress we get back this information back in a neat json with ura availability zero meaning the second app techiepress.ug is available and that is because in our PHP we still have this being checked and we have this being checked what I can do to just only check for this piece that has been passed here is say this function actually expects a domain or it can be anything it can be domain, underscore value, whatever you want to call it and I'm going to copy this domain value and I'm going to pass it in this section so we'll pass some strings here add some concatenation periods and then I'll remove this extra item from here so we know that we're only going to check for only one domain so let me go back I'm going to change this to techiepress.io.ug click search the right domain is passed back but in the results we have the name and the availability all coming back as now so this is an anomaly that we need to check let me error log this and we want to see the body response because we've made modifications to our code this is bound to happen whenever I change code so it's good for you to write what are called unit tests and that is something that I want to explore on this channel we want to see how we write tests and other things inside WordPress please let me know in the comments and then I'll consider adding that as part of this particular series or in another series so let's test this by clicking this and let's go back to our editor we get our post data we also get a proper response from the API so that means there is a problem with our function that actually returns the means so we need to check this at this point because the way the data comes back from here is not the same way it comes back when it's only one item so what I'm going to do is make a modification to this function so I'm going to error log our PHP here I'm going to save this let's come back to our browser I'll hit search again let's go back to our code debug.log at this point we only have objects so we have domains as an object we have domain as another object and then we have attribute as an object and then we have the name and the availability however this is different from what we have here we have a difference in the data type we have arrays when we have so many domains being returned and yet we have only objects when we have one domain coming in so this is going to call for us to add a conditional so that we can get only a single domain being checked for or multiple I'll add an if statement here and we're going to use the PHP function which is is underscore array that helps us to check whether we're working with an array or something else and when I pass is array then we should be able to get this information right here I'll duplicate the if statement if it is not an array then we shouldn't use it for each loop but rather treat it differently so I'm going to come back in here I'll get our PHP domains object and then try to map onto it the domain object that follows the kind of data type that we initially had when we error logged our data I will error log what we have here as the data and this is all to make sure that we have the right data that we expect coming in to our function so I'll add this right here I'll save this I'll click search go back to the editor and I'll go into that debug log and you're going to see that we actually get back the attributes object and it has the correct information at this point so I'm just so I'm going to get what we have here and then chain on the objects attribute remember we need to pass this as a string and that's the way that PHP will understand that we want to get this same object hit serve reload the browser click search and you see that we have an empty array however if we go back to our editor and we go to the debug.log we are getting back the object that we want with the name and the availability so we should be able to get this and then use it in our editor to basically map and say this is the data we'll be looking for one individual domain and we want to push that data back as a JSON response let's copy this array push that we had previously paste it here I'll copy this domain log variable paste it here and say that it's equal to what we have here as the object I'll clean this out then we can use this domain log inside our array push that we are making down here so our editor is screaming at us and telling us these are not defined so all I need to do is say let's get the domain log paste it here and then we shall use our single arrow and say the domain log we are looking for the name I'll do the same for the availability here so I'm going to save this and with this modification we are now catering for both the single and the multiple domains being returned if you want to see how I function please look in the previous video and you'll see how we came about with all of this so I'm going to go back to our editor here I'll hit search and you'll see right here that now we actually get back a nice response from our API and for our particular domain so I'm going to come back here in our JavaScript I'm going to say the result is good now we need to just say let domain response and now we are describing a new domain response and we're going to say let's json.pass the information that's coming back and basically this is the result we want to json pass so let's see what we get back as the domain response after passing it I'll come back to the browser I'll type in take your browser click search and you'll see that we get back and this is an object that we can actually go to and pick the name and availability we shall come back to our code and then we shall use the jQuery each function to basically go over each item inside the object in this each function we need to now pass an anonymous function that we are going to loop over from each individual object so we shall pass our variable of domain response here and we shall be able to loop over that in the function and that means we can get an index and a value so what I'm going to do here is console log the index the other thing that I'm going to console log is the value so I'll hit save here, come back in our browser, hard reload do take a press dot tuji click search you'll see that we get back our index of zero and then we have our object which has our name and availability this other array it's coming from this other console log so don't get confused by that tool so we have the index, we have the value now what we need to do is just get the value dot name and then we can also get value dot availability you can pause the video and see what you'll get back as a result at this particular point but what I'm going to do is now to the front end and I'm going to use some if conditioners to allow me to be able to display the data when we have an availability of one which means that we are able to register this domain under zero which is for that domain that is not available if it is equal to one we should console log the name and take the value name and I'm going to chain on some strings here and say is available for purchase that's what we want to do at that point and I will duplicate this so that you can see the difference and say if it is zero let's add not I'll comment out the console log and make sure that the way spelt availability is the same way as I did inside our PHP so I'll copy this come back to our javascript and make sure that is the same all through I'll comment out the console logs above as well and then we'll go back to our browser after hard reload I'll put this click search and you'll see it says this is not available because that's taken up and when I say take a press click search you'll see this is available for purchase so I'm going to just basically move this into our DOM I'm going to go back to our html and I'm going to add a new div with an ID of registration and a class of registration so that we can be able to style it and this is basically emet helping me throughout of this I'll come back to our javascript here so using jQuery we are going to look for the ID of registration and we are going to append which is a method in jQuery as well to do we are going to append what we have here so I'll paste this in here and say instead of console log I'm actually going to just add some tags and say this is a paragraph same thing here I'm going to add a paragraph comma p and I just need to chain this up together because it's one thing and add a plus symbol here to write our javascript I'll remove that extra semicolon that is giving us errors I'll copy this and I'll pass this here and I'll just use our not available here remove this console log I'll add a button here that says register and then close it off as well so this is what's going to happen so when someone comes back to the front end reload this click ura.go.uji click search you get this without any problem if I change this to take a press which should be available I'm going to click search you'll get this back you have a button that you can click register and that will allow you to do some other PHP queries and so on so that you can be able to register this domain inside our API as you can see we are getting closer to our final product so in the next video I should be able to style this up and we should be able to make this into something that we can hook into wukamas allow us to make a product with our customization and then go and check out to pay and then after payment we should be able to get that order stored in and have the domain if not we should be able to have this as a standalone program and that's what we're going to do in the incoming videos if you enjoyed this please give it a thumbs up don't forget to share and subscribe if you're new to this channel and if you have any comments or questions that you want to share with me please leave them below the video and then I'll be able to get back to you as soon as I can enjoy whatever you're developing


For the CircuitPython Parsec today, I wanted to show you how to use a special type of print debug in your code. So what you'll see here, I have a pie badge. And right now when I press the buttons, you'll see it's printing out both onto the screen and onto my code window repel there, the name of the button that's pressed. You'll also see I am blanking out some of those LEDs when I press a button. I also have some dimming happening based on the little light sensor that's on the front of the pie badge. So this is typical print statements, which let's say I want these. This is what I want this to do. But sometimes when I'm debugging, I want more info. So you can see right now at the top of the code, it says debug equals false. I'm going to change that to true and resave the code. It'll restart here pretty quickly. And now you'll see I'm doing more. I'm printing out light values. And I'm also printing out when I release a button besides just when I press it. So I'm getting more info here. And you can imagine there can be lots and lots of info you're doing in your project you want to see for debugging purposes that you normally don't want to see. So what this debug print process involves is a special function that's been created here. It's actually pretty simple. This function is defined as printD, and then it has an input of a line. It's going to be a string that's going to print. And then this is the key thing here. This function will only do something if debug is true. So when that was set to false, it just kind of does nothing. But when it is set to true, it will print the line. So you can see here I've got my pressed button line in the sort of normal way, print, and then in parentheses whatever I want to print. For the button release as well as the light sensor value, those aren't a regular print statement. Those are actually calling that function. So we say printD and then we're using F string formatting so that we can put inside of quotes any variable names we need as well as plain text and those are inside of one single line. So now with that debug true, we get lots and lots of info. But in the end, if we want to calm that down, we're done developing. Then we're going to set debug to false and resave. And now we don't get flooded with information. We just have the key stuff that we need for the project. And that is how you can use print debugging in your code inside of circuit Python and that's your circuit Python parsec.


Welcome to Pookie Ponders, the podcast where I explore big questions with brilliant people. I'm Pookie Nightsmith and I'm your host. Today's question is, how can technology help us to help people? And I'm in conversation with Jonathan Singer. I'm Jonathan Singer and I am the president of the American Association of Suicidology. I'm an associate professor of social work at Loyola University, Chicago. I'm the co-author of the book Suicide in Schools. I'm the co-lead for the Social Work Grand Challenge Initiative, Harness Technology for Social Good. And for the next couple of months, I will be the treasurer of the international organization HUSITA, which is Human Services and Internet Technology Association. I live in Evanston, Illinois with my wife and three kids. And I like to hang out on Twitter where I avoid tweets by Donald Trump. That is quite the bio. I'm glad I got you to introduce yourself because, wow. Well, so I asked you today to come and talk about how technology can help us to help people. And I think there's so much actually within what you're doing at the moment that kind of speaks to that question. But what you didn't mention in there was the one thing that brought me to you initially, which is that you, like, run a massive podcast. Oh, right. You mentioned that? Completely for that. Wow. Yeah, so... That little thing, yeah.  Yeah, so in 2007, I founded the Social Work Podcast, which is, I think, the longest running. Possibly first, although some folks up in Scotland said that they had a Social Work podcast back in 2005, although I have not gotten confirmation that it was actually a podcast. It was definitely Internet audio. But anyway, so yeah, so the Social Work podcast, I started it as a way for Social Work students who were then transitioning into Social Work professionals to get practical information based on what I was learning in academia, based on the rich expertise of experts in the field. So they could learn on the go. You know, in between a home visit, they could say, oh, I really want to brush up on this and do that or just learn something totally new. It is, I call it an irregularly scheduled podcast because I get to it whenever I get to it. And because I started it in 2007, before there were any podcast platforms, I do everything myself, like I literally hand code the RSS feed. I have a server where I upload the MP3 files. You know, I do the blog. Just all those sorts of things and I'm sure there's a way that I could automate it these days. I just haven't had the time or energy to do that.  Which is exactly what you should do. My advice to people who are starting podcasts or have started in the last couple of years is don't do what I do because it's ridiculous. And you should spend the time creating really valuable content rather than all the background stuff, which you don't need to do. I think one of the things for me that's been most amazing about the podcast is that it has given me an opportunity to talk with so many amazing people and to share ideas that I know some people would not have had access to. I wouldn't have wanted to, but just, you know, we're all busy and we, you know, we get tunnel vision, right? We sort of were in the world that we're in. And so this opportunity to talk to you right now is amazing. And I don't know that that would have happened without being on the podcast, which then prompted me to get onto Twitter, which then helped me get to know so many people. And tell me about some of the topics that you've covered that you think people might not have kind of found out about if it hadn't been for the podcast. Well, you know, I have an episode that I did a few years ago about identifying sex trafficking victims that are in your social service agency, right? So this isn't about sex trafficking or human trafficking, generally, or the organizations that specifically focus on that.  How should you think about is this client of mine, a victim of sex trafficking, right? And that's a little piece of, it's an important piece, right? And sort of like thinking about where are sex trafficking victims, sort of where are the public places where we can identify and then respond. I had another episode where I talked to Lori Holler and Stiker from UT Austin about recovery high schools, right? High schools where students who are in active recovery can go and be supported in their recovery from substance use. And again, that's the kind of thing where, like, unless there's a recovery high school in your community or unless you're involved in that, it's just not something that you would know because there just aren't that many, but it's a phenomenal idea. I remember listening to that episode, actually, and that was, it was really powerful, I think, because as well there were quite a lot of ideas there that could be quite easily sort of taken and used in general practice, I think, as well, weren't there? It was, yeah. Yeah, oh, that's so cool that you listened to that. Yeah, see, this is the thing, right? So, like, we have Lori who's sitting in Austin, Texas, and here you are, you know, listening to it. And even though our social service delivery systems are different in lots of ways, I try to talk with folks in a way that whether you're in Australia or Austin, Texas, or wherever, you can get something out of the episode. And why do you think podcasting? I mean, what drew you to podcasting in the first instance, and you've obviously stuck with it for a long time? So what's special about that as a medium? Yeah, so one of the things I love about podcasting, audio podcasting specifically as opposed to podcasting, is that it's intimate. Yeah, so I'm having a conversation with somebody else, but really it's like we are talking in front of one other person. You know, it's very different than doing what you and I do, which is, you know, we give lots of talks to big audiences, and there's something amazing about that.  They're talking to a ton of people. And so I love audio podcasts because there is an intimacy to it. You know, I love this American life with Ira Glass. And I feel like he's in my ear. Like he's literally in my ear. I feel like I know him, even though I don't. And that is very different than video lectures that I've seen or documentaries that I've seen. I mean, I have a lot of respect for Ken Burns and what he's done, but obviously he's not physically on screen, but I just don't feel like I have the same relationship with him. I mean, I don't have a relationship with Ira Glass either. It's just all in my mind. Do you get that? Do people find that with you when they meet you that they, if they've been listening to the podcast that they feel like they know you? Yes. In fact, I was testing out Facebook Live a couple of weeks ago because I was going to be doing, I was going to be moderating a conversation around the role of social work and policing. And so I just hopped on to Facebook Live real quick just to make sure that the technology was working. And on Facebook, it says, you know, the search work podcast is going live or is live. And I don't know, maybe 20 people popped on for those three or four minutes to say, to watch. And somebody said, like, this is so weird seeing your face. I've been listening to you for years, but it's weird seeing you actually speak the words. So yeah, it's strange. Sometimes what I do when I'm in conferences and sort of live, and I can tell that people are a little weirded out, I just tell them to close their eyes. That's great advice. I love it. I love it. What are you like most proud of in terms of topics that you've maybe covered or where you think you've had a real impact with some of the words you shared? You know, I did an episode on Prachaska and Declamenta stages of change model. And it wasn't an interview, right? I just, it was something that I was teaching in, you know, to the social work students and it was something where I was seeing a lot of resources around the stages of change model that were based on like substance use or from a psychological perspective. And I just wanted to have something that was more social work-y. And really for my own purpose, I created just this talking head version. And I thought it came out well. I was proud of it. And it downloaded like 150,000 times a year. Like that one episode is like, that is the go-to episode. And I don't know why. Like I don't know why, but I'm, I am proud of it because it does take a social work lens to the stages of change model.  And I think it's really helpful for social workers and others to think about stages of change. But so just in terms of like an episode and the reach, that's been one of the things that I've been really proud of. And is that kind of a key measure of success for you? Like how many lives you sort of touch with it? Or is it sometimes about, you know, the quality rather than the quantity of that response maybe? Well, you know, the number of downloads is one metric. And so there is something about, you know, we put these out there, and we want to reach people doing that. I mean, I could record the most amazing episode ever. And if nobody listened to it, then it would just me like wasting in 100 hours that I could have spent with my family, right? But there have been other things that I've heard that are incredibly meaningful. Like I remember I interviewed Barbara Jones again from UT Austin. I don't just interview people from UT Austin. So we talked about pediatric oncology social work. And it was probably a decade ago. And she told me that because of that episode, people around, not just because of that episode, I mean, she does amazing work and she's the past president of the Social Work Pediatric Oncology Association. I can't remember what it's called. So she's, she's definitely a scholar in her own right. But she said that she received emails from people all over the world because of that episode, inviting her to train on pediatric oncology social work, right? So it was an entree for her into communities that because it was audio, right, because they felt like they knew her because they were able to hear her passion and her excitement about the topic and her ability to explain things, which is very different than reading a journal article or even a book, right? That they were like, can you come hang out with us and teach us? And for me, that's amazing, right? That is really cool. Yeah, that's a gift. There's something about, like, I love listening to podcasts, and I do always listen to yours as well. And there's something there, as you say, about people bringing a topic that they're genuinely passionate about to life. And I think that doesn't happen so well in sort of more formal training and speaking, does it? But when you interview someone and they are actually having to just respond in real life in real time, you get quite a different quality of response there, don't you? Absolutely. Absolutely. You know, and I've learned some things about interviewing.  Oh, okay. Tell me more. What did you learn? Well, so one of the things that I learned is that I was using a lot of verbal following. So somebody would say, so this, and I'd be like, mm-hmm. Ah, mm-hmm. Right. The sort of things that you might do in a therapy session that are fine in the moment because they happen and then they go. But in an audio recording, it sounds terrible. But the other thing that I learned is that I was really used to asking questions like, oh, so tell me more about that or, huh, so what was that like for you? Which is great when the focus is on the individual, and it's not great when the focus is on the topic. Yeah. And so I learned to ask questions like, you know, tell me about a, you know, depending on what it is, like, you know, paint me a picture of what that was like, or can you describe for us this or just more evocative, more journalistic questions rather than more therapeutic questions? That's interesting. Although I think you kind of, you step between the person and the thing quite readily as well, don't you?  And I think that's one of the really nice things that your work does. And you don't shy away from tough topics either, do you? You just go there with everything. Which I love, I love.  He's saying, oh, Jonathan Singer, writer of that cheerful term, Suicide in School, wrote the intro to my self-harm book. So I'm interested to know more about that. Like what inspired you to kind of run towards those really distressing topics that other people would generally shrink away from? Yeah, so, you know, when I graduated with my MSW, my master's in social work in the mid 90s, 1996, my first job was working at the child and adolescent psychiatric emergency team, which we call the CAPE team. And our job was to do assessments and short term stabilization therapy for kids who are suicidal, homicidal and actively psychotic. And again, this was outpatient, right?  And what I realized pretty early on was that it was terrifying in the beginning, because I didn't know what I was supposed to do. And I thought there was this like magic ingredient in this. And then after about six months of doing this, I realized that that first of all, working with kids who are suicidal is really about finding hope. And that all of the ways that suicide's been glorified or sensationalized in the press is not what it's actually like when you're talking with somebody who's suicidal. That especially a kid who's suicidal. And so part of what I wanted to do is I wanted to demystify this and say, you know, when you're in a school situation, there are going to be kids who are suicidal. There are going to be kids who are thinking about hurting themselves and all sorts of things. It doesn't mean they're going to kill themselves. And it's much less likely that they're going to die or even hurt themselves if they have people that they can talk to. If this is, if this is something that is not so taboo, or so like scary that nobody wants to touch it.  And, and, and I'm really proud of the book.  And that to me is like, it's amazing. So what were your hopes when writing it? Was it about kind of informing or inspiring change? Or, I mean, because it's a big, like, I mean, it's not a big book, but there's a lot of information in there. I remember this reading, it's dense, right? I mean, a lot of work went into it. So, you know, it was intended to be a practitioner's guide. So we wanted, you know, I had this ideal reader, which was a mental health professional who's working in schools who, you know, has the training on sort of how to work with kids. They know the kids in their school. They, you know, they work with their colleagues and the staff and they do all these sorts of things. And they probably had, have had some experience with folks who are suicidal, you know, there's a continuum and they might have even gotten some training in graduate school. But in any given day, they're having to deal with kids who didn't eat breakfast, kids who are failing out of this, kids who are struggling with food issues or eating disorders or addiction or like all sorts of things. I wanted them to have a resource that they could pull off the shelf and be like, Okay, what do I do in this situation? Here it is. Here's enough information for me to either remember what I was trained in, or I've learned enough so that I can do this now and then, you know, move forward with it. We also wanted to have kind of a, you know, from prevention to assessment to intervention to postvention book so that administrators could say, Yes, we want to have a comprehensive suicide prevention policy in our school. What are the elements that we need to be thinking about, you know, a lot of schools in the United States. They respond for the first time after a kid dies by suicide. And they don't have a prevention plan. Right. And so we wanted that to be in there also. Just to clarify, an administrator is quite a senior role, right? Yeah, so I'm talking about, you know, in the United States, we'll call them the principal of a, you know, of a building or in a school district, you know, you'll have the superintendent, which is in charge of all of the schools. You know, for example, you know, we have school districts in the United States that have a million students, right in a school district. And then we have some school districts that, you know, have a thousand, you know, in, in 12 grades.  But yeah. Yeah, just here an administrator would be more like the person answering the phone or, you know, a kind of office based role. So I just wanted to check that. So then you wrote this book a few years ago now. Is there anything that you think has maybe changed or that you would add now? Anything that you've learned since that book came out? Yeah, absolutely. And in fact, we're in the process of revising suicide in schools. So, you know, fingers crossed, we'll have a new edition out next year. A couple things have changed. One, some of the programs that we've talked about like signs of suicide have had research come out subsequent to the public publishing of the book that have shown better outcome. So now there's research that suggests that high school students who go through signs of suicide SOS are significantly less likely to attempt suicide, which is pretty important finding. And it's one of the few programs that has been shown to have that. There was the, I don't know how you pronounce it, the SYLE study with YAM, the Youth Aware of Mental Health Program. Yeah, it came out of the, actually it was a massive study across several European countries. And, you know, so that came out. And even though YAM is not widely implemented here, it's a program that we wanted to include in our book, which there wasn't information about before then. I think one of the other things that's happened, and this was something that we were working on before George Floyd's murder at the end of May, but really addressing how particularly postvention, right, addressing grief and loss has to be understood in a cultural context, and that defaulting to sort of, this is how we do it, is really defaulting to this sense of what white people, middle class white people are doing. And that that is problematic. So we've integrated that into the text, as well as, you know, more information about LGBTQ suicide and things like that. Wow. Okay, so there's quite a lot of revision in your revision. And when's that coming out, the new version? Next year sometime. We haven't submitted the final manuscript, so I don't know exactly what the production schedule is going to be.  Yeah, that little thing. Have you, did you look at all in revising it about kind of technology and use of apps or anything like that, and did that come up? Absolutely. You know, so there have been a couple of advances since, you know, we published the first edition. One of them is the rise of software that runs in the background of school districts. So in the United States, we have companies that create software that run on the Google platform like Chrome OS or Windows, that when kids are typing, it's able to track the keystrokes. If you're searching something, it's able to track that. And the idea originally, because it's the United States, is they were looking for kids who were threatening to, or planning to shoot up the school. Right, or bomb the school. But they quickly realized that, in fact, most kids do not search for those things.  Wow. Right, what's the fastest way to die? And so this software runs in the background, and when a kid has a search query, or, you know, it types something to somebody on one of these, like Google Docs, the alert, the system flags it, alerts, you know, the principal. And then the principal says, hey, we need to send this to social work and social work intervenes. And so, like that, there are a lot of issues with that. Right, so you've got the idea of surveillance or data valence as they call it. You have the idea that kids are growing up, knowing that this runs in the background, and learning, I have no choice. I have to be, I have to be surveilled. And then on the other hand, you have this idea that schools have always been a place where if you see something or hear something, you do something. And the fact that kids are doing most things in an environment where the adults can't see or hear doesn't mean that we don't have a responsibility to respond. And so, all these issues, and obviously we don't go into all of these issues in depth, but we do touch on them. We have a whole section on technology and suicide prevention. And that does touch on the apps, and most apps have safety planning in them. We talk about this general idea of is social media killing kids? And we've really come down to on the side that social media itself is not, but that when you have kids that are depressed and anxious to begin with, and they are spending a lot of time on social media, searching for either kind of validation or sometimes they end up finding reasons not to live that can be hugely problematic. And so we, you know, we talk about that. And did you see any benefits in social media for kids who might be struggling in that way? Yeah, so one of the things about social media that could be so powerful is is really finding community, right, or affinity groups for kids who are in home situations or schools or communities where they aren't finding other people like them. It doesn't mean there aren't other people like them in those communities. But because of, you know, maybe, maybe, maybe you are the only kid that you know of, whose parents are from another country and they don't speak English very well. And there's a lot of judgment and prejudice and bias because of the United States about what that means. And so then you're able to find other kids online that are like you, first gen, and struggling with those things. And so that can actually provide a sense of community, a sense that I'm in this, this boat with other people.  And that can be really powerful and life affirming. And I'll say that one of the things about the pandemic is that, you know, the crisis text line released some data that suggested that there was a significant increase in the number of people who are reaching out in crisis, but most of those were adults. And that the, the texts are the crisis texts that were coming in from youth. Increasingly, we're talking about how sources of support were coming from parents. And so there is, there's the possibility again that, you know, when we think about adolescence and distress that we have people who are disconnected from their parents during a typical time, but during the pandemic when everybody's locked in together, even though that can be really horrible for some kids, especially those in abusive situations. For other kids it can be a time of connection, because they are able to have those informal conversations with parents because everybody's together all the time. And that they ordinarily wouldn't have because everybody's over scheduled and doing this, that and the other thing. And so, and so the way that that relates to technology is that technology, like crisis chat line has suggested that there might be some in person connections that have been possible because of the lockdown that are also life affirming for kids. Interesting. And do you think that for our adolescents that there is a kind of protective factor for them during the pandemic because they were so kind of connected online already, you know they lived a lot of their lives virtually anyhow and we certainly looked to them for how do we connect when we can't go out. And I, yeah I wondered what your thoughts were on that. That's such an interesting question. You know in the states. One of the things that I've seen is that you know the kids that that tend to have the hardest time in school are kids that are identified as sort of behavior problems. Right, they act up in class they they're identified as the teachers as being the problem students even in their peer groups it's like, it's like dude why are you always messing up you know that kind of thing. And then you have, and these are obviously artificial binary categories but then you have the the other kids that sort of know how the system works, and it works for them and so they're getting praise from their teachers they're getting props from their peers. And when the pandemic hit. There was a shift. And the kids that were struggling at school because of behavior. They were doing really well in an online environment and those kids that were really motivated, because they would get props from teachers they get props from peers in real life were less motivated.  Like I feel like there's nobody around. You know I do my work but you know I only see my teacher once a week. Like I don't, and they can't like, tell me, thank you for doing a good job right so there was a switch. And I think one of the things I think this points to two things. One, our mental health system at least in the United States is really designed around responding to the kids that other adults would identify as being problematic. And in a situation where kids are required to be in school. It's those kids that are disrupting school. And so we have a lot of folks that are trained and working with kids with disruptive behavior disorders ADHD conduct disorder and we oftentimes miss the kids who are, they might be anxious or depressed but you know kind of aren't disruptive. And we've known this, I mean for a long time but our system is set up to address the behavioral problems and so this time, when you had kids that were the good students who were struggling people were like what's going on. How do we respond to this. I don't know what to do right it's because really the function followed the structure in the schools in terms of the mental health response and I think that that is a really important insight for us to, you know as we think about or to use an academic term as we interrogate sort of the basic assumptions of our mental health service delivery system, who is getting services and why. And do you think there are lessons there that will be actually kind of carried forward into our learning as we move into the next phase of the pandemic or do you think it will get kind of lost in the wash up. My hope is that it absolutely will get moved into the next phase I mean my hope is that the, I mean and I've, I've personally have talked with folks about this in schools to say, you know, all of the kids that you thought you didn't have to worry about. You didn't have to keep an eye on you want to make sure you're checking in on those folks because they might really hate the new online learning environment. There are kids that have been on your radar that teachers have been like oh so you got Joey again this year you know so let's keep an eye on him. Got to make sure he graduates, like, obviously you want to check in but if he's doing really well. Then one of the take home lessons is that maybe, you know in person schooling is not for everybody, and maybe this is a shift in our history where we say. You know online education isn't just the alternative when in person education has failed, but maybe there is a benefit to achieving a sort of a long term educational objective that we need to reconsider. I think it's a really interesting question. It's one that's coming up a lot in my teaching at the moment and a lot of families and schools talking to me about students who were not thriving at all prior to lockdown but who at home have really engaged with learning so some of these are children who have been sort of school phobic for many years maybe who are suddenly actually thriving and succeeding and also a lot of autistic children who have really settled at home. And there's this fear now because we move to the next phase in the autumn and schools will have kind of wider reopening and lots of people are worried about how am I going to get my kid to carry on responding in this really positive way that I'm seeing and yeah how do I not lose that progress. And I don't think we know the answers yet on that one which is the tough thing and but maybe moving towards perhaps a more blended curriculum might be might be part of the answer there perhaps but I think it's hard because we're having to learn so much so quickly about how to make this work and what's working really well for some is is you know really turning others off as well isn't it so. It really is and you know there's that classic picture I know you've seen this right they it's sort of like this is what you know like medicine looked like in 1890 and this is what it looks like today this is what transportation look like in 1890 this is what it looks like today. This is what a classroom look like in 1890 and this is what it looks like today like the only one that looks the same as the classroom. And I really think that this pandemic is the thing that could force it so that in 10 years from now people are like well no actually classrooms look very different, like educational settings actually do look different. And instead of it being a continuum of, you know, or not a continuum of saying in person classrooms are what we do, and then in extreme circumstances we do something different. I do think we have to think about it as a continuum, like there are lots of different places that people can learn and lots of different ways. And I know this is not an easy thing to do, but I think that we would really be missing an important opportunity to rethink education, if we were not learning these lessons. Yeah, and I think the other thing we found is that, and it'd be interesting to hear what your view is in your neck of the woods but but in the UK is that people have suddenly had this much broader understanding about the wider role of schools so for a long time, you know I've known in my work and the people who I work with that actually school is way more than just a place of education. But actually during this time, they've so very thoroughly stepped up they're providing food and care of all sorts of different kinds. Yeah, and kind of I think really stepping into the health and the social care kind of role as well as the education role and I don't know if that's reflected in in what you're saying as well but Oh, 100% I mean the conversations that people have had in the last, you know, six to eight weeks about how it's clear that we default to school as serving a childcare function, a nutrition function, a mental health function. As well as an educational function and a monitoring function, and that it's not actually designed for that. Right, is problematic, you know, we've been able to say in the United States like we don't need to provide any sort of childcare to speak of. And when I say child I don't just mean like little kids I mean what do you do with the 12 year old. It's done at three o'clock, and their parents don't get home from work until six. What do you do with them, right, like as a society what do we do with them.  We default to well it's not our problem. We don't know that literally all the parents are like, I can't do this home thing again, like literally I please, please like I know, like we could end up killing millions of people but I just need my kid back in school right like there's this bizarre disconnect. It has really forced this issue of the fact that we do not have an economic system that allows for parents to be with their kids. We're parallel with the way that we've set up our educational system and our lack of childcare. It's yeah it's it's an interesting time I think for all of us isn't it I guess you're finding this you're a father of three right. How old are your kids. I have twin boys who are eight at the moment there'll be nine in October and then my daughter is 12 she'll be 13 in December. You found that being at home in this extended period is that kind of changed your relationship with them and you know how things are at home is that yeah that made a difference to you guys. I mean I think that in some ways there have been, you know, some really beautiful moments. You know, I think one of the things that it's done, you know, my, my, my kids say, why do you work so much. You know, because when they were at school, and I was at work. And so if, you know, if, if I had something to do for an hour or two when they were home, it was just an hour or two but now they see that, you know, I could be gone all day and we're in the same house. And so that's been challenging. There have also been a couple of times where we've just been like, okay midday movie party like that, you know, which is super fun and like you just wouldn't do that before so that's been, that's kind of been special. So how's it, I'm interested to know like, has that changed your perception of your work at all like having your kids scrutinize it like that. Yeah, I mean I, I wish I had less work. Which sounds really privileged. And I recognize that I mean I'm grateful to have a job where I can, you know, work from home and then I'm at a point in my career where, you know, people like you invite me to talk about things, you know, time but, but yeah absolutely I definitely has made me think more about, you know, saying yes to things or saying no to things and prioritizing things and how I have really fallen into, you know, a stereotype that I never thought I would fall into which is like the middle aged white guy that is all about his career and not about his kids, not that I'm not but like that in a very practical way it works out like that in this pandemic, because I'm like okay got to go. What are your kind of priorities moving forward. Like, you know when you went through your bio at the beginning there like you got a lot of titles you're doing a lot of different things what's important to you because I think this has been one of the great things about the pandemic it does make you sit and go, what really matters in my life where do I want to make a difference. What's that. I found that. So what's the priority for you what are you hoping to achieve for the next few years. I'm having a hard time thinking about the next few years. I think that's one of the things that's happened for me in the pandemic is that, you know, instead of saying okay here's this research project or, you know, yeah, like next summer we're going to take the whole summer off and we're going to go travel like it's hard for me to think about like what the future is going to look like. Because I am anxious that, you know, it is going to be fall of 2021, and there's still going to be a question about whether or not kids can go back to school. Right. That said, I said, you know, for a couple more months I'm the treasure I'm like, I was like okay I got to be done with this. I can't, like I can't do all of these things just too much. If I'm going to be looking at being at home with the kids over the next year or two years like a lot of the volunteer stuff which I love, but, you know, so it's sort of like saying no to those things and saying, and you know saying yes to my wife right spending time with my wife who and she's incredibly busy herself. She's, she's got this research on HIV, STI prevention with sex workers and it's really amazing powerful stuff and, you know, she's busy. And so it's like how do we coordinate that. Yeah. So you're not sure. No, I'm not. I, I, because really what I default to is like, oh my God, when the pandemic is over. I want to take a summer and just be able to hang, you know, which again is a privileged position. I'm a, I'm a professor. I'm literally I'm on a nine month contract so I'm not paid in the summer so technically I don't have a job in the summer. And so like why not. I've never, ever done that. Like I've never not worked, like 50 60 hours a week in the summer. So it's like, okay, now we got to do that. And one more thing I wanted to ask you about specifically was about self harm and suicide. So there's been quite a lot of contradictory kind of reporting and conflict in the media in the UK about whether self harm is on the increase at the moment and the feeling is generally that we think maybe it is. But I wondered about you know what what was your kind of take on it whether do you think you're seeing an increase over in the states or do we not know. So, as far as the United States in general we don't know. We don't have real time tracking of self harm, you know, suicide ideation suicide attempt, or death. What I can tell you is that anecdotally, you know I have friends that work in emergency departments at hospitals. I've looked at the, at some of the stats in cities, and it looks like there has been either a decrease or no change in suicidal behaviors amongst adults. And in these pediatric emergency departments, fewer kids coming in. That doesn't mean that fewer kids are having thoughts of suicide and it doesn't mean that fewer kids are making attempts it just means that, you know maybe as parents are like, ordinarily I would have taken to the emergency department but the last place I want to go is a hospital during the pandemic. They just haven't gone and because it's a low base rate behavior relatively low. You know if you normally would have 10 kids show up in a week and you had seven. You know, what does that mean so it's a long answer to saying I don't know. And this speaks to one of the biggest complaints or criticisms that we've had about suicide and self harm in terms of data is that, you know, I can go on to a map and I can see, you know, for a zip code, how many cases of COVID there were yesterday. But the most recent data I have for suicide in the United States is 2018. Wow. You know, I mean I can look at at individual studies that were about a city or something like that. But, you know, I don't, I don't know, like we just don't have it. You know, it's like in the dark a bit then really I mean that's, that's a challenge. And do you think that in your work around suicide specifically is there going to be any impact of kind of COVID and any need for a specific kind of recovery plan or supporting people coming out of COVID or is it just not specifically relevant. This is one of the things where we as a sort of a field suicide ology, we have not kind of come up with like, what does it mean. Yeah. You know, we know historically from the research that in times where there's, you know, massive unemployment where there's in the United States where people, people have been buying guns, like, like they're going out of style like more people have purchased firearms in the last, like three or four months I think that any other single period. And, you know, that's been recorded. And we know there's a direct link between firearms and suicide. There's massive violence interpersonal violence. You know child abuse and neglect, like all those things correlate and, and all of the indicators are that, even if in the short term those things didn't increase. Right, like unemployment or unemployment increase but like there was financial buffers so like people weren't getting evicted there wasn't foreclosures on mortgages. Payroll protection, but all that's going to end. And so the next wave of the pandemic is going to probably in the United States be paired with massive evictions. We're talking millions of people being evicted from their apartments and homes, people foreclosing on their homes the mortgages. We have, you know, we have a increased scrutiny about law enforcement these days and people are really questioning whether or not in situations with where there's interpersonal violence whether it is helpful or harmful to involve law enforcement and so there is sort of a sort of a rethinking about what that looks like. And all of these things we know correlate with increased suicide risk. So the question is, is it COVID, right, meaning like family members are sick. I can't care for my kid. I'm now depressed. I have post COVID symptoms, meaning I have memory loss I you know I'm unable to like all of those things and therefore that leads to a sense of hopelessness, blah, blah, like, so there's the COVID specific suicide risk but then there's a suicide risk for all of these other things. And I think that as a field, we're concerned that it is going to increase as a result. But we don't have a plan for how to do that other than to do more of what we've been doing which hasn't worked. Wow, that's bleak. Okay. So what's next. Oh, gotta go. No, so I think, you know, my hope is that, you know, if we talk again in a year, I'll be able to say so, you know, all of these folks who had been getting together and talking about what is our response, they were able to come up with something and once we got better data, and once we knew, like what the problems were what the risk points were what the intervention points were then we were able to swoop in and do something.  Intervention are face to face. Or, you know, if they are over the phone or over a chat, there's always the option of having somebody come visit you face to face and, and at this point that's people aren't doing that. And so we just don't know what this is going to look like. Okay, so we need to do quite a lot of learning quite quickly it seems. Yeah. But we're in a great position and time to be able to do a lot of learning quite quickly and internationally as well so there is some hope there and you said hope is really important. Yeah. Yeah. I think a really useful thought to leave people with would be if you wouldn't mind sharing a few words of wisdom about if someone listening to this might be concerned about someone in their life and they might think that they have thoughts of self harm or suicide like what can we practically do knowing that maybe there isn't some big infrastructure right there that's going to sweep them up but what can we do person to person to help if we're worried about someone. So if you're, if you're worried that somebody that you care about is thinking of suicide. I think that the most basic and important thing that we can do is to connect with that person and spend time listening to them and help them to really get a very sort of deep sense that somebody cares about them. Now sometimes that is enough. Right. You know Kevin Heinz who's one of the few people to survive a suicide attempt off the Golden Gate Bridge he often says you know if even one person had stopped and said how are you doing today. I probably wouldn't have jumped. And you know that's it's a nice story it doesn't doesn't cover everybody but but listening is really important and don't be afraid to ask the question, you know, are you thinking of ending your life or you thinking of killing yourself. Don't be afraid of saying, hey, I don't know if I'm saying the right things but I really want to let you know that I it's important for me that you're in this world. And, and, you know, tell me more about what's going on right so to have those conversations you can have them over the phone you can have them over zoom you can have them over text. Most suicidal crises don't last for a long time. It might feel like a long time, but you know if you have somebody that says hey I just want to call and let you know that I'm done I'm out of here. And that's the question. And, and in your brain think okay I'm, I'm probably going to be checking in with this person pretty regularly for the next three to five days. And I'm going to make sure I'm getting support and things like that but you know this is not sort of the new normal this is how it's always going to be. And I say that because sometimes people are like oh my god I can't. I can't do this right now right and that's a that's a legitimate response also. Yeah, so ask the questions, let the person know that they're important to you. If you have access to a crisis line yourself you can always call them and say hey I'm talking with a friend of mine who is talking about suicide they don't want to reach out to you but I would love some support and know what to say blah blah blah. And oftentimes people will say sure here you know let's triage this let's do this together. So I think all of those things are important supports.


The number one thing that I learned that you can learn that will change your life, you have to know what motivates you. And it's different for different people. You might not care about cars. You know you might like travel or freedom from a nine to five job. Whatever your thing is, find out your mix. I wish the school system had taught us this. You know we learn so many things that we don't need in school. You learn isosceles triangles in the history of Mesopotamia, but what about how to be productive, overcome procrastination, figure out what motivates you? For me, it's a mix of a little bit of materialistic things, some non-materialistic things like freedom and travel, ability to help other people, help my family, help charities. That mix gets me out of bed every day and you've got to know yours.