Hello and welcome to NewsClick. We are going to discuss with D. Raghunandan who has been following the issue of the aircraft acquisitions that has been going on for some quite some years now which has ended with the 36 Rafale aircraft being bought. There has been now a controversy about it, Congress has raised issues regarding how this has been done, at what price this has been done and so on. But this has been a matter of controversy for quite some time. Raghunandan, we have talked about it in NewsClick itself when this 36 aircraft was suddenly decided during payable this visit to Paris and we had said that this seems to be a very startling development considering the long process, the fixing of what our needs were, what kind of aircraft we wanted and suddenly this discussion the decision to buy 36 of Rafale aircraft not 1 to 26, not transfer of technology. Is there anything which has come out in Nirmala Sitaraman's statement which throws some more light on this? Unfortunately not. Raksha Mantri has basically said that all procedures were followed in taking this decision. How they were followed? Which committee has decided what based on inputs from home unknown? So, there is complete opacity in this, there is no transparency at all because every other day even the Air Force Chief who has somehow pressurized to come out in defense of this Rafale deal is lamenting the fact that we have got only 36 of these aircraft. We require much more, the squadron strength is highly depleted. India went through a prolonged process of discussion and deliberations, inputs from all stakeholders including the user agency, the Indian Air Force, the bureaucracy and the political leadership to come to a decision that India required medium weight or twin-engined aircraft and required about 126 of these aircraft. In fact, the original tender which India had floated was for multi-role combat aircraft in which everybody had applied including the F-16, the Gripen, they are all single engine fighters, the MiG-35, but then the committee sat down in India and said no, our requirement based on the IAF's needs and where our Air Force strength is and weaknesses are, we require twin-engined aircraft. Suddenly, this decision was taken not to buy 126, but to buy 36. Nirmala Sitaraman made the point that we did this because our government believes in decisive action and we took a decision because the Air Force desperately needed some aircraft, but the Air Force says it desperately needs 126 aircraft. So, I find this strange that a system has been set up for defense procurement keeping the user agency's needs in mind, that seems to have been given the go-by and now that is being praised as effective decision making. It may have been quick decision making, but it has certainly not been effective and I don't think it keeps India's long-term interests in mind, both in terms of the defense requirements and the requirements of technology. You raised the issue of transfer of technology. In this particular case, there is no transfer of technology involved, that is the first time the defense minister has explicitly said no transfer of technology is involved. That's absolutely right. And as you said, this is the first time this has been openly admitted, those who know the aviation industry would know that if an agency, if a foreign equipment manufacturer is going to supply 36 aircraft, extremely difficult to transfer technology in the real sense of the word, which is also one of the reasons why India had put forward a requirement of a larger batch of aircraft so that they could be gradually productionized and indigenized in this country. Therefore, what is now going to happen is some component manufacturer in India largely assembly will take place here. There is still an offset requirement, 50% supposedly of the value is going to be offset in this, but as usual in these offset deals, you will see that the MOU has been signed between the Rafale manufacturer, Dassault Aviation and Reliance, Anil Ambani is Reliance. And Reliance has zero prior experience in aviation and actually funnily enough, even very little or no experience in any kind of manufacturing. How a corporation like that expects to enter into any kind of manufacturing role for as sophisticated a piece of engineering as a combat aircraft is completely beyond me. So, clearly they are only going to be turning the screw drivers here. Importantly, the offsets are not going to be within the Rafale deal. Dassault Aviation is going to start sub-assembly or assembly of its Falcon jets, which are civilian jets and they will show that as offsets. Now, this is achieving only a commercial goal. Some amount of money gets spent in India, but the idea of the offsets was not just to gain money, but to gain technology. Buying 36 aircraft is going to cost us anything between 60 to 70% of the total 126 aircraft we are negotiating with France earlier. So, it does seem that per aircraft a cost is roughly two and a half to three times what was originally envisaged. Now, this again seems to be a very arbitrary decision. One doesn't know exactly how much these 36 aircraft are going to cost. In her otherwise fairly extensive press conference yesterday, all that Raksha Mantri could promise was that she will make the data available. I'm not sure how much of that is going to happen. It's almost more than a year since it's happened and there's always confidentiality clauses to hide behind and that too in defense matters. So, with one thing or another, I'm not sure we'll get to know what exactly is involved, but the deal as such because they are fly away condition aircraft with all kinds of other after-sales service and all promised and this is precisely the idea of building in more indigenization is to acquire the capability and to bring down costs and in this case you're achieving neither. So, you're locked into a kind of long-term path dependency as it were because anything that you need to be done, you'll have to call that's all. And I have a last worry and that is India has suddenly started talking about buying a whole lot of single-engined aircraft. We started this discussion saying how come after India took so long and after a long process of deliberation arrived at the requirement for twin-engined aircraft and 126 of them and now suddenly you turned back and revert to single-engined aircraft even there given the way the Rafale deal has gone how do we know they are going to buy 100, 200 with gradual indigenization or suddenly because of emergency requirement that's also going to end up with 35 or 40 bought-out aircraft. I think this is we are entering into very dangerous territory, very thoughtful procedures of decision making to enable thoughtful planning for acquisitions has been set up and now you're back to taking arbitrary decisions which was precisely the reason why those defense procurement procedures were set up in the first place. You know one part is corruption, the other is you get what is called the museum of different technologies that means you get 36 Rafale, you get some Grippen, you get some F-16s. Now all of this is mishpash of technologies maintaining them dependencies or different kinds of parties all of it also make you much more vulnerable. So in fact it was to get out of the Mirage mix that we had that it was decided we should this time go for a larger volume and as you said develop indigenous capability that path is with abandoned we are back to shopping on a peaceful basis. Last question on this India also has its own combat aircraft technology which has taken one considerable period of time to develop one shouldn't really worry about that because F-35s have taken almost 35 years so therefore this is not unknown in the aviation industry so do you think there is a in fact a much stronger case for building one or two lines one of which should be our indigenous capability technology itself? 100% because as you know I have long been critical of the slow pace of development of the LCA project I believe that more resources and more planning should have gone into it to ensure quicker and more effective delivery of the LCA aircraft India has set up very successful systems to achieve self reliance in technology in space and in nuclear and in both these cases by the way even though they are very high tech and the deepest part of the security establishment in this country we have achieved not only a high extent of indigenization a lot of the manufacture today is being done by the private sector under subcontracts from either BARC or from ISRO in the nuclear or these space cases the same thing could have been developed by now for the LCA and can be developed in future also right now Hindustan aeronautics is saying we can supply only 15 aircraft a year which is clearly not enough it is then up to the government to build a system where you can increase production volumes by putting in more money into a decentralized thing which I am sure HAL will be happy to take up and I think that's the route to go rather than if you today go with an F-16 route or something like that you're likely to see the LCA go further down the priority line essentially it is mortgaging our future future air force capabilities to the exigencies shall we say of new strategic alliances Mr Modi is trying to build yeah thank you very much for being with us this is the all the time we have today news click please keep watching news click and also visit our youtube site our facebook page


This is the OGM community check-in call on Thursday, June 9th, 2022. And Leif is zooming in from a little town near Perpignan in France, so I'm waxing melodic about how cool that is. Yeah, it's quite remarkable. And I can tell you the story that on Monday I will get fiber installed in my house. Seriously? Yes, and it has only taken 15 years for France Telecom to deliver. Perfect. So are you going to celebrate? Are you going to pop some champagne? Yes, of course. But here we drink Limous. Limous? Yes, L-I-M-O-U-X. Which is what? It's the origin of champagne. So the monks from the area of champagne came down to Limous, which is close to Carcassonne, and learned the recipe. And then they went back and put a lot of IP rights around it and fences and fortresses, et cetera. Yeah, so much history. And for those of you who just joined Pete's, they see Leif is in the south of France near Perpignan. So we're talking about stuff that happens there. And one of my bucket list items is actually to try to see some cave art in the Dordogne somewhere in there. And I don't know which of them are the most accessible, most reasonable. I am likely not a good caver. I think that I think that I would probably suffer being in an actual cave crawling through things where like what you're crawling through is only large enough for your head. It doesn't feel good to me anymore, maybe as a kid. Yeah, but I would still love to see the art. And what I don't understand, what I don't understand is the art that was made is way deep inside caves and an age when they didn't have flashlights and batteries. So they were clearly taking torches in or bonfires or making light somehow back then, unless they were, unless they were raising bioluminescent critters and taking cups of light back, you know, back in there, which I don't pretty sure that wasn't happening. It's not been a bad alternative, come to think of it. To do this art.  And it's just shocking my art history teacher at UC Irvine, he used to fly back and forth between Santa Barbara and Irvine for us. And the leader showed us the, you know, some artwork from the case at Lascaux before they had discovered chauvet and all that. And he said, look, these people knew how to draw one hoof ahead of the other, like perspective isn't this thing that suddenly gets invented later. We always knew how to draw naturalistically there are religious and social reasons why we do this for 2000 years. And that just blew my mind way back then I'm like, Oh, okay, I can, I can get on with that program. You know, Jerry, this is resonant with, with what Graver and Winslow are doing in the dawn of everything. Of course, you know, a very different view of history and progress and the nonlinearity of that and how much of what we do and know now known for, you know, tens of thousands of years on and off. Yep. Yeah. Yep, it's been known humans are pretty inventive and we're pretty social and we figure things out when we don't kill each other off. And at our public policy lab of their neighboring economics, we thought it was going to be about just clever techniques or whatever zoning and things. And it turned out the black folks came in and led by this one woman said, look, you know, we don't want policy changes we want to decolonize the economy, because it was set up to you know enslave us and and it's a good term and Kevin, you're very good. Kevin. Very, very good. You're working. Yeah, and so they're continuing as a group of white folks and black folks doing it and what's interesting is that the fact that they will be saying that to them and their group, but that the lead guy was meeting with JP Morgan the next day, and he's gonna say the same thing. And so like, this is this role of the connected evangelist who tells the story to get in the room where those folks can go and then opens the door. So he's a great example of, you know, what in our taxonomy called the connected evangelist. I'm starting to tell that I've been waiting for 15 years for my for France telecom to install fiber in my house. And I usually when I meet them in Paris I asked them how long does it take for nature to come up with a baby. And they say nine months. How come that you need 15 years to fix this. I have a little side note along many moons ago when I got out of grad school. I had a project in Argentina. And the guy who was my main contact at the little engineering company in Argentina, Paolo corporate daddy I think, had been waiting for a residential phone in Argentina for I think 13 years, just a resident regular residential phone in an apartment because the system was so screwed up, and there was so much corruption it was so awful. And one of the suggestions I had during our project was for them to call up MCI and Erickson and just build a cellular system in Buenos Aires. And then connected to later, first pick off the people for whom that was a high value item they would pay a lot for service, and then connected to the phone system etc they never did that. But five years later their main competitors were the main utility, helping the emergent new cell phone carriers that were telephonica and bell self had come in and split the city. I think. Anyway.  Yeah, well thank you. Oh yeah I'm moving into this new phase of not being in operations and there's younger people coming into our business. And but we're staying engaged. And so, you know, I'm my new role is ambassador scout reporter kind of thing.  So you're like, so you're like, but no I'm not even pretending to be in operations, or or to try to build something I'm just like connecting it to them. And so it's, it's a pretty interesting role. And, you know, and then I can be building new things, as long as they're outside of our core is and our business has grown to the point where it has, we know what we have a replicable model that'll work right and so when things get replicable I got to go find something new to do. And so I can build things outside of our business that can connect to it like some marketplace. So anyway, it's a pretty interesting role. I like it when I can exile myself from operations in the business and go figure out something else. It's good to know that about yourself.  What, along this process what light bulbs have sort of lit up in your head what, what different kinds of insights showed up for this set of projects. Well, you know, I've had to learn to follow, you know, I think if you see a seven year old do good or white guy leading the project then that's wrong. So I've found, you know, women of color who's who I am following you know Stephanie steps and Twitty and in the funds we're doing and stuff. And so I go out and do my sort of scout thing for her.  You know, boomer boomer guys who want to help me to learn to follow and listen to what's already happening up there. Thanks Kevin. Let's go Eric life. Eric, I think has a show and tell. Yeah, I made a video about it but I'm going to show some few things. So first of all it's good to see you Doug. Right Bart. Yeah. And thanks for the book you helped write. So. So I'm, I'm thinking about the meaning of life lately. And why not. I tweeted a few things about it. And there's actually a Twitter bot that looks for those tweets and this is what it came up with. Based on something I tweeted it said machine language is to be happy. It's truly all the matters in the grand scheme of it. Hmm. Okay, so words of wisdom there. Thanks for the links when I'm done, but this is what I wanted to show a Sinclair ZX 81. And the video I made is a kit. Now if you think about Clive Sinclair, the first computer he created he wanted a real low cost machine for the masses. And UK, where he lived, they really marketed it and this is a six inches square. And for under 100 pounds, the people were able to get the machine and learn it and program on it and those people are doing the cryptography these days and all kinds of interesting work because they were able to learn on a machine that was slow enough to learn on a machine. And, and what I realized, there were two women who wrote a book to really introduce several series of books who real to really introduce people on how to use the machine. So you have the genius who builds it and the people who support the whole thing so I'm having fun with this. The software came on cassettes. And I was able to load one of these cassettes and then I realized there's machine code in it. So I was able to print out the machine code go through the numbers and figure out the machine instructions. So, um, yeah, and then I got a game of life working on it so that's also the meaning of life but what I'm thinking more, I'm feeling a calling more towards music, and I got a bunch of DVDs I'm just going to show. I'm just looking back towards the early part of the 20th century and how technology influenced the music and film industry. So, Irving Berlin. He has a fascinating life of and the songs are linked to him, his moments in his life like blue skies is when he had his child. Al Jolson story. I watched that recently. That has some, yes, connection for me as a Jew. And then related to that is George Gershwin and the whole bunch of like American song book things. And then film Charlie Chaplin, the silent film era. Yeah, so Jolson was the first talking picture. The first time people saw boy heard voices while watching a movie. So before that it was all piano music and orchestras providing the background and you'd read subtitles on the screen. Getting into American music, the American roots music, a whole bunch, a whole history. Also this American epic when. So, yeah, there's the whole New Orleans and all these forces coming together. And just what I'm trying to see is, there's something I need to learn going back and looking at the stuff, something related to just the impact of technology on life. So there's a few more like Miles Davis, making jazz popular less Paul engineering, and then world music, Katara is a Japanese synthesizer composer, and Yanny. So, I just put the selection of things to study in further depth, as I figure out what music means to me and my style where I want to go with it. So that's my meaning of life for now. Thanks, I'm going to post the links. Eric, that's awesome. Thank you. Have you seen the video explaining Coltrane's giant steps. I'd love to see that. I just pasted it. The link to the video in the chat. And giant steps is sort of music theory played out as a as a song. Yeah, I remember. It's been covered by lots and lots of people. Not super interesting and I know zippity-doodle about music theory so the video is fascinating fascinating cool. Thank you. I'm sure seeing that for the first time the chords jumping all over the place. Yeah, it's great. There's a diagram where he's making his way around. He drew it out. This visual way that's super cool. Pete your life sort of bridges music and computing and history and all that kind of stuff do you want to jump in for a moment. Thanks for the invitation. I would probably have to prep better. One thing that comes up for me is Aaron Copeland did an interesting thing with American music and collected American folk songs and one of them is originally known as Napoleon's retreat. And it's really interesting. I found a recording I think on YouTube of a fiddler, you know, back in the Appalachia in the early 1900s playing Napoleon's retreat. I'll share that. That's a cool kind of little history thing. It turned into the I think it's the American beef counselor or whatever ended up using that that song for, you know, so you'll recognize the tune. And it's weird knowing that it came out of Appalachia. And I think it has nothing to do with Napoleon is another interesting kind of. So it's fun. It's bonaparte digging back into what's that. It's Bonaparte's retreat. But it has nothing to do with Napoleon. Yeah, but I think the tune is called Bonaparte's retreat. It is. Yeah. Yeah. And you can hear the fiddler he's fiddling along and you say this is the bony part and he's fiddling. Like, yeah, that's awesome. Oh, maybe, maybe all I've got the. I ended up ordering this online. I used to work with microprocessors. This is a whole computer. Nice, you know, of the kind I think it's close to an inside 6800, which is, you know, it was a big boxy thing like this. When I cover a popular electronics back in the late 70s. Yeah, old computers are really popular lately. So one thing I wanted to follow up. So I just forgot it. I'll come back. I just go ahead. Sure. I'll go to student sec. There's also the vintage computer Federation, which is anybody who cares about this stuff.  Please go ahead, Stuart and then Julian. I just wanted to say that you evoking Katara reminded me of a performance I saw it has in Philadelphia in the mid 80s. There were two large kettle drums suspended on the stage from the ceiling with the face of the drum facing the audience and I couldn't imagine why I thought they were just, you know, ornaments. And then the last part of the performance. He was bare chested back to the audience, hair down to his waist, playing the two kettle drums. It was the most extraordinary tribal experience that that that I've had in a concert it was just absolutely amazing. So thank you for Eric for that's great to hear. It was a Japanese music group, I think named Kodo that played Kodo drums I went to their performance once in Los Angeles many many moons ago is beautiful. I was a professor at Delaware who had a gamma lawn band with the students, the Japanese gongs. And what I was remembering was the power of music therapy. Just in these times, just to help people. I know that there are some people really exploring that. Well, Eric, you just said all computers are getting popular again.  Seriously. Mark from France. You know what the French word for computer is? Yeah, yes, exactly. And it's a big difference between an ordination and ordering numbers and a computer and the Chinese word for computer is electric mind. Yeah, so think about what we had in the 80s, all this new stuff coming out and people knowing nothing learning how to use it and build their own things with it. So it was a fascinating time. And how can we get back to that excitement. Well, I would like to go forward rather than going back and going forward is related to where we started off in talking about the roles of the future in Sweden right now there's a tremendous demand for leadership issues. And I wonder if you have some remarks on why is leadership so popular right now is it that people don't have a navigator or that they are lost in navigation or translation. What is it that is demanding this leadership when it should probably be that we learn from the 10 year old kids, how to play the music or play the game or shape new connections. I think that's important to watch for emergent leaders. Yes, but is it the time 10 year old guys or is it some other generational dimension to it. Well, I think that our we're in, you know, we're in the middle of five crises probably has a little something to do with it that we're I think there's a leadership crisis. And it could well be that old forms of leadership got us into these five crises because they've been failing, which explains a lot of wrestling and and anxiety about politics and government that's happening worldwide. And I think that the topic that keeps burbling up in our conversations is this emergent leadership theme. What can we learn from indigenous people what can we learn from children. And I think this decentralize and federate, feel free to jump in in, you know, into new forms of leadership that I think is what we're going to end up with. So 100 years from now I think we'll look back and go man. Glad we made it through that little squeezy horrible point and you know, saved humanity because now life is better because we are more represented with more people's voices are heard we're not trampling on everybody's rights, and we found some new forms of governance. We can pull all that stuff off I'll be like really happy. Are we really hearing the voices or is it that it's still a lot of noise in the here. I'm chilling did you want to add more. Yeah I had another follow up from what Eric was saying, so please. And a couple of weeks ago I made the kids take me to my little childhood once for my birthday and discovered the SNA film museum. So the Niles district of Fremont was the original Hollywood. This is where they did all the their movies before chaplain decided that Niles was to way back I mean it really was remote and he wanted a bigger city and then they moved to Hollywood. The film museum was created by the descendants of the SNA film studios. SNA was the initials of the original guys as I forgot what stands for a was from Anderson, and eventually around 1914 or so they had a falling out and split apart and a went on to become Bronco Billy So he and chaplain and Keaton they were all shooting the movies there in this backwards and then there's a few remnants of it if you're ever in Niles or in Fremont California. Take an hour and go see this museum it was fascinating to see all of this stuff from now 100 years ago. Thank you. Thank you. Oh, sorry, go ahead, Eric. One more comment. I could watch all these DVDs by myself, but it would be nice if people are interested in specific ones let me know and we can try to do a watch party. I'm going to rename at per for Pete's suggestion I just haven't gotten to it and realizing it now. I'll rename our calls channel to OGM town square so that we're sort of in parallel with the other communities that are using the matter most chat server and Eric if you just want to say sort of post the time and say watch party. Here's here's the thing here's the time and see see who shows up or just ask for a time or whatever please do. I think that'd be great fun. Super Carl. During the topic I went and got my OQO t shirt you probably have a thought on that. Yeah, this was a little, little computer Dory Bell it was designed to G. For service I got one of those two so if anybody wants. It's got a whopping 40 gig hard drive. Which was big back in the day. Yeah I got the I was they told me I was the first person in the Washington DC area to buy one of these. It also got me by my cheers here at the time they had an annual that annual anniversary party and the manager always gave out awards we had that big blackout. That was like 2003 or so but like the whole like major part of the East Coast so like he gave me a most impacted by a blackout award. And stuff so that's my old technology thing. Well I'm also probably the only person who's still using 123 for windows. You may well be. Try poor. To wrap up. So, yeah just thinking about how the computer industry evolved during our lifetimes. And, like, I wasn't familiar with an OQO computer but as I study that there are just so many different brands that emerged all over the place, and really started in the 1940s and 50s, like once the idea came around the world, everybody built their own thing. And then, but now we have an Apple have their worldwide developer conference, and then the EU has a regulation now to regulate the charging technology so Apple's lightning is going to eventually go away, but so look what where we are now and how we got there. So, can we get back to that spurt that Cambrian explosion time. Just the thought. Thanks. Good question. It brings me to just from earlier conversation here. How does this role question link up or bridge with the theory of agents. Could it be that the theory of agents is much more relevant for the future than the management theories from our universities. Can you say something about the theory of agents for those of us who are not familiar with it. Can you talk about the relationship between nodes and characterized by people as well as machines and other capabilities and how you connect to play different roles in either a company or in a music performance or film. That is not limiting your capabilities. It's rather the opposite. So therefore, you can actually have a number of roles that you played during a daytime. In the old industrial society we had a limited number of roles we play, but with the new IT society, we can play hundreds of roles during a daytime. And that of course changes. What we said earlier, I think what Jerry said to get our voices heard. I think that is a very interesting democratic issue. It's your voice heard when you have to put on yellow West or other kind of items to be able to be seen and heard. But that is just the first step. You have to have a number of other steps to get forward after being heard. And that might be called the democracy might be called other things. And therefore the society, as we said is probably at the kind of fog right now in leadership, who takes a lead in a society, the one who is screaming highest. I forgot I was going to go ahead Julian. Going back to what leaf and Eric we're just talking about. And from what we've just said I think it's related to, but to the comment about Eric, which is that if you look back in the very early 1900s there were dozens of not hundreds of different car manufacturing companies, and it's been whittled down to just a few dozen now. A few decades later the same thing happened with the airplanes is like the 1930s was the most widely the biggest design era for airplanes and since then, the designs have been whittled down to just a few. And if you look at computers now I think we've gotten to the same point where personal computers there were just dozens back in the 70s and 80s and now it's been whittled down to what the big manufacturers do. It seems like there's this iterative process where everybody goes crazy at the beginning of the, the technology, and then it gets starts getting whittled down as there's more experience about how things, how to design things and how they would they work in their actual lifetimes. So, I'm wondering, given the advent of even newer technologies, I think we'll be going through the same things that was at the augmented World Expo last week. And there's this explosion of companies in different markets where there was only a couple, just a few years ago. And I think we'll see the same process of whittling down it seems to be necessary that when a subject comes along everybody tries experimenting with all different ways and as you get a level of experience then it starts to filter down to what works best. Julian, there's a really interesting history here in American business there's a reason the companies are called General Motors and United Airlines is that they were rollups. Yeah, they were basically lots and lots of little players that got rolled up into one big company, either through series of acquisitions or an AT&T case through the granting of a nationwide monopoly and on telecom And it's part of the fact that people used to have like a dozen phones on their desk, depending on which company with their trading partner was with they might pick up a different phone and make a different call through a different system so we need to somehow get through that. The history is complicated, but, but like general mode it's like really interesting. General Motors Chrysler because Chrysler was the original company that got swallowed. Cool, we have Leif Stacey and Doug Carmichael in the queue Leif did you want to add something as by we need to check in. Yes, I think General Motors is a very interesting label for standardization of management. Today we have the ISO that is emerging ISO for innovation even. And my kind of a quest here is, could it be that standardization like General Motors is locking up that spirit that we were searching for 50 minutes ago actually that the. We are trying to organize and over organize that it goes into the bureaucracy of yesterday. A little thought. Thanks Leif. Stacey you've made your way back to the floor floors yours might I'm passing you the mic. The laser beams are on they're flashing behind you. The pot the pot of ice dry ice is now boiling over go. So I wanted to throw down a virtual speed bump from when Eric talked about happiness being the meaning of life and just throw out that most people really don't know what how to get happiness they're confused about what will bring them happiness and ultimately, they want to feel like they mattered. And I wanted to connect that to when Kevin was talking about learning how to follow, and then connect that to the idea of that 10 year old leader, that 10 year old leader is not looking to make a name for himself that 10 year leader is acting authentically into what he wants to do, and it resonates with the other people that are following him. He's not looking to make a mark. He is being authentic. And I think that when we think about all these new things being created, we should maybe recognize why we're always looking for the next bigger and better thing. That's it. That's all I wanted to say, just something to think about. I'm just the narratives about what we're aiming for and what our goals are are part of larger narratives that people are busy selling us so the whole, the whole notion that companies must grow that the economy must grow or we will all die is a narrative that we sort of bought into. That's being fought unsuccessfully by other groups like the degrowth people and so on and so forth and like you're about to jump in and say something. Yeah, I just want to say I was really interested in what life was saying about, I don't remember what you called that an agent model that sounded really promising. Yeah, and it also relates to what we just touched upon that the curiosity might be related to what in other circumstances is called visionary values. And then we know from research that visionary values bring happiness. And if you lose the visionary values, you tend to return back to a kind of very meaning making or mean making situation. So therefore, the joy of tomorrow is actually in the visionary values. And it might be that the 10 year old has a kind of a natural way of fulfilling that visionary navigation, which we might lose later on, especially when we go into General Motors model of leadership. I think kids voices in these contexts are really interesting in one sense they just don't have a lot of history or context so they don't have like a rich understanding of what's going on and how things work. On the other hand, they usually ask like the really blunt question like why do we do this. Why is this happening and and one of our nieces at age seven asked her parents like why are there homeless people on the street and what made the local news in Denver years ago and they started bagging up food to drop off with homeless people and things like that. It was just that it was a simple obvious questions like why why in our society are the people who don't have something there seems to be a lot of stuff. And there's so so I think one of kids one of kids superpowers is seeing what maybe ought to be and asking why it why it ain't. And we should pay more attention to those kinds of things because they're, I think they're getting there. They're seeing they're intuiting the natural flow or state of how things could be. And then looking at things going well why not. And another thing for me is that our various socialization processes which vary dramatically by culture, squeeze this natural and so socialization basically drains us of creativity and diversity and a whole bunch of others kinds of things and then locks us into a belief system that is coherent with our culture, which helps us exist within that culture, but makes it really hard for us to see stuff outside the culture and see different ways socialization is really really really strong. That's why you call your email associate. I called myself associated 98 because I like to associate people and ideas. And because I think that the social changes we're going through will be more profound than the economic and structural changes we've already seen because of things like e commerce and the intertubes. And so, I've always I've always felt like I was when I was a tech industry analyst I always felt like I was a champion for humans.  And I was like, yeah, but humans. Yeah, good. Very good. And it also links to what we said earlier that associate might be an agent role for an agency role. And, and leave if you have any links to add to the chat because I don't think you mean agency theory which is a different thing altogether. And so theory of actors or theory of agents I looked around I didn't find very much but if you can find an article or a post or whatever to share with us that'd be great. Yes, I will. It has been researched by colleagues at University of London. So I will put that into the chat. Thank you. I'll go by it right now so I don't have the possibility to check around. That was my assumption, although I know a couple people who are astonishing with just their phones like they managed, they managed to juggle post and do a whole bunch of crazy stuff with phones which I am not able to do it's beyond my ability as well. Let's go. Doug Carmichael Wendy Stewart. Okay, so I have a question that's been bothering me all week. My question is, is it impossible to do a startup without creating CO2. Start with the commuting workers. Add the energy that goes into computing. It's just to me that there's actually no way to do a startup, which isn't contributing to CO2. That's a question. So is it possible to to move around during the day and not create CO2 other than just taking a walk in the park. So forget start bicycles. Well, so, so we funded one that was carbon negative. Altarica organic regenerative farming around it. The ground water around the quinoa production was improved.  And the insets meant that they improved the ecosystem around commercial farming and you know the product is carbon negative and actually the their truffles are biodegradable, and they formed a collaborative with a bunch of other food companies around what part of the stuff that they build together like packaging can be in the comments. And a startup. Doug does a startup that is carbon negative intentionally by its design and action qualify for you. Well, I want to do a really accurate analysis. So a carbon negative company is still probably doing computing. They're in a building. It took energy to build that building. If they're doing any transportation. It's using energy. If you take something like wind turbines. Okay, so it's creating clean energy, but the amount of carbon that went into producing that wind turbine is huge if you add up across the whole cycle. And of course, part of the problem is the nature adds up across the whole cycle. You can't avoid it. I'm going to jump in and explain the ROI. Yeah, Doug, I think you're talking about energy return on investment or maybe it's carbon return on investment, which is what's the investment you got to put into the new thing which you know, like you say will have an impact. And what benefit does that generate, like a, you know, like an investment of money has to generate return investment doesn't energy investment in a new technology produce net beneficial results. I think that's the question you're asking. And it's a good question. It's not often asked. I mean, you know, in a lot of cases, well, for example, you know, keeping your old car may make more sense than buying the new, you know, zero emissions electric vehicle, because of the embodied energy that it takes in the steel and the rubber and the electronics and so forth. So it's a great question. It's rarely asked. It's it ties in with the D growth story in really complicated ways, and maybe the best resource to get really, you know, analytically precise on this Doug is is Saul Griffith. The MacArthur fellow operates. Yeah. Yeah, good. I did mean saw other labs in San Francisco and he's done some of the most geeky, you know, multi decimal point analysis of some of the stuff so I would start there if I were you. Yes, let me add another dimension to what has been puzzling me. And that is, if you create a new startup. A new startup is creating relations with people. Relations tend to stabilize society, which in this case means it makes it harder to change. So are you saying that healthy relations or relationships actually preserve the status quo is that your claim exactly. I'm not sure I agree with that. Well, relationships are how change happens. I think it's like both sides. If you create a relationship that it gets defended. People want to hold on to their relationships. And that's part of the fabric that keeps society stable. But that's trouble when we need to change desperately. So Doug, if I take your arguments and run them out a little ways. I hear you saying, we should not start any more companies and we should stop having relationships. I don't think that's what you mean to say. I'm not positive. I think that if we, I think that might be what you're trying to say that in the cascading series of collapses. Those collapses undo relationships. And that allows reconfiguration to the extent that we hold on. It makes reconfiguration difficult. So have you just become a millenarian. Are you like looking for the wrap the collapse and the rapture so that we can just reorganize stuff. Are you going to good join Saul. Steve Bannon's new school. I just want us to be honest about the implications of what we're doing. I think I think I'll speak for everybody and then everybody can chime in. I think we're generally believing that we have to expend energy in order to fix stuff and that's just a cost of trying to fix stuff. If you're really intelligent about it, then the energy we look, we expend will be neutralized and offset and maybe even go negative because how we do what we do in fact compensates for the energy expended in doing so. And that's just a, that's just a rationalization we're making and Pete has something to say about that. Thanks Jerry, and thanks Doug. It's a good question.  Why are we trying to limit the energy we expand so that we don't create carbon. The whole carbon thing is results in climate change. So, I'm going to say something that sounds crazy but I don't mean it in a crazy way so give me give me some room here. It's, it's not necessarily that we have to avoid climate change, it's just that climate change has a bunch of bad effects. So, another, another strategy would say a strategy similar to the letter rip strategy of COVID mitigation is to say yeah screw it.  You know, it's going to be more chaos. And we'll deal with the chaos. So, I, you know, the, I think it's a good thing to kind of put a flag in the ground a plant a plant a flag and say let's try to keep it to 1.5 degrees or two degrees. The other observation is, I don't think we will right just structurally, and we're going to slide past the one and a half we're going to slide past the two we're going to get to two and a half. We might go to three we might go to six you know it's one of the, the other effect is that the chaotic effects of where we get to changes every time we get a little bit closer to, you know, two degrees or two and half degrees. So, when, when we're at 1.5 degrees we can say well, if we slide over a little bit we'll go to three but then we'll be okay, or we'll be as okay as it will be more okay than we were at six.   So, I, there's kind of two paths. I see us worrying a lot about carbon and I think that's really, really important. And you kind of also want to place that in the context of, you know, we're going to overshoot where we want to get to anyway. And I don't, I'm not saying that we should let it rip and just do whatever we want. But, you know, you kind of need to, I tried to keep two goals in mind, let's try to reduce carbon as much as we can let's try to keep, you know, climate change in check let's try. When I when I say climate change in check what I'm saying is, let's reduce the chaos, essentially. Right.  You're not just trying to keep the temperature low you're balancing the inputs and effects of what we do now, including burning energy, and, and trying to end up in a place. I guess actually another thing I always wonder about is, who's trying to do what right. Are we trying to reduce the amount of global suffering, are we trying to reduce the amount of suffering for the 1% are we trying to reduce the suffering for the 0.1%. We don't, I feel like we don't talk about that enough.  You kind of have to, like, reduce the whole thing, which the real goal is reducing chaos and suffering, it's not reducing temperature right.  It's probably going to be a lot better right and then, and then that's a goal that people can kind of organize around and keeping their head and go, you know, you know so many parts for millions so many parts for million. I saw somebody on Twitter say, guys, it's time, you know, we've been calling it 1.5. It's time to say that we're at 1.6 degrees, right. And, and the, what he said is every little partial degree makes a lot of a lot of it's important to think about that right as, as we cross these barriers from 1.5 to 1.6 saying that okay well looks like we slipped and now we're at 1.6 is a lot different than saying we've been holding at 1.5 for however many years. But there's it for maybe for some of us in this room, I think there's messaging where you want to say, let's hold the line on carbon. There's a lot of other philosophical philosophical existential stuff that, at least I worry about, you know what happens when we get to two and a half degrees and and all hell is breaking loose. So, I'm trying to hold the line, and I'm also like considering, you know, so Doug's question I think is a really good one. And it's a focusing thing and it's like, you know, carbon is one of the most important things, and we should focus on that.  That's, you know, that's another conversation that that we ought to be able to have. It's a higher level conversation that gets more complicated. It's, you know, it, it doubles down or triples down or quadruples or or squares or something. It's an exponential growth and kind of the existential, you know, mindset that you have to be holding. You know, it's like those weird discussions about seatbelts and stuff like that, you know, how many people is it okay that drown and don't have food, you know, at two and a half degrees. But I think, I think it's incumbent on us at this time to be thinking in both modes, right the simple mode and the really complex mode. It's like going to get more complicated and more complicated and the answer to the more complicated stuff. The 80% answer is reducing carbon. The other 20% is a lot more complicated than that right. How can we, how can we read. One thing I work on is how can we we engineer society so that it works differently so that we have a more sustainable way of doing society at large in 100 years. And that's, you know, and, and I don't worry too much about the carbon impact of that because I think the, the, having a soft landing for society in 100 years is also important, right. So as long as I'm not like blowing the carbon budget. I don't worry about that. I'm like okay we're going to do use computing and networking and stuff like that which is not carbon negative and thank God there are people working on zero carbon and carbon neutral computing and stuff like that but, you know, it's a complicated thing out there 100 years from now it's not just carbon. Thanks. If I can just riff on what you said, in one direction, which is, if I were a realist looking out the window I'd be like, wow, the danger that scares me the most is that we kill off all life in the oceans. So let's figure out what it takes to preserve life in the oceans. And then I'm assuming temperatures are going to just keep rising waters are going to keep melting etc etc. So let's figure out how to live on the oceans with some form of natural cooling that keeps us from dying a wet bulb heat death and growing food and everything else. And so I would focus a whole bunch of energies on those two goals, I'm just making this up. Is that, is that an appropriate strategy given what you just said, and is that something like what the deep adaptation folks are saying or are they saying something completely different. Darn good questions. And right away my first reaction is, oh my God, he's talking about adaptation rather than mitigation.  So we're going to go the adoption route. We're going to do the letter rip thing. Oh, okay. So I'm just going to go to parties and whatever without my mask.   I try not to even think about adaptation. We have just taken you there. And so your questions are good ones, Jerry. I'm actually not an expert on any of the adaptation stuff. And, and like I said, it freaks the heck out of me that that when I, I guess, I guess I know that there are people thinking about deep adaptation or think people thinking about living on the ocean and just making sure the oceans are okay and we don't die of wet bulb heat death. And it's like, oh my gosh, are they like on the, on the evil side where they're just going letter rip or are they, are they actually working really hard on mitigation and reducing the effects of climate change. And they've also got some contingency plans for, you know, for stuff. I so I don't know it's a thanks for the question I don't know the answers because I'm not an expert at that. And it's a good illustration for me of how like freaky heart it is to talk about, you know, the, the, the 10% or 20% kind of stuff we should be thinking about, but, but you want to make sure that thinking about that and talking about that doesn't infect the all of society with the idea that that carbon isn't important. Before going on with the conversation, I just want to note how complicated this is for us who have the privilege to sit here and have these conversations who have some resources who are calm in the face of what's going on, still notably, maybe those who aren't are the ones who are not joining us on the calls, etc, etc. But, but this is not easy, none of it. And there are conflicting opinions, plenty of what to do and how to go about doing it. And we're trying to figure out, I think we have a shared goal of, hey, we need to act together in order to solve things and Doug says we need like some some some sort of centralized mandate and we need to stop doing all the crap that would that is harming us right this second, and top down as a is an answer to that. And we're also talking about emergent strategies and mob strategies and who knows what. But this is really hard. And Doug was talking about that we need to organize for it. To me it sounded like we are then searching for the general motors for the climate. Possibly correct. Mr Carmichael is that a good analogy. I think that my own muted. Yes, yes. I'm on a farm outside of Sacramento so if I want to get your background noises. I just don't know the answer. But the question might open the idea that, as we know, general democracy is one tentative solution. I also have Toyota that grow up into another paradigm with their work. Well, I think they're implying something like the response of the US to World War two and shifting general motors from cars to planes and tanks. The problem now is a larger scale. And even if we had a central organization, we don't know what they should do to cut CO2, because any cutting of CO2 is going to unemployed somebody somewhere. So nobody wants to go there. Doug, I'm not sure that life is pointing to the mobilization the World War two mobilization. I think he's pointing to corporate roll ups that might actually be helpful here in some way. And I'm sort of noting that Toyota gifted the world the Toyota production system TPS which affected a whole lot of people in a whole lot of places, and arguably led to just in time inventory which made systems fragile, but arguably gave workers autonomy because they could stop the assembly line and arguably created second and third triple loop learning systems inside of organizations so that they can learn from their mistakes and pick stuff. And so maybe I'm just, I'm just guessing here. Maybe there's a consortium of consortium of global businesses that can say screw us being like the bad guys here, we're going to get together and create the next Toyota production system equivalent for saving the planet, and then act together in concert with the mass and the force that they could bring to the market with resources and whatever, and maybe be helpful, which I, this is not a bad fantasy in my head right now I'm like that I would, I would go for that I'd like to help with that. Well remember I think I actually proposed that about four weeks ago, that we get a collection of CEOs of executives to say we've got to stop and we've, it means we've got to do this and that and enforcement's going to be the major problem, which turns very authoritarian and unattractive in some ways. It does but maybe we have to go there. Thanks, I'm Carl. Can I just jump in on that quick. Yes, Joe. To the corporate exact thing there are various consortia of businesses that are inching toward that and for me one of the favorite examples was. The early odds were HP and IBM and I think Dell, some third company basically dictated to their supply chains what they expected in terms of environmental performance of the products they were supplying. And overnight, they had more impact than any stack of regulations out of EPA global impacts they said we're just not going to buy stuff from you unless you adhere to these standards. Right. I mean that's some of what Doug is talking about. I'm sorry to step in Carl. That's okay, Gil, notably Adam Warbach convinced, I think it was Walmart to start buying organic chicken or I'm forgetting exactly what the story was. And overnight, I think it might have been McDonald's to to ask for a particular thing with their chickens, no more antibiotics, something like that, and overnight the market for that particular mass commodity shifted, because there were such huge buyers that not quite monopsony but close Carl the floor is yours. Okay, on those notes, back in the 50s general service administration who basically buys things that the federal government and stuff we totally I a coke and company that if you don't buy, if you don't put seat belts in your cars we're not buying your vehicles. And that was the transformation and there's also I think the two largest supermarkets in Australia said no more plastic bags and there's data about how much that reduced plastic there. I posted a couple links. Most people are probably aware of Ray Anderson's work with interface carpet and things. The link I put was actually interview that the public building service commissioner interviewed him back in 2002 and GSA uses interface carpet on and most hotels use interface carpet, almost exclusively any place you go that's got this carpet tile. They invented a new process of like carpet as a service so they, they come not only do they come and take the carpet back but they've been pulling out tons of old carpet out of landfills, no new oil type of thing. So that's a part of it and then the other thing that I see evil. I see him as going from conservation to restore the first clip with that interview with was saying there's something beyond sustainability. There's some restorative putting back more than that the goal is putting back more than take when, when we can't and stuff and I see that is a, that's a whole embrace and extend, like, it's sleeping over sustainability to this restorative and then we can pull, we can pull this sustainability wall down. From the backside and the end since sustainability means but sustainability is not enough do no more harm is not, is not going to get us to where we need to be. And stuff so I mean, we got Thomas Coon was I mean he went from he wrote the book on on the Copernican Revolution in 1957 so he had this mindset that that that paradigm shift required this this and the things were incommensurable and stuff now for that his mindset of like the earth revolves around the sun or the sun revolves around the earth, those are and stuff but we need to, we need to get past that rip and replace we're not going to, we're not going to rip and replace in the next millennium some of the things that we have is momentum and stuff so we got to, we got away. I'll leave it at that for now. Yeah. You are here. Kevin Jones can you mute please. I just I just muted him yeah. Thank you. Although I was really intrigued by what the support call is going to be like so. Ken, please. Yeah, something that I think doesn't get paid attention to in in these conversations is addiction. When you're addicted to something it doesn't matter what evidence is presented to you that it's harmful, you know, if you need a fix you need a fix and you're going to do whatever it takes you will sell your grandmother's, you know, teeth out of her head to fricking get your fix. And collectively we are as addicted to oil and energy and economics as any junkie is addicted to heroin so it presents another layer on top or on or below I'm not quite sure where that layer is that is really, really challenging so, you know, I find this conversation, both stimulating and incredibly depressing, because, you know, we really are looking at just how bad things are going to be. And yeah, thanks for Kurt Vonnegut. I'm still a Bacowan fan. But we, I don't think we take into account just the just how strong the people who are in positions of being billionaires and the way in which they are completely addicted to their power and their money and their greed, they're not going to let go, you know, it's going to be, you know, when you pry it from my cold dead hands. But by the time you're cold dead hands are available for us to pry something out of it. So will mine. So, you know, I just don't know I don't know what to do about that. And just one more thing I'll throw in is from a mythological standpoint, if you search the mythology for giants, you have a really, really hard time finding a single giant that actually is beneficial.  This conundrum we're in. Love that.  It's like yeah what way too accurate. Yeah, just to pick up on what Ken was saying I mean and this is the. This is this is the edge this is the nerve this is the essential piece that we're all looking for. How do we change human be. How do we change human behavior slash how do we change human thinking in such a way that the addiction stops. How do we create a new vision how do we create a new mythology how do we create a new story, a new earth story, and I don't know, maybe we will, maybe we won't. But that's, that's the edge in terms of everyone just realizing that each and every individual living on the planet right now in some way is contributing to the morass we're in. Everybody's looking for a solution everybody's looking for someone, something who has the answer, and people don't want to take individual and personal responsibility. And that's the edge. Yeah, agreed. The New York Times op ed I posted earlier was from a conservative who describes the world from his perspective and it kind of shook me up last night because I didn't agree with all his arguments but boy, the arguments made a lot of sense as as descriptions of the battle that that's that's raging, you know in our country anyway. So, Doug and then let's get back to our cute. Doug you muted. We are not getting the pleasure of your voice. So, this looks good. So, so there, there's an addiction to doing us the way we do us. I'm going to use this, this session as a, as an example, as an exemplar. So the recurring theme. Pretty much from the beginning has been rooted in sort of focusing on the dark wolf feeding the dark wolf. So it's the growth medium is fear. And everything that was touched on invoked expressed referenced inquired into or contributed to energetically feeding the horror of what we're in the middle of if that's the choice and decision to focus attention. And that's been the cognitive mental focus abstract focus path, going back to Newton and Descartes. And if we don't do us differently and better than we're doing us the way we've always done us and we're going to get what we've always gotten and everything points towards some kind of global extinction or, or, you know, ending result for our species. If there's a change to be made or a course correction to be triggered or catalyzed, then we're, we're source, like we are the creators of everything we're looking at. So, as the creators, we got to start with changing us. The way we are doing us. We are relating to reality around us. And that on a lived, modeled internalized basis is really, really difficult like our species may not be up for the task. We may not be evolved enough to do that. But ultimately, ultimately, it's about can we transcend the way we've been doing everything and shift on every dimension and level of our beings to a new us. So, our current focus is mental is intellectual is abstract that's that's the body that's operating. We have four others at our disposal that have been basically neglected rejected oppressed or ignored. In terms of our, our physical, emotional, spiritual and energetic dimensions of us. And the question for me from a present moment. What is projection into a past and no invocation of a projection to a future rather or an invocation of past is what is needed right now. What is the ask. What's the, you know, thing that we're looking to replace what is with. What is the creator stuff. And somebody earlier sort of alluded to that, like the beginning of a new story to be written is to start in the beginning. Like, what's the it. And my, my experience of the pulpy of the, of the, of the grown out of the fear medium and all the challenges and all the problems and all the choices and things that would could we can focus attention on is sort of a rabbit hole that is keeping us doing us the way we've always done us. It's a map to figuring out what is needed, what do we want from an affirmative, you know, grown out of love grown out of a natural organic reference. You know, and, you know, one of the things that popped up and this is just like a just a spark. As an example. And the conversation about carbon, which is this sort of mineral mineral obsessed orientation to the world. You know, the element air in an ancient elemental tradition is oxygen and all living things require it. And the thing about air is we breathe it in, and our bodies extract just what we need. So we breathe it in and we exhale. The air we've taken in minus some oxygen. And we've added to it. So too. And that concept of from a natural cycles and flows basis, taking just what we need it. No more no less is is what the natural balance of that those flows and cycles are. If we apply that to our world and the way we relate to it and every living thing on it. And it really shifts our orientation. Our starting premise our perspective our whole frame of asking the question what's needed and framing the answer in terms of what do we want. What's the result that we're actually looking for. So I'll stop there but that's my two cents. That was a brain full and I'm going to take us into a minute of silence just so we can ponder what said, my brain was spinning in about 100 different directions, as you were talking. There's a longer conversation to be had, and we don't have that much time for right now about your critique of how we're doing us, even here in these calls and in this community, which I would love to dive into. Again, we can do it on matter most we can do it next week as a topic for this call that might be a really good use of our time. I would love to just open the floor for anybody else who has a thought about what you just said and then let's go to Wendy so we make a little bit of progress on the queue which we are not going to be able anywhere nearly to finish today but I think it's been a really rich conversation so whoever would like to jump in on what Doug just said and then after that we'll go to Wendy. Great. There you go. Gil. More from Kevin first more from Kevin first Kevin you're you're breakfasting but still can you actually might be lunching because you're an actual. Do you want to say more. Maybe not. Okay, back to you go. Yeah Doug thanks very much for that. And so much to say from this whole conversation I'll hold it off but just to what you so gracefully unfolded. This is an evolution that I've been going through from, you know, I work with companies and cities around this stuff. And it's been evolution just from saying you can do less bad and it will be okay for you slow down the rate of the damage to stop the damage to do more good. And more and more the formulation that I'm speaking about but also experiencing myself is what might it be like if we lived and did business and did all the things we do as as though we actually belong to the living world. Not trying to treat it better not trying to harm it less not trying to manage it better but as though we belong to it. Like sometimes we belong in families and other constellations of human beings where there's a kind of relationship and care and responsibility. And, and this intangible thing called a sense of belonging of where you know where Nora Bates and likes to ask where's the edge of the deer. You know, where's the edge of me. You know, do I send food to a refugee relief organization in Africa because I'm compassionate about those people's kids. Or do I do it because that's me and part of me and that's part of the I think part of the shift in orientation that some people have been hinting at through this conversation. So, I would, yeah, I would Jerry I would value having deeper conversation about that. I have, I have concerns about the addiction model that can run into the conversation as the best way to look at this because I'm not quite sure what that means. I think we're sort of metaphorizing a bunch of things together and can I'm, you know, I bow to your much greater experience on this than mine but that's my, that's how it lands for me. And, and what I really wanted to talk about when it when it was queues about what Kevin said early in the conversation about geezers stepping back. I find myself very much in that question as I'm designing an organization that's being initiated by some geezers. But it feels like what I need to do is step sideways not back, because there's contributions for the older folks to make in a different capacity, perhaps, rather than withdrawing from the stage. I sometimes where my despair shows up is by saying well I'm not going to be here for the worst of it. And yet that, for some reason and how I'm constituted that doesn't let me step away from care and concern and responsibility for how the story unfolds. So, sharing another time. Thanks Jerry. Stacy, I'm sorry not Stacy, Wendy. Oh my gosh, what a conversation and thread I feel like I'm often kind of in towards the end of our meetings and and end up wrapping things together and I feel like I'm about to kind of do the same thing I really value the convert the thread through this without connection. I kind of want to go back to that a little bit and an impart reaction to what Doug had shared about how connection with other people needs to break apart. I think in some cases that's definitely true in order to create what we want but I'd like to maybe reframe it from my perspective. It's not about getting rid of connection it's about creating a different kind of connection so that you know we're not. If we're finding that as the old systems that aren't working so well are breaking apart and that's creating a break in the connections that we currently have, then I am hypothesizing that the connections that we currently have are not built on authenticity. And they tend to be built more on what we've achieved together, or what knowledge set we share. Right and so a lot of exploration I've been doing and thought just recently is kind of old stuff for me kind of resurfacing around the importance of connection and how we build it, and where it comes from and what we can do with it. Right so the fact is that we're hardwired for connection. So, when we start talking about the environment to me I think there's a really good argument, not just philosophical not just spiritual. That is about how we are connected to our environment not just to each other but how we're connected to our environment. I've been thinking now to I recently watched the documentary kiss the ground. And if you haven't seen it it's actually quite inspiring. It's all about the microbiome it's all about the regenerative agriculture. And I remembered one step not going to get the stat perfectly right and somebody wants to find it posted that be fun, but that really when you're eating food, you're not eating the food. The bacteria in your stomach is eating the food and you are benefiting from the excretion of those bacteria. Right. So, if we're trying to say I'm not connect you know somebody's walking around in their life going I'm not really connected with this nature thing will I'm not like well you are whether you realize it or not so to me this is an awakening of or reawakening for some of us of how we truly are connected with each other and with the world and with right so to me those are where the richest answers come from. So when we start talking about mitigation we start talking about solving problems or swooping in and having an answer to something or throwing more money at it. Sure, I think some of those solutions are fabulous. I think the best solutions are going to be the ones that go back to the bear roots here and are like the mycelium and are like the, you know, the fungus that are helping the trees and we need to get back down to what is it that makes us all thrive. I'm proposing that we remember that one of the biggest things that makes us all thrive is connection. So whenever connection is being restored, then we know we're on the right track and whenever connection is being dissipated, we know that we're potentially on the wrong track. So I put in a couple things into chat that also speak to some of the things that we've been talking about Eric Brock Eric that that all have connection woven through Eric brought up. How can we use tech to help us be happier and the creative kind of revolution, really like a video I saw recently by Tristan Harris I don't think his talk is recent his talk is about probably like eight years old now, but he talks very clearly about what we're doing to use the, the neurobiology that we have against us, and what we can do to create the tech that uses the neurobiology for us. And while it's about the tech, I would also argue that we all have those choices every day we just don't usually take agency about them we let somebody else write the narrative. As part of ourselves we can take all the things that he highlights and do those things more for ourselves cut out social media in certain ways are different kinds of connections that aren't serving us on tech or off tech. That's the first one. The second one is a fabulous fabulous and very well known taken by millions of people at this point. This is science a well being free course on Coursera. For those people who are like oh what really brings happiness you breaks it down and talks about this, the myths that we all tell ourselves what the science really says, and what choices we can make again same along the same lines but now we're really instead of a tech focus we're really talking about well being and happiness. Then the next one is really great research, you know grounded in a lot of science again free a free questionnaire that you can take to find out what your character strengths, and all the science that's going behind. I mean, and we're talking lots of science in in business in person in personal relationships and life in general education if we use our strengths when we act on our strengths, samples of how to do that, it makes us happier brings more meaning and purpose into our lives. So again, back to choices of how we connect with what we're doing, and how we're doing it. And then the last one is the work. On the five level languages which has also been around for very long time but is comes more comes from a gentleman who's actually a minister I believe, and so came from his marriage counseling, but has been around now for so long it's expanded out to business and it's expanded out to many other places as well, and how it's applied. And the five languages basically say that there's five different ways to connect that people connect with each other. And inside those five there's a many different dialects, and that understanding what your top love, love languages are and those of people around you create more authentic and deeper connections with each other, fill each other's buckets more easily and more quickly so understanding your own, you can help fill your own. And understanding others like children's helps you fill other peoples. So, all of that to me those are some of my go tos all the time and and things that have been incredibly pivotal over my 2030 years of, of diving into all these kinds of concepts. I would absolutely love a conversation a deeper conversation around this I think it's pivotal, and I'm hearing more and more of it just in the last two three weeks of the shift from talking about how do we collaborate together. How do we create individual personal transformation and recognition that that personal transformation really kind of needs to come first for the collaboration to be successful. Thanks. Just say one quick thing. Please. I actually was using the vision and action signature strengths when I was teaching positive psychology at San Francisco State. You are like me and you take that test do not go oh my God look at number 20 I have to get that back up into my top 10. Go with your top 10 strengths. Yeah, can I, can I just speak about that it's so interesting and this goes back to other things you were talking about today when I've been teaching character strengths to it is it's the natural most people go oh look at my weaknesses. So and I know you know can but for other people. The bottom isn't your week. Everyone's got the same. So I started making sure I preempted this thought in people's hands by saying it's about the amount of energy, it takes for you to act on the strength. So, you get can get to the point where your top strengths are so easy for you, you have strengths blindness you don't even recognize them you think everyone can do it because it's so easy that actually you get annoyed when other people can't do it because can't understand why everyone can't isn't doing this, instead of recognizing that this is the thing you actually bring to the room and can offer to other people right versus and then the other side, or something super super hard. And so you have to look into how teams work together, you know the one, lots of times we hire people that have similar strengths to us. And so you have sometimes people on as the outliers, and then you can get annoyed at them because they're focusing on things that not everybody's, but actually they're the strength of the group because there's only one focusing on those things are you, all those kinds of things are incredible but the most important is the, there are no weaknesses it's about the energy that it takes. That was a tour de force Wendy thank you. Okay, anybody else who has a contribution on that. Let's go around for just a moment if not. Well, let's pause. I mean, let's let's wrap the call after that. We didn't make it through, I think, half the room, which is how it goes sometimes but this is really rich and beautiful I completely let's do it the floor is yours. Yeah, I just wanted to punctuate the last few entries. Because, you know, after talking about more techie things, we got to talk about the human fulcrum. And that I think is is the is is the place. Well, I remember what was it Archimedes who said it give me a give me a fulcrum so long and I can you know, move the earth or something give me a lever on a place to stand. Thank you. And, and that's, that's the lever right now that the human transformation on a massive global scale to just to shift the way people think you know picking up on what Doug said what what what Wendy was talking about. These are all the edges. We know so much in this area. There's so much we know, and we know how to move and and and shift people by shifting their mind by changing consciousness. That's the edge that's the that's the that's the evolution I've been talking about. We need to conquer outer space we need to conquer inner space. And yeah, before we can collaborate and work together. It's the individual transformation that needs to happen need the capacity, just to let go of all the crap that we're living in.  It boils down to creating the context in which people's natural empathy and compassion shows up, and it does if you create the right context ask the right questions and provide the right kinds of education. And that's the edge that we're all on right now. And a theater surgeon wrote a really interesting science fiction book in the 20s or so that really was about that and it was that humanity responded collectively to stop an alien invasion by gaining collective consciousness and realizing my sacrifice needs this but then that happened. Is it more than human Kevin. Kevin points to the key thing.  We're not there yet there's not quite enough pain on behalf of enough people unfortunately, but that's probably what's going to happen. I really want to jump in if I can. Yes, I was just going to add that what Stuart just said Wendy the things you put in front of us a moment ago are basically like manual instructions for getting to the spot that Stuart just described so go ahead. You got the last word on the call. I just want to add one nugget that I forgot to mention before but it relates exactly what Sue was just saying to and goes back to the idea about the myths that we tell. I think it's really important that we start thinking about who our heroes are and why those people are our heroes, and the thread that I really want to bring out here is generally our heroes are people who have endured suffering have shown incredible resilience, and we celebrate that. What I'm suggesting though, so we start paying attention to the times when a gentle rise into greater thriving that required no obvious catalytic trauma or crisis is also worth celebrating that you end up in the same spot. But one requires a crisis and the other one doesn't. Right and that we generally don't pay attention and don't give credence to the one that didn't have a crisis. So it actually almost encourages the crisis in order for the change to happen and we start believing that a crisis is necessary for great change. I disagree. I do agree that it happens that way. I disagree that it's the only way to happen. And I would love to see stories that don't have the traditional arc that we have been telling for thousands of years of the reluctant hero who goes on a quest. Right the the whole journey heroes journey thing. I think we're ready and right for a new story that says that measures celebrates and perpetuates a general increase in thriving things. In case nobody knows that the acronym is that I just typed in the chat it's from your lips to God's ears Wendy. I think this is a very nice point to suspend this conversation and try to hit resume next time. Doug, if you want to go on the matter most channel and whoever else wants to play to help shape question for next week's Thursday call. I think that we have a nice nascent topic about how do we do us better. What does that mean. Doug is off so I don't want to reach out to him directly with that invite. No Doug Breitbart not Doug right I'm sorry. And he's still here and he's not in the firm of the other. Yes, I think we're good. The Doug prime Doug B and Doug C. Yeah. Cool. So. Thank you all. It's been like really juicy my head is going to explode and I've got 40 tabs open to go process. Joe. Bye.


Joseph coming in and just bulls Alex Carey. Gets top of off stump right where he wants it. Official says no, no, no. He says no, no, no, no to you. No, you missed it. And he does not get as bad to it. Did it hit the stump? That's gonna be the big question. So they bring in the noise and that shows that, yeah. It hits the stump as it goes through. So they're like, all right, well, what happened then? The bales didn't fall off of it. They stayed right on. Did they get hit? And look at this shot. It's incredible. The bales get hit, they spin around, but never fall. They need to fall off for him to be out.


in five, four, three, two, one. Good morning, New York. Welcome to Hair Drugs and Reacts. Today, it's sunny with a chance of silk hair for the sea. They really love me, they do. Your audience loves me. They really do. I'm not gonna lie to myself. Nobody's, no, stop gassing her up, guys, because it's getting awkward. And now she thinks she's a YouTuber also. So there's only room in this house for one of those. Oh my God, you are not putting this on. Hi, beautiful. Today, we're watching some girls with four-sea hair. And if you don't know what four-sea hair is, that is the curliest hair you could possibly have. Very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very curly.  Iron flat, it's gonna be so sexy, so fun. Last time I did this video, I learned a lot about the process of doing silk press on four-sea hair. And today, I hope to learn even more and better my knowledge about four-sea hair. Before we get into that, today's video is sponsored by my love, Honey. We all shop online and we've all seen that promo code field taunt us at checkout. But thanks to Honey, manually searching coupon codes is a thing of the past, baby. Honey is the free browser extension that scours the internet. It finds promo codes for you and applies the best promo codes it finds to your cart. Imagine you're shopping on one of your favorite sites. Here I am shopping on PacSun and buying some beautiful, fabulous shoes. When you check out, the Honey button drops down and all you have to do is click Apply Coupons. And then you just wait a few seconds while Honey searches the best coupons for that site. I save $14 on these fabulous Chuck tailors. I can never have enough. I have way too many pairs of converse, it's bad. Those of you who have installed Honey using my link have found over $16,000 in savings. That's a lot of saving, baby. If you don't already have Honey, you could be straight up missing out on free money. And by getting it, you'll be doing yourself a solid and supporting my channel. Get Honey for free at joinhoney.com slash Brad Mondo. It's literally free and installs in just a few seconds. That's joinhoney.com slash Brad Mondo. Thanks, Honey, for sponsoring today's video. So with that all said, let's get it started. Okay, first video, we got a girl named Shakira, Jonay, or Jonay, Jonay. I'll go with Jonay. This is called the curly to straight hair routine on type four hair, silk press, no heat damage. I doubt that. I always love learning, but how are we doing a silk press, no heat damage is what I'm wondering. But let's check it out. I haven't had flat iron my hair in like so long. I got my red tail comb. Sorry, right off the bat her hair looks so healthy, so hydrated, beautiful curls. Literally no frizz. She said she's done this in a very long time. And her curl pattern, by the way, is like flawless. Really appreciate that. Probably because she doesn't straighten it very often, like she just said. The Tressame, heat tamer, leave in spray. Okay. She's so confused. I just bought this. Everybody loves that stuff. So this better work. Like my hair better be like super extra flowy. I wonder if it's just like straight up silicone. Let's check it out. The first ingredient on the cheese silk infuse is silicone. Cheese? Cheese silk infuse. Get it. Cheese. Yeah. I mean, for there not to be water before silicone, I'm kind of surprised, but also not, because everybody loves this product. It has very curly hair and silicone will really make a very glossy, slippery surface on your hair. I don't have a problem with silicone. However, sometimes you can overload your hair with it. Sometimes it's really hard to get out. So having a product that has the first ingredient as silicone can be a little bit too strong for some people. Make sure you're clarifying your hair and getting that silicone out in between washes and not having it build up on your hair. I just got out of the shower and this is what my hair is looking like after being towel dried.  I like that she's parting with her hands and not a comb. Normally, you know, if I were not working with forced hair, I would go straight to a comb. I've definitely learned that with curler hair, it's great to just use your hands for a lot of things. There's no real need to use a comb for this. And it's just a lot easier to part curly hair without it. And I'm just clipping it away so I can work on this back section, spray my trust and make heat tamer all over it. And now I'm using my Chiso confusion. Something I know about curly hair is that you should have the hair super wet when blow drying. That way you can get that curl out better. Once the hair dries, it pretty much like sets in place. So I tend to really spray down the hair before I blow dry, which is way different than when I do straight hair because with straight hair, I tend to want it to be like 90% dry before I even go in with the round brush or anything. In this case, I would want the hair stopping wet, but let's see how it goes with her. Obviously she probably knows more than me since she has the curly hair not me. And I'm using kind of like a nickel dime size amount and I'm going to put that throughout the whole section and I don't want to use too much, but I'm just using the praying hands method to evenly distribute that throughout my hair. And right now I'm taking Tangle Teaser dupe that I have from the Dollar Tree and I'm using that to stretch my hair out. When I blow dry, I blow dry in a downwards motion. So right now I'm using my Denman brush and I'm going to use this technique to get to the root. If you guys know me, you know what? I love a Denman brush. I went over that brush in my brushes that I love video or whatever the f*** you call that. It's one of my favorite brushes. I love to use it on curly hair for forming curl pattern or blowing out the hair. It's just so good. It gives you so much grip and it's just so easy to use. It has a great weight to it. Definitely recommend that if you've never tried one before. And for this to really get flat and have a good blow dry, I use my blow dryer on high heat. She's really just trying to stretch out the hair and not trying to completely smooth it out. I'm sure she'll go back with a flat iron. The mistake that I feel like I make a lot is trying to get the hair too smooth with a round brush or a flat brush before going with a flat iron.  It would not waste my time, you know? I haven't seen a lot of people do this twist after. Use the tension method to dry my hair. Very interesting. About 95% dry before I go in with my Denman brush. I'm learning a lot today, again. You see how slow she does these passes with the flat iron? That is where it's at. You don't go like this, the flat iron, okay?  You should never need more than one pass on the same strand of hair. That is when you cause damage in your hair. Oh, look at that hair get smoothed out. It's so satisfying. Yo, she has some shiny mother-f***er hair and I'm here for it. Right now I'm just gonna go ahead and quickly wrap my hair and I'm surprised I still know how to wrap my hair. Yeah, I usually wrap my hair in the opposite direction of what I want my part to lay on. She just said wrap and I went right around. Yes, I'm just putting my satin scarf on. This helps set the style also from what I know. Now I'm gonna go in with an edge control to do my edges which I don't recommend unless you just know it's not gonna revert your hair. Whoa, do with the edges laid and everything. I usually don't like edges laid, but this looks flawless.  Oh my God, you just gave me everything I needed today. Stunning before, stunning after. Those curls were so hydrated and so beautiful. That straight hair is so silky and so soft. I'm so happy for you. You look divine. Thank you for that video. 10 out of 10 today for the first video. Let's move on to the next video. Next video is by Kanise official and this is updated poppin' silk press my 4C hair beginner friendly. I want to section it off into two sections from now. Side by side. She has very similar hair to the last girl. So I'm wondering if their technique will be the same or a little bit different. I actually end up doing two dime size amount. People also use very, very little of this which if it was me using after the first time I'd probably be like, dump it on my hand. Like I love products, so good to know. Don't use too much. The tangle with a wide tooth comb only. During my blow-drying process I'm going to be doing the tension method. Hold the end of your hair, pull it down nice and straight and you allow the heat from the blow dryer to dry your hair when it's in kinda like this straight form. Okay, so clearly this is working for people.  When I used to do blow-dries a lot in 4C hair they would want me to do a full on blow out and then straighten it because they said it lasts longer. That was their preferred method was for me to full on blow dry that sh** real straight. And if I tried to do something like this like just do the tension method they would be like, can you really blow dry it first and put a lot of tension, a lot of grip on the hair? Like a Dominican style blow out where they put just a lot of heat on the hair typically. That's how I was taught, but I like this better. It's a little less damaging and seems a little more gentle on the hair. Now we're using a comb kind of as a paddle brush and using it to pull the hair straight and then blow dry. And we are twisting like the last girl. Again, I find that super interesting. I would never think to like twist after I had already blow dried the hair. Like I would think that would add curl back. So good to know. Y'all know I work from back to front. I'm just sectioning off. Yo, she has just as much hair as the last girl if not more. Hair, so I'm just putting the top in like a little ponytail bun situation. I am applying more of that she on my hair. I apply that every time I'm about to start a new heating process. Oh, okay. My hot comb. She's using a hot comb. Those combs make me very, very nervous. I only use them on wigs, but using that on a client or something, I would be way too scared.  I don't wanna do that. So I have this little tool. I honestly don't know where I got it from. Someone, it was gifted to me, but I'll try to find one on Amazon and I will link it down below. She's using this really cool comb that I've seen a few times before, but have never used one. I think they actually look like a lot of fun to use. I don't know, it keeps the hair really trapped in. And she's using a very, very skinny flat iron, which I feel like might be a waste of her time, but I think she really wants to get close, close, close to those roots. So maybe that's the reason for using that. I don't know. And we're making our way through the hair. She's going all around the head, section by section, you guys. This is what I mean when I talk about sections. It should be this precise.  They're fabulous. You're gonna get the best result when your sections are this small. Now she's giving herself a little bit of layering, which I love to see. And honestly, love to also see those dead ends drop to the floor. Still make me nervous with that hot comb. It's really scaring me a little bit. Okay, so now she's going in just like the other girl and putting some curls in there. I think this is the finishing touch that makes a silk press just so beautiful and well done. It's when you put that little bit of a bevel in there to give it some movement and some life back to it. And I wonder if she's gonna do the same wrap. Oh, I guess not. She's not gonna wrap her hair like the other girl. She's gonna leave it nice and bouncy and curly and wavy. I have to say it's not as straight as the last girl. They might have had slightly different textures. Some curly hair doesn't get that straight no matter what. Some curly hair gets really, really pinned straight. Who knew you wanted so straight for that? You've been saving that one for the entire video. It wasn't even that good. I did that, I don't know. It wasn't even good. I don't know. That one you probably should have just saved. Her hair looked beautiful.  But just for the before and after purposes, like I want it like f***. Ooh, I want it really stuck to her. But she had great volume and it was a different kind of style than the last girl and I appreciate that. It looked fabulous before and after and yeah, great job. Next video is by Shayna Violet. This is called, I tried doing my own silk press on my 4C hair, fail. Oh, we had to get a fail in there today. We had two guys, come on. I'm not very good at blow drying.  It looks good to start. I mean, she already stretched it out. It's looking similar to the other girl so far. I wonder what the fail's gonna be, honestly. My flat iron is from Amazon. I have no idea what it does. They had a lot of good reviews. So I bought it. All right, y'all. So I'm starting off by sectioning my hair into four parts.  Similar to the last girl. The esiocacy. And to it's- This is so fun. I'm learning, I'm learning a lot.  And just kind of editing the way I do curly hair. It's, this is all fun for me.  Yeah, I would be scared too. Uh-uh, the hot comb thing, guys, I can't get behind it unless it's for a wig. Yeah, I don't think I can do this. No, don't. We're just gonna have to go part by part. I'm going to be chasing the straightener with my comb. They make it look so easy to do the back of your head like this. Straighten my hair with a straight face. It's like, if I don't make one, then I'm not doing something right. I'm trying to do one pass, but here we are two passes later. Oh no, dude, this straightener is terrible. It's either not hot enough or it doesn't work well. I feel like it's probably not hot enough. Ah, I'm sad already. Branted my hair was super flat, but it didn't look how it does like when my stylist does it. But obviously I'm not a licensed hairstylist. Oh, no. Going to attempt to catch my roots again. It went just as you probably would expect. No. This flat iron needs to be way hotter. I feel like that's the issue. Or she needs to use some kind of silicone-based oil, something to really hydrate her hair and make it super slippery and glossy. Because something's going on here. I can't quite identify what it is, but it doesn't look any different. And she just took all that time to straighten it. I feel so bad, no. Why does my hair look the same? This doesn't make no sense. Dude, I'd be pissed. Okay, so I did go in and try to trim my hair. She definitely needs a little bit of a trim, so I'm excited about this. I don't even think I cut it evenly. And I know I should have cut more, but don't judge me. Put down the scissors and the straightener. Never do it again. So sorry that this was like a fail. Oh. Hey, y'all, please don't judge me. But I'm not good with hair curls. I cannot do hair curls. Okay, Shayna, we're not judging you. Maybe a little bit. I mean, if you watched this video, hopefully the two girls I watched before this will give you a few pointers on how to properly do your hair. And maybe you learned a thing or two. Well, I did today on how to do a better next time. But, Shayna, it was quite a fail. I'm sad it didn't come out completely straight. Damn, that's frustrating. I'm sorry. All right, you guys, so those were some beautiful and not so beautiful slick presses. I learned so much. I love learning about hair and I love expanding my knowledge about all things. Hair, whether it be color, cut, blow drying, straightening. Gotta always learn, you know? I'm not perfect. I don't know everything. Make sure you guys follow me everywhere else. Here are all my social media handles from everywhere. If you guys would like to text me, here is my number. I will be picking a few of you guys to actually text back.  Make sure you guys check out my haircare line, xmodohair at xmodohair.com. It is linked below. Or head over to our Instagram at xmodohair to see more about our products and learn more. Make sure you guys subscribe below if you're not already. Click the bell icon and the thumbs up if you'd like. Should I stop saying that? At the end of the video, is it annoying? I don't know. Today's Instagram shout out goes to Cindy. She says, hi, Brad. I'm Cindy from Barbados. Ooh, Barbados, I need to go there. I love your channel. I'm getting married in a couple of months. Congratulations. I'm having a hard time choosing bridal hairstyles. Can you suggest one for me, Brad? That would look great with my face shape. I love you too. I am getting a vision of you having a side part. Maybe like right over here. Having like a really cute bang moment with the side part. Really nice and flat around the head. And then having a low bun with a lot of movement and wave and curl. And maybe jazz it up a little bit with some pearls or some crystals inside that bun just to really make it elegant and give you that bridal vibe. If you end up doing that, I would love to see a picture of it. Please send it over. That is all for today, guys. Thank you so much for watching.  And I'll see you next time. Bye, guys.