Hi, it's Think Tech and this is History Lens. I'm John David and the host of the show and today we have with us Dr. Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins who is a scholar from Yale University and Dr. Jenkins is the specialist on religion and the rise of neoconservativism in religion and the rise and fall of secularism. He's currently got a book under contract with Columbia University Press entitled The Neoconservative Moment in France, Raymond Aaron and the United States and he's working on another book, The Rise and Fall of Global Secularism Since the Cold War and Daniel's here this week in Hawaii to give a lecture at Hawaii Pacific University on religious liberty and the rise of neoconservativism. So Daniel, thanks for being on the show. Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. Great stuff. So when we think about, can we get some definition? So how do you define neoconservativism? Well, that's an interesting question. I think when most people think of neoconservativism they think of the foreign policy inspirations behind the Bush administration's decision to conduct a war in Iraq as a result of 9-11 and the fear of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. So typically I think when people think of neoconservativism they think of maybe the foreign policy hawks behind the Bush administration or maybe the foreign policy audiology of Paul Wolfowitz. But it actually has a much longer history. It's a term that was used to describe a more conservative wing of the Democratic Party or at least some intellectuals in the Democratic Party in the mid to late 1960s who didn't like the direction that the party was taking under Johnson and they didn't specifically like the rise of the new left and they didn't like the direction of American foreign policy after as a result of the Vietnam War, very concerned in fact that because of the Vietnam War the United States was losing the Cold War and so they in many ways began to critique, if you will, the orientation of the Democratic Party in the late 1960s early 1970s and eventually wound up by the time of Reagan's rise and wound up in the Republican Party. So it's a bit of a different history than maybe the one that most people are familiar with in terms of the Iraq War. It goes back a couple of decades longer and different concerns depending on which decade. But in terms of religion, neoconservative religious types, where do they stand and what's their kind of what's their agenda? Well that's an interesting question. One could make the argument that many neoconservatives were not religious at all. They were in fact maybe culturally conservative and therefore because of that realized and recognized the importance role that religion plays in society and specifically allowing for a kind of traditional value system to be maintained.  One would be Daniel Bell who wrote this book, The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism where he basically suggested that the kind of capitalism that had made American political economy successful was inseparable from a kind of Protestant work ethic and that the new left in the 1960s in some sense their lifestyle contradicted that kind of Protestant work ethic. So in that sense there's kind of a, if you will, for strategic reasons and functionalist reasons a kind of value for religion in society. It has a restraining effect and it's not by coincidence that many neoconservatives in the 1970s, I mean, they joined forces whether knowingly or unknowingly with evangelicals who were also mobilized in the early, in the late 1970s with Jerry Falwell to present kind of two of the main ideological foundations of the Republican Party. So whether neoconservatives are actually religious or not, maybe it's not the important question, it's how they viewed religion and its role in society. Okay, so in a sense their ideas that we need, that they themselves are not religious but we need religion to serve as a kind of structure in society and to preserve values and show people the right path. Yeah, interestingly enough, I mean, yeah, it's a cultural, form of cultural conservatism and it somehow, although not a neoconservative, been revived in the United States, at least that rhetoric with this idea of making America great again. And if you look at someone like Steve Bannon, the whole idea is that you need this Judeo-Christian tradition to kind of curb the excesses of kind of a sort of decadent lifestyle that would explain the rise of the 2008 financial crisis. So now that's becoming very clear now. Okay, so and that helps, that helps us to understand I think in the, on the contemporary scene, you know, why the evangelicals are so attached to Trump. If I'm articulating this correctly, then it's a values issue, not necessarily a religion issue itself, because of course, Trump is not a religious person, by any means, he seems to be just the opposite, right, an amoral person. Yeah, I mean, I don't want to infuse terms here. I think the neoconservatives that I have in mind are actually quite critical of Trump, mainly for, main reason would be for foreign policy reasons. But the argument that I was making is something that I share in common, perhaps, with maybe someone like Steve Bannon would be the restraining effects that religion can have on curbing kind of certain excesses, and cultivating certain virtues that would, if you will, cultivate good spending habits instead of ones that lead to bad decisions, which Steve Bannon, interestingly enough, thought that was connected to why the 2008 financial crisis happened. There was too much, you know, this restraining tradition wasn't in place. But that's different actually, though, than the neoconservatives. That's a different, they're moving, many are moving away from the Republican Party now, or they're critical of Trump, they don't like Trump. And as you mentioned, Trump isn't really, doesn't seem to be the most religious of people, even though his admirers, many of his admirers in the United States, do admire him. He presents a conundrum, I think, for many believers who are voting for him because of... Yeah. Yeah. I would think it would be a huge problem for religious people to vote for Trump because of his, you know, kind of out in the open amorality, right? Right. Or even immorality, right? Well, yeah, I mean, it's a challenging to explain the kind of ways that religious groups have gone about justifying their support for Donald Trump, knowing that his own lifestyle in many ways contradicts their own faith. And of course, you know, one could just say that he gives them what they want. He'll have the Johnson amendment, he gives them, you know, maybe the Supreme Court just, justices that they want. Right. And in exchange, he gets their support. And this is kind of a pragmatic relationship. Yeah. It also could be a very theologically inspired view of Trump, which is that he's kind of analogous to Cyrus, a great king in the Hebrew Bible, who allowed for the end of the Babylonian captivity and for the Jews to return to their homeland. And even though he's a pagan king, he allows for... God uses such a person for redemptive purposes. But yeah, there's all kinds of ways to try to figure out that relationship. This is what I've heard, is that Trump is a broken vessel. Right. But the key is the vessel. Right. It's brokenness doesn't really matter if he can move things along in a way that religious people think. So, okay, so that's kind of, so there's some, there's apparently some, quite some variation among what we call neoconservatives or religious fundamentalist, religious evangelicals who support Trump. You're saying, can you say a little bit more about neoconservatives who are actually moving away from Trump?  Right. And this was the same concern that many of the early neoconservatives had regarding what they considered to be a kind of Vietnam syndrome that had taken over the American foreign policy establishment in the 70s, exemplified through detente and strategic arms limitation talks, but also through the turn of international human rights from the car administration. So, and the idea was that actually we don't, we're underestimating the threat of the Soviet Union, right? Just like maybe if you talk to some neoconservatives today, we're underestimating the threat of democracy, whether it be Islam or whether it be China, for instance, and we have to have a strong view of America's role in the world. In many ways, there are some parallels with the older neoconservatives from the 70s and their children today, even though one major difference is the criticism of the Republican Party today by neoconservatives. So, you're referring to Robert Kagan and the writer, the historian. Right. Yes, correct. Yes. Okay, so, okay, so that makes more sense. These are kinds of the neocons that came out of the woodwork when we entered Iraq, right? Right. Iraq war in 2003. And, okay, so can you take us back a little bit and talk about that the neoconservative movement that you study in your, I assume this was your dissertation that it became your first book? Right, yes. Well, I mean, I guess the purpose of the book is to try to suggest that even the story about the rise of neoconservatives in the late 1960s and the early 1970s is a limited one in so far as that story typically focuses on the United States. In the 1960s, you had, again, a group of what you could describe as vital center liberals, new dealers that were not happy with the Johnson's Great Society program. We're not happy with some of the directions that the Democratic Party was taking in the 1960s. And there's also, as I mentioned, this thing about foreign policy, but this is actually a transatlantic phenomena and it can't be just reduced to the United States. You had similar concerns in Germany, for instance, and in France. And one of the major concerns was the student protest movements that, especially in the late 60s, that kind of rock college campuses and, of course, France, Paris would be the obvious, one of the biggest examples, the May 68 student protest movements, but also in Germany, also Berkeley, Columbia. There seemed to be a concern about this new generation of students and the demands that they were making and that these demands somehow went against or were a threat, if you will, to kind of the great accomplishments of the post-war welfare state. And so the issue became trying to explain why a group of middle-class, generally economically stable college students at some of these elite schools were so discontent. And many, such as Daniel Bell, for instance, said, well, we can only explain this at the level of culture. There's cultural discontent. And the fight for recognition amongst new groups seeking equality, whether it be women, gays, et cetera, they explained this at the level of culture. And then they quickly, Daniel Bell was famous for saying, in terms of culture, I'm a conservative, in terms of politics, I'm a liberal, in terms of economics, I'm a socialist. But I think that's a true statement. I mean, like, you have to have all three for him, right? For him, you had to be a kind of cultural conservative, if you wanted the political economy of the New Deal, right? And it was these, if you will, these students who are disrupting this because their culture wasn't that of the New Deal, which was based on a Fordist model of the family, and it was quite conservative. So there was kind of a cultural turn, if you will, amongst these kind of vital center liberals. And they recognized, okay, that culture is imploding. We have to somehow address this. And this also is an element of the neo-conserv movement that you find not just in the United States, but in France as well, I make the argument in the book that something like this is a concern of someone like Raymond Aueron, the great French liberal, who's very struck by the student protest movements, famously calling them a carnival and a psychodrama, and very conservative. In a negative way. In a very negative way. Carnival, he meant that the professors were behaving like students and the students were behaving like professors and that the I did, that's it, right? Yeah, exactly. And we hold it there, Danny, we're gonna have to take a break. And when we come back, we're going to talk more about the rise of neoconservatism. I'm fascinated by it. So, okay, we'll be back in a minute. Thanks. Hello, I'm Dave Stevens, host of the Cyber Underground. This is where we discuss everything that relates to computers that's just kind of scare you out of your mind. So come join us every week here on thinktecawaii.com 1pm on Friday afternoons. And then you can go see all our episodes on YouTube. Just look up the Cyber Underground on YouTube. All our shows will show up. And please follow us. We're always giving you current, relevant information to protect you. Keeping you safe. Aloha. Aloha. I'm Wendy Lo and I'm coming to you every other Tuesday at 2 o'clock live from thinktecawaii. And on our show, we talk about taking your health back. And what does that mean? It means mind, body, and soul. Anything you can do that makes your body healthier and happier is what we're going to be talking about, whether it's spiritual health, mental health, fascia health, beautiful smile health, whatever it means. Let's take healthy back. Aloha. All right, we're back. We're live with Daniel Steinmetz, Jankin from Yale, and we're talking about the rise of neoconservatism in the United States and in Europe. And we were talking Daniel, we were talking about the these young protesters and how new dealers who accepted the liberalism of the New Deal, but were really repelled by this. They were cultural conservatives who were repelled by the kind of, I suppose what they saw is that the nihilism and the the kind of created as you go spirit of these young students. Right. Yeah, one thing that I should say, many of these neoconservatives were some of the biggest proponents in the 1950s of what was described as the end of ideology, which is this notion that with the welfare state and with kind of a certain political economy, revolutionary ideologies wouldn't be necessary because you had the necessary safety net in place to allow for the workers to have basic security. And I think what happened with these kind of end of ideologists who became neoconservatives, they quickly realized that actually you need more than just the welfare state and you need more than just a certain form of political governance, you need a certain kind of culture. And that has that goes a long way explaining the the neoconservative turn, it's a cultural turn, right? Okay, it's not just tweaking the economy, it's not just technocracy, it's actually culture as well. And so yeah, there was great. And the students represented, if you will, cultural, I mean, discontent with with that kind of conformist culture, kind of a very and that they aren't cage of modernity, right?  And that's interesting. You mentioned it because many of these end of ideologists were actually very much influenced by Max Weber. Yeah, and the concerns about bureaucracy. So that's that that's absolutely okay, you're talking about the neocons as well. The Neoconservatives early these early these early ones that I have in mind where we're kind of a barrier and an outlook. But I think you can take what I'm saying, though, and you can kind of put the pieces together. If you think of it as if you think of the New Deal as entailing a certain kind of culture, which is quite conservative, you would see why, even if you're an atheist, but you're a new dealer and you're in your cultural conservative, why something like why why there would be an acceptance of something like the evangelical movement, because they provide you with that conservative culture, right? That's and so even though you might find their ideas totally ridiculous. Well, the national audience for Billy Graham in the 1950s, right? Yeah, kind of, he's a national figure, right? It doesn't matter if you're Lutheran or Baptist or or Methodist or congregationless, right? He's like, Oh, he's, he's our kind of national pastor. Yeah. And that's interesting, because the pastor before him, at least the national one, I think the person that typically it's associated with that was Reinhold Niebuhr, who was actually quite different than Billy Graham and had very critical things to say about Billy Graham. But one has to ask the question, well, why not a Reinhold Niebuhr type Protestant liberal figure and instead a Billy Graham kind of evangelical cultural conservative figure. And one of the reasons is because mainline Protestantism by the 1970s is slowly beginning to undo itself because the very kids who are becoming critical of culture are the children of mainline denominate, they attend the mainline churches. In other words, their children are rejecting their conservatism. So they're becoming secular, they're not around anymore. Okay, what are their religious group is there? Oh, there's these evangelicals who were all over the political map in the 40s and the 50s. Now they're being mobilized for political purposes. They kind of in some sense replace. But yeah, I mean, isn't it, isn't it true that that the evangelicals, especially fundamentalists in the period from the 1920s into the 1920s, were considered kind of cranks and kind of, you know, euphuses by by the kind of the Eastern elites and the intelligentsia, right? I mean, you know, they make a lot of fun of the evangelicals in the 1920s. Right. Well, what's, you know, I think sometimes we have ways of viewing the so-called fundamentalists that does, I think, exhibit the kind of reputation that you just described as being anti-modern and kind of uneducated, anti-intellectual, anti-secular, and so forth. Well, it rings bells for me in the present day, honest. There's been a way of the scholarship to kind of call those things in the question, but there's there's a reason why that I think there's probably still something to it nonetheless. But in the 1950s, you have a new evangelical movement that breaks away from this, even in the 40s, that breaks away from this fundamentalism that is much more invested in culture and in mainstream American society. And that's Billy Graham, right? Okay. So, so in other words, you have the rise of the evangelicals, and you have the decline, if you will, of the mainline protestants. And at the very moment where these neo-conservatives are worried, worried about mores and culture, so they can't rely really on those liberal protestants, because they're kind of dying out, even though they're kind of still there, but they can rely on this new group that's now mobilized in the Republican Party for the first time. Okay. And so the, and thus they move into the Republican Party at that point. Yeah, exactly. This very moment that the evangelicals are mobilized into the Republican Party to support Reagan is the very moment that many of these vital center, you know, lifelong Democrats leave the Democratic Party and become Republicans. Right. And it's also at this very moment to where another group joins, well, another group forms kind of a pillar of ideology of the Republican Party. That's the neoliberals. Okay. And so you have the neoliberals, the neo-conservatives and the evangelicals come together. And what's interesting is those groups are kind of kind of coming apart today because of the Trump administration. Okay. Well, that's that's good news. But there is a question here. And my question is in the Reagan era, then, why didn't the evangelicals embrace Reagan more readily? Maybe it's the other way around. Maybe it's just that Reagan had just so little time for evangelicals that he didn't actually implement much of the agenda of evangelicals. Right. I mean, he tried a little bit. Right. Well, I mean, I think he's able to cater to them. It's fascinating that you know, the president, of course, before Reagan was Jimmy Carter, a Democrat and an evangelical. Right. That's right. And I think received the majority of evangelical support. But at that point, the evangelicals weren't mobilized the same way that they were under Reagan. But you know, if you recall the National Prayer Breakfast what in 1980 1981, Reagan uses the language of evil empire to describe the Soviet Union. True. That's a language that would have been familiar with many evangelicals because they were huge readers of how Lindsey is the lake, great planet earth and which had a very similar view of the Soviet Union. Right. Reagan was whether consciously or not use that rhetoric and that's kind of language that they would understand. And so maybe, you know, supposedly he attended church less than any other president, yet he was he still to this day is admired, I think by by the evangelical community without a doubt. So perhaps he could have done more, but he was effective. Well, he really fits your definition of the Neoconservatives of that time, right? Because he was a new dealer. Yeah, that's right. But he hated the the 60s protesters. That's right. Kind of the chaos that he felt they created. Exactly. And he did nothing to undermine the new deal. Right.  Not not like current, the current reform. Yeah, I mean, maybe we overemphasize that. And you know, when we start stressing the influence of the neoliberals on the Reagan administration, and with thatcher as well, the fact that supposedly Hayek and people like Milton Friedman were were a real influence on those administrations. Maybe we go too far. And and and trying to stress that influence and project maybe 2008 into 1980 or 1978 or whatever. But yeah, maybe, maybe that that that the very well could be the case. Okay, so, so we're almost out of time. But bring us up to the present day. I mean, you're talking about a fracturing of the Neoconservative movement. And I know you're working on a book on religion and populism. Is this book contemporary? Or is it go back in as historical as well? I'm sure. But are you bringing it up to the Yeah, I'm actually working on this, like a trade press book on religion and populism. You know, there are many different ways to explain what populism is we struggle as academics to even, you know, articulate what is the essence of populism. It seems to me that most of the ways that scholars go about it is to say that it's a problem of political representation. That's one. People don't feel represented by their parties or their party leaders. And someone from the outside comes, you know, rises and says, Oh, I can I can represent your system is rigged. I can represent you. Well, that sounds very familiar. This is this is one explanation for populism. It's a political explanation has very little to do with economics. Then there's the economic explanation, which says there is this kind of global financial system that's run by Davos elites, and people are putting their money offshore. And this the the economic system is neoliberal, and it's not functioning properly. We need to kind of have a Brexit, or we need to, you know, close down the EU, or we need to have tariffs, or we need to become isolationist, or we need a fair distribution of wealth. So distribution of wealth is economics is the second explanation. I think those explanations for populism go a long way in explaining what's going on. But one thing that strikes me that about those explanations is they don't really they don't explain why, for instance, why, why, why are so many religious citizens in particular, and enthusiastic about an Erdogan in Turkey, or by about the kind of traditionalist discourse of Christian democracy in Hungary under Orban, or evangelicals with Bolsonaro in Brazil, or evangelicals with the Judeo Christian tradition, the United States, which they somehow associate with Trump, or the list goes on, we can mention many examples, and the relationship between religion and populism, and right wing populism, those two other explanations, the economic and the political explanation don't seem to provide answers for that. That's true. They don't fit. They don't fit. Democrats currently in 2020 are going to run on economic populism. Yeah. So okay, so so what fits then? I mean, just did we've got like 30 seconds? Well, I think many people on the left are hesitant to look at the role that values play in why maybe a populist candidate is appealing. And all the examples that I just mentioned, whether it's Bolsonaro, whether it's Orban, or whether it's, you know, Trump or whoever fill in the blank, they're all promoting kind of a kind of traditionalism. They all kind of look at, in many ways, Putin, who's not really a populist, but they look at Putin as a kind of way of providing an alternative to Western secularism. And so it's really, I think you have to take into consideration meaning and values and and trying to come up with a sense of collective understanding based on tradition. Yeah, that's providing, if you will, ways of dealing with automation and international capital that so it's in way it's in a way, it's really not religion, but it sounds like Western civilization, plus religion like, yeah, it's it's the discourse, if you will, of some kind of civilizationism, it's the discourse of some kind of value system that in some ways, you want to use the language of Karl Pellani, the the it provides a way of dealing with capitalism, the disembedding effect, the dizzying effect of capitalism by encasing capitalism within tradition, within a particular value system. That's very interesting. I think that's the thing that needs to be emphasized a little bit more, not to the detriment of those other two, but to combine those three together would be I think a way to go. But we're going to have to stop here. But Daniel, thanks so much for coming in. Thanks. Great to have you. Do an in for another episode.


Hi, my name is Aiden O'Shea. I'm one of the directors of the Linguaviva Centre Language School on Leason Street in Dublin. Aiden, I want to start by asking you about the challenges that the pandemic has posed in your school and in your classrooms there. Yeah, well I suppose like all language schools we taught our last class before the pandemic on the 13th of March and ironically it was the 13th of October when we reopened so we were closed for physical classes for a full seven months. I suppose the initial challenge caused by the pandemic was flipping a very short notice on to online classes in the space of 48 hours now. We were lucky enough that we had some guidance from Quality English that they developed in relation to online classes and online class charters and best practice for reteaching and for syllabus and so on. So that was probably the first challenge that we faced and then I suppose the second challenge once we had got the online classes up and running was the back end support, you know, the admin, the student support applications for, you know, letters that students need social programs and, you know, moving all of that from a face to face provision online. And so they were kind of the two initial hurdles that we had to overcome at the very early stages of the pandemic. And as it went on, I suppose, and as we all realize that this wasn't something that was going to go away in two or three weeks or even two or three months. The next hurdle for us was, well, how do we how do we deal with this and, you know, not just in an emergency form for two or three weeks but how do we make this the new norm. And that was, you know, adapting everything that we do kind of becoming if you like an online school. You know, for a substantial period of time and training has been has been a huge part of it and getting lots and lots of feedback so we surveyed our students regularly, our staff, and then as we decided on a reopening in October, now we probably reopened later than many schools because we, I suppose, wanted to get it right. And we surveyed extensively our staff or students and what they, what their priorities were, going back to face to face classes, and the point to view of safety from the point to view of resources. And then once we decided we'd go back, again, training our staff, moving all of our, moving all of our placement tests online, and then trying to implement the COVID policies as they became available to us from the range of government bodies so it's I think that the main problem from for all schools I don't think I speak, you know, just for our school here was the lack of clarity, and you know we really didn't know which a under whose office as we fell you know we were we were dealing with the Department of Education, we were dealing with newly formed departments, you know there was, everyone forgets there was an election and new departments, you know, in the start of this pandemic, and then just trying to, trying to agree on a set established protocol and for everything to be online to reopening. And so that's been, that's been a frustration, and you know just when you thought you had, you know, something as simple as, you know, two meters or one meter distance or 1.5 or masks or visors so it's the constant move of the feast. It just had to be adaptable. And I think that the best way to do that has just been to set our own standards, you know, to take in all of the standards available by government bodies. And as I said, we work with Quality English we've worked with the MEI have had theirs available but I think you need to set your own standards that you're comfortable with that cover all of the statutory guidelines, and then train up your staff, go with them and then, implement and enforce them and so far it's worked. And we reopened physically for eight days and then we were back online. You know again that's just that's just the way 2020 has been but I think we were all really happy with those eight days. And because we got to test out the systems that we had, you know, spent months planning. And then we now know that when next go back face to face that we were very happy with the physical layers of the school and the structures and the procedures that we put in place they all worked well, albeit firm for eight days but we now know that we can confidently reopen again when we're told safe to do so. And from the feedback that you, you were collecting as you went along from the students from the staff was a kind of things where they telling you that influence the form that that eventually took whether it's academically or in terms of health and safety or general welfare. Yeah. And I suppose the first thing we focused on was the health and safety given you know this this is a, this is a health crisis that we're in so. And, you know, we've we pride ourselves and having good access to things like computer rooms libraries student rooms we've a lovely outdoor area at the back, and you know students use that and we also have low numbers in our classes so we had to tell the students that if we're going to go back here face to face we're going to have to sacrifice a lot of our common areas. You know, are you happy to come back where you know you won't be able to congregate on the breaks.  And students were aware that unhappy, I suppose to make those sacrifices if it meant they could get back in a classroom with, you know, with their teachers with their classmates so the priority first and foremost was health and safety and from an academic provision point of view. We looked at, you know, we, I suppose we stopped recruiting and for quite a while once the pandemic kicks we know we didn't know exactly how long it would take so once we knew we're going to reopen we started to recruit new students again. And that phase so we're quite a lot of new students and invariably, you've got quite a broad spectrum of levels so we made the decision early on that we would continue to provide all all levels even down to you know a one for students. And even if it meant one or two in a class, because that's what the feedback from students was they didn't want to end up in, you know, classes where you had maybe an a one a two blend because you know it made more sense economically or it made more sense when they were online so what we ended up doing is actually having more classes face to face than we had online because well a for for social distancing but be because we were getting a broader spectrum of levels. And we canvas the students in advance of that and again they were happier to be, and you know, in a more defined level, and then maybe they would have been online. So most of the students concerns were around health and safety, you know, were they happy to wear a mask for three four hours a day. And were they happy that you know a lot of the things that they really enjoyed in the class previously may not be able to to happen such as you know really you know intensive pair work and group work so we prepare them a lot for kind of the pedagogic changes that we prepare. And I think, saying that to them in advance and giving them the option to maybe continue some of those aspects online and through our virtual learning platform, kind of soften the blow of the fact that now they couldn't do, you know, the really close you know two or in a pod and kind of pair work that they that they were quite used to so. And, but again I think just telling the students in advance telling them what to expect what was coming rather than them arriving in first day, we moved on over induction again online. And moving our placement tests online allowed us to then do the induction and right up to even doing some video tours live video tours which new students to walk them around the building. I think, and showing them the story, and I looked at what the HSE did actually for, for children who are yet to get the test, you know, to get their cove a test and they had a really interesting story of the day where they show the students but you know you'll arrive at the building and somebody will meet you like this and it's a very strange looking building because everybody's in PPE but we kind of took a similar approach where we, you know, the students were used to seeing the school under normal conditions and we kind of didn't want them to be shocked eight, seven, eight months later where it was covered in stickers and signs and the desks were different and there was barriers up so we kind of brought them through a video tour of the school to show them you'll arrive here, stay to the left inside of the stairs. You know this is your teacher's zone which you know you shouldn't be going into and normally you go to the office but can you please email us instead so I think showing them in advance what the building looked like how the layout had changed, you know, made their adaptation to arriving into the building a lot easier. So we've been having a one students and when it's all changed and new procedures and new way of doing things and new information that must really have been a challenge for them. Yeah, yeah, no absolutely I mean we're lucky we've got quite a multilingual staff and so you know we do have the main the main languages covered so we were able to again through the online inductions and kind of zoom supports. And the visuals work really well with with a one learners, particularly in the area as I said of health and safety, but it's always a challenge I think even under normal conditions, you know, doing proper inductions with a one students because there's such a mountain of immigration anyway for them, arriving into a new country and, you know, everything from getting registered with immigration to finding accommodation and all of the, all of that paperwork that goes with it so it's it's it's a challenge at the best of times. But again, we took advantage I guess of having a good lead in time and I think giving ourselves the lead in time we could have reopened in August or September. And we waited until October, just so we could work through all of these issues in advance and kind of think about them in advance so we gave ourselves plenty of time. We knew we had a one students coming in. So we knew that we had two or three weeks in which to integrate them in and for them to meet us all online and get their documents set up and get their appointment set up so that when they did join our classes they could just concentrate on the classes. And I don't always have that luxury when you're in a busy period, you know, in a face to face language school where, you know, you're, you're processing, you know, larger number of students and you're doing inductions and placing tests on a Monday so one of the benefits I think of as we've a smaller student population now so, and, you know, we never had a huge population but it's smaller than usual. And so you just get to spend more time with the students and you get to spend more time, especially in advance of their arrival so that's that's certainly helped. So, apart from using zoom and this kind of, you know, technical tools and all of that. What would you say you've learned along the way as an organization or even yourself as a professional. Yeah, I mean it has been it's been really interesting it's been, you know, it's a good way to kind of I think reassess your kind of core values as a school you know what is it that we do what is it that we don't do. I think we've certainly and what we you know what we keep on saying at our staff training every week is that we need to set up our school and our systems for the students give the students every chance to succeed. So I think we've gotten to know our student profile a lot better. And we've gotten to know their needs and I suppose the things that affect them on a day to day basis so for example, in our most recent kind of feedback the students we realized that what was stopping them access to the online class at the moment was wasn't, you know, in a good phone or good laptop or good wife I was that where they're living there's four or five other people in their apartment with them and they can find a quiet space to learn or they could have another blackmate in the same room as them in a different school on a different call on a different level and you know, so we've said to our students for example if you are within five kilometers of us, and it's safe to do so and you just you you're you're doing your class at home isn't working for you, you can come into the building will will designate a classroom to you you can use our Wi-Fi user hardware and access our online classes on the school. And so I think, you know, that whole idea of you know setting the students up for success and giving them every chance for success has has kind of become a little mini mantra for us, and since we started back onto the online classes. I think the other thing we've noticed is, you know, you spoke about it, you know, there's so much out there now between zoom and all the different virtual learning environments and the gadgets and so on and they're great but good teachers in a physical classroom so that the core of, you know, teachers and preparing suitable classes for students at their level that are challenging and engaging, albeit by a different medium, by its very essence is still what we do. And we've worked a lot with our teachers, you know, we learned a lot over the, the six or seven months. Myself and the other director Ian Bo taught online, we kind of had learned the hard way you know what works what doesn't work so we worked a lot with the teachers, preparing them for the differences between face to face and online classes. It's not good enough just to kind of say we'll do an hour and a half break hour and a half and we'll deliver lessons the same way, you know, a breakout room doesn't work the same way that you know sending students into parent group work and also, you know, having traditional books on an online class, you know, doesn't make sense so we've kind of started to reassess, I think, a lot of ways how we assess students, what we use to assess them, the materials that we're using. And I think we'll carry a lot of that into our face to face classes as well. And, you know, I think we were always looking at better ways of getting students to produce language, whether it be, and you know, what's that voice notes, video presentations, you know, share docs, all of these things and I think this going online has really helped with that, you know, rather than, I think the mistake that could have been made was just trying to transfer, as I said, what happens in a face to face class into an online class so we're trying to avoid that. And I think we're trying every week to get the teacher's feedback on what the students require because it's the big change for them as well. And so I don't think you can have enough feedback or enough training during this whole period. The last question there is, how do you see it developing in the medium to long term? Wow, the crystal ball. Yeah, I mean, I think we've all agreed as soon as we can get back face to face safely, even for a portion of our syllabus we want to. And, you know, our students came to Ireland and we want them to be, albeit if it's only for a period of the week in class. I definitely think the industry needs to start looking more seriously at blended and flip learning classes done, done properly. And I think the online, I think we're going to be using online for a while in 2021 I don't know how long but we're certainly looking at hopefully if this quarantine period drops from two weeks to a week, or you know dropped from 14 days to five days I think we could be initial weeks for students maybe being done online or in a blended format and then building up towards face to face or if students need to be self isolation for example if they're close contacts I think there has to be a way of them continuing on in their curriculum online without kind of having to you know lose those two weeks so I think that type of adaptation is going to be really essential. In a teaching context as well I think we're going to be you know we're all looking at the moment at quite a small in Ireland quite a small pool of students from a very kind of specific demographic. And I think as we head towards the springtime, you know that demographic will change and I think traditionally there's always been a change maybe more short term students coming in I think that will be a big challenge because they've got very different you know to students who are here on the academic year programs. So I think managing a short term students expectations with long term when you've got, you know potential zones changing from green to red to orange. I think having lots of flexibility in your system and having a lot of adaptation in your system is going to be crucial. And I think most schools and teachers have responded really well to that because you know that there has been no choice you know it's been it's been an unprecedented year. But I do think that we should come out of the last, you know, nine, 10 months, the better far up but I don't think we can go back to kind of the the old traditional way the things were done, you know right the way from, you know recruitment through to the student journey assessment and the whole fundamentals of learning the whole student support social program. And we're going to have to take the best lessons from this if we're going to. We're going to make the industry more resilient and hopefully as well you know it produces different revenue streams for schools. And you know I think you know plenty of schools are dying to get back to face and you know you can understand why it's what they've done since you know they open their schools but I think, I think they'll have to understand as well that you know there there is a market for different types of programs and there is a need I think to get more creative and modernize programs. And you know, I've been listening and talking to people, you know, developing a virtual learning environment and going online and putting it as a two or three year program and then in the space of two weeks, people did it and they had to do it so I think it just goes to show, you know that it, it can be done but I think it has to be thought through now and then it has to be where where does this sit in our suite of offerings It's one thing setting something up at very short notice and it's you know it doing a job but I think if it's going to be done properly and if it's going to form an integral part of what you are as a school then that's fine but you know think it through and decide where it sits in your suite of offerings and rather than just you know continue doing the, the, the norm which which you know it won't work it won't work with 2021. Yeah I mean the genius and it's not going back into that bottle and I also think that the emergency is over. This is now. This is now the normal whatever whatever that might be. And so, yeah we just have to kind of get used to it. I mean, as I said, it's, it's, you know, it's the five stages of grief even with it you know, accepting you know when we all heard the, the speeches it was you know closing the schools on the 12th 13th of March we all knew it wasn't two weeks at that stage but we didn't know. I think we all thought maybe we get some sort of summer summer came and went, and then schools reopened at the end of summer but you know it wasn't the same. The opening as before and then all of these milestones we keep on missing you know the major marketing fairs in September, October.  We hope 2021 is different but 2021 isn't going to be the exact same as 2019 and, and that's a good thing. You know it's, there's, there's a chance to to evolve here as schools and as an industry. And until you know, learn from a lot of the, you know, either the stagnation or the kind of laissez-faire approach that you know has had been in the industry for a while and just doing the same things and hoping that it's going to going to stay the same. And now is the chance to, you know, in Ireland to maybe to set ourselves, you know, apart from, you know, other competitor markets with the US or Canada or Malta or UK or whatever but you know we haven't even mentioned Brexit which I think this time last year we were all saying you know we've got to prepare for that so that's only seven or eight weeks away as well but I think you'd hope that you know people aren't just crossing their fingers thinking things will get back to normal. We all want things to get better, but I think want them to get back to normal, it seems to indicate wanting them to go back to what they were before, and let's hope that they can get you know they can get better. And that means that way they can improve, you know, and that we can we can all improve and this now has to start a lot of conversations about if online learning is here to stay then let's formalize it let's build it into our quality assurance programs. Does it form part of a future IEM, you know, let's get people trained up in a properly doesn't go into initial teacher training programs.  Oh that's just something we did during the pandemic and sure we don't need to worry about it anymore. It is now as you said the genes out of the bottle it is now part of our offerings so I think we need to we need to really start thinking about that as an industry and we need to say well if it is then what's the best way of doing it what is best practice. And how can we how can we learn to to incorporate it in a really in a way that best suits our students rather than just kind of saying thank God we don't need to be on zoom anymore. You know, all of that, all of those things that we did we you know we can we can leave them behind us now we're back to normal no it's, you know it's, it's only going to become more and more as part of a broader kind of learning offering so I think we need to embrace that and, you know why why shouldn't Ireland and you know the LT schools in particular take a lead on best practice in online learning or blended learning if if it's going to form a part of our offering.


Hi, my name is John. I'm a proud Stas driver. Let me guide you through the world of Stas Let's meet the Stas people. This is Fred. He's a passionate sales expert. Hi Fred. Hi John Stas builds durable relationships with solid dealers and sales partners Peter and Sarah joined their forces in our factories in Vargum, Tournet, Freudenberg and Medias We believe that the well-being and the personal growth of our people is very important. We also focus on durable relations with our trustworthy and high-end suppliers. With Team Stas we aim for customers and proud drivers that value long-term thinking. We are Team Stas. What about the product? It's a proven fact that a Stas trailer has a longer lifetime. Stas trailers are known for the refined design, safe and stable driving, strong and light construction and high resale value. In all of our plants we obtained the label of clean factory and factory of the future. We recycled the water we use and invested 800k in air extraction. Our very own wind turbine is ready to be installed and the aluminum we use is 50% recyclable. We develop planet-responsible projects. Let me tell you something about the longer lifetime of a Stas trailer. We work with raw materials of very high quality and constantly think on making our designs more durable. This means that there are less fractures in the vehicle so you can drive longer with your trailer. It's a win-win for both the planet and the driver. Enjoy the Stas ride. Definitely a long-term pleasure.


We're having OTK game night. Wait. What's what's going on though? You have to get to yourself. Yeah, what are what are the lobbies a thousand soldier buddy?  Oh frick. I'm losing. I'm losing. I'm losing. I'm losing.     Okay? Oh Dude, how many streams to take to build a couch Wait, he's still here.  No, I don't I don't have to climb on the keyboard. I can only climb on couch or keyboard or mouse brick controller How do we climb in real life?  Oh, no, no, no Espen hang on. No, no, no, I'm running. You're done. You're done. You're done. You're done. I think the random is the guy in the chicken suit He's still on chicken boy Oh, no, Espen save us. I'm sorry rich.  It's the only way Oh How do you headbutt I don't know. Come on Beef city beef I'm so sorry. I'm gonna take my hand. Come on. It's okay. Wait. What?  Hold them crack. Tecton are you talking?  Yo, I'm saying this one's gonna be a draw. I'm calling it Beef city No No, the whole I I stepped Carnival together Taking you with me Let's go this one. We're the three best friends at anyone. Is this you?  You're in the water. You're upset.   Wait, really? Birthday as your grandma. Thank you grandma. What are you doing? No Billions on a revenge of the grandma off three grandkids I got them by the hair. I got them by the hair We don't want to lose for random No I got killed by a falling sausage. What is that about it? Dude, chicken man one.  Am I not good at anything? Hey, let's use the subject Before we go too far down that rabbit hole.  Wait, no, no stop stop. Look what I just learned. Look what I just learned You guys are barely hanging on.  I know exactly what you're doing No, you're just trying to wait till everybody kills each other, dude Uh game fuel game fuel. Yeah Rich let go rich I'm getting punked by grandma Dude, what how am I getting owned by grandma? Oh, we both got knocked out frick We look like cheerleaders And then you betrayed me Dude, what was that? I just did a front flip over you No, dude, why would I This game is so good chat.  I can't reach it. My reach is too small Come on. That's bad. Come on. That's bad. No. Oh, this is a fun one. This is a fun one Can I say I just wanted to do like I just want to hang out with you. I can't believe I like tecton win Hey, wait, that's fine. Let's get tec. Let's get tec. Yeah. Good idea. Good idea Who's this? I can't see I got him Wait, that was azmin, I didn't know what was azmin and which was me No, that's rich That's I think that's me. Put me down. Put me down. You gotta get tecton. You gotta get tecton. Sorry. I didn't know it was me for a second Yeah, there's no monologue in game. You're not allowed to monologue tecton That's against the rules is very it's a strict competitive advantage to monologue Beat his monologue and ass I was born to be cringe Worth it. You don't see I'll trust him. I'm trying. I'm trying. I'm trying I'm wings.  No, Grayson is mine. Dude, dude, azmin. I want to do arena's with grayson Azmin, I want arena's with grayson. Give me grayson I'm gonna do No, no, no. No, he's pulling me down Azmin, azmin.  It's please let go. You brought this upon yourself, Sanny. Wait. I'm still alive. Wait, what? No, you're so weird, dude. No, I'm gonna take you on myself headbutt. Good play dude.   I'm fine. I'm fine. Everything's fine. How do I get back? I don't even know Oh That was really really good Really really good. I I think I think gangbis is probably our best um, I Think game gangbis are probably the best one So Bob me gangbis do it so the poppin made soda poppin. Is that crazy?


Welcome to Spotlight. I'm Robin Basilen. And I'm Ryan Gertzma. Spotlight uses a special English method of broadcasting. It is easier for people to understand, no matter where in the world they live. A young man walks down the street in Tokyo, Japan. He stops at his favorite technology store. He sees a new mobile telephone. He already has a telephone. He uses it to talk and send text messages to people. But with this new telephone, he could connect to the internet. He could play music and watch films. He considers the price. Then he decides to buy it. This may seem like a simple story, but the story of the man's telephone is very complex. Before the man ever saw the telephone, many people worked together to produce it. Someone mined the basic materials to make it. Someone else created the individual telephone parts. Another person put it together. And yet another person placed it in its box and sent it to the store. Most people do not think about how the things they buy are made. They also do not think about what happens to this stuff when they are done using it. But this is exactly what activist Annie Leonard wants people to think more about. Today's spotlight is on Annie Leonard's story of stuff movement. Annie Leonard is an environmental activist. She thinks it is very important for people to understand the story behind the things they buy. This story includes all the steps of making, buying and throwing away a product. Leonard calls this system the materials economy. And she believes that the materials economy is a system in crisis. For many years, Leonard traveled the world studying the stories behind products. She learned that a product like a mobile telephone could have a very global story. Materials for a telephone may be mined in both South Africa and Nigeria. Then a woman in a factory in China might put it together. And a man in Mexico might package it. Then a young adult in Brazil might buy it. And when this person throws it away, it might end up in a disposal center in Africa. The global story of many products is bigger than we think. And every stage of this story involves both people and the environment. Leonard went to 40 different countries to research the materials economy.  In 2007, Leonard decided to create a film called The Story of Stuff. In The Story of Stuff, Leonard explains the materials economy in a simple way using pictures. Leonard put the short film on the internet. The reaction was amazing. Today, more than 40 million people from more than 200 countries have seen her film. After the film, Leonard decided to start a not-for-profit organization. She called it The Story of Stuff Project. Through the project, Leonard makes more films and develops educational materials for schools and faith communities. She urges people to look at the larger impact of all their buying decisions. She believes that our current materials economy is not sustainable. It cannot last because our planet has limited resources. Consider the simple product of a cotton t-shirt. T-shirts seem simple and not costly. But Leonard's message is that they are not simple and they can be costly. The t-shirt may only cost a small amount of money, but there are other costs that we do not see. The story of the t-shirt starts with the resources used to make it. Growing cotton can take a lot of water. In Uzbekistan, farmers use water from the Ural Sea for their cotton crops. Leonard reports that in the past 40 years, cotton farmers have used 80% of the sea's water.  Growing cotton can also have other costs. In some countries, the chemicals farmers use to grow cotton can cause serious health problems. Leonard reports that in India, 91% of full-time male cotton workers experience major health problems. But the t-shirt's story does not end there. The next part is about the workers who make it. Many people who make clothes work in large factories that are often polluted and crowded. Often, large international companies treat workers unfairly. These companies pay very small wages for workers in countries like Bangladesh and Haiti. Then, they charge higher prices for people to buy them. The difference in cost is so great that the companies make a lot of money. But too often, the people who grow the cotton or work in the factories remain in poverty. The story of every product also involves buying and selling. Today, many companies make their products easy or necessary to replace. In the example of the t-shirt, the company might make the t-shirt of very poor quality. Their goal is to get people to replace their clothes more often. Another example is computers. Computer companies release new and different products every year. If you want to fix one small part of an older computer, it is often difficult and costly. Usually, it is easier to just buy a whole new computer. This makes companies more and more money, but it creates a lot of waste. And what happens to all of this stuff when we are done with it? A person may recycle or reuse a cotton t-shirt, but other products, such as computers, are more complex. They can leak poison into the air and water, especially when people dispose of them by burning them. This pollutes the environment and can cause health problems. Leonard argues that people and the planet are at risk during every step of the material's economy. So she wants people to think more carefully before they buy something. She also encourages people to take better care of the things they do buy. And she urges them to ask their governments to use safer processes for workers and the planet. Annie Leonard believes that our current materials economy is in crisis. But she also believes that we can change. And she believes we are doing better. However, Leonard also asks people to think about what they need. Is more stuff the answer? Leonard told the Los Angeles Times newspaper. I have been reading about the science of happiness. After our basic needs are met, more stuff does not make us happy. It is the quality of our relationships. It is coming together around shared goals. The writer of this program was Jen Hawkins. The producer was Mark Drenth. The voices you heard were from the United States. All quotes were adapted and voiced by Spotlight. You can listen to this program again and read it on the Internet at www.radioenglish.net. This program is called The Story of Stuff. You can also leave your comments on our website. Or you can email us at radio at radioenglish.net. You can also find us on Facebook. Just search for Spotlight Radio. We hope you can join us again for the next Spotlight program. Goodbye.


Your shoulder especially you need to know how to punch higher this back into the middle now punch the solar plexus Just here punch back to the chin punch up Guys seven foot tall you need to reach up to punch his face. Okay, so that's a change one drill


Motivation is the experience of wanting something or wanting to avoid it. When we study how we get motivated to learn, develop, and succeed, we can identify two contrary forces, extrinsic and intrinsic ones. On the one hand, we want to belong, desire to be loved, and seek to get the attention we think we deserve. We are motivated extrinsically by rewards in order to progress socially. On the other hand, we strive to explore things that are satisfying in themselves disregarding rewards. We are motivated intrinsically by a natural curiosity which we follow because it feels right. The opinions of others don't matter. To understand why we probably need a good mix of both, let's imagine two four-year-old children. Both grow up in families that want only the best for their kids but have completely opposing views on how to motivate them to succeed. Tom's parents believe that all their boy needs is love. To not undermine his intrinsic interests, they never praise him or use rewards. Eventually, they decide not to give him any feedback at all, fearing it could corrupt his free mind. Over the years, Tom develops an immense capacity to imagine, spending most of his time playing by himself. By being allowed to follow his passions, he learns what he likes and what he doesn't. But Tom doesn't learn what others expect and gets easily irritated when asked to do something in a particular way. Mira's parents believe that their precious little girl needs clear rules about what's good and what's not. They see it as their duty to help Mira learn by providing precise and actionable feedback on all aspects of her young life. Mira spends her days in preschool, music, and ballet lessons. Over the years, she gets exceptionally good at the things that please the adults around her. However, since there is neither time to play nor to relax, she doesn't discover her own interests. Being alone bores her. At 14, Tom is independent and begins writing science fiction. He realizes that he isn't quite like his friends and spends most of his time at the library. When he shares his writing, others can't quite relate. At the same age, Mira is at the top of her class and has plenty of friends and admirers. She knows what is expected of her and makes sure to meet those expectations. Sometimes the pressure becomes unbearable, although that's her secret. By the day he turns 21, Tom has a unique perspective of the world. He is intelligent but doesn't like to work for money and hence is always broke. He hates the idea of conforming to conventional norms and is annoyed if someone interferes with his creative expression. At this point, Tom knows a lot about himself but doesn't connect well with others. To him, people seem to follow rules without questioning them, just like sheep. Integrating into the society is difficult at this point and he begins to search for utopia. Mira makes it into a top medical school where she realizes she'll never be top of the class again. Once that place seems out of reach, her motivation drops and she wonders if medicine actually interests her. Since quitting is no option, she takes up a second major and runs for student council president. Soon, Mira will know everything about what others expect but nothing about what she likes for herself. All her life, she has just listened, driven by external feedback loops. At this point, she's almost lost the ability to question the norms of the society she grew up in. Listening to our heart can tell us who we are but not how to be happy among others. Listening to others can motivate us to be a part of their world but doesn't teach us if that world is ours. This is why it's probably good for the two to go together. Then, we can learn what we want and get the feedback we need in order to stay motivated to explore new roads into a better society. A large body of research shows that balancing the two forces is not straightforward. One meta-analysis of 128 studies examined the effects of extrinsic rewards on intrinsic motivation. While most rewards significantly undermine our intrinsic interests, positive feedback which is an extrinsic motivator inspires us to keep going. Put simply, honest words of encouragement get us going while money or gifts undermine our inner drive. What about you? Do you listen to your heart or to the voices of society? And from your personal experience, which of the two eventually takes your decision? Share your thoughts and check the description to dive deeper into the topic. Patreon.com slash Sprouts. Even one dollar can make a difference.


Welcome back to beautiful Barcelona, everybody. This is theCUBE and we're here at MWC 2024. I'm Dave Vellante with my co-host and lead analyst at theCUBE Research, Managing Director Shelly Kramer. And we're really excited to have two CUBE alums, great guests, top analysts in the business. Carolina Melanesi is here. She's with Creative Strategies. Great to see you again, Carolina. Thanks for coming back on and Bob O'Donnell from Technalysis Research. Bob, how's it going? Good, good, happy to be here, Dave. Yeah, it's good action, the show is growing. Yeah, well, you know, for me, it's the first time back in five years because, you know, obviously there was COVID, but, and then ironically for me, the day before I was supposed to come last year, I tested positive for COVID. And we were supposed to do this last year. That's right, we were. In 2023. That's funny. Yeah, and then I couldn't do it, but oh well. So, but it's fun to be back. It's such an amazingly beautiful city and I immediately had to go to see how far they had gotten on Sagrada Familia, which was impressive in five years. Like, they got a lot done. But, and obviously the show is, the buzz is amazing, it's incredibly crowded. There's just, you can feel it in the air. It's like. Yeah, you can tell by the lack of taxes in the morning how crowded it is versus last year, so. Right, it was bad last year and it's now it's impossible. But a lot has, a lot has transpired.  Absolutely, yeah, Genitive AI is everywhere. You know, we saw this to some extent as CES, where you start to talk about AI washing a little bit. And there's certainly some fatigue in listening to people all the time talking about Genitive AI. And actually not necessarily always helping the market understand what Genitive AI can do for you, just because. Everything, if you do everything, come on. Can wash your clothes. Sadly, they cannot do coffee in the morning for me, but I think that the excitement is definitely here and what I think is important is the fact that, first of all, it's not a fad, right? It's not something that's going to disappear in six months. It is actually a tangible, useful thing with a lot of complications. We can talk about bias and what comes with it and how we really need to deploy, you know, ethically, but it is going to impact every aspect of our lives. So. That's why it's so exciting to talk about. It is, it is. Absolutely. So I want to step back a little bit and talk. Yeah, I've got two device geeks here, right? So I wanted to talk a little bit about some of the cool stuff that we've seen here in Barcelona. I think that you both have had a chance to see Qualcomm's new XR Hub. Tell me a little bit about your first insights here. Ladies first. Oh, wow. We're going to go there. Wrong person to say that to. I've known her long enough, I felt like I could do it. I think before I get to the XR Hub, which is a very interesting product and right at the right moment, right after Vision Pro and what Apple is doing in VR, XR, AR, whatever it is that you want to call it, is important that we take this momentum and continue to build the market. And this is exactly what Qualcomm has been doing. But this traditionally has been a smartphone show and the weekend has been about smartphones. What is interesting always for me now that I'm based in the US versus Europe is how much the Chinese brands own of the smartphone market and the momentum that there is even around AI. We don't see this in the US, right? The market is very much focused around three brands nowadays, iPhone and Apple, Samsung and Motorola. That's pretty much it. Well, and sometimes the European market also, they're much less expensive. I mean, they have a lot more affordable devices that we don't really see as much in the US. So I think that plays a big role too. Yeah, that's the benefit of being in Europe where if you don't like the price in your country, you're going to go somewhere else. Right, right, absolutely, absolutely. So the XR Hub is basically the guts of a smartphone in a little cube that connects wirelessly to a headset. Cause one of the challenges with, you know, something like the Vision Pro and other headsets is it's a face computer, like it's a lot of junk on your face. And this isn't. This is literally, so again, it's like the Ray-Ban style sunglasses and then connecting to a device, you know, that's got the smarts. Now, the first ones, if you're going to put a screen on those Ray-Bans, that's going to obviously make it more challenging. But the idea is you put some of the intelligence, it takes the weight, the battery life, all those things, well, not the battery life, obviously the battery, but because it's- From a compute power. From a compute power perspective, it's being powered in that cube, you don't have to compute, you know, have the battery power for the headset. So, you know, it'll be interesting to see how willing people are to have two different devices they need to bring with them. But- That cube is a smartphone? Or it's a- It's the guts of a smartphone. It's just literally- So it's a separate device. A little box. Yeah, it's like a box. It's like a hub. It's like actually- Are you guys going to bring that with you? Are you going to have a separate charger for that? Well, I mean- I mean, traditionally, if you're looking at the smartphone market through the years, at the beginning of the camera phone market was actually Sony Ericsson that had the first two piece, right? So the camera was actually an add-on that you would plug into the end of your phone. Most of the time you were forgetting that. You would pick out your phone and forget the accessory, right? So it's always hard when you have more than one piece for consumers to really, you know, kind of embrace that experience. So you feel like even with Vision Pro, it's more of a developmental platform for programmers? I wouldn't call Vision Pro a developer platform in terms of the reach. I know, Bob and I disagree. Obviously- Okay, so I thought that was the sort of general consensus but you would disagree. The price is the limitation. It is. Of course, right? So it is a niche. That's why people think that, right? But I think it's interesting to me that Apple talks about it as a platform, not necessarily a device. Because that's what they want to build.  No. If from a use case perspective, I can give you something that is driving more your emotion than your logic, you will. If you're going to make me give an experience of being at Beyonce concert in the front line, am I? And if I look at how much my tickets for Beyonce and my kid would cost me, well maybe- Well, how much do you pay for your PC, you know what I mean? Yeah, that's true. I mean, I don't know. To me, Vision Pro is more of an experiment than anything. Certainly first gen. I mean, but every first gen is. Yeah, but that's not a normal Apple style. So it even breaks from Apple tradition, I would argue. But, you know, it's a great VR headset. If you want a VR headset, most people don't. And that's the bottom line. I agree. I mean, again, I think this XR Cube thing is an interesting concept. There are absolutely practical challenges there. But it allows you to create different types of devices. And look, we're still in the experimentation of days and days of this stuff. And that'll be interesting. What did you think of Zuck's video after the whole Vision Pro thing came out? He basically was saying, we have a superior product. You guys have used them both. I had a lot of comments on different social platform after posting my experience with Vision Pro. And the common remark is I can get the quest for a fraction of the price and have the same experience. And the reality is no. No way. It's not, right? Now, the question is, is it good enough for most people? Yes. So it is really what you want. And then the question though is, look at the number of applications that are native for Vision Pro versus Quest. Apple got to 1,000 at launch day versus the quest being on its first generation plus the pros of four generations. And we're not even close from a number perspective. That's it right there. So that's the power of Apple and the ecosystem. Yeah, no, sorry, Shelly. I mean, at the same time, we'll see how long those companies stay in there, right?  Yeah, the Apple ones, yeah. And the other thing is way more of those Apple apps are paid apps versus free ones because the developers were like, well, yeah, we're not going to have a huge audience to sell to, we better charge them. So I don't know, we'll see what happens. That's true for the Quest as well. Yeah, no, I mean, it's fair. You know, because development cost is a thing. But good enough, not going to get it on my face. I'll tell you that right now. No way. But the other thing is, there's got to be better experiences and that's still what we're waiting on. Right. And the demos, you know, I mean, for me, the fun part was the action had Jean-Michel Jauré, if you're an electronic music fan there and he had an application on the VR at Qualcomm event and I actually, having a history of electronic musical equipment doing that, oh yeah, I used to be the editor of Electronic Musician Magazine, so I talked to him afterwards, which was funny. He's like, oh yeah, that was a great magazine, blah, blah, blah, that was fun. Anyway, but the point is, so he's, you know, they're working with a lot of people to try and create experiences that are different, you know, with these headsets. The problem that I have with all of them is they're cool for about five or 10 minutes and you're like, okay, I'm done. Yeah, well, there are people who want to, the feedback on the Vision Pro that I've seen has been, it's uncomfortable, it's very heavy, it's inducing headaches, I mean, and then when you're blind, like Dave and I are, then you have to have some extra things to, you know, so it's not a seamless experience for everyone and for $4,000, I mean, I'm happy to let Carolina and everybody else experiment. You've done a terrific job, I mean, I follow you and I know that you use it on the plane, on the way over here, and so I'm learning from you in terms of what your experiences are and I really appreciate that and I know that's why you do those videos, plus you're a device geek, but I do think that the whole potential here in democratizing experiences, especially beyond the whole, I don't want to have one of those on and work and collaborate with Dave in, I don't need that. I agree with you, I think that the discipline in a way of first adopters in trying to figure out the real use cases versus, you know, you see people walking on the street with it or, like, you know, Apple has a whole list of do's and don'ts, but obviously for liability issues too, right? But that's what it is, like, not everything is conducive to use Vision Pro or any XR device, right? So, you know, I watched the movie and I was like, oh my God, the first reaction was like, I'm never going to watch a movie in my living room in any other way. And as soon as I finished thinking that, I was like, yeah, but it's kind of lonely, because it's just me. It's just you, right? Very isolating. So would you use, is there something you use every day? I have been, for different reasons. I watch movies on my app and my phone because I can pay attention. I have the headphones and nobody's talking. I don't have to shush anybody. I kind of like it. So maybe I should try the Vision Pro. Yeah, and I'm thinking about my family and you know, there was a day when we would actually watch things together and my youngest kids are 18 year old twins and it's like, when we're watching anything, everybody is on a device. It's not a family group thing anymore. So that's very interesting. But you use it every day for what? Like, what do you do? For different things. For collaboration sometimes, obviously now there's a willingness to learn as well whether or not it's going to replace my Mac and I haven't found the workflow yet. I think that's the hardest one to figure out. A lot of it because of kind of behavioral debt, right? You used to do things in a certain way. Entertainment is really great. I watch the Super Bowl in an app that gave me a screen that was four times the size of my TV screen, you know, things like that. So it's more taking away from maybe TV time, not so much smartphone and PC time yet? A little bit of PC time, but it's been additive. So I'm spending more time. On a different kind of screen. All I have to say is ask her in a month if she feels the same way. That's all I'm saying. Well, you know what? Just follow her on Instagram or Twitter and you'll know. I know. I'm important. We only have so much time of the day, you know, and so I'm teasing her, but I just mean I think a lot of people are finding and my own experience with other VR headsets in the past has always been, again, they're exciting and different. And I think that that is what determines a good product from a mediocre product, right? Because it's so different than what you do every day if it becomes painful, either because it gives you headaches or is isolated, whatever the case might be, then you're not going to go back to it.  Absolutely true. Although if you've spent $4,000 on it, chances are good, you might try harder. You are, but again, it's going to be a door stop in a lot of homes that keep them. I'm telling you. All right, Bob, I want to talk now. Let's talk a little bit about one of your favorite topics, Open RAN. Oh yeah, all right. So what, update it. So first of all, just quick overview for people. Open RAN is this idea that previously, telecom networks were all closed systems. So you bought from Ericsson or you bought from Nokia or a couple other vendors and that's how you made sure they worked because telcos originally were basically utilities, right? They weren't tech focused. They were a utility like the water or something else. As they've evolved over time, there's this idea just as we have in the compute world of mix and match of different things. So the idea with Open RAN was, oh, wouldn't it be great? We can get things more cheaply and it should work better and we're just more competition and all those things you would normally associate with it. And there were frankly some geopolitical issues related to Huawei and concerns about Huawei equipment in certain countries. So that also played into all of this. Problem has been, it turns out it's really, really hard to do something like that and oh, by the way, keep those seven nines of utility and even now, like we saw what happened with AT&T last week, right? And that's before Open RAN sorts of stuff. So it's hard to do, it's hard to actually get the benefits but we're seeing more and more companies start to do it but they're taking it sort of an interesting version of it. They're saying it's Open RAN but it's still all the equipment from one single vendor. It's just that the interfaces are open. It's like, well, that's... Homogeneous Open RAN. Sort of. So it's sort of closed open. Anyway, we are seeing the beginnings of multi-vendor Open RAN but even there, companies are realizing, you know what? A, I need one throat to choke if something does happen on my network. Like, this is life or death kinds of things. You can't go down. So some of the benefits that people thought were going to be great, not so much but we are seeing this slow progress towards it. And then the hope is that other kinds of services and other kinds of applications because you're building your infrastructure differently are going to be possible.  That's never going to happen. So now all of a sudden they're like, wow, we paid for all this frequency spectrum, we paid for all these equipment and in the end, what it's doing for them is it's lowering their costs, which is fine, but not exactly exciting. And so the idea with OpenRAN is it will force a change in the architecture that theoretically will make it easier to deliver services. So that's why you still see- Which can be monetized. Which then eventually can be monetized, so yeah. It's interesting because I was looking recently, kind of did a retrospective because people have been talking about is the AI boom like the dot-com boom? And so we went back, the Telecommunications Act of 1996 like opened up and you remember the level trees, the Enron's and Global Cross, a lot of them went out of business, most of them did, right? But there was a half a trillion dollars spent in the dot-com boom by the telcos and the ISPs, which in today's terms is close to a trillion. And now you see a similar build out from telcos and you see all the cloud guys putting out, it's another trillion, it's like a two trillion dollar build out. So somebody's got to monetize this thing. Well, they are and the people like the cloud, like AWS and Google Cloud and Azure, they're all starting to host some of this open-ran software. Again, the initial step, to be honest with you, we went dedicated hardware to virtual-ran, VRan, where it's the same idea of virtualization in a server and then open-ran. But again, it's that step-by-step change, telcos are more conservative, they move a little bit more slowly, but we're starting to see that, we're starting to see other services and capabilities that become available. And you and I were talking beforehand about something like the Open Gateway Initiative. And the idea there is to develop a set of standard APIs that application vendors can create services that would run on these networks and they would be consistent. Because one of the problems we've had up till now is like if I build an app for Verizon, it may not run on Timo. That's obviously not a sustainable version. No, but that whole providing universal access to operators and really opening up the possibilities for developers, that's I think really exciting and I'm glad to see this initiative. And theoretically, you can start to bring, Dave's pointing, you can start to bring AI into some of these applications that are running on the telco network. So it all starts to tie together in some ways. We've got to jump, but any cool research you're working on that you want to tell people about? We're spending a lot of time on AI, both from an adoption perspective and both as a user, whether I'm a consumer or an enterprise user unwilling and interested in using. We're looking at sustainability as a purchase driver, whether or not there's a lot of debate around this. The reality especially in this market is that sustainability is driving both opportunity and risk if you're not follow the directions that are coming from the regulators. So yeah, those are kind of hot topics that we are looking into right now. You did a big AI study last year. You're probably going to update it. I'm going to do another one this year.  Or is it going to be? Well, I don't know that it'll happen on the telco side. I think we will start to see some ROI on in the enterprise world. Second half? I think second half is, and right now it's a lot of proof of concepts, but we'll start to see some real world applications and that's why NVIDIA is crushing it because everybody's building out the infrastructure they need to enable these kinds of things. Well, you think if that happens in the second half do you think that'll accelerate the top line of IT spend which has been kind of constricted? I think it could. I do and AI PCs is another topic that we both look at a lot and we're going to see AI PCs more later this year. We've seen that some of the first ones we're going to see a lot more happening in that front and they're going to start to do some interesting things as well. Most of it's initially what I would call hybrid AI, meaning it'll, some of it will be done on the PC and some of it will be done in the cloud but over time more and more of it will be done locally and then that opens some interesting possibilities. Thanks so much for coming on theCUBE. It's great to have analysts like you that have deep perspectives in your fields and really appreciate the collaboration. Thanks for having us. Thank you. You bet. All right, keep it right there. Shelly and I will be back. John Furrier as well as in the house is Savannah Peterson. This is theCUBE from MWC 2024. Keep it right there.


Senator Joe Manchin, of course, abruptly pulled the plug this week on the Democrats. No, Martha, he didn't abruptly, Martha, let me just agree on that. Okay, he abruptly, on Friday did that. He didn't abruptly do anything. He established the president's agenda. No. Look, if you checked the record six months ago, I made it clear that you have people like Manchin, cinema to a lesser degree, who are intentionally sabotaging the president's agenda.  What a majority of us in the Democratic caucus want. Nothing new about this. And the problem was that we continue to talk to Manchin like he was serious. He was not. This is a guy who is a major recipient of fossil fuel. Money, a guy who has received campaign contributions from 25 Republican billionaires. Okay, Senator, I want, okay, you say he wasn't serious, but Manchin says his main goal is to do what's good for West Virginia. And he's worried about inflation. Listen to what he told us. Really, really, listen to this, please. Is that inflation is absolutely killing many, many people. They can't buy gasoline to have a hard time buying groceries. Everything they buy and consume for their daily lives is a hardship to him. Your reaction to that, Senator. Look, the same nonsense that Manchin has been talking about for a year. West Virginia has a beautiful state, and I've had the pleasure of being there. Great people. It is one of the poorest states in this country. You asked the people of West Virginia whether they want to expand Medicare to cover dental, hearing, and eyeglasses. You asked the people of West Virginia whether we should demand that the wealthiest people in large corporations start paying their fair share of taxes. Ask the people of West Virginia whether or not all people should have health care as a human right like in every other country on earth. That's what they will say. In my humble opinion, you know, Manchin represents the very wealthiest people in this country, not working families in West Virginia or America. That was Senator Bernie Sanders condemning Joe Manchin for what he is. A saboteur. This is not a good-faith actor, and it is long past time for the Democratic Party to stop treating him as if he's a good-faith actor who's just really looking out for the needs of his constituents. And he keeps tanking climate legislation or anything with regard to climate change or environmental issues because he's worried about inflation. He doesn't care. So it's time to stop pretending as if this is a good-faith actor. And that's what Bernie Sanders is speaking to here. This is somebody who is a saboteur. Now, if you've watched this program for a while, I have talked about how Manchin has used his political career to financially benefit his coal company and also how his ties to the fossil fuel industry, more broadly speaking, are extensive. So it's not like this connection to the fossil fuel industry is some obscure fact. It is now public knowledge. Even mainstream media has extensively detailed the way that he has used his political career to benefit not just the fossil fuel industry, but his coal company. So it's time for the Democratic Party to take action and punish him because just letting Manchin be Manchin has been a colossal failure. That's what Ilhan Omar said in an interview on MSNBC. She said it's time for the Democratic Party leadership to take action. Here's what she said. It's really disappointing, not surprising. We knew when the Build Back Better agenda was decoupled that this was ultimately going to happen. I don't know why Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer still allows for Manchin to be the chair of the Energy Committee. I don't know why our party hasn't decided to make the case and pressure Manchin to do the right thing in advancing the Democratic agenda and the President's agenda. I think we ultimately have to come to terms that what we are doing at the moment and the way that we are dealing with Manchin isn't working in advancing the Democratic agenda and the President's agenda. And so we must change course. She's absolutely correct. It's time for people to stop looking at Manchin exclusively and also start directing their ire at the Democratic Party's leaders because they have done nothing to rein in rogue members of their caucus. Chuck Schumer is the Senate Majority Leader. Why is he allowing a modern-day coal baron to serve as the chair of the Senate Energy Committee? I mean, there's kind of a conflict of interest there. No, he is a coal baron. His family owns a coal company. Throughout his career, even when he was a state senator in West Virginia and governor, he did everything in his power to make sure that that company was benefited by his policies. And yet he serves as the chair of the Senate Energy Committee. Why is Chuck Schumer allowing this to happen? More importantly, why has the President of the United States not publicly condemned Manchin even a single time? He'll vaguely refer to two votes that he's missing in the Senate, but as President, you can use your bully pulpit to exert maximum pressure. I mean, you've tried just letting Manchin do his thing, treating him as if he is a good faith actor and that has failed colossally. So now it's time for people to start directing their ire at Biden and members of the Democratic Party establishment who refuse to rein in Joe Manchin. And just to give you a sense of how self-serving this politician is, Manchin has taken steps actually to protect the environment it's just the environment where his mansion is located. As Daniel Boguslav, the Intercept, writes, while Manchin has sabotaged federal efforts at combating climate change, he has used federal dollars to preserve his own corner of the world. Public records reviewed by the Intercept show that even after Manchin's decades-long efforts to append environmental policy that would undercut the fossil fuel company's funding, his political campaigns, and the waste coal industry generating his personal fortune, he and his wife Gail Manchin have directed millions of federal dollars to a small pristine valley in West Virginia where the couple owns a condo. Hundreds of miles north of the coal communities decimated by the mountaintop removal mining that Manchin fostered in the state, the mansion's Canaan Valley residents sits in an unadulterated watershed surrounded by the Dolly Saud's wilderness, the Canaan Valley National Wildlife Refuge, and Blackwater Falls State Park. The couple purchased the condo in Davis, West Virginia in 2011. According to the deed in 2018, Manchin used his spot on the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee to secure $7 million to rebuild the visitor center at the Canaan Valley National Wildlife Refuge less than a mile from his condo. So he cares about the environment, it's just the environment where his condo is, not the planet that we all live on because when it comes to the habitability of our planet, Joe Manchin is old, so he's not going to see the worst of what climate change has to offer. So, so long as the environment around him is protected, then he's okay with that. So this is the type of person who we're dealing with. He is the textbook example of a bad-faith actor and the Democratic Party establishment has done nothing to reign him in. They're too busy condemning progressives and trying to stop progressives from winning primary campaigns against incumbent corporate Democrats. So yes, it is true that everything Sanders is saying here is accurate about Joe Manchin, but it is time for the president to understand that if he does not act, the failure is on him, not on Manchin. When you look back at the history book, sure, Manchin is going to have a role here, but ultimately this is going to be a failure of the Biden administration. And so one criticism that I have of Bernie Sanders and Ilhan Omar is that as much as it's evident that Joe Biden is too afraid to criticize Manchin, progressives have got to stop being too afraid to criticize Joe Biden, call out Joe Biden, call on him to do more. Now thankfully Ilhan Omar did that there, but Bernie Sanders has been really reluctant to criticize Joe Biden and maybe that's because he feels as if, if he has the president's ear, then he can influence him in a positive direction. But I'm sorry Bernie, that's been a demonstrable failure. So now it is time to condemn Biden for not exerting pressure on Manchin. Biden could threaten to fire his wife, Manchin's wife who he gave a job to. Biden could threaten to use the DOJ to investigate Manchin's daughter who was involved in a price fixing scheme regarding EpiPen when she was a big pharmaceutical CEO. There are things that Biden can do, extraordinary measures that Biden can take, but at a minimum, just name and shame him. Do you think that Donald Trump when he was president would allow just two senators to destroy his entire agenda whenever they were blocking, whenever Lisa Murkowski or Susan Collins were holding up Trump's agenda, he condemned them, he condemned people who he called rhinos. It's time for Biden to stop sitting idly by and letting people like Manchin dictate his presidency. But you see, the thing about this is Biden is not calling out Joe Manchin because I think that deep down he agrees with Manchin. I mean, actions speak louder than words. So if you just let somebody dictate the terms of your presidency, let somebody dictate what you claim is your agenda, then I'm sorry, you're complicit in that. So this is where we're at. Bernie Sanders and Ilhan Omar are absolutely correct, but nothing is going to change. Manchin will continue to sabotage the Democratic Party's agenda purposefully so until the Democratic Party itself, its leaders, takes action to reign in Joe Manchin.