Harrison about a half hour you guys are heading to Houston game one of the ALCS starts just how much are you looking forward to? Advancing and facing off against that Astro squad. Yeah, absolutely You know got the job done here played really good baseball for five games and We're just gonna continue the momentum and game plan and do what we do and just focus on continuing to beat each other up And it's a new series so we turn the page and we'll go from there You knew coming into this one that that Guardians team is scrappy They definitely grind how much of a battle did it feel like for five? Yeah, those guys over on that other side You know they deserve to be there. They earned it. You don't take anybody lightly. I'm on defense offensively Especially when we're pitching so It's a really good staff over there You know, it's a good lineup, you know, they manufacture runs and they do it multiple ways So it was definitely a big challenge But you know at the end of the day as long as we continue to pitch and play defense and play our game and remain confident You know It's gonna be good series for us first postseason in pinstripes. How much were you enjoying it out there this afternoon this evening? I enjoy playing majorly baseball every single day whether it's game 18 of the regular season Game five of the postseason, you know put on this uniform put on any big little uniform is a dream come true every day So, you know, I'm just here playing my game doing what I kind of contribute to wins And it's a great clubhouse to do it in I'm just happy they were moving forward so we can continue our season


The National Broadcasting Company presents another in the series of famous stories for the young of all ages. Adventure Ahead. This week a classic story of espionage and intrigue. Green Mantle by John Buchan. A timeless story of the men who fight behind the front. A story of the secret service. Adventure Ahead. Green Mantle. The magic word Green Mantle. The legend that struck terror along the eastern front and as a miracle came true. I want to tell you how it happened. How I came to find the secret of the legend of Green Mantle. It all began at the British Foreign Office one afternoon in the early days of the war. Major Henne? Yes? The Colonel is expecting you this way, please. Thank you. Step right in, sir. Morning, Colonel. Well, well, well, how are you, Dick? Ready for your new assignment. I'd hardly recognize you in that civilian outfit. It does seem a little strange. It's a good disguise. I only hope it fools the Germans as well. Oh? The Germans at this time? Very hard at it. Berlin, Vienna, southern Europe, right under the noses of the German secret service. I see. Must be important. Dick, the course of the war in the southeast may well depend upon information that you and your assistants obtain. Oh, then I'm not working alone, sir. Well, not entirely. It's a dangerous mission. I've assigned two men to help you. Just a moment. Yes, sir. Send in Blenke iron and Sandy cost Patrick, will you? Yes, sir. Sandy? Is he back from the Crimea? Arrived a few days ago. Sandy is the only one of our staff familiar with the mountains of southern Europe. He'll be invaluable. I'm sure he will, sir. And I'm sending Blenke iron because you may need some help in Germany before you get... Ah, here they are. Come in, please, will you? Well, hello, Dick. Sandy, how are you? Ready for another go at the Bosch? Good, so much. Dick, this is John Blenke iron, a major Dick Haneck. How do you do, Major? Pleasure to work with you all, thanks. Gentlemen, I'll come directly to the point. As you know, the Russians have finally fought the Germans to a standstill in the southeast of Europe. A stalemate that promises to last for several months. But what you don't know is that there's a growing tension down there. Rumblings of trouble among the wild, nomadic mountainsides. Well, what's that to do with the war? Well, those natives might throw thousands of armed men into the conflict. Against the Germans? No, Dick. Against our allies, the Russians. But... But why? We don't know, for certain. But it's our guess that the regular German troops are worn, tired, exhausted. And failing to get large reinforcements, the German Secret Service may have hit upon a scheme of inciting the natives to revolt. To break the stalemate? Exactly. But Colonel... Yes, Sandy? I don't see how the Germans could do it. I've lived and worked with those native tribes and even speak their language. I know their feelings about war and their religious customs. It just doesn't seem possible. But the fact remains, Sandy. Reports from our agents in Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, all tell the same story. There's some sort of feeling of unrest down there. And it spells trouble for the allies. And do you believe Germany's behind it, Colonel? I'm certain of it, Lankan. Of course, when it comes, the uprising will be more like a... like a holy war, a crusade. Yes, and the natives are probably only waiting for some sort of religious revelation, like a star, a man, a prophecy to set off the fireworks. But Sandy, how could something like that cause them to revolt? They are deeply religious. They can devote it to their leaders and their prophets. Why, I expect their followers chose a leader into battle against any foe. And if the Germans knew something of that intense religious feeling, they could control an uprising and turn the natives against the Russians. Yes, it's quite possible. That, gentlemen, is your mission. To go into the mountains of southern Europe, to find that secret, and it's possible to stop the uprising. And your plan of attack, Colonel? Simple. The three of you must separate and operate alone. Then I want you to meet together, say, in, um, two months at a rendezvous in the mountains somewhere near the Black Sea. Don Raedor would be a good place to meet, Colonel. All right, Danny. It's in German hands, of course, but it's near the native stronghold in the mountains. Good. And we'll meet at Don Raedor, two months from today. Now, ask your departure from England. Tand is going directly to Istanbul, disguised as a Turkish seamen, and from there north into the mountains. Yes, Colonel. But you, Dick, and Blenkeian, are going through Germany to southern Europe the hard way. I take it there's work to be done en route. Right, Mr. Blenkeian. The major is traveling alone, of course. But I'm counting on you to follow him in case he needs help. Yes, sir. I understand. You'll pose as engineers from neutral countries. But since you both speak German fluently, you'll have no trouble passing a citizen's lunch or inside Germany. On your shoulders, Dick, calls the greatest person. Yes, Colonel. You must find out something about this unknown trouble that's brewing in the south. I can't tell you where to get the information because I don't know. Look for the answer in Berlin first. Then Vienna. Caucasus. Anything. Yes, sir. Here's the address of Otto Spion. Why are there agents in Berlin? Maybe he can help you. And if possible, I want you to become acquainted with the Colonel von Sturm. Von Sturm. He's head of the German secret service in southern Europe. Just now he's in the north, according to Otto Spion. I see. That's all I can tell you, Dick. The rest is up to you.  It's not almost impossible. You may not succeed. I understand, sir. But if you three do meet again, two months from now in Don Raider, perhaps you'll know the secret of the trouble. Sandy left for Istanbul that night. And leaving Blenck iron to follow me within a week, I flew from England to a neutral country, carefully rehearsing the part that I must played to gain the German confidence. And I had not long to wait. For an arrival at the airport, I was questioned at the German passport office. Senor Hene. See? Your passport and papers seem to be in order. Of course. But they're curious about your business in Germany. Why do you insist upon flying to Berlin immediately? Why? Because I'm an industrial engineer, as you can see from my papers. And I bring many suggestions, which I think your Ministry of Labor will find of interest. Particularly plans for the commercial development of the Crimea. Oh, I see. It is important that I reach Berlin soon. Of course, Senor Hene. It can be arranged. In fact, I can give you transportation until next plane. No, Senor. It is impossible to find a hotel room anywhere in Berlin. But I must find one. Here, now. Well, I... I see what I can do, Senor. Who is that man? The new one. His name is Hane, a neutral. His face seems familiar. You have checked his passport? Of course. Everything is in order. I went everywhere in Berlin, mingled with the military, the politicians, attended all the theaters, the meetings, the cafes, hoping to hear some word or phrase, some bit of information that would help me. But there was nothing. And then, after two weeks, when I thought that it was safe, I looked for Otto Speon, our agent in Berlin. Good evening, Freiland. Good evening. I just happened to be passing by your shop. I thought I'd stop in. Yeah, my dear. Very nice shop you had here, Freiland. It belongs to my father. Oh, Herr Otto Speon? Yeah, my dear. Is he in that? I'd like to see him. No, he is not here just now. Oh, that's too bad. I've come a long way to see him. Would you tell him that Richard Hane paid a visit?  Mr. Hane! Oh, well, good, good. Mr. Hane. I'm glad you're all right. Thank you, Herr Speon. Your friend Mr. Blankhian was here a few days ago. Blankhian here? He seems to know more about you than you do about him. I've been busy ever since I arrived, looking for stray bits of information and trying to locate Colonel von Sturm. Von Sturm? He's in Vienna. Vienna? His home is there. Oh. Why do you want to see him? I must find some vital information. In the difficult, dangerous mass. What kind of information are you looking for? I must find out about the situation near the front in southern Europe, about the nomad tribes in the mountains. The mountains? I see I startled you, Herr Speon. Indeed you do. Only yesterday one of our men has met her, returned from that region with the mountains. What did he tell you? What did he say? He was afraid to talk. Even to me. He told you nothing? He was even afraid to write a report. Where can I reach him? I'll give you his address. It's near the Wilhelmstrasse. I'll find it. But be careful. Her metal said the things that he's been followed. All the way across Berlin I ran into a shabby tenement up the noisy stairs to the unlocked door of Mittelsbrunn. But I was too late. By minutes. But he'd been shot within the hour and lay there weak and dying on the floor before me. Mittels. Mittels, speak to me. I'm your friend. Try to talk to me. Mittels, try to talk. Tell me about the trouble in the south, the mountains. Trouble will be trouble. Yes, yes, I know. But what's going to happen there? Happen? Happen? Yes, yes. Green mantel. Green mantel. That one meaningless word, green mantel. And he was dead. The first time I'd heard it, but that word was destined to roar in my brain a thousand times again. I knew it was important. And I resolved to go to Vienna to see von Sturm. But I must see the colonel. I am sorry, my hair. He is conferring with the deputy. Colonel von Sturm cannot be disturbed. But it is important. It concerns his interest in the south, the mountain. The mountain? Yes. Oh, I am taking the colonel's view immediately. I must apologize for keeping you waiting, her honey. That's quite all right, colonel. I was discussing some matters with Rasta Bey, the young man who passed you in the doorway. You know him? No, colonel. He also is concerned with the mountainous region near the Russian line. Oh. But suppose you come to the point of your visit, her honey, what interest do you have in the region? My interest, colonel, is mainly one of economics. Oh, so. As I've told you, the government in Berlin has directed me to survey the newly conquered territory with a view toward establishing certain slave labor factories. Oh. And you wish to know something of the possibilities of the region in that regard? Exactly, colonel von Sturm. Well, I can give you that sort of information. I suppose just a moment I get my portfolio. Here we are. My plans are in here. Even the plans for rain mantles? What did you say? What do you know about rain mantles? Nothing, colonel. Then how did you know that name? Rumor, perhaps. I heard it mentioned around the government offices. No one seems to know much about it. Oh. I see. That's different. I'm sorry, colonel. I didn't realize it was a military secret. Sorry. That's all right, honey. You'll be able to read all about green mantles some day after the fall of Russia. But until then, the plans will have to stay right here in my portfolio. I knew then that part of the secret of green mantle was in Vienna. And somehow I must get those papers. Walking back from my visit near the Bristol Hotel, I had a strange encounter when... Oh, no. A big your father. Quite all right. My fault. I was... Plank iron. Careful. Step down, Miss Addie. No idea how glad I am to see you, Plank iron. I'm at your service, Major. Plank iron?  Of course. What is it, a piano? Harder than that. Some confidential papers in the portfolio at von Sturm. But that place is surrounded by policemen and soldiers day and night. That's right. Won't be a simple task. Hmm. But I think we can handle it, Major. First of all, we'll have to borrow a few boxes of groceries. Here, you two cannot enter the Colonel's residence. That's because we must. These groceries are for Colonel von Sturm himself. Special order. All right. You can go in. But there must be a mistake. We did not order all these groceries. We don't know about that. All we do is deliver. Well, you can leave them if you must. I'll tell the Colonel about it as soon as he wakes up. This is the bedroom. Mm-hmm. If you're gun-handed, you may need it. Right, Major. Careful now. There he is. Sleep. Mm-hmm. They have a portfolio. Go ahead, Major. I'll keep him covered. All right. I'll stand here by his bed so he can't... Hey, hey! What are you two doing here? Who are you? What are you doing here? Don't move, Colonel von Sturm and keep quiet. You can't. My pot for you is a plant. No, you can't. You can't. I told you to keep quiet. Close the papers, Major. These are the ones. We've thought of the information about Green Mantle. You, I should have suspected you from the past. But, fortunately, you didn't, Colonel. You'll never get away with this. And you'll fly on. Will you keep quiet? I'll track you down if it's the last thing I ever do. Sorry, Colonel.  Let's get out of here.  No time for that. We've got to separate and escape. There's a car down the street you can use, Major. And you? I'll manage. Then we'll meet as we plan. At Gongra Edau. At our rendezvous. Precious plans concealed upon me. I was in Vienna, speeding westward in the car Blinkiron had stolen. It was a wild ride. Over rough, deserted roads and highways with my foot jammed down upon the floorboard, nursing every bit of speed I could.  Instinct led me westward and southward toward the Daniel, the only hope of quick escape. Till at last, the sputtering engine told me that the gas was gone. And then I struck out through the forest, knowing that the Germans were not far behind me. For that night, still another day and night, I stumbled blindly through the forest. I did not stop to rest or read the papers that I'd captured, for they were all around me. I knew Von Sturm was at my heels. Watching every opportunity, using every trick I knew, I managed to evade them and struggled onward, tired and worn and hungry, toward the river and escape. And on my fourth day of wandering, I crossed the hill and saw the Danube there below me. Mr. Lein, want to get on the way? Aye, Captain. Captain Schenck! Oh, Captain Schenck! Huh? Well, well, what's the matter? This man here, Captain, just came on board once a child. Oh, so? Yes, Captain, I need a job. Ever worked on river barges before? Well, yes, yes, I have. I'm an engineer. Could use another engineer. Long trip ahead. I can handle the job, Captain Schenck. All right, it's yours. Take this string of barges all the way down the Danube with me, and it's worth five marks a day. Good enough. And, uh, what is our destination? Well, half the cargo goes to Sevastopol. Yes, Captain. And the rest goes to a port over close to the mountain, a place called Donra-Edov. End of our trip. So, this is Donra-Edov? Small port, but important. Front line of the war, not more than 30 or 40 miles from here. Other side of the mountain. Yes, I know. This all used to be Russian country, whether... Oh. Army officials there coming aboard. Wonder what they want. I don't think I'll stay to find out. Must be a couple of colonels among them. Service. Hmm. Can I help you, gentlemen? You have a man on board named Mr. Honey. Honey? Why, uh, why, of course, new man. He's here, Colonel Von Stumpf. He's here. Oh, well, well. So, I have at last caught up with him. Where is this man, Captain? Well, uh, over there in his cabin. He went inside when he saw you coming. Oh, he did, huh? Hmm. Get your pistols ready. The man's dangerous. He may try anything. Now, Captain. Yes, sir? It's Kevin here. This is it. Then throw open the door and let us kill the rat. We have trapped. But he's gone. So my arrival at Don Raida was somewhat icy cold and wet. Although I had escaped Von Stumpf again, there wasn't much relief in knowing that he was so close behind me, trailing me, guessing my every move. The day was soon at hand, however, for our rendezvous, and I waited at a table in a small sidewalk cafe, the appointed place at the appointed time. Soon, two figures approached me. I presume this gentleman wouldn't mind if we sat here. I hope not. Sandy, Blank iron. Welcome. Sit down. Sit down. Hello, Dick. Can we meet again, eh, Major? Yes, and it's good to see you both. Blank iron, you had trouble? Not a bit, Major. My life's been quiet since you left me. Do you, Sandy? Well, nothing happened on my sea journey, Dick, but since I arrived a week ago, I've been up in the mountains talking with the natives. Oh, tell me.  Why, Sandy? Because their prophets foretold the arrival of a leader who soon to appear and lead them into battle. A prophecy is sort of a legendary figure, a man they've never seen before. And his name? Green Mantle. Oh, that confirms the papers, the plans we stole, Major. It does, Blank iron. What's all this about, Dick? We also know something of Green Mantle, because we stole the plans of this uprising from Von Sturm. The German secret stories? Mm-hmm. Look here, Sandy. All this? Yes, Sandy. This is part of the secret of Green Mantle that I've carried halfway across Europe. You're right about the prophecy, the legend of Green Mantle. But listen, the Germans plan to produce a live man, a leader, a flesh and blood Green Mantle to fulfill that prophecy, to lead the Nomad tribes against our allies. But that's impossible. The Green Mantle doesn't exist. It's not unless the Germans produce a bogus leader, a man who claims to be Green Mantle. Oh, so that's their plan. A hoax seems incredible. But I can see that it might work. Right now, the natives are restless waiting for the prophecy to come true. They'd follow almost anybody into battle. Then we've no time to waste. That uprising must be stopped. But what can we do, Major? We must find out the identity of the man who dares to pose as Green Mantle. But how? We must go to the only man who can tell us. We must go to the only place that we've yet to visit. Where? The control point of this entire uprising. The headquarters here, the German secret service. And Colonel von Sturm. Dick, are you mad? They've been after us ever since Vienna. Yes, I know, I know. It's like putting our heads in the mouth of a lion. But if you're with me... Count me in, Major. Of course, Dick. Then I have a plan for learning the rest of the secret of Green Mantle. And the first step is to surrender to Colonel von Sturm. I must say I never expected to catch all three of you. To have you standing before me here. Helpless in my own office. Nevertheless, Colonel, here we are. And at my mercy. I don't know the meaning of that word. I'll make you three regret the day you ever joined the British Secret Service. Because I can assure you, gentlemen, your death will not be quick. Why? Careful, Blankine. I have on you. Stand against that wall. There's three of you. This lube on my desk is not an ornament. We understand, Colonel. Now, before you are taken away, I have a surprise for you. Since you have all expressed such an interest in Green Mantle, I thought I'd let you see him. What? Green Mantle? Yes, Major. That's impossible. It's only a legend. Then watch, and you will see a legend materialized. I'll be ready, Dick. It's not yet late. Rasta Bay? Rasta Bay, come in here. Rasta Bay? I've heard that name before. Rasta Bay.  Come here. I remember him. Now, I saw him in Vienna. Look at his cape, Major. Emerald Green. The emblem of Green Mantle. Rasta Bay? Yes, Colonel? Show the gentleman your beautiful green cape. Yes, sir. You see? Yes, sir. Now, tell them what your new name is going to be in just a few hours. My name will be Green Mantle. I will be Great Man. Hero. Great Man. All right, now. That's his attention. I'll grab the gun. I will be Hero. Green Mantle. Very good. You're excellent for the fast. I will be Greatest Man in... Look out, Colonel. No, you don't, Colonel. Colonel, Colonel. I've got the gun now. You all right, Tandy, Major? Yes, I'm all right. No, you can't get away with it. Keep him covered, Blink Iron. Yes, Major. What you do? What you do? Take off that cape. No. I'm not take off. I am Hero. That's what you think. Take off that cape. No. No, I run away. I run away. I'll take care of that. What have you done? You have keep him. Oh, no, Colonel. He's just wounded. Now, keep quiet, Tandy. Yes, sir. The green cape. Grab it. Right. What are you doing? You can't do that. Colonel, if you don't keep still, I'm going to bust you over the head again. What are you going to do? I'll tell you what we're going to do, Colonel Von Sturm. The Nomad tribesmen are going to be led into battle after all, but they won't be led against our side as you'd planned. Instead, they'll attack and fight the Germans. No! No! You can't do that! No! There's not so much noise there, Colonel. All right, Tick. I'm ready to ride. You look fine, Tandy. Don't stay here and watch the channel. Of course, Major. The careful Von Sturm doesn't play any tricks on you. I've got him covered. Good luck. We'll have to hurry, Tandy. Long ride to the mountains. I saw some horses outside. That'll be the quickest way. I only hope the natives wait until... I guess the channel tried to play a trick. And didn't get away with it. The natives were assembled and waiting as we rode into their camp. I stood aside there, watching Tandy as he moved up through the milling mass of men. And the hush fell over them like a spell. And Tandy spoke out loud and clear. Men of the mountains!  I ask you now to follow me to attack the Germans who cringe beneath the blows of our lives. If you believe your prophets, if you believe the legend of Green Mantle, then follow me to victory into battle against the Germans. Tandy rode along out through the mountain pass. He was almost beyond their sight before the first few natives took their guns and rode behind him. Then others fell in behind the leaders. And there were more and more until at last every man of them rode out roaring through the mountain pass, storming toward the German lines to crack the eastern front. And in the very front, a single man with sandy hair, a bright green cloak. But the prophecy had come true. The long-looks-for revelation was a fact. The prophets of the people had not failed. Green Mantle had appeared at last. Adventurer-Head has presented the famous John Bucken story, Green Mantle, in a radio dramatization by Tom Gouttage. In today's play, the part of Dick Hane was played by Alexander Scurvy, Guy Spall as Blankern, Jack Stanley as Sandy, and E. A. Krumschmitt as Von Sturm. Others in the cast were Horace Bram, Guy Sorrell, Len Shira, Kathleen Cordell, Charmé Allen, and Guy Sorrell. The entire production was under the direction of Herbert Rice. NBC and its affiliated independent station presented Venturer-Head as a public service.


I'm very happy to be talking to Monica Aspe today. She's from Mexico and she's the head of the office for the Coordination of Information Society there, welcome. Now, you're shaking things up a bit in Mexico, aren't you? Because you've had a very strong incumbent in the country for some time and you want that to change. We're going through a very deep constitutional reform in terms of our telecommunications markets. So yes, the new administration is really shaking things up and this is a part of a larger movement, a set of reforms in the country and it's the three main political parties together with the president who presented this reform in order to have more competition in telecommunications, lower prices, better quality and most of all have access to more population. Could you give me some other headlines in relation to the situation in Mexico because prices have been high for a long time and this has affected your growth or affected your standing in terms of development? Well, yes, we have slightly over 40% of internet users and we should and we want to have much higher percentages. We also have problems in terms of coverage of networks. We have only 50% of the population who actually live in a town that has access to more, two or more fiber optic networks. So 50% of the population don't live in a place where you can access a fiber optic network in competition. So we have challenges in terms of concentration, in terms of prices, quality of service and most of all access to ICTs and the benefits. So this is a shift towards looking at ICTs really as some sort of engine for growth and engine for development in Mexico. Absolutely, absolutely. And also in terms of growing, in terms of GDP but also in terms of equality, we believe that people, all Mexicans should have the right to access information and have freedom of expression through ICTs and this is now a constitutional right that was passed in Congress a couple of days ago. So we're very happy for that because we will have the visibility, the importance of this matter now at the constitutional level and thus we will have much more powerful and larger policies regarding access. And this is quite important for a country like Mexico which is very vast but not necessarily homogeneous. You have marginalized communities on the margins who might need to have through ICTs access to e-government services, et cetera. Exactly. And Latin America is the most unequal region in terms of income distribution in the world and Mexico is part of this inequality. So ICTs are a huge opportunity to take public services, to make equal in terms of coverage and quality, public services such as education, health, security and well the main services that states provide. Monocraspi, thank you very much. Thank you.


Good day my wonderful people. Well I wouldn't say my wonderful people. You wonderful person. Thank you for tuning in. Today I've got a lovely episode for you on the dating and autistic series, the series, the top series on YouTube for understanding and working with autistic people in relationships. Even if you are or aren't autistic, you're going to get something from this video. The special topic of the day, meltdowns. What are they? What do they feel like? How do you prevent them? How do you notice when someone is having a meltdown? Autism shutdowns are not very known about, whereas there is a lot of content. I say content because it varies in its efficacy. Some other stuff out there on meltdowns come more under the category memes. Most people know what an autism meltdown is from memes, from jokes, from gaming communities. There's a lot of humor around autism. Depending on your views, it can be funny and it can't. It's only funny for me when it actually makes sense. If I watch a streamer or someone just like randomly saying that they're autistic because, I don't know, they did something wrong in the game or they forgot something, that doesn't make any sense. Why would we forget anything like that? We're hyper focused on it and planning every single bit of the game. You know, going off on the tangent here. So what is a shutdown? A meltdown. A meltdown is a lot of things. I'm going to explain what a meltdown is like for me. I've explained this sort of stage by stage model in my autism shutdown video. But due to that, most autistic people are like suffymic, struggle noticing, understanding, categorizing emotions, all that really important stuff for self-regulation. A large percentage of that time period of when we are getting, for example, more and more stressed, we will not particularly pick up on that, especially if we're focusing on something else. So there is a very small window between noticing that you're stressed and being able to do something about it and having a shutdown. Usually, the shutdown is the most important sort of step in this because it can prevent having a meltdown. If in the right environment and in the right sort of low sensory environment, if all of that stuff doesn't work, and obviously you can refer back to the shutdown video, the person may have a meltdown. Your brain is going at about a million miles per hour. It's not like a panic attack, although it's similar in some aspects. But it's usually characterized by kind of a pretty extreme regression in someone's social presentation. For me, when I have a meltdown, I can usually sort of control myself to some degree. If there is a lot of external factors that are adding to my stress while I'm in that meltdown, then it's likely that it can continue on for quite a significant amount of time. And there are a lot of aspects of having a meltdown that are to do with stimming. So rocking or, you know, for me, motor ticks, physical ticks, you know, those sort of semi voluntary actions that you do kind of like to rest, but just depending on whether I'm stressed enough, I get a lot of those. And it's extremely physically exhausting to be in that state. Every time I try to move a certain body part, it twitches about five or six times before I'm able to actually move that body part, which is a really difficult thing for, you know, keeping myself mobile, safe. You know, this is not something that I would want to happen in public just because of how vulnerable it makes me feel and makes me look. On paper, there is no reason for you to feel ashamed or sad or embarrassed about having a meltdown, but it really doesn't take away from just the difference in how you are not having a meltdown just in everyday life. And it's sort of the level of functioning and the presentation that you have when you're having a meltdown. They're very, very different. And it can, for me, it makes me feel extremely embarrassed and extremely sort of, you know, I want to go hide myself away.  There is a lot of dissociation. You can't really think properly. Your thoughts are like buzzing all sorts of different directions. And it's really hard to focus on a certain thing. You're very, very sensitive to other people, depending on their outward presentation. If they're very calm and lovely, it tends to be a bit easier to kind of calm down if they're not so much. And they're kind of, they're not really sure about this thing that's happening to you. They don't particularly understand why you're doing this. You know, they think that is something that you're doing actively, a voluntary thing that you're doing to get some sort of result. You know, depending on the environment, it depends on the severity of it. There can be a lot of cases where I'm really frustrated with something that I wanted to do, like my routine, and there's lots of different changes. And it's just because of that. Usually once the mount down passes can sort of get a little bit more back on track, if it gets a little bit too intense, then it can, it can literally exhaust my energy for the next two days, three days. It can make me feel really down on myself, really low self-esteem for like nearly a week or two, depending on whether I talk to the people who've seen me having the mount down. And I've really sort of worked through that sort of shame and guilt that I feel. So with the whole mount down, there's a lot of physical tension, there's a lot of anxiety, like a lot. It's almost painful. It's excessively difficult to try and have any sort of communication. Depending on how bad it is and depending on the situation, perhaps maybe you might be able to give single words or very, very simple sentences, but there will be no tonality in this. It will be extremely monotone. It will be almost a task and effort, like lifting like a really heavy weight in order to try and get these words out. The only thing that I can really communicate is affirmatives and, you know, the opposite of that. I don't know what that would be. Just processing the language and formulating a response takes a lot longer than usual, maybe up in, up into the range of about 10, 20 seconds sometimes. But the actual sort of inner world experience is perhaps in some ways not what people would expect. When they see you in that state, they don't think that you kind of you'll remember things and that you can think and that you are still a person inside. It very much looks almost like you've kind of regressed in your intelligence and that you kind of in this very vulnerable, perhaps a very exaggerated state. And so it's hard for people to comprehend that there is a person still inside there, you know, while this is happening. Quite often I can remember what the experience of them out down is. Perhaps it's a bit blurry. Perhaps the time is distorted quite a bit. Perhaps my understanding of the situation is a little bit different, but I can still remember what happens. So anyone who helps me, anyone who makes me feel worse, I know about that. I can still have thoughts. I can still want to express something in my head. I can think, okay, right, I want to tell them that I need to lower the lights and listen to some music. And then I try and it just doesn't come out. And it's extremely frustrating, especially if someone's trying to pressure you to communicate. It's so difficult. It's almost impossible in some circumstances. So you can kind of realize the intensity of what this experience is like. If you've had a panic attack before, there will be a lot of crossover in that. But there are some more typical things related to an autism meltdown than to a panic attack. I know what the difference is I can tell most of the time. With a panic attack, the adrenaline spikes, but it's the, it's the adrenaline that spikes up. It's the anxiety that goes up. And it's not necessarily characterized by me becoming mute or anything like that. I'll probably be a bit more in control of it. I could have a panic attack and perhaps still walk down the street kind of thing or communicate that I want to go inside or I want to change the atmosphere and be able to do that. Whereas if I'm having a meltdown, that capacity, that ability to think and act is very, very lowered. It's very difficult to do almost anything. And it's not something that I'm pleased to share. Like I hope that you can appreciate that I'm being quite vulnerable about this because from my outward presentation on YouTube, it doesn't really seem like this would be something that I experienced, but it is. And it does happen. Not so much in adulthood, but it still does happen. And there are specific triggers and things that happen that put me in that state. So you may come away from your first experience saying like it's kind of a holiday retreat, but you may feel almost fairly traumatized by your partner having a meltdown. It's not a pretty thing. I would sort of compare it to having like an epileptic fit. Obviously there are different types of epileptic fits and there are very strong differences between the two. But for arguing sake, it is kind of a good comparison. It's a good way to think about an autism meltdown because it's a lot easier to think in that sense of your brain just going haywire. This is a bad thing. You can't control all of these things and these are happening. And that's probably the most simple way of viewing it. It's a state of mind. It's a set of behaviors that come from this extreme anxiety, this extreme overload. You have to have the mindset of right, we need to wait this out. We need to try our best to make it comfortable. We need to make sure that if you can talk to them and that they're able to talk to you about perhaps the other feelings that are going on after the meltdown. You know, there's a lot of different sort of care aspects involved. It's not the best for someone's self-esteem. So a lot of the stuff that you can do that a lot of people don't do is the aftercare for it. Dealing with the meltdown, of course, very good, making sure that it's shorter, making sure that it's less intense, of course that it's going to be good, but you've got to get the aftercare as well. So you can spot a meltdown. It's very easy to spot mile away, but you understand what it's like to some degree, what it feels like. It's not a pleasant experience, of course. And you also know how to spot it. Now we have the how to help part, how to help the actual meltdown. Of course, the best way to help is not to encourage it to happen. If someone's having a shutdown, you know, watch that video of me talking about shutdowns. There's a lot that you can do to not make it worse and make sort of encourage them to have a meltdown. So keeping that in mind is obviously the best thing, prevention, better than treatment, better than the cure, all that kind of thing. But when they are actually having a meltdown, it can be very hard to know what to do if you don't have kind of a step-by-step guiding or rough guide in your head about how to tackle this situation, because you can't exactly ask them what would help and then just explain, okay, right. I'm feeling very overloaded by my senses and this and that and music would help and I'd like to just lay down and I'd like you to massage my legs or all of that stuff that could easily be communicated out of the meltdown is not easily communicated when the person is having it. So it's always important to have that conversation with your partner. Make sure that they understand what happens to them, try ask them what it feels like for them and what helps them and what makes things worse. It may be different to perhaps my experience. So that is, you know, the best thing to do, the prevention side of things, you know, making sure that you don't fresher them into doing a lot of socializing and going out in very busy places and, you know, when the mental health is not very good, all that kind of stuff probably going to help out a lot. So when they are actually having a meltdown, you've crossed the breaking point, the seal is off and they are in it for maybe one or two or three hours. Very intense pain, physical, mental, emotional for the person and perhaps also for you. The most important thing to do is not to rush them. A lot of people say put them in a situation or take them out of a stressful situation and put them in a situation that's better. Great idea if you have a kid and you can carry them with an avil, probably not a good idea to rush them because that can make them feel even more anxious I talked about the difficulty putting thoughts into action and that's the same thing. If you try to force someone to get out of a stressful situation too quickly, then it can possibly make it more intense for them. So make sure that you are always slow, slow and calm and understanding and listening. If they say that they don't want to move, don't move them, don't force them to move. I would encourage them to move because, you know, the second step, the ideal step would be to put them in a situation that's less stressful. A situation where it's less noisy, perhaps having some headphones on and listening to some relaxing music, not being around other people because obviously, you know, that self-conscious aspect, the shame and the guilt, it's going to be amplified by more people gathering around and watching you in this vulnerable state. So the ideal would be to just have you and them in a room, away from the public, away from all the sensory distress. That is the ideal. It's not always the case, perhaps if you are the cause of a malign, you've caused them to have a malign, you've pushed them when they're in a shut down state, forced them to communicate.  Perhaps in this situation, it might be good to contact someone that they know so that they can talk to them and perhaps leave them alone. Obviously, a caveat to that is when they have a meltdown, they're not self-injurious. You know, the thing is with this is that even though you are their partner, you're not always qualified to help someone have a safer meltdown. If they tend to hit themselves, which does happen and it has happened to me in the past, you're not really trained to restrain them to make sure that they're okay. So I wouldn't go for physical restraint too much if they are hurting themselves. I would encourage them not to but you should always try and substitute it for something else that will help them calm down. So if they're hitting themselves, perhaps giving them something that's quite stimulating to them sensory wise, like something to squeeze or something to bite or anything, any kind of sensory toy that you can think about, something that they like and that calms them down. Substituting that with them hitting themselves is better than wrapping them up and just squeezing their arms together and restraining them because that's probably going to make them feel worse about themselves and it's also going to be fairly unpleasant. If they are doing any motor ticks or verbal ticks and repeating noises or phrases or doing very jerky movements that seem to be quite violent, I wouldn't say stop them from doing that because it's not really something that they control and it's usually the body's response to try and relieve the tension and the anxiety and the stress that they're feeling. Some more tips for trying to help in this situation would be simplifying the questions that you're asking, yes and no's. If they're in a state and they can't process and talk very well, perhaps they may want to nod or they may want to shake. So it's always good to give yes and no questions. Do you want the light off? They can say yes, I want the light off. It's too bright. They won't say that, they'll just nod the head or they'll say yes and then you do it and if you want to communicate to them in that state I would always just stick to that. It's important to make sure that you get your vocal tonality all well and good. You have to remember there still is a person inside that. This is still your partner and they can still remember things that happen during the meltdown. You know, it's good to make sure that you're treating them as a human being as a partner rather than a patient or someone that you care for. You need to make sure that you give them a lot of positive affirmation. You let them know that you're not being bothered by this, that you want to help, that they're concerned about you, that they care for you, that it doesn't affect your image of them. All of these things are really good because they'll make the after the meltdown a little bit easier. So let's go on to that aftercare. What does it look like? Once the meltdown subsides, it tends to go very, very slowly downwards up until a point where they look absolutely exhausted. Like they've just done two nights worth of work in one night, no sleeping. You know, they've been traumatized by this event. That's what they'll look like. They may get very depressed, especially if they already have mental health conditions. They may be extremely sensitive, they may be very, very self-conscious, very down on themselves, very low self-esteem. So in this situation it's important that you understand that perhaps they won't be up to the communication standard that they were for maybe a couple of days or a couple of hours depending on the person. It tends for me to be about one or two days where I gradually get more and more energy as these days subside after the meltdown. But for me the most important thing is to perhaps have some alone time to think about it. It may sound very counterintuitive, but you know, having that sort of alone time to just process what's happened, understand, get your thoughts in order, make sure that you've given enough time so that you can communicate what happened and what helped someone, what was good and what was bad within the context of the relationship. But what can you do? What can you do to make this this period of time easier? I would always look to doing something that they like. One of the things that I like the most is theme parks and trampoline parks and water parks. Probably that's not going to be the best thing for me to do in that state. You know, maybe just going about and just having a bounce in the trampoline or going to the gym or, you know, doing any of that stuff that kind of relaxes your body is very important. For me, it's very important for other people, you know, the idea of going to the gym after you've had a meltdown is like, maybe a couple of days after. The main thing for you to focus on is trying to reassure them, trying to say that you were willing to talk about it, trying to be open about it, trying to be open-minded about their responses. If you come out of the situation as a, right, this was really hard for you, and I'm really sorry that you feel felt that. Is there any way that I can help you feel better about it? Usually, there'll be a lot of shame and sort of stress around, you know, you're not finding them attractive anymore. They could develop a lot of self-esteem issues, tread lightly and tread calmly and tread positively. You need to make sure that they feel like having a meltdown in front of you hasn't affected the image that you have of them. It hasn't affected how you view them, how much you want to be in a relationship with them. You need to reassure them of this because they're probably going to go through a tough time, especially if it's the first time that they've had a meltdown. So just being aware of that and just being aware that you may need to be a bit more sensitive around them, perhaps a bit more emotionally open, perhaps a little bit more supportive than usual. But, you know, after that, that couple of days, they tend to go back to their original sort of mode of being, if you've done everything right in this, in these steps, then the meltdown won't happen from the preventative side or it will happen, but it won't be that intense and it will be a lot more manageable. And then eventually, once they come out of it, making sure that it doesn't, they don't feel like it's going to impact the relationship that you two have and that you understand them and that they feel comfortable having a meltdown around you and being in that vulnerable state. All of those things compiled into one is how you deal with meltdowns in a relationship. So I hope that has helped you. I do realize that I have been rambling on and on and on and on and on throughout this entire video. But if you want to stay up to date with all the stuff I have written versions of the videos that I make over on my Instagram account, you can find me on Facebook and Twitter if you want. But Instagram usually is the best place to go. Also, if you want to stay up to date with the autism series, that I do have the playlist for the autism dating series, if you want to check that out, all that stuff, that playlist is probably a good idea to watch if you are dating an autistic person. And if you want to get in contact about a collaboration about getting me to come speak at your school or getting me to do some training for a workforce or a workplace that you're involved in, please email me at AspergersGrowth at gmail.com or contact me via my website ThomasHenley.co.uk. If you want to try and support me and my work and the time that I put into the videos, I do have the join button on my page now. And it's the minimum amount that you can donate is one pound a month. So if you do find my videos somewhat useful and it's, you know, I've made the relationship world a little bit easy for you. I would really appreciate a join. Stay safe, stay cool, make sure you vaccinate it. Probably shouldn't have so that it's going to rile some anti-vaxxers up in the comments and drink some water. I'll see you later.


Pow, what's up everybody once again, it's Brandon and Shawn and today we're going over how to get maximum attention using social media ads. Now this video was inspired because I noticed that a lot of musicians are really just wasting a lot of ad dollars by not really customizing their ad campaigns for the platforms that they're making it in and often times just taking regular content they have like a music video and then running an ad using the entire music video. And the first thing that you want to keep in mind when you're creating an ad is what is the goal that you have at the end of the day? Are you trying to drive music plays? Are you trying to drive overall awareness? What do you want the end behavior of the user to be? What do you consider a successful campaign to be? So for this I'm going to use three examples. None of these have been necessarily considered the huge viral campaigns where you might necessarily know about people and the first one I'm going to actually use a non-music example. A few years ago I was hit with this video on Instagram. This is also a metaphor for your car. So when you don't put Toyo tires on your car, you're basically doing this, tires, not spraying cheese. Now the first thing I actually saw scrolling down my feed was food. That beautiful looking steak, you keep watching for a few seconds and then bam, this cheese happens. Obviously especially on a platform like Instagram, you're going to catch a lot of people's attention using something as beautiful as a steak, some good looking food. But this ended up being a tire commercial and you can see that a lot of people got got when they talk about it in the comments. But why this commercial works, which is really important to remember and take note of is the fact that even though they had the steak and it transitioned to end up being a tire commercial, it wasn't like some straight spammy stuff. It made sense in the narrative of the actual story itself. The steak was ruined by cheese. They were using it as a metaphor to say your car is ruined if you don't have our tires. Don't put cheese on your car. I want to drop that point in because a lot of people call everything clickbait these days, but clickbait isn't necessarily clickbait or at the very least, it's not so much of an offense if what you're using or the content after the click actually makes sense and it's providing value at the end of the day. But so the point is they were able to use something to capture people's attention and then transition when you have something as boring as tires, right? A lot of you guys are working with music or just everybody has different, these interesting brands, but tires is pretty boring. How do you capture people's attention? I had never heard of Torio tires before this ad or seeing this, but now I do. These type of campaigns are really to build awareness. They're really not meant to drive some kind of specific clicks or behavior or I personally wouldn't use that type of ad to do that, but just getting people intrigued and captured by what it is. And maybe a lot of people might even send it so they can get somebody else with it. I actually end up sending it to my sister because I know she likes food and I knew she would be thrown off by the ad and transition herself. What you gotta pay attention to in all these ads are the structures. You have something quick that brings in the attention and you use that somehow to lead to another narrative that makes sense for whatever you want to do or at least want them to know. And because you're using this type of ad to drive awareness with a lot of people who might not necessarily know you already, this is one of the type of ads I would recommend doing like a Facebook ad campaign and actually paying for it. Because it has the ability to stop people in their tracks for just enough time to get informed of you. Number two, the second ad was actually just an Instagram post. So I'm gonna go ahead and start and say this type of ad is not to build a fan base or bring in new followers. This is to engage and direct your fans, your current fans to a specific action. A lot of people just post, hey now available on Amazon or now available on Spotify and all of those types of things. But this person did a blacksmith. He actually engaged and entertained the fan base and even made them laugh a little bit around what he wanted them to know and then provided a single call of action which is basically going Amazon Prime if you got it and listen to the music. Once again, this type of ad is not to build a fan base. It's to inform your current fan base and then lead them to a specific action. Doing things like this allows you to constantly inform them when you can always have the regular post, hey this is available here on Spotify. But now I'm gonna entertain you this time and then once again let you know it's available on Spotify and then I might do something else. So you can come up with a lot of creative ideas that are small. They don't even have to be funny. But just something where you give them value in addition to the information itself and then hit them with the fact that you want them to know something and then direct them to the action. Number three. So number three is my favorite because not only does it utilize influencer marketing but it does it right. Going to think of it too much as an ad, it's straight up organic. They're listening to music as they get ready which a lot of girls and just people in general do. So it's them being their natural selves and then they're interacting with each other and they're interacting with the video just looking like they're having fun because of the song, like they like the song, like they actually know the song. That's way different than a lot of these other ads you see. And while I don't have any personal insight on the first two ads, what I can tell you from this lured one is the song in this video is called Masi by artist named Shony N and then Shony N had an additional 50,000 plays in a very short period of time on that song after it was posted. Now the track has about 522,000 plays on SoundCloud or maybe it's 580 something thousand. I can't remember.  He hasn't even maximized the use of that particular clip or pushed the song really heavily yet. A lot of people will talk about hey use influencers, reach out to influencers, pay them for an ad but it still depends on what they do when they promote your song. With a lot of these influencers, they're gonna want creative control. Just make sure that they're doing something creative instead of just posting. So two quick tips, especially if you're doing an Instagram ad. If you can make a video that actually gets people's attention and maybe even can make sense or be funny or intriguing or even confusing without the sound at all, then you're doing yourself a great service because hey, a lot of times people don't have time to click the sound or also a lot of times people just can't because they're in a certain place. But if you can get that message out and make them laugh, that could be a pretty effective video especially for awareness. And then of course, when they turn the sound on, hopefully the video's just that much better or explains what they didn't get but got intrigued by before turning the sound on. And then the second tip is A-B testing. As you notice, I did not say hey, do this one, only do this one. I always talk about experimentation. A lot of people will tell you that videos do better on social media than text ads. But I say you test that for yourself because it all depends on your goals. What a lot of people get confused by is they'll see a bigger reach or they'll see bigger numbers as far as watches when it comes to the videos. But it just means people might not saw the video. But that doesn't mean much if they like the video or anything like that. So you might just want to use that as awareness just like the first video because a lot of times what you might find in my experience with text ads is you have more clicks and better drive people to specific behaviors. If you don't have a good video ad in itself or even just good copy when you're writing your text ad, we can do a video about how you use language in your ads later. But for now, that's it. Y'all know what to do. Hit that subscribe button.


I'm hoping to have some room for questions toward the end. So I will get through this as efficiently as I can, but there's a lot of material here, because of course, this is a massive topic. I can't do more than maybe hit a few high points. And I'm hoping to have a little time afterward to answer any questions you might have when we're done. This is a talk that has evolved over several years that I've been giving it at Mises You. And it's one that I've got a personal interest and connection to, because my father was a physician. And he and I would talk about a lot of these things, me from the economist standpoint, and him from the physician standpoint. And it was really enlightening to see from his kind of clinical perspective some of the things that were happening that government had done to the medical profession and to see how bad economics, bad economic policy related to medical care had so adversely affected not only him as a doctor, but more importantly, his patients. And so I hope that I'm going to do this justice, because it is something that I think all of us, to some extent, even if we're not involved in the medical profession are going to be affected by. I think there are four principles that rise to the top of where we can reform medical care and make it better. As I go through this, you're going to see some of this that's like, well, that's politically, that's never going to happen. Well, maybe not immediately. But I think we need to have a clear view of what we can work toward and not immediately dismiss something simply because it's politically maybe difficult to put into practice. The first thing I want to talk about here today is free pricing. We have a medical care system in the United States, and I would say in most other countries, that is not a free market medical care system. And I wanted to say that right off at first, because too often I hear people talking about the American medical care system as though it is somehow an example of free market medical care and then, oh, wouldn't it be better if we moved away from the free market towards something that would be a little more government controlled? And of course, that's not at all what we have here. It is not a free market medical care system in the US and has not been for some time. The lack of free pricing is an example of this. It's standard, fair, and any principles of micro-course to get a discussion of price controls into the class, usually toward the beginning. And we know from those principles lectures that if you hold a price below the equilibrium, you're going to get a shortage. It also tends to reduce incentives to create innovative solutions. I was listening to Per Bilan's talk yesterday on regulation. That very much applies here as well. If you regulate medical care, you're going to distort the medical innovations that otherwise might have occurred. They're not going to happen. You may get different innovations, but they're not necessarily going to be in line with consumer preferences. We know that low prices mean that people are not going to reduce their consumption of a good, even when it would make sense to do so. So we see shortages partly because we run out of things that people have a great need for. And then two, the expectation that prices will be capped by government discourages stockpiling for emergencies. And we've just seen that recently. If you don't even have to put a price control on something, if there is the implicit threat that a price control is going to be applied, that itself will restrain markets from pricing things efficiently. So we can think about the great toilet paper hand sanitizer in 95 mass shortages of 2020. And we are still seeing some shortages of various things. And I would argue that a large part of these shortages was the inability of the price system to adequately adapt to the new situation. So this is a typical supply and demand diagram, like you'd see in a principal's class. Downward sloping demand curve, upward sloping supply curve. Maybe this is, I mean, we're talking about medical care here, but toilet paper would be a good example of what happens when you try to limit a market and there are other things, medical equipment, ventilators, and so forth, where we saw similar kinds of problems. So what happened in 2020 is, number one, you get a massive increase in demand for certain things. We all of a sudden wanted a lot more latex gloves and 95 masks and hand sanitizer and a lot of other things. So the demand curve is going to shift to the right. And then we also had supply problems. I really don't like the word supply chain. I'm trying to wean myself from that and use supply network instead, because a network implies substitutability, whereas a chain implies you've got this rigid kind of line that entrepreneurs can't work their way around. But anyway, so we've got these supply network problems as well. I mean, toilet paper manufacturers were used to making a lot of commercial grade toilet paper with massive roles made to fit in commercial dispensers. And they weren't making household toilet paper. And all of a sudden, everybody wants household toilet paper. So we get a rightward shift in the demand curve. And at the same time, the supply network problems lead to a leftward shift in the supply curve. Not to mention, people being told, you need to go home means that you've got factories that can't operate as they normally would. So we get a leftward shift in supply, rightward shift in demand, a new equilibrium with a higher price. And yet, we didn't really see the prices rising to that level, at least not what I would have expected to see anyway. And stores are running out. You'd find people at Costco, at least in my area, who were lining up outside right before they opened up and hoping to rush to the back to find the toilet paper section and wipe out the bad choice of words, to secure for themselves these products that they expected would be gone within 15 minutes. And they often were gone. So what we ended up with was a shortage here, where the quantity supplied was far less than the quantity demanded. That by itself is evidence that there probably was too low of a price. So when we're looking for medical care, if you've got price controls on medical care of any type, that's going to tend to create shortages. If people are not paying the equilibrium price, if they're paying something below that because government has affected the market, then it's going to tend to create that kind of problem. Number two, I think one of the things that we could work toward is the elimination of occupational licensure. If you could say that the COVID pandemic had some kind of silver lining to it, it might be that occupational licensure regulations were weakened. And they're still around, of course, but people did begin to see that maybe in a crisis situation, these don't work so well. Well, now with the crisis past, there's an extension of these weakening of these policies that have weakened the occupational licensure laws. And maybe we'll see a permanent shift away from occupational licensure. So what occupational licensure does is limit competition. Even if you are competent to do some job, you won't be allowed to do that job unless you have a license from the state. And this puts the state in the position of determining who's competent and who's not, which means that the state is putting itself in the position of being the arbiter of good and bad science. We see a reduction of innovation because without competition, without the freedom to enter a market and say, hey, I've got a new way of doing things, it doesn't really match the status quo. You get this ossification if you don't have that ability to compete with the mainstream. We'll talk about this in a minute, but under pandemic conditions, we saw some of these problems where people who might have left an occupation, like maybe they were a nurse, and they left the nursing profession a year or two before. Maybe they let their license lapse, but they're still competent. And yet they couldn't immediately get back in when the medical professor was screaming for qualified people to staff hospitals and to handle this emergency. So that limited the ability of the market to adjust to a higher demand. Also, skilled people who are able to perform a function but are legally restricted to another group are unable to step in where they might be able to fill some kind of need. So maybe I've got a lot of medical training, but because of the licensure barrier, I'm not allowed to move slightly outside of that and do some tasks that I might be perfectly capable of doing but I'm not allowed to do by law. Then you've got people that maybe they're a weak short of graduating from medical school and they've got a lot of the competency that they might gain from medical school but they're not allowed to step in even in an emergency. We did see some weakening of these kinds of rules like telemedicine, for example. You could start offering your medical services across state lines on Zoom or something and that was helpful, right? So that starts to weaken the state line barriers. If I'm not licensed in another state, can I still do telemedicine with a client in another state? I mean, I got a driver's license from South Carolina but North Carolina allows me to drive on their roads even though I didn't pass North Carolina's specific set of driver tests. North Carolina deems me competent because they have a reciprocal arrangement with South Carolina, et cetera. So why we can't do this with medical care is unclear. Medical licensure is actually quite old but it started out as an anti-competitive kind of practice. The American Medical Association controls medical schools. Now, keep in mind the American Medical Association is a group of doctors.  More doctors. So the American Medical Association can use the medical education apparatus as a way of constricting the number of new doctors that enter the profession. And this is something that goes back a very long time. The AMA uses the Liaison Committee on Medical Education to do this. You can only get a medical license if you graduate from one of their approved medical schools. And so when this started to happen, medical schools, of course, had a limited number of seats, limited number of new doctors. Of course, that restraint on supply forces prices up. I skipped ahead one slide, but Ronald Hamaway in a very useful brief history of the American medical licensure way the American medical profession has developed over the last couple of centuries, says that competition actually produced a lot of progress. The fact that we did not for a long time try to restrict who was able to be a doctor and try to impose these licensure examinations on doctors meant that if you've got a different idea about how you want to practice medicine, you could do that. And if your new idea doesn't work, it doesn't actually make patients better or maybe it actually makes patients worse, then patients are gonna stop using your new method and it will die off. I mean, nobody's gonna continue down that path. If you've got a new successful method or one that's less harmful to patients than the status quo, then that experimentation that's allowed by competition will promote that new path. And so Hamaway points out that by the 1870s in the United States, mainstream medicine had reduced its dependence on practices we now regard as barbaric, bloodletting, giving people arsenic, and it began to use more botanical drugs. A lot of our drugs are botanical in origin. Aspirin is a botanical type of drug. And alternative schools of thought that were more successful began to prosper. Well, by the late 1800s, this had produced a medical profession in the United States that had expanded to the point where the United States had the highest numbers of physicians per capita in the world. This is good for consumers. This means that costs are low. This means that if you're a physician, you've got to worry about your patients going to somebody who's using a better technique. So you've got to keep up. You've got to pay attention to what is happening in your discipline, because you don't want to fall behind. Someone else will step in and take your practice, take your patients. But if you're in the medical profession, you might not want to see this kind of pressure on yourself. So there was an effort by the American Medical Association to try to reduce the number of doctors. And they would do this by reducing the number of medical students. They said, well, if we have fewer students, then we can sort of concentrate on them and we can make sure that they're learning. We're giving them the best education possible because we're not trying to teach so many students. It's going to be quality, not quantity. Well, in 1910, Abraham Flexner produced a famous report, a commissioned report that was sponsored by, funded by the Carnegie Foundation. And the report suggested closure of most medical schools going from 155 medical schools down to 31. Medical education would be standardized, homogenized. No more of this experimentation with different techniques or different practices. Any new medical school would have to be approved by the state government and there would be some additional state licensure regulation. So that leads us to where we are today after those recommendations were in part adopted. Prices of medical care went up. Schools of alternative medicine were almost all closed. You still do see some alternative medicine, but it's been herded into a corner and a side effect, well, I'll say it's a side effect. Maybe it was in part intentional, but the changes that the Flexner report brought about resulted in fewer women and fewer African-Americans in medical education. So this was the origin of a kind of ossified medical establishment that we've got today. And it's one that has not, my father was a very traditional doctor in many ways. He had an MD, he was a family physician, he was not into a lot of alternative medicine, but he did see that these alternatives should be allowed to exist and to make efforts at improving patient care.  You should be willing to accept those alternative schools for whatever they can offer. So thinking about COVID and medical licensure in a crisis, the rules of medical licensure were weakened, as I said, some states loosened or lifted their occupational licenses. And in some states, we are still in that period of time where these occupational licensure rules are less stringently applied than they once were. I haven't mentioned here certificate of need laws or con laws, but that's another factor here when we're looking at a crisis. Certificate of need law is a regulation that says that if you want to build a new hospital, you have to get permission from a committee at I think the local or maybe the state level. And without that certificate where the committee has decided that there is a need for a new hospital, you can't build one. I went to graduate school here at Auburn. My first child was born at East Alabama Medical Center here in Lee County. At the time that I was here, I don't, that I was living here, I don't know about now, but at the time EAMC was crowded. They had times when there were patients in the hallways because they didn't have room for them, to have a room for them. And there was, as I recall, an effort to start a new hospital. And yet the certificate of need could not be obtained. And I asked somebody yesterday, and there's still just one hospital here in Lee County, EAMC. So the temptation to use this kind of regulation as a way to prevent competition is enormous. And when you have a crisis of some kind, it doesn't have to be COVID, it could be whatever. And you all of a sudden need new hospital rooms, you can't build a hospital overnight. This is a long and expensive process. So certificate of need laws may not seem to be as restrictive during normal circumstances, but when all of a sudden you need a lot of new ICU beds, where are they? They're not there because con laws stood in the way. Third, I think we could work toward dismantling barriers to innovation. And here I'm gonna pick on the FDA, Food and Drug Administration, they're kind of an easy target. They make it easy. So the FDA creates barriers to entry for new drugs, which means if you've got an existing drug that's already passed the FDA's hurdle and it's on the market, you are protected to a large degree from competition. I'll talk about patents maybe in a minute, but it's not just patents, it's the fact that it can take a billion dollars or so to get a new drug through the process of research and development and passing the FDA's requirements. So during that time, and it's a shorter time than it once was, it used to be eight to 10 years that it would take to get a drug past the FDA's, requirements, but during that period of time, even though it's now shorter, you have people who would have been helped by a new drug who are not helped. And they may die if it was a drug that could have saved their lives. I'll give you an example or two in a minute, but one of the things the FDA is not capable of doing is assessing the willingness of a patient to take a risk.  It's like either the drug is approved or it's not approved. Now, under the Trump administration, there was a weakening of this where you could take a drug, if you fell into, you know, met certain qualifications, you could take a drug that was in a kind of an experimental status. It was called a right to try bill. So this was a step in the right direction, I think, where you didn't have to wait until full approval if you met the characteristics under right to try. So that, again, that's a step in the right direction, but as long as you're delaying a new drug, you run the risk of people who would have been helped by that new drug suffering, maybe even dying depending on what the drug is. And the FDA doesn't know how much of a risk a given individual is willing to take. Maybe the drug just came out of the lab and I don't know whether it's gonna help me or hurt me or what, but I'm in a very desperate situation and I'm willing to take a risk and I'm not willing to wait around three years for lab scientists to run the full battery of tests. If I'm willing to take that risk, that's my risk. Now that's kind of an extreme. I doubt anybody in this room would be willing to take a drug fresh out of the lab like that, but the FDA doesn't know where you are on that spectrum of risk, being very risk averse or being the sort of person who will try anything. And there's been some pushback on this, like back in the 1980s, the drug AZT, which was, I think originally it was an anti-cancer drug, but it was apparently, it was useful in treating AIDS and there was pushback from people who are at high risk of getting AIDS and they said, well, look, as far as we can tell at this point, we're under a death sentence and we're desperate here. We can't wait around eight or 10 years for the FDA to make up to mind about this drug. Might not be around to benefit from the drug. So let me try it. And so there wasn't enough pressure put that it compressed the timeline the FDA did, but not all drugs have that kind of focused, well-organized interest group to kind of push for that drug to be accepted into the market quickly. And then finally, costs and delays can cause drug loss and drug lag. Some drugs may not show up in the market at all because the drug manufacturer says, well, this is gonna cost us however many hundreds of millions of dollars to get it past the FDA. The drug's not gonna ever make us that much money on the market once we sell it, so it's just not a, it's a no-go from the very start. So we're just not even gonna try. I remember a story from years ago, a doctor at the Children's Hospital in Boston who was aware that there was a nutritional supplement for premature babies that was apparently very helpful and was being used in Europe. He wanted to use it in the United States, but had not been approved for widespread use by the FDA. And from what he could tell, it was very effective. That was kind of his specialty of dealing with premature infants. And the drug company that made this and was selling it in Europe was not even going to push to try to have it fully approved in the US because they said, well, we've got another drug in the pipeline that we're developing and if we're gonna spend all this money to get it past the FDA, we're gonna spend it on this other one, not on the one that we're currently approved to use in Europe. So it was a loss. We never were able to get that drug into the market. So SEPTRA, this is an antibiotic. There was a five-year delay in introducing this antibiotic to the US market and an estimate by Nobel Laureate George Hitchings said that this delay cost 80,000 lives in the United States. We don't know exactly who those people are, but we knew about how effective this antibiotic was and a certain fraction of the patients that could have benefited from it died. Beta blockers. There was a lag in FDA approval there that may have cost 250,000 lives because people who died of cardiovascular problems that would have been helped by these beta blockers were unable to get it until it was fully approved. Mary Ruart, who's written on this says that at least half of pharmaceutical innovations get shelved because the cost to take a drug through the regulatory testing process makes those drugs uneconomic for drug developers to pursue. Even with very conservative assumptions, she found that the years of life lost due to FDA clinical demands is in the millions. Years of lives lost are in the millions. Tom DiLorenzo, who you heard from in the previous session says that advertising restrictions by the FDA can cost lives. So if you find out that you've got an existing drug but maybe it's useful for a new purpose, then you're not allowed to advertise for that purpose. And therefore people don't find out about it as easily. And so you've got people who may die or suffer because they weren't allowed to tell you that maybe I'm not saying that this is the current science. I don't know what the rule is on this now, but aspirin apparently was useful in low doses to prevent second heart attacks, something like that. Sure that someone with medical knowledge can correct me on that, but I think that's what I've read. And yet aspirin couldn't be advertised for that purpose until the FDA said, yes, you can now say that this is useful for that. Again from Mary Rewart, in the early 1980s, several reports of medical journals indicated that the B vitamin folic acid taking early in pregnancy could prevent a number of birth defects. Folic acid would have to go through the expensive drug development process if the manufacturers wish to advertise its benefits to young women. Had US folic acid manufacturers been permitted to advertise, we might have seen an increase in supplementation in the United States and a decline in birth defects. Instead, approximately 10,000 American babies were born with deformities more horrific than thalidomide. Thalidomide, by the way, is the FDA's, what they consider their triumph. Like, well, if you didn't have us keeping people from using thalidomide, then you would have had the birth defects that thalidomide caused. And this is looking at a, if you're thinking about birth defects avoided from thalidomide, are they also gonna tell you about the 250,000 lives lost because of the same FDA kind of conservatism on admitting new drugs to the market? That conservatism works two ways, right? I mean, it'll hold a drug off the market that later turns out to have some pretty bad side effects, but it'll also hold drugs off the market that would have been very helpful. And you don't know which ones those are at first. So you can't have one without the other. And the FDA's incentive, being a bureaucratic organization, is to be very conservative about this because those who are damaged or killed by a drug's side effects form an interest group that can put focused pressure on the FDA, whereas we don't know who the 80,000 people are who would have been saved by septra. We don't know who the 250,000 people are who would have been saved by beta blockers because it was a probability issue. So that group, not knowing if you're one of the ones that would have been saved, you're not as motivated to criticize the FDA for holding a drug off the market. It's not as easy for you to organize and put pressure on the FDA. So the FDA's incentive is to behave conservatively and mandate more testing and longer testing and more expensive testing and otherwise would be appropriate. COVID-19, again, if we look at how the FDA in conjunction with the CDC affected this crisis, according to Charles Silver and David Hyman, the federal government botched the process for creating and administering coronavirus tests because SARS-CoV-2 is a new variant and new tests was needed to track its spread. German researchers developed one in mid-January, this would have been 2020, but the CDC decided not to use it instead pressing ahead with the development of a separate test. When that test was released in late January, it proved faulty and the FDA prevented private laboratories from developing tests of their own. The CDC also distributed its few test kits equally to labs across the country without regard to the size of local populations which resulted in a dramatic shortage of valid tests in populous areas which created the false impression that the number of cases in the US was low. In early March, again, 2020, facilities in the US had administered 3,099 tests by comparison, South Korea, a much smaller country whose epidemic started the same day as ours had administered 188,000. Now the idea that the market is completely helpless in the face of something like an epidemic or a pandemic is a very popular notion. I see this all the time. I mean, it shows up in textbooks that, well, there's the externality problem. And because of externalities, we can't use markets, we have to use government to handle these kinds of situations. Well, I mean, it turns out that there's some evidence to the contrary. A recent article by Byron Carson from 2020 looked at malaria prevention in the United States in the early 1920s. And he starts off his article with this quotation from Jeffrey Hammer, which is a very prevalent view of this kind of episode. He says, Hammer says, for some anti-malarial operations such as mosquito control, the service provided is a pure public good. If the public did not provide it, meaning the government, it would not get done at all. Funny how Hammer apparently equates the public with the government, like anyway. So Carson says, no, that's not actually what happened. I mean, we actually did get a suppression of malaria, not because the government came around and launched some massive anti-malarial program, but because private citizens saw it in their interest to take steps to prevent the breeding of mosquitoes which transmitted malaria. So Carson says, when individuals tied the collective good of prevention with a private good, when individuals can form organizations like associations or firms, private prevention or provision of mosquito control and malaria prevention is encouraged. So we're not just helpless in the face of an epidemic or pandemic without government to ride to the rescue. And as we know very well, I think when government does intervene in an epidemic or pandemic, they can make things worse instead of better. One study from last year looked at the connection between economic freedom and pandemics. When you enlist government to do anything, it's hard to enlist it to do only one thing. You end up with a wide variety of government interventions and it's extremely difficult to keep government limited to the one task that you envision that it might be able to help with. Skeptical even of those isolated incidents, but Candela and Galosso said that a society that is relatively free economically offers economic actors greater flexibility to adapt to pandemics. We argue that societies that are more economically free will be more robust to the impact from pandemics illustrated by shorter time for economic recovery. If you've got a more free society in general, you've got room for entrepreneurs to maneuver. You've got room for markets to make adjustments. You've got room for innovation. You've got room for these private sector adjustments to the new situation. When you foreclose those kinds of private sector adjustments in favor of a government program, you may have a worse outcome, both in terms of the spread of the disease and also a worse outcome for the broader economy. The last thing I'll mention here is that we need to start moving toward putting patients instead of government in charge of care. Or I should say maybe put patients back in charge of care because that's where we once were. When you have third party payers, which is increasingly government but also in the United States is private insurance, then you're creating a moral hazard effect that leads to regulation and rationing. I'm gonna skip over my little vocabulary lesson on social lives versus universal coverage versus single payer. You wanna talk about that later, maybe we can. But what we've seen over the long term in the United States is an increase in third parties paying for medical care and a decrease in out-of-pocket payments. And you think, well, medical care is expensive, so therefore we wouldn't wanna have to pay for this out-of-pocket. You know what that MRI would cost out-of-pocket. And yes, it costs a lot, but it costs a lot partly because third parties are paying. I remember the one time I had to get an MRI and I didn't even look at the cost because I knew my insurance company was picking up the tab. I didn't care. And if I had to pay what the MRI cost or even half of that or a fourth of that, I would have gone back to the doctor and I would have said, can you get by with an X-ray? Not feeling that bad. And one way we can see this impact of third party payers is to look at a segment of the medical market where third parties are not paying for the most part and that's cosmetic surgery, cosmetic procedures. This table here is looking at plastic surgery procedures ranked by popularity in 2016 and the increase in prices from 1998. And you can see at the top of the table there, the CPI for medical care services overall increased by 100% from 1998 to 2016. For all items, the CPI went up by 47% over that same period. So what are we seeing in cosmetic procedures? There are none of these procedures that exceeded the CPI for medical care services in general and most did not exceed the CPI increase over that time period. People are paying out of pocket for these procedures. There is a lot of competition in this market. Patients are very price sensitive and it's not like the procedures aren't happening and it's not like some of these aren't quite expensive but because third parties are not involved, the providers are motivated to keep their costs down, to pursue cost saving technology where they can and so forth. Studies have found that a fully insured population spends about 40 to 50% more than a population with a large deductible and their status is not measurably improved by the additional services. Now the United States is famous for spending a lot of money on medical care but in a lot of cases we are spending this money on medical care services that have diminishing returns. We are spending a lot of money on things that might provide a very slight increase in outcomes but they're tremendously expensive like my MRI for example. So why are we doing this? Well because patients don't care about the cost and neither does the doctor. The doctor is not motivated either to care much about the cost. This, there's a famous study, the Argon experiment that was published in 2013 that found that Medicaid coverage generated no significant improvements in health outcomes in the first two years despite increased use of prescription drugs, increased office visits, preventive care services and annual spending per individual in excess of $1,100. A lot of money spent. The only positive outcome of that seemed to be a lower level of stress and I think a lower level of depression among people who were in the group that received additional Medicaid funding. So this study from 2014 says that technological change has increased healthcare costs in many cases but has not improved outcomes. Medical insurance in its current state discourages individuals from economizing on healthcare decisions and incentivizes the adoption of services with progressively diminishing returns. So what's the alternative? I mean, you say, well, get rid of insurance. If you've got patients who have skin in the game so to speak, when they've got a motivation to watch the expenditures, then that tends to reduce their expenditures on unnecessary things while maintaining expenditures on things that are more necessary. One way to do this that is used to some degree in the US is the HSA account or healthcare savings account. And with that, you get a tax-favored account sort of like an IRA and you can put money into that account and it's tax deferred so you don't have to pay taxes whenever you put into that account. And if you're spending money out of that account on medical services, you don't have to pay taxes when you take it out either, even if the account grows over time. So that is typically paired with a very large deductible medical insurance plan that covers catastrophic kinds of expenditures. So you get whatever's in the healthcare savings account or HSA to cover smaller things that account for a lot of our expenses and then if something truly catastrophic happens, that's when the insurance kicks in. But the key is that if you don't spend the money in the HSA, it remains yours. Unlike an insurance plan with a low deductible where if you don't spend the money out of the insurance company's pocket, then you don't get the residual. It's not yours to have. So in HSA, if the money ends up not being used, it's still accessible to you. I think the way the rules operate once you reach retirement age, you can take it out tax-free. I'd have to check on that again, but I think that's the way that works. So you've got an incentive to hold back on expenses that aren't truly necessary for you and to watch the prices that you're being charged for medical procedures. Well, I wish I had time to go through the ACA, the Affordable Care Act and a lot of those kinds of things, but as usual, I found myself running out of time before I run out of slides. So thank you very much and I'll be happy to stick around and answer questions later. Thank you.


Ladies and gentlemen, welcome. This is now the beginning of our event, a glimpse into the Institute, the Hauts études scientifiques. I am Claire Lenz, Director of Communications and Development at IHES, and on behalf of the Institute, as well as the friends of IHES, I thank you for attending this event. The format chosen for this event is that of the webinar, meaning that all of you, for all of you watching, you can see the panelists, but you cannot see the rest of the audience, and you cannot speak directly during the event. That being said, feel free to ask your question and post your comments using the Q&A button as well as the chat button down your screen. Without further ado, we will now start our event with Mr. Michael Ordoblas, President and Chairman of the Friends of IHES. Thanks, Claire. Hello, everybody. Thanks for joining us today. This is our first virtual event ever for Friends of IHES, and it has the great advantage that you can join us from around the world, both coast of the US, Canada, France, the IHES itself, Europe, welcome to all of you. It's a great pleasure to host this event and a great opportunity for us to get together. So we're particularly honored today and grateful to the French Ambassador of the US, Philippe Etienne, who is with us today to introduce the event, Philippe. Thank you. Thank you very much. Good morning, everyone. Thank you, Claire and Mike. And thank you for giving me this opportunity to offer a few remarks at the opening of this event. It's both a pleasure and a great honor. Pleasure because I train myself as a mathematician and an honor because the Institute, the Old Institute Scientific, is one of the most prestigious research institutions in France, but also in the world. How many institutes can count among them, among their permanent professors, seven field medals? And indeed, France is renowned for the excellence of its research in mathematics. Even if some international rankings are not without their flaws, I am nevertheless pleased to see that according to the Shanghai ARWU ranking, Paris-Saclay University is ranked first in the field of mathematics in the world and ninth in physics. The IHES, a founding member of the University of Paris-Saclay, no doubt contributes to this very high rankings. The IHES also illustrates the strength of cooperation between our two countries. A quarter of the 2,000 researchers invited to the IHES over the past 10 years have come from the United States and of the Institute's eight chairs, five are held by professors based in the US. The IHES promotes and conducts theoretical scientific research, but I find it remarkable that the researchers who receive the Institute's support also know how to tackle the most concrete questions that arise in the real world. I would like to mention two examples. The American Association for the Advancement of Science Award for Scientific Diplomacy received last year, I think, by Professor Eliezer Rabinaviti and the work by Robert Clark Penner, which uses advanced math to help fight COVID-19. It is fascinating when even the most theoretical research has such a positive impact. I don't want to be too long and I leave the floor to the speakers to the discussions that I'm sure will be fascinating. The presentation that Slavka Ryskov is going to make a universality in physics, will I am sure give an image of the scientific excellence that the IHES stands for, but before leaving the floor, I would like to extend my warm greetings to, and my gratitude to several participants in the audience today, whom I know personally sometimes, especially to Emmanuel Ulmo, the IHES's director and his predecessor, Jean-Pierre Bourguignon. I was, I want also to express my sincere gratitude to the friends of IHES, and in particular, it's German, Professor Douglas, and our great friends, Jim and Marilyn Simons. Your support is really very, very much appreciated and admired in my country. Thank you, thank you so much. I really miss the time when this kind of meeting was held in person, allowing for discussions on the sidelines of the event itself, but those days will return. I'm sure, even if we still have to deal with this terrible pandemic for a while. Thank you all. I wish you all the best in enjoying these few moments of science. Thank you for your attention. Thank you very much, Mr. Ambassador. Thank you for your kind words, and I look forward to the day that we'll be able to get together in person. So now we have our virtual tour of the IHES, which is a short movie entitled, IHES, A Paradise Born of Franco-American Friendship, which will last about 10 minutes. Shall we begin?