Anytime you see something over and over again in your industry it crosses your desk once twice three times You might want to stop and take a look and over the past week I have had masterclass ads plastered across my YouTube feed These ads you've probably seen they take celebrities and they have them teach their area of expertise If you're writing about people you have to be interested in people I I Can teach you how to play drums in about two minutes Everything in life is a negotiation Whether that's Tony Hawk teaching skateboarding lifestyle a sport and an art form all at once Carlos Santana teaching guitar You're bringing light into the darkness Or pretty much anything you can imagine and if you've seen these ads before they have a very distinct style And they're running millions of dollars in ad spend to them So that means it's time for me to perk up and say what's going on here? And then go ahead and give it a shot in my own business today We're gonna break down how to create your own masterclass style ads for your business and create a winning ad that works Here we go all right, so Undoubtedly you've seen these distinct ads they have quick cuts They have their own stylistic flair and they're easily Identifiable you know at the beginning that you're seeing another masterclass ad and since they work and we see them over and over again That brand recognition is going to feed into the advertising loop We know the humans respond to this anytime we see an ad or a campaign that's working over and over again We can take principles of that even if it's outside of our industry We can take principles bring them into our industry or if it's already in our industry We can take elements of that without copying it into our own business to have success based on what's already working So the first thing we got to look at is the camera shot, right? We're gonna get set up to shoot this ad which is pretty simple We can do it with one or two camera still static shot and there's gonna be a cheap way to do this in a more expensive way so the Elements of style as far as a shot We have depth of field which is those shots where you see the blurry background and it's focused on the person's face We're gonna have multiple angles usually one straight on angle and one from a 45 degree angle We're going to have an interesting background that means it's usually not just a blank wall or something There's usually something more interesting So we might put a view in the background or bookshelf or something like that And if you don't have any interesting backgrounds at your house You can just go to a public place go to a park go to the mountains whatever find something Next we have nice dress typically as people are not dressed like I am in a tank top But it is hot here right now So I'm gonna have to change to shoot my masterclass ad. They're gonna be well-lit professional style So usually we're gonna have good lighting and in the face. We're gonna see lots of emotion It's not somebody called this is an expert in their field He's usually spent 10 20 30 years doing what they do and that passion for what they do is gonna come out in these ads So before we even set up our shot to shoot our own ad We have to have these things dialed in and we have to get ready to set them up You know, so find a place that has a cool background and bust out your DSLR camera or if you don't have one hire a photographer for a day Dress up get the lighting right and get ready to convey that emotion So that's part one of shooting the masterclass style ads. That is the camera or shot So next up we have the format of the ad. It's gonna be about 60 to a hundred and eighty seconds long And we're gonna use specific sound design on that so we're gonna use fast-paced or chasing music This is sound that you might see an opportunity for them actually to present you with your deal Only they thought it was there when there are things happening This is gonna keep the viewers interest keep them watching to find out what happens next They're also gonna use sound effects with the title. So anytime those titles come in We're gonna use a sound effect to show that title coming in Then in general the sound is just very cinematic. So we're gonna mimic what movies do to keep our attention in this So we've got the look we've got the sound and now we need the script now real quick before we get into the script So we know what the end product looks like as Stephen Covey says start with the end in mind We're going to look at editing. So these ads again, we're gonna shoot them as a talking head But we want to edit them with black in white titles.  I Cannot think of any line of work that you are not going to benefit by Communicating which means the shot is gonna change to the beat of the music We're gonna use varying angles and zoom so we're changing the shot about every three seconds in these ads It's gonna keep the viewers attention and we can even use black flashes in between cut So if we're cutting a scene, we're cutting to a new angle. We can use a black flash in between All right, so last but not least we have the structure in the script And I will link below this video to the structure in the script so you can go use this in your own business Go ahead and grab that below the video number one We're gonna begin with a statement about your topic and a statement should qualify or disqualify our desired customer That means if we're targeting real estate agents We might make a statement about real estate and the reason we're gonna do that is we want to perk up the Interest of the people who might become our customers and we want to encourage those who are not in our market to skip the ad And that's because on YouTube you only pay for the viewers that actually watch your ad Anyone who skips it right away. You're not gonna end up paying for that viewer So make a statement that makes it real clear. We don't want everyone to watch our ad We want the people that are ideal customers watch your ad We want everyone else to skip it the process of doing your second draw It's a process of making it look like you knew what you were doing all along After we have a qualifying statement, we're gonna have a title that says meet your new instructor again It's gonna be white text black background Nothing replaces a human connection And we're gonna say what I'm gonna teach you in this masterclass and then say something that goes against industry conventions So if everybody thinks that you need to Prospect by cold calling you might say something like cold calling is the dumbest thing you could do in the real estate industry So you just want to defy Conventions and get people interested in what you're gonna say there has to be a guessing game going on Okay, you have to break their guessing machine if they already know exactly what you're gonna say with the ads about it They've heard it before they're gonna tune out so again tip is to break the guessing machine defy their expectations Then we're gonna have title number two again black background white text. It's gonna be your name Statement what fires me up in the morning about real estate investing about being a real estate agent So whatever your field is I'm just using this as an example. I'm not in real estate You're gonna make a passionate statement. Just dig deep emotionally. Why do you do what you do? Why do you care about your customers? Who are you a hero to and what does that mean to you? Make a passionate statement about that and get the viewer hooked They're going to feel your passion and then they're gonna feel passion in return and keep watching This is the foundation of who I am every single piece of me is in these jobs Everything when you play music You're bringing light into the darkness Title three is gonna be social proof This could be something like as seen on entrepreneur magazine or over 10,000 customer serve or Known from this movie. Whatever it is We want to grab social proof that people already recognize and we're gonna put it on the screen so that we're building trust and credibility So they believe what we're saying Reveal a secret of your trade You have to realize that the top producers in their field are not doing this This and this it's something nobody likes to talk about, but it's the truth So just think into what happens behind closed doors in your industry that most people don't get to hear What will the people at the top not talk about because it causes too much trouble in the industry, but behind closed doors That's what they're focused on Okay, so again, this is to find conventional wisdom But we're really digging into like the 80 20 of what the top producers are doing and whatever our field is And we're telling the truth something that they don't usually hear because usually the people at the top are not going to tell The truth to the mass market because the mass market usually can't handle it And so we want to tell them a secret of the trade again. We're breaking their guessing machine We're telling them another secret. It's gonna get them to keep watching now in between this We're gonna use b-roll so we've used talking head up until this point Talking head is when you're just sitting in a chair and the camera is shooting you straight on 45 degree angle B-roll is when we're cutting in relevant background footage It's not of somebody talking the audio is not synced up might be a panning shot of a scene It might be a scene from outside. It might be a close-up of the speaker's face There's tons of instances of b-roll they use different kinds of b-roll It could be you practicing your craft whatever that is or working with the customer So we want to sprinkle in b-roll to show our audience a little bit of our world Okay, so if I'm making an ad about running Facebook ads, I might show b-roll of me sitting at a laptop on the beach Logged into my Facebook ad stack now after we showed them this we kind of hooked them We've opened up some questions in the mind now we want to give them a tangible results number five on here by the time We're done You're going to be able to and you just want to tell them exactly what they're gonna be able to do by the End of this ad what I'm gonna do this master class is teach you how to think The goal here is to train your mind how to see the world different How to question what others say I'm gonna give you all the strategies and tactics that I developed as one of the top Hostage negotiators in the world you're gonna learn everything from bargaining to reading body language To the neuroscience that you can use to literally bend people's reality I'll talk about connecting with people and asking them questions I'll talk about keeping a diary it begins with a notebook. I'll be reading a few of my published essays Lisa. You're a natural I'm often asked. What is your family feel when you write about them? Well, I thought I would bring my sister Lisa here and find out from her So by the time we're done in this class You're gonna know exactly how to go out there and get your first paying client Or you're gonna know exactly how to grow your business by 10x this year You know know exactly how to learn how to ride the tricycle or learn how to sing better whatever it is whatever industry you're working Just talk about the result that you're planning your customers really have next We're gonna have title number four and it's gonna be your name Teaches so Christian Martin teaches how to ride a tricycle if that's what my class is about six We have tell a personal or painful story from your past about your struggle to get a result Keep it short and relatable now the keyword here is Vulnerable this word came up over and over again in these ads and what you want to do is humanize yourself Show that you're not perfect and you're more like your audience than they think Oftentimes we'll look at an expert in a subject and we just think that person is superhuman and they were born be good This so tell a quick story about your struggle that you had to overcome to get to where you are today Now if you can use an enemy, okay if somebody was trying to hold you back If somebody tried to sabotage you, but this could be an internal enemy, okay? It could be your own self-doubt it could be the nine-to-five job that was holding you back or student debt So it can either be a person an organization Society or it can be something internal that you believed about yourself, but try to create There's a saying in screenwriting that Character is conflict and we don't really know what somebody's character is until they Have to deal with conflict and their true character is revealed by watching what they actually do when they're confronted with a difficult Situation so show some of your character by walking through a conflict you've experienced next This class is not just about blank. It's really about so this class is not just about making money online It's really about becoming the person you were meant to be so we know a level deeper here Like what result do they want to achieve and why so it's not really just about learning to ride the tricycle It's about proving to your family That you had it in you all along that you can make it in the circus and this is silly example But this can be applied to anything if you teach singing it can be it's about finding your true voice It's not just about sounding better. It's about finding what's inside of you So we're gonna use the heroes to Germany's here. We call us internal and external There's the external thing. That's the obvious tangible thing that everybody's after and then there's the intangible thing It's the inner journey or the inner desire that we have that we want to achieve could be the respect of our family The respect of ourselves proving to ourselves that we could do it Setting a good example for our children. It could be anything internal anything that drives you beyond Just the external rewards could be what you do for your customer, right? Title five we're gonna have task-eating topic So we just want to have the topic scroll through the screen here And we're gonna show them what we're gonna teach them on our webinar or video whatever comes after the advertising Eight I will equip you to life, but also to blank So just pick out the two big things that you're gonna show them on the webinar So I will equip you to be able to create your first online course and go out there and get paying students But also to take control of your financial destiny and have a scalable asset in your business that works even while you're asleep So show them two things you're gonna show them how to do and again go one step deeper on the second one Why is the first one important? We're gonna talk about that in the second one and after that We want to talk about objections and primary benefit to the viewer So we might say even if you're not sure you're an expert yet We can show you how to create an online course that truly and deeply helps your market Even if you're insecure and you've never taught anything in your life You need that conviction that you are brilliant This is the greatest idea that anybody's ever had and that by writing it you will set the world on fire When you know what your passion is and what your purpose is and you go for it No one and nothing can stand in your way Skateboarding can be a great lesson in your life a lesson in perseverance a lesson in self-confidence a lesson in belief You don't have to be a pro skater, but you can carry these lessons with you throughout your life in so many other ways We're gonna show you how to take the expertise you already have the knowledge in life experience You already have and turn that into a scalable digital asset. Okay, so cover objections What are the five main reasons that people are not gonna work with you? What are they insecure about and what is happening outside themselves that they think is gonna prevent them from getting the result that they're after? Okay, so if we're teaching people to speak on video We can say even if you don't have any fancy camera equipment and you get nervous every time you hit record We're gonna tell them about these objections and how we're going to overcome it And then we want to reiterate the primary benefit to the viewer. So ultimately, what are they gonna get after they click through or add? That's what we want to emphasize. That's what people are after and then finally the last thing we have hi My name is Christian Martin and this is my masterclass. I'm Robin Roberts. I'm meal game. I'm Colin Santana and this and this This is my masterclass. Don't say masterclass That might trigger the copyright infringement on this type of ad so you need to pick your own thing You know, I'm Christian Martin and this is my webinar I'm Christian Martin and this is my blueprint for Selling your online course. I'm Christian Martin and this is my video about how to create masterclass style ads So I just say what it is that you're gonna provide to them and that is the end of the ad we're gonna end Leaving them wanting more that's gonna get them to click through so this whole time. We're building excitement Okay, we're going through a character arc both internally and externally. We're showing them how we come up against conflict We're addressing the objections that they will have to get this result for themselves And then we're encouraging them to come learn more. That's the masterclass ad It's very distinct again. We have the look we have the sound and we have the script now if you're if you've gotten this Document below the video and you're writing your own masterclass style script number one I'd love to see it. Please post in the comments so we can check that out We might even pick the best one and send you some free stuff number two I have some tips for you tip number one be specific not general Don't say it was really hard for me to go into business for myself. That doesn't mean anything You might say I sat down to Thanksgiving dinner with my family and they were all pressuring me about why I hadn't made it yet This is a hard part about entrepreneurship. So that's specific.  You can paint a picture where you eating turkey. Was it cold outside? Was it warm outside? What state were you in? Is it hard for you to visit family? Again, just really really specific any time you can paint it just like it would be in a movie Rather than some general thing that people aren't gonna be able to picture in their mind. You're gonna get a better result Next tip good versus evil people love the interchange of good versus evil So no matter what field you are in again, you can have an enemy I want sort of an ad where the enemy my arch nemesis was the alarm clock five years ago I came face-to-face with my arch nemesis the alarm clock. So if you're setting your thinking, I don't have any enemies There are no villains you're lying to yourself You can always create a villain the villain could be not enough time, right? It could be family pressure It could be the mark is too saturated. It could be whatever you want. There's always a villain There's always conflict think about what annoys you think about what's standing in your way Think about what obstacles you had to overcome to get to where you are now and put those into your advertising Next tip clear outcome Tangible outcome. So don't say something like sing better say something like the next time you step out on stage You feel the power in your chest because you know you're ready for this performance Okay, again, it's all about painting the picture and people do not like general outcomes Okay, don't say I can help you grow your business say I can help you bring in 15 new clients in the next 45 days Okay, really clear about what the outcome is Next tip is to tell a story anytime we can wrap that into a story It's gonna have a bigger impact people learn through experience and if they don't learn through the own experience They can learn through your experience, but only if you tell them about that experience So again, when we're telling them about the trials and tribulations wrapping into a story They're gonna remember that story much better than they remember you just telling them it was hard And the last thing I have on here is be passionate. Why do you do what you do? Why are you in the business that you're in? Why do you care about your customers?  Let the love and the passion and the enthusiasm you have for your field for your expertise for what you do come out in your ad And it's okay if you're scared the first time you get on camera I promise if you just practice it over and over again your natural self and your natural enthusiasm and passion will come out So if you don't nail the first time if you can't seem to be yourself in camera, don't worry about it Just keep going just keep practicing and you will get there So that is how to shoot masterclass style ads for your business if you want to get more customers more clients more business You want to get more exposure? This is a great style ad to go ahead and give a try on YouTube if you need help running YouTube ads or running ads like this go in the comments below this video and We will post more resources for you to help you My team digital no mind calm is some of the best in the world at this type of stuff We run millions of dollars in ad spend and bring in millions and millions in sales using Online video assets and go ahead and check that out. But again Masterclass style ads one to two minutes 60 to 180 seconds is what I've written down actually so a little bit longer than that You got to get the look right you got to get the sound right and you got to get the script right remember This is a template for you to follow, but you can break the rules Okay, learn the rules so you can break them You don't have to look exactly like a masterclass style ads You don't have to do it exactly like a little out But I would recommend giving him a shot see what you'd like see what you don't like take the parts that you like Get rid of the parts that you don't go out there shoot your ad and make it rain because one good ad can change your life Post your ad in the comments until next time is Christian Martin from digital know my calm and I'll see you on the next video


I remember when I was in high school and then when I started, went through, through college, there's an exception to this that I'll talk about in a minute. But in general, I would walk into tests and quizzes and things and I kind of got this adrenaline rush. Like I kind of like the excitement of walking into a test. It's like a me versus the paper and all that kind of stuff. And so in general, I kind of like tests and I would hear people talk about test anxiety or math anxiety and I was like, ah, you know, lucky, I guess I'm immune to that one. And I just sort of thought I was that good. And so then I went to graduate school and I, you know, tip from the future for you. Graduate school's hard. And yeah, my brain wasn't working quite the way it used to in all those things. And I went to a talk that was on test anxiety and I realized, oh my gosh, all the stuff that I'm feeling in graduate school that I hadn't really felt before. Oh my gosh, I too get test anxiety. I too get stressed out by math. And what that reminded me of is that we all deal with, I guess it's a life lesson. I think we all deal with math and test anxiety. Every one of us. It's just a matter of the where and the when. So everybody's gonna get sort of nervous and stressed out in some situations. Maybe the things that stress you out aren't the same things that stress the person next to you out. Does that make sense? That makes sense. So the good news is that after 25 years of teaching, I think that there's a few tips and tricks that I've picked up that maybe can help you to be a little bit more successful in math and also specifically to combat the math test anxiety. There is no pixie dust that I can sprinkle over your head to magically make these things go away. But maybe with a few ideas, a little hard work this can all come together. So I alluded to the fact that it wasn't always fun and game serving college. So let me tell you about my first quarter at community college. I was a running start student. Who are my running start students here? Usually I don't call you out, but every now and then gotta relate. So I was in my first quarter running start at 16, taking calculus one. And I liked math before I was taking it. It was just a choice. I didn't know I was gonna be a math teacher at that time. I was just like, oh, this is the next class on the list. And I was in a class that had weekly quizzes, like weekly tests. And I went and took my first weekly test in calculus and I got a 65%, 65. And I was like, this is not good. But I was like, okay, next week is gonna come. So next week came around and I took my second quiz and I got a 55%, 55. And I was like, oh snap. Week three I got an 80 and I was thinking, yeah, I figured this college thing out. And week four I got a 50% on my calculus quiz. And I was wanting to give up. I can't remember, I mean there's other times, but that was definitely one of the times I looked back and I was like, I wanted to give up. And two things happened. The first thing that happened was I talked to my dad. And my dad had never taken calculus. He had gone to college. He's a smart, wise guy. And I told him what was going on. I'm like, dad, I'm like failing things and this is not looking good. There is no hope for me in this situation. And he said, Dusty, he's like, when is the last day to withdraw from classes? And I said, it's November the first, about a month away. And he said, that's a month from now. He said, I want you to give this class everything you've got until that deadline. And if when you get to that deadline, you are still failing, well then you'll know what to do. But if you don't give it everything you've got until that deadline, you're not gonna know what you're made of. You're not gonna give yourself a chance to grow into this class. So that was the first thing kind of like the, that you can do at pep talk. The second thing that happened is I was sitting in the library and maybe you've had this experience where you're sitting down you're looking at your book, right?  And you're trying.  And it's just this horrible feeling I'm in the library and studying. And I feel this tap on my shoulder. And I look around and it was this kid, his name was Gabe Johnson. I haven't talked to Gabe Johnson in over 25 years. I have no idea where he's at. He has no idea that 25 years later I'm still telling this story. Probably knows, never knows, he made a difference in my life at all. So Gabe taps me on the shoulder and he says, hey, we have a study group going on in one of these library study groups. Would you like to join us and talk about calculus? I'm like, this isn't working. And so I joined Gabe and a few other kids. I think there was Roberta and Louise were there. Those were kind of our closest friends there. And we started studying calculus together. And what I quickly learned is that I had a few small holes in my understanding, a few small concepts that I didn't get. And once I was able to fill in those holes, I started to do really well. And there were enough drops and assignments to that first quarter that I was able to pull myself up to a pretty good grade. And by winter quarter, I was doing really well.  He just was like, hey, here's somebody studying calculus. We're studying calculus. Do you want to join us? Somebody reached out to me. So those are two things that happened to me. We need, but it reminds me, we need people like Gabe in our life that invite us in, right? Sometimes we need to be the Gabe, right? Somebody on the shoulder and says, hey, would you like to join me? We need to be able to have the courage to reach out to somebody else. And we also need people in our lives, maybe their family, like my dad, maybe their friends, people that will encourage us and challenge us and push us to be our best. So that was my experience in calculus. And I wanna bring, so those are my student experiences. I wanna bring this together kind of in my teaching context. And I'd like to do this by telling a story. Does anybody have, do you guys have water bottles or at least some props? Do you guys have some water bottles? I got one, if you have water bottles, I'd love them. Don't give me the blank one. Because then there will be no label. You'll never know until it's yours. We've all done that. What do you got? So we just got cool ones. Sweet. So I have one brother. My brother's name is Moe.  That's what kind of is really important. But as far as this story is concerned, my brother lived in Bellingham. That's about an hour north of here, a couple hours north of here. And he calls me up on the phone and he says, hey Dusty, I bought a piece of property. And I was like, cool. He's like, I bought a piece of property. I wanna build a house on the property and it's really cool, it's beautiful. And I was like, sweet, this is cool. And I'm a little bit like have older brother jealousy. And like, why is it that he's getting by the cool piece of property and blah, blah, blah.   So we pile into our minivan, drive up to Bellingham and go to his current house.  I'm like, yeah, well I didn't think I drove two hours with my ankle biters. Think it was to see you? No, I don't see this land. And so the next morning we get me, my kids in our minivan, he gets his, I think his wife and my brother and their two or three ankle biters are there and we drive out to this piece of property. And it is in the woods.  It is forest, like from one side to the other. And there's bushes and there's blackberries and there's branches down. It is just forest. It's not like, it's not jungle. There's no vicious animals. It's just forest, okay?  That's like the size of a soccer field, okay? It's not, this isn't huge, but it's big, right? Bigger than a city lot. And we drive down the main road. We come in here and we park right here.  Like it's got these trees on it. I can't see what's there.  So that I can understand what it is that I purchased. Like you can see the outside, but he hasn't seen the inside. You guys got a picture of this? Okay, so now this is a trail like of, like just trying to scout things out. We're not trying to build interstate five. Okay, we're not Boy Scouts. I didn't know what he bought. Well, he knew because he could see it from the outside. He knew it's a forest. He could see the dimensions, but he hadn't physically walked the whole thing. So there wasn't a house on it? No, it's just an empty forested lot. There's no house. He's gonna build the house. Good question. So we start working on our trail and from one side, and we're cutting our way across this lot. When we get to a big tree, we don't cut it down. We just go around the tree. When we get to the blackberries or whatever, we don't cut through the blackberries. We're like, oh, go around them. We're kind of cutting our way through. We got little kids. They're going, you know, like all that kind of stuff. We're not, we're not machetes. We got like little clippers.  This is like low key chill trail building. You got a picture in your head? Okay, so we keep cutting our way across the forest. Oh, I gotta move this out of the way. Okay, so we cut our way out and eventually we make it to the other side where there's another gravel road and we push the bushes aside, step out onto the other gravel road. We're like, huh, it's a gravel road. And then we're like, nice. And so then we turn around and we walk back along our trail, pushing the kids along the way, right? We get back to the, to the Armini Vans.  And we're like, hey, it's a nice piece of property. Guys got a vision in your head? How long do you think it took us from when we left Armini Vans the first time to when we made it to the other side of the piece of property? I got it two hours. Six hours. Six hours. We had kids with us. If you've done things with little kids, huh? Three hours. Three hours. Eight hours. Eight hours. One and a half. One and a half. Remember, this distance is like here to the turtle building, here to the student union. Like this is not that far. I don't remember, I'm guessing it was, let's call it an hour, right? For the sake of conversation. Takes us an hour. So we get there. An hour. Turn around. We heard all the kids back. How long do you think it took us to get back to our vehicle? Along the trail, we just, 15 minutes. Five minutes. Probably depends on whether the kids wanted, if the kids were hungry and wanted to get back in the car, it took us like three minutes. If the kids were being like, nah, never mind. Then it probably took us 15. But a lot, lot shorter. You tracking? Okay. So then, my brother's like, it was a gorgeous piece of property. It still is.  I'm really excited to build my house. And so he started to work on the plans that he could submit to the city. And so the piece of property just sat there for like six months to a year. I don't remember how long. Nothing, like he didn't go visit it. What's he gonna do? Oh, I'm gonna go look at a tree. Like there's nothing to do. So he just goes and he does his thing. The land does its thing. What's gonna happen to that trail over time? Disappear. It's gonna disappear. Now, it's not going to get overgrown like it was originally, right? That took many, many years. But those branches are going to, more branches are gonna fall. The creepers are gonna creep. You know, all of that kind of stuff's gonna happen, right? So what would it take if he was to go back to re-clear that trail? Like how long do you think it took? I'm gonna take it. You said an hour the first time. How long was it? 30 minutes to get it back into shape. You tracking? Okay. So here's what my theory is. My theory is that learning mathematics is like cutting a trail through a forest. Learning math is like cutting a trail through the forest. And what oftentimes happens is that you do all of the hard work to cut the trail the first time. You come to class. You take notes. You do your homework, right? You're doing all of those, the hard work. And then you get to the other side. You press submit.  You wash your hands with the whole thing.  You walk out to the main street. You walk down the main street.  And then when test time comes and you're trying to go back over that path, it's all overgrown. And you're like, what happened? I did all the hard work. And so what my claim is, is that being successful in math is less about doing more hard work. I mean, it is work. But it's more about doing the easy work of making this path smooth and fast. Does that make sense? So what would my brother have needed to do to make the path in the forest smooth and fast? And I don't wanna hear anything about bulldozers and gravel. This is just a path through the woods. Like. You came back once a month, once a week? Yeah, if you came back once a month, once a week, once a day, if he walked the path regularly, then it would become developed. Every now and then something gets in the way, but it's pretty easy to move the one or two branches. Right? Like that regular walking over the path will make a difference. And is that hard? Not particularly, but it is really important if you want something to be fast and smooth. So what is some of the easy work that we do as students that helps us to, if you will, go back over the path? You do the same problem, but with different scenarios? Keep repeating the same formula till you have a professional idea? Yeah, I like what you're saying, Harago, that we did our homework the first time and now we're gonna go back over different variants of the same question until we can fine, until we can fine-tune it until we really get what's going on. Nice. Others? Reviewing, like reviewing material. Okay, tell us, say more a little bit about that. Reviewing. So like if you learn something for the first time and then you use it, like going into school. Yeah, so one of the ways that we learn information or try to learn it is we take notes in class. So one, like a common way of reviewing would be to read your notes, right?  Another way to learn is feedback and self-reflection. It's hard to do because when you look at it, you made a mistake and then you go back and you acknowledge that you made a mistake as far. Yeah, that's really deep. That when you get the feedback from, maybe it's from the online homework and you get a red check mark, it's really tempting to just be like, oh, I'll just change something really fast and try to get the green check mark rather than understanding what you've done. Or when you get the feedback on a test or quiz or paper that you actually read what the teacher wrote, you go, what can I do so that I actually understand not just feel like the points were fair?  But then analyzing that goes behind it, like the coordinates and everything in the planning, that's like endless hours over. Right, it's a lot of work to go into that one event. How much time do you put in, sees it in practice for every basketball game that you play in? It's like three to four hours. A practice for how long is a game for you? Like it depends, if you're doing 25 minute quarters or halves, it's like 15 minutes. Yeah. Or if you're doing 10 for high school, it's eight minute quarters. Okay, so four hours of practice for a 32 minute game, right? It's a lot of prep for one game, right? If that was a one game a week. Yeah, so what do we do? We can go over our notes. We can practice more questions. What are other things we do that are going over the trail a second time? Stake, existence, existence. There's like a consistency. So it's sort of like putting these things together. Like if you try to cram everything in all at once, it's hard for the material to stick in your brain, right? But if you can stick at it a little bit at a time, that can make a big difference. One thing that I've seen that can be successful is to pre-read your textbook, right? Who's taking math right now? What's, do you know what section you're going to be talking about next? Give a quiz today. So what will you be talking about next week? That's, derivatives of inverse trig functions. So you're like, okay, derivatives of inverse trig functions. I don't know what that is. I don't know what we're gonna learn. But what you could do is you get into class, show up five minutes early, open your textbook, and just page through the book. Like what are the questions look like? Are there a lot of, is it a place where there's a lot of examples? Are there a lot of formulas that I'm gonna need to memorize? And you're just trying to familiarize yourself with what's the big picture that's happening here? And if you know that big picture, that will help you to then pay attention and get more out of the class period itself. A lot of the things we're doing is trying to get the most out of the class period itself.  I guess it keeps you safe, but it also helps prep your body for what you're gonna do. Let me grab some of my notes to see if there's any other examples that I don't want to bring out yet. So let me just hit some of these, the things that we haven't hit. Who here uses the Math Resource Center? So Jonathan gets his mail delivered there, he's there so often, right? So you go to the Math Resource Center and the Math Resource Center, which is where I mean you guys have been there, or tutoring, it's a good place for you to go individually and bring your questions. Or it's also a good place to go with your study group. Like why not form that study group? Remember, Gabe tapped me on my shoulder. Why not have that study group at the Math Resource Center where when your study group gets dumped, you can just raise your hand and you can collectively get help on. So that would be one, I think about going through a forest. The forest can be dangerous places, right? And it's nice when you don't have to walk through the forest alone, right? And so I think about the classmates, your study groups, all these resources is something that's gonna come along with you so that you're not walking the forest at night. Okay, so far so good, you like the story? All right, I'd like to share a second illustration with you. The computer's still alive. The projector's not, we'll let that warm up. So we're talking about success in math, but we're also talking about math anxiety. And I feel like we're in a culture where sometimes we talk about anxiety and we act as though it's the end of a story. But I don't think it has to be the end of a story. And so I'm hoping that this metaphor that I will share with you when the projector warms up will perhaps help put some of these things into perspective. The projectors are so funny to go, nothing, nothing, nothing. A lot of math anxiety when I'm focused on a problem and I just can't understand it, it's like a different language. And the teacher's telling you what to do, but you still, it's just like a completely different language. That's where math really gets me. Yeah, yeah. Thanks, I really appreciate you sharing that. Anybody relate to that? Yeah, I've seen a lot of nods, uh-huh. I feel like if you hire your stress tolerance, you're gonna be more calmer, the most successful you'll be in a situation. What was the beginning of your statement? The more of our stress tolerances. Oh, yeah. Like stress in situations, yeah. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, is it? I used to take math, I used to have math, anxiety. I just got over with it, I just take a deep breath. Yeah, makes a difference.  And when you start to freak out, open the bag of chips and everybody will look over you and be like, say what?  And kind of like, everybody's gonna think you got it. You are all that and. Okay, here's my illustration. I think that there are facts that are related to how we're doing on math. Let's talk about some of the ones that we've already mentioned. Do you go to class every day? That is a fact, a true or false objective statement. There's the, do you do your homework? That is a fact, like an objective type of answer. What are other facts that are related to your success in mathematics? Are you studying? Yeah, yeah, I am studying two hours a day for every hour inside a class. So I'm putting in my time outside a class. Good, it's a fact. I spent time to review what I learned. I pre-read my textbook before class, I went over my notes after class, I re-copied my notes in preparation for the test. What else, what are other? Those are, they're facts, right? They either happened or it didn't happen. Mm-hmm. Do you self-equip with descriptions? Yeah, I thought about what I was doing after the fact. I'm honest with myself about what I know and what I don't know. Yeah, these are facts. I have a study group and I meet with my study group, right? I did extra practice questions to make sure that I understood this concept. I visited office hours, right? These are all very objective things. These are facts, okay? And then what are the feelings that are associated with tests? Anybody get excited on testing? I got one like this, okay? Anybody get feel overwhelmed by existential dread? A little bit there, okay? And then what are some of the feelings in between? I just want to get this over with, yeah. We have all these feelings, probably the overarching one that we're talking about today is anxiety, right? Just the stress of the situation, right? It's real. It is real and it legitimately does impact us. So these are the feelings and what I'm suggesting is that sometimes if this is a train, we let the feelings of the situation drive the train. And our feelings can go all over the place, right? You can be really high one moment and somebody cuts you off in traffic and you are feeling really low the next moment, right? You can feel really good. You look at the first question on a test and you're like, oh yeah, I know what I'm doing. And you look at the second question and you question your very existence, right? You're like, what happened? Like I literally put from here to here on a page and my emotions did all these things, right? And so when we let our feelings drive our lives, we tend to be going all over the place. And so what I'm suggesting is that we let the facts of the situation drive our lives, the feelings are real, but we're gonna let the feelings follow. And what they're joined together by are these faith or belief statements. And so let me give you an example, okay? So a faith or belief statement would be I believe that hard work pays off. Like that's not a fact. It's a belief, right? I believe that, maybe we'll go Disney, I believe that I can do it, right? Like our Nike slogan, you know? I believe that I can do it. I believe that my prep work that I had prepared well. I believe that I can learn from my, picking up on what Ghashan was saying, Ghashan was saying, I believe that I can learn from failure, right? I believe that I am more than my GPA, right? I believe that my teacher knows what they're doing and wants to prepare me. I believe that my family wants me to succeed. Are there other belief statements? Are there other belief statements that you can think of here? These are beliefs, they're not facts, they're not feelings, they're sort of these statements about how we view reality. And so what I'm saying is that if we let the facts of the situation drive the train, our feelings will follow, our feelings will, they're real, they'll happen. There's nothing disingenuous about them, but they move all over the place and when we let those feelings drive, we can end up in a train. Ghashan. I mean facts are a bit backed up by actual statements, but faith is backed up by you and how much you want to contribute to it. That's what's backed up. It's coming from your strength, however much you want to strengthen your faith then that's how much you'll strengthen whatever you believe in. I thank you, I appreciate that. Yeah, I appreciate that. I think that we gain faith a lot of different ways. That sometimes it is like a willpower, like a choice that we make. I choose to have faith in the situation. Sometimes it's experience, right? I, you know, I dusty remember what happened to me when I was taking calculus and how I was able to work through that and that gives me confidence that I can figure it out myself in this new situation. You're reading, for your readings, you're reading that book about first-gen college students, right? How many of you are first-gen college students? Half-ish.  You know, life wasn't easy for that person but I can see that they were able to overcome and when you read those stories and those anecdotes, that helps you to believe that you can do it too, right? Who here is a, is not a first-gen college student, okay? So are you encouraged knowing that your mom, your dad, your brother, your sister was able to make it through college? Is that something that helps to keep you, to keep you motivated? Like even if you don't think about it, it probably is a little bit. I feel like the one I keep hearing is, your son's like, I have this brother, uncle, cousin? Who's your, who's it that you keep talking about? The, oh yeah, somebody's a lawyer. Oh, a cousin, yeah. Your cousin. It's like, my cousin did this path and is really successful and he's, I hear him, he's like, you have a belief that because my cousin can do it, I can do it too. Now is that a fact? Oh, tell us in five years. Right, like when these things work. But at this stage it's just a fact or it's just a faith statement, a belief statement and it's helping to, it's helping to guide the choices that he makes and helping to get through the dark times. Good? I've been even for one of them, like you said, it relates to kind of your story where he used to work at like Best Fire or something and he just wanted to stick to it and do some martial arts but his dad and his parents pushed him and they were like, we want you to pursue your education. He'd feel the bar exam first time and he got it the second time. I mean, that's failing the bar exam for like a loss of a year. That's like, it takes like six months to just train for the bar exam. Right, that's a big deal. Yeah, yeah. And that took a lot of faith on his part because I'm sure he was feeling really low at that point. Okay, so let me hit some reminders and then let me see if I can pull this all together with one last thing. So reminder number one, we can make good choices that help us do and feel better, right? We can go to the Math Resource Center, we study, we practice. These are actions that we take that add to the facts of the situation, right? Reminder number two, all these tips, these techniques on active learning that we've been learning throughout this class, the review processes, they are preparing the path, right? They are making that path faster and smoother for us. That's a good thing. These are these, they're called retrieval practices that are in action. Three, your teachers, right? Your community, right? We are on your side. Like we want to see you succeed. We want to see you thrive, okay? And finally, whether it's in math, it's in chemistry, it's in other parts of life, I would encourage you to let the facts of the situation drive the train. But the facts of the situation, coupled to those feelings by those faith statements, okay? Drive the train of your life, okay? Because your feelings are going to fluctuate, okay? But you do have control over some of the facts, okay? And I think that it will be a smoother and safer ride if you're able to invest in the driven by those facts. Uh-huh. This is an example of a fact statement. Well, a fact statement is, I am coming to class every day and I'm participating. I'm engaged. A fact statement is, I had the prerequisite for the class that I'm taking. A fact statement is, I had all my materials prepared on the first day of class.  A fact statement would be, I read through the whole syllabus, I actually understand the rules of this class. Is that, I mean, those are kind of boringish classrooms, but I think there's many, many, and they're not just about class, right? They're about a lot of other situations.


Great. So today's meeting is being recorded. I want to make sure that everyone I see a quorum can hear and be heard. So I'm going to ask you to acknowledge that you can hear and be heard, George Hicks. Here. Sharon Cherry. Here. I mean. Yeah. And Alex Lefebvre is present. So calling the meeting to order at nine oh one. Let's see pursuant to chapter 20 of the acts of 2021. This meeting will be conducted via remote means members of the public who wish to access the meeting can do so by clicking on the live link to this Zoom meeting. That can be found in the public meetings calendar on the town of Amherst website or by dialing in by phone. The public is able to comment during the public comment segment of the posted agenda by raising their hand. This meeting is being recorded and will be posted to the town of Amherst YouTube channel. I think that's true. Library. Yeah. Just kidding. We will be posted to the library website. Not to the town. Okay. Great. So the first item I see we have two attendees. And our first order of business is approval of the minutes of March 15th. Somebody make a motion. I motion to approve the minutes. I second it. Any questions, comments. When those meeting minutes. Okay. Hearing none. Take a vote to approve the meeting. Meeting minutes of March 15th, George. Yes. Yes. And Alex is a yes. Next order is the minutes of May 24th. Is there a motion to approve those minutes? Okay. I move to approve the minutes. Thank you. I second. Any questions, comments, discussion on the May 24th meeting minutes. Okay. See none. I vote to approve. George. Yes. Yes. And Alex is a yes. Our next item on the agenda is public comment. We have two attendees. If either of them would like to make a comment, you can signal by raising your virtual hand and we can. Bring you into the meeting to make a comment. Okay. Seeing none. I'm going to move on to the next item on the agenda, which is the North Amherst library project update. And with that, I'm going to turn that over to Sharon. And we'll move on to the next item on the agenda. And I'm going to move on to the goals. So first, I want to thank send a Jones and. Hashtag the mill district. For donating to the town. This space for the North Amherst library in the mill district, the address is going to be 81 Coles road. Yes. And. You know, my note says the 27th. Hang on. That's what I had to. Okay. So that's Monday, the 27th. So it's actually, we're closing to the public after, at the close of business on Saturday, the 25th. And then we will start being closed to the public at that point. Staff will be packing. We're going to be packing. We're going to be packing. Many thanks to Gilford and the DPW crew. They're going to be helping to move the boxes and some of our furniture. It'll be after the first of July. That's when the space is expected to be ready. It's not a definite yet, but that, that's when they're expecting to. We're going to leave the boxes in the new space and some of this furniture until we have shelving. And then we're going to be able to store it. And then we're going to be able to store it during shelving for us. And depending on how much shelving they're able to secure, that's going to dictate how much of our collection. We get to unpack, put on shelves and make available. And then if any of it, any of the collection doesn't fit, we'll put that into storage. I T is going to be installed during the week of July 11th. That's when PC. Dr. Hank. Amazing. Gets back from vacation. And then like the previous week, we'll be adding it right to the space. I'm going to be in the space at the PC. At the USIT department under Sean Hanan. We'll be working on getting our phones up and ready. After July 1st. Anyway, so, so all of these dates matter because I don't know when we're going to reopen to the public yet. It will depend on when all of these. These little pieces get put into place. George is, we do have a floor plan for the space. so nice. And the Jones staff are working on, so there are things we have to deal with regarding it to library loan and holds items that are meant to be brought over to the North Amherst Library just during this, you know, two, three week period while we're closed. Staff are going to have to figure out how to work that out, where the public will come to pick it up, whether it be the Jones or the Munson. And then the North Amherst staff, again, they'll be in charge of storing parts of the collection, if any of it have to be stored. And the library is going to have to pay the utilities during this interim period. The library is also going to be responsible for cleaning and stocking of the bathroom that's there. Side note, Petra Pendroff, our new head of branch services, she starts on July 11. So she'll, when she starts, she'll be starting in the new space. Yay, George, I'm going to hand it over to you. What didn't I talk about? I think you covered most everything. I'm working on trying to get Hank into the new space this week, just so we can have a look see, just so he can be prepared for what is there as far as technology and what the possibilities are going to be. We are in the process of procuring boxes. We have been hoarding and stashing boxes. And after the zoom, I'm going to go over to Coles, because they've been saving boxes for us as well. We've been working on clearing out the basement of North with all of the clutter and labeling stuff that is going to go to the new location and stuff that is going to come back to the Jones. So yeah, I think that's where we are right now. We're just gearing up and getting as prepared as possible. So when they do close, we can be ready to hit the ground running. And I'm going to dedicate as much time as possible to helping out the branch staff to get things ready. Like you said, I made up that floor plan. I sent it to you. I sent it to the branch staff to get their feedback. Everybody seems to be pretty happy and enthusiastic about it. So yeah, hurry up and wait. Thank you, George. And I have to say, Cindy left both branches in a really good spot. You know, all the staff know each other and they're ready to work together. And it's we're ready. It's a good, we're in a good place. Thank you both. Sharon, how many people are going to be in the space? Like how big is the space? Is it a little over a thousand square feet, George? It's just under 900 square feet, which isn't much bigger than the existing space. But because it's a square, it is so much more rectangle. It's so much more efficient. Yes. We like rectangles. Yeah, this planning was a joy. Yeah, so they're actually seeding. There's going to be sight lines. Be nice. Art, did that answer your question? I was just curious how many people were going to be staffing it? Oh, two. Two people at all times. Yeah. Yeah. Two questions from me. One where is the, do we know, do we have an estimated cost of utilities and is it similar to what we would normally be paying? Or is this a bump to the budget? It's an awesome question. I have no idea. Okay. You know, it's a brand new space. I'd like to think it's going to be cheaper because it'll be more efficient than what we've got going on, you know, in the 200-year-old building. But George is shaking his head, yes. Yeah, I agree. I can't help but think that the utility costs will go down. Okay. That was my suspicion, but I wasn't sure. But that will be good because now we're going to have to supply toilet paper and paper towels. Right. Right. So hopefully that'll be a wash. And the expectation is that we'll be in the space for like minimum 10 months, we think. That's what they said. You know, they started with three to six and now 10 to 12. Who knows? I don't know. I can't imagine that this is going to last longer than a year. And then another question is about hours. In terms of what hours we have in our current North Amherst library, will that be different? No, the hours are going to stay the same. So, you know, most of the staff that are manning the space have second jobs and so their schedules have to stay the same. So it's Monday, Wednesday from 3.30 to 7.30, Tuesday, Friday and Saturday from 10 to 2. Yeah. So that's kind of nice. That's easy to remember. Yeah. And then I know that, so I think they're from folks in the District 1 neighborhood, I think there have been offers of, you know, volunteering to expand hours. I have no idea whether, whether we're even allowed to do that or what that means. I mean, I assume we always have to have an employee on site. And if we don't have an employee on site then having volunteers doesn't change our hours or our ability to offer more hours. And so I guess I just wanted to sort of understand, I think it's incredible and I love that people are offering to volunteer, but just maybe understanding the logistics of how that can or can't work. I don't know. Yeah. So there are lots of reasons and, you know, for the same reason a business would not run its business using volunteers. The library is not going to be running, expanding hours using volunteers. The hours that are in place work for the staff, expanding the hours, training volunteers, the confidentiality of patron records, those kinds of things can't be left to volunteers. Volunteers are awesome, but you can't rely on them. When push comes to shove, volunteers get sick go on vacation and now you've got to find new people to fill in because you've already promised these, you know, bigger hours and the staff that I have can't take those hours, which would mean that then I've got to close because I don't have a volunteer coming in. It's a... Well, I'm wondering from a liability perspective because that's of course where I always live, like can we even operate a building without a town employee in the building? No, it would always have to be one staff member, one volunteer. And so start the logistics of just starting to reschedule the staff, that in itself is a nightmare slash not possible because they've got second jobs and I can't. So, you know, these staff members, for example, on Monday, they come in from 3.30 to 7.30 and now if I have to take one of those people and find another time slot for them, they might not be able to work another time slot. And does the introduction of Petra starting on July 11th potentially change that? Do they have an impact at some point while it's open once Petra's up and running and like, is there a possibility, I guess? So, the reason we're having one head of brand services is so that the head of brand services is not going to be working the desk. That's not what you pay somebody at a department head level to do. This person is there for the big picture thinking, the long range planning, managing IT and building issues and trustees and all of that. She's going to be managing overseeing two branches. And so when she's not at the north, she's got to be at the south. And when she's not at those two spaces, she's going to be serving as a reference librarian here at the Jones. So she's got lots of things to do. She's, her time is not going to be available to add open hours either. We were asked if we could pay people a dollar an hour. That way it would put people on the town's payroll and the town is not legally allowed to pay anybody less than minimum wage. So we can't do that either. Yes. Are you had a question? Yeah. So Sharon, sorry, just to backtrack. So these are the same hours that you've always had at North Amherst? Not always, but in the past. So COVID? Let's say since COVID. Yeah. Yeah. And just to go to Alex's point, have people offered to have people offered to help out before? Alex, do you know? I mean, while it's amazing that these people are coming out and saying that it's maybe this is something long term. If there are people in district one who are so enthusiastic about supporting the library, you know, there could be something long term that they could look into in terms of what you were saying, training people, Sharon and all that. But it seems like a big load on the library. There would have to be a large chunk of money exactly donated so that we could actually hire people at, you know, the 17 plus dollars an hour so that we can have actual employees that go through a training process who can be trained as to how to deal with patrons who are experiencing homelessness or mental illness challenges and employee. Yeah. Maybe down the road, the anonymous donor could offer to put that bill too. Yeah. I mean, I think it's, I think it's an interesting, I think, I mean, it sounds like it's not realistic to be able to just magically open the library for longer hours. But it sounds, I mean, we know the more library hours is always something that people want to see. And if there is some way to partner, you know, it's not like 100% of our employee costs are paid for town anyway. I don't know. I mean, maybe there's some creative solution in the future about how to staff that for longer hours. And so I guess my comment, and I just think what I hear from far is like, let's, let's leave the door open to possibilities, but know that it's certainly it's not going to be happening on July 1 or 11 or whenever we finally open. Well, one of the things that we did say is, you know, working with volunteers to offer programming that we can knock it out of the park that way. You know, so if there are people out there, if there are people out there that love story that love to do storytime that can can be a part of social media. And who knows, sky's the limit with that. And that way the staff can work with the volunteer in order to either do a one time program or a, you know, something that lasts for four weeks or who knows. So programming is a beautiful space for volunteers. Great. Also, these volunteers could offer to transport people to one of the other libraries if they had a book emergency or something, right? That's sweet. That's sweet. You know, one of the other, one of the other big picture things that we're always looking at is the equality between the North Library and the South Library. So we've got the same number of staff, we've got the same number of hours. And so what we do in the North affects what we do in the South. And it's really not good for community. It's not good for the community as a whole to be pitting one branch against another branch. So that is another reason for not extending hours in one branch if I can't do it in the other as well. Because right now the hours are the same in both branches. Yeah. Gotcha. That's a good reminder. Okay. Good. Are there questions about the North Amherst Library? Okay. I think that was the totality of our agenda. Happy to check back in with the public again before we adjourn the meeting to see if there's any questions, comments that people want to contribute at this point. So another opportunity for the public if you'd like to say something or provide a comment. Okay. Not seeing any. Great. Okay. Well, thank you, George and Sharon and everybody who's been working on the North Amherst Library. I can't imagine that's a small amount of work getting all of this together, especially since it's a timetable that we're not in charge of. So we're a little bit of hurry up and do what needs doing, you know, with not a lot of notice. So thank you. We really appreciate you and the staff for just being flexible and responsive. So thank you. Thank you guys. Okay. Wow. These meetings are super short these days. So with that, I'm going to go ahead and call the meeting adjourned. So everybody have a very good day. Thank you. And thank you. Members of the public who came.


Without even one trailer, AHS NYC premiered its first two episodes last Wednesday on FX, and today I'm going to tell you my thoughts, some easter eggs I caught, including some references to past seasons, and some theories about where these storylines may be heading. So stay tuned for all of that, and this year I'm going to be doing things a little bit differently. I'm going to start off with all of the easter eggs and references I found in both episodes 1 and 2, since I know that's why a lot of you are here. And then after that I will get into my reviews and thoughts for episode 1 and 2 separately, and we'll close off the video with some of my speculation for what is to come. And since it is now official that FX will be releasing two episodes of AHS NYC every week, I will also be reviewing two episodes of AHS NYC every week in one video, just like this video you're seeing right now for the next five weeks. So without further ado, let's get into the easter eggs and references in episode 1, Something's Coming. Episode 1 partakes in the dead deer trope that is common in horror films like Get Out, and could also be a reference to when the first episode of AHS Double Feature last year also partook in the very same trope. This trope of roadkill as ominous foreshadowing for what is to come traces as early back as the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and is still going strong with modern instances with gems like Karen Kusama's The Invitation. So in episode 1, Gino references the Phil Donahue show, which aired from 1970 to 1996. And then at the start of episode 2, when Gino is being held captive in Mr. Whitley's apartment, we can see 4 VHS tapes next to the TV. The films in Mr. Whitley's library are Coma, the main event, Yanks, and Can't Stop the Music. Coma was released in 1978 and was directed by Michael Crichton, and is about sinister occurrences at a hospital where patients are inexplicably entering Coma's and being shipped to mysterious facilities. Now I haven't seen any of these films on Mr. Whitley's shelf, but I'd guess that the inclusion of this film in the episode is meant to point us towards a larger conspiracy being at hand with this virus that Dr. Hannah is monitoring, or even a wider conspiracy with the murders that are occurring in New York. The end of episode 2 points us directly in that direction with France meeting with Hannah, so having this clue at the very start of episode 2 does seem intentional to me. But the next tape on his shelf is the main event from 1979, which is a film where Barbara Streisand learns to box. Again, never seen this film, but I think this one is more of a clue to who Mr. Whitley is as a person, and I think it's safe to say he's a Streisand fan. Next on his shelf is a movie called Yanks, which is about a US soldier fighting in World War II who also falls in love for a married British woman. Just like the last one, this one seems more like a hint towards Mr. Whitley's character rather than a hint towards the season as a whole, and Mr. Whitley we know is a veteran of some sort, and I presume we will learn much more about his past in the armed forces in the season to come. Lastly, Mr. Whitley has a copy of Can't Stop the Music, which is a loose biopic about the village people starring the village people. The village people are a disco group with hits like Macho Man and YMCA.  So it's all tying in, it's all making sense to paint a picture of Mr. Whitley's upbringing and his, the culture that he interacts with. Later in the episode when Gino is flipping through potential photos for the cover story, he stops on a photo of Marsha P. Johnson. Marsha P. Johnson was an activist who fought for gay liberation and AIDS awareness in New York City across the 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s until her untimely passing. She is most commonly known for being a notable figure at the forefront of the Stonewall riots. Very intriguing to see how NYC continues to interact with the gay history of New York at this time. Also in episode 2 when Gino recounts his abduction and release by Mr. Whitley, the women that come to his rescue are shown wearing angel wings. While it is likely a hallucination from the drugs lingering in Gino's system, angels have made some other notable appearances in American Horror Story. Michael Langdon similarly hallucinates an angel in Apocalypse, and of course Asylum's Angel of Death character played by Francis Conroy, who appeared to many characters throughout Asylum, serving almost as a grim reaper, providing them a final kiss of death. And finally, my last Easter egg that I have for you today comes at the end of the episode, when Fran meets Hannah in Central Park and claims that the US government is responsible for the virus that's been infecting the local deer population. If what Fran is saying turns out to be true, this opens the door for a possible connection to the second part of double feature, Death Valley. In Death Valley, many notorious conspiracy theories are brought to life like government UFO coverups, the Kennedy assassination, and the death of Marilyn Monroe. So if the government is actually behind any of the atrocities at play in NYC this season, including this virus, it would be very par for the course based on where AHS left us last season. But personally, I hope NYC strays as far away from Death Valley as possible. Alright so those are the Easter eggs and references that I caught in episodes 1 and 2. Let me know any that I missed in the comments below, but now let's just get into my review. Let me just start by saying, this is one of the slower starts that we've gotten to a season. A lot of the first two episodes are exposition and there are very few developments to what is presented at the start of the first episode by the end of that first episode. And with that being said, I think the setting, characters, and plotlines introduced in both of the episodes have a ton of promise. And even though the episodes do have moments where I felt like they were potentially retreading ground that they covered in seasons like Hotel and Double Feature, for the most part it felt very fresh to AHS. I've seen a handful of people say that it just doesn't feel like AHS and I get that. It's hard to imagine a season with very few AHS alums, but I think AHS 1984 had a lot of these same critiques early on, but at the end of the day, I had a great time with 1984 and I know a lot of you guys did too. Even without our favorite cast members, so I'm keeping an open mind and who knows who will guest star in these 10 episodes. Episode 1 entitled Something's Coming was written by Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk, our series creators who have written every single AHS premiere episode except for Season 2's Asylum. The episode is directed by John J. Gray, a long time producer for AHS and recent director for some episodes in 1984 and Double Feature including fan favorite episode Gaslight from last season. In episode 1 we meet our characters almost one by one and firstly I want to talk about who I'm perceiving as the main character this season, Gino, played by Joe Mantello. I want to praise Joe Mantello for a moment, I think he had a great performance and I think his character of a gay reporter who is enraged by the silence surrounding these murders is incredibly compelling and a great driving force for this season's story. I just recently watched Ryan Murphy's The Watcher on Netflix and Joe has a small but memorable role in that miniseries, but I'm now seeing his full talent on display in a leading role and I think he's a very valuable addition to the cast this season. Also I'm getting over a cold so if you notice that in my voice, apologies. We meet Sandra Bernhardt's character Fran next and although her scenes are minimal, her character is already a great addition to the dynamics at play this season. I fell in love with Sandra for her role on Pose and I think her delivery sometimes can be a bit blunt but that is exactly the type of delivery that this character needs and I think it's pretty clear that this role was written for Sandra Bernhardt. Russell Tovey's character Patrick fits right in on this cast but I'll be honest and say I wasn't completely sold on his performance in parts of the episode. Frankly I'm not quite buying Geno and Patrick's relationship especially with the whiplash we got from their first scene together that almost ends in their breakup. Clearly they don't trust each other and they're not getting what they want out of their relationship but it's hard for me to see how they even ended up together in the first place. But nonetheless their relationship being on the rocks is believable at the very least. I mean they're trying to sell the contrast of an out-and-proud reporter dating a closeted cop. Obviously there will be conflict but my main issue is the lack of chemistry between the two. Something that doesn't help this is that the dialogue is at its worst in their shared scenes together in the first episode. In these first two episodes I didn't have huge issues with the dialogue especially compared to last season but there were definitely some rough spots and I felt like the scenes between Patrick and Geno accounted for most of my issues. As they're separate characters though as I said I love Joe Mantello's performance of Geno and I think his passion is palpable which makes him the perfect lens for us as an audience to get to the bottom of these murders alongside him. While I don't dig Patrick as a character just yet his character is a ripe for development and I hope that we see that this season. In this first episode the character of Big Daddy is painted to be a potential main antagonist in this season but across episodes one and two it's clear that there are much larger threats at play than this one man in a leather mask so I'm not gonna spend too much time dissecting Big Daddy. Charlie Carver's Adam doesn't really stand out too much to me just yet I just haven't really picked up on his character's personality or any unique traits when compared to the other white male characters of which there are a lot of this season. I loved the bath house setting as a concept especially with live performances by Patty Lappone's character Cappy. I hope this setting is used more I think it would be a great set piece for some horror sequences and I loved Patty's performance in these episodes even though they were scarce and limited only to musical performances but I wonder what else there is to Kathy as a character. Isaac Powell's Theo definitely feels like a step up from his character in double feature but just like Adam and Patrick I'm not incredibly attached to Theo just yet. The episode is only 42 minutes but it feels longer thanks to lengthy scenes with heavy dialogue as we tediously meet our cast of characters. This felt similar to how hotel started honestly but I loved hotel it turned out to be one of my favorite seasons despite its slower pace. A slow pace isn't necessarily a bad thing to me I do feel like I'm getting to know these characters in NYC a bit deeper than say in 1984 where we learned about our characters through flashbacks amidst their chaotic night of bloodshed at Camp Redwood. That being said I would have liked a little more thrilling scenes in episode 1 but it checked all the boxes for me in terms of psychological horror. Zachary Quinto plays Sam another villain this season. We know Zachary plays a villain well and his character this season is almost as creepy and unnerving as Dr. Oliver Threadson was. I also enjoyed how they ended this episode with a silly sequence with transitions from the steamy bath house to the killing of the deer population. Overall I would give episode 1 something's coming 7 kathies out of 10. Now let's talk episode 2 thank you for your service. In both episodes we don't really see much of Leslie Grossman's character Barbara. We learn she's Patrick's ex-wife and she's now bringing secrets of Patrick's past into his current relationship with Gino but I am intrigued on how she will continue to become more central in the season's conflicts. Her role definitely seems more serious than her previous roles in AHS and I'm excited to see Leslie continue to flex some of her dramatic acting skills that we saw a peek of in 1984 and Colt. In this episode the horror is a bit more apparent than in the first specifically with Gino's torture scene at the hands of Mr. Whiteley which I almost couldn't bear to watch but again I think the season will lean into psychological horror a bit more similar to Hotel but the line that Mr. Whiteley says to Gino that Gino later repeats to Patrick you can tell the police about me they'll do nothing they don't want to that's the real horror that Gino faces immediately after being released from his captor and for me that theme is very effective. The visuals in both episodes are great I thought last season double feature had some of the strongest visuals the series has seen since the first five seasons but I am happy to say that NYC is delivering some rich and dynamic cinematography as well. The neon lighting of the city the visual motifs with the angels and hallucinations the swooping crane shots the long takes they're all giving me the visual substance that I'm craving where the plot is somewhat lacking the visuals inject some palpable AHS magic into these episodes no complaints with the visuals so far. They saved the title sequence this year for episode two and there's some interesting images but all in all it doesn't really feel particularly remarkable to me when compared to the title sequences of the past. Episode two continues with Joe Mantello being our main character and we explore his rage against Patrick in the NYPD following his abduction. That rage is portrayed very well and once again MVP is Joe Mantello so far this season for me. I also enjoyed the scene with Adam and Morris in the subway car and I would love some more horror sequences in the subway. Like the bath house in episode one episode two also introduced a strong new setting and that was the candlelit party that Adam and Morris attend with cats everywhere and live performers and party goers dressed in 17th century wardrobe. The vibes there were immaculate speaking of Morris played by Kyle Beltran although he doesn't have much to do just yet I do hope he becomes more integral to the plot. By the end of the episode it is revealed that the leather figure known as Big Daddy is working for Sam and Sam is in fact a sadistic criminal kidnapping gay man in the city as well. There is no current indication that Sam and Dr. Whiteley are even aware of each other's presence so I imagine having two potential serial killers targeting gay men in the streets might throw Geno's investigation off the rails. I'm intrigued to see where this goes and to what extent Sam is responsible for these murders and likewise Dr. Whiteley and Big Daddy like I'm intrigued by the mystery of it all. Overall the episode raises the stakes for our characters and I honestly like where the season is going. I'm definitely giving it the benefit of the doubt after last season but I am here for AHS NYC thus far. So I give episode two thank you for your service seven kathies out of ten as well. Alright before I leave you let's talk some of my additional speculation and things to think about over these next five weeks. For me there are three big questions that AHS NYC has posed thus far. What is this mysterious virus? Who is Mr. Whiteley? And what is Patrick hiding? It's clear that this season has put a few threats on the map. We have Sam, we have Mr. Whiteley and we have this mysterious virus that Dr. Hannah is currently monitoring. Also it's 1981 which means historically the AIDS epidemic is on the horizon and it's not clear whether or not the season will deal with that real life epidemic or simply draw parallels to the history with a serial killer or serial killers targeting queer people in New York. There's also a clear setup for Dr. Hannah's virus becoming transmissible to humans and based on some set leaks which show mutated monstrous figures in the streets of New York I think this virus may turn out to be a larger threat to our main characters than Sam and Mr. Whiteley soon enough. Well there you have it that is my review and breakdown of American Horror Story NYC's first two episodes. Be sure to let me know all of your thoughts and theories in the comments below. Thank you guys so much for watching and I will see you next time.


All right. Hello and welcome to our presentation, ladies and gentlemen. Our project is your door, and we are going to be presenting this to you guys. It's a state-of-the-art facial recognition technology on doors around campuses. All right, my name is Peter Schwartz, and this is my partner and colleague, Jacob Johnson. Okay, so currently you're walking around campus and somebody loses their key card for their dorm. Somebody can walk up, find that key card laying on the ground, grab it, and use it on a door. This would allow unsecure access to buildings for that other person. The other problem that also exists is tailgating. So if somebody was to see somebody accessing a door, and then they walked up behind them and also gained entry into that into that door frame, then they would have unauthorized access as well. So another problem that both of these create is theft of college property. All right. So our solution? Your door. Your door offers state-of-the-art facial recognition technology, and it's safe, secure, and effortless. It also houses a standalone server, which will keep the integrity of the data intact and with the customer, which is very, very important. All right, so we would initially target colleges and universities. We have pretty good knowledge of those systems as is. I currently work for GTS, Gustavus Technology Services, and my partner, Jacob, he works for Campus Safety right now. We then would target the small businesses. We would look at targeting the small businesses, mainly to track analytics, and also to grab some marketing data for them. So at this point you're probably wondering what goes into your door. So there are two main areas of our product. The first are the door components and the second are the main frame components. The door components consist of a camera to record the faces, a Raspberry Pi, which is a little computer chip, that will relay the faces to our facial recognition software and receive an input from that, and then finally an electronic lock, which will then relay back to the Raspberry Pi and will either unlock or not, depending on if the face was recognized. We then have our main frame components. These are things that will only need one of per customer. And these are the central server, which houses our facial recognition software as well as our custom tailored software that we would design. So we're going to take an example here. We're going to take Nobel Hall of Science, which is currently one of our most at-risk buildings on campus, due to the liability of the expensive equipment inside. Now we're going to take an example of the front, one of the front doors, and how this would look. So, as you can see, we would set up a camera on the right in the center. You can see the two electronic door locks and the Raspberry Pi that is housed either in the ceiling or in the door frame nearby. This would then have two modes, an active mode and a passive mode. The active mode would work at night when the doors are supposed to be locked and would only allow certain users access to the building such as campus safety. We would then also have a passive mode during the day, which would allow anybody into the building, as the building is right now, but it would keep track of people who are not registered with the college, so non-students and non-faculty. We would then also set up in campus safety, or similar location, our central server with our facial recognition software, as well as our custom tailored application, which would allow campus safety to see the individuals who have been flagged throughout the day. At this point, you might be wondering, who are our competitors? So, our two main competitors are facial recognition software companies, such as Face First, and key card reader companies. We've already shown that we have some clear advantages over key card reader companies in terms of security, as well as customizability, but we also have some clear advantages over current facial recognition software companies. The first is commercial availability, the fact that the majority of companies right now are offering this only to large corporations or government contracts, whereas we can provide this to smaller businesses as well as colleges and universities. Second is that we offer localized data, so the big thing right now is cloud storage. We would use a central server instead, which keeps the data with the customers, as opposed to a company such as Microsoft, which would then have you input the photos to their cloud storage, and they would effectively own your data. Finally, we have the customizability of our product, which is the active and passive mode, as well as many other things that we could build on top of the facial recognition software. Yeah, so our management team currently consists of myself and Jacob, and we are both computer science managers and we both have experience in facial recognition technology. I've worked at Mayo Clinic doing some facial recognition stuff on some apps of theirs, and Jacob has done some research at Oxford University from his study abroad. So our first target would probably be a marketing expert. We need somebody with a know-how to help us with the marketing side of things. We have the software side of things, but we also need the marketing. So now let's take a little bit at our marketing and sales. We once again would initially target colleges and universities, that's kind of our buy-in. Now one of the things we can also provide is a potential reduction in terms of liability insurance. So let's take Gustavus for an example. Gustavus is currently paying approximately $180,000 a year for liability insurance to cover their 1,300,000 square feet. Now say we could offer them a 3 cent discount per square foot, right there we are saving them $39,000 a year, which practically pays for our system. On top of that, we also buy all of the parts and would offer installation of all of the physical components, as well as build the custom tailored software ourselves, which would in essence mean that our customer does not have to have the technical experience necessary to implement this system. We would do it all for them. So for our financial projections, there's initially a $50,000 opportunity cost of building the facial recognition software. But then after that, we can see that by year four, when we have estimated that we would be in approximately 30 institutions, we are at almost a quarter of a million dollars in profit. Alright, so we would seek some funding to initially build the software for our company. The core components of the software would have to have some funding. We would also need some financing for the marketing side of things. And finally, most of those costs will be covered by the customer. So the customer will take care of installation and the core components. So people across the world have been looking for a new way of secure, safe, and effortless access to buildings. And we think that your door is the solution that campuses across the world need. I guess I've been involved with some factor authentication security systems in the past. The obvious question is, if somebody came up to the door with a picture, has that been tested to prove that... Yeah, so many facial recognition algorithms currently have undergone a lot of different testing. And I had the experience to work with some researchers that are kind of leading edge in this field. And right now, almost all of them can detect if it's just somebody holding up a picture. There have been a couple of issues with identical twins, but right now that's the biggest obstacle that they're trying to overcome in facial recognition. Yeah, one simple thing for that is if you check for blinking. Blinking is one of the easiest ways to automatically get rid of a fake, like held up picture. Like if somebody's pulling up a piece of paper. Okay, but then you get a little bit more elaborate.  So right now the majority of facial recognition algorithms have 99.999% accuracy in terms of being able to recognize across many test cases. It all depends on how you build it. And you end up training on a lot of images already. But it is something that is very highly efficient right now and very, very secure. Are you using off the shelf hardware and then are you going to build the algorithm? Yeah, so we would build the algorithm from scratch. And so that would be the biggest cost to us initially is actually coming up with designing that and then testing it, making sure that it works in all of our use cases. We would use off the shelf hardware as well. We would try and partner with specific hardware vendors so that we can ensure like the same consistency across all of our institutions. Let's hear it for them.


Who is threatened by a fairytale? You know, how many of us would like run from the books when they opened up the fairytale books? Now we were like, tell me a story, give me a bedtime story. I don't buy that.  Yeah, until, I mean once you start to get the essence of a fairytale, it's like, what has it got to tell me and what has it got to teach me, but it's not like, not like a potential threat. Of course if you grew up with Grimm's fairytales, it might be a different story. Still. It depends like what your imagination is. Yeah. Can you see the word as you just say, like just everything is single and that, like the script is all written. So even like the moment that you were awakened it's written. So you don't have to do anything for me.  Because everything is written. So you will arrive to that point where it will happen. Can I say something? It's just depending on your happiness. If you are just following, like doing things that make you be joyful and... I just had a thought of that because I've been thinking about it and I talked to somebody about it too. It is like I see, like, there is no time. It just seems as if we are getting closer to the Spirit or to God all the time. It just seems that way. You know? In the moment when, I guess in the moment when we are awakened, we will understand it that there was no time and nothing happened. But in the meantime, it seems like we are getting closer. And it feels good. You know? Can you understand me? No, I don't think about it. I don't have the impression that we don't know about this. Yeah, we do. Yeah, we do. Because you are saying we don't need to do anything, but we need to do something. Because it seems like we are coming closer. We are like cutting small pieces of the blockage to the awareness of love. And that feels good. If we didn't do that, just focus on everything else, we wouldn't feel good. But it doesn't happen in time. I can't explain it better. But that means you believe that you are not already awakened. Yes. Well, which in theory everyone is anyway. Because time is all at the same time. Yes. I don't understand all that. In the Star Trek, I think, get it over very well is what you thought. But I keep coming back. Who is the dreamer of the dreamer? There always seems to be somebody that's dreaming it. That's what puzzles me. I can say, OK, so I made up all my life story. I've broken within what my life story is going to be. But who is that I that's in there that is doing it, dreaming it? Well, it's wonderful in a sense that there's one part. Jesus has all these different names. He gives it and he calls it happy dream, real world, true perception. He's got so many different names for that state. Dreamer of the dream. He even comes out and says, you are the dreamer of the dream. And no other cause does it have or ever will. It's just like, boom. He's saying, you, that's you. We're not talking about the Christ you or the one with God you because God's not dreaming. And Christ is not dreaming, really. Heaven and eternity don't have anything to do with the dream. But this is, his whole course is aimed at one thing, which is that you are the dreamer of the world of dreams and no other cause does it have or ever will. He actually comes out at one point and he says that the function of God's teachers is awareness of dreaming. Now he's equated awareness of dreaming with the happy dream, with the highest state you can reach. And isn't that what I just said? If you were aware that you were dreaming, in psychology they call it lucid dreaming. It's great. Has anybody had a lucid dream? Isn't it fun? It's very empowering. Like monsters, nuclear weapons, anything in there. Yeah, it's just cool. When you're having a lucid dream, it's very empowering. And that's what Jesus is saying, that just staying with that one thing, I think that's really, ultimately what Armel is pointing at. If you just stay with the awareness of dreaming, you got it. In fact, that's the max. If you've rang the bell and you ding, you just hit the bell at the carnival, you know. So, if you are depressed, whatever you can do, I mean, if you just follow your heart and just make things that are joyful for you, it's the point. I mean, that's it. Stay aware. Just stay aware of the dreaming. In other words, you can see where the struggle comes in. If you go through these experiences and you think, okay, there was my life in Belgium, but now I just went through this marriage experience and I'm here on an island in the Mediterranean, now with a group of people, a lot of them that I've just met, and da-da-da-da-da. If you can just get to the point like, okay, I'm dreaming. And that's what I'm dreaming. And this is what I'm dreaming now or seem to be dreaming now. You can just stay with that in a state of trust that this is good, this works. That's wonderful. It's when you bring in the first thought of the future, where will I go? Will I stay married to Eric? What will I do? How will I act and interact? Of course, the world is saying, that's the practical thing to do. Be a dreamer.  But everything in the world that involves specifics and future and past is actually impractical. And to stay in the awareness of dreaming is the most practical thing. Because then you're saying, oh, it's just symbolic. You're not poison. That's the closest approximation this world offers. I would say light experiences, revelatory experiences are even closer expressions of the now. But in terms of what we're talking about with the world, to be able to see it as symbolic. So I've used many examples, but sometimes people will come to me and they'll say, okay, what are we going to do about this, this, this and this and this? And now it's like usually I just kind of throw it back and say, well, what do you feel? What do you feel? One of the things that just happened was they're working on this monastery out in Utah and they're adding on bathrooms to this one house and they just sent me the floor plan, the blueprints for the bathrooms.  And then the other one had a little commode and a sink and a bathtub. They just sent it out to all the messengers and Helena said, great. Like the tub. Jenny said, like the tub. Jason said, like the tub. Virsten said, like the tub.  I've no investment, you know. It's a tub, two tubs, two showers or whatever. But it's just like, it's just like you're aware that it's a dream. And these tubs and these showers and these blueprints are just part of the fairy tale.  You start to just see everything as symbolic. And then when you do that, then it's always, what's the point? The point is to stay aware of the dreaming. That's the point. You're safe when you're aware of the dreaming. When you forget, then you're into Simone. You know, how that all just got blown out of proportion. Millions of people swaying and painting their chests with Simone and all the bizarre thing. Or coming to a spiritual treat and watching people hit each other. You know, if it's real in any kind of aspect, then it's absolutely bizarre. As we can see in the movie, that just was bizarre how that played out. All on a false construct. And then you couldn't even stop it.