Okay, you can set your clock. Let me a little late, couple of minutes, but you can set your clock on Wednesday afternoon at 4 p.m. with Hawaii, the State of Clean Energy, which is supported by the Hawaii Energy Policy Forum. That is Maria Tomei. She's a co-host, and she's a member of the Hawaii Energy Policy Forum on the steering committee. We're going to talk about that in a little while. And our special guest from Hawaiian Electric is Ricky Hanma. He's the education and consumer affairs what director? Oh, one day, one day. Just one day, one day. Okay, he's involved in education and consumer affairs at Hawaii Electric. Thanks for coming down. I'm happy to be here.  I am. I'm here to promote our Hawaiian Electric Clean Energy Fair. It's October 6th from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Kahalamoa. October 6th is one Friday. Saturday.  Like, what am I gonna see over there? You know, we have different activities, games, things kids can play, all about education on clean energy and emergency preparedness. We also have entertainment. We're gonna have musical performance from our Hula, our Nahoku Hano Hano award-winning duo, Kupoa. We have a Kiki Hula Halao. That'll be there for a presentation. That would be great. I can take pictures, eh? Sure. Bring my camera. Come on down.  I know you do. I went to the Boy Scouts, the Ellison Onizuka Day function at the place about 60 days ago. Hawaiian Electric was there in Regalia. You guys, there's so many things going on. It was great. It was all good, too. Yeah. Is that what you work on all the time? You know, my department, I am a part of the Education and Consumer Affairs Department, so I do have the opportunity to be out in the public quite a bit. We do participate in as many events as possible, take advantage of different events that are already pre-run, and we participate with them, set up booths, help educate the public, and then we do throw our event just like our Clean Energy Fair. So what sort of education do you want at the end of the day? What's the takeaway? In other words, if I come, what do you want me to learn while I'm there? You know, the Clean Energy Fair is all about learning about our precious island resources, different renewable energy sources, and what you can do to conserve electricity. Okay. So it's all of the foregoing. It's a raising awareness. It's raising sort of a mindfulness of consciousness about energy. A lot of people, they walk in the room, they flip the switch. They don't think about, you know, how much you have to do to get the power to come through the switch. Exactly. Exactly. In Hawaii, we've been so reliant on fossil fuels, and we are, by 2025, gonna be converted to 100% renewable energy. Okay, I'm gonna be alive then. Well, 2045. Yeah. Oh yeah. 2045. Yeah. Right around the corner. So what would you add to that, Maria Tome? Well, so Energy Awareness Month is what they used to call it. I noticed now they're calling it Energy Action Month. I guess maybe awareness is not enough anymore. They want people to take action. There would be more than awareness, two things. Yeah. So I guess usually Hawaiian Electric has little guides to how to save energy in your home, how to save money, you know. So what are some of the top ways that you're hoping to exhibit or to explain to people about how they can save money in their homes? We do hand out a lot of different informational booklets on what you can do in your own home. We also focus on the youth, the future generation, on what they can do and power them to make energy conscious choices at home as well. Yeah. So I noticed that some other events you've had little contests. I guess they have that wheel, and then you answer the questions, and it's like, okay, you know, what kind of light bulbs do you have in your house? And people don't necessarily know, you know. That's been around forever, right? And then the water heating, you know. And what else, you know, and so to save energy, you know, we've gone through a really hot summer, right? So there are things that homeowners can do to keep the heat out of the house. You know, do you turn on the AC? Do you turn on fans? You know, people can... Every household is different. So they might have questions that that your experts there can answer. Definitely. Education helps you make the best, you know, educated decision and conscious decisions on what you can do. Yeah. Again, electricity is now a necessity in homes. Yeah. So just making the most conscious energy conservation, energy conscious decisions possible. Yeah. Yeah. You know, the whole thing about education has been central in the clean energy initiative, even from back when. I mean, I remember all these programs. I remember one program that was put on about sustainability, but including clean energy in the priory, in the church next to the priory. And it was the Honolulu Theater for Youth. Oh, that one. Yeah. It was very good. It was a musical, actually. Yeah. Hank Rogers supported it. Blue Planet supported it. And what struck me is that they were singing songs. And I'm going to ask you more about the songs. In fact, at the end of the show, Ricky, we'd like you to sing some songs. Oh, I have my favorite song. How's your voice? So they were singing songs there in the church. And during the Theater for Youth, and these kids, they were like six, seven, eight years old, maybe. They came on buses from all over the island to watch this play. And it was really good. It was adapted to kids. So kids would be really interested in it. And they were. And at the end of the play, and this is the part that struck me, is they remembered the songs. So as they marched out of the auditorium back to their buses, these kids that were six, seven, eight years old were singing the songs they'd heard. Well, it didn't stop at the songs. They had all these messages about reused, recycled, and all that, right? And they were taking those messages home. So that's part of your education, you know, initiative to try to get, especially kids, you must be focused on kids, at least to some extent, to go home and teach their parents, right? Exactly. Working with Hawaii Theater for Youth, they actually did perform Shaka. Oh, and Electrical was a proud sponsor of that. And we do promote energy conservation through Makka, the Energy Conservation Owl. He was another project to work with Hawaii Theater for Youth through as well. So you try to, if you hit the kids, you know, they're going to remember they're going to pick it up right away. It's going to be, you know, embedded already in them as people as they grow up. And they're going to take it home and all of a sudden the family, the whole family will be more aware, more conscious. Exactly. And especially when you empower them at a young age, they make those decisions in the future. So that's what we're focusing on is making sure the youth of today can make those decisions as they grow older. Yeah. And I would also guess, Ricky, you must be part of this too, Maria, is that the level of awareness in this state is way higher than in other states. The level of awareness, we've worked on it for at least 10, 15 years now. At least. You know, at least, right. They must be thinking about this. They must be at least somewhat sophisticated. Can you tell me how sophisticated they are, these kids, these families right now today? It's come a long way. And I know with our educational programs, we are involved in a lot more of the DOE schools than we were previously. We have a lot more booklets, collateral things that they can request. We have a lot of different resources for them. And kids nowadays, they are involved in robotics, STEM programs are helping them come along at a rapid pace. We have children as low as fourth, fifth grade, creating robots and competing with intermediate high school students. So it is something that is evolving really rapidly. Yeah. So as you go, you know, it builds on itself, doesn't it? I mean, if you take somebody who always found the truth, take somebody who already has a baseline of knowledge, who knows at least some, already knows at least some of what you're saying, and then you give him more or her. Then you get, then you reinforce the existing knowledge and a level of confidence. And then you get a person who is more interested and committed, you know, to something like clean energy than you would have had, yeah. So you also mentioned another aspect of what you're helping to accomplish at your Clean Energy Day on October 6th. So energy emergency preparedness, those types of things I know with the recent hurricanes, we've had a lot of discussion of disasters, disaster preparedness, designing systems to withstand hurricanes. And so you're going to talk to folks about what they need to know to stay safe. Are you going to talk about if the pole falls over, don't touch it, stay 30 feet away? You know, because electricity is such a necessity now, emergency preparedness is just as important, making sure your family is prepared for extended outages that can come with natural disasters. Everything from cooking, food preparation, and even medical needs require electricity. So making the emergency preparations you can before emergency strikes is what our message is, always, be prepared. Okay, we're going to take a short break now, Ricky, but before we do, I just wondered if you could just, you know, you're going to have a halal there, and you're going to have a singing group. I wrote it down, but I can't read my hand writing. What was the name of the singing group? The Naho Kuhu Kuhu Hano Hano Award-winning group, Kupa Owa. Kupa Owa, yeah. And our halal for performing that day is halal puale o likole hua. Yeah, so are you going to get up on the stage with them? And if you are, could you just give us, we're going to go to a, we're going to go to a breakdown. So we like to have a little music as we go into the break. You know, if I memorized those Shakka songs, I would have performed that for you. Okay, let the record reflect. We're going into the break. We've got until October 6th to learn some of those. Yeah, watch this. No music. The truth is, I'm impressed. I haven't been asked such intelligent questions in a long time. Thanks. I want to invite all of you to talk story with John Wahee every other Monday here at Think Tech Hawaii. And we have special guests like Professor Colin Moore from the University of Hawaii who joins us from time to time to talk about the political happenings in this state. Please join us every other Monday, Aloha. If you move here to change that. Okay, we're back. We're live. And here we are, Hawaii, the state of clean energy with Maria Tome, who is a member of the steering committee of the Hawaii Energy Policy Forum. And she's co-host of this show. And she sets these shows up. And she's just great. I've been hitting temporarily. Okay, thank you. Let's talk about the energy policy forum. Okay. You know what Sharon Mori-Rocky ran for the Senate. She won the primary. A general is coming in November. And she was the, what, co-chair with Mike Hamlin for 15 years. And now we went out and had a search committee. And we found Sheryl Wee, who's a PhD economist from the Public Policy Center in the School for Social Sciences at UH. And she is now taking over. And things are going to be different. Yeah. And Maria and I are both part of this process of the reimagining of the Hawaii Energy Policy Forum. This is very exciting stuff. Want to talk about it? Yeah. So the, you know, when I first got involved in Hawaii Energy Policy Forum, I really appreciated that it was a place that welcomed a bunch of different views and was an opportunity for the folks who had been involved in energy to communicate with the folks who were newly arrived in, you know, completely informal setting. You know, they get together and they chat and they discuss the problems and, you know, the potential and you have enthusiasm and you have opposition. But it's respectful. It's civil dialogue. You know, this is what you have on your show. You know, it's those, I don't know what your catchphrase is regarding the civil dialogue part. But that's really what it is, you know, an opportunity. And then they made the effort to go out with the shows and the communications and Clean Energy Day. And in the beginning, they had a lot of reports. Now, in fact, I think in 2003 or thereabouts, one of the reports was about the Public Utilities Commission and, you know, how it compares to the other ones. And pretty much everybody on the forum agreed that the PUC needed more resources in order to regulate this increasingly complex utility space. And so that was, you know, something that is bearing fruit now with our, you know, new reorganized and re-empowered and reinvigorated Public Utilities Commission. So, you know, the, so the forum brings folks together to discuss, debate, and identify areas of common interest to move things forward, even if they are not necessarily in agreement on something. If they can live with it, then they can continue to discuss it. So that, I think that, I think that is one of the most important parts of this organization. And I think Sherilyn, who's the new head or whatever, whatever the proper title is, you know, I think it resonates with her that, that aspect of it, you know, because we have very, very interesting energy opportunities and challenges and getting all the pieces to work together in our energy futures. We're on a journey. Yes. And we've only really started. I mean, if you count the years, say, we've been operating for about, I'm making this up, but maybe 15 years now. It sounds about right. Yeah. And then we have another 30 to go before we reach 2045 or 2048, whatever. 2045. 2045, yeah. There's a long way to go. There's a lot to do. And certainly, we've seen a lot of changes in the past 15 years. We've seen a state that really didn't think much about this. It was a state that thinks a lot about it. Yeah. It was a state that didn't have much renewables to a state that has really a very admirable amount of renewables that has had great experiences that has sort of carved the future out of out of the past and the present and made and made a vision for itself. The state has made a vision for itself. It's central, isn't it, in public policy in general, right? Right. And the energy policy forum has been there. It has tried to educate people just like Ricky does. Yeah. It has tried to bring them together as a sort of a gathering place, reach consensus and in a nice way so that we don't get into too many arguments. Even if you can't reach consensus, at least you've discussed and understood what are the different viewpoints. What are the holdups? What are the concerns? Is it a near term concern or a longer term concern? Yeah. And then through creative disagreement, you can actually find ways through that. And so I think we'll be doing a lot more. I look forward to. Yeah. But we've already found certain things that work. We found the consensus model. We found the benefit of bringing people together and addressing policy issues. We found the benefit of a legislative briefing every January where we try to bring the legislation, legislators up to latest events and the thought that that will help them fashion legislation will be appropriate to meet the reality and the aspirations. We've talked to a lot of people in public office and we've had a lot of people in the industry come together to give advice to people in public office. We've been available to have this discussion with anyone who is involved. And there are roughly what 45 members of the forum right now from government. Something like that. From industry, from what else? Government, industry, the public, activists, community organizations, you name it. Yeah. And I think the consensus model is one of the things that is both enables folks to participate because they're not afraid that their name will be on something that they cannot stomach. But on the other hand, there's a lot of debate and disagreement on the details. So sometimes it seems that that is holding things up. And what I heard in the most recent discussions is maybe looking at a new model that allows that information to be shared more. Say, you know, we disagree because of X, you know, before if it was disagreement and just, well, it might not result in the forum taking a position. And so the idea is you have all these folks who are bringing their knowledge and their experience and their interest to bear. And they can share that. If we can find a way for them to share that, then it's much more valuable. So we'll see how that works. Now, like everything else, the vision is the first step. And then how you get it to work and how you put the pieces together and how you craft the language or the vehicle, whether it's presentations or meetings or reports. Maybe, you know, this is a UH project. So there's probably some research and surveys involved up to its eyeballs. There's HNEI, there's many departments involved in energy and changing our society to adapt our energy program to clean energy. But I wanted to mention this too, though, and it's what you were saying is that we need to get people to buy in. The consensus model is not just consensus among the 45 stakeholders who are members, so to speak, of the energy policy forum. It's a matter of getting everybody to understand what's happening and having them buy in. And I'm reminded, if I can take a minute to tell you, of what Neil Milner said in one of our programs in the Venture Capital Association years ago about rail. He's the problem with rail. As the government did rail before the people knew they wanted rail. And so you get a disconnect when that happens. You've got to get the people on board. That's not a pun. They get people on board before you actually go out and do it and spend the money. In fact, they should be on board, as you were saying, not only in the visioning, but also in the implementation of the plan. Well, there's a whole spectrum, right? You've got some folks who are looking at the future problems and saying, you know, it's going to take us 50 years to prepare for that situation. We have to start now. And those folks are, you know, looking at the vision thing and saying, yes, it's going to take that long. And then you've got the folks who react. They are very busy with other elements of their lives. And they say, well, if I don't need to do anything today, I'm not going to worry about it. And so you have this whole spectrum of, you know, the people. And so I think what the energy policy forum does, and especially if we do involve more of the discussion and make that a little more accessible, is to understand what are the near-term impacts? What are the near-term actions? What are the benefits and costs? And what are the long-term impacts? Because very often, you don't see both of those in presentations. You see, you see, okay, this is going to cost you this or this will benefit you this in the next six months. And then there's a whole other discussion that's talking about 50 years from now. But to be able to discuss the long-term as well as the near-term and the steps to get there, I think, is a very interesting discussion that brings in the whole spectrum of folks and their interests. And never, ever forget Repetitio Mater Studiorum, which is Latin, which means that repetition is the mother of study. So you're going to try to educate the legislature. You really have to go down there and educate them once every two years at the least, or more frequently if you can, because they forget. New generations of legislators come in who weren't at the last briefing. And the same thing with people in general. More people become aware. They weren't aware before. They need to know. And you have to sort of re-expose the public to these things. So it's always a matter of, and that's why it's good that Ricky and Hawaiian Electric are doing this every year where they're trying to teach people about energy and give them an education in energy. And so the forum has to do that too, because you cannot assume that what you taught them last year or the year before is going to stick. Not only that, things change. The interests and the emphasis change. When you're in the middle of hurricane season and you've got a bunch of named storms heading your way, all of a sudden you're paying attention to that in a way that you hadn't before. And likewise, any year that's calm, maybe it's not about emergency preparedness as much. And so when you're talking like the city and county with their resiliency program, they're looking at what do we need to do in the near term as well as what about the long term? Because this is going to be a challenge of our generation. And so I hope that the person that we had previously scheduled for today who couldn't make it can come back in a couple of weeks and we can have that conversation. Because it's an opportunity. I think very often folks have a tendency to complain about change. I don't want it to change because I like it the way it is. And if it's going to change, you say, well, I didn't want it to change and it did and I failed. The other way to look at that is to say, change is going to happen. And so success will be managing and working with that change in the best way possible. And then you try to prevent further change. And so there are two parts of it. How do you measure success? And so if you see it as a challenge that we are trying to prevent additional global warming and we are also trying to ensure that our cities and our state is prepared, you need to do both. And so if you can look at it as how do we measure success? And that's the energy policy forum gets into really interesting discussions on how do you measure success? What's our metric? It's a think tank. The metrics program is worth mentioning. Carl Friedman does that. And we have metrics on how well we've been doing in clean energy. Gee, for the past several years and it'll be more refined going forward. And you'll be able to see it in graphical form and tabular form on how well we're doing or not. And then we can use that to fashion legislation to appreciate our success or lack of it. Maybe to get more active in some areas or less active in other areas. What do they say on the Hokaleia? You've got to know where you are to know where you're going. So our navigation of this initiative has to be with due regard for where we are. If I could say something about navigation. Very often people say where's the energy plan? I want to see a plan for the next 20 years. Well, you don't know what technology is going to do in the next 20 years or the economy or the energy space, really. The energy planner is crystal ball. That's pretty opaque. But so maybe you don't have the plan. What it is is wayfinding. You know the signs. How do you read the signs of success? What do you need to do? How do you need to work together to go in the right direction and to take into account the swells and the wind and the storms and the resources you have? And I think it's more like a wayfinding thing rather than complaining. You don't have a plan. It's like what do we need? What expertise? What knowledge? What awareness? What working spirit of working together do you need for us to navigate this journey successfully? So that's what I see the energy policy. Very challenging but very important to the state. And I think this is central in the energy phenomenon, energy initiative for the state. And energy itself is central to the future of the state. Let's me forget. So the energy policy forum is actually very important in terms of public policy bringing people together, educating the community. And a big part of it is this, this think tech right here. I really appreciate people from the forum who come down here and try to educate people and let them know what the current affairs are. And they never know what you're going to ask them. That's okay. Keep them awake. Our job is to keep them awake for me. Okay. So what's what's happening? We've had a meeting of the steering committee that was very effective last week. Cheryl and we got, you know, the things started. And I thought it was a very good meeting. And then we have other meetings. We have meetings for visioning coming up soon or revisioning or reimagining as she calls it, what the forum can do, will do in the years to follow. And then following that, a meeting on, a strategic meeting on exactly what events, what steps will the forum take, what programs will the forum, you know, create in the next year or so. And I assume that that'll cover the legislative briefing in the middle of January just before the ledge opens. And it'll cover Clean Energy Day in the summertime because the forum has been doing that for at least 10 years. Yeah. Right on cue. Right on cue. Okay. So we're about out of time. I guess what I would ask you is to tell the people how they can stay in touch with the forum, what the forum can do for them, and what they can do for the forum, Maria. Oh, excellent. So the forum has a lot of information on its website. And the website is going to get revamped. So you can find a bunch of stuff there. It's not as easy as it will be once we get done, you know, trying to organize it and reprioritize the working groups and whatnot. But there is a lot of good background information there. Probably the most exciting part of it is the metrics piece because that is looking at trends. How are we doing, you know, what are you, what are you measuring to get to success? And so that's also a very important piece. As far as what mechanisms there are to communicate to the forum, I'm, I really don't, I really don't know what there might be on the website. We should have something. Yeah, we should have a way to engage.  We want them to know what we're doing and how we think they should, you know, up their game in terms of energy appreciation. Usually there, you know, and so the annual transformational energy awards piece. In June. Yeah. Usually, so when that comes around, we send out email, okay, so we send out email blasts to a whole bunch of folks and they can nominate people or actually programs that have been transformative in the energy space, whether it's a policy idea or something that's been installed, you know, that demonstrates something new and different and better, a better way of doing things or a better way of communicating. So that transformational energy awards is one of the ways we get folks to nominate. Right, and give recognition to the people who are central in the initiative. Yeah, so that's, that's very tangible way to appreciate some of the benefits that people in society are providing to each other and then publicizing those so that they can be copied. It's great fun to follow the forum. For one thing, you learn who's doing what in energy. And there are a lot of heroes out there in energy who are doing remarkable things. Yeah. It's not just the utility companies, it's all those guys. It's the regulators and the PUC. It's the guys who were starting, you know, new companies, startup companies in energy with smart ideas. There's so many people doing so many things. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Here we are, pledging ahead to 2045. That's an adventure. So to learn about the adventure is really learning a great story. The other thing is it affects us, all of us. It affects us in terms of the quality of our lives in these islands. It also affects us in the quality of our economy. It shapes us going forward. We can do it right or maybe not so right. So it's everybody's interest to know what's going on and maybe to say something about how they feel over energy development. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. I only mentioned, just one other thing. And that is, you know, we were going to have another guest on the show today. We were trying hard to reach him. And that's our regular energy expert who appears on Energy 808, the cutting edge on Mondays, often with Mina Merida, former chair of the PUC. And he is right now studying energy as he always does wherever he travels in Southeast Asia. That's Marco Mangelsdorf. And when he gets back, hopefully soon, we'll debrief him on what he found in terms of clean energy and energy development in Southeast Asia. You know, you don't realize it's really worth taking a moment for this. You don't realize that Hawaii is not the only one interested. There are people around the world who watch us, who want to emulate us, and in some ways they may do it faster or maybe differently in some way where we can learn from them too. If we can take turns making the mistakes or learning the valuable lessons and also find the successes and emulate those, that's always good. It's a global community. It's a global initiative. But it really does take a lot of the face-to-face discussions because you don't write a report necessarily on failures unless your course Rocky Mountain Institute and you go after a hurricane and see what failed. But that's very important to discuss what worked and why, what didn't work and why. And so if you have a place to come and discuss it with folks, I think it's very helpful. So now that he's gone and discussed it with the folks in Asia that he was able to meet with, yeah, let's get him on the show. We want to be educated in every way about everything happening in the world about energy so we can learn and do it best. Yeah. Thank you so much, Berga. Thanks, Jay. I'll see you next week. Okay, thanks. All right. Oh, good.


is one of the forces that shape American life. It affects everything from housing to policing, even farming. And after years of delays, there's a new state law designed to bring fairness to the state system for issuing licenses for marijuana production. This will align state law with the federal Pigford versus Glickman settlement with the US Department of Agriculture, which prohibits government discrimination against minority farmers. That went into effect on July 1st. So to put it simply, black farmers sued the government for discrimination, and they won. So rules have been set up to stop it from happening in the future. And now that rule applies to marijuana farms in the state. With me now is state senator Tracey Davis, one of the lawmakers behind the legislation. She joins us in the studio. State Senator Davis, hello, hello, hello. Good morning, good morning, good morning, Al. You doing all right today? I am so doing, doing all right today, especially talking about this subject. Excellent. So I'm going to invite you guys to call in and talk to us at 5492937 or tweet us at FCC on air or email us at FirstGhostConnect at wjct.org or message us on Facebook. And please, people, stay on topic. All right, so can you explain Pigford in a bit more detail for those who may not be familiar with the ruling? OK, first of all, you did a great job with breaking it down so people can understand you. Very good, very good. But just to go into a little bit further, Pigford and Black Farmers is a class member. They are identified in our state law. So again, with the discrimination case that you talked about, that was the opening door to now we have this medical marijuana industry. And what we just did with HB387 is open that door even more for our Pigford and Black Farmers to be a part of the medical marijuana industry that we have here in Florida. So what we did with HB387 was that the last round of Pigford applicants, again, these people are identified in our state law. There were 12 applicants that applied for the Pigford license. 12 applications will be granted. We're fighting for one license because that's how the law was set up. So in our state law, they're identified special class and the special class of people were fighting for one medical marijuana license. So with that, we had 12 applications. We had one winner. And when that winner won the application, the other 11 folks sued. And so the first Pigford that had the most points that gentleman passed away. Before he received the letter from the Department of Health saying they were going to approve or deny his application, he actually had one. He passed away three weeks before receiving that letter and everyone else sued because Department of Health came back and said, well, we can't grant this license to this entity or this person because he's no longer with us. So now you have litigation everywhere and you have to figure out what to do. Well, that happened some years ago and for the last six years, those 12 applicants have been waiting to receive a word of what the Department of Health is going to do and no license has been given. So thankfully with all the work we did, HB387, that was signed by our governor and that was a shock to all of us, but it was signed, opened the door for all 11 of these applicants to cure their deficiencies within a 90-day period and be awarded a medical marijuana license at the end of that. OK. I want to take a step back. I definitely want to talk about the dissensus of all of this and how that happened, but I just want to take a step back and really look at the issue of marijuana and marijuana farms, medical marijuana. I've been in California for the last couple of years and it's legal there and there are dispensaries everywhere. I actually went into a dispensary once and I was surprised it was sort of like going into a bank because there's security there.  It's surreal, especially come from Florida where like you don't do that. We don't have that. I mean, we have a couple, but I don't have a car. Nothing like that, right? But what struck me about being in California and seeing that is that just being honest about it, most of the people who were in charge and running these businesses who were profiting off of these business were usually young white men, young white women. And then just to think about that in one part of the country, you've got these successful businesses that are bringing in a lot of money. Clearly they're bringing in a lot of money. The dispensary that I went to was packed. That's the reason for a lot of security. So they're bringing in a lot of money. But then you have other parts of the country where primarily black people are in jail for selling it, for selling this exact same product, maybe even actually a lower grade street product versus people who are making a lot of money in this. So I'm just curious, when you were thinking about taking on this case and trying to change this legislation, was that something that was in your mind, the disparity between the two? So I love when people ask me this part of the story. Yes, all of that that you just talked about is 100% true. We have to remember that we are talking about medical marijuana, not recreational. And that starts there. So Florida has gotten to a point where we're willing to open the door for folks to become a part of this medical marijuana industry. But it is still disproportionately represented when we talk about black to white. This is a very expensive business to be a part of. And the way Florida has it set up, it's a vertical integration.  You have to be able to cultivate it, you grow it, package it, sell it. And that is very expensive. And a lot, unfortunately, a lot of black people outside of the white industry, the people that hold this billion dollar industry in their hands, and it's not their fault, it's the fact that black people just don't have this kind of dollars. We don't have these kind of dollars. That's right. You're talking about a billion dollar industry. And again, the way it's set up in Florida, you have to be able to do the seed to sell. So that stops us. And so going back to your question, how I got involved, I have a constituent who is a friend and her grandmother is actually a Pickford. And so she brought this to me and she said, hey, we're in this litigation, this is what happened. We applied, we were denied. We're in the middle of a lawsuit, but we have this legislative language that if we could get this in law, it would help us get through the door. And then she said, and my grandmother is 100 years old. So the fact that grandmother would not be here beyond another session, I went into session saying, this is something that we could do.  They are identified in law. And so why should this be that hard to get done? Why should this be that hard? And it was, it was hurdle after hurdle. And not because I think that we were dealing with Pickford black farmers, especially an identified class of members identified in our law, it's just Florida doesn't want to open the door. They don't. But unfortunately, the way our law is set up, once we hit 800 patients, 800,000 patients, which we have by law, we have to issue five licenses. Every time we hit an 800,000 patient threshold, we have to administer five more licenses out in the field. We just closed a window to issue 22 more licenses. We took in about 70 applications and we're going to issue 22 more licenses from that. So no matter what we don't want to do, medical marijuana is here in Florida in our laws mandate that we move forward with it. So knowing that my constituent had this grandmother that was 100 years old. She had this, this acreage of all this farmland that they had been farming on that was ag and they want to end in this, into this medical marijuana industry. That was my inspiration and fight. And I was not going to finish session without, without coming back and telling Miss Leola Robinson, we had done it for her. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's excellent. So like just going off the numbers that you just laid out to me, the thing that comes to mind to me is that like, it seems that when the law was passed that maybe legislature, legislators didn't necessarily believe that Floridians would go out and get these licenses in mass the way they have. And what that tells me is that Floridians are in favor. And maybe I'm making a stretch here, but Floridians are in favor of making marijuana legal throughout the state beyond medical licenses. I guess what I'm saying is like, if so many people are applying for these medical licenses, it feels like there's a movement to legalize marijuana just without the card, like they have in California. So I think we do have again, we, the state, the state law is set up to where we have a threshold of 800,000 patients. And we are well on the way of a second round of that. So I have to agree with that to a certain point. We're talking medical marijuana versus recreational. And I do think there's an appetite throughout our state for recreational. And I know there's an amendment that's out in the field now. And you know, voters will speak just like they've done on any other amendment that they wanted to have become law. They will speak. And so I think there is a great movement for recreational, but we definitely have to see. I know personally my fight right here and now is knowing everything there is to know about medical marijuana and to ensure that these Pickford black farmers are a part of this industry, like they've never been before, to have, you know, 11 to 12 applicants be able to cure an application within 90 days. That means we possibly can be issuing 12 licenses to Pickford black farmers, the special class of people that have been waiting for seven years. Now we're talking about generational wealth here with this industry. We're talking a billion dollar industry. And these folks have been waiting for years. And so I'm just excited that we have this opportunity and I'm even more excited when that 90 day period hit and we can announce how many Pickford black farmer licenses we're giving out. Yeah, so if you had a Venn diagram of things that Governor DeSantis does not care for and one of them was like a circle of drug policy and another one was a circle of issues related to diversity and race. And you put them together, they would overlap and that sweet spot would be this bill that you're pushing, right? That you got passed, excuse me. Like clearly that is like the sweet spot for like Governor Ron DeSantis does not care for or at least the way it shows up in policy, it's clear that he doesn't care for. How did you get him to sign this? If I could answer that, I just would be able to answer all the questions that everyone asked me or solve all the problems of the world. You are absolutely right. This fell in such a sweet spot. That was the best description I've heard of it, by the way.  Our colleges were attacked by that, you know, prohibited from using funding to provide, you know, DEI programs or hire people. I just, I really, really have no, no earthly idea how we fell in a sweet spot. I know there was full on support for it. I know 39 senators voted for it and that was all of us that were there that day with one being absent. And I know most of the House members voted for it and I think it was like 105 to eight. So overwhelming support for this bill in the House and the Senate. And the other part of this bill is not just what we just did for the Pigford block farmers in relation to the medical marijuana. That was an amendment. The actual bill was to ensure that qualified physicians could perform exams once in person. And then when someone went to renew their medical marijuana card, they could do it via telehealth. So that was the bill. And then we laid our amendment on it for the Pigford block farmers. So we got two significant pieces of legislation across the line in one jump. But going back to your question as to how we got it across, first of all, this was those two bills, like I explained, those two bills were great for this state because we're there. Like I said, we have over probably 820,000 people with cards now for medical marijuana. So there's no way we can backtrack or stop progress in this industry. And the other thing is this cost the state nothing. This passing this law with the governor signing HB 387, there is minimal fiscal impact to the state. And he may have looked at that significantly and that may be, have been a significant reason. There are other things that we could talk about, but we'll leave that alone. You're listening to First Coast Connect. This is Al Letten. And today we are speaking with State Senator Tracy Davis. Listen, if you wanna join the conversation, call us at 549-2937 or tweet us at FCC on air or email us at FirstCoastConnect at wjct.org or send us a message on Facebook and people, please stay on topic. All right, so I guess the question I have is, can you break it down for me a little bit? Like how many licenses are in the state currently and with this bill, how many black farmers are going to be added to that number of people who have licenses? That's a good question. I should have been more prepared. I know we have probably about 30, between 30 and 40 licenses that are out there right now. And this HB 387 has a potential because like I said, these folks that applied in the last round, just for Pigford Black Farmer Round, it was 12 applicants. And the gentleman who won the one license that was granted in law by the state to the Pigford black farmers, he passed away. So we right now have a potential of 12 because his team is in litigation after the state said we couldn't issue a license to someone who is no longer alive. We, again, we have a potential for 12 licenses. Okay. And so what does that mean for new people who are seeking licenses and how is your office helping them? Wow, so this is a process because I- It sounds like it's a long process. It's a terribly long process. There is a break, a window. The Department of Health will open up a window and it is usually a week. So you are working on a 70 page application with all of the diagrams and answering all of the significant questions on the application because you have to show your seat to sell process. You have to show a cultivation plan, a dispensing plan.  And Al, like I said, this is a million dollar, billion dollar industry. So you have to show to the state that you have financial capacity to be able to do this product from seat to sell and all the plans therefore that goes with it. And so my office will help anyone but it's the Department of Health that they need to go to. The information is on the website. We can help them as much as we possibly can. But as far as being intimately involved with their application and things like that, I keep arms length away because I am the legislator. And so I have to deal with the law and the policy of it and not necessarily the application and the makeup of what you're submitting. But we are excited about this. We want more people to be a part of this industry. And again, if we can help them in any kind of way, we absolutely will. But I got to get these pick for black farmers over the finish line right now. And we still have a ways to go. Like I said, they have a 90 day cure period. So we got to get them over the ultimate finish line. Yeah. So we have a question from Twitter. It's from Susan. Her question is, will the legalization of marijuana show up on the ballot in 2024? People shouldn't have to go to jail for possession. But what will be zoning for places that sell it if citizens approve it? Oh, that's a lot going on. So the amendment has some of that. And I'm sure, again, once the voters speak, as far as making recreational legalized, and we have to make sure it gets across the finish line, if that's something voters want, they'll vote on it just like they did amendment four and those other amendments to make sure the state hears them loud and clear. But as far as where a person can go and the legalization around that, there'll be a special rulemaking process after the amendment goes into effect, where it's accepted. The Department of Health will do all that legalization and identify where people can go and the remnants with employees and things like that. Sure. Being in Florida, employees still have the right to make sure their places of employment are marijuana-free zones. Yeah, yeah. I would say to Susan, just from living in California, and I don't know all the laws around marijuana or dispensaries and selling them, but they're dispensaries all over Oakland and all over San Francisco, I mean, literally everywhere. Which, you know, I mean, and I would say that I could be totally wrong, but I feel like the question kind of maybe implies that these dispensaries would be seedy places and they're really not. They're really very much like, like I said, like it feels like you're going into a bank to withdraw marijuana, it's like that. So we'll see what the legislature decides to do. Actually, we'll see what the people of Florida decide to do and then how the legislature responds to that. Yeah, I have to agree with you there with the seediness of it. Half of the places that I've seen even around here in Florida, we have a few. You don't even realize that's what it is. Yeah, yeah. The dispensary, you really don't. Unless you know that's what it is, it looks like you're just walking into a very intimate kind of place of business. There's usually not a lot on the doors of the walls even, you know, indicate that's what it is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So before we go, I'd love to ask you what are the things that you are looking forward to or dreading in the next session? I knew you were gonna get me there. Well, I'll tell you this and I think a lot of people are talking about it. We passed them laws that allow this current governor to go and run for president and then be able to come back to the state of Florida. That's interesting. Yeah, resign to run. And so I anticipate if folks watched and were aware of what we passed, things like the Permanentless Carry, a six-week abortion ban. And I mean, there was some tough things we did. Billions of dollars into education but not sufficiently still paying our teachers. So the list could go on and on, but he's gonna come back and he's going to, in my personal opinion, it will be even more things we have to fight even harder. So I really, really hope people are paying attention because voting is more important than ever before and we gotta have everybody on the same page voting when it's time to do it. Yes. On that note, State Senator Tracy Davis, thank you so much for coming in and talking to me.


You know in the Marine Corps you make brothers and sisters and my brother's already my brother's and now he's just like double the brother Nobody else really understands it unless you went through it And so it's kind of cool like how we're brother and sister like twins We're still able to like communicate and like understand what each other are talking about even now I would just like know that she joined after me and that she followed me into this So when we're younger we got along really well and then he grew up a little bit and we got in a lot of fights like We fought each other and then we got into high school and we became like best friends It was just kind of cool having like someone there with you to like go through things like If we had to go do some the other person we come with and we kind of already have like a friend There to talk to or something like that. So it kind of helped go through certain things I was going through it first and so I was like Can't be weak because if she finds out that I quit she's gonna rub it in my face and all that kind of stuff For him it was like that but for me. I'm like, you know, my brother's doing it I can do it too Then when he made it when I knew that he was already a Marine and I was still in boot camp I'm like well now I can't quit. I got to beat him. It was kind of like a competition During the motor run we stopped and might face the families for the first time I saw my grandma and that was it But like maybe so happy to see them It was just it fell unreal to like go see them after being away so long because I felt like it's the only way I could communicate with two male and then actually seeing them and seeing like how proud they were of me is crazy It was like the best moment of my life at that point To me family day was better than graduation just because like that was the first time seeing my family after three months And like seeing my brother honestly made made my whole family day like even better because I didn't think he was gonna be there When I wrote him like if you have already you can come if you want and then he said he wasn't gonna make it So I'm like, okay, that's fine. Like I wasn't expecting him to come anyways I think just the coolest part is just kind of like understanding what we're going through We can communicate and if one of us are having a hard time about a certain situation We can be there for each other like and be able to understand that's what the other person's going through


What's up everybody? It's Chris from the Rewired Soul where we talk about the problem but focus on the solution and excuse my voice I'm still getting over this this cold but yeah today we're going to be talking about Russell Simmons and the rape allegations and you might be sitting here wondering but Chris you do a channel about mental health and addiction recovery and things like that why are you talking about this? Well one of the reasons is because Russell Simmons is one of the people out there who I really look up to and for a variety of reasons if you follow my channel you know I talk a lot about meditation mindfulness and genuinely just being a good person I talk about a lot of the books I've read and something I've been really dragging on is making some videos about the amazing books that Russell Simmons has written. Russell Simmons is somebody who follows Buddhist philosophy he is into yoga really into transcendental meditation he's a vegan he's a philanthropist he's always donating and he's helping starting schools and all sorts of stuff so he's with all the allegations that have come out ever since Harvey Weinstein and the Me Too movement and just celebrities and producers and directors and everybody in Hollywood dropping like flies like all of them like to be honest with you like I'm like yeah you know like I'm not also that surprised you know I'm of the belief that we as a society we hold these people up on these high pedestals for this this skill they have to act and entertain or make music or you know produce or direct movies and things like that and they're just somebody who has a skill that's getting shown out to the world but Russell Simmons is one that has hit me because he is legitimately a good dude so I just kind of wanted to talk about this and I want to make it very clear like the way I see all of these accusations like whenever a new story comes out like we have to treat everyone as if they're true when a woman comes forward or even we've had some men come forward we we have to believe them we have to believe them we got to go through the process of finding out if it's true and things like that a lot of people have come forward and said yeah you know what that is true Harvey Weinstein went off to some sex rehab know who knows what's even going on with that Louis C K came out he said yes these things are true um and you know even Kevin Spacey you know said that there was some truth behind those allegations but anyways Russell Simmons is saying that this is completely not true at all he has stepped away from his businesses and the NYPD is actually doing an investigation now something I won't get too far into if you're just popping in to find out the recent updates like so apparently they are doing a you know an investigation on Russell Simmons which hasn't really come up for any of the other people who have been getting outed recently you know they're just getting fired or you know they have to resign or quit or you know whatever the case is but this is the first one where there's actually an investigation being open so here's just where where I'm at with it um some of you have seen my other videos like all my videos like I talk about how I was a a drug addict um alcoholic I was a very terrible person I even made a video which I will link up in the info card talking about can men change or can people change and this is something that is a little bit you know it's unfortunately controversial and in no way am I apologizing for anything anybody has done in their past you know not even myself I just work hard at creating a better future and being a better person on a daily basis um but when it comes to Russell Simmons and I've read some of his books and things like that he he is somebody who you know grew up in the hip hop culture um that's what it was and these allegations you know from the 90s and things like that like again not excused in any way at all but he he's a much different person since finding yoga and meditation and um you know becoming a father and all these other things so like this is where you know we really need to talk about you know what um you know our people forgiven can they change but you know in any case where we are right now today is December 16th 2017 and there's no um no like he hasn't admitted to it and he hasn't been caught there hasn't been evidence that's come out but like here's here's something else that's been going on like uh some of you might have saw that um uh Morgan Spurlack the guy from uh you know uh supersized me he came out and he's trying to get ahead of this thing like whoa whoa I did some really crappy stuff to women in the past here's what I did and I'm putting it out there some other people are doing that too and like that's that's kind of where you know I'm I'm wondering you know what what what these guys should do in this situation now first thing I will say for all of you guys out there like if you have been a crappy dude like your your whole life like now is probably a good time to change because we live in a time where everybody's everything is out there like so there's no secretively doing this anymore like people are like getting out and left and right so if you need an excuse to become a good person now is the time to do it but I would figure I would figure somebody like Russell Simmons what he should have done if if if he is guilty of these things what he should have done is he should have come out years ago and talked about it he should have done something he should have faced the jail time he had to face he should have you know did whatever he needed to do to do this and you know I I really hate to say it because I try to keep mental health stuff and addiction recovery stuff completely separate but like you've heard me talk about Russell Brands book recovery and he really talks about how this 12 step program is something that can better just about anybody another video I recently did was about how to forgive yourself and part of the process of forgiving yourself is going and making amends to other people for those of you who picked up on that that is part of 12 step programs you know and this is this is something that you know if you are working one of those programs you know that that's just part of the deal you don't get to just change your life while other people are still suffering and you hurt them in the past it is part of your program to be completely spiritually fit to go back and make these amends in one way shape or form right and so if Russell Simmons is guilty of this like you know that's where it's kind of like you know I I like programs like refuge recovery where it blends in Buddhist philosophy with 12 step programs you know what I mean like all I can say is if you're somebody out there watching this and you've done some terrible things in your past like you better get started on righting your wrongs that's that's all I can say like not only so you can go to sleep with a clear conscience but that way you're not inducing your own anxiety because of the secrets that you're keeping um I if you're not yet I will put another link to my instagram because I hope you're following me on instagram but I just made a post yesterday on instagram where I said honesty is the best anti anxiety medication like if you're somebody who struggles with anxiety and you're holding in secrets lies things that you're feeling guilty about like being honest is a great way to get rid of your anxiety like I couldn't imagine holding on to certain secrets for so long that's another part of 12 step programs is that one of the steps is airing out your dirty laundry to another person to another human being and then when you get to the amends portion of it you go and make amends whenever you can except when to do so would injure that person would make the situation worse for that person and that's why you have somebody who kind of guides you along to let you know how to make that decision but anyways like um yeah like I said the reason I'm doing this is Russell Simmons is actually somebody I look up to as a good human being in this you know in society in general like on a global level just a genuinely good human being so if this comes out to be true you know we'll go from there but um I might make a follow-up once we get some more information but I'll put some links to some of the news down below um but yeah that's pretty much all I got today I'm trying to get over this uh this sickness still but anyways I would love to know what your thoughts are on Russell Simmons down in the comments below and if you like this video please give it a thumbs up and if you haven't yet click the little round subscribe button right below this box my videos are usually about helping you uh overcome symptoms of mental illness um emotional issues addiction recovery so go ahead and click the subscribe also be sure to click or tap on one of those thumbnails check out some of the other videos on this channel thanks so much for watching I'll see you next time


So this may be my only opportunity to use the gavel. I might take one of those home with me, see if it has any effect on my daughters. So we're back to the home stretch of the open session, and we're going to begin with a report on the genome sequencing program. This is actually something that was requested by the council during the council-initiated discussion in February. And it's going to be a team report. I think Adam, is Adam in the room? There's Adam. Okay. So Adam's going to lead off with his report on the GSP, and then Chris Wellington will step in as well. So. Yeah, thank you, Rudy. So good afternoon, everyone, and yes, I'm going to tag team this with Chris. Just a quick update on the genome sequencing program. Some orientation. I know Eric talked a little bit about this in his director's report. The genome sequencing program has four major elements together situated between biology of genomes and biology of disease on our current sort of strategic scheme. They consist of the following four components. The centers for Mendelian genomics is aimed at discovering and causal Mendelian variants as possible, and Chris will pick up on this in a few minutes. The centers for common disease genomics are CCDGs, whose aims are to develop a paradigm for any common disease for the comprehensive discovery of genes and other elements that affect risk of alleles, both risk-raising and protective, coding and non-coding. And also, they have an aim to improve methods, analytic methods, and technology for all of them. There are also GSP analysis centers, and I'm not going to talk, most of the talk today is going to be about the first two components, but I have to include something about the GSP analysis centers who aim to develop and apply analysis methods to improve our ability to identify variant associations, help develop a set of common controls based on the data produced by the centers. But one of the things that I don't think, when they started, I anticipated as much, anticipated that they would do, that they are doing is that they sort of force the issue on several important areas, for example, provision harmonization and analysis of data across the consortia, and to show what can be done early and reflect that back to the entire consortium. I should say the analysis centers are pretty diverse, what they do, their analyses including, for example, methods development to use population admixture information in analysis, and also the use of functional data to help those power to recognize non-coding variants. There is also the coordinating center, which tracks progress, helps with data storage for the consortium, helps lead and rationalize consortium policy development, so data access and publications, for example. They spearhead the common controls effort. They also help with logistics, and under that, et cetera, is a laundry list, as long as my arm, of things that they help with. The structure is fairly typical for this kind of consortium. It is a little bit baroque, but it's flexible and responsive to where the consortium wants to go. It's fairly typical, again. There are, I use this, yeah, I use this. There are disease working groups. Some of the groups I'm going to point out, because I'm going to talk about them later today, these are the disease working groups for the CCDGs. There's data pipeline analysis and standardization, data flow working group, methods working group, and here over in CMG, a number of working groups that maybe Chris will talk about. There is, we are fortunate to have a number of sources of co-funding. Much of that is from NHLBI. There's a lot of collaboration with the Transomics for Precision Medicine effort or TopMed, some from NIA, some from NINH, and some from NEI. There's also a lot of what I call indirect co-funding from several sources. That's when somebody, another entity is basically also interested in funding sequencing from the same phenotypes and sometimes from the same exact same cohorts, and it's great to be able to have, to be able to mix the data when we can, to do cross analysis when we can. And just before I continue, I want to say that both the CMGs and the CCDGs work would be impossible with that extensively characterized samples for the CMG at the patient and family level and at the CCDG at the large cohort level, funded and worked on by many completely outside of the program. So program timeline, the current iteration of the program was started in 2016. It ends at the end of 2019, roughly. You can see where we are here in May. Most of what we're going to talk about today for the Centers for the Common Disease Genomics, GSP Analysis Centers, and the GSP Coordinating Center, really these were, these either changed their mission or were completely new two years ago, so most of what I'm going to talk about later is about progress in the last two years. The Centers for Mendelian Genomics, this is their second round with roughly the same mission, so that'll cover six years. So I'll leave it here for Chris. Thank you, Adam. So I'll give a brief update on progress from the CMGs. So as Adam just said, we are currently in the second iteration of the program. The first phase was funded in late 2011 with three centers, one at Baylor Hopkins, one at University of Washington, and one at Yale. All three of those successfully re-competed for phase two, and we also were able to add a fourth at the Brode. And also as Adam mentioned, the Coordinating Center has been instrumental in the second phase since they came online. So back in 2011, the sort of framework for launching the CMGs, the overall purpose was really to see if it was feasible to do Mendelian gene discovery at large scale. And if so, to see if we could use that as a lens for insight into gene function and disease architecture. The specific goals of the program were first to discover genes underlying Mendelian phenotypes, as many as possible, to develop strategies and tools for effective discovery, and then to disseminate and collaborate the findings of the project. So I'm just going to briefly walk through progress on each one of those. So again, when we launched this project, we weren't sure how this would work. So one of the important things is to define success. And we actually defined two different tiers of discovery. So the higher confidence tier, one discoveries are where there are multiple lines of evidence, either multiple families, or one family plus model organism data or functional data. And then tier two is where there was only discovery was only in a single family. So starting in the first phase of the project, things were slow for the first year, but by the end, there were over a thousand discoveries, which made us confident in renewing the program. Since the renewal, the discovery has continued to pace. And yes, we see that discontinuity. That's actually an interesting topic on its own. Those were a couple fairly large collections of samples with similar phenotypes that ended up resolving to a large number of underlying Mendelian causes, so interesting in its own right. You'll also notice that there are about 1,000 tier two discoveries at present. And obviously, we'd like to be able to move these to tier one. These are rare diseases, more samples are hard to come by. So model organisms are a good approach for that, in some cases. The number of discoveries. A discovery could be a association between a gene and a phenotype. If there are multiple genes underlying similar phenotypes, that could count as multiple ones. So this is not a count of unique genes or a count of unique phenotypes combination of the two. So model organisms are one approach. We don't directly fund the CMGs for that. So actually about a year and a half ago, they started a collaboration with COMP, knockout mouse project. Which aims to make a comprehensive public resource of mice with a null mutation in every gene. So the CMGs share candidate variants with COMP. COMP is able to prioritize some of the mouse orthologs. And it ends up being a nice example of collaboration between two of our resources. At the same time, it's not that each of these discoveries is a simple gene that can be knocked out and recreated in the mouse. Super straight forward manner. So just a brief example of something that's a little more complicated. This was an example of bililic inheritance of SMED-6, and craniosynastosis from the Yale Center. And here they found a loss of function in SMED-6 strongly associated with phenotype, but the penetrance was only about 60%. Which would exclude it in a number of analysis pipelines from a delian discovery. But instead in looking at some of the GWAS data that was collected previously, they saw a risk allele near BMP2. And when looking at the combination of the two, they got full penetrance in subjects who had the null mutations in SMED-6 and their risk phenotype, risk allele near BMP2. So again, just an example of some of the slightly more nuanced discoveries that also come out of the CMG. So the second major goal is developing strategies and tools. So here, just a couple of very high level things. One sort of strategic point is the value of high quality whole exome sequence for Mendelian discovery. Obviously, this is still less expensive than whole genome, at some point it won't be. But for now, the CMGs have found this very useful. Another is that they have a number of strategies for doing analysis depending on sample availability. And really recognizing that you can still do discovery, even with a single case. Obviously, you'd rather have trios, maybe, or a larger number of cases. The CMGs have approaches for all of those. A number of tools have come out of the CMG. A couple high level ones are listed there.  So finally, dissemination, collaboration. Obviously, everything I just talked about is freely available. The CMGs also share, pre-publication, basis, the phenotypes that they're going to be working on. So others with samples can see that. The candidate variants that are identified, again, help others in the field. They offer some courses on analysis and better training opportunities. They've done some valuable patient-facing collaborations, engaging either support groups or social media. And they're members of the International Rare Disease Research Consortium. So now, just very briefly, you've seen where we are. What are we looking forward to in the rest of the program? Constant question that always comes up is how much remains to be done. So I want to use two different lines here to suggest that we are nowhere near complete. The first is COMP, I mentioned earlier. And with the careful phenotyping, Pipeline's COMP has, they actually see usually more than one phenotype in about 80% of their knockouts. That includes embryonic and early lethal as phenotypes. And at the present, about 20% of human genes have been implicated in phenotypes, Mendelian phenotypes. So I can argue around the edges of those numbers, but clearly there's a large gap there. And earlier, we mentioned the rate of discoveries is continuing consistently. So we also would say on that basis, it seems that there's still much to be done. So it's not surprising probably to hear the future plans and what we heard in the external scientific panel at the in-person meeting of the GM sequencing program, we're really first and foremost to continue what the CMGs are doing well, this effective, efficient discovery of variants underlying Mendelian disease. We're also looking at a couple other things such as understanding and improving the solve rates. So at present, about half of the phenotypes that come in are solved. It's a little tricky to define that. And so we're looking at adding whole genome sequence data, RNA-seq, try to understand the value proposition there. There have been some success cases with both of those, but we don't have enough data to know if it's actually an efficient use of resources. Also looking at what we can do by aggregating similar phenotypes across the CMGs. And finally, we want to keep an eye toward the bigger picture when we launched the program of using this as a lens to better understand human variation. For instance, you can imagine the impact of the NOVO. There are many trios sequenced under the CMGs and some interesting potential there. And I mentioned an interaction, a rare and a common variant earlier. There are also some cases where we have Mendelian phenotypes that look a lot like common diseases and looking at the contribution of Mendelian to that. So on that note, turn it back over to Adam. So back to the Centers for Common Disease Genomics. So you saw that for Mendelian disease caused by rare variants of very strong effects, there are now very many examples of finding the responsible variants. The success rate at the CMGs is approaching 50 percent. And much of the time, I would say we know what we're doing. But for common disease, I'm much less sure. I think a lot of the time we still don't know what we're doing. And I'll return to this point at the end of the presentation. First, I'm going to go through some basic progress. Just some numbers. We are at about 58,000 genomes and 43,000 exomes headed towards, by the end of the program, about 100,000. Sorry about that. Headed at the end of the program to about 100,000 whole genomes and about 125,000 or more whole exomes. This is a little bit higher than what Eric showed in his slides, and that's because these numbers are actually capacity that is spoken for and plus capacity that's not yet spoken for. Other consortium progress. We already had the first data freeze of 22,000 samples that was last year. Frees two starts in June with all the whole genomes. Something I should say about in case you're not familiar with the jargon of data freeze is just a convenient way to have a common data set to analyze across the consortium. These were all processed through the coordinated or through the synchronized, the harmonized data processing pipeline that was developed in the first year. Just a brief look at ancestry. These are for samples received. This is the best. This is what I could get right now. This is samples received. It's a little bit of a proxy for sample sequence, but it's where we're headed. And the main point here is that even including the green wedge samples that we don't know the ancestry for, that just over half the samples are of a non-European. This is just breaking out some of the numbers in detail, and I'm not asking you to look at everything at all the numbers, but I just want to make a couple of points. First of all, the sequencing is spread out over eight. You'll actually see 10 different columns, but really there are eight different disease phenotypes here that are really part of the consortium. And that means that it takes a while, it's taking a while to build up sufficient numbers to be able to do analyses, and these analyses are just starting. The other point that I want to make is that, and I'll show a simplified version of this in a second, is that there are three umbrella disease working groups, the immune-mediated, cardiovascular, and neuropsychiatric working group. With immune-mediated thinking about and coordinating work on type 1 diabetes, asthma, inflammatory bowel disease, the cardiovascular working group on early onset coronary artery disease, early onset AFib, and hemorrhagic stroke, and the neuropsychiatric working group on epilepsy and autism. I just want to show a couple of vignettes, one from each of these working groups that were presented at the recent meeting. So the immune-mediated working group presented work on type 1 diabetes. This was from about 3,000 samples from the Diabetes Genetics Consortium, which includes cases and controls of African, Hispanic, and Asian ancestry subjects. There are 58 previously known GWAS loci in European ancestry samples. This study replicated some of those loci and found four new alleles at known loci. They also found that at several known loci, associated variants in Caucasian ancestry populations are not observed in African ancestry populations with novel associations a little bit of a distance away from those. This is evidence for population differences. And the cardiovascular working group on some results on early onset MI, looking at cases from the CCDG effort and controls from the top med effort. They did whole genome sequencing to ascertain polygenic risk scores for early MI, and about 17% of cases had high polygenic risk, but not other distinguishing factors. So for example, they didn't have evident bad lipids or worse lipids than controls. They had equivalent risk to individuals with a rare strong LDL receptor variant for familial hypercholesterolemia. I like this for a couple of reasons. First, it shows an application of the CCDG data that I certainly didn't anticipate at the outset of what I thought was a discovery effort. This is a little bit closer to the clinic, and I think that's cool. Second, this highlights a point about the importance of genomic architecture. There's a strong monogenic component here and also a polygenic component of what we call the same disease. The neuropsychiatric working group, looking at about 12,000 quads from the Simons Foundation samples, together with some existing data, found likely damaging exonic alleles in 124 previously known plus nine novel genes. These implicate synaptic activity and form of modification pathways, and they showed evidence for a role of non-coding variants and estimates of their contribution. So there are other kinds of analyses going on in the CCDGs, and together with the analysis centers. We've seen a few that are about the sort of the expected kinds of variant discovery studies for each disease, but they also include analyses that can be done across datasets. For example, on basic genome biology, like structural variant discovery and ancestry LD studies, work on study design improvements, methods development, methods comparisons, and development of secondary resources. There are a lot of other activities going on, including, as I told you, the standardized data processing pipelines across the CCDGs have been developed already, and that paper has just been submitted. I understand that's from the analysis and data flow working groups. There is an effort to try to aggregate the data between NHLBI and TopMed. If we can do that, that will afford analysis of about 150,000 whole genomes. There's joint variant calling plans, so both within, so across all the CCDGs samples, and also if we can get the aggregation to go forward together with TopMed, and that's, again, work from analysis and data flow working groups. There's some thought of putting together an imputation server based on the data, and also there's been coordination on data annotation and markup within both the Centers for Common Disease Genomics and together with TopMed, and there have been two joint CCDG TopMed analysis meetings already and another one planned for this winter. So I want to return just to something I said at the beginning here, and that is, from Mendelian, we know what we're doing. There's not a lot more to do, and of course, as Chris showed, some examples of very interesting biology that the Mendelian Centers are getting into. And we have a lot of examples, but for common disease we don't. I still think we're quite near the beginning. As you might know, the CCDGs have been working on what they call a goals strategy and plan document. The goals were really stated in the introduction and the other slide, another slide. The strategy part of that document has gotten quite exhaustive. I think people are just trying to cover every aspect of it, but I think it can be summarized, I think it can be easily summarized by looking at it as a statement of the state of the art here. And some of those are reflected on the next slide, which is taken directly from the discussion about strategy at the meeting. And I just want to make a few points. So rare variant, if you look at the block, you just look at this block, you can see that rare variant studies looking in coding regions is working. It's beginning to work, and it looks like it has room to grow. Although, if you think about it, you look at the large number of cases that are needed to find just a few rare variants in coding regions. And maybe that's not unexpected. But in contrast, there's still very few. In fact, some people have asserted that there aren't any examples of well-validated non-coding variants being identified in rare variant association studies. So how can we address those challenges? There's probably a number of ways. In addition to clever study design and better analysis, it would be great to have... Sorry. So clever study design and better analysis methods may help, especially for some diseases or maybe some components of some diseases. That's important to consider. But otherwise, we probably need much more functional information, much better functional annotation of the genome to help with that. So based on all the discussions, the CCDG plans going forward are to maintain work on the current range of diseases to continue exploration of different approaches. So exomes define coding variants in case control studies, whole genomes and families where there's a strong maybe even de novo component of the architecture and still pursue genomes in case control studies to begin to look at non-coding and sort of to stimulate the field in terms of improved design, better analysis methods, better technologies. The external scientific panel recommendations were that the CCDG should not add a new project at this time, even though the one under consideration would add a new design, just for the sake of concentrating power on the existing studies. Where there's environmental data, there is some to add that analysis to actually do some more systematic evaluation of methods, for example, SV calling or developing polygenic risk scores, to have the cross-consortium collaborations add collaborations on polygenic risk scores this is already going on and phenotype harmonization. And finally, they recommended that we should increase outside collaborations beyond the current scope to include other organizations and other consortia. There are way too many people to acknowledge. I can't put them all even on two slides, but there are the Centers for Mendelian Genomics, the Centers for Common Disease Genomics, the three analysis centers. I want to especially thank our coordinating center and team sequence, and also members of our external scientific panel. And open it up for questions for either me or for Chris. Or maybe I'll ask Jonathan to start off since he's one of our ESP members. Right. I think Adam and Chris covered it pretty well. I think one of the things that the external panel is really looking forward to is we're about halfway through, so the data is just getting there, particularly for the CCDGs. And so a lot of the analysis and the results of that aren't quite there because the data is just getting there because the freeze too is just coming, right? Yeah, freeze too is next month. Yeah, it's next month. And there'll be a lot more that they can do with that, particularly with the analysis centers. They're gearing up with ideas and developing methods, but they'll be able to apply that. So I think in general, you've seen the recommendations and I think that we certainly feel reasonably good about how things are going. When you count the significant SNPs, that's based, I assume, on P-values, one for only corrected P-values. What are the effect sizes? Yeah, so that was on the slide and I could go back to it. And again, it's not my slide, so I can only comment so much on the details, but I'll go back. So inflammatory bowel disease, these are moderate effect sizes, three-fold, same for cardiovascular disease, maybe larger effect for schizophrenia and then huge for autism. Yeah, so I wouldn't read too much into the details of the slide. The reason I'm asking is because if you have, in some of these, I assume that you really have a huge sample size and you've only had a few go over the significant threshold, which technically could be lowered, by adding more and more samples, you might get something significant, but now the effect size must be very, very small and the question is, does it even matter at this point? Yeah, so that's the whole question that was anticipated, maybe not fully anticipated at the beginning of the program. And that was one of the reasons to, one of the several reasons to try with a select number of diseases to push as far as we could push, we were told by one council member at the time, you'll probably have to go farther into the realm of diminishing returns than you wanted to in order to understand really where you were but where you are. And we did have maybe the naive idea at the outset that we could bring enough sequencing power to this to actually be comprehensive about a few diseases, but things have gotten, the picture of genomic architecture disease I think has gotten quite a bit more complicated since then, but this is a very important question, is what is the point of diminishing returns? When do you know you've hit it and what does that really mean? Jonathan? Maybe I could address that a little bit. There's a difference between the effect size of the individual variant, which could be extremely rare, but that variant may have an extremely large effect. The question is population attributable risk. How much does it mean to the population as a whole? And that's where you start getting into how far down do you want to go in terms of diminishing returns at the population level. Certainly for the individual or the family that has that rare variant, it's very, very, very important. And it might open up new biology, you don't know. That's a balance that I think everybody is struggling with a little bit. Yeah, Jay? Well, I will say, my bias would be that we may already be at that point, but I think it also depends on dividing it up into this dichotomy of whether we're doing this to explain disease risk through specific findings or whether we're doing it to get to leads for biology. If we're doing it for risk, I think that one of the most and you highlighted it a bit here, but I thought the study from Saccathoracian I think is still on bioarchive. I think that's one of the most exciting developments of the last couple of years. And I think we should be paying a lot more attention to it. Maybe you guys already are, but I feel like it should be kind of permeating through all of the genomic medicine aspects of this institute as quickly as possible what the implications of that are, because all of the genomic medicine folks tend to really be focused on the rare variant specific genes, and if this really is that we can predict an equivalent risk for a much larger fraction. That has pretty big implications. Yeah, so essentially the same thing was said by our ESP during the meeting in April. I guess another comment is that following up on Jay's comment if you're interested is in leads then Bonferroni corrected at whatever it is, 0.05 or 0.01 level is incredibly conservative and you could definitely make that instead to a FDR of 0.05 and then your sample sizes come way, way, way down if what you want are leads. Just comment. Two millions and millions of dollars. These are discussions that happen almost weekly, I'm sure within, certainly when we're having the joint meetings, those discussions come up as to where should we go with it and if you loosen things up and you do more and the polygenic risk score kinds of things where can you go. So these are ongoing discussions and debates, so it's a good point. This is coming out as a bit of an affectionato and not knowing the details of this area super well, but just looking at it from the outside it seems like focusing resources on getting polygenic risk scores for non-white populations would be a super use of money in the near term if that's at all a possibility with the cohorts that are available. So Jay, we've just started to think about this again since April since we saw that presented and some of that has to do with how right how much of a shift it requires in analysis and also in data production and we just haven't thought through that yet. I don't know if you've done this calculation, but could you figure out in terms of identifying new leads or new targets cost per target that you identify in terms of either the CMG or with the common variants and if you did use the CMGs for getting at some of the common diseases are those phenotypes represented in the CMGs? So the easy one first I guess. For the CMGs it's about 30 exomes that we sequence for each thing that's counted as a discovery. We said there's a little nuance to what a discovery is. So there it's relatively low and whether it's representative on the phenotypes that's something that we tend to find out at the end. And I my inclination is to resist doing that too soon for the complex disease because right now the cost per is going to be astronomical. I'll write. Is autism a Mendelian disorder that's very heterogeneous or a complex disorder? Can I just answer yes? Well the question goes to what do we learn in going forward and selecting other disorders to study? Because there could have been guesses made about I'm sure there were about autism. Yeah especially about that component of autism and yes in hindsight it does seem sometimes that there could have been guesses but I think at the outset maybe not so much although I agree with you that it's clear that there's sort of there's overlap in the Mendelian mission and the CCDG mission maybe with that kind of study.  It's purely CCDG and there's part of it is a whole genomes and families and quads design and part of it is a cohort design done at two different centers. Chris, Adam, thank you very much. Let's move along.