Hey guys, this is Matt Beck from freesaloneducation.com And I'm here to talk about pre-booking with you and give you a couple tips that will help you pre-book better I know that I used to think that I was the best pre-booker in the world I used to think that I had 80 to 100 percent rebooking all of the time and I took a business class about eight years ago and I came back I looked at the computer that I had at the time and it said that we were 20% rebooking and I was like I was shocked because I only really remembered the people that I knew came in all the time I knew that my my really Main get my guess that are loyal to come in all the time I knew that they were always rebooking But I didn't realize there were so many other people that I was seeing that weren't rebooking So 20% is the industry average for rebooking So what we need to do is make that better if you if you guarantee the visit that they're coming in Then they're definitely coming back to you and we look at retention rate Which is what we just talked about the best way to get a good client retention is make sure you get that appointment Scheduled to make sure that they're coming in for their next visit. So let me give you a couple tips There's this let's start off with the basic one the basic one is don't ask them if they want to rebook Give them dates of when they're coming back and then one thing that I love to do when I heard this on a CD I believe Stephen Terry Cohen from Chicago. I heard it on one of their CDs But it was Asked them right away when they sit down Did they have any trouble getting in if they say no, they didn't have any trouble getting in it was easy I just called and you were available then say oh well a lot of my guests have been having trouble So what what I'd like to do is just get you in the book so that we don't have that issue with you That's a good way to do it if they say yes, I had trouble getting in with you then say alright Well, let's get you booked for next time.  So give them a date Share with them when you'd like them to come back and then then the thing that has worked the best for me and my book and my growth with rebooking is Think about before they come in. It's almost like the way I look at it is a football team or or any kind of sports team But football seems to be the best. So think about football before a football team goes into a game they study the team before and They watch what they do they look at the past games that they've done and then they go in with plays to be successful Plays that they practice over and over again to perfect So when you're looking at I know that a lot of you aren't sports people probably But if you look at it that way it makes a lot of sense if you come in the morning of you look at your book You look at the history of your guests you plan out your day and even think about a Three-month plan for your guests. So let's say they're in here now What are we doing next month? And then what are we doing the next month? Give them ideas and then that's gonna get them excited and make them want to come back to you So those are just a few tips for pre-booking You know and like I always say I use Millennium software if you guys do as well Then the report I love is the MA 200 that shows you pre-booking I also use the Paul Mitchell edition of Millennium and it has a little toolbox that pulls up your rebooking score right away So that works well for me too But we do our Stylist contest based on rebooking rebooking is such an important thing in your business So make sure you're focused on it. Let us know below. What's your rebooking percentage? I'd love to hear it follow us on Facebook hairbrain.me free salon education calm Subscribe to us on YouTube


What's up, everybody? Jason here for jaspyscasebrakes.com. We're doing a 10-spot Immaculate Giveaway break with a 2021 Mosaic Hangar One Box Break round on teams number five. So first, guys, we do the break. We randomize the customer names and teams who should be the hits out. Then at the end of the break, we'll take all 30 customer names and randomize them. The top 10 names will win a spot in the Immaculate Basketball One Box Break. So we'll do that at the end. Let's do the randomizer for the break first. Let's roll, and it is a one out of four or five times. Good luck. One, two, three, four, five. Five times, five times. Matt, down to Eric. Five times, five times. One, two, three, four. Second round of Kings out of the Memphis Grizzlies. All right, and again, stick to what you got, guys. No trades. All right, so there you go right there. Quick little glance. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10. All right, so here you go. Here's the hanger. Pukku, Hallie, Cole Anthony, Josh Jackson, Kevin Love, Naismith, Matisse Dival, will the win. All right, so there you go. Now let's switch scenes. And here's the dice roller. Here's the customer names. Let's click dice roll, boom. We got ourselves a four and a five nine times. Good luck. Top 10 get in. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, boom. Four and a five nine times. Top 10 are in. Daniel, Eric, Jeff, Simon, Michael, Ray, Patrick, Jeff, Michael, and Jonathan. Wow, a lot of different names, actually. There we go. So boom, U10 customers are in. Let's put you guys right here. And again, another one's on the store, guys. That'll help sell out the break if we sell the seven spots straight up plus the filler. So appreciate you guys. Jaspy'scasebreaks.com.


We demystify what goes on behind the therapy room door. Join us on this voyage of discovery and co-creative conversations. This is The Therapy Show, behind Close Doors podcast with Bob Cook and Jackie Jones. Welcome back to the next episode of The Therapy Show behind Close Doors with myself Jackie Jones and the wonderful, as always, Mr Bob Cook and what we're going to be, say again, just sitting down here, just sitting down and sorting himself out, making myself comfortable for the next half hour. Yes, half an hour, I'll remember that. Or whatever we do. You're responsible for the time.  It's difficult. What we're going to be talking about in this podcast is five things I wish I'd known before I became a psychotherapist. Interesting topic. Yeah, I'd be interesting for the people listening. I know they're going to listen to what we're going to come up with. It would be interesting for the people listening to just think about, well, I wonder what things I wish I'd known before I stepped into this career. And feel free to comment on the YouTube channel or on Spotify and let us know. Yeah, there might be different doors similar. You kick off then. Probably one of the things I wish I'd known was that I need to be all things to all people as in a marketing person, a business person, being self-employed for me was a big wake up call. And I know not everybody who's a psychotherapist is self-employed. They can be employed by somebody else, but the business side of things I haven't got a clue about. Okay, so what you wish you'd known more about was that not so much about being a successful, effective psychotherapist, but in terms of selling yourself afterwards so that you can get out to people publicly and also to mean economically as well. Of course, that your practice will flourish. Yes, I didn't think about that at all. I just thought people would automatically come and find me. Yes, so it's like you're, which is very, I think very, it's a compliment to you that where you were coming from, which is very much is about how can I be an effective psychotherapist to my best abilities to help people rather than thinking, well, you know, how can I actually be associated? I don't know when you started, but in my day, social media wasn't around. So there we are. But how can I be on Facebook or Instagram or LinkedIn and all that sort of stuff? Yeah. Because when I started, none of that was there. Well, no, I can remember when I was doing my training that, you know, they were talking about yellow pages when they started.   Now, most of my clients come from Google. They've found me on the internet. And so I'm assuming as you've gone along, you've become quite a fairy with these social media platforms today, then. I've become better. I wouldn't say I'm all fair with them. But it's, you know, it's not a full time job being a psychotherapist.  No, I didn't either, actually, though, probably a little bit more than you. In another vein, I always, it's interesting, because actually, I don't know where this has come from. But anyway, I'll go on. I was going to say, I'll not continue saying, I always, always from the beginning, believe very much in putting eight or nine percent of what I earned into advertising. And that was always, I was just thinking where that came from. I must have heard somebody. That's a really good thing to have, though, Bob. Absolutely. And I remember, it took a lot out of me because I did. The training was very expensive. And when I started to see clients, of course, it's like, well, eight percent of all I earn going back into advertising, yellow pages and all sorts of other things. But I stuck to it. And I think I started to develop. I didn't start to because I realised it worked out. And when people came, my advertising worked, I realised that's the way to go. And I always followed it. Yeah. I think there's a tipping point with it. Do you know what I mean? When it's a struggle when you're first starting off, but then the more clients you get, the easier it becomes. And there's that point where it's just like the wheels are turning and everything is okay. But it is a struggle when you first start. Well, even today, I take, well, four weeks ago, the bill is waiting for me to pay, I put and spent £1,500 on a full page in the UK CP magazine. That's our regulating body or the equivalent would be BACP. Because they're both as expensive. Advertising the next two conferences I do. So the one thing I haven't done so well in all this lot is chasing where the people come from. So the other thing with what you've just said, is it takes a lot of courage at the beginning to do that, I believe. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. That tipping point, to the get to that tipping point. Yeah. It's like a step into blind faith. Yeah. In other words, I hope it works. And I think that maybe another thing that I didn't realise before I started is the longevity of it, that, you know, 12 months, two years into it, that's when you start reaping the rewards of the work that you were doing 12 months, two years ago. You can't come into this and expect everything to just fall at your feet in the first six months, unless you're very lucky. Well, if I look at my career, well, I'm really bearing out what you said. Yeah, the work that you do before building the structures of the house or the platform, whatever it is, means that the house, the structures will not only build, but build up in a, you know, substantial structures. And if you've got structures, then the rest will follow. Absolutely. Good foundations. That's what we need. So that's a really good, that's a really interesting one. I'll share then my first, I wish I'd really understood that how much of my own therapy I needed to do to become the therapist I needed to be. Yeah. And never really, I went into therapy before I became a psychotherapist. So I was a politics lecturer. And my, you know, psychological emotional side of myself wasn't that healthy. It took me into therapy. And at that time, I had no idea I wanted to be a psychotherapist. And it was in the first year of that that my eyes opened up to the power of psychotherapy, because I started to feel better, if you like, I don't know, better's the right word. Yeah. And by chance, somebody said to me at a party I was at actually, that they were going to train to be a psychotherapist, why don't you do it. And it was a bit of a while before I decided to leave the career that I was in. As a politics lecturer to be a psychotherapist. But at no time did I think that I would be in psychotherapy for the rest of my career. And I'm one happy person that you did, Bob. Yeah, I didn't, I didn't think about it. I didn't think about the cost to it. I don't mean financial cost. I mean, the emotional cost, well, financial cost is with it. But actually, I didn't think about it. I did I did remortgage my house to pay for my training at therapy. Wow, that's commitment. Yeah. And it all came from the power of therapy. In other words, how I started to change. Yeah. But I didn't ever put the two together, unbelievably. But I would, how important it was that I stayed in in my own therapy and just had myself so that I could do the best job for the clients. I understood that as it went on. Yeah, yeah. I never really, I never thought, for goodness sake, when I started to be a psychotherapist, I've been in therapy for a year, I didn't think I then would have access to therapy for the rest of my life. I didn't think that I would believe, I didn't back then, that to be a successful psychotherapist, you always need to have access to therapy and have an actual priority to dealing with your own trauma. Absolutely. Yeah. And it's like that age old saying about, you know what I mean? There's a reason why you were told to put on our oxygen mask first before we help other people. We've got to be in the right place emotionally and mentally in order to do the best for our clients. And I've always, intellectually, can understand this. But there's a part of myself which says that I never really understand why people who come into our profession training-wise don't understand that. Yeah. I didn't understand it. I didn't think that I would have to have talking to you now, but it became a mantra of mine. I do understand intellectually at one level, of course. In other words, it might be too overwhelming, too frightening, too economically expensive, many other things. So people don't spend the money or many other things to understand themselves and move on. I do understand that. And then at another level, if you're asking you own clients to do that, I think it's, I don't know what I think, I think it's a bit, I don't like what hypocritical, but it's not very good modeling that you don't do yourself. Yeah. So I really wish I'd understood that when I started because if I did, what I have gone for probably still would have done because I was in therapy. I understood the power of therapy, but I didn't really realize that I was still being therapy dealing with my own traumas and perhaps not once a week, of course, but have access to therapy at the end of my career. Yeah. I think once you're in this job, you're just part of a different world where it's okay to share experiences and thoughts and feelings and all that sort of stuff. It's more acceptable somehow. That's true. That's true. Okay, second one for you then, Jackie. Second one for me, some things that I've written down about self-care, which I suppose links into what you were saying with the therapy side of things and knowing when you sometimes need to take a break. Life has a way of throwing us a curveball and we need to be our own priority. If we're not in the best shape, then we need to be aware that we're not going to be very good at being a therapist. I couldn't agree more with you and I think that's probably not taught enough in the trainings. I think I thought it was like a job and you just went and did it. I don't think I realised that sometimes it takes an emotional toll on us as well. Oh, that's a really important one, I think. I think it's such a vital one and as I said, I think hopefully we come to realise that, but I don't know how long it takes and for some people, you know, as you know, I have many people who went rooms in my institutes and my side across the road and I know many people who run psychotherapy centres and many, many, many therapists and many people come to supervision for me over many, many years and I always get surprised that it takes not all people, of course you know it, how long to realise that? Sometimes they can come and say, oh, I'm seeing 10 clients a day, something and then they don't understand why they're burnt out. I attempted to do that initially because when I was renting a room, I would go to Manchester for two days a week and I would try and squeeze as many in as I could and it didn't last very long before I thought I can't do this. This is... Burner? Yeah, and even the practicalities of letting one client go before the next one came in, I need to have a break between clients to literally let one go and be ready for the new client if that makes sense. Absolute sense and I think they'll just eventually start to have a priority of self-care though often they put economic costs and things like that, well for very good reasons, but eventually, unless they start to take care of themselves, they'll feel the cost of that. Yeah. So I can understand that. So is it my second one now? It is your second one, yeah. So if you met me in 1984 because I went into training in 1985 and for many years, and in fact my wife might still even say this about me now in terms of traits, what I'm going to say, you know, she would certainly define me as a self-reliant loner. Wow. And so that leads on to what I'm going to say. If I don't know the importance of support and people having my back and the importance of cultivating that and trusting people will support you and peer groups, then I think my professional career would have been a lot easier. Yeah. Because I was somebody who was very cut off from all that and self-reliant loner sort of sums me up at that stage in my life, a bit like Lone Ranger. I mean Lone Ranger back in 1956, I don't know if you've ever watched the original ones, but I saw they did a film was about 20 years about the Lone Ranger. He did have one friend. Contour. Contour, but you know that was just that was about it really. And I wish I'd realised that I needed to have support systems together than I did and the importance of having somebody people around you in this journey. Yeah. Yeah. If that makes sense. Absolutely. And I think it's about having like-minded people around you as well. Do you know what I mean? I think, yeah, I completely agree. And I've worked a lot. I've worked it out as I went along than quite a bit of therapy on it. And I still got traits of that, but I wish I'd realised it before because this profession particularly demands support, you know, support of other people around you. Yeah. Yeah. So my next one, I was thinking when you were saying that, and I'm not sure whether this is my psychotherapy training or the therapy that I had while I was doing my psychotherapy training, but I didn't realise how much it would change me and that I would lose people along the way. If that makes sense. I'm definitely not the person I was prior to my psychotherapy training at all. And the second part of that is really important what you said there is that you might lose people on the way. In other words, you surround yourself maybe with different types of people. Yeah. An understanding about how some people can be toxic and potentially that I will choose not to be around those anymore. Yeah. Relationships changed when I became a psychotherapist. Yeah. And you know, I always used to tell my trainees that that you probably won't be the same person when you leave it and you might lose people on the way and you may choose people to choose different people. Yeah. Who are more healthy for you to be around. Absolutely. And it's a different relationship that you have with the people after than it is before. Yeah. If that makes sense. It has been for me anyway. Am I on to four or three? Three. Yes. I know. Yeah. You're on to three. Yeah. I've got two or three in my head, but I'll do this one because I was thinking about this as you were talking and why. I wish I had had a sense of realism about this profession. Well, actually, about the whole myth of what I call psychotherapy or psychotherapist. I used to believe that psychotherapists had the cure to everything. Yeah, I suppose I did too. And you know, and you know, once I became a psychotherapist and I built my own psychotherapy practice and that I went on to create my own institute and my own family in a way, that everybody I met would be all loving and caring and take care of me and support me and all those sorts of things. Now, given I've just said the one about support for you, but I think what I want to say is that I think it's, how can I put this, psychotherapists are human like everyone else. Yeah. It took me a long time to realise that. Yeah. Yeah. Because I thought they were magic people. Yeah. And I got so much difficulties really in that because part of building up a practice and especially an institute, you have to be a business person where there's lots of aspects of reality. And the other side of that is all, you know, a lot of people go into the world of psychotherapy because they're dealing with their own issues. And they're dealing with their own traumas and dealing with all their own challenges and difficulties in life. And I think I just thought I was moving into a world where everybody who was sorted. I can 100% relate to that Bob. And going along with that, which I think is really interesting is that I thought I needed to be sorted to be a psychotherapist. Ah, it goes along with it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I 100% agree with what you're saying. And it's, I've had to do a bit of disappointment of that. I know it's gone with that, but I wish I'd realised that. It's like everything else, you know, when I've been gone on to move into this world, I don't know, but I think I wish I'd have had a little bit more realism about this world. Yeah. You see, it's a scary thought because I'm thinking now that, you know, my clients probably think that I've got all my stuff sorted and the reality is I've not. But that is one thing in my training that I liked is that we are allowed to be human. We are allowed to share our experiences. Obviously, if it's in, you know, the benefit of the client, but I don't need to be perfect to be a good psychotherapist. Yeah. Next one then. My next one is that therapy is a process, not an event. Yes, it is. That's one. And it can be a slow process and it's not necessarily linear. We can be in a loop for quite a while with therapy. It's almost necessary to be that way. Yeah, that's right. And I think I'm very similar to you. I think I'm moved into probably not as much as a lot of people actually, but I still at the beginning of training thought of therapy and problem-solving ways more rather than looking at the unconscious and developmental processes that underneath the challenges. Yeah. And maybe that we were supposed to have all the answers or I thought we were supposed to have all the answers. I soon learned that I haven't got them. Another one, I think my comment is a fourth or fifth anyway. Courage. Yeah. So I think I'd have liked to have had, can I explain this, to have really taken ownership of the fact that I had a lot of fundamental courage in what I did because I just used to talk a lot about, oh, I just happened to me. Yeah. And if I didn't really take on board the courage of a lot of the steps that I'd taken, I think I'd have actually been kind to myself. Yeah. Because you have built an empire at home. Yeah, but it took me a long time to realize that I was building a family and took me a long time to realize that a lot of the steps I took were courageous in nature. I mean, I calculated risk as well, don't get me wrong, but I think I had a sort of a denial system about, oh, well, things just happened around me rather than taking ownership of the steps of my career. Yeah. My career. Yeah. It took me a long time to realize that it was a career, actually. And then that sounds paradoxically perhaps, but, you know, the fact that I was trained to be a psychotherapist and everyone went along with that, and that's obviously a career one. I mean, today, many trainees ask me, oh, will I get other jobs after this? So they think of a career structure. I never thought about it that way. I just, in some ways, a lot of what I thought I did was blind faith. But actually, so I think I would have liked to have been able to understand the courageous side of myself. Yeah. I want to ask you a question, Bob. You kind of touched on it with one of the things that you said, would you, if you knew what you know now, would you still do the job that you do? Would you still have been a psychotherapist? I take going to hit onto my fifth one in a minute. But the answer is yes, because there's no doubt, no doubt in my head that psychotherapy is in my blood and way of life. And where that comes from is my own therapy, in other words, to understand myself and to take ownership of what happened to me and the decisions I've taken and the toxicity of my history and how I've changed that for the helps of lots of people and how a different person to what I was then. It's like light and day. It's like light and day. So I want other people to have that opportunity like I did. Yeah. That's lovely, Bob. So that's in my blood. Yeah. That's why it's so hard for me to stop doing the job I do, even at the age of 73. You'll never stop, Bob. Those built into my identity. Yeah. I built it and I built a whole family as well. So letting go of a lot of things has been very hard for me because I know I have, yeah, I know we only have so much time on this planet and I want to do other things. But the answer to the question is yes, psychotherapy became a way of life for what I've said. So at the age of 34, I've been a part of this lecture for six years. I went on part-time for another two, at least, or three because I needed to fund the first two of my years at my side because I'd be training. But when I left that college, I remember throwing the keys in my car keys into the air and catching them saying, thank God I've finished and I need never go back. That was my first career. Yeah. Second career, I can't even let go of the keys. The main day. Yeah. That's lovely.  And that's what took me a long time to understand that it was work. Yeah. What a lovely position to be. Letting go of all this now. And yeah, that's a whole other podcast, but you want to be a fifth?  Oh, that's a lovely one. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Do you want to say a little bit more though? I know what you mean? Well, just even people, like, when did I start seeing clients in 2014? I think it was. So it's like 10 years nearly now that I'll see people that I haven't seen in a therapy situation for six, seven years. And they'll still say to me, do you know, I always remember when you said this or I always, you know, when I'm going through something, I always say, what would Jackie say? It's, you know, when you hear that, it's lovely to know that you are making a difference in supporting those people. Yes. And I couldn't, I couldn't agree with you more. But I don't want that to sound big edit or narcissistic or egocentric or whatever. No, I identify with that completely. I completely identify what you talked about. I certainly didn't think about that. It turns my career for a long, long time until people, like you said, fed it back to me. Yeah. I don't see that's been right. So it's like the opposite of being big headed because it takes you a long time, took me a long time to take ownership of that. Yeah, I'm not sure I still do. I always say, oh, you'd have got there anywhere. You'd have got there without me, whatever it is. Yeah. So there's so many more.  But anyway, I'll save. And then I thought, well, people listening will want to list the practical things, you know, like, like, I didn't really realize how much inadvertent comments after what I've just said, hard work it takes to get clients or practical things. But I'm going to leave the practical ones, perhaps, or another podcast for further five practical ones and go to a one in the vein of what we've been talking about really. I think it's about opening my heart and love. What I mean by that is I never realized that being a psychotherapist had emotional cost to it. I never realized the emotional cost. I never realized the emotional benefit I would achieve personally myself, which led, of course, to professional success. Yeah, I never thought about either of those things. No, it's a big thing, isn't it? And it's no wonder that we don't think about these things when we first start. I was far, far away to thinking about, well, you know, the more that, you know, if I can get to the grips of being able to take on board love ability for myself and open up my heart and humility and everything else that goes with it. And I, I never even thought about those things. No, it's by doing it, not only is really priceless for yourself, but what modeling that is for priceless.  Healing will happen almost automatically. Yeah. And I think that's something that can't be taught, Bob. It has to be experienced and it has to be felt. Yeah. Yeah. I like to think I've got somewhere in that, but it's come from, always, it's come through exploration of myself. So I suppose I'm saying, I didn't realize I was, this profession would mean that I would spend so much time in exploration itself. But the other thing to people listening is by doing that, not only will people be healed in front of you, but your practice will grow. Not the other way round. Yeah. Another good podcast, Bob. We've done five each. We've done more than five each. Yeah.  Like, you know, I didn't realize the, um, how much it would cost and financial costs and economic costs. I think I haven't mentioned them because actually, I know this sounds very strange. You might do people listening, but if you open your heart up, if you do the training, you do your own therapy, the rest will follow. If you start thinking about money, start thinking about squimping on all those sorts of other things and you keep your heart closed, actually it will be harder to keep clients. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Sounds like, I feel like I'm preaching for everybody to become a psychic therapist. The importance of understanding yourself and everything goes with it. But those are the sort of things, but it's a very good question to ask then, knowing all the, if I'd have known all these things beforehand, would I have gone into the psych of that profession? Very good question. I like to think the answer would have been yes. You know, in terms of the emotional, but in terms of the emotional cost, but the other side of it is, you know, I know how much I changed positively. So it's, it's got processes. I've sort of evolved, um, as I've gone along in knowing these things. But if I don't know them all beforehand, I think the answer would be yes, because my life is so enhanced today. How could I say no to that? Yeah. I feel the same. I think if anything, my one regret would be that I didn't do this sooner. Yeah.  But if I hadn't a metter through doing another job with somebody else, I probably wouldn't be sat here now. Well, I know I wouldn't be. You should put podcast on qualities to enhance in the side. See perseverance, I would say to listen to this podcast as you listen to us, one of the things I want to say is just, you know, perseverance is so important not to stop at the first pitfall or branch in the road. Absolutely.  I didn't go to university. I'm not that intellectual. And I never thought I would be able to qualify as a psychotherapist. So I would have put blocks in my way, maybe if this opportunity had come earlier. Yeah. Great. Thank you for the opportunity to say those things. You too, Bob. So what we're doing next time is- I'm waiting. We've got the drum going.  So we're going to know what we're going- This is one that's very close to my heart. It is the growth of equine therapy. Oh, it's, this is your turn. It's my turn next time. Yeah. I put this in because I wanted to, I wanted to give you the opportunity to talk about your passion and your specialism, which I, the bits I do know is because when I was a lot younger, a lot younger in sort of 75 years, 75 lives ago, I used to trade polo ponies. And I, okay, there's things I can offer to the conversation, not only about my- You always offer something to the conversation, Bob. This, you, you, I know it's a great passion of yours. Yeah. Yeah. So that's what we're doing next time. Oh, I really looked forward to that. Okie dokie, Bob. I'll speak to you soon. So yeah, bye-bye. Take care. You've been listening to The Therapy Show behind closed doors podcast. We hope you enjoyed the show. Don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review. We'll be back next week with another episode.


Last night I wrote a tweet that said, Dear Anorexia, I have nothing left to prove to you. I choose not to lose a stone in 21 days. Instead I choose life, I choose health, I choose love, love pookie. And I ended it with just holding myself accountable because it's never just a stone and I'm struggling with this one. It's so tempting. And I wanted to take a moment to explain the context of that tweets a little bit because it's really important to me that I'm trying to be authentic and honest in my struggles but also honestly it helps me because when I hold myself publicly accountable, it enables me to more easily do the things that I need to do to keep myself healthy. So the kind of wider context of this tweet is a TV show that was on last night that's encouraging people to lose weight that they've gained during lockdown and it's part of a kind of wider call to curb obesity. And the issue with it was this trending hashtag, lose a stone in 21 days. And there's been lots of input from various eating disorder charities and advocates and so on saying this is really damaging and the ways in which they're encouraging people to lose weight are the kind of gateways into eating disorder behavior and it'd be really triggering for those of us with a history of eating disorder and so on and so on and so on. I didn't watch the program. I didn't share an opinion on it prior but when I went on to Twitter in the evening to share my three good things that I do every day I was ambushed with this hashtag again and again and again lose a stone in 21 days and what my head and the anorexic voice which no matter how healthy I am in body and mind is always there waiting the anorexic voice in my head went lose a stone in 21 days. You can do better than that and it's there and it's kind of going I wonder if you could lose two, three, maybe you're heavier now so it'd be easier to lose weight than when you're lighter so you can and it goes and it's instantly there nagging away at me testing me challenging me and I'm a very competitive person with very high standards many of you will know this about me and so instantly I start challenging myself I start wondering and I had to just stop right there and allowed and to my network say no I'm not going to do this I'm not going to go here I'm not going to engage with this voice at all and to directly challenge that anorexic voice and the reason why I felt the need to tweet it was partly because I felt like if I was beginning to have these thoughts these feelings this kind of triggering of this eating disorder narrative there'd be loads of other people who were similarly feeling that way even if like me they're currently at a really healthy weight I'm doing apparently quite well that doesn't mean that we're not having to battle with these thoughts these feelings these voices all the time and I also needed to say out loud I'm not going to engage with this I'm not going to let that anorexic bully tempts me into this because if I don't say it out loud if I don't acknowledge hey I've had this thought and I'm not going to do it actually what happens is that I quietly do listen to that voice and I just quietly get on with it and without necessarily even proactively engaging with it I would find that I challenge myself to lose the stone in a week or whatever and that I kind of go there and the problem with that anorexic thinking and behaving for me and for many others I believe too is that once you start it's like an addiction it's really really hard to stop and one day becomes a week becomes a month becomes six and suddenly you're very very poorly so I need always to recognize this stuff as soon as it arises to put it out there and to very publicly say I'm having these thoughts I'm not going to go with them I'm going to fight them and I think the other thing that I just wanted to acknowledge here is that it is a battle and one of the things I really struggle with when it comes to things like eating disorder awareness weeks and campaigns and so on is that we see these brilliant stories of recovery and they're really inspiring and my story doesn't look anything like that it's been really up and down and a lot of the time it's quite messy just a couple of weeks ago I was having to talk to my psychiatrist because I'd had a PTSD flare up and I found myself completely unable to eat because I was so anxious and suddenly this became impossible and my family are crying at mealtimes because I'm unable to eat and they're worried because they remember where this leads and how I wind up unable to even sit in a hospital bed because I've starved myself obviously I'm a long way from that right now but it can happen really fast and it's terrifying and we all fear it constantly it's like this extra person in our family there all the time and most of the time it's okay and most of the time I can keep it quiet and most of the time I just manage it but sometimes it rears its ugly head and I don't know if it will ever fully go away and I guess yeah so my recovery is not perfect I get it wrong some days and some days it's fine and some days it's easy but sometimes it's hard and sometimes I mess up and sometimes I do the wrong thing and sometimes I make my family cry and sometimes I make myself cry and ugh it's messy but you know what we're managing and actually that really matters that we're managing we manage each day it matters that my children my husband my mother-in-law felt able to say to me hey you're not eating we're really worried about you what can we do to help with this what would make it easier what foods would be better how can we change mealtimes let's call the psychiatrist does your medication need changing all those kinds of questions that we never used to ask and that matters it doesn't matter that it's not perfect every day it matters that when I stumble when I fall that I'm able to pick myself back up and when I'm not able to pick myself back up that there are people all around me offering their hands helping to guide me up and support me along the way so that turned into a bit of a ramble but basically that's the context behind my tweet the context is yeah I look happy and healthy I'm the heaviest I've ever been and I don't say that with any shame or worry or concern I'm actually really delighted I've bought a whole new wardrobe of clothes that fit me and I like this size and granted maybe it will change again a bit once I get a bit more active and once lockdown's over but I'm really quite happy I'm really quite healthy and I don't want to engage with that anorexic voice but it's there it's there all the time and it's always just waiting for that trigger for that weigh-in so that it can take over me again and I have to fight hard to stop that from happening and I just wanted to be open and honest and authentic and messy and real about that okay I hope that you are all well and that anyone who has been triggered by this program last night or any other kind of of the context of COVID and lockdown and the pandemic that you're doing okay I'm here right alongside you we battle this together all the time it's okay to not find this easy every day it's okay to have beliefs I would urge you please to reach out to those around you who can and will support and help you if you're finding things hard and please know that I'm on your team and we got this good luck


Welcome everybody, thank you for joining. My name is Andres Martinez, I'm the editorial director of Future Tense. Future Tense is a partnership between New America, our host this evening, Arizona State University, and Slate Magazine. We are a citizen's guide to the future. We're both a section on the Slate website where you can read content on a daily basis that looks at the implications for society of emerging technologies. Then we have a lot of forums and discussions like this evening's where we like bringing people together around provocative questions. You can follow us on Twitter at Future Tense now. Some upcoming events that we are hosting at Future Tense on November 8th, we are posing the question why we should imagine solar flares taking down space stations. So I hope that's intriguing enough. And then on the 14th of November, we are doing an event on the history of the future looking at past predictions of where we are today and what we can learn from those predictions. Just in terms of housekeeping items, please silence your cell phones. I haven't done that myself, but I will as soon as I sit down. During the Q&A, please wait for a microphone and identify yourself. And with that, I really am excited for this conversation and tonight's subject matter of the role the arts play in allowing technology to build a better future. And we have a fantastic panel tonight. And I'm just going to hand things off by introducing our moderator for the evening, Eric Malinsky. Eric is a reporter at WNYC Studio 360 with Kurt Anderson and he hosts a podcast for Panoply about sci-fi and other fantasy genres called Imaginary Worlds. I mentioned Eric before we came on stage that I was listening earlier today to the latest podcast where he looks at the origins of the haunted mansion at Disneyland. And it was fascinating having been at Disneyland a couple of times at various stages of my life. I didn't realize that Walt Disney himself was confused as to whether he wanted the experience to be humorous or scary and that if you've been to the haunted mansion, that confusion kind of comes across. So I highly recommend Imaginary Worlds. And Eric, thank you so much for being our moderator. Thanks. So today we're going to be discussing technology and need the arts to build a better future. And we're an interesting point in space exploration where NASA seems to always be facing egocentric questions as to whether where is this all going and is this all worth the money. At the same time you've got billionaires like Yvonne Maas that are making space accessible to the super rich or anybody who has access. And the artists here with me to my left are looking at why not make space accessible to everybody? Why not democratize space? And how can we have a feeling when we look up at the stars that it belongs to all of us? So first on my immediate left is Juan Jose Diaz Infante. He's the director of the Mexican Space Collective, a group of artists that builds and launches nanosatellites as a platform for art projects. He also runs a satellite school to teach non-engineers how to build their own space technology. Devarra Strachan is a conceptual artist based in New York, originally from the Bahamas. The most famous piece, A Distance Between What We Have and What We Want, he transported two and a half ton block of ice from the Arctic to his childhood with your elementary school, elementary school. He's also trained as a cosmonaut in Star City, Russia, which I really want to talk to you about, that influenced his multimedia work. Orthostatic tolerance, it might not be such a bad idea if I never went home. So thank you guys for coming and we're going to start by looking at some images of their work and then we're going to talk amongst ourselves and we'll open it up for Q&A. So now let's see whether I know how to use this. This is very exciting. Don't believe I do. Is there any way, as we discuss technology in the future? That part I got. There we go. All right. Just the right button. All right, so first thing we want to discuss is this little guy over here. This is a... Okay, this is a... Cool. I was just saying, I've been vinging on Dr. Hu lately and I feel like this is like a... There's some wonderful explanation with David Tennant. Tell me about Ulysses. Tell me in the Mexican space collective, what was the idea behind all of that and I assume that was an initial sketch approach. It was the original, the exploring. My problem was that I became 50. So I woke up one morning and I realized the future was not there. So I had been watching all these Kubrick films from 2001 and suddenly that, for me, it was... All that future was a promise. So I had a middle-aged crisis in which I decided either to buy a convertible or start building a satellite. And I made the wrong choice and started building a satellite. So it was just this re-engineering of my life.  So it's very difficult to lie in that direction.  So I thought, you know, if you are going to be lying to people, if you make it a poetic and if you make it an artistic mission, then also Mexico is not a very scientifically prone place. So we decided to make it an artistic and poetic piece. That's how it started. So who are the Mexican space collectors? Well, originally it started as a concert because you cannot be the author of a satellite. So the idea of working something technologically is always a team effort. And we do not know how to work as a team. We think that we work as a team but we work in an environment of competition. So the idea is that the collective and the problems of the collective have to be worked around. So I designed a collective without knowing. And I decided that this collective that had no one yet would be the one that would make the satellite because it was like the right authorship that needed. And from there I started inviting people that was needed for the project. And I started with 11 artists because that's the number of a soccer team. And I decided that if you are trying to engage into a team effort and a world problem and a world trying to live as a collective, FIFA has more members than the UN. So I would go with FIFA.  I mean, I've seen videos on YouTube where somebody just like hooks their iPhone to rock it and shoots it up in the space. I mean, was it as easy as that? Or did you have to get official permission? Well, it's the same problem as poetry or painting is when you're right from a museum and you have a person that goes to the painting and says, I can do that. But it's a different way to mention how you say it. I can do that. It's a totally different approach to poetry. And the problem is it is as easy as that. But when you are a citizen that wakes up one morning and decides to launch a satellite it became an international issue. Because no one had done it in that way. A lot of people joined into a scientific community. They joined into a university. And I knew the other way around. I asked the university to join me to do this thing. So the conversation was, it's as easy as you say it. It's just the way you converse with the people. But was this one of the things where it just took a really, really long time and you were just keeping getting referred to? Will you need permission from this person and this person kind of thing? Well, no, my original problem was my Visa card. So I was buying components from China. And my card got canceled. So I called Visa the same way that you call and the people of Visa said your credit has been canceled. And they ask why and they say suspicious behavior. So I said, well, exactly what does that mean? I mean, how do I clear myself from suspicious behavior? Okay, you are building a satellite and we got on, our algorithm has gotten on that you are buying technology that cannot be exported to Mexico. And in Mexico no one, there's no NASA. No one launches anything from Mexico. You are not a university. You are not a research group. So therefore this is suspicious behavior.  You had to call the US Department of Defense to launch a nano satellite in Mexico. Yeah, there is no Department of Defense of Mexico. But why would the US Department of Defense have pure jurisdiction? Because I was exporting technology to Mexico that shouldn't be exported to Mexico. Wow. And I had to swear in the phone that I was not going to share my poetry with an enemy of the United States. So I called Captain John Smith at the Pentagon. His name really was John Smith. No, of course not. But for this purposes we called him John Smith. He says, excuse me Captain, but I'm trying to launch a satellite and it seems that I need permission from you. And John Smith said, son, I need to know what your satellite is going to be doing. And when I told him, well, it's poetry. And you could hear him telling everyone in the room, we have a poet. How do you do the manifest of a poetry satellite? And that conversation lasted three months before I could get a $1 cell exported from San Diego to Mexico City. And from there onward I had to use contraband. Really? Yeah, but a very bad ombre tells me. I love these drawings too. They look like something out of a Buck Rogers. Very da Vinci. Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, of course, of course. Absolutely. Same, Buck Rogers da Vinci. Yeah, they're very close. Very, very close. And so where do these components come from exactly? You're saying some of them actually came from like Radio Shack? Yes. When you're launching things at 300 kilometers, you can buy them anywhere. More on it. Because the mission only lasts four months. And then you were also saying, you know, you said a couple times, Mexico, we don't launch anything. Like, would this, I mean, what, symbolically, what did this mean to you?  Well, in the aspirations and hopes and dreams. It was very strange that the Department of Defense had to give you permission to bring cells that come in any toy. I mean, I could have bought the toy, bring it, take the cells out, put them into my satellite. And on the other hand, you start realizing what exactly is happening in countries that are not developed. Imaginary of what the countries that have not reached development yet. And how the global conversation has to be happening. So the idea of Ulysses was to be a little bit of a sputnik. You know, when the sputnik was launched, it was a basketball. And it had a radio, the same as this one. And it went for 23 days. And suddenly the whole world was in a panic. And I'm trying to create that panic a few years ago. There's a Mexican satellite in the sky. All right. So what we have here, tell us what we're looking at right now. Okay. That's the Book Fair in Guadalajara, which is the largest book fair in Mexico. And I got permission to launch a nanosatellite to the threat sphere from there. And it was a very complicated launch. Even though it seems very simple to send it in a balloon. We had to stop air traffic of Guadalajara. Guadalajara is like the second largest city in Mexico. So we were trying to explain the people at the control tower that we were in the middle of the city with a lot of air traffic. And we were going to launch this satellite up from a book fair in a homage to Jules Verde. And the 100th anniversary of the trip, the man to the moon. I mean, from Earth to the moon, a novel. So basically, the idea was launching from a book fair. It was the idea of there.  And they lost the satellite. So that was the last time we ever saw that one. So you've launched two so far? Yes. Two. When it goes up, how do you just simply know, well, we've, you know, it's supposed to go in this direction. We hope it has. I mean, can you keep track of it? No, we were relying on the scientists to know that, you know, to buy a GPS. But suddenly scientists have this complicated mind in which they do things complicated because they are complicated people. And so they lost it because they wanted to lose it. I mean, they never thought that we would do it. The day that, okay, guys, we have to launch it, no one was ready for the launch. So the way that you catch that one up is there is a program in Google and you put how much helium you use, how big the balloon is, where you are, your geography, and we will tell you where it lands. It's relatively simple if you know that. Now the problem with this one is if you haven't done it before or if you're going to launch something to space, there has to be a 15-meter distance between the parachute and the balloon because when it blows up the balloon, it wraps the parachute and it just brings it down in a faster mode. So here, my friends and scientists didn't know that it was from the 15 meters between the parachute and the balloon. I'm funny with any kind of artwork that is, that deals with un-traditional materials. Very often the artist has to learn all this kind of scientific, technological, mechanical things he didn't know before. This must be interesting in all the facts that you certainly know about space, longings in the space. Well, the thing is you start learning a lot because a lot of people have too much knowledge. So as soon as you tell them, I want to launch a satellite, people look at you and say, it's very complicated because you have million dollars, we need to buy a new lab, we have to hire NASA. It's not making very big, it has to be very good. So there's no way that it can be done. And basically what I did is okay, there has to be a simpler way to do it. So I've been coming up with a simpler solution to it.  Well, let's go to Tavares. I have this bigger thematic question too, but I want to talk to both of you guys about that. So let's start with some of Tavares in this year. Now you, you grew up in Bahamas, you've always been interested in space and it seems like deep sea and Arctic exploration as well. What did that mean to you growing up? I think for me it was two things. I think one was feeling a deep sense of isolation and the other was pure boredom, which is a very important ingredient. There's been a lot of studies that boredom actually, that we're not as bored as we used to be because of all of our devices and we're potentially less creative because of it. There was no device. Tell me, this is called, let's see my mother's house from the moon, right? Tell me about this piece. So I was, I think around 2009, I believe, I was invited to be an artist and resident at MIT. During this time, I was working with the List Center, which is MIT's art space and the curator at the time, Jane Farver, invited me to come to a visit and see if I was interested in working with any of the labs at MIT and I made a seven-page bucket list of what I would want to do and fortunately all of the labs responded very well and so this was one that I collaborated with, the 3D Systems Microfabrication Lab and basically we built this 22-micron house in the laboratory at MIT and the idea was when you were looking at it in the exhibition space, where you were standing would represent the moon. And is that a physical scale? Is that actually your mother's house? Or a representation of it? That's a good question.  This is an old Pablo Picasso question. Is your face that size? Yeah. This is famous quite a bit, Gershwin Stein said to him, Pablo, the painting doesn't look like me and he said it will someday. And so this is Invisible Rocket. Tell me about this. Yeah, so a group of family and friends of mine got together and we decided that we wanted to try and get as many of the ingredients that were familiar to us into space. And so on the islands we have a lot of salt and sand, which are the ingredients for glass making, which is something that I'm familiar with. And salt, again for fuel and sugar. So I started devising these plants to produce these rockets that would be made from these materials. You know, I think one of the things that goes missing in the Bahamas and the islands in general is, you know, this is long historical narrative that these places are empty in desolate. Another devoid of any sort of future potential. And from the 1500s to almost to the present, that's kind of the pervading narrative. So, you know, we were talking about resources in Mexico, scientific resources in Mexico I think, there's sort of a parallel conversation about how do we engage questions of manufacturing and production in these sort of scientific modalities and places that are quote-unquote been labeled as desolate. Yeah, which I think is bringing us to, what is that from the time you, but this is Blasthoff, right? Yeah. Tell me about Blasthoff. Is it where you launched and crashed the rocket? We lost a bunch, we like lost several rockets. I feel out of it, I haven't lost or launched a rocket. And I think one of the interesting things that I've been thinking a lot about lately is the intersection between the sort of poetic space, picture making, basically lying, and this sort of alternate reality of the sort of physical reality that the sort of science lives within, where an object in science is a result of sort of empirical investigation and how those things can actually have a relationship with each other. And I think this Bahamas-based agency is interested in investigating this sort of new approach to thinking about the past, present and future of how we think about making things. And so then how did Blasthoff play out as a piece, exactly? That's a question I'm still working out, to be honest with you. I don't know that, I try not to think about duration. It's very boring to think about for me.  Yeah, I think everything I'm working on is a work in progress. Yeah, and this is the part I'm dying to talk to you about. You train as a cosmonaut at Star City. Is this you underwater? That's me underwater, yeah. What inspired you to do that? I won't tell you which one is me, though. Is that a cosmonaut? Is that a Russian secret? Sorry, can you repeat that question? So yeah, what inspired you to do this? I was interested in exploring these sort of unfamiliar terrains and disrupting the conventions of who was expected to be interested in this kind of material, so that maybe in 25 years, 50 years, 100 years, there's a whole host of explorers in places that are sort of branded as places that will not produce explorers. What's funny, you having to deal with the U.S. Department of Defense, and then it's a similar thing in terms of who owns space or who gets to control what goes up there. Obviously Russia, the other big space power. So it's interesting that it's parallel there. But what was that like, did you just call them up or send them an email and say, I'd like to train as a cosmonaut, I'm an artist? That's exactly right. In a way, the system in Russia is a lot, the level of bureaucracy is a lot less than, say, working with institutions like NASA. And also, little secret guys, if you tell someone that you're an artist, they most likely respond to you. And it's really that simple. You're not that great. No, we're not that great. And in fact, I think this non-threatening characteristic is interesting, specifically because I think between this sort of poetic space and this empirical evidence-based space is actually creativity, daydreaming. And I think no matter what field you're in, no level of innovation can come without that.  So how is this experience... I mean, as I was asked what you expected to get out of it, but I'm also curious, were you surprised by the experience? Were there things about it that were just not what you expected to be going completely open-ended in terms of what you thought it was going to be like? Yeah, I think a huge part of my visual knowledge of space has to do with NASA, because, you know, proximity. And I think NASA's done a really good job of branding the whole enterprise of space in a way that makes it seem woefully difficult and extremely inaccessible. And I think one of the things that I discovered in Russia was, for example, Star City is also a military base. Which means when you pull up to the facility, there are children running around. There's a small garden and farm. And it's filled with everyday working people. And it's quite beautiful to see, because it's not this sort of separated facility where, you know, if you don't have a red coat... a white coat on with a massive patch, you couldn't get in. And it was quite astonishing to see, I think, it was the most revealing component for me of how human the whole experience was, believe it or not. Yeah, I could definitely see that. So then how does this influence ortho-tastic tolerance, the piece that I assume is still in progress then? Yeah, I think so, ortho-static tolerance is the discomfort a person feels when he or she returns to home, to Earth's surface. And I really love that idea that, you know, returning home makes you incredibly sick. And so this body of work, this comfort with familiarity was sort of driving this creative process for me. And it was sort of underwriting the strangeness that I had always felt as a child growing up being interested in this kind of material. How does one reconcile that? How does one feel alone and being interested in something and still sort of barrel through it tend to making, hopefully, producing something? I like that idea. So now one thing you guys both have in common is we talked about earlier, Bahamas, Mexico or countries you don't really associate with space. What does it mean for communities and countries and people that have access to space that have not previously had access to space? Talk to me about why that is so important to both of you.  But when I showed up, I said I'm mankind. NASA said you cannot come in. You need to be accompanied by someone from NASA if you want to wander around Cape Canaveral. I've always had a really base level belief that every human being is talented at something. And I think it's just a matter of each individual figuring out what that thing is. And I think when you look at these under represented, under exposed groups of people through this technology and through these ideas and through this realm, I think there's the potential for these tools and tools of talent. And I think in a way the sort of singular direction that exists a lot of times in the scientific process, it misses so much because it's devoid of a certain level of diversity in every direction. And so it's interesting even talking to scientists about their creative process, their creative process because it's like a wave, the human creative process. But ultimately, like I said earlier, if you're not interested in creativity, then you're just a human experiment. And so I think this is an insane potential for the next great engineer or the next great chemist to come from a place that is completely isolated and devoid of physical resources more than is likely for that person to come from somewhere that is rich. My podcast usually, I mean I talk to a lot of writers, film makers. I don't talk with a lot of artists. I mean it's funny because science fiction, we're so used to the space being given to us through movies, television, novels. What does art bring to that conversation? What can visual artists bring to that conversation? That's different. In terms of the future of science. I think in terms of just sort of like showing people this is space, this is how we should imagine space and imagine ourselves in space. Well, it depends a lot on what you call an artist. Who is left here? He's an artist. His space album is on there. Or Frank Sinatra is an artist. And I think the artist has been put away from the social environment. Whenever you draw that organization charts to know how to make a hospital there's never an artist in that organization chart. Or in school or whatever. The artist is always wandering somewhere there. And I think what is very important is to bring the art back to the organization chart. The social organization chart because I think artists are like a catalyst of things. They are creators of metaphors. So the actual ownership of your house is a metaphor because it's a piece of great paper. And reality is a metaphor that is being created by a very bad poet. So we need better poets generating reality. I wonder too is there something a little bit more democratic in terms of anyone. You can declare yourself an artist and create art with whatever materials you want as opposed to a filmmaker.  And I think maybe is it the fact that you don't have a marketplace. You have to worry about in terms of your ideas that can be more, you know, allow more creativity. That's what I think that we are outside of the organization. So it's good and bad in that sense. I think it's important to recognize that. I think there are layers of art, like art worlds. And so the conventional art world, the art world that maybe you think of it is New York, Paris, LA, et cetera. And if you think of that world, that world is as conservative as any other small community. And I think it's important to also for us to consider that. There's a certain smallness that goes along with that and I think that's a great misconception that people have that it's this free flowing open minded space and it's actually completely the opposite. That's true. And also it's a world that's just as dependent on you know, is Hollywood. I mean are either of you fans of science fiction or are you ever influenced, is any science fiction ever influenced you by real astronauts or astronauts? Well, my problem is that I was born in 1961. So basically the space race and all the narrative of reaching space and the Apollo program, it was very important in TV. We did not need science fiction because it was happening. You had the Sputnik going on and the Russians going on. And that was pretty amazing on itself, everything that was happening. I think later on or I don't know, you had all this Star Trek happening in a very parallel way. It was because you were interested in space you wanted to see science fiction. More than you were interested in science fiction and therefore you were interested in the space program. I think the capacity of wondering or surprise was the other way around. Yeah, that's interesting. I mean I was born just a decade later but for me growing up it was the Challenger Space Shuttle going up again. I mean we had of course it blew up and that was obviously very, very tragic but there was a sense of monotony to the program overall and maybe you didn't know where it was going. The Star Wars messed it up a lot because people are not amazed at things since they watched the first Star Wars. So basically there's some science fiction that has harm to us a lot. That's interesting. Because the special effects everything seems possible just by going to the special effects company. Yeah. You go to Pixar, Pixar does it for you. I mean to some extent do you feel with your work do you really want to help inspire or send them wonder again to people? I think you could need a sense of future. A future? More than wonder. I think you need to think that there is hope and we're constructing something not immediacy. I think young generations are very immediate to get the reward and basically they think that the world is going to end tomorrow so they need to get the gratification very quick. Yeah. My generation did not have I don't know you're younger than me. I think what's inspiring potentially inspiring about this whole space project in general is that it's really faith based as much as it's underwritten by science we can probably name all of the humans that have ever entered space which means it's deeply reliant on storytelling and that storytelling is supremely important all of the film that's made about space and all of the poems and all of the songs movements, you know social movements, political movements all are based on this idea that only probably under a few hundred people have experienced. So I think this is really sort of a rich idea because I think within this idea there's this potential for this kind of investment in the future and then wonder if we can somehow unlock that because we all sort of believe to a certain extent. Yeah. I don't think it possibly that could have been part of the inspiration for you. I know for a lot of people when Armstrong did land on the moon there was a sense of how long this would have been in the plane and how many people they didn't even get to live to see that but had been part of the beginning of that process and so I could see why there's a sense of we lost that in the sense of investment. So I think that it's just to try to understand what the mathematics are to launch a rocket and to think that someone thought of it in 1903 and Shilkovsky had the equation to launch something out of space and if you see the sketches of Shilkovsky they are exactly the same one that Kubrick used in the movie. So it's a very interesting relationship that someone in 1903 was helping the story board of 1969 that was 2001 Space Odyssey. So I think we need we need to get back someone that is thinking forward and generating the mathematics of something that needs to happen in a hundred years. Well what's next that you've launched to these so far? Where is this project that keeps going here? Well now I've become addicted to space mission. So I last year I did bounce from the moon. So you what? Last year was the 400th anniversary the 400th commemoration of the death of Cervantes and I was thinking a lot the message that Earth should have to intelligent virtual life and I decided that if a human being were to say hello I come in peace with it, come out. So I was trying to work out which should be the message from Earth and not the Bible because I think it would work to just read the Bible with any other planet. So I said Don Quixote was a pretty good message to bounce from the moon and I got a radio station to bounce it off the moon to get it back to Earth and I did also some transitions to other stars and it was very interesting because I mean the fact of someone of someone that goes mad because he read too many novels of shit always and he's fighting whatever is good and noble I think it really defines what the world is. We try hard we are mad we accept that reality is mad and that's why we put on with everyday reality but we are here because of madness not because we are smart people So I think if an alien were to see or to try to understand Don Quixote and come to Earth it would match perfectly on Earth. On that note I'd love to transition to some questions Do we have any questions? Hi, I'm going to be a student of space policy at Ram One of the main issues I've had with people who are working on space exploration are people like Elon Musk talk about it as colonization and colonizing Mars and I have a problem with this language because of the history of colonization globally and thanks that it makes space inaccessible so I was wondering if you could talk about framing and how important it is for you to think about how to frame space for people in the future I think framing is quite significant and if you I had the privilege of yesterday coming from the scientific conference and it's extremely difficult to go through presentation after presentation of charts and graphs and a complete denial of personhood so you hear all these ideas and all these theories and theorems about what they're proposing to do but you don't ever hear how it connects to the why and I think that's ultimately the question so if we're going to go to Mars and you're right if the only reason we're going there is to colonize it then that makes that endeavor completely ridiculous and so yeah I think this is where the two sort of sides of the spectrum the empirical science experience in object making as truth versus lying, art making creative reverie should collide and when they collide I think there's a lot more optimistic sort of view of the future and it's not let's go to Mars and colonize it it's how do we make the universe better I wrote a little text about how lawyers in Berkeley are studying law to know who owns space and I was wondering if in another planet there's other lawyers discussing who owns space and by the time we reach there we are already part of someone there so once you extrapolate things to a cosmic level you suddenly the framing becomes very strange because you have to reorganize a lot of thoughts, concepts ways of seeing people and what is very interesting is when you bring it back to your world not necessarily Mars but basically when we are searching for intelligent life and we do not know how to deal with ourselves so you can have a mathematical equation to meet other civilization but you should be applying here to meet your neighbor or to meet another nation or Brexit whatever situation we are having we cannot work as collective that in the west outer space was having for a long time yes I always thought that was interesting there's a general perception that artists and scientists are kind of pulling out of it and I believe that they are probably more related and then we will be really into a knowledge my question for you is what are we losing by enforcing this perception or misperception and as an artist would you like to see a replacement I think the comment about madness is appropriate in response to your question I think we have been invested in a process a practice deeply enough and engaged enough we are all working on the same problem we are all trying to solve the same problem I think we are just coming at it in different ways and I think ultimately we are I think our biggest challenge as a species is we have extreme communication issues and I think from them I think we all need to be a lot more multi-lingual and when I said it I mean I need to understand enough about what you are doing I need to understand enough about what I am doing so we can actually talk to each other and once we start doing more of that then I think we can start getting at the real we can start solving real problems as opposed to kind of working out our own frustrations separately I think there is a lot of the problem that could be solved teaching people photography because we are not able to see most of our visual education comes from I don't know from where because as a child you are asked to read and memorize and any illustration on a book has to do with a badly written text so basically you just read something that you could not understand and you have to see the diagram but you cannot also understand it's a badly drawn diagram and that's the way you reach university so I think right now we are having a bad transition because phones are cameras and people think that bad is photography and it's actually transmission is broadcasting it's not photography and it is very important to learn how to generate to be able to see, to observe because you need to train the eye and 70% of your brain is for seeing so basically if you do not learn to see first of all part of your brain is not working and it's only through seeing the compassion for the other person or that you could so I'm really redesigning the human race I'm basically going to elementary school and teaching photography as an interface for people to actually see and decoding what the eye is seeing because I think we have problems at many levels in the conversation and the way we see the others by the way Laurie Anderson was an resident at NASA I think about 12 years ago Laurie Anderson is a performance artist I did a live show about it it was very cool I thought in Brooklyn I don't know what it was out there anyway but if you look that up I think she joked she would be one and only in NASA I work at NASA I've done a lot with citizen science and prize competitions and getting the public more involved in our projects I wrote my doctoral dissertation a couple of years ago on the space shuttle program and how NASA shifted from the Apollo program to the shuttle program in terms of how it involved people in different ways and how it redefined public engagement I'm not sure if you're familiar but NASA had a non-scientific payload program which was actually encouraged by artists that actually started by artists wanting to fly their pieces of work into space it also had the teacher in space program it was supposed to be a bigger citizen in space program both of those projects ended up getting curtailed with the Challenger disaster and never were resurrected in quite the same form afterward for a variety of reasons but I'm wondering now given your experiences and thank you for sharing them what you think the agencies NASA could be doing to bring people into the fold in a bigger and better way I think so when I first left the Bahamas I was almost embarrassed to be from such a small place because being an artist represented this long sort of historical trajectory of artists that had come from Paris in America and so how does one find room how does one find that space and so it was I saw it initially as this huge huge disadvantage being from this tiny island and I think that now it's an amazing advantage and I think the question is not necessarily what can NASA do the question is what can individuals do and how can NASA inspire individuals to think differently about space exploration and how can NASA say to people that we don't own space exploration and I think that weight of ownership and that historical narrative is a part of what I think a lot of people may struggle with so I don't know if I answered your question but I feel like it's it's an extremely existential question like I think we're moving away I think we're in some ways moving away from that model into something else I have certain observations about I saw all the directors of the space agency last year at the IAC convention and the problem is that you have NASA Roscosmos China and China doesn't even make eye contact the guy of China just said we have done 98 missions and there's someone a very fat man translating behind him into English and then you have the European the European space and I think the way things are divided you cannot conquer space so there's a need of talking to the Chinese and the Chinese they don't even tell you when they send the rockets and there's been near misses to the International Space Station and things like that there are so little basic talking that I think you need to call the citizens or the artists or just citizen science that could bring together somehow the Chinese NASA Brazil that is now doing some satellites I mean you really need to open the channels of communications beyond politics because things become highly politicized so there's no discourse there's an emptiness of discourse so everything is 98 missions and on the other hand the private industry that is coming along with Elon Musk and Blue Origin I have my problems why they are doing it because I have a suspicion that is pretty much like the internet bubble that was put together and could you bring a great capital wanting to put together and then the bubble burst and I'm not very sure I need to go deeper there but I saw Elon Musk presenting his project to Mars and his dates for Mars and it's just not possible and whatever he's delivering because he wants to load fuel in orbit and I want to see that happening it will take 10 years to do that successfully so I'm trying to put together what it is possible to get the new boundaries and you need NASA to think of space as China India Russia and you need to bring the virtues of each attitude of but it cannot be defense of each country to block any development of rockets I mean there has to be a conversation among all the all the world because if not basically what you do is never get anywhere you are chasing your own tail I think we have time for one more question we can do the last questions I'm Victor Rogers also known as Slankston Hughes I'm a poet and I work with the organization out of Baltimore literary organization and when I'm not doing that I'm a humongous trekking and so I was like poetry and space this is literally my two loves colliding but I think my question is kind of a two part question inspired by some of what's been said one I think in the modern era of science you see a lot more room where science and spirituality and creativity have more common ground and space for collaboration where in past eras it was almost unheard of it's like this is science, this is real this is spirituality, this is things people imagine you can't prove it and where now there's been a lot of science coming forward that's kind of been like yes you can actually see where these two things aren't just connected but they're the same thing and kind of saying that also in that we realize that we're all connected would that not make it easier to collaborate as a species in general in trying to explore beyond our own planet we talk to a lot of astronauts one of the things they always talk about there was like a spiritual experience for them when all the science was over is seeing earth from space for the first time and the biggest thing they notice is the lines that we have on maps are not actually there on the planet there are aliens really out there and they come and they like you know these people these guys actually think that there are lines where there's not and they don't they think that they're different from each other they're crazy, let's not bother with them I don't know maybe if they heard Don Quilty bounce off the moon they might stop for a minute but just wondering what do you think about how in the modern era of quantum physics and stuff there was a cross-pollination between spirituality and scientific research and how that relates to the ability for humankind to make an even larger leap and kind of realizing that working together is a better result getter than like you say all the different factions being split up and not really getting anywhere okay well you see the whole thing is a problem semantics or grammar of language because when you try to talk to a nanotechnologist or you try to talk with an engineer that is really focusing on a problem to try to get space and you come and you say hello I'm an artist it's just they ask for margaritas they have a hard time seeing where you are serious about it so basically in my research I am trying to make up like a new type of career called like engineering in art or art engineering in the sense that you need to bring language together but the words mean the same because when you're in a space the basic thing is the mission and the mission has a problem of language because even engineer of communication has a problem with the engineer of power and has a problem with the engineer that is in the earth base and they have trouble communicating in a basic mission so I took a course in mission so you have to broaden the concept of mission to become a global thing to understand that the formality of the language how you use the language is the capacity for artists and engineers and a lot of people to work together but it's a thing of writing and reading and learning how to read someone I think there's an underwritten sort of non-spoken hierarchy that develops when we're very young through education and through how we teach subjects and how we create hierarchies and at a certain point visual thinking is devalued and so all the questions about communication obviously re-enter the conversation again how can we be more equipped to speak to one another if from the minute you enter a school system you're taught how to speak different languages and never to speak to each other in those languages but I think from the early stages art really has to be seen as a uniter and not a divider and not the thing that you do the past time before you go to do math I think the great Temple Grandin I don't know if you guys know who she is but she talks all the time about visual thinking and there's so many talented students in the country and the world who can't get into certain programs because they don't know how to do algebra because their brains are not wired to work that way so what are we going to do with all those kids I think the communication the fact that the two things communication the other thing is how do we create how do we disrupt the hierarchy how does engineering become as important as painting as important as monofabrication etc etc and in order for us to be able to speak to one another there needs to be an even an even playing field I think we're out of time unfortunately but thank you guys so much this is fascinating, very inspiring too the remiss in mentioning at the outset was that we really would love for you all to linger and have another refreshment and let's continue the conversation amongst ourselves but thank you again and thank you for coming


Nigeria received its first COVID-19 vaccines on the 2nd of March 2021 and then kicked off an inoculation program. Two months down the line, it has been met with several conspiracies and misinformation, hence the need for a media roundtable tagged journalism, pandemic and vaccines. Take a listen. It has been over a year since the pandemic broke out, with Nigeria recording its first case on the 26th of February 2020. In 2021, vaccines have been rolled out across the world, with Nigeria receiving her first batch in March. The Nigerian Academy for Science held a meeting with the press to enlighten the public on the myths and misinformation about the vaccine. Professor Tomori Oyewale, a virologist, breaks down the numbers, looking at the efficacy of the vaccine vis-à-vis the people who have died. Take it. According to the figures we have, as of 2019, we have already passed the 1 million cases, 1.8 million samples tested. This information is easily disseminated through social media, and not only religious leaders are culpable. President of the Nigerian Science Academy, Professor Ekhan Embrade, encourages the public to know the difference. They are different. You can be good people and how long is the education, one year, three or four years, and keep it. I mean, I'm not very good at it. Because education is something that keeps you, that has to do with the health of the mind. Total education, total education. So, you can find somebody like other children, they don't know you, not the other children. The rest of you can find somebody who is popular, and you speak with the person you feel you are. This code is actually that some of the people that have been regarding them. The lockdown may have been lifted, but we will successfully overcome the pandemic with the power of the right information. Fumi Yuna Jeefe reporting for Plus TV Africa. Hello, hope you enjoyed the news. Please do subscribe to our YouTube channel and don't forget to hit the notification button so you get notified about fresh news updates.


Hi everybody. I'm Rachel Bailey, the Zoning Administrator for the City of Columbia. I'm here to talk to you today about an exciting time we're going through in our Planning and Development Services Department. We have a new ordinance. It took effect on August 30th of this year and it's called the Unified Development Ordinance, so it has zoning and land development included. The reason we did this rewrite is because the ordinance we had prior was from the 70s. Nothing wrong with the 70s, but when it comes to development that's a bit outdated. So we wanted to bring the code into modern times to make development more streamlined while also encouraging that neighborhood compatibility feel that we want to keep in the city. Some changes that you're going to find in the Unified Development Ordinance have to do with the name of the zoning districts. So those are a lot of the minor changes that you'll see, especially in our residential zoning districts. A great deal of changes were just name only. As you get into our commercial districts, that's where you start to see more of the significant changes. It's more than just name. We've added completely new districts, so we have a great deal of mixed use districts now to really encourage the commercial and the residential to kind of join forces in portions of our city. As you're flipping through the new ordinance and scrolling through the new map, of course you're going to have questions, so staff is learning it as well. So feel free to reach out to us at the Zoning Division. You can reach us at<PHONE_NUMBER> or you can also email us at zoning at columbiasc.gov and staff will be happy to work through any questions you have with you.