bring you greetings on behalf of Elizabeth City State University's Community Connections Performance and Lecture Series. We would like to thank our national endowment for the Citizens Bank, Trustee Phyllis Bosmworth, and contributions from our very own ECSU students for making this event possible. The Community Connections Performance and Lecture Series mission is to produce cultural experiences which can be enjoyed by students, faculty, staff, as well as the community at large. We are especially excited to officially welcome home our ECSU alumni for this Vikings, a different world. While our main attraction is our esteemed guest of honor, it is equally important to ensure that our discussions are guided with expertise and grace. To do just that, we have the privilege of introducing our moderator for this event, Mrs. April Woodard. April Woodard is a Hampton Roads native and one of the original hosts of Coast Live when the program launched in 2016. In 2018 and 2020, she was nominated for a Capital Emmy Award for Outstanding TV Host and Moderator. April got her start as a reporter and anchor right here at WTKRTV3 in the late 90s. April spent more than a decade as a New York-based senior correspondent for Inside Edition. There she landed one of the last interviews with Joan Rivers, reported on 9-11, and did red carpet interviews with Kanye West, Taylor Swift, Beyonce, and J-Lo. She also served as an anchor and reporter for Black Entertainment Television, hosting specials including a conversation with President Obama, Michael Jackson Forever the King, and Music Around the Globe, which was nominated for an NAACP Award. April is a visiting journalism professor at Norfolk State University and a media and marketing consultant for Favor Multimedia. As a graduate of the University of Virginia, she lives in Chesapeake with her husband, Pastor Adrian Woodard, and two children, Adrian and Alec. Please let's give us a warm, Viking welcome to the stage, Mrs. April Woodard, who will introduce our guests and serve as moderator for the evening. To the Chancellor, Dixon, thank you so much. True as bank, everyone who has me here, I am just so delighted because I, Thursday night at April Woodard's apartment, even though I went to a PWI, I have got mad history at HBCUs longer than four years, 22 years. I grew up on campus at Norfolk State University, so I know what the HBCU experience is like.  I wanted to be on the show. I needed to be on the show, but they just couldn't make room for me. But I'm so delighted, I am so delighted to introduce our guest here tonight. Our first guest, well, he is known as Ron Johnson, but he, yeah, but he is an actor and producer and executive producer and a serial entrepreneur. Please welcome Daryl M. Bell. Wonderful. She is a Emmy nominee and NAACP Image Award winner, actor, dancer, beautiful Broadway. And she played none other than Whitley Gilbert. Please welcome Jasmine Guy. She played Jelisa Vinson. She is a singer, a Broadway actress and founder of a New Day Foundation. Dawn is over artists. She played Freddie Brook. I love the Flav, I love the Flav. Director, director, the question and answer just yet because we have got so many surprises for you and so many things in store. Before we begin, I do want to welcome the ECSU Sound of Class. That was so live, you all. And I love the shirts. Black Voters Matter, yes. Yes. Let's get out there in November, y'all, in 2024. All right, so I think we have another little surprise. I'm going to put on my glasses and make sure I get this right. So the homecoming was 1998. Let's think back to Hilton's homecoming, 1988, season two, episode seven, based on my research. And it was called The Stepping Stone, right? It was around in 1998. OK, I was because every Thursday at April Woodard or April Wilson at the Times apartment, it was a different world was on. All right, Gilbert Hall was one of the dorms. Y'all remember on Hillman's campus, yes. And I have been told that ECSU has recreated the scene. The special presentation, so at this moment, ladies and gentlemen, I introduce you to the recreation of the Gilbert Hall steppers. Viking Star, special shout out to my women of Delta Sigma Theta Soror. And where shall we begin? All right, good night. First of all, the name encompassed everything, right? So it exposed people to the world that I knew growing up because I was on a HBCU campus. But then also the viewers that may not have come back from our experiences or come from our experiences were able to have a different view of what our lives were like at HBCU. So people who were out there that didn't know anything about HBCUs and all of them. Our sororities and all of the lifestyle and everything. And it really just brought everybody together. And what I loved about each of the characters that they all had depth, they all had originality. Everybody was different. And you represented so many different people. And you spoke for so many different people. And then the other thing that I loved about it too is that there was a message. And long before, there were messages on TV like there are today. There were messages on a different world. And I appreciate you all bringing that to the audiences. And for those of us who watched, who learned vicariously through your experiences on the show, I first want to start off, I'm going to start with Dawn. Because we had lunch the other day. And I got a chance to get a little dig a little deeper into being my investigative reporter. Did you all know that Dawn Lewis wrote the theme song to a different world? Some of y'all didn't know that though. I was ready to start crying. She was about to start crying when y'all played that song for her. Because that was her first connection to a different world. I want to know about your experience on a different world and how you shared with me how you got in the door.  And I know we all have many different talents on the stage, but I just want to know about how writing that song led to you being on the show. Well, actually writing the song and being cast on the show happened at the exact same time. And the people who did the music didn't know me as an actress or dancer. I was doing a tour of a Broadway show by the same people that cast the Cosby show and was begging for three months to let me audition. And they told me no. They finally turned around and said, would you be interested in coming in tomorrow? There's this one role we have in cast. I said, sure. An hour later, the musical director had my cassette tape. I was trying to be a recording artist and said, you wrote this music, you're singing this music, would you be interested in working with me on the theme song for a new TV series? And I thought it was a joke. So literally they happened at the exact same time when he told me it was for the spin-off of the Cosby show about Lisa Bonet going off to school starting this new chapter and what the premise of the show was. I basically wrote my story. It meant a lot to me because I was 16 when I started college. And so telling that story of the people in your life having that faith in you, propelling you forward, despite the messages of failure, of this isn't for you, of nobody wants to see you or check in for you. Me writing those words of empowerment was me regurgitating back to myself, talking to myself to go forward boldly. So to be cast in the show at the same time then my whole life has changed. So it was an honor to write that song. It's an honor that you still embrace the words and embrace the message of the song and of the show. And no, playing Jalisa has just been really an honor for all those people who haven't given up on themselves. Come on back to school. Yes. Seek out that new career. It ain't over till it's over. So God, that is blessing, blessing, blessing, blessing. Thank you so much for that. And as I was saying earlier, this show really had a profound influence on the audiences that watched it. And it exposed people to the black community, to our culture, to HBCUs. So I'm just interested in hearing what each of you all have to say just about the impact that your show still has on the people who watch it, the people who consumed it originally and who continue to watch it. You wanna start out, Kadee? Yes. I was listening. Okay, so just to refresh the audience's memory, because the audience probably wasn't, maybe the mic wasn't loud enough. So what is the impact that it has had on HBCUs and exposing people to HBCUs, as well as heightened people's awareness of the impact and how significant HBCUs are? There you go. I got you down. Just that was for y'all, because Kaysha missed it at first. Oh, they dream for a second, y'all. This is really surreal and really incredible that you guys have showed up for us and did the band and everything. It's taking me back. So impact, when we were on, we doubled the enrollment in HBCUs during the time that we were on. And what that's led to is a whole bunch of people, half a generation younger than me, coming up to me telling me that they went to school because of me, or because of us. And they love to show so much that it inspired them to further their education. And nothing could be more important. And 35 years later, they make their kids watch it. And their kids wanna go to Hillman. They think that that's a real school and they wanna go and they wanna find it. They wanna come to school with Jaleesa and yeah, Freddie and everybody. So the impact has been incredible for HBCUs and also for our lives as actors and pursuing what we love to do. But yeah, I really wasn't lost in a daydream. I was sitting here looking at everybody going, wow. And then you said, I'll start with you. Remember? That's okay. Snap, I'm listening. So that's my answer for you. Cree? Thank you. I too just wanna say thank you because that was so beautiful. Oh my beautiful freaks. Well, I just wanted to say that I grew up in Toronto by way of Saskatchewan, Canada. We didn't have any HBCUs in Canada. I had no idea what I was getting into. And it just broke my heart open to a part of black culture and black life that I would have never known anything about. So it changed me profoundly. And I got to witness and be a part of that change with everyone that approaches me.  And that's what I love about it. And I just think that was one of the best parts of a different world was its inclusivity and that finally on television we were all multi-dimensional characters, not just one version of black life. So that's it. Thank you so much for that. Okay, Jasmine, it's your turn. I was just gonna say one of the things that really blessed me is that it revealed to the world that an HBCU education is not a second class education. It's an excellent education. Where to Cree's point, Khadim's point, there was a space in a lane for everyone. The intellectual nerd, the free spirit that is looking for her direction, the person that hasn't given up on themselves, the person that came from privilege but yet still has so much growing and so much learning that they crave and want to do, the young man that has a perpetual hustle where nothing will keep him down. He will figure out a way to make it happen.  We had, you know, Lou Meyers as Mr. Gaines, our seasoned citizen. Yes, who's spoken to the lives of our students. We had Glenn Turman as our Colonel Taylor who were ever presenting, yes, black excellence and commitment and service to our country. There was someone for everyone. Mary Alice, who was our resident director, our leddie. I mean, there was someone for everyone and it was just beautiful to see our community, our environment that people who don't look like us are now like, whoa, but I want to go to Hillman. I want to go and be a part of this experience. That's what it did. That's what it did. It gave us our rightful light and our shine and our glow as people of color and the education that we are just amazing to have in this space, in these spaces and then some. Mike Check. Is it on? Thank you. Okay, I just wanted to say what a joy it was to be a part of a show that allowed us as artists to really go for it. A lot of times, for those of us that had done other shows before a different world, we were the only black person on the set so we had the weight of the whole race on our shoulder. And it's hard to be funny and consistent when you're always trying to be correct because when you're playing a character, people aren't correct and characters aren't correct. It's our flaws as characters that made us stronger and you get to see us as young people work through what we didn't know and learn what we didn't know and accept each other for how we were different. And I think that was an important lesson in doing a show during that particular period from 17 years old to 20, well, I was already 25 when I got the part, but you know what I'm saying? The young people's is a crucial time in our development as human beings. You're away from home for the first time. You're in a strange language. Whitley's character was very much set on what she already knew. And I tried to. I knew my job, you know? And the thing that I always loved about our ensemble is that we are very versatile and Debbie didn't underestimate us. We did deep moments. We had, we danced, we sang. We backed up Gladys Knight. But within that 30 minute period, we were real. We had a real journey and we still of course had to be funny because it was a sitcom. And I love that we were able to find humor in whatever episode they gave us. Even the most, and we had some heavy ones that were a little difficult to do like the Mommy Dearest and AIDS episode and the Right episode. So the challenge for us as actors, I think was tremendous there and we really loved watching each other nail it, you know? Watching Cree or Freddie pray for the first time. God, I don't know what I'm doing. I've never prayed before, but I think this would be a good time. I just love watching them work. I really did. So let me say with respect to HBCUs, there have been lots of other representations of HBCUs. They've been often imitated, but none have recreated the magic we had. A different world remains the preeminent representation of HBCUs in film and television full stop. One of the things that I enjoyed most, and if you wanna talk about an HBCU experience, like for first of all, I'm gonna need the band to come introduce me everywhere I go from now on. Yeah, yeah, come on. Every time I sit down for an interview, I'll be like, wait up, hit it, I need that. But one of the things that you saw that people tell you about an HBCU, one of the things they talk about a college experience is that when you go off to college, you become an adult. That as opposed to high school and grammar school where your parents take you and make you show up to class at college, they don't care if you come. At an HBCU, what we saw, I remember when Robert Guillaume played the Dean, he took the time to get Ron to try to graduate. Dwayne took the time with the students. Colonel Taylor sat down with Blair Underwood, who was playing the soldier who was about to ship off to talk to him about his experience. That is real about an HBCU. And I think we all have that to thank not only for Debbie Allen, who was a Howard alum and by a second season saw to it that we were going to make it look like an HBCU. And our head writer, Susan Fales, who was a Harvard grad, but also said we're gonna make this college experience matter. And for me, Kadeem Jasmine and I met on school days. I left college to go audition for that film. When I left school, we were protesting apartheid. My brothers in alpha, we were organizing voter registration drives. Then I went on camera to protest apartheid.  That's what, you know, and when we got to Hillman, when it became about things that you actually experienced in college, that was the secret sauce in everything we did. Outstanding, thank you. I gotta talk about relationships because I was learning a lot about relationships when I used to watch a different world. And there was one couple that I really could relate to. Dwayne and Whitley. So I just want to know, Dwayne, this is coming to you at some point. Okay. I just wanna know, what was it like having that relationship on camera? And then what type of impact do you think it had on how people viewed what their relationship should look like or not? Mm-hmm, Jasmine? She said it was coming to me eventually. Okay, well. I'm gonna let you ladies first.  I always said that Dwayne Wayne was the perfect man created by woman for woman. And he put up with a lot of stuff that Kadeem would have never, it wouldn't, it wouldn't fly. But there was some work, you know, we had to work on that relationship because neither one of us, well I'll speak for myself. I knew what my role was at first season and it didn't have none to do with goofy ass Dwayne Wayne. I was like, what? How does that work with her character? I was sorry, I mean, maybe she go out with an associate professor, you know? But we did talk about, okay, the things that I am playing are not necessarily attractive. They're funny, they're working, but I didn't feel like the accent was particularly attractive. I felt like her mannerisms were particularly annoying. I thought she was a classist at best. And I said, so we gotta help each other like these characters like each other. We already liked each other as people. But how are we gonna make it believable that this Southern debutant likes you? Underclassmen. Goofy.  You always did, yeah. But we worked on it in a way where I don't know, we kind of gave each other permission to show another side of our character. So I just decided, well, when Whitney's around Dwayne, there's a part of her that she's only showing to him. Her vulnerability, she lets that guard down because you know, after a while he's like, you know, you're not just talking to me like that.  And watching them grow up together, I thought was really cute. Like I used to think, oh, I wish I had a boyfriend from high school into my 30s and we experienced, you know, growing up together. And I think that part of it was really beautiful to watch them fight for each other and come back and in and out. Sound boy, you're in trouble. Sound boy. The greatest, the best part for me was I literally had Lucille Ball to work with. Like really, the funniest, she danced, she sang, she acted, she wrote, she directed, she produced, she wrote books. I literally was in front of, and I didn't, I realized it very early, a living legend. So if she ever had a note for me, one time we had a scene, I'ma tell. We had a scene where she was coming in to my apartment and I had to kind of, you know, flirt a little bit and I wasn't hitting it. And she said, hold on, wait a minute. I'ma be Duane and you be Whitley and watch what I do.  And I was like, so it's okay for me to go for it like that? And she said, yes, if we're gonna play this, then you have to go for it. And then I went for it. And then the relationship took off and it was that one day in rehearsal where she unlocked it for me. And I could always listen to her, I could always trust her. She always had the best notes, we'd have table reads and I'd read it and I'd pretty much go along with what was written until we got the stage and then I'd try to fix it in my own way. But Jasmine would read it and then say, she wouldn't say that. This is what she'd say. She wouldn't just say no, she would have a solution kind of on hand ready. And I was mostly in awe, you know what I mean? So it was easy to play like early crush and interventional love. And then some of the stuff she was doing, like I said, I was perfect man created by a woman for a woman. Some of the stuff she did really pissed me off. So it was easy to check her. It was easy to go into that look here. Don't you ever, if you tell me you are not speaking to me for a week, I drop you like a bad habit with me. And another thing, knew I was a basketball fan before you met me and you know it now.  Sound boy, sound boy, y'all in trouble. Y'all in trouble, sound boy.  Somebody's changing the batteries I think. Okay, well, I want to talk about friendships because I got a chance to spend some time with you all backstage and see how you all interact as you know, friends really. But did the show, and this is for Cree and Dawn, did the show ever, it highlighted the ups and downs of friendships, the good, the bad. Was there anything that you took away from the experience on set that would resonate in your personal life? Or do you have an experience on set that you want to share in regards to the friendships that you all had? We had the most amazing group of people. All of us, sometimes it's hard to get us all to focus at the same time. No, seriously, because we're enjoying each other so much, everybody's got the amazing amount of wit and humor and fast one-liners and such, and it's impossible to not respond to each other. But what we found, when it was time to work, you will not find a group of people that could be more focused, more prepared, more on point. So one of the things I learned in life is that it's okay to play hard if you're ready to work just as hard. You know what I mean? Come prepared for excellence, enjoy what you do, be a person that people enjoy being around.  But then when it was time to work, we got the work done. Debbie Allen had us down to a four-day work week, which is unheard of in Hollywood. You take every single moment of every single day, every week, to try to get to the right formula, to get to the right seasoning for an episode. She was like, no, if everybody comes prepared and does what they were supposed to do, we can knock this out and have a three-day weekend. And did we not do that season after season? Because this group of people, they know how to play, but when it's time to get down to it and eat, it's time to eat, let's go so we can all catch a flight because we're going to Vegas, all right? Created? Well, this show, as far as friendships and relationships change the molecules of my life, I mean, I fell in love with Jasmine at first sight. We just became sisters immediately. I fell in love with Kadeem. He was my first true love. And I just have to say that Daryl and Dawn, all of us, we hang out with each other on purpose. Jazzy and I, our first born daughters, share a birthday. And I've worked on a lot of shows and been privileged enough to work all over the world, but these people are family, and I will keep them until I die. And that is one of the most profound gifts of a different world, that not a lot of jobs do you leave work and call somebody as soon as you get into your truck. Usually just like, chow mein, motherfuckers, but these people you want to be with. All right, see what I know now? Half of y'all are going to go home and go, chow mein, motherfuckers. You can't not respond to that. It's like, it is what it is. Just pearls, just pearls, constant pearls. I come with the proper lack of decorum. I don't want to just say bye anymore. Careful what you ask for. Y'all can't even. OK, I saw somebody with, where's the sister with the t-shirt? Relax, relate, release. Where you at? I saw you, are you out here? OK, so that happened, Jasmine. During a time when you were really feeling overwhelmed in one of the episodes. And you went to the counseling center and you got help and you started saying the phrase, relax, really, you can say it better than me. You want to go ahead and say it? Well, it came from Debbie's line, but doctors told me I needed to relax, relate, release. OK, OK. Now, first of all, doing the scene, Debbie was directing the episode, so we didn't rehearse it that much. I was usually rehearsing it with a stand-in for her. And when we did the actual taping of that scene and I saw how she was going to do it, I was like, oh, my god. I'm not going to be able to get my lines out. Her wig was crooked. She was mocking me. And I was like, what do you want me to do, doctor? You need to just relax, relate, release. And I was like, oh, god. And then I could feel that I was going to lose it. And I didn't want to have to do it over. And she was like, oh, come on, darling, get, come on. Let's get through this scene. I'm like, well, can you fix your wig? I mean, help me out. Because if I've known Debbie since I was 18, because I did fame, times. And there were a lot of times with Cree that I just couldn't look at her. I would look at her ear or her hairline. Because when you're in church and you start laughing inappropriately and you can't stop, it's painful. You're like, OK, I was just thinking about really bad things and sad things. So a lot of times we, and I would try to crack people up because Charnell Brown was immovable. I was like, I'm going to bust up Charlie. I'm going to get Kimberly Vries in this scene and no matter what I did, she would stay in character. She's so professional. So good. You know, I was like, OK, that didn't make her laugh. I'm doing even big. And I'm looking, you know, stepping fetches up there. And she's like, whatever, Jasmine, you are not breaking me. I am a professional. We had so many moments of true joy and laughter on and off camera. And everybody was funny on that show. I mean, we're working with, I mean, Glenn and Lou and Symbad. There was sometimes we'd be in the pit and Lou couldn't remember our character names. He'd be like, what the, oh, what? You Kim, Kimberly, blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm pretty old. I wouldn't be afraid if we'd be like, oh, God, if you don't say somebody's name soon. It was just a joy. It really was. A follow up to that, though, is that you were actually dealing with a mental health issue. Long before, you know, we deal with shows that deal with mental health issues now.  And even though there were lighthearted parts of it, it still was the issue of mental health, getting counseling, seeking therapy and not being ashamed. Especially in the black community that, you know, has been taboo for us to get help. Because we're supposed to bear everything. We're supposed to bear everything. Pain, trauma, loss, divorce, where we're watching everybody else going through these things. And they need help. They need support to get through it. So that is something I didn't really think about that. It was odd for a young woman in college to go get therapy like that. And just that acceptance of it, you know, or making it funny makes it a little bit more accessible. But it was a serious issue. And she was, she didn't need to relax like release. She really did. She was just wowed like this, you know?  Like, what is the problem? What are you complaining about? Sometimes we make up problems. Thanks. OK. I'm taking a turn now because I want to talk about some of the other issues, the serious issues. And Kadeem, you dealt with this, Terrell, as well. When you said the line, I'm an educated black man.   So, Darrell, I want you to talk. And then Kadeem, what was that episode like when you dealt with that and you really had to deal with, you know, probably something you had dealt with in your personal life before, as well? Kadeem and I talk about this all the time when people ask you what's your favorite episode, Cats and the Cradle, that's it. And what I remember most about that week were the two actors who were the white actors. Dean Cain, it was his first job ever in television before he played Superman. The other actor was really good. I mean, he was the one when they talked about, in I was written on the car, he said, how do you know he wasn't writing, have a nice day? I mean, he was cold-blooded with his. And it was hard because Dean was a friend, too. And so to play that kind of animus with him was really tricky. And so what I really liked, and Kadeem had talked about this earlier, was that the story was told Rashomon Staple. So you saw everyone's point of view, the retelling of it through their eyes, showing how people experience the same events differently, how they thought we were thugs, liars, how we thought that they were just so over the top antagonizing us. And irrespective of how the principles involved solved their differences, somebody else finished it. Somebody else finished writing it on the car. And it just shows no matter how you work, there's more work to be done.  Who would say that? It was racist, sexist. It was everything as unconscionable as you could want. And this was a half-hour sitcom. But it's why when we talk about issues that remain relevant today, look at all that we still face in our community. Look at all we still face to protect the women we love. I have been arrested driving while black multiple times. It happens. So it's a similar moment. I will also say, only because you asked about a friendship, we were in school days just random. If y'all go back and watch school days. In the parade episode, Khadim and I lined up right against each other. And I can't look at Khadim really without laughing. This was his first acting job, folks. True. True. And every time we'd have to get in each other's face, because one of the hardest things to play was the fight that Ron and Dwayne had. And it took a long time. Like Khadim didn't talk to me the whole week. But in school days, I have on mirrored glasses. And Khadim would get right in my face. And I would look this way. And when I would turn that way, I would close my eyes. So I couldn't see him through the mirrored glasses. Because if I looked at him, I'd crack up because that's my man that I love. And I can't be mad at him. And it's really hard. So that speaks to how our friendship interfered with our work until I could grow up as a performer to actually do the work. It's real time. For me, casting the cradle is so great. Because for so long, I wanted to do action movies. I wanted to do love stories. I wanted to do everything. This had all of that in one episode. I got to be a little bit of thug. I got to be the smart guy. I got to do a fight scene. All of it, that care for the woman. All of that at once. So it was, come on, baby. Talk to me. I hear you. It's OK. Yes, we love baby sounds. It's the best sound. She going to go to college one day. He and she. She in the right place. So yeah, so that episode, just as an actor and watching him grow, because I was standing there with him in his first job, and he couldn't even look me in the eye. Poor thing. I was mopping the floor with him. So now I watched him grow into a point where we were standing up there together side by side, giving looks, giving attitude, playing, all of that stuff. And it's just the most fulfilling episode. I'm going to talk really fast. Kadim and I both auditioned for the role of Duane Wayne. Yes. When we left school days, we were already friends. And when the role for Duane Wayne came up, I got an audition. I called Kadim. Did you say, did you hear about it? He said, yes, I did. I got a call back. He said, me too. I said, I'm going in for producers. He said, me too. He said, they're taking me to network. He said, they're flying me to LA. I'm like, OK. So when we got to LA, I remember Kadim was the first one to go in. And all I heard was laughter. He came out. They was giving him high fives. And yeah, buddy. Yeah. And giving them all this business, right? And I walked in. And I had never auditioned for more than two people at a time. But I walked in. There was a crowd like this. I froze. It was the worst audition I ever got. Kadim gets cast in the role. Kadim lives in New York. He has to relocate to Los Angeles. He has nowhere to stay. He moves in with me on his couch. So I had to drive Kadim to work to the job I didn't get every day. And he had to pick me up afterwards and take me home. Those are facts. That is love. I just want to ask the bosses. I know we're supposed to take some questions. Is it time yet to note? Yes? Yeah, I thought so. OK, so we have microphones and individuals that have the microphones. So you don't even have to move. So just raise your hand if you want to ask a question and are lovely. While they're trying to get the microphone, I just want to thank Chancellor for receiving us here at the University. I want to thank all our partners at Truist Bank for making this happen for us. Mark, John. Thank all you all for coming out on the Thursday night. Thank you. There's some hands back in the back in the middle. Got their light on, too. They want you to, OK, there you go. There you go with it. Now we got it.  You was my favorite character in a different world. You was my different character in Harlem Nights. So with that being said, I feel as though you did an amazing job and I love you. But my question is, what are the steps that you have to take in order to pursue that dream? Pursue. Pursue your dream, which is acting. Everybody's going to have a different answer. Yeah, because everybody's journey is a little different. And part of the experience of any performer, it is essentially the only job for which there is no absolute requirement. You can say you are a professional actor today and you are. The only distinction is your ability to compete against your peers to get a job. So you don't have to go to school to get a job as a dancer. So you have to be competent and proficient. Now there are programs that will help train you in training matters. And to be a master craftsman at anything requires a skill set. That being said, the number one differentiator from when we started to when anyone else wants to pursue a career in performing arts now is the barrier to entrance was distribution. If you couldn't get on a network or movie studio, you couldn't be seen. Now distribution is free.  What we saw today with the recreation of the different world credits, that's where you have to be. Casting now is done day and night based on how many followers you got. That happens. So there's so many folks that I know y'all follow who create content online. That matters. And I will tell you, two of the most prolific directors, writer, producers, the Duplass brothers, they talked about how they started their career. And the brother said, one brother wrote the script, the other brother got the camera and they went out and shot their first movie. And this is an adult crowd.  They went the next day and they did it again. They went the next day and they did it again and they kept getting better. The difference between those who are the most successful and those who are not, is putting in the work. Stephen King talks about there are so many writers that are infinitely more talented than him, but he goes to work from nine to five and writes every day.  That's what's up. Hello everyone, my name is Katelyn Jones. I'm a sophomore criminal justice major. The question that I have is, what are some advice that you have for college students? I feel like you briefly touched on this, but. Advice for college students? We didn't hear the last part in the question. Oh yes, I said, I'm sorry. I feel like you briefly touched on this, but I would like to know some advice that you have for college students. Advice you have for college students? Anybody want? I didn't go to college. Okay. Great, great. Dawn, I can jump in, but I'd love for another voice. Advice for college students is this is a big, huge platter of opportunity and information. Take advantage of it. How many of you are here on scholarships? How many of you are here on student loans? How many of you here at college work study? Okay. So the reality is that college is very expensive. It is incredibly expensive. So if you've already made the financial investment into being here, then your responsibility is to milk this environment for everything that it is worth. Milk it for everything that it is worth. Learn a little bit of this, a little bit of that, and it gives you an opportunity to be exposed to, I'm gonna use a veritable cornucopia of information and opportunity for you to decide this is where I wanna move forward. You know what I mean? And you're in a safe environment in order to explore and express that. Cause when you get out of here, things get real real. Bills are real, eating is real, putting gas in your car is real. If you live in LA, gas is almost $7 a gallon. Gas is over $6.60 a gallon. So that's real. There's no more cover. There's no more safe landings. You are now responsible for you. So here is where you start to practice that. So as a college student and you're here, get in the habit of being responsible for you, take advantage and maximize everything that is presented to you so you can make an informed decision of where you wanna be next and how you wanna get there. I'm gonna add two seconds to that.   That's facts, that's an expectation that they have. Because the Stanford engineering students get together with the Stanford law students who get together with the Stanford business students and they create companies that change the world. When you're at college, I can tell you, Robert Smith, the wealthiest black man in America, we went to college together. He was at Cornell, I was at Syracuse. You will meet people right now in this room who are your classmates, who will be the presidents and the influencers, and you will be able to pick up the phone and call them and say, hey, Viking pride, pick up the phone. That will matter. Oh, there it is, all right. Hello, I don't have a question. I don't, I love y'all so much. Like, I really don't think you understand down from season one to season six when Jada Pickett was there in season six. Okay, I know it down to the theme songs with season we on, real bad. But, I'm not singing. All right, all right. Now, so the show is still going in my head, okay? When y'all stop in season six, when you went to Kanishiwa in Korea and all that, and you was pregnant. What baby did y'all have? Did y'all have a boy or a girl? You were requested to sing the song. Really don't know all the words. It's a different.  Which one? If you, if you- If you did shit!  She back, she back in. Is she leaving? No, she going around. Oh, she making an exit back there. Did you have a boy or a girl? I don't know if Whitley had a boy or a girl. I know what I think she would have had, but I really don't know what other people think. I think she had a boy or a son. Okay, we gon' go with that. Was he naked? Sorry, I just had to. I couldn't help myself. He came out in a tux, a little baby tux. So I'm infinity, I am a senior interdisciplinary study student, and I'm also a miss senior for the university. Hey y'all. And so my question is, how does it feel being able to see a different world now while people are using it as a reference? Like I know, I'm a TikToker. I see Whitley and Dwayne and the friendships and things like that as references, people go back and look at that. So how do you guys feel being that reference? Good question, Aina. I think we feel honored, right? Yeah, we're honored that the show is still alive 35 years later. So, thanks to you. And I think Darryl had a stat that different world hasn't stopped airing since. Different world has not been off the air since it premiered in 1987. It has been available every day since 1987. You're welcome. Kree, did you wanna say something? Cause you got the mic. Oh, I was just gonna say exactly what Kadim said.   That's because of Freddie or something, you know, or what they do, you know, or I'm Ron Johnson or I'm Kadim.  And it's something that we have a lot of different jobs as actors. And this is one that we will eternally be proud of because, you know, above all in life, you wish to do no harm. And this show has simply injected love into the black community. At the conclusion, I just want to give each of you like one minute, two minute as a wrapping statement, just something to leave us with. Whoever would like to start first. I love you all. Good night. Okay, thank you very much. Thank you for all for coming. This was awesome. Thank you. I love y'all. This has been fantastic. I had to take two planes to get here. I'm not really crazy about flying, but this was well worth it. Okay. Dang, dang, dang, dang, dang. I would just like to say thank you, beautiful people so much, and chow mein, motherfucker. I love her so much. Thank you again. You guys are amazing. You guys have made what we did decades ago invaluable and precious. And you are a walking testimony that when you see it, you can be it. And it just blesses my heart that half of you weren't even born when we were on, when the show first aired.  And I want to give a shout out to my family who lives here in the Virginia area. My 15 year old nephew is almost seven feet tall, but he's in a room now inspired by you all going to college. And no pressure, but Jay, this is where you need to be. This is where you need to be.  Keep up the hard work. Keep up the good work. This is the, you know, what do they call it? Good trouble. We making good trouble here in Elizabeth City. Echo the gratitude. What? Thank you. And thank you for calling me my real name. I appreciate it. My mama appreciates it. Okay. We just feel your love and your spirit, your enthusiasm. Sometimes I'll speak for myself. I don't know if we're, if we still resonate. You know, I don't know if something that I did, you know, 30 years ago still resonates.  It means a lot to me. And I am very grateful to have been a part of this show. And thank you for making me grateful for that experience. So to bring it all home, I want to tell you, we do lots of panels. We don't always get this kind of energy and love. So thank all y'all. This is really special. Those are facts. I'm also going to take a minute to thank April Woodard for coming out here and moderating. But I want y'all to know that for all of these people who I love to get here and for all the things we've done, I'm going to get up for your own Dr. Kevin Wade. Where you at? Where you at, Dr. Kevin Wade? Dr. Kevin Wade made this happen at the persistence, insistence, and tenacity of Dr. Kevin Wade. Don't y'all love when a plan come together. Viking pride! Viking pride! Viking pride! I'm going to make this real quick. I have a lot of thank yous. I want to thank Constance, Davenport, if you are out there. Thank you so much for your vocals behind the scene of us doing, recreating the video. Thank you, Truis Bank. We'll circle back to that. Truis, representatives, can you make your way to the stage for me, please? If you're out there, up this way. My career development and trio team, thank you so much for your support. Thank you, Student Affairs. Thank you, Sound of Class. Thank you, thank you, thank you. And I also like to thank Chancellor Dixon and her cabinet and my supervisor, Dr. Brown, for trusting me with this vision. I appreciate it so very much. Thank you, 1704 Media, Communications and Marketing. Everyone, thank you, thank you. Thank you. So at this time, I'd like to bring up Chancellor Dixon, as well as Dr. Brown. So we have a very special presentation. Just wanted to make sure y'all were still up. My name is Mark Johnson, Senior Vice President of Truis Bank for the Commonwealth of Virginia. It is a pleasure being in the state of Virginia and the city of Elizabeth City, North Carolina. Quickly, I have to say how I got here. I have a colleague counterpart in North Carolina. That's, this is how it works. I'm responsible for Virginia. He's responsible for North Carolina. He could not be here because his work schedule, he was overloaded this week. So give a hand to Mitch Gibson, Senior Vice President and Community Development Manager for North Carolina, for creating this opportunity for us. We did it together at Truis. We inspire and build better lives in communities. And the other saying for us is, when it starts with care, you get a different kind of bang. So we thank you so much for this opportunity to partner. Let me say, you guys are incredible. Give a hand, personally. What a journey. Thank you so much to Chancellor Dr. Kerry Dixon, her staff, amazing team. And lastly, now listen, I have my collar on today. I had to do a presentation. I had to lunch in. Some people thought I was a pastor. Yeah, I don't prophesy. But I have to say, Dr. Kevin Wayne, your gift shall make room for you and bring you before a great man. What an incredible production that you put on that came from the heart. But it also showed the talent that you have. You adjusted incredible talent.  He didn't pay me to say that. But after I've seen this tonight, and the cast will probably attest, we did this some odd years ago in Norfolk State. Elizabeth Sid, you put it down. So on behalf of Truis Bank, we like to present the Elizabeth City State Foundation with a check for Money Matters for $25,000. And I would be remiss. We have a one team approach. I know I'm up here speaking. But listen, we have people behind the scenes that do the work every day. And they make it happen. And they speak to clients. And they improve lives. Let me give before you, Cecilia Huff, Jeremy Bailey, Fredwick Startward, and let me see. I think that's it. Let's all get in the picture. And our foundation chair. Oh, how are you? Thank you. I'll get in the. Oh, I'll hold on to it. I can hold it. OK, hold on. Also on behalf of Truis, I partnered with this gentleman. I don't know if you've heard of this game, the HBCU trivia game. So who's the gentleman who owns this? Can you stand up? Mr. Khan, yes. Outstanding. And so as a part of this, I have five of these that I will give to Chancellor Dixon to give out to whom she wants to support African-American city of Elizabeth City and wherever you go. This is a black owned business. Who have produced this? Let's get back to basics. I know you use technology. This is back manually. This is back in my time. Let's get back to the board games. Thank you. You all so much for coming out tonight. Students, special message. If you are a student and going to midnight care, we need you to line up on this side. To get your wristband. If not, thank you all so much and have a good night.


You can't do business with Hitler. We are now at war. There are but two alternatives. Total victory or total defeat. There can be no such thing as a military stalemate that would result in the survival of Hitlerism. That is the opinion of a man who knows. Douglas Miller for 15 years commercial attaché to the American Embassy in Berlin.  Episode 5. Mass Murder. Douglas Miller speaking. Hitler's new order for Europe provides for the expansion of Germany until Germans occupy all of Europe. Not only for the present, but for all times. But to claim all Europe, Hitler must eliminate its present population. Thus, for Hitler and his followers, organized, systematic, unemotional mass murder and depopulation have become the means of getting rid of capitalist people and dispelling forever any such a Hitler's new order. Not radio. It was announced to Berlin tonight that 150 Poles have been executed for unseeding the German advance in Russia. Created tonight in Berlin, 123 checks were executed last week. Among them were of any prominent distance. Radio Salient. From Krooster comes the report that 180,000 Serbs have been executed since the early part of August. Radio Berlin. The Ministry of Propaganda announced today that 1,000 were executed throughout Europe during the past week for acts of rebellion and sabotage against the German eyes. I am Hitler. These are factual reports from the capitals of Europe. But it is long for us to assume that these reports of executions and depopulation are isolated acts of terror to spoil rebellion. I claim they go much deeper than that and I can prove it. I claim that these executions are the result of the Nazis' deliberate and fundamental policy of exterminating racial groups. A scientific plan to get rid of so-called inferior people so that German farmers and workers may occupy the conquered lands. The Nazis have developed no standard techniques of depopulation. They use whatever means are available. They merely select an area that is desirable to them and ruthlessly get rid of its inhabitants either by shifting them to other localities or by executing them. The harsh extermination of the people of Abbeville that occupied France which took place in January 1941 is typical. Abbeville, the coast of France, January 1941. It's nice to drop a hook into the water again, eh Jacques? Even knowing the Nazis have dragged us all and taken every fish does not matter. Man does not need fish. Fish, a little line, a pole, even if only a bed pin. You call me? I think you have caught something. Jacques, you have caught a fish. Even a little one. No, no, big one. Do you? Jacques, that is not a fish. No? Look there. In the water. Alone. A body. Look, there are many of them. Many of them. You go. We must leave this place. Come. Shall we stop on the bridge, Marie? They say if you throw a shoe in the sun, right at this spot, any way to make it come through. May I have a shoe, I see? Shall I throw it? Right over there, I see. I see. Nothing? Yes. In the water. What's with them? Crosses, no? I see. What does it mean? I don't know. I think we are in danger. Come. Time, Master. Take your cat and go away there. Go, Lumia. I did not. She told me to bring them here. You know what will happen if I be sure to be. What can I do with them? They might get back to the restaurant already. Well, you must take them. It will be bad for you too. Very well. How many to your heart? 30. All from the river? Stop. 900 bodies in the stomach. What is happening? You will make your apartment, please. Hello? 876 is my mortgage. 876? Good. 876, that's 12,094. You are excused. If you please, Mr. What has happened? Some suicide. Suicide? 12,000. The French are peculiarized. They are like sheep. When one sees another doing something, well, there must be something wrong, Mr. Those I have examined have been meet in the air. They were upset before they were in the water. Really? Here below, perhaps you need a geography lesson. The storm is full of rocks. If one were to jump into the river, he would surely crack his head on the rocks. Come. I will show you how simple it is. Conceivable? Do you need proof? I have proof. A German-controlled newspaper, Nouveau Thong, published in Notified Paris, reported on the 16th of January, 1941, and I quote, Half the population of the town of Abidale and the channeled coast has disappeared in a strange suicidal way that caused the inhabitants of this town to throw themselves into the salt. End quote. Suicide, indeed. The Germans admit that our copies of the body's reveal that nearly all of the so-called suicides had been hit on the head with a blunt instrument. Now, why were the people of Abidale depopulated? Because Abidale is a channeled town needed to house troops for possible invasion of Britain and because the once-class first town is to become German. But there are other ways of Nazi depopulation. Less number dramatic. Just this is it. Starvation, exposure, disease. Encontred grief which never had enough proof. Starvation was the method. By all the social requisition, all the food in this house draw lines. You will gather everything edible and place it on the table. Here. We have nothing to do with this. We'll do it. Very well. I will serve myself. But I am telling the truth. All we have is the truth to pay to us. So let's get it once. The German army of occupation is requisitioning all the food in peace. You will be made no exception. But it's all we have. What will we do? I am sorry, Berlin, but you must realize that there are at present twice as many Greeks as we need here. Half must die.  This is our policy. Incredible? Want proof? Then see Time Magazine for November 24, 1941. And it's not only to grieve that starvation is being applied as an instrument of extermination, but to Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Norway as well. Yet, this is only a fragment of the story of Nazi depopulence. Scientific extermination reaches its most pillarless aspects in the Slavic and East Baltic states where Hitler has relegated to the lowest position in his hierarchy of races. Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf, So Poland is to be depopulated. How? The freight cars are loaded of enlightenment. I have orders to hold this train. Our freight is increased by 300. Very well, sir. But everybody puts them. The backskirts are loaded to capacity. You will have to make room someplace. My orders are to ship 300 more. Why couldn't they lie on the floor and the others on top of them? 900 miles.  I see no alternative. Here are the orders. Very well, sir. 300 more. And like some cherries, I saw what's in the battle. How many are here? 200 blister. 100 narrow cartons. I saw them go in. It took 10,000. That's one. To the right? Right. Where do you come from? Warsaw. I was in business there. I was in business, too. Are there any Jews here? I'm a Jew. I thought you'd all been killed. Oh, now they're killing the Catholics. I'm a Catholic. Where did you see we're going? To the right? To the right. Talking through it? Any children? Yes. Guys, all of a sudden. To these? They were coming to get them. They say that's Piper's there. Piper's? Yes. I keep trying to get away, but I can't. I don't like being with Piper. No, you try. You can't move. You must be going wrong. It's getting cold. I'm shivering. It wouldn't be so cold if you had something to eat. They gave me some bread when I came. I waited in the station two days. Every day they gave me bread. One piece. I had to work you out to have water. Stop it. Or I'll eat. And we're not going to the right. Maybe I was in a concentration camp. It's better than this. Look at it. Can't find things to eat. They're coming. What are we going to do? Everybody stay down. I told you I'm about to go. Go. I've been forced to stay down to go out to bed. I'm already dead here. I'm already dead here. What are you doing here? Just one... Oh, how did he die? Don't tell him. I don't regret it. I just said, he just died. And these? No, he thought the others killed him. Of course. How about that? I think he just came off to the ranch. Since the beginning, the Nazi solution of the Polish and Jewish problems along the new Eastern frontier has been much the same. A greater part of Poland is to be German and is being provided with a new set of German landlords. The Germans need, however, fully slavers to operate their states. But this number is far smaller than the existing population so the surplus has been hurried out of the country. There has been no adequate attempt to provide food, shelter, or employment for these people. They've been dying like flies.  It reapportions the population of long lines more agreeable to them. It gives the Germans slave labor. And if Hitler's victory is permanent, this slave labor will permit him to undersell every other country in the world. Fantastic? Unbelievable? No, not at all. The best evidence of all is in the writings and speeches of Adolf Hitler himself. When Hermann Ross means both the voice of destruction on page 137, we find the following speech by Adolf Hitler. We are obliged to depopulate as part of our vision of the future of the development of the techniques of depopulation. If you ask me what I mean by depopulation, I have been telling people of an iracial unit. In fact, it seems like a tremendous number of disturbances in the world without the support of these reformists. You can't do business with Hitler. You have been listening to the fifth broadcast in a series entitled You Can't Do Business with Hitler based on the experiences of Douglas Miller, who was, for 15 years, commercial attaché to the American Embassy in Berlin. Listen for the sixth episode in the series which is entitled The Soils of Europe. Douglas Miller reveals the Nazi technique of plundering and moving conquered lands. This transcribed program written by Elwood Hoffman and directed by Frank Shelfers was brought to you by the radio section of the Office for Emergency Management in Washington.


Thank you all for having me. It's truly an honor to be back here in Houston. It's been a little while and I must say, so I'm originally from India and Houston was the first place I lived. Initially it was fairly quiet, but I learned to love the place. It was a bit of sweet to leave here. And a lot of, you know, the roots for research work has sprung from here in my training and my background in epidemiology and MPH. So it's great to be back and it's an honor to be here presenting and speaking in front of all of you guys. So I'm going to talk a little bit about right ventricular pacing and what's changed over the course of the past decade or so and give you guys an introduction to where we're headed and how this could change the field going forward. You're certainly going to see much more of this in your general cardiology practices as well as an EP. So it's better that you're at least introduced to this subject. Those are my disclosures, none of which are relevant for this particular talk. We're going to talk a little bit about the adverse outcomes of right ventricular pacing. The search for alternative sites, which has then led to his spinal pacing and review how this can help us prevent some of these adverse effects, but also can this help reverse some of these adverse effects that we see with right ventricular pacing? And just a brief slide or two on our program at Rush. So we are all aware that conventional RV apical pacing is associated with structural changes within the ventricles. This then translates into adverse clinical outcomes, which include increased incidence of pacing induced cardiomyopathy and heart failure, increased incidence of atrial fibrillation, and an associated increase in cardiac mortality or all cause mortality. This was an interesting study that was published in 2004 in Jack. I don't think we can replicate this again, and I'll tell you why in a moment. So these were 12 subjects that had a normal LV ejection fraction at the beginning of the study. They all had normal AV conduction, had sinus node dysfunction, and received dual chamber pacemakers. So what they did here was they essentially, as you can see, each one of these bars I'll probably just use my pointer here. So each one of these represents a MAGA scan. So you can be certain these patients were glowing by the end of this study. So they paced these patients in the atrium at 80 beats per minute and performed a baseline MAGA scan and started pacing them in the ventricle. And within an hour of pacing them in the ventricle, there was a decline in the EF in the overall patient group. After about a week of pacing them in the ventricle, you can see that the EF declined down even further. And once they stopped pacing in the ventricle and went back to atrial pacing, the EF started improving. So there's an acute decline in the LV ejection fraction with ventricular pacing. If you look closely, none of these patients had their EF declined to down to less than 50% on average. That's probably why we don't call them pacing induced cardiomyopathy, but there are acute hemodynamic effects of ventricular pacing. And if these patients are paced for long enough in the ventricle, then these effects become more pronounced and sometimes more irreversible. The most study was the first study back in the early 2000s that assessed VVI pacing, which is pacing in the ventricles versus DDD pacing, which is what they thought was physiological back then, which as you pace the atrium and let conduction occur as long as the AV delay is not too long. This was a sub-study of the most trial. And what they found was that the burden of heart failure hospitalization increases as the burden of ventricular pacing goes up. For every 10-point increase in the ventricular pacing burden, there was a 20% increase in heart failure incidence. And at about the 40% mark, 40% burden of ventricular pacing, the incidence of heart failure hospitalizations increased by 2.54. A similar trend was observed with the incidence of atrial fibrillation. This is the study that actually drives the guidelines today, where in the guidelines of a patient already has a low LV ejection fraction and is likely to pace 40% or more in the ventricle, then they would qualify for cardiac resynchronization therapy. That comes from this paper. What I want to highlight is some of the newer data that has emerged over the last few years. So we know 40% used to be considered the gold standard for a high enough ventricular pacing burden. So this was a paper published by the pen group where they looked at patients that were paced 20% or more in the ventricle. So patients that had a normal EF to begin with paced more than 20% in the ventricle, and they decided to try and evaluate what was the likelihood of developing pacing-induced cardiomyopathy. They defined pacing-induced cardiomyopathy by a drop in ejection fraction of 10% or more from their baseline, such that the EF dropped to less than 50%. Out of 257 patients, they identified that 19.5% of patients that are paced 20% or more in the ventricle were likely to develop a pacing-induced cardiomyopathy based on this definition. That is one in five patients. What they found in a multivariate analysis was that the multivariate predictors for development of pacing-induced cardiomyopathy were elderly males and patients that had a wider native QRS to begin with. What that implies is if a patient has LVH or has an IVCD type pattern as a result, then there is already an ongoing process that's causing stress and strain on the ventricles. You add injury to that where they're pacing in the ventricle with a high percent of ventricular pacing burden, they're more likely to develop a myopathy. Then came the study from the Cleveland Clinic group. They decided to conduct a similar analysis. Between 2000 and 2014, they had 823 patients in the study. The only difference was their definition of development of pacing-induced cardiomyopathy was a little bit more conservative. They said we're only going to take patients, of course, it's a given that all of these studies ensured that there was no other potential etiology for the cardiomyopathy and that these patients were paced a lot in the ventricle. They only included patients that had their LV ejection fraction drop to 40% or less, so fairly conservative. What they found was out of 823 patients with sinus node dysfunction or AV block that were paced in the ventricle, they found that 12.3% of these patients developed a pacing-induced cardiomyopathy. If this study used the same cutoff as the previous study from the Penn group, then the incidence of pacing-induced cardiomyopathy was closer to 15%. As you can see, about a third of these patients underwent an upgrade to a CRT device and about 90% of these patients that underwent an upgrade to a CRT system actually were considered responders with a significant improvement in their ejection fraction. Think about this carefully. If you could pace somewhere in the ventricles where you could avoid pacing-induced cardiomyopathy, then that would be the right way to go. The second thing is we are sometimes very quick to upgrade these patients to a CRT defibrillator system when 90% of these patients might actually improve their EF and they may not require that defibrillator. That's something that is important to talk to our patients about when we're making these decisions, about an upgrade of their system or a revision of their system. Now again, they looked at the old, you know, the gold standard which was 40% or more in terms of pacing burden and you can see patients that are paced more than 40% at worse. But again, based on the previous study from the Penn group, they said let's look at 20% or more burden and you can see that even with the RV pacing burden of 20% or more, the likelihood of developing a pacing-induced cardiomyopathy was still fairly significant. So based on this study, they found two multivariate predictors. One was patients that were paced 20% or more in the ventricle and the second was patients that had a lower pre-implant LVEF. So if you have a patient with an EF of 45 or 50% to begin with and they pace a lot in the RV, they're the most likely to develop a pacing-induced cardiomyopathy. So then we started looking for alternative sites. We said, okay, RV Apex is not a good place to place these leads. How about we place a lead somewhere on the RV septum or on the RV outflow track? So the RV septum and outflow track were evaluated in multiple studies and unfortunately the results were fairly conflicting. There was no significant difference between RV Apex or RV outflow track when it came to hard endpoints or mortality or heart failure hospitalization. This was a meta-analysis that looked at all of these studies that are available comparing RV apical versus RV non-apical sites for ventricular pacing and what they found was in those patients that had a low EF, RV non-apical pacing, is probably better when it comes to preserving LV ejection fraction. But for those patients that had a preserved EF to begin with, there was no significant benefit with RV non-apical pacing compared to RV apical pacing. So then as a field, we decided to take it to the next level. We said, what about bi-VCRT? Now again, you guys are all aware that CRT with bi-ventricular pacing is a gold standard for patients with left-punner branch block and a cardiomyopathy. But based on current guidelines, those patients that are placed more likely to pace more than 40% in the ventricles and have a low EF are also good candidates for bi-VCRT. But what about those patients with a low normal EF or a normal EF? So the first study that analyzed this was the Block HF trial. And for those of you who are updated with your guidelines based on this study, there is a new indication in the guidelines for use of bi-V pacing for patients with an EF between 35 to 50%. Why is that? So this study was performed by Ann Curtis and was a US-based study where they included about 670 odd patients that were randomized to RV pacing versus bi-V pacing. All of these patients were patients that had an EF that was less than 50%. So 35 to 50% was a predominant group. Patients that were likely to pace in the ventricle more than 40% of the time. And what they found was when you looked at the primary composite endpoint of all cause mortality or heart failure or increase in the LVN systolic volume, bi-ventricular pacing in yellow did better than RV pacing. So this is where the current guidelines reflect that bi-V pacing might be beneficial for this patient cohort. But at the same time, there was another trial that was happening outside of the US called the bi-opace trial. Included 1810 patients, one of the largest studies conducted to date in bi-ventricular pacing, randomized again to bi-V versus RV. And what they found was the curves were bang on top of each other, that there was no difference in the primary endpoint of mortality or heart failure hospitalization. So then they said, let's look at the patients with an EF less than 50%, just like Block HF did. And still there was no separation of these curves for, there was no statistical difference between bi-V versus RV in terms of these heart endpoints. Now the interesting thing is this study has never been published because it was a negative trial. It's the largest trial that was conducted, post presented at ESC in 2014, but never been published in a, in a journal. So that then brought us to what we refer to as conduction system pacing. And his bundle pacing was the first step along this way. So what is his bundle pacing? It's the implantation of a permanent pacing lead at the bundle of his, which is part of the AV conduction system at a site that is distilled to where the AV block is. So the hope is to preserve normal biventricular activation or to potentially even normalize biventricular activation in patients that have bundle branch block and we'll talk about how that's even possible. And then the second thing is, could this then translate into a prevention of some of these adverse clinical outcomes and maybe even reverse some of these adverse clinical outcomes in patients that develop a myopathy by pacing or other reasons. So just a quick slide or two on the anatomy of this region. So here is an anatomical specimen, the right atrium on the top, the right ventric on the bottom, the tricuspid annulus. This then becomes the AV node and that continues as the AV bundle or the his bundle, which travels on the lower portion of the membranous septum. Now, when you look at this more carefully, there are two portions of the his bundle. One is the atrial portion and one is the ventricular portion. If you look at the relationship of this to the membranous septum, there is a portion of this his bundle that is atrial. We've all heard of the Gerbodi defect. Why does that happen? Because the tricuspid valve is displaced more apically compared to the mitral valve. So there's a portion of the membranous septum that communicates between the right atrium and the left ventricle. The his bundle runs on the inferior portion of that membranous septum. So as part of it is atrial, before it becomes a ventricular structure and then branches out into the right bundle branch, which is a continuation of the his bundle, and the left bundle fascicles take off on the left side of the muscular septum. Now, therefore there are publications that demonstrate that if disease is proximal enough where the level of block is maybe in the AV node, these leads can actually be placed on the atrial side of the tricuspid valve and you won't deal with issues such as tricuspid regurgitation. The other advantage of doing something like this is that there is no way you can cause a perforation. Cardiac perforation is almost unheard of with his bundle base and if you actually record the electrical conduction system and place a lead there, it can cause phrenic nerve stimulation because the phrenic nerve runs outside the heart, not on the septum. So there are clear advantages of that, of this technique from an anatomical perspective, but we'll talk about whether or not this actually does result in a clinical benefit. So just to highlight, this is what RV apico pacing would look like. You see it's like creating artificial iotrogenic left bundle branch block because you're pacing the RV before the LV and that causes dyssynchrony. On the other hand, biventricular pacing is also not ideal, especially for patients that have a narrow QRS and baseline because you're creating two artificial wave fronts. One is RV endocardial and the second wave front is epicardial on the LV side. While intrinsic normal cardiac activation occurs or biventricular activation occurs from endocardium to epicardium, so you're reversing that wave front. And finally, with his bundle pacing, you place a lead distilled to the level of block and you can actually utilize the distilled hisperkingee axis to activate the ventricles in a synchronized fashion and maintain biventricular activation. So just a few examples. So here's a patient with a very long PR interval and rate-related Venkibok. When he exercised, he developed AV Venkibok and was symptomatic. So he came in for an implant and we placed the lead at the bundle of his. This is the PACE TCG. So for those of you who've never seen his bundle pacing, it looks just like your intrinsic QRS. In fact, when we first started doing this about a decade ago or so, we'd get a lot of calls from telemetry where it would say a pacemaker is not capturing because it looks like the pacer is, you know, there's a pacing spike and then there's a QRS that looks like your intrinsic QRS. But that is actually capturing the his bundle followed by the 30, 40, 50 milliseconds it takes to get down the hisperkingee axis and activate the ventricles. So that's the PACE QRS. And I'm going to overlay on top of this the patients' intrinsic QRS in blue. And they look exactly identical. When a patient that has an intact distal hisperkingee system, you can take advantage of the hisperkingee axis. There's another patient with interpreted high-grade AV block. And you can see that there's high-grade AV block with wide escape rhythms and he presented the dizziness to an outside hospital and this was picked up on a monitor. And this was his final PACE QRS. Now again, when patients have high-grade AV block, we have methods and ways of identifying that we are distilled to the site of where block is when we do these cases in the lab. But then yes, I showed you some beautiful examples of beautiful ECGs and we talked about theoretically how this could be beneficial, but does this really result in improved outcomes for our patients? So this is a summary of all the data there is in a paper that we just published in Nature Reviews on this topic that summarizes some of the early work. The first study was done in the year 2000. It was a very small concept study published in circulation, but the success rates were really low. And then we published our first work in 2015 and somewhere around that time, we had a more dedicated delivery system and a better mapping technique and success rates have only gotten better from about 80-85% to about 92% in more recently reported literature. So I'm going to show a couple of these studies just highlighting the differences, but I want to caution you about something. This has become a movement. We call it physiological pacing. It's become a movement and most of this work is physician-initiated. There has not been a lot of funding for a lot of these studies because there's not much to gain from a manufacturer perspective. We're working with the NIH to get, I'll show you some of this data, but we're working closely with the NIH to get funding for large-scale randomized control trial, but I'm going to caution you, none of these studies to date are randomized control multi-center studies. So this was the first study we conducted. This was a prospective evaluation of his spinal pacing versus RV apicope pacing or RV pacing. So 192 patients where at one site, we attempted his spinal pacing on all patients for any pacemaker indication sinus node dysfunction or AV block. At the other site, everyone received RV pacing. We were successful in achieving his spinal pacing in 80% of these cases. These were cases we performed in 2009 and 2010. So the early experience of his spinal pacing. We looked at patients that were paced 40% or more in the ventricles. And this is what we found in a very small cohort of patients that heart failure hospitalizations were almost negligible with his spinal pacing while they were pretty high with right ventricular pacing. There was also a trend towards the separation of curves when it came to mortality outcomes, but this study was not powered for and we were not trying to assess mortality outcomes as a pre specified endpoint. It was just a signal towards something that we couldn't explain. So then we did a long term follow up in this patient cohort, more than five year average follow up. And all of these patients came back for follow up echocardiograms. What we found was in blue is baseline EFs and in red is follow up EFs. When he took the entire cohort of patients, his spinal pacing demonstrated that the EF remained stable. The group with RV pacing, there was a decline in EF, which was statistically significant. Now we said, let's look at those patients that were paced a lot in the ventricle because we anticipate that those are the ones that are going to suffer the most. And clearly in that group, the decline in EF was even more significant with RV pacing, while with his spinal pacing, the EFs from still remain stable. In the intention to treat analysis, there was no statistical difference in all comers, but those patients that were paced more than 40%, there was an increased incidence of heart failure hospitalization or mortality with RV pacing compared to his spinal pacing. Now look at the N0, 59 versus 60 patients. In such a small cohort of patients in a prospective evaluation, we've been able to demonstrate a significant difference in heart endpoints. And this is the on treatment analysis where the difference was significant both in the patients that were paced and in all comers in the cohort as well. But then we said this was the early work when the success rates were low and we were still learning a lot about his spinal pacing. So then we got better at it and we did a much larger study with pre specified endpoints, 765 patients, 332 underwent an attempt at his spinal pacing and 433 with RV pacing. This time our success rate was higher, it was 92%, an average follow up of two years. We demonstrated with a primary outcome of death, heart failure hospitalization or need for upgrade to biventricular pacing that his spinal pacing in blue did better than RV pacing in red. And this was a late breaking clinical trial at ACC last year. In those patients that were paced more than 20% in the ventricle that difference was even more significant. So at least some of the data suggests that his spinal pacing might be better when it comes to preventing some of these adverse clinical outcomes. How about patients that develop adverse clinical outcomes or already have a cardiomyopathy? Can it help with those patients? Let's look at an example. This was a 75 year old gentleman. He is the father of one of our CCU nurses and she came to me saying he's in Florida and his physicians there tell him that he needs a pacemaker because he has sinus nor dysfunction. I said he has sinus pauses, his heart rates are 40s, he needs a pacemaker, he should get it done. So he gets a dual chamber pacemaker implanted in March of 2017 in Florida. And two weeks later he comes to see me because he's back from Florida and she's like I'd like for him to establish care with him. His device has checked and I'm like he's pacing 90% in the ventricle. I thought he had sinus nor dysfunction. Why is he pacing 90% of the time in the ventricle? Turns out his PR interval was 37380 milliseconds. So just for you, the people in the room that actually refer these patients for pacemakers, if you have a PR interval that's more than 330, 350 milliseconds and they get a dual chamber pacemaker unless you program them in an AAI mode there is no good way to award ventricle in a patient. So I said fine, we'll see what happens. We have programmed him AAI and he started Venkibarking. So I had to program the dual chamber device back on and I followed him carefully and this is what happened. In blue is his pacing burden. So you see his 99% paced, 92% paced, 100% paced at every three month follow-up. And this is what happened to his EF was 60% to begin with 55 to 60% becomes 50 to 55%, 45 to 50%, 35 to 40% over the course of a year. And this is what happens to his AFib burden goes from 6% to 12% to 19% to 31%. So now what came first? The chicken or the egg was at the AFib that's making predisposing him to a cardiomyopathy or is it the pacing that is leading to all of these issues? We couldn't tease it out. So put him on amioro on hoping that we'll suppress the AFib and then we'll know if his EF recovers or not. Unfortunately, wasn't able to tolerate amioro on and so we bring him in, we do an AFib ablation, take him off the amio and he does well. We repeat an EF still down. So we bring him in. Ideally a patient like this with an EF of 35% would probably get an upgrade to a biventricular CRT, maybe even a defibrillator like we know. So this is his RV paced ECG with a QRS duration of 210 milliseconds.  He has such a nice beautiful narrow QRS. Can anyone tell me why he has T-wave inversions? Any of the fellows in the room? Memory, right? So he's paced a lot of the time in the ventricle and so when you turn off pacing he has T-wave memory. So bring him in and this is what we do. We take the RV lead out from the ventricle because it's about a year and a half old so it comes out easily and we just place a new lead at the bundle of his which is where you'd anticipate here is the tricuspid valve plane. This is where you expect the his bundle and you can see in the left lateral view it's nicely pointing towards the septum. This is his his bundle paced ECG about 100 milliseconds and this was in red is his intrinsic QRS with the T-wave memory changes that we showed you again. So what happened to him? So this is where we performed an AFib ablation. His EF still remained at 35 to 40 percent. His AFib burden was zero. He was still pacing 100 percent of the time and so we revised his lead to the his bundle position. The same dual chamber pacemaker, the same can all we did was reposition the lead and his EF is now 55 to 60 percent. There's no cardiac symptoms. So is it possible to minimize health care expense and reverse some of these effects? Is it possible to minimize health care expense and preserve LVEF, a void heart failure which is one of the biggest reasons for health care expenses in cardiology today? Maybe it is. This was a study we did. This was multi-center experience looking at patients that had exactly this sort of a situation where they were paced in the ventricle, developed a pacing induced cardiomyopathy and underwent an upgrade or a revision of their system to his bundle pacing. This is their baseline QRS on average as a group, as a cohort. With RV pacing their average QRS width increases to about 180 milliseconds and with his bundle pacing it narrows it in. Their EF was normal to begin with. Their EF declined to average of 34 percent with RV pacing and after his bundle pacing the average EF improved to 48 percent. And there was a significant improvement in NYHA functional class after an upgrade to his bundle pacing. So with a dual chamber system just revising the lead might be sufficient to reverse cardiomyopathy in this cohort. So let's talk about another area that's gaining a lot of interest which is CRT. So we have a new term that we use that's called his CRT which means the re-synchronization using his bundle pacing. So there's BIV CRT and there's his CRT. Let me show you a few examples and we'll talk about how that's even possible. So this was one of my first referrals for CRT when I started as a new attending. She's 94 years old. She's a non-eschemic myopathy. Her EF went from 40-45 percent to 30-35 percent to down to 20 percent. NYHA classed three to four symptoms and left on a branch block as you can see. She can barely make it from her bed to her bedroom door without having to stop a couple of times because she gets so vented. Now this is not the ideal first consult because she walks into my clinic. She walks in with a walker. She weighs 42 kilos. I can see every one of her ribs so I'm wondering where this device would go if I were to put one. And the best part of it all was she walks in with three family members. All three are physicians. Okay so it's a good thing in the beginning of your career because you have an hour to spend on a new consult but you don't have that as you get busier. So I spent enough time with them walking them through the scenarios and explaining to them that I don't think that giving her a defibrillator would be the ideal thing to do in this situation. It's all about quality of life. So if we can do something to improve her quality of life maybe there's value to it. So we talked about achieving narrowing of this QRS with his bundle pacing with a dual chamber pacemaker and if that wasn't successful then we'll put a biventricular pacemaker to achieve re-synchronization. This was her dual chamber his bundle paste ECG. Do you see here she has left on a branch block of 176 milliseconds and with one single lead we've achieved re-synchronization of the ventricles with a paste QRS of 90 milliseconds. And for all the echocardiographers in the room this was her baseline echocardiogram pre-implant. Three months after implantation we repeated an echocardiogram and the EF after looking at multiple views was reported at 50 to 55 percent. She's NYHA class one now comes to see me in clinic she's still alive and now comes to see me in clinic with a cane because she has rheumatoid arthritis and has no cardiac symptoms whatsoever. So now let me show you a couple of cases of where his bundle pacing can really help with CRT and this is probably fairly valuable for the EPs in the room because this is how we've been doing this. So we all have patients that get you know be either referred out or get referred to us for CRT. This is a classic example an ischemic cardiomyopathy with an EF of 30 percent class three symptoms and a left bundle of 170 milliseconds. Patients 81 years old. So not diving too deep but the simple fact is we tried for three hours to place a biventricular or CS lead in and failed. And this was my first case as an EP fellow I've been doing his bundle pacing since I was a cardiology fellow. And this was my first bivy case as an EP fellow and after and this was one of the best implantors I know to date. And after seeing him struggle for three hours I gathered the courage to say before we send this patient for an epicardial surgical system would you want to try his bundle pacing. And he was like at this point I will try anything. So this this is how we do these we record the his electrogram so you see a atrial electrogram a his and a ventricular electrogram at this location. We place the lead there this was the final paste QRS. Plurotime of one minute and procedure time of four minutes after trying for three hours plus for a CS lead. And this this patient was a super responder despite having an ischemic cardiomyopathy his EF improved to 55 percent and YHA class one. We call this rescue his CRT which means if you fail a CS lead implant then we can try to do this as a bailout strategy. But here's another example of what we now refer to as primary his CRT which is there's a patient with a non ischemic cardiomyopathy you know there are some features of this QRS that look like a clip typical classic left bottom branch block but there are some that don't. And so in these cases what we do is we try to prove to ourselves that what we're doing is the best strategy for this patient. So here's an example of what we do. So we basically get into the CS like it's stuck but in either case we get into the CS we place a wire sorry we place a wire into the lateral CS branch and we measure what we call the QLV which tells us how delayed is the activation on the lateral wall of the left ventricle. You see here this is the CS venogram and this is the wire placed in the lateral left ventricle and we have a the QLV is 120 milliseconds. I'm not going to play the videos I'll just show you guys the images. So here is we're trying to map the bundle of his and you see an A, H and a V. This is a proximal location because the A is big and so we don't like this part we move on to a slightly superior location. You still see an A, H, V but the A is smaller and you paste here and the QRS looks narrower and the QLV gets shorter from 120 milliseconds to 90 milliseconds. And so we say let's map it on a little bit more and so we find this distal location where the A is very small there's a his and a V, fluoroscopically this is even more superior but when we paste here look at that QRS duration and look at what happens to the QLV which means the lateral wall is activated almost the same time as the RV septum. This proves that there is no better way to activate this ventricle than through the conduction system with an endo to epi approach. And this patient had a final base QRS of 88 milliseconds and is also a super responder with a normalization of her EF. So this is primary his bundle pacing for CRT what I showed you earlier was rescue his bundle pacing for CRT. Now how is this possible? We published on the mechanisms of how this is possible but to simplify things for you there's this concept of what we call the longitudinal dissociation within the his bundle. So the way I explain this to my patients is the AV conduction system is like being on a freeway. You're on a freeway with four lanes you suddenly hit the tow booth the tow booth is the AV node after you cross the tow booth the freeway divides in about a half a mile into lanes going west and lanes going east but you start seeing signs right away if you're going west take the right two lanes if you're going east take the left two lanes the same concept applies within the bundle of his the fascicles or the fibers that are about to become the right bundle branch and the left bundle branch are starting to separate and they had their insulated fibers that are starting to branch out already within this common area of the bundle of his and 85 to 90 percent of the time the disease is actually located within these proximal fibers so this is the model that we published so if you look at these fibers that are predestined to become the left bundle and the right bundle branch and diseases in this region if you can place a lead distilled to that area of disease you can completely narrow this left bundle branch block pattern that completely narrows with his bundle base so it's this concept of longitudinal dissociation within the his bundle and disease that is located within those proximal fibers that you can overcome with his bundle base so here is a summary of all the outcomes data there is on his crt and you can see we've done a lot of work in this with two big publications in this region this was the biggest study to date or series to date i should be specific we won the best publication of the award for this paper at hrs this past year and this is a multi-center experience of using his bundle pacing as an alternative for cardiac resynchronization what we had was we had two groups we had patients that we performed his bundle pacing as a rescue strategy like i showed you earlier and a second group where we perform his bundle pacing as a primary strategy and these were all comers with various crt indications and we had a success rate of about 90 percent in achieving crt with his bundle pacing what's interesting is that there were eight patients in the study and we now have 16 or 17 patients there were non-responders to traditional by v crt that had successful his bundle pacing for crt and six out of these eight patients are now responders the you can see significant improvements in lvef improvements in nyj functional class the overall response to his bundle pacing was 73 clinical response 70 plus echocardiographic response and a 40 percent super responder rate which are higher than traditional by v crt numbers that have been reported now another unique patient population that doesn't do very well with by v crt is those patients that have a cardiomyopathy and have right bundle branch block because biventricular crt is going to resynchronize the lve doesn't do much for the rv and so we performed a study on patients with right bundle branch block and cardiomyopathy and you can see a significant decrease in qrs duration improvement in lvef except for three patients in this patient cohort overall response rate was 76 percent echocardiographic response rate was 70 percent and super responder rate was 20 percent the interesting thing from this study was that even those patients that had a qrs duration between 120 and 150 milliseconds and a right bundle branch block also had a very high response rate which is not something we've seen in any reported study with by v crt i'm showing you all of this data because this is a signal this might become an alternative for cardiac resynchronization therapy and maybe both of by v and his might be available we might pick and choose which is best for our patient in a given scenario at the present time there is only one pilot randomized study that was just presented at heart rhythm that we were a part of it was called his sink that was only 40 patients but it did show us that his crt had better clinical echocardiographic response rates compared to by v crt with an average improvement in lvef of about 9.5 percent compared to 5.5 percent with by v crt this was core labs used for ecgs and echoes in a very good study that was randomized control but only 40 patients so more data needs to be available before this becomes you know an accepted standard of care so our experience at rush we've done about 273 attempted cases of which 265 have been successful with a 97 success rate as you can see majority of our patients are bundle branch block wide qrs just because of the referral patterns that we have only a quarter of all these patients receive the crt device though because as i showed you there are patients that you can achieve this with a dual chamber pacemaker and if they don't have any scar and their ef is borderline we don't put in defibrillators for them and we've done about 42 patients now with his bundle pacing and av node ablations if you have a patient that has a narrow qrs to begin with and you're going to do an av nodal ablation because they're elderly and they cannot undergo any affib ablation then putting in a biventricular crt for them is creating this synchrony so this in my opinion becomes the best strategy for that patient cohort now how has this impacted the guidelines like i said there are no randomized controlled trials to date and yet we have a class 2a indication in the guidelines based on all the data that i showed you this has created a movement in the ep community we have a program at rush where we have physicians that come to train and get proctored on his bundle pacing and at the present time there is a wait list of 700 physicians waiting to get trained and we've already trained over 350 400 so it's a class 2a indication for those patients with an ef between 35 and 50 on an anticipated pacing more than 40 where you could either choose his bundle pacing or buy v crt for that patient cohort it's a class 2b indication for those patients with av block at the level of the av known and these are these indications are coming based on the data we have and unfortunately we don't have large-scale randomized controlled trials because those studies will take millions of dollars and there is not much to gain from an industry perspective but to conclude are we pacing has been associated with adverse clinical outcomes including atrial fibrillation heart failure cardiomyopathy and associated mortality the search for an alternative site has led to his bundle pacing which is a more physiological form of ventricular activation his bundle pacing has demonstrated superior clinical outcomes in comparison with conventional are we pacing although i would caution you that these data are not randomized control and his crt might be an alternative to buy v crt but this does need further investigation i'll stop there thank you for your attention


Ooh, it's a thicky, too. Not thicky, but it's like a patch auto. Vertical. Rourers. Rourers. Oh, MLB Logo Man Auto. Corbin Burr. Milwaukee's Carl C. That's fun, man. Jesus. Yeah, dude. That's for real. Everybody can hit monsters. Mom, get the camera. Hell, yeah, dude. One of the best pitchers in the league. Gorgeous. That's Brew Crew. It can be a little tough to get. It seemed like the Brewers in the random. But hey, even they have big hits. Ricky Audit of 50 is Anthony Volpe for the Yanks. Nice.


Do you need a fallow's day gift? How about a rustic hat rack for $25? We can show you how we made ours today. Fallow's Day. Our dad has like 20 million hats, so we're making a really big hat rack. As you can see. The supply list is easy. We use this two foot by four foot quarter inch piece of plywood. We got these six foot fence posts from Home Depot. And we got these half inch bolts as hooks for the hats. A couple of stains for to stain the wood. Step one, we're going to cut these fence boards into one and two foot sections. Pretty brandy tonight. Step two, we're putting these smocks on so we don't get any stain on our shirts. We're going to stain these boards three different color stains. I feel like my art teacher. We're going to stain the plywood so you don't see it. Give it five minutes to dry and then wipe it down. We have to stain off. Step three, we take our stain boards and organize them in a random pattern onto the backing. Alright, now let's glue and tack the boards. We're going to use these bolts to hang the hats on them. Now time to stagger the hats nine inches apart. Now we're going to drill a pilot hole. Now time to put the bolts in. Last one, we're just tightening them down with this wrench. Hands tight, not too tight. We don't want to crack the wood. Oh, it's heavy. Well, this stain was too wet for the stencil so we'll just have to do the frame now. Alright, last step, we're just putting these one-by-twos around the edge to clean it up a bit. Alright, since we didn't do the stencil, that was the last step. We're back for $25 and a couple of boards.