Hey guys, it's Nate, AKA The Foot Accountant. Welcome back with the channel second upload on the day. Cheeky little double upload for your Tuesday. Hopefully it's a good one for you guys. Hopefully you're enjoying these upgrade SBCs that are out in the game right now. That's what I've been doing this evening. I've been crafting these cards 81 to 87 because I am trying to get myself an icon upgrade SBC sorted for a lot cheaper. I've got two of the four squads done and we're almost there. So I'll be opening that here pretty soon. I've been really not trying to spend a lot of coins on it and I've been pretty successful in that. And I've actually packed a couple of decent things. This Usman right here got this earlier today. Untradable first owner from the 81 to 87 upgrade. I honestly find those 81 to 87s basically the best out of all those upgrade packs in the store. The 81 pluses are really good but they just cost so much. So I've been doing a lot of the 81 to 87s and they've been paying out pretty well for me. If you checked out the other video this morning with the pack opening kind of comparing the two SBCs the 82 plus and the 81 to 87. There is a good kind of reasoning and explanation I do have in there for why I choose that that pack and why I think it might be the best bang for your buck. But I want to get on the market today and talk about a few things maybe I'm regarding those SBCs and also talking about a crazy crazy thing that happened tonight with this guy right here Mr. Van Basten. I don't know if you guys saw there was probably a message that popped up on Ultimate Team for you guys when you got in either last night or today when you're watching this video. But he said something that was not good and I'm not really going to really go into it but EA has decided to take his card out of the game. So they put this message up in the game. They didn't really say anything about it. I don't think the message was like put up in the game. And I think on Twitter a couple people tweeted it out. But I don't even know if EA tweeted out yet. He didn't tweet it out. It just showed up in the game. This was the actual message. This is on the companion app a screenshot from Twitter. But it basically says we are aware of the recent comments made by Van Basten and they will suspend his icon item from being available in packs, SBCs and foot draft until further notice. So they're going to give us some more info on this. But obviously this is a huge thing that happened today. And as you can see I was actually on the game when that message popped up. I saw that right away. I went to the market to see what his card was doing. And I honestly don't feel too bad about flipping a card like this. I bought it for 500k flat and I sold it literally minutes later for 920. It was crazy that he went up that high. I knew he was going to go up. I was hoping to get a decent icon flip out of him. Maybe he would go from 500k to 600k. And I would make 60k on the card or whatever. Maybe 70k. But I was shocked to see his price go up to a million. It's since fallen back down. But people were buying this card around a million coins. I don't like making coins off of stuff when there's like tragedy or we've had past tragedies happen with some guys in FIFA where their cards have been taken off the game. Or even earlier this year when Andre Gomes got hurt. He had the bad injury against Spurs. People went and bought his card up. That's the kind of stuff I'm not about. But this one was an icon. And the thing that he said I looked into it a little bit. It was not good. But I don't want to go into it too much. But I think that it might have been taken out of context a little bit. But whatever the case it did make his card rise. And some people don't like that you make coins off stuff like that. I wouldn't do it if it was like a tragic event or something like that. But it was something that he said it was not good. But it did make his card rise a little bit. And I was lucky enough to make a few coins off of that. And it's FIFA. It's not related to real life. So I'll take my coins. That's kind of how I feel about that. I don't feel like I'm supporting him in any way by trading his card at all. But if you guys have any comments about that throw them down in the description. That's a crazy situation. We've never seen that before. So I'd be curious to see what your guys' thoughts are on that. But putting that aside I want to talk about some stuff on the market at the moment. The best of team of the week cards are almost out of packs. So if you're trying to smash some SBCs some upgrade packs before these go away to try to hit one of them you don't have much time left. And a lot of these guys have continued their slow rise out of the weekend of their lowest price time kind of being on that Saturday night zone. Again I want to look at this Ben Yetter card because I think there's a lot of people that haven't invested in these best of team of the week cards. As I look around Twitter and as I see people talking about stuff there's a lot of people that have bought into these cards. You can see today he's around 200,000 coins.  But he is getting close to going out of packs. And I was incorrect about this before. They go out of packs actually in like not very long at all. I think it's actually they go out of packs at like when is it best of team of the week players are available in packs now. I think they go out of packs actually like at 2pm UK on Tuesday right? On Tuesday yeah. Let me see if I can back out and go back in. But it's not at 6pm UK like I said before. Since they came into packs early last Friday they're leaving packs like at the same time. So I'm not sure if it's going to say here on the loading screen when it pops up. Yes 10 hours and 27 minutes. So these cards are almost out of packs. So you don't have much time to pack them in like an upgrade pack or whatever. But go for that if you're trying. But I do think these cards are going to rise a little bit more out of packs. I don't think it's going to be a substantial amount though. I'm a little bit scared just because of the pure supply on these cards. Literally the bignetter. I mean this guy was getting packed and I am panicked so at the same time on Saturday so freaking much. It just does not want me. I don't want to buy his card because of the amount of supply that I know he has. 85 rated. He was the lowest rated player in best of the team of the week. But he's also one of the most popular. So we'll see what happens. He could rise up. I could maybe see like 230 or 240 on Thursday. But I feel like after Thursday rewards his price might stay pretty stagnant because people that want this card for their team they probably already bought it on the weekend because that's when a lot of these card prices were low or they panic sold it when the team week SBC came out and then they bought it again. That's why I feel like his price has jumped up some of the most amount. I also kind of mistimed or mis-said yesterday that he just jumped up a lot on his own. But the Fabrigas SBC as was pointed out did help his card rise up a little bit as well which does make sense. So the best of team week stuff. I do think you'll start to see it trickle up. But then maybe stay stagnant and actually go down for some of the upper tier cards maybe on a guy like Mbappe especially this Mbappe card actually because I just don't know how much demand there is for this card being in the same position as Neymar. If you're unless you're rocking like a three back formation I just don't see this Mbappe card going up a lot because he shares that position with Neymar and unless you're going to play a couple guys off Kim you're probably not going to put Neymar and Mbappe in the same squad. Again unless you're running like a three at the back formation not five three at the back formation with like a left mid and a left wing where you could get both of those guys in your squad. But other than that I just think Neymar takes the cake over a guy like Mbappe. Speaking of Neymar what is his price at the moment? What's going on with this card? Some of these guys were lower over the weekend. Looks like Neymar is actually still decently low a million thirty so he's right around a million thirty a million forty which is pretty it's on a low-ish end for him and again I think you're gonna see a lot of stuff shoot up this weekend okay Neymar ten forty right there ten forty ten forty five so I think you're gonna see stuff probably continue to rise up through the rest of this week in this weekend and that's what I wanted to kind of focus on in today's video was the stuff that's going to be going up throughout the rest of this week. I told you guys last night during squad battle rewards to pick up on some of these higher rated cards the 87s are up a little bit the 88s are up a little the 89s are up a little I think actually the the best bang for your buck might have been some of these 86s at like um at like 14 000 coins maybe a little bit lower than that on bid I know these guys did hit that price last night so they were pretty cheap which is nice it's good um but you can make coins on those I think they're gonna keep rising throughout the rest this week uh with the icon SBCs being there people having coins to do those but I really want to focus on some of these team of the week cards and out of packs specials now row to the final cards sancho I bought one um as you probably saw I think I had on my trance list and showed you guys I bought it for 187 he's 212 right now so he's risen nicely some of these guys won Jesus has risen nicely um and some of these other guys from row to the final two have risen because people know wow Memphis to pie 340 goodness gracious gretzger at 888 unreal that card is just really rare and really overpriced goodness that's way up there man holy cow but what the gist of what I was getting at with these cards is uh just all informs in general they're going to be great flips this week a lot of cards are going to be great for flipping uh I'll show you my trance list right now when the market is high like this people have coins and they're looking to try players out and they're looking to upgrade their squads I uh I posted on the twitter about this cruise I bought it on stream for 279 it was a striker position change uh so just be aware of cards that you see pop up like on sniper on bid with the position changes you can look and see are they actually selling for more with a certain position change in that case for that cruise it was I've been trading with the shesney card got all these around 40 000 coins or below sold one for a lazy buyer at 50 and a couple at 46 this saul was bought at 57k sold at 70 these delix were all bought at 37k sold at 43 or 44 and this riccardo perre was bought at 57k as well packed this to hella and then I have a bunch of other cards still up for listing have some 82s and one mata but as you can tell on my transfer targets I've been looking at a lot of special cards and uh that's kind of the way of trading at the moment I think it's a fantastic way to trade these cards are fluctuating now a lot more because you know maybe there's a couple hours where the cards get low that's why I had some shesneys today I was watching this card a lot I missed that one on bid at 40k that would have been a nice deal to try to flip um because this is a kind of card that fluctuates a ton it really is it was from a team of the week it was pretty rare 41k I'm going to add that to the targets and if that gets any lower I'm going to be looking at purchasing that card because that's kind of he's getting pretty low same thing with delict under under like 39 38,000 coins for delict is is a really good place to buy this card on playstation and these cards are fluctuating a lot and you can really tell which cards are fluctuating a lot based on their footprint trends and just based on how desirable of a card they are like this delict card with the dynamic image desirable card we're probably getting a couple siria informs this week so you can keep an eye out for those and maybe those cards kind of rise a little bit this week so again if you're looking to trade this week if you're looking to do some stuff on the market take a look over here on the team of week squads I mean you can focus on screams you can look at road to the finals you can look at just normal team of the week cards maybe just kind of hunker down on like a five to ten cards and that's a great way wow cruises 319 see these guys these guys fluctuate all the time um my crew sold today at 320 when he wasn't even anywhere close to 320k he was just 290 an hour ago 320 now he was like 290 283 all day he's actually 319 that's crazy that's absolutely crazy but these cards are all rare and they fluctuate a lot and just now it's like the optimal time to trade with him with the way that the market is with a lot of coins yes people are kind of focused on doing sbc's crafting a lot of people are crafting right now that's a very low plight price for hamas rodriquez actually um i was looking to buy an icon tonight to try to flip an icon maybe but if i can get that price for hamas i'm going to take you guys over here to the game there are none wow that undercut at 260 for hamas was a really low undercut then because there there's not even any at 283 now man that was a big undercut all right i'm going to add this to the transfer targets and watch that one as well um but yeah people are still doing those icon sbc's but that's kind of taking their eyes off of like trading with the market because so many people are worried about crafting right now everybody's worried about getting high rated pack pulls buying the rare golds getting non rare golds or whatever to do these upgrades and it kind of takes less people away from the trading scene i mean myself included for a little bit tonight i was focused on um getting cards in these packs and just doing pack after pack to for after pack and trying to you know pack some good cards that i can recycle into sbc's and that actually probably you know hurt my my trading time a little bit to be honest and i just think that's where a lot of people are are spending their time right now on the market so in diddy 50 000 coins for his inform right about there which is pretty normal with the shadow though 50k what is in diddy with the shadow again shadow and and uh chem style trading is perfect right now as well because uh people have coins they're they're not afraid or scared to buy stuff that might um that might have that shadow or chem style they have the coins and they're able to spend on those types of things i'm going to watch this here if that if i see one like a little bit lower let me actually look at this graph let's go look at indy's graph i know that one has a shadow on it and that's what i'm looking to trade with um but if he goes to like 52k his normal card during the day at all 50k 55 50.1 so he doesn't move that much this guy just kind of might be one of those more forgotten type informs there's been a lot of informs that have kind of replaced him since then but uh chemistry style with the shadows with the hunters is still a great great way to make some coins uh on stuff like that this week again that's what i'm going to be focused on this week if you guys bought cards on sunday night make sure you have them listed i've had a lot of cards sell for lazies um basically this cruise was a lazy this jezney was a lazy this towel was technically a lazy as well uh so make sure you're listing your cards up for lazy buyers if you bought some stuff on sunday night kind of heading out of the promo and then again if you still have some 82s or 83s or 84s watch and see if you can get those cards out of uh get those cards out here the next day or so i think just to be careful um we're probably gonna have another team of the week it doesn't look like a very good one van dyke could be in team of the week but other than that it does not look like a very solid team of the week upcoming so i'm a little bit skeptical about that and what that would mean for the market i want to talk about one other specific inform in terms of team of the week as well Theo Hernandez's inform has fallen out of the sky because uh this guy is probably getting another inform this week he was actually at 55k at one point today but i'm not going to mess with this card because he is respected and projected to be in this week's team of the week and uh this guy getting an 81 to an 84 rated boost is going to be mental a lot of people are going to want to put this guy in their squads even a guy like rome agnoli who is up a lot as a scream card i think could boom even more um as is a good link investment to Hernandez um maybe another maybe another center defensive mid from like syria i'm trying to think of some examples even a guy like um uh shesney some delix some weak links there's going to be a lot of people that want to use a guy like Theo Hernandez so there could be some links this week link investments to a card like this again he's french as well so he's pretty easy to link with other french guys um in the syria and just other french guys in general so maybe even a guy like donnaruma i don't look at this inform a lot but maybe donnaruma is a decent uh if i could if i could type his name in donnaruma might be a decent inform to you to take a peek at as well this week how much is he on the market he is like 46 000 coins for this card right here 46k for donnaruma that's actually like a undercut right there i'm gonna actually look this one up uh because that actually looks pretty good 86 rated inform donnaruma according to footbin he is up a lot already right now so that might not be the best of buys i'm gonna try to get the i get a sale there for 50k because usually he's down closer to 40k so that really wasn't that good of a buy to be honest but we will we will just take our our small profit like our 1k profit at 50k that's what you get for not looking at a card right away and uh checking the market to see what his price is but he is 50k right now which is up um but if you see this guy again maybe around like the low 40s that could be a look this week pre team of the week uh coming out to look at some stuff like that and again a lot of you guys are probably doing the upgrades right you're doing upgrades trying to grind these sbcs you can do the 81 to 86 you can go get yourself maybe like toko akami and tiago silva just got some dynamic images um maybe you can go do those upgrade sbcs and maybe make the sesk fabrikas uh fabrikas sbc or the bailey sbc or any of these sbcs you might have wanted to do do them for a little bit cheaper man uh that's what these sbcs are good for so that's what these upgrade sbcs can really help out with if you're smashing these which i would highly recommend doing the 81 to 87 after my packs that i opened today as well just seems to be like a good thing to do uh and uh we continue to wait for a possible uh team of the group stage promo so we'll keep our eyes open and our keep our eyes peeled for that this week some people think it's going to be in two weeks but i honestly think it might be this week just because uh ea if they're not running the same footness promo then that could change things but foot misses usually starting you know kind of soon and since black friday was a week later than normal this week i'm not entirely sure what we're going to see this week so i'll talk a little bit more about that stuff probably tomorrow and our thursday flipping video but i just want to get on video today talk about the market talk about stuff the uh black friday and the the basically the super sunday promo is over so we do have some packs in the store but that promo is over flash sbcs are done we didn't get anything for cyber monday today but that's because we had super sunday so i saw some people complaining about nothing on cyber monday but i think that was just because they basically moved all the cyber monday stuff back to sunday because there was more people on the game on the weekend and they could possibly make some more money off of that which maybe they did maybe they didn't so we'll see what happens of that and what becomes of that but we are past black friday now boys and uh the next thing in sight is foot miss we're having dudes these next the next month or so is going to be massive on this game we're going to have foot miss we're going to have the team of the group stage we're going to have the icon swap two coming out in like 17 days and also baby icons going out of packs so a lot of stuff coming road to the final boost as well in like the next week or so there's going to be tons of ways to make coins in this game before team of the year i know a lot of you guys are focused on making coins before team of the year especially today uh as we probably know we're going to get a team of the year messy card 99 rated after messy today one ballon d'or so this this guy's probably going to get a 99 rated team of the year card last year of ma drich got a 99 team of the year so we'll start to hear the the mumblings and the grumblings of team of the year stuff start to be talked about as well uh as we're just a little over a month away from that so time is flying boys time is certainly flying and keep your eyes peeled again for player of the month of voting player of the month voting could be coming out this week as well depending on when um the premier league wants to to run that that could that voting could come out uh on wednesday so be able to look out for that kind of stuff or maybe even today you could start to see i think premier league would be the first one to have their voting come out so be able to look out for that kind of stuff and uh enjoy these upgrade packs while they last and hopefully you guys can pack yourselves something sick or craft some good old icons if you guys are doing like the bpm craft all the way into these upgrade sbcs like the the ultimate grind process props to you i'm just buying some non rare golds in the market and and jumping with some bronzes and silvers from my club because um i just can't spend all that time grinding that but i've had some decent pulls so far and it's definitely helping us get closer to an icon base icon sbc which i do want to do one of those um and the van basten profit today definitely helped me out with that because i feel a little bit better about buying a few cards and that honestly helps us out big time in terms of coinage as well 300k in a minute or so was massive so again that was a crazy occurrence today let me know if you guys have any comments about that or about the market and or questions about that uh at this time as well so drop those down in the comments if you have them like the video if you enjoyed it and of course subscribe to the channel if you are new it's been Nate photocounting catch you guys later peace out


What's going on everyone? Sam here with late in sports cards ripping 22 penini flawless baseball hobby one box break number nine random left side serial numbers so look again at your random results as always you can find these on the website under the results tab as well as the link and chat the results are posted to the website as they are here once I start the break I am going to sort them one through 25 just to make it easier to find each number but they will go up this way after what was represented on the tenth dice roll stop Elon it's good luck here everybody let's do it the joke is that if the thunder get victor that they would literally have the tallest line in the sport yeah they're probably too good to get especially when they get yeah sure I forgot about that yeah dude he's scary awesome I like it I like it I can rock with it right how about starting off going to the one spot penge and see that's gonna be a promise or mere as for the cubs that's sick dude grads on that pension that is game worn as well look at the patch on that man that's kind of nasty it's three color and like four color on the other side three color maybe I guess nice one there congrats pension camera just the tad there we go going to the four spots which is Cameron G we've got a Jackson co-op RPA nice one there it's part of like the that royals logo with the gold in there as well this is disgusting it's going back to pension see I'm at a one of one Gavin sheets RPA dude that is so cool congrats on that pension one spot is eating there you go man so sick that is fantastic congrats on that pension get that mag for you buddy really quick do this yeah disgusting patch on that as well absolutely insane patch there's your link to iMac breaking in just a bit next up going to it's got this team or this spot going to brian r at the 11 spot we've got a three-colored rpa of josh low for the race but i'm rookie autos in this which is nice a third one of the break third one so far that's awesome congrats on that there brian what is that logo going to the 22 spot yep 22 spot name ql we've got a Tyler O'Neill very cool congrats on that name q one of that low spot or higher number mojo got you brian uh this is going to Troy at the 12 spot how about a kuma rocker on the team us a baseball diamond auto congrats on that that's fire 12 out of 15 team us a legend is right and the nice one here going to scott f at the 20 spot how about an on-card great of brooks robinson congrats on that scott that's awesome man there you go buddy scott um emailed me he's one of the 101 scottie barnes and he went to florida state scott went to florida state so he was like a huge scottie barnes fan yeah so awesome dude congrats on that scott that's empty empty see what we got in our outer now this got going to matinee r it's going to be a quarry seager uh diamond congrats on that there again that is nine of 10 diamond guarantee agreement on the back rangers quarry seager oh that's sick we've got spikes 18 of 20 going to darin g that's going to be kyle schwarber that is player worn congrats on that so these spikes are so cool you can just see how thick the card is nice one there man nice shwarbs these are spikes are fire congrats on that again darin there you go buddy and then finish it off we've got and go into the one spot again pension see how about a pizza man my piazza is a dodger on the flawless momentous signatures encased congrats on that pension that's awesome dude nice pizza man so sick empty empty that will do it for the break guys thanks again for the fill on that one next up we have another one of these so sit tight


This week, Jack on Investor Intel's top 10, the number one story continues to be why graphite could be the next critical mineral to rise steeply in price. We are dying to hear your opinion on this. First of all, almost all of the graphite used in lithium ion battery anodes, it comes from China. Not only is it mined in China, it's processed in China, made into anodes, and those anodes are made into cells, the cells are made into batteries. China dominates the graphite space. And so unless and until we start producing battery grade graphite, which is not only a particular purity, but a particular shape in North America, we as like the rest of the world are going to be totally dependent on China. So is graphite of great interest? Absolutely. Is graphite monopolized by China? Absolutely. And so if we're going to produce graphite here in competition with China, we're going to need investment. We have quite a few graphite deposits in North America, but they need to be developed into producing mines, then the material needs to be processed into the correct form of graphite. Maybe it needs to be modified a bit by technologies now developed in Canada. There's a lot to be done, and we need to do it now. In the meantime, yeah, graphite is quite valuable. So the Critical Minerals Institute is going to have you host that debate and be an expert on that. Probably let's do that in May. What do you say, Jack? Okay. That's a good one, because that's an area that North America can probably succeed in becoming cell sufficient. So next on my list, you're number two, dominating our top 10 trending list on something that I can barely pronounce, letitium. Is it letitium? Yeah, that's a good pronunciation. Okay. Why? Why does anyone, I don't even know what it is. Talk to me, Jack. Letitium is the highest atomic number rare earth metal, and it's quite rare. The total world production is maybe between 50 and 200 tons. Nobody knows, because once again, most of that's in China, and they're not very forthcoming. It's used in a few applications, mainly medical, in the sense that letitium is used in the most efficient radiation detectors. And so I know there are a couple of other uses, but to be honest with you, I'm not paying a lot of attention to letitium market, because if the total world production is 80 to 200 tons a year, then price isn't the issue, because I can only think of one thing offhand that it produced in less quantity than letitium, that would be rhodium, okay? So why people are interested, I honestly can't tell you, but actually to be honest with you, it's not very interesting. Okay. Well, was someone finding it interesting? Is there anything that's happened in the news in the last week or two that would cause such an increase of individuals searching for letitium? Yes. Yes. Has Forbes put something out? What is going on, Jack, though, because we're getting all these high-ranking views due to your letitium piece, and you're telling me, and you're telling me, and I believe the quote was, I don't know why, it's not very interesting. Some scientists have determined that they believe they can create a room temperature superconductor. That is a material that has no resistance to the flow of electricity at room temperature. This is the holy grail of the distribution of electricity. Imagine if there were such a material, you could produce electricity in campus casing and use it in Key Largo, Florida, and there'd be no losses in the transmission, which it's the reason you can't do that now. So that's a wonderful laboratory experiment. I'm sure they had a beautiful desk and some great photographers from the university publicity department, but it's nonsense because I just mentioned to you the total world production of this material is under 200 tons. Do you honestly think it could be part of a mass distribution system or electricity, even if we could make a room temperature superconductor, which required letitium? I don't believe in that stuff. I think that college professors should stick to teaching classes. And forgive me, I have to go look this up. Is letitium in the critical mineral list? I don't think so, but it could be now if Forbes decides it's important. I imagine it will make the critical minerals list, not mine, theirs. On that note, I urge everybody to go to the criticalmineralsinstitute.com website to find out more about Jack Lifton posted virtual summits monthly on the critical minerals industry. Thank you so much, Jack, for joining us today. Thank you, Tracy.


Cats are notorious for sneaking up and pouncing on their owners without them even noticing. While this is all harmless play, it sheds light on just how stealthy these adorable creatures are. Cats can walk silently and sneak up on their prey without being detected. Felines are born hunters, and evolution has granted them anatomy that allows for optimum stealth and streamlined movement. They boast a handful of gates and movements that allow them to move silently and gracefully and seamlessly transition to a full speed sprint to capture their prey. That said, how cats can walk so silently is a question that still puzzles many cat owners and enthusiasts. If you're one of them, keep watching to learn everything you need to know. Fluid Movement The fluid movement that cats exhibit is beautiful to watch. But all the beauty and majesty of your cats walk is far from an aesthetic gimmick. Instead, it serves a predatory purpose by allowing cats to sneak up on their prey without detection. Most of the cat breeds we see today are direct descendants of the North African and Southwest Asian wild cat. Wild cats are adapted to hunting in desert and jungle environments. The cat's agility and tactility can be summed up in one word, form. The form describes the anatomy and movement of the cat's body parts to facilitate stealth walking. The front and hind legs of cats are structured differently and perform different functions. Cats also have a tiny, free-floating collarbone that allows them to squeeze through tight spaces. This also allows for all legs to stay close together, giving them incredible dexterity. That's why cats can easily transition between short and long strides, burst into speed sprints almost instantaneously, and stay flexible all the while. A close look at the cat's front legs will reveal that they're hinged backward with a slight bend. They're also straighter and a tad shorter than the front legs, and they can rotate more easily than the hind legs. The hind legs are much shorter and have a larger surface area than the front legs. They help propel the cat forward and upward. What is direct registering? Direct registering is a way of walking in animals where the hind paws place the hind paws directly on the corresponding front paws. This allows them to minimize their tracks and move as silently as possible. With indirect registering, the chances of walking on a noisy, breaking twig are high because the feet are all over. The same chances are greatly minimized with direct registering. Cats show almost perfect direct registering, which lends a lot to their stealthy and swift movement. Are there any drawbacks to the cat's stealthy movements? The stealthiness of our feline counterparts does come at a cost, while they can easily sneak up on prey and devour them in minutes, they have to sacrifice efficiency. These slow, calculated movements require much more concentration, draining much of the cat's energy. If they don't catch their prey, a lot of energy goes to waste. Cats are incredibly fascinating creatures, and silence is gold to them. Their incredible anatomy confers to them a considerable degree of advantage on hunting grounds. This, coupled with their innate predatory instincts and sharp claws and teeth, give them unmatched hunting capabilities. Thankfully, we don't count as their prey, so we can cuddle up with them and watch them as they walk gracefully in our homes. // If you enjoyed this video, kindly press the like button. Also don't forget to subscribe with notifications on, so that you don't miss out on videos like this. Thank you for watching.


Hello, and welcome to an evening with Bruce Wheeler, brought to you by the John C. Hydra Society of the University of Tennessee Libraries and the University of Tennessee Press. We are here tonight to celebrate the third edition of Knoxville, Tennessee, a mountain city in the New South, recently published by UT Press, which includes a new preface and a chapter covering the period from the death of Kaz Walker to the end of the administration of Madeline Margero, Knoxville's first female mayor. Joining Bruce in conversation tonight is Jesse Fox-Meshark. He worked as a reporter and editor for 20 years before going to work in communications for Knoxville Mayor Madeline Margero in 2011. In 2018, Jesse started the local news website Compass with former Knoxville News Sentinel editor and reporter Scott Barker. Welcome, Jesse. Thanks very much. Happy to be here. Finally, the author himself, William Bruce Wheeler, Professor Emeritus of History at UT Knoxville is also the co-author of TVA and the Teleco Dam, a bureaucratic crisis in post-industrial America, and Discovering the American Past, a look at the evidence. He is currently at work on the sixth edition of Discovering the American Past. Thank you very much. I've actually finished that. All right. So it's so great to see you both, and I thank you again for joining us in conversation this evening. I understand this isn't your first time together in an event setting, so I'll take this as my cue to let you two get to it. I'll see our audience again after our Q&A session, and remember, audience, you are welcome to ask your questions of Bruce or Jesse at any time this evening by dropping them in the comments on YouTube or Facebook. See you soon. All right. Well, Bruce, first of all, I just want to say it's great to see you. We last did this last year at Union Avenue Books, so I hope that you've been well since then. I have. Thank you very much, and interestingly enough, I happen to be in the Union Avenue Books today, and they're open all the way, so I'm very excited about being able to go in there and browse and buy. Yeah. It's great to see things starting to come back. Well, we're here to talk about the third edition of your book, and I guess I'd just like you to kind of kick us off by talking about the third edition. This is your third chance to revisit this story. Can you talk a little bit about how that narrative has changed with each succeeding edition and people who are familiar with the previous editions? I guess what can they expect to see in this one? Well, let me say this. I came to Knoxville. In fact, I happened to drive into Knoxville on the last day of the Billy Graham Crusade, so I was in something of a traffic jam as we were leaving the football stadium, but I didn't know very much about Knoxville, and I learned sort of as I went along. My co-author then, Mike McDonald, had been here longer. He knew a great deal more. We did a lot of work together, and then the more I stayed in Knoxville, the more I knew about it and wanted to change things as I went along and to add things. I think somebody said, well, has the book changed? I said, yeah, I've changed. And because of that, the book has changed somewhat. I feel a lot different about Knoxville than I did in about, I guess, I was about the year 20,000 when I came. And can you talk a little bit about that difference as a historian in writing history that you weren't present for, where obviously you're relying totally on documents and other people's recollections, and then also writing history that you've actually been here and seen firsthand. What's the difference between those two processes and perspectives? Well, that's a terrific question to be here and to watch Knoxville. And the first, my wife and I, we drove out I-40 and finally got off out. I thought it was in the middle of nowhere, but we were out somewhere there and not too far away from Concord Methodist Church. And we went there and we just didn't know where we were. We had to go and find things. We didn't know that there was such a thing as a blue law that we couldn't buy certain things on Sunday. And we did a lot of other things. But as we learned to be in Knoxville, the more we knew people here and the more we got to like the city, it got much, much different. We moved closer in to the city. And then we were actually in the Sequoia Hills area. And we loved that area. And then we decided we wanted to move out to the country. We'd both been raised in the country. And so we went to move way out in Severe County, which is where we lived. So there was that. But as I say, we learned to like the people in Knoxville and try to come to understand them. And some of their ideas, some of which I thought were quite interesting and some of them were very interesting. But me working with the fellow academicians and many of them were, I thought, were sort of sad that they were here. They wanted to move. And I thought, well, I'm actually happy to be here and I'm happy to be with these folks. Also, I had taught at several other schools before I got to the University of Tennessee. And so I came to look on the students themselves. It was quite an experience. Some of my colleagues said, oh, well, they're not very good students. Well, I found out they were OK. They moved along some of them faster than I moved. But it was that. And so as I say, I wanted to do a book. And this would be the last edition. Do a book which comes up to the present and how different the present is than the way it was when I first moved here. Yep, hit on a couple of those highlights. What are the biggest differences and some of the things that you talk about in this new edition between Knoxville as you first encountered it and Knoxville as it is now? Well, first of all, I wanted to study some of the politics in Knoxville. My wife worked at a little newspaper out in West Knoxville. And I said, well, I'll write a column for you every now and then. And I went and I would interview people like Mayor Kyle Testerman and other people. And got a different view of Knoxville from those folks. And that was, I think, different for us. The politics here were rough and tumble. I didn't know Kaz Walker, although as you can imagine, I had to interview him for the first and later second edition. And he is certainly an interesting person. Mike McDonald and I did a little bit of a paper, which was to be one of the chapters in the book. And we did that for the Historical Society downtown. And we were there. And all of a sudden at the back of the room, the doors open. And here comes Mr. Walker. And he was passing out little scissors, tie clips. I think I still have one of mine. And then he said that Mr. Wheeler must be very, very good to his mother, et cetera. But there were lots of things that he got wrong. And he talked about some of them. I didn't think later, as the book went along and as Mike and I went along, I think we were more right than wrong. More right than Kaz, maybe. More right than Mr. Walker, certainly. And what has changed in local politics or in Knoxville politics that we don't really see characters like Kaz Walker anymore? I mean, I think we're in a very different era now. For one thing, obviously, we have a lot more women involved. The majority of representatives on City Council right now are women, which certainly wasn't the case back then. Well, I think for one thing, a lot of people have moved to Knoxville. And when I came first to Knoxville and lived out in Village Green, and most of the people there were salespeople or worked, and they couldn't wait to get out of Knoxville. They wanted to get to New York, or they wanted to get to Chicago, or they wanted to get to somewhere else. And it came as I got to know some of the business people here that some of them, for a lot of reasons, liked Knoxville, and they would like to stay here. It was not as rough and tumble as a New York or a Chicago. And it was a nice place. They said they could raise their family and be with their friends and things. And so a lot of those people lived in Knoxville or in the surrounding county, and their idea of what the politics should do and could do was somewhat different than you would run into with Leonard Rogers or Carl Testament or others, good leaders in many ways. But these folks, they had certain different ideas about what should happen. They were very, very hot to go to the parents things at the schools. And I know that we went to some of the school evenings, and there were people who would stand up and say, well, where I come from, we didn't do it that way. We did it this way.  But there were a lot of people who said, well, maybe this idea could be different. There could be the way things would be different. So that's, I think, one of the things that happened. Also, I think in the early 2000s or so, the country had a difficult situation from, say, about 2005 to 2008 and long. And people were losing houses. They were losing jobs. They were terrible things. And interesting enough, there were three, at least according to the Brookings Institute, there were three cities in the country that didn't go through that terrible situation. One of them was Dallas, one of them was Pittsburgh, and the other was Knoxville. And someone said, well, that can't be right. But why was it? One of the things was that Knoxville employers were not at risk in the recession. Covenant Health, Knox County Schools, UT Medical Center, Oak Ridge, et cetera, et cetera. These were places where the jobs were there. And new jobs exceeded and did well. Banking continued in a healthy way. So Knoxville and the people who lived here were pretty lucky about things in the years, say, from 2000 to 2012 or so. And that, I think, has helped. I've talked to a lot of people. I used to give a lot of talks to the introduction Knoxville people. These were usually new people that come to Knoxville. And almost all of them were planning to stay. And almost all of them planning to stay because of the way in which the life was for them and their families and for the economy. They thought things were different. I should warn you, Jesse, that one of those people, after I had talked to the group, said, you ought to go across the street and see if you could get a job with the comedy club. I thought, this is insane. But I actually did it. And I won the first prize in one of them. All I did was tell stories about my students and about my faculty and about the presidents of UT and the coaches and what have you. And the other comedians, they were telling other stories. But I was just telling those stories. I thought they were OK. Tales from a classroom. Class tales from a classroom. My wife said, that's the last time you do that again. And it was. Well, speaking of the classroom and the university, we have a question popped in from, I think, our friend, Ernie Freeberg. And he wants to know, in your view, was the university itself a useful force in improving Knoxville in these years or not really much of an important factor? And I guess a follow-up to that is, should we think of Knoxville as a university town? Well, Ernie Freeberg was my department head. And so I would never say anything that would suggest anything else. But I never thought of Knoxville as a college town. I don't think it ever really was. Maybe on football Saturdays, it was a Knoxville town. But I don't think that Knoxville had given much to the town. The people who taught in the education department and went out to teach and things, the agriculture people, there were some of the people that really did do some important things. But when it comes to getting the college itself to do things, when I first came here, the faculty sort of looked down their noses at Knoxville. They weren't sure that they liked it here. There was a fella here about that time. And he was on the radio. And he did things on the radio. He did all sorts of different things. And apparently, you could pay him to come up to your house at a party. And he could do some of these things, things like Kaz Walker or other things like that. And I sort of was a little embarrassed by that. I knew that, yes, there were things that needed to be corrected in things. But I wanted us to do more for the town. And in some ways, we haven't done as much as other universities have done. Some of the individuals, Bill Lyons, who had worked in the city government I don't know if he's working in the government now. He's doing a good job. He's retired from the city. He's doing a terrific piece every Sunday, I think. Yeah, he's writing for the new sentinel. He's my important boss at the city. Yeah, and there are a lot of people like him that had come out of the university, had taught at the university, and then had come and had done some really good work for the city. But no, I wouldn't call this a college town or a university town. I think we're going in a or had gone in a very, very different direction. Let's talk about downtown a little bit, because I think the rebirth of downtown Knoxville is probably one of the biggest stories of the last couple of decades here. And I know that you have had your own downtown apartment there. What's the difference living in Knoxville now with that kind of vibrant, again, urban center versus the couple of decades where there wasn't really a whole lot going on down there? Well, we lived way out in the country in Severe County. We liked it there. We liked our neighbors, and we liked what was going on. But my wife had the idea, maybe, that we could get a condo downtown, and we could go to, we love to go to the theater. We love to go to the opera. We love to do those things. And she says we could get some good restaurant food, and we could go to that. And we liked it a lot. And we met a lot of folks just in the lobby of the Tennessee Theater of people who have done that. And we just loved it. We loved going to Knoxville on Saturday and go to the farmer's market or other kinds of arts and crafts things that were going on. And people came and they liked it. There's good food and apparently a fair amount of it. We haven't been back very much because things have slowed down in downtown. But as I told you earlier, I'm very happy to see the Union Avenue bookstore open. I'm very happy to go back to get some good food on Gay Street or in the Market Square or other places. And we really enjoyed that. It was nice to see people out on the streets and doing things. I must say that the Women's March, I think, was that what it was. And I think it brought something like 14,000 people. The vast majority of them are from out of town somewhere. And they did that. And it was really, really something. I said in the book, I said that the mayor or a hero gave a speech that nobody could hear because there was so much clapping and good shouting and things. But it was good. It was a good thing to see that happening. And I liked that. I liked people downtown with their pets and doing that. And we have now learned of the people who live downtown. Well, it turned out I knew a couple of those people, but I didn't know they lived downtown. But I turned to like them and get together with them and do lots of other things with them. We haven't done as much as we wanted to do because of the problems with the pandemic. Right. We could do better, better, better now. We're also trying to add a room to our house to think that we're just as crazy as can be. But we're adding a room to our house. And this is going to be a room that's going to have all the things like the sewing and the book reading and the book writing and all of that in one room. And then try to open up the rest of the room. So the place isn't so crowded. But yeah, we like our neighbors there. And we like our neighbors here. Well, we have another question here. The question is, what time period in history, besides now, besides 2020, 2021, when would you say Knoxville was the most vibrant economically, politically, or socially in its history? I would say that probably the most vibrant and in some ways, in the same for the same reasons, was the late 1800s. We had factories. We had things. We had people to come from all over and bring with them ideas and money. And I know that the Albers Company was one of the largest drug manufacturers. But the original name of that was Sanford Chamberlain and Albers. Sanford was from Connecticut. Chamberlain was in Ohio, I think. And Albers, I'm not sure where he was, but they were all from outside. And they would come in. We were so proud of ourselves that a quarter of the downtown burned down in a fire because people were saying, it's a million-dollar fire. You can't believe that Knoxville had a million-dollar fire. And they were bragging on all of that. But those people, I think, Chamberlain, who came here, turned out to be a very important person, both in banking and in politics. And there were lots of others. Now, I think that they kept the factories going. And you could think of the people like the Albers. You could look at the Kerns Bakery. You could see that, and it's being redone. And lots of other things like that. It didn't stay long. It didn't stay long enough, in part, because the railroad was bringing in things that were made elsewhere that could compete or even do better than the things that we were making here. But if you go down to where the old railroad stations were and all there, you could sort of sense what it used to be. And it was a very important place. It was those people that, maybe a little bit later, moved out to, I guess, it was not too far from where the university grew in that area. And then it would maybe leave it further than that out into West Knoxville and into where things are now. The huge expanse of growth we've had out there, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. That was amazing. Now, I think the problem that there were sons and grandsons, I think, that didn't keep that going. And I'm not sure why. If I could tell you why, I could tell it and write it. But I don't quite understand why that didn't happen. But as those people died, things, it was just sort of like their sons and daughters just didn't just didn't take it up and keep it and keep it going. So I think that's probably the next most exciting period in Knoxville history. And then today, or just a little bit before today, is the early, the other thing I wanted to point out, and this is in the book, is that Knoxvillians are beginning to think about things that they can do to help the city. And I think one of my favorite former students who has a thing in the Sunday papers, and that was, now tell me what his name was. The fellow there that was there, he did something. Now, I guess they've moved the business to the Monday, but he's in that was it Don, I've forgotten his name, I have it somewhere. But he says, he said, we're having trouble with health. He said, Knoxville could do that. We can't wait for the state or the federal government to do that. We can't wait for that. David Moon, you're talking about. Yeah, right. And he said, he said that we could do that. I suggested that in a talk to the to the leadership group. And I said, we don't, we don't. David Moon said, we could do this ourselves. We have the intelligence. We have the people to do it. We have the, and the good thing about it is that as opposed to the federal and the state, our politics here are not so difficult for people to get to get things. I mean, I'm sort of sad for watching the two major parties do it and not really helping each other as much. But nobody's Knoxville's doing that, that I know of. Do you think that our nonpartisan government is part of that? What difference does that make that we have a nonpartisan city government? I think it does. I think it does. I also think the people that were chosen are people who are very, very good. If you think about the people that were chosen to lead the city. And if you talk about Ash and his four terms, but if you talk about Bill Haslam, talk about Madeleine Rojero, and nobody particularly thought of them as Republicans or Democrats, although they knew that they were. And then Rojero's person who followed her. Yes, yes. And I think Haslam and Rojero ran a really good campaign against one another, but they kept it good. And when Haslam needed somebody with Rojero's talents, he went to her to join his government, which I think is very, very interesting and very helpful, very helpful. And also, Rojero in good position to run then the next time because she had the experience there. That's true. That's true. And I think it's pretty clear that there were people who probably did not support her when Haslam first ran that probably would help her out. Because she's got the same idea about government and about the people. And I know people said, I was talking to the person today who works at the Pembroke. And he said that people stand out and watch Bill Haslam because he rides his bike all over the city, which he did when he was mayor and people was. And he would say, I can't believe it when people started waving to me and say hello mayor, which they did. And he had good ideas. I know Mike Edwards has some great stories about Haslam as mayor and bringing in people to business leaders and things to help the economy. And I think he's got an office there at Union Avenue. And I understand he's spreading along that block, which is fine. And he has a book coming out, too, this month. I heard that. Is it something about religion and politics? Yeah, I haven't read it yet. But yes, about faith in the public sphere, I think. I'll buy it. Yeah, me too. Maybe we can do another event with him. Well, I have a here's a fun question for you. What is your favorite Knoxville story to tell people who are new to the area if you want to introduce them to Knoxville? Let me see. Well, it's a story about we had just moved in to Village Green is when we first came to Knoxville. And we set up our television set. And the television set was going in. And there was an ad. And it was two men. And in between the two men, there was a pig.  The other one said, that's not a jackass. That's a pig. And he said, I was talking to the pig. And my wife said, I think we need to move back to DeKalbville. But that that was I think it was it was an ad on one of the Walker, one of the Walker things. And that was because it just it just it just it just got me. It said, this is it. This is it. We're we're we're here. I grew up in a small town in North Carolina.  But but somewhat. Yeah, that was that was, I think, a fun, fun story. The other fun story, which I did add in the book, was Paul Soper, who was who was a professor in the theater department, and he wrote a play which was sort of a play about Kaz Walker. And but he was not named that. And they said that that there were so many people that went to that that they had to open it up a couple of more nights. And he said, with all the other plays that we're doing were going on that year, that was the biggest the biggest incoming incoming. It was it was just called something about a little town. And everybody knew who they were talking about. And nobody nobody could stop stop laughing. So Soper, I understand, was just just great. He never did say anything about about that. But he was great. He was around when I first came. It was good to good to see him do that. I'd love to see the play again. Yeah, somebody should revive it. We need to find that. Well, I can be done. That ties in a little bit to another question I had, which has to do with Knoxville's kind of Appalachian culture and heritage. And it's right in the title of your book. You say a mountain city in the South. And my sense is that Knoxville has always had sort of a love hate relationship with its place in Southern Appalachia. Do you think that the city now and the city leadership now is more comfortable with kind of accepting and acknowledging that that is a big part of our identity than they used to be? I think people now are just ignoring it. But I know that when I first moved here, people told me, this is not a Southern city. This is a mountain city. And you don't think of it as a Southern city. And so there was things about its politics and other kinds of kinds of things. There were things that were not so good. I think almost every town and city in the country is having difficult, embarrassing problems with its African-American population. And Knoxville was no exception. There were problems there. And I suppose in some ways there still are, although Ash, I think, tried to stop that. And we can see. But I don't know so much whether it's even a mountain city anymore. But I think it's certainly not a Southern city. I think that's for sure, as we say. But at one time, I think, there was this thing of people moving in here. There were a lot of people that I knew when I lived in Severe County that had gone, say they had gone to the service and come out of the service and they wanted a job and they came to Knoxville. And that would be the place that they would have a job. And then as they did that, then they wanted to move back and get a job at Blalox and Company or something like that. But they came to Knoxville. And they certainly were mountain city folks and proud of it, I suppose. But I think now I'm not sure that you could say that the city is either Southern or mountain. Now, don't make me cross out the subtitle of that. Don't make me do that. It would be, if anything, it would be a new city, a new city. And maybe in a new South. And we could do that. I've got a new title. I can go back and do a fourth. Fourth edition. Well, we have another question here. Wants to know, has your perspective on the 1970s and the 1980s changed since your last edition? And specifically, does the legacy of the schemes of the Butcher-Balanton years seem different now than it did 10 or 20 years ago? Well, it certainly was something that had to be said. The Blanton business is just statewide, I think, in some ways. But the Butcher thing was, I mean, that was wrapped up very much in the fair. And there were people who thought that we didn't need the fair. We shouldn't have the fair. It should be held in far west Knoxville, where the people who would finance it would live, but not downtown. But then there were people that they thought they could, they could build a fair. And then on top of the fair, build a new city that could be there. And they could do that with the money they made out of people who came to the fair. And of course, a lot of that, unfortunately, had to do with the Butcher brothers and some of the things that were done that I suppose, in some ways, were terrible, hurtful, hurtful banks and things like that. But... Well, we're coming up on the 40th anniversary of the fair next year. How does the fair look now? Because, right, it didn't have the immediate impact on Knoxville that some people hoped it would. How does it look now, this far out? What impact did it have? Well, the acreage, not much happened to that. I think that last time I was there, they had those antique baseball guys would come out and play. And I enjoyed watching that. But we haven't been able to use the acreage as much as we thought we would. And somebody, I think, who came and talked about and studied the fair before it came, then they said that they don't put 1200 houses on that site along with stores, et cetera. They will have wasted what they have. And I don't know if you could say that actually has happened, but it certainly has not been a great enormous help, a dramatic help to the city. There have been some nice things that have happened, and we're sort of glad to... The other thing you could ask about was the Whittle. Here was a fella that built a campus, as he called it. And he was doing some really, really dramatic things, but I guess went too far and couldn't stop. I don't know what his situation is now, but I know it's not like it was back when he built, as he wanted to call it, the campus. I actually just read, there was an article about Chris Whittle in the Wall Street Journal a couple of months ago. He's putting his Hampton's house on the market. I think he's in a little bit of financial difficulty again. I'm sorry to hear that. You're changed, yeah. Yeah, and I thought he set up all those scholarships. And I think Alexander, when he was president at the university, got him to set those up, and then it turned out that he couldn't finance them after a while. And I know that Joe Johnson used to have to go up to New York every year and beg money from him to get to, and there would be 20 students, and then there would be 15, and then gradually there would be none. He had some great ideas, no question about it. The man was an idea factory, and I know that there were people at the university who worked with him and thought this was going to be something. This was going to build the new city. Well, not so well. He brought a lot of talent to town. I was fortunate to work with a lot of former Whittle people when I was at Metropulse. Yeah, and there are still a lot of them around here. So I think there was some real impact there from all that. Yeah, yeah, that's true. It's true. Well, we're going to be coming up on our closing here in a minute. But I wanted to ask a little bit about the relationship between the city and the county, because Knoxville has gone from being the population center of the county surrounded by mostly rural areas to now 60% of the population of Knox County lives outside city limits, and also tends to be more politically conservative than the people inside the city. What does that mean for the city to now be sort of like a minority in terms of population and also maybe politically within Knox County? Well, it's interesting to bring that up, because now, like you said, the county is dominant in that. And there have been efforts to get the city and the county to put money into projects. And that just wasn't going to happen. There were things that people wanted to change about certain of the way in which people live in the county in terms of their sewage, in terms of their sidewalks and other things. And people, they just didn't want to do that. And then, of course, so much of the money that has brought in is brought in through things that are now in the county. And I know that when he was mayor, I think Victor Ash had some ideas about that. And there were people that even wanted to combine city and county. But I just don't think it's right. I think you mentioned once that both of them might be Republicans, but they're not the same Republicans. They're different kinds of Republicans. Republicans in Knoxville, in many ways, are moderate. I think the unfortunate thing is that when things come up, before, this is sort of more like Cass Walker, before anything can get going, the county is against it. We're not going to pay for all that money. We're not going to do this. We're not going to do that. We just can't. We can't do it. And they don't. They don't do it. Is there going to be, I know there's been talk since I moved here about the city and the county uniting together. And I know a friend of mine who taught at the university at one time. And he said, anybody who says that is going to be viewed as crazy. I don't think that's quite the way you want to put it. But certainly they didn't want to do that. If anything, it seems less likely now than 20 or 30 years ago because the city and the county kind of have these much more distinct political identities. That's true. That is true. And I was in South Knoxville. I haven't been in South Knoxville for years. And I was in South Knoxville just a week or so ago and drove down along the river in the South area. And what a wonderful place that has happened there, that has grown up with all these wonderful homes and lots of things for buying things. And there'll be more of that, I think. Yeah, it's developed a lot down there. I know that Rohero Big wanted to do a lot for South Knoxville, she thought that it was well underserved. And as I say, I just was down there and I was just absolutely in the island home area. I was just delighted with what has been done with homeowners but also with the city and with companies. So yeah, I think that'll be something. Well, and that kind of sets up what'll probably be the last question here, which is having written three editions of this book now. Are you more optimistic at the end of the third edition than you were the first edition in terms of Knoxville's future or less optimistic or just kind of the same? No, I'm a lot more optimistic than, first of all, a lot more optimistic than I was when I moved here in 1970 and grew somewhat more optimistic as went along. But now, because the way that politics have gone and the way that downtown has gone, and now I saw in the paper that there is going to be, is it so many new apartments that are being built by so much? A lot of new apartments downtown, yeah. Oh, it's going to be something. Maybe a baseball stadium again, too. That would be something, that would be something. I don't know. I always like to go out to 407 and watch baseball, but that's just me, the severe county, liking that. But yeah, I like to go to baseball down there. My mother lived in Knoxville for some time, and she was a big baseball fan. And I want to tell you the people who work there were so nice to her. She was in a wheelchair. And they made sure that everything was just right for her. And did she get a Coke? And did she get a this? And did she get a that? And they actually asked some of the people who were sitting behind her if they wouldn't move, because they were going to have trouble watching over her. And she loved baseball. And she loved to come to the games. And she loved for the people that were there. Most of them were people who work there, but not all of them. There were some that were just nice folks. Yeah, I loved the old Bill Meyer stadium myself. Well, I lived so close when I first moved in here. I lived so close that a night game was flashing in my window. Was it the Durham Bulls, was it? Was that what it was? Yeah, they would come and play. I enjoyed. I enjoyed. Well, I think that will wrap us up. Jesse, your questions have been great. Thank you very much. Great to see you again. I hope we get to see each other in person again one of these days soon. It will happen. It will happen. Yes, sir. I'm sure everyone's sad to see me, because that means our time is up. So again, I want to thank you, a UT Press author, Bruce Wheeler, and Compass co-founder, Jesse Fox-Meshark, for joining us this evening. And many thanks to our viewers.


So I'll try and finish it before the time, so that you can have a nice lunch. I'm really, really excited to be here. This is my first trip to Singapore.  I'm going to be talking about the evolution of serverless, past, present, and future. When are you trying to predict the future? It's always a very, very tricky thing. A lot of people got their fingers burned trying to predict the future, especially with respect to technology. Let's see how I do. So what we'll be doing is first try and discuss a little bit about what is serverless. So there are a lot of misconceptions when it comes to serverless. So we'll talk about them. And I'll take a brief peek into the past and see where we are today. And also we'll be looking at what my predictions for the future are. And what would be the takeaways? Yeah, I think one of the takeaways would be the fact that when it comes to technology, a lot of things don't have a clear definition. What does DevOps mean? I mean, there's not a single definition. If you give an example, you can think of whether it's DevOps or not. But what is DevOps itself does not have a precise definition as such. And that's true for a lot of things with technology. And I think that's one of the things which is true with serverless as well. Other than that, one of the things I observe is that the adoption of serverless is increasing. So that's another thing that we would discuss. Another thing I really believe in is the fact that almost all cloud services and almost all architectures are heading towards serverless. So that's another thing we'd be talking about. So we'll discuss these in addition to the other serverless trends I'm observing. Just a big background about me. I'm Ranga. I'm founder of In 28 Minutes. I'm a very popular Udemy instructor. I have about a million learners on Udemy who are doing our courses on cloud DevOps programming. And yeah, you can connect with me on rangacarnum.com. Let's start with a few kind of jokes about serverless. So why did the serverless function go to the beach? Any guesses? Because it's always running in the cloud. It needs some sun. Why did developers switch to serverless? Yeah, this is actually true. A lot of us are very, very tired of playing with servers. You don't really want to do manage softwares, installations, your hardware. You don't really want to worry about that. Why was the serverless function feeling cold? Any guesses? I think it should be easy. Yeah, because it was running on a cold start. I think this is something where AWS is putting a lot of effort into making it better. One of the recent features which is added in SnapStat, I think that really makes a difference when it comes to Java, cold stats. But I think there is a long way to go with respect to cold stats. Yeah, how do you make a serverless function feel better? Any guesses? Obviously, give it more hardware. So give it more CPU. Give it more memory. Yeah, just off. So whenever we talk about serverless, there are a lot of misconceptions. The word itself, serverless, it almost says that there are no servers. But when it comes to the ground, your applications are running somewhere. Your applications are finally running on servers, whether you're making use of serverless or not. So that's one of the most important misconceptions about serverless. When somebody is starting with serverless, they would be thinking, hey, where are my applications going to run? So serverless, it's not about servers not being there. But it's something a little different. So and another misconception I very, very frequently see is that a lot of people think we are past the wave of serverless. So if you look at the entire journey of serverless around the time frame when lambda was brought in, that's when the word serverless became a little bit more pronounced, more popular. And I think within a few years, like the 2020 time frame, 2018, 2019, 2020, there was a lot of hype around serverless. Everybody was saying everything will be serverless, and so on and so forth. And none of them has actually materialized in the last few years. And now the buzz around serverless, it's not so much. Today, hardly anybody talks about serverless being something really, really big. So that's another misconception, the fact that the amount of use of serverless is going down. So that's another misconception. Actually, in my view, as we see a little later, the amount of use of serverless is actually going up. A good case in point was Donnie's and Steve's talk earlier. Almost 80% of the services which were talked about were serverless. You had no instances. You can directly go in and play with them. You don't really need to create a server or an instance or any of that kind. So that's another thing. So another misconception I usually see is usually serverless is actually linked only with compute, right? So a lot of us think AWS Lambda is the only serverless service or AWS Lambda with API gateway is a serverless service. But actually, when it comes to serverless, there are serverless databases, data warehouses, right? So services like SQS, SNS. So there are a lot of other things that you can do in a serverless approach as well. And another very important misconception I see is serverless is always cheaper, right? That's not actually true. If you don't get your architecture right, then serverless can be much more expensive than going the server way. So that's another thing which we have to be really, really careful about. So let's get to the first one, right? The first misconception about what is serverless, right? So whenever we want to deploy an application, typically if you go back a few years, what we would be thinking about is what kind of server I would want, what kind of hardware I would want for that specific server, what do I want to install on that specific server, right? So those are the important decisions we think about, how do you scale the application up? How do you make it available, right? So those are some of the factors that we think about before we even think about writing some code or thinking about the use case or things like that. So we have to make a lot of decisions before you get into the business logic and your code. So for me, serverless is just a trend towards taking your focus, putting your focus into your code and your business logic rather than focusing on the infrastructure, right? So it's all about trying to focus on your code, on your data, on your service, on the business logic that you're trying to implement, rather than focusing on where it would run and what is infrastructure you'd need, how to make it highly available, how to make it highly scalable. So it's about shifting away some of the response, like AWS uses this term a lot, undifferentiated heavy lifting, right? So if you are an insurance company or if you are a health company, right? So you'd want to focus on your core business logic. You don't really want to focus on infrastructure. And for me, serverless is just a way where you can take the next steps, right? So you would want to focus on as much as possible on your business logic rather than focusing on other things. And you'd want to leave things like scaling, things like availability. You'd want them to be the headache of the cloud provider rather than they become your headache, right? So that's kind of how I see serverless. There are a lot of definitions out there. For me, serverless is just about giving as much responsibility as possible to the cloud provider. You don't want to worry about a lot of the infrastructure details. As many details you'd want to leave it to the cloud provider. That's like, for me also serverless is not about, I mean, it's not whether you're doing serverless or not. It's at the level, right? So there is a serverless scale starting from zero to 100. It's about where you are on that specific scale. There is no 100% serverless at all. So it's about how much responsibility you are giving away to the cloud provider that's where you'd be grading yourself. Probably, in my view, it's like, you might be 80% serverless or 90% serverless, but it's not an absolute thing. It's not a one or zero thing. It's like, when you're designing your architecture, it's like, depending on how much you're worrying about the servers, there's a grade. I kind of think of a fit like that. So for me, actually serverless is kind of an operational model where you would actually, like, you'd not worry about servers and one of the characteristics of these models is paying for use, right? You're not paying for number of instances. You are actually paying for the number of, I mean, the amount of consumption, amount of memory you're making use of, CPUs you're making use of. So you're paying for consumption rather than the number of instances which are present in there. And I kind of see that reflect in this survey which was done as well. So this is actually a little older report. This is not the most recent one. This is IBM Serverless in the Enterprise 2021 report where they are looking at, like they have done a survey like among users of serverless on what are the benefits that were experienced. So they have implemented like a number of enterprises and implemented serverless and what were the benefits that they have experienced. I think one of the most important benefit is redemption in amount of management effort that you need to put in. I think that's exactly what's reflecting in there as well. The other improvement, the other major improvement you can see in there is the improvement of application quality. So for me, I think the first three, right? So in terms of reducing the amount of management effort, reducing, improving your application quality and also having greater flexibility, right? Scaling, availability, these are very, very important. So having greater flexibility. I think those are the three main advantages when it comes to serverless architectures. So for me, serverless is about reducing the responsibility, reducing your responsibility as much as possible and leaving things out, like leaving things which are undifferentiated, heavy lifting to the cloud provider. It's about focusing on your business logic. It's about focusing on your code or data and it's about paying for use. And how many of you are aware of Gartner hype cycle? Right, a lot of you. So a quick introduction to Gartner hype cycle. Basically any technology kind of goes through this cycle, right? So you have a technology trigger where somebody says serverless, right? They introduce the term serverless and at the start, within the first couple of years, you would have the peak of inflated expectations. Basically, you would think everything will be that, right? So the same was the case with serverless as well. So when serverless was introduced after a couple of years, we were thinking everything will be serverless. Almost all architectures will be serverless, right? So after a little while, what would happen is you'd start realizing the real use cases. You'd think, okay, maybe this is not the right fit in this specific scenario. So you'll get more data. I mean, you would have implementations, you'd get data from that and you'd see where, which are the right places to use a specific technology. And that's where you'd have the trough of disillusionment. So it's basically, after the hype comes the down and slowly we would go towards identifying the exact use cases where that might be the right scenario to use, right? So you'd see almost every technology go through this, right? So serverless, Kubernetes for example, Docker. So all these technologies goes through this hype cycle, right? So for me, I think when it comes to serverless, we are somewhere in between the peak of inflated expectations and the trough of disillusionment, especially because, I don't think the expectations are huge right now. In the last few years, the expectations on serverless have went down. And I think we are somewhere very near here. And I would think within a little while, we would start seeing the real benefits of serverless. And when it comes to serverless, another typical misconception with respect to serverless is serverless is AWS Lambda, right? Right, AWS Lambda is where serverless terminologies started. That's where a lot of us started hearing this word serverless. But actually serverless existed even before AWS Lambda. And also today, serverless is well beyond just compute, right? So you have things like DynamoDB for example, right? So whenever you'd want to make, typically when we talk about databases earlier, you need to create a server, you need to then create instances, then you'd be able to create your data in the server. But when it comes to things like DynamoDB, you can directly go in and create your database, right? So when it comes to, for example, a data warehouse, right? So a good example for serverless data warehouse from the beginning is BigQuery, right? So when it comes to BigQuery, Google Cloud BigQuery, it's like you can store as much data as you'd want and you'd only pay for the data you are storing. So you'd pay for the data you store and you'd be paying for the queries you do of the data. You'd be paying for operations. And you'd see that BigQuery is actually something which is present from 2012, right? So it's like the term serverless was coined from the time AWS Lambda became popular. But for me, the concept of serverless, not worrying about servers at all, focusing on your data, paying for the volume of data, paying for the operations, that existed well before DynamoDB. A good example in AWS is AWS S3, right? So AWS S3 was actually introduced in 2012, right? Even with AWS S3, you don't really create a server. You'd actually create a bucket and you'd pay for whatever you store in the bucket and you'd pay for the operations which are performed on the specific bucket. So yeah, the serverless terminology itself, even though it started with AWS Lambda, in my opinion, cuts across almost all services, right? So you have functional service offerings like AWS Lambda. You have similar services which exist in other services, other cloud platforms as well. You have cloud functions in Google Cloud. You have Azure functions in Azure. And also today, like one big evolution with respect to serverless is the evolution towards containers, right? So when AWS Lambda came in, probably containers were not so big. Docker was not so widely used. But today, if you look at most of these services which are related to containers, for example, ECS in AWS. Now has a serverless version, Fargate, right? So and it's improving every day. Similar to that, almost every other cloud platform also has a serverless way of running containers as well. And like when it comes to databases, you have things like DynamoDB, which is serverless. And when it comes to data warehouses, like Google Cloud, BigQuery, like Azure Synapse Analytics, and also like Redshift now has a lot of serverless features as well. Like one of the biggest challenges when it comes to data warehousing is managing the servers, right? So you have huge volumes of data to store and you want to query from it as well. So yeah, it's a space where serverless makes a huge difference because you only want to pay for the data you're storing and whenever you want to execute the query, you don't want to only pay for the query execution. You don't want to pay for all the servers which are present in there. And that's something which we have a lot of improvement when it comes to AWS with respect to Redshift and the serverless options which are coming in into Redshift. And also like another very, very important area where there's a lot of focus in serverless is application integration, right? So there were a lot of use cases that Donnie and Steve presented to us related to application integration, right? So we looked at the integrating AWS services and we also looked at how to integrate SaaS services with AWS. And one of the key things that we would have observed, it's kind of taken for granted right now is the fact that we are not worrying about, for all the services that we looked at earlier, we will be paying for consumption. Like once we create a flow, you will be paying for the number of executions of that flow or how many operations were performed and things like that. And you'd not be really paying for the servers themselves. So it's also serverless is becoming more underneath the hood nowadays. It's almost taken for granted kind of. So we already looked at the, I mean we already talked about the serverless options for compute, right? So AWS Lambda, AWS Fargate is the serverless compute engine which works with Elastic Container Service. And AWS Fargate can also be used with Elastic Kubernetes Service as well. And we also have a number of data stores which are serverless, right? So you have S3, EFS, DynamoDB. You have RDS Proxy which can actually integrate with RDS. Amazon Aurora is a very great, good example of AWS Arora serverless as well. And you have Amazon Redshift serverless coming in as well. And you have a lot of things. We already talked about a lot of these. Like we talked about EventBridge earlier. Like we talked about the like multiple, like a family of EventBridge. And we have step functions, SQS. All these are good examples of things which help us to implement serverless. And serverless architectures are also implemented in wide variety of use cases, right? So the typical, this is kind of the most popular architecture, right? So for building most popular use case of serverless, I think to build things like web applications, to build things like REST API. So you have your data stored in DynamoDB which is exposed, which is like which a Lambda function would be talking to. And this would be exposed from something like API Gateway or something like that. So this is one of the popular architectures when it comes to REST API with serverless AWS Lambda. The other like architectures which are also possible are data processing architectures, right? So this is an example of actually like you have nodes coming in and you don't want to store them to S3. And you don't want to do further processing based on the nodes. Maybe you'd want to generate a PDF or things like that. So those kind of things can easily be done in an event-driven style as well, right? So you have an object which is stored in S3 and you can have events triggered from S3 and you can trigger Lambda functions or you can put messages in the queue and you can do a lot of processing after that based on whatever is coming in. So you can process the biggest advantage over here is once you create the entire flow, you don't really need to worry about scaling it or you don't need to worry about availability of it and things like that. You can also implement batch programs, batch processing in a serverless way as well. In the previous session, Donny talked about EventBridge, right? So in EventBridge, one of the new features which came in is scheduling, right? So you can schedule like as soon as, so you can schedule something in EventBridge to trigger off your batch and you can process the entire batch in a serverless way as well. Yeah, you have a number of other things that you can do in a serverless way as well. You can trigger off your machine learning workflows or you'd want to do some processing on your images and things like that. You'd want to get intelligence from them. So those kind of things also can be done in a serverless way. So basically the serverless architectures, there are a wide variety of possibilities when it comes to serverless architectures. And let's quickly look at some of the important trends with respect to serverless. So right now, if you look at the serverless market, it's, I would say somewhere, it's like the bottom is completely fragmented and the top is consolidated. I mean like where there are very, very few players. I would say it's somewhere in between, right? So today, like when it comes to function as a service offerings, I would say Lambda has a big advantage. But when you talk about serverless in general, I think it's somewhere in between. And this is from Mordor Intelligence Survey. And you can see that there are a wide variety of use cases where serverless is being used. Again, this is from the IBM serverless in the Enterprise 2021 report. You can see that it's used across different domains. And as usual, like AWS has a lead when it comes to like the serverless adoption. So you can see that almost half the organizations in each cloud have adopted serverless. But this is from the Datadoc Survey, like serverless survey 2022. So you can see that almost 75% of the enterprises which are using AWS have adopted serverless. So like AWS is leading the way in terms of how many of its customers are adopting serverless. This is like, you can write your Lambda functions in obviously multiple languages. And you can see that the two prominent languages which have a big lead are Python and Node.js. I think with this snapshot, with this snap start feature, probably Java would improve. But let's see, let's see how it goes. But right now Python and Node are the leading languages when it comes to writing your Lambda functions. And if you, I mean, whenever we talk about like serverless, it's kind of a flow. So you need to integrate your Lambda function. You need to have triggers for your Lambda function from somewhere. And you can see that like a lot of like invocations, the most popular way to invoke Lambda function is API gateway, right? So today, I mean, one of the recent features which was introduced into AWS Lambda is the HTTP invocation, right? You don't really need an API gateway to invoke a Lambda. But still, you'd see that actually, API gateway is the number one preferred option. The other one is through the queue, SQS. So you have a notification, you have a message coming into the queue and the Lambda function is invoked in response to that. The surprise in here is the event bridge, right? So event bridge is something which is pretty recent, I would say, but still it's doing pretty well. A lot of Lambda functions are getting triggered from event bridge as well. So yeah, and one of the like other trends that we see in the last year, like last couple of years is a lot of enterprises are going container first, right? A lot of enterprises, like earlier it was cloud first, today it's like container first, right? So you'd see that a lot of container related technologies are really loved, right? If you look at Docker, Kubernetes, these are really, really loved by a number of developers who make use of them and that's exactly the trend which is reflecting when it comes to serverless as well. The number of services, number of offerings around containers with respect to serverless in each of the cloud platforms are growing, right? And that's exactly reflecting with respect to the adoption as well. So more than 35% of the container organizations use serverless and the reverse is also true. A number of people who are going serverless are making use of containers as well, especially because today Lambda also supports containers. So yeah, as we talked earlier, like I see that with respect to serverless, we are somewhere in between, between the peak of inflected expectations and tough of dissolutionment and I see the adoption of serverless growing further and a lot of times we are making use of serverless unknowingly. Let's, we have three more minutes. So let's get to the predictions. Yeah, this is a famous prediction by somebody who's very, very popular, much, much more popular than me and he said 640K needs to be sufficient for anybody and this phone in here today has more than 64 gigs of memory, right? So it's like predicting is very, very difficult. Yeah, this is something which we are already observing, right? So almost like I would say serverless would become mainstream and a lot of times you would not even think about serverless as something specific, right? A lot of services you would make use of are serverless underneath and that will be the trend going forward. Probably I think very, very soon, like it's been almost seven, eight years since the term serverless was coined. I think there would be a new name for serverless, right? So in technology we have a way of actually doing the same thing and giving it a new name and I think we will find a new name for serverless very, very soon. Almost all the cloud services would become serverless and yeah, and like with respect to containers, I think like almost everything related to compute and serverless, I feel we would consolidate towards the containers way, right? So I think serverless containers will become the norm and obviously another factor where I think serverless service, I mean serverless architectures and serverless flows can improve is with respect to the developer experience, right? So building serverless is not as easy as building a usual traditional application, especially when it comes to debugging problems, right? So there are a lot of things that we can do better when it comes to that. Each of the cloud providers is doing a lot with respect to that but I think still there's a long way to go with respect to improving the developer experience with respect to building serverless applications. Yeah, now like my recommendations when it comes to like how do you get much more knowledge about serverless? I love this serverless ICY MY, it's in case you missed it. This is something which is published on the AWS website every quarter and I love reading it, right? This gives you a complete overview of what's happening with respect to serverless every quarter and this is a great place to look at if you would want to explore serverless further or if you want to understand the history of serverless, how it evolved. Another great place to go is the AWS well-architected framework. The serverless application lens is a great place to go in and look at all the architectures that are possible with respect to serverless. Serverless land is another website I love. This is where a lot of patterns related to serverless are present. So you can actually see around 400 plus different templates with respect to getting started with your serverless architectures. And I love the Data Docs survey. They have been publishing this for a few years now and this is a great place to understand what's happening in the serverless world. Thanks a lot. I think serverless is here to stay. We might find a new way to express what serverless is, but I think serverless is something which will be here to stay for a long time. Thanks a lot. I would want to thank the organizers, Steve, Donnie and Badri. Thanks a lot. You have helped me a lot in actually even getting a visa and coming in here. Thanks a lot for all that. I hope you all have a nice session and thanks a lot. Thank you.