How great it was to see some of y'all in the flesh last night. Thanks for coming to Joe's Pub. That was fun. That was fun. But today, it's Watch Me Work. It's Watch Me Work, where the me and the title is you. Now you guys know, so hey, hey, Watch Me Work people. For those of you who don't know what this is, I'll give the little intro. It's Watch Me Work, where we hang out together and get some work done. And the focus is on your work and your creative process. We've been doing this for going on 12 years now. And we thank HowlRound and we thank the Public Theater for making it happen. And here's how we work together. We hang out and I set the timer for 20 minutes. And then we work together. And then we come back and we talk about your work and your creative process. And, Audrey, if there's something else that I've forgotten to say. You didn't forget. It's my turn to tell you how to answer questions. So we're good. So if you want to ask a question and you're inside of the Zoom, all you need to do is click on the Raise Your Hand button, which is in the Reactions tab, which is likely at the bottom of your screen on a laptop or the top if you're on an iPad or a tablet. And if you're watching on our stream, you can ask us questions at Watch Me Work SLP on Twitter with the hashtag HowlRound, H-O-W-L-R-O-U-N-D. Or you can write to the Public Theater's Instagram or Twitter and we'll get it that way. I think that's it, though. And I think that's it. Yeah, except all the good juicy stuff that happens. Starting now, are we ready? And. All right. OK. All right. Here we are. We're back. We're here. We got a question. You ready? Yeah. All right. All right, Larry. Go for it. Hi, SLP. Hey, Larry. How you doing, man? OK, how are you? Good, good, good. Happy Monday. Happy Monday. I have a possible opportunity waiting to find out. I may get a grant through my school to do a workshop. And I wanted to talk to you about the workshop. And I guess having been, I met you through ACT and we did lots of little workshops. And regional theaters do a lot of workshops and sometimes for better and sometimes for worse. Even be constructive and not so constructive. And I guess I just was wondering what your experience is in terms of has it helped you to hand your play over to actors and listen to actors do it? And when do you do that in your process? How do you prepare for that as a writer? Do you do you just simply try to finish a play and then you hear it? Or do you ever go into a workshop with certain questions or unfinished ideas or things like that? I don't know. I just was interested in your experience as a writer handing your work to actors while you're still in process. Great question, Larry. And congratulations on maybe getting an opportunity to develop your work. Very cool, very cool, very cool. Yeah, right, right. That's really great, man. Yeah, I mean, different writers work differently and certainly you work differently. The same writer might work differently, given different situations, you know? If they're actors, you know really well. It's a different kind of situation than actors that you don't know at all, a director that you've never worked with, that kind of thing. So it does vary. Also, what you want out of the workshop varies. So without you don't have to sort of name names or get specific, but is it a group that you know well or is it a group that you're totally new to or what? Actually, I'm thinking of amassing actors. As I told you, I've sort of, this is my, I don't know if you remember, this little Sisyphus play of mine. And I sort of developed it sort of like back and forth through like sort of like a devising thing and then just a writing thing.  And one of the things I feel like is that I've lost a little bit of the spirit of wanting it to reflect voices other than my own. So I was thinking about basically getting a group of actors that have not participated in the process at all and kind of testing and see how does it sound with people who don't know what the hell I'm talking about, who haven't been involved in the beginning and just seeing, does it stand on its own and what do new voices bring to it? So they'd be actors, I know, but they don't know. They don't know the project. Right, they don't know the piece. Well, okay, let's see. Because there's so many variables here.  That's just my process. But some writers go in and they've got an idea, you know, and they're gonna workshop it and figure out. I like to go in with the, having gotten to the end. Again, I'm not judging the quality of my draft, you know? I got to the end. I like to do what I call the writer's work, which then frees up the actors to do the actor's work. Again, this is just me. I'm not one of those writers so far anyway, who goes in going, I don't know the story of the play at all. Actors, could you help me? You know, a lot of writers do that. I don't know these characters. If they're maybe outside of my presenting person, my presenting self, you know? Actor, I'm gonna cast some actors who live in that experience daily. Maybe they can help me. I'm not one of those writers. You know, I'm gonna go there as best I can. If I'm writing something who is outside of my person or not, I'm gonna go there as best I can. So I'm not asking the actors to do the work that I consider to be the writer's work. I'm asking the actors to amplify and clarify what I've gotten so far. And not help me figure it out. That's the, you know? Because then I feel like they do their best work.  And then people can feel comfortable in what they have to do. That's just my style, though. But different people work different ways and they're all valid. You just have to let the actor, everybody know what the expectations are from the beginning. So for me, I like to be, have reached an end of a script. I'm personally just to take that to the next level. I like to be a couple of drafts in. I haven't yet been so eager to, I gotta hear it, you know? I can hear it fine at home in my head, you know? Or if I need to hear it out loud, I can read it aloud. I only bring in other people when I've done a significant amount of work. Not done, not perfect, but just a significant amount of work so that I can lead, you know? So, and that doesn't exclude, you know, other voices, ideas or anything like that. It's just, it's my play. It's my script. It's not our script. We are not writing it. I'm writing, you know? And they're acting and that this person over here is directing or whatever. Yeah, does that help it also? And workshops, you know, they can last a week, they can last a month. They could be workshop just before the production, you know, it really depends what kind of expectations you have and what the runway looks like.  Are you just gonna workshop in this? I thank you very much and we'll see you next incarnation, that kind of thing, it depends. Is that helpful? Okay, but congratulations on having that opportunity.  Thanks, Larry. All right, we're gonna go to Chris next. Go for it, Chris. Hey, Chris. Hi, Susan, Laurie. So my question for you is about, I've been working on this project for the last year and a half and for the first six months of it, I was writing it and then for the last year, I've been filming it and writing it as I've been making it and it's kind of a hybrid documentary. So parts of it are fictional scenes that are written by me and then parts of it are documentary scenes that are just kind of improvised and happen as I film them. And I'm now at the end of filming this project, I'm gonna be done in 10 days and I've been working on writing the final scenes and I've been rewriting them and rewriting them and none of the versions of the scenes have manifested in a way that feels like they're ready to film, but it feels like I'm running out of time. So I was just wondering if you have any thoughts or advice on the scenes that we rewrite and rewrite and we just can't quite crack them, particularly when you have a deadline that's coming up. That's a really great question. Particularly when we have a deadline and a medium that is a fixed film. Film is different from, I'm going into first previews on my play or something like that. Let's see, a couple. When do you have to give the pages to the actors? I'm assuming like the day of or day before? Oh, it's your muted question. One second, let me see if I can get you back on, sorry. There you go. Yes, I could give them the pages on the day of. Great, okay. So you have your finished line, right? Just day of so you can go, because if it were a play and we were going into previews, you just have to be mindful about when you're handing actors pages, right? So if it's a play, so it's medium dependent. Okay, so you have right up until the last day, right? And even on set. And you have the magical thing called reshoots. I mean, if you do that at all, I don't know. I think this project probably won't have reshoots, but. Because? I mean, it's a weird project. So a lot of it is, it's a project that I've been making with my family. It's kind of been about making a project in quarantine. And so I'm moving away. And part of it is just that like, I've been working this project for the last year and a half and I've been growing out my beard and my hair throughout the process of it. And so I'm just gonna be filming it. I'm gonna be shaving and cutting it all off the end of it. So it's just that if we were to reshoot, it would clearly be a different time. Okay. But I'm just saying that you are, so just, I would say keep that door open. You know that song? I'm gonna leave the door open. Okay, leave the door. I would say leave the door open. Okay. Because then you have, because making a film, I mean, in my experience, I made movies and TV shows, the film that is made in the editing room. And we do reshoots. It's part of the process. So that you gotta get it right on the day, sure, you gotta have the right pages to hand out. But if there's something that you wanna redo, you get reshoot. You can reshoot a scene. And so you can give yourself the opportunity. It's just like if you were say, I mean, there used to be writer, there used to be writers, there probably are still writers, but the beats, you know, first draft, best draft. I think it was the beats. It was some group of people. First draft, best draft. That's what they'd say. Like they didn't believe in rewriting. No, you know, I'm just a genius and I just put it out there and it's brilliant. And that's what we're gonna do. And that's something, okay, it's an idea. It's an idea. Great, great. You know, no worries, everybody. There are many different faiths and they're all valid, but some, you know, I like doing reshoots if I have to. I like doing rewrites if I would need to, you know? I'm, because, yeah. So I'm just saying, so you write all the way up until the day, until the morning, you know? And then you fly with what you've got. And then you consider the possibility of reshoots. I.e. you might not want to shave your beard until you feel like, yeah, I got it. You know what I mean?  Yeah. Pause, see what you've got when you look at the dailies or however, you know, you're gonna look at it. You know what I mean? Yeah. And sit with it for a couple of days or a week or so. Just, just to give yourself some generosity there. Yeah. I would suggest. There's not the pressure of it has to be the version. Exactly.   But you can always like, that's what I had on the day. But if you've got reshoots available to you, I'd say just consider it. Yeah. You know? Awesome. Thank you, Susan, Mari. Thank you. Thank you, Chris. Thanks, Chris. All right, Vernita. Hi. Were you writing some articles? Is this, this the, were you writing some articles ages ago? Yeah. How'd it come out? Oh my goodness. Well, that's why I had to come back and share. So I'm like, I'm so glad this is here. Hey, SLP, hey, Audrey. I'm like the gang's all here. Chris will have this fire haircut. I'm loving her haircut. Melania's hair, yeah. I'm looking at everybody, Jim's hair. Everybody's here. Everybody. Everybody's here. So yes, well, one, I wanted to just quickly say congrats again on the United States versus Billie Holiday. Oh, thank you. Very, very much. Thank you so much. Appreciate that. So yes, the smart and hot article, the life form reliant that I called out, systemic racism, town and country, and the Hearst Corporation. Has, it was published in the Daily Beast. It was named Best of the Beast two years in a row. I just got that this past, a couple of weeks ago, November, because I published it in, thank you. In October of, it came out October, 2020. It was named Best of the Beast November, 2020. So I just got named again for November, 2021. Yes. Also awarding podcast episode around the article. Wow. New lifestyle brand. So one of the quotes in the article has lent to me really shaping a brand around this idea.  And so that has lent to the brand America's Hot Sauce. Right on, right on. And last thing I'm like, what else, what else? And responses from executives, one of the largest animation companies in the world or most historic reached out to me to inquire about doing equity and diversity consulting with them. Oh wow. So my question is, doing something like this again, because of flip sides. So I'm like, yay, all of these things happened. And I'm so incredibly grateful for this community that was on that journey with me, which ended up being a four month process. But the energy that I expended, what I never anticipated was the crash after doing that piece. So I mean, like I went through like, I had this pain that's robbing pain in my right, I'm right handed in my right wrist as I'm doing the drafting. And then like, once it was off, the pain and the risk alleviated. And it was also amazing to connect with other, with former black employees of this company who reached out and said, my God, it happened to me too. The article was my story as well as the story, my story as a consultant, but also the two other former black employees. But I have, I'm having trouble writing again. And it's almost like that was pouring.  And how do I really recuperate and be able to continue to write at a high level? Great question, Bernina. And congratulations on all your success. We're so proud of you. We're so proud of you. We're so rooting for you. Excellent job, sister, really, really, really great. And yeah, so how do you keep going? I mean, that's a question we all ask like every day. How do I keep going? How do I know what I'm done? And then how do I keep going? How do I know what I'm done? We asked that question over there. So now you're at the, how do I keep going? You said you used the words recuperate. Sure, just do some fun things. It's the holidays, whatever you celebrate, much of the Western world is celebrating the holidays. So enjoy whatever things sort of present themselves to you as things that might be enjoyable. binge watch your favorite shows, hang out with your friends, maybe do some non-work related things, read for pleasure, write for pleasure, just write stuff, just let your mind wander, do some self-care things. You know what I mean? And I mean, I think what I hear in that, it's weird just certain amount of anxiety about like, we'll just work out and we'll just come through. And if I remember correctly, and I might not be remembering correctly, that's a similar kind of anxiety you had when you were working. So it's what's there all the time, you know, faith, your faith in what you can do and what's gonna come through for you. And you just have to keep telling yourself that it's gonna come through, you just do the work, and the spirit has given you a great evidence. You know what I mean? Hey, Bernita, you did the work, here's evidence, right? So you need to look at your anxiety and go, do I really need to be this anxious and worried and scared, you know?  I've almost run a marathon, or have you ever, you haven't, you have? Yes, you haven't. No, I have not.  You had a good time, you know?  Just do some self-care, but be aware that your anxiety about whether or not a workout is high when you're working and when you're not working, you know? And see if you can sort of talk to yourself about that, you know, it's not a bad thing, it's just a thing that I've just realized, because I remember when you were working on these articles, you know, right? So not a bad thing, just an observation, something to look at, which is great. It's great when we see things that we can look at in our process, not in ourselves, but in our writing process. I'm not talking about like you when talking about your writing process, right? Okay, something to look at and go, okay, okay, okay, Vrenita, what do I need to do to bolster my confidence? You know? What things do I need to do to feel good about me? Because that's where the writing's gonna come from, that's where the next project will come from. What's gonna be joyful?  Did you somehow award yourself in some way, reward yourself in some way, in some way? Did you? Not really, I think I just really kind of kept my nose to the grindstone.  Nose to the grindstone, you know?   So you might not like flowers. Buy yourself a house plant, you know, that could be cool because there it is, a growing thing in celebration of, that's why they have the Olympians stand on those pedestals and they go, they hang that metal on their neck in front of millions of people. It's a way of saying, good job. You need a good job after you do all that work. Yeah. Right? Okay. Okay, okay, okay, okay. And the last thing I'll say is I love that you said about self-care because that's one of my platforms for this America's hot sauce brand that self-care is the revolution. Well, you gotta practice it. You gotta practice what you preach, sis. Thank you. Okay. It is, it is. Okay, all right, I got it. Great. Let's celebrate it, how I celebrate it. Yes, celebrate yourself. Okay, good job. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks, Renita. All right, I'm gonna say, Cess, is that you, you're next. Thanks, Cess. All right, hello. Hello. It's nice to be here. I'm tuning in from Vancouver. Hey. To the Mesquim Square, I'm a slave of this nation's land. Could you speak a little, can you speak, can you raise your voice a little bit? Yeah, yes, I'm actually at the library but people just need to hear me. Can you hear me okay now? Yes, I can hear you okay now. Okay, great. So I have been watching your interviews on YouTube and there's this one thing that you said to, I think it was Charlie Rose. It was like, you know, like something arrives and like inspiration arrives and I don't question it. I don't, you know, I don't like thinking, I think you said it in terms of like, you know, in terms of like critical thinking about that inspiration, but I just give it, give that a space and like follow that. I have a hard time doing that because I tend to just go like, is this meaningful? Is this gonna help? Or is this gonna like be beneficial? And so I have been just like, that realization made me realize how much there's a blockage in my creative practice. Like, and how much it actually released that stress, just like seeing you speak about that, just such an ease. Just like, you're just like, yeah, yeah, like I don't even think about that. And I feel like I have missed so many opportunities. Like I got into my dream school and because of fear, I was like, no, I can't do it. And so like, it's a big thing. And but I'm going to break the leg of that theme. And do it next year, hopefully. But just wanted to ask you, can you expand on that a little bit more? And how do you follow that? What would you be see you doing if you were to give that space? Er, what a great question, Sess. And did you say you were going to break the leg of that demon? Is that what you said? Yes, I mean, that's- I just want to be clear because I didn't want to misunderstand you. I mean, that's, I think that's a phrase that has in my mother tongue, but I translated that in English.  It's Turkish. You've called before, you've called before. No, I haven't. You haven't called before? This is the first time. Oh, wow. There's a dude from who's Turkish who calls, he has a yellow background in back of him. I'm sorry for thinking that you were here. Yeah, sorry about that. That's amazing. So break the leg of the demon. Okay, not to go against anything in your mother tongue. So let's just look at that demon for a minute because when you, so the demon, the angel, the spirit, the devil. So there's a spirit that comes to visit you and they give you gifts and they offer you things and you say no, right? Because maybe you're trying to protect yourself. I'm guessing, I don't know. Maybe? Yeah, I think so. I think it's, I think that it is, I feel that it's essential and sexual energy. Maybe I'm blocking that. And also I am trying to avoid fear that comes with following creative life, artistic practice. And so I think I'm avoiding that step. No, I understand, I understand. Yeah, it's all about like where we feel safe, right?  I don't wanna do it for all kinds of reasons because we're in a box sometimes of our own making. Are you in a carol right now, like in the library or just in the library? I'm in the library, but I just found a chair in the hall. Okay, cool. Okay, okay, okay. Sometimes we're in a box of our own making and it's safe, you know, but the spirit says, Cess, come out of the box. And it's an act of courage to take those first steps, you know, it's tricky. I just wanna say just, I mean, you know what you need to do? You need to follow the spirit. The spirit's calling you loudly, you know? It sounds like it is anyway. It's calling you loudly.  You walk the path, you won't be alone. Just in this room, this Zoom room, you have friends who are on the path too. You're not a, you know, you won't be alone. You'll be supported. Maybe that's what's frightening. Yeah, a little bit, I think. Maybe to be loved is terrifying for who you are, terrifying. To be who you're supposed to be, terrifying. To be yourself, oh my gosh, you know? To be yourself among others who are being themselves. That's what we're doing right now. We're being ourselves, you know? So you have a choice. You can be yourself or you can be someone else, someone who will fit in in all those places that you feel comfortable right now, you know? You have a choice. And it's okay, either way is good. Either way is good, okay? And it's no fault, it's no big regret or anything if you choose, you know, you're at a fork and every day we're at a fork in the road, you know? But you did call here and to talk with me. So I'm just telling you what I told Charlie Rose. I mean, I've also been reading your work. It's not only. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Man, I know I'm just, all I'm saying is that I'm just gonna say what, you know what I'm gonna say. Oh yeah.   Yeah. Come on. You're not alone. Look at us, look at all these people, right? It's great. And you can come and hang out here each time we're here every Monday, you know? And we sit here and we do this and look, you know, we get work done and we're from all over. We all look all kinds of ways. Isn't this great? You know? Yeah. So join. That's what the spirit is asking you to do, right? The spirit is saying, come on, Cess, come on. There is no demon, Cess. There's no demon, no. Okay? Yeah, thanks very much. And just keep checking in, you know what I mean? I mean, when do you have to say yes to this fabulous school of your dreams? When do you have to say yes? Oh, I declined it already. Okay, so what are you gonna do now? What are you gonna do? It's okay, maybe, hey, you know what? And maybe what are you supposed to do? Don't worry, hey, look, you're here. This is good.  It was actually, so I've done a uni in Istanbul. Okay. And it was actually under the grad here in Vancouver. It was actually a decline, but it also told me I should go, like they accepted me, but they also told me I should go for MFA. And so I'm actually, yeah, I will audition schools in New York actually. There you go. Yeah. There you go, so maybe that's what you really want.  I really want to do something else. Yeah. Okay, but do something. You know what I mean? Okay. Yeah. And just keep checking in now that you found us. You know? Yeah, we'll do. You know, there's that song now that we found love, what are we going to do with it? Look it up on Spotify. It's a soul song. Anyway, it's kind of cool. But you know, we're your tribe, bro. So come on. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks everyone too. We've got about five minutes left and we're going to go to Emma. Emma. Hello again. Hey, Emma. How are you doing? Good. How are you doing? I'm good. Good to see you. You too. Thank you. So I'll try to keep my like, my introductory rambling contained for the last few minutes. But I feel like I'm still kind of at the beginning of my writing journey. Like I'm still kind of green. And so a lot of my writing right now is like, and this is not like a slight to myself, but it's like a lot of it is kind of like derivative of people that I like that I'm reading. Like I'm kind of trying to figure out what works and what doesn't. And so I'm trying to get better at discerning. Like when I'm making a choice, like if it is the thing that will be best or like necessary to tell the story or if it's something that I'm just doing to like make it more interesting or because it's something that I saw that I liked. And like I can't always tell the difference. So I guess my question is like, do you have any advice for getting better at that? Or like, is that something that you've noticed in your own journey as a writer that like you've got more confident with that as you went along? Well, definitely get, I got more confident as I got along, but also different pressures come into play, you know? So confidence when you've got five years of writing under your belt is different from when you've got 10 or 15 or 20 or 40. You know what I'm saying?  Don't have your critical mind going, is that the right word? Is that the right preposition? Just throw something down. Keep going, get to the end.  You just see what I mean? You just got to write stuff. You just got to write stuff and then you can look at it critically. Does that make sense? Cause then you're not in the middle of it going, I don't know, is this the right word at all? This could be, I don't know why I'm choosing this word that's getting a different part of your brain involved that's not really gonna help you get done. Yeah, I think that was like, I was thinking about it cause of the question at the beginning about workshopping. Like my, I went to undergrad for acting and so I have like some devising experience. And so I feel like what I'm used to is like being around people and throwing something out and then immediately getting feedback about like, that doesn't make any sense or that's a terrible idea. And then I'm like, okay, great. Now I can like, like I get a lot of external validation from that. Or just like, I just don't have a lot of practice, I guess, like listening to myself or like recognizing my own instincts. Right, and that's great, that's great. And so now you're a writer and this is one of our superpowers. So you're gonna build it.  You see what I mean? You're just gonna work on it. It's like a muscle. I don't know, do you do yoga or something? Maybe the, I don't know if you're natural. The first time you do yoga, I see people, you know, first time you do a down dog, ah, you know, you got to work it, it's a muscle. It's listening to yourself as a muscle, you know? You just got to work it and be patient and enjoy it. You know, but really just get to the end. Just that external validation, what you turn it into is external condemnation. You know, in that question, you turn it into an external questioner. It's not giving you validation. Just don't listen to it. The one you're listening to is in here. And just get to the end of the piece. Okay. Definitely. Thank you. You're welcome. You're welcome. Thanks Emma. Well, we've got about seven seconds left. Are we here next week or are we here next week? Yeah, I feel like it's number 20. Yes, yes, yes, yes, I'm looking into the distance like I'll know everything. Yes, yes, December 20th. Yes, we have, yeah, we have another Monday. Another Monday, the final class of 2021. The final class of 2021. Yeah. Yeah. And we'll look into the next year soon. Yeah, yes, we'll be back. We're here. Okay. Love you guys. Thanks for helping me. Thank you, Audrey. Thanks, Hal Brown. Thanks, Public Theater. Bye.


A useful result in higher mathematics is known as the pigeonhole principle.  If you have more birds than places to put them, then at least one of the pigeonholes must contain at least two birds. So with four pigeons and three pigeonholes, then at least one pigeonhole must have at least two pigeons. So mathematically at least, we can state the theorem as follows. Suppose k items are to be placed in n bins with k greater than n. Then at least one of the bins must contain more than one item. Since this is a theorem, we should prove it. And in fact, unless I prove some things, I'll get my mathematician card revoked. So we'll prove it by contradiction. Suppose no bin has more than one item. Since there are n bins, this means we can place at most n items. But k is greater than n, so there are some items that haven't been placed. Consequently, our assumption has to be false, and there is at least one bin with more than one item. The key to using the pigeonhole principle is to find the bins. It's useful to think of the bins as the places we sort into. For example, let's try to prove that for any hole number a, and any non-zero hole number q, there must be m and n, where a to m minus a to n is divisible by q. So a useful question to ask is, what if it isn't? In this case, suppose our difference isn't divisible by q for any m or n. There must be some remainder, and that remainder has to be somewhere between 1 and q minus 1. Now since the pigeonhole principle relies on there being more items than bins, let's make these remainders the bins. This gives us q minus 1 bins, so we'll want q or more values to be categories by the remainder on division by q. Now another useful idea to keep in mind is to change one thing at a time. There's two exponents, m and n, so let's fix n. Say we'll make it equal to 1, and consider the remainders of an a minus a, a squared minus a, a q minus a, and so on, are divided by q. Now the first is divisible by q, so we're done. Wait a minute, that can't be everything. And if you really want to understand mathematics, it's important to remember, don't stop with the easy cases. So let's ignore this first one. And if you omit the first one, that if any of the rest are divisible by q, we're done. Well, those were the easy cases, so if none of these are divisible by q, then at least two will have the same remainder. So remember, definitions are the whole of mathematics, all else is commentary. If two things have the same remainder, that must mean there's something times the divisor plus that remainder, and so we can write. Now, since both of these have an a and an r in them, it might be helpful to subtract one from the other. And if in doubt, expand or factor, and this means that for some m and m prime, the difference is divisible by q. It's useful to remember the last line is what you've actually proven, and it's not quite all we want to prove, but go ahead and rewrite the question. We'll change from a m minus a n to a m minus a m prime. Now, at this point, we'll introduce the following idea. To really understand mathematics and to be able to do more mathematics more easily, there are two useful strategies. There's a strategy of Leonard Euler, consider the corollaries, and there's a strategy of Carl Friedrich Gauss, prove it again. Now, we've proven the difference is divisible by q, and if in doubt, we can expand or factor, and so this can be factored as. Now, the exponent is this different m minus m prime, and it could be negative. And we shouldn't fear negative numbers, but you might as well avoid them if you can. And in fact, in this case, without loss of generality, we'll assume that m is greater than m prime. And since q divides the product, q must divide one of the factors. Or will it? And the thing to remember is that if you don't find the flaws in your reasoning, someone else will. So let's try an example. Well, we note that four divides 20, but if we write 20 as a product two times five, four divides neither factor. Question in the back. But 20 isn't two times five. Ah, yes, that's true. So if we wrote 20 as four times five, we find that four divides neither, but about 20 equals two times 10. Now, this factorization property does hold true for prime numbers because primes can't be broken. So if a prime divides a product, it must divide one of the factors, and so this gives us the following corollary. If q is prime and does not divide a, then it must divide a to k minus one for some k. So that's the Euler strategy. The Gauss strategy is to find a new proof. Yes, yes, Euler also reproved things many times. So let's try to find another proof. Since we're looking at the remainders when a difference of powers is divided by q, we might consider the remainders when the powers are divided by q. So let's consider the remainders by the terms of the infinite sequence are divided by q by the same reasoning, at least two terms have to have the same remainder, say a m and a m prime, and so, and so again, our difference is divisible by q.


Welcome to Sustainable Investing that benefits nature and people. If you need close captioning, you can click on the little button at the bottom that's marked with a CC and it says show captions. San Francisco Public Library acknowledges that we occupy the unceded ancestral homeland of the Ramaytush Aloni peoples who are the original inhabitants of the San Francisco Peninsula. We recognize that we benefit from living and working on their traditional homeland. As uninvited guests, we affirm their sovereign rights as first peoples and wish to pay our respects to the ancestors, elders, and relatives of the Ramaytush community. Please visit us on the fourth floor of the main library. If you are unable to visit us in person, you can reach us by chatting with us virtually through our website. You can email us at bizcitech at sfpl.org. That's B-U-S-S-C-I-T-E-C-H at sfpl.org or give us a phone call at<PHONE_NUMBER>. April is National Financial Capability Month. Formerly called National Literacy Financial Literacy Month that Biden administration changed the name this year. So that's why we're giving it this full on mouthful title. We have a great selection of programs for you to help you support you in your wellbeing as a citizen and financially fit citizen. The URL for our landing page with all of the listings and links to each programs is listed above, which I will share with you after the program is over. So don't worry about trying to memorize anything on this very busy page. Oops, went forward. And if you have our recorded programs, you can find them on San Francisco Public Library's YouTube channel.  That's our brand name for all programs pertaining to jobs and careers, personal finance and small business. And at that, I'd like to introduce you to our speaker today. This is Paul Herman. He is the CEO of the HIP Investor and the author and co-editor of Two Books, the Global Handbook of Impact Investing and the HIP Investor, both available at the San Francisco Public Library and used in teaching sustainable finance around the world. Please welcome Paul Herman. Thank you, Leah. Thanks everybody for joining today, either live or watching on YouTube afterwards or watching at a later time. I'm Paul Herman from HIP Investor and I've been delighted to be part of Leah and the San Francisco Public Library's program for multiple years now and super energized that the Financial Capability Month has a full slate of programs to learn about investing, saving, insurance, Medicare, retirement. So today we're going to kick it off with sustainable investing for nature and people in your portfolio. Feel free to ask questions in the chat and we'll try and answer them along the way. And what you'll learn today are ways and methods as well as reasons why a portfolio that focuses and supports nature and people as well as trust not only is better for the world but can be better and more resilient for your portfolio. So I'm going to share my screen here and we'll get started and these slides will be available afterwards. So let's get started and dig in. I like to kick off with this visual here and what you see sometimes is very scary to people. We almost use this for the cover of our last book but some people reacted that it was a little too intense but these are the choices in front of us. Living closer to the right where the skies are blue and the grass is green and people are treated well or on the left where the sky is orange or black like it was in San Francisco a few years ago with the wildfires when the smoke poured in and the sun didn't get light until about 1030 in the morning. This is the future we need to avoid on the left and the future we want to achieve is on the right. So I see already one question what to do with $1,000 to support nature and make money we're going to get to that. I'm going to share some fun names with you in just a little bit. Just a reminder that HIP Investor is an investment advisor registered in California as well as other states that everything we're going to talk about is for your education. All investing has risks. I'm not offering you any securities and the past is not indicative of the future just like the climate of the past is not indicative of the climate of the future. In this month of financial capability one of the resources on the San Francisco Public Library website are 67 books that you can look at going all the way back to 2009. Here are two books that are ours that are part of the 67 books. One is the HIP Investor from 2010 published by Wiley and that's a how-to guide. Everybody can read it. I wrote it in a very easy to understand language. And on the right hand side is the global handbook of impact investing. That was produced by 50 authors and myself and Elsa Sarmanto edited the 50 authors as well as contributing several chapters to the book. So both of these are in the library and can be accessed and they're part of the 67 books of financial capability month as well. And the topics that are covered there in the global handbook investing include nature and climate, investing with a gender lens so that women are supported as well as men that we can measure impact in many ways which we're going to show you and that there's impact experiences around the globe, China, India, Italy, Finland and more. Here are some other books that have been written recently. You can see Activate Your Money with Janine Furpo. She's local to San Francisco. You see Bill Gates writing about the climate potential disaster as well as Alex Edmonds talking about how people can be a great investment and grow the pie. All right, who are we at HIP? Just so you know, we were founded in San Francisco. We're still based in California though our team is virtual around the world.  Fund managers like Van Neck, for example is a fund manager with an exchange traded fund co-branded with HIP. We also work with investment indexes. So some of you may know ICE. We have a co-branded investment index with ICE and we work with investment advisors. So we are an investment advisor and we work with other investment advisors. We talked about the books. We do a lot of speaking in the media to help educate everybody and we're even part of the Newsweek Green Rankings for a while. So what we do is we rate investments on nature, people and trust and we give it a score, a zero to 100 score and then we invest in strategies and portfolios including those that are fossil fuel free. I see a question about which local foundations we work with. Sierra Club Foundation is one of our clients. So we help them invest in sustainable real estate. I also see a question about the pros and cons of gift annuities. We're not gonna get into those today but that's something we can follow up on later if you like. All right, so meet Kristen Magnuson. Kristen is based in San Francisco. She's an architect. She works for a San Francisco company called Stoke STOK and Stoke helps companies, large, medium and small become more sustainable. It helped their real estate become more sustainable and Kristen, who's worked there for more than a decade has a sustainable life. You can see her kayaking. You can see her with her dog. She's sustainable at work advising companies and real estate companies how to be more sustainable. But about eight years ago she came back to work after a conference and said, I heard how investing can be sustainable. How can our 401k plan at Stoke be more sustainable and how can my portfolio in general? So you're here just like her right now and what Kristen started was essentially the move to get the whole company options and suggestions which we'll cover in a few moments options for investing. And in addition, they wanted it to be fossil free. So this is a toolkit available at an Oakland nonprofit called as you so. As you so.org has a website called Fossil Free Funds which is a great site. It shows you what's inside the mutual funds and exchange traded funds that you invest in. And we with Timothy Yee of Green Retirement and as you so wrote this step-by-step guide. So you can find that on as you so. You can search for the fossil free investing guide and that's a tool available for you. So why you're here today and why I'm here every day is people want to invest in a way that reflects the future and that just like Wayne Gretzky in hockey said go where the puck is, you know, skate to where the puck is going don't skate to where the puck is. We want to skate towards a future that has blue skies and green grass that is fair and just to everyone. And that is ethical and not corrupt. So what you see here are a variety of pictures of investments in either companies or uni bonds in mutual funds or exchange traded funds that have that potential. So why, what are some additional reasons we want to do this? The world has industrialized we're now more than eight billion people with that eight billion people we're generating a lot of carbon, a lot of greenhouse gases and we're reaching the physical limits of how much we can produce by driving in our cars, riding in a bus, being on electric scooter, being in a building that may or may not have energy efficiency that and so those limits are starting to be reached and these limits were identified 50 years ago by NASA and James Hansen and talked about by Al Gore in his movie and book but we are getting to a dangerous time right now where we have to do something. And a way to talk about this is you hear a lot about climate change and the temperature the temperature that they talk about is usually in Celsius because the world is usually taking temperature in Celsius which sounds a little less intense than in Fahrenheit. In general, you can double Celsius increments of Celsius in the Fahrenheit. So all of our body temperatures usually are about 98.6 Fahrenheit degrees. And the way I like to talk about the risk of climate is if the planet warmed one and a half to two degrees Celsius that's like our body's warming, two and a half to three and a half degrees Fahrenheit. And from 98.6 that would mean we would have a fever of about 101 to 102 degrees. If we do nothing today, our fever risks the world's temperature or our fever risks being 105 to 109 degrees. There aren't many people who survived that and if the planet were to do that, it's not only us humans but also species and nature and bees and water and climate. So the time to act is net. So when you next talk to people about climate try and use those measures if you can. When you apply this to the 3000 counties across the US and we're not showing Alaska and Hawaii here but they're analyzed as well, you can see that the climate risk ranges from this green to yellow to orange to red. And you can see a lot of that. Some of that is in California, including around the Bay Area but a lot of that is in the South and Southeast. And so the risk of everything from sea level rise to hurricanes and tornadoes to flash floods. This is an intense risk to be managed. It's not a hoax as some people talk about. It is a real problem that more than 95% of scientists around the world agree. So when you're looking at investing and if you're investing in real estate this is a chart you wanna study. If you're investing in companies, for example, some pharmaceutical companies are based in Puerto Rico when the massive hurricane hit Puerto Rico there was a disruption to pharmaceuticals and pill production, which are things that we need for healthcare. In earlier days when there'd be hurricanes in the South Walmart usually would be one of the first companies stocking trucks with beer and pop tarts which are two of the things that go fast when there's a weather risk. So the worser risk on this chart just answer that question, red and orange is more intense risk and less resilience. Those are either states or counties or cities that are not preparing for climate because there's conservatives who don't believe in climate or say they don't believe in climate. But as we see in Florida, you still have the governor wanting to solve the problems of climate even if they say they don't believe in climate risk. So greener is better. So if you're thinking about moving somewhere in the future Seattle, Minnesota, Maine are more isolated to some of these risks but there's risks everywhere, various forms. Okay, so what does that mean for your portfolio? So I hope you've at least heard the term greenhouse gases. Some of you may know that it's made up of carbon and it's also made up of methane. These are all terms from chemistry. So you can see CO2 that's carbon dioxide that comes out of the back of your car if you have a gasoline powered car or a diesel powered car. CH4 is methane and then you have things like nitrous dioxide, chlorofluorocarbons which were addressed a few years back in terms of air conditioning and refrigerators and the like. But these are all pollution going into the sky from 40% of it comes from buildings, 40% of it comes from transportation and then the rest from a mix like food supply. And there's a suggestion in the chat box about reading about donut economics. That was one of the books we showed you at the beginning and Linda says, please read Kate Raver's donut economics. I agree, it's a great book to give you context about this. So there's three types of greenhouse gases and I'm gonna show you why this is important in a second. Scope one, which is what's inside the company. Scope two, which is what comes from energy production that you purchase from Pacific Gas and Electric or other sources. And then scope three, which is your customers and suppliers. So a car company like Ford or General Motors or Tesla has scope one of building the car, scope two of the energy used to build that car and scope three of all the pollution that comes from that car for the rest of its life as well as all the pollution from the suppliers that went into that car. So you can see how these can become very large numbers and it becomes difficult to change. So one of the things that you see on the left hand side is something called science-based targets. So in science-based targets, there's more than 2000 companies around the world that have subscribed to say, hey, nature has limits and we need to invest, we need to reduce our pollution to stay under those limits and we need to make investments to be more efficient and find ways to get to lower and maybe even zero carbon. Okay, so here are some examples. These are actually the stock tickers. So you can take a screenshot of this, the slides will be available later. So who are companies that are pursuing aggressive carbon or greenhouse gas reduction? In that green box, you can see three of them. UL is for Unilever, they make a lot of consumer products. Like soap and cereal. HASI is hand in arm strong. They finance and produce renewable energy for large governments and states as well as some companies. And then Novo Nordisk and VO, which is a medical company seeking to cure diabetes. They're committing to eliminating all their carbon by the year 2030 from a base year, usually somewhere around 2020. That means if you have a hundred percent reduction over 10 years, you have to do 10% a year or if it's compounded, you only have to do 8% a year. You have to do that every year. eBay and the Gap and Heinz are also companies that have these aggressive goals. And then on the right hand side, you can see F for Ford and G for General Motors. Car companies have to adhere to laws from California and from Europe that say after 2035, you can't sell a gasoline-powered car anymore. So the climate is changing. We're reaching limits of what we can support without risking our global fever and body temperature. And companies are starting to take action. Now, what you see on this slide these companies are ahead of their target. Etsy, say a Brown Bavarian, Jones Lang LaSalle. Some of these names you might not have heard of before, but these are companies who are aggressively reducing their carbon. And so someone to consider for your portfolio. Another company is Intuit that you can see there. Intuit has said they not only want to reduce their own carbon, but they want to help reduce their customers' carbon. So if you're using QuickBooks or one of their products, you might start to see tools to help reduce your energy in your pollution and your carbon. All right, so a lot of you, I see some of you say, what can I do at Vanguard or what funds might be able to help me invest in nature? Whoops, sorry. So here are some names and ticker symbols along with some carbon metrics of what you can consider for your portfolio. These are funds that we invest that I personally invest in. So I'm invested in these. We invest our clients' money. So when we manage money for clients, they're usually doing what I do first. I'm not trading in first, but we're picking the selection and we're investing together. And there are various mixes of these funds because if you're investing for the longer term, you might want more stock-based funds. If you're investing for the shorter term, you might want more bond-based funds. So this is what goes in 401K plans as well. So these are possibilities for your 401K plan at work. Okay, so let's talk about water that makes everybody wants clean water to drink. So one fund to look at, you can see in the middle there is Invesco Water Resources. The ticker is PHO. When you see a short ticker like that, that's an exchange-traded fund. You can buy and trade it like a stock. Whereas some of the longer tickers, like NextX, which is a fund from Shelton, now called the Shelton Sustainable Equity Fund, that's a mutual fund. And mutual funds just trade at the end of the day. So mutual funds were invented first to group stocks together. So a mutual fund is a group of stocks, 30, 50, 100 or more stocks. And you invest in that fund. And by investing in that fund, you're investing in those stocks. And then you might own different stocks over time based on what the fund manager chooses. ETFs, or these typically shorter tickers, those trade throughout the day. So as computers became more powerful, it became potential to trade them during the day, not just at the end of the day. One of the others we like to talk about is Portfolio 21. That's more than they started in 1999. They started in Portland on the West Coast. They're now owned by a fund called Trillium based in Boston. And so they look internationally. So when we're talking about Unilever and Novo Nordisk and other companies, they look for international companies as well as US based companies. There's a firm called PAX that is owned by IMPACs. So you can see their global environmental markets. Those are companies working on water efficiency, energy efficiency, products to make buildings more efficient and make cars more efficient. Cars have fuel injectors, for example. Just a reminder, 40% of all greenhouse gases come from transportation, moving people and food and goods around, and 40% come from buildings. So when you think about yourself, like what kind of car do I drive? Can I drive an electric car? Can I drive a hybrid car? Can I take a bus? Can I take public, can I take BART or Muni or ride a bike or an electric scooter? That is changing your greenhouse gas profile. And when hundreds of people or thousands of people for a company do that, a company called SAP, which makes software, they actually use their human resources department to let people know who lives next to you. So when you do go to the office, you can carbon. And that can reduce 50 to 75% of carbon emissions. So there's a lot of exciting actions going around in products, in process, in human behavior. And then you can see companies like Etho, which is based in California. Etho climate leadership. So many of you might be in the S&P 500, but the S&P 500, as you can see on this chart at the bottom, has almost 9% of the investments are in oil, gas, and other fossil-based production. What all the funds in the green show is there's no investment in oil, gas, Haliburton, Chevron, Exxon, ConocoPhillips. The US economy and the global economy is built around oil. And so these are investments that are moving to the future, like we said, skate where the puck is gonna be, not where it's been already. And so these funds have committed to focusing on nature beneficial investments, at least less nature damage and potentially more. All right, let's take a pause right here. We're talking about a lot of funds and I see some questions. So I see somebody ask about managed accounts at Schwab where they don't have control over the investments. Can I get more input in managed accounts? Yes, call whoever's managing it. You either have an advisor allocating to managed accounts or you have fund managers that are doing that. Find out who they are, contact them, feel free to send them this presentation if you want or this webinar link. And the books in Financial Capability Month and let them know this is what you want. And they may already have an option. They just may not know yet that you want it. So you have to speak up. The number one rule is speak up. If you have an advisor or fund manager, let them know. Give them time to change. But if they don't change in a short period of time, maybe look for a new advisor and maybe look for fund managers. I see a couple of questions here about saving or investing for college kids as their balance might be small. You can pick one or two of these funds. You might have a 529 plan. Some of those plans have sustainable investing choices. There's different 529 plans by state. So you can research the states to see which one. They are changing, but they may not have sustainable options yet. You might open up an account for minors at a Schwab or a Fidelity or a Vanguard or your broker. And so you can pick one of these fossil free funds. If you like it, you can research it and see. And so that's something you could put into the investment pool for your kids. Some mutual funds have minimums, $500 minimum, $1,000 minimum. And some of those have a minimum increment. So these exchange traded funds, I mentioned ETHO or PHO, you can buy a share of it. And so a share could be $20, $50, $75. And that's lower than a $500 minimum. How to give kids incentives to save and invest. The kids probably know this already. The kids are worried about climate. The kids are worried about making a better world. They have lots of access to it. Encourage your kids to research these, give them these short list of companies that I'm sharing, funds that I'm sharing here and have them research it or have them like I just showed you who are the science-based target companies, research those and see. So kids like to be involved. And this wasn't in my intro bio, but my first company before HIP, I've been doing HIP for now 17 years. My company before that was helping kids, teams and families manage their money, invest, save, donate, and we built a parental permission electronic wallet. So kids like to be engaged. So definitely engage the kids if they're old enough to do so and they may even have school projects that are looking at this. I see another question about Vanguard. My portfolio is with Vanguard. How do I ensure my investments are in focus and sustainable? Again, call them up. If you call the call center, they might have a script they read from. Vanguard recently pulled out of the net zero alliance for fund managers. And the reason they did this is we're living in California. Most of us on this call are probably progressive. Some of us might be conservative, but what's happening in conservative states like Texas and Florida and Indiana and Utah and about 20 other states is they are passing policies and laws to, A, band financial companies, band fund managers from their pension that are investing in this way, investing in this fossil free way. So what they say in Texas and Oklahoma is, oh, you don't wanna support fossil fuel companies, you can't manage our pension. So Vanguard, either A, being afraid, or B, being opportunistic said, oh, we're dropping out of the net zero alliance. We're not gonna aggressively move towards climate action. So that's a reason to consider if somebody is for Vanguard, whether they're gonna be as attentive to this issue, but something to be aware of, but whoever you're dealing with at any company, you need to ask them. All right, so let's see. So funds that we've mentioned, just in case you're listening and not seeing, these slides will be available afterwards so you can research them on your own. Etho, E-T-H-O, it's an exchange traded fund that you can buy on most brokerages. P-H-O, which is Invesco water resources, water efficiency, water production, sometimes desalinizing water, that's done very well over 20 years. It's been a great fund in the past, potentially in the future. Portfolio 21, there's a P-O-R-T-X is the everyday version. You might have access to P-O-R-I-X. Some of these funds, mutual funds, have institutional shares that are available to you, sometimes in a 401K. Whenever you can get a lower expense ratio fund for the same holdings like P-O-R-I-X versus P-O-R-T-X, same thing for PACs and impacts. See if your 401K can get the lower cost version. How much money should you set aside before you start investing? You should always start investing as soon as possible. You want it to compound as much as possible over time. It's difficult to put money in the market these days. There still may be some more trauma. There still may be some more healbacks of 10, 20, or more percent. Over the long haul, investing usually goes up, usually. And the longer the timeframe, the more likely, but there's no guarantees. If you invested in the 1970s, it took you a long time to survive the volatility of the 70s. But in general, what we usually tell advise investors to do is what money do you need in the short term? What money do you need in the medium term? And what money do you need in the long term? And the original title of this, I think was called Tax Deferred Sustainable Investing, but we just called it Sustainable Investing. And so when you invest in an IRA, tax deadline is coming up on April 15th slash April 18th. California returns have been delayed because of the floods and other weather, climate change. Climate change is at an effect where you have to elect over in some cases to file your October taxes for your state taxes for California. Start early. Some of you may have 401K plans or 403B plans at work. Some of those may have matching. Matching is free money. So if you have a match of 1% to 100%, usually it's 100% for the first couple of percent. At one point, Visa had a 5x match. So if you worked for Visa, the credit card association, you put in one, they match you four to five more. But usually it's 100% match for three, four, five percent, sometimes a little bit more. The bigger the company, the better the match usually, the smaller the company may not have a match. At HIP, we actually have a match. We do 100% match up to 3% and we do another 50% for the next 2%. Start as early as you can. Pick investments that you believe in and you like. Like Warren Buffett says, just pick companies that you like. He likes Coca-Cola. He likes Wells Fargo. He likes Apple. That's worked out for him. You can try and copy what he does or you can just buy a Warren, you can buy a Berkshire Hathaway share. Or he's not investing as sustainably. So we've covered some companies and we've covered some funds for you to research and look at, bring to your advisor, ask your fund manager about. All right, I see another question about, I was told by a financial advisor that green investments would be slower to have returns, making them less desirable for older investors. What do you think? Well, I'm in the green investment business. I'm in the investment business first. But the reason why we're in the green investment business is it's lowers future risk. So remember that temperature chart, that is future risk. We're not doing a lot to rush towards that world. So do I believe that funds like these have a better chance than the S&P 500? I do. Do I believe that a diversified portfolio of sustainable companies and sustainable bonds is better than a non-sustainable? I do.  When I say conservative, I mean lower risk, lower risk investor, so we don't confuse this with politics. The longer the timeframe you have, if you have 40, 50, 40, 30 years, you can invest aggressively and over time it should work out. Especially if you invest in indexes or funds. But remember, if you invested in Apple or I bought my mom Tesla at 20 bucks a share, she's very happy about that. But not all stocks win and not all funds win. So the closer you are to retirement, it's a little bit risky right now because with interest rate rises, bonds are going down as well as stocks are going down, not by as much. So as an older investor, depending on what you're trying to do, you might buy a certificate of deposit at a sustainable bank. Sustainable banks like Amalgamated Bank. There were the, that's what acquired New Resource Bank in San Francisco. You can look up the global alliance for banking on values. And so I'll just put that link right here in the chat, GABD.org, the global alliance for banking on values. Okay, and if you're 66, you need to understand when you need the money. So you might start beginning social security, you might already be on social security, you might have started, you might be waiting to 67 where you get a little bit more or you might be waiting till 70 where you get a little bit more. There's also something known as iBonds right now, which if you go to treasurydirect.gov, if you go to treasurydirect.gov, you can buy inflation protected bonds. Currently they're paying 6.89%. That will change every six months, but it is meant to mimic inflation. So until two years ago, it paid zero. So if inflation goes down again, it might pay less, but that's another possibility. I see somebody say I'm 73, I invest not only for myself, but for future generations. This is a forward-looking point of view.  As long as you know that you have the cash you need for healthcare, for medical care, maybe you're paying tuition for kids. So it's a personal choice. So just think about how much do I wanna put long-term and higher risk? How much do I wanna put short-term and lower risk? And there's different choices for each of those. Okay, so each of these portfolios has a different profile and not only in nature, but in people. So as you can see here, these sustainable funds actually have women portfolio managers or teams of men and women portfolio managers or teams of different ethnicities, race and diversity. So that's another benefit of this type of investing is there's a wider perspective. It's more diverse not only for its own goal, but because of that thinking of how do we help people? How do we help nature? How do we advance trust? I see another question about newer renewable technology startups that haven't yet IPOed or been acquired. Are there funds that provide venture capital type investment that small investors can access? That takes some research. It also takes some minimums. From time to time, there'll be a public stock company that does venture capital or even IPOs. There is a ETF. There's one where founders are running called BOSS, B-O-S-S. That is volatile. There's one that invests in IPOs. They get some right, they don't get others right. You can check that out. There's an IPO based ETF. There are private equity stocks like KKR Kohlberg, Kravitz, Roberts, where they've taken the private equity firm public so you can invest them. Remember, those are companies and there's farmland stocks too. Some of those are starting to go sustainable. So that takes more research. There's no easy, fast answers to that. There is a group called Impact Assets based in San Francisco and Impact Assets highlights fund managers, a dozen or two fund managers every year that are sustainable and that have some potential. So check out Impact Assets for private investment, private fund managers, including VC. Okay, great. I've tried to answer as many questions as I can along the way. We are gonna share this. So you're gonna see slides that we may not have presented. I'm just gonna scroll up to see other questions. Okay, so there's new laws. So one of the other investment trends when your friends or investment advisor or fund manager is like, well, I'm not sure about that. The money funnel is turned on. So the new Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill, which is here are bringing billions of dollars to electric vehicle charging, to ports and airports, to roads, bridges. If any of you invested in solar, you can see this reflected in some of the solar stocks in the past year or two. The money is starting to flow, both from climate, which we're not gonna, climate's gonna win. So who either we can adjust our behavior to climate or climate's gonna win and government laws. So not only US government laws, but today one of my fund manager clients wrote me and said, here's what Europe regulation is asking for. How can you help us satisfy the regulations from Europe? So the world's globalized European regulations on climate as well as biodiversity. There's some of that starting to happen in San Francisco and California as well. So there are many crises of our time. There's crises in healthcare and COVID. There's crises in wealth disparities and CEO pay. There's crises in the earth and climate. There's crises in inequality. There's crises in trust and corruption and holding people accountable for doing things against the law, which we're talking about today of course. So your portfolio can harness trends that will solve these problems. And those will come from new metrics. That's part of what we do at HIP is quantify these through investment possibilities that we've reviewed some possibilities with you and through multi-sector solutions. So that's where cities and companies work together. The new Apple headquarters down in Sunnyvale worked with the city to source water because it's a huge complex. And so using rainwater and recycled water and other water solutions, Google works with the rail companies and the bus companies to move people around. So multi-sector solutions are also part of our future. That's a whole, I built a whole course on that for MBAs and MBAs and that's a topic for another day. Okay, so just a quick review of metrics. When you see a stock price, that stock price is based on the future cash flows. That's not based on historical profitability. It's based on future profitability. That's why stocks move so much. The future outlook has changed. Now what fundamentally has changed is back in the 1970s, most of the stock market value was how many factories you had, how many warehouses you had. Today it's on a lot of non-physical assets which are not on the balance sheet. So those non-physical assets used to be 17% of the stock market value and now it's more than 80% of the stock market value. So you can't easily find people on the balance sheet. Sometimes you'll hear CEOs say people are most important asset, which they are, but they're not on the financial statements except as a cost. So the next time you hear a CEO or any executive say people are most important asset, please ask them or say, my friend Paul wants you to answer this question. Where are people on the financial statements and where they are is usually cost. But as you can see, the great places to work, this is another San Francisco-based organization, the great place to work institute is downtown San Francisco. And so they rate companies and we operate a portfolio on this methodology as well that the companies that are better places to work outperform over time.  You don't have to rehire new people, but second they're gonna innovate.  So great places to work can outperform over time. So this 84% is people as an asset. The metrics include employee satisfaction and employee retention and employee turnover, natural resource efficiency, how much oil, water, gas and pollution are we producing. Governance, what is the diversity of our team? Again, diversity is a positive goal in its own, right? But the ripple effects of diversity are, hey, we don't all think alike. Hey, we have different experiences. That means we're gonna think of different risks. It also means we're gonna think of different opportunities. And so when a diverse group of people come together in a company by age, by gender, by race, by where you grew up, by how much money you made in the past, your income track, those people when put together will come up with more diverse and creative solutions. And as you can see, there's a lot of problems we need to solve. And then transparency, one of the most important pages to read when you do research on a company, this is one of my favorite tests. We almost built a whole portfolio on this one metric. Who is suing the company? Every company that's listed has to file a 10K. That's an annual report every year. When you look it up online or on paper, open it up to the legal section. That section can either be a paragraph or it can be several pages. What we have found over 17 years at HIPAA is the companies who get sued more are usually riskier and the companies who get sued less are usually stronger. And so just by looking at who's suing you for how much and why are customers suing you because you gave them a bad deal? Are employees suing you because you discriminate? Is the government suing you because you polluted the river? Companies that treat people, nature and trust right do better over time with less risk. All right, I'm gonna share all these slides with you. Time is moving fast, but I wanna cover some other topics that I want you to think about. The good news is if you own an S&P 500 index, most of those firms have diversity targets. The bad news is that diversity policies, sorry, diversity policies, we have a policy of not discriminating. That's easy to write, but very few of them have diversity targets. They don't measure their progress towards diversity. In addition, women who are half the population, slightly more than half the population, 51%. And very in workforce, a lot more women put the workforce in COVID, but before COVID it was about half men, half women on the workforce in many industries. This shows about 40%. But the number of women in managerial positions is lower and the number of women in executive positions lower and the number of women in boards is lower. So those, what we've found over 17 years at HIPP is companies with more gender diversity actually are lower risk and typically have stronger returns. So I wanna show you some of these. So sustainable investing is going up because of these trends that we're talking about and questions that you're asking. It's sustainability is being applied all across the world. We rate 11,000, not 12,000 companies and 85 countries around the world. We give it a rating. So more sustainable, blue skies, green grass is a higher score, less sustainable. And what we find is this, most public stocks are destructive and extractive, whoops, sorry, are destructive and extractive to society. So the key is to figure out who are the leading companies, which ones have science-based targets, which ones are treating people right. And so to be a publicly listed company is not easy and to be a sustainable public listed company is super difficult, but that's part of what we do. We analyze companies and we analyze funds and then invest, I hope investors and guys. Okay, so let me just answer a few questions, keep this interactive so much to cover. So excited that you have so many questions. This recording will be sent out if I talk too fast and you'll get the slides. And then of course you have the books in the library, including the hit books. What's the best place to read and stay up to date on sustainable investing? Well, first, San Francisco Public Library, this month's program of events, but there's different publications. Bloomberg has a newsletter, Bloomberg Green, I think they call it now or Bloomberg ESG and they acquired Business Week, which usually does a good job of covering. There's a website called ESG Today. And then we, if you track us on social media, if you track hip on social media, you'll see us promote different articles and sources. Okay, what about greenwashing? There's a lot to say about greenwashing and the short answer is look at the data. Now, what we've found from 17 years so far is most companies don't lie when they publish data. I handful do and run, for example, but most companies don't because there's a big downside. So if you care about greenwashing, see if companies are reporting their greenhouse gases. See if companies are reporting their employee satisfaction or employee pay. And when you do, you'll get a sense of, is this doing well or not? Another question, what's the prospect that age diversity would be addressed in the near future? This is a great question, especially on boards, because one of the things you can see on the board is they list their ages. And very frequently, unless you're a founder, it's a lot of people in their 50s, 60s and 70s. Now, there's a positive support for that is they have a lot of experience, but there should be advisory boards with young people. In Europe, there's employees on the board and labor unions on the board. So there can be more age diversity in the future. Somebody said, what's the name of the form filled out regarding who is suing the company? So the document is called a 10K. It's an annual report filed annually with the SEC and the SEC, the Securities and Exchange Commission has a website called Edgar. And I think you can even access it at the library and Leah and the team at the library can help you. But every public company, Tesla, Ford, General Motors, Unilever has to fill this out annually and quarterly. But there's not a lot of detail quarterly. The most detail is annually. So the 10K read the legal section, it'll be eye-opening even about companies who think might be doing well. Okay, so those are the latest questions that I see. Oh, okay, and then hedge funds. Let's see if we can skip ahead here. By the way, this is what happens. Higher rated companies generally have higher returns as a group. Each individual company may not comply and lower rated companies generally have lower returns with more risk. Okay, and overpaid CEOs. This is one of the things we do with the nonprofit as you just letting everybody know. You can go to hipinvestor.com. My email is paul at hipinvestor. The overpaid CEOs usually aren't worth the money that they earn. In fact, the more times you're overpaid according to the past nine years of us doing this report, you lag the general market. So there's a whole series of reports that as you sow.org, you can look those up of the past nine years and companies who don't overpaid their CEO usually do better and companies who overpaid their CEO usually do worse. Okay, so we're talking about hedge funds. This is all the different types of ways that you can invest. You see low risk on the left, high risk on the right. Cash is low risk. Fixed income like bonds, green bonds, social bonds, muni bonds, that's a little less risk. It's felt more risky the past since interest rates have gone up but in general, they're stable. And remember in investing, you only lose money when you sell. Now you still may want to sell but you don't lose money until you sell. Then you have income generation like dividends. There'll be a session on dividends at the end of the month as part of this program. You have equities, some of which pay dividends, just smaller ones. Global international stocks, we talked about a little bit, venture capital on private equity and you have things like alternatives which include hedge funds. Some hedge funds are lower risk, some hedge funds are higher risk. Hedge fund just means it's an independent private pool. Some of them are fast turnover, high transaction, micro second stock trading. Some of those are very solid strategies based on private credit. There's also things like sustainable forestry like there's a company called Farmland LP. That's one of the highest hip rated organizations. They offer, it's a private company that supports that essentially manages the farmland that produces some of the berries. That you have in stores and renewable fuels. Muny bonds could be a way to help manage your risk and get a tax advantage. Remember it's tax time. So muny bonds are usually tax deductible for federal and usually for state. Though there's some states that don't like Illinois. And in Puerto Rico, there's city tax deductible usually too, so triple tax advantage. There's more muny bonds that are impactful than there are companies. So this is something that you can look at. And then there's a whole category of green bonds, social bonds, sustainability bonds, including things like affordable housing. And I'm gonna show you, here's one right now. Capital improvements for water and wastewater. And they're designated as green bonds and seeking to comply with the Clean Water Act. There's solar panels that are part of green bonds in Ohio. Look at that. And there's green bonds that are financing bridges or downtown Kansas city. So there's an increasing number. It's still single digit percentage, but an increasing percentage of green bonds, social bonds, sustainability bonds. Those might be right for you in your low risk portfolio or if you're older or if you need tax. So one of the charts you'll see, I know we have to wrap up in a couple of minutes here, is here are different impact themes and different asset classes. This is produced by a group called Align Impact. They're an investment advisor in Southern California. Some of the people who used to work for HIPP actually moved over to Align Impact. So they're building out, somebody had asked about venture capital, private equity, other private investments, as well as public funds. That's something that HIPP does. That's something that Align Impact does. All right, and then the SDGs, the Sustainable Development Goals, before the SDGs there was Millennial Development Goals. These are alerts for solving problems like poverty and hunger and gender diversity and sanitation and life below water and climate action. So you'll start to see companies report on these and you'll start to see funds report on these. All right, I will wrap up here. Here's the final call to action for today.  So demand action from the people who are touching your money. If you have an advisor, tell your advisor if you haven't yet. If you have fund managers, they have publicly contact information, contact them. If you have a 401k manager, talk to them. If they don't listen, talk to your CEO. It's your money, it's your future. So align it with the future. Remember, Wayne Gretzky going to the puck in the future. Be conscious of climate, getting warmer and all the volatility around that. Some of the worst weather we've had in a while is related to the increasing pollution. Having diverse teams adds value. Having a great place to work is usually a good strategy and engage the people around you. The more you get your friends, family, coworkers to all ask for it, especially at work. If you've got a group of 10 or 20, good companies and organizations pay attention to make this happen. So I'm Paul Hermann from Hip Investor. We covered a lot in a short time. I really appreciate all the questions that you asked. Feel free to email me at Paul at Hip Investor or engage on social media. I'm super excited that you are here and that you're thoughtful about taking action on your portfolio and hope that you can learn more during this Financial Capability Month. I'll learn from all the other presenters. I want to thank Leah for her leadership over multiple years in putting this together and the San Francisco Public Library for making this globally accessible. It's your money. Invest it for higher impact. We're here to help if you need us. And there's multiple books in the library, online resources in the library to help you and feel free to follow us on social media if you're interested. Thank you so much, Paul. That was a great presentation. And we look forward to having you back as one of our speakers in the future. Paul, he presents for us on a fairly regular basis, probably quarterly. So you can learn from him, continue to learn from him and check out all the other programs that are happening at SFPL. And thanks for joining us today. We'll see you soon.