All right, testing, one, two. Just gonna get everyone to get online before we get going. Hope everyone is doing well. Just setting up a few boxes on my side at the moment, but just gonna welcome everyone to the live stream. So Nathan, Nightwolf Crypto Talks. Wow, what a pleasure to have someone who's evidently into crypto joining us on the FMC coverage, so great stuff. Thank you, Yenny Moe. Hope you're doing well, Moe. Great to have you with us. Who else have we got? Neil, thank you, Neil, for all your comments on the channel, on the briefings every day. Really appreciate the engagement and this goes for everyone. Feel free on the briefings every morning to leave me a message, stuff like that. I'll try my best to get back to everyone if I can. I normally have a period in the day and I'll try and return messages, so yeah, feel free to leave comments there. Harry, good to have you online. All right, we'll give it another minute and then we'll get straight on to things and we'll discuss a little bit about what we're expecting from today. But yeah, thank you for giving up an hour or so of the evening. The plan of action will be I'll do a rundown now. We'll listen into the live announcement from the team at Newscork. They'll escort the news straight away. We'll analyze everything that's happening. I'll try to provide, if I can, a bit of rationale behind why the markets are doing what they're doing and I'll talk you through each chart.  We'll look at it technically and then we'll go in. We'll do a preview for the press conference or decipher what he says. Obviously, we've got the projections, everything like that as well to get through. So hopefully a really good learning exercise, if anything, for today. So yeah, Davidson, Ross, Sean, Dippu, Onda, Frank, much love for you guys. I do see your names quite often and all things amplify. So really appreciate that. Hands, hope you're well. Long time member of the community, of course. All right, let's get to it. So, obviously the main man, Jay Powell, is under a bit of pressure today because he really needs to almost disassociate himself, decouple this idea of tapering from rate hikes. That really is what the main event is that we're watching today. And it's a tricky one because tapering in itself has been very well telegraphed and so that is probably not the biggest surprise here and in fact, actually, the thing that we're looking out for in this specific meeting, of course, is the latest summary of economic projections, the SEP and the reason why that is important is because of the eight Fed meetings that we have per year, four of them, March, June, Sep, Dec, we get the latest forecast out the Fed. These includes things like their outlook for unemployment, for GDP, for PCE or inflation and then also for the interest rate in the US and of course, that's the update that we're concerned about and this is those infamous dot plots that people talk about when these things come around and movement on that dot plot could be very meaningful in the next 10 minutes or so when we get the latest announcement. So yeah, as some of you guys are saying in the chat, it's not so much about taper to taper or not to taper. It's not so much that they are gonna taper. Some of the recent data, obviously, soft August jobs report that we've had, the criteria, if you like, about what would be substantial progress and their eyes are really contingent on two factors, one being inflation, which largely has been met already because even though the most recent print has softened a little bit and given the kind of transitory view, a bit of an argument, it's still very high but the labor market recovery has been perhaps a little slower than someone have thought or be heading kind of in the right direction. So yeah, the thing that we're looking for then is really a couple of points. For one, it's looking out for any changes in their wording that would constitute advanced notice, putting the market on advanced notice and that is the intention that tapering is gonna come. Now, given the aforementioned soft data that we've had in August, it's highly unlikely that tapering's gonna come now. I think that's very much off the table and everyone's of that opinion. The question is that tapering is likely to come in November, December sort of time of this year. And if that is the case, of course then, we need some kind of more definitive hint now for then that to happen in time. No, I think don't get too bobbed down in it though because between now and then, they obviously can have lots of speeches and things like that if necessary to guide the market appropriately when that course of action and saying that leads me to believe that perhaps the language might be a bit light tonight and if that is the case, with everyone as we have been in recent Fed meetings kind of having this hawkish tilt, if they go into this and they don't actually say a great deal and they leave it fairly open-ended without being explicit, you could well see a relief rally and particularly given the fragility we've seen in equity markets this week over this whole China Evergrand episode and obviously that market bounced already today given some of the news that we had earlier on about this idea of them meeting some of their bond payments and the government's liquidity injection we saw from the PBOC. So the statement, they might well, what some analysts are looking for is a recycling of what Powell said. You remember a few weeks ago, everyone was kind of penciling in Jackson Hole as a really meaningful event and Jackson Hole served a good purpose for us because it gave us what the latest wording that he adopted and at that point he said, I quote, he said on inflation the taper test has been met and we have made clear progress on the employment side. So it's kind of that clear progress. How does that alter to suggest then that we're ready to go or we're almost ready to go, so to speak, that kind of idea of advanced notice? While the Delta variant has caused some recent softness in the jobs market, which of course we have seen be clearly evident, the FMC may choose to make relatively few changes to its statement, repeating the description that the economy continues to strengthen and that the surge of inflation is transitory. The idea about tapering, we're not gonna get too much into the nuts and bolts of that right now. Again, it's more about when does it start, but when does it start, I think, really is kind of priced in at this point. I don't really think that that's the bigger deal here. The bigger deal for tapering specifically will come in the future when we start talking about, okay, when we know when it's gonna start, what is the composition of how that bond buying program is wound down? And so the proportion of tapering of mortgage-backed securities and of treasuries, both in their respective sizes, into what degree do they look to do that and over what timeline? Is it six months or is it 12 months? The slower they do it, the more kind of dovish and cautious the approach, the more accelerated that timeline, the more quicker the normalization of tightening of policy in that first sequence of policy moves. So that's kind of tapering. The main thing that we're looking out for today really comes down to this. This is those infamous dot plots, as I said. And this is looking at the difference from March to June. If you go back to June, you'll remember, there was a real shock in markets at the time and we saw some big moves in markets. Yield, dollar, strength, equity weakness, gold come under pressure and all of this came because there was quite a shock where not only did the Fed say now they're gonna hike in 2023 where previously it was on hold. So just to make sense of these graphics, in March, remember the median dot plot, the green line was at the floor. So people weren't anticipating a change and analysts were generally of the opinion in Banks and Wall Street that they were gonna bump that up to signal one rate hike in 2023 and they went for two. So if you remember last time, the main initial headline that rocked the market was the Fed are gonna do two rate hikes in 2023 according to the dot plots. So it wasn't so much the language, it was the dots that created the initial move and then the subsequent comments came thereafter. And so for here, what we're looking out for now with the dot plots is any structural change to the trajectory of that green line. And again, for those who are totally new to this, the dots are representative of an anonymous vote from one of the 18 FOMC members and where they see interest rates at the end of each subsequent year, including this year. This year doesn't matter. Rates are not gonna change this year. That's guaranteed. That could be obviously, it could be wrong, but we can just extrapolate that out of the kind of mix, if you like, because it doesn't really matter. The main point here is really 2022 and 2023. And the two risks are here is that seven, you can see here five, six, seven. So let me zoom it in. So if we're looking at June here, seven of these people wanted a rate hike in 2022. So they're on the much more hawkish end of the spectrum. The median though didn't see obviously a rate lift off given the bulk of proportionate members still remained unchanged in 2022 until 2023. If there was a shift here and there was a rate hike now brought forward to 2022, I would expect in the initial reaction, stocks to sell off, the dollar to spike higher, yields to spike, gold to move lower. Now, how likely is that? I'd say, I don't think that's particularly likely. And so therefore all the more potent that move would be if that hawkish surprise did materialize. The other thing then is about what happens in 2023. So more than a third of economists surveyed by Bloomberg think the median for 2023 could increase from two hikes. An indication that the first hike could then occur in the first half of the year. So if the composition of these starts to bump up and more of these lower people start to move higher, bumping up to three hikes in 2023, that as well could see a hawkish type reaction as I described, but to a more moderate degree at least. Banks like Goldman's are forecasting this as their base scenario. We will also get a shift along to now inclusive of 2021 will drop out and we'll see 2024 come in on the latest dot plot. So everything shifts along. Now for 2024, the expectation are that there's gonna be three additional hikes. So remember, this is going further out. So as we go through time, we go post COVID, the economy starts to recover and therefore interest rate trajectory starts to climb even further. So again, something to be mindful of what was the number for 2024, which will be new. And that's pretty much it at the moment. And so as far as things like the Q and A, these sorts of things, we'll talk about that more. So just to refresh your memory, we'll get the statement. We're gonna get the dot plots and all of those forecasts coming out. Again, just be mindful of what are the revisions to things like growth, probably lower inflation and probably higher. We'll look at the dot plot matrix. So again, if you just jump onto the Federal Reserve website, click on monetary policy here and this will update and we're gonna look at these things here, the projection materials. And as you will see, there's a table and what I'm gonna be looking at within this table here is first of all, the dot plots, any changes here. This will have the additional 24 column and then meaningful revisions to the growth and the PCE numbers. All right, so we've got about three minutes now to go. So I'm doing this event so low at the moment. So if you are asking questions in the chat, I'll do my best to keep an eye on them, but just be mindful that I might not be able to get back to you guys straight away. I can see Eddie, my partner in crime, Eddie Donmez is on the chat. So hey Eddie, he's gonna be manning the chat. So if there was any questions at all, he can pick them up while I'm doing everything live on the screens as it's happening. He's more than happy to help. All right, we've got two minutes. I'll turn the scorecon in a moment and then we'll focus in on the event. Quick look at the charts then at the moment. Obviously everything's been fairly quiet for the time being. Things have settled to a certain degree. Equities have bounced and that stacks up about a hundred points, albeit it's off its best levels. Again, US Indices buoyed today chiefly because the onshore property unit, Hengda Real Estate, said overnight that they renegotiated a plan for bondholders to pay interest on a domestic note. This is China Evergrande we're talking about and the PBOC injected just short of $19 billion into the system overnight and that's seen as a good short-term bandage, I guess on the issue that had really been in focus at the beginning of the week. So now we're just, that's been put aside. So if you're day trading this event, definitely Evergrande does not matter for the next five minutes. What does matter is what the Fed come out and say. Statement language, are we put on advance notice? How do they describe that? What does the projections look like? What is the number of rate hikes? Does it move forward to 2022? Very hawkish, look for that type of reaction. Stock sell-off, T-notes under pressure as yields go bid. If they go to 2023, does that move from two to three rate hikes and then three rate hikes expected in 2024? All right, I'm gonna put the squawk on now. Okay, 30 seconds. I'll leave my charts visible. I'll let them cover the release and then I'll come on afterward and start explaining what's going on. 10 seconds. First hike seen in 2022 million in the summer of economic projections. His first hike in 2022. If progress continues towards inflation and employment goals, it judges moderation in the pace of asset purchases may soon be warranted. So advance notice given, million looks for a hike in 2022. Humanity's decisions today, indicators of economic activity and employment have continued to strengthen sectors most adversely affected have improved in recent months. Rise in public cases has slowed their trajectory. However, we'll maintain Fed farms rate until it's achieved its late market goals and inflation has risen to 2% on track to moderately exceed that for some time. Inflation is elevated largely reflecting at transitory factors. The Fed continues to frame inflation as transitory part of the economy continues to pendle the course of the virus. It repeats progress on vaccinations rightly continue to reduce the effects of the health crisis. Fed also raises counterparty limit for overnight reverse repo. Okay, just coming off there just to cover off some of the first comments. So yeah, unchanged on all of the policy in itself but that's very much expected. The median sees a hike in 2022. So that's that hawkish surprise and initial knee jerk blip that you saw there in Eurodollar and cable lower stocks lower but they've already popped and reversed that. So I'm just waiting for the Fed website to update so I can look at the actual report and it's full entirety. But what I can do here is I can bring up here these guys on Newscork have just dropped a comparison which is super useful and we can have a look at that. So here we go. This is the actual difference in language that they've used. So what they've dropped off and what they've brought in. So they said sectors adversely affected by the pandemic have shown improvement but have not fully in recent months and they talk about COVID. The committee will if post progress broadly expected committee judges in moderation to assess progress in coming meetings the pace of asset purchase may soon be warranted. So they'll continue to assess progress in the coming meetings if the pace of asset purchase will soon be warranted. So there's a couple of things there to have a look at and let's see if the Fed is just loading up now the PDF on the Fed website and we can look at the dot plots. So initial hawkish reaction. So you saw stocks blip lower FX markets did the same. So you're a dollar in cable blipped but the reaction now is the fact that from the tapering side of things on the language on that statement it's not a great deal of change on the initial first glance but I'm just trying to cast my eye on some other comments at the moment. So Fed bond taper may soon be warranted they maintain 80 billion and 40 billion MBS per month. So that was very much as expected so they're not gonna do any change of that as yet. They said inflation elevated on transitory factors. So they do keep that that's a little bit more less hawkish than perhaps some might have anticipated. So here's the actual table of event or the actual table. So here you can see the dot plots change. So we've got the addition of 2024 now. So you can see so one, two, three, four. So what have we got there? Six, seven, eight, nine and that turns the table then now where the median has seen an uptick to 2022. And you can see then the more progressive nature of the rate hikes there after going forward. So just gonna turn this walk back on while I read through some of the other content. So just to be clear the Fed median dot plot sees one hike in 2022 previously zero, three hikes in 2023 previously two, seven hikes in 2024 long run of nine, yeah, seven hikes. That's pretty hawkish but the markets at the moment reacting in actually a bit more of a relief type fashion, if anything. The Fed forecast shows officials were evenly split on the 2022 rate increase. So yeah, at the moment, the dollar now is coming under some weakness. So as you can see here, weakness in the dollar and equity markets would be indicative of actually a much more dovish type reaction after that initial knee jerk surprise. I'm still looking through things at the moment. I can't see anything that's quite clearly evident here at the moment that would suggest the rationale behind that. So I'll continue looking but the NASDAQ here just coming back up in close proximity to the earlier high that we printed just after the European exit of the cash markets this afternoon. Yeah, Euro dollar and cable both catching a decent bid now on the back of the dollar weakness. So a couple of areas here in Euro dollar to keep an eye on as we break out some of the near term range. So you can see here, you've got those previous lows on this area, low on the test and the breakdown and that previous high that we saw from yesterday's session. So just finding a bit of resistance in the Euro here on this most recent bid. As far as gold is concerned, that dollar weakness just helping assist the yellow metal. That's also being properly aided a little bit with the momentum through the breakout through the previous days high which was also a band of lower range area that was holding price. You can see here back on the eighth in this area here and then yesterday's trading session. So gold having a bit of an extended bid on the back of that on the run-up then to R1 just a bit more acceleration through the technical break of that level that had been an inflection point for price over the past two weeks. Yeah, I mean, this is one of the things so like Ali is saying in the chat that I think is right. Whenever there's a hawkish change in the dots, for example, they try to tame that with some dovish commentary to kind of shoe in the actual more hawkish policy change. And so definitely when Powell comes out, it'd be interesting to see when he starts his press conference in 25 minutes how he tries to address that overall. So it's kind of like in a sense, the taper, it's not happening now, but the rate hikes will be a little bit more aggressive in the future. So if there's two kind of sides to that normalization sequence, the latter point, which is not in the near term, which is further down the line, is gonna happen in a slightly more aggressive fashion, but in the near term, there's not an immediacy to just get tapering immediately underway at this point in time. So yeah, you're just seeing a bit of moderation in that bid tone now for equities. So the balance there, as I described, is a little bit offsetting of one another. So a lack of more immediacy on tapering, which is slightly more dovish, counteractive by slightly more hawkish plots overall. Just having a look as well on the back to the matrix here for GDP. So for this year, they downgraded it to 5.9 from 7% they saw in June, but then they do see a decent reverse course picking up more pace to 3.8 from 3.3%. That's the rationale then behind probably why there's more members now looking for that increase in rates in 2022 that's tipped it to one expected next year. Unemployment, it's expected to be a little bit higher, so perhaps not quite as good, but we're kind of expecting that. The payroll's data's been relatively poor, the August one following that trend. And so the decrease in unemployment rates has been a little bit slower than perhaps anticipated. Otherwise, other years remained unchanged. For inflation, they revised that up to 4.2% for this year from 3.4%, but then kind of moderating, which would suggest transitory conditions on inflation, then the fact that they just maybe underestimated the stickiness of the situation more short-term, but overall beyond going into 2022 and beyond those transitory pressure starts to fade. Just having a look elsewhere, the US 10 years pretty choppy, but not really. I was just having a look at the T-note. The T-note is quite telling, I always find, because whilst things like the dollar and gold can flip about as two connectivities, the 10 year is always, seems a little bit more rational in its movement. And you can see here, the 10 year is exactly where it was trading before this statement came out. So that's telling you that actually, from a correlation point of view, I don't actually feel at this point in time at least, and there's still a bit of time to run to digest what's happened and for Powell to speak in the Q&A. But just trying to pile in and get long equities here, thinking we're just gonna go bid now for the rest of the session, I would rather see T-notes come up and at least make a bit of an attempt to break out of this range that we've been trading in for this week, which is that kind of air of that double top that's really been a marker for the last two days trading sessions. We've also got the R1 on the daily pivots there as well around this 1.3311. Do you wanna see that more kind of equity relief, more kind of traditional dovish reaction to this announcement? I'd wanna see yields to continue to decrease. So the 10 year bid, to just give you a bit more conviction of that equity move being able to sustain and be able to break out some of these key levels. Because as you can see here, as far as the Dow was concerned, there's a bit of lack of appetite so far on this initial reaction to bust through some of the previous highs that we've seen. This was the afternoon high. You can see we've flashed up and then we've just failed to breach it so far and similar kind of reaction effect that we've seen in the NASDAQ and the S&P at the moment. In terms of the S&P, again, just bring it up. You've got the afternoon high. That's where we momentarily spiked up higher and it's failed to push beyond that at the moment. So really, I think I wouldn't feel too confident about that breaching yet. Now that probably the market's got 18 minutes or so to wait for Powell, probably wait for Powell. Let's see what he's gotta say. And then I'd wanna see gold start to move higher, T-notes start to move higher. If that materializes, then I think a bit more confidence for that equity break and we start to push on up. You'd also really wanna see the dollar come under some more pressure to really validate that move where there's a coordinated kind of read on what's happening in that sense. Gordon, I did see an email from you, Gordon. I've just been super busy. I apologize, but yeah, absolutely. Next time you're in London, give me a shout and me and Sam will have to take you out. Your tails are always more than welcome, Gordon. Tilting in the dovish direction over here. So we are seeing upside in empties finally and we're seeing a bit of upside in bombs. Also worth noting that the dollar seems to be under pressure now as well. With your dollar and gold finding fresh sessions for the fresh price for the session. Also seeing the MFX edge out the dollar in recent trade as well. So just to go through our long and short of the nice, neat way, more or less as we would expect from it here, we've got the advance notice. We've got a steep wave trajectory. The situation still seems kind of boring. Okay, we've got 15 minutes or so till the press conference. I'm just keeping an eye on equities as I am doing that. We have, if you're a student, a university student, college student and you're thinking about a career in finance but you don't know what to do, sales trading, quant trading, market making, broken, and then absolutely feel free to check out AmplifyMe.com. This is the new focus of Amplify. You might have recognized our name change from we're still Amplify trading but we're focusing very much so on our proprietary technology that we use to train a lot of the graduates of the world's biggest banks and business schools around the world. So we've basically reconstructed this to allow for absolutely free training but it is for students, bearing in mind our recent graduates. If you are a trader though, if you go on the website and scroll to the bottom, you'll see as well, I'm actually putting out a daily newsletter now. And so the aim of that is, I basically deconstruct a major news story or something happening in the markets into a bite-sized three minute read just to try and make the objective being that you learn something and it's interesting and it's written in a non-jogging way where you can just learn about markets bit by bit. So feel free to subscribe to that newsletter. We'd love to have you in that community and of course then you'll get access to other things as well if you check this out. Other things, if you are not already doing so, we have a podcast. So part of that market maker kind of series that we do in our community, which is a daily newsletter, a weekend newsletter where I'm able to make the best content out there. We also have a podcast, either myself, Eddie, who's online or the head of Trading Peers. We'll have a conversation and we'll talk about some of the things that happened that week. But if you haven't checked this out, please do. We'd love it if you could take a listen. Again, it's aimed at not trying to make things overly complicated, but interesting, engaging and useful, both for an investor, a trader and a student if you're looking to get into finance. So yeah, check it out, add it on your listening list. Podcasts for me, definitely. I listen to loads of them. I think they're super useful for consuming kind of market knowledge and stuff like that. If you are listening to the podcast and you have done for a while and you haven't yet left us a review and a rating, do it. I'd love it because it just helps get the podcast out to more people and that would be amazing. So I'd be very much appreciative if you could do that. Otherwise, look, let's get back to the action and let's have a look what's going on. So yeah, equity is starting to have a bit of a push on the upside. The 10 year down at the bottom here though, still a little bit reticent to kick on. It's just had a brief flurry up to the top end of that range. NASDAQ's looking a little bit more bullish here. Just had another look above that level. If we start to break out higher now in the NASDAQ here, areas that I'd be looking at are, you've got the R2, but 15, 265 and a half. This kind of area here really, which brings in the lows that you can see here and the high of that kind of consolidation after the push lower. This is some of the move that we saw at the tail end of last week. So this would have been Friday's move, then continuation on the Monday. So this is kind of the ever grand sell-off, if you like, inspired. And so as we come up here in the NASDAQ, that area there, so here I'd be keeping an eye on. And then consolidation above there on the top end of that range from Friday would be here as key levels if we continue to push higher. Kind of likewise in the other indices. So now, now that the Dow has sat there at that level, quite keen to just keep an eye out, the NASDAQ is still having a bit of a tussle at that resistance. And so the Dow is holding for the moment. Now what's quite key here from a correlation point of view, if you look in the currency markets, Euro and the cable are coming off. So the dollar is not continuing to sell off. So that gives me at the moment a little less conviction that these equities are just gonna run away at this point in time. T-notes and the dollar are not playing the same game here of equities, which equities are reacting in a more relief type fashion that something even more hawkish wasn't seen. So yeah, I've still feel a bit of a lack of conviction yet for equities to break out to the upside given those other asset class movements at this point in time. Yeah, I'm just having a look at what some other analysts are saying at the moment. And I agree in terms of the rationale behind a lot of these moves. The bottom line being this is not too dissimilar from what markets we're looking for. We're obviously getting closer and closer to tapering. So we've been put on advance notice. The rate hikes have come a little bit earlier and a little bit more aggressive. But again, that's not massively surprising, I'd say. And then the inflation increase for 2021 on the dot plots on the PCE forecast is quite sharp, but importantly in 2023 and beyond, it reverts back to type. So what the Fed is saying is the transitory is still transitory, it's just a little bit more pronounced in the front end. So yeah, looking out for the press conference to begin in about 10 minutes, the main point here is about POW looking to distinguish the decouple or decoupling of tapering and rates. They are not two of the same thing. What he wouldn't obviously want to do or send the signal of is that just because we start tapering and we're doing this, it means that for rates, they're two separate things. So he's gonna be quite conscious of doing that. So as you can see here, now T-notes again, backing off a little bit. So you're starting to see the Dow and the S&P Nasdaq just come off losing a bit of that momentum. So you see there how the other asset classes just weren't buying into that move to give you further reassurance that it's a definitive kind of reaction or more aggressive that markets were trying to do. So again, this is where it could be quite key, obviously, depending on your platform and access to have multiple charts up like I've got at the moment so that you can determine your timing if you're executing very short-term intraday markets to maximize those kind of opportunities in that sense. Yeah, let's have a look at Bitcoin. Simon's mentioning Bitcoin and obviously something that I'm not kind of throwing into my media analysis here, but yeah, Bitcoin's getting a bit of a boost. Let's have a look. We've just broken out here. This is looking on a 30-minute candlestick. So if you look at some of the price action materializing over the course of the last day, again, bit of a breakout and you can see the market rejected this afternoon pretty much in tandem with the stock move actually, fleshing out its peak. That came with the high that we saw midday yesterday. So as we start to break out high in Bitcoin here, I'd probably be looking at these levels and then just scaling it back up. It's generally, it's a very technical product. So I'd be definitely looking at round figures as well into the mix with that. So probably these areas here, I'd keep an eye on. So pretty much there at the moment, which was this area here of the peak from before then the fall came on the overnight, last Thursday into Friday session. And then you've got this kind of area here as next target. Not saying we're gonna get up there right now, but yeah, definitely I think the move here more pronounced by the fact of the technical break above that area of short-term resistance in Bitcoin. Okay, what the plan of action will be is we'll listen into Powell, we'll listen into the first two or three questions of the Q&A.  I had to pick my daughter up from nursery and they think she's got COVID. So I need, she's not feeling very well. I have to take it for a PCR test tomorrow. So it's gonna be a long night for me. I'm gonna have to probably not get any sleep. So yeah, we'll tackle the beginning of the press conference, we'll do the first one or two questions as well on the Q&A and then we'll look to wrap it up. So any questions in the meantime, just give me a shout in the chat. Yeah, WTI, let's have a look at WTI. Someone's asking, we can do that. Here's WTI Crew Futures. Yeah, would you trade crude oil on the back of an FMC? Much lower probability that I think that it would be a trigger to really initiate a definitive trade from a news impact point of view on the back of an FMC release. It's very indirect. It's more to do with the idea that a more positive narrative of the economy tends to read across then more impactful for the demand side of the equation for oil. Perhaps extreme dollar weakness might promote a bid like you'd seen commodities like gold and silver have seen on the back of the dollar weakness on the event, but crude here, very tame move. Definitely not a product that I'd typically advise looking at if you were looking at trading around an FMC. You got that high here on the 17th. You can see the market's respected that here this afternoon. Upside level resistance that keep an eye on. Other than that, I'd say other areas of interest on the upside, if it was to remain bid throughout the rest of the session, I'd probably look up at these areas here, which would be 72, 47 front month futures, that area of resistance seen back on Thursday, and then really the upper bound of the price activity of the last couple of weeks here, up at around 72.86. But yeah, not really that interesting, to be honest. Yeah, equities have pulled back with five minutes now to go to Powell. So you can see, again, the reason why we haven't had a breakout in stocks, as I've mentioned a few times, but now the likelihood of stocks busting out to the upside in the next five minutes is very small. Because of the fact that now we're so close to Powell speaking, everyone who might have been trying to trade a breakout strategy on the pushout, on the Nasdaq break, and trying to get along the Dow on that retest to that high, those people are bales on that trade by now. So now sit on your hands, let's wait for Powell. Someone's asking, Amir, if you have a simulation day coming up, how can you prepare? Is it a walkthrough as well as an experience, or it's just an independent simulation? Nope, so there is some preparatory on-demand material that you can go through Amir on the platform, so do check it out. Otherwise then, on the live event, there'll be one or two members of the Amfi team that will be online talking you through, getting you used to the platform, guiding you through the full simulation. So don't sweat it, just get involved on the Student Hub portal and consume some of that content there as well. But you'll be given instructions from the team when the nearer the event comes. All right, where are people from? It's always nice to know why I'm sat here in my office, which feels a little bit isolated compared to many years gone by, sat on a trading floor. It's good to know where people are from. Who have we got on the call? Yeah, Amir, if you're having any issues, just feel free to shoot an email to communityatamplifyme.com. Or we got Andorra, London, Florida, Turkey, Liverpool. Yeah, can't complain with that. Israel, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Italy, Scotland, Tunisia, Brighton. Yeah, not too far from my hometown. So Lady Jennifer, got a lot of love for you. Who have we got? India, Sri Lanka, Cambodia. Yep, Simon, of course, long-term person in the community. So thank you for tuning in. Stockholm, Hong Kong. Yeah, it's just incredible. It always blows my mind on YouTube, the people that listen. It's phenomenal. So again, huge thank you to everyone who follows Amplify, who follows the YouTube channel. That being said, you might have seen Eddie and I have been trying to put out some extra content on YouTube, and our intention is to do more of that in the future. And so actually tomorrow is the Bank of England interest rate decision, and I'm going to cover the Bank of England live as well. So that's at 12 o'clock tomorrow, Thursday, the 23rd of September. I'll come on at 11.45, we'll cover that, and I'll be on till 12.15 tomorrow. So don't forget, if you're not already, hit the subscribe button on the YouTube channel. Hit the bell icon. I mean, I'm logged in, so you can't see it here, but it's located here. And then you'll get notified when I need new content we put out. We put out daily briefing. So I do that myself. So early in the morning, I'll issue one. If you want to see some of my morning notes, then definitely you can do. So my Twitter account, a lot of people would follow me for the main purpose of just getting a hold of a short note that I put out every morning, which looks something like this, where first thing in your day as a routine, if you're a trader and you're looking to just get set up for the day, if you're a student, looking to stay on the pulse of markets, this is a three minute read that hopefully does that job. It aggregates the very best of what you need to know from all the different sources, the FT, the journal, market watch, CNBC, the list goes on. So feel free to check that out. And I tweet it all. So feel free to follow me on Twitter if you're not already doing so. Yeah, absolutely more than happy to help. All right, I think he's about to begin shortly. So let's go back on the Federal Reserve website and let's get this going. Okay, I'm just gonna put the volume on for power so you guys can hear. So give me one second. I had to continue at a strong pace in the second half. The sector's most adversely affected by the pandemic have improved in recent months, but the rise in COVID-19 cases has slowed their recovery. Household spending rose at an especially rapid pace over the first half of the year, flattened out in July and August as spending softened in COVID sensitive sectors, such as travel and restaurants. Additionally, in some industries, near-term supply constraints are restraining activity. These constraints are particularly acute in the motor vehicle industry where the worldwide shortage of semiconductors has sharply curtailed production. Partly reflecting the effects of the virus and supply constraints, forecasts from FOMC participants for economic growth this year have been revised somewhat lower since our June summary of economic projections, but participants still foresee rapid growth. As with overall economic activity, conditions in the labor market have continued to improve. Demand for labor is very strong and job gains averaged 750,000 per month over the past three months. In August, however, job gains slowed markedly with the slowdown concentrated in sectors most sensitive to the pandemic, including leisure and hospitality. The unemployment rate was 5.2% in August and this figure understates the shortfall in employment, particularly as participation in the labor market has not moved up from the low rates that have prevailed for most of the past year. Factors related to the pandemic, such as caregiving needs and ongoing fears of the virus, appear to be weighing on employment growth. These factors should diminish with progress on containing the virus, leading to more rapid gains in employment. Looking ahead, FOMC participants project the labor market to continue to improve with the median projection for the unemployment rate standing at 4.8% at the end of this year and 3.5% in 2023 and 24. The economic downturn has not fallen equally on all Americans and those least able to shoulder the burden have been hardest hit, in particular, despite progress. At the moment, what's being said is really very little that's new use, so you're not seeing too much in the way of any subsequent move as yet. He'll continue delivering this for a little bit longer, but Powell's pretty well versed in this now, so he's unlikely to make any mistakes here. So it's really the Q&A, which he'll start in the next few minutes, which is gonna be quite key. An emphasis on the first couple of questions normally carries the greatest magnitude for potential market movement. So just keeping an eye on things at the moment, the dollar just coming under a bit of renewed weakness, testing around its initial poplar we saw in the first statement. So just keeping an eye on Euro dollar as well, back at those highs again, but nothing really too spectacular being said by Powell at the moment, so we'll continue to listen then. 2% this year to 2.2% next year. The process of reopening the economy is unprecedented, as was the shutdown at the onset of the pandemic. As the reopening continues, bottlenecks, hiring difficulties, and other constraints could again prove to be greater and longer lasting than anticipated, posing upside risks to inflation. Our framework for monetary policy emphasizes the importance of having well-anchored inflation expectations, both to foster price stability and to enhance our ability to promote our broad-based and inclusive maximum employment goal. Indicators of longer-term inflation expectations appear broadly consistent with our longer-run inflation goal of 2%. If sustained higher inflation were to become a serious concern, we would certainly respond and use our tools to assure that inflation runs at levels that are consistent with our goal. The path of the economy continues to depend on the course of the virus, and risks to the economic outlook remain. The Delta variant has led to significant increases in COVID-19 cases, resulting in significant hardship and loss, and slowing the economic recovery. Continued progress on vaccinations would help contain the virus and support a return to more normal economic conditions. Defense policy actions have been guided by our mandate to promote maximum employment and stable prices for the American people, along with our responsibilities to promote the stability of the financial system. Our asset purchases have been a critical tool. They helped preserve financial stability and market functioning early in the pandemic, and since then have helped foster accommodative financial conditions to support the economy. At our meeting that concluded earlier today, the committee continued to discuss the progress made toward our goals since the committee adopted its asset purchase guidance last December. Since then, the economy has made progress toward these goals. If progress continues broadly as expected, the committee judges that a moderation in the pace of asset purchases may soon be warranted. We also discussed the appropriate pace of tapering asset purchases once economic conditions satisfy the criterion laid out in the committee's guidance. While no decisions were made, participants generally view that so long as the recovery remains on track. Yeah, MFX, I can't see your comments. Don't worry. I think it's the nursery being taking precautions. She seems relatively okay and her temperatures come down and she's with her mother, so very much appreciate your concern, MFX, but she's all good for the moment, so I'll get to her straight away once we're done. So I wanna listen in the first two questions and then we'll wrap it up. But at the moment, look, Powell's not really added a great deal too much here and thus the initial moves are starting to see a little bit of fatigue and actually a bit of reversal now. So Powell's just said gradual tapering to conclude around mid-2022 and that's just seeing a bit of movement here. Economic conditions will be fulfilled by the end of the next year. Our funds will be raised slightly above the effect of lower costs. So yeah, we're just having a look. Participants change. Powell said, fed taper process offers no new signal for rate-high outlook. Fed discussed the appropriate pace of tapering once conditions for doing so are satisfied. If economy remains on track, that tapering for asset purchases could conclude around the middle of next year and that's a little bit more on the hawkish side. So now you're starting to see that little bit of a turnaround where the dollar's gone bid, equities under a bit of pressure and gold's just reversed a little bit. So they've been a bit more explicit about the timings in how long it will be the taper timeline. Remember, the expectations were for six to 12 months, but obviously wrapping up by the middle of next year would be a little bit more sooner than the most hawkish expectation. Okay, we're just going into the Q&A now. So this lady's just asking about what are the conditions around substantial progress? What substantial rate of progress looks like? That would be great, I'm sure. So the test for beginning our taper is that we've achieved substantial further progress toward our goals of inflation and maximum employment. And for inflation, we appear to have achieved more than significant progress, substantial further progress. So that part of the test is achieved in my view and in the view of many others. So the question is really on the maximum employment test. So if you look at a good number of indicators, you will see that since last December when we articulated the test and the readings today, in many cases, more than half of the distance, for example, between the unemployment rate, unemployment rate in December of 2020 and typical estimates of the natural rate, 50 or 60%. Okay, rather than listen in to him live, I'm just gonna relay to you guys what's going on because obviously he's just come out, he's talked about the appropriate pace of tapering. He's been a bit more explicit. He said if the economy remains on track that tapering could conclude in the middle of 2022. And that in itself would be a little bit more on the hawkish end of the spectrum. So we've got yields going bid, the dollars going bid, currencies are coming under pressure. He also said substantial progress on inflation has been achieved. Many on the FOMC say that substantial progress test on jobs has been met as well. So we've seen a complete U-turn now in the dollar for these reasons. And the Euro dollar pair has just flipped on itself and it's now retesting around the lower bound of the initial volatility that was seen on the breaking news on the first statement. Equities as well, the peak has been seen already. So equities are turning around on some of this latest movement. So this is a complete reversal of the initial moves that we've had given the reasoning of some of the more hawkish factors that materializing early in the presser. Gold likewise under pressure with the dollar bid. So all of the gains have been taken back. And in fact, now, if I was looking at lower levels, I'd keep an eye down here at the Friday and Monday high. So that would come in the futures market in gold at 1767, 68 as an area on downside to keep an eye on. And a breakdown of that could well trade a little bit more heavy to a much more deeper move down to the S1 or beyond. Powell said the language in the statement is meant to flag Bar for Taper could be met as soon as the next meeting. But that's not too dissimilar for my expectations. Just thinking now as the Q and A is going on, I just saw Jennifer's comments and I kind of agree. If I was looking at this equity move right now and the volatility in FX and gold, it's a pretty tame move so far.  He's basically saying the threshold for members has been met as soon as perhaps next meeting. It's what we thought. He's saying that it's gonna get wrapped up by the middle of next year while the range of expectations was six months to 12 months. So it's bang in the middle of that. They're gonna hike rates further in the future. That's pretty much expected as well. Inflation is still transitory, albeit a little bit more higher in the short term. It's to be expected. Yeah, it'd be interesting to see when we come in tomorrow whether or not we just kind of carry on in our merry old way and actually it's been fairly well managed by Powell and the Fed team. Okay, the Q and A is still in progress at the moment so he's just taking questions from the financial times at the moment. We'll listen in on one more and then we'll wrap up and obviously I'll leave you guys to it.  Yeah, Alec, I hear what you're saying. You're definitely expecting more volatility. I mean, one of the things is that I do feel like the market has become so, so taper obsessed that the Fed have been talking about this for a very long time and so the commencement of tapering I think is pretty much baked in. I don't think it's that unexpected nowadays. So the first things that people are looking out for the timing and the range and we've kind of had a hint at that now and then it's gonna be about the composition in terms of how they configure the reduction of their bond buying that's gonna be the next talking point going forward.  So at the moment though, the market is definitely, yeah, any of that bid that was seen earlier on I think is gone now. So you can see T-notes here are just coming under a bit of pressure. Equity is more pressure and in gold session lows as the dollar index hits fresh highs. So Powell said in the Q&A there's very broad support on the committee for timing and pace of taper some who would have preferred to go sooner due to financial stability concerns. Yeah, with gold, I know there's a few you guys looking at that, you can see here that last little push down that we had. So that again, as we had just marked up a few minutes ago, the market responding quite nicely there on that level, on that initial downtick. So that level of inflection of the last five trading sessions has been quite key. The market came down, got close to it and it's just had a bit of a bounce since testing. Alexandros, thank you for joining us. I'm gonna look to wrap it up now. So a couple of final departing points just to make for one, don't forget to check out amplifyme.com specifically as well if you're a student would love to have you in the community. If you sign up for a free account you get access to our student portal. Absolutely go for it, that content is there for you.  I'd put a newsletter out every day talking all things markets and everything else. So that's at the bottom of that webpage. Otherwise, a few other points just to finish. Feel free to add me on Twitter.  Absolutely happy to do so. The plan of action is that Eddie and I are gonna be way more active in putting out new fresh content going forward. So I'm kind of pivoting my role to be doing a little bit more content focused. So yeah, otherwise, yeah, the podcast. Do check it out, had some good feedback on it so I'd love to have you check that out as well. All right guys, gonna wrap it up there. Thank you for joining us. Again, Bank of England, I'm gonna be covering the Bank of England live tomorrow. So if you wanna cover the Bank of England with me, then feel free to join. Absolutely love to take questions while we do it. Lady Jennifer, how does one qualify as a student? Well, by doing the simulations, we are able to see by your performance certain data metrics about your behavior while you go through these simulations. And that allows us then if you want to use that data depending on how you perform with our corporate clients. So we work with the likes of Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Bank of America. We also work with hedge funds like Citadel, for example, and they use the data from these performances as a way of recruiting talent. So predominantly it's for students. What I mean by students is university students, recent graduates, but obviously everyone is there. You can take part if you like. The simulation there is absolutely free. The portal's free. The newsletter, so it's just there to help. All right guys, gonna wrap it. Thank you very much for joining me. Have a fantastic evening. I'll see you for the briefing. So don't forget to subscribe to the YouTube channel. I'll put that out tomorrow morning and I'll encapsulate, wrap up everything that's happened tonight once you've had a night to sleep on it.


Welcome back to another episode of Domain's 21, where I have, this is a personal interest story for me. I have been dying to hear more about the open online course, Anth101, and I have two of the three creators here, Mike Wesh, Tom Woodward, and the other one who can't be with us, Brian Klatsky. Is that right that I pronounce the last name? Klatsky. Klatsky. Yep. So, I'm actually going to ask you both. What is Anth101 and how did it get started? Well, a good way to start would actually be with Brian Klatsky, who's not here. Back in 2014, he started teaching online for us, and our entire faculty was super skeptical about the idea that you could teach anthropology online. And then we started seeing his teaching evaluations, which were not just good, you know, not just like, it wasn't just the numbers that were coming through. It was these like long essays from students saying how much it changed their life. And so we started peeking in like, Brian, what are you doing? And he had set up, you know, ways to get people out in the world. And I think that was the key. He had two driving principles. He saw, for one, he had this really diverse group of students who were coming from all walks of life. There was, you know, taxi drivers and ex-military. And this is really rich collection of people. And he thought, okay, how do I make anthropology relevant to all these people? And then the second piece of that was he wanted to put it out in the world. So it wasn't that it was online. It was that, you know, if you're driving a taxi in Cincinnati, maybe you could show us what that looks like and do a little ethnography, you know, and share that with us through video. So that was the original insight. And then a few years later, I had to teach online. Ryan and I got together for the summer. We invited Tom in and we just started kind of building the best of both of our classes together with this idea of adding to those two first principles, anthropology for everyone and then getting it out in the world. We added this third principle, which is basically that you can't just think your way into a new way of living. You have to live your way into a new way of thinking. And that meant we wanted to build a set of challenges that got people out into the world, actually practicing basic anthropology. So that's where it started. And Tom came and joined us for just a few days in the summer, but we were in touch that whole summer and then for a couple of years after that, just reiterating and reiterating. How did the design of the site reinforce the kind of philosophy underpinning it, right? You have to be out doing this to make it make sense. Yeah, we kind of championed like student content from the beginning. So we tried to build websites that could show that student content. So they go out into the world, do something, and then that student content would be showcased. So me, Tom, could talk more about that. Yeah, and I think one of the attempts certainly was to get the technology out of the way as much as possible, both in terms of just dealing with the scale, the number of students going through, and just making life as simple and positive as possible for them. So a lot of times, different things get in the way when you're trying to submit content or show things, but the evidence of them doing things contextualized by the frameworks and the challenges was what this website tried to do. So, and to try to do it as simply as possible for those students using a variety of different things as the site evolved. So we started out trying to make everything happen in the site and make it simply happen. And then we moved to Instagram and tried to bring the things in. And now, based on a conversation just a minute ago, it sounds like maybe we're coming full circle and starting to change where that might happen and where it might show up. I was fascinated by the way in which you both not only built it on WordPress, and it was a bit of a heavier site, and you were doing a lot with it. And then you really streamlined that by offloading almost all of the heavy lifting of sharing challenges. And we could talk a little bit about the structure of the site to Instagram. And as you just mentioned, Tom, there's been a further evolution. And so thinking specifically about how the infrastructure was both fully open source and home built, then outsourced to Instagram and now maybe a rethinking of that with other infrastructures and why. Yeah, maybe we should share some of the breaking points for us. So we built the site completely inside WordPress. And there were a lot of advantage to that in terms of like control and how things appeared on the site. We were able to make things look exactly like we wanted them to look. We started having trouble with some sort of hack and maybe Tom could explain that. So we started getting heavy traffic because of like, was it a bunch of registrations that weren't real or what was going on there? Yeah, I think that was one of the problems at one point was we needed to get some spam registrants out because you got popular, but the site got out there. And then you get kind of besieged by things. So that was one of the issues. The other issue was having due dates, we had several faculty using the site. And it seems that almost all faculty were assigning things due on Sunday night. So we'd have this rush on Sunday night. And it was just hard to keep up with on the server side and it was going to be very expensive. And so we started thinking about how we could offload and so we then moved to Instagram and we found some ways to bring those Instagram posts into the WordPress site basically instantly. We used plugins as well as some Tom magic. And all that was working really well, but then it kept breaking because Instagram, I don't think really likes to have their stuff shown on other sites. And so Instagram basically kept breaking it on us. And so that became a bit of a headache as well. Yeah, there's trouble with relying on kind of the external APIs, particularly Instagram with Facebook's acquisition as they kept pulling things back and breaking and breaking quite intentionally. Well, how did that like so maybe it would be interesting to think about the move to designing it, building it homegrown, going out to Instagram, right? Running into the problems with Instagram, not only around the technology, but often probably around students are using Instagram for a whole variety of things, often not educational or often fraught with social or personal meaning. And did that start to create issues? Were there issues there that made you rethink, okay, maybe Instagram isn't the best platform, what else? Well, so some students struggled with how do you do this? And in particular, they were really worried about their brand, you might say, on Instagram. So they started creating Finsta's, which worked really well. A couple of issues we ran into, one was there's always this set of students who just aren't really technologically inclined. And maybe they've never been on social media. I know that sounds surprising, but it does happen. And some of them are not on social media for very deep reasons. They've really thought about it and they just never want to get on social media. So there was always some element of needing to make space for those people. And so we always had alternatives for them. But in general, it was a lot of fun, people were posting on Instagram. They're able to like each other's posts very easily. It was just generally like it worked really, really well. And the other thing that was nice about it was we could see like lots of different faculty using it and students could peek in on other classes around the country and eventually around the world who are using it. I'm not sure what the hashtag has on it now. It says, I just checked it here. It's over 16,000 posts. And so that's kind of fun, people are using the hashtag and sharing stuff. But I think the challenge is always like what's private? What's public? Where does it happen? Who has ownership on it? These are things that come up whenever I talk to people. And we've replicated aspects of this pattern. So that's one of the cool things about this one is you went and you made it something that other faculty members could use with other courses at other institutions. So that's one of those big things to do and comes with some complexity. It comes with some awesome benefits because part of this, when you say in the world, it's pretty awesome that you can see it happening in the world in all these different places. But, and I think you're going to hit on this now, is there also kind of some repercussions maybe of those choices of public? Yeah, and so I think maybe this is the right way to say it is that it's not that we're totally shifting away from Instagram. It's that the emphasis in my course, for example, was basically like let's do this on Instagram, like encouraging everybody to do it on Instagram, but there's this backup where you don't have to do it. And you can just do it on Canvas, like behind closed doors kind of thing. I think we shifted now to a different sort of waiting of those elements. And now I actually encourage students to do it on Canvas. And then if they want to share it on Instagram, that's just up to them. And they can do that if they want to, and a few students do that. The nice thing about that shift is that now all the posts are coming into this sort of private space, this walled garden of Canvas. And there's a bunch of ways that we can monitor and encourage people to participate there. And for a lot of students, they like to have everything in one place, like all their classes in one place. And having to go outside of Canvas feels a little bit burdensome. So we're getting a lot more participation by keeping it all inside Canvas. It allows students to kind of have their notifications on Canvas set up in a way that it's kind of that school space. And they're not like feeling this weird poll where Instagram feels like this non-school space, but then setting up notifications for this account can get kind of confusing. I think just in general, people are navigating these complex social relationships. And in general, we found that the Canvas thing is working a lot better. And then some students go out and use Instagram. The upside of that is that the stuff that ends up on Instagram is generally higher quality. It's a little bit less watered down because it's mostly just the really good stuff where students are really wanting to share something. Are you feeling the tension with the original idea that you and Ryan had to get this out in the world? And then now you're back behind the walled garden of Canvas. And are you trading Canvas for Instagram? Or it's just interesting because it's almost like the not only evolution of the technology, but evolution of the thinking around how to teach openly. Right. I think the original idea was also that we wanted to create challenges that were so awesome that lots of people would want to do them, even if they weren't signed up for the class. So we imagined people doing the 28-day challenge, which is just you try to break a habit or create a habit over the course of 28 days. Like maybe that's the kind of thing that could go viral on Instagram. And people would see this 28-day challenge, hashtag AMP 101. And then maybe other people would do it just for fun. And pretty soon we got the idea was we would have people taking the class who aren't really in the class. And they're just sort of taking it online, participating when they want to, diving out when they don't want to. And we got some of that. But the kind of the weird thing is if you look at some of the posts that have hashtag AMP 101, some of them are low quality. Some of them are even potentially offensive. And that's where you start to be like, man, I don't know. This is tricky. I feel partially responsible for this post that is borderline offensive. And it's one thing to handle that in the classroom. And there are certain ways to handle that in the classroom. It's trickier when it's out in the world. Well, and I think what becomes interesting to me is it felt like when would we start this? I don't know. That was a long time ago. It feels like it's almost five years now, I think. And a lot has happened in five years. And I think it felt, I don't know, more innocent at that point. And a lot of these things just didn't seem as conflicted. And I think what I've done more and more of is kind of those blended spaces and being able to push back and forth between fully private, maybe semi-private, or at least controlled groups, and then fully public. And that's what I think is an interesting space for some of this, is that if we take Canvas, for instance, you can decide we've done embedded WordPress sites within Canvas, so you get the control and visuals of something like that, we've knitted Instagram things into Canvas as well, and then done some stuff around pushing content in and out of that space. So trying to make it, once again, that facile ability to kind of move maybe from private in Canvas to public in Instagram or wherever, and creating those mechanisms. So maybe you end up with the best of both worlds without a lot of technical over it. And I think maybe that's an aspect of the future, is gradations of public and private, and then trying to take advantage of the services rather than them taking advantage of us so much. It's interesting too, because one of the things that, and I don't know if it has to do with the network effects of doing what you've done on Instagram or in WordPress, et cetera, was it's become like a media empire, right? Like you have textbooks free, both paperback, as well as a digital edition. You have a film school. You have a whole series of other faculty at other schools doing Anth 101, and then you have a resource guide for them. Like talk a little bit about what it's been like to build this out as a shared course, as an open course for other people to use and adapt, I imagine, as they see fit. Yeah, I think that speaks to kind of realizing like what is best out in public and what is best kept in private. And one of the elements there is stuff that's just really well polished. I'm OK putting out. And this has to do with my own personal media philosophy, which is in general, I try not to consume any media that took less than two days to produce. That's just sort of my own media diet, is I like things that are thoughtful and considered. So those are books, thoughtful YouTube videos, not just real quick throw it up their videos. And generally, I stay away from social media. So that's kind of how I run the site as well, is now I've got the book out there totally public, totally free in multiple formats. I participate in multiple faculty groups, some of them on Facebook, just basic Facebook groups. And then we also have our own sort of private Google group, where we share ideas specific to Anth101. And so in general, this has been a really fun way to do things for me. I produce videos for the course. And again, those are like take a long time to produce, and then they get pushed out. Sometimes those include student work, but that gives me time to sort of contextualize and polish that work before it gets showcased. So it's not just like throwing stuff out into the world. And I don't know, it sort of can feel like it kind of gunks up the internet to throw out low quality work. So that's part of the philosophy behind that. So it's like the opposite of DS106 and that. Well, it's a tricky thing, because I love DS106. And the nice thing about the internet, of course, is that it does have these filtering mechanisms. But I have been embarrassed on occasion at being someone who's been an advocate of being out in the open for now, for like 15 years. I have been embarrassed on occasion by things that really probably shouldn't have been out in the open. Sometimes they're just like quick lecture notes or something that aren't totally polished, but they include like non-contextualized information that I'm just not super proud of like have my name associated with. And so I've become a lot more careful about making sure that what gets out there that I can vet like gets fetted well and it's high quality stuff that goes out. That's one of the things I have struggled with though, like real quick is like, how do you like demonstrate like this evolution of thought if all that people see is the published piece? You know what I mean? And that's the tricky thing I find with a lot of this is I understand like a lot of the concerns, but I'm also trying to show people like, look, I thought this then more time and I felt this and like it's okay and good that these things should evolve and continue to improve. Like just to demonstrate that better is something that I kind of struggle with. One of the key things that changed with Instagram just in the last five years for us is that more and more people see it as a curated space, not as a social space. And so that's one of the sort of triggers for students is like, oh shoot, I'm really not comfortable messing with my curated space here, you know? So the Finsta thing helps, of course, but I think Instagram in some ways like shifted. And there's a whole other layer here where I heard more and more students who had had really bad experiences on Instagram that just made it difficult for them to participate on the website at all. I think that plays into some stuff that's happening with this generation in general, which is obviously they've struggled through a lot of challenges that we didn't have. And the internet is one of those challenges, just trying to figure out how to navigate it and be in it. Well, and I think maybe that's the thing, like everything is getting more complex, more and more things to think about, which is kind of the opposite of what was promised, right? Like, you know? But I think it is the deal, right? Like what's private, what's public, what's curated, what's this, what's that? Like all of it blends and merges in ways that we're just not seeing. You can't just say like be in the open. Like this is all good and positive.  And I guess the technologies and the social implications have only grown more complex. And the courses like this or more broadly higher ed should be a place where that's thought of and navigated through these experiences. And so that really does tie deeply. Well, I mean, I really enjoyed this conversation. I enjoy the work you both have done for many a year, but seeing you two work together and that's one of one as a highlight. And thank you both for taking the time to chat with us about your work. Thank you. Big fan. Nom, nom, nom.


What is up Marvel Squad and welcome back to our channel. I hope you guys are having a great day. Mine is starting off pretty crazy. I actually just went to the store and purchased myself my first bra in public. So you already know how that went. That was super embarrassing slash awkward especially cause I went to the self checkout but the girl that like controls the self checkout was like just looking at me and yeah. Anyways, long story short, super awkward and it was a pink bra. I did not want to film it at all because like I don't know. I just didn't want to draw too much attention to a dude buying just one bra. Like who does that? Who goes to the store and just gets one bra and then leave, especially being a guy. But anyways, besides the fact that that was super awkward I successfully purchased my first bra and I'm gonna be hiding this somewhere in the car for Mariah to see when I go pick her up. All right, I had to pull over because I am almost to my house. I'm in actually my neighborhood right now and I don't want to get home before I finish talking about what I want to talk about. So basically what I'm gonna be doing like I said is I'm gonna be hiding this. I don't even want to show it on camera guy. I don't even want to touch it. Okay, it just seems so weird holding a bra just because like I don't like touch bras every day unless it's not Mariah and it's not Mariah's bra. Like it doesn't even fit her. It's like really tiny and like I don't know it's just not her. So I feel like I'm actually touching a different girl's bra. But I'm gonna be hiding this bra in plain sight. So when I come pick up Mariah she's gonna see a strap or see something. She's gonna rip it out and then boom. Her reaction is just gonna be whatever, however she reacts. Now if you're an OG on our channel you guys already know that I have done a video like this where I hit a bra in the car, right? Mariah found it, it was in the back seat and Mariah flipped out. This was probably three years ago, three plus years ago. So it was literally in the start of our YouTube career. This is when we lived in Chicago. We were driving in the Mitsubishi Eclipse, the old car.  I didn't really want to redo it. But the more I thought about it, the more I was like, yo, this would actually be hilarious to redo in a different state, different car, different time of our life, especially the fact that we don't have any friends here. So immediately she's not gonna think it's a friend's bra. Either way, if you're not new to our channel you already know Mariah is super gullible, okay? For you guys that are watching us for the first time this girl will believe anything and everything. Mariah at least have a little bit of knowledge when it comes to getting pranked and it's harder for her to prank me, but Mariah, I can literally tell her right now I literally just broke my hand or something and she would believe it. I don't know why, that's just an example but she would believe it. That's what I'm trying to get at. All right, so I gotta finish this really quick. I gotta hurry up because we are actually, I'm picking her up to go to Starbucks. Oh, the reason why I was out is because I've been recently getting into Airbnb and me and Mariah, we have our social media that we love and that we do every single day but it's always been a passion for me to own real estate and to get into more of owning homes and stuff and also renting them out. So lately, we've been filming in the morning and then in the afternoon I would go drive around like I am now and go to certain houses, certain things that I'm looking at and wanna purchase and that's what I just did today. Actually, I listed my first ever property on Airbnb which is super dope, I don't own it but I'm kinda like the property manager which is like freaking awesome. So I'm hyped about that but that is the reason why I was out and I do look like I've literally been running around all day because I have. Like, let me just tell you, there's a lot of work when it comes to listing a home but I'm not gonna be getting into that. So I'm picking up Mariah right now because we wanna go to Starbucks and I think she wants to run to Target or Ulta. I don't know, because we literally just went to Target yesterday but I swear this girl is always up to go to Target another day, like every single day. So, all right, so last time, like I said, I hid the bra on the back but this time I think I'm gonna hide it more in plain sight and I'm literally, I'm either gonna put it in here or I'm gonna put it under the seat. I think I should put it in here. Actually, I think I should do this and then here, how's that? How's that? Oh my gosh, that just looks great. Maybe I should put it out a little more just so she kinda looks there. That looks like a bra. So she's gonna be sitting here. That's how she's gonna be facing and if she looks down, boom, that's literally gonna be right next to her leg. I feel like that's the perfect spot. I am so scared, guys. Literally this girl, I've already been like pranking enough.  I'm your neighbor, bro. I'm not stalking your house. I literally live in the same neighborhood as you. He literally is just looking at me. I don't know what he is. He's literally standing on his driveway right now just staring me down. All right, anyways, I gotta hurry up before I start making the whole neighborhood freaked out. But anyways, I just hid the bra. I'm gonna go pick up Mariah right now. We're gonna see how she reacts, guys.  I am going to show her that Team Bill is not a team to mess with. I gotta wave to this guy because he was just staring at me for the past five minutes and also wish me luck because I'm doing this for you guys. I'm definitely not doing this for myself because every time I prank Mariah, I swear I have to like make it up to her. So maybe this is good that we're going to Starbucks. Maybe I prank her before.   Oh no. All right, Marpa Squad. I'm pulling in right now. Sorry, I have that AC on blast because low key, I was sweating when I was filming that intro. I don't want the AC on so it wouldn't like tune out my voice. I just texted her to come out because I'm home and the bra is set up. I am nervous but it's okay because this is gonna be good. This is gonna be, this is gonna be bad. She's looking at me, hold on. All right, hold on, I need to hide the camera. This is what we do. We sit down, discuss a lemon, now discuss a corn of you. Stop, dude, I'm sweating. Sweating? Yeah, it's so freaking hot. Do you see the sweat coming down? I didn't have the AC on for like a minute. I didn't even notice that it wasn't on. Because it's on the feet. Oh. Silly, I wonder why you were feeling hot. No, I swear, I literally was starting to sweat. I need my caffeine. Yeah, you do. Before you start getting moody. No, I'm getting tired. You need your second wind. Yeah, second wind. We had a crazy jump right in there. Yeah, this is 93 degrees. Geez, it's not even summer yet. This is like what, spring? When is summer? May? It's literally coming up. We're probably a week away. Oh, well this feels like- I like your shoes. This feels like summer. I know the Converse, I never wore them yet. They're so white, they're so white and new. I love them. Do you have your water bottle down there? Yeah. Can I have this up? Does this not fit, like in the door? Maybe. Like in the couple there? No. Cause you always put it in the middle. But there's a- Oh no, there's a can, but you have your keys right here. Isn't there a couple there on the side of the door? Where? On the side of the door, there's usually a couple there. The one door that you are next. This one? Yeah, isn't there a couple there always by there? Is that it? Oh, sh**. Oh, sh**, what? Nothing, that was- Whose bra was that? That was a gift for you. Babe, that was a s**t for you. That was- A gift for me. For Easter. But it was in. Babe, for Easter. No, that was a gift for you. Why do you gotta lie? I literally bought it the other day, I was gonna give it to you. Why do you gotta lie? You just, you can be truthful. Whose bra is that? Were you really at where you were at today when you told me? Whose f**king bra is this? Stop, babe. Lots and lots of stuff. And look, it's not for me, so whose bra is it?  And you don't know my size? Then why would you get a bra for me? Why would you- I thought you were a medium. I thought you were a medium. Why would you get- Ew, okay. Dude, that was- That's the most disgusting about touching that thing anymore because I don't know whose bra that was.  That's disgusting. Am I sitting in the seat that stuff has happened in?  Because why would you- It's just a bra.  Yeah, because it was a gift. Oh s**t. It was a gift.  A gift? Yeah, it was a gift. A gift. Oh my god. From whom? I'm literally parking because you're going crazy. A gift from whom? No, don't park. Go into the drive-thru! I need my caffeine, bro. No, I'm not gonna go through a drive-thru when you're yelling at me. Who's bra is that? Where were you? It doesn't matter. It does f*****g matter. It does matter. We've been dating for five years and you have some a** random girls brought in the car. How can you- What do you mean? How can you even- How can you get so mad at someone that's just trying to give you a gift? It's not that big a deal. A gift stuffed in the side. There's no way.  You had it stuffed right in here so whose bra was that? I'm gonna fight a b**ch. I'm gonna fight a f*****g b**ch. I'm gonna fight anyone. Where were you? No way.  What? Was that a lie? No, it was not a lie. Was that a lie or were you somewhere else? Well, I also- Clearly you were somewhere else because this bra wasn't in here this morning when we went to the gym. Babe, this bra is literally like- Stop touching- Ew! What the f**k? You're sniffing some other girl's bra? Just give me the bra. You wanna sniff it? Yes. Sniff it again and we're done. Yeah, I do. Sniff it, touch it and sniff it. I do. Sniff and touch it and we're done. I do. I'm walking home then. Look at how petite. You know? Babe, it's a joke. It's a prank. You literally saw the tag. I just bought it at Target. Why was it stuffed in here then? I don't believe you. Because I put it in the car, babe. I'm not even kidding. I didn't buy it for you as a gift. I bought it to you as a prank. It's a joke, see? It's brand new. You wanna sniff it? It's brand new. Oh, I don't even trust you right now. It's brand new. It was just a prank. I don't believe you. I was just joking, babe. I'm literally filming. I've been holding the camera right here. Can you hear it? Yes, right here. Right here. I don't believe you. You can't even see it. It was just a prank, Mariah. It's not a real person's bra. Or it could be. If you want it, you can have it. I'll be in my f**king deals. Babe, I literally- I told you- I was gonna get you back.  I will say, guys, I'm sorry for cussing. I think my New Year's resolution, which even though it's not really New Year's anymore, it's like April now. I need to stop cussing. She was so- I knew you were gonna get heated. I think, girl, we'll be mad after five years how random girls bra with it. No, I knew you were gonna get heated. I knew you were gonna get heated. How did I not notice that the tag was on it? You weren't- I didn't even put two- Guys, I don't remember- You weren't giving me the energy that I needed. I don't know if you guys are ever so mad that you don't even notice the small s**t. I didn't even think about it twice. I didn't think once or twice or nothing. When you said there was a tag on it, I was like, she's gonna know this is a prank. But then you literally just went with it. So I was like, okay, that's why I started sniffing it because I figured if I start sniffing it and get her mind off of there being a tag on it, it would make it even more believable.  But whoever did wear that smelled really good. Some people put it- Try them out in the stores. Hey, but- I'm just kidding. Guys, you were so weird and strong. All I gotta say, guys, is Team Araya will be back. We always come back stronger than ever and we will come back and beat your little ex. Okay, but- But- You can kick me out of the car- You guys wanna shake on it? As much as you want. But I did ask, literally made you feel like there was another girl's bra in here. There's two different, two different totally- What happened to us vlogging today? What happened to us just having a cute little- We did, we filmed earlier, but this I'm adding to it because I needed to spice it up and I needed to get you back. No, this isn't spicing it up.  But we're at Starbucks. Are you mad? Not until I get my picture. Are you mad? I don't know if you guys saw my story, but I said- Wait, wait, what about they said that they're out of the strawberry assaii? How mad would you be right now? I'd be so sad. Let's just pray. Okay, here we go, here we go. Wait, hold on, let's see if they're out or not. I swear whenever Mariah wants it most, they're always out. Please. Please.  Venti pink drink with no berries? Oh, you're lucky. I'll have a venti, never mind. No, you're good. And that'll be it. It's beautiful. You're telling me guys need me to look after her. You're lucky. I was about to say- You know when they say, okay.  So I was gonna ask how Mariah feels now that she got her pink drink, but they put berries in it. And if you don't know Mariah, she hates syrup. Oh, are you serious? That was an accident. We literally said no berries. And now she has to take all of them physically out by hand. That's just a double whammy, Mariah. This drink is really helping me out with the prank, isn't it? I thought everything was going good. They had the pink drink, they had it all. And then I see the girl had and I said Bill, I said I think they go berries. Just think, right before they handed it to us, she literally was just like three seconds before. Flip, and then she gave it to you. So it was all going great until the last second. She just threw it all in. But one of the reasons I don't like berries is only because I don't like it when it hits my lips right here. I just don't like that like- The berries don't even taste that good. No. But actually it kinda tastes good with it today. I think they don't taste good because the drink is so sugary. It offsets the flavor of how good the strawberry is. So if you ate those separately or drank it, ate those separately, it would taste good. But if you drink them together, it just doesn't. I don't know. Either way, I hope you are enjoying your pink drink. I hope it's making you feel better because I really needed that to come through in order to make you feel happy. I thought we planned it out well. I planned it out well though, right? Sorry, but. You're the one that's got pranked. I don't know why you're telling me sorry. She has no words. When Mariah gets in these modes where she literally doesn't know what she's saying, she just goes, mm, just wait. Where are you going? Because she literally has no idea what she's doing. She's not even focused on us right now. Yeah, I'm not focused on you because I'm trying to plot my mask. That's just how her mind is not a multi-task mind. It's not a multi-task mind. It's like, think one thing, do that one thing, and if it doesn't work out, think of another thing and do it. There's no in between. There's no in between.  So that's my way of getting back at you. She always zones me out.  Is everything mad? No, it doesn't. It does it. No, it doesn't. That makes me happy because that's another thing that I have on you is I'm a good multi-tasker and you're not. Anyways, guys, we'll see you in the next video. But until then, peace, love you guys.