three simple steps to close an insurance sale. Everyone wants to close and I want you to picture something real quick as you're thinking about your prospect. What happens is, okay, what happens is your prospect, I never said I was the best drawer, okay, is in a state of confusion, all right? They're not certain that you have the answer. Maybe they haven't purchased insurance before. Maybe they and maybe they don't know if they should. Maybe they have before. Maybe the experience wasn't great. Maybe they canceled it, whatever, right? But what you need to do and what you think about when you're closing before we get to the steps, they're in a state of confusion. You need to take them to a state of excitement, to a state of certainty that you have the solution, okay? So as we walk through this, be thinking about your prospect a little bit, all right? So the first step, three simple steps close. First step is to ask questions and listen. Most, most insurance agents think that by talking a lot, it's good. They think by having the gift of gab that it's amazing. They think that whoever's talking more wins. Wrong. Ask questions and listen. The person asking questions is in control, but the person listening is the one that will influence the sale, okay? I make sales when the prospect talks more than I do because I'm in control. I'm asking questions, I'm listening and they are responding. So I want you to think about it when you're trying to close a sale and when you're walking through this sale in a home, picture right now, you're in a home. Ask questions, be in control and listen to them and actually listen, right? I'm not saying, you know, you should always be one step ahead, but that doesn't, that doesn't mean ignore what they're saying. It means listen. It means be in the moment. It means be ready, so ask questions and listen. Step number one. Step number two is to show and I'm giving these in a different way than I normally would because I want you to think about a sale in a different way today. Show empathy, not sympathy. You don't feel bad for them. You feel empathy that you understand where they're coming from. You understand where they've been. You understand why they haven't done this and you're with them, right? You're on their team.  I want you to show empathy, not sympathy. You don't feel bad for the fact they haven't done it or feel bad that they chose the wrong option and wouldn't you, because you're the right option, right? But it's empathy that you understand where they're coming from. You're with them, right? You're in this together. We want this to feel like a team effort. For example, when I made $9,000, my first month in the insurance business, I went and spent it on a Dodge Challenger and when I spent it on Dodge Challenger, the reason I'm saying this story is the salesperson, he felt like he was on my side the whole time. It was like, I don't know if you can get this. I don't know if they'll accept this offer. That's what I kept hearing from management. But the salesperson was so good that I thought the dude was on my team. He was showing empathy, not sympathy. But it felt like we were together. He felt like he was on my side of the negotiation. And I was like, dang, this salesperson is freaking good. And I've always remembered that. So remember that when you're talking about prospects. Show empathy.  You understand them or something they're coming from and understand that you are the solution to help them get there. The third step. The third step is confidence. What do people buy? Think about this for a quick second. Slow down for a second. What do people buy? Guess what? They don't buy products. They don't buy... They like benefits, but they don't buy benefits. They like features, they don't buy features. They like prices, but they don't buy the price, okay? Because I paid more for products all the time than I could if I just went to Walmart. But I don't like to go to Walmart. So I'll go to Target and pay more, right? And maybe you're in the same equation. Your prospect is too, okay? They buy confidence. They buy you and your confidence and your certainty. So I want to express that you need to be certain. You don't say, I think you need this. I think this is the option for you. No, that ain't certain. When you're certain in your confidence, you don't use words like think. You don't use words like, you know what, maybe. You don't use words like, I'm not sure.  Everyone buys because they have a problem, okay? Every... A salesperson is a problem solver. And you are selling them the solution. And you need to be confident that you are that solution, that you have that solution. You need to be certain. I believe a sell is made, okay? I believe that you will close deals when you believe that they will buy more than they believe that they won't. Now, if they believe they're not going to buy, more than you believe that they will, they won't. But you need to be more confident that they will than they are that they won't. That's when a sell is made, okay? That is when deals are closed. Is when you are confident.  And you need to talk confidently. You need to talk with assumptive behavior. You need to use word tracks that are assuming because you are the answer. You have the answer and you need to be confident when you close. I buy from people when they're like, dude, this is the only solution. This is the best solution on the market. And it is definitely going to solve your problem. Let's see if we can get you approved for this. What's your full legal name? Right? You need it. You want it. You can afford it. This is the answer. Now, I'm helping you do it because I'm the dude to do it. True? Now, let's go, okay? Let's see if we can get you approved, right? That's certainty. That's confidence. That's assumptive behavior. And that is why you will close more deals. Because insurance agents fail because they don't close enough deals.  But when they do, maybe we're not asking questions and listening. Maybe we're not showing empathy. Maybe we aren't super freaking confident that we have the solution. So this is the three simple steps to close the insurance sale from somebody that made six figures in their first eight months in the business, okay? And that knows that you too can make six figures in this business. 92% of insurance agents fail. Only 8% succeed, which is why Dylan's where 8% cap right now. You can't even see it because we don't close enough deals. You can close enough deals. You can make whatever amount of money you want to make. I'm certain of it. I'm confident in it. And now I need you to be confident in it as well. Hey, 92% of insurance agents fail. Most of you won't make it if you want to be sure that you make it. And that you know how much money you can make and keep watching this, all right? My name's Cody Askins. I started the insurance business about a decade ago. When I was 19, I was an intern. I became a full-time insurance agent while I was in college taking 21 credit hours a semester. I was playing basketball as a college athlete. Tournaments, games, weekends, weeknights, practices every day. And I made a decision to earn $100,000 my first year and using our six-figure cell system and some of the stuff that I'm going to share with you briefly and shortly. I was able to earn $117,361 and you can't forget the 13 cents in my first eight months as an insurance agent. So how much money can you make? I'm going to share with you right now how much money a new insurance agent can make, okay? So stay with me, all right? So I want to talk through some of the numbers behind this because I'm a numbers guy, okay? 92% fell within three years, okay? Awful statistic, we created 8% Nation because of that.  We're going to Vegas, okay? This next year. How much money can you make, though, as an agent? And you're wondering that, okay? I said that I made $117,361.13 in my first eight months as a brand new insurance agent, couldn't spell insurance, didn't know how to sell, wasn't competent my ability, no product knowledge, et cetera, right? And that may be you sitting there right now and you're thinking, okay, how much money can I make? I'm going to walk you through number one, the average, okay? Because I always want to know what is average just so I don't freaking do that, right?  You want to be average? I bet you don't want to be, I don't want to be average either, okay? So the average insurance agent makes about $50,000 per year. Some states, some areas, some different product types, it's higher, some it's lower, okay? About $50,000. That sucks, right? That's horrible. But I was trained a long time ago to not say the word but because it's kind of like an eraser word, but I won't keep using it anyway, okay? There are more millionaires in this industry, insurance and financial services than in the other industry in the world. And you say, well, Cody, how much money can I make? Well, I know you want to make more than the average. So I'm going to show you what you can expect to make your first year. If you follow the six figure sales formula, which I'm assuming that you're going to follow, correct?  So let's look at the six figure sales system. That's a book I'm working on right now, six figure sales system. And I believe that every insurance agent, this is a triple S weekly system, I believe that every insurance agent should set 15 appointments per week, they should sit and ask 10 people to buy every single week and that they should actually physically sell at least five policies, applications every single week. And if you do the math, and let's just say, for example, let's just say you're selling life insurance, okay? Let's just say that you're selling life insurance.  Let's just say that you average, when you sell life insurance policy, you should average at least, at least 700 dollars of annual premium per sell. That's the premium the client pays over an entire year, okay? A 50% commission, that is $350 in commission, okay? Let's just say that you sell five of those every single week, okay? You can do the math pretty quick, that if you do five of those, selling life insurance, you're at 1,750 bucks per week, okay? So take that times 50, okay? And you're at about, you're at about 80 to 90k right off the bat selling life insurance. Now, let's just say, let's just say that you're selling, let's just say that you're selling health insurance, okay? Or Medicare. And let's just say that every time you sell a policy, you make 200 bucks, okay? Just for easy math sakes. For an example, you can change the numbers for your own example, okay? Let's just say you make 200 bucks commission every time you sell a policy. But let's just say that maybe it's residual, and maybe you get paid the same amount the second year you did the first year, okay? And let's just say that you sell five policies per week, okay? That's $1,000 per week. That is 50k per year. But if you make the same amount the first year, the second year, and the third year, because it's residual income, then all you have to do is do this three years in a row. And guess what? Here's your first year. Here's your second year 100k, because you can double it. That's if you don't lose any clients and you'll probably lose 10%, okay? Third year, you're up to $150,000, okay? Now, let's say you're selling home and auto, okay? And let's just say that the average customer you're typically going to make about I would say it's closer to this, but let's just say for easy math sake, because I personally believe that every home and auto insurance agent should be selling 20 policies, policies, not households, every single month, okay? Let's say you average, let's say you average up 100 bucks, okay? That's two grand. Let's just say that you get it again the next year. That's four grand, right? It takes time, I'm just, for example, it takes time to build a property and casualty business, home and auto business. The key is to this is how much money can I make? Well, these are early numbers. These are specific examples. The average is this, I believe, and I've got another video previously that talks about how I believe you can make a million dollars a year selling insurance. There's more million interest in the world than why not, okay? When I was a new agent, I focused on getting in front of people every single week. The secret to you making money early, often and consistently, and keeping this thing sexy is by following this. The whole key to this is you need a prospecting system. The only reason that insurance agents that this happens that 92% fell, and the reason the average is this, and the reason that most people fell, and you maybe will too, hopefully not for watching this video, the only reason why, the number one reason why insurance agents fell, the number one thing they struggle with, number one thing you probably struggle with is what? It's getting in front of people. That's the toughest part of this business. Nobody ever does this, nobody ever does this, nobody ever does this, because if you don't start with this, you can't get this. If you don't get this, you can't get this, right? You can't sit with three people a week, two people a week, like most of you are right now and expect to sell five policies every single week. It ain't going to happen. Number one reason people fell is they struggle with a prospecting system, getting in front of people. That's why I have a six figure sales system that teaches you every step of the way. I believe, for this, I believe you should be working your warm market. I believe that you should be working about 20 to 30 leads per week. I believe that you should have a third activity. Maybe it's door knocking, maybe it's something else that you can go out and specifically go make money right now. Now the question was how much money can I make? There is no specific answer. You can make as much money as you would like to make. You set the target, because the whole trick to this is, if there even is one, is if we put it into steps. If you wanted to leave with specific steps from this video, and I'm running out of whiteboard, as you can see, because I get a little crazy. Number one, you need a target. My first year, I said a target. I said, I will make $100,000 my first year. I committed. I wrote it down. I told everyone. I made it public. If I didn't do it, I was going to be embarrassed. You need a target, and everyone needs to know. You need about a publicly hold yourself accountable. Step one, you need a target. Step two, you have to know your numbers so that you can actually go and hit step one. Funny how that works, and then step three, you have to actually go execute on those numbers. Most insurance agents, they struggle with this because they don't spend enough money. We have five different companies here. Maybe a sixth pretty soon. We will spend $5 million a year on a personation, agency, security agent leads, security agent marketing, Kodiaskins and brand, all those things. We'll spend $5 million a year operating this thing. When I spend more money, I make more money. Maybe you should start spending more money. So, when we say how much money can you make, I want you to make a lot of money. I want you to be successful. I promise you it's possible. I believe in you. I want to motivate you.  But just remember, you got to get in front of people. So, when you make $100,000, I want you to think back on this video. When you make a quarter million dollars, half a million dollars, a million bucks, 10 million dollars, whatever it is, the answer is you can make as much money as you would like.  Hey, if you love this video, there's one video you absolutely have to watch. It's how to make $10,000 weekly and it's right there. Go click on it and I'll see you there. Let's do the math. So, if you want to think through 10K. So, the goal is $10,000. If you divide that by an average


Over the next few months, the planting of several new trees will take place at the Lake Bemidji South Shore along with the repair and replacement of electrical boxes for each tree. The Bemidji City Council voted on Monday to spend over $45,000 to replant and repair many of the trees in the area in preparation for hockey day Minnesota. Electrical receptacles will also be repaired so that the first city of lights celebration can expand the area. Many of the trees throughout the South Shore have either not survived or have been damaged by severe weather. Without any buildings, without anything protecting them have received some storm damage over the years. Plus, it's just so windy up the lake as well so we feel that we have some sunscalving occurring to them when they're initially planted so we're going to be planting some species of trees that are hearty and also this time around. These drip water bags that will slowly release some water because this area is not irrigated. The hope is to have trees in the immediate hockey day area illuminated for the season. There are 243 trees overall in the South Shore development. If you enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News, please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to Lakeland PBS.


We're very pleased to welcome you to this IIA webinar where the subject is US-Latin American relations under the Biden administration. My name is Justin Harmon. I'm a retired Irish diplomat who has worked in the region on various occasions. And I'm currently based in Argentina where I'm working with the Association de Studios Irlandese del Sur, developing Irish studies in Latin America. I'm also associated with Carrie, which is the IIA equivalent body in Buenos Aires. We're delighted to be joined today by Guillaume Long, former Minister for Affairs of Ecuador. Guillaume Long will speak to us for about 15 minutes or so. And then we will move into a Q&A with our audience, both of which are on the record. You'll be able to join in the discussion using the Q&A function on Zoom, which you should see on your screen. Please feel free to send your questions in throughout the session. Please also feel free to join in the discussion on Twitter using the handle at IIA. On relations with the US, I think it's fair to say there are high hopes in the region of the new administration, not least owing to the experience of Biden himself. The anticipated change from the Trump era, when the region felt itself relegated. A key question was how the new approach would compare with that of the Obama era, and that's something I know that Guillaume will be speaking to today. Since President Biden took office, COVID and domestic policy initiatives have been to the forefront, while more recently the withdrawal from Afghanistan has dominated the US international agenda. Latin America has therefore appeared somewhat of a secondary priority. Insofar as the region has figured it has been dominated by the migration crisis in Central America, which is of course of significant domestic political sensitivity. Some have argued that if a narrow domestic based agenda is sustained, it could thwart the opportunity to renew key partnerships in the region that have come under strain in recent years. There have also been delays in Senate approval of senior nominations in DC and to embassies in the region which have hampered policy implementation. In the meantime, the pandemic is proving particularly destructive with over 30% of deaths globally for the region with 8% of the world population. It is exacerbating economic stagnation, rising inequality and political turbulence. And indeed, some scholars have suggested the pandemic is contributing to the growth of a neoliberal authoritarianism. The US is providing vaccines, but this has been sluggish while Russia and particularly China have been notably active, countering China, Chinese influence and presence is clearly a priority concern for the administration. In outlining policy towards the region, questions have been raised as to whether there are irreconcilable differences or perhaps competing priorities in the approach, particularly given the overall climate agenda. Some have asked whether in current circumstances, one size really can fit all is a regional approach feasible, given the diversity of issues now facing countries in the region. The important signal of US intentions was the recent visit to selected countries of national security advisor Jake Sullivan. We can also I think look to the prospects for the ninth summit of the Americas which will be hosted by the US in the next year. Here to discuss these and other issues is Guillaume Long whom I'm very happy to formally introduce and to hand over to him. He is currently a senior policy analyst at the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington. He's held several cabinet positions in the government of Ecuador, including Minister of Foreign Affairs Minister of Culture and Minister of Knowledge. More recently he served as permanent representative to the UN in Geneva. He trained as an historian and holds a PhD in international politics from the University of London. He teaches international relations and comparison Latin American politics at Johns Hopkins University at the Institute of International Relations and Sciences in Paris, and he joins us today from France. Bienvenido. Welcome. Thank you Guillaume. Thank you very much Ambassador for this very generous introduction. I'd like to thank of course the IIA for inviting me. Thank you Ambassador for chairing this meeting. And I'd also like to thank Ross Fitzpatrick for making this event possible. Now, I don't have much time so I'm going to go straight into it. And hopefully we can we can cover some more ground during the questions. So the overarching question we're posing here is, is the Biden administration, a new beginning for Latin America is there real change in the US policy towards the region towards Latin America. After what many of us considered to be a rather disastrous approach towards Latin America during the Trump administration. And I think the short answer to that is that not really. I mean, maybe we should be more patient, maybe six months isn't yet enough to see what the Biden administration really wants to do in Latin America. But so far, I think, sort of expectations have been rather dashed. There's a lot of disappointment, and a lot of the policies that were put in place by the Trump administration remain in place, and there's been very little change. This is there are a lot of gray areas and have been some positive advances in some fields. Maybe I should, I won't have time to cover all the countries maybe we can do them during question time but just to give a few examples. My own country Ecuador I think it was the US showed very important goodwill during the electoral process that happened there it was the first election presidential election, taking place after Biden came to power in Latin America so it was very symbolic very very important, and they was a very clear threat a very real threat of a coup in March, April 2021 this year. It was very seldom covered by the international press, but the leftist candidates for the air of Rafael Correa came in first place in the first round. I think the elite pack setup by then President Lenny Moreno did everything in its power to stop the second round the runoff if you like, from happening, trying to overturn the results cancel the elections, find all sorts of ways to boycott the second round elections and the polls said that the leftist candidates would win. Well I have to say that the US administration did not support these coup, this calls for a coup I mean I interacted personally with a number of people from the incoming administration diplomats from the State Department, and they themselves were very explicit in saying that they were being solicited by people who wanted to interrupt stop cancel the the elections in Ecuador. So it significantly discouraged this from happening and the second round actually happened with actually ironically a result which I think favored the world I mean would have probably the preferred results from the United States point of view with actually a surprise win by Guillermo Lasso so not the leftist candidate winning, but at the time when the leftist candidates was poised to win with the polls favored in the United States really slowed things down and called for respect for institutions of democracy and what was a positive development we don't know what the Trump administration would have done, but given past experiences during the Trump administration. I'm thinking of Bolivia but I'm thinking of a number of cases. I think that having Mike Pompeo in the State Department and having your Trump the Trump administration handed over US foreign policy towards Latin America to essentially what I would call the Florida caucus of the Republican Party so sort of people close to Marco Rubio. Bolton was in the administration for a while with very aggressive sort of hawkish approach to Latin America with a very backyard sort of approach to the region and indicating the Monroe doctrine and all these kinds of things so obviously from the point of view of Ecuador, having Trump in place. We don't know what would happen or whether the coup would have taken place but we were very happy to see Biden show some clear signs of change there, I would say the same thing happened in Peru, the Peruvian opposition, or the Peruvian opposition, or the Peruvian opposition were willing to see a conservative right wing candidacy of Pekka Fukimori, a cry for fraud, and wanted to the institutions, the electoral body and the authorities to disrespect the electoral result in the runoff against Pedro Casillo who was declared eventually declared winner of the long process. States called for respect for the electoral authorities. There was no sort of encouragement of Fuhi Modi's call for the annulment of the elections. And those were again clear signs of respect for democracy, respect for rule of law, institutions and so on. And again, we don't know what the Trump administration would have done, but we can suspect that it's kind of allegiances with the hard right in the region. And I think the Fuhi Morismo as a movement, Keiko Fuhi Mori as a candidate, kind of fits into that sort of fairly far right category, could lead us to think that anything could have happened. So those are the positives. For the negatives, you know, there are still a lot of things that remain unchanged from the Trump years. We just saw last week in the permanent counsel of the OAS, speech from sort of the, hopefully the temporary representative of the United States in the OAS, sort of a holdover from the Trump administration, sort of dabbled down on narrative of electoral fraud in Bolivia, which has now been completely debunked. And this is not an issue of he says, she says anymore. There is complete agreement across the board in the US academia, think tanks, prestigious universities, that there was no electoral fraud during the 2019 Bolivian elections, that the OAS observation was, and its reports was deeply flawed. It's got a statistics wrong. The OAS isn't even defending now the technicalities of its report anymore, because it's been so debunked by a number of scholars from various institutions, the MIT, University of Pennsylvania, University of Tulane, my own institution, my own institution where I work, CEPA, et cetera, et cetera. But yet you're seeing the US representative at the OAS under a Biden administration repeat the same sort of rhetoric that you were hearing during this sort of very anti-scientific and anti-fact based Trump administration. So this is worrying. And again, one hopes that it has to do with what Ambassador Harman was mentioning, slow transition, still a number of nominations to happen, a lot of people not in key positions. But on the other hand, this is the United States, it has strong institutional capacity. Things are not that ad hoc. It's the OAS, it's the permanent counsel. You're having a representative read from a piece of paper. It is worrying that there hasn't been a change of position on the issue of Bolivia and the protection of sort of so far the rhetoric, but you know, sort of strong protection of NES and positions against what actually is transpired in a number of human rights report, recent human rights report supported by the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights. And the other half of the OAS system, if you like, which calls on those responsible for human rights violations during 2019, including what it calls massacres to be held accountable and to be taken to justice, the US not commenting on that. And on the contrary, sort of defending some of the key people in the annual regime. This is also a little bit worrying because this was the Trump's approach to Bolivia. And we weren't expecting that from the Biden administration, which remind our listeners, it said from the campaign onwards that it would bring human rights and democracy back to the center of foreign policy and back to the fore in terms of its relationship with Latin America. I think the issue of Colombia is also very, the US Biden administration's approach to Colombia has been very disappointing. It is under the Biden administration that we saw the recent protests happening in Colombia and the brutal repression of those protests. Colombia being a country, I think, with one of the worst human rights records in Latin America. There are others, but it's certainly in terms of extrajudicial killings, the persecution of activists, of civil society, organization, so on and so forth. It's been historically a big problem. It's still a big problem. And Colombia has been, of course, historically a key ally of the United States in the region. So unsurprisingly, we saw the kind of neocon members of the Trump administration handling Latin America, very much warming to Uribe's successor to President Duque, particularly in the context of their attempt to succeed at having regime change in Venezuela. But we would have expected maybe not the end of that kind of strategic partnership between Colombia and the United States. This is not what was realistically to be expected, but certainly a more critical approach of the Biden administration towards gross human rights violations in Colombia, where it has been completely silent. Of course, in contrast with the Biden administration's ongoing accusations, in some cases with due reason against some of its sort of the typical ones that it points singles out as being undemocratic regimes, Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua and so on. So double standards there, which we would have hoped with the Biden administration would have been less salient, at least during the Trump administration. I think it's also important to bear in mind that there was a significant amount of unease in the ranks of Democrats, including now from conversations I've had with some people in the Biden administration. There was some unease of people in currently in administration with the Colombian president's party, Centro Democrático, basically the representative of the broad political current of Uribismo and its role in the Florida elections. Uribe campaigned aggressively in Florida and his party campaigned aggressively in Florida in favor of Trump. This is now transcribed. It's in the media. It's not quite the same. Hasn't got the same seniority in the media or visibility as the Russian accusations, but people close to Duki campaigned aggressively in Florida in favor of Trump. And yet you're seeing a Biden administration being absolutely silent, not sort of recaliating in any way, and not saying anything about human rights violations. Now maybe there are some stuff that's happening off the record. Maybe there are behind the scenes conversations, but certainly publicly there's nothing of what we might have expected in terms of sort of moving away from cozying up to some of the more sort of very, I won't use the word far right, but very, very right-wing regimes in Latin America. In contrast to this, on Cuba, we saw a very aggressive Biden administration. I can have a big debate on Cuba. There's lots of things to be said about Cuba, but there was one death as a result of the crackdown on the protests in Cuba, as opposed to dozens and dozens of deaths as a result of the crackdown on protests in Colombia. What we saw in Cuba is a very sort of aggressive Biden administration, which is now added to the list of sanctions on Cuba, new sanctions. In this case, they're less systemic sanctions than the Trump sanctions. They're sanctions on individuals. But ironically, we now have a situation whereby we have more sanctions on Latin American countries under the Biden administration than we had during the Trump administration. Just to remind our listeners that during the Trump administration, there were 250 new types of sanctions that were added to the list of already existing sanctions on Cuba. We now have more that have been added on by the Biden administration. Now, maybe it's a question of time. Maybe Biden will eventually go back to the approach that had been espoused by the Obama administration and trying to sort of create a climate of detente and move away from the historically flawed US policy towards Cuba. But so far, we're seeing more aggressiveness. Maybe it's a question of timing because of those protests in Cuba, and the US felt it couldn't remain silent. But the result is the result, more sanctions. And it's also true in terms of the new sanctions regime in Nicaragua, which is more and more aggressive. And the ongoing sanctions regime in Venezuela. And this despite the fact that there was an initial pledge on behalf of the Biden administration, including there was a big discussion and serious number of things that were said by the Treasury on doing a sort of review. I think the word is they used of US sanctions around the world, and in particular in Latin America. And this led to a lot of hopes of sanctions being used much less. Because as we know, they're very counterproductive. They're very unpopular. 70% of Venezuelans are clearly opposed to sanctions. If this is in the name of the Venezuelan people, then this is clearly problematic. They're also very unpopular with a key sort of political stakeholders, particularly obviously the political left in Latin America, which isn't as marginal as it was 30 years ago. It's kind of the main opposition to a lot of the right wing governments in power at the moment and maybe could come back to power in certain countries, which is something the Biden administration bear in mind. So all these sanctions regimes are so unpopular in Latin America, and yet that have remained largely unperturbed, unscathed. I mean, the good news on Venezuela, I suppose, and this maybe is light of beacon of hope, is that we're not seeing the Biden administration speak badly or sabotage the ongoing negotiations taking place in Mexico right now between the Venezuelan government and the opposition. And there is some noise in the US administration that this Guaido situation can't really go on for much longer. Guaido is being recognized by less and less countries in the world. The main Venezuelan opposition doesn't recognize Guaido as the leader of the opposition. Guaido is not even an elected member of parliament anymore. I mean, I would argue this is probably not the place for this to have this conversation, but I would argue that the Guaido self-proclaimed presidency was always problematic. In fact, there's no precedent for it in history of Latin America. There was certainly no parallel government or government in exile after the Cuban Revolution. There's certainly nothing like that during the Pinochet regime or other dictatorships in Latin America. This is unprecedented. And to think that the Guaido representative even holds a seat at the OAS, whereas it's the Maduro government that's recognized in the UN, all this is really quite remarkable and very telling of the chaos of the Trump administration's approach towards Latin America. And it would be a key step for the Biden administration to move away from those less serious policies in the region. Running out of time very quickly on Brazil, I think that it's going to be interesting to see what the Biden administration does there. I think it's unlikely that we see the Biden administration sort of forgiving Bolsonaro for his very, for his disrespect for Brazilian institutions and rule of law and so on. It's too close to home. It's too close to symbolically, even to some of the Trump approach to overthrowing or avoiding the results of elections. In the case of Bolsonaro is trying to avoid elections altogether. I don't think Biden will warm to Bolsonaro. I think there's some clear ideological differences there, but it will be interesting to see whether the signal sent to, well, to the PT and to the left and to Lula, who might be a year from now the new president of Brazil, or a little bit more than a year from now in elections in October 2022 in Brazil, where Lula is the favorite. I mean, there are clear issues there during the Trump administration. It's been denounced by the PT. It's been denounced by a number of Democrats on the Hill in Congress to do with the role of the FBI and the DOJ in the persecution of Lula. And this is something which is unlikely to go away. If Lula is the future president, I mean, he was in jail after for a year and a half, so it's a personal issue for him, too. This is something which one would hope the Biden administration comes to terms with, answer some of the questions that have remained unanswered, a way of moving away from the Trump administration and towards more democracy in human rights versus what he's promised. I've got a few more things to say on a few more countries. I'm running out of time, so I'll deal with those during question time, just to conclude four hypotheses why we might see too much continuity and not enough change. First, the transition has been very slow. Ambassador Harman was hinting in that. Still other people to be sworn in to key places. I'm not sure that explains everything, as I've just said. I think U.S. is an institutionalized enough place for the administration to do a few key things, even if you still don't have everybody in place. Second, it's domestic politics, the Florida explanation. And I think that's quite important because losing Florida was very bad news for Latin American democracy and the Latin American left and quite good news for the hard right because obviously the Biden administration thinks it's the socialism issue, it's the communism issue, it's the Cuba issues, the Venezuela issue that got Trump for it. Third, it's the Latin American balance of power, too many conservative governments, too many right-wing governments, and U.S. just has to be pragmatic. I've heard that argument. I don't really buy it. First, because when the left had a majority, it's not as if the U.S. aligned with the left in the region, so the U.S. doesn't tend to follow the majority. And secondly, because the Biden administration should have the foresight to see that this balance is gradually changing, there's still a majority of right-wing conservative governments in the region, but you've got an increasing number of progressive or leftists or post neoliberal, whatever you want to call them, governments that are taking power, the most recent case in Peru, but before that Bolivia, Argentina, Mexico, so things are changing. And the left is the main opposition in a number of countries where the right wing is in power. So I don't think, I think that would be too short-sighted for the Biden administration. And finally, and it's my last point, it's the poll, what Ambassador Harmon also hinted at, it's the poll of the traditional security doctrine, which kind of supersedes and annals in a way this stress on human rights and democracy. And in the context, of course, of this new obsession with China, which is a big player in Latin American politics right now, and for the last 10, 15 years has been, I think, perceived as a threat in the hemisphere on behalf of the United States, this kind of context of a new Cold War, of new security doctrine resembling, in many ways, the old security doctrines of the past being imposed on the US reality and the US Biden administration, a relationship then still about hegemony and perhaps even domination with no major paradigm shift. And sorry, I spoke for too long.


Dr. Askov, welcome to the show. How are you doing? I'm very well. Thank you for having me. Today we're going to be returning to the world of Greco-Roman associations and their intersection with early Christ believer groups. Thanks to the work of scholars such as yourself, John Kloppenberg, Philip Harland, and others, we have a fresh mode of comparison. These Greco-Roman associations and the nascent Jesus movement are now looked at through more dynamic ways of understanding the world of time. I didn't know if you could just explore and go over the different types of Greco-Roman associations, whether that be philosophical, religious, or voluntary. Yeah, this has occupied a lot of my time from early on in terms of the taxonomy of associations. So, you start with the broad categories. Philosophical schools, for example, the Epicurean Garden or the Academy or the Stoa for the Stoics. These used to be talked about in terms of one kind of school focused on what they called philosophy, pursuit of wisdom, and human flourishing. And then the earlier scholars would also talk about the mystery of religions as a separate kind of taxonomy where we could put things. And then, of course, voluntary associations, which were these unofficial groups in the Greek and then in the Roman world that we know existed mostly from inscriptions and some papyri. So, early on you had these big categories. I should mention also synagogues, who were kind of separated out. And in some areas, scholars then used these categories to try and understand Christ groups. I think we're now at a point where we sort of see the pot is both bigger and has a lot more smaller pieces in it. So, there were associations of a lot of different kinds in the Greek and Roman world. And some focused on cult, so worship of a deity. So, this would be religious kind of association. And some were based on occupation. Others might have been grouped by neighborhood. Others by ethnicity. So, Udioi or the Jewish groups would be one example of that. So, he sort of titrated it down now to even a lot more different kinds of groups, but with a bigger pot that would include philosophical schools within there. And the first essay, I believe, of your collection, you'd kind of go over those schools and I'm like, oh, I didn't even think of it that way. But yeah, they would be considered an association, wouldn't they? But are the main sources of evidence for Greco-Roman associations? The primary evidence we have is inscriptions from antiquity, Greek or Latin inscriptions, sometimes bilingual ones as well. And a lot of the evidence we have available to us is based on archaeological finds, like where they find an inscription, how many they find, graveyards are a good place for that, sometimes reuse of inscriptions in more modern houses. We're lucky that they did like what once called the epigraphic habit, at least in the Roman world. I mean, the Greek world as well, but we wish it went back a little earlier. If there's one thing ancient Greeks and Romans like to do was to chisel their name on things. So, that's across the Greek and Roman world, we find inscriptions from all those areas. We have some evidence from papyri, but of course that only really survived in Egypt. So, that gives a good sense of Egyptian associations in often Greek, Latin, and demonic, but it's more localized. But when we match it up with the inscriptions from other places, we can see some pattern. And then we have some literary texts, not a lot, but texts where the writers mention associations explicitly, either in some kind of legal dispute or describing, you know, Cicero will describe the way associations were used by his opponent, for example, when they were electioneering. So, we have three kinds of evidence, but the predominant evidence is from inscriptions. The legal status of these groups was sometimes in question, wasn't it? I like to use the example of driving. So, early on in the Hellenistic period, no problem, these associations existed. In the Republican period, they were banned. And under Julius Caesar and Augustus, they kind of opened it up with some limitations.  They'll probably let you go. But if they have another reason to stop you, they have a law on the books to stop you. And so, with associations, there's this flourishing of them, even while technically they're banned, but they just get tolerated. And in fact, men, like, write to emperors and mention them. And so, over time, then you start getting, seeing some of them get more than just tolerated. They get woven into the civic fabric a bit more in their urban centers. And so, they start to be used, if you like, by the state and even become an arm of the state into sort of second, into third century. So, it's this oddity. But yeah, in theory that they're illegal. Except for a few that Augustus and Caesar said, yeah, these are the conditions under which they could be legal. And Dr. Kloppenberg and his work, Christ's associations really drove home the points that the association in a world in flux in terms of stability, associations often take the place of the traditional family structure. This is a world where people are often displaced by necessities of making a living and trade, among other things. How does the association take that place and give people who otherwise would not have a place in the civic world of this cosmopolitan empire of voice or at least a sense of belonging? I think that last turn of phrase is key, a sense of belonging. Where do they fit in society? And whether it's by migration, either voluntary or forced migration. So, you have to move from your home city to somewhere else because of work. Or it might just be a disruption within the city itself. People seem to be looking for connection. I mean, I think in some ways we could talk more broadly about what it means to be human. And so, these associations both mimic a little bit of the civic structure and a little bit of the household structure. So, we find some where they might call each other brothers. And you see this in Christ groups, but not just there. Or they might have a mother or father title for a leader. And so, they're giving people a sense of being connected as a kinship group. We call it a fictive kinship group. It's not blood relatives, but they feel like they're friends or even more than that, brothers and sisters. And then, there's also ways in which the names they use for themselves or their leadership structure that sounds like the civic structure that they find themselves in. And so, we think that these groups then were places where people went. They socialized. They didn't really have a lot of economic power the way modern unions would. So, if they went on strike, the Romans would cut them down pretty quickly and say, no, back to work. But one of the things they did a lot was eat meals together. So, they socialized over that. And it's a common salary that comes with that. Another thing that a lot of them did was take care of burial. So, if somebody in the group passed away, if you're away from home, you don't have family to take care of your burial, but you've been paying your dues, then they'll ensure that your body is taken care of, buried or cremated. You just mentioned something there. I feel it's important to point out. And you mentioned this in your articles. You note that professional associations often organize themselves by modeling the civic structures. This is also reflected in the multitude of titles, like you said, used to designate these groups. The important distinction is we look at these texts in a theological way of looking back. But if you're in the 1st or 2nd century and you're hearing the term ecclesia synagogue, that just means, for lack of a better term, an assembly. Why is it important to understand these communities? And I'm going to actually talk about specifically the community at Thessaloniki in Macedonia. Why is it important to understand the community that Paul is writing to you as a trade organization, as opposed to, say, the way that these groups are portrayed and say something like the Book of Acts? This is a huge question. I think it's the critical question. So, let me start with the terminology because you're right. There's a way in which we hear the word ecclesia or synagogue as having sort of been puted in them certain kind of theological, ideological, ethnographical kind of things. But they were just terms that were used for, as you say, different and different terms were used for assemblies and they chose some. So, you get a synagogue of barbers and parenthos, which is not Jewish at all, right? It's very clear from the text. And so, it's important there. They're saying we're a synagogue of a particular kind. And I think this is why you also see in Jewish inscriptions a synagogue of Judeans as opposed to a different kind. And so, it's a differentiation. But the bigger question then, like why is this important, is historically, mostly because of the way European history developed, the church has dominated the narrative from the way it's presented in Acts, the church's triumphant. It's special, it's designated by God, and it basically replaces Israel and then kind of wins out over the so-called pagan groups. And so, a lot of textbooks even today will talk about Christians, Jews, and others as if there are three separate groups in the ancient world, Christian groups, Jewish groups, and this amorphous other. And we're trying to push back against that and say, no, all there is is others. There's associations. And in there, there's Christ groups, there's Judean groups, and they overlap. So, sometimes, you know, Christ's believers were Jewish, sometimes not. But there's also Zeus groups, Dionysus groups, Mithras groups. And if you're walking down the street in the ancient world and said, do you belong to a Christian group, a Jewish group, or another? They'd say, what's an other? Like, I'm a part of a Zeus group.  So, we're trying to dismantle that, if you like weirdly, that specialness of Christianity, specialness of Judaism, not because it's not important to know about them, but because we want to put them within their broader context. And so, it's more interesting to say, how is a Jewish group similar to and different from a Dionysus group? Because clearly, they're going to be different, likewise Christ groups, but a Dionysus group would be different than an ISIS group or a Zeus group. Yeah, the taxonomy of difference is really important. It's like Jonathan Z Smith said all those years ago, the importance is in the differences. It's not interesting if everything's the same. And that's why I feel it's so important to shine a light on this. I really feel like using these exempla from Greco-Roman associations is hard and parcel of what I'm actually trying to do with my channel as well with the ancient world in particular, just in general. We need to understand them in their context and not put one thing over the other or favor one thing over the other, because there's some ideological reason why. It's because we have to understand them all in their context and also not only what makes them the same, but what makes them different and why that's important just as people living together, right? I'll just say my personal favorite kind of association are the tree cutters, the wool die, so I can imagine being a member of a tree cutter Dionysus cult or something.   Or are you the cult of Hipsistos with the specialization and herding goats or whatever?  They don't always work. They break down at a certain point, but if you're at a party with people you don't know, after the perfunctory kinds of introductions, people say, so what do you do? So what's your job? And so that's where we might start with an identity for ourselves. And so this is how their primary identity might be. Yeah, I'm a tree cutter. Oh, my neighbor's a tree cutter. Do you know him? Yes, we're in the same group. We have a meal together once a month. And this is sort of a way of situating yourself within the civic state. And so this is sort of part of normal conversation. And we're trying to say that Judean groups and Christian groups are both part of that normality and also not like in the same way you might say, oh, you're one of those tree cutters. Yeah, they cleared my land last year. I don't like them very much. And it gets this awkward moment. Again, the analogies break down at a certain point. But it shows just how we do these things normally. If you play a sport, you might be part of a sports group. If you like to drink, you might be part of a whiskey tasting club. If you quilt, you might be part of a quilting group. And so these things, we look at them in the modern world and say, well, there's a certain demographic that plays sports, a certain demographic that quilts, a certain demographic that likes to drink whiskey. And we look at their gender, we look at their economics, Danny, we look at this, we look at that and look for patterns. And absolutely, the whiskey club is not the same as the quilting group. And yet so, but we start with similarities. We can compare them because they're both groups that are in the city. And then, and you're right with Jonathan Smith, I think my favorite article title is What a Difference Difference Makes. And the similarities are the least interesting thing, but they invite the comparison. Going through your articles and going through your introduction to the epistles to the Thessalonians. For those unfamiliar, first Thessalonians is dated as probably the most early of the Pauline epistles. So it's really important in that sense. But I think the thing we tend to lose sight of is we tend to look at these things romanticized as like, oh, Paul's going around and he's creating these things. Paul Kwa, by himself, they didn't exist prior to Paul coming into town. If you could give us a sketch of what's going on in first Thessalonians. We have the two pieces of evidence. We have Paul's letters, and then we have acts. And we have to figure out, can we reconcile them? And if so, how, or if they're not, and what ones are primary sorts by the guy that founded this community, the other secondary, but you know, sometimes we're blinded by our own closeness. But I was like, it's good to start with the primary. And so with first Thessalonians, most people would date that as the earliest of his letters. And when you start going through it and mirror reading what he's saying to the group and about the group, one of the most clear things is he says in the first chapter, you've turned to God from idols. Now, that's not a way a Jewish person would talk about other Jews, right? They're already turned to God, but they might have found a Messiah in Jesus. That sounds like non-Jews have found the Judean God. Then in the second chapter, he says, don't you remember how when I was with you, I worked night and day with my hands while I spoke to you about the gospel. And so again, that doesn't sound like he's standing on a corner preaching, trying to attract people. It sounds like he's in a workshop. So I was the first to argue that he's in a workshop, but I kind of ran with it and said, well, what if we imagine that instead of him working during the day and then in the evenings going and doing street preaching or going to the synagogue that we take about his word that he's spending this time in the workshop, we know they work long days. And of course he's going to talk to them. And so I imagine that at a certain point he says, you know, there's this God that, you know, he tells them about the God of the Hebrew Bible and the apocalyptic stuff comes in at the end of the world. He mentions the wrath of God in chapter one, like they're familiar with it. And they say, jeez, we got to get this God on our side. And Paul's like, great, here's how you do it. And they say, well, just give us a little idol of this God and we'll put him up on the shelf with the other gods. Paul says, yeah, there's the thing. This God doesn't like to share space. There's no idol of him and he's not going to go. And I think this is what's behind the you turn to God from idols is not individual, you and you and you, but all y'all. So the sort of the group as a whole decided, we will adopt it a different patron deity than the one or ones that we've had in the past. There's a lot more in the text that I think points to him using language that artisans, hand workers would be familiar with. But that's the key piece right there. And then he also mentioned in the Corinthian letters that he's, he's works with his hands. And this is something that actually is cooperated in acts as well, that talks about him being a tent maker, worker with leather. So we get it from two different sides that your primary and secondary sources that, that he, he's an artist that he works with his hands. Leatherworking is transportable with your tools. And you use a network when you go from town to town, you probably would have gone maybe to a Jewish neighborhood and then tried to find work in that area. If not, then the leather worker somewhere else. And that's an important point too, not just like the language that he's using and the fact that it's, I'm convinced, you know, just the concept that this is a pre-existent trade association more or less who had other idols and Paul's just like, Hey, we got a new one. And, you know, it's like he works a little bit different, but you know, don't worry, it'll work out in the end. But also what's important in this, just kind of dispelling the uniqueness as well, an important thing to point out, but I was really fascinated by in your introduction to the first and second Thessalonian epistles. You mentioned the process of writing a letter in general was very different from what we conceive of in our mind. So like, just like how we kind of think of like Paul romantically walking in, you know, one day like, Hey, I'm creating this new community and, you know, y'all are now followers of Jesus and isn't this great. We also tend to think of Paul as like a loan in a room, writing a letter by himself, sending it off, you know, but these things more often than not, like you mentioned are more often than not written by committee. So I didn't know if you could just kind of touch up on that. This is the interesting piece. I mean, we've all seen the Renaissance art and others that have him sort of in a room like what I have behind me, packed with books and he's sitting in a desk with the candle and, you know, that's not at all what it was like. And so what I tried to do in my little book on first and second Thessalonians and other places is take seriously the collaborative nature of letter writing. So when he says Paul and Silas and Timothy to the Thessalonians and then throughout uses the word we, then this is not just him writing it. I imagine he's checking with them. Hey, what about saying this? What about that? There's a few places where he breaks in. I, Paul, right? So this, I think even more so draws attention to that he does differentiate between when he himself is speaking and when he's speaking for the committee. And so this means that they collaborated both in the sort of foundational stage. So in the case of a preexisting group, probably help them rethink not their structure. I think, why would you change something that works, but their orientation towards a different God? What does that mean now? And they didn't cover all the basis. So things have come up like people have died. They've asked Paul, I guess, what do we do about them? You made it sound like, you know, Jesus would return before that happened. So he has to figure it out, but he's working on this with other people. So everything from the papyrus that he's probably having it written on to the person who's writing it, who's probably a highly trained slave, right? Paul himself, it's arguable, he probably had a hype idea, but arguably the person who's, who's writing it all down from this committee has the hype idea and he's putting it together in ways that he thinks his audience will understand. So it's important to realize that this is not done just by like one great man who's just going around changing the world one community at a time. The older paradigm of the Holy Spirit whispering into Paul's ear what to write and then Paul writes it down himself. No, it's not even just Paul writing himself dictating. I imagine there are times when Paul says some stuff and describes frantically writing it and Paul says, well, you know how to finish this. You've heard me talk before, right? So the squad can write that down. Paul's like Appalachus. He knows how to start a good story, but he can't finish it. Write down to the sentence level. Absolutely. I want to get to this because this is a really important part of your work and you did mention this before. A couple of things actually, the communal meal, the eschatological language that he's speaking to the Thessalonians about in regards to their concerns. And this is one thing I always found really beautiful and also very weird that the communal meal at the tomb of the hero or the columbarium of the association is a way of reinforcing the dead also as members of the community. As John Kloppenberg has pointed out in my previous interview with him, you're a member for life and then into death. It doesn't just stop at your death. You are still part of it. This is most strikingly pointed out in how they take their meals with their dead. And your essay, I think it's titled Paul's Apocalypticism and the myth-making of the Thessalonian and Corinthian groups. You look at it from the vantage point of this sense. It's not a sense of when we read 1 Thessalonians 4 in that whole section where he's like, the Lord will come back and the dead will rise first and we'll all lead him in the air, things like that. Like I said, we look back on it with theological language. But really, is there question about theology or is it about the people in their community and just the simpler sense of does this person still belong? And are my friends and the people that I ate with and lived with, are they going to be with us? What is he talking about really? I think he's very much talking about who still fits into our community as we imagine it. I think Paul would be a little bit shocked at where that language has gone in Christian history. So in terms of the development of apocalyptic scenarios of Jesus' return of things, I think for him it's more of a, yeah, Jesus is coming back, kind of an off-the-cuff response to a very important question. And I think that question is around belonging. So community members, one or two, let's say, have passed away. And I think they pushed back to Paul. We know those exchanges of emissaries going back and forth. So I think they've said to him, you know, Joe Blogg's passed away. You said this God was bringing this wrath down on earth and we'd all be saved, but I guess Joe Blogg's missed out. So poor Joe. He didn't make it. And Paul's like, no, hold on, hold on. No, that's not the way this works. And he has to tell you that Joe was just waiting for Jesus. When Jesus comes, like the dead in Christ, those like Joe that are actually, and he uses the word sleeping. They're just asleep. They're not dead. They're going to rise up. And then those of us who are still alive and includes himself in that, and also, you know, his fellow writers, we will rise and join them in the air. So we're still all part of a community. In 1 Corinthians 15, he sort of has a similar scenario, but he's developed a little bit. And what's curious to me is by the time he gets to writing Philippians, which is one of his later letters, I think he's tired. And he imagines a scenario now where he's not part of the alive people that get caught up.  Right? There's no more. I wish Jesus would come back and take me out of this, right? That he might like, it's changed a little bit for him. So I think he's developing at his goes. Which says to me, he hasn't got this preconceived theology of the end times when he writes 1 Corinthians 4. He's answering a very specific question that they've asked him. And it's about what do we do with the dead people? And so I think to be honest, I expect he would say, you honor them on their birthday or on their death day, you have a meal at their graveside, you include them, you maybe read their names out during some kind of ritual activity, all the kinds of things we see in associations. Now, we don't have that evidence for Christ groups. But why wouldn't they? That's what people did. Right? It's just we have a letter not an inscription. I guess an imperfect analogy, but an analogy is like, why I started this channel in the first place, right? I started the channel because there were paradigms already there that I felt like I could add to. If for some reason it wasn't YouTube, but it was say on public access, maybe 20 years ago, maybe I'd have a public access TV show. It's just paradigmatic things in a kind of process of negotiation in the culture. Right? What is really happening here is that, like we've mentioned in this conversation many times, these are not groups just kind of created by the Holy Spirit. Don't get me wrong. I think there's a wonderful inspiration in all kinds of human reactions to ritual cult and more. They're just using the building blocks of their time. And this is no different in the same article you were talking about with the Corinthians and the Thessalonians and the end. You mentioned that scholars previously used to look at it as Paul struggling to explain the Hebrew eschatological way of looking at the end of the world to people who perhaps didn't understand it. But you pointed out that they would have with something like Stoicism, for instance. So there possibly was. So it's not grounded in Jewish apocalyptic, Paul's Jewish. This is where he's got his ideas from, right? But I don't think he's sitting down to teach them Jewish apocalyptic thinking. I think he's trying to connect with ideas they already would have had around things like the transmigration of the soul or an afterlife or things like this. He starts that passage as we don't want you to grieve like those who have no hope. And the usual interpretation of that is everybody who wasn't a Christian or a Jew had no hope. And certainly there are texts that would indicate that way. But the more, even since that article, I spent more time looking at that and more and more finding ways in which in the Roman world people did have hope for life beyond the grave, which is curious then who is Paul addressing there. So Dionysic groups, you know, in the gold tablets of Dionysus, you have this whole this imaginary that is the afterlife that the initiate can kind of navigate their way through. You have it in Egyptian texts and you have this imagination in the philosophical schools of something beyond lasting. So Paul's not unique in that and it's not just Jewish, but it's through his Jewish lens that he's going to draw on the kinds of metaphors of language that he's used to without having to explain the whole system to a non-Jewish audience. Yes, absolutely. Paul is using Hebrew eschatological ideas. That's very important point then. And being Jewish in that world doesn't mean just one thing. There's many ways of doing that depending on where they were. Yeah, you could be a Philo or you could be Philo's nephew, right? You mentioned before that there were certain analogies that you could possibly do with Paul's exhortations to these groups and association languages to begin with. You make this point in the sections that Paul and Enduro Paul talk about the banquets and disciplining people who were rowdy. So I didn't know if you could just kind of touch upon that. And why is it valuable to look at these exhortations through the lens of association language? This part of the similarities and difference kind of conversation that we started with. But if you look at the associations there, when we look at the bylaws and we wish we had more of their bylaws, we don't have them for all the groups, but the way they organize themselves. There's very much a concern about decorum, both at meetings and at meals. So make sure you're sitting in the right seat. Don't take someone else's seat. Don't call someone names. And all the way through to it's not right for you to take a fellow member to court. And then you realize that when Paul talks about the disruptive and second Thessalonians, or in 1 Corinthians talking about he's a Paul, but a brother is taking a brother to court, you realize that in many ways they're just doing what people did. And Paul is trying to stop them in the way that other kinds of group leaders trying to stop their group people from doing what they did. So it's not that Christians were particularly predisposed to be disruptive and had to be reigned in or take each other to court. It's just this is the kind of thing that was happening and the kind of thing that group leadership didn't like. And they exacted kind of fines of punishment. So anything from a small financial fine to a big financial fine to a flogging and sometimes expulsion. And so in 2 Thessalonians, the writer says, you know, if the person is disruptive enough, then they're barred from the communal meme. So it seems that it's Paul not giving rules, but reminding them that the rules exist. So he's not laying down the law. He's saying, this is the rules of engagement that we know from group dynamics. I found it very interesting how you reconstruct Thessalonian trade organization as an all male group. I didn't know if you want to talk about this colloquialism Paul uses that kind of gives it away. I found it very humorous. In the course of writing for Thessalonians, he's addressing various problems that have been brought to attention. So one is of course the dead that we're talking about. And he says, each of you has to control his own skeuos. That's the Greek word. And it means vessel. So maybe something you would pour wine into, but it's clearly a metaphor. So a metaphor for what? So then we look culturally, how has it been used metaphorically? And I'll talk about two that jump out in the literature. One is you control your wife. The other is you control your penis.  We have the colloquialism that if 2000 years from now, they're somewhat reasoning was like, what's that? What are they talking about? And so we have to make that decision when we translate that word. You translate it as vessel and leave it up to the English reader to kind of figure out what he means. Or do you pick one of those metaphoric pieces? Because no matter what one you use, it's an interpretation. And so this is the debate. Now where I went with it, and this has run me into a little bit of trouble, but I said, you know, this is not an expectation you put on a mixed gender audience, right? And beyond that in the passage, it talks about, you know, being with prostitutes and some other kinds of, it's all about purity. But it sounded to me a lot around male purity, but this is what, you know, the boys would talk about in terms of keeping yourself pure as opposed to a mixed gender audience. Now this is only one small piece within the broader argument of Paul's talking to a trade group. But we do know that for the most part, the trades were gender segregated. And so one would expect if you're in a leather workshop, and it's a group there, then it's mostly if not exclusively male. And that fits with the associate. So I mean, it's a, it doesn't prove it is an association. It's more once you go down that path, you can interpret it that way. They were probably married and eventually probably talked about their experiences with their families. And maybe this is how there was a gender mixing. But it just seems to me there's not a lot of evidence in the text at that early stage for it being more than an all male group, as we would expect other associations were. What surprised me in my research is how different that is from Philippi. You know, Philippians, he wrote the, led it to the Philippians. It's 110 kilometers, let's just say. So what is that in miles, 70 miles down the road? And there, very explicitly, Paul names women who are leaders in that group. And in fact, I argue that when he starts that letter with greeting those who are bishops and deacons, Presbyterians and deaconesses or elders, he then names women who seem to be arguing in ways, I would say, as a leadership that they might hold those titles. So it's not that Paul's only creating male groups or only creating occupational kinds of groups that I think he's doing. And he just gets to a town and works with what's before him. And at the Saloniki, though, I think it was a trade group that already existed and therefore was male and then find in that language of control your own penis. And I would take it as control your own penis. Then, you know, keep it in your pants kind of thing is part of him trying to bring the decorum to the group. But we find those same kind of purity concerns in other associations as well. Purity concerns are not just part and parcel of a Pauline community. These would be in the bylaws. He's not a particular prude, like other people had these kinds of concerns. My last few questions, I want to focus on something that's extremely important to an association, regardless of what type. And that's commensality, the ritual of eating together, coming together the banquet. As Harlan would say, associations and the accompanying banquets are about claiming a place in society. We've touched upon this before, especially people displaced by the needs of the economy of being displaced from their home in general by maybe things like war or slavery. It's important to find a place in the world. The meals and status that a Greco-Roman association would provide for that is a constant, right? And you find people find status in that. You look at the literature, something as far reaching as Satirakon, the second part, Tramalchios Feast. There's all kinds of vying for positions there. You have all the difference bylaws.  Reading something even like the Gospel of John, all the discourses pretty much are taking place over a banquet. And a lot of Plato's dialogues take place at banquets and communal meals. And we have to realize that these are semi-public events as well. This went a long way in claiming the place because you're out in public. People are seeing you eat. It's a performance. I'm thinking a strange analogy, but hear me out.  Like when the master finds out that Lucius can eat human food, he brings them to the table at the banquet and he gives them this privileged place. Everybody is like the guests of honor. And he feeds them all these human food. I didn't know if you could just talk about what I would call and others have called the politics of common sense. Yeah, this is taking up a lot of my research timing in very good ways in terms of the way that meals helped people navigate these social relations. And again, it is a sort of a scale to think about these things. So a private meal, if you imagine in the sort of a back of a house, and we do have evidence of Pompeo, a villa where it would be more private. There are also the public ones I get to them, but there you're signaling to the in group. So let's say there's nine to 15 people most and the rooms are not bigger than that, to take that many people. Even within those nine or 15, who's the guest of honor? Where who's the one sitting in the least seat? Everyone will remember that. Now, as you shift it and so that it's, you can see the diners as you're walking by the house, you can see into the dining room. That's then now signaling not just to the insiders, but to the people on the street that might see it. If you're meeting not in the house, but in the tavern, then that's other patrons there who aren't invited are going to see who's invited not invited. So it's all performative, no matter not how public or semi private or private. It's still very much performative. And so what they're performing is ways of fitting in, but I would also add to that identity creation. And so this is what they're telling each other how they imagine things could be. In some cases, imagining everybody is equal. In other cases, just reinforcing the kinds of social hierarchies that we see across the Roman world, not just in associations. And so there's different kinds of common salad that people can participate in. And one of that is a secretive, which is sort of says like, we're a special group and you can't be part of it. And one of it's transgressive where, you know, topsy-turvy. So we have, you know, an association that imagines that a slave could be sort of more honored at a meal than his master. Did it ever happen? I doubt it, but at least they imagine it could. What strikes me is even when it does happen and they imagine, let's say, for example, and this is part of I think what Petronius is poking fun at, that we have this lavish banquet and we're just like the elite. Ultimately, when the elite read that, they realize, yeah, this guy's new money. He's not vast there. Or, you know, another analogy would be a bunch of guys go into a bar today and they sit down in a rowdy and they're drawing attention to themselves and they're like, yeah, we're the best hockey team. We just won the championship. Yeah, that's good. But as soon as they leave there and break apart, that whole transgressive stuff dissipates and they're back to being who they were. And so it's a sort of a space where they test out these things, which does find a place in the community. I think that's right. But also kind of as a reminder that they can play with where your place is in the community, but you're always going to kind of go back to it. It's kind of like when your boss serves you at the banquet during Christmas. Yeah. On Monday morning, you know that he's still above and you're not. It's just because you brought up Patronius and I can't help myself. You brought up Trimelkyo's beast. People are like, oh, what is Satyracon? Most people, if they even know it, they know just like that one part of the text, right? And they're like, well, I know who Trimelkyo is kind of, but I don't really know.  He's Jay Gatsby, right? He's a nouveau riche point of Satyracon, right? And that beast is that Patronius and his circle are laughing at people like this. They're separated by like a generation or so.  Because plenty still refer to freed men as slaves or plenty who's like the Tom Buchanan of this world.  I'm old blood, oligarchy money, and you are still a slave to me. So it's very interesting. No matter how hard they try, right? And those freed men at that banquet, and they're distressed of all the sophists and the philosophers, they look down just as much on the learned people like Encopius and his friend as Gyltos, as they do vice versa. It's very interesting, you know, the mapping going on, even there, you know, just on the question of common salad. I wanted to ask, why is it important to understand things like the last supper in relation to and looking at it through the lens of a Greco-Rome association meal versus something just created and instituted and looking back on it over 2100 years of theology? Why is it important to understand it in its original context? As a historian, I think it's critical sort of to get get history as right as we can when we construct it from the available evidence. And so that hasn't been done, you know, theologically in a church context, I would imagine they too want to get the history right. But I think it also helps us to revisit the way things have been interpreted and implemented. And in the case of, say, the Lord's Supper, people are at least in the West so used to thinking of it as it's depicted in, you know, the famous medieval photograph, it's not obviously, but of the 13 guys sitting facing outwards at a table. And just saying that that's not how meals were done in antiquity. Associations are not. That's just not how people eat dinner. Changes how we imagine Jesus is situated in that. And then you mentioned the Gospel of John earlier and so many of the scenes they are set in meals. But when it says Peter wants to ask Jesus a question and he has to tap the beloved disciple on the shoulder to say, could you ask this question for me? Because the beloved disciple is resting his head against Jesus. That that's not sitting up in chairs. That's reclining at a banquet. So it's not special. It normalizes that scene. They were having a meal, probably on a triclinium, just like everybody else would be. And so we can imagine there's a lot of other people coming in bringing in the food or maybe not a lot, but some men and women, part of the retinue, maybe even slaves, right, are part of that context in which then he gives a sort of a philosophical or theological, but a philosophical kind of speech. Again, it all is constructed in the mind of the writer there. So again, how did it happen historically is one of the questions. What one of the potentialities, one of the possibilities. Another is how has John constructed it and very much constructed it in that mode of a symposium? Then what does that mean about what John is trying to signal to his audience by constructing it that way, regardless of whether it happened or not, right? And so these sort of questions, I think, sort of run parallel to each other historically, but also in terms of literally what is that. And contextualizing them and for what a bit of a re-describing, there's a group I was involved with and still am and, you know, it's been around for a while and Jonathan C. Smith was part of re-describing Christian origins. Each little piece gets re-described and then so the opposite is it's a whole different picture than the sort of standard grand narrative, which is rather triumphalistic that these groups appeared, you know, after Jesus rose up into heaven, 5,000 people converted, then 3,000 people converted. This is all the narrative in the book of Acts. And this has been chipped away at, chipped away at, chipped away at in ways that suggests that this makes a lot of sense for what the writer's agenda is, but not in terms of what we know about group dynamics and antiquity. And then certainly it was a historian, you take kind of Holy Spirit God out of the picture as well. Say, how do we have human explanations for development growth slowly over a couple of centuries of these Christ groups? One of the things that I think where we are now is we translated a lot of inscriptions. This is a lot of material, a lot of papyrite, there's more coming out, fairly available on our database, Draco-Roman Associations. So Google that, you'll find the database of association inscriptions. There's so much more work to do, so many exciting things to find out and discover. I would just encourage you and your audience to keep probing, keep pushing, keep pushing back on my stuff, stuff I think now that I wish I'd written differently 25 years ago when I was writing papers as a grad student that got published, which is great. But now I'm like, yeah. So I published them in this book just to kind of, it's more of a sort of a, I think of it kind of like a greatest hits album of a rock band. And of that career stage and age where I have my greatest hits album and you can say, yeah, that was great and it's time, but maybe it didn't age as well, but this one maybe aged a bit better. So yeah, I just agree to be able to kind of work with the data and figure things out. I like the way you look at it as like a greatest hits album. It's kind of like your greatest hits, greatest misses. I guess it depends on our creative process. I think of a band that only released like two albums, like Jane's Addiction, you know, has a really great best of, but then you added that third album and then it kind of stinks up the whole joint. Dr. Askov, this has been a wonderful discussion. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Well, thank you very much for having me. I've really enjoyed it.


How about we just sort of start out with can you just describe your company hub in a sort of like, you know, simplified, quick, quick explanation way? Sure. I have many simplified versions, trying to pick the best one. So hub is trying to put reputation on the blockchain. And so what we believe is that trust and reputation are really valuable to people. And right now, they're all locked up in centralized databases. And what we're trying to do is basically put that information onto a blockchain so that people can control that information, they can bring it from one marketplace or community to another, make it portable, and really derive the economic benefits from it.  Okay. So is it similar to a social network in that sense, like creating interactions? It's sort of like a meta social network, if you will. So our project is building a protocol. So it's underlying many different kinds of applications, both new and existing. So we're not necessarily building one, you know, social network, we're trying to enable a trust layer that can work across many different social networks and many different marketplaces so that people can use their reputation across multiple of these networks or communities. Okay. So I think that kind of interaction where you need reputation, that could be a consumer interaction, like I need to buy something and you're selling something. What are the other interactions that you're seeing? Yeah. So we definitely see a lot of use cases around buying and selling and that exists across of course many different industries and different domains. But we believe that transactions actually start with just interactions, people interacting with each other. And basically sharing information and engaging with each other in conversations. And there you need also to have a trust and reputation as well. How do you know that the information that you're reading or somebody that you're interacting with is a trustworthy source? And we want to solve that problem as well because that is really the basis on which people make sometimes very important decisions about what they're going to buy and what they're going to sell. The whole process starts much sooner than just a transaction itself and so that's what we want to cover the interaction part of it. Okay. So I'm assuming it has a native token. So can you talk about how the token works in this trust establishment? Yeah. So our token is really designed to incentivize trustworthy interactions and the building of reputation data on the blockchain which hopefully further creates trustworthy interactions. And one of the design goals that we had for our token was that it's impossible to buy trust. We really wanted to design that in. You can't buy the tokens and have more trust. So what the tokens allow you to do, it's a staking mechanism for various kinds of interactions that people might have and we define interactions very broadly. You can imagine a buyer seller scenario or people sharing information with each other. But across all of this, the idea is that people can stake tokens on the interaction. It's almost like a bond that says I'm going to act in a trustworthy way in this interaction. And if I do that and the other parties agree, I'm going to get those tokens back. I'm going to get my bond back and I'm going to get rewarded with some additional tokens that I can take for some future interactions. But if things don't go well, then the tokens that I have staked might be at risk and might be given to somebody else who sort of lost out on a certain transaction, for example. And so that's how the token works. So what is your reputation measured in if it's not in tokens, you can't buy more tokens? That's right. And it's a very important point that you cannot buy your reputation, otherwise the whole purpose of a reputation system is defeated. So the way that we measure reputation is really on all of those granular interactions that are happening with the staking going on. So we remember on the blockchain, all the different interactions and transactions, and that builds up a reputation history, basically. That can be scored by different kinds of scoring systems. So imagine a FICO score in the U.S. that is designed for creditworthiness. Now we can have scores across multiple domains, even beyond creditworthiness, in all the different domains where reputation and trustworthiness make a difference. That's amazing. You already have that protocol established for how people are rated, sort of. So we have the initial protocol implemented, we're about to release it, and we're working on finishing the first proof of concept on the protocol, which will be a reputation system around the ICO ecosystem. We figured that was a really great place to start, and provides a really great opportunity for us to kind of showcase the value of the protocol itself. That's so cool. Okay. We brought that up. I didn't realize that.  I know you already explained abstractly. Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, so one of our favorite scenarios is kind of a service marketplace where maybe somebody is a designer and they're offering website design services, and then there's a client who wants to find the right designer to build up their website. So we can capture this transaction in a smart contract that records the participants, and most importantly, it records the outcome. So at the beginning of this transaction, both sides stake their tokens and say, we're going to act in a trustworthy way. So for the consultant, it's like, I'm going to do a good job. I'm going to successfully deliver the design. And then for the client, the promise is, I'm going to pay for that once I believe that this is a good outcome. And so the participants will go through the process and the project, and they'll come up with the results of the design. And if everything goes well, both participants acted in a trustworthy way. Somebody delivered, somebody paid, and they both get their tokens back and a little bit more from the reward function that's built into the protocol. When things don't go well, there's a dispute. And in this case, it's maybe not clear which side was correct. Maybe the design was delivered correctly, but the client just wasn't happy for some reason. And so we have a mechanism where disputes can be handled by an arbitrator, which can basically decide, and is a trusted source for both parties to figure out who was in the right. And the arbitrator might actually have a reputation themselves in the protocol itself. So however it gets decided, whether it's the vendor, the consultant, or the client, they get the tokens that have been staked on this transaction. There's one party that basically loses out on their tokens. So there is basically an incentive that's built into the overall process to incentivize people to act in a trustworthy way. And the reputation comes out of, again, that history, that interaction and the outcome. And that actually goes on to both the consultant and the client in terms of how they interact. So in the case of the consultant, if they do a lot of great projects and they build up a really great reputation for themselves that maybe can reflect very effectively for them and get them new projects in a marketplace. Right. And losing tokens in a dispute is clearly going to affect your reputation negatively. That's right. That's right. And maybe people might not always be able to perform perfectly. And that's fine. And so the scoring algorithms and so forth will take that into account and make sure that people have a fair chance to improve their reputation over time if, in some cases, they didn't do it perfectly. So we believe in designing a fair system that works in a fair and maybe even a subtly generous way for people. Cool. Yeah. I wanted to ask more about, from your capacity as co-founder of LinkedIn, co-founder. So from that role, with your experience, a very large social network, or I don't know exactly how LinkedIn is defined. Yeah. It's a professional network. Professional network. But it falls into the broad category of a social network. Okay. So with that perspective, I want to ask about the recent bans by the social network and internet giants, Facebook, Google, Twitter. I believe there will come a time again when advertising of this nature around token sales and so forth will be repermitted on these platforms. I mean, because, so you think it's mostly a protective measure in terms of, I don't really know how they are being involved if they're advertising things, but in terms of like Facebook being able to go and say, we didn't allow the advertisement of the scam, like when it comes out or something, right? Is that what you're saying? Or like, I'm just wondering if there's any other like potential reasons or motivations behind this for them. I mean. Yeah. This is the only one that I can think of because, you know, back in the, you know, I believe early 2000s, there was this digital millennium copyright act, which basically allowed all of the online platforms to disassociate themselves from the responsibility of the content that their users would put onto their platforms. It was a very key, you know, act that made it possible for Web 2.0 to really flourish. And so advertising, you know, really should be covered under that, regardless of whatever domain is advertising. But I do believe that it's fundamentally around just, you know, kind of a conservative protective measure that these platforms have to not have to be entangled with the SEC and to, you know, answer, you know, potentially, you know, interesting questions, which they don't have to deal with. I'm sure they're busy enough with their own priorities as it is. Yeah. So that's what I believe. But it's the only theory that I can think of right now that seems to make sense. Well, yeah. They would say they're protecting the consumer, but if I'm not going to be questionable. Yeah. Yeah. I agree with that. Yeah.  But, you know, I wouldn't be surprised if they made a similar decision based on maybe a similar, you know, reason, but at this point we're just conjecturing, you know, what the reason might be. But do you happen to know if there's either been, well, has there been an increase in related advertising since this ban was ensued? Like is LinkedIn getting more of a market, basically, or not? I don't, I don't, I don't know that. Yeah. Sorry. Yeah. Okay. Well, that's, yeah. Okay. All right. Thanks very much. Appreciate it.