Jamie and Abby. Today we filmed with Clea and Joanna with the home edit for our January episode. Yes, they were amazing. We talked about their Netflix show, which season two drops early 2022. There are three books, their visit to the White House. They had a lot to say. We are so thankful that y'all are here today. Yeah, we're so happy to be here. We're so happy to be here. Thanks for having us. We're honored, really. Really, I love the headphone microphone setup. We're a helicopter pilot. This is close to helicopter pilots as we'll ever be. Yeah, we're up in the sky. Yeah, we have a pen house. Yes, I'm a little too close to the edge, actually. It's okay, they're good to you. There is like glass and concrete and steel. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, I know. But yeah, we are in the pen house at the place at Fifth and Broadway and they were nice enough to let us film here and it's fun and very, very hard. It is very hard, very hard. 30, 30 more, but it's fun. This is our January episode. So before we get into all things, the home edit, I wanna know what you do for January resolutions. Do you guys do a big annual? We're gonna be better at this. We're gonna do this, or do you kinda just? So we're Jewish, which is great. We have two bites at the apple. So we have the Russian Shana, which is September. That's the Jewish New Year. So we can make our resolutions then. Then we get to screw up for four months and start all over. It's really helpful. It's a reset from the first one. Yeah, it was awesome. And I'm personally the diverse and I make a new resolution every month. Because I'm so good at breaking them, you know? I have downloaded every fitness app under the sun. And she buys like 10-year subscriptions. You do too, oh my gosh. Okay, I did this last one, I did buy like a 10-year subscription. Joanna and I literally downloaded Melissa Wood Health or whatever and bought like the 40-year subscription plan, I don't know. It's like a generational subscription that we brought it like pass it down to our kids. I like get on this kick where I'm like, okay, now I'm gonna invest in an air fryer. I'm gonna start cooking. I'm gonna get into Pilates. I'm gonna join a studio. You're all in. I get all in in my mind and like buy all the things, get all the subscriptions and then fail miserably. I am so good at sitting on a couch and looking at the fitness class. I will watch the fitness class and be like, no, that's not for me. No, no, that's not for me. And you're gonna try to start cooking because y'all don't cook. Oh, I don't even try. Yeah, I tempt it every year. I'm like, and I fashion it. I really do. I don't even put it on the list. I love a resolution. I'm a very optimistic person. Joanna likes to make fun of me about that because I'm optimistic with like my time management. I'm optimistic with how many people I can fit in my house for a dinner party. I'm like, you know, I liked, I'm like- Very optimistic about a lot of things. Yes. I'm gonna say it'll go well. Yeah, that's my resolutions. I think it's gonna, I'm gonna crush it every time. And I just, I don't. No, I have one resolution every year that I don't. It's kind of heavy, but it's that I need to be more present with my kids because I'm not. And I'm really, that's all, I'm always working on that and I still have not killed it. Same. I think that's every mom.  I don't even need to be an Instagram mom. I just need to be like an okay mom. That's my problem. I am an Instagram mom. And it's the reason why I can't be present with my kids. How old are your kids? Your kids are the same exact ages. They are. How old are they now? Ten and seven. Okay, thank you. Yes. When did y'all get started? How did y'all meet? Bring us back to day one. So day one, the day we met is the same day we went into business together. So we met in August of 2015 through a mutual friend. Her name's Leah. She's amazing. She's still our friend. She is still our friend. Yes, shocking. Shocking, cause we're a lot. I had just moved from LA. I knew zero people. I met Leah through Instagram because that's what adult women do now. If you don't have friends, you have to figure out how. DMing that we took our friendship to IRL status. I know. We went to breakfast and I told her I really wanted to start an organizing company in Nashville. And she was like, oh my gosh, wait a minute. I have a friend named Joanna. She moved from California also from San Francisco. And Joanna had an organizing business and wants to re-appen in Nashville. You guys should do it together. And I was like, well, wow, that is what luck is this. This is amazing. This is incredible. Let's do it. And Leah pitched the idea to Joanna and Joanna was like, oh, that's a no for me. So, no, no, no, no. I was like, definitely no. Yeah, definitely no. Hard pass. Hard pass. Cause you'd already done it and you're like, I don't need a partner. Exactly. I did it. And I've had a lot of businesses by myself. It's not to say that I'm so great. It's just that I'm used to working by myself and I know what I can do and I know how much work I'll put in and you can't, how would you know that about somebody else? So, why have that risk? I don't know. You could try. Joanna was very not open to it. She was having an entrepreneur get-together party, like a networking party that Leah invited me to and Joanna said, I couldn't come. I was just like, I'm having my business. I'm relaunching my business here. It doesn't make sense. We're not going to be in business together. Anyway, that was the first of many mistakes Joanna made in her life. But so, anyway, I talked her into having lunch with me. I was happy to have lunch. Not happy. Okay, I was fine to have lunch. You were fine.  Fine to have lunch. Not happy about it. But we sat down at lunch and we sat for four hours. We just immediately dug in and it was weird because we never really even circled the wagon in terms of like, so tell me about how you grew up or tell me, you know, none of it. We were like, what are your strengths and weaknesses? Like, what are your skills? What assets do you bring to the table? What, like, I mean, we just got deep so fast. We started like writing down like our goals or aspirations. I mean, and the second I met Leah, I was literally when we walked into the door, I was like, 100% this will work. I am like, we both are very instinctual and intuitive about things. And so it was never even a question. The second I met her, I was like, oh, this is 100%. It's really never let us astray. We always tell people we're like, don't do as we do because that's crazy. Like we went into business without Googling each other. That terrible advice, but it did work. It never failed us in six and a half years. Every single big decision, even small ones, but let's just say big ones, no matter what, we have instinct, like 100%. We have a gut instinct, same page. We've never even disagreed about it. It's really wild. It is wild. So did this like sisterly banter happen right away too? Because I'm actually like in love with it. And people think we fight and we're like, oh no, that's just the way we talk. Yeah, yeah, you're like, no, no, no, no. Yeah, I think someone asked and I was like, I think that's just how they are. Yeah, it is. And it's like, you can't offend each other, right? No, we're both just like straight who we are. We have so many similarities and then we have so many differences. And so it's like this, it's like two sides at the same time and it's just wild. And the more we got to know each other, like our parents are both our moms and our dads are the same people too. There's a weird parent trap thing that's happened. We just are still trying to figure out how we are actually blood related. Yeah, it's crazy. And our moms now are like best friends and they have like scheduled call times that they all have. Yeah, well I was talking to my mom last week and she's like, there was a chance I may have to go. And I was, she's like, I'm waiting for a call. And I was like, okay. And I was like telling her some stuff. And then she's like, the call was with Roberta. Right, they take their calls very seriously. They will hang up on us. My mom came to visit Nashville and she was like, she tried to gaslight me into thinking somehow she and Sarri are closer than Joanna and me. Oh my gosh. Well. I was like, don't forget where you came from. Okay. We set this friendship up. And my mom was like, you know, I know you and Joanna are like close, but I'm like, we're like, we're with each other every day. More than our husband, totally. They are so funny. But our dads are also co-op and copies of each other. It's weird. They show up, we had a play date with them too. So we brought them together. And the reason it's called a play date, we're not trying to like diminish. It's because they both play instruments and we were going to set them up to play instruments together with the first time that they met. And trust me when I tell you, they did. So they brought their guitars. They both were wearing like dad jeans, dad sneaks, like flannel shirts with like the holster cell phone belt and like they look the same. Their mannerisms are the same. And they're both kind of like, you know, like leaning in like against the kitchen counter trying to like figure out like who's going to make the move first. So like who's going to play a song or something. And then all of a sudden we look over and they're like hunched on the couch with their instruments. They have like a cell phone out recording the song. Oh yeah. Oh my gosh, that is so cool. I was like, dad, the kids are hungry. We have to leave because we have to like go to have dinner at home right now. And my dad's like, uh, I don't know. Dad almost had to send him in an Uber because he didn't want to leave my dad. Yeah, no. It's very cute. It's really cute. That's amazing. Yeah. And they're both in California still. Mine are in LA. Mine are in North Carolina. Okay. Yeah. I know. Crosscut. It's a long distance affair. It is. That's why the phone calls are really important. You have to get through time zone. Yes. Oh, it's true. I get it. So from the beginning, you guys are like, we met. We spent four hours. We're launching this business. In your wildest dreams, were you ever like, we're gonna have a product line with a container store. We're gonna have five and a half million Instagram followers. We're gonna like, No. You guys are doing so much. Thank you. It is beyond crazy. We had one wild dream, which was we wanna be the like premier organizers period. We were like, we know we are the best. We can be the best. We're going to rise above all the other organizers who exist. Organizing is something that's been around forever for a long time. So we were like, we're gonna put a new spin on it. We're going to elevate it. We're gonna make it, you know, aesthetically beautiful and tied to design and style. And we're going to, like we had all these kinds of goals, but the real goal, the big goal was to be the best. The reason for starting the company was we wanted to be amazing organizers. Yeah. And you are. And you did.  No. I mean, there's, it was so, all of it was just like, what? And it happened pretty fast. I mean, I feel like you said six and a half years was when you like first started. That's quick. It is quick.  But one of my backgrounds before becoming, you know, owner of the home edit is social media. And I was just like, no one is utilizing the social media space. No one's using Instagram for organizing. And interior designers do like, why can't we, why? So we kind of put that stake in the ground really early. I did ask Clea. I remember at the meeting, I was like, are you experienced with social media? I think it's called. Yeah, right. I think it's called. Joanna was like, there's like a thing that's on the phone. You know what I'm saying? They're like, I got it. She's like, yeah. She's like, Clea said, do you want to like share it? Do you want to do it together? And I was like, oh, oh, no, I don't know how to do it. She's allowed to have the password, but not allowed to post. No, I don't. Even though I feel like I get logged out, I'm like so nervous about messing something up. Yeah. Yeah. So are you still the main one that, or do y'all have? We do have a social media team now. We have three people on our team. Courtney, Libby and Kenna, you know, they're amazing, but it's hard to give up completely. Yeah, it's a little addictive. Especially, it's not even addictive, I wish. I could cut that addiction, I don't know what you're talking about. But you know, it's hard.  Like it's not just like a static image. I think that's how people started to relate to us as individuals. And I thought it was just a personal thing. It's hard to have somebody else post that. Totally. The day I figure it out, I'll let everyone know how to do it. That's good. I'm a true fan girl. Like I think I was following you guys like five or six years ago. Like when you first started, seriously. Oh, that's amazing. I'm not surprised. I know. I'm the type A and she's the like, We're completely opposite. Bring them in. I binge watched your show recently and the first two episodes had to take a break because I was overwhelmed. I was like, how do they do this?  Like I just love it. But I swear, when Nashville Guru got hard a couple of times, I was like, I can't do this. I'm gonna go apply for a job at home at it. Like all I wanna do is just organize a closet. You know what? I would like to apply for a job at home at it because I am tired of all of the other stuff now. I'm like, the other stuff is hard. The other stuff is hard. Organizing is so fun and so satisfying and so rewarding. And then it's done. Instantaneously rewarding, that's the thing. Nothing else in life is instantaneously rewarding. Well, there might be an application soon. Where are you? I'll always like this, like even as kids. The answer is yes. But I have always been like this consistently. Joanna went through a dark period. I did. I did.  I just, my brain and body have never been comfortable with a mess. I just can't. I literally once saw a doctor for it because trying to like tap into, he was a bit of a psychologist, but he was a homeopathic doctor in LA and he was doing some acupuncture because I've always been, you know, an anxious stress ball, crazy person, doesn't sleep, all of it. And he was like trying to ask me some questions to like get to the root of it. And he was like, so let me ask you this.  Are you able to just get back in bed and take care of yourself or do you need to clean up before then? And I was like, who would get in bed? Who would get in bed? I would totally get in bed. You're like, I would bleach the toilet back. Oh my God, I was shook by the question. I was like, it was so foreign to me. You're like, how does one do that? I was like, I don't even, is that even an option? So, yeah, it just, but I've always just been, I'm just, you know, I'm wired that way. Well, and I think people are realizing you guys have made this a thing, right? A trend, like the home edit has really, I think being organized, it makes you more successful.  And it's like, it does create a clarity, at least for me, that's like, okay, now I can like focus on what I need to. Exactly. Yeah. It's so hard to focus on what you need to do if you feel disarray in your house. Yes. Yes, it's a being encumbered by things makes your mind encumbered too.  Again, it's physical, it's mental, it's all the same thing. I mean, we always say organizing is a form of self-care. You know what I mean? You are taking care of yourself by freeing yourself of the weight of all the clutter and the things all over the place. It's also really, really powerful to know that every single thing you have in your home is something you want, need or use. That's where the kids come in and that's why it's hard to have kids. We need to talk about it. I thought you meant the kids were something we wanted to do.  No, I just mean they come in with all kinds of little buried treasures and then you don't know exactly what's in your house. Oh, but if you do, you have to go through it. This was my question because we have so many female listeners and people with kids, moms and the kids. Like before kids, I was like, oh my God, everything's perfect. And now it's like maddening. Yeah. You used to go through it all the time. And you train them young, though. You train them young. I try. See, that's what I screwed up. It's a foreign language, you guys. So it's like the earlier you learn, the more it's part of, it's just you grow with it. Let me tell you this. Kids know how to organize from a very early age. You think teachers are cleaning up the preschool classroom? No. There's literally a song about cleanup. Every single kid knows how to do this and they are fooling you when they come in the house and they're like, I don't know. Yes, they do. Yes, they do. And honestly, kids are smart and they're scrappy and they're fast and they have energy. They can absolutely do this. They can clean up their classroom in two seconds. They can definitely clean up their room. The onus is on the adult to set up the systems that work. And then it's on the kid to put it away. Yes, 100%. My daughter the other day said, mom, she's nearly 13 years old, right? And she was like, how come my friends, their families, their island is always clean and Howard says it. And I'm like, well, can you look on the island and see what's on there? Yeah. I'm like, I am constantly picking up your stuff. And then so lately I've just been taking it and throwing it on the stairs. And you know what they do? They walk over their stuff and get upstairs. Drives me insane. Well, here's the thing. This is what we say to our kids. If you can't take the time to put it away, it must not be that important to you.  We're ruthless. I just start raging and I'm like, I'm throwing anything away that I see. Oh, a coat I just bought. Like I just am like, I get to my wits. Oh, I like that you do that. I mean, I don't actually do it, but I like then she picks it up. Why did you say you did? Well, no, then she picks it up. But I will like, I'll get to that point where I'm like, all right, anything I see, like I'm just gonna throw it away. It doesn't mean that much to you. It doesn't mean that much to them. You can't hang it up. And it'll mean something to someone else. That's the thing. That's what I always remind them is that somebody else would be very excited and lucky to have this. Yes. Absolutely. You know something you just said, Cleo, it's part of self-care. Completely agree with that because we have moved, I think six times in 20 years, all over the United States. And then just in Asheville, being here six years, we've moved three times. So our second move. I've moved five times in six years in Asheville. You look crazy. It's just, and you... Oh, she's crazy. I'm crazy. I'm looking for another one. Yeah. It's an occupational hazard. I love, I love moving. I do too. I do too. So our second move, we had a whole bunch of stuff. So I had an organizer come in and at first I felt guilty because I'm like, I should be doing this myself. You should be doing it. We hear that all the time. And then after her team came in and I just, I mean, I would walk around going, I wouldn't know how to do this. You know, I wouldn't know how to clean out my closet and y'all, we had so much fun doing it because one of my best friends also came in and we, I mean, they were throwing stuff out left and right.  But it is, it's a form of self-care. So the next time we move, the first thing I did is I called Amy up and I'm like, can you please come over and help me unpack? And it is. It's a game changer. It really is. I'm moving is hard. It's like a superpower that I have inside of me. When I move into a new house, I am out of boxes in 36 to 48 hours. Everything is unpacked. Everything is done. You know, there's still tweaks I need to make, but I mean, I'm moved in. You're already like pared down enough. Yes, correct. I'm also already organized. I'm an organized person. It's very easy to pack and unpack because the bin goes in the box and then you take the bin out of the box, you put it on the shelf. So it's plug and play.  It is fun. It is fun. When people are moving, like, should I hire someone to get me organized after? And I was like, honestly, get someone to organize you first. First, yeah. And that's what it is. So this last move we did, is she had just finished the house and then this past move, it was super easy. It is like you said. It is easy. And I mean, the best thing anyone can do if anyone is moving, I mean, you should really just do it even if you're staying. Yeah. But I know I always pretend I'm moving. I know it's so fun. You have to have a real ruthless editing eye.  Start with one room, pick a room. Every single cabinet, every single drawer, you need to physically touch every single item and make an active decision whether or not you're going to keep it.  And once you touch it and really look at it and have to make a choice, it's amazing how much you can let go. And again, I love the feeling of knowing every single thing in my house I want. And it is there for a reason. And again, when we say want, there's also different things that, do you need it? Do you use it? Toilet plunger, it's not exciting, but you need to have one. It's like that kind of thing. But every single thing in my house I have looked at, I've made a choice about, there's nothing hidden in a crevice and a corner. It is so powerful. It is. It really is. And honestly, we both go through our houses all the time. I mean, you would think that we'd have nothing to get rid of, but things come in. Oh yeah. We also get gifted a lot. Yeah, that's true. But even without gifting, like the kids seem to acquire so much. The kids stuff. The kids stuff. I'm always like, you don't even have money. Where did you get this? I know. Why do you, who got this for you? Like there's just stuff that enters into the house. But again, I think as parents, we also, we know what our kids like and what they're gonna use and what they're gonna play with.  Like this is not.  I'm like, I'm sorry, sorry. I don't believe you. I don't believe you. My daughter's pretty, actually, she's pretty into it. She said to me the other day, it was Hanukkah, so she got a couple new things. And she said, I walked upstairs to tuck her in.  She's like, I wanna make space for some of these new things. But so she gets it. She understands that like you get the item or you get the space and she doesn't have space to play with the new things. And so something has to go. And so she figured out what it was that was going. And I didn't even say, what do you wanna lose? She just realized she wanted the space. Wow. That's awesome. So you can start getting very young. Yeah. How many cities are you in now doing the organizing? Nine right now. Okay. Yeah, I don't know.  Enough that I can't tell you all the gossip. Yeah, I know. I know. We have NDA, I sign more NDAs than I sign emails. Yeah, I bet. But it's really, it's what a gift to be trusted in someone's home. What was that kind of your LA connection originally? Yeah, that's kind of honestly, I say social media was what helped accelerate us and then our celebrity following real, I mean, it, we started in August of 2015 and in October I said to Joanna, I was like, let's go to LA for a week and let's offer some people that I know, like we'll do a promo job for them. We'll comp it and in exchange for an Instagram post. And that really skyrocketed. Skyrocketed, yeah. And Chloe's as nice as she seems, right? Oh, like Chloe's is the best. Okay, I love that episode. Being in the world. Yeah, in the world. She's wonderful. Honestly, they all are. They never met nicer, harder working, kinder, more accessible people to me. Agreed. It's wild.  That's wonderful. That's good to hear. Yes, yeah. It is because whenever they seem nice on camera, but to hear that they're so behind the scenes actually we're so lucky to be able to work with them and be trusted with them. And they are so kind. Yeah, so kind and so hardworking. Yeah, they're the best. You can tell, I mean, just from keeping up with the crowd. Because I'm not in their home. But they're like so sweet, you can't fake that. No, but they're just so good to everyone. Yeah, they're just really wonderful people. Great. If y'all are able to tell us one of the wild and craziest, I mean, no names, obviously. And it doesn't even have to be a celebrity. But one of the craziest stories as far as them being disorganized or something you found. I was going to tell you all sorts of other crazy stories. Yeah, tell us all. Something you found, something you found. Well, we've just, there have been so many moments in our career that we've looked at ourselves and been like, is this insane? Is this real? Am I living in a simulation? I mean, we have been, one thing that sticks out to me, it was early on, early days. Someone was coming home, was a celebrity. They were coming home from a dinner party. But somehow, the assistant or something, they were being very vague about who this person was coming home with. But it was clear that it was even a bigger celebrity. It was something wild. We were like, we were there for a couple of days. And they were like, oh, make yourself at home, drinks in the fridge, all this. They were coming home with someone big. And we had to go. We had to get out. It went from just like a part of the family to like, it was a code red alert. So we, in the dark of night, it was like a get out now. I know, it was wild. In the dark of night, running out the back door, like jumping over hedges and like, we had to get out. We had to literally like ninja roll out of the garage door and like into the, into grass. I was right about that. It was, it was wild because it was just so, so I mean, we knew it was like someone, probably someone super private that like didn't want a couple of random people there, but it was no fault of this person. I mean, I think it was just like, they were like, wanted to make sure the house was like totally locked down. We couldn't help it. We still don't know who it was, but it was wild. And yeah, that was, that was an early. That's a funny one. I forgot about that. Early memory.  You know, we don't really get phased, I would say by like the things particularly.  We've organized anything under the sun. What would you say is like one of the weirdest, or is there a room that's been I'll say a room. Really odd. Besides the pregnancy test. Well, let me tell you. It's not the only pregnancy test. They pop up. They pop up pretty frequently. A used pregnancy test pops up pretty frequently. Pet ashes also pop up pretty frequently. Oh, grandma's ashes too. That was a rough one. It's hard when you're holding something and they're like, that's my mom. And you're like. Well, and remember the pig heart? That was weird. The pig heart? We think it was, we don't really know. But it was from like Thailand or something. It was, we don't know who's a pig. It was an animal, an animal's heart. In like a keepsake. We're like, mm. So you're like. Surely a keychain wasn't available or, you know. If you like move mom to like the keep pile. Yeah, you're like, keep. The amount of, we really run into a lot of ashes. Teeth, sometimes people keep fingernail clippings. Oh my gosh. It's pretty gross. I never kept my teeth. She gave them to me for my 40th birthday. Oh my God. Happy birthday. I am not kidding. For your 40th birthday? For my 40th birthday. It was a big joke obviously. Oh my gosh. Did I? I think I had a necklace but it was in this little bitty cookie jar. And I opened it up and I'm like, what is this? Oh my teeth. Oh my gosh. No, my kids started saving and I was like, let me just stop you right there. Then they tried to save them. And I was like, what's the end game with these? Like, what's the end game? Yeah. I'm not going to keep them. Are you going to give them to someone? Are you taking them with you to college? Like, where is the end game? What is the end game? I agree. That is, yeah. But I feel like as far as a room. I mean, I don't know. I guess there's not been one specific room. Insane. Probably more just really cool rooms. Oh, that's the problem with our job. It's like a real, we're in such amazing homes. Right. So we always want to move when we get home to ours. Oh, that's the problem. I have to say that's why you move a lot. Yeah. I'm constantly on realtor. Yeah, I know. I'm constantly. It is. I started looking at houses literally months after I moved into this last room. I'm like, I just, I want to go. Yeah, I love it so much. There's nothing more fun.  Then you walk into someone's house and it's like really nice.  That's what happens to me. Season one was a huge hit, obviously. Get organized with the home edit on Netflix. Are you finished filming season two? We did. We finished filming the end of the summer. I think like August, September. Yeah. OK, yeah. So are you allowed to say when that drops or no? I'm not allowed to say when it drops, but it will be 2022. Yes. OK. Not too long. OK. Y'all are known for your rainbows and like organizing with rainbows. Was that something that the both of y'all like to do before? Is that part of that? I mean, this could be I'm so naive. I don't know. Does all organizers do the rainbow? Oh, they do now. I mean, yeah. Rainbows, it's it really was my affinity for rainbows that I now Joanna is on my rainbow bandwagon. We also I can walk you through the hierarchy of emojis that we use for things because Joanna is like she has ownership over hearts and like rainbows are kind of for me. OK. But I was always obsessed with rainbows. I was rainbow bright for Halloween like six years in a row. I loved rainbow bright. I know. Rainbow bright. Always just made me so happy. Yes. And I think that from an organizing perspective, I mean, I started I've always had my books color categorized and by the rainbow. My husband, I remember very early memory when we first got married, he walked into the living room and I was just surrounded by piles and piles of books and you know, I was arranging them in color.  I was like, oh, it's going to get so much worse. But so I've always loved it. But the truth is the organizing by a rainbow and rainbow order is really a set of labeling. It's it's a visual instruction for where to find something and where to put it away. And it really I think marries the form and function that our brand speaks to, which is it's an organized system that looks really beautiful. And when you can make an organized system look beautiful, you're more likely to maintain it. You're really proud of it. It's something that makes you happy every time you see it. It feels like a reward. It's not just a smart system. It's it's really beautiful. So the rainbow is kind of taken on a lot of the home edit ethos and mantra around it. And Joanna's Joanna's on board. Things aren't quite as rainbow-fied in her world. Not as much as Cleo's, but I do use it for a system. I don't always use it in every way, which Cleo the way Cleo does, but it is such a smart system. It is always does look so beautiful. Yeah. I have quite a bit of it. It's actually not that I think about it. I have some of that way too. But I mean, if you line up your clothes by the rainbow, I mean, it's pretty easy to get dressed in the morning. It is like you think about what color you want to wear. Right. Yeah. So do you do like going to the closet? Okay. You have like, for instance, in my closet, I have my Titans row, you know, and then I have my long sleeves, my short sleeves. Do you mix short sleeves and long sleeves according to the rainbow? Or do you do long sleeves? Well, okay. So first of all, we organize for the client. So it depends on how, what makes sense in your brain. I'll tell you what makes sense in my brain. This is how my closet is. All of my tops, let's say, go from the shortest sleeve, so like a tank top, all the way to a heavy sweater. And it's organized by color in that section. So my white goes into, you know, red, orange, yellow, and it's, you know, the lightest weight to the heaviest weight in that section. Some people, they really want like, all of their long sleeve together, all of their short sleeve together. For me, that's the way it works. It just instinctively, I'm like, okay, I know what color I want to wear. I know what I'm leaning towards getting dressed. I know what season I'm in. I know what the weight that I want to pull. So I don't really need to go over to the long sleeve or go over to the short sleeve. I really want to look at the full breadth of what I have in that color and then pick accordingly. But, you know, everyone's really different. Yeah, everyone is different. I have it in two different sections, but partly it's how my closet's laid out too. I don't have as long of a row as Clea has. So, but I have it in rainbow, but they're in two different, they start and stop and then start and stop on the next section. Right, yeah. It depends on your space, right? It's like, yeah, totally. I think that's smart though. I'm going to redo mine that way. It also looks really pretty. Yeah, because it's a real rainbow block. It really is so pretty. I mean, if I had a whole consistent space, I would do it the same way as she does. Although mine's like black, white. Yeah, that's okay. And then like a little. What's that to say? I'm like, yeah, see, I'm like, I don't know. You know what mine used to be like that a lot too, but when we started filming and being on TV in general, you need jewel tones. We didn't even own, the first time we went on TV was for Rachel Ray.  They said, don't wear black. They said, don't wear black.  It's so funny that you said that. My phone, they pulled up, you know, on the new iOS on the iPhone thing, like they'll just pull photos from your library and put it on. It was the photo of us with on Rachel Ray. Oh my God, today. Weird. That is weird. I know what I'm wearing. I'm wearing a black leather top What was I wearing? I was looking at me. I'm pretty sure you're wearing black. You know, I have a funny story about Rachel Ray, actually, that just cracked me up when I saw the photo. So Regis Philman was the co-host with Rachel Ray that day. So it was all that we're doing. Six years ago. Five and a half years ago. Very much at the beginning.  First of all, we were supposed to like give Regis a job. They were like, just like be playful. Just give them a job. We'd never been on TV before also. So we have like, you can't imagine the amount of nerfing. I'm like, give Regis a job?  Oh, geez.  Like what? I don't know. And anyway, it was like a whole, I like blacked out during it. But at the very end, they were like, go and like, take a photo and like, we're all together. And so he pulled us aside. And he was like, like that grandpa who was like very concerned about like us and like us being able to make a living. He was like, so you can make a job with this organizing thing. He was like, gonna give us 20 bucks. Like I was so worried about it. He was so concerned. He was like, let me see what cash I have. Yeah, no truly. It was like that. Yeah, he was definitely was like nervous that us like we are not going to make it. So I was like, yes. I was like, you can. Yeah. What was that like though going from you're just like in people's clubs, organizing to now like TV shows, interview. I mean, it is, that's a ramp up. It is a style on, you know, hair, makeup. Like how that's crazy. The first few TV spots were absolutely nerve wracking.  I couldn't think of anything worse. I'm like, do I want to be on a plane which we both hate flying? Or do I want to be on a three minute segment? I'm like, can we show? Helicopter. The hardest thing, I think one of the hardest things I've ever done in my life truly is a seven minute segment. The very first one on the Today Show because first of all, it's so timed. You have to like hit every single mark and it was 14 tips that we had to get through on like five different stations, but like you have to hit like in the kitchen section, it's like you have three tips here and then you move to gift wrapping and then you have to do a demo of folding a shirt. And it's live. And it's, you know, the Today Show, like there's nothing bigger than the Today Show. And I was just, I couldn't sleep. I woke up at three o'clock in the morning and you have to know two o'clock in the morning or something. You have to be like out the door at 4.30. So I'm getting ill just thinking about it again. Yeah. It's the most incredible opportunity and it's so stressful. Yeah. It's so, so, so stressful. Nothing has ever been more stressful. It's probably nice you have each other though, right? I think if you get stuck or you're, you know, the other person can kind of pick it up. Well that's the thing, you don't have time to get stuck. Yeah, that's true. It's live and it's fast. Go, go, go.  But now, no, no, no. And now it's, it never really gets easier. No, but we're so comfortable with everyone there and like Savannah. Yeah, they're so wonderful. But also you just start trying to navigate. I mean, the two of us are trying not to talk over each other, which is what we naturally do. But then we definitely don't want to step on anyone's toes by over speaking. Well, you know, it's not our show. Like we want to like, let them leave. Yes, but we're also trying to get in the tips that they want us to do. So it's just like, the producers will be like, you lead, but it's like, but it's Savannah Guthrie. I just thought that you'd do it, just tell us what to do. It's just, it's so, so straight. It just feels like super high stakes. Yeah. Followers must have, it must have skyrocketed on Instagram after that, right? I don't even, I don't even remember either. To be honest. But you know what does is a lot of like actual jobs like inquiries come from the Today Show because people are watching and then want to, I don't know if it leads to Instagram followers necessarily. I really don't know. More jobs. I've lost track. It's recognition. But it's amazing. It's an incredible opportunity. It's just such a wild experience. It's just never, it's not feel like a wild up to serious. I like, when I'm watching it, I feel bad for the people with like segments. I'm like, I don't know how they're doing this. Is she gonna be okay? Cooking once? I'm like, how are you stirring? Can't talk at the same time. I know. Or like the holiday where they're like, have to get through these five and then you can tell they're running out of time and it's like, it's stressful. It is. It is. I know I feel like so, I internalize it so much when I watch someone else. I know. It is so stressful. How do your kids, how do your kids handle seeing you on TV? Are they like understand what's happening or? I think they do. Yeah. I mean, we just try to keep them ground.  We're not celebrities. My daughter loves to point out to me. You're a celebrity now. Oh, not according to my kids. Oh, wow. Oh no, we'll be at the grocery store. And part of it is, you know, Stella was raised half of her life in LA, half here. Nashville is LA light, let's be honest. She goes to school with plenty of celebrities, kids and everything. So like we'll be at the supermarket and she'll like point to the cover of People Magazine and be like, look at so-and-so's mom. Oh yeah. Now she's a famous person. You know, I'm like, okay.  People Magazine is not beating down our door for the cover anytime soon. No. But you guys, you have three books now, right? We have two full-length books and a workbook. A workbook. I count that. Okay, great. All right, we'll count it. We'll count it. Publish or count it. Yes, we can count it. And you have your own product line, like the wooden stuff, which is amazing. What's like next? What are you guys doing? Not that you need anything else. We have plenty of things that are next. Natalie, we can't talk about it anymore. We can talk a little bit about it. Obviously, we will be working on another book. Hopefully, everyone loves season two that's gonna be coming out. It's such, it's really good. Yes. Season two is really, really good. I'm excited. We have a bunch of new things that we're gonna be launching that you guys will hear about in short order. There's some very, very, very exciting launches happening. We are gonna be expanding, of course, our organizing services into more places. We just have, 2022 is gonna be wild. I'll tell you that. There's a lot that's gonna come out. We're pretty excited about the year ahead. Okay, can we end on your visit to the White House? Oh, sure. Even though you may not, I don't know if you can say why or what. Oh yeah, we can. Okay, good, yeah. Yeah, no, it was great. We have a really great relationship with the White House, which is like not a normal thing to say. Yeah, what does that mean? As I said that, I was like, what? But if we do, we've done a bunch of things with them. They invited us to come and see the holiday preview at the White House. It was kind of crazy because the president, the first lady, they were seeing it at the same time. Not with us. On different floors. So it was just, it was wild to be able to see something and have it be. And it was snowing when we walked in. Yeah. It was pretty magical. Yeah. And it was just a handful of us, which is crazy to be at the White House in such a small group setting. Yeah. Like it was really beautiful and the whole East Wing was, every room was decorated for Christmas in a different way. And every room has this beautiful fireplace and the fires were roaring and it was snowing outside. Yeah, it was magical. The Christmas trees everywhere. I mean it was truly magical. Gingerbread house. I mean, all of it. You just couldn't even, you couldn't even absorb it because it was just so unreal. The whole thing. It was just so stunning, so beautiful. And really the goal was they wanted to invite a few people there because of COVID, people can't actually see, they can't come into the White House now and like see all the decorations. And I think in previous years, you could book tickets or make appointment times to come and see what the first lady does. So they really wanted to invite some people who could share how beautiful it was with everyone. The message of this year's decorations, Dr. Biden really wanted to create things that were super accessible, that were easy to replicate in other people's homes. Like one of my favorite Christmas trees was really decorated with red ribbons and just framed pictures. And you know, some of the, they did a rainbow tree, which of course I love. They did. But they hung paintbrushes and Pantone color swatches. Oh, that's cool. And like ballet slippers and kids shoes. And like, not on the rainbow one. But like, they created really beautiful trees that were really just made up of mementos and keepsakes and things that, you know, it's not about like fancy decor, like the craziest thing you can do, but to make really personal, easy to replicate things. So it was just, it was really beautiful. It was really special time to be there. And then they also invited us to the White House Tree Lighting, which was very, very fun. Yeah, so. Wow. Yeah, it was a wild trip. Guys, that's like a pinch me moment. Oh, it was a whole thing. It was amazing. It was amazing. I went to the bathroom before the tree lighting started and ran into like, you know, some large men with guns. Oh my God. You know, like, I was like, ah! You know, like, can I come in? Well, and while we were actually at the White House for the holiday preview, Lauren, who's on our team. Oh, yes, yes. Lauren was like, all of a sudden started patting her pockets and she was like, I don't want my phone. I lost my phone. Oh my gosh.  And all of a sudden, they were like, people walking, people. And they were like, okay, okay, okay, okay. All right, we'll clear the floor. So Secret Service had to come, go search, retrace our steps. There were five armed guards in like military uniforms. I mean, they were searching for Lauren's phone. It became, I was like, for a good 10 minutes at the White House, there was a national security nightmare over finding Lauren's phone. We're like, where's your Apple Watch? Oh my God. Okay, so here's the thing. So we log in, we log into the Find My Phone app and Lauren is like, someone else's phone. And Lauren is pulling up her phone and as she's pressing to chime to find my phone, the girl who's with us is like, just do anything but chime the phone. Don't chime the phone. Don't, as long as you don't chime the phone. And as Lauren's finger presses in, it's like, ding. Oh no. Can you hear it like ricocheting? You're at the whole East Wing. No, like this could be like a bomb noise. This could be a recording device. This could be a million different things. Just don't press the chime. That's crazy. And then we heard it. Yeah, we were like, oh, but it's there.  It was a whole nightmare. But yeah, but five like armed guards who were like saluting outside the Oval had to go search for Lauren's phone. So there's certainly a file. There's the dossier, 100% on one miss Lauren's card. We think you'll be invited back. I think we will. I think we will. But it was. Allie's gonna have to go with you. It was quite a thing. I was like, we just, you know, we always say, we always laugh that we don't make it look easy. And that is, we definitely made a scene. Correct. Well, we know how busy you guys are. We appreciate more than, you know, honestly coming on. Oh, thank you for having us. No, it was so much fun. Yes. So fun. You guys are so easy to talk to. Definitely, when we started this, that immediately top of our wish list. Yeah. That's so nice, you guys. We hope they can do this. Yes. Well, I'll tell you one thing as we're wrapping up. Joanne and I, the only football game I've ever been to in my life is the Titans game. Oh, that's true.  No way. And our client invited us, her husband is a coach, a Titans coach. So she invited us to sit in the box and like watch our very first game. And we didn't know, like, we like went to the merch shop and like we thought we didn't look like football people. Yeah. Who like knew about football. We definitely bought a shirt, by the way. So we bought like hats and a jersey and like we showed up with like a flag. I don't know.  And I was like, I mean, I know that. That's why we're here. He's a Titans coach. It took about two hours until I realized she was saying a Titan coach. So I had no, she kept telling me the Titan. I was like, I know, it's a Titan. I get it. Titans. I mean, what can we say? We know nothing. I know nothing. Go sports, but I knew nothing. But we really tried. We did try. We're glad that was your only game. Yeah. We're gonna go to one. It was actually really fun. It was super fun. First go and really fun. Yes. I will, I will go again. You'll have to come back. Yes. For sure. Absolutely. Let me know any time. You can sit in my box. Oh, okay. Let's do it. I have my shirt still. I might too, actually. It's in the blue. Yeah, exactly. The blue shirt. Thank you guys so much. Thank you so much. We appreciate it.  Thank you.


What's up? Hello. Do we have an agenda for today? I don't know. I am trying to think. I don't think I have anything. Do you, I guess just while we're here, do you think that we're gonna keep having a bunch of merge conflicts because of this tooling stuff or do you think that it'll end up settling down? The most disruptive one was the one that went in yesterday where basically every single API protocol reformatted and had major code movements. Going forward, I anticipate the changes will be very small. Like, we'll see maybe some small formatting changes here and there. I feel that maybe if we're playing around things like put a validation formatting for the possible future ones, I think people should just be more cognizant if they're making API changes at least in the next week or two, they should merge master before merge, before, you know, doing the final merge. Okay. Most of the time from now on we'll be in the B3 alcohol treatment B2, which is where we're going to put it. And one other question for me is, have we actually formalized the policy on like when are changes to B2 still allowed? Like what are the rules here, basically? I don't know that we've actually set that down or is that written down anywhere? I don't think we have done that. I feel we need to, basically once we cut B3 we need to have this discussion. I feel for a short period of time at least we're going to have to allow B2 because there's still people actively working on B2 who are sort of blindsided by B3 and they're not going to want to upgrade to B3 just because you know, B2, but we kind of wait until, you know, 11 months into the B2 deprecation cycle and say, hey, now we're going to freeze things. No, no, yeah.  Right. Yeah, that's my feeling too, is that whether it's like three or six months or something, but we have to have a policy so that people know. My gut is that basically halfway through the cycle, we should freeze it. So if it's a 12 month cycle, we should basically tell people, you know, after six months, you know, if you want new features, like you must start moving to the new version. That's my personal feeling. Yeah, I think that's absolutely right. Yeah, how? I would lean for earlier because we can always relax it. And then also again, like we've had problems before where people don't move early enough and then find problems.  And I think like I'm financing six months for the first cycle, we'll see how it goes.  Like if we have someone do a drive-by big feature and then they wander off, right? They're more likely to run in three months than sex is my only thought. Yeah, that sounds reasonable. Yeah, I don't like, I think we can try whatever. We may have to be flexible this first time. I think I'm just trying to balance. It's like we need to get people to move forward, but I also can realize to some people how incredibly irritating it would be. Like if we told them that, you know, they added one field that they want and now they have to move like everything over. I mean that, you know, so I just feel like giving them enough notice so that and having the policy clearly written down that we can reference it is pretty important. Yeah, I kind of feel like what we're going to do with the V3Work is show how we can reduce the toil by example on the on-boy side and folks who are then, let's say we can go control play and they're going to have to adopt the patterns that we've used, but not the code necessarily in on-boy to actually reduce the pain and moving forward through these major versions. Yeah, for what it's worth, I think six minutes totally makes sense this time around and then we'll see how it goes. I just don't want to codify that. That shall how it will always be. I think we're going to learn how it goes. Makes sense to me. Okay, so yeah, there was someone taking notes. Yeah, great. Cool. One other thing to point out is that we will probably, you should expect if you're on-boy user to see an email coming out soon about some pending release, no details right now, but it's, there will be a new point release coming in the next few weeks. Yeah, I was very pleased with that, so yeah, we'll do that. Yeah, yeah. All right. I can't think of anything else from my side. Anything else anyone wanted to chat about? Do you want to talk about relatable config status or do you want to stick that to email? I can go either way. Oh, I mean, as long as we're here, sure. Yeah, I saw your last comments on that. I think my question is, you're going to, this is not just for listeners. You're going to go and do the same thing for clusters and then we're going to have the same problem there, right, with the warming and the active clusters. Yeah, right, okay. I haven't seen the stress right about this. What's the- So essentially, again, what I want is something that's going to be generalizable and it's possible that I should do the one API change and then a bunch of coding changes. But essentially, for anything that's relatable, I would like to know, again, the last successful load for an instance of a thing and then if there were failed loads. So if they are named things, I would want to know that listener foo had a successful load five minutes ago and it had a failed load one minute ago, but if it's the first time I loaded foo, I do want to track the fact that like, we never successfully loaded foo for interval. Yeah, yeah. My preference though, which I expressed yesterday, I'm not sure how people feel, is that we should just reorganize how config dump works. So we should dump by resource, not by resource status essentially is what we do today. Yeah, so I haven't had a chance to type into the GitHub issue, but that was going to be my suggestion also, is to essentially move it over where now it's just a map of basically name to a thing. And in there, I think we can structure it so that if it's active, like here's the active config and like here's when it was last loaded. Like if there's a failure, there could be like a failure section with the config that failed to load. And then if it's warming or draining, you could optionally have what the warming or the draining config was, does that work? Like I think that would be flexible and then that would work for clusters also. Yeah. So basically what we're saying is we want functional name to... Thing. One of the lists that we have now, where the list that we may have now may be three things, let's say worst case, the warming, active and draining. And then... Yeah, so it's like, I think the common case, so let's just talk common case for a second. We're like, everything is running for both clusters and listeners. The way that I'm envisioning it as an operator is that I have a name of the cluster or the listener that goes to an object. The object basically contains the config, the running status, the last load time, like all of the things that you had said. In the case that there was a failure since last load, you would have like an optional part of that object which is like last failure. And then if it was draining or something else, you could even have, and then an optional section of draining config, drained at time, draining configuration, right? But that wouldn't show up unless those things are actually happening. So instead of just having those three lists that we have today, it becomes a little more of a dynamic structure where it only shows the extra information if it's actually pertinent. So I'm fine with that. I guess again, my question is, what do we want to do if the first time this thing existed, it failed? That's fine. So then basically the, yeah, so it's like we can figure out the object. I think in that case, you would have a last failure data, right? Which contains the last failure and then there just, there would be no active configuration. So it's like the only thing in the name would be like a last failure, basically. Well, you might actually have a config that was delivered, right? No, no, no, no, no, sure. So sorry. In like last failure data, I'm including like the time, like the config that failed, you know, like various things there. And then do we have preferences on what we want to do for, if there's only a fail, like if there's a listener, it's pretty easy to say, we're going to remove it when it's removed, right? I don't think we need to have, you persist that. If it fails on startup, then there's a question of when we remove it. We want to have that be configurable or just kind of hard-coded for now and later when people complain. Right. I had just thought about that case and my feeling was that while Envoy is still polling for it, like while it's still trying to fetch it, I would just keep it there. And then if it gets swapped out, for some reason, it would be gone. Yeah, that works for the resources that are delivered by RDS and EDS where Envoy knows what it wants. State of the world updates, the things coming from LDS and CDS, that's not the case. And so, unless you're saying, we're essentially going to delete the failure now of each successful LDS update, which might be reasonable actually, because when you have a successful LDS update and everything that's on the floor, it's useless. I'm a bit worried if we're doing some multi-tenant, we've got scoped RDS and like there is some scope that fails that hasn't succeeded yet.  Like I feel like it's something we're going to have to have mouths for and we don't want it. If you're not doing it incrementally, there's a difference. If you're doing these incrementally, that's the thing we're going to have to discuss is a separate design discussion. So as I mentioned today, scoped RDS is the state of the world. So each time you get all your scopes, all the tenants, and the ones that fail will still be consistent. Yeah, I think I'm fine saying for now, the default is on the next successful update we can wipe that information. Yeah. And then again, when that doesn't work for someone, they can add the rich functionality. I think that's fine. Because like one of the work items, and this came up, I mean, it's something that I know that we've talked about. And it came up when I tried to remove the experimental flag from config dump, is that we definitely still need to invest more in config dump in terms of like making it available for filtering and like various other features. So you could imagine that based on either a proto RPC or just like, you know, query params that you could change the behavior and actually make it display different things possibly. Okay. So I think what I'll do is I will try to just do a proto push today or tomorrow, which is a pure structural change. None of the coding changes. Yep. We'll iterate on that until we like the shape of it. And then I'll go and do the rest of the things. Yeah, sounds great. And I mean, if you don't mind, since you're going to do that, could you do clusters also? Because I think we're going to wind up with the same situation basically. Cool. Because that way we can just agree on the overall structure and make sure that it looks similar for both clusters and listeners. And costal listeners are basically identical from a conceptual point of view. Costal listeners and like route tables are quite different in that, you know. Eventually I'm going to want it for everything relatable. I would like to not do it all in one fell swoop. I think we should, even if we don't land all the API changes, like tell me which ones you want to see the prototype for now so we get the structure right? Like if you should prototype and can use things, I would do listeners, routes and clusters. Yeah. Everything that we care about basically. Okay, so what I'll do is I'll do that. I'll leave the draft PR with those three and then we'll agree to tackle at least listeners. Yeah, that's right, right, right. Yeah, so. I'd rather make sure, because again, when I was doing the listeners, I was like, well, this works for this, but this isn't going to work over there. Cool. Yeah. Graph changes for all three and then maybe again I'll just roll back clusters and routes once I'm happy with it. Yeah, yeah, that's fine. I'd say as long as we have a link back, I think to the API that we agree to for all three and then someone can come back to it later, I think that's fine. No, and I think this is going to be my spare time thing. I am no longer allowed to work on changes anyone cares about, but I mean, this is something we need in the next six months, but no one needs it in the next month.  It's amazing. Yes, I do one change every month now. It's great. Hey, I got to fix our build up. I'm like, I got my CL stats up. One extra PR. We're laying behind Harvey. Okay, cool. I will do that when I can. Anything else you want to talk about over here? No, that sounds good.  Okay, 15 minutes back. Bye. Bye.


Political network structure refers to the overall structure of connections within a sociopolitical organization and how that structure of the network affects individual members or organizations operating within it. Network theory can be seen to be particularly relevant to the analysis of political systems and power, in that power is typically understood as a relational phenomena, but likewise it is a structural phenomena also. Actors have power based not only on their inherent qualities, but more often based upon their location within a network and their degree of connectivity. By analyzing political networks, we can gain a deeper understanding of their true workings in terms of how the connections around actors shape and influence their actions and opportunities. Traditionally, we think of political organizations in terms of boundaries, we are very accustomed to looking at maps of the world in terms of fixed geography and national boundaries. However, such boundaries only illustrate how people are disconnected from each other, while networks offer us an alternative way of looking at the world in terms of connectivity which gives us a very different view of things. When we start to look at the world in terms of networks, we start to see connections. Boundaries become recontextualized as disconnections and organizations become defined in terms of their connections. However, they are most dense, that is where the organization is most well defined and such networks of connections create the political spaces that people inhabit. Political are not all-knowing creatures. In living their everyday lives, they interact with certain things and in so doing they become aware of those things and they become central to their interpretation of the world. Those things that they do not interact with become peripheral, they become in a certain sense less real to the individual. Political organizations are then formed out of these networks of interactions between people. For example, in the study of the geography of marriage ties in the English town of Kent during the Middle Ages, it found that 75% of people married people from within just 5 miles and 95% of people married others from under 15 miles from where they were born. The political organization of such a society, where connections are almost exclusively local, would have naturally been the localized feudal system of the Middle Ages. In this sense, connections create the space of the sociopolitical system and that space is altered whenever the connections are altered. Today of course, these connections are more dynamic than ever as we're in the process of building a global infrastructure of technology networks, air transport networks, telecommunications networks, financial networks, logistics networks, urban networks. Through all of these people interact and create new kinds of sociopolitical organizations. Increasingly, what governs our lives is not how we're divided from each other but in fact how we're connected through these networks. This is not necessarily a good thing or a bad thing but it is a paradigm shift in that it changes the rules of the game. This world of networks only makes sense in terms of connectivity. If one goes on thinking in terms of independence and borders, things stop adding up and stop making sense. Whereas a traditional conception of organizations, in terms of their boundary condition, creates a form of space that is defined by the objective metrics of geometry and geography. Connectivity creates its own kind of space, that space is called topology. The topology is the overall shape of the network. What defines networks is their structure of connections. In every network, something flows and it usually flows wherever it is easiest to flow. When one reconfigures the network, then one changes what people are connected to and likewise you change the organization, thus our primary focus here is on the structure of the connections in the network. A traditional network is a set of people or organizations and a set of relations between them through which they achieve common decisions and actions. These relations can be cooperative or conflictual. In the case of cooperative relations, we're dealing with the exchange of social capital where people share common vision and interests in an environment of trust. In the case of conflict, the relations can be of power where people's interests for the whole are divergent and actors try to exert some forceful influence over others for them to conform to their desired interests. A network can be an exceedingly complex structure as the connections among the nodes can exhibit a multiplicity of patterns. One challenge in studying complex networks is to develop simplified metrics that capture some elements of the structure in an understandable way. When analyzing such networks, there will be a few central questions of interest. For example, how influential is any given member or organization within the network? What is the disparity in influence between members? How centralized or distributed is the network? What is the degree of local clustering within the system? All of these structural characteristics to a network will affect how the resources are distributed out and how they flow through the system, which is in many ways the central question of interest. Answering these questions, though, will likely tell us little about the formal structure of the organization. That is to say the typical hierarchical organizational structure that institutions will present to the public. People can have a given role in a hierarchy without that actually meaning anything. Likewise, an organization can espouse certain ideals without that affecting how it actually operates. As we know, an organization can tell the public that it's doing one thing, when in fact it is really doing something very different, because connectivity typically defines functional exchanges. The system typically cannot have a pattern of connections and be doing something other than what those connections exhibit. That is to say, in network analysis, we collect real data about the exchanges between people, how many emails they sent to each other, what television channel or website they connected to for their news, how many times they visited a certain person that month, etc. These connections enable people and organizations to operate in the way that they actually operate. Such functional networks describe how the system works and not how it tells us that it works. And in political analysis, these two things often turn out to be very different. We can spend a lot of time talking about what the organization says it does, or should do, or is supposed to do. However, it is necessary to understand the network to understand how the system really operates and that means dealing with the complexity of the real patterns. With the traditional model, people's trustworthiness and reputation are largely given by their place within some formal organization. It is not actually tied to the thing that really matters, which is their actions. This creates a disjunction between the formal structures and the informal structures. For example, politicians say many things to get elected every four years, but in the meantime, their actions are influenced by all sorts of other forces that create a disjunction between the two. Networks and the feedback systems that operate through them define people by the connections they make and how they act in those exchanges. In such peer systems, people gain their status and reputation by the feedback from others in the network on an ongoing basis, continuously updated according to their interaction with others, instead of this being determined by appointments once every few years. And this creates a much closer match between formal and informal structures. As connectivity has increased, so has transparency and the public's capacity to see what is actually going on inside of these previously closed organizations. The result has been an endless stream of scandals revealed to people, from sexual abuses being covered up inside the Catholic Church to systematic corporate bribery to marital abuses to the spying of intelligence agencies. The institutions that societies, once held in the highest regard and trusted, are becoming ever more distrusted in the eyes of the public as hyperconnectivity brings down walls and reveals what was hidden behind them. Trust in these institutions is declining significantly. And nowhere is this more acute than in politics. With the rise of mass media politics, it has turned into what Emmanuel Castells calls scandal politics. The public's trust in the formal institutions of society in developed nations has dropped to a very low level, particularly for traditional political parties and politicians in general. Whereas an older generation may still be inclined to trust closed institutions, a younger generation that has grown up with the internet is more likely to trust feedback systems. They trust the network of their peers, more than they're inclined to trust formal closed institutions. The primary question people are typically interested in when first looking at a network is the question of how influential is any given node in the network. The simplest answer to this is in looking at how connected that node is. That is to say it's degree, which is simply how many links it has to other nodes in the network. This gives us an indicator of how likely anything that is spreading on the network will pass through the node's sphere of influence. The more connections, the more likely the actor is to receive it, and thus the greater its potential to influence things that are happening on the whole network. Simply put, if a node is not connected, then that node cannot influence anything. London and New York are central nodes within the global financial system because many financial transactions are processed through these nodes and that gives them the capacity to influence the system. For example, if you use a credit card to make a purchase in the city of Tehran in Iran, that transaction may be processed in New York. However, the opposite is not true. That you know financial transactions made in New York will be processed in Tehran. This gives central hubs like London and Hong Kong a certain kind of influence within the system that Tehran or Santiago, for example, do not have. Degree distribution is the simplest metric for measuring power and influence within a sociopolitical network, but there are many other metrics that also contribute to one's influence, including closeness centrality, which is measuring how far any given node is from any other within the network. The general idea is that if you can reach any other area of the network in just a few hops, then you must be in a more central location than another actor who is far away from others. Again, being central in this sense means you can easily reach others and affect them. Betweenness centrality is another metric determining one's influence. It measures how many times an actor functions as a connector or bridge in connecting other sets of nodes on the network. This metric captures the actor's importance as an intermediary or gatekeeper within the system. For example, some political analysts see Turkey and Poland as strategically important locations in the future because they're bridges between Europe and the Middle East or Eastern Europe in terms of their location within a multiplicity of networks. Physically, as Istanbul is the only physical bridge between Europe and the Middle East and Warsaw is a transport hub. Economically, through outsourcing to Poland, culturally, as Turkey is a combination of European and Islamic cultural traditions, while Poland is both a part of the Slavic community, while strongly connected to Western European sociocultural and political networks. This gives these social communities a kind of bridging power and influence as seen with the role Turkey is playing with the current immigration flow into Europe. Likewise, a node may have an influence of the network based upon the influence of the actors that it's connected to, which is the measure of centrality that tries to take into account the centrality of other nodes to which a node is connected. That is to say, being connected to someone that is highly connected makes you in turn more connected. For example, being the secretary of a CEO would give you this kind of connectivity. Some people are influential because they know a lot of other very influential people. Not only may we want to look at who is most influential within a given organization, but just as importantly, we may want to look at how power is distributed out across the whole system. This is understood in reference to what is called degree distribution. Degree distribution tells us how the connections are distributed out among the nodes. It can answer the question, do some members have lots of connections, while others have very few, or do all have a relatively similar amount of connections that makes the network relatively egalitarian in this respect? By counting how many nodes have each degree, we can form the degree distribution. For example, in the simplest type of networks, one would find that most nodes in the network have similar degrees. This would be characteristic of a network that was formed at random. The distribution will be a normal Gaussian distribution, with most people having around the same amount of connections. However, most real-world networks are not formed at random. They are formed by people making specific choices about who to connect with and the result is often not a normal distribution. Much research has been done on the subject in the past few decades and it's been found that in most real-world networks, we get something that approximates a power-law distribution, where most nodes have a relatively small degree, but a few nodes will have a very large degree, being super connectors in the network. The degree distribution then forms a parameter that defines how centralized or distributed the network is. The highest degree distribution corresponds to the most centralized network, which is a star network structure, where one node is connected to all others and thus has as many connections as it could possibly have, while all others just have one link. Such centralized networks, whose degree distribution follows a power-law, are called scale-free networks. When we turn down the disparity between the degree of nodes, the connections within the network become more distributed. We go from a centralized network with just one dominant node to a decentralized network to a distributed network, where the connections are evenly spread out across all the nodes. Power is always a function of a potential difference between entities. Power is relational and it is only realized in the difference between actors, in the same way that a ball will only roll down hill because there is a gravitational gradient between the top and bottom of the hill. It will not spontaneously roll horizontally between two points of the same elevation. If two things are the same, then neither has power of the other. Thus we can say that the higher the degree distribution within the network, the greater the potential power within that network. In a fully distributed network, there is no potential for power. In the same way, that a system of maximum entropy has no capacity to do work and network at maximum degree distribution has no potential to exercise power. And this makes sense intuitively. We know how easy it is to control and exercise power through a centralized communications network like a country with a single source of mass media where all channels lead to the same hub. If we affect that hub, we can influence the whole. In contrast, we know how difficult it would be to fully control the internet which has millions of distributed peer-to-peer interactions. We can ask then why centralized networks are so prevalent within real-world, social, economic, technological and political networks. The answer to this is typically found in two different models what are called the fitness model and preferential attachment. Both of these can result in a parallel distribution and centralized networks. In the fitness model, how the links between nodes changes over time depends on the fitness of nodes. Where fitness means the inherent competitive factor that nodes may have. Fitter nodes attract more links at the expense of less fit nodes. Thus a node can become prominent within a network purely through its own merits. For example, some people have more interesting things to say than others and people will want to connect to them. Some people are just better football players than others and people will want to watch them. In this way, a network can come to have nodes that have more connections and those that have less making it more centralized purely in a meritocratic fashion. In contrast, a node may accumulate many links due to what we call preferential attachment which is also called the Accumative Advantage or the Rich Get Richer. A preferential attachment process on a network is a process whereby the new connections that are made are distributed out among the nodes proportional to the number of connections that they already have so that those who already have a high degree receive more than those who are not so well connected. Such a process can also produce power-law degree distributions. This typically happens when it becomes easier for more people that have already chosen it and when people make their choice of connections based on ease of access rather than quality. For example, we might think about some man choosing to wear pink trousers with flowery patterns on them. When no one else is doing this, it would not be an easy option for clothing as people might laugh at him. But if pink flowery trousers suddenly became a fashion and lots of people were wearing them, it would be easier and people would wear them just to be fashionable like others. Thus we get the bandwagon effect where people are simply adopting something because everyone else is irrespective of any inequality of that thing. If the process of network formation is conducted in this way, we can see how major nodes may form irrespective of their quality. Likewise, preferential attachment processes can lead to lock-in effects because people are connecting to others based simply upon the number of connections that they already have. It becomes difficult for small nodes of merit to compete. Large nodes get larger irrespective of their quality and value. A corollary to preferential attachment is network clustering. That is to say, the degree to which the network forms tightly interconnected subsystems within the overall network. Intuitively, a cluster is a collection of individuals with dense friendship patterns internally and sparse friendships externally. Most social networks show high levels of clustering. This is due again to the fact that people do not connect to others at random but in fact connect with those that they find it easiest to connect to and this typically means connecting to those who share things in common with them, a similar culture and language or similar geographical location. Much political network analysis over the past few decades has looked at the clustering of communities around certain political parties on social networks. Political networks and power are very complex phenomena that are multi-dimensional in nature. Power within a large modern society is best thought of as a network of overlapping networks, each operating an exerting influence along a certain dimension. Each form of power is constrained not so much by how much of it people have but by the inherent limitation of any form of power that is to say by the basic logic of that source of influence. The military has a form of power in their capacity to project physical force against people but the use of physical force has a particular context instead of rules to it and those rules define what is possible with that power and what is not. The media, corporations, the financial institutions, schools, the scientific community and computer hackers all have different forms of power but each is inherently constrained by the rules of the game they're playing as we might say in game theory. Truly understanding such complex political structures in an analytical fashion requires a detailed analysis of the many overlapping networks and how they interact and this type of network model is called a multi-layer network. A multi-layer network is a network made of multiple network types each of which represents a given operation mode such as an economic network layered on top of a financial network layered on top of a social network, et cetera. Increasingly sophisticated attempts to model real-world systems as multi-dimensional networks have yielded valuable insight in the field of social network analysis over the past decades. These models reveal the true complexity of sociopolitical systems but are required to gain a full comprehension of how different factors interact to create emergent outcomes. This new paradigm in network science is believed to be the next step towards a better and more comprehensive understanding of social networks and political systems.


These little cards you just saw me do on a speed through with a kid's spin art machine on watercolor paper with watercolor paint and I just rigged up my spin art machine so that I have a piece of double stick tape in the center of it and I can stick the paper down and then I applied the watercolor paint with a brush while the paper was spinning to dry paper. I didn't pre-wet the paper or anything and we're gonna paint some little blob people and we're gonna play with painting some blob people and they're just what they sound like, blob people. So here we go. So I always use a round brush. I'm gonna start with just you know a head shape and pull down a neck, put in some shoulders, torso, suggestion of some arms.  You can't really see that and I'm just gonna use the damp brush to pull the ink down.  You're doing something really primitive, really suggestive, really loose. We're not drawing anything too complicated here. We're just really suggesting our shape. So I'm gonna rinse my brush off again and it's just damp with a little water and I want to pull out some of this ink to suggest sort of a ground and a shadow. Let's have him holding hands with somebody. So let's put another shape here. Again we'll start with the head and the neck and shoulders and this time we're gonna bring our sort of triangular shape down further.  Now if you watch a lot of YouTube, there's an artist here on YouTube called Chuck McLaughlin. I'm not sure how to pronounce his name. He calls these blob people. They are kind of blob people. So now I'm just, I'm not adding any more ink. I'm just pushing the ink that's already here around with water down brush. There you go. So that's really cute. I like the way that looks. So we're gonna set that one aside to dry for a minute. Let's do another one. Try not to think too much about the position that your figure is gonna be in. Let the ink tell you what the figure wants to do. Let the ink figure out where it wants to go. We just have water, no ink, or water, no ink. Just think of basic, basic shapes, you know, from elementary school. Just suggest your shapes. Don't worry about drawing them literally. Okay, in this next step we're gonna use a white gel pen to give our blob people a really big pop. I think this really makes them stand out. You can do this on any painting abstract background. I do think it works best on a watercolor background, but if you're gonna use Sumi ink like I did, you can definitely do that over acrylic paint. It works just fine. And I'll show you some examples at the end. I'll have some pictures. This is a white uniball signal and I'm just gonna use it to highlight some of the parts of my blob figures. This does not require lots of fancy drawing skills. And the little bit of gel pen really makes some pop. You can do these big ones. You can do little ones. I've got some tags here that I've done. I have some little small squares. These could be used as embellishments on your journal page. Like I said, this one is ATC card size. So give this a try and have some fun with it. Some of these are done on acrylic paint. Some of them are done on watercolor. Because I use the Sumi ink and it dries permanent and it won't smear, it will work on both kinds of backgrounds. So give it a try and see what you think. When you're done watching my video, go to the participant list in the description below for the other people on this video hop. And click on the first one and watch their video. Don't forget to like, share, subscribe, and of course leave comments and let us know what you thought. When you're done watching their video, then click on the name on the top of their list. And keep doing that with every successive video. By the time you get back to me, back to this video, you'll know you've seen them all. And I hope you have a good time on the hop. I hope that you discover some great new channels because these are some really great new channels. Show them some love and some support. And don't forget to go out and do something nice for yourself.


What's up, YouTube? It's Don DeMonson here, my buddy Mike's house.  Just giving you a channel update. We got big news coming next week. So I want you to watch out for that. And yeah, see you later. Pretty much a historic event. You betcha.


The first guy up brought here brought with the help of the Institute of the black world hip-hop artist from Pittsburgh Jiziri acts come on up So what's the state of the black world when the hood raised black boys and black girls? Before you pass judgment on us. Just see reacts gonna give you something to discuss See these streets will talk to you if you understand the language corners become famous the more blood They stain with the marmure was painted with shells hit the pavement.  I can't take no more and these kids they don't haul them shake no more They in the kitchen cooking up cakes galore kicking down doors like everybody face the floor and they got guns They will make you shaking contort and they don't shoot ball They shoot 38 for sport getting trials as adults when they can't sit the court Getting sent to state prison getting raped on law What did we do to deserve this condition where we can't even function with our herb in our system and every here We take from the split blurs a vision in the next day just means another murder victim in the summer Just means we're going to get dumb a coroner's putting bodies under covers and in between sheets like the Izzy brothers He told his mother that he loved the hood, but the hood will never love you She was the state of the black world when the hood raised black boys and black girls Before you pass judgment on us to Syriac's gonna give you something to discuss Thank you Thank you. Thank you. So so for me and for us, you know, I come from a place Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania We have the poorest black community in the country even though we were labeled America's most livable city We have youth unemployment rates of 90 percent We have a community where it's easier much easier to get a gun and get a job So for us drug policy reform for us ending the war on drugs is a matter of life and death So I asked you as a hip-hop artist I would ask that you use us and you help use culture hip-hop has been the strongest voice Here and across the world in legalizing drugs So use us to help push this policy forward use us in organizations like the Institute of the black world to help push This agenda forward because if we don't do it It's a minute really for us our lives our state in our community. So I thank you for having me My name is just Siri X. It's one hood. Peace