Rich stats of secret stash media once taught me that a lot of people are intelligent But there's this special next level intellect that few people possess Which basically allows them to beautifully articulate complex ideas to anyone That person is Robin Lord One of my all-time favorite talks of dare I say the last 10 years was by Robin at search love where he so gracefully Showed the power of Python and Panda's data frames in comparison to Excel Robin is a senior consultant at distilled where focusing on unusual questions and tricky answers is Just part of his job description. So let's give it up for Robin Lord New York 1930s Little boy called Joe is living with his parents in Brooklyn during the Depression They're so poor that they have to move at least once a year because back then your landlord would give you your first month of rent Free and that was the only way they could survive and yet at six Joe decides he wants to become a lawyer So he works and he works and when he gets older He takes day jobs to pay for night school until he can apply for Harvard and get in And Harvard he's one of the shining stars of his class part of the Harvard review peers tell stories about everyone else in lectures furiously scribbling notes while Joe sits and listens and Absorbs and comes out with thoughts and arguments that hadn't occurred to anyone else in the room Hiring season rolls around and when the dust settles just two people don't have a job Joe is one The firms were looking for people who are smart and driven and well educated Joe was all of these things But even if you jump through all the hoops they set for you Someone could take you into a room and gently explained that the firm couldn't possibly hire someone who's Jewish Joe ends up working for a much smaller organization that has to take whatever work comes through the door a lot of that Ends up being things like corporate takeovers, which are seen as too uncivilized for the major firms I'm sure this is a surprise to no one but halfway through the 1900s things change Some the corporate takeovers are big business at this point Joe is one of the leading experts in this field He helps his firm grow from having just four lawyers to over a thousand and People will hire the firm even if they're not going to use anyone on the staff Just to be certain there's no risk of being in an important meeting and finding themselves arguing against Joe Joe's a flon died named partner in the fourth largest law firm in the world And you could be asking yourself Why is he telling us this story? But bear with me my points coming the thing to remember about Joe is yes He was smart. He was driven, but most importantly He was building up a set of skills that nobody knew was going to be very important He was able to surprise people Now there's a lot of parallels with changes that happened in our industry So for example when Joe was at his peaks. I was the concept of brand We had this idea that brand has value even if we can't measure it and some of the most important brand building campaigns came out around this time A little while later a couple of small organizations began work Google began its quest to completely catalog the internet Facebook began its quest to completely catalog my aunt's means and To begin with nobody really thought much of these little companies and the data they were offering But as we know over time those companies grew until they ain't so little anymore and The people who've been playing around in the background who knew how to work with social media communities who knew how to work with search engines They had an advantage like Joe. They were able to surprise people And around that time a lot of us kind of locked away this concept of brand Now why would we try to measure something so big and messy when we know how many people are searching for our product? How many people are going to see the next tweet I sent how many people land on my site and then convert Now things are changing again So those little companies have become some of the biggest monopolies we've ever seen Marketplaces are getting more competitive costs going up to advertise It's not enough to know how to get a site crawled and indexed when we're working against Bayer moth Companies the days of quick wins are waning which means that as SEOs We're more impacted by the performance of the business and the brand that we ever have been before As an example We can all agree that Maz is a very successful company But in 2018 ran fishkin gave a talk in which he said he wishes He'd been able to measure Maz's product brand because he might have seen competitors like Samrush and Ahrefs coming Likewise Tom Kappa has shown that brand correlates more strongly with rankings than links do You might be show that in 2017 2018 and in 2019 Now these talks hit home particularly hard for me because around that time I'd started working with the APAC wing of a global B2B company It's our job to help 10 teams across 20 countries 30 languages to perform in search And we started with a lot of the usual stuff tech audits and keyword research Training and dashboards we kicked off projects across Singapore and Melbourne and Tokyo and every time we did we asked What does marketing look like for you and the things we heard back with things like? blogging and emails and digital ads, but also things like local country partners Small events opening new locations There was a whole host of things that these teams were doing that we weren't contributing to at all and it was impacting our metrics We would see the organic conversions had taken a dip and look into it and realize that they dialed back events in that territory and conversion rate across the board had fallen or We'd see that we'd started ranking for a couple of terms particularly well And they would say yeah, we've been pushing those terms quite a lot to our industry partners We think we're just getting interest and links. We're not seeing We have competitors who are experimenting with driving up specific branded searches to improve their rankings 35% of our traffic is branded So even if everything else is looking good it can still take a dive if brand falls and a lot of the stuff We're doing does contribute to brand, you know, none of us thinks that when we write a blog post That's going to take someone from I've never heard of them to yeah, I'll spend ten thousand dollars a month Please this kind of activity has value because it contributes to brand And initially we thought this is just a funnel problem, you know blog posts and events They're just very top of funnel will improve our attribution and account for them that way but attribution is very hard to do it doesn't account for things like offline events or People taking a long time to decide about something and it relies on things like cookies to track users over time And we know the browsers like Safari and Firefox are targeting cookies so much. They'd be safer on Sesame Street So our funnel is starting to erode We're as SEO is more and more impacted by brand. We were bad at measuring it to begin with and we're getting worse So at this point, I'm starting to feel a bit hot under the collar, right? But we look into it and we realize that yeah, we're facing some real challenges as an industry But without knowing it we're ready for them We've been building up a set of skills and like Joe like the upstarts of the 90s We're ready to surprise some people in this talk I'm going to take you through my journey to measuring brand the way I do a broad way of getting brand insight and I'm all granular approach to get tactical brand info Now I knew this was information we needed so I started by finding any guide I could but they resulted in frustratingly vague conclusions like you have bad brand awareness in Japan spend more money on brand advertising master all relevant sales channels I Can't say this to my client. They would say I Asked you to help improve the performance of my business and you're telling me to get the attention of the entirety of Japan You realize someone constructed a full-scale Godzilla in Tokyo and still couldn't get anyone's attention So we took a step back and we thought okay. What do we want here? We want brand interest data And we could use surveys, but the problem with surveys is they're expensive They take time and we can't ask everyone so we're missing out on a bunch of data What's more academics have said for years that we can't always trust what people write in surveys So even if it's part of the picture our data can't just be self-reported What's more we need to be able to do a competitor comparison. So it's not enough to be able to just say our brand is strong We have to be able to say is stronger than these people or weaker than these people Now as SEOs for a while. We've had a way of knowing how many people are interested in something. We asked Google We know for example that Kanye West is a very popular man, and we know that Taylor Swift is even more popular still Normally we can ask tools like stat and Mars and SEMrush But they tend to report at country level and we know that brand data brand interest in New York is not the same as brand interest in Seattle So we need a way to break that country up and they also tend to report in blocks of numbers So if we get results back saying yet you and all your competitors get a thousand searches a month There's not much to work with So we need data that's not just self-reported that lets us do a competitor comparison So we can't rely on things like search console and gives us the granular data to break up a country and see the difference between brands Now this is a pretty tall order and as you can probably guess I exhausted a lot of my options before I turn to the free tool I'm going to talk to you about now As a warning when I put this on screen, you're probably going to think I'm a bit of a moron that I've been wasting your time But honestly by the time we finish this section. I think you'll agree that This tool is not being used to its full potential and a lot of people are missing out on valuable brand insight So when I was putting what I was trying to make head or tail of my client in a pack we put their brand into Google Trends This line shows the searches for my my client in Google Trends in India over the last 10 years. I Didn't know anything about their industry in India. Certainly nothing about it 10 years ago But this tells me a really clear story We can also add in competitors and see the red competitor started in the lead and has lost that over time Their industry is getting more competitive. The yellow competitor was behind but over the last two years They've taken the lead This also lets us zoom in on specific activity. So for example, this spike here corresponds with a large influencer led conference they ran This got a lot of press attention really caught the eye of our team on the ground But as we can see after that spike things kind of drop off And it's not until later on when we see their graphs steadily rising That's when they're running a series of smaller ongoing Events scattered across the country Now we already had a big conference planned We didn't cancel that course, but we made sure that from the off we planned in a series of follow-up events Smaller targeting the people we really want to talk to and before the COVID virus hit We were starting to see some really nice changes in this graph and a boost in organic search volume Now one problem we run into here is it's not always clear exactly what the competitors done So we've added in this green competitor now. We can't pinpoint a specific activity What's more the lines are far enough apart that we run into that same Godzilla problem How do we make an entire country pay attention to something else? Well, we don't we have to be more tactical on that and that's where the maps in Google trends come into play So this is exactly that same data searches for these brands, but broken up at territory level We can see the green competitor is dominating and the deeper the green the stronger a hold they have We can also see percentage breakdowns by territory So in Maharashtra, for example out of all the searches for these competitors 75 percent are for the one in green Now one problem we run into here is not every territory is worth the same amount You know 50 percent of searches in one territory can be worth the same as a hundred percent in another So we needed a way to know where's valuable This is where we turn to census data So every country seems to make census data freely available and tell you number of businesses based on Location and industry and size or number of people based on age and demographics So if you have an idea of your target market You can combine census data with proportions of search to work out which territory is worth how much to your you and your competitors As an example Bangalore looks like a good target for us, you know growing tech hub But we could see that the green competitor have been strong there for a while It's actually their global headquarters and according to census data. There actually weren't that many relevant businesses So even if we're talking purely about branded organic traffic We're not getting the return on investment Mumbai on the other hand well the green competitor was investing but they haven't always been strong The census data showed there's lots of valuable businesses there and lots of small to medium businesses Which we know the green competitor doesn't cater particularly well to so off the bat We know that we can push out lots of messaging about small to medium businesses We can look at what people are saying on social media and in press around Mumbai to find out what matters to them Use that to generate content now We start ranking for terms that people are searching which is generating organic traffic, but also Strategically relevant organic traffic. We can take that content push it back out to press They're going to cover it because it's targeting the kind of things that audience are interested in So now we're getting links and press attention and organic traffic and cut through everything feeds into each other So Google Trends oft overlooked is a really powerful source of brand insight It will give us an idea of the history of a territory It'll tell us whether big events are working for us or our competitors and it'll help us find valuable Territories and narrow them down with census data But it's not perfect. You know, it doesn't give us actual numbers We have to rely on proportions out of a hundred and using census data It's not terribly fine grained. You know, we tend to work with relatively large territories and we only get brand level data And we know that a brand isn't just one thing So for example, say we're looking at Sony you could know Sony for PlayStation Headphones TVs batteries cameras DSLRs phones watches movies semiconductors or multi-application cell solters So if we're thinking about what data we want here, maybe it's not just brand level data Maybe it's product specific brand cut through This is where my more granular approach comes in and I was facing this problem when I happened to talk to my colleague Rich cotton who's a senior member of our paid advertising team and he suggested getting this information out of Google ads Now we know when we're working with Google ads We get lots of lovely data like impression numbers. How many times people have seen our ads and impression share Now Google calculates impression share by looking at our targeting criteria Working out the total number of times we could have been seen and then telling us the proportion of times We were actually seen So say for example, we're bidding on mattresses in Seattle and Google tells us we got a thousand impressions and 50% impression share From that we can estimate that we got 2,000 searches for mattresses in that time This is how we're going to get that more granular data Now if you know Google ads you could be thinking can we really believe impression share because Google's really tweaked this formula Say we're bidding on mattresses, but we're not bidding high enough They'll remove a bunch of searches from those impression share calculations. So it completely throws off our numbers We end up having to bid really high on really specific mattress terms and it's not worth the while But in this case, we're looking for brand insight, which means two things First we're willing to spend a little bit more, you know brand investigations can cost tens of thousands of dollars And this is way cheaper Second because we're able to be very specific with the searches we're focusing on we can drive those costs down until they don't really matter Now as you can guess Product level brand data is impossible to anonymize. So I've gone out and I've gathered data on fashion brands across West Coast America Now you could be wondering does this guy know anything about fashion in West Coast America? No I don't I don't work with any of these brands, but when you're doing this kind of analysis, you will have that context So you get an idea of how I approach this I bid on phrase match terms So the exact phrase is H&M dresses, J crew dresses, Zara dresses, Zara maternity, Uniqlo bikini and a hoax of other besides. I had separate campaigns running in LA, Vancouver, Seattle and Portland So I could get city-level data and you could be wondering how much did all of this cost because taking other people's branded traffic gets expensive But the thing to bear in mind here is we don't want their traffic. We want their data So yeah, it'd be really expensive for me Robin law to bid on Zara sale and take their traffic Which is why when I was bidding on Zara sale, I drove all of that traffic straight to Zara Most of the time these brands weren't bidding on the terms themselves. I didn't want that traffic I didn't want to take anything away from them. All I wanted to know is how many people are searching Zara sale Which meant that it cost me just three cents per keyword per day So we don't have enough time to go through all of the examples here But we'll go through three and start with a very simple graph So this is the total number of searches for Zara dresses across LA Vancouver Seattle and Portland during February this year This is the total number of searches for Zara dresses Zara jeans Zara pants in those territories during February this year This is Zara compared to competitors. Now one thing we can see from this graph is Zara is smashing it They're getting way more product specific searches than everyone else, but if we turn to Google Trends, we can see that Zara is doing well, but their brand search actually isn't that much higher than everyone else So what could be causing people to search for Zara plus products so much more than everyone else? One of the things that came up when I was looking into this brand is the site can be quite hard to use So to break down what could be happening here say someone's on the Zara site and they're looking for dresses But they find it quite difficult to use so instead they just jump to Google and search for Zara dresses instead Get the page they want the problem here is they're passing through Google Which is a place where many people advertise dresses and they could go to a competitor, which is lost sales in and of itself What's more Google is seeing someone land on the Zara site not get what they want come back to search results quickly and go somewhere else Now it's controversial as to whether Google uses this data directly in search rankings But we do know that Google's feeding more and more UX signals into the search results that are rolling out changes at the moment So even before we look at competitor versus competitor comparisons This gives Zara some data to work with they if they see that their Generic branded search is roughly in line with competitors, but their product specific search is much higher That gives them the sign that maybe something's broken in their UX They could run surveys on people leaving the site to see what they're struggling with or use Twitter advanced search To reach out to social media users find out what they're struggling with when they say the site is hard to use They can even offer these people incentives to get involved These are people who are already tweeting about the brand who care enough to care that the site is hard to use So they're likely to get their followers involved as well, which is free promotion We can also treat this as kind of similar to a tech order. We're rooting out systematic issues that could be impacting performance So maybe this helps improve our rankings over time Even if it doesn't it helps improve our conversion rate, which makes our organic numbers look better anyway But we didn't come here for brand insight. We didn't come here for UX insight. We came here for brand data So let's look at two of the biggest brands. We have H&M and Zara at a product level kind of clear that Zara is winning across the board except for in maternity There are way more searches for H&M maternity than Zara maternity, which is interesting given how much better they're doing everywhere else Now I asked around a bit about this and overwhelmingly the response I got was Yeah, I'm not really surprised Zara doesn't really do maternity So that's kind of a boring thing for our data to point out I suppose, you know people don't search for something that someone doesn't do So if we look at H&M's maternity category, we see that they've got over 400 maternity products They've invested heavily in it But if we look at Zara's maternity category, which they do have we can see they've got over 200 products So even if it's clear to us as consumers that people wouldn't search for Zara maternity, someone at Zara disagrees Now if we just say Zara is doing worse for maternity, that gives them something to work on But they're still trying to change the opinions of the entire West Coast about a topic, which is a tall order So let's break that data down a little bit more These are numbers of searches for Zara maternity and H&M maternity across LA, Vancouver, Seattle, and Portland Now one problem we run into here is even though we can see Zara and H&M are doing best in LA and Vancouver We're looking at cities of very different sizes. So we end up basically just tracking city size with search volume Unless we bring in our old friend census data So if we do something as simple as divide these search volumes by the number of people in a city We get kind of per capita search number Proportional search. Now we can see that they're both doing best in Vancouver So maybe Zara starts thinking about birth rates in Vancouver and whether it's an area to target H&M is doing second best in Portland. Now Zara is doing worst in Portland. So maybe they decide this is an area we need to focus on. This is where we're losing out the most So in terms of outreach, they could focus on Vancouver and Portland targeting mum bloggers and press to drive up interest That should increase interest in things like their category pages Maybe get them some links which should help them improve their rankings They could also do things like overbidding on maternity terms with PPC Because the value that we're driving with these organic sessions with these paid sessions. Yes short term We're getting sessions in sales But we're also appearing in search results and letting people know this is something that we do. We are an option So it's going to have short-term impact on organic sessions But also much longer term impact on branded organic sessions continuing to drive value As our final example, let's look at anthropology and J crew They have roughly similar overall branded search And it's kind of a mixed bag when we look at product until we focus on plus size There are far more searches for anthropology plus size than J crew plus size and to be fair anthropology really puts in the effort You know, they're number one for plus size They have a number of category pages targeting plus size searches which adults a drive organic sessions now and also change minds They show a variety of body types on their social media They sponsor events like curvy con which let them have models on the runway and pop-up shops and got them featured in blogs They have in from Instagram influencers with over 260,000 followers talking about anthropology plus size and it got them featured on good morning America Which has a morning viewership of over five million? J crew on the other hand We can look at by doing something as simple as searching J crew plus size in Google news That'll tell us how press are talking about J crew plus size and we can use the tools Function to filter to a certain time period to say how that changed over time So for example in 2014 We can see that J crew Aren't doing very well for plus size searches. They're kind of getting slammed for the focus on the lower end of the scale Now if we jump back to 2020 things have kind of changed J crew are doing considerably better The brands the publications that were previously slamming them are now talking about J crew as a brand that is changing modern fashion and Lisa Greenwald their chief merchandising officer has promised shoppers can expect to see their favorite stars in a wider range of sizes And that is what we see on the product page You know, there's a variety of sizes on show the problem is the product page itself doesn't make that very clear What's more J crew have taken the decision that If someone's searching for dresses, they shouldn't have to search in a separate plus size dresses page If you want to dress go to our dresses page, which I think is fantastic But it means they haven't got any plus size category pages So if we search J crew plus size as we see some people are We get an ad for the home page resellers and then a four or four deals page. So we're probably losing traffic here What's more if we click on that ad for the home page the models there Don't really show a variety of body shapes if we look at things like the Twitter or Facebook ads library We can also see what kind of advertising J crew is pushing out at the moment and again There's a variety of styles, but not necessarily a variety of body types So what could they do to address this? Well, they could start by looking at that territory level breakdown and see that Anthropology is doing best in Seattle and LA Well, that's a really clear target for them You know, they can focus on press and outreach around Seattle and LA to make sure that they're really getting this cut through They could also consider doing things like sponsoring events there and definitely consider sponsoring curvy con Even though we don't have data for West Coast America. That seems like a fantastic opportunity They could also specifically target those territories with their social media ads So that lets them get a lot more cut through and lets them run a series of tests on what's working Because they're focusing on smaller populations. Everything gets cheaper. They can do more they can also again overbid on plus-sized terms in PPC and They can create a plus-size category page I think it's great that they don't want to segregate their audience But they can have a plus-size category page alongside the dresses page That at the very least is going to let them rank for J crew plus size, which is free traffic It's going to drive down costs for their PPC and social advertising it's an excuse to link to that page from the home page so now they can show different model types on the home page and Now they've got a targeted well-linked to page targeting plus-size terms So they can start ranking organically for those plus-size terms They could even decide to put a banner right at the top of the page saying why are you here? You don't have to shop in a separate category shop in our main dresses page Everything is there. That's turning a category page into a brand statement Which can get press interest and links which will help them rank even better, which is getting them more traffic Which is changing minds about what I'm through what J crew does which drives them branded traffic further down the line So everything feeds into itself So Google ads Will give us city level product level data It will give us insight into how people are interacting with the search engine around our site to see if our UX is broken It will it is paid I mean it costs us some money not loads But some which means that we can only really get city level data Otherwise it gets very expensive and we don't get any historic data like we do with Google trends Now I've spoken to a lot about the kind of things we can do with this data But haven't told you really much how to set up the campaigns. I'm put out a bunch of Fairly dry bullet points that you can go through here that will tell you how to get the results you want But by means of wrap-up Whether we're using Google trends or Google ads because they both have their uses we can use this data to tell our Colleagues our bosses our companies what to put on billboards and where to put them when to judge ads by completely different metrics What newspapers to target social media to invest in influences to reach out to emails to send when to judge organic sessions by Completely different metrics everything up to informing our five-year plan Which will help us give our customers what they want rather than just what they know us for This is all ways to give your company direction if you're ahead of marketing I've given you data your competitors don't have if you're ahead of SEO I've given you a way to start expanding your role owning these strategic conversations They're impacting your team already as it is. This is just a way for you to get credit for all that hard work But the most important thing here isn't here are some tricks in Google ads here are some tricks in Google trends The most important thing here is none of this is new to us This is looking at what people are searching Figuring out why we're not appearing and doing better That's our day-to-day. That is our skill set We are facing some real challenges as an industry, but we're not just ready for them We're made for them. So let's go surprise some people. Thank you


Access to clinical and public health information at the point of care in many developing countries is a huge challenge to the delivery of high-quality health care to the population. More often than not, clinical workers in health facilities use outdated materials to diagnose and treat their patients. After our project, the mobile health information system developed a mobile-based technology that would provide access to nurses and doctors at the point of care to this life-saving information. So this is one of our major achievements. Over 80% of the doctors and the nurses reported improving diagnosis, treatment and care for their patients as a result of this system. I think another point which is one of our, we are proud of our project is that we developed a business model to scale this initiative to larger users, larger group. We started with about 50 nurses. Now it's being rolled out to over 20,000 nurses and doctors in South Africa. It directly contributes to the WISIS action line to a health by using, by harnessing the power of ICTs for providing access to content, for improving the quality of health care delivery to underserved population in underserved countries. We're very, very highly honored by this award and it means two things. One, it affirms that we are doing right and two, it renews our commitment to do more because we're voted by thousands and thousands of people and we must live up to their expectations so it will really give us the impetus to innovate more, to work hard. So it means a lot to us.


Chapter 1 of the Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Ephesians, American Standard Version. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information and to find out how you can volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Sam Stinson, by hisfaith.com. Chapter 1, Paul, an Apostle of Christ Jesus through the will of God, to the saints that are at Ephesus, and the faithful in Christ Jesus, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and without blemish before him in love, having foreordained us unto adoption as sons through Jesus Christ unto himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace, which he freely bestowed on us in the beloved, in whom we have our redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of his grace, which he made to abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence, making known unto us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in him, unto a dispensation of the fullness of the times to sum up all things in Christ, the things in the heavens and the things upon the earth in him. I say, in whom also we were made a heritage, having been foreordained according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his will, to the end that we should be unto the praise of his glory, we who had before hoped in Christ, in whom ye also, having heard the word of the truth, the gospel of your salvation, in whom, having also believed, ye were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, which is an earnest of our inheritance unto the redemption of God's own possession, unto the praise of his glory. For this cause I also, having heard of the faith in the Lord Jesus, which is among you, and the love which ye show toward all the saints, cease not to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you a spirit of wisdom and revelation and the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your heart enlightened, that ye may know what is the hope of his calling, what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints, and what the exceeding greatness of his power to us, ward, who believe according to that working of the strength of his might, which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead and made him to sit at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, in every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come, and he put all things in subjection under his feet, and gave him to be head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him that filleth all in all. End of chapter 1. Chapter 2 of the Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Ephesians, American Standard Version. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information and to find out how you can volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org, recording by Sam Stinson by hisfaith.com. Chapter 2. And you did he make alive, when ye were dead through your trespasses and sins, wherein ye once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the powers of the air, of the spirit that now worketh in the sons of disobedience, among whom we also all once lived in the lusts of our flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. But God, being rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ, by grace have ye been saved, and raised us up with him, and made us to sit with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come he might show the exceeding riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace have ye been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves it is the gift of God, not of works that no man should glory. For we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God afford prepared that we should walk in them. Wherefore remember that once ye, the Gentiles in the flesh, who were called Uncircumcision by that which is called Circumcision in the flesh made by hands, that ye were at that time separate from Christ, alienated from the common wealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of the promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus, ye that once were far off are made nigh in the blood of Christ, for he is our peace, who made both one, and break down the middle wall of partition, having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances that he might create in himself of the two, one new man, so making peace, and might reconcile them both in one body unto God through the cross, having slain the enmity thereby, and he came and preached peace to you that were far off, and peace to them that were nigh. For through him we both have our access in one spirit unto the Father, so then ye are no more strangers and sojourners, but ye are fellow citizens with the saints, and of the household of God, being built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom each several building, fitly framed together, groweth into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom ye also are building together for a habitation of God in the spirit. End of chapter 2. Chapter 3 of the Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Ephesians, American Standard Version. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information and to find out how you can volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org, recording by Sam Stinson, by hisfaith.com. Chapter 3. For this cause, I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus and behalf of you Gentiles, if so be that ye have heard of the dispensation of the grace of God, which was given me to you, how that by revelation was made known unto me, the mystery, as I wrote before in few words, whereby when ye read, ye can perceive my understanding in the mystery of Christ, which in other generations was not made known unto the sons of men, as it hath now been revealed, unto his holy apostles and prophets in the spirit. To wit, that the Gentiles are fellow heirs and fellow members of the body and fellow partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel, where if I was made a minister, according to the gift of that grace of God, which was given me according to the working of his power, unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, was this grace given, to preach unto the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to make all men see what is the dispensation of the mystery, which for ages hath been hid in God who created all things, to the intent that now unto the principalities and the powers and the heavenly places might be made known through the church, the manifold wisdom of God, according to the eternal purpose which he purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have boldness and access and confidence through our faith in him. Wherefore, I ask that ye may not faint at my tribulations for you, which are your glory. For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that he would grant you according to the riches of his glory, that ye may be strengthened with power through his spirit in the inward man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, to the end that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be strong to apprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye may be filled unto all the fullness of God. Now, unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly, above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us, unto him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus, unto all generations for ever and ever. Amen. I, therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beseech you to walk worthily of the calling wherewith ye were called, with all lowliness and meekness, with long suffering, for bearing one another in love, giving diligence to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one spirit, even as also ye were called in one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is overall and through all and in all. But unto each one of us was the grace given according to the measure of the gift of Christ. Wherefore he saith, when he ascended on high he led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men. Now this, he ascended. What is it but that he also descended into the lower parts of the earth? He that descended is the same also that ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things. And he gave some to be apostles, and some prophets, and some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, for the perfecting of the saints unto the work of ministering, unto the building up of the body of Christ, till we all attain unto the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God unto a full grown man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, that we may be no longer children tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine by the slide of men in craftiness after the wiles of error. But speaking truth in love may grow up in all things into him who is the head, even Christ, from whom all the body fitly framed and knit together, through that which every joint supplyeth according to the working and due measure of each several part, maketh the increase of the body unto the building up of itself in love. This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye no longer walk as the Gentiles also walk in the vanity of their mind, being darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardening of their heart, who, being past feeling, gave themselves up to lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness. But ye did not so learn Christ, if so be that ye heard him, and were taught in him, even as truth is in Jesus, that ye put away as concerning your former manner of life the old man, that waxeth corrupt after the lusts of deceit, and that ye be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new man, that after God hath been created in righteousness and holiness of truth. Wherefore, putting away falsehood, speak ye truth, each one with his neighbor, for we are members one of another. Be ye angry in sin not. Let not the sun go down upon your wrath. Neither give place to the devil. Let him that stole, steal no more. But rather let him labor, working with his hands, the thing that is good, that he may have whereof to give to him that hath need. Let no corrupt speech proceed out of your mouth, but such as is good for edifying, as the need may be, that it may give grace to them that hear. And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, in whom ye were sealed unto the day of redemption.  And be ye kind one to another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, even as God also, in Christ, forgave you. 5. Be ye therefore imitators of God, as beloved children, and walk in love, even as Christ also loved you, and gave himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God, for an odor of a sweet smell. But fornication and all uncleanness or covetousness, let it not even be named among you as Bacometh saints, nor filthiness, nor foolish talking or jesting, which are not befitting, but rather giving of thanks. For this ye know of assurity, that no fornicator, nor unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater, hath any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. Let no man deceive you with empty words, for because of these things cometh the wrath of God upon the sons of disobedience. Be not ye therefore partakers with them, for ye were once darkness, but are now light in the Lord, walk as children of light. For the fruit of the light is in all goodness and righteousness and truth, proving what is well-pleasing unto the Lord, and hath no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather even reproof them, for the things which are done by them in secret it is a shame even to speak of. But all things when they are reproofed are made manifest by the light, for everything that is made manifest is light. Wherefore he saith, Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall shine upon thee. Look therefore carefully how ye walk, not as unwise, but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil. Wherefore be ye not foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. And be not drunken with wine, wherein is riot, but be filled with the Spirit. Speaking one to another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord, giving thanks always for all things, and the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God, even the Father. Subjecting yourselves one to another in the fear of Christ. Wives, be in subjection unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ also is the head of the church, being himself the savior of the body. But as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives also be to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself up for it, that he might sanctify it, having cleansed it by the washing of water with the Word, that he might present the church to himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that it should be holy and without blemish. Even so, ought husbands also to love their own wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man ever hated his own flesh, but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as Christ also the church, because we are members of his body. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is great, but I speak in regard of Christ and of the church. Nevertheless, do ye also severally love each one his own wife, even as himself, and let the wife see that she fear her husband? End of chapter 5. Chapter 6 of the Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Ephesians, American Standard Version. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information and to find out how you can volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org, recording by Sam Stinson by hisfaith.com. Chapter 6. Children, obey your parents and the Lord, for this is right. Honor thy father and mother, which is the first commandment with promise, that it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth. And ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath, but nurture them in the chastening and admonition of the Lord. Servants, be obedient unto them that according to the flesh are your masters with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ, not in the way of eye service or men pleasers, but as servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart, with good will doing service as unto the Lord, and not unto men. Knowing that whatsoever good thing each one doeth, the same shall he receive again from the Lord, whether he be bond or free. And ye masters do the same things unto them, and forbear threatening, knowing that he who is both their master and yours is in heaven, and there is no respect of persons with him. Finally, be strong in the Lord, and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. Wherefore, take up the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all to stand. Stand therefore, having girded your loins with truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace. Withal taking up the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the evil one, and take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God. With all prayer and supplication, praying at all seasons in the spirit, and watching there unto an all perseverance and supplication for all the saints. And on my behalf, that utterance may be given unto me, and opening my mouth to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains, that in it I may speak boldly as I ought to speak. But that ye also may know my affairs, how I do. Tychicus, the beloved brother and faithful minister and the Lord, shall make known to you all things whom I have sent unto you for this very purpose, that ye may know our state, and that ye may comfort your hearts. Peace be to the brethren, and love with faith, from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Grace be with all them that love our Lord Jesus Christ, with a love incorruptible. End of chapter 6. And also the end to the book of the Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Ephesians.


for joining us a very, very eventful week. A lot of possible things to pick out of the air and we're going to focus in on what the recently leaked first draft Roe v. Wade overturned opinion from the U.S. Supreme Court tells us and what concerns it raises and we're extremely fortunate to have with us today on her birthday. Tina Patterson from Germantown, Maryland, mediator, arbitrator, experienced entrepreneur and business coach, Rebecca Ratliff, one of the leading insurance claim executives in the country for many years and now a leading mediator and arbitrator and nationally and internationally and losing very timely and appropriate the APABA Asian Pacific American Bar Association group awardee this year together with a women's rights advocate and leading attorney in Hawaii for a good number of years. Well, we've all seen what Justice Alito has to say, what strikes you having seen what he said, what's missing, what's wrong with that in your view? Where does it go off the rail? Tina, you want to start us off? Actually, I'm going to defer to Louise on this one for a legal opinion first. Okay, Louise. Oh, thanks, Tina, but I think I've lateral thanks to Tina before. So oh, I don't know. I don't know where to begin. I think what strikes me is the fact that there is a sense of betrayal on so many levels from the time of confirmation hearings where many of these people who have signed on to the opinion have claimed that the Wade was settled law and basically not to be disturbed and then to have this just not even to make an effort to pretend that they're just sort of moving a little bit to just have this totally polarity of views on what's happened and also to just misrepresent the history to claim that this is only reflecting what the history has been on abortion when in fact there's more information coming out on how all of the laws against abortion are of fairly recent origin that this was not something that existed in the 17 or 1800s. I also think it's just incredibly dangerous to be re-examining the scope of the right of privacy and then to claim that it has nothing to do with all these other civil rights that have sprung from the right of privacy like same-sex marriage and the right to contraception and the like to say somehow that's different. I just see this as a very dangerous slippery slope and one that just seems to be I don't know just sort of totally disregarding the advances in the idea that you know women of the right to privacy that women should have a decision over their own bodies and principles that have been you know I've seen develop from the time I was a college student until now and not and you know hard to imagine and sad to imagine that now we face the idea that it's going to be left to the political winds of every wind winds of every state. Rebecca what strikes you about this? I think Louise hit the nail on the head. Dangerous is the word that comes to mind for me because this can set so many wheels in motion in so many areas that it's a little well it's not a little scary it's a lot scary for the reasons that she gave. It can open up Pandora's box and our country is fragmented as it is and to now leave you know to have this this law changed and to have the states be able to weigh in with their flavor could really just tear up the country worse than it is. There are so many different reasons why a woman might need to make a decision about her body and it's I just I do feel that it's very dangerous and it's a very sad time for America that this is being contemplated. My concern too is that it's just done there's no there's no vision or view to it I mean what are we trying to do here is it legislating morality rather than keeping this a medical decision between a woman and her doctor are we trying to make people more moral take care of kids because I you know if that's the case then we can't just you know ban abortions there needs to be a whole social network or system put into place to you know support parents and children and children from unwanted pregnancies and the like you know is that going to be happening in these um states banning abortion I don't know I I'm not optimistic Tina I think your thoughts chair um I think the timing is unsettling the the one the leak um the time the timing of the leak the fact that there was a leak and the timing of the supreme court bringing this forward to the public I don't think it's a coincidence that it's a that all of this is unfolding as we're entering midterm elections and that it's not just politicized but literally parties are taking different positions and the fact of the matter is the topic or subject of abortion is not always defined by political party it's literally defined by that person's beliefs perspectives and experience I always tell people if you want to find a room divide a room have them talk about birth death and property those three topics will divide people immediately because each person has a different perspective and underlying each of those three areas is the this concept of power what having power over who comes into this world or the choice that you can make as to who comes into this world how you leave this world and in what context do you leave do you leave pre-mated do you leave in a casket do you own property or do you have to go through someone else so the timing to me um is very interesting I also think that it's it's it shouldn't be a surprise and because we've seen the swing and I still of the perspective that we are undergoing huge changes from a societal perspective um talking about race racism gender who we love how we love and now as was called out by louise this right to privacy how how you maintain your body or what you do with your body your choice um I do think that it's it's part of this pushback we see it with critical race theory and this to me is just another step in that pendulum swinging back and people really conflating fiction versus what the reality is a row versus weight and what this means or what it potentially means so it's very unsettling and those are really important insights because putting this back in a historical perspective as for example austin history professor heather cox richardson does so very well in her six day a week blog letters from an american which I commend to everyone very very well researched and thought out and presented is you now have for the first time in decades a despite a popular majority favoring woman's reproductive rights a a small white male christian minority operating in favor through state legislatures of restrictive women's reproductive rights restrictive voting rights restrictive educational and employment rights and protections all of these things under the guise of state rights states rights which was exactly the pretext that would use in the civil war to try and perpetuate slavery we come from full circle it's like that doesn't it in many ways yes scary to me because you know I don't want to sound too extreme but yeah my thought was well you know there might be some legislators in states that want black people out picking cotton again I mean it's this is that I know that sounds really extreme but since you brought it up chop you know when I was saying that it's scary for so many reasons that was one of the things civil rights are in jeopardy on many levels and that seems to be exactly the point that this is only one of many really critical personal private individual civil rights protections that now stands at risk of being eroded on a claim of interpretation of our history and traditions by justices who clearly have not been educated in and don't know what our rich cultural history and traditions of all of our peoples especially people of color and indigenous peoples really maybe those the groups that you're so indigenous peoples african americans raised here africans who live in america but maybe were educated in some in america and some abroad um caribbean americans latino americans um asian americans we all although we're black and brown people we all have though we have some shared experiences we all have very very different historical experiences and sometimes um as a mediator um and as a as a speaker a lot of times when i'm a panelist i'm talking about cultural competency and the you know the importance of understanding that every brown person is not the same every brown person doesn't think the same and you know again but we have some shared experiences there are many things that we see differently because in context of our culture there are different realities that apply to maybe one group and not another and you know that's that's a reality um here you know tina mentioned critical race theory and how it's being canceled in so many different states um this is just uh it's just a scary time in our history where um i'll go back to what luisa what are we really trying to accomplish what what is all of this really about um and the minority of people who are kicking up all of this dust um you know you just have to wonder what the end game is and you know and and why um harmony you know i i pick harmony although we all have to agree all the time we're not going to always agree sometimes i don't agree with myself um but harmony really is a beautiful thing when we take care of each other we were i believe we were created to be communal and the division of americans and people really um all over the world especially at a time of pandemic when they're they're already so many factors of instability it's just it's just a it's a bad you know it's a bad time and tina spoke to the timing of it time and timing um you know we'll tell the story later because um yeah what is the reason for this to happen now um and you know who really is behind it you have to think that these issues are very highly motivated which is even more scary please your thoughts oh yeah um you know you're right it just seems like one in incidents of just a whole disease of um you know so the anti-democratic anti-multicultural movement in this country and you know my my question then is okay how do we come back that in the long run um you know i think we go back again to the importance of voting um we go back to the importance of making sure that the voice of the you know those those values are reflected in our local and state legislators legislatures um there was a commentary i heard on on npr this morning about how you know the republicans have really focused over the last decades on building up their political power in the state and democrats not so much and i'm thinking well why not i mean that was you know we got a clue during the trump years that we needed to focus on our local and state governments to shore that up um but i just think that this underscores the need for uh you know being vigilant about voting rights getting people out to vote and also just you know continuing to tell a positive story about the values of multiculturalism and the good things that are happening there's so many bad things happening in the world right now that you you know just want to pull the covers over your head but it seems to me this is the time that we just need to uh you know make sure that we're educating the next generation to be you know much more open-minded and humane and communal and you know multicultural than what is i hope um you know a slowly shrinking minority view that right now is just too dominant in our culture and that's an important insight and perspective because we know that a lot of the history and traditions of this country have moved strongly in a direction of inequality mistreatment disrespect for people who were not male white christian landowners the way things started out and that over the last particularly 50 years or so a lot of work and a lot of sacrifice have gone into moving the needle in a more balanced less unequal less disrespectful direction and now to have that needle swing back so far so quickly through minority control what do you see that might help us get back on track have to keep speaking out we have to keep talking um many of the programs i've done if i'm moderating i end um my parting words are stay safe but don't stay silent um we have to keep having these conversations and facilitating conversations being willing to be uncomfortable um these are uncomfortable topics because um people don't really want to admit to the stain of racism and um you know slavery racism the sins of america people don't really want to talk about it and you know we've talked to about allyship and what that really means um and what i know is ally is a verb even though it's a noun in the dictionary ally is a verb um there are many people who are aspiring allies and i've had people say i'm an ally um and i thought well you you're trying um but an ally is willing to be uncomfortable willing to speak out against um injustice and inequality and inequity um chuck crumpton is an ally um you know a person who is is willing to be criticized for supporting what is right not what is comfortable and the conversations that chuck facilitates and louise facilitates um and we don't have um our our comrade sandra on on this one but you know tina and i um are um you know happy to to have and lead conversations around these topics so that people can be seen heard so that perspectives can be shared so that solutions can be found and that's you know this this really is a movement there is a movement of of there is an evil movement and there is a just movement and people have to pick a side because again uh silence is complicit if you're if you're silent we hear you um and you know people at this point need to to pick the side i pray is democracy um but it's you know we have to continue to have these conversations to keep not just the awareness um going but also the activity around making things better together oh exactly right yeah that reminds i was just thinking that um you know sometimes when you know you've suffered a personal setback or insult you have to think this is not going to define me and to me this setback is not one that ought to define the the work of those of us who want to have a different more just democratic um you know multicultural society and this is our you know sort of the the bell sort of the bell to get us to move forward i mean i i do think of this past years and maybe the coming years is one of focusing on allyship and intersectionality um and building coalitions across different groups you know the course of planning an agent specific heritage month event for our firm one of our speakers who's Asian American talked about his work on a black reparations panel in california because they have a legislative initiative going forward to study black reparations and his his approach is you know the why the Asian American community is should be supporting this and you know the his the common historical roots and so i think that you know this we need this reminder of the bad things that could happen to try to get you know ignore that and just move forward get the right people to get together and you're exactly right i love that rebecca stay safe and don't say suck stay silent people need to be willing to speak up i agree with rebecca regarding the idea of speaking up but i i i also think this leak and the conversation regarding roe vs weight is an opportunity to have a larger discussion regarding reproductive rights and women and and where we are in terms of how we discuss reproduction um how we discuss our bodies how we discuss the choices that we make it's it again timing in the us we're coming up on mother's day and the part of this discussion regarding roe vs weight is abortion and and how is abortion perceived and we're seeing what i'm seeing on social media women talking about and not the stereotypical person actresses and other people who are well recognized saying why they had to make a decision i think it's also important we're hearing as we talk about the reasons in which abortion may be permissible are things that we wouldn't that are considered taboo incest human trafficking and at times other health reasons rate would be another reason having a discussion about that and taking the taboo away from these topics but also taking the taboo away from women's reproductive um stages as we become young women as we move into our full reproductive years and as we age there's still this discussion that we don't have about women aging and a woman deciding that she wants to be a mother or she doesn't want to be a mother and that the taboo that's associated with that is underlying part of this um this discussion and and where we're seeing the division i think it's an excellent opportunity to have that that talk and to really come together again across cultures um what does it mean and in some cultures it's it's lauded you know having a child or having being a mother is is highly regarded and for other communities yes if you do it great but you know taking that stigma away and saying here here's what can happen here are the choices here are the many paths but at the end of the day it's my choice it's my body and that's a really important centering value to come back to is that as we've seen in the polls favoring abortion favoring protection of voting rights favoring same-sex marriage favoring open sexual preference classifications all of those things have indicated if anything the efforts to build a growing respect and appreciation and understanding for the most personal private choices of each other has been growing at least in the populace at large and but now we have a situation where neither the federal legislative branch nor apparently the federal judicial branch is going to protect those civil personal private rights and the states are questionable so where do we go from here we do have a few state legislatures hopefully more that are you know vowing to uphold the right of privacy and the right to reproductive choice we're just having discussion today about how some employers are taking it upon themselves to offer benefits to women who need to travel for you know to terminate their pregnancy and the like so I you know I just think yeah you're right Tina and Rebecca great I you know points about we need to get the stories out this needs to be the start of a conversation and we need to think about all the different ways that we can whether in private or public forums support reproductive rights and that's a great reminder because maybe the decisions and the choices should best look for their protection at the levels where people are interacting directly rather than protection by government forces which clearly can be politically directed or manipulated okay in our last minute any last thoughts on where we are where we're headed Rebecca I guess I'll just say that I know a lot of the points that I made or make often when we're having these discussions are broad which is why I appreciated Louise identifying that so much of what we talk about and the issues when we're drilling down our intersectional one thing affects something else and you know and every everything that we do all the spaces we're in the politics around you know these issues well that that don't start off politicized but get politicized it all ends up affecting us as individuals and how we live and interact how we live personally and professionally and so I just I want to say Chuck thank you for this platform for us to have these conversations and thank you all Louise last I did have one but I think it left me but anyway I just think this is part one of a continuing discussion because this is going we need to sort of keep this for you know front and center on how this is going to motivate our activism one little thing I did as I think I pointed out to you I started wearing my Ruth Bader Ginsburg pin to remind me about courageous women who have you know set a good example for all of us and we need to remember people like that. Chuck I think you were trying to find a quote by her who remembers that about Reducted Tina found it and Tina it's your birthday we honor you today actually all right any last words yes I am going to read a quote from former Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg the decision whether or not to bear a child is central to a woman's life to her well-being and dignity it is a decision she must make for herself when government controls that decision for her she is being treated as less than a fully adult human responsible for her own choices and what a great place to wind us up for today to remind us all the most important thing we can do is to respect understand and honor that individual worth and value in each of us thank you all thanks those who join us come back in two weeks and many more topics including probably more on this one take care thanks Chuck thank you so much for watching think tech Hawaii if you like what we do please like us and click the subscribe button on youtube and the follow button on vimeo you can also follow us on facebook instagram twitter and linked in and donate to us at think.kawaii.com mahalo