Welcome, everybody, back to the Martin E. Siegel Theatre Center here at the Graduate Center CUNY and the City University of New York from Manhattan. Welcome to Siegel Talks. It's another week of listening to voices from artists around the world. Yesterday we had an update from Indonesia, very significant, I thought, inspiring talk of the theater community coming together in that big nation, the fourth largest nation, the greatest Muslim population in the world, and how the arts are working there. Where is no real government funding for the arts, but over 350 festivals in a year where art and life seems to be intertwined. Great supportive community. We heard devastating accounts just last week from Brazil where artists are starving, there's no help, a hostile government, a right wing close to fascist government, and it's the same troubling news somehow from a bit from Hungary, part of Poland, Romania, and now we switch our focus to a country that has a great tradition of theater, one of the great superpowers, one would say, of theaters in the history of theater. It's Italy that has brought us so much over centuries of a significant contribution to the world of theater, reinventing theater, and from early Commedia groups being the hosts, of course, a lot of Greek theaters that are throughout the south of Italy, also in Sicily, and then the great works of the Pirandellos, the Giorgius trailers, and it's impossible to name the Ronconi's, all the names, and Massini going on now, and we have a very special update today from Italy, and it's from Palermo, from Sicily, and we have with us the Honorable Mayor of the city of Palermo, with Leo Luca Orlando. Thank you for joining us, the great Pamela Villorezzi, a great actor, actress, director, and she runs the Theater Beyondi in Sicily, and also with us is Atam Darauscha, who is the president of the Cultural Council in Palermo. Palermo, of course, is the city that is, as life itself, full of contradictions, full of everything that's good, that's good, and things that are not good, are not good, but they are close, of course, to the frontlines of the new development when it comes to refugees, when it comes to immigration, and much, much, much closer than everybody else is perhaps in Europe, and so we would like to hear what is going on. So, Leo Luca, first of all, thank you, really, for taking the time to talk to us. I know how much you work. You are a legend in Italy for your work, for supporting the arts, but also for your work for refugees to put Palermo in open city, but how is it now, in the time of Corona, what's going on in the city of Palermo? Could you hear us? Yeah, maybe you can come up. So, Pamela, let's go to you right away. What's going on in Palermo? Okay, I have to tell you, in the famous war between state and mafia in Palermo, thanks to Leo Luca and many heroes, like judges and so on, won the state. So, now we can call Palermo the town of culture, and every day there is some museums that is open, and when I arrived to direct the theater, Leo Luca, the mayor, asked me, please, destroy the world around the theater, and put the theater in all the town, in poor areas of the town, and so on, and that's what I did. Leo Luca was the mayor when, 30 years ago, he invited Pina Bausch for her show Palermo, Palermo, and if you remember at the beginning of the show, you could see a wall, and after two, three minutes, all the world fell down, and so he said, just that, and so we really started to bring the theater out of the world of the whole, and to go in all the parts of the town, for all the persons of the town, and we started to create a lot of synergy with all the cultural institutions of the town, not only cultural, even for assistants, volunteers, and so on, and that was, I think, a little bit my signature of my brief for the moment, a direction, but now we have Leo Luca, he can tell you about the coronavirus period in Palermo, Leo Luca. Okay, Leo Luca, can you hear us? Yes, I can hear you, and I wish to say thanks for your attention, just I wish to say that after a test, a cemetery test, lucky negative, about me, I lived in quarantine, and my wife says that she spoke more along with me when I worked outside than now that I work inside my home, because I spend all my time just trying to direct the city remaining at home, but it means that probably now I am a new start-up, I am Leo since 35 years, but I feel like a start-up, because I think that everything changed, and I wish just to start from freedom from fear, freedom from fear, I am a real honoured, because 14 April of this year, I had to receive by King and Queen of Holland, by the Roosevelt Foundation, the freedom from fear, our art, of course, it was postponed, and I will receive next year this fantastic prize, I'm really, I say thanks for the attention to me, but the attention to the Palermo, because we probably know what does mean to be free from fear, there's only one way to be free from fear, to take care and to prevent, we just fight against the mafia taking care and preventing, not only with repression, not only with law enforcement, but even with the cultural prevention, because the fight against the mafias is something like a Sicilian cart, with two wheels, one wheel is the wheel of law enforcement, and the wheel is the wheel of the cartoon, the two wheels have to march at the same speed, if the wheel of repression marches, I remember tolerance zero, marches more fast than the wheel of cartoon, the cart doesn't go forward, get round, and people would say it was better when it was worse, so we just fight in the mafia, decided not to respect the law, but to respect the rights, in many cases the state law are against the human rights, lucky our republican constitution does protect the human rights, and the international convention protect the human rights, so we are not, we have not been only the city of legality of the law, but we wish to be the city of legality of the rights, I am really proud to say that we are not foreign non-migrant in Palermo, when someone asks to me, how many migrants are in Palermo, I reply, no one who is in Palermo is Palermo, and then I'm sorry for you, I'm sorry for you, if one day will come in Palermo, you will be obliged to be Palermo, just to repeat, just to repeat what Leo Luca said, he said there are no foreigners, there are no migrants in Palermo, everybody who is in Palermo is part of the city of Palermo, so this is an incredible statement, we know your legendary action when you went onto a ship full of refugees, that was rejected by Italian government, you filled out forms, immigration forms, and said everybody should come in here, did the immigration, the migration, did it revive the city, was it part of the renaissance of the rebirth of Palermo? All the Palermitans were important, including the so-called migrant, and I wish to say that the one year ago the former minister of interiors, Matteo Salvini, when I said I will not respect the law because I respect the constitution, he said that just in the press conference I will send the army to arrest, to stop Orlando, after one year Salvini is not yet minister of interiors and the army did not arrive, I'm waiting for the army but it did not arrive, because I think that no one can go against the the protection of human rights, what is really important is that I am not crazy, probably yes I am, I'm not crazy, isolated male, what I feel, what I say is supported, is just sponsored, just by the high majority of population, I'm not a philosopher, I'm proud to be honorary doctor in German philosophy in the University of Thier, but I'm a jurist, I'm not a philosopher, I am a politician, I've been with these ideas elected and re-elected in Palermo, please stop three minutes and think how different and better is Palermo just in comparison with other cities in the world, we applied the same strategy just against the will, just like the mafia, prevention and taking care, prevention and taking care and I wish to tell you that today Palermo is the big city, having less infected and less people who died, you can imagine that in the province of Palermo, it means 1,300,000 inhabitants, where the total 34 people who died, 34, may I tell you, I have not to say that, in the city of Palermo, there is the city that I govern with 6, because I said and I cried, you have to obey, you have to obey, then I prayed and prayed please, please obey, respect the law and the population followed me and I think that today we are just like in the past and better than in the past, we are exciting and safe, we were safe, just speaking about the community, we wish to be, to remain safe, speaking about sanitary dimension, respect of the of the of the health and I think that I am a startup, so I spent these two months to put in the quarantine, of course at the beginning to try to counter the thousand little and enormous emergencies, sanitary emergencies, but since the last four weeks when I just controlled that the virus, the virus did not expand in the city of Palermo, I take care of the of the future, just one hour before, together with Pamela, together with the deputy mayor for cartoonists, we spoke about the future of the city of Palermo, starting from using the theater, because we are just ready just to play the role of startup, of course, and then we shall only to say some some think about the virus, I think that because COVID-19 is a natural event, natural tragedy, just like the eruption of the volcano, just like earthquake, or if you prefer just like a a war, a war where it's possible, it's not the earth, the earth, but it's possible in the states of the human beings. Well, we have now counter the largest natural event in the history of humanity, because the volcano eruption is local, the earthquake is local, even the Second World War was not so expansive like the virus, because we have a lot of states not involved in Second World but involved by the virus. It means that our life has to change, it's changing the dimension of the time, the people are living in a different way, the time, they are living in a different way, just the right to to be in good health condition, and I think that any any artistic plan, any political plan, any economic plan has to start from the respect of the of the health. It is just the starting point that means the respect of human rights. Now I think that Palermo is in a special position in advance because for us to respect human rights is domestic life, it's just the life of every day. No one will come in Palermo because the cathedral is fantastic, no one will come in Palermo because our museum, our theater are really splendid, everybody will ask we will be safe, we will be sanitary safe, and we are just planning the sanitary safety of the city, we are a customer to get the safety, in the past was the safety coming from security, today is the safety coming from respect of the health, and as I told you, I think we are the only city in the world not having a deputy mayor, deputy mayor for culture, we are not deputy mayor for culture, we are deputy mayor for cultureists, not for culture, the cultureists, respecting the identity of everybody because identity is the supreme right, supreme human right, every human being is a cocktail, he's a cocktail, the Sicilian identity does not exist because each Sicilian is different, I think that even each American or each German is different, only the fascists, only the fascists, pretend to say that we are all the same identity, not times, my identity is different from the identity of everybody because we feel we think that we are to be different to be equal, somebody said just reaching because the United States, to be different to be equal, we are different because we are human being. And also we have the right, yeah we have the right to be different, the three of the difference as the the French, so this is an incredible account. And if we hear Leo Luca, if you wait a second, you know to say this is a sixth term mayor of a town that was shaped, a town that now has won as Pamela and others in the fight against mafia, where culture has made an important rule and as we heard from Brazil now or from Hungary, where government are not working right, they have forms that do not work, they do not serve and also they are hostile to culture, this is an example where government works, it keeps same and also keeps culture in it, so maybe we ask Atam as the president of the cultural council, how does theater and performance fit in? What difference does it make in the life of the city? He was the president of the council of the culturalists, now he is the mayor of the culturalists. So how does, how do you come in? What's difference does theater make in the city? Yes, thank you very much Frank, thank you very much to everybody as the mayor stated, I was the first president of the city council for culture, which was the city council that represented everybody who was born in another country, we don't call it the city council for migrants, we call it city council for cultures, it was my first political experience, now I'm executive chancellor of culture, the deputy mayor for cultures, I'm the city government and it's very interesting that someone like me today, in these days, in these months, is running the cultural sector in Palermo and running the business in this period is very difficult, but you know Frank, you ask a very interesting question, you said how much did the migrants or migration contributed on changing, on creating the renaissance of Palermo, we have a lot of example on that and every kind of contribution that I can state now, it's always linked to the cultural issue, because culture for us, we have proved in this year that culture is a very a very, how you say it, a very important instrument of social inclusion, of putting people together, people that they are very different between them, when they meet they don't have almost anything in common, so you can stick people together by culture and the work that Pamela has done with the beyond the theater and the work that the Teatro Maxim, our Lyric Opera House does and the work that everybody does, we do a lot of cultural activity that it's addressed to social questions, so it's our way of taking care of things, so when we speak about a crisis like COVID-19 or any other crisis that the city had in these years, you will always see that we handle the situation using culture, you know, you can speak about COVID-19 by health, measurement by health, you know, sanitary actions, I'm a general practitioner myself, I'm a doctor, so I think that I and I still work as a general practitioner, although I'm Deputimero Palermo, for us culture it's not only a word, it's not something that you go there on Friday or Saturday and you live one hour, two hour in a theater, on a cinema house, it's not like that, for us, we decided that culture for us, we decided and we take it on in this year, that culture for us is the base of our action and when we are speaking about secure city, we are speaking about secure city because we speak about a city that takes care of everyone, you know, the mayor has spoken about this concept regarding taking care of people, it's very important not to have any invisible areas in the city, it's very important that people are visible, that we can help poor people, we can help people who are coming to our country after, you know, having a very long journey in Africa and then in the Mediterranean Sea, we can help people that are facing now very difficult economic action, making people visible is very important because it's the only way that you can assure that you have a secure city, so being inclusive, being how you say tolerance, being culturally involved with the place that you live in is a very important instrument that makes your city secure, I handle myself this situation in my first experiment as a president of the city council for cultures dealing with the migrants community, we had a lot of people who didn't really run their usual life, their daily life by the rhythm of the city and we make it that now they are a part of the city rhythm, it's very important for a big city to have everyone involved and I can assure you there is nothing that makes people involved and make people feel together than culture. That's incredible, normally we hear stories or we see film that people from Sicily went away to United States which was a country of openness where things were working, where they had a chance for a better life and now it seems all the sudden that things are reversed, Pamela Atam said we work to make things right, the mayor said this is an open town, this is a healthy town, a safe town, tell us about your work, how do you take care of things? So I have to tell you when I was very happy to come in Palermo because we have really a renaissance, a renaissance in this moment in the town and so it's very touching and one of the first productions I wanted because you know the duty of a national theatre like we are is to talk about the land's culture but the land's culture is not only Pirandello from Sicily, it's not the culture of the past, for instance the culture of the moment of the present, for instance, is the culture of 30,000 Indians, they are Palermitanino and from Pakistan to Sri Lanka but most of them are from Bengali. So I called a very good dramas writer and she spent five months in all the areas where the Bengali lives and so on and she was listening all the story, we were shooting all the interviews and all the stories we created, Bengala Palermo, that will be the next show, I mean it's a show that had to be to have the premiere on the 8th of May and unfortunately we have to postpone on the next spring but anyway is one of the next production and they are so happy to participate to the life of the town and I have to tell you one thing, many Indians of course they have different religion, mostly Catholic and Hinduist, they have only one fest, religious fest, they are all together for Santa Rosalia that is the scent of the town and you know there are many persons they walk up in the mountain to be in the cave, to go in the cave where is the statue where the scent lived and so there are thousands of persons they go up, they call Akyanata when you go up and so there are more or less every September 1,000, 1,500 Bengalis that go up to do the Akyanata and Rosalia is the common point of this, the three religions of the Bengalis you know is culture. Incredible, Mayor first of all congratulations on putting regulations in place that the Covid didn't speak, congratulations for six terms where you turned around the city that was a model for what's not working and now having something shining that is working, for you personally what does art mean, what does theatre mean for you as a person? His life, I wish only just to say something, just because I think the best way to communicate is not to say words is to tell stories, the words are all the same, all perfect, are all dead, the stories are all different, are all different, they are all not perfect so I can tell you stories, not words, one story is that Adam the Roushwa take care of the people because he was in this a doctor and being a doctor knows what it means to take care of the people and just speaking about Palermo, the candles of Chanukah in Palermo were switched on by Imam, by the male, by an Hindu leader, I forgot, by a rabbin too, by a rabbin too, I mean just we think that no one can accept that we divide as the name of God, I believe in God but please don't ask me the name of God, when I am in Moshe I pray for Allah, when I am in the synagogue I pray for Yahweh, when I am in the Hindu temples I pray for Shiva, when I am in a Buddhist community of course I am with Buddha and the moment in this moment when I am in a Christian church I pray Jesus Christ, no one can divide the name of God, the man from the other man, it's not a philosophy, it's daily life, it's my life and I am really proud because I was, it was really a lot for me, I was able just to do what I feel and to be elected, re-elected, it's terrible, I think that is a fantastic luck, I can die in five minutes and if I die, I can say I die lucky, mission accomplished, non-completed, not completed, there's something to do, but accomplished because I, being my contribution to the cultural change, the change of the mind of the people, I think is a terrible, terrible privilege to be part of a community, I am a person, we are a community, that is alternative, I am an individual, we are across the group, so I'm a person, we are a community and I think that everybody understand what I wish to say that I am, of course, I'm not against Mr. Salvin, I'm not against Mr. Salvin, I'm not in competition with Mr. Salvin, he plays cricket, I play volley, I play another sport, another film with other rules, so we are not in competition, it is a completely alternative, so we are alternative to populism because the populism has no respect for the time, the populist thinks it's possible to change at soon, without respect of the past, without the project of the future, therefore the populists, they use tweet as slogan, tweet as slogan, we don't use tweet as slogan, we tell stories because we have respect of the past and we are sure that without respect of the past, it means respect of the time, it's not possible to build the future, the theater is giving this moment in Palermo and I have to say thanks to Pamela because we are demonstrating that it's possible to have theater without theater, it's possible to grow in school without school, it's possible to have a church without churches, it is the gift of the digital, we have only to think really globally, the virus and the digital, we wish to connect, we fight against the virus and we should use the digital, not to be used by digital, thanks. Thank you so much and this is interesting what you say, you say theater tells stories and we need to tell stories, not slogans, we need to make people visible and theater is one way to do that. Probably it's actually the role of theater to tell stories. Yeah, that is amazing, so Pamela, I hear you also have during the times of the corona and this is why the great Elizabeth Hayes who is joining us here listening in and will help us out if we can find the right Italian world, I think she's a speaker of French and English and Italian but thank you a little bit for putting us all together, it was her suggestion that we focus on Palermo, she said this is an extraordinary story and we did so. So Pamela, what do you do during the time of corona, your theater that is so deeply rooted in community that plays a vital role in the renaissance of Palermo, what do you do, did you close or what are you doing at the moment? We had to close, they closed because in Italy we have in the regions different situations of corona, in the north. I think we lost her. No, it just froze for a moment. Yeah, I'm sure she's talking about Bergamo where it was a terrible situation. Terrible, immediately terrible, we have another situation. So we heard that they were closing all the theaters in the north and so I just contacted some association companies or video and so we were ready to shoot live and to go in live streaming with the show. They closed our theater, we just had the premier, Leu Luca and Hamburg there, and so we announced that we had to close the theater and for three days we have been acted for live streaming with the cameras and the direct direction, live direction and we had so many spectators in all over the Italy, not only in so the same production, Pamela, so the production you stopped, the production you stopped, you showed live every evening. Yeah, for three days with only one spectator, the first one was our mayor, the second day a famous photographer, leticia battaglia and so on and we so one person came in your theater, then it was one person, they could and everybody in Palermo and everybody or who has an internet access could see the show. Of course, for free, without money, for free and it was a fantastic message because the show was about Frida Kahlo and the title is Viva la Vida, no one title was so perfect for the period and we were telling the story about a woman that was obliged to be closed in her room for years because of the accident of the tram and because of the 33 surgical operation she had, but in that prison, in that block she started to pain and so she became immortal. So with this message we closed the theater and we started to go online in our social media, in our social media with interviews, of course with some shows about our archivial but also to share the creative process of our productions with students and with all the public and so we called the directors, the costumes, design, scenery design, the musicians to talk with the public, for instance for one production that was a comedy of Latin word, Aulularia of Plauto, we wanted to have 300 students in the theater to talk with them about the trade that the treatment that you have to do when you translate, do the translation from an ancient language to a modern one to to be comic, you have to be to trade of course, so which treatment and so on and the surprise was that we had our 300 students from home but they were online, they were out of 5000 students from all over the world and so I thought it's fantastic, I really hope to see our students as soon as possible in our theater but I don't want to renounce anymore to the other 5000 in a lot of the world, we have to say the persons of my age, I'm 63, we are a little bit Jurassic with the new technologies and most of theater's artists, they are Jurassic, so this was an opportunity to our mentality and to open our mentality to the digital and so we are organizing a lot of work on digital, not really the show because of course theater is one person that talks about human stories to other persons, this is the theater but all the way, all the process we do to arrive to the premiere like a birth can be like a pregnancy shared with all the public, with the students and not only the students. So you prepare dramatically, you show the process but do you also do daily programming now or? Of course, of course. What do you do?  Yes, I explained some shows we had in their kibios, a lot of interviews and there are a lot of actors, they gave us some reading about classical poems, Divina Comedia, a lot of things even for little children and especially for the students they are studying at home, it's very difficult you know but if you have an actor that reads for you the poems or Divina Odante or Lepardi, everyone checks here, it's more easy I think. So you commission artists, theater artists to program, to tape something and you show it live at 6.30 p.m. or something. And especially with our young actors, our students of our school, so even they could get some money because we have a very good, how do you say, government help for workers and financial help from government assistance, okay, but for freelance there are only 800 euros per month and not for everybody, especially for young freelance artists. So we could pay them and we involved them to create something for digital, but from theater actors that was very interesting. A great idea, yesterday we heard from Indonesia, from the Paper Moon, the company, they actually they ask people, pay us, pay $10, three people and then they create a story based on suggestions from audiences or they send little boxes to make a puppet for people at home, students, people make the puppet at home and they create stories. So it's another way around, so there are many ways and your way is a fantastic way to reach out. At Ham, what do you want artists to do? You are the president and Nixon the mayor but for you, what do you need from artists at the moment? What do you want them to contribute? What is of essence?  I am involved for this period that we have a lot of discussion with a lot of artists who live and work in Palermo. There are a lot of them that have chosen Palermo to live here. They come from other cities from Italy and we have a direct and frank discussion about the situation. It's not easy to say what do you want from them, it's what I want for them. I would really want that our government and the European Union and in any other country, being an artist, it's a state of mind. We accept that but it's a job too and they should be helped to be able to produce their cultural activities without being worried every day and every month on how to pay the rent. I really am a dreamer. I think I dream about a way of like a substitution that the state just pay the artist to do their part in our society because I think that artists, singer, cultural operator are very important to our society like doctors, lawyers and any other else. It's not easy to understand the life of artists in Italy and in Europe. Usually, as Pamela said, a lot of them, the freelance, they don't have a fixed income and it's very difficult for them. So this is what I really, we ask the government to try to help them more because being an artist is not only a state of mind, it's a situation that you have to run on your life. We try in Palermo to be very near them and to help them in passing this period that it's not an easy period. Frank Speck has spoken about artists in Brazil and in Indonesia and other countries that they are dealing with very difficult questions. What I really dream about art and culture in general is to make you understand what I really think. I think that here in Palermo, we don't have migrants, but I think it's a free sentence. I know it's a very crazy idea, but we don't have artists too because art and culture belong to everyone and when I meet with Pamela and when I go to the theater, she makes you feel a part of the theater.  You are not a cultural operator. It's not your job, but you feel a part of this place. When you go to the Massimo Theater, to the Opera Lyrica House, you feel a part. This way of making people feel belong to these places. It's the only way to give much more strength to cultural activity and to the whole sector of art and cultures, because if the whole population feel that the art is very important for us, they will do anything to defend it. It's the same thing that we as doctors live in this space in Italy, because as doctors, we didn't have a lot of easy period working in a country like Italy. It's not an easy job to be a general practitioner or a surgeon or whatever, but in this crisis, a lot of people understood that we are saving the country. We are saving health of people and I want you to understand that I think that artists and cultural activity will save our society. That's why I will do everything to try to give them the whole support that they need and they need a lot of it. May I? What? Yes, please. Go ahead. What Adamus said is not the present, the future, it's even the past. In 1987, Pina Bausch, coming from Wuppertal, became Palermeton, felt the soul of the city, shared our life as she produced the Palermo. It was in 1987. It means the wall fell down two years before the wall fell down in Berlin. It was a prophecy. It was a Palermeton prophecy that was just produced by a German, a German artist. They tie love, they will never stop to cry remembering my love of Pina. I wish just to say that the past, the future, and the present try to live together. Therefore, there is not only a mayor, a deputy mayor for Cartres, there is a deputy mayor, is a lady, for school and job, school and job. Just to send the message that we have to go to promote the school outside the classes, to promote the job inside the classes. I mean, this is a cultural change. Another deputy mayor, another deputy mayor is very old, is 26 years old, 26 years old, is very, very old. It means that when I started to be a mayor, he was not born, he was not born. And so, you know what I did, just speaking with the father and the mother, because you did not know what I did when I was mayor. Now, his deputy mayor is taking care of young people and innovation, young people and innovation. Incredible. Incredible also for us. This is what we call cultural change for us. It is normal. No one protested when a Palermeton born in Nazareth, because Adam was born in Nazareth, of course, he and another person were born in Nazareth, not only he came from Nazareth, even Jesus Christ. Jesus was born in Bethlehem. Yes, but we have the hospital in Nazareth. The family came from Nazareth. Yeah, but they have problems in the hospital in Nazareth, so they went to Bethlehem. And let us discuss about Jesus Christ with Adam that is Muslim, of course. If I can, I want to tell you that what we have really understood, I hope, in this situation of COVID is that we are saved together because we are part of a greater whole. And that was what I really wanted to do with the Biondo theater, to create synergy with all institutions of the town. For instance, the most one, the most important is with the university. We have a lot of students now that are in our, in our internship in our theater.  We have students of Bosaart, the Belle Arti, they are designing the scenery and there for us and so on and so on. But now we have just signed the convention two days ago. Our school theater will be the first university diploma of Italy. And from October, we will start in October and we are very happy with the students in the morning. I mean, there are many theater universities, first diploma for... Frank, a little bit. No, it's just, there is a remarkable theater school connected to the town of Biondo and they study, but now as of this new agreement, which thanks to Pamela's initiative, they will receive a university, it will be a university level diploma, because you don't have arts universities in Italy. So it's the first time that the theater course will be recognized on a university level diploma. It's extraordinary. And you also put together theaters... We have the double diploma. And you also put together theaters in Sicily, right, to try to create a union. Does it happen in corona time? Yes, during this period. No, we started before, many months before, to call the other theaters, the other town, to create the association of Sicilian theater, because there are many regions like Tuscany and so on. They have a circuit, an association of the theaters. And that can be a very good job for Sicily, because you don't pass through the Sicily. You have to come from the other parts of Italy and it's very expensive. So if you invite a production from Milan, for instance, if you have to pay a lot of aeroplanes and the track for Sicily and so on, it can be very good if you have an association of theater. Now you can divide all this money and so on. But also because a lot of theaters of little town, they are closed for many years. So if we create an association now, it's the moment to reinforce the base, because especially in the autumn, we don't know if we can have some invitation, some invite productions, so guest productions. The mobility, we don't know what it will be in the autumn, special for our production to go out. So maybe it's a good moment to reinforce our situation. And we are quite ready to sign the document. We are just 15 theaters for the moment. In a time when theaters, one second, but in a time when theaters are closing down in the US, the richest country of the world, when it looks like everything is in danger, there's a town in Italy where you think of reopening theaters during corona time, that theaters that have been closed for decades. We have a mayor who has been moved by his theater piece of a dense choreographer that was important for a vision for his city. So it's a foundational myth almost to have theater. If we always think, what does theater really do? Then I guess you can look at Palermo and say this made the mayor or the future mayor, or he was already mayor, think. May I say that for us, the lockdown was not, we had not a lockdown. We had the pregnancies.  They are part of the dream, dream workers who walk in what you dreamed up inside you. What voice was it that told you I should become a politician? I should change the city and I want to have art as part of it. Where does that come from? I am just to tell stories, not only to say words. Everything for me started on 6 January 1980. And since January 1988, the president of Sicilian region, the governor of Sicily, was killed by politicians and by mafios. He was named the president. Yes, I'd say. He was killed and the name was Piersanti Mattarella, the president of Sicilian region. By the body of the president, there were two persons, the brother of Piersanti, Sergio Mattarella, a professor of the president. Professor of the university, my colleague, were in the same department. He was teaching parliamentary law. I was teaching constitutional law. And I was the legal advisor of Piersanti, the killer, the president of Sicilian region. And Piersanti was assistant university of my father, because my father was the kind of the faculty of law in the city of Palermo. And he was a young lawyer in the law office of my father. When I went from the second floor to the first floor, the palace of my family, just with my father, I met every time the young Piersanti Mattarella. When he started to be involved in politicians, he stopped to be a lawyer, giving me a terrible positive lesson. You cannot be a lawyer and be involved in politics. Otherwise, you will be in conflict of interest. And I followed the example of Piersanti. When I started to be involved in politics, I was a rich lawyer. A rich lawyer. But I decided to be a poor mayor, because I think that if you are free, you can defend the freedom of everybody. By the body of the killer, the president, I was obliged to be involved in politics.  You are young. You are not 30 years old. You don't know the politician. You have never met the politician of Piersanti. You are pretty crazy. I occupied the faculty of law where my father was the dean. Then I went to live two years in Germany, where I occupied the faculty of law where the dean was not my father, so no proper family in Germany. And I could not say no. And I candidate in the first election, Sergio Matterelle at the time professor in the university, candidate, the city council member, to vote for me as mayor, because at that time, the mayor was elected inside the body of the council members. And I started to show my experience. So when Sergio Matterelle was elected president of the Italian Republic, is our president of the Italian Republic, I called him and said, Sergio, mission accomplished. You are the president of the Italian Republic, and the mayor of Palermo and the mafia doesn't govern any longer the city of Palermo. So you can understand why I cannot have a compromise with the mafia, because it should be against my life, against the sense of my life.  I'm lucky in saying mission accomplished. Not completely accomplished. Now I'm sorry, but I have to leave because at seven o'clock, I have an appointment because I have to fight against some friend of mine, the minister of the Italian government. I have to fight against them, the name of my party. My party is Palermo, and the name of Palermo, I fight against everybody, but I am really happy because I convinced, I say to all the 1390 mayors and citizens, I'm the president of the 390 mayors and citizens, put in Catania, Tormina, Montreal, and Cefolo, and they all accepted my vision. And we have the same party, the party for the mayor as the name of the city, the government. So we are always together in the name of our city, and I don't take care, in this case, I don't take care of what say this party or that party. So in five minutes, I will fight against my friend who are the national government in name of my party, in name of my city. Thanks for your attention. Sorry, but I really, really, really have to leave. Yeah. No, thank you so, so much for joining us and for sharing this. Congratulations on your work. What a great example. And if anybody who questions what good government can do, how government can change, look at the city of Palermo, look at your work, and also how you integrate the arts. It's a role model. And where art flourishes, where art is a center stage, it's a good sign for the city, for the community. It's an indicator that things are going the right way. And that I'm not saying that it's a good way of taking care of things before you go. And maybe then I ask everybody, what do you feel, Lio Luca, what do we have to focus? What do you say to our listeners or to young artists? What should we think about? What is important to keep in mind in this time of Corona? I think that what is important for an artist is to be free from fear, to be free from fear. It means not to imagine what the people wait, they do, but do what they feel to do. I think the real artist has to be free. When the artist is not free, there is no artist. And I think that we are building new humanism. So I hope that the artist will be all crazy, all crazy, all crazy. I hope that the artist will be all crazy. So I hope that all the males will be crazy, of course. In the sense I said before, and just speaking about new humanism, I just was watching my iPhone because I received really human information. My granddaughter, 18 years old, the daughter of my daughter lives in Groningen in Holland. She's 18 years old. She was just in a school of art. The school of art was closed. And she remained in quarantine. She is in quarantine in Groningen since three months. Now she told me that she was accepted in the University of Paris. So she will go not in Palermo, but in Paris. But she will be Palermitan even in Paris. I'm sure. So thanks a lot. Thank you. And congratulations. Thank you. Atam, what do you think? Thank you. Thank you. It's a great honor to have you with us and really all our respect to you and your life's work and whatever. See you in Palermo. See you in Palermo. Yes, I will come. Exciting and safe. Exciting and safe. Don't forget. And even not expensive. Even not expensive. Okay. We will be there. It's a great city and an important city to support. Atam, what do you think artists talk about? What do you say to young artists, but in general to our listeners in this time? What do you focus about? Well, we are exciting and safe and we are a lot sunny. We are sunny like California and even more. What I really want to say to all artists, mainly young ones who are facing this period is to be hopeful because you have to be free from fear, but you have to have hope. Because it's only hope with hope that you can build new ideas and new visions. You can be mad. You can be crazy. But if you don't have hope in you, you can't go anywhere. So to be hopeful because we have already demonstrated in these years and these decades and centuries that the history of humankind is always evolving and going ahead. So just it's a new way of dealing with things. It's a new way of seeing things and living things. And as I always said, art has been always the key that permits us to see things differently. And I think that artists are showing us and will show us how to cope with this period in a different way. And I'm a good observer of their activities. And I have to say that since my politician role is to deal with them and as the mayor said, you want them even more crazy and dealing with a lot of crazy people make you very happy because it makes me feel like in my family. And I'm very in this context. It's very important to understand that when things are changing, it's not the end of the world. It's a new world. It's a big thing. Elizabeth, since you have been such a faithful listener also to our series and you have been such a great worker in the field of cultural diplomacy, from your experience, how do you go through this and what do you feel is of significance in this time? I did want to say that I expected to remain in the background, but I can't resist because all of these extraordinary things that we've been hearing today, they are true. I'm a little bit on the inside and on the outside because I'm very honored to be a teammate with Pamela and be consulting on some international projects. And I was absolutely stunned having lived and worked in other cities in the world, primarily Paris, that there's this incredible feeling of humanism, of acceptance. I really, when I'm in Palermo, I don't see the seams between one neighborhood and another or one community and another. And if anything, Pamela was a little bit modest and underestimated some of the things that the theater is doing. So as for the future, first of all, I think there's a degree of flexibility in the way they are working at Teatro Biondo and the city of Palermo, thanks to the mayor and thanks to the deputy mayor for culture, where it's really the question of adapting and not leaning on the past, but using this very difficult, challenging period to be an opportunity. And I'm very excited to see what will come. But the courage and the energy and the solidarity that I have already witnessed in Palermo, and I certainly know that I will see when I return, is this says, I think a great deal, and I've been listening to many of your Segal talks, and the contrast between one country and another is, as you pointed out, is very, very pronounced. Our dream is to go deep in our identity, in our past, in our culture, but just to grow up and to meet all the world, even in theater. We are connecting with many situations, all the Europe, all the world, thanks to Elisabeth, that is our collaboration. She accepted to collaborate with us. And so with Wuppertal, with Pina Bausch Foundation, with Kartuscheri, Ariane Manuschkin in Paris, with Eugenio Barba in Denmark, and so on. So we are creating something very interesting. It's very exciting. No, that is sensational and really thank you for this update. That is unexpected. We also don't really read about, in the news, or we don't hear about it at all, especially often, is in the headlines for refugee crisis and the inability of Europe of handlings, I think this is a great, great model. And again, it's impressive how governments and the arts work together. In a way, also what makes New York City great, that mayors have such a great respect. Bloomberg, of course, was a mayor that put also the culture in the city. He understood that it's no longer the city of manufacturing, no longer the city just of Wall Street alone. It's also a lifestyle city and you need something to glue it all together. Tony Kushner said New York is the melting pot that never really melted. And we have real problems there. And perhaps Palermo is finding a way to melt and to combine and to do some alchemy to create a gold out of all these ingredients that are there. And I certainly will also go to do that. But it was moving to hear how significant it is for a mayor to have the arts that he goes to theater openings that Pina Bausch's work was so foundational to his vision and that you really are inventing something new that you imagine a city where someone from India or from Pakistan is part of the vision and that is not a threat, but as something to reinvent as they it was the great thinker who no longer with us, but who was also at the grud center said so many of problems are just failures of imagination because we fail to imagination to imagine a possible world and theater helps us. And of course, you and Palermo, you're imagining a different world. And it seems to be working just by simple looking at COVID cases and seeing that the government is making contributions to make that city better. And here in the U.S., as around the world, it might not be the mafia and the cliches of the Italian ones, but there are people out there who only take advantage of others who kill for their own advantages and they have to be fought as much as you look at it over six terms and over decades, it hooks courage and everybody has to go out. We all need to be part of the change we see, you know, with the same energy and dedication. So really, thank you for joining us and Pamela. Thank you, Frank. Thank you, Lisa. Thank you, Adam. Yeah. And tomorrow we will have a Monty Python would say now to something completely different. The great Richard Foreman, the great director of avant-garde theater in the world who also created completely new forms who said it's impossible to express with words what we really see, that we have to find different ways, new forms to understand reality, to transcend it. And he is a great master who now works mostly with film or video from his home. He will join us. Significant also inspiring and great Thomas Oberender from Berlin who runs the Berlin Festival, a significant undertaking. Not only he overlooks the Martin Kropius Museum, his immersion festival. He overlooks the Berlin Theater from the Berlin Film Festival, the Jazz Festival and others. And he's a great writer on the cultural and artistic developments in Europe. He is very close to the earth and I can't wait to hear from him how he experienced this time. But also what he sees, what new forms will be developing and he always is looking for them even before a corona time, but I will be great to hear what's on his mind. And Phillip Howe will come with Giordana, a great New York playwright and to hear an update from the theater scene in New York and reflections on how this experience, we are still the epicenter at the moment in the world, of the coronavirus with so so many death people and we don't know can it really be opened? What will happen if we go the German way or other ways? How will fatalism be? It's the healthcare is catastrophic, the problems that were existing are wide wide open and in Latin America as we are learning it's only starting and New York is so connected to every place on the planet. So it is really uncertain what will come but as Atan said, let's not be afraid of the uncertainty of the future, this is a chance we can reinvent it. So I thank you all for listening, it was an inspiring and also significant talk and it does show why theater, why the arts is important, we don't always feel we have to justify ourselves but a session like today makes it clear how significant it is and that working societies, working cities, working communities see it as a given to have a cultural present as the great playwright Goethe said, the German man, you have a house, you want to have nice colors, you want to have nice paintings and furniture, do you really need it? You don't. If you have a partner in life, you want someone who is attractive, who you feel close to and the same as with cities and countries, you have to have art and you have to have culture and you have to have a livable situation, you have forms that work and old forms that do not work, we have to get rid of and we all have to be part of creating new ones. So thank you all for listening, thanks for howl around to thank you friends, thea and Vijay and Travis and the Seagal team, Andy and Sanyan and hope you will tune in tomorrow for Richard Foreman and thank you all in Lidibus, especially of course for putting this together, Pamela, all the best for your work and thank you Frank to you. Thank you, thank you, bye bye, bye bye.


We demystify what goes on behind the therapy room door. Join us on this voyage of discovery and co-creative conversations. This is The Therapy Show, behind Close Doors podcast with Bob Cook and Jackie Jones. Welcome back to the next episode, episode 139 of The Therapy Show, Behind Close Doors with the wonderful Mr. Bob Cook, as always, and myself, Jackie Jones. And what we're going to be talking about this time, Bob, is when intimacy and closeness can be unsafe in the therapy room. Oh gosh, that's a big subject. I'm glad I put my birthday jumper on for it. My wife bought me this lovely jumper I've got now for this cold weather we've got. And it's one of my favourite jumpers. And when I'm thinking of this subject empathy and nurture, and this jumper's very warm. But just say the title again, so I've got it again. When intimacy and closeness can be unsafe in the therapy room. What a wonderful title. Yeah. And happens a lot what we're talking about here, because I think therapists and counselors and people listening to this podcast may vastly disagree with me, I don't know. But I think that therapists or counselors who believe that empathy and nurture is all that's needed for a successful outcome. I think they're very naive. Yeah. And I think therapists or counselors who believe that empathy and nurture is the prerequisites for psychotherapy, maybe. But you know, better way to look at all this, I believe, is that all the clients that come in the room will have their own unique histories. Yes. And in somebody's unique history, being vulnerable and allowing themselves to perhaps action their desire for closeness and intimacy might have been very dangerous in their history. Yes. Yeah. And they may find it so hard. And rightly so, given the context I've just explained here, to be able to show any new vulnerability that might lead to any closeness and intimacy with the therapist, because the way they survived was exactly the opposite. And it's our understanding of what intimacy and closeness means as well. Well, that's a little bit more because I think this is the key. Yeah. Well, intimacy can be potentially, we can have sex and we can be intimate and things like that. Or being intimate is showing vulnerability of our upbringing and our past and being open to sharing and things like that. And the closeness aspect of it, bringing another person into our world can be seen as being intimate and close. Or not. Exactly. Or not. Yeah. Because it's too dangerous. When I do that, I get hurt. Yeah. So the therapist or the naive therapist who thinks that every client that comes to the door has the capacity for intimacy and closeness, I think is going down the wrong street. Yeah. Yes. And in fact, can lead to a therapist closing down completely. Yeah. Because again, depending on what personality type they are, some clients dipping in and out of contact, never mind intimacy and connection. Just the contact can be very hit and miss sometimes with some clients. Yeah. Let me tell you a story. It came actually from a colleague of mine who I've known for many, many years. And we were discussing artificial intelligence. Oh, I love that. In about seven months ago, I was driving along in the car and Channel 4, I think it was on the radio or something like Channel, it must have been Channel 4, was talking about the advent of artificial intelligence. And was talking about using robots with artificial intelligence to take the place of counselors or psychotherapists. And why that hadn't happened extensively was because they were struggling with what? Developing what they called is the people, the tech people, empathy chips. Yeah. Okay. Now let's go forward to where we are from last week when I was talking to my colleague. He's from Canada and he was talking about fact that in a certain part of Canada, which part of he was talking about, they actually had started to replace some of the counselors with artificial, with robots with artificial intelligence and had developed a so-called empathy chip. Wow. And he was talking about this story about a robot stroke counselor who was working with somebody who was depressed and, you know, was displaying all the empathic transactions, if you like. And then the robot had a malfunction. In other words, it stopped. Yeah. And it wasn't because they had the empathy check, it was just because of something else. And then all of a sudden, the client was left without anyone because the robot had malfunctions. Yeah. And this client who had had weeks and weeks and weeks of nurturing and empathy, suddenly, had a diet of starvation and they went away and killed themselves. Wow. Yes. I think that's one area where I don't think robots or machines can ever take our place. I think our jobs are quite safe for the future. Well, therapy is not all about empathy and nurturing. No.  In fact, it may be the opposite. Yeah. I think it's important to have a template of empathy and nurturing. Of course I do. But if you were just always going to give empathy and nurturing, there's something that you don't anymore for whatever reasons. Empathy and nurturing for me is quite triggering to be fair. You want to say a bit more about that? Because I didn't have it in my upbringing, so I find it really uncomfortable. I don't actually know how to be around somebody that's really empathic and nurturing to us. So it can be quite triggering for me. Therefore it could be quite unsafe. Yeah. Because it would take you to a younger place where perhaps things weren't so good. Absolutely. It can be quite, it feels quite manipulative to me when somebody's being very nurturing. It feels manipulative. Another story for you. I think about 30-odd years ago. I was, this is before Mamitz. This would be 35 years ago. But I remember a colleague of mine, another therapist, I was a young therapist, came to visit me and I had a house in, still in Manchester then, in Fallowfield. And we walked up to the curry houses in the curry mile. And we had to go through some back-end streets, if you like. So we were walking up there. It was nighttime. And suddenly out of the blue came at least three or four black Mariahs. Do you know what they are? Yeah. They're police fans. Yeah. And it was just like a war zone in some ways. The dashing around and police was dashing out of their blue Mariahs. And they managed to grab hold of these two youths. Both of us was frozen in the spot, looking at all this lot. And then one of the police and bundled the young lad into the black Mariah. And the lad started to fight going in. So the policeman said, do you want to go in the hard way or do you want to go in the soft way? And the guy said, I want to go in the hard way. Because at least I know what I'm expecting then. Wow. Yeah. So when we talk about nurture, we talk about empathy, the way you're talking about it, the usual response for people who have had that, the type of history that you're talking about is what's the trick? Yeah. In other words, all this empathy in nurture, it's just I'm going to expect, I expect the worst. I'm going to prepare myself for the worst. This is just maybe a trap. Yeah. Absolutely. So when we're talking about it, you know, when intimacy and closeness can be unsafe in the therapy room, it potentially is it feels unsafe to some clients. Yeah. That's the point I'm making. Yeah. And can reinforce even more their defensive coping mechanisms, more concretized, and therapy will take longer. Yeah. Yeah. Because it's kind of like the not the physicalness of being close to somebody, as in the proximity, it's what that closeness represents for us psychologically. Yeah. Absolutely. If you've been, if you've been brought up on a meal of starvation, yeah. Yeah. Hard then to get a full meal. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. You won't believe it or your stomach is strong. That's it. You won't be able, you won't be able to handle it. Absolutely. Yeah. So, you know, the other side of it is being, you know, having the intimacy and the closeness physically in the therapy room and protecting ourselves against that professionally. Yeah. And so it's okay to have a prerequisite or template of empathy and nurture. But there's a lot more to helping a person with their developmental deficits, their neglected history, their toxic structure. You have to have different ways of attuning and involving yourself with clients. Yeah. Because you touched on earlier on, I think you used the word vulnerable, being vulnerable and things. And I think, you know, if a client is being vulnerable in the therapy room, often it comes with shame. So, you know, they might have a session where they've opened up and they've been really vulnerable and everything. And then the next, they come in and they're completely shut down and closed. I was listening to a, the new Robbie Williams documentary, which has come on, I don't know if you've seen it or not. Yeah. Yeah. I watched the first three out of the four episodes and he was talking about shame. And he was talking about sometimes when he was on stage with 60,000 people in Nebworth or wherever he was. And he was having a panic attack or palpitations. He would feel, well, not with the audience, usually after he would feel a lot of shame. Because he triggered his own history. In fact, all the nurturing and the vibes and everything else at one level is very good. But when he's looking back at his history, often shame comes up. Yeah. And guilt. Yes. Yeah. And when you're talking about nurturing empathy and all these sorts of things, which are likely important in the world of curative health, we must also remember that all individuals have unique histories. And you start a podcast in a very good way, which is, what do we mean by intimacy? And what do we mean by closeness? And for one person, it might mean X. Yeah. And for another person, it might mean Y. And we haven't even talked yet about the therapist's character transfers to intimacy and closeness. Yeah. Well, you don't mind now, right? I have a reaction to it. There we are. There we are. And what they mean by intimacy and what they mean by closeness and what they mean by vulnerability. Yeah. I think I always tend to check in with the clients as well, when we're, when we've gone to a deep place where we are kind of crossing the boundaries of, you know, vulnerability and things like that to just check in and make sure and not have an expectation that they're okay with it. Absolutely. You must, that is really, really important that you don't live in the world of assumptions. Yeah. If you live in the world of assumptions, then therapy will invariably go down the wrong road. No, it's true. Absolutely. If you live in the world of assumptions without this checking in that you're talking about and the phenomenology of the inquiry, therapy will invariably go down the wrong. I tell you which road it will take. It'll take the road the therapist wants the therapy to go down rather than a bilateral, tuned, involved therapy. Yeah. And then all of a sudden the therapist is working with one contract and thinks they're working with another contract and the client is somewhere else completely. And again, you know, I know I probably say this every second episode that we have, it's like the matrix in the therapy room. There are so many different levels and things that, you know, there's you in the room and then there's the client in the room and we've all got our own histories and everything. You know, when you were talking about AI earlier on, all that I was thinking about was how can a robot read between the lines? Because often I think that's what I do in the therapy room. You know, what they're saying doesn't always match the body language. I think it's so important that we realise what you've just said because you're right. It is a bit like the matrix in some ways. There's lots of listed avenues we can go down, a lot of traps that have been set, a lot of testing that's been set. You know, we've got multiple cells in terms of parental interjections and younger parts of the self and all this is going on at the same time. And somehow we need to stay connected as much as we can and involved as much as we can and enquire as much as we can so that we can stay at least in the same dimension with the client. It actually takes a lot of skill. Yeah. I spent my first training for a very long time in transactional assets, years and years and years. I don't know how long, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, probably at least 15 or 16 years before I learned the tools of enquiry, involvement and achievement and thank goodness I did. Thank goodness I started to learn, you know, these tools to allow me to go to the developmental places I needed to go. Without them, I'm not sure where I'd be in the matrix. I do know something though. If I live in the land of assumptions, we'll go nowhere. Yeah. I think that's a really valid point that, you know what I mean? As you were saying that, I was trying to think, I qualified in, well I started seeing clients in 2014 so it's nearly coming up to 10 years now and I'd probably say that it's only the last couple of years that I've been okay to go deeper with clients. I think for the first two or three years at least, I only wanted it to be surface stuff. You know, I found it difficult to go at deeper levels with them, confidence wise I think. Oh, I can certainly think that's true and I went a long, long journey of a psychotherapy training process and a trainer until I met somebody who really showed me how to work at deep levels. So, I think it sort of takes a long time to work out in the matrix where we both are. Yeah. But no empathy, well, where we started right, you know, about empathy, nurturing, intimacy, closeness. It's not that they can be on the safe traps, but I think it's really important that we see each client in front of us as a unique spirit with their own particular stories where intimacy and closeness was the last thing they desired or wanted. It might be what the therapist wants, which is a different story altogether. Yeah, because I suppose at some point, does our ego get in the way that we do want the client to be intimate and close in a psychological way because then it makes us feel like we're doing a good job. Yeah, also we might believe that's where a client needs to go and is a sign of health. Yeah. I mean, one of my belief systems is about contact and how do we contact a person and how do we look for interruptions to contact. Why that's so important is I believe that contact or lack of contact is a bit like oxygen. Without contact, TA words will say positive strokes or negative strokes, people will go psychotic or they won't have a particularly healthy process in life. So is that equal to intimacy and closeness? No, I don't think so. I think I like to think about contact and how people find it hard to contact people or they may contact people through negative process rather than positive processes. And that's how they survived or didn't survive in life. And we need to look at how we can contact people in an attuned involved way, which they can bear rather than turn away from. Yeah, I think that's a really key point that it's not overwhelming for them. Yeah. Because if they start to feel overwhelmed, they'll shut down. Yeah.  And I think as an exposter carrier, that was one of the things that I became consciously aware of quite early on. You know, a lot of the looks after kids that we had, it was layers of protection. You know, they didn't want to be intimate or necessarily have a connection because one, they thought they were betraying the parents if they made a connection to me. But also it was unsafe. In what way? Again, it's that thing that if you make a connection or you show a vulnerability that it will be taken advantage of. Or you'll be tricked. Yeah, it's a trick somehow. And these are really important things for therapists to think about.  I don't want to go in ramshod and try and break them all down. Oh, no, I think that's probably the worst thing that a therapist or counsellor can do. Yeah. Because first of all, who are you to have the right to even do that? Absolutely. And secondly, it'll be against all the contracts you will have made. And thirdly, nothing will come of it except that you will help the client repeat history. And this, I want to say, ladies and gentlemen, is why therapy takes so long because we all have so many layers of protection that need to be surrendered. I don't know what the word is, but we need to work through them somehow. Yeah. Yeah, for a developmental relational psychotherapy, the way we're talking. Yeah. The therapy will take time. And when I mean time, I don't mean days, weeks, months. I mean, more like years. Yeah. Yeah. But it's worth it, Bob. Priceless. Yeah. Absolutely priceless. And I think what we're talking about in this podcast is priceless. Yes. Actually, very important for therapists and counsellors to think about when working with clients. Another wonderful one. I'm really looking forward to the next one, Bob. Oh, gosh, what is it? What is it, Jackie? This is a surprise, but it's not an induction in the therapy process. Oh, Jackie, another wonderful title. I'm doing things about them. No, most seriously, I know I put this title in because, well, I won't take the thunder away from this podcast, but there's a lot to talk about. Yeah. And I'm really interested in this. And what's the second one? The second one or the week after will be the importance for the therapist to think developmentally. Oh, well, of course, that's a perfect podcast for me and you to talk about. But I'm looking forward to the not induction one, basically, because it was part of my training, well, my third training, actually, and I found so much importance in it. So it's a really important podcast that I'm going to, I hope both you and I find talking about this useful as well as the people listening to us. So I'm looking forward to that. I'll have to go to the recesses of my mind to see what comes up with the hypnotic induction bit. So until next time, Bob, take care. Yeah, take care. Bye bye. Bye. You've been listening to The Therapy Show, behind closed doors podcast. We hope you enjoyed the show. Don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review. We'll be back next week with another episode.


Watch that. That's a Michelle Obama arm about to happen. Chili is the quintessential American comfort food. It's comforting, easy, and delicious. It's elementary. Do you want to know what makes chili chili? I'm going to show you. I'm Kisha Harris. I'm an editor here at the Spruce Eats, and today I'm making chili three ways. Classic American, vegetarian, and green chili verde. We're going to start with the classic American chili. This is the chili. When you've worked hard all day and you can get home and you have those chili feels, all you need is like four ingredients and you've got the thing in the pot and done in like 20 minutes. So we're going to take a little bit of vegetable oil just to get the onion sweated out.  This is where the chili begins. Now listen, I want to talk to you a little bit about building flavors. It's not just about throwing stuff into the pot. It is about taking your time, listening, get that incorporated. We don't want color on it. We just want it to come out. And in order to help the water kind of come out and give a little flavor, I want to start seasoning my stuff now. So just a little pinch of salt. I'm going to add a little bit more oil because it's a little bit dry for me. And I'm also going to add some pepper to this. Two teaspoons of chili powder. And this is called blooming. It's really important if you're like me and you have spices in your cup that have been there for a hot minute. You want to wake them up. You want them to come alive. And then you see this beautiful color that's happening in here. That's all flavor. That's the foam that's happening at the bottom of the pan. Great. So now we've got, see, that's the sign. That's the sign right there. And here's where the ground beef comes in. It's 80-20. That means it's 20% fat. You can of course use a leaner ground beef if you'd like.  You want all the paint to be gone. And so now instead of the meat going in and then us adding seasoning afterwards, the meat is beginning with tons of spice and seasoning. I love chili. I love chili. Chili feels are, it's a feasting of chili powder and a comfort food hug. And it keeps so well. Like you can double this batch if you want to and stick it in the freezer. Now we're adding the other star to chili. American chili is the kidney bean. We're going to add those beans. I like to get them incorporated. Everybody needs a minute. Listen, the salt is up to you. This is all no salt. You could really measure it yourself. But I really, salt adds flavor. Don't be afraid of it. Now we're going to take this can of diced tomatoes every bit. Listen, people worked hard to put these tomatoes in a can. And then we're going to add a can, eight ounce can of tomato sauce. You need both because you need the liquid to work with the fat of the meat and kind of come together into one product. And I'm going to add a little bit more black pepper. Now listen. Your girl is done. It's, it's done. It's boiling now. And we just want it to take a little power nap, a little disco nap while we tend to other things. So let's put the lid on. And we're going to reduce the heat to low. All right. So we have that classic American chili happening, brewing away. It's going to be good. But let's move on to vegetarian chili. This is a great recipe for all you vegetarians, non-vegetarians, omnivores, and just people who just love vegetables. So we're going to take a little bit of vegetable oil, two onions. I'm an onion person. I love onions. I mean caramelized onions. I like fried onions. I like any type of onion.  I want to hear a little bit more sound. I want to hear my food talking to me. I wanted to say, Hisha, I'm ready. Let's make this happen. I start with onions because they have the most water of all the aromatics. And so I want that water to start to come out and I want it to start to get translucent and caramelized. And it takes a little bit longer than other vegetables do. So I'm going to put in probably about a quarter teaspoon of salt. And the other thing that I really want to encourage you to do is just don't cook, taste, listen, smell, all of the things. Be engaged in your cooking, you know. It's going in your body. Talk to it and be with it.  Okay, so now let's talk about that sofrito. That's sofrito action again, creating the flavor from the beginning. I now in here have the onions and the oil and the salt and the pepper. And now I'm going to move to my spices that I'm going to bloom. And let's start with the two tablespoons of chili powder. And you know what I love most about chili powder is it's almost like a sumac to me. Like it has some citrus notes to it. It's got heat. It's got spice. So as this chili powder is blooming in here, I'm going to add some other ingredients. I'm going to add cayenne and I'm going to add cumin. Now we don't want to get it going too long, but now look at this sofrito. At this point, this is all lovely and this is what we add to garlic. Garlic needs like a minute.  You just want it to actually season your seasoning. So again, here we go. We're building flavors step by step in cooking things turn brown and things get all carbolized and delicious. That's what happens on the bottom of the pan and that is all flavor. It is concentrated flavor. This is when we start to make the sucker. Vegetarian. Okay. I'm going to add some bell peppers. Now, I love beans. I love beans. Black beans, I make sometimes I make a rice and bean situation that I absolutely adore. But this is when you can decide what protein you want to put in. It could be meat substitute. It could be tofu or seitan or a meat alternative. And so you really can make it your own. Okay. I mean, can we just, gorgeous, the color, all of that. Now, can of corn. We are not going to drain this. We're going to use the liquid because actually we need to deglaze the bottom of the pan just a little bit. Deglazing means that all of that fond we talked about on the bottom of the pan that looked like it was burned or just looked like it was too brown. That's the flavor. We want to bring it up. We want to create a little liquid that will loosen it and ease it up up off of the bottom of the pan. So now what is chili without tomato product? I'm using tomato sauce here because this is a quick dish and we don't need tomatoes to break down. We just needed to have some substance and some depth and tomato sauce does that. The last thing we're going to add is dried oregano. And if it's older oregano, you know, you want to again release those flavors. And so you just don't want to put it in. You actually want to get aggressive with it. Now, as gorgeous as the color is for this chili, you can do more. This palette here is just the beginning. You can add zucchini. I would do diced carrots in here. And it could be anything. Any seasonal vegetable, you could finish this with spinach, baby spinach even. Oh my gosh, the other thing that I did when I was testing this recipe and I had leftovers, I took it to the beach. Since it has no meat product in it, it became a salsa. Get some tortilla strips, cold, put it in the cooler. Perfect. Perfect. So now classic American. We have our vegetarian chili. I'm going to turn it down to low. I'm not going to cover it and it's going to cook for about 20 minutes. And now let's move on to the done data. White turkey chili, their day. Let's go. This is for people that tomatoes are not their jam. No tomato product. We are going to use a Dutch oven for this recipe. Why a Dutch oven? I just think it looks great and we have more volume. We're going to have like six cups of broth in there. So I've got this preheated on a medium-high heat. Feels really good and nice and hot. We're going to add some vegetable oil. I think this is two tablespoons of vegetable oil and we're going to start building the sofrito again. So in here I have one large onion and I'm going to put a little pepper in it as well. This recipe calls for a poblano or any mild chili. You could use cubanel. You could use bell pepper if you want. There's tons of chilies you can ironically use for chili. And there's too many to go through. But if you're really nerdy like me, you'll go to the Spruce Eats and you'll see a great piece we have on different types of chilies and on heat levels. And at this point, since it's going to take a while, I am going to add in the minced garlic. This is for cloves of minced garlic. And listen, I love garlic. I have a problem with garlic. I'm a friend. Okay? I don't know how people that don't like garlic can make food without garlic. It's a sex. And here, look, use your discretion at this. I think they should be a little softer and it might take a minute. It might take a minute. I'm going to put the lid on so it can just go a little faster. And we're going to just let that go for a little bit so that they'll start to break down a little bit. I'm not an exceptional baker. I set it right there to you. Lauren is a much better baker. I will never ever tell her though. Say it to the camera. This could be a bake. Okay. But I cook with feeling. I cook with all of my senses. You can't just follow a recipe blindly and not be in your experience of what is happening. All right. See, this is what I'm talking about. So now all the liquid is starting to come out of the vegetables and they're all marrying together. So onion and poblano peppers and they haven't really broken down. They're still verdant. They're still green, which I really appreciate about that. I would even, let's even do this. Let's even taste it for the salt level because this might be the only chance that we get. The salt did exactly what I needed it to do. It's not salty, but you get all the flavors of the vegetables. Now here we're going to add a pound of turkey meat. So it's lighter in color. It's leaner than beef. It takes on the flavor of everything else. It doesn't have such a strong flavor. Gosh, this smells so good. I'm going to add a little bit more salt because again we're adding a new element to the dish. We're building these flavors up and I'm going to add a little bit more crushed black pepper. You know, it's all about, it's a poblano-based but this pepper has another dimension of what peppery heat is. Now here's the optional part. I need to get a beer. Will you pour me a cup of beer? It's never a bartender. I told you good hop will help. It's hard to find. Does foam count? No, it does not count as that. That's fine. Well, thanks so much. Cheers. I'll come back once I can eat stuff. All right, so now what we're going to do is we're going to add a cup of beer into the pan. You want to turn the temperature up. Let it boil for a little bit so we can kind of boil up the alcohol. We want the flavor of the beer. We don't necessarily want the alcohol. Oh my gosh, that beer brings out the sweetness of the chilies and listen, we are almost home. Now here are my other stars of this wonderful, wonderful chili. We're going to use white cannellini beans. Okay, we're almost there. We're going to final ingredient is we're going to add three cups of hominy, also known as spasole. I love it. I just love it. I could eat it like this, but we're going to finish it with six cups of chicken broth. Hopefully it will fit into the pot and then we are going to bring it to a boil. Come on, look at that. Isn't that nice? That's so pretty. It looks like our vegetarian chili is done. I'm going to cut the heat off of that so it'll be ready for our chili. First of all, I mean it's chili, yes, but look at the visual differences in this. This is giving you a hearty big bowl moment and this is giving you green, goddess chili moment. I think it's having them together is just so great for a chili party at home and tomato base, of course, which has a little bit more acid. Some people do not work well with acid. And this has cayenne as well, so this is going to be much more spicy than this one is. The great thing about all of these is that you can double them, triple them very, very easily and keep them in a pot, in a big pot on the table and people can go ham or they can go vegetarian ham. Okay, we have all three of our chilies simmering away. We just finished that beautiful chili verde. So now let's talk toppings like the fun part. Okay, so we have classic American chili. We've got vegetarian chili with corn and black beans and we have our turkey chili verde. So how do we pull it all together? Let's start at the beginning. Classic American. Remember, this is just four ingredients, four or five ingredients. For this one, we're going to keep it classic, classic American. My first thing is cheese, cheddar cheese, because it's usually hot enough to melt it. I do my dollop of sour cream, then some scallion, of course, and some cilantro. I mean, look at it. So gorgeous. So gorgeous. Okay, so now the tasting. Love this. Now, your science here. You want to go down into the sour cream, but not you want to go to the middle of the sour cream. I don't blend it around like some people do. I want to take, go down into it. See, I have a little dibble dabble of sour cream. I got some scallion. I got the chili product. Maybe put a piece of cilantro on there. All that work you did, well, not that much work. All that work you did, it comes right out in this product. And you would not think that this chili took 20 minutes to do.  It's so good. And the cheese, that little acid hit. Next up is the vegetarian bell pepper, onion, garlic, tomato, chili powder, cayenne. Watch that. Okay, tortilla strips, the pepper jack. Also, you could add some thinly sliced jalapeno, fresh cilantro, scallions. I'm going to put a little bit of sour cream on it. This is the wonderful thing about chili. Those combinations of green, white, red, yellow, purple. No, there's no purple. But you know what I mean. It's got a lot of color. The sour cream. I'm going to make sure you get cheese and scallion, cilantro in there. And you want to get a tortilla strip in there. Okay? There's the cayenne. I'm not missing the meat here. Really not missing the meat here. And that sweet, that bell pepper, that red bell pepper, really, really, really gives you the sweetness that you need to kind of round out the acid of the tomato. All right, kids. I told you, this is my favorite chili, this green chili verde. Oh, and you see how brothy it is?  Yes, ma'am. Haas avocado. You got to get a Haas avocado. We're going to take a little of this wonderful, salty, Parmesan-like Cotilla cheese. We're going to do a little scallion. I don't think this is hot enough, so I'm going to put a little bit of jalapeno on it. And then some cilantro. Now, perfect bite. A little bit of that avocado. You want to come down through the Cotilla. No, ma'am. The texture from the pizzo. Fabulous. Creaminess from the avocado, saltiness from the Cotilla, the brightness of the cilantro and the jalapeno. We did it, y'all. It's been a chili party. You made three chilies. Toppings. Cerveza. Friends. Family. Fun. Chili. It's elementary. So these are some of my favorite chili toppings. What are some of yours? Let us know in the comments below and don't forget to subscribe to The Spruce Eats. I'll see you next time.


Last night, The Financial Times unearthed a story from the 19th century documenting a historic case of misogynist behaviour by aristocratic boars at a Victorian philanthropist's club. Last night, The Financial Times broke a story having sent an undercover reporter to the president's club charity dinner at the Dorchester Hotel. The event was a strictly men-only affair, aside from the presence of hostesses. Tall, thin and pretty women were paid just £150 for 10 hours work, despite the black tie dinner raising £2 million from attendees. Instructed to wear black, sexy shoes, matching underwear and tight black dresses, the women were told to hand in their phones for the evening and sign non-disclosure agreements. Time spent in the bathroom was tightly monitored by a security guard, and an enforcement team toured the ballroom to ensure that all hostesses were keeping attendees happy at all times. So far, so ominous. And despite a full page warning in the event's brochure that guests were in no circumstances to sexually harass staff, hostesses were groped, propositioned and one woman reported that a dinehead exposes penis to her. To be honest with you, I don't know what's more obscene. The sexist behaviour, the fact that access to our foreign secretary and governor of the Bank of England can literally be bought at auction, or that Nadim Zahawi, a child protection minister, was in attendance at an event which proudly advertised its sleazeball credentials. But what I do know is this, that wherever women are disempowered, wealthy men are able to take sexual advantage. From Dominique Strauss-Kahn to Damien Green, the gatekeepers of power have shown time and again complete disregard for women's basic right to work unmolested. In the UK, one in five women has been sexually harassed at work. 58% of them never reported it to their employer, with more than half citing intimidation as the reason they didn't speak up.   The President's Club has no place in 2018, and we're calling times up on this corrupt culture of money, power and misogyny.


Adramas, the forest for forrest, the forest forrest, forest forrest, Adramas, that's a great idea, the forest forrest, I've There's been times where I sat in my hammock for days upon days upon days. I just watched the butterflies Really? Looked at the pad, you know when people lay back and look at the clouds in the sky and try to see if there's patterns and stuff like that I've done that for sure, but I've also done it to trees looking at the Silhouette of trees, trying to find patterns in silhouettes of trees.   Are you ready? Yeah The wind, the songs of birds and insects 100% and you can figure out a lot of things when you're doing that Really?   Yeah Alfie is on it bill. Look sleepy waves go to my website Do a search for bill Hicks break chichu bill Hicks break I wrote an article on that just saying What that means to me That I need to take a bill Hick breaks at times sometimes there's a couple of days Sometimes there's a couple of weeks. Sometimes it's a couple of months. Sometimes it's a longer Okay, as far as I'm concerned by the way, we should be seasonal workers, right as far as I see it. We should be We should have minimum take minimum Four to six months off a year if you can if you're going through some crazy periods, right? Because in the first three months of not working you're You're twitchy man. You've been used to going to work five days a week nine to five or whatever the hell it is Right, and you're twitchy. You don't know what to do. It takes about three months to get out of that twitchiness And then you can settle in right? It's like making sourdough bread. You gotta wait Okay


Titan fans, it's Rand Carthon here, you know, jam, excited to be here. It's amazing, I already feel the love, I feel the energy and I can't wait to get to work for you. Titan up. I would like to introduce and welcome Rand Carthon as the Tennessee Titans general manager. Jumps out is how hard and how tough this team is, but it was always about the right fit. You understand the work.


While watching movies, Virginia Tech Libraries provides many ways you can watch films, including access to over 7,000 DVDs and 100,000 streaming videos including new releases, documentaries, foreign films, classics, and more. In this video, we will give you a quick overview of the best ways to access movies through the library. The library's DVD collection and portable DVD players can be accessed at Newman Library on the Blacksburg campus. You can check out up to three DVDs from this collection using your hokey passport or your borrows card. You can search everything the library owns on the main search bar at lib.vt.edu. But there's even a faster way to find movies and other physical materials. To find a movie for a check out, head over to catalog.lib.vt.edu and search by either the title, actor, director, or subject, then locate the call number. Now we'll head over to the collection on the second floor of Newman Library. The collections is sorted in alphabetical order, so if I was looking for Spider-Man into the Spider-Verse, I would head to the S section and then look for the call number, DVD 8029. Voila! If you have any trouble locating a film, you can ask for help at the front desk. Once I have my DVDs, I'll head over to the front desk or the self-checkout stations on the second floor of Newman Library. Make sure to take off any security devices at the station located next to the front desk. Now you are ready to watch! Don't see the movie you're looking for? Did you know you can request movies for purchase? Head to catalog.lib.vt.edu and click Suggest an item for purchase. After logging in with your VT or borrows credentials, you can suggest films to add to our collection. Virginia Tech Libraries also has access to thousands of videos through online streaming. For Virginia Tech users, these videos can be watched anywhere, anytime, and with no special equipment or software. Only an up-to-date browser and their VT credentials are needed. Community users can access streaming videos on public computers inside the library. You can check out the full list of streaming sites provided by VT Libraries at bit.ly-slash-streaming-film-vt. For example, the streaming platform Swank Digital Campus allows you to watch hundreds of films requested from folks right here in the Virginia Tech community. If you have any questions about accessing movies in person or online, you can always contact the library through our Ask a Librarian feature at lib.vt.edu.