Thanks Karen. Our next reader is Lucy Coran. She's a fiction writer. She's been the Margaret Bridgeman Fellow at Bredlow and recently the American Academy of Arts and Letters John Guar, Writers Fund Rome Prize Fellow at the American Academy in Rome, which meant she got to go live in Rome for a year because that is what happens when you're Lucy Coran. She is the Associate Professor of English at UC Davis. Please welcome Lucy Coran. This cycle of life. She really needed some time off work so she took maternity leave but the baby was so much work it was like she wasn't getting any time off at all so she killed the baby. Hold on, hold on.  When she looked into her options one that apparently a zillion people had chosen and she'd never even known about was a move to the trash heaps of Navarro. That put things in perspective. No, she thought. My options are way more limited than that. Thank the good Lord above. She felt her back against the warm wall of her office. She felt her cells battling it out below deck. She ate a stale pastry. She had one more idea.  Our next performer is Dia Deer who says, I use my body and performance as a form of writing or painting, both writing and painting.  I'm interested in beauty and acceptance and perception and honesty and humanity and changing my mind. You can find more at diadeer.com and right now, Dia Deer. I am Mr. Eggman. Mr. Eggman is full of wishes. If you shake him, yellow mucus wishes come vomiting out. Mr. Eggman knits blankets out of his vomited wishes and wraps himself up, wet and slimy in them and smiles, shuts his egg eyes tight. Mr. Eggman lives in a smiling bright room. All the walls are white and they are decorated all over with elegant mirrors, large and small.  Mr. Eggman is sitting in front of one now. Mr. Eggman looks at himself and hopes to see a moonbeam. Right now, he sees a moonbeam. As a prince, I was a goodly and godly god. See my shiny shoes? Yes, you may address me as your Cleopatra Lisa, but I didn't come for much, you see. In this room, all the walls are white, the ceiling is white and the floor is white, flat white. All the same and even and matte, barely an eggshell. The edges are corners and they're all 90 degree angles. Each one fits only right angles and each is the same. A perfect clean white cube full of space, space and completely even bright light. Can you imagine?  Here we are inside. Mr.  I mean, Mr. Eggman received his moonbeam wish from mirror gazing and is off to right. Mr. Eggman is writing chapter one. One. When you cross the ocean to the west from here, Japan is only one place and it will continue to be there linearly until it is no longer. The same can be said of pick a place name and think it here. They will be where they are right now and they will be the same place in the morning. When you open your eyes in the morning, it will be the same. When you open your eyes in the morning, same reality. By that I mean Japan will be there just there and it will be Japan and then to himself. Look at me, look at me, Mr. Professor, I will learn you things. Look at all the things I have told you. See how it is the most right, the very most rightly thing ever have you. When you cross the ocean to the west from here, Japan is only one place and it will continue to be there linearly until it is no longer. The same can be said of pick a place name and think it there. They will be there right there and and now and they'll be the same place in the morning. When you open your eyes in the morning, it will be the same. When you open your eyes in the morning, same reality. By that I mean Japan will be there just there and will be Japan. We thank Mr. Eggman for sharing. Thank you, Mr. Eggman. Thank you for sharing. Please, Mr. Eggman retires to his mirrors but sees moon beams no more. Mr. Eggman thinks while staring trying to find a fix. He drinks from a glass filled with sugared cream. As a prince I was a goodly godly godly see my shiny shoes ascribe his writing.    Mr. Eggman feels a freeze. Chapter one. Japan is still to the west this morning and will continue to be until a disaster makes it otherwise. Or Japan is still to the east or north or south depending on my location. I'm serious. I have one location at one time linearly. A perfect clean white cube. Here we are inside. Mr. Eggman keeps one friend a speechless kitty, kitty no mouth. When he feels bad for not receiving his moon beam wish, he tells her everything and she listens. The box does not breathe there in small almost distinguishable shapes. Your eyes work the way they trick you when you're trying to wake yourself up from a nightmare and cannot quite open your eyes. You cannot focus on anything but you see everything in the waking world blurry between small eyelids. You cannot open your eyes. They're even shapes. Even shapes small in the distance and amalgamation of small squares and circles and primary colors. They move too slowly. They move too slowly. They move too slowly. They move too slowly. Mr. Eggman dripping in wish blank at smiles to himself. Smiling Mr. Eggman sees a mirror. Mr. Eggman sees the absence of a moon beam again. He didn't mean to look. But I am a moon beam. I'm a moon beam, a boom beam. Don't cry, Mr. Eggman. We will find your moon beams. We will find your boom beam. As a prince that was a good godly godly god see my shiny shoes.  Please do not disturb me.  Please do not disturb me. Let me sleep alongside my warm smiles.  Please do not disturb me. Allow me to sleep alongside my warm smiles. God came down and Mr. Eggman couldn't see them while he screamed. God's dance and laughed and painted elephants all over the air and walls and then the elephants came to life dancing and doing elephant things. So gods drew the elephants trees and calves and luxurious flowers and paisleys free spinning in the air. God's dancing and smiling and laughing and everything in the white room becoming a gluttonous rainbow. The gods are fearsome looking and Mr. Eggman would crack completely open to see them. There is no chance of cracking anyway. Mr. Eggman cannot see the gods dancing around him painting paisleys and elephant calves.  The gods are bodyless heads surrounded in light blue and white flames. Kitty no mouth sees everything but cannot make a sound. The room fills with tall grasses and trees the longer the gods play in an extravagant forest of glittering greens purples and blues punctuated with yellow and orange flowers springs up as the plants grow to capacity in the room. All of the light is suffocated out. Water begins to flow up from the now earth and floor. The forest room quickly fills with aquamarine water. The gods almost drown themselves the elephants and their calves. As soon as the room fills with water it drains flood drains into a quiet stream running through the middle of the glittering forest in the white box. Mr. Eggman does not notice. Mr. Eggman kills himself with his mirror game. The box is full with gods dancing and smiling tongues, lulling hair, flowing eyes rolling around in their sockets. They dance on top of dead Mr. Eggman. As the gods dance on top of Mr. Eggman shell all his yellow inside squish out. The box is gone. The forest remains and extends forever in all directions. The canopy grows high and is dense. A little moonlight filters to the floor. The air is royal purples big cats pad along the soft elvety ground and bumblebees buzz along. Jeweled elephants stand in a clearing drinking from the river stream. The remaining space hums and tinkles. Ghosts with pale white rotted flesh and missing limbs grow from evaporated mist off the stream and wave in the air like flags.  Thank you. She took her laptop into bed to look at baby animals so that the pattern was hard world, soft bed, hard computer, soft baby animals. What's inside after that was hard to tell because the telescoping stopped. She looked at baby polar bears first because that's what got it started was feeling herself floating away from the melting iceberg mainland on her lonely shard. She moved on to puppies, a particular breed she'd had as a child that her parents had gotten rid of when they moved the dog floating deeper into her past with every moment she remained alive. Her carpet was endless, but the animals were also good and wronged that she started feeling better. But just as she started feeling better, a sick feeling seeped in to cover the inside of her stomach like fur. Just keep looking at them, she told herself. It's good for you no matter why. What would her male counterpart be doing? Looking at trucks? What would her destitute counterpart be doing? Counting stars? What would her animal counterpart be doing? Breathing, breathing, breathing? Thanks. Silas is short films, music videos and web stories series have aired on MTV logo show Time and the Sundance Channel. And his second feature Sunset Story is premiered at the 2012 South by Southwest Film Festival. And he's just doing so many things. He's like directing episodes of Hudson Valley Ballers, which is totally hilarious. And he had a short film in Valencia that was absolutely a fan favorite. And he's got some new stuff that he's going to sneak peek us tonight. Please welcome Silas Howard. Three of the four walls at the Nolan Chevrolet of Rutland are made of glass. The lot holds 70 new cars spaced two feet apart in perfect rows around the dealership. Steven stares at the blue sky and the dew covered lawn at the smudge on the once clean glass and goes to fetch the dead bird thinking of a sensitive daughter at home. Back in his office, Steven moves the stack of vanilla folders with lists and plans for a business of his own. Man needs to be his own boss, a man with a plan.  He's 26. Every night, he vows to quit his job. The other salesman entered the dealership as Steven sits behind his desk learning learning the specs for new car models. Steven's brother Chuck, in spite of years on welfare, always bought a big use Cadillac every couple of years. As long as you got a car, you get a place to live. Chuck would tell his little brother. In order to sell, you must believe in the need for the thing that you're selling. Steven was one of their top salesmen. A new car smell reeks of promise, escape, power, mobility, upward or at the very least horizontal and status. Steven knows this as he convinces the prospective buyer to sit behind the wheel and close the door. But Steven also knows cars fuel if not invented dissatisfaction, enabling one to drive with no destination to feel the electrifying potential perpetual choice unanchored from train and bus schedules. Ron, the owner of the shop like Steven, a man you could trust. That's how people experienced him and made him the top salesman in charge. Ron always gave him a second chance. Matt or Maddie, as Steven called him on the other hand, was fired for far less bad behavior just the day before. Maddie's sales were down and Steven could see his confidence wane. He could hear it in his voice. Maddie started to think every new buyer was out to get him. There were complaints. Maddie's the phone rang again and Steven crossed the glossy showroom floor to answer it. I have to swing by the bank then the dentist so I won't be in today. Have Jerry do the night statements. Ron said, Sure, we have it. Steven replied. The dealership doors opened, second pot of coffee brewed. The secretary came in and smiled at Steve. Their eye contact broken by a car as it skidded into the lot. The driver going too fast, too close to the main showroom window parked sideways. When Maddie got out, he looked rearranged. Like the thoughts he'd been thinking all night physically changed his face. Steven almost didn't recognize him. Maddie walked in and demanded to see Ron the owner of the car dealership. He's out for the day, Maddie. Well, that's too bad because I drove all the way here to shoot him. Everyone stopped and then noticed the gun in Maddie's hand. It tapped against his leg, jumpy and loose like a hook trout trying to get away. He just let me go. You can't do that. You can't just let somebody go, Maddie said. I'm sure he'll talk to you, but he's not going to be in today. Steven looks him in the eye as he says this. Eight people stand in the showroom spread out around the new beige car on display. Maddie stands on one side with the gun out in front of him. A couple enters a door, click, click as they swing through and open it and then a whoosh, whoosh sound as Maddie swings around. Could it be true, Steven, how could he hear the sound of Maddie's turn? But he remembers that sound most distinctly. The couple at the door smile then register the gun and the possibility of danger out of nowhere. Whoosh, whoosh, Steven hears again. Go, Maddie yells at them, swinging the gun back to the eight coworkers standing in a half circle around the beige car. I'll let you go one by one until Ron shows up. But he's not coming in, Maddie, they tell him once again. Then I'll shoot the last person here. The Rutland police show up six cars parked around the showroom. The wide brim sheriff's hat visible behind Maddie's head and shoulders. Okay, Sue, you can go. The secretary looks at her coworkers. It's down to two people, Steven and Jerry. They gesture for her to go. Maddie paces, looks at the police cars and back at his coworkers. Steven at that moment has an overwhelming desire to protect Maddie. Maddie looks at my father. Go, he says, and tilts his head towards the door. Steven looks at Jerry. You wonder what you'll do. You know what you're supposed to do. But in reality, you have no idea each second what you're capable of. It comes down to this.  Steven walks around the car and everything slows down just like they say times elastic, it's always this way. As he passes Maddie, he pretends to stumble or was it pretend? It wasn't real either way he falls. Maddie reacts on instinct and he reaches down to help my father. Jerry moves forward and grabs his arms while Steven pins the gun against the bumper of the new car. Jerry and Steven wrestle him up against the car hood like actors on a cop show. They yell things like, drop it now. They're bad acting their own lives. The crowd out front, including the police, they watch. Stephen and Jerry wrestle Maddie who holds the gun tight. My father can't get Maddie's finger off the trigger. He said the only thing that finally made Maddie drop the gun was when he gently massaged Maddie's shoulder. Steven just rubbed Maddie's shoulders and repeated softly, it's over. It's all over. Let go. They held each other and it was the closest Steven ever felt to a man. That day, Steven was a big hero in a small town, but Ron, the owner of the car dealership, was worried to let the story out. He didn't want anyone to get any similar idea. So he made the newspaper bury it. The only difference between a hero and a fool is the outcome, my father says, finishing the story. Stubbing his cigarette out in the ashtray, the blue haze of smoke that surrounded him my whole life hangs between us. In the sunlight, it's almost beautiful. This smoke that's slowly shutting his system down. He looks into his green plastic cigarette holder. He obsessively checks his oxygen level with a clip that attaches to the end of his finger. Yeah, like they say, the only difference between a hero and a fool is the outcome. And he laughs. He reaches for another another oxycodon places dangerly places the small white tablet on his tongue coughs and lights a cigarette. I tilt the mirror that I've just hung one more time until it's level. How about this, I ask. He can no longer lie on his right side to face the bedroom window with the view he fought so hard for. That's perfect. I can see camels hump and the clouds. I cross to his side of the bed and look at the mirror from there. I can see the mountains perfectly reflected.  Look at that. He says, you made me a new window. Thank you. These people in the photo of the war and their babies look like dirt and rags and dirt. All fell but especially the babies who fell into the earth the way they had always fallen into shoulders into sleep with small complete weight. You understand that the bodies are dead because of angles elucidated by the photograph. You are not convinced that the stillness is not the stillness of a photograph. As the photo suggests, you conflate what is rag, what is dirt, what is body. You put yourself in there, even in babies. And you know the angles your body can't do even with yoga. The other reason you know they're dead is it says as much on a little card next to the photograph. You have come to an exhibit of photographs that has been praised for breathing. The reviewer stopped short of announcing that the pictures make the war come to life. He composed the review after visiting an ex-lover in the hospital, a sculptor who, quote, remained in a vegetative state. In the hospital, he tried to concentrate on the sheet veiling her and not the memory of her body. She had been a sculptor on her way to revitalizing classicism. They lived in an apartment with her resin figures. He had been a photographer losing faith in his own artistic promise. Her stillness was hard to take. He remembered the camera he loved and Nikon he'd saved up for in 1965 and still brought out some times, usually alone in his apartment, usually after several drinks. Once he'd found a mysterious role of film among the pieces of fruit in the bowl on his countertop and had it developed. On it, objects in his life had been rendered monumental. He had not had children. He had not gone to war. He had not made good art. But when he looked at the photograph of his kettle, he found it difficult to breathe. Somamesheng Frazier. This is her latest book, Collateral Damage. She's an East Coast native. She lives here in the Bay Area. She works at KQED. Please welcome Soma. What incentive exists for honesty? These are the facts of the case. We value diversity. There is no evidence of foul play. The potato peeler looked like a gun officer.  But those who suffer by the lie, hunger for the truth. He stared at his lead. Too heavy handed.  This was high school. Nobody read the school paper except its student staff. Student journalists will shape weekly issues of just the facts in concert with a faculty advisor, the course syllabus read. But Mr. Murphy, who'd taken a single journalism course at Monroe Community College 30 years ago and still heavily referenced Iran Contra and the rise of Connie Chung, barely read the headlines that his staff wrote. Your next, Anfrid, he said at least once a week, the greatest Asian journalist since Constance Yuhua Chung Povich. Then he dozed off behind his laptop while Freddie and his co-editor took turns managing the computer lab and smoking weed in the bathroom. Before his parents dragged him to rural Massachusetts, the coups had lived on Flatbush Ave. There he'd had impromptu drum circles, close friends, the two and the five. Here he had pretty autumn leaves, no car, and a clear window into a close-knit pastoral community. There he'd had his older brother Thorsten, home from college on the weekends. Here his parents claimed he had safety, as though concrete might kill him and foliage could keep him safe.  I've had a bit of experience with New York myself, Mr. Murphy had announced on the first day of school. In fact, I met Ollie North once on Park Avenue back when he was fresh out of Akawamik. If only I'd known what was to come. Smiling wistfully, he'd scratched his armpit through a forest green wool sweater. Interesting connection, Massachusetts is an Algonquin word. Freddie had nodded his head slowly, as though this were an actual connection. Just the type of white dude I like, he thought, one who lacks the sophistication to hide his flaws. But sophistication had its merits, he acknowledged later when a classmate nicknamed him chunk, a brazen amalgam of the word shink and the observation that he was 20 pounds overweight. At night, the silence kept him awake. He'd lost his headphones in the move and for now lack the money to replace them. So he lay there and listened to the quiet. Sometimes the house gave a creaky exhale or a raccoon bumped against the garage door. But the predominant sound was nothing. In the eyes of his classmates, it turned out chink chunk didn't indicate derision. It was in fact a term of affection that he came to appreciate. With his Canal Street knockoffs, Gembe and Flatbush accent, Freddie established himself as a trend setter. The ruder he was, the stronger his reputation for being real, and he could popularize whatever slang came to mind. That's Bootsy, he'd say, and the next day everything was Bootsy. Occasionally he threw in a made-up term. All the other kids, except the Decados and the Silvas, wore clothing from the town's strip mall. Jenna and Rob Decado's father owned a truck stop with a cafe and convenience store and they could afford to order everything online. Jenny and Jamie and Debbie De Silva wore thrift store stuff. They eat roadkill. Mindy Johnson had whispered as he assisted her with his layout. Apparently the Decados owned a grip of publicly traded stocks at most of Massachusetts. Acres and acres of forest that Freddie had mistaken for public land. And they also owned a shitty wooden shed at the end of a quarter mile trek from their egregiously overbuilt mansion, where half the high school's upperclassmen had convened tonight. Rubbing his hands together for warmth, he sidled up to the bonfire that they'd finally got going. Jell-O-Shat, like a Sylvan catering service, Jenna Decado and Tonya Tibadot were circulating with laden silver trays. He lifted a paper cup down to jiggling orange cube. Don't mind if I do. Very good set, Jake Sullivan said, examining the tray with an imaginary monocle. Obviously the finest. Freddie laughed feeling good. Sully was a kitten at heart and even the old New York crew would have been down for an alcohol-fueled bonfire in the woods. Who wouldn't? Even Irene Jong was in attendance, hanging back near the shed with Mindy Johnson. He stared at her, noting her full lips and short skirt, but she didn't look back. Following his eyes, Sully socked his shoulder hard. Forget that slant. He blurted in a yell that was pretty much a whisper for him. Small tits. Small sense of humor, Freddie added. No sense of humor, agreed. By dawn, only 15 kids or so were left. Silent, ecstatic, and clustered around the dead bonfire. And with a little jolt, Freddie realized that he didn't want the party to end. Rising, exhausted to his tiptoes, he raised his 10th natty light. All y'all, he intoned in his heaviest flatbush accent. My fam, bam, now. The white kids laughed loudly, then stared at him, committing this new phrase to memory.  Excuse me, said Marnie, making some good eye contact before she left the circle. Gotta use the ladies. At best accommodations await you, Jenna Decato sang out, throwing an arm toward the dark wall of pine, and everyone laughed again. Me too, Sully said. Me three, nodding at the group. Jim Hanscom followed Sully into the woods. Freddie had left his notepad in the shed, he realized, just as the group reached the mansion where the cars were parked. What are you doing? Irene Jong asked as he turned and trudged back toward the tree line. Forgot my notes for the op-ed piece, till Mindy to wait up, she rolled her eyes and walked on. The notepad was exactly where he'd left it, wedged between couch cushions in the splintery shed. He snatched it and went back outside. The forest was magical in a new way now, white sun sifting through its leaves and needles, lighting the undergrowth, and he paused to breathe deeply. At first when he heard it, he thought it was a cat. Sometimes cats made sounds like that, dying sounds that might be mating sounds or fighting sounds, but when he followed the whale, he saw Marnie and Sully and Jim. When Marnie came forward a week after the party, he and all his classmates had closely followed the proceedings which the school paper had even covered, stabbed by guilt. He'd reminded himself that it wasn't like he'd never dialed the cops, but there was no cell service in the Massachusetts wood and he'd had a lot of time to think about the repercussions of snitching as Mindy Johnson drove him and Irene slowly home. With Thorsten gone, he thought, turning his phone over and over in his hands, these kids are my only family. Okay. In the end, nothing happened. Marnie went off to Spellman, Sully to State, Jim to the Marines, and he kept in touch with both boys for a few years. The alleged and the accuser had all been 18 and the facts weren't conclusive. There was minor vaginal tearing, but not enough physical evidence to confirm who was lying and who was telling the truth. It was consensual. She was begging for it. At his desk, he leans his head onto his palm. It's time, he knows, to finish that lead. To give the story of the party history complexity and weight, because Sully and Jim said one thing and Marnie said another, because the precise measurement of complementary variables is impossible simultaneously, especially in a close-knit family and his sister deserved more than just the facts. He starts to move his pen, but rather than beginning with the lines he'd intended, lines derived from that elusive high school lead, he starts with the words of a stranger. I'm sorry, he writes, I should have stepped up sooner. I was a coward. I waited too long. Thank you.


little block in my hand that's maybe an inch and a half by an inch and a half maybe three quarters an inch thick and Luke Malpass from Facetto claims that the link that I'm holding has a two terabyte SSD in it is that true yep correct it's the world's smallest hard drive solid state right yep solid state full solid state 2000 megabytes a second 2000 megabytes a second so the purpose of this little tiny box I mean I literally could slip this in my pocket you never notice it it's a for video streaming yes for many things it's effectively the one place you should store all your data so you know videos music contacts work documents just all of your digital data two terabytes that's even big enough for me so wireless obviously yep completely wireless so wireless charged wireless access everything there's no wires it comes in a box as it is where the wireless charger it's got some nice blinky lights on it though yep so there's two buttons and two blinky lights what do those do so right now there's your power and there's your activity so that's a power on and off button and this is a programmable function button so using the application or the web browser you can configure that button to do anything you like a specific action you know a frequent action that you'd like to do so this is actually a small computer right yeah that's a full blown computer so it's a again it's probably the world's smallest computer but we're advertising it as a hard drive because that's the main purpose I guess yeah so it's got an arm processor and it's a two gigs of ram yep and two terabytes of disc yep that's crazy you seem so matter of fact about this there it's blowing it's blowing our minds how much is this thing weigh about four ounces four ounces I mean this is like I think this is fake I think you made this up and there's nothing in this oh no no that's a real product we've done that demos with it all day all right poor Luke said that he had a sore throat when I started we're making him answer this question the third time how much is the length so we've got a 256 gigabytes and that's 349 and then we've got a 512 but one terabyte and a two terabyte and the two terabytes 1400 all right so that's the ssc you're paying for that right yeah yeah it's all in the cost that's that's where the whole cost is and they're effectively the storage of the data all right and it's been so long since we started did you already say when you're shipping so we're shipping in like november december this year so quarter four very cool I absolutely need one of these I think we make a fine christmas present Steve


Your government has listened to the call of families and employers to move further on childcare and early childhood education. The financial pressures and time crunch on families today are real and increasing. Parents want a need to work and childcare is fundamental to that goal. New investments cannot wait. They need to be made now. With the confidence of this House, your government will amend the 2017 budget to make a billion-dollar investment in childcare and early childhood education over the next four years, the single largest boost in BC history. Your government's plan is guided by three core principles, delivering the highest quality care, reducing wait lists by creating more spaces and making childcare more affordable. This investment will be sustained over the long term and when it will enable building 60,000 new childcare spaces, a 50% increase over the next four years, covering an additional 150,000 children, a five-fold increase with either full or partial childcare subsidies, funding up to 4,000 new early childhood educators with $10 million in grants and bursaries, exploring partnerships with school districts to co-locate new childcare spaces at elementary schools. While your government applauds the federal government's efforts to expand spaces, it will seek further help to increase support for parents to make childcare even more affordable. Your government welcomes discussion with members of this legislature and families to ensure this billion-dollar investment meets the needs of British Columbians in all corners of the province. However, your government recognizes these investments are urgently needed and will move on this as quickly as possible. Thank you.


For our last talk, you are here for tonight. Please give a warm welcome to Dr. Kim Vah to tell us about the best topics it is. Good to see you guys. Thank you. Come on, cheeseburg. Okay. It's a bit of a trivia, but it's okay because we're going to talk about aliens now. We'll figure out if a planet is sort of like Earth, does it have an ocean, or whether or not a planet already has life on it, whether or not it has biosignatures, signatures of a bio or biology, whether or not it has aliens. The first thing that we'll want to cover, I'm totally blanking on my first slide. I'm hot-braining, so sorry. Dr. E-slide. In case you don't know what an exoplanet is, people here are science enthusiasts and you know what an exoplanet is, but just in case you don't, that's perfectly okay. An exoplanet just refers to any planet outside of our solar system, so you know that we have a star that we call the Sun and the 8th planet's orbit around it. Well, anything that orbits around another star, and we've been finding tons of these things since the mid-90s, is an exoplanet. According to that, that's what I'm talking about. Just any planet in a solar system that's not in our own, not in our 8th planet, if it was not a planet, any other, yeah, whatever. Forming one of the stars you can see, or even the ones we can't see, is an exoplanet, and that's most of what I'll be talking about. I'll talk a little bit about ways that you can detect life on bodies in our own solar system. So why would we use polarimetry in the first place to study planets? Well, we mentioned in the introduction that actually you kind of don't get polarized light from stars. If it's a star that's kind of like not being ripped apart, and it's very much like our Sun, it's sort of main sequence, it's not too young and active or old and fluffy, then we don't get polarized light from that, so this is just an image of our own star, the Sun, and Venus transiting in front of it. So if you want to look at something that's really freaking dim like, and you don't want the light from that super bright star, then you can just basically erase the star by looking at it and polarize light and study planets. So there's a whole bunch of different things that you could be looking at. A whole bunch of different things that you could be looking at and polarize light, these different stuff. So you could be looking for the glint off of an ocean from an exoplanet telling you whether or not there's an ocean there in the first place, and you think you need water for life, so that's useful. You could be looking at really scattering the same thing that makes our sky blue. We can look at on other planets and figure out what their atmospheres are like, what sort of gases are in the atmospheres. We can look for clouds and cases in some cases, and we can look for rainbows even, double rainbows. And that's a polarizing mechanism as well. And that will tell you about, obviously, what's raining down, what the precipitants are on these planets. As for actual life, there's some indication that we could look for biosignatures, so we could look at the gases in an atmosphere to figure out whether or not there's life there, and that that might be enhanced if we look at linearly polarized light. We talked earlier about linear and circularly polarized light. With circularly polarized light, we can detect something called chiral molecules, and I will explain what that is very shortly. So, another reason that this is a super useful thing for studying planets is, I know that this schematic looks way too technical. Hopefully you've also already had free drinks, so it's just too much. But it's really quite simple. O-L is just referring to the orbital longitude. It's just telling you how far on the star it's gone. And the phases are just kind of like the moon, like the githubus phase of the moon and things like that. So, the other reason that this is super useful for studying planets, for studying exoplanets, is because it's dependent on the angle of the planet. So, we're getting that directional information as well as the intensity, the thing we talked about in the introduction, so we can look at how the light is reflecting off or interacting with particles in the atmosphere of these planets. So, here in the middle, you've got the star, and you're looking at this from a top-down angle. You would, of course, be this planet-finding satellite that's looking at its side-on.  And then you have a planet that's orbiting around it. It's not elliptical, it's just how my hand moves. It's going around in a circular orbit. So, if you're looking for something like a rainbow, you get that sort of, like, near-full phase when it's pretty fully illuminated, and the planet's kind of behind my head or behind the star. And then, if you're looking for something like really scattering that's producing that blue light in our sky and our red sunsets, that's hitting a maximum in that polarized light when it's at 90 degrees. So, that's important. You can tell the difference looking at polarized light by seeing whether you get a peek from the planets back here or when it's at the side. You can tell whether that's from a rainbow or if it's from the red light scattering. And then, if you're looking at something like the water reflection, that glimpse, that glare off the ocean, you can get that when the planet is closer to a crescent phase. So, when the planet has moved in front of the star, you don't get a whole lot of polarized light when it's directly in front of the star, but kind of out here you'll get a glimpse. You get this kind of glimmer off the surface if the planet has an ocean. Now, I want to do a quick aside. We're talking about astrobiology in terms of life as we know it. And that's done for a very practical reason. We need to have very detailed ideas about what we're looking for. So, when I'm talking about this, I'm aware of the fact that I'm talking about looking for planets with water oceans, H2O oceans. And scientists do know that you can have life that's a sentient ocean that takes the form of your dead ex-wife and tries to kill everyone in the spaceship. But the kind of life that we can look for would be something more akin to what we see on Earth. So there's sort of three things that you can look for. You can look for, when you're looking at polarized light of a planet, when you're doing planetary polar imagery, you can try to characterize the system just to figure out what the atmosphere is like, what the orbit is like. You can try to judge habitability. It doesn't have an ocean. It doesn't have an atmosphere like ours. What is the rain like there? It's something I would want to be standing in. And you can try to detect biosignatures. Those signatures of a biome, signatures of biology, but there's life already there. So when we're talking about characterizing planets, we can actually do that whether or not the planet is small or large. We only expect life to be on small planets, but we can kind of practice polar imagery with really large planets, even with Jupiter-sized planets. So we have these things called hot Jupiters you might have heard of, and they're like the size of Jupiter or larger, and then they're like a fraction of the distance that Mercury is to our own Sun. They can orbit within like an Earth Day. So their gear is like less than an Earth Day. And so they're super hot. They're getting tons of radiation from their star, lots of light bouncing off of them, and they're also very large. So they're really good at reflecting light. And that gives us something to study in the meantime. It was only very recently that we developed polarimeters, things that can measure polarized light that were sensitive enough to start studying planets. So these are sort of the first things that we've begun to look at. And oh, there's some math there. Let's give it a five. When you're looking to just kind of characterize a planet, you're maybe looking for that Rayleigh scattering, like we see in our own atmosphere. So to look for Rayleigh scattering, you're just kind of looking for this wiggle.  When the planet is in behind, sorry, at 90 degrees, more or less, you get the peak of polarized light for Rayleigh scattering. And you can do that with those giant planets. Unfortunately, so far, we have started looking, there's only really a couple of polarimeters that can even do this in the world, but we've started looking at this, kind of one of the better cases, and you just see scatter. So you can kind of fit that wave to it, but it doesn't fit very well. So we think maybe we're seeing that, but this is a totally new application of polarimeters. It's kind of exciting. It's really, really new. We're figuring out all the different things that we need to look at when we look at a planet to be sure that we're just getting the polarized light from the planet itself. So this is an example of a hot Jupiter, real data from a hot Jupiter there, and with measurements meant to detect the Rayleigh scattering from the atmosphere to see whether or not it has a blue atmosphere. The reason you might care about whether or not planets have blue atmospheres and what the Rayleigh scattering is like is because it tells you something about the average size of the particles in the atmosphere. So we have a lot of nitrogen and some oxygen in our atmosphere, and we have a different sunset than what you might expect on different planets. We have a blue sky that's produced by the Rayleigh scattering as well as our red sunsets, and that's going to vary from planet to planet. So looking at the Rayleigh scattering and polarized light, a really easy way, relatively, to detect Rayleigh scattering because you're nulling the star or you don't get any light from the star, would tell us something about what the bulk composition of the atmosphere is, what it's like in general. So we can move on from giant planets and sort of looking at the atmospheres and try to start judging habitability. Does this planet have gases in its atmosphere that are a similar composition to ours? Does it have an ocean that produces blint? Does it have rainbows that are actual rain and like made of water and not like sulfuric acid or something? We don't want to be standing in. Oh. So... I mean, I see you take care of that, don't worry. So if we're looking at something like rainbows, the reason that looking for rainbows works is not only do you get a peak in the rainbow at a certain point in the orbit, but that peak will change very slightly depending what that rain with the cloud that's producing the rainbow is made out of. So if you have water, you'll get that peak in your polarized light at a slightly different angle from if you have, say, rain drops made out of sulfuric acid like on Venus, or if you have rain drops made out of methane like on Titan. And that's all due to that math that I just covered up, but basically all that math was saying was that the light will bend in the water droplets at a slightly different angle depending what the droplet is made out of. If it's water, it bends at a slightly different angle than if it's methane. And we all know that there are, probably told at some point in our life that rainbows happen at a very specific angle. And so when we're looking at polarized light, we're just extending that to exoplanets that have rainbows happening at slightly different angles at different points in their orbits. So one of the teams that I worked with has used models to reproduce this for a very famous case of Venus.  It's probably got tropical jungles. It's supposed to start to our sun. I'm sure it's great. And then looking at more and more detail about the information, the light that we were getting from the atmosphere of Venus, and looking, in fact, at the polarized light at different wavelengths, we were able to keep almost flipping. We were able to tell what its rainbow was like. So you can look in sort of like a red light, a green light, a blue light, and look for those peaks in the polarized light that rainbow is sort of like what I showed you on the last slide, and prepare them. And you can tell where your rainbow is happening and sort of how spread out the colors are, what shape the rainbow has. And that's going to tell you whether or not those rain droplets are made out of water like we have on Earth or sulfuric acid like we have on Venus. And maybe we don't want to go there after all. That was a bad idea. So we're trying to create these really robust models that will take into consideration polarized light from really scattering in the atmosphere as well as from rainbows. And if you've had a planet where you can see the surface, not like Venus, you'd be able to see the signature from the lens as well. And we're able to kind of map the polarized light signature that we get across the surface. So this is sort of looking at Venus through different phases and those blue dashes that don't show terribly well on the screen are those different polarized light vectors.  So it's giving you the directional information as well as the intensity. And then if you were able to look at a planet through different phases, you'd be able to tell things like if it had an atmosphere made out of nitrogen and oxygen or carbon dioxide and whether or not it had rain drops made from water or made from sulfuric acid. So speaking of looking at planets through phases, another way to detect habitability or to judge habitability is to look for glint. So this is a real planet called Earth. I know. This is real observations of a planet. And so you can kind of see the light from the sun kind of bouncing back as it moves across. And you can see a peak in that light right when it's kind of in presence.  And that's when you're going to see that peak in polarized light. So we can look for that as well, as well as the rainbow and the really scattering. We can start to get a really robust picture of what the planet is like. Of course, in reality, we have all these other things going on. We have clouds that are getting in the way and we have continents, which I guess would be good. But you can start, ideally, you can start mapping this, right? You could look at when you see the glint and when you don't see the glint and get an idea of maybe where the continents lie. And that might give you an idea of where they take on it, since some other things that we want to know to get an idea of whether or not a planet is habitable. You can also figure out whether or not, whether or not those oceans that are producing the glint are something nice like water that we think life as you know it would be happier or something a little different that maybe other life would be happier or maybe life would be happier at all. And once again, that's all to do with math, but it all comes down to the fact that different things bend white at different angles. So, glass bends light at a different angle than water. And similarly, on Earth, we have light going from air, bouncing off of H2O water, and that's going to produce a maximum and polarized light at a different angle than on, say, Titan, where you have light going from a methane atmosphere and then bouncing off of a hydrocarbon ocean. So we can actually, in theory, tell what the ocean and atmosphere are made out of by looking at where exactly we see this glint. So once again, we're going to look at where in orbit we see this peak. It's going to shift a little bit depending on what the light is bouncing off of, what the atmosphere and what the ocean are made out of. So finally, we're on to the aliens. How do we detect biosignatories, who's being polarized by it? We've talked about how to figure out if a planet would be friendly to life, whether or not it's habitable, but how are we going to tell if there's already light there and we can't just set up camp? There's a few different ways, actually. So there's the idea that you could enhance biosignatories to enhance the signature of the spectrum of the gases that you see in it. But the method that I'm more familiar with has to do with something called chirality, which we mentioned earlier. So you can have molecules in your body that are either left-handed or right-handed. We call that chirality. And so in this picture, that R is meant to be kind of forward and poking out at you, but you can also imagine the reason we call it left-handed or right-handed. If you take your left hand and flip it over, your thumb's on the same side as your right hand, but it's not the same as your right hand. I can't do it. If you do it like, palms up, and then flip it over, it's not the same. So the molecules in your body are the same sort of thing. They can be left-handed or right-handed. And so that you need really complicated molecules for life. And we know also that you want those molecules to kind of wind up the same way so that they can interact with each other. We think this is one of the most basic, most simplified examples of a biosignature, that this is a sign of life in its purest form. So in your own body, you have DNA that's wound the same way. All of your DNA is wound the same direction that my DNA is. You have sugars wound in the opposite way. You have amino acids wound the same way. All of these molecules that are very complicated in your body need to interact with each other. They need to be wound the right way. And we think that because when you have life on a planet, you're going to have a system that needs to interact that all of the molecules there will be wound the same way. And so we talk about, you know, your DNA could be right-handed or left-handed. It could, on other planets, though, be wound the other way. The important thing is that it's consistent. So in the future, you can have friends who have their DNA and their amino acids wound the opposite way from you and your friends, but it would be consistent on their planet. They would all have DNA or whatever their analogs DNA is wound the same way for all of the creatures on that planet. And it would be consistent. So that would produce circularly polarized light. Those molecules that are wound a particular way that are right-handed or left-handed will produce circularly polarized light. As Jamie mentioned earlier, that light that's linearly polarized but twisted in a particular way will be twisted one way or another. So the problem with that is that in the past we thought that this was a very weak signal. It turns out a recent research has suggested, I should say, that you might actually have an enhanced signal. You can have all of these molecules in a single cell sort of like enhancing, like amplifying your circularly polarized light signal. And it might be that if you had a whole mat of these things that you would get a very strong signal. So I was very fortunate earlier this year to be able to go to Yellowstone with a team that had a polarimeter that measures circularly polarized light, that twisted light, and measure the signatures that we get off different microbial mats. These different colors here are all different organisms that live at different temperatures. And we took measurements of these different micro-organisms to see what their circularly polarized light signatures were like. And so this in the future could be applied to exoplanets but in the near future it could certainly be applied to something more local like Europa. You could possibly send a polarimeter to look at the cracks in Europa to see if there's any gross microbial mats kind of growing there just like we find in Yellowstone or in other extreme environments. So once again, there's lots of different ways to use polarized light, linear and circularly polarized light to detect signs of life or even signs that a planet is habitable in the first place, and life as we know it would be happy living there. So we can look at whether or not it has liquid oceans and whether or not it's made of water, whether or not it has blue skies that would suggest it has molecules similar to the molecules in our atmosphere, clouds and gazes, whether or not it has rainbows and made of nice water rain. I kind of touched on this but didn't go into it in detail. We can look for biosignatures, the gases that come off of life from breathing out and burning the hole that might be enhanced using linearly polarized light and then we can look for that circularly polarized light when we have molecules that are kind of twisted and they can twist the light when it interacts with them. With that, I'll open it to questions. You should really ask me questions because I love talking about aliens when I'm drunk. So scientists don't really know that. They're trying to figure it out. There's a few different ideas that have been kind of good is that you have some random orientations to begin with but then once you have life, they have to line up one way or the other. So you'll have slightly more of one than the other and things will just work out so that that takes over because if you have life, things need to be able to line up, they need to be able to combine together in the same direction. There's some other theories that it could have to do with the circularly polarized light of the star that the planets orbit in the first place. It could kind of give it a preference but that's definitely an open question. Blue shirt in the back. So if you look... Sorry, I should be repeating my questions. If you look at a planet that doesn't have life, would you see a bright ahead in the left? That's sort of the idea that you don't really have anything driving the preference until you have life, you have things wanting to reproduce to copy information and to interact with each other. And so if you kind of think about life, how do you want to define it in the first place? Even the most rudimentary idea of life, you might think, I kind of need to have these molecules that can interact with each other and copy their information. I guess that's the most basic definition of life. So to have that, you would really want things facing the right way and that they can interact with each other and be consistent. So I guess you wouldn't have so much. You would have a mixed back unless that process of life has started. I think you're wearing a black shirt in the middle. Just did jump rope through a white picket fence and allergy work to explain circular polarization? I can't visualize it. Yeah, now I have a hard time visualizing it too. Jump rope through a white picket fence and allergy work to describe circular polarization. So you're basically, you're looking at linearly polarized light that's just kind of changing its angle through time. So if you wanted to measure that, you would have a white picket fence and know the time that you're taking the measurements and change its angle through time or if you could take two different angles at the same time. And you would just look to see if it sort of kept its face, if it was what you expected for a twisting over time. Does that make sense? How do the moving glasses filter? How do they filter for it? They measure linearly polarized light, basically. The glasses are measuring. We just started working on circular polarized light so it's pretty nice of you. We had the face changing over time like what's producing it. I would expect it to be constant, but I haven't really thought about what it would mean if it wasn't constant or if it changed in like predictable way through time. I mean, we're sort of just starting to explore that. So part of the science that we were doing at Yellowstone was just kind of trying to get measurements of mats like huge swaths of microbes rather than just trying to look in the lab at a small sample. It's all very new science. Yes, Dan? Goals? No, we have not measured. We haven't detected aliens yet. I would tell you guys. But it seems like doing this study to see if you really do get that sort of amplified signal from something like a microbe, we could use that in the near future as I said for something like Europa, but it's going to be a long way in the future. It's still going to be a weaker signal for circular polarizing. Of course, they're so far away, it's already quite weak. Space shirt? Almost done? Done? Space shirt? Are you using Rayleigh Scattery? Do you only get like a shell on the outside or do you get an average of people out of the sphere? Yeah, I mean, you can't necessarily probe. And that's another... You can't probe the surface. So you're getting information about the top of the atmosphere at least. And maybe some depth. And that can be hard to kind of lay across the atmosphere. You're masking everything below that. You're not getting a signal from below those clouds from the Rayleigh Scattering. So you might just be getting information about the top of an atmosphere and totally blow it. So you'd want to look at like rainbows and stuff like that too to get a more complete picture. Yeah, I can't tell what color your shirt is in the middle. What satellites are looking at them. So this is all super, super new stuff. So we've built a couple of polarimeters that are super sensitive and can actually measure this stuff at least for those hot Jupiter planets that I was talking about. And those so far have just been placed on small telescopes. We're trying to get people to let us put them on something that they're like Gemini or even to put them on space telescopes like Luar. And that would really open things up. We'd be able to get a lot more data over a short period of time and maybe be able to really pin down whether or not we can just have Rayleigh Scattering from hot Jupiter and maybe even start to look at terrestrial planets. They aren't really on any orbiting satellite telescopes right now. But there's a discussion about whether or not they should be included on some orbiting telescopes like what would be the next generation after JWST or whether or not we should include them on things that would probe and go to other places like Europa to look for signs of life and things like that. Thank you. Before I let you all go, just want to remind you our next month's event is October 25th. That's Wednesday at 7pm. Please, before you head out, make sure to bring those trivia pencils back up to the front to our trivia side. Tyler, thank you all so much. Let's give one more round of applause to our speakers. Thank you so much. Thank you so much.


2. Internalising externalities Supporters of government often argue that government is essential to provide needed regulation of market activities. Individuals contracting with each other in a market often act in ways that impose harm or unconsented to costs on others. Manufacturers make and consumers purchase products whose use imposes an unacceptable risk of injury on third parties. For example, automobile companies can produce, and drivers will purchase, cars that can move at speeds or have handling properties that create an unreasonable risk of injury to pedestrians. Oil companies can ship oil to consumers in ways that create an unreasonable risk of spills that would pollute the land or body of water over which the oil is transported. More generally, because people do not bear the costs their activities impose on others, they will often act in ways that impose greater costs on society than are justified by the personal benefits they realise. These unconsidered costs to others are the social costs of market activity, what economists call negative externalities. Supporters of government contend that only government can regulate market activity to ensure that private contractors consider the social costs of their transaction. Thus, even if rules of law, courts and police services could be supplied non-politically, government would nevertheless be essential to internalise externalities. I must confess that I am at a loss as to how to respond to this argument. Look around is not enough. That this argument has any plausibility at all is a testament to how completely oblivious people can be to the world around them. In a world in which one of the dominant political issues is tort reform, in which businesses are continually complaining to Congress that they are over-regulated by the common law of tort and begging government to protect them from this non-political method of internalising externalities, how can anyone seriously assert that government regulation is needed to deal with the problem of social costs? It is true that economists posit a fictitious realm in which human beings engage in voluntary transactions free of all forms of regulation. But they do so because such an idealised conception of the market is useful to their exploration of the science of human interaction in much the same way that the concept of a perfect vacuum is useful to physicists exploring the laws of nature, not because they think it corresponds to anything in reality. In the real world human interaction is always subject to regulation, by custom, by people's ethical and religious beliefs and in our legal system by the common law. Tort law is precisely that portion of the law that evolved to protect individuals, persons and property from the ill-considered actions of their fellows, that is to internalise externalities. It is only by ignoring the existence of these forms of non-political regulation, that is only by believing that the economists model of the market is a description of reality, that one could possibly believe that government is necessary to address the problem of social costs. Of course one should never underestimate the power of a conceptual model to blind intellectuals to what is going on in the real world. But supporters of government claim common law can never be an adequate regulatory mechanism because it is necessarily retroactive in operation. Lawsuits arise only after harm is done. Therefore civil liability could never provide the type of proactive regulation necessary to prevent serious harm from occurring. Really? The basic rules of tort law prohibit individuals from intentionally harming others and require them to act with reasonable care to avoid causing harm inadvertently. There is nothing retroactive about this. It is true that precisely what constitutes reasonable care may have to be determined on a case by case basis, but in this respect the common law is no different than government legislation that announces a general rule and then leaves it up to the courts to determine how it applies in particular cases. Furthermore the common law can act prospectively in appropriate cases. The injunction, an order not to engage in a specified activity, evolved precisely to handle those cases in which one party's conduct poses a high risk of irreparable harm to others. And by the way government legislation is almost always retroactive as well. Limitations on human knowledge, not to mention public choice considerations, mean that legislators are rarely able to accurately anticipate future harm. Megan's law required public notification when a known sex offender moves into a community. It is called Megan's law because it was enacted after Megan was killed by a repeat sex offender who lived in her community. If I remember correctly Sarbanes Oxley was passed after Enron collapsed. And when was the USA Patriot Act passed? Oh yes after 9-11. Until 1992 fast food restaurants served coffee at between 180 and 190 degrees Fahrenheit, a temperature at which the coffee can cause third degree burns in two to seven seconds if brought into contact with human skin. This posed a considerable risk of serious injury given how often coffee served in styrofoam cups is spilled. I did not notice any proactive legislative regulation designed to internalize this externality. In 1992 Stella Liebeck won a judgement against McDonald's for injuries received when she spilled coffee on herself equal to her medical expenses plus the amount of profit McDonald's earned in two days from knowingly selling coffee at a dangerously high temperature. The next day every fast food restaurant in the United States served its coffee at 158 degrees Fahrenheit, a temperature at which it takes 60 seconds to cause third degree burns, a sufficient amount of time for customers to brush the coffee off their clothes or skin. There may be many things wrong with contemporary tort law but being ineffective at internalizing externalities is most assuredly not among them. The only way to believe that government is necessary to resolve the problem of social costs is to be studiously blind to the nature of both common law and government legislation.


We like something that you've mentioned, kia nza aku kwa na kama TikTok. As a content creator, you should always be on toes kukiwa. Like there's other apps that has come and has numbers, you jump on it. True. Aya, nataka twende, Twitter.  Okay, Twitter pwede you have to have a thick skin. It's a very real time. It's a very conversational. So you go there to have conversations with people. We don't know people who have different opinions.  Choose one. To do what? Use one for life. Two have to go. One has to remain. Which one are you going with? What's up everybody? Welcome to SPM Buzz. My name is Liz Jackson. And today we have yet another amazing guest, Brian. We have another amazing guest. Who do you think we are? We are friends. We are friends. I would want you to introduce yourself to someone who is maybe singing for the first time. My name is Brian, I'm a content creator, influencer, copyrighter, creative director, father to be. Along with the other thing. So Brian, I would want to know. Umesema TikToks, waku wapo. Did you ever see yourself becoming a content creator? Amma, exactly, dreamiako ilikuanganini? I mean, to keep growing, we all had these dreams to be doctors. Pilots. Pilots all that. But then to go to campus, social media came. So we just saw an opportunity to create content and then eventually a way to monetize it. So that came later. So it was just passion. I would want to take you back to when you began content creation. Ilikuwamuakagani, if you can remember? I think I started in 2015. So it's been seven years now. Seven years? Hey, 2015 ilikuwamu two. Anyway, you started content. Ilikuwa this, we know you as a comical person, a funny person. Ilikuwa comedy ama inesakwa labdu leanza kama jim instructor. Got changed. Got changed. And you came to Ayoga. Yeah, I started with skates. We used to shoot with Kinase. We just happened to have a camera to notice if something can do different. So we started with skates and then now eventually we just started growing into different parts which are not so far apart. Yeah. Speaking of set, mukianza content creation, I remember when Instagram came ilikuwa yawatu buji. Aku kwangana skates. So how are the skates doing at the time? Asilikuwa sento vines. Yes, vines were 15 seconds. So there were two things. Either you'd be buji or funny. So we couldn't afford to be buji. So as we were funny. You know when you're funny, you can get away with so many things. True. So what we're going to do is we're going to go to Nado. So we're going to Nado. So we're going to Nado. And which is that one video ilikuwa breakthrough yaako? Ha, there's one that I think we did something for Salt Bay. Yeah, I think Salt Bay was huge. Yeah, that was that video. We're just imitating. And how long did it take you to get the first shilling? It'll take how long to get the yani job and your umelipa out of content? It took us about a year. It didn't take that long. The only difference is we didn't make good money. The first shilling was there. I mean it came early but we got 2 pesos. I believe. We got 2 shikahiwa. Speaking of Seth, tu na kwa nangapa le pamtando, you said you had very good friends. How instrumental has he been on your journey? I can say we've been instrumental to each other because of basically having almost the same career journey in terms of encouraging each other and also inspiring each other. I look up to him and some stuff that he does and we have so many candid conversations about content about how we don't want to go back to where we started so just encouraging each other. Let's talk about monetizing your brand. As a content creator, what is the process of monetizing your brand? What is a content creator supposed to do? Create content. That's the first thing. When you create content, you create a community. Then now when you have a community, two things, either brand will notice you or you can go to the brands but you need something. So the key thing is creating content and building a community, which is the hardest. If you don't understand how much content, how hard content creation is until they get to do it. I will pursue it on a daily basis. That's the first thing that someone needs to do. Now, you broke the number. Muna jwa watua mezoia wkimaliza shule 8 to 5 na tafta job but you're here in content creation. I would call it new at the time kwa nini mkianza, sika masisi, nini mkianza it was very new. How are the people around you, maybe your siblings on parents taking that? They took a while to understand what she do. I think. Adi wa leo. I think my legacy. Oto na kumbe anga upate kazi. No, when I was only going to kazi, but they just prefer to call it marketing. Anything that I do is does marketing. That's an easier term for them but now they know there's something that's coming out of it. So took a while but for me, my family and people around me were very supportive. They gave me time to prove that the thing that I'm telling them is actually, I'm actually serious. So I can say that went well for me. Do you think when you start making money is when they actually understand what I'm doing? That's an African thing to do, yes. That's standard. Even in the conventional careers. Yes. Okiko wa dakitari na una pesa. Kuna mitu wakuen wata shibu dakitari. True. So, yeah. That's how we can do things. We have to make money for them too. Statue, respect and sharing. Brian, I have seen you on several occasions. You've been flying to Naivasha as you own a plane going to Naivasha to promote Apanaka. Kule kumena na Guinness? That was in Naivasha. Yeah, ok. Yes. Profile ya koni kona kwa fingaji. Fafali. Ehhe, tusa umepanda hindi ege just because of your content. How did you feel? I mean, these are the signs that this thing is actually working. Remember, Guinness, there was a bit earlier in my career. I think there was 2018. I was watching that from my bed-sitter. Bulinipai pressure. Bulinipai inspire. So, for me, I feel good that I've been able to achieve some of these things. I mean, kupanda hindi ege has always been a reach out trend. True. You later realize kuna shibu dakitari, it's bad day, but I'm too zaliwa. Me spending day again over baga it. So, it makes us feel good, makes us want to continue doing what we do and inspiring our whole generation behind us. Let's talk about your routine. When Brian wakes up in the morning, what is the first thing that you do? Kuwaga. Kwa hindi sok. Ukoza. I've had my routine. Pretty simple actually. First thing I do is open my phone, check through the main social sites, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, just to have an idea of what people are saying, then after that, and check my emails, see what my clients are saying and things like that. And then now, from there, kuwaga, kukunya chahi, and then now, we go now to the content creation and now calling my creatives, trying to brainstorm ideas. We have a shoot, planning a shoot, calling all this sourcing for venues, elites and all that. Just following up on work and then seeing what else we can create. Talking of venues, in Kenya, sika mauka maju na june zenda, maju tau ushuta, kuna mutata kuliza, but in Kenya has that been a problem cut after venue. Venu to shoot something. It's a problem, it's actually a problem because first of all, tawu, kishikwa tawu, kishu utuna funguakamitis in tenias, with no parole. You find, let's say you want to shoot in a hotel, some of the people who are supposed to give you that permission don't understand most of the stuff that we do, it's a big challenge. You're trying to tell them what actually you're trying to achieve and what's in need for them. But with time, you just found some partnerships with people, so onakwa, at least na ulautua, kuna jua, ni kipigia, uia mahuia, tani sotapa, tani connectna watu. So, villa connections, you can really, really suffer. Places like tawu, kishikwa na kanjum, na laksumbo na bure, so those are places we avoid. Do you believe fame comes before the money? Depends. For you, for you, if you have energy. For me, I think it's the Indonesia if we promote it. Again, we have been this for a long time, not a product of trending. A product of trending? Not in a bad way. Like, I've never thought about it that way, by the way. So kuna watu, na amuka kiesho, watu na kongelelia, and then now most of them, now they start to travel, up and down, because okay, tunanzawa. So for me, I can say it's been gradual, and that's why I can say my growth has been documented.  So mine has been heavy. It's my Indonesian. And what has been keeping you grounded? Seven years? Si rahisi? Just waking up every morning, trying to be better than yesterday, understanding that their kids were coming up, things are changing, all these platforms are coming up. When you study the Northern TikTok, TikTok is a big, big platform. So oniki, amuka kiesho na ni ni me sema, ni mi nim toa Instagram, ma mi nim toa Twitter, I'm losing on numbers other sites. So it's constantly reinventing yourself, looking at what other people are doing, doing that, using what you have to your advantage, if it's the connections, if it's the talent, if the money, anything that you have, that you feel like it can help you grow use of your advantage. I like something that you've mentioned, Kianza, aku kwa na kama TikTok. As a content creator, you should always be on toes. Kukiwa, there's other apps that has come in haze numbers, you jump on it. Ayana, tkatwende, Twitter, you're very big on Twitter. You're very big on Twitter, verified pale. How different is Twitter from all these other apps? I think that question should be answered by everyone else apart from me because other people are the ones who find Twitter different. For me, Twitter is, okay, Twitter pale you have to have a thick skin. It's a very real time. It's a very conversational.  So Kianza, pale na mentality Molo is right. We'll struggle. That's the difference. It's very conversational compared to maybe Instagram and TikTok. As you said, on pale, sometimes you find people who differ with your opinion. How do you handle them? When you learn to kutama embe unamutama chungwa ama the silent one? I only engage if I have fun. Sometimes you know it can just be my opinion. It doesn't have to be factual. So one, kubali kure kebisha kwa wrong. If the other person is wrong, kure kebisha, if you have time, if you don't have time, machana nae. Again, watu, kiyo na tunimtwa na takam sumbuane mure. You just ignore unamu lenga na boeka na dili tamana na mobo na meshaki. So today, Brian, you're given Twitter, TikTok, Instagram. Choose one. Tenana again. To do what? Use one for life. Two have to go. One has to remain. Which one are you going with? Think TikTok. Okay, I think TikTok has some very interesting characters over there. Yes. TikTok is the most accommodating app we have. Walimo shago. Mawachi. Masiyo. Everyone kawako. Nakila mtu na kumbali wili mingine wili. I like that app. Yeah. Piaikona kenyeji content. Kenyeji. Mutsinda. Anyway, most of the time we see that you reshare content from TikTok. Let's say ume post mtu na amenda viral. Has there been that one clip that you've ever shared and then we want to reach out? When I come out I can't remember but they always reach out. I understand. I try to tag most of them. One level when you reach out and I happen to see the DM. You know, now a shout out. And talk to me about have you ever had a crazy experience with a fan? How crazy? Crazy? Tell us the level of crazy. How crazy? One day we will have events Mutsinda like last weekend we will have events. You know, just their vibes. Yeah. I'm very laid back. I'm very vibes oriented. So maybe I mean, someone will come be happy that they have messed me. I mean, takwa tuwa puwa something and then I want to take a picture to figure. I try to just make everyone around me comfortable. Just that good vibe. So, because I mean, I understand when someone is all, you know. All up on Ryan Mutsinda. Yeah. So, nile una try to make as comfortable as possible. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, for them it's a one in a lifetime opportunity. So, I might as well help them have a good one. Yeah. And sometimes numbers come with consequences. Do you think that right now you as a brand mutina kuna vitu ways ifanya? Like numbers you may change, fame you may change. Do you think kuna vitu ways ifanya kama kitamu? Unendengam kati asubui? Or kugotea? I mean, personally, I can't say kuna kitu say asifanya. All I do is to minimize in terms of I don't know what I'm doing what I'm doing what I'm doing Kuma bokonan wa you know, you know, the all that interaction na kuwa bit limited, but I can do it just that I choose not to. Yeah. Because I also want to enjoy my personal time. That people don't understand. so making sure to be you and have money in the market one teach talk about what you do online but that works for me because I am a Qunja that kind of thing I don't think there's something I can't do, just that I can't do everything as frequently as I would want it to. What would you like to be remembered for? I've watched this industry grow from ground up, and I want to be remembered as a person, someone who fought that Mao Mao war to ensure creatives well-reimbursed, well-recognized. Watu apewele hakiyao, because that's something that we are still not there yet. That's something that we really, really fight towards the children. So there's this famous phrase, between influencers and clients, na kwanga, exposure. You know, sometimes oneeza pata, if a client gives you exposure, sometimes you may create a network,


A float with Henry Morgan. A float with Henry Morgan, written for radio by Warren Barry and a George Edwards production. Recovering from the deadly fever, Geoffrey discovers that he is too late to save Kitty. She's been taken to captive by Deats and Dolores to Cuba. Kitty cares nought about her fate, believing that Geoffrey has forsaken her. Knowing that Dolores has gone but ignorant of the destination, Geoffrey goes with hero to Port Royal to warn Captain Morgan, but finds that he too has sailed. Jeopardizing his own liberty, Geoffrey appeals to Sir Thomas Motford for help, admitting that he is an escaped convict and tries to prove that he had no hand in stealing the Aztec necklace. He tells of his friendship with Dolores, but Sir Thomas interrupts him to ask how it was that Geoffrey became a convict. Yes, that has been puzzling me too. You are obviously a man of education and intelligence. How is it that you were convicted and sent out to this colony with the riffraff, the scum of humanity? That story has nothing at all to do with what I'm discussing tonight. It's done and can't be undone. I know what it means to my future by coming to use Sir Thomas tonight. It means my death. But it means much more to me to be able to save Henry Morgan, his men and all their ships. I would still like to hear your story, Hunter. I will tell it to you, Sir Thomas, when I have made you believe what really happened on the night that the Aztec necklace was taken. Yes, you have yet to convince me that what you've told me is true. All seems so perfectly clear and logical now, but I can't see how you can help but believe me. Well, if you won't tell us your own story, get on with the story of the Aztec necklace and the woman who was masquerading as Sir Thomas's kid's woman. The friendship of the woman I thought with Aunt Nadelleze meant so much to me that I fell in love with her. I can see now that she set out to make me fall in love with her. I was lonely, desperately unhappy. It was an easy thing to do. Unhappy? What about Kitty? The story goes that you're over fond of her? Before I met the Spanish spy, I went to Kitty because of my loneliness and for comfort. She never meant anything to me. She was just a woman who could make me forget. And I appreciated that. I appreciated all she did for me, but for some reason, best known for herself, she fell in love with me. How that fitted in with the plans D.S. made. Kitty fell in love with me in a jealous, possessive way. I couldn't make her understand that I was not in love with her. Never had been. I tried to help her. I hated seeing her as the plaything for filthy seam in the dirty tavern. But everything I tried to do for Kitty, she thought I was doing it because I was in love with her. Then I met the woman who was in your house, Sir Thomas. I tried to make Kitty understand that this other woman was part of the life which belonged to me, but I didn't succeed. But what is all this to do with the Aztec Nectar? I believe the Aztec Nectar was taken by Henry Morgan as a Spanish prize. I believe this woman knew of it. I believe the real entranet de Lacy fell into the Spanish hands. And this woman knew that you had never seen the real entranets, Sir Thomas. And so she learned all she could about her family and came in her stead. Yes, we've surmised that already. And she came for two purposes. One was to get the Aztec Nectar and the other was to betray Morgan into the hands of the Spanish. She has succeeded in one and is about to win the other. That is why I've come to you for help. Would you please carry on and tell us about the Aztec Nectar that was stolen? Unless you can prove you had no hand in it, Hunter, I don't want to hear anything else and you'll go back to the fate which you so richly deserve. Not so long ago, a convict ship arrived in Fort Royal and aboard it was a convict named Glen. Yes, I know that ship. I was in charge of the convicts aboard it. So, Glen knew me in my past life. I was with Kitty at the Dolphin Tavern. Glen recognized me. I tried the niats and immediately left the tavern. Previously, Kitty had seen me with a woman, the one you thought to be at Mr. Lacey's from us. She was mad with jealousy. After I left the tavern, she no doubt got the whole story of my past from a man named Glen. Then she must have told us, don't you see what a perfect opportunity this was? Don't you see they were both in league to get the necklace? What a chance it was for them to betray me and have a necklace appear at the same time. Yes, I can see what this man is getting at the Thomas. Get on Hunter, I'm becoming very interested. But it had to be done at the same time. Their idea was that they should get their hands on a necklace and have me disappear. The deets would make Kitty wear the necklace in the tavern on the same night so that Morgan Seaman would see her wearing it. And then deets was to kidnap Kitty and take her away into highly. Then when the Spanish spy left for her homeland, deets and Kitty were to sail with her. I believe you've hit the nail on the head, Hunter. But tell me, how did they know the hiding place of the necklace? Morgan said only you knew of that Hunter. Well, perhaps I told her. Oh, you betrayed that trust. Not intentionally, but I did betray another trust. What is that? I'll come to that all in good time. After I left the dolphin tavern that night after meeting Glen, I was terrified that everything would be lost. I attended once to the flying girl, hoping that I could see Captain Morgan and so was the teacher's aide. Yes, Morgan was here with me that night. I know. I gave word to the man on watch. But no one was to come aboard who wanted to see me. I was frightened that Glen would follow me. And then what happened? I went down to my quarters, hoping that Morgan returned aboard ship very soon. After a while, I received word that deets was waiting to see me on deck. I went up and he told me he had come from Captain Morgan. That was alive. Morgan was with us. He also told me that Morgan had given him a precious stone, which I was to put away for him. Was the man deets alone? At the moment, yes. But I didn't see him come aboard. You mean then that the woman could have come aboard with him and hidden? Yes, and I think that is exactly what did happen. Deets showed me a precious stone.  He also told me that Morgan wished to see me in half an hour's time at the dolphin tavern. Although I wanted to see Morgan, I was a bit fearful about going. But I thought I'd better have my orders. I took the stone from Deets. And where did the stone come from? I have no idea. I didn't examine it. To me, it looked like one which I'd seen in Morgan's hiding place. Perhaps Deets had held that gem, awaiting such an opportunity. Anyhow, I took the gem to Morgan's cabin. I placed it in the hiding place. Now, I believed that the woman was already hiding in the cabin and saw me put it away. I then returned to my quarters, not wishing to be seen about on the deck. I let her wait at the dolphin tavern. Whilst I was in my quarters, they must have escaped with the Aztec Nectar going straight back to the dolphin tavern where they waited for me. You went there to find Morgan? Yes. And I remember now that as I approached, I saw drawn up on the other side a closed-in carriage. I think no doubt that in that carriage was Deets and the woman. As I approached, Kitty came to me. And as soon as she spoke to me, two members of the watch arrested me. So it was Kitty who betrayed you? Yes. Going into it by Deets and the Spanish woman. As they took me away, I asked her to go to Morgan and tell him what really happened. And I believed she possibly tried to do it, but was stopped by Deets who made her wear the necklace into the tavern. And then, later in the evening, he took it away by force. You disappeared, Kitty disappeared as well as the Aztec Nectar. If all this is true, it's a devilish cunning plot. It can be proved by checking up with the authorities as to what I was doing on that night. But why was Kitty afraid? For two reasons. One, that it was to be thought she'd run away with me. And the second, that Deets wanted her for himself. I have no doubt that the payment for the part he played in getting the Aztec Nectar was a passage back to a Spanish possession. And he wanted to take poor Kitty with him. And he succeeded. I can't bear to think of her fate. It's too terrible. So they've gone. And it seems as though the Aztec Nectar and Kitty have gone for good. But you said you betrayed another trust. What was that? I believe in this woman who is masquerading as your kin's woman. I can see now that she very cleverly warned from me information which she wanted in honeyed words of love as though concerned for my safety. She got me to tell her all that I knew of Henry Morgan's plans. She knows where he is going. She knows what he plans to do. Spain will give large awards to anyone who captures Captain Morgan. That is why I've come to you, Thomas. That's why I've thrown away my liberty and what chance I had of making a permanent escape because I can't bear the thought of Henry Morgan sailing unsuspectingly into a trap. And from the trap which they set, there will be no escape. But Morgan has gone away, we can't recall him. I know to where he is going. I can give you full details. His ships are heavy and cumbersome. Send a fast ship off in pursuit. A ship which will overtake him before he reaches his destination. And before I return from where I escaped I will tell you all that I know. Colette, what do you say about this story that we just heard? I believe it, Sir Thomas. I believe it. Remember how Morgan said it just didn't add up together? He couldn't understand Hunter taking the necklace, giving it to Kitty when this other woman was so anxious to get it. Yes, he did say that. Hunter, I believe your story, but I must check up with the authorities. Freedom and life were nice while they lasted. Tell me, how did you come to be sent here? You've told me the story of the Aztec necklace. Now tell me your own story. There's nothing much to tell, really. I was a fool who had too much trust in my fellow men. I was born to a life of ease, Sir Thomas, in comfort. I was always sorry for the under-dark. I was against and still am against harsh laws which send human beings into captivity and sleep. Well, those convictions don't send you to Jamaica. They didn't, away. Because a man came to me, a man named Gleg.  That they had haunted him ever since. He couldn't get a job. He was driven by starvation back to crime. I gave him a job. He would look me some months, and then one day he suddenly disappeared. Oh, what happened? The next day the both street runners came to my house. I searched it and found hidden in one of my bedrooms, Jules. Jules had been stolen from my friends. They were only part of the missing Jules. Gleg had managed to get away with the rest. But he left those there just to incriminate me. I was arrested. Try. Sent out to Jamaica as a conduct. And Hunter, how did you manage to get free and join Captain Henry Morgan? How was it that Geoffrey Hunter was abroad that night in Port Royal when he saved the life of Captain Henry Morgan? Listen to the next episode of A Float with Henry Morgan.