Hey everyone, welcome! Linda here from ITTT, back with another live session this week. As you know, we always have these live sessions every week, usually on the same day, same time. And today we, because it's the first Friday of a new month, we are doing a Q&A, what I like to call a TEFL TESOL Q&A, a casual TEFL TESOL Teaching English Abroad kind of chat where you have the opportunity to ask me your questions, what's on your mind, your most burning questions, what you're most curious about, about teaching English abroad, about getting TEFL certified, about ITTT, about anything to that extent basically. And that's why I call it Teaching English Abroad online and everything in between. So because it covers a lot of stuff, right? So this is what we're going to do today. Thank you so much for being here. And as always, please let me know where are you watching from today? Where are you right now? I'm in South Korea. It is 1030 a.m. Friday morning. I'm super excited. It is Friday. We're getting ready for the weekend. Do you have any plans for the weekend? Let me know. I'm going to a wedding this weekend. And I'm also going to meet some friends this weekend that I haven't seen in a very long time. So I'm very excited for this weekend. But before we head into the weekend, we are having a chat today. So let me know where you are watching from, where you are right now, what time it is there, and what your plans are for the weekend. I'm always very curious. Also, if you can't hear me for some reason or there's some issues, also let me know in the comments, please, so we can fix that as fast as possible. And please don't forget to like and subscribe. You know, you're already here. You have nothing to lose. And like I said, we go live every week. So you don't want to miss any of our upcoming sessions, especially next week. And I'm going to talk a little bit more about that in just a second. But next week is a very, very special live session. We do have a guest. And I think you should all really tune in because it's going to be very, very exciting. So yeah. Welcome. We have LaTurk here. Hi, LaTurk watching from the Philippines. Oh, Giuliano. Hi. How are you doing in Brazil? It's nice to watch you again. Same. Thanks for being here again. And then we have Hindi with Manish. Cool. Manish from India. How are you doing? It is 7am. Wow. Very early. Thank you so much for joining Manish. That's awesome. Great. Oh, I need to check out your channel. So I assume you're teaching Hindi. That's cool on your channel. I should check that out. I love learning languages. I'm going to do a quick intro about myself in just a minute, but I'm all about learning foreign languages. So I'm going to check out your channel. And maybe I can learn some Hindi from you. That'd be great. Then we have Yusef here from Morocco. City of Benimelal. Oh, cool. Nice. I need to Google where that is first time I hear it. Nice. Very cool. Morocco. Thank you so much for joining. Awesome. That's good stuff right there. Great. What else do I need to mention? Oh, of course. We do have 30% off, guys. That's what I want to mention. Oh, wait. This is me. And then let's see. This one I wanted to show you guys. So we have 30% off today, a 30% discount off of all of our TEFL courses. So if you're not yet TEFL certified, if you're thinking about getting certified, maybe this is a great incentive to do so. So this is the link. So you can either hear, as you can see the QR code, you can scan this with your phone if you can. But if you can't, if you're watching this on your phone or just you can't scan it, no problem. We also have a link, which looks like this. It ends with Facebook Live minus Linda. So if you use this link, you get 30% off any TEFL or TESOL course from ITTT. So if you're interested in starting a career in teaching English abroad, this is a really, really good chance to save a lot of money to do so. So just want to mention that right off the bat, so that we're all on the same page here. And then we also have Jenna. Hi Jenna, watching from Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Nice. Awesome. Welcome. Then we have Roshanadi from Egypt. Cool. And then we have Saleh al-Hajri, al-Hajri, al-Hajri probably. I'm sorry if I butcher any of you guys' names. I'm trying very hard. From Oman. It's 5.30 AM. Oh my gosh. What are you doing up already? That's amazing. Thank you so much for being here. I appreciate it. That's great. Wow. We have a very international crowd. We have people from India, from Morocco, Vietnam, Egypt, Oman, Brazil, Philippines. I'm in South Korea. Wow. We're from everywhere today. That's awesome. Thank you guys. I'm excited. Very, very excited to be here. Cool. So yeah, don't forget 30% off. I'm going to mention this of course one more time later because we get some people joining later, more people joining later, or people leaving and coming back in. So I'm going to mention that again. Don't you worry. If it doesn't work for some reason, if this link doesn't work, let me know. I'll help you out. Of course. And then, yeah, let's have a chat today. Let's have a chat about Tefal Tea Sol. I think we also have a lot of new people here today, a lot of new names. That's awesome.  Okay. So feel free to ask whatever you want about Tefal Tea Sol, ITTT, teaching English abroad, or online, or whatever you want to know. And I'm going to try my best. Of course, I don't know everything, right? I'm not a robot or Wikipedia. So I might not know everything, but I'm going to try my hardest based on my own experience of teaching abroad and obviously working with ITTT for a very long time. So that's where my knowledge comes from. Okay. All right. Good. And let's go back to this and just a quick introduction about who I am because, like I said, I think we have a lot of new people here today. And I just want to show you guys so you know who I am. So my name is Linda. I'm a travel writer and content creator among many things. I do many different things, but those are like the main things that I do. And so my name, my online name I handle is Linda goes East and East because I've been, since I was a teenager, very, very interested in Asia. And so that's why Linda goes East. And I lived in China for a little bit. And now I'm based in South Korea. Now I've already been based here for seven and a half years. So already a long time. But before that, I lived in China and obviously I travel all around Asia. And now finally after COVID, all the countries are pretty much open again and travel is back on. I'm very excited about that. So if you're interested in this part of the world, especially in Korea in China, East Asia, but also all the other countries in Asia, feel free to head to Linda goes East.com and you might find something that you like and enjoy some travel guides and tips and good information for traveling there and also teaching English in different countries. So go ahead and check that out. And also, if you're on Instagram, I love creating content. Photography is a huge passion of mine. I also recently got a drone, or I guess this year I got a drone, sorry, it was in spring. But so if you enjoy that kind of content, feel free to head to at Linda goes East on Instagram. And you can also follow me there. And also, if you have a question that you might not want to ask here in front of everybody live, you can always DM me. And I'll answer the question there privately. That's also possible. You can also book a time slot with me one on one on my website. If that's something you're interested in to discuss certain things, how, you know, more like tailored to you, because everybody's situation is different. So if we, if you want some time just one on one consultation, we can certainly also do that. And there's a place on my website where you can book that or you just reach out to me on Instagram. I'm originally from Germany at the US. So my mom is German, my dad is American. And yeah, I'm based in South Korea and I've been here for seven and a half years and it's been a wild ride and I still love it. And I teach here. I teach, I used to teach full time my first year in Korea. And then I transitioned over to this is the next side. So this is definitely some marketing for it. That's what I started doing. But then I continued teaching on the side different projects. I taught business professionals at companies here in Korea, but also children. I've done winter camps, summer camps, these kinds of things. And also online teaching, I started teaching online during the pandemic, which was really great. And I'm still doing it now. So I do a lot of different things. And yeah, ITTT. So that's also kind of what I do work for ITTT, which stands for International Teflon T-Soul Training. And what we do is we help people sort of achieve their goal of moving abroad or teaching English professionally. So you don't even need to move abroad to do that nowadays. It's super easy, especially because of the pandemic to just do that online. So we help people just become English teachers. And our website is TeflonCourse.net. You might know it. Some of you are probably already certified. Some of you might not be. So this is just yeah, how you can find us. And ITTT has been around since 1998. So since the 90s and is a leading Teflon T-Soul course provider now worldwide. We also have in-class courses, so in-class centers around the world, but also a wide variety of different online courses. And if you're interested in that, I have some slides I can show you. I always like to use some slides in these live sessions so you can just visually see it better. I think that makes just more sense. Yeah, so this is it. And a little bit about me. And now let me have a look at the comments. All right, already two questions. Great. All right, so Saleh, I hope that's how you say Saleh, is asking, I did my SELTA. Should I do a Teflon T-Soul now? Yeah. So SELTA is a type of Teflon T-Soul certification. They are sort of their own brand. And when it comes to Teflon courses, let me just do this. Or what should I do? Maybe this one. And when it comes to Teflon T-Soul courses, it really depends on kind of every company, every provider, what their course content is. So it might vary. So I always say the more qualifications you have, the better it is and the more helpful it will be for your career. So if you have a SELTA already, that is really, really great. You can certainly move on now to do a Teflon, but maybe you should actually do the T-Soul Diploma course. So maybe that was your second question. I would recommend that one. And I can share the link with you so you can see this program. This is basically the most advanced, the most advanced that we have, the T-Soul Diploma. And that is an advanced level training course. And this is really for people who are already certified and who want to step up in terms of ESL knowledge and you have access to higher, better jobs and things like that. So let me share that with you and you can check that out. I think that would be a great next step for you after your SELTA. And I added the 30% off bit at the end to this link. So when you click on that you and you apply, you already have that 30% off in there. So you don't have to worry about it. So that is this one. So maybe I can show you all or you know what, I'll do that in just a minute. I just want to mention one more thing. And I kind of already mentioned this a little bit. So this is actually next week. I want to say this right away. I mentioned it a little bit that we do have these live sessions every week. And next week is very special. We actually have a guest speaker which is Dan Warden from Teach English Global Recruiting. So he's a recruiter specialized in China. So we're going to have a live session about teaching English in China in 2023 next year, what you need to know. Okay. Everything you need to know next week, it's going to happen. Same here on Facebook and on YouTube. So go ahead and check that out. Especially if you're interested in teaching in China, this is going to be a really, really useful live session for you. And you can ask Dan all of your questions and we're going to answer a lot of things, especially a lot of things have changed when it comes to teaching English in China because of the pandemic. They have a lot of new things implemented and I think it's going to be really, really interesting because China used to be the biggest teaching market in the world and it still is. And I think because of the pandemic and sort of a little bit of bad rep, it's gotten a lot of people are kind of looking for alternatives, but Dan will be here to kind of explain a little bit and show you guys a little bit how, what the teaching situation is in China right now, how you can get hired, what you need to know, and basically just the situation. So it's going to be really, really good. And if you're interested in that, please join us next week. It's going to be really great and you're going to have the opportunity to ask a true expert here. So yeah, this is something that Dan is going to be able to answer. So is teaching English in China legal for non-native speakers? Dan is going to talk a lot about that about the requirements because they have really, really changed in China in recent years. So when I was teaching there, which was literally seven years ago, I think, well no more, hold on, nine years ago, eight years ago, nine years ago, and I was teaching there, the requirements, the restrictions were very different. So anybody could basically come and teach in China. Now it's very different. And non-native English speakers, especially people from non-English speaking countries, are having a harder time. So it is, is it legal? I think we need to ask Dan that for sure. So please join us next week with when Dan will be here. I think that would be really interesting. And he'll be able to really answer that and say what the situation is right now. Okay. Yeah, the Turk. Yes. Excited. Definitely excited. And I hope you'll join if you're interested in teaching English in China. Mark this on your calendar. It's going to be really, really great because we have a guest who knows what they're talking about. I mean, I know what I'm talking about, but he is an expert in teaching English in China at the moment. What it's like, what has changed, what you need to know for the next year. Okay. So great. All right, now back to the diploma and the different courses, what Saleh here was asking. And let me just move to the right slides here. And if there's anything that you see on the slides that catches your interest, please let me know and I'll talk about that. Okay. Yeah, maybe this is a good thing for Saleh here, which Teflon course is right for me because literally there are so many different course options also within ITTT, not just in general, but also at ITTT's website or our course offer. In general, we have a lot of different course options. So how do you know which course is right for you? Right? That's always a big question. So let's first look at the different, oh, I need to make this bigger. Also the cost of things. So basically you really want to stay away from these free Teflon courses, right? Be wary of any Teflon course costing close to nothing or offered completely free because with those kinds of things it's really like you get what you pay for. So cheap and free Teflon courses, they aren't going to get you the desired teaching job abroad. They're most likely not accredited internationally recognized and they also lack basic things like job assistance and even a hard copy certificate. So I always like to compare this with a budget airline, right? We all know them. They're all over super cheap tickets, but then you have to pay for everything extra. You need to pay to check your luggage. You need to pay for booking your seat. You need to pay for everything extra, right? Everything extra. You need to pay for your water in some cases. So this is kind of what this is like. These Groupon Teflon courses, right? It looks great in the beginning, but then it really adds up. And it's basically, in some cases it actually gets much more expensive than choosing just a Teflon course from like a provider like ITTT from the go, from the get go, from in the first place. So yeah. And then they don't have this accreditation. They don't have jobs assistance. They don't even have a way to contact like customer service like we do. We have course coordinators and tutors that can help you and assist you. So they don't have any of that. So that right of the bat, you want to stay away from that. And then yeah. So at ITTT we have Tefl training starting from 50 hours all the way to 550 hours. So obviously there's a huge difference, right? What you want to aim for if you are a new teacher and you want to move abroad or you want to teach English online or in your own country, like professionally long term, you want to aim for a certificate that is at least 100 hours long. 100 hours just has become the international standard basically. That's why our most popular course is the 120 hour Teflon course. We don't have a 100 hour course. It's a 120 hour course because this one includes all the things you need to know. It teaches you all the things you need to know to be successful in your own classroom, to lead a classroom, to be an English teacher. And so yeah. Among all of these courses, like I said, we have a wide variety to suit all needs. We also have specializations that, you know, teaching business English, teaching children, teaching grammar, phonology, those kinds of things. And those are really, really great to kind of add to your portfolio and make you stand out because there's 120 hour course because I said it is the standard course. Most people are going to have it. So you want to kind of stand out from the crowd, stand out among all the other applicants and you want to get the specialization to kind of just have something different on your resume. All of the courses are internationally accredited, of course, and accepted worldwide. And let's have a more detailed look here. So this is the one that I mentioned earlier, the 120 hour course. This is the most popular among all our courses. And this one is completed 100% online, which is really, really great. Huge flexibility. This is also the course that this is how I found out about ITTT. Basically, I was looking for technical courses. I Googled as you do and ITTT came up and I looked at the website. I looked at the reviews and everything seemed really, really great. And I took this course and I really enjoyed it. I was working full time at the time. So this course was really great for me because I could study whenever I wanted. I had a lot of flexibility. There was no certain time where I needed to be online to join a class or anything. So I could really do my own studying at any time I wanted, whether it was really early in the morning in the afternoon or late at night. Didn't matter. I just log into the dashboard and I work through the course units all independently. So there are 20 units you need to work through with this course. You can study at your own pace. You have up to six months to complete the course, which is really, really great. So it gives you so much flexibility. It doesn't take most people six months, of course. You can finish this. I finished it and I was working full time. I didn't study like too much per week, a couple of hours per week. So it took me between three and four months to complete it. But if you are in a hurry or if you have more time, you can finish it much faster maybe. And I think if you do, you can do two units a day, I believe. It won't let you do more. If you do more, because you don't want to do too much too fast, you need to retain this information. So you can only do two units a day. If you do two units a day, I think it comes down to, well, it comes down to 10 days, doesn't it? So if you wanted to, you could finish it in 10 days, but I wouldn't recommend it. You really need your time to kind of work through everything and get it into your head. But basically you could do it in 10 days, but not recommended. At least I would say take a month, you know, really focus on it if you really want to do it super fast. But generally speaking, you could do it in 10 days. And then at the end, when you're all done and you're past, you get an embossed hard copy certificate shipped straight to your door wherever you are in the world. We will send it to you. And also that's the great thing.  Because when you apply for a teaching job, you're not, you're applying online, right? You're not actually sending them your certificate. So you would just attach the PDF anyway to the application. So you can do that right away. As soon as you pass and you don't have to wait for your embossed certificate, the embossed certificate, you only need, for example, if your certificate is needed for visa purposes. So for example, if you want to teach English in China, or in countries where the TEFL certificate is required, you need to show that to like the immigration and the visa people, then you will need that. And I believe in Vietnam and things. And in those countries, you'll also need a notarization. So this is like an extra stamp on your certificate to just get it super verified, notarized basically. And this is also something that we do at ITTT, so we can help you with that as well. But this is only needed in certain select countries. So most of you guys are not going to need that. But if you need that, we can help you with that as well. So yeah, in this course starts at $249 and $339 U.S. dollars with tutor support. So all of our courses or most of our courses actually come with tutor support. So tutor support means you have access to a tutor, an experienced TEFL tutor, who you can ask questions, who for clarification, you can reach out to them if you don't understand something. So that's really useful for people who maybe are taking an online course for the first time, they don't really know what to expect, or people who just have a hard time kind of studying on their own. So then it's a really great idea to have this tutor. But if you're used to online studying and you're like, no, I'm good, you can certainly take it without. So this is that course. And then we also have, oh, this one. Okay, let's talk about this too. So I kind of already talked about this. So how long does it take to complete the course? So like I said, you have up to six months. If you do the diploma course, because this is an advanced level course, you actually have up to 12 months to complete the course. So this is usually how it works. And then we also have, of course, in class courses, and they are four weeks long.  This is usually eight hours a day in addition to some homework and practice teaching. And then yeah, you can choose a training center of your choice around the world. You can check on our website. We have a lot of different locations in Asia, in America, in South America, in Europe, Africa, Middle East, wherever you want to go, we have a center there pretty much. So yeah, and if there's no center, no center near you, or you don't want to travel anywhere. And obviously the budget is also very different, right? In class courses are a lot more expensive than the online courses. So depending on your budget and what you want to do, you can pick an online course or an in class course, basically. But the certificate you receive is actually the same. That's also what I want to say. So, but of course, with the in class course, you have this additional teaching practice, right? Because you will be going to an actual English teach in English language school. So you will actually teach real students there. So this is the benefit of the in class course that you actually get to teach real English students with the online course. You don't have that part. But the certificate at the end is the same. And also the online certificate, it doesn't say that the TEFL course was done online. That's another thing. So I think that's what a lot of people are also worried about. Oh, does it say online on the certificate? It doesn't, it doesn't. Nope. Okay. Yeah, then these are the specializations. I already mentioned these, you can add these on. Or sometimes we have special offers where if you buy a course with tutor support, for example, you get a free specialization course on top of that. So there are a lot of options like that on our website, you can check it out. Yeah. And then these are the bundles. I actually wanted to mention those, because that's very interesting. So if you purchase a bundle, it's basically a couple of courses in one. And it's cheaper to buy it this way. And actually, my favorite course bundle is the 220 hour master package. That's what I have done. But when I did the course, they didn't have the bundles yet. So I actually had to do every course individually, which is a lot more expensive. So now they came out or ICTTV came out with the packages. So it's a lot more affordable this way. So I like the 220 hour master package because you get the standard 120 hour course. And then you also get two specializations, which is teaching business English and teaching English to young learners, children, because those two are really the biggest English teaching niche fields. And if you have those, you're really good to go. You can teach in any environment because business people or children are basically the two groups that you will encounter in most teaching scenarios. So if you're, if you take this course package, you're really good to go and you don't have anything to fear. But of course, we also have these other ones. So this is great because as you can see with the 470 hour one here, the final part, and here also this part is the TESOL diploma, right? The diploma course, which is the highest level that we offer. And so this is great for people who want to do this long term and who want to go to a really good school, high level school, they want to earn a higher salary, they want to be head teachers, leading roles in their schools, or maybe you want to start your own school, then these are great course packages to do if this is something you are interested in. Awesome. We have D.R. Rakhmi. D.R. Rakhmi. I hope I'm saying that correct. Hi, I'm from South Kalimantan Province, Indonesia. Nice. Good morning. Happiness and healthiness. Happy Friday. Thank you to you as well. That's so sweet. Sending you a lot of happiness and healthiness. Thank you. Great. All right. Yeah. Then let me know. I don't want to talk too much about or just rambling. This is not a lecture, so this is for you guys. So yeah, I just want to put this slide back on and I'm going to make myself bigger. So ask me your questions. You listened now to a lot of the things I said. Now is your time. Please ask me your questions, anything you're curious about. And then if a slide that I have here fits with your question, I'm going to show it. But yeah, I just really want to have this as a conversation between you guys and me. So yeah, I'm open to your questions now. Please send them my way. Even while I'm talking with these slides, feel free to just send questions. That's all cool. Amitava. Hi. I'm doing very well. How are you doing? Thank you for being here. And maybe I also have a question for you. Let me know, guys. I'm going to ask you a question while you think about your questions for me. Are you already TEFL or TESOL certified? Yes or no? Just leave a yes or a no in the comments right now. And then we'll talk about it. Very curious. Let me know. Are you already certified? TEFL or TESOL? Yes or no? Let me know. Yes or no? And of course, ask me your questions as well. But are you already certified? Perhaps? I'm quiet because there's always this delay between, that's what I've heard. There's a delay between me talking and then you guys seeing it because of Facebook regulations. They want to make sure there's no weird content coming up. Okay, great question. Sorry, I cannot read your name. I can't read Arabic. I'm so sorry. So the question is I have a bachelor's degree in English but looking for more sophisticated experiences. Awesome. Yeah, I mean if you have a bachelor's degree in English, great English language, probably not English teaching. So you might definitely want to add on a TEFL certificate if you want to go down that route of teaching. That'd be really great. So a TEFL course basically teaches you how to teach English, right? You might speak fluent English. Your English grammar is great. But a TEFL course really also focuses on teaching techniques and how to basically bring that across to your students. We have classroom management units. Lesson planning is a very big thing, how to structure a lesson. And we use a very good system. It's called ESA, which means Engaged Study Activate. And if you follow this kind of pattern, you can plan a great lesson, a very successful lesson. So this is all included in a TEFL course. So in your case, yeah, I would either recommend again the 120 hour course, which is the standard course. Or if you're thinking about doing this more long term and you maybe also want to teach children and you want to teach business people too, the 220 hour master package that I just talked about for a while is great, which includes the standard 120 hour course and then two of these specializations for teaching business English and for teaching English to young learners. So if you take that one, you're really good to go. And especially because you have a degree in English, I think your chances will be really good because in most places, people, when a degree is required, the major is not important. But your major isn't English. So that's already a big plus. And then adding on a TEFL certificate, that will really be great for you, I think. All right. I mean, I was just, yes, a double certified in both TEFL, 120 hour in class intensive and TSOL 250 hour online diploma as well. Great. Amitabha, that is awesome. I love it. That's great. Awesome. I think that's a good idea. All right. Hello, Maria from Uzbekistan. My name is Maria and I'm going to take your 170 hour course, but a bit confused. Should I choose with tutor support or not? Okay, great. Let me see if I have a slide about the 170 hour course. I might actually not have one. Let's see. I have a lot of slides. Let's see. We talked about the courses. We talked about all this. 120. I feel like there should be one for one. No. I should have one for, let's see. If not, I'll just, what can you do? No. Okay. Well, I guess maybe I don't have one. Okay. 120 hour course for those of you who don't know, this is the TEFL certificate with online teaching online specialization. So this is the 120 hour course, the standard course, plus a 50 hour teaching online specialization. So this is great for anyone who wants to either go abroad and teach or also teach online. So this online portion, the online teaching portion really focuses on how you teach online, which is so, so different. And I've learned that when I started teaching online is very different from teaching in a classroom. So I also took the specialization actually, the online teaching one, because it's so useful because you think, oh yeah, like I know how to teach, but teaching online is very different. Like the environment is very different. You need to use a lot of different techniques. So very helpful. So yeah, a bit confused. Should I choose tutor support or not? So this really depends on your own study preference, I would say, and how you study. If you've done an online course before and you're confident and you're more of a, like, like solo, no, what do you call that? Like a single study, solo study person? If you study by on your own, you're comfortable with that. Or if you prefer someone who pushes you a little bit and somebody who is there and kind of guides you a little bit, you can ask a tutor questions. If there's something you don't understand, you know, a lot of course takers who are non-native English speakers, they choose tutor support because just sometimes it can be, oh, maybe there's something you quite, you don't quite understand because of like English or, you know, I don't know. Then you can ask the tutor as well. So it really depends on you. I recommend tutor support in general. I think it's really good. And if you have a question, you can always ask them and they provide really, really great feedback. And especially if there's something you don't understand from a language standpoint, you can ask them or if you took an assessment and then maybe you didn't pass the assessment, sometimes it can happen. You can ask your tutor, hey, can you have a look at my assessment results? Like why, what, I don't understand why I got that wrong or something like that. So you'll be able to do that. So it really depends on you, Maria. I hope you can make a decision. And don't forget to use our 30% off, okay? If you book any course or sign up for any course, please, please, please, do not pay the full price. We have 30% off here. I'm going to share the link again, by the way. Let's share this link again. I think we have some new people here. And please ask me your questions, more of your questions. So this is the 30% off link, this one. So don't pay the full price. Use this link. Save 30%. It's a lot of money. Please, please, please. You're welcome, Maria. Awesome. Great. Okay. So we still have some time. Feel free.  So please ask away whatever you want to know. I'm here. You can ask me. And again, don't, don't miss next week. I think next week will be really great. Even if you're not interested in teaching English in China, you might get interested when you watch this. I taught English in China. I studied Chinese before as I'm a bit biased, but I really like China. I love the culture. I love the history. It's such a big country. There's so much to see and do. So teaching English in China is really like the lifetime experience. It's going to blow your mind. So if you're interested in that, interested in teaching English abroad, but you're not quite sure where yet, join us next week. We have a guest speaker, Dan, from Teach English Global Recruiting. So he really knows what's going on in China, in terms of English teaching, how to get a job, where to get a job, when to get a job, all of those things. Good. We have Jessica, until when is the 30% promo? It does not expire. It does not expire. It doesn't expire. You can use this today, tomorrow, next week. Oh, good. All good. Just make sure you use it. Don't forget. Copy, paste, and maybe save it somewhere. This will work anytime, anytime. We're just only sharing this during the live sessions. That's why it's so special. You're not going to find this anywhere on our Facebook page. You're not going to find this. You're not going to find this anywhere. So this link we only share in our live sessions. That's why. Okay. Ask me your questions, please. I'm still here a couple more minutes. Want to make sure everybody gets the chance to ask their questions.  Or if there's something, you kind of, you watch the replay, you can still comment on here. We'll, we'll get back to you even if you watch this at a later point. Or you can always reach out to us via email and me, my colleagues, we'll get back to you. Our course administrators, coordinators here, courses at tcell-tefl.com. Reach out if you have any questions about which course you should take. Anything, anything you want to know, always reach out to us. Yep. Yep. That's it. That's how it works. If you're watching for the first time, we go live every week, every week, Friday, this time. So please like and subscribe. And we always also, especially on our Facebook page, we share a lot of really great content on there for teachers. So teaching materials you can use in your classroom or job offers for people who want to be teachers. Of course, information, so much. So check it out. Really check it out. There's a lot of content on there. Also on YouTube, a lot of informational videos, a lot of good stuff. Yeah. Do check it out. And again, don't miss next week. Please tune in. Join us again. Like and subscribe so you don't miss the notification when we go live. We always post about it also in advance. So you can see it there and you can join. Next week might be a different time than this today. It will be a different time. It will be later in the day because Dan is in the UK. So we need to match that time zone. So it will be at a different time. So make sure you like and subscribe. You check it out on our page later. It's not live yet. But when it is, make sure you check it out so you know when to tune in. But you can always watch the replays as well. That's a good thing. All of our live sessions and we've done so many live sessions are always in our playlist on YouTube and also on Facebook. We have a dedicated playlist of all the live sessions. So you can always browse that. Check it out. We talked about so many different topics. So today is just a casual Q&A, which is what we do every first Friday of the month. And then every other Friday is a dedicated topic, right? It's just more structured. Yeah, Jessica, I just mentioned that. So the 30% promo, you can use this anytime. It does not expire, but we just share it only this specific link during our live sessions. That's why it's so special. You're not going to find 30% off anywhere else only here. But you can use it tomorrow, today, next week. All good. It does not expire. Just make sure you save it. And then when you're ready to sign up, you use that link to save 30%. Don't pay the full price. Don't do it. Why? Why would you if you have this opportunity? You're welcome. You're welcome. All right. Good. Anybody else has more questions, please let me know. Please let me know. Thinking. I mentioned everything I believe, what I wanted to mention. But yeah, anything you're curious about, about Tefal, TESOL, teaching English abroad or online, let me know. Before I go, I want to make sure everybody had the chance to ask a question. And then again, don't miss next week's session where we talk about teaching English in China in 2023, what you need to know. We have a guest speaker, Dan, from teaching, no, teach English global recruiting, who's an expert in teaching English in China, what you need to have to teach English in China, where the best cities are to teach, what has changed, also in terms of lockdown situation, how can you now enter China, all of those things. So how much money can you make there now? All of those things will be answered in that live session. So please join us next week. It will be really, really awesome. Just check in. If I missed any comments, I don't think I have. So yeah, let me know. I'll be able to take a couple more questions, or if there are no questions, I'm cool too. But now is your chance, now is your chance to ask away your big opportunity. Again, this is the discount link. So 30% off with this link, you can find it in the comments that ends with Facebook Live minus Linda. And you, oh no, not this one, but this one too, but this one's the shorter one with apply copy, paste this link, and you'll get 30% off your Teflon TESO course. And also this is our email address courses at TESO minus Tefl.com. You can email us at any time if you have any questions outside of this live session. Again, you can also leave comments here even after this live is finished and we'll get back to you at any time. And yeah, but now I'm still here. I'm still live right now. So you can still ask me right now. So I have a couple of minutes. All right, Amitava asks, Linda, are my credentials enough in order to land me a good job with a decent salary either in Asia, Australia, or Europe? What do you suggest? I think yes, you're more than qualified. Certainly you didn't in class course, you have to TESO diploma. I forget about your university background. But I do believe did you have a master's degree? I think you or a bachelor's degree. I don't remember now. But certainly, certainly you might want to start somewhere like in Asia first, right? And get a couple of years experience. And then you can move on to Australia or Europe. That's I think a good way to go about this. So certainly, certainly. And also we have a job section on our website. And we have lifetime job support for all ITTT course graduates. So just reach out to us again with this email. And Amitava, you too, reach out to and my team at the job department, they will be able to help you find a job. But I think yeah, going with probably somewhere in Asia first, if you don't have any teaching experience yet, start in Asia and get a couple years experience. And then you can move on to a more competitive market. I think that'd be a good strategy. But you're doing, it looks like you're doing so much Amitava, because you're always here too, you're getting so much information, which is so great. And you did the courses. So I think you're really on a good way, good path. There's a good teaching career in front of you, I can feel it. So reach out to us Amitava. We will help you. Okay, yeah, I have a two years associates degree in commerce from the University of Kokkata. Okay. Yeah, okay, two years associates degree might be a little bit difficult. I'm not going to lie. Usually, but in Asia, it's going to be okay. In Asia, I think you're going to be okay in certain countries. But a lot of countries really want a four year bachelor's degree. So maybe there's something you can do to get that. And then you'll be able to go to Australia and Europe, and other countries in Asia too. Two years associates degree might be a little bit difficult, but you can still find a job with that in Asia, in Asian countries for sure. Absolutely. And with ITTT, we have the option, you have the option of getting university credits to from your courses. And there's an online, you can do the online degree. So through ITTT. So if that's something you're interested in, again, you can email us and ask about that, how you can do that. It's also a lot less expensive than other universities. Check that out. Might be a good option for you too. Good question. All right. A little bit more time left. If anybody still has a question here, let me know before we sign off. Still have a little bit of time. Thomas says, anyway, thanks a lot for your kind advice, help support and suggestions at all times. Thank you so much. Thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you for always being here. I feel like you're, you're here every live session. That's really great. Thank you so much for your support as well. Really appreciate it. That's why we're doing this, right? That's why we're doing it. Thank you. All right. Let's see if there's one more question coming in. If not, we're going to sign off. Maybe one more question who will be the lucky person to get one more question answered. And don't forget, please join us next week with Dan from Teaching English Global Recruiting, who will be here to answer questions about teaching English in China in 2023, what you need to know. I hope to see you there. Even if you're not particularly interested in China, I think it's still going to be very interesting. You're going to learn a lot of new things too about recruiting in general, TEFL recruiting. Because I think there are a lot of misconceptions out there. One of the biggest ones really is that teachers don't pay for the recruiter, right? The schools pay for the recruiter. So really using a recruiter is a great way for teachers because you do pay them, right? And I think a lot of people don't realize that. They think you need to pay them. But no, the teacher doesn't pay the recruiter. So it's really awesome. And Dan will be able to talk a little bit more about that too. So all right. Well, I guess there are no more questions coming in then today. But thank you so much for being here. We had a very international crowd from all parts of the world and some good questions came in. Oh, I'm going to ask one more question. Awesome. Okay. Would a 50 hour young learners or business English bolster my future chances of getting recruited on an ASAP basis? What do you say, Linda? Of course, the more qualifications you have, the better, right? And if you don't have the young learners or the business English one yet, I really, of course, I recommend getting that, for sure, for sure, especially because business English and young learners, so children are the two biggest markets for teaching English. And especially, unfortunately, as a non native English speaker from a non, and I know like India is an English speaking country, but there's so much. And it's really stupid because there are certain countries that are considered English speaking countries and certain countries who are actually speaking are not considered English speaking in this teaching world.  But that's just how it is. So the more certifications you have, if you're not from one of those countries, really the better. And it's not fair.  But that's how it is, unfortunately. I wish it wasn't. And it's changing. It is getting better. A lot of countries are easing their restrictions when it comes to their teacher's nationality and background, which is great. But there's still a long way to go in this, in this area. So, yeah, at the moment, of course, the more sort of certifications you have better. But I mean, if you can, I would really focus maybe on the four year degree. So like I said, we have an ITTT.  And this degree can be taken online. I recently looked at that because I was very interested in that too. So you don't even have to attend any university, like you don't have to go anywhere. You can do this from home as well. But I think for you, really trying to get maybe a bachelor's degree would be a better investment for your money. But if that's really not an option, then yes, young learners or business English, definitely a great, great idea. All right, then I think we're going to end it here. Thank you so much for being here, for watching today. I hope you learned something new. And I hope you're going to join us again next week, please, when we have a guest speaker here about China. And yeah, don't forget to like and subscribe. And I'm going to see you all next week, I hope, at this live session. And then I'm going to sign off and I wish you all a very, very good weekend. And I hope to see you all again next week. And if there are any unanswered questions, feel free to reach out either via Instagram, me directly at Linda goes East, or just email us courses at tso-teflul.com. That's our website teflulcourse.net. There are a couple of other ways you can contact us. What's up and whatnot. So definitely reach out. The Turk is saying thank you so much, Linda. See you next week. Thank you. Happy weekend. See you next week as well. All right, then I'm going to sign off for today. And thank you guys. See you next week with this upcoming live session with a guest speaker. Thank you guys. Bye.


With that said, Mike, I'll hand it over to you to introduce the next panel. Thanks, Andy. I'm Michael Rosenblatt and I'm the Chief Medical Officer of Flagship Pioneering. And I've been a longtime member of the Scientific Advisory Group for this conference. And I'm really honored to introduce our next panel, which is entitled Industry and Investment Outlook. We're going to be looking at a collection of topics under that major heading. They include looking at macroeconomic trends in the near and midterm and what their impact will be on biopharmaceutical investment. We're going to look at healthcare and pricing. What industry investment behavior makes no sense now and needs to change. And of course, on the near horizon are the U.S. presidential election and what direction that might have impact on investment. And similarly, the development of a COVID vaccine and a return to normal or near normal. We've assembled a real blue ribbon committee, which are the members are going to be introduced to you in just a moment. I have the pleasure of introducing Andy Plump. He's the chairman of the overall of this entire conference and it's MC and he's also the president of R&D and Takeda. And I'm honored to have him as a longtime friend. So Andy, I'm passing the baton back to you. Terrific. Thank you very much for the really kind introduction, Mike. And I have to admit that as the master of ceremonies, I'm always conflicted because whenever I host a panel and put a team together like this one, I want it to be the best. So as MC, I'm always conflicted. So I've decided that we just have all the panels are great. And this one is just really great. So with that said, let me quickly introduce the panelists and I would encourage you to put up the Hollywood Squares image because we're going to be trying to make this dynamic to have to see how everybody interacts with one another. We're going to try to keep it lively, keep it flowing. It's a group that is quite familiar with one another. So that allows for a really provocative discussion and no hurt feelings. So introducing the panel, we have Daphne Zohar. Hi, Daphne. Daphne is the founder and CEO of Pure Tech, which is a really exciting and interesting new way of thinking about drug discovery and drug development. So we have my former boss and friend, Elias Serhouni. Elias is now a professor emeritus at Johns Hopkins, but before that, head of R&D for many, many years at Sinovi, ran the NIH during the Bush years. And before that, a very successful career at Hopkins entrepreneur. The list goes on and on, Elias. Chris V. Bakker, who also doesn't need much of an introduction, he's now the managing partner at Hornet Point Capital. Chris, before that was the CEO at Sinovi, and before that a long and illustrative career in many, many countries at GSK. And then, last but not least, and you've already seen Stelios Papadopoulos earlier on in his terrific fireside chat with Ken Frazier is the chairman at Biogen. He's the co-founder and chairman at Exalixus and a long history in the healthcare industry and investment banking. So really looking forward to stepping into this panel. And I will start with you Stelios, but Chris, you feel free to jump in. Tell us what's happening in the world from a macroeconomic standpoint. What do you see happening today? What do you see happening in the near future? And then specifically, what do you see the effects of some of the disruptions that we're seeing today and some of what you expect to happen tomorrow on healthcare investment? Well, this is, thank you, Andy, and a pleasure to be with everybody again. This is a large, wide open-ended question, and I will not attempt to address all the points, but let me focus a little bit on the investment in this reaction to what's going on right now, and particularly to our sector. It's a bit odd, if you think about it, that we are in the worst pandemic of our lifetimes. For sure, none of us has seen or hopefully will see again something of this magnitude and severity. And at the same time, the stock market has been setting records for the last several months. It's odd, it's peculiar. Now, why is that happening? And why is our sector the beneficiary of this? The largest underlying force here is there's an imbalance in supply and demand for investment opportunities. There's excess liquidity in the world, for sure. That money, typically, the larger portion of capital goes into the fixed income markets. But interest rates have been so low and are predicted to remain low, there's little interest in investing in fixed income securities. So that brings you into equities. And if you look at equities, and now there's an avalanche of capital because, as I said, the fixed income markets are two, three times the size of the equity markets or more. When you look at equities, clearly you don't invest today in leisure entertainment, in travel, in consumer goods, in commercial real estate. These are all sectors that are clearly suffering from the pandemic. That leaves you with just a few things, high technology, information technology systems, and obviously healthcare. Now, healthcare historically has been a defensive sector. On the assumption that people get sick, no matter what the markets are, you can even argue they may get sick more in difficult economic and social and health environments. But at the same time, uniquely now, not only we're a defensive sector, we're also an offensive, if I can point that term, in the sense that if there's going to be a solution to this pandemic and I'm confident there will be, although I may debate the timing with a number of my colleagues in the industry, it's going to come from us. So we have this opportunity for huge upside and also the limited downside. And that I think is what is driving money into our sector. What would I worry about, as you pointed out? Well, at some point, as the pandemic comes out in control, if you look at Delta Airlines, American Airlines, if you look at those stocks, how much they've been beat up. Typical investor behavior sector rotation, they'll shift money away from parts of the market that I've overperformed into those that are likely to explode to a recovery. So as the recovery becomes visible, I expect money to shift out of where we are. Also, and I will allow the other panel members to comment on this, but that's all disappointments with the work we're doing, setbacks. Will there be a vaccine in October or in November or in January? Will it be a good vaccine? Will it not? Will the antibodies work? All these things come with daily adjusted expectations, and those can introduce some fatigue in the marketplace at some point or some huge disappointment. So I'll stop right here because this is a topic worthy of a lot of conversation everybody else is trying to make, I believe. So you're taking a little bit of a downturn in industry investment as we start to hit some bumpy roads downstream. Chris, any additional thoughts from you? You're on mute. You're on mute. Just broke the first rule of Zoom 101. Just to put a few numbers around what Stelio said, if you look at the capital that has flowed, at least in the public equities and health care in terms of IPOs, pipes, or secondary offerings, it's a year-to-date $31 billion. And to put that in context, at the same time in 2019, this was $17 billion. So interestingly, in a period where everybody has been at home and not been able to get out and travel, actually money has not only been flowing into the sector, but it's been flowing into the sector by getting deals done. If you talk to investment bankers, they are as busy as ever. We've seen some major acquisitions this year. And certainly even IPOs, I mean, Stelios in a preparatory call was noting that actually the pandemic is probably an advantage for an IPO because where you spent 10 days getting tired running around the world on a plane, you can do this thing in three days and see a lot more people and you're probably fresher and able to do your pitch better. One of the things that is usually a factor, though, that they sort of say who's going to take away the punch bowl and it's usually the threat of pricing reform. And I remember back in 2003, I just become the president of GSK North America and the chairman of GSK from the UK was there and asking, how long can the U.S. defy economic gravity? And I've had to answer this question about when are we going to see something happen on pricing for 17 years and arguably the only thing that's really happened is the consolidation of payers. I mean, the express scripts and CVS care mark have done what no government has done in terms of really eliminating price increases, but I think we've got stability. This is a really complex system. We've just finished two years where we've had a House of Representatives that was desperate to do something on drug pricing. They've got someone in the White House who's desperate to do something on pricing. And it hasn't been able to really work. So I'm not sure that we're going to see it when you can never say never, but I think, you know, that doesn't. Can you hear me? Okay, Chris, can you hear me? Yeah, but I'm, this says, oh, there we are. Mine wasn't on mute. So I don't think pricing is necessarily going to be the big factor. It doesn't seem to be coming into this election like it did in 2016. Maybe, Elise, I'm going to turn to Daphne, but I want to set you up. I love when physicians and scientists and R&D heads get asked questions about pricing. They used to be five years ago that we were told, don't go there. It's a third rail. Save it for somebody else. But now we're all in this discussion. So I'm curious on your thoughts on not just drug pricing, but healthcare costs and where you see things headed and where we can perhaps be more responsible. Before we get there, though, kind of continuing along this investment thesis, Daphne, you know, we all wake up, read the Wall Street Journal. We read John Carroll's brilliant work in Endpoints, and every once in a while we say, oh, why was that investment made? Or why is that number so large? What do you think of some of the practices that we have saved that just don't make sense? I don't think I have done that in the lead controller because I was... I'm hearing an echo in the background. Yeah, me too. If I could ask some of the technical folks to go on mute if you're in the green room. I need to mute the gallery. Okay. Thanks, Andy, and hello, everyone. Yeah, so I think it's really interesting because several people have mentioned today that the industry that more capital needs to come into the industry. And while I agree with, you know, in terms of significantly investing more in basic science and translational research, I completely agree with that. But I also think that as an industry we could look back and see if there's practices that we employ that might actually be changed in order to improve the impact of the money that we end up spending. So that's, you know, a general comment. And at PureTech we did something really unusual in that we started and built a biopharma company with actually very little resources. So in doing that it wasn't by choice, but we actually learned a few things that I think could be relevant for the industry. So for example, one of the things that I think would be really important would be to kill projects early. But there's a whole incentive mechanism that is in place that can pay people a lot of money before getting to proof of concept and before getting to an approved drug. And so there's a lot of financial incentives that may not necessarily be aligned with what we're trying to accomplish in the industry. So I think one thing that we could do differently is set up a motivation incentive structure that enables people to kill projects early. Another thing I think that could be very interesting would be to enable bigger companies to be a little bit more entrepreneurial and nimble. And that means scaling down decision making when you're making decisions that relate to smaller amounts of money to be able to be a little bit less cumbersome. So those are some ideas, but I think generally I'd love to hear what others think about the idea of the incentive structure that we have in place, which tends to be somewhat short term versus the long term horizon and the many failures. Give us an example of something that you're doing at PureTech to incentivize the kind of this rapid incisive decision making that you're talking about. Yeah, so we've set up PureTech such that there's the ability to move resources very quickly between projects. And we actually, as a management team, are motivated to kill projects early because the resources will move to better projects. So we've set that up, we've incentivized the team to do that, and our structure is set up to do that. Whereas if you're in a traditional biotech company, there tends to be a bias to continue even if you get mixed results. You want to keep going, you want to keep the company going. So this concept of setting up a structure like that I think makes sense. The other thing is doing experiments that don't cost a lot of money but could kill the project. And it'd be surprised how much resistance there usually is to doing that. Terrific. Thanks, Daphne. All right, Elias, what's the answer to pricing and health care cost control? Well, you know there's a revolution going on. I mean, pricing, I sort of agree with Chris in the way that when you look at the statistics, pricing has not gone up.  So it's not as much of a problem as it was 10 years ago for the total system. I think what you're seeing in health care is a little bit what we saw in the PVMs. And that is why the point of view, I don't know who's talking, but from the point of view, can you hear me okay? We can. There's a little bit of background noise, which I think is the technical staff and I'm just going to ask them to please go and mute. But we do hear you, Elias, through that. So from the point of view of the market, I mean, you can see consolidation in health care systems are consolidating. Everybody's sort of coming together. And it's rare now that you see an independent hospital, even in Boston. And that leads to what you would call optimization of delivery. And so all the hospitals are right now working on formularies and clinical pathways and trying to control costs that way. You also see new entrants and technology companies. You can see CVS is trying to open minute clinics. Digital health is going to be a major player because you can access now cheaply, virtually 80% of the needs of primary care. And I think you're going to see that happening on the grand scale. From the point of view of R&D, what I feel is that as Elias and Chris were mentioning, we're in the golden era right now because cost of capital is very low. There's a lot of capital available. I just stated in some activities. I mean, the interest rates for a multi-billion dollar loan is less than 1%. And in some regions of the world, it's negative. I think that we have to be prepared because this is a bubble of the yin yang, if you will. And that will be driven by what interest rates going up, taxes going up, depending on the election. I mean, if capital gains are changed or dividend payments are changed, that will happen and we'll have to adapt to it. But I think there are two trends that I believe are really essential to understand the investment dynamics. One is, you know, typically investors invested in big pharma, that is not providing the returns that you would expect in terms of innovation, simply because innovation has changed. Today, you're not talking about vertical organizations that do everything.  So innovation is distributed. And because of that, you're going to see investments in new ideas at a pace that you didn't have before, because there were not a lot of new ideas coming from the traditional investment channels, if you will. And you're seeing it. I mean, you're seeing it in your survey. I mean, cell therapy. I mean, you know, it's a hard thing to do, but it will grow. And investors are willing to take a chance earlier, as Daphne was saying. But in a way that is more distributed where the risk is more hedged, if you will, across many different ideas. I think, you know, if you ask me what is going to grow is really the concept of multi-targeting where you're not going to do one drug for one pathway, but one drug for different nodes in the pathway. So there'll be a change in the nature of the research we do.  You'll see a lot of diagnostics grow, biomarker field. The field of biomarkers is going to grow to help us develop drugs, but also treat patients more precisely. Healthcare systems are going to consolidate and they are. And at the end of the day, I think the healthcare system moves very slowly. It's not going to happen overnight. But I think we're going to see ups and downs and booms and busts in different areas at different times. Andy, may I chime in for a second? Please. I want to emphasize a couple of points made by Chris and Elias regarding IPOs. This is the first time in the 40-year history of the stock market for biotech where a preponderance of IPOs consistently trade above the IPO price. This never happened before.  So that creates incremental demand. Demand begets performance, performance begets demand, comes a virtual cycle in that regard until something happens. And when the bubble burst, I don't want to call this a bubble worry now because there's a lot of exciting fundamental science. But when that excitement somehow has reason to sit back for a moment and take measure of what's going on, then prices can drop precipitously. And what that trigger is going to be is usually unpredictable because if we knew it, we could deal with it ahead of time. But the fact that just about every IPO this year is trading above the offer price is a remarkable event. Never happened before. Chris. Just one more, please. Quick point, Andy, if you look and if you've been active in this biotech investing and pharma investing, the number of players has multiplied. I mean, Chris can comment, I remember in 2011 we acquired Genzyme and M&A operation that he can talk about, which is brilliant. But at that time, I can tell you the number of players that could compete with you were very, it was very small and I let him comment. But today, if you look at the number of outfit you can channel investments, both singly or in syndication, it's three times what it was. So there's more, there are more players willing to do that and it feeds into that wheel that Alastelius is talking about. Maybe Chris, go back to the story of Genzyme, which was at a very different time. You're coming out of the housing crisis and the recession that ensued. Healthcare investment was actually at a very different place. Maybe walk us through a little bit kind of what happened and how you would compare where we are today to where we were then. Well, you know, back in those days, every big pharma was still trying to source all of the innovation really more in-house.  And we identified Genzyme. It was in 2010. And we did it really to get a presence in the best ecosystem there is in the world, which was Boston, to try to make that leap to biotech. But also to try to bring in a more entrepreneurial culture into the company. One of the side effects of that transaction though was up until then, the strategy had been five billion dollar transactions string the pearls type approach. And we borrowed $20 billion in 2010 at 1.8%. And as one investor said, you know, you could have bought yogurt and it would have been a creative.  And actually, if you go back and look at the biotech index, it really started to take off from that point in time. But it was this whole notion of, you know, we needed to have a lot more of an external focus to do that. We needed to have a presence in an ecosystem and people that knew how to collaborate. You know, today, I mean, the world is completely different. 70% of the biopharmaceutical pipeline is in companies with market caps of $10 billion or less. This is completely different than when I started in this industry 30 years ago. And, you know, I think that is really enabled research and development to really go. I mean, Daphne talks about the slowness of when you're dealing with a big pharma on sort of the sell side to them. We just kind of came to the conclusion that you're never going to really create innovation on a large scale inside of large corporations. And I think the other thing is that by outsourcing that, it's not just a different model. But, you know, one of the things I noticed when we did, for instance, the Regeneron deal was this was a way for me in Santa Fe to access a different source of capital, because the capital that was behind Santa Fe was only interested in what Atlantis did last quarter. They weren't interested in the pipeline. But I go and listen to Len Schleifer at JP Morgan, and I had a different fidelity in his meeting than was in ours. And that capital was interested in pipelines that capital was much more risk oriented. And so I think this outsourcing and collaborative approach to R&D is not only good from a people point of view but allows big companies to kind of escape their treadmill of quarterly earnings and tap into innovation for people who have a different and more risk oriented capital behind them. You know, by the way, Stelios was giving an investment tip. You had made the suggestion of investing in yogurt. Stelios just wanted to clarify. I don't know if everybody heard it, but it was Greek yogurt. I think that's what you said. At some appropriate time, I will even distinguish different brands of Greek yogurt. All right. Well, Regine Paul is listening. So please. Andy, can I ask a question? Please. I mean, as we see all these technical shifts, you know, the way innovation is done is different. And can I ask the question to all the panelists, Stelios, Chris and Daphne, do you foresee an increased wave of mergers of big companies like we've seen between you and Shire, Akita and Shire and Sal Jean and BMS and Allergan? And what is the guy? What are you guys reading? Because this is a very interesting question of supply, demand and market power, right? And what are we going to see? Great question. Are we kind of where we headed in terms of M&A? Stelios, maybe you can comment. And Daphne, maybe from a kind of a budding pharmaceutical company, you can offer some of your thoughts as well. My thought on the matter is what drives big company mergers is usually the attempt to solve a problem. Everybody who's done something is trying to solve a particular problem.  That's the term you coined. And I never forgot that because it was very telling. You're attempting through catalytic events to dramatically change a company. There was a problem you were trying to solve. And you could go on probably offline and talk, why did Akita and Shire, why BMS did Sal Jean? Why did Pfizer do Ronald Lambert, Pharmacy and Allergan? And that will persist. The creation of the emergence of problems within large pharma will continuously exist. And it's typically, but not exclusively, driven by expiration of intellectual property protection.  In November 2011, the Lipitor Patna was to expire. And at the time was the biggest selling drug in the industry. That was the cliff. And they were just looking at it with fear. So, bottom line is, yes, they will continue, but the universe is so small. Each one is a separate story, all of itself, all by itself. So it's not trends or secular force or anything else. It's just people trying to solve a problem and an acquisition is a potential solution to the problem. What do you think, Daphne, from your point of view at PureTech? Yeah, I mean, I think it would be pretty bad for the industry if there's all these big mega mergers, I think they tend to kill. Some of the innovative things that are happening within those organizations. And I also think it's kind of interesting to look back. And if you ask anybody in the industry, what defines it? You know, the first thing would be patience and making a difference. The second thing they probably say is innovation. And it reminds me of that phrase from the Princess Bride where, you know, he says, you keep using that term. And I don't think it means what you think it means, because this is an industry that's actually very good at pattern recognition. And pattern recognition is almost the opposite of what you want when you want to incentivize innovation. So we're good at being fast followers, I mean, as an industry. And I think that there is innovation that bubbles up. But that happens through the innovation ecosystem, through academic translation and things like that. So I'm going to ask you, Chris, where we're headed. More or less, M&A, but I just have to just pause and underscore the fact that we are the coolest panel. We just quoted the Princess Bride. I'm lying on culture, on popular culture. What is that? Oh, Stelios. No, you just back. Well, offline, we'll work with you offline. Chris. Well, I first, I completely agree with Stelios. These tend to be one-off solutions. And you go after a major deal when you've got a major problem and you have to move the needle pretty quickly.  You can't do that with one-off deals. I would argue on the merits. I mean, I think today the only way that scale really benefits a company is in commercialization. I think Big Pharma will still rule that. It's very difficult for smaller companies to go and sell to every country in the world. And as long as they have that, you know, I think Big Pharma is still going to stay at the top of the food chain. But I think most companies have the critical mass they need. So I don't think critical mass is going to drive it. It is, if I've got a hole and I need to fill the hole, I'll do that. I don't think anybody's really trying to get bigger for bigger sake. And I think there is a general recognition of something that Daphne said is that actually I think scale can be, can actually hurt innovation. Here's a question. Any of you can take it. You just made me think of this, Chris. So, you know, if you go back 10 or 15 or 20 years and you look at the top 10 pharma companies in terms of market capital revenue and you look at them today, there's a little bit of evolution. There's a, you know, MGen steps into that mix in and out, but not a lot. What do you predict in, if you go ahead 10 or 15 years, do we see more less or the same kind of movement in terms of that top 10 list?  Well, I was going to say, I think I can imagine similar brand names on there. I think the contents will probably be different because they'll absorb an awful lot of the companies in there. And let's face it, the dream of every biotech and every investor is that one day a big pharma comes along because nobody will pay more for your company than a big pharma. So they will absorb that. So I could see that there'll be some shifting in the mix, but perhaps not an awful lot, but they won't be in the same way that Sanofi. I mean, you know, if you look at Sanofi today, it's nothing to do with what the company where Elias and I started 10 years ago. The whole product mix has changed, the whole focus of the company has changed. So I think actually some of these big companies have gotten very good at actually, you know, just keeping a regular set of growth and bringing, they figured out how to bring the right amount of innovation.   I mean, Sanofi was a mess when I took it on, but it was generating 11 billion euro free cash flow every year. I mean, if you have cash flow, you have solutions. Yeah. So you're predicting J&J, Pfizer, Novartis, Merck, PureTech. Is that your top five? Yes. The point is this. I mean, if we say, oh, Pfizer was there, Pfizer is still here. Well, Pfizer, but what's Pfizer? Yeah. Legacy Pfizer, Rory or Ronald Lambert or Wyeth or Pharma Sia. All of these have been absorbed. All the names we used to know.  So it's, it's evolving. Yeah. We clearly got what Chris said. You're all saying more of the same, basically. It's kind of kind of looked the same with evolution, not dramatically. Let's go ahead, your thoughts. Let me say something different because there's something that drives the value of a company. It is nonlinear. All right. If you look at the returns and market value, it's all driven by a combustor. So a company that doesn't have one tends to fall off the top 10. And sometimes gets back down. So the business is not a linear business. It's a very nonlinear business that's related to specific hits of blockbusters. So the question really would be where are the blockbusters likely to happen and which companies are going to acquire them early enough to get the value or not. And I think there is this sort of noisy environment which allows big companies that have a lot of cash to survive and by making the right choices. But look at all the companies that have gone away. They're no longer there. I want to go back to something that you raised earlier, which is the election. And I just have a softball for maybe Chris and Daphne and anybody else who wants to kind of step in and take it on. The softball question is who's going to win in the U.S. in November? Who's going to win? I want a name. And what's the consequence to the investment thesis in healthcare? I personally think it's right now it's too close to call because the polls are narrowing. And you have all these shy Trump voters and that's why the polls didn't work the last time. So I actually don't know. What I would say is, you know, I think the industry will work with whoever wins. I mean, I used to spend a lot of time on Capitol Hill and I used to say not every Republican is our friend, not every Democrat is our enemy on that. I mean, they have different approaches. You know, we had an Obama administration that controlled both House of Congress. We had the Affordable Care Act. We were moaning and wailing because we had to pay, I think, 110 billion in taxes over 10 years. But actually, we gained in volume. You know, maybe Democrats will focus a little bit more on pricing, but they tend to focus a lot more on coverage.  We expanded Medicaid and we expanded on volume.  They're more likely to be interested in bringing parallel trade, looking at the pricing in Europe. And I think the success of the industry has been not in winning over public opinion because we've actually been lousy at that. But long ago, they decided prevent bad things from happening in Congress because virtually everybody in Congress knows someone in their family who's been sick. And actually recognizes that the solutions that we bring and recognizes that, you know, when I started in this industry in Germany in 1988, Europe spent twice as much or 50% more on R&D than the U.S. Bayer was and Herkst were the biggest companies in the world. And now the U.S. is the dominant player in technology. And this is a strategic industry. It's a hard argument to win in a world of sound bites. But I think the industry is actually more effective than most people give it credit for in getting its value proposition across to those in halls of power. So we'll have to morph and adapt. But I think, you know, the industry can do that. That's great. So what you're saying is you're positive. We'll see what happens. Daphne, can you do this in a sound bite? Can you answer with one word who's going to win the election and one word about the consequence will be? I can't answer that question. But what I think we should we need to do is do something about this war on truth and science and create some sort of bipartisan approach to doing that, because that's the thing that's the biggest concern, not who necessarily wins this election. Great. Let me. So I'm not a terrible moderator. Let me reach out. I have a couple of questions on the from the from the audience, and I think I'm going to open it up to Sam Wachsall. Sam, if you could quickly go through your question, then pick on somebody to answer it. And you're on mute. You're pulling a crispy buck. I can't think of anybody better to pull on. But anyway, Daphne, I love that you quoted Princess Bride. You know, what's fascinating is I always use one of the characters there when I think about innovation, the Wallace Sean character, who when he was promoting his intelligence set Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, morons. So in order to really, you know, I always believe that human memory exists predict the future. And one of the things for all of you and as I listened to how you all think about things. You look picking the right technology.  It happens. But new technologies occur, new products, new pathways. How do you all choose and a couple of you here have to do this for all of you have to do this for a living actually. So we don't have we don't have any time because we don't have any time. I'm going to give this one to you, Daphne, because you this is what you do right now for a living. If you could quickly give Sam the answer. I mean, we start with a disease focus or a theme. We bring together leading experts and orthogonal perspective. So clinicians, academicians, entrepreneurs. And then we take an unbiased modality agnostic approach to solving the problem, looking at academic labs and bringing together basically the best science. Terrific. Thank you. I want to thank you, Sam Simba. I'm sorry we didn't get to your question. I know that you had one and I wanted to thank this and this great panel for a really terrific discussion. One also remind all of you in the audience that we have a polling question coming up. So please stay on and answer that question. Thank you. Thanks Andy.