Good afternoon, and welcome to this week's Informed and Engaged. I'm LaSharp Bunting, Director of Journalism at I Foundation. The White House Beat, many would agree, is the beat with one of the highest profiles. And traditionally, the press corps has not reflected the diversity and texture of America. But that has been changing. For today's show, we will talk about the importance of equity in the White House press corps and its role in elevating the public conversation and strengthening the journalism and our communities. Today, re-joined by three women currently covering the White House. Ouija Zhang of CBS News, Rachel Scott of ABC News, and Yamiche Alcindor of PBS NewsHour. This will be a great discussion. For those watching, please submit your questions in the chat, and please use the hashtag Night Live. We hope to get to a few of your questions toward the end. So thank you so much. First, I want to personally thank each of you for taking the time for this important discussion. Being here with you, three fierce women of color who are covering news of such high national importance is quite frankly just a moment to be recognized. So thank you. Thanks for having us. Of course. So this will be a conversation, right? And I just want to jump right in. So many believe that a more diverse newsroom provides better, more nuanced coverage, right? Which will then reach even more communities. How do you believe your presence in the White House Corps has made the difference in the coverage? And Yamiche, I'm going to start with you. Well, again, thanks so much for having me, Lushar. It's great to talk to you in this form. I feel like I call you all the time for advice. So it's nice to talk to you here. I would say that I used to think diversity was a nice thing that newsrooms should do. It was the moral thing to do. It was the right thing to do. After I covered Ferguson in 2014 in the protest air, I realized how critical it was just to get the stories right and to understand what it means when you have diversity of thought in minds of the journalism. As you said, it's a lot better and it's stronger and it's more representative of America. I think as being a black woman in the White House, I think for me, I'm constantly thinking about race and constantly thinking about justice and that makes its way into my coverage. I'm thinking about the way that I craft questions. I have questions all about news of day stuff, the coronavirus, all sorts of things that are going on. Who's the last person to get fired? What's going on with mail and voting? But I always have questions on race and social justice on my list. It doesn't mean that I always ask them because sometimes there are things that I have to ask about testing or about other things. But I think that probably, I would say what makes my journalism different is that it's constantly as part of my life experience as a child of immigrants. I'm constantly thinking about vulnerable populations and the people who will never make it into the White House. I'm not saying that my other colleagues might not be doing that, but I know I can say with my journalism, I'm thinking, what are my cousins in Miami thinking? What's my mom thinking? What are the immigrants who are just coming to this country? What are the challenges they're facing and how is this administration representing all Americans equally and fairly? I love that. I love that. Weisha, I'd love for you to weigh in here as well.  And I realized that when I was starting out in my career and I was a young journalist, I was so self-conscious about being a minority that I tried not to lean into that because I wanted people to respect my work for what it was. And I really tried not to highlight the fact that I was different because I wanted people to judge me on the merit of my work and not my ethnicity. But I have now realized over the years especially and now more than ever before that we don't have diversity in a newsroom for diversity's sake. You know, we don't have that so we all look different. We have that so we can bring our personal perspective to our reporting and make it richer and better and more inclusive. And that's the value of having diversity.  And I think that is what ultimately can offer some sort of balance.  And I think that's where the most important piece of what we do really comes to light because we're asking questions on behalf of all of those people who don't have the opportunity to do that. And that includes especially right now communities of color who are being impacted disproportionately. And so for us to understand what our family and friends are going through and to be able to use that to ask the right questions, then we can get some answers or at least try our best. That's great. So Rachel, I know you very recently was promoted to the White House, but have a career, a long career in politics. So I'd love for you to weigh in as well here. Yeah, I'm the new kid on the black, but taking my cues from these two who I have long watched and learned from just by watching.  So thank you. And you know, I think going back to the questions, right? Even this past weekend, you know, at the president's press conference in Bedminster, New Jersey, I was there. And when I was thinking about what question I was gonna ask the president as he was taking his executive actions, I was thinking of the people that I talked to that have been affected by this pandemic. I was thinking of spending some time, you know, in the two hardest sections of Washington, DC hit by the pandemic where the blackest and poorest residents were disproportionately dying from coronavirus just right across the river, just miles away from where the White House stood. I was thinking of a woman I met, Ms. Beatrice, who doesn't even have internet access and was trying to learn about how to get information about this pandemic. I think about the people that I met that were traveling miles just to get a test and then waiting days to get the results and contending with the fact that they had to put food on the table for their family. I was thinking about the undocumented immigrants that I've interviewed, where it's really a choice between if they have the virus, you know, being out of work and having no money and trying to provide for their families. And so I also try and think about those people and those are the people that pop in my head when I'm drafting my questions and when the president this past weekend was announcing these executive actions, my biggest question to him was, well, when are Americans going to see that relief? Because there are 30 million Americans that are out of work right now. There are 30 million Americans that are struggling and they needed that money yesterday. They needed that relief yesterday. And so I think bringing that perspective and asking those questions is so important, but also having the diverse experience of covering these different stories, right? I was out covering the protests right in front of the White House, listening to the demands, listening to what people were saying, what message they wanted to get across to not only the president, but also other lawmakers. And so having the privilege to also expand out in our storytelling and talk to those that are affected, I think that really helps inform the type of questions that we could be asking the administration as well. So let me sort of go a little higher, right? With this conversation, how do you think news organizations really as a whole can better reach the communities? Each of you really talked about the need to craft questions and to bring that part of yourselves to how you cover and how you view these stories, but how do you think news organizations can better reach these communities that often aren't watching or reading or just plain missing from the conversation? So I'll put that out to whomever wants to answer that. It's tough in these times because a lot of things are virtual and it's scary because everyone's trying not to get the virus, but I think boots on the ground and reporting is the way to do it. When I think about my role as a White House correspondent, I'm obviously honored to be in the building and to be at the White House covering the president, but to me, the most important part of my job is still being out in people's living rooms and it's going out. I was just out in Southeast talking to people, this is a part of DC that has seen the majority of deaths in the city. And what you see is people that are worried about being evicted, they're going to jobs as grocery store workers, they're construction workers, they're people who simply cannot work from home. We talk about social distancing as if it's something that people can do. I just interviewed a woman who's living in a home, two bedroom apartment with seven people. There's no such thing as social distancing in her. She literally can't do it, so it's a privilege she doesn't have. So I think part of this is that newsrooms have to think about who are we interviewing, how are we continuing to have regular, everyday people's lives be part of our coverage because it's easy to get caught up in the bickering back and forth of the Capitol Hill and the White House and who's getting what and what the light is offered.  I also think that I think about all the people who are so terrified of a virus that killed members in their family and then don't want to get it themselves and are still kind of trying to figure out how the federal government's going to work out for them how to stop this thing. I think about all of the medical experts that I've talked to because I'm certainly not a medical expert. So I had to get the idea of interviewing people to put in perspective the fact that the United States is literally an anomaly when it comes to industrialized countries and how we've handled this virus. It's one thing to say, oh, the president's rhetoric, he isn't taking it seriously. It's another thing to talk to a medical expert who kind of gives you the information that you need to be able to report. No, really, the United States objectively without politics, we are completely different than any other country. I think if you don't do the boots on the ground and don't put people on the ground to talk to people, you lose the pulse of America. Yeah, I was gonna say that. Oh, you agree. Yeah, go ahead, Isha. No, I was just, I mean, boots on the ground is at the core of what we do. And sometimes it's limiting when we're covering the White House because we have to be at the White House and that's why it's so important for the producers and the heads of the shows in my case is we're broadcast to really think about, okay, where else are we going? Where are we sending our national correspondence? They have to be at the heart of these communities that are really suffering the worst, that are seeing a lack of testing, that are seeing over capacity in their hospitals. We have to be in those places to find people who are willing to share their experiences with us because it's not just that one or two persons experience. They are representing what's happening to so many people around them. And so we always say we have to hear from the real people, the real people, and we can't say that enough, especially when we're having two parallel crises unfold before our eyes, we have to understand how it's impacting people's daily lives and how they're struggling. Otherwise, we won't be able to help find a solution. And I do think that that is a big part of our job is to just try to help people get through their daily lives by giving them the best information that we can to try to cut the noise and give them the facts. And it's not only on broadcast, but I think we have a huge responsibility on social media because I think it's easy to dismiss something like Twitter as, oh, it's nothing but an echo chamber for people in DC and New York to just boost each other's thoughts. No, that's not true. There are real people who rely on social media who will check in with people that they trust to see their feeds and to try to get some facts. And so everything that we put out there, no matter what platform we are using, it comes with a huge responsibility to try to give people what they need to make those decisions that impact their lives. Yeah, and I was just gonna say, I think real investment in communities is so important. You just can't parachute in and expect to just find and connect and find people to be vulnerable with you. And I think as news organizations, we also have to get to a point where we're checking ourselves. I talked about being over across the river in Southeast and interviewing residents that don't even have internet access. We'll just think about how many Zoom interviews we do with people that are suffering. There are people in this country that don't have internet. They're relying on news bulletins and churches for information and churches are closed in most parts of this country right now. So I think we also have to get to a point too where we're not just relying on what's convenient and what's easy because what's easy sometimes does not always strike at the heart of what's actually happening for a large swath of this country. And we have to talk to each other. I think one thing that I've seen at least in our newsroom and I have read about it in others is that we are finally having these really tough conversations and it's not just people of color having them. Our white colleagues have to sit at the table too. They can't just remove themselves from the conversation because they don't think they have something to contribute because they aren't someone who's gone through this experience because their experience and their thoughts are important as well because this is one big conversation that the country is having. And so within our organizations, we have to have them as well to understand how we can do better. And this isn't something new. We've talked about the value of diversity for decades now but I do feel like this is a shift in a different moment where people are okay with being real and to really say, when you said this, this is how it made me feel and how people in my community responded to it and that's why we need to make some progress and talk about why did you say that? What can we learn from that? And we are always doing the work too. We're not perfect and we have to evolve along with our audience and our communities. We have to do better too. And I really think that's happening in newsrooms now which will only enrich our work. And if I could jump in, I would say what Weija just said is so critical. This idea of white reporters being able to feel like they need to cover these stories too. I think a lot of times it's great that we're getting these new beasts focused on race, focused on covering kind of the conversation that people are having. But I think it would be too easy to say, okay, well this team covers race like everybody and everyone else doesn't have to do that. Any beef that I've been on which is education, transportation, obituaries, I've covered all sorts of crates in this. Race has always been part of my beat. And it wasn't hard because literally race is part of the fabric of America. They're always gonna be whatever story you're covering. There's a racial element because that's the way that the country was founded. So I think it could be making it critical that your tech reporter needs to be writing about this too. Like your tech reporter shouldn't also, your tech reporter, your Silicon Valley reporter, your international reporter, they should all be thinking about race and justice in this country. The other thing I'll say is we talk about diversity of course, talking about race and ethnicity but I think of geographic diversity being so important. I'm tried and through an East coaster. I'm from Miami, then I moved to New York and then I'm in DC. I've never lived anywhere that's really like a rural community. My husband on the other hand, he spent time living where my in-laws live in a rural community without broadband. Having people that are from different parts of this country who can say, I'm from the Midwest, I'm from this small town, I'm from this big city. It's so critical when you go to report stories out because I think a lot of times we go to the big cities because that's where the airports are, that's where it's easy as Rachel said, it's easy sometimes to get to the big cities but being able to say, you know what, I had to drive three hours to get to the story. There's jewels in being able to have people say, I know this small town in South Carolina, we need to go there when we're writing about primaries. I think that that's critical too. Absolutely, so Knight recently released a report with Gallup just last week that shows that nearly three quarters of Americans see too much bias in news as a major problem, right? And each of you really touched on this, but how do we move the needle on that? Three fourths of Americans, that is a lot. So how do we move from there to a place of deeper conversation and discourse? We shall start with you. You know, I think even before COVID surfaced, one thing that I did, you know, see as a problem was that people went to certain outlets, not for information, but for validation or confirmation of things that they already thought. And that can't be what we do. That's not what we do. We're not here to, you know, play into any previous, you know, conceptions about our government or about what's happening. We're here, and it sounds so simple, but we are here to give the facts. And, you know, that sounds maybe naive and like, you know, we could do better, but at the end of the day, that's really it. And so the problem is that people are now perceiving facts as bias. And I used to say before, if you saw something in print or on the news, on broadcast, you took it to be true until for some reason, it, you know, it was proven false. There's a huge section of the country now that takes the information to be false until it is proven true by the government. And that is so backwards from what journalism is. And so I think the way we combat that is just doing the best by, you know, every day reporting out what we can, offering as much detail in terms of sourcing that we can without revealing people and just trying to make that product, you know, 100% foolproof and bulletproof when it comes to the facts. Because again, there is, you know, a war on information now. And I think it's because it goes hand in hand with the political climate that just continues to get hotter as COVID and as racial tensions continue. And so we have to just do our best to show people through our reporting that we're giving you the facts. Yeah, I would say like a commitment to the facts is absolutely essential right now. And we're seeing this information spread so easily. I remember being on the ground for the president's rally in Oklahoma in Tulsa where for some people wearing a mask was such a political issue. And I remember talking to some people there that feared, you know, wearing a mask outside that they were making this political statement instead of, you know, making a statement about wanting to protect not only their health but also the health of others around them, right? And I think when I'm out covering the president's rallies on the campaign trail when they were happening frequently, but specifically in Tulsa, Oklahoma and then down in New Hampshire before that rally was called off. You know, you meet some people that do not believe the virus is real. And you're having to in real time present those facts of those that have died, those that are still suffering. And I think, you know, our jobs are just to stay committed to those facts and trying to present that information. But it is definitely an issue right now. We are seeing disinformation spread so rapidly. And it's our jobs to do the best that we can to try and confront that and curb it. Yeah, and on the issue of disinformation, I mean, just Friday we learned that the national security apparatus in this country has named at least three countries, Russia, China and Iran, that are actively trying to spread disinformation when it comes to the election and comes to the political institutions in this country. So I think there's something to be said about the bias that's being perceived. But there's also this idea that we have to think about the fact that there's a whole machine behind people wanting people not to believe the news and the facts as we present them. I also think that really as a reporter I agree with both of these women and that is that I'm so focused on the work that I can't be, at least for me, I can't be so worried about whether or not people think when I fact check the president that I'm being adversarial. I think that I'm here to kind of do what I was taught to do in journalism school with all my mentors, watching women, like Gwen Eiffel, like Diane Sawyer, like Barbara Walters, like so many people that came before us, like Gail, like so many other people to show us that it's just present yourself, do your job well and in some ways to me it's like let everybody think what they may because at the end of the day we also are living in a polarized society where even if they watch people watch the exact same information and it's true, it might also depend on what they make of that reporter and if that reporter's body language tells them something. So I think as reporters, especially reporters on TV we're doing our best to prevent the information but I think there is also this viewer that is living in a polarized society that's allowing them and forcing them to think of things in the shade that they perceive the world politically. Yeah, and to Yamisha's point, I think one thing that we have learned that is surprising to me at least is that we prepare a lot for these briefings. We put a lot of time as a team into crafting the questions and a lot of times we wanna fact check the president with his own quotes. And then all of a sudden, you know, whether it's the president or another administration official or being told I never said that or that's not true but or they are reacting in a negative way when we are simply presenting them a quote that they said before. And I think that's the best way that we can arm ourselves is with information and with facts and with quotes in order to do our jobs because again, you know, someone can perceive that as a bias but really it's just, you know, it's just a fact that we're trying to check. And so that has been alarming to me that when we do that because, you know, that quote or that statement was questionable that, you know, then we are attacked with accusations that we're trying to stir up, you know, trouble when we're really just trying to get some clarity on something that wasn't true. So to that point, you know, what's all acknowledged, right? The White House beat is a very tough beat period. And there have been some high profile incidents where journalists of color, including yourselves have been targeted and attacked. Some would say that there's a greater burden we put on, you know, journalists of color, women of color who are reporting at this time. How are you handling these challenges? I'm handling them by thinking of all the people that came before me that allowed me to have this job at the White House. So to me, every day that I walk in the White House, I think, man, I am the child of Haitian immigrants who came here in the 70s and my grandparents literally would not have believed that their granddaughter would be a White House correspondent. So the responsibility that I feel to the American people to do my job well to me is the biggest, I wouldn't call it a burden, I call it a privilege that I have in this job. So I'm not overly concerned with being attacked or being targeted or even in the moment when I'm feeling a little shaky if someone's trying to snatch a microphone out of my hand because at the end of the day, I'm here as a representation of all the people who one will never walk into the White House and to the people who, for my family, came here so that I could live my wildest dreams and my wildest dreams are to be a White House correspondent. So I think of that, I also think on a personal note, I'm spending a lot of time zooming with my friends, spending a lot of time drinking wine with my husband, working out, doing things that keep me healthy as a person. And I'll say that I would have taken mental health days if I feel overwhelmed, I take a day off. I think maybe when I was first starting out, especially it was work seven days a week, don't never take a day off. I'm sure maybe Rachel, maybe you're newer than this than me, then maybe you're feeling in that mode. I'm in the mode where it's like, I need to take care of myself. So if I feel like I don't wanna go to work today because I just wanna lay in bed and I just need a minute, take a beat, then I'm gonna take a beat. The week that George Floyd was killed was a really, really tough week for me personally. I think I'm doing this job as a hit in a Black body and sometimes I forget it because I'm muscling through and doing the work and not wanting to really be shown as any different than any of my colleagues. But the reality is that I'm married to an African-American man who's six one who could easily have been George Floyd or any of the other Black men, I could myself be targeted. So I think that when I feel that or when I have to be real with myself and say, okay, let's take a beat and do something different today and then you'll come back and you'll be a White House correspondent tomorrow and you'll come back with all of the rested mind and all of the fierceness that you wanna bring to the job. Yeah, I think there are challenges that you just experienced by being a person of color in this country period, right? Take the reporter out of it.  And so those transfer over, I mean, I remember being mistaken as a maid that I was covering the president once back in Florida, staying at a nice hotel because most of the people that were people of color were there working at the hotel. Someone asked me for towels. I mean, those things happen, right? People don't see that on the 6 p.m. news when I'm live. Those moments happen, you get called different things, especially by some at campaign rallies, colored or whatever. But I think that I also think about the sense of ownership that I feel to pick up where the others that came before me left off, right? And when I got promoted to this role, I mean, all I could think about was like Alice, Alice and Doug again, who was the first female Black reporter to have a press cast and to think that like 75 years ago, someone that looked like me did not have a seat in that White House. And I refer back to her book, her autobiography, over and over again, because even though so much time has passed, I still feel the same things that she was feeling at that time. It took two years for her to be even be called on at a press conference with the president. Like she was skipped, she was overlooked, she would raise her hands. Her white male colleagues would joke that she should save her strength and she persisted on. And she had to deal with so many other hurdles that I don't have to deal with because she paved the way and because there's been so many others, including these two women that I share I'm sharing the screen with, right? That I've paved the way for the future of other journalists that are gonna come through that press briefing room. So I always fall back on that of just feeling so incredibly grateful to just have that White House pass. And before I leave almost every week when I am at the White House, I try and look out and before, for pre-COVID, there are a bunch of visitors that come and they stand on the other side of the gates. And to me, there's always that moment that gives me chills when you're looking out and there are people that are just trying to get a glimpse in. People that are like, just wanna see something on the other side. And to think that you have a press pass that is accessed into this White House, it's remarkable and it's just a remarkable sense of privilege. And I don't take that for granted any time that I get the opportunity to step through those gates. Yeah, and for me, I think almost every day still when I do step through and I start walking down the driveway to get to the press quarters, you see the American flag and I still try to take a moment and it never gets old because I was born in China and for my parents to immigrate here and us to completely relocate and to have all places, West Virginia. I certainly had my own challenges growing up and becoming part of this country but it's the only home that I've ever known. And so when I am on the grounds and I think about the huge responsibility weighing on me to represent every single American, it is a heavy burden. And back to your question about how we do that as a minority, I think that burden is felt, it is harder, it is stronger because we understand that we represent a lot of voices who might not have the opportunity that we have to bring these issues to light. And I guess for me, because of the way the pandemic has really completely shifted and changed the relationship between US and China, it's impossible not to tell stories from the Asian American community about how they are impacted, about how they are targeted and the sort of hate that they are receiving. And I've experienced that myself. And so just to touch back on what we talked about before is having that perspective is critical in shaping the kinds of questions that we've posed to the administration. And I will say it's not just me and it's not just women of color. There's one example in my mind that stands out and it was after President Trump referred to the virus as the Kung Flu and I was pressing the press secretary about it. And after that, because we didn't get a satisfactory answer, three more reporters including Yamiche also pressed her about it and the other two reporters were white women. So it's not about to Yamiche's point earlier just because you aren't a minority doesn't mean you can't be a critical part of the conversation because at the end of the day, no matter where you come from, no matter what you look like, no matter who your family is, if you see an injustice, it is our job to call that out and to hold those in power to account. And so that's what happened in that particular instance and I was, you know, I just remember that very clearly because it's not just me being biased as a Chinese American and that's why I'm asking the question. It's because, you know, people identify that as something that deserved an answer and so that's why it received so much attention. We're gonna transition to Q&A from the audience. I have a ton of really great questions. Some of which we've covered just even in this past question but we have some really good questions here. So let's see, I have one from a gentleman from Montana that I thought was really interesting. Are there significant generational barriers in your work? In other words, do older reporters, producers, et cetera, resist the unique perspective of younger reporters? I have found the opposite actually. You know, I'm a very young reporter and especially covering the protests, the racial unrest. I have found that my voice has been so valued because most of the people that are leading this charge are around my age. They look like me, but it's also very diverse, right? Generations are getting more and more diverse in this country. And so I have found that, you know, my perspective, people are coming to me and asking, you know, those conversations in the office are happening where people wanna understand what is happening and what is going on and I don't feel that way at all actually. I feel like people are also looking at the younger generation and wondering what they're seeing and wanting that to be folded into our coverage. Okay, so here's another question from a viewer. More than ever, students need to practice media literacy skills and whatever learning platform they will engage in. What is one suggestion you would make to educators to engage their students sort of in this challenge, in this coverage and getting them more as part of these conversations? I would say recommend different mediums. So even though I'm a TV reporter, so maybe this is a little sacrilegious for me to say, I love, love, love radio. I love listening to the news. NPR has always been one of my favorite things to listen to. So to me, I feel like if it's being online, if it's a newspaper, then read your news. If watching TV is a thing you wanna do, then of course watch the news hour, watch CBS, watch ABC. So I think in some ways it's meeting people where they are. If TikTok is what it is and introduce them into BBC's TikTok or introduce them to USA Today on Snapchat. I think the thing that people need to do is learn kind of where people are and then try to point out the news that could be the most accessible to them. I also think the thing that my mom always tells me is really take into perspective the international news. I think American reporters, the one thing that we might have a little bit of bias is that we kind of are thinking we're living in the best country in the world, which is that we think, okay, well, this is a problem here, but it's maybe our coverage is different because of that because we're all American reporters or at least living in the country that we're covering where if you watch France's reporting of President Trump, you watch the British's reporting and the British's reporting of President Trump or watch reporting from Haiti, you realize just the different perspectives, the different ways that we're being seen in an international space. So when I'm like covering NATO or I'm covering the UN, I'm constantly reading other countries, news organizations to understand kind of the protective perspective that we're missing because I think especially with the coronavirus, it would have been, it's lost on us in some ways just how much of an outlier the United States is and just how shocked some other countries are of how we've struggled through this pandemic if you don't watch and listen to international news. Yeah, we always talk about the responsibility of the media and obviously, we have a huge responsibility, but I think news consumers have a part in it too. And so people have to take the time if they're going to be weighing in on these conversations, if they're gonna be sharing content especially and spreading information. I do think we have to stress what Yamisha said, which is finding a diverse portfolio of our sources. And we have to do that as journalists, but especially for those people that you're talking about who are just trying to become more engaged, you cannot just rely on one source of news. You can have your favorites, but I definitely also encourage to look beyond what you typically would because there's so much work to be done and that means there's so much product out there, really amazing storytelling and pieces of journalism that really help shape your understanding of what's happening. And it's your responsibility to inform yourself as best as you can and you can't just do that if you're relying on just one source all the time. So, and we touched on this a little bit, but we have a really specific question about sort of the coverage, right? So how do we have conversations with the public, which is largely white, right? About the lived experiences of people of color that are authentically told without censoring whiteness in those conversations. I think sometimes when you're a reporter of color and you're an editor of color, you're thinking about that. So how do you guys think about that when you're shaping your stories to have it not come from a place of, where whiteness is at the center of it? I'll say for me, it's boots on the ground again. It's this idea that to explain to people what a lived experience is, is to show them which is why I love TV reporting because you take people into people's living rooms. You explain to people what people are going through. I think the facts speak for themselves in a lot of way. Like I was just in Southeast, it sounds like racial is there just there too. That's the ward out all the wards in DC. They have the highest rates of all sorts of diseases. They have one grocery store for a large ward where other wards in the city, which are just same size, have 13 grocery stores. Explain to people what racism and structural racism can look like from a ground level in a way that they can really explain. So maybe people will say, well, anyone can live wherever they want to. Okay, well, if you live in this neighborhood, you literally will have one grocery store. If you move across the water where housing is double, you'll get 13 grocery stores. What does that mean for your health? What does that mean for how you live your life and how the virus impacts that community? So I think a lot of it is really explaining to people what the data shows, but also then bringing people into people's lives. I went to Mexico in November and did a story about President Trump's remaining in Mexico policy. Of course, it's important to explain to people just how many people have been sent back to Mexico to wait through that policy. But I went and interviewed people. I interviewed a woman who was raped while she was waiting in Mexico to try to seek asylum. If the president hadn't changed the policies, she would be waiting in the United States. That's just a fact. So the idea is that it's one thing to save these things, but it's another thing to go out and show people. Here's the neighborhood where people are having to sleep on the ground as they wait for the United States to look at their asylum cases. So I think it's all about really bringing people and showing people what it means to be American. And of course, I'll just shout out the 1619 project, which was the project by our friend, Colhanna Jones, teaching people the history of this country and teaching people how things were set up in a way to the detriment of African-Americans and people of color, I think has to be something that's shown. So we just point about Asian-Americans. I remember when the virus first started in it, you started hearing these spikes in hate crimes explaining to people that a family was stabbed and targeted because they were Asian, because people think that this virus is something that only Asians are carrying or it's their fault. I think if we don't explain to people what the real lived experiences are, it's lost on people and the numbers can sometimes just be that, they can just be numbers and not real people. Yeah, I would say the intent is never to make any group right feel targeted by coverage. I think our goal in doing this type of reporting again, it is to reveal that lived experience and also to show the links, right? Of how these systemic issues create problems, especially now with the pandemic. And so I know we're talking a lot about like word seven and eight right across the river in DC that we've done some reporting on. But when you look at what that means to have one grocery store for thousands of residents where you can walk down a street and before you reach that grocery store, you can pass how many corner stores, where how much is it to get a fresh piece of fruit? Is it three or $4? That surcharge where it's easier to get access to a bag of Cheetos or liquor than it is to get access to fresh produce, right? And the real effects that that has on a community over time, the real effects that it has on people that live there, people of color being pushed across the river to live in a certain subset of a neighborhood, right? And then not having that access, the health disparities, the lack of testing and how all of these things together during a pandemic has made a community more vulnerable, right? So showing that is not in any way targeting another section of the population. That is just exposing and ripping off the bandaid of a womb that America has that needs to be fixed quite frankly. And so that's never, I would say that's never the goal to someone that asked the question, but more so than ever, it's just to reveal the realities of the experiences, the lived experiences for so many in this country. Lisa, I'll let you get the final word here before we wrap up.  And at the end of the day, when we're presenting these stories because we have the facts and the numbers and the figures to back up, you know, these claims that we are making with our storytelling, I think that's where we have to lean in to the facts and the right information. And, you know, it's okay if somebody feels uncomfortable after seeing a truthful piece of journalism, because that's how we can make progress as a society is when we acknowledge something that makes us feel a certain way and we ask why, and then we try to move forward together. And, you know, it's not something that we should run from.  And so that is our job to bring provocative, rich stories that really capture what people are going through in order to make it better for everyone. Well, thank you. Thank you for each of you for joining us today. Each one of you is doing a very important, you know, work to lift up this cause of equity and journalism and really informing the country on these important matters. So as we've heard today, the hardware continues. So thank you to each of you. Thank you. Thanks so much. So please join us at the same time next Monday for another episode of Informed and Engaged. Thank you for watching.


Okay, so before I start describing the circumventricular organs, let me give you a quick overview of what is the structure of these circumventricular organs, the microscopic structure. These circumventricular organs in general have got a certain few characteristics which are very specific.  So these characteristics enable blood and sampling of the CSF by the circumventricular organs. The only notable exception as we shall see a little later is the subcommissural organ which does not have fenestrated capillaries. With this few background, let's start with the circumventricular organs and we will follow a clockwise direction around the third ventricle.  Just to give you a quick overview, this is the lateral wall of the third ventricle which is formed by the hypothalamus, the lower one third and the upper two thirds is formed by the thalamus, this is the interthalamic adhesion, this is the midbrain here, this is the pons, this is the medulla, this is the aqueduct of sylvius which connects the third ventricle to the fourth ventricle. So first of our description will be restricted to the third ventricle and only a little bit of it we shall go into the fourth ventricle. And we shall follow the circumventricular organs in a clockwise direction. So let's start with the first one. The first circumventricular organ is


What's going on everyone? Sam here with late in sports cards ripping 22 tops chrome formula one racing sapphire edition 5 box break number 15 Random team style there's a look again at your random results as always you can find those on the website under the results tab as well As the link in chat. Let's do it Good luck. Let's see some big Cards come out of here everybody this stuff has the potential to be super super loaded as well It's a teal Sebastian Vettel to 99 for Aston Martin Verstappen at Mattiah Bonotto. I guess just 99 and under that's all base there. There's yellow Joe Guan Yu to 199 for up for a male Roy Nassani, Fernando Alonzo. I said don't worry about the yellows of the sepias You'll see those the most probably Botas Logan Sargent. Cheryl. Cheryl Lecler Who read it go to McLaren there we go carry carry W with McLaren Hell yeah, that's awesome. Let's go carry. We'll get that into a mag for you Joe Guan Yu and Verstappen No sepias are in this they're just do a hundred. No, I know Uh There's sometimes they're in tops chrome Green Daniel Ricardo that is 275 that may be the variation if I'm not mistaken for McLaren McLaren killing it right now killing it Killing it. There's an orange Joe Guan Yu to 25. This box is loaded Here we go Alfa Romeo, let's go into Michael T. Let's go Michael make this Latifi and Lou Ham or dude Lou Ham Marcus Armstrong and Sergio Perez box to That was that was a that might be the best box I've ever opened Yeah Uh yellow Sergio Perez to 199 for Red Bull Schumacher and Lou Ham Magnuson Kevin Magnuson tail Porsche and a Lando on the back as well Lando of the Norris variety Green Sergio Perez same one to 75 nice one there Red Bull pull the yellow good in that rainbow apparently Louis Hamilton P1 award winner. That's gonna be Lando Norris sepia to or sepia to 199 There you go again. God McLaren having a hell of a break right now. Grats again to Kerry. Thank you as always for taking spots in these breaks Kerry I appreciate you very much Yellow Joe Guan Yu rookie for Alfa Romeo to 199 Joe Guan Yu. There's a Ricardo and a Clement no luck Louis Hamilton Lando Norris and Logan sergeant.   This stuff is so loaded. Well answer Joe Perez From those. Oh, man. That's a tough one actually It's a good question Blake I'm dropping guys a link to dynasty She would you go Like who like give me your like your pick I guess well, it's not technically a sitcom like sitcoms like Right, right, right, right, right, right, right. That was gonna be my my pick to actually Blake Spencer for my carly Green up for Stappen max for Stappen to 75 I Swear to God Kyle if you make fun of me for that saying that you're getting banned. It's the band Good magazine pure ghastly. I you move Iwasa I'm pretty pretty amp for some star Archive six series Yellow Lando Norris. God McLaren. Just keep racking it up to 199 Alexander Albon and Sergio Perez Did Disney one I know I'm trying to think too How's your Vettel Schumacher and Lou Ham? There's a teal. Charlotte clerk to 99 for Ferrari. There it is Kyle. Congrats, buddy Charlotte clerk three packs to go in box three three and three Three left in three put a wolf no block Max Verstappen Yellow Lando again, dude same one again to 199 McLaren There's a Charlotte clerk for Cher Latifi and Lou Ham for Mercedes on to the next one That red land. It was pretty pretty nifty actually Pretty nifty card. Yeah. Yeah, Zach from zapping Cody is pretty good. I mean Yeah, I guess they're a little bit different. Yeah again guys just Two left on dynasty. We have pulled some monsters out of dynasty not gonna lie But the last time I pulled I ripped dynasty one-on-one Mike trout That's okay now last time Christian Horner for Red Bull principle card to 199 Well Iwasa Alexander Albon as well Gold Louis Hamilton Card number five on the portrait up 50 Huge hit for Mercedes Let's go. Abram s. Congrats, buddy massive hit Gold Louis Hamilton portrait card number five We pulled the Verstappen last case and we pulled the Hamilton this case That's how we do it ladies and gents on some F1 sapphire do this stuff is so loaded Yuki Louis Hamilton and Jack Doohan did a great break so far great break Get that mag for you, Abram. Thanks again, buddy Teal Sebastian Vettel driver of the day to 99 for Aston Martin max Verstappen and Clement Novalock Clement Novalock and Stroll Verstappen at Chen Bullock Boschie Chen Bullock Boschie Yellow pure ghastly for Alphatari to 199 nice one there max Verstappen and Nicholas Latifi Ocon Louis Hamilton and pure ghastly. I'll close this out in box number four round of box five and final Good luck here, everybody five and five now Again guys just two left in that first case of dynasty. That is the next break. We got to fill up a couple of those So we got a variation of some sort that is gonna be car number one variation max Verstappen Jonathan Ellen Red Bull There you go, buddy Holy cow, man One of the hardest to hit variations right there the God where's he friends for Belgium forget where he's from off top I had not Belgium Netherlands That's the he's got the flag on it basically Schumacher Louis Hamilton Good god, dude. Good god Stuff is looted Hey, of course share Lando Norse. There's gold Sergio Perez 44 50 driver of the day, Mexico. It's gold. My core deal Louis Hamilton as well. Monica. Thank you.  Gotcha. See rate races under the Dutch flag It was born in Belgium interesting. Let's do a quick recap guys.  Thank you guys again for the fill next up number


In the last class we had looked at cycle analysis of air breathing engines now let us look at rocket engines in the next few classes here we will be trying to derive expressions for specific impulse and how mass flow rate varies through a choke nozzle how do we get thrust how do we get exit velocity what are the assumptions that we make and as a consequence of these assumptions what do we have to deal with okay or what is the error of these assumptions we will look at it a little later in the course okay fine. So now let us look at rocket engines now rocket engines all the three kinds of rocket engines that we discussed in the earlier classes that is solid liquid and hybrid all three of them have the following that is they have propellant storage then they have a thrust chamber and lastly a convergent divergent nozzle in the solid rocket both these two are in the same physical location whereas in liquids and hybrids all three of them are separate but one thing common to all of them is this part that is the nozzle part okay. In the nozzle what you have is the thermal energy because of release because of chemical reactions is now converted into kinetic energy so in the nozzle you have thermal to kinetic energy conversion okay and as this is common to all three kinds of rockets we can study them exclusively okay and without having to pay any need to pay any attention to what kind of rocket it is whether it is a solid rocket or a liquid rocket or a hybrid rocket so we will do that now we look at the conversion divergent nozzle now before we go there what we are going to look at is quasi-steady one-dimensional analysis that is we are going to assume that all changes happen along the axis only there are no changes that are happening in the radial or the azimuth direction r and ? directions we do not assume any changes to be happening so all changes are happening along the axis so it is one dimension which is not strictly true for a rocket engine nozzle okay we will see what error this bring about a little later first is we are going to make this assumption then we are going to assume that the chamber pressure temperature are given to us that is let us say if this is the rocket motor we will assume that we know chamber pressure which is called PC and chamber temperature PC as known we will also take these to be stagnation quantities that is if you look at velocities elsewhere in the nozzle and if you look at the velocity at the entry of the nozzle these velocities are very small compared to the velocities as you go the nozzle so you can take them to be stagnation conditions at the entry of the nozzle okay and we are also going to assume that you are also going to assume that I said these are known to us firstly and we are also going to assume that fluid is an ideal gas with constant thermodynamic properties that is the CP gamma thermal conductivity all these do not change as we go from this portion of the nozzle to the exit of the nozzle okay then we will also assume that the flow is inviscid that is viscosities are very small and we also assume fluid flow is isentropic so with these assumptions let us see what we can derive and based on this we will also evaluate what are the shortcomings of some of these assumptions are these really valid and then we will try to estimate what is the error okay now from a basic gas dynamics you know that for a nozzle for a convergent divergent nozzle I can write du by u that is change in velocity as you move along the nozzle is equal to now we know that if m is less than 1 what should be the da by a if this has to fluid has to accelerate if m is less than 1 da by a has to be negative if fluid has to accelerate and if m is greater than 1 da by a has to be positive if fluid has to accelerate okay and we know that if at the throat at the throat of the CD nozzle Mach number is 1 then we call it choke nozzle let us now find out what is the pressure ratio if you have PC here what should be the PA or what should be this ratio of PC by PA for the nozzle to be choked okay so let us find the critical ratio of this pressure for choking in order to do this we will solve the energy equation from here to here okay from the entry to the throat section and I can write one dimensional energy equation as one dimensional steady state and for in visit flow with constant thermodynamic properties I can write the energy equation as HT plus is equal to UT where C where C there indicates our chamber conditions and T indicates throat conditions C indicates and T indicates that is we are looking at this to be C this to be T okay now there is no heat addition that is taking place from here to here okay and the composition is the same so if the composition is the same then CP has to be the same so C to T that is from chamber to throat which means that CP is same and there is only change in sensible enthalpy and it also means that only there is change in enthalpy because there are no reactions that are taking place so if all the change from C to T is only because of sensible enthalpy change then I can rewrite this equation as that is I have replaced HT by CP TT and it see by CP TC we also know that if the throat is if the flow is choked at the throat then at throat M is equal to 1 and therefore UT is equal to ET that is the speed of sound which is given by here RS nothing but R is equal to RU universal gas constant divided by molecular weight okay now using all this we can simplify this equation further and write it as because we know UT is equal to AT and AT is this I can write it that like this is equal to we know that CP by CV is equal to ? and CP- CV is equal to R so dividing the entire equation by CP TT that is dividing by CP TT we will get 1 plus ? R TT divided by 2 okay now we know that R and CP we can get through this so let me write that down this will then become 1 plus ? x 1 by 1- ? this cancels out so you get 2 is equal to TC by TT or simplifying I can write TC by TT is equal to ? plus 1 by 2 okay from this and knowing the connection between CP to temperatures to pressure for an isentropic flow I can write PC by PT is equal to so now we can get the critical ratio that is required for choking okay and if you substitute for ? equal to 1.2 which is usually the value of ? for burn gases you get PC by PT to be 1.7 that is if the chamber ratio to the exit pressure or the pressure outside is greater than this then the nozzle will be choked okay so for any pressure ratio PC by or for any pressure ratio that is from PC to ambient wherein it is greater than or equal to 1.7 then the flow at flow is called choke flow as I had said in the previous class the advantage of choke flow is now it becomes independent of downstream conditions and it is only a function of upstream conditions okay so let us see how we can use this to calculate what is the mass flow rate through a choke nozzle okay you have calculated what is the ratio that is required for the flow to be choked let us now calculate what is the mass flow rate through a choke nozzle now we know that m. Which is the mass flow rate is given by ? T ET into VT where T as I said earlier indicates throat conditions so this is the density into area into velocity okay now let me normalize ? T and VT with respect to chamber conditions why because I know for a choke flow that it is only dependent on the upstream conditions upstream of the throat of the chamber so if I normalize it with chamber conditions I will be able to derive some useful equations ? T and VT with ? C which is the density at in the chamber and ET which is the acoustic speed for the speed of sound at the throat so we will get m. is equal to ? T by ? C into ET into VT L by ET into what is ET I know that ET is equal to right so I will normalize this also with the chamber conditions and multiply by under root TC what is this ratio is the ratio of local speed fluid speed to acoustic speed which is nothing but Mach number Mach number at throat for choke condition is 1 so this is 1 so we get m. is equal to ? T by ? C ET so now we need to find this ratio and this ratio we already know for choke flow what is this ratio we also know pressure ratio so density ratio is nothing but ? T by ? C is nothing but PT by RTT into RTC by PC so R cancels out you get PT by PC into TC by TT you have already derived them that is nothing but into ? plus 1 by 2 okay this is the temperature ratio this is the pressure ratio so now if we because these two are the same we can add the powers and we can simplify it as ? T by ? C I will get it as I also know TT by TC which is nothing but I need under root so this would be – half now I know all the ratios that I wanted these two I can substitute them and get the relation for mass flow rate as m. is equal to I am sorry you did not remind me I needed to multiply by if I divide this by ? C I need to multiply by ? C again so this is ? C into ? T by ? C into this so I will get here ? C okay now I can deal with them because they are same base but different powers I can add the powers so I will get and further this – I can replace it as plus and this ? C I can write it in terms of pressure so I will get PC by RTC into AT ? RTC because I have a minus sign here I can write this as 2 by ? plus 1 into ? plus 1 now I have RTC here and RTC here so I can re simplify all of this and write it as this is very similar to something that you have already derived in gas dynamics wherein you will not use PC you will instead use P0 A star by T0 right this whole function this whole thing is a function of only ? so normally in rocket literature this is denoted as a ? of ? function okay so you get m. is equal to PC AT by C star where C star is called the characteristic velocity and C star is given by 1 by ? of ? RU by M is nothing but R so C star is given by this where ? of ? is only a function of function of ratio of specific heats that is so this is the typical expression that we use in rockets when we are discussing rockets for mass flow rate through a choke nozzle okay this ? of ? is also called as a Vanden-Kerchoff function varies from 0.64 to 0.667 for ? variation of 1.3 now we know how to get the mass flow rate through a choke nozzle now if you recollect back we had derived expression for the thrust of the rocket motor when we were discussing about the thrust of the turbojet engine so or an air breathing engine so we know that rocket engine F is equal to m.UE plus AE PE-PA where E indicates exit conditions A indicates ambient condition so you have here UE which is the exit velocity exit area exit pressure and ambient pressure okay now we in the thrust equation we already know how to calculate m. For a choke nozzle so this part we know we need to now find out how to get the exit velocity and then we need to get something about area ratios and other things we will look at it a little later firstly let us get an expression for the exit velocity how do we get this expression we know that the energy equation is valid from the entry of the nozzle to the exit of the nozzle so from that we know we can write from energy equation HE plus UE square by 2 is equal to HC we had seen a little earlier with respect to the throat this equation now we applied to the exit of the nozzle okay so I can rewrite this as UE is equal to under root 2 HC-HE since we know that there are no reactions that are taking place inside the nozzle and the thermodynamic properties are constant from the entry of the nozzle to the exit of the nozzle all this must be sensible enthalpy so therefore we can write this in terms of UE is equal to 2 CP TC x 1-TE by TC and TE by TC we can express it in terms of pressure as equal to under root ?-1 this part CP TC part I can use the UE CP TC I know is equal to CP by R x RTC okay now this RTC what is C star C star is nothing but RUTC by molecular weight or RTC right this is nothing but is equal to 1 by ? of ? x under root RTC so this part here RTC must be equal to C star square ? square okay so I can put this what is CP by R this I can write it as ? by ?-1 into so if I substitute back this into the expression for UE I will get UE is equal to okay because this has square here and this is in this route I can take it out and write it like this now what this tells us is that if we know the characteristic velocity and the pressure ratio we can get the exit velocity right so if PE goes to 0 what happens if this will UE will be a maximum when PE goes to 0 so when PE is equal to 0 UE is maximum and is called limiting exhaust velocity that is it will only become a function of the chamber temperature PE becoming 0 here means in this case if PE goes to 0 TE also has to go to 0 so the UE would this then become under root that is it becomes only a function of the chamber temperature but in reality we cannot get a condition where in the exit velocity this is not the ambient velocity ambient pressure this is the exit of the nozzle being at 0 pressure this is not possible this will be some finite number therefore you cannot get this condition but this is the maximum that one can get with a convergent-divergent nozzle okay now we need to also get one more parameter that is how does we still do not know how AE and PE are connected that is if we know the area ratio there from the throat to the exit how does how does one obtain PE from if knowing PC how can we obtain PE so let us do that so let us relate PE by PC to AE by AT to start this what we know is we know that mass flow rate once the nozzle is choked and the flow is steady the mass flow rate at any cross section is the same it cannot vary so we know m dot is equal to PC AT by C star and is also equal to rho e ue AE okay where e indicates exit conditions okay so from this I can get an expression for AE by AT as PC now I know rho e is nothing but rho e is PE by RTE and if I substitute for that here I will I also know the expression for ue which we just derived okay so if we substitute for both of them here rho e and ue we will get an expression for AE by AT okay this is the expression that we get once we substitute for ue and rho e now here what is again C star into if we take a ? of ? here so you get C star into ? of ? square which is nothing but RTC right so we get PC by PE into RTE divided by RTC that is we need to have a ? of ? in the numerator to account for this into 2 ? by ?-1 I can cancel the Rs and TE by TC I can again express in terms of pressures I already have a PC by PE so I know that TE by TC is nothing but PE by PC to the power of ?-1 by ? so if I substitute for all this for this here and simplify or I can because I can put them together and rewrite this as if you notice this is a relation connecting area ratios to pressure ratios mostly we will know what is the geometric area ratio of the nozzle that we are taking and to get the pressure ratio from knowing the nozzle ratio nozzle area ratio using this equation is very difficult so therefore we have gas dynamic tables which will give you this or there are plots that will tell you how PE by PC varies if you vary AE by AT we look at it in the next class thank you.


Hey there friends. So today I have the once a month grocery shopping ultimate guide for you all. This has been so highly requested, especially since I show a lot of grocery hauls here on my channel. A lot of you have been asking how I'm grocery shopping once a month. How do I make my groceries last? How do I keep produce and other things like that? So we're gonna get into all of that today. So a question I've received is why would you grocery shop once a month? I break it down into a couple different reasons. One of them being less gas spent, less time spent, and less trips to the grocery store. For us, we actually don't live very near a grocery store. We live out in the country. There isn't a grocery store just up the street. And so that's one of the reasons that really pushed me into grocery shopping once a month amongst many others. So I'm not spending the gas or the time every single week to go grocery shopping. I am a mom of three. We homeschool, we have a lot going on in our schedule. So being able to take out the time that I have to take every week to go grocery shopping is huge. Along with that, I find that I spend significantly less simply because of the age old trick of impulse buying the way things are advertised or simply yourself choosing to impulse buy in that moment. I think there is so much of that that happens whenever I'm grocery shopping and whenever I go once a month, I have a very particular list. I have particular reasons. I'm gonna need those things throughout the month and it just cuts down on a lot of that, oh look, there's our favorite this or that or maybe even holiday sales or other things that might cause you to spend extra money that you were not planning on spending. I find that I am more purposeful in my shopping when I'm shopping once a month. I find that I make healthier choices and I'm more mindful of just the basic needs we have versus quick things that might only last for one meal or may go bad quickly. And the last biggest reason for me to do once a month grocery shopping is I have way less food waste, way less food waste. And the reason for that being is every week when you go grocery shopping, you tend to purchase a lot of the same things. You might get lettuce every week, you may get certain vegetables and other things every week and sometimes you put it on your list even if you don't need it or say you bought a pack of small bell peppers the week before, you have like two left and you're thinking, well, I'm probably gonna need some more this next week so I'm gonna buy an entire pack again and those two that are left may get thrown away, they may never get used. So that's just one example of so many other areas in my cooking and grocery shopping that I was creating so much food waste and also I think sometimes we just tend to get in a rhythm with shopping every week and we tend to not eat up the rest of whatever we purchased last week. So for those reasons, you can see why once a month grocery shopping is kind of an attractive idea. So let's go over the basics of grocery shopping once a month. Decide your goals, maybe you want to be healthier, maybe you want to stick to a budget, maybe you want to shop locally and you just wanna shop locally and it'll help you hone in on those local stores a little more if you're just going once a month. Whatever your goal is, write them down, figure out your reason of why you want to shop once a month. After you create those goals, then decide where you want to shop once a month and this fluctuates for me a lot depending on what I really need that month, depending on maybe what I have coming up the next month. I tend to shop in bulk so we do have a lot of local bulk food stores. I've done a lot of that in the past but currently I am doing a lot of shopping with Azure Standard and that's a new one for me and then also Costco and whatever I can't manage between those two, sometimes I'll stop at a local grocery store or I will stop at Aldi and I try to get it all done within a very small time period. I usually do most of my regular Costco and other shopping in one day and then my Azure Standard order does fluctuate on when it's going to be delivered so that may not be the exact same day but I try to get it all very close together so I can keep a handle on keeping track of what I bought for the month and I'll get into that as we go on. So is there any exceptions? Do I never run out to the grocery store? So I do have a few exceptions. One of them being if we are invited somewhere to go for supper and I'm taking a dish, I may need a little extra something for that. Obviously events, birthday parties, barbecues, having people over, those sorts of things and also another exception and you can create your own exceptions is we do a lot of things together as a family on the weekend and one of the things we really enjoy doing is cooking. On occasion, my husband will say, hey, let's do, let's barbecue this or let's do that and so then we will make a special trip to the store. A lot of times we do it as a family and it's just kind of more of an event than it is a grocery shopping trip. All right, so we're all ready to go grocery shopping for the month. What should we do before we leave to do that? So one thing that is really handy and if you are a Costco shopper or a Sam's club shopper and honestly I've been seeing them more and more at regular grocery stores but those soft, large, cooler bags, they are very handy. For myself, whenever I go to Costco and a lot of these other stores I'm actually driving about an hour away and so to have all of the cooler things, the freezer things in those bags is very convenient and I think everything stays nice and fresh. Freshness is going to be key in this video as you will see so making sure that everything stays nice and cool that's important. Another thing I like to do is go through my refrigerator or maybe some other cabinets where I'll be storing the things that I'm going to be bringing home. It just cuts down on the chaos when I bring a month's worth of groceries home. It's a lot to do, a lot to put away, a lot to store correctly in a short amount of time so I just want to be prepared and ready for that. One thing we will not be touching on in this video and you can let me know in the comments below if you would be interested in this is how to plan a grocery list for a month's worth of shopping. We are going to be talking more about storage today and how to make groceries last longer. I thought that was a bigger, broader range of information because everyone's grocery list is a little bit different but if you're interested in my grocery list and how I buy things by the month, I can definitely make a video about that. So you also might be saying I do not have room to store a month's worth of groceries and I'm going to give you a little bit of a challenge on that. Go through your house. I have a very good friend of mine and you all may watch her channel. Her name is Sherlyn Gingrich. I'll leave her channel linked below but for a time period of their life they lived in an apartment and she was able to convert some space in that small apartment to create food storage and I think that it just goes to show that anyone can make food storage happen. It might be underneath of a staircase. It might be in a cellar. It might be in a closet in a guest room. It may be somewhere that's a little bit unusual, a laundry room closet, somewhere that you don't often use. You can even get freestanding shelving that could be put in your garage or somewhere else or bins or totes. There's so many different ways that you can get creative with storing extra food and learning how to do food storage. I'm not going to be talking a whole lot about dry goods today. This is going to be more focused on produce and perishables because I know that's the bigger interest. However, one thing that is worth looking up is how to store dry goods correctly so that they do last a long time and there is so much information on the internet about that and I'll let you to it to do your own research. Okay, so let's talk about produce. Produce is huge. It's probably the biggest hang up in the idea of going monthly grocery shopping. You might say, well, how am I gonna make my produce last? How can we eat healthy while grocery shopping once a month? So first and foremost, let's consider what is more perishable and less perishable or, I don't know if that's a word, but basically what will spoil the fastest? So things like raspberries and bananas, we might eat those more quickly than we do other fruits like apples or oranges that I know will last very long time. So that is something to consider as you're making your grocery list and even as you're making your grocery list, you can mark them, underline them, put a little star next to those things that you know you want to use up first. Because storing produce is so key to grocery shopping once a month, I'm actually gonna break down a bunch of different produce items and how I store them and I also want to put a huge disclaimer here. Huge because this is really kind of the way that nature works and that is the fresher the item is when you go to store it, the longer it's going to last. So since we don't really know often when our produce was picked and how long it's been sitting in the grocery store, sometimes these methods do fail. So I wanted to make that very clear and put the disclaimer out there that your things may not last quite as long. I've had a few months where I've done these methods of storing things and stuff has gone bad at times simply because obviously that produce was a little bit older than I thought it was when I got it at the grocery store. So when you pick your produce, definitely pick the freshest looking produce, the best looking produce so that you know it's going to last as long as possible. Also another disclaimer, some of these methods do use things that are disposable and I know for some people they just care to not use these things and that is okay. I personally find that it's worth it to use some of the plastic and other things I'm going to be using to store some of these things so that they last longer versus using up more gas to drive to the store, using up more of my time and also ultimately more food waste like I mentioned earlier. All right, so we're going to start out with avocados. So whenever I started grocery shopping once a month, two of my biggest produce items that I wanted to get nailed down first because they are things we use a lot in our house was avocados and lettuce. So avocados are something we eat a lot and I decided to try out two different methods to store avocados for a month. One of them was to put the whole avocado right into the freezer and freeze it. I heard that works, so I went ahead and gave it a try and then the other way is to actually take your avocados, fill a jar with water. I personally like to use a glass jar so I can see what's going on in there and then put the avocados in and then fill it with water and so the winner out of the two methods was the jar with water and I'll get to that in a second but I do want to mention that putting a whole avocado in the freezer might work for pretty much one purpose and that is guacamole and you do want to use it within a couple of weeks. It just gets really mushy. It's probably the best explanation. So whenever it comes to the jar of avocados, I mean I have had avocados that I have taken out of that jar and cut open that were put in five weeks earlier and they look amazing inside.  I can put them into a gallon jar with water, put a lid on it, put it into my extra refrigerator and we will have avocados all month long. Okay, so the next one is lettuce, like I mentioned. So what I have done and experimented with is romaine lettuce. That is the lettuce that we prefer and so one of the things that I had heard works really well is to take your lettuce and wrap it in tinfoil and I know for some of you, you would care not to use tinfoil so maybe you could find an alternate method or let us know in the comments below if you have another method of making lettuce last a long time. Now I do take each head of romaine lettuce and individually wrap them. Whenever I did this for the first month, I let one or two of them in the refrigerator for five weeks. I wanted to see truly how long it would last. I opened them up and they were just like they were the day I purchased them. It just blew my mind and I think once I had that and the avocados down, it was a game changer for me to realize that I did not have to go to the grocery store for lettuce every single week. Something I recently got down pat is spinach. I personally love spinach salads and so what I started doing is putting my spinach in an airtight container and before I put it in the airtight container, I take a piece of paper towel and I fold it in half so it's a double layer in the bottom of the container and then I do the same thing on the top of the spinach as well. It helps to absorb extra moisture that might be in your spinach and with that airtight container, it's keeping out any extra air and I have so far been able to keep spinach fresh for probably a little over two weeks, just depending again on when that spinach was harvested. Okay, so mushrooms, again, the same exact method I just mentioned, I just put a paper towel on the bottom of the container, put the mushrooms in, paper towel on the top and put an airtight lid on top. Bell peppers is something I do not purchase every month simply because I slice them and keep them in my freezer and they're just really simple to use in most things in that way. I also can bell pepper and onion together but occasionally I'll see a good sale or I'll pick some up and if I do that, I actually like to put it into a vacuum sealed bag so it's really sucking all of the air out but I wanna mention with vacuum sealing, you can also just take a regular freezer bag and press as much air as you possibly can out of it and it's still going to help that item last longer than it would if it were to be just sitting out in a room temperature basket or something like that. So celery, I take that and I actually cut the end off and I think there's a few different ways you can do this. If you store celery a different way, let me know in the comments but I like to cut mine so that it's all trimmed up and I put it into a container that's airtight with water and I do change out that water probably at least once a week, even maybe a little bit more than that and your celery will definitely last a very long time in the refrigerator like that and I'm able to get it out and it's crunchy and I can put peanut butter on it and enjoy a healthy snack. Carrots are something that I think is a pretty big staple in most homes and if they are not peeled and they're just a whole carrot, I like to store them in a drawer in my refrigerator. If they come in a bag, I will often leave them in that bag as well, just kind of an added layer of protection and I'll store them in the bottom of my refrigerator often but if you want to go ahead and prep those carrots and you want to peel them and cut them and have them ready to go, you can store them the same way that you would with the celery just in some water with an airtight lid. Okay, so apples. Apples are something that generally lasts a long time and they're an item that if we're going to eat up some softer, more perishable fruits in the earlier part of the month, there's something that we tend to eat a lot more in the later part of the month. One caution about apples is I definitely would store them in their own drawer in your refrigerator if possible and I actually go an extra step. If you have a bonus refrigerator in your garage or your cellar, you can store them away from your other vegetables. That would be a really good idea because apples do let off a certain gas that does cause vegetables and fruit to ripen more quickly. So that is one thing to keep in mind. It might be a good idea to definitely keep them in their own drawer without adding any other fruits or vegetables to that drawer. Oranges are something that if refrigerated should last a better part of a month and it's a great way to get in vitamin C. My children love the little small oranges so once in a while I grab a bag of those and it's a great healthy snack that they can peel and eat on their own. Okay, so let's talk about potatoes, onions, and squash. And I'm not talking about summer squash like zucchini or the yellow summer squash. I'm talking about butternut squash or spaghetti squash, a squash that has more of a hard shell like pumpkin. Those types of things along with potatoes do really well being stored in a cool, dark place. For us, we just store it in our cellar or basement. I know some people store them in a bottom of a cabinet in their kitchen and those sorts of things. I've heard of people putting squash underneath their beds. Just as long as it's kind of in a dark, cool place, it works out perfectly. And onions, I actually keep my onions hanging in a bag in my kitchen. So another component that's good with potatoes and onions is to put them in to something that has air flow. So my potatoes are stored in a crate that has holes where the air can flow through. And my onions, I do store in a net kind of a bag and they get air flow a lot. And those sorts of things store really well. One thing that I like to do, and it's possible because you have a little bit more time not going grocery shopping every single week is maybe once a week, mark on your calendars to kind of check over your food stock. Check over what might need to be used up a little bit more quickly. Maybe your potatoes are starting to turn and you wanna use those. But I know from buying 50 pounds of potatoes, my potatoes generally last two months at a time. But again, it's a good thing to keep an eye on and just know if your onions are starting to get a little soft, you wanna dice them up and throw them in the freezer so that you don't get any waste. So the last one I'm gonna share today is cabbage and it is a very hearty, hearty vegetable. It's something that I have kept in my extra refrigerator for months at a time. And I like to wrap mine in like a saran wrap, just something to help keep it a little airtight on the outer part of the cabbage. Quick note on the later part of the month. So obviously some of these things are only gonna last a week or two. You're not gonna have them all month. So I know that not all of you have a seller storage like I do. I have lots of home canned things that I do in the summertime, whether it's green beans or corn or potatoes. So we obviously reach for those things when we're getting towards the end of the month and we don't have as many fresh items around the kitchen. For you that do not do home canning, it is very easy to find organic canned pears and other items that you can keep for your later in the month. You can get things like green beans that are frozen and plenty of other frozen fruits and vegetables. So one option that we like to lean into towards the end of the month is making smoothies. Whatever bananas didn't get eaten within that first week of me going grocery shopping, I throw in the freezer so we can use them in smoothies. I think by now you're probably picking up on the great amount of food that could be thrown away throughout a month that you're paying more attention to because it's what you have there. I have my bananas on the table. I just went grocery shopping this past week and so I'm kind of keeping an eye on them as they get a little more ripe. I'm gonna throw them in the freezer and they're still gonna get eaten and not thrown away. So the last category that we are gonna talk about today is dairy. I'm not gonna talk a whole lot about meat. I feel like meat is pretty self-explanatory. We actually purchase our meat locally so it's all in our deep freezer so I very rarely buy meats at the store unless it's sausage or something that's kind of special but most of our meat is in the freezer.  So back to dairy. Dairy might be something that is challenging you going how am I gonna do milk without going to the store every week? So there's a few ways to approach this. One thing to keep in mind is that the best buy date on a lot of dairy products is actually pretty far out. So when you purchase your milk and sometimes I even look at the best buy date in the store, which I buy my milk locally now which is really nice but I've done this in the past where I'll look at the top of the milks and sometimes there's a lot of milk in the case and you might notice that some of them have an extra week on their best buy date. So that means that milk is fresher and so you can purchase that and you can use it up into its best buy date. Especially if you keep it closed and you're only opening one container at a time the whole thing of air tightness is very key whenever it comes to storing your foods. So you can look for the best milk at your store and then you can take some of it home and sometimes I've even frozen it in the past. Milk freezes pretty well, especially if it's pasteurized from the store. You can take and dump a little bit into a cup and use it that week just to give you a little bit of space on the top of the milk so that when it freezes and expands you're not having milk blowing up in your freezer. And another option if you really don't want to freeze milk is to try out powdered milk. I've had some pretty good experience with powdered milk in the past. So it's just dehydrated milk and all you have to do is add some water to it and you wanna let it get really cold in the refrigerator. It's definitely not something you wanna just mix up and drink but if you do that it actually works out very, very well. I'm going to get to dairy free milk here in a minute but let's talk about cheese. Cheese I think for most of us we know but for anybody that doesn't know cheese is something that lasts a very, very long time. And I actually tend to buy our cheese now in five pound blocks and then I can shred it as I need it.  But one thing to keep in mind especially if you don't have a vacuum sealer is to maybe look for cheese that's already vacuum sealed. I know that there's times that blocks of cheese in the store are already in a packaging that doesn't have any air in it. And so maybe if you don't have a vacuum sealer and you would rather go that route it's going to last a good long time in your refrigerator because it's nice and tight already in that packaging. A few very cheap investments whenever it comes to cheese is a cheese slicer like this one. It's very simple, there's a little wire right there and just run it down the block of cheese and it makes a nice slice of cheese and also a box shredder. I have a food processor and I could shred all my cheese that way but I like to fresh shred my cheese for the most part. I just think it melts so much nicer and I also like to fresh slice our cheese as well. I don't do a lot of pre-slicing and pre-shredding just because the melt is so great on fresh sliced cheese. So I like to have this on hand as well to just be able to grade things quickly. Another note about cheese is that I've had cheese last months in my refrigerator being vacuum sealed so there is times that I've even bought cheese in a two months chunk of whatever I think I'm going to need and it's lasted perfectly fine. Dough or cream and cream cheese. Both of these things for the most part I'm gonna say I've never purchased cream cheese or sour cream directly from the store that has not had a months best by date out. So the date on it is a month away so I know that my cream cheese and sour cream is gonna be perfectly fine all month long and it works out great to just purchase one month at a time. Having cream is also that way. A lot of times I purchase heavy cream and the best by date is two, three, four weeks away so I know that especially if I don't open it right away it will last a nice long time in my refrigerator. For this reason you may wanna purchase heavy cream in smaller containers just because it's got that seal again with the airtight and it's going to last longer as you open up the smaller containers versus one large container. Take that mindset with other things that you might be purchasing for the month might be better to purchase smaller groupings of things than one huge amount if you don't have a way to store it correctly. Okay so let's talk about nut milk. So I drink a lot of nut milk and through this whole entire learning process of shopping once a month I've learned that a lot of nut milks are also best by dated a month away so you could purchase one month's worth of nut milk if you drink almond milk or coconut milk or something like that but for myself I have just started keeping those things on hand almonds, cashews, the things that I want to make milk out of and then I just make it as I want it. It's very simple, if you have a blender you can make nut milk at home. It's very very easy, even if you don't have cheesecloth you can use a t-shirt, a clean t-shirt to strain out your nut milk so that you have fresh homemade nut milk whenever you wanna make it at home. So since nuts store a very long time in the freezer I just keep mine in the freezer, pull them out whenever I wanna make nut milk and I go ahead and do that. So I know this was all probably a lot of information. I don't even know how long this video is gonna be. I'm assuming it's gonna be a little bit longer than my usual videos but it is such helpful information if you are really serious about wanting to start shopping once a month. These are things I've had to do a lot of learning on my own and obviously I did not talk about every possible thing that's in a grocery store but we can talk more in the comments if you have tips and tricks on how to store certain things that maybe I didn't talk about or another idea about how to store something I did talk about let me know in the comments. I would really love for this to be a great resource video for people that are trying to find the tips and tricks when it comes to shopping once a month. I know whenever I went looking for a lot of this information I really had to experiment myself and couldn't find a lot of resource on this so I wanted to share what I've learned so far. I will be sharing a lot more of what I'm learning over the next couple of months as I share once a month's grocery haul because I'll be doing that as well and I know that you all will appreciate that because I've had so many questions about how to store this or that for a whole month. I hope this gives you a starting point and if you're just starting into doing once a month shopping I hope that it goes really well for you and if you wanna leave comments in this video I will do my very best to respond to them as quickly as I can and I'm so glad that you're here. If this is the first video of mine that you've ever watched think about hitting that subscribe button. I do lots of meal prepping and food preservation and recipes and just very good home simple cooking. Also hit that like button for me if you enjoyed this video and I will see you all in my next video.