When you work in this field, you meet a lot of amazing people and Some of them there are amazing because of the work they're doing some are amazing because they're so willing to spend their time with you To exchange ideas with you. I hope you all meet those people while you're at SoCAP I'm excited to bring to the stage two people who I absolutely cherish every minute. I get to spend with them I've learned more from Fran Siegel over the last five years than just about anybody else and Ariane I've met more recently but is someone who's always thoughtful always wants to hear a good question and The benefit of having them both up here Is not because they're wonderful people but also because Ariane is one of those people who has found that magical space where Financial return and impact are not compromised. He's running a very successful fund called core innovation capital And I'm excited for you to hear from them the way that works the way Ariane thinks about this work the impact that he's having and all Of the other topics that they're gonna fit into the next few minutes. So please welcome Fran and Ariane Can you hear me? I'm Fran Siegel. I am chief investment officer of impact assets Which is a nonprofit financial services firm focused on increasing the flow of capital to impact investing And I am delighted to be in dialogue with Ariane Shuta who is a founder and managing director of core innovation capital Just we wanted to kind of contextualize our discussion for a moment You've heard this morning a fair amount about About mainstreaming and about incumbents entering the field institutions putting capital to work and Ariane and I are both really passionate about democratizing About making financial services making impact investing available to all to the retail investor And so we hope that we can offer a slight point of contrast to some of the other speakers this morning The other thing is we talked a lot about the supply side of capital. So drawing more capital into the space Whereas Ariane's work and his partner Kathleen as business partner Kathleen Put put money to work and so we'll be talking about impact entrepreneurs not just the supply of capital But also the demand for capital so a first kind of opening salvo is the core innovation invests in companies that serve the domestic unbanked and underbanked so I'm wondering if you could talk about what that market is and Quantify it if you can and talk about why the sector is growing sure So thanks Fran, and it's great to be here I kind of came to this after reading a book about a guy named Muhammad Jonas And he was new to me and microfinance was new to me I'd spent a decade building educational software and a bunch of venture-backed companies and I Was just really genuinely blown away with what they'd done And I'm an immigrant here myself And so I didn't want to go to Bangladesh or India and I was really interested and kind of inspired when Al Gore was sent packing When he went to visit India and talked about global warming and they said you come from the biggest polluter Go back home and fix your own backyard And so I've been really inspired to do what we can from our side to fix our own backyard So I went looking for who's doing this kind of stuff in the United States, and I found myself in south side of Chicago Visiting with the founders of shorebank for some of those who who know about shorebank They've from their little corner of things done an incredible amount to really advance Community development and financial inclusion not just in Chicago or in the United States, but really globally And so while on one hand I was really like deeply inspired by what they'd built I also looked at what that community had done in terms of scale and after about 40 or 50 years the community development movement while it has done remarkable things in local neighborhoods if you add it all up and look at it from a United States perspective is Serving about one half of 1% of the population And so it hasn't scaled particularly well, and so one aha was gosh, there's incredible work very powerful Important and powerful work going on, but it hasn't scaled at all. And so When you look at the United States, right the income divide is growing and that represents a dire policy problem many many tens of millions of customers underutilized traditional banks and Overutilized alternatives those alternatives are extremely expensive It's expensive to be poor as it sadly turns out and So this is also a dire need and But there's also a flip side to it, and that is that is not just the need. There's also is an incredible opportunity And so as we started looking at how do we reframe this as an opportunity, right? You start looking at it from a revenue perspective and so Then the need that we have around Financial security for low-income people in the United States and financial mobility for yet low-income people in the United States Actually represents about a hundred billion dollars on annual revenue that low-income people spend on very basic financial products all products that Probably almost everyone in this room gets for almost free And so no matter how empathetic we all may be we basically live in a bubble and it is hard to imagine the Incredible expense that is incurred by an incredible number of people who live all around us And so looking at it through a market lens was really the aha that led to the creation of core and to the thesis of investing in financial services companies that could serve low-income people at scale to the tunes of tens of millions as opposed to Hundreds or thousands or maybe tens of thousands And do so in a way that is profitable and Uplifting for them economically. Mm-hmm. I spoke yesterday in a session with Kathy Clark about how focused I am on the microfinance movement and global sustainable agriculture lending in emerging markets and you touch on this a little bit but but how Those markets in some ways from a lending perspective are ahead of the United States and what can we learn? from microfinance and global sustainable agriculture, which really look at the rural poor and the urban poor as Strong credit risks and what can we do to help build the credit rating of a folks at the bottom of the pyramid and Just wondering if you can kind of elaborate on that you have roots in in both microfinance and Community community banking, but it just occurs to me in the wake of the financial crisis and subprime lending that The low to moderate-income folks have kind of gotten a bad rap in some ways worse than ever before And so can you talk a little bit about those some of those market factors? Yeah, so clearly there's a lot to learn From what's happening around the world and in many very important and annoying ways the United States is antiquated and behind from its financial services offerings However, we've and I've I've been scouring for a decade now to find ways to translate What's happening abroad and apply that here? It's very it's been very hard to do that in many cases literally Because the the in the financial services infrastructure United States is so different There are other places in the world where they are similar like South Africa or Brazil or more similar than Or the UK or the EU than many other places But it's hard to replicate literally and so what what but where there is tremendous power and Lessons from abroad to be applied here is more metaphorically speaking and so for example this notion of a social Lateral is something that the United States barely utilizes so there's about 70 million Americans Who don't have a FICO score and that doesn't mean that they are? Subprime or irresponsible. It just means that there isn't the data in TransUnion Equifax and Experian that create a FICO score and so they're invisible and so It's a continuous challenge for the United States financial services system to underwrite this customer Accurately so they're not risk-adjusted. They're basically treating all of these thin file or no file customers as subprime customers at their detriment and so The microfinance world for example has figured out very powerfully how how you use your Community and your friends and your loved ones and the notion of shame for example to decrease defaults that is Hardly utilized the United States and is a very powerful idea And one of our portfolio companies is actually trying to do that in a very modern way so we invested in a company called vouch And vouchers trying to be an alternative to a payday loan payday loan famously cost three-digit APRs it's easy and to get you know riled up about that at a cocktail party But vouch is trying to Address the same customer at one-tenth the price of a payday loan largely by helping people leverage their social collateral so Helping the lender vouch basically determine the the resilience of someone's character and character is really hard to define and so they basically allow you to Engage your social community to vouch for you to sponsor you you can either say Fran I think you're responsible and it'd be a kind of a soft vouch Or I could if you're trying to borrow five thousand dollars I could say I'll back you for a hundred bucks and you could get ten people to back you for a hundred bucks It's kind of like a cosine and that's a very modern online Translation of a very old idea right that's existed in microfinance for a long time and and You know more old-fashioned forms of borrowing for millennia before that So as an example of how of how we're kind of metaphorically importing some ideas from abroad So I think of the kind of investing you do at core as kind of fintech for good For fintech for impact. There's been a lot of discussion around fintech It's it's quote-unquote super hot right now and and how do you see yourself fitting within the broader trend of Fintech in in serving this very particular constituency Yeah, so we're unique in the United States in that we're a Fintech investor that knows the sector well, but is decidedly interested in investing in companies that are Economically empowering for low-income people So we have a an angle on fintech. We play very nicely. I think with the broader ecosystem And by and large we Co-invest with mainstream investors. We'd love to co-invest with more impact investors But I actually have none as co-investors But we do have under recent Horowitz or Greylock or Google or Venrock or Charles River and many others as co-investors Who and who co-invest with us for a variety of reasons? They may not call it impact. Maybe they call it reputation risk management or maybe they It just gels with one of the partners or maybe they see it as You know effectively increasing the enterprise value Ultimately if our thesis is right We're able to align creating high impact and great returns By investing in companies that are going to create long-term value on lots and lots of customers and That ultimately translates to higher enterprise value and it plays out in financial services that if you look at companies that are more Predatory like companies that are publicly traded you actually see that their enterprise value is relatively little on an EBIT Or or revenue basis versus companies that provide much longer-term value And so that's how we're trying to marry these two ideas so that they're actually synergistic to each other as opposed to in conflict So let's move a little bit now bridging to financial returns and You probably know Aileen Lee from cowboy ventures who famously coined the term unicorn Which is privately held companies that have evaluations of at least a billion dollars on the list is growing of those And so I'm trying to coin The phrase impact unicorn and an impact unicorn and yeah, I think you invest in impact unicorns where the where You can seek to achieve market rates of financial return as well as extra very very strong Impact and that the financial returns are released Because of and not in spite of the impact But the true story of impact investing is that it's a spectrum From return of principal to concessionary term to market rate and even premium rates of return You have have spoken specifically about this dichotomy of Missionary to mercenary and I was wondering if you could expand on that dichotomy and say where you think Core fits on that spectrum. Sure. Well, and I think of it as a spectrum and not a dichotomy and it's kind of a It's meant as a characterization which is meant to both insults kind of people at either end of the spectrum as a Stimulus to get them to think differently. And so right. I kind of see the spectrum as there are missionaries on one hand and basically the missionaries are You know, we'll give lip service to the business part of it They know they need to talk that language, but at the end of the day, they're really mission driven Nothing wrong with it great very courageous group of people and there's mercenaries Which I also don't see is particularly wrong and that's frankly most of society and like you know These are not evil people and you know the good or the impact may be you know an afterthought or kind of you know The community section on their website or something like that Nothing wrong with that. There's incredible philanthropic dollars and efforts and well-intended people who are on either end of the spectrum But you know what I mean and so from our perspective as we look at entrepreneurs The lion's share and the mercenary category a Very small number of them are in the in the missionary category And we've found sadly that the missionaries by and large are not company builders It's the it's difficult for them to raise The kind of capital they need to build the kind of scale that we think is important Even though we are agreed with their intentions and the mercenaries basically don't care enough to build in Oversampling of value to low-income consumers into their business models and to go through the Hardache and the harder work to to make business models that work or to create technology that brings that drives real Efficiencies like an order of magnitude type of efficiency where you're ten times better than what there was there before and So we look for what we call the visionaries who are neither missionary or mercenary But they are the they're driven by the desire to really make deep impact as Deborah referred to I like that framing but they are schooled and effective in the in the in the business of business And those are and and often they end up being what we call a kind of accidental social entrepreneurs They many of them don't know what this is or who we are or what is this? You know so cap and the so caps of the world But they care deeply And so almost all of our entrepreneurs are accidental social entrepreneurs and I think We should all look beyond our Right the converted To see who are the people who can really take us to the next level and many times they will not be Right here amongst us Okay, so moving from financial returns to impact returns It impact assets we largely invest in fund managers And so we have a database of you know 500 600 firms that we follow and we we tend to invest in just a handful a year in the same way that you look at hundreds of deals and maybe only invest in a handful as well and we talk a lot in the space about aligning Impact with financial incentives, but the truth of the matter is meaning that the is the fund managers Financial incentives aligned with the releasing of impact and I will say that I have seen Like very few of these in the wild We all see if you know, it's a good idea, but you know It's it's very rare and core innovation capital is one of the few Fund managers that that do this kind of alignment, and I'm wondering if you can speak about that sure, so We're looking to make market rate returns Which in the venture space is actually very difficult because venture capital for those of you who don't know is actually really crappy asset class Almost all there's a power curve in venture so almost all venture capitalists underperform S&P 500 Let alone get anything close to what people think of as a venture returns And so the notion of concessionary within venture capital I think is a bit of a is a of a misnomer because it is discounting a already, you know discounted median performance so For us the challenge was okay How do we combine these two and how do we stay true to being high impact and delivering deep impact? and so We clearly have our toes to the fire in terms of creating great financial returns and our LPs bug me about this every day Or whenever they get a chance that we should be you know like Pushing that harder. We've tried to build in into our into our inner fiber Into our general partnership agreement and our limited partnership agreement Also holding our toes to the fire to create great and scalable social impact and it's something that is Unique and it shouldn't be and it's something that I would love to see more in our industry that We don't just rely on our good intentions and everyone here is incredibly well-intentioned But good intentions are the road to I forgot but you know Setting up an accountability mechanism is very important to help us execute Highly against our good intentions and so we've built this system by which we basically Tie our compensation to our not just our financial return, but our impact And so when we underwrite a company we look for a variety of impact metrics how many low-modern income are they serving can they get to scale can They get can they reach millions? Are they providing are they saving them something like an order of magnitude over the best alternative and can they help the customer in the long-term? build assets build credit and Find a pathway to the financial mainstream and then every year we create an objective report with data reported From our portfolio companies. We have a three-person impact audit committee that is independent from us That scores us from one to a hundred and that score equals a hundred percent of our bonus and ten percent of our carry and that and it's broken down to a number of parts and that practice in Very practical ways has really helped us improve the way we execute against that and so You know if we get a score of eight or seven or something that and part of our in part of our impact metric That is embarrassing right like that is not why we're doing this. We're doing this to be in the top One percent the top five percent and so we've we've made changes and you know again Like I don't need to be reminded why I'm doing this but like having that mechanism is Incredibly powerful and it's something that I would really like to see and encourage more people who are investing in funds or met people who are managing funds to Self-impose right to create a mechanism to follow Peter Drucker's kind of famous mantra of what what's measured gets managed To create excellence not just in great financial returns, but social returns as well Well, thank you behold ladies and gentlemen and impact unicorn Thank you


A private helicopter crashed in the southern neighborhood of Coyoacan in Mexico City, killing the pilot and two passengers on board, local newspaper LaRozón reported, Pablo Vasquez, head of the Secretariat of Citizen Security of Mexico City, said on social media that people in the neighborhood were not at risk after the crash. We can confirm that three people lost their lives, the pilot of the plane and two passengers, the local officials said in a statement. We are crossing information to determine the identity of the three people, he added, emergency services are still investigating the accident, which was brought under control almost immediately, Vasquez said, although the identities of the victims are not known, reports of forum TV indicate that the pilot would be a man of approximately 65 years old, presumably identified as Armando Cervantes, who had a valid flight license. Marty Batris, head of government of Mexico City, announced that the crash of an aircraft at the intersection of Delphine Madrigal and Avenida Deleman was reported to him. He did not offer further details regarding this emergency, preliminary reports indicated that the vehicle involved in the accident would be a red condor, however, the Secretary of Security denied the above, the aircraft that collapsed does not belong to the condor's group, it is a private vehicle.


I would just like to thank the organizers for putting this together because I'm so excited to see what's going on in Europe and what you guys are doing. This is just so wonderful to be at room with a bunch of cave archaeologists. At some point we're going to be acknowledged as cave archaeologists that we are specialists in what we do. And all those people out there who aren't here, they are missing the very best session in the whole thing. So let's feel sorry for them.  So I'm going to start out with my one minute all-inclusive history of the ancient Maya. So you'll know all you need to know by the end of that. And then I'm going to talk about two caves where I have worked. I was going to do three, the third one is a pilgrimage site that I really wanted to talk about. But I think it's better to start out with kind of the basics today. So I'm at the University of California Merced. I have been working in Belize in ancient Maya caves for the last 25 years. So I've spent a lot of time underground over most of my middle part of my life. So I'm going to talk a little bit about the kinds of caves that we see and also just try to give you some kind of general information about our caves. So this is the Maya area. We're in Central America. So it's hot, it's tropical, it's many compasses, Guatemala, a little bit of Honduras.  But most of our caves are either in Belize or Guatemala. So Belize has more caves than anywhere and it's been better researched than anywhere else in Central America. Mainly because we've had so many archaeologists working in Belize. So has anybody ever been there? Has anybody ever worked in? Okay, yeah, this is a tiny country. It's about the size of Florida. It's quite a great place and they're very friendly to archaeologists. So this is a view, I'm working right now in a surface site that has a cave wandering under it. And this is a view from the top of our highest couple of the rainforest. So this is the rainforest area we work in. It's also very karstic. It used to be, it's cretaceous limestone. It used to be underwater. And so some people say we have more surface area under Belize than we have on top. And that may be true because we have a lot of caves. This is a giant cave in Guatemala. So this is sort of what our bigger caves look like, right? So we get these big, kind of magnificent looking caves. This is not to each cave. It's the Matt Nanny. Unfortunately it's in Guatemala, it's not in Belize, but I love this cave.  Because it's really in the dark zones where we see ritual space mostly, right? That people very, very rarely, if ever, live in the dark zone, except under very specific circumstances like during war or there's an ice age where it's so cold that you really can't sleep up. And most of the habitation in caves we see are really in rock shelters. So I think it's really important for us to differentiate. And so the caves I'll be talking about today, I'm going to be talking about dark zone caves. Boom, so the ancient Maya. Okay, so the first thing to know about them is that they are horticulturalists. This is a typical technique throughout, anywhere on the equator, where they do what they call slash and burn farming. And this is the, they grow corn, beans, squash, and this is the subsistence is mostly on corn. All the studies show that Maya people in the past, most of their calories came from corn. So what they do is, this is wet dry season, right?  And then they come along right before rainy season with a digging stick, and they plant their corn and beans all in the same hole because the beans can go up the corn, right? Really very, very sustainable. Then something else has to happen before it starts to come up, and they get two to three corn crops a year. Okay, what has to happen after planting? What has to happen for your seeds to come up? Rain, yes, it has to rain. Okay, you guys, how do you make rain? How do you make rain? There's only one way, cloud seeding doesn't work. How else do you make rain? You have to pray for rain, right? So that's when a lot of their agricultural ceremonies happen and they pray for rain. This is a fortunate picture I took of a modern guy in a cave. Pray for rain. And so do we still do this today? Yes, I have tons of pictures from California during our drought. All along the highways, it says, pray for rain. And then when it rains it says, thank you God. So we still do this today, even though we know better, right? So the Asia-wide civilization goes, we start to see people, we have 100 gatherers living in the area and we've been able to date this back further and further all the time, the more stuff we find. However, you know, about 1200 BC is when people really started to settle down and live in villages. Now they wouldn't necessarily have been called Maya. Maya is an archeological term and it just encompasses all of these people we can't talk to who can tell us, oh, I'm this type of Maya or that kind of Maya, right? So this is Maya's civilization, something we essentially made up. And so we see them starting to settle down about 1200 BC. We start to see in beliefs settled villages about that time. And then they grow actually rather rapidly. So by about 400 BC, we have evidence that there may be either chiefs or kings by then. And then they develop a new library of writing systems that we start to tell us about themselves around 250 CE. And then we have the rise of the kingship at that point. And so the Maya was a very high civilization. They lived in city states, usually 10,000 to a million people. So some of them are quite large. They had armies, they had warfare, they had writing. They have all the markings of states. And they build these rather large structures. And so by the late classic period, this was the height of their civilization, probably between 7 and 900 CE is when their populations are the highest. But it's also when things start to fall apart. Because what happens is they stop building buildings about 900, 950, start maybe around 850 in that area. They stop writing. So our last monument is 909 at Tonina, which is in Guatemala. The calendar changes, everything changes. And people, they don't just disappear and die, but the populations do, they lose their population. It becomes very, very low. People move out of this populated area where the rainforests are. They move down towards Yucatan, where there's wells, where you can get water. They move close to rivers. So our big sites in the post-classic period are all close to rivers. But the classic period is essentially pretty much done at least by 1000 CE. And most of them are kind of done around 950. So now let's think about, because this is a time period I'm also most interested in. This time between 700 and 900 CE when things are starting to fall apart. So we call it the classic my-collapse, but what it really is, it's the collapse of the government. It's the collapse of the kingship. Knowledge disappears. All of these things happen to them at this time. And so, of course, we've been working on this for about 150 years now. People have been trying to figure out what happens to these people. And of course, a lot of the paleo-climate records are now showing us that there was a huge drought that started right about 820. And in fact, our paleo-climate records are so good, we can actually look at relative rainfall about every five years. So it's really wonderful. And of course, cave data is showing us that, right? So I'm going to talk about two caves today. This was told to the children all. I did it for my master's thesis. And this one is called, you can call it, this was the one I did for my dissertation. So this is some of my earlier work, but I think it's important because it's very basic about Maya and what we know about caves, right? And how we can think about caves, especially during the late-class period when things were tumultuous, things were falling apart, there's lots of uncertainty, people are probably hungry. There's all of these things happening during this period. So let's start with acting to the children all. As you can see, it's beautiful, by the way. It's a wet cave. There's a river that runs all the way through it. It has this gorgeous entrance. It's really kind of a mountain cave-water-type complex. This is the map that some caveers did many, many years ago. It's a five-kilometer cave. There is early use before the late-class period up around the entrance. And then in the late-class period, they used this area. They called it the Maya level, so we called it the main chamber, right? And so the main chamber, you have to walk through water. You have to swim part of the way. Then you have to crawl up a rock like duck under this little hole.  And there's actually about five rooms in it. It's really big. It's about 90 meters long. I recorded that chamber back in 1997 and 1998. I have about 1,500 artifacts out of there, most of which are ceramics, but I waste the other things as well. So my goal for my MA was to look at how they were used in this space, which would hopefully tell us of something about what kinds of rituals they were doing. So I was really hoping to look at where they're putting things, and hopefully this would give me hint as to what they were trying to do. Because the Maya have got, they have writing system. We can read it. They hardly say anything about caves. They don't say anything about what they're doing inside them. What we do have is ethnographic analogy, because we have people today who still use them. So what cave archaeologists attended to do is to take ethnographic analogy and splush it onto the archaeological record and say, hey, that's what they're doing. Which, you know, I'm not against ethnographic analogy. I think it's great. And I certainly use it. It helped us to understand that these were ritual spaces. But at the same time, does that mean there haven't been changes over time? So I was really interested to see, like, what they were doing. Well, in my spatial analysis, I looked at things like, you know, rocks, stalactites, you know, pools, where are they putting things? As it turns out, most of the artifacts were placed in these more pools. So these are rimstone dams. And they fill up with water when it rains a lot. So a lot of stuff in the chamber is actually cemented down in calcite. From the constant, you know, while emitting the flowing of the water and leaving this crystalline calcite line. A lot of other things were put under drips. So this is a grinding stone, a quite nice one, by the way. And it's under a drip sitting on a stalagmite. And so when it rains, it fills up with water. So the water features seem to be quite important in this cave. The other thing I found was when I looked at the artifact assemblage itself, the Demolines ceramics, I found that most of the ceramics assemblage were water jars, either really, really big ones or small ones, but lots and lots of water jars in this cave. And so I started to think about, well, you know, what does this mean in terms of the kinds of rituals? Now, there were a number of human sacrifice victims in this cave, which is a little bit unusual. The Maya weren't like the Aztecs. They weren't crazy for sacrifice. You know, caves are the main place where we're seeing human sacrifices, which is really interesting. We also have, we think, some burial caves as well, but the jury's out on that. Even the ones that we think might be burial caves. Normally, they're burial caves, but not in deep caves, especially far back like this. But we think this is a woman. We can't be sure. She's covered in calcite. We'll never take the calcite off. It's one of the top tourist features of Belize, so they're never going to touch her. But based on her pelvic girdle, they think that this is a woman. And as you can see, she was thrown back, so she landed like this. So not a position to bury your locked one in. There's no grave goods with her. And she's placed where? In a pool. Yeah. We have other people as well. We have 16 entire skeletons out of these. 13 of them are actually placed in pools. And all of the infants except for one. So seven out of eight of the infants are all in water as well. And, you know, about half of our assemblage is infants. And so we know from the Aztec that infants are the offering par excellence for rabies. And this is likely to be the truth although we don't have any actual evidence. So let me show you what the crystal maiden looks like when she's covered in water. So this is the rimstone Damley's pool. So as you can see, she's pretty much covered up in water. So I concluded that they are likely to have been doing reign or agricultural rituals in this chamber at this time. And so this is bolstered by my iconography. I'm showing you a couple of examples here because of time, but there's many, many, many. This is a late classic vase that's drawn from the vase and shows this is chocolate ring dot, and you pretty. And he's in a cave. So caves are always shown as these big vases. So this is the mouth, this U-shaped element. And as you can see, there's little teeth. Do you see the teeth? And the teeth are actually stalactites. So if you stand inside a cave, as you all know and look out, often you have stalactites at the drip line, and it looks like they're out with big teeth, right? And that's how the Maya are very literal in their iconography. And so there's Chuck sitting in his cave. This is an actual cave in Guatemala called La Polita. This has been destroyed, but they've got a picture before they ruined it. And this is Chuck's ring dot sitting on a banshee throne inside the mouth of the cave. So essentially, you know, we have these images of reindeers living in caves. So it makes sense that people would do reindeers in caves. Also, we have really good ethnographic evidence from Highland, Guatemala that people still do rituals in caves, especially like first fruit brides, harvest brides. They do something called the cha-cha ceremony, which is a ring ring. That's what that ceremony is. So they do these types of ceremonies today in caves. But I think we have good evidence to say that this is a long tradition. So after that, you look at, well, okay, I have a really good late-class example, right? But what do I have that could be earlier? Have there been changes over time? And I was lucky enough, and this was just a happy accident, because I'm like, my superpower is luck. Because I looked into this site. It's amazing. It had deep subsurface deposits that go down to the Pleistocene. And it's the earliest ritual usage of any Maya cave. So one of the things I did was I excavated this cave. I also ran 42 radial curbing dates, which is a lot to one cave. And I record all of the ceramics and I did all the ceramics so that I could really look at changes over time, both in the use of space, in the ritual assemblage. And I also did a study on use of tenacity, which I'm not going to talk about much today, but I've published on this where I actually looked at the charcoal at each level to see I counted every single lake and my whole big ol' excavation and I could tell when they were using the cave more intensively at some periods than at others. So I did a use of tenacity study as well. And in all three of these categories I found changes, big changes over time, particularly between the early classic and the late classic period. So in the interest of time I'm just going to show you this example of the artifacted assemblage. So one of the things we're getting is in the early classic you notice everything's broken up. And these are all just, you know, this is not a ledge, but the assemblage is all broken up. In the late classic period that's when we start to get these water jars. The same kind of thing I was seeing about two tuna children, these big water jars. And I looked at the iconography and I often hold these big water jars and in fact the moon goddess is thought to hold it large. She sits on the moon and the moon is like her oya and in rainy season it tips over and it dumps water onto the earth. So this also has to do with their mythology and with reindeer deities as well. So not only were they leaving these big sort of partially intact jars, I have to tell you, they didn't hold corn or anything or water, but the bottoms of all of these are, they actually holds in them that you can't see. But like the bottom of all of these is all blown out. So the jar itself is the offering. It's not something that was in the jar. It's the jar. And then when we're seeing these the spatially it's just so different. They're up on these high ledges and they're in the very backs of the cave or they're set up on altars. So they're in these really specific places but often in these really esoteric places as well. So I thought, well, what is this about? Why are they leaving these big jars in the late classic period? What's happening here? So I was also lucky, right, because that's my superpower that they did some wonderful paleoclimate stories of paleoclimate research using speliathems. And so this speliathem is used for this particular research. This is probably the most it's probably the most accurate and well-dated speliathem anywhere. It's amazing. Doug Kennett did this work. Okay, Doug Kennett did this work and as you can see the forest part for droughts, right? And so here's our late classic period right here where the collapse starts. And so about 800 it starts to show that there's a precipitous drop in rainfall. It's not the worst drought they ever had, but you have to remember there's also a high population and they have to maintain a very expensive cane, right? So this was enough we think to have toppled their government and it lasted for quite a long time. And then it would get wet and dry, but then there's this huge drought that really this is 100 years. I mean this is really intense. This was a very, very dry time in my area. So then I started to think well when I looked at my radio carbon days I'm like, wow they fit this exactly. When we see these changes in ritual practice and so I've argued that this is what we call the late classic drought call. And it's happening in caves which should be no surprise to anyone because if there's if there's problems with rainfall caves are the place where you're going to go solve them because you have to use ritual technology to pray for rain. And this is the best place to pray for rain. I also think oh and this is the other thing. So then after my proposal I spent the next 15 years thinking about other caves and one of the things I noticed is that I've been in probably 100 caves in Belize so far and all those I've worked about 28 intensively where we've gone in and photographed and excavated and done radio carbon dates and recorded all the ceramics and done the ceramic chronology so we have really good chronological control on 28 caves. I can say for sure I know when these date to. And of the 28 caves that I've looked at almost half of them only came into use in the late classic period. So not only you know is this a drought call but it's also more extensive. So people are using more caves and they're starting to use more caves during this period than any other time. So what does this mean for humans? Well it means some really interesting things that first of all if you take a kind of Durkheimian Malinowski style approach right or even if you think about social solidarity and costly signaling you know during these really stressful times what are people doing instead of fighting each other right these people are coming together in ritual they're coming together and their religion is uniting them so it's a way to sort of ward off some of the possible stresses one might expect in this kind of stressful situation and so this is the positive part of religion. We hear about the negative religion all the time in today's world but for us this is peace mongering that I'm seeing so I see the ancient Maya as peace mongers not war mongers. Okay and on that note I'd like to thank you for coming I'd like to thank all the people who helped fund me and all the hundreds of people who worked with me over the years who made this all possible and I'm going to give you a present this is a great picture of the Milky Way there you go, thank you


When you think about it, all law, all legislation is about the restriction of freedom. That's exactly what we're doing here, is we are restricting freedom, but we're doing it for the common good. You will see throughout our constitution, yes, you have rights, but they are restricted for the common good. Everything needs to be balanced. And if your views on other people's identities go to make their lives unsafe, insecure, and cause them such deep discomfort that they cannot live in peace, then I believe that it is our job as legislators to restrict those freedoms for the common good. With governments like these, who needs terrorists? Hello everyone, Dylan Schumacher, Citadel Defense, and that clip is from Irish Parliament. I don't know how they do government in Ireland, but whatever. As you know, there's been some kerfluffles in Ireland recently, and I'm not going to get into all that, but some people have been writing and some people are upset. So of course, the natural government reaction is this clip, where they're saying what they need to do here is restrict people's freedoms for order, society, and all those good things. And there's such a problem with this whole thing.  It's amazing how many there are in 40 seconds. So here we go. So the first problem is, of course, she says for the common good. She says that a couple of times. We need to do this for the common good, which is ever the line of tyrants and dictators. Well, it's for the common good. I need to take this thing away from you that you previously enjoyed and were allowed to do for the common good. I know it was fine and good and acceptable and for the common good yesterday, however today it's not. And so for the common good, for the good of all people, which by the way is always a made up statement, right? No one's actually benefiting when they say for the common good. That's not, no one's actually, there's no common goodness among that. It's just common tyranny and destruction. But they say for the common good because that sounds much better than, you know, for the common bad.  But it's a ever dystopian phrase for the common good. Well, we just, you know, we have to do assistance, suicide in Canada, you know, for the common good. It's always for the common good. Hitler put the Jews away for the common good, right? Stalin had his, oh my gosh, what do they call it? The gulags, that's what they were called, for the common good, right? Stalin starved Ukraine to death in the whole Mador, I don't know how to pronounce that word, for the common good. China had the culture revolution where somewhere between, nobody knows, 50 to maybe 100 million people died for the common good, right? So, yeah, I just don't buy it. It's very 1984-esque. I can't even believe anybody actually says those words out loud anymore. The other phrase she has in there is everything must be balanced, right? Again, this is a dystopian view. First of all, says who? According to what? Does things have to be balanced? And what they mean is balanced like that, where it's tipped in the favor of government, tyranny, oppression, and we will tell you lowly peasant people what to do. And that way, you know, things are balanced and they're good, and they're orderly, and, you know, you want to be for the common good, don't you? So it's always this phrase of, well, that's, that's what we do. Things need to be balanced, you can't have too much freedom. I mean, imagine the craziness if people had freedom, we've got to balance that out, you know, a little bit of freedom on the scales and a lot of tyranny, and then things are balanced. That's what they mean, right? They never ever mean, well, the government should be less restrictive. Things have to be balanced. No one has ever said that statement from that position, ever. Why not? Because they don't mean it. They don't care about balance, what they care about is taking things from you. And this one's, this one's pretty good here. If your views on people's identity make them feel unsafe, insecure, or cause them discomfort so they can't live in peace, then it's their job as legislators to, to legislate that. So let's just break that down for a second. If your views on people's identities, so what she's saying there is, what you think about people is something we should regulate. That's what she's saying. If your views on people's identities make them feel unsafe, well that, that we need to pass a law against that. If your views, what you think on people's identities make them feel insecure, then we need to pass a law about that. If your views, what you think in your own brain, cause people, because you believe something, it causes other people to feel so distraught they can't live in peace, then we need to pass a law against that. Now there are lots of people's views that make me feel unsafe or insecure and cause me a substantial amount of stress, we've talked about it before on this channel. However, is there a law against them thinking that? Should there be? Now again what she means is if anybody disagrees with me we should pass a law against that. That's what she means, right? She doesn't actually mean well you know everybody should be able to not feel oppressed by the people's thoughts because if that was the case no one could think anything ever, right? Obviously. But that's not, again that's not her concern. She's not actually concerned with equal application of the law. She's concerned with making laws so that you, the opposition and people who don't think like her, can be prosecuted with the power of the state for thinking differently than her. That's what she means. It's clear as day, obviously.  I'm on one hand you know, sure yeah. On the other hand this is just a sign of Western governments. All of them, America included, are going that way, right? Where we need to push and restrict other people's views, thoughts, discussions, whatever, about it so that they agree with us and use the power of the state to crush all political opposition that does not perfectly align with our own and think the way we think, right? In 1984, you know, it's illegal to turn the TV off, right? In the book, 1984. It's illegal to turn the TV off because you have to be hearing the party's message. How long till that's a law, you know? You have to sign a statement every day saying you agree with the state and you'll worship the emperor and all the other pagan things. So, all that to say, just again, sign of the times, right? And the language, the language guys, it's always going to be in a flowery for the common good. We need to make people feel safe and secure and you want people to feel safe and secure, don't you?  That never, ever, ever happens. It's always for the greater good, the common good, making people feel safe. We don't want you to think things that make people feel unsafe. That's not fair to them.  I just finished filming this and went to sit down and I saw that this tweet here about the law that they're preparing to pass in Ireland, apparently. Offense of preparing or possessing materials likely to incite violence or hatred against person on account of their protected characteristics. So, a person should be guilty of an offense under the section of the person, prepares or possesses material that is likely to incite violence or hatred against a person or a group of persons on account of their protected characteristics or any of those characteristics with a view to the material being communicated to the public or section of public, blah, blah, blah. Prepairs or possesses such material with intent to incite violence or hatred against such a person or group of persons on account of those characteristics or any blah, blah, blah, blah. So, what they're saying is, if you even own something, that's a book, that's intended to incite hatred, whatever that means. Well, that's illegal, though. And you better absolutely believe that will mean the bible and other books that have been commonplace in history, in western culture history, since we've had the printing press. This will, if that passes, and I don't know what the likelihood of it is passing or not, but that will absolutely mean the destruction of traditional western culture, right? Because that's what western culture has been built on. I mean, one, the bible. But two, the fact that we can think and exchange ideas, right? And what they're saying is, no, we can't do that. You have to listen to us. The fall of the west is coming, ladies and gentlemen. Do brave deeds and endure. We're going to need you.


My name is Elsmarie Yegenu. I'm a PhD student at the Centre of Functionally Integrative Neuroscience at Aarhus University Hospital. As a PhD student at Aarhus University I have enjoyed the great possibilities of doing interdisciplinary research. I started out as a student of religion but my PhD thesis is about pain, the clinical aspects and the influence of religious beliefs and practices on pain experience. With a group of colleagues I traveled to the island of Mauritius to study how Tamil Hindus cope with pain during religious ceremonies. There's a very international environment and atmosphere at the Centre of Functionally Integrative Neuroscience. I work with people from many different countries and from many different disciplines, philosophers, anthropologists, mathematicians, engineers and medical researchers. We all work with different aspects of neuroscience and I think this is one of the reasons why we have such a friendly and open atmosphere at the Centre. We are colleagues rather than competitors. Aarhus University is located right in the centre of the city but there are plenty of green areas around campus and if I need a break I love to go for a walk or run in the University Park. For me two things really stand out at Aarhus University. The research possibilities for young scientists and the friendly work environment. In that sense I think I have the best opportunities to follow my talent and prove myself as a scientist.


What should I be doing now? What should I be doing here? What should I be doing there? This is what I believe. I'm sharing that with you for nothing.    And then not only that, but what everything is. What is every little thing you need to think about and not forget about moving forward? I have a schedule book that's one week per page. So if I need to follow up with somebody next week or something like that or a Zoom call or something, I'm gonna put that in my schedule book. So that's what's gonna remind me to call people back or to go to this meeting or listing appointment or closing or whatever I'm doing. So that's kinda how I keep track with things that are in the future. But what about today? You know, what are the most important things I need to accomplish today? So for me, it's like this ongoing list of people I need to follow up with and new leads and things of that nature. Also to do items, just things I need to do. For a new agent, it's like me, my days are completely booked. From the moment I wake up to go to bed, every day it's completely booked. Every second of the day it's calculated. Everything that I do is for a reason. Every minute is maximized to the highest extent for efficiency. I understand the trickle down effect of certain activities. You know, it's like certain activities don't seem like much when you do them that day but compounded over time end up being huge over the course of six months or a year, two years or five years or 10 years. And so I understand what those activities are and I'm willing to spend a lot of time on those activities even though I get no immediate results, knowing that these are gonna be the activities that give me where I wanna be. So for a new agent that doesn't have a booked schedule, you know, it's like phone calls the whole day.  However you build your database, whatever your avenue of database building is, you know, you have to decide what your avenue is, what you think's most efficient.  But wherever you are, I think at the end of the day, it's just to stay busy all day, right? Never take a moment and say, what do I do? If you take a moment and say, what do you do? You need to fill that time. Let's just get on the phone, just call people.  Just talk to people, see what's going on, see what you can do to help them. You know, how are they doing? All that kind of stuff. You know, it only leads to positive results. You know, that's why the meeting with myself in the morning is so important because, you know, it gives me a chance to kind of meditate if you will about my business. Take a second to breathe, relax for a second and really kind of get my wits under me before I really go hard. Because once I complete that list, and I know what I have to do, and I have that little meeting with my assistant about all that, to work together as a team to accomplish the goals, then I'm back to what I have to do personally to accomplish and to conquer the day, and I'm going hard. Now I don't have to think. I don't have to think about what I'm doing. I put it all on a piece of paper at eight o'clock in the morning. I don't have to think about, you know, okay, what should I be doing now? What should I be doing here? What should I be doing there? I know what I'm doing all day long. Now I'm just gonna go hard. I'm gonna kind of be thoughtless of now. Like I put all my thoughts on paper in the beginning. Now I can kind of relax that part and just go through the motions of absolutely, you know, crushing everything on that list. So then at three o'clock, it's like let's do another meeting with ourself to kind of reevaluate before the day is completely gone. Because a lot of people get to the end of the day and they feel like there was something they should have did but that they forgot, they can't quite put their finger on it. Now they worry about that all the way till they go to bed and the next day they're mentally drained. Whereas at three or four o'clock, you'll sit down again and take another five or 10 minutes and study everything that you did, check off some boxes and try to figure out what the top two or three or four things you need to do before five o'clock to make your day complete. Then accomplish those three or four things then get whatever else done you wanna get done. You'll never get to the total end of your list. Your list is always gonna continue over to the next day but what are those top three or four things that have to get done? Who did you tell that you would call back about a property or email somebody or you needed to check on this or check on that or go here or do that? It's really important to do what you said you were gonna do when you said you were gonna do it. That second meeting with myself just helps me make sure I'm not forgetting anybody for the day and it also helps me forget about real estate when I go home where I can actually relax without worrying that I forget something I feel accomplished and the next day I'm totally recharged and ready to roll.


What's going on everyone Sam here late in sports cards? We are doing 2022 prison World Cup soccer first off the line photo two box break number 16 random group style Here's a look again at your random results as always you can find these on the website under the results tab as well as the Lincoln Chat good luck everybody that was a heart attack right there. Oh my god Geez man Boy, all right. There is The first off the line indicator Let's do it. Good luck. See something big Now we'll probably split six we owe it no matter if our team is bad and your team is good We always split like the year we lost all like in 2015 when we got injured everybody Are you serious? Oh my god? Pink coming up here. That is Edison Kovani for Uruguay Wow Good Here comes our blue shimmer good luck everybody Let's see what we got it is Edward Mendy nice going to Senegal Five of five congrats Senegal That is Marvin N We're watching the World Cup USA Andrew Nicholas Odomendi for Argentina on the blue to 299 They did it silver Darwin Nunez. They did it. Thank God man. Yes Geez That was nerve-racking Silver Salem L. Dossari At the offseason hard. Yeah red coming up here And it's gonna be at ten alvarez for Mexico nice one there 42 out of 399 from Mexico Let's go dolphins What do you three? I know Taylor we were freaking out here. I'm finished dude brutal dude awesome silver straw Hingea palovich for Serbia Jules Kunde got pulsar or not pulsar hypers Safian Amrabat from Morocco This is our year Yeah, Matt is every year that I've always been so excited Stink it's up Richard. Yeah, let's it got her dude Gold buddy. Look like he took a cleat to the old area Cracked ice of Wu Yang Zhang For Korea. Yeah bangles and ravens about a coin flip right now. Who's better? Get in true Orange coming up here orange insert. Good luck everybody First up. We've got a red for Croatia. That's gonna be Marcello, Brasovic 289 out of 299 and Nice going to Jinwoo Orange Pedri and Gaby That is numbered six out of 25 for Spain. Congrats, Jinwoo Sounds good. I appreciate that Richard Congrats, Jinwoo. There you go, buddy. Can I have this one? Yeah There you go, Jinwoo. Nice one there. Not quite a case hit what you're looking for but a nice Orange Gaby rookie Shady. Let's go dolphins Silver Nicola Milankovic Nice one there Kingsley Coleman. Yeah, dolphins did lose to the Jets. Good. You stink. You're crazy. Wow. You got the three losses Two is right there. Two is a guy You really stink. Okay, holy cow After you're beating us by 21 about that one. We're not very good either Silver, Miquel Demsgaard for Denmark Then we just lost to the Jags. We're not very good That was pretty bad And then to actually be there and see the person was even worse Ultimate Stinger. It was pretty awesome though. It's like no one cares. No one cares about the Jaguars either So it was basically a Raven Toma and like we were on the Raven side surrounded by Ravens fans See if they're at an NFL game. Mark Anthony Kaye I don't know what the two teams I didn't care for. It's still a game. Still fun for sure. Yeah And me Should have our auto in here Sean's fantasy needs help. Sean Stinks and fantasy. Fantasy is tough this year. We got a purple mojo as well as our auto of Frank LeBuff Going to France nice one there on the legend hit Congrats to Matthew B. There you go, buddy. Nice Frank LeBuff auto followed by a purple mojo of Felipe Coutinho For Brazil 30 out of 49 That is Kevin L Silver Jaden Sancho and base Fancy needs help Andrew join the club. I know I was gonna say All right, see we got here now That's the link to this Teams are on sale as well That's who a Stinks, bro Box number two set a big blue shimmer big blue shimmer silver mohab and Kana For Saudi Arabia pink coming up of Edson Alvarez for Mexico Nice one there, Mexico Yeah Red is for Saudi Arabia Abdul Rahman Garib 14 out of 399 nice when they're Saudi Arabia Jim B and base silver coming up here The coyote soccer silver Lavro majeure for Croatia Nice one there Croatia on their silver rookie the hazards base Play Netherlands next yikes Yikes yikes yikes That is Ricardo Pepe on the hyper nice one there USA Jeffrey H Jeffrey Pump the brakes there all moyes Ali Nice one there for Qatar Six, I'm not saying this is a Ravens fan. He might be lower than that Bernardo Silva for Portugal nice one there Edison. That is the 399 plus an orange New era of Wataro end up for Japan that is 22 out of 25 nice one there Japan That is Jinwoo Jinwoo with both oranges now scratch Jinwoo Bomba Jane and base cracked ice Edward Mendy for Senegal. Yes, he's better than those four. I agree with that About right now. Yeah, definitely better than Baker Definitely better than Dalton better than Wilson better than Mariota. I would have fall from grace Russell Wilson What is going on there, dude silver Philip Kostich Serbia? Yeah, it's better than anybody in Houston. I would say that's about right Silver coming up next No, he did yeah, so if you're on a robot nice one there for Morocco got our blue shimmer. Good luck everybody of Casper Schmeichel going to Denmark nice one there Three of five Matthew be with Denmark group D. Maddie. Congrats Matthew followed by a blue Raheem Sterling 120 out of 299 Silver Jules Kunde for France when I see more and base let's see what we got should have our auto here. Yes, we do loo shimmer auto plus a red mojo Auto is Paul in say for England Nice one there congrats England. Did they take both orders? They did no not France that one Congrats on that one followed by a Saeed al-Sheeb for Qatar 83 out of 99 nice one there Qatar Marvin and Silver Phil Foden base base base and base that'll do for the break guys do a quick recap around here. We've got Red to 399 Bernardo Silva Portugal Abdul Rahman a green Saudi Arabia Marcello Brasovic for Croatia Edison Alvarez from Mexico Red mojo 299 Saad al-Sheeb Qatar blues to 299 Raheem Sterling England Nicholas Odomendi for Argentina that is purple mojo to 49 flip a catino for Brazil orange Rotaro Endo to 25 Blue shimmer Casper Schmeichel for Denmark to five as well as Edward Mendy for Senegal to five our Blue shimmer autos were Paul in say for England and Frank LeBuff for France and then we had a Pedri in Gabi orange connections for Spain six out of 25 that is going to Jin Woo K Congrats, Jin Woo. That'll do it for the break there guys. Thanks again for the Phil next up We have another a two boxer