Hello, everyone. It's great to meet you guys here. I want to introduce myself. My name is Andy Zhong. I'm the CEO and founder of FunPlus, a global gaming company, and also a new entertainment startup called Next Entertainment. Before I start, I want to ask a question. If you guys are the first time to attend Slush, please raise your hand. Great. All Slush colleagues asked me, what is my first impression in Slush Tokyo? My answer is young and disruptive. That's the same feeling I got from a young startup as well. That's Slush Japan. So every startup started with really a little secret story of founders. So I started the company seven years ago. Before that, I spent a few years in Silicon Valley making games. The reason to start the company is really, it's a typical story. We don't get satisfied from the work. We always talk how to do the gains by the people who don't understand gains. Then me and my partner just say, how about we create a gaming company by ourself? At least we can create gains by ourself. That's how we started the company. We started the company to create gains globally, majorly focused on US and Europe market. So I think that's might be a really interesting story for some of you to share, because I original from China, I spent a few years in Silicon Valley making startups. So when I was thinking about doing a startup, I didn't start from Chinese market. Because I don't know Chinese market enough, honestly. And also when we start a company, we kind of feel global company is cool.  So that's the idea when we started. So we started this little startup by doing the first title called Family Farm. It's a family simulation title. In 2010, we started this game in Facebook initially. The game has gone really good success initially. It went to top 10 in Facebook in 2011 and 2012. We got around 20 million users in first 12 months without too much marketing. So I think we're really lucky as a startup. And we constantly spend a lot of time to build a community. The community is really strong. So we have 50 million fans for this game in Facebook. So in 2014, we sold one of our company to a Chinese listed company. That's my first exit for my startup life. I want to share a little bit about this experience. So I think in 2014, we released the first game in 2011. And then we made another two or three games between 2011 and 2014. We never make the second game more successful than our first game. The games we're making are really, really successful, but not as successful as the first title. So we suffer a little bit as a game designer and also as a founder. We always want to make another game which is more successful than the first game. Until in 2014, we saw the company Supercell coming out. We played against Hay Day. I still remember Hay Day and the Clash of Clans. All our founders, we are doing games in Silicon Valley for many years. So we just started to say, wow, where this company from? Why the game is so good? Especially Hay Day is in the simulation category, which is the category we built the first game in 2010. So we started to learn about the company. We started to dig a little bit more into how they struck the company, how they do games. Then we got into a conclusion, says, OK, this company is really great. We need to learn from them. We need to focus much more in mobile. We need to focus a lot of resources in mobile. We need to build really small teams and really, really talented teams to make games. So I think that 2014, when we are forming the strategy to really, really invest in small teams, in innovation, a bunch of investors introduced this company in China. They come in to talk to us. They say, how about I invest you guys and just give you more financial support to be more innovative and go global, more aggressively. So eventually, we accepted the offer to sell part of the company. The main reason is because we feel we need more money. And at that time, we feel unsafe. We kind of feel that the company is so good, better than we are. We feel unsafe. So we did a transaction. We want to make a better games. Really, luckily, after the sale of the company, we started making more studios, more games, and also invest other studios. Because we're really eager to learn how do you be more innovative? How do you make great games, great products? So I think that's another game from us half a year ago. We worked on this game for the last three years. We started this game in 2013. We never shipped this game until last year. We always feel, wow, that's not enough. So this game got a really good success. We ranked number one in US for one week. Right now, it's averagely 25, top 25 globally by revenue. So for this story, what I want to really share is, never give up what you believe. But also, you need to learn and adapt fast if something is changing. And if other people, other companies are doing better, you need to change fast. So we insist on doing games by really small studios. We waited for many years. This title passed the first title made in 2010. It's six years. We waited for six years until we made another hit, which is bigger than the first one. So during from 2014, when we sell one of our subsidiaries, we tried to be innovative. One of the innovations is we just tried to thinking about what is really important, right? The answer is talents. How you organize your structure, how you recruit the talents are most important. Then we ask ourselves, if we want to recruit a key employee, if someone joined FunPlus, how we can convince them? How we tell the story, say, come on, guys, join us. So I think the answer we get is, let's make the company a small. Every company is independent, has a unique mission. This mission is really, really easy to tell people, and this is what we do. If you want to join us, join us for this mission. So that's what we learned. We start to break the company into different independent business. And also we start to invest the company as well. So on the left, that's the company we founded, Next Entertainment, the label is like an HBO model for premium games. Those are the company on the right, on the left, are the company we invested. Inco, I want to introduce a little bit. Cloud9, which is number one in sports company US, there's a few other companies as well. Every company we invest, they have a mission which is really, really impressive. The mission is almost making me feel I want to join this company. So that's why I invest. So I'm going to introduce a little bit about Inco. We call it Inki in English. Inki, the company is founded in 2015, around two years ago. It's growing really, really rapidly. I want to show a chart, maybe this one at first. This is the data for MAU for Inki. So you guys can look at the orange line. From 2015, October, and you can see the MAU is rapidly growing, and it's passed YY in 2016 May, roughly at 25 million MAU. So I think it grows really, really fast. What's the reason for growth? For growth, right?  It has a long history in China, has long history in Japan, long history in the US. Inki, the secret for Inki is innovation and the founders. That's the conclusion I get after spending roughly one and a half year with them. Initially, I don't know. I kind of feel, wow, why this company grow, right? It's because of the beautify features. It's because of the mobile experience, because they have more beautiful streamers. The answer I get after one and a half year is no. It's because the founder and the innovation the company has. So I can share a little bit about the revenue. It's really amazing, the company. In 2016, April, it's number seven globally, number six just by iOS. So really amazing numbers. If you guys look at the chart on the top, it's mostly like Netflix, HBO, and all those apps from US. So what is next entertainment? After spending more time with Inki, I really impressed by the founder and the team and also the innovation ability. Just the way I actually supercell came out, I really amazed just by how good the product it is. So we brought out a suggestion, say how about we create a company to bring Inki overseas on China. Six months ago, we founded this company. We started brainstorming how we can bring live streaming innovation outside of China. As I start to always mention, innovation is important. What is the innovation in Inki? Why innovation matters, right? I think two years ago, Inki bought a really unique idea about a mobile streaming platform without agency. Because in the old days, all the live streaming channels are dominated by agencies. You always see the same kind of different kind of big agency content. And they kind of manipulate the content. Even some of the algorithms, some of the rankings are manipulated. So I think when mobile age coming, people want to understand more. If I'm a streamer, I want to understand why I can make money while ranking in top 10, while ranking top 20, but not top five. How I can make it myself the top five. So I think that's back two years ago, the innovation is really, really strong. It gives streamer with a mobile phone a great opportunity. They want to try. They're going to feel, wow, that's cool. Of course, they also have a really good user experience, beautify features, blah, blah, blah, two years ago. But six months ago, everyone in China want to copy Inki. So there's a more than 100 live streaming platform coming out. Inki's DAU kind of fled for quite a while for a few months. But for ourself, we know from inside, we are innovating. We know the innovation in the past don't support the growth for many years. You always need to keep innovation, because people copy you and you need to innovate them all. So one month ago, we released live streaming feature for games, which is streamer can use two phones. One is for the streamer, one is for the mobile game. One screen will automatically overlap on another one. You can switch between this one and another one. So we see a really, really amazing growth this month, really, really amazing. Because before, mobile live streaming for games, it's just one phone. You can't do too much. Either you just focus on the streamer, or either you just focus on the game screen. So I think they use a really, really innovative approach. So that's the one example I want to mention is founders and the company's DNA matters not just the numbers. So we all know content, entertainment are global. We all want to distribute content globally. We want to distribute content in China, Southeast Asia, US. But from my experience, innovation are the key for distribution. Because if you are unique, when you get into any market, you have a advantage. So innovation, including technology, including content itself, including how you run the community, including how you market yourself. That's not innovation in different perspective. But innovation plays a big role in global distribution. And also I keep saying the most important thing is the team. What is the great team? Just like I mentioned was my first impression about slush, Japan, young and disruptive. The team needed young and disruptive. It doesn't mean they need to be young in age, but their ideas, their philosophy, and also their understanding of the new things need to be really young. And they need to think really disruptively. They need to do things really disruptively. I think that's really important. Then why those people will join your team? Why not other people? Why not other team? So I think, as I mentioned in the past, we learned that a strong vision and a really clear mission are equally important. So you need a company has really, really visionary founders. But also you need to have a plan really, really clear. What do you will do here? Why are you coming here? What do you achieve? So the mission needs to be clear. So if you have these two teams, I think you will have a great team. So we didn't have the best team at the beginning. We never have the best team. But in my experience of doing startup, I always try to learn more, especially the recent three years, since 2014. I always ask myself a question, do we have a really, really good vision for this business? Do we have a really clear mission for the people who join us? So if we can answer these two questions clearly, I think it will be really good. So another thing is about the evaluation of the evaluated innovation. We learn a lot in the process of making gains. It's making gains is never easy. It takes us six years to pass the record of the first game. And during this process, we made it more than 10 gains. And how to evaluate the gains? It's not like say, OK, this game is good. This is not good. This game looks beautiful. I love this game. No. I think I need to have a great way to evaluate the innovation. Sometimes it doesn't look beautiful. It doesn't look amazing at the beginning. But you need to have a way to understand it and why people create this, why they are like this, not like that. So I have a picture which is from an old Disney animation. So I think also about define the right matrix. It's really important. Fund and engagement are really important, not just statistics, not just about first day retention, 30 days retention. Those numbers are usually just for reporting. You need to really feel fun. You need to feel engaging. And also find your core audience. It's really important. I always hear people say, what is your addressable market? She says, everyone, not good. Because if everyone is your addressable market, no one will be your addressable market. So you need to find your core audience. And also you need to take care of your core audience. This metaphor says, that's a metaphor we used for operation gains.  Then how we can expand to 10,000 customers? One way is let's take care of this 1,000 core users and make them feel really, really happy, so excited. Then they will tell their friends. Another way is, OK, let's put some water into the coffee and split it to 10,000 people. Let's sell to 10,000 people. Let's try to promote to 10,000 people. That's two ways, but the result will be really different. We usually take the first route, take care of those 1,000 people really, really seriously, and make them self to speak for your product. And let them to promote your product. So execution, iteration, I want to spend too much time. I think my session, the time is limited. I want to give the time to the next wonderful speakers. Thanks a lot for the attending and the really great media guys. Thanks.


In this video, we will be discussing the most haunted battlefields in the world, part two. Thanks to the Battle of Alamo, San Antonio is a hotbed of haunted hotels, as well as theaters, hospitals, and many other buildings and locations, from ghostly apparitions of army officials who fought for the independence of Texas from Mexico to figures of famous people, including an American president, have been reported in the haunted city. Teddy Roosevelt is regularly seen in menger hotel halls and bar, and has even caused one employee to quit. After terrifying him so much, he tried to break through a locked door. There have been reports of it being so haunted that there are upwards of 45 ghosts that reside in the hotel. The Crockett Hotel is located adjacent to the Alamo. Many of the Alamo defenders can be seen and heard around the hotel, including the sounds of their horses hooves. However, the most haunted of all the rooms in the hotel are its offices. They overlook the hotel's swimming pool and patio, and are said to be where General Santa Ana and his troops waited to breach the fortified walls of the Alamo. As you guessed it, the most haunted place in San Antonio is the Alamo, the main site of the Battle of Alamo. It used to be called the Mission San Antonio de Valero when the city was under Mexican rule. There were plans to tear it down, not long after Texan independence was achieved, but after people reported ghostly sightings of the old army marching up and down the path by the Alamo, they were abandoned. Afterwards, it was made into the police headquarters in jail, and reports of the paranormal continued. There was so much activity that many prisoners and staff who worked the night shift reported moans so loud that they were woken up. Many of the guards started to refuse to work the night shift because there was so much ghostly activity occurring, and so the prison was forced to move into a different building. Before the battle, the site was once the city's cemetery, and once housed at least a thousand bodies under its soil. One of the most reported ghosts at the Alamo is of a little blonde-haired boy. If you want to see him, you have your best chance in the building's gift shop. It is said that the boy was evacuated during the big battle, but due to his parents not doing the same, he visits the place where he last saw them. You can see most of the ghosts during the month of February, which is when the battle occurred. Number four, the haunted battlefield of Savannah, Georgia. Like its Northern Civil War counterpart, Gettysburg, it is often called the most haunted city in America. Savannah was the site of the second bloodiest siege of the American Revolution, and one of the least studied. The Polish nobleman, Casimir Pulaski, was among its casualties, and his spirit is one of many which haunt some of the city's famous areas. Revolutionary war hero and Rhode Island Quaker Nathaniel Green died and was buried in Savannah following the war, and his spirit, as well as that of his son, have been encountered by people when approaching a monument erected in his memory after his first grave was vandalized during the Civil War. The British occupied Savannah early in the American Revolutionary War, and in 1779, a joint French and American force attacked the city from the west, hoping to capture it quickly through an assault rather than a protracted siege. When the first assault failed, the American and French forces laid the city under siege, beginning in mid-September. By October, the supporting French fleet was running low on supplies, and the beginning signs of scurvy among some of the crews were being noted by officers. On October 16th, wanting to end the siege as quickly as possible, the French and American ground forces assaulted the British fortifications but were driven back. There were heavy losses among the French and Americans, among them Pulaski and an American sergeant named William Jasper. Years later, a statue memorializing William Jasper, who was a hero of the defense of Charleston early in the war, was erected in Savannah's Madison Square. Locals say that the ghost of William Jasper has been seen many times in Revolutionary uniform, moving about Madison Square in preparation to face the British troops. Other reports of apparitions, apparently British in the area, have also been seen in Savannah for decades. When Casimir Pulaski died, he was hastily buried as the American and French armies abandoned the siege and withdrew. His gravesite was unknown for many years, though a statue was erected in his memory in Monterrey Square. If you're enjoying this video, then smash the subscribe button. At number three are the ghosts of Dresden. Well, not quite a battlefield. It was a city that experienced extraordinary Allied bombing during World War II, which caused enormous suffering and deaths. In February 1945, as World War II was almost at its conclusion, two waves of British bombers and one wave of US bombers targeted the city. The British bombers dropped so many incendiaries and explosives that the fires in the city soon joined, creating a terrifying tornado of flames that rose far into the night sky, creating hurricane winds and sucking victims of their air. Those caught outside were either dismembered or burned when their clothes spontaneously caught fire, or when they found their feet stuck in melting tar. Death also came to those who had taken shelter underground. There they sat as above them in the words of one witness, the gates of hell opened. Those who weren't gradually suffocated or who suffered carbon monoxide-induced heart attacks were eventually baked and mummified. All this together makes Dresden a dark destination and a city with unfortunate souls that still roam the city. Number two is Yorktown, Virginia. Yorktown was a small tobacco port on the York River in Virginia when it was selected as the site of a British resupply base by Earl Cornwallis during the American Revolutionary War. After the French fleet drove off a British fleet near the Virginia Capes, Yorktown became a trap for the British army besieged by the combined continental and French armies. In October 1781 the Americans continuously bombarded the British in and just outside the town, targeting the most prominent house owned by Thomas Nelson in the belief that the British headquarters was located there. Legend has it that Nelson himself suggested that Washington bomb the house. In fact, the bombardment had driven the British senior staff to seek another shelter. The Nelson house was used as a hospital. The sounds of the suffering, the moans and groans of the wounded were heard over the thunder of the French and American guns. Citizens of Yorktown sought shelter from the bombardment in caves along the banks of the York River. After the British surrendered the post, the American army returned to its watchful positions on the Hudson River and in New Jersey, leaving behind many of the fortifications and entrenchments they built during the siege. Both the caves, now known as Cornwallis Cave and the Nelson house, have been reported to be haunted. The sounds from the Nelson house have been limited to the third floor and spectral images have been claimed to have been seen through its windows at night. The caves were later enlarged into a single cavern by smugglers and are now secured with gates, but the ghostly sounds emerging from the site have been reported both by people walking in the area and moving on the river. And number one is Lake Poyang or China's Bermuda Triangle. Poyang Lake is the largest freshwater lake in China and in 1363 was the site of the largest naval battle in history. It involved as many as 800,000 men. The battle started as a siege by the Han Navy against the Ming control town of Nanchang. However, the city's walls held firm and eventually the Ming Navy arrived to counter the siege. The Han Navy totaled around 100 large ships armed with around 650,000 men. The Ming Navy had the responsibility of ending the siege and was much weaker with around 200,000 men on smaller and lighter ships. The Ming Navy used this to their advantage. They maneuvered around the large ships and used fire weapons to devastating effect. Thousands of Han sailors were burned alive as a result. By the end of the battle, the Han Armada had been completely destroyed with most of the 650,000 men being sent to the bottom of the lake. The Ming losses were small with just 1,300 dead. Since that fateful day, Poyang Lake has been the site of an enormous number of strange and mysterious events and has earned the nickname of the Chinese Bermuda Triangle. From the early 1960s to the late 1980s, more than 200 ships sank in the mysterious waters of Poyang Lake. According to the department in charge of maritime affairs in China, large ships with payloads as heavy as 2,000 tons have sunk in Poyang Lake. On August 3rd, 1985, 13 ships were lost on a single day, which is an extremely rare event in maritime history. Scientists have been trying to unravel Poyang Lake's mysteries for years, but no investigations have yielded any concrete conclusions. The Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology, the study of inland water, has devoted itself to exploring and investigating Poyang Lake in recent years. Jiahujang, a researcher at the Institute, said it is unimaginable that no ship wreckage or victim remains have ever been found beneath the waters during the numerous expeditions they have conducted, even though hundreds of ships are known to have disappeared. Japanese invaders during World War II have also fallen victim to the lake's effects. The Japanese army that invaded China during World War II also encountered an unexplained situation on the lake. On April 16th, 1945, a Japanese cargo ship that weighed more than 2,000 tons sank in Poyang Lake. Operated by the Japanese army, the ship was fully loaded with stolen treasures taken from Chinese civilians. The ship sank in the lake and none of the crew escaped. The Japanese military ordered its navy personnel stationed nearby to salvage the ship. Only one of the divers found his way back to the shore, but he could not speak. The survivor was stricken with extreme fear. So much so, he was driven to insanity. At the end of World War II, the Chinese nationalist government tried to salvage the ship once again, this time with help from Edward Bohr, a respected American diver and salvage expert. In the summer of 1946, Bohr led a dive team, but nothing was found after a month's long search. During the search, several divers also mysteriously vanished. Many years later, he spoke of having seen a blinding light and hearing an ear piercing screeching sound while diving in the lake. He claimed that the lake appeared to be shaking and an unseen vortex was pulling him and his dive team towards the lake bed, although he managed to escape. The grip of the vortex he claims to have seen the rest of the dive team disappear into the bottom of the lake. What's also intriguing about the area is the geographic location of Poyang Lake. It is situated in the vicinity of 30 degrees north. Many people link the mystery of these waters with other unsolved mysteries centering around latitude 30 degrees north, such as the Bermuda Triangle in the Atlantic Ocean and the Pyramids in Egypt.


Daniel Mehvedev vs Yannick Sinner is the final of the Miami Open for the men for 2023 and both players had to fight to get to the final. Yannick Sinner started the tournament off as the number 10 seed and we get a buy in the first round. In the second round he take on Jera, this was no problem for Sinner getting through in straights, 6-4-6-2. In the third round he take on the 21 seed Dmitrov, but again this was no problem for Sinner getting through easily in straight sets, 6-3-6-4. In the fourth round he take on the number 6 seed Rubelev, we had had interesting matches against in the past but Sinner was on fire and destroyed Rubelev 6-2-6-4 to advance to the quarter-final stage. In the quarter-finals Sinner would take on the unseeded Russavari who had a very good tournament to get to this stage. This was no problem for Sinner getting through in straight sets, 6-3-6-1 to advance to the semi-finals. In the semi-finals Sinner would have to take on the number 1 Elkaraaz who was also the defending champion and going for the Sunshine Double. And after a very close first set Sinner would rally back to win 6-7-6-4-6-2 to advance to another Miami Final. Mehvedev started the tournament off as the number 4 seed and we get a buy in the first round. In the second round he take on Payana, this was no problem for Mehvedev winning in straight sets 6-1-6-2. In the third round he was supposed to play Mulchan, unfortunately Mulchan pulled out with injury allowing Mehvedev to get the easy win with a walkover. In the fourth round Mehvedev would take on Hallis who had saved match points against Diminor a couple of rounds ago. But this was no problem for Mehvedev getting through in straight sets 6-4-6-2 to advance to the quarter-finals. In the quarter-finals Mehvedev would take on the qualifier U-Banks, Mehvedev would eventually get through in straights 6-3-7-5 to advance to the semi-finals. In the semi-finals Mehvedev would take on the number 14 seed Hashinov, a close friend and a man that he'd beaten earlier in the year. But after a close first set and losing the second Mehvedev would have to fight in 3-7-6-3-6-6-3 to advance to the final. These guys have played 5 times before with Mehvedev leading the head-dead 5-0 including a meeting a couple of months ago in Rotterdam that went 3 sets. This will be the first time they actually play on an outdoor hard court in their careers. The steel percentage goes to Mehvedev, however it's Sinner who has the baseline battle percentage in his favor when Mehvedev has the conversion in attack in his favor. So it's very very close all around and of course no surprise that both these guys are well and truly above the tour averages for each respective category. So it's probably going to come down to how good Mehvedev serves and how good Sinner can return and what are the baseline battles going to look like between these guys. Because throughout the whole week Mehvedev has struggled at times on the baseline with consistency. And of course we just saw Sinner play an epic match against Alcaraz where he was hitting winners from all over the place. And the shot quality is calculated in real time by analyzing each shot's speed, spin, depth, width and the impact it has on the opponent. This is a new way of analyzing matches brought to you by Tennis Insights. If you want to check out more you can go check them out on Twitter, link down in the description. This is going to be an awesome matchup and I feel like Sinner getting a lot of confidence from that win against Alcaraz. Mehvedev didn't play that great in his semi-final against Hashinov but I can't go past that head-dead 5-0. I have to pick Mehvedev in this one. He's been so good. For the last couple of months this is his 5th final in a row. So I'm going to go with Mehvedev in a 3 setter. Hopefully a tiebreaker in the 3rd. That would be epic to finish the week. But let me know down in the comments below. Who do you think will win Miami?


Tom Ford has done it again. Welcome to the channel where fashion meets fragrance. My name is Kevin Samuels, your style godfather and guys in today's video we talk about the master Tom Ford and the new fragrance Black Orchid Parfum. Oh my god. If you like these kind of videos cool go ahead subscribe drop a like down below. Shout out to the CIA One Love FBI. Ladies and gentlemen you know I love Tom Ford for fashion. I affectionately refer to him as the master and one of his most important fragrance creations for the fragrance community is one called Black Orchid. It's the one fragrance that I say that every couple should own. I love the EDP. The EDP version some people like a little bit more and my most well flankers and or derivative. The highlight is this fragrance has always been this truffle note the plum and the patchouli.  Ladies tended to love it but I always love Black Orchid and I've worn it often. However now Tom Ford has dropped this baby on the market right here. Black Orchid Parfum. I mean come on what's not to like what's not to like. I mean look I mean just look at that bottle. I mean that's got to be us. Let's look at that bottle. That is quintessential Tom Ford and I will tell you as soon as I saw it I decided to buy it. I sprayed it on my hand and I just bought it because I knew this is going to be something special. As soon as I put this stuff is this stuff is potent. There's an entire backstory and entire concept around the whole thing about Black Orchid. What I will tell you this fragrance has always been synonymous with sweet sophisticated sexy elegance. Smells great on a woman. Smells greater on a man. But this one right here guys takes everything that I liked about the original and amped it up in the right places. If you like the note of truffle this one is one you must put your nose on. If you like something that leaves a little bit more gorm on and has a decadent chocolate kind of thing going on this is one you need to put your nose on. I've been wearing this for a week straight and I'm ready to give you my guys breakdown. Let's get into the C3PO system. First off compliment factor this on my skin is fantastic. Everywhere I went someone was asking me what are you wearing that's in summertime heat. I can only imagine what it's going to do when it's out when it's cooler outside because in the summertime fragrances like this can tend to get kind of glowing but the way this develops on masculine skin especially indoors is fantastic. Performance 8 hours plus. Projection 2 to 3 feet plus and this stuff keeps pushing after the 4-hour mark. Yes the CEI's trail is 2 to 3 feet plus. What does that mean? B-Smo. This is a B-Smo fragrance. Shout out to my boy big beer business. I sprayed it one I put one spray on the base of my throat and I called it the next day and said man one spray would do. One spray of this stuff will do so know this do not use your typical fragrance application. If you tend to be here here here here here oh you might want to back off of it. You may want to go back of each hand and mid chest and then see how you rock because if you have all this going on up here you're not going to be able to breathe because this stuff is potent. Now maybe it's because it's a little bit warmer and it cooks on my skin a little bit differently but at the end of the day beautiful bottle incredible fragrance incredible performance. Style personality I can see pulling this off. This is one of those date night special occasions romantic after dark fragrances and the style personality I can see pulling this off. Come on guys it has to lean into that little player flirt. This is going to be a date night special occasion dressed up. This is not something you want to wear just down or casual. It has that air of refinement and sophistication. It has that air of refinement and sophistication kind of like noir day noir does and they're just something that smells regal and special about this and I think this is actually going to be a much better fragrance. Cool weather this fragrance in my opinion is going to do better in the cool weather or if you like me and you can wear something like this you got to wear it outdoors after dark.  But I digress do me a favor hit us up in the comment section let us know have you put your nose on the new Tom Ford black orchid platform what you think about it did you like it if so cool if not cool but keep it cool keep it classy inquiring minds would like to know your Godfather is out.


So Josh, I thought I'd pitch a slow one over the center of the plate for you to start with. So in terms of energy use, is COVID-19 giving us a bit of a respite from CO2 emissions and even climate warming? It's actually not as slow of a pitch as you might imagine. It's a little bit complicated. I think what we're seeing pretty clearly is that those types of energy use that are associated with being at home are increasing. So home heating bills and in the summertime, home air conditioning, those things, those types of energy use are probably rising. But we're really seeing a lot of as a dip in emissions from transportation, particularly airline transportation, but also other forms of transportation seem to have at least in March and April taken a dip. And that gets complicated because a lot of people, particularly in the developed world are no longer taking public transportation as regularly for sort of mid-length commutes. So I guess the answer is yes and no. There's less happening in the economy to produce greenhouse gases, but there are certain activities that have ramped up, and particularly those associated with being at home. Yeah. So what are the consequences of this, I guess, change in energy mix? Do we know? Well, so I guess we don't know per se. There are people who are working on modeling this. I think we saw in the spring a pretty significant overall dip in greenhouse gases in the short term. I don't think that is necessarily going to persist or has persisted. There's a lot of momentum and renewable energy as the price of oil is down, which I think is taking some people by surprise because conventional wisdom would say when oil is down, you build oil infrastructure, take advantage of the low prices. And so a number of regulators and renewable energy companies have realized is when oil companies are down, you kick them. And kicking them when they're down means they can't fight back on regulation as readily, and you have opportunities in the market to roll out new renewable technologies. Currently, renewables are going absolutely gangbusters. If you look at, for example, some of the big solar ETFs, those exchange-traded funds that are tracking the commodity prices of things like solar panels, they've doubled since, some of them have doubled since August. So I think the real question is this disruption in the market has created some opportunities for changes in the fuel mix, and it's as much a market response as it is a response to the pandemic itself. And I'm wondering about the fate of mass transit, though. I mean mass transit ridership is down dramatically. I'm wondering whether some of them are going to survive this. It's a good question and I don't know the answer to that question with any kind of certainty. I think a number of mass transit systems are supported by, for example, municipal bonds and other type of county bonds. And they're not necessarily supported in the short term just by ridership fares. Those are supposed to keep them afloat in the long term, but it's possible that some cities and counties and even states can help public transportation systems, whether that's storm. I don't think that's going to happen everywhere. I think there's some serious issues and I think ultimately those places that have invested in more flexible public transportation bus systems, for example, are going to have a better time responding to this than those that have built fixed infrastructure like light rail that they can't change. I see. I think you're going to see, again, there may be a shake up in the way people are thinking about public transportation in the same way there's a shake up that people are thinking about the fuel mix. One of the things I wanted to explore in this is, is the way in which climate change and in COVID-19 are banging against each other or exacerbating each other. What are your thoughts on that? I mean, there's a couple of different ways I think that these two things interact and the biggest one for me is that climate change has continued to put stress on all kinds of social systems and exacerbate inequalities within societies, both in the developed world and in the developing world. That overlaps with the way that COVID also affects marginalized and minoritized communities disproportionately to the larger population. So not only do you have challenges from climate change like increased, take it very simple, like increased air conditioning bills in the summer in places where that's tough to afford. You also have the same people are being affected by greater healthcare costs and greater risks to COVID at the same time. So what's happening I think is that the same structures that make climate change disproportionately bad for the poor and marginalized make COVID disproportionately bad for the poor and the marginalized. So I think that's the biggest kind of overlap here is that both of these things magnify inequality and then magnify it. What are the kinds of in quite you mentioned air conditioning, but I'm just wanting, there's probably a whole host of other things that I'm unaware of. Some of them are very kind of local and spatial. So for example, there's pretty good research in places like for example Portland where where I teach that shows there is less less foliage available to mitigate what's called the heat island effect, which is a sort of second tier part of climate change where when it gets hotter.  That's mitigated in part by planting trees and other plants. You can see pretty clearly that there is less green space in minority neighborhoods and less green space in poor neighborhoods in Portland and there are in wealthy white neighborhoods. There are just specific tangible examples where climate change is exacerbating an issue that already exists, because those, those same green spaces are associated with property values in those cities, the cities like Portland. I mean, there's really good work being done actually a Portland State University about the way that these contemporary climate inequalities arise from historical redlining policies where minority communities are denied. And but any COVID makes this worse. It just affects the same people so it's not so much that it makes property values bad or exactly basically green space problem. It is that the same people who are living in the neighborhoods who whose property values are not increasing and who have a number of other sort of structural impediments also get hit harder by cover and have fewer resources to deal with it. I guess we were you're sort of already answering the question but I mean, are these economic, are these sort of democratic disasters affecting all equally and I guess not. The answers no I mean I think that initially everybody thought. There's a lot of people who are really hopeful, not that this pandemic was going to be what it is but but that because the pandemic looked so democratic that maybe this would reveal to people. The gross inequalities in the health care system and I think pretty quickly that that was given the line people they under realized that getting good care, good testing, and now that the next thing is going to be the vaccines is it is indicated by factors like race and class. And in this country also ethnicity. Maybe it's not a completely different subject but the polarization of science as as as COVID made that worse. And I think that this is one of the overlaps of COVID and climate change that I'm not seeing a ton of in the press and that that I really think is important. So, in some ways, climate change is like the original, not the original there've been scientific controversies before this and they've been polarized but climate change polarized science, like almost no other issue in the late 1990s and early 2000s. And even as early as the late 1980s you had to essentially corporate interests Exxon and others. And there's, I think, not many rescues in particular as documented the ways that they worked to so doubt in the public's eye of the findings of science that's been enormously successful. And by the early 2000s I think the sort of climate denier or climate skeptic movement is on the forefront of polarizing science but also polarizing our political response to different types of information. All of that was exacerbated I think by the rise of social media where people can live in their, their echo chambers but the stage was really set by the time you got to 2019. There were vastly different interpretations of scientific information and political politically motivated challenges to, to expert science and there's been many issues that have fallen in this kind of category of behavior but climate change and climate denial. This is the way that's run down party lines in the past 10 to 12 years, really laid a framework for the response to COVID that ended up I think being really destructive. So what's the effect of this polarization. I don't know whether polarization is a better word or politicization but whatever you choose. I mean, so I guess they're not necessarily the same thing I would shy away from politicization because I don't think there is a science that's a political I think that's always. There's always some, there's always some reason that scientists are studying the things they do. They understand there's going to be these impacts I don't think scientists are naive actors in society. They think they're not themselves from politics in their scientific conclusions but I think they're also smart enough to see that there are always political implications the polarization of science is a different story, wherein a political leaning can now in the United States allow or enable you to discount a whole line of research and a whole line of evidence in a way that I don't think has been the case. Prior to the 21st century in the United States and that that polarization. I mean, where that goes. I don't know. But where we are now it's a sort of choose your own adventure of scientific information where, you know, if the implications of scientific research don't support your political position. You just get to discount that scientific research and that seems really destructive to me. Is this about kind of anti intellectualism or elitism. How does that play. So it is and that's that's a longer story I think I think there's baked into the polarization science a distrust of expertise and honestly I think that has played into this in some really, some really kind of nefarious ways in so far as there's a certain amount of elitism, and there's also been a failure I think, not just on the left but in the scientific community more broadly to to acknowledge some of the past mistakes or missteps, even as the scientific community continues to ask the public to trust them. I think about, for example, you know, rolling out the vaccine currently I don't think there's for the record I don't think there's evidence that this vaccine or vaccines in general are harmful. But I think there's a presumption in the way that the way that vaccine producers and also scientists who are promoting the vaccine present. In western medicine that Western medicine has never screwed up in the past and in fact, there's a lot of I mean, you can go back to the 50s and fluid amide, which, which you might remember and it's in the village old song. But but there's been many more instances where for example the FDA approved something and then asked to retract or these are not infallible institutions and I think there's a sense in which the presentation of infallibility. It really is can be pretty damaging, even though I don't think the institutions themselves are the ones to blame for predominantly for the kind of anti-vax movement that's growing up. You know, one of the key points I got from your book behind the curve was that science has done kind of a poor job of communicating what they found and the urgency of what they found to the general public. Is that fair. Yes and no I mean I think, you know, my book tracks climate change advocacy from the 1950s to really the early 2000s. And in that period, in the main I would say that that is true. I think there are two things I would like to two points I'd like to make. First, simply the dynamics of this has changed the scientific community has become emboldened to make stronger claims about climate change as the evidence has gotten stronger but also as they've recognized the extent to which their voice is a political voice. So I think the last five to 10 years scientists have been much more, much more aggressive about that, which I think is important. The second thing is that within the period that I'm talking about even up to the present. There's a problem where scientists are held to the standard of political neutrality and, and they're, they're supposed to be a certain way. And that circumscribes just how they can talk about some of these political issues or how they've been willing to talk about these political issues. So, in short, advocacy for for action on climate change has in the past. And there's a problem of advocacy for more and better science with the presumed the presumption that more and better science if you show it to the policymakers is going to create change. And that's where they've they've kind of fallen out on the job is that for years and years this was the model and it, it hadn't worked for a long time. That dynamic has also changed a fair amount in recent years and you can see it in the way that scientists are working with members of Congress and putting some of that scientific neutrality behind them to try to frame their science in terms of real tangible policies and bills. So if you look at the Green New Deal, for example, there's this whole whole just raft of scientists who are on board and helping write that legislation. That's the kind of thing that you didn't necessarily see even 20 years ago. Yeah, I'm wondering whether basically scientific training makes some scientists sort of hesitant to go beyond the precise data they've collected. I mean, when I did the research for the book this I kept running into this a minute have you get a reviewer for example like when in 1970s is this guy named Steve Schneider was pretty controversial as a scientist he published a book called the Genesis strategy warning about climate change and the the reviewers the peer reviewers of this book had major concerns that Schneider was overstepping his training and his and his bounds as a scientist. There's a deep discomfort within the scientific community about exactly this overstepping the boundaries of your training and sacrificing that authority of political neutrality. And some of that still exists I mean you see that you see some hesitation from for example graduate students to engage with these sorts of things when their careers are still still young and possibly in jeopardy. So you're right this is part of the kind of structural problem of having scientists on the frontline of climate change politics but they have to be because they understand it the best. And how did this change over the years, because it seems like what you're saying is it has changed a bit. At a certain point, enough scientists realized that they were going to get pilloried either way.  And the blueprint is okay well we don't have to fight a political battle what we can do is just go question all the information in the science we can go after the scientists where they live because they're not coming into our realm. And so the scientists like, for example Michael man at the University of England they would publish their work and then they'd have, you know, scientists from, you know, Exxon or wherever. Coming in and just publicly lambasting them. And at that point it's like well why am I trying to pretend neutrality in the first place, why don't I, you know, fight back and I think that's the last 10 years you've seen a lot of scientists who are much more from the beginning I mean from their early graduate career much more engaged with the political discourse as a motivator for what they're doing. Well this sort of ties back into at least in my mind, kind of the anti-elitism we were talking about earlier and I wanted, you know, as a historian, how did, where did America get this what to me seems like a fairly fervent strain of anti-intellectualism. Where does this come from? It's not just a fervent strain, it's a really long standing strain of American anti-intellectualism. And in part it almost come, not almost, it part it comes out of the kind of frontier mentality that in many ways defined America's perception of itself pretty early in the nation's history. But it gets flamed by, inflamed by populism at various points, but also by some of the mistakes of elites themselves. I mean I think of for example the progressive movement, which is an early 20th century movement built significantly around rationalization and bureaucratization of services in the United States. I mean in many ways there's a lot of great things that the progressives did. These are the early progressives. At the same time, some of their work is like tied up in eugenics and some really unsavory things and some assumptions about, I guess the hubris of knowing how the world works and deciding for other people that that's what you know. I think there's ingrained in American history a tension between the kind of do it yourself, all figure it out, kind of frontier mentality that we laud in American culture, I think that's great. And then intellectual elitism where we have these really great thinkers with really great ideas who can remake the world, and those things often are kind of at odds with each other, particularly when governance is at stake. And is this, is this a urban rural thing is that a caste system I mean this split, what is it. That's, that's a good historical question because I think that split, it looks a little bit different every time. There's, there's often, I mean obviously there's a split in education, because that's where the anti-elitism comes from, or at least how it manifests but there have been pretty big urban rural splits and East West splits, where you had educated in the East, who end up in government and you have a large population that tends to distrust those elites over time I mean, there's, I think there's always a racial component to this, in part because the elites in the United States have for so long, then exclusively white and often exclusively male, because of the structural impediments for marginalized communities to enter the elite. That manifests in, in different ways usually at more local levels. I think, for example, of the way that farm workers in California in the 60s and 70s began to question elites at state health boards. And so, on their daily experiences with pesticides to make them rethink what they were doing with their pesticide regulations and part of that is this, it's a racialized difference between the elite educated class and the people who are actually experiencing these ills so the anti-elitism is not always so as, you know, we might like to caricature as the uneducated versus the educated there's often these sets of assumptions that go into expertise that they really need to be challenged. So it looks different in different historical periods, I think. Have we been here before, a deeply divided society in the midst of a existential crisis or two. Well, we did have a civil war. So that was a thing I think you know if you want to look at at messy, messy times in American history and deeply polarized times I think not just the civil war but in the 1870s and 1880s, particularly during during reconstruction, there's, there's a polarization there that it's also a great model for how not to move forward in from this moment in American history because reconciliation as dates came at the expense of the black community and African American rights so those are some incredibly polarized periods, you know the second half of the 19th century and yet I don't think we've been here before I don't think there's a moment quite like this. And I don't say that often or lightly that's as a historian I usually am, I pump the brakes on the, the kind of unique moment analysis in this case. I mean, given the events in Washington DC, in which the capital building was stormed that seems like grounds to say this is something now. Okay, how do you see this playing out. Well, that's a good question. My, my cynical historians hat with that hat on I suspect that we muddle through and whatever major changes happen change relatively slowly and behind the scenes. Well, there'll be big outward facing rhetoric of change that that sort of masks much smaller incremental changes. If we muddle through and there aren't significant, significant changes to the way that political discourse unfolds and the way that we respond to the pandemic. I suspect that the people most affected would be the people most affected negatively by almost everything in the US which are the poor, the racially minoritized and to an extent, women. So I think gender race and class are going to continue to define how this looks moving forward. I put my more hopeful hat on I think there's a real opportunity. As, as we deal with the pandemic to take advantage of some of the other things are happening that are happening, like for example, the realization among the financial community that there's a viable new energy mix that is that is around or or that investors in in, for example, pension funds and endowments really do care at the expense. of the bottom line of the fund about diversity and inclusion and environmental impact. I'm more hopeful I do see some some really positive things that that might come out of this in the short term like what's going to happen next week I had no idea. You mentioned the phrase muddle through is that is that good policy. It's. No, no, it's not it's it's just what we usually do. Are there policies you'd like to see. I mean, I think there's some low line fruit. One, one piece of low line fruit for for climate changes is signing back on to the Paris Accords. Another is to to commit to, if not the Green New Deal as a whole, at least elements of of the Green New Deal that began to couple reducing emissions with creating and repurposing jobs in the United States I think those are. Despite the resistance that we've seen those are pretty low lying options for especially given the makeup of the Senate and the White House going forward. I also think that healthcare reform is ripe at this point. I think everybody realizes from the pandemic that some things got to change and. And so I think continuing that process that's kind of been on hold for the past six years or so. Is another piece of low line fruit. So I think there are some good policies that are kind of floating out there. And those are the two that are two of them that I think. For this conversation are pretty promising. Well, this is really great. I'm really pleased that you made the time to talk to me about this because it's something I know I'm interested in and I think I think a lot of people haven't thought about the convergence of these two factors a lot. It's always good to talk to you, Kim. Okay. Thanks a lot, Josh.