Systematic

This week’s guest is Jeff Severns Guntzel, an investigative researcher with 20 years of journalism and humanitarian work under his belt. He joins Brett to talk about the juvenile detention system, prison abolition, activism, good deeds through hardware hacking, and trips to the garbage dump. Sponsor Upstart is the fast and easy way to pay off your debt with a personal loan –– all online. Visit Upstart.com/SYSTEMATIC to get your fast approval with up-front rates. Show Links discoverlexproject.com Twitter/jsguntzel Instagram/forestofthings The Baghdad I knew:Before and after the fall Top 3 Picks The Dump Dotfiles from Start to Finish-ish Dotbot UFO News Join the Community See you on Discord! Thanks! You’re downloading today’s show from CacheFly’s network BackBeat Media Podcast Network Check out more episodes at systematicpod.com and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcasting app. Find Brett as @ttscoff on all social media platforms, and follow Systematic at @systmcast on Twitter. Transcript Brett Brett: [00:00:00] [00:00:00]This week’s guest is Jeff Severns Guntzel an investigative researcher with 20 years of journalism and humanitarian work under his belt. How’s it going? Jeff, [00:00:16] Jeff: [00:00:16] It’s going very well. Thank you. [00:00:17] Brett: [00:00:17] do you know when the last time you were on the show was [00:00:21] Jeff: [00:00:21] Oh, I had just left a job in public radio, so I want to say it was like 2013 or something. [00:00:28] Brett: [00:00:28] 2014, very close. [00:00:30] Jeff: [00:00:30] 14. Oh God, I should’ve listened back. Or I only have so many things to say. [00:00:35] Brett: [00:00:35] Well, it’s been long enough that if anyone still remembers the last time you were on, I’m sure they won’t mind a refresher, but we have new stuff to talk about since then, too. [00:00:45] Jeff: [00:00:45] Yeah, I haven’t heard anything about people still talking about it to this day. So I’m just going to assume we can call this a clean slate. [00:00:51]Brett: [00:00:51] So this just for listeners this will be the last official episode of [00:01:00] systematic on this. We’ll call it a season. I’m going to take a little break after this. There might be a bonus episode. Jeff May have something to say about that, but at least a month or two we’re gonna go dark and hope to be back soon. [00:01:14] But anyway, that sounded like I was finishing the show, but [00:01:18] Jeff: [00:01:18] nah, [00:01:19] Brett: [00:01:19] I [00:01:20] Jeff: [00:01:20] it’s just, I buy it as a season finale. [00:01:23] Brett: [00:01:23] So you have the distinguished honor of being the season’s final guest. [00:01:30] Jeff: [00:01:30] I thank you. [00:01:31] Brett: [00:01:31] SSo what do you do for a day job right now? [00:01:35] Jeff: [00:01:35] What I do for a day job is what I call investigative research. There is a thing called investigative research in the sort of academic research world, which I am not a part of. But it seems to have, it seems to have fizzled a little. So I’m just like borrowing it for a little bit. So I don’t have to explain, like, I’m not a journalist anymore, but I’m still doing journalists, like things with that said I’m not a journalist anymore, but I’m still doing journalist- [00:02:00] [00:01:59] like things. I started working on a project with a small team of people in Omaha, Nebraska about four years ago. And the purpose of the project is to. Really get inside the experiences of the kids there who are going through the juvenile justice system and their families and their siblings. [00:02:20] And to really kind of understand how how experience with the system ripples through an individual’s life, but also through their family life and their social life and all of that stuff. Because we don’t spend too much time talking about that. And so the way that project works is I am not interviewing kids. [00:02:37]Instead we have a team of people. I have these amazing colleagues in Omaha who have been interviewing kids who have experience working with kids who themselves have experience with the system. So that it’s not, I mean, in my case, it’s not a white guy coming in from Minneapolis, gathering up stories, tucking them under my arm. [00:02:59] And flying [00:03:00] back to Minneapolis, right? Like that model should die. And this model we felt was like going to be something a little different. So we started this project called the lived experience project, and it was initially to collect stories and then figure out what the stories or the kids were telling us should happen next. [00:03:17]Where my job comes in is, you know, it only took us about a dozen interviews to realize that if we’re going to be having Frank conversations with kids about their experiences in the system, that we’re going to start hearing about ways in which the system harms them. [00:03:32] And we didn’t want to be in a situation where things like that were being shared with us. And we were just filing it away in our database of interviews. We wanted to be sure that we took those cues when they came, even if they were implicit, like if someone said something subtle about a certain facility, but it kind of matched something subtle. [00:03:52] Someone else said about a facility, my job was to go, okay, what are the other ways of knowing here? Right? We’re not going to, [00:04:00] we’re not going to put it on this kid to tell us everything that happened, because that puts them in a really It puts them in a potentially dangerous situation and it puts a lot on them. [00:04:08]When I was, you know, doing reporting the kind of main rule when you got information from a source was, first thing you do is go try to get it from something else so that you can kind of shield your original source of that story or that document or whatever. So I was taking that approach and I had to kind of start from scratch because in a way, like in these interviews, we weren’t learning super specific things, right. [00:04:32] But we were learning types of harm in the system. We were learning ways you can be harmed. We were learning how kids defined harm, which is very different from kid to kid based on whatever their sort of norms are. And so I, in a way kind of broke off of all of that and just focused on how can I see into this system, which is very opaque. [00:04:55] And in some cases necessarily opaque, but in some cases, [00:05:00] That opaqueness kind of protects people who are doing harm in the system. So how can I see in? And so my job became working with public documents, pulling whatever data I could about any given facility from like 911 data to tracking down court records that discuss what life was like in that particular facility. [00:05:19]I would cold call former staff of different facilities. I would talk to state agencies, all that stuff all as a way of sort of. Seeing into the system so that I can start to see patterns and red flags which was something that was not previously possible in Douglas county, juvenile justice system, or actually just wasn’t previously done, I guess. [00:05:38] And so that’s what I do. I’m like, I’m a journalist in this very, I’m an investigative researcher, investigative journalists in this very narrow sort of scope that is not even my hometown that I’ve been doing for a few years now. And that I really hope when we’ve really kind of nailed down this model can be not scaled from us, but can be like toolbox can [00:06:00] be, you know, borrowed like a little to have a little tool lending library for these things we’re creating. [00:06:05] So anyway, that’s the long answer of what I do. Next question, please. [00:06:09] Brett: [00:06:09] it’s an hour long podcast. You can take as long as you like for answers. So with the lived experience project, now that you’re, you’ve been doing this for a while and you’ve been gathering data and you’ve been analyzing, it has the mission statement of the lived experience project changed at all. [00:06:28] Now that you’re kind of in the weeds. [00:06:30]Jeff: [00:06:30] Where I stand. No the idea for me was if what we were doing and learning was going to become part of a reform conversation. And by the way, we’re funded by a private foundation. Who’s interested in reforming the Douglas county juvenile justice system. We are not in and of ourselves a reform project, but. [00:06:53]We are supported by this foundation so that we may use, you know, youth voice and lived [00:07:00] experience to contribute in a hopefully meaningful way to a discussion about how the system can stop harming kids in it. And so, for me, the first thing that, you know, I worried about when we were only collecting stories and not collecting data yet was like, you put. [00:07:18] Any story of a kid. Who’s saying that while I was in the system, after I got in trouble, I was harmed. And the first thing that the system is going to Do just instinctively is knock it down, you know? Oh, well, okay. So they say this place was rough. Well, of course it’s rough. That’s where we send the rough kids, that whole idea of the rough kids as if there’s any such thing. [00:07:38]Just kids. And so we wanted to be sure that we were standing alongside them a little bit of ground under their feet, if that was helpful, whatever, with data that said, yeah, here’s a story that suggests a pattern and here’s some data that actually expands our sense of that pattern. And in some cases, highlights a pattern that is far worse than what we [00:08:00] might’ve assumed was true based on this one story. [00:08:02]And so. My mission in this work has not changed. It’s just to be sure that we can create as much solid ground under the feet of these kids who have been harmed as possible so that their stories can’t be ignored or pushed aside or erased by, by the system itself. [00:08:21] Brett: [00:08:21] Do you consider yourself a prison? Abolitionist? [00:08:25]Jeff: [00:08:25] Yeah. [00:08:27] yeah. [00:08:28] abolit

This week’s guests are Betty and Colleen McCluskey. Betty is a Licensed Professional Counselor in the State of Wisconsin with a special interest in Autistic Spectrum Disorders. Colleen McCluskey is a graduate student with Asperger’s Syndrome attending the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire (UWEC) and pursuing an English Master’s Degree. They join Brett to talk about autism in females, living with autism, and where research on Autism Spectrum Disorder currently stands. Sponsor Upstart is the fast and easy way to pay off your debt with a personal loan –– all online. Visit Upstart.com/Systematic to get your fast approval with up-front rates. Show Links Psychological Resource Center, LLC What is Autism Spectrum Disorder Top 3 Picks Betty: Asperger’s Syndrome – A Guide for Parents and Professionals – Tony Attwood Autism in Heels – The Untold Story of a Female Life on the Spectrum – Jennifer Cook O’Toole Temple Grandin (2010) Colleen: I Think I Might Be Autistic: A Guide to Autism Spectrum Disorder Diagnosis and Self-Discovery for Adults – Cynthia Kim The Autistic Brain: Helping Different Kinds of Minds Succeed – Temple Grandin Neurowonderful: Ask An Autistic Video Series, Amythest Schaber Join the Community See you on Discord! Thanks! You’re downloading today’s show from CacheFly’s network BackBeat Media Podcast Network Check out more episodes at systematicpod.com and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcasting app. Find Brett as @ttscoff on all social media platforms, and follow Systematic at @systmcast on Twitter. Transcript Brett: [00:00:00] [00:00:00]My guests this week are Betty and Colleen McCluskey. Betty, you were on the show back in 2017 and we talked about autism and autism spectrum disorder. And since that time autism has become part of my life. A loved one in my life is going through the we’re learning a lot about ASD right now. [00:00:27]So I definitely wanted to have you back and you brought your daughter Colleen with you. So I’m going to let you guys do your own intros buddy first just who you are and what you do. [00:00:40] Betty: [00:00:40] Betty McCloskey. And I’m a clinician in private practice in Tomahawk, Wisconsin. I have a master’s. Degree in guidance and counseling and a licensed professional counselor in the state of Wisconsin since 1992, I think my journey into autism is personal and has turned professional. My husband, who is a [00:01:00] Rutgers PhD in earth, science was diagnosed with autism and our lovely daughter who’s joining us today. [00:01:06] Colleen is also diagnosed in third grade with autism. I’m sure my cat has autism. So self-defense first off, got me really into the autism community. And the more I learned about this amazing group of people, the more I spend more time in there, I’m a member of the board of directors, of the state of Wisconsin autism society. [00:01:30] I work with Wisconsin facets for mediated. IEP is for children who are underserved in public schools. I do all kinds of volunteer work in the community, but my passion is autism because the people I’m passionate about live there. [00:01:45]Colleen: [00:01:45] Okay. So my name is Kelly McCluskey and I’m actually just graduating from the university of Wisconsin, Eau Claire with an English master’s degree, specifically in literary analysis and textual interpretation. That sounds like a mouthful, but [00:02:00] basically it’s a. I get paid to read about comic books. [00:02:03] So that’s fun. No, but currently I have a BA in English from the university of Wisconsin, green Bay and associates in ethnic studies from the university of Wisconsin marathon County. I also have a teaching license earned through UWA green Bay. And like Betty said, I am autistic. I was diagnosed in third grade with Asperger’s syndrome, but as of the DSM-V Asperger’s syndrome has kind of been folded into the rest of the autistic diagnostic criteria. [00:02:28] So I feel a little bit more comfortable just saying autism now. I consider myself a really strong advocate for people on the spectrum and people with Like sort of sister diagnoses ADHD and add tend to manifest with autism other instances of socio communicative disorders, which are basically higher than normal difficulty with neuro-typical social conventions which can be caused by just about anything, honestly. [00:02:52]That’s very similar to so during my advocacy stuff I’ve presented at a lot of different conferences most [00:03:00] notably IWC, which is international writing center association. And that I believe was about two years ago. And I presented on how you might talk about autism in the college writing center. [00:03:10]One of my big things is again, I’m an English major, but I also have a background in forensics and theater speaking forensics, not the crime kind. But. I think that being able to talk openly about autism and to acknowledge its existence along with any other mental health struggles, it’s like if we can acknowledge that it exists and kind of talk about it, frankly, then we’re one step closer to not just autism awareness, but autism acceptance. [00:03:38]I’ve also presented at ASG w autism society of greater Wisconsin conference. Gosh, it’s, I think I’ve done it like probably close to five times now. Maybe more. I can’t remember. But we go every year. It’s very cool. It’s also awesome to see all of the new research and stuff that people have to talk about because it kind of keeps you on the ball with stuff like that. [00:03:58]But yeah, that’s mostly [00:04:00] me. Apart from that, I’m really into like, drawing making art in general hiking. And my academic interests are, you are like comic books and experimental storytelling specifically, like with hypertext and stuff. [00:04:12]Brett: [00:04:12] So, I’m curious about where autism research has gone in recent years. I’ve got a good kind of history I guess a rough background of what ASD is and how it was diagnosed, but I’m really curious about what’s fresh and new for autism research. [00:04:29]Betty: [00:04:29] There’s not a lot, you know, there, there is a lot, there’s always something that’s new, but a lot of what we think of as new is repackaged old. And there are a lot of a lot of the newer things are based on ABA, which has been since the 1960s. Love us, L O V a S introduced us to applied behavioral analysis and it’s kind of a touchstone. [00:04:54]There’s a lot of controversy surrounding it. And I re I was introduced to it in graduate school, of [00:05:00] course, in the early nineties. And we had what we had the, we called it the toast and jelly video because it was a little girl and they were showing us how to do applied behavioral analysis treatment. [00:05:13] And the third, I would say, would you like some toast and jelly? And the little girl had echolalia, can we say, just repeat what they hear? And she would say, would you like some toast and jelly and therapists would be holding the toast with jelly and say, no, like some toast and jelly. And she would say, no, would you like some toast and jelly? [00:05:32] So until she would say, I would like some toast and jelly, she couldn’t have her toast in jail. So think about Pavlov’s dogs and training them and to the bell and the food and the saliva. That’s kind of how ABA works. And while it’s very good in theory BF Skinner influenced love us to start this program. [00:05:53] And if you remember BF Skinner with a Skinner box where he had the rats that pushed the little [00:06:00] levers, some people don’t know that BF Skinner also raised his daughter in a BF Skinner box until the age of about two and a half. Isn’t that frightening. And there are pictures. If you choose to look online, you will find BF Skinner’s daughter who spoke about it later as an adult. [00:06:15]But let’s not go there. So what ABA does is it reinforces behavior through presence in treats and positive interaction. And there’s a lot of controversy surrounding that. So it’s morphed because we need a kinder, gentler way because everybody who doesn’t fit into that box pivotal response training is play-based, it’s interactive. [00:06:40] It kind of sidesteps that one behavior, one reward thing. And it integrates the whole child into that type of therapy. So it’s a pivotal area of development, maybe, please. And thank you. So we’re working on social skills, maybe taking turns at recess. So interactive [00:07:00] skills. The early start Denver model, ESD M is another play-based therapy focuses on children ages one to four, lots of success with that. [00:07:10] It’s a natural environment. It’s a playmat, rather than that therapist across the table from you format it looks at floor time where kids spend their time and how to help them interact depending on what their needs are. It’s a buffet, basically. You can go. I said, it’s like it’s the early Denver start model. There is a book called evidence-based practices and treatments for children with autism. And this is from fat Fred Volkmar V O L K M a R. He’s done a really nice job of laying out the different therapies that are available and for whom they work best. [00:07:47]Colleen: [00:07:47] So some of the stuff that I’ve noticed especially as a fairly young adult on the autism spectrum it’s very cool because I’ve kind of been able to watch this focus go from children, which is still a major focus [00:08:00] because of course, early intervention is very important for identifying the struggles that can come with autism and helping someone who’s autistic interact with a world in which they’re a minority in the neurodiversity pool. [00:08:10]But I’ve kind of been able to watch Everything evolved because I’ve been going to conference and kind of keeping an eye on the research. Ever since I was in high school and now I’m doing my master’s degree in college moving onto a PhD or year after next. So something really interesting that’s emerged that really interests me as a person who is interested in I’ve used, interested

This week’s guest is Patrick Rhone, writer, blogger, technology consultant, mental health advocate and home restoration enthusiast. He joins Brett to talk mental health, home restoration, and some of his favorite tools. Sponsor Upstart is the fast and easy way to pay off your debt with a personal loan –– all online. Visit Upstart.com/Systematic to get your fast approval with up-front rates. PDFpen is the ultimate tool for working with PDFs on Mac, iPad and iPhone. Learn more about PDFpen and PDFpenPro at smilesoftware.com. Show Links Rhoneisms – by Patrick Rhone Whoa to Wow Patrick Rhone Micro.blog IFTTT Day One Systematic 180: Everything Exploded with Patrick Rhone Mental Health Minnesota NYT – Languishing Mental Health Minnesota The Piggyback Guy Top 3 Picks Keychron K2 Ugmonk Analog Dash/Plus System Area X: The Southern Reach Trilogy Nnedi Okorafor Neuromancer Snow Crash The Road Less Traveled Your Money or Your Life Join the Community See you on Discord! Thanks! You’re downloading today’s show from CacheFly’s network BackBeat Media Podcast Network Check out more episodes at systematicpod.com and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcasting app. Find Brett as @ttscoff on all social media platforms, and follow Systematic at @systmcast on Twitter. Transcript Patrick and Brett Brett: [00:00:00] [00:00:00] [00:00:07] This week’s episode is brought to you by PDF pen and upstart.com. My guest this week is Patrick Rhone. It’s been, uh, since about 2016, since you’ve been on, what are, you introduce yourself these days? [00:00:26] Patrick: [00:00:26] Um, well, I guess I’m still a writer. Um, I am still a blogger. I am still a technology consultant. Uh, I am, uh, still, uh, very, uh, deeply involved in, um, um, mental health as a, uh, as a passion, um, and a, and an advocate and, uh, and a, um, you know, mental illness, survivor myself. Um, and, uh, I [00:01:00] also, uh, found on now and the home restoration game, uh, Where, where, uh, I, uh, my wife and I have long been an interest in property ownership and whatnot, but now we are actively like, like looking for properties to purchase and to fix up and to themsel. [00:01:26] But one at a time, at least I’m trying to hold her. [00:01:32] Brett: [00:01:32] Yeah, well, uh, you have, uh, you have, you’ve journaled your, uh, your kind of, uh, progress through at least one home. Now, how many, how many homes have you done? [00:01:43] Patrick: [00:01:43] So this really started back in 2011. We bought a house for $7,200. [00:01:54] Brett: [00:01:54] Wow. [00:01:55] Patrick: [00:01:55] Um, and that was all on closing costs and everything, $7,200. [00:02:00] Um, and, but it was a category, two vacant building. I E what that means is, uh, you know, the, the system, the city had listed it as a vacant building, and there are certain things that had to be done within a certain period of time in order to purchase this property. [00:02:19] Um, you had to pledge to get these things done in that period of time. Um, and, uh, uh, Kind of had to be done, you know? Well, um, yeah, you know, it was going to be inspected and the, he was going to be watching and that sort of thing. Um, and so, uh, and so yeah, $7,200 and we, the nice thing about buying a home that needs a lot of work, um, is that, uh, especially for very little money is that you can kind of. [00:02:54] Learn how to do a lot of this stuff by diving in and trying it, bring it up [00:03:00] and trying again, because you know, what do you have to lose? It’s only somebody $200. So if you make a $500 mistake, well, you know, Hey, you’re, you’re still way ahead. Um, Hmm. So, uh, and so, yeah, we, uh, we still own that house. Uh, it is currently, uh, the one that my, the one my dad lives in, um, Uh, and we kind of bought it with that in mind with the idea that, Hey, one of our parents may need, may need some help, you know, coming up, they’re not getting any younger and you know, who knows they might need a place to be and, you know, and, uh, at an affordable price or maybe even no price at all. [00:03:44] And we may need to put them up somewhere and we’d rather not have them live with us. Uh, so yeah, we kind of bought it without purpose in mind, but we live in an 1886, a Victorian home. And [00:04:00] so, uh, that my wife purchased in 1993 as a HUD home. Um, And, uh, and so once again, uh, it was in a major disrepair. Got it. [00:04:12] Very cheap. Uh, she, and, uh, and Mr. Gladhill number one, uh, put a lot of time into it, fixing it up, and then, uh, they divorced. And then when I came into the scene, uh, you know, we continued on projects around here. [00:04:27] Brett: [00:04:27] So like I’ve watched you like gut, uh, some of these homes that you’ve worked on, have you done the same to your own home? [00:04:35] Patrick: [00:04:35] uh, well, I mean, certainly two rooms, uh, in, in my, in the home and, and really with, with the, the one I’m working on now, you know, we’re, we’re gutting rooms, right. That need to be the need to be gutted. Um, you know, but there, and the nice thing about the house we’re doing now is that there’s only really. [00:04:59] Really [00:05:00] three of those rooms that really need that kind of gutting the rest of everything else is pretty. Okay. And it’s going to be mostly, yeah, mostly kind of clean up and cosmetic stuff, but, um, but certainly with the, with the new one. Um, but, but yeah, certainly in this one, um, the room that is currently our library, um, had, uh, You know, the plaster literally falling off the walls. [00:05:26] And it was, I mean, it was, it was pretty bad, you know? Um, and, uh, same with, uh, what is currently, um, are mine and my wife’s bedroom, similar sort of thing. I mean, it was, you know, cracked, plaster, everything everywhere and, you know, just the original, the pine floors, um, because it was not, it was not an unusual, um, cost saving measure in Victorian times to, um, uh, put a fair bit of [00:06:00] money into the public spaces in the home. [00:06:03] I E the first floor, um, you know, and the dining room and the living room of the parlor and that sort of thing. Um, and then not put as much money into the second floor. And the non-public spaces. Um, and so, uh, it was not unusual. Uh, we’d like to think, Oh, they, you know, had these beautiful hardwood floors throughout not, was not the case with a lot of Victorian homes. [00:06:28] Those nice floors on the second floor were they usually added later. Oh, and, uh, originally we’re just a, um, um, pine or, or, or, um, or Alder or Poplar. Poplar was very, um, uh, very popular choice, um, for, uh, for floors. And it was just kind of standard plank flooring that then they would put, um, um, a four cloth over, um, which was, um, basically think of it like, um, like carpeting, except it [00:07:00] was, it’s kind of the mid point between carpeting and a rug is essentially a rug that, um, that you tack down to the floor. [00:07:09] Um, so, um, it would take up the whole, the whole room, the whole space, but it would just be tacked down, uh, along the edges. And it would usually [00:07:20] Brett: [00:07:20] opposed to glued. [00:07:21] Patrick: [00:07:21] As opposed to glued. Yes. Um, uh, and, and that’s usually what you would find on the second floor of many middle-class Victorian homes. Um, and that’s your history lesson for the day? [00:07:35] Brett: [00:07:35] I got it. [00:07:36] Patrick: [00:07:36] benefit from the fact that my wife’s master’s degree is in historic preservation. So that’s how I [00:07:41] Brett: [00:07:41] That does help. I got to ask about this powder room. You posted a picture of a three foot by 10 foot room where the toilet was positioned on the long wall. So you basically, you had like a foot, it was like being on an airplane. [00:07:57] Patrick: [00:07:57] Yes. Where you literally like [00:08:00] walk in and like you couldn’t close the door, like behind you, like, as you would, like, you had to walk in step to the side, close the door and then use the toilet. Otherwise you just used it with the door open. Yeah. That one. [00:08:17] Brett: [00:08:17] did you fix that? [00:08:18] Patrick: [00:08:18] Um, well, we’re on, we’re on the road to fixing that. [00:08:22] Um, yeah. Yeah. We’re going to move it down towards, towards the, uh, towards the end of that room. But, but that also speaks to a lot of the progressions that have happened. Um, and that, that is part of a house’s history too, right? Is, is those sorts of changes. And so, um, from what we can tell that room used to be part of where the kitchen was originally and where the door to the kitchen was originally, um, is actually on the other side of the, you know, the far short wall of that, of [00:09:00] that room and has been turned into a built-in in the dining room. [00:09:05] But that built in didn’t use to be there used to be a door into that room, which was the kitchen. Um, oftentimes kitchens in Victorians homes were relatively small. Um, you know, it wasn’t like today where, Oh, you know, I need all this room and counter space and open concept and all of this other stuff, you know, I mean, it was a utilitarian room. [00:09:27] It was for one thing. And that was for your mate to cook, you know, and quite frankly, you know, you, weren’t gonna make it very nice because that’s your maids, you know, your, your maid doesn’t care, you know, she’s coming in and she’s cooking. Um, and so, uh, And so yeah, uh, over time, uh, and changes the kitchen, moved to a different location that, that, what is now that powder room has I call it, uh, was probably a pantry for awhile. [00:09:57] Uh, after that, after it got closed off [00:10:00] and only later in life, probably sometime from what I can guess in the seventies, 1970s, it got turned into a bathroom. [00:10:08] Brett: [00:10:08] Huh. So you’ve been, uh, I think of you as a tools guy, even if you have kind of roots in, in minimalism, but you’re very opinionated

This week’s guest is Aaron Mahnke, the creator of the Lore podcast and the small empire that’s grown up around it. He joins Brett to talk about Lore, podcasting, and how life can change when you least expect it. Sponsor Nebia: The Nebia by Moen Spa Shower uses 45% less water while providing a serious upgrade to your shower time. The first 100 people to use code overtired at Nebia.com will get 15% off all Nebia products. Just head to Nebia.com/systematic. Show Links aaronmahnke.com grimandmild.com twitter.com/amahnke instagram.com/amahnke Top 3 Picks Chris Reeves Sebenza pocket knife Immortals Fenyx Rising The Battle of Polytopia Oura Ring AutoSleep Join the Community See you on Discord! Thanks! You’re downloading today’s show from CacheFly’s network BackBeat Media Podcast Network Check out more episodes at systematicpod.com and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcasting app. Find Brett as @ttscoff on all social media platforms, and follow Systematic at @systmcast on Twitter. Transcript Systematic 258 Brett: [00:00:00] [00:00:00]My guest this week is Aaron Mahnke he’s the creator of the Lore podcasts and a small empire. That’s grown up around it. How’s it going, Aaron? [00:00:15] Aaron: [00:00:15] Hey, Brett, I am doing well. I’m doing well. How are you? [00:00:17]Brett: [00:00:17] I’m good. I haven’t talked to you since 2016 and at that point a lot had happened since the last time I talked to you before that, and I feel like things have only exponentially grown for you since then. [00:00:32] Aaron: [00:00:32] Things are indeed busy. Yes. And I like it that way. It’s been really fun. [00:00:38] Brett: [00:00:38] Yeah. So I think we talked about this back in 2016, but when I first became aware of you kind of cross paths with you, you were of tossing ideas against the wall with frictionless workflow stuff and kind of putting out things like index cards and whatnot. And then all of this sudden. [00:01:00] You put out a podcast that I don’t think you had like strong, a strong inclination that it was going to change your life. And it, it did. [00:01:12] Aaron: [00:01:12] It did it really did. Yeah. I tell people when they ask me, you know, how did you start lore? I say, have you ever seen one of those detective movies where the. You know, the clever detectives in the library of this English Manor and he sort of leans on a bookshelf and a door swings open because he leaned on the right thing. [00:01:28]That’s how I fell into this. It was all complete happenstance and I have just been making it up as I go ever since. [00:01:37] Brett: [00:01:37] Laura gained more and more popularity. Eventually got. Optioned as an Amazon show. What other Lore specifically, we’ll talk about some of your other shows soon, but like what other major avenues has Laura taken since then? [00:01:51] Aaron: [00:01:51] Shortly after the TV offers rolled in, I had a number of literary agents reach out they’re these mythical [00:02:00] people that a lot of authors don’t think actually exist because. It’s so hard to attain. And I had a lot of them knocking on my door, which was super great. So I teamed up with one of them sold a three book lore series to penguin random house. [00:02:12] The first of the books came out the same. I think the same. It was the same month. I, it might’ve been the same week as the first season of the TV show. So it was sort of a big October, 2017, I think 17 and 18. I think that was the 2017 was the, was like the big month where everything landed. Yeah. And and then, I don’t really think of it as a spinoff, but I’ve taken Lore on the road, you know, we’ve done. [00:02:35]Chad who composes music for the show. He’s a amazing classical pianist. He’s got an album out now. That’s just tearing up the charts in his category. He recorded at Abbey road. He’s signed on with Decca records legendary. Record that. Yeah he’s the bomb and we’ll go on tour and do 15 or 20 cities across the country over the course of a few months, just, you know, go out and do a few come back home recuperate and do lore live in front of an audience of a [00:03:00] thousand or two people. [00:03:01]It’s always a really fun time. [00:03:03] Brett: [00:03:03] That’s amazing. So you started production company, I think is what you would call it grim and mild. [00:03:09] Aaron: [00:03:09] Yeah. Yeah. About three years ago, was it three years ago? Two and a half. I, heart radio approached me and they said, Hey, we love what you do with lore. And we want you to make more shows. And so what we want to do is we want to Pay you for your services, but also provide you with production, muscle, and staff and people who can take your ideas and make them into shows. [00:03:29] And the first thing we launched was a show called cabinet of curiosities which is my love letter to Paul Harvey and the rest of the story and a little bit of uh Ripley’s believe it or not. And it comes out twice a week. Each episode has two tiny five minute stories in it that are these little. [00:03:44] You know, delightful, wonderful, curious, vignettes about inventions are amazing people. And then after that, it’s just been that’s the same model for every show. And when I went to re up that deal a year later, or two years later, I guess it’s been three because I just hit the year [00:04:00] Mark on grim and mild. [00:04:01] Anyway, I needed a more of a. I needed to hire people I needed at the time I was doing cabinet with contracts, Unobscured. And then unobscured, that was another show I brought on. And I was doing that with paid contractors, but I wanted to hire people and, you know, give health insurance and all those benefits and have people on staff who could do other things too. [00:04:19] So I started a production company to sort of be the umbrella for that expensive venture. And and now everything is sort of bundled up under that umbrella that I guess it’s a network in a sense of grim and mild. [00:04:31] Brett: [00:04:31] How big is your team now? [00:04:33] Aaron: [00:04:33] I have five paid staff members. And I have another, I think three contractors who still, they’d rather just be contractors, they’re doing it, you know, around a day job or things like that. [00:04:43]I think, you know, Harry Marks he’s floated in our circle for years. Harry writes cabinet for me. He’s my main guy for cabinet. Yeah. And he does that around a full-time job. So there’s no need to hire him and all that. Yeah, it’s great. So yeah, th the team grows as it needs to and, you know, [00:05:00] there’s seasons for a lot of these shows and ebbs and flows, and so people can move around and, you know, we’re developing other stuff and working on other shows that haven’t come out yet. [00:05:08] And it’s exciting. We do team meetings every month, every every Monday and writers’ rooms for different shows on a regular basis. It’s it feels like a. The production company. [00:05:18] Brett: [00:05:18] Like I’m just. I did not succeed at being independent. Like I recently took a day job after a decade of doing my own version of throwing things against the wall and seeing what sticks and I feel like I am the typical story of people who try to make it independently. [00:05:35] And you are the very atypical story of of independent success. [00:05:41]Aaron: [00:05:41] Yeah. I like, you know, I’ve said it already and I’ll say it many times today, but I am making this up as I go. I. There was no manual to tell me what to do. It did help that I was running A small one person designed business for about seven years, but that just taught me about things like taxes and how to handle clients. [00:05:58] But I did take a lot of those [00:06:00] skills, you know, how to sell a logo to a local plumber who doesn’t necessarily think he needs one to going out to sponsors, you know, in those very early days, it was like me knocking on doors. I remember just a couple of months after lore. Came out. And then the numbers were screaming up and I thought, Oh, it’s getting to the point where I can go get advertisers, but I didn’t know how to do it. [00:06:22] So I just went to contact forms on websites, for places like Squarespace or Casper and sent messages into their customer service team and said, Hey, I’ve got this show and here’s its numbers. And I don’t know who in your company to talk to, but could you point me that way? And they always would. And and it worked and I started selling ads and I’ve continued to sell my own ads on Lore for the last six years. [00:06:43]Brett: [00:06:43] That’s a time suck in and of itself. [00:06:46] Aaron: [00:06:46] Sounds like it. My ad sales, I do it for the whole calendar year in one shot. I don’t do like quarterly that look, Laura is six years old. I’m beyond the point where I’m going to grow exponentially from quarter to quarter. It’s a [00:07:00] steady show and that’s fine. And it makes selling easy. So I can take a week out of my August or September. [00:07:05] And I can put together my numbers put together my prices. I know that I’m going to put out like 28 episodes over the year. Every episode has three spots, so there’s 84 spots I need to fill. And I just go out to the agencies that I have contacts with. And I say, here’s my availability. It’s first come first serve. [00:07:21] Here’s the pricing. Let me know what dates you want, but hurry up because they’re going fast. And they do within a week. I sell out the year. I dust my hands off and I move on to the next task. So [00:07:30] Brett: [00:07:30] be nice. [00:07:31]Aaron: [00:07:31] It’s been really great. It’s. You know, I’m grateful there. When I launched lore six years ago, there were, I don’t know, maybe a quarter of a million podcasts out there, and there are over 2 million now and granted, most of them don’t have enough downloads to get sponsors, but there’s more competition for ad money now than we used to be. [00:07:51] So I’m grateful that I can sell out. [00:07:55] Brett: [00:07:55] I have bud

This week’s guest is Tris Hussey, a freelance content marketer. He joins Brett for a wide-ranging discussion about writing, mind mapping, software tools, and Cadbury Cream Eggs. Sponsor Nebia: The Nebia by Moen Spa Shower uses 45% less water while providing a serious upgrade to your shower time. The first 100 people to use code overtired at Nebia.com will get 15% off all Nebia products. Just head to Nebia.com/systematic. Show Links trishussey.com My Ink Stained Fingers linkedin.com/in/trishussey twitter.com/TrissHussey Marked 2 nvUltra MindManager Chuck Frey Scapple Popclip WebMD Popclip extension Curio MultiMarkdown Composer iThoughtsX Bear Top 3 Picks Snowpiercer on Netflix Invincible on Amazon Just Add Magic M.A.S.H. Spring Cadbury Cream Eggs Join the Community See you on Discord! Thanks! You’re downloading today’s show from CacheFly’s network BackBeat Media Podcast Network Check out more episodes at systematicpod.com and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcasting app. Find Brett as @ttscoff on all social media platforms, and follow Systematic at @systmcast on Twitter. Transcript Systematic 257 Brett: [00:00:00] [00:00:00] [00:00:06] this week’s guest is Tris Hussey, a freelance content marketer. How’s it going, Tris? [00:00:12] Tris: [00:00:12] Brett, It’s great. And we were just talking last week about stuff. So it’s, it’s an honor to be on this podcast. [00:00:18] Brett: [00:00:18] that the, [00:00:18] Tris: [00:00:18] So flattered. [00:00:19] Brett: [00:00:19] the easiest way to get on systematic is to have me on your podcast first. [00:00:24] Tris: [00:00:24] All right. So then if I want to be on again, do I have to have you on again? Which would be fine, but [00:00:30] Brett: [00:00:30] I don’t think it works twice. [00:00:31] Tris: [00:00:31] no. Okay.Ok. [00:00:33] Brett: [00:00:33] you have to wait for the rotation, come back around. Like after I took a year off of systematic and then. Since starting it back up. Most of my guests have been people that were on like five, six years ago and like catching up with them. But, uh, it turns out you’re okay. [00:00:52] So I, I feel like we’ve known each other in a digital sense for a long time. And I had it in my head in my head that you had actually [00:01:00] been on systematic before, but you haven’t. [00:01:02] Tris: [00:01:02] But I haven’t. No, but we have known each other in the digital sense for a very, I think probably almost 10 years. [00:01:08] Brett: [00:01:08] How did we, how did we first connect? [00:01:10] Tris: [00:01:10] Oh, it was, I think it was, well, I was still a professional blogger and tech journalist and doing a lot of writing and I think I, I might’ve stumbled on nvALT. And, uh, then quickly saw Marked, the first version came out and scoop that up in a heartbeat. And then when Marked 2 came out, I grabbed that and then I’ve just kind of followed the stuff you do. [00:01:39] Not that I understand all of it because when you and Christina Warren were talking in your last overtired episodes, like, wow, I have no idea what they’re talking about, but it sounds so cool. I wish I could do those things. [00:01:52] Brett: [00:01:52] Yeah. That episode, like w our audience is by and large super nerdy. But then [00:02:00] again, when I say things like that, I realize I work off of assumptions. And we don’t get a lot of like data on who actually listens to the show other than like random tweets. So, you know what? I don’t even know what my, my primary demographic for this show is. [00:02:18]Tris: [00:02:18] I would say humans who are interested in learning new. Things, if the, if, if the episodes that I’ve seen [00:02:25] are any indication. Yeah. [00:02:28] Brett: [00:02:28] Curious humans. That’s that’s my, that’s my target demo. [00:02:32] Tris: [00:02:32] Curious humans, they’re, they’re all usually the most fun humans. So [00:02:36] Brett: [00:02:36] So what, uh, how do you define content marketing? [00:02:40]Tris: [00:02:40] Uh, I, I think it is the, the teenage version. Of professional blogging, which means you’re, you’re creating content for a business to help them meet some kind of, [00:03:00] some kind of business goal. Whether it’s more leads or more app downloads or just thought leadership in general. Um, any, any of those things. And I really do it. [00:03:12] It did come right out of professional blogging. When I’m asked about that as well, I’ve been content marketing for 16 years and people look at me or, you know, the raised eyebrow goes up. It’s like, well, I know it wasn’t called that back then, but that’s what it was when we were business blogging. It really was, it was content marketing. [00:03:27] We just didn’t realize it yet. [00:03:29] Brett: [00:03:29] So w w what is teenage version mean? [00:03:32] Tris: [00:03:32] It means we still have a lot to learn. And I think we have a lot of angst. Um, yeah, I think content marketing is, it’s kind of, maybe we’re almost ready to graduate from high school as in content marketing, but I don’t think we’ve hit our stride. And I think there’s a lot of experimentation going on, which is great, which is what all your teenage years are about. [00:03:57] Um, there’s certainly the emo crowd in [00:04:00] the, in the, the, the popular kids crowd and, uh, the, you know, the drama and band group in, in the geeks, in, in content marketing who are. Seeing where this is going to go. Cause I think it’s too early to really pigeonhole it because we’re still figuring out what really the best things are. [00:04:23] Because not that long ago, people only thought about content marketing, I think as blogging. And they didn’t look at the whole picture, which is like podcasting and audio, um, and webinars and those expanded versions, or even, you know, posting on LinkedIn, um, and other social media, like people didn’t think they thought, uh, early on, you know, Twitter, you know, like I’m going to share this on Twitter. [00:04:50] And it’s not really part of my content marketing, but it is, it all has to be part of the same story. The story has to be all part of the same thing. So we’re still figuring it out. And I think once, you know, we, we [00:05:00] finished high school, we’re getting into college and we, uh, go into our, maybe our, our philosophical phase. [00:05:09] Right. We’re going to hang it around drinking, um, obscure imported beer or smoking clove cigarettes. And, uh, talking deep thoughts about the true meaning of content, then we’re going to kind of mature and be… Have things figured out because I think everyone’s still figuring stuff out, like where, you know, how, what metrics to measure and how to measure them and what are important, what are just the vanity metrics versus actual metrics, you things that things that we don’t. [00:05:42] We don’t really, if you look at the digital marketing world and ads, that’s pretty mature. I mean, we’ve been doing it since the late nineties. I mean, we’ve, we figured that one out pretty well, but content I think is still evolving. [00:05:54] Brett: [00:05:54] Do you, if you had to pick one medium that you thought [00:06:00] if a client could only afford to hire you for one medium, is, is it still blogging? That’s kind of the primary, uh, most effective. [00:06:09] Tris: [00:06:09] Yeah, I think so because it has the most potential to spin off into, in support other things. So if you have a really good solid blog and you. W, uh, set up a good story. What’s your brand story and what are the value propositions that are going to connect with your customers? Then as you expand into, let’s say you wanted to start a podcast or you want to do a video series or webinars. [00:06:33] That blog is a good foundation that you can then use to promote. And reuse the other parts of, of your content. So if you, if you can, only, if you can only hire me for one thing, uh, it, it would be blogging. It would be for writing. Absolutely. [00:06:51] Brett: [00:06:51] To you, uh, do you find email marketing is, is email marketing, part of, uh, what you do part of what you provide. [00:06:59] Tris: [00:06:59] Um, [00:07:00] I would, yes, I guess, yes, because I would think of it as a newsletters. Um, And I see newsletters as an extension of blogging and as an extension of content, it’s just the same things that you can write about in your, in a blog, um, in a, in, in a format that everyone just gets. I mean, literally right. [00:07:23] Everyone gets email manners and they understand it. So yeah, if someone is going it’s I think part of any blog strategy, any content marketing strategy I do, I would absolutely say all right now, how do you have a list of people that you can email and they go, well, yeah, we’ve got customers, so they go, okay, cool. [00:07:42] We’re going to start emailing them a blog, the blog posts, and maybe some curated links. If they’re. You know, if the, if the blog posts seem a little thin or they’re not publishing very regularly. Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s part of this. This growing up is seeing this entire universe as being connected so [00:08:00] that you can repurpose and reuse and re-enhance all of your content. [00:08:05] Just add ad infinitum or maybe ad nauseum, depending how, how it is. [00:08:11]Brett: [00:08:11] trying to strike a balance myself. Like I have as an independent developer, I have to market all my own apps and I’m good at marketing stuff for other people. If you ask me to put together an advertising plan, Do market buys, uh, come up with a voice, come up with a strategy, even come up with jingles. Like I can do all that for someone else, but doing it for myself has been, uh, I would much rather be coding than marketing. [00:08:38] Um, but I’ve started doing email newsletters and I [00:08:43] Tris: [00:08:43] I love, I read it this morning. [00:08:45] Brett: [00:08:45] I have fewer people on my mailing list than I have, like RSS subscribers, but I see a bigger financial impact from the emai

This week’s guest is Tiffany White, an independent software developer. She joins Brett to talk about getting started in a tech career, some indie filmmaking, and some classy Top 3 Picks. Sponsor Mint Mobile: Cut your wireless plan to $15 a month and get the plan shipped to your door for FREE by visiting mintmobile.com/systematic. Show Links insta/trwhitemedia tiffanywhite.blog tiffanywhite.dev @tiffanywhitedev www.freecodecamp.org Code & Supply Udemy App Ideas GlassDoor Moment for iOS Harrisburgers with Cameras DJI Mini 2 Top 3 Picks Canon M50 Canon M100/M200 HiFiMan Drop headphones Ultimate Hacking Keyboard WASD Custom Keyboards Hue Light Strip Home Assistant Join the Community See you on Discord! Thanks! You’re downloading today’s show from CacheFly’s network BackBeat Media Podcast Network Check out more episodes at systematicpod.com and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcasting app. Find Brett as @ttscoff on all social media platforms, and follow Systematic at @systmcast on Twitter. Transcript Tiffany White Brett: [00:00:00] [00:00:00]My guest this week is Tiffany White, an independent software developer. Thanks for being here, Tiffany. [00:00:11]Tiffany: [00:00:11] Thank you for having me, Brett. [00:00:13]Brett: [00:00:13] So when did you first start to code? [00:00:17]Tiffany: [00:00:17] early 2015. I just was. Thinking that I needed a career change. And someone mentioned the Brico camp to me and I started learning right there. [00:00:31] Brett: [00:00:31] What were you doing before that? [00:00:33]Tiffany: [00:00:33] I was doing absolutely nothing before that. I was going to school For a long time, just basically a professional student who was trying to get a degree in English and perhaps, get an MFA in writing. But as someone who didn’t have any money, I felt like that wasn’t an appropriate career choice at the time. [00:00:57]Brett: [00:00:57] Need them, you need to have money to be here. And [00:01:00] MFA and lit. [00:01:01] Tiffany: [00:01:01] Oh, yes. Oh yes. So I I lived in Pittsburgh at the time and there were a whole bunch of techniques out there and I went to one coding supply is one of the biggest ones out there learned a little Ruby and decided that’s what I wanted to do. [00:01:15]Brett: [00:01:15] And you went to school for a little while [00:01:19]Tiffany: [00:01:19] Yeah. I went to the [00:01:20]Brett: [00:01:20] For a code. [00:01:21] Tiffany: [00:01:21] Yeah. Yeah. I went to Pitt on their university of Pittsburgh for computer science for two years. It was interesting to see how different that environment was compared to me learning on my own. There was just, I don’t want to say. That it was a bad experience. [00:01:43] It was a different experience because you’re learning more theory and more algorithms and data structures and things like that. That things that you aren’t really going to use on the job? At least when I was working as my previous job, I didn’t use [00:02:00] any of that stuff. It did teach you how to think how to learn, how to think about abstractions. [00:02:07]But I just, I found that the courses that I need to take along with the computer science courses that I was taking just did not, I just didn’t want to, so to take those, I was getting older and I just, I didn’t want to continue to go through that route. So I decided I was just going to do it on my own plus Pitt is expensive. [00:02:28] So there was that. [00:02:30]Brett: [00:02:30] So do you feel like going through things like free code camp that you got perhaps a more useful education that way? [00:02:37]Tiffany: [00:02:37] Yes, I think so. They do have their, algorithm and data structures. Part of the pre co camp that’s really invaluable. So when I started free code camp, it was right at the beginning of Ricoh camps existence. So they were basically, aggregating different. Different sources for you to learn. [00:02:57]Then they made their own curriculum [00:03:00] and then have improved upon it for the past six years. And it’s just, it’s an amazing resource and it’s free, and I learned a good bit there and I would recommend it to anyone starting out, like wanting to learn how to code it’s. It’s great. And it’s not just web development. [00:03:16] It’s not just JavaScript. They have Python now and machine learning. So check it out. [00:03:22] Brett: [00:03:22] So you were able to parlay that then into an actual industry job. You went from. A an English major to working in tech. W did you, was there an uphill battle to try to get that first job without a college degree? [00:03:38]Tiffany: [00:03:38] There was and it wasn’t so much that. The lack of a degree for me, I got, there were people who reached out to me from like Google and Twitter and things like that. I think what it was for me was my lack of building anything useful. When you [00:04:00] go to free coop free code camp, and you work on the curriculum, there are projects that you need to do, are things you need to do projects to actually want to the next section to get a certificate or whatever. [00:04:12]And I wasn’t doing that. I was going to different tutorial sites and, Feeling like I was doing things by doing code alongs and things like that. And that, that hindered me more than not having a computer science degree. [00:04:30]Brett: [00:04:30] What would the recommendation there be if someone were following in your path, what would you say to do differently? [00:04:36]Tiffany: [00:04:36] I would tell them to. Build things learned a little bit from safe Rico camper. You Demi course learn whatever you can. From there, you don’t need to finish those things. Learn the basics and start building a project and continue to dip in and out of. Tutorials, but don’t just spend time spinning your wheels, doing [00:05:00] these things because you’re not actually learning anything. [00:05:02] You’re not synthesizing the things that you’re learning and applying them to something real, a real world project. And not just a project that you get from like a Demi course. But a project that you’ve thought of. On your own, like even take a, an idea from a repo that I found on GitHub called app ideas, you can take an idea from there and then start building it with the stuff that you’ve learned from whatever tutorial you have been doing. [00:05:32] So I think that building a project and several projects is going to help you in the long run, learn how. Programming works and learn how to be a developer and landing your first software job. [00:05:51] Brett: [00:05:51] It’s interesting that you say that I, because that’s the only way that I. Can learn. I don’t think I’ve ever finished an [00:06:00] online course of any kind. I dropped out of a computer science degree after a year. Like I only learned by creating my own projects and like my GitHub has a hundred, some repositories. [00:06:13] And if any employer has ever wanted to know what do I know? It’s literally all there get hub repositories. And that has served me pretty well. [00:06:23]Tiffany: [00:06:23] Yeah. I, yeah, I wasted so much time. And I’ve never finished an online course and part of, I think I finished one and it was the course that I learned the most in. But I think a lot of it for me was fear. It was fear of the blank text editor. And not knowing where to begin when I was thrown into the fire. [00:06:47]And it’s, it was scary to me. And I did not like when I was growing up I, there were, I w I was in quote unquote gifted [00:07:00] classes and honors classes and things like that. Things came easily to me. When I was growing up in, in school, I never skipped any grades because my mom wouldn’t allow it, but. When I started programming those things just not come as easily to me. And it scared me for a long time. And I didn’t want to quit because I needed to get out of the poverty that I was living in, but I did fear not, not being smart enough to actually learn how to program. [00:07:31] Brett: [00:07:32] So how did you first get started in tech? [00:07:34]Tiffany: [00:07:34] I just started, I like before I was in tech officially, even though I loved technology as a kid in. The inner city where, you know, central Pennsylvania in a city called Harrisburg growing up it in the eighties, it wasn’t something, even though I loved tech, it wasn’t something that I thought I could do. [00:07:59] No [00:08:00] one around me was doing it. I did have a computer when I was 12, my mom she got a hammy down. She worked for the state and she worked as a computer operator, which is not. It’s not a programmer. It’s just someone who sits at a terminal and does some data entry. So she worked with people that. [00:08:20]Program computers and things like that. And she bought a Commodore one 28 off a guy for $500 because I was into it writing at that time. And she thought that I might need something to write my poetry on. And so she bought the, and Peter and I basically played games on it. I didn’t really program too much. [00:08:44]It was, it used basic and at the time I was in a bad place mentally and too foggy to understand how basic worked. And the guy that was going to teach me programming. He never, we never got a chance to sit down and learn it. But [00:09:00] so I didn’t really. No, that tech was a thing I could do. [00:09:04] I basically just wrote, I wrote poetry sort of fiction. And things like that. So when I first started going to college back in the early two thousands I was basically going for writing English major. And it wasn’t until, I was in and out of school for a long time. And it wasn’t until I moved to Pittsburgh where I decided that I would, I was already, I already didn’t have any money and it was hard. [00:09:30]To li like to live in that city without a whole lot of money. And I decided that I wanted to make some money. And I decided to switch it up to to, learn coding and things like that. So that’s. That’s where I was coming from. Initially there were periods in betwe

This week’s guest is April Herndon, an English professor and author (and many other things). She joins Brett to talk about fat advocacy, her Appalachian roots, and the joys of punching bags. Sponsor Nebia: The Nebia by Moen Spa Shower uses 45% less water while providing a serious upgrade to your shower time. The first 100 people to use code overtired at Nebia.com will get 15% off all Nebia products. Just head to Nebia.com/systematic. Show Links April Herndon at WSU Fat Blame: How the War on Obesity Victimizes Women and Children Top 3 Picks Choice Everlast Punching Bag Lipstick Stunna by Fenty Join the Community See you on Discord! Thanks! You’re downloading today’s show from CacheFly’s network BackBeat Media Podcast Network Check out more episodes at systematicpod.com and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcasting app. Find Brett as @ttscoff on all social media platforms, and follow Systematic at @systmcast on Twitter. Transcript April [00:00:00] April: [00:00:00] Okay, [00:00:00] Brett: [00:00:00] Hi, I’m Brett Terpstra and you’re listening to systematic. My guest this week is April Herndon, a professor of English. How’s it going April? [00:00:10] April: [00:00:10] good. I mean, as well as it can be in a pandemic. Thanks for asking. [00:00:13] Brett: [00:00:13] I feel like there’s a lot more to your introduction. You are in my mind a lot more than just a professor of English, but I wasn’t sure where to go with it after that. [00:00:22]April: [00:00:22] It could go a lot of different places. I appreciate you sort of letting me be all of the different. Things I am. You know, in addition to teaching English, I have an interdisciplinary degree. So I’ve taught science and technology studies. I was a director of a non-profit organization called the intersex society of North America, where I did medical advocacy. [00:00:42] For children who are born with mixed reproductive and or sexual anatomy I’ve been on a steering committee, started a union at Michigan state, or help start that union. That certainly wasn’t a solo effort. So yeah, I’ve done a lot of different things and have finally settled here in Winona as a professor of English. [00:01:00] [00:00:59] Brett: [00:00:59] Did you go to Michigan state? [00:01:01] April: [00:01:01] I did. [00:01:02] Brett: [00:01:02] And why did I assume you had gone to school in the South? [00:01:05]April: [00:01:05] Well, because I’ve still got a really, really strong accent, even though I haven’t lived in Appalachia since I was 18. So I was a Michigan. Let’s see, how long was I in Michigan? I was in Michigan for seven years and then came to Minnesota and I’ve been at Winona state for 15 years and still the accent lingers. [00:01:25] So yeah, you think if I’d gone to school in the Midwest a little bit more of this would have faded, but, uh, it’s got some pretty good sticking quality. [00:01:31] Brett: [00:01:31] So you are, we’re going to talk a lot about how I know you through Facebook, because that is where I, I learned the most about you and you are a, you. Frequently use colloquialisms, but you never use the same one twice. Are the colloquialisms you use? Are they real or are you just really good at making up Southern sounding colloquialisms? [00:01:56]April: [00:01:56] A mix of both. Um, I do have my own phone [00:02:00] for things. There’s no doubt about that. That’s a family inherited trait. My dad was incredibly quick with it, but a lot of them really are Appalachian sayings. And I think one of the things that people really forget about when they think about that part of the country and the poverty comes to mind, um, the coal mining industry comes to mind. [00:02:20] But they forget that for a very long time, Appalachia has had an incredible oral tradition. These were people who, although they were not formally educated, love to tell stories, passed on all kinds of really important ideas and skills and all of that was done through language. And so from an Appalachian perspective, you know, why would you say that the road outside is slippery? [00:02:43] When you could say it’s a slickest, greenhouse, not. Right. I mean, it’s waving more vivid people. Remember that, you know, that makes an impression. I mean, somebody says that to you. You think I better get my ice cleats on you? Don’t just go run out there, like to check it out. You already know it’s rough. [00:03:00] So yeah, I do have a lot of those. [00:03:01] And like I said, that that’s part of the Appalachia that I wish people knew more about. [00:03:06] Brett: [00:03:06] Did that kind of a fascination with the oral history play into your, uh, eventual education and English and professional life in English. [00:03:18]April: [00:03:18] For sure. Um, one of the things that was really interesting to me is I didn’t really have an incredible appreciation for Appalachia when I was still in high school. Um, you know, for me it seemed like a place to get out of. I looked around. I saw people who were living in poverty and I loved my family, especially my maternal grandparents and my maternal grandmother, like huge influence on my life, taught me more stuff than I can even start to count up, but I wasn’t sure what I would do if I stayed there. [00:03:50] And that was sort of my main impression was. Leave when I got to college and I started taking English classes and had professors who were teaching Appalachian literature. [00:04:00] And I really started to understand that we had our own culture. We had our own dialect. Um, we had this really rich tradition of telling stories. [00:04:12] It really made me want to learn more about it. And I do think that’s one of the biggest reasons that. I went as far as I did in terms of my education. And in terms of studying English, is that for me, the literature was a window onto a place where I had actually lived and it still made me see a different, and that’s. [00:04:33] That’s a really a powerful statement about the effect that words and storytelling can have on someone to take somebody that grew up there and show them a different set of stories and help them see that thing that they’re so familiar with in a different way. That’s amazing. [00:04:50]Brett: [00:04:50] Yeah. That’s awesome. So one of the topics that, uh, that I know you post on frequently and have even written a [00:05:00] book about is fat advocacy. Is that the right word for it? [00:05:04] April: [00:05:04] Yeah. That’s one way to say it. There’s a, if you want to think about it from a medical perspective, there’s a movement called health at every size. Um, and most of us who are in the health at every size movement and that’s more medical professionals. And then folks like me who publish in a field that we call fat studies. [00:05:21] Um, we’re all people who are trying to help other folks understand that fatness very much like gender or race or class or disability that these are constructed social categories. And although there are things about people’s bodies that underlie all of those, the meanings that we attribute to those things, those are social constructions and we choose. [00:05:44] How to construct those meanings. And so we’re all working for a world where, when we talk about fatness, we’re talking about it, not as a stigmatized trait, but more, just a neutral descriptor of how people’s bodies happened to be in the world. [00:05:58] Brett: [00:05:58] Yeah. So [00:06:00] the, uh, the title of the book is fat blame. The war on obesity, victimizes women and children. Um, so first of all, let’s define, there’s been how, how long has this idea of, uh, the, um, PA UPenn and not pandemic [00:06:17]Epidemic! I got pandemic on the brain. [00:06:20] April: [00:06:20] We all do, which is an interesting thing to think about just that term. Right. Um, and maybe part of the reason, like it’s hard for you to recall it tied to obesity is that that’s normally a term that we use to refer to something that’s contagious. So rhetorically the war on obesity is a really interesting moment when we’ve taken language that we would normally only use. [00:06:41] If we were talking about a virus or a bacterial infection and we’ve actually applied it. To the state of people’s body that is not contagious. So in and of itself rhetorically, you know, we can sort of see already that we’re stretching. A little bit, when we talk about, um, the [00:07:00] current rhetoric around obesity and referring to it as an epidemic, um, in terms of when people started talking about it as an epidemic, you can go all the way back to the seventies and find references to it. [00:07:12] But really in the eighties and nineties, the concerns started kicking up. Um, much more. We had the presidential fitness test and all kinds of movements. And then we had several surgeon generals who were worried about it, and you can follow it all the way up into the Obama era. When Michelle Obama took up childhood obesity, um, as a cause and started her let’s move program, which interestingly enough, focused on kids having good food and having safe places to move. [00:07:43] Which is actually not something that has to be tied to obesity. That just seems like a general sort of thing that we would want all children to have regardless of their body size. So I’m also always fascinated when people use obesity as a tool. And every time I say that, by the way, I’ve got scare [00:08:00] quotes around it because in fat studies, we sort of understand that as one of those terms, that’s really like a question. [00:08:06] So when I say obesity, I’ve got my. My air quotes going here. Um, but that sort of drive to tie what could be really good social programs to people’s body size rather than just having those social programs is interesting too. Um, it, it sort of puts this burden on. You know, these kids who are fat, that they’re supposed to then lose weight. [00:08:30] If we give them access to food and we give them, you know, good places where they can exer

This week’s guest is Dr. Steve Daviss, a consultation laison psychiatrist. He joins Brett to talk about pandemic psychology, addiction, ADHD, note taking, and a bit of making music with code. Sponsors Mint Mobile: Cut your wireless plan to $15 a month and get the plan shipped to your door for FREE by visiting mintmobile.com/systematic. TextExpander: The tool neither Christina nor Brett would want to live without. Save time typing on Mac, Windows, iOS, and the web. Listeners can save 20% on their first year by visiting TextExpander.com. Show Links Linkedin/drdaviss Twitter/@HITshrink Schematic of addiction reward circuitry (from Dr George Koob, NIAAA) Support for mental health and addiction recovery during COVID My Three Shrinks podcasts Shrink Rap: Three Psychiatrists Explain Their Work (borrow from OpenLibrary) Top 3 Picks David Lubbers — Persistence of Vision Wayback Machine SonicPi Join the Community See you on Discord! Thanks! You’re downloading today’s show from CacheFly’s network BackBeat Media Podcast Network Check out more episodes at systematicpod.com and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcasting app. Find Brett as @ttscoff on all social media platforms, and follow Systematic at @systmcast on Twitter. Transcript 254 Steve Daviss [00:00:00]Brett: [00:00:00] [00:00:00] This week’s guest is Dr. Steve Davis. He’s a consultation liaison psychiatrist. Hi Steve. [00:00:07] Steve: [00:00:07] Hey, Brett. Uh, thank you for a vitamin onto your show. [00:00:11] Brett: [00:00:11] Oh, absolutely. Uh, tell me what a, uh, consultation liaison psychiatrist does. [00:00:18] Steve: [00:00:18] Uh, that’s a great question. Um, so. Uh, consultation, liaison psychiatrist. Uh, the words in that phrase, essentially refer to psychiatrists who work in typically medical settings. Um, often hospitals emergency room. Sometimes it might be nursing homes, um, and. Uh, the focus is really, I’ve got somebody here with some sort of problem, and I need a psychiatrist to, uh, evaluate and see if they have a psychiatric problem that might be contributing or, uh, the person has [00:01:00] psychiatric symptoms. [00:01:01] We think it might be XYZ, depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, uh, alcohol withdrawal. Um, but we know we want a second opinion. So that’s, that’s really what we do. We work in hospital settings generally. Um, and that’s where I spent most of my career, I guess, working in either hospital settings or other kind of primary care setting. [00:01:24] It’s like a FQHC federally qualified health center or primary care offices. Um, so that in essence is what a cl psychiatrist, uh, does. Uh, I’m also, uh, an addiction psychiatrist, um, frankly, It’s hard to do psychiatry without also doing addiction. Uh, and I’ve done a lot of, um, uh, work around addiction. In fact, I’m currently the president of the Maryland DC society of addiction medicine, which is a chapter of the larger national main addiction [00:02:00] organization, which is a, or the American society of addiction medicine. [00:02:03] Brett: [00:02:03] So you do a lot more, um, uh, consultation than actual long-term seeing of patients, at least in your capacity as a consultation liaison, then. [00:02:14] Steve: [00:02:14] Um, I had been, um, my career has kind of, um, O taken a winding path. I, you know, I started off doing, uh, actually frankly, schizophrenia research way back in the day. Um, and. Uh, I wanted to go into, uh, research, uh, primarily because it that’s what attracted me to psychiatry and medicine in the first place. I, um, uh, growing up, I had a, um, uh, family members who developed schizophrenia at a young age in their teens, uh, which is oftentimes when it develops and the. [00:02:54] Uh, just to see, you know, these loved ones of mine transform [00:03:00] with hallucinations and seeing numbers floating in the air. And it just kinda made me made, you know, I was younger than them. I was probably 11 or 12 and made me wonder how does the brain do this weird stuff? Um, and I was kind of a geeky kid to begin with. [00:03:15] Uh, so that just was something to focus on and, um, I never let go of it. I mean, that’s really, what’s driven my. My, my career is how does, how does it happen that the brain gets broken like that and how to fix it? [00:03:32] Brett: [00:03:32] do you think it’s a typical fo it surprises me that you’re still fascinated now by what you were fascinated by when you were 12. [00:03:43] Steve: [00:03:43] yeah, well it reminds me of, um, you know, so I, so I went into. Uh, kind of a research research career. I actually started out as an MD PhD candidate. Um, and then, uh, [00:04:00] Uh, when I was driving around to, um, residencies, you know, you go to four years of medical school after college, four years of medical school, then internship and residency for psychiatry, which is, uh, uh, typically four years. [00:04:15] Um, and then maybe a fellowship or, or start your career. And as I was driving up to Dartmouth, um, and New Hampshire, um, for my interview on the radio, Um, there was an NPR, a story about how they found the gene for schizophrenia. And, um, I remember kind of shouting, you know, and exclamation as I’m driving. Um, Oh, this is great. [00:04:42] And then my next thought was, Oh, well, I guess they solve that problem. Maybe I won’t go into research. Um, as we know, it’s never as simple as it seems. Uh, there are, you know, a bazillion genes that seem to. I have something to do with, uh, schizophrenia and, um, [00:05:00] it remains, uh, mental health in general, um, remains, uh, to me a very interesting, challenging area. [00:05:09] Um, although over the years, my interest have gone from research, you know, causes it, how to treat it, um, to more mundane, but probably much more important things like, uh, we know what good care looks like. We sometimes don’t know how to get it to people. You don’t know how to get it to them, where to get it to them, how to make it affordable, how to make it effective. [00:05:36] So a big part of, um, psychiatry nowadays is often, uh, uh, implementation research, how to. Get people, the care that they need, it’s a little sad, um, that it is like that. Cause we don’t seem to have as much trouble getting diabetes treatment to people and blood pressure treatment to people. Uh, but it continues to be a problem. [00:05:57] Brett: [00:05:57] Do you, I think that, uh, I mean, there’s been a lot of [00:06:00] talk over the last couple of years about mental health, especially mental health in America. Do you feel like things are changing, uh, that there actually is more of a light being shined on those problems? [00:06:12] Steve: [00:06:12] I do. Um, you know, it’s been something that’s been changing, I think over the years, but, um, over the past, I would say five, eight years or so there seems to be an increasing. Recognition of the centrality of mental health and by, and when I say mental health, I mean like mental health and addiction, I, I, a lot of people split those two things separately. [00:06:39] I think of them, many of us think of them as, as together, it’s all brain stuff. Um, and so, uh, the, uh, th the recognition that if you don’t. Address those issues, then somebody’s health, physical health suffers as well. And so you’ve got to [00:07:00] do both and if you don’t do both, you’re not going to do a good job. [00:07:04] If you’re just focused on physical health, like diabetes, you won’t do a great job with that, unless you’ve got the mental health stuff under your control. [00:07:12] Brett: [00:07:12] So you talked about, uh, genes for schizophrenia and I, over my life, heard a lot about, you know, the various mental illnesses being passed on genetically has, has that kind of research resulted in any, um, actual therapies? Um, it does knowing that it’s genetic help in treatment. [00:07:36] Steve: [00:07:36] um, it, it’s not a direct answer to that. Um, overall, you know, a blunt answer would be, um, not greatly, uh, but, uh, there’s more nuanced answers. So. Um, knowing that the target of the gene. So what does that gene do, you know, does it code for, uh, a certain neurotransmitter receptor [00:08:00] or, um, some other piece of the receptor, uh, ecosystem? [00:08:06] Um, if you will. Uh, so there are different things in the, in, in the neuron, in the brain cells, um, that either make neurotransmitters and neuro-transmitters are generally the, you know, the messenger. Um, uh, the lingua franca, if Frank gua rank God, if you will. Um, and, uh, so knowing about what is broken, you know, if a gene has an error in its code, um, that helps you understand, well, maybe we should design a drug or find a drug. [00:08:41] That targets, that particular receptor and tries to work around the defect. So it does, it does help to define the targets, the, uh, the drugs that, uh, drug companies, um, uh, think about and look for. When they’re trying to figure out, okay, what, what else will work? [00:09:00] Um, so that, that does drive. Um, those, those types of genetics do drive some of the research, but there’s still, I think a lot more that we don’t know then there is that we do know. [00:09:13] Brett: [00:09:13] So what’s, uh, what’s new and exciting and the field of addiction and psychiatry. [00:09:21] Steve: [00:09:21] Um, so those, those things. Um, certainly as I said, go together. Um, and, uh, what’s new is, is what’s really old, unfortunately. So, um, we talk about whole person care. Um, you know, uh, whether it be physical, uh, mental, uh, addiction, uh, but there continues to be a lot of separation. Between those three things. And even between addiction and psychiatry. [00:09:53] So some of the new stuff is, uh, finding models of care that knit [00:10:00] these things together in a way that where you can get treatment for both types of conditions, uh, mental health condition, and, uh, addiction condition, and ideally even your physical health, all in one plac

This week’s guest is Victor Agreda Jr, a polymath for hire. He joins Brett to talk startups, poker, comedy, and mental health. Sponsor Nebia: The Nebia by Moen Spa Shower uses 45% less water while providing a serious upgrade to your shower time. The first 100 people to use code systematic at Nebia.com will get 15% off all Nebia products. Just head to Nebia.com/systematic. Show Links victoragreda.com @superpixel Instagram/Superpixel5 Mario the Maker Magician Atypical Kegan Peele History of Sketch Comedy Top 3 Picks M1 MacBook Air Magic is Dead Ukelele Amanda Palmer Tiny Tim Join the Community See you on Discord! Thanks! You’re downloading today’s show from CacheFly’s network BackBeat Media Podcast Network Check out more episodes at systematicpod.com and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcasting app. Find Brett as @ttscoff on all social media platforms, and follow Systematic at @systmcast on Twitter. Transcript Victor [00:00:00] Brett: [00:00:00] This week’s guest is Victor Agreda Jr. [00:00:02] A polymath for hire? How’s it going, Victor? [00:00:06] Victor: [00:00:06] Uh, it’s going well, [00:00:07] Brett: [00:00:07] What’s a, what’s a polymath. [00:00:10]Victor: [00:00:10] you know? Uh, it’s it’s funny. So I’m, I’m actually in a startup right now. We’re we’re in stealth mode. Uh, I don’t know when this will air, but we might be out of stealth mode by then. But the thing is, is that one of our, uh, one of our teammates was putting together, you know, the requisite investor deck, and they put me as polymath. [00:00:26] I actually had to look it up and it’s basically a nice term for Jack of all trades master of none. [00:00:31] Brett: [00:00:31] Oh, that is, that’s a way class. Your way to say that. Huh? Yeah, I had that. I had the actual job title, Jack of all trades for awhile. Uh, when I worked at agile, because I couldn’t, because there wasn’t really good at any one thing. [00:00:48]Victor: [00:00:48] Well, you know, it’s, it’s sort of like, uh, nowadays in it, there’s a bunch of different job titles that will earn you money even like more money, even though you’re kind of doing. A similar thing that maybe 10 years ago [00:01:00] would have just been it admin. Right. And so it’s sorta like that. If you say polymath versus Jack of all trades, I think you can, you can. [00:01:07]Brett: [00:01:07] So last time you were on systematic. I was 34 years old. [00:01:12]Victor: [00:01:12] Holy cow. [00:01:13] Brett: [00:01:13] It has been eight years since, since we’ve talked on the show, we have talked in person even since then, [00:01:19]Victor: [00:01:19] That’s right. [00:01:21] Brett: [00:01:21] it’s been eight. I like, I vividly remember talking to you. About, uh, magic and comedy. And I did not realize how long it had been until I looked it up just before we said [00:01:33]Victor: [00:01:33] Time flies, man. [00:01:35] Brett: [00:01:35] so, uh, so what are you up to these days? [00:01:37]Victor: [00:01:37] Well, uh, it’s funny because I’m picking up magic again. Uh, comedy is obviously kind of off the, the. The plan with the pandemic. What I do know people who are doing comedy shows, there are still open mikes, believe it or not in my area. Um, but I’m not going to any of that stuff. I’ve, I’ve picked up magic is kind of a side thing to just kind of play with. [00:01:59] But that [00:02:00] routed me towards a couple of other things that are somewhat in my wheelhouse as well, which is, uh, puppets. And, um, I’ve, I’ve long been a fan of the Muppets last year. I read the well actually year before that I read the. Biography of Jim Henson and it was very inspirational. And so, uh, aside from my work as a writer and, and doing some PR and doing some other sort of side stuff, I’ve, I’ve really gotten into puppetry, um, and working on a little show with puppets that really talk about feelings and kind of the human condition. [00:02:34] Brett: [00:02:34] Wow. Yeah. So where I was on, uh, I didn’t interview with a puppet. I believe the name was Maddie. And so that was for this show. You’re speaking of. [00:02:47] Victor: [00:02:47] That’s correct. Yeah. Maddie is the station manager for QTF M and this is a group of puppets that have come from another dimension, uh, in this weird looking sort of tugboat, this interdimensional tugboat. Uh, I figure if [00:03:00] Dr who can ride around in a police box from the 1950s, uh, these guys can be in a, uh, a tug boat. [00:03:06] And, uh, QTF em, is this sort of pirate radio station from another dimension. And they’ve come here. Uh, somewhat accidentally, but also kind of on accidentally on purpose, uh, to study human beings and to learn about human beings. [00:03:19] Brett: [00:03:19] all right. And is this, is this live yet? [00:03:23]Victor: [00:03:23] Not yet. No, I’m, I’m, uh, I’m going to be slowly working on this, um, in my spare time and I’ve, I’ve conducted, you were actually the second interview that I did. And I’m working on about, I think, six more interviews and then we’ll have, I think four episodes, uh, that we’ll have all kinds of different things. [00:03:40] So I even have a little bit of magic that I practiced on Instagram live over the summer. When the pandemic really hit the lockdown hit, I was like, Oh, let’s try out some of this, you know, video magic stuff. And, and that was a fun experiment. [00:03:54] Brett: [00:03:54] Complete. Absolutely. Coincidentally, my last guest was David Wayne, who was also doing [00:04:00] magic on Instagram. [00:04:01]Victor: [00:04:01] Oh wild. What are the odds? [00:04:04] Brett: [00:04:04] And, and talking to you right now is making me realize there’s a friend of mine owns LARC toys in, I think it’s Kellogg, Minnesota. But it’s one of the, uh, one of the premier toy stores in the country and, uh, as kind of a creative outlet, he designs all of these puppets. [00:04:26] And, um, I, I guess they’re all, they’re all puppets. Even if you don’t put your hand in them, right. Like, So these big animatronics and like he has a blast, he has a, a huge troll puppet that controls a smaller puppet, like Maryann that style I should show you this stuff. You guys would get a kick out of each other’s work. [00:04:48] I’m sure of it. [00:04:50] Victor: [00:04:50] Yeah, that’s amazing. Well, I I’ve got some, I’ve actually got a raspberry PI and some servo motors and stuff. And so my son is, is really he’s on a robotics team and that’s [00:05:00] something that I think once the robotics season is over, we’re going to play with. Some possible robotic puppets are like assisted. [00:05:06] There’s actually a guy named Mario the magician. Uh, well, Mario, the maker magician, I think is actually his title and you should check out his stuff because he kind of reminds me of, I can’t remember her name now, but the one who did like the crazy robots, you know, that would like fling cereal and that kind of thing. [00:05:23] Um, it’s very kind of low tech stuff like that, but he uses them in a magical context and they’re wonderful. It’s, it’s a true merge of electronics and puppetry, but in this sort of cute DIY, you know, low tech, uh, uh, sort of almost like folk art way. [00:05:38] Brett: [00:05:38] I will find that for the show note. Sounds fascinating. So one of the topics that you pitched for this conversation was poker. Where does that fall into your life? Right now? [00:05:50] Victor: [00:05:50] So I can say even still in stealth mode that that’s, that’s something that the startup that we’re involved in. And I didn’t know a lot about poker. I mean, I [00:06:00] knew it, I played poker a little bit here and there, but I’ve never, I was never one of those, you know, you went with me to see yes. Uh, I think once or twice maybe, and I’m not a big poker player, I’m not a big gambler. [00:06:11] And so poker was never a thing that I really got, uh, into, but, uh, a buddy of mine from high school, Called me up last year. And it was like, Hey, I want to, you know, I mean, it’s the pandemic, right? So people were not, especially during the full lockdown, people were not going to poker rooms. And even now, if you look online, uh, I just watched somebody last night, call a poker game and it’s kinda, it’s kinda sad. [00:06:35] It looks like a moose lodge or something like that. You know, it’s just, it’s not a very. Enjoyable experience. And so we, uh, we got involved in sort of an online poker idea and that’s what we’re fleshing out right now. So I’m kind of getting this crash course in poker, and it’s really fascinating from a psychological standpoint, from the sort of game theory, standpoint and whatnot. [00:06:57] There’s just a lot of facets to it. And it’s [00:07:00] also a uniquely American game. [00:07:02]Brett: [00:07:02] sure. So it was funny when, when our check came, when this came up in our chat, I was in the middle of an episode of star Trek, the next generation. And, uh, it was, there was literally a poker game going on. One of those, one of those poker games that they used. It’s like object lessons for data. And it was, it was just funny, the coinciding of a conversation and television at the same time. [00:07:30] And it made me curious, if poker in this conversation was going to hold a deeper human meaning than just the game itself. [00:07:40]Victor: [00:07:40] Well, that’s, you know, that’s sort of, what’s interesting, right? Is that you can be mathematically adept. In fact, one of the people that I’ve, I’ve had the privilege of getting to know and work with is a guy named Barry Greenstein. And he, interestingly enough, he started in Silicon Valley. He was one of the early members of Symantec. [00:07:57] And for people who remember that [00:08:00] company. And as a matter of fact, he wrote a word processing, one of the first word processing programs, and bill Gates tried to snag him from Symantec. He was like, I don’t, I don’t want to go. I don’t want to go to Microsoft. Um, and that’s sort of the stubborn char

This week’s guest is David Wain, a writer, director, actor, comedian, talented musician and amateur magician, among other things. He and Brett talk about getting a show to Netflix, quarantine content production, and some great Top 3 Picks. Sponsor Uber for Business: Keep your customers and employees engaged and happy with vouchers for rides and food. Get a $50 voucher credit when you spend your first $200 at uber.com/systematicpod. Show Links davidwain.com Medical Police Instagram/DavidWain TikTok/@davidwain Collaborative music videos “What if They Sucked” PSA about masks with Paul Rudd SCTV nvUltra Bunch Top 3 Picks The Leftovers The Americans Hello Forever Eleven Occulus Quest Join the Community See you on Discord! Thanks! You’re downloading today’s show from CacheFly’s network BackBeat Media Podcast Network Check out more episodes at systematicpod.com and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcasting app. Find Brett as @ttscoff on all social media platforms, and follow Systematic at @systmcast on Twitter. Transcript David [00:00:00] Brett:This week’s guest is David Wayne. He’s a writer, director, actor, comedian, talented musician, and aspiring magician among other things. That’s great. We’ll have you back, David, David:always great to be back, Brett, how are you Brett:is it like your fourth time? David:could be, you know, I was just, I was just talking to a friend of mine that said, because people do ask me a lot to be on random podcasts and I. Basically usually say no, but when it’s somebody sort of nerdy like you I’m like yeah, of course. Brett:Wow. Thank you. Thank you. That is a that’s an honor. Why don’t you have a podcast? David:I haven’t gotten around to it. I will. I’m sure Brett:feel, I feel like if there’s one thing the world needs right now, it’s another white guy doing a podcast. David:exactly. That’s sort of the problem. Brett:So. David:Sort of the problem with anything I want to do these days, but Brett:I have to think, though, if you were going to do a podcast, you would [00:01:00] do something I’m going to say it would be a clever heartwarming and slightly uncomfortable, David:Could be. I mean, although I’ve thought about doing podcasts about. Uh, topics that are completely outside of what people think of me as you know, like using a podcast as a, as an Avenue to talk about something totally different, Brett:but David:you know, or do it, or do a podcast just about like Rubik’s cubing or something. Brett:Of actual interest you or just so out there, it throws everyone off. David:no of interest to me, but just on different slice. But then again, maybe I’m not as widely. Uh, I don’t have as much breadth as I think I do. And so it would be pointless. Brett:All right. Well, so last time we talked, uh, what had American summer first day of camp was I think just coming out, David:Oh, my goodness. That must been like four years ago. Brett:this was 2015. David:Okay. Six years ago. Brett:Um, so w since then you’ve had your IMD peep, [00:02:00] your IMDV page, uh, lists a lot of things. I know that, uh, you did a Netflix, Netflix, what do you want to call it? A pandemic comedy thriller David:Well, well, I mean, after that, I actually did two other things on Netflix before that made a movie, which was a biopic about, um, Doug Kenney, the founder of national Lampoon. And the maker of animal house. And then I did the wet, hot American summer 10 years later. Mini-series um, and then not too long after that, we did this show that you’re talking about called medical police, which is sort of a spinoff of our other show from adult swim children’s hospital, but is, uh, Action comedy globe trotting, mission, impossible James Bond kind of show that we made for very little money about a worldwide pandemic and two doctors who are recruited to become CIA type agents to help figure out the conspiracy. And they have to go all over the world with guns and, and, uh, and their medical smarts and it’s [00:03:00] called medical place. But it’s very silly and funny. Brett:and you’re released, you released it just under the wire to not be current events. David:Correct? Yes. It was about a worldwide pandemic and we, you know, it aired on Netflix in January of 2020. Um, so timing was not great on any level, Brett:so I know that wa uh, March, April, uh, the number one movie on Netflix was contagion David:right? Brett:and it showed up at like top movies on iTunes. All of these pandemic movies did, did, uh, did the. Uh, David:Medical police. I don’t think, I don’t think we received that sort of bump. I think people didn’t, weren’t aware that, uh, of the topic of our show. I mean, it really isn’t. Um, as much, it’s not really an exploration of what a pandemic is, like as much as it is just a dumb, funny comedy. Um, and it’s a very funny, very dumb comedy and I highly recommend everyone check it out Brett:so [00:04:00] well, okay. What is your, what’s your kind of pitch? David:to watch the show. Um, Brett:I, I get what it’s about. I get the, I get the David:I would say, well, I would give you two, I’ll give you two pitches. One is if you’re at Austin, no you with any of my previous work, whether it’s wet, hot American summer or role models or children’s hospital or the state or anything like that, then you will definitely, definitely love this show. It’s a great. Addition to the Canon of very, of a very specific comedic sensibility that, uh, you will like if you liked any of those things. I just mentioned on the other hand, if you’re not familiar and also if you ever saw the show children’s hospital, this is a direct spin-off of that with the same characters. Um, if you’re not familiar with any of that, I still recommended on this regard, which is to say, um, it’s a uniquely funny, very fast paced. Fun to watch 10 episode action comedy series with a one storyline that takes [00:05:00] you in a suspenseful way from beginning to end, um, where you’re kind of involved in the storyline as well as being, you know, entertained with comedy from beginning to end and, um, is also got an incredible all-star cast, including Henry Winkler. And, um, I mean, there’s just a. Brett:Chris pine was in her, right? David:Chris pine is the wet hot Brett:hot American summer. That’s right. David:Um, but it’s, it’s a, it’s an incredible ensemble cast and it’s a Jason Schwartzman. Isn’t it. And it’s, it’s um, it’s fun for anybody who likes anything funny. Brett:yeah, I binged it right after it came out and I thought. Oh, he doesn’t need to hear from some random podcasts or who, who enjoyed the show, but I did enjoy the show David:I’m glad. I’m glad you checked it out. I’m glad you enjoyed it. It got great reviews. It did not do great in terms of people watching it, a lot of them, but you know, whatever. Brett:Yeah. So how, what goes into, uh, okay, [00:06:00] so it wasn’t a smash hit. It didn’t make anyone millions of dollars, David:Well, of course, on Netflix, they, you never really find out any specific numbers. Anyway. That you just sort of goes on and then that’s the end of it, even if it does well. Um, but they probably would’ve ordered another, another series if they loved it, if it did really well, which it did. Brett:So how do you get a show from, from your laptop ideas sketches to a Netflix show? Like what’s the process there? David:well, I’m sure for every show, it’s a very different answer. Um, I could certainly answer in the case of this one, we had, there’s four of us that created this show together. Um, and we created it as an idea of how can we. We had ended children’s hospital in 2013 and we wanted to find, figure out a way to, we missed it and we missed the cast and we missed the, the whole group of, of creative people that worked together on it. [00:07:00] And we also missed the world that we had created, but we also felt like the show we had done for seven seasons on adult swim, which was a 15 minute. Hospital drama, hospital comedy in the form of a drama, um, had done it was done. And what could we do that was new and different, but kept what we loved. And so we just brainstormed for awhile, um, sitting in the backyard and ultimately landed on this idea of doing what I described this bigger palette action, half hour long comedy that has a. Uh, a much wider scope to it. Um, and, and, and the children’s hospital as a joke kept mentioning, Oh, by the way, this is all takes place in Brazil. And then we decided in the medical police to open that up in a real way and actually make it feel like it really was in Brazil at least to start. And then it goes all over the world during the series. Anyway. So to answer your question, [00:08:00] we brainstormed it and then we pitched it to the. Production company, which was Warner brothers that we had done children’s hospital with. They liked it. And then we wrote a script. I’m trying to remember now that was, um, that was passed on by another network. I can’t remember who he wrote it for. Um, and then w w even though. Uh, that happened after that, we were able to make a deal. Warner brothers studio was able to make a deal with Netflix to, to make the show for, for a certain price. And so it doesn’t sound very glamorous or fun of a story, but that’s how, that’s how that came to be in terms of going from idea to Greenlight. And it was everything I just said was like three years going, like it was not [00:09:00] a quick process by any stretch. Brett:So once you, once Netflix picked it up, then you go straight into production. Like you, you are the producer on that show, right? David:I’m the producer. I mean, basically the four of us that I mentioned, we were all producers and myself and Chris Johnson, Johnson and Rob Corddry. And, uh, we each did different. You know, we had different sort of specialties. John stern was also more than nuts and bolts production company that, that got the thing done in a certain way. Um, but yeah, essentially once we got a green light, the

This week’s guest is Jesse Grosjean, an independent developer known for WriteRoom, TaskPaper and a love of plain text. He joins Brett to talk coding, coffee, and board games. Sponsor Mint Mobile: Cut your wireless plan to $15 a month and get the plan shipped to your door for FREE by visiting mintmobile.com/systematic. Show Links twitter/@jessegrossjean WriteRoom TaskPaper FoldingText Rob Trew – @ComplexPoint – GitHub/RobTrew Rust Swift Notion Quip Top 3 Picks Wingspan Carcassonne (no longer available) Quest 2 Headset Morning Drinks Califia Farms – Oat Milk, Unsweetened Barista Blend Crema.co Join the Community See you on Discord! Thanks! You’re downloading today’s show from CacheFly’s network BackBeat Media Podcast Network Check out more episodes at systematicpod.com and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcasting app. Find Brett as @ttscoff on all social media platforms, and follow Systematic at @systmcast on Twitter. Transcript Jesse [00:00:00] Brett:My guest this week is Jesse Grosjean, an independent developer. How’s it going, Jessie? Jesse:Oh, good. Thanks for having me. Brett:Uh, you were last on in 2012. That is so long ago. Jesse:Yeah. Yeah. Um, it, I been programming ever since, although over time it seems like I programmed slower and slower, but that’s what I do. Brett:Is that just part of aging or are you becoming more careful in your, in your older years? Jesse:I don’t know. I think it’s, it’s part of, I have lots of fun programming and I learn more over time and I sort of, I think I get I’m Mo it at the moment. I’m more into like making my programs pretty and data structures and things. Not that I’m a super great person at that, but yeah. Uh, I don’t know. I’m very deep. Like, I, I can tell you the story of my last few years and it all [00:01:00] started out with all right, let’s see how to search a bunch of files. And now I’m like four years or three years into Russ programming and parallel programming and all this stuff. And it was all just to search a few files. Brett:Oh boy. Um, I have this habit, like I’ll start out a project with what I consider to be like a good. Bait like object. I don’t know what you call when you map out what properties and what objects and how everything’s going to interact. And then it gets out of hand so quickly. It’s I start adding too many properties and too many controllers. And, uh, my, my apps after a year ended up being unmanageable and I ended up having to start over. Jesse:Yeah. And I, for, for me, especially recently, I mean, I certainly have that problem. And what I do is I start over continuously and especially if I get stuck on something, my, my desktop is scattered with junk mail, junk, junk, junk, junk, junk, junk, all these little. [00:02:00] Junk things, trying to get all the mess out of the way. So I can actually figure out the massive, my existing program out of the way. So I can figure out what this one little attribute does or something. But, uh, it, I, at the moment I keep on going deeper and deeper into probably stupid. I don’t know. I just let’s see if we can reinvent this, you know, but it is fun and it’s very, go ahead. Brett:is this a, is this searching text files, uh, or searching files? Uh, is that your next project? Jesse:Yeah. I mean, basically previous my sort of application history that is inter the way I look at it. Anyway, I did a few apps early on that were just kind of learning how to develop Mac stuff. And then the first one I had success with big success was with Rite room, which is a very. Simple app that just blocks out your screen and does full screen mode. [00:03:00] And then, so the next step was task paper, which was okay. To-do list in a text file. People liked text files. I like text files. Let’s see how simple you can do that. And so task paper is a very simple syntax to make a to-do list. And I worked on that for a bit. And then. I wanted to, you know, always want to expand and make things, do more and stuff. And so the next step was folding text and that, um, the basics of has, it takes a marked on file, then it makes it so you can fold the various, like, you know, in a code text editor, how you can fold, um, regions of text. Well, it does that in markdown structure and then it also, um, I like outliners a lot. And so the, the underlying model is really an outliner and that’s the same thing with TaskPaper it’s outliners that feel like text editors and, um, [00:04:00] folding text ads, uh, also a query language. So you can filter the document by a query and it’s very sophisticated or complex or something like that, query language. And, uh, then. So, so that’s the direction I’ve been headed as time goes on, things get more complicated. I probably should have just stuck with right room, but then, then my, then my programming life would be boring. Um, and, but right room, I sort of R sorry, folding text was sort of the big effort, but I didn’t like the way it turned out, particularly, um, in that. I for all these apps, I kind of use them for the same thing, which is, I’m not a very organized person. I don’t keep like long journey. I mean, I try sometimes to do journals or something, but mostly it’s just like a pizza sketch paper. And I read out ideas on it, most of the time programming ideas, but I [00:05:00] just sort of, I’m very interested in the feel and the environment and folding text-based basing it on markdown, which. I on one hand think is great, but on the other hand, I don’t feel very calm in it with all the various things going on. And anyway, and also folding text while the sales started out great, they were dropping so that past paper was selling better. And so anyway, I did do after folding text or rewrite of task paper just to modernize it. But then my, my big project, well, all those projects, what they share in common is, uh, very much, uh, uh, plain text based approach. And then, uh, uh, strong, uh, rich, uh, I like to allow people to do plugins and things like that, so that they provide that kind of API APIs and the data model that people can change. Yeah. Extensibility. Yeah. Yeah. So I always think that’s [00:06:00] a fun, you know, I never use it basically ever in other other programs, I’m not really that kind of person, but just the idea really appeals to me. And I like it. You know, I have fun doing that anyway, providing it. Um, so they’ve all plain text files with extensibility and, you know, they’re focused. Maybe towards tasks or something, but basically there, they try to be flexible programs that you can use for lots of different ways. And so the next thing I want to do is make it so that you can support multiple files. Now, how hard can that be? And, uh, that’s what I’ve been working on since and in various forms. Um, but the, I guess the, the thing that, so basically my, my vision is. Very simple. You know, every code editor has this little file tree and you can browse through the files. And I liked that. Um, but [00:07:00] then for extensibility, I, there there’s a few details that I want different. And so for example, save searches are always something that, um, people talk about in applications and in task paper. And so task paper, I build a new separate UI for saved searches. And it shows up in the sidebar, right. And you click on it and it shows the search results. Um, with multiple files, I’m starting to think sort of, I think of it isn’t instead of a text-based UIs like a file based UI. So maybe there’s a new file type called search. And you just put that in one of your folders and it’s has a certain format, which saves your search, you know, in a plain text file. When you click on it, it will open a document, which. Show search results. And it seems to me like that’s a pretty extensible way you could do, you know, a calendar or it’s an extensible way. So you have a basic database of text files, and then you can have some text files, which are plugins [00:08:00] that they store their data and texts, but they show, you know, you can, they’re more user interface than what we think of as text file. If that makes any sense at all. right. I think they, yeah. And they that’s interesting cause yeah, I’ve tried both of them, but not in detail enough to actually have ever come across that, I guess with them. They’re both sort of apps that I love. Like, I think they’re really cool. And then I hate because there’s just, so I don’t know, it’s this foreign thing I assume. I mean, maybe it’s all plain text files that I can sync to my computer, but I don’t think it is. Um, and [00:09:00] like, I don’t know, like, I think they’re cool on one hand, but then I can’t, when I’m actually in the editor. It’s just, there’s so many different things that it can do that I don’t have that nice calm feeling. If that makes sense. I, I definitely have over the years, I don’t know that I’ve seen, I’m sure I haven’t seen it. I haven’t downloaded it. And you know, it’s been quite a while. Right. Brett:so, so there was envy old Jesse:That’s what I’m thinking Brett:Yeah, that’s been, that’s like a decade old and I, I, I stopped updating that because I started working on, uh, an app called bit writer. That was just basically going to be a modernized version of envy old. And then the guy I was working on that with just disappeared. Like I have no idea what happened to him. Stop responding to two emails, messages, just gone. Um, [00:10:00] Jesse:Never knew that it was such a phenomenon, but I guess it is. Brett:I, yeah, I’m a little worried. Like, it’s been a couple. Yeah. Since I, since I’ve heard a word, I have concerns, but so I let that, I let that project die after, after, uh, uh, kind of dragging dry, uh, what’s the PR making people, um, worry about it for like three years and, uh, eventually gave it up. And then, uh, Fletcher, penny, the guy who created multi-market down. Jesse:Yes. Yeah. Brett:he contacted me with like a rough draft of his version of envy guilt, and I got all ex

This week’s guest is Christina Warren, senior cloud advocate at Microsoft. She’s also my co-host on Overtired, so consider this a rare crossover episode. Sponsor Mint Mobile: Cut your wireless plan to $15 a month and get the plan shipped to your door for FREE by visiting mintmobile.com/systematic. Show Links @film_girl insta/film_girl Overtired Rocket Microsoft Developer on YouTube Top 3 Picks Elgato Camlink 4k Reincubate Camo OBS Wirecast Tricaster mimoLive eCamm Live Visual Studio Code FoldingText 1Password Join the Community See you on Discord! Thanks! You’re downloading today’s show from CacheFly’s network BackBeat Media Podcast Network Check out more episodes at systematicpod.com and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcasting app. Find Brett as @ttscoff on all social media platforms, and follow Systematic at @systmcast on Twitter.

This week’s guest is Jesse Atkinson, a software engineer at Credit Karma. He joins Brett to discuss modern web development, keyboards, movies, and the rabbit holes of new hardware. Sponsor This episode is sponsored by: Uber for Business: Keep your customers and employees engaged and happy with vouchers for rides and food. Get a $50 voucher credit when you spend your first $200 at uber.com/systematicpod. PDFpen: The ultimate tool for working with PDFs on Mac, iPad and iPhone. Learn more about PDFpen and PDFpenPro at smilesoftware.com. Show Links Jesse Atkinson @jsatk Credit Karma scala Breathless put.io Synology keyboard.io Top 3 Picks Getting a financial advisor YNAB. Personal Budgeting Software for Windows, Mac, iOS and Android The Sopranos The Talking Sopranos podcast Deadwood Wikipedia: Grimdark Blood Meridian As I Lay Dying Hades The Last of Us Join the Community See you on Discord! Thanks! You’re downloading today’s show from CacheFly’s network BackBeat Media Podcast Network Check out more episodes at systematicpod.com and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcasting app. Find Brett as @ttscoff on all social media platforms, and follow Systematic at @systmcast on Twitter. Transcript Brett [00:00:00] Brett: [00:00:00] This week’s guest is Jesse Atkinson, a software engineer at credit karma, and a return guests to Ben since about 2018. How’s it going? Jessie [00:00:09]Jesse: [00:00:09] Uh, it’s going really good. Uh, I mean, relatively speaking state of the world of interesting right now, but it’s going well. Good. [00:00:17] Brett: [00:00:17] standard response. These days is a really good considering. So you’re working at credit karma now. Uh, what, what kind of stuff are you doing there? [00:00:28]Jesse: [00:00:28] Yeah. I’ve been, um, my kind of like my history and I might’ve went over this a little bit on the last one. So sorry if you, this is repeat for you, but yeah, I started like in 2010 doing real old school web. Design like taking Photoshop, designing what a website would look into Photoshop document, adding up the assets, turning that into HTML and CSS and, you know, um, and I, and I, I do have a college degree, but [00:01:00] I joke that my, uh, know bachelor in computer is mostly used this. [00:01:05] Like it’s mostly self-taught because what I learned was like, uh, you know, How to do Pearl and how to do like PHP. And I didn’t end up using any of that. And it was very outdated anyways. And so I, even though I have a degree, I largely consider myself self taught, uh, and moved into web design and web design, and naturally grew into what we have now, or like things like Spotify, half discord, half, they actually run our quote unquote web pages, but they’re full on web apps. [00:01:37] So if you. We’re a front end web designer, web developer, over the past decade, you’ve naturally grown into probably warning, many different JavaScript frameworks. And, uh, every year it feels, it feels like you’re never off the treadmill. You’re never off the sort of mouse wheel of learning. And so I’ve [00:02:00] been doing that for a while and I got, um, really interested in functional programming. [00:02:07] And really interested in just, uh, anytime I get really comfortable in what I’m doing. Um, I’m like, well now I’m bored. I’m not learning anymore. And so I really wanted to dive into functional programming and that kind of led me to Scala, which is one of the Kings of, I guess, that world right now, um, very math centric kind of community, uh, And completely scared me. [00:02:34] I had never dealt with anything Java or the JVM, uh, that world just terrified me. And so I started looking for jobs in that space and, uh, really dove, headlong into it and have been there something like 16 months. And, uh, you know, I F I feel like I’m pretty, pretty good at it. Now I actually [00:03:00] teach the. Class now with the, at the, uh, at credit karma, like I teach the like new hire class for learning Scala and like here’s an intro to Scala and I’ve so clearly I’ve done something right there, but yeah, it’s a, it’s a radical shift from front end for sure. [00:03:18]Brett: [00:03:18] Great. You decided you wanted to learn not just a new language, but an entire new kind of paradigm of programming. So you will. I immediately looked for a job. [00:03:29]Jesse: [00:03:29] SI sort of, uh, like I was doing it on the side. I’m very bad at, uh, I have the rare and radical belief, at least in Silicon Valley world, that 40 hours a week is a lot. Um, I think that’s a lot of time personally. I don’t, I’m not, I don’t rise and grind. I’m not a hustler. Uh, you know, maybe it’s my. Well, I was raised Midwestern and you know, my dad, mum, both just worked [00:04:00] simple, nice nine to five jobs and, and whatever. [00:04:03] I had a nice life. Um, and so I’ve always really struggled. I’ve never been the guy to work all day and then come home and like crack open the latest coding book or like work on my side project or whatever. Um, I mean, you’re a perfect example of somebody who, uh, I mean, part of our friendship is like me discovering it blog and kind of being in awe of and jealous of how productive you were and all this tooling. [00:04:32] And, and, you know, literally as we talk, I’m looking at marked right now, like I have a marked open, you know, and so I was always very jealous of that, but I, I personally have struggled to. Do that in my free time. And so it’s always been, I need to, I need to learn on the job because there’s no way like 9:00 PM on a Tuesday. [00:04:50] I’m going to be like, all right, let me sit down and like learn Scala now. Like when it has nothing to do with my day job, it’s just not going to happen. [00:04:57] Brett: [00:04:57] So did you apply for a [00:05:00] job like that? Do they not like w w w the times I’ve interviewed at places like Google, they make you do like live coding tests. And you have to like, prove that you understand at least the, like, they didn’t care so much if I knew a particular framework, but I had to demonstrate competency with a language. [00:05:20] Uh, did you have to, did you have to learn enough to get through an interview process? [00:05:25]Jesse: [00:05:25] No, because so most places I’ve interviewed now. So when I had been forcing myself to learn to a small degree, but, um, when I interviewed, you know, they’re like, Oh, pick whatever language you. Or comfortable in, and then you kind of have to solve the, the sort of coding riddle that they put in front of you. [00:05:46] Um, and in this particular case, there were, you know, Hey, we have an opening over here and it was more, it was in JavaScripts or now everybody’s using TypeScript, but whatever, same difference. Um, and then, then make [00:06:00] also, but you’re more interested in this other job. And I was like, yes. And they’re like, well, I kind of had to talk to the hiring manager and be like, Hey, I’m a fast Horner. [00:06:06] I promise all. Oh, I won’t suck. I promise. Uh, you know, so they, so they liked me. I passed the interview. Um, but yeah, I did kind of have to sell them a little bit and it worked out and, uh, I don’t know, but yeah, it’s, [00:06:20] Brett: [00:06:20] really cool, dude. [00:06:21] Jesse: [00:06:21] it’s going on. [00:06:22] Brett: [00:06:22] I really, [00:06:23] Jesse: [00:06:23] Thanks. [00:06:24]Brett: [00:06:24] like, I appreciate first the, uh, the more laid back approach to Silicon Valley that is. That is admirable in my opinion, but the ability to get the job in order to learn something, I, I can respect that. That’s really cool. [00:06:40]Jesse: [00:06:40] Thanks. Yeah. I, I don’t, uh, I guess, I don’t know. This sounds so cheesy. I just, I’m always going to be a student. I don’t like, I think when I’m 65, I’m going to be wording something I’m not comfortable. I dunno, I’ve never been comfortable, like resting on my [00:07:00] world foot. You know, I have very limited, very, very small laurels, I guess, whatever a Laurel is, but, uh, yeah, I’ve never been like I’d have made it cool and done, like the idea of like going to school, your whole, uh, w you know, first 24 years or 22 years of existence, or, you know, for some longer in school is very intense. [00:07:23] And then getting up school and your first shopping, that’s often intense, you know, it’s very intense tense, tense, and then just completely shifting gears. So like, okay, now I am, I’m in my thirties, forties, and now I’m just going to not use any of those skills I learned and really just write emails all day, you know? [00:07:44] Uh, it’s not, I’m, I’m, I’m being a little glib. I don’t mean to oversimplify like a management position, but. It’s just not appeal to me. I don’t, yeah, [00:07:53] Brett: [00:07:53] Yeah, no, there’s a, it’s weird that managers get paid more than their employees. A lot of [00:08:00] times because the employees often. They don’t, they don’t want to be managers. Their, uh, their upward mobility is not about getting a management position. That’s a whole different, like, track to be on. [00:08:13]Jesse: [00:08:13] Yeah, I’ve, I’ve definitely been talked to a few times about like, Hey, what’s the next step for you? Are you interested in management? And you know, I do. I do think I have pretty good soft skills. And like I mentioned, like I’ve mentored some folks, uh, quite a bit and uh, like, Oh, Hey, you’re good with people. [00:08:33] You want to be manager? And I’m like, no, no, I want, I want to mentor people. I want to teach, but I don’t, uh, I’m not a product guy at all. Um, And, and so I couldn’t go to meetings and have someone say, Hey, you know, what do you like talking about the product and what I think for the product, I would be like, no, I want you to tell me what to build and I’ll go build it, but I’m not like a product visionary type. [00:08:57]Brett: [00:08:57] See, I think, I think that’s where, like I [00:09:00] always thought product manager

This week’s guest is Nikki Kinzer, ADHD coach and co-host of Taking Control: The ADHD podcast. She joins Brett to talk about ADHD coaching, the transition from organization professional to ADHD coach, and the joys of online grocery shopping, and more. Sponsor This episode is sponsored by Uber for Business. Keep your customers and employees engaged and happy with vouchers for rides and food. Get a $50 voucher credit when you spend your first $200 at uber.com/systematicpod. Show Links Nikki Kinzer – Take Control of Your ADHD facebook.com/takecontroladhd Taking Control the ADHD Podcast Pomodoro Technique Body Doubling Melissa Orlov ADHD and Marriage Top 3 Picks Untamed — Glennon Doyle Design Home Grocery Shopping Online Hello Fresh Green Chef Bravus NA Beer Misen knives and pans Grubhub Join the Community See you on Discord! Thanks! You’re downloading today’s show from CacheFly’s network BackBeat Media Podcast Network Check out more episodes at systematicpod.com and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcasting app. Find Brett as @ttscoff on all social media platforms, and follow Systematic at @systmcast on Twitter.

This week’s guest is Howard Buddin, a neuropsychologist and four-time guest on Systematic. He joins Brett to talk offer his perspectives on psychological health in and out of quarantine. Sponsored by TextExpander If you want to get ahead of your productivity for the New Year, TextExpander is going to be your new best friend. Show listeners get 20% off their first year: visit textexpander.com/podcast to learn more. BetterHelp BetterHelp.com, affordable professional therapy and counseling from the comfort of your home. Get 10% off your first month by visiting BetterHelp.com/systematic. Show Links @hbuddin SCNeuro Marked 2 Top 3 Picks Orange Micro Dark LEENALCHI Kite on Spotify Phillips Hue Join the Community See you on Discord! Thanks! You’re downloading today’s show from CacheFly’s network BackBeat Media Podcast Network Check out more episodes at systematicpod.com and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcasting app. Find Brett as @ttscoff on all social media platforms, and follow Systematic at @systmcast on Twitter. Transcript Howard [00:00:00] Brett: [00:00:00] This week’s guest is Howard Buddin, a neuropsychologist, and four time guests on systematic. It’s great to have you back, Howard. [00:00:07] Howard: [00:00:07] Great to be back. Thanks. [00:00:09] Brett: [00:00:09] It’s been, yeah, it’s been about five years since we last talked. So I I’m going to assume a lot has happened. When we last talked, you had finished your postdoc, you had opened up, S C neuro it, I know that’s the web address. [00:00:22] Is there a longer name for that? No, it’s called SC neuro. [00:00:26] Howard: [00:00:26] just the neuro I mean, the it’s a short version sort of, of South Carolina. Neuro-psychology [00:00:33] Brett: [00:00:33] Yeah. I, I did put that together, so [00:00:36] Howard: [00:00:36] when I, yeah, when I was coming up with it, I want it, you know, uh, my, my wife, uh, a lot of what she does involves marketing, um, branding, advertising, et cetera, for small businesses. And so, you know, sort of by association, I I’ve adopted and learned a lot from her. [00:00:53] And one of the things is like, eh, make it easy. Right? Uh, you have, yeah. You have people who have these. [00:01:00] Horrible, uh, business names and emails, right. That just take you an hour to type out. And I didn’t want that. So yeah, I seen neuro [00:01:07] Brett: [00:01:07] anything with the word neuro-psychology and it would be unmarketable it’s just too hard to say. [00:01:14] Howard: [00:01:14] Yep. [00:01:15] Brett: [00:01:15] Yeah. So how’s the clinic going? [00:01:17]Howard: [00:01:17] Um, it is going, uh, it is going really well by most measures. Um, Of course with the pandemic this past year has made things interesting in a lot of respects. Um, we’ve had to adjust a lot for changing, um, like how we deliver services, right. Um, how we see patients, uh, in addition to keeping up with the. [00:01:42]Governmental and health insurance, billing Like it’s, it’s, it’s been a lot, but, um, we we’ve kept things running and kept everybody, uh, fortunately employed and, uh, had been able to keep, keep seeing patients. But, uh, yeah, we’ve [00:02:00] grown, grown quite a lot in the last five years. I went from a. Just one man operation more or less two, um, hiring on, uh, several employees, including, uh, opening a second clinic, uh, hiring a doc doctor, run that one and, uh, you know, fantastic support staff, office manager, et cetera. [00:02:23] So, yeah. [00:02:25] Brett: [00:02:25] that’s awesome. You guys doing a lot of, uh, tele health now? [00:02:29]Howard: [00:02:29] Yeah. Yeah. Um, in the, uh, early, early days of the pandemic, um, we, we almost Mo we, we more or less kind of shut down if you will, uh, for a couple of weeks and just did kind of limited tele-health as we were kind of getting that stuff set up. Um, and now that we’re sort of in the swing of things, um, we probably do. [00:02:53]Uh, I, I want to say like 70% of appointments are telehealth. Um, sort of [00:03:00] the unofficial rule is like, we want all patients to do tele-health and less when you’re calling to schedule the appointment, you know, if they say something like what’s a computer, uh, you know, then we’ll, we’ll, we’ll work it for an inpatient visit, but otherwise, um, you know, we try to minimize exposure like that. [00:03:17] And for in-office visits, they’re set up so that. We’re only, we only ever have one patient in the clinic at a time. Um, and they’re spaced far apart to give us time between patients to walk through the office and do, you know, grab the sanitation wipes and wipe everything down and, um, get prepped up for the next person. [00:03:37] So we’re, we’re doing our best, you know, to minimize the risk of transmission. Um, you know, of course being. Directly involved in healthcare delivery, like, and a lot of our patients being that in that older sort of more vulnerable group of [00:03:51] Brett: [00:03:51] sure. Yeah. [00:03:52] Howard: [00:03:52] um, you know, the, the risk is higher still. So we want to protect ourselves, right. [00:03:58] Uh, myself, my employees, as well [00:04:00] as, um, make sure that we’re not, you know, a spreader kind of node or vector. So [00:04:07] Brett: [00:04:07] So how have the types of problems you’ve seen, um, have they changed with the, the pandemic? Are you seeing more certain types of stress or, I mean, there are obvious answers to that, but. [00:04:21]Howard: [00:04:21] Yeah. The, the biggest one, um, as far as like, right. So, so people generally are going to be more stressed out because. Almost almost all at once. Um, all of the normal Moore’s of our daily activities and so forth, right. The anchors of stability that we really fail to appreciate, and day-to-day life were just sort of ripped out of the ground. [00:04:45] Right. Um, so when, when, when that stuff happens, right, people are going to get upset and stressed, but, um, we’re seeing in, and you’ve seen in the last couple of months, probably a lot more articles have been popping up online about the mental [00:05:00] health side of things, um, as a result of the pandemic. Um, yeah, that’s been going on here and I’ve. [00:05:07] Talk to other doctors or you know, of different, um, specialties around, uh, around and about. And we’re all seeing kind of the same thing, which is, yeah. People are coming in with really people. Who’ve never had problems before on the behavioral or cognitive side are showing up with problems. Um, primarily related to like attention and concentration and memory, um, and, uh, heightened anxiety and symptoms of depression. [00:05:35] Um, those are the big ones. Um, and without getting too, too long into it, you know, you know, there’s a, always a relationship between your mental health and your physical and cognitive abilities and health. Right. Like, it’s easy to think of, right? If you get the flu, you’re not going to be able to do the things as well as you usually do them. [00:05:55] And if at all, it’s the same thing. If you’re stressed out anxious, depressed, right. You’re not going [00:06:00] to be sleeping. You know, a lot of people have like severely disrupted sleep, um, that has an impact on cognition. Um, and so yeah, people just show up that are completely out of sorts or, you know, if they’ve been well-managed, you know, like with depressive or anxious, Um, conditions for years, it’s all of a sudden these symptoms have just blown up out of control [00:06:19] Brett: [00:06:19] Sure. [00:06:20] Howard: [00:06:20] it, it it’s, it’s the wild West. [00:06:22] It’s like hard to manage on our end. We’re kind of like, Ooh, [00:06:25]Brett: [00:06:25] Yeah. Um, the anxiety doesn’t surprise me at all, but the, uh, attention and memory is that, uh, correlated with anxiety or is that something specific to kind of pandemic life? [00:06:38] Howard: [00:06:38] Yeah, so good. Good. That’s a great, great question. At the best way to think of it is, um, Like like this. Okay. So we’ve got to pay attention to, um, things without him within, in other words, uh, if you’re driving down the road, there’s a lot to pay attention to, right? All the cars around you. And if you go to shift lanes, you’ve got to look over [00:07:00] and make sure there’s no cars next to you, et cetera. [00:07:01] Um, so you’re paying attention to what’s going on out in the wide world. Um, but you’ve also got to pay attention to the things that are in your head, right? Like you’re. On your way to the grocery store, let’s say you’re driving. Right. And you think like, Oh yeah, I need to also pick up some eggs. Right? So you’re focused on the stuff that’s going on in your head and, and the outside world. [00:07:25] Now, your brain is built to rapidly shift. Back and forth, uh, rapidly shift attention, back and forth, um, between, you know, whatever it is you need to focus on. Um, but what happens when your, um, anxiety kicks up, stress kicks up really high as he is. You’re more likely to spend more and more time worrying. [00:07:50] Right. Thinking, um, about what’s going on right now, or what’s coming down the pike in the future. And so you have this buildup [00:08:00] of thoughts that you’ve got to focus your attention on and therefore your brain you’ve got less cognitive wattage to direct, to focusing on what’s going on in the outside world. [00:08:11] Okay. Now the final piece to this is that. Um, if you’re not focused on something, um, then it’s unlikely, uh, are the chances that it makes it whatever it is going on. The chances that makes it into memory are significantly reduced. Right. Um, you know, it’s like if I, if I asked my kids, even, I’ll say like, remember to put your plates away. [00:08:35] Uh, after you eat and if they’re watching TV then, or they go, Oh, okay. Okay. Right. And I’ll say, what did I just say? And they’ll even characterize it as a memory thing. Oh, I don’t remember. Right. But really they just weren’t paying at

This week’s guest is Ashley Esqueda, senior producer at CNET and woman about the internet. She joins Brett to talk about producing video at home, gaming, and some media picks worth talking about. Sponsor BetterHelp.com, affordable professional therapy and counseling from the comfort of your home. Get 10% off your first month by visiting BetterHelp.com/systematic. Show Links @ashleyesqueda Red Ventures Alpha Comic Book Club Elgato Collapsible Green Screen Neewer Camera Slider Neewer 18" Ring Light Aputure MC Light Aputure MC 12-light kit OBS Studio Cyberpunk 2077 Cyberpunk 2077 glitch Among Us The 52 things Disney just announced Top 3 Picks Spirit Farer Solutions and Other Problems Hyperbole and a Half Broken in the Best Possible Way You Are Here an Owner’s Manual for Dangerous Minds The Mandalorian Gallery: The Mandalorian Brett’s extras: Ultimate Hacking Keyboard 60 v2 Children of Blood and Bone Children of Virtue and Vengeance Join the Community See you on Discord! Thanks! You’re downloading today’s show from CacheFly’s network BackBeat Media Podcast Network Check out more episodes at systematicpod.com and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcasting app. Find Brett as @ttscoff on all social media platforms, and follow Systematic at @systmcast on Twitter. Transcript Ashley [00:00:00]Brett: [00:00:00] This week’s guest is Ashley Esqueda, senior producer at CNET and woman about the internet. Welcome back to the show, Ashley. [00:00:08] Ashley: [00:00:08] You for having me back? I it’s been a few years, so I figured I was on a black list. [00:00:12] Brett: [00:00:12] No, there was a year in there where systematic was just off the air. [00:00:18] Ashley: [00:00:18] I got, Oh, okay. I see. I see. [00:00:19] Brett: [00:00:19] I burnt out, I guess. [00:00:22] Ashley: [00:00:22] My PR it was so bad. My last appearance was so bad that you had to take a year long break [00:00:28] Brett: [00:00:28] was a slow burn because your last appearance was in 2015 and it just took until about 2019 for it really to sink in. [00:00:36] Ashley: [00:00:36] I get it. I get it. Have that effect on people years later, they realize what have I done? [00:00:43] Brett: [00:00:43] So how’s the pandemic treating you? [00:00:45]Ashley: [00:00:45] You know, uh, what is good anymore? It’s as we’ve discussed, it’s all relative, right? So I’m, we’re surviving. That seems we’re very fortunate. Um, we’re very we’re we are very grateful to still be [00:01:00] employed. Um, we are very grateful that, uh, we do not have to do distance learning because our. Son who was born last year is too little for that. [00:01:10] Um, we are, we are feeling very grateful for those things and, um, and just grateful that, uh, you know, the people that are closest to us have stayed for the most part, very healthy, um, and. Safe. So we’re, you know, it’s a, you know, the holiday season, you kind of start thinking of yourself, but all the things you’re grateful for, the things that you’re, you know, that you want to keep safe, the things that you care about. [00:01:35] And, um, all of those things have held thus far. So I will take it as a win. [00:01:40] Brett: [00:01:40] So when you say you’re still employed, um, what, what does your current job entail? [00:01:47] Ashley: [00:01:47] So I, well, it’s been a fun year for CNET. So, uh, if, if you hadn’t heard, we were sold, um, we do not. Uh, any longer have CBS as a parent company, [00:02:00] we are now owned by red ventures, um, who owns a lot of websites that you might be familiar with? They own, the point sky is one that a lot of people are familiar with. [00:02:09] Um, and so they. Yeah, good old Darren. Um, and so, uh, there are a lot of, uh, sites under sort of the CMG, uh, Seanet media group, um, banner that, that red ventures now own. So like GameSpot, um, Metacritic like all of the sites that CBS had, like a lot of them in interactive and digital have now moved over to red ventures. [00:02:33] So, um, so, but I’m still doing the same thing, which is, uh, that I’ve been doing for almost seven years now. I’m, I’m producing and hosting a video about technology and, uh, and all of the things that touch it, which at this point is pretty much any, anything is fair game, as long as it kind of plugs in or powers on. [00:02:51] Right. [00:02:52]Brett: [00:02:52] Yeah. So are you you’re producing and doing on-air stuff from home? [00:03:00] [00:03:00] Ashley: [00:03:00] Yes, uh, that has been a challenge. Um, I so funny story. So at the beginning of this year, um, I had just come back from maternity leave in November of 2019. And, uh, we had finished CES and I talked to my boss and I said, Hey, like I have a seven month old. Um, I’d really love to kind of spend a little more time at home. [00:03:24] Um, and the office that we were in was sort of a shared space with a lot of other CBS teams. So we struggled, uh, from time to time getting booking a space in our studio and, um, And so I said, Hey, like, because that’s the case, like I could really do something at my home office. That would be nice. Um, and he said, yeah, that seems fine. [00:03:44] Like, I’m willing to let you do that. You you’re pretty self-sufficient. And as long as you guys feel, um, at team LA that you could do your job like that. That’s cool. So, um, Huge huge props to my boss for allowing me to even just look into that. [00:04:00] Um, and as I was looking into it and sort of, kind of tinkering around with the idea, boom, the pandemic hit. [00:04:04] And so I was a little bit ahead of the curve on having a set up, um, to record from, um, compared to some of my other colleagues at work who were taken, uh, quite a bit by surprise. And the San Francisco office for seeing is. You know, it’s a, it’s a major office. It’s where most of our employees are and they have full studios there that they shoot in, in New York as well. [00:04:27] So, um, that was a little bit of a, more of a shock for them, uh, to have to work from home, shoot from home. Um, then, then, you know, maybe me, so, um, I got to work, right? So I cleaned out my office, which was. Up until that point a storage space for all of the baby stuff people had given us. Uh, and, and I just had not gotten around to cleaning it up. [00:04:50] And with the help of my very lovely husband, I was able to clear the space out and kind of rework some of my furniture. Uh, thanks to animal crossing for [00:05:00] inspiring me to keep furniture away from my walls at certain points, because that was actually very oddly helpful, uh, in figuring out how to sort of Tetris all of this together. [00:05:09] So now, um, as it stands, I actually have three different shooting spaces in about a 10 by 10, uh, office in my house. So I’ve got a desk space that is sort of a streamer setup. Uh, and it’s kind of where I do all my video meetings and there’s a bookshelf behind it, very sort of classic, uh, desk set up. And then I also have a vlogging set, which is a seated set. [00:05:34] I have a chair there it’s, it’s free standing. There’s no desk in front of it. Uh, and that is sort of more of a set set. I painted the walls matte black. I have acoustic foam on those walls. Um, I have a shelf in the back. That’s a curated collection of items that some that are some functional and some fun. [00:05:52] So, um, And then I also have an El Gato pop-up green screen, just in case I need to do a casting. So I’ve done a couple of [00:06:00] Splatoon online tournaments. I’ve done some e-sports casting with Nintendo, and I have continued to do that during the pandemic. So yeah, multiple shooting setups in here and throughout the year, I’ve kind of upgraded my gear and I just bought a new slider, which has been very exciting. [00:06:16] Cause I wanted to kind of up my B roll game. I shoot all this now by myself. It’s people send product and then I have to do all the B roll. I have to do, you know, the script and I have to sit down and then be the host. And then I have to sit down and figure out, you know, how I’m going to do transitions and, and get all the shots that my editors need and then, you know, upload all of that. [00:06:36] So it’s been, it’s been a year. It has been a tough year of adjustment, but, um, but fortunately I think that extra few weeks, like really kind of. Gave me a headstart in the way of figuring out how I could make this work. And, um, and now officially I’m I’m I think we in Los Angeles are permanent remote employees because red ventures is based in, um, back East. [00:07:00] [00:06:59] So we were kind of, the Burbank office in particular is, uh, we’re kind of like, Oh, okay, well, I guess we all just work from home, at least for now. Like, I mean, per you know, who knows if it’ll be permanent, permanent, or if it’s just like permanently until something really big changes. [00:07:14] Brett: [00:07:14] I have several questions. [00:07:16] Ashley: [00:07:16] Okay, please. [00:07:17] Brett: [00:07:17] First of all, what, when you say a slider, what is a slider? [00:07:21] Ashley: [00:07:21] So a slider is, uh, it’s this really lovely piece of equipment. And it usually is where you Mount your camera on top and then there’s some ball-bearings. So you get these really smooth. Um, side to side shots or going, you know, from kind of, if you ever watch a movie being made, you’ll see sort of, uh, the really big cameras on rails with the director. [00:07:44] And they’re like watching as like the camera moves forward. Okay. It’s similar to that, but much, much smaller. I’m definitely not sitting on it. Um, it’s just for the camera. And so you, uh, you put it, you Mount your camera on there and then you can slide your camera as it’s recording, uh, left to. Right. [00:08:00] Or if you, you know, rotate it. [00:08:01] You can go front to back. So it’s, um, it’s been very, very handy getting those really nice, like smooth B roll shots of, uh, products. So it’s, I really am loving the one tha

This week’s guest is Pete Wright, podcaster, producer, and photographer. You may know him as the co-host of Taking Control: The ADHD Podcast. He joins us to talk about podcasting, movies, music, COVID-19 and a dizzying array of topics that only two ADHD podcasters could fit into an hour. Sponsor BetterHelp.com, affordable professional therapy and counseling from the comfort of your home. Get 10% off your first month by visiting BetterHelp.com/systematic. Show Links Pete’s Links Find Pete podcasting at TruStory.FM @petewright on Twitter Bartender Setapp The Next Reel Underworld Mythbusters: Shooting holes in a floor The Next Reel on Instagram Wobbly Board Wobbly Stool Pogo balls Bare Naked Ladies: Gordon Prince – Lovesexy Peter Murphy – Deep pomDeter – Call Me A Hole billie eilish You Should See Me in a Crown Dr. Sharon Saline on Take Control Top 3 Picks Radiant Saunas BSA6315 Harmony Deluxe Oversized Portable Sauna Withings BPM Connect Blood Pressure Cuff Prince: The Official Podcast Prince – Official Website Join the Community See you on Discord! Thanks! Thanks to BetterHelp.com for sponsoring this podcast. You’re downloading today’s show from CacheFly’s network BackBeat Media Podcast Network Check out more episodes at systematicpod.com and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcasting app. Find Brett as @ttscoff on all social media platforms, and follow Systematic at @systmcast on Twitter. Transcript Pete [00:00:00]Brett: [00:00:00] this week’s guest is Pete Wright. Uh, podcasts are producer and photographer among many other things. I know him as the co-host of taking control of the ADHD podcast. Welcome to the show, Pete. [00:00:13] Pete: [00:00:13] Hey, Brett, glad to be here. [00:00:15] Brett: [00:00:15] So I, as far as your kind of day job goes, podcasts are a big part of your life. Is that fair? [00:00:22] Pete: [00:00:22] Yeah. Big, big part. Yeah. We’ve got, I’ve got, uh, I don’t know. It’s feels like 13 shows, something like that, whether it’s whether I’m producing for myself, like our personal shows or, uh, or for clients 13, 14, somewhere in there. [00:00:37] Brett: [00:00:37] Yeah, like a whole network’s worth. [00:00:39] Pete: [00:00:39] Yeah. True story.fm. Uh, and that’ll be the last blog. I don’t. I promise. [00:00:45] Brett: [00:00:45] Fair enough. Um, your, uh, your co-host on the ADHD podcast, Nikki is, uh, is scheduled to be a guest on this show as well. Um, she, she, she, her more from the, uh, [00:01:00] ADHD coach perspective than, than you’ll have, but [00:01:04] Pete: [00:01:04] no, I just, I just have the ADHD. She’s the coach part and that’s, that’s why we’re, you know, we’re like the wonder twins of ADHD, podcasting. So. She’s great. She’s amazing. I, I, we’ve been doing the show for 10 years this year and, uh, it’s been the community that’s come up around. It has been just really, uh, you know, for me personally is living with ADHD and my special brand of it. [00:01:24] Uh it’s the community has been incredible, um, for, for me. It’s great. [00:01:31] Brett: [00:01:31] Yeah, for sure. Um, we have a discord for overtired and systematic and the overtired discord has. Become pretty much an ADHD conversation place. Um, yeah, no, it’s really, it’s, it’s fun to connect with, uh, people who I guess know how to live with and work with their ADHD. if you spend too much time hearing from people who are [00:02:00] doing nothing, but, but suffering, like it’s fun to commiserate with people as well. But it’s really exciting to get like positive feedback from people too. [00:02:10] Pete: [00:02:10] It is, but, you know, for me, like, I really love hanging out with people who are, who are living with ADHD and people who are struggling to live with ADHD, but are trying and that, but are trying carries a lot of weight because like, that is a huge difference in the kind of people that are attracts, certainly attracted to our show and our community. [00:02:27] And we’ve got the discourse over too. And, um, it it’s just so illuminating when people come and have already given up and. You see the turnaround and they recognize that they’ve given up by just dent of hanging out in the server and watching people who are doing amazing things with their ADHD. Um, so it’s, it’s really cool. [00:02:52] Brett: [00:02:52] Well, I would say you you’ve been, uh, you’ve been a pretty successful, a good success story for ADHD [00:03:00] adult life. Um, what, what would you say if you had to say, uh, that there were benefits to ADHD, how would you, how would you coin that? [00:03:12]Pete: [00:03:12] I, uh, so, um, the, when, when I can control hyper-focus. It’s definitely a benefit. You know what I mean? Like I just find, I, I, I hear this a lot in people, particularly in the sort of people who don’t have ADHD, they’re saying ADHD is a superpower and hyper-focus is a superpower. And I just, I really. I hate it. [00:03:36] I hate that because like, those are people who don’t recognize that all the super power stuff is totally unregulated. Like I can’t control when I need to rip all my CD collection over a weekend. Like I can’t control, I can’t control that. And I can’t control when I’m working on a website and I forgotten to eat for 72 hours. [00:03:57] Like I can’t control that and it [00:04:00] directly impacts my health. And we had somebody on our show who said, um, You know, who told us that, uh, ADHD is, is one of those massively under, um, uh, acknowledged conditions. Just how dangerous it is that people with ADHD have a 12 year shorter lifespan than people who. [00:04:19] Or without ADHD because they don’t do things like take their medication. They don’t do things like, like, and not ADHD meds, like their heart medication. They don’t eat, they just eat cereal all the time. Like they just don’t take care of themselves because it’s it’s, their, their brain is not functioning in the, in the way that the system expects it to. [00:04:39] Function and that’s what makes it just so insidious. And so, you know, in terms of silver, silver linings, I’m I like to think I’m a pretty creative guy. And, um, I struggle with context switching. I get pretty engrossed in one thing, one tool for a kind of a long time. And I really struggle with [00:05:00] like, Shifting it’s been, it’s taken a lot of years to kind of, uh, build the muscles to adapt, um, and, and learn to move from one thing to another without completely like losing my thread. [00:05:11] But, um, generally I’m pretty creative and I, I really, I think I use my, my hyper-focused time. Well, when I find it. And, um, uh, apart from that, it’s, it’s kind of a lot of work being in the brain, you know? [00:05:25] Brett: [00:05:25] Oh, for sure. Um, you should try combining, uh, ADHD hyper-focus with bipolar mania. That is that’s a trip. [00:05:36] Pete: [00:05:36] Yeah, I I’m. I just I’m. I listened to some of your recent episodes now that you’re, you’re back in the, in the big chair and, uh, I’m just like God, more power to you, man. I just, your stories of what you have done to like, to, to move your brain in and around the space and time in which you live is laudable. [00:05:59] Brett: [00:05:59] That’s very kind of, [00:06:00] you. [00:06:00] Pete: [00:06:00] It’s really impressive. [00:06:01] Brett: [00:06:01] I, I feel like I’m, uh, in a constant mode of survival, but [00:06:06]Pete: [00:06:06] Yeah. I don’t think people, I mean, I think you present so well that I don’t think people, uh, largely probably underestimate how much work it is and probably how tiring it is just to, just to do your thing. [00:06:19] Brett: [00:06:19] it’s actually really nice to hear that because I feel like I, I, my, my whole life I’ve felt like. Um, if other people could be inside my head, they would be shocked. Like even as a kid, I understood that things, like I thought differently from everyone around me. And I think is it, is it an ADHD symptom to feel pain, more, uh, to be like more sensitive to pain? [00:06:48]Pete: [00:06:48] Like physical pain or others’ pain. [00:06:52] Brett: [00:06:52] Physical pain. [00:06:53]Pete: [00:06:53] I don’t know. I can’t answer that. [00:06:55] Brett: [00:06:55] Okay. I [00:06:56] Pete: [00:06:56] don’t th I [00:06:57] Brett: [00:06:57] all of [00:06:58] Pete: [00:06:58] yeah, maybe now I should just go back [00:07:00] to all the, all the stuff I’m feeling and figure out if I’m just feeling it more that makes this whole COVID thing, you [00:07:06] Brett: [00:07:06] well, I know that [00:07:07] Pete: [00:07:07] more severely. [00:07:08] Brett: [00:07:08] that ADHD people are more susceptible to issues of addiction. And issues of addiction often happen in people who are more sensitive to physical pain. So I thought maybe there was a correlation there I’m I’m, I’m both of those things. So, yeah. Anyway, yeah, we have so many different topics we can talk about. [00:07:32] Um, my ADHD brain is trying to narrow them down right now. This, this thing came up before the show, but I’m actually really excited to talk to somebody about though. Um, and it came up on over-tired as well, but there’s an app for the Mac called bartender and for ADHD, people who maybe need less clutter on their desktop, an app that [00:08:00] like basically removes things from your Macko S menu bar. [00:08:05] Is, it’s kind of a perfect ADHD tool for me. Do you use it? [00:08:11] Pete: [00:08:11] I use it. I I’ve used it for years and, uh, bartender three was just rock solid and completely just stable and trustworthy. And, uh, I really love. How easy it makes the menu bar and then, you know, big sir. And I don’t have, um, when it comes to like technology and software updates and getting new stuff, I don’t have any breaks. [00:08:36] And so I know because it’s my production machine, I should not have upgraded to big Sur. And I also knew immediately that I would. And so I did, and bartender four was only released as a, you know, big Sur ready bet

This week’s guest is Kelly Guimont operations manager at Technolutionary in Washington DC, as well as doing the Daily Observations podcast at The Mac Observer, The Incomparable with Don Melton, and The Aftershow with Mike Rose. She joins Brett to talk about remote work, tech support, and her love of crochet. Show Links @verso Technolutionary Daily Observations Background Mode Greetings From the Uncanny Valley Kelly Guimont on The Incomparable The Aftershow with Mike and Kelly Star Wars Crochet (Crochet Kits) The Mandalorian Top 3 Picks AD/HD shirt Intoval Wireless Charger Learn to Crochet Club: The Dishcloth Kit Join the Community See you on Discord! Thanks! You’re downloading today’s show from CacheFly’s network BackBeat Media Podcast Network Check out more episodes at systematicpod.com and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcasting app. Find Brett as @ttscoff on all social media platforms, and follow Systematic at @systmcast on Twitter. Transcript Kelly [00:00:00] Brett: [00:00:00] This week’s guest is Kelly Guimont, operations manager at Technolutionary in Washington, DC, as well as doing daily observations over at Mac observer, the incomparable with Don Melton and the after show with Mike Rose. How’s it going, Kelly? [00:00:15] Kelly: [00:00:15] It’s going good, Brett, how about you? [00:00:17] Brett: [00:00:17] Um, man, I’m having a rough day. [00:00:20] Kelly: [00:00:20] I understand completely. [00:00:22] Brett: [00:00:22] You you’re, you’re already privy to this. Having been through a rather chaotic pre-show with me. But things are not going my way today. [00:00:32] Kelly: [00:00:32] Yeah. I know those days. I think we all do [00:00:36] Brett: [00:00:36] I’m happy that this worked out though, that I actually have you in we’re we’re recording now. So, uh, you’re wait. I thought you were, [00:00:46] Kelly: [00:00:46] So we better get to it while everything’s behaving. [00:00:49] Brett: [00:00:49] I thought you lived in Portland. [00:00:51] Kelly: [00:00:51] I do [00:00:51] Brett: [00:00:51] How are you working in Washington, DC? [00:00:54] Kelly: [00:00:54] remotely, [00:00:56] Brett: [00:00:56] I suppose that’s the obvious answer. [00:00:58] Kelly: [00:00:58] Uh, uh, well, [00:01:00] what happened was, uh, Tom bridge is one of the founders of tech Solutionary and is a friend of mine. And, uh, not that long ago in January, as a matter of fact, this year, um, he told me that he had had a conversation with the other founding partner and said, like, My friend, Kelly, we totally need someone like my friend Kelly, to just sort of like handle all this stuff so that we can be doing this. [00:01:23] And then I happened to mention that I was in the market for a new, for, for new employment. And so we sat down and had a couple of conversations about it. And so they hired their first remote person. Cause all of theirs, um, three of them total who all live in Washington DC. And it’s it consulting. So like a small place that needs an it department. [00:01:46] Or even just someplace that has somebody that mostly handles the day-to-day stuff and then calls in backup, you know, for something larger. Um, Uh, those are our clients. And so they’re all there. Like in-person hands-on and, uh, [00:02:00] in the, before times, the intent was for me to be able to schedule people and to keep track of a little bit of project management. [00:02:08] Like, um, this place totally needs their network redone. So when we have, when we have two people with a free afternoon, we need to book that slot, you know, things like that. Um, it has been different than that right now. Um, But like, there’s, there’s still a lot of people who are going into the office. [00:02:28] There’s still people like hiring, you know, there’s lots of hiring happening. Uh, we spent most of March and April helping people with VPNs and things like that. So, um, Yeah. And I’m learning a ton because I didn’t know a whole lot of like nuts and bolts, networking kinds of things. So I’ve been learning loads about that and doing lots of frontline support. [00:02:48] So people who, um, sometimes, you know, the password screen is a trick question for some people. Uh, and so I help, uh, so I help those folks out, which used to be a thing that, uh, they had [00:03:00] to do, like in the car. Like I can return phone calls while I’m driving from. One client to another client and, you know, everybody kind of has to wait until I’m done, you know, in, in the car again, before I can actually try and help anyone. [00:03:13] So, um, I ended up sort of being home-based for all. [00:03:16] Brett: [00:03:16] Yeah, so I feel like operations manager is a job title. That probably means something entirely different depending on where you’re working. So it, in your case, it sounds like it has some aspects of project manager. What exactly would you say your, uh, kind of, what is the job title mean for you? [00:03:37] Kelly: [00:03:37] Uh, well, for me, it’s sort of, at least initially again, uh, it was day-to-day operations, so it was where is everybody, if something happens, who’s going to be the available person that I can get to deploy to some sort of, you know, um, unplanned outage. Yeah, unscheduled outage, you know, that kind of thing. [00:03:57] Yeah. So a little bit of dispatch, [00:04:00] um, a little bit of being able to route the right, the racing’s to the right people. So, um, I have a work phone and my work phone is part of a, I think it’s called a ring pool. So if somebody calls the main number at techno missionary, there’s a chance my phone will ring and I’ll pick it up and answer it. [00:04:18] And you know, who is that person? What do they need? Um, Handling sort of incoming email and, uh, tickets that come from our automated system about, uh, something weird is going on with your hard drive or you haven’t backed up to, you know, crash plan or a time machine or Backblaze or something in whatever amount of time we’ve set, you know, for that particular organization, things like that. [00:04:41] So, [00:04:41] Brett: [00:04:41] so you’re also doing like actual text support too, then. [00:04:45] Kelly: [00:04:45] I do. Yes. I do a lot of tech support and I do a lot of, um, like helping folks with projects. Like if somebody decides they want to migrate from their old email system to a new email system, you know, whether it’s to Microsoft [00:05:00] office or away from Microsoft office or get everybody upgraded from whatever version of Mac S they’re on is a project I’m in the midst of now and things like that. [00:05:09] So, [00:05:09] Brett: [00:05:09] yeah, you’re upgrading yourself right now. [00:05:13] Kelly: [00:05:13] Uh, well, Mike, my own computer only just went to Catalina. I was on my hobby for a long time. Um, you mentioned I do a podcast with Don Melton and, uh, Don stance is Gramps don’t beta. And I think I might’ve caught a little bit of, uh, Gramps don’t beta from him. [00:05:29] Brett: [00:05:29] Yeah, [00:05:30] Kelly: [00:05:30] Uh, [00:05:31] Brett: [00:05:31] Catalina hasn’t been in beta for a year. [00:05:35] Kelly: [00:05:35] Well, they shipped it. [00:05:38] Okay. But we know it was in beta to like Christmas, at least. And then after that, I just never got around to it. So, uh, it’s done now. [00:05:46] Brett: [00:05:46] for the record, I am not running big Sur on my production machine yet, [00:05:52] Kelly: [00:05:52] Oh yeah. [00:05:53] Brett: [00:05:53] which is going to be a whole thing [00:05:56] Kelly: [00:05:56] Oh, yes. [00:05:57] Brett: [00:05:57] marked marked [00:06:00] my, my main source of income. My application marked, uh, it’s PDF export breaks on big Sur and the solution. Is to do a complete rewrite of marked that will then only work on big [00:06:18] Kelly: [00:06:18] on big Sur. [00:06:19] Brett: [00:06:19] So really I’m looking at D looking at developing two entirely separate applications and also trying to get NV ultra out. [00:06:27] And I’m losing a lot of sleep right now over this. [00:06:31] Kelly: [00:06:31] And I can imagine that that’s only going to increase because Apple just announced an event for next Tuesday. [00:06:40] Brett: [00:06:40] Yeah, no, I’m, I’m screwed. There’s no way I get, uh, there’s no way I get a full rewrite done by then. Anyway. [00:06:46] Kelly: [00:06:46] no, but I imagine part of that is going to be here’s big Sur, whatever date they slap on it, whether it’s the next day or not. You know, it’s, I’m, I’m hoping that will be part of the one more thing. [00:06:57] So [00:07:00] [00:06:59] Brett: [00:06:59] yeah. That’s that’s my life right now. [00:07:04] Kelly: [00:07:04] Yeah, well, I do a podcast five days a week. And so to me, like my audio set up is sort of, it’s not that it’s fragile. It’s just that I don’t have a lot of patients to necessarily sit down and mess with everything sort of over again, which is part of where my anxiety came from with Catalina, because, um, I just didn’t want to break anything was really what it was. [00:07:29] And I am often not as much as, as your friend of mine, Victor Greta jr. Has this happened to him, but I’m one of those people that like, if something weird is going to happen, it’s going to happen to me. Like, you know, all I did was upgrade my operating system, but now every time I turn my computer on. The screen is purple, you know, or whatever. [00:07:48] Like there’s always some weird thing and I will end up with that and I didn’t want to mess up my audio set up. So that was part of my inertia was just [00:08:00] everything works. Why should I go, like kick a bunch of it over and just hope that it all stays up. [00:08:06] Brett: [00:08:06] I have the opposite problem where like nothing bad usually happens to me unless I really pushed my luck. And like, to the extent where people will tell me about the weird things that are happening to them and just bye. Explaining them to me, the problem goes away. Or by having me sit next to their pho

This week’s guest is Jay Miller, a podcaster, developer, and, as of recently, a developer advocate for Elastic. We chat about what a developer advocate does, adventures in productivity, and the joy of building things that help people who build things build things. Sponsor This episode is brought to you by ExpressVPN. Keep your information secure using ExpressVPN. It’s one click to protect all of your internet browsing and activity. Visit expressvpn.com/systematic to get three extra months for free. Show Links kjaymiller.com @kjaymiller github.com/kjaymiller The PIT Show Let Me Google That For You Let Me DuckDuckGo That For You Bullet Journal Bookworm By The Book Bunch Bunch for Alfred Treating ADHD With Video Games ProgrammableWeb Stream Deck Elapsed Time Keyboard Maestro Macros exist.io Slogger Top 3 Picks Diagrams Setapp Brett’s Setapp Script OmniGraffle Pie-hole Jacob Collier All I Need (Breakdown) Sleeping on My Dreams Join the Conversation Come join the Discord community! Thanks! You’re downloading today’s show from CacheFly’s network BackBeat Media Podcast Network Check out more episodes at systematicpod.com and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcasting app. Find Brett as @ttscoff on all social media platforms, and follow Systematic at @systmcast on Twitter. Transcript Brett_1 [00:00:00] Brett_1: [00:00:00] My guest this week is Jay Miller, a podcaster, developer, and as of recently, a developer advocate for a Elastic. How’s it going, Jay? [00:00:08] Jay_1: [00:00:08] I’m excited to be here. This is, this is several years of dreams come true. Finally. [00:00:13]Brett_1: [00:00:13] It’s really nice to hear that. I have been on your show before, and I would say that if you feel like reverting to interviewer mode and ask me questions, it’s totally cool because that’s what makes my job way easier. [00:00:28]Jay_1: [00:00:28] I would just say, just stop me and be like, Hey, no, this is my show. Where are you doing? [00:00:32] Brett_1: [00:00:32] You are now a developer advocate for elastic first. Tell me what is Elastic? What do they do? [00:00:39]Jay_1: [00:00:39] So elastic is the search company. I’m not going to say a search company. We are the search company. That’s right. Google shots fired. Let’s do this. But the way that I explain it to people, when I’m doing the advocacy thing, is that. Elastic is the search that you want to work. So you don’t have [00:01:00] to go to Google. [00:01:01] And I mean that in, when you go to Yelp, you want to find tacos in your area. That’s powered by elastic search. When you want to go to, you know, When you’re on Uber and you want to like, you know, hail a ride and it’s checking your area, checking for cars in your area. It’s making sure it has a list of, you know, who you’ve worked with in the past and who you don’t want to have, you know, driving you that’s elastic search working in the background. [00:01:25] We are search company through and through. And what we’ve kind of been able to do learn is that search works. Beyond a UI bar and a little magnifying glass. In fact, we can search logs. Um, I think I showed you a picture of this, but we can search RSS feeds and look at trends in history. Of people’s posting frequency and things like that. [00:01:51] And I know of course, when you start talking about data and the consumption of data, it can get creepy. But the general idea is [00:02:00] we’re only able to collect the things that people give us and looking at it from the database perspective, we are simply a database that focuses on retrieving the information that you’re looking for as you’re looking for it, or really, really fast. [00:02:15] Brett_1: [00:02:15] The creepy thing happens when it’s gathering data, you don’t realize you’re putting out there. And when you find out that they’re selling that data, that’s, that’s when it gets creepy using actual public data. That’s what data is for. That’s what it’s there for. I, uh, [00:02:35] Jay_1: [00:02:35] actually started working on the San Diego police call records for the last five years to see if there’s any trends and over-policing in different districts based on their nine one, one calls. [00:02:48] Brett_1: [00:02:48] Really? I would, I would be curious to see your findings. [00:02:53] Jay_1: [00:02:53] uh, right now I’m just trying to get the things to work. So we’re getting there. [00:02:57] Brett_1: [00:02:57] I did. I noticed with your, [00:03:00] uh, your, your analysis of my RSS feed. Um, it made a pretty clear graph of my bipolar disorder. You can see where I was manic and then these lulls where I was depressed, it was, uh, perhaps the, uh, the best mood meter I’ve seen yet. [00:03:18]Jay_1: [00:03:18] Well, a lot of that comes from the idea. I’m sure, you know, Wolfrem from Wolf from alpha fame, but one of the things that he’s done is collect so much data on himself that he’s able to just make these correlations to things that no one else would think of. And hearing about that. I’ve wanted to do something similar. [00:03:42] And you mentioned like working with RSS feeds and seeing if it has a way to track, like, you know, mental health or having peaks and valleys. If you, if you have to track, you know, your mood to me, being able to log that data in it in a [00:04:00] way that you can make those connections is something that. I don’t think is necessary for the business end of companies. [00:04:08] I think that’s a personal journey because I think everyone’s data is different. I mean, that’s kind of where we start to fall off in productivity is everyone tries to follow the one way when there really isn’t the one way, it’s your way, whatever you decide to do, that’s what’s going to work for you. And I mean, not to be too much of a shell, but one of the things I like about elastic as a company is that all of our products are open source. [00:04:32] So we, we get paid post data when it’s asked of us. But in terms of all of our products, anybody can download them. Anybody can run them on their machine, you can set up your own system and you can configure it. And we see none of that data ever. And to me, that is the package power of an amazing product, not an amazing company. [00:05:00] [00:04:59] Brett_1: [00:04:59] Um, I, it’s probably not your fault, but I’m surprised I’ve never heard of elastic before. [00:05:05]Jay_1: [00:05:05] I think that that’s a victim of doing our job because you know, the internet outrage machine doesn’t yell at us too much. And in fact, the only advertisements that I’ve seen that are like, talking about competitors are often, like, do you have all of these problems that other databases have. Well, I’ll try our database cause you’re not going to have them with us. [00:05:28] So I can, I can tend to, uh, definitely understand that the common world doesn’t really know of us, but I mean, I didn’t know that I was working for a company that, you know, we’re trying to reach like a billion dollar company status and like we’re publicly traded and all of these things. And I didn’t know that until I got the offer letter and it was like, Oh, Oh wow, we’re bigger than I thought we were. [00:05:54]Brett_1: [00:05:54] So, so you you’re obviously you’re advocating for them right now, but what does a [00:06:00] developer advocate do? [00:06:01]Jay_1: [00:06:01] So I like to think of a developer advocate as like a influencer for a certain segment of the tech community. And for me, it just happens to be in the world of dealing with search. So. Advocates are often the people that you see speaking at conferences, if they’re not engineers. In fact, I think one of the funny trends is as more and more conferences have gone to online only events. [00:06:31] A lot of the advocates that I know have been getting into live streaming more. And it’s, they’re realizing, Oh, wait, you mean, I don’t have to prepare a talk. I don’t have to, you know, figure all this stuff out. I don’t have to travel, you know, three weeks out of the, out of the month. I can just on a computer, turn on a camera and talk and that’s like doing my job. [00:06:53] Okay, sign me up. That’s great. But one of the things that I like to say, and that I’m glad happened was we’re [00:07:00] longer evangelists, you know, it’s great when we can preach the amazingness of our product, the speed, the relevance, all those things. But. To me, this switch from developer evangelism, which is what it used to be called for a long time or developer relations to developer advocacy. [00:07:22] Is that when we speak on behalf of both sides too, The other side. So for folks in the community, we’re out there listening to their concerns, we’re out there trying to help them build the things that they want to build. And when there are headaches where the people that are, you know, logging the issues, updating the documentation, speaking to people on the engineering team saying, Hey, When, you know, when Brett uses our system, he’s getting this error. [00:07:56] This error could probably be written better. I’ve already submitted a [00:08:00] pull request to update the documentation for it. Can you just make sure that this is done? And then when it is reaching back out to Brett and saying, Hey, thank you so much for catching this. I’ve made sure that it won’t happen for anyone else. [00:08:13] Brett_1: [00:08:13] I need a developer advocate for my software. [00:08:17] Jay_1: [00:08:17] Yeah, I’ve been trying for years, but I’m just a terrible, terrible in maintaining some of the things I’ve helped make. [00:08:25] Brett_1: [00:08:25] I, yeah, it would be great to have someone in between me and the get hub issues. That could kind of, um, I it’s a D it’s a diplomatic position. Uh, you, you I’m sure that like when developed, when things go wrong for developers, they’re not always kind about it. Uh, I’m sure you hear the angry side of things and have to translate that into the actual, like a report and then go back and try to be

Alex Cox, Senior AV Producer at Cards Against Humanity and prolific podcaster, joins Brett to talk about gender, bipolar disorder, and the wonders of virtual reality. @alexcox Two Headed Girl @twoheadedgirlfm Do by Friday @dobyfriday Repo Man Women’s Roller Derby Has a Plan for Covid, and It Kicks Ass Don Schaffner Show Links Top 3 Picks Why Fish Don’t Exist Descript Black Leopard Red Wolf Virtual Reality Occulus Quest Jaron Lanier Lawnmower Man Upload When Did I…? doing Join the Community Join us on Discord! Thanks! You’re downloading today’s show from CacheFly’s network BackBeat Media Podcast Network Check out more episodes at systematicpod.com and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcasting app. Find Brett as @ttscoff on all social media platforms, and follow Systematic at @systmcast on Twitter. Transcript Brett + 2 [00:00:00]Brett: [00:00:00] My guest this week is Alex Cox, senior AAV producer at cards against humanity and a prolific podcaster. Welcome to the show, Alex. [00:00:09]Alex: [00:00:09] Hello. Thank you so much for having me. [00:00:12] Brett: [00:00:12] Again, actually, this is I think your second time, right? [00:00:16] Alex: [00:00:16] yeah, the first time I was on, I threw up before and after we recorded, because I was so nervous and listening to that episode last night, I’m like, well, you know, it’s not the best, but you sure can’t tell how I want to vomit. And I should say the reason is. Because this has been such a formative show for me and to be on it a couple of years ago was just wild. [00:00:42] And it’s still wild to be here. Thank you so much. [00:00:47] Brett: [00:00:47] I love hearing that from you because you are an amazing, uh, con content producer. Um, my girlfriend has actually, you, you guys met briefly in Chicago, [00:00:58] Alex: [00:00:58] Oh yeah. It was so [00:01:00] fun when people were allowed to hang out. [00:01:04] Brett: [00:01:04] right. In large, large groups. But, uh, but she became a huge fan of yours. I shouldn’t make it sound like she’s the crazy fan girl, but she, she follows you very closely. [00:01:15] She loved you. Um, she actually helped me come up with some of the questions on my slate today. [00:01:20]Alex: [00:01:20] Oh, Oh boy. [00:01:22] Brett: [00:01:22] So say hi, Elle. [00:01:24]Alex: [00:01:24] Hi. Hi L I, I miss you. And I hope that one day we get to hang out in real life again. [00:01:31] Brett: [00:01:31] That would be so much fun. [00:01:32]Alex: [00:01:32] In 20, 29. [00:01:35] Brett: [00:01:35] I literally just, I just started going to Comicon in like 2019, [00:01:41]Alex: [00:01:41] Yeah. I mean, I don’t miss it yet for sure, but that’s because a, it’s very much part of my job, your job, but, um, I mean, yeah, it’s, it’s pretty wild. [00:01:56]Brett: [00:01:56] So, let’s see right now, [00:02:00] you, in, in your podcast life, you have a couple of really cool projects. Uh, the first one I want to mention is two headed girl. which is a podcast you do with your partner, Matty. And, uh, tell us a little bit about what that project entailed. [00:02:17]Alex: [00:02:17] Girl is a podcast. I like you said, I make with my spouse, Maddie, and it’s all about transitions and. Some, some what? Uh, notably it’s about gender transition and he’s a trans mask person. Um, yeah, and I am, who knows what the heck I am a gender queer. Non-binary some people would call me trans. You got to listen to the show, I guess. [00:02:48]Go to two headed girl.transistor.fm. Um, but we have for the past, maybe three years just been, um, [00:03:00] recording our own like small, personal interactions about how we feel. About gender, um, and our mental illnesses. Uh, we’re both bipolar. Uh, and yeah, it’s kind of just an exercise in being vulnerable and an exercise in, um, documenting like our young adulthood into what I hope is medium adulthood. [00:03:31] As we both turned 30 this year. And. Uh, I mean, I don’t know. It’s, it’s, it’s very much like, uh, it’s very, very good, but that’s because of Matt, not, not because of me, it’s, it’s kind of a, uh, sort of journal personal journal type show. So yeah. [00:03:51] Brett: [00:03:51] Yeah, I think it’s been, I think it’s been really informative for a lot of people inside and outside of the trans community. I think there’s a lot [00:04:00] to relate to there for everybody. You might need to help me out. What is trans mask mean? [00:04:05]Alex: [00:04:05] Uh, just, uh, well, when you say just, and then related to gender that’s that’s that doesn’t ever, [00:04:14] Brett: [00:04:14] It’s [00:04:15] Alex: [00:04:15] uh, Well, as you, as you know, Bob, um, but I don’t want to speak totally for him, but, uh, trans mask person is just someone who is traditionally very far to the more masculine side of sort of the gender spectrum, but not fully like a doesn’t fully identify as a binary man. [00:04:42] Does that sort of make sense? Yeah. It’s and the thing is it might not make sense to some people and that’s okay because, uh, you know, who cares it, it shouldn’t, uh, I, it’s not that gender shouldn’t interest people, um, [00:05:00] it’s that most of the time, gender isn’t relevant, relevant, uh, but part, part of the reason we also did this podcast is because there’s a lot of, uh, tone policing. [00:05:11] And nervousness around asking questions about gender, um, and still sexuality, honestly. And we’re kind of like, no, ask us the questions that you think are problematic. Uh, like learn, be good allies. Nobody is perfect. Like c’mon like, it’s okay. It’s okay. So that’s kind of, um, another thing we, we try to hit on because I have my own, uh, internal, you know, like, uh, Internalized transphobia and stuff like that. [00:05:43] So it’s, we try not to preach to the choir too much, um, except in terms of our bad, bad jokes and puns. Um, but I mean, yeah, there’s a lot of things that don’t make sense and that’s okay because the [00:06:00] world isn’t fair or logical and neither is gender. [00:06:03]Brett: [00:06:03] What is in your opinion, one of the more interesting questions that you’ve, uh, you’ve tackled. [00:06:10]Alex: [00:06:10] Oh, yeah. Oh, that’s I mean, there’s interesting. And then there’s embarrassing. My favorite question that has ever been asked was about, um, the literal growth of a penis. Um, which was an absolute delight because people truly don’t know how the human body works, which is also like, okay, because I don’t know how the human body works. [00:06:39] The president of the United States doesn’t know the human body works. Uh, [00:06:43] Brett: [00:06:43] a low bar [00:06:44]Alex: [00:06:44] I know. Yeah, not theirs. Uh, there’s only up from there really, but I think the most interesting questions we get are the ones that related to sexuality versus gender, because they are two [00:07:00] very separate things. Um, it just so happens that they. [00:07:05] Oh, overlap with one another. So, um, I’m trying to think of a specific example, like, uh, Oh, uh, folks will ask. So did you, what part of queer did you know you were first, did you, did you know that you were queer in the, like you typic, typically liked women or did you know you were queer in terms of like trans or gender queer and. [00:07:29] My answer to that is usually like, Hm, I’m still figuring that out. Let’s just Gus that, uh, because I think the way that we have mushed gender and sexuality together is, uh, interesting, but also can be damaging for, for folks. [00:07:51]Brett: [00:07:51] Um, I’m not sure. I think answering that question would depend on the person and at what, at what [00:08:00] point they learned about spectrums. Cause I think most people don’t. Don’t come to understand gender, spectrum and sexuality spectrums at the exact same time. [00:08:10]Alex: [00:08:10] Absolutely. Yeah. And I, I did not. And also that, that, that penis question actually came as a, uh, like, like was. Asked, uh, in a healthy good, good way. Like I w we often invite these questions because, uh, normally don’t ask anyone what’s in their pants when it’s not appropriate. Uh, but on this podcast, uh, we attend, we intentionally do Q and A’s where we’re like, yeah, Go for it. [00:08:41] Go buck wild because you know, there’s, there’s a dad sitting in the middle of camp, Kansas, uh, who has like somehow around my work through either cards against humanity or Merlin man. And then it’s like, Oh, I understand this a little bit more. [00:09:00] Or, uh, he might be like, I don’t understand this at all, but I see now that it doesn’t really matter. [00:09:06] Okay, cool. So, I mean, I don’t like to say that it’s an educational show, but that’s how some people have described it. [00:09:18] Brett: [00:09:18] I hate to tell you, but it really is. Uh, [00:09:21] Alex: [00:09:21] Thank [00:09:22] Brett: [00:09:22] it, yeah, no, it serves as a really good resource. Uh, you. Not too long ago. Uh, I don’t want to say documented, but, uh, discussed, uh, Maddie’s top surgery, [00:09:33] Alex: [00:09:33] yeah. [00:09:34] Brett: [00:09:34] was, I mean, for someone coming from like way outside of any of that, I have a lot to learn there. [00:09:41]Alex: [00:09:41] I mean, I had a lot of book, both of us had a lot to learn, um, because it’s not something that’s talked about often. Um, not just because of the stigma of being trans, but because there is a [00:10:00] stigma amongst trans folks who, um, They, they have opinions about what is consent centered, the quote, right way to transition to female, to male or male to female. [00:10:16] Uh, and, and there are some folks who are like, if you don’t get full. Like a w w what they would call it a full transition, like be on hormones, get all sort of gender. Like every gender affirmation surgery, you can get a, if you don’t do that, then you’re not really trans. And that is the. Narrative that I know, not that I believed, but, um, that I heard until I was in my late teens, probably early twenties, act