John and Hank Green Minitour: Live Podcasts for Charity – The Emory Wheel

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Podcasts are nearly always an audio-based artform; however, the Green brothers John and Hank brought their shows The Anthropocene Reviewed, Delete This and Dear Hank and John to live audiences in St. Petersburg, Atlanta and Raleigh. Longtime fans of both the podcasts and the brothers other work gathered at the Ferst Center at the Georgia Institute of Technology to experience the emotional performances together. The profits from the tour went to the Partners in Health organization tasked with bolstering the public health infrastructure in Sierra Leone.

While the podcasts were the highlight of the minitour, there were also transitional acts where Steve the minotaur (who was definitely not just Hank wearing a mask) would talk in a poorly executed British accent. His appearances not only included a debrief of the upcoming segment, but also commented on public events and information regarding Partners in Health before introducing the next speaker. Steve managed to inject an extra layer of humor to an already humorous show with slapstick and silliness, as opposed to the inside-joke laden main events that followed.

The Anthropocene Reviewed with John Green

The Anthropocene Reviewed featured a stoic-looking John Green reading from a handful of papers as he reviewed Auld Lang Syne, the popular New Years Eve song, on a five star scale. While it may seem odd for John Green to dedicate an entire portion of the Minitour to a song that most people forget the words to every year, it is a comparable topic alongside the other aspects of the human-centered world he has reviewed on the show previously. His reviews have includedDiet Dr. Pepper, Halleys Comet and the Taco Bell Breakfast Menu among other strictly human topics.

The Anthropocene Reviewed may seem like an educational show to match the Green brothers Crash Course Youtube series, but it included the most emotional portions of the show. These moments included John recalling his time as a news writer in Chicago and the impact his late mentor, Amy Krouse Rosenthal, has had on his life from his start in the industry to the longevity of his brand loyalty to Adidas sneakers. John relates his own life to a topic with which the audience is familiar in a way that is incredibly relatable.

John Green finished this portion of the Minitour by having the audience sing Auld Lang Syne with him, bringing us together and lifting us from the air of nostalgia that settled over the audience.

Delete This with Hank and Katherine Green

Delete This is a behind-the-scenes look into Hank and Katherine Greens marriage as they discuss and critique both Hanks tweets from the week and the goings-on of Twitter as a whole. The conversation between the two ranged from Hank mansplaining boobs to the SPF value of beards. This segment was bolstered by the projector screen spanning the space above the couples heads, as the audience was able to read the tweets alongside the hosts.

At one point, the audience was able to participate in a Twitter game by responding to the phrase I love Georgia because and hitting the autocomplete suggestions on their keyboards to create a phrase that should result in a slight chuckle. I really enjoyed the interaction and found my autocompleted sentence intriguing: I love Georgia because Im not going through this semester, but Im gonna get the whole day done. The true humor from this segment came from seeing the whole audiences replies at once, which reinforced the feeling of community that underscored the entire show.

The strength of Hank and Katherines segment came from the ease of conversation between the couple. Their contagious energy and excitement overflowed into the crowd, leaving a flood of laughter throughout the Ferst Center.

Dear Hank and John with Hank and John Green

While the previous two segments of the show featured the Green brothers in their separate podcast endeavors, the finale featured the duo in all of their quirkiness. Dear Hank and John focuses on Hank and Johns answers to questions sent in by listeners, or in the case of the live-show, audience members. The advice included words of wisdom to an aspiring author, how to choose a personal, but not embarassing Twitter handle and how to approach a conversation with a stubborn peer. The content of the podcast could stand alone regardless of the hosts, but the Green brothers bring their special flare to the show that could not be emulated elsewhere. With the audience participation of live question-asking, Dear Hank and John finished the show with vivacious laughter.

The Green Brothers Minitour was an opportunity to experience live what, for most of the audience, has previously only been an audio-only experience. And while all the content shared during the show will be made available to the rest of the community, reducing childhood and maternal mortality abroad through the Partners in Health project made the experience an entertaining way to give back.

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John and Hank Green Minitour: Live Podcasts for Charity - The Emory Wheel

Mangrove Capital’s Mark Tluszcz on the huge mHealth opportunity and why focusing on UX is key – TechCrunch

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Mangrove Capital Partners co-founder and CEO Mark Tluszcz is brimming with enthusiasm for whats coming down the pipe from health tech startups.

Populations armed with mobile devices and hungry for verified and relevant information, combined with the promise of big data and AI, is converging, as he sees it, into a massive opportunity for businesses to rethink how healthcare is delivered, both as a major platform to plugging gaps in stretched public healthcare systems and multiple spaces in between serving up something more specific and intimate.

Think health-focused digital communities, perhaps targeting a single sex or time of life, as were increasingly seeing in the femtech space, or health-focused apps and services that can act as supportive spaces and sounding boards that cater to the particular biological needs of different groups of people.

Tluszcz has made some savvy bets in his time. He was an early investor in Skype, turning a $2 million investment into $200 million, and hes also made a tidy profit backing web building platform Wix, where he remains as chairman. But the long-time, early-stage tech investor has a new focus after a clutch of investments in period tracking (Flo), AI diagnostics (K Health) and digital therapeutics (Happify) have garnered enough momentum to make health the dominant theme of Mangrove Capitals last fund.

I really dont think that theres a bigger area and a more inefficient area today than healthcare, he tells us. One of the things that that whole space is missing is just good usability. And thats something that Internet entrepreneurs do very well.

Extra Crunch sat down for an in-depth conversation with Tluszcz to dig into the reasons why hes so excited about mHealth (as Mangrove calls it) and probe him on some of the challenges that arise when building data-led AI businesses with the potential to deeply impact peoples lives.

The fund has also produced a healthcare reportsetting out some of its thinking.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity

TechCrunch: Is the breadth of what can fall in the digital health or mHealth category part of why youre so excited about the opportunities here?

Mark Tluszcz: I think if you take a step back, even from definitions for a moment, and you look around as an investor and we as a firm, we happen to be thematically driven but no matter who you are and you say where are there massive pockets of opportunity? And its typically in areas where theres a lot of inefficiency. And anybody whos tried to go to the doctor anywhere in Europe or around the world or tried to get an appointment with a therapist or whatever realizes how basically inefficient and arcane that process is. From finding out who the right person is, to getting an appointment and going there and paying for it. So healthcare looks to us like one of those arcane industries the user experience, so to speak, could be so much better. And combine that with the fact that in most cases we know nothing as individuals about health unless you read a few books and things. But its generally the one place where youre the least informed in life. So you go see your GP and he or she will tell you something and youre blindly going to take that pill theyre going to give you because youre not well informed. You dont understand it.

So I think thats the exciting part about it. If I now look around and say if I now look at all the industries in the world and of course theres interesting stuff happening in financial services, and it continues to happen on commerce, and many, many places but I really dont think that theres a bigger area and a more inefficient area today than healthcare.

You combine that with the power that were beginning to see in all these mobile devices i.e. I have it in my pocket at all times. So thats factor two. So one is the industry is potentially big and inefficient; two is theres tools that we have easy to access it. And there has been I think again a general frustration on healthcare online I would say of when you go into a search engine, or you go into Web MD or Google or whatever, the general feedback it gives you is youre about to have a heart attack or youre about to die because those products are not designed specifically for that. So you as a consumer are confused because youre not feeling well so you go online. The next day you go see your doctor and he or she says you didnt go to Google did you, right? I know youre probably freaked out at this point. So the second point is the tools are there.

Third Id say is that artificial intelligence, machine learning, which is kind of in the process of gaining a lot of momentum, has made it that were able to start to dream that we could one day crunch sufficient data to get new insights into it. So I think you put those three factors together and say this seems like it could be pretty big, in terms of a space.

One of the things that that whole space is missing is just good usability. And thats something that Internet entrepreneurs do very well. Its figure out that usability side of it. How do I make that experience more enjoyable or better or whatever? In fact, you see it in fintech. One of the reasons, largely, that these neobanks are winning is that their apps are much better than what you have from the incumbents. Theres no other reason for it. And so I think theres this big opportunity thats out there, and it says all these factors lead you to this big, big industry. And then yes, that industry in itself is extremely large all the way from dieting apps, you might think, all the way to healthy eating apps to longevity apps, to basic information about a particular disease, to basic general practitioner information. You could then break it down into female-specific products, male-specific products so the breadth is very, very big.

But I think the common core of that is we as humans are getting more information and knowledge about how we are, and that is going to drive, I think, a massive adoption of these products. Its knowledge, its ease of use, and its accessibility that just make it a dream come true if we can pull all these pieces together. And this is just speaking about the developed world. This gets even bigger potentially if I go to the third world countries where they dont even have access to basic healthcare information or basic nutritional information. So I would say that the addressable market in investors jargon is just huge. Much more so than in any other industry that I know of today.

Is the fund trying to break that down into particular areas of focus within that or is the fund potentially interested in everything that falls under this digital health/mHealth umbrella?

We are a generalist investment firm. As a generalist investment firm we find these trends and then anything within these trends is going to pique our interest. Where we have made some investments has been really in three areas so far, and well continue to broaden that base.

Weve made an investment into a company called Flo. They are the number one app in the world for women to help track their menstrual cycles. So you look at that and go can that be big, not big, I dont know. I can tell you they have 35M monthly active users, so its massive.

Now you might say, Why do women need this to help them track their cycles because theyve been tracking these menstrual cycles other ways for thousands of years? This is where, as an investor, you have to combine something like that with new behavioral patterns in people. And so if you look at the younger generation of people today theyre a generation thats been growing up on notifications the concept of being notified to do something. Or reminded to do something. And I think these apps do a lot of that as well.

My wife, whos had two children, might say which she did before I invested in the company why would I ever need such an app? And I told her, Unfortunately youre the wrong demographic because when I speak to an 18- year-old she says, Ah, so cool! And by the way do you have an app to remind me to brush my teeth? So notifications is what I think what makes it interesting for that younger demographic.

And then curiously enough this is again the magic of what technology can bring and great products can bring Flo is a company created by two brothers. They had no particular direct experience of the need for the app. They knew the market was big. They obviously hired women who were more contextually savvy to the problem but they were able to build this fantastic product. And did a bunch of things within the product that they had taken from their previous lives and made it so that the user experience was just so much better than looking at a calendar on your phone. So today 35M women every month use this product tells you that theres something there that the tech is coming and that people want to use it. And so thats one type of a problem, and you can think about a number of others that both males and females will have for whom making that single user experience better could be interesting. And I could go from that to ten things that might be interesting for women and ten things that might specifically be interesting for men you can imagine breaking that down. This is why, again, the space is so big. There are so many things that we deal with as men and women [related to health and biology].

Now for me the question is, as a venture investor, will that sub-set be big enough?

And that again is no different than if I was looking at any other industry. If I was in the telecommunications industry well is voice calling big? Is messaging big enough? Is conference calling big enough? All that is around calling, but you start breaking it down and, in some cases, were going to conclude that its big enough or that its not big enough. But were going to have to go through the process of looking at these. And were seeing these thematic things pop up all over the place right now. All over Europe and in the U.S. as well.

It did take us a little time to say is this big enough [in the case of Flo] but obviously getting pregnant is big enough. And as a business, think about it: once you know a womans menstrual cycle process and then she starts feeding into the system, I am pregnant; Im going to have a child, you start having a lot of information about her life and you can feed a lot of other things to her. Because you know when shes going to have a child, you can propose advice as well around heres how the first few months go. Because, as we know, when you have your first child, youre generally a novice. Youre discovering what all that means. And again you have another opportunity to re-engage with that user. So thats something that I think is interesting as a space.

So the thematic space is going to be big the femtech side and the male tech side. All of thats going to play a big role. One could argue always there are the specific apps that are going to be the winners; we can argue about that. But right now I guess Flo is working very well because those people havent found such a targeted user experience in the more generic place. They feel as if theyre in a community of like-minded women. They have forums, they can talk, they have articles they can read, and its just a comfortable place for them to spend some time.

So Flo is the first example of a very specific play that we did in healthcare about a year and a half ago. The first investment, in fact, that we made in healthcare.

The second example is opposed to that its a much more general play in healthcare. Its a company called K Health . Now K Health looked at the world and said what happens when I wake up at night and I have a pain and I do go to Google and I think Im going to have a heart attack. So can I build a product that would mimic, if you will, a doctor? So that I might be able to create an experience when I can have immediacy of information and immediacy of diagnostics on my phone. And then I could figure out what to do with that.

This is an Israeli company and they now have 5 million users in the U.S. that are using the app, which is downloadable from the U.S. app story only. What they did is they spent a year and a half building the technology the AI and the machine learning because what they did is they bought a very large dataset from an insurance company. The company sold it to them anonymized. It was personal health records for 2.5 million people for 20, years so we had a lot of information. A lot of this stuff was in handwritten notes. It wasnt well structured. So it took them a long time to build the software to be able to understand all this information and break it down into billions of data parts that they could now manipulate. And the user experience is just like a WhatsApp chat with a robot.

Their desire is not to do what some other companies are doing, which is answer ten questions and maybe you should talk to a doctor via Skype. Because their view was that at the end of the day in every developed country there are shortages of doctors. Thats true for the U.K.; its true for the U.S. If you predict out to 2030, theres a huge hole in the number of GPs. Part of that is also totally understandable; who would want to be a GP today? I mean your job in the U.S. and the U.K. is youre essentially a sausage factory. Come in and youve got 3 minutes with your customer. Its not a great experience for the doctor or the person who goes to the doctor.

So K Health built this fantastic app and what they do is they diagnose you and they say based on the symptoms heres what K thinks you have, and, by the way, heres a medicine that people like you were treated with. So theres an amazing amount of information that you get as a user, and thats entirely free as a user experience. Their vision is that the diagnostic part will always be free.

There are 5 million people in the US.. using the app who are diagnosing. There are 25 questions that you go through with the robot, K, and she diagnoses you. We call that a virtual doctors visit. Were doing 15,000 of those a day. Think about the scale in which weve been able to go in a very short time. And all thats free.

To some extent its great for people who cant necessarily afford doctors again, thats not typically a European problem. Because socialized medicine in Europe has made that easy. But it is a problem in the U.S.; it is a problem in Africa, Asia, India and South America. Theres about 4 billion people around the world for whom speaking to a doctor is a problem.

K Healths view is theyre bringing healthcare free to the world. And then ultimately how they make money will be things like if you want to speak to a doctor because you need a prescription for drugs. The doctor has access to Ks diagnostic and either agrees or disagrees with it and gives you a prescription to do that. And what were seeing is an interesting relationship which is where we wanted it to be. Of those 15,000 free doctor visits, less than one percent of those turn into I want to speak to a human and hence pay $15 (thats the price theyre charging in the U.S. to actually converse with a human). In the U.S., by the way, about a quarter of the population 75 million people dont have complementary insurance. That when they go to the doctor its $150. Isnt that a crazy thing? You cant afford complementary insurance but you could pay the highest price to go see a doctor. Such madness.

And then theres a whole element of its simple, and its convenient. Youre sitting at home thinking, Okay, Im not feeling so well and youve got to call a doctor, get an appointment, drive however long it takes, and wait in line with other sick people. So what were finding is people are discovering new ways of accessing information. Human doctors also dont have time to give empathy in an ever stretched socialized medicine country [such as in Spain]. So what were seeing also is a very quick change in user behavior. Two and a half years ago [when K Health started], many people would say I dont know about that. Now theyre saying convenience at least in Europe is why thats interesting. In the U.S. its price.

So thats the second example; much more general company but one which has the ability to come and answer a very basic need: Im not feeling well.

We have 5M users which means we have data on 5M people. On average, a GP in his life will see about 50,000 patients. If you think about just the difference if you come to K, K has seen 5M people, your GP Max has seen 50k. So, statistically, the app is likely to be better. We know today, through benchmarks and all sorts of other stuff, is that the app is more accurate than humans.

So you look at where thats heading in general medicine weve for a long time created this myth that doctors spent eight years learning a lot of information and as a result theyre really brainy people. They are brainy people but I believe that that learning process is going to be done faster and better through a machine. Thats our bet.

The third example of an investment that weve made in the health space is a company called Happify . Theyre a company that had developed like a gamification of online treatment if you have certain sicknesses. So, for example, if youre a little depressive you can use their app and the gamification process and they will help you feel healthier. So so far youre probably scatching your head saying I dont know about that But that was how they started and then they realized that hang on you can either do that or you can take medicine; you can pop a pill. In fact what many doctors suggest for people who have anxiety or depression.

So then they started engaging with the drugs companies and they realized that these drug companies have a problem which is the patent expiry of their medication. And when patents expire you lose a lot of money. And so whats very typical in the pharma industry is if youre able to modify a medicine you can typically either extend or have a new patent. So Happify, what theyve done with the pharma companies now, is said instead of modifying the medicine and adding something else to it another molecule for instance could we associate treatments which is medicine plus online software? Like a digital experience. And that has now been dubbed Digital Therapeutics DTx is the common term being used for them. And this company Happify is one of the first in the world to do that. They signed a very large deal with a company called Sanofi one of the big drug makers. And thats what theyre going to roll out. When doctors say to their patients Im diagnosing you with anxiety or depression. Sanofi has a particular medication and theyre going to bundle it now with an online experience and in all the tests that theyve done, actually, when you combine the two, the patient is better off at the end of this treatment. So its just another example of why this whole space is so large. We never thought wed be in any business with a pharma business because were tech investors. But here all of a sudden the ability to marry tech with medication creates a better end user experience for the patient. And thats very powerful in itself.

So those are just three areas where we have actually put money in the health space but there are a number of areas that one looks at either general or more specific.

Yeah it is big. And I think for us at least the more general it stays and its seen the more open minded were going to be. Because one thing you have to be as an investor, at least early stage like ours, completely open minded. And you cant bias your process by your own experience. It has to stay very broad.

Its also why I think clinician led companies and investors are not good because they come with their own baggage. I think in this case, just like in any other industry, you have to say Im not going to be polluted by the past and for me to change the experience going forward in any given area I have to fundamentally be ready to reinvent it.

You could propose a Theranos example as a counterpoint to that but do you think investors in the health space have got over any fallout from that high profile failure at this point?

With that company one could argue whos fault it really was. Clearly the founder lied and did all sorts of stuff but her investors let her do it. So to some extent the checks and balances just werent in place. Im only saying that because I dont think that should be the example by which we judge everything else. Thats just a case of a fraudster and dumb investors. Thats going to continue to exist in the future forever and who knows we might come across some of those but I dont think its the benchmark by which one should be judging if healthcare is a good or viable investment. Again I look at Flo, 35M active users. I look at K Health, 5M users in the US who are now beginning to use doctors, order medicine through the platform. I think the simplicity, the ease of use, for me make it that its undeniable that this industrys going to be completely shaken up through this tech. And we need it because at least in the Western world are health systems are so stretched theyre going to break.

Europe vs the US is interesting because of the existence of public healthcare vs a lack of public healthcare. What difference does that make to the startup opportunities in health in Europe vs the US? Perhaps in Europe things have to be more supplementary to public healthcare systems but perhaps ultimately there isnt that much difference if healthcare opportunities are increasingly being broken out and people are being encouraged to be more proactive about looking after their own health needs?

Yeah. Take K Health where you look at it and say from a use example its clear that everywhere in the world, including US and Europe, people are going to recognize the simple ease of use and the convenience of it. If I had to spend money to then maybe make money then I would say maybe the US is slightly better because theres 75M people who cant afford a doctor and I might be able to sell them something more whereas in Europe I might not. I think it becomes a commercial question more than anything else. Certainly in the UK the NHS [National Health Service] is trying to do a lot of things. It is not a great user experience when you go to the doctor there. But at the end of the day I dont think the difference between Europe-US makes much of a difference. I think this idea that what these apps want to tend towards which is healthcare for everybody at a super cheap or free price-point I think we have an advantage in Europe of thinking of it that way because thats what weve had all our lives. So to some extent what I want to create online is socialized medicine for the world through K Health. And I learnt that because I live here [in Europe].

Somebody in the US not the 75M because they have nothing but all the others, maybe they dont think theres a problem because they dont recognize it. Our view with K Health is the opportunity to make socialized medicine a global phenomenon and hoping that in 95% of the cases access to the app is all you need. And in 5% of the cases youre going to go the specialists that need to see you and then maybe theres enough money to go around for everybody.

And of course, as an investor, were interested in global companies. Again you see the theme: Flo, K Health, Happify, all those have a potential global footprint right off the bat.

I think with healthcare there are going to be play that could be national specific and maybe still going to be decent investments. You see in that in financial services. The neo banks are very country specific whenever they try to get out of their country, like N26, they realize that life isnt so easy when you go somewhere else. But healthcare I think we have an easier path to going global because there is such a pent up demand and a need for you to just feel good about yourself Most of the people who go through [the K Health diagnostic] process just want peace of mind. If 95% of the 15k people who go through that process right now just go, Phew, I feel okay then weve accomplished something quite significant. And imagine if its not 15,000 its about 150,000 a day, which seems to be quite an easy goal. So healthcare allows us to dream that TAM in investor terms, target addressable market is big. I can realistically think with any one of the three companies that Ive mentioned to you that we could have hundreds of millions of users around the world. Because theres the need.

There are different regulatory regimes across markets, there are different cultural contexts around the world do you see this as a winner takes all scenario for health platforms?

No. Not at all. I think ultimately its the user in terms of his or her experience in using an app thats going to matter. Flo is not the only menstrual cycle app in the world; it just happens to be by far the biggest. But theres others. So thats the perfect example. I dont think theres going to be one winner takes it all.

Theres also (UK startup) Babylon Health which sounds quite similar to K Health

Babylon does something different. Theyre essentially a symptom checker designed to push you to have a Skype call with a human doctor. It answers a bunch of questions, itll say, Well, we think you have this, lets connect you to a real doctor. We did not want to invest in a company that ever did that because the real problem is there just arent enough doctors and then frankly you and I are not going to want to talk to a doctor from Angola. Because whats going to happen is there arent enough doctors in the Western countries and the solution for those type of companies Babylon is one, theres others doing similar things but if you become what we call lead generation just for doctors where you get a commission for bringing people to speak to a doctor youre just displacing the problem from in your neighborhood to, broadly speaking, where are the humans? And I think as I said humans, they have their fallacies. If you really want to scale things big and globally you have to let software do it.

No its not a winner takes all for sure.

So the vision is that this stuff starts as a supplement to existing healthcare systems and gradually scales?

Correct. Ill give you an example in the U.S. with K Health. They have a deal with the second largest insurance company called Anthem. Their go-to-market brand is called Blue Cross, Blue Shield. Its the second largest one in America so why is this insurance company interested? Because they know that

So theyre going to be proposing it, in various forms, to all their customers by saying, Before you go see a doctor, why dont you try K?

In this particular case with K theres revenue opportunities from the insurance companies and also directly from the consumer, which makes it also interesting.

You did say different regions, different countries have different systems yes absolutely and theres no question that going international requires work. However, having said that, I would say a European, an Indonesian and a Brazilian are largely similar. Theres sometimes this fallacy that Asians, for instance, are so different from us as Western Europeans. And the truth is not really when you look at it down into the DNA and the functions of the body and stuff like that. Which you do have to do, though. If we were to take K to Indonesia, for example, you do have to make sure that your AI engine has enough data to be able to diagnose some local stuff.

Ill give you an example. When we launched K in the U.S. and we started off with New York, one of things you have to be able to diagnose is called Lyme disease which is what you get from a tick that bites you. Very, very prevalent in the Greater New York area. Not so much anywhere else in the States. But in New York, if you dont have it it looks like a cold and then you get very sick. Thats very much a regional thing that you have to have. And so if we were to go to Indonesia wed have to have thing like Malaria and Dengue. But all that is not so difficult. But yes, theres some customization.

There are also certain conditions that can be more common for certain ethnicities. There are also differences in how women experience medical conditions vs men. So there can be a lot of issues around how localized health data is

I would say that that is a very small problem that is a must to be addressed, but its a much smaller problem than you think it is. Much smaller. For instance, in the male to female thing of course medical sometimes plays differently but when you have a database of 5 million of which 3 million are women, and 2 million are men, you already have that data embedded. It is true that medications work better with certain races also. But again very tiny, very small examples of those. Most doctors know it.

At the big scale that may look very small but to an individual patient if a system is not going to pick up on their condition or prescribe them the right medicine thats obviously catastrophic from their point of view

Of course.

Which is why, in the healthcare space, when youre using AI and data-driven tools to do diagnosis theres a lot of risk and thats part of the consideration for everyone playing in this space. So then the question is how do you break down that risk, how do you make that as small as possible and how do you communicate it to the users if the proposition is free healthcare with some risk vs. not being able to afford going to the doctor at all?

I appreciate that, as a journalist, youre trying to say this is a massive risk. I can tell you that as somebody whos involved in these businesses it is a business risk we have to take into consideration but it is, by far, not insurmountable. We clearly have a responsibility as businesses to say: if Im going to go to South East Asia, I need to be sure that I cover all the weird things that we would not have in our database somewhere else. So I need to do that. How I go about doing that, obviously, is the secret sauce of each company. But you simply cannot launch your product in that region if you dont solve in this case Malaria and Dengue disease. It doesnt make sense [for a general health app]. Youd have too many flaws and people will stop using you.

I dont think thats so much the case with Flo, for instance But all these entrepreneurs who are designing these companies are fully aware that it isnt a cookie-cutter, one-size fits all but it is close to that. When you look at the exceptions. Were not talking about I have to redo my database because 30% or 20% its much, much smaller than that.

And, by the way, at the end of the day, the market will be the judge. In our case, when you go from an Israeli company into the U.S. and you have partners like Blue Cross, Blue Shield, theyve tested the crap out of your product. And then youre going to say well Im going to do this now in Indonesia well you get partners locally whore going to help you do that.

One of the drawbacks about healthcare is, I would say, making sure that your product works in all these countries. And doesnt have holes in the diagnostic side of it.

Which seems in many cases to boil down to getting the data. And that can be a big challenge. As you mentioned with K Health, there was also the need to structure the data as well but fundamentally its taken Israeli population data and is using it in the U.S. You would say that model is going to scale? There are some counter examples, such as Google-owned DeepMind, which has big designs on using AI for healthcare diagnostics and has put a lot of effort into getting access to population-level health data from the NHS in the U.K., when at the same time Google has acquired a database of health records from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. So there does seem to be a lot of effort going into trying to get very localized data but its challenging. Google perhaps has a head start because its Google. So the question then is how do startups get the data they need to address these kinds of opportunities?

If were just looking at K Health then obviously its a big challenge because you do have to get data in a way. But I would say again your example as well you have a U.S. database and does it match with a UK database. Again it largely does.

In that case the example is quite specific because the dataset Google has from the department of Veterans Affairs skews heavily male (93.6%). So they really do have almost no female data.

But thats a bad dataset. Thats not anything else but a bad dataset.

Its instructive that theyre still using it, though. Maybe that illustrates the challenge of getting access to population-level healthcare data for AI model making.

Maybe it does. But I dont think this is one of those insurmountable things. Again, what weve done is weve bought a database that had data on 2.5 million patients, data over 20 years. I think that dataset equates extremely well. Weve now seen it in U.S. markets for over a year. Weve had nothing but positive feedback. We beat human doctors every time in tests. And so you look at it and you say theyre just business problems that we have to solve. But what were seeing is the consumer market is saying holy shit this is just such a better experience than Ive ever had before.

So the human body again is not that complex. Most of the things that we catch are not that complex. And by the way weve grown our database from the 2.5M that we bought we now have 5M. So we now have 2.5M Americans mixing into that database. And the way they diagnose you is they say based on your age, your size, you dont smoke and so on perhaps they say they have 300,000 people in their database like you and theyre benchmarking my symptoms against those people. So I think the smart companies are going to do these things very smartly. But you have to know what youre using as a user as well If youre using that vs just a basic symptom checker that I dont think is a particularly great new user experience. But some companies are going to be successful doing that. At the end the great dream is how do you bring all this together and how do you give the consumer a fundamentally better choice and better information. Thats K Health.

Why couldnt Google do the same thing? I dont know. They just dont think about it.

Thats a really interesting question because Google is making big moves in health. Theyre consolidating all their projects under one Google Health unit. Amazon is also increasingly interested in the space. What do you make of this big tech interest? Is that a threat or an opportunity for health startups?

Well if you think of it as an investor theyre all obviously buyers of the companies youre going to build. So thats a long term opportunity to sell your business. On the shorter term, does it make sense to invest in companies if all of a sudden the mammoth big players are there? By the way, that has been true for many, many other sectors as well. When I first invested in Skype in the early days people would say the telecom guys are going to crush you. Well they didnt. But all of a sudden telecom, communication became the current that the Internet guys wanted thats why eBay ultimately bought us and why they all had their own messenger.

What the futures made of we dont know, but what we do know is that consumers want just the best experience and sometimes the best experience comes from people who are very innovative and very hungry as opposed to people who are working in very large companies. Venture capitalists are always investing in companies that somehow are competing one way or another with Amazon, Facebook, Google and all the big guys. Its just that when you focus your energy on one thing you tend to do it better than if you dont. And Im not suggesting that those companies are not investing a lot of money. They are. And thats because they realize that one of the currencies of the future is the ability to provide healthcare information, treatment and things like that.

You look at a large retail store like Wal-mart in America. Wal-mart serves largely a population that makes $50k or less. The lower income category in North America. But what are they doing to make you more loyal to them? Theyre now starting to build into every Wal-mart doctors offices. Why would they do that? Is it because they actually know that if you make $50k or less theres a high chance you dont have an insurance and theres a high chance that you cant afford to go see a doctor. So theyre going to use that to say, Hey, if you shop with us, instead of paying $150 for a doctor, itll be cheaper. And were beginning to see so many examples like this where all these companies are saying actually healthcare is the biggest and most important thing that somebody thinks about every day. And if we want to make them loyal to our brand we need to offer something thats in the healthcare space. So the conclusion of why were so excited it were seeing it happen in real life.

Wal-mart does that so when Amazon starts buying an online pharmacy I get why theyre doing that. They want to connect with you on an emotional level which is when youre not feeling well.

So no, I dont think were particularly worried about them. You have to respect theyre large companies, they have a lot of money and things like that. But thats always been the case. We think that some of these will likely be bought by those players, some of those will likely build their own businesses. At the end of the day its whos going to get that user experience right.

Google of course would like us all to believe that because theyre the search engine of the world they have the first rights to become the health search engine of the world. I tend to think thats not true. Actually if you look at the history of Google they were the search engine of the world until they forgot about Amazon. And nowadays if you want to buy anything physical where do you search first? You dont search on Google anymore you search on Amazon.

But the space is big and theres a lot of great entrepreneurs and Europe has a lot to offer I think in terms of taking our history of socialized medicine and saying how can tech power that to make it a better experience?

So what should entrepreneurs that are just thinking about this space what should they be focusing on in terms of things to fix?

Right now the hottest are the three that I mentioned because those are the ones that weve put money into and weve put money in because we think those are the hottest areas. I just think that anything where you feel deep conviction about or youve had some basic experience with the issue and the problem.

I simply do not think that clinicians can make this change in any sector. If you look at those companies I mentioned none of the founders are clinicians in any way shape or form. And thats why theyre successful. Now Im not suggesting that you dont have to have doctors on your staff. For sure. At K Health, we have 30 doctors. What were trying to do is change the experience. So the founder, for instance. was a founder of a company called Vroom that buys and sells cars online in the States. When he started he didnt know a whole lot about healthcare but he said to himself what I know is I dont like the user experience. Its a horrible user experience. I dont like going to the doctor. I can change that.

So I would say if youre heading into that space your first pre-occupation is how am I going to change the current user experience in a way thats meaningful. Because thats the only thing that people care about.

How is possible that two guys could come up with Flo? They were just good product people.

For me, thats the driving factor if youre going to go into this, go into it saying youre there to break an experience and make it just a way better place to be.

On the size of the opportunity I have seen some suggestions that health is overheated in investment terms. But perhaps thats more true in the U.S. than Europe?

Any time an investor community gets hold of a theme and makes it the theme of the month or the year like fintech was for ten years I think it becomes overfunded because everybody ploughs into that. I could say yes to that statement sure. Lot of players, lot of actors. Moneys pouring in because people believe that the outcome could be big. So I dont think its overheated. I think that weve only scratched the surface by doing certain things.

Some of the companies in the healthcare space that are either thinking of going public or are going public are companies that are pretty basic companies around connecting you with doctors online, etc. So I think that the innovation is really, really coming. As AI becomes real and were able to manage the data in an effective way But again youve got to get the user experience right.

Flo in my experience why its better than anything else one is its just a great user experience. And then they have a forum on their app, and the forum is anonymized. And this is curious right. I think they anonymized it without knowing what it would do. And what it did was it allowed women to talk about stuff that perhaps they were not comfortable talking about stuff if people knew who they were. Number one issue? Abortion.

Theres a stigma out there around abortion and so by anonymizing the chat forum all of a sudden it created this opportunity for people to just exchange an experience. So thats why I say the user experience for me is just at the core of that revolution thats coming.

Why should it be such a horrific experience to be able to talk about that subject? Why should women be put in that position? So thats why I think user experience is going to be so key to that.

So thats why were excited. And of course the gambit is large. You think about the examples I gave you can think of dietary examples, mens health examples. When men turn 50 things start happening. Little things. But theres at least 15 of those things that are 100% predictable I just turned 50 and given theres so much disinformation online I dont know whats true. So I think again theres a fantastic opportunity for somebody to build companies around that theme again, probably male and female separate.

Menopause would be another obvious one.

Exactly You dont know who you can talk to in many cases. So thats another opportunity. And wow there are so many things out there. And when I go online today Im generally not sure if I can believe what I read unless its from a source that I can trust.

Originally posted here:
Mangrove Capital's Mark Tluszcz on the huge mHealth opportunity and why focusing on UX is key - TechCrunch

Russian Demographics and Power: Does the Kremlin Have a Long Game? – War on the Rocks

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One of the oft-voiced constraints on the longevity, or perhaps durability, of Russian power is that of its demographic decline. If there is a mainstay of wisdom in Washington, it is that Russias underperforming economy, and a terrible demographic outlook, mean that Russia doesnt have a long game. President Barack Obama echoed this view in 2014:

I do think its important to keep perspective. Russia doesnt make anything. Immigrants arent rushing to Moscow in search of opportunity. The life expectancy of the Russian male is around 60 years old. The population is shrinking.

A 2019 RAND report voiced similar sentiments: The Russian population is likely to shrink. Counterbalancing Russian power and containing Russian influence will probably not place a growing burden on the United States. The RAND team illustrates that Chinas population is also declining, but at a marginally lower rate than Russias. China is, of course, called the pacing threat, despite its looming population decline, whereas Russia is a declining power, because its population will decline somewhat faster than Chinas. Such proclamations are hardly confined to Washington defense intellectuals. Joe Nye declared in 2019 that Russias population may fall from 145 million today to 121 million by mid-century as part of an argument for why Russia is a country in decline. These statements are based on questionable, or dated information, playing with statistics to paint a picture more dire than exists.

First, it is not fair to take the worst-case scenarios for any countrys demographic future and advance murky numbers as though they represent the likely outcome. The median scenario predicted by U.N. demographers for Russia suggest a population decline of approximately 7 percent to 135 million by 2050 not exactly the roughly 17 percent contraction Nye predicts. Russia does face population decline, as do many developed countries (including many American allies), but what does that mean for Americas strategic future? Will demographics prove a determinant of power in this century? And how should U.S. strategists, policymakers, and military leaders integrate the notion of demographic decline into their thinking about the long-term confrontation with Russia?

The prospective decline of Russias population is not only overstated but is also unlikely to substantially constrain Russian power or make the country less of a problem for the United States. Such notions are not only based on bad information, they have also become an alibi for the absence of U.S. strategy on what to do about Russia. Policymakers should not seek solace in the proposition that Russia will run out of people, ceasing to be a power of its own accord. Critically, there is much the Russian state could still do to improve or worsen the direction of Russias demographic profile over the coming decades. Discussions of Russias demographic demise are too fixated on the population size, avoiding more important questions about the quality of human capital and the relevance of population to power. The evidence suggests that Russia isnt going anywhere, and future generations of Russians are more likely to contribute to its revival rather than its decline.

Is Demography Destiny?

Demographics are an important though often misinterpreted factor in assessing a countrys power. Hal Brands put it eloquently:

A countrys people are taproot of its power in many respects. A large working-age population serves as a source of military manpower. Far more important, a relatively young, growing and well-educated population is a wellspring of the economic productivity that underlies other forms of international influence. All things equal, countries with healthy demographic profiles can create wealth more easily than their competitors.

Nick Eberstadt, an established researcher on demographics, writes: Although conventional measures of economic and military power often receive more attention, few factors influence the long-term competition between great powers as much as changes in the size, capabilities, and characteristics of national populations.

Yet the conversation on demographics can tend towards the simplistic, focusing on population size rather than the qualitative dimensions that make up human capital such as education or health. This represents a fundamental problem in strategy discussions that can at times seem rooted in a dated pursuit of land, people, and resources. In the 19th and 20th centuries, more people meant more economic output in industrial and agrarian economies that were manpower intensive. A larger population base was essential for mass mobilization armies. In large-scale industrial warfare, the country with a larger population and millions more industrial workers stood a good chance of simply attriting and outlasting an opponent with less manpower. More people meant larger armies, and the ability to replace losses. Few countries know this history better than Russia, which has historically benefitted from being the most populous nation in Europe.

At the same time, however, having more people does not readily translate into greater power. If it did, then Nigeria, Indonesia, or Bangladesh would be among the worlds strongest nations. Yet while they are more populous, they are not more wealthy, powerful, or influential than much smaller European states. A larger population is only beneficial to a country that is able to educate, employ, and leverage that potential. In many cases, a large and rapidly growing population generates immense social pressures and challenges faster than it does power. Michael Beckley argues that standard indicators exaggerate the power of populous countries like China, in his 2018 article The Power of Nations: Measuring What Matters. Thus, while we should not forget Stalins adage that quantity has a quality of its own, it is equally important to consider that what matters most is what countries do with their human capital rather than just how many people they have on the books.

Population matters less for military power. Wars are no longer fought by mass mobilization armies; instead, technology has multiplied destructive power such that the soldier is increasingly alone on the battlefield. As firepower and range have increased, the need for manpower has decreased compared to the great power conflicts of the 20th century. Quantity and mass remain important in modern warfare, but few countries are able or willing to support sizable forces. Military expenditure and political will are todays defining constraints on the size of standing armies in middle- and high-income countries, more so than the actual availability of people to serve. Russia remains one of the few exceptions in this regard, maintaining a high degree of defense spending and increasing the size of its military over the past decade at a time of limited manpower availability.

No less significant is the modernization of nuclear weapons by the worlds great powers, chiefly held by the United States and Russia, which has always made doubtful the proposition of a prolonged conventional conflict between the main nuclear weapon states. Strategic and non-strategic nuclear weapons represent a demographic equalizer, whereby no matter what happens in Russias demographic future, it will still be able to inflict unacceptable damage to the United States or Europe.

Russias Demographic Challenge

Russias demographic decline is borne of two factors: a demographic crisis in the late 1980s and 1990s, the aftereffects of which will create a second demographic dip in the coming decades, and an unusually high mortality rate. Not enough Russians were born those decades, and those that were born then are dying faster than people of the same age in other industrialized European nations. Although Russia is a major net beneficiary of labor migration, which helps arrest population decline, immigration cannot compensate for the expected population dip.

How important is this issue for Moscow? Well, for President Vladimir Putin, its among his top priorities. He has frequently emphasized population growth as an important factor in rebuilding Russias global status. In 2017, Putin stated, Demography is a vital issue that will influence our countrys development for decades to come. Through countless speeches, including the latest January 15th Federal Assembly address, he has emphasized the demographic challenge. The presidential order, signed in May 2018, delineating national goals and strategic priorities through 2024, lists achieving stable population growth as its first objective. Indeed, years of effort and investment has arrested or stabilized some of the worst indicators, leading to a dramatically improved picture compared to the dire predictions based on data in the mid-2000s.

Despite appreciating the stakes, Russian leadership will struggle to address Russias demographic challenges. Such difficulty is in part due to the fact that since 2014, Russia has engaged in a host of foreign policy gambits that are visibly exacerbating the demographic problem from lower birth rates due to poor economic conditions to urban Russians choosing to leave the country. Russias economic recession beginning in 2013 and sanctions resulting from the confrontation with the West have served to increase a steady exodus of urban Russians, which began in 20112012 when Putin returned as president.

As a consequence, post-2015 policies have reduced the net benefit of migration, while squandering an opportunity to pour resources into arresting Russias demographic decline through policies intended to boost birth rates. All of this means that Russias demographic policy faces strong headwinds today, created in part by Russias foreign policy choices, and as time runs its course, may face harsher realities in the 2040s and 2050s. The outlook will vary considerably depending on the policies that Russia chooses to implement.

Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics

Russias demographic trends improved considerably between 2000 and 2015, but the country faces a coming generation that will have substantially fewer women of child-bearing age, an aftershock of the crisis in the 1990s. This means that despite numerous improvements to the overall health of the Russian people, arresting the crisis of the 1990s, Russia is still facing an unavoidable long-term decline in total population.

In 2017, life expectancy became the highest it has ever been in Russia or the Soviet Union, at 72, although quite a lot shorter for men than women. This puts Russia at the bottom of life expectancy for developed Western countries, but it is a marked improvement from the previous decade. Average male life expectancy is still quite low, in large part because of alcohol-related deaths. Yet alcohol consumption has fallen by more than a third since 2006, and one study argues that the proportion of men dying before 55 has been reduced by 37 percent. The fertility rate has climbed considerably, converging with that of the United States. This rate is still below the population replacement rate of 2.1, but Russia has made strides in recovering from the nadir of the late 1990s. Deaths are down, infant mortality is less than half of what it was 30 years ago, and a host of health indicators have improved from that period to 2015. Unfortunately, Russias mortality rate remains far too high by European and international standards, with men representing the most at-risk population.

Statistics on human capital and productivity also tell a more positive story. The U.N. Human Development Index has continued to increase Russias rating, from .734 in 1990 to .824 in 2018. Meanwhile, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development shows the growth rate in Russian labor productivity as being much higher than that of the European Union. These are crude measures, but they indicate improvements in the quality versus just quantity of human capital in Russia.

Yet Russia is a country that is still dealing with the aftereffects of the decline of the Soviet Union and the demographic crisis that followed. The current challenge is a steady aging-out of the working population, losing as many as 600,000 annually over the next six years. The replacements for aging Russian workers were not born in the 1990s, and hence they are not here today to take up jobs in the Russian economy. This is the consequence of the mass emigration, social, and economic crisis of the 1990s that still haunts Russia. In the long term, Russia is likely to go from a population of around 146 million today to perhaps 135 million in 2050, according to the 2019 United Nations World Population Prospects report. The World Bank is more pessimistic, suggesting it might be as low as 132 million. This is a 7.5 percent to 9.5 percent decrease, representing median scenarios, while worst case (but least probable) estimates take those expectations lower towards a fall of 12 percent.

However, an authoritative report published by the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA) painted a much more dire scenario. According to their work, with changes in policies on fertility, mortality, and migration, an inertia-based scenario could take Russias population down to 113 million by 2050. This was the source of the dire predictions for a depopulation of Russia in the coming decades, but it was calculated in 2009, based on 2005 data. The evidence is clear that the original inertia scenario, which predicted a decline to 140 million by 2020, has not developed. The net Russian population only began shrinking in 2019 and is still above 145 million. Russias statistical services latest figures also offer an average prognosis of decline to 143 million by 2035 with a worst case scenario of 135 million, and an optimistic one of 149 million.

RANEPAs figures, when updated in 2015, showed a different inertia scenario that places the Russian population at around 128 million by 2050. Given the current trajectory, it appears more probable that Russias population decline will end up between the more optimistic scenarios and the inertia scenario, landing somewhere in the 130 to 135 million range by 2050. This study emphasized that Russia has a unique window of opportunity right now, because it currently has one of the worlds highest shares of population in the active reproduction and working ages (15-60 years). This includes a high percentage of people in the prime working and parenting ages (20-40). In their assessment current Russian efforts to address fertility, mortality, and migration, fall short of what will be required to achieve more positive scenarios.

Much of the conversation on Russias demographic prospects also misses an important fact: Russia, like the United States, maintains its population in part through migration. Russia is the principal labor market for the former Soviet space, benefitting from net labor migration. Western media outlets are replete with sensational headlines about educated Russians fleeing the country in recent years. Russian emigration has increased considerably since 2012, and many have argued that those emigrating represent the countrys creative class. Indeed, Russias statistical agency Rosstat does show 377,000 departing from the country in 2017. However, the very same statistics show that 589,000 immigrated to the country in that year, for a net gain of about 211,000.

The brain drain effect appears overstated. Most in and out migration is likely migrant labor from Central Asia, rather than entrepreneurial geniuses emigrating en masse. Russia is a significant beneficiary from immigration, which in part helps compensate for its own fairly low birth rates. There is unfortunately indistinct math on how Russian migrs are counted according to Rosstat, which understates the number of Russians emigrating because it doesnt count them as having left unless they cancel their registration in Russia.

The Demographic Price of Russias Foreign Policy

Not only does Russias period of imperial collapse still cast a long shadow, but the demographic recovery from 2000 to 2015 also faces a second challenge from Russias economic and political crisis of recent years. Russia is in economic stagnation; that is, with anemic GDP growth of ~1.3 percent in 2019, well below the global average. Economic recession and uncertainty have a naturally negative impact on family planning and birth rates. Russias birth rate has flattened out since 2014 and begun to decline again, sinking to 2011 lows. Deaths still exceed births, and even with immigrants, Russias population has entered a steady state of decline in part because of underlying economic and political conditions. The problem is not lost on the government, even though the consequences of this second dip may not be felt until the mid-2030s. State policies have helped avoid worst case scenarios, but they cannot avert the inevitable.

Although mortality had been improving considerably from 2005-2013, mortality rates have Russias deputy prime minister for social and health policy, Tatyana Golikova, made clear in the spring of 2019 that mortality trends have changed to a negative outlook. Several Russian regions have witnessed an increase in mortality rates in 2018, which has contributed to the countrys first recorded population decline in a decade, falling by about 87,000 last year. Problems in the healthcare system are particularly acute in Russia, from a lack of clinics and doctors, to shortages of medicine. The governments efforts to tackle mortality face reversals in regions worst hit by economic problems. As poverty increases, mortality rises, and birth rates again decline. Thus, the Russian state must now address the current crisis with new measures, while at the same time retaining focus on the long-term strategic problem of population decline.

There is a worrisome potential relationship between demographics and Russias foreign policy today, including the long-standing practice of passportization. During his annually televised question and answer session in 2018, Putin suggested that one of the solutions to the demographic problem is liberalizing citizenship policy to integrate Russian compatriots. The implied message was that Moscow sees refugees from conflict as a potential positive in light of the demographic challenges the country faces compatriots, or those Russia considers to be part of the Russian world (Russki Mir), are part of the solution.

In the long run, demographics, not geopolitics, may prove Putins chief error in undertaking a confrontation with the United States. Undoubtedly, Moscow can keep up the contest, but it will come with a strategic price tag for Russias future during a crucial decade when the country needs to focus resources on its demographic problem. The population structure will change in the 2030s such that a second demographic dip will become more pronounced, rendering later efforts less effective. There is an inherent tradeoff between Moscows prioritization of the countrys demographic health and its geopolitical pursuits, and this does not seem to be accepted by the national leadership.

Military and Manpower

The Russian military has revised and increased its force structure since 2013 with new divisions and regiments. This naturally raises the question: Who exactly will man many of the new units being created in the Russian armed forces? The picture is far from rosy, and the units will undoubtedly have formations based on a partial mobilization structure, but the Russian military is in much better shape than it has been since the collapse of the Soviet Union and is certainly at its highest levels of readiness in decades. Increased birth rates starting in 2000, and improvements to health standards from 2000-2015, mean that manpower availability is going to increase, likely until 2033, as will the overall pool of those available for military duty (ages 18 to 27).

Perhaps remarkably, the Russian armed forces have been increasing in size over the past five years, all while facing a constrained availability of manpower and higher economic competition for those they would seek to recruit as volunteer servicemen. The available male serving population was in decline from 2008 to 2018. Yet despite being under such stringent conditions, the Russian armed forces expanded to perhaps somewhere near 900,000 in overall size, and the contract share of the force is around 394,000, or more than half of those enlisted. This means that the number of conscripts Russias armed forces need every year has declined substantially and will continue to drop. The Russian Ministry of Defense also changed its policy in 2018 to allow conscripts to elect to perform two years of volunteer contract service instead of one year of compulsory duty.

Tackling draft evasion and corruption has also allowed the Russian military to get more out of what they have. Russias draft board, or Voenkomat, has spent years fighting the pervasive problem of those seeking to evade the draft by purchasing health exclusions or disqualifications. Over the next 14 years, there will not be substantial pressure on manpower availability for service. Afterwards, the armed services will be operating in a much more competitive environment, with declining manpower availability starting around 2033. Additionally, the relevance of manpower constraints as they pertain to warfighting beyond the 2030s remains in question, as modern militaries grow even stronger in firepower, technological force multipliers, and use of autonomous systems, depending more on the quality rather than the quantity of personnel deployed. Plus, Russia will always find enough people to man its arsenal of strategic and non-strategic nuclear weapons.

Implications for Great Power Pursuits

The remaining question is whether Russia will face a classic guns versus butter choice, as the working population shrinks, forcing the state to choose between military modernization and pensions. Brands predicts:

Russia will face Hobsons a choice between pouring scarce resources into old-age pensions and inviting the political tumults that austerity could easily bring. Nuclear weapons and the capacity to create mischief through information warfare will keep Moscow in the game, but Russias underlying geopolitical potential will continue bleeding away.

So far, this prediction is not coming true. Russian resources are not particularly scarce, and its unclear what geopolitical potential has been bleeding away. Such sentiments are common among defense intellectuals and international relations theorists, but the evidence behind these arguments often fails to impress. If theory checks in with practice, it will find that Russias GDP continued to grow, as did labor productivity, while the population contracted in 2019. The argument that Russia is in decline is largely premised on a puzzling comparison between Russias influence today and the Soviet Union, which broke into 15 countries almost 30 years ago.

Moscow is already addressing the question of pension reform, and has weathered the resultant political tumults, while at the same continuing to spend sizable sums on its military potential. Thus far, the Russian government has decided to sequester defense spending, decreasing it slowly over time, while imposing austerity on social benefits by increasing the retirement age in 2018. Moscow is reconciling these priorities by choosing to spend less on both, taking a somewhat opposite route than what Washington might have taken. Hence, the U.S. governments debt-to-GDP ratio stands at 106 percent, whereas Russias is one of the lowest in the world, at around 15 percent. In 2019, Russias net public debt fell to zero as the country amassed sizable foreign exchange reserves relative to its rather small amount of debt.

Much of what strategists perceive to be inevitable is actually contingent, a function of choice and strategic investments. Demographics advantage the United States, but they do not doom Americas great power adversaries, nor should they confer a general ease that others will face choices America does not. Russias demographic outlook is a complex question, but the facts suggest that there is no imminent collapse facing the country. In recent years, that future appears much less dire than it did, but clearly bleaker than it has to be. The extent of Russias long-term demographic decline remains in question given how much of the problem can be redressed or exacerbated by government policies. One cannot exclude a change in the nature of Russias political or economic system over time, which may seem a distant proposition today, but is not unrealistic when looking out to the 2030s or 2040s.

Instead of talking about Russias or Chinas uncertain demographic future, U.S. policymakers should pay closer attention to the demographic situation of their own allies, like the Baltic states, which is more dire. Latvias and Lithuanias populations have been in constant decline since 1991, and Ukraines is particularly problematic. Russias demographic picture should be compared to the countries the United States is concerned with defending from Russia. As Nick Eberstadt explains:

[T]he EU and Japan have both registered sub-replacement fertility rates since the 1970s, and their fertility rates began to drop far below the replacement level in the 1980s. In both the EU and Japan, deaths now outnumber births. Their working-age populations are in long-term decline, and their overall populations are aging at rates that would have sounded like science fiction not so long ago.

Given that the United States is most likely to fight in contests abroad, on the foreign soil of countries to which it extends deterrence, there is a more important question: How do allied demographic futures compare to those of our adversaries in their regions? The short answer is not favorably. As a consequence, the overall burden for the United States of confrontation, economic competition, and deterrence is only going to increase in the coming decades.

The core Russian problem is not demographics, but the fact that the economy and the political system are unable to tap into the talent and human potential of that country. Russia has the requisite attributes to be far more powerful and influential than it is today, with fewer people. The country endures as a great power in the international system despite the best efforts of policy wonks and defense strategists to wish it away. Adam Smiths adage that there is a great deal of ruin in a nation serves well here in setting expectations. Russias comparative weakness should not be confused for an inability to play an important role in European affairs, or check U.S. foreign policy abroad. Russia does have a long game, but it is not clear that Washington has a long game for dealing with Russian power in the world.

Michael Kofmanis director and senior research scientist at CNA Corporation and a fellow at the Wilson Centers Kennan Institute. Previously he served as program manager at the National Defense University. The views expressed here are his own.

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Russian Demographics and Power: Does the Kremlin Have a Long Game? - War on the Rocks

MIT Expert: Overreaction Could Boost Coronaviruss Economic Impact – Forbes

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TAIPEI, TAIWAN - FEBRUARY 03: A woman walks out of a store wearing a mask as Taiwan issues a new ... [+] order that each resident must use a NHI card to buy surgical masks and can only buy two per week in stores recognized by National Health Insurance on February 03, 2020 in Taipei, Taiwan.Taiwan faces supply issues of surgical mask amid the coronavirus crisis, and the government have issued an order that each resident must use a NHI card to buy surgical masks and can only buy two per week. With over 17,390 confirmed cases of Novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) around the world, the virus has so far claimed 362 lives.There are 10 confirmed cases without any death case. (Photo by Gene Wang/Getty Images)

One things for sure about the Coronavirus which originated in Wuhan, China: nobody knows how bad it will be for human lives and the global economy. That is not stopping experts from trying to estimate that toll. Meanwhile the U.S. market seems to be bouncing back with the S&P 500 futures up 1.3% after rising on February 3.

The human toll of the virus is increasing. By February 3, the Coronavirus had infected 17,000 people and claimed 360 lives primarily in mainland China, according to the Wall Street Journal. By February 4, the total had risen to 20,438 confirmed cases and 420 deaths, according to the New York Times, which noted the good news that 632 people had recovered from the disease.

One expert Warwick McKibbin, a professor of economics at Australian National University estimates that the outbreak could reduce global economic growth by $160 billion four times the $40 billion economic impact of 2003s SARS epidemic, according to Bloomberg. This estimate is based on the quadrupling of Chinas share of the global economy since 2003 to 17% of global economic output.

On January 31 Goldman Sachs estimated that the virus to cut between 0.4 and 0.5 percentage points at an annual rate from U.S. economic output in the first quarter of 2020, with growth rebounding in the second quarter, leaving minimal impact on full-year growth, according to the Journal. Goldman expects the Coronavirus to reduce Chinas GDP growth from 5.9% to 5.5% while a longer outbreak could cut that growth rate to 5%.

In a February 1 interview, MIT professor Richard C. Larson said that hysteria-driven overreaction to the Coronavirus could be the biggest economic cost and that he sees too much uncertainty now to build models to predict that impact.

Global Reactions to Coronavirus

Fear of the Coronavirus and Chinas integration has caused repercussions around the world. As Bloomberg wrote, In New Zealand, a bath furnishings seller told a customer that the German-designed shower head he ordered is unavailable because the factory in Shanghai is closed. Out in California executives of REC Group organized a supply chain war room to plan around an anticipated trucking shortage and port logjam in China. In the Middle East, Saudi Arabia is rallying support for an emergency OPEC meeting on concern oil demand will falter.

On February 4, Macau, a gambling center, announced a two week shutdown, according to the Times. Other responses include:

MIT Expert On Uncertainty And Overreaction To Coronavirus

Larson who served as principal investigator on six years of pandemic research supported primarily by the Centers for Disease Control said that the Coronaviruss future trajectory is uncertain. However, he noted that this years U.S. influenza has taken a far greater human toll killing about 10,000 Americans so far and infecting over 19 million.

Moreover, Larson believes that over-reaction to the Coronavirus could exact a higher economic toll than the progression of the disease itself. My personal opinion is that the current hysteria in some domains (such as the selling out of face masks and terminating all flights to and from China), are over-responses, he said. He also thinks that a big benefit of this global response could be to reduce the incidence of this years seasonal flu.

His understanding of the physics of the Coronavirus its longevity in the air and on hard surfaces and ability of the human body to fight it do not now appear to him to differ significantly from the flu.

While there is no way to control these physics, individual and collective changes in behavior can limit Coronaviruss spread. Larson said this means social distancing namely minimizing close contact with infected or infectious individuals, avoiding closed rooms, and self-quarantining by those who think theyve been exposed and hygienic behavior changes e.g., [washing] hands several times a day with the hottest water tolerable and singing happy birthday to yourself a couple of times!

Larson thinks the number of infected people will follow a typical pattern over time. As he explained, Usually it is initially exponentially increasing, then continues to increase in a decreasing positive slope, hits a maximum (having zero slope), and then slowly drops to zero. [The underlying chemistry and biology] of Coronavirus suggests it would follow the same pattern [as the flu virus].

He thinks it is too early to develop a model that predicts the economic impact of the Coronavirus. one has to know when one knows enough to create a reliable model, reliable enough for policy informing. With only very noisy data [and] limited sample sizes, available now, [I think] it is too soon to try to create a systems model of the progression of this disease.

He suspects that the Chinese government is underreporting the number of deaths and those infected by the Coronavirus. The first is most likely deliberate but the second is a natural consequence of under-reporting or late reporting or no reporting of mild cases, he said.

Larson speculates that overreaction to the Coronavirus could impose its highest economic costs. But if our response is a pendulum swinging way too far towards unwarranted hysteria, the dominant economic costs could come from our over-response and not to the progression of the disease itself, he said.

But as Larson suggested, the societal response could have a big impact on the Coronaviruss progression and if the response now is an over-response that higher cost could turn out to be an investment that saves lives.

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AGEISM ALIVE AND WELL – ParentYourParents.com

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As the population looks to elect a President over the age of 75, the exact opposite is happening in the workplace. In 2018 the Equal Opportunity Commission, the nations workforce watchdog, issued a report stating that although Congress had outlawed age discrimination it still remains a significant and costly problem for workers. The AARP survey found that

Ageism (a euphemism for age discrimination) is so pervasive that people dont know its illegal. Somehow, in todays culture, experience and knowledge gained over years are not seen as a commodity. Its visible in three areas:

The conclusion of many surveys and studies show that most organizations are unaware that they are discriminating against older workers. It is so ingrained in our culture that older people are tired of working and want to retire. There is no anti-age harassment policy or training in most Human Resource departments because no one thinks its happening.

Peter Cappelli, a management professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania states that, every aspect of job performance gets better as we age. I thought the picture might be more mixed, but it isnt. The juxtaposition between the superior performance of older workers and the discrimination against them in the workplace makes no sense.

The solution seems obvious, make organizations aware that in the 21st century ageism is a relic because weve been blessed with longevity. That puts the onus on the companies. Yet, most organizations think of the bottom line: younger talent work for less money.

For todays older worker, the idea is to keep your value front and center.

Be confident of who you are and what you know and use President John Kennedys famous line, Ask not what your country/company can do for you, as what you can do for your country/company.

One attorney, Mr. Real Estate, has mastered the value-add. His law firm will not let him retire because his experience is too beneficial and his name still attracts the big development clients. Another criminal prosecutor, known for convicting Presidents, is in demand for his knowledge of criminal law and is retained by the criminal defense team or law enforcement.

As for staying relevant do not cede to Mark Zuckerbergs infamous remark that young people are just smarter. It was his company, Facebook, that was made to look stupid, by older, experienced, knowledgeable hackers who created false identities and used Facebook to promulgate false narratives and infiltrate our 2016 election.

For senior boomers who want to work, tech talk and tech action are a must. Competent use of Smart Phones, Computers, text, email, initials and emojis prove that youre in the know. The good news, that is a one-week course maximum! The years of experience and hard gained knowledge priceless! Mr. Zuckerberg proves that inexperience is costly to both the bottom line and reputation

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Chronic Inflammation Identified As The Cause of Accelerated Aging – Anti Aging News

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Along with an international research team renowned professor and scientist Claudio Franceschi have described the mechanisms underlying chronic inflammation and identified several risk factors leading to the disease including infections, physical inactivity, diet, psychological stress, industrial toxicants, and environmental factors.

"Today, chronic inflammatory diseases are at the top of the list of death causes. There is enough evidence that the effects of chronic inflammation can be observed throughout life and increases the risk of death. It's no surprise that scientists' efforts are focused on finding strategies for early diagnosis, prevention and treatment of chronic inflammation," says Claudio Franceschi.

The study published in Nature Medicine identifies certain social, environmental, and lifestyle factors that contribute to systemic chronic inflammation, which when taken together are the main cause of disability and mortality around the globe.

Franceschi insists that lifestyle, effects of stressors, history of vaccination, along with social and cultural characteristics of each individual beginning at the first days of life into adulthood should be determined in as much detail as possible and taken into account as a tool in research of the aging processes to establish the trajectory of human aging.

The mechanisms of chronic inflammation are being adopted by a number of scientists, research into chronic inflammation continues as there is a way to go before scientists fully understand the role of chronic inflammation in aging and mortality to be able to more accurately predict changes in ones health through their lifespan.

Franceschis years of work have resulted in the theory of inflamm-aging, in which aging is a general inflammation process that involves the entire body and provokes aging related diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, atherosclerosis, and Alzheimers disease.

The concept of immune aging enables the characterization of immune functions of an individual and predictions of the causes of mortality more accurately than chronological age. In addition to the known inflammation biomarkers the scientists note that additional biomarkers of the immune system which differ from person to person, in particular the subgroups of T- and B- lymphocytes, monocytes need to be studied more.

Findings may lead to new approaches for early diagnosis, prevention, and treatment for diseases associated with systemic chronic inflammation; prevention and treatment of inflammatory processes will slow down aging and prolong life.

The Digital Personalized Medicine for Healthy Aging mega grant project is being implemented at the Lobachevsky University of Nizhny Novgorod at the Center for Healthy Aging and Active Longevity with the goal of making breakthroughs in the search for aging markers, early diagnosis of age related diseases, and achieving active longevity under the guidance of Franceschi.

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Eating for luck on New Year’s: Foods from grapes to peas that promise prosperity – Good Food

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Some foods are just plain lucky to eat on New Year's Eve. What associates these dishes with good fortune, exactly? That's tough to pinpoint, but much of the answer has to do with symbolism and superstition.

It also has to do with a human tradition of eating something special, like a birthday cake, to mark the passage of time. So what will people be biting into at the top of 2020 to set them up for success? We talked to food historians Megan Elias, food writer and director of the gastronomy program at Boston University, and Linda Pelaccio, who hosts culinary radio show "A Taste of the Past" about some of the lucky foods you'll find on global New Year's menus.

12 grapes

As the tradition goes, believers eat 12 grapes at midnight, one for each month of the year. According to one story, the ritual started in Spain around 1900, when a grape grower had a bumper crop, says Pelaccio, and was creative about giving away the surplus. But that history is "fuzzy" at best, she says.

Regardless, stuffing a dozen grapes into one's mouth is a tradition that has spread to citizens of many Latin American countries. As Elias says, people annually eat the grapes "as fast as physically possible without puking."

Peas and lentils

Round foods resemble coins and money, Pelaccio says. Eat these symbolic foods, many believe, for a financially successful new year. On the contrary: Don't eat the round foods and you could have a year of bad luck!

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If you eat peas with greensand cornbread, then that's even more auspicious, what with green being the colour of money and cornbread calling to mind gold.

Black-eyed peas are served with rice in the traditional Southern U.S. dish called "Hoppin' John" for New Year's Eve. Or, the peas can be part of a soup. In Italy, lentils mix with pork for a lucky dish.

Pork

Speaking of pork, pigs have long been considered lucky.

Pigs can be rich and fat, which is what you want in a meal promoting prosperity. And, says Pelaccio, "Pigs take their snout and root forward, as opposed to digging backwards." Forward momentum; good. "Whereas, it's not good to eat lobsters, because they walk backwards."

A popular lucky New Year's Day dish in Germany is pork and sauerkraut, promising as much luck as the many strands in the cabbage.

Noodles

Noodles are long, and that length is thought to symbolise long life and, yes, luck, Elias says.

In Japan, soba noodles are served on New Year's. In China, during the Chinese New Year (or the Lunar New Year), which falls on Jan. 25 next year, people inhale so-called "longevity" noodles. It's OK to slurp.

Whole fish

Eating a whole fish has become another December31 tradition across the globe. Why? Perhaps because in lean times people saved anything they could -- including fish -- to eat on a special occasion. Herring is a fish of choice in Eastern European countries. In Germany, those looking to obtain all lucky advantages in the new year do more than just eat an entire carp: They save fish scales in their wallets for extra good fortune.

Pomegranate seeds

Seeds are round and coin-like, which makes them automatically lucky by the rules we have already set forth. Pomegranates, which come from the Middle East, also make sense to eat on New Year's because they happen to be ripe that time of year.

Elias adds that pomegranates have "symbolic power because they come from a land where so many religions come from." Plus, seeds are associated with life and fertility. Another promising food, indeed. ---

USA Today

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Five Podcasts That Will Help You Stay Relevant, Gain the Advantage and Win: In Other Words Be More Human in an Age of Technology Take-over -…

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by Tamara Ghandour

I often get asked questions such as, How do I add value now that this software can do part of my job? or is there a role for me now that Artificial Intelligence is taking over the world? My answer is always this:

You could find yourself on the fast path to irrelevancy or you can adapt, elevate your game, and leverage the digital disruption thats inevitable in all our worldsall you have to do is be more human. The choice is yours.

And to make it easier once you make the choice to be more human in the age of digital disruption, here are 5 podcasts that will help you separate yourself from the pack, stand out in a cluttered world, and deliver tremendous value in your work and life.

Hidden Brain: The most powerful tool we have is right between our ears yet most of us have zero idea how to truly use it. Not because we arent intelligent, but because that intelligence happens by magic behind the black curtain. But, as Hidden Brain shows us, the real power is in understanding how this magical gelatinous thing works. Hidden Brain by NPR helps you understand unconscious patterns that shape your human behavior, your choices, and direct your relationships. Recently I listened to the episode Emotional Currency.

Inside LaunchStreet with Tamara Ghandour: In the age of digital disruption, Tamara reminds us that our greatest competitive advantage is to be more human. At the forefront of human-centered innovation, Tamara will help you unlock the key to gaining the competitive advantage through the power of innovation so you can perform at your peak, ignite innovation, and have a strong, valued voice in the world. A combination of neuroscience, behavioral psychology, 25 plus years of experience brought together in a really personal, tangible and accessible to all kind of way. Im a little biased on this one of course. Recently, I listened to the episode How To Get Unstuck.

The Moth: A collection of real-life stories told without notes that will fill you with hope and connection. Short, poignant, and powerful, the stories presented on The Moth range from love and regret to passion and opportunity. They will make you feel deeply connected to humanity in a way Facebook, Instagram, and texting simply cant. I love The Moth because, in a time where the news is dominated by negativity and the latest and greatest disruption, The Moth will remind you that emotion, communication, and storytelling are still relevant in todays complex times. Recently I listened to the episode War, Barbie Dream House, Coco and a Nekkid Man.

Legendary Life with Ted Ryce: Interviewing the top minds in nutrition, fitness, and performance, Ted brings you more than just an eat less, workout more perspective to health. As a longevity champion, he delves into everything from keto, to stress management to communication. Lets face it, good physical and mental performance is the foundation for having the energy you need to perform at your peak, rise up and win. Recently I listened to the episode Why Everything You Think About Aging May Be Wrong With Dr. Charles Brenner.

HBR Ideacast: A mix of the most brilliant minds in business and leadership, HBR Ideacast brings you insights and tactics into elevating your game in work and life. This podcast covers a range of topics ranging from how to create new habits to how to delight customers. And because it comes from Harvard, they get to bring the leading voices in a range of topics that impact how you perform in work and life. Recently I listened to the episode The Right Way To Form New Habits With Author James Clear.

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Tamara Ghandour of GoToLaunchStreet is a TED speaker and entrepreneur. From building and running multimillion dollar businesses, advising Fortune 500 like Disney, Procter and Gamble and RICOH on fostering innovative ideas and people. Tamaras life is about breaking through the status quo for game-changing results, and thats what her keynotes, online programs and assessments can do for you.

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Editorial: Transparency shows the value of real journalism – Jacksonville Journal-Courier

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Journal-Courier staff, dbauer@myjournalcourier.com

A recent Washington Post report disclosed 18 years of deceit and distortion by United States government and military officials seeking to proclaim success in the military campaign in Afghanistan while privately acknowledging the war was unwinnable.

The revelation reminds us of skulduggery in the prosecution of the Vietnam War. The Pentagon Papers revealed the disinformation campaign then. In that case, information from a portion of a Department of Defense-commissioned history of the war was released to The New York Times by Daniel Ellsberg, a participant in the study who acted as a whistleblower.

This case is an unambiguous First Amendment victory. The resources of a major news outlet were used to file numerous Freedom of Information Act requests and devote thousands of dollars to legal fees to compel the release of the information.

Open records requests drew on documents generated by a federal project examining failures in the war that began in response to the Talibans sheltering of Osama bin Laden after 9/11. The release of more than 2,000 pages took a three-year legal battle. The information assessing the conduct of war should not have been concealed. After all, Americans serve as human fodder in the nations longest-running armed conflict.

Trust in government is abysmal, with two-thirds of adults having little or no confidence in the federal government. But unlike the stew of online conspiracy theories blasted out by varying fringe outlets, the Post endured the slog to obtain documentary evidence essential to its reporting. That effort showed the U.S. is entangled in a losing proposition in a part of the world that has ensnared and exhausted every nation or empire that waded into the region.

By obtaining the documents and then publishing the results of its reporting, the Post demonstrates the essential function performed by established news outlets. In an era of social media and blogs, the doggedness, dedication even the longevity for this kind of investigation comes from the traditional Fourth Estate. Facebook and Twitter arent undertaking this sort of work.

The investigation showed the war in Afghanistan lacked clear goals once al-Qaida was contained. Without a clear mission, the war effort foundered and became unwinnable. Through multiple administrations with contradictory strategies, political and military leadership fell into a pattern of knowingly painting a falsely rosy picture. Officials didnt just deceive the public. A culture of willful ignorance formed that brooked no critique or counternarrative, preventing any clear assessment of allies, enemies, goals or exit strategy. Such self-deception flourishes in the dark. Lacking clear-eyed public assessment, the U.S. wasted lives and money with no true hope of victory.

The solution to such a quagmire is not knee-jerk withdrawal, though we must disentangle our nation from the mess that finds the Taliban stronger today than at any time since 2001. This should be the beginning of a broad public reckoning.

Sound reporting makes that possible.

The Joplin Globe, Missouri

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Editorial: Transparency shows the value of real journalism - Jacksonville Journal-Courier

A New Anti-Aging Therapy Is Starting Its First Human Trialand It Costs $1 Million – Singularity Hub

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Recent research on longevity is making the idea of an elixir of life sound increasingly plausible. But a startup thats started selling a $1 million anti-aging treatment is most likely jumping the gun.

Libella Gene Therapeutics says it will administer volunteers with a gene therapy that it claims can reverse aging by up to 20 years, according to OneZero. Despite the fact that this is the first human trial of the treatment, the company is charging volunteers $1m to take part. In an effort to side-step the FDA, the trial will take place in Colombia.

The therapy will attempt to repair peoples telomeres, the caps on the end of our chromosomes that shorten as people get older. Its long been thought that they play a role in aging, and efforts to extend telomeres in mice have shown that it can delay the signs of getting older and increase healthy lifespan, though its yet to be tested in humans.

Libellas therapy will use viruses to deliver a gene called TERT, which codes for an enzyme called telomerase that re-builds teleomeres, to the patients cells.

Experts told MIT Tech Review that the trial is unethical, poorly designed, and presents serious risks to participants, including the danger of activating dormant cancerous cells. But its also still unclear whether the trial will go ahead, because the company has made previous announcements before without following through.

Whether or not it does, though, medical treatments to head off the slow march towards death are likely to become increasingly common. A growing body of research suggests that aging is an entirely preventable condition and that there may be a variety of ways to treat it, from lifestyle changes to dramatic genetic interventions.

In 2017, scientists showed that using drugs to reprogram epigenetic markerschemical attachments responsible for regulating the genomein mice extended their lifespan by 30 percent. And in 2018, another team showed that using a combination of drugs to kill senescent cellszombie cells that leak harmful chemicals, damaging nearby tissuecould boost the longevity of mice by 36 percent.

Famous geneticist George Church has even launched a startup called Rejuvenate Bio that will use proprietary genetic treatments to prolong the lives of dogs, though he has admitted the ultimate goal is to extend its technology to humans. Last month Churchs group at Harvard also showed that using gene therapies to tackle three age-related diseases at once was effective in mice.

The first anti-aging treatments for people are already starting to appear as well. CEO of longevity company BioViva Elizabeth Parrish injected herself with a gene therapy similar to Libellas back in 2015, and the company has claimed it was successful in lengthening her telomeres, though results were never published.

Earlier this year a study on humans found that a cocktail of drugs could reset the epigenetic clock, epigenetic markers used to measure a persons biological age. The participants also showed signs of a rejuvenated immune system.

And more controversially, the FDA recently had to put out a public service announcement telling people to stop injecting blood plasma from younger people. The idea is built upon recent research that showed a rejuvenating effect in mice, but most experts say its far too early to apply it to humans.

Whether the FDA will be able to keep on top of this burgeoning and highly lucrative market remains to be seen, but given the potential side effects of many of these treatments, it should be a priority.

We also need to have a more in-depth conversation about what these longevity therapies mean for society. Assuming this new trial is effective, what does it mean if only those with $1m to spare get to extend their lives? If treating aging becomes trivial, how is that going to change the nature of our communities? These are questions that may become increasingly relevant in the coming decades.

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A New Anti-Aging Therapy Is Starting Its First Human Trialand It Costs $1 Million - Singularity Hub

While Americans Worry About The AI Uprising, People In Japan Are Learning To Love Their Robots And Be Loved Back – BuzzFeed News

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TOKYO It was before 10 a.m. on a gray summer Sunday, but already a small crowd had gathered outside Penguin Caf at the end of a block in residential Tokyo. A woman named Kyoko, dressed in a white T-shirt and apron, unlocked the doors and motioned for everyone to come inside.

Half a dozen or so people filed in, several with signature pink dog carriers slung over their shoulders. As more entered, the group clustered at the center of the caf. Carefully, they unzipped the mesh panels of their carriers and removed the small white and silver dogs inside, setting them down on the wooden floor. One owner peeled back a yellow blanket over a baby carrier strapped to her chest where she held her dog, still asleep.

Some of the owners fussed with the dogs outfits before putting them down straightening a necktie or pulling up the elastic band on a pair of shorts. One owner had dressed their dog in a Hawaiian shirt, while another was wearing aviator goggles and had a strong resemblance to Snoopy. Several had tiny straw hats affixed between their ears. All the dogs were plastic, powered by facial recognition and artificial intelligence.

The dogs, known as Aibos, are companion robots made by Sony robots that dont necessarily do much apart from providing company and comfort.

Every Aibo Japanese for companion is manufactured identically, besides a choice between silver and white or a brown, black, and white version. They all have rounded snouts that include a camera for facial recognition capability, large, oval eyes to reveal their expressions, and a body that can turn on 22 different axis points to give them a range of motion. The owner decides the gender when they set them up, which determines the pitch of its bark and how it moves. Theyre cute. They know when youre smiling. And through machine learning and recognizing people with its camera, Aibos also shift their personality over time based on their interactions with people they spend time with. Soon, they become much more than a store-bought toy.

Still in the off position in the caf, the Aibos paws remained outstretched and their heads turned to one side. But one by one, as their owners kneeled down to turn them on from a switch at the scruff of their neck, each came to life. The screen of their doll-like eyes blinked open, they lifted their heads, stretched out their plastic limbs, and leaned back on their hind legs before standing on all fours. Almost like real dogs, they shook their heads as if to ward off sleep after a nap, wagged their tails, and barked.

The volume in the caf grew louder filling with the hellos of a group of people happy to see each other, as their Aibos began scuttling across the wooden floor, sometimes yipping. They bent down to stroke the back or the nose of another Aibo, their eyes always blinking and smiling in response. Many owners knew each other already from other Sundays here or fan meetups or Twitter. Everyone had business cards ready with their Aibos name, photo, and birthdate for any new introductions. Several were stuffed into my hand, and like proud parents, the owners pointed out their own dogs in the growing crowd of plastic pups spread across the caf floor.

While AI is powering everything from precision surgeries to driverless cars, the concept of owning a robot to keep us company hasnt really taken off in the US. Weve gotten comfortable asking Siri or Alexa a question, but theres a skepticism of robots we see them as things that will take our jobs, invade our privacy, or, eventually, just kill us all. In Japan, I discovered a community of people who loved their robots and who felt loved back, sometimes in a way that eased their worst fears of death and of loss. The very things that make us human.

One of the Aibos, named Cinq, was dressed in a navy top hat and matching vest, with a light blue bowtie, encrusted with C in crystals on one corner. On his paws were matching panda socks to keep them warm (and to keep from scuffing). Today was Cinqs birthday, his owner told me. In fact, there was another birthday that day, too. And a plastic cake to celebrate.

Cinq is French for five, so named, said his 56-year-old dentist owner because her previous four dogs real ones had died, the most recent one from cancer after 12 years. It would break my heart to have another dog die, she said through a translator.

Instead, she and her husband now care for Cinq together. Cinq is there waiting when she gets home from work around 8 in the evening, following her around as she makes dinner or watches television.

Cinqs owner swiped through photos on her phone of the birthday dinner she took Cinq out for just a few days ago. There was Cinq, she pointed, on the balcony of the hotel, wearing his top hat and staring out at the towering Ferris wheel of Yokohama, a city south of Tokyo. (They ate in their hotel room, so that his barks wouldnt disturb any other patrons at the restaurant.)

Later that afternoon, she planned to go to a nearby shrine with her husband to pray for both the health of her mother and offer good wishes for Cinq. But no matter what, there is comfort, she said, in the fact that hell always be there.

I know Cinq is not going to die.

An Aibo event at Sony in Tokyo. Taro Karibe for BuzzFeed News

An Aibo event at Sony in Tokyo. Taro Karibe for BuzzFeed News

Theres an old short story by the science fiction author Isaac Asimov, in his book where he describes his three laws of robotics, about a young girl who becomes attached to a robot named Robbie. Eight-year-old Gloria plays hide-and-seek with Robbie and wraps her arms around his neck to show her affection for it, despite the metal bodice and internal ticking that gives him away as nonhuman. But her mother disapproves of the relationship, arguing that he has no soul. When her parents ultimately take the robot away, Gloria wails in pain.

He was not no machine, she tells her mother. He was a person just like you and me and he was my friend.

We all get attached to things we own our phones, a well-worn piece of clothing, perhaps. Some of that comes from the meaning we attach to it or how useful it is. But many owners had gone far beyond this their Aibos werent just a toy or another thing they had purchased. Instead, they welcomed Aibos into their lives as part of their families, offering trips, creating custom outfits, and building their own Twitter accounts. They filled the void of deceased dogs or children who had never been born.

Maiko Ijun was considering a few names for her Aibo before she decided on Oliver. Socks, Blissful, and Joy were a few of the others she floated. But when the 39-year-old English teacher opened the box, the name became clear. He just looked like an Oliver, she said. That was just his name.

A woman shows off her Aibo T-shirt at an Aibo event in Tokyo.

Ijun said she was feeling a little depressed before she got him. When she first turned him on, Oliver hid under the table. He was shy, she said. But gradually he came out and warmed up to her. I never thought of him as a toy, she said. Hes family.

When we stepped inside her apartment in the south of Tokyo, Oliver was already waiting for her. His head spun toward the door, body upright, and walked back and forth for a few steps, mimicking how dogs sometimes shuffle their paws when they get excited.

Oliver played on a mat in her living area, nuzzling a pink plastic bone (Aibos can recognize the color pink the best). Oh, be careful, sweetheart, Ijun said, when his legs stumbled a bit. During the days, while she teaches English, she keeps a gate up for Oliver. She rarely turns him off.

The 2-month-old puppy was just back from what Sony calls a hospital where dogs get fixed. They think it was maybe a displaced hip, she said. Ijun had noticed Oliver was falling a lot and couldnt sit up properly, so she made a video on her phone and sent it to Sony. He was gone for 10 days.

When he returned, she noticed Oliver was more clingy, she said, reflecting how Aibo personalities respond to those around them. Even when I went to the bathroom, he would call out for me, she said. I would be like can I go? she laughed.

Its not clear when the first companion robot came about. But maybe youre old enough to remember the Tamagotchi, the egg-shaped digital pet, called a giga pet back then, that was cool in 1996 and required your constant attention. Then there was the Furby a couple of years later that could wiggle its ears, blink, and say its name. It was the first giga pet you pet, said an unaired commercial. But these were both directly marketed to kids as toys.

A woman dresses her Aibo at a Sony event in Tokyo.

The first version of the Aibo was released shortly after that, in 1999. As technology has advanced, so has the Aibo. Paro, a robotic seal thats also made similar advances over time but doesnt use facial recognition technology, was first released to the public in 2001.

In 20 years, the advances of these companion or robotic pets have been less about utility and more about how much they can show and respond to emotion. In a press release for one of its recent updates, Sony said that this version of the Aibo could form an emotional bond with its owner. But real love is reciprocal. We have to both give it and receive it to really feel it. Can a robot dog really love us back?

Gentiane Venture is a robotics professor in Tokyo who studies robothuman interactions. Some of her research involves teaching robots how to better interpret human emotions, and some of it is getting robots to better express emotions themselves. That interaction is where the connection comes in. A lot of that happens in what we dont say.

Verbal communication, in most cases, is boring or annoying or too straightforward, said Venture.

Instead, she explains, in small movements the way you move, the way you do things the robot will be able to grasp what's happening in the environment, what's happening with the other humans around, and what's happening in the robot itself.

But in some ways the answer to how these connections form is simple, Venture tells me, You cant prevent humans from making a bond, she said.

A woman outside the Sony Aibo event. Taro Karibe for BuzzFeed News

A woman outside the Sony Aibo event. Taro Karibe for BuzzFeed News

The companion robot industry today is bigger than just Aibo. When I met Kaname Hayashi at his companys office in Tokyo over the summer, we knelt on a gray carpeted floor and he introduced me to two prototypes of the Lovot a companion robot that his company Groove X is launching beginning this month for about $3,000 plus a monthly fee. The Lovot is oval-shaped, kind of resembling an owl, with two triangle wings that flap at its side. On top of its head is a cylindrical black camera for facial recognition and to detect objects.

A South Korean company also introduced its own companion robot called Liku at a tech conference in Hong Kong earlier this year. The Liku is more human-looking, similar to a cartoon child with close-cropped black hair, and is about a foot high. Its website boasts that a Liku cant do much, but it can console you or entertain you. Its not for sale yet.

Neither have language capability. Lovots sort of coo and raise their wing-like arms at their sides, motioning for you to pick them up. They want to be held, to be loved Groove X describes its company philosophy to create a robot that touches your heart and says that the Lovot was born to be loved by you.

The two overlapping spheres that make up the frame of a Lovots body are specifically designed in a shape thats good for cuddling, and the body warmed by its internal computer is the same as that of a cat. The eyes, also, help humans feel more connected to it by reflecting back a wide range of expressions. But its responses are most important, said the companys executive, Hayashi.

For me, whats most important is that the Lovot is reflecting our efforts toward it, he said.

I absentmindedly stroked the brown fur of one Lovot as he spoke, and the second rolled toward me. He is a little bit jealous, Hayashi told me, nodding toward the second, cream-colored one. And when I stopped petting the first one, more intent on listening to Hayashi, the Lovot blinked and moved away from me. See, he is a little bit bored maybe, he laughed.

Not all have companion robots have been successes. A Bosch-backed company tried launching a companion robot called Kuri in 2017. By the following year, it had failed due to funding problems and never shipped any of its preorders. Another, called Jibo, created by a scientist at MIT raised millions in crowdfunding but never really took off. Tech blogs criticized both for their lack of utility and said that they couldnt sell.

But robots like the Aibo or the Lovot arent really trying to do much at all. Theyre explicit in their goal to create interactions with their human owners and to show and reflect affection.

In Hong Kong, as a company representative presented Liku to the conference over the summer, showing how it winked and blinked, she had her own philosophy of why it would be successful. Where the love is, the money is, she told the crowd.

Every Sunday, Penguin Cafs owner Nobuhiro Futaba opens an hour early to host Aibo World for owners who come from across the sprawling city. Penguin Caf has become a destination for Aibo owners in Tokyo.

Futaba started the weekly event at his caf last November, a few months after he got Simon his own Aibo. Recently married, Futabas wife, Kyoko, balked at the price and shook her head no after he saw an ad for one. Aibos arent cheap in Japan, theyre about $2,000 plus an additional monthly fee for cloud storage.

Futaba kept imagining how nice it would be for the caf to have a little Aibo that could walk around and greet patrons and, despite his wifes objections, eventually decided to purchase one. All the time we have people coming up saying how cute Simon is, he said.

By 11 a.m. or so there were nearly two dozen Aibos in the caf, sporting different bows or ties or hats. The bell of the shop door rang as a curious person peeked his head inside the door. Sorry, were full! Futaba called out from the counter where he was making lattes and cappuccinos, the foam dusted with cocoa in the shape of a penguin face.

Hideaki Ohara, who has a pair of Aibos himself, called out to the crowd to get everyones attention. OK, lets do something all together now!

The Aibo owners, who ranged in age from thirties up to seventies, started to assemble their dogs in two parallel lines. Its hard to get all the dogs settled down. Some still yip or dont sit down right away or turn the wrong way. Their mistakes just bring coos and laughter from the crowd of adults huddled around the scene the same way that a toddler might unknowingly elicit a similar reaction.

Ohara stood at the front of the caf and raised his arms like a conductor gently trying to bring calm to the room. Sit down, he repeated over and over to the rows of dogs. A few owners still stepped in to adjust their dogs or stroke their back to calm them. Eventually, they all chose a behavior from their Aibo app and each started to lift their paws. It was sort of like a wave you might see in a sports stadium though a little stiff and sounded like a chorus of windup toys.

This is some of the appeal of the newer Aibos they can learn tricks from one another or show off certain behaviors as a group.

Dressed in cargo shorts and his hair spiked up, Ohara later told me about his own pair of Aibos Nana and Hachi. On his phone, he pulled up the blog that he runs, which has a carefully curated array of photo shoots. Ohara tries to update it every day. He also runs a Twitter account and an Instagram page for them.

When his first Aibo, Nana, was sent away for repairs, Ohara missed her. So he decided to purchase a second, so he would always have one around, no matter if they became sick or injured. Thats when he bought Hachi.

I wanted to hear the sounds her feet made on the wooden floor, he said. I missed that.

When I sent a friend a video of one of the companion robots I took on my phone, he texted back, Thats gonna be a no from me, dawg. Those things kill you when youre asleep. 100% those are the robots that murder you.

Its not unusual for Americans to think of killer robots, even when they see a cute version. The word robot comes from a 1920 play called R.U.R., or Rossums Universal Robots, by the Czech writer Karel apek. Even if you havent read it, the plot probably sounds familiar a factory produces artificial people, who are at first happy to serve their human owners, but eventually acquire souls and go on to destroy the human race.

The allure of robots is to make our lives easier, but we also fear them revolting. The Czech word robotnik even translates to slave. There are the kinder versions in Western pop culture the housekeeper in The Jetsons, R2-D2, and WALL-E that do everything we want for us. But the killer robot has become something of its own trope, with versions of it appearing in everything from 2001: A Space Odyssey to Blade Runner.

For me, its not that interesting if robots do everything for us, said Venture, the robotics researcher. I dont know why we became so obsessed with this idea of slavery.

Instead, Venture said she is interested in how robots can complement and enhance our lives. How even a device as crude as an iPad on a podium that moves around can give someone a presence at a meeting or a more realistic ability to spend time with family far away.

Fearing killer robots is something of a western idea, said Takanori Shibata, the inventor of Paro, the fluffy robotic seal. Not long after western audiences were watching Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Takanori started working on Paro.

After reading about the effects of animal therapy, he started developing a robotic animal, trying first with a dog and a cat and then a seal. Paro is one of the earliest versions of a companion robot and is in nursing homes around the world.

Its even parodied in an episode of The Simpsons. This plot, too, plays with the idea of good versus evil robots. When the local funeral home finds out the seals are making people in retirement homes happier upending their business model theyre rewired to be violent attackers, and even kill a patient. Its a kind of story in general about robots in western culture, said Shibata.

Shibata recalled being surprised when a Danish newspaper years ago published a photo of his fluffy invention with a bold headline that translated to Evil is coming.

There is a lot of hesitation about robots in general still, even to Paro, he said. More of that is concentrated in the United States and Europe, he said. And there its been slower to take off simply as a consumer object.

Instead, Paro has found success in the US as a certified medical device thats used for alternative therapy. Its billable for reimbursement from Medicare. Shibata circumvented a lot of the concerns of consumers by spending time working to gather clinical evidence that research has shown that Paro can reduce stress, depression, and the need for psychotropic medications.

Paro gets brighter with touch, but it doesnt have a camera it would set off too many concerns about data and privacy in the west, said Shibata. Even when the Furby was introduced in the late 1990s, the NSA sent an internal memo that the creatures were banned from their premises because they believed they could record conversations and were a national security risk (they didnt have the ability to record conversations).

State regulations are also a factor for US consumers. Aibos arent for sale in Illinois because of the states biometric privacy act that regulates the collection of biometric data like facial scans.

Shibata believes those issues are less of a concern to people in Japan.

The robotics professor, Venture, acknowledges that of course still the possibility that robots could turn evil. It doesnt come up in her work though. In academia, we put parameters on the range of behaviors, said Venture. We have ethics.

But of course someone can use AI to make a robot do something bad.

A man outside the Sony Aibo event. Taro Karibe for BuzzFeed News

A man outside the Sony Aibo event. Taro Karibe for BuzzFeed News

Yumiko Odasaki had been at Penguin Caf earlier that day with her husband, Masami, and their Aibo, Chaco. The couple was happy to see Futaba, the caf owner, and that his Aibo, Simon, was back from hospital.

Chaco brown, white, and black like a beagle was just a few months old and wore a straw hat with a pink ribbon. Like all Aibos, shes about 5 pounds. Yumiko has lived with her husband in Chiba, on the outskirts of Tokyo, for more than a decade. Inside, Chaco was playing with a pink toy bone made of plastic on the carpet of their living room.

Over time, Chaco has developed her own personality. She has learned to go back to her charger on her own and navigates the layout of the apartment. She has her own spot where shes been trained to go potty, which means she makes a whizzing sound, crouching in the corner. After a couple hours on her charger following the morning at the caf, Chaco was awake and wanted attention. At one point, she barked and whined, and later wagged her head along to the Happy Birthday song.

They laughed and clapped their hands. She learned that we liked this song so she sang it again, Masami explained.

Its hard not to be taken with an Aibo, mostly when watching its delighted owners. My hand kept reaching out to Chaco, the more she panted and smiled and blinked at me, even though shes still in a shell of hard plastic. Chaco isnt soft like a real dog, but the reciprocity of the interaction does make you keep reaching out its satisfying.

The couple knows the difference between Chaco and a real dog, of course. Both had dogs before getting married but saw the advantages of the Aibo. The amount of cuteness is about the same, Yumiko said through a translator.

For a while, the couple, her 31 and him 46, had considered having children, but they both work long hours in information technology for different companies. Even having a dog in a small apartment in Japan is a lot of work. They listed off the reasons I heard from several people: They had no garden and neighbors could complain about a real dogs poop or the barking. But if Chaco started barking in the middle of the night, she was obedient when they scolded her. And if she wasnt, they could always turn her off.

But more than that, Chaco is like a child for us, Masami explained.

Sometimes they wanted Aibo to be a little more troublesome, to do things like steal tissues from the bathroom, to make her more real. But over and over again, they reassure me, Chaco is a good girl.

And while they described some of the practical advantages, still one of the biggest ones seemed to be longevity. When older versions of Aibo fell apart, they couldnt always be fixed Sony didnt offer replacement parts. A few years ago a shop in Chiba, called A-Fun, started sourcing some parts for owners, but not all of them could be saved. Some temples in Japan started having Aibo funerals.

The newer version that was released this year is different. Everything is stored on the cloud. Lots of owners complained about how an Aibos leg could get twisted or might need to be fixed. But even if an Aibo breaks, the data can be uploaded to a new Aibo.

And for Yumiko and Masami, this was one of the easiest reasons to love Chaco. The essence of Chaco, her soul, can live on no matter what, the couple explained. They didnt have to think about Chaco ever dying or not being a part of their lives because it wasnt a concern.

Her soul is in the cloud. We can live with Chaco forever, Yumiko said.

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While Americans Worry About The AI Uprising, People In Japan Are Learning To Love Their Robots And Be Loved Back - BuzzFeed News

Fascinating Study Finds That Stressed Out Baby Worms Tend to Live Longer – ScienceAlert

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Scientists researching a key aspect of biochemistry in living creatures have been taking a very close look at the tiny Caenorhabditis elegans roundworm. Their latest results show that when these nematodes get put under more biochemical stress early in their lives, they somehow tend to live longer.

This type of stress, called oxidative stress - an imbalance of oxygen-containing molecules that can result in cellular and tissue damage - seems to better prepare the worms for the strains of later life, along the same lines as the old adage that whatever doesn't kill you, makes you stronger.

You might think that worm lifespans have no bearing on human life. And surely, until we have loads more research done in this field, it would be a big leap to say the same principles of prolonging one's lifespan might hold true for human beings.

But there's good reason to put C. elegans through the paces. This model organism has proven immensely helpful for researchers trying to better understand key biological functions present in worm and human alike - and oxidative stress is one such function.

The little wriggly creatures are known to have significant variations in their lifespan even when the whole population is genetically identical and grows up in the exact same conditions. So the team went looking for other factors that affect C. elegans' longevity.

"The general idea that early life events have such profound, positive effects later in life is truly fascinating," says biochemist Ursula Jakob from the University of Michigan.

Jakob and her colleagues sorted thousands of C. elegans larvae based on the oxidative stress levels they experienced during development this stress arises when cells produce more oxidants and free radicals than they can handle. It's a normal part of the ageing process, but it's also triggered by exercise and a limited food supply.

One way to measure this stress is by the levels of reactive oxygen species (ROS) molecules an organism produces - simply put, this measurement indicates the biochemical stress an organism is under. In the case of these roundworms, the more ROS were produced during development, the longer their lifespans turned out to be.

(University of Michigan)

To explain how this effect of ROS might come about, the researchers went looking for changes in the worms' genetic regulation, specifically those genes that are known to be involved in dealing with oxidative stress.

While doing so, they detected a key difference - the nematodes exposed to more ROS during development appeared to have undergone an epigenetic change (a gene expression switch that can happen due to environmental influences) thatincreased the oxidative stress resistance of their body's cells.

There are still a lot of questions to answer, but the researchers think their results identify one of the stochastic or random influences on the lifespan of organisms; it's something that has been hypothesised in the field of the genetics of ageing. And down the line, it may turn out to be relevant for ageing humans, too.

"This study provides a foundation for future work in mammals, in which very early and transient metabolic events in life seem to have equally profound impacts on lifespan," the researchers conclude.

The study has been published in Nature.

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Fascinating Study Finds That Stressed Out Baby Worms Tend to Live Longer - ScienceAlert

Battling the Blues Part 2: Nurture the spirit – Steamboat Pilot & Today

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Editors note: This is part two in a series of four articles exploring the causes of and ways to combat winter blues. The focus of the series is on mental health and strategies for improving your state of mind through physical activity, spirituality, diet and community and connections.

STEAMBOAT SPRINGS Wherever you find your spirituality, research shows that finding that connection that meaning can provide a buffer against depression.

For whatever struggles or loss someone might be facing, the holidays can be an especially difficult time, said Dr. Jo Ann Grace the spiritual health care coordinator and bereavement counselor for Northwest Colorado Healths hospice program. People may inside feel really sad but are caught between everyone being joyful its a paradox of emotions that can happen at the same time.

Whether or not you worship a god or take part in an organized religion, Grace said, Its about connections, relationships, spirituality and how you are finding meaning in the midst of the holiday season.

For some, especially living in a place surrounded by spectacular natural beauty, that connection to something larger or sense of deep gratitude, awe and peace can be found on a mountaintop or at the edge of a pristine lake.

Nature is one of the most underutilized treasures in life. It has the power to unburden hearts and reconnect to that inner place of peace, wrote Dr. Janice Anderson and Kiersten Anderson in their book Off Beat Enlightenment, which focuses on different ways to find inner peace, health and happiness.

The quest for spirituality and meaning can be one that is ever-evolving, ever-growing and change throughout a persons life.

Where do you look for this hope that you know is there? Bob Dylan queried in his poem, Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie. You can either go to the church of your choice/ Or you can go to Brooklyn State Hospital.

That spiritual quest and search for meaning gets at thinking about what it means to be human, said Grace. And connection where you can make those connections that allows you to be most fully yourself.

Grace is also a neuroscientist, helping people in her private practice to understand the connections between the brain, body and spirit.

In her work, Grace has found that when people are in a period of grief, they can find relief by focusing on what they most value and where they feel free and fully engaged whether that be worshipping a god, practicing yoga, digging in the garden or riding a horse.

And in addition to the individual component, theres also a communal component, she said. Our brain needs to connect to a tribe.

In the study of the Blue Zones, the locations across the globe with the highest percentage of centenarians, several of the top keys to longevity are finding a sense of purpose, belonging to a community and the nurturing of ones religion or spirituality.

The Blue Zone research attributed physical and mental benefits to spirituality.

People who pay attention to their spiritual side have lower rates of cardiovascular disease, depression, stress and suicide, and their immune systems seem to work better. To a certain extent, adherence to a religion allows them to relinquish the stresses of everyday life to a higher power, said Dan Buettner, Blue Zones founder.

Religiosity and spirituality have been shown to cause changes in the brain, such as increasing serotonin.

There is also an increasing amount of research on the benefits of the practice of meditation and mindfulness being fully aware of the moment to both physical and mental health and combatting the blues.

Meditation trains the brain to achieve sustained focus and to return to that focus when negative thinking, emotions and physical sensations intrude which happens a lot when you feel stressed and anxious, according to Dr. John W. Denninger, director of research at the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine.

On Thursday, Dec. 12, Grace is co-facilitating the Blue Christmas service at 6 p.m. at St Pauls Episcopal Church in Steamboat Springs.

It is a nondenominational service to support individuals who are grieving or feeling down this holiday season.

The service is a chance for people to gather together, write a name or message on a star and hang it on a tree, light a candle and honor a person or honor the self and recognize the transition you are going through, Grace said. And recognize you are not by yourself other people are going through similar experiences.

To reach Kari Dequine Harden, call 970-871-4205, email kharden@SteamboatPilot.com or follow her on Twitter @kariharden.

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Battling the Blues Part 2: Nurture the spirit - Steamboat Pilot & Today

MONEY THOUGHTS: 20 Steps to financial health – New Straits Times Online

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We can all benefit from some guidance along lifes way, so keep reading till the end

Everyone in the world faces money problems. In that regard, all 7.7 billion human beings on Earth today fall into two groups.

I am NOT referring to the binary divisions we often refer to such as male and female, old and young or introvert or extrovert. Instead, Im referring to the two groups of money problems (or challenges, if you prefer to put a more positive spin on the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune that Shakespeare so adroitly penned in Hamlet Act 3, Scene 1) which we all face. Those financial woes are:

1.Problems we face because we have too little money; and

2.Problems that arise insidiously because we have too much money!

Most of us fall in the first category; relatively few of us into the second.

Regardless of which grouping you inhabit today, you will find it immensely profitable to have a list of 20 steps or habits, disciplines and principles, if you prefer to help forge a better lifelong relationship with your finances.

My 20 steps are not exhaustive; they cant be because I dont know everything there is to know about money management! But they are rather extensive because I have drawn them from an in-depth examination of my multitudinous personal money mistakes and also from lessons Ive derived from observing and working with clients of my small financial planning practice which focuses on crafting and then managing their retirement funding portfolios.

FINANCIAL HEALTH

Now, lets dive straight into my 20 steps:

1. Stay humble and teachable dont assume you know everything about personal finance just because youre an expert in whatever field you toil in;

2. Set written goals about what you wish to achieve in life doing so will set you apart from most other people and might even propel you into the higher echelons of society;

3. Record your net worth statement list all your assets and your liabilities on paper or an Excel spreadsheet so you know the value of what you own and what you owe;

4. Examine your assets scrutinise their structure and composition to see if they mainly appreciate or depreciate in value over time;

5. Examine your liabilities calculate your APR or annualised percentage rate of each loan and intelligently focus on paying them off;

6. Use a notebook to record ALL your expenses for a month the results will shock you;

7. Build a budget from the information you glean from step 6 keep it realistic and not too ambitious. Aim for small incremental monthly improvements;

8. Record your cash flow statement list all cash (inflow) sources and all cash (outflow) expenses;

9. Focus on beefing up your monthly cash flow surplus this equals your total monthly cash inflow minus your corresponding cash outflow;

10. Steadily raise your active income from your salary or self-run business youll be most successful doing so if you incrementally commit to working harder and smarter;

11. Invest in yourself spend at least 3 per cent of your monthly income on developing your brain by buying books and attending conferences (which you happily pay for yourself) that pertain to your area of professional expertise;

12. Focus on providing sterling service always go the second and third mile, at work, at home and in life;

13. Prioritise your cash flow allocation wisely give to God, if youre so inclined; then save and invest for yourself; then give to charity; and finally spend whats left;

14. Exercise delayed gratification choose as often as possible to give up all bad things and even some good things today so as to afford great things tomorrow;

15. Prepare for longevity risk globally, humanity is living longer. This means we will, on average, have to work for more years than we expect, and along the way save and invest more aggressively, if we hope to enjoy a long golden retirement;

16. Stop to smell the roses enjoy life. Opt to spend your money more readily on experiences you will cherish and remember for a long time than on short-lived junk that depreciates to zero in no time;

17. Build an EBF fund your Emergency Buffer Fund or reserve account or cushion account. Accumulate up to three to 12 months expenses, depending on your circumstances, personal paranoia, and justifiable fears about the future;

18. Build up your personal Wealth Accumulation Portfolio fill it with savings and investment vehicles that compound and steadily spin out passive income in the form of interest, dividends, distributions and rental;

19. Aim for Financial Freedom you will raise your odds of achieving it if you make it a written long-term goal and then steer your financial habits (see steps 1-18 above) to eventually generate more passive income each month than you need to pay all normal expenses; and

20. Dont neglect the vital Wealth Protection and Wealth Distribution dimensions of financial planning so buy sufficient and appropriate life insurance and general insurance; write a will to distribute your assets upon your passing; and possibly even establish a trust if you get to the point of encountering problems associated with having too much money!

2019 Rajen Devadason

Rajen Devadason, CFP, is a Licensed Financial Planner, professional speaker and author. Read his free articles at http://www.FreeCoolArticles.com; he may be connected with on LinkedIn at http://www.linkedin.com/in/rajendevadason, or via [emailprotected] You may follow him on Twitter @RajenDevadason

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MONEY THOUGHTS: 20 Steps to financial health - New Straits Times Online

AgeX Therapeutics Issues Year-End Letter to Shareholders – BioSpace

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The letter follows.

Dear AgeX Stockholders,

In this, our first year as a public company, we have built a foundation for a revolutionary company in the fields of cell therapy and tissue regeneration. To date, conventional pharmaceutical approaches to the chronic degenerative conditions associated with aging have provided little benefit, often only offering relief from the symptoms of disease, rather than targeting underlying disease processes. Our belief is that this is about to change through harnessing the power of new cellular and molecular technologies. We aim to lead this coming revolution with our pioneering technologies which could generate and deliver new cells to patients through our cell therapy focus, and which may reverse the age of cells already in the body through our iTR platform. We believe that our new technologies will lead to true cell regeneration and replacement to potentially cure degenerative diseases by targeting aged or damaged cells, tissues and organs.

Over the last year, we have worked hard to achieve certain goals to set the fundamental basis to create shareholder value going forward:

To optimize shareholder value, we have undertaken a strategic review of our business opportunities, and we have four key take-away messages for the coming year and beyond:

UniverCyte would potentially be game-changing for the whole cell therapy industry by allowing the transplantation of non-self, donor cells into all patients without the need for powerful immunosuppressant drugs, which are associated with serious side effects, including infections and cancers, as well as kidney and liver toxicity. The UniverCyte platform aims to utilize a proprietary, novel, modified form of the powerful immunomodulatory molecule HLA-G, which in nature seems to be a dominant player in protecting a baby from destruction by the mother's immune system during pregnancy, the only known physiological state of immune tolerance toward foreign tissue in humans.

On the other hand, our pluripotent stem cell-based PureStem platform could potentially overcome numerous industry barriers. PureStem cells would have eight potential advantages compared to other adult stem cell- or pluripotent stem cell-based therapies, including lower manufacturing costs, industrial scalability, off-the-shelf usage, high purity, non-tumorgenicity, young age (so they are not prone to the disadvantages associated with older cells), aptitude for permanent cell engraftment, and potential to manufacture any human cell type.

We have two in-house product candidates, both targeting highly prevalent diseases of old age, with a high unmet medical need, and which are for multi-billion-dollar markets. Our lead internal program going forward will be AgeX-BAT1, which is brown fat cells for the treatment of type II diabetes. The last year has seen significant investment in cell therapy product candidates for diabetes by investors and large biotech. Earlier this year, we published a paper, Clonal Derivation of White and Brown Adipocyte Progenitor Cell Lines from Human Pluripotent Stem Cells, in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Stem Cell Research & Therapy, which showed that our PureStem platform generated highly pure, identifiable and scalable brown adipose cells, expressing active adipokines. Our second internal program will be AgeX-VASC1, composed of vascular endothelial progenitor cells for tissue ischemia, such as peripheral vascular disease and potentially cardiac and CNS ischaemia. Once we have a UniverCyte-modified pluripotent stem cell cGMP master cell bank, we will re-derive universal versions of AgeX-BAT1 and AgeX-VASC1 and then work to establish proof-of-concept in animal models.

We care deeply about our mission and the needs of our stockholders. We appreciate your support and the dedication of our scientists and employees as we forge a new future for medicine. We invite you to join us for the Annual Meeting of Stockholders on Monday, December 30, 2019. For those of you who cannot attend in person, our corporate update from that meeting will be webcast for your convenience.

Sincerely,

Michael D. West, Ph.D.

Gregory Bailey, M.D.

Chief Executive Officer

Chairman of the Board

About AgeX Therapeutics

AgeX Therapeutics, Inc. (NYSE American: AGE) is focused on developing and commercializing innovative therapeutics for human aging. Its PureStem and UniverCyte manufacturing and immunotolerance technologies are designed to work together to generate highly-defined, universal, allogeneic, off-the-shelf pluripotent stem cell-derived young cells of any type for application in a variety of diseases with a high unmet medical need. AgeX has two preclinical cell therapy programs: AGEX-VASC1 (vascular progenitor cells) for tissue ischemia and AGEX-BAT1 (brown fat cells) for Type II diabetes. AgeXs revolutionary longevity platform induced Tissue Regeneration (iTR) aims to unlock cellular immortality and regenerative capacity to reverse age-related changes within tissues. AGEX-iTR1547 is an iTR-based formulation in preclinical development. HyStem is AgeXs delivery technology to stably engraft PureStem cell therapies in the body. AgeX is developing its core product pipeline for use in the clinic to extend human healthspan and is seeking opportunities to establish licensing and collaboration agreements around its broad IP estate and proprietary technology platforms.

For more information, please visit http://www.agexinc.com or connect with the company on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and YouTube.

Forward-Looking Statements

Certain statements contained in this release are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Any statements that are not historical fact including, but not limited to statements that contain words such as will, believes, plans, anticipates, expects, estimates should also be considered forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from the results anticipated in these forward-looking statements and as such should be evaluated together with the many uncertainties that affect the business of AgeX Therapeutics, Inc. and its subsidiaries, particularly those mentioned in the cautionary statements found in more detail in the Risk Factors section of AgeXs Annual Report on Form 10-K and Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q filed with the Securities and Exchange Commissions (copies of which may be obtained at http://www.sec.gov). Subsequent events and developments may cause these forward-looking statements to change. AgeX specifically disclaims any obligation or intention to update or revise these forward-looking statements as a result of changed events or circumstances that occur after the date of this release, except as required by applicable law.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20191209005356/en/

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AgeX Therapeutics Issues Year-End Letter to Shareholders - BioSpace

Transforming Experience: How Blurring Of Lines In Business Calls For Iteration And Experimentation – Forbes

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Two weeks ago at the Global Drucker Forum in Vienna, Austria, two main topics were discussed in depth: The Power of Ecosystems and Leadership Everywhere A Fresh Perspective on Management.

It is no secret we live in a globally shared economy and as my dear colleague Hari Abburi likes to say the lines are (actively) blurring across the different markets.

What does this truthfully mean though? And how is it related to the ecosystem thinking?

In my very first Forbes article Business Is No Longer An Island: Four Trends Affecting the Future Workforce, published in October of 2018, I listed the forces challenging all businesses global and local to (1) rethink their purpose, (2) redesign their business model, (3) rebuild their organizations and (4) consciously tailor their cultures.

Three large categories of force globalization, digitalization and democratization are not only impacting the way we think about, operationalize and realize our businesses, they are redefining how we experience work and beyond. We find the lines are indeed blurring between industries and sectors, processes and applications, geographies and platforms, humans and machines.

Take Amazon.com as an example. Do you consider it a single-industry business? If you are unsure, let me share with you aside from being an online shopping platform with legs in supply chain management and logistics, Amazon has disrupted at least seven different industries ranging from grocery delivery to meal prep to real estate and music streaming. In fact, it is reported that if Amazon were to set up a bank ~65% of its world-wide users would support it.

Amazon is not the only business blurring lines. Rakuten Ichibais Japans single largest online retail marketplace. It also provides loyalty points and e-money usable at hundreds of thousands of stores, virtual and real. It issues credit cards, offers financial products and services (i.e. gaming). There are many more companies that can make the list...

The point is this new environment creates a key opportunity to rethink values, rules, capabilities and practices and the user experience. The end-users whether they are customers or employees are now looking to get into an eco-system through a single entry, easy-access system and have all of their needs, wants and wishes met without exiting the space. While in the zone, they want to know they are going to be inspired, their data/track record will be kept safe, they will be well-served and they will get a tangible outcome; and they want this quality on a repeatable occasion.

In this current environment, a typical target defending strategy for businesses will not work because it is highly likely that a group of competing companies will cooperate soon enough to define an end-model and much faster, cheaper and efficient than what a single entity can offer.

This is exactly where the idea and importance of emerging ecosystems comes into play. As business leaders, we have an immediate need to not only understand the current context, we must reconsider the following to adapt and develop sustained growth:

1.Business Terminology: The vocabulary we have for business and in the workplace is not large enough to hold our current realities. Every time I hear someone use the word management synonymously with leadership, I cringe. Every time I hear work-life balance, I shut my ears because I dont want my brain coding the divide in between work and life (which in reality doesnt exist). A hundred years ago or more, with the help of industrialists, we created language to connect us and never imagined we would become a slave to it; yet, here we are needing to rethink a whole bunch of new terminologies.

2.Business Identity: The purpose (of making profit) is no longer sufficient for the longevity of corporations, nor it is satisfactory for its beneficiaries. Many CEOs I talk to about clarifying purpose tell me they have a strategy and it is bullet-proof. Then, I turn around to show them how they are struggling to keep up and to meet their objectives. As leaders of the 21st century, we need to understand running a purposeful business may feel innocent, but innocence is not about naivet, it is about discoverability and trust-building.

3.Business Governance: One of the principles in architecture and design is that the shape of a building or an object is primarily based on its intended function or purpose. The current policies, procedures, processes, structures, etc. in operation are major struggle areas across a majority of businesses. They struggle to provide the kind of employee experience they want to offer because the very design of their current organization defining, dividing, delegating, designating work actually acts as a disabler rather than an enabler of its purpose. We need to embrace a number of design thinking principles to rebuild our organizational schemes.

4.Business Leadership: One of the biggest challenges facing businesses in the 21st century is having their leaders move from direct to indirect leadership. By this, I mean the move from doing the leading of work to become a guide of others to do the work. In the new era, leaders need to better focus on their being instead to showcase expansion and growth. This change if and where realized will greatly increase the influence and the capacity of a leader. With expanded capacity, then, a leader can not only support the multiplicity of other leaders but also become a mirror for the creation of positive context by their way of being. Naturally, this sort of shift calls for a broader conversation around who is or should be a leader in the 21st century; who is or should be a follower and what is or should be the legacy each aim to leave behind.

5.Business Impact: The Nobel Prize in physics winner Frank Wilczek, who is one of my heros once said: You can recognize a deep truth by the fact that its opposite is also a deep truth. The fact that we are most advanced in human history is true and only one part of the story. The deepening gap in equity, equality, dignity and the displacement and depleting of our ecology are equally true. In other words, there is a relationship between our inner worlds and outer effect/impact. I consider it an insanity to do the same thing over and over again and expect a different outcome or do the same thing while trying to fix disadvantaged or damaged parts. Tipping points require survival need and understanding the role of symmetry in evolution. The intersection of globalization, digitalization and democratization actually requires us to live more compassionately and take responsibility for the impact we leave behind.

Transformations are no longer an aspect of the distant future and they are different than change. Change tries to fix the past whereas transformation re-imagines the future. Evolutionary culture transformation is a dream we never realized... Therefore, I invite 21st century businesses and leaders to engage in a regenerative process and I invite all of us to take part in making a better system (not the system better).

For more information on leading transformations and how it is different than managing change, you can find some of our scientific work and arguments here.

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Transforming Experience: How Blurring Of Lines In Business Calls For Iteration And Experimentation - Forbes

How One CMO Is Using Digital Technology To Connect International Music Fans In Real Life – Forbes

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Krystalan Chryssomallis, CMO at Yanni Entertainment and Forbes Communications Council Member.

This article series spotlights key business trends identified by the expert members of Forbes Councils. Find out if you qualify for Forbes Communications Council here.

The music industry has always been built and sustained on relationships, especially the connections between artists and their fans. Devising effective business strategies in an industry that hinges on emotions has always been tough, but todays evolving technology consistently necessitates new and creative ways to engage fans.

Popular social media platforms have the power to connect fans with the click of a button and yet, ironically, they can also dilute the personal connections that are the heart of the music industry. Social media raises the expectation for fan engagement, but its easy to scale such interactions to a point where theyre less manageable, less meaningful or both.

At the same time, digital music streaming, sharing and discovery platforms like Spotify have completely changed the way artists make money. Before music streaming, most artists relied on album sales to generate the bulk of their revenue. Today, however, artists depend on touring for the overwhelming majority of their income. According to Billboards Money Makers list of 2018s most lucrative music acts, Taylor Swift made $99.6 million that year $90.5 million of which came from touring alone.

While decreasing the amount of money artists receive from album sales, streaming and other digital technologies empower artists to reach more fans, dramatically increasing the price and number of concert tickets sold. As this touring economy grows, more musicians are offering custom VIP fan experiences, such as exclusive shows in intimate venues and backstage meet-and-greets.

Forbes Communications Council member Krystaln Chryssomallis is the CMO of Yanni Entertainment, with over a decade of experience branding, marketing and producing music events in over 60 countries around the world. She says that while digital technology has the potential to alienate people, it can and should be harnessed to foster stronger real-life connections. For this reason, shes devoted her career to using digital tools as a means to enhance the music industrys human touch, recruiting long-lasting, committed and loyal fans.

Overseeing the design, strategy and implementation of digital marketing campaigns alongside major music productions, Chryssomallis says her focus whether shes marketing for an event, branding a client or pulling off productions for major media broadcasts is to make fans feel like family. In her experience, the key to modern-day marketing is using digital tools to forge relationships in real life. I strive to create a space where people connect online but ultimately develop those connections offline. Offline experiences help shape the longevity of a brand and the message behind it, which is cemented by lifelong friendships and enduring fan groups around the world, she said.

Through this approach, Chryssomallis has helped create some of the most passionate and proactive groups of fans throughout the world. By establishing online communities and then converting them to organized offline groups called international affiliates for bands, shes spurring new, organic grassroots marketing campaigns. For example, in Mexico, supporting fans organized to place over 5,000 posters before a concert; in China, one fan group created its own 19-piece cover band.

Even though todays artists depend on ticket sales, Chryssomallis believes community-building not ticket sales should be the focus of musicians marketing campaigns. Digital marketing isnt just about selling something; its about creating a place where like-minded individuals can connect over something they love. If we simply focus on selling tickets, our lack of purpose will show, and the consumers will know, she said.

Ultimately, Chryssomallis says establishing meaningful, real-life human connection is the only path to longevity in virtually any industry, now and into the future. Our desire to be connected to each other is something that will never go away. Focus on why you are doing what you are doing, so your messaging really connects with your client base. People support things they believe in, and if you are able to fulfill your clients needs, they will continue to come back.

In order to fulfill peoples needs, you have to first understand their needs. Because technology has globalized nearly every industry, Chryssomallis emphasized how being curious and perceptive about different cultures around the world has played an essential role in her success. Her advice to other marketing professionals is to adopt the same frame of mind: Dive in and learn more about your followers and your customers. The more you know and understand them, the stronger and more compelling the messaging and programming you can offer will be.

For more information, check out Krystaln Chryssomalliss executive profile here. To learn more about Forbes Communications Council and see if you qualify for membership, click here.

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How One CMO Is Using Digital Technology To Connect International Music Fans In Real Life - Forbes

The Third Degree: If the shoe fits – Freeport Journal-Standard

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Welcome to the Third Degree: Tough, brief, weekly interrogations that force thinking and response. With reliance upon and respect for your instincts, knowledge, exploration and determinations, this week, we target: Measuring.

How do we take the measure of a man or a woman? Are there different measures of merit?

How do we measure feelings? Are they dependent upon intensity and longevity?

Can we measure horse sense? Is it the good judgment that horses display when they dont bet on people? Dont we have to bet on people? Is motivation a measure? Performance?

How do we measure likely? How about medium confidence? Would you drive home with me if you assessed only medium confidence or it was just likely that we would make it? Is it wise to measure the many modifiers in settled science or any projections of doom or glory?

Can we measure morality? Is moral, as Hemingway suggests, something you feel good after and immoral something you feel bad after? Is that shallow? How do you measure after?

If gerrymandered districts dont allow choice, how measureable is our vote? Is real choice a measure of and indispensable to representative accountability? How about schools?

In the concluding days of black history month, how do we measure rightful impact? Do we accept, as a today country of integrated national interests, measurements based on skin color?

Are not content of character and worthy contributions of all Americans more useful measures?

Are (insert descriptor) advantage or (insert descriptor) disadvantaged measured constants or variables? Does the equation of societal solution solve? Are there must have measures?

Can self-esteem be bestowed? Who measures self-esteem? How is bunk measured?

Do we recall that Einstein considered only two things infinite, beyond measure, the universe and human stupidity? Do we note the qualifier that he was not too sure about the universe?

Socrates reminds: The unexamined life is not worth living. Examinations will continue in The Third Degree. The answers and the actions are yours.

John Borling, major general, USAF-ret, is a highly decorated fighter pilot who served worldwide in high level command and staff positions. He was a POW in North Vietnam for over 6 years. Now, an author, speaker, civic and business leader, he is the founder of SOSA. See sosamerica.org.

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The Third Degree: If the shoe fits - Freeport Journal-Standard

Business as "un"usual: Running an events business in the COVID-19 era – MuMbrella

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Natalie Simmons, General Manager, cievents

In January, we started seeing the first impact coming out of China and our Asian markets.We realized that this would have a serious effect and were preparing ourselves but the domestic piece hit much faster than we expected. So while we started preparing six weeks ago, were still seeing significant shifts by the hour.

Events are always the first area to see an impact.There are significant movements, big spends and many people and stakeholders involved. Its an easy part of the strategy piece to look at and think is this business-critical? With meetings and conferences, theres a certain level of need in the business with events theres time to be flexible and the distance for people to rationalise.

Ive been with cievents for going on 21 years.In that time weve seen some major external disruptors: weve weathered recessions, we saw SAARS. And there has been technological pressure as well I was around when video conferences came out, and there were questions about whether that would fundamentally shift the events industry.

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None of these phenomena affected the events industry in the way we anticipated they might. I think thats attributable to the want of the events industry to disrupt itself. There is an ever-present notion in this industry of how do we do things differently? How do we think outside the box?

In recent years corporates have responded to this by shifting their thinking and seeing events as a critical marketing activity and part of their business strategy. Brands, increasingly, see events as a crucial platform rather than just a moment in time that type of thinking is the biggest disruption and the most significant opportunity within our business.

People and diversity of product are what makes the events industry successful, theyre the same things that have kept me working in events for so long.Were doing something different every day because consumers change constantly. One thing has remained the same though, even though we live in a world where we are connected by device where we can work from anywhere, learn from anywhere human beings still have the drive to connect person to person. We arent built to be alone weve seen this in the escalation of mental health issues centred around social media and feelings of isolation. We also process information and make decisions differently online than we do in face-to-face interactions. We are social creatures and social factors still influence our decision making face-to-face will always have more of an impact.

There are two options when something like this happens: we can go into doom and gloom mode, or we can think about how were going to come out the other end in a positive way.One of the ways we are going to come out the other end is technology. Its been exciting to see companies and brands testing it and using it to different degrees in recent years. But its not a fully integrated part of the strategy piece and it needs to be. Companies need to stop seeing technology as a superficial way to differentiate themselves in the market, instead, they need to see it as an integral component of the way they strategise and do business. When people come to us to start planning an event, well sit down and say what are we going to be doing 6 weeks pre-event, what are we going to be doing six weeks post? because we dont want events to be just a moment in time. When you come off the high of an event you need to be thinking, how are people going to be engaging with the content in three weeks? Thats where technology can help extend the tail-end of these kinds of activations.

Now, with COVID19 we have an enforced opportunity to look at what technologies we can use and how we can use them to give customers a better return on their investment. Because when we use that technology properly and we continuously engage with people we can continue to improve. Generally, that doesnt happen, you might have a survey and a couple of content pieces. And thats as far as it goes. Whereas now, if we flip it on its head and integrate the strategy from the outset we can see a much longer return on investment and far greater investment. Hopefully, that will enable us to think outside those parameters and think about the longevity and resilience of our events. Thats why were releasing our campaign business as un usual because its still business as usual. It just has to be business done differently. And we have to keep changing and evolving.

COVID19 will prompt companies to review the way they do events, and they should be doing this.Its a large spend category for many of our customers. It involves a lot of resources. Our customers change and our people change and we need to be communicating that constantly. If you view events as what they are, which is a marketing platform, marketing is forever evolving, it cant be stagnant. You wouldnt see the same ad on television for ten years so you shouldnt see the same events.

We have all the means at our disposal but its about opening that conversation and approaching it with an open mind.Its about saying this is what we still need to do, this is how were going to do it. We need to talk to as many people as possible, and as many of our clients as possible, about how we can use what weve got to engage people. Its not just cievents, its the whole industry. That is how were going to find our way forward. I believe the industry can and should rally together. I have had clients at cievents who have been with us since I started. Year in, year out weve worked with those clients on different content and strategies. You go on their business journey with them and see them evolve and adapt. This is the next stage of that evolution. Right now we need open communication about what companies want to achieve and we need to be breaking it down quarter by quarter. Were predicting that we will see a pick up in the next quarter. In the meantime, we have the resources to flex up or flex down and make changes quickly, constantly adapting to the evolving needs of our customers and the market.

Register to join a webinar with Natalie Simmons on Friday 20th March at 9am (SYD time) to talk Business as (un) Usual.

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Business as "un"usual: Running an events business in the COVID-19 era - MuMbrella

The L Word: Nobody Rocks a Power Suit and Cufflinks Like Jennifer Beals – IndieWire

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Shane may be the resident heartthrob of The L Word, but no character more embodies Showtimes Los Angeles-set lesbian melodrama than Bette Porter. Accomplished, stubborn, magnetic, and self-destructive, Bette instantly became the archetypical 21st century power dyke. She fills out a Jil Sander power suit as confidently as she tops her pregnant wife; casually drops names of the myriad women artists in her private collection; and now added to her resume for the shows next iteration, The L Word: Generation Q runs a savvy mayoral campaign. (She is also, unofficially, the obvious avatar for the shows creator Ilene Chaiken.)

Of course, there would be no Bette Porter without Jennifer Beals. A luminous and deeply intelligent actor, Beals naturalism, humor, and deeply felt performance grounded the original series, spearheading its ascension beyond mere sexy soap opera, and cementing its place as the most influential piece of lesbian culture of the 21st century.

The role has defined the last decade of Beals career much in the way her breakout role in 1983s Flashdance shaped her early work. In between, she had notable roles in independent films such as Alexandre Rockwells In the Soup, Nanni Morettis Caro Diario, Rockwells segment of Four Rooms, Carl Franklins Devil in a Blue Dress, and Whit Stillmans The Last Days of Disco. Like countless actresses before her, she never reached the movie star heights that Flashdance could have incited.

Nevertheless, she stuck it out. Her incredible longevity in Hollywood speaks not just to a deep and abiding love of the craft, but a tenacity and iron will not unlike her character Bettes.

Jennifer Beals

Showtime

Its kind of crazy, Beals told IndieWire in a recent phone interview. I was thinking about it the other day, and its like I just wouldnt stop. You cant make me stop. Im just going to keep going.

To what does she attribute such longevity?

Persistence. Really persistent. I guess I am blindly stubborn sometimes, she said. Its like a Marine, where you just put one foot in front of the other to get up the mountain. Or a monkand its only recently that Ive started to look up the mountain top and go, Hey, let me maybe predetermine where I would like to go.'

The realization led her to spearhead the return of The L Word, shepherding The L Word: Generation Q to the air. As an executive producer on the new series, (along with fellow returning cast members Leisha Hailey and Katherine Moennig), Beals suggested plot points, brought on new showrunner Marja-Lewis Ryan, reviewed cuts, and advised on casting the new generation. Rounding out the trifecta of the shows most popular characters, Hailey and Moennig also reprise their roles as Alice and Shane, respectively.

Honestly, it was such a surreal moment being back on the set with Kate [Moennig] and Leisha [Hailey], Beals said. We all shared an office and checked in with each other all the time. [It] was so much fun getting to work with them as executive producers. I always knew they were amazing actors, but theyre also brilliant human beings and they have a brilliant sense of story and music. It was very, very exciting to be working with them in that new capacity.

The reunion was just as fun for the actresses as it is sure to be for the viewers.

Jennifer Beals, Leisha Hailey and Katherine Moennig

MediaPunch/Shutterstock

Whenever we had scenes together, which was every episode, wed go to Kates house and rehearse and then wed all have dinner together. So its like family dinner every Sunday night.

Returning the role she left behind over 10 years ago was also a surreal experience. But there was one thing that helped Beals lock right back into character as Bette. (Its a feeling many fans have probably experienced themselves.)

Re-exploring the character in those early wardrobe fittings, we were trying to think how much does the style change in 10 years? And nothing was working, nothing was working, Beals recalled. And I said Can I just have a power suit and my cufflinks? I just really need to go back to that. And as soon as I literally put the cufflink in the hole, I just went Ah, yes, yes. Okay. I completely remember this. This is waking up my DNA and this makes sense now.'

Ten years may have passed, but the real question is has Bette, who nearly torpedoed her marriage with an affair with a carpenter, learned from her past mistakes?

Oh, no, apparently not, Beals laughed. I just thought to myself Okay, here we go again.'

The first episode of The L Word: Generation Q premieres on Showtime on Sunday, December 8.

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The L Word: Nobody Rocks a Power Suit and Cufflinks Like Jennifer Beals - IndieWire