The Young Turks - TYT Extended Clip - September 1, 2020

Episode Date: September 2, 2020

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You're listening to The Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome. Thank you. I'm going to be able to be. Hello and welcome to staying home with Josh Fox, your Revolutionary Guide to the Green New Deal and why we're not going back. Today is an extremely special episode.

Today, I am interviewing Ann Bogart. Now, you may not know who Ann Bogart is unless you're a theater person like myself. Ann Bogart is my mentor. Ann Bogart is my teacher. Anne Bogart is one of the most influential theater directors on the face of the planet and one of the most influential theater

teachers on the face of the planet. She taught me when I was in college and her company, the city company, the Saratoga International Theater Institute, has revolutionized theater training, not just in America, but all over the world. These are all techniques that I have used in my own theater work, which I've done for years and years. And if you really know much about my work, you may know that my book, The Truth Has Changed, which is based on my solo performance, which I've done all over the world, but that I've run a company called the International Wow Company. which has made over 30 original works for the stage, premiering in New York and in Japan and Thailand and Germany and all over the world. So we're going to talk about the theater. We're going to talk about how pandemics change theater. We're going to talk about what does it mean to be an actor? What does it mean to be on the stage? What does it mean to be present?

But as always in a conversation with Anne, and I'm sure this is what will happen, is a remarkable level of insight, not just into her area of expertise, which is the theater at being on stage, but also about life in general. So please stick with this. I'm sure it's going to be an absolutely thrilling conversation

with my mentor, with my teacher, with my hero, with one of the greatest theater minds on the planet, director, Ann, how are you? First of all, I'm delighted to be here, and you have to know that you keep saying on your mentor, but based on your activities in the past years, you're my mentor. Well, that's rather... And I have to say, And I just have to ask you, you're doing this, what, five days a week?

Okay, so I do this show five times a week. We don't do every show a day. We do three or four in a day. So it's usually taped with two or three, two days a week. That's what we've got to now. At the beginning, I was doing it five days a week. And at the beginning of this show, there were 50 people watching it on Instagram. It was basically me, like interviewing my first.

friends. And I have a lot of friends, turns out. You know, friends in high places, friends in low places, as they say. And so now it's getting like, you know, 100,000 views a day. So that's amazing. Has it been something to go through? I mean, doing it so often. It's a little like your Marina Abramovich with the artist is present. I mean, you're just present and you're asking questions and making observations. I mean, something must be happening to you. The core. of this show, which has been from the beginning, is something that Albert Maisels said to me, the great

documentarian who made salesman and who made Grey Gardens, who was a mentor of mine as well, who said to me about documentary filmmaking, he said, the whole process is a friendship. You get to know, and then everyone gets to know. And that was his precise wording.

And I try to remember the precise wording of people like yourself and Albert Maisel's. And the idea is that when you base your work in friendship. It's on a different resonant level. You know what I mean? There's a lot of interviewers that I've actually, I've tailed along with like reporters from Nightline and they were doing like earthquakes in Arkansas because of fracking and they would arrive with their trench coat and their microphone and their camera person. They would go, what happened to you? And the

people would immediately be like, ah, you know, and you'd get a crappy interview. But if you go and hang out and be friends with people, the real thing comes through. And that is an unmistakable event, right? And it's always, it's not repeatable either. It's a captured thing, which is such a fascinating thing, because most of my life has been in the theater completely obsessed with what's repeatable. But yeah, that's my, what I've learned about doing this

is very bizarre because I do it two days a week. And the other five days a week, I'm out in nature with no cell phone, no electricity, in a one-room cabin, riding out the coronavirus, which I'm making a whole movie about, which is a whole other episode, right? So I'm a little bit schizophrenic right now. I'm like, Mr. Nature Man,

and I have another hat for that. And then this interview process, which is to me about dreaming. This to me is like the imaginal cells inside the cocoon where people are dreaming the future and trying to learn something from this moment of isolation, which I think at first was extremely desperate and upsetting and hard.

Yeah. And now has become a way of life. And I think has centered and grounded a lot of people in a weird sort of way. And are you making the coronavirus film by yourself all you, just yourself? Well, I'm making it by myself with Greg King. Brilliant. I mean, I say brilliant, I mean brilliant, Greg. I don't mean it's a brilliant idea to be.

Greg is hopefully making a film about the city company. I know he's in the middle of doing that. Yeah. He's my editor for the last few projects and a wonderful collaborator, also a great musician person from with Rachel's. But Ann, so I have to ask you these things because there's just going over and over again in my mind. But can I just say you used one of my... I knew this was going to happen.

I knew you were going to start interviewing me. No, I'm not going to interview. I just want to say that you used one of my favorite central words a few minutes ago when you were describing what you're doing and how you deal with this interview of friendships. You use word resonance. And that word to me is sacred right now. And as a matter of fact, I'm writing a book about. about it and it's due in September. So I'm working very hard here in London,

which is where I am in that really bad heat right now. And it's a book called The Art of Resonance. And it comes about, you know, and I think you might find this interesting in terms of what you said about the Maisel's notion of friendship is that, you know, what is it that we do in our lives, right? What is it, what is it we're trying to do?

And I used to think in the theater, that what we do is we create memories, right, is that, you know, if you leave a production and you don't remember anything about it afterwards, I'd say that's a failure because you haven't created memories. And it turns out that memory is actually a protein that grows in the brain and it's made by the heat of emotion, which creates synaptic pathways to that piece of protein. So then I thought, that's fabulous because we're making memories, you know, and that's what we do in the theater. But then I was in a conversation not so long ago with our mutual friend Leon Ingalls' Root. And Leon has, you know, a family issue with Alzheimer's, one of his family mothers have said. And he says, Anne, he said, what about people who can't remember anything? And I really had to stop in that moment.

And what I realized through going through a lot of, you know, personal thought is that it's not memories that are the most important thing. It's resonance. And I thought, you know, I love reading books. So I read a lot of nonfiction. And while I'm reading, I get really excited and emotional. And I feel like I'm being changed as a human being. But then a week later, I can't even remember the name of the book. And I can't remember what happened in it.

I can't relate. You know, I just forget. And I realized, actually, that doesn't matter. That used to bother me. What happens is that you set up a resonance with something, another person, you know, as you say, a friend. and resonance is is comes from the word to resound so I'm making a sound and you resound with it and we start to resound together so when you use that word resonance I just had to interrupt you because it's at the heart of what I'm thinking about and you know you clearly when you say I started out with very

few people listening and watching and now I have a lot of friends that's because it is resonating and What our job to do is to create resonances in the world, right? It's such a fascinating. That's just and created resonance, right? Why is that? Okay, I'll let you talk. Go ahead. Well, no, I mean, well, first of all, I have to say every 11 minutes.

You're tuned in to staying home, your revolutionary guide to the Green New Deal. This is Josh Fox. We'll be right back. You're tuned in to staying home with Josh Fox, your revolutionary guide to the Green New Deal. My guest is revolutionary theater director. Ann Bogart, who was also my mentor. But I wanted to mention because when I first started,

I finished your teachings, not finished, but I finished a certain segment of them, right, because they continued to resonate in 1995. And then I went to after college, and I went to Thailand. And in 1996, I founded this company called International Wow Company because the idea was, in many ways,

inspired by your International Theater Institute, the Saratoga International Theater Institute, the idea that international theater had to start to have a conversation. And I went there, and I had no idea what these Thai people were like, and they were asking me to teach them stuff and teach and make a play with them. And so I taught them viewpoints, and we started doing viewpoints, and they were incredible movers. I mean, unbelievable, like liquid.

You know, we would go to dance clubs at night, and then we would go dance in a dance clubs, and then they would get bored of that song, and we would just sit down in the middle of the dance. there's middle of the discotheque. And then they would get excited again and go. It was this incredible Zen thing. So I didn't know what to do.

And I didn't know the language. I didn't know the culture. So I invented six questions to ask them, like an interview. What are you afraid of? What's your most basic daily routine? Tell me a story about leaving, because I was obsessed with leaving. Tell me what's the, what is one question you can't answer? and these questions became a basis of this table work that we were doing

and I started to think about the fundamental interconnectedness of the universe so we were thinking about the theater like a pond pool where if you throw a rock in that's one element and then you throw another rock in and those splashes will come together like it's called an interference pattern and that is those when the splashes and the ripples come together that's that interference pattern as it turns out that's actually your brain works because your synaps is firing two different places or three different places at once and though the firing of it creates a ripple like pond ripples and that creates the thought

that the thought is these intermeshing interference patterns and it's also in fact the way the universe works because the stars are these ripples and the radio waves are hitting these so we're in the middle of these resonances as you say all the time and as i'm isolating myself in the woods there's a pond and this is very much like recreating henry david throw and i have beavers in the I thought when you've got this weird cross between Thoreau and then these programs, there's something in that that's... I don't know what's going to happen. We're making the movie, and the beavers in the pond, we're doing this whole section about how the beavers are creating these ripples in the pond, and they're interacting with each other. And, of course, beavers, there were 400 million beavers in the United States before the colonists came.

And the beavers were also thought of as sacred by Native people. people. And the beavers create where water goes. So that created this incredible landscape of the continent, of course, alongside of the gardening and cultivation of the people who lived here, which were then all, of course, killed. By a pandemic. So all of these thoughts, there's a genocide of the smallpox pandemic that the Europeans brought. And of course, the genocidal wars were small consequence. But anyway, these are the thoughts that I'm having. And I'm wondering, because we're in a moment, where there's no theater, where theater is like impossible. Theater, as I love the definition that you gave me an unmediated event, an event that doesn't have this Zoom, that doesn't have a mediation there.

How do you think this pandemic is going to change the theater? How has pandemics change theaters in the past? Yeah. So I think everything's going to change. And I'm sure that most of your guests say that. In other words, we can't go back to where we were. And that's a good thing. So the thing I've been thinking about the most in the last couple of weeks is to answer a question in a roundabout way is tents and tent poles. So, you know, when I'm doing a play or an opera, I like to think that I'm creating an old-fashioned tent. You know, so this tent, is held up by tent poles. And what's happening now is, and I think about tents in the last couple of weeks, because a lot of people are trying to hear out what's going to happen to the buildings.

We can't go in these buildings that are created by compression that want us to sit in the dark and be really close to each other and watch something presentational. Right. That the theater has to become places of radicalized meetings,

a way of meeting and meeting differently. So a lot of people are actually starting to build tents or make tents or think of theater in the tents. But what's for me, the key issue of this tent metaphor is that every time I make a play, if you imagine, or at opera, I'm making a tent. Now, those tent polls. We need to talk about a relatively new show called Un-F-The Republic or UNFTR. As a Young Turks fan, you already know that the government, the media, and corporations are constantly peddling lies that serve the interest. of the rich and powerful.

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and get ready to get informed, angered, and entertained all at the same time. That make this space for an audience are actually the principles that are holding the tent up. So like a really straightforward bunch of tent poles in a city company rehearsal is mutual respect. listening, training, you know, that these are the tent poles. So as an artist, what you do is you work on the tent poles and then the tent is constructed

and then you don't control what's happening inside of it. It's the opposite of sort of pressure. So what we're doing right now is we're actually, and what we need to do is to concentrate on the tent poles. The tent pools have to change from what they were. The question is, what are they? And I think, and I haven't worked this part out, but there's something about, the tensile architecture that's going to tell us something and maybe you can figure this out.

You know, I've been looking at Buckminster Fuller, you know, who of course created the geodesic dome and a lot of other things. And he said he was originally interested in looking at quantum nature. Electrons don't touch. The moon doesn't touch the earth. And so he wanted to create with the minimum means a maximum effect or space. And that's what you do with a tent, right? With minimum support, you create this space. So I think what we actually have to do is to reimagine the architecture and reimagine and start to figure out what our new tent poles are that are holding up this event called the theater, which is an ancient event. I love how you're saying that this is a value structure and not an architectural conversation,

right? Yeah, yeah. Because theater is something, I'm in a theater right now. This is a theater that I built in my garage and it seats about 30 people and it was a garage and we had no use for a garage because we could park the car outside you know and so we made it into a theater by painting it black and turning and putting lines and whatever but I actually right outside there is a huge amphitheater and I have a friend with a stage on the back of the pickup truck and we're thinking about having people come and drive in and I would do the truth has changed my solo show and people would be in their cars in a safe atmosphere

with a radio transmitter like a driver so that's one very crude interpretation of what you're saying but I think a lot about other kinds of architecture what you're telling me the value structure of the theater I just very famous that got kicked out of the public theater

in a very brutalizing fashion and it occurs to me that the reason why was because the value structure of that place was so completely out of whack. And I wanted to say something to you because I don't know exactly what to do about this. Because my theater work was my whole life. It was all I ever wanted to do.

I never wanted to make movies. I never really thought about it. I made a film out of necessity to defend this nature. And then all of a sudden, people are paying attention. So let's make another one. Because in the theater, my political sensibility, which was the root of what I was doing, was never accepted and never encouraged.

and never housed, when we're talking about a tent, it never fit into any of the architecture of any of those major theaters. I think about Manuskin, R.A. Mnuchkin, whose work is incredible, huge productions, epic, very political, and how she had to create her whole place, the cartuserie outside of Paris, just to house her vision of the theater.

And for me, it was extraordinarily frustrating to keep banging my head against the wall of those institutions, which for me were ruled by white moderates by an ideology that was not listening to the revolution that we were preaching, that did not want to hear anything about our international dialogue

of progressive political thought and who just didn't get it and all the critics were in that place as well except for a couple of them that had a political consciousness. It was extraordinarily painful. So I wonder, and it still is, about that architecture, what do you foresee?

Because I think about what are the new values? The new values have to actually be inclusive and non-hierarchical. You know, years ago, I mean, really years ago, I was on a panel financed by the Pew Charitable Trust and the whole bunch of, it was at a fancy mansion in Terrytown, New York, and a bunch of artistic directors were there. And it was like Gordon Davidson. God rest his soul.

And at a certain point, Gordon Davidson spoke up and said, you know what, our theaters should just be blown up. And I said, what? I sat up straight. You know, I was an independent whatever at the time. He said, yeah, they should be blown up. This top-down hierarchical thing is not working. And other artistic directors started going,

yeah, it's true. And I said, well, what do you see in its place? And I can't remember. Why just survive back to school when you can thrive by creating a space that does it all for you, no matter the size? Whether you're taking over your parents' basement or moving to campus, IKEA has hundreds of design ideas and affordable options to complement any budget. After all, you're in your small space era. It's time to own it. Shop now at IKEA.ca.

who spoke up, but it seemed to be agreed upon by these big artistic directors. He said, cells. I said, what do you mean cells? Well, we have these buildings, so we should have cells come in. I mean, the public has tried to do that. They had the labyrinth company, you know, various companies come in and be part of the cells. And for a while, the Mark Taper Forum did the same thing. But the thing is, is none of these artistic directors ever gave up their jobs.

I mean, they have a very strong, they make a lot of money. Huge amounts of money. And they have a million dollars, actually. And they have an incredible staff, and they have good, probably, they want to do the best they can. And so none of these theaters got blown up. They're getting blown up right now. And whether you say it's fair or unfair, in some ways it's unfair, because I would say some of the more, quote, liberal artistic directors are getting outed and outed in every. way that you can imagine, while some of the most conservatives aren't, but that's a whole

another thing. But it is changing. That said, Josh Fox, you know, you have an audience, and I've always believed that we are not in control of who our audience is. You do your work and your audience comes to you. That's true. I don't know that you and the public theater are a good fit. You know, I remember seeing a play at Actors' of Louisville at the Humana Festival, and I hated it. I'm not going to say the name of the play. It was a one-person show. I hated it. And I was sitting next to my then-girlfriend, Tina Landau. And I said, oh, that's not theater. I said to her afterwards. And she turned to me and she said, yes, it is theater. And that's the wonderful thing about theater is it can be so many things. I thought, you know what, busted. She's right. It can. And that is, in a sense,

got to be one of the tent poles is that it can be so many things. There are so many actor audience relationships that have been, you know, explored throughout history, but we forgot them. You know, we've turned into a consumerist, expensive art form. And these things, these things will change, and they're changing. So in a way, we have to, in a sense, accept. that it's going to be many, many faceted that we can't control who our audiences are, but we can actually create the tent poles, the principles, the tenants upon which we build a tent and invite audiences in. You're tuned in to staying home. This is Josh Fox. We'll be right back. So we'll have more of our interview with Ann Bogart tomorrow because it's such an in-depth

interview. It's going to stretch over two episodes. But on the subject of resonance, we have Vicki. Brown violinist and composer coming to us from Tucson, Arizona. No. No. No. No. No. No.

Dixote, three, three, d'all, d'all, d'all, d'all, that's,

name, Neme, Neme, no, roachick d'clock, feet of me, know,

d'clock, Do you know what I'm going to do you have to have a little bit of a little name for me no matter what check to leave be to be to be do for me no dog today don't do so many don't know how to do you know what I'm going to do that I'm I don't know. ...hean... ...when... ...when...

And... Mm-hmm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . moet. Oh, Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I mean...

...whoe... ...and... ...you know? ...you know? ...and... I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.

I don't know. So, ...and... ...their... ...from... ...you... ...and... ...the...

...and... ...the... ...and... Wow. It's like a magical visitation from a space or something. Explain to us what you're doing here. You're using various different sounds. We can't see obviously what's under it.

down there, but what's going on here? That sounds like, sounded like baby talk at the beginning. Tell us what's going on here. Well, you know, a lot of times when I, when I create something, it's usually just, it just is a, just a painting. And then the theme usually arrives afterwards. Okay.

And, but yesterday I was thinking, what can I do intentionally? And I was running through my loops. I have a bank of loops. And I ran across my sister's son, who they live in Switzerland. And I recorded him like three years ago. And I ran across his voice. And I was thinking, that's what was.

And now what is and what will be? Right. And sort of kind of, you know, to try and kind of put a structure around this experience that we're all going through right what was what is what are we doing what are we what's in front of us right now and what what is to be so that was my starting point was my neat my nephew's little voice and I brought in I have this fantastic thumb piano oh I'm wondering what was going on over there yeah so I have a thumb piano and a bass pedal and a whammy bar

and so I can create all these crazy swooping sounds with it. The track that you have in Gasland, it's this very haunting violin track with a lot of different sort of delays on it. And it's when I'm driving through the desert throughout all these gas wells. And it does feel very much like searching on the wind in some way like this. So what is it right now in terms of this moment of being in a cocoon almost as an artist are you are you finding this is a moment

which which I think a lot of it's interesting because when we go on tour and we're constantly playing out we're constantly traveling we'd lose the ability to sort of be as introspective as perhaps we would like you know and this is a very important moment I think for artists to incubate and develop new things so what is it that you're finding in this moment to develop Well, to be quite honest, I've been just going back to the mainstays, my classical music. It's solidifying, you know, it's something that I know. And also, honestly, I'm not really producing a whole lot.

I'm still working full time. So, you know, touring is not in my purview necessarily. but I have other projects. I collaborate with a friend in Australia on a new album. So that's coming down the pike, another friend in town collaborating on a song. But as far as my own creative productivity, I haven't really sat down to do much.

It's been a 15 time because it is, you know, like when I hear people say, you want, just wrote a screenplayer and finishing my book and I'm not envious, but sometimes it feels like it's enough just to be. And, you know, I've been experiencing kind of levels of awareness about myself and what I'm doing, you know, just in life in general throughout this process. But it's interesting that you say that levels of awareness, that you think you know who you are and what you're doing and then all of a sudden the day arrives

when you're like, wait a minute, wait a minute, maybe I didn't know what I was doing. Yeah, I think I know what I'm doing, but actually it's been, I don't know if it's a combination of just getting older and then just with the circumstances that we're in. One thing I've loved is the stripping away of the veneer of everything.

You know, everybody is just so real, now and you know and i hope so vulnerable and i feel like we're you know yeah i hope so um but i'm really and i just am falling in love with this the stripping away and and realizing what really is what do you really need i ask myself that question you're like do i really need to do that do i really need that and so um i think that's that's really fascinating right now because we have been deprived of a lot at this moment, right? We're being deprived of travel. We're being deprived of parties.

We're being deprived of audiences. We're being deprived of human contact in so many ways. And when you see, when that happens, it's like, oh, that's what's really important in life. Do I actually need the blank that I thought was important, but isn't? Do you know what I mean? The material thing or whatever it is. It's just becoming very elemental. You know, it's just the basis.

And you know what it's like to be on tour? I love going on tour because all you have, your world is at your feet, literally. Like whatever is in your suitcase, as long as you grab your credit card passport, fiddle, my bag, I was your place whatever's in my bag if I leave it at the train station. But I love that feeling of just not being encumbered. And I wish that that would be an experience that a lot of people would have because Well, we could talk at length about the situation, but I think there's something so beautiful in the simplicity. The feeling of not being encumbered. I'm writing that down.

You're tuned in to staying home, your revolutionary guide to the Green New Deal. We'll be right back. You're tuned in to staying home, your revolutionary guide to the Green New Deal. This is Josh Fox. We're back with Vicki Brown. Thank you. So, I mean, I met you in Mexico City at a thing called the Interdependence Day, and it was organized by my great mentor, Benjamin Barber, who passed away a couple of years back. And we had a lot of late-night jam sessions, sort of like in the hotel lobby.

I feel like I meet a lot of people at late-night jam sessions in hotel lobby. One of the hardest parts of getting older is feeling like something's off in your body, but not knowing exactly what. It's not just aging. It's often your hormones, too. When they fall out of balance, everything feels off. But here's the good news. This doesn't have to be the story of your next chapter. Hormone Harmony by Happy Mammoth is an herbal formula made with science-backed ingredients designed to fine-tune your hormones by balancing estrogen, testosterone, progesterone, and even stress hormones like cortisol. It helps with common issues such as hot flashes, poor sleep, low energy, bloating, and more. With over 40,000 reviews and a bottle sold every 24 seconds, the results speak for themselves. A survey found 86% of women lost weight, 77% saw an improved mood, and 100% felt like themselves again. Start your next chapter feeling balanced and in control. For a limited time, get 15% off your entire first order at happy mammoth.com with code next chapter at checkout.

Visit happy mammoth.com today and get your old self back naturally. I don't know why that is. Like, you can always find a place in a hotel lobby to jam. And somehow the hotel people don't have any idea how to deal with you. Because they're like, wait a minute. The musicians are playing in the lobby. What are we supposed to do? Kick them out?

Or we should let the play? Or what should we do? You know what I mean? But you're not the first person on this program that I met in a late-night jam set in a hotel lobby. But it was really an amazing event that was talking about how we're all interdependent. Not Independence Day, right? And it took place on September 12th. every day after September 11th to react against the isolationism of what was happening after September 11th in the war.

This idea that we're all interdependent, that nations are interdependent, the people are interdependent. And there were musicians, and I was showing my film, and it was just an amazing moment. And there were panels, Dr. West, and so many others who were amazing. So what does this moment of isolation say about this idea of interdependence to you? Isn't that interesting? It's how we're finding our connectedness through our isolation. I think it's a resounding notion that we need to think about now. When we're talking about climate change, we're talking about a pandemic.

It's so clear that a pandemic happens because we are all interdependent. And right now, America, America refuses to follow the rest of the world. And as a result, we have become completely isolated. The United States will not do the things that China has done, that Italy has done, that Korea has done, that Germany has done, to stop the coronavirus. And therefore, no one around the world will accept us as travelers at this moment.

And it's a very, very difficult time to do anything because we refuse that notion of interdependence. We refuse that notion of a scientific community of a political community. It's flooring. I just, it's, it's astounding. I just, I don't even, I don't know what words can describe the frustration with this lack. Just the willing, what do you say? It's the willing, willful ignorance, willful incompetent.

I'm a scientist. I have a PhD in psychology and measurement of behavior. And it feels like, should I just toss that out the window now? I'm being here with it. But it's so involving. And you know what? I don't think that it's, it's not the U.S. It's a, it's a hand, I feel like maybe it's not a handful.

I hope it's not bigger than a handful. Right. But it's really. Just a few people. It's so disheartening. But I have to say, you know, since the corona, so the work that I do, is mostly revolving around building resilience in among rural communities in Sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia.

So traditionally, you know, we would go fly to Nairobi, fly to, you know, wherever, do a training, meet with the locals, make sure that the data quality that they're getting is good. But now, you know, we've all been grounded and it's been great. you know all that energy that you used to go into just getting ready to go somewhere to go to the airport to get your meds to be to the airport on time the flying everything the recuperation time it's all gone and it's so it's I love it I love not I don't I wouldn't care if I ever had to get on a plane to go somewhere other than for my own you know leisure but are you still able to do the work even though you can't travel so we we had to pivot very quickly because you know You know, we have surveys going on continually. And so we had to pivot to phone surveys rather than face-to-face with farmers. And so that has actually kind of been, it's exciting to see the world of development, international development, particularly from the U.S. side.

We go in and we train them and then we come back. But they are fully capable, you know, the capacity of, other countries is really you know they're fully capable and so it's really exciting to utilize this technology of having a training we might have to get up at 3.30 in the morning but using this technology to you know share the knowledge with them and they can go out and do the job we don't have to go there in person and just thinking about you know global emissions all the flights every all that all that waste gone and so hopefully that

you know, I don't know where we can bank that. Well, I think we have to, I think we have to invent a new world. Well, I think it's happening, you know. I don't, I don't know what the utility is. Other than, you know, the personal contact, it really is nice to go and see other places and experience all that. And, you know, meet people in person. but I really do think that this is revolutionizing the world development and I might say that it's we're still almost in a post-colonial phase you know this this entering and leaving entering and leaving and we're stripping away I think we're finally stripping that notion away and we are you know holding each other up rather than

bringing another along which is necessary you know too but um i i think it's really exciting it has you know this whole situation though has had its downsides too um i'm also really passionate about uh wildlife and you know without uh revenue from tourism coaching can go up oh i know that's what's very very scary that whole circle of everything but um Well, I think it's about finding new forms, finding new forms and new values, a different sense of values. Like you said, what is actually real and what is actually important. But is there possible to do a second piece? Yeah, I'll do another one.

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Wow, terrific. Thank you so much, Ricky Brown. It's good to see you and hopefully we'll catch it up at some point in the future. That's all the time we have, but that was terrific. What was the name of that? That's called Last of the Water. Last of the Water. All right. Well, thanks so much for this and for the conversation. This has been staying home with Josh Fox, your revolutionary guide to the Green New Deal. And we'll see you again tomorrow. bonus content and more by subscribing to apple podcasts at apple dot co slash

t yt i'm your host jank huger and i'll see you soon