"I want my own keys" (with Doug Broughton)
Topics Discussed
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Episode Resources
Pantsuit Politics Infrastructure Series Contributor Application
March 31 Nightly Nuance on Transgender Legislation (open to the public)
CAPITOL ATTACK
Slain U.S. Capitol Police Officer Was An 18-Year Department Veteran, Father Of 2 (NPR)
Billy Evans, the officer who died in the Capitol attack, is an 18-year veteran of the force. (The New York Times)
VOTING LAWS
Coca-Cola C.E.O.: Voting Rights Advocate? (The New York Times)
Culture wars strain once unshakeable bond between Republicans, corporate America (NBC News)
Inside Corporate America’s Frantic Response to the Georgia Voting Law (The New York Times)
BRIAN HART & LADD
LADD (Cincinnati Magazine)
Smart Home Provides Independence For People Living With Disabilities (Cincinnati Public Radio)
DOUG BROUGHTON & CRYPTOCURRENCY
Transcript
Brian: [00:00:00] So, how are we making sure that there's equity in what we're doing? How are we equitable? How are we giving accommodations that are needed? How are we from the scope of a person with a disability trying to have full inclusive life? How are we making sure the world around them is equitable for them as possible?
And so when I look at things like this, I look at it through that lens of, okay, we're anytime they need to change voting laws, I understand they need to change probably all the time because the world is changing, but are we doing it in a method to make it more equitable so that more people can vote and make it as easy as possible for people to do it, or are we making it so that it drives elections in a certain way?
Sarah: This is Sarah
Beth: And Beth.
Sarah: You're listening to Pantsuit Politics.
Beth: The home of grace-filled political conversations.
[00:01:00] Hello everyone. Thank you so much for joining us for another episode of Pantsuit Politics. Sarah is on vacation this week, but have no fear. I have some great co-hosts stepping in to help me today. My friend Brian is here. If you follow us on Instagram, Brian is the maker of my beautiful bookshelf that you see all the time.
He is more important things than the maker of this bookshelf, but just to orient you. So Brian is here with me today while Sarah is on vacation, but you will hear Sarah's voice. Don't worry. Sarah has done an interview with Corrie’s husband, Doug, who's an expert on cryptocurrency and NFTs and so we're all going to get an education about the digital economy after Brian and I do a couple of news stories and talk about his organization's work to empower people with disabilities.
Brian, thank you for joining me.
Brian: [00:01:49] Yes. Thanks so much, Beth. I'm so excited to be here.
Beth: [00:01:51] You want to just tell people a little bit about you? We're going to talk a lot about your work in just a minute, but do you want to give people a little introduction to who you are in general and maybe [00:02:00] politically as well?
Brian: [00:02:01] Yeah. So in general, I am a married father of three kids who are awesome. I work at a local nonprofit that we'll talk about a little later. I've worked in the field of disability services from housing and employment for well over the last decade. Really enjoy woodworking being outdoors. Politically, I would say that I definitely lean more to the left side. I definitely lean more progressive in my views, and really at the end of the day, I, I really just look for what is going to help make things better. That's all I really focus on.
Beth: [00:02:34] Well, all of that is true in my experience, especially the three great kids part. I love Brian's family. We'll talk more about that too. Before we jump into our discussion today, I want to make sure to continue our orientation to Patreon for those of you who are new here, because we do talk about it quite regularly.
It's where we put up lots and lots of bonus content. Our show is listener supported and so your financial contributions through Patreon and help us do what we do here. If you're interested in joining us [00:03:00] there, there is a link and amazing community over there. We have an Instagram highlight that will walk you through how to sign up on your phone.
And all of the information will be in the show notes. You can reach out to our team at any time. We're happy to get you settled in there and just a reminder that we have that Nightly nuance episode that's open to the public. We'll make a news brief episode open to the public next week when Sarah's back.
So you can see what you do before you make a commitment and a reminder that if you want to be part of our team for the summer series on infrastructure applications are due April 16th. Check out the link in our show notes there, we're getting some amazing ideas and applications coming in. We're really excited about. Okay, Brian?
Brian: [00:03:36] Yes.
Beth: [00:03:37] We were planning what we should talk about today and I realized we were able to make a plan and stick with it. Nothing went bananas over the weekend, which is something that we're not used to here at Pantsuit Politics. So officer William Evans is where I would like to start because we've lost another Capitol police officer.
Officer Evans went by Billy. He's been on the Capitol police [00:04:00] force for 18 years and he was killed when a 25 year old man drove his car on Friday into a barricade at the Capitol. The driver emerged from the car with a knife before law enforcement shot him and he died at a hospital later from his injuries.
We have another police officer who was injured. He has not been identified, but just to let tell you a little bit about the officer we lost. He was 41 years old, the father of two children. He joined the Capitol police force in 2003 and was a member of the first responders unit. His friends say he was a talented athlete and musician and a Star Wars fanatic who was funny and always up to good-natured pranks.
He played mini golf with his kids and video games. One of his friends said that he was the kind of person who can make a trip to the dump look like a truly good time and he certainly made every moment count with his kids. So just terrible news. Were you aware of this happening at the Capitol Friday as it was going down, Brian?
Brian: [00:04:53] I wasn't. It was one of those things that I definitely caught on to a little later on, and I think it got buried down with [00:05:00] everything else that, you know, kind of is going on that it's, I think it's a sad state to say that, you know, a police officer getting killed at the Capitol isn't the first thing that I see when I, when I turn on the news sometimes. It's just mind boggling to me, you know, someone who has, I would say probably a pretty low stakes job in terms of safety.
I go to work everyday, feeling safe and not worried about that, to think that this, as I read more about this officer and thinking about, okay, he's like me, father with kids and to think that he's showing up doing his job and stills in this situation, it's just crazy to me that this is still going on.
Beth: [00:05:31] It is. I became aware of it on Friday. I was cleaning my house and I saw an alert come up on my phone. And then I started looking for like that sort of cable news coverage that you can get when something is developing, because everything in my body immediately went back January 6th. Yeah.
Are we seeing that again? What's the motivation here? It so far, it looks like this is not connected to January sixth, that this is more of a typical attack on a government building. I hate that [00:06:00] we have typical attacks on government buildings, but we do. Lots of reasons that people choose sort of high-profile government targets and the little bit that we know about this attacker so far shows social media posts linking him to some extremist religious views, referencing beliefs that the government is engaged in mind control.
His family is describing real concern about his health and wellbeing in advance of the attack. So it does, it looks like something totally different. I'm sure for people at the Capitol, it didn't feel like something totally different. That's what I keep thinking about. Just what is it like to live with January sixth kind of in your cells and continue to show up for work in that environment?
Brian: [00:06:43] Yeah, it feels to me too, that I did once I started hearing about it, that was the first place I went is how is this connected to what happened in January? How is this connected to, is this some part of something bigger? Is this isolated? And I think that's where a lot of people's minds go because [00:07:00] it's still so fresh. You know, January 6th is a few months removed at this point, but it still feels pretty fresh to me. And I think that a lot of the, a lot of those things are fresh.
And so trying to say, okay, how are in my mind? How do I separate, okay what happened with that group on that day that was so horrific and anytime that's going to happen again because these you're right, these things happen, not just in the United States, but all over the place all the time, how are we making sure that we're protecting from the first one and then all the subsequent ones?
Is it the same thing? I, I think of these, these officers, and I read an article where he's talking about how there is general genuine concern about, are we going to be able to still have Capitol? How are we going to keep getting Capitol officer's coming in and how do we have to change our mindset? Okay. That all things aren't connected, but they might have similar things that are driving to them.
Beth: [00:07:47] Yeah. I was reading about the difficulty in recruiting Capitol police officers as well. And I think that one mini conclusion, you know, we're, we're too close to this event happening to have any conclusions about it but one like working conclusion that I [00:08:00] have is that the public really needs a big report on what happened on January 6th. I know that it's stalled in Congress a few times for lots of different reasons, but, but we really do need kind of a definitive accounting of what took place in January, because right now it doesn't feel like we have, uh, a bookend of it at all.
Not that that's completely available to us, but it would be nice to have something that tells us here is what happened, why it happened. Here's what we are doing to safeguard against this kind of thing in the future so that we can just put new events in their own context instead of looking for those connections.
Brian: [00:08:37] Yeah, I totally agree.
Beth: [00:08:49] I want to spend a minute talking with you about what's going on in Georgia. So the Georgia legislature passed and the Georgia governor signed into law [00:09:00] sweeping election reform as we've talked about on the podcast before. We've tried to break that down, both on the show and then very detailed breakdown on Patreon, because I do think that Georgia law has a lot going on in it.
Some things that I am supportive of and some things that I view as really significant contractions of the right to vote, in addition to the ability of a political party in power to overreach and overseeing elections. And so when we put all that together, the characterization of the law in the news has been that it is voter suppression, that it is being done for a, to solve a problem that doesn't really exist, that the Georgia legislature did not like being a blue state on the map in 2020 and wants to fix that.
And so now we have corporate America responding. Major league baseball pulled its all star game out of Atlanta. We have co statements from Delta and Coca-Cola. And in response, Republicans are now trying to make this idea of like woke corporate hypocrites a thing. [00:10:00] Republicans are saying, you know, corporations don't care about genocide and China, but they're worried about voting in the United States.
They're, mis-characterizing these laws, you know, we're going to take on their antitrust exemptions. It's just really fascinating thing to watch and I wondered Brian, how you are taking this in and like what questions you're thinking about as you watch all of this unfold. Yeah.
Brian: [00:10:21] I, I have, uh, I mean, I have a lot of questions. Um, I have not gone through and read every page of these, these bills so I get it from, you know, the news and from wherever I can. I try to be as equal opportunity consuming in my news. So I like to listen to the news that feeds into my own, you know, what I like to hear about, I also like to listen to their side just to make sure that I'm not missing something.
Also like looking at the data around this. It's like, okay, what is this really doing? And then I shift over to it's when I heard about the MLB pulling out, it really struck me because I think a lot of my life is centered around a lot of sports. And so I watched a [00:11:00] lot of sports. I participate on constantly going to sporting events and coaching kids' soccer games and football and baseball games and things like that.
And that I look at this as, okay. They decided to pull out, here was the response and you look at everyone's response on it. What does it really doing for what actually needs to happen there in Georgia? Like is MLB pulling out. I think it's sends a really clear message, but who does it hurt, but what does it actually solve too? Is it too little too late? I just have, I don't know about, I probably have more questions than answers.
Beth: [00:11:30] Well, I think the first thing we can say is that George's legislative session has ended. And so we're not going to get a reversal of this law, this session. It's over, it's done. This is the law now. I think it's a really good question about who gets hurt when we do boycotts.
And I think that's why you hear people like Stacey Abrams saying, I don't want boycotts. That's not good for Georgia. I want corporate leaders to speak out. I want them to use the power they have, but I don't want that level [00:12:00] of lost revenue for the state.
At the same time, we have seen corporate boycotts and specifically sporting event boycotts be pretty impactful around the protections of transgender people in North Carolina, for example. And so I don't know what this will do other than create a new Twitter kind of food fight for people who already love politics to keep accusing each other of hypocrisy around politics.
Brian: [00:12:27] Yeah, I don't. I think that's the thing that, that I find the most telling is when the GOP or the Republicans say, okay, we're, we're pro business, we're going to give business tax cuts. We're going to do all of these things and as soon as it doesn't align with all of those things that they're looking for, it's an immediate, we got, we got to cut that out. We got it. Now you go back and boycott, you know, the, the, the arms race for boycotting now has begun in Georgia. So does it stop?
I mean, I, I do recall the NCAA tournament, North Carolina, but it didn't happen immediate. It took them a long [00:13:00] time to finally make any changes, but it's still, you costs them money. And you know, is it the answer that if the GOP is only going to listen to money, do we use, is that the way that we make things happen?
Beth: [00:13:12] We've been doing at some point because you know, major league baseball is moving the game at the demands of its players, as I understand it. And I think that is important that organizations listen to the people who create those organizations. Coca-Cola is just saying we don't like this, Delta is saying we don't like this. I certainly think that's within the scope of what corporate leaders ought to do.
But then, you know, you have a certain contingency saying, well, we're going to boycott baseball because major league baseball made. I mean, you know, just the back and forth is not real activism. At some point it's not real activism. And I think that's your point, like what actually makes a change here. And in the meantime, we're just continuing to fight about how the law is characterized.
And I've gotten a lot of messages from people saying, well, it's not [00:14:00] really voter suppression and honestly, I don't care to have that argument. The question for me is, is a state legislature acting in good faith to make voting easier or harder? That's where I'm looking right now. Are we trying to make voting easier or harder? And if the answer is harder, I'm concerned about that because I don't see data that indicates that people are just cheating all over the place where we need to restrict the way that we show up to vote.
Brian: [00:14:31] I think because the work that I do, I work with adults with disabilities and the thing that we focus a ton on is equity. So how are we making sure that there's equity in what we're doing? How are we equitable? How are we giving accommodations that are needed? How are we in the, from the scope of a person with a disability, trying to have full inclusive life? How are we making sure the world around them is equitable for them as possible?
And so when I look at things like this, I look at it through that lens of, okay, we're anytime they need to change voting laws, and I understand they need to change probably all the time because the [00:15:00] world is changing. You know, the tech, even technology and things like that didn't exist. Different, you know, work schedules didn't exist.
All these things didn't exist when potentially some of these laws were written. I understand there's need for change, but are we doing it in a method to make it more equitable so that more people can vote and make it as easy as possible for people to do it or are we making it so that it drives elections in a certain way?
If we're trying to change the laws in the real intent is it makes it trying to make it more equitable. And at the end, maybe we're not a hundred percent, but we got to 80. In my book. That's great. If at the end of the day, you look at something and you say this isn't actually more equitable. It's not making it easier for people to vote. It's not making it so that people that have a harder time just getting to the polls, that's a problem. Honestly, I haven't read all of it. But when, uh, when you talk about the idea that you can't get food and water to someone, I have a hard time understanding how that could be a problem anyway.
Beth: [00:15:55] So since we're in your wheelhouse here, can you talk a little bit about [00:16:00] equity and voting for populations where disabilities are concerns?
Brian: [00:16:04] Yeah, it's a huge issue. So we went through the last election and we have people with disabilities, have a huge voice, but it's not easy or accessible for them to vote. So especially this year where with Corona, with the COVID and coronavirus, people with disabilities had twice as much likelihood of catching it. You know, if they caught it exponentially more often, they were going to get significantly ill and die from it. And so just showing up and working at a poll or showing up and waiting in line and things like that was not a great solution for people.
Most people with disabilities don't have access to high-speed internet in a lot of situations. Transportation's a huge barrier just to get to work, let alone, try to get somewhere that's a different off your schedule where you're normally going. And so we look at all of these things when it comes to voting and we have to put in a full court press to try to get the individuals that we work with, just an option to vote.
And so using the mail in voting is always just a simple answer. Even [00:17:00] the accessibility you think about polling locations and yeah, a lot of times it is a library or a school where it's easy to get to, but sometimes it's an older church that has 14 steps to get up the door and if you're someone that's in a wheelchair or uses a mobility device, trying to get up those steps, it's not going to work.
And so the option a lot of times as well, we'll have somebody come out to your car and help you vote. But that doesn't even work all the time. And then sometimes, you know, if you're blind trying to even fill out the application to get an absentee ballot or a mail-in ballot, or to have someone help you is prohibited.
And so in areas where you have to go through extra hoops, just to get a ballot that's accessible for you is a huge barrier. And so we have worked a lot to try to work with our local election boards to say, let's try to make these more accessible and try to do that because we know that the more that people vote and we don't obviously, as a nonprofit, we can't tell anybody how to vote. We don't take any stances, nothing like that.
At the end of the day, we just know that the more people that vote, the more the system benefits. So we want to get [00:18:00] everybody out there. It usually means that on election day we are having our staff give people rides. We are helping them fill out these forms because that's one second of the population we know is very under voting, just because they are not there all the time. It's hard to actually get there.
Beth: [00:18:15] That's the kind of information that makes me want corporate America speaking out on voting rights, even though corporate America doesn't do everything perfectly. You know, I was listening to Marco Rubio's video about where is Coca-Cola on China. And, you know, I saw his tweet about major league baseball enters this deal with a streaming service for a streaming services with a tech company in China at the same time that it starts to pull the all-star game.
And Marco Rubio is like, well, the hypocrisy. And I thought, well, I'm cleaning my house today because I live here. I probably would have objections to how other people take care of their homes, but like I'm not in those homes, right? This is my place to clean. [00:19:00] And Coca Cola is headquartered in Georgia. I think it's fair for Coca-Cola have higher expectations of Georgia.
I would hope everyone has higher expectations of the state of Georgia than they do of the Chinese communist party. I want these corporations to speak out about the treatment of Uyghur Muslims in China. Absolutely. I am with Senator Rubio on this issue, but I don't think that means that they have to be perfect on every issue internationally, to be able to hold us to a higher standard here in the United States, where we're living up to the promise of democracy that we ask countries around the world to honor and respect also.
Brian: [00:19:37] Yeah. And I also look at it as they have a responsibility to everywhere where they're doing business, but this, these are their employees that are here they should be looking out for. I would also love to see corporate America take a bigger stance in doing things themselves to make voting easier for their employees. So, you know, setting up pulling locations that are near, they have huge warehouses with [00:20:00] thousands of people working. Are they adjusting shifts to make sure people can get off? Are they giving time away to go and vote? Are they ensuring that people have those things necessary? Because that also is going to benefit.
At the end of the day, I agree with you, Beth. I think that everyone should be able to vote in the most equitable, inclusive way possible. And then whoever has the best ideas, that's who gets to lead. And that's, I mean, I know that that's probably the most idealistic thing that I'll say today, and maybe we're never going to get there, but that's, that's how I think we should do it. You know, regardless of what party you are, you should be invested in getting as many people out to vote because that's how this thing keeps going.
Beth: [00:20:37] I agree with you completely. And I would love to see these statements pushing back on the law in Georgia, the proposed law in Texas, accompanied by a commitment to election holidays, where people get a full day off work to go vote during the early voting period or on election day itself.
You know, let people get out there to vote without having to choose between exercising the [00:21:00] franchise or being late for work. I think that's really important. Okay. Let's talk about you Brian. Our moment of hope today because I love what you do. I'm really excited for people to learn more about your organization and the work that you all do to empower people living with disabilities.
Brian: [00:21:18] Yeah, thank you so much and it really is a really great to hear. So to give a little idea, the reason that I even know Beth is because I uprooted my family and moved out here to this area to work for this organization that I work with. So that's why we're here. It was so important to me, the work that we're doing that we moved, you know, 1700 miles and couldn't be happier living right here and being really good friends with Beth and her family.
But what we, what I do is I work with a company called LADD, it's L A D D. Um, and we were started in 1975 to assist adults with disabilities who have to have safe, affordable housing. And when I say disability, it's intellectual developmental disabilities is what we work with. And so [00:22:00] we were started back then 46 years ago now by parents who at the time, if you had a developmental disability, there were pretty much two options for you. You could go to a large state run institution, and we all have seen what those look like or you could pretty much live in your parents' basement.
There wasn't a place for you to live in the community. And so a group of parents got together and decided they were going to start an organization so their children had somewhere to live in the community that was not an institution. And that has grown today. We, I mean, it started with, you know, a handful of people. Now we serve over 600 people in the Cincinnati region and do a lot of different things to ensure that people with disabilities can, can work, can live, can connect and really make sure that they have everything that the rest of us have.
When we talk about inclusion, we're not looking to make sure that people with disabilities are able to be alongside the rest of those who don't have disabilities, but to be fully included and what they do. It's not just integration. It's not just, you know, being around other people and being diversified. It's really being fully included in what people do. And so [00:23:00] I'm the chief strategy officer there at LADD. I've been with them about 18 months, as long as I've lived here in the area and my job, which. I'll be honest is probably the perfect job for me.
And it's, I don't know, other people might not want to do it, but what I get to do is I look for the forward into the future. So everyone in our organization or anyone who wants comes with these grand ideas that don't seem reachable. They hand them off to me and then we go out and we make them possible. And so I get to build all the new, big, shiny things, and then hand them off to our operations department to actually run them forever.
So it's a really fun job. It's really exciting. And right now, one of the things that I'm really excited about is our smart living pilot. It's a first of its kind in the nation, uh, technology pilot. What we're doing is we're taking smart home technologies, virtual support systems and wearable devices so that people with disabilities can live fully independent in the community.
And so it's been really exciting to do that and to do something that's never been done before. And really, I just love the, what we do and love being able to [00:24:00] share the knowledge that I have, that if people are given opportunities and again are given a real fair shake and giving equity in what they do, they can live full, successful, inclusive lives, like anyone that doesn't have the same barriers in their life.
Beth: [00:24:15] So we're going to link some videos for you to see one of the smart home projects that Brian worked on. Every time I watch it, Brian, and I've watched it a few times now, seeing the family members of the people who move into these homes and you can just kind of, even in these short clips, you can watch people's range of emotions. Like I never thought this was going to be possible. I'm so delighted that it's happening. Uh it's it's just really touching.
Brian: [00:24:42] I appreciate that. Yeah. It's, it's one of those things that as a, you know, as a parent myself, even I think about the future of my kids and think about, okay, what are they going to do? Where are they going to live? How are they going to survive in this world? And to have a kid that has a significant disability thinking about, okay, what, [00:25:00] how is that going to be even more complex? Is this child ever going to live on their own? What am I going to do?
You know, any parent with a disability, the thoughts in the back of their mind, all the time of what happens when I'm gone, if I'm the only one taking care of them. Right now, the way that the system is set up, and this is not unique to Ohio, Kentucky or anywhere, is that if someone has a disability and has a need, the system says, okay, well we'll put a person there as a caregiver and they'll just help be there in case they need something. But even, uh, you know, most States spend anywhere between, you know, several billion dollars, Ohio spends $4 billion a year on these services, and there's still 40,000 people that don't have the services because there's not enough money. There's not enough people.
And so LADD decided we needed to find a different way to do it. And so we, we built a house in, um, in the local area that has probably more technology than any house ever needs to have, but we thought if we can do one house and we can also take wearable technology so that when someone leaves the house, they still have supports and then build in some virtual supports.
So taking it, where someone typically has [00:26:00] 24 hour around the clock caregiver services, reduce that down to where they just have supports when they need them using technology. The person is more independent because they don't have to rely on somebody else being with them all the time. It saves money so that you can actually provide services to more people and then it also gives a break for some of the staff that we, we are relying constantly on just another person solving for everyone else's needs.
Beth: [00:26:23] Well, thank you so much for telling us about that, Brian. And we're going to put all the links in the show notes so that you all can learn more about what LADD is doing.
I just, I think it's really special work.
Brian: [00:26:31] I appreciate it.
Beth: [00:26:32] Next up, we are going to hear an interview that Sarah did with Doug, who is married to an avid Pantsuit Politics listener and Doug happens to be an expert on cryptocurrency and NFTs. And I am so thrilled for Doug's existence in the world, because whenever I talked to my husband, Chad, about cryptocurrency and NFTs, I turned back into a lawyer.
It's like, we're at a deposition. Is he'll say, well, you know, blockchain is this digital ledger. I'm like, right, but what is it? What is it? What is, and then [00:27:00] he'll say, well, an NFT is a non fungible token, right? But like, what is its purpose? What is it? And I feel like after listening to this conversation between Sarah and Doug, I have a much better understanding, not only of what these things are, but why they matter and why they matter to me and how they could create a pretty significantly different future for all of us. So thank you, Doug. Thank you, Sarah. For this conversation, I hope y'all get as much out of it as I did.
Sarah: [00:27:38] We are so thrilled to have Doug Broughton here with us, the CEO of Vendible, a startup focused on secure identity. He was volunteered by his lovely wife to help us all understand cryptocurrencies and NFTS. Doug, I have to tell you the very exciting development as we are beginning this conversation. I am in line to get [00:28:00] an NBA top shot NFT. Finally got in the queue going to be able to get my NFT, non fungible token.
We're going to get into that in a minute, y'all. I've been trying to get this forever. I've been trying to procure one of these and by forever, I mean, approximately two weeks when everybody started talking about them and I thought, well, I have to have one. I like to diversify. I got a little bit coin. I want one of these two. And so it feels like the universe is coming together. You're here to talk to us about these things while I'm going to get my first non fungible token. I'm so excited.
Doug: [00:28:31] It is exciting. Congratulations.
Sarah: [00:28:34] I don't give one single care about the NBA. I never watch a game, but I'm so excited to get NBA top shot, just the same. Okay. Before we get into NFTs cause that's a little deeper let's back up. Help people. Do you think we should start with cryptocurrency or blockchain? Maybe blockchain?
Doug: [00:28:54] We should start with blockchain.
Sarah: [00:28:56] Okay. Help us. Talk to us, like we're, first-graders, [00:29:00] Doug. Walk us through the blockchain. Beth was like, yes. And I kept saying, it's like a ledger Beth. And she's like, okay, I'd still don't understand. So just help us dig our way through this slowly.
Doug: [00:29:11] So blockchain technology is a form of a distributed ledger and it is essentially what makes it special is that in this ledger, groups of decentralized entities come together to look at all of the transactions that are on the network and they decide what needs to be bundled into this block and this block has some information that is specific to it. And then when the next block is created, there's a reference back to the previous block.
Sarah: [00:29:52] So that's sort of like this, the certification, is that they're referencing something else. Okay. Got it.
Doug: [00:29:58] The key in, [00:30:00] in these networks is the linking of these blocks.
Sarah: [00:30:04] Perhaps while we call it a chain.
Doug: [00:30:06] Yes. Yeah. It creates this chain and it creates incredible security for this record. It's essentially immutable because if it's, if the blockchain is properly set up, then anyone who wanted to change a previous record would have to go to more trouble than it's worth to change this record. So essentially if I wanted to change something that happened at block 200 and we're currently at block 300, I would have to change all of these blocks because it's yes, because that identifier references the previous block and you'd have to change the references to all this. And there's these very intensive cryptographic hoops than minors or, or consensus mechanisms need to perform in order to [00:31:00] create this record.
Sarah: [00:31:02] Okay. First question, who are the decentralized entities and where is this network?
Doug: [00:31:08] And the network is global. It depends on the project. So in the case of Bitcoin, uh, these would be miners and they run very large, um, operations, where they are competing against one another to essentially solve a problem, which will give them the right to create the next block.
Sarah: [00:31:37] Okay quick. Okay. I'm gonna interrupt you because this is my, always my, I think where I'm a little confused. So we have a mining company near here in Calvert city, and because they have lots of industrial land available and cheap electricity rates. Cause it's, so is this like a brute force? We're just running numbers until we stumble upon it, or when you say solve a problem, is it a little more complicated than that? Are we just [00:32:00] running numbers until we get the right numbers that link up in the chain? Like that hit the next transaction?
Doug: [00:32:05] It's elliptic curve cryptography, which is that there's orders of magnitude of difficulty in this that do not exist in normal cryptography.
Sarah: [00:32:15] So this is not a person with a paper and a pen situation. This is like thousands of computers running up for once trying to find it?
Doug: [00:32:21] It's like if, if I wanted to toss a coin into a cup, but that cup is on the other side of my house and I can't see the cup. And so I have to throw it over the house. And, and so I would have to throw millions of coins.
Sarah: [00:32:39] So you'd want a million robots throwing the coin for you.
Doug: [00:32:42] Got it, though. What the process of mining does is it's crunching and doing these calculations over and over again, but it has to do it with the entire chain visible to it. And so it has to run this for all of these transactions. So it's incredibly [00:33:00] intense. It takes a lot of energy to confirm these transactions to the point that we're now just the Bitcoin blockchain itself uses as much energy as some small countries.
Sarah: [00:33:15] Yeah. That's what bill Gates was saying. Like we should not any company that cares about global warming should not be working in cryptocurrency because it's such an energy intensive.
Doug: [00:33:28] In some cases that is correct and there are, they're smart people working on it. Um, things have been changing over the last four to five years. So when I originally came to blockchain, I heard about the person who, who purchased the pizza with Bitcoin and I got interested and I
Sarah: [00:33:50] Oh, that pizza is worth. What now all sad for that person. That's like a
Doug: [00:33:55] currently, it would be $560 million dollars.
Sarah: [00:33:59] Very [00:34:00] expensive pizza duck.
Doug: [00:34:01] For two large pizzas. Yes. Brutal. Yeah. At the time Bitcoin was 0.003 cents each?
Sarah: [00:34:09] So now it is what.
Doug: [00:34:11] 56,000 somewhere.
Sarah: [00:34:15] But wait, how do we get from the block? So we've gotten our million robots to get us the block that links to the chain that makes it secure. Yes. Where does Bitcoin come in?
Doug: [00:34:26] So Bitcoin is in, in this instance, it is essentially the digital asset on the Bitcoin blockchain and so it's a, a store of value and people use this in transactions the way that we would, if I were, you know, just using cash. So this is now an electronic cash. What separates this from earlier attempts, uh, to make an electronic [00:35:00] cash is the immutable record, uh, number one and number two, the notes
Sarah: [00:35:06] we'll have a record of every quote, unquote dollars ever spent. Wow, that's intense.
Doug: [00:35:12] So a lot of people talk about Bitcoin being used for illicit purposes. And early on, there was a lot of that. Uh, I think the, the latest studies say that less than 1% now are for illicit transactions. And I think when you look at, I think there was a UN report that said that $2 trillion in cash is traded illicitly each year, then Bitcoin's a drop in the bucket. But what people don't like about Bitcoin is they believe that it's difficult to, to track and trace it's anonymous, but that's actually not true. It's not anonymous, it's a pseudonymous so.
[00:36:00] Sarah: [00:35:59] I don't know what that means.
Doug: [00:36:02] Pseudonymous means that there is a representation of my assets, uh, on the blockchain. And so it's visible for everybody.
Sarah: [00:36:14] Your assets in Bitcoin, not like all your assets?
Doug: [00:36:16] No, just my assets in Bitcoin. They're, they're open to the public. Anyone can see my, my wallet. Anybody can see the contents of my wallet, but nobody knows that it's mine.
Sarah: [00:36:29] Oh, I got you. Okay. Here's a little nut I can't crack in my own mind. Well, so we all, actually I did not read the article because I knew enough about the article to know that it sounded torturous and I didn't want to read the whole thing, but that article went around about the couple of people who do not remember their passcode to their Bitcoin wallet.
And it's like growing and it's like billions of dollars and they only have so much time. And it's just, it's awful all the way around, but let's say they never get the password. What happens to that [00:37:00] bitcoin?
Doug: [00:37:00] It will never move again.
Sarah: [00:37:02] It's just it's there, gaining in value, but inaccessible.
Doug: [00:37:06] Completely. Inaccessible and once you lose it, you can't get it back. The way that you have your fund secured is through public private keys. So in your wallet, you don't actually have any, there's no funds there. All the funds are actually are all the assets are actually on the blockchain itself. So in your wallet, all you have are keys and the keys give you the right to make a transaction.
Sarah: [00:37:34] Okay. With that amount of Bitcoin?
Doug: [00:37:37] With whatever was assigned to that address, where, where your assets were held. And so if you lose your keys, then you cannot remake these. And so right now, There's a lot of steps that we have to use to ensure that we can back this up, [00:38:00] that if we lose our keys, uh, there's recovery mechanisms. And this is probably why we won't see large scale adoption of, of what we call self sovereign, um, blockchain use for probably decades.
Sarah: [00:38:20] Because we need to solve that problem first.
Doug: [00:38:22] There's a great in any technology adoption curve, there's this chasm between the early adopters and the early majority. And in order to, to cross a chasm, we have to make things simpler for everybody, because quite honestly, they don't want to go to the trouble.
Um, it's, uh, you know, my wife. She hears about this routinely, but she has no desire to, to set up her own, you know, wallet and, and start.
Sarah: [00:38:57] The Coinbase is so easy. It's so easy though.
[00:39:00] Doug: [00:39:00] Say that is, that is separate. That is easy. And that is one of those tools for, for adoption. And, and there's, there's two views. So Coinbase is easy, but technically you still don't own those assets. Coinbase, Coinbase has all of those keys. Those are coin basis keys that you are using. And so you don't, you still don't technically own them.
Sarah: [00:39:29] I mean, okay, well that after this is over, you're going to help me set up. Cause I want my own keys.
Doug: [00:39:35] If you truly want to own your own assets then you have to have your own wallet set up either on your own hardware or with, you know, there's there's companies that, that help with, uh, whether they're called cold wallets, or you can even make a wallet on a, on a piece of paper. You can print out a QR code and, and you know, your, your backup [00:40:00] phrases.
And you can then put that in a, uh, security deposit box and just let it sit and, and accumulate in value. But without, without your true ownership of the keys, you can never, 100% would certainly say that that's your assets.
Sarah: [00:40:17] Well, I need to take my money out of Coinbase and get it on a piece of paper with a QR code. Im gonna own my own keys.
Doug: [00:40:23] True. Everybody does. It's just. It can be complicated and that's why.
Sarah: [00:40:27] You can lose the key and then you're at some sad sack in a wall street journal article about how you got $2 million dollars you can't get to.
Doug: [00:40:33] Exactly. And, and to this day, when I send a transaction, I still pause. I still look at every single letter and digit in the address that I'm sending it to and then I go back and I double check because if I send it to, if there's one letter or one number off in this transaction that I'm building, then it's gone and it didn't get where it was supposed to be, and I can't recover it.
[00:41:00] And so, wow, there's a lot of responsibility with being sovereign over your funds and, and your identity and stuff. And so that's a lot of, a lot of what we're working on is how do we make it accessible to the majority of people in a way that they still have control over their, their personal and financial data.
Sarah: [00:41:25] Okay, well, back to the same issue of, if you lose access to your key, is there a finite amount of Bitcoin or is there an infinite amount of Bitcoin?
Doug: [00:41:39] There is a finite amount of Bitcoin.
Sarah: [00:41:41] That's crazy that we would lose access to this finite. I mean, although I told my husband, it's not like we didn't have ship sink to the bottom of the ocean full of gold, you know, lost to us forever.
Doug: [00:41:54] That's true. And so at one point we will hit a block where [00:42:00] there will be no new Bitcoin and so we'll now we'll just be transacting with, with what's out there. And to think that right now, if you look at the price of a Bitcoin now, you know, what will the price be of a Bitcoin when there's no new Bitcoin are entering the supply chain? And so it's. It's kind of staggering to think where it may go.
Sarah: [00:42:25] Yeah. Well, how close are we to that? Do we know?
Doug: [00:42:28] There's a date uh, I don't know it off the top of my head, but it's, it's a long ways off.
Sarah: [00:42:33] So it's like years. Okay. So I got time to get my safety deposit box with my QR code. That's what I really care about about. Okay. So I think we have a good, a good handle on the blockchain.
Bitcoin is not the only cryptocurrency where it's being said, Oh, do you have a stance on the dog one? What's the dog one, I forgot the name of it,?
Doug: [00:42:54] Doge?
Sarah: [00:42:54] Doge. Yes. It was like a, it was like a joke cryptocurrency. And then all of a sudden it was not a joke [00:43:00] cryptocurrency.
Doug: [00:43:01] Yeah. They can appear to be a joke to those on the outside, but there are, there are what are now called just like Bitcoin is a decentralized ledger, we now have decentralized autonomous organizations. That have or DAOs, which are sprung up, uh, from this. And so, uh, Dao is not a new concept, but it's, it's new in the way that it's being presented here, where you have people from all around the world that are uniting around a blockchain project.
They, most of the time, they don't know each other's name. They don't know where they live. They don't know anything about each other, but they all come together to support a project and build it and try to see it adopted in some form or [00:44:00] fashion out in the world. And it's really interesting to see it credibly diverse groups of people coalescing around a single idea.
And that's a really, really nice thing that I've seen come up out of this. That's how I got involved. My background is in energy engineering. I was looking at Bitcoin and I thought this wasn't going to work, uh, that this is just, it's too much energy per transaction. If you look at visa and what they do, that they can just, it doesn't matter.
They can scale up easily where Bitcoin can't and then new methods came out where it wasn't, competition-based like Bitcoin. It's it's, uh, cooperation based. And, and I got involved with one of these it's, uh, protected, instant verified transactions for pivots. And they, they verify blocks in a different way, which is essentially holding assets in your wallet. And by [00:45:00] doing so you create stability in the network and it makes transactions easier to see, and you get rewarded for that.
Sarah: [00:45:05] Oh, so you're like you commit to, to not like buy and sell and trade constantly, commit to keep them in one spot.
Doug: [00:45:12] You have a stake of, of assets that you hold in your wallet and you say I'm holding these and you know where they are and it makes, it makes everything easier to confirm. And this is called, so where Bitcoin uses proof of work, uh, that method is proof of stake and that's the other major consensus method. And, uh, I'm a huge fan of that.
It's 99% less energy intensive and transactions happen a lot faster. And we're seeing a lot of movement to that. And, uh, Ethereum, which, which is home to many of the NFTs, uh, they are slowly working their way to that as well, because we all understand that it's not tenable to continue to [00:46:00] use energy at that kind of pace. There would have to be a major reward or there would have to be a major shift in the way that we produce electricity in order to continue in this way,
Sarah: [00:46:22] NFTs that are really recent, probably not to you, but to the mass public, they've kind of burst on the scene. We're seeing the very first tweet being sold by Jack Dorsey is an NFT. We're seeing Christie's auctions of NFTs and digital art. I am currently, as I said, at the opening inline to purchase my first NFT from NBA top shots. I'm now 9,000 in line. Everybody get excited. Um, tell us what an NFT is.
Doug: [00:46:52] Uh, it's a token and tokens, um, are kind of like the next [00:47:00] generation of blockchain technology. So, uh, Bitcoin was the original and then we had a theory of that came along and the theory came from Bitcoin, but it allows developers to create smart contracts and you can think of smart contract is just a little, a little.
Sarah: [00:47:20] It's like an evolution of mining. So you're not necessarily mining to get this next evolution of currency.
Doug: [00:47:25] Well, they're still mining on Ethereum, to confirm all the transactions, to produce all the NFTs. They're still mining to do that, but Ethereum allows developers to create applications and embed them into the blockchain themselves. So you can essentially program your, your assets. You can, you can program money. You can program, uh, you know, any sort of application that you'd want directly in there.
Sarah: [00:47:56] That's what the NFT is, is the ability to program [00:48:00] this transaction onto a token, be it an NBA clip or a tweet or whatever.
Doug: [00:48:10] Yes. So, an NFT is a non fungible token and that essentially means that I can not transfer that token for any other token. It is unique into itself. So a non fungible, a token or asset would essentially be like the dollar. Uh, a dollar is fungible. So if I have $1 and I gave you my dollar and you give me a dollar, I still have a dollar. Uh, and, but if I had a, some sort of non fungible dollar, then we couldn't trade. It wouldn't, it wouldn't work because maybe my dollar is only valid at this local shop. And so I can't trade that. And it's only good for this one particular item that they [00:49:00] sell.
Sarah: [00:49:00] So my friend, Leslie, is getting an NBA top shot today, too. She made it into the line, so we can't trade our NBA top shot?
Doug: [00:49:06] We can trade them, but they will, they were only represent that specific item that you purchased.
Sarah: [00:49:16] Oh, I see what you're saying. It's not like it's a dollar for a dollar and all dollars are the same because we could trade but eventually my top shop might be worth more than hers. Whereas a dollar, if you trade a dollar for a dollar, they're all going to always going to be a dollar isn't for inflation, but is a little complicated. Yeah, I get it. Okay.
Doug: [00:49:32] It's a snowflake that, uh, can't be traded for any other snowflake.
Sarah: [00:49:36] Got it. Okay. And why do you think that we have, we're evolving to these?
Doug: [00:49:42] There are a lot of business use cases that we'll see very soon that we'll rely on non fungible tokens. You can think of things like your identity. If you wanted to, you know, have proofs to your identity [00:50:00] and you don't want anybody to copy that in real estate, I can create a Deed to my home. I can prove through this token that I have deed to this house, then not only can I use that for say, if I sell my home, instead of going through all of the intermediaries. In 15 seconds, I could transfer ownership.
Uh, but not only that, you know, we'll see a day where you won't be able to open the door to your home, unless you can cryptographically prove that you're the owner and the same with starting your car. Uh, and, and so there's going to be a lot of that right now in supply chains. We're seeing, um, a massive amount of cooperation to begin to tokenize everything that's moving globally. And [00:51:00] that will filter down to our daily lives at some point. Wherever it can be used to, um, simplify processes that we've had for, for decades. That's where we're going to see them come out first.
Sarah: [00:51:14] Is this going to help us get at the problem we were talking about earlier with the keys and helping certify that key process and getting it to the masses? Can we use the non fungible token to make sure we don't lose our keys, I guess is what I'm asking/
Doug: [00:51:32] I suppose you could have a, a token that represented your keys. Uh, I've not thought of that.
Sarah: [00:51:38] Did I just, did I just push us forward like 50 years? Did I just solved that problem. I'm sorry. Is everybody listening? That's amazing. I'm so proud of myself.
Doug: [00:51:49] I still, I still see it being really, a long time off before people are [00:52:00] comfortable enough to sort of have all of that in their hands on their own and so there's, we're going to see all of this, you know, stewarded for us because quite honestly, people don't want that kind of stress in their lives. They've got enough going on right now that they don't want to worry that if I push a wrong button, then my entire life savings is gone.
Sarah: [00:52:28] But isn't it fascinating that we've seen this stuff take off during the pandemic when people like their stress, but also they got like extra time, extra money and we've seen a lot of growth in cryptocurrency and NFTs.
Doug: [00:52:39] Yeah. It's, we're really seeing a second big, uh, push in this space right now, uh, and really excited to see where it's going to go and I know that, uh, our government, uh, is, is really also watching closely and there's a lot of mixed opinions, but I [00:53:00] know that, um, it's Greg Ginsler, uh, was, was nominated by, uh, the Biden Harris team to, to oversee, uh, the transition in the fed.
He's taught blockchain courses at MIT, really smart, really smart person. And I know also at MIT, I think the summer they're going to start researching the digital dollar. Wow. Because our, our central banks are smart enough to know just how much waste can be removed from the system with blockchain technology.
And so we will see test roll-outs of, uh, central bank, digital currencies, and they'll run concurrently alongside of, of what we have now with an eye towards, you know, what does it look like to fully take the old [00:54:00] methods of verifying payments, uh, away and, and just work with what we have now?
Sarah: [00:54:05] Well, because it feels like to me, like, we've, even though we're not to mass usage, and even though there are big problems left to solve. This is not going anywhere. Like we are, we are fully in it. And, you know, I would say to people who hear cryptocurrency and like get a little anxious or a lot anxious to me, the best way to de-stigmatize it and sort of lessen that anxiety is just to try it.
Like there is there you lose nothing by getting it on Coinbase even and using like the first, the very first cryptocurrency I can use $100 I got for Christmas, like five years ago. And I just thought, I just want to some, I just want to see, I want to like, have an, have a better understanding of what's going on here. And that's how I felt about the NFTs. I'm like, I'm going to get left behind. I want to try this. And just like dabbling in it is like one of the best ways to learn I think.
[00:55:00] Doug: [00:55:00] Definitely, and I believe Coinbase right now has a program where when you sign up, you can go through little short classes to learn little, little bits about the technology. And when you do, they give you coins that you can store on Coinbase. It's a great promotion. And that really is if you're a complete novice and you're interested, that's a good place to start. I would not recommend, uh, just jumping on an exchange and getting into that world, uh, until you have a kind of a, a more solid base.
Sarah: [00:55:39] Yeah. Not until you can have Doug, after you in this team called walk you through how to get it into the safety deposit bank on a QR code, which he's definitely going to do. He just doesn't know yet. You definitely need people that like, it does help to have people who are like more comfortable with it and can kind of like give you the rundown and in [00:56:00] de-stigmatize a process, which is why we brought you on here today, Doug, and you have been amazing. You have been so incredibly helpful.
Doug: [00:56:07] Well, thanks so much. I appreciate it.
Beth: [00:56:09] Thank you, Sarah and Doug. And thank you Corrie, for volunteering, Doug, to spend this time with Sarah, we really appreciate it. Okay. Outside of politics, here is the situation. I love Brian and his wife and his kids. I love every member of his family. I feel like that's a highly unusual thing and I'm blessed to have lots of families like that in my neighborhood.
And now they are looking at moving. So Brian, outside of politics, I just wanted to ask for your demand list to stay within walking distance of my house.
Brian: [00:56:37] Yeah. So when we moved out here, so when me and my wife decided in our family that we wanted to leave Utah and move somewhere else, never in a million years, would we have landed if we were pre-planning everything in this neighborhood that we live in and now we do not want to leave.
So as everyone knows, the housing market is awesome and super easy for everyone. So, um, we are looking, we it's, we're in this weird [00:57:00] situation where we need to move because we need, we need a different space, but we don't want to move out of the neighborhood. So we, we keep sticking around and yeah, really what we're looking for, it's not crazy. I mean, one of the big things we were looking for is access to good ice which Beth has solved with her, her good ice machine. So that's check off that list.
Beth: [00:57:17] Yes. I bought a nugget ice machine for our house. He, Chad is a deal finder. Okay. So we never pay full price for anything. He's been looking for a long time for a nugget ice maker. And I just want you to understand how significantly my quality of life has improved by having this nugget ice maker. And I do feel like, okay, if this is one thing that can anchor Brian's family to us longer, that it was totally worth the investment.
Brian: [00:57:41] Right? Honestly, we're looking for us for forever. We, me and Jen had, and that's my wife's name is Jen. We spent the first 15 years of our marriage traveling and moving around a lot because we were kind of nomads. I grew up in a really small town and never saw anything outside of it for the first 18 years. And so we spent a lot of time traveling and now we're ready to settle [00:58:00] down and what we're looking for, so if you live in our neighborhood and you're about to sell your house, we'll totally take it.
Space for our kids. A nice yard. Um, and honestly a place for Jen's parents as they get older, somewhere that they can come and stay and visit for long periods of time and really good neighbors. When we were looking for a place to live, one of the things we did was we drove through and, and we noticed how many bikes were in the yards and how many playgrounds were in the backyard. And that really drove it home.
And honestly, our kids have been super happy living here because they spend a lot of their days down in the creeks and out in the woods and catching all sorts of creatures that they want to bring home and, and start vet clinics for. Our oldest son and, and Beth's oldest daughter spend a good chunk of their time rescuing, and I'm saying rescuing quotes animals, and thinking what they're going to do next with them. They usually end up in a container in the yard for a day or two before being released back to their home because they didn't really need to be rescued.
Beth: [00:58:52] Yeah. They have this. Jane has like an elaborate org chart for their animal rescue team. It's very important to her. And this what I'm saying, like [00:59:00] some, every once in a while, Jane will come inside looking all down, I'm like, what's wrong? And she says, well, we were planning to do this, but you know, I think the Harts are going to move soon. So I don't know if that's going to work out and just like, all right, what else do we need to do? We got the ice maker, we have a pool coming. Like, what else can we do to keep you here?
Brian: [00:59:19] You know, it's, it's just living here has made it there. We just need, uh, a house in the neighborhood that has enough space for our family. So we're, we're on the street, you know, we've, we've got some, some timelines we're set up. We're we're about a month away from me, just knocking on neighbors, doors, asking them how, how happy they are in the neighborhood. I've identified a few that I don't know how happy they are here. So I'm going to go knock on their door and see if they're just open to moving. But, you know, it's, it's been really great. We, we genuinely love it here.
Beth: [00:59:44] Well, I like that approach. If I can help, I'm happy to like life coach people through this, like, Hey, you know, what are your goals? Let's connect you with a realtor who can help you accomplish those goals. But I don't want you to be somewhere that you don't want to be right.
Brian: [00:59:57] You don't seem to like kids and there's 50 of them in the [01:00:00] neighborhood. What can we do to help you go live somewhere else? Yes. Yeah. As long as you guys stick around, that's really key. So we'll stick around, you stick around and that'll be good.
Beth: [01:00:09] Listen, we're in here. I would never, ever have thought that I would be as committed to living here in Northern Kentucky, as I feel. I've always thought I want to move lots of places. I want to see lots of the world. I worked for a woman once who had lived in so many States that she had like a quippy thing to say about all of them and I just, I admired that so much.
Like I, I always cracked up when she would talk about living in Oklahoma, she would say like, Oklahoma, the song is right. Oklahoma is okay. It's not great. It's not terrible. It's just okay. And she said, we had a good life there, but you know, there are places that are great. There are places that are a lot worse than, Oh man. I thought I want to be like that. I want to know the range, but this is just such a good place to raise a family.
Sarah always says she's jealous of our neighborhood because it sounds like we have a commune type situation happening. It's not that, but it is like a suburban version of that for sure. We are, we are super, [01:01:00] super lucky to have such good neighbors. And we're so glad that you guys are here and we definitely do want you to stay.
So if that demand list increases, just let us know we'll get on it.
Brian: [01:01:04]We will let you know.
Beth: [01:01:05] Thank you all so much for joining us for this episode of Pantsuit Politics. Thank you, Brian, for filling in for Sarah while she's on vacation. On Friday, my husband Chad is going to be here with me for the entire episode. He has telecommunications expertise so we're going to talk about polarization and the fairness doctrine and the airways in general. It should be a good and fun conversation. Hope you'll have the best week available to you.
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