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Podcast - Ep 57: Catherine Read, mayor of Fairfax City, Va., is outspoken, unfiltered

Damian Cristodero — Mon, 25 Mar 2024 15:10:13 +0000

Podcast - Ep 57: Catherine Read, mayor of Fairfax City, Va., is outspoken, unfiltered Damian Cristodero Mon, 03/25/2024 - 11:10

Fairfax Mayor is outspoken, unfiltered

Catherine Read is the first woman and first ��AV graduate (BA government and politics ’84) to be mayor of Fairfax City, Va., the university’s hometown, and she isn’t shy about touting a university she says helped teach her how to think critically. Want to know why it’s good to “disrupt the system,” why it’s important to get more women into policy-making decisions, and why our educational system doesn’t reward bold ideas? Read tells you in this Women's History Month conversation with Mason President Gregory Washington. She also is adamant that “if we can’t maintain democracy, if we can’t preserve our country’s rule of law, then all of these other things make zero difference.” This podcast was recorded on March 21.

Listen to this episode

As I started out doing nonprofit advocacy work, I became aware that we did not have enough women around the table for good public policy. A lot of the problems and the issues that exist are because women are not in a position to create policies around, such as, universal pre-K or affordable quality childcare or paid family leave. And you have to ask yourself, why? And it's because women have not been at the table.”

^{~ Catherine S. Read, Mayor, City of Fairfax, Virginia}

Read the Transcript | Fairfax Mayor is outspoken, unfiltered

Narrator (00:04):

Gregory Washington (00:26):

��AV is a school for groundbreakers and trailblazers from globally impactful research to creating lasting change locally and beyond. Mason students, faculty, staff, and alumni put their stamps on their communities every day. With me today is one of those extraordinary alums, Catherine Reed. Class of 1984 with a bachelor's degree in government and politics is the first Mason graduate and the first woman to be mayor of the city of Fairfax, Virginia, the university's hometown. Katherine has dedicated herself to serving and supporting the city and its people. She's a small business owner with a social media consultancy firm. She is a long-time host of Fairfax Public Access shows Inside Scoop, Your Need to Know and Making Change Radio. She is also dedicated to bringing the city of Fairfax and George Mason into a closer partnership and that I can, so well, thank you for. I am so pleased she could be here during Women's History Month of all months to talk about the history she herself is making Catherine Read, welcome to the show.

Catherine Read (01:46):

Thank you so much for having me. It wasn't far to travel, actually, from City Hall to this radio station. Probably not even a mile.

Gregory Washington (01:54):

. Hey. And that's the whole point, right? You are right here. You're right here with us in this community in George Mason.

Catherine Read (02:02):

Well, it's interesting because when I was here, when I arrived in 1981, I moved into the first dormitory ever built. It opened on October 25th, 1981. Prior to that, there were no dormitories. There were the old student apartments, but there was no dormitories. And so that was one of the reasons I chose to come to George Mason. That and the fact that it was in a suburb of Washington DC. I grew up in rural southwest Virginia.

Gregory Washington (02:25):

Yeah, I know you took one of my questions. This is fantastic. Well, let me, let's talk a little bit about things. You have a really interesting background. You have said that you're not a politician, and I can tell by your background why you would say that, but talk a little bit more about what you mean by that.

Catherine Read (02:42):

Well, being mayor was not really in my life plan. I mean, I do have a degree in government and politics and, and people have asked why I changed from being a theater major at Emerson College to being a government and politics major at ��AV. I had an interest in both. I mean, I was very politically aware in fifth grade. During the Nixon McGovern race, I asked my fifth grade teacher if I could do a bulletin board about the presidential race. And he was like, as long as you cover both candidates equally in fifth grade, I was politically aware. I watched the Watergate hearings, the summer of the Watergate hearings I can remember most clearly as yesterday. So even though I had a love for theater and thought that's what I wanted to do as a career, I've always had an interest in politics. But not necessarily as I got older, seeing myself in a political role. As I started out doing nonprofit advocacy work, I became aware that we did not have enough women in the rooms where decisions were being made.

Catherine Read (03:39):

There were not enough women around the table for good public policy. A lot of the problems and the issues that exist and still exist are because women are not in a position to create policies around like universal pre-K or affordable quality childcare. Or paid family leave. There's not even paid parental leave, maternity leave that doesn't exist in this country. And you have to ask yourself, why? And it's because women have not been at the table to make policies that benefit women and families. And so I became an advocate working with nonprofits, but also electing more women to public office. So I know a lot of women in this region who sit in positions of power like Phyllis Randall out Loudoun County. I knew Phyllis before she was running for the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors, Katie Cristol. She and I sat on panels before she was ever on the Arlington County Board. All of these women that I've worked with for over 15 years trying to figure out how we get women in the room where it happens. So I always saw myself in that role, not in the elected role, but being the person who helps women who see themselves in the elected role get into those seats.

Gregory Washington (04:52):

Well, we are dealing with a time in the US House where, what is it? I think it's up to 29% women now. So 128 out of the 440 members. You know, it's a high watermark, but not where we need to be.

Catherine Read (05:11):

No. In 2013, I remember working for women candidates in 2013. We were 47th in the United States for the percentage of women in our legislature. Virginia was very low. And that year, 24 women ran for office. In the journal assembly. 12 were incumbents, including Charniele Herring, who's also a Mason alumna. That is true. Charnel was an incumbent in 2013, and there were 12 challengers and all 12 incumbents won, and all 12 challengers lost. When you look back and you think, well, 2013, that's just 11 years ago. Look how far we've come in 11 years from that to where we are now. You look in the House, you look in the Senate, you see women, you see women with babies. You see women who have given birth in office. You see women with school aged children. And that didn't exist a decade ago. It just didn't.

Gregory Washington (06:06):

So when you were elected in 2022, you became the first alum, as I said, and first woman to be mayor of Fairfax. Did that dawn on you? Were you thinking, look, I wanna be a trailblazer here?

Catherine Read (06:17):

You know, it was funny because somebody from the Washington Post said, are you running on being the first woman mayor? And I'm like, are you kidding me? Did you see how that worked out for Hillary? No. , no. I don't talk about it at all because it's a double-edged sword. Right? People don't wanna hear about gender, even if it's a factual statement. People don't wanna hear about gender. They want you to make a case for why I should be elected based on my vision, my commitment, my background, my skillset. And same with being a George Mason alumna. I mean, I did not talk about that, but I talk about it all the time now that I'm in office.

Gregory Washington (06:51):

Yeah, look, I see here what the City of Fairfax Women's History Month proclamation stated that there have been only 15 women elected to Fairfax City Council since 1961 and only two women ever elected to Virginia statewide office in the Commonwealth's 500-year history. Right? Yeah. We have a history of government here longer than, literally longer than the country's age. By a wide margin. mean, it's not even close. And we still have not had

Catherine Read (07:23):

Well, so we don't, we haven't had a

Gregory Washington (07:24):

Woman governor. Two elected officers, one of them is sitting in her seat right now.

Catherine Read (07:29):

Right now. So, there was a long time between Mary Sue Terry, who was attorney general in the late 1980s, and Winsome Earle-Sears, who's the current 42nd lieutenant governor, those are the only two in the 405 year history. It's been five centuries. We have the longest, continuously operating legislative body in the Western Hemisphere. And the fact that we as the Commonwealth of Virginia have not been able to elect a woman governor in five centuries, people should be asking themselves, it's not about the candidates. There are plenty of qualified women. So if it's not about the candidates, then we have to ask ourselves, is it about the voters? So I had an interesting conversation At a political event

Gregory Washington (08:09):

Okay, this is getting really interesting. Let's go

Catherine Read (08:12):

At a political event hosted by Gerry Connolly, which he does every St Patrick's Day, the holiest day of the year, according to Congressman Connolly. And he has a big event where, and it's all Democrats. And you know, I was talking about a potential ticket in 2025 of candidate for governor, lieutenant governor, and Commonwealth attorney, and a longtime friend of mine, someone who I just love and respect. She goes, well, we can't do that. I'm like, why? She goes, well, it's three women. I'm like, Judy, you did not just say that. Did you just say the Commonwealth of Virginia could not, would not, will not elect three women to the top offices 'cause that's what I just heard you say. She goes, well, yeah, I don't think that they could get elected. I'm like, wow. Wow. And wow. This is 2024. And you're telling me, I said, do you remember what Ruth Bader Ginsburg said when somebody asked how many women Supreme Court justices will be enough? And she said, when there are nine, because no one ever questioned the fact that we've had nine male Supreme Court justices. Why should anyone question if there are nine women? But I just had a long-time feminist activist woman say to me, oh, three women on a ticket. Oh, that won't work.

Gregory Washington (09:25):

You know, that's interesting that you bring that up. Not only is it commonplace for there to be only men on the ticket, it is clear that even some, I assume you're talking about a Democratic ticket. Yes, yes. That even some of the Democratic party would be uncomfortable with a ticket of all women. We have a saying, I'm an engineer. We have an old saying. Every system is designed to get the results it gets. If the system's giving you a certain result, that's because that's the way it was designed. Those are those results it was designed to give you, well, this is a primary example of that. This is exactly an outcome, that's a part of a system of which all of us are included that we produce even when we're not thinking about it. Those kinds of things have to be disrupted. They have to be changed. It's people like you that change 'em. So this is fantastic. I did not think we were gonna go in this direction. These questions are not on my card.

Catherine Read (10:23):

Well, that's okay. Because I under, I understand that you kind of a are freethinking, freewheeling, and I love that about you. It's kind of like that is true. Go where the conversation takes you. And you're right about disrupting systems. And it's kind of like, how was I the first woman mayor in 2022? Because it was the first time municipal elections were held in November instead of May. Historically, and this is part of the Virginia Constitution, and it's part of the Byrd Machine.

Gregory Washington (10:47):

Preach. Teach on this one. Go ahead.

Catherine Read (10:48):

Right. So every other year in May, 20% of registered voters voted. 20% of a hundred percent chose the mayor and city council since 1961. And I call that voter suppression. That's when I call it. When you have a system, to your point about what the system produces, when you have a system that consistently produces 20% or less over 60 years, then the system is working the way it was designed to work. So we had 15 women who were elected to city council over that period of 60 years. And there were many, many years where it was an all male city council and a male mayor. And that's what May elections produced. It produced a consistent constituency who decided that that is what they wanted their government to look like. So in 2022, when we moved to November, 59% of registered voters came out to vote, which meant two thirds of those voters had never voted for mayor and city council before.

Gregory Washington (11:46):

And you got a different outcome,

Catherine Read (11:47):

Different electorate, different outcome.

Gregory Washington (11:49):

Exactly. A different system.

Catherine Read (11:52):

Different system. .

Gregory Washington (11:55):

Amazing. Amazing. So when did you feel as if you were making history?

Catherine Read (11:59):

You know, I didn't really. I do now, because it matters to young women who want representation. Like you can't be what you can't see. I have a Girl Scout troop that's coming to City Hall. This is interesting too, because Deepak Madala, who I worked with at Virginia Poverty Law Center, and he just reached out to me and said, my daughter's Girl Scout troop would like to come to city council and meet with you and take a tour of the City Hall. And I said, well, that would be wonderful. And then it's occurred to me, I've never seen Girl Scouts in City Hall. Boy Scouts come to do the Pledge of Allegiance. We got lots of Boy Scout troops that come to the meetings and they have for years. But to my memory, I've never seen a Girl Scout troop in City Hall. So I'm like, yes, absolutely. Bring them. And I said, and I will ask the women on staff to come down. It's gonna be late in the afternoon to come down so that these girls can see the different kinds of people, the different women who have jobs in government besides the mayor. We have a deputy city manager, the city registrar, uh, Asian American woman. We have so many women. And these girls need to see.

Gregory Washington (13:03):

That's exactly right. That's how you change the vision of the future. This is Women's History Month. Who are the women you look up to?

Catherine Read (13:11):

Greta Thunberg.

Gregory Washington (13:12):

That's interesting.

Catherine Read (13:13):

It is because I tell you, young people at a certain point in their lives don't understand that things aren't possible. Kids come into this world curious and they learn all the time. And they ask questions and they have bold ideas. But a lot of times our educational system doesn't always reward that. And so as time goes on, you start to realize that what gets rewarded is hitting benchmarks and achievements and checking off boxes. That is what is rewarded. And all your big bold ideas somehow are not something you start to believe in. But Greta Thunberg does. Greta Thunberg is like, I can change the world. There are young women out there that I think will go forward boldly without considering the fact that they could fail or consider the fact that it could be wasted effort, because it, that's not what is driving them.

Catherine Read (14:07):

What is driving her and what is driving a lot of young women is the fact that they see a problem that needs to be solved, like climate change. They feel an urgency that it needs to be solved now. And they don't doubt their ability to move the needle forward. And a lot of times you take criticism, I look at Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, or even Nancy Pelosi, right? Two different generations. And those two women are not on really on the same page. But each of them has taken their fair share of criticism over what they have committed themselves to do in moving the needle forward in a way that they think serves the greater good.

Gregory Washington (14:45):

That's exactly right. And when time came to support one another, they did. Do you get what I'm saying?

Catherine Read (14:51):

Yes I do. And I think, and you know, and I heard Liz Cheney speak at the, uh, Richmond Forum like, uh, last month. And listening to Liz Cheney speak too, she was on the Rachel Maddow Show. That's another example of how two women who will tell you they don't agree on most things. RAnd yet Liz Cheney was on Rachel Maddow's show because what they do agree on is our country and our democracy comes first above partisanship, above politics. Because if we can't maintain democracy, if we can't preserve our country's rule of law, then all of these other things make zero difference.

Gregory Washington (15:27):

Yeah, I really like Liz Cheney. I saw her maybe about a year ago when she came, right before she was ousted. She came to DC to give a speech. And I happened to be able to meet her then. She's phenomenal.

Catherine Read (15:41):

She is. And, again, this is a woman who took a stand and got kicked out of her own party. But you have to admire women like that, right?

Gregory Washington (15:49):

She got kicked out of Congress.

Catherine Read (15:51):

True. She got kicked outta Congress.

Gregory Washington (15:54):

She got kicked outta Congress. I don't think she got kicked outta her party.

Catherine Read (15:58):

Well, it'll be interesting to see what she does. I don't know what a path forward is for her, but she hasn't given up and she's using her influence in her platform to speak her truth.

Gregory Washington (16:07):

That's right. I love principled people who stand on right. And fight for what they believe in.

Catherine Read (16:13):

Me too.

Gregory Washington (16:14):

Yeah, so you've been in this job now, how long?

Catherine Read (16:17):

15 months. And I'm already running for reelection.

Gregory Washington (16:19):

Okay, well look, that's the nature of the beast, right?

Catherine Read (16:22):

Uh, every, every other year. Yes.

Gregory Washington (16:23):

That’s right. So 15 months, is the job what you thought it would be?

Catherine Read (16:27):

Some of it, but no. First of all, people are like, well, it's a part-time job, right? I'm like, no, it's 365 days a year, 24/7. And a lot of that is because of email, social media and smartphones. Sometimes I think about former mayor John Mason, who was the longest serving mayor from 1990 to 2002. He recently passed away. And I'm thinking John Mason probably got up when he was mayor on a Sunday and read The Washington Post. I get up every single morning and look at my work email. I look at my smartphone and I see what text messages and what emails have come in. And

Gregory Washington (17:01):

From the night before,

Catherine Read (17:02):

From the night before and overnight.

Gregory Washington (17:04):

While you were sleeping.

Catherine Read (17:04):

Well, yeah. And I sit on regional committees too, so I really didn't understand that part of it. I sit on the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments, which meets once a month. The national, I mean the Northern Virginia Transportation Commission, the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority, and the Northern Virginia Regional Commission. That is four monthly meetings a month. Right. But it's important because we are a region. And I'm committed to doing that work. But again, there is so much to this, it's not a part-time job. A podcast I really like a lot is Pod Virginia, Michael Pope and Lauren Burke do a twice a week podcast. And they, it is all Virginia politics. But one of the things on Tuesday's episode that they were talking about is what the House of Delegates gets paid.

Gregory Washington (17:48):

Oh, that's ridiculous.

Catherine Read (17:49):

Well, $18,000 a year. But they're a part-time legislature, right?

Gregory Washington (17:53):

Yeah. But it's not true.

Catherine Read (17:54):

It's not. And so they were talking about the fact that, again, we were talking about is it the candidate or is it the voters? But in this particular case, is it the fact that these people don't deserve to be paid a living wage or a fair wage? Or is it the fact that people just believe that this is some sort of volunteer job and we're just honored to do it, but it's an equity issue. I can do this job. I don't do, people are like, do you have a day job? I'm like, well, I used to do many things that I don't do anymore. I do the mayor job every day, every week. That's right. I'm on all the time. And I said, so this is not a part-time job, but it pays $13,000 a year. So if I had to pay my mortgage with what I make as mayor, it wouldn't work.

Gregory Washington (18:36):

That's exactly right. And that's why you have people of substantial means being the ones that run for office, because they are the ones who can afford to.

Catherine Read (18:45):

And it's not representative government. So we need to care about that.

Gregory Washington (18:49):

We are getting deep.

Catherine Read (18:49):

Well, we have to. You know, I got a great education. I got a great education at ��AV.

Gregory Washington (18:54):

You know what? I was about to say the same thing. Boy, those George Mason professors have indoctrinated you well.

Catherine Read (19:01):

They taught me to question everything and to look deeply into government . But I do think

Gregory Washington (19:05):

This is amazing. I gotta pinch myself a little bit. So let me back up and see if I could get us back on track here. I was asking you about role models is how we got on this one, right? Let me ask you one more question in, in, in this segment and then move on. If you could sit down with any woman in history, any woman, who would it be and what would you wanna know from her?

Catherine Read (19:25):

It would be Eleanor Roosevelt. It would be Eleanor Roosevelt. You know, the more I learn about history, the more I admire that woman. And just when you think you know everything about somebody, you find out something else.

Gregory Washington (19:38):

Nice.

Catherine Read (19:39):

Like the Golden 13, I asked an American Legion full of veterans if they knew who the Golden 13 had ever heard of the Golden 13. And no one had. It is the first 13 Black naval officers that were trained during World War II in 1943. And they were called the Golden 13. And they didn't even know why they were selected. They went through a three-month training program in 10 weeks. They did so well that they were accused of cheating and had to take some of those tests over again, which they passed. But this was because of Eleanor Roosevelt. Eleanor Roosevelt is the one who pushed for training Black naval officers. The USS Mason, which is over there fighting off Somali pirates, when I heard something about the USS Mason, I remembered from the book the Golden 13, that that ship was built in commissioned during World War II because it was going to have an all Black crew. And they called the USS Mason Eleanor’s Folly. This is why, no matter how much we think we know about history, there is so much more to know. And I would love to know what Eleanor knew and all the things that she was behind that no one knows

Gregory Washington (20:47):

. Catherine, can I ask you a question? Can I, can I You are hitting me with zingers, man. Wow. This is fantastic. Okay, look, let's back up a little bit and talk about your time as a student at Mason. You said earlier from Southwest Virginia came to Mason from Emerson College where you were a theater major. So how do you make that flip? How do you go from being a theater major in Boston to a government and politics major at Mason? That's a flip

Catherine Read (21:18):

It is. It is. But like I said, I'd always had a deep interest in both. And when I realized theater was probably not a good career choice. And I have to tell you, I'd never been off the farm when I went to Emerson. I went to Emerson College in 1980 on a Greyhound bus with a steamer trunk and electric typewriter and $20 in cash and a work study job and a Pell Grant and a lot of scholarship. I had the International Thespian Society Scholarship, the Elizabeth Taylor Warner Scholarship for the Dramatic Arts had all this one-time money and a grant from the school. But I'd never been to Boston. I'd never seen the school. So I get on this Greyhound bus leaving Roanoke. 15 hours changed buses at Port Authority in New York. I loved every single second of my time in Boston. Loved it.

Gregory Washington (22:02):

Boston is a great university town.

Catherine Read (22:06):

It is. Oh, it's oh, every, yes. Every so many schools we used go to them.

Gregory Washington (22:08):

Don't let, don't let anybody fool you.

Catherine Read (22:10):

Yeah. $1 movies at MIT and we prayed they didn't check student IDs. So we would go over there and watch first run movies at MIT. But I realized that the kids who were there, it was a small school because it had about 1500 undergraduates. And George Mason was the same size.

Gregory Washington (22:26):

We're not the same size now.

Catherine Read (22:27):

Not anymore, right? . And so in 1980, Mason literally had the number one debate team in the nation. Their forensics team just knocked everyone out. And I had never heard of George Mason, even though I lived in Virginia my entire life. I'd never heard of this school. And so when I decided I couldn't afford to stay at Emerson and that theater was not a good career choice by which to have an independent life, I started looking at George Mason strictly because of my interaction with the Mason forensics team. And so I ended up applying to Mason.

Gregory Washington (22:57):

Did you tell them that? That is something that they should know, by the way. Fantastic. Fantastic.

Catherine Read (23:02):

Yeah. I mean, I was on the forensics team in high school, but the funny thing is, once I got here, I had a work study job. I had a series of work study jobs here on campus and I ended up not joining the forensics team. Like I didn't do forensics at Mason, even though that's what brought me here. But I did get a great education working my on campus jobs. And I will tell you this, I learned as much working jobs at Mason as I did in the classroom. Absolutely. I mean, you interact with staff and faculty in a different way. I was doing data entry for the chair of the American Studies Department, and we are still friends all this time later, Hans Bergman and I are still friends, still talk to each other over LinkedIn. And I worked in the copy center at Thompson Hall binding reports and hot gluing things.

Catherine Read (23:47):

And that was one of my work study jobs. I was a desk receptionist at the dorm. That was one of my work study jobs. And you know, I worked my way through school. And I will tell you Mason at that time was attractive for a lot of reasons. But I could afford to go here. I could afford to work my way through school. I had student loans, but it didn't take me 20 years to pay off my student loans. It took me probably five years to pay off my student loans. And I think the cost of public education is so prohibitive now. Young people are discouraged from even considering a four-year college degree because they don't want to start out life with a degree and $20,000, $40,000 in student loans and no guarantee that that degree is gonna get them a job to even pay off their loans. You know, young people really have very tough choices to make. But Mason is still a school and it's got many accolades. It's a research school, it's world renowned, but it's still a school where more students can afford to go and get a world class education, not for world class tuition. That is the legacy.

Gregory Washington (24:52):

That's my tagline right there. I'm gonna take it. I am going to use it. That is fantastic. That's exactly what we are and who we are. And not only that, we find you, no matter where you are. We're that place of opportunity. We are that place of access. We are that place where if you want to become a success, we'll provide a pathway for you. We will work with you to figure it out. And that is probably the most attractive thing about this place. So at some point in time, something had to flip in your mind to say, I wanna do politics, right?

Catherine Read (25:28):

Well, okay, I'll tell you what that was. I reinvent myself every seven years. So I had a career.

Gregory Washington (25:32):

Is this on purpose or it just happens every seven years? It's like it happens. It’s like the itch thing?

Catherine Read (25:37):

It just happens. It’s an itch thing. So my first job out of George Mason was actually, I got a job as a software tester on a Navy payroll personnel project for the Navy through a government contractor. And it's 'cause I had computer experience. Computers were very new in the early eighties. And so if you had computer experience, you could get a job. It wasn't in my major, but it, it was a job that paid decent money. I worked in the data processing industry and then I decided to take a job in human resources. So I was in human resource for seven and a half years for Long and Foster local real estate company. And then I was a small business owner with my second husband. We opened a fax company back. Remember fax machines? There's some kids who couldn't even tell you what one does, but yeah, it was back with

Gregory Washington (26:20):

No you, you still see them around on desk desk and many offices around here. When they come on, people are like, well, well what is that?

Catherine Read (26:27):

But it, but back when, when fax was new in law firms and hospitals relied on fax machines. That was a going business. So Fax World was a business I co-owned. I did the bookkeeping, I ran the service techs, I did all the things in a small business. And then I ran a program called Home Service Connections for Long and Foster. And that was in the early 2000s. And then I had a business mentor who suggested to me in 2007 that these 18,000 real estate agents didn't know how to market themselves online. So think about 2005, 2006, there was no social media. It was called online marketing. Social media wasn't even a term. And so you've got 18,000 independent contractors who still use business cards and telephone to market themselves. And so he suggested to me, he goes, you should start your own business teaching professional people how to use these online tools. And so I did, in 2007, I started Creative Read and I started teaching people how to use Facebook and Twitter, which, you know, people are like. And this is political people too. This is one of the, how, one of the doorways I walked into politics and I know so many people in politics. I got Mark Keam on Twitter. He's like, Catherine,

Gregory Washington (27:39):

Mark Keam?

Catherine Read (27:39):

Mark Keam. I got him on Twitter. He's like, Catherine, it's so stupid. I'm like, mark, you have to be where the people are having a conversation. They're trying to talk to you and they're definitely talking about you. And so got Mark Keam on Twitter back when he first ran in 2009. So I started teaching people how to use social media, how to use online tools. I was doing that as my own business starting in 2007. But then that led me to nonprofits. Then all of a sudden, word of mouth, the Virginia Autism Project, how can we use social media to get autism insurance reform? Then I got Virginians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. How can we social media to abolish the death penalty in Virginia?

Gregory Washington (28:19):

Oh, okay. I see what's happening.

Catherine Read (28:20):

So this is how I pivoted to that. So this every seven years thing is just, this is just where life led me, I guess. I see opportunity and I'm like, there's an opportunity there. And I take it.

Gregory Washington (28:31):

Ain't nothing wrong with that. So one of your goals, one of your major goals since taking office has been to expand the partnership between Fairfax and Georgia Mason University. And one thing you've done to do that, to personify that, is hosting the first ever Fairfax Pride event, which was a collaboration, which is a collaboration between your office and Mason's LGBTQ+ Resource Center. And so can you talk a little bit about what was your vision for that event? How it got started?

Catherine Read (29:03):

So Josh Kinchen invited me to the Mason Pride event, which I came to last April. And I'm coming to on March the 30th this year is, is the pride event here. And they were very generous. I mean, they introduced me not only as the first woman mayor of Fairfax City and the fact that I was a Mason alumni. Lots of applause, lots of applause. But the night of my election, we had our thank you party. I didn't call it a victory party 'cause I didn't know if I was gonna win, right? But we had it at what was then the Earp’s Ordinary Popup on the plaza in Fairfax City. It's now McKenzie's Tonics and Tunes. And I said to Josh, I'd like to have all of my volunteers and my campaign workers come for an event. And he goes, well, what time would that be?

Catherine Read (29:44):

Because we have a drag show that's gonna be Tuesday night. And I'm like, really? What time's the drag show starting? And he goes, it starts about nine. And I said, well, I'd still like to have my event. Is there any way that we can just stay for the drag show? And he goes, well, there's a cover charge. And I said, well, can I cover the cover charge? He goes, well, lemme talk to Alan. So long story short, not only am I the first woman mayor, first Mason alumni, first mayor who's never served on city council. I'm the first mayor who had a drag show at my election night party. Okay. So I think that pretty much says it all. So all this is

Gregory Washington (30:15):

You Trailblazin’.

Catherine Read (30:16):

So this was relayed at the Pride event last year at Mason. And so recognizing, and again, I I was on the, the Board of Equality Virginia for seven years too. Recognizing we have to celebrate, recognize, celebrate, uplift, support, protect every single person in our community. And that means the LGBTQ community too.

Gregory Washington (30:37):

Without question, without question. So you clearly know how to build partnerships. You've been doing it your whole career, you've done it with us. What are some ways in which students can get involved with the city, can help the city, can engage the city.

Catherine Read (30:52):

Your, your students are already there. A lot of them are already there. The women's basketball team and the men's baseball team are volunteers at our Providence Elementary School. And I think we have athletes who volunteer at Daniels Run Elementary School. There's a lot of students, Mason students who live in the city. They live in the city and not just at the Flats at University. They rent houses that are in our neighborhoods. And so they're very much a, a part of the fabric of the city. But we have park cleanups that they come to. We have all kinds of events downtown, like the Fall Festival. And I just wanna mention this too, about partnerships Fall for the Book is a super important partnership that we have with ��AV. Ollie, the OSHA Lifelong Learning Institute, which is in the city. Very much a partnership and, um, Spotlight on the Arts, uh, a partnership between the city and the university.

Catherine Read (31:40):

These are longstanding partnerships that bring our residents together with students, faculty, and bring visitors in from outside of the city to take advantage of these things that we produce together as a collaboration. But, uh, as far as students, we have reached out to the Climate Center, which is, we are very excited that the Virginia Climate Center is located here. You know, we have environmental issues in the city. Kate Doyle Feingold, who sits on our city council, her dissertation advisor, Kate contacted her and she's working with our police department to help us to analyze data, public safety data. Um, I've just reached out to Dean Perry of your College of Public Health.

Gregory Washington (32:21):

She's fantastic.

Catherine Read (32:22):

Well, I, because we have a homelessness task force.

Gregory Washington (32:24):

She is fantastic.

Catherine Read (32:26):

And one of the things we have not included is part of our homelessness task force is public health issues and how we address public health issues as part of what we're trying to do for people who are unhoused in the city. So I just reached out to Dean Perry to see, you know, how can we work? So there are so many opportunities for students to get involved. Using our city is basically a way to get clinical experience. Again, I'll bring up Mason's Community Mental Health Center, which is also in the city, Behavioral Health Center. You've got students getting their clinical hours right here in our city providing mental health services to our residents. And the school of business. I can't even, how could I forget? The Costello Business School is, we've got one of your faculty members that sits on the Economic Development Authority for the city of Fairfax, Patrick Soleymani. And we are glad to have him.

Gregory Washington (33:14):

He’s a good guy.

Catherine Read (33:15):

But we've got students who are working on a, a retail assessment for a parcel of land that's being redeveloped in the city. And we've got students who are working on what that could look like through the business school. We welcome partnerships like that where students get real experience and we benefit from the faculty members in the programs and the disciplines here at the university.

Gregory Washington (33:38):

So for 10 years before you became mayor, your focus was on legislative advocacy work. If you, you just highlighted mostly with nonprofits and you had some big victories, right? Uh, the Virginia Autism Project lobby for autism insurance reform that when it passed in 2011, required insurance companies to provide medically necessary behavioral therapy. They, they were not doing it before then. You also helped the Virginia Alliance for Breastfeeding successfully push for a new 2015 law that allows mothers to breastfeed their children anywhere the mother is lawfully present. So talk to us a little bit about focusing your efforts on Fairfax relative to focusing your efforts on the larger picture items.

Catherine Read (34:29):

Yeah, well, you know, there's a lot of crossover. I think one of the things we're waiting for right now is when you talk about advocacy and how state issues can impact local issues, we have to renovate our schools soon. It's been 20 years. And so we're gonna have a bond referendum on our ballot in November. But there's a 1% sales tax that both chambers passed that would allow locality, every locality to have a 1% sales tax specifically for education. Yeah. But will the governor sign it?

Gregory Washington (34:59):

Is it K-12?

Catherine Read (35:00):

It’s K-12. I know I would, I wish it was for you too. I wish it was for you too, but it's a 1% sales tax for K through 12. And, but we don't know if the governor's gonna sign it. But those are the kinds of things where it matters. And we advocate as a local government, as a municipal government. And a lot of that advocacy is done through the Virginia Municipal League too. Because getting that ability to have a 1% tax in addition to a bond referendum, to fund this major school innovation really makes a difference for us. And again, we're a Dillon Rule state, and people don't understand that too. There's a lot of things we can't do as a locality without asking permission from the General Assembly. We can't change our charter. Almost everything we do is a locality. It has to be approved by the General Assembly and then signed off on by the governor because we're a Dillon Rule state, and not every state operates that way. A lot of states have home rule, and we don't.

Gregory Washington (35:49):

I'm gonna have to look up this Dillon Rule.

Catherine Read (35:50):

Well, I tell you, I got a good education, Mason. Did I mention that?

Gregory Washington (35:53):

You got a great education at Mason.

Catherine Read (35:54):

I learned all the things.

Gregory Washington (35:55):

And we are seeing the evidence right now. Among the many roles that you've had, you've hosted this Fairfax Public Access, these shows Inside Scoop, Your Need to Know and Making Change Radio. What's the genesis for these shows?

Catherine Read (36:11):

So I fell into it as somebody else had been hosting Inside Scoop, and she had family issues. Her sister and mother were ill in upstate New York. And so I started filling in for her. And I didn't have any broadcast experience. I might've been a theater major, but no broadcast journalism experience whatsoever. And this is live television. This was a one-hour live television show. Yeah. I'm in the host seat and I'm just learning as I go. I will tell you this, I am good at learning as I go. Like I learn on the job and it's fine. So I started being in the host seat. And what I found is that people were trying to do important things, policy-wise, like decoding dyslexia, parents who were trying to get resources for their dyslexic children in the public school system. I mean, at that time, back in 2015, Fairfax County didn't even have a reading specialist in an administrative role to test kids for dyslexia.

Catherine Read (37:00):

A lot of parents felt like they were setting kids up to fail before they got help. So having a show where you could get these parents on air to talk about what the challenges were, what they were asking for, it presented it in a different way. And not only were the shows broadcast on television, but they go out on YouTube. Which means that all of these groups could send it out by email. They could embed it on their website and it would present what they were trying to do in a different way. So for me, the shows were just an extension of this nonprofit advocacy work. How do we help people understand the problems you're trying to solve with your nonprofit? And doing it in a interview format was just helpful. It's better than trying to read an assessment. It's like somebody hand you a brochure or a one pager about what they're doing. It's not the same thing as talking to somebody who has some basis of knowledge and who's really interested in what you're doing. So people would say to me, I've never been on television before. I'm so nervous. I'm like, all you have to do is look at me. We are having a conversation. And the reason these shows work is because I am interested and you are passionate.

Gregory Washington (38:05):

You talked a little bit about the new voter turnout, right? And how that new voter turnout changed the election in your case. I surmise for years of just 20% of the population showing up for these elections, there were probably some things that were undone or some opportunities missed. Really core kinds of things that we were not able to do as a community. Have you thought about what happens to a community when constituents really don't take part in elections, right? Because we had that over a period of time.

Catherine Read (38:40):

Well, this is sort of my assessment of the 20%, the 20% who tend to turn out were a demographic, older, educated White property owners.

Gregory Washington (38:51):

Okay. And I know what the outcome of that was.

Catherine Read (38:54):

Right? And so you have a government that reflects the electorate, but you also have a government then who recognizes that the constituency to whom you feel you are answerable are the 20% who come out reliably every other May. So when people look at Fairfax City, and we are a bit on the conservative side to be in such a progressive region, and our citizens tend to be progressive. I have a member on my city council right now, Jeff Greenfield, and I forget, but he served for 22 years. He took four years off, but he's been on there for 22 years on the city council. And so there was basically a lot of consistency. There was not a lot of turnover. Generally, you stayed in your seat and got reelected every time until you decided to step down or retire. And that might have led to some stability in the government, which is good.

Catherine Read (39:46):

But it also led to sort of this mindset about what the community valued. And so I was in a meeting with Fairfax County not too long ago, and somebody said, I'm a 2012 graduate of ��AV, and I lived on the campus. And he said, and I didn't feel like the city really welcomed us being there. And I said, well, that is not your imagination. I said, one of my good friends pointed out that until recently, there were not streetlights on the sidewalk from the downtown to the campus, right? So subtle things that make you feel not welcome.

Gregory Washington (40:25):

You know, every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets. And so you don't want those folk in your establishments and in the downtown you develop systems to keep those kind of things from happening. You, you develop covenants so that you can only have a certain number of people in an apartment, right? That would discourage students from getting apartments together, right? You have all of these kinds of things.

Catherine Read (40:54):

I like your systems thinking. If you think about the, the fact the university is like 52 years old and the city gave land to the state for the university, but it was a commuter school. So people were like, we should have a university. A university is a good idea. Yeah. A university that would be a good idea. But then suddenly it's like, but we don't wanna be a college town. We don't wanna be Charlottesville. Like, that's not what we had in mind. So you go do your university over here, but we want Mayberry over here. And Mayberry did not have college students in it. We're at an inflection point. I'm a different kind of mayor, you know, I have a different vision. I do. And I think that the relationships between the university and the city benefit both. And it's not like we don't have a say in how that looks or how it feels. We can build parameters. I don't necessarily want a hundred tipsy college students in the middle of downtown on a Tuesday night. But honestly, we don't have that. And I don't even see that that will ever be a thing. When the Flats at University was proposed, people just, it's gonna be like a frat house. People really believed it was just gonna be noise and kids and cars, and you know something, none of that has happened.

Gregory Washington (42:07):

Right.

Catherine Read (42:08):

They brought energy feet on the street. It is great to be in the downtown with people.

Gregory Washington (42:13):

It's helping. And it's helping business

Catherine Read (42:14):

A hundred percent.

Gregory Washington (42:15):

And businesses are now coming back and that helps the tax base. Which helps the resource base, which provides more amenities. Right. It's a virtuous cycle.

Catherine Read (42:25):

It is. It is, and I love it.

Gregory Washington (42:25):

You hit the nail right on the head and we're seeing some pushback from some members about cricket. And I believe it's the same thing about our cricket baseball stadium, right? No one pushes back against the baseball side of that, but the cricket side of that, what is cricket, what does it mean? I know it's gonna bring a whole new community of people to this area and the ultimate beneficiary will be the city of Fairfax.

Catherine Read (42:54):

I agree. You know, and I think people don't understand cricket. And even though people are like, no, that's not it. That's not it. I'm like, but it is it. It's kind of like if there's nothing in it for you; you can see yourself going to a baseball game at Mason. But it's like cricket, what is it? Who plays it? I don't know anything about it. So why would I go there? And so when there was a,

Gregory Washington (43:14):

Until you actually wind up going and saying, huh, this is actually pretty cool.

Catherine Read (43:18):

Pretty interesting, right? And it's family friendly. And I think that's the other thing that the owner of the Washington Freedom, he did a good job on the town hall meeting explaining the fact that it's a family friendly game. They've modified it so it doesn't take three days to play a match anymore. , it's a T20 three-to-four-hour model. And it's early in the evening. Yeah, it's early in the evening, the afternoon. So it, it doesn't go till 11 or 12 o'clock at night like a Nationals baseball game.

Gregory Washington (43:42):

Exactly.

Catherine Read (43:43):

Again, people just don't like change and they don't like things that are unfamiliar. But to me, the Cricket Stadium is a reflection of the diversity of this university in this region. I know so many people who play cricket and when you travel the world, you run into people. When we were Warsaw, Poland, which is where our grandchildren are. There was an Uber driver who's married to a Polish national, he's from India, and he was showing us pictures on his phone of the cricket pitches in Warsaw, Poland. This is a beloved international sport and we have an opportunity and I think it's an amazing opportunity here.

Gregory Washington (44:16):

Well, you know what, I really appreciate it 'cause hearing this is energizing in terms of what we've been dealing with today with cricket. So it's really interesting. This is fantastic. You have , you have put it down, and I really, really appreciate you for it. And so we're gonna have to leave it there. Mayor Catherine Read, thank you for your time and most importantly for your leadership. I will tell you right now today that your George Mason degree, has never been worth more than it is today. I am Mason President Gregory Washington saying, until next time, stay safe, Mason Nation.

Narrator (45:04):

In This Story

Access to Excellence Podcast Episodes

Podcast — EP 63: The economic perceptions driving U.S. politics
December 11, 2024
Podcast — EP 62: What are the chances of intelligent life beyond Earth?
November 18, 2024
Podcast - EP 61: Can dirty coffee grounds be the key to clean water?
October 21, 2024
Podcast Ep 60 - Marking a decade of success at Mason Korea
August 6, 2024
Podcast Ep 59 - Cybersecurity and the global threats of tomorrow
July 5, 2024

Topics

affordable higher education

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Podcast - Ep 56: A view from the pulpit

Damian Cristodero — Fri, 16 Feb 2024 19:06:45 +0000

Podcast - Ep 56: A view from the pulpit Damian Cristodero Fri, 02/16/2024 - 14:06

A view from the pulpit

Rev. Jeffery Johnson, pastor at Mount Calvary Baptist Church in Fairfax, Virginia, and Dr. Vernon Walton, pastor at First Baptist Church in Vienna, Virginia, guide us through some of the history and aspirations of the Black community using the lens of Black and African American History Month. The pastors, both of whom have ��AV students and alumni in their congregations, also examine with Mason President Gregory Washington the unique, but intertwined, roles the university and churches can play to confront issues such as affordable housing, food insecurity and equitable healthcare.

^{I believe wholeheartedly in scripture, where it says to whom much is given much is required. And our responsibility is not just to sit on our stools of do-nothingness and enjoy our own success, because, if that is the case, then we are guilty as well of just relishing in our own privilege. But our responsibility is to reach out to those who are marginalized, to reach out to those who have not had the benefit of the same level of access, for whatever the reasons are. And to help lift the tide.” ~}^{Dr. Vernon Walton,}^{Pastor, First Baptist Church, Vienna, Virginia}

Listen to this episode

Read the Transcript | A View from the Pulpit

Narrator (00:04):

Gregory Washington (00:27):

Mount Calvary Baptist Church in Fairfax, Virginia was established on May 15th, 1870 by former slaves who settled around the area of the Fairfax Courthouse after the Civil War. It is the first and only Black-founded church in the city. It is located less than a half mile from the ��AV campus. The First Baptist Church of Vienna, Virginia was established in 1867 and was also organized by former slaves. It is the first and oldest church of any kind in Vienna. It's located six miles away from the campus. I am honored to have the leaders of those congregations here with me today. They serve our students, our faculty, our staff, and they serve them incredibly well. And so on this early stage of Black History Month, I just felt fantastic that they were able to engage with us and speak with us today. Reverend Jeffery Johnson has led Mount Calvary since 2004. Dr. Vernon Walton has led First Baptist of Vienna since 2014. Both have put their stamps on their communities and have relationships with Mason that go beyond their church's proximity to our campus. Rev. Johnson. Dr. Walton, it is good to see both of you and welcome to the show.

Vernon Walton (02:01):

Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you for having us. (Jeffery Johnson) Yes, indeed.

Gregory Washington (02:05):

Well, Rev. Johnson, I know your son Jeffery has a degree from ��AV in graphic design, so I hope that it served him well. And Dr. Walton, you have had the Mason Chorale sing at your church and have Mason graduates on your staff. So both of you, how does the legacy of your churches, both of which are founded by former slaves, inform your work and the mission of your churches?

Jeffery Johnson (02:36):

Let me defer to Dr. Walton.

Vernon Walton (02:38):

Well, thank you. Thank you brother, brother Pastor again. Dr. Washington, thank you for having us. I'm honored to be here, talk about our work and our mission and our legacy, and certainly the celebration of Black and African American History Month. We really recognize that as a church, we stand on the shoulders of those who've gone before us. We celebrate really the strength and the capacity of those, those slaves who literally built out churches from the ground. And when I say built our churches from the ground, I'm not just specifically talking about the brick and mortar, but I'm talking about those who really worked and labored hard to build a community, to build a sense of belonging. And we recognize their intent. Years ago, 156 years ago, specifically for First Baptist, their intent in building a congregation was to inform people about their faith as well as to educate our children and community in a academic manner. And so we recognize those shoulders that we stand on and we continue that work and that mission today

Jeffery Johnson (03:42):

Yes. As well, the Mount Calvary Baptist Church, being that it was established May of 1870 by individuals, just like with First Baptist Vienna, we are known as the historical church with the biblical mandate. That biblical mandate comes from Ephesians chapter four, verse 12, that we are about the perfecting of the saints, the work of ministry, and the edifying, which is an old word that means to build up of the body of Christ. We're proud to be in this community with ��AV. Not only has Jeffery Junior graduated with honors from this school, he went on, uh, Dr. Washington to enroll in the Howard University Law School and is now a civil rights attorney, and he's currently working for the Veterans Administration.

Gregory Washington (04:35):

Okay. That's all right. How well do your congregations know each other? Like is there a rivalry? Is there any type of, you know, you're not that far apart and I know how churches go. What is the engagement like between the two congregations?

Vernon Walton (04:52):

Well, I wouldn't call it rivalry President Washington, but I, I would say that if you go into most of the black churches within Fairfax County, there is certainly an interconnectedness between the congregations. There are relatives throughout each of these congregations. The pastors enjoy great relationships and fellowship, and whenever possible, we attempt to collaborate together to work for the betterment of people.

Jeffery Johnson (05:18):

Yes. And many years ago, I was one of the youngest assistant pastors in Northern Virginia at the Peace Baptist Church and Peace Baptist, Mount Calvary and other congregations like Mount Olive for Centerville, had very close relationships. As a 22-year-old Baptist preacher, I used to cruise throughout Northern Virginia in a 1965 Dodge Dart convertible. And I used to worship at the old, uh, sanctuary, not only of Mount Calvary, but of First Baptist Vienna. And we are very proud of the work that Dr. Walton is doing in the city of Vienna. We are trying to do the same type of work in the city of Fairfax.

Vernon Walton (06:07):

I'll just also add President Washington, that one of the founding pastors of First Baptist is also listed as a founding pastor of at least three or four other congregations in Fairfax County. So the river runs deep.

Gregory Washington (06:23):

Outstanding. Outstanding. So, uh, Reverend Johnson, Mount Calvary, when it was founded, was known as the Colored Baptist Church. And prior to its founding, slaves attended churches of their masters. In addition, both of your communities, both Fairfax and Vienna, were segregated at one time. And I believe the last black enclave in Fairfax City on School Street really actually sat right next to Mason. And so what effect did the, the dissolution and the, the breakup of the strictly black communities have on the churches themselves. Did that impact you all significantly?

Jeffery Johnson (07:04):

It definitely affected us at the Mount Calvary Baptist Church, still driving that classic automobile throughout Northern Virginia. I used to come to School Street and I actually saw visually young black children and sometimes with their parents walking to the Mount Calvary Baptist Church. You could actually drive up and down School Street, and there was a series of houses, not all, but there was a series of houses that you could just park in front of the house or in the, the residential yard of that homeowner. And the front door was never locked. You could just walk right in. And there was a very gentle, yet powerful Christian woman by the name of Mabel Colbert, and she had quite a few children and grandchildren, and it was her personal ministry to make sure that they were involved in the various ministries and activities of the Mount Calvary Baptist Church.

Gregory Washington (08:03):

So Dr. Walton, I don't know if you've heard this quote from the actor Morgan Freeman, who recently on, uh, no, not too recently, but not too long ago, on 60 Minutes in which he says Black History Month keeps racism alive. And in that interview he says, you're going to relegate my history to a month. Black history is American history. I definitely agree with the last part of that statement. How do you, how do you react to that?

Vernon Walton (08:28):

Before I react to that, can I just go back to your last question? Just for a minute, because First Baptist, like Mount Calvary has experienced some of the same thing, but I think it's also safe to say that wherever there is a African American church in Fairfax County, you could make the assumption that there was an African American community. Clearly, as you peruse through the county today, things have changed. My question is perhaps why the disruption of these communities and what led to the disruption of these communities? You know, in some places today, we call it gentrification. But very similarly, First Baptist was very much a community church, was very much a rural community church and enjoyed its membership living and occupying space in that community. Whereas at one time, there was 80% Vienna, 20% commuting.

Vernon Walton (09:23):

We are probably just the opposite today. 80% commuting and 20% in the community within miles from the local church. And I think that's significant for us to mention because where the church existed, there was a Black community, there was Black home ownership, and there was Black economics. And so there's been a real disruption in that system. (Gregory Washington) So were there Black businesses in those communities and the like? (Vernon Walton) Absolutely. Absolutely. There were, there were plenty of Black businesses. Many, um, as I said, were farmers, and they sold their goods and their products, and they, the communities itself enjoyed a plethora of African American entrepreneurship. And today we are very hard pressed to experience the same thing. So to your point, you make about Morgan Freeman and his quote, I would agree with the latter part as well. I have not seen the exact interview, but I have heard conversation about Brother Freeman's comments. But I would just add that African American history is American history, and you cannot talk about American history without talking about the contributions that Black people have made to our nation, to our country, to our world. I personally am not sure that Black History Month keeps racism alive as much as those who seek to eliminate the contributions of Blacks and those who attempt to rewrite our history. And of course, I'm sure there's spirited conversation on this campus about those who even attempt to ban books that share our story.

Jeffery Johnson (10:57):

And Dr. Washington as well look at the fact that when you speak of, like, I, I believe one preacher spoke of 11 o'clock on Sunday morning as being the most segregated hour in America. That is one sided. We, and I'm sure Dr. Walton would agree with this, we have never rejected Whites from our membership, nor have we rejected White people from attending our services. It's only been on the other side of that scenario. Even right now, I'm part of a group called the Racial Unity Group, and we have a wonderful time fellowshipping together. And this thing based upon Morgan Freeman, uh, let me bring to your attention, he was one of the key actors in the movie called Glory. (Gregory Washington) Sure was. (Jeffery Johnson) He portrayed a character that they referred to as Sergeant John Rawlins. If you do a Google search on Sergeant John Rawlins, it will speak of the fact that the main character of the movie was real. But this was a character that was invented for that movie. The truth of the matter is, if you do another Google and you put in the name of Lewis Henry Douglass, who was the oldest son of Frederick Douglass, that sergeant from the 54th Regiment of Boston was actually Louis Henry Douglass. If you read his bio on the computer, it runs parallel with the screenplay of who they called John Rawlins. Why would they leave out such a significant fact?

Gregory Washington (12:33):

Yeah, that's interesting.

Jeffery Johnson (12:34):

But I see as Black History Month as a time that brings much pride and inspiration to the African American community. You may also remember that there was a congressional representative, I cannot think of his first name right now, but it was Congressman King from Iowa, and he actually stated that all of the major contributions to the world from Western civilization came from the White race. And that other people groups were merely observers of their contributions. And he was actually, uh, punished for making that statement. But because of our lack of knowledge of the contributions, not only of African Americans, but Asians and Hispanics and other people groups, we are really very ignorant of the contributions made by other people other than those of European descent.

Gregory Washington (13:30):

I understand that. Well, I can tell you, Black Baptists in particular played an undeniable role in the Civil Rights movement. We don't have to talk about Martin Luther King and, but the church was the rallying point for the community. And in a large sense, still very much is, uh, it provided social communication networks. It provided facilities, leadership and money, all of that. So do these roots still shape the current mission of the Baptist Church, in your opinion?

Vernon Walton (14:03):

Absolutely. We are still very much continuing in that same tradition. We are still very much continuing in the tradition of Dr. King and Vernon Johns and a host of others, even before some of the more famed individuals, we continue to work toward the liberation of not just African American people, but especially African American people, but all people, we are on the front, at the forefront of issues of justice. Churches were a big part of the movement for George Floyd right here in Fairfax County. The church galvanized around the injustice against Timothy Johnson. One of the other issues here in Fairfax County, as we talk about the shifts that have taken place within our communities, Fairfax County has a policy that is entitled One Fairfax, which is an equity policy. An equity plan. The church is at the forefront of making sure that people of color, Black people in particular, are included in this One Fairfax plan, and that it becomes a reality. So the church, from its roots has been very engaged, and the church is still engaged today.

Jeffery Johnson (15:13):

Mount Calvary actually worked with Dr. Walton with the Timothy Johnson case, and we were very proud of his leadership there. We have been very involved with City Hall here in the city of Fairfax with the previous mayor, Mayor Meyer. And we are currently working with Mayor Reed, but Mount Calvary used to have a group that would meet once a month at the Mount Calvary Baptist Church called the Fairfax County Colored Citizens Association. And very briefly, they were trying to bring forth more equity and education, home ownership, voter rights, as well as with economic opportunities.

Gregory Washington (15:57):

Oh, that's fantastic. So if I were to shift gears and say, okay, at that point in time, back in the, the 1960s, right? In the height of the Civil Rights movement, the real emphasis there was getting rid of segregation, getting rid of separate but unequal and getting our folk on a level playing field, right? And Mason was a part of that. There is a lot of that history that, from what I've read, is an integral part of this campus. What would you both say are the issues today? What are the things that are the galvanizing rallying points right now? Where are our efforts best focused?

Vernon Walton (16:36):

Can I just lift as a recent example of the work that the Black church specifically did on behalf of Black people and people of color? COVID-19 people were dying. People of color were dying at disproportionate numbers, and we literally felt as clergy persons that we needed to address this issue. And because we did not have access to shots, we did not have access to vaccines at the same rate as others. And so we really petitioned and worked hard to get equity clinics within the churches. Uh, and there were some who initially told us that this would not happen. That this was not a possibility, but we looked at the numbers, we looked at the data. We saw what a small population that we represented in this particular community, but that we were dying at a much larger and faster rate. And so we did not rest until these clinics were up and running in African American churches.

Vernon Walton (17:36):

And that's important because, and not only did it speak to the needs of African American people, but those in our Hispanic and Latina community took advantage of this because they were not trusting of some of the government sites that were up and running. And they took great delight and great comfort in coming to the churches to get the shot. So that's just one example of how we've used our voice recently and, and what some of the issues. Obviously in Fairfax County, affordable housing is a real issue. Many of our congregants, they have children who they put through college and school, and they do well, they get jobs, but they still cannot afford to purchase homes and raise their families here in Fairfax County. And so they are looking at other opportunities, and that's something that is a very pressing issue today, because we believe in the importance of education and that education should pay off, but they can't afford to live. And in some instances, they are remaining in their parents' home or they're moving away. And that impacts our churches directly when people move because of housing.

Jeffery Johnson (18:46):

Yes. We've had countless numbers of members that upon retirement, they have moved further south, either to North Carolina, Georgia, or Florida, to have much more affordable living. And we can understand that. The problem is, is that those, as Dr. Walton has spoken of, those who have matriculated through school and are making a pretty good salaries are still priced out and taxed out and placed out of the availability of housing. I myself was born in the city of Alexandria. I cannot afford to live in the city of Alexandria, which is the city of my birth. I also cannot afford to live in the city of Fairfax, which is the city where I work. And so I actually have to drive just about 20 or more miles to Mount Calvary. And even when I was at the Antioch Baptist Church, there was no housing of available near the Antioch Baptist Church, which is in Fairfax Station. So there definitely needs to be something. I'm not intimidated and I'm not jealous or envious of estate homes. And in our community, they have what they call luxury town homes. That's wonderful. That's great.

Gregory Washington (19:59):

Yeah, I saw those. They just built, they just built a new set of them right there.

Jeffery Johnson (20:03):

Yes. Yes.

Gregory Washington (20:04):

They went right on 123.

Jeffery Johnson (20:05):

We're talking about they start at around 600,000, and shot up to 900,000.

Vernon Walton (20:11):

They, they must use the same builders in Vienna .

Jeffery Johnson (20:14):

But the problem is, there should be somewhere nearby where there's a housing community, which is for the middle class or lower middle class. And, uh, I do see other housing projects that are connected with George Mason, and we look forward to servicing the spiritual needs of those who will be moving into those communities. But it would be nice, we may not be the heart of the city or downtown Fairfax, but there should be somewhere nearby that could accommodate our young professionals.

Gregory Washington (20:45):

Look, I hear you. You all are hit the nail right on the head with the housing piece.

Vernon Walton (20:49):

You know, President Washington, it broke my heart at least a year and a half ago, to learn that there are people just a few miles away from our churches here in Fairfax County, not in Washington DC but in Fairfax County that are living tent communities. And when I share that story with individuals, they automatically make the assumption that these individuals are living in tents by choice. But I've had the privilege to walk the tent community to share with many of these individuals. And if you go to, to these tent communities during the day, they're empty. And not because people are just hanging out on the street, but these individuals are at work, they're working individuals, many of them, but for a number of consequences and decisions and unfortunate realities, they just cannot afford to have a roof over their head without some specific assistance with affordable housing here in Fairfax County.

Jeffery Johnson (21:50):

And to add onto that, the first Tuesday of each month, I actually speak at the chapel service at the Central Union Mission in Washington DC, and there are people who work in Virginia who have to bed down at night at the Central Union Mission. They have transportation, they have a job, but there is nowhere for them currently to live.

Gregory Washington (22:15):

You know, the cost of housing is a significant issue, one which we are trying to address here ourselves. You know, the reality is, is that if you look at where George Mason sits, many of the people we hire, and we pay decent salaries, right? For our faculty and our staff, many of the people we hire can't afford to buy a home in this community. They have to go 15, 20, 30, 45 miles out in order to find something. And that issue is a real issue.

Vernon Walton (22:44):

And that same reality is true for brand new elementary school teachers in the Fairfax County public school systems. You know, if you're just graduating, trying to get into the system, and we've been particularly trying to recruit African American students from our local colleges and HBCUs. But again, the cost of living is cost prohibitive as well as in some instances for those going into our police departments. The first year or two is difficult on the starting salaries.

Gregory Washington (23:13):

Man, I didn't know I was gonna get this today. This is fantastic. Reverend Johnson, I know that you can recite Martin Luther King Jr's speech, I have a dream, by heart. Is that right?

Jeffery Johnson (23:25):

Yes, sir, uh.

Gregory Washington (23:26):

And I heard you do part of that. He outlined some basic tenets in that speech. But how far would both of you say we've come since that speech?

Jeffery Johnson (23:36):

I actually believe we've come a long way. The only thing is, there are some people who see the realities of some of the things that we've spoken about this afternoon, and they would actually be, uh, somewhat pessimistic. And when I run across those people, whether it's in the street or the barbershop or so forth, I say, wow, I gotta tell you the truth. I was born in 1962, and I would prefer that to 1862. There's a lot to be done, but we have also accomplished so much more than is being spoken about today. And there again, it goes back to one of our earlier topics, because there is not an adequate inclusion of African American contributions in our history, uh, in our public schools and even some of our private schools, that that's the reason why there is such a hopelessness today. But when you look at the King speech, I have to admit Dr. Washington, there are relevant issues that as much as I love that speech, I wish that it was irrelevant today.

Gregory Washington (24:43):

Oh, that's deep.

Vernon Walton (24:45):

Yeah, that's a great way to put it, rev, great way to put it. I would agree, President Washington, that we've made some tremendous strides. And let me just stop and say we should not overlook, and we should celebrate the fact that we are sitting here at George Mason with you, a trailblazer. And I think you are an example of some of the strides that we've made as a people, the fact that you are leading this institution as an African American male. We celebrate the ascension of President Barack Obama into the White House, and more recently, the ascension of our Vice President Kamala Harris, and we celebrate the ascension of our first African American female justice. I think those are signs, those are signals that we are heading and moving in the right direction. But we should continue to keep moving. And sometimes we pause to celebrate. And in our pausing to celebrate, we forget that there's still more ground to cover. And so, yes, there are some strides, but unfortunately there are some realities from that speech and likewise from Dr. King's letter, from the Birmingham jail, uh, that are still unrealized parts of his dream, particularly when we talk about the economics of African American people, as we just alluded to talking about the housing crisis. And I believe that it was Dr. King's real focus on economics that ultimately led to his assassination.

Gregory Washington (26:11):

I heard a couple of lines from that final speech that he was putting together. That was an economic empowerment speech If you, if you've ever heard one.

Jeffery Johnson (26:21):

Yes, sir.

Gregory Washington (26:22):

So how do we balance what has happened in the past and our hopes for the future? So, Dr. Walton, you gave a talk in which you spoke of a sermon you heard from Reverend William Augustus Jones of the Brooklyn Bethany Baptist Church, who said, and, and I'm paraphrasing here, our past isn't allowed to become the past because we keep it alive in our minds instead of letting it be bygone. We become stuck in that moment. You can't have the present because you have no clear vision for the future. Is that a personal statement or can you make a connection to what we're basically talking about in some of the struggles for equality and equity that are happening today?

Vernon Walton (27:08):

I think Dr. William Augustus Jones, who has gone on to be with the Lord now, was one of our premier voices in the pulpit, particularly the Black pulpit. But he was a world-renowned preacher and a voice and force to be reckoned with. Those words. Dr. Washington come from a sermon he preached, called The Problem of the Present Past. And in that sermon, he quoted the psalmist David, and he's, I believe it was Psalm 51. And he said, my sin is forever before me. And the point that he makes in this particular sermon is simply that there's some things that have occurred in our lives that we cannot go back and change. That sermon spoke volumes to me when I first heard it in person, when I've read it in print. And, uh, it's one that I will remember to share with you. One of the reasons why it speaks to me, because it's still relevant today in terms of my personal life, in terms of our collective witness.

Vernon Walton (28:03):

And certainly for us as people of color. What do we do? I think it's important for us to confront our past. I think it's important for us to move on from our past. But before moving on, we have to learn. Because if we don't learn anything, then we are bound to repeat the past, right? And we have to make amends for our past. We have to recognize, yes, there's some things that we cannot change. There's some things that we can apologize for, come to grips with, make restitution for, offer apologies for. So what do we do? How does it speak to us today? I think it speaks to us personally. It speaks to us as a county, as we talk about why all of these communities have shifted around these Black churches. And it also speaks to us as a country, how are we going to confront our past and make amends for our past, and then ultimately move on from our past? At the end of the day, we cannot hide. And whatever we don't confront, we are bound to repeat. And unfortunately, there are many people in our nation that don't want to have the real conversation about America and the real conversation about how African Americans were treated in America. And that, of course, goes back to this whole rewriting of history and the banning of books. But we will never be the real people that we can be until we confront some of those issues.

Jeffery Johnson (29:30):

Oh, yes. And Dr. William Augustus Jones, along with preachers like Dr. E.K. Bailey, A. Loui Patterson, and, uh, even, uh, Dr. Smith, I cannot think of his first name for some reason, it just left my mind, but he was from New York City. B.W. Smith. They used to speak in Washington DC where I pastored for 10 years. And Dr. Jones would empower his listeners with taking biblical facts and shaping them around African American experiences. He had one sermon entitled, he, he did a, he flipped the script somewhat, and he said the lion’s in Daniel’s den. So in other words,

Gregory Washington (30:15):

Instead of Daniel in the lion’s den.

Jeffery Johnson (30:17):

Right, right. And he was showing us, we are troubled on every side, yet not distressed. We are perplexed, but not in despair. Persecuted but not forsaken. Cast down, but not destroyed. And when you hear of the horrific things that have happened to our communities, it is a miracle that we are still alive and thriving with a $1.3 trillion budget in the African American community. I think this is another reason why our history is often overlooked, because there is a strong spiritual presence in our journey. And it's not politically correct to share things with spirituality when it comes to something like history. But it is the only reason I think we are still doing well and thriving. You look at Moses and the children of Israel, they had an exodus. We had an emancipation. The exodus means that they left, they came out of, we are still living in the footprint of the Civil War. We are still living near plantations. We are still living near trees where folks were lynched. We are still in Egypt even though we've been emancipated.

Gregory Washington (31:38):

Can we stay there for a second? I wanna unpack that a little bit and ask you all some questions about it. You know, the reality is that the way I see it, the shackles that hold us down today are mental, as much as they are economic, social, and physical. We have a large percentage of our community who are striving and doing extraordinary things, and they are setting the bar. Everybody knew that we would do great things in entertainment and athletics. We've done that throughout our history. But now you're seeing it in business. You're seeing it in science and engineering, you're seeing it in areas in which historically we just haven't had a modern, strong legacy, but we still have a cohort of our people who haven't gotten that memo, so to speak, and thereby are not reaching their potential. How do you speak to that?

Vernon Walton (32:42):

Dr. Washington, I think that's where the hard work is. That is the work of our church. And quite frankly, honestly, that is also the work of institutions like George Mason.

Gregory Washington (32:53):

Oh, I agree with that a hundred percent.

Vernon Walton (32:54):

If we are honest, there are many in Fairfax County that enjoy a great deal of privilege. And those who live here, those who work here, as it has already been suggested, you have to have reached and or, or obtained a certain level of success, and I place success in quotations that you can afford to do this. But to your point, there are others who have not received that memo. And I believe wholeheartedly in scripture where it says, to whom much is given, much is required. And our responsibility is not just to sit on our stools of do nothingness and enjoy our own success. Because if that is the case, then we are guilty as well of just relishing in our own privilege. But our responsibility is to reach out to those who are marginalized, to reach out to those who have not had the benefit of the same level of access for whatever the reasons are, and to help lift the tide. And that's the work of our church that remains, and that's the work of our institution that remains.

Jeffery Johnson (34:03):

I wholeheartedly agree. Sometimes Dr. Washington, other people groups look at the African-American community, and this happened during the time of Dr. King and they’re still doing it today. They're saying, why don't you just get over it? And the thing is, we would've been over it if it wasn't for the malfeasance of government that ended reconstruction, we would've been over it. If it wasn't for Plessy v. Ferguson or the Dred Scott decision, we would have been over it. If it wasn't for Jim Crow and the physical, or the, I guess you could say the character assassinations of Marcus Garvey and Medgar Evers and Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. We could have been over it if it wasn't for the fact of what happened in not only Tulsa, Oklahoma, but Colfax, Louisiana. And I even read recently about a insurrection that was successful in, uh, Wilmington, North Carolina back in 1898.

Jeffery Johnson (35:05):

We would've been over it if we didn't have people like Congressman King trying to tell the American society that Blacks have not contributed anything of note worthiness to the world or to the country. Because the thing about it, when you look at the reality, a civilization began in Kemet, in Egypt, in Africa. And then the Greeks came and borrowed, very politely, borrowed from what they had gained from Egypt. And then naturally, the Romans borrowed from the Greeks. We don't want to be seen as a Afrocentric superiority. We want to cooperate. There were Black explorers leaving the African continent, which actually at one time, the entire continent was called Ethiopia. And the Atlantic Ocean was referred to as the Ethiopian Sea. And you had African explorers actually coming down to the Americas. And you can see their contributions in architecture and technology.

Jeffery Johnson (36:09):

and even the exchange of the culture and so forth. So we don't want to dominate, we want to participate. And that is something that is missing today. That is something that we still would like to do. There were two elderly white ladies who looked like charming characters on the Andy Griffith Show. And when Barack Obama's second term was coming to an end, they were embarrassed because they were against his election in the first place because they thought that if there was a Black president, he would come and reap retribution against the White community. That has not been the case. Over the many years that we have been in this country, the centuries of our suffering, there are very few opportunities that our race took to have any type of retribution. And I like to tell people during Black History Month and the Martin Luther King services that I speak on, is that the African American community has had an August the 28th, but not a January the 6th.

Gregory Washington (37:19):

Hmm. Yeah. That's deep. That is really, really deep. Man, I don't even know what to say about that. You got me at a loss for words.

Vernon Walton (37:29):

Yeah. You're walking heavy.

Gregory Washington (37:32):

Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Dr. Walton, on the wall in the lobby outside of your office, you have a photo with a quote from Booker T. Washington who was born into slavery, but became the most influential African American speaker of his time and the principal developer of what is now known as Tuskegee University. And that quote says, success waits patiently for anyone who has the determination to seize it. Why that quote?

Vernon Walton (38:01):

Well, Dr. Washington, that particular quote speaks to me, but I think it's also important to note that Booker T. Washington, yes, hangs outside in the lobby of my office, but he doesn't hang there by himself. He hangs there along with a picture of Dr. King from the Birmingham Jail. He hangs there with a picture of the Little Rock Nine. He hangs there with some individuals who are participants of the 1969 March of Selma to Montgomery, and he hangs there with a picture of Rosa Parks. And so, while I love and appreciate the work of Booker T. Washington and support that quote wholeheartedly, and it speaks to me, the real intent of that quote and the others that hang in that lobby is to demonstrate to those who walk in our office and those who leave our office, is to demonstrate that we are not monolithic as a people, and that all voices matter. All voices are impactful, and that we can learn from everyone's experiences.

Gregory Washington (39:12):

Oh, that's fantastic.

Jeffery Johnson (39:13):

And Dr. Walton lives that every week. I was saddened that I was in Tampa, Florida, and could not attend his MLK service where he actually had Dr. Robert E. Lee as one of the speakers for that service. And, uh, we don't have time to talk about all of the great things that this descendant of General Lee has done to speak of a united America rather than a separated America. As well as the fact I was able to meet at First Baptist Vienna, I was able to meet the actual secretary of Dr. King, who actually composed the notes that King wrote in the Birmingham jail. So these are some very rich experiences, and we have an opportunity, as Dr. King would say, that we can either learn to live together as brothers or perish as fools. We are the greatest demonstration of the equity of democracy for a nation throughout the world, and some of the petty differences that are currently in our Congress, which I will not go into, but, uh

Vernon Walton (40:28):

Do we have enough time for that?

Jeffery Johnson (40:30):

Dr. Walton, they say, if you keep electing clowns, you are bound to have a circus. And that is what has been happening. These men are not realizing that not only are they giving a black eye to democracy, they're giving a black eye to Christianity throughout the world, because Jesus told us to love our enemies. Bless them that curse you. Pray for those who despitefully use you and persecute you. These citizens that this particular party is fighting, they're taxpayers, and whether you agree with their lifestyle or not, they work hard. They contribute to their communities and they pay their taxes. Allow the churches and the synagogues and the mosques to deal with the other issues. But you cannot relegate in legality how people should live. They have to make that decision because even God himself gave everyone a free will. And if we do our job and they do their job, we could have something close to a utopia.

Gregory Washington (41:31):

That's fantastic. So let me back up one second and let's break down where we go from here. You know, one of Mason's pillars is that education is a great equalizer. You know, and that's why we partnered with community college to create smoother pathways to four-year degree. We put in place the Mason Virginia Promise to help you either get a degree or start your own business. All of the small business development centers throughout all of Virginia are led by George Mason, so we can help folks start a business. So we put these foundational bricks in place. But what I want to ask you is, what else can we do? How can we help you deal with some of the problems that are still afflicting our communities?

Vernon Walton (42:21):

Well, Dr. Washington, you are creating here at Mason thought leaders. You are developing practitioners. You are creating the new economist and sociologist. And the work that you do here helps to better inform the work that we do in our local churches. The work that you do here helps us to translate the social norms and the customs. It helps us to make sense out of what is actually happening in our society. So I would dare say that these kinds of partnerships, to continue these kinds of conversations that we're having today. Many of our churches are creating feeding programs. We are creating tutoring programs. We have senior programs that are running on a regular consistent basis, but it's the thought leaders and the practitioners that you are developing here at Mason that help us to challenge the structures that create the need for these feeding programs and tutoring programs.

Vernon Walton (43:22):

And so I want to encourage you and faculty and staff here at Mason to keep developing the thought leaders, but to use our spaces and places as platforms so that the leaders that you are building have actual stages to put their work into practice. Whether they are helping us to translate the dynamics of our society, whether they are helping us to tutor the kids that are in our possession, whatever the case may be. I believe, yes, education helps greatly to equalize, but let's not forget the roadblocks that exist and that are challenging the opportunity to education, that we have, the rollbacks as it relates to affirmative actions, set asides, and, and the need for DEI. So continue to create those thought leaders, those practitioners. We are gonna continue to do our work on the ground, but your work informs what we do, and we have space for your practitioners.

Jeffery Johnson (44:22):

Oh, yes. I, I, I greatly agreed. I saw the humble beginnings of George Mason, and there were some people who said, well, I would go to school, but I have to support my family and work here in Northern Virginia. But then they thought of Mason, and those educational dreams and aspirations became real. It is amazing. I would ask anyone to just take a slow casual drive through this campus. It is a small city of intelligentsia. It is a oasis of academics, and you have produced so many people. Not only did my son Jeffery Jr. attend here, we have other members of the Mount Calvary Baptist Church who either took classes or actually graduated from George Mason. And what I like about George Mason is that out of all the things that Reverend Dr., uh Walton has mentioned, you also have maintained a stream of conversation that is relevant to this community. Sometimes colleges become so academically involved that they no longer have connection with the community. Your connection, Dr. Washington, with the community, is making a great impact. And when this is done, not only will you affect the graduates of George Mason, you will also make a great impact on the city of Fairfax, not only its citizens, but its government and its visitors.

Gregory Washington (45:59):

We got a ways to go, and we want to continue to be the institution that the community needs to be here. Not the one that it tolerates, or the one that it wants to be here, but the, that the community needs. And that means that we're gonna have to continue to provide really great outcomes for the students in and around this community, quite frankly, for the companies and the institutions, churches included, around this community. We're actually here for you also, and there's a whole host of things that we can provide you in addition to, in addition to, parishioners.

Vernon Walton (46:41):

Let, let me, let me just give you a, a shout out, Dr. Washington. I know you may not be intimately aware, but your staff was incredible. Just recently for us, a few months ago, we hosted a African American male summit for high school young men. And we had nearly a hundred young men from as far south as Richmond, from DC and all over Fairfax County. I'm a firm believer that experience and exposure goes a long way, and there's no substitute for both. As a part of that particular day, the young men had a presentation about college acceptance and preparation for college from your staff here at Mason. It for many, opened up the eyes of young men, some of which for the first time was having a conversation with someone about their future potential. And so I want to acknowledge that in this moment.

Gregory Washington (47:38):

No, I love that. I love that. And it's great that we could be a part of that. And it's fantastic that our faculty and staff can be helpful. We don't want to just stop there. We want to do more. It's part of my reason for engaging you brothers, because I wanna make sure the institution is pretty much part of the family here in Northern Virginia. So I want to thank you all for giving me, for giving us, that chance to be that, and for being a, a willing partner going forward in our futures together.

Vernon Walton (48:09):

Thank you for the offer, and we are here to receive it. And we're, and we're together. We're together.

Gregory Washington (48:14):

Outstanding, outstanding. I love it. Well, we're gonna have to leave it there, Reverend Jeffery Johnson, pastor at Mount Calvary Baptist Church in Fairfax, Virginia, and Dr. Vernon Walton, pastor at First Baptist Church in Vienna. Thank you both for your time and for a really fantastic conversation.

Vernon Walton (48:39):

Thank you, Dr. Washington.

Gregory Washington (48:41):

I'm Mason, president Gregory Washington saying, until next time, stay safe, Mason Nation.

Narrator (48:49):

In This Story

diversity equity and inclusion DEI

Access to Excellence Podcast Episodes

Podcast — EP 63: The economic perceptions driving U.S. politics
December 11, 2024
Podcast — EP 62: What are the chances of intelligent life beyond Earth?
November 18, 2024
Podcast - EP 61: Can dirty coffee grounds be the key to clean water?
October 21, 2024
Podcast Ep 60 - Marking a decade of success at Mason Korea
August 6, 2024
Podcast Ep 59 - Cybersecurity and the global threats of tomorrow
July 5, 2024

Topics

Black History Month

Black Lives Next Door

Enslaved People

Podcast - Ep 55: Where the bodies are buried

Damian Cristodero — Thu, 11 Jan 2024 14:53:56 +0000

Podcast - Ep 55: Where the bodies are buried Damian Cristodero Thu, 01/11/2024 - 09:53

Where the bodies are buried

Forensic research on human donors is not for the faint of heart, Mary Ellen O’Toole, director of the Forensic Science Program in ��AV’s College of Science, admitted to Mason President Gregory Washington. But the university’s new outdoor research and training laboratory—or “body farm,” as O’Toole, a former FBI profiler, calls it—is a valuable addition to the study of human decomposition in various environmental conditions for the purpose of solving crimes. It also positions O’Toole’s program as a national leader in forensic science and forensic anthropology.

^{And I love the term audacity because being audacious is to stand up and say, ‘We've got thousands of unidentified remains in medical examiner's offices throughout the United States. What can we do to reunite those individuals with their family members?’ We know that we've got unsolved cases out there of marginalized victims throughout the United States. Audacious means what can we do to solve those crimes? And so if my students can be as audacious as is humanly possible, they're gonna be magnificent forensic scientists.”}

Listen to this episode

Access to Excellence Podcast Episodes

Podcast — EP 63: The economic perceptions driving U.S. politics
December 11, 2024
Podcast — EP 62: What are the chances of intelligent life beyond Earth?
November 18, 2024
Podcast - EP 61: Can dirty coffee grounds be the key to clean water?
October 21, 2024
Podcast Ep 60 - Marking a decade of success at Mason Korea
August 6, 2024
Podcast Ep 59 - Cybersecurity and the global threats of tomorrow
July 5, 2024

In This Story

Topics

Forensic Science Research and Training Laboratory

College of Science

Forensic Science Program

Podcast - Ep 54: Are we headed for an internet apocalypse?

Damian Cristodero — Fri, 01 Dec 2023 14:40:03 +0000

Podcast - Ep 54: Are we headed for an internet apocalypse? Damian Cristodero Fri, 12/01/2023 - 09:40

Peter Becker, a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy in ��AV’s College of Science, talks with Mason President Gregory Washington about how a predicted major increase in solar storm activity could be a prelude to an “internet apocalypse.”

Can we prepare? What could be the consequences? What are the economic implications? A $14 million federal study Becker is leading with the Navy could provide better predictive capabilities and help us better understand exactly what’s at stake.

Professor Peter Becker joins Mason president Gregory Washington in the studio to discuss how an increase in solar storms could be a prelude to an “internet apocalypse” on this episode of the Acess to Excellence podcast.

Photo credit:

Cristian Torres/��AV

^{A very large event could take the internet out for as long as a month, and there’s additional damage to the power grid, too. So if you lose the internet, the economic damage in the U.S. alone is considered to be on the order of about $10 billion per day. And so if that escalates, you pretty rapidly run into an economic disruption that’s larger than COVID, let’s say, as an example."}

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Read the Transcript

Narrator (00:04):

Trailblazers in research, innovators in technology and those who simply have a good story. All make up the fabric that is ��AV, where taking on the grand challenges that face our students, graduates and higher education is our mission and our passion. Hosted by Mason President Gregory Washington, this is the Access to Excellence podcast.

Gregory Washington (00:26):

A team of ��AV scientists has received an almost $14 million federal grant to work with the Department of the Navy to study and better understand increased solar activity that could potentially ‘cause what is being called an internet apocalypse. Such an event would disrupt all of Earth's communications, including satellite communications. My guest, Peter Becker, a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy in Mason's College of Science, is the principal investigator of the research. Dr. Becker has a PhD in astrophysics from the University of Colorado, and his research focuses on topics in high energy astrophysical theory. His model for studying accretion flows onto rotating neutron stars has become the standard for researchers studying these extreme objects. Now though, he's part of an effort to protect the earth from the effects of what many predict will be an increase in solar storms and their potential consequences. Peter, welcome to the show.

Peter Becker (01:40):

Thank you so much, President Washington. It's a pleasure to be here with you.

Gregory Washington (01:44):

Well, look, this is, uh, quite a scary topic and depending on how you look at it, but this is one that we need to talk about. Yeah, look, if you go on your Facebook page, your cover photo though is not a picture of stars or a planet of solar flares disrupting the, our communication system and burning up satellites, but it's of you playing a guitar in a band at a local bar. Now, is that your rock and roll alter ego?

Peter Becker (02:10):

Yeah, that's basically the, I just hit the nail on the head there. Yeah. My other passion in my life is my music, my music hobby. But science is the primary focus. I, I did figure out early in life that I didn't want to be a full-time musician. I realized I was born to be a scientist. I've never second-guessed that decision because my scientific career has been the source of really all the inspiration and motivation and my main creative output in my life. So, uh, the music thing is a lot of fun as a release. It's, it's a little bit, sort of more of an emotional thing, I guess, versus the very sort of clinical quantitative work that I do as a scientist. So it's a, it creates a nice balance in my life.

Gregory Washington (02:48):

Oh, that's outstanding. So from the photos, you seem pretty proud of your two Les Paul guitars. What's so special about 'em?

Peter Becker (02:58):

Right. Well, if you play a lot and if you play on stage, you tend to get connected to certain instruments. So it's actually a little bit of a Covid story there because I used to play a Fender Stratocaster mainly on stage, but I had about 30 years on that particular instrument, and the frets were worn out, so I needed to have it re fretted. Well, I gave it to a luthier over in Manassas and it disappeared for a couple years because of Covid . So I had no choice but to, to bring up My Les Pauls. And then with those on stage, it's just a different sort of experience. They're a little more solid, a little meatier you might say. And then it was tough to go back to the Stratocaster after that. So I started sort of collecting Les Pauls a little bit. I don't have too many, I have about four, I guess. Nice. But the ones that you saw are my favorites. Uh, there's a Sunburst and then there's a, a Blueberry Burst it's called. And those are dialed in quite nicely now. So those are my main instruments on stage at the moment.

Gregory Washington (03:48):

, that, that is really, really interesting because you have this phenomenal career in astrophysics, and yet you have this strong, strong connection to music. So what got you started in music and then what got you started in astrophysics?

Peter Becker (04:03):

Okay, yeah, those are interesting questions. So I guess music would be my sister's record collection, I guess, which I wasn't really into that much when I was a young teen. And she would be playing certain things that were great, like, uh, Elton John and, uh, the Beatles and Cat Stevens and some other stuff. But I actually wasn't really into it at the time, but it's a funny thing 'cause it sinks in kind of subliminally. And then when I was an older teenager, I got really into her record collection and started listening to the radio. And I was a teenager in the seventies. So they're all, all these great bands that were doing some amazing stuff called Progressive Rock at the time. So bands like Boston and, uh, rush and even Pink Floyd, you could put in that group. And REO Speedwagon, they had virtuoso guitar players.

Peter Becker (04:45):

And when I heard that guitar screaming at me through the speakers, as they say the old cliche, it spoke to me and I got very interested in that. So I was an undergraduate in college at the time, but as I said, I, I knew early on that I wanted to be a scientist because I was also into the original Star Trek shows and Mr. Spock and all that good stuff. And the Apollo program, I was nine years old when the lunar landing occurred. So that had a huge impact on me, and that was stronger actually than music. And so I got interested in astronomy. And then when I was a freshman in high school, I actually wasn't doing too well because I hadn't discovered astronomy yet. I remember halfway through my freshman year, I suddenly just got interested in astronomy. My mother had been, of course, bugging me to do my homework and this and that.

Peter Becker (05:27):

And I told her I made a deal with her. Tell you what, just stop bugging me and I'll make sure I get all my homework done on time. And that was the deal we had. And it was a win-win situation for both of us. And I excelled after that and graduated, did quite well in high school and college and ended up going to graduate school in Boulder, Colorado, which was fantastic for five years. And then I've been here at Mason since ‘92 and couldn't be happier. Didn't really expect to spend my whole career here, but I've been here over, over 30 years now. And I've loved it, been treated very well here and it's been a wonderful environment for me to keep doing my science and working with my graduate students.

Gregory Washington (06:02):

Oh, it's outstanding. So this, so-called Internet Apocalypse. Is that just a marketing slogan to get people's attention? Or are we really talking about, you know, I, in preparation for this, I tried to ask myself the fundamental question, what would life be like? What would we lose if for whatever reason we'd lost the internet?

Peter Becker (06:25):

So, yeah, it is a thing. It's not just type, it's a real concern. And it's basically because of course the internet is growing and the internet share of the world economy is growing. It's like pushing 20% and at the same time the sun is ramping up its activity in a way that hasn't occurred in the last 20 years or so, in other words, since before the internet. So the concern is that solar flare is an event where there's a huge explosion on the sun. And we can tell that because we see a huge flash of light. And that flash of light is kind of like the muzzle flash, and then there's gas that is ejected from the sun, that's called a Coronal Mass Ejection or CME. And that basically can go in a random direction in space. But when it comes towards Earth, then all these particles can arrive at Earth and do things to our magnetic field.

Peter Becker (07:12):

And we can actually tell what's going to happen when we see that first flash of light. Because if it forms a halo around the sun, that's a signature that we're basically looking down the barrel of this cannon. The flare is the muzzle flash, and then the bullet is the CME, the Coronal Mass Ejection. And if it comes towards earth, we see that halo. And we have about 18 to 36 hours of warning. Now, this has happened many, many times before, and I can talk about a couple of specific examples, but we haven't had a severe solar storm and a large CME strike Earth's magnetic field directly since pretty much before the internet era. So the internet is not really built to have a robust enough infrastructure to actually survive that kind of disruption. And we can talk about exactly what I mean by the disruption and how it happens. So, you know, it's like anything else that it was built as strong as it needed to be built based on the economic bottom line at the time. And so it's not engineered at the level that you're required to handle severe disruption. The power grid is somewhat in the same boat, but it's a little bit more robust.

Gregory Washington (08:15):

Oh, man.

Peter Becker (08:15):

But, uh, if we talk about DOD communications, the original intranet was called the ARPANET. And that's actually relatively hardened, could, might even survive. But the way I look at it is if you build the internet harder, it's sort of an insurance policy against a large disruptive event, which may or may not happen. And some people buy insurance and some people don't buy insurance. And if you buy it, it can be expensive, but you're protected. And if you don't buy it, you're vulnerable. And the way it is right now is the internet really doesn't have that insurance policy behind it 'cause it wasn't engineered up to that kind of a level of hardness to be able to handle this kind of disruption.

Gregory Washington (08:50):

So just for our audience, and let me make sure I get this right. Solar storms will become much more active over the next 10 years, is what you're predicting. And you even said that the peak time will be between 2024 and 2028. Oh boy. And during that time, the entire internet could conceivably be knocked out for a period of weeks to months in the event of an extreme solar flare. Is that right?

Peter Becker (09:21):

Right. So I could sketch that out for you if you like.

Gregory Washington (09:23):

Yeah, please do.

Peter Becker (09:24):

Okay, so let's look at a historical precedent. So the last large flare in CME that directly struck Earth with this event called the Carrington event, which was in 1859. And that was actually recorded and reported by an astronomer in England named Richard Carrington. And he noticed a tremendous brightening of the sun. He could actually see with his eyes. And he went outside and it was, the sun itself had actually gotten brighter. They didn't know about CMEs back in those days in 1859, but about a week or so later, there was a tremendous disruption of the telegraph system. So the telegraph system was the internet back then, right? And we had all kinds of currents running up and down the cables, the telegraph wires, and there were reports that some operators may have even been electrocuted from touching the equipment. And the whole system was brought down for weeks to months.

Peter Becker (10:14):

So as I said, that was, that was the internet back in 1859. And if you think about a telegraph system, it's got pretty robust wires. It's kind of like the home wiring for a lamp or something like that. It's pretty large gauge wiring. And it was taken out. And then if you think about modern electronics, we have hair-width circuits, wires running all over the place, and optical fibers and things much, much more delicate. So in an event of that magnitude happened now, it would cause a lot of circuits to actually get fried. If you think about all the, uh, utility closets, the relay rooms and the, the office buildings and on campus here, there's mysterious closets all over the place that are chock full of electronic equipment that's extremely vulnerable to this type of interference. So if you have a large enough event, you're talking about hardware actually getting fried and people having to go out into the field to make hardware replacements.

Peter Becker (11:03):

And that's going to take a long time if it's widespread enough. So a very large event could actually take the internet out for as long as a month. And there's additional damage to the power grid, too, that we're not really focusing on today. But that's part of this as well. So if you lose the internet, the economic damage in the U.S. alone is considered to be on the order about $10 billion per day. And so if that escalates, you know, you pretty rapidly run into an economic disruption that's larger than Covid, let's say, as an example. Now the 1859 event isn't even the largest that we're aware of. There's evidence of much larger events in the distant past, which are scarier because if you have an even larger event, you're talking about a larger amount of disruption and longer time to make repairs. But there was an event about 14,000 years ago that was probably about a hundred times stronger than this Carrington event I was just referring to.

Peter Becker (11:55):

Now 14,000 years ago, humans were around on the planet, but there's no recorded history from that time. So the way that we know about it is actually from evidence in tree rings and ice cores. And this is actually kind of interesting 'cause you've probably heard about how Carbon-14 is used to date things that were alive to determine when they were alive. Things like that. So the way that Carbon-14 actually gets formed is it's actually produced in the upper atmosphere when cosmic rays and also particles from the sun strike nitrogen atoms up there and convert them into carbon atoms, which are radioactive Carbon-14 atoms. And this happens all the time. So we're in a bath of radioactive Carbon-14 in the atmosphere, constantly filtering down. It's not dangerous, but it gets absorbed by living things and metabolized into their bodies.

Peter Becker (12:40):

And then when they die, they stop metabolizing it. So a clock starts running and you can tell from how long it takes the Carbon-14 to naturally decay, which is a few thousand years, you can tell how old that sample is, right? It's, so what happened at 14,000 years ago was there was a tremendous increase in the production, a big spike in the production of this radioactive Carbon-14 in the upper atmosphere, which filtered down and was absorbed in all sorts of living things, including these trees that were discovered in France that actually fossilized trees, which have ancient tree rings that show a big spike in Carbon-14. So this amazing indirect evidence was used to deduce that there was a huge solar flare at that time and a huge CME that did strike Earth. And we also see evidence for this enhancement in ice cores from Greenland that correlate with the same time.

Peter Becker (13:27):

So it turns out that events that large, once we found out about that one, we started looking through the geological record. And it turns out they seem to have it about every thousand years or so. So we're overdue for one . It's been about a thousand years since the last one that's kind of comparable to the one I was just speaking about occurred. And it's also been about 150 years since the Carrington event occurred. And that one's estimated to occur every hundred years roughly. So if you think about it, we're on the clock here, and if you just look at the probability of things happening, we're in a sweet spot right now for something large to happen for some large event.

Gregory Washington (14:02):

No, I hear you. But, but you know, you, you, you become, in terms of your analysis, you highlight 2024 to 2028. Why those particular years? Is it because we're just close to that time period now? Or is there something in the mathematical or physical record that points you to that, you know, that time period?

Peter Becker (14:25):

That's a good question. So if you look at the cycles of solar activity, we haven't talked about that, but the sun goes through about a 20 year cycle where its magnetic poles can reverse. And that cycle's also associated with the increase in decrease in sunspot number. And when you have a lot of sun spots, you get a lot of flares and CMEs, because the sunspots are the points where the magnetic field comes out and forms loops, which can sometimes burst releasing particles into space. So we're just entering a period of enhanced solar activity, which is called Solar Cycle 25 right now. And it's the sun, of course, that's had millions of solar cycles, but we've only been keeping track o over a period of 25 of these cycles that we call it Solar Cycle 25. But then on top of that, there's also a longer-term cycle in the sun called the Gleissberg cycle.

Peter Becker (15:13):

That's about a hundred-year cycle of overall increase in decrease. So you have another way of sitting on top of these 20 year bumps. You have a general increase that's happening right now on a hundred-year cycle, and that's lined up roughly with the time period that we're talking about 2024, 2025 through 2028. So the concern is that there's definitely an increased risk of a very large CME launching towards Earth. Now, you know, again, they're basically gonna go in random directions in space, but as a small chance they're gonna head towards Earth. But that's already been included in the statistics . So we're basically due for something large heading in our direction, unless we get very lucky and we have gotten lucky, um, for quite a long time.

Gregory Washington (15:56):

And that's the whole planet, right? I presume given the distances travel in the way in which these waves will expand, it's not like part of the planet will be affected and another part will not. Is that accurate?

Peter Becker (16:12):

That's exactly right. Yeah. So, so just say a little bit more about what actually happens physically. So we have this, we have the flare, as I mentioned, and if we see a halo, we know the CMEs coming towards Earth, it'll take 18 to 36 hours to get here. And then when the particles get here, it's not like they're gonna sweep down to the surface of the earth and incinerate life as we know it. The magnetic field will protect us. But what happens is the magnetic field sort of gets hit by a hammer of these particles and that causes waves to move through Earth’s magnetic field. And physicists know that when you have a changing magnetic field, it actually gives rise to changing electric field. And an electric field can accelerate charged particles because as you know, electrons are gonna flow from the negative to positive terminal on a battery, for example.

Gregory Washington (16:55):

And that's how you fry circuits.

Peter Becker (16:57):

Exactly. You get that current going. And then there's a kind of a little bit of an insidious thing that people don't necessarily think about, but you could actually also get currents induced in the surface of the earth itself. So if you think, oh, my computer's grounded, let's say, well, grounding actually can bite you in a case like this 'cause you can get currents actually coming up through the ground that are induced by these magnetic waves I'm talking about. But there is a way to deal with it. First of all, again, we have warning, if we see the flash, we have 18 to 36 hours of warning .

Gregory Washington (17:28):

Okay, wait a minute. Wait a minute. Okay, let's talk about that. It's America, , there's a warning goes out. Okay, in 18 to 36 hours, highly likely your electronics are gonna be fried. Things are just not going to work.

Peter Becker (17:44):

You basically start unplugging stuff

Gregory Washington (17:46):

Because the reality is we have very little control over what the sun does.

Peter Becker (17:51):

Like, like none .

Gregory Washington (17:53):

So the real research is a) giving us predictive capability, right? So that's more in alignment of the physics side of it, right? You're looking at it being able to predict these, understanding the magnitude of what's going to hit us from the perspective of fields, right?

Peter Becker (18:16):

Yep, exactly.

Gregory Washington (18:17):

Quantifying that.

Peter Becker (18:19):

That's exactly right. So as you said, we, we can't control the sun. The sun's gonna do whatever it wants to do at any time. So for us, it's all about two things, predictive capability. The earlier warning, the better every hour of warning you have is gold because you could maybe put another satellite in a safe mode or disconnect another transformer from the power grid. So you can save millions and millions of dollars if you have more warning. So our research is about trying to amplify that time period, trying to extend that time period so that we can make predictions over a longer timeframe, uh, which I can talk about some more. That's actually the whole basis for the research program that I'm, I'm PI on that you mentioned.

Gregory Washington (18:58):

Yeah. When, but that's one thing. It's a second piece here. What you do, what kinds of things should people do in order to function? What kinds of things could we do now, right? What's the mitigating strategies that you put in place so that we can actually continue some semblance of operations until you get all of the stuff right? Because what'll happen is it'll go down for a period of time, right? But you'll bring systems back online slowly. And then it'll take a period of time, but we'll start to function again, right?

Peter Becker (19:32):

Right. The actual timescale for the event itself would be, again, about 24 to 48 hours. That's how much time the matter be hanging around Earth causing problems. Then it would slip past Earth and go into the outer solar system. So we get hit by that hammer for 24 to 48 hours. But after that, you can start using radio equipment again, for example, as long as it's not damaged.

Gregory Washington (19:51):

As long as it's not damaged,

Peter Becker (19:52):

As long as it's not damaged.

Gregory Washington (19:52):

But most of it will be damaged.

Peter Becker (19:54):

Well, not necessarily because if it's unplugged, if it's just sitting there, it won't necessarily be fried. But this does depend on the magnitude of the event that we're talking about. Right? It does, there's mitigation measures there too. Actually, if you shroud electronic equipment in metal, like if you wrap a phone in aluminum foil, that's actually not crackpot that actually would work. It creates what we call a Faraday cage, which runs currents around, so fields don't penetrate that electronic device. So you can do things like that to protect your electronic equipment, small items, but once the plasma passes by, the interference will die down and we'll actually be able to use radios again.

Gregory Washington (20:33):

Okay. So then that's the strategy, right? How do you structure yourself such that you can create a Faraday cage around as much of the stuff that you want to protect as possible? Right? Faraday cages aren't hard to build. I've been in buildings that are essentially Faraday cages, right?

Peter Becker (20:51):

Yep. A lot of secure places that

Gregory Washington (20:53):

Yeah, a lot of secure places. Nothing gets in, nothing gets out. And so maybe that is part of a, in the 18 to 24 hours or 36 hours that you have, gonna have a hard time building those kind of things. So if you had a mechanism in place where you can protect as much as possible, that would allow you to get back and get up and going quickly.

Pete Becker (21:15):

That's right. Yeah. And as, like I was discussing the kind of analogy of an insurance policy before. So I think what's gonna happen is that there's going to have to be a moderate scale event to really get people's attention, and not just in terms of individuals protecting their devices, but in terms of society, doing things like maybe shielding hospitals and places like that where we don't want electronic equipment to malfunction because it's life sustaining equipment. Or maybe parts of the network are gonna have to be shielded better. But that kind of investment probably isn't gonna happen until there's a moderate scale event. So my hope is it's not a massive event that causes a huge problem, but just a large enough event to get society's attention and make them realize that we're entering sort of deeper water in terms of the solar activity, and we need to invest in hardening certain aspects of the infrastructure.

Gregory Washington (22:05):

Now let me ask you this. Who's listening to you? I know you got research from that's fund, looks like it's funded from the Navy, and so maybe they're listening, although interestingly enough, if they're out to sea, they might be at the safest position of all . They're not grounded to anything . But, but who's listening?

Peter Becker (22:27):

DOD is certainly paying a lot of attention to this. So this is, this is a, the $14 million grant that the Navy's providing because they're very concerned about maintaining communications. There's some connections with concerns about an electromagnetic pulse that could be associated with a nuclear detonation. So there's, there's a little bit of a crossover there in terms of maintaining communications across the board in terms of any kind of electromagnetic disruption that could take place. But the Navy's particularly concerned about the sun because of the potential. The sun is such a huge dominant object in the solar system. We really need to understand it better than we do right now for lots of different reasons. I mean, there's, there's even issues with possible changes in the level of solar output that could change climate on earth, for example. There's historical evidence that that's happened. So it all comes under the umbrella of security, at least in the United States. When the Department of Defense is looking at a lot more than just rockets and missiles and defense systems.

Peter Becker (23:21):

They're actually thinking about all aspects of national security, which includes a lot of fundamental science research of this type. So the Navy's very interested in some, and Mason students are involved in doing simulations with the sun. We're running advanced simulations to try to connect subtle changes in the sun's behavior with the possibility that we're seeing the onset of a large event that might not happen for a while, for weeks, let's say. That would be a tremendous amount of additional early warning that we would have. So we're interested in doing that. We're also heavily involved in sun observation. We're helping to run a satellite system called Stereo, which is actually two satellites in orbit around the same distance from the sun that the Earth is. But they're on the other side of the sun, giving us sort of an early warning system on the backside of the sun.

Peter Becker (24:11):

The sun rotates in about 30 days. So if a flare is developing on the backside, in a week or so, it could be on the front side and could actually burst, shoot that cannon a matter towards Earth. So being able to see the far side of the sun gives us a much more comprehensive capability to this kind of early warning. So we're involved in data acquisition and analysis from Stereo and other satellites, and also running enhanced sophisticated simulation codes to try to improve our predictive capability of what's gonna happen in the atmosphere of the sun.

Gregory Washington (24:43):

Okay, so for those folk who may not know, explain the concept of a solar storm and solar flares.

Peter Becker (24:50):

Sure. So, well, we know the earth has a magnetic field, for example, right? And we have a magnetic north pole magnetic south pole. And the north magnetic pole is pretty close to the geographical north pole, which is where the Earth’s spin axis comes through. The sun is very similar, but the field is much stronger, and the field actually pervades the whole sun down to the core where the nuclear reactions are taking place in the sun. So the magnetic field really controls a lot of the dynamics in the sun. It controls how the matter boils on the surface of the sun, where we see convection, hot matter coming up and cold matter going down. And we also see the magnetic field sticking out of the sun into space. And so I mentioned sun spots before. They always come in a pair, north and south polarity, sunspots, and there's magnetic field that connects those two.

Peter Becker (25:39):

And that magnetic field helps to confine some of this hot matter that's boiling up on the surface of the sun. But when the pressure becomes too much, the magnetic field can't necessarily hold it anymore. And it goes through what's called a reconnection event. And that loop kind of, uh, severs itself. And then you get a closed loop that goes off into space and a smaller loop that's still connecting the two sunspots on the sun. So that's how we're generating all this high temperature, high energy matter. So it's interesting to note that in some cases, these extreme solar flares and explosions could even produce gamma rays, which are the highest energy form of radiation that we can observe in the universe. And what's surprising about that is that if you look at the temperature of the surface of the sun, it's about 6,000 Kelvins. And that's basically yellow hot.

Peter Becker (26:28):

If you have a yellow hot match head or something like that, it actually has a temperature of about 6,000 Kelvins, like the surface of the sun. But that's way too cold to produce gamma rays. So the fact that we see gamma rays sometimes indicates that there's particles that are actually being accelerated by strong fields. Getting back to what you were saying before, strong electric fields are accelerating electrons and protons to such high energies that we can produce these gamma rays. And that's actually my personal area of research where my research intersects with the solar physics is in trying to understand how those particles are accelerated during these flares to such high energies that they can even produce gamma rays. So we have a model for that. It's an interesting challenge because the particles that get accelerated don't come from nowhere. They're actually members of the population particles on the surface of the sun every day, protons and electrons and things.

Peter Becker (27:20):

So how do they get up to such high energies? They, they sort of start as members of this thermal population of 6,000 Kelvins or so, but then they end up with such a high energy, they're basically what we call relativistic particles, which means that their kinetic energy of motion is equal to or larger than their rest mass energy, which is what you get from Einstein's famous formula E=mc(squared). That's the rest mass energy. But when these particles, uh, get to what we call relativistic energies or speeds very close to the speed of light, their kinetic energy is actually even greater than that rest mass energy. And that's how they can produce this higher energy gamma radiation. So that's a puzzle that we're helping to contribute to the solution of working with my students at Mason. That's, as I said, one component of this larger solar physics research projects that's going on.

Gregory Washington (28:08):

That is interesting. Why are we not hearing a lot about this in a mainstream media? Do you think people just say, this is just too science fiction for us? Or it's, I got bigger fish to fry or, or worry about right now and to worry about something that I don't know when it's gonna happen?

Peter Becker (28:26):

Yeah. Well, I mean, it's true that your average person is not gonna worry about a solar flare because they have much more bread and butter kitchen table issues to deal with on a daily basis. But on the other hand, the, the profile of the possible internet apocalypse is definitely going up in the media. I, I've actually been doing a whole bunch of interviews over the last couple of weeks on the subject. And, and it is in the popular press. There's an article in the Washington Post just a few weeks ago, the Wall Street Journal's done a series. Forbes has done a series.

Gregory Washington (29:00):

What was the catalyst? What prompted people to start paying attention.

Peter Becker (29:03):

It's really the idea that we're seeing a, an increase in solar activity, which is documented. And we also are seeing a large cross section for disruption of global commerce. So I think it has caught the attention of certain people, and that's filtering into the mainstream media. And I think this is probably gonna get amplified over time, because as the activity increases, we're going to see reports of, for example, much more extensive Northern Lights phenomenon, which we just saw a week or two ago. As a matter of fact, two medium-sized CMEs actually did reach Earth just about 10 days ago and created very spectacular aurora, uh, a couple of weekends ago that were noted in the popular media. But that's, again, kind of the tip of the iceberg. We may see more of that, but then that's going to transition into blackouts here and there, not necessarily major blackouts, but significant ones.

Peter Becker (29:59):

The last time we saw a really major blackout was, I think in the late nineties, the whole province of Quebec, Canada lost power for about 24 hours. So, you know, events like that are going to start to become more common and it's going to get people's attention and hopefully will cause us to reconsider what we need to do in order to harden the infrastructure. Because, again, we can't control the events themselves. The sun's gonna do whatever it needs to do. And the sun's been around for billions of years and, and you know, our modern industrial economy's only been around for a couple hundred years, so it's completely meaningless amount of time compared to the lifetime of the sun. So if the sun is entering a phase where its activity is gonna change, we just have to deal with that. And if that may be something that has never occurred before in human history, because we haven't been around that long, but we are living with a star and 93 million miles away, as you said.

Peter Becker (30:49):

So for the most part, it's extremely beneficial. It's given us life on earth and all the wonderful things, the photosynthesis and the warmth and the liquid water that we have at, in this Goldilocks zone where we are 93 million miles from the sun. But there can also be an alter ego there. And the sun is definitely capable of unleashing tremendous firestorms or particles that can have very serious consequences on Earth. Again, I mean, there's even worries about events that could be even a thousand times larger than the Carrington event in 1859. Very unlikely to occur, much like large earthquakes. These large solar disruptions are impossible to predict. But we know that the large ones are very infrequent and very widely spaced. But if you get a large enough event, then you're talking about much more severe disruption that's difficult to really extrapolate from anything that we've seen before in human history.

Gregory Washington (31:41):

So let's talk about that for one second. So that storm that you just highlighted, the one that was significantly more potent and substantial than the Carrington event, my understanding is that occurred about 14,300 years ago, something around that time period, right?

Peter Becker (31:56):

That's the one I was talking about. Yes.

Gregory Washington (31:59):

And so the thought is the research is that there've been nine such extreme solar events. One every 1200 some-odd years. I'm trying to get you to handicap this for me so, so I can place internet bets, so that when it happens, you can't collect your money, right? ,

Peter Becker (32:18):

There you go. Always scheming. Money for Mason.

Gregory Washington (32:22):

Exactly. You know,

Peter Becker (32:24):

The ultimate donor. But anyway, well, it's difficult to put a precise number. I would say that for an event as large as this one from 14,000 years ago, it's probably more like a, it's probably more like a percent per hundred years for an event that large. But if you go back to the Carrington event, then you're talking definitely about a percent per year for an event that large. Because that's gotta scale about a hundred years. So it's about a percent per year of chance overall. It's probably only a 10th of a percent or so of this 14,000 year ago event.

Gregory Washington (32:56):

Well then that means we're long overdue.

Peter Becker (32:58):

Yes. That's exactly the concern that the sun is entering, again, not only solar cycle 25, but also this Gleissberg cycle, which is a hundred-year cycle. It's beefing up to a level pretty similar to what it was back in the Carrington time, because that was 150 years ago. So the Gleissberg cycle would've been more active at that time too.

Gregory Washington (33:18):

So there is a cycle that actually is prompting this. There is a precursor events that are happening that really give you alarm. Is that right?

Peter Becker (33:28):

Yeah, that's a great analogy. Because it's much like earthquakes again, where you can see some precursors, small earthquakes. And in fact, we're just seeing this right now in Iceland where they're super concerned because they're having like a thousand earthquakes in 24 hours, if you can imagine, right? And they're evacuating villages because that definitely could indicate that there's a large eruption coming. And yes, there's that kind of correlation of solar activity as well. But having said that, nobody's running around ringing alarm bells yet. It's not as if we're, I mean, the analogy with what's happening in Iceland breaks down because we're not seeing that level of activity yet with in the sun, where we're really anticipating a huge event, you know, next week or in the next month. But there is a trend in that direction. And at a certain point in a year or so, it's a possibility that alarm bells will be ringing and we'll actually be much more worried about this. So the level of consciousness is definitely going up. And again, it's also because of the vulnerability of economically of the world. It's not just communication and sending email, it's global e-commerce that's sort of pushing a 20% level now. If you disrupt that communication, it's a lot more than just email. It's basically gonna bring the world economy almost grinding to a halt, except for local economies that can go on in the absence of communication. So, yeah. It's, it's a worry.

Gregory Washington (34:46):

It is a worry. So it seems like there should be some development of backup systems and backup processes to help some functions continue.

Peter Becker (34:58):

For one thing, it's a good idea to shield data centers. We were talking about shielding before. It's a good idea to shield data centers and also to have redundant backup data centers. You know, we have these things on computers called RAIDS systems. R-A-I-D-S with multiple hard drives that clone off each other and have backups. So if you lose one hard drive, you don't lose your whole data archive, right?

Gregory Washington (35:18):

Exactly right.

Peter Becker (35:19):

We kind of need to do that with larger data centers too, because the effects of these storms can be localized. So you might lose one in the U.S. but another one in Australia, let's say, could survive. And the loss of data itself is of course a big deal. Data is value these days. Data is money. So if data's literally lost, that's just as bad as losing real time communication.

Gregory Washington (35:40):

Oh yeah. Without question. Without question. So where's the playbook? Who's put that together? So you, you've highlighted a number of strategies. Is somebody putting that framework together? It's almost like an insurance policy we're talking about when, not if. And we're probably talking about our lifetime.

Peter Becker (36:00):

Yeah, I think that's probably true. And so, I mean, the U.S. government and DOD are definitely working on mitigation strategies for their own equipment and their own satellites. And the large communications companies are working on mitigation strategies for their networks and their communication satellites. My concern is mostly with the healthcare system because I do feel that there's a lot of vulnerability there and civilian infrastructure associated with healthcare, keeping people alive, which often relies on data transmission as well as maintaining power. So I think there's a sort of a soft spot there. It's not clear to me that there's any government entity that's looking at that particular aspect of this problem.

Gregory Washington (36:36):

I see. I see. You know, we had another astrophysicist on, Hakeem Oluseyi, who has also taught here at Mason, and he talked a lot about space exploration. If there is an event like this, what does it do for space exploration? Does it make people a little more concerned?

Peter Becker (36:54):

Yeah, that's a good question. So space exploration, the ramifications of all the solar activity kind of depends on your altitude off of Earth. So we have the space station in, so-called low Earth orbit about 300 miles above the surface of the Earth. That's low enough that it's somewhat protected by Earth’s magnetic field. But you wouldn't wanna leave astronauts up there if you knew that a huge CME was coming by because they would definitely receive harmful amounts of radiation. But they have a Soyuz capsule hanging around up there, which is sort of their lifeboat. And you do have 18 to 36 hours of warning. So you could bail out and you could get back to the relative safety of Earth. And again, Earth's fields are gonna protect you from the particles directly. You'll only have to deal with the secondary effects of the magnetic waves and electric currents, but you're not gonna actually get fried by the particles.

Peter Becker (37:41):

In orbit’s another story. Now, if you go farther out into space and you're talking about a lunar colony, well, on the surface of the Moon, you're totally vulnerable 'cause there's no magnetic field protection at all. The Moon has no magnetic field and it's outside Earth's magnetic field. So the idea would be to build underground shelters on the Moon. And I actually, I just read an article a few months ago about how they found a likely spot where there's apparently a cave on the Moon that they may land near. Because if it's already dug out as a cave, you can go in there; hopefully, there's no weird lunar creatures or anything waiting for you. . You can go first, right?

Gregory Washington (38:16):

, Hey, no worries, .

Peter Becker (38:18):

But that would actually provide natural shelter from harmful particles that we're talking about. Now, when you go and you start talking about Mars exploration, that's when things get really dicey because it takes years to get to Mars and you're in deep space, way outside Earth’s magnetic field. You can't lead shield a spacecraft like that because if you use lead, you're not gonna get it off the ground. It's not gonna launch. So you've gotta find another way to protect astronauts on the way to Mars. Once they get there again, they would probably dig underground shelters.

Gregory Washington (38:50):

And they might actually be better off than earth, right? Because it'll hit Earth first and then, right?

Peter Becker (38:55):

Yeah. And, and for that matter, it might hit Earth and not hit these astronauts on the way to Mars because the path you take to Mars would actually be a curved path through space. So a CME that hits Earth, you might actually be outta the line of fire if you're floating around in space. But the worry is that you wouldn't be, and then that's a big concern as to how we would actually protect astronauts. They'd have a certain amount of maneuvering capability. But the problem is, is the cloud of gas we're talking about is so large, you couldn't actually manually reorient a spacecraft in a direction that would get you out of that, because then you're not gonna reach Mars at all. You're gonna end up floating around in deep space forever. So they've gotta develop ways of maybe using electromagnetic fields to create an artificial magnetic field around the spacecraft. Kind of a magnetic cocoon or something might be strong enough to do that, or other types of shielding. Again, you can't lead shield the spacecraft, but you can use layers of foil, might be effective unless you're dealing with very high energy particles like those relativistic ones I was talking about, which can actually plow through thin sheets of metal.

Gregory Washington (39:58):

So as we wrap up, over the next five years, what is your handicap on a Carrington like event happening?

Pete Becker (40:05):

I think the odds are about 50-50 because, and the reason I say that,

Gregory Washington (40:09):

Those are amazing odds.

Peter Becker (40:10):

Well, the reason I say that is because after Carrington, one might ask when was the last time there was an event that was close to that, and that was actually in 2003. And it happened to be the Halloweens solar storm of 2003, almost exactly 20 years ago. And that one was just as large an event and it almost struck Earth head on, but it was kind of a glancing blow across Earth. So we had a lot of spectacular aurora and Northern Lights and some localized power blackouts, but we weren't hit directly by that. And so that was about 20 years. So my guess is that an event like that, that directly strikes Earth isn't really that unlikely to happen in the next five to 10 years.

Gregory Washington (40:51):

Wow. That's scary.

Peter Becker (40:53):

But again, an event that large, we would definitely survive.

Gregory Washington (40:56):

We would survive as humans. The question is, what is mankind state after that period? I'm getting on another tangent here, but this is great. It's almost like you should be having conversations now with humanist. Because the real issue is not just what happens once the solar storm hits. The real issue is what happens to society afterward and how do you manage and mitigate the aftermath? Is it gonna be a month? Is it going to be two months, right? Do you remember what happened in this society when we could not get toilet paper ? Do you remember during, during the pandemic? Do you remember what ensued for something as as mundane as that?

Peter Becker (41:43):

Right. Yeah. You're absolutely right. And you kind of alluded to this earlier too, in our conversation when you're talking about radio communication, loss of communication, what could happen to society. And I think we're at an especially delicate time now because of the rise of conspiracy theories in general right now. And the kind of the breakdown of rational human thought or American thought anyway,

Gregory Washington (42:02):

Without question. The breakdown of rational thought and the breakdown of understanding and belief in science.

Peter Becker (42:08):

Yes. Yes. Right. Exactly. So if you think about it, a communications internet blackout in a context like that, again, with the country awash in more guns than there are people in this country.

Gregory Washington (42:20):

And imagine what would people do if they couldn't get ahold of their social media for a month. This will be catastrophic for some folk.

Peter Becker (42:26):

Yeah. I have to agree. We can only hope that maybe a better spirit will actually prevail if they're not able to read the conspiracy theories on social media during the blackout. Who knows? It might actually be returned to a simpler time when we spoke more directly to our neighbors and actually understood each other eye to eye.

Gregory Washington (42:45):

It would definitely put you in a more localized setting for communication and engagement.

Peter Becker (42:50):

So that could be good. Maybe. I guess that's a good way to end on a bright note at least.

Gregory Washington (42:55):

Yeah, end on a bright note, . Well, thank you. That is going to wrap things up for our Access to Excellence. Thank you, Peter. Peter Becker is a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at ��AV's College of Science. I am Mason President Gregory Washington saying, until next time, stay safe, Mason Nation.

Narrator (43:20):

Learn more about the Access to Excellence Podcast

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Podcast - EP 52: The tension between war, justice, and peace

Damian Cristodero — Mon, 11 Sep 2023 13:56:10 +0000

Podcast - EP 52: The tension between war, justice, and peace Damian Cristodero Mon, 09/11/2023 - 09:56

Professor Karina Korotelina joins Mason president Gregory Washington in the studio to discuss conflict analysis and resolution on this episode of the Access to Excellence podcast.

Photo credit:

Cristian Torres/��AV

Karina Korostelina, a professor of conflict analysis and resolution in Mason’s Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution, conducts research with global implications that not only applies to countries and groups in conflict but societies as well.

She tells Mason President Gregory Washington that Ukraine’s war with Russia, at its end, will present enormous problems with the reconciliation of people and territories. A look behind the scenes at Korostelina’s remarkable research and what it tells us about human nature and how we can find peace after conflict.

_{The study was an analysis of 15 peace processes across the globe. What I found, in addition to many other factors, was that if a nation creates multicultural, or civic — based on connection to the state — identity, then peace processes sustained. If not, if a country promotes an ethnic concept of national identity, peace processes fail.”}

Listen to this episode

Explore the Carter School for Peace and Conflict

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Podcast — EP 62: What are the chances of intelligent life beyond Earth?
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Podcast - EP 51: Nikyatu Jusu is elevating the horror genre

Damian Cristodero — Fri, 04 Aug 2023 17:18:38 +0000

Podcast - EP 51: Nikyatu Jusu is elevating the horror genre Damian Cristodero Fri, 08/04/2023 - 13:18

Nikyatu Jusu

Nikyatu Jusu, an assistant professor of directing and screenwriting in ��AV’s College of Visual and Performing Arts, talks to Mason President Gregory Washington about her movie “Nanny,” which won the grand prize at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival, and why the horror genre is not all “jump scares.”

Just as often, she says, the monster is a commentary on human nature and the way we treat each other and ourselves. A fascinating conversation with this gritty, street filmmaker who went from studying biomedical engineering to putting non-traditional protagonists into fantastical worlds.

^{And there is a genre called elevated horror. There are many other euphemisms for elevated horror, but you're not getting those paint by the numbers. Jump scares in elevated horror. It's always about something besides the monster, like the monster is usually something that is commentary on human nature and the ways that we treat each other and the ways that we treat ourselves.}

^{Nikyatu Jusu}

Listen to this episode

Explore the College of Visual and Performing Arts (CVPA)

In This Episode

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Podcast Ep 60 - Marking a decade of success at Mason Korea
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Podcast Ep 59 - Cybersecurity and the global threats of tomorrow
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Read the Transcript

Transcript: Episode 51: Nikyatu Jusu is elevating the horror genre

Narrator (00:04):

Gregory Washington (00:27):

We like to talk here at ��AV about how grit and audacity are two of our core principles. My guest today is the true epitome of that. Nikyatu Josu is an assistant professor of directing and screenwriting in Mason's College of Visual and Performing Arts and is one of the industry's most up-and-coming filmmakers. Her debut film Nanny, which you can see on Amazon Prime, is about a Senegalese woman working in New York trying to raise money to bring her son to America. It was the first horror film and only the second film directed by a Black woman to win the grand prize at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival. She wants to establish herself as a filmmaker who is centering non-traditional protagonists in these fantastical worlds because she believes in creating things that we haven't seen live in action. Nikyatu Jusu, welcome to the show.

Nikyatu Jusu (01:27):

Oh, what an intro. Dr. Washington . That was amazing. Thank you for having me.

Gregory Washington (01:33):

There's a lot to talk about. First of all, I've seen the film Good. , everybody out there who hasn't seen it. You should. It is an excellent film. It really is, thank you. That's a non-traditional film, right? Mm-hmm. , it has a flow of this whole genre of these African movies. Mm. Come because of Netflix and the like. They've brought lots of Nigerian films here. Yeah. But you can tell it has an American touch to it. Mm-hmm. , then it connects the spiritual aspect, almost like Beloved.

Nikyatu Jusu (02:03):

Oh, ooh.

Gregory Washington (02:04):

I don't know if that's negative or positive.

Nikyatu Jusu (02:06):

No, that's very positive. Tony Morrison Obsessed. We need a remake of that film. If anybody has to do it, I would love to be the one to do it. There you go. So that's such a compliment. Thank you.

Gregory Washington (02:17):

This release date was January 2022. So that means you shot during Covid, right? Mm-hmm. . So what was that like and how did that complicate the process?

Nikyatu Jusu (02:24):

Yeah. We shot Nanny on one of my sabbaticals. I'm almost, I'm running out of sabbaticals at the peak of Covid all over New York. So we shot in Brooklyn, we shot in Harlem, we shot in the city in Manhattan around the Tribeca area. And it was so challenging because we still didn't have a grasp on Covid. And so everything was changing in real-time. There were big gazillion-dollar productions that were getting shut down next to me, you know? And we were a micro-budget independent film, just gritty shooting in the street. And we made it to the other side, which is such a blessing. We used to say that once you finish shooting the film's last day of production, you can celebrate. But these days you can finish a film and it still gets buried in the industry. And so I knew I wasn't in the clear yet. So we went right into editing. I took maybe three days off from a 28-day averaging, 14-hour day shoots in the city at the peak of the summer peak of Covid, directing under a mask all day. And just sprinted into the editing process, post-production process, sprinted into submitting our film to some of the top festivals as we were still cutting the film and got into Sundance. And it's been history since

Gregory Washington (03:39):

It is classified as a horror film, right? Yes. But look, I didn't see it that way. To me, it had a lot to do with immigration. Mm-hmm. , the cultural differences between immigrants and how they're treated. Mm-hmm. , not too long after I saw that movie, I was actually in New York City and I was in an Uber headed to the airport and it stopped right at a park. It was in the middle of the day. Mm-hmm. and inside the park there, all of these young children playing and all of them. I mean, it had to be at least 25 kids in this park. Right. Um, all had nannies.

Nikyatu Jusu (04:15):

Yeah, yeah.

Gregory Washington (04:16):

And I looked at it and I immediately thought about the food. Right. That's good. So, so you have that immigration piece mm-hmm. . And it was this deep spiritual piece in the end, the entity that was supposed to be scary. Mm-hmm. actually was more spiritual.

Nikyatu Jusu (04:35):

Yes. Yes. Dr. Washington.

Gregory Washington (04:37):

And there was a benefit to the

Nikyatu Jusu (04:39):

Protagonist, Aisha protagonist

Gregory Washington (04:41):

In the movie. Right. Yeah. And, and it was a love story. Mm-hmm. , we had those pieces connected to it. The one thing I did not get from that film was horror.

Nikyatu Jusu (04:50):

Was horror. First of all, thank you for seeing all the things that you saw. I mean, everything you said in terms of spirituality and some of the themes, this is a cross-genre film, meaning there are many genres kind of crammed into one film. And most of the films that I have reverence for are non-American films. Even though you said that, I have a lot of, I think compared to seeing African films, it feels very American. But if you watch a lot of South Korean films or German films or Eastern European films, they get a lot more leeway to make films that are hard to pigeonhole into one genre. And there is a genre called Elevated Horror. There are many other euphemisms for elevated horror, but you're not getting those paint by the numbers. Jump scares in elevated horror. It's always about something besides the monster.

Nikyatu Jusu (05:41):

Like the monster is usually something that is a commentary on human nature and the ways that we treat each other and the ways that we treat ourselves. So I think about filmmakers like Aria Aster who made Hereditary. I think about Rosemary's Baby, I think about Jordan Peele's Get Out, and we don't have those jump scares. Like you're not waiting to jump, but you do feel a sense of dread, a sense of tension that kind of gradually rises. And those are the types of films that I really love. The Wailing is a South Korean film that is considered elevated horror, and Train to Busan is a zombie film. South Korean film is a brilliant commentary on humanity and who is actually the monster. And so when I made Nanny, I knew I was going to get pushback, especially because we haven't seen a protagonist like Aisha in Elevated Horror.

Nikyatu Jusu (06:35):

You know, we've seen The Witch, which was a really subdued, grounded, contained American elevated horror film. And so there's a whole canon of work that I think about when I think about the way that I approached Nanny. And so all of these influences inform my approach. So when Blumhouse was the one who purchased Nanny, 'cause we were one of the few films who premiered at Sundance with no marketing, no distribution, super small, gritty indie film. We were waiting, even though we were in competition, we were waiting to get purchased by a studio because we didn't have it at the moment. So when Blumhouse was brave enough to take our film on, I was like, oh God, this is gonna attract all these like film bros who are expecting paint-by-the-numbers horror, which this film is not,

Gregory Washington (07:22):

Is not.

Nikyatu Jusu (07:24):

All my press run. I was dealing with having to spend a lot of time talking through how this is still within the horror canon but fits into a more experimental, grounded iteration of horror. I just learned to have references up my sleeve because it see the pushback on, and this is not from you, Dr. Washington, but there was a lot of racial tension around our film 'cause most of the reviewers who you're exposed to when you reach a certain quote-unquote pedigree of filmmaking, most film reviewers are White men still overwhelmingly. And so engaging my film, they were forced to engage it. One, because we screened in competition at Sundance, and two, we won the grand jury prize and we were the first horror film to win it. And so when you're the first horror film to win it, you're going to be under a microscope in terms of are you truly a horror filmmaker. Is your film truly a horror film? What is a horror film? It's a good dialogue to have.

Gregory Washington (08:22):

For those of you out there who don't know, I think we should talk a little bit about your personal story. Okay. , it kind of borders his mind a little bit. You took a different path. So you grew up in Atlanta. Mm-hmm.

Nikyatu Jusu (08:33):

Born and raised in Atlanta,

Gregory Washington (08:35):

Daughter of Sierra Leone and immigrants. Yep. In a household, you've described as one of voracious reading. That being said, you went to Duke University to study biomedical engineering. Yes. Yes. . When I saw that, I was like, yes. That's what I'm talking about. Right. . I hate to see the field lose.

Nikyatu Jusu (08:54):

Oh listen, I have so much reverence for engineers.

Gregory Washington (08:57):

But as a humanist, yeah. Recognize your calling. A lot of people don't realize that in my own personal life, English was one of my first loves. I came. Yeah. I love poetry. And the old Canterbury Tales, , Edgar Allen Poe,

Nikyatu Jusu (09:12):

He was onto something, wasn't he? Edgar Allen Poe that he was, all his stuff is horror, but it's existential and it's psychological. And he's a good reference actually.

Gregory Washington (09:22):

, I hear you. . So at some point in time in your life, you made the switch from biomedical engineering. How did you get into film?

Nikyatu Jusu (09:30):

I've had a very winding trajectory. So I pivoted my sophomore year of college. It didn't take me long. I got to do engineering. And I think when you excel in high school in every subject, it's hard to identify what your actual passion is. This isn't a humble brag. I'm here for a reason. I excelled across the board in high school, and in school in general. And so I was just kind of going through the motions. At some point I was like, okay, I'm good at all these things, but what do I actually get excited about? And when you have immigrant parents, as you mentioned, whether you're an Indian parent, an African parent, or an Asian parent, I don't think that immigrants of Black and Brown cultures compare notes enough. Because education is key, right? Education is always top of the totem pole priority. And you better be getting a degree in something where you're gonna make money on the other side of this degree.

Nikyatu Jusu (10:24):

African parents don't wanna hear about the arts, they don't wanna hear about creative writing. Good job. You got an ‘A’ in creative writing. But how's that physics course doing? How was the intro to biology 101? So I was pushed really hard by my immigrant parents. And I appreciate that because I know it stems from love, but it also stems from fear. It stems from a fear of not knowing how their child's life is gonna turn out. Mm-hmm. . So I never took it as something that was a slight on my humanity, although at the time there was a lot of pressure on me. So sophomore year of Duke, I stumbled into a screenwriting class and it fulfilled an English requisite. I mean, you mentioned English, even in engineering, you had to fulfill the English requisite.

Gregory Washington (11:08):

That’s right. You had to get your right general education grade.

Nikyatu Jusu (11:11):

And thank God, because I would've been

Nikyatu Jusu (11:13):

And because I would've been sitting in these engineering courses, like, oh my God, I was already going through it. So I stumbled into this screenwriting class and really superficially, I was like, oh, this is one class where I get to be around people who are athletes, who might be cool, who are not as intense as the engineering students or the science students. And so it was one part vanity, but another part, I love reading and I love writing. And I fell in love, Dr. Washington. It destabilized me so much that I had to go back to my parents and say, and mind you, this is after I had done my research, 'cause if you're gonna come to your parents and say that you're pivoting from biomedical engineering,

Gregory Washington (11:52):

Not just biomedical engineering, but biomedical engineering at Duke. At Duke. At Duke, which was court of their Pinnacle programs.

Gregory Washington (11:58):

Listen, don't remind me, please. . Okay. Although it still worked out. But I knew I had to plead my case. So I had done research on what a comparable degree would be within film literature and film is a Tide major. 'cause Duke didn't have a film major at that time. Went to, my parents, and said, this is what I wanna do. I'm really in love with this. They supported me. They asked a lot of questions, and I know my parents. So I already had all the receipts for what my pathway could look like. And my dad was like, if you're serious about pivoting your sophomore year of undergrad, we need to sit down and think about graduate school and what your terminal degree looks like in filmmaking. And again, this goes back to me being lucky and having, you had brilliant parents,

Gregory Washington (12:43):

You had good parents.

Nikyatu Jusu (12:45):

I know. Believe me.

Gregory Washington (12:47):

Before we go any further than you started off for the show, started here talking about the actor and writer strikes that are going on and . Yeah. And so you're a member of the Writer's Guild if I'm not mistaken.

Nikyatu Jus (12:58):

I am. You must have seen my tenure portfolio.

Gregory Washington (13:01):

Hadn't seen your portfolio yet. Not what's coming.

Nikyatu Jusu (13:06):

That's the only guild. Oddly enough, people are like, why are you not in the Director's Guild? Because Right. That's a whole other beast. So, but I'm in the Writer's Guild. Yeah.

Gregory Washington (13:15):

That means you are technically on strike right now. Is that accurate?

Nikyatu Jusu (13:19):

Absolutely. Yeah. Pens down, .

Gregory Washington (13:22):

, pens down, fist up, pens down. . I see you. I see, I see you. Good . So help us understand what's the real issue with Strike.

Nikyatu Jusu (13:37):

Oh, you know what? As soon as I finished the Nanny tour, the strike started, you know, so I'm educating myself because educating, I just got my Writer's Guild status after Nanny. Unions have been a mystery to me. I'm in the Writer's Guild, try to get into the Director's Guild. They're so protected for a reason. Like the hoops to get into the DGA are astronomical. But I'm educating myself because I'm very much in academia and I'm an indie filmmaker in my brain. Even though after Nanny, I've got studio projects on my slate. I'm still very much indie, gritty, street filmmaker. And so I'm still educating myself. But based on my circle, I know so many people who moved to LA after NYU grad film and just started their TV writing career ages ago. Everybody wants a fair wage. There's a lot of free labor that writers do.

Nikyatu Jusu (14:35):

Dr. Washington, take this meeting, put together this presentation. Here's a novel, here's a short story, here's a water painting. How would you adapt this to a script? And so screenwriters are constantly having to have meetings, break story, put together presentations based on their idea, a breaking story. Then we receive notes. Mm-hmm. . And so how much of this are you getting paid for? How much of this is quantified? How much of this is labor that you have enough protection around you to make sure that you're getting paid for your labor? So the strike is really essentially about being paid a fair wage in an industry that thrives based on writer's work. I mean, the springboard is the screenplay, is the pilot. Whatever you have on the page is the blueprint

Gregory Washington (15:24):

Is the writer, because they're not on the screen? Mm-hmm. , they're not seen as much by the public.

Nikyatu Jusu (15:32):

It's not sexy, it's not visible. If I had to put up a camera on my daily life when I'm writing mm-hmm. , nobody would wanna watch it. I'm literally, it's, it's

Gregory Washington (15:44):

It's writing . You're in a room if you're lucky, it's a safe space. And you're processing notes and you're interpreting what people just sent you in terms of fixing problems. But it's such a process of intellectual labor. And a lot of it happens alone in isolation. And so you turn over a draft and people just kind of cut it apart, chop it up. So I think a lot of people just don't understand what the process of writing is. So I'm excited that the strike is garnering attention to how much of this process is in the writer's hands before we start getting the sexy technology. And we're on set with the A-list actors. Something has to be on the page. Mm-hmm.

Gregory Washington (16:26):

, speaking of which, what I heard was that there's also this concern about artificial intelligence.

Nikyatu Jusu (16:33):

Mm, yes.

Gregory Washington (16:34):

That presents to writers. So I've worked in this space. Mm-hmm. , I can tell you a lot about it. I've published papers in this space.

Nikyatu Jusu (16:42):

I would like to see those.

Gregory Washington (16:44):

. They're real technical now. But the thing is, I understand artificial intelligence reasonably well. Right. Do you see it as a real danger?

Nikyatu Jusu (16:52):

So I don't know if you're familiar with Guillermo del Toro, the Mexican filmmaker. He makes fantasy, but it has horror elements. He's one of my mentors in my head and gave a really glowing review of Nanny just informally on his Twitter. But he was part of this group of writer-directors that I got to pop in and hear working filmmakers, discuss the strike and discuss fears around ai. And so I'm still educating myself on what that means, just like I am educating myself about the strike and exactly what people have been navigating. Guillermo stated something that I agree with. And as a filmmaker who's been in the industry for a while, he's older than me, he's wiser than me. He's one of the people who, when he speaks, I listen. He feels like for motion picture in terms of directors directing live action and movement, imagery that moves and imagery that you hear and feel.

Nikyatu Jusu (17:49):

There's a little ways off for AI to be a significant danger. Those of us navigating the written word and static images, photographers, graphic designers, the immediacy of the threat is more significant. And what does it mean for it to be a danger? What does it mean for AI to be a threat? Because we have different iterations of AI. Now, when you search for something on Google, AI is already pulling from the algorithm of your previous history. We already are being watched and surveilled. So me as an individual filmmaker, but also as an educator, as a professor of filmmaking, I'm curious about the ways that we harness these tools to our benefit. How do I maximize my ability as a writer, director in the realm of AI? How do I make myself even more competitive? And I think that tinkering with chatGPT individually and doing a little research, I think there are ways to harness it to maximize your working capability. Whether it's brainstorming or research. There are ways to put in prompts that really respond to you in a meaningful way that saves time when you're writing a script.

Gregory Washington (19:00):

That’s probably a good approach to take in terms of understanding how the tools are gonna be used. I don't know the field that well, but I know the, what's happening in the AI space. And I don't think you have 10 years and before you start. Right.

Nikyatu Jusu (19:13):

That makes sense.

Gregory Washington (19:14):

But you're going to start to see people utilizing tools, not just chatGPT, they're a whole host of tools now. Mm-hmm. that are out and available. You're gonna see people using tools to help you. You know, you get to a sticking point in writing.

Nikyatu Jusu (19:29):

Right. And that's where I am.

Gregory Washington (19:31):

Ideas. Right. Or you

Nikyatu Jusu (19:32):

Like, how can we harness these tools to make us more efficient?

Gregory Washington (19:36):

Right. You can write something and then feed it to the AI and have it tell you what it thinks of what you've written.

Nikyatu Jusu (19:42):

Right. And Dr. Washington, I've had a lot of intense deadlines at the peak of the strike. 'cause everybody was trying to get work in, and the execs wanted your work in ASAP. And so I had time crunches and I was like, how can I use this technology to make my process more efficient? Mm-hmm. . And there was a moment where I needed prompts and it sent me a series of responses. And one response, my instinct told me this was incorrect. So I Googled it. I did research. It was a completely wrong answer. Mm-hmm. Like referencing a whole different artist, a whole different person gave the quote, like, you would've embarrassed yourself if you were on a panel and you just regurgitated this information. And so I responded to AI in ChatGPT, and I said, this was wrong. This is actually, who said this. Immediately I got a prompt that was like, you're right. This was incorrect. Apologies for misdirecting you. And I'm like, how many people are going to follow up on responses they get and make sure and confirm that they're truthful? A lot of people aren't. And when you hold the system accountable, and I think this is my biomedical engineering background, because computers give you what humans put into them.

Gregory Washington (20:53):

They do. But that is where the real change is happening. In the early days of AI, you had all of this data mm-hmm. , that you put into the computer and it would then give you the data back that you trained it on. Right. And that was great because the more data you had, the more knowledge the algorithm had. Mm-hmm. . Now the real big jump in benefit, the real change that's happened with generative AI is that you can train the algorithm on all this data, but then ask it to extrapolate. And it does it reasonably well. Uh,

Nikyatu Jusu (21:31):

And reasonably is the word. Because

Gregory Washington (21:33):

If you went back and asked now,

Nikyatu Jusu (21:35):

I bet it has the right answer.

Gregory Washington (21:37):

Has the right answer. And that's the thing. And not only does that Yeah. But every computer in the world,

Nikyatu Jusu (21:43):

And this is why people are fighting because we need to quantify and monetize how we're educating these systems to be stronger and better to replace us essentially.

Gregory Washington (21:54):

I get it. And it's not just talk about chatGPT. You can generate images now with Dolly. Yeah. The big issue was in extras. That's what you know.

Nikyatu Jusu (22:02):

MmHmm getting people's likeness and duplicating it.

Gregory Washington (22:05):

You could put it on top of bodies anywhere.

Nikyatu Jusu (22:08):

It's intriguing. Dr. Washington, I love this stuff. I'm obsessed with this stuff.

Gregory Washington (22:13):

Don’t forget your engineering background. You may have to.

Nikyatu Jusu (22:15):

No, but that's what I'm saying. Like I still have that engineering scientific background that grounds me in fiction. I'm still really interested in this stuff.

Gregory Washington (22:24):

I want to talk a little bit about Nanny . It's, it has such depth to it and so many layers and levels. Right?

Nikyatu Jusu (22:31):

Thank you.

Gregory Washington (22:31):

What were you going through mentally? What were you thinking about? How did you come up with this story, to layer it like you did, how you developed Aisha's character? Mm-hmm. .

Nikyaatu Jusu (22:42):

Yeah. The audience does not want to know what I was going through, but definitely, I pulled from the women in my family's story. So born and raised in Atlanta, Sierra Leonian family. Domestic work is a big entry point for Black women immigrants, Brown women, immigrants, but also Black American women. It's one of the jobs that is one of the oldest occupations that have been made accessible to Black and Brown women from the inception of this country. Good and bad. It's something that is old and ancient but is undervalued because Black and Brown women's labor is undervalued. And how many of us really wanna think deeply about the woman in our home who's cooking our food and cleaning our mess, and essentially raising our children. I don't have a nanny, but I can imagine the fear of having if you're being honest with yourself, like how are you treating this person who has so much power in your domestic space?

Nikyatu Jusu (23:42):

So it was on and off for eight-ish years that I pursued this idea. And whenever I tell my students at George Mason in the FAVS program, I'm like, it wasn't eight consecutive years. It was me taking a break on this project, visiting another project that I felt like maybe would get made sooner. So stacking, stacking ideas. Not being someone who's censoring yourself. Like if there's something that draws your attention as an artist, create a folder in Google Drive, throw some articles in there and take a break from it. But constantly nurture and pour water and fertilizer into the ideas that get you excited about being an artist. Because more and more as we pursue this trajectory in an ever-increasingly destabilized, capitalistic system, you have to really care about your ideas. It's not enough to just feel like I wanna be a part of the industry.

Nikyatu Jusu (24:36):

Is this an idea that you can see through for five years? Is it an idea that you can continuously speak about in an exciting way for three consecutive years, regardless of how the industry goes? So it took a while. I started and stopped. And now that I got this entry point with Nanny, I have other ideas that I abandoned and came back to and poured into enough that are now exploding in different ways. Like I did interviews where people were like, breakout star breakout filmmaker. I'm like, breakout only if you didn't know me already. Because everyone who knows me knows that I would chip away at different ideas simultaneously to make sure that I had something that was ready to go.

Gregory Washington (25:18):

And you were working on this thing for a while, huh?

Nikyatu Jusu (25:21):

Long story short,

Gregory Washington (25:22):

You were able to get some really good people. Mm-hmm.

Nikyatu Jusu (25:26):

Amazing cast and crew.

Gregory Washington (25:30):

I'm familiar with Sinqua Wall's work.

Nikyatu Jusu (25:32):

Oh, he's gonna love to hear that. Dr. Washington. He's amazing.

Gregory Washington (25:37):

So he was on Power. I liked that. He was on the Don Cornelius whole Soul Train thing. I thought he did well.

Nikyatu Jusu (25:42):

And even though it was a short stint, you saw it. He garnered an audience. You know, I think what people don't understand is that every job matters. You garner a new audience when you take on a job like that.

Gregory Washington (25:54):

Oh, that was so cool. And Anna Diop, she played that part extraordinarily well. The quality of the individuals, the actors in the film.

Nikyatu jusu (26:04):

Thank you, Dr. Washington.

Gregory Washington (26:05):

What made you add the spiritual part to it?

Nikyaatu Jusu (26:09):

I love that you keep bringing up the spiritual. I'm very spiritual and I find that people either get it or they don't in terms of spirituality. I come from a family of people who are very immersed in Christianity, organized religion, go to church every few days. And I grew up in that and rejected Christianity. Uh, for me, I was tapped into the universe. I was tapped into how I feel, my gut, my instincts, and just receiving messages from the universe. So my father transitioned from cancer at the peak of my pre-production process. He was going through it. I was writing, we were in the process of securing financing and I was navigating grief. So this is part of what I poured into Nanny once we were greenlit. I think that sometimes if you're really tapped into the universe and spirituality, you receive these signs that keep you going even when you think that you don't have anything left.

Gregory Washington (27:10):

So I hear you now, you could tell me if this is wrong, but I'm hearing , you're gonna do MGMs Night of the Living Dead Sequel. Is that,

Nikyatu Jusu (27:17):

That’s what they say. . So again, going back to stacking projects, that's one of the projects that I'm not writing as a writer-director. It's one of the few, most of the projects that I have on my slate, I'm writing and directing. And there's a whole other screenwriter, Latoya Morgan who wrote for the Walking Dead series is writing that. So everyone is respecting each other. I'm not checking on her. She's not checking on me. I don't know if she's writing. I'm sure she's not. 'cause she's in the WGA.

Gregory Washington (27:50):

She's in the Writer's Guild too.

Nikyatu Jusu (27:51):

Oh, Latoya is very much, she's more in it than I am. I slid in, 'cause I'm a filmmaker, but she's been in rooms like writer's rooms for series. So she's paid her dues.

Gregory Washington (28:03):

So this one is kind of on the back burner until the strikes are resolved. Is that?

Nikyatu Jusu (28:10):

Everything is until the strikes are resolved, everything is on the back burner. If you're in solidarity with the workers, which I am, you know, it's easy for me, but I, I'm also not someone who has a film that needs marketing right now. So there are a lot of small, independent filmmakers, marginalized filmmakers, who can't promote the work that they worked hard on right now, 'cause the rules are not just writing the rules are like promotion. You can't promote your project, you can't do press, you can't, there are a lot of parameters that a lot of the public doesn't know. So had I been on this side of things after killing myself to make my first feature, I don't know how I would feel. So I have a lot of compassion for filmmakers who I know who toughed it out and can't promote the work that they made in the past two years because of the strike. So now if you have this amazing series on Amazon and you can't promote it, who's gonna see it? You know? And so these companies can still go back and say, we're not making diverse work. It doesn't turn over money. It is tricky.

Gregory Washington (29:16):

I understand. In Nanny, one of the most powerful moments in the film is when the lead character Aisha is asked is Rage your Superpower. Mm-hmm. Now that came from somewhere, you wrote that. So tell me about that question. Is that a question you've asked yourself?

Nikyatu Jusu (29:32):

I want to ask you, Dr. Washington, 'cause you're one of the few people who's asking me this question who I can return the question. Like, what was it about that moment that made you feel like it resonated or made you feel curious about it? Because the fact that you identified it is a big deal for me.

Gregory Washington (29:51):

The whole dynamic in the film. Okay. You have this young woman with this power that she doesn't quite realize she has. Right. She, she's clearly more intelligent than the family that she is supporting. Mm-hmm. . And that was clear to me, even the young child that she was caretaking Rose.

Kinyatu Jusu (30:11):

Yeah.

Gregory Washington (30:12):

That Rose was tearing that African food up. , you know? You know, she

Nikyatu Jusu (30:18):

Loved it.

Gregory Washington (30:18):

Oh, she did. Right. And there was a power that Aisha had that like I said, I don't know if she really realized it.

Nikyatu Jusu (30:26):

You’re right, everything you've said is accurate.

Gregory Washington (30:28):

I took it that she had a right to be angry at her circumstance, was clearly a victim of the Zip Code lottery. If you Right. For lack of a better way.

Nikyaatu Jusu (30:38):

I like that Zip Code lottery

Gregory Washington (30:39):

And, she was struggling with how she was going to use the way she was feeling. And so that wasn't her only superpower. Right. The thing that amazed me is why would rage be the one thing that was intelligence. Mm-hmm. , she was clearly attractive.

Nikyatu Jusu (30:55):

Yeah. Anna is gorgeous. When I saw her reel, I was like, I mean I'm a Libra, and Libras love beauty and as a filmmaker who's a Libra, I'm always gonna cast some people I think are gorgeous.

Gregory Washington (31:09):

Why that superpower? Because she had all, I thought she had this way of communicating. Right? Right. She could engage with this young child in ways that the child's mother could not.

Nikyatu Jusu (31:20):

Yeah, I love that. Dr. Washington. Like you gave me a lot of backstory and the moments you've identified, you are my target audience. I just navigated a lot over the course of Nanny. I navigated people who were like, oh, this sucked. It was boring, it was weird. I didn't get it. And I'm like, that's fine. You're not my target audience. Rage is something that we all have to harness good and bad. Especially if you are navigating a society where you see very clearly all the inequities and you get frustrated for everyone. I'm one of those people who even as a kid would just hone in on weird moments and spaces that I was in and wanted to root for the underdog, you know? And wanted to just always think about how we can make a more equitable society. I pull from Toni Morrison, you mentioned Beloved.

Nikyatu Jusu (32:12):

I pull from Saidiya Hartman, I pull from Ousmane Sembene. I pull from so many people, so many artists, thinkers, writers, filmmakers, painters, James Baldwin. All of them navigated rage at having seen and understood the inequities that we're navigating. But having to just fall in line and read from this script in academia. We talked about my trajectory. I went to Duke undergrad. I went straight to NYU grad film, which is a whole story in itself. Like I didn't take a break. I haven't taken a break from academia. I graduated from NYU, I made films and now I'm teaching. You know, I've been teaching while I've been a student for a long time. And so I've never had a clinical distance from academia. I've always been immersed in it in every facet. And so I'm able to use the language I need to use to articulate the inequities that I see so clearly all the time.

Gregory Washington (33:10):

Last question, what is it like to be associated with an iconic film forever? Right. You look, you won the big prize.

Nikyatu Jusu (33:18):

I did, didn't I

Gregory Washington (33:19):

You did. So what is that like? Do you walk in places?

Nikyatu Jusu (33:23):

Oh, please, .

Gregory Washington (33:24):

No, no, no. I I'm not talking about, I'm not talking about everyday fans. Right? I'm talking about people who are in the space. Mm. Know movies and the like.

Nikyatu Jusu (33:34):

Like other filmmakers,

Gregory Washington (33:36):

They come up to you and there are people who are making millions in this business

Nikyatu Jusu (33:41):

Quietly. The smart ones are quiet about it.

Gregory Washington (33:44):

They don't have that award.

Nikyatu Jusu (33:45):

Oh yeah.

Gregory Washington (33:46):

They don't have that banner.

Nikyatu Jusu (33:47):

Listen, I did an interview with the Spirit Awards, uh, film Independent. I won someone to watch. It was a big award that I won in March of this year in LA at an event where I saw a lister. Like people, you only see on the screen. I'm in the room. My table's next to anyone you can think of in this space and didn't think I was gonna win. It was me and two other really brilliant filmmakers. And I won. And I did an interview backstage afterward and they were like, how has it been? Da da da da. And I mentioned how lonely this trajectory is. It's actually immensely lonely for the reasons that you just listed. People are not coming up to you. You would think you'll be at the Oscars, right? Or the Governor's Ball or whatever. The Spirit Awards. And you're in this room of people who get it, who get what you're navigating career-wise

Nikyatu Jusu (34:39):

'cause they're actors and they're DPs and they're editors, but everyone is so in their own bubble. Especially if you're a minoritized person in these spaces. I don't think it's the most organic space where people are finding community. Most of my community that lingers are not my film school people because it becomes hyper-competitive. It's kind of like law in the sense of only a few of you graduate and will go to the top law firms. Right? Only a few of you who graduate from film school at a top-tier film school will continue to make films. Some of you will have to figure out a living that is sustainable and filmmaking is not always sustainable. So it's actually really isolating.

Gregory Washington (35:21):

That's really interesting. I never thought that.

Nikyatu Jusu (35:23):

Yeah, it's really alienating and everything hinges on financing. Like you need money to make a film . You have to really be hyper-cautious about the way that you present in public.

Gregory Washington (35:35):

No, I hear you. Well, this is a fascinating conversation. I can't wait to see what's next for you. Have my eyes . I'd like to thank my guest, Nikyatu Jusu, the professor of directing and screenwriting, and ��AV's College of Visual and Performing Arts and director of Nanny, which you can all see right now on Amazon Prime. I am Mason President Gregory Washington saying, until next time, stay safe. Mason Nation.

Narrator (36:09):

About the Access to Excellence Podcast

Podcast - EP 50: Andrew McCabe: 'I don't have any regrets'

Damian Cristodero — Wed, 05 Jul 2023 14:01:08 +0000

Podcast - EP 50: Andrew McCabe: 'I don't have any regrets' Damian Cristodero Wed, 07/05/2023 - 10:01

McCabe on teaching graduate courses at the Schar School of Policy and Government: "I have students from all sorts of different backgrounds...It really creates just a vital and interesting course of conversation."
Photo credit: Cristian Torres / ��AV

Andrew McCabe, the former deputy and acting director of the FBI, and a Distinguished Visiting Professor in ��AV's Schar School of Policy and Government, gives a masterclass on the indictment of Donald Trump under the Espionage Act, and goes deep with Mason President Gregory Washington into some of his career's most controversial and important moments.

That includes his assessment of the investigation by Special Counsel John Durham into whether the FBI should have examined whether Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign coordinated with Russia. McCabe called Durham’s report “flawed and politically motivated from the beginning.”

Listen Now:

Explore the Schar School of Policy and Government

Go to the Access to Excellence Podcast

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Podcast - EP 61: Can dirty coffee grounds be the key to clean water?
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July 5, 2024

In This Episode

Andrew McCabe

Read the Transcript

Announcer (00:04):

Trailblazers and research innovators and technology, and those who simply have a good story all make up the fabric that is ��AV - where taking on the grand challenges that face our students graduates and higher education is our mission and our passion. Hosted by Mason President Gregory Washington: this is the Access to Excellence podcast.

Gregory Washington (00:26):

You know, one of the greatest things about being at ��AV is the opportunity to hear and learn from those who not only were a part of history, but can actually help us contextualize events that are now truly and honestly shaping our lives. My guest today checks that box and then some. Andrew McCabe, the former deputy and acting director of the FBI, and a distinguished visiting professor in Mason, Schar School of Policy and Government, brings a lifetime of service within the Justice Department to the courses he teaches in National Security. McCabe was part of the investigation into the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, and he oversaw the planning and arrest of Achmed Abu Katala for his involvement in the 2012 attack on the US mission in Benghazi, Libya. His book, the Threat, how the F FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror, and Trump was called by the New York Times, a substantive account of how the FBI worked during a moment when its procedures and impartiality. Were under attack now an intelligence analyst for CNN. He is also a triathlete who was known for riding his bicycle, 35 miles , to work in Washington, D.C.. And the reality of that statement is, it's not the distance, it's actually riding on a bike for 35 miles in Washington D.C.. Some people out there know what I'm talking about. Andrew McCabe, welcome to the show. Yes,

Andrew McCabe (02:06):

Sir. Thank you so much for having me. It's a, it's a pleasure and an honor to speak to you and to talk to the Mason community, so thanks for having me.

Gregory Washington (02:14):

Well, so first and foremost, I assume from the look of you, you're still doing triathlons, is that right?

Andrew McCabe (02:20):

I stay pretty active. I haven't done a triathlon yet this year, but I actually just did a half marathon last Sunday, so a few days ago when the whole family, we went out there and did one. So I, I try to stay pretty active.

Gregory Washington (02:31):

Ah, outstanding. Is it just health? What's the challenge there?

Andrew McCabe (02:35):

Well, it's definitely health, but I think it's both physical and mental health. It's always been something that I had to have in my life, even when I was at my absolute busiest working counter-terrorism in the, in the FBI as a almost a 24 hour a day job. And I would get up at four in the morning to get the workout in or to get the ride on the stationary bike in before I went into the office, because of course, once you're there, there it's very hard to break away to do anything. But it was important to me to do that. It was also a way of keeping control over some very small part of my day and my schedule. So that was important to me as well. So I've tried to keep it up over the years. Ah,

Gregory Washington (03:12):

Very good. Very good. So for those of you who may or may not know, professor McCabe has been working at Mason for three years now, and he teaches a graduate level class on the legal framework of national security. What is it you're trying to get students to understand?

Andrew McCabe (03:29):

One of the things that I treasure the most about George Mason is their commitment to having people like me teaching students. So I am not an academic. There are so many distinguished academics here on campus. I'm not one of them. I'm more of a practitioner. And so my goal with this class is to really put my students in the room. I had the privilege of participating in some pretty significant national security conversations in the White House, in the situation room as a member of the Interagency National Security team, as it were from representatives, from all different agencies involved in things like counter-terrorism and counterintelligence issues. And so from that experience, I try to show my students how it actually works, what's the difference between the agencies, how each agency is pursuing its own agenda in that conversation, how things like personal relationships between agency heads or between the president and his national security advisor have such a huge impact on the direction and ultimate decisions and the national security area. And then we look at individual issues like, we'll spend a week studying detention and interrogation policy or targeted killing or domestic terrorism, and talk about the policy process around those issues. What's bogging them down, how different administrations have handled those persistent questions in different ways over the years. That's the insight that I hope to give them. And really, it's all about the conversations we have in class around those issues. It's, it's a great time. I love it.

Gregory Washington (04:56):

Well, I don't know if you can see me over here smiling, but what you just said, the discussion, the points that you just highlighted are the best possible advertisement for why a student should attend ��AV. This is the exact thing that we hope to bring with bringing individuals like you here to have you engage. So much of what students learn today is textbook. So much of what students learn today is theory. So little of what students learn today is application from people who actually know, for people who say, no, you can't use that theory because if you use that theory in real life, here is what will happen. That's right. Here is what can happen. And there's no better education than that. We call it experiential learning, and it is a fantastic thing. So with your experience, I think you could bring your students clearly, as you said into the room, that is a tremendous value. How do the students react to this? What do they say?

Andrew McCabe (05:56):

You know, it, it typically takes a class or two before people really warm up to the environment and understand that nothing is outta bounds with me. Mm-hmm. , I am happy to share anything I can from my own experience, and I want to hear that conflict of ideas, that conflict of approaches, because that's what happens in that room around that table in the West Wing where you literally hash your way towards a result or a decision or a policy. Those are the sorts of perspectives that you get from George Mason. Students. They are not consistently leaning in one direction politically or ethically or operationally. They are very diverse. I have students from all sorts of different backgrounds. I have maybe half the class are students who graduated from undergrad within the last two or three years. And the other half of the class are people who are in the middle of successful careers and seeking to increase their opportunities going forward.

Andrew McCabe (06:51):

People who are at the end of military careers and are looking to change their direction professionally. Mm-hmm. in that mixture. It really creates just a vital and interesting course of conversation. We have a class on active measures, and we use the example of what the Russians did in 2016 in their efforts to influence the 2016 presidential election. You know, I was obviously very involved in the FBI's response to that issue. And they can sit there and ask me, why did you, why did you decide to do this? Or why didn't you do something else? Exactly.

Gregory Washington (07:26):

And

Andrew McCabe (07:27):

I'll, I'll tell them exactly the way we thought about it then the ways I think differently about some of those things now. So it's really a process of learning for the both of us. I find it enormously helpful to me. It kind of put, uh, some of these things in a different context sometimes. So it's a lot of fun.

Gregory Washington (07:42):

Oh, oh man. And if I can go back and be a student again, this is the kind of class I'd want send. No, especially today, with the stuff we're dealing with today, how could you not want to get an understanding of the real why? Right. That's right. We get the sound bites, we hear the sound bites on both sides, but I think people in their heart or hearts know that there's something more. There's a reason why certain events happen the way they happen, and being able to talk to people in who were in the room and have that discussion in a contemporary context. Right. To me, I don't know of a better education that a student can get. I just don't.

Andrew McCabe (08:23):

And Mason students are those kind of students. They're dialed in, they read, they consume the news, they come to the table with a great background and a great curiosity, which is the most important thing. So when we talk about domestic terrorism and why does the government pursue domestic violent extremism in one way, but in not another way? And we talk about the differences that the First Amendment makes on how you investigate and prosecute people for domestic terrorism activities. And then the Biden administration releases their new framework for how to approach domestic terrorism. And we talk about it in the next class. And so we are literally debating and analyzing these policy proposals that are coming out in real time.

Gregory Washington (09:07):

Ah, I love it. I love it. So what do you find is the biggest misconception among your students about what really happens and the misconceptions they have in terms of what they think might have happened before they enter the class?

Andrew McCabe (09:22):

I think one of the most fundamental misperceptions about the policy making process is this kind of people who, who bring to that question the idea that government actually knows and has a way to solve every problem. One of the things I try to explain to my students is that these issues, no matter from what perspective you see them, these are hard, impactful problems. Right. And there are no easy answers. Every choice that you make invariably eliminates other possibilities. And there's no rule book there. Well, there, there are rule books. There's the constitution, there's some, there's some very important rules, but there's no manual that tells anyone how to decide to do these things. There's no place you can look for me in my FBI training at Quantico, or in my experience over 20 years when confronted with the issue of the Russians efforts to undermine our presidential election.

Andrew McCabe (10:21):

How do you handle that? That's not in the manual anywhere. Those sorts of questions, the easy ones, they get filtered out long before you gather in that room to make these decisions. And so you have to bring to that conversation, your own ethics, your knowledge, your understanding of history, of law, of legal authorities, and, and of course what the administration's trying to accomplish. And they put all those things together and there are still tough decisions to be made. You rarely ever get them all right. But if you go through that process in a deliberate and diligent way, factoring all those things together in the best way that you can, you can at least come to a result that you can stand up and acknowledge publicly, even if it didn't accomplish the things that you wanted. So I think that process is incredibly important.

Gregory Washington (11:11):

Oh, that's amazing. Sounds to be honest with you, a lot like being a university president these days. . I'm

Andrew McCabe (11:17):

Sure it is. I'm sure it is.

Gregory Washington (11:19):

So look, let's just jump right in. The big news recently is that former president Donald Trump, was formally charged by the Justice Department in a discovery that hundreds of classified documents were taken to his Mar-a-Lago home after he left the White House. There was a 37 count indictment, if I'm not mistaken, any person who was involved in the national security apparatus as a person who was involved in this framework, what are the consequences in the way that the former president handled these documents? And how was this different? What we saw with Mike Pence in some of the documents that he had that were discovered, uh, with Joe Biden and with the documents that he had, and with Hillary Clinton with the emails Sure. Uh, that she had, the pundits will say, ah, there's a double standard here. Because at least on the part of the two Democratic individuals who did have classified materials illegally, they were not charged. That's right. They were not paraded in front of the country. So again, in your heart or heart, you're looking at this and you say, there must be something more to the story. Can you enlighten us just a little bit?

Andrew McCabe (12:29):

Sure. There is a lot more to the story, and I think you've hit on it very well. There is, in a sort of headline perspective, when you compare these different events, these different incidents of this handling of classified material, there's a bit of a rush to make comparisons, but it's really impossible to do that until you start to drill down and understand the details of what makes these cases more or less significant and what makes them very different from each other. So let's start by talking about the actual documents that are involved in the Trump case. So over 300 documents stored at his residence club, the Mar-a-Lago Club down in, uh, Florida. We know that just from what's publicly available from the search warrant that was conducted last August, we know that those documents included top secret documents, well documents at every classification level, right?

Andrew McCabe (13:23):

Confidential secret and top secret. Top secret is the most serious classification. It means that anything classified top secret, uh, the government considers that its disclosure could cause grave harm to the US national security. But even beyond top secret, there are levels of handling restrictions on even more sensitive matters, right? SCI secure compartmentalized information, no foreign or con, all these different handling restrictions. You have some documents that were found at Mar-a-Lago that are what you call compartmented documents. So they're part of special programs that very small lists of people even have access to. These are truly some of our nation's most closely guarded secrets. And in many cases, their disclosure could lead to the loss of a collection method, right? So that's either a technical collection method, meaning we have the ability to technically capture intelligence through cyber systems or communication systems, things like that. Or they're the result of human intelligence.

Andrew McCabe (14:31):

So it's information that's given to us by individuals who we've recruited in foreign countries to provide information to us. If that information is disclosed, those people could be killed. And we can lose, not only lose a human being, which is bad enough in and of itself, but we lose the access to that intelligence. If we compromise a technical means, same thing. Our lights go out, we're in the dark, we know less about our adversary. So this is very, very sensitive information. Now, the former president has been charged with 31 counts, violations of the Espionage Act, it seems on its surface. Again, there's been a lot of hyperbolic claims about this. He has not been accused of being a spy, he's not been accused of taking this information and giving it to foreign governments. The Espionage Act is very big, and it covers all sorts of different activity.

Andrew McCabe (15:20):

Some of what it covers is the unauthorized retention of national defense information, which is the allegation that is now sitting against the former president. So very serious documents. He had them as a private citizen, not as president of the United States. He held onto those documents for over a year while the National Archives, the entity that actually essentially owns and controls all presidential papers, as soon as you are no longer president under the Presidential Records Act, the National Archives takes custody of all your papers, all your work. They are the property of the US people. So for about a year, he resisted giving these things back. He ultimately made the decision to return some of the documents, many classified and retained many more. He was served with a subpoena officially requiring him to turn over all classified material he did not do. So the government has alleged that he actively, personally conspired with another person, Walt nata, to trick his attorney into not providing the documents back to the government under the subpoena that he had received and held onto those things ultimately until his mar-a-Lago was searched last August.

Andrew McCabe (16:32):

So that's in a very kind of roundabout way, the summary of the case against Donald Trump. So let's compare him with the Mike Pence case, because that's the one that's been most recently resolved. Mike Pence undertook a voluntary inspection of his own papers. When he saw all these things happening with President Biden and former President Trump, he found a few classified documents. Not too many, I think maybe a dozen or so, I don't have the numbers exactly. His attorneys immediately contacted the Justice Department and the National Archives. He made arrangements to return those, and then he allowed the government to come in and search his residence to make sure there wasn't anything else there. Those are two very different sets of circumstances, far fewer materials. No indication that Mike Pence ever intended to deprive the government of those materials. It appeared to be more of a, a mistake or an error on he and his staff's part, and he immediately turned them over.

Andrew McCabe (17:25):

There's no resistance, no obstruction to the government's efforts to get those back without any evidence that Mike Pence had tried to deprive the government of those materials intentionally. There is essentially no criminal case there. That's why the investigation of Mike Pence ended in a declination rather than an indictment. So now let's talk about Hillary Clinton just for a second. Hillary Clinton, while Secretary of State used a personal email server rather than the one provided by the State Department, that was a poor decision, but nonetheless, that's what she did. The FBI investigated her use of that server at the request of the State Department Inspector General. We all know, uh, the basic facts. Hillary Clinton and her attorneys voluntarily went through all of her emails, which they estimated to be about 60,000. They determined which ones were work related, and therefore, state Department property turned those over about 30,000 and the remainder of the other 30,000, they claimed they were personal, and so they were retained and ultimately destroyed.

Andrew McCabe (18:29):

When the FBI came in to investigate, we of course looked through all of the 30,000 emails that were returned. We also conducted an incredibly extensive investigation to recover as many of the other emails as we possibly could, and we found thousands of those as well. From the entirety of all those emails, what we found were about 60 email conversations that included classified material somewhere around 38, if I have my numbers correct, were secret. I think there were eight to 12 or so that were top secret, about 35 to 40 that were at the secret level, and then a few that were at the confidential level. What we didn't find with Hillary Clinton's use of her private email server was any indication that she intentionally, intentionally discussed classified material in any of those tens of thousands of emails. There was no clear evidence of intent. She also cooperated with the investigation, provided us access to the emails that they had, and also to the devices that she used, the ones she still had to process that material.

Andrew McCabe (19:34):

I think it's also worth pointing out that none of the emails that we recovered from Hillary Clinton, these were not classified documents. Right. They weren't drafted with headers and footers and classified markings and portion markings on every paragraph. Those are the sorts of things that you expect to see in a classified document. This was just email conversations with her communicants that included material that we determined was probably classified. That information was probably part of a classified. I see, I see the difference document when she sent the email. So it's a very, very different set of circumstances.

Gregory Washington (20:10):

So this wasn't the retention of documents that are marked top secret

Andrew McCabe (20:15):

Gregory Washington (20:15):

That's correct. On the top and the bottom right? That's correct. There were no attachments that had this top secret stuff all over him. Is that that what you're saying?

Andrew McCabe (20:23):

That's exactly right. There was, I think, one email that had what we thought were portion markings on the paragraph. So in other words, maybe it had been cut out of a document and pasted into an email. But again, it wasn't stamped with any sort of clear classification on it. These were people who were bringing information to the attention of Hillary Clinton in the course of her duties and airing in what they were putting in this unclassified email server and in their email communications. There's no question. There was all kinds of things that they should have done differently here, but what we couldn't say at the end of the investigation was that there was any clear evidence of an intent to traffic in classified information to exchange classified information or to take classified information and put it someplace it shouldn't be. And so that's why we didn't request that the department pursue an indictment.

Andrew McCabe (21:14):

The department reviewed our findings and agreed with that. I know that many, many people disagree with that conclusion. In a free and fair democracy, people should know what we did, how we did our work. They should have the ability to criticize our decisions, our judgment to ask for explanations of these things. But what's not fair or accurate, what does not contribute to the public's understanding is to make these head headline comparisons of you didn't prosecute Hillary Clinton, so you shouldn't prosecute Donald Trump. That's not the way our system of justice works. If I rob a bank on the way home and I'm seen on video and I get arrested, I can't go into court and raise as a defense. Well, there was another bank Rob that week and you didn't arrest that guy, so you should let me go as well. It doesn't work that way. Every case is evaluated on its own facts and under the law that applies to that case. And these two cases, Hillary Clinton email investigation and the Donald Trump Mar-a-Lago documents investigation are very, very different. Okay.

Gregory Washington (22:18):

Now what about the Joe Biden, uh,

Andrew McCabe (22:20):

Case? Yeah, so that's a great question. So we don't know a lot about what they're finding in that investigation. The attorney general appointed, uh, special counsel to investigate the current president. I think that was the right call. He appointed a guy named Rob Herr, who was a DOJ official in the Trump administration. For all we know, he's been conducting his investigation very quietly because there hasn't been much public discussion about what he's found yet. I don't think we've seen any publicly available court findings. So we'll see if Rob Hur, who I know from my past experience, if Rob Hur finds reason to believe that the president or his staff violated the law and can show evidence to prove that there are intentional violations of the law, I expect that he'll recommend an indictment. But whether or not he finds that evidence of intent, that's always the hardest thing in these document cases. People make mistakes and take things home, and then they find them, and most people try to give them back. That happens all the time. Those cases never get prosecuted because there's no evidence of intent. If they find evidence of intent here, though, I expect a charge would be forthcoming, but we just don't know yet.

Gregory Washington (23:28):

So let's talk about this a little bit and uh, little bit more detail, but from a slightly different perspective. You're hearing these attacks on government. They've been a steady drumbeat. They actually go back even before you with Comey and many of the others. Yeah. So many of these people who are running in the 2024 election against President Trump have come to his defense. They have attacked a special counsel. I've heard words like weaponization of the Justice Department. My feeling is that that is causing a certain level of distrust in a certain level of anger in many cases, against those entities that are put in place to protect and support us. What is your response to that?

Andrew McCabe (24:14):

I think you're exactly right. There is no question that a public trust in the institutions like the Department of Justice and the FBI institutions, we depend upon to protect and defend our democracy, to help us maintain this democratic experiment are under relentless attack. And the result of those persistent attacks, I think, is eroding public trust in a very concerning and corrosive way. And you're right, this is not brand new. It's not novel to hear complaints, particularly from the political community. Anytime the bureau and the department are poking into matters that impact politics, it's usually the entity, whether it's Republican or Democrat, that's on the pointy end of that investigation. That's right. That you hear the complaints from. And that's a probably a normal human reaction. And there's a certain amount of that that we've always had that I think is understandable and and sustainable. What's changed is the direct assault from the head of the executive branch that the department and the FBI experienced during the Trump administration that raised this level of attacks to something I don't believe we've ever seen before. It also strangely put the Republican party on this side of the antagonist of law enforcement and of justice and of the justice system, which is

Gregory Washington (25:39):

Never before in the history.

Andrew McCabe (25:41):

That's right.

Gregory Washington (25:42):

That's right. Never before in the history has that, at least in modern history, post-civil rights era That's right. History. Has that actually been the case? That's right. The Republican Party has always been the party in support of law enforcement,

Andrew McCabe (25:54):

Taken a lot of pride in thinking of themselves as the, as the party of law and order. So this is a very strange time for people in law enforcement. And I think that this is something that Donald Trump kind of normalized, for lack of a better word. Mm-hmm. , these routine attacks on cases, on investigations, on individuals like myself and James Comey and others have now become kind of an accepted part of the process. And with that, you now see the President's supporters on Capitol Hill, particularly in the House, are really raising that to the next level. And that's why you've, we have something like this, I don't know, awkwardly named, I guess, committee in the house, empaneled to investigate the weaponization of, of the Department of Justice, like a committee in panel to investigate what they've concluded and named their committee about, I guess if,

Gregory Washington (26:44):

Which is interesting, right?

Andrew McCabe (26:45):

Yeah. It's, uh, a bit of, uh, pre-judgment there. But nevertheless, I can tell you from my own experience in government, 21 years in the FBI, obviously working closely with colleagues in the Department of Justice, you may not like what do DOJ or the FBI is doing at any given moment. And neither entity is perfect. They both make mistakes. I made mistakes while I was there, my colleagues did as well. That'll always happen. It's an organization of human beings. But what the FBI and the department don't do is open and close and investigations to help or hurt different political parties. And I know that I may be the last person standing by myself in the forest shouting that , everyone else has abandoned that idea. But I will never give it up because across 21 years, that's just not something I ever experienced. Not in my own work and not in the people I supervised.

Andrew McCabe (27:36):

And I think that the indictment that we saw this week about the Mar-a-Lago documents case as a perfect example of that, many, many people do not like the fact that Donald Trump has been indicted. And I understand that he's their preferred candidate, their preferred leader, and those breathless, but ultimately baseless comparisons of why not Hillary? Why not Mike Pence? Why not Joe Biden don't help that status of polarization. But read the indictment. Donald Trump was not indicted for politics. Donald Trump was indicted because he had hundreds of highly classified documents in his presence. He was asked for them numerous times by different government agencies. He refused to give them back. He personally decided to review those documents and made the decision to keep them. He showed them to other people and acknowledged the fact that they were classified and that he had never declassified them. And then he deceived his own attorney to ensure that DA documents would not be returned in response to the subpoena that he had been served with.

Andrew McCabe (28:36):

That's why he was indicted. Now, you may still hope that he becomes the next president. You have every right to that preference and to express it and with your vote. But this is what the government was able to convince a grand jury of Donald Trump's peers in Florida, that there was enough evidence to prove that there was probable cause to believe that he committed these offenses. And so now we must step back and let the criminal justice system work through this issue to come to a resolution that's just an accurate, whether it's conviction or acquittal.

Gregory Washington (29:08):

It's not just about Donald Trump in the FBI in the documents. Right. I'm thinking of the time when Donald Trump and the Republican congressman who endorsed defunding the FBI and, and as it relates to this recent special counsel report that suggested that the FBI failed to uphold its mission. And that's in quotes in the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 Trump campaign. And you were acting director of FBI at the time. It's interesting. I was listening to CNBC this morning. Mm-hmm. on the way in to work, and Mike Pence brought this issue up. Can you give some feedback as to that, what happened there? What is the whole story?

Andrew McCabe (29:52):

All right. So let's talk about that special counsel report. That's the report written by then special counsel, John Durham. Mm-hmm. . Okay. John Durham. Despite his solid reputation historically, John Durham was brought in by William Barr, then Attorney General Barr, for the purpose of settling political scores for Donald Trump. Full stop. This was never a legitimate investigation. And how do we know that? Because John Durham and William Barr announced their conclusions of what they would find in the investigation at its inception, both made public comments that they thought that we had engaged in wrongdoing and that we would be, those of us involved in these issues would be prosecuted criminally. And John Durham then spent years and millions of dollars literally traveling around the world trying to prove these theories that he brought to this investigation. And none of them, he was not able to prove any of them. And the reason he wasn't, it wasn't because he didn't work hard enough or didn't spend enough money or take enough time.

Andrew McCabe (30:52):

He didn't prove those theories because they never happened. And every other investigation of our work, and there have been many, the Department of Justice, inspector General, the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is then chaired by a Republican, the work of the Mueller Special Counsel probe, every one of those investigations bore out the fact that we were correct in opening the case to investigate whether or not anyone from the Trump campaign in 2016 had coordinated with the government of Russia. And that I was correct in later adding Donald Trump as a personal subject. In that case, as we know from the Mueller report, we had information and were concerned that there might have been a national security threat, and that Donald Trump as president may have committed a federal crime, that being obstruction of justice. And you can read the Mueller report to see exactly what they found about that.

Andrew McCabe (31:46):

But all those very different investigations concluded the same thing, that we had ample reason to open those cases. The only outlier is John Durham who will say in the headline that he felt we failed to meet our mission. And when you get into the details of that report, his position is that we should have opened a preliminary investigation instead of a full field in investigation. This is an esoteric and insignificant difference that really only employees of the FBI understand. So I guess he thinks we should have opened a preliminary investigation, run that for a month, and then elevated it to a full investigation. That's great. He disagrees with our position. He has, has his right to that opinion. The end of the day, all that effort, all that time, all that money he mounted, two prosecutions, both failed. The only conviction he has to show for his efforts is that of Kevin Kleinsmith, who committed a grave error as an FBI lawyer and whose malfeasance wasn't uncovered, not by John Durham, but by the Department of Justice Inspector General. So yeah, I think as you can probably tell from my answer, I don't have any respect for that report or its author. It was flawed and politically motivated from the very beginning, and that's exactly where it ended up.

Gregory Washington (33:02):

Well, there's nothing else then for me to say about that. ,

Andrew McCabe (33:07):

I told you I'm happy to answer any question.

Gregory Washington (33:09):

No, this is, this is great. Look, let me shift gears just a little bit, because clearly you've dedicated your life to government service.

Andrew McCabe (33:19):

That's right.

Gregory Washington (33:20):

Talk a little bit about your trajectory, you know, all the way up through the time that you retired. Sure. And I guess they're near the end where we got into the politics of things. As someone who had dedicated their life to service, to then have the level of conflict between the president and the FBI, can you talk about on the tail end of that service, how did that make you feel about your actual choice to serve in that manner? Yeah, yep. And where does it leave you now? Do you have any regrets?

Andrew McCabe (33:57):

You know, I joke about this with my students. I probably, over the course of the semester, I make multiple pitches to encourage them to continue to pursue careers in government. And then I say, admittedly, I may be the worst poster child, the the worst recruiter for a career in government of, of anybody you can think of. But in other ways, I think I'm the best simply because having gone through a really hard time at the end of my career mm-hmm. , I can still sit here and tell you that I absolutely treasure every day of that opportunity, every day of that experience. And I would do it all again tomorrow. But just to kind of summarize it, I went to law school at Washington University in St. Louis, worked for the Department of Justice during the summer before my last year in law school. Developed this interest in the FBI by doing that.

Andrew McCabe (34:43):

Ultimately worked in private practice for a few years, and then went into the bureau in 96, spent the first half of my career doing criminal work in New York City, organized crime work, most actually exclusively Russian organized crime work. And then I came to headquarters in 2006 and started doing national security stuff. I didn't know a single human being in the FBI. When I entered the organization, 37,000 employees, I had the unbelievable luck to serve really at every single level that an agent can serve from coming in as just a GS 10 street agent. Mm-hmm. all the way up to being acting director in those many different positions. I had the great opportunity to see the majesty of not just the most righteous mission, I believe in this country, protecting the American people and upholding the constitution, but also to work with this incredible group of people who were all drawn to that mission and joined the organization for that reason.

Andrew McCabe (35:42):

I wouldn't trade that for the world. You know, when I left in 2018, that summer, I wrote the book that you graciously mentioned at the beginning of the podcast. And really, it was a very tough time. It was very hard on, on me and on my family, the circumstances under which I left getting fired essentially by the president having been hectored and kind of terrorized by him for months in his social media postings. And then ultimately getting fired 24 hours before I, I was supposed to retire. And with that, losing my pension and benefits and my connection to the organization and my ability really even to communicate with the friends and colleagues I put together over 21 years, it was just crushing. But writing the book forced me to look beyond that tough experience and to really appreciate the significance and the joy of the entirety of my career.

Andrew McCabe (36:36):

You know, I kind of buried myself in the work for many months, and I think that kind of got me through that summer anyway. And when I look back, I've spent a lot of time thinking about those decisions, particularly in 2016 and 17, that really built towards that sort of an OMI end. There are a few things that I think I wish we had done differently, but I don't have any regrets. The reason I, I was fired because I did what I believed was my job and my obligation to my organization and to my country. And I don't see that any differently today. And I would do the same thing again. And I think it's really important that people who serve in government, particularly at high levels, where you are responsible for the direction of your agency and and responsible for the people that you lead, you have to be willing to stand on principle and the law and your ethics.

Andrew McCabe (37:29):

And if that costs you your job because of some political nonsense, then that's okay. You have to be willing to walk away to make the right decision, the decision you believe in, and to lose the job as a result of that stance. I wouldn't do it any differently. I think presented with the same information we had then, which was limited, but very concerning. Mm-hmm. , I felt we had an obligation to open the cases we did. I knew at that time, opening a case on the president would be bring nothing but grief, , and peril. I guess I was right about that , but know

Gregory Washington (38:02):

Absolutely.

Andrew McCabe (38:04):

Absolutely. You know, I I, I wouldn't do it any differently. I understand. I really wouldn't understand. It's a privilege to be able to do those things. And you know, I still say to people they should consider, consider a career in government. It's really unlikely to happen the same way twice. So don't worry what happened to me.

Gregory Washington (38:19):

It won't happen to to you happen to you. No, I get you. I

Andrew McCabe (38:22):

Get you. But it's a great, great, great way to live. It's so incredibly fulfilling and exciting and and impactful and yeah, I wouldn't do any differently.

Gregory Washington (38:31):

Outstanding. To shift gears yet again, so we hear a lot of debate about the balance between public privacy and safety. You have described in one of your jobs as an agent in New York after nine 11 as being part of an effort to do clearance investigations on people who were detained because of their immigration status. So can you give us a thumbnail of your duties in that context, and what is the balancing act for law enforcement, especially in times of crisis between privacy and liberty? And I, and I bring this up because as a university, believe it or not, we are caught in the midst of many of these issues. Yes, we have a large foreign population here, students who come seeking an education, but there could be some who may come for more nefarious purposes. Yes. And so if you can talk a little bit about that.

Andrew McCabe (39:22):

Yeah, sure. So the post nine 11 situation I refer to in the book was I was a criminal agent on a Russian organized crime squad. I was on the SWAT team and had been detailed out to SWAT duty for about a month after, uh, nine 11. And then everybody was working the nine 11 case in one way or another. And the attorney general had essentially in a public announcement, changed the way the federal government interacted with people who were here in the United States illegally. So people who had maybe overstayed their visas or weren't here on valid kind of immigration status as a prior to nine 11, there wasn't a very aggressive enforcement effort to find those people and to deport them. But in the wake of nine 11 with, you know, almost 3000 Americans dead at the hands of a foreign terrorist group, and really the law enforcement intelligence community really kind of on their heels trying to figure out how we had missed this immense tragedy, this disaster.

Andrew McCabe (40:22):

The government went into overdrive in many ways. And one of them was that the Attorney General decided that any persons that we interacted with in the course of investigating nine 11, whether they were related to it or not, if we were out conducting an interview and we came across a person who admitted that they no longer had legal immigration status, that those people would be taken into custody and ultimately processed for deportation. But before they were deported, we would have to, and I quote, clear them for ties to terrorism. So slowly at first, but then with greater speed, people started getting detained in and around New York and in many places around the country. So the FBI, New York Field office where I was working, put together a small group of agents and said, Hey, clear these people for terrorism. And quite frankly, we didn't really a bunch of, you know, Russian OC guys, we didn't really have, uh, much of an idea how to do that.

Andrew McCabe (41:15):

So we came up with a process to run all sorts of records checks to send requests to other agencies for any information that we had about these people. And we tried to do what we had been asked to do. And it took way too long. And there were way too many people had been detained for really not doing much at all other than simply overstaying a visa. And ultimately, they were housed in places like county jails across New Jersey where the federal government had to rent space because they were literally detaining more people than we had the capacity to hold onto. And those people were treated really poorly. You can imagine being arrested and detained in the course of the nine 11 investigation and thrown into general population in a state prison. Right. These people, many of them really suffered. And we struggled to try to do what we've been asked to do.

Andrew McCabe (42:07):

And the process really held people for far too long in adverse circumstances. I ta I gave a talk recently to Masters of Public Policy students at Duke University, and we were talking about different policies and my how, my own experience trying to execute policies that were poorly thought out and in completely communicated to the people responsible for actually doing the work. And I use this as my example as one of those, how we learned things through this policy process, even as an agent on the ground in New York. So it was frustrating for us, but really much worse for the people that we interacted with. And ultimately, the whole thing was kind of shut down and there'd been a lot of litigation about it. I think you're in a tough spot here, sir, running a, a major university because tell me about it. Yeah, it's, you know, there are some legitimate threats that as the leader of a large organization with a deep investment in technology and responsible for creating and environment where academics and students can interact and benefit from open communications and sharing of work and writings and data and things like that, that's what you want at a university, right.

Andrew McCabe (43:15):

But we also know that some of our adversaries try to take advantage of that great American opportunity to take advantage of the unique talent and development and research that comes up from our major institutions. And so at the FBI, we spend a lot of time trying to counsel people like you and people in your position to try to think about things like cybersecurity and data security. And sometimes that results in investigative attention on certain individuals in the academic world. To be clear, we've had kind of an uneven history with that. There have been people who have been investigated and put through that ringer unfairly, but there have been many others who we were fortunate to find and investigate and prosecute. So that's a very tough balance. And as with every one of these questions of privacy versus security, the FBI, law enforcement, intelligence agencies are always gonna be on the side of active aggressive enforcement. That's their job. I think the hard thing is figuring out that balance of security versus privacy. Mm-hmm. is probably not something that we should leave up to the FBI or any law enforcement entity. It's something that we need our elected representatives to weigh in on. And I don't think we've gotten nearly enough leadership from them on that count.

Gregory Washington (44:36):

So as we wrap up here, speaking of safety, in the first five months of 2023, there were 25 mass shootings in the US and that breaks out to about and shootings in which four or more people were actually killed. Okay. And so, according to a database by the Associated Press USA today in Northeastern University, that is a record setting pace. It is. How much of your time at the FBI was consumed with gun violence?

Andrew McCabe (45:03):

An enormous amount. I mean, what you've cited is just one more symptom of a situation that we have in this country as a direct result of the fact that we are a wash in guns. We are the only nation on earth that has 120 guns for every hundred people. There are more guns in this country than there are citizens in that statistic. The second highest nation guns per hundred people on Earth is the Falkland Islands at 60 per hundred. And I mean, do we really compare ourselves with the Falkland Islands? Wow. Third behind the Falkland Islands is Yemen. So it's hard to get people to understand how many more firearms there are in this country. And I know that we have a long history with independence and freedom, and those concepts are for many people intertwined with their constitutional right to bear arms. But it's also important that we recognize some other things.

Andrew McCabe (45:59):

I think the fact that we have so many guns in this country has a negative impact on many other things that we suffer with not just mass shootings, but violent crime in general. Homicides in this country, gun homicides in this country are off the charts higher than other comparable nations. Suicide by firearm in this country is much, much more prevalent than it is in comparable nations. Yes. And mass shootings, obviously no place else on earth experiences, mass shootings the way that we do here, and I would even argue many of the problems that we currently have, some of the things that we are alarmed about in law enforcement are directly traceable to the fact that law enforcement officers today know that when they go out to a domestic call to pull somebody over on the street, the chances are pretty good that the people that they're interacting with are armed. And when you bring that sort of assumption to your work day to day, you are elevating the likelihood that police officers are going to feel like they need to draw their guns more quickly. That's right. And resolve these situations with gunfire rather than deescalation. So I think there are many things happening in this country that are to some degree, impacted and accelerated by our state of firearms ownership.

Gregory Washington (47:23):

No, I get it. You've been hearing about artificial intelligence and the powers of artificial intelligence as a scientist, as a researcher, let me draw a connection from you and get your reaction. Sure. So in a recent Texas Mall shooting in which eight people were killed and seven others were wounded, the shooter was a, out of the military for mental health issues. Yep. B frequented social media platforms that praise Nazism and white supremacy, and C, he was able to buy his guns legally. One of the things that we do as a researcher in artificial intelligence is we let the data highlight patterns. Yes. And from a practical standpoint, I believe that while it might be difficult for law enforcement to draw the DOT connections Yep. To an individual like that, I think it's reasonably easier for computers to do so, especially with the need for artificial intelligence.

Gregory Washington (48:23):

Is this something that's plausible? Is this something that could be used to help law enforcement? Because what happens when there's a mass shooting, we go through and we do the background immediately, get the background of the person, and most times there are red flags that are in abundance. And so if we're not gonna do anything with the guns, and I get why people avoid that issue and don't want to, we got other tools. How about using some of these other tools to help us from the perspective of at least helping people have an understanding of where the actual threats are.

Andrew McCabe (48:55):

There are many more opportunities with artificial intelligence than, certainly than I'm capable of, of imagining. And I, I think you've honed in on what's most relevant about ai, and that is our cyber system's ability to aggregate data and analyze it for those sorts of commonalities trends. Mm-hmm. that would take human beings much longer to do. And so there's got to be some ways to move that technology forward in a productive way. On this issue, as always, the problem is what can you possibly do with those trends, those suggestions, that targeting, can you use that data and those conclusions to deny people access to firearms? Probably not. Mm-hmm. in the way that firearms laws are currently written, probably not even just on the mental health factor. The, uh, excluders the things that can cause you to fail the background check and therefore be prohibited from purchasing a firearm. The mental health prohibit requires an adjudication of mental defective. So you act have to actually have been essentially involuntarily committed by a court before your mental health issues prohibit you from buying a firearm. Okay. It's not simply enough to be depressed, alienated, looking at questionable stuff online. Sometimes those are helpful indicators to investigators. Right. I get, but the question on the policy level, we need to determine what are we gonna do with that data and with those conclusions. And right now, we're not really in a good position to do much different.

Gregory Washington (50:33):

No, I get you. But, and you bring up something else. Right. The assumption that people make is, oh, well, it's a mental health problem, but the way you just described it Yeah. You're way down the line of a diagnosis of mental health

Andrew McCabe (50:47):

That's absolutely

Gregory Washington (50:48):

Right. In order to stop you from buying a gun. Right.

Andrew McCabe (50:50):

Right. We say that about mass shooters, like, well, this person clearly was suffering with mental health issues. Sure. But it's almost irrelevant,

Gregory Washington (50:58):

Right. Because those mental health issues wouldn't deny you from getting a firearm in the first place. Absolutely not. What I think I

Andrew McCabe (51:04):

Hear you saying, absolutely not, not unless you'd been in front of a judge and they had sent you to a, sent you to a facility and issued an order along those lines.

Gregory Washington (51:12):

Okay. So last question. Yep. What would you say was the lowest and highest points of your FBI career?

Andrew McCabe (51:18):

, you saved the hardest one for last . Oh, wow. Um, I had so many high points. There's no way I could pick just one. Mm-hmm. first big arrest as a new agent in New York. My first big case was a organized crime case. And I remember wrapping those guys up after a long investigation and working with informants and making confidential recordings and things. I remember what that felt like to this day. I remember going as deputy director and swearing in my first class of new agents my career. I was very lucky. My career was filled with incredible moments that I'll never forget. Lowest point, I, it's pretty obvious walking out on a cold day in January when, uh, I'd essentially, essentially been kind of thrown out of my, my job before I was fired in March. That was incredibly, incredibly sad. And I was, I was very sad and humiliating and, and just on a kind of a sickening level. So I remember that as well. I wish I could forget that one, but , unfortunately, I can't. But you know what, like all things you move on. And I've been very fortunate to have recreated now a new life after the FBI. I get to still talk about and analyze law enforcement and intelligence issues that fascinate me. I get to teach these wonderful students at George Mason,

Gregory Washington (52:39):

And that's what I love there. I

Andrew McCabe (52:40):

Mean, it's all good. It all comes around. If you work hard enough and just keep shooting at what makes you truly happy, then uh, things work out. Uh,

Gregory Washington (52:47):

Outstanding. Outstanding. Well, Andrew McCabe, we are truly thankful for you being a part of the conversation here at ��AV. I am President Gregory Washington saying, until next time, stay safe, Mason Nation.

Announcer (53:04):

If you like what you heard on this podcast, go to podcast.gmu.edu. For more of Gregory Washington's conversations with the thought leaders, experts, and educators who take on the grand challenges facing our students graduates in higher education. That's podcast.gmu.edu.

Podcast - EP 49: The metaverse, crypto, and the evolution of the internet

Damian Cristodero — Fri, 02 Jun 2023 17:37:33 +0000

Podcast - EP 49: The metaverse, crypto, and the evolution of the internet Damian Cristodero Fri, 06/02/2023 - 13:37

What exactly is the metaverse? Some say it is the future of the internet — a broad shift in how we interact with technology, including new and more ways to collaborate in virtual worlds.

Others say it creates even more infringements on privacy and creates chances for identity theft. Foteini Baldimtsi, an assistant professor in ��AV’s Department of Computer Science, and James Casey, an associate professor in Mason’s Computer Game Design program, talk to Mason President Gregory Washington about what the metaverse is, and could be, and how the volatile world of cryptocurrency fits in.

Foteini Baldimsti and James Casey join Mason president Gregory Washington in the studio to discuss the imprint the metaverse is making on society and our future in this episode of the Access to Excellence podcast.
Photo: Cristian Torres / ��AV

Listen to this episode

Read the Transcript

Episode 49 Transcript:

Narrator (00:04):

Trailblazers and research innovators in technology, and those who simply have a good story all make up the fabric. That is ��AV. We're taking on the grand challenges that face our students graduates in higher education is our mission and our passion hosted by Mason President Gregory Washington. This is the Access to Excellence podcasts.

Gregory Washington (00:26):

So what exactly is the Metaverse? Some say it's the future of the internet, a broad shift in how we interact with technology, including new and more ways to collaborate in virtual worlds. Others say it creates even more infringements on privacy and chances for identity theft. My guest, I hope you will help us understand what the Metaverse is or will be and how the volatile world of cryptocurrency fits in with all of this. So, James Casey is an associate professor in ��AV's computer game design program, and he's the associate director of the Virginia Serious Games Institute. He has more than 12 years of experience developing video games and has extensive knowledge of the production and live management of Gaines, and has worked on titles from Mythic Entertainment, electronic Arts, and EA Mobile. Foteini Baldimtsi is an assistant professor in Mason's computer science department. She received a career award, which is one of the highest awards that could be given to a young faculty member from the National Science Foundation in 2022. And her research is centered around cryptographic protocols to help prevent infringements on privacy and identity theft. To both of you. Welcome to the show.

James Casey (01:54):

Thank you.

Gregory Washington (01:55):

So let's start talking very, very high level here and then we'll work our way down into the weeds into specifics. Jim, let's start with a basic definition. What is the metaverse?

James Casey (02:08):

Uh, of course you start with the hard question, right? So the metaverse is interesting because depending on who you ask, the definition changes. So some people, it's just a virtual world where you inhabit a avatar and you do stuff that mimics real life to some degree. You know, games and other things out there already do that. But to a lot of folks, it's a little more broad. It's like you have a computer and then you have the internet connected everybody's computer, right? The metaverse is this idea that it's a virtual world where people have avatars and it becomes their virtual life and it takes over and you can work, you can play, you can buy, and it's all interconnected and persistent and all these cool buzzwords. So depending on who you ask, it's somewhere within that kind of spectrum of what we currently have to what we want to have. And so the metaverse is this broad great idea that we're still developing.

Gregory Washington (03:09):

Is it the same thing or different from Web 3.0?

James Casey (03:13):

Another great question. Basically, we're in Web 2.0. I could go into the history of web one versus two and three, but web three is just really the iteration of the internet that we will see in the future to some, this includes blockchain and cryptocurrencies and some of the other stuff we'll talk about today. Some people include AI and machine learning as a big part of that, uh, and to some people as well. The idea of virtual reality of a metaverse is kind of the evolution of the internet. Whether that becomes specifically Web 3.0 or somewhere in the future still is to be seen. But Web 3.0 definitely includes some of the same things that people are looking from in the metaverse.

Gregory Washington (03:57):

So Fonteini, you focus in cryptography. Cryptography, yeah. And its connection to privacy. Correct. And these two worlds are colliding at an enormous rate. Let me highlight what has happened and then let's talk about it a little bit. Mm-hmm. , I'm gonna give you a little story, and then I want you all to think about how these worlds connect in a very interesting way. So my son is a junior at Ohio State, just completed his junior year, and he came home and decided, okay, let's spend some daddy son time. So I'm gonna take him and we're gonna go hang out and go to a restaurant and just talk. And so on the way there, he's on his phone the whole time, but I see him and he's using some app, and then he'll press an icon and then he'll listen to it, and then he'll just crack up laughing and then he will, you know, and so I said, Hey, you know, you're not talking that much. Tell me what's going on. So he says, dad, it's a new app where you can send anyone an actual voicemail from a famous person. And I said, what do you mean? So he lets me listen to him. Somebody had sent him a message from Drake and it was Drake's voice, but Drake wouldn't be talking to my son like this. Right.

James Casey (05:14):

. Right,

Gregory Washington1 (05:15):

Right, right.

James Casey (05:16):

Good old deep fake talking.

Gregory Washington (05:18):

Oh my goodness. It was phenomenal. Yeah. And he kept letting me hear all these voices and I, I'm sitting here listening, I'm like, oh my goodness. I said, so you can send me a message from anybody except from anybody. I said, send me one from Kim Kardashian. .

Foteini Baldimtsi (05:32):

James Casey (05:34):

Nice.

Gregory Washington (05:35):

Anyway, we were just joking. Right. But you send a message, right? You can send it from anybody. I say, really? And then I start thinking, well, if you're on a metaverse mm-hmm. And now any public figure's voice that's online, that can be synthesized and then recreated by a computer and then sent out anywhere in a virtual world, you don't know who you're talking to. Mm-hmm. .

James Casey (05:59):

No,

Gregory Washington (05:59):

Absolutely. Because there's somebody behind it typing the words. And what's being mouthed is the voice of a famous person. Yep. You could actually think you're in a virtual house with Drake. Oh, sure. And it can be Jake from State Farm, right? Absolutely. You can.

James Casey (06:15):

Yeah. You could even have avatars that look exactly like the celebrity, almost realistic. You could even have the stuff you type into the computer be adjusted so that it actually sounds more like the person that would be speaking. So it would still …

Gregory Washington (06:32):

No, that's what I'm talking about. I mean, that's what this,

James Casey (06:34):

Not, not even just changing the words to sound like it, but I mean, you could actually change the word, like you could put in what you wanted to say, like the gist of it. Right. And then it could actually modify the words to be more in the lingo or more in the, the way that something

Gregory Washington (06:47):

Like, oh, the way the person, the way the person.

James Casey (06:49):

So, it's not just, oh, hey, I'm a stuffy guy and I'm trying to be Drake. No, it's actually, this is what I want him to say. And then Drake says it using his own kind of cadence, his own lingo, throwing in some stuff that Drake might say. And you could do a whole lot with it to really make it convincing. I mean, now we're veering into the AI, the machine learning aspect of these things.

Gregory Washington (07:10):

Well, but I think that's where this thing is going. So what are the privacy concerns with this ?

Foteini Baldimtsi (07:15):

Well, um, the good news are that cryptography can actually help in situations like this, because no matter what AI can do, it can only simulate public information. So the way we speak or the way we write is something that is public, but the way that we can actually secure our communications or authenticate ourselves in a secure way relies on secrets that we shouldn't be making available. This essentially says that in order to authenticate in the future is not enough to just call someone and then claim that it's us and people believe us based on our voice and our tone. But we might actually have to provide more than that. That actually relies on cryptographic secrets.

Gregory Washington (07:58):

Oh man, this is getting hot. I love it

James Casey (08:01):

It's like you had to watermark your voice, right? You have to watermark your

Gregory Washington (08:04):

You have to watermark your voice. This is exactly the point.

James Casey (08:07):

In fact, some internet creators have been creating fake Drake and, you know, Kanye songs.

Gregory Washington (08:13):

Oh no. This is actually, if you go online right now, Spotify Yep. Has taken down Yep. Thousands. Yes. Not a few songs. Yes, absolutely. Thousands of songs Yep. That were developed by bots. Yeah. But made to sound like real artists. Exactly. Who we all know and love. Thousands of songs have been removed. I couldn't believe it.

James Casey (08:36):

Some artists I've seen, like, I think it was Grimes, the previous other half of Elon Musk, who is like, Hey, if you make something using my voice, I just want 50%. Right. And other ones are like, yeah, no, don't use my stuff. Right. . But yeah, it opens up a whole new level of …

Gregory Washington (08:53):

But are you even using, so if me and you are talking mm-hmm. and I impersonate Drake's voice Yep. And I'm talking to you in that context. Well, there is no mm-hmm. issue there with copyright or anything. And even if I sing like I, you know, I sound like him or anything like that, as long as I'm not using his music or anything like that, it's just me. I, I listen to artists that sound like other artists all the time. You listen to, oh, he sounds like.

James Casey (09:24):

I would argue yes and no, because it depends on what you say as Drake. So we should have done this. That would've been actually really cool if you had come on and used a voice changer. Right.

Gregory Washington (09:33):

I should have done that. I should've done that. That would've been really cool. Actually have Drake interviewing you.

James Casey (09:38):

If you did not, if you did not say you were using Drake's voice and you weren't saying, oh, this is, you know, Dr. Washington, but I'm using this voice. If they just thought for some reason and we didn't correct them, that I was talking to Drake, and then you as Drake were to say something very controversial that would get the real Drake in trouble, then we fall into some issues because then you are basically acting as Drake and defaming him and or liable whatever the correct.

Gregory Washington (10:07):

I get it. But this is the point. The messages that my son let me listen to. Oh, I'm sure they were bad. Were of stars cussing people out. I mean, basically in their own voice. You'd be like, whoa, I'm shut.

James Casey (10:20):

Drake curses. Come on, . Have you heard his songs? Come on?

Gregory Washington (10:23):

Yeah. But, you know,

James Casey (10:25):

Not in the way, but what,

James Casey (10:27):

But what about Joe Biden? Okay. Yes. So you get Joe Biden calling you and he's just ripping you a new one. Oh. And it's because they have synthesized his voice and put it on.

James Casey (10:37):

There are some,

Gregory Washington (10:38):

You know what I'm saying?

James Casey (10:38):

There's some actually great videos where they have Biden Trump, and I think Clinton all like playing Call of Duty on the same team. I like and ripping each other. Oh man. And it is the funniest thing, and it's just, it's just taking sound bites and stringing them together. And not even, not even in the sophisticated way. Right. But, and it's just, it sounds so funny, but you know, it's a joke and you know, with parody in that case. That's right. But will you always be able to tell that?

Gregory Washington (11:06):

And that is the, I think that's, to me, that's the quintessential privacy challenge. Mm-hmm. because, and you brought it up, Fontin, if you don't have a way of authenticating mm-hmm. mm-hmm. , who a person is now, all of the tools that we have traditionally used on listening to a person's voice or to their lilt and their tone and, and how they speak, all of that can be digitized. All of that can be replicated. So, you know, I can receive a phone call from my son right now where he's asking me to send him, yeah. 150 bucks or 200 bucks so I can do abc or I just got in an accident, I need blah, blah, blah. Mm-hmm. . Yeah. And it cannot be him. Absolutely. So, and then when you get in these virtual worlds where there are two or three layers behind the disguise, so you think you're interacting with a person and you're interacting with somebody else, or you're actually interacting with a bot. Yep. Well, I had a very normal conversation with chat G B T the other day, and it seemed normal to me. You know, bill Gates says the Metaverse is already here. Right. But then the guy whose company took the name Meta mm-hmm. , Mark Zuckerberg turns around now and says, oh no, it's still five to 10 years away. . So, so who's right?

James Casey (12:26):

Well, and Business Insider, if you read them like the last week, they said the Metaverse is dead. So it depends on who you ask. Right? If we go with this grandiose vision of everything connected, like the movies Ready Player One, or the Snow Crash book, or these fantasy, you know, ideas of essentially taking the internet, but making it into a virtual world where everything's connected and blah, blah, blah. And we can go into specifics, and I know later in the, the conversation that is still years away and there's a lot of technical reasons. Why do we have the lower end versions of Metaverses? Sure. We've got people claiming they have Metaverses right now, fortnight's probably the closest because they have so many different types of IP and content. Roblox has tons of people coming into their world and sharing space. So there's these ideas, these seeds of a metaverse. I made massively multiplayer online games for a living before I came here that essentially was its own kind of metaverse, because it was virtual worlds where people played and bought and worked and talked mm-hmm. . It was just in its own world versus connected to every world. And I think that grandiose vision is what's still years away.

Foteini Baldimtsi (13:36):

Right. And I, I don't think we're gonna have like a clear distinction between web two and web three. I think we're gonna transition to it slowly. It's the point that we'll not be able to tell when we are actually there when we're actually in Metaverse.

James Casey (13:48):

Yeah. Someday they're just like, Hey, we're on web three. Web four though. Right. Web four, that's going to be great. Right, . No,

Gregory Washington (13:55):

Exactly. So this whole idea of cryptocurrency mm-hmm. , and if you're in a digital world, it seems to me that you're gonna want to use digital currency. Right. You can't use paper currency obviously in that world, because the definition of it, it's digital. The currency of choice would have to be a cryptocurrency. So, so talk to us a little bit about that. And uh,

Foteini Baldimtsi (14:19):

Yeah. Um, yes. And,

Gregory Washington (14:19):

And it's going, it's ebbing and flowing, right? Mm-hmm. , every other week you'll hear that crypto is gone, it's

Foteini Baldimtsi (14:25):

Dead .

Gregory Washington (14:26):

And then the next week you'll hear, no, it's not. And you see the price of Bitcoin just oscillate. I've seen it go down to 16,000 and go back up to 34,000 and then, and now it's somewhere in there.

Foteini Baldimtsi (14:39):

Now it's been an rollercoaster. Yeah. Yeah. . Yeah. So let me try to put some definitions first into case. Okay. I'm, I'm a computer scientist. I work in theory, I want to define things first. Digital payments exist forever. And they're not necessarily related to cryptocurrencies. Okay. So we could as well go into Metaverse in whatever way James refined it and just use digital payments using the fiat currencies that we all were used and love or not. Cryptocurrencies bring a different perspective into that. So it's not just the fact that they allow us to do digital payments. The main innovation of digital currencies or cryptocurrencies is that they try to take the intermediary out of the picture. They try to take the idea that there is a trusted financial institution or a government that handles the way that the currencies operating. And they are democratizing that, quote quotes in a way that now is decided by a set of parties.

Foteini Baldimtsi (15:34):

And who are these parties? Well, everyone. So you can participate in the governance, if you like, of these cryptocurrencies and decide how the system is gonna work. Participate in the system, maintain the system, and be rewarded for it if you do so. Hmm. So the main idea, again, of cryptocurrency is not just a payout digital payments. They do. Absolutely. They do. And they have certain perks as opposed to doing digital payments through our financial institutions. I can send coins money to Australia without paying any fees for intermediaries and, uh, having a constant payment later, early in a matter of seconds. Although if I try to do that through my traditional bank, it'll take days to clear . That's the big perk of it. But the main revolution is the fact that they're taking the idea of a central, trusted party. Mm-hmm. out of the picture.

James Casey (16:23):

Ah, very good. Very good. And, and think about it this way, like we have this idea of the metaverse, but if you really wanted to boil it down, the internet is kind of like a metaverse. You just don't have the 3D world on top of it. Right? We can play, we can talk, we can pretend to be Drake, we can buy stuff on the internet. And we did not create a single currency for the internet. Right. Just like we have multiple currencies around the world. And you know, some people say, oh, dollar is king. Or some people are like, no, we use ours. But there's still this idea that regardless of what you're using, you can convert it or you can get it into goods, whether they're virtual, real. And so in that virtual metaverse, yeah. The dollar can still be what you pay with, or you can pay with Frank's, or you can pay with pounds, you can pay with a credit card.

James Casey (17:11):

Cause that's fake money anyways, right? mm-hmm. or that money then translates into metaverse bucks or whatever we want to call it, right. Me bucks. Me bucks. Right. And it has its own exchange rate. And you know, a lot of games or worlds out there now do that for several reasons. And one of them being, once you take a currency and you abstract it into another layer, you are less likely to be as stringent on your spending. So if I spend a hundred bucks on a thousand meta bucks, that dollar value, that cost becomes obscured and you're more likely to spend. So whether the metaverse ends up with one kind of virtual currency really is gonna depend on who owns and who runs the metaverse. And that's why things like blockchain and cryptocurrency are being pushed by some people is because they want to make sure it's outside of Facebook owning it or a government owning it.

Foteini Baldimtsi (18:11):

Right. I mean, if you think about online game platforms right now, yeah, they do have these currencies, but they are controlled by the company that runs the game. So if that company decides to shut down the game today mm-hmm. , nobody's gonna give these funds in some form back to the users. But if instead they were using a currency that was decentralized using a blockchain system, nobody can really set it down because it doesn't really belong to someone specific.

Gregory Washington (18:38):

That's right. That's right. And it makes it harder. Although , we've seen examples of this the other way, but it makes it harder for individuals to steal your coins as well, supposedly. Yes.

Foteini Baldimtsi (18:50):

Uh, yes and no

Gregory Washington (18:51):

Well, yeah, that's a hard problem. Yeah. Because death is, death has actually happened, but it's still much easier to take your physical money,

Foteini Baldimtsi (18:59):

Right? Yeah. Well, well, although it turns out that well, people should not have physical money. Don't think, well, not should not . No. People should have deposited their physical money to some financial institution. Right. And the good news are that if you lose, let's say, your password to your online bank account, there are ways to recover it. Why? Because there is this central institution that has ways to physically authenticate. You might ask you to literally walk into an office and sew a passport and have ways to recover your password. If you lose your password or your secret key for funds for coins that you have on a blockchain system, then this becomes so much harder to recover. Almost impossible. Yeah. Mm-hmm. , look,

Gregory Washington (19:40):

Look, I forget my passwords all the time, , because they keep making us change it. So, , how much money do you think is sitting in cryptocurrencies now that people can't recover because they cannot figure out their key?

Foteini Baldimtsi (19:54):

A lot .

Gregory Washington (19:56):

I'd be willing to bet you it's billions of dollars.

James Casey (19:58):

Oh, yeah. No, there was people back in the Bitcoin days before it became big that had a bunch sitting on a hard drive somewhere, and that hard drive is lost or dead, or they don't know the password to get into the computer. And that was tiny amounts of money for Bitcoin back there. And now it's 30,000 of Bitcoin and Right. That's millions of dollars in just one space. So yeah, there's, yeah, there's lots of stuff there. I mean, I mean, look at what's happening with banks recently. Right. The nice thing about a lot of that is the government is going in and bailing them out, or there's the F D I C, which covers deposits up to a certain point, you know, that if you put your money there, you have some degree of security. The thing with the cryptocurrency is, although it is de democratized or however you want to put it, right?

Gregory Washington (20:42):

Democratized

James Casey (20:43):

Yeah. Essentially, yes, you have complete control over it, but you also, like you said, if something goes wrong or you lose it or something goes on, like there is no backup to that.

Foteini Baldimtsi (20:53):

The hope for that is to change it. And I think that people who are serious in the space, they actually want to have regulation over cryptocurrency. And I'm very optimistic on that. I think that it is gonna, I mean, it is gonna happen one way or another because people are using these systems

James Casey (21:06):

And I think the same thing needs to happen for the metaverse for it to take on too. Absolutely. We can get to that in a minute.

Gregory Washington (21:11):

So that kind of brings me back to that. The reality is, you know, you had movies like Blade Runner mm-hmm. , and even the Avatar, the ones that, that show these futuristic worlds Yep. Where people in their avatars interact in the world and in Ready Player one, the currency was digital currency. And if you lose it in a in a virtual world, you lost it in the real world. Yes. Yes. Absolutely. So how accurate are the predictors? They talk about this dystopian world where, you know, you really can't go outside, you really can't live in the environment because we've corrupted it. So and so people kind of engage one another in a virtual framework. Now, let me preface this by saying, you know, we were, we were kind of there for a while mm-hmm. with the pandemic, right? Yeah.

James Casey (22:05):

Covid was a nice, uh, precursor. Right?

Gregory Washington (22:07):

So talk a little bit about that. How accurate are those in terms of a future?

James Casey (22:10):

How accurate is the dystopia of the science fiction? Oh, well, I think that there are trends that could point to us going down some of those routes. Absolutely. I think, and you see more and more adoption of technology and virtual aspects, just like with your son, right? , uh, always on the phone. And I think that we could become addicted to certain things just like we could anything else. The allure of the virtual world is that it is better than your station in life. You've got a better house where you've got better clothes or you have better friends, or you can't get out like in the Covid and get to your friends. So this is your way to communicate. So it becomes a surrogate for other things that you do not feel are positive in your life. This positivity replaces that. Could that become something that is troublesome?

James Casey (23:04):

Absolutely. Hopefully as a society we do better in general, as well as looking at how do we look at these kind of technologies to prevent that not being draconian like China, where you can only play games three hours a week, certain hours, specific hours on like a Friday night. But how do we ensure that somebody does not become, like in ready player one living in shipping canisters just being on the internet all day long. Mm-hmm. . And while there's advantages to maybe attending school in virtual space at the same time, you gotta get out and as they say on the internet, touch grass, be real. And so if I was a pessimist, I'd say yes, we could definitely see that becoming more of a reality. But I think, you know, the optimist in, in me is that we will adopt the technologies, uh, and we seeing, you know, more and more social change and more social, whatever the right words are, justice or knowledge or shared bits, I think more people will be able to see that going into it, hopefully, than we give them credit for .

Foteini Baldimtsi (24:15):

Yeah. I, I think also our role as scientists is to actually develop mechanisms that make these tools and these technologies to work in the, in the favor of the society. And this is, this is a responsibility for us. And just for example, on, on the blockchain space, right? So all these payments are now becoming transparent, right? Mm-hmm. , so think for a second that right now, when you're making transactions through your credit card, it's only your own financial institution that knows exactly how you're spending, right? Mm-hmm. . But now, if all these transactions happen in the blockchain space, then they're essentially in one way or another, becoming fully public, right? So everybody now knows how you're spending. But then also as scientists, we know, and as cryptographers, we know that there are tools that can actually work towards adding privacy in these transactions in a way that not even your bank knows more than what they should know. . I think this is a great responsibility in our hands, and we should be trying to make these tools to work for the benefit of the society.

Gregory Washington (25:19):

Interesting. Well, let me give you a, a little spin on this. Mm-hmm. , you can get your reaction to it. Our group of researchers at Stanford University in Google mm-hmm. have created a miniature virtual world mm-hmm. , where 25 characters controlled by chat, G P t mm-hmm. and custom code Yep. Live out their lives independently with what a r s technical has described as a high degree of realistic behavior. Yep. In addition, they created an architecture that stimulates minds with memories and experiences. Yep. Then they let the agents loose to interact, and now humans can interact with them too.

James Casey (25:58):

Smallville, I think they called it.

Gregory Washington (26:00):

How is that not like

James Casey (26:02):

Gregory Washington (26:03):

The kinds of things that we saw in, you know, an early version of, of a ready player one Right. Or an environment where you are interacting like Matrix with bots. Right. The only good thing is if they kill you in a virtual world, you don't die in the real world. Right. , at least not yet.

James Casey (26:23):

I think it would be closer probably to kind of like the West World model, right? Like you're Oh

Gregory Washington (26:27):

Yeah, yeah. Exactly.

James Casey (26:28):

Like you're developing this, like, in this case the AI to mimic real world interactions. And so I'm familiar with the Stanford, uh, little research that they did on Smallville, and I think it's great. Now, to be fair, when I grew up, there was a program called Little Computer People, where we got to watch, watch people live in their house and go about their day. And it was very similar, but it was much more strict and programmed. In this case, the AI is learning based on the data that it was trained on, the goals it was fed and all these different things. And what's nice about it is it gives us insight into how it takes this information and creates those relationships, these, uh, conversations and creates memories. And honestly, one of the big things for, you know, the general intelligence is this idea of how do we mimic how people's brains work? And part of that is the memory construct. I

Gregory Washington (27:16):

That's right. And and that was great that they gave them those.

James Casey (27:19):

Oh, yeah. In fact, um, one of our companies out at the Virginia Series Game Institute was founded by a guy who worked on Ultima Online, a massively multiplayer online game. And he's working in this field, and he took the same thing that Stanford did, but he actually had the AI create the world instead of just, hey, here's your town and here's, we've already created all this, the art for the world and the way the world worked. And the, the streams and the valleys and the roads and the, the resources of the world was all created by the AI as well. And then it populated it within NPCs that took a look at what was around, and they built a campfire. And then once they had that and they met that need, they'd go and grab resources and build a, a cottage. And they had apple trees.

James Casey (28:02):

So they made a fruit stand and they build this whole backstory for themselves using ai. And then that can be put into a game or a world where then you interact with a guy and he is got this whole history of, oh yeah, when I first got here and it was just a campfire and we had to, and so this AI is building all this content , essentially for a game or a virtual world. And it's not just let 'em loose and see what they do. It's from creating the world proper with AI to every little aspect of it. And so the next step for them is obviously they're gonna do 3D and they're gonna do a few more things and they're, I think they're reaching out to the same folks at Stanford as well as the researchers here. But again, the promise of what AI and machine learning can do is huge. And yes, there's always horror stories about what it could do if it approaches the singularity as they call it, and things like that.

Gregory Washington (28:59):

But see, I think this whole singularity thing, I think is a red herring, to be honest with you. I think these technologies are going to be incredibly influential in our lives long before that concept is reached. Mm-hmm. . And in some sense, I'm blown away by the earliest forms of artificial general intelligence and it hasn't even been optimized yet.

James Casey (29:25):

Oh yeah.

Gregory Washington (29:26):

You don't have the breakthroughs yet. And to me, this will all play out in virtual worlds. Right.

James Casey (29:32):

It's a great place for it. Cuz again, it's content generation. Mm-hmm. , it's a tool to make more stuff at the end of the day, whether it's coming up with a chemistry equation and showing a proof, or whether it's creating a world or whether it's making people talk to each other or pretending to be Drake .

Gregory Washington (29:51):

So recently mm-hmm. , we've heard Jeffrey Hinton, one of the groundbreakers in artificial intelligence mm-hmm. talking about the idea that this stuff can get smarter than people is not that far off. Hmm. You've heard the warnings from many of the individuals in open ai mm-hmm. , which is the company behind chat, G B T, including its CEO mm-hmm. , that basically warn of the challenges associated with it and how they are actively have to, for lack of a better way of putting it, dumb down the AI before it's released to the public because they're worried of some of the damage it can actually do. Maybe the metaverse is the place for this stuff to develop and flourish where it's not touching the physical world and let it grow. And you can interact with the currencies and you can intermingle all of this stuff. Sure. Because they're unintended consequences to everything you do. We know some of the intended consequences of artificial intelligence, but it's that thing you're not thinking about that will creep up and sure just knock you down.

James Casey (30:54):

When Microsoft first put out an AI chatbot, I think it was called Tay,

Gregory Washington (30:58):

And started

James Casey (30:59):

Training and it and became racist. Right?

Gregory Washington (31:01):

Not just racist.

James Casey (31:02):

It was, yeah.

Gregory Washington (31:03):

It was all of the ists. Yeah. . It was racist, it was homophobic. Yeah. It was, oh my goodness. Sexist. It was everything.

James Casey (31:10):

But I think what it boils down to again, is it's, it's just like with people, right? The inputs you give it, the training you give it, you know, the whole nature versus nurture and all this stuff, like for ai, you're feeding it information. If you put this AI into a virtual world, it is going to end up being a product of its virtual society, just like people are. And to that end, it is very much like a person, because it is taking all this information in and some rules that have been set up by society or by the programmer and who programmed it and how they programmed it and what they designed it for. Now, if we put AI in charge of nuclear weapons, then we deserve what happens, right? Just like a terminator. Right. But what it can do, and what we allow it to do, those are the questions, right? Training in virtual worlds, whether they're 3D with avatars or this little Smallville with 2d, uh, guys, that's essential for us to see how they grow and to make them better and to remove bias and to remove other elements that get put in as part of the programming, right? Whether it's the initial programming, whether it's the training and data, or whether it's stuff that comes in after the fact that affects them, the learning module.

Gregory Washington (32:25):

So if we pull back in, think about it in the environment and in the world in which we live in today, the real world, right? And you look at cryptocurrencies, do you believe that there will be fully integrated in any time in the near future?

Foteini Baldimtsi (32:39):

I'm gonna say my personal opinions here, right? So I don't think it's a matter, we should not be focusing on the cryptocurrency part of this technology. I think we should be focusing on the technology beyond the cryptocurrencies, which is the blockchain. The blockchain technology. Sure. Uh, so the blockchain technology can offer much more than just digital payments. So digital payments in a sense, are just one application of blockchain systems. And the main idea, the main advantage of all these blockchain based systems is that, as I said before, they take away the idea that you rely on a specific third party. And since we have James here, let me give you one of the most prominent applications of blockchain today beyond payments, that is the generation of good randomness. And let me explain why this is very, very important in the gaming industry and in metaverse in all these games that try to offer some version of virtual reality.

Foteini Baldimtsi (33:33):

So it is, uh, in many, many parts of these games, the users, the gamers, need to be sued. That what happens in the next phase of the game is actually random done in a random way. And not in a way that the company that controls the game can alter the sequence of the game in order to gain more money. At the end of the day, so many of these very large gaming industries, they care to prove to their users that they use good randomness. That for, in a verifiable way, in a truthful way, they do randomly decide what's the next phase? What's the next thing that will happen in the game? Mm-hmm. . So now where do you take this randomness from? Blockchain systems are an excellent resource of randomness. Again, why? Because they're not controlled from a single entity, but they pull together randomness from thousands or millions depending on what blockchain systems they're looking at of people around the world in a way that it's very, very hard to bias us the randomness.

Foteini Baldimtsi (34:35):

And again, this is just one application and, uh, believe me, it is one of the applications that people are using blockchain today a lot or are looking into blockchain a lot. So that said, cryptocurrencies are one part of this blockchain systems. And if you ask me, yeah, I do think that some of these cryptocurrencies will become more mainstream, but I don't think that this is the main contribution of blockchain in web three. So I think that blockchain can do much more things, many more things than just allowing for this mm-hmm. cryptocurrencies for these digital payments.

Gregory Washington (35:08):

I get the blockchain portion of this. Let me pose the question a little bit.

Foteini Baldimtsi (35:11):

Just don't ask me to give like, uh, investment, uh, investment advice.

Gregory Washington (35:15):

Let me, let me pose, let me pose the question a little, a little bit differently. Right now in our country, we are spending trillions of dollars a year, and we're driving large amounts of debt. And as we continue to have more spending beyond the revenues that we are taking in, and we go into more and more debt, at some point in time, you're gonna see a dramatic downward pressure on the value of the dollar. Now, in terms of having a global economy, large enough, in order to become the global currency, you basically got the r and b and you got the dollar, right? Maybe it could be the Euro mm-hmm. , but it doesn't leave you a lot of alternatives as you devalue the dollar, right? Mm-hmm. . So at some point you start getting driven towards a digital based currency or cryptocurrency as an alternative. All you need is one or two catastrophic market events with our currency in order to drive people to these. So I don't believe that it is totally unrealistic to think that at some point in time, people will, will want to engage more with these digital based currencies.

Foteini Baldimtsi (36:41):

And we actually, sorry James, uh, we actually saw that happening like a few years ago when like the banks collapsed in Cyprus, for example, we saw that the prices of cryptocurrencies went up. We do observe that happening in the world, right? I mean, I'm not an economist, but there is certainly relation on that.

James Casey (36:55):

I think the biggest thing that becomes a part of that is like, so you mentioned the dollar, right? And a lot of our economy in human or debt, right, is based on this idea that we are a kind of a world currency, but all currency to some degree has a historical value to it based on usually some kind of physical resource. So in the, in the past, it used to be gold, right? It used, it used to be gold used. It's really no longer. Most people may not even realize it, but it's, you know, we're just printing money. But, um, and

Gregory Washington (37:24):

It's the full faith in credit of the United States government is what it's based on and trust. And if that trust is ever broken, you will see the currency collapse and there's no real global alternative outside of the cryptocurrency.

James Casey (37:37):

So we'd have to work together as governments around the world on a currency we all accept within that parameter. So that if we said, you know, what we transfer from the dollar to Bitcoin or Dogecoin or whatever the, you know, Dogi coin or whatever latest coin is, right? Mm-hmm. or the, the dollar coin or the, you know, I didn't know they were playing around with some of these, right? It's, it's still based on, you know, if the U.S. has trillions of dollars worth of Bitcoin, there's still going to be some of that inherent instability behind it if all of a sudden the U.S. is not good for it. And that's why some people were really skeptical about cryptocurrencies in general, or this idea of digital currency is because, is there something behind it? Except what we say. It's the same thing with stocks, right? The stock market is one of those things where, or you know, the banks, you know, failing because people start to lose faith and they're like, how do we get any value out of it? And if there's no value originally in it, how does that translate in the long run if we do lose faith in the system?

Gregory Washington (38:35):

I guess what I'm kind of driving to, and as we start to wrap up here mm-hmm. , you start to bring all of this together. So we talk about the metaverse as a construct. We talk about cryptocurrency and the like as a construct, and we talk about how these entities can actually connect mm-hmm. the connection with the physical world. I remember Pokemon, I remember when my kids got into it, they were into it big time. And so they were into it so much. I said, okay, let me figure out what's going on with this thing. You'd have a camera from your phone would overlay over the physical world in an environment which you were in. Yep. Pokemon Go. And you'd see a little Pokemon over it in the corner and you can walk over to it and get it. You were in the physical world, but you were also in the virtual environment also

James Casey (39:23):

Mixed reality.

Gregory Washington1 (39:24):

Exactly. Is that a possibility? Is it a possibility that these worlds could indeed collide? You know, I got cryptocurrency Yep. And I have real currency. You, you, you get what I'm saying? Yeah, absolutely. I have, you know, exist in the virtual world and I exist in the physical world, right? Yep. So talk a little bit about that.

Foteini Baldimtsi (39:44):

Yeah. I mean, so a as you're saying, this is already happening. Uh, I, I'm not sure if this is part of web two or web three now, , but it is certainly happening. I do have both cryptocurrencies and real currencies. Yeah. And wrapping back to the, you know, the beginning of this discussion, right? Are we gonna move completely into a metaverse reality? Mm-hmm. ? Well, I think it's not clear, right? So I think we'll probably end up having for many more years a mixed reality of people trying to find a harmony between the, the virtual world and the real world. And again, in one way or another, our role as universities and researchers is mm-hmm. Uh, to try to make this balance as fair as possible and as, uh, secure as possible.

Gregory Washington (40:26):

Try to make sense. We have to try to make sense in all of this.

James Casey (40:29):

We also have to make it easier for folks. Blockchain and cryptocurrencies at the end of the day, are not the easiest things for people to understand. Yeah. So I know Amazon is working on a digital marketplace for NFTs, you know, non-fungible tokens, but they're abstracting it. So it's, it's as easy as buying on the Amazon website. And I think for us to go to that route where we can buy physical stuff, we can buy virtual stuff, we can combine them, we have to have that same kind of thing. Cuz again, at the end of the day, if you can keep it simple, people will adopt the technology. You know? And as, as Bitcoin became more popular, you could use it to buy a Tesla. I know somebody bought pizza with it way back in the day and regret it now cause it's worth a lot more

Foteini Baldimtsi (41:12):

Because they could have bought a Tesla now.

James Casey (41:14):

Yes, exactly.

Gregory Washington (41:14):

They could have bought The Tesla

James Casey (41:14):

With the pizza. They could have had a Tesla . Um,

Gregory Washington (41:18):

Amazing.

James Casey (41:19):

But to get to this idea of what really the idealists want Web 3.0 or the Metaverse to be, requires us to really put in regulation work procedures, technology like blockchain or, or similar. We have to agree as both either a country or a society as a world, much like we did with the internet, we have to say, look, there are some rules. There are some things that have to happen. Cuz right now nobody in a capitalist society, no company is going to want to share their version of the Metaverse with everybody else. Because as you said, if I spend $10 on Nike sneakers in this virtual world, that $10 purchase can't translate to Nike shoes in every other game because of so many technical problems. Right? Right. So what is that $10 Nike shoe worth? Well, it's worth $10 worth of skins in Fortnite. Mm-hmm. .

James Casey (42:16):

But in order to use it in Call of Duty, so many technical things would have to happen for it to even have an equivalency. So this idea, this idealistic view that the currency or the items or things that you share within a virtual world, like the Metaverse should be, requires us to get on board in so many different ways and pass some technological hurdles. And maybe AI and machine learning can help us on that cuz maybe they can help us make translations between different worlds. But there has to be much like we have the back end of the internet. You know, we all rely on https and we all rely on these different protocols and we all rely on these different things that make it fair, not necessarily equitable at all times, but make it at least fair and things will work together. And we know if we do this, it will work. That has to be done for the metaverse and people are are on that. It's just, it's a lot more slow going I think, than when the internet took off.

Foteini Baldimtsi (43:07):

Yeah. And I thing James and what you're saying, it's, it's really, really important to bring together people from different disciplines. Yes. And so far it has been a game that has been played too much on the side of computer scientists and engineers. Yep. But now it's becoming a part in that no matter what technology we're building, it cannot get out there without regulation, without people from the policy side. Mm-hmm. without economists, without psychologists to understand how this impacts people. So we really need to close the gap here.

Gregory Washington (43:35):

So in conclusion, what does the future look like in your opinion, in both of these contexts? I'm not talking 10 years out. Sure. You know, even five, I'm saying over the next three years or so. What happens in the context of what both of you all do? What do you think happens? Look, I get the caveats that it's almost impossible to predict the future. Here’s the thing. If you predict it and it's right. I will refer back to this recording.

Gregory Washington (44:03):

As positive proof of the Power of Mason faculty. All right. So have at it.

James Casey (44:09):

So with the idea of the metaverse, I'll handle that side for, to start with. So a lot of the metaverse is built around virtual worlds. And right now the technology, like the Meta and you mentioned Mark Zuckerberg is betting on this idea of VR goggles and all these ways that we can enter the world and become immersed in part of it. And then we can shape it is not catching on. That's why Business Insiders said the Metaverse is, is dead. Right. Is because that technology isn't making it. But I think there's an opportunity over the next few years to start striving for setting up parts of the network that we need to make this work to not just be a dominated Amazon marketplace, which, you know, they took over. Right. And eBay controls this part of the, the internet. There needs to be a push for how do we make this a shareable marketplace, a shareable world.

James Casey (44:58):

And I think that is going to start being where we see the most growth. I don't think we're necessarily going to see Fortnite become the place where everybody goes, you know, and transform it. And I don't think unfortunately, you know, meta from Facebook is going to be the big thing that Mark Zuckerberg wants it to be. I think we'll see some iterations on those and everybody's going to do their own little pointer of the metaverse, but it's still a little ways, way before they start to connect to each other. We make those valuable connections that will help us both from a society standpoint as well as obviously from their point maybe making money. Yeah. So I think we're still a little ways away. I think VR is taking a small step back and, and we'll see this still valued about, but I think we're going to hopefully concentrate on the technologies around it more.

Gregory Washington (45:47):

Well, you all remember the Newton mm-hmm.

James Casey (45:49):

. Mm-hmm

Gregory Washington (45:50):

That's what happened with the Newton, right? Oh yeah. Many of the technologies that happened in Newton wound up in the iPhone, right? Yeah. Right. Yep. And so when the Newton was developed, it was a huge flop. Yep. Right. I remember Bart Simpson was cracking jokes on it. Right. You know,

James Casey (46:03):

It's like the Google Glass. The Google Glass was a great idea. It's this augmented reality giving you information. I could look at somebody and see their name and get information. It just wasn't, that would've really done well.

Greg Washington (46:15):

That would've been really helpful for me. But everybody's, I'm bad with names.

James Casey (46:19):

Same. Same here. I tell my class all the time, I'm never gonna remember your name. But if I had that on my phone, we already have that power on the phone phone right now. It's just how do we get it out of the phone and in front of you and everyday use and make it useful. That's why phones have taken off is because their user experience is perfect for most people.

Gregory Washington (46:39):

No, I get it. So as we end Foteini, you tell me.

Foteini Baldimtsi (46:43):

Yeah, I mean, just to, to bring up the blockchain aspect here on the near future, I don't think, again so much is gonna change on the end user experience. I don't think we're all gonna going to be transacting in cryptocurrencies in three years, . But again, I do see aspects of the blockchain technology being more integrated. So the example that I brought up before with gaming industry and how they're using randomness, I think that this is something that in three years it might start becoming mainstream. So we might not start trusting companies that they claim they generate their own randomness.

James Casey (47:17):

If there's money for it, the companies will go for it. And that's the key generating that value.

Foteini Baldimtsi (47:21):

Exactly. So I think that we will be seeing more applications of the blockchain space, not necessarily just digital payments, but mm-hmm. . But more part of it will go hand in hand with the metaverse, you know, like reality as it can help in some aspects of it. But blockchain is also very different technology that can have comp completely. You know, even if Metaverse dies, blockchain might not die or the, the other way around. .

Gregory Washington (47:45):

No, I hear you.

James Casey (47:46):

We're never gonna get rid of virtual worlds and the virtual environments, but the overall view of what the metaverse is probably will change to some degree. We also talked about AI and machine learning. I think in the next few years we'll see some scary developments, but I don't think they're gonna be scary in the way that people talking about the singularity or, or that kind of stuff is gonna be …

Gregory Washington (48:06):

No, I think, I think we're headed for disaster in some other things. It won't be the singularity, but I think criminal enterprise is gonna have a field.

James Casey (48:16):

Oh, sure.

Gregory Washington (48:16):

Day with artificial intelligence. You're gonna spoof phones, you're gonna spoof people. When you couple that with cyber security issues and cybersecurity, it's gonna force us, it is going to, we got a rough couple of years before we figure out all of this.

James Casey (48:32):

It's like Covid though, right? Like Covid forced us to do things we were Right. Not comfortable with. Right. The rise of AI is going to force us to look at things we have not wanted to look at for a long time. Mm-hmm. and figure out how to bend to this new technology and how to use this tech new technology. Cause at the end of the day, AI and machine learning, I mentioned earlier, in my mind it's just content generation, right? It's just like a computer or a painting brush. You know, when you were doing cave paintings, you, you had certain tools when you started to do paintings, you had different tools. When you started to make digital painting, you had different tools. Now we have more tools. How do we use that responsibly? And I think the great thing is, and I've seen it here, both, you know, with what we do and what CS is doing and all across our campuses, we've got people that are thinking about these problems and we got people that are developing solutions now. So that at least makes me hopeful. .

Gregory Washington (49:26):

Outstanding. Outstanding. Well, look, this has really, really been a fascinating discussion. And the one thing I can say for sure is that we're gonna be hearing more on both of these topics.

James Casey (49:38):

Oh, yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

James Casey (49:40):

So I'd like to thank my guests, Foteini Baldimtsi, assistant professor at Mason's Computer Science Department. And James Casey, an associate professor at Mason's computer game design program, and the associate director of the Virginia Serious Games Institute. I am Mason President Gregory Washington saying, until next time, stay safe. Mason. Nation.

Narrator (50:04):

If you like what you heard on this podcast, go to podcast.gmu.edu for more of Gregory Washington's conversations with the thought leaders, experts, and educators who take on the grand challenges facing our students graduates and higher education. That's podcast.gmu.edu.

Explore Computer Science at Mason

Find out about Mason's Computer Game Design program

In This Episode

Foteini Baldimtsi

James Casey

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