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Kamala and Pottery and Data Centers… Oh My! · Between the Headlines: Columbus

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what he has come up with today to talk about.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not asking you to hide anything.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_01: You know, don't put it out there.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_01: Let the people see it.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: I've never not worked in a hospital working department.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_01: You can't argue with anybody when they're putting facts in your face.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_01: Zach, that's a hard question.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_01: I have no answer for it.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_01: From the opinion page of the Commercial Dispatch, this is Between the Headlines.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_02: This week on Between the Headlines, we have learned that Kamala Harris is coming to town in support of Scott Cologne for U.S.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_02: Senate.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_02: And accountability scores are in for our local school districts.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_02: And I guess we're going to have to talk a little bit about data centers.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_02: And you will not want to miss our interview with Ian Childers from MUW, who knows a lot about pottery and other stuff.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_02: But first, retirement looks different for everyone, so your plan should be built around you.
• 1:00
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• 1:06
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• 1:12
  SPEAKER_02: Wherever you are in your journey, we're ready to help.
• 1:15
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• 1:16
  SPEAKER_02: Financial Concepts is a registered investment advisor.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_02: This episode of Between the Headlines is brought to you by Bank First, a bank headquartered right here in Columbus, Mississippi.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_02: That means your banking decisions aren't made hundreds of miles away by someone who doesn't know you.
• 1:31
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• 1:36
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• 1:38
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• 1:40
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• 1:49
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• 1:54
  SPEAKER_02: Bank First is a member FDIC and Equal Housing lender, Bank NMLS 454063.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_02: In the heart of the friendly city, we welcome you once again to Catfish Alley Studio.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_02: You look giddy, David.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_02: Where it is.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_02: Check this out.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_02: Oh boy.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_02: 107 days since MUW has had a permanent president.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_03: This is a better countdown, David.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_03: I like it.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_02: I like that one.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_02: Any progress on that front in terms of getting a permanent president?
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_02: Nah, we've got a nationwide search and they meet every month.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_02: So we're just tracking it along.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_02: The monthly meeting of people who meet every month.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_02: So top headline today is we um we have the former vice president of the United States supposedly coming to town on October 22nd.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_02: Is that correct?
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_02: That's our understanding, yes.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_02: All right.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_02: So are we gonna like have the Secret Service here at Catfish Alley Studio and um and bid her fairly welcome to that microphone right there?
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_03: We have extended an invitation uh for her to appear on the podcast.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_03: I haven't heard back yet.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_03: Don't know if we will, but we are trying.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_02: Well, there's a snowball's chance in hell, right?
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_02: I mean there's a you're saying there's a chance.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_02: So you're telling me there's a chance.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_02: So um good move, bad move.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_02: Um, whose decision do you think this was?
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_02: Um well I uh you go first on that one, man.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_02: Great.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_02: Um she would not come here, Zach, if she did not think this was a winnable race.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna tell you that um that that it's it doesn't look good for Cindy Hyde Smith for Kamala Harris to be willing to come to Columbus, Mississippi, and elsewhere in this state.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_02: Because one would think, based on how deeply read we traditionally are, that this would be a lost cause and not worth the former vice president's time.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_03: You know, uh that's a good point, David, and that and that's one that I'm gonna piggyback on a little bit and maybe take it a little bit of a different direction.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_03: Uh one of the obviously Kamala Harris lost the 2024 election.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_03: She's from California.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_03: Considerably more liberal than your than Bill Clinton.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_03: There you go.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_03: Uh so uh I was talking to somebody about this yesterday.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_03: The usual sort of progression of a campaign is to first rally your base and then after you rally your base and get them all for all things at the mouth, then you come through with the but I'll represent everybody.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_03: And Scott kind of is doing this in reverse.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_03: Scott came out with uh came out of the gate.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_03: I'm gonna represent everybody, I'm gonna represent Mississippians.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_03: I don't care whether you vote for me, I don't care whether you're uh, you know, left, right, in the middle, you know, if if you live in Mississippi, I'm gonna be your senator if I win.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_03: And and that was his push.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_03: Now, toward the end, he's coming back to rally his base, which uh seems backwards, but I've you know I've been doing a little bit of thinking about this.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_03: Um one of the criticisms that I have seen of Kamala's visit from the you know from the Facebook comment crowd and different things like that.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, the experts.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, of course.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_03: Uh experts on you know all manner of things is Mississippians don't want to hear from Kamala Harris.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_03: And on the surface and in your gut, you probably feel that that's true, and but but I'll but I want to I want to propose this.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_03: I think that it would be um an unfortunate error for say you, David, or me for that matter, uh, to look in the mirror and what we see is how we define a Mississippian.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_03: Oh yeah.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_03: You are a Mississippian, but you are not the Mississippian.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_03: And when you look at uh when you look at voting and when you look at stay homes and Republicans don't stay home.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_03: You people go to the polls.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_03: You go to the polls either for your person or to vote against something.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_02: On presidential years, I think that's true.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_03: I I think that's true in any race of any substance.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_03: Republicans are coming.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_03: And is he g and I think that um is there a chance that uh Kamala Harris being so polarizing might cost him a handful of crossovers that he would have gotten otherwise?
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_03: Democrats stay home for all manner of reasons.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_03: Um one of those reasons I think very often becomes fatalism.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_03: So it's like, what does it matter if I go?
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_03: He doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_03: Um, it's always gonna be a Republican.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_03: I I don't want to be disappointed again.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_03: I, you know, I'm always disappointed by my government, I have no reason to get excited about this.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_03: And that is, I think, something that this visit and the blitz of prominent Democrats coming to Mississippi, I think that's the target audience for these visits.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_03: I think that's the target audience for Kamala's visit.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_03: Because whether you think she has anything to say to Mississippians as you would define them, uh, and I'm not saying that of you, I'm saying that to anybody who would have that opinion, there are gonna be plenty of Mississippians out at whatever rally or speech that she makes in Columbus, I promise you.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, because Mississippians are all demographics, myriad lifestyles, whatever.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_03: There are gonna be plenty of excited Mississippians there to see her.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_03: And I think that the play here is this is a last-ditch effort to recruit those people to the polls that would otherwise be Cologne voters that would otherwise stay home because the the voting in the Democratic Party is all over the map, especially in the South in states like Mississippi, and the stay home rate is much higher in the demo on the Democratic side than it is the Republican side.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_03: And I think that this, to your point, is meant to show them this is a winnable race if you come.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_02: I've been around several counties and listened to people talk specifically about Kamala Harris.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, it's just her name for whatever reason would come up organically, usually in a scoffing or a joking kind of way.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_02: Uh depending on what crowd you're hanging out with.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_02: Your hardcore Republicans hate Kamala Harris.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_02: They hate her on a visceral human level.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_03: It has Which I think is really unfortunate and very unfair in a lot of ways, but we'll I'm just I'm just telling you how it is.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_02: They just they hate her person, uh, regardless of her politics.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, one might say that that the Joe Biden campaign happened largely in a basement back in 2020, and and so because of that and because of other things, when she comes to town, people are going to pay attention.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, they're gonna look at it, they're gonna listen to it.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_02: It's like okay, you're riding in a school bus and you pass a gas station and somebody moons the school bus.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_03: For better or worse, people are gonna look.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_02: You are going to look to see that, not because you favor seeing it, because it's a freak show and it captures your attention.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_02: People are going to pay attention to this.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_03: Well, and I think that there are a lot of people who don't see it as a freak show who are gonna pay attention to this.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_03: And I think that it could get a lot of people off of couches.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_03: But let me let me give you this one too.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_03: How many times have you ever walked into a building, seen the office where you were supposed to go?
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_03: You don't have an invitation necessarily, you don't have an appointment, rather, and you walk right by the front desk lady, you say hello, and you walk straight to the office where you're supposed to go, and nobody stops you because you were acting like you were supposed to be there.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_03: That's that's what my dad has always said, Comport yourself like you're supposed to be there, and very little uh and very few people are gonna ask you any questions about it.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_03: And if you act like you're not supposed to be there, then everybody around you is gonna assume, regardless of your talents, that you're not supposed to be there.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_03: Papers, please.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_03: So I think that not only is the or the or the prominent Democrats and the Kamala Harris is coming to support Scott, sending a message that Scott's supposed to be in this race and it may be a winnable one.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_03: But it may be, let's just say it's not winnable.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_03: Let's just say that it takes him from maybe five points down to a three-point loss.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_03: You know, he he he loses his thing by one possession, which whatever.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_02: Which would lead you to wonder why she's coming.
• 11:42
  unknown: Yeah.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_03: Well, let me let me give you this.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_03: If you're in Michigan or Texas or Kansas or Georgia or Ohio, or if you're one of these sit-on-the-couch voters who are are in races that are much or are polling much closer, much more often, and are seen as much more up in the air, much more swing races.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I mean, Talerico's giving Paxton problems in Texas.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_03: That Michigan race is gonna be something.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_03: That Ohio race, there's other race, that Georgia race.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_03: I wouldn't want to be running against Osif if I were the Republican right now, especially that guy.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but if you're one of those voters that's undecided or you're uh whether you're gonna go or what you're gonna do or whether it's worth it.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_03: And you look up and you see Kamala Harris in frickin' Mississippi, like these people are acting like they're supposed to be here.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_03: I might need to be paying attention.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_03: And so I think that there might be a trickle a trickle across effect to some of these others.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_03: Like, if these guys think they can win in Mississippi, then we damn sure can win here if you're a Democrat.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_03: And I think that there could be an effect that gets other people off couches in other states that maybe not it may not help Scott win his Senate seat or win this Senate seat, but it it it may have a trickle across effect for Taler Rico or these other people in these other up-in-the-air states.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_02: Somebody within the Democrat establishment is looking at Lowndes County.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, thank you.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_02: The Democratic establishment is looking at Mississippi and Lowndes County in particular, and and they're seeing how purple it is turning.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_02: They're seeing how uh Republican voters are still on their lawnmower at 6 59 p.m.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_02: the day of election, and may or may not make it there.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_02: And they're like, you know what?
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_02: There's a shot.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_02: Because I don't think she's coming to run for president here.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_02: She may be the the you know the forerunner in the polls as far as the presidential race, but I don't see this as a presidential campaign stop.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_03: She's coming for Scott Cologne and and whatever, and whatever show up like you're supposed to be here, that it might have an effect in other states.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_02: I want both of them to come on this podcast.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_02: Let's go.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_03: We've invited them both.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_03: Let's see which one comes if either.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_02: So next thing on the agenda today, drum roll, please.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_02: We have the accountability scores that have come in for our local school districts, and they are as follows.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_02: So I'll read this from bottom to the top.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_02: Knoxby County Schools improves from D to a C.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_02: West Point Consolidated maintains at a C.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_02: Stark V Lock Tibija keeps its score at an A.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_02: Lownds County Schools goes from A to A B.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_02: And Columbus Municipal Schools goes from C to A D.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_02: So the only uh improvement in green is Noxaby, uh, West Point Consolidated, Starkville, Octopihawk, and Talavade stay the same, but they're an A, so they still, you know, that's good for them.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_02: Uh not so good here in Lowndes County and in the city of Columbus.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_02: Where do we start?
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_03: Well, um interesting question.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_03: Where do we start?
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_03: I know where we're gonna end up going, but um, you know, you've got Lowndes County who's had an A for seven or eight years running, it's now a B.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_03: Um you've have the uh Startville, who's kind of a Johnny cum lately, to the A.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_03: I think that this may be the second year they've had one.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_03: Uh they maintain their A.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_03: You've got Columbus, who was a B two years ago, now a D again.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_03: Um and then and then you've got Knoxaby County rated higher than Columbus, and then West Point maintaining the status quo there.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_03: Um I don't know if it tells us anything, David.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_02: Does um does D stand for danger like uh when you see a D, it is the state getting ready to intervene?
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_02: It's not an F.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_03: Uh I think there are rules there, but they probably change just like the standards for these grade letters.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_03: If I was a school district right now, uh and I know I know for having kids in school that they preach to these kids how important it is for this accountability rating to be a certain way.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_03: But I I mean, are we being are we being for real right now that you could go out to New Hope, Caledonia, or West Lounge right now and see a material difference in the teaching and learning uh between last year and the year before?
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_02: You may not see that, but you're seeing trash thrown out the window right now.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_02: They're gonna freak out on this.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and for what?
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_03: For what?
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_03: I think that it would be a and I think I'm gonna tell you what, and and I'm not glad for like Sam or Allison or some of the people who I know and respect out at uh Loynds County School District, but I think that it would be I'm I'm glad that Lowndes County lost their A this time around for the demonstration of how stupid all of this is.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_03: Um because it would be really easy, it would be really easy, and there would be a line of people forming at the rear for throwing tomatoes at uh Craig Chapman and Columbus Municipal School District and all of that if um if what we saw here was everything else and Lowndes County kept their A, they'd be like, oh, here goes Columbus again, falling apart.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_03: And I just don't think that's true.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_03: MDE keeps uh changing the standards, they keep changing the tests, they keep changing the numbers, they keep changing the qualifications, and the target is never the same two years in a row.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_03: So what does this even mean?
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_03: And I think that people who would be the tomato throwers at Columbus Municipal School District from this can now look at lounge and go, well, wait a second.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_03: Something smells stupid, and it's not the schools, it's the Mississippi Department of Education.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I mean these are these are uh the distance between an A and a B and a C is different than the distance between an A and an A minus and a B plus.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_02: You see, uh I mean that these are not numbers, these are letters in it.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_03: I just don't think I think that uh I think that MDE has outkicked its coverage and uh uh has uh uh uh foisted upon these school districts uh imaginary gnomes for accountability uh standards.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_03: And it's like catch the gnome in the net or you're gonna get a C.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_03: And there's no you can't teach to that.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_03: You can't administrate to that, you can't expect a student to give a damn about that.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_03: And I don't honestly think that we should anymore either.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_02: So if you think it either has become or it is becoming a paper tiger.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_03: A paper tiger and a parody of itself.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_02: But but I mean, depending on what mood the legislature is, sometimes there's money.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_02: Well, there you go.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_03: Legislature, paper tiger, and parody of itself.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_03: I guess maybe they could go work for MDE when they retire.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_02: But at the same time, you sound a little bit like one of those people that cheers when Alabama loses just because they're Alabama.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_02: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_03: No, no, no, no, no, no.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_03: Make no mistake.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_03: The argument that I'm not I'm not I'm not sticking my tongue out and laughing at Lowndes County School District.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_03: I think that's a fine school district.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_03: And I don't think what I'm saying is I don't think that they're any less good of a school district now than they were the last eight years.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_03: I think that, and I think that it's a a stupid argument to give an arbitrary grade to them.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_03: Um expect them to rally around the flagpole to fix it when the system is what is broken and not necessarily Lowndes County School District.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_03: So I'm not laughing at them.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_03: I'm not saying I'm glad 999999 Alabama lost.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_03: I'm saying that I think the fact that they went from an A to a B, when I bet you$20, nothing of substance has changed with the efficacy of the education that you can get there, demonstrates that these accountability scores have become a parody of themselves and a parody of their point and their purpose.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_02: The other is Mr.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_02: Chapman.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_02: And if I recall on one of our episodes, you were talking about he's good with people, he's good with these certain skills and you know, healing and all this stuff.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_02: But let's talk about the accountability when that score comes in.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_03: Well, they have been ringing the alarm.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_03: Sam Allison and Craig Chapman have been ringing it together that the sc the ratings are gonna go down because the standards have been all over the map and they keep changing them and changing them and changing them.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_03: And brace yourself for you know disappointment when that grade when that letter grade comes out because it's not gonna be a reflection of who we really are.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_03: And if it's not gonna be a reflection of who who these school districts, what these school districts really are, then I think that it should be burned down and rebuilt, not the school districts, the the the instrument.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_03: The instrument needs to be burned down and rebuilt to something that first of all focuses on teachers and teaching and learning and focuses on what kids actually know when they leave and not what they can bubble in on a piece of paper.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_03: And keep these standards not in a static place, but keep them in a place to where the progress and the and the growth from them makes sense from year to year and isn't just all over everywhere.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_03: They change tests like some five years in a row that we're gonna change the test that we measure you on.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_03: Uh they did that uh they did that several years ago.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_03: It was four or five years in a row where it changed a test.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_03: And so now these teachers are having to scramble to teach teach a different test, and the whole time they're not teaching the child, or they're not getting to teach the child the way that they were trained to do, because oh shit, we gotta make this A, or we've got to maintain our B, or we can't go back down to a D.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_03: Oh yeah.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_03: Well, but let me tell you who doesn't care about that, a third grader who is being compelled to care about it by this uh guy on the intercom and their teacher that's trying to make sure that's right, the National Guard is at the door keeping people from entering.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_02: Restroom breaks, you better hold it.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_03: And it's all missing the point.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_03: Like I said, it's become a parody of its of its purpose.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_03: And I think that again, I I I do feel bad that Lowndes County School District is going to have to um deal with whatever fallout comes of this, if there is any, but but but that is a fine school district.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_03: But I think that the fact that they went from an A to a B is evidence that this entire thing is stupid.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_03: And it needs to be burned down and rebuilt in a way that makes sense.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_03: And I can tell you that if any the State Department is gonna burn down and rebuild anything in a way that's gonna make sense, it's not gonna be the Mississippi Department of Education.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_03: And I leave it.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_02: They'll probably make it more complex.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe, maybe something numerical with stickers and ponies and all that kind of stuff.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_02: So we'll take a break and right after that we'll come back and talk a little bit about data centers.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_02: All right.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_02: Hot outside, cold inside, that's exactly how we like it for three generations.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_02: Family-owned BRISLIN Incorporated has been keeping our neighbors comfortable no matter what our Mississippi weather throws our way.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_02: BRISLIN Incorporated comfort runs in the family.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_02: So, Zach, if you want to set our listenership on fire.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_02: There we go.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_02: If you want to get people uneasy, we've already told them Kamala's coming, so let's talk about data centers.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_02: I don't think Kamala is gonna bother people any bit as much as data centers, okay?
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_02: You you and I have been to these public meetings where one of these hot button issues comes flaring up and people will come out of the woodworks.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_02: You're gonna make New Hope a town.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_02: Everybody comes to talk about that.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_02: Vaccines?
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_02: Oh no.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah we were at that meeting right now.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_02: Oh man.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_02: Uh Kratom.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_02: I mean Well, we gotta talk about it though, because we've got I would say the premier place in the state of Mississippi where one might potentially go.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_02: You've got good power, you've got good water, plenty of land, and you have the um you have the CEO of the link, uh not against it.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_03: Certainly not publicly being full-throated in favor of it, but not opposed.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_03: And so we we published a story on on Saturday.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_03: It was uh apologies, it was fairly lengthy, but we were um looking to do a deeper dive into what data centers are, um, how many employees actually work at these places that in these hyperscaled places like the Amazon uh data centers in Madison County, um and and try to help people understand a little bit better, one what they're talking about when they say they're for or against them or what they are or whatever, and and two, how viable of an investment they would be in the Golden Triangle.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_03: And one of the reasons that we pursued that story was uh poor Meryl Fisackerly, the CEO of the link, goes to an exchange club meeting, uh, I think it was in August, and says, Yeah, we got we've got uh data center developers calling us every day.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_03: And then the room went silent.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I mean, I think the exchange club, which I am in, is is a fairly well-meaning group that that that that um doesn't mind a little nuance.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_03: I I think that they actually do as well with nuance as any civic club in this town.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_03: I think uh Rotary would be right there with them in a lot of ways, but um you've um the exchange club didn't blow up at her, but God, when that story hit Facebook, everything went to hell in a bucket.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_02: Well, that's where the alligators are, is on Facebook.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, there's no question about it.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_03: And so uh interestingly enough, as we're interviewing Meryl about that reaction and the link's actual posture toward data centers and what they're telling them and what regulations that she thinks ought to come with them uh to meet the public in a place where it is reasonable and protected, and protected from the bad actors, but also allowing these data centers to do business if they want to, um, met with a very real defensive response um uh to the peanut gallery.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_03: There's a very real, it seems like you know, the she asked the question, are we open for business?
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_03: Uh but at the same time, it it there there's a lot of conversation in in that interview that and that some of it gets in the story of it makes people mad.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_03: And the and the misinformation that they're using to get mad may not be real, but that anger is real.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_03: And what do we do with that?
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_03: And yeah, and and and there seems to be a very real sense for for Merrill at least, that if we're gonna seriously talk about data centers, we're gonna have to get ready for how we're gonna put that in a box, how how we're gonna put that back in the box, that anger.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_03: Um and I think that's unfortunate.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_03: Because I think that a lot of it is ill in a lot of that anger is ill-informed.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_03: Much of that anger is ill informed.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_02: Well, uh, you got to remember that a lot of that information was Googled, all right, or uh, you know, found in other various and sundry search engines and then posted on the cloud and shared.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, look, we could go into all that and and we will eventually go into all that.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_02: I don't have any inside information, but I feel like there's going to be an announcement.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_02: And after there's an announcement, there's going to be a public hearing.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_02: And the public hearing is where all hell is going to break up.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_03: I think there's going to be a public hearing.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_02: There will be a public hearing, and Andy Gibson will be there with his cowboy hat, and he's going to tell us all what we need to be thinking about it.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_02: Muslims, obviously.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_03: Well, they may be there too.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_03: Anyway.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_03: Interestingly enough, the um and I was having this discussion with another friend of mine.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_03: All of the things that, or many of the things at least, that data centers bring problematically, there is a so there's a way to solve for that.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_03: And as technology has progressed, um and as communities have met these data centers in good faith to say, you can come here, but you're gonna have to do these things.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_03: These data center developers have been willing to do them.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_03: They have moved with the technology.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_03: They have they have they are using less water.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_03: Five years.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_02: Less water.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_02: Five years is a long time for the progress of how these things are made.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_03: Which is gonna go to uh Trip Arston's point that we'll talk about uh in a minute, but the power usage, some of them are on the grid, a lot of them are supplying their own.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_03: The noise.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_03: Um I went down to I I took our our buddy Joey Deeson's uh took him up on the invitation to go down there and uh look at the You went to the crypto.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_03: No, no, I didn't go to the crypto, I went to the Amazon uh data centers.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, okay.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_03: Th those big ones in Madison County.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_03: So I I went down there and looked at those.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_03: Were they squalling?
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_03: No.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_03: You can't hear them over the traffic.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_03: They're held to 50 decibels or less.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_03: It is informed Amazon's build informed the community's policies around data center builds.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_02: Well, the way you would just listening to people talk, you would think that it sounds like third down and short in the superdome.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_03: Well, listening to people talk is much louder than these data centers were.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_03: And so there is a solution for a lot of the problems that a lot of the legitimate problems that people have with these builds and where that comes from, as Joey pointed out, as Lynn Spruell pointed out in her part of the story, um, as places like Loudoun County, Virginia, and St.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_03: Louis have done, is the community is saying, okay, yes, we are open for business.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, we want we want you to come, but if you come here, can you come here under these parameters, whether it be noise or resource usage or job creation or whatever.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_03: Making sure that the utilities don't go up.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_03: Correct.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_03: And these data center developers, the good actors, are doing it.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_03: And the bad actors are weeding themselves out by saying, No, can't no no can't do that.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_03: So that seems to be a pretty obvious solution that the link can work with the communities to provide.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_03: And then the peanut gallery can just eat their peanuts.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_03: But jobs, terrible misconception that these hyperscalers only have like 13 people working there.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_03: In Madison County, they are when they're gonna they're building out 34 data centers.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_03: They've got 10 of them built already.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_03: And just for those 10, there's 750 employees.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_03: For the 34, they're gonna by the time they scale it up to all 34, they're gonna be 1,700 employees.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_03: And those people are gonna be making an average wage of$80,000, which Joey told me is pretty conservative.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_02: And and this is not these are not builders, these are maintainers and full-time, they're there.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, they're there.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_03: Like these are the techs, these are the HVAC guys, these are the electricians, these are those folks.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_03: And, you know, you Meryl tells us that the people who are calling her, uh low-end 30 jobs, high-end 500.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_03: That's a pretty significant job creator.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_03: I understand when people say, okay, well, you're putting a solar farm out on places where they used to grow corn and there ain't but two people working there.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_03: I can I can understand the argument of is that juice worth the squeeze?
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_03: But if we're talking about several hundred employees, why are you mad about the data center and you're not mad about a metals manufacturer?
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_02: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_02: I just think it's going to be imperative that we have smart leadership to understand that we kind of have the upper hand on this, right?
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_02: We've got the land, we've got the stuff to make it happen.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_02: Don't let them push us around without there being these rock solid deals in place because the devil is in the details.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_03: Uh then you also have people like Board of Supervisors President uh Trip Arston who makes what seems like a pretty logical point as you build a big hyperscale data center, this huge facility, and as technology advances, the room that they need constricts.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_03: It becomes smaller and smaller and smaller.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_03: And he's like, then they go out into space, and then you've got a big ass building out there with no purpose.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_03: Is is that a is that a reasonable use of our um of our public of our industrial land, of our public investments?
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_03: And I think that that is a valid argument against it, um, that should be considered as well.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_03: This uh you know, something Joey told me was there was the industrial revolution, now there's the tech revolution, and you're either gonna be a part of it or you're not.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_03: And if you're not, if you're not, if you're not, then what does that mean for your economy in 20 years, 25?
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_03: But I mean, and let's talk about the industrial revolution because you know, people still mine things today.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_03: There are people, there are miners in the United States today that are getting stuff out of mines, right?
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_03: Those people aren't 10 years old.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_03: They used to be, but now they're not.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_03: So in the same way that that progressed in the Industrial Revolution, and we still got the production that we needed and the 40-hour work week and paid time off and all of the other things that came with the labor movement and whatnot, the same type of thing can happen with this, to where we progress with the technology that exists today, we benefit from it economically, and we have a community-minded approach that protects the people.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_03: You can do all of those things, and it's being done in places like St.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_03: Louis.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_03: So why not us?
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_02: If you compare it to the uh industrial revolution, one can very reasonably ask the question since we have the resources for the data centers, since the data centers are looking for places to go, why don't we have one already?
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_02: Good question.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I I tell you what, and and look, I'm just I'm just throwing out the details.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, to me that I use them so I can't be hypocritical.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_02: And there's also a big side of me that thinks, okay, this is the tower of Babel that we are building.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_02: We are going to destroy ourselves as a as a human species with this stuff somehow.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, so there's all this stuff.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_03: I know I know that's running through the history of mankind.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_02: Well, look at how many people lost their jobs because of the invention of the wheel, right?
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_02: So, I mean, I think what we do here is we can't put a period on this discussion.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_02: It's got to be a comma.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_02: I want to open this up to our listeners.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, we're gonna post something um on our Facebook page, spread it around, and and we want to get your concerns.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_02: We want to get your opinions, your questions, your ideas.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_02: Um, uh, crazy or not, go ahead and sound off.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_02: We'll let that drive the discussion because we're gonna have folks in here talking about it, and I don't think there's any way this discussion is gonna die down.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_02: At this time, we are pleased to welcome into Catfish Alley Studio Mr.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_02: Ian Childers, whose official title is Associate Professor of Art at MUW.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_02: He teaches ceramics, but perhaps more interestingly, I've got here that he is a tattoo artist, graffiti artist, BMX biker, and causer of General Mayhem.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_04: I was as a young man, yes.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_04: Nowadays I mostly stick to ceramics.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_03: Well now the the uh It's in your bio, so I've just gotta ask.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_03: So um this graffiti, was it um mischievous graffiti, or was it Banksy type graffiti, or how did you view it?
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_04: It was well in the 90s, graffiti was there was not the street art movement that like Banksy is part of.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_04: It was still just write your name on the walls.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_04: So I grew up in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, writing my name on the walls.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_04: Um to me it felt like art.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_04: In hindsight, it's probably not very well done at the time.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_03: Did you ever spend the night somewhere you didn't need to?
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_04: Yes.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_04: It's that is one of the reasons I ended up getting into uh ceramics, was I was in a little bit too much trouble as in my rambunctious youth, ended up leaving the state of Pennsylvania and moving to Georgia to get out of being in trouble all the time.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_04: And when I went to Georgia, I decided to try college, stumbled into a ceramics class, and never looked back.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_03: All right.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_03: Well, well, but uh talk about uh talk about that type of art, the the the the type of things you do with ceramics, type of things you teach.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_04: So for me, working with clay itself, like I said, I was a tattoo artist at the time.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_04: I apprenticed to tattoo in 95, 6, and 7.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_04: Uh and then I've been writing graffiti, and those things are very surface level, and they're and they're supposed to be.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_04: Tattoos are on the surface of your scan, graffiti's on the surface of walls.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_04: And there was a tactile nature to ceramics that really captured my attention.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_04: I had a lot of teen angst, even though I was in my 20s.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_04: I think I still do have a lot of teen angst in my 50s now, almost.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_04: I'll be 50 this year.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_04: Um, when I touched clay, and I would have never assumed this, it was a lightning bolt that struck me.
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_04: And I was like, wow, I like I like working with my hands.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_04: And this is quiet and soft and hard, and the exact opposite of tattooing, which was loud and rambunctious back then.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_04: Riding graffiti is climbing around the middle of night hanging off buildings.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_04: Pottery was quiet, and it it focused all that angst into like a focal point, which was my hands on a pottery wheel.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_04: And I've never gotten over that, and I still feel the same way when I work today, and it it has grounded my entire life.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_04: I don't think it's necessarily pottery.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_04: I think it was just finding something that I connected to.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_04: Any single thing that I would connect to like that probably could have pulled me out of it the same way.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_03: Well, from what I understand, pottery in particular is a very difficult thing to get into because it's it's it's an exercise and frustration, they say, for a while before you get the hang of it.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_03: How did you get through the first little while of getting over that, huh?
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_04: I was by far the worst student in the class, skill-wise.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_04: So I I know there was a lot of frustration, and there's there's points in my career I can talk about with my students where frustration compounded and I learned to let it go.
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_04: Um, in the beginning, my first potter class was 2001, and I hardly remember what what I felt.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_04: I remember I remember loving it and wanting to be in it, but I don't remember the struggles as much.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_04: I don't remember the pots that fell down.
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_04: I don't remember the ugly pots.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_04: I still have photos of a lot of them, and I can look back and be like, wow, I really thought that was good.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_04: Um But yeah, like I think the act of doing was what got me.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_04: I wanted to sit, I wanted to focus every time I threw, and every time I still throw a pot, I have to focus.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_04: It's hard.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_04: I try to make the work, I push it until it's hard.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_04: If it's too easy to throw, I'm not super interested.
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_04: Um, so I I push my work till it challenges me every time I throw, and I think that keeps me engaged in it.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_04: Whether it's hard or not, it's satisfying.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_03: Do you have freshmen or do you do it just upper level or do you do the whole thing?
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_04: We do the whole spiel.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_04: We have a lot of training.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_04: Um just the way Mississippi's set up.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_04: We have the community colleges system is really strong.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_04: So we get a lot of students from community colleges, but we also get traditional freshmen.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_04: Um and we have the curriculum is set up so that anybody can come in and learn.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_04: And if they've learned somewhere else, they still come in and they get a bit of a refresher because they need to be on my curriculum, and not to sound like I'm bolstering my curriculum is better than anyone else's, it's just we have a system that works.
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_04: I think one of the things we do the best at the W in our art department, and I'm sure the whole campus, but you work here because you love teaching.
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_05: Right.
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_04: And when I first came here in 2011, I remember being kind of floored at how much the department cared about the minutiae of education and thinking about the organizing our classes so they learn the best.
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_04: And it's trained me in the last 15 years.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_04: So I am on board with that with my students.
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_04: I'm like, we have a curriculum and you have to follow it because there are learning expectations.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_04: I know this is a pottery class, and for most of the kids that take it, it's just a pottery class.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_04: It's not, they're not majors.
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_04: But it's Mississippi.
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_04: Education has always been something that we've been struggling to bolster.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_04: So I find it personally really important that even if I'm just your pottery professor, for the one class you take that one.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_04: One time you're in school, it should matter that it matters to me.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_04: Um, even if they don't care, I should.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_04: And hopefully the kids get something from that.
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_04: A lot of them will connect with that.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_04: They're like, hey, my pottery teacher actually really cared about everything that I was working on and everything that I was doing.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_04: And I feel like everybody at the W does that, but the the importance of that, I reminded of that every single day I go into the studio.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_04: So talk a little bit about the Oak Fest.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_04: So Under the Oaks, I think this is the third year.
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_04: Um it is an arts festival that the university puts on, and it's under the oak trees on the front road on campus, and you'd think I'd know the name.
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_04: Is it Wealthy Drive?
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_04: Um, I've been there 15 years, it's in front of Wealthy Hall.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_04: And um Eric Studdard was the first one to help start putting it on, and now we've combined with uh the Rosen Swag, and we basically there's a bunch of like maybe 60 or 70 vendors that can come on campus.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, it started small, it's been growing.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_04: And the art department specifically, we have a booth, and then our student organization, which is called Kappa Pie, and I am the faculty sponsor for that, also has a booth.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_04: And this year, Kappa Pie is doing a double booth.
• 45:10
  SPEAKER_04: And for the Kappa Pie portion, we we collect artwork from the students in the community and we sell it as a fundraiser for student activities.
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_04: We like to take the students on trips.
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_04: We go on a lot of trips.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_04: Um, and trips are getting expensive.
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_04: Last year I took 35 students in New York City for an entire now, not off the fundraiser.
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_04: The students had to pay into that.
• 45:29
  SPEAKER_04: It was a class.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_04: I also was able to, one year ago, right now, I was in Los Angeles with four ceramic students.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_04: I took them on a 12-day adventure across California that we fundraised for for an entire year, and Capapi helped with that.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_04: So we we really put into Under the Oaks because it's it's our home turf, it's an art show.
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_04: So we we have two tents, the students can sell some of their own work and make some money, and then we have the fundraiser work.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_04: We also, in front of me, I brought a mug, and there's also a Chris Murphy inside.
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_04: We make a an a W-branded mug that I wanted to do on campus.
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_04: It was an idea I was throwing across with a few students a few years ago.
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_04: It's like, wouldn't it be nice if we could make something from Under the Oaks from the ceramics program about the university?
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_04: So we wanted, we played around with a bunch of logos trying to get to work because we have to be able to make this efficiently and effectively in the studio, which isn't that easy because it's a working classroom and we're now making a product.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_04: So there's they're used with a method called slip casting, which I make a mold and then we're able to cast them with liquid clay, and then they you pour the clay out, and then you have a cup at the end.
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_04: There's a lot more work involved.
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_04: Um, this one we also have a Christmas ornament on the inside.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, okay.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, wow.
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_04: That's if you look at the bottom of the cup, it says made at the W, which was something that I wanted to really focus on.
• 46:45
  SPEAKER_04: It took a lot to figure out how to get these letters in here properly.
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_04: And it was a good learning pro uh learning project for myself because as I teach, I constantly have to keep learning.
• 46:54
  SPEAKER_03: But I mean, and these mugs don't look, I mean, I'm gonna be honest with you, they don't look like a class project.
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_04: It's supposed to be a professional mug.
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_04: They are handmade by students.
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_04: There are sometimes little inconsistencies, and that's okay.
• 47:06
  SPEAKER_04: We want them to be handmade.
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_04: Um, we're using slip casting, but it is still very much handmade.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_04: Our whole process is made in-house.
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_04: And yeah, there they should be a professional cup, and it's meant for everybody.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_04: It's a big, it's got a big handle, so no matter how big your hand is, it should be able to fit in there.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_04: It's a dishwasher and microwave.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_03: I would only have to have two cups of coffee in the morning if I drank out of that.
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_03: It's a big cup of coffee.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_04: That's that's me uh falling into that.
• 47:29
  SPEAKER_04: I like a big cup of coffee.
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_04: I only drink one a day, and it's it I nurse it for half the day.
• 47:33
  SPEAKER_04: So it's I honestly don't know the scale.
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_04: I should know it's maybe a 20-ounce mug.
• 47:39
  SPEAKER_04: Don't quote me on that.
• 47:41
  SPEAKER_04: It's good, it's gonna be it's gonna be 16 anyway.
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, it's a big mug.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_04: And yeah, we just wanted uh we wanted something and we we made it W blue, as close as we could get with glazes.
• 47:50
  SPEAKER_04: Glazes are crushed up rocks in chemistry to make the blue, so it's not there's no pigments that we can buy.
• 47:57
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, there are for a little bit, but for most of this, it's crushed up quartz and feldspar and a bunch of other things to make a c uh a blue glaze.
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_04: So getting the chemistry right, we got pretty close to I think W blue.
• 48:09
  SPEAKER_04: I think we're as close as we could possibly get, but a nice W blue mug and a W ornament with the same the Ginkgo leaf on it.
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_04: And we'd like to expand to a few more designs, but that relies on me doing all the work, so it's slow.
• 48:23
  SPEAKER_03: Talking about slow and talking about teaching young people manual skills, the the that that art that you have to do with your hands.
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_03: Has that gotten harder as everything else around us has gotten faster and on demand?
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_04: It you know, ceramics specifically is more popular than it's ever been.
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_04: Really?
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_04: Which is yeah, most people wouldn't think that.
• 48:48
  SPEAKER_04: The National Ceramic Conference, I've been going for 20 years.
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_04: It used to be 3,000 people, now it's 8 or 9,000 people.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_04: Wow, okay.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_04: I think Instagram really gave everybody a window into the arts and especially like the arts and crafts, which ceramics kind of walks a fine line between the arts and the arts and crafts.
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_04: Um I think people were like, wow, that actually looks enjoyable to do.
• 49:08
  SPEAKER_04: I'd like to try that.
• 49:09
  SPEAKER_04: So ceramics overall is much more popular than it's ever been.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_04: Students, though, are much more distracted, and they're not the people that are falling in love with it on Instagram, they're the people that are stumbling upon it while they're in school.
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_05: Right.
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_04: Um getting the kids to take their headphones out in class just requires a very strict rule.
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_04: I have a very the first rule in my syllabus is no headphones in my classroom.
• 49:31
  SPEAKER_04: I get it.
• 49:32
  SPEAKER_04: They want to put their headphones on, put their head down, but then when we speak, they're not even in the classroom to hear me back.
• 49:36
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 49:37
  SPEAKER_04: Um getting them to work in the classroom, I have students at work pretty hard.
• 49:42
  SPEAKER_04: I don't think that's changed throughout the time that I have to come to their level instead of getting them to come to mine.
• 49:48
  SPEAKER_04: I think that's the number one part of my teaching philosophy is like, well, what excites them?
• 49:53
  SPEAKER_04: I had to watch 500 episodes of Naruto a few years ago because that's what they were talking about.
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_04: And I was like, do I am I gonna start watching anime so I can understand what excites you?
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_04: It's not so that I can like Naruto, which I actually ended up enjoying the show after I watched it.
• 50:07
  SPEAKER_04: But when I was thinking about it, I was like, if that's what excites them, I should look into it and see what about that excites them.
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_04: So now I'm watching tons of anime and talking with the kids about it.
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_04: We're not doing it in ceramics, but occasionally a kid will take things from an anime or whatever else they're doing.
• 50:23
  SPEAKER_04: It's not just anime, but they'll take uh uh a character or an idea from anime and they'll bring it into their work and they'll want to talk about it.
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_04: Um, I have a student right now making a lots of pieces with tongues and teeth on them, and it sounds more grotesque than it is.
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_04: They're actually really well designed and nice looking.
• 50:41
  SPEAKER_04: And I think that comes, um, this student has a severe love of tokasatsu, which is a kind of person in costume Japanese kind of aesthetic of making stories from movies back in the day, like Common Rider and Godzilla is Tokasatsu.
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_04: So they're doing that, and it's you wouldn't know it if you look directly at it, but me knowing talking to them and watching what they watch and then seeing the work, I can kind of piece all those things together.
• 51:11
  SPEAKER_02: Nice.
• 51:11
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 51:12
  SPEAKER_02: So when you work with these kids, um do you feel that your trade and what they're putting together is in competition with AI and 3D printing?
• 51:24
  SPEAKER_04: No, and yes, and no.
• 51:25
  SPEAKER_04: I think it has to be a little bit of both at the same time.
• 51:28
  SPEAKER_04: Um, we used 3D printers to help us with these mugs.
• 51:31
  SPEAKER_04: I was able to do the mold work digitally, which made the product nicer.
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_04: Uh I was able to make it faster.
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_04: I can remake or make changes to it a lot faster.
• 51:41
  SPEAKER_04: 3D printing is something I have to start teaching now.
• 51:43
  SPEAKER_04: And I've been working pretty hard at 3D printing for the last two years.
• 51:47
  SPEAKER_04: We have a small fab lab.
• 51:49
  SPEAKER_04: Um that equipment's expensive, so we're slowly getting there.
• 51:52
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, we have a laser cutter, a little 3D printer, and a little CNC router.
• 51:57
  SPEAKER_04: I could spend$200,000 in that classroom alone, but that'll take the rest of my life.
• 52:02
  SPEAKER_04: Um but I think those pieces of equipment, the technology side, are really important.
• 52:08
  SPEAKER_04: As far as AI, I see it in writing.
• 52:11
  SPEAKER_04: I don't see it in their work yet.
• 52:13
  SPEAKER_04: I see them bringing it in to critique it because at this point, it's still pretty absurd some of the posters we see, especially on Facebook.
• 52:21
  SPEAKER_04: If you open that, you see some of the local businesses need to use AI, and I understand why they do it.
• 52:26
  SPEAKER_04: It's they don't have a designer and they can't afford one.
• 52:29
  SPEAKER_04: But sometimes somebody will pick a poster and you'll look at it like, you you put this up though, and that doesn't look like food.
• 52:37
  SPEAKER_03: That's that's not what food looks like, and that's your logo now, and you and we as artists we're much more defensive of that than most people, but um we'll talk about that defensiveness, and you're talking about implementing that technology into your classrooms with 3D printing and and different things like that.
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_03: I mean I would imagine that an artist would would be turned more toward being a purist.
• 53:03
  SPEAKER_03: So do do did you have to be carried there kicking and screaming, or were you an early adopter of this is coming, we need to make this a part of what we do?
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_04: Well, I thought 3D printing was cool.
• 53:14
  SPEAKER_04: Um I think working in different things from writing graffiti to moving into the to fine arts.
• 53:19
  SPEAKER_04: Uh the graffiti writers, when I I tell a joke to my friends, or not my friends, to my students, about my friends.
• 53:25
  SPEAKER_04: When I was 20 and decided I was gonna be a ceramic major, I thought my friends in Philadelphia were gonna punch me in the mouth because I was like, I'm gonna do pottery, guys.
• 53:33
  SPEAKER_04: And they're like, what?
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_04: Like, that's not what you did in my neighborhood.
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_04: Nowadays, all my friends think it's cool, but when I was a kid, we we had these expectations for what we thought we needed to do.
• 53:42
  SPEAKER_04: Um, but I think me making that change coming from tattooing, all the different technology.
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_04: My dad fixed air conditioning for a living, like skyscraper-sized air conditioners, and so tools were always cool fixing things.
• 53:54
  SPEAKER_04: I've always had old cars because I can never afford new cars.
• 53:58
  SPEAKER_04: I have a 97 Jeep Wrangler that I drive.
• 54:01
  SPEAKER_04: Um, it breaks a lot, so I have to fix things.
• 54:03
  SPEAKER_04: So 3D printing was like, oh, it's a tool.
• 54:05
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 54:06
  SPEAKER_04: I think AI can be a tool.
• 54:08
  SPEAKER_04: I don't have a need for it in my studio.
• 54:12
  SPEAKER_04: Um, I think it could be a fine tool if you have any kind of education and you can recognize what's bad AI.
• 54:20
  SPEAKER_02: Well, you know, the bots are gonna make a bunch of guns and lasers and come after us.
• 54:24
  SPEAKER_02: That's step one, right?
• 54:25
  SPEAKER_04: That's okay.
• 54:27
  SPEAKER_03: I have pottery.
• 54:29
  SPEAKER_03: What else do I need?
• 54:30
  SPEAKER_03: You gotta go somehow.
• 54:32
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I mean, listen, I've had a pretty good run.
• 54:35
  SPEAKER_04: If if they if the lasers come after me with with Skynet, that's okay.
• 54:40
  SPEAKER_03: Well, now under the Oaks, that's uh October 31st.
• 54:44
  SPEAKER_04: October 31st from 10 a.m.
• 54:46
  SPEAKER_04: to 3 p.m.
• 54:46
  SPEAKER_04: Okay.
• 54:47
  SPEAKER_04: There's food trucks, there's bands playing, there's maybe I don't quote me on the number because I'm not in charge of it, but there's like 60 vendors.
• 54:55
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 54:55
  SPEAKER_03: Um it'll be worth checking out.
• 54:57
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I think our booth is like number 31, so there's at least 31 vendors.
• 55:00
  SPEAKER_03: There you go.
• 55:01
  SPEAKER_04: And I know there's a bunch more past us.
• 55:03
  SPEAKER_04: So let's say anywhere from 45 to 60, maybe more.
• 55:07
  SPEAKER_04: I think it's a great little art fair.
• 55:08
  SPEAKER_04: We've and and it's a kind of a response to the 3D printers and all that stuff.
• 55:13
  SPEAKER_04: Like art fairs have changed drastically in 10 years, right?
• 55:16
  SPEAKER_04: And we wanted one where it was all handmade objects by artists, a lot of young artists, a lot of people from campus, but it's open to anybody, not just campus people.
• 55:24
  SPEAKER_04: Um, so it is an art fair for art lovers, which I think is a really cool thing that they're doing.
• 55:30
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 55:30
  SPEAKER_04: So we want to support it every year from the art department.
• 55:33
  SPEAKER_04: And the art department uses a recruitment tool, and then and uh Cap Pi uses it as a fundraiser.
• 55:39
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 55:40
  SPEAKER_03: All right.
• 55:40
  SPEAKER_03: Well, we really appreciate you coming in.
• 55:42
  SPEAKER_03: I have one more question for you.
• 55:44
  SPEAKER_03: When was the last time you got on a BMX bike?
• 55:47
  SPEAKER_03: And how did that go?
• 55:49
  SPEAKER_04: I remember when I was so before I came to the W, I had one that I just got rid of, but before it might actually still be in my shed.
• 55:56
  SPEAKER_04: But before I came to the W, I was teaching at a school called Shorter College in Rome, Georgia.
• 56:00
  SPEAKER_04: And there was a student there that rode BMX bikes, and he heard that I used to ride BMX bikes.
• 56:04
  SPEAKER_04: So he brought his bike out and we did a a contest in the in the driveway of the art building where we had to jump over a trash can.
• 56:11
  SPEAKER_04: And I was like, okay, I'm not in practice anymore.
• 56:14
  SPEAKER_04: I still love bikes.
• 56:15
  SPEAKER_04: I ride bikes a lot.
• 56:16
  SPEAKER_04: I travel a lot and I spend a lot of my time, I spend my summers in Los Angeles most years, and I ride bikes around Los Angeles a good bit.
• 56:22
  SPEAKER_04: But a little 20-inch BMX bike, if I fall now, I'm not getting up as easily.
• 56:27
  SPEAKER_04: So it's been it's been a while, probably 15 years.
• 56:30
  SPEAKER_04: Understand.
• 56:31
  SPEAKER_03: Well, uh, Ian, thanks for coming in and talking with us today.
• 56:35
  SPEAKER_02: Our special guest today has been Mr.
• 56:38
  SPEAKER_02: Ian Childers.
• 56:39
  SPEAKER_02: If you need somebody to teach you to make things with your hands, he's the guy, or to decorate your local water tower.
• 56:48
  SPEAKER_05: There you go.
• 56:49
  SPEAKER_02: Zach, three things to know.
• 56:52
  SPEAKER_03: Three things to know.
• 56:53
  SPEAKER_03: Number one, Caledonia Days is happening this weekend with an appearance by the famed monster truck Bigfoot.
• 56:59
  SPEAKER_03: You remember Bigfoot and Gravedigger?
• 57:01
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah.
• 57:02
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, well, this is um my favorite of the two was Bigfoot, and so they'll be in Caledonia.
• 57:07
  SPEAKER_03: Festivities will begin Friday evening at Ola J Pickett Park and continue all day Saturday with live entertainment, food and art vendors, kids' play zone, and the always popular car show.
• 57:20
  SPEAKER_03: Number two, the Lowndes County Sheriff's Office Sting Unit went back to back in Biloxi, earning Drug Unit of the Year and Northern Mississippi Case of the Year honors for the second straight year at the Mississippi Narcotics Officers Association Conference.
• 57:36
  SPEAKER_03: Congratulations to them.
• 57:39
  SPEAKER_03: And number three, it's not in Lowndes County, but it's right next door.
• 57:42
  SPEAKER_03: Bulldog Bash, the state's largest free outdoor concert, is Friday night at the MSU Amphitheater.
• 57:50
  SPEAKER_03: Country artist Vincent Mason is the headliner.
• 57:53
  SPEAKER_03: Gates open at 6 p.m.
• 57:56
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just a simple old country boy, but um I think that makes sense.
• 58:01
  SPEAKER_01: I've stepped out and I've said what I had to say.
• 58:04
  SPEAKER_02: You've been listening to Between the Headlines with Zach and David.
• 58:07
  SPEAKER_02: That's what old people do.
• 58:11
  SPEAKER_05: That is.