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Christopher Johns:

I wish people were more aware that those insignificant items that are on your shelf, there's someone who's sacrificed so much to get that jar of Marmite. Oh, I don't know if you have Marmite in Canada, I'm sorry.

Sonari Glinton:

Whether it's a jar of Marmite, a bunch of bananas or pharmaceuticals, Christopher Johns knows exactly what it takes to get us our goods.

Christopher Johns:

We're always up against it. Do you know, it's been so long since I remember getting to a destination early ahead of time. It just doesn't really happen anymore. You can be on time, but there's not enough of us.

Sonari Glinton:

The us Christopher's referring to are truck drivers, drivers who are right now in very short supply pretty much everywhere. In the United Kingdom, they've even called in the military to drive fuel trucks to keep gas stations running. Christopher has been driving in the UK and Europe for 15 years and the shortage is really no surprise to him. It's about more than resignations, early retirements and not enough new recruits. There are bigger issues that need to be solved in the industry, and they only got worse during the pandemic. But more significantly, the shortage of drivers is part of a huge labor crisis, a labor crisis that's making all the supply chain problems we've already talked about in the series much, much worse. So, what's going on and how is it going to get better?

Sonari Glinton:

I'm Sonari Clinton and on this episode of Now, What's Next, an original podcast from Morgan Stanley, truck drivers, labor shortages, and how the workforce of tomorrow is being shaped by the problems we're facing today.

Christopher Johns:

On paper that looked like quite an easy journey, but it was tight in the end.

Sonari Glinton:

It's evening and Christopher Johns is at the New Haven truck Depot in England.

Christopher Johns:

So I've used all 10 of my driving hours for the day near enough. So that's 11 hours working time roughly. By the time I get home, my kids will probably be asleep or in bed. So I don't really get much time with them, which really, really sucks. Fingers crossed, I might get to see them tomorrow night.

Sonari Glinton:

Sometimes Christopher is gone a day, sometimes a few days, but usually he's on the road a week or more at a time. The time away from his family is one of the downsides of truck driving and one of the reasons that the industry is in crisis right now. But at one point, that alone time on the road was a part of the appeal of truck driving. In the late '70s and the early '80s in American culture, truck driving was awesome. Anyone remember the CB radio craze? I mean, major movies with major movie stars were about long haul trucking. Every Which Way but Loose with Clint Eastwood. Burt Reynolds starred in Smokey and the Bandit about an outlaw trucker. It was the number two movie when it came out. The number one movie that year was Star Wars. Chris, like me, remember those trucker movies fondly.

Christopher Johns:

Convoy was a pretty great one. I think the way that particularly America portrayed truck driving was just it was quite this romantic idea. It was that kind of sense of freedom. You get to see these incredible sites and views. Yeah, that was one of the biggest draws probably, seeing the world.

Sonari Glinton:

You know what? Convoy was an excellent movie, but seeing the world freedom rambling, the call of the open roads, well, that's a cliche because it's so true. Christopher heard the call as a young single man who needed a break from studying graphic design and the idea of being alone on the road for long hours, well, it appealed to him.

Christopher Johns:

I thought I would be quite good at that. Quite naively I assumed that being on my own I'd be the best company. Me and my thoughts, in hindsight that was mentally a lot tougher than I had been prepared for.

Sonari Glinton:

A lot of it has been a lot tougher than Christopher was prepared for. For one thing, when he's not driving, he's got to eat, he's got to sleep and he's got to wash up. Sometimes that means getting really creative with his camping gear.

Christopher Johns:

I have a solar shower. I didn't realize how rubbish it would be because of course by the time I park up, there's not a lot of sun left. So it's always just a cold shower from a bag.

Sonari Glinton:

The brother is not exactly selling life on the road. When Christopher is fed and clean, he folds down the bed in the sleeper cab. It's in a big enough space that he can stand up. And yet...

Christopher Johns:

I'm always pretty desperate to get out of the cab. I always, if I'm able to get in a truck park or a secure parking, then I able to leave my truck under security so I can then go and jog. That's enormous relief just that freedom just to jog, run off somewhere, get lost quite a bit actually.

Sonari Glinton:

Now, the running hasn't been just for his mental health. Snacking on the job is a serious health hazard.

Christopher Johns:

So much self-control is needed because you are sitting on your bum for 10 hours a day. It's really punishing. I have friends of mine who are so overweight and they have serious diabetes and they have trouble getting in and out of their own cabs.

Sonari Glinton:

Being on your own for those long stretches, that doesn't help. Christopher finds some comfort though in singing along with his music, well, until his voice hurts, and listening to the podcast, you're welcome. And sure, he can talk to his wife and three kids over a screen, but that sometimes makes it harder.

Christopher Johns:

It just shows you where you are not. It's like a window into where you want to be, but you can't. My time is so much more precious than it was before. And time is everything in this job. It's the one thing that costs the most because you give up, sacrifice important moments like my little girl's first steps and things that you... Yeah, things that you regret. They want things done faster and faster and I think it's the victims of that day and age where people click a button and it's on your doorstep and it's a fight. It's a real fight to get there in time.

Sonari Glinton:

Not only are there not enough drivers, but traffic is worse. The weather and road conditions more unpredictable and the surge in online shopping has added real pressure. Plus, there's often a lot of waiting around to be loaded or unloaded, which in the UK and Europe only got worse after Brexit. This job requires a lot of patience, but it also requires a lot of skill, incredible spatial awareness, problem solving skills. To put it bluntly, it's an important job. It's an essential job even. And Christopher doesn't think that the industry gives the drivers the respect, the growth opportunities or the compensation that they deserve.

Christopher Johns:

It's sad and they're not going to attract any young drivers. And it is a young single person's career really. We're running out of drivers and we are going to run out of so much more. It needs quite a huge overhaul.

Sonari Glinton:

You could argue it already has. Despite all the challenges, Christopher doesn't see himself leaving the job anytime soon.

Christopher Johns:

I get frustrated at myself really because I went into this career eyes wide open. So it's the decision I made, but I feel like it was a selfish decision on my part. But this is the cards I've been dealt with and this is what I've become quite good at. So I have to play my deck. This is what it is.

Sonari Glinton:

Truckers and big rigs have been a part of Kendra Hems life for almost as far back as she can remember.

Kendra Hems:

We'd get ready for a road trip. My father would hook the CB up, put the big antenna on the top of the station wagon. And throughout the course of those trips, he'd be speaking with truck drivers and he'd find out were there cops ahead or road conditions or accidents.

Sonari Glinton:

All a while, young Kendra was in the backseat doing the arm pump to get the drivers to blow their horns. Now, as the president of the Trucking Association of New York, an organization that represents the trucking industry, Kendra spends a lot of time thinking about the kinds of issues Christopher talked about earlier and how to get more drivers out on the road again. So, take me from first memory as to how do you get into the trucking business.

Kendra Hems:

My stepfather, his family owned a trucking company. So around the age of eight, I was always around trucks and drivers and everything that went along with having a family owned business. Never initially intended to actually get into trucking, but ultimately I graduated college and was trying to save some money up to go on to graduate school.

Sonari Glinton:

Spoiler alert, life happens, she never went. Kendra's stepdad asked her to fill in when they were down a dispatcher, and well, she got hooked.

Kendra Hems:

I'm so glad that's how I started in the industry because it gave me such a profound respect for the job that our drivers do every single day. They want to know that there's somebody back there that really cares about what they're doing and making sure that they can get home at night. And no disrespect to men in the industry by any stretch but I think one of the reason why we're starting to see women succeed so much in management roles in the trucking industry is because they show that they care a little bit more openly, I think, than men often do.

Sonari Glinton:

As a dispatcher, Kendra got to hear firsthand about the problems that drivers face. And she knows that they're a part of the reason that the industry right now is struggling to hire them.

Kendra Hems:

Right now, it's the worst that it's ever been. We've increased over a three year period from 61,000 drivers short to now over 80,000 professional truck drivers.

Sonari Glinton:

You're short 80,000 professional truck drivers?

Kendra Hems:

We are, yes. We were already dealing with this shortage prior to the pandemic. And as with every industry across the US, we're struggling with getting individuals to come back.

Sonari Glinton:

You may have been hearing about the great resignation. Well, over the pandemic, record numbers of workers left their jobs. Now employers across many industries are struggling to fill those gaps and there are a whole host of reasons but I'm just going to list off a few. Mass layoffs at the start of the pandemic led to early retirements for some or finding new jobs for others. An aging baby boom population essentially left the workforce. And now, there are simply millions more available jobs than there are workers to take them. This hit the supply chain particularly hard, especially as our buying skyrocketed.

Kendra Hems:

There was a report issued by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in July that indicated in transportation and warehousing as a whole, there's 490,000 job openings.

Sonari Glinton:

That's half a million jobs along the supply chain waiting to be filled.

Kendra Hems:

You're short with the crane operators that are trying to unload the ships at the port. You're short with warehousemen and forklift drivers to unload the trucks at the warehouse. We're short the drivers, we're short technicians to maintain the trucks. It's just every aspect of the supply chain right now is experiencing that shortage.

Sonari Glinton:

An aging workforce is a huge issue for the truck driving industry and the number of retiring drivers far surpasses the number of new recruits.

Kendra Hems:

The other problem is, to be quite blunt, the trucking industry has an image problem. They're not necessarily viewed as, I guess, a sexy career.

Sonari Glinton:

And that's something that the industry is working harder to change. Now, potential drivers here.

Kendra Hems:

You're not just a driver, you are a professional and you're doing a very important job that means a lot to a lot of people. You are essential to the economy. It's something that you can be proud of doing because you truly are supporting not just yourself and your family but the nation as a whole. We were seeing drivers come to grocery stores with our food and our toiletries and our cleaning supplies and they were delivering the PPE in terms of masks and gloves. And aside from our medical professionals, they truly were the heroes in this pandemic. I'm hopeful that that stays and the respect for our drivers stays, and I think respect will go a long way in terms of encouraging individuals to come into this industry and stay in the industry.

Sonari Glinton:

Look, respect is obviously important, see Aretha Franklin, so is knowing you're not in a dead end job. Career growth is now a key selling feature as they try to turn a new generation on to trucking.

Kendra Hems:

Ultimately, you can move up into dispatching or operations management, safety managers, even executive level positions.

Sonari Glinton:

Trucking companies are also finding ways to get their drivers home more often so they're not missing out on friends and family time as much. And well, what about the money? Well, in an economy where there are more jobs than workers, new recruits are demanding more and demanding better; better lifestyle, better conditions and better pay. Before the pandemic, salaries started around $40,000 a year.

Kendra Hems:

We have seen salaries for truck drivers increase exponentially over the last year. A lot of companies are doing sign-on bonuses. I saw one recently as high as $20,000. Obviously they're asking for a commitment for that bonus, but they're doing what they can to entice them in. We're hearing starting salaries up as high as $70,000 depending on years of experience and safety records. We have carriers now that are paying six figures to their drivers.

Sonari Glinton:

If salaries are up exponentially and these other things are happening, then why has it been hard to bring back drivers who got other gigs, do you think?

Kendra Hems:

There's been a lot of changes to try and improve, but the job itself is still hard. It really takes the right individual that enjoys being out on the road that is going to have an interest in the industry.

Sonari Glinton:

Industry leaders are pushing for changes on a lot of fronts. One of the big ones, lowering the age limit for drivers who cross state lines. Right now, they have to be at least 21, but the industry is lobbying the federal government to reduce that age to 18, with a lot of training.

Kendra Hems:

For us, it's not as much a skills gap as it is an age gap right now, and we lose individuals out of high school to other trades.

Sonari Glinton:

But nearly every trade is struggling to fill jobs. Many are being forced to reimagine their workforce altogether. In trucking, they're trying to fine tune their recruitment efforts to appeal to veterans, women, as well as people in the prison system who need a fresh start. But if hiring remains a challenge, how soon in the future are autonomous or self-driving trucks?

Kendra Hems:

Technology has already infiltrated the trucking industry. That's not anything new, that's been happening for years. But as far as what's coming, I don't think it's going to be driver-less as much as it will be driver-assist.

Sonari Glinton:

Now, Kendra doesn't see robots replacing truck drivers anytime soon, but she does think that trucking's transitioned to a more tech based industry that could attract more young people who've grown up with technology. In the meantime, she's been encouraged by what she's seen on the road.

Kendra Hems:

We were starting to see the arm pump come back. Drivers were saying they'd go down the road and they'd see these kids in the backseat pumping their arms for them to blow their horns. It had been quite some time since they'd seen that.

Sonari Glinton:

Technology clearly is going to be a huge part of the future of any labor force, but to what degree and how much it will help the current shortage. Well, Kunwar Walia is a design researcher recently with GE Transportation and he works on making the trucking industry more efficient through digitization, and he thinks putting too much emphasis on autonomy, driverless trucks for example, could actually be a problem.

Kunwar Walia:

I think we are solving for a symptom. That's a symptom that we are not trying to get to the root cause of it. I have spoken to truck drivers. They take pride in their truck driving and they know how much impact they have. But right now the problem is, I think it's the feeling of being non-productive.

Sonari Glinton:

Kunwar saw this firsthand when he was a grad student at the ArtCenter College of Design in Los Angeles and his class visited a container yard at the port.

Kunwar Walia:

I was just sitting there just trying to understand these operations and I was just questioning myself. Hey, there is like trillions of dollars of cargo that we move annually from this infrastructure and some of the practices are so, I think there's a common term we say in the industry called stone aged.

Sonari Glinton:

Stone age. Yes, it's true. You still see people with pencils and clipboards and carbon copies. It is shocking when you realize the immense volumes of goods moving through or stuck at ports around the world.

Kunwar Walia:

And that's because of the inefficiencies in the system, the bottlenecks in the system. It's just painful when a truck driver is sitting inside a yard and doing nothing and the cargo is not ready for it.

Sonari Glinton:

As you might imagine, those bottlenecks got really bad during the recent supply chain chaos. Drivers can wait up to 12 hours for cargo to be loaded onto their trucks, especially at a backed up port like the ones in Los Angeles and Long Beach. In normal times, drivers can still expect to wait up to two hours to either pick up or unload a container. Kunwar believes this has to change. After grad school, he went to work for GE Transportation, looking at the supply chain from every angle.

Kunwar Walia:

I've kind of understood what problems this industry is going through and then how it trickles down to an end user, like somebody sitting inside the office of a shipper and maybe trying to figure out where my cargo is, and what kind of challenges that person has to go through when it comes to the visibility of the cargo or just operational inefficiencies, whether I don't have a right tool, whether I don't have a right information, how should I get it, how can I optimize my operation. I think in the end it comes down to how I can make my life easy while I'm working.

Sonari Glinton:

And when Kunwar looks at the challenges in the trucking industry, he doesn't see driverless trucks as the first best solution. He thinks there are many more immediate ways to solve the stone age problems, and it starts with how the information is handled, stored and shared.

Kunwar Walia:

This industry needs to go through digital transformation and they have to understand how to function as an IT company.

Sonari Glinton:

Imagine a trucking company as an IT company. And one of the key steps in that transformation is making reliable information available and easy to access. For example, he describes what it can be like to work at a trucking company and be responsible for tracking down cargo.

Kunwar Walia:

I'm assigned like 100 containers to manage today, I'm just going through different website, finding that information container by container just to maybe have an understanding that what is the status of that container today.

Sonari Glinton:

Turns out it can be really hard to keep track of a container. So, many different parties are involved, often without a centralized tracking system, which makes it feel like a frustrating game of tag. The inefficiencies keep truck drivers waiting longer and longer to load and unload, extending their time away from their home and their family. Kunwar wants to see more data shared and standardized so that everyone across the industry can benefit.

Kunwar Walia:

It's not that this industry is not collecting information. They've been collecting information for ages. There is a lot of data which is somewhere in the books, somewhere in some spreadsheets and it's not made accessible to the right kind of stakeholders.

Sonari Glinton:

By making this data available and accessible, Kunwar believes we could reduce a lot of the bottlenecks and frustrations, making the work for truck drivers and anyone along the supply chain much more efficient and rewarding.

Kunwar Walia:

This person would feel more productive. He can enjoy going to the company and working. He's not frustrated from his job. So that's a kind of an impact this digitalization can create. It just makes life easy for a lot of people. And once a digitalization is done, then we have an opportunity to use these AI ML kind of technologies to really start looking ahead.

Sonari Glinton:

Well, that's the point that we're starting to ask, where does autonomy like self-driving trucks make the most sense? Kunwar gets excited. You can hear him tapping his desk when he talks about what he sees as the real goal.

Kunwar Walia:

What things I should automate and how I should automate certain aspects that really assist the users or the end user to make that person's life easy or more productive. If you're able to achieve that, maybe we don't need automation, maybe we don't need to replace that person because that person would be more productive anyhow because he's enjoying his work. We should start from, hey, this is not a human friendly job if it risks somebody's life, and that can be automated.

Sonari Glinton:

Now, the jobs that are high risk, that makes sense. But what about other jobs, ones that are not so high risk like driving trucks? Well, Kunwar thinks that although self-driving trucks will probably be a part of our future, especially for long haul trucking, for now the job remains very human. Automating certain aspects of the job though would make it safer, more comfortable, more efficient, which benefits everyone: the drivers, the businesses, the consumers waiting on their goods. It could also make the job itself much more appealing to those future recruits, and Kunwar thinks some of those innovations will likely come from within the industry, like the drivers themselves. And he says he sees that happen all the time.

Kunwar Walia:

If you see some of the technology innovations that are happening in this space and the people who are doing it, they have a history of doing these things themselves or maybe their parents and they actually use the current technology to solve the same problem from a different angle, from a technology perspective. So that's how things change.

Sonari Glinton:

Think of Kendra Hems, rethinking the family business on an industry-wide level, or think of Christopher Johns, the English truck driver and all the frustration and waiting he faces on the job. How much more would he enjoy his work if some of those bottlenecks and delays were reduced, if the riskiest parts of his work were made safer, if he had an opportunity to make the work better?

Christopher Johns:

I've spent 15 years now and I think the attraction is becoming less and less. The obstacles are increasing and there's no let up. A solution needs to be reached because, yeah, it's a constant battle for us and I don't see that getting any better.

Sonari Glinton:

That discontent is part of what's accelerating big changes in the trucking industry, from working conditions to compensation, to recruitment, to digitization. If there's any good to come from all this supply chain chaos, it's the opportunity to rethink our old ways of doing things, to get out of the stone age and make the work better, safer, and more efficient. Like many industries around the world, truck driving is facing a real reckoning and it's thinking hard about how to value the workers it already has because without them, nothing gets anywhere y'all. Coming up on Now, What's Next, an original podcast from Morgan Stanley, how supply chain disruptions and a shortage of raw ingredients have left pet owners scrambling to find food for their companions. See you next time.

CHRIS EVERT

Hi, I'm Chris Evert.  Welcome to Episode 2 of What Moves You, an audio miniseries for Morgan Stanley in support of the WTA. We're here to talk about some of the most common questions you have about money with Morgan Stanley Private Wealth Advisor Nadine Wong. Questions like the ones I had over the course of my career.

When I first started playing, I was a teenager, and trust me, I had no concept of saving. But over time, I learned how important it was. 

As tennis players, we often have erratic streams of income – a tournament purse here, a sponsorship there. For most players, it's nothing like receiving a regular paycheck from a day job.  Nadine says financial stability comes down to one major point.

 

NADINE WONG

Saving.

But the big question is, how MUCH should you be saving every year ... or month ... or week? And how do you do that, especially when you’re starting out?

First, you want to make sure you have at least a couple of months’ worth of living expenses immediately available in your checking account for day-to-day use. Refer to your budget to understand your monthly fixed expenses.

Next, you need to build up an emergency fund.  This is important for anyone, but especially for you as an athlete -- you need to have a cushion so you can be prepared for any unexpected costs that may come your way --  say you need to take a break from playing while you recover from an injury.

As a general rule, a strong emergency fund should be able to cover between 6 to 12 months’ worth of living expenses.

Get into the habit of saving some money every time you get paid -- you won't miss it if you never got used to having it in the first place, and before long you'll have a nice "rainy day fund."

Overall, you’re looking to work towards 60 - 30 - 10. That’s sixty percent of your income going towards your fixed costs, including taxes. 30% going towards savings and debt repayment, and 10% going towards variable spending.   

When you’re starting out, building up these savings can feel overwhelming but it doesn’t need to happen overnight. Saving is similar to training- you do not see all of your gains in one workout. It takes many deliberate training sessions to achieve the results you want.

So - is there ever a good time to splurge on something big and expensive, like a car? You have to go back to your budget -- are all your NEEDS covered? Are you paying down any expensive debt? Is your emergency fund in a good place?

Finally, one of the most important skills when it comes to saving is mastering the art of saying no. You have to stay disciplined in the face of "FOMO" - fear of missing out. This is especially true for expenses I’ll label as “wishes.” An exotic trip.? A pair of designer shoes.? For those things, try saying "not right now." While you're still building up your savings, categorize carefully between needs vs. wishes and wants. Find smaller, less expensive things that give you pleasure, in moderation. That can keep you motivated. 

 

CHRIS EVERT

It can be so tempting to use that first big win to splurge on something exciting, like a car.  Unless, of course, you're winning them by winning a tournament. But it's important to save and build up that baseline of financial stability. Remember, just because you're making a lot of money doesn't mean you can spend a lot of money.

Ultimately that will make you a stronger player.  Thanks for listening to What Moves You. I'm Chris Evert. Next time you've got a healthy amount saved, you've just booked a big sponsorship and your finances are looking good for now at least. So what can you do to keep it that way?

 

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Sonari Glinton:

Hello, I'm Sonari Glinton. I've been thinking a lot about this conversation I listened in on recently. Meet Lauren Wright and her father, Willie Wright.

Lauren Wright:

I'm 33, daddy. I'm 33. I am getting older and I'm having to do adult things like talk to my father about him getting older and being his... What's it called, daddy? I'm your power of attorney.

Willie Wright:

Yes. And that's all you, everything is you.

Lauren Wright:

I know.

Willie Wright:

That's the reality of living as it were. We have to be prepared to live, we also have to prepare to die.

Sonari Glinton:

Listen, I know this sounds like a dark way to start a show, but let's face it. We're a year plus into a pandemic that has been deadly for elderly folks. And we're all thinking about how we ourselves will spend our senior years. And if we're lucky, we're having conversations just like this with love, humor and a bit of frankness.

Lauren Wright:

I already told you, you can't die.

Willie Wright:

Yeah. I can and I will.

Sonari Glinton:

This is a weekly conversation for Lauren and Willie Wright. It's a conversation that feels more urgent because of the pandemic. Right now, Willie loves living in Cleveland, God bless him, where he's a program manager for the National Caucus and Center on Black Aging. But he's getting older and he lives alone far from Lauren and he has diabetes. He thinks about his future every single day.

Willie Wright:

I don't want to be in anybody's nursing home thing. That's just not my style.

Lauren Wright:

It's also not an option, and you're also not 90.

Willie Wright:

But eventually, I will be 90, God willing.

Lauren Wright:

Yeah.

Willie Wright:

But what does that look like for me? What does 75, what does 80 look like for me?

Sonari Glinton:

What does that look like for me? Well baby boomers like Willie Wright are redefining what the golden years can look like, or at least they're trying. They're going to live longer. That could also mean they're living with more health complications like dementia. The pandemic has forced us to reckon with how we treat and value our elders and the people who care for them. So how can we make that care better? If we tackle that now, what could 75, 80, or fingers crossed, 90 look like for Willie Wright, for our parents, or even for us?

Iris Yafuso Toguchi:

It's just a beacon of light when you have that program.

Rudy Sukna:

Yeah. And like I said, I'm very hopeful and I know that we can get through this.

Sylvia Mendoza:

Hallelujah. I can finally get her in a place that has a private room where she does have some dignity and respect.

Sonari Glinton:

I'm Sonari Glinton, and this is Now, What's Next?, an original podcast from Morgan Stanley. Now, let's get started.

Iris Yafuso Toguchi:

Okay. So this is a picture of my mom. We got awarded this award when we closed the bakery from the state saying it was a-

Sonari Glinton:

Iris Yafuso Toguchi is showing me some of her family photos.

Iris Yafuso Toguchi:

This is all of us with the representative of our city.

Sonari Glinton:

Her father opened the Larry's Bakery, a Honolulu institution, in 1957. Her mother, Irene Yafuso, ran it for decades after he died.

Iris Yafuso Toguchi:

She would get up 2:30 in the morning, go to work, get the bakery all set up. And at seven o'clock, she would come home and pick me up and then bring me back to the bakery and feed me my favorite pastry, which was a butterhorn, fresh cup of orange juice, which I had every day for at least 15 years of my life, and that's why I look the way I look now, but she did that. And then after I ate-

Sonari Glinton:

Iris' mom blended two full-time jobs into one. Single mother and business owner.

Iris Yafuso Toguchi:

And at two o'clock, do it all over again.

Sonari Glinton:

You don't get a sense that any flour landed on her.

Iris Yafuso Toguchi:

No! I mean... right?

Sonari Glinton:

What you just described is moving all day long.

Iris Yafuso Toguchi:

Right, right. Exactly.

Sonari Glinton:

But a few years ago, things changed. Iris remembers the day she realized the tables had turned.

Iris Yafuso Toguchi:

She had cut her foot at the bakery site, so I took her to the ER. And I found out she didn't have insurance, health insurance. It was last three, four months back because she forgot to pay for it. That is when I found out something was wrong. Checks galore to publishers, clearing house, Ginsu knives, gave money to the dolphins, the whales, the whatever, and no money. It was all gone.

Sonari Glinton:

Now, that's a moment. All of her mom's savings were gone. Now, that discovery led to Irene's Alzheimer's diagnosis. And in 2017, Iris and her brother decided to close down the bakery so Iris could become her mom's full-time caregiver and keep her at home. Now, the benefits of aging at home are huge. I mean it's home, it's familiar. You can be independent, but close to loved ones. Not to mention, there's less of a chance of catching viruses. Overall, people live better when they age in place. So why is it so hard to do? First of all, it may be cheaper than a nursing home, but aging in place comes with a cost, a cost that's usually carried by women like Iris.

Iris Yafuso Toguchi:

In the beginning, people are like, "Be careful, the caregiver burnout. I've been there." And I'm like, "Caregiver burnout, I'll never get to that. No, no, I'll never let that happen." Well that thing is real, man. I'm at caregiver burnout for real.

Sonari Glinton:

And then Iris got some help. In 2018, Hawaii launched the groundbreaking Kupuna Caregivers Program. It gives working family caregivers money, financial support up to $70 a day towards services that help keep an elderly person at home. And that could mean hiring a visiting care worker, someone to help with cleaning or cooking, or sending a loved one to daycare.

Speaker 7:

Who's winning?

Irene Yafuso Toguchi:

She's winning!

Sonari Glinton:

Now, Iris finds a bit of relief by sending her mom to a senior daycare center. You can hear Irene playing a game with a small child of a daycare worker.

Irene Yafuso Toguchi:

Come on, open your mouth.

Sonari Glinton:

Now, Iris was nervous about taking her. But day one went a lot better than expected.

Iris Yafuso Toguchi:

She's like, "Hey, there's my friend." She went right in. She started coloring with a friend and that was it. And I tell you, it was like I won the megabucks.

Sonari Glinton:

Iris' mother loves it, but daycare also costs megabucks, bucks Iris and her family didn't have. Social security checks barely cover the cost of medicine, diapers and personal items. Iris was dipping into her own dwindling savings. Now, unpaid family caregivers can expect to spend nearly 20% of their overall income looking after a loved one. And they may need to also bring in home care aids, install safety equipment. And if they don't have family leave, they may lose or give up their own jobs and deplete their own retirement funds. Figuring out how to pay for all of it takes time and a lot of energy. Now, without Kupuna Care, Iris doesn't know how she would cope.

Iris Yafuso Toguchi:

The time that I already don't have I would not have. I would need an eighth day in the week. It's just a beacon of light when you have that program.

Sonari Glinton:

Like any program, Kupuna Care is not perfect. There are waiting lists and the program itself is subject to state budgets and yearly renewal, but it points to a shift to support values that are a part of Hawaiian culture, values we could all embrace. In Hawaiian, kupuna translates roughly to grandparent or ancestor, but it comes from two words that put together mean the source of our existence. And in Hawaii, there are a lot of kupuna.

Iris Yafuso Toguchi:

In Hawaii, they call it the silver wave. Our silver wave is huge. Some of them still drive, still exercise, still teaching the young ones language, or ukulele. They're just so amazing.

Sonari Glinton:

While Hawaii's experiencing the silver wave, the whole world is preparing for a silver tsunami. There are currently 750 million seniors in the world. By 2030, there will be over a billion. And more and more of them want to stay in their homes or with their families. By giving caregivers money to support that desire, the Kupuna Care Program actually saves the government in health care and nursing home costs. I asked Iris, given all the stress and exhaustion, if she'd ever consider putting her mother in a nursing home.

Iris Yafuso Toguchi:

Oh, hell no. No. I want to keep her home safe, especially with coronavirus, but I want to keep her here as long as I can so she's happy and I'm happy. I'm happy. When she's gone, I will have no regrets. And when she's gone, I can sleep all I want, work all I want. I'll probably be old, but I’ll travel. But for right now, this is what's important to me in my life.

Sonari Glinton:

I mean she did make you those pastries when you were a kid.

Iris Yafuso Toguchi:

Mm-hmm. And she did a lot more than just that. She did so much for all of us. So that's the best thing I can do. I mean yes, that's the best thing I can do.

Sonari Glinton:

We all need to figure out the best thing we can do. But what if there were more programs like Kupuna Care to give us better options? As much as we might like the idea of aging at home, it's not going to work out for everyone. For some of us, a nursing home may be our final destination. Over the last year, the prospect became a lot less appealing to a lot of people. So what can we do to make these facilities safer and more inviting?

Rudy Sukna:

So I'm Rudy Sukna. I live in New Rochelle, New York, and I work as a registered nurse at the Hebrew Home for the Aged.

Sonari Glinton:

It's one of the biggest nursing homes in New York City. And despite the unprecedented challenges of the last year, Rudy gets into the elevator at work every day and pumps himself up so that when the doors open on his floor, he's got his game face on.

Rudy Sukna:

And I'm there with skates ready to go. So they give me a report letting me know what's going on. The floor's on quarantine, somebody's started IV, we're getting blood cultures, if they've got to get swabs. So yeah, it's exciting at the same time. And I'm pumped, ready to go. You've got to be because I can't go in there feeling depressed and feeling, "Oh my God, how am I going to do this?" I go in there with enthusiasm every day, trying to do the best I can do.

Sonari Glinton:

Even in the middle of a pandemic.

Rudy Sukna:

Even in the middle of the pandemic. Yeah.

Sonari Glinton:

And this pandemic has been pretty brutal for Rudy. In early spring last year, he caught COVID from one of his residents, one of the 50 residents in his care at any one time.

Rudy Sukna:

I just had a face mask on. And when I gave her the medication, she spit it back out onto my face and I could feel it going into my eyes. And I was scared at the time and went and washed it out. They sent her out, she died at the hospital. A couple of days later, I normally don't get sick, I started literally getting a 103 fever. I had chills. I was bed ridden for three days. And it was hard for me to breathe too. My mom also got sick, she works in the healthcare field, and she was sick for maybe three months. I was there trying to help her out with different things. My uncle contracted it. He died.

Sonari Glinton:

I'm sorry for your loss.

Rudy Sukna:

Yeah. And then my patients also.... I developed relationships. I had at least 10 I can remember that passed away. So I've been working there for over 24 years. Well yeah, it's going to be 24 years.

Sonari Glinton:

Now, I'm able to look at you. You don't look like you've been working anywhere for 20 years. Can I ask how old are you?

Rudy Sukna:

Yeah, I'm 40. I'm going to be 41 in the next week.

Sonari Glinton:

He's seen a lot in those 24 years. And you might think with all he's seen in this past year alone, Rudy wouldn't want his own loved ones in a nursing home. Well think again, his mother and his aunts care for his grandmother and he's watched the toll it's taken on them.

Rudy Sukna:

And it's very typical. But with the nursing home, you have a lot of different resources. So you have the doctors there, you have the nurses there, you have the aids there, you have physical therapy, there's food there, there's dieticians, there's a lot of different services that we provide for our residents. And it takes the burden off the families. So I don't see a nursing home as a bad thing, I see it as a community.

Sonari Glinton:

But Rudy often struggled, especially over the pandemic, to give his community of seniors the care he felt they deserved.

Rudy Sukna:

Even pre-COVID, it would happen every so often that you'll be having one nurse for 50 patients. I'm telling you that's a mess. So during this time right now, recently, last week, three or four days I was working by myself with 50 patients with four CNAs. And it's difficult.

Sonari Glinton:

Let that sink in. How much can one registered nurse and four certified nursing assistants, or CNAs, do for 50 patients?

Rudy Sukna:

We're crying out that we need more staff because if we have more hands on deck, we're able to tackle this hard situation.

Sonari Glinton:

Here's one thing that could make it easier. This past spring, the New York State Legislature passed the safe staffing bill. It requires homes to have enough staff to make sure each resident gets at least three and a half hours of one-on-one care each day. Plus, the state cap the profits for nursing homes, which means they'll have to spend at least 70% of their revenue on caring for residents and 40% of that on staffing. It's hope that these changes will improve the quality of care for residents and working conditions for caregivers like Rudy. But these changes won't solve the problems of low wages or shortage of workers. A recent study found that nearly three quarters of homes had difficulty finding enough staff to cover shifts, but Rudy is more committed than he's ever been.

Rudy Sukna:

We're there to take care of these people who've been through their lives already and this is like their sunset of their life. I don't think you can just sometimes abandon ship. I'm a union delegate. So I'm there for my residents and my coworkers.

Sonari Glinton:

Are you hopeful?

Rudy Sukna:

I wouldn't be here if I wasn't hopeful. That's why I'm sticking around. I don't know. Maybe I'm too optimistic or I have too much enthusiasm, but that's how I've lived my whole life anyway.

Sonari Glinton:

If you want to change the sunset years as Rudy likes to call them, then we have to value the people who care for the elderly. They've been essential to getting through this crisis. And while Rudy and his union advocated for better conditions for his residents and coworkers, there's another revolution happening. The nursing home and caregiver industry is beginning a huge rethink of the facilities themselves. Now, if you close your eyes and imagine your standard nursing home, you probably see something that looks like a hospital floor, long hallways, rooms with two or more people in them, a nursing station, medical carts and wheelchairs, IVs. Modern nursing homes resemble hospitals because well they grew out of hospitals. After World War II. The U.S. government shifted funding away from welfare homes for the elderly to facilities that gave medical care to the elderly.

Sonari Glinton:

Now, many of those facilities were built and managed by hospitals. And when Medicare arrived in the U.S. in 1965, seniors with low incomes got money to pay for long-term care homes. Then by the 1970s, the number of U.S. nursing homes had more than doubled. While there have been efforts to tighten regulations and improve the nursing home industry, not much has changed in the last 50 years. That is until a global pandemic encouraged us to look around and see if there's a better way of doing things.

 

Sonari Glinton:

Hello, Sylvia. How are you doing?

Sylvia Mendoza:

Fine. Thank you, Sonari. How are you today?

Sonari Glinton:

I'm all right. Well first, I have to say I'm sorry for your loss.

Sylvia Mendoza:

Oh, well thank you very much.

Sonari Glinton:

Sylvia's mother, Lupe Mendoza, died in February. She was 91-years-old and survived cancer, had dementia, and diabetes. But Sylvia literally beams when she talks about her mother as a young woman.

Sylvia Mendoza:

She looked like Liz Taylor, but instead of the purple eyes, she had green eyes. She would wear her little glove in the early fifties and sixties. And as she became older, she always had her matching pants suits. In fact, one of the instructions she had for the funeral directors was a little rouge, a little pink lipstick, part my hair to the side so I look like maybe Lana Turner in the early years, sexy like. So that was my mom, always concerned with appearances.

Sonari Glinton:

All right. Now, to be clear, this isn't a story about the death of Lupe Mendoza. This is a story about how her only child, Sylvia, found a nursing home that helped her live out her days as happily as possible. In fact, Sylvia Mendosa was following her mother's own instructions.

Sylvia Mendoza:

My dad became very ill and he was home bound for 10 years. And during that time, she was his primary care provider and I would come in and provide respite. But she then said, "If I ever need help, don't keep me at home because our relationship will be really strange. You're going to hate me at that point in time. Find me a nice nursing home."

Sonari Glinton:

Now, that time came after Sylvia's mom had a bad fall and had to stay in the hospital. The doctors recommended a nursing home with a rehab facility and she stayed there for five months. But Sylvia knew that it was not a good fit.

Sylvia Mendoza:

She was sharing a room with three other people and really was not getting the attention or the care that she deserved and needed. I'd show up to visit with her and she'd be in the same clothes three days in a row. And I'd asked, "Hasn't she been changed?" "Well she doesn't want to."

Sonari Glinton:

Now, Sylvia started looking for alternatives and she didn't like what she saw. I'll spare you the gory details. You've heard about them all before. Sylvia though was on the hunt for something much, much better.

Rosemarie Sperry:

What I was looking for was does the staff treat the people under their care the same way they would treat a family member?

Sonari Glinton:

Sylvia found what she was looking for in a Green House.

Rosemarie Sperry:

Lupe loved Mexican food. And we would host taco night on one of our lovely outdoor patio and just enjoyed the evening and the good company as well. Every year, Sylvia would organize a large party for Lupe's birthday, everything from food and drinks to a live mariachi band, who would come and play for everyone, including our neighbors to enjoy.

Sonari Glinton:

Rosemarie Sperry is one of the nursing assistants who cared for Sylvia's mom during her last years at the Evergreen Villas, their unique part of Mt. San Antonio Gardens, a large retirement and nursing home facility in Pomona, California. Now, Sylvia was thrilled when her mother moved to the top of their waiting list.

Sylvia Mendoza:

Hallelujah. I can finally get her in a place that has a private room where she does have some dignity and respect.

Sonari Glinton:

The Evergreen Villas are part of the Green House Project, a nonprofit organization dedicated to humanizing the nursing home experience. Now, they do that by making smaller facilities that look and feel like home, no long hallways or nursing stations, private rooms, private showers, a big fireplace and a bright, comfy living room, and a kitchen that everyone can use.

Sylvia Mendoza:

One day when she was a bit lucid, she said, "Is this how a college dorm is like?" And I said, "Yes." You have that atmosphere where everybody is together and you get to enjoy each other's company and you get to interact and do different things. So that's how it's different. It's more family like, almost collegial.

Sonari Glinton:

The Green House staffing model helps with that family feeling. On a day shift, a registered nurse like Rudy would have to take care of no more than 24 residents. He'd have the help of four nursing assistants. Now, those lower ratios make everyone happier and healthier. And during the first four months of the pandemic, 95% of Green House homes reported zero cases of COVID-19 among residents or staff. There are currently around 300 Green Houses around America, but with those numbers, you can certainly expect to see more. Now, this care is not cheap. About 45% of Green House residents qualify for Medicaid, but not Lupe.

Sylvia Mendoza:

Yeah, we did have to refinance our home to help defray some of the costs. So yes, it is expensive. But when you have a loved one who has given so much of their time and love and money to educate you and make sure you have the best in their waning years, you want to make sure that you do something for them as well. And that was her money. And I decided to use it on her.

Sonari Glinton:

Sylvia has no regrets. Not only was she able to keep working at a job she loves.

Sylvia Mendoza:

I was able to maintain the relationship as her daughter versus her care provider.

Sonari Glinton:

In fact, Sylvia's taken out long-term care insurance for herself and started saving money so if she needs it in the future, she can stay at a place like the Evergreen Villas. And seeing her mom happy there meant the world to Sylvia, as did the tribute her mother received from the caregivers the day she died.

Sylvia Mendoza:

They had gotten my mom ready and they put on her blush and her lipstick like she had wanted. And as they were wheeling her out, one of the women turned on her phone and started playing mariachi music. All of the staff came out and lined the driveway and they were singing that she was the [inaudible 00:25:03]. She was the queen of the house here. And they paid tribute to her by playing one of her favorite songs as she left. And we were very touched by that.

Sonari Glinton:

This is what it looks like when we value our elders. Sylvia was able to make the best choice for herself and her mother just like Irene and Iris Yafuso Toguchi made a different, but equally good choice in Hawaii because well... they had good options. Options that were grounded in a positive perspective on old age. The problems facing nursing homes are very complex and we've only looked at a few of the possible ways forward. But after what we've seen and learned through the pandemic, are we ready to start making changes? Will we make solutions like the Green Houses more accessible and affordable? Will we invest in more staff? Will we expand kupuna caregiver support? I'm hoping we answer some of these questions for Willie and Lauren Wright, the father and daughter duo from the beginning of the story.

Willie Wright:

But you know I love you, right?

Lauren Wright:

I know. I love you too.

Willie Wright:

And we'll make the right decisions. We'll make it work.

Lauren Wright:

I know.

Willie Wright:

Yeah. Not going to be the babysitter though.

Lauren Wright:

No, I'm not expecting you to be the babysitter.

Sonari Glinton:

We always find ways of making it work. But here's the thing, can we find ways of making it better? On the next episode, speaking of babysitters, we find out if the pandemic has been enough to create positive change around actual daycare, making it better, more affordable and accessible.

 

I'm Sonari Glinton, and this has been Now, What's Next?, an original podcast from Morgan Stanley. Thank you for listening.

 

Jacob Sarasohn:

So I packed one travel sized suitcase, and I got on a plane, I was the only person on the plane. And I flew home from Chicago. And as soon as I landed, and I wheeled my suitcase into my parents' house, I realized, this is real, this is something bigger than a little break from school.

Sonari Glinton:

That's Jacob Sarasohn.

Jacob Sarasohn:

I'm currently 21 years old. And I go to school at the Art Institute of Chicago,

Sonari Glinton:

Or at least he did. When classes first went online last spring, Jacob and his friends were thinking.

Jacob Sarasohn:

Let's just get through this month, we can all handle it and we'll figure it out. And then next year it'll be different.

Sonari Glinton:

But it wasn't. A weekend into Zoom classes in September. And he began to weigh his options.

Jacob Sarasohn:

I thought that I could do something else with my time that's more valuable. It wasn't worth paying that much money to take classes that I felt were subpar. Not because of the professors, or the students, or the content, but because of the delivery.

Sonari Glinton:

So the idea of you stopping school, in my mind, was kind of crazy because I think of all the angst and anxiety that I had about you choosing your damn school. You know what I mean? You should know, Jacob's mom is a very good friend of mine and he's kind of like family.

               

Sonari Glinton: And you get into the frigging Art Institute of Chicago. And now you're like, "Nah, this is not interesting. I'm going to go do something else." So what did you decide to do?

Jacob Sarasohn:

I decided to take a course to become an EMT, which is a little different from art school. I will say.

Sonari Glinton:

A little different?

Jacob Sarasohn:

A little different.

Sonari Glinton:

Well I want to be clear, Jacob left in-person art school because he felt it was too dangerous to be in classrooms during the pandemic. Then he decided to become an emergency medical technician. He wanted to learn. He just didn't want to do it over a computer screen.

Jacob Sarasohn:

I'm doing CPR for the first time, or I'm trying to help out on a patient that was pulled from a vehicle in the emergency room.

Sonari Glinton:

Now those are lessons that you definitely won't get in an art school studio.

Jacob Sarasohn:

There's those moments where I'm sweating and stressing out, but it's never a yearning to go back. It's just a broader understanding of how privileged I am and just expanding my landscape of how I see things.

Sonari Glinton:

I have to admit. It is hard for me not to admire that choice. We all know that college can lead to great things. Better earning potential, a longer healthier life, even having healthier children. Then, of course, there's learning for the sake of learning. The intellectual and spiritual growth that happens. College, it can make us better people and better citizens. But when the pandemic pushed college into a long pause, it made way for big questions and new insights that could change how we think about higher education for good. From how we teach.

Elizabeth Grimm:

I acknowledged my own personal vulnerability in ways that I never would have done in class before.

Sonari Glinton:

To the rewards of living on a college campus.

Brenda A. Allen:

Those are life skills. Negotiating a bathroom and you share it with 16 other women. If you can figure that one out, you can probably close the biggest deal ever in business.

Sonari Glinton:

To the deeply held beliefs about what it takes to succeed.

LaShana M. Lewis:

The first thing that comes to my head is that people lie to me.

Sonari Glinton:

I'm Sonari Glinton, and on this episode of Now What's Next, an original podcast from Morgan Stanley. We're looking to get schooled on higher education.

Brenda A. Allen:

These are good questions because these are things that people are really grappling with right now.

Sonari Glinton:

Now will Jacob continue being an EMT or will he go back to school? Well, we'll find out about that later in the show. One thing is certain, Jacob is not going back to Zoom classes. I don't blame him. But would he have stayed if he could have gone to an online course that made him feel something like this?

Bushra Shaikh:

I would be engaged, energized. When I imagine international law, I just imagine a bunch of happy students. I just think of having this motivation to learn, but also this positive energy. That's so hard to get across on Zoom.

Sonari Glinton:

That's Bushra Shaikh. She's a long way from her home and family in Kashmir. She's finishing a very strange senior year at Georgetown university in Washington DC. Now the course Bushra was talking about, international law, is taught by Dr. Elizabeth Grimm.

Elizabeth Grimm:

I've taught it for many years, many different semesters, many different iterations. And I thought that had been working really well. If I had not had the forcing mechanism of COVID to change the class, I would not have changed the class in the way that I did.

Sonari Glinton:

Dr. Grimm taught the course last fall when the long-term reality of the pandemic really started to set in.

Elizabeth Grimm:

I think all of us, at the beginning of March, went into it saying, "All right, we've got this, we're tackling this." And that adrenaline very much had evaporated, I think, by August of 2020. And given rise to frustration, and given rise to loneliness.

Sonari Glinton:

Now that summer, instructors at Georgetown got training in online teaching.

Elizabeth Grimm:

In every single training session, we received this guidance of, just so you know, students' attention span on Zoom is eight minutes long.

Sonari Glinton:

Now as she sat through those Zoom classes, Dr. Grimm had to think about how her own lectures, that clocked about 50 minutes, would translate in this new world.

Elizabeth Grimm:

I spent the whole summer basically, about an hour or two hours every day, reworking the lectures into about 10 or 15 minute videos. Because let's be honest, unless Beyonce records a 15 minute video, I'm not going to watch a 50 minute video. And so I'm not going to ask my students to do that either.

Sonari Glinton:

Writing, recording and editing video lectures wasn't easy at first.

Elizabeth Grimm:

Well lets say, as we're recording this, I'm looking at my paper planner, my multiple colored post-it notes and colored pens. I mean, I am very much a child of the 1880s as far as technology is concerned.

Sonari Glinton:

But Dr. Grimm realized that teaching online during a pandemic was about much more than the course material.

Elizabeth Grimm:

Georgetown university is a Jesuit university, and so one of the things that that means is that at the core of our mission, at the core of what it means to be at Georgetown, is this concept called cura personalis, and so that means caring for the whole person, taking into account their individual stories, individual needs.

Sonari Glinton:

I was educated by the Jesuits myself, and the tradition is that who the graduate is at graduation is as important as any skill-set.

Elizabeth Grimm:

And I think in the old world, for me what would be important is both the grasping of the details of the law and facts and various key tenants and debates. And also the ability to critically analyze and ask deeper questions. But in this new world, I think for me the emphasis on empathy, the emphasis on humanity, became even more important. I would say almost of equivalent importance to simply just the course material.

Sonari Glinton:

So when Bushra came to Dr. Grimm's international law class in September, 2020, it felt and look different. Well, for starters, Dr. Grimm split the class of 50 students into two smaller groups. So there would be fewer faces on those Zooms. And then she sent out short video lectures and readings in advance.

Bushra Shaikh:

And then when we came to class on Wednesday, then we'd get straight into it. We'd hop on, talk a little bit about how our week was going and then we'd dive into the material. And then everybody had something to say, so we spend a lot more time analyzing than just taking down notes.

Sonari Glinton:

And to Dr. Grimm, the difference was stunning.

Elizabeth Grimm:

It is hard for me to even put into words, the depth of engagement and the richness of conversations. It was categorically different.

Sonari Glinton:

But it wasn't just because her students had watched her bite-size lectures in advance. Now, remember when Bushra mentioned...

Bushra Shaikh:

We'd hop on, talk a little bit about how our week was going, and then we'd dive into the material.

Sonari Glinton:

Well, that was part of Dr. Grimm's larger design to keep her class feeling happy and connected.

Elizabeth Grimm:

There's such an importance of the sound of a classroom and so I wanted to replicate that. So we would hop on, we would even talk about mundane things about what they did over the weekend? Things like, what did they have for breakfast? What were crazy things your pets did?

Sonari Glinton:

This is really important. Professor Grimm doubled down outside of her lectures. She hosted online tea times, happy hours, there were chat rooms for grad students and peer meetings for her undergrads. She checked in with each student directly and even held weekly, ask me anything sessions.

Bushra Shaikh:

It was everything from, oh gosh, I feel like I picked the wrong major and it's too late to change now to, should I get a pet cat? Stuff like that.

Sonari Glinton:

Professor Grimm, who lives on campus with her husband, three kids and a dog Crouton, even offered her students the option of meeting for socially distanced walks.

Bushra Shaikh:

You would schedule a time usually early in the morning and then you kind of go on this 45 minutes, 50 minute walk just around the neighborhood, talking about everything from our life stories, her life story, just in an environment that doesn't feel like a pressure cooker.

Sonari Glinton:

The pressure cooker of the pandemic changed professor Grimm too.

Elizabeth Grimm:

I acknowledged my own personal vulnerability in ways that I never would have done in class before. I should note that throughout the entire fall semester, I was in a high risk pregnancy and I contracted COVID in November. And I would have never shared details like that with students in class before, but I wanted them to know that they are not alone, and that sense of fear and confusion that they felt about their own families and their own communities was a sense of fear and confusion that I felt as well. And I think that helped them gain a greater comfort, a greater understanding, and a willingness to take risks in ways that I don't know that they would have taken in a brick and mortar classroom.

Bushra Shaikh:

It was a hard class, she did challenge us, but it was so worth it. I like to tell people that it was kind of my highlight of last semester and one of the best I've taken at Georgetown. It didn't feel like a Zoom class.

Sonari Glinton:

But what happens when classes don't have to be on Zoom anymore? Dr. Grimm says the tea times, the book clubs and the dog walks are going to continue and possibly videotape lectures as well. But our big lesson from the pandemic was...

Elizabeth Grimm:

Recognizing that empathy and humanity and vulnerability, they are not ancillary to the teaching and education process, they're central to the teaching and education process. And I think I recognized that at a sort of base level before, but this experience has really embedded those lessons for me, both as a professor, as a mother and as someone who cares very, very deeply about her students and her community.

Sonari Glinton:

Now if we are lucky, we all have at least a few teachers like professor Grimm. For me, it was Selma Coates, may she rest in peace. And in the best possible scenario, we find a program or maybe an institution that's a good fit for us, one that meets our needs socially, academically and financially. But trust me, that is a lot to ask. Students have to think really hard about what kind of higher education experience, what actually serves them best. Now it took LaShana Lewis a very long time and a lot of determination to find the right fit for her. Even though she found her calling when she was only eight years old.

LaShana M. Lewis:

So I first got my hands on a Commodore 64 that was used and junk from one of my mom's family friends. And it really started getting me interested in electronics in general and computers specifically. And then that's when I was told about how people go to college for these kinds of things.

Sonari Glinton:

LaShana grew up in East St. Louis and her mother had her at 15. LaShana was the type of kid that in fifth grade, she had already won her first scholarship. For years, she knew more about computers than her teachers. She got accepted to all the colleges she applied to and a recruiter convinced her to choose a college in Northern Michigan.

LaShana M. Lewis:

I was well aware that this was supposed to be the gateway for me to not be poor anymore, not to be in the Projects anymore.

Sonari Glinton:

College was her ticket out, that's what they told her. But when she had trouble with coursework and asked instructors and classmates for help, she kept hearing things like this:

LaShana M. Lewis:

Maybe you shouldn't do this major at all. And at the time I didn't know what implicit bias was, so I didn't know that at the time they were saying that because I was black, because I was a black female trying to be in something that was stereotypically white male, but that's pretty much who I had as classmates.

Sonari Glinton:

LaShana, the only black woman in her program, was at a loss. And she turned to counseling where she was told:

LaShana M. Lewis:

This is what discrimination is and that's what you're going through. And I had to do all of this learning. I'm what? 17, 18, 19 years old, away from home for a long time, for the first time, and I had to figure all this out. And then finally talking to my counselor and she's like, you're out of money, you are stressed out, you're going through discrimination, you need to possibly consider leaving. So I did.

Sonari Glinton:

How did that moment feel for you, leaving college?

LaShana M. Lewis:

Oh, it felt like giving up. I felt like I failed. If you could paint a Scarlet F on the front of my clothes or on my forehead, that's literally what it felt like.

Sonari Glinton:

Even though you had been in a school and you're the one black girl in the computer science program. I mean, even after the therapist tells you, Hey look, this is what discrimination. You still felt like you had failed and not your teachers or-

LaShana M. Lewis:

The system failed me. Yeah.

Sonari Glinton:

Right.

LaShana M. Lewis:

My mom was actually very supportive because she knew how depressing this would be for me. But everyone else from within my community was like, oh, you're leaving, you're never going back. You're just going to be a dropout.

Sonari Glinton:

Despite her strong skills and three and a half years of college, as well as experience doing an office internship, without a degree, LaShana couldn't get an IT job. But she could get a job driving high school students to an after-school tutoring program. She somehow managed to turn that into tutoring and then eventually with a lot of work, a job at a different college as the IT help desk manager.

LaShana M. Lewis:

And I kind of got the same spiel again. You are really good at what you do, but unfortunately you don't have a bachelor's degree, so you can't move up certain ranks. So I said, you know what, let me sit down, take some courses…”

Sonari Glinton:

LaShana was back at college, this time in St. Louis, 16 years after she'd left six credits short of graduating. LaShana's instructors noticed her skills immediately and told her to apply to a new apprenticeship program called LaunchCode. It did not take long before she got noticed there as well.

LaShana M. Lewis:

This facilitator is like, "When can you start?" And I'm like, "Start what?" She said, "When can you start your apprenticeship program to be a systems engineer at MasterCard?" And I was like, "What are you talking about?"

Sonari Glinton:

Just two months after LaShana started as an apprentice at MasterCard, they offered her a full-time job. Seven years later, LaShana is now the director of IT at Givable and the CEO of her own consulting firm. Her experience taught her that traditional college is definitely not the best fit for everyone.

LaShana M. Lewis:

I would be remiss to still send people of color down a path that could end up in financial ruin for some, when there are other viable paths that... With LaunchCode I paid $0. I didn't pay anything. The apprenticeship actually paid me. I was paid at that time, what? $15 an hour. Which ironically, was more than the job that I had left. And I was a manager at that job.

Sonari Glinton:

Now for her, the apprenticeship program was life-changing in more ways than one.

President Barack Obama:

Let me wrap up with just the example of one person, a woman named LaShana Lewis.

Sonari Glinton:

In 2015, President Barack Obama invited LaShana to Washington for the launch of TechHire, a talent initiative that built on the success of LaunchCode. And as she sat in the audience, he suddenly called her by name.

President Barack Obama:

Where's LaShana? She's here today. There's LaShana. Now...

LaShana M. Lewis:

And he points me out in the audience. And I stand up and in the whole entire room wrenches and looks at me. I blank out because I was just like, everything is kind of in slow motion.

President Barack Obama:

So we got to create more stories like LaShana's.

Sonari Glinton:

The TechHire initiative was all about pipelines, helping people like LaShana get past barriers keeping them out of the tech industry. Now, companies like Google, Apple, MPR, and IBM, no longer require all applicants to have degrees, especially for tech jobs.

LaShana M. Lewis:

Going through that whole entire process, the first thing that comes to my head is that people lied to me. They lied to me about all of these things that they need and the type of person that I needed to be in order to get to this level. And it made me feel sad. I still tear up at this point to say, 20 years of just going through all of this. And what I knew was actually more than what I needed to know to do the job that I was doing.

Sonari Glinton:

These days, LaShana thinks it's incredibly important to share her story with kids.

LaShana M. Lewis:

And when I tell kids the story and I tell them the Obama story, I say, "I didn't get there using traditional ways," because we need to let people know what our stories are. So I tell them, "Whatever you're doing, as long as you've taken the time to think about it and explore other options, I say to keep going."

Sonari Glinton:

When you think of how much LaShana had to push through to keep going, you’ve got to wonder about all the people who were just like her who didn't, who couldn't, or who were told not to. You have to think about also, how much we all lost. And yet, the US still lags behind when it comes to earn and learn programs like the one that launched LaShana. But there is some hope. After winning bi-partisan support in the house of representatives, the National Apprenticeship Act of 2021 is now working its way through the Senate. Now, if it passes, that means three and a half billion dollars would go to creating 1 million new apprenticeship opportunities.

               

The pause on this academic year has given a lot of students and their parents who pay all that tuition, the time to take LaShana's advice and explore other, maybe better options. But what about colleges? What have they learned about higher education this year?

 

Sonari Glinton: Take me on the quad on a crazy spring day. You know that first spring on a college campus?

Brenda A. Allen:

Yeah. Yeah. So, I expect to see some group of students coming back and forth from the library, which is right across from the quad. There'll be another group of students who will be coming out of the student success center because they've been in tutoring or they've been in advising. There'll be another group. Now we have Bluetooth speakers on the yard somewhere, doing the Wobble. Another group somewhere, throwing a frisbee.

Sonari Glinton:

What's the Wobble?

Brenda A. Allen:

You don't know the Wobble? We have to show you the Wobble. You have to come party on the yard. Come on.

Sonari Glinton:

I did not go to a historically black college. I need to learn the Wobble. I need to know how to step.

Brenda A. Allen:

You got to learn the Wobble. It's the new version of the electric slide. Come on. You got to know electric slide.

Sonari Glinton:

That's Dr. Brenda Allen. She's president of Lincoln University in Chester County, Pennsylvania. It's a public, historically black university where all the students, in normal times, live on campus. Now, Dr. Allen taught at Yale and Smith. She started in administration at Brown University. She wanted to bring what she learned in the Ivy leagues back to Lincoln, her Alma Mater.

Brenda A. Allen:

I'm telling you, I loved it here. I loved every bit about it. And again, I tell my students, many of the skills that I use today in this job that I have, I began to hone those skills on this campus. Planning, balancing, work and school.

Sonari Glinton:

Listening to Dr. Allen. I can't help but wonder how things might've been different for LaShana if she had gone to a black college.

Brenda A. Allen:

What really matters, I think, is how a student feels on a campus. And I think it's also what they may need, both personally and professionally. So, at historically black colleges, one of the things that's really important about this environment is that it's a very supportive environment. And I think that's consistent across most HBCUs.

Sonari Glinton:

Now let's face it. When it's the right fit, a college campus can be transformative if not downright magical. But during the pandemic, well, it's been empty. And that quiet has given us time to look at what's working and what isn't.

 

I wanted to find out what Dr. Allen learned from this past year and how she saw the experience of college changing. She says skill-specific training, like what LaShana had, has its value. But for Dr. Allen, the real value of college, in person, not virtual, is that it introduces you to ideas and whole possibilities you could never have considered.

Brenda A. Allen:

I don't think anything can take the place of, for example, a student just wandering through our student success building, seeing a sign that talks about study abroad and just wandering in. And the next thing you know, they're spending a summer in Ghana, or in Egypt, or in Ireland, or something like that. The serendipitous sort of things that can happen, I think in a real environment, it's harder to do that in the virtual world.

Sonari Glinton:

I mean, I really wonder about this because with the move to remote learning, in some ways doesn't that open up the question about how much of that serendipitous experience do I need? Do I need four years of it?

Brenda A. Allen:

And so again, I think that there are some people who will make the choice and they can thrive in a partial environment or do some years online, do some years on campus. Some people do community college first and save money and then transfer and finish their baccalaureate degree at a four-year college. And for many, having four years on a campus can be the most transformative experience that they can have.

               

I also was a statistician for awhile, and I look at this from the perspective of data. And not every online environment is the same, but disproportionate numbers of African-Americans have gone to online schools and the graduation rates, the completion rates for them is just not as great.

Sonari Glinton:

You know what I can't help thinking about? That. I keep thinking about the students and graduates all over America, carrying a crushing 1.7 trillion with a T dollars in student debt, a number that goes up every single semester. And some of those students, just like LaShana, end up with debt, but no degree.

 

Now, no one felt good about paying full or even discounted tuition for Zoom courses over the last year. But are there any signs that a year of remote learning is making colleges rethink the return on investment they're offering? Not counting scholarships and financial aid, a new student at Georgetown, the private university where Dr. Grimm teaches, will pay around $75,000 for a year of tuition of room and board. And a year at Lincoln, a public university?

Brenda A. Allen:

Full cost of attendance, tuition, fees, room and board is about $22,000. So in the scheme of things, we're still pretty affordable.

Sonari Glinton:

But then we need to think about it though. I mean, at $22,000 for serendipity, that's a lot of money.

Brenda A. Allen:

Well, it's really about the total experience. These are good questions because these are things that people are really grappling with right now. So surely you can probably deliver education much more cost-effectively if you do it virtually, but it's really not the same. And I think as a residential campus, we offer a special experience that really our data shows helps individuals to go on and become very productive citizens. So Lincoln University, for example, is number one in Pennsylvania for moving students from the lowest socioeconomic level to the highest. They graduate and are able to be employed and earn at the highest socioeconomic ladder. That's social mobility.

Sonari Glinton:

Mobility, transformation, belonging, employment, there are no easy answers when it comes to evaluating the impact of college or a higher education on the quality of our lives.

 

Sonari Glinton: Is there a question I should've asked you?

Brenda A. Allen:

No, but you were hard. You were pushing me. So, I appreciate that. I think I am walking away really still committed to my thought about the importance, but you got me thinking about some other things that I need to consider in this as well, so I appreciate that.

Sonari Glinton:

Growing, reconsidering our ideas. These are all things that are supposed to happen in and around college, but they happen off-campus as well. I remember Jacob, my friend's son who opted to step away from online college to become an EMT. Well, he's going back.

Jacob Sarasohn:

I think a post-pandemic life for me is ideally... it's finishing school. But I think it comes with all these experiences and understanding that this little bubble that I've existed in that I want to go back to is so small compared to all of the whole world.

Sonari Glinton:

You know what the irony of that is, knowing you a bit, I feel like it took leaving school for you to grow up. You're like a grown-ass man now.

Jacob Sarasohn:

I think so. I think so. And for me, there are so many things that college teaches me that I couldn't learn anywhere else. But college is a very small part of learning how to be an adult and how to be ready for a world where you're not a student.

Sonari Glinton:

That's called growing up.

Jacob Sarasohn:

But I wasn't supposed to grow up. I had another year of this, another year of not growing up and here we are.

Sonari Glinton:

And here we are, the pandemic has forced a lot of us to grow up and adapt regardless of how old we are. It's also taught us a lot about higher education.

               

We saw during all this, that some colleges and universities, even ones with long histories and traditions, they can adapt and some can even do it quickly. And perhaps they will take the lessons that they learned over the pandemic and make higher education even more accessible, more connected to the needs and dreams of this disrupted generation of students and those still to come. For their sake and for our sake, I really hope they do. I'm Sonari Glenton and this has been Now What's Next? An original podcast from Morgan Stanley. On the next episode, working nine to five, how we got the 40 hour work week and why it is not working for us. Thank you for listening.

Sonari Glinton:

Hello. Sonari Glinton, and I'm walking down Hollywood Boulevard to begin our new season of Now, What's Next, an original podcast from Morgan Stanley. Welcome.

Sonari Glinton:

We're starting at Hollywood Boulevard because it's not that far away from my house. After doing a year of interviews and recording podcasts from my apartment, I thought it would be really good to get back out in the world again.

Sonari Glinton:

I'm standing here on William Friedkin's star in front of Sid Grauman's Chinese Theater in the middle of downtown Hollywood, which is kind of like New York's Times Square. It's just smaller and probably weirder. There's jugglers. You might hear the world's worst drummer occasionally. There's always people...

 

Right now there are tourists walking up and down the street, taking photos of their favorite stars. There's usually a Spider-Man or Wonder Woman impersonator, as always, trying to take a picture with you. I'm right down the street from the Dolby Theater, where they usually present the Oscars. It's also where they hold a ton of movie premiers. The last time I was here was actually to see The Avengers: Infinity War.

Sonari Glinton:

Normally for big premiers, they close off the middle of the street, roll out the red carpet. There's usually a big tent with tons of reporters and fans. The last time I was here, I saw Angela Bassett wearing a beaded white suit with her hair in a blowout, just like Diana Ross in the '70s. It stopped tons of people dead in their tracks. You got to love Hollywood.

Sonari Glinton:

The Avengers premiere was in January of 2018, but it feels really like yesterday. It also feels like a crazy pre-pandemic dream. Today, there's still the Spider-Man dude here. There's a woman who's watching me recording. But this could be any weird downtown area anywhere. What makes Hollywood special, though, is the movies.

Sonari Glinton:

The movies are slowly getting back into business. Cinemas are reopening again. But while the screens were dark, a whole lot has changed. From the theaters fighting to stay alive ...

Shelli Taylor:

We've laid off a majority of our team in theaters, behind the scenes. It is very scrappy, to save as much or conserve as much money as possible.

Sonari Glinton:

To rethinking which movies get made and who makes them ...

Cameron Bailey:

It's not a very diverse crowd of people who are making the big decisions. This is not news. Everybody in the film world knows this, right?

Sonari Glinton:

To, who are the new power players?

Vicky Ding:

People are starting to pay attention to Chinese cinema.

Sonari Glinton:

This season on Now, What's Next, we're looking for scenes of rebirth and change. We're focusing on the same old problems, problems that have been exposed or possibly made worse by this global pandemic, from daycare to shopping malls, colleges to nursing homes. We're meeting folks who are trying to reimagine a better future.

Sonari Glinton:

Right now, because I'm in Hollywood where people dream for a living, let's go find some folks who are dreaming up solutions to our current problems. Let's start with the movies, of course.

Speaker 1:

Quiet on set. And action.

Shelli Taylor:

I didn't tell my parents, because they would have been like, "Oh, no, you don't."

Sonari Glinton:

That's Shelli Taylor. Just over a year ago, she started a job that all of a sudden got a lot more difficult.

Shelli Taylor:

Everyone asked if I was crazy, and I said, "Yes. I'm clearly crazy." But, at the same time, this will pass.

Sonari Glinton:

Just to be clear, I am taking the job as a CEO of a theater chain during a pandemic.

Shelli Taylor:

A pandemic. Yes, yes, and yes. Absolutely crazy.

Sonari Glinton:

Shelli Taylor is not crazy, but she did walk into a really bizarre situation when she became the CEO of Alamo Drafthouse, which is a movie theater restaurant chain, just weeks after the pandemic temporarily closed all their locations.

Shelli Taylor:

I don't think anyone believed it would last that long. Two or three months, and we'd be back to normal. The feelings were nervous, and then truly didn't believe it could ever take this long.

Sonari Glinton:

She's taken big risks before. Her dad thought she was nuts when she went to work for Starbucks in the '90s. You didn't have to go to college to work at a coffee shop, he said. Eventually Shelli took Starbucks to China, and then moved on to Disney and Planet Fitness.

Sonari Glinton:

When you think about your first CEO role, nobody hires a CEO because they want them to "hold on" to the business.

Shelli Taylor:

No.

Sonari Glinton:

Shelli's experience expanding companies is why she got her first CEO gig running Alamo Drafthouse. Pre-pandemic, they were a success story in a declining industry. Alamo was actually growing and opening new theaters with their mix of super local food, and high quality movies, and cool events. Then COVID entered the scene.

Sonari Glinton:

2020 turned out to be the worst year ever for movie theaters. Ticket sales dropped 80% while streaming services such as Disney+, Hulu, and Netflix ate their lunch. AMC Theaters lost nearly $5 billion, and came close to bankruptcy.

Sonari Glinton:

With Alamo Drafthouse, Shelli and her team tried to find ways to keep the movie magic alive. For instance, they promoted a streaming site with specially curated movies. They offered curbside food pickup. Like many of us, they found themselves on Zoom, organizing Zoom cast reunions for Lord of the Rings and Dazed and Confused. When they finally began reopening theaters, it was at reduced capacity.

Shelli Taylor:

Then the hard realities of business, which have been so incredibly painful, is we've laid off a majority of our team in theaters that are not open, but as well as in our support center. Then minimized every account, every everything behind the scenes so that we're providing the experience, but there's really, behind the scenes, it is very scrappy, to save as much or conserve as much money as possible.

Sonari Glinton:

In March, 2021, Alamo Drafthouse filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection with Shelli Taylor less than a year into her job.

Shelli Taylor:

Messed up as this has been, in some ways the pandemic allows us to start from scratch and to really look at our business from a clean sheet of paper. How do we want to continue?

Sonari Glinton:

Shelli thinks that something is happening around the industry, and here's an example. Until the pandemic, studios and theaters had a rule. A new movie had to play in theaters for at least 90 days. Then, and only then, after that 90 days, could it be released to streaming. That's essentially how theaters made money.

Sonari Glinton:

But the pandemic completely obliterated that rule. Some movies, like Wonder Woman 1984, came out in theaters and was released to streaming at the same time. Shelli thinks the movie got shortchanged.

Shelli Taylor:

That movie was meant to be seen in a big cinematic experience. If they watch it on their phone, or iPad, or at home, it's not the same experience, and that's what was getting reviewed. That was just not ... It just wasn't fair, and it shortchanged the movie.

Sonari Glinton:

You only talk about the genie when it's out of the bottle, and this genie is definitely out of the bottle. It's unlikely we're ever going to go back to the old system. Shelli hopes there won't be, though, a one-size-fits-all release for movies in the future.

Shelli Taylor:

My hope for the industry is that we wouldn't get stuck on a number, but what we would think about is, what does that movie deserve? How should it be best shown? Some movies, maybe they go to the theater for a week or less, and then they go to streaming. But others, they deserve the time on the big screen.

Sonari Glinton:

Will folks who got used to streaming new releases be reluctant to go back to the movies? Shelli thinks ...

Shelli Taylor:

That's just not true. I think that content is content, and the way in which people consume content is-

Shelli Taylor:

And the way in which people consume content is forever going to evolve. But when I look into the future, people are not standing in line for a vaccine to stay home. That is super clear. People are getting vaccines because they want to get back out and have experiences, be social, be human again.

Sonari Glinton:

And Shelli thinks going to movies is still relevant.

Shelli Taylor:

There will be nothing like sitting inside an auditorium with 50 to 200 people, having a shared experience, big cinematic experience, watching a movie, and a movie that changes you. And then when I think about the movie that just blew my socks off, where I walked out of the cinema moved and thinking I could be a different human being was the first Star Wars movie. And wrapping my hair up into buns on either side to be princess Leia and practicing mind tricks, or thinking I was. All of us kids that saw Star Wars, that first experience in the movies, we still talk about it. It connects us and it spurs the excitement to go back to the movies.

Sonari Glinton:

And Shelli's watching what's going on in places where the virus is under control and movies are back in business. Think China. A movie making Mecca we'll visit later on this episode.

Shelli Taylor:

The box office is just exploding there. But as people are going, the question is going to be yes, there's great content, but what's the experience? The biggest risk we face, in my mind, as a cinema is poor service and poor experience. And as long as we continue to provide just the best experience, best reason to go out, we're going to have plenty of business.

Sonari Glinton:

But the business has changed. Shelli predicts we'll see fewer Megaplexes and more medium or small theaters. And then there's this game changer, and it's accounted for about 50% of Alamo's revenue over the pandemic. Going to say it slowly. Think about this. Private theater rentals.

Shelli Taylor:

So over the holidays, I rented a theater to see Love Actually, so a rep film, but it's my favorite Christmas film. I watch it every year. And invited my group of friends and was able to have a really cool party in a safe way at Christmas. And so I think that hadn't been available or had been very limited prior to the pandemic, and we're seeing incredible success. And that's a long-term experience that we'll innovate against.

Sonari Glinton:

Now this makes me want to rent a private theater and explain to people why Cool Hand Luke is the best movie ever.

Shelli Taylor:

Well, here's the deal. When we reopen our theater in LA at the block, I'm going to call you and we'll go see that together or another movie and get back into the business of seeing movies.

Sonari Glinton:

All right, I'm all in. But I can't help but wonder, how are the movies themselves changing after this most unprecedented year?

Cameron Bailey:

I was born in England, left England when I was four years old. Went to Barbados and lived in essentially the back of beyond on a farm with my grandparents. We didn't have movie theaters where I was. They existed in Barbados, but I never saw a movie until probably eight, nine years old in a movie theater.

Sonari Glinton:

That's Cameron Bailey.

Cameron Bailey:

I'm the artistic director and the co-head of the Toronto Film Festival and the TIFF organization. I've been working in movies for over 30 years.

Sonari Glinton:

But Cameron's first vivid movie memory is a classic.

Cameron Bailey:

It's playing at some old rickety drive in and we kind of had to hide in the back of the car, because I wasn't old enough to see Jaws at that point. But we wanted to all go see it, and I remember being terrified at that movie, watching it on the big screen from the inside of our car with no water around, but still terrified. And that's kind of when I knew what movies could do.

Sonari Glinton:

Cameron's been figuring out what movies can do ever since. Now for those outside of Hollywood, you might not get the importance of the Toronto International Film Festival.

Cameron Bailey:

We're the biggest public film festival in the world, so in a normal year when we don't have a pandemic, we have about a half a million people who attend our screenings and events every year.

Sonari Glinton:

The festival, affectionately known as TIFF, has become a predictor of sorts.

Cameron Bailey:

American Beauty won our audience award in 1999 and that was maybe one of the first times that Hollywood kind of sat up and took notice of our festival as kind of a bellwether for award season. But many other films, Slumdog Millionaire, many others that have gone on to Oscar victory started at our festival as well.

Sonari Glinton:

A bellwether, not just for award season, but for the box office as well. In the last two decades, films that won TIFF's people's choice awards made $3 billion globally. Now that's not just serendipity, there's a lot of consideration behind what gets picked to screen at TIFF. And Cameron and his team watch thousands of movies every year.

Cameron Bailey:

There's a lot of movies that are just a basic level of good that could work at our festival, but we can't choose all of those. So even among the good movies, we have to make some very hard decisions about which ones we invite. And then also once we've invited the films about how we're going to position them.

Sonari Glinton:

I wonder about you in your role. It's like in many ways you were born for this moment, right? I mean, how do you see yourself changing in this last year, pandemic and racial almost awakening?

Cameron Bailey:

Yeah. Well, it's complicated, I guess is the short answer. It's almost like a veil was lifted or something, because a lot of the things that were quiet or even silent suddenly were very loud. I'm always aware of myself as a Black man in this role and in this industry. It was not a very diverse crowd of people who are making the big decisions. This is not news, everybody in the film world knows this, right? So as one of a fairly small number, a too small number, I'm aware of how those decisions that I make about what films we invite, about what filmmakers we decide to really get behind, how that all matters.

Sonari Glinton:

To get a sense of what he means, I want to take you back to the 2009 Sundance Film Festival in a screening of a movie called Precious. When it ended, Cameron...

Cameron Bailey:

Was just euphoric. It's a tough movie to watch for some people. It's definitely about trauma, but it is, I thought so well directed and performed that I wanted to invite it right on the spot.

Sonari Glinton:

He starts negotiating to bring it to Toronto to give it the biggest audience possible.

Cameron Bailey:

That was when I felt like if I wasn't in this role, and at that time I was I think co-director of the festival. If I wasn't in this role as a Black man, that would not be happening.

Sonari Glinton:

Why is that?

Cameron Bailey:

I think if it wasn't me at that particular moment, if somebody else might've said, oh, it's a good movie. It's all right. Maybe we'll take it, maybe we won't for Toronto, but it was much more powerful, much more visceral for me. Suddenly just comes to mind, Billie holiday singing Strange Fruit, it's intense, it's painful, it's powerful, but it's necessary. And that's how I felt about Precious.

Sonari Glinton:

And when it came to the festival.

Cameron Bailey:

This is going to be Tyler Perry and Mariah, and Mary J. Blige and Oprah and everybody coming to Toronto to our biggest theater, the Roy Thompson Hall. 2000 people, big red carpet. My own mother, my late mother was there and I got the opportunity to introduce her to Oprah and that was a dream come true for her. She was one Black woman among many in the room that night, but it meant a lot to have that space, the biggest, most prestigious space in our city, during the festival be taken over by Black talent. That meant a lot.

Sonari Glinton:

All right, so Precious one TIFF's audience award and then went on to win two of the six Oscars it was nominated for, team Monique forever. It also brought in more than $63 million on a $10 million budget, and it was said to over-perform. A term that is often used when a film by a person of color hits big at the box office, which happens all the time.

Cameron Bailey:

Then that annoying word over performs has been part of Hollywood history for decades, because people are surprised when audiences go out to see a movie with Black people in it. And I don't know how you can be surprised for your whole career by the same thing happening over and over-

Cameron Bailey:

... whole career by the same damn thing happening over and over and over again.

Sonari Glinton:

Earlier this year, McKinsey Consulting released the report. Hollywood is losing $10 billion a year. That's $10 billion because it ignores minority audiences. In particular it found projects led by black talent were systematically undervalued despite their amazing return on investment. But will the film industry do anything about it permanently?

Cameron Bailey:

Change is not a straight line. It is not an upward path to progress, right? That does not happen. Let me take one example. There's a Canadian film that we showed called The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open, directed by a couple of filmmakers, both women, one indigenous, one not, Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers and Kathleen Hepburn. It's a small, low budget film but super smart and very powerful emotionally. Ava DuVernay's company bought that film and suddenly she's out there bigging that movie up, talking to people about it, more people are seeing it, and that affects the lives of indigenous women because that's who's on screen in that movie. People watch that film. They have a much deeper, richer understanding of what the life of an indigenous woman in contemporary North America might be like. The risk, the danger, the things that they're dealing with. And that actually increases empathy, increases understanding. It also allows these artists to make more work and to sustain careers because too many people burn out or can't continue, but I think on a very basic level, it allows more people who are too often erased or unseen to be seen.

Sonari Glinton:

When he says that I'm thinking of last year just before the pandemic hit, I got the chance to attend the Black Film Critics Awards. Now the Korean film, Parasite, got multiple and I mean multiple extended emotional standing ovations and it won almost every award. I said that night, it felt like the blackest movie I've ever seen, but I couldn't quite figure out why. So I asked Cameron who started off acknowledging, "Well, it's a masterful film."

Cameron Bailey:

But I think there is also something that's powerful about just kind of taking a bit of a break. Like just taking a breath from always putting the effort in to enter a white story. We all grew up with that. It becomes second nature to us, right? We identify with white protagonists, white heroes, white villains, because that's what we mostly see. And so I think there is something that even if it's not your own culture and your own particular background, that if it's not the dominant culture, it just feels like, oh yeah, I'm ready because I'm not getting enough of that.

Cameron Bailey:

But then I think Parasite is so sophisticated about class, about what it's like to have nothing, to be scrambling for wifi and all of that kind of stuff. Black people I think understand that. And there's some black people who are lucky enough to understand what it's like to go from one to the other, to really cross the river from poor to rich and to understand how you can also slip from rich to poor, right? And that dynamic is something that I think any marginalized group understands well that wherever you are right now in society, it's precarious. Do you know what I mean?

Sonari Glinton:

Actually, I do. In the middle of all this turmoil, Cameron sees hope in stories like Parasite and Precious and The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open. And to be honest, in streaming.

Cameron Bailey:

Yeah, I think the pandemic is accelerating things because we've all been at home for a year watching stuff on our TVs for the most part, mostly from streaming services. That's accelerating things, but it was already underway.

Sonari Glinton:

Cameron points to an independent film called [inaudible 00:22:00] about a group of Arab women in Paris. Netflix bought it, which meant people in 192 countries around the world could see it.

Cameron Bailey:

And that I think is the game changer. But when those personal stories resonate enough and they have the opportunity to go all around the world and you have people in Mexico watching Korean melodramas, that kind of thing, all of a sudden you begin to see a whole new world. We don't all have to consume the same thing.

Sonari Glinton:

You can begin to imagine a whole new world. For so long, Hollywood has been the center of the movie world and we've slowly, I mean too slowly begun to acknowledge the other woods around the globe, Bollywood, Nollywood, Ollywood in East Asia. Now thanks to the pandemic, other countries are getting their close-up.

Vicky Ding:

Well, I think the very first time that I have a strong memory to film is when I was like eight or nine year old watching Titanic at home with my parents.

Sonari Glinton:

Vicky Ding grew up in Beijing, China, and today she sells Chinese films internationally through her company, Blossoms Entertainment. But Vicky's first movie memory is pure Hollywood.

Vicky Ding:

And the scene that I'll remember forever is when the ship's sinking gradually to the ocean. It really strikes me because I've never seen something like this.

Sonari Glinton:

For children like Vicky who grew up in the '90s, Titanic was a generation defining Hollywood blockbuster. It was also a massive hit. It broke Chinese box office records in 1998. And when the 3D version of Titanic came out in 2012, hearts went on. Chinese audiences flooded theaters. The opening weekend box office more than doubled the US numbers. Back then in 2012, film industry experts were saying it was only a matter of time before China eclipsed North America as the biggest movie market. Fast forward to 2020, Vicky started Blossoms Entertainment just as theaters in China reopened in July.

Vicky Ding:

And there was a capacity of 50% or 25%. You can bring any food or beverage into theater and you have to wear masks throughout the film. And the very first blockbuster new title came into the theater is The Eight Hundred. And well, it froze the highest box office last year in China and internationally.

Sonari Glinton:

Let's think about that for a moment. For the first time China was behind the highest grossing film in the world. It's called The Eight Hundred. It's a film Vicky's company sold to buyers in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. The Eight Hundred is an epic historical film set in 1937 in Shanghai. A Chinese battalion of soldiers defends a warehouse against the invading Japanese army. Think Saving Private Ryan or Pearl Harbor. Lots of special effects, incredibly loud, and shot entirely in a giant IMAX format, [inaudible 00:25:23] China.

Vicky Ding:

So it's heavily on the special effect and also with the production budget that some Hollywood titles couldn't really reach. So I think yeah, from the box office side and also from the investment side, it really shows that China is becoming or is on the way to become the largest market in the world.

Sonari Glinton:

Between those two poles of Vicky's life and movies, Titanic and The Eight Hundred, there's a lot of ground to cover, but I'll go out on the limb and say a lot of us don't even know where to start. That's what Vicky discovered when she left Beijing to go to film school at the University of Southern California in 2012.

Vicky Ding:

Well, I think it really shocked me that even starting at a film school and a prestigious film school, my cohorts were not interested in Chinese cinema alone. Scholars who study international cinema don't really care about Chinese cinema. And I felt no one knows what it's showing in China.

Sonari Glinton:

And when they did know something...

Vicky Ding:

People will first remember all those classic titles in '80s, which is really a... How can I say that? It's like, well, we call it like fifth generation of Chinese directors.

Sonari Glinton:

Did you catch that? Fifth generation. Now, it shouldn't be a surprise that China like many places in the world has a long and rich film history. If I asked you to name five Chinese actors, films, or directors that aren't Bruce Lee, Jet Li-

Sonari Glinton:

Five Chinese actors, films, or directors that aren't Bruce Lee, Jet Li, Jackie Chan, or the recent Oscar winner, Chloe Zhao. [inaudible 00:27:08] Vicky wants that to change.

Vicky Ding:

I chose to do international sales for Chinese titles because I think that's my personal mission because I really want to introduce good Chinese titles to the world.

Sonari Glinton:

Before she started Blossoms, Vicki sold one of 2019's biggest movies, The Wandering Earth, to Netflix. It's a Chinese sci-fi special effects extravagance.

Vicky Ding:

We are so used to watch something from The States in terms of space story, the story happening the space like Gravity or Interstellar, but we really want to see something original from China. So The Wandering Earth really gained the success and very positive reviews from the audiences.

Sonari Glinton:

And while traditional Hollywood blockbusters like The Avengers franchise to bring it full circle on Angela Bassett are still one of the strongest box office draws in China, people there are hungry for something homegrown. Vicky sees the Hollywood China co-pro relationship as a thing of the past.

Vicky Ding:

There was quite a plenty of co-production going on and got released, but the box office performance was really bad in The States and in China domestically. So I think people are more confident now to tell the story in the Chinese way. The foreign audiences, I think the international audiences are willing to see something authentic Chinese.

Sonari Glinton:

But also Hollywood and all the other woods, frankly, one a piece of this growing Chinese market. As a reference point, as of 2020, there were 44,000 movie screens in America, keyword now because of the pandemic. With 75,000 screenings and a population of 1.4 billion people, China is an appealing and very lucrative destination. And like everywhere else, China's film industry isn't immune to challenges from streaming services, but they're innovative. Does this sound familiar?

Vicky Ding:

In China, we do have something so-called private cinema. So it will provide a mini room for you and you can choose the film you want to watch.

Sonari Glinton:

Whether it's a private movie rental or a multiplex, there's no doubt China's gone back to the movies in a big way.

Vicky Ding:

And for the first time in my life, I couldn't buy a ticket during Chinese New Year holiday because it sold out everywhere. So I only want to see one film during the holiday and it's completely crowded, like there's no empty seat at all.

Sonari Glinton:

Imagine that.

Sonari Glinton:

I started this episode on Hollywood Boulevard and I'm ending it on another iconic movie street, Sunset Boulevard. Now I'm in front of the theater you would consider my own theater where I see most of the movies I go to, the ArcLight's Cinerama Dome. Now it's about 60-years-old and it looks like the top half of a giant golf ball that's been lit from underneath. The last movie I saw here actually was Fences with my mother at Christmas time. But this time I'm here because the Cinerama's future is uncertain. In April, ArcLight announced that after a year of struggling through the pandemic, they're closing their doors for good, with 300 other screens.

Sonari Glinton:

Now there's a chance that someone will step in and save them, maybe even another movie chain. But the idea of losing this place is a big blow to movie lovers who kind of think of it as home. Now, it was never just about the movies I saw here. It was about the people who were here to watch along with me, laughing, crying, talking back to the movie. It's the whole experience. But as I look at this theater waiting for someone to swoop in and save it, you can't help but think of the theaters in China that are busier than ever. And I think of the cross-cultural pollinating that goes on with those films.

Sonari Glinton:

I think of the cinemas that will survive, that are finding new ways to show the movies of tomorrow, movies that will tell our stories and help us better understand what we're all going through right now. I'm Sonari Glinton, and this has been Now What's Next, an original podcast from Morgan Stanley. Now, if you liked this, do us a favor. It'll help us if you leave a rating and a review at the Apple Store. Next time, I'll take you on a trip to the post pandemic shopping mall where what's in store is not exactly what you'd expect. Thank you so much for listening.

 

Sonari Glinton:

I'm Sonari Glinton and this is Now, What's Next? An original podcast from Morgan Stanley.

Escher Olson:

The worst thing about online learning is everything.

Sonari Glinton:

This Escher Olson. He is eight years old and that makes him a third grader. Education-wise, for boys, this time is pivotal. Escher lives in Los Angeles and we should note he's the nephew of one of the show's producers. Like a lot of young folks his age, Escher's school life took a nosedive when our lives got interrupted by the pandemic.

Escher Olson:

I've learned to live with it. I wish we didn't have any school.

Sonari Glinton:

When Escher's school, his physical, actual school, shut down in March, he had mixed feelings, as you can imagine, about school closings. Come on. You all remember third grade?

Escher Olson:

Happy I didn't have to go to school anymore but then I got sad and got too emotional. I needed a vacation.

Sonari Glinton:

Problem was it wasn't vacation time. School didn't stop for long, it just went virtual.

Escher Olson:

I hated the weekly Zoom meetings with my class and my mom made me stay for the math class. It was awful.

Sonari Glinton:

There's near universal disdain for online learning at this moment. One survey says 75% of students are unhappy with it. As my own great niece says, "it's like, take school, then take all the fun stuff out." For Escher's parents, their challenge was overwhelming. So they did something a bit drastic. They pulled Escher out of school, packed the car, left Los Angeles and headed North to Canada and to a school set to reopen for the year. They gave up on remote learning and hoped for something better in another country.

Sonari Glinton:

This season on Now, What's Next? An original podcast from Morgan Stanley, we're trying to figure out what life after a global pandemic looks like or can look like. Some of these changes will be subtle, others dramatic, but no matter what, even after the dust settles life is not going back to the way it was before. How is the world evolving in the face of a global crisis and what do we do with this rare chance to rethink our old assumptions?

Sonari Glinton:

This may be a once in a lifetime challenge, but it is also an opportunity to create real and lasting change. Today, what the pandemic teaches us about learning.

Sonari Glinton:

For a lot of families, the urge to flee their local school system for something better, likely predates the pandemic. Education, especially in the United States, has long been in crisis. Individually and collectively our primary and secondary school systems are overcrowded and underfunded. COVID-19 though, forced an urgent and harried pivot to some kind of online learning. Now that rush highlighted problems we knew were already there, like how 20% of students don't have access to decent internet at home and how many don't even have a computer.

Sonari Glinton:

One study predicts that if this continues, low-income students will have lost an entire school year's worth of learning. It's been hard to keep kids engaged in their education right now, let alone keep them socialized, keep them developing and mentally healthy.

Sophie Olson:

He would say things like, "Mom, I feel angry and sad at the same time and I don't know why." And I'd say, "Oh, well maybe you're tired." And he'd be like, "I'm not tired, I'm angry and sad at the same time."

Sonari Glinton:

When school moved online, Sophie Olson, that's Escher's mom, she saw the impact on her son right away.

Sophie Olson:

Then he'd go on a trampoline and just lay there and read books. So seeing his personality change, that was like, "Oh crap. How can we work through this?"

Sonari Glinton:

For this mom and dad, the dominant emotion was exasperation.

Sophie Olson:

They said, "There's no school. Here's a packet of 15 worksheets. We will see you at some point."

Sonari Glinton:

What was the thing that got you concerned or worried?

Sophie Olson:

Well, one of the things that was like a huge slap in the face was that, "Okay everybody, in two weeks we will meet online somehow and you'll get an email and we will do schooling online." So I was thinking, "Cool, let's all figure this out together. Let's all stick together as a community, let's figure this out." And then we started and no one knew what to do.

Sophie Olson:

Parents weren't able to log on. They were breaking down. They were crying. Kids were freaking out. Outside of my child, I heard it from all my friends. They were frustrated, they were cooped in, their routines were completely busted.

Sonari Glinton:

It was clear the school wasn't prepared for this moment. The shift to online was a stop gap and the cracks were showing.

Sophie Olson:

What was missing was the encouragement. As a parent, you can't do it all, but your child is required to show up online every day. So they're supposed to show up. They're supposed to turn in their work. The online learning system last spring did not work.

Sonari Glinton:

Escher's family gave up on online learning. They left the city and moved to Canada because well, they could. Sophie is from Canada. The option to move was available, so they took it. Now, that's not true for most students. Most still struggled to make sense of this. One of those students is Olivia Clark.

Olivia Clarke:

Well, at first I was like, "Yay, an extra two weeks of spring break." And then two weeks turned into six months and I was like, "Wow, okay." But originally, I tried to make the best out of it. I think a lot of people, including me, were like, "Okay, this is my chance to fix myself and I'm going to get everything done and I'm going to come out of quarantine and they're going to be like, 'Wow, she's Oprah now.'"

Sonari Glinton:

Olivia Clark is a 16 year old student in the very underrated city of Columbus, Ohio. And if there ever was a doubt that this young woman is a high achiever, well, in the middle of all of this, Olivia published a book.

Olivia Clarke:

I'm a 16 year old senior, and I am the author/editor of Black Girl, White School, Thriving, Surviving, and, No, You Can't Touch My Hair.

Sonari Glinton:

What leads a 16 year old? When I was 16, you could barely get me to write an essay, let alone a book. What prompted it?

Olivia Clarke:

It was out of hope, I want to say. I've had past frustrating or angering experiences or whatever, but I wanted to help other girls and other little brown and little black girls like me when I first started going to a PWI. So it was less out of anger and more out of frustration that there wasn't anything like this out there already.

Sonari Glinton:

A PWI, that's a Predominantly White Institution, and speaking of which, Olivia's school gave students a choice this year, come back to the classroom or learn from home. Olivia chose remote learning and seeing who else opted out was telling.

Olivia Clarke:

So in my grade, there's only about 44 to 46 girls and all of the girls that chose to do virtual school this semester were black and that's something that... I didn't expect everyone to be black, but I did expect a lot of the people who chose virtual school to be black, just because we know how hard COVID has hit communities of color and the black community.

Sonari Glinton:

Olivia, being the student that she is, can definitely quote you chapter and verse on the health impact of COVID on the black community and she knows her mom is in a high risk category. So stay home, stay safe. She and the other black students at her school have the extra burden of feel like, Well, they have to represent, and I can tell you from experience, that's a hell of a lot of responsibility to put on 16 year old shoulders.

Sonari Glinton:

How do you feel about that, when the black girls are in virtual and the rest of the kids are not?

Olivia Clarke:

That was something I was worried about because there aren't that many. I mean, there's 30% girls of color throughout the whole school. I was like, right now, we just finished a widespread Black Lives Matter movement and a lot of schools are having to rethink how they approach diversity and inclusion. And all of the black girls are gone and I was like, "Oh great. That's good."

Sonari Glinton:

Olivia is asking herself a lot of questions about how her online education intersects with her identity. But it's not only that, the constant need be online for school, it can feel like a waste of time.

Olivia Clarke:

It has made me criticize the way that we do certain learning. Doing virtual school means that I'm just sitting there for 80 minutes and some of those 80 minutes, I really don't need to be there, but it's just me sitting here staring at a screen when I could be doing something else or I could be achieving something of a lot more important, or just do that homework later or do homework during that period.

Sonari Glinton:

Look, Olivia Clark is definitely a kid who is going places. Again, this is the kid who used the pandemic break to write and edit a book and her dissection of what can go wrong with remote learning is exactly on point. But it's likely that some form of online learning is here to stay. The technology itself is often the barrier but if this grand experiment is going to work, teaching methods, they need to adapt to a new virtual environment or else education will fail our kids.

Lindy Elkins-Tanton:

The problem is that when you're learning passively in the classroom to begin with, that is you're just listening, you're not really participating, and then you take that online, that passivity is magnified a thousand fold.

Sonari Glinton:

Lindy Elkins-Tanton is a professor at Arizona State University and here's a bonus, she's the principal investigator of NASA's mission to the Slakey asteroid. When she's not educating college students or planning expeditions to space, she's thinking about better ways to inspire learning.

Lindy Elkins-Tanton:

What was not the best in the classroom becomes really ineffective online.

Sonari Glinton:

She points out that traditionally, education has been a one-way flow of knowledge from the active teacher to the passive student.

Lindy Elkins-Tanton:

What's boring becomes even more boring, but today the difference is information is everywhere. Almost no one is the secret owner of information that no one else can have.

Sonari Glinton:

You know and I know that it is not enough for classes to be just a data dump. Instead, the best teachers work to activate learning based on what the students themselves want to learn.

Lindy Elkins-Tanton:

So what we need to be teaching students to do is how to find, assess, and use the information on their own. We need to be teaching process, and that's a transition that hasn't really happened yet. We're just adjusting to living in the information age, we're just figuring it out. We're baby beginners at this.

Sonari Glinton:

Lindy's own classroom instruction is based on something called inquiry-based learning. Now it's an approach some educators have championed since at least the sixties. And she says, right now, it is a great way to overcome the barriers to remote learning. So fewer worksheets, shorter lectures, inquiry-based learning, encourages the students to not only ask the questions, but the find their own answers.

Lindy Elkins-Tanton:

In pure open inquiry where the students question really leads the process. What we do is we set a big goal for the semester. Goal might be, what does it mean to be an engaged citizen in today's world? And we give the students a little bit of content, just a 15 minute lecture or tiny reading, and then we ask for their first question. And here's where the magic really starts.

Lindy Elkins-Tanton:

We ask them, "What is your natural next question? What's the question that you think that if you answered it would take you a step toward that big goal question for the semester?" We're asking them to take a step away from what they know into the unknown. And this is a kind of question asking that students almost never get to practice.

Sonari Glinton:

What this does is motivates students to follow their own curiosity. And so at home, it liberates them from passive listening and instead inspires them to search out knowledge.

Lindy Elkins-Tanton:

And showing the students how that can work, how you can pursue your questions, do your research, come together, share your answers, help each other improve, all using online tools and working at home remotely, this is really preparation for work and life.

Sonari Glinton:

The best teachers are trying all kinds of ways to engage students, to keep and hold their fleeting attention over the web. One account on Twitter describes a man spotting someone lying on the sidewalk and thinking that he was hurt. It turns out it was a local science teacher with a GoPro strapped to his head capturing video of an anthill for his students. That is nerdy teacher dedication. Now I bet his students love him for this kind of stuff. In fact, the kids are starting to say things you don't expect to hear from them.

Ilana Drake:

I think one thing I took for granted, or I didn't realize how different it could be is not seeing my teachers and not having that face to face interaction.

Sonari Glinton:

That's Ilana Drake and she misses her teachers. She's a senior at the high school for math, science, and engineering at the City College in New York City. But now that she's stuck between the four walls of her family's New York City apartment, she is feeling the squeeze.

Ilana Drake:

We're in a two bedroom apartment and my brother sleeps in the dining room and I think working in a small space with everyone is just very difficult because our dad's in the bedroom and our mom's in the living room. But when you take exams or when you have assignments that are timed, there's a lot of stimulation in the apartment because everyone has their own work and everyone's on Zoom or doing work. So I think that's pretty tough.

Sonari Glinton:

And across the country in Dublin, California, high school senior, Pratham Dalal, is missing those everyday interactions that are such a huge part of the high school experience.

Pratham Dalal:

I think the human connection is really what I want. There's no way to goof off. There's no way to take your mind off of academics for a brief second.

Sonari Glinton:

Stuck at home, young people miss out on a key part of education, the social element. Like interacting with peers and teachers, joining clubs and sports teams, or participating in school traditions.

Pratham Dalal:

Senior year starts off as like a huge community bonding experience. The seniors get to go up on a mountain that's about a couple of miles away from our campus that you can directly see. Students will take bags of flour and they will run up to the mountain and paint their graduation year on the mountain. And that flour stays on that mountain the whole year and all the underclassmen, all the juniors, just look at it and think, "I want to be like that someday."

Pratham Dalal:

That's what we've been looking forward to since 2017, when we came to the school.

Sonari Glinton:

And right now the mountain is just empty. All of this, it's all a part of learning and without it, something fundamental is list. We already know that kids are reporting more anxiety and depression than ever. Is that really a surprise school is about more than just tests and passing grades. It is a rite of passage as much about discovery and interaction as it is about memorizing your times tables. Teachers know this and some of them are really leaning into it.

Sonari Glinton:

Eppie Miller always dreamed of teaching outdoors.

Eppie Miller:

There's a really beautiful wooded space that I just thought would make a beautiful outdoor learning classroom.

Sonari Glinton:

That's Eppie. She teaches pre-K at the Mendell Jewish Day School in Beachwood, Ohio. Eppie has always lobbied for an outdoor learning program, she just wasn't getting anywhere. But in June of 2020, she was winding down the remote school year and her principal gave her a call.

Eppie Miller:

I was told, "Okay, you have two months. When the students come August 26th, we'll be ready for an outdoor learning environment." And it was all because of rethinking the way we do education in the age of COVID.

Sonari Glinton:

Eppie's outdoor classroom is broken up into sections. Over in this corner, there is an open space dedicated to drama lessons, and in that corner, a spot for building things. There's also a meeting circle where everyone can gather and you'll find tables strewn about where students can spread out and do their written work, all while obeying social distancing protocols. And all of it is surrounded by grass, trees and nature.

Eppie Miller:

We also have an area that I call my science area, where I put out hand-held magnifying glasses and binoculars and different books on different subjects. I switch up what's in the science area every about two weeks. So there's always something new for the students to hold and touch and learn from, both visually and tactally.

Sonari Glinton:

Speaking of science, there is a lot of data showing the benefits of outdoor learning. Attendance up, ADHD symptoms go down. Students are more engaged, they actually want to be there.

Eppie Miller:

So much of the learning that's happening is that the teacher is getting out of the way and watching and supporting what these students are interested in and following their lead. So I've never done a unit on worms ever, but we did a whole unit on worms because my class is just fascinated by worms. These are opportunities that would never have happened inside my classroom.

Sonari Glinton:

One of the most important things I've learned studying Judaism is that in the Jewish tradition, the relationship between teacher and student or rabbi and student is sacred. What is taught is as much about the intellectual, emotional and spiritual development, as it is about learning history. That's a lot of weight to put on a Zoom call.

Eppie Miller:

As much as we made lemonade out of lemons with Zoom and we did as much as we could to keep that relationship going with each of our families and students, it's very artificial. I mean, it's over a computer screen. I mean, even in the outdoor classroom, we still have to be six feet apart and we can't hug. We do air hugs or we do elbow bumps if we're really excited about something. So it's not the same as pre-COVID, but we can be together and we can discover together and we can sit and look at each other, which is so different than being on Zoom.

Sonari Glinton:

Here's something, it's not the first time we find ourselves taking the classroom outside in response to a public health crisis. In the early 20th century, in the 1900s, schools held classes on rooftops and in parks to avoid transmitting tuberculosis. We're having to rethink the way we teach in much the same way as teachers did over a hundred years ago.

Sonari Glinton:

This pandemic is giving remote learning technology its moment in the sun and there's clearly an appetite for online learning tools. Programs like the Khan Academy or Coursera were around before this crisis. It can help in areas where students don't have access to quality education or where teachers lack resources. It's an example of how online and offline education can work together.

Sonari Glinton:

We have an opportunity to reimagine how we teach, otherwise families will continue to get frustrated and give up like Escher and his family did. Escher, his mom, dad, and baby brother are sheltering in a small community, not far from Vancouver, British Columbia and as of this recording, his school is still open.

Escher Olson:

Sophie Olson:

It's a computer from the principal's computer. Can I have a smooch? How was your day?

Escher Olson:

Good.

Sophie Olson:

Where's your jacket?

Escher Olson:

In my backpack?

Sophie Olson:

Can you get your hand sanitizer spray, please?

Sonari Glinton:

You can mistake this for a school pickup in the pre-COVID days without the hand sanitizer. But otherwise, this is very normal, somewhat mundane daily routine, helps the family rediscover the joy of education. Most of us took school for granted. It was just there to be experienced or endured, but this pandemic is reframing all of our assumptions.

Eppie Miller:

The most important thing for me as education is not only books or computer. Education is people and experience and adventure. And if you don't have that, I think for a lot of people, you become a shell of a person and you have your whole life to become a shell of a person, it should not happen when you're eight years old.

Sonari Glinton:

I genuinely hope that up in British Columbia, Escher has found that one great teacher to inspire him. Mine was Mr. [Kislefkis 00:21:54]. He was an English teacher with a chalkboard and a book, and he used both to open our minds. That my friends is the work of a superhero.

Sonari Glinton:

Now imagine your favorite teacher with the tools of a superhero. We have an opportunity to turn every class into an exploration and every student into an adventure. Oh, the places our classrooms, our Zoom chats and our students could go.

Sonari Glinton:

Special thanks to my friends at Wire Media who helped interview some of the high school students you heard in this episode. Wire Media is a nonprofit that takes young students and turns them into media professionals. I'm Sonari Glinton And this is Now, What's Next? An original podcast from Morgan Stanley.

 

Sonari Glinton:

Let's begin our story by setting the scene. Now, we need a little bit of atmosphere. I like our sound designer, Shaun, to play some tinkly piano music right about here. Yeah. Jazzy a bit like piano bar style. Yep. Perfect. Okay, remember just sitting at your favorite restaurant with a drink? Bartender, I'll have a Gibson martini. That's a gin martini with an onion.

Sonari Glinton:

Now, let me ask you, have you ever witnessed something become a hit up close? One of the most amazing things I witnessed in my life is a neighborhood restaurant become a Chicago institution. The kind of place where you go to get full, but also to have a night out to remember. It's the kind of place that Michael Jordan, all the Bulls would head to after workouts and home games.

Steve Lombardo:

So, my name is Steve Lombardo. I am the chairman of the Gibsons Restaurant Group, one of the larger, independent restaurant groups in the Chicago area.

Sonari Glinton:

Steve, or at Lombardo as I call him, we've been friends since long before his dad opened Gibsons more than 30 years ago. And, in recent years, I've watched him slowly take over his dad's line of restaurants. And I wanted to know how he was doing.

Sonari Glinton:

So, you took your dad's business. You've been the chairman for about five years or so. You've been in charge of things. And the calamity of calamities happens. I've never asked you, how has that felt?

Steve Lombardo:

I mean, obviously, like you've gotten hit by a ton of bricks and kicked in the groin all at once. It is brutal.

Sonari Glinton:

Lombardo tells me that when the quarantines began, Gibsons was barely doing 15% of regular business.

Sonari Glinton:

Now, it's times like these, when you start thinking the unthinkable. And, in Lombardo's case, that meant delivery.

Steve Lombardo:

It was taking every menu item at every restaurant and putting it in a container, and letting it sit there for 30 minutes, and then tasting it. And saying, "Okay, is that acceptable or not?" The things that did not taste well after 30 minutes of sitting in a container, you said, "You know what? That doesn't belong on the menu.

Sonari Glinton:

For a Chicago steak house or an institution like Gibsons, pivoting to delivery is a huge deal. This is the kind of place that brings the raw cuts of steak to your table, so you can pick out which one you want cook. I mean, what app has that setting. But can a dry-aged prime Chicago cut steak in a paper bag, save the restaurant business? Well, it might have to.

Sonari Glinton:

I'm Sonari Glinton and this is Now, What's Next? An original podcast from Morgan Stanley.

Sonari Glinton:

Before the outbreak, nearly half of us went out to eat at least twice a week. Half the money we spent on food went to restaurants. But here's the thing, restaurants typically operate on razor thin margins. Now, corner taverns, greasy spoons, neighborhood institutions, even national chains, they're going out of business. By September 2020, over 100,000 eating establishments in America closed forever.

Sonari Glinton:

Things do not look good for our favorite places. So many are adopting new ways of doing things. And along the way, they're rethinking what it really means to be a restaurant. But will it be enough?

Sonari Glinton:

This season on Now, What's Next?, a podcast from Morgan Stanley, we're trying to figure out what life after a global pandemic looks like, or can look like. We're exploring how the world continues to evolve in the face of a global crisis. And the rare chance it's given us to rethink our assumptions. This may be a once in a lifetime challenge, but it's also an opportunity to learn from this moment and create real and lasting change.

Sonari Glinton:

In this episode, if we won't go to restaurants for that dine-in experience, then restaurants are going to have to come to us. That's Now, What's Next?

Sonari Glinton:

When Gibsons sales nose dive the impact that went beyond just their bottom line. They were forced to cut their staff by 40%. And with a operation that big, it means a lot of people lost their jobs.

Steve Lombardo:

People who've worked with us for 30 years and then some who've only worked with us for a year, but 800 of those people aren't with us anymore. Guys, who I knew from when I was a kid, when I bused tables, we had to lay them off. They're part of the family, that was the toughest thing. We did everything we could but, at some point, it's survival.

Sonari Glinton:

They are not alone. The pandemic has been devastating to restaurants and a lot of people rely on them, not only for a meal, but to make a living.

Colleen Vincent:

There's not just a person that cooks the food. There's a person that serves the food. There's a person that washes the dishes. There's a person that preps the food. There are a lot of hands and those people are just like the rest of us, and deserve to be cared for just like the rest of us. They deserve the opportunity to be safe. They deserve the opportunity to do the job that they love, and be able to care for their family.

Sonari Glinton:

Colleen Vincent is the Vice President of Community at the James Beard Foundation.

Colleen Vincent:

If the majority of the restaurants don't survive this moment, it means transformation and a devastation, unlike much of what we've ever seen in our lifetime.

Sonari Glinton:

Colleen can't say exactly how many restaurant workers face unemployment in the US this year, but the foundation is alarmed by the size of this crisis.

Colleen Vincent:

I think that the closest that we get to understanding that number is anecdotally without an intervention we can lose up to 85% of this industry. So, what are your options, if you lose your job in the restaurant industry? To be very frank, not very many.

Sonari Glinton:

In the face of potential ruin, restaurants everywhere trying any number of things to innovate their way through this crisis, or at the very least keep the lights on. Delivery and takeout is huge. So, is retail. Everything from t-shirts to homemade spice rubs. And some places are going much further. And here's one example, it starts with burnt bacon.

Shaun Garcia:

So, I'm going to just use an induction burner, whether using any burner in your house. I'm going to kind of get the pan kind of a medium heat. And we've already got our bacon cooked off.

Sonari Glinton:

While you're doing that, I've gathered the ingredients in my kitchen as well. So, I burned my bacon, but I still have the bacon fat.

Sonari Glinton:

Five minutes into my online cooking class with Shaun Garcia. And I've already burned...

Shaun Garcia:

Well, if you still got...

Sonari Glinton:

And eaten the bacon.

Shaun Garcia:

If you still got the bacon fat use that. It's going to give you those flavors in there, like you had the bacon in there.

Sonari Glinton:

Shaun is the executive chef at Soby's, where they cook up new South cuisine. It's a classy place that's been around more than 20 years. You'll find it in Greenville, South Carolina. And, today, from 2300 miles away from my kitchen in West Hollywood, he's teaching me how to make shrimp and grits.

Shaun Garcia:

So, what, essentially, we're going to make first is we're going to make a bacon tomato gravy.

Sonari Glinton:

Like so many restaurants, Soby's also needed to find a way to make ends meet that didn't involve packing their dining rooms with customers. That's where the virtual shrimp and grits lesson comes in. The idea is, very simple. Swing by the restaurant, pick up the ingredients, what they call a virtual cooking box, and that night you take part in a Zoom cooking class with the head chef himself. Or, if you're like me, and you live thousands of miles from Greenville, you can make do with what you can get at your local grocery store.

Sonari Glinton:

Now, help me understand why you decided to make this offer.

Shaun Garcia:

Well, one, is to make that connection. To be able to give our customers something that they could have when we were closed. But also to still support the staff that was still coming in everyday.

Sonari Glinton:

Shaun knows he's in the business of creating and fostering links between you, the meal, the person who served it, and the person who cooked it. With the Zoom cooking classes, you get a shortcut. And that interactivity makes it even more intimate than it was before the pandemic.

Shaun Garcia:

So, something that we wanted to be still viable, still being in the community, still be there for our community.

Sonari Glinton:

And people are, well, eating this up. Some nights, they have more than 3500 people following along on a Zoom call, cooking their grits and, hopefully, not burning their bacon.

Shaun Garcia:

No matter what's going on around you and how things in life seems hectic when you bite into that shrimp and grits, that fish and grits for a small time period there, everything kind of stops. And you're consumed with that emotions of enjoying that food, and the people that you love, and the people in your family.

Sonari Glinton:

During a time when many restaurants are navigating openings and closings, and reopenings and re-closings, Shaun hangs onto these cooking classes. So, like me, you don't even need to live in Greenville to enjoy his Southern cuisine, even if what you're cooking. Doesn't quite match what served in his restaurant.

Sonari Glinton:

Shaun Garcia, and Steve Lombardo, they're engineering creative ways to extend their restaurant's story into our homes. But what happens when you're a chef who doesn't have a restaurant, but still hopes to create that connection, and share another story through food? It's simple, you fake it so you can make it.

Sonari Glinton:

Before the pandemic, a restaurant trend emerged called ghost kitchens. Essentially, these are restaurants that aren't restaurants. They exist exclusively in food delivery apps. There's a kitchen, sure, somewhere, but that's it. In 2015, one study found that 10% of all restaurants listed on food delivery apps in New York, apps like Grubhub or Seamless, they were ghost kitchens. And that number has only grown.

Sonari Glinton:

In mid 2020, a mysterious Pasqually's Pizza & Wings was showing up in cities where nobody had ever heard of a pizzeria by that name. Pasqually's pies, it turns out, were made in the kitchens of dormant Chuck E. Cheeses closed during the pandemic. It was, in fact, Chuck E. Cheese by any other name.

Ed Hardy:

Ghost kitchens definitely got a bad rap. And some of it's deserved because, from what I understand, some of the delivery companies are taking their data, setting up their own kitchens based on that data, so they can target hamburgers sell the best in this area of Westchester, New York.

Sonari Glinton:

This is Edward Hardy. He's a chef from Northern Virginia. He's talking about how delivery services are eating their way into the restaurant business. They're launching their own ghost kitchens, and competing directly with actual restaurants. And people don't like that.

Ed Hardy:

So, they set up a hamburger restaurant, and they name it Bill's Hamburger Restaurant. They're able to beat them on price. They have preferred delivery on their own website. And once you really go down that rabbit hole, you can imagine the advantages that a ghost kitchen restaurant set up by the delivery company would have.

Sonari Glinton:

And so, from the if you can't beat them, join them school of entrepreneurship, Ed decided to not let the virtual restaurants get the jump on him. He went out and started a ghost kitchen of his own.

Sonari Glinton:

For the pandemic, Ed was among the millions of hardworking people hustling their way in the food industry. One of the millions Coleen Vincent at the James Beard Foundation thinks a lot about. Ed cooked in a nightclub restaurant, and he was a teacher at a culinary school. The virus cost him both those jobs, as both businesses closed up shop. Suddenly, without work, Ed found himself kind of at a loss.

Ed Hardy:

And my day would consist of getting up, making myself a gourmet omelet for breakfast, and playing video games. And then, eventually, going to bed about 16 hours later,

Sonari Glinton:

He drifted around like that for a few weeks. And his friend, Nate, a former partner at the nightclub was also without a job.

Ed Hardy:

And he invited me over for a socially distanced barbecue. And he was looking for some comfort food. And he said, "Hey, Chef Ed make some perogies.

Sonari Glinton:

It sounded like Ed was a perogie pro, but he took it on as a challenge. One that didn't involve the video game console.

Ed Hardy:

I made some beet perogies. I made a blueberry lemon thyme perogie.

Sonari Glinton:

Ed's perogies were so good he and Nate realized that there might just be demand for their starchy nourishing comfort food. What, with everyone mostly stuck at home.

Ed Hardy:

Because we're internet savvy, the ghost kitchen phenomenon presented itself. We said, "What's the best place to set up a ghost kitchen?" Well, what was being unused in my life, it was the recreational culinary school, which had plenty of equipment.

Sonari Glinton:

And so, that's what they did. They set up in the gourmet culinary school. They called their perogie place, Zofia's Kitchen. It's named after who else? But Ed's completely fictional Polish grandmother. This is how you tell a story about food, right? They built the menu of perogies that only a make-believe bubby could cook. Loaded baked potato perogie, spinach and feta perogies, pastrami perogies. There's even something called The Fat Elvis, a dessert perogie with bacon banana and Nutella. Oh, saints preserve us. The idea took off immediately. Really. They hadn't even cooked anything yet, but they were a hit the moment they first tested their online ordering system.

Ed Hardy:

We didn't realize we actually turned it on, like it was live for real. And within about 10, 20 minutes, somebody placed an order, which shocked us and surprised us. But also was really encouraging. I mean, somebody noticed this thing that had been out in the ether for 10 minutes, and said, "I would love to have some perogies." We we managed to be able to call him back and refund his money, but he was shoving his money at us.

Sonari Glinton:

The new business model, the virtual restaurant, let's Ed connect with a hungry customer base. Ed has learned not to be afraid of ghosts.

Ed Hardy:

Nate and I should have had a lot of fear in mind, opening during the pandemic when restaurants are closing. But just a little belief, and just a little creativity, and just a little smart look at the market around you is allowing us to succeed.

Sonari Glinton:

Bringing you comfort food in a time of anxiety, isn't that what the best chefs and grandmas do all the time?

Sonari Glinton:

The COVID crisis confirms what restaurants and chefs know about success, it's not only what's on your plate that matters. It's connecting that meal to the place that makes it. Even better, connecting with the person who cooks it. In normal times, this is what helps get people out of the house and off the delivery apps. But in a pandemic year, sometimes you just have to bring the chef, quite literally, to them. And there's nowhere that that's more clear than a crazy experiment that took place in Florida.

Sonari Glinton:

In March 2020, an NBA player tested positive for COVID. Not long after, the entire basketball season was suspended, at least until early June. That's when the league made a surprising announcement, they would finish out the season, but all players and support staff would live together in Florida with no contact with the outside world. They called it the NBA Bubble. In other words, the biggest shelter-in-place order was about to play out in basketball. It was great news for fans, but not for Chef Lex.

Chef Lex:

I was very upset. I was like, "Damn, how am I going to get a piece of this? You're literally taking all my clients, all my money. Not only am I about to suffer for this, all the chefs that I've been keeping employed during this time was about to suffer this."

Sonari Glinton:

That is chef Alexia Grant. She got her start working in restaurant kitchens. But, eventually, she grew a business providing private chefs to wealthy customers. Customers like NBA athletes. But if all those athletes were going to be walled up in that bubble, that would be a problem for her and her business. Lucky for her, and maybe unlucky for the NBA players, the food in the bubble, well, let's just say, it became an issue. Montrezl Harrell posted a picture of a nasty looking chicken dish to his Instagram with the caption, "Yeah., I'm about to starve here in the bubble." Joel Embiid posted that he was, "Definitely losing 50 pounds." This was Chef Lex's chance. She sent a detailed proposal to the NBA.

Chef Lex:

And when they found out how many clients I had and what my plan was, they offered me a space in their executive chef kitchen to run my business. And I was floored. I was like, "What? Really? I get to go in the Bubble?" I was just so excited. I jumped right at the opportunity. It was a no brainer for me, at that point.

Sonari Glinton:

Who better to get the call, really? Chef Lex had been helping to feed athletes for years. And she knew what they like and how they need to eat.

Chef Lex:

I made, for the NBA Bubble, a comfort food menu of soul food and Caribbean infusion. My genre that all my clients call for is healthy comfort food in totality. So, I am half Indian and half Jamaican, Caribbean. I wanted to create a menu and just let everybody, who was able to try my food, feel like home because no one was able to have that.

Sonari Glinton:

Chef Lex found success, huge success in the Bubble. She's a mini celebrity now featured on NBC, Sports Illustrated, and NPR. Now, business is booming. The folks with money were desperate for a private chef to help them weather the pandemic.

Chef Lex:

So, my phone started blowing up and I didn't have enough people, at the time. And it was also, I mean, COVID, they need a chef, but everybody wanted their own chef.

Sonari Glinton:

And, before the pandemic, she was at the whim of fickle customers. Some of them would make ridiculous demands. Not the NBA players, but other wealthy clients, who weren't afraid to air their prejudices.

Chef Lex:

"I don't want minorities. I don't want a woman. I don't want someone who looks like this." A lot of these issues would come up in the interview process of accepting a new client. I'm walking into a situation thinking that it's going to be about food and allergies. And it's more about someone's gender and someone's nationality. I mean, it sucks.

Sonari Glinton:

But as demand for in-home chefs outstripped supply, a lot of that prejudice disappeared. This in a crisis where Black-owned businesses, be it food based or otherwise, close at twice the rate of their white counterparts. From Chef Lex's view, there were opportunities to be found.

Chef Lex:

The level of success that I reached feels surreal. It's the thing that I've been praying for so long, so long. Screaming it onto the universe that I want it. And it's happening.

Sonari Glinton:

Both Chef Lex and Ed Hardy have found ways to navigate this downturn. And both are surprised by their sudden good fortune. There are many other examples like this out there. There are also countless stories of tragedy. That's why Colleen Vincent and her team at the James Beard Foundation have refocused their mission this year to support survival and rebuild efforts across the industry. They're raising and distributing funds to those in need. And they've joined efforts to pressure governments to support the industry. And they're thinking about how restaurants can come back better.

Colleen Vincent:

The first thing that people have been thinking about is how to have a restaurant. That revenue is not an up and down thing. Certainly, like an industry wide consult on the true cost of operating a restaurant. On a true cost of labor, and how to support not only the owner, but the staff.

Sonari Glinton:

But it's not just about the money. It's about people as well.

Colleen Vincent:

Wanting to have a restaurant, wanting to be employed by a restaurant is as much of an American dream as any other. And is as valid of an American dream as any other.

Sonari Glinton:

Restaurants offer more than just a place to grab a meal. There's a story to every single place we love. And it's been hard to be a part of that story lately, but it doesn't go away. My buddy Lombardo at Gibsons in Chicago, he knows this all too well.

Steve Lombardo:

Why do people go to restaurants? We're social animals. We eat together, whether it's a birthday, or an anniversary, or just hanging out with a bunch of friends. And they can say, "Hey, I went to your place." They have memories that they've created that we helped them create. And there's something beautiful about that.

Sonari Glinton:

So, Gibsons does delivery, but ensures the food you bring home reminds you why you love them. Your favorite chef teaches you to cook for yourself until he can cook for you again. And another gives you a taste of home when you're trapped in the basketball bubble. And grandma [Zo-fia 00:22:36] shows up from nowhere to fill your belly and keep your cozy during a quarantine. That was a need that proved so pronounced, actually, that Ed Hardy's ghost kitchen is becoming something real. Ed is opening a lunch counter where you can eat hot meals and get perogies to go.

Sonari Glinton:

A good restaurant tells a great story. Coleen Vincent agrees.

Colleen Vincent:

Yeah. The secret ingredient is the restaurant story. And so, the way it's being told it is has changed, but the story is still there.

Sonari Glinton:

The restaurants with the best chances of surviving are the ones that recognize the value of building, and fostering connection. Of helping create memories, that keep people anchored to physical places. That alone is why restaurants need to be saved. When this crisis is over your favorite restaurant, if it's still around, will be jammed packed. I can't wait to have a real martini with a friend telling a bar story, being together, communing. I know you can't wait either.

Sonari Glinton:

The virus might go away, but that need, that desire to connect, never. I'm Sonari Glinton. And this is Now, What's Next? An original podcast from Morgan Stanley. Cheers.