#WOW after years of no photos or contact to prove their existence we now have a picture proving the well being of Gerard way

[ghost-in-fools-garments]

I love the way MCR fans discuss Gerard Way sightings like he’s an endangered species

[pear-pies]

Placebo in Rock & Folk magazine - April 2003

Words by Jerome Soligny, photos by Carole Epinette

Wonky translation under the cut:

These three did it all. Shot with the QOTSAs and posed with Indo. They survived "Velvet Goldmine" and the Top Bab. They come back after the ordeal of the fourth album. Danger interview: “Jerome, what if you came out?” They ask our charming reporter.

"We do not regret anything"

Everything begins again with "Bulletproof Cupid", a punky instrument that pulls everything off. Then "English Summer Rein", mechanico-depressive spinning punctuated by twisted keyboards, and "Sleeping With Ghosts", the lament which advances while blistering during cooking, confirm the tone. Against all expectations, because you never know how will age the groups that the previous album installed at the Top, Placebo took over. And stuffed it in an iron glove. Further on, "The Bitter End" tumbles through yapping guitars which would stick to the hatches the thickest of the sailors. Be careful, Placebo is on the way out of being one. At the end of the record, Brian Molko, Stefan Olsdal and Steve Hewitt do not even run out of steam. The cows. They drop a "Centerfolds" which frolic like a cynical top under a shower of saving doubts. What augur still other perspectives.

The fourth album: a horror for all who have faced it. Often a stupid trap. Returning from the Gothic directly inherited from the glam of pageantry and from these hasty and harmful certainties which congest the face and the veins, Placebo publishes its first real great disc. Oh, not the marvel of wonders, not the album from the third millennium, but something very strong, compact, tenacious in listening, which proves that the future is indeed there, in front, where the light is most blinding. Calfeucée in their Parisian hotel (the Costes, of course), our three lads do not make the blow of the revelation, of the luminous questioning. Simply, they now think with their heads, a good plan most often Likewise, reality no longer frightens them, and it is probably she who is hiding behind this "Sleeping With Ghosts" which relates the sorrows only for the better. melt into hopes At the moment when rock brings us back to life and when we just want to ask them everything, the Placebo have decided to say everything. Not even in a hurry, they settle down on the couch, ready to talk like never before. Despite new batteries embedded in the carcass, the Panasonic barely a Brian Molko: Hey Jerome, you came to talk to us this time when you had not come to the previous album ...

Rock & Folk: Uh yes but I was there for the first two, that says a lot, right?

Brian Molko: Certainly, I also believe that over time, we finally appreciate the true nature of the problem: we were mainly criticized for the sound of the previous album, which I can understand but, paradoxically, it is the one that brought us to the Top.

R&F: Legitimately, we have the right to expect a lot from the people we love: while "Black Market Music" sounded a bit like a sequel, this new record is all about a renaissance.

Brian Molko: Actually, we were finally able to live a little. After having existed in a small bubble for a very long time, we forced ourselves to take an eight-month break. The album-tour rhythm put us on the sidelines: we no longer had normal contact with anything. We were losing ourselves. We have fully lived the old cliché which claims that we spend the first years of our life writing a first record and six months on the second. It turned out to be very true. We had to get back to the situation of the first album, see friends, go shopping, look at the buildings in our city.

R&F: So the freshness would come from there ...

Brian Molko: Yes, and it was essential spiritually, emotionally and physically.

Steve Hewitt: We had to be in tune with reality again.

Brian Molko: In fact, we find ourselves in a bit of the same state of mind as when we released "Without You I'm Nothing", although "Sleeping With Ghosts" is a lot less gloomy. The heroin has since stopped leaking. In fact, I feel like I've pulled myself out of what I consider my second teenage years, between twenty and thirty. I conquered the self-destruction, exorcised some demons, understood what had happened to me. I held on to what I had learned. As a human being, I am now able to continue living, to try to answer the big questions posed by existence.

R&F: Maybe that's why the melodies are needed this time. It took me four records to get a favorite Placebo track.

The whole group in chorus: Which one?

R&F: "Protect Me From What I Want", of course ...

Brian Molko: The most paradoxical is that this song dates from the end of the "Black Market Music" sessions. I was not married at the time, but I was trying to get out of a particularly vicious divorce.just started. Then we wait for the lyrics, which don't arrive, it's rather intriguing. We especially wanted to avoid the big Rican producer side, we needed someone who shakes us up a bit. Jim could do that because he comes from dance and his pedigree is impressive. We have all his records at home, Bjôrk, Massive Attack, Sneaker Pimps and especially DJ Shadow. It is believed that guitar rock can only evolve by incorporating new genres, this is the only way to remain a modern rock band. At home, we practically only listen to hip hop.

R&F: Still, he didn't betray you.

Brian Molko: No because he actually brought out our rock side, which I'm particularly proud of. In fact, because we always wanted to control everything, it was not easy to be forced, to do certain things backwards, to walk on the head. But in truth, that's what we wanted: yes, there was some tension in the studio but we all took advantage of it. The challenge is necessary and it is also valid for the public. We opened up and rediscovered ourselves.

Stefan Olsdal (emerging from his chair): We found ourselves in front of the mirror, at the foot of the wall: someone had to kick our ass.

Brian Molko: Jim was like, "Why are you doing this?" We would answer him: "Because we always do it like that!" He would say: "All the more reason not to do it."

Stefan Olsdal: On the first day, he messed up all the demos, changed the tones, the tempos ...

R&F: Like Brian Eno ...

Steve Hewitt: Yeah, but with a lot more compassion. Eno is a bit (silence) ... We don't really like being told our actions, but at the same time, we are still young, still absorbing. Jim knew how to preserve us while making a modern sound.

R&F: Modern and rock'n'roll at the same time, a characteristic which does not necessarily apply to all the young groups in The which recycle the past gently but are convinced to have found the virus of the AIDS.

Steve Hewitt: Placebo doesn't belong to any current, has nothing to do with fashion.

R&F: You always pose as outsiders.

Brian Molko: It's the only way to survive.

Steve Hewitt: These bands, like The Strokes, play the nostalgia card.

Stefan Olsdal: And what happens next? I would not like to be in their place.

Brian Molko: If you want good New York pop, you better listen to Blondie.

R&F: In 2003, 11 seems that you have abandoned all the androgynous paraphernalia, sexual ambiguity, glam references ...

Brian Molko: I think today everyone knows what there is to know. Our sexual inclinations haven't changed, and we still wear makeup. It is just more expensive and better applied. We are ourselves, in our music and in private. I went through my travelo period (in French in the interview - Editor's note), and I understood that being androgynous was not wearing skirts. It is a way of being on the spiritual plane. It is not an image but a state of mind.

Steve Hewitt: It's like being punk, it's an attitude.

Brian Molko: At the same time, I don't regret any of my eccentricities. I grew up in the spotlight and it all kind of makes me smile.

Stefan Olsdal: People still talk to us about certain outfits or positions, as if it still shocks them.

R&F: Yes, and particularly in France, a particularly homophobic country which bumps heartily on gay artists.

Brian Molko: And you, coincidentally, you still hang out with.

Stefan Olsdal: Jérôme, it's coming out time (laughs) ...

Brian Molko: All that has to change, that all of France becomes gay (laughs)!

R&F: "Protect Me From What I Want" precisely, here is a title heavy with meaning. What was the idea behind this song?

Brian Molko: For me, it's a study of the pathological need people have to copulate, the search for meaning in copulation. As if bachelors or monogamists were aliens. As if we were only one when we were two. The song is about the fact that one relationship has destroyed me but I can't help but look for another ... why do I keep coming back to this?

R&F: Wow, we're bathing in philosophy here!

Brian Molko: Yes and it's the same elsewhere in the record: in "Plasticine", I insist on the fact that you have to be yourself above all while asking myself all these questions. Why do we have to do a lot of forbidden things, bad or harmful?

R&F: It's therapy in public.

Brian Molko: At least I find some balance in it. These are not songs about compassion or self-pity. They came out like this because it was vital for me. I am in this privileged situation where I can express myself and the world hears me. Otherwise, I would be really frustrated and I would have suffered a lot more in the last fifteen years.

R&F: Music saved your life.

Brian Molko: Sure.

Steve Hewitt: Everyone: I think we can say that. Without Placebo, we would not be not even alive.

Brian Molko: Spitting it all out is not necessarily the right solution. There are things with which to live. In fact, I've always been afraid to go see a psychiatrist ...

R&F: Yet, listening to you speak earlier, you could have the feeling that Jim Abiss acted a bit like a shrink with you.

Brian Molko: That's right. You could say that.

R&F: At a time when Bush and Blair want to play World War III, what attitude do you adopt? What do you think of these Englishmen who left for Iraq to constitute a human shield?

Brian Molko: Let's say we stand together. We participated in the March for Peace on February 14th with Damon Albarn and 3D from Massive Attack. We were also surprised that so few groups mobilized, which increased our desire to participate tenfold.

R&F: Do you consider that it is the role of the artist to give voice in such circumstances?

Steve Hewitt: Yes, in the sense that we can help with general motivation.

Brian Molko: I'm very interested in seeing if Blair is going to let Bush bomb Iraq with the British present on the soil of the country. If he ever allows that, the consequences will be dire.

R&F: It will only be one more religious war, in the name of oil and money ...

Brian Molko: It seems absurd that we can still fight for that. And curiously, nobody speaks more, or almost, of Bin Laden. Wouldn't it all come from him, by chance, as a huge consequence of September 11? On the other hand, we have such a feeling that Bush wants to finish the job that daddy started. Its image is so bad that it needs at least one war to restore its image.

Steve Hewitt: And reinvigorate its dying economy.

R&F: The method is lamentable, deceitful. Like those employed by the recording industry which claims to be doing well by selling pop in damaged boxes to ignoramuses.

Brian Molko: The ability of this job to ingest people, bribe them and then spit them out is impressive. This is what happened here at Canal +.R&F: Business is the beast.

Brian Molko: All these pre-made artists are young and naff ...

Steve Hewitt: They'll all end up in a labor camp for ex-pop stars.

R&F: Warhol was talking about fifteen minute glory, we're brutally passed to fifteen seconds.

Brian Molko: We should have called them Karaoke idols from the start.

Steve Hewitt: And it only works because of the TV ...

R&F: Who washes the poor, helpless brains.

Steve Hewitt: You can tell how much people want to think less

R&F: And spend less. For many, music should be free: one in five thirteen-year-olds doesn't know that a disc doesn't have to be a computer-burnt puck. Some are flabbergasted when they see a cover for the first time.

Stefan Olsdal: And those who don't buy records put pressure on those who have them to pass them on at all costs, just long enough to copy them.

R&F: Exactly.

Brian Molko: That's why we blame Robbie Williams so much. Scooping 80 million pounds off EMI and then declaring that pirating music is a fantastic thing just makes him want to stick a chunk in his face.

R&F .: And then piracy is not a matter of environment. It's not a suburban thing. There are rich kids who find it normal to burn 80 CDs during their weekend and sometimes sell them to their friends ...

Brian Molko: What do these people believe? That we are there, the face in the stream with a syringe stuck in the arm singing "La Vie En Rose"? And who will pay for our children's school? Not them, anyway. Our mentality is quite different: we always want to buy records from people we love, from our friends. Personally, we are partly out of the woods, but it will be particularly difficult for new groups to make a living from music in five or ten years.

R&F: Come on, we're not going to leave each other on this, a little humor won't hurt anyone. If you were to be banned from any of these three things, which would you choose: making music, making money or making love?

Steve Hewitt (almost tit for tat): I would stop making money, without hesitation. It's because I love music and sex too much. And then, well, you have to choose.

Brian Molko (completely overwhelmed): Oh damn, that's not true. What a dilemma!

R&F: No Brian, that doesn't count, make an effort (laughs).

Brian Molko: Ah, I don't know. And then if. I would stop making money and get on well with someone super rich.

R&F: Or you would be pimp ...

Brian Molko: Yes, that's it. Good plan.

Stefan Olsdal: Stop making love does not mean to stop loving ...

Brian Molko (preparing his shot): And we can always masturbate (general laughter).

Stefan Olsdal: OK then, I would stop making love.

R&F: Okay, it will be written in black and white for all eternity.

Brian Molko: Will we live long enough to regret it? This is the real question.

*COLLECTED BY JEROME SOLIGNY

[Inset, Trash Palace]

Already present on the first album by Trash Palace which he had adorned with his presence one unhealthy recovery of "I Love You, Me No More "in duet with Asia Argento, Brian Molko is coming to re-stack. This time he cosigns directly "The Metric System " with Dimitri Trash Palace Tikovoi, an electro saw boosted to bleeps fundamentals available in two remix and its clip on an enhanced single recently published at Discograph. The result is particularly (d) amazing and sounds good logical, like of Placebo cyber.Placebo in  Rock & Folk magazine - April 2003

[sanderssidesfanfiction]

If There’s a Place I Can Be - Chapter Eighty Four

If There’s a Place I Could Be Tag

November 27th, 2000

Remy was ready to punch a wall. His parents made him so furious sometimes. Forcing him to change his major if he went back to school?! If he could drop the rest of his family and only stay in contact with the good ones, he would. He loathed accounting, and that would drive him faster to suicide than taking literally anything else at college would.

He took a breath and made sure he had everything ready to go back to school. He met Toby in the hallway and gave him a hug. “You’d better keep in touch,” Remy playfully threatened.

“Cross my heart and hope to die, I’ll call your number and make sure we have each other’s details,” Toby swore. Then, more quietly, “Now go trick our parents and drop out of college.”

  March 28th, 2003

Emile came back down the stairs finding Toby looking like he was about to cry, and Remy not that far off, either. “You two seem very intent on having a crying session without me,” he noted, taking the last available space on the couch.

Remy rolled his eyes. “Toby was asking about the stuff with my— our mother.”

“Ah, yeah, nevermind,” Emile said. “I totally understand that.”

“I don’t,” Toby said, furrowing his eyebrows, and Emile blinked, because there was so much of freshman Remy in that action, the man who didn’t understand why what his parents were doing was controlling and wrong.

Remy coughed. “Well. Turns out that a lot of the stuff we dealt with that initially doesn’t look like abuse was, in fact, a type of abuse,” he said awkwardly. “So like, not only was Mom stalking me wrong, but so was her taking Bones and any other toy she thought I had outgrown. Same with the toys she took away from you. There’s other stuff, but that’s like...the obvious things.”

“What are the not-so-obvious things?” Toby asked, looking between Remy and Emile.

“Uh...” Remy, for once, looked speechless.

“Things like temporarily taking away toys that brought you a sense of security or comfort,” Emile said. “Or denying you food when you’re hungry when you broke a rule. Remy has told me both of those things have happened. And corporal punishment has started to be studied, and it seems to be less effective than most parents think it is.”

Toby looked stunned. “But that wasn’t...? No, I mean...”

“You may not have seen it as such, but that is abuse,” Emile said gently. “Even if they gave the toys back, even if you eventually got to have dinner, even if the punishment was ‘only’ a spanking. Those are all forms of abuse.”

“Jesus Christ,” Toby said, paling. “You’re serious.”

“He’s always serious about trauma,” Remy said with a weak smile. “It’s one of the things that I had to learn to love about him, because he had this conversation with me before, over the course of literal years, but he has taught me that I deserve better. And now I actually believe it.”

Toby ran his hands through his hair. “Oh my God,” he said simply. “I...wow. I’m...How do I keep in contact with them after this?”

“You don’t have to,” Emile pointed out. “You always have the choice to say no.”

“No, but...Vanessa...Vanessa deserves to know too...” Toby swallowed. “She—how do I tell her, I only ever see her at our parents’ house and I don’t want her to repeat their mistakes...she’s been talking about kids, recently, when she finds a husband.”

Remy shrugged, looking about as hysterical as Toby sounded. “You would know better than I do, Tobes, I haven’t had contact with anyone from our family for years.”

Toby ran a hand down his face. “Yeah, I know...Nate and Magenta have been worrying themselves sick.”

Emile figured it might be time for a distraction, so he asked, “Those two are twins, right? How did one of them get the misfortune of being called Magenta?”

“Oh.” Toby laughed. “Vanessa nicknamed him that when they were babies. Because to tell the twins apart, their parents put magenta nailpolish on his big toe. Bear in mind, she was also really little. But she’d call Nate his name, and she’d call Percy—that’s his real name—Magenta. And it stuck throughout the family, and he never complained, so we all just sorta...rolled with it.”

“He didn’t get called that at school,” Remy hurried to add. “He’d get called that at family reunions, but his own family, for the most part, calls him Percy.”

“Ah, good. I was worried there for a minute,” Emile said, clearing his throat.

They sat there in silence for a minute, before Remy kicked his feet over Emile’s legs and laid his head in Toby’s lap. “Toby, I’m bored,” Remy whined.

Emile laughed at the shock on Toby’s face. Toby looked over to Emile. “Remy said I have you to thank for this.”

“Yeah,” Emile laughed. “I would say sorry, but you don’t look upset.”

“Upset? I’m ecstatic!” Toby exclaimed. “My baby brother has emotions! I thought those all shrivelled up and died in high school! But you revived them! I can’t thank you enough!”

“I’m still here!” Remy exclaimed.

“Yep,” Emile said, grabbing Remy’s hand and kissing his knuckles. “And we both love you more than words can say.”

“Ugh. You’re sappy,” Remy grumbled.

“You wouldn’t have me any other way,” Emile pointed out.

Remy sighed. “This is true,” he admitted. “But you know how weird it is to have people talking over your head like you don’t exist?”

“Sorry, Rem,” Emile laughed. “But to be fair, you complaining you’re bored doesn’t really add much to the conversation.”

Remy stuck his tongue out at Emile and Emile laughed, sticking his out back. Toby looked between them fondly. “You two really are in love,” he said, sounding a little awestruck. “I think the two of you might ruin dating for me by the time this long weekend is over. Because none of my relationships are quite as good as what you two have.”

“Aw, you’ll find someone if you want to, Tobes,” Remy said. “I don’t doubt that.”

“Maybe I will, but I doubt I’d ever be in love the way the two of you are. It’s something else,” Toby said.

“Well, Emile is kinda the reason I believe in soulmates now, so...” Remy shrugged.

“Soulmates, yeah,” Emile laughed. “Listen. I let you be sappy, Remy, but you wanted absolutely nothing to do with me in the beginning of us getting to know each other. I dragged you into interpersonal relationships kicking and screaming—one time quite literally.”

“That was because of the bubbles, not because of the relationships!” Remy said, pointing accusingly at Emile. “Patty used far too many bubbles and I did not want to be seen blowing bubbles like a child when I was still trying to figure out who I was in the world!”

“Whatever you say, Rem,” Emile said, snickering.

“Bubbles?” Toby asked, arching an eyebrow. “There’s a story there.”

“Not a long one,” Emile said. “My friend Patty was—mmph!” He was cut short by Remy surging upwards and kissing Emile passionately. When Remy was done, he leaned back and Emile was sitting there dazed, blinking. “What were we talking about?”

“Nothing, darling,” Remy said, before Toby could say anything else.

Emile blinked and readjusted his glasses. “I thought it was something,” he mumbled. “Ah, Toby, are you weirded out by PDA?”

“Bit late to ask that,” Toby laughed. “But no. I’m just annoyed that Remy cut short an embarrassing story by kissing you roughly enough for it to get an R-rating at the movies.”

“Anything remotely gay gets an R-rating at the movies, Tobes,” Remy scoffed.

“Okay, I was thinking in straight-couple standards, though,” Toby said.

“Were a straight couple to do what I just did, it would be PG-13 at worst,” Remy said, pointing at Toby.

“Agree to disagree?” Toby proposed.

“Oh, hell no. You agree with me or I go all out in proving my point,” Remy said, staring Toby dead in the eye as he declared this.

“Those are fighting words,” Toby said, getting a mischievous glint in his eyes.

Before Emile could ask what was going on, Toby grabbed Remy around the torso and ripped him off the couch, spinning them both around roughly. Remy screeched, before bursting into peals of laughter. “Ah! Toby! Let me down!”

“Not until you agree with me!” Toby exclaimed.

“Toby! I’m gonna puke! Lemme go!” Remy screamed.

“Boys, you’re going to put a hole in the wall!” Emile exclaimed, going over to Toby and holding him by the shoulders.

Toby was laughing and red in the face, while Remy looked a little green. “Hey, Rem, why don’t you grab that disposable camera we’ve got and the photo album? I think this deserves a new photo.”

Remy lightly shook his head and stood on wobbly legs. “Ugh, gimme a minute, first.”

Toby looked worried. “Oh, you were serious about puking?”

Remy blearily nodded.

“Shit, Rem, I’m sorry,” Toby said.

“Don’t worry about it,” Remy said. “‘S fine.”

“Hey, Remy, no,” Emile reminded him. “You’re allowed to set boundaries.”

“Hm?” Remy hummed. He staggered over to the couch. “Is that a boundary? I don’t think that qualifies.”

“Uh, that definitely qualifies,” Emile said.

Remy did some deep breathing before looking up at Toby. “I’d appreciate if we kept the spinning to a minimum.”

“Yeah, of course,” Toby said, scratching the back of his neck. “I’m really sorry.”

Remy nodded and leaned back, before standing and saying, “I’m getting the camera. Emile, don’t kill him while I’m gone.”

“Wasn’t planning on it,” Emile said simply.

As soon as Remy left, Toby whispered, “How much did I screw up?”

Emile pinched the bridge of his nose. “Not badly. Remy and I have been working on boundaries off and on for a while. Just needing a refresher doesn’t mean you screwed up. He’s just nervous to set up boundaries with someone he looks up to.”

Toby swallowed. “He...looks up to me?” he asked.

“A hell of a lot,” Emile confirmed. “He talked about you all the time.”

Toby blew out a breath. “Oh, God,” he breathed. “I don’t want him falling into any bad habits again by reasoning that I do them.”

“I doubt he would,” Emile said. “He just hates saying ‘no’ sometimes, and to certain people. You’re on that list. I’m on it, too. It just means we have to be more careful than we otherwise might be.”

Toby shook his head. “God. I’m glad I came, but this suddenly got a lot more scary.”

“I wouldn��t sweat it, Toby. Just be yourself. And if either Remy or I call you on something, try not to take it personally. You were raised by the same parents he was. I’d appreciate it if both of you were healthy about approaching things. So I might make a gentle nudge or two. It’s not the end of the world, it just means there are things to work on,” Emile said. “And I won’t try to therapist you. Just let you know, ‘Hey, that sort of thinking isn’t the best,’ or ‘Maybe you should go easy on yourself.’ It’s not the end of the world if something goes wrong.”

“That’s something I have to remind myself of every day,” Toby said with a weak laugh.

Emile smiled sadly. “Yeah. Me too.”

Remy came back down the stairs. “You didn’t threaten to eat Toby if he messed up, right?” he asked, pointing at Emile.

“Cross my heart he didn’t,” Toby said.

“Yeah, I actually let him know he could mess up and we wouldn’t kick him out,” Emile said.

“Good. Because if you did anything else, I just might have had to kill you,” Remy laughed.

Emile shook his head fondly. “No, you wouldn’t,” he said. “Although I don’t think injury to my person would be entirely out of the question.”

Remy rolled his eyes and said, “Duh.”

“How many pictures does that thing take?” Toby asked.

“Uh,” Remy looked at it. “Thirty. We’re down to sixteen. Why?”

“I brought my digital camera,” Toby said. “It was a bit of an expensive investment, but it’s been paying off. I would love to get some more pictures with you guys after this one, but we don’t have to wait for all of them to develop and mail them. Although, I will probably periodically mail you guys pictures just because, and Christmas cards would be a delight.”

“Oh, I was expecting you’d come over here at Christmas,” Remy said.

“Provided I can convince our parents I’m not seeing you, of course I can. But the way Mom bragged about stalking you? I’m unsure if I want to take that chance.”

“We can always celebrate New Year’s and Remy’s birthday and Christmas at once,” Emile offered with a shrug. “Come over the thirty-first, it could be fun.”

“Oh, of course!” Toby exclaimed.

“Picture now, future plans later!” Remy interrupted. “I want a picture where I’m genuinely smiling for the album!”

Toby laughed and Emile grinned. They gathered around Remy and Remy held the camera up and out, pressing the button as all of them grinned. “Here’s hoping that turned out well,” Remy said, putting the camera down.

“Don’t worry, if it didn’t, I’ll just take a dozen more,” Toby laughed.

Remy grinned and Emile realized this weekend was just what all of them needed.

[writing-appreciation]

Hazel Eyes

SYNOPSIS: You have hazel eyes, but in most lights they appear to be a dirty brown. Instead of giving that complicated explanation, you just say you have brown eyes; but one day a boy says otherwise.

PARING: Stark!Reader X Peter Parker

WARNINGS: Moderate language. Possible Endgame Spoiler? If you look into it, yes, but on the surface, no spoilers.

WORD COUNT: 1,807

A/N: Just a little imagine for my fellow hazel colored eyes people out there. I am over it. This is actually inspired by something that happened to me not too long ago at class. Some elements are fictional, but inspiration is everywhere. So, enjoy!

..................................................................................................

It was annoying having hazel eyes that look brown. It made the question, "What colour are your eyes?" difficult to answer.

And that's the situation I found myself in today in Newspaper class. We weren't doing much as the school year was winding down. Other than planning stories for next year, we had nothing to do. Ultimately we all ended up playing random personality quizzes we found online. It was all fun and games until my least favourite question appeared.

“What is your eye colour?”

Without a beat I responded with a simple, “Brown.”

Ned, who was working the computer, just clicked on my answer.

Although I noticed how Peter seemed caught off by this question.

“Wait, my eyes are brown.” He said. “Look at me.”

I looked up, knowing what his answer would be. The lighting in this room sucked. The green specs in my eyes would be basically invisible here.

Peter looked into my eyes for a bit. Not gonna lie it made me feel awkward.

“No, she definitely has hazel eyes.” He finally spoke up, still eye locked with me.

I was taken back. Peter was the first person to notice my eye colour. Clearly he noticed my confusion as he cleared his throat and clarified.

“I mean, look, there’s clear green specs on the inner ring of her eyes. There’s even a little bit of blue. Ned look at them.”

Peter pulled Ned up by the arm and positioned him to face me.

“Hey Ned.” I said.

“Hi, (Y/n).” He replied awkwardly.

This is starting to feel like a circus show.

“Nah, man I’m just seeing brown eyes, not any green or blue.”

“Well, the lighting in here does suck.” I finally spoke up. I was a little confused because I had never noticed blue in my eyes.

“Yeah, but Peter saw the the colour.” Ned called his friend out.

This did throw me off. How did Peter see the colour in my eyes? It could be his hypersenses, but that still doesn’t make that much sense.

This seemed to hush Peter. A slight blush also climbed up his neck.

“Let me see.” MJ looked up from her book.

I walked over to her. She was sitting in the corner of the room. She observed my eyes.

“You know Peter likes you, right?” She whispered, looking into my eyes.

“Pft. No he doesn’t.” I defended.

“Dude, he just talked about the green specs in your eyes. He was one sentence away from confessing his love with you.” She said quickly, still keeping her voice low.

“Brown. Definitely brown.” MJ called out to the boys, but not breaking our eye contact.

“Okay, that’s it. (Y/n), come on.” I heard Peter call to me.

I looked at him to see him grabbing a camera and a hall pass.

“Peter, what are…”

“I’m proving you have Hazel eyes. Come on.” He began to walk out the room.

“Good luck.” MJ said, smirking.

Without anything to do, I decided to roll with this.

Peter was walking incredibly quickly. He was already halfway down the hallway when I exited the room.

“Peter, you wanna slow it a bit?” I called to him.

“Oh sorry.” He said and stopped so I could catch up.

“Not all of us have spidey powers of high endurance.” I whispered.

He laughed, “Alright I’ll keep that in mind. Come on, what’s a well lit area in this school?”

“Cafetiera? The lights are way too bright in there.” I suggested.

“No, I think we should go outside. Your colour comes out really well when you’re outside.” He absentmindedly remarked.

I looked at him puzzled.

“Well, I mean, like from what I’ve noticed. Not that I’m just staring at your eyes constantly. I just like keeping eye contact with people. Plus they’re good eyes. I mean, not that they’re not pretty. They are beautiful I MEAN, the colours go well together. The green specs and blue accents really bring out the element of kindness. They compliment your pr.. personality.” He stumbled on his words.

I laughed at his rambling, “Peter, breathe. And thank you.”

He finally looked back at me and looked mortified.

Maybe there was some truth to what MJ told me.

“So, I have a macro lens, so I should be able to get a nice photo of your eyes.

“Oh, the eyes that have green specs and blue accents that bring out my element of kindness?” I asked innocently.

He blushed even harder, if possible.

When we got to the school courtyard, Peter went into full photographer mode. He began correcting the white balance and setting the ISO.

“Where do you want me Photographer Parker?”

“Uh, here. Sit on the bench and I’ll try this lighting.”

I did as I was told.

Seeing Peter behind a camera was a sight I don’t think I’ll ever forget. He looked hyper focused. Not to mention the fact that a camera was centimeters away from my eye. Peter himself was directly in front of me. He licked his lips in concentration. I stayed still, not particularly wanting to leave this position.

I heard the shutters of the camera.

Peter pulled the camera away and sat next to me. He began to go through the photos. They looked great. Peter was right, there was definitely some blue in my eyes.

“Wow, if those weren’t my eyes, I’d love them.” I joked.

“You don’t like your eyes?” Peter asked, searching my eyes for an answer.

“Not really. They always look brown. But look at their real colour. It sucks.” I complained.

“Well, I think they’re pretty.” He said, smally. “Besides you don’t have ugly poop coloured eyes for real. That’s something I have to deal with everyday.”

“Peter, your eyes are not ugly. Their nice.”

“Yeah, just nice. Yours are beautiful.”

My breathing hitched. Peter Parker just called my eyes beautiful two times in the past 15 minutes.

Without thinking I grabbed the camera off of Peter’s neck and stood up. Peter followed my lead.

“Oh, no , no Parker.” I pushed him back down, “I’m taking pictures of your eyes now.”

“No, (Y/n), the goal was to get a picture of your eyes, not mine. Besides, they aren’t worth the memory.”

Instead of a response, I positioned the camera in front of his left eye.

He kept moving.

“Peter, stop moving. You’re gonna ruin the picture.”

And he did. So I focused in on capturing Peter’s eye in a photo.

It was my turn to sit down by him and show him the photo.

“See, nice eyes. Dare I say beautiful.” I teased him.

“(Y/n)...” He trailed off.

I looked up to him and saw him looking at me. His eyes flicked to my lips.

“Peter?” I responded.

Before I knew it he had his lips on mine. I felt the camera go limp in my hands. Peter pulled away and swiftly caught the camera. Damn, I couldn't lie. That was attractive as hell.

“Drop this?” He asked, confidence in his voice pronounced.

I just nodded as I stood up.

“We should probably get back. The bell’s gonna ring soon.” I quickly took off.

I heard him jog ahead of me. The little gentleman went to grab the door for me.

“M’lady.” He stepped aside so I could get back in the school.

I muttered a quick thanks and proceeded to walk back to class.

I couldn’t help but let my thoughts wonder. What the heck just happened? Peter B. Parker, the most awkward, adorable dork in MidTow Tech history just kissed me? I'd be lying if I said I didn't want to kiss him more regularly. I mean, come on. He's cute, funny, smart, and is a superhero.

“(Y/n), please stop.” He lightly grabbed my arm before I could get far. This pulled me out of my thoughts.

“Listen, I don’t think it’s a secret that I like you.”

Wait, hold up. Does everybody know about this except for me? Why, more how, was I left out of this memo?

“Say something, because you’re starting to freak me out.” He pleaded.

I paused, trying to find some type of confidence. Luckily, I did.

“You know, my dad loves you, but loves the idea of me being single more.” I finally looked at him.

His face lit up. This could be interesting. Especially given who my dad is.

“Mr. Stark loves me? I don’t see a problem here.” He smirked.

I smirked too. This was definitely going to be interesting.

"Well then, talk to him. See how it goes." I suggested.

He looked mortified.

"May I suggest wearing your suit because you may want to make a hasty exist after you tell him you have a crush on his eldest daughter."

That clearly didn't help him feel any better.

"Okay, cool thanks for the tip." He breathes out as we enter the classroom again.

This time all eyes were on us.

"The pictures?" Ned asked as we sat down.

Peter slid the SD card into the slot and pulled up the photos.

"You're right, definitely hazel." Ned replied, now changing the quiz answer.

"(Y/n), come here!" MJ called.

I walked over to her corner. That's when an epiphany hit me. Her spot was adjacent to a window that overlooked the courtyard.

"So that kiss."

I heard a pin drop. Yep, her corner would've given her a front row seat to everything that just went down.

I feel like for a moment I forgot how to speak english. A series of strange noises left my mouth.

"Yeah, Ned and I saw everything."

I looked back to Ned and Peter, who was now completely red.

"We didn't expect Peter to make the move, but here we are."

I chuckled at this.

"Well, MJ, I guess you were right."

"I'm always right."

I waved goodbye and walked back to the boys.

"Hey, so I just texted your dad telling him we need to talk."

"Already? Somebody's in a rush."

"(N/n), I've literally been waiting since 7th grade."

I laughed, "Really? 7th grade, wow."

"Yes, really. Trust me, I was there. It was almost embarrassing how much he liked you." Ned chirped in.

"Dude." Peter playfully hit his friend.

"No, no Ned. Tell me more about how Peter's embarrassing crush." I pleaded.

And so he did. Ned went on about every detail he could remember.

I smiled as Peter sat with his head in his hands, clearly embarrassed about everything.

"It's fine, he's embarrassing and cute." I said.

Peter slowly raised his head, a familiar shade of pink dusting his cheeks.

This was going to be fun. All that was left was to break the news to dad that his daughter and his mentee both liked each other. That's a story for another time.

A/N: Trying to cope post Endgame, this helped. I'm still in denial.

[utopianvoices]

paws off | l.minho

↭ genre: relationship au; fluff

↭ word count: 2.5k

↭ a/n: thanks for the request love!! i’m not sure what genre you want so i’ll just go with my own ideas if that’s okay <3 it’s my first fic after quite a while so i hope it’s not too shitty asldkfj hope you like it :3

↭ prompts: “It’s not mine, I swear.” - “How is it not fucking yours!”

↭ warnings: explicit language

⋅•⋅⋅•⋅⊰⋅•⋅⋅•⋅⋅•⋅⋅•⋅∙∘☽༓☾∘∙•⋅⋅⋅•⋅⋅⊰⋅•⋅⋅•⋅⋅•⋅⋅•⋅

“Y/n, no. We’re not going in there. The last time we went there you wouldn’t leave even past closing time and we were practically kicked out,” your boyfriend huffed, stuffing his hands into his black leather jacket that he, after much persuasion and threats, claimed back from you. “I’ll take you to any fucking shop, except that shop.” 

“Oh come on, Minho. Stop being such a party pooper,” you whine, tugging on the hand that was clasped around yours, turning around to face your boyfriend who was staring holes at the shop’s entrance.

Happy Paws, it read.

You had always wanted a dog — a really fluffy, cute, energetic one — to brighten up the atmosphere in your new shared apartment with Minho. Both of you had decided to get an apartment together after being together for nearly two years, and everything was perfect. Except for one thing.

Minho didn’t like dogs.

He only liked cats and although you had tried your best to continuously show him photos and videos of dogs, it never worked. 

y/n: [15 photos attached] y/n: babe, check this out!!!! it’s so cute (ಥ﹏ಥ) side hoe: first of all side hoe: why are you texting me, i’m right opposite you side hoe: second of all side hoe: stop sending me fluffy devil photos ffs 

That definitely earned him a kick and a threat of making him sleep on the couch, although the both of you knew that that was never going to happen; you needed your cuddle buddy. 

Every time the two of you paid a visit to the shopping mall 3 blocks away from your apartment, you would drag Minho into the pet shop, and he usually grudgingly complied. However today, he wasn’t in the mood to have “fluffy devils” — as he liked to refer to them as — pouncing on him and licking him all over as if he were some ice cream bought on a hot summer day. 

“No, Y/n. I’m not coming. So if you really want to, you can go ahead while I go visit H&M,” he announced firmly, gently prying your hand off of him, and turning to walk the opposite direction towards the retail outlet. 

You sighed and cast a last glance at the neon sign — which flickered every now and then due to the lack of maintenance — and jogged to catch up with your very, very grumpy boyfriend. 

✼ •• ┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈ •• ✼

The theme song of F.R.I.E.N.D.S was blasting as you lay lazily on your couch, scrolling through Twitter and saving a funny meme every now and then. 

With your pyjamas on and with a bowl of popcorn on your lap, you were not in any mood to move, already merging into one with your couch. But fate wasn’t on your side. Not even 15 minutes into your favourite show and your doorbell rang incessantly, not even giving you time to get yourself together and walk over to the door. 

Only one person was that impatient, and that was Han Jisung, the bane of your existence, also known as your best friend. 

Setting your popcorn bowl down on the table, and turning down the volume of the TV, you noticed that the weather had completely shifted from before you started your show; it was a downpour. Quickly hurrying to the door, you opened it gently, only to be pushed back as Jisung slammed the door open, hurrying in, completely drenched.

“Ew, Han Jisung! GET OFF MY CARPET!” you screeched, kicking his legs as you pulled him away from your precious cream coloured wool carpet that took you months to save up for. If anything were to happen to that carpet, you knew that you were going to make Jisung pay for every single cent. 

“Geez, calm yourself woman. It’s just a carpet!” he exclaimed, looking around nervously. “Is Minho home?”

“No, he’s out for dance practice. Why?” you asked, narrowing your eyes at his tensed posture and nervous glances; something was definitely up. “Why do you look like you just committed a crime?” 

At this, Jisung let out a nervous chuckle, holding his coat tighter and moving slightly away from you, trying to hide whatever he was guilty of from you. But you were too observant and immediately zeroed in on the problem.

“What’s up with your coat? The first thing you do is throw your coat onto the couch, so why are you holding onto it as if your life depends on it?” you enquired, moving closer to him, wanting to get to the bottom of his weird behaviour. 

“U-uh, its nothing! It’s just really cold here and I think I really need to keep my coat on, in case I fall sick? Yea, because of that,” he stuttered out, sounding more like he was convincing himself instead of you. 

That’s it, you knew something was wrong. Your best friend never stuttered unless he really did something that he knew was going to piss you off.

“Spit it out, Han Jisung, or else I’m going to tell Felix about your crush on his sister,” you said, smiling slyly as his eyes widened in horror. If there was anything scarier than you being mad, it’s Felix being mad, especially when it involved his precious sisters.

“Omg fine I’ll spit it out, but before that, let me explain clearly so that-” he started, but was cut off by a small sound coming from his coat. One that sounded a lot like a bark.

You heard it again, surprise filling your eyes as Jisung’s shoulders drop in defeat, hand reaching into his oversized coat to carry the cutest puppy you had seen in your entire life. 

“I was walking over to Felix’s place from the mall when it started pouring and I saw this little fella running around trying to find shelter. It was so tiny and looked like it was lost so I just grabbed it to check for a collar,” he said, scratching the puppy behind it’s (you hadn’t checked for genders) ears as the puppy cuddled closer into him, visibly shivering. “There was no collar,” he continued, pointing to the pup’s empty neck. “I couldn’t just leave him there, but I couldn’t bring him back to my campus because my RA doesn’t allow pets.”

“So, your dumbass thought that it would be a great idea to bring it to my place where my boyfriend, who LOVES dogs, lives with me,” you deadpanned, causing Jisung to chuckle sheepishly and scratch the back of his head. 

“Hey Y/n, I just saw an extra pair of shoes outside. Who’s here?” Minho’s voice travels through the apartment, causing both you and Jisung to jump on your spot. Oh no. 

You stood frozen at your spot, unable to move, as Jisung ran into your master bedroom and hid the puppy under the bed, immediately taking off towards the way out of your apartment. 

“Oh hey, Jisung! I didn’t expect you to be here-”

“Yes yes, it was great meeting you Minho! I gotta go now,” Jisung says, words rushing out of his mouth as he ran out of your apartment at the speed of light. 

Minho just stares at the door, unable to comprehend what just happened, when he saw you standing in the middle of the apartment, still unable to move from your spot for fear of what might happen if Minho found out about the new uninvited guest.

“Hi love,” he drawls out, as he places a soft kiss on your lips, a usual greeting between the both of you when either of you gets home. “What’s up with Jisung?” 

The kiss seemed to snap you out of your thoughts, as you chuckled nervously. “H-Hahaha just typical Jisung, you know?”

“True,” he nods along, as he walks towards your bedroom, dying to get into the toilet for a nice hot bath.

Before you could stop yourself, you grabbed Minho and swerved him away from your bedroom, causing him to collide with the wall behind him.

“Woah nevermind Jisung, what’s up with YOU today?” he asked, surprised by your sudden movements. 

“Uh... I just wanted to say that you look so amazing today? Like wow, how am I dating a GOD,” you say, throwing compliment after compliment, hoping that it will distract him from his usual chores. If there was something that Minho loved more than you, it was being complimented by you.

His surprised feature slowly morphed into one of his infamous smirks, as his hands found your waist, pulling you closer to him.

“Hmmmm I like what I’m hearing. Go on,” he encouraged, smirk ever present on his flawless face. 

You started off your list, relieved that his attention was diverted to you and the words spewing from your mouth, and not at the tiny creature lurking around in your bedroom, curious about its new environment.

With every compliment, the space between both of you decreased, as the reason you even started this was erased from your mind. Right then, it was just you and Minho, everything else forgotten.

You stared into his eyes, captivated by the intensity he held in them, as it spoke stories to you. It never ceased to amaze you; how you scored someone Lee Minho.

Just as you felt the ghost of his lips on yours, eyes closed and heart beating erratically, the both of you heard something that caused you all to freeze on the spot. You, in fear that you had been caught, and him, in confusion.

Woof.

Well, fuck.

“What was that?” Minho asked, glancing between you and your bedroom door, the confusion slowly dissipating as annoyance took over his features.

“W-what? I didn’t hear anything?” you forced out, avoiding eye contact with the boy in front of you. 

Before you could stop him, he marched towards your bedroom and yanked the door open, your words of protests dying in your mouth.

Less than a minute later, Minho stomps out, fury written all over his face as he points to your bedroom. “What the fuck is that doing here? You know I don’t like dogs, and yet you buy one?!” 

“It’s not mine,” you start, letting out a sigh at the fact that you had successfully pissed him off.

“Come on, I’m already pissed, don’t give me stupid excuses.”

“It’s not mine, I swear!” you say, raising your voice slightly to prove your point. 

“How is it not fucking yours?!” he shouted back, causing you to wince at his tone. You face the floor, unable to look at him as the guilt of doing something that he didn’t like ate you up, even though it wasn’t really your fault.

Your eyes didn’t leave the wooden flooring even when you heard a retired sigh leave Minho’s lips, footsteps coming towards you as you finally see his socks clad feet right in front of you. 

“Jisung left it here,” you started, slowly lifting your head to look at him. “It was raining and it was lost, and Jisung brought it here because his RA doesn’t allow him to keep pets. I’m so sorry, I should have told you sooner, but it just happened really fast and I didn’t want to piss you off, but that didn’t really work out very well so now you’re mad and-”

“I’m not mad,” he said, cutting you off. “I was just surprised and assumed you got one without even telling me. I’m going to kill Jisung,” he finished, pulling you in for a hug, as an indication to prove his words — he really wasn’t mad.

You buried your face into his chest, taking in a deep breath as his scent calmed you down, causing you to squeak out one last “I’m sorry”.

“So... What are we going to do now?” he asked, staring at you expectantly. Oh, right. The problem wasn’t solved.

“Um, I can ask around for anyone who’s willing to take it? But that’ll take time, wouldn’t it? And since you don’t like dogs, we can’t keep it here, so maybe I could go to that pet store at the mall and get them to keep him? I don’t know if they do such things but-” you rambled on, disappointment growing in you at the fact that you had to give away that cute little thing that had found its way into your heart at first sight.

“We can keep him,” Minho cut in, causing your ramble to come to a halt. You blinked at him, mouth half open, unable to believe the words that just came out of his mouth.

“Close your mouth, honey. You’re going to catch flies,” he said, shaking his head slightly as a smile grew on his face. “What kind of a boyfriend would I be if I don’t give my girlfriend what makes her the happiest? I could see the disappointment on your face, baby. And there’s nothing I hate more than that. So maybe I can make some space for that fluffly devil in this house.”

Your heart was threatening to burst out of its seems as he finished his little speech, your face immediately lighting up, as you threw your hands around him, causing him to stumble backward.

“I love you I love you I love you,” you chanted, as you untangled yourself from him after planting a kiss on his cheek, rushing towards the bedroom to introduce your new puppy to your boyfriend. 

“Hey! You better not forget about me, alright? I better be receiving more love than that fluffy devil!” your boyfriend called out, only to be met with your beautiful laugh bouncing off the walls.

You cradled your new baby in your arms as you carried him (you finally checked) out into the living room, as Minho waited expectantly to see the little creature that got you so happy.

As soon as his eyes met yours, the puppy squirmed around in your arms, indicating that he wanted to be let down. As you bent down and gently placed him on the ground, little paws rushed towards the boy in front of you, as the puppy rubbed himself against Minho and nudged him with its nose, clearly wanting to be held by Minho.

Hesitantly, Minho picked the little one off the ground, instinctively scratching the little pup behind its ears, causing the little canine to relax into his arms, its small tongue poking out from the side of its mouth.

You cooed at the sight in front of you, happy that you could see Minho’s walls slowly break down around dogs.

“It’s true,” he spoke up, causing you to look at him curiously. “It’s different when it’s yours, and not just some random one roaming the streets.”

Your eyebrows raised as you let a small chuckle escape you. “I’m pretty sure that’s only applicable to children.”

“Oh, right.”

You walk over to where Minho was busy playing with the new pup, joining both of them on the floor. Sometimes going through hardships to attain something, just made it that much more satisfying. You smiled to yourself, as you made a mental note.

Thank Jisung later.

∞ end ∞

[cvteeds]

ME!

minnesotamemelord on AO3

Richie adjusts his bow tie one last time in the side mirror of the limo. He can hear the seemingly deafening roar of the crowd, of the reporters and nominees and everyone else outside. His manager sits across from him, spouting off reminders. Richie barely hears him.

”-and if you lose, look happy anyway. No one likes a sore loser, and if you want another season, you’ll-“

”I got it,” Richie says, cutting him off. He can’t take it anymore. “Don’t worry. I’ll be fine.” His agent and former manager, David, sighs.

“Fine.” He checks his watch and looks around nervously. “Are you sure you don’t want someone to walk the carpet with? It’s not too late, I hear Zachary Quinto’s still available-“

”I don’t need a date,” Richie says, rolling his eyes. “I’m still married. Even if he’s not here.”

”Of course.” Before David can say anything else, Richie opens the door and steps out into the Los Angeles evening, his brand-new converse sneakers sinking into the plush red carpet. The sneakers are his signature, and it’s written into his contract that he gets to wear them everywhere. Even, as is specifically stated in the writing, to the Emmys. They do not go with his tuxedo, and he has been reminded of this every single minute of every day since his nomination was announced. Well, nominations.

”Richie! Richie, over here!” Some reporter shouts. He vaguely recognizes her from a popular morning talk show that he always gets up too late to watch, but hears about constantly from his early-bird husband. He puts on an easy smile as he approaches, hoping it doesn’t look too fake. It’s not fake, not the excitement, but he can’t help but think that he should not be alone right now.

”I’m here with Richie Tozier, writer and star of the hit new horror-sitcom, ‘The Losers Club’, streaming now on HBO. Now, Richie, you’re famously very good friends with author William Denbrough.” It takes all of Richie’s self control not to laugh. Hearing people call Bill ‘William’ is like hearing himself called ‘Richard’, which only ever happens when Eddie gets mad. “Lots of people have drawn comparisons between ‘The Losers Club’ and Denbrough’s books. Was there any inspiration that came to you from reading your friend’s writing?” Richie laughs good-naturedly.

”Wow, starting off with the tough questions. Aren’t you going to ask me who I’m wearing?” The reporter chuckles politely. “No, but seriously, both Bill and I take our inspiration from our childhoods. We grew up together, and the kids we write about are definitely inspired by ourselves. So in a way, yes, I do take some of my inspiration from Bill, but it’s more from the person himself than his books.” She nods, clearly surprised by the eloquence of his answer. “And, uh, this suit is Gucci. Just so you know.”

He fights his way through the crowd (metaphorically, of course. He still stops for photos and interviews, and to talk to the odd acquaintance) and finally gets inside. He finds his seat between two of his co-stars, a young woman who resembles Bev in almost every way except that her hair is black, not red, and a man who resembles Eddie so heavily that Richie has, much to his husband’s annoyance, mistaken for him at least five times. The lights dim, the show begins, the host launches into her monologue, and Richie hardly even notices. It is a blur of standing, sitting, applauding, laughing, of lights and sparkles and the swish of gowns and tuxedo pants. Jameela Jamil leans back for a selfie. Tony Shalhoub accidentally knocks his glasses off on his way up to collect his award. John Mulaney cracks a joke so funny it takes all of Richie’s effort not to laugh through the ‘In Memoriam’ video. And then it is his award, Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series. The announcer, a young woman Richie vaguely recognizes from this summer’s biggest action movie, flashes a brilliant white smile and lists off the nominees, ending with “...Richie Tozier as Bradley Thompson in ‘The Losers Club.’” She opens the gold envelope with delicate hands and Richie can feel his breath catch in his throat. He hardly expected to be nominated. He would not win. And yet, he has never been more anxious in his life, except on the day he asked Eddie to marry him.

“And the Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series goes to... Richie Tozier for ‘The Losers Club!’”

Richie doesn't register the shock at first. He thinks perhaps it is a dream, and when he stands on the stage to collect his award, he will be in his underwear. Or maybe it's Eddie, who had mocked him with this since his nomination was announced (lovingly, of course). But no, it's real, and he realizes it when his female co-star throws her arms around him, squealing excitedly. He rises to his feet, smiling unsteadily, and scoots out to the aisle. He was not supposed to win, he thinks. That's why they put him in the middle of the row instead of the end, where he could get out more easily. The probable winners are always in the aisle seats because it gives them an easy path to the stage. It's an odd moment of clarity, and it passes quickly, and then he is rising the stairs, and he's being handed the golden statue, and his face is warm under the lights. He blinks, expecting the glare of light on glass, but it never comes. He wears contacts now, he remembers, and laughs at his own short-mindedness. He has to bend down a little to reach the microphone, and as he pats his jacket pocket, realizes he has forgotten his speech at home. Fuck. He's going to be "that guy", the guys who forgets his notecards and has to make the whole thing up on the fly. Still, it's probably better than standing in awkward silence, which is what he's doing right now.

"Um... as a kid, I told a lot of jokes. And mostly, they weren't funny. But if you told that kid that one day, he'd be standing on this stage, he probably would have said 'yeah, right' and then made a crude joke about your mom." There is a smattering of polite laughter. He is building speed now, snowballing. "But that kid from Maine couldn't have gotten here without a lot of help, so there are some people I need to thank. My parents, Maggie and Wentworth, for always laughing, even when I was being a complete idiot. My agent, David Lukas, who convinced me to make the move from stand-up to TV. I'd like to thank my co-stars, who are the funniest, sweetest, best people I could have asked to work with, and for never being dicks about being more attractive than me, even though you clearly are. You're the best minions I've ever had. But seriously, I sometimes feel like the show was written for you guys, even though I literally had no idea who any of you were before the first day." Richie scans the room. He sees a hundred people he knows and a thousand he doesn't. He sees friends and idols and people he doesn't even recognize. And in all of them, he sees the one person he wishes were here most, the one person who isn't here.

"And last, but absolutely not least, there's one more person I need to thank. My husband, Eddie, the light of my life. Without him, this show wouldn't exist. When we got together three years ago, I was still using a ghostwriter. It was writing jokes about Eddie that got me to write my own material, and then my agent approached me about writing a pilot for this show, and now here we are, and it all came from him. This show is inspired by our childhood, growing up together, then reconnecting as adults. He's my constant inspiration. I do everything I do for him. He's at home with our son right now, because he said he wasn't going to come all the way from New York to LA just to watch me lose- that's a direct quote. And as he knows damn well, there's nothing I love more than proving him wrong."

He looks directly into the camera now, smiling wider than before. "I won, baby, I did it. And I did it for you. I love you, Eds." He blows a kiss to the camera and flushes, maybe from the heat of the lights, maybe from the out-of-character gesture. He embraces the announcer, kissing her cheek gently as he exits, desperate for the first time in his 43 years of life to be out of the spotlight. He is almost back to his seat when he stops fast, nearly slamming into the figure that he hadn't seen before in the dark theater. His gaze travels up from the impeccably polished shoes to the neatly pressed tuxedo pants, to the burgundy velvet jacket he had custom-made as a birthday present last year. It is Eddie, he knows it is, before his eyes finally meet the tear-filled, puppy-dog brown ones of his husband.

"You came," he says, his eyes turning from gray to a watery black.

"You won," Eddie replies, and Richie's tearful face breaks out in a huge, toothy grin. He cups Eddie's cheek (the one with the scar on it) in his broad, hairy hand, and leans down, pulling Eddie into a long, feverish kiss. The cameras catch every second, but they don't notice, nor do they care. Richie leads Eddie by the hand into the row of seats, and they sit beside each other, their legs scrunched together in the limited leg room.

"I know you didn't come just because I won," Richie whispers. "You would've had to leave seven hours ago. At least."

"I realized, like, two hours after you left that I was basically being a massive piece of shit. So I hopped on the next Delta flight here- way less nice than the Cessna, by the way- changed in the airport bathroom, and came straight here. I had to call David and have him talk to security just so I could get in. Apparently, the photos of our wedding are not enough to prove we're married."

"I'm glad you're here." Richie intertwines his fingers with Eddie's, then gasps. "Fuck. What'd you do with the baby?"

"First of all, you gotta stop calling him 'the baby.' Stan's almost three."

"Yeah, but he's my baby."

"Good luck with that once he hits school age, my love. And in terms of what I quote-unquote 'did with him', I called that sitter, the one Blake and Ryan recommended at poker night. And before you asked, yes, I interviewed her; yes, she speaks three languages; yes, she can bake, play guitar, and has half the best doctors in Manhattan on her speed dial. She's perfect, and has been texting me updates every half-hour." Richie's head lolls onto Eddie's shoulder, and they nestle into each other like puzzle pieces. Richie's show wins again and again, the articles the next day will say it swept. Richie's hotel room is paid through for another day, but Eddie helps him pack. They load what little luggage they have into the back and take off (the first thing Richie did after returning from Derry was get his pilot's license). The palm trees and city lights below give way to dark, lightless desert, and then mountains, then cornfields and lakes and long stretches of empty plain. And then, just as the dark violet sky begins to fade into the faintest streaks of yellow and pink and blue, just as the star begin to disappear and the moon becomes almost translucent, the silhouette of the New York skyline appears against it.

"Home again," Eddie says, his eyes tired, but he has never looked happier, except maybe the first time he saw Stan.

"Finally." The plane touches down at an airfield in Queens, and they step out, stretching their tired limbs. Richie stares up at the sky, in which the sun is steadily rising. They go home to their Upper East Side condo, careful to shut the door behind them as quietly as possible. The windows are dark, but a thin stream of light flows out from under one of the bedroom doors, the one with a big green 'S' tacked to it. They open the door as softly as they can and look in on the young, curly-haired boy asleep, his Star Wars nightlight the source of the light. They leave him asleep, and the Emmy on the mantle. Eddie steps into the bathroom, and Richie can hear the shower start. He tosses his jacket on the chair in the corner and yanks his shirt and tie over his head. He goes to the terrace and looks out at the East River below. It's a chilly early morning, very early, and the breeze ruffles the thin layer of dark hair on his bare chest. He hears a honking horn, a couple arguing, glass shattering and water crashing. They are all sounds he heard before, in Derry, in Chicago, in Los Angeles. But they sound different here. Or maybe he is just seeing the world through new eyes, different eyes. The eyes of a man who has everything he wants. He feels cold tears on his face and brushes them away half-heartedly. He has not realized until now that his life is perfect. Legitimately, genuinely, certifiably perfect. Out of the closet? Check. Dream job? Check. A loving husband and son? Check. And now, one last validation that he is, in fact, on top of the world. It's sitting on his fireplace right now, but it's nothing compared to the boy with the Star Wars nightlight and the man in the shower. They are worth every award, every affirmation, every positive review, every selfie with a fan, everything.

Richie hears the shower shut off and the snap of the towel as Eddie pulls it off the hook. He sits on the bed and wiggles out of his tuxedo pants, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. He does not turn around when he hears the door behind him open, nor does he move when the other side of the bed sinks under Eddie's weight. A hand comes to rest on his shoulder, folding around his upper arm. Feather-light kisses brush his other shoulder, tracing a line across his shoulder blades. He twists his upper body around to face Eddie, who smiles serenely up at him. Richie places a hand on his chest, his thumb gently circling one of Eddie's two black star tattoos.

"How's it feel to be back?" Eddie asks, leaning into Richie.

"I liked the ocean air, but I have to say... I missed the smog." Eddie chuckles and fidgets with his his inhaler (it's new, and he carries it with him everywhere. It's more of a security blanket than anything else.)

"I don't know, I mean... since we spent those few months out there shooting the show, I've given it some thought, and... what would you say to moving? Somewhere else? Anywhere else?" Richie looks up in shock.

"You serious?"

"Yeah, I mean, it's not like I want to move back to Derry or anything, but think about it. If we went to Pasadena, or Santa Monica, or San Diego-"

"You really liked California, I take it?"

"I did, but if you think about it, it'd make perfect sense for us. And we wouldn't have to live in the middle of the city. I- I love New York, Richie, I do, that's why I moved here, but it's never where I imagined raising kids, if I imagined that at all. But we loved it there. And Stan loved it there. And if we went there, he could grow up on the beach instead of the sidewalks, and he might actually be able to see the stars at night, and-"

"Okay, Eds, calm down." Richie laughs and flops onto his back. Eddie falls beside him, and they turn to look at each other. "Let's do it?" Eddie cocks an eyebrow.

"Really?"

"Yeah, really. You're right, as always. And besides, it's warmer there. It's too goddamn cold here." Eddie curls an arm over Richie and buries his face in Richie's chest.

"I love you, you know that? And I literally couldn't be prouder of you if I tried." Richie pulls Eddie in closer and presses a kiss to the top of his head.

"It's all for you, Eddie. All of it. That statue out there is yours, baby. And so am I."

[gdolowokandi214-blog]

We did it!! We raised $18,002 for charity

A year and a half ago, I saw a speech that changed my life - and the lives of at least 600 other people in the developing world.

I was at the World Domination Summit in Portland, where I'd later be speaking. I sat in the audience as Scott Harrison took the stage.

Scott is a former nightclub promoter who, at age 28, had a crisis of conscience. His job was encouraging people to get drunk. He smoked two packs a day. He gambled. He felt like he wasn't adding anything to the world. And he wasn't sure if, or how, he could.

“One day, I woke up and I realized I was the worst person I knew,” he wrote in an article on Medium.

He quit his job, sold most of his possessions, and spent the next two years as a photojournalist on a hospital ship off the coast of Liberia in west Africa. He saw diseases that were unlike anything he'd imagined.

As WIRED describes: “Some of the patients were grotesquely deformed by grapefruit-sized tumors, while others were nearly blind from cataracts that turned their eyes opaque.” (Here are images.)

He felt surprised - and then sad, then angry, then determined - when he realized that thousands of people die from preventable diseases, like cholera and dysentery, that are spread by drinking dirty water. More than 660 million people in the world don't have access to clean drinking water, which is almost 1 out of every 10 people. That's twice the population of the U.S.

That's unacceptable.

Scott decided to spend his life bringing safe water to the villages and communities that need it most. He came back to the U.S., threw a party at a nightclub, and raised the initial seed capital for charity:water. More than a decade later, he stood on the stage in Portland, sharing photos of the people whose lives he's changed.

I've seen many nonprofit leaders deliver speeches. But there was something about Scott's mission that struck me. Maybe it's because nearly everyone at that conference in Portland seemed to be carrying a BPA-free water bottle. Maybe it was the experience of walking past the hallway drinking fountains without a second glance. But for some reason, in that moment, I thought: “I have a platform. I could use it to save lives.”

Cue the eyeroll. I get it. I get it. “Saving lives” is a lofty goal, and its achievement is hard to pinpoint. That's the thing about prevention; you never know whom you may have spared.

A decade ago, when I worked at a newspaper, we'd write articles about community nonprofits on slow news days. The staff would refer to these as “angel-sheds-a-tear” stories.

Don't get me wrong; we supported these efforts. But the stories seemed so cliche, so repetitive, that a part of me wondered: “Are we actually doing anything, or are we just making ourselves feel better?”

The gulf between cynicism and hope is bridged by effectiveness, and Scott built an organization that's indisputably effective. Their mission is critical. What's more basic, more fundamental to survival, than drinking water? Their results are tangible, specific, and easy to verify.

They've funded more than 28,000 water projects, like digging wells, creating rainwater catchment systems, and distributing biosand filters. Their projects can be tracked on Google Maps.

They've also opened two separate bank accounts. They use one account for their administrative overhead. This account gets funded by a small group of donors. They use 100 percent of their other account for water projects. This account is funded by public donations. This means every dime they raise from the public goes directly to water projects. Their accounts are audited. They can prove it.

I interviewed Scott on my podcast last year, and I told my audience that I had a lofty goal: I wanted to raise at least $12,000 in the year 2018 for charity:water.

If we raised that amount, Afford Anything could sponsor a water project. We would fund a specific project, tangible and GPS-identifiable. It would exist because of this community.

I started 2018 with huge enthusiasm for this goal. My Chief Sanity Officer Erin and I designed three shirts and sold them on Amazon, and we donated 100 percent of profits ($5.38 per shirt) to charity:water. I also set up a page on the charity:water website where people could make direct donations.

Then I waited. And watched. And bummed myself out.

By July 2018, we'd raised around $3,000. While that's amazing and helpful and I'm grateful for it … it also felt like a blow. We were halfway through the year, but only one-fourth of the way to our $12,000 goal.

There was no way we'd be able to raise $12,000 by the end of the year, I thought. I felt deflated. Disappointed. I knew I should feel grateful for what we have achieved, but I kept feeling like this was a setback. I'd been in contact with Anna, who works on the charity:water team, both last year and this year; we'd spoken on the phone about Afford Anything's sponsorship campaign. I didn't want to have to call Anna at the end of 2018 and say, “Sorry, we failed. We tried to raise enough to sponsor a project, and we failed.”

I spent the late summer and fall making peace with that idea. I told myself that if I could make any difference at all, that's something to celebrate. I told myself that it's better to fall short of lofty goals than to create errors-of-thinking-too-small, as I'm prone to doing. I told myself that it doesn't matter if we sponsor a project or not; what matters is that there's at least one human being who won't suffer from typhoid or cholera or guinea worm disease. This isn't about us, it's about the person on the other side.

I found peace with it. I let it go. I accepted what is.

And then I checked the charity:water fundraising page, and saw this:

HOLY MOLY WE DID IT!!!!!!!!! We did it, we did it, we did it, we did it, we did it!!!!

We - no pun intended - we blew it out of the water!!!!!

I'd like to express massive, massive gratitude to several people right now, starting with Richard Potter, a podcast listener who generously matched donations up to $4,000. He fueled the fire that made this possible.

He made the donation that brought us up to the $4,000 mark, and then he announced that he'd match contributions, dollar-for-dollar, up to a $4,000 limit.

When I announced this on my podcast, the floodgates opened (no pun intended yet again). This community responded with enthusiasm unlike anything I've ever seen. Donations skyrocketed from $4,000 to $8,000 nearly overnight. Richard matched these donations, as promised, which brought the total balance to $12,000 and allowed us, the Afford Anything community, to become the official project sponsor of a water project.

WE DID IT!!!

And can I admit something? I thought it would stop there. Yes, I know; ye of little faith. I thought that once we reached the matching contribution limit, donations would slow to a trickle. (So many puns. I can't help it.)

Thank goodness I was wrong.

You all amaze me so much … the donations keep coming! Here are a few of the many:

Susan, a podcast listener, gave $300 after she watched an interview with Scott. A family in Israel, including their daughters ages 9, 13 and 16, contributed $191. A podcast listener named Clara gave $15 with a note that said, “Only a little bit as I'm a student, but it all helps.” And a listener named Mark donated $250 with a note that said, “I'm so proud of how you handled Suze.”

Massive thanks to Lancy Erdmann, who donated $2,000, J Clark, who donated $1,500, two anonymous donors who gave $1,000 each, Charles Rosenbusch, who gave $500, and the many, many people who gave $100, $50, $25, $20, $15, $10 and $5. I'm also grateful to everyone who bought a t-shirt to support the campaign.

The support keeps coming!!

Wow.

Tonight, as I write this, with 15 days remaining before the end of the year, we've raised more than $18,000 for clean drinking water.

  Thank you. This is amazing. Afford Anything is you. It's this community. It's this incredible group, gathering together to improve lives and help others and focus on money and purpose and meaning and contribution and life.

We are Afford Anything. And we are creating a legacy.

____

To support this campaign:

Buy a t-shirt on Amazon. 100 percent of the profits will go directly to charity: water.

Make a donation at affordanything.com/water

[shumparker1953-blog]

We did it!! We raised $18,002 for charity

A year and a half ago, I saw a speech that changed my life - and the lives of at least 600 other people in the developing world.

I was at the World Domination Summit in Portland, where I'd later be speaking. I sat in the audience as Scott Harrison took the stage.

Scott is a former nightclub promoter who, at age 28, had a crisis of conscience. His job was encouraging people to get drunk. He smoked two packs a day. He gambled. He felt like he wasn't adding anything to the world. And he wasn't sure if, or how, he could.

“One day, I woke up and I realized I was the worst person I knew,” he wrote in an article on Medium.

He quit his job, sold most of his possessions, and spent the next two years as a photojournalist on a hospital ship off the coast of Liberia in west Africa. He saw diseases that were unlike anything he'd imagined.

As WIRED describes: “Some of the patients were grotesquely deformed by grapefruit-sized tumors, while others were nearly blind from cataracts that turned their eyes opaque.” (Here are images.)

He felt surprised - and then sad, then angry, then determined - when he realized that thousands of people die from preventable diseases, like cholera and dysentery, that are spread by drinking dirty water. More than 660 million people in the world don't have access to clean drinking water, which is almost 1 out of every 10 people. That's twice the population of the U.S.

That's unacceptable.

Scott decided to spend his life bringing safe water to the villages and communities that need it most. He came back to the U.S., threw a party at a nightclub, and raised the initial seed capital for charity:water. More than a decade later, he stood on the stage in Portland, sharing photos of the people whose lives he's changed.

I've seen many nonprofit leaders deliver speeches. But there was something about Scott's mission that struck me. Maybe it's because nearly everyone at that conference in Portland seemed to be carrying a BPA-free water bottle. Maybe it was the experience of walking past the hallway drinking fountains without a second glance. But for some reason, in that moment, I thought: “I have a platform. I could use it to save lives.”

Cue the eyeroll. I get it. I get it. “Saving lives” is a lofty goal, and its achievement is hard to pinpoint. That's the thing about prevention; you never know whom you may have spared.

A decade ago, when I worked at a newspaper, we'd write articles about community nonprofits on slow news days. The staff would refer to these as “angel-sheds-a-tear” stories.

Don't get me wrong; we supported these efforts. But the stories seemed so cliche, so repetitive, that a part of me wondered: “Are we actually doing anything, or are we just making ourselves feel better?”

The gulf between cynicism and hope is bridged by effectiveness, and Scott built an organization that's indisputably effective. Their mission is critical. What's more basic, more fundamental to survival, than drinking water? Their results are tangible, specific, and easy to verify.

They've funded more than 28,000 water projects, like digging wells, creating rainwater catchment systems, and distributing biosand filters. Their projects can be tracked on Google Maps.

They've also opened two separate bank accounts. They use one account for their administrative overhead. This account gets funded by a small group of donors. They use 100 percent of their other account for water projects. This account is funded by public donations. This means every dime they raise from the public goes directly to water projects. Their accounts are audited. They can prove it.

I interviewed Scott on my podcast last year, and I told my audience that I had a lofty goal: I wanted to raise at least $12,000 in the year 2018 for charity:water.

If we raised that amount, Afford Anything could sponsor a water project. We would fund a specific project, tangible and GPS-identifiable. It would exist because of this community.

I started 2018 with huge enthusiasm for this goal. My Chief Sanity Officer Erin and I designed three shirts and sold them on Amazon, and we donated 100 percent of profits ($5.38 per shirt) to charity:water. I also set up a page on the charity:water website where people could make direct donations.

Then I waited. And watched. And bummed myself out.

By July 2018, we'd raised around $3,000. While that's amazing and helpful and I'm grateful for it … it also felt like a blow. We were halfway through the year, but only one-fourth of the way to our $12,000 goal.

There was no way we'd be able to raise $12,000 by the end of the year, I thought. I felt deflated. Disappointed. I knew I should feel grateful for what we have achieved, but I kept feeling like this was a setback. I'd been in contact with Anna, who works on the charity:water team, both last year and this year; we'd spoken on the phone about Afford Anything's sponsorship campaign. I didn't want to have to call Anna at the end of 2018 and say, “Sorry, we failed. We tried to raise enough to sponsor a project, and we failed.”

I spent the late summer and fall making peace with that idea. I told myself that if I could make any difference at all, that's something to celebrate. I told myself that it's better to fall short of lofty goals than to create errors-of-thinking-too-small, as I'm prone to doing. I told myself that it doesn't matter if we sponsor a project or not; what matters is that there's at least one human being who won't suffer from typhoid or cholera or guinea worm disease. This isn't about us, it's about the person on the other side.

I found peace with it. I let it go. I accepted what is.

And then I checked the charity:water fundraising page, and saw this:

HOLY MOLY WE DID IT!!!!!!!!! We did it, we did it, we did it, we did it, we did it!!!!

We - no pun intended - we blew it out of the water!!!!!

I'd like to express massive, massive gratitude to several people right now, starting with Richard Potter, a podcast listener who generously matched donations up to $4,000. He fueled the fire that made this possible.

He made the donation that brought us up to the $4,000 mark, and then he announced that he'd match contributions, dollar-for-dollar, up to a $4,000 limit.

When I announced this on my podcast, the floodgates opened (no pun intended yet again). This community responded with enthusiasm unlike anything I've ever seen. Donations skyrocketed from $4,000 to $8,000 nearly overnight. Richard matched these donations, as promised, which brought the total balance to $12,000 and allowed us, the Afford Anything community, to become the official project sponsor of a water project.

WE DID IT!!!

And can I admit something? I thought it would stop there. Yes, I know; ye of little faith. I thought that once we reached the matching contribution limit, donations would slow to a trickle. (So many puns. I can't help it.)

Thank goodness I was wrong.

You all amaze me so much … the donations keep coming! Here are a few of the many:

Susan, a podcast listener, gave $300 after she watched an interview with Scott. A family in Israel, including their daughters ages 9, 13 and 16, contributed $191. A podcast listener named Clara gave $15 with a note that said, “Only a little bit as I'm a student, but it all helps.” And a listener named Mark donated $250 with a note that said, “I'm so proud of how you handled Suze.”

Massive thanks to Lancy Erdmann, who donated $2,000, J Clark, who donated $1,500, two anonymous donors who gave $1,000 each, Charles Rosenbusch, who gave $500, and the many, many people who gave $100, $50, $25, $20, $15, $10 and $5. I'm also grateful to everyone who bought a t-shirt to support the campaign.

The support keeps coming!!

Wow.

Tonight, as I write this, with 15 days remaining before the end of the year, we've raised more than $18,000 for clean drinking water.

  Thank you. This is amazing. Afford Anything is you. It's this community. It's this incredible group, gathering together to improve lives and help others and focus on money and purpose and meaning and contribution and life.

We are Afford Anything. And we are creating a legacy.

____

To support this campaign:

Buy a t-shirt on Amazon. 100 percent of the profits will go directly to charity: water.

Make a donation at affordanything.com/water

[justinrmcneill-blog]

We did it!! We raised $18,002 for charity

A year and a half ago, I saw a speech that changed my life - and the lives of at least 600 other people in the developing world.

I was at the World Domination Summit in Portland, where I'd later be speaking. I sat in the audience as Scott Harrison took the stage.

Scott is a former nightclub promoter who, at age 28, had a crisis of conscience. His job was encouraging people to get drunk. He smoked two packs a day. He gambled. He felt like he wasn't adding anything to the world. And he wasn't sure if, or how, he could.

“One day, I woke up and I realized I was the worst person I knew,” he wrote in an article on Medium.

He quit his job, sold most of his possessions, and spent the next two years as a photojournalist on a hospital ship off the coast of Liberia in west Africa. He saw diseases that were unlike anything he'd imagined.

As WIRED describes: “Some of the patients were grotesquely deformed by grapefruit-sized tumors, while others were nearly blind from cataracts that turned their eyes opaque.” (Here are images.)

He felt surprised - and then sad, then angry, then determined - when he realized that thousands of people die from preventable diseases, like cholera and dysentery, that are spread by drinking dirty water. More than 660 million people in the world don't have access to clean drinking water, which is almost 1 out of every 10 people. That's twice the population of the U.S.

That's unacceptable.

Scott decided to spend his life bringing safe water to the villages and communities that need it most. He came back to the U.S., threw a party at a nightclub, and raised the initial seed capital for charity:water. More than a decade later, he stood on the stage in Portland, sharing photos of the people whose lives he's changed.

I've seen many nonprofit leaders deliver speeches. But there was something about Scott's mission that struck me. Maybe it's because nearly everyone at that conference in Portland seemed to be carrying a BPA-free water bottle. Maybe it was the experience of walking past the hallway drinking fountains without a second glance. But for some reason, in that moment, I thought: “I have a platform. I could use it to save lives.”

Cue the eyeroll. I get it. I get it. “Saving lives” is a lofty goal, and its achievement is hard to pinpoint. That's the thing about prevention; you never know whom you may have spared.

A decade ago, when I worked at a newspaper, we'd write articles about community nonprofits on slow news days. The staff would refer to these as “angel-sheds-a-tear” stories.

Don't get me wrong; we supported these efforts. But the stories seemed so cliche, so repetitive, that a part of me wondered: “Are we actually doing anything, or are we just making ourselves feel better?”

The gulf between cynicism and hope is bridged by effectiveness, and Scott built an organization that's indisputably effective. Their mission is critical. What's more basic, more fundamental to survival, than drinking water? Their results are tangible, specific, and easy to verify.

They've funded more than 28,000 water projects, like digging wells, creating rainwater catchment systems, and distributing biosand filters. Their projects can be tracked on Google Maps.

They've also opened two separate bank accounts. They use one account for their administrative overhead. This account gets funded by a small group of donors. They use 100 percent of their other account for water projects. This account is funded by public donations. This means every dime they raise from the public goes directly to water projects. Their accounts are audited. They can prove it.

I interviewed Scott on my podcast last year, and I told my audience that I had a lofty goal: I wanted to raise at least $12,000 in the year 2018 for charity:water.

If we raised that amount, Afford Anything could sponsor a water project. We would fund a specific project, tangible and GPS-identifiable. It would exist because of this community.

I started 2018 with huge enthusiasm for this goal. My Chief Sanity Officer Erin and I designed three shirts and sold them on Amazon, and we donated 100 percent of profits ($5.38 per shirt) to charity:water. I also set up a page on the charity:water website where people could make direct donations.

Then I waited. And watched. And bummed myself out.

By July 2018, we'd raised around $3,000. While that's amazing and helpful and I'm grateful for it … it also felt like a blow. We were halfway through the year, but only one-fourth of the way to our $12,000 goal.

There was no way we'd be able to raise $12,000 by the end of the year, I thought. I felt deflated. Disappointed. I knew I should feel grateful for what we have achieved, but I kept feeling like this was a setback. I'd been in contact with Anna, who works on the charity:water team, both last year and this year; we'd spoken on the phone about Afford Anything's sponsorship campaign. I didn't want to have to call Anna at the end of 2018 and say, “Sorry, we failed. We tried to raise enough to sponsor a project, and we failed.”

I spent the late summer and fall making peace with that idea. I told myself that if I could make any difference at all, that's something to celebrate. I told myself that it's better to fall short of lofty goals than to create errors-of-thinking-too-small, as I'm prone to doing. I told myself that it doesn't matter if we sponsor a project or not; what matters is that there's at least one human being who won't suffer from typhoid or cholera or guinea worm disease. This isn't about us, it's about the person on the other side.

I found peace with it. I let it go. I accepted what is.

And then I checked the charity:water fundraising page, and saw this:

HOLY MOLY WE DID IT!!!!!!!!! We did it, we did it, we did it, we did it, we did it!!!!

We - no pun intended - we blew it out of the water!!!!!

I'd like to express massive, massive gratitude to several people right now, starting with Richard Potter, a podcast listener who generously matched donations up to $4,000. He fueled the fire that made this possible.

He made the donation that brought us up to the $4,000 mark, and then he announced that he'd match contributions, dollar-for-dollar, up to a $4,000 limit.

When I announced this on my podcast, the floodgates opened (no pun intended yet again). This community responded with enthusiasm unlike anything I've ever seen. Donations skyrocketed from $4,000 to $8,000 nearly overnight. Richard matched these donations, as promised, which brought the total balance to $12,000 and allowed us, the Afford Anything community, to become the official project sponsor of a water project.

WE DID IT!!!

And can I admit something? I thought it would stop there. Yes, I know; ye of little faith. I thought that once we reached the matching contribution limit, donations would slow to a trickle. (So many puns. I can't help it.)

Thank goodness I was wrong.

You all amaze me so much … the donations keep coming! Here are a few of the many:

Susan, a podcast listener, gave $300 after she watched an interview with Scott. A family in Israel, including their daughters ages 9, 13 and 16, contributed $191. A podcast listener named Clara gave $15 with a note that said, “Only a little bit as I'm a student, but it all helps.” And a listener named Mark donated $250 with a note that said, “I'm so proud of how you handled Suze.”

Massive thanks to Lancy Erdmann, who donated $2,000, J Clark, who donated $1,500, two anonymous donors who gave $1,000 each, Charles Rosenbusch, who gave $500, and the many, many people who gave $100, $50, $25, $20, $15, $10 and $5. I'm also grateful to everyone who bought a t-shirt to support the campaign.

The support keeps coming!!

Wow.

Tonight, as I write this, with 15 days remaining before the end of the year, we've raised more than $18,000 for clean drinking water.

  Thank you. This is amazing. Afford Anything is you. It's this community. It's this incredible group, gathering together to improve lives and help others and focus on money and purpose and meaning and contribution and life.

We are Afford Anything. And we are creating a legacy.

____

To support this campaign:

Buy a t-shirt on Amazon. 100 percent of the profits will go directly to charity: water.

Make a donation at affordanything.com/water

[skuds-blog]

We did it!! We raised $18,002 for charity

A year and a half ago, I saw a speech that changed my life - and the lives of at least 600 other people in the developing world.

I was at the World Domination Summit in Portland, where I'd later be speaking. I sat in the audience as Scott Harrison took the stage.

Scott is a former nightclub promoter who, at age 28, had a crisis of conscience. His job was encouraging people to get drunk. He smoked two packs a day. He gambled. He felt like he wasn't adding anything to the world. And he wasn't sure if, or how, he could.

“One day, I woke up and I realized I was the worst person I knew,” he wrote in an article on Medium.

He quit his job, sold most of his possessions, and spent the next two years as a photojournalist on a hospital ship off the coast of Liberia in west Africa. He saw diseases that were unlike anything he'd imagined.

As WIRED describes: “Some of the patients were grotesquely deformed by grapefruit-sized tumors, while others were nearly blind from cataracts that turned their eyes opaque.” (Here are images.)

He felt surprised - and then sad, then angry, then determined - when he realized that thousands of people die from preventable diseases, like cholera and dysentery, that are spread by drinking dirty water. More than 660 million people in the world don't have access to clean drinking water, which is almost 1 out of every 10 people. That's twice the population of the U.S.

That's unacceptable.

Scott decided to spend his life bringing safe water to the villages and communities that need it most. He came back to the U.S., threw a party at a nightclub, and raised the initial seed capital for charity:water. More than a decade later, he stood on the stage in Portland, sharing photos of the people whose lives he's changed.

I've seen many nonprofit leaders deliver speeches. But there was something about Scott's mission that struck me. Maybe it's because nearly everyone at that conference in Portland seemed to be carrying a BPA-free water bottle. Maybe it was the experience of walking past the hallway drinking fountains without a second glance. But for some reason, in that moment, I thought: “I have a platform. I could use it to save lives.”

Cue the eyeroll. I get it. I get it. “Saving lives” is a lofty goal, and its achievement is hard to pinpoint. That's the thing about prevention; you never know whom you may have spared.

A decade ago, when I worked at a newspaper, we'd write articles about community nonprofits on slow news days. The staff would refer to these as “angel-sheds-a-tear” stories.

Don't get me wrong; we supported these efforts. But the stories seemed so cliche, so repetitive, that a part of me wondered: “Are we actually doing anything, or are we just making ourselves feel better?”

The gulf between cynicism and hope is bridged by effectiveness, and Scott built an organization that's indisputably effective. Their mission is critical. What's more basic, more fundamental to survival, than drinking water? Their results are tangible, specific, and easy to verify.

They've funded more than 28,000 water projects, like digging wells, creating rainwater catchment systems, and distributing biosand filters. Their projects can be tracked on Google Maps.

They've also opened two separate bank accounts. They use one account for their administrative overhead. This account gets funded by a small group of donors. They use 100 percent of their other account for water projects. This account is funded by public donations. This means every dime they raise from the public goes directly to water projects. Their accounts are audited. They can prove it.

I interviewed Scott on my podcast last year, and I told my audience that I had a lofty goal: I wanted to raise at least $12,000 in the year 2018 for charity:water.

If we raised that amount, Afford Anything could sponsor a water project. We would fund a specific project, tangible and GPS-identifiable. It would exist because of this community.

I started 2018 with huge enthusiasm for this goal. My Chief Sanity Officer Erin and I designed three shirts and sold them on Amazon, and we donated 100 percent of profits ($5.38 per shirt) to charity:water. I also set up a page on the charity:water website where people could make direct donations.

Then I waited. And watched. And bummed myself out.

By July 2018, we'd raised around $3,000. While that's amazing and helpful and I'm grateful for it … it also felt like a blow. We were halfway through the year, but only one-fourth of the way to our $12,000 goal.

There was no way we'd be able to raise $12,000 by the end of the year, I thought. I felt deflated. Disappointed. I knew I should feel grateful for what we have achieved, but I kept feeling like this was a setback. I'd been in contact with Anna, who works on the charity:water team, both last year and this year; we'd spoken on the phone about Afford Anything's sponsorship campaign. I didn't want to have to call Anna at the end of 2018 and say, “Sorry, we failed. We tried to raise enough to sponsor a project, and we failed.”

I spent the late summer and fall making peace with that idea. I told myself that if I could make any difference at all, that's something to celebrate. I told myself that it's better to fall short of lofty goals than to create errors-of-thinking-too-small, as I'm prone to doing. I told myself that it doesn't matter if we sponsor a project or not; what matters is that there's at least one human being who won't suffer from typhoid or cholera or guinea worm disease. This isn't about us, it's about the person on the other side.

I found peace with it. I let it go. I accepted what is.

And then I checked the charity:water fundraising page, and saw this:

HOLY MOLY WE DID IT!!!!!!!!! We did it, we did it, we did it, we did it, we did it!!!!

We - no pun intended - we blew it out of the water!!!!!

I'd like to express massive, massive gratitude to several people right now, starting with Richard Potter, a podcast listener who generously matched donations up to $4,000. He fueled the fire that made this possible.

He made the donation that brought us up to the $4,000 mark, and then he announced that he'd match contributions, dollar-for-dollar, up to a $4,000 limit.

When I announced this on my podcast, the floodgates opened (no pun intended yet again). This community responded with enthusiasm unlike anything I've ever seen. Donations skyrocketed from $4,000 to $8,000 nearly overnight. Richard matched these donations, as promised, which brought the total balance to $12,000 and allowed us, the Afford Anything community, to become the official project sponsor of a water project.

WE DID IT!!!

And can I admit something? I thought it would stop there. Yes, I know; ye of little faith. I thought that once we reached the matching contribution limit, donations would slow to a trickle. (So many puns. I can't help it.)

Thank goodness I was wrong.

You all amaze me so much … the donations keep coming! Here are a few of the many:

Susan, a podcast listener, gave $300 after she watched an interview with Scott. A family in Israel, including their daughters ages 9, 13 and 16, contributed $191. A podcast listener named Clara gave $15 with a note that said, “Only a little bit as I'm a student, but it all helps.” And a listener named Mark donated $250 with a note that said, “I'm so proud of how you handled Suze.”

Massive thanks to Lancy Erdmann, who donated $2,000, J Clark, who donated $1,500, two anonymous donors who gave $1,000 each, Charles Rosenbusch, who gave $500, and the many, many people who gave $100, $50, $25, $20, $15, $10 and $5. I'm also grateful to everyone who bought a t-shirt to support the campaign.

The support keeps coming!!

Wow.

Tonight, as I write this, with 15 days remaining before the end of the year, we've raised more than $18,000 for clean drinking water.

  Thank you. This is amazing. Afford Anything is you. It's this community. It's this incredible group, gathering together to improve lives and help others and focus on money and purpose and meaning and contribution and life.

We are Afford Anything. And we are creating a legacy.

____

To support this campaign:

Buy a t-shirt on Amazon. 100 percent of the profits will go directly to charity: water.

Make a donation at affordanything.com/water

[jillmckenzie1]

The Silver Lining – Online Dating on the Road

Once upon a time, in a galaxy not so far away, I came across a guy on Bumble who immediately proclaimed in his bio that faith was the number quality that he was looking for in a woman. Okay. He then proceeded to say how much he loved positivity and hated photo filters: “Real is beautiful.” You got it, bud. I second the filter hate train. I mean, I’ll send you a dumbass video of me with cheeseburgers circling around my head, but a hard no on the cat ears for public visibility. In true Stephanie fashion, I led with: “Should I start sending all my Snapchat filter selfies now or later?” (don’t worry, the answer is yes, I do amuse myself). Here’s the part where you sit back, relax, and enjoy the show. His response: “Funny, Funny. I wonder what a vagina looks like filtered? Huh [insert light bulb emoji]. I have an idea. Test it out for us. Send me one both ways. I’ll let you know [insert smiley face emoji].”

What. The. Actual. Fuck.

Yep, this actually happened. Seriously. I responded and questioned why, on any planet in any point in time, he believed this response would be an acceptable way to speak to a woman. Ever. I recall using words like “disgusting” and “degrading” (I’m sure the screenshot is somewhere deep in the abyss of my iPhotos if you need evidence). His response? He was joking. Right. Super funny, dude. Real funny. Report. Block. Terminate. Bye.

If you’re single, you’re not surprised by this story. If you’re in a relationship, I hope to God you are completely astounded. And, while I often think dating apps are the absolute devil, it is also the current means to an end. Are you even a real single person if you are not on a dating app? Not even kidding. Okay, slight over exaggeration, but truly, never in our wildest teen years did us 30-something-year-olds imagine using our phones to score a significant other (AIM, sure, but not our phones).

So, I exist in my current reality. Fact: I’m single. Fact: I’m transient. Fact: I’d like to be in a relationship. Fact: I don’t care whether or not that relationship exists in a transient or stationary state. So, yes, if our vibe is high and you want to hop in the Airstream and explore every end of the earth, great. If you work in a job you love in a city that you call home, ask me to stay. Let’s ride the wave. Together. Because, seriously, doing life with someone who really gets you better than anyone else ever could is the real damn deal.

Back to dating. I don’t think anyone actually dates anymore. I am actually convinced that it’s not really a thing these days. There’s like pre-dating in which you entertain the idea of actually dating. And then there is friend-zoning or jumping deep into the abyss of quasi-matrimony. I speak with experience from the former, not the latter. And, mark my words, “friends with benefits” is so hot right now. I actually went toe-to-toe with two guy friends at a bar last weekend in a pursuit to convince them that the typical Millennial male is more often than not seeking a friend with whom he can simply have sex than an actual committed relationship (let’s just say they didn’t disagree). Because, I actually do believe that most men do not want to sleep around with handfuls of random girls. They seem to be perplexed by their own paradoxical existence of not wanting anything serious (i.e. being forced to attend your grandma’s 80th birthday with you) while simultaneously wanting to have sex as much as humanly possible.

Let me present to you exhibit A.

I moved to Denver in my Airstream last spring. I met a guy on Bumble who happened to be on the way to a bachelor party for the weekend. I assumed we would engage in an hour-long text conversation that would end with him asking me to send nudes or with him sending me a completely unsolicited dick pic (because, yes, as you can assume from the above scenario, guys really do that). I’d tell him to (a) Google a nude, any nude (most certainly not mine), if that’s what he wanted, or (b) I’d cuss him out for exposing himself like a disturbed and arrogant asshole, and I’d add another tally to my list of douchebags found in the wild.

Welp, surprisingly, he proved me wrong. Beyond that, he actually seemed interested in who I was as a human being, and he proceeded to text me non-stop over the course of the weekend. While at a bachelor party (I feel that this detail needs repeating).

So, he returns home three days later and we commit to actually meeting face to face (like, whoa). And, for lack of a better word, it’s flawless. We’re super funny together (priority one), conversation is natural, and chemistry is fire. We hang out for a few weeks, which inevitably leads to sex. Immediately, he drops the bomb: let’s be friends. Let’s. Be. Friends? Oh wait, I’m sorry, correction, let’s be BEST friends. Perfect. Great. Because, I’m really lacking in the best friend department (insert massive eye roll here).

At this point, I assume it will die out. I assume that he used the nice guy “let’s be friends” card in an attempt to save my feelings and he will vanish as quickly as he had appeared. But, no. He quite literally continues to pursue my friendship. For a month he asks me to do nearly everything with him. He also proceeds to pay for everything: climbing, concerts, movies. Let’s note here that he also proceeds to take my clothes off on a semi-regular basis (despite his constant commentary on us needing rules to prevent such happenings). Final bomb: after a Luke Bryan concert, while sitting on a bench enveloped by a Colorado night sky, he tells me that he loves my soul. I’m sorry, what? Like, we are dating, bro. We. Are. DATING. I don’t care what you title me, but let’s call this thing by its Urban Dictionary definition. He follows up this statement with the fact that I simply deserve better. One, I think I am being dumped for the first time without ever actually having been in an established relationship. Two, fuck off. No one gets to tell me what I deserve. I decide that. So, no, I don’t deserve better. You simply deserve less based on your own evaluation of whatever this thing is that we’re doing. Say that, please. Own that.

So, spring came. And, spring went.

Summer roared in like a lion, and I committed myself to rock faces and mountain peaks, two things that I find to be (surprisingly) much more predictable than men. I also dove even deeper into my work (don’t worry, the digital dating gods still delivered amidst my commitment to my professional projects).

Enter exhibit B.

As a freelance creative director and brand strategist, I work remotely for all of my clients. Idaho. California. Kentucky. Texas. I sometimes wonder if I have a subconscious goal to knock off all 50 states. With all that being said, I met a guy in another state who pursued me completely on his own accord. My vision had always been to travel with my Airstream, but I was never 100% certain on dates. This guy gets my number, he uses round-about questions to engage me in some witty banter, and low and behold he says, “Move down here and I’ll fix all your dating problems.” Wow. Bold statement. I like it. So, after a couple months in this state of flirting euphoria, I commit (amongst a sea of many factors, but I’m intrigued by what’s happening here). He calls me pet names and we have running jokes, and if you know me, these are the keys to my heart. So, I’m smitten kitten. Without any expectation of what will actually become of it. If anything.

The point here is that I show up. I have the luxury of saying yes and then doing something about it. I want to be next to him, so I choose that. Because his voice brings this uncanny smile to my face, and when his name appears on my iPhone notifications, there is a simultaneous level of excitement and comfort. He is fireworks, and he is coming home. And the beauty lies not only in the feeling, but also in the reciprocation of the feeling. Because, there is zero bone in my body that has interpreted anything that he’s told me as being untrue.

Until I’m there. Until I’m standing in front of him begging for every inch of contact. And, that alone becomes the culmination of months of aggressive flirting. Me. Begging (like, seriously, just kiss me before I scream). Because he likes me, but he doesn’t know. I’m sorry, what? Yes, he likes me, but he doesn’t know. Because, self-admittedly, he is a tease. And, he likes it, even though he’s not proud of it (his words, not mine). Perfect. Great. Because, my character flaw is not consuming enough water daily. The effect of this flaw on other people: zero.

At this point, I need to clarify two things. One, I respect people who have an awareness about what they do not know. There is nothing wrong with not knowing. I would take harsh honesty over a sugar-coated lie ten times out of ten. My frustration or disappointment or bewilderment exists in the actions that suggest otherwise. I get it, the pursuit is fun, but if you are not ready to take the elk out of the woods after the hunt, then why are you going hunting in the first place? Terrible metaphor, by the way, but rolling with it. Two, I do not believe in forcing anything in life. I spent far too many years making things happen in the pursuit of checking off items from some proverbial checklist (which is entirely bullshit, by the way). So, for someone not to choose me does not devastate my being. Yes, I have feelings. Lots of them. Too many of them, probably (hello, Leo over here). But, in a world where we get to choose everything (for argument’s sake), I’m not into forcing anyone into a choice that involves me.

What I have observed in this last eighteen months of singledom is that no one wants to commit. To anything. There is no need to commit to anything. Most guys are on dating apps to have sex. Okay, rephrase, most guys are on dating apps posing like they want something substantial in order to get sex. I actually have the most respect for bios that read, “If I’m being honest, just looking to hook up.” Bravo. Kudos to you, dude. Because, I have had my own seasons of wanting more and wanting less. And, there is nothing wrong with either choice. There is nothing wrong with existing in either space. It’s the lack of honesty that burns me to my core. Stop flirting with me if it’s not going anywhere. Stop wasting my time. I don’t need more friends off of Bumble, or sliding into my DMs, or through obscure means of getting my phone number. Truly. I’ve reached my lifetime quota after 34 years.

In tandem, what I have observed in the last eighteen months about myself is that I am, most certainly, a lover and believer of words. And, that is the crux. That online dating, or simply just dating, is this whole show of words. That are so easily believed. And it’s just all shit. If I had a dollar for every guy who suggested running away with me in my Airstream, I would have been able to pay straight cash for my new F-150 a few weeks ago. Seriously. There’s one in LA, and a couple in New Jersey, a handful in Texas, and so many in Colorado that I’ve actually stopped counting. Because the minute I say, “Okay, I’m calling you on this statement,” my experience indicates that they can’t live up to it.

Great, tell me all about your fantasies, homeboy, only to ghost two days later (or, better yet, I find out about your undying love for your current girlfriend on your second to last Instagram post from five days ago). Newsflash, smoother operator, this is my actual life over here. Hope you enjoyed your glimpse.

So, yes, I’m attempting to not grow cynical. I’m also attempting to unpack two very real personal questions. One, if a game must be played in order to win the affection of another, and that game requires me to act outside of my normal state, then am I even winning if I do “win?” For example, guy articulates that he doesn’t know if he wants anything. Then, the same guy asks for me to bring him food because he’s stuck at work. I show love through service, so naturally, my being is dying to deliver said food. But, guy advice (based on my current inner circle) is usually, don’t bring him the food: “He’s using you. If he can’t say that he wants you, but is willing to get favors from you, show him that you don’t have time to do him favors without him giving you a respectable level of commitment.” And, this is fair. This actually makes sense. But, still, I deliver the food (yep, that’s me) because, yep, that IS me. And, I don’t want to be anything but myself. Ever.

Two, what is my responsibility to give people space to be honest and themselves but also to guard my own heart in that process? I believe in ease. I believe that there are certain things in life that mysteriously and beautifully fall into place. I’d like to believe that a romantic relationship would unfold in a similar fashion. But, if this guy says he doesn’t know and then proceeds to engage with me in a fashion that suggests otherwise, should I believe his actions or his words? And, the fact that I’m asking that question is my answer, right? If the right person were standing in front of me, I’m confident I wouldn’t have to be choosing between his actions and his words in the first place because there would be an alignment in both areas that carries the level of integrity that I demand for in my own self. Yet, here I am, FaceTiming my best male friend at 7:32pm on a Wednesday night to ask how to respond to the 47th text message from a guy who just doesn’t know what it is that he wants from me, making me perplexed on how to proceed with my own verbiage and actions.

At this point, let’s add the nomadic element to the mix. And, I am quite confident that therein lies a bigger piece to this commitment-phobic puzzle. Because, it is easy to fall into a routine with someone who resides within your city limits and has a similar schedule to your scripted life. It is an entirely different thing to choose a person who has the freedom to leave. To ask someone to stay requires a deeper level of commitment. It means that someone is choosing for me to do life alongside him, and it means that we are taking off into the sunset together or I am abandoning the road to call someone my home. Ultimately, that choice is my desire. Because, the more I embark on adventures alone, the narrower the gap becomes for me to experience those things for the first time with someone else.

And, I’m starting to question whether or not anything is actually beautiful without it being shared, without it being seen through two sets of eyes in the same moment, if anything is real without the conversation of that thing existing between two coherent bodies.

So, I continue to sit and manifest these desires in the belief that, one day, I’ll be done with the exhibits. That, one day, someone will choose me, and I will choose him back. Without force. Without fear. Without the twenty questions. Granted, maybe I’ve already missed out on Mr. Perfect somewhere in between. Because I didn’t like his shoes. Or his haircut was weird. Or, I swiped left because he failed to include a bio (c’mon, guys). Regardless, I know that wanting something requires attention to that thing. I know that wanting someone requires intentionality to his existence. So, I’m here. Showing up. Attempting to live outside of our digital dead zone. Attempting to keep doing the work to have that one thing that my heart yearns to explore. I can reason that if it were easy, then everyone would do it. Like, really do it. It’s not easy. Not everyone does it. Like, really does it. But, it will damn well be worth it.

Meanwhile, if you need help with your pickup lines, don’t hesitate to slide into my DMs. They’re currently still free for the taking.

from Blog https://ondenver.com/the-silver-lining-online-dating-on-the-road/

[jeroldlockettus]

Nurses to the Rescue!

More nurse practitioners are graduating each year than MDs, but will they be prevented from treating patients? (Photo: COD Newsroom/flicker)

Our latest Freakonomics Radio episode is called “Nurses to the Rescue!” (You can subscribe to the podcast at Apple Podcasts or elsewhere, get the RSS feed, or listen via the media player above.)

They are the most-trusted profession in America (and with good reason). They are critical to patient outcomes (especially in primary care). Could the growing army of nurse practitioners be an answer to the doctor shortage? The data say yes but — big surprise — doctors’ associations say no.

Below is a transcript of the episode, modified for your reading pleasure. For more information on the people and ideas in the episode, see the links at the bottom of this post.

* * *

Hey there, it’s Stephen Dubner. Before we start today’s episode, let me ask you a quick question. Why do you listen to Freakonomics Radio? I’m guessing it’s for the same reasons that we make it. Because it seems like a good idea to challenge the conventional wisdom now and again; to dig in and take stuff apart and see how the world really works; also: to explore counterintuitive ideas. Here’s one counterintuitive idea: there’s no way you can give away content like Freakonomics Radio and then expect people to pay for it. Who would voluntarily pay for something you can get free?

But you know what, they do! Not just for Freakonomics Radio, but millions of people do it all the time. Voluntary contributions at museums and other cultural sites; pay-what-you-want meals, and yoga classes. Frankly, this model strikes me as a bit nuts. It makes no sense — and yet, often, it works. And it’s completely Freakonomical. Every week, we give away Freakonomics Radio but we also think it’s worth your support.

The show gets more than 8 million listens every month, so we know a lot of people like it. But: only a very small percentage of listeners make a donation. So: listening — very popular. Giving support to the thing you consume? Not so much.

What’s that about? Maybe the rewards aren’t set up right. But consider this. There’s the short-term reward — a burst of dopamine that makes you feel good right now when you support Freakonomics Radio. Then there’s the long-term reward — keeping something you like healthy and vital for the future — by investing today. Knowing that each week you’re listening to something that you helped make possible. I imagine some of you would be persuaded by that notion. It’s something our friend Richard Thaler, a recent Nobel Laureate, should weigh in on:

Richard THALER: Right, because why should I donate because I can listen for free? So there was a famous paper written by Paul Samuelson defining what’s called the public good problem in economics and proving that for goods like public radio that anyone can consume without paying that no one will pay for it. And what we know is thankfully some people do contribute. And so the real world is a mixture. There are free riders, and there are cooperators.

So what are you — a free rider or a cooperator? Only you can decide. As for us, here we are, just a podcast standing in front of its audience, asking for money with our transparent, truthful nudge. And we’re going to make it easy.

You can invest in the future of Freakonomics Radio, in future episodes, when you text the word “nudge” to 701-01. You can also go to Freakonomics.com/donate and make your donation. Why not, right? After all, you’ve probably been accepting hundreds of nudges for all sorts of things that don’t necessarily make your life better. Twitter notifications on your phone. Those Amazon ads that follow you all the way to your inbox. If you’re working in a big corporate office, your so-called perks — the ping-pong tables and free food — are nudging you to work longer hours, for no extra pay.

Here at Freakonomics Radio, we’re trying to be 100% transparent with our nudges. This show is worth something to you. Otherwise you wouldn’t be listening right now. And we are going to build on the value by making more shows, telling more stories that highlight the amazing connections between economics and human behavior. That’s where your money goes — to making the show. Super simple.

What does that mean? Well, on average, at least five people work on any given episode. Sometimes, it’s as many as eight. Really talented producers who spend their days wrangling the data, lining up the evidence, and tracking down experts that make this show unique. And there are other costs beyond staff — studio time, office space, equipment, engineering and mixing, editing and sound-design software, distribution. And those costs really add up.

So if you want more of this show, more episodes, more exploration of our world through the lens of Freakonomics, now is the time to chip in. Sign up to become a sustaining member, maybe an $8-a-month donation, and you will be joining the other very smart people who already figured out how they want to support a podcast that has been in their lives for years. Join the Freakonomics Radio team, become a member. Text the word “nudge” to 701-01 now or head to Freakonomics.com/donate and make your commitment. Thanks so much.

And now on to today’s episode.

* * *

If I asked you to name the most-trusted profession in America, what would you guess?

MAN: Uhh, most trusted?

MAN: Ohhh. That’s a challenging question. Uhh …

WOMAN: Wow. I’m too old to trust anybody. Uhh …

WOMAN: Maybe something in like the arts?

No, it’s not something in the arts.

MAN: Hmmm. The most trusted profession in America today?

WOMAN: Not politicians! (Laughs)

MAN: Certainly not politicians.

Right. It’s not politicians. In fact, they’re the least-trusted.

WOMAN: The most trusted profession? I can’t quite answer that.

MAN: This morning we had breakfast at the hotel. And the lady who served the breakfast, she looked very, very sweet and kind. So I would say that lady.

No, it’s not that lady.

MAN: Maybe a coach?

WOMAN: Okay, I’m thinking.

MAN: Umm, so many jobs.

MAN: Construction worker.

MAN: Pilots.

MAN: Barbers.

MAN: Uhh… librarians.

WOMAN: I would have to say a teacher.

“Teacher” is a pretty good guess. But not the answer we’re looking for.

MAN: The most trusted profession in America? Uhh … maybe a doctor?

You’re getting warmer …

WOMAN: The most-trusted profession, I would say… nurses. I would say nurses.

Correct! Nurses. For 15 years straight, nurses have topped the Gallup Poll list of professions that Americans say are most honest and ethical. Last year, nurses got an 84 percent approval rating. The next closest: pharmacists, with 67 percent, and then doctors, with 65. Followed by engineers, police officers, and so on, all the way down to journalists (at 23 percent), lawyers (at 18 percent) and, yes, members of Congress (at eight percent).

So why are nurses ranked so high? For one thing, there’s a good chance you’ve directly interacted with one. There are more than 3.5 million nurses in the U.S.; it’s far and away the most popular medical profession, and one of the most popular occupations overall. So wouldn’t it be nice to be able to measure the effect that nurses have on patient outcomes? Today on Freakonomics Radio: we’ll give it a shot:

Martin HACKMANN: So one key advantage of this study is that we can compare the effect of nurses on patient health.

We’ll hear about a huge boom in one subset of nursing:

Kelly BOOTH: I’m really excited to be a nurse practitioner because I want to make the health care system less broken.

We’ll hear about a national movement that’s reimagining the role of nurses:

Janet CURRIE: The evidence seems to be that increasing accessibility of care in this way is actually getting better outcomes.

But: how this movement is running into a political and regulatory system that’s hard to change.

Uwe REINHARDT: It’s just almost insane. It’s like putting the Mafia in charge of the New York Police Department.

* * *

  One reason there are so many nurses in the world is that nurses perform so many functions.

Benjamin FRIEDRICH: They have direct patient contact, they provide medication, they monitor the patients, provide counseling …

And yet, despite their prominent role …

FRIEDRICH: Despite their prominent role it’s, you know, their effect on patient health is not fully understood. And so that’s where our paper comes in.

That’s the economist Benjamin Friedrich.

FRIEDRICH: Yes, I’m an assistant professor at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

The paper Friedrich mentioned is called “The Returns to Nursing: Evidence from a Parental-Leave Program.” His co-author is Martin Hackmann.

HACKMANN: Yeah, so I’m an assistant professor of economics at UCLA.

Hackmann and Friedrich make clever use of what might be called an accidental experiment.

FRIEDRICH: So we’re in Denmark in the mid-90s. And basically the economy’s not doing so well; relatively high unemployment.

HACKMANN: And the idea at the time was to bring in some public programs that would rotate the workforce and give opportunities for people that are currently unemployed.

FRIEDRICH: And what the government decides to do is expand their existing parental-leave program and offer up to one year of additional leave of absence to every parent with a child age eight or younger.

One year of extra paid leave, that is.

FRIEDRICH: So parents will receive typically 70 percent of their previous income, and with job security to return to their previous position.

So Denmark was offering a rather generous parental-leave program, including a guaranteed return to your old job.

HACKMANN: So any parent could take advantage.

FRIEDRICH: Yeah, so the point is this reform was not targeted at the health sector at all, right?

HACKMANN: Statistically, though, it’s heavily women that took advantage of it.

FRIEDRICH: So it hits health-care providers completely by surprise.

HACKMANN: And that’s one reason why we see these large effects in the nurse occupation, because 97 percent of nurses are female and that’s one main reason why that occupation was particularly affected by the program.

So the new Danish parental-leave program appealed especially to women, and the nursing sector is almost exclusively female, which meant a lot of nurses took leave. But then — here’s the really important part:

HACKMANN: But then there were no unemployed licensed nurses that could replace them.

That’s right: even though this leave program was designed to ease unemployment, it turns out there weren’t that many unemployed nurses. Certainly not enough to replace all the ones who took a leave.

HACKMANN: And that overall led to an average a reduction in nurse employment of about 12 percent.

So an unintended consequence of this parental-leave program was that the nursing workforce suddenly shrank by 12 percent. The doctor workforce, meanwhile, being mostly male, barely shrank at all. This sudden shortage of nursing care turned out to be exactly the kind of shock to the system that a researcher can exploit to measure cause and effect. In this case, Hackmann and Friedrich wanted to see how the nursing shortage affected health outcomes. They had something else going for them: Denmark, like the rest of Scandinavia, is a bit obsessive about record-keeping, and it collects all sorts of personal data on just about every citizen.

FRIEDRICH: So that means we can observe every individual and whether they take advantage of this leave program.

HACKMANN: So that gives us rich information on employment. And then we have very rich health data.

FRIEDRICH: And we can analyze information about patients in hospitals and nursing homes, so we’ll know hospital admissions, we’ll know diagnoses and treatments.

HACKMANN: We see detailed diagnosis codes, so that allows us to zoom into different hospitals sub-populations. We can compare heart-attack patients. We look at people that have pneumonia. Newborns at risk.

FRIEDRICH: And we’ll know from the death register, for example, the mortality rates of different patient groups. And so we can very specifically say which patients were most affected by the reduction in nurse employment at these different providers.

Okay, so that’s a lot of data on nurses, patients, nursing homes, and hospitals. What’d they find? Let’s start with hospitals:

HACKMANN: We do find negative effects on hospitals.

FRIEDRICH: Yes. So the way we measured it was to look at the 30-day readmission rates.

Readmission rate is a standard measure of hospital care — the idea being that if you have to go back to the hospital after you’re discharged, the original diagnosis and care weren’t so great. On this measure, the economists found the nursing shortage led to a 21 percent increase in readmission for adults and children, and a 45 percent increase for newborns. So nurses would seem to be quite important to overall health outcomes. But if you think that effect is large, consider the data from nursing homes, where nurses play an even more prominent role than in hospitals.

HACKMANN: We see that this reduction in nurses leads to a 13 percent increase in mortality among people aged 85 and older.

FRIEDRICH: Yes. So what we find is that in particular circulatory and respiratory deaths in nursing homes significantly increase.

HACKMANN: Just to put this roughly into perspective, right? So the parental-leave program reduced the number of nurses by 1,200 in nursing homes persistently and that increased the number of moralities by about 1,700 per year when you consider the 65-year-olds and older, or about 900 people if you look at people aged 85 and older. So these effects are what we think quite large.

Quite large indeed. Which suggests that the returns to nursing are quite high. So, if nothing else, this evidence would seem to justify the fact that nurses consistently win the most-trusted profession competition. But what else should we make of this finding? Imagine you’re a policymaker. You’d think you’d look at this finding and say — well, since nurses are plentiful, and effective, and relatively much cheaper than doctors, perhaps we should think about reassessing and maybe expanding the role nurses play in our health-care system.

Okay, let’s do think about that. For this part of the story, we’ll bring in Freakonomics Radio producer Greg Rosalsky.

ROSALSKY: The story I’m about to tell goes to the heart of the American healthcare system.

Christy Ford CHAPIN: This very expensive, inefficient model.

ROSALSKY: It’s a story about how political pressures can lead to distorted economics.

REINHARDT: So you should not be surprised that your health spending is double what it is in other countries.

ROSALSKY: And yeah, it’s a story about nurses. But before I start, I should tell you something about myself and nursing. My mom’s a nurse (hi, Mom). My aunt’s a nurse. My sister’s mother-in-law is a nurse. As if all that weren’t enough to make me pro-nurse, then there’s my younger sister.

Alexandra HOBSON: So my name’s Alexandra Hobson. I’m your sister. I’m a Registered Nurse that’s about to graduate from Nurse Practitioner school and I’m excited about the graduation that’s coming up soon. It’s a doctorate in nursing practice.

ROSALSKY: Alex is getting her nurse-practitioner doctorate from the University of San Francisco, where she also got her bachelor’s degree in nursing.

HOBSON: So I’ve been a nurse now for six years and I’ve been mainly focused in primary care, because it’s an area that I am passionate about.

ROSALSKY: Primary care — including things like annual checkups and vaccinations — is usually our first line of defense against chronic health problems. Public-health experts say it’s incredibly important, and the medical literature points to a strong relationship between access to primary care and good health outcomes. Studies also show that in many cases, it can save money, since good primary care means catching and treating ailments before they become chronic, and costly. My sister grew passionate about primary care during nursing school.

HOBSON: Because after doing my rotations in the hospital I saw a lot of complications and advanced chronic diseases that I know could be prevented if provided the right preventative services. Without primary-care services, patients usually wait until they have complex illnesses and they end up in the emergency room.

ROSALSKY: Despite the importance of primary care, America suffers from a shortage of doctors who actually provide it. Of the roughly 600,000 practicing physicians in the U.S., only about a third of them work in primary care. This shortage is getting worse, as baby-boomer doctors retire, and since fewer than a quarter of newly minted doctors go into primary care. By 2030, the Association of Medical Colleges projects a potential shortage of more than 40,000 primary-care doctors.

REINHARDT: I think we underpay primary-care physicians and that’s one reason young people don’t go into it.

ROSALSKY: That’s Uwe Reinhardt.

REINHARDT: I teach health economics, regular economics, and finance at Princeton.

ROSALSKY: Reinhardt says medical students are drawn to higher-paying specialities like plastic surgery and cardiology at the expense of pediatrics, general practice, and other primary-care concentrations. The average specialist earns about 46 percent more than the average primary-care physician. But financial incentives aren’t the only driver.

REINHARDT: It’s an issue of prestige. The culture of the medical school is such that students sort of automatically look up to the specialists and that somehow primary care is kind of viewed as a stepchild.

ROSALSKY: The primary-care gap is increasingly being filled by nurses, like my sister. She worked in a clinic serving Bay Area veterans. While working nearly full-time, she went on to get her masters in public health, and now her doctorate.

HOBSON: Yep, I’m a doctor nurse and proud of it!

ROSALSKY: The nurse practitioner degree, which can be a doctorate or a master’s, requires a lot of training and exams. It leads to a sort of hybrid position, that combines the patient-centered focus of nursing with skills historically reserved for doctors. Like physicians, nurse practitioners, or NP’s, make diagnoses, prescribe medications, order tests and x-rays, and refer patients to specialists. One key difference is the focus and rigor of their training. NPs are required to do hundreds of hours of supervised clinical work and, like my sister, they often spend years in the workforce as a registered nurse before getting their NP degree. But they aren’t required to do a residency, which for doctors is a minimum of three years, typically in a hospital; once in the workforce, their responsibilities vary. For example, in fields involving complex surgeries, NPs assist physicians. But when it comes to primary care, NPs are increasingly taking a leading role.

Surani Hayre KWAN: There are not enough providers to take care of all the patients in the country today.

ROSALSKY: That’s Surani Hayre Kwan, the former president of the California Association of Nurse Practitioners, and an NP herself.

KWAN: And everyone is scrambling to figure out how to fix that problem.

ROSALSKY: Between aging baby boomers and the Affordable Care Act, there’s been a huge spike in demand for healthcare services, especially primary care. But the supply of healthcare isn’t keeping up. It was a similar imbalance, in the mid-1960’s, that led to the creation of the nurse practitioner profession. The federal government had just created Medicare and Medicaid, which provides healthcare coverage to the elderly and the poor. The sudden, massive demand for services was not met with a commensurate explosion in supply. Prices skyrocketed and people found it difficult to get care.

KWAN: So nurse practitioners first became a role in 1965 .

ROSALSKY: The first NP program was created at the University of Colorado by a pediatric nurse named Loretta Ford and a pediatrician named Harry Silver. The original idea was that NPs would provide healthcare to kids from low-income families. But the role soon expanded.

KWAN: The use of nurse practitioners has spread like wildfire to literally every aspect of healthcare. You name it, a nurse practitioner probably works in that field.

ROSALSKY: Over the past decade, the number of NPs in the U.S. has more than doubled, to over 200,000. And more NPs are now graduating each year than MDs.

ROSALSKY: In the spring of 2017, my little sister was becoming one of those NP graduates and I flew home to California to watch the ceremony.

ROSALSKY: Did you hear us screaming your name?

HOBSON: No.

ROSALSKY: Here, give me a hug. I’m really proud of you.

HOBSON: Thank you. Thank you.

ROSALSKY: I also met a lot of my sister’s classmates, and I asked them why they were becoming NPs.

Erin FLYNN: I’m Erin Flynn. I am an LGBT nurse and I’m really excited to be a nurse practitioner because it is a really underserved population that really needs more primary care focused on helping them.

Christian EKLON: Name, Christian Eklon, coming from Daly City, California. Why I’m excited to be a nurse practitioner? I’m just ready to change the lives of my patients.

Kelly BOOTH: My name is Kelly Booth. I am from Phoenix, Arizona, originally and I’m really excited to be a nurse practitioner because I want to make the healthcare system less broken.

ROSALSKY: But as the profession grows, it’s facing legal and political challenges from state governments. In most states, NPs have had to fight to obtain a license that would give them what’s known as “full-practice authority,” letting them provide all the services they’ve been trained and certified to deliver. In California, for instance, they’ve been on the losing end of this fight. Surani Hayre Kwan again:

KWAN: We’ve now had three full-practice authority bills that have all failed.

ROSALSKY: So what’s the problem? To figure it out, I decided to drive up to the state capitol, in Sacramento.

ROSALSKY: After passing through metal detectors and security, I made it to the office of Senator Ed Hernandez.

Ed HERNANDEZ: Hey.

ROSALSKY: Hey, how’s it going?

ROSALSKY: Hernandez represents the San Gabriel Valley, just east of Los Angeles.

HERNANDEZ: So, by profession, I’m an optometrist. Been one for 30 years, been involved in politics pretty much my whole life. Became an activist, was concerned about health care in the state. How individuals didn’t have access. Decided to run in ’06; got elected. Now I’m in the Senate and been chair of the health committee and I’ve been honored to be a public servant.

ROSALSKY: One of the first big things Hernandez did after getting elected was to form a select committee that analyzed the medical workforce of the state.

HERNANDEZ: We found out there was a huge shortage of primary-care providers but not only was there a workforce shortage, but there was a huge distribution problem of where primary-care providers go to.

ROSALSKY: Where they didn’t go to was California’s rural areas — a trend that holds true in many other states as well. The National Rural Health Association says that a quarter of the U.S. population lives in rural regions, but only 10 percent of physicians actually practice there. There’s a similar shortage in low-income urban communities. In both cases, doctors are reluctant to accept the low reimbursement rates of government-funded health programs. Hernandez wanted to do something about these primary-care shortages. One option would be to get more doctors into the system. But it turns out that’s really difficult. For one thing, Hernandez says, there’s limited capacity at U.S. med schools. Of the 53,000 students who applied for admission in 2016, 32,000 were rejected from all the schools they applied to. That’s sixty percent of all applicants.

HERNANDEZ: So we have a finite number of medical schools, whether it’s in California or across the country. And they’re not growing in leaps and bounds. The biggest hurdle is obviously the costs.

ROSALSKY: There’s also the time and money it takes to become a doctor: four years of undergrad, four years of med school, and then a residency of three to seven more years.

HERNANDEZ: There’s at least 12 years before they’re out in the work force.

ROSALSKY: An even bigger issue is the limited number of residency slots. Since 1965, the federal government has provided most of the funding for residencies through the Medicare program. But the number of Medicare-funded residencies was capped by Congress in 1997; and other sources of funding have been slow to make up the difference. There’s an ongoing debate about the residency system.

One side argues we should remove the funding cap and increase the number of subsidized residencies. Another side would like to see more fundamental reforms. They believe a redesigned system could work without the $15 billion Washington spends on residencies every year. It’s a big, complicated subject and I won’t take you down that rabbit hole now.

The important part is both sides agree the current policy is a key issue behind the shortage of doctors — and why, each year, thousands of med-school grads can’t find a residency. So between the residency bottleneck, and the med-school bottleneck, and the very high cost of tuition, you can see why so few new doctors are heading into the relatively low-paying field of primary care. So Hernandez had an idea. What if, instead of trying to break all those bottlenecks that constrict the supply of doctors, he could encourage a different supply of primary-care providers?

HERNANDEZ: Nurse practitioners — they’re not only less expensive to train; they’re more cost-effective because there’s less overhead for them. They have lower student debt and therefore they’re willing to possibly even take a lower reimbursement. They truly could could fill in the gap when it comes to primary care.

ROSALSKY: But as we heard earlier, California law doesn’t give NPs full-practice authority. Instead, they have to work under the supervision of physicians, who are each limited to overseeing only four NPs. And that supervision can cost a lot of money. Hernandez believes this requirement severely limits the impact NPs can have on closing the primary-care gap. So he began a fight for a bill to free NPs from these constraints.

HERNANDEZ: So what they can do under this bill is exactly what they’re allowed to do under the law right now. The only difference is they can do it independently without physician supervision.

ROSALSKY: The main argument against allowing NPs to practice independently is that they have less training than physicians. But there’s a mountain of empirical evidence from randomized trials, case studies, systematic reviews, and analyses of malpractice claims in states where similar legislation has already passed that all points to the same thing: when it comes to primary care, NPs are just as safe and effective as doctors. Uwe Reinhardt again:

REINHARDT: I am not aware of any literature that said care given by nurse practitioners is of inferior quality or causes safety issues and so on and so forth.

ROSALSKY: Some studies also find patients prefer NPs to doctors, perhaps because they report NPs, on average, spend more time with patients. So their training is less expensive, they get similar or better outcomes. And, by the way, they typically make about half as much as primary care physicians. All this makes NPs good candidates to provide primary care to underserved populations. So you can see why health economists like Reinhardt support giving NPs full-practice authority.

REINHARDT: Well, first of all, I think it would make healthcare more accessible to patients because for many things you don’t really need an M.D., right? But you need somebody who knows how to stitch a wound, who knows if something is going around like the flu and they would know initially what you should do. And secondly it would make it cheaper and more efficient.

ROSALSKY: It’s an idea that has support from a wide range of organizations, including The National Governors Association, the Federal Trade Commission, and the AARP.

HERNANDEZ: businesses, business groups. You know, there was a large coalition.

ROSALSKY: Hernandez, a Democrat, also had support from Republicans, like Senator Jeff Stone, who represents portions of Riverside County.

Jeff STONE: I applaud Senator Hernandez’s efforts. I believe that nurse practitioners could provide healthcare in some of the more rural regions in the state of California that presently are highly underserved. And it’s unfortunate that we have some people that may even lose their lives because they’re not getting the attention, the medical attention that a nurse practitioner can appropriately deliver.

ROSALSKY: With so much support for this bill, and so much evidence in favor, you might think it was a no-brainer for it to become law.

HERNANDEZ: Of course, it’s a no-brainer. It’s the right thing to do. Why it didn’t get through?

Yeah, why didn’t it get through? Coming up on Freakonomics Radio: Greg Rosalsky’s reporting continues, and we hear why:

REINHARDT: They are a regular interest group that wants to shovel money into the pockets of their members.

Also, please consider making a donation to support this kind of Freakonomics Radio episode. You can go to Freakonomics.com/donate or text the word “nudge” to 701-01. We’ll be right back.

* * *

I’m Stephen Dubner; this is Freakonomics Radio; and our producer Greg Rosalsky has been reporting from California about a legislative fight to allow nurse practitioners more authority to practice medicine.

ROSALSKY: Right. Thanks, Stephen. So Democratic State Senator Ed Hernandez was telling us about this bill he sponsored, which had all kinds of support.

HERNANDEZ: Of course, it’s a no-brainer. It’s the right thing to do. Why it didn’t get through? It’s the California Medical Association. It’s the political clout that they have here in the Capitol.

ROSALSKY: The California Medical Association, or C.M.A., is the state affiliate of the American Medical Association, or A.M.A. It’s an organization that combines the non-controversial work of advancing medicine with the controversial work of lobbying the government for its interests. The Princeton economist Uwe Reinhardt again:

REINHARDT: In other words, they are a regular interest group that wants to shovel money into the pockets of their members, which is what these associations do.

ROSALSKY: That, of course, is not how the A.M.A. sees itself. “Our mission,” the organization says, “is to promote the art and science of medicine and the betterment of public health.” Reinhardt believes the A.M.A. does, in fact, make legitimate contributions to medicine. It’s their contributions to economics and politics that he objects to. As do many other critics.

CHAPIN: The traditional story about the American Medical Association is just how politically powerful they have been.

ROSALSKY: That’s the University of Maryland historian Christy Chapin.

CHAPIN: I am author of the book Ensuring America’s Health: The Public Creation of The Private Health Care System.

ROSALSKY: As Chapin documents in her book, the A.M.A. has played a central role in the development of the U.S. healthcare system. In the 1940’s, for instance, they helped sink President Harry Truman’s push for universal health care.

CHAPIN: It arguably was the largest campaign ever conducted against one piece of legislation.

ROSALSKY: The A.M.A. has also had a strong hand in shaping the medical marketplace, much to the chagrin of free-market advocates. The economist Milton Friedman, for instance, spent much of his career blasting the A.M.A. for using its political and economic power to stifle competition and drive up prices. This was especially the case when it came to the A.M.A.’s control over medical licensing.

Milton FRIEDMAN: And the control over that licensure procedure is what has enabled the American Medical Association to exercise its monopoly power for these many decades.

ROSALSKY: Friedman argued that the A.M.A. exerted undue control over every step in licensing doctors. The rules governing how to get licensed, the people who sit on licensing boards — even which approved schools students had to graduate from in order to practice.

FRIEDMAN: And by some strange accident, the list of approved schools in every state is identical with the list of schools approved by the American Medical Association.

ROSALSKY: This control, Friedman said, put an artificial limit on the number of people who could become doctors. Not only that, he said, licensing prevented perfectly capable medical professionals —who aren’t doctors — from playing a bigger role in providing care.

FRIEDMAN: You and I know and many of us know that there are many medical practices which can perfectly well be carried out by people who do not have the full training.

ROSALSKY: The net effect of licensing, he believed, was to raise the incomes of doctors and raise health care prices. Friedman wasn’t a fan of any sort of licensing. He saw it as a way that professions seize power and exploit consumers.

FRIEDMAN: And if you really want to know the real function of licensure, of licensing, all you have to do is go and see who goes down to the state legislature to lobby in favor of licensing. Now if the real, true function of licensing is to protect consumers, you’d expect consumers to be lobbying for licensure. But there isn’t an occupation you can name, which hasn’t been down at the state house trying to get licensure.

ROSALSKY: At the California Statehouse, a lot of lobbying in recent years has been aimed at protecting the medical licensure that already exists. Since 2013, when Senator Ed Hernandez introduced the first of his two nurse-practitioner bills, the California Medical Association has spent $9 million on lobbying activities, and another $4 million on campaign contributions through their PAC. It currently employs 10 registered lobbyists. These dollar figures are not attached to specific legislation, but it’s been very clear that nurse-practitioner bills have been an intense focus of the C.M.A.

During that same time period, the California Association of Nurse Practitioners spent less than $500,000 on lobbying activities and only $150,000 on campaign contributions through their PAC. It currently employs only one registered lobbyist. This is a typical story: the C.M.A. can outspend anyone looking to expand their scope of practice. For Hernandez, who trained as an optometrist, the issue is personal.

HERNANDEZ: So when I graduated in 1986, California had one of the weakest scope-of-practice laws in the profession of optometry. We still do and over the years I’ve seen how powerful the C.M.A. is.

ROSALSKY: The same is true for his Republican ally Jeff Stone, who trained as a pharmacist.

STONE: Many will tell you that pharmacists are some of the most-educated but under-utilized health care professionals on the planet. And I tend to agree with those. So you know we’ve we’ve seen these struggles to expand our scope and share those frustrations with our nursing counterparts.

ROSALSKY: When I first began reporting this story, Senator Stone had picked up where Senator Hernandez left off, introducing new legislation to give nurse practitioners full-practice authority in underserved areas. But by the time I got to California, it had been almost completely neutered. It has since become law, but it only allows NPs to independently prescribe one specific drug meant to fight opioid abuse. So what happened?

STONE: Well, unfortunately we have political realities up here. You know I’d like to say that it’s the citizens of this state that really govern this institution. But I’m going to be a first to tell you that it’s not.

ROSALSKY: If the citizens aren’t governing, who is?

STONE: Well, the California Medical Association is a very active political organization up here, as a member of what we call “the third house” and and they do their job; is to make sure that their physicians are able to practice without giving up the scope of their practice to any other entities under just about any circumstances. So they’re a powerhouse to deal with.

REINHARDT: So you have this system where basically the rules have been written by the hospitals, by the doctor[s], by the pharma industry, and so on.

ROSALSKY: Uwe Reinhardt again.

REINHARDT: So you should not be surprised that your health spending is double what it is in other countries, where the supply side isn’t given nearly the power to write legislation, to structure the health system as they will please.

ROSALSKY: It’s a system that the American Medical Association continues to strongly influence, although it’s not as powerful as it once was. The historian Christy Chapin argues it’s lost legitimacy with a lot of doctors.

CHAPIN: As I did very careful research on the association, what I found is that oftentimes the leaders were out of step with what the rank and file wanted.

ROSALSKY: This was especially the case when the A.M.A. fought the creation of Medicare and Medicaid. Before then, as many as 75 percent of the nation’s doctors were A.M.A. members.

CHAPIN: Today, their membership is down to about oh I think 20 percent.

ROSALSKY: But, Chapin argues, we’re still living with the healthcare system the A.M.A. fought to create — a system that economists like Reinhardt have long criticized for its inefficiency and for its fee-for-service incentives that drive up costs.

REINHARDT: It’s really something of a shame, but there’s no question the A.M.A. left its stamp on the system that we have.

ROSALSKY: It’s a stamp seen in many places. For instance: the A.M.A. has been deeply influential in setting the rates that the government and insurance companies pay for services. These payment rates are lower for NPs than for MDs, and much higher for doctors with a specialty. Critics say this is a big incentive for specialization, at the expense of primary care. The A.M.A. was also a key player influencing Congress to cap the number of Medicare-funded residencies in the mid-1990s. Again, many argue, this has been a key factor limiting the supply of doctors. Although they and the C.M.A. have since come out in support of more residency funding as a means of addressing the doctor shortage. However, they remain opposed to more fundamental reforms.

I asked the C.M.A. for their position on using nurse practitioners to fill the primary care gap. They replied, quote, “California must take immediate steps to train and retain more physicians” and, quote, “Doing away with physician-led, team-based care is not a viable option for patients.” Uwe Reinhardt is not opposed to team-based care. It’s the physician-led requirement he takes issue with:

REINHARDT: Rather than saying, “Oh yeah it’s great to have nurse practitioners, but they should be under the control of a physician.” I don’t like that arrangement. I’m an economist. I like competition.

ROSALSKY: Going one step further, the economist Dean Baker recently declared that U.S. doctors’ associations, by limiting competition, are essentially acting like a cartel. This, he argued, is a key reason why doctors earn twice as much in the U.S. as in other rich countries. Whether through the A.M.A. or other institutions, doctors remain deeply influential in health policy including, in some states, by sitting on licensing boards for nurses.

REINHARDT: Our our medical boards, the licensing boards, reek of conflicts of interest. I mean it’s just almost insane. It’s like putting the Mafia in charge of the New York Police Department. I mean you just don’t do that. You know I mean why would you have physicians dominating the licensing boards for nurses? So I would have a system where the licensing boards would be much less dominated by practicing physicians and be as clean as can be of conflicts of interest for starters.

ROSALSKY: But in the case we’ve been talking about today — the full-practice authority of nurse practitioners — there’s been a big shift. A growing number of states, facing provider shortages and accelerating costs, have gone ahead and granted this authority: earlier this year, South Dakota became the 22nd state to give the nod.

The U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs recently did the same — over objections from the A.M.A. Which means that nurse practitioners have full-practice authority in V.A. facilities even in states that withhold that authority. As for states like California? Well, even there, Reinhardt says, the time will come.

REINHARDT: And I will tell my friends in the C.M.A. in California, you will be defeated. You will eventually lose this battle.

That was Greg Rosalsky, reporting on the push to upgrade the nurse-practitioner model of medicine. The economics of it, at least, are pretty straightforward: a more efficient allocation of resources would lower costs while maintaining or maybe even improving outcomes. Which, I think we’d all agree, the U.S. healthcare system could really use. Remember, we rank No. 1 in the world in healthcare expenditure at 17 percent of GDP. On medical access and outcomes, meanwhile? We are nowhere near the top. So there’s a lot of room for improvement. Making better use of nurse practitioners seems like one good option. Any other good ideas out there?

CURRIE: So retail clinics seemed to me to be a an example of something that could increase competition.

That’s the economist Janet Currie.

CURRIE: I’m the Director of the Center for Health and Wellbeing at Princeton University.

For years, Currie’s research was focused on the wellbeing of kids in particular. Lately, she got interested in the idea of competition within healthcare.

CURRIE: We hear about this a lot — that having more competition in healthcare markets might improve the way that they function. Or conversely, that one of the big problems with healthcare markets is a lack of competition. You know, lots of places that have only one hospital or one hospital consortium, health insurers that are very concentrated, and so on.

For an economist, it’s a bedrock belief: competition helps increase quality and drive down costs. But for competition to be optimal, certain conditions must be met.

CURRIE: And in the case of health care, almost none of the conditions are met for competition to be optimal.

Consider a basic one: price transparency.

CURRIE: So one of the things that’s really the most messed up about the healthcare market is you just don’t know how much anything is going to cost. You go to the hospital. You’ve no idea how much you’re going to have to pay for it. It’s impossible to make rational decisions. It’s really like we’re all groping around in the dark if we don’t know how much anything costs.

There is, however, one healthcare market where prices are posted. They’re called retail clinics.

CURRIE: So what is a retail clinic? It’s a clinic like you might imagine in a drugstore where you can just walk in — you don’t usually need to have an appointment. They have a limited number of services. They have the price posted for the service, and the person that you see is usually a nurse practitioner. There’s not usually any doctor there.

The modern retail-clinic movement got started in 2000, at a Cub Foods grocery store in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, where a company called Quickmedx set up shop. Quickmedx is now known as MinuteClinic, and it’s owned by the CVS Pharmacy chain. Other pharmacy chains and retailers like WalMart have followed suit: there are now more than 2,000 retail clinics in the U.S.

CURRIE: They do a lot of immunizations — so things like flu shots are really big. They also do diabetes screenings. So people who have diabetes have to regularly get checked, and so they’ll do those kinds of diabetes checks. They do some asthma type of check. So the kind of thing where if somebody has a chronic condition and it needs to be checked periodically — you can go to the drugstore, get it checked, probably buy your supplies that you need at the same time, and go home.

The nurse practitioners at retail clinics treat a lot of minor ailments like pink eye, urinary tract infections, and earaches. Also: cuts, burns, sprains, and so on.

CURRIE: So you can go online, you know, wherever you are. Look at their posted price list, and you know exactly what it’s going to cost you to go to CVS and get your shot or get whatever it is that you need to do. And so if retail clinics and other types of non-conventional providers created enough pressure that other, more traditional providers also had to be transparent about prices, I think that would have an enormously positive impact on healthcare, healthcare access, and debates about health policy.

Services at retail clinics are significantly cheaper than elsewhere. There’s also the convenience factor.

CURRIE: You don’t need an appointment. You can just walk in and walk out without having to kind of disrupt your day at all. And I think that’s actually really important. They are usually open on weekends. They’re open after school. They’re open in the evening. So I’ve used them frequently. For example, if I had to get a form signed for my child’s school and you know I could just get it done and not have to make an appointment and wait two weeks and then get the form signed.

That convenience, however, could have a downside — as Janet Currie encountered when she read some earlier studies on retail clinics.

CURRIE: Those studies argued that you saw basically people getting more care. So if you make it cheaper and you make it easier, then people go more frequently. And they argued that on net it was more expensive, and not less expensive.

Now, that wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing if more spending leads to better health outcomes. But more to the point, when Currie examined these studies, she saw they didn’t fully consider a huge potential source of saving. In the form of healthcare spending that retail clinics might prevent.

CURRIE: There’s a lot of emergency room visits for things which in some sense are not really emergencies. You know, so your child has pinkeye and can’t go to school tomorrow unless you get it treated. And the doctor’s closed. So you end up — so you go to the E.R. So there’s a group of the E.R. visits that you might think could directly go to a retail clinic instead. And there are also E.R. visits because of simple things that didn’t happen. So if somebody has diabetes and they don’t take care of it, they could end up in a diabetic coma and have to go to the E.R. And so something that was a matter for primary care becomes an emergency.

So Currie decided to run a robust study on the economics of retail clinics. She partnered with fellow economists Diane Alexander and Molly Schnell.

CURRIE: So what we did was we looked at all of the retail clinics in New Jersey.

They compared geographic areas that had retail clinics nearby with those that didn’t, and then analyzed emergency-room use in those different areas. They focused on three categories of medical conditions. The first: minor things like earaches and pink eye, which had been the subject of the previous studies that found clinics increased spending.

CURRIE: But then, we were also interested in conditions like flu and diabetes that send a lot of people to hospital but are preventable through good care. So that’s the second category.

And the third category were conditions that would seem to be obviously outside the scope of a retail clinic.

CURRIE: And so in that category would be things like fractures, poisonings, and childbirth. You’re not going to go to CVS to have your baby. You’re going to go straight to the hospital.

So Currie, Alexander, and Schnell ran the numbers to measure how retail clinics affected E.R. visits in these three categories.

CURRIE: So what we found was that there was a reduction in E.R. visits for the minor things, and that’s kind of consistent with what other people had found.

Okay, no surprise there.

CURRIE: But the new finding really was that there was also a reduction in visits for the preventable-care conditions like diabetes, in particular, and flu.

So access to primary care at clinics does seem to decrease hospital use. And what about the third category of conditions — were people having their babies at CVS?

CURRIE: And then in the third category — where we didn’t expect to see any effect — we didn’t see any effect. So that was reassuring.

They also computed the costs of healthcare spending in places with and without clinics. Contra the earlier studies, they found, on net, big savings for consumers and the taxpayers who fund government healthcare spending.

CURRIE: Yeah, so our estimate was that it was about $70 million a year in New Jersey. So the savings were coming from people getting their minor condition treated in a retail clinic instead of an E.R. And then the second source of saving was actually preventing people from getting sick by getting them flu shots and getting them timely diabetes screenings.

Currie thinks that $70 million in savings in one year in one state could actually be a lot more. That’s because the state they happened to study, New Jersey, is not one of the 22 states where nurse practitioners have full-practice authority.

CURRIE: Well, in New Jersey the nurse practitioners are operating under the authority of a doctor so they don’t really have full-practice authority. And so if they did, then for one thing, it might make it more attractive for nurse practitioners to take these and secondly, they might have a little bit more discretion in what they were able to do.

For instance, nurse practitioners in New Jersey are required to, “collaborate with a physician for prescriptive authority privileges.”

CURRIE: So I think one of the most important things for promoting retail clinics would be to change scope-of-practice laws to make it easier for nurse practitioners to staff them.

Currie identified another problem with New Jersey retail health clinics: they aren’t allowed to accept Medicaid.

CURRIE: Yeah, that’s actually remarkable. So one of the nurse practitioners that we talked to told us that people would come in and say that they were on Medicaid and they’re not allowed to treat people who are on Medicaid and then the same person would come back and say, “Well, I’ll pay cash.” You know, they really didn’t want to go to the E.R. for some reason. So it seemed kind of crazy that something that the patients really wanted and would be cheaper for Medicaid was not available to them.

Currie has come to believe that retail health clinics are generally a good, cost-effective idea and could be improved by accepting Medicaid and giving nurse practitioners more authority. She also believes that clinics might pose enough competition to force traditional healthcare providers to improve their business practices. So much of the recent healthcare debate has been about the demand side — especially the rise in people with insurance coverage. Currie argues that sure, that’s important, but it would also be wise to focus on improving the supply side of healthcare.

CURRIE: And that side always seems to get ignored in the public-policy debate. And it may be because there are very powerful groups, like the American Medical Association, and so perhaps the government fears to do anything that might impact the supply-side.

The A.M.A., as you might imagine, is not the biggest fan of retail health clinics — especially when they’re not supervised by a physician. When we asked the A.M.A. for a direct comment on clinics and nurse practitioners, they replied, “The A.M.A. encourages physician-led health care teams that utilize the unique knowledge and valuable contributions of all clinicians to enhance patient outcomes.” They also expressed concern that clinics without a supervising doctor may, quote, “further compartmentalize and fragment healthcare delivery.” The A.M.A. argues the importance of “continuity of care,” meaning access to a doctor that you’ll see regularly.

CURRIE: Now, to the concern about continuity of care — I think that’s a really big concern and it is a legitimate concern with people going to clinics that they’re not going to be seeing the same person all the time. I think the problem is we’re sort of comparing the care from retail clinics to some sort of idealized care which doesn’t really exist for most people now. We all move around a lot, doctors go, you know, in and out of practice, doctors move around a lot, and you end up seeing different doctors all the time anyway.

Uwe Reinhardt, Currie’s fellow Princeton healthcare economist, is less generous toward the medical associations.

REINHARDT: And while, on the one hand, you don’t accept Medicaid patients. On the other hand, you worry that a Medicaid patient might not get the best quality if they go to a nurse practitioner. So the argument seems to be “for the poor, nothing but the best. And since we don’t want to pay for the best, the poor get nothing.” I find that a very cynical posture.

Worse yet, Reinhardt argues, the influence of associations like the A.M.A. and C.M.A. is still grotesquely outsized.

REINHARDT: We don’t really have a democracy in the way we teach that in high school. It’s more a plutocracy really. A thing run by interest groups. What the average American patient dreams about or wants is completely irrelevant. As I always put it, what 10 million Americans might want to aspire to is nothing compared to what one K Street lobbyist thinks about in the morning in the shower.

That was, once again, the Princeton economist Uwe Reinhardt. Some very sad news to share with you: just before releasing this episode, we learned that Reinhardt had died. He was 80 years old. Reinhardt was one of the great minds on health-care economics, always thinking about how to improve the system. He was also a friend of this program, and we feel privileged to have interviewed him several times. Our condolences to his family, and our thanks to Uwe for all that he taught us.

Coming up next time on Freakonomics Radio: This past election day, the state of Texas passed a referendum that’ll allow banks to offer a prize-linked savings plan, what’s sometimes called a “no-lose lottery.” It’s a smart policy idea, a great alternative to the high-risk, low-return state lottery. And you want to know how that Texas law came to pass? It started with one person who happened to listen to one episodes of Freakonomics Radio about the no-lose lottery.

Melissa KEARNEY: So a lot of Americans think the lottery is their only chance at winning big sums of money — why don’t we take that appetite for gambling, for a product like this, and attach it to a savings vehicle that offers some positive return? It’s Reinhardta win-win situation.

So next week, we’ll revisit our episode “Is America Ready for a No-Lose Lottery?” and we’ll hear from the guy who got the ball rolling in Texas. Sometimes our show can actually help get something done — and that’s in large part thanks to your generosity. So please consider joining all the other people who support this show by making a donation. Go to freakonomics.com/donate or text the word “nudge” to 701-01. And thanks.

Freakonomics Radio is produced by WNYC Studios and Dubner Productions. This episode was produced by Greg Rosalsky. Our staff also includes Alison Hockenberry, Merritt Jacob, Stephanie Tam, Eliza Lambert, Emma Morgenstern, Harry Huggins and Brian Gutierrez; the music throughout the episode was composed by Luis Guerra. You can subscribe to Freakonomics Radio on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also find us on Twitter, Facebook, or via email at radio@freakonomics.com.

Here’s where you can learn more about the people and ideas in this episode:

SOURCES

Christy Ford Chapin, University of Maryland historian.

Janet Currie, director of the Center for Health and Wellbeing at Princeton University.

Benjamin Friedrich, assistant professor at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

Martin Hackmann, assistant professor of economics at University of California, Los Angeles.

Ed Hernandez, California state senator.

Alexandra Hobson, registered nurse and family nurse practitioner.

Surani Hayre Kwan, health practice chair for the California Association of Nurse Practitioners.

Uwe Reinhardt, professor of economics and public affairs at Princeton University.

Jeff Stone, California state senator.

RESOURCES

“Americans Rate Healthcare Providers High on Honesty, Ethics” Inc, Gallup (December 7, 2011).

Capitalism and Freedom by Milton Friedman (University Of Chicago Press, November 15, 2002).

“Does Preventive Care Save Money? Health Economics and the Presidential Candidates.”, Joshua T. Cohen, Peter J. Neumann, and Milton C. Weinstein, New England Journal of Medicine (February 14, 2008).

Ensuring America’s Health: The Public Creation of The Private Health Care System by Christy Ford Chapin (Cambridge University Press July 20, 2017).

“The Returns to Nursing: Evidence from a Parental Leave Program” Benjamin U. Friedrich, and Martin B. Hackmann, Working Paper, National Bureau of Economic Research (February 2017).

“Shortening Medical Training by 30%” Ezekiel J. Emanuel and Victor R. Fuchs, JAMA (March 21, 2012).

“Toward Graduate Medical Education (GME) Accountability: Measuring the Outcomes of GME Institutions” Candice Chen, Stephen Petterson, Robert Phillips, Fitzhugh Mullan, Andrew Bazemore, Sarah O’Donnell, Academic Medicine (September 2013).

EXTRA

“How Do We Know What Really Works in Healthcare?” Freakonomics Radio (April 2, 2015).

“Why Doesn’t Everyone Get the Flu Vaccine?” Freakonomics Radio (January 8, 2015).

The post Nurses to the Rescue! appeared first on Freakonomics.

from Dental Care Tips http://freakonomics.com/podcast/nurses-to-the-rescue/