<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>HBO</span></p></div><p></p></div></div></p><ul><li><strong>"Silicon Valley's" Jian-Yang has been a hit among fans and critics since his introduction, but saw an expanded role in season five of the HBO show.</strong></li><li><strong>Actor Jimmy O. Yang spoke with Business Insider about what he loves about the character, his newly published memoir about his immigrant experience, and an upcoming role in blockbuster "Crazy Rich Asians." </strong></li></ul><p><br />The character of Jian-Yang, played by Jimmy O. Yang, has been a fan favorite on HBO's "Silicon Valley" since the start, but reached new heights as a delightful ruffian in season five.</p><p>Before this season, Jian-Yang had mostly existed as a comedic foil to TJ Miller's blowhard Erlich Bachman character, but with Miller's exit from the show, he got to take control of his own destiny. And boy did he.</p><p>"I think it turned out to be a blessing in disguise," Yang said of Miller's departure, as Jian-Yang became "more of a villain, not just a pain in the a-- to TJ, but to everyone else." </p><p>Yang, in real life, has had his own career ascent (by much less nefarious means). He's not only snagged roles in movies like the upcoming adaptation of "Crazy Rich Asians," but also published a memoir on his experience immigrating to the United States at 13, and making it in Hollywood, which came out in March.</p><p>That path wasn't easy, but Yang's success has run counter to a maxim his dad loved to quote when he was growing up: "Pursuing your dreams is how you become homeless." That hasn't been true for Yang - at least, not yet. And part of Yang's success in a tough business is certainly due to his charisma and casual hilariousness, which are evident as soon as you start talking to him.</p><p>Business Insider caught up with Yang in advance of the release of "Silicon Valley" season five on all digital platforms on June 11. We talked about what he loves about that "a------" character Jian-Yang, his ambitions and upcoming projects, and the casting director he'd be totally down to fight.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>HBO</span></p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p><em>This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.</em></p><p><strong>Nathan McAlone: What was the audition process like for you at the beginning of "Silicon Valley," back before season one?</strong></p><p><strong>Jimmy O. Yang:</strong> The original audition for it was a few months before the show even got picked up. The original pilot was a totally different script and Jian-Yang was totally different, actually one of the main characters. He was described as a Taiwanese guy who cursed like a pirate. He was one of the main dudes. Then I never heard back from the auditions. I just moved on and then a few months later, I got another audition for the same part, but the show had already been shooting - I think this was episode three - and it had become a smaller part. But deep down I was hoping it would revert back to whatever the original character was, that they had big goals for this guy. I was just really happy to get that three-line part at first.</p><p><strong>McAlone:</strong> When did you have an indication that his role was going to be expanded? Was that based on them liking your interpretation of the character?</p><p><strong>Yang:</strong> I think it's a little bit of that. They saw that I was able to work with the guys pretty well. They were starting to see the chemistry of me and TJ [Miller, who played Erlich Bachman]. But between season one and two, I had no idea whether I was even going to come back for the second season. There was this whole crazy thing that happened where I was offered to be a series regular on a Yahoo show - some streaming content. But the problem is there's always exclusivity, especially with streaming services, so it was either I was going to do the Yahoo show and maybe not come back to "Silicon Valley," or take a chance with "Silicon Valley" and not do the Yahoo show. And I took a chance with "Silicon Valley," and luckily they believed in me enough and I became a series regular the second season.</p><p><strong>McAlone:</strong> I have a hard time telling, but how much of the banter of the characters on the show is improvised versus heavily scripted?</p><p><strong>Yang:</strong> I think it's a few things. The scripts are written really brilliantly. It's one of the best-written shows I think on TV right now. And they also let us improv for sure, especially scenes with me and TJ, we would come up with different ideas. We get one take that's of the script and everything else we can play around and have fun doing. And then the third part is [producers] Alec [Berg] or Mike [Judge] or Clay [Tarver], or somebody like that,  is on set and will give us some alt lines as we are going, which helps also. There's a three-part comedy dynamic that makes the show really work.</p><p><strong>McAlone:</strong> Were you apprehensive going into this season without TJ at all, or were you ready to branch out from that dynamic that you guys had?</p><p><strong>Yang:</strong> I was definitely sad when I found out TJ wasn't coming back because he was my partner on the show and we had such a good dynamic going. But I think it turned out to be a blessing in disguise, seeing Jian-Yang becoming more of a villain not just a pain in the a-- to TJ, but to everyone else.</p><p><strong>McAlone:</strong> Did you do much research into what the Chinese tech scene was like this season, for that side-plot?</p><p><strong>Yang:</strong> I visited a bunch of startups in the off-season last year, talked to VCs, toured campuses of different places. And one of the main questions I was asking them was, "What is the China market like?" I got a lot of good information, like hardware: their hardware game is way superior production-wise to ours. But their software is a lot of what the show has showed you so far: it's a little bit like "new internet," "the new new internet," "the new facebook," whatever. Just doing stuff for the Chinese market because of government restrictions.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>HBO</span></p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p><strong>McAlone:</strong> I know when you inhabit a character in a TV show for many seasons, you grow a certain fondness for them. Are there particular things you are going to miss about stepping into this role on a regular basis when the show ends?</p><p><strong>Yang:</strong> I think there's something great about being a dick on screen. There are no consequences, which is awesome. I think a part of us kind of wants to do that. Because he's so straightforward and he doesn't care about hurting people's feelings. I wish I could be more like that in real life in the off-season. But it's kind of liberating to inhabit that.</p><p><strong>McAlone:</strong> I know a lot of people who just love your character, do people stop you on the street?</p><p><strong>Yang:</strong> Yeah, they scream out random things. They say, "God d----- Jian-Yang," or like "not now." A lot of TJ Miller sayings. They'll say, "Not hot dog." I'm a very different person in real life. I think Jian-Yang is kind of a version of myself 15 years ago, when I first came to this country. Now I'm a lot more Americanized and I would like to think I'm a much nicer person than he is. I think. People are sometimes surprised that I'm not actually that guy.</p><p><strong>McAlone:</strong> What do you think people find so funny about him? For me, his character is so much beyond an accent. What do people tell you resonates with them about the character?</p><p><strong>Yang:</strong> You don't see it coming, which is half of what comedy is. He is this quiet, seemingly nice kid, but he is pretty diabolical. I think it was earned because early in the seasons Erlich just gave him so much s--- and was trying to bully him. But it became a "David versus Goliath" story where he kept getting the upper hand, which is I think why people like the character throughout the years. Especially going up with big personalities like Erlich's character and Gavin's character. There's something fun about that.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>HBO</span></p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p><strong>McAlone:</strong> You wrote a memoir [titled "<a href="https://www.amazon.com/How-American-Immigrants-Disappointing-Parents/dp/0306903490">How to American: An Immigrant's Guide to Disappointing Your Parents</a>"]. What initially made you want to write a book and what was the process like for you?</p><p><strong>Yang:</strong> It was very nice. It was a lot about my immigrant story, coming to this country as an outsider and also making it in Hollywood as an outsider, and not really expecting to do this at all. I went to school for economics and especially in Asian culture it's not really a viable job for my family to be an artist. Like my dad would always say, "Pursuing your dreams is how you become homeless." An old-school Chinese dude. I just thought there is not too much material that is just an honest, funny immigrant story. And for me it was really tough to pursue what I love, and it worked out to some degree, and I want to share the story. Hopefully other kids whose parents have that old-school mentality can relate to the story, other immigrants can relate to the story so they don't feel so weird about themselves. It was a really rewarding process.</p><p><strong>McAlone:</strong> When you are an actor, you are making yourself vulnerable in very different ways than if you're writing a memoir. Were there any elements you were nervous to write about?</p><p><strong>Yang:</strong> I made sure to give everybody props that were deserved - like everyone on "Silicon Valley." But certain people that I ran into in the business … like what the f--- is his name, the guy who cast "Modern Family," Jeff Greenberg or something. He was a real f------ a------. And I just told the story how it was. He just yelled at me when I was this really young actor, and for no f------ reason, whereas the other casting directors have been really cool and nice. No, not really nervous. If Jeff Greenberg wants to call me and confront me about it, I'll fight him.</p><p><strong>McAlone:</strong> You said you are are very different from your character on "Silicon Valley," is there anyone else in the cast that you think people would be super surprised how they are in real life?</p><p><strong>Yang:</strong> Oh, interesting. I say I'm a bit different. I think on the surface I'm a bit different, but deep down I might be a dick also. Who knows. Zach [Woods, who plays Jared] is the kindest, nicest, most intelligent guy. And in a way you can kind of see that in the show, even though he's nothing like the Jared character. Everyone is kind of like that. It's a very exaggerated version of yourself.</p><p><strong>McAlone:</strong> You're in the upcoming movie adaptation of "Crazy Rich Asians" [in theaters August 15], how did you get involved and what was shooting like?</p><p><strong>Yang:</strong> Well, being one out of three Asian people on TV. [Laughs]. No, it's a really cool project and it's a really important project. It's the first studio movie in 25 years, since "Joy Luck Club," to feature a full Asian cast. So when I heard the movie was being made, I was really stoked and I called my managers and I said, "Guys I know I'm a character actor, but let me audition for the leading role, I think I can do it." My managers were like, "I don't know, Jimmy. I don't know how to tell you this, but they're looking for a good-looking guy for the leading role." I was like, "Whatever, I get it." I ended up auditioning for this character, Bernard Tai, he's kind of the worst. They are forced to hang out with him. He's a ladies man in a way, playboy, bad boy - very cool and fun for me to play.</p><p><strong>McAlone:</strong> Were they instantly into you getting the role or did it take some convincing?</p><p><strong>Yang:</strong> They took a chance I think, because Bernard was supposed to be <em>fat</em>, physically and personality wise this massive a------. But they know I can take this character to the next level, which is great for them to trust me on that.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Warner Bros.</span></p><p class="caption">"I don't know, Jimmy. I don't know how to tell you this, but they're looking for a good-looking guy for the leading role."</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p><strong>McAlone:</strong> Now that you're a known entity in Hollywood, with the success of "Silicon Valley" and other roles, and can maybe take a breath and see which direction you want to go in, what projects do you think you'll gravitate toward?</p><p><strong>Yang:</strong> A lot of more meaningful projects. You know something like "Patriots Day" that I did a few years ago, which is a drama, is very different than comedy. That was super rewarding. I want to do more of that and also my own writing. I have some scripts, I'm putting a couple of projects together with people I want to work with. I think that's the most exciting part, when you can hopefully create your own content and find the people that you love that you get to work with.</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/155-dollar-tasting-menu-19-year-old-chef-flynn-mcgarry-gem-2018-5">This 19-year-old opened a restaurant with a $155 tasting menu</a></h3>        <div>                    </div>    </div>

Why Jimmy O. Yang loves playing his diabolical 'pain in the ass' character Jian-Yang on HBO's 'Silicon Valley'

For many years now <keyword id="619691" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Publishing-industry">publishing industry</keyword> pundits have been sounding the death knell of the printed book. Yet, year after year the printed book has continued to withstand the digital onslaught, and remains the most favoured format for readers. Last year print <keyword id="5050" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="books">books</keyword> in India grew by 15% and the contribution of digital books to total sales amounted to a miniscule 5-10%. In spite of this, new entrants to publishing like Juggernaut and more recently the Pune-based, mobile-only publisher Readify are pushing boundaries and experimenting with content and format. In just 8 months since its launch, the Juggernaut mobile app has seen more than 560k+ users and 180,000 book downloads. Of all the digital books, 30 titles have been downloaded more than 1000 times. Most of these include classics like Charles Dickens, Agatha Christie, Rudyard Kipling, mass market romance, topical non-fiction such as Caste is Not a Rumour by Rohith Vemula, India Vs Pakistan by Hussain Haqqani, Operation Cactus by Sushant Singh, or books that benefited from certain events such as Vasanthi’s Amma and Mahashweta Devi’s short story Fishermen.<br />
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It seems that debut literary fiction struggles as much on apps as in print. Juggernaut is actively commissioning content and stories to time them with current events. It has also tied up with top newspapers and magazines such as The Hindu, Mint, Caravan and Business Standard to curate digital books out of their existing archives. For instance, Juggernaut has recently published a digital book on Jayalalitha in collaboration with The Hindu. Titled Jayalalithaa: The Struggle for Power: 1982-1991.The book ‘presents startling interviews with the famously enigmatic politician. Interspersed with reportage, they provide a rich sense of the erstwhile CM's difficult early years along with her incredible will to succeed’.<br />
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The consumption of books on the app shows interesting trends – for instance, short crime and horror sell more on digital than in print, especially if they are written by Indian authors. App based publishers are also discouraging lengthy tomes and a lot of the commissioning is done strictly keeping the word count in mind. “The format of the content being published will evolve to match the new delivery vehicles and the new target customers. The full-length novel is not suitable to be read on the relatively smaller screens of mobile phones. This won't adversely affect the prospects of full-length books, which already have a home in print publishing. It's going to be the time for flash fiction, short stories, and novellas’, says Readify’s Vivek Rao, who is also a fiction writer. Readify has signed the rights to filmmaker Vikram Bhatt’s flash fiction, which the author used to post regularly on his Facebook page. Rao feels that reading on mobile apps will break through unlike ebooks which couldn’t penetrate tier 2 and tier 3 towns where fewer people use laptops and tablets. Mobile phones, on the other hand, are everywhere. With the absence of printing and distribution costs (although these are offset to an extent by tech development costs), the pressure on pricing is much less. That said, it would take a few years to make these ventures profitable because initially a lot of books are offered at attractive discounts. <br />
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Technology also addresses the rampant issue of piracy faced by print books. Both Readify and Juggernaut have built in several security features, including encryption of all content, so that piracy becomes extremely difficult. Business journalist and voracious book reader Chitra Narayanan gave me an interesting perspective on mobile apps:<br />
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‘There are huge cost savings. These books are half the price of physical books. So the volume of the books one buys goes up. But it does not necessarily mean that you read more. It just means the volume of unread books piles up! Thanks to them I am diversifying my reading. Earlier there were select authors one would buy as one was generally hesitant to experiment. Now, because of sample chapter reads being free I read the free chapter and feel emboldened to buy the book.’<br />
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Almost everyone I spoke to agreed that print will remain untouched by these new digital platforms although the latter will be instrumental in drawing younger, traditionally book-averse people to reading. ‘Mobile publishing will not eat into the conventional market. There's a very limited overlap between the two markets. People who currently buy print books will continue to do so. Mobile publishing will bring in hordes of new readers - youngsters who are currently not reading at all.’, says Rao. Full Circle’s Priyanka Malhotra couldn’t be less bothered by such technologies and is only concerned by the threat posed to traditional bookstores by online selling platforms. Juggernaut’s Anish Chandy reports an excellent performance by the print division, with their first 21 books selling a combined 2.4 lakh copies.<br />
<br />
<em>(<strong>About the Author:</strong> The article is authored by <a href="http://www.publishersmarketplace.com/members/writersside2010/">Kanishka Gupta</a>, one of the key players in <keyword id="2808548" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Indian-publishing-market">Indian publishing market</keyword> and was the youngest author on Man Asian Literary Prize in 2009)</em><br />
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In future digital and print in India will go hand in hand!

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span><a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/mtaphotos/with/30905257644/">Flickr/MTA</a></span></p><p class="caption">Long overdue.</p></div><p></p></div></div>New York's long-awaited, long-overdue Second Avenue Subway line will officially open to the public on the first day of 2017 - nearly 100 years after it was first discussed.</p><p>Even before the turn of the century, the need for an additional subway line east of Lexington Avenue on the Upper East Side was imperative.</p><p>I know because I lived on E. 87th Street, a block and half from the East River, for several years and often struggled with the overburdened 4-5-6 trains, passengers waiting six deep on the platforms.</p><p>The new line will be constructed in three phases, eventually running from 125th St. to lower Manhattan; the finished section connects 96th St. and 63rd St. It's a godsend. But as lovely as the new stations might be, and advanced as the construction methods may have been, the Second Avenue line fails to address the NYC Subway's biggest problem.</p><p>The vast network of trains, tunnels, and elevated lines unites the cities boroughs and enables millions of New Yorkers to get around easily and (relatively) cheaply. Alongside the London Underground and the Paris Metro, it's one of the Big Three most-used and most-beloved mass-transit systems on Earth.</p><p>And the NYC Subway is the most unpleasant large-scale public space in America. It's old, hot, loud, smelly, crumbling in places, moderately unreliable, dank, overcrowded, full of garbage, and infested with rats. It's not as bad as it was in the 1970s, when lurching, graffiti-covered trains were the rule, but it hasn't been substantially improved in the decades since New York recovered its affluence.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_left"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Ianqui Doodle/Flickr</span></p><p class="caption">Ugh.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>I rode the Subway constantly between 1989 and 2004. I hated every minute of it. When I lived in Los Angeles, I occasionally rode the LA Metro, a much more modern system. I loved every second.</p><p>Recently, after doing everything I could to avoid the NYC subway, I returned to semi-regular ridership. The episodes are easily the most depressing part of my entire life.</p><p>For a city as big, rich, and ambitious as New York, this is baffling - more baffling than the fact that it took 100 years to get the Second Avenue line started, after numerous starts and stops. New York is a city of symbols, cast in engineering: the Statue of Liberty, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Empire State Building, Grand Central Terminal, One World Trade, the High Line. </p><p>But the Subway overtakes them all, in scale and in a sort of proud and willful embrace of thoroughgoing scuzziness. </p><p>I'll admit that there's a bit of throwback allure to this - when you enter the underground realm, you're returning to a less airbrushed and sanitized New York. The New York of the Subway is emphatically <em>real. </em></p><p>But I think that's a cop-out. The number-one thing that New York could to to make everyone's life better is make the Subway a more pleasant environment. Heck, the famous <em><a href="http://web.mta.info/maps/submap.html">map</a></em> is considered a masterpiece of graphics design. Just studying it makes you feel better.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span><a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/mtaphotos/with/30905257644/">Flickr/MTA</a></span></p><p class="caption">Nice.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>The efforts are there. We have more air conditioning. There's cell-phone service and wifi, here and there. The stations are somewhat cleaner. The modernized trains make less horrifying noises when they grind into the stations and are graffiti-proof. You can hear the public-address announcements, on an off the trains. The MTA employees are, in my experience, helpful and professional. The Subway is, to my eye, well policed - that sense of omnipresent menace I felt in the late 1980s is gone.</p><p>I don't like to attack New York icons. But when it comes to the Subway, I think the city is  missing an opportunity to undertake a massive aesthetic rehabilitation program. And I don't mean on the art-and-design front; the Second Avenue line, as well as other new stations throughout the metropolis, look much better than the more weathered quarters of the underground world. </p><p>I mean on the basic quality-of-life stuff. The <a href="http://www.mta.info/news-operation-track-sweep-subway-new-york-city-transit/2016/09/12/big-clean-all-469-subway-stations">MTA is moving in the right direction</a>: earlier this year, the first two phases of a massive track cleanup were undertaken. Two additional phases will improve the MTA's ability to remove huge amounts of garbage from the tracks.</p><p>But the entire system is vast and well beyond the capabilities of the MTA to make it a truly marvelous or uplifting environment. That's why the Second Avenue line - which could end up, short-term, being the most obsessively cared-for in the entire system - changes nothing. The NYC Subway has always been a beautiful means to an end. But it will never be a beautiful place to spend time.</p><p class="tagline">This is an opinion column. The thoughts expressed are those of the author.</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/how-mta-nyc-subway-cars-get-loaded-onto-the-tracks-2016-12">Here's how subway cars get loaded onto the tracks</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="5yeWs5ODE6ADNB3BjhPNM9xfW-Z0hX7j" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

Why New York's new Second Avenue subway changes nothing

NEW DELHI: Looking to cement its frontrunner status, BJP faces a formidable array of rivals ranging from Congress, Samajwadi Party, BSP, Janata Dal(U) to Jharkhand Mukti Morcha as the biggest round of polling in 121 seats in 12 states takes place on Thursday.<br />
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Though BJP is expected to do well in Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh where it won state polls last December, it needs to prove its mettle in UP and Bihar and retrieve ground lost to Congress in the Karnataka election in 2013.<br />
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A strong performance by BJP in UP, Maharashtra and Bihar, which account for 168 seats, is critical for the party to cross the 200-seat mark, crucial to powering BJP, and specifically its PM candidate Narendra Modi, to the magic halfway mark of 272.<br />
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The Shiv Sena and BJP have their task cut out in western Maharashtra’s Maratha belt where the Congress-NCP control over sugar cooperatives gives them significant political clout. NCP chief Sharad Pawar’s family boroughs of Madha and Baramati will also be tested.<br />
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The central stretch of Bihar going to polls is a big test for Janata Dal(U) leader Nitish Kumar as the party holds important seats like Arrah, Nalanda and Munger and must contend with the two-pronged threat of RJD-Congress and BJP-LJP.<br />
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BJP needs a high strike rate to remain on course to winning more than 20 of Bihar’s 40 Lok Sabha seats, an objective integral to the party’s hopes of picking up a rich haul of seats in UP and Bihar.<br />
JD(U) is at risk of being squeezed out of the frame with RJD-Congress appearing a preferred option for Muslims and upper castes, as well as a chunk of middle castes gravitating towards BJP which has sought to encash Modi’s backward caste credentials.<br />
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In UP, BJP is banking on a counter-mobilization that cuts across castes to help it challenge SP and check BSP. The latter may face the toughest test as it must compete with SP for the minority vote while protecting parts of its dalit base from drifting to the BJP.<br />
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In the 11 seats of Odisha that include tribal ones like Keonjhar and Mayurbhanj as well as those in the coastal heartland, BJP has emerged as a surprise force but its capacity to convert support into seats will be tested by lack of organized presence.<br />
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In MP, BJP holds most of the 10 seats and Congress leader Jyotiraditya Scindia remains the sole hope. In Bengal, Congress has been reduced to a bit player with even BJP grabbing more eyeballs. In Jharkhand, BJP has just two of the six seats up for grabs, and hopes to improve at the cost of Congress-JMM and Babulal Marandi’s JVM(P).

Lok Sabha Polls 2014: Get Set, Vote In Biggest Phase Today

1. TGI Fridays: The Tinder of the 1960s

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span><a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-S38324,_Tag_von_Potsdam,_Adolf_Hitler,_Paul_v._Hindenburg.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span></p><p class="caption">Hitler at the Tag von Potsdam (Day of Potsdam) ceremony for the opening of the new Reichstag after the German federal election, March 1933.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><ul><li><strong>New economic research shows that bad tax policy was instrumental in bringing about the rise of the Nazi Party in 1933.</strong></li><li><strong>Austerity measures implemented by an incompetent Weimar government had the unintended consequence of radicalizing German voters.</strong></li><li><strong>The U.S. is not Weimar Germany, but GOP policies - starting with the Tax Cut and Jobs Act and continuing on with cuts to social programs that may follow - in an already polarized environment could have the same unintended consequences.</strong></li><li><strong>Doing away with tax deductions that are relied upon by poorer, sicker, or younger Americans to fund tax cuts for the rich is akin to an austerity measure and will push already struggling Americans further into political extremes.</strong></li></ul><p>The intended consequences of the GOP tax plan are bad enough. Unanimously, economists across ideological spectrums have said the GOP's Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) will increase the deficit, hurt lower and middle-income Americans, <a href="http://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/republican-tax-reform-plan-will-boost-inequality-benefit-the-rich-2017-11-1010087979">exacerbate inequality</a>, and fail to provide the economic growth the Trump administration keeps touting without evidence.</p><p>The unintended consequences could be much worse.</p><p>In a new paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, economists Gregori Galofré-VilÀ, Christopher M. Meissner, Martin McKee, and David Stuckler show the dramatic impact poor tax policy had on Weimar Germany from 1930-1932.</p><p>That policy - even more so than other economic factors like unemployment - radicalized the population and made Germans feel the government was out of touch with their struggles. In short, it created the perfect environment for the Nazi party.<br /><br />Let me be clear about something: <em>the US is not Weimar Germany</em>. Our situation obviously isn't as desperate. But an already polarized country can learn some things from Germany's example, including just how quickly bad policies pushed German voters to extremes.</p><p>The policies this paper examines were implemented for two years and then cast aside when a new Chancellor was appointed in 1933. Support for the Nazi Party fell almost immediately. However, by then it was too late. Even after losing seats in Germany's legislature, the Reichstag, from July to November of 1933, the Nazis had gained control of 44% of seats - enough to form a coalition.</p><p>Enough to come close to destroying the world.</p><h2>Austerity </h2><p>Desperate after Germany's economy collapsed in 1928, the country's president Paul von Hindenburg appointed a bunch of technocrats to run the government in 1930. At the helm was Chancellor Heinrich Bruning. He was an austerity guy who liked to issue "notverordunungn" - emergency decrees. He quickly implemented a mix of tax increases and spending cuts in an effort to get the country back to good.</p><p>From the paper:</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;">These measures involved drastic cuts to government expenditure, increased rates of taxation, new taxes, and cuts to unemployment benefits, payments to pensioners, and welfare recipients. In addition, the central government acted to centralize important fiscal decisions that were traditionally decentralized in the Weimar Republic.</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;">According to Brüning, the suffering they would cause would help elicit international sympathy for the Germans and help put an end to the unpopular reparations imposed at Versailles.</p><p>The political ramifications of these measures were almost immediate, according to researchers, and they went beyond the Nazi Party. This austere fiscal policy combined with a public sector slow down due to the depression only worsened the economic situation for Germans, and it radicalized people across the social spectrum.<br /><br />As they lost faith in their government's ability to manage the situation, unemployed and low-income Germans became more likely to turn to the Communist Party. Middle and upper-income Germans were more likely to turn to the Nazis.  </p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_left"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Br%C3%BCning#/media/File:Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-1989-0630-504,_Heinrich_Br%C3%BCning.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span></p><p class="caption">German Chancellor Heinrich Bruning</p></div><p></p></div></div>Over the period Bruning, who was dubbed "The Hunger Chancellor," was slashing and burning, the Nazis gained ground in Germany's legislature, the Reichstag. </p><p>Hitler knew Bruning's policies were helping him too. In 1932 he wrote a widely circulated pamphlet decrying the measures called that he ended by saying, "although that was not the intention, this emergency decree will help my party to victory, and therefore put an end to the illusions of the present System."</p><p>In 1933 a new Chancellor implemented fiscal stimulus, and again the political ramifications were almost immediate. That year the Nazis lost dozens of seats in the Reichstag from July to November.</p><p>Still, it was too late. Hindenburg named Adolf Hitler Chancellor in January of 1933. By March the Nazi party controlled 44.6% of the Reichstag and managed to pass the infamous Enabling Act, which allowed the the German cabinet to pass laws without the legislature or president.</p><p>"The coalition that allowed a majority to form government in March 1933 might not have been able to form had fiscal policy been more expansionary," the researchers wrote.</p><p>And so began one of the darkest periods in the history of the world.</p><h2>Obviously, the US is not Weimar Germany</h2><p>We are not Weimar Germany. We do not have painful war reparations from the Treaty of Versailles to deal with. We do not have a global financial crisis on our hands. We do not have austerity measures being implemented across the board in the midst of the economic downturn.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right click-to-enlarge"><div><div class="image on-image"><a title_source="Pew Research Center" title_caption="" class="zoomin" href="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5a2efce00b0f2747008b4658-960/screen shot 2017-12-11 at 125957 pm.png"><span class="sprites click-to-enlarge-icon" title="Click to enlarge"></span></a><p class="source"><span><a href="http://www.people-press.org/2016/06/22/6-how-do-the-political-parties-make-you-feel/">Pew Research Center</a></span></p></div><p></p></div></div>What we do have, though, is intense political polarization. We also have a populace increasingly tired of its leadership.</p><p>Plus, we have a government taking steps that are isolationist, economically disruptive with no beneficial outcome, and going to add to the struggles of lower-income Americans who are already moving further away from the mainstream.</p><p>"The Depression-era was associated as much with a major decline in world trade as financial and monetary disturbances; it was a time of tariff increases, quotas, competitive devaluations, exchange controls, and the promotion of bilateral at the expense of multilateral trade (Crafts and Fearon 2013)," researchers wrote.</p><p>The Trump administration has returned to that when it comes to trade policy, adding another layer of economic risk  to an already fragile political situation. NAFTA, for example, is now in jeopardy,<a href="http://thehill.com/policy/finance/363405-mexican-ambassador-says-nafta-has-50-50-chance-of-being-terminated"> as the Mexican ambassador</a> mused there was a 50/50 chance the deal would be terminated. The US is angering friends and enemies alike, pushing for nonsensical bilateral trade deals.</p><p>That antagonism extends to Trump's tax plan. <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/trump-gop-tax-reform-bill-resistance-from-china-leaders-europe-2017-12">European and Chinese officials</a> have both said that could be detrimental to global trade. Chinese officials are calling it a "gray rhino" - an obvious problem that no one is doing anything to stop.</p><p>Again, The Weimar government engaged in this same behavior.</p><p>"As a result, Germany's GDP fell by one third from peak to trough and exports declined by 50% (Crafts and Fearon 2010; Grossman and Meissner 2010)," said the paper.</p><h2>Austerity by any other name</h2><p>Above all that, what we have is a tax policy that will hit some Americans harder than others. While the rich and corporations will enjoy a nice long tax cut, by 2019 Americans making $30,000 and under will see their taxes go up. By 2021, everyone making $75,000 or less will see a tax increase. The median household income in this country was $59,039 in 2016 - so that's most people.</p><p>And then there are the increases here and there that Republicans hate talking about. The House plan does away with the medical expense deduction, a tax increase on those with high medical bills especially the elderly. Young people with students loans and grad students get hit in the Senate bill. Everyone in high taxed states like California and New York will get hit if their ability to deduct state and local taxes is eliminated. Over at the <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-taxman-cometh-senate-bills-marginal-rates-could-top-100-for-some-1512942118?mg=prod/accounts-wsj">Wall Street Journal, Richard Rubin</a> figured out that some high-income businesses face a 100% tax increase.</p><p>Healthcare, which is the only sector that has experience price inflation since the financial crisis, will become even more of a burden on Americans. <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/16/gop-tax-bill-would-spike-obamacare-premiums-nearly-2000-for-families.html">Analysts estimate</a> that the Senate bill would leave 13 million people uninsured, increase Obamacare premiums on unsubsidized families by $2,000, and force automatic cuts to Medicare.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Pew Research Center</span></p></div><p></p></div></div>Meanwhile, members of the GOP are already talking about cutting welfare and other social programs next, and there are signs that they'll be doing so at a bad time. <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/credit-card-delinquencies-a-red-flag-on-consumer-spending-2017-11">Americans are starting to have difficulty paying off their credit cards</a>. Though unemployment is low, wage growth is still stagnant. Inflation is also anemic, still hovering below the Federal Reserve's 2% target despite the fact that it is tightening economic conditions by ending financial crisis easy money policies.</p><p>This is austerity in a country that has plenty. It's a heinous act of cruelty fueled by ideology, the desire for power, and the very toxic partisanship that it will likely exacerbate. </p><p>To wit, as in Germany, this incompetently written tax policy will produce the unintended consequence of radicalizing Americans further.</p><p>"Germany today is in the grips of the most powerful deflation that any nation has experienced … many people in Germany have nothing to look forward to - nothing except a 'change', something wholly vague and wholly undefined, but a change," Chancellor Bruning once said.</p><p>Those who suffer in this twisted new form of American austerity will feel the same desire. It's what pushed many young people into the arms of Bernie Sanders.  It's the same phenomena that pushed some to give Donald Trump a chance, despite his incessant lying, racism and tendency toward authoritarianism. It has given us Alabama Republican candidate Roy Moore.</p><p>If this tax plan passes, expect our faith in government to erode further. Expect our partisan divisions to worsen. Expect this to take our country to destinations unknown.</p>       <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/over-1500-married-people-reveal-the-most-important-quality-marriage-2017-1">1,500 happily married people say the key to lasting relationships isn't communication - it's respect</a></h3>        <div>                    </div>    </div>

1930s Germany shows us that bad tax policy can magnify Washington's worst problem by 1,000

<p><span class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><span><span data-post-image="" class="image on-image"></span><p></p></span></span>In 1906, in a lodging house for Indian students in Highgate, a pleasant area of north London, a young lawyer called Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi dropped in on a law student called Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, who happened to be frying prawns at the time. Savarkar offered Gandhi some of his meal; Gandhi, a vegetarian, refused. Savarkar allegedly retorted that only a fool would attempt to resist the British without being fortified by animal protein.</p>
<p>The meeting is said to have begun hostilities between the two young Indian nationalists; whether or not the story is apocryphal, there were real reasons for antipathy.</p>
<p>The two men had very different approaches to the struggle against Britain. Gandhi, who became leader of the Indian National Congress (INC), was a pacifist with an inclusive attitude towards Muslims and Christians. Savarkar, who would lead the Hindu Mahasabha, was a right-wing majoritarian who spawned the idea of hindutva, or Hindu-ness--the belief that the Hindu identity is inseparable from the Indian identity. Congress eclipsed the Mahasabha and, since history belongs to the victors, the story of India's independence movement became one of non-violence. But the strand of thought that Savarkar represented was more important than is generally recognised, and is enjoying a revival.</p>
<p>A member of the Mahasabha broke away to form the paramilitary Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), or national volunteer organisation, in 1925, modelled, some say, on the British army. A social rather than explicitly political organisation, it presented itself as the world's largest non-governmental group, in which like-minded, khaki-uniformed men could gather for dawn calisthenics. It recruited boys at an impressionable age, as the Jesuits did, the better to inculcate them with discipline and with passion for the cause. One such was the eight-year-old Narendra Modi. The future prime minister attended training sessions with the RSS, was subsequently inducted as a cadet, and in 1985 was assigned by the RSS to its political wing, the Bharatiya Janata Party, which he rose to lead.</p>
<p>Mr Modi is India's strongest leader since Indira Gandhi, and its most controversial. The source of controversy is his failure in 2002, when chief minister of Gujarat, to avert a massacre of Muslims, which opponents attribute to a hostility to Muslims born of the ideology that Savarkar spawned. Mr Modi has never apologised for the massacre, though he said last year that he felt regret over them, as he would at seeing a puppy run over in the street. Nor has he made any attempt to distance himself from the RSS.</p>
<p>The RSS, meanwhile, is becoming more overtly political. Mohan Bhagwat, its current leader, is somewhat in the mould of Savarkar, paraphrasing his beliefs and promoting Hindutva. In August this year Mr Bhagwat directly echoed Savarkar by saying all who live in "Hindustan" are in fact Hindus, whatever Muslims, Christians or secular Hindus might say. More striking, the RSS leader has switched the organisation's methods. Now, far from eschewing party politics, the group has become an enthusiastic and effective actor within it. The RSS's millions of members and volunteers (no one knows just how many active ones there really are) played a big role in electing the BJP by a landslide in 2014. At least 19 ministers in government, including Mr Modi, have a background in the RSS. Its leaders are seconded to senior posts in the party too. So the ideas of the man who inspired the RSS matter more than ever before.</p>
<h3>The naked jumper</h3>
<p>The lawyer described by a British official in 1906 as "a small man with an intelligent face and a nervous manner" does not sound like the muscular hero that Indian nationalists crave, but Savarkar clearly had a certain dash. In 1910, while he was in London, he was charged with conspiring to wage war against the king and with providing weapons used to assassinate a Briton in the Indian civil service, sentenced to two life terms--50 years--in jail and sent back to India. While the steamship "Morea" was berthed in Marseille harbour, he slipped away from his guards, leapt, almost naked, into the sea and swam ashore. Unfortunately for the eulogists, he was promptly caught by French police and bundled back to the ship.</p>
<p>His daring did, however, win him fame, and also created legal history. France's government, annoyed that Britain had overseen an arrest on its territory, wanted Savarkar returned. Britain refused so the matter went to the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague. It ruled his arrest was indeed "irregular", but decided Savarkar might as well stay in India. The case was one of the earliest heard by the tribunal.</p>
<p>Savarkar's next stop was the Andaman Islands--a group of islands in the Bay of Bengal. This palm-fringed tropical paradise served as a penal colony for the British. Cellular Jail in the capital, Port Blair, is now a memorial for freedom campaigners. In a park opposite stands a row of statues of independence heroes. One is of a slender man with a pinched face behind round spectacles. A pen protrudes from his jacket pocket, one hand rests on a part-furled umbrella and the other wags a finger at the sky. You might mistake him for a prissy bank manager, but a plaque identifies him as Vinayak Damodar Savarkar. The park is named after him.</p>
<p>Ranjit Savarkar, his great-nephew, who runs the Savarkar trust, says that he showed great fortitude in jail. A trained yogi, he overcame thoughts of suicide. Other inmates nicknamed him "Barrister Babu", for his London legal training. Already a published historian and poet, he used Cellular Jail to work on his writing--literally: he wrote on its walls. He spent a decade there before being moved to the mainland in 1921. He was subsequently freed, after pledging to keep out of politics--a promise which the ideology he was developing in jail suggests he did not intend to keep.</p>
<p>A fierce nationalist, he adored Guiseppe Mazzini, who fought for the unification of Italy, writing about him in the hope of inspiring resistance to the British in India. Savarkar believed that India is really composed of, and must only be run by, Hindus. In his 1924 book, "Hindutva", he drew on cultural, philosophical and religious practices of ancient Hinduism, a rich faith that allows immense variety in how it is followed. But he also distinguished the ideology of hindutva--an attempt to unite disparate Hindus in a political project--from the religion. He himself was an atheist, and disapproved of aspects of traditional Hindu belief, dismissing cow worship as superstitious--a stance that would upset many today. He was an early outspoken opponent of caste discrimination. In the 1920s and 1930s others among the emerging Indian political elite opposed "untouchability", the rejection as sub-human of those considered "below caste". But Savarkar went further, saying modern India should drop altogether the idea of dividing people by caste.</p>
<p>His attitude towards Muslims, who made up a quarter of the population before partition, and other non-Hindus was less liberal. He regarded them as alien and separate, in effect not as real Indians. He was fiercely opposed to the formation of Pakistan and what his great-nephew calls the "appeasement" of Muslims. He believed that they, along with the Europeans, had crushed Hindus for a millennium--a sentiment echoed by Mr Modi in an address to parliament after his election this year, when he spoke of ending "1,200 years of slave mentality" in India.</p>
<p>Aside from his view of Muslims, the big difference between Savarkar and the nationalists in the INC lay in their contrasting attitudes to violence. He also wrote one of the first Indian accounts of the uprising in 1857, centred in Delhi. Known as the "Mutiny" to the British, it is referred to by many Indians as the "first war of independence"--echoing the title of Savarkar's book, "The Indian War of Independence". It was a gruesome episode, in which hundreds of thousands were killed, but Savarkar was untroubled by the violence, and seemed to justify the murders of British women and children. His works are steeped in a desire for revenge against those who have humiliated Hindus, and his frustration with the passivity of his co-religionists: "I want all Hindus to get themselves re-animated and re-born into a martial race." In his early years, he circulated manuals on bomb making. He approved of--and probably assisted in--the assassination of colonial administrators. He was suspected, for example, of encouraging a student radical who shot dead Sir Curzon Wyllie, a government official, one summer night on a Kensington street in 1909.</p>
<h3>Rewriting history</h3>
<p><span class="KonaFilter image-container"><span data-post-image="" class="image on-image"></span><p></p></span></p>
<p>Today, some Indians adulate him. On the day your correspondent called in at Cellular Jail, a party of jovial men in their 80s and 90s, an official "Eminent Committee of Freedom Fighters", was also visiting. Among the last surviving veterans who battled the British in the Quit India movement in the 1940s, they raised gnarled fists to chant "Jai Hind", posed for pictures and praised Savarkar as strong. The local MP called veer (brave) Savarkar a "ferocious, dangerous man who frightened off the British". Rashida Iqbal, the jail's curator, assessed him as "one of the most important freedom fighters". Port Blair's airport, like the park, bears his name. Some 2,000km away, in his native Maharashtra, a street and a park in Mumbai also each carry his name. (In London a blue plaque identifies his former home in Highgate.)</p>
<p>Savarkar's enthusiasm for violence sits uncomfortably with conventional ideas of how India got its independence. India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, and then the Congress party (successor to the INC) promoted a pacifist narrative of history, the idea that Gandhi and the likes of B.R. Ambedkar, a social reformer who inspired the Modern Buddhist Movement, triumphed through non-violent resistance. That meant downplaying the bloodshed of 1857, in which atrocities were perpetrated by both sides, and also the roles of Savarkar, Subhas Chandra Bose and Vallabhbhai Patel.</p>
<p>Bose, the Bengali leader of an Indian National Army against the British in the second world war and an ally of Hitler and imperial Japan, led some 40,000 soldiers against the British. (He didn't get far, though the Japanese briefly handed him control of the Andamans.) Patel, the "Iron Man of India", had the Bismarckian task of uniting the country. He oversaw the integration of 562 princely states into India, threatening and using military force. Operation Polo in 1948, a five-day conquest of Hyderabad, a wealthy and Muslim-run state in the south, was bloody indeed. Official estimates, only made public in 2013, suggest the fighting and subsequent Hindu-Muslim clashes there killed between 27,000 and 40,000 people. Some historians claim the real toll might have been five times higher.</p>
<p>The way the story of Indian independence is told is beginning to change. Mr Modi and the BJP are keen to celebrate muscular, nationalist figures. Patel is likely to have a much higher profile in future: in the national budget, in July 2014, the government set aside $32m to erect a statue of him in Gujarat, twice the size of the Statue of Liberty, by 2018. And while Mr Modi frequently invokes Gandhi's name and beliefs, he refers almost as often to Swami Vivekananda, a 19th-century nationalist who revived Hinduism and promoted it abroad. Mr Modi is said to be named after him (the swami was originally called Narendra Nath Datta) and frequently poses before his photograph. Vivekananda's ideas on invigorating Hinduism foreshadowed Savarkar's hindutva project.</p>
<p>Savarkar's profile is lower, but is also rising. Educational comics, hagiographies and patriotic films retell parts of his life story. In 2008 Mr Modi, then chief minister of Gujarat, inaugurated a website (savarkar.org) that promotes a man "largely unknown to the masses because of the vicious propaganda against him and misunderstanding around him that has been created over several decades", and in 2012 he launched a Gujarati-language biopic. A previous BJP-led government put Savarkar's portrait in parliament. On his birthday this year, May 28th, the prime minister paid homage to him there. Mr Modi tweeted about Savarkar's "tireless efforts towards the regeneration of our motherland". Ranjit Savarkar's group plans various events to mark the 50th anniversary of Savarkar's death in 1966. (Aged 83, he submitted to what he called atmaarpan--refusing food, water or medicine in order to die. It took 20 days.)</p>
<p>Yet Savarkar remains immensely divisive. He was a fiercely outspoken critic of Gandhi, still India's top national hero: he called Gandhi weak, a "sissy" and far too willing to collaborate with Britain. Gandhian talk of man's common humanity he regarded as utopian to the point of naivety. In articles from the 1920s to the 1940s Savarkar lambasted Gandhi as a "crazy lunatic" who "happens to babble...[about] compassion, forgiveness", yet "notwithstanding his sublime and broad heart, the Mahatma has a very narrow and immature head." Gandhi promoted ahimsa, a Buddhist rejection of violence which Savarkar called "mealy-mouthed". He said Gandhi was a hypocrite for supporting violence by the British against Germany in the first world war. Nor did he cheer Gandhi's prominent backing for the Ottoman Caliphate Movement, designed to win Indian Muslims to oppose British colonial rule.</p>
<p>Over the years, Savarkar was eclipsed by his rival. During the 1920s and 1930s, the INC benefited from its ability to claim plausibly that it spoke for Muslims as well as Hindus, which made it a more credible interlocutor with the colonial authorities. Perhaps more important, it had an impressive organisation and, in Gandhi and later in Nehru, accomplished political leaders.</p>
<p>By the mid 1940s Savarkar and his supporters in the Mahasabha (which he led until his death) had a new gripe against Gandhi. They were enraged at the prospect of Pakistan seceding from India. Gandhi, in their eyes, did nothing to stop that "vivisection". Worse, he seemed to favour Pakistan when it sent forces to violently seize Kashmir, evidence to Savarkar that warlike Muslims were again crushing passive Hindus. When Nehru applied economic sanctions on Pakistan (refusing to pass on its share of central-bank funds from before independence), Gandhi launched a fast in protest and forced him to back down. To Savarkar's followers in the Mahasabha, that constituted national betrayal.</p>
<p>On January 30th 1948 Gandhi was assassinated in Delhi. The killer, Nathuram Godse, was a member of the Mahasabha, edited its newspaper and was an associate of Savarkar's. Godse's explanation of his actions echoed Savarkar: he said he murdered Gandhi for his "false notions of Hindu-Muslim unity" and in fury over the secession of Pakistan. Savarkar was arrested and tried as a plotter in the murder. He denied all and was acquitted. That did not convince everybody. As the leader of the Mahasabha, who had praised the efficacy of violence and railed against Muslims, it was reasonable to suspect he had at least inspired Gandhi's killer. A.G. Noorani, author of a book on Savarkar and Godse, goes further. He draws a parallel to the Kensington murder of Wylie in 1909, saying the elder man had twice pressed others to pull the trigger. "I would definitely call him complicit in the assassination of Gandhi," he concludes. He points, too, to an official commission of inquiry into Gandhi's death, in the late 1960s, which drew on testimony unavailable at the original trial. It found the evidence was "destructive of any theory other than the conspiracy to murder by Savarkar and his group". Following Gandhi's murder the RSS was also banned, for a year. Yet the final reason why Savarkar should remain unacceptable in modern India goes beyond suspicion over Gandhi's murder. It lies in his attitude to his fellow, non-Hindu, Indians. In his own writing he relates joyfully how as a 12-year-old boy he led a gang of schoolmates to stone his village mosque and smash its windows and tiles, in the aftermath of Hindu-Muslim riots. Relating how "we vandalised the mosque to our heart's content", he adds that when confronted by Muslim boys, he and his pals wielded knives and sticks and chased them away.</p>
<p>Throughout his writing he sets out Muslims as savage, immoral, sensual and eager to destroy the Hindu way of life. In 1937 he wrote of there being "two antagonistic nations living side by side in India", an idea that relies on using religion as the defining characteristic of any Indian, one utterly against the secular constitution of India. And while he occasionally wrote admiringly of the political and religious fervour of Islam, or rather of Muslim political leaders, he did so to encourage his fellow Hindus to match or exceed it.</p>
<p>In India today the fear of communal clashes--between Hindus and Muslims--should not be overblown. But it is never far away. Especially before elections, parties exploit religious tensions. Those who promote hindutva and echo Savarkar whip up stories of "love jihad", alleging that Muslim men convert large numbers of Hindu women by seducing them. Earlier this month a BJP parliamentarian praised Godse as a "patriot" equal to Gandhi. Members of the increasingly influential RSS feel emboldened. Such majoritarian politics, when a larger religious group sets out to absorb or flatten a minority, is utterly destructive. One need only look at the failure of Pakistan as a reminder of that. Sarvarkar could be a brilliant, eloquent and progressive leader. He could also be extremist, violent and divisive. If his influence grows, India's tolerance and moderation will be at risk.</p>
<p>"Notwithstanding his...broad heart, the Mahatma has a very narrow and immature head," wrote Savarkar</p>
<p>&#xa0;</p>
<p>Savarkar (back row, second left) was arrested and tried as a plotter in Gandhi's murder. He was acquitted</p>
<p>&#xa0;</p>
<p>Click <a href="https://subscriptions.economist.com/nwcd">here</a> to subscribe to The Economist</p>
<p></p>

Narendra Modi's Mentor Thought Gandhi Was A Sissy

<p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div><ul class="summary-list"><li><strong>Brandon Rogers is a YouTube star with <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCywhnhPP3dAw7huG_y0hdEg">4.5 million subscribers</a>&#xa0;who was nominated for a Streamy Award for Comedy on Tuesday, but his road to success has not been easy.</strong></li><li><strong>Rogers toiled on YouTube in relative obscurity for years before going viral on the now-defunct video service Vine.</strong></li><li><strong>Rogers' career has included many twists that are emblematic of the changes (and struggles) of digital <keyword id="6354777" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Media">media</keyword>, including having a show on a subscription service that shut down, dealing with having his videos demonetized on YouTube, and getting one of the first premium Facebook Watch shows.</strong></li><li><strong>Rogers gave Business Insider a behind-the-scenes look at his rise, from making depressing videos for a personal injury law firm to the time Facebook told him to tone down the blood and feces on his show.</strong></li></ul><p><br>It was 2 a.m. by the time Brandon Rogers had packed up everything he could fit in his car, ready to run away from his hometown of Livermore, California - a small, sleepy city on the outskirts of the San Francisco Bay Area - and to Los Angeles.</br></p><p>It was his "rock bottom point," Rogers told Business Insider. He was in his mid-20s and had been making YouTube videos for about seven years, with only a few thousand subscribers and nothing tangible to show for it. He had watched his other actor friends make their way through college and graduate.</p><p>"I was scared," he said. "I was going to be left in this town without my friends because they all got their s--- together and got out."</p><p>Little did Rogers know the YouTube channel that seemed so futile then would - a few years later, and a decade after he started it in 2006 - begin to blow up, eventually reaching its current height of over 4.5 million subscribers. That subscriber count puts Rogers in the upper echelon of YouTube creators, and he was nominated for a Streamy Award on Tuesday in the Comedy category.</p><p>But it hasn't been a straight path. In many ways, his long strive for stardom is representative of the numerous fits and starts the fledgling web video medium, and its top platforms, have experienced over the past decade. Rogers, right alongside Facebook, Google, Twitter, and a few other titans, has been trying to figure out what native web video content is, what fans want, and what business model makes sense.</p><p>On his way to the top, Rogers experienced every twist of the changing ecosystem, from going viral on video-sharing network Vine (RIP), to landing a show on Fullscreen's now-defunct subscription service, to creating one of the first shows on Facebook's Watch platform.</p><p>"It really does feel like I'm on the cusp of history," Rogers said. "I'm not making it, but I'm a part of it."</p><p>Indeed, Rogers' comedy feels like it could only exist in the Wild West of the internet. It is frenetic, bawdy, offensive, and utterly unhinged -&#xa0;in a way that millions have found hilarious. He has developed a roster of dozens of surreal characters who interact with each other, often at a dizzying pace.</p><p>His characters include an ornery grandpa who refuses to provide candy, a mom who always seems to be on the verge of a highly caffeinated breakdown, a blind German fashion designer, and a strict hall monitor.</p><p>If you aren't familiar, here is a video that mashes up a lot of his characters:</p><p>But while Rogers said he's always enjoyed playing various characters, he didn't develop his signature style until he took a depressing job at a law firm - following that late-night move to LA - and found his cameraman and collaborator Gabriel Gonzalez.</p><p>In tracing Rogers' story, you can see what a strange ride the digital media business has been for creators over the last few years, and how little Hollywood (and even tech giants like Facebook and Google) understand about this new world of internet entertainment.</p><h2>Developing his style while making brutal videos for a law firm</h2><p>The first job Rogers found in LA was making videos for a personal injury law firm. Rogers would go into the house of the plaintiff of the suit, the injured person, and do a documentary on a "day in their life" with their new, horrible circumstances.</p><p>"It's so sad, you'd cut to their confessionals, 'What do you miss most about your previous relationship with your wife,' and they would start crying," he said. "Almost all the videos won the cases. It was a dark job. I had to take someone who was f----- up and make them look even more f----- up [to] pull the heartstrings of a jury."</p><p>Rogers did the job for three years with Gonzalez, who was the cameraman. Gonzalez was brilliant behind the camera and would get beautiful shots for these videos, Rogers said. And the idea started brewing in Rogers' head that these "day in the life" videos were compelling and could travel beyond the courtroom context.</p><p>"Let's make a funny version of these," Rogers proposed to Gonzalez one day.</p><p>Rogers had been making every type of YouTube video imaginable for nearly a decade, but these "day in the life" videos of wacky characters were the ones that caught on.</p><p>But there was a big problem.</p><p>Rogers' videos didn't go viral when he uploaded them to his YouTube page. They actually started to get picked up when someone Rogers didn't know uploaded 6-second clips of them to the video-snippet-sharing platform Vine. (After buying Vine in 2012, Twitter shut it down in 2016.)</p><p>The first clip that blew up on Vine was a clip of Rogers playing his grandpa character at a supermarket.</p><p>"They didn't think I was an actor," Rogers said of the people watching the clip on Vine. And worse, he wasn't credited. Then another clip, and another, began to circulate on Vine. He wasn't credited in any of them.</p><p>"No one knew it was the same person," Rogers said, because he looked so different dressed as each character. He said he even started seeing quotes from the clips on tee shirts in restaurants and felt "maddeningly" like Bruce Wayne or Clark Kent.</p><p>"No one knew it was me," he said. It was agony.</p><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div><h2>"The most gratifying moment of my career"</h2><p>But then in August of 2015, Rogers had what he called the "most gratifying moment of my career." The Fine Brothers, one of YouTube's original superstars, made a video connecting the dots that Rogers was the creator behind these Vine clips, and the memes that resulted.</p><p>"That immediately stopped any negativity about people taking my work," Rogers said. He gained 27,000 followers overnight, he said. It changed his life.</p><p>"Those 10 years, not only did my family think it was a waste of time, but I did too," Rogers said. "I'd go home at night crying for no other reason than, 'This is my life now, and it's not going to get any better than this.'"</p><p>After the Fine Brothers video, Rogers ascended quickly in the ranks of the YouTube famous, though it didn't begin to financially sustain him until he reached around one million followers, he said.</p><p>"I had 10 years of catalogued footage" for fans to work through, he said when explaining one reason his fan base exploded so rapidly.</p><h2>"No one really knows that they are doing"</h2><p>Soon, Rogers was given the opportunity to expand his reach beyond YouTube.</p><p>In 2016, less than a year after his fame started to rise, Rogers got a call saying digital studio Super Deluxe, owned by Turner, wanted to meet with him. Rogers had been taking a lot of meetings around LA and didn't really know what this one was going to be about.</p><p>It turns out, Super Deluxe wanted to offer him a show.</p><p>"I walked into that office and they said, 'We'd like to give you a show,'" Rogers said. "It was the CEO himself … They were looking for a brand of comedy that hadn't quite been done, that really pushed the limit."</p><p>Rogers said the meeting lasted 15 to 20 minutes. And just like that, Rogers was a showrunner with nearly total autonomy. Super Deluxe confirmed to Business Insider that the show was greenlit after one meeting between Rogers and the CEO.</p><p>The show was called "Magic Funhouse" and portrayed "the dysfunctional production team for a children's show." Super Deluxe made it to run on Fullscreen's short-lived subscription service, a Netflix competitor that cost $6 a month which aimed to create premium shows with YouTube talent. (Fullscreen, which has been fully controlled by AT&amp;T since August, announced in November 2017 that it was shutting down the subscription service and laying off 25 people.)</p><p>Fullscreen (and Super Deluxe) gave "Magic Funhouse" a generous budget for a streaming show from a first-time creator. It was a time when upstart subscription services like Verizon's Go90 and YouTube Red were spending relatively large amounts on shows anchored by digital talent. Rogers said the show had a total of around 150 people working on it, a number that was confirmed by Super Deluxe (including "cast, extras, crew, and post-production").</p><p>"They brought me into this extra-large conference room for our first production meeting and it was a sea of people - all that was very scary," he said. "The show was run by rules and regulations of a TV show … but you kind of come to a realization that no one really knows what they are doing. They know how to produce a show, but to produce it for a digital network? I started to get frustrated because I felt like nothing was going my way."</p><p>He said he kept getting notes to "dial it down, dial it down," for being too outlandish, though Super Deluxe disputed that characterization, saying some things were simply "cut back for production reasons." Rogers felt a lot of money was going toward the production when it really should have been going toward the writing, he said.</p><p>And even though he was paid well, ultimately Rogers felt like he wasn't reaching an audience. Rogers said Fullscreen didn't give him any viewership data, though he was told it was the service's top-performing show. Fullscreen confirmed to Business Insider that "Magic Funhouse" was its subscription service's most-watched original show.</p><p>But being the top show on Fullscreen wasn't satisfying for Rogers.</p><p>"I'll tell you what I'd never do again is another digital platform like Seeso or Fullscreen," he said, both of which folded their subscription services in 2017. "It's almost a demotion compared to YouTube."</p><p>But despite some of his frustrations with "Magic Funhouse," Rogers got another crack at a streaming-only "premium" show the next year, this time with Facebook footing the bill.</p><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div><h2>"Tone down the blood and feces"</h2><p>When Facebook came knocking on Rogers' door in 2017, he was having trouble making money on YouTube because his videos kept getting flagged as inappropriate and demonetized. In YouTube's quest to keep advertisers away from hate videos, many creators saw some of their videos cut off from ads. This was colloquially called the "adpocalypse" by many YouTubers. It was especially painful at the time because YouTube had been one of the only platforms to provide a steady source of income for digital talent, letting creators keep 55% of ad revenue generated by their videos.</p><p>YouTube declined to comment for this story.</p><p>"Facebook comes out from the shadows: 'Hello Brandon, we understand YouTube is f------ you over,'" Rogers said. "They brought me into the office. We had a YouTube sh--talking contest. They offered me a 20-episode webseries: 'We understand you're a risky kind of a guy with your humor.'"</p><p>Facebook did not respond to a request for comment.</p><p>Rogers worked on that series for about six months, putting aside most of his work on his YouTube channel. He had complete creative control and got a flat budget. He worked with just two other people on it and had little overhead.</p><p>"We made a good chunk of change from it," he said.</p><p>He's proud of how the show, called "Stuff &amp; Sam," turned out. "The series was really, really awesome," he said. But he doesn't know how Facebook felt.</p><p>&#xa0;</p><p>"Every time I would talk to them, they'd say, 'Oh it's funny' -&#xa0;but they have to say that … I don't know whether they liked it or not."</p><p>He said he only got one real note.</p><p>"They did call me once, once to specifically tone down the blood and feces," he laughed. "Not eradicated. But just toned down. That was really the only thing."</p><p>Facebook didn't really market or promote "Stuff &amp; Sam," which launched in October 2017 as one of its early Watch shows, he said, but it gave him a budget and freedom. And Facebook only demanded exclusivity on it for two weeks, after which he put the episodes on YouTube. The show ended up getting much more viewership on YouTube. For instance, the first episode currently sits at 127,000 views on Facebook and 2.5 million on YouTube.</p><p>"I couldn't be mad," he said. Rogers said he thought Facebook helped him reach a different audience, and that he noticed more men coming to his live shows following the release, whereas before it was mainly women.</p><p>And there was another benefit: YouTube started to listen to him.</p><p>"I mentioned [to YouTube] how much I loved Facebook," he said. "Suddenly YouTube, they remonetized my videos, every video I put up, untouched. Facebook helped me get my YouTube mojo back."</p><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div><h2>"They don't understand but they try to..."</h2><p>The main thing Rogers has learned maneuvering the convergence of digital and linear TV, and the birth of new forms of entertainment, is that no one has quite figured it out.</p><p>Everyone is "testing" - "testing is a great way to make money" for a creative, he said.</p><p>"These old rich white f---ers in ties don't know what they are doing," he said, but neither do many of the young execs. "No one knows what they are doing … You have to stand out among the rest and a lot of these companies are afraid to."</p><p>Rogers recalled one meeting with an exec of a big-name cable TV channel.</p><p>"Your stuff, it's very out there, we love it," Rogers said, imitating the exec. "But you should really, you know, if you bring it down a bit like … Amy Schumer … She's funny, she's out there, but she does keep it grounded."</p><p>"They don't understand but they try to," Rogers said of entertainment execs, exasperated.</p><p>Rogers said despite the strides made by creators who came up through social media, there is still a negative stigma around YouTubers in Hollywood. But he has the opposite view.</p><p>"No, we are actually better than you," Rogers said in regards to more traditional movie or TV stars. "You got chosen. You got lucky. We have to promote ourselves. We have to go out there and do everything on our own."</p><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div><p><strong>Rogers is currently touring with his live show:</strong></p><p><em>10/7 - Seattle, WA - The Showbox</em></p><p><em>11/4 - Englewood, CO - Gothic Theatre</em></p><p><em>11/17 - Austin, TX - Stateside at the Paramount</em></p><p><em>11/25 - Fort Lauderdale, FL - Amaturo Theater</em></p><div></div><div></div>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/how-actors-fake-fight-movies-2018-8">How actors fake fight in movies</a></h3>        <div>                    </div>    </div>

YouTube star Brandon Rogers tells the inside story of his rise to 4.5 million subscribers, from his big break to clueless execs and Facebook's one hilarious request

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container"><div class="image"><p class="source">Screenshot</p><p class="caption">Suzy in Seven Up (1964)</p></div><p></p></div></p>
<p>Back in 1964, the British television news show "World in Action" profiled the lives of fourteen seven-year-olds from various walks of life in the U.K.:<span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;"> some were in an elite West London prep school, others were from the rough and tumble East End, one grew up on farm, and two were in a children's home run by a charity.</span></p>
<p>The show was inspired by a Jesuit motto: "Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man."</p>
<p>"Why do we bring these children together?" the show's narrator asked. "Because we want to get a glimpse of England in the year 2000. The shop steward and the executive of the year 2000 are now seven years old."</p>
<p>Called "Seven Up," the show was a big hit in the U.K. What happened next, however, made it legendary.</p>
<p><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">Michael Apted, a young man who had worked on the original show, decided to revisit the subjects seven years later, when they were 14 years old, for a show called "Seven plus 7." Seven years after that, he visited them again for "28 Up," and seven years after that, he did it again, and so forth all the way through "56 Up," released last year.</span></p>
<p><embed src="//www.youtube.com/v/f-U6RfKVzCs?version=3&amp;hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;" height="338" width="600" /></p>
<p>The series has became one of the most celebrated TV programs in the <keyword id="6361754" type="COUNTRY" weightage="60" keywordseo="United-Kingdom">United Kingdom</keyword>, topping a 2005 <a href="http://www.imdb.com/list/Pixb1R4U0t4/">list of the greatest documentaries ever</a>, and inspiring similar series in other countries,<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0281550/"> including the United States</a>. Roger Ebert, writing <a href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-the-up-documentaries-1985">in a series about "Great Movies" in 1998</a>, said that the series aimed to "penetrate to the central mystery of life."</p>
<p>But what is that mystery, and what answers can the series provide? I had never watched the series before, so I recently sat down and watched all eight episodes in a row, clocking in at more than 12 hours of footage.</p>
<p>Here are seven things  I noticed:</p>
<h3><div class="KonaFilter image-container float_right" style="width:400px"><div class="image"><p class="source">Screenshot</p><p class="caption">Lynn in "7 Plus Seven" (1970)</p></div><p></p></div></h3>
<h3><strong>1. Rich kids have a huge advantage over poor kids, but it is not insurmountable</strong></h3>
<p>In one of the most famous moments in the show, three boys from a Kensington prep school (Andrew, Charles, and John) list their future plans - a certain boarding school, followed by a particular college at Oxford or Cambridge, followed by a specific career. <span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">Of these three boys, two nailed their futures with remarkable accuracy, while the third failed to get into Oxbridge but made do with another well-respected university, Durham.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">The accuracy of these boys in predicting their lives' courses is stunning, especially in comparison to the uncertainty of</span> some of the other children in the first show. Paul, one of the boys from the charity school, doesn't know what the word "university" means - and he goes on not to drop out of high school and become a bricklayer and handyman who struggles financially<span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">.</span></p>
<p>Thankfully, childhood circumstances don't determine everything.</p>
<p>Nick, a child from a rural village who went to a one room school four miles away, ended up being perhaps the most academically successful of all the original children. He moves to the United States and works as a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, enjoying professional and financial success.</p>
<p><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">Likewise, one of the kids from the East End, Tony, becomes a London taxi driver with apparent economic stability - enough to buy a second home in Spain. <span></span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">Conversely, Neil, a middle-class boy who seems to be one of the brightest in the first show and had ambitions of Oxford, ends up dropping out of Aberdeen University and becoming homeless.</span></p>
<h3><strong>2. Careers are not the defining factor in people's happiness</strong></h3>
<p>Thankfully, professional success is not the only thing that matters.</p>
<p><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">For example, two of the most downtrodden kids in the first episode, Symon and Paul, are housed at a charity school. Symon is the product of birth out-of-wedlock and continues to live at the school, away from his single mother, until he is 13. Paul is being housed at the school while his parents divorce, and seems to hate it: telling the camera awkwardly about how the older boys hit him. </span><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">Neither child attains financial stability or success, but both find a loving partner and ultimately build happy families.</span></p>
<p>On the other hand, John, one of the poshest prep school boys who went on to go to Oxford, becomes a litigator but expresses disappointment that he never became a politician, as he had hoped he would and as many of his peers did.</p>
<h3><strong><div class="KonaFilter image-container float_left" style="width:400px"><div class="image"><p class="source">Screenshot</p><p class="caption">Nick in "21 Up" (1977)</p></div><p></p></div></strong></h3>
<p><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">One of the cheeriest participants on the show is Bruce, a child from a wealthy family who goes on to work in tough East London schools and Bangladesh, before eventually working at a private school. Meanwhile, another participant who became a teacher seems far less happy -</span><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;"> "It is not the job that makes you unhappy," Ebert </span><a href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-the-up-documentaries-1985">observed about this in 1998</a><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">. "It is whether you want to be doing it."</span></p>
<h3><strong>3. The participants show a big capacity for change</strong></h3>
<p>A lot can change between episodes. Bruce is one of the few characters still single at 35, and he is clearly a little worried that he may remain a bachelor. By the next episode, however, he has found a wife, and the next time we see him after that, he has not one but two kids.<span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;"><br /></span></span></p>
<p>Meanwhile, Tony's economic turnaround surprised even the director, who later admitted he filmed Tony at various neighborhoods with a connection to London's gangland past as he believed he would eventually <a href="http://www.onthemedia.org/story/261818-up-series-56/transcript/">end up in prison</a>. Instead the cab driver ends up sunning himself (and his extended family) at a holiday home in Spain.<span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;"><span><br /></span></span></span></p>
<p>One of the most remarkable stories in the show, however, is that of Neil, has become homeless by "28 Up." While that episode makes for uncomfortable viewing (Neil admits he has considered suicide), he is later able to return to some kind of normality as a local politician (crucially, a key part in this is played by his friend and fellow Seven Up participant Bruce).</p>
<p>You can see some of Neil's story in the clip from 49 Up below:</p>
<p></p>
<h3><strong>4. Britain's demographics have changed dramatically</strong></h3>
<p>It's hard to imagine that a similar show cast today would feature the same cross section of society.</p>
<p>On one hand, this may have to do with the limitations on the casting process - the first show was designed as a one-off, and Apted, who did the casting on that show, was only given ten days to find its subjects.</p>
<p>Yet surely the casting says something about how Britain saw itself in 1964. The participants come primarily from the upper crust and lower edges of society, with almost none from the middle class. <span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">Only four of the participants are female, and just one participant is not white.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">Apted didn't anticipate that changing economic factors that would blur the lines in the U.K. class system, inflating the numbers and significance of the middle class, nor that women would obtain a vastly more prominent position in society. He was also unaware </span><a href="http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/guide-method/census/census-2001/index.html">that by the 2001 U.K. census</a><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;"> almost one in ten people would list themselves as an ethnicity other than white.</span></p>
<p>The show's content also reveals changes in the U.K. For example, almost all of those who grow up in London's East End move elsewhere, while those who stay look increasingly out of place in what has largely become a Bangladeshi neighborhood.</p>
<p>In one sad scene, Tony goes back to the dog-racing track he hung spent a lot of time in growing up as it now stands derelict. In the most recent episode he returns to the spot again - this time it has been turned into the new Olympic Stadium for the 2012 games, one example of the massive government spending being put into the area in recent years.</p>
<h3><strong><strong><div class="KonaFilter image-container float_right" style="width:400px"><div class="image"><p class="source">Screenshot</p><p class="caption">Tony in "57 Up" (2012)</p></div><p></p></div></strong>5. Almost everyone seems better off</strong></h3>
<p>When the show began, Britain was less than 20 years past the end of the Blitz, with parts of the East End still rubble. The early episodes would also deal with the economic stagnation and rising unemployment of the late 60s and 70s.</p>
<p>Over the course of the show, however, the economy start to get better. Almost everyone seems to be able to live to a comfortable standard. Even those who had little educational opportunity seem able to move to middle class neighborhood and enjoy a lifestyle far more comfortable than they grew up with. The most obvious example is Tony with his Marbella mansion, but it is noticeable across the board.</p>
<p>The experience of the show participants matches up with reality. According to one <a href="http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/14977/1/14977.pdf">University College London study released in 2002</a>, "median equivalent incomes (before housing costs) have approximately doubled in real terms over the last four decades (up by 90 per cent since 1961)." The Institute for Fiscal Studies <a href="http://www.ifs.org.uk/comms/comm124.pdf">reported last year that on average median</a> household net incomes had grown by 1.5% per year over the past 5 decades.</p>
<p>The problem, of course, is that economic inequality has also grown during the past five decades: Even the richest members of the show are out of place in a London that has become home to an ultra-rich global elite.</p>
<h3><strong>6. Having your life on camera is a strange and often unpleasant experience<br /></strong></h3>
<p>Of the 14 children who were featured on the first show, only 10 have appeared in every episode. One, Kensington prep-schooler Charles, has refused to appear on any of the shows since 1977 (perhaps un-coincidentally, he now produces documentaries himself), while another says that he only participates in the shows to raise money for a charity he founded, saying that it is a "poison pill" he is forced to swallow every seven years.<strong></strong></p>
<p>Part of this is simply because the show has put the participants in the uncomfortable position of having their lives picked over by the British public. One participant, Peter, refuses to take part in three episodes after he is criticized in the tabloid press for angry remarks he made about Margaret Thatcher's government in 1984. Another participant's spouse later refuses to be involved in the show after her dismay about how some of her comments came across (she later divorces her participant husband).<strong></strong></p>
<p>Perhaps a bigger part of this animosity is because the director, Apted, forces them to scrutinize their own lives - their past, their future, their successes, and their failures. Apted, to his credit, often includes scenes of the participants scolding him for his line of questioning.</p>
<p>That so many participants have remained in the show says something about how much it has defined their lives.</p>
<p>"My ambition as a scientist is to be more famous for doing science than being in this film," Nick says at one point, "But unfortunately that's not going to happen.</p>
<h3><strong><div class="KonaFilter image-container float_left" style="width:400px"><div class="image on-image"><p class="source">Screenshot</p><p class="caption">Neil and Tony in Seven Up (1964)</p></div><p></p></div>7. The show is a legacy of a different time</strong></h3>
<p>If you're a Netflix Instant customer, you can watch all eight episodes of the show in a weekend; however, it is a strange experience to do so. These shows were <span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">designed to be watched <span>seven years apart, with viewers who might not remember what happened in the last one. <span>Binge-watching is frustrating, as the show constantly cuts to past episodes, repeating certain moments incessantly.</span></span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;"><span><span>As TV demands have changed, one wonders if we could pull off something so big and ambitious today</span></span></span><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;"> (most attempts to replicate the series in other countries have not been as successful).</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">There is a huge level of public service involved in a show like this, and it could perhaps have only happened in the context of British television at the time (while it was shown on the BBC's commercial television rival, ITV, there was a conscious effort in the 1960s to avoid having the kind of "vulgar" programming on British commercial television as there was seen in the United States).</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">Apted </span><a href="http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2012-05-14/56-up-michael-apted-on-the-documentary-series-thats-spanned-five-decades">recently said that </a><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">"the fragmented state of the business all over the world will never allow anything like this to happen again," and he may be right.</span></p>
<p>When the show was created, "reality TV" didn't exist, and neither did the idea of a normal person going on TV to become famous. As such the people on the show were remarkably natural and candid. They had nothing to gain from being on the show. <span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">The participants' understanding of the show may have changed, however</span><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;"> - Peter, an angry teacher who dropped out of the series for three episodes, came back to the show last year so that he could promote his new country rock group.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">The show's uniqueness is becoming only more apparent as it goes on. As the show has recorded the lives of the 14 participants, it will also show them getting old and eventually dying. </span><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">Even though all 14 original participants of the show are still alive, many of their parents and loved ones are not. On numerous occasions the show features the participants talking about grief, often in tears.</span></p>
<p>In the next one or two or three episodes, some participants will likely have died.</p>
<p><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">Apted, for his part, has said he has no </span><a href="http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2012-05-14/56-up-michael-apted-on-the-documentary-series-thats-spanned-five-decades">plans to pull the plug anytime soon</a><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">, though as he is 11 years older than his subjects, his own mortality may one day be an issue.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">"Well, I know what I hope," Apted </span><a href="http://www.onthemedia.org/story/261818-up-series-56/transcript/">recently told</a><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;"> NPR's On The Media. "I hope to do 84 Up when I'll be 99."</span></p>
<p><strong>The next episode of the Up Series is due in 2019. You can watch the episodes that <a href="http://dvd.netflix.com/Movie/56-Up/70265193">have been released on Netflix streaming</a>, or <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00CD6VY6S/ref=s9_hps_ft_g74_ir02?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&amp;pf_rd_s=center-3&amp;pf_rd_r=0F4C66Q40BWCWJHBP1SZ&amp;pf_rd_t=1401&amp;pf_rd_p=1635171002&amp;pf_rd_i=1001019701">order the DVDs from Amazon</a> or <a href="http://firstrunfeatures.com/56updvd.html">from independent distributors First Run Features</a>.</strong></p>

7 Observations From Watching An Epic Documentary On Modern Britain

<p><div class="image-container float_right" style="width:600px"><div class="image"><p class="caption">Hero? Or goat?</p></div></div>I was minding my own business last night when I got the note below from a respected investor.</p>
<p>As you will see, the investor has had it with all the adulation and sympathy being showered on newspaper families like the Grahams, who are being extolled for their decades-long "stewardship" of institutions like the <keyword id="79961" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Washington-Post">Washington Post</keyword> and New York Times and pitied for the terrible misfortune they and society have recently endured.</p>
<p>In the common telling, the investor observes, the Grahams and other newspaper families are cast as victims of an unforeseeable and horrible trend--the unstoppable rise of an invasive technology that has crippled the newspaper business and threatened a profession that has held society together for decades. The Grahams have done their heroic best, this story goes, but the forces of evil have just been too numerous and overwhelming. Now, finally, the brave and intrepid Grahams have had no choice but to surrender. So the world will now go to the dogs.</p>
<p>The real story, the investor believes, is that--like many business owners--the Grahams and other 'newspaper families' enjoyed decades of easy money and fame and then were confronted with a significant business challenge. Unlike many business owners, however, the Grahams failed to adapt to it:</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span><div class="image-container float_right click-to-enlarge"><div class="image"><a title_source="Washington Post" title_caption="" class="zoomin" href="http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/5203866c69bedd9938000015-960/post-front-page.png"><span class="click-to-enlarge-icon" title="Click to enlarge"></span></a><p class="source">Washington Post</p></div></div>I can't take it anymore.  All of this high-minded windiness on the </span><span>Post, the Grahams, journalism, democracy, etc.</span></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span></span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">I took a screenshot of the Post home page the day of the big story </span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">itself -- attached.</span></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"></span></span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Note the big ad in the upper right of the home page.</span></span></span></span></span></span></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"></span></span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The CPM [price per thousand views] on that was, what, 5 cents?</span></span></span></span></span></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"></span></span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Slate, ironically, [a Washington Post Company company] <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2013/07/how_one_weird_trick_conquered_the_internet_what_happens_when_you_click_on.html">analyzed those particular ads a few days ago</a>:</span></span></span></span></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">These are bottom-of-the-barrel remnant ads. They degrade the user experience, and are </span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">essentially consumer fraud on top of that.</span></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span>And that's the best they can do for the main ad on their home page.</span><br /><br /><span>What we have here is not a story of the decline of newspapers in </span><span>America blah blah blah.  What we have here is a story of basic </span><span>business incompetence.</span> </p>
<p>I agreed that the sympathy and adulation for the newspaper families was overblown. If there is another formerly fantastically profitable business in which the mogul owner gets to be referred to as a "steward," for example, I haven't heard of it. But I did point out that what's happening to the newspaper business is classic disruption--an attack from below by cheaper, easier, and simpler services (digital delivery and advertising)--and that getting disrupted is an extremely difficult challenge for a business to overcome.</p>
<p>The investor was undeterred. He brought up a print media company in Germany, Burda Media, that has adapted just fine to the rise of the Internet--by quickly diversifying into many successful digital businesses:</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span>Do a compare and contrast of the Washington Post Company (or for that matter the </span><span>New York Times Company) with Burda Media.</span><br /><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"></span></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Hubert Burda was the first media CEO to proactively visit a little </span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Silicon Valley startup called Netscape and has built an amazing </span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">digital business since, from very similar starting points (and from </span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Germany!).  Today, Burda employs 10,000 people and is thriving.</span><br /><br /><span>There was nothing preventing the leadership of American </span><span>newspaper/magazine companies from doing the same thing over the same </span><span>period.</span></p>
<p><span><span>The investor is right about Burda. They've done an excellent job. And he's right that t</span>here was nothing preventing American newspaper companies from doing the same thing. </span></p>
<p><span>And the Grahams actually did do the same thing, of course. They bought an education company that quickly became larger and more profitable than their newspaper. That education company, and some other assets (TV), will remain in the family portfolio now that the Washington Post has been jettisoned. </span></p>
<p><span>Interestingly, what the Grahams did <em>not</em> do was invest the quite-considerable profits from their other businesses in the future of the Post--a fact that should probably be noted in some of the Graham hagiographies. Instead, they dumped the paper the moment it stopped making them money. </span></p>
<p><span>It's easy to "steward" a business when it's also making you rich. It's more difficult when the going gets tough.</span></p>
<p><span>The good news for the Post, as well as the readers who love it and most of the folks who work there, is that the Post's new owner is perfectly willing to endure losses while investing in the future. (Amazon has been investing in the future for going on 20 years). The Post also has a perfectly healthy and growing digital business. The current digital business won't sustain the print-paper's high cost structure--nothing will--but it will still allow the Post to continue to produce an amazing amount of superb journalism. </span></p>
<p><span>And if the Post's new owner, <keyword id="191583" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="Jeff-Bezos">Jeff Bezos</keyword>, is successful with his "experimentation" over the next few years, the Post's digital business will become a healthy, vibrant, and profitable growth engine.</span></p>
<p><span>So, let the experimentation begin!</span></p>
<p><strong>SEE ALSO: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/why-jeff-bezos-bought-washington-post-2013-8">Here's Why I Think Jeff Bezos Bought The Washington Post</a></strong></p><p class="tagline">Disclosure: Jeff Bezos is an investor in Business Insider through his
personal investment company Bezos Expeditions.</p>

Investor Loses It Over Adulation And Sympathy For 'Newspaper Families' Like The Grahams -- This Is A Story Of Incompetence!

<p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>SoulCycle - an <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/expensive-fitness-classes-2015-6" target="_blank">expensive fitness</a> studio <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/why-people-pay-34-for-soulcycle-2014-9" target="_blank">popular</a> among&#xa0;metropolitan&#xa0;women - recently announced some big news: its founders have <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/soulcycles-founders-are-resigning-2016-4" target="_blank">resigned </a>from their positions as co-chief creative officers of the brand.<p>And it had&#xa0;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/cringeworthy-soulcycle-ipo-filing-2015-7" target="_blank">filed to go public</a>&#xa0;in July.</p><p>This verifies that the boutique indoor cycling classes are not only taking over America, but are also potentially going to be in the midst of a&#xa0;crucial transition.</p><p>So&#xa0;it's worth noting that&#xa0;like many fitness fads, it's not all it's cracked up to be.</p><p>I can confirm this firsthand.</p><p>I had a momentary obsession with SoulCycle. Stuck in a fitness rut and feeling the effects of my desk job on my waistline, I wanted a workout that would force me to break a sweat.</p><p>A shiny new, grapefruit-smelling SoulCycle studio had opened close to my neighborhood, and as an avid fan of indoor cycling, I found that sometimes regular cycling&#xa0;classes left me unsweaty and unsatisfied. I had tried high-intensity interval videos on YouTube in my living room, much to the chagrin of my neighbors, and that didn't work, either. The idea of a class was alluring; I would be required to show up, and at $34 a class, I would have to push myself, or else it wouldn't be worth it.</p><p>Plus, I had heard so much about the community of SoulCycle. Celebrities cycled there. Reportedly, the teachers were like gurus, and you would leave with your metaphorical demons cast out from your day!</p><p>But I was nervous, because in November I had passed my certification to be a Mad Dogg spinning instructor, and Mad Dogg master instructors vilify SoulCycle. I felt slightly like a traitor, but I was still excited about the new experience. Plus, a first class was a comparatively cheaper $20, and the new studio near my apartment even offered a one-time complimentary class. I promised myself I would go only those two times, but that turned into many, many more.</p><p>But then I realized there are many things wrong with SoulCycle. My wallet is now thanking me.</p><h3><strong>1. It's not a good workout, according to some experts. </strong></h3><p><strong><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div></strong></p><p>Because SoulCycle focuses on combining dance moves (that have not been scientifically proved to do anything for you) with riding the bike, I found it hard to actually get an optimal cardiovascular workout and a toning workout.</p><p>In 2011, James S. Fell wrote in the <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2011/nov/28/health/la-he-fitness-soulcycle-20111128" target="_blank">Los Angeles Times</a> that he gave SoulCycle "a failing grade for exercise physiology and biomechanics."</p><p>"The whole idea of working one's upper body while pedaling a stationary bike is not only counterproductive," he wrote, "it can be physically detrimental over time, according to several experts I talked to."</p><p>He wrote that neither of SoulCycle's cofounders, Julie Rice and Elizabeth Cutler, had a background in exercise <keyword id="41551" type="ENTERTAINMENT" weightage="60" keywordseo="science">science</keyword> or any indoor cycling certifications. (Rice told Fell the two worked with an exercise physiologist to come up with the routines.)</p><p>Further, some experts believe that the workout is bunk&#xa0;and that by combining weights and cycling, you actually lose efficiency, one expert told Fell.</p><p>"<span>You're probably going to burn less calories because your power output is going to drop," Jennifer Sage, a master-spinning instructor with a degree in exercise science who wrote the emphatic "<a href="http://www.indoorcyclingassociation.com/blog/id-rather-sell-my-soul-than-soul-cycle/" target="_blank">I'd Rather Sell My Soul Than SoulCycle</a>," told Fell.</span></p><p>Separately, Sage wrote that the popular move of doing push-ups on the bike&#xa0;was&#xa0;useless. "<span>Because of this vigorous action, there is momentum to his movement, reducing even more the potential of any strength gain," <a href="http://www.indoorcyclingassociation.com/blog/pushups-while-spinning-high-points-on-the-silly-scale/" target="_blank">she wrote</a>.</span></p><p><span>"<span>There is an illusion that they are working out harder because high repetitions can cause a burning sensation, but it doesn't accomplish anything," Martha Heaner, an indoor cycling instructor with over 15 year of experience&#xa0;who has&#xa0;a doctorate degree in nutrition and physical activity, told Fell in the same <a href="http://www.latimes.com/health/la-he-fitness-soulcycle-20111128-story.html#tugs_story_display&amp;page=1" target="_blank">Los Angeles Times</a>&#xa0;article.&#xa0;</span></span></p><h3><strong>2. You can hurt yourself.</strong></h3><p><strong><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div></strong></p><p>When I got certified to teach indoor cycling, one of the most important things I learned was that proper alignment is crucial to avoiding back injuries. While some SoulCycle instructors do make concerted&#xa0;efforts to go around and help participants find proper form before the class begins, others didn't do that in some of the classes I took.</p><p>That leaves&#xa0;room for injuries - and in an already intimidating (and at times, snobby) environment, it can be tough to ask for help, let alone grab the attention of your instructor or one of the attendants.</p><p>There's also more of an effort on "following the dance moves" than following the instructor. (You can see a hilarious&#xa0;<a href="http://gawker.com/5978735/we-came-we-spun-we-dubstepped-gawker-does-soulcycle" target="_blank">Gawker</a>&#xa0;review of the class in which Rich Juzwiak, Caity Weaver, and Leah Beckmann attempt to follow along to prove just how confusing these dance moves can be.)</p><p>But this shouldn't come as too much of&#xa0;a surprise, as SoulCycle openly discloses that most of its instructors, as is the case with&#xa0;its founders, do not have fitness backgrounds. "<span>SoulCycle is open about the fact that the company recruits performers as much as, if not more than, people with a fitness background," <a href="http://nymag.com/thecut/2013/01/evolution-of-soulcycle.html" target="_blank">New York Magazine</a> reported in 2013. </span></p><p><span>Master trainer Janet Fitzgerald confirmed to&#xa0;the magazine that she "<span>would rather not take an outdoor triathlete" as opposed to a dancer or SoulCycle enthusiast. This&#xa0;alone&#xa0;is yet another problem with the fitness regimen.</span></span></p><p><span><span>Even when doing the exercise routine properly, there are plenty of opportunities to injure yourself. Sage told the <a href="http://www.latimes.com/health/la-he-fitness-soulcycle-20111128-story.html#tugs_story_display&amp;page=1" target="_blank">Los Angeles Times</a>&#xa0;that "w<span>hen you start bobbing and weaving and doing push-ups on a bike while your legs are spinning, you risk hurting your low back." In that same article, other fitness experts disapproved of not only the validity, but the safety of the workout.</span></span></span></p><p><a href="http://www.indoorcyclingassociation.com/blog/id-rather-sell-my-soul-than-soul-cycle/" target="_blank">Sage has&#xa0;specifically&#xa0;criticized</a> the popular "tap-back" move for its ability to cause injuries - it's what spin instructors call a "contraindicated move." "<span>They are about as contraindicated as one can get because of the deceleration required by the back muscles," she wrote. "Otherwise you'd slam down hard into the saddle. There is zero benefit to doing these, and they are potentially harmful to joints and the musculature of the back."</span></p><p>Additionally, riding with little to no resistance can result in injuries.&#xa0;In a separate post detailing an unsafe spin class, <a href="http://www.indoorcyclingassociation.com/blog/this-could-be-one-the-craziest-and-most-dangerous-classes-ive-seen/" target="_blank">Sage wrote</a>,&#xa0;"<span>by not having resistance, rider's hips and spine are unsupported at such a high cadence, potentially injuring the low back." Of course, riding in any indoor cycling&#xa0;class with little resistance could lead to injuries like this.&#xa0;</span></p><h3><strong>3. SoulCycle fools&#xa0;you into thinking you're working harder than you actually are.</strong></h3><p><strong><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div></strong></p><p>If you've ever walked out of a SoulCycle class drenched in sweat, it's probably because the studios don't cool the rooms down; it's warm in there. The rooms are notoriously steamy. The first time I experienced this, I foolishly attributed my soaked attire&#xa0;to an intense workout. I must have burned a billion calories!</p><p>Not quite. Many people buy into the fact that they're eviscerating calories from their bodies, but it's just&#xa0;part of SoulCycle's pseudo-yogi schtick.</p><h3><strong>4. SoulCycle charges&#xa0;you for water and shoes.</strong></h3><p>SoulCycle requires riders to don shoes that are&#xa0;able to clip on to the pedals, which isn't unusual for an indoor cycling class. It's $3, however, to rent shoes previously worn by someone else. Additionally, Smart Water is $2.&#xa0;</p><p>Purchasing bottled water isn't a unique experience at an upscale fitness studio, but it does seem a bit excessive when you learn that SoulCycle's biggest competitor, Flywheel, grants you water and shoe rentals free.</p><p>These expenses add up on top of the already-steep fees.&#xa0;</p><h3><strong>5. You get shoved to the&#xa0;back, where you may&#xa0;not be able to see the instructor.</strong></h3><p><strong><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div></strong></p><p>If you've watched "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt," you've seen an excellent parody of this phenomenon, with Nick Kroll as a hack indoor&#xa0;cycling&#xa0;instructor.</p><p>New riders are encouraged to stay away from the front, which can make following the instructor near to impossible. (Usually, the rear end of a fellow rider is in your face instead.) As mentioned previously, it's problematic to not be able to follow along with the instructor.</p><p>This practice also gives the experience a cliquey feel. You have to work your way to be good enough for the front row - and by good enough, it doesn't mean in shape enough. It means that you've mastered the "dance" moves on the bike. This is plausibly another strategy to get people to&#xa0;keep coming back; riders want to get coordinated enough to get bumped up to the front. I made it to the front once ... but it was a day when the front row was empty.</p><h3><strong>6.&#xa0;It's expensive, and there aren't memberships available for loyal, frequent riders.</strong></h3><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"></div><p></p></div></div>It's a no-brainer that SoulCycle is a very easy&#xa0;way to throw your money into the wind, but the cost is even harder to take when you realize other cycling studios offer memberships - or participate in <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/classpass-worth-it-2015-6" target="_blank">ClassPass</a>, a&#xa0;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/classpass-400-million-valuation-2015-5" target="_blank">hot startup</a> that despite its demerits, allows fitness enthusiasts to sample many boutique fitness studios for what was a cool $99 a month (it's now $125&#xa0;a&#xa0;month in New York, after <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/classpass-raising-prices-in-new-york-city-2015-7" target="_blank">a recent price hike</a>).&#xa0;<p>SoulCycle's top competitor, FlyWheel, offers <a href="https://www.flywheelsports.com/buy/new-york" target="_blank">memberships</a> at specific studios in New York City for $375 a month. That is expensive, but classes are unlimited; it's a deal if you go every single day. In other cities, FlyWheel memberships are even cheaper. SoulCycle offers no such options. <a href="https://www.soul-cycle.com/series/" target="_blank">Classes</a> are available to purchase as singles or by the package, which reduces the price tag per class only slightly. A SuperSoul package exists for $3,500; it's 50 classes, and it goes so far to hike up the prices to 70 classes, with the "benefit" of securing the ability to register for coveted classes earlier and a concierge service.</p><p>And a new cycling&#xa0;studio with significantly more affordable prices, CycleBar, has been&#xa0;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/cyclebars-cheaper-spinning-classes-2015-7" target="_blank">opening up franchises like crazy across America</a>.</p><p>Even <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/equinox-growth-plan-and-strategy-2015-4" target="_blank">Equinox</a>, which is often criticized for its sky-high price,&#xa0;seems affordable in comparison with&#xa0;SoulCycle.</p><h3><strong>7. It&#xa0;owns its elitism and exclusivity.</strong></h3><p>By not joining ClassPass and by not offering memberships, SoulCycle owns the fact that it is for the upper echelon of society. So it's no surprise that going to SoulCycle feels more like going to a debutante ball than going to the gym.&#xa0;</p><p>It's also hard to get into SoulCycle classes;&#xa0;sign-ups are at noon on Mondays, and unsurprisingly, the popular classes fill up rapidly, leaving many die-hard riders without their preferred classes. "<span>The withholding creates that rare thing among the well-heeled - unfulfilled material desire," Vanessa Grigoriadis wrote in <a href="http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2012/09/soul-cycle-celebrity-cult-following" target="_blank">Vanity Fair</a> in 2012.&#xa0;</span></p><p><span>This supposedly community-based workout thrives on keeping people out.</span></p><h3><strong>8. It doesn't make you feel good about yourself, but it promises that it will.</strong></h3><p><strong><div></div></strong></p><p class="embed-spacer">While this may not be true for all of the clientele, there's something about being shoved to the back of a room amid a sea of perfectly sculpted and tanned women with massive diamond rings, clad in SoulCycle's signature apparel, that doesn't make you feel great. Yet SoulCycle's marketing promises to help you be the best you, if you keep coming back (and buying the company's&#xa0;very expensive apparel with the word "SoulCycle" stamped&#xa0;across it!)</p><p class="embed-spacer">On its <a href="https://www.soul-cycle.com/info/find-your-soul/" target="_blank">website,</a> SoulCycle makes some&#xa0;lofty promises about how it will alter riders' universes: "f<span>orty-five minutes is all it takes to transform the way you look and feel," and more grandiose, "<span>SoulCycle doesn't just change bodies, it changes lives."&#xa0;</span></span></p><h3><strong>9. The wording in its&#xa0;IPO filing was ludicrous.</strong></h3><p>You can&#xa0;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/cringeworthy-soulcycle-ipo-filing-2015-7" target="_blank">click here</a> to read it, but be warned that it&#xa0;contains the words "tribal" and "primal."</p><p>That said, there&#xa0;are&#xa0;undeniably a few&#xa0;good things about SoulCycle. Some instructors really do say the right platitudes that keep you coming back (I know I have a few favorites still whom I would ride with again on occasion). Some instructors also offer classes that are structured more like traditional interval classes, and they shy away from the distracting dancing hi-jinks - but you have to go through many classes and instructors (and paychecks) to get there. And at the end of the day, anything that gets people off of the couch and exercising can't be entirely lambasted.&#xa0;</p><p>SoulCycle had declined to comment on this story.</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/slacking-red-bull-backflip-sport-baylines-2015-6">People doing backflips on a two-inch wide strap is a real sport called slacklining</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="J1cDZvdToyxik-Ww0y-RX8k6QQqJs9ZD" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

I used to be obsessed with SoulCycle -&#160;until I realized how much is wrong with the class

<p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>SoulCycle - an <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/expensive-fitness-classes-2015-6" target="_blank">expensive fitness</a>&#xa0;studio&#xa0;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/why-people-pay-34-for-soulcycle-2014-9" target="_blank">popular</a> among urban&#xa0;women - <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/cringeworthy-soulcycle-ipo-filing-2015-7" target="_blank">filed to go&#xa0;public</a>&#xa0;on Thursday.<p>This verifies that the boutique indoor cycling classes are, in fact, taking over America.</p><p>But, as with many fitness fads, it's not all it's cracked up to be.</p><p>I can confirm this firsthand.</p><p>I had a momentary obsession with SoulCycle. Stuck in a fitness rut and feeling the effects&#xa0;of my desk job on&#xa0;my waistline, I wanted a workout that would force me to break a sweat.</p><p>A shiny new, grapefruit-smelling SoulCycle studio had opened close to my neighborhood, and as an avid spinner, I found that sometimes regular spin classes left me unsweaty and unsatisfied. I had tried&#xa0;high-intensity interval videos on YouTube in my living room, much to the chagrin my neighbors, and that didn't work, either. The idea of a class was alluring; I would be required to show up, and at $34 a class, I would have to push myself, or else it wouldn't be worth it.</p><p>Plus, I had heard so much about the community of SoulCycle. Celebrities cycled there. Reportedly, the&#xa0;teachers were like gurus, and you would come out with your metaphorical demons cast out&#xa0;from your day!</p><p>But I&#xa0;was nervous, because in November I had passed&#xa0;my certification to be a Mad Dog spinning instructor, and Mad Dog&#xa0;master instructors vilify SoulCycle. I felt slightly like a traitor, but I was still excited about the new experience. Plus, a first class was a comparatively cheaper $20, and the new studio near my apartment even offered a one-time complimentary class. I promised myself I would only go those two times, but that turned into many, many more.&#xa0;</p><p>But&#xa0;then, I realized there many things wrong with SoulCycle. My wallet is now thanking me.</p><h3><strong>1.&#xa0;It's not a good workout, according to some experts.&#xa0;</strong></h3><p><strong><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div></strong></p><p>Since SoulCycle focuses on combining dance moves (that are not scientifically proven to do anything for you) with riding the bike, I found it hard to actually get an optimal cardiovascular workout&#xa0;and a toning workout.</p><p>In 2011, James S. Fell wrote in the <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2011/nov/28/health/la-he-fitness-soulcycle-20111128" target="_blank">Los Angeles Times</a> that he "[gave]&#xa0;this company a failing grade for exercise physiology and biomechanics. The whole idea of working one's upper body while pedaling a stationary bike is not only counterproductive, it can be physically detrimental over time, according to several experts I talked to."</p><p>He wrote that neither of the two co-founders,&#xa0;Julie Rice and Elizabeth Cutler, had a background in exercise science or any indoor cycling certifications. (Rice told Fell that they worked with an exercise physiologist to come up with the routines.)</p><p>Further, some experts believe&#xa0;workout is bunk. And by combining weights and cycling, you actually lose efficiency, one expert told Fell.</p><p>"<span>You're probably going to burn less calories because your power output is going to drop," Jennifer Sage, a master spinning instructor with a degree in exercise science who wrote the emphatic "<a href="http://www.indoorcyclingassociation.com/blog/id-rather-sell-my-soul-than-soul-cycle/" target="_blank">I'd Rather Sell My Soul Than SoulCycle</a>," told Fell.</span></p><p>Separately, Sage wrote that the popular move of doing push-ups on the bike, are useless. "<span>Because of this vigorous action, there is momentum to his movement, reducing even more the potential of any strength gain," <a href="http://www.indoorcyclingassociation.com/blog/pushups-while-spinning-high-points-on-the-silly-scale/" target="_blank">she wrote</a>.</span></p><p><span>"<span>There is an illusion that they are working out harder because high repetitions can cause a burning sensation, but it doesn't accomplish anything," Martha Heaner, an indoor cycling instructor with over 15 year of experience, and a doctorate degree in nutrition and physical activity, told Fell in the same <a href="http://www.latimes.com/health/la-he-fitness-soulcycle-20111128-story.html#tugs_story_display&amp;page=1" target="_blank">Los Angeles Times</a>&#xa0;article.&#xa0;</span></span></p><h3><strong>2. You can hurt yourself.</strong></h3><p><strong><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div></strong></p><p>When I got certified to teach spin, one of the most important things I learned was that proper alignment is crucial to avoiding back injuries. While some SoulCycle instructors do make concerted&#xa0;efforts to go around and help participants find proper form before the class begins, others didn't do that in some of the classes I took.</p><p>That leaves&#xa0;room for injuries - and in an already intimidating (and at times, snobby) environment, it can be tough to ask for help, let alone grab the attention of your instructor or one of the attendants.</p><p>There's also more of an effort on "following the dance moves" than following the instructor. (You can see a hilarious&#xa0;<a href="http://gawker.com/5978735/we-came-we-spun-we-dubstepped-gawker-does-soulcycle" target="_blank">Gawker </a>review of the class in which Rich Juzwiak, Caity Weaver, and Leah Beckmann attempt to follow along to prove just how confusing these dance moves can be.)</p><p>But this shouldn't come as too much of&#xa0;a surprise, as SoulCycle openly discloses that most of its instructors, like its founders, do not have fitness backgrounds. "<span>SoulCycle is open about the fact that the company recruits performers as much as, if not more than, people with a fitness background," <a href="http://nymag.com/thecut/2013/01/evolution-of-soulcycle.html" target="_blank">New York Magazine</a> reported in 2013. </span></p><p><span>Master trainer Janet Fitzgerald confirmed to&#xa0;the magazine that she "<span>would rather not take an outdoor triathlete" as opposed to a dancer or SoulCycle enthusiast. This, in of itself, is yet another problem with the fitness regime.</span></span></p><p><span><span>Even when doing the exercise routine properly, there are plenty of opportunities to injure yourself. Sage told the <a href="http://www.latimes.com/health/la-he-fitness-soulcycle-20111128-story.html#tugs_story_display&amp;page=1" target="_blank">Los Angeles Times</a>&#xa0;that "w<span>hen you start bobbing and weaving and doing push-ups on a bike while your legs are spinning, you risk hurting your low back." In that same article, other fitness experts disapproved of not only the validity, but the safety of the workout.</span></span></span></p><p><a href="http://www.indoorcyclingassociation.com/blog/id-rather-sell-my-soul-than-soul-cycle/" target="_blank">Sage has&#xa0;specifically&#xa0;criticized</a> the popular "tap-back" move for its ability to cause injuries - it's what spin instructors call a "contraindicated move." "<span>They are about as contraindicated as one can get because of the deceleration required by the back muscles, otherwise you'd slam down hard into the saddle. There is zero benefit to doing these and they are potentially harmful to joints and the musculature of the back,"&#xa0;she wrote.</span></p><p>Additionally, riding with little to no resistance can result in injuries.&#xa0;In a separate post detailing an unsafe spin class, <a href="http://www.indoorcyclingassociation.com/blog/this-could-be-one-the-craziest-and-most-dangerous-classes-ive-seen/" target="_blank">Sage wrote</a>,&#xa0;"<span>by not having resistance, rider's hips and spine are unsupported at such a high cadence, potentially injuring the low back." Of course, riding in any spin class with little resistance could lead to injuries like this.&#xa0;</span></p><h3><strong>3. SoulCycle fools&#xa0;you into thinking you're working harder than you actually are.</strong></h3><p><strong><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div></strong></p><p>If you've ever walked out of a SoulCycle class drenched in sweat, it's probably because the studios don't cool the rooms down; it's warm in there. The rooms are notoriously steamy. The first time I experienced this, I foolishly attributed my soaked attire&#xa0;to an intense workout. I must have burned a billion calories!</p><p>Not quite. Many people buy into the fact that they're eviscerating calories from their bodies, but it's just&#xa0;part of SoulCycle's pseudo-yogi schtick.</p><h3><strong>4. SoulCycle charges&#xa0;you for water and shoes.</strong></h3><p>SoulCycle requires riders to don shoes to clip-in, which isn't unusual for an indoor cycling class. However, it's $3 to rent shoes previously worn by someone else. Additionally, Smart Water is $2.&#xa0;</p><p>Purchasing bottled water isn't a unique experience at an upscale fitness studio, but it does seem a bit excessive when you learn that SoulCycle's biggest competitor, Flywheel, grants you water and shoe rentals for free.</p><p>These expenses add up on top of the already-steep fees.&#xa0;</p><h3><strong>5. You get shoved to the&#xa0;back, where you might not be able to see the instructor.</strong></h3><p><strong><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div></strong></p><p>If you've watched "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt," you've seen an excellent parody of this phenomenon, with Nick Kroll as a hack spinning instructor.</p><p>New riders are encouraged to stay away from the front, which can make following the instructor near to impossible. (Usually, the rear end of a fellow rider is in your face instead.) As mentioned previously, it's problematic to not be able to follow along with the instructor.</p><p>This practice also gives the experience a cliquey feel. You have to work your way to be good enough for the front row - and by good enough, it doesn't mean in shape enough. It means that you've mastered the "dance" moves on the bike. This is plausibly another strategy to get people to&#xa0;keep coming back; riders want to get coordinated enough to get bumped up to the front. I made it to the front once ... but it was a day when the front row was empty.</p><h3><strong>6.&#xa0;It's expensive, and there aren't memberships available for loyal, frequent riders.</strong></h3><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>It's a no-brainer that SoulCycle is a very easy&#xa0;way to throw your money into the wind, but when you realize other cycling studios offer memberships - or participate in <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/classpass-worth-it-2015-6" target="_blank">ClassPass</a>, a<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/classpass-400-million-valuation-2015-5" target="_blank"> hot startup</a> that despite its demerits, allows fitness enthusiasts to sample many boutique fitness studios for what was a cool $99 a month (it's now $125/month in New York, after <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/classpass-raising-prices-in-new-york-city-2015-7" target="_blank">a recent price hike</a>).&#xa0;<p>SoulCycle's top competitor, FlyWheel, offers <a href="https://www.flywheelsports.com/buy/new-york" target="_blank">memberships</a> at specific studios in New York City for $375 a month - which is a lot, but classes are unlimited; it's a deal if you go every single day. In other cities, FlyWheel memberships are even cheaper. SoulCycle offers no such options. <a href="https://www.soul-cycle.com/series/" target="_blank">Classes</a> are are available to purchase as singles or by the package, which reduces the price tag per class only slightly. A SuperSoul package exists for $3500; it's 50 classes, and it goes so far to hike up the prices to 70 class, with the "benefit" of securing the ability to register for coveted classes earlier and a concierge service.</p><p>And a new spin studio with significantly more affordable prices, CycleBar, has been<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/cyclebars-cheaper-spinning-classes-2015-7" target="_blank"> opening up franchises like crazy across America</a>.</p><p>Even <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/equinox-growth-plan-and-strategy-2015-4" target="_blank">Equinox</a>, which is often criticized for its sky-high price,&#xa0;seems affordable in comparison to SoulCycle.</p><h3><strong>7. It&#xa0;owns its elitism and exclusivity.</strong></h3><p>By not joining ClassPass and by not offering memberships, SoulCycle owns the fact that it is for the upper echelon of society. So it's no surprise that going to SoulCycle feels more like going to a debutante ball than going to the gym.&#xa0;</p><p>It's also hard to get into SoulCycle classes;&#xa0;sign-ups are famously at noon on Mondays, and unsurprisingly, the popular classes fill up rapidly, leaving many die-hard riders without their preferred classes. "<span>The withholding creates that rare thing among the well-heeled-unfulfilled material desire," Vanessa Grigoriadis wrote in <a href="http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2012/09/soul-cycle-celebrity-cult-following" target="_blank">Vanity Fair</a> in 2012.&#xa0;</span></p><p><span>This supposedly community-based workout thrives on keeping people out.</span></p><h3><strong>8. It doesn't make you feel good about yourself, but it promises that it will.</strong></h3><p><strong><div></div></strong></p><p class="embed-spacer">While this may not be true for all of the clientele, there's something about being shoved to the back of a room amid a sea of perfectly sculpted and tanned women with massive diamond rings, clad in SoulCycle's signature apparel, that doesn't make you feel great. Yet SoulCycle's marketing promises to help you be the best you, if you keep coming back (and buying their very expensive apparel with the word "SoulCycle" stamped&#xa0;across it!)</p><p class="embed-spacer">On its <a href="https://www.soul-cycle.com/info/find-your-soul/" target="_blank">website,</a> SoulCycle makes some&#xa0;lofty promises about how it will alter riders' universes: "f<span>orty-five minutes is all it takes to transform the way you look and feel," and more grandiose, "<span>SoulCycle doesn't just change bodies, it changes lives."&#xa0;</span></span></p><h3><strong>9. The wording in its&#xa0;IPO filing was ludicrous.</strong></h3><p>You can&#xa0;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/cringeworthy-soulcycle-ipo-filing-2015-7" target="_blank">click here</a> to read it, but be warned that it&#xa0;contains the words "tribal" and "primal."</p><p>That said, there&#xa0;are&#xa0;undeniably a few&#xa0;good things about SoulCycle. Some instructors really do say the right platitudes that keep you coming back (I know I have a few favorites still who I would ride with again on occasion). Some instructors also offer classes that are structured more like traditional interval classes, and they shy away from the distracting dancing hi-jinks - but you have to go through many classes and instructors (and paychecks) to get there. And at the end of the day, anything that gets people off of the couch and exercising can't be entirely lambasted.&#xa0;</p><p>We reached out to Soul Cycle, and the company declined to comment, citing the quiet period before filing for an IPO.&#xa0;</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/slacking-red-bull-backflip-sport-baylines-2015-6">People doing backflips on a two-inch wide strap is a real sport called slacklining</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="J1cDZvdToyxik-Ww0y-RX8k6QQqJs9ZD" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

You Searched For "hindu upper castes the most rich" and got 12 results

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You Searched For "hindu upper castes the most rich" and got 12 results

Why Jimmy O. Yang loves playing his diabolical 'pain in the ass' character Jian-Yang on HBO's 'Silicon Valley'

Nathan McAlone

In future digital and print in India will go hand in hand!

Guest Author

Why New York's new Second Avenue subway changes nothing

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Times Of India

1. TGI Fridays: The Tinder of the 1960s

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I used to be obsessed with SoulCycle - until I realized how much is wrong with the class

I used to be obsessed with SoulCycle - until I realized how much is wrong with the class