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whichstiel · 6 years

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Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Supernatural Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester Characters: Castiel (Supernatural), Dean Winchester Additional Tags: spn 14x11, Damaged Goods, episode coda, Episode Tag, Episode: s14e11 Damaged Goods, Dreams, Bunkers, Kid Fic, Whales Series: Part 9 of Season 14 Codas Summary:

A future story, riffing off of the events of season 14, episode 11 “damaged goods.”

Castiel reads a child’s story about Dean’s imprisonment in the box. It’s…canon divergent, to say the least.

“Hey!” Leshawna’s high, clear voice pulled Castiel up short and he halted in the middle of the bunker’s library. It was a little before the dinner hour on a gorgeous summer afternoon, and few hunters occupied the common rooms.

Turning a kind smile on their youngest resident, Castiel hooked his thumbs against the pockets of his coat and rocked forward slightly on his heels. The little girl, daughter of two of their resident hunters, was settled at the library’s wide wooden table in a sea of papers and brightly colored markers.“Yes?”

Leshawna pushed a sheaf across the scarred wooden table. It was lined paper, ripped from a spiral notebook and stacked. Yellow yarn loops between the holes in the margin were tied off into three tidy knots. Castiel picked it up and raised his brows at it, before looking back at the young girl drilling her heels against her chair in excitement. “This looks like a book?”

“Yup.” She grinned a kilowat and shot a confident finger in his direction - a perfect mimic of her hunter mother. “I made it for you! And Dean.”

Castiel’s eyes widened in genuine interest. He gingerly held the book in one hand as, with the other, he pulled out a chair and settled down next to Leshawna. “So,” he began. “What’s this about?”

“Daring adventures!” Leshawna waggled her fingers dramatically and lowered her voice into a register that could only be described as spooooky. “Scary monsters.” She watched Castiel expectantly. “Go on,” she prompted. “Read it!”

Castiel smiled at the cover. There was a rudimentary devil’s trap scrawled on the page - roughly drawn but technically correct enough to trap a demon. Around the devil’s trap the title read, The Drowning Box and Other Stories. “Oh,” Castiel said. He’d been expecting… Well. What had he been expecting? Unicorns, perhaps? He could have sworn Leshawna was obsessed with unicorns. “I was expecting unicorns,” he told her.

The little girl wrinkled her nose dismissively. “Boooring,” she declared.

“Oh, I don’t know. I hear they—” Castiel cleared his throat at Leshawna’s glare and opened the book with overplayed haste.

Once upon a time, the first page read, there lived a man who fought monsters. The accompanying drawing was of a man standing in a wide stance, arms sprouting weapons. A scribble of yellow for hair and two green circles made Castiel smile. “Is this Dean?” He would appreciate having three knives instead of a hand, Castiel thought.

Leshawna nodded impatiently. “Read it out loud,” she prompted and Castiel obliged.

“He was good at fighting monsters. He killed a lot of them.” The next page showed the same proud figure, but this time the weapons dripped with red. Pools of crimson were scribbled in hasty, wide circles on the bottom of the page. Castiel winced. “Oh.”

Leshawna giggled. “It gets better.”

“No doubt. One day he trapped a big, bad monster. A monster from another world.” The illustration on this page was a single black shadow with red orbs for eyes and two wings spanning from corner to corner. Accurate, Castiel thought, and turned the page. There was rectangle there with the man from the first few pages drawn inside of it.

Castiel was better at putting up a good show these days. He kept the easy smile on his face even as he suddenly understood what the title meant by “drowning box.”

“He locked himself up inside a box and drowned himself in the ocean.” He looked up at Leshawna, and this time a mild frown slipped over his features. “But he didn’t.”

She rolled her eyes expansively, exasperation traversing the entire room. “Cas-ti-el,” she said with the aggravated edge specially curated by young children. “It’s a story. Just read it! This is where it gets good.”

“The box sank down to the bottom of the ocean.” And, yes, there was the puzzle box stuck in what must be sand. Fish were drawn around it, as though exploring its edges curiously. “The monster inside hurt the man and brought him back to life every time he died.”

“It was the bottom of the ocean,” Leshawna interrupted earnestly. “So he died all the time.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.” Leshawna turned to the next page for Castiel.

In the corner of the room, Mary coughed loudly and the spine of her book creaked as she set it down against her leg. When Castiel met her eye, her look seemed to say, This is why I said no kids at the bunker. Castiel shrugged at her. As Dean had put it, hunting was a long term mission. The bunker was like a space ship in Star Trek - and families were just part of the deal now.

“But one day a pod of humpback whales-” Castiel broke off in surprise, then continued. “—Heard his screams.” A smiling humpback whale took up the whole page, one flipper held out as though in greeting. “The whales surrounded the box.” Just like the prior drawing, the box remained on the bottom of the ocean, jutting upward in an angle with a screaming Dean inside it. Instead of fish, there were now massive dark whale shapes curled around the box. “They decided to help the man. They used their sonar to vaporize the angel inside the box.”

The next page showed two long wing shadows stretching out across the brown line of sand depicting the ocean floor. The figure of Dean was no longer screaming. “The whales picked up the box and brought the man to the surface.” Bubbles of blue ink escaped from Dean’s lips as a whale nosed the box upward on the page. “The whales broke the box and the man was free.” Dean was drawn next as a panicked X, with arms and legs outstretched and head held just above choppy green waves. A wide, worried O broadcast his distress. Castiel turned the page, bracing himself for more drowning. Instead, the next page showed a whale with a little figure of a man riding on top of it. They were both waving at the reader. “The man rode back to shore on the back of a whale and they all lived happily ever after.” The last page of the story showed Dean standing on a massive boulder, high fiving a whale. “The end.”

Castiel set down the book, carefully smoothing the pages. “That’s quite a story. You— You did a very good job.”

Leshawna tossed her head. “I know,” she chirped. Her fingers made skittering motions towards the pages on the table. “You can keep it,” she said.

“Ah, thank you?” Castiel carefully closed the storybook and picked it up.

“You’re welcome,” she said blithely, pulling another sheet towards her. The page was already illustrated with a picture of a crib holding a baby. A dark figure stood over it, eyes scribbled in gold marker. “I’ll give you more pages to add when I finish them.” Leshawna smiled and bent her head to the page.

Castiel tilted his head in confusion and amusement, then pushed back from the table, recognizing the dismissal for what it was. “I— Thank you,” he said finally. “I look forward to reading them.”

* * *

That evening Castiel entered his and Dean’s shared bedroom late. He’d been working on a comparative spellbook project, trying to reconcile the differences between seventy-eight resurrection spells. Dean looked up as he entered and Castiel noticed with dismay that Dean was settled back against the headboard with Leshawna’s book in his hands. Dean had amassed more than his share of nightmare fuel, but these days he frequently woke up gulping air like it was water cutting into his lungs instead. Some scars were mental, some physical. Michael’s possession had left both behind in Dean’s mind. The memory of drowning was a hard thing for Dean to shake.

“We have a budding author in our midst,” Castiel said after a pause. He quietly closed the door and crossed the room to the bed.

Dean tossed the book to his desktop and chuckled. “Yeah, I can see that. Whales, huh?”

“Humpback whales,” Castiel confirmed. “A heretofore unknown feature of the species - the ability to obliterate archangels.”

“Shoulda tried that.” Dean tugged Castiel down to sit next to him, arm looping around his waist. He let Castiel pull away for a moment, and Castiel bent to remove his shoes. “I would’ve liked to ride on a whale.”

“Really?” Castiel laughed and let himself be drawn back against the headboard, pulled into Dean’s embrace. “I thought you said all sea journeys were, and I quote, ‘crazy suicide missions.’”

“It’s a whale, Cas.” Dean nuzzled at Castiel’s collar. “Whales always get a pass.”

“I should have known.” Castiel wriggled against Dean’s arm, snaking his own around Dean’s shoulder with a lack of grace he’d long since accepted as part of the indignity of snuggling. Then, satisfied, he brought his other hand across his lap and brought it to rest against Dean’s thigh. He curved his fingers along the muscle there, bringing his fingertips across Dean’s warmth until his knuckles rested against Dean’s opposite leg. “I once possessed a whale.”

Dean’s laugh was sharp and bright, startled out of him. “No shit?” He pulled away a little bit so he could look Castiel in the eye. “You fucking with me?”

“No shit. An actual whale.” Castiel hummed and began to gently massage Dean’s leg. “They’re quite intelligent and capable of consenting to an angel. It’s very difficult to wield an angel blade, however. I found it rather impractical.” He increased the pressure of his fingertips.

“You tryin’ to give me a whale kink?” Dean let his legs fall open a little, and his breathing grew deeper. More pointed.

Castiel laughed. “Whatever works for you.” He lowered his mouth to Dean’s and claimed him in a gentle kiss. “I was a massive whale, you know. A sp—” Dean sputtered against his lips. “But that’s not important. This is important.” He slid his hand upwards and let the night fade into easy bliss.

Much later, Castiel held Dean as he flinched his way through bad dreams. He wondered if he dreamed of the box - of being sealed inside it. The absolute silence. The cold of it. If Dean was dreaming of it, it was mild enough this time to not wake him instantly. Castiel sighed and pressed his lips to the thin drops of sweat gathering on Dean’s brow. He’d spent years now on Earth, trying to puzzle out the function of nightmares. What could possibly be the advantage of torturing oneself at night, often when the brain would not retain even an echo of catharsis in the morning? Perhaps they were a little like stories - or stories were a little like dreams. Little bubbles of catharsis, or pockets of pain to slip into and out of at will.

In his sleep, Dean choked on a sob. Then another. His breathing grew shallow and pained. Castiel hesitated for a moment. Then, a scene formed in his mind and he passed it along to Dean with the gentle stroke of a finger against his temple. Immediately, Dean’s distressed sounds began to ease. He sighed, and the room once again fell into silence as he accepted the suggested images.

Castiel settled his arm across Dean like an anchor and closed his eyes with a satisfied sigh of his own. Skimming along the surface of Dean’s mind, light and inconsequential as a breeze over the ocean, Dean dreamed of sailing the seas astride a whale. In his dream, he whooped into the whipping wind and the salt spray. In his dream, he was free.

Author’s note:

I am clearly the child in this story. Would you like to hear a tale about Dean drowning over and over again for eternity?

….No?

Oh, fine. Have some whales. I like whales.

#spn 14x11 #damaged goods #supernatural episode coda #deancas #destiel #whales

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lookbackmachine · 6 years

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Disney Afternoon Part 2

The Disney Afternoon Pt 2

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https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-look-back-machine/id1257301677?mt=2

0:00:00 Speaker 1: The Disney Afternoon hit an unexpected hiccup a few years earlier that was finally starting to rear its ugly head. Eisner and Katzenberg would try to strong-arm their former boss Barry Diller, which would lead to unexpected new competition. In 1988, Eisner bought a television station in Los Angeles that eventually became KCAL. With his new station, he obviously wanted to air Disney product. There was a problem. They were already airing the Disney Afternoon on Fox affiliates, Barry Diller's network.

0:00:32 S1: According to DisneyWar, Eisner had Katzenberg call Diller. In Diller's recounting of the discussion, Katzenberg said, "We want to renegotiate the Disney Afternoon, and we're taking away the LA market." Diller was shocked. They had a contract. "That's not fair," he protested. "I know you bought an LA station, but give us two or three years to replace this. Let's be reasonable." Diller called Eisner, who refused. "We were there for you when you needed us," Diller reminded him, pointing out that he'd bought the original programming for Disney Afternoon. Eisner still refused. "Okay then, we're out of business," Diller said. Fox promptly dropped the Disney Afternoon from all of its wholly owned stations and encouraged its affiliates to do the same. Still, that wasn't what put Diller over the edge. Even though he felt Eisner had betrayed him, it was when Disney sued Fox on antitrust grounds claiming Fox was trying to monopolize children's programming and then complained to the FCC that Fox was a morally unfit broadcaster with programming like the Simpsons.

0:01:35 S1: When Disney lawyers approached Diller about a possible settlement, Diller said the only settlement he'd consider was an apology. Disney ended up dropping the suit in 1992, but Diller told David Geffen, "I'm never going to speak to him, Eisner, again." Fox would launch its own kids programming in 1990, which would eventually cut into Disney's ratings with the cultural phenomenon Power Rangers, not to mention Batman, the animated series, and Animaniacs. Power Rangers was a show that no one wanted. It was turned down by everyone, and then became the show everyone wanted and wanted to replicate. Premiering in August of 1993, by December it was the biggest kid show by far. According to the Baltimore Sun, it was averaging a 12.5 on weekends with kids two to 11. Fox's X-Men was doing a 10.0. And it was first on weekdays. It was doing a 7.5 rating. Second was Fox's Animaniacs with a 5.6, and the highest rated non-Fox show on weekdays was Bonkers with a 4.5. Also in 1994, Power Ranger toy sales would reach nearly a billion dollars. At their highest height, Ninja Turtles had done only $450 million in sales.

0:02:50 S1: The butterfly effect was now spreading its wings, and the Disney Afternoon would take a hit, as did the future of syndication as networks realized they should be promoting their own IPs instead of other companies. It would even happen to Fox when Warner Brothers would take its popular hits, Batman and Animaniacs, and put it on their own WB network. And it wasn't just network competitors anymore, cable had entered the market as well. Nickelodeon had popped into the world of animation and their first three cartoons, Ren and Stimpy, Doug, and Rugrats had all been big successes. The syndication window was closing in the not too distant future, but for now Disney Television Animation was about to change with the times.

[music]

0:03:43 S1: Greg Weisman, creator Gargoyles.

0:03:46 Greg Weisman: The pitch for Aladdin, that I pitched to Eisner, it was just one poster shot of Aladdin and the Genie and three words, "Aladdin the series". He's like, "Sold." That was it. And I knew that. In other words, going in, it was like I could have given this whole pitch on Aladdin, but I thought anything I say would only give him a reason to say no. Aladdin's this huge movie. Let him imagine what the show is.

0:04:11 S1: Tad Stones, creator of Darkwing Duck.

0:04:14 Tad Stones: At the end of Darkwing, I said, "Okay, now Darkwing worked much closer." I think I can get even closer with my next show, which was going to be a science fiction show. Again, a comedy. The staff loved it, but the boss did not. I never got to pitch it to Michael and Jeffrey. You know, had a meeting, I said, "Oh, I'm gonna get a chance to do it." And it was like, "No." They wanted me to do Aladdin. Now, Aladdin was done by Ron Clements, John Musker. I said, "I used to room with... In the same office as Ron Clements." I mean I was literally four feet away from him. "Let me talk to those guys." With Aladdin there was the other thing that I did the first direct to home video, Return of Jafar. And all I was trying to do was keep our budgets up. And I thought, if there's one more source of revenue that comes in from our shows, this would be the excuse to not cut budgets or give us the money we need to pull off some of this stuff. I called up Home Video and said, "Technically, when I do this four part episode pilot to set up the show, technically it's the sequel to Aladdin. Are you interested?" And the guy took it to the higher ups and they were not.

0:05:25 TS: Then they put out Aladdin on video. Again, it broke records. They made a huge amount of money, and I called the guy back and again restated what I was doing. And this time he took it to the top and they were very interested. And we had a story meeting with my boss where he gave all sorts of notes. And I said, "Well, we got... That's a lot to pull off. We have to do that by March 14th or whatever the date was." He said, "Why?" I said, "Well, Home Video was willing to put this out on literally video at that time." And he said, "That's gravy. Do these notes and if you get them done in time, that's fine." And I had to be told this later by people who were in the room 'cause I had forgotten that I had said, "Okay we have to take those notes, but it also has to be done by this date so I can get it to Home Video."

0:06:11 TS: We did. And Return of Jafar was made for $3.5 million and it made something between $180 and $200 million domestic out on video. This may be apocryphal, but I was told that it was the first quarter where the company wouldn't have grown. Well, I don't know what, ten percent or whatever the number was, and I guess a bunch of executives had bonuses tied into profit growth. Evidently that was the first quarter that there wouldn't be bonuses, and then suddenly everybody got a bonus, and it was because of Return of Jafar, that out of nowhere this thing came in and making all this money. And that started the whole direct to video thing.

0:06:53 TS: All I was trying to do was to keep our budgets up. The stories involving the bonuses, they tried to do things like Lucas had with Star Wars had given everybody involved points or some sort of bonus, so they had X amount of money and they divided it up so everybody got something. And what that led to is whoever was last in line, some of the lower level people, got a bonus, a check of $50 or $100, whatever. People who basically were in the department who didn't work on the show, and all that did was piss them off 'cause they knew how much the movie had made. I got $14,000 and I told that to Ron and John. Now I was not an idiot. I knew that the only reason why the movie made that much money is because they had done an incredible Aladdin, and I remember telling that to them and their reaction was, "You got ripped off." And I realized, yeah, in live action terms, if you do a crappy spinoff of something that made a lot of money and your crappy spinoff makes a ton of money, you get a five picture deal and a new car in your driveway as a present from the studio. In animation, I was happy to get the bonus. But get a pat on the back and then you move on, do something else for us.

0:08:09 S1: Jymn Magon, writer.

0:08:11 Jymn Magon: Disney's had a definite style there for a while, of... I think we cornered the market in the comedy adventure genre. When Disney execs felt like they needed to branch out, I felt like the formula fell by the wayside. And it's like, "Hey, look what John Kricfalusi is doing on Ren and Stimpy. Let's do something like that. Hey, look what Warner Brothers is doing with superheroes. Let's do something like that." And I felt like, "Oh, this is interesting." Obviously, we're branching out, trying new things. But it felt weird to me that where we had before had been sort of chopping our way through the jungle, creating our own path. Now we were sort of following other people's paths, copying them. And that always seemed odd to me. But anyway, department does what the department does over the years, and the changes, and the new policy, and it gets worse or it gets better. And is it Disney? Yes, because it's Disney TV Animation. They're Disney and this is the show they're doing. It becomes part of the canon, you know.

0:09:15 S1: In 1994, Variety reported that Disney was spending $50 million to boost its afternoon, which resulted in two new series, Shnookums and Meat, and Gargoyles. Gargoyles, Aladdin, and Shnookums helped cut into the lead of Fox, but there was a larger problem that television animation was about to encounter. Disney's syndication contract with networks ran only through 1997, meaning that other networks could produce their own shows and make more money. This would leave Disney Animation without a home because Disney didn't own a network. In fact, earlier in the year, they had tried to buy NBC but failed. Total viewership was also in decline during this period, which had to do with VCRs, computers, and video games offering alternatives to television. And to add to the uncertainty of 1994, Jeffrey Katzenberg left the company and he left because he was fired by Michael Eisner.

0:10:12 S1: In a walk in Aspen together, according to Katzenberg, Eisner promised him that if anything happened to Frank Wells, Katzenberg would take over Wells's role as president. Eisner would later say that Katzenberg misunderstood this conversation. Unfortunately, something did happen to Wells. He was killed in a tragic helicopter crash on April 3, 1994. But business stops for no man, and Eisner went back on his word and did not put Katzenberg in Wells's position as president, nor did he name him as his successor. To make matters worse, in a white glove slap to the face to Katzenberg, Eisner took on the role of president himself. This led to a further deterioration of their relationship and Eisner gave Katzenberg his walking papers. Eventually Eisner also refused Katzenberg part of his contract, which stated Katzenberg would get two percent of all profits from any of the projects he had worked on at Disney.

0:11:08 S1: So, like all great Hollywood love stories, they went to court. At one point it came out that Eisner had said he hated that midget, referring to Katzenberg. The case could have been settled for $90 million at one point, but instead it was eventually settled for $280 million in Katzenberg's favor. And then to further complicate matters, Katzenberg went on to form DreamWorks with Spielberg and David Geffen. In the midst of all that, Shnookums and Meat, a funny cartoon show, was being made. Bill Kopp, animator.

0:11:40 Bill Kopp: And then I got a call from Disney Television, which I had never heard of. I didn't even know they had it. And Gary Krisel and Bruce Cranston made me an offer. They said, "Hey, we need some new funny stuff and we really think your eat show is funny, and can you come and do a funny show?" And I was like, "Well, like what?" And they were like, "Whatever you want." Seriously. I didn't have to pitch anything. They were just like, "Just come over and we'll do whatever comes out of your head." It was incredible. So I had a sketchbook full of stuff, and I just came in. And they said, "Well, how about a cat and a dog?" I said, "Okay." We started with that, and that must have been 1992 or 1993, something like that. I forget. Pitching at Disney now. I'm not saying [0:12:22] ____. I mean, it's legendarily hard. It's like running a gauntlet. There's all these people in these giant buildings and you just got to carve your way through. And then once you do get into development, you're gonna be there for a year or two just trying to get it through. My experience was, we had lunch and the next week I was there with a contract.

0:12:40 BK: There was no feeling of pressure or ever like, "Oh my God, the wheels are coming off." It never was like that. And we had a saying that Disney [0:12:49] ____. It's like, "Well, if something's... If something crashes, well, I'll just throw money at it." You know. Nobody bothered us. When they said, "You can do whatever you want," they never brought it up. I remember sitting in the editor room with Gary Krisel, who was a great guy, and he'd look at some of the rough animation coming back. He'd look at me and he'd go, "Is that funny?" And we're like, "Yeah, that's funny." He just trusted us, and it was awesome. Now, Jeffie came over one day, as he frequently did, while we were kicking it around. And I said, "The cat's kind of abrasive. So let's give him the opposite kind of name," you know, Shnookum, 'cause he was kind of a dick. And then we were just like, "What the fuck are we gonna call this dog?" We had no clue. Just nothing. And Jeffie came up with the name, and I think we were actually barbecuing something, which we also frequently did. And I think he just said, "Meat." And we had the design already. And I said, "Fuck, that's it."

0:13:40 BK: Shnookums and Meat. A little confusion came when they made the SpaghettiOs though. I had a can of them around here, they finally just deteriorated. I had to get rid of it, it was gonna explode. And it said, "Shnookums and Meat." It was like SpaghettiOs. The lawyers were like, "No, no, no, man. You gotta say that it's not meat. It's not a meat product."

0:13:58 Shnookums: Hey, what happened to your head?

0:14:00 Meat: Hey, what happened to your head?

[music]

0:14:07 Shnookums: Oh my gosh, my brain's gone.

0:14:10 Meat: Oh no, mine is to. What we gonna do Shnookums, what we gonna do? We don't have any brains.

0:14:21 Shnookums: Now, let's stay calm. I don't think you have too much to worry about, but I know I do. They couldn't have gone far.

0:14:27 BK: Right after the first two shorts went on to [0:14:29] ____ said, "Okay, let's make it a whole half hour. What else do you got?" And I just pulled out the Pith Possum, and the Tex Tinstar bit was gonna be a space serial called Guy Guy and the Space Vigilantes. We were all set to go, and then I got a call from John Kricfalusi, and I had Fontanelli there, you know, all of Kricfalusi's guys, [0:14:47] ____ was there. A couple... Eddie Fitzgerald. And John called me. He goes, "Hey man, I heard you're expanding your show, but can you maybe not do a space thing?" Actually, it was like getting a call from the Godfather. He was like, "Yeah, don't do a space thing." And I was like, I go, "Why?" And he goes, "Well, 'cause I'm working on one. I've been working on it for a while." Actually, Fontanelli brought that up to me too. So I just turned it into a western, which was easy because I was happy to accommodate. But I guess he never sold his space thing.

[music]

0:15:14 Speaker 8: Pith Possum. At one time an ordinary laboratory possum. He was changed forever by an experiment gone wrong, an experiment that endowed him with ultra possum-like abilities, turning him into Pith Possum, super dynamic possum of tomorrow. Maintaining his secret identity by cleverly disguising himself as Peter Possum, copy boy for a great metropolitan tabloid. He defends truth, justice, and the forest critter way for the good citizens of Possum City.

[music]

0:15:56 Speaker 9: Let me just grab what I have in store for you. The rope that holds you up Tinstar, will soon be burned through by that candle. When you fall, you'll land head first on this trampoline, which will send you flying into the pen full of rabid badgers. As you go down the ramp inside the pen, this torch will be knocked over, igniting the trail of gunpowder burning toward that cannon. Your barrel will roll toward that cannon and your head will become stuck. The gunpowder will burn the cannon's fuse and the cannon will fire. The blast will ignite the waterproof fuses on the dynamite surrounding your head. The cannon will shoot you through the roof of the barn, and then down into this giant tank full of man-eating sharks. The sharks will eat you. Then the dynamite will explode. The whole mess will be blown skyward and your remains will fall into this envelope, which I will place on a boat bound for Tunisia. So long, Tinstar.

0:16:48 BK: Anyway, and that was Shnookums and Meat, but again, that was so busy and I was the only writer. I wrote all 39 of those because I didn't know any better. After the show was on the air and we were done, Jeffie and I sat around. I went to Hawaii for six weeks to recuperate. I came back and they were just like, "Well, we don't know about the second season." And I mean, Shnookums and Meat was not... It was amazing that they let us do it 'cause it's not Disney, really. Well, it's not out of line, but it's weird. So we were just sitting there waiting to get the word, and I mean the writing was on the wall. I was like, "Yeah okay, there goes that. What are we gonna do next?" And I was there still getting paid. I developed other stuff. Jeffie and I were like, "This is gonna crack, man. What are we gonna fucking do now?"

0:17:34 BK: We didn't have a plan. And then, what happened was they said, "Oh, sorry boys. You're through." And we were like, "Ah fuck, okay well, at least we got that out." I mean that was three in one, dude. You got Pith and Tex, and Shnookum and Meat was actually our weakest link in the thing. And that was the only part that was foisted on us. But right after they canceled it, that was when Gary Krisel and Bruce Cranston left to go to Dreamworks, and we were like, "Ah." And it was like a sad goodbye and stuff.

0:18:06 BK: A new executive moved in, and we just weren't part of their plan. Because... And rightfully... They didn't know what to do with us. We were like a weird thing that, they were like, "Huh? Now what with these guys?" But we had a good time. I think we sort of knew in the back of our heads, it was like, "Wow, this will never last here." It isn't Disney material. The real story of that time was they were trying to keep up with Margaret and Fox Kids, and they were right to try crazy things. To their credit, they really, they stuck right by it. And then they... And Gary and Bruce did the same for us at DreamWorks when we went to do Toonsylvania.

0:18:42 S1: Greg Weisman, creator Gargoyles.

0:18:44 GW: We had the Disney Afternoon, which we viewed as sort of like the dragon that you had to feed a virgin to every six months. So every six months, we'd go up in front of Michael Eisner. In those days, Michael personally chose the shows. And we would pitch him six or seven shows. And he knew he always had to pick one to put into production. He could pick more than one, but he had to always pick at least one.

0:19:10 S1: Jymn Magon.

0:19:11 JM: Yeah, what we would do is every week, we would have this writer's meeting that I think it was Wednesday mornings, and it was like any new writers out there, any new talent, any new ideas, it was always looking for what are we gonna pitch? What's the next big thing? And of course, like everything in Hollywood, it was basically, what was the most recent hit film? With Star Wars, Indiana Jones, whatever. But people would come in and they'd pitch all kinds of things. And the things that were noteworthy would get... I'm not sure we did artwork on all of it, but at least we had a list of shows that we would take to the meetings with Eisner and Katzenberg and say, "Okay, this is called Wonder Weenie. It's about a guy in a hot dog suit that gets kidnapped and taken to another planet, where they think he's a hero 'cause of his television commercials." And it was like, Gong. [chuckle] "No, next." And we would just do that. We would come up with these sort of one, two sentence pitches and they would go, "Nah, or yeah."

0:20:13 S1: Greg Weisman.

0:20:14 GW: We were all sort of keeping an eye on Batman, and sort of seeing was this going to be a success or not? It was a serious drama on cartoon, and would that work? Because the conventional wisdom is it always has to be comedy, and often it's a pendulum and that conventional wisdom swings back into the forefront all the time. But Batman was working, it was working so well they tried it in prime time, and then it didn't work in prime time. And so the desire for us to do something along those lines sort of waxed and waned, often with Batman's ratings. And we didn't have superheroes in our camp so to speak, so we didn't wanna do Batman, we didn't wanna copy that, but we wanted to try and do something different. But that's not how Gargoyles came about at all. Those are almost two separate discussions that dovetailed later.

0:21:08 GW: Gargoyles was initially developed as a comedy adventure, very much inspired by and along the lines of Gummi Bears, Disney's Adventures of the Gummi Bears, which was a show we were really proud of, created by a guy named Jymn Magon. We thought was great. It had this very rich backstory and we thought it didn't get enough respect, and we thought that the main reason for that was because there was brand confusion with Care Bears. Care Bears was a sort of sacchariney sweet, kinda awful show, from my point of anyway. But the brand confusion was understandable because both shows featured cute, cuddly, multi-colored bears. Gummi Bears wasn't that. It was an adventure show. It was funny. It was exciting. It had a great comedic villain in Duke Igthorn and great sidekick in [0:21:54] ____, and great characters, and just a lot of fun. So we set out very consciously to create a show in that vein with the same sort of rich backstory, but that would get more respect. So everything in the 90s, the sort of buzz word was everything had to be edgy. Instead of doing cute, cuddly, multi-colored bears, we did cute, cuddly, multi-colored gargoyles. Gargoyles having been something that fascinated me since I was in high school.

0:22:23 GW: And we thought that's edgier. And instead of setting it in medieval times, we'd have this rich medieval backstory, but we'd set it in the present. We'd have gargoyles have a spell cast on them and they'd wake up in the 20th century, and that seemed edgier too. And so we thought, we can do this kind of show and have this fun comedy adventure with Gargoyles. So we put together a pitch, and we pitched it to Michael Eisner, and he passed. But we really liked the show and my bosses, Bruce and Gary, both really liked it. And they were like, "Well, take another pass at it." So I showed it to a number of people, just the original comedy pitch, to try and get some feedback and see what else I might do with it. One of the people I showed it to was Tad Stones.

0:23:06 TS: Gargoyles had a long history of things that are in a direct line that ended up with Gargoyles. And some of them didn't involve Gargoyles at all. They were gremlins, or whatever. The last thing I'd been playing with I think was a Three Musketeers version of these gargoyles. I had just seen the rough cut of Beauty and the Beast. So again, I'm instrumental. I'm not a genius, at least not in that meeting. Greg had asked me in just to talk about things and be in the discussion with his assistants basically. Again, he was an executive. And I said, "What if he was the last of the gargoyles? This could be your Beauty and the Beast 'cause you've already got the female there." He is one of the fastest thinkers I've ever seen. While he's watching a movie, he is analyzing, dissecting it. And walking out of a movie he'll have all sorts of comments, where I'm going, "Well, I thought the colors were nice." Anyway, he was on to something, he kind of said to his assistant, "Okay, you follow up on the Three Musketeers angle. I wanna work on this."

0:24:07 GW: And that really clicked for me. And so I created the character of Goliath with the artist Greg Guler, and we took the whole show, the whole comedy development and put it through the prism of Goliath and came out the other side fundamentally with the show that made it on the air. And we were so enthusiastic about it, we came up with all these concepts for villains and adventures and stories and put together this huge long pitch and pitched it to Eisner six months after we'd pitched it the first time. And he passed, killed it. And so I thought it was done. We tried. It wasn't the first time I'd pitched a show and it had gotten killed. And the next day we had what we called a postmortem meeting. In those days, Jeffrey Katzenberg was... And Michael ran the whole company, but Jeffrey Katzenberg was head of the studio. And so Jeffrey had been in the meeting with Gary and Bruce and I, and we were having this postmortem meeting where we were discussing actually the shows that Michael had said yes to and what the next steps would be. And so after having this discussion about the yes shows, we all got up to go. And as I'm about to go, Jeffrey said to me, "Oh, and you're gonna work on Gargoyles some more, right?"

0:25:20 GW: And Bruce and I sort of looked at each other, and I was like, "Well no, Michael killed it. He killed it as a comedy. He killed it as a drama. I don't know what else we'd do with it." And Jeffrey said, "Oh, Michael didn't kill it, he just thought it needed more work." Now I had been there the day before, and I knew that he had killed it. But what this was telling me was that Michael may not have liked it, but Jeffrey liked it. And in those days Jeffrey wasn't gonna contradict what Michael had said, but he still felt it was worth pursuing. I also found out later that Gary had talked to Jeffrey about the need to diversify the Disney Afternoon from the standpoint of all we had in those days were very similar, funny animal comedy adventure cartoons, and that if we just kept doing that over and over again, eventually the audience would get bored with those kind of cartoons. No matter how good they were, they'd just get bored with them. And we had to bring other types of things in, which led to shows like Goof Troop, which was really more sitcom than comedy adventure. Shows like Shnookums and Meat, which was more sort of Tex Avery short cartoons, and Gargoyles.

0:26:36 GW: And so we went back to the drawing board for a third time to try and figure out how we were gonna pitch Gargoyles for a third time. And we looked at the show that we had, and we thought, "Nope, this is the show. We don't wanna change the show at all." So the problem isn't the show, the problem is the pitch. And what you realize is that we had just put way too much into the pitch. It had diffused it all and gotten confusing and we hadn't been crisp and clear. So we just pulled things out, things that we eventually did use in the show, but we pulled all these elements out and really narrowed it down to the key idea, which frankly, was the Beauty and the Beast idea.

0:27:16 GW: It was this relationship between Goliath, the lead gargoyle, and Elisa, the cop, who befriends him in the 20th century after he wakes up. And we very much played it like Beauty and the Beast, which actually was a movie that had done very well for Disney recently. So six months later, we pitched it to Michael a third time, and this time they bought it. We had added nothing to this pitch, we just subtracted. I'd reordered a few things. We may have redrawn a card or two just to clarify an idea, but there was nothing new, it was just shorter. Jeffrey turned to me and said, "You added a lot to that pitch didn't you?" And I said, "Yes, I did." And that was history. We went on and made the show.

0:28:03 Speaker 10: One thousand years ago superstition in the sword ruled. It was a time of darkness, it was a world of fear, it was the age of Gargoyles. Stone by day, warriors by night. We were betrayed by the humans we had sworn to protect, frozen in stone by a magic spell for a thousand years. Now, here in Manhattan, the spell is broken and we live again. We are defenders of the night. We are Gargoyles!

0:29:01 GW: And so, yes, relative to Goof Troop it's dark, but I don't think of it as dark. There's tons of humor in that show. The color palette is rich, full of blues and purples and magentas and neon. It's not a dark show either visually or thematically. It's fundamentally a show about a guy, Goliath, who's an optimist, who believes that the world can be a better place, that bad things happen but they can be fixed, that the next generation can do better or that we can make it better. And so it's got a fundamentally optimistic tone to it. In terms of supervision, the advantage there was that I'd been the executive at Disney for five years when we went into production. I often compare it to a lunatic asylum, TV animation, in that there are inmates and then there are trustees, and the trustees are actually also inmates, but they're considered by management to be less crazy.

0:30:07 GW: So they give the trustee a stick, a baton to keep the other lunatics in line. And so that's how I sort of see my role on Gargoyles. I was the lunatic most trusted. So because of what was going on, both in the larger company and at TV Animation, there were a lot of shows in crisis for various reasons. And because of that and because I was in charge of Gargoyles, which I produced with Frank Paur, we were both producers, but from an executive standpoint it was still me. I was the lunatic most trusted at Disney TV Animation, so they kinda left us alone. And I remember at one point, Frank and I had lunch with Gary during season two and Gary said, "I wanna apologize to you guys. I have not been paying attention to Gargoyles at all. We've had other things going on. How is it going? What's going on? How's it going on the show?"

0:30:54 GW: And we said, "Well, it's going pretty good. Schedule's tough, but we're managing and we're happy with how things are turning out." He's like, "Great. What kind of stories are you doing?" So we started telling him about that and at one point we told him about Xanatos and Fox getting married and having a baby. And he goes, "Whoa, whoa. I wouldn't do that. You can't have the bad guy have a baby. You can't have the bad guy raising a kid. You gonna take the kid away from him? That'll be bad. And if you don't take the kid away from him then you got a villain raising a kid. Don't do that one."

0:31:23 GW: And we were like looking at each other and then I say to him, "Well, we already did it." So there was this long pause. And Frank and I are both sort of like what's gonna happen here? Is he gonna still reject it and force us to sort of tear the whole show apart and start over? And you could sort of tell he's thinking the same thing, like he doesn't like this idea at all. But on the other hand, this was the one show that was going smoothly, and if he rips it all apart, then he's gotta get another show in crisis. So after this long pause, he says to us, "Well, don't dwell on it." I said, "Okay, we won't dwell on it." Whatever the hell that meant, but so we didn't. I mean we didn't do it, we didn't change anything, but that was the kind of thing, we had very little supervision because of where I had come from. We pretty much made the show that Frank and I wanted to make and had almost no interference whatsoever.

0:32:25 GW: Gargoyles was sort of superheroes done without flagging that they're superheroes. No tights, no capes. For all intents and purposes that was the genre we were doing. A year or so later, I was in a meeting with Eisner where he announced his desire to buy Marvel, and I watched his corporate strategic guys talk him out of it and say, "Marvel's a disaster. They've got their rights sold all over the place. So you'd buy the company and then find out you can't make a movie about Spiderman because they've tripled sold the rights to three different companies. And Fantastic Four is being held by this company. And blah, blah, blah, blah."

0:33:05 GW: Now of course, years later Bob Iger just bought it anyway, and yeah, couldn't do X-Men, couldn't do Fantastic Four, couldn't do Spiderman, at least not at first, bought it anyway. Of course, it's been a huge success for Disney. But Eisner was talked out of it that day. So he turned to us, to Gary and Bruce and myself and says, "Can we use Gargoyles to start a Disney superhero universe?" And I said, "Yeah." And we began developing spinoffs, which we would do backdoor pilots for during season two of the show. But by the time those things got on the air, Jeffrey had left the company. Rich Frank had left the company. Frank Wells had died. Bruce had left the company. All the main supporters of Gargoyles had gone, and so that notion of using Gargoyles to launch Disney's own superhero universe sort of fell away.

0:34:01 GW: But for, I don't know, three or four months, it was like this is what we've got to do 'cause we can't buy Marvel, and Warner Brothers has DC. And on one level, and I don't think we even appreciated it at the time, but the great thing about Michael himself picking the shows was that everyone in every division got on board or got out of the way. In the years that followed, when Michael stopped picking the shows personally, those decisions began being made by committee. You found you had to get literally unanimous vote in order to sell a show. You needed not just one important person to say yes, or two or three, but literally you needed something like eight or nine people to say yes. And if even one said no, the others would jump off the show. And it became much harder to sell. So Michael was sort of the last of the moguls from my point of view, and we didn't appreciate it at the time 'cause there were so many shows he passed on that we thought were great, but what we didn't get was yeah, that may have been so but the shows he picked we got to just make. And that hasn't been the same in most places since then.

0:35:12 GW: I think what happened was, is that over time, there was this sort of sense within the corporation that Michael was micromanaging, not from us per se. I don't think it had anything to do with TV Animation, but just in general. And there was this sense that he had to start giving some things up. One of the things he gave up was choosing the animated series, but he didn't invest that power in another individual. Again, sort of became a decision by committee, a committee where any one person could derail something.

0:35:40 Speaker 11: Five-eights today to close at 42 and five-eights, one day after the company announced the resignation of Disney studio's chief Jeffrey Katzenberg. While rumors run rampant about where Katzenberg will end up, Disney chairman Michael Eisner said today, the company will likely produce fewer films.

0:35:57 GW: Jeffrey left. Rich Frank left. A lot of this was in the wake of Frank Wells's death, which was a tragedy in it's own right, but also destabilized the company. Roy Disney was not happy with Jeffrey. Ultimately, not happy with Michael either. So ultimately, both departed and Gary had at least a couple job offers that I know about, maybe more. I think Jeffrey wanted him at DreamWorks and had an offer out to him, and then when Bruce Cranston left to go to Dreamworks, Gary decided that DreamWorks would be a good place to sort of work with Bruce again and reform that team. So Gary also picked DreamWorks. So you had Jeffrey, Gary, and Bruce all at DreamWorks. Those were the three guys who I'd worked with. So at Disney, everyone sort of assumed that I'd be going to DreamWorks.

0:36:50 GW: When my deal was up at the end of the second season of Gargoyles, that I'd leave and go to DreamWorks. And I didn't actually want to. I wanted to stay and do a third season of Gargoyles. But it became this self-fulfilling prophesy. They were so sure I was gonna go to DreamWorks that they stopped inviting me to meetings, 'cause they thought of me as I was already spying for DreamWorks or something. It was kind of ridiculous. But they didn't make a job offer to me until a week before I was leaving, at which point, I did end up going to DreamWorks because I didn't have any other job offers. A week out they finally made an offer to me too late. So I went. And they really kind of made it clear that I wasn't welcome there anymore.

0:37:36 GW: In November of 1995, I wanna say, they came to me, and said they wanted me to do the third season of Gargoyles but they were offering me a demotion from producer to story editor. They said the show was going to be animated at Deak, but Deak had a very bad track record in those days in terms of the look of the thing, and that it would be pre-produced there as well. And they gave me a schedule in November of 1995, where the first script was due in October of 1995. And I looked at the schedule. I said, "Well, do you have a time machine? Because I don't know how I'm supposed to go back and deliver a script in October when it's already November and we haven't started." And they're like, "Well, we know that schedule's gotta be adjusted, but we wanted you to see where it had to end so you'd have to catch up. Not instantaneously, but by the end of the season you'd have to catch up." And so it felt to me like they were asking me to preside over the demise of the show. That they were reducing the budget, reducing the quality of the animation, reducing the quality of all the preproduction, giving us an impossible schedule, and then asking me on top of all that, to take it to motion.

0:38:57 GW: And we didn't even talk about money. That... We didn't even get to that. I just said, "Look, I need the weekend to think about this." And they said, "Great. Take the weekend." And then I came in Monday and they had hired my replacement already. And I said, "What the hell?" And they said, "Oh well, you can still say yes. You're a... We just figured we needed someone in case you said no." Which basically said they were trying to get me to say no. They were trying to make the deal so horrible that I'd say no. So I just said, "Fine, I'll walk away." And so I winded up going to DreamWorks, and they all sort of patted themselves on the back and said, "See, we knew he was gonna go to DreamWorks." But of course they're the reason I went to DreamWorks 'cause they basically kicked me out. Not literally, but basically.

0:39:44 GW: I ended up writing the first episode for them, which they gave to other people to add it into whatever. So the version that got on TV was, I thought, a mess, but still better than the other 12, which were done by good people, but good people who didn't know the show and didn't have time to familiarize themselves with the show. And so those last, that last season of Gargoyles, the fans and I just don't even count it as canon to the series. And we look at the comic book series that I did years later as the sort of true third season. I watched the third season. I watched every episode exactly once. That's not quite true, I watched the one that I wrote more than once, not a lot, but the other 12 I watched exactly once each and made myself do it. I don't know why, but I did. It was very painful for me on a lot of levels, not just again, not just because I didn't think they were very good, which I didn't, even though I know a lot of good people worked on them, but characters were just behaving out of character. And the stories just weren't up to our standards. And it was just a different show.

0:40:57 S1: The original Mighty Ducks movie was made because Eisner's kids liked hockey. So it got a green light. And based on the success of the movie, which the company termed market research, Eisner bought an expansion NHL team and promptly named them the Mighty Ducks. And with that purchase came an addition to the television line up. The Mighty Ducks, the Animated Series, premiered in September 1996, and Joe Barruso, and animation veteran, served as a director and supervising producer.

0:41:27 Joe Barruso: The reason I was able get a job at Disney, and went from Deak to Disney I think had more to do with the fact that the show that I had directed and produced, Where on Earth is Carmen Sandiego, had won an Emmy in '95 as the best children's animated program. And it was one of the first shows that they called edutainment because it had this emphasis on providing real information, whether it was historical or science, in combination with an entertaining story. It was a detective-type story where a couple of younger kids were pursuing Carmen Sandiego. It was based on a computer game that was very popular at that time. They were looking for someone specifically for Mighty Ducks at the time. They needed a producer and director. And so yeah, I went and interviewed specifically for that project.

0:42:20 JB: In the initial meetings they showed me what they had done to that point and it wasn't a lot. It's funny, thinking back on it, it had started because Friends was very popular at that time, hugely successful at that time, so they wanted something like Friends. I remember them pitching it to me that way, and I thought, "Oh well, that's interesting." In the development that I'd seen to that point, when it was the Friend's concept, it was like we had in the show ultimately, it was human characters with duck heads, so it was sort of breaking with Disney tradition in terms of DuckTales and things that were clearly Donald Duck type characters. This was a new twist on the ducks for them. And that wasn't tremendously interesting to me, but then I can't recall at what point it shifted and became more sci-fi based, you know heroes in the image of sort of Ninja Turtles. And that's when David Wise, the editor, came on board.

0:43:22 JB: It was clear it was gonna go that direction. He had had a great deal of experience with Ninja Turtles, editing those shows, so he brought all that thinking and that expertise in terms of that particular genre, in going in that direction. He bought all that. That's when I was excited about... Sci-fi had always been a big interest for me and then anime was just getting really a lot of attention at that time. It really caught my interest, so that when we started talking that way, I was like, "Oh well, this will be great. We can use anime influences on this." But yeah, I think the old school that was there, because it was ducks, was a little uncomfortable. But our character designer, Greg Guler, he had had a longstanding relationship with Disney TV, and so he had done it all. He really knew it inside out. At the same time he had a great interest in superheroes. His background, he had originally come from comic books, so his first love was superheroes. So here he had a chance to combine Disney ducks with superheroes, so it was really a perfect opportunity for him. He was just a fantastic artist. So it all sort of came together.

0:44:32 JB: I was relieved that it was moving away from sort of a Friends sitcom to something more sci-fi and hero based. All our influences in terms of doing the art were harder edged. We never really got to go as far in that sci-fi direction as we would have liked to, but the way it's done is in terms of the development and art direction, it's sort of a consensus. So you have to put it in front of a whole bunch of people. And that included at the time, that included Michael Eisner and Michael Ovitz. We had meetings where they reviewed the artwork, and so they would have their input. I was kind of reaching for one end of the spectrum, and them pulling us back to something that was a little more comfortable. I was pleased that we were able to go as far as we did, given what they had done with ducks to that point.

0:45:24 Speaker 13: Six hockey playing ducks appear out of nowhere and suddenly six vigilantes in comic book get-up start showing up whenever there's trouble. Spill it. Where are they from? Another planet?

0:45:36 Speaker 14: Not another planet babe. A whole 'nother universe.

0:45:40 S1: And in this universe, there's a planet inhabited entirely by ducks.

0:45:45 Speaker 15: They called it Puckworld in honor of their greatest hero, the legendary hockey player, Drake DuCaine. He was the ultimate team captain. He saved Puckworld from a horde of conquering aliens, called the Saurian Overlords, hundreds of years ago.

0:46:00 JB: Michael Eisner, he was excited about it because he was excited about the hockey team. So here was just an opportunity to promote it.

0:46:07 Speaker 16: Well, this is sad news indeed for Duck fans. It looks like the Mighty Ducks season long winning streak may be coming to an end. They're tied with the Maine Quahogs with forty seconds remaining at Quahog Center. John Luke [0:46:20] ____ is aiming to score again. Oh, a spectacular save by the Mighty Ducks goalie, Wildwing. You know, not only are these ducks mighty, they're really ducks.

0:46:36 JB: Interesting thing that we did, which was sort of unconventional, was after the shows would come back animated, we would of course assemble them. It was decided that they were not funny enough. I would spend large amounts of time each day sitting with two comedy writers who would rewrite the shows. And rewrite jokes into the shows. And we would sit and we would have to make sure, because the shows were already animated, we would have to make sure that the new lines would work with the mouths that we already had. So, it was a grueling exercise of... They're trying to be funny, trying to... Coming up with jokes, but we had to make sure that they could work in the animation, as it was already completed. That was different, yeah, maybe one in ten were actually worth all the time and energy.

0:47:29 S1: So these hockey playing ducks were attacked by a dinosaur named Dragaunus. Am I hearing you right?

0:47:36 S1: You're bright, you got it babe.

0:47:38 S1: Beautiful. I could have stayed home watching sci-fi chiller theater, but this is much funnier. All right, what happened next?

0:47:48 JB: It was kind of disappointing that it went away just after 26 episodes 'cause there really was a big push behind it. The Disney marketing machine and merchandising machine was behind it entirely. And Mattel was on board entirely for the toy line. And I guess it was the second largest toy line in Canada, second only to Star Wars at that time, which makes sense 'cause it was hockey. And I know for a fact that Mattel was disappointed that it went away 'cause they had planned years of it. It never did horribly, but some weeks it would be just average, but other weeks it would be doing really well, so it was a surprise when we didn't get more episodes. I had worked my whole life towards the point of having the opportunity to do the traditional look, and a big thrill for me was to finally be at Disney, which was a personal goal. And so I was happy that I was able to do Mighty Ducks and sort of kick it up a notch in terms of duck properties.

0:48:47 S1: Jymn Magon. The last show the Disney Afternoon would produce was Quack Pack, a descendant of DuckTales, but with the nephews as teenagers and Donald as the parental figure instead of Uncle Scrooge. It should have been a perfect ending to Disney's run, but some things are not meant to be.

0:49:04 JM: I did move after the Goofy Movie into development on Duck Days, which eventually became Quack Pack. By that time, the whole mindset of the studio was changing. People that were valuable before were being sort of pushed aside and people that weren't valuable were being elevated and there was a lot more what I call baby suits showing up, middle management who were making decisions, creative decisions about things, people who had never made a single frame of film were making decisions. And it just got very strained, and it got so strained that I eventually said I need more money or I'm gonna go somewhere else, which was very, very difficult for me because I loved Disney. I thought I would retire from Disney, and it just didn't happen.

0:49:58 JM: From then on it was just like, I can't even follow what they're doing anymore. Well, it was part of the deal breaker. We were trying something new. We said, "How are we gonna do a series with Donald Duck when nobody can really understand Donald?" He's fine in a short where he goes, "Oh brother," or, "What's the big idea?" That kind of stuff. But to do dialogue is crazy. To try and hang a show on someone that you can't understand was gonna be very difficult. And we had some radical ideas and management looked down their noses at us. And I remember at one point our producer on the show, Larry Latham, was listening to management spouting about something or another. He looked over at me and he just, he did the throat cut, like cut, I'm out here.

0:50:51 JM: And shortly after that Carl Gears and I, who were the executive producers on the show, we just said, "We're happy to continue working on this, but we can't be running the show because management doesn't believe in it." And management said, "Okay fine." They never even called us and said, "What's wrong?" Accepted our statement and, which was basically a big, you know, forget you. And it was like, "Well, they don't care about us anymore." Like I said, that was sort of a turning point, for me anyway. I think it was a turning point for the department as well. But anyway, and I left shortly after that. We had a terrific run, and then just things felt... Started to get weird, that's all.

0:51:36 JM: And again, I can't put my finger on it, but to me, it had a lot to do with we stopped doing what we were good at and started following other people's leads. Every show we did was like number one in its slot, and so it wasn't like, "Oh ratings are slipping, let's do something different." To me, that genre, that style of Disney comedy adventure could still be going as far as I know. But it was like, "No, let's do Shnookums and Meat, and let's do Gargoyles. Let's do things that look like other studios." It just felt wrong to me. But again, I'm not in charge, I don't make those calls, I just, I'm a stupid ass show developer and story editor. I don't get to make the big decisions.

0:52:18 S1: Dean Stefan, writer.

0:52:20 Dean Stefan: And then of course Quack Pack was originally called Duck Days. The way I hear it, and I don't know, 'cause you know. It could be not exactly true, but I think it's true. Jymn Magon and, I think, Carl Gears were set to develop it, and much like Tad Stones was locked in his office for about six months or so when I first started, coming up with Darkwing Duck and all the artwork or whatever. Jymn and Carl were figuring out the show for Duck Days or Quack Pack. And at the time, Home Improvement was a big hit for Disney ABC, and they got the idea that Donald would be like the Tim Allen character. And he would have Huey, Louie, and Dewey, much like Tim Allen was the harried dad of the three kids. And the conceit was gonna be 'cause Donald couldn't really, he didn't have that many phrases he could say that... Disney actually had a list from the 30s they would hand to us, say, "These are the phrases that are recognizable, that Donald said." Because there just weren't that many words that you could make out, the way he talked.

0:53:26 DS: So their conceit was that he would have been a tailgunner in some kind of war and nobody could understand his instructions, so the military sent him to allocution school. And he would learn to speak clearer so that now he could do the sit-comy stuff with the kids and they can interact and stuff like that. So they had this whole thing worked out based upon the harried dad interacting with... And the way I hear it, they went to pitch to Katzenberg and the whole table of Disney suits. And they said, "Okay so, in this Donald, he went to allocution school because nobody could understand him in the military. Now he can speak a lot clearer." And that's about as far as they got.

0:54:07 DS: And Katzenberg says, "Wait, you wanna change the duck? You're gonna change the way Donald Duck talks?" And that was pretty much the end of the pitch, so that was it. So six months of work down the drain, 'cause without that they didn't really have a show. So then it became just really harried and it became Daisy Duck would be a roving reporter, and the kids would be tagalongs and Donald would almost be comic relief. You'd cut to him in the hammock doing gags and stuff like that. And it was a weird time at Disney 'cause we were between shows. And I think I wrote the Bible for Quack Pack, but I guess the show was okay. I'm not sure how it did in relation to the other ones. I don't think of it as one of the great ones.

0:54:49 S1: Jim Peterson, writer.

0:54:51 Jim Peterson: The origin of it is kind of muddled a little bit 'cause it kinda went through a whole bunch of different creative hands. So there was, I think it was originally Jymn Magon's project, and then he ended up leaving Disney. And Carl Gears took over. And then Carl got taken off the project and it was turned over to Kevin Hopps, who was our original story editor on Darkwing. And on the artistic side, Toby Shelton was running it, and they had kind of very different views of just between the two of them, how they wanted the series to run. And Toby really loved classic Donald Duck cartoons, and he kinda wanted to take it that way. And Kevin was more, it seemed, more on the sit-comy kind of stuff. We came in. There had already been a couple scripts written, but we ended up rewriting on what would become essentially the first episode, which was where Donald Duck gets drafted back into the Navy, of course, for some bizarre reason.

[music]

0:56:14 JP: The one that came out, kind of was still watchable was an episode called "The really Mighty Ducks". In it Huey, Dewey, and Louie become superheroes and Donald becomes a super villain called the Duck of Doom. And the whole battle is just about Donald trying to get the boys to clean their room, and they're doing everything humanly possible to, or duckly possible I suppose, to avoid cleaning their room.

0:56:41 Donald Duck: Clean this room or else.

0:56:47 Speaker 20: Clean our room? The nerve of some people.

0:56:50 Speaker 21: We're much too busy.

0:56:52 Speaker 22: We got a million things to do.

0:56:55 S?: We got nothing to do.

0:56:57 JP: And when Duck Days was winding up, it was an era where Disney was letting go of all of their staff writers. During the Bonkers run, they were also doing a couple other series at the time. So there were like 51 staff writers at that point, at Disney TV Animation. And when we finally left at the end of Duck Days, there were less than ten. So part of the reason was that Disney lost their market when Fox acquired the rights to the NFL. And a lot of stations that were independent and carrying the Disney Afternoon, signed up with Fox and had to drop the Disney Afternoon for the Fox cartoons. But at the time, that was our perception on the executive explanations for why the affiliates were dropping the Disney Afternoon. So that and also, at the same time, Turner acquiring Hanna-Barbara. Then he let go of all of the staff writers and decided to go freelance, and Disney kind of followed suit on that 'cause there were a bunch of writers available on the freelance market that didn't used to be available.

0:58:01 S1: In 1997 Disney purchased ABC, which was the final nail in the coffin for what had been known as the Disney Afternoon. Not only was that over, syndication was basically over as well. With their new network, Disney went full Nickelodeon, even bringing in Geraldine Laybourne who headed the Nickelodeon network. And Disney Television Animation changed quickly in response.

0:58:24 S1: In an attempt that the press called The Nickelodeonization of Disney, they bought Doug out from under Viacom and brought in Joe Ansolabehere who helped develop Hey Arnold! And Paul Germain who co-created Rugrats, to launch Recess, which became the flagship show of Disney's One Saturday Morning. With One Saturday Morning, Disney would retake the title of the number one kids block. The shows were far different than what had been done in the past, and the familiar faces that had transformed television animation like Gary Krisel, Greg Weisman, Mark Zaslove, and Jymn Magon, no longer wandered the halls. But a few were still there. Tad Stones.

0:59:02 TS: They had a luncheon at the rotunda restaurant where they invited the key people in the department, key creative people in the department were all there for the executives to introduce themselves. And Jerry Laborne, [0:59:17] ____ that she's talking about her direction. And she says, and obviously they had worked this out before. Says, "Dean, I hate ducks." And then that was Dean Valentine, and he replied. "I hate ducks too." Which was basically crapping on 80 percent of the people in the room, to say nothing of you would not have been offered a job because there would be no job to be had if it wasn't for those shows that you're currently crapping on. I was luckily on vacation during that luncheon. I don't know how I would have reacted. I wouldn't have said anything, but I might have walked out, which would've had the same effect. But it was totally disrespectful.

1:00:00 TS: You can certainly say, "You guys have done a fantastic job. And now the market's changing, we want to do something entirely different and we're looking for new ideas, and here's the ideas we're starting with." It's like, "Why do you have to piss on something to move forward?" So that was, again, this... They had a pitch, they had a strategy. Upper upper managment had signed off on it. So it's just basically, here's our show runners and some of you are gonna be working on these shows and some of you are not. So it's just a management thing. It's not like a slow evolution. It is just, "Hey, this is what we're doing now." And it's like, "Okay, are we doing any more of that?" "No, we're not gonna do any more of that, but we're still gonna do those feature spin-offs 'cause they're still doing well."

1:00:45 TS: That's that, you know.

[music]

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-look-back-machine/id1257301677?mt=2

#disneylandparis art disneypic spongebob disneyresort disneyaddict disneystore movies lgbt instagood disneymagic dc tvshows xboxone nintendos #disneyland disney disneygram disneyworld disneylife instadisney waltdisney disneyparks disneyphoto mickeymouse love waltdisneyworld disneypr

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katanahime · 5 years

Text

Revue Starlight Liveblog Part 22: Episode 8 Part 6

Kat in the theater basement06/04/2019

Nana had a line like this as well, after the 99th festival

all i want for xmas is revue06/04/2019

RESUME And ye

Kat in the theater basement06/04/2019

"I won't ever lose again!" Thems some good fighting words

Their ties to each other keep her in the game

Flashback to fight with Junna, huh?

And yet

She interfered on your behalf And became involved So then you think "we can't both win, so we can't win at all" But Karen doesn't think like that And you also can't lose it yourself

Really, in order for EITHER of you to fulfill your dream, you'd have to both win. One person winning is actually a loss for both And thus, yep

TWWOOOOOOOO DAAAAAAAAAAAAYSSSSSS06/04/2019

rules? who needs RULES? - Karen Aijou, 2018

Kat in the theater basement06/04/2019

This feels like the show putting the pieces together for people not liveblogging it, which is of course, most people generally

TWWOOOOOOOO DAAAAAAAAAAAAYSSSSSS06/04/2019

Gale and I have an ongoing argument I cannot WAIT to involve you in when this is done

all i want for xmas is revue06/04/2019

oh no It's also Hikari putting the pieces together herself

Kat in the theater basement06/04/2019

Or really "the rules didn't actually SAY I couldn't so" "technically correct is the best kind of correct" -Aijou Karen, 2018

all i want for xmas is revue06/04/2019

Good to see some introspective development Like, a character developing on their own

TWWOOOOOOOO DAAAAAAAAAAAAYSSSSSS06/04/2019

"there's no rule that says a dog CAN'T play basketball"

Kat in the theater basement06/04/2019

Well, yes, that too. But having the flashbacks in here and not just an inner monologue is for the audience

all i want for xmas is revue06/04/2019

mhm

Kat in the theater basement06/04/2019

Yee

Oh dang girl

"If you can't make your own glimmer, store bought is fine"

TWWOOOOOOOO DAAAAAAAAAAAAYSSSSSS06/04/2019

it's time for them to Bring The Budget Out

Holly Jolly Pieman06/04/2019

Unlimited Budget Works.

Kat in the theater basement06/04/2019

Oh dang, are we gonna get like, a weapon transformation?

Oh we HELLA are

THE FLOWER BLOOMS Into a star

all i want for xmas is revue06/04/2019

Caliculus Bright is now... Blossom Bright. Rebirth of glimmer...

Kat in the theater basement06/04/2019

"Blooming the Star" holy shit, occasionally, I am very good with the words that I say(edited)

TWWOOOOOOOO DAAAAAAAAAAAAYSSSSSS06/04/2019

ACT TWO

Kat in the theater basement06/04/2019

As the mirror image Tokyo Tower comes the fuck down

Holly Jolly Pieman06/04/2019

Is Tokyo Tower a Stand or Noble Phantasm?! You decide dear viewer!(edited)

Kat in the theater basement06/04/2019

Hikari heard you were thirsty the other day, so she's helping ya out

MegaZapDeer06/04/2019

I love this part , it’s so dang hype !

Kat in the theater basement06/04/2019

Well Nana you seem to have lost a sword there

Also I was too caught up in it to pause for a bit there

all i want for xmas is revue06/04/2019

No worries 'Tis in the top 3 or so best Revues after all

TWWOOOOOOOO DAAAAAAAAAAAAYSSSSSS06/04/2019

god I love that line

Kat in the theater basement06/04/2019

YAS

TWWOOOOOOOO DAAAAAAAAAAAAYSSSSSS06/04/2019

the fact that makenai and akiramenai are two of the phrases every weeb should know notwithstanding ... "I wanted see you" subbers were eating a sandwich

Doc Mahiru06/04/2019

I actually learned what they meant from this scene

all i want for xmas is revue06/04/2019

Uh Whoops Guess that error passed both the subbers and me by

TWWOOOOOOOO DAAAAAAAAAAAAYSSSSSS06/04/2019

happens to the best of us my dude

Kat in the theater basement06/04/2019

"kimi" is definitely "you" "zutto" could be "all" or "always" I didn't quite catch the start, so wondering the error there

TWWOOOOOOOO DAAAAAAAAAAAAYSSSSSS06/04/2019

it was a typo "I wanted see you"

Kat in the theater basement06/04/2019

Oh lmao, I missed it too

all i want for xmas is revue06/04/2019

Pffft

TWWOOOOOOOO DAAAAAAAAAAAAYSSSSSS06/04/2019

I didn't see it in my watch either

Kat in the theater basement06/04/2019

When you read stuff a lot of times you mind just fills in the blanks you expect to see

TWWOOOOOOOO DAAAAAAAAAAAAYSSSSSS06/04/2019

it's just the screenshot made it more obvious to me lol

Kat in the theater basement06/04/2019

YEEEEE

TWWOOOOOOOO DAAAAAAAAAAAAYSSSSSS06/04/2019

I LOVE MAKING MIRACLES HAPPEN THROUGH SHEER FORCE OF WILL I LOVE SOULMATES

Kat in the theater basement06/04/2019

And there we have it!

Doc Mahiru06/04/2019

a k i r a m e n a i

Kat in the theater basement06/04/2019

She defeated the banana

Holly Jolly Pieman06/04/2019

I suppose you could say the Banana was... peeled.

Doc Mahiru06/04/2019

Kat in the theater basement06/04/2019

And Karen defeated Claudine of course. And I say "of course" with extra "of course"-ness, because I honestly didn't even think of that as being in question tbh lol

all i want for xmas is revue06/04/2019

Rip kuro

Holly Jolly Pieman06/04/2019

She'll need to watch more Maya videos. I believe in her. Time to absorb the XP.

Kat in the theater basement06/04/2019

Claudine literally the most surprised one here

all i want for xmas is revue06/04/2019

I mean, she thought she was #2™️, and just got rekt by someone she considered to be dead last. That's a fair reaction. You underestimated the power of Karen

Kat in the theater basement06/04/2019

Karen was not dead last the last time we saw the lineup, but still fair

all i want for xmas is revue06/04/2019

We saw it, but Claudine didn't Presumably

Kat in the theater basement06/04/2019

At any rate, she was a SECURE #2 Or she felt she was Although I think Hikari might have also beaten her last time so, idk, but EITHER WAY She didn't expect Karen

all i want for xmas is revue06/04/2019

Mhm

Kat in the theater basement06/04/2019

Pretty

all i want for xmas is revue06/04/2019

I think Claudine won because we see Hikari regaining her glimmer here, now As well as coming to the decision that she'll never lose again

Kat in the theater basement06/04/2019

Maybe I guess

all i want for xmas is revue06/04/2019

But we can't know for sure Ya Is all hcs

Kat in the theater basement06/04/2019

I think it doesn't really affect Claudine's feels either way, because Hikari was an x factor. WE may have seen the start position on the lineup, but presumably Claudine didn't, and Hikari was NEW, a TRANSFER

Holly Jolly Pieman06/04/2019

As is the norm thus far: Suddenly Karen Interrupt.

Kat in the theater basement06/04/2019

Whereas she KNOWS Karen Oh Nana, honey

She must be thinking, like, "I can't protect everyone like this" Yeah, that's only been hammered in like 5000 times

We'll see about that! You don't ALWAYS have to follow the script

You can flip the script And we all know Karen's good at flipping her choreography

Shine together. Fight the SYSTEM

And that would make the most unexpected play, wouldn't it, kirin-san? And we get a VISUALLY solo Hikari ED, but with Karen singing OH FLIPPING BOARD Let us seeeee Maya and Claudine still retain 1 and 2, a small upset isn't going to change it THAT much, after all, not when people were so far below before Hikari takes 3. Nana falls to 4. Karen at 5.

OH WAIT

TWWOOOOOOOO DAAAAAAAAAAAAYSSSSSS06/04/2019

oh, huh, Hikari's arrow is blue instead of the usual red too

Kat in the theater basement06/04/2019

Hikari is blue It's kind of a thing Anyway, as I was saying- OH WAIT A TIE

I didn't expect the number to flip lol

エリザベート・バートリー〔ハロウィン〕06/04/2019

GASP

Kat in the theater basement06/04/2019

Indeed

Wakarimasu End! Anyway, that certainly proves ties are possible! So you can tie at 1 too

all i want for xmas is revue06/04/2019

Fun fact Hikari was my least favorite character Until this episode

Holly Jolly Pieman06/04/2019

...

Kat in the theater basement06/04/2019

HOW GALE HOW DARE YOU

Holly Jolly Pieman06/04/2019

How are you this bad Gale.

TWWOOOOOOOO DAAAAAAAAAAAAYSSSSSS06/04/2019

he hadn't read Overture

all i want for xmas is revue06/04/2019

Without the interviews, overture context, and reading into the reasons why she likes jellyfish, is a dumb, etc

Kat in the theater basement06/04/2019

Overture doesn't help much with Hikari!

TWWOOOOOOOO DAAAAAAAAAAAAYSSSSSS06/04/2019

or so I assume

all i want for xmas is revue06/04/2019

She was just so incredibly bland and uninteresting This episode made me realize she's just bad at people

Kat in the theater basement06/04/2019

I had to learn Hikari from the show, mostly

TWWOOOOOOOO DAAAAAAAAAAAAYSSSSSS06/04/2019

eh, fair

Kat in the theater basement06/04/2019

And she got ME with EP 4

all i want for xmas is revue06/04/2019

After a rewatch, I noticed all the little details And she was catapulted to #2

エリザベート・バートリー〔ハロウィン〕06/04/2019

Ah, THIS was the moment you realized what she was like

Kat in the theater basement06/04/2019

I don't know how you didn't get that with ep 4 Gale

TWWOOOOOOOO DAAAAAAAAAAAAYSSSSSS06/04/2019

I don't remember when she sold me, let me see if I can go back and see

all i want for xmas is revue06/04/2019

After I figured out she was autistic she reached a tie with Mahiru

TWWOOOOOOOO DAAAAAAAAAAAAYSSSSSS06/04/2019

Gale was gushing about her the whole time since I don't mind spoilers ofc

all i want for xmas is revue06/04/2019

Episode 4 aired when I didn't much like Karen either

Kat in the theater basement06/04/2019

Gale, you were a mess

all i want for xmas is revue06/04/2019

Her being #8

Kat in the theater basement06/04/2019

How were you so wrong

all i want for xmas is revue06/04/2019

So I just kinda Dismissed The whole ep

I always loved Mahiru since the start though

Kat in the theater basement06/04/2019

How can a person be so wrong and somehow end up so right later

all i want for xmas is revue06/04/2019

I was 33% correct

Kat in the theater basement06/04/2019

Also: Do you like episode 7 or 8 better?

Fate's End Says Play Ar Tonelico06/04/2019

8 is better because smiling hikari

Kat in the theater basement06/04/2019

My feels are with 8 atm, but I also feel, thinking it over, that it's a lot to do with high impact from the END of episode 8 overall. Whereas 7 may have been stronger throughout, but 8 just having a wonderfully amazing strong end Not sure Will have to rewatch both of them

all i want for xmas is revue06/04/2019

Anyway... I do prefer episode 7 Episode 8 is a solid 10/10 But good lord Episode 7 is just above and beyond Episode 7 is just Masterful 8 is pretty good, but not as thematically solid imo Nana being a bit shoehorned in to be Hikari's opponent as to show how Hikari stronk now And 7's build up leading to the first Nana fight we see after it be a loss is a bit Meh

TWWOOOOOOOO DAAAAAAAAAAAAYSSSSSS06/04/2019

ah, yeah, that's a good way to word it

all i want for xmas is revue06/04/2019

But it's overall a 10/10 7 is just. 11/10.

TWWOOOOOOOO DAAAAAAAAAAAAYSSSSSS06/04/2019

the song and the sakuga are godlike

all i want for xmas is revue06/04/2019

Yes

Kat in the theater basement06/04/2019

Yeah, basically

all i want for xmas is revue06/04/2019

Correct Fun fact: The action guy for a few of those shots near the end? It's Jojo's action guy

Kat in the theater basement06/04/2019

That's amazing

all i want for xmas is revue06/04/2019

Revue also borrows some peeps from Symphogear Y'know, "best action scenes featuring diegetic music in anime" Symphogear

Kat in the theater basement06/04/2019

Another anime I need to watch, apparently

all i want for xmas is revue06/04/2019

Yes

Kat in the theater basement06/04/2019

I'm developing quite the list, and I think it's like 75% Gale's fault

all i want for xmas is revue06/04/2019

It's definitely not as, like Deep ™️ But it's fantastic popcorn action after it gets over its edgy start

Kat in the theater basement06/04/2019

Cool I'll just like Watch That one

all i want for xmas is revue06/04/2019

And plenty of people like that start a lot, too

Kat in the theater basement06/04/2019

I think

all i want for xmas is revue06/04/2019

Yeah no need to blog dw

MegaZapDeer06/04/2019

Hikari was always high up on my tier list, but i think this episode secured her the number one spot i just thought it was so cool how her weapon was small due to her glimmer being drained, but then her weapon did a tranformation and it was amzing!

Kat in the theater basement06/04/2019

Me taking my adhd and depression medication:

TWWOOOOOOOO DAAAAAAAAAAAAYSSSSSS06/04/2019

omg

Kat in the theater basement06/04/2019

TWWOOOOOOOO DAAAAAAAAAAAAYSSSSSS06/04/2019

I do love a good case of magical depression (Hi again Kingdom Hearts how are you today) God I just fuckin LOVE DESTINY Like I love free will too They aren’t mutually exclusive and I love that this show makes that such a focus

all i want for xmas is revue06/04/2019

And like, the best part? Her dagger didn't grow back into a sword You can't unrid yourself of depression It just grew a crossguard, for parrying Aka making it more functional Like Yo

all i want for xmas is revue06/04/2019

I wonder if there's a weeb out there powerful enough he reads "aka" as "red" instead of "also known as"

Kat in the theater basement06/04/2019

It's honestly such a good metaphor. Like, the problem didn't go away, it's just helping me function btw, next liveblog tomorrow, probably around the same time as today Also I think I'll start trying to put the first ep on tumblr and see. How that goes. I'm really curious how long it goes for compared to the manga posts

Kat in the theater basement06/04/2019

Gale observing me talking about Karen during first ep: "Please be gentle she has big stupid" Me now: wondering how much Gale had to hold in the "Bakaren"

all i want for xmas is revue06/04/2019

A lot

Holly Jolly Pieman06/04/2019

Please be gentle, Bakaren has big stupid.

#Revue Starlight #Revue liveblog

0 notes

ambronite · 6 years

Text

Superhero Podcast 14: Annastiina Hintsa: How to Unlock Meaning in Life, Overcome Burnout and Reach Sustainable High Performance

Listen on iTunes

In this episode, I talk to Annastiina Hintsa, COO of Hintsa Performance.

After working in top management consulting and experiencing burnout, she was faced with profound questions about balance and meaning. She found answers in a transformation that involved running 250 km (155 miles) ultra races in places like the Gobi Desert and Antarctica, and joined Hintsa Performance as an entrepreneur, helping people unlock a life of meaning and sustainable high performance.

The holistic Hintsa coaching method has been used by Fortune 500 executives and world-class athletes like F1 Champions Fernando Alonso and Mika Häkkinen.

Technical note: A few of my questions were re-recorded after the interview because of a microphone issue.

Links

Dr Aki Hintsa’s Book: The Core - Better Life, Better Performance

4 Deserts Ultramarathon series

Superhero Podcast 14 Transcript

Simo T. Suoheimo: I'm joined today by a very special guest; Annastiina Hintsa the COO of Hintsa Performance, one of the leading organizations in the world in applying a holistic approach to high performance when that's created very uncommon results and dominating entire fields and series of sports, and also excels in building around meaningful human experience. Welcome to the show Annastiina.

Annastiina Hintsa: Thanks!

Simo T. Suoheimo: What's really interesting in the Hintsa Performance, your personally bringing to the world is focus on starting with your personal core and recognizing and clarifying your values and building your whole life to support the equation and using that as a proven successful method of bringing the best out of exceptional world class performers. Many of whom are household names in the sports world, including a record breaking Formula 1 drivers like Mika Häkkinen and Fernando Alonzo. How does this type of a holistic approach to performance instead of a one that's focused on incremental short term and medium term improvements? How does this type of a larger holistic method translate into someone who is not a professional F1 driver or a professional athlete, but rather someone who is looking for a performance edge and into building more meaning and more impact into their daily life?

Annastiina Hintsa: It's really, It actually does start from what you were talking about, the core. It's basically three questions that we ask from all of our clients, including these high performers. We ask about their identity. Do you know who you are? About their purpose. Do you know what you want and finally are you in control of your life? And it is through sort of like a process of exploration of those themes that we then started building kind of like the different blocks in their lives that actually matter. And it's interesting for how many of some of the top performers theme and it's the first time they stopped to think about it and that sort of like that, that core is what we believe is the kind of the foundation of a long term sustainable high performance even. For a lot of them is about performing. It's about performing under pressure even, but performing under pressure over a long period of time. And that's only possible when you have a sustainable foundation to build on and that's unsustainable foundation. It actually starts from within. Starts from you. And it starts from sort of that internal, that sort of self-awareness. What is it that you actually care about? What is it that actually matters to you? What are your certify key strengths and values? And then what do you actually want to do about it? What, what's the sort of like impact or driving force in your life and have for a lot of them, like at some point like with these drivers, it's quite clear. It's um, we, we work a lot with Formula 1 and for them it is about being the world champion. Even for like the younger drivers, like from a very early age, that's, that's their kind of key sort of purpose. But it's important that in addition to their purpose, they think about who they are and it's not just a purpose that's driving them. If your identity is tied to just being a Formula 1 driver, what happens after your career and that sort of questions like that are that are actually quite easily translatable to to you and me.

Simo T. Suoheimo: Absolutely. One of the key things that I've, I've witnessed first-hand when going through a personal transformation and helping other people do the same as that there is no such thing as an overnight transformation. There are only more and less sustainable ways of building a new baseline in different areas of life and I can imagine that that's at the very core of what you've been seeing because many of the people you start working with Hintsa Performance are actually quite young when they're, when they're starting to work on these problems.

Annastiina Hintsa: Yeah. Many of them are really young. We also work a lot with executives that are actually, you know, closing retirement and for them it's a cool thing and yeah..

Simo T. Suoheimo: The questions don't change, do they?

Annastiina Hintsa: The questions don't change at all. I think we're actually quite lucky to be thinking about them right now at this age because many of our clients think about them first time, you know, when they are closing retirement and it is sort of like, yeah, it's actually even painful to watch sometimes if, if that's the first point in life when you start to think, oh wow, that's. Have I actually been, you know, when you discover sort of a what it is that actually matters to you and then you think reflect on your life and, and realize that maybe I haven't been actually living my life the way the way I wanted to or the in accordance to those values. That's it's a, it's an uncomforting thought.

Simo T. Suoheimo: Definitely is. And that's something that I've been also very much immersed in my own life and also that of my company and with Mikko, my co-founder who you met him in London and we've been thinking about this a whole lot and how actual sustainable transformations can only come through recognizing your own values and noticing, calling your own bullshit in a way. Noticing whether rubber actually hits the road, whether or not you're living those values in your, in your daily life.

Annastiina Hintsa: Exactly, exactly. Calling your own bullshit. I really love that it is about being genuine to yourself and it is about being honest to yourself, but you know, where am I in terms of like in my life and in terms of the different elements in my life that are actually meaningful to me or that I actually care about and then it is about kind of being realistic about that too. So a lot of our, you know, when you do start that process, you do start thinking. You do recognize that shit maybe, I'm not doing as well as I wish I was than it is about like, okay, starting with small steps as we all know. I remember when I started that process, I was also sort of a, I kind of wanted to turn things around overnight. Obviously I wanted to create a program. I wanted a plan, a concrete plan please. And um, yeah, we do have a plan, but the plan was nothing like I expected it to be. It was actually, it was, um, one of my biggest issues was, I mean we also look at holistic health and wellbeing in terms of general health, physical activity, nutrition, mental energy, sleep and recovery. Biomechanics. Exactly. And it's um, I mean we looked at all those elements. My biggest issue at the time was sleep and uh, I was expecting a rigorous plan to change it and I got one minute breathing exercises before going to bed. It was so disappointing, this is, this is what, like, what is this? And it changed everything. It completely to changed my like.. The first two hours of my sleep were actually completely disrupted. So I was, I had problems actually switching off. That was my issue and my coach recognized that and what he gave me, it was one a minute breathing exercises, and through that, like when we did turned into 5 and 10, I was able to then kind of like, I gained two hours of sleep effectively because I was..

Simo T. Suoheimo: So that's a pay off

Annastiina Hintsa: It was a pay-off. And one of the key sort of counter arguments that we often get is that I don't have time for this. Like I don't have time for this. Everyone has one minute before going to bed and if you can get two hours for it like in my case it's a good ROI.

Simo T. Suoheimo: Absolutely. That's the best investment you can make.

Annastiina Hintsa: Definitely

Simo T. Suoheimo: Now, one thing that I find really impressive is the scope of the work you do at Hintsa Performance. The last nine world driver's championships in Formula 1, we one have been won by people who have been working with the Hintsa Performance coaching methods. One of them is, is the legendary Formula 1 champion, Mika Häkkinen, who was actually speaking at a panel where also one of my teammates, Inka was invited and Mika has been speaking extensively about the interconnectedness of the psychology and the mental game into and and bringing that into recent performance. You work with athletes, executives, and other clients by starting from some of the most fundamental and important questions, their identity and values and what outcomes are they really after and after that you only go and look at the outer sphere of physical activity, of nutrition, recovery, mental energy and so forth, so you start much, much deeper before exploring other building blocks and daily actions and the routines that most people associate with when we talk about health and wellbeing and and high performance, and this is actually where unfortunately most programs get stuck in and most programs focus and most heavily and they in fact ignore the critical questions of why and the critical questions of internal purpose. In fact, many other programs tend to start and end on the outer sphere and I think that's a big problem. They look at performance on a very superficial level without really doing what I like to call it, the psychological heavy lifting in helping athletes really know themselves in, in helping them identify and prioritize their own values and really discover what's driving them and why they really wake up in the morning. And your own journey also involves some extreme experiences in the world of endurance racing that have played a part and asking some deeper questions about what is meaningful to you. You've just completed your fifth ultra-marathon race in Antarctica, which was 250 kilometers. That's a whopping 155 miles and before that you've raced in other extreme environments like the Atacama desert and the Gobi desert.

Annastiina Hintsa: So Antarctica was one of the most challenging races mentally that I have ever done. Probably the most challenging one. And the kind of key reasons for that, you started every day by not really knowing for how long you have to go on, so every day we're just keeping running until the weather didn't allow us to do so anymore, so it was, we were basically completely. It was just dependent on the weather. It could be two hours, it could be four hours, it could be 12 hours and you just don't know. You just got to keep it running and that kind of uncertainty and not really knowing how to pace yourself. That was really tough mentally. And the other thing was that because of safety, primarily, and because of the location, we were running in circles like literally in circles and, and uh, like the worst. I'm sorry that where's the most challenging day was 1.2 kilometre loop up and down the ice iceberg and uh, for 10-11 hours,

Simo T. Suoheimo: That's a tight loop

Annastiina Hintsa: That's a really tight loop with 50 competitors as a really, really tight loop. And at some point during that sort of like probably around, I don't know, it was maybe around like seven, eight hours that you start being like really what am I doing? And um, it wasn't, it was more than once that I question it. I was sort of like, it's a moment where you, do you overcome it? What you do is you just, you know, lift up your gaze from your feet look around. And uh, it was incredible. I mean, the nature of there was something you just can't, can't imagine before it, you see it. It was sort of the, I didn't know there are so many shades of blue. It was beautiful. The ice, the mountains, you know, you look around and you're like, oh, there, you know, probably like 100 penguins and that iceberg, you look around and there is a whale and it's sort of like, and just, you know, look around and appreciate where you are and that you are actually going through this unique experience that you'll probably never experienced again, that was sort of fa emerge yourself in and the scenery it was, it was beautiful.

Simo T. Suoheimo: The immersive nature of this is something that I can totally relate to to through my own ventures and climbing expeditions and I've always wondered if, if there are other people who get these sorts of immersive experiences during these races. This is your fifth race, fifth ultra. Can you talk a bit about those?

Annastiina Hintsa: I think that's the key reason why I do these anyway, It's that sort of like what, that's the feeling that you're looking for. And um, so my first ultra I did in Jordan and that was, to be honest, the reason why I did it was primarily just because I needed a goal that I didn't know if I was going to make it through. I was, I was actually recovering from burnout at the time I, um, I was working, I say management consultant before and I, I loved what I did. I worked a lot. And uh, you know, I realized I was working too much at some point and I realized also that I'm the type of person who needs a goal to actually then implement some of the things that I know I should be doing anyway. And that was, that was my goal. I was like, okay, this is, this is hard enough. I'm not going to make it. Um, I don't know if I'm going to survive the desert. And uh, yeah, that was, that was the first experience. But the experience there was during the first couple of days, you're of course, you're kind of like going for your inbox, sort of like, yeah, I should probably do that and that, and that, then you start thinking about things like, um, like relationships, you know, the people in your live. And uh, I remember being like, oh, I should talk to my mother about that. It was sort of like you start thinking about the people that, you know, you realize maybe I haven't been in touch with these people enough, like, you know, I wonder how he or she is doing. And it was sort of like you start having, having thoughts that you don't have the time to think about in your kind of ordinary life. And uh, that was sort of like, you know, day two, day three, and then at some point you start thinking about yourself and you're so thinking about like, you know, so I haven't been in touch with these people. Why? You know, what are the things that really matter to me, you know, what are some of the key values? What are my key values? It sort of, um, at, at Hintsa my current job, what we ask are the three questions my father used to people are sort of, do you know who you are? Do you know what you want? And are in control of your life? And those were just sort of things that you start thinking about it, so like who am I really? And you start going through that process and then at some point you sort of like run out of thoughts and then it just becomes really sort of like, you become acutely aware of your surroundings, of kind of the sand beneath your feet. Sort of a, Oh, the tree, oh, a bird. And, and especially in the desert where there is not really much out there. And uh, during the races they're kind of, they're small races. There are not that many people and you spread out for like 40 to 90 K, so it's like you, there are a lot of times when you just don't see anyone for, for the longest time and you're just completely alone in this vast emptiness. And it's, it's beautiful, it's really, really beautiful. You feel like you're part of something bigger and you also realize how small you are. And I actually quite liked that feeling. It feels liberating in a sense.

Simo T. Suoheimo: I can definitely appreciate that feeling, in fact, I found that to be or those kinds of experiences for me personally to be the context at which I feel like I get to know myself the best and get to peel off some of the layers of the onion that are kind of cushioned by everyday reality and every day pursuits as an entrepreneur or many A-players listening to this discussion It can relate to the fact that you're a person with high drive to achievement and high pain tolerance and often there are not that many places or contexts to contemplate on what really matters and really get to the bottom of your values. What do you think about these experiences in terms of sharing these with the world? Because not that many people can relate to these kinds of extreme endurance pursuits. Are there any ways for you personally to explore these states to get to the bottom of yourself in everyday life?

Annastiina Hintsa: That's a really great question and, and you know, one of the questions I most often gets asked is like why on earth would you do this? And for me it is exactly like you were saying, it's my chance to stop and reflect. The question is do I really need to go to a desert and run 250 kilometers to stop and reflect? Is that the only way? Would there be potentially an easier and it may be even cheaper alternative, an alternative way to do it. And uh, yeah, absolutely. And I think it's absolutely necessary that we find those moments and also in our live her day life, I think the challenges that it's not easy, it's much easier to start off like stopping to reflect in an environment like, like that where you're kind of like completely detached from your, from your work and from your responsibilities, and also It's not just responsibility, it's like for many of us, it's our passion, it's what we do. It's not because of like responsibility and duty, it's, it's because we love what we do and we're like deeply passionate about what we do and it's not negative, it's positive to contrary. It's extremely positive and the challenges that can also be dangerous if we, if we don't ever kind of detach ourselves from it. I think for me sort of, um, the good thing, what about with ultra, ultra-endurance is that it requires you also to take those moments every week. I have to run, I have to get out, I have to sort of spend time by myself, uh, quite a bit every day. I still liked the nature I, I need the kind of need the outdoors or for me that's, that's my place where I get the chance to kind of stop and reflect. It takes time though, like for me, takes a little bit of little bit of time and sort of conscious reflection. I'm in a lot of people do meditation. I nowadays, and I actually think that that is a great way of sort of maybe instead of spending two days in a desert in order to get to a point where you like maybe able to, to kind of a feel that state of not really thinking about anything. I mean meditation is that it's basically the same thing, but you just don't need to spend two days, you spent 20 minutes. It is something that I do personally practice. Um, let's be honest, I don't do it every day.

Simo T. Suoheimo: I'm sure none of us really do. Even many of us have our best effort.

Annastiina Hintsa: Regardless of our best efforts. I'm not perfect at all, so I don't do it every day, but I do, I do try to do it every week and, and that for me right now is sort of a, it's a, it's something to kind of compliment that running experience. But for me, yeah, running, running relates to the thing that really helps me to disconnect. It's a, I also have a dog and running with my dog definitely helps me disconnect because if I focus on anything else but him, he'll not behave so well. He will protest, uh, so it's uh, uh, it's a really great way to.

Simo T. Suoheimo: So am I wrong to say that you've actually built these kinds of supportive structures, supportive habits into your life to make sure that you actually do take time for this process on the regular? Your dog and the ultra-goals definitely sound like elements that will certainly make sure that will take time for the right things.

Annastiina Hintsa: It's an enforcement mechanism and it's what works for me and I think it's important for people to kind of like fine whatever works for you and it's sort of like, it's not something that's going to suit everyone, definitely not. I actually think more people, most people would actually be able to do it. Most people are capable of doing things that they thought they wouldn't be able to do. Like seriously. I was definitely not sure if I was gonna make it out as the first one. I was not sure at all, but it's in the end it's much more about that mental strength than physical, which is a bit counter-intuitive because you think like, oh my God, it's such a, it's like five / six marathons, six marathons. It's crazy. You can't do it, but it's a, yeah, it's six marathons, but like after 30 K it's pretty much in your head. So it's like, yeah, it's, it's, it's much more in your head and it's much more about like what do you think you're capable of doing and what you think you're not capable of doing. So it is something that many more people could do if they chose to, but it's of course it's not for everyone for like, you know, I think it's just, yeah. For me it's been, it's been my dog honestly. It's been sort of like maybe building a bit of that kind of routine. So realistically I'm working on, I'm practicing meditation so it's something that I don't do every day, I do it once a week. I tried to kind of like every day I went on like a weekend courses and whatnot, and I freaked out. It was too much. It was a goal that was way too way too high for me. I had to start by step by step and for me the first step has been like once a week. That's it.

Simo T. Suoheimo: Yeah. That thought really resonates with me and uh, what has personally helped me a lot has been to understand that the act of meditation is actually noticing that your mind has wandered and still coming back to the breath and embracing yourself with loving kindness while doing that instead of becoming frustrated for having drifted, understanding the role of meditation not as something you need to be good at, not as a source of additional stress on top of everything else, but rather a moment when you were deeply aware of your shortcomings and deeply accepting of those shortcomings that including the shortcomings in your practice, but also as a human being. The opposite of course, being a forcing another routine on top of your already entirely crowded to do list and life. And I'm personally guilty of falling into this.

Annastiina Hintsa: And that's exactly what I did. Meditation I need to do. That's pretty much exactly how it ended. I think there's so many similarities between meditation and ultra-endurance actually because, you can't go there are thinking that I'm going to run this at whatever pace you're running a marathon or I'm going to run this as x pace because you never know what's going to happen. The weather changes kind of like. You never know how the course is going to be exactly. You never know how your feet will be. You never know how you're kind of stomach will hold up. There are like so many different factors. You never know if you run into someone who's in trouble and it's sort of like there's so many factors involved in that and the environments are so. I mean they're beautiful and gorgeous, but they're also very extreme. So there's, there's no way you can control it and accepting that as something that I find very similar to meditation. You have to be kind to yourself and you have to be kind of accepting off that imperfection. It's not going to be a perfect, perfect race at pace x. it's, it's something that you just need to adjust to.

Simo T. Suoheimo: Exactly. I feel that that goes for our everyday lives at scale as well. I feel like there's a lesson here for anyone who appreciates and is driven by not only the external but the internal rewards of approaches that come through hardship, accepting the hiccups during the journey as part of it rather than by trying to minimize those by programming your everyday existence to the tee. I feel that's a message we definitely need to get out there. And uh, what really fascinates me about your story is the personal transformation that you've gone through. Like me. You've also spent part of your childhood in Africa. I lived in Zimbabwe for some time. And you spend some time with your family in Ethiopia. What did that time look like and how did that shape you?

Annastiina Hintsa: Ethiopia is probably where my heart still is. It's, it's like a really special place to me. It's so we moved there when I was, I think about three and my parents were, my father was actually a missionary doctor and my mother was a teacher and we, they took three young girls. I was three and my sister was two, and my younger sister wasn't even one year old and we moved in the middle of the jungle and in the middle of a civil war actually, which was a guerrilla war. Yeah. That's, that's something I didn't realize at the time. I actually for me was the most beautiful childhood ever. But actually it was a really, really brave decision that my parents made at the time. It was definitely a bit. Um, I don't, I never felt unsafe ever. I mean we were sleeping next to the windows to avoid bullets.

Simo T. Suoheimo: To void bullets? Like as in if there was a shooting outdoors?

Annastiina Hintsa: Yeah sometimes there would be something and you know, we would have like bullet, like sometimes they would be like bullets on our roof or something. And, and my dad would tell me it is bookshelf that fall or monkeys throwing coconuts. And as a child you are like okay, let's go back to sleep. And it's, um, I never, ever felt unsafe. I mean we were obviously, I mean, we were evacuated at times then it was sort of like with hindsight and as an adult I'm sorta thinking like, would I take three blonde girls to the middle of his civil war in Africa? I would think about it.

Simo T. Suoheimo: For most people that might be a no, unless you have a specifically strong calling,

Annastiina Hintsa: To have a very, very strong calling to help. And that's something I think I think has shaped me the most. And I get it from both my parents. They had an extremely, extremely strong calling to help people. And um, my father was actually a training a Ethiopian surgeons. He had a clinic in Chevy that he was leading and what he did, I've only heard about it later on, obviously that it was, it has been extremely inspiring. Same goes for my mother and it was that sort of the decisions that they took and the childhood that we got to live. And especially understanding that now as an adult I am, I'm just extremely grateful. It was sort of like it gave, It has given me a perspective that I don't think I would otherwise have and I think like the kind of deepest sort of a feeling that it has installed in me is gratitude. I'm just extremely grateful for, for what I have now for what I'm able to do now. We're, for what I am sort of able to experience now. What I'm able to talk about right now, the people I get to meet. But then also that like, yeah, that whole experience was something that definitely gives you perspective.

Simo T. Suoheimo: I'm sure and there's an element to it that, that I'm sure that you've only had the chance of, of kind of analyzing later in life like how these experiences have shaped your view of the world and indeed from a larger perspective, what it means to serve people and what it means to give a gift that not many people are...

Annastiina Hintsa: And also what you learned from them. I think that that's even like a bigger thing. So like, you know, a lot of times, you know, it is funny like we talk about it and it's even kind of like a cliche that, you know, when you go there and people are happy and they are. And they're happy with much, much less. And I sort of like that it goes back to that being, being grateful there is a kind of. Yeah, sort of very deep feeling of happiness and content and uh, yeah, I, I'm not really even sure how to explain it but that, that joy is very sort of explicit in evidence and strong and visible in their everyday life.

Simo T. Suoheimo: And also what I feel one of the great lessons there is that, uh, many of the core components of, of a daily meaningful experience start from community and in fact are, it seems like our, our, our kind of a western abundance has in fact disconnected us from each other to a great extent, which is the polar opposite of, of life and so many other cultures.

Annastiina Hintsa: you have to be part of a community to survive. I think that's the point. So like there is no way these people would, you know, your family is, it's extremely important because there is no other safety net. I think there is also that sort of like, you're just, you're reliant on each other, you need each other and, and that's why it's sort of like you do get this sort of like deeper connection and sense of community, which then is, is actually, like you said, it's part of that sort of. Yeah. What then gives you meaning.

Simo T. Suoheimo: And uh, one thing that's a very particularly interesting part of your own story is, is the, uh, kind of a transformation into, into the track that you're now applying through your own experiences with hardships, including that of a burnout. So can you please explain how that has kind of shaped your current ability to help others, especially people with a tendency of getting way immersed into high performance.

Annastiina Hintsa: Yeah, that's, it's really. Yeah, it has definitely shaped me and it was definitely an experience that I had been wondering like, do we really all have to go through that to learn, why do we all have to go through that same sort of like same story. But yeah, so I was like from Ethiopia, we came back and I actually, I ended up working for a management consultancy. I'm a global management consultancy which actually really, really loved. It was sorta gave me, meaning most people would not associate meaning with a management consulting maybe. But for me it actually was, I was working mostly with um, developing economies. I was working in the public sector, social sector. I was doing things like calculating the economic value of peace and conflict zones as a part of like a peace negotiation process. And it was sort of like the kind of topics that we worked on. The kind of work that we've doing was just incredibly meaningful and interesting. And the people you have to work with are intelligent and the clients you have are like prime ministers of x, y, z. It was sort of like you were feeling like you really have one of my core values is actually impact and, and I really, it's, it's something I strive towards. It's something that, that drives me and I was really feeling like I was having an impact and it's that sort of like, I think for, for many of us, it's that kind of overuse of passion, like obsessive passion. I think that's a term that we've been talking about earlier on and it's, it's that, yeah, that's an obsessive passion that's actually what causes us to burn out eventually. It's not sort of like your boss forcing you to work overtime or negative stress or something like, well, negative stress eventually. Yeah, but, but it's not like someone's forcing you to do something and you were just like overburdened with responsibilities or whatnot is because you love what you're doing. Nobody forces you to do it. You just love it and you are, you're probably even good at it. And probably you also have a higher tolerance for pain, like higher pain thresholds and it's the combination of those things. A combination of your, kind of like you overuse of your strengths, that obsessive passion and that sort of like higher pain threshold that then maybe causes you to crash and burn in a way that's not. Yeah. And you fall, you fall from higher up basically. And um, yeah, the fall can be actually quite hard. For me it was actually very physical.

Simo T. Suoheimo: Physical?

Annastiina Hintsa: Yeah. I um, like the moment I realized I had gone too far. It was um, I was working on a project and on three different continents and it was a November morning. I was rushing through the stairs to catch a taxi in my Helsinki apartment and I, I fell downstairs, I fainted. I lost my conscience. I literally rolled down the staircase, walk up at the bottom of it, like woke up. I noticed like, you know, my head's bleeding. And uh, my first thought was, oh my God, where's my laptop? It was, that was the first thought. And then I'm like, shit, I need help like this, this, this, this is not good. That's what kind of scared me, like instead of thinking of it like, like, you know, I should probably see a doctor. I was, I was more conservative my laptop, so I ended up obviously seeking help and it was um, I think there were a few things that contributed to me then kind of bouncing, bouncing back from it. One of the things was my father, I wasn't really conscious of using any sort of like Hintsa philosophies or methodologies. We just had a chat and uh, he did start by actually asking me those three questions like, do you know who you are? And do you know what you want? And uh, do you feel like you're in control? And my answer to everything was like, no, no, no. It was sort of like, that's a Bingo. Bingo. And it was, it did force me to reflect. I had joined the company for certain reasons and I actually ended up doing some of that, but then also something else that I didn't find certainly as meaningful and I had kind of like, you know, taking a path that was interesting in the beginning but then turned out to be maybe something that I was like, wait, wait a minute, this is, this is not what I thought I wouldn't be doing. This is not what I thought I, you know, this is not what I really wanted to do in the beginning. And I just kind of had gone there. So that was one thing I had to go back to thinking about like, so what are the things that really matter to me? Like starting with, with relationships, starting with my family. It's really sad, but at the time I was really seeing my boyfriend at the time mostly when he was asleep. I would get back home from work and he would already be asleep and I'd wake up before he and go back to go to work again. And it was sort of like, not really. If you tell someone you love them and they're an important person in your life and you see them mostly when they're sleeping, it's not really a great sign. You can tell yourself whatever you want but that's not really a relationship. I was also sort of like not really spending time with my family. I realized I hadn't called my mother in probably three months. It was sort of like, eh, that's not who you want to be. And also that sort of that core value of impact. Yeah, it was having an impact was without having an impact on things I really wanted to. And it was sort of alike, I literally actually joined the company after I had worked in the central bank in Finland where I, I was responsible for Greece. Making forecasting for Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain in 2010 and didn't really go that well. It was, um, it was not very, it was not very motivating to forecast economic progress with those countries at the time. And I realized that I didn't want to be forecasting like every single curve going the wrong direction. I wanted to be doing something about it. And that goes again back to impact. It was. And it was sort of, it was the reason why I joined that company, the management consultancy and it was what I got to do in the beginning. But then, you know, things happen and you end up doing other things and, and suddenly you realize that, wow, this is really cool. It's not really who I am. It's not really what I find meaning in what I find sort of a what inspires me, what drives me and what I want to have an impact on. And um, I took a really conscious decision at the time. I kind of shifted career paths within the company and I started focusing on the public sector, on the social sector, on economic development. And it was the fact that, you know, it was my father asking the question, but then also obviously that the company that supported me in that, which was hugely important. And I think that's something that employers also actually start-ups. I mean we have to think about as employers and we have to think about it like how can we help people kind of like do things that matter to them. And that was sort of like something that, that really was a huge contributor in my recovery.

Simo T. Suoheimo: I really liked what you said there. How can we as employers and as movements help or people make a meaningful impact on the world and help other people in meaningful ways and how there's an element of responsibility but also a huge upside of, of positive power and positive impact that can be created through that kind of an outlet. Because I feel and I've witnessed that people who feel that they're making an impact and that impact is aligned with their own values. I've seen that's an unstoppable force really. Those, those people are an unstoppable force.

Annastiina Hintsa: Absolutely. And I think that's sort of like that is so it's really inspiring. It's really, really inspiring. And that was sort of like, I, I love that we're talking about these things now and it's sort of like, yeah, I, I think there is a generation now that is looking at this a little bit differently, it's not just about like, you know, keeping your investors happy, it's about something else, something a bit bigger.

Simo T. Suoheimo: What were some of the changes that you made in addition to recognizing the meaningfulness and the direction of, of the change and the impact that you are bringing out to the world.

Annastiina Hintsa: So that was the number one thing and I think like the biggest change really happened in my head. But then obviously there were sort of other things that I had to go through. I mean the last question about control and sort of lack of control maybe. There are actually two sides to it. There are things you can control and there are things you can't control. And I think that's also important to recognize that there will be things that you just, you just can't control. And then it's important to be able to let go. Recognize that, you know, this is not something I can influence or impact and then don't stress about it, like just let it be. And then there were surprisingly many things that you actually can control, like once you start questioning. So you oftentimes take it for granted that, you know, my boss sends me an email at 7:00 PM and uh, or my manager at the time sends me an email at 7:00 PM and I obviously think that I need to reply or do this thing by tomorrow morning. You never even asked if the deadline is tomorrow morning or if it's okay that I do this tomorrow morning and I give it to you by lunch. And it probably would've been totally okay. I just never asked a lot of the things I was actually at just imposing on myself thinking that this is, this is the way it is without ever questioning it or the client. The client really needs this by tomorrow. Actually. Maybe it would be better that we only returned it, you know, the day after tomorrow or maybe on Friday. So that, so that the client actually has also time to process and you know, be part of the change and the journey of the discussion as opposed to us like turning things overnight and delivering them in the morning. That type of sorta questioning and learnings were things that I started. It sort of like, that was sort of a prerequisite for me then to be able to make some actually concrete changes like, you know, making sure that I have at least a one or two nights off per week during the work week, which was not a given at all. It sounds horrible to some people, but I think a lot of people will also recognize that it's, it's quite, quite normal, horrible thing to say. Then there is, um, there were sort of like what I actually realized. What's the most important thing for me was to keep my morning sacred, it's sort of like from 6:00 AM to 10:00 AM. I don't want any meetings. I don't, I don't want to talk to people really. That's my time. So I would, I would do during those mornings would go for a run and it was a great thing by the way. So that first ultra was really my enforcing mechanism. I had to run, I had to get back in shape, otherwise it wouldn't have, it just wouldn't have worked. So it was sort of like I knew I had to do my morning run and that was a great way for me to actually, you know, the first thing I did in the morning was no longer, you know, check my email. It was actually put on my gear and get out and it was sort of that routine kind of had a cascading effect. It would mean that I come back and I have breakfast because I'm hungry and it was sort of like it was a, it made my mornings much more sort of quiet and a peaceful. And then I just made it like a pretty strict rule. It's a huge temptation to get on the email and you know, open your laptop while you're, while you're eating breakfast or you know, schedule calls at 8:00 AM because the next chance will be at 4:00 PM and and it's sort of like, it's really, really huge temptation, which is why I started using the word sacred. It might be the wrong use of the term at the, but for me mornings are sacred. I don't want to do meetings, I'd want to do email. It's my time to time I take for myself because I never know what's gonna happen during the day. That was my learning for in particular in that job, like anything that happened during the day and your evening might be you may need to sacrifice your evening for whatever reason, but my mornings I didn't give up.

Simo T. Suoheimo: I love getting this message out to the world. What are some of the key questions or key pieces of advice that you would have loved to send back in time to your 20 year old self? Having now gone through the experience and finding and recognizing the core pieces of the puzzle yourself.

Annastiina Hintsa: So I mean obviously it would have been great to start thinking about kind of the deeper questions beforehand. I think that would have actually been like the kind of deeper motivation and the time to kind of stop and reflect about those questions that we were talking about earlier. That's what I think I really would have needed. But I think also like other things that if I think about my former self and even my, my self-right now, to be very honest, it is also about sort of like the short-term gains and it is about your kind of your performance right now, which matters. And um, I think if I had understood at the time what kind of an impact my lifestyle and my work style, where having on my performance or the cost of that performance actually both, um, I, I probably would have thought about things differently. Like if I hadn't been aware of like, okay, what's the effect of my 4.3 hours of sleep per night on average? I found my FitBit, I destroyed the evidence very quickly. It was a no, it was horrible. I was, I was sleeping for 4.3 hours at night. I was at the worst times. I was definitely not exercising. I was eating mostly what I found out if minibar's. Sneakers was the best option and it was, it was, yeah, definitely not a very healthy lifestyle and you know, barely able to walk up the stairs, like getting tired, walking up the stairs. I used to run marathons. It was, it was not me. But if I had been aware of like I ready at that point in life I was ready to sacrifice my health because it was very evident to me, I was ready to sacrifice my health, uh, for, for the outcomes that I was getting at work. But had I actually understood that my health was having an impact on those outcomes, on the quality of my output, maybe I would have thought about things differently. And it's, it's not a nice thought because it's not very like internal, but it was, it was something that probably would have actually stopped me at the time because it was sort of like, actually one thing that kind of got me thinking with my father. Or actually, one of the sleep experts from his firm told me at the time was that sleeping six hours a night for two weeks in a row has an impact on your fulfillment, which is equivalent to staying up for 24 hours straight. There's a straight up cognitive decline and you're basically performing like as if you were drunk because of the cumulative sleep debt. And that was a graph that he showed up. My first reaction was certify Yeah, but that's not me. I'm doing okay, look at my reviews and I just got promoted. I'm fine. And he's response was, you know, next slide, which was, which was the same people who were like and their self-rated performance, which was for the first couple of days and they noticed a decline, but after that it just plateaued.

Simo T. Suoheimo: Just plateaued?

Annastiina Hintsa: Plateaued. So what happens is your brain gets used to it, you get sort of like, you get used to that sort of sub optimal cognitive performance and you get used to kind of thinking foggy. And it was sort of like, that was sort of like okay. And honestly like after a couple of nights of good sleep, he do think a little bit clearer. I mean like just try it out, try for a week, try and get like 79 hours for a week and you will notice the difference. It's everything is just a little bit easier, more logical and more clear. Your thinking a bit faster and it's sort of like, yeah, it's, that had I kind of like understood that link and not just, you know, obviously it's not just sleep, it's about kind of like how you structure your day and your rhythm during a day. It's about like, it's also about exercise. It's about taking those breaks and that idle time for your brain. It's about what you eat. And it's all of those things combined obviously. Um, and, and they have an impact on your health. But had I understand that what I was at the point in time, I was ready to sacrifice. But had I understood that they also have an impact, a direct impact on my performance, I think that would have got me thinking.

Simo T. Suoheimo: And that I feel is something that so many of us on a knowledge level recognize and, and kind of understand, but haven't fully internalized and integrated into our daily lives because we, we're really, I'm always pay the due focus on getting proper sleep, eating properly, a distressing, properly recovering properly and in a general way, building our lives in a sustainable format rather than optimizing short to midterm outcomes?

Annastiina Hintsa: Yeah, because we are okay. That's the thing because we were still performing, we're still performing, we're still sort of like, you know, I think that's the kind of danger we're still doing okay. But I think the question is not just, you know, yet the question is sort of like, could you be doing, are you actually performing at the level that you could be performing? That's one question. The other question is how much are you paying for it. And that sort of like in terms of your health, but also in terms of things that if you go back to that, those core questions in terms of the things that actually matter to you in terms of your family, in terms of for your friends, in terms of, you know, the core relationships in terms of taking time for yourself to get to know yourself, it's sort of what's the price you are paying? What cost are you doing this? Because then unfortunately for many of us, like if we keep on going at that kind of like at that maximum, I mean it would be the same as if an athlete would be all the time training at high intensity,

Simo T. Suoheimo: I guess no one does that. That's a certain way of destroying yourself.

Annastiina Hintsa: Exactly. So at some point you'll just crash and burn and plus you're not really getting the best results because what actually happens is that, you know, super compensation happens after rest. Athletes know that and maybe we should learn something from them.

Simo T. Suoheimo: Absolutely. And that's a challenge for all of us. I'm really happy that this is the discussion that we're having on a wider scale as well instead of the tactical and the two levels of performance and output that so much of the discussion has thus far been focused on because as we know, none of that really matters and none of that is sustainable unless is based on a deep understanding of your core, a deep understanding of your personal values and aligning your passion and your skills and your output and the and the mark you're leaving on the world accordingly. Thank you so much Annastiina for coming on the show. This has been a truly amazing talk and I really hope we can expand on this in a further session sometime soon.

Annastiina Hintsa: I hope so too. Thanks.

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