Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Hello and welcome to Focus on OLLI. What is OLLI? OLLI is a program at UNLV dedicated to active retired or semi-retired individuals who understand the importance of keeping themselves engaged. OLLI is the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at UNLV. Every month this program will dig into favorite classes, interesting teachers and members as well as special events offered through OLLI.
Announcer 0:00
This is a K-Unb Studios original program. The
Wesley Knight 0:04
content of this program does not reflect the views or opinions of 91.5 Jazz and Moore, the University of Nevada Las Vegas, or the Board of Regents of the Nevada System of Higher Education.
Keith McMillen 0:16
Hello, and welcome to Focus on Olli. Olli is a program at UNLV dedicated to retired or semi-retired individuals who remain engaged and active in civic activities and lifelong learning. Ali is the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at UNLV. Ali is made possible by support from the Bernard Osher Foundation, established by philanthropists Bernard and Barbara Osher, with a mission to support lifelong learning, higher education, and the arts. This series is designed to give you an in-depth look at the Olli program and encourage you to join in the fun. And today we're going to look at three brand new classes that are actually being offered this summer at the Olli program, and I've got three wonderful instructors here to explain their classes and maybe bounce some ideas off of each other about their experience teaching Olli. I'm going to start at my left with Bob Hoffman, who is not teaching at the main Olli campus, but at one of our satellites, we'll talk about that later. He's doing contra dancing, don't ask me now, but we'll find out what that's all about. From Bob, to my right is Stacey Boyle, and she's going to talk about a hot topic in the world today, Bitcoin. So, if you've got any questions about that, that's a class you might want to think about. And finally, we've got Pat Thorne, who's going to accompany us on a stroll through the 50s, and that I have met many fond memories of the 50s, so we'll see what's going on there, but let's start with Bob, and contra dancing. What's contra dancing, Bob?
Bob Hofkin 2:05
Well, contra dancing is a social form that has actually been around since before the beginning. It was certainly evolved from English country dancing, came through France, back through the US got a little bit more excited, and it's been done since colonial time. It's a social form of dancing, where it's long way sets, you have a partner who you trade every dance, and you interact with all the other neighbors in that set, so it's inclusive, not competitive. No one's figured out a way to have a whole set full of people with a shared purpose, and evaluating them. Oh, yeah, you're, you're more contributing to the joy of this session.
Keith McMillen 2:57
All right, very good. Now we don't have a room right now at Ollie for that kind of activity, so you are going to be at one of our satellites.
Bob Hofkin 3:08
That's right, I'm going to be down Cactus Valley, and people say, "Where's that? It's off of St. Rose Parkway at Amigo Street, so it's right across from the Costco. If you know where that is, if not take I 15 south, and when you get almost to the end, just head east a bit.
Keith McMillen 3:29
And if this is something you're interested in, when you, if you call the Olli desk, they'll be glad to keep you informed about all that. So contra dancing is really just a very social, engaging kind of thing for people,
Bob Hofkin 3:42
it is. It's an easy form of dance. Before I got into contra, I had tried ballroom, I tried waltz, I'd tried swing. They were all fun, but I had trouble keeping track of my feet, you know. And since a lot of them require a leader, I also had to be thinking about, oh gee, what am I going to do next, and it was just not relaxing. Gotten into Contra, found out there's no leaders, every dance is walked through, taught, and then prompted as the dance goes on. It's all easy choreography, it's pretty much four count walking steps, it repeats enough that you can learn the choreography of each dance, but varied enough that you don't get too bored.
Keith McMillen 4:32
Yeah, fascinating, Stacy.
Stacey Boyle 4:35
Yes,
Keith McMillen 4:36
you are going to talk about Bitcoin, which I know many of our listeners have heard about, are probably very confused about. Hopefully, you're going to solve all of their Bitcoin problems.
Stacey Boyle 4:49
Well, that's the plan. The main purpose of the class is really educational, so since it's just a 10 week class and an hour and a half for each class, I'm just going to. Really, cover Bitcoin conceptually. We'll get into the details about some of the topics if people are interested. I'm happy to shuffle the syllabus around if we need to. My plan is not to get too technical, that's what I put in the syllabus - is we won't be very technical, but we can talk technicalities if people want, and I can bring in guest speakers. We have some very famous Bitcoiners that happen to live in the Vegas area that are interested in being guest speakers, and if we need expertise in a different area, and they don't win the Vegas area, they're happy to zoom in and call in, because so I'm going to be open and flexible with the schedule, but the main idea is to educate people about Bitcoin, and we're going to start with sound money. What does sound money look like? We're going to talk about the fundamentals of money, and we'll talk a little bit about Bitcoin, what it is, and why it's important to the world. People don't really understand Bitcoin's one of those things, it's like hidden in plain sight, right? People don't know, but at the end of the class, we're gonna have a field trip to go to the cannery at Steak and Shake and buy our lunch with Bitcoin, if people are interested. So, you don't even know you can go to local steak and shake some of them and purchase your lunch with bitcoin and the D circa and Golden Gate, all owned by Derek Stevens in Vegas, accepts Bitcoin, and it's a Bitcoin friendly community within that within those facilities. So there's a lot in our area that people aren't aware of, and there's really a lot of misinformation out there, and Bitcoin has evolved, so I just want to dispel some of the myths and educate people on what Bitcoin is, and help them start thinking about it, and doing their own research to see if it's an investment that they're interested in, because I think for people 50 and older it's very good way to build generational wealth.
Keith McMillen 6:43
Interesting. Yeah, I know. I have, I've heard the phrase, I know it's based on the thing called blockchain, and there's all kinds of stuff going on, but you can't put it in your wallet,
Stacey Boyle 6:55
it's not physical. But guess what, you don't really use have money in your wallet right now, anyway, do you? It's on a computer screen on your phone, it's the same thing, it's the same thing, and it's a transparent ledger, anybody can audit it, you know. When we were on a gold standard before Nixon took us off in 1971 nobody audited the gold. The gold has not been audited in Fort Knox for 70 years, so were we really on a gold standard? Who knows,
Keith McMillen 7:20
right? Okay, all right. And finally, Pat Pat Thorn, we're going to stroll through the 50s. We
Pat Thorn 7:28
surely are, and I hope there'll be enough people in the class that will remember the 50s to stroll along with me, but even if they don't recall the 50s, oh well, it'll be, it'll be about the history of that era,
Keith McMillen 7:42
so when I heard your first topic, my first thought was, How's she going to do this? Are you going to dedicate each week to a different year? Are you going to look at topics like music for a couple of weeks and movies? How are you going to do this?
Pat Thorn 7:59
Sure, it'll be topics we need to look at the end of World War Two, and we need to look at the beginning of the Eisen Eisenhower era. We need to look at what it was like at the end of World War Two. How men and women's roles had changed. We all need to, we'll want to actually look at the music of the era, the beginning of rock and roll. Sorry to contra, but it'll be rock and roll. Okay, and we'll look at American Bandstand a little, maybe we'll look at the Atomic Age. This is to me, it's a fascinating decade, and it led up to what was the era of social unrest? The 60s, I guess we could maybe call it that, but it was the 60s. Surely were a different era. Now we'll look at a little of the civil rights things that were going on at the time, including the integration of public schools, which occurred during that era, and we'll look a little bit at McCarthy and Keef offer. I'd like to keep it a little vagasy, so we'll talk a little bit about the atomic bombs that were exploded north of Las Vegas. We may be able to take the opportunity to go either to go to the Atomic Energy Museum, which is out of flamenco, or we may actually invite them to class. I haven't actually got that finalized yet, so we'll look at TV during the era. There wasn't a TV there, were no TVs in everyone's house before the 50s, and that's when they started to reside in all of our living rooms, or most living rooms, so there's a lot of topics, so it'll be different topics, not by decades, we. Why I chose to do it the way I did, I'm not quite sure, you know, because I am a sequential person that likes to go in order, but I chose the topics that seem to flow the best for me.
Keith McMillen 10:13
Good. Okay. Well, that gives us some idea what's going on, anyhow. Because that, you're right, that was going over that list, there were so many changes in society, and television, just the role of women, thanks to World War Two, had changed significantly, and some of them didn't want to go back, and I don't blame them.
Pat Thorn 10:37
Yes,
Keith McMillen 10:37
so there could be some great discussions,
Pat Thorn 10:40
or some of them wanted to stay in suburbia. They wanted to be home taking care of the kids behind the picket fence. So we will talk about the development of suburbia too.
Keith McMillen 10:53
Lovely, that that should be very interesting. Great. Now, why did you pick the 50s?
Pat Thorn 11:02
I came across a book, and I'm not sure how I happened to come across it, but it's a book written by David Halvestrom, and it's called The 50s, and he actually is a Pulitzer Prize-winning author. He has written about the Korean War, which is another segment that we will cover, and there's not very much about the Korean War. So, as an author, he's really.. he, that was his very last book, and was published after he died. But that.. so I came across the book, and I thought this.. I could make a 10 week course out of the 50s easily, and so I chose to do that.
Keith McMillen 11:45
Nice, that is something to look forward to. Stacy, what triggered your interest in Bitcoin?
Stacey Boyle 11:52
Actually, I was always curious, like, what is Bitcoin? What was crypto? You know, I was a corporate executive for 25 years, and just heads down focused on my job and my profession and running global teams and Covid hit and whap laid off, so it's the first time in my life, at least in my professional career as a mature adult, I was able to stop and think for a minute, like actually gather my thoughts, and a new app came out called Clubhouse, I don't know if people have heard about it, but it was during Covid. It was an audio app where you go in all these different rooms, like a clubhouse, and listen to different topics, like real estate, dancing, trading, whatever, and whatever was called Cafe Bitcoin. I'm like, I always wondered what that Bitcoin thing was. So I listened to it, and I was really impressed when I started listening to people, and all the references and resources, I started reading, and just learning more and more and more, and I just became obsessed with it, and I fell down the rabbit hole of Bitcoin, and it's virtually impossible to bump your head on the bottom of the rabbit hole of Bitcoin. So you're just going to learn, learn, learn more and more and more from everybody around the world. Click, because it's a global asset, it actually has a market cap of $1.5 trillion People don't even understand that more than Walmart and Amazon today. So, like I said, it's hidden in plain sight. And when I started studying it and learning about it and thinking about it personally, what does this mean for me? What does it mean for my life? What would it mean for my family? I was so impressed, and I actually quit my corporate job and started a nonprofit called Bitcoin Transformation Community with a guy that I met in the Bitcoin space, and we go into prisons and educate inmates about Bitcoin, because we have a lot of people that are very intelligent sitting there with wasted time and with nothing to do, so we said this is the time we conceptually could introduce them to Bitcoin, and then teach them how to mine Bitcoin, so when they get out, they've got a job, and our whole goal is to reduce the recidivism rate with that, and what we've done last year is we were able to get Bitcoin basics content on all tablets in all US prisons and state prisons and state jails, we're not in the federal system, but now we have Bitcoin exposure to everybody that's incarcerated somehow in the United States, and I go to all the Bitcoin conferences. All my friends are Bitcoiners now, so I'm just obsessed with
Keith McMillen 14:14
it. Amazing, wonderful. And have you been in music all your life,
Bob Hofkin 14:19
Bob? Actually, different aspects. I started out as a DJ at my college radio station, and that was, you know, the era of me playing music. When I moved around the world a couple of times, got back to the DC area, I got into contra dancing, as Stacey just said it's also a thing that's hidden in plain sight, it's all over the country, but people don't know what it is, and only in the last few years have I actually gotten into playing music, and those things seem to be separate in my head.
Keith McMillen 14:56
Oh, interesting, so if somebody. Comes into your class, what's it going to look like? What's it going to feel like? Because it won't be tables and chairs,
Bob Hofkin 15:07
no. Most of the time people will be standing, holding on to somebody else, you know. It's a dance class. I will teach a couple of steps and then put them into context of a dance, 234, whatever we have time for, and we'll actually be dancing with those steps and things we learned in previous weeks, so it's going to be a progressive endeavor. I'm assuming at the beginning that people coming in have no experience with contra dance or even any other form of dance, so I'm intending to be pretty slow the first few weeks while we absorb this just feeling of being in motion and moving with other people in this sort of shared enterprise, but over the course of the 10 weeks I expect it will get a little bit less. Oh gosh, I got to look where my feet are and be able to pay attention to the rest of the room and and smile and interact with other people while your feet are doing whatever your feet are going
Keith McMillen 16:20
to do. I know what my feet are gonna do. Oh, and I don't have much control over it. No, I'm one
Bob Hofkin 16:24
of those people with two left feet, and this particular form seems to work. I often call it nerd dancing, because there's an awful lot of nerds in the contra dance world. It's great for introverts, because you don't have to really lead, you don't have to make up steps. All you have to do sometimes is ask someone else if they would like to dance with you, and if they say no, you go on to someone else, but they're just as likely to ask you as you ask them. Anyone can ask anyone.
Keith McMillen 16:57
This may be a completely off the wall question, and if it is, tell me so. How does this relate at all to like square dancing?
Bob Hofkin 17:07
Yeah, I'd call it a second cousin. A lot of the steps are the same, but because square dancing is done in a formation of eight people who are facing each other, it feels quite different than contra dancing, that's done in a long way set, where you're with four people at a time, usually.
Keith McMillen 17:27
Okay, okay. So, what can we expect out of Bitcoin? I mean, you're going to talk about these things. Yeah, I'm curious, how that works, because I have - I remember seeing articles about Bitcoin mining, and now I know that people have buildings full of servers. What are they doing?
Stacey Boyle 17:56
They're trying to get fresh, baby new Bitcoin for themselves, and either they keep it or they put it on the market, so there's value to that. So, what we're going to do in the class is, so I'm going to tie a little bit back to what Bob's saying. So, talk about contra dancing, being nerds, Bitcoins, bigger nerds, probably. They're, you know, we just did a recent, somebody in our industry just did a recent Myers Briggs Briggs assessment on like typical Bitcoiners, and there are mostly introverts, right, especially those that are way early adopters, like in that when you think of the technology adoption adoption crate curve, those that are really early. So, Bitcoin was released by a pseudonymous person, we don't know he, she, we, they, man, woman, we don't know who it is. They've left, and they've produced Bitcoin, or the model, and the protocol with the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto. So, Satoshi Nakamoto is the person, the community, the committee, whatever it is that created Bitcoin. We don't know who it is, and to me, that's the biggest gift to Bitcoin is the founders walked away, because the founders probably, unless it's an alien or a time traveler, right, it's a human. Humans are fallible, so there's all those issues that come with a human founder. So the person walked away, and it's self-run. So, just like contra dancing, it's run by the community, and it's global, and it's an open, transparent protocol for everybody to see nothing's hidden, and there's so many myths about it, about mining. You're boiling the oceans, right? There's the energy FUD - FUD is fear, uncertainty, and doubt that mainstream media puts up, because when anything is conflicting or seems like a conflict with the US dollar, there's going to be, you know, some issues with that, right? And the way they distribute and communicate, that's not going to be very positive for Bitcoin, and Bitcoin is used by criminals, right. Most recently, we heard the Nancy, the Nancy Guthrie kidnapping, and the abductors asked for Bitcoin. Why is that? Because it's value. People, that's why, and it's to me, it's kind of a stupid thing to ask for, because it's traceable. We can find the people, you can get away with more crimes, and more crime, way more crimes committed with the US dollar, with current, with fiat currency, than it was with Bitcoin. But people have these notions that mining's not efficient, right? And we work on strain and energy, we'll talk about that a bit, but when you think about all these AI data centers, now, now that whole issue and debate goes away, because nobody's up there arguing about how inefficient all the energy the AI data centers are pulling, no, they're not, not as much, but they'll always tack that on to the Bitcoin logic, and so there's a lot of thought out there, and some of the stuff's true. Criminals do use Bitcoin. Criminals use cash. Criminals use other cryptocurrencies, and we're going to distinguish Bitcoin from cryptocurrencies because it's very different. It's not the same thing, but people don't understand that, and because it's decentralized, not owned by anyone. There's no marketing company, there's no CEO, there's nobody in charge that says here's what the brand has to look like, here's what you're going to do, here's what you can say, here's what you can't say. We say what we want, and then when people say things that are good and bad, that's the beauty of a decentralized system. So there's no central governance, nobody controlling anything but yourself.
Keith McMillen 21:17
Okay, so there are, we're talking truly about the Bitcoin, not general. Yeah,
Stacey Boyle 21:26
we won't talk about.. well, at the beginning, I'll talk about.. I'll differentiate, right, Bitcoin from cryptocurrency. The differences, and the differences.. what I literally just said was that Bitcoin has no founder. I mean, we don't know who it is, and cryptocurrencies are literally a project run by some person, and usually the person's purpose or intention is to generate revenue for themselves, right? Or to walk away, and in the crypto space, it's called a pump and dump. So that's your.. it's like I think I, using a Vegas analogy, when you think of the casino, you walk in and all the slot machines, the lights, the bells, the whistle.. ding ding ding. This looks so much fun. Oh my god, let me go put my money in this one. That's a crypto space, right? That's all going on, Robin Hood, and all these decentralized platforms. But with Bitcoin, Bitcoins like the sure win, like you know if your goal, you know the house is going to win in a casino, the best bet we know, the two best ways in the casino is one to bet on the banker on Baccarat, or that front pass line on craps, right? So nobody goes in to do those two things. Somebody's sure I'm going to win for one minute, and I'm walking out. No, we're going there, having fun, spending money, messing around, and that's what people do, and that's how people get into crypto and lose their money, and some people make money, but it's a short-term time perspective view, whereas Bitcoin is a longer-term time perspective view.
Keith McMillen 22:46
Interesting, that's that's a distinction I wasn't clear about. Yeah, people don't know. Yeah, so what part of the 50s do you enjoy, Pat?
Pat Thorn 22:59
Oh, wow, what a difficult question.
Keith McMillen 23:01
You know, is there something that stands out? I mean, the Keef offer hearings.
Pat Thorn 23:06
Well, I need to do a more investigation before I get to that module yet, because every time I do a class, I'm learning at the same time as I give it, and I always wind up with a stack of books. So, my house is now full of books on various subjects that I've done, so I have looked a little bit at a little information online, so that segment is not fully rolled out yet, but we'll know more, you know. Kief offer hearings that mob museum has a has a courtroom set up where you can go and listen to one of the key fof her hearings, I believe been a while since I've been there, but it's an interesting concept, so I thought, well, that connects in, so yeah,
Keith McMillen 23:57
so yeah, I mean, I, I grew up, I was born in the 40s. I grew up. I became a teenager at the end of the 50s, and yeah, there's a lot of memories I have there. I'm going
Pat Thorn 24:10
to ask the class if they will divulge to me how old they were in 1959 I figured maybe that's not such an intrusive way to find out what era of people are we speaking to, because we in Ali, we have folks that span the generations. I'm sure we have some that weren't born until maybe the 60s, perhaps it's a possibility, late 50s, right? So their memory of the of that era will be interesting to me, and I hope engender conversation within the class. I'm hoping that it will be part structuring it to be part video and my. Much discussion, so you know, maybe a good half hour of discussion about memories or questions and answers, that sort of thing. That's my hope for the course,
Keith McMillen 25:11
because I, I was, when I was born, Truman was president, but the old, the first president I remember is Eisenhower.
Pat Thorn 25:18
Oh
Keith McMillen 25:19
yeah, so and all the stories about him playing golf, I don't remember a lot about it, I was not paying too much attention, but yeah, so that, that, that could be fascinating.
Pat Thorn 25:34
Luckily, there's a wealth of information out there that we can, that I can pull into it, can always
Keith McMillen 25:41
dig out some old Chuck Berry. Oh, yes, yes,
Pat Thorn 25:45
we can. Yeah, so I'm looking forward to it. I always really look forward to structuring the class and seeing how people react to it and what their memories are. Most of the classes I've done have involved a lot of class discussion.
Keith McMillen 26:01
Oh, and I, yeah, I think you will engender that this time too.
Pat Thorn 26:06
I hope so. Yeah,
Keith McMillen 26:07
it's important because people want to get it. Is you know,
Pat Thorn 26:11
Ali is.. it's well, it's worthy because of its socialization too. It's because people in Las Vegas who may not have ever met their neighbor, then come to Ali, or go on Zoom, or meet others that are in Las Vegas with common interests, and become friends. So that's part of the goal, I think, of the organization.
Keith McMillen 26:38
Excellent, wonderful. One thing you will discover, and you've taught other classes, so, but Susan, you, you haven't.
Stacey Boyle 26:46
Yeah, Stacey, I haven't.
Keith McMillen 26:47
Stacey, I'm sorry. That's okay.
Stacey Boyle 26:49
I get it all the
Keith McMillen 26:51
time. My brain is slowing down. You will find that what your class people have done in the past will amaze you. The stories we have on Olli members, they have been all over. I, I did a thing with a TED talk, talking about a possible cancer treatment. Now, the TED talk was 10 years old, so at the end of it, we agreed that we need to find out, because it was a very promising technique. What happened to it? Because we hadn't heard of it. Well, we just happened to have a retired cardiologist in the class, and he knew all about it, and he knew what happened to it. It turned out it was so personal to the patient, it was too expensive. They couldn't do it on a regular basis, but he said it did lead to something better. So, you will be amazed at what your folks can do. So, that's new classes coming up in TED or not in TED Talks, that's my class in Olli in general. That's going on this summer right now. Keep listening, and we'll finish you out. There'll be a phone number and a web entrance you can go to if you want more information. And next month, I already know we're going to have a big surprise about some very special classes starting in the fall that are going to involve all kinds of people and the theater, so pay attention, leave your focus on Olli. Thank you. Thanks for listening to Focus on Olli. There are several ways to get more information. Our web address is Olli o l l i.unlv.edu You may also email us at Olli at UNLV, that's Ollie o l l i a t u n l v at sign unlv.edu You can also just give us a call at 702-895-3394 Monday thru Friday, between the hours of eight and five, except of course on university holidays,
Keith McMillen 29:02
do.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai