On those three things, do your campaigns genuinely deliver on those three? Am I being too simplistic or is that where the magic is that it does all those three?

It's a really nice way of putting it, like pulling those three threads together.

I might steal some of that from my sales deck.

Yeah, no problem.

Yeah, you can have that.

It's a really good way of putting it.

Like basically, a lot of the, when I'm talking to brands, a lot of what I'm saying is like, you want attention.

How does that work?

Over those 14 years, what are some of the big things you think that, that you both learned about Mars and, and the potential for life out there?

I really grew up on this mission.

Curiosity is my first Mars mission, and as a little, you know, we, we joke about being a little baby grad student even though, you know, we're beyond college age years at those points.

I've grown up on this mission for sure, and so I think for Curiosity, it's, it's been about exploring habitable environments, places where life would want to live, as, um, the vehicle climbs Mount Sharp.

And we've moved through all of these, like, actually rather different environments as we've climbed up the mountain, going from, like, lakes and rivers.

Um, we've moved into a place where the landscape is a lot drier.

We somewhat recently gathered evidence for this, basically an ancient sandstorm on Mars that is preserved in the rocks.

Finally, Amy, um, I know it's, it's been a bit quiet, um, for, for news from the red planet, but, uh, what is, what is kind of really interesting that's coming up in, in the next few weeks or months that, uh, you're keeping your eye on?

Are there some examples of these?

Sure.

Um, one of the objects that we're gonna be talking about is a sampler, which, um, I think most folks think about as an object that school children would have used in the 17th and 18th century to learn stitching.

Well, in this case, the Ursuline nuns here, oldest girl school in the, in the country, was started right here in New Orleans, and one of the students in the Ursuline Academy created a sampler.

It's cotton and linen.

It's just a basic object.

It's something that a schoolgirl would have made.

From a historian's perspective, is it ever difficult to, to gain access to items that might have a, a deeply sacred or religious significance?

Every

living thing that we're aware of is made of organic carbon, but it's not only made by life.

Organic carbon molecules can be made abiotically or without life present.

Picture like a deep sea hydrothermal vent or actually even an interstellar space.

Organic molecules can form on meteorites.

What I'm interested in is, one, looking for organic carbon because it is so important to life as we know it, looking for that organic matter on Mars, and then trying to learn a little bit of detail about the character of that organic matter.

Could you tell if you detected if it's made by life or if it was made on meteorites or if it's made by geology? So relatively recently, I published a paper that tells us about detecting organic carbon on Mars, which I'll say we have done previously with this instrument on this mission.

So what was that like for you being part of even that big success of actually successfully launching this rover?

Is it better than people?

They don't talk back to you too often, but sometimes they drive in circles.

So you have to ask them to not do that very politely.

It's an incredible opportunity to work on the rover missions.

These are teams of 400 plus scientists and engineers who show up every day We get downlink from our deep space network.

We look at the images and the data that come back from the rover, and we make a decision about where to go next.

Now, we have a long-term plan.

What's the implication for humankind?

So tell me about the strategy when it comes to building the right image and marketing and, and that side of building AGOLDE.

Yeah.

I think everything that we do and try and do as a, a company and, and both brands is very oriented towards authentic long-term partnerships and relationships.

Um, and so we're not looking to go out and sort of buy business, for lack of a better word, whether it's with, um, an endorsement and, like, you know, a face and a name that's of a season or for a year to get a lot of eyeballs and then potentially have those eyeballs shift somewhere else.

So from the beginning of the product quality and where we source the fabrics to making our products primarily in our own factories, which requires a lot of care, and again, is much more like a luxury house setup, we, we translate that also into the marketing and the partnerships and the relationships.

So people that Alicia and Rosanna and Jared and the team have, um, worked with and partnered with have been with us in different ways, like, from the very beginning of time.

And then when relevant, they tap into maybe a deeper possibility or potential.

So how do you see that expanding and evolving?

So what did make you start this business in the first place?

Oh, it's kind of a long story, but I'm going to summarize it for you.

So I really was not doing what God intended me to do.

So I have a degree in civil engineering, and I worked in the private sector as a consultant for almost 15 years doing that.

And I started to job hop.

And my last job I hopped to, just a few months in, I realized I wasn't fulfilled.

And I really had to pause and say, okay, God, what do you want me to do with my life? How do you want to use me? And what was revealed to me was I was meant to use my analytical left side of my brain that he gifted me, right? But also the passion for horses that he instilled in me and the passion for holistic healing.

But as far as like your first session of Take the Reins, for you, what is different now and how you think or how you show up or how you run your business now that you've been through this?

Are you starting to see that creep into the clients and the work that you're doing at the moment?

Yes, definitely.

I'm really heartened by the amount of clients that are coming to us because they want to talk about impact from a place of authority and action.

And, you know, one of the things that Goodloop uniquely is well positioned to do is deliver action because, you know, for every dollar or pound you spend with Goodloop, 20 pence goes to a nonprofit directly.

We give from the top line with every impression, every eyeball there is a donation.

And what we find is that really helps to connect brand rhetoric with brand action because it's taking that action to a very, very concrete and tangible place that the consumer can see and feel and be a part of.

And that by no means is the only piece of the puzzle, right? They have to also have, you know, if we're running a pride campaign, funding support for LGBTQ plus communities and their families and their loved ones, like that's great, but it has to sit within an organisation that also has inclusive practices and, you know, a supportive ERG and, you know, and, and, and.

Trust me.

I mean, we're covered in organics, right?

We certainly are, yeah.

Um, and so these are all like I, I would say relatively simple molecules.

Um, so as you were describing before, they're what we call aromatic hydrocarbons, many of them.

So what does that mean? It, hydrocarbons mean that you have carbons bound to each other, and they have other molecules, often hydrogens on them.

And when you have an aromatic, those carbon molecules have actually bound themself into a ring structure, so like five or six carbons all bound together in a circle, basically.

So we see those types of molecules, sometimes a single ring, which we call a benzene, sometimes a double ring, which we call a naphthalene.

So, so what is gas chromatography?

When you look at the fact that this is now being retried, um, when you look back at what you viewed as the most compelling evidence to convict, what was it for you? Was it testimony? Was it ballistics? Was it something else? What?

I mean, most compelling was the video that put him at the scene, uh, because he lied about that, which is the most important piece.

Um, so him being at the scene, not knowing that there was a video, uh, even be- ha- happening at the time, and he had already made a plan, obviously.

So why lie about being at the scene if you didn't kill them?

What was it about him?

... to come out with...

I don't, I don't know.

He just, it, it was like he was just acting.

What does this tell us then in terms of the likely prospects of life processes having existed on Mars? Is this a sort of an opportunity to say, "Well, we know what can form in space, therefore what's probably present on Mars and what might not have come from space and therefore might have been made on Mars and might be significant"?

The fact that there was this basically more complex organic matter that we broke apart with this first-of-its-kind experiment, that tells us there's more complex carbon preserved on Mars than we realized previously.

We just didn't have a technique to see it until we did this experiment.

That's really, you know, promising in the search for life beyond Earth because it, it means that, you know, w-we expect life to make complex organic molecules.

And if that is preserved in the rocks on Mars, we've sort of demonstrated that it could potentially survive over billions of years, and it could be detectable with the techniques that we have on board this mission as well as future missions to Mars.

Now you've proved you can do this, is it just widening the search, or are you going after a specific target?

Um, so this particular experiment contains a chemical that we had to send with the rover when it launched more than 13 years ago now, and that means that we, we actually, we used one of the two experiments, um, on board the rover for the study that I'm talking about today.

But, um, what this does do is it sets the path for us to be able to do this experiment both one more time on Mars with the Curiosity rover, as well as with future missions.

What's the holdup? Why not more of these skeleton deals?

I think countries are digging their heels in and they don't want to be pushed around.

So Donald Trump and the US obviously have quite a lot of leverage.

They have these big tariff threats which no country wants to face, but the demands that are being made, in some cases, are quite difficult for other countries to deal with, and other countries have their own rules and regulations.

They have their own tax laws.

Sometimes Donald Trump has been asking other countries to change their domestic tax laws, which are, you know, sovereign matters for those governments.

So the example, the- the main example would be the- the European Union's value-added tax.

Can you talk a bit about what- what's happening with these sector-specific tariffs? How did that become a thing when before we were only talking about countries?

What are the new tariffs, I guess temporary tariffs, for the US and China?

Well, the US has said it will lower its additional Trump tariffs on Chinese goods to 30 per cent, down from 145 per cent where it was on Friday.

So this is a 20 per cent tariff to punish China for its role in fentanyl trade and manufacturing, and then a 10 per cent baseline tariff which Trump officials have said will remain on all countries.

And China, for its part, has reduced its duties on US imports to 10 per cent as well, down from 125 per cent, where it was on Friday.

And China's also promised to suspend or cancel non-tariff measures taken against the US.

So this all holds for 90 days while more talks continue.

Is there any truth to that?

I don't think it's a defeat for Donald Trump, no.

What does each country get out of it?

Well, the details are still actually emerging, but some of the top line things that we know, so the US had put tariffs of 25% on car imports.

In this deal, it offers the UK 100,000 cars that can come into the US at a lower tariff of 10%.

This is something that's very important to the UK auto industry and covers the bulk of British exports to the US in that sector.

Steel and aluminium is another big pain point here, that Trump had put 25% tariffs on all imports of steel and aluminium.

The UK was very unhappy with this.

We are still watching for the fine print on this one.

The USMCA.

Amy Williams covers trade for the FT, and she says that while there are exemptions for things like chips, pharmaceuticals, and some metals, consumers will get hit hard if companies decide to pass on the costs of these taxes.

So, assuming that the thing that you're trying to buy is a piece of candy, a $1 piece of candy from China would now cost $2.04.

It would have a 104% markup.

The world's biggest exporter, meanwhile, isn't exactly rushing to get on Trump's good side.

Beijing is digging its heels in, I think it's fair to say.

A lot of countries have picked up the phone to Trump, sent trade delegations, really tried hard to negotiate.

China fired back with its own tariff of 34% on all US goods, and that's what's triggered Trump to ratchet up the trade war even further and say, "I'm gonna do another 50% on China."

What's he hoping to ultimately achieve by imposing these tariffs?

Well, he's, on paper and initially, linked these tariffs to his upset around illegal immigration into the US, primarily across the southern border with Mexico, but he also has attacked Canada on that issue, and he's also attacked both countries and China on the issue of fentanyl.

However, he has also just railed in general against US trade deficits with other countries.

This is a old theme for him.

We heard a lot about this during his last administration, and he has said at a press conference on Friday that the tariffs were pure economic and not to be used for negotiating leverage.

Now, you've been talking about the US economy, but what about globally? What sort of scenario might we see should this trade war really become entrenched?

Well, I mean, the two most immediate potential casualties here are Canada and Mexico.

They are threatening to retaliate.

How does it fit into Trump's vision?

So Trump wants to go as high as 20% for the universal tariff, but he's threatened to go even higher in the specific cases of Canada and Mexico, where he said 25% would be the tariff he would place on them if they don't comply with his demands.

So Bessent's plan is not contradicting the president.

It's more just adding a little more detail and suggesting that, "Hey, why don't we start these at 2.5% this month? They go up by 2.5% every month, and then it ratchets up." And the idea here is that it's not this massive tariff that comes in, freaks out the stock market, doesn't give business any time to react or respond in any way, and also this idea that they'll ratchet up slowly, it kind of preserves some negotiating leverage for Trump, right? So people will start to feel the pain, but they're gonna be more willing and have more time to come to the table and thrash out some kind of deal with Trump on whatever it is that he wants from any particular country.

Now, who else is in Trump's ear when it comes to tariffs?

Well, the person who is technically in charge of trade policy is Howard Lutnick, who is Trump's nominee for Commerce Secretary.

He's actually having his confirmation on The Hill today, and he is in charge of tariff policy, but also export controls.

That's a different trade measure that will allow Trump to block exports of US technology to countries such as China.