The following message is written on a teleprompter for an upcoming news update on "Peer Dialogues." A teleprompter is not intended to be repeated verbatim. These words serve as a brief guide to the brief reflections from the "Peer Dialogues" activity. Please practice reading out loud and adding your own language to it. This will assist you when you are ON LIVE later today:

Mutual Aid is not confined to an exchange of assistance but expands to encompass the reciprocity and interdependence that is a part of being human. In this pod mapping exercise, we illustrate the ways in which we are interdependent. Before proceeding, it is essential to discuss the framework for conceptualizing pod mapping.

A pod is a microsome of community. Thus, a pod is not merely a capsule for one's life, but a mode-of-living that recognizes one's relation to community. The oxygen in the pod comes from the community that surrounds it.

Mapping is a constructive process. Maps change depending on the geographical position of the map maker in relation to the rivers and Lands that are depicted as well as the epistemological position of the map maker's belief on the nature of being human.

Combing the words to form "pod mapping," we realize how this is an insightful exercise. Writing in the pods and discussing the map with a partner, I have found that the pods were not confined to the writing of proper nouns of human names but also extended to describing the interactions among the social worlds of text, the authors as elders of experiences, the fantastical realm of videogames as well as the conversations with people, which make the names proper. Thus, the pods are not only for human beings, but are also for the nouns (person, places, things) and verbs (actions) that are too co-constructors of community. All of these pod interactions map the flow of oxygen throughout the pod and among the community.

And, that is all for now. We will be back after the commercial break.