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What if the reason your easy runs feel hard is because you're doing too much, too soon?Marathon training can feel overwhelming when every run type seems important and everything feels hard at once. In this episode, I break down the simple structure behind effective marathon training and explain why most runners struggle not because they lack effort, but because they train in the wrong order. I walk through the three run types that quietly build most of your fitness, why they matter more than speed work early on, and how following the right sequence helps you stay healthy, consistent, and confident all the way to race day.Key TakeawaysMarathon training works best when it follows a clear order, starting with easy runs, long runs, and threshold work before adding speed. Skipping this order is one of the fastest ways to get injured or burned out.Easy runs and long runs are not filler workouts. They build the aerobic base that lets your body recover, adapt, and handle harder training later.Speed work only helps once your foundation is solid. Without a base, harder workouts create damage faster than your body can rebuild.Timestamps[00:34] What You'll Learn[01:47] The Problem[04:10] Use This To Crush Your Next Marathon[05:17] The Solution: How To Sequence The 16 Weeks[07:35] Run Type #1: The Easy Run[09:41] Run Type #2: The Long Run[14:05] Run Type #3: The Threshold Run[18:27] Find Out What Level Marathoner You AreLinks & Learnings

Thank you for joining us for week 2 of our series called Abide where we are learning how to do life with Christ! This week, Pastor Parker leads us in 1 John 1:5-2:2. We hope you are convicted and encouraged by this message and we can't wait to see you next week! As always — love God, love others and make disciples!

"McElroy & Cubelic In The Morning" airs 7am-10am weekdays on WJOX-94.5!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Strap in as Lionel takes you to the "correct side of the truth," serving up solid food for those tired of the "mother's milk" on cable news. Lionel dissects the baffling incompetence surrounding the Savannah Guthrie case—from cleaning the pool at a crime scene to the family's hesitation to put up real ransom money. He then exposes the "militant atheist" mob targeting Yale mathematician David Gelernter for questioning Darwinism. Plus, Lionel doubles down on the reality of geoengineering, explains why the hyoid bone proves Jeffrey Epstein was murdered, and takes calls on the dark, depraved underbelly of elite society. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Anna-Carin Svensson joins Dr. Sandie Morgan as they explore how Sweden's decision to punish buyers instead of victims has reshaped who feels safe coming forward — and how that same principle is now being applied to hold online exploitation accountable.Chapters(00:00) - Introduction: Sweden's Principle That Changed Everything (01:07) - The Equality Model: Why Sweden Criminalized Buyers, Not Sellers (07:37) - What 25 Years of Data Actually Shows (09:16) - When Exploitation Moves Online: Updating the Law for the Digital Age (14:37) - Why Multidisciplinary Collaboration Is Non-Negotiable (18:41) - The Gap Between Good Laws and Correct Application (25:02) - Prevention Starts Before the Warning Signs (29:51) - Hope, Humanity, and the Road Ahead Anna-Carin SvenssonAnna-Carin Svensson serves as Sweden's Ambassador to Combat Trafficking in Persons, representing Sweden in multilateral anti-trafficking efforts including at the United Nations. In this role, she has participated in high-level discussions related to the appraisal of the UN Global Plan of Action to Combat Trafficking in Persons, including the side event "Proactive by Design: Leveraging Multidisciplinary Collaboration and Digital Innovation to Prevent Human Trafficking."Previously, Svensson served as Director-General for International Affairs at the Swedish Ministry of Justice, where she led Swedish delegations in international human rights forums and oversaw Sweden's implementation of international legal obligations, including under the Convention against Torture. Across her career, she has consistently emphasized state responsibility, institutional accountability, cross-government coordination, and the importance of translating legislation into effective practice.Key PointsSweden's Sex Purchase Act, introduced in 1999, was a landmark legal shift that criminalized the buyer of sexual services rather than the seller, placing the state firmly on the side of the more vulnerable party in the transaction and signaling that prostitution is a harm to all of society — not just to the individual.A 2010 official evaluation of the law found measurable results: street prostitution decreased, criminal networks were deterred from establishing trafficking operations in Sweden, and public attitudes shifted significantly — evidence that law can have both a direct and a normative effect.As exploitation moved online, Sweden updated its legislation in 2025 to extend the same principle into the digital space, criminalizing the purchase of live, on-demand sexual acts performed remotely — because if something is illegal offline, it must be illegal online.Many victims who had been coerced into performing live cam shows said the new law would have made it easier for them to refuse, illustrating how legal frameworks can shift power back to the exploited person even before a crime is prosecuted.Correct application of the law matters as much as the law itself — broad training across all professions, not just specialized units, is essential so that any first responder can recognize a victim, give an appropriate initial response, and connect them to the right support.Multidisciplinary collaboration is not optional: criminal justice, social services, civil society, health professionals, schools, and international partners must all work in concert, because victims often feel safer disclosing to a social worker or nonprofit than to law enforcement, and that trust must be honored.Digital literacy and healthy relationship education must begin before exploitation happens — teaching young people to recognize manipulation, loverboy tactics, and online red flags is one of the most important prevention investments a society can make.Hope lies in the growing global community of organizations and individuals bringing creative, collaborative solutions to every aspect of this problem — and in the simple recognition that for every challenge, there are many possible answers.ResourcesEnding Human Trafficking PodcastGlobal Center for Women and Justice (GCWJ)UN Global Plan of Action to Combat Trafficking in Persons – 2025 AppraisalSweden's Sex Purchase Act – Swedish Gender Equality AgencySweden's 2025 Online Sexual Acts Legislation – Library of Congress SummaryTranscriptClick here to view the episode transcript.

The person you see in your head when you think “me” probably isn't you.Most of us don't perceive ourselves accurately—we see a distorted, unrealistically negative version. Not because it's true… but because your brain is trying (and failing) to protect you from pain.In this episode I explain “The Magnet”: the force that pulls your self-concept downward after experiences like rejection, failure, and embarrassment—so you'll “reject yourself first” before the world can do it.It's a defense mechanism… but it comes with two brutal costs:You trade short, sharp pain for a lifetime of dull painYou start preemptively opting out of opportunities, connection, growth, and visibilityIf you live with chronic self-criticism, low self-esteem, or an internal “lowlight reel” that plays on repeat… this episode will help you interrupt it.If my podcast has helped, my new book, The Light Between the Leaves, goes even deeperNext Steps:

Brad Evans and Pat Boyle speak on the most notable College Basketball news throughout the last 24 hours, as Kansas State fires Head Coach Jerome Tang for cause. Additionally, our thoughts on if this decision was justified and why there is one obvious candidate to replace Tang, that needs to be the top priority.

This podcast shows you how to fully recover from OCD.Each episode breaks down the exact techniques and nuances that stop rumination, reduce compulsions, and help you retrain your brain out of the OCD cycle. We cover every major OCD theme, including:Pure-O OCDRelationship OCDHarm OCDReal Event OCDSO-OCD / Sexuality OCDReligious / Scrupulosity OCDCleaning & Contamination OCDPhysical CompulsionsAll other OCD subtypesMy goal is simple: clear guidance that actually works, explained in a way that is calm, direct, and easy to apply immediately.You can fully recover from OCD. Don't give up — you're not stuck, and your brain can change.

My apologies for uploading an OLD show, rather than the correct show, on Thursday. Here is the correct one. Have a great weekend!Big 12 basketball chaos is back. Heartland College Sports basketball columnist Matthew Postins joins Pete Mundo to break down a wild week in the league.We react to Jerome Tang and Tad Boyle publicly ripping their teams, TCU's upset of Iowa State, and Kansas knocking off Arizona. Plus, we preview a massive weekend of Big 12 games, including Iowa State vs. Kansas and Texas Tech vs. Arizona.S

In this episode, Dana Irvine shares essential insights on common mistakes women over 40 make regarding breast health and practical ways to support and improve it. Whether you're new to self-care or looking to refine your routine, these tips are vital for maintaining health and confidence.The importance of regular breast health monitoring beyond annual mammogramsChallenging normalization of breast pain, tenderness, and congestionOvercoming fear and avoidance of self-breast examsThe impact of detoxing too aggressively on breast healthThe critical role of lymphatic health in overall breast wellnessHow supporting hormones, liver, and gut enhances breast healthEffects of chronic stress on breast tissue and overall wellbeingThe importance of proactive, holistic self-care over reactive health measuresResources & Links:Touch Your Tatta's ProgramFive Minutes to Wellness GuideDr. Perry Nicholson - Lymphatic ActivistBreast Health Support & Self-ExamsConnect with Dana Irvine:InstagramWebsiteIf you're over 40 and feeling:• Tired but wired • Bloated or inflamed • Hormonal and frustrated • Concerned about breast health • Unsure what testing you truly needYou don't need another quick fix. You need clarity.The Wise Divine Women Health Clarity Call is your 1:1 strategy session to uncover root causes and map out your next best steps — whether that's functional testing, thermography, nutrition coaching, or hormone support.

From rewriting Google's search stack in the early 2000s to reviving sparse trillion-parameter models and co-designing TPUs with frontier ML research, Jeff Dean has quietly shaped nearly every layer of the modern AI stack. As Chief AI Scientist at Google and a driving force behind Gemini, Jeff has lived through multiple scaling revolutions from CPUs and sharded indices to multimodal models that reason across text, video, and code.Jeff joins us to unpack what it really means to “own the Pareto frontier,” why distillation is the engine behind every Flash model breakthrough, how energy (in picojoules) not FLOPs is becoming the true bottleneck, what it was like leading the charge to unify all of Google's AI teams, and why the next leap won't come from bigger context windows alone, but from systems that give the illusion of attending to trillions of tokens.We discuss:* Jeff's early neural net thesis in 1990: parallel training before it was cool, why he believed scaling would win decades early, and the “bigger model, more data, better results” mantra that held for 15 years* The evolution of Google Search: sharding, moving the entire index into memory in 2001, softening query semantics pre-LLMs, and why retrieval pipelines already resemble modern LLM systems* Pareto frontier strategy: why you need both frontier “Pro” models and low-latency “Flash” models, and how distillation lets smaller models surpass prior generations* Distillation deep dive: ensembles → compression → logits as soft supervision, and why you need the biggest model to make the smallest one good* Latency as a first-class objective: why 10–50x lower latency changes UX entirely, and how future reasoning workloads will demand 10,000 tokens/sec* Energy-based thinking: picojoules per bit, why moving data costs 1000x more than a multiply, batching through the lens of energy, and speculative decoding as amortization* TPU co-design: predicting ML workloads 2–6 years out, speculative hardware features, precision reduction, sparsity, and the constant feedback loop between model architecture and silicon* Sparse models and “outrageously large” networks: trillions of parameters with 1–5% activation, and why sparsity was always the right abstraction* Unified vs. specialized models: abandoning symbolic systems, why general multimodal models tend to dominate vertical silos, and when vertical fine-tuning still makes sense* Long context and the illusion of scale: beyond needle-in-a-haystack benchmarks toward systems that narrow trillions of tokens to 117 relevant documents* Personalized AI: attending to your emails, photos, and documents (with permission), and why retrieval + reasoning will unlock deeply personal assistants* Coding agents: 50 AI interns, crisp specifications as a new core skill, and how ultra-low latency will reshape human–agent collaboration* Why ideas still matter: transformers, sparsity, RL, hardware, systems — scaling wasn't blind; the pieces had to multiply togetherShow Notes:* Gemma 3 Paper* Gemma 3* Gemini 2.5 Report* Jeff Dean's “Software Engineering Advice fromBuilding Large-Scale Distributed Systems” Presentation (with Back of the Envelope Calculations)* Latency Numbers Every Programmer Should Know by Jeff Dean* The Jeff Dean Facts* Jeff Dean Google Bio* Jeff Dean on “Important AI Trends” @Stanford AI Club* Jeff Dean & Noam Shazeer — 25 years at Google (Dwarkesh)—Jeff Dean* LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeff-dean-8b212555* X: https://x.com/jeffdeanGoogle* https://google.com* https://deepmind.googleFull Video EpisodeTimestamps00:00:04 — Introduction: Alessio & Swyx welcome Jeff Dean, chief AI scientist at Google, to the Latent Space podcast00:00:30 — Owning the Pareto Frontier & balancing frontier vs low-latency models00:01:31 — Frontier models vs Flash models + role of distillation00:03:52 — History of distillation and its original motivation00:05:09 — Distillation's role in modern model scaling00:07:02 — Model hierarchy (Flash, Pro, Ultra) and distillation sources00:07:46 — Flash model economics & wide deployment00:08:10 — Latency importance for complex tasks00:09:19 — Saturation of some tasks and future frontier tasks00:11:26 — On benchmarks, public vs internal00:12:53 — Example long-context benchmarks & limitations00:15:01 — Long-context goals: attending to trillions of tokens00:16:26 — Realistic use cases beyond pure language00:18:04 — Multimodal reasoning and non-text modalities00:19:05 — Importance of vision & motion modalities00:20:11 — Video understanding example (extracting structured info)00:20:47 — Search ranking analogy for LLM retrieval00:23:08 — LLM representations vs keyword search00:24:06 — Early Google search evolution & in-memory index00:26:47 — Design principles for scalable systems00:28:55 — Real-time index updates & recrawl strategies00:30:06 — Classic “Latency numbers every programmer should know”00:32:09 — Cost of memory vs compute and energy emphasis00:34:33 — TPUs & hardware trade-offs for serving models00:35:57 — TPU design decisions & co-design with ML00:38:06 — Adapting model architecture to hardware00:39:50 — Alternatives: energy-based models, speculative decoding00:42:21 — Open research directions: complex workflows, RL00:44:56 — Non-verifiable RL domains & model evaluation00:46:13 — Transition away from symbolic systems toward unified LLMs00:47:59 — Unified models vs specialized ones00:50:38 — Knowledge vs reasoning & retrieval + reasoning00:52:24 — Vertical model specialization & modules00:55:21 — Token count considerations for vertical domains00:56:09 — Low resource languages & contextual learning00:59:22 — Origins: Dean's early neural network work01:10:07 — AI for coding & human–model interaction styles01:15:52 — Importance of crisp specification for coding agents01:19:23 — Prediction: personalized models & state retrieval01:22:36 — Token-per-second targets (10k+) and reasoning throughput01:23:20 — Episode conclusion and thanksTranscriptAlessio Fanelli [00:00:04]: Hey everyone, welcome to the Latent Space podcast. This is Alessio, founder of Kernel Labs, and I'm joined by Swyx, editor of Latent Space. Shawn Wang [00:00:11]: Hello, hello. We're here in the studio with Jeff Dean, chief AI scientist at Google. Welcome. Thanks for having me. It's a bit surreal to have you in the studio. I've watched so many of your talks, and obviously your career has been super legendary. So, I mean, congrats. I think the first thing must be said, congrats on owning the Pareto Frontier.Jeff Dean [00:00:30]: Thank you, thank you. Pareto Frontiers are good. It's good to be out there.Shawn Wang [00:00:34]: Yeah, I mean, I think it's a combination of both. You have to own the Pareto Frontier. You have to have like frontier capability, but also efficiency, and then offer that range of models that people like to use. And, you know, some part of this was started because of your hardware work. Some part of that is your model work, and I'm sure there's lots of secret sauce that you guys have worked on cumulatively. But, like, it's really impressive to see it all come together in, like, this slittily advanced.Jeff Dean [00:01:04]: Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think, as you say, it's not just one thing. It's like a whole bunch of things up and down the stack. And, you know, all of those really combine to help make UNOS able to make highly capable large models, as well as, you know, software techniques to get those large model capabilities into much smaller, lighter weight models that are, you know, much more cost effective and lower latency, but still, you know, quite capable for their size. Yeah.Alessio Fanelli [00:01:31]: How much pressure do you have on, like, having the lower bound of the Pareto Frontier, too? I think, like, the new labs are always trying to push the top performance frontier because they need to raise more money and all of that. And you guys have billions of users. And I think initially when you worked on the CPU, you were thinking about, you know, if everybody that used Google, we use the voice model for, like, three minutes a day, they were like, you need to double your CPU number. Like, what's that discussion today at Google? Like, how do you prioritize frontier versus, like, we have to do this? How do we actually need to deploy it if we build it?Jeff Dean [00:02:03]: Yeah, I mean, I think we always want to have models that are at the frontier or pushing the frontier because I think that's where you see what capabilities now exist that didn't exist at the sort of slightly less capable last year's version or last six months ago version. At the same time, you know, we know those are going to be really useful for a bunch of use cases, but they're going to be a bit slower and a bit more expensive than people might like for a bunch of other broader models. So I think what we want to do is always have kind of a highly capable sort of affordable model that enables a whole bunch of, you know, lower latency use cases. People can use them for agentic coding much more readily and then have the high-end, you know, frontier model that is really useful for, you know, deep reasoning, you know, solving really complicated math problems, those kinds of things. And it's not that. One or the other is useful. They're both useful. So I think we'd like to do both. And also, you know, through distillation, which is a key technique for making the smaller models more capable, you know, you have to have the frontier model in order to then distill it into your smaller model. So it's not like an either or choice. You sort of need that in order to actually get a highly capable, more modest size model. Yeah.Alessio Fanelli [00:03:24]: I mean, you and Jeffrey came up with the solution in 2014.Jeff Dean [00:03:28]: Don't forget, L'Oreal Vinyls as well. Yeah, yeah.Alessio Fanelli [00:03:30]: A long time ago. But like, I'm curious how you think about the cycle of these ideas, even like, you know, sparse models and, you know, how do you reevaluate them? How do you think about in the next generation of model, what is worth revisiting? Like, yeah, they're just kind of like, you know, you worked on so many ideas that end up being influential, but like in the moment, they might not feel that way necessarily. Yeah.Jeff Dean [00:03:52]: I mean, I think distillation was originally motivated because we were seeing that we had a very large image data set at the time, you know, 300 million images that we could train on. And we were seeing that if you create specialists for different subsets of those image categories, you know, this one's going to be really good at sort of mammals, and this one's going to be really good at sort of indoor room scenes or whatever, and you can cluster those categories and train on an enriched stream of data after you do pre-training on a much broader set of images. You get much better performance. If you then treat that whole set of maybe 50 models you've trained as a large ensemble, but that's not a very practical thing to serve, right? So distillation really came about from the idea of, okay, what if we want to actually serve that and train all these independent sort of expert models and then squish it into something that actually fits in a form factor that you can actually serve? And that's, you know, not that different from what we're doing today. You know, often today we're instead of having an ensemble of 50 models. We're having a much larger scale model that we then distill into a much smaller scale model.Shawn Wang [00:05:09]: Yeah. A part of me also wonders if distillation also has a story with the RL revolution. So let me maybe try to articulate what I mean by that, which is you can, RL basically spikes models in a certain part of the distribution. And then you have to sort of, well, you can spike models, but usually sometimes... It might be lossy in other areas and it's kind of like an uneven technique, but you can probably distill it back and you can, I think that the sort of general dream is to be able to advance capabilities without regressing on anything else. And I think like that, that whole capability merging without loss, I feel like it's like, you know, some part of that should be a distillation process, but I can't quite articulate it. I haven't seen much papers about it.Jeff Dean [00:06:01]: Yeah, I mean, I tend to think of one of the key advantages of distillation is that you can have a much smaller model and you can have a very large, you know, training data set and you can get utility out of making many passes over that data set because you're now getting the logits from the much larger model in order to sort of coax the right behavior out of the smaller model that you wouldn't otherwise get with just the hard labels. And so, you know, I think that's what we've observed. Is you can get, you know, very close to your largest model performance with distillation approaches. And that seems to be, you know, a nice sweet spot for a lot of people because it enables us to kind of, for multiple Gemini generations now, we've been able to make the sort of flash version of the next generation as good or even substantially better than the previous generations pro. And I think we're going to keep trying to do that because that seems like a good trend to follow.Shawn Wang [00:07:02]: So, Dara asked, so it was the original map was Flash Pro and Ultra. Are you just sitting on Ultra and distilling from that? Is that like the mother load?Jeff Dean [00:07:12]: I mean, we have a lot of different kinds of models. Some are internal ones that are not necessarily meant to be released or served. Some are, you know, our pro scale model and we can distill from that as well into our Flash scale model. So I think, you know, it's an important set of capabilities to have and also inference time scaling. It can also be a useful thing to improve the capabilities of the model.Shawn Wang [00:07:35]: And yeah, yeah, cool. Yeah. And obviously, I think the economy of Flash is what led to the total dominance. I think the latest number is like 50 trillion tokens. I don't know. I mean, obviously, it's changing every day.Jeff Dean [00:07:46]: Yeah, yeah. But, you know, by market share, hopefully up.Shawn Wang [00:07:50]: No, I mean, there's no I mean, there's just the economics wise, like because Flash is so economical, like you can use it for everything. Like it's in Gmail now. It's in YouTube. Like it's yeah. It's in everything.Jeff Dean [00:08:02]: We're using it more in our search products of various AI mode reviews.Shawn Wang [00:08:05]: Oh, my God. Flash past the AI mode. Oh, my God. Yeah, that's yeah, I didn't even think about that.Jeff Dean [00:08:10]: I mean, I think one of the things that is quite nice about the Flash model is not only is it more affordable, it's also a lower latency. And I think latency is actually a pretty important characteristic for these models because we're going to want models to do much more complicated things that are going to involve, you know, generating many more tokens from when you ask the model to do so. So, you know, if you're going to ask the model to do something until it actually finishes what you ask it to do, because you're going to ask now, not just write me a for loop, but like write me a whole software package to do X or Y or Z. And so having low latency systems that can do that seems really important. And Flash is one direction, one way of doing that. You know, obviously our hardware platforms enable a bunch of interesting aspects of our, you know, serving stack as well, like TPUs, the interconnect between. Chips on the TPUs is actually quite, quite high performance and quite amenable to, for example, long context kind of attention operations, you know, having sparse models with lots of experts. These kinds of things really, really matter a lot in terms of how do you make them servable at scale.Alessio Fanelli [00:09:19]: Yeah. Does it feel like there's some breaking point for like the proto Flash distillation, kind of like one generation delayed? I almost think about almost like the capability as a. In certain tasks, like the pro model today is a saturated, some sort of task. So next generation, that same task will be saturated at the Flash price point. And I think for most of the things that people use models for at some point, the Flash model in two generation will be able to do basically everything. And how do you make it economical to like keep pushing the pro frontier when a lot of the population will be okay with the Flash model? I'm curious how you think about that.Jeff Dean [00:09:59]: I mean, I think that's true. If your distribution of what people are asking people, the models to do is stationary, right? But I think what often happens is as the models become more capable, people ask them to do more, right? So, I mean, I think this happens in my own usage. Like I used to try our models a year ago for some sort of coding task, and it was okay at some simpler things, but wouldn't do work very well for more complicated things. And since then, we've improved dramatically on the more complicated coding tasks. And now I'll ask it to do much more complicated things. And I think that's true, not just of coding, but of, you know, now, you know, can you analyze all the, you know, renewable energy deployments in the world and give me a report on solar panel deployment or whatever. That's a very complicated, you know, more complicated task than people would have asked a year ago. And so you are going to want more capable models to push the frontier in the absence of what people ask the models to do. And that also then gives us. Insight into, okay, where does the, where do things break down? How can we improve the model in these, these particular areas, uh, in order to sort of, um, make the next generation even better.Alessio Fanelli [00:11:11]: Yeah. Are there any benchmarks or like test sets they use internally? Because it's almost like the same benchmarks get reported every time. And it's like, all right, it's like 99 instead of 97. Like, how do you have to keep pushing the team internally to it? Or like, this is what we're building towards. Yeah.Jeff Dean [00:11:26]: I mean, I think. Benchmarks, particularly external ones that are publicly available. Have their utility, but they often kind of have a lifespan of utility where they're introduced and maybe they're quite hard for current models. You know, I, I like to think of the best kinds of benchmarks are ones where the initial scores are like 10 to 20 or 30%, maybe, but not higher. And then you can sort of work on improving that capability for, uh, whatever it is, the benchmark is trying to assess and get it up to like 80, 90%, whatever. I, I think once it hits kind of 95% or something, you get very diminishing returns from really focusing on that benchmark, cuz it's sort of, it's either the case that you've now achieved that capability, or there's also the issue of leakage in public data or very related kind of data being, being in your training data. Um, so we have a bunch of held out internal benchmarks that we really look at where we know that wasn't represented in the training data at all. There are capabilities that we want the model to have. Um, yeah. Yeah. Um, that it doesn't have now, and then we can work on, you know, assessing, you know, how do we make the model better at these kinds of things? Is it, we need different kind of data to train on that's more specialized for this particular kind of task. Do we need, um, you know, a bunch of, uh, you know, architectural improvements or some sort of, uh, model capability improvements, you know, what would help make that better?Shawn Wang [00:12:53]: Is there, is there such an example that you, uh, a benchmark inspired in architectural improvement? Like, uh, I'm just kind of. Jumping on that because you just.Jeff Dean [00:13:02]: Uh, I mean, I think some of the long context capability of the, of the Gemini models that came, I guess, first in 1.5 really were about looking at, okay, we want to have, um, you know,Shawn Wang [00:13:15]: immediately everyone jumped to like completely green charts of like, everyone had, I was like, how did everyone crack this at the same time? Right. Yeah. Yeah.Jeff Dean [00:13:23]: I mean, I think, um, and once you're set, I mean, as you say that needed single needle and a half. Hey, stack benchmark is really saturated for at least context links up to 1, 2 and K or something. Don't actually have, you know, much larger than 1, 2 and 8 K these days or two or something. We're trying to push the frontier of 1 million or 2 million context, which is good because I think there are a lot of use cases where. Yeah. You know, putting a thousand pages of text or putting, you know, multiple hour long videos and the context and then actually being able to make use of that as useful. Try to, to explore the über graduation are fairly large. But the single needle in a haystack benchmark is sort of saturated. So you really want more complicated, sort of multi-needle or more realistic, take all this content and produce this kind of answer from a long context that sort of better assesses what it is people really want to do with long context. Which is not just, you know, can you tell me the product number for this particular thing?Shawn Wang [00:14:31]: Yeah, it's retrieval. It's retrieval within machine learning. It's interesting because I think the more meta level I'm trying to operate at here is you have a benchmark. You're like, okay, I see the architectural thing I need to do in order to go fix that. But should you do it? Because sometimes that's an inductive bias, basically. It's what Jason Wei, who used to work at Google, would say. Exactly the kind of thing. Yeah, you're going to win. Short term. Longer term, I don't know if that's going to scale. You might have to undo that.Jeff Dean [00:15:01]: I mean, I like to sort of not focus on exactly what solution we're going to derive, but what capability would you want? And I think we're very convinced that, you know, long context is useful, but it's way too short today. Right? Like, I think what you would really want is, can I attend to the internet while I answer my question? Right? But that's not going to happen. I think that's going to be solved by purely scaling the existing solutions, which are quadratic. So a million tokens kind of pushes what you can do. You're not going to do that to a trillion tokens, let alone, you know, a billion tokens, let alone a trillion. But I think if you could give the illusion that you can attend to trillions of tokens, that would be amazing. You'd find all kinds of uses for that. You would have attend to the internet. You could attend to the pixels of YouTube and the sort of deeper representations that we can find. You could attend to the form for a single video, but across many videos, you know, on a personal Gemini level, you could attend to all of your personal state with your permission. So like your emails, your photos, your docs, your plane tickets you have. I think that would be really, really useful. And the question is, how do you get algorithmic improvements and system level improvements that get you to something where you actually can attend to trillions of tokens? Right. In a meaningful way. Yeah.Shawn Wang [00:16:26]: But by the way, I think I did some math and it's like, if you spoke all day, every day for eight hours a day, you only generate a maximum of like a hundred K tokens, which like very comfortably fits.Jeff Dean [00:16:38]: Right. But if you then say, okay, I want to be able to understand everything people are putting on videos.Shawn Wang [00:16:46]: Well, also, I think that the classic example is you start going beyond language into like proteins and whatever else is extremely information dense. Yeah. Yeah.Jeff Dean [00:16:55]: I mean, I think one of the things about Gemini's multimodal aspects is we've always wanted it to be multimodal from the start. And so, you know, that sometimes to people means text and images and video sort of human-like and audio, audio, human-like modalities. But I think it's also really useful to have Gemini know about non-human modalities. Yeah. Like LIDAR sensor data from. Yes. Say, Waymo vehicles or. Like robots or, you know, various kinds of health modalities, x-rays and MRIs and imaging and genomics information. And I think there's probably hundreds of modalities of data where you'd like the model to be able to at least be exposed to the fact that this is an interesting modality and has certain meaning in the world. Where even if you haven't trained on all the LIDAR data or MRI data, you could have, because maybe that's not, you know, it doesn't make sense in terms of trade-offs of. You know, what you include in your main pre-training data mix, at least including a little bit of it is actually quite useful. Yeah. Because it sort of tempts the model that this is a thing.Shawn Wang [00:18:04]: Yeah. Do you believe, I mean, since we're on this topic and something I just get to ask you all the questions I always wanted to ask, which is fantastic. Like, are there some king modalities, like modalities that supersede all the other modalities? So a simple example was Vision can, on a pixel level, encode text. And DeepSeq had this DeepSeq CR paper that did that. Vision. And Vision has also been shown to maybe incorporate audio because you can do audio spectrograms and that's, that's also like a Vision capable thing. Like, so, so maybe Vision is just the king modality and like. Yeah.Jeff Dean [00:18:36]: I mean, Vision and Motion are quite important things, right? Motion. Well, like video as opposed to static images, because I mean, there's a reason evolution has evolved eyes like 23 independent ways, because it's such a useful capability for sensing the world around you, which is really what we want these models to be. So I think the only thing that we can be able to do is interpret the things we're seeing or the things we're paying attention to and then help us in using that information to do things. Yeah.Shawn Wang [00:19:05]: I think motion, you know, I still want to shout out, I think Gemini, still the only native video understanding model that's out there. So I use it for YouTube all the time. Nice.Jeff Dean [00:19:15]: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's actually, I think people kind of are not necessarily aware of what the Gemini models can actually do. Yeah. Like I have an example I've used in one of my talks. It had like, it was like a YouTube highlight video of 18 memorable sports moments across the last 20 years or something. So it has like Michael Jordan hitting some jump shot at the end of the finals and, you know, some soccer goals and things like that. And you can literally just give it the video and say, can you please make me a table of what all these different events are? What when the date is when they happened? And a short description. And so you get like now an 18 row table of that information extracted from the video, which is, you know, not something most people think of as like a turn video into sequel like table.Alessio Fanelli [00:20:11]: Has there been any discussion inside of Google of like, you mentioned tending to the whole internet, right? Google, it's almost built because a human cannot tend to the whole internet and you need some sort of ranking to find what you need. Yep. That ranking is like much different for an LLM because you can expect a person to look at maybe the first five, six links in a Google search versus for an LLM. Should you expect to have 20 links that are highly relevant? Like how do you internally figure out, you know, how do we build the AI mode that is like maybe like much broader search and span versus like the more human one? Yeah.Jeff Dean [00:20:47]: I mean, I think even pre-language model based work, you know, our ranking systems would be built to start. I mean, I think even pre-language model based work, you know, our ranking systems would be built to start. With a giant number of web pages in our index, many of them are not relevant. So you identify a subset of them that are relevant with very lightweight kinds of methods. You know, you're down to like 30,000 documents or something. And then you gradually refine that to apply more and more sophisticated algorithms and more and more sophisticated sort of signals of various kinds in order to get down to ultimately what you show, which is, you know, the final 10 results or, you know, 10 results plus. Other kinds of information. And I think an LLM based system is not going to be that dissimilar, right? You're going to attend to trillions of tokens, but you're going to want to identify, you know, what are the 30,000 ish documents that are with the, you know, maybe 30 million interesting tokens. And then how do you go from that into what are the 117 documents I really should be paying attention to in order to carry out the tasks that the user has asked? And I think, you know, you can imagine systems where you have, you know, a lot of highly parallel processing to identify those initial 30,000 candidates, maybe with very lightweight kinds of models. Then you have some system that sort of helps you narrow down from 30,000 to the 117 with maybe a little bit more sophisticated model or set of models. And then maybe the final model is the thing that looks. So the 117 things that might be your most capable model. So I think it has to, it's going to be some system like that, that is really enables you to give the illusion of attending to trillions of tokens. Sort of the way Google search gives you, you know, not the illusion, but you are searching the internet, but you're finding, you know, a very small subset of things that are, that are relevant.Shawn Wang [00:22:47]: Yeah. I often tell a lot of people that are not steeped in like Google search history that, well, you know, like Bert was. Like he was like basically immediately inside of Google search and that improves results a lot, right? Like I don't, I don't have any numbers off the top of my head, but like, I'm sure you guys, that's obviously the most important numbers to Google. Yeah.Jeff Dean [00:23:08]: I mean, I think going to an LLM based representation of text and words and so on enables you to get out of the explicit hard notion of, of particular words having to be on the page, but really getting at the notion of this topic of this page or this page. Paragraph is highly relevant to this query. Yeah.Shawn Wang [00:23:28]: I don't think people understand how much LLMs have taken over all these very high traffic system, very high traffic. Yeah. Like it's Google, it's YouTube. YouTube has this like semantics ID thing where it's just like every token or every item in the vocab is a YouTube video or something that predicts the video using a code book, which is absurd to me for YouTube size.Jeff Dean [00:23:50]: And then most recently GROK also for, for XAI, which is like, yeah. I mean, I'll call out even before LLMs were used extensively in search, we put a lot of emphasis on softening the notion of what the user actually entered into the query.Shawn Wang [00:24:06]: So do you have like a history of like, what's the progression? Oh yeah.Jeff Dean [00:24:09]: I mean, I actually gave a talk in, uh, I guess, uh, web search and data mining conference in 2009, uh, where we never actually published any papers about the origins of Google search, uh, sort of, but we went through sort of four or five or six. generations, four or five or six generations of, uh, redesigning of the search and retrieval system, uh, from about 1999 through 2004 or five. And that talk is really about that evolution. And one of the things that really happened in 2001 was we were sort of working to scale the system in multiple dimensions. So one is we wanted to make our index bigger, so we could retrieve from a larger index, which always helps your quality in general. Uh, because if you don't have the page in your index, you're going to not do well. Um, and then we also needed to scale our capacity because we were, our traffic was growing quite extensively. Um, and so we had, you know, a sharded system where you have more and more shards as the index grows, you have like 30 shards. And then if you want to double the index size, you make 60 shards so that you can bound the latency by which you respond for any particular user query. Um, and then as traffic grows, you add, you add more and more replicas of each of those. And so we eventually did the math that realized that in a data center where we had say 60 shards and, um, you know, 20 copies of each shard, we now had 1200 machines, uh, with disks. And we did the math and we're like, Hey, one copy of that index would actually fit in memory across 1200 machines. So in 2001, we introduced, uh, we put our entire index in memory and what that enabled from a quality perspective was amazing. Um, and so we had more and more replicas of each of those. Before you had to be really careful about, you know, how many different terms you looked at for a query, because every one of them would involve a disk seek on every one of the 60 shards. And so you, as you make your index bigger, that becomes even more inefficient. But once you have the whole index in memory, it's totally fine to have 50 terms you throw into the query from the user's original three or four word query, because now you can add synonyms like restaurant and restaurants and cafe and, uh, you know, things like that. Uh, bistro and all these things. And you can suddenly start, uh, sort of really, uh, getting at the meaning of the word as opposed to the exact semantic form the user typed in. And that was, you know, 2001, very much pre LLM, but really it was about softening the, the strict definition of what the user typed in order to get at the meaning.Alessio Fanelli [00:26:47]: What are like principles that you use to like design the systems, especially when you have, I mean, in 2001, the internet is like. Doubling, tripling every year in size is not like, uh, you know, and I think today you kind of see that with LLMs too, where like every year the jumps in size and like capabilities are just so big. Are there just any, you know, principles that you use to like, think about this? Yeah.Jeff Dean [00:27:08]: I mean, I think, uh, you know, first, whenever you're designing a system, you want to understand what are the sort of design parameters that are going to be most important in designing that, you know? So, you know, how many queries per second do you need to handle? How big is the internet? How big is the index you need to handle? How much data do you need to keep for every document in the index? How are you going to look at it when you retrieve things? Um, what happens if traffic were to double or triple, you know, will that system work well? And I think a good design principle is you're going to want to design a system so that the most important characteristics could scale by like factors of five or 10, but probably not beyond that because often what happens is if you design a system for X. And something suddenly becomes a hundred X, that would enable a very different point in the design space that would not make sense at X. But all of a sudden at a hundred X makes total sense. So like going from a disk space index to a in memory index makes a lot of sense once you have enough traffic, because now you have enough replicas of the sort of state on disk that those machines now actually can hold, uh, you know, a full copy of the, uh, index and memory. Yeah. And that all of a sudden enabled. A completely different design that wouldn't have been practical before. Yeah. Um, so I'm, I'm a big fan of thinking through designs in your head, just kind of playing with the design space a little before you actually do a lot of writing of code. But, you know, as you said, in the early days of Google, we were growing the index, uh, quite extensively. We were growing the update rate of the index. So the update rate actually is the parameter that changed the most. Surprising. So it used to be once a month.Shawn Wang [00:28:55]: Yeah.Jeff Dean [00:28:56]: And then we went to a system that could update any particular page in like sub one minute. Okay.Shawn Wang [00:29:02]: Yeah. Because this is a competitive advantage, right?Jeff Dean [00:29:04]: Because all of a sudden news related queries, you know, if you're, if you've got last month's news index, it's not actually that useful for.Shawn Wang [00:29:11]: News is a special beast. Was there any, like you could have split it onto a separate system.Jeff Dean [00:29:15]: Well, we did. We launched a Google news product, but you also want news related queries that people type into the main index to also be sort of updated.Shawn Wang [00:29:23]: So, yeah, it's interesting. And then you have to like classify whether the page is, you have to decide which pages should be updated and what frequency. Oh yeah.Jeff Dean [00:29:30]: There's a whole like, uh, system behind the scenes that's trying to decide update rates and importance of the pages. So even if the update rate seems low, you might still want to recrawl important pages quite often because, uh, the likelihood they change might be low, but the value of having updated is high.Shawn Wang [00:29:50]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, well, you know, yeah. This, uh, you know, mention of latency and, and saving things to this reminds me of one of your classics, which I have to bring up, which is latency numbers. Every programmer should know, uh, was there a, was it just a, just a general story behind that? Did you like just write it down?Jeff Dean [00:30:06]: I mean, this has like sort of eight or 10 different kinds of metrics that are like, how long does a cache mistake? How long does branch mispredict take? How long does a reference domain memory take? How long does it take to send, you know, a packet from the U S to the Netherlands or something? Um,Shawn Wang [00:30:21]: why Netherlands, by the way, or is it, is that because of Chrome?Jeff Dean [00:30:25]: Uh, we had a data center in the Netherlands, um, so, I mean, I think this gets to the point of being able to do the back of the envelope calculations. So these are sort of the raw ingredients of those, and you can use them to say, okay, well, if I need to design a system to do image search and thumb nailing or something of the result page, you know, how, what I do that I could pre-compute the image thumbnails. I could like. Try to thumbnail them on the fly from the larger images. What would that do? How much dis bandwidth than I need? How many des seeks would I do? Um, and you can sort of actually do thought experiments in, you know, 30 seconds or a minute with the sort of, uh, basic, uh, basic numbers at your fingertips. Uh, and then as you sort of build software using higher level libraries, you kind of want to develop the same intuitions for how long does it take to, you know, look up something in this particular kind of.Shawn Wang [00:31:21]: I'll see you next time.Shawn Wang [00:31:51]: Which is a simple byte conversion. That's nothing interesting. I wonder if you have any, if you were to update your...Jeff Dean [00:31:58]: I mean, I think it's really good to think about calculations you're doing in a model, either for training or inference.Jeff Dean [00:32:09]: Often a good way to view that is how much state will you need to bring in from memory, either like on-chip SRAM or HBM from the accelerator. Attached memory or DRAM or over the network. And then how expensive is that data motion relative to the cost of, say, an actual multiply in the matrix multiply unit? And that cost is actually really, really low, right? Because it's order, depending on your precision, I think it's like sub one picodule.Shawn Wang [00:32:50]: Oh, okay. You measure it by energy. Yeah. Yeah.Jeff Dean [00:32:52]: Yeah. I mean, it's all going to be about energy and how do you make the most energy efficient system. And then moving data from the SRAM on the other side of the chip, not even off the off chip, but on the other side of the same chip can be, you know, a thousand picodules. Oh, yeah. And so all of a sudden, this is why your accelerators require batching. Because if you move, like, say, the parameter of a model from SRAM on the, on the chip into the multiplier unit, that's going to cost you a thousand picodules. So you better make use of that, that thing that you moved many, many times with. So that's where the batch dimension comes in. Because all of a sudden, you know, if you have a batch of 256 or something, that's not so bad. But if you have a batch of one, that's really not good.Shawn Wang [00:33:40]: Yeah. Yeah. Right.Jeff Dean [00:33:41]: Because then you paid a thousand picodules in order to do your one picodule multiply.Shawn Wang [00:33:46]: I have never heard an energy-based analysis of batching.Jeff Dean [00:33:50]: Yeah. I mean, that's why people batch. Yeah. Ideally, you'd like to use batch size one because the latency would be great.Shawn Wang [00:33:56]: The best latency.Jeff Dean [00:33:56]: But the energy cost and the compute cost inefficiency that you get is quite large. So, yeah.Shawn Wang [00:34:04]: Is there a similar trick like, like, like you did with, you know, putting everything in memory? Like, you know, I think obviously NVIDIA has caused a lot of waves with betting very hard on SRAM with Grok. I wonder if, like, that's something that you already saw with, with the TPUs, right? Like that, that you had to. Uh, to serve at your scale, uh, you probably sort of saw that coming. Like what, what, what hardware, uh, innovations or insights were formed because of what you're seeing there?Jeff Dean [00:34:33]: Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, TPUs have this nice, uh, sort of regular structure of 2D or 3D meshes with a bunch of chips connected. Yeah. And each one of those has HBM attached. Um, I think for serving some kinds of models, uh, you know, you, you pay a lot higher cost. Uh, and time latency, um, bringing things in from HBM than you do bringing them in from, uh, SRAM on the chip. So if you have a small enough model, you can actually do model parallelism, spread it out over lots of chips and you actually get quite good throughput improvements and latency improvements from doing that. And so you're now sort of striping your smallish scale model over say 16 or 64 chips. Uh, but as if you do that and it all fits in. In SRAM, uh, that can be a big win. So yeah, that's not a surprise, but it is a good technique.Alessio Fanelli [00:35:27]: Yeah. What about the TPU design? Like how much do you decide where the improvements have to go? So like, this is like a good example of like, is there a way to bring the thousand picojoules down to 50? Like, is it worth designing a new chip to do that? The extreme is like when people say, oh, you should burn the model on the ASIC and that's kind of like the most extreme thing. How much of it? Is it worth doing an hardware when things change so quickly? Like what was the internal discussion? Yeah.Jeff Dean [00:35:57]: I mean, we, we have a lot of interaction between say the TPU chip design architecture team and the sort of higher level modeling, uh, experts, because you really want to take advantage of being able to co-design what should future TPUs look like based on where we think the sort of ML research puck is going, uh, in some sense, because, uh, you know, as a hardware designer for ML and in particular, you're trying to design a chip starting today and that design might take two years before it even lands in a data center. And then it has to sort of be a reasonable lifetime of the chip to take you three, four or five years. So you're trying to predict two to six years out where, what ML computations will people want to run two to six years out in a very fast changing field. And so having people with interest. Interesting ML research ideas of things we think will start to work in that timeframe or will be more important in that timeframe, uh, really enables us to then get, you know, interesting hardware features put into, you know, TPU N plus two, where TPU N is what we have today.Shawn Wang [00:37:10]: Oh, the cycle time is plus two.Jeff Dean [00:37:12]: Roughly. Wow. Because, uh, I mean, sometimes you can squeeze some changes into N plus one, but, you know, bigger changes are going to require the chip. Yeah. Design be earlier in its lifetime design process. Um, so whenever we can do that, it's generally good. And sometimes you can put in speculative features that maybe won't cost you much chip area, but if it works out, it would make something, you know, 10 times as fast. And if it doesn't work out, well, you burned a little bit of tiny amount of your chip area on that thing, but it's not that big a deal. Uh, sometimes it's a very big change and we want to be pretty sure this is going to work out. So we'll do like lots of carefulness. Uh, ML experimentation to show us, uh, this is actually the, the way we want to go. Yeah.Alessio Fanelli [00:37:58]: Is there a reverse of like, we already committed to this chip design so we can not take the model architecture that way because it doesn't quite fit?Jeff Dean [00:38:06]: Yeah. I mean, you, you definitely have things where you're going to adapt what the model architecture looks like so that they're efficient on the chips that you're going to have for both training and inference of that, of that, uh, generation of model. So I think it kind of goes both ways. Um, you know, sometimes you can take advantage of, you know, lower precision things that are coming in a future generation. So you can, might train it at that lower precision, even if the current generation doesn't quite do that. Mm.Shawn Wang [00:38:40]: Yeah. How low can we go in precision?Jeff Dean [00:38:43]: Because people are saying like ternary is like, uh, yeah, I mean, I'm a big fan of very low precision because I think that gets, that saves you a tremendous amount of time. Right. Because it's picojoules per bit that you're transferring and reducing the number of bits is a really good way to, to reduce that. Um, you know, I think people have gotten a lot of luck, uh, mileage out of having very low bit precision things, but then having scaling factors that apply to a whole bunch of, uh, those, those weights. Scaling. How does it, how does it, okay.Shawn Wang [00:39:15]: Interesting. You, so low, low precision, but scaled up weights. Yeah. Huh. Yeah. Never considered that. Yeah. Interesting. Uh, w w while we're on this topic, you know, I think there's a lot of, um, uh, this, the concept of precision at all is weird when we're sampling, you know, uh, we just, at the end of this, we're going to have all these like chips that I'll do like very good math. And then we're just going to throw a random number generator at the start. So, I mean, there's a movement towards, uh, energy based, uh, models and processors. I'm just curious if you've, obviously you've thought about it, but like, what's your commentary?Jeff Dean [00:39:50]: Yeah. I mean, I think. There's a bunch of interesting trends though. Energy based models is one, you know, diffusion based models, which don't sort of sequentially decode tokens is another, um, you know, speculative decoding is a way that you can get sort of an equivalent, very small.Shawn Wang [00:40:06]: Draft.Jeff Dean [00:40:07]: Batch factor, uh, for like you predict eight tokens out and that enables you to sort of increase the effective batch size of what you're doing by a factor of eight, even, and then you maybe accept five or six of those tokens. So you get. A five, a five X improvement in the amortization of moving weights, uh, into the multipliers to do the prediction for the, the tokens. So these are all really good techniques and I think it's really good to look at them from the lens of, uh, energy, real energy, not energy based models, um, and, and also latency and throughput, right? If you look at things from that lens, that sort of guides you to. Two solutions that are gonna be, uh, you know, better from, uh, you know, being able to serve larger models or, you know, equivalent size models more cheaply and with lower latency.Shawn Wang [00:41:03]: Yeah. Well, I think, I think I, um, it's appealing intellectually, uh, haven't seen it like really hit the mainstream, but, um, I do think that, uh, there's some poetry in the sense that, uh, you know, we don't have to do, uh, a lot of shenanigans if like we fundamentally. Design it into the hardware. Yeah, yeah.Jeff Dean [00:41:23]: I mean, I think there's still a, there's also sort of the more exotic things like analog based, uh, uh, computing substrates as opposed to digital ones. Uh, I'm, you know, I think those are super interesting cause they can be potentially low power. Uh, but I think you often end up wanting to interface that with digital systems and you end up losing a lot of the power advantages in the digital to analog and analog to digital conversions. You end up doing, uh, at the sort of boundaries. And periphery of that system. Um, I still think there's a tremendous distance we can go from where we are today in terms of energy efficiency with sort of, uh, much better and specialized hardware for the models we care about.Shawn Wang [00:42:05]: Yeah.Alessio Fanelli [00:42:06]: Um, any other interesting research ideas that you've seen, or like maybe things that you cannot pursue a Google that you would be interested in seeing researchers take a step at, I guess you have a lot of researchers. Yeah, I guess you have enough, but our, our research.Jeff Dean [00:42:21]: Our research portfolio is pretty broad. I would say, um, I mean, I think, uh, in terms of research directions, there's a whole bunch of, uh, you know, open problems and how do you make these models reliable and able to do much longer, kind of, uh, more complex tasks that have lots of subtasks. How do you orchestrate, you know, maybe one model that's using other models as tools in order to sort of build, uh, things that can accomplish, uh, you know, much more. Yeah. Significant pieces of work, uh, collectively, then you would ask a single model to do. Um, so that's super interesting. How do you get more verifiable, uh, you know, how do you get RL to work for non-verifiable domains? I think it's a pretty interesting open problem because I think that would broaden out the capabilities of the models, the improvements that you're seeing in both math and coding. Uh, if we could apply those to other less verifiable domains, because we've come up with RL techniques that actually enable us to do that. Uh, effectively, that would, that would really make the models improve quite a lot. I think.Alessio Fanelli [00:43:26]: I'm curious, like when we had Noam Brown on the podcast, he said, um, they already proved you can do it with deep research. Um, you kind of have it with AI mode in a way it's not verifiable. I'm curious if there's any thread that you think is interesting there. Like what is it? Both are like information retrieval of JSON. So I wonder if it's like the retrieval is like the verifiable part. That you can score or what are like, yeah, yeah. How, how would you model that, that problem?Jeff Dean [00:43:55]: Yeah. I mean, I think there are ways of having other models that can evaluate the results of what a first model did, maybe even retrieving. Can you have another model that says, is this things, are these things you retrieved relevant? Or can you rate these 2000 things you retrieved to assess which ones are the 50 most relevant or something? Um, I think those kinds of techniques are actually quite effective. Sometimes I can even be the same model, just prompted differently to be a, you know, a critic as opposed to a, uh, actual retrieval system. Yeah.Shawn Wang [00:44:28]: Um, I do think like there, there is that, that weird cliff where like, it feels like we've done the easy stuff and then now it's, but it always feels like that every year. It's like, oh, like we know, we know, and the next part is super hard and nobody's figured it out. And, uh, exactly with this RLVR thing where like everyone's talking about, well, okay, how do we. the next stage of the non-verifiable stuff. And everyone's like, I don't know, you know, Ellen judge.Jeff Dean [00:44:56]: I mean, I feel like the nice thing about this field is there's lots and lots of smart people thinking about creative solutions to some of the problems that we all see. Uh, because I think everyone sort of sees that the models, you know, are great at some things and they fall down around the edges of those things and, and are not as capable as we'd like in those areas. And then coming up with good techniques and trying those. And seeing which ones actually make a difference is sort of what the whole research aspect of this field is, is pushing forward. And I think that's why it's super interesting. You know, if you think about two years ago, we were struggling with GSM, eight K problems, right? Like, you know, Fred has two rabbits. He gets three more rabbits. How many rabbits does he have? That's a pretty far cry from the kinds of mathematics that the models can, and now you're doing IMO and Erdos problems in pure language. Yeah. Yeah. Pure language. So that is a really, really amazing jump in capabilities in, you know, in a year and a half or something. And I think, um, for other areas, it'd be great if we could make that kind of leap. Uh, and you know, we don't exactly see how to do it for some, some areas, but we do see it for some other areas and we're going to work hard on making that better. Yeah.Shawn Wang [00:46:13]: Yeah.Alessio Fanelli [00:46:14]: Like YouTube thumbnail generation. That would be very helpful. We need that. That would be AGI. We need that.Shawn Wang [00:46:20]: That would be. As far as content creators go.Jeff Dean [00:46:22]: I guess I'm not a YouTube creator, so I don't care that much about that problem, but I guess, uh, many people do.Shawn Wang [00:46:27]: It does. Yeah. It doesn't, it doesn't matter. People do judge books by their covers as it turns out. Um, uh, just to draw a bit on the IMO goal. Um, I'm still not over the fact that a year ago we had alpha proof and alpha geometry and all those things. And then this year we were like, screw that we'll just chuck it into Gemini. Yeah. What's your reflection? Like, I think this, this question about. Like the merger of like symbolic systems and like, and, and LMS, uh, was a very much core belief. And then somewhere along the line, people would just said, Nope, we'll just all do it in the LLM.Jeff Dean [00:47:02]: Yeah. I mean, I think it makes a lot of sense to me because, you know, humans manipulate symbols, but we probably don't have like a symbolic representation in our heads. Right. We have some distributed representation that is neural net, like in some way of lots of different neurons. And activation patterns firing when we see certain things and that enables us to reason and plan and, you know, do chains of thought and, you know, roll them back now that, that approach for solving the problem doesn't seem like it's going to work. I'm going to try this one. And, you know, in a lot of ways we're emulating what we intuitively think, uh, is happening inside real brains in neural net based models. So it never made sense to me to have like completely separate. Uh, discrete, uh, symbolic things, and then a completely different way of, of, uh, you know, thinking about those things.Shawn Wang [00:47:59]: Interesting. Yeah. Uh, I mean, it's maybe seems obvious to you, but it wasn't obvious to me a year ago. Yeah.Jeff Dean [00:48:06]: I mean, I do think like that IMO with, you know, translating to lean and using lean and then the next year and also a specialized geometry model. And then this year switching to a single unified model. That is roughly the production model with a little bit more inference budget, uh, is actually, you know, quite good because it shows you that the capabilities of that general model have improved dramatically and, and now you don't need the specialized model. This is actually sort of very similar to the 2013 to 16 era of machine learning, right? Like it used to be, people would train separate models for lots of different, each different problem, right? I have, I want to recognize street signs and something. So I train a street sign. Recognition recognition model, or I want to, you know, decode speech recognition. I have a speech model, right? I think now the era of unified models that do everything is really upon us. And the question is how well do those models generalize to new things they've never been asked to do and they're getting better and better.Shawn Wang [00:49:10]: And you don't need domain experts. Like one of my, uh, so I interviewed ETA who was on, who was on that team. Uh, and he was like, yeah, I, I don't know how they work. I don't know where the IMO competition was held. I don't know the rules of it. I just trained the models, the training models. Yeah. Yeah. And it's kind of interesting that like people with these, this like universal skill set of just like machine learning, you just give them data and give them enough compute and they can kind of tackle any task, which is the bitter lesson, I guess. I don't know. Yeah.Jeff Dean [00:49:39]: I mean, I think, uh, general models, uh, will win out over specialized ones in most cases.Shawn Wang [00:49:45]: Uh, so I want to push there a bit. I think there's one hole here, which is like, uh. There's this concept of like, uh, maybe capacity of a model, like abstractly a model can only contain the number of bits that it has. And, uh, and so it, you know, God knows like Gemini pro is like one to 10 trillion parameters. We don't know, but, uh, the Gemma models, for example, right? Like a lot of people want like the open source local models that are like that, that, that, and, and, uh, they have some knowledge, which is not necessary, right? Like they can't know everything like, like you have the. The luxury of you have the big model and big model should be able to capable of everything. But like when, when you're distilling and you're going down to the small models, you know, you're actually memorizing things that are not useful. Yeah. And so like, how do we, I guess, do we want to extract that? Can we, can we divorce knowledge from reasoning, you know?Jeff Dean [00:50:38]: Yeah. I mean, I think you do want the model to be most effective at reasoning if it can retrieve things, right? Because having the model devote precious parameter space. To remembering obscure facts that could be looked up is actually not the best use of that parameter space, right? Like you might prefer something that is more generally useful in more settings than this obscure fact that it has. Um, so I think that's always attention at the same time. You also don't want your model to be kind of completely detached from, you know, knowing stuff about the world, right? Like it's probably useful to know how long the golden gate be. Bridges just as a general sense of like how long are bridges, right? And, uh, it should have that kind of knowledge. It maybe doesn't need to know how long some teeny little bridge in some other more obscure part of the world is, but, uh, it does help it to have a fair bit of world knowledge and the bigger your model is, the more you can have. Uh, but I do think combining retrieval with sort of reasoning and making the model really good at doing multiple stages of retrieval. Yeah.Shawn Wang [00:51:49]: And reasoning through the intermediate retrieval results is going to be a, a pretty effective way of making the model seem much more capable, because if you think about, say, a personal Gemini, yeah, right?Jeff Dean [00:52:01]: Like we're not going to train Gemini on my email. Probably we'd rather have a single model that, uh, we can then use and use being able to retrieve from my email as a tool and have the model reason about it and retrieve from my photos or whatever, uh, and then make use of that and have multiple. Um, you know, uh, stages of interaction. that makes sense.Alessio Fanelli [00:52:24]: Do you think the vertical models are like, uh, interesting pursuit? Like when people are like, oh, we're building the best healthcare LLM, we're building the best law LLM, are those kind of like short-term stopgaps or?Jeff Dean [00:52:37]: No, I mean, I think, I think vertical models are interesting. Like you want them to start from a pretty good base model, but then you can sort of, uh, sort of viewing them, view them as enriching the data. Data distribution for that particular vertical domain for healthcare, say, um, we're probably not going to train or for say robotics. We're probably not going to train Gemini on all possible robotics data. We, you could train it on because we want it to have a balanced set of capabilities. Um, so we'll expose it to some robotics data, but if you're trying to build a really, really good robotics model, you're going to want to start with that and then train it on more robotics data. And then maybe that would. It's multilingual translation capability, but improve its robotics capabilities. And we're always making these kind of, uh, you know, trade-offs in the data mix that we train the base Gemini models on. You know, we'd love to include data from 200 more languages and as much data as we have for those languages, but that's going to displace some other capabilities of the model. It won't be as good at, um, you know, Pearl programming, you know, it'll still be good at Python programming. Cause we'll include it. Enough. Of that, but there's other long tail computer languages or coding capabilities that it may suffer on or multi, uh, multimodal reasoning capabilities may suffer. Cause we didn't get to expose it to as much data there, but it's really good at multilingual things. So I, I think some combination of specialized models, maybe more modular models. So it'd be nice to have the capability to have those 200 languages, plus this awesome robotics model, plus this awesome healthcare, uh, module that all can be knitted together to work in concert and called upon in different circumstances. Right? Like if I have a health related thing, then it should enable using this health module in conjunction with the main base model to be even better at those kinds of things. Yeah.Shawn Wang [00:54:36]: Installable knowledge. Yeah.Jeff Dean [00:54:37]: Right.Shawn Wang [00:54:38]: Just download as a, as a package.Jeff Dean [00:54:39]: And some of that installable stuff can come from retrieval, but some of it probably should come from preloaded training on, you know, uh, a hundred billion tokens or a trillion tokens of health data. Yeah.Shawn Wang [00:54:51]: And for listeners, I think, uh, I will highlight the Gemma three end paper where they, there was a little bit of that, I think. Yeah.Alessio Fanelli [00:54:56]: Yeah. I guess the question is like, how many billions of tokens do you need to outpace the frontier model improvements? You know, it's like, if I have to make this model better healthcare and the main. Gemini model is still improving. Do I need 50 billion tokens? Can I do it with a hundred, if I need a trillion healthcare tokens, it's like, they're probably not out there that you don't have, you know, I think that's really like the.Jeff Dean [00:55:21]: Well, I mean, I think healthcare is a particularly challenging domain, so there's a lot of healthcare data that, you know, we don't have access to appropriately, but there's a lot of, you know, uh, healthcare organizations that want to train models on their own data. That is not public healthcare data, uh, not public health. But public healthcare data. Um, so I think there are opportunities there to say, partner with a large healthcare organization and train models for their use that are going to be, you know, more bespoke, but probably, uh, might be better than a general model trained on say, public data. Yeah.Shawn Wang [00:55:58]: Yeah. I, I believe, uh, by the way, also this is like somewhat related to the language conversation. Uh, I think one of your, your favorite examples was you can put a low resource language in the context and it just learns. Yeah.Jeff Dean [00:56:09]: Oh, yeah, I think the example we used was Calamon, which is truly low resource because it's only spoken by, I think 120 people in the world and there's no written text.Shawn Wang [00:56:20]: So, yeah. So you can just do it that way. Just put it in the context. Yeah. Yeah. But I think your whole data set in the context, right.Jeff Dean [00:56:27]: If you, if you take a language like, uh, you know, Somali or something, there is a fair bit of Somali text in the world that, uh, or Ethiopian Amharic or something, um, you know, we probably. Yeah. Are not putting all the data from those languages into the Gemini based training. We put some of it, but if you put more of it, you'll improve the capabilities of those models.Shawn Wang [00:56:49]: Yeah.Jeff Dean [00:56:49]:

This week the Boys are back...but not in studio. Sadly it's been sub zero temps and it's too cold to go outside.Good news is, We have Games!!!Game 1 - Like Share Block Story 1 - Russia is Developing Remote-Controlled Spy Pigeons https://t-invariant.org/2026/02/doves-of-the-russkiy-mir-how-potanin-s-money-and-the-institute-of-putin-s-daughter-recruit-neuroscience-for-military-service/ Story 2 - 'Blizzard Lizard' Rescued from Winter Storm in Rhode Island https://www.facebook.com/NewEnglandWildlifeCenters/posts/pfbid0XqhXj1NFCmqmnvn6mG6UaxGxnQFpmNvdoBbxTCNVKpkFMHNcTxU8PMFgJgBfECSWl Story 3 - Florida Man Arrested for Exposing Himself and Making Love to a Vacuum Cleaner https://www.scribd.com/document/988975244/Man-Arrested-for-Indecent-Exposure Game 2 - Pop Culture Fight Club The game of answering a tough question and defending your position returns! I'll ask each player for the best something or their favorite something from the world of pop culture, and they'll have to explain and defend themselves as best they can, and the best answer as judged by me will get two episode points. This week, I've been inspired by horror games - a load of my favorite horror games feature horrific acts and scares galore, but what fictional event in a video game, TV show, movie, or book, horrified you the most? What froze your blood completely? Best answer and defense wins. Game 3 - The Cost is Correct 3 items, final bids rules.Promos Beer'd Al WeedStockProudly Sponsored by Peace, Love, & Budhttps://www.plbud.com/WeedStockShoutouts to our Patrons; Mexi, Justin B, Kristin F ,Jeramey F ,Flaose, Todd, Jim, Flaos, Bridget F., David M., Dave A, Erin S, Donna/Colin Maggs,The GateLeapers, Kacey S., William M., Crunchie, DJ Xanthus, Crystal D., Jeff S, Gina W., 8Bit, Matt.Founding Members of @OddPodsMedia https://www.patreon.com/BFYTWShow Music by @KeroseneLetter and @Mexigun Our Merch Available by contacting us.https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCyJG-PDn6su32Et_eSiC6RQA MidnightSmoke ProductionShow #306 BFYeopardyhttps://bfytwpod.com/?p=1640

Wednesday Wisdom ⛳️

In this episode of Dad Talks, I explore the importance of tone and communication in parenting, emphasizing the need to correct children without resorting to yelling or constant criticism. I share personal anecdotes and insights on navigating perfectionism, setting standards, and using gentle pressure to guide children. The conversation highlights the impact of parental tone on children's self-esteem and behavior, encouraging parents to reflect on their interactions and strive for improvement.TakeawaysThe tone we take with our kids is crucial.Constant criticism can crush a child's spirit.Perfectionism can hinder both parents and children.Children reflect the behavior of their parents.Setting clear standards helps guide children's behavior.Gentle pressure is more effective than harsh criticism.It's important to recognize when we are being overly critical.Self-reflection is key to improving parenting.Discipline should not destroy a child's dignity.Parents should strive for good enough rather than perfection.

In this episode's discussions around the Community Table, explaining to clients what to expect, marketing, and getting your tech up to speed.   With new clients, take the time to set expectations and explain the process. Assumptions and miscommunication can lead to lower satisfaction when a client's uninformed expectations don't meet reality, even with a successful outcome Starting with a clear explanation of the process can lead to more favorable outcomes. Will the case go to trial, our would a settlement be better? How much would one route cost vs. another? Give clients the big picture. Real life is not a television TV drama. Is your marketing attracting the clients you want? Casting the widest net isn't always the best choice. Explain who you are and what you do honestly. And then live up to those promises. (And for Heaven's sake, get your tech in order. Clients today expect at least that: Hear the common tech shortfalls that turn clients off.)  Mentioned in This Episode: Clio ClioCon 2026, Oct. 26-27, 2026

On this week's episode of The Joy of Football, Martin Tyler and Neil Barnett take on some of the game's biggest current talking points, with a particular focus on form, trends, and how football is evolving in front of our eyes. The conversation begins with “We Need To Talk About”, as the guys dig into the modern Brazilian centre-forward. From Richarlison and Gabriel Jesus to João Pedro and Igor Jesus, the guys discuss why Brazil's production line of number nines, and who could get a shot at the World Cup. In Three of the Best, Martin and Neil each pick their standout players across generations. There's praise for emerging talents like Dango Ouattara and Mateus Mané, reflection on influential figures such as Steve Holland and Siniša Mihajlović, and appreciation for current players including Ismaïla Sarr and Angel Gomes. Martin then delivers another Letter From The Gantry, this week centred on hat-tricks (and a time when Martin saw 3 in one go) - what makes them special, how they feel from the commentary box, and why certain moments stay with you long after the final whistle. And the episode closes with Voice of Passion, where the discussion turns to whether changes in the game are really for the good of football. From Manchester City's disallowed goal to extended drinks breaks, Martin and Neil question where the balance lies between tradition, fairness, and entertainment. As ever, it's a thoughtful, experience-led look at football — past, present, and where it might be heading next. #ad Find out more about St James Place here! https://www.sjp.co.uk Join Neil Barnett (former Chelsea touch-liner announcer and football journalist) alongside the voice of the Premier League, Martin Tyler in celebrating the greatest addiction in the World!  Hosted by The Revive Lounge Ltd  UCsdye1hUxP4xhgBx9zvuSjg Subscribe to https://youtube.com/@TheReviveLounge?si=L5ddzrJrtSmErtJ5  Support the Pod https://patreon.com/TheJoysofFootballPodcast?utm_medium=unknown&utm_source=join_link&utm_campaign=creatorshare_creator&utm_content=copyLink Read us on  Substack https://martintylerandneilbarnett.substack.com/  Follow our Twitter https://x.com/TheJOF  Follow our Tik Tok https://www.tiktok.com/@joy_of_football_pod?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc  Follow our Instagram https://https://www.instagram.com/joy_of_football_pod/  Contact us via: therevivelounge@gmail.com  Music by Arron Clague - https://www.instagram.com/arronclague?igsh=aHg1bjQ3OHpmaXIz  Intro Sequence by Wellong Sadewo (wells.illustration): https://www.instagram.com/wells.illustration/  For incredible football artwork, check out: https://linktr.ee/marclobodaart  A massive thank you to our Patreon Supporters:  Nick Parmenter  Hillary Abbott  Daniel Butigan  Tommy Mck  Katie Watson  Benjamin Fairclough  Nathan A Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

"Lessons from Elihu", ...from the book of Job.ch. 32-37

HARVEST(6) | The Impact of the Word | CHIMDI OHAHUNA Bible Text: John 4:35 ; Hebrews 4:12 ; Ephesians 3:8 ; 2 Samuel 6; Acts 7 In this sixth installment of the HARVEST series, we explore a foundational truth: the Word of God is a seed,and every seed makes an impression. Whether the soil is receptive or resistant, the gospel always leaves a mark. Our role is not to force results, but to faithfully sow and trust the Word to do its work. Key Insights from This Teaching: - The Word is inherently impactful.    Just as every seed leaves an imprint on the ground, the gospel makes an impression in every heart it touches. The parable of the sower reminds us: the seed fell on four types of soil, and each responded differently, but impact was made in all. - We are sowers and harvesters, not the soil.    Trying to be both leads to frustration. The soil (heart) must do its own work. Our responsibility is to preach Jesus, not to manipulate outcomes. - Stop trying to make the Word powerful.    The Word is already “sharper than any two-edged sword” (Hebrews 4:12). We don't need to amplify it with theatrics or emotional pressure. We simply need to preach Christ, the Word Himself. - Pray for receptive hearts, not for the Word to work.    The Word always works. Our prayer should be for the soil to receive it. Impact is guaranteed; responsiveness may take time. - Impact is spiritual, not numerical.    The size of the Word's effect is not measured by crowd size, applause, or offerings. It's measured by transformation. When the Word grows in you, it will grow in your city. - Correct your vision.    Preach not to populate a denomination, but to see souls saved and adopted into God's family. The gospel is not a recruitment tool, it's a rescue mission. - Agitation is part of impact.    Stephen's preaching stirred anger, yet it planted the seed that later won Paul. The Word may provoke before it transforms. Don't be discouraged by resistance. - Let the Word help you, don't try to help the Word. Uzah tried to steady the Ark and was struck down (2 Samuel 6). Likewise, when we try to force the Word's impact, we risk stepping outside divine order. Preach in love, not in pressure. This episode is a call to every believer to Preach Jesus. Trust the seed. Expect impact. Even when hearts seem hard, the Word is working. Keep sowing. Keep harvesting. The gospel never returns void. Jesus is Lord.

Trump menace encore le Canada et y va de déclarations controversées… | Soraya Martinez Ferrada veut attirer de grands artistes à Montréal | Vers des élections fédérales? Pierre Paul-Hus estime que ce n’est pas du tout le moment | Québec, la meilleure ville du Canada? | Une IRM manquante cause le désarroi de milliers de patients et d’employés du système de santé | Le chanteur Chris de Burgh ne se voit pas prendre sa retraite de sitôt ! Dans cet épisode intégral du 10 février, en entrevue : Soraya Martinez Ferrada, mairesse de Montréal. Pierre Paul-Hus, député conservateur dans Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles. Bruno Marchand, maire de Québec. Dr Grégoire Bernèche, président de l’Association des radiologistes du Québec et radiologiste à l’Hôpital Pierre-Boucher. Chris De Burgh, chanteur et musicien. Une production QUB Février 2026Pour de l'information concernant l'utilisation de vos données personnelles - https://omnystudio.com/policies/listener/fr

Are you suffering from "Ethical Fading"? Discover actionable strategies to navigate a compromised world and cutthroat office politics without losing your soul or your competitive edge.We spend a significant amount of our collective energy frustrated by the state of the world. We look at the headlines, we watch the news, and we see a parade of compromised characters—politicians who trade influence for favors, CEOs who prioritize quarterly earnings over human safety, and public figures who seem to have surgically removed their shame. It is easy, and perhaps even cathartic, to point a finger at the screen and declare them the problem. It feels good to position ourselves as the moral observers of a crumbling society. But today, I want to ask you to do something much harder. I want you to lower that finger, turn away from the screen, and look in the mirror.This isn't about politics. This isn't about the grand stage of global affairs. This is about you. It is about the subtle, quiet, and often invisible ways that the corruption of the world seeps into our own bloodstreams. We all hate the corrupt politician, but we need to have a very honest, uncomfortable conversation about whether we fudge our own taxes. We despise the corporate liar, but do we embellish our resumes? We loathe the system that seems rigged, but do we grease the wheels of our own small lives with convenient untruths?The reality is that integrity is not a binary state. You aren't simply a "good person" or a "bad person." Integrity is a muscle, and like any muscle, it atrophies if you don't exercise it, and it tears if you put it under too much weight without training. In a world that often rewards the shortcut and celebrates the shark, maintaining your integrity is not just a moral luxury; it is a strategic necessity for your long-term mental health and professional survival. We are going to break down exactly how good people end up doing bad things, and more importantly, how you can navigate a compromised workplace—the office politics, the toxic bosses, the gray areas—without losing your soul or becoming part of the problem.We have to start by understanding the mechanism of our own undoing. Psychologists and behavioral economists have a term for this phenomenon: Ethical Fading. It is a fascinating and terrifying concept. Ethical fading occurs when the ethical dimensions of a decision fade from view, and the decision is reclassified as a business decision, a strategic maneuver, or a necessary evil. It is the process of numbing ourselves to our own small dishonesties. It doesn't happen overnight. You don't wake up one morning and decide to be a corrupt person. It happens by degrees. It is the boiling frog experiment applied to your soul.Think about the last time you faced a minor ethical dilemma. Maybe it was an expense report where you rounded up a few figures. Maybe it was telling a client that a project was "90% done" when you hadn't even started, just to buy yourself a weekend of peace. In that moment, you didn't think, "I am a liar." You thought, "I am managing expectations," or "I am just making sure I get reimbursed for the hassle." That is ethical fading. You strip the moral weight away from the action and replace it with utilitarian language. You convince yourself that the ends justify the means, or that "everyone else is doing it," or that the system is so broken that your small transgression is merely a drop in the ocean.But here is the bottom line: those drops accumulate. When you allow these small acts of "fading" to occur, you are retraining your brain. You are raising your threshold for discomfort. The first time you lie to your boss, your heart races and your palms sweat. That is your conscience working; that is your biological alarm system. But the second time, the alarm is a little quieter. The tenth time, there is no alarm at all. You have successfully numb yourself. The danger here is not just that you are becoming dishonest; it is that you are becoming blind. You lose the ability to see where the line is, and eventually, when a big compromise is demanded of you—a serious breach of ethics—you might just cross it without even realizing you have left the safety of the shore.So, how do we stop this slide? How do we maintain a rigid spine in a flexible world? It starts with a brutal personal audit. You need to look at your life with the cold, hard gaze of a forensic accountant. Where are you leaking integrity? This isn't about guilt; guilt is a useless emotion unless it drives change. This is about data. Are you honest in your relationships? Do you keep the promises you make to yourself? Do you present an unfiltered version of reality to your team, or do you curate the truth to make yourself look better?One of the most common places where this integrity leak occurs is in our professional identities. The resume is often the first casualty of the truth. We live in a hyper-competitive market, and the temptation to "polish" our credentials is immense. But there is a massive difference between highlighting your strengths and fabricating your reality. When you claim a skill you don't have or inflate a title you didn't earn, you are building your career on a foundation of sand. You are creating a future based on the fear that you are not enough as you are. And practically speaking, the anxiety of maintaining that lie, of constantly looking over your shoulder waiting to be exposed, is a massive energy drain. It taxes your mental resources—resources that you could be using to actually learn the skill you lied about.This brings us to the battlefield where most of us face these challenges daily: the workplace. The modern office is often a breeding ground for ethical compromise. We have all been there. The toxic manager who takes credit for your work. The colleague who smiles to your face and gossips behind your back. The pressure from upper management to hit targets that are mathematically impossible without cutting corners. This is where the rubber meets the road. It is easy to be virtuous when you are sitting alone in a room. It is much harder to be virtuous when your mortgage payment depends on your ability to survive in a corrupt ecosystem.You might be asking, "How do I survive office politics without becoming a politician?" The answer lies in shifting your mindset from "playing the game" to "mastering the terrain." You do not have to become a snake to survive in a snake pit, but you do have to know where the snakes are hiding and how to handle them.The first strategy is to become the master of the paper trail. In a compromised environment, the truth is often the first thing to be distorted. Your best defense is documentation. This isn't about being paranoid; it is about being professional. When a directive comes down that feels unethical or risky, you confirm it in writing. You send the follow-up email: "Just to clarify our conversation this morning, you would like me to proceed with X, despite the potential risk of Y." You do this neutrally, without emotion. You are essentially creating a reality anchor. Corrupt systems thrive on ambiguity and verbal orders that can be denied later. By forcing things into the written record, you introduce accountability. You shine a light. Often, just the act of documenting a shady request is enough to make the requester back down, because they know that their "ethical fade" won't survive the scrutiny of a written record.However, documentation is just the defensive line. You also need an offensive strategy, and that strategy is competence. In a corrupt or highly political environment, competence is the ultimate currency. People who rely on politics usually do so because they lack the substance to succeed on merit. They need the smoke and mirrors. If you focus on being undeniably good at what you do, you create a layer of insulation around yourself. When you deliver results that are tangible, measurable, and high-quality, you become harder to manipulate and harder to remove. You become an asset that even the corrupt players need to keep the ship afloat.But let's go deeper into the interpersonal dynamics. How do you handle the gossip, the backstabbing, the alliances? The pragmatic approach is to view yourself as Switzerland—neutral, observant, and armed. You can be friendly without being intimate. You can listen without participating. When someone comes to you with gossip, you have a choice. You can fuel the fire, or you can let the flame die with you. The most powerful phrase you can learn in office politics is a non-committal, "That sounds frustrating for you," followed by an immediate pivot back to work. "That sounds frustrating. Anyway, have you seen the data on the Q3 report?" By refusing to engage in the mudslinging, you signal that you are not a player in that game. You are there to work. This might alienate you from the "clique" temporarily, but in the long run, it earns you something far more valuable: respect. Even the snakes respect the person who refuses to be bitten or to bite.There is a nuance here that we must address. There is a difference between being "difficult" and being principled. Some people use "integrity" as a shield to be obstructionist or self-righteous. That is not what we are aiming for. We want to be the person who solves problems, not the person who creates bottlenecks. When you have to say "no" to something because of an ethical concern, you should always try to offer an alternative path. Don't just be the stop sign; be the detour. "I can't do X because it violates our compliance policy, but I believe we can achieve the same result if we do Y and Z." This shows that you are still on the team, that you are still driving toward the goal, but that you are insisting on getting there on a road that doesn't collapse beneath you.Now, we have to talk about the hardest part of this equation. We have to talk about the breaking point. There is a limit to how much you can navigate a corrupt system before the system begins to change you. You can wear a hazmat suit to work every day, but eventually, the radiation gets through. You need to know your "walk away" price. This is a concept I want you to define for yourself today, not when you are in the middle of a crisis. What is the line you will not cross? Is it lying to a client? Is it firing someone unjustly? Is it breaking the law? You must define these non-negotiables now, while your head is clear.If you don't define your non-negotiables, you will fall victim to the "slippery slope" we discussed earlier. You will justify the first small crossing of the line, and then the next, until you are miles away from who you wanted to be. But if you have that line drawn in the sand of your mind, when you approach it, an alarm will go off. And when that alarm goes off, you have to be willing to act. This is where the "pragmatic" part of our coaching comes in. Integrity sometimes requires an exit strategy.I am not telling you to quit your job tomorrow in a blaze of moral glory without a plan. That isn't smart; that's reckless. I am telling you that if you find yourself in an environment that consistently demands you compromise your values, you need to start plotting your escape. You need to update that resume (honestly), start networking, and save your money. Financial stability is one of the greatest guardians of integrity. When you live paycheck to paycheck, you are vulnerable. You are terrified of losing your income, and fear is the enemy of ethics. Fear makes us compliant. But if you have an emergency fund, if you have a "freedom fund," you have the power to say "no." You have the power to walk away. Money, in this sense, buys you the luxury of a conscience.Let's shift gears and look at the internal cost of corruption. Why does this matter? Why shouldn't you just fudge the numbers, play the politics, and get the promotion? Why not just lie on the resume if it gets you the foot in the door? The answer lies in the concept of "cognitive load."Lying, pretending, and managing a false persona takes an immense amount of brainpower. When you are living a lie, you have to remember the lie. You have to constantly calibrate your story to match your previous fabrications. You have to monitor other people's reactions to see if they suspect anything. This is a background process that is running in your brain 24/7, eating up your battery life. It causes low-level anxiety, chronic stress, and a pervasive sense of impostor syndrome.On the other hand, the truth is efficient. When you live with integrity, you don't have to remember what you said, because you said what happened. You don't have to worry about being exposed, because you have nothing to hide. This liberates a massive amount of mental energy. You can focus that energy on creativity, on problem-solving, on actual growth. Integrity is the ultimate productivity hack. It simplifies your life. It streamlines your decision-making process. When you know what your values are, you don't have to agonize over every choice. You simply ask, "Does this align with my values?" If the answer is no, the decision is made.Furthermore, we must consider the compounding interest of reputation. In a world that is increasingly transparent, where digital footprints last forever, your reputation is your most valuable asset. You might gain a short-term advantage by cheating—you might get the sale, or the job, or the tax break. But if you are caught, or even if people just start to sense that you are not trustworthy, the long-term cost is catastrophic. Trust takes years to build and seconds to break. In business and in life, people prefer to work with those they can trust. If you are known as a straight shooter, someone whose handshake actually means something, opportunities will flow to you. People will bring you into the inner circle because they know you won't stab them in the back. Integrity is a long-term greed. It pays better dividends over a lifetime than dishonesty ever could.Let's look at some specific, actionable steps you can take today to begin strengthening your integrity muscle. We need to move from the philosophical to the practical.First, I want you to practice "Radical Honesty" in low-stakes situations. We often lie about small things to avoid minor social friction. We say we are "five minutes away" when we haven't left the house. We say we "loved the dinner" when it was cold. Start catching yourself in these micro-lies. Correct them in real-time. If you are running late, say, "I am running 20 minutes late because I managed my time poorly." It is uncomfortable, yes. But it trains your brain that truth is the default setting. It builds a tolerance for the minor discomfort of honesty, which prepares you for the major discomfort of difficult ethical stands later on.Second, identify your "Ethical Blind Spots." We all have them. Maybe you are incredibly honest with money, but you tend to exaggerate stories to be the center of attention. Maybe you would never steal a pen from the office, but you regularly steal time by scrolling social media when you are on the clock. Be honest with yourself about where your weak points are. You cannot fortify a wall if you don't know where the cracks are. Once you identify a blind spot, set a specific rule for it. If you doom-scroll at work, use an app blocker. If you exaggerate stories, practice the discipline of understatement.Third, find an "Accountability Mirror." This can be a person—a mentor, a partner, a friend who you know will tell you the unvarnished truth. Give them permission to call you out. Ask them, "Do you ever see me compromising on my values? Do I ever come across as disingenuous?" It takes courage to ask that question, and it takes even more courage to listen to the answer without getting defensive. But that external perspective is invaluable. We are often the best lawyers for our own defense, rationalizing our bad behavior. You need a judge.Fourth, change your language. Words shape reality. Stop using euphemisms that disguise unethical behavior. Don't call it "creative accounting"; call it "fraud." Don't call it "padding the resume"; call it "lying." Don't call it "office politics"; call it "manipulation." When you use the raw, ugly words to describe the actions, they lose their seductive power. It becomes much harder to commit fraud than it is to engage in creative accounting. By stripping away the corporate speak, you force yourself to confront the reality of what you are doing.Let's return to the concept of the "Compromised World" for a moment. It is easy to become cynical. It is easy to look at the billionaire who cheated his way to the top and feel like a fool for playing by the rules. You might think, "nice guys finish last." But I want you to challenge that definition of "winning." If winning means having a massive bank account but being unable to sleep without medication because of the stress of your deception, is that winning? If winning means being the CEO but having a family that despises you and a staff that fears you, is that winning?We need to redefine success to include the quality of our inner life. A "clean" success—one achieved through hard work, smart strategy, and ethical behavior—tastes different. It is sustainable. It is robust. It belongs to you in a way that stolen success never can. When you achieve something honestly, no one can take it away from you by revealing a secret. You own it completely.There is also a ripple effect to consider. We often underestimate the power of our own example. In a corrupt workplace, one person acting with integrity can change the atmosphere. It is contagious. When you refuse to gossip, you create a safe space for others to stop gossiping. When you admit a mistake openly instead of covering it up, you give permission for your team to be honest about their failures, which leads to faster problem solving. You have the power to set the standard. You are not just a passive observer of the culture; you are a creator of it.This is particularly true for those of you in leadership positions. If you are a manager, your team is watching you like hawks. They are looking for cues on how to behave. If they see you fudge a number, they will fudge ten. If they see you lie to a client, they will lie to you. The culture of a team is a reflection of the worst behavior the leader is willing to tolerate—in themselves and in others. If you want a high-performance team, you must demand high integrity, and you must embody it first.Now, let's address the naysayers. There will be people who tell you that this advice is naive. They will say, "This is the real world, you have to get your hands dirty." To them, I say: Look at the long game. The graveyards of industry are filled with the careers of people who thought they were smarter than the truth. They thought they could outrun the consequences. They thought they could manage the web of lies. They were wrong. The house of cards always falls. It might take a year, it might take ten, but gravity always wins. Building on a foundation of integrity is the only way to build a structure that withstands the storms of life.Navigating this path requires a specific kind of courage. It isn't the loud, heroic courage of the movies. It is a quiet, daily courage. It is the courage to be the only person in the room not laughing at an inappropriate joke. It is the courage to say, "I don't think that's the right way to handle this," when everyone else is nodding along. It is the courage to accept a short-term loss for a long-term gain. This is the courage that builds character. And character, in the end, is destiny.As we move toward the conclusion of this discussion, I want to leave you with a strategy for when you feel overwhelmed by the corruption around you. It is called "The Circle of Control." You cannot control the politicians. You cannot control the economy. You often cannot control your company's upper management. When you focus on these things, you feel helpless and angry, which makes you more likely to say, "Screw it, why should I try?"Instead, draw a small circle around yourself. Inside that circle are your actions, your words, your work ethic, and your treatment of others. That is your kingdom. Rule it wisely. Make that circle a zone of absolute integrity. No matter how chaotic or corrupt the world outside that circle becomes, inside the circle, standards are maintained. Inside the circle, promises are kept. Inside the circle, truth is spoken.What you will find is that over time, your circle will expand. People will want to be in your circle. They will want to hire you, partner with you, and follow you, because your circle is a refuge of sanity and reliability in a crazy world.So, here is your homework. I want you to take one specific action today. Not tomorrow, today. Identify one small area where you have been letting your standards slip. Maybe it's how you talk to your spouse. Maybe it's how much effort you put into your work when the boss isn't looking. Maybe it's a small recurring lie you tell to avoid conflict. Fix it. Right now. Send the text, make the apology, redo the work. Reclaim that piece of territory for your integrity.Don't do it to be a saint. Do it to be strong. Do it because you refuse to be a passive victim of a compromised culture. Do it because the most pragmatic, powerful thing you can be in this world is a person who cannot be bought, who cannot be intimidated, and who dares to tell the truth.The world may be compromised, but you do not have to be. The corruption stops at your doorstep. The ethical fading stops with your next decision. You have the tools. You have the strategy. Now, go out there and execute. The world needs more people who are playing the long game. Be one of them.

Brad Evans and Pat Boyle discuss Kenneth Walker taking home the MVP of last night's big game, and make the case that this was ultimately the wrong decision. However, they also disagree on who should have taken home the MVP Trophy, including a call for a change when it comes to the format of the award.

In this episode of Accelerated Health with Sara Banta, I explore how to safely correct iodine deficiency during pregnancy, a crucial factor for maternal thyroid health and fetal brain development.Learn about the common causes and signs of iodine deficiency and why many pregnant women may still be at risk despite taking prenatal vitamins. I also discuss how deficiency can affect your baby's nervous system and long-term cognitive growth.This episode covers the risks of improper supplementation, emphasizing why both too little and too much iodine can be harmful, and how to maintain safe, effective levels.Discover evidence-based strategies to restore optimal iodine, including proper testing and personalized approaches to protect both your health and your baby's development.Supplements Featured In This Episode:• Acceleradine® Iodine https://www.acceleratedhealthproducts.com/products/acceleradine-iodine-supplementNot sure what food to eat and avoid? This guide is for you.⬇️

Good morning! On today’s show, Matt Swaim and Anna Mitchell discuss the aftermath of Super Bowl LX and the commercials and messages that came out during the course of it. Guests include Stephanie Mann with more on Robert Hugh Benson and friendship with God, Fr. Phillip Larrey on the Pope and artificial intelligence, and Kevin Schmiesing with This Week in Catholic History. Plus news, weather, sports, and more… ***** Prayer of Pope Clement XI Lord, I believe in you: increase my faith.I trust in you: strengthen my trust.I love you: let me love you more and more.I am sorry for my sins: deepen my sorrow. I worship you as my first beginning,I long for you as my last end,I praise you as my constant helper,And call on you as my loving protector. Guide me by your wisdom,Correct me with your justice,Comfort me with your mercy,Protect me with your power. I offer you, Lord, my thoughts: to be fixed on you;My words: to have you for their theme;My actions: to reflect my love for you;My sufferings: to be endured for your greater glory. I want to do what you ask of me:In the way you ask,For as long as you ask,Because you ask it. Lord, enlighten my understanding,Strengthen my will,Purify my heart,and make me holy. Help me to repent of my past sinsAnd to resist temptation in the future.Help me to rise above my human weaknessesAnd to grow stronger as a Christian. Let me love you, my Lord and my God,And see myself as I really am:A pilgrim in this world,A Christian called to respect and loveAll whose lives I touch,Those under my authority,My friends and my enemies. Help me to conquer anger with gentleness,Greed by generosity,Apathy by fervor.Help me to forget myselfAnd reach out toward others. Make me prudent in planning,Courageous in taking risks.Make me patient in suffering, unassuming in prosperity. Keep me, Lord, attentive at prayer,Temperate in food and drink,Diligent in my work,Firm in my good intentions. Let my conscience be clear,My conduct without fault,My speech blameless,My life well-ordered.Put me on guard against my human weaknesses.Let me cherish your love for me,Keep your law,And come at last to your salvation. Teach me to realize that this world is passing,That my true future is the happiness of heaven,That life on earth is short,And the life to come eternal. Help me to prepare for deathWith a proper fear of judgment,But a greater trust in your goodness.Lead me safely through deathTo the endless joy of heaven. Grant this through Christ our Lord. Amen. ***** Full list of guestsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Can you find and correct the mistakes in Ben's sentences?Patreon: patreon.com/learnenglishwithben - For transcripts, comprehension quizzes, and video tutorials, join the fan club.Buy Me A Coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/learnenglishwithbenInstagram: instagram.com/learnenglishwithbenWebsite: learnenglishwithben.comEmail: learnenglishwithben88@gmail.com - send me an email if you're interested in classes Hébergé par Acast. Visitez acast.com/privacy pour plus d'informations.

Flat feet are not genetic! Flat feet correction and prevention are simpler than you think. Discover the one exercise to fix flat feet and restore your foot's arch naturally, along with some easy flat foot exercises to strengthen the arches of your feet. 0:00 Introduction: Exercises for flat feet 0:27 Foot arch function1:38 The best flat feet fix 2:27 More exercises for flat feet 3:26 Flat foot prevention in children4:04 Vitamin D, K2, magnesium, and flat feetIn this video, I'm going to show you the best flat foot fix that you can do at home. You're born with flat feet and develop an arch when you're around 6 to 10 years old. Some people develop a fallen arch as they age because they don't exercise the muscles that strengthen the arches of the feet.The purpose of your foot's arch is to provide it with free energy. It acts as a preloaded spring when you walk, climb, or run. You can still walk if you've lost your arch, but other muscles will be recruited. The quads and PSOAS muscles will compensate for flat feet, and the hamstrings, glutes, and lower back will be underused and become weaker. Sprinting is the best exercise for flat feet, helping restore the foot arch naturally. Even if sprinting is difficult initially, you can improve within 6 to 8 weeks. Jogging is one of the worst exercises for flat feet! Strengthen the arches of the feet with these exercises and build up to sprinting:• A skipping• B skipping• High knees• Butt kicks When sprinting, sprint at 60% intensity, doing 2 to 3 sprints for 15 seconds each. To prevent flat feet in children, allow them to play in the grass or a safe environment without shoes to strengthen the arches of their feet. Look for shoes with thinner soles; barefoot shoes are best. Also, ensure there's enough space for the toes to move. This improves posture by strengthening the glutes and taking pressure off the lower back. Low vitamin D, K2, and magnesium early in life can contribute to flat feet. Dr. Eric Berg DC Bio:Dr. Berg, age 60, is a chiropractor who specializes in Healthy Ketosis & Intermittent Fasting. He is the Director of Dr. Berg Nutritionals and author of the best-selling book The Healthy Keto Plan. He no longer practices, but focuses on health education through social media.Disclaimer: Dr. Eric Berg received his Doctor of Chiropractic degree from Palmer College of Chiropractic in 1988. His use of “doctor” or “Dr.” in relation to himself solely refers to that degree. Dr. Berg is a licensed chiropractor in Virginia, California, and Louisiana, but he no longer practices chiropractic in any state and does not see patients, so he can focus on educating people as a full-time activity, yet he maintains an active license. This video is for general informational purposes only. It should not be used to self-diagnose, and it is not a substitute for a medical exam, cure, treatment, diagnosis, prescription, or recommendation. It does not create a doctor-patient relationship between Dr. Berg and you. You should not make any change in your health regimen or diet before first consulting a physician and obtaining a medical exam, diagnosis, and recommendation. Always seek the advice of a physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition.

On this segment of KCMO Talk Radio's Ask Mundo Anything, host Pete Mundo takes calls from listeners across Kansas City. Carl from Independence asks how Pete books big-name guests, and Pete shares the importance of building relationships and trust. Dan from Kansas City discusses balancing work and family life, and Pete opens up about how his kids are now more interested in current events. The conversation also touches on politics, taxes, and the Kansas City Chiefs.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Political maturity is finally admitting to yourself that the angriest, most disconcerting communist you've ever met was pretty much right about everything. If you learn enough, stay humble enough, and pay close enough attention, eventually that's what happens. You realize that, generally speaking, the really high-octane commies have the most lucid understanding of the world out of any group out there, and the only reason this wasn't always obvious to you was because you live under a capitalist power structure which aggressively indoctrinates its populace from birth into believing that communism is No No Bad Bad. Reading by Tim Foley.

It's all going on with Paul in Bradford and Sarah in Wrexham but whose taking that mug?

Mario Bros. is the biggest franchise of all time. Bigger than Star Wars, Marvel… bigger than Harry Potter. Nintendo is an empire. Dave Young: Welcome to the Empire Builders Podcast, teaching business owners the not-so-secret techniques that took famous businesses from mom and pop to major brands. Stephen Semple is a marketing consultant, story collector, and storyteller. I’m Stephen’s sidekick and business partner, Dave Young. Before we get into today’s episode, a word from our sponsor, which is… Well, it’s us, but we’re highlighting ads we’ve written and produced for our clients. So here’s one of those. [Travis Crawford Ad] Dave Young: Welcome back to the Empire Builders Podcast. Dave Young here with you, and Stephen Semple’s alongside, with another empire-building story for us that- Stephen Semple: An exciting story. Dave Young: It’ll take you back to childhood, but it doesn’t take me back to childhood because I’m too goddamned old. Stephen Semple: Well, it depends how you look at this, this might be- Dave Young: No, I suppose. I suppose the company [inaudible 00:01:55]. Stephen Semple: It might be older than your childhood, but depends what we decide to talk about. Dave Young: Yeah, it’s just like when the big games came out, the… So we’re talking about Nintendo today. Stephen Semple: Correct. Correct. Dave Young: And I had Atari and things like that. And my kids all had the Nintendo. I actually have a Nintendo Switch, but I didn’t get that until I was… Stephen Semple: It also originally started as an arcade game, if we go back, because we are going to go back far enough. Dave Young: Well, that’s true. That’s true. Stephen Semple: Yes, yes. But if we actually went back to the company, Nintendo, we would be going back to 1889. Dave Young: Okay. So not so much my childhood. There you go. Stephen Semple: 1889. Yeah. And we’re really not going to talk so much about the origin and Nintendo as a company, but really, the origin of the video game business, and more specifically Donkey Kong, and went on later to become the Mario Brothers franchise. That’s really what we’re going to talk about. Dave Young: Now, hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Now, I don’t know everything, but I’m pretty sure video wasn’t around in 1889. Stephen Semple: It was not. Dave Young: There was no video games. Stephen Semple: No, there was not. So that’s why we’re really going to be talking about more of the recent history of Nintendo. Dave Young: A real Donkey Kong, climbing ladders and throwing barrels. Stephen Semple: Okay. That’s it. That’s it. Dave Young: Or a monkey, a gorilla. Yeah. Stephen Semple: And here’s the thing, the Mario Brothers franchise is huge. It’s one of the biggest franchises in history. There’s been 800 million video games sold worldwide, making it the bestselling video game of all time. It’s bigger than Pokemon in game sales alone. The estimated lifetime sales across all revenues for the Mario Brothers franchise is $60 billion. Bigger than Star Wars, bigger than Harry Potter, bigger than Marvel. Dave Young: Wow. Stephen Semple: The movies alone sold over a billion dollars. There’s theme park now. It’s huge. It’s absolutely massive. And the Nintendo company is very old. It was founded back in Kyoto, Japan in 1889 by Fusajiro Yamauchi. That’s it, Yamauchi. Dave Young: Oh. Stephen Semple: Boy, I’m going to struggle with these names. Dave Young: What were they doing back then? What was the company doing? Stephen Semple: The first product they did was a playing card called Hanafuda, and it was very, very successful. So they actually started- Dave Young: As a gaming company. Stephen Semple: … in game business doing playing cards. Dave Young: Okay. Stephen Semple: Now, during the 1950s, during Japan’s economic recovery, because if you remember, the economy was decimated in World War II, and through the Marshall Plan and whatnot, there was this rebuild going on. And during that time, they had a new leader, Hiroshi Yamauchi, who decided to explore all sorts of new businesses. He was doing all sorts of stuff. They had taxis, they had love hotels. Yes, you heard it right, love hotels. Dave Young: Love hotels. Stephen Semple: Instant rice, and of course, toys. And most of the things they did failed, except toys held a promise, so they continued to lean into toys. So it’s April 1978, so this is basically really where our story starts, and Taito, a competitor, releases a game called Space Invaders. Dave Young: Oh, right. I remember Space Invaders. Sure. Stephen Semple: Remember Space Invaders? And of course, this is back in the day of arcades, and you’re putting money into the games. This is so big in Japan, there’s 100 yen shortage. It would be like being in the U.S., and we run out of quarters. Dave Young: Right. Stephen Semple: It’s so big. So Nintendo, because it’s having some success in the game space, decides to make a knockoff of Space Invaders. So it’s October 1980, they create this knockoff called Radar Scope, and they decide also to ship it to the U.S., because they’ve started up a U.S. division. And it takes four months for the game to travel from Japan to the United States, and once it arrives, the trend has changed, it’s no longer Space Invaders, it’s now Pac-Man is the big game. Dave Young: Okay. Stephen Semple: So they’re left with these 2,000 unsold cabinets sitting in the United States. Enter Shigeru Miyamoto, who’s a graphic designer with Nintendo, and he has an idea, and he says to them, “Look, let’s reuse the cabinets, and let’s just create a new game. Let’s do that.” And it’s like, “What the heck? Let’s give this a try.” So Shigeru grew up in rural Japan, and this deeply influenced how he looked at games, because he grew up in a place where there was no television, none of these things, and he would go and he would play in like a cave that was nearby, and he would create all of these stories and characters. And this is the ’80s where the games do not have characters or a story. Dave Young: Okay. Yeah. Stephen Semple: They didn’t have that. Dave Young: Space Invader, you’re just knocking down… Stephen Semple: Right. Pac-Man, the same thing, there was no story. Pong, all that stuff, no stories. He takes a look around and he realizes that Nintendo has the rights to use Popeye, so Shigeru makes a suggestion to create a game using Popeye, where they already have the rights, and he moves ahead and does that. And so he also decides to make a game where characters move up rather than scrolling left to right, and there’d be different levels, which was also a relatively new idea. And he created this whole thing where they could jump, and using just a joystick in the buttons that already existed. So they started to create this game, but they hit a snag. Just before the release, they discovered Nintendo only had the rights to use Popeye for playing cards. Dave Young: For playing cards. Darn it. Stephen Semple: Now, turns out this was a gift from heaven, and the best thing that could ever happen in Nintendo. Dave Young: So it would’ve been Bluto up at the top, and Popeye trying to get up there, climbing the ladders and- Stephen Semple: And saving- Dave Young: So sort of a nautical theme? Stephen Semple: And saving olive oil. Dave Young: Yeah. Stephen Semple: Because remember, he would always capture olive oil. Dave Young: Yeah. Stephen Semple: And Popeye was this love triangle, right? Dave Young: Yeah. Stephen Semple: So what does Shigeru do? Replaces- Dave Young: Bluto becomes- Stephen Semple: … with- Dave Young: … the gorilla. Stephen Semple: Right. Popeye becomes Mario. Dave Young: Yeah. Stephen Semple: And olive oil is Princess Peach. Dave Young: Okay. Stephen Semple: It’s the same story. Dave Young: Yeah. Beautiful. Stephen Semple: It’s exactly the same story. And if you think about it, even the whole idea of this gorilla capturing the princess kind of sounds like King Kong, doesn’t it? Dave Young: A little bit. Sure. Stephen Semple: A little bit. And of course, they can’t use the name King Kong, so it’s Donkey Kong. And the reason why Donkey Kong is, he went looking through English dictionaries, and there’s all this stubbornness, and all this other things that go along with it. So we went, “You know what? This monkey, this Kong is kind of stubborn.” So Donkey Kong is the name of the game. Dave Young: Did they run into any issues with the King Kong folks? Stephen Semple: Nope. Dave Young: No? Stephen Semple: No, because you think about it, it’s a completely different name, Donkey Kong, right? Dave Young: Yeah, but it’s still a big gorilla with the word Kong in it. Stephen Semple: Yeah. Nope, no. It was different enough. Dave Young: [inaudible 00:09:14] just because it’s stubborn, and it sort of went with the word Kong? Stephen Semple: Yep. So it was different enough. It was all great. And the original character was not Mario. Dave Young: Stay tuned. We’re going to wrap up this story and tell you how to apply this lesson to your business right after this. [Using Stories To Sell Ad] Let’s pick up our story where we left off, and trust me, you haven’t missed a thing. Stephen Semple: And the original character was not Mario. The original character was Jumpman. Jumpman. Dave Young: I kind of remember that. Stephen Semple: Jumpman. And the game allowed them to reuse the cabinets, and just do it. And think about it, the objective of this, because he was also just a very junior graphic designer, and the objective on this was, “Hey, if we can sell these 2,000 unsold cabinets sitting in the U.S., that’ll take the financial strain off of our U.S. operations, and it will be great, it will keep them afloat.” And here’s what happened, they sold in 1981 alone 60,000 cabinets. Dave Young: I tell you, I poured a lot of money into one of those cabinets when I was in college. Stephen Semple: So Shigeru goes from this low-level designer to the creator of one of the best performing games up to that point. And one of the things that also ends up happening, he starts making modifications to the game. And one of the modifications is, he’s walking one day, and he sees these pipes, and he realizes character should be a plumber, and the landlord for one of the Nintendo properties’ name was Mario. Dave Young: Okay. Stephen Semple: So that’s where the whole idea of Mario came from, and eventually evolved to being brothers, Mario and Luigi. And of course, there was continuing success, and other formats and differing games. And Mario Brothers grew beyond Donkey Kong, it went from Donkey Kong to really the franchise being the Mario Brothers, with all sorts of new characters being added, and all sorts of new themes, like there’s go-kart racing and all sorts of different things. But the birth of the idea happened when they had this problem of, “We’ve got to have these cabinets…” And Shigeru saying- Dave Young: “And we either have to make a whole bunch of Popeye playing cards, or we have to find something to put in these cabinets.” Stephen Semple: “We have to find something to put in these cabinets.” And Shigeru saying, “It needs to be a story.” Dave Young: Yeah. No, that’s brilliant. And I feel like I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out to our listeners here in the U.S. that Steve is Canadian, and he pronounces it Mario, and everybody I’ve ever met says Mario. Stephen Semple: Mario. Dave Young: Mario. It’s Mario Brothers. Stephen Semple: Mario. Dave Young: It’s sort of like you say Mazda, we say Mazda. Stephen Semple: Right. Yes. Yes. Dave Young: So- Stephen Semple: Yeah, that’s true. Dave Young: Here’s a weird tangential thought. Do you have a minute for one of my weird tangential thoughts? Stephen Semple: Isn’t that why we’re here? Just for your weird tangential… Isn’t what we tune in for? Dave Young: That’s the way I look at it. I wonder if the guy that shot the UnitedHealthcare… Luigi, I wonder if there was a little bump in Nintendo stock. Stephen Semple: Oh, I wonder. Dave Young: And I wonder too, what was the discussion inside Nintendo about that? At first it was probably, “Oh my God, a guy named Luigi just shot someone.” And that was probably, “Oh my God, a guy named Luigi just shot someone that… Okay.” It’s not cut and dry. Stephen Semple: Well, it isn’t, because sometimes these negative events actually have positive impacts on sales. The one that I always remember that always comes to mind, I always find bizarre, is the white two-door Ford Bronco was due to be discontinued until O.J. Simpson went and did a joyride on LA freeways, and it actually extended the sales of that vehicle several years. And to this day, the white two-door Ford Bronco is a premium price from that year. Dave Young: Yeah- Stephen Semple: It’s nuts. Sometimes these crazy things happen. Dave Young: I don’t know if it was a joyride, but yeah. But we remember it, for sure. Stephen Semple: But we remember it. But- Dave Young: And those things have these impacts that you couldn’t buy that. There’s nothing Ford Motor Company could do that would’ve done that, that would’ve saved the Bronco. Stephen Semple: So here’s the interesting thing, coming back to Nintendo, that I find… So one of the influences it had was it was the first game that came along and basically said, “We should have a story.” And if we take a look at video games today, they’re all very heavy story based. And in fact, the stories are unbelievably rich, like Zelda, and all these other ones are these very complex universes that have been created. And he was kind of the first to come along, and his influence from that came from the fact that he didn’t grow up with these things. Dave Young: Yeah, he grew up with stories. Stephen Semple: So again, it’s this whole outside… We had this graphic designer that didn’t grow up with these things saying to a game, “Here’s what it should do. It should have this story, and there should be this imagination.” And all these things. And when you think about it, there was a couple of accidents, a couple of lucky happenstances that led to the birth of this. First of all, the console. Because if you think about it, if it was the creating of a brand new game, you wouldn’t take some junior graphic artist and put on it. The objective was, “All we need to do is move these 2,000 consoles.” So it was like, “Okay, so we’ll give it to the junior guy to do.” And then it blows out of the water. The other lucky happenstance is, think about how Nintendo’s fortunes would be completely different if they actually had the rights to use Popeye. Dave Young: Yeah, it would have been, like, Mario Brothers, that whole universe would never have come about, and- Stephen Semple: Well, the whole universe would be Popeye Universe, even if it worked. Dave Young: And I can’t see that happening. Stephen Semple: Right. But even if it worked, it would not have been theirs, it would have been- Dave Young: Oh, true. Stephen Semple: The people who would have made all the money were the owners of the Popeye license, would have been a licensee. Dave Young: Yeah, that’s true. Stephen Semple: So they had a couple of really lucky, fortunate things that happened that totally changed the trajectory of Nintendo. But here’s the other interesting lesson, and look, we talk about this all the time in storytelling, is there’s a couple of things you can do in storytelling. One is, you can take an existing story and just change the characters. We just took Popeye, changed as Donkey Kong. And what you know is, we knew that story worked, so it’ll work over here with different characters. Or what you can do is, you can take existing characters, and you can change the setting. In magical worlds, you’re always talking about how Sherlock Holmes, and- Dave Young: House M.D. Stephen Semple: … House M.D. is the same story. Dave Young: Sure. Stephen Semple: It’s just one is a detective during Elizabethan times, and the other one is an emergency room doctor in modern times. Same character, different setting, changes the story. Dave Young: Right. Stephen Semple: So when you’re looking to use stories, find ones that work, and do that. Dave Young: Find the popular stories and just take the framework. And I’ll give you another example- Stephen Semple: Right. Either change the characters, make it same story with different characters, or take the characters and put them in a different setting. Dave Young: … there’s a book called the Bible that had this story about this Jesus fella. Stephen Semple: I think it’s rather a relatively popular book. Dave Young: And then in 1605, a guy named Miguel Cervantes wrote a book called Don Quixote, and he took a lot of the storylines and metaphors from this story in the Bible and created a book that became the second bestselling book of all time right after the Bible. Then a guy named John Steinbeck took a lot of the stories from Don Quixote, and renamed characters, and put them in different situations, but took the structures of the stories, and… So this works. Just do this. Stephen Semple: Oh, yeah. Dave Young: Just find a story you like- Stephen Semple: Absolutely. Dave Young: … and take the [inaudible 00:17:59]. Stephen Semple: Reimagine it. Reimagine it. Reimagine it. Either change it, keep the same story and change characters, or take the characters and put them in a new setting. Dave Young: I mean, the cool thing is, you can’t copyright a story arc, right? Stephen Semple: No, no. Dave Young: Something bad happens to someone and they overcome it. “Okay, no, that’s mine.” Stephen Semple: I’m still waiting for the overcome part. Dave Young: Yeah. Right? Stephen Semple: Yeah. Dave Young: That’s still the part of the story. Oh, I love it. Stephen Semple: I just found these things that came together for the creating of the Mario Brothers to be really interesting. And it’s also interesting when you consider who was expected to be the star of the show was the donkey, and it ended up becoming the Mario Brothers. Dave Young: Yeah. Great story. And I see it. Thank you for switching to English. American English. I’m sorry. Stephen Semple: American. Dave Young: [inaudible 00:18:54]. Stephen Semple: All right. Thanks, David. Dave Young: Where can we go play some Donkey Kong next time? Stephen Semple: Well- Dave Young: Anybody got an old Donkey Kong console? Stephen Semple: Yeah. You know what? My kids have got some old play stuff, I’ll bring it down. Dave Young: No, I want the console. I want the big- Stephen Semple: Oh, you want that… Well, I think we may have to look hard for that. Dave Young: Yeah, that’s good. Well, keep your eyes out. Stephen Semple: I will. Dave Young: Thanks for the story of Nintendo, Stephen. Stephen Semple: All right. Thanks, David. Dave Young: Thanks for listening to the podcast. Please share us. Subscribe on your favorite podcast app, and leave us a big, fat, juicy five-star rating and review at Apple Podcasts. And if you’d like to schedule your own 90-minute empire-building session, you can do it at empirebuildingprogram.com.

TRANSCRIPT Gissele: Hello, and welcome to the Love and Compassion Podcast with Gissele. We believe that love and compassion have the power to heal our lives and our world. Don’t forget to like and subscribe for more amazing content. Today we’re talking with Rashi Nayar, and she’s on a mission to shift humanity from lower states of consciousness to higher states of consciousness. Gissele: I’m so, so excited to talk to her today. We’re gonna have a great conversation and she’s gonna do a practice with me. Maybe you can tag along as well. So welcome Rashi. Hi Gissele: Rashi. Rashi: Hi Gissele. Rashi: I’m so honored to be here with you. Gissele: Oh, thank you so much for being on the show. I’m really looking forward to it. Gissele: What led you to be on this mission to increase the consciousness of humanity? Rashi: My own path to increasing my own consciousness, you know, to operate from higher states of consciousness, which is peace, joy, and love. You know, these are actually who we are and we explore that more as we go along. Rashi: But I was very depressed for 18 years of my life, you know, since [00:01:00] 2007 when I lost my dog and in a car accident. And that was the first time I had experienced unconditional love that way, you know, someone loved me for who I am, not for, I had to prove myself or I had to perform. I had to be someone. Rashi: I could just be whatever. And he loved me that way, right? And it’s very beautiful to get that type of love from someone in that way. And when I lost him, he was only two years old and he met with a car accident and he died in my arms. But that was like it was like an opening. And it was like my heart broke for the very first time. Rashi: I had never experienced something like that before and I was grieving, but that was the first time I started asking questions like, who am I? Why am I here? What’s our true purpose? What is God? What is enlightenment? You know, all of that. Because what my soul was longing for was to connect back to that unconditional love that I had experienced from him. Rashi: But I didn’t know, [00:02:00] I was always looking outside, you know, outside myself. And I entered toxic relationships because I thought that other people were gonna give that to me. I was very disappointed and I was very depressed. I wasn’t chronically depressed. I was depressed, but I was also living in a low, low grade anxiety for a very, like, very long time until 2025. Rashi: This year when I lost another family member, I lost my aunt to ms. So that episode really shook me to the core and it forced me to sit in stillness with just with myself. Like no more reading books, no more going outwards, right? Because that’s what I always did. I would go to a spiritual retreat. Rashi: I would, you know, go outwards, read books, do therapies, you know, do coaching. I did a lot of work, technically a lot of healing work, and maybe that was required, but. Nothing really significantly changed. You know, I was still the same. I was [00:03:00] still living with low grade anxiety and I was still the same. And but this time I went inwards and I connected with the part of myself that is infinite, that is peaceful, that is love. Rashi: And I realized that everything that I thought about myself or the identity that was caring was actually not who I truly was or not, or not who I am. The identities or the masks that I was wearing, you know, the mom, the entrepreneur, and the aunt and the friend, all of those were really masks and identities that I was carrying. Rashi: But who I truly am, my most authentic self is actually free already. She’s already free. And it’s not even a, she, I wouldn’t even, we cannot really label, right? It’s, it’s. The vast infinite being that we are is inherently peaceful. Is [00:04:00] inherently open. Infinitely joyful. Infinitely blissful and loving. Rashi: Compassionate. That peaceful, that’s who we are inherently. And I, stayed in that high, right? Let’s just say I was in those higher states of consciousness for three days straight and I was floating. Gissele: Mm-hmm. Rashi: Yeah. I was so high. But then came the day I went down, the anxiety was back again, and I was like, wait, I thought I was enlightened. Gissele: I did it. What happened? Rashi: But that is what what’s supposed to happen, because now. I could see the contrast, right? I had experienced something so profound, and now there’s the contrast or the lower states of consciousness, which is fear, anxiety, lack. I was back, I was back in the fully humanness, you know, the human part of me, but [00:05:00] now my aunts, so she passed away and three days later she, she was in my head, she kept telling me, Rashi, love yourself. Rashi: Rashi, love yourself rash. It’s like, it was constant. And I realized that I didn’t love the parts of me that were so-called dark or negative. I was trying to get rid of anxiety. I was trying to get rid of the darkness, right? I was trying to resist whatever I was experiencing in the moment, and that was profound because now my only job is to love myself unconditionally. Rashi: In all parts of myself, the shadows they call it in the psychology. But I realized that the parts that I’m trying to get rid of, the anxiety, the so-called depression, the low level depression that I was constantly feeling the numbness or the sometimes of sometimes just sadness, [00:06:00] like it would just come up. Rashi: What if I fell in love with those parts of myself? Then what would happen? And that became the journey that became the practice. And when I did that, I no longer resisted those. So it was just the experience and me in love with whatever what is right, whatever the experience is. And now I’m whole, now I’m not broken, you know, there’s some, nothing’s wrong with me. Rashi: You know, and that was the narrative that I lived with for 18 years. If something is wrong with me, I need to be fixed. I need the healing, I need the therapy. But really there is nothing inherently is wrong with me. We all experienced this human side of things and what if I fell in love with the humanness, Rashi: And that’s why the being that I experienced, so in those three days when I experienced the so-called enlightenment or the awakening, it was when I touched my being. And our being is inherently free. We who we are, our [00:07:00] authenticity, we are inherently free. We are peaceful. And yet the human side of things or you know, how we grow up, our conditioning, our identity, our beliefs that we carry, all of that is there. Rashi: And that is the conditioning. So the constructed itself or the human is still there, but we cannot try to get rid of it. It’s like, you know, the snake leaves its skin. By its own. We cannot force the skin. We cannot rip the skin out of the snake, you know? So it’s going to happen only when we fully and completely fall in love with who we are in the humanness. Rashi: And that brings me back to that connection, to that love, to that peace that resides within all of us. So that’s in a nutshell, that that’s the story. That’s why I do what I do. Gissele: beautifully said. First I wanna go back to the, the loss of your dog as a person who had a dog. Gissele: Never wanted a dog to be honest, but we got one for a family and felt completely in love with the dog. And after [00:08:00] 13 years to have lost him. And I realize now that he had to go the way that he did. But he did teach me about unconditional love and patience and forgiveness and joy. And so the grief that you experience after having that can feel very overwhelming. And so where I was going with this question is, the human experience can feel so real, I have sat with some really difficult emotions it’s almost as if your mind tells you that something’s gonna happen something bad or you’re gonna die. Gissele: What do you say to people that say, you know, This is all we are because this is what we can concretely see and touch and experience. How do you go from that to understanding and embodying the fact that we are more than this reality? Rashi: Yes. Oh, that’s such an important question. Something that I live with almost every day. Rashi: You know, there’s this low grade anxiety that I still experience on a daily basis. [00:09:00] The only thing that’s different is I’m no longer resisting it. Gissele: Hmm. Rashi: So, you know, and we human beings, we are either, we’re only living in two A states at all time. We’re either to attach to the state that we want, which has happiness, joy, love, bliss, or we are resisting the lower states of consciousness, which is anxiety. Rashi: We’re really in, in these two states or all times. So it’s like when we get that love from the dog or the baby, you know, I have two babies, two little girls. And I’m like, I want it all the time. Right. So now there’s attachment, because if she says something like, I have a 4-year-old, which is a, she’s a very mischievous toddler. Rashi: Right. When you say something that can feel like hurtful. I mean, I don’t take her things seriously because I know better, but Gissele: yeah, Rashi: for someone else it could feel like, what, what would just happen? Like we were in love and now, or the, the spouse says something, right? Like, I have my husband who really triggers me, so he’s, he’s like my [00:10:00] best enemy, right? Rashi: Like he’s my favorite person, so mm-hmm. He says some things that can feel hurtful, and in the beginning it really used to bother me because I would resist those things. I would resist the experience of whatever’s happening in the moment, right? But now I lean into it, and that’s the difference when we are getting this anxiety or when we are getting something and the experience doesn’t feel pleasant. Rashi: The mind itself because the mind is like that. Mind wants to go navigate towards pleasure and it wants to avoid pain. That’s how the mind is, right? Gissele: Mm-hmm. Rashi: But we are not the mind though. So in the moment, if we can witness the mind’s neuros, whatever it does is like trying to resist. What we do is we say, first I love you mind. Rashi: Because the thing is the mind in itself is what it’s doing. It’s movement what it’s supposed to be doing. [00:11:00] And the second thing is, I love you, anxiety and that love it. It’s the experience that feels heavy, that feels not good, right? And that experience now is infused with love. So there’s no longer a problem with what is, with the experience itself. Rashi: And there’s a beautiful book written by Byron Kitty and her, the name of the book is Loving What Is, and apparently, you know, she’s enlightened, you know, every like, so she’s the enlightened being, right? We can talk in that way. I’m not enlightened for sure, but that’s what she meant. I didn’t understand it back then. Rashi: But this is what she means is whatever our experience is, if we are not attaching ourself to it, which means we are not craving more of that, or we are not resisting that, [00:12:00] then we have no problem with the experience. So the experience in itself is not a problem, Gissele. It’s our relationship with the experience that’s the problem. Rashi: So the anxiety in itself is not a problem. It’s how I relate to anxiety, how I see it. That in itself is the issue here. So if we’re like, okay, anxiety is here, can I love it? Can I lean into it? And when I do, and it can feel scary because some people might think that if I lean into that, that means it’s gonna expand, it’s gonna grow more. Rashi: Right? That’s sometimes where the belief is, and I definitely have that, but it’s actually what happens is the other way that anxiety or that bubble becomes love. And you know, there’s a great saint in India, I really, really respect him. He’s no longer in body and that’s, I always keep this picture over here. Rashi: Mm-hmm. [00:13:00] His name is named Carol Baba, and he was apparently he’s the same behind Apple. You know, Steve Jobs went to his temple. Rashi: I love him. I’ve never met him, but somehow I love him. Rashi: And, you know, love has no logic. Gissele: And it has no boundary either. It doesn’t, it doesn’t mean that you can’t love somebody who’s passing. And I think that’s the difficulty perception about, we think that when somebody crosses over that the love ends. I still love my dog bear and I still think about him. Gissele: I think about caressing him. I think about, I talk to him. But anyways, go on. Rashi: Yes, you’re right. Exactly. So, because love is unconditional and love is who we are. Mm-hmm. Which I’m going to take you back to so you can experience it yourself. But he used to say that suffering brings us closer to God. Rashi: Mm. And God is love. And so suffering, meaning anxiety, pain, whatever, chronic pain. I mean, people who are his devotees and people who have written books about him, they [00:14:00] said that, I’m so glad that there’s this pain in my life because it helps me take back to him love or God. And that’s exactly what we’re doing here, is we are saying, whatever comes to our experience, I love you. Rashi: Anxiety, I love you. Guilt, depression, grief, It can feel really hard in that moment, but that is the portal, the bridge between the lower states of consciousness, which is anxiety, fear, all of that to higher states of consciousness, which is love, peace, joy, abundance, that love and saying it mentally in the beginning it could feel like a mental repetition. Rashi: Everything is like, and then you’re like, I love you. I honor you. Even if you’re here, I love myself and I love, I mean, that’s loving kindness. The practice of loving kindness meta in Buddhism is loving ourselves and then loving people in our lives and loving [00:15:00] what is, you know, so that’s a tool that if people can use then, you know, I would love to hear how their life transforms. Gissele: Hmm. Yeah. it’s definitely something that I use myself and what I realized was that the more love I had in my heart for myself, the more it overflowed to other people. Like I didn’t need them to be different. I didn’t need them to change ’cause I didn’t need them to give me anything. Gissele: I really resonated with what you’re talking about, resistance. I noticed that one thing about myself is when I encountered the most resistance to what was happening, my inability to accept and surrender, had to do with my belief that if I surrendered, I was giving up. Gissele: That was accepting. What is that? it’s like saying that there was no hope or no chance Rashi: Mm-hmm. Gissele: I didn’t realize that the deeper thinking behind my resistance had to do with that. This has power over me, so if I give into it, it’ll take me, it’ll do what it wants to do. Correct. And so when I let go of that story [00:16:00] and allowed myself to surrender, there was a level of peace, but it was hard to get there. Gissele: I just wanna acknowledge what you’re talking about is so brilliant, but it can feel really challenging. And it doesn’t have to, but it can. Because I remember when I would ask for guidance from my higher self God source universe, the guidance that I always got was Love it. Choose it. Gissele: And I’m like, well, I don’t wanna choose this. I don’t wanna accept this. And so, but I would lie to myself thinking that I was not in resistance, but I was in resistance. ’cause my body was so tight. Rashi: Yeah. Gissele: And so, it can feel difficult to let go of that resistance. And we are. Gissele: Not really taught to surrender. we’re doers. Rashi: I just gotta keep grinding it out and eventually this is gonna come through. Gissele: how is that counterintuitive to allow love? Rashi: I love that question because I was exactly what you’re describing. For 11 years of my life, I was a [00:17:00] serial entrepreneur. I’ve scaled my own businesses to seven figures plus. And I learned it from my dad. Rashi: You know, it’s a learned behavior. You keep pushing through, you just keep doing, you know, and that’s discipline. Yeah. And consistency. Like those words feel really good. Discipline, consistency and but it didn’t feel good to my body. Gissele: Oh, Rashi: right. It does. It feels like, oh, it, it felt like I’m choking, but I still kept pushing through and I burned out very much. Rashi: So that’s why, you know, I no longer do what I used to do for 11 years and it just didn’t feel aligned anymore. I wanted to open my heart. I wanted to lead from the heart. So, to answer your question, Gissele, when you say that you are the doer, I wanna take you into this is again, a constructed and identity. Gissele: Yeah. Rashi: Right. This is, again, something that we have [00:18:00] adopted from our environment and from our parents, maybe from our teachers, someone we really admired because they had this habit of keep going and it felt really inspiring, right? Because they accomplished so much and the narrative that we. Play in our head is if we keep doing that means, you know, we’re bring, we’re service. Rashi: This is service to humanity and we’re serving, we’re adding value. All of that feels really good, right? Gissele: Mm-hmm. Rashi: And it feels like we’re in service. But the highest service, and I haven’t come to that point myself, but I get glimpses of that, is surrender. And I’ll tell you why. The highest service is surrender is because when we are surrendered, we are now the channel for God will to flow through us what God wants us. Rashi: And that is the path of least resistance. The [00:19:00] path of least resistance is when we are, it’s not my will, it’s God’s will. The problem. The problem, we don’t have a problem. The brain has a problem. And this is, now, let’s go back to scientifically, understanding the scientifically how this works is the brain wants to solve problems because our brain is from the ancestors we lived. Rashi: Our brain is coming from survival. You know, it, it doesn’t know how to thrive. It knows how to survive, right? And survival means keep pushing through. It means keep solving problems because there could be a line behind us and if we don’t solve problems, we are gonna die. So the brain is used to solving problems. Rashi: So it’s not necessarily you that wants to do, it’s your brain that wants to fix the problem. Gissele: Mm-hmm. Rashi: So Rashi: once you understand who you are, then you don’t relate to your brain as yourself. That, and that’s what we do, is we relate to our brain’s [00:20:00] mechanism or our mind’s workings as ourselves. We identify that that’s who I am, but that’s not who we are. Rashi: when we realize who we are, then we are free. Then we can see the workings of the mind as the workings of the mind. And we’re like, ah, that’s what the mind wants us to do right now. But what do I wanna do? Which means I, the, which I’m gonna take you to let you experience that for yourself. So we can do that whenever you’re ready. Gissele: Yeah, of course. I just wanted to mention a couple more things. in my life surrender has been so fundamental. Mm-hmm. It’s led to some magical things happening. But what I noticed was that on the things that mattered the most to me, or had the most limiting beliefs about surrendering is really difficult. Gissele: Mm-hmm. I could surrender, like small things or things that I believed could happen, but the things that were bigger, that bigger than I thought I could hold in my container, I [00:21:00] had a hard time really releasing or surrendering. Rashi: Mm-hmm. Gissele: And so for me, the, the whole concept of surrendering has been a minute by minute step by step by step. Gissele: I’m surrendering a little bit more. ’cause people think, well, I just surrender and then it’s. But if you have limiting beliefs around it, surrender can feel really dangerous. It can feel, it can feel unsafe. And that was one of the things that, the word that came up for me every time I tried to surrender about the different things I was surrendering about is like, this feels unsafe. Gissele: This feels unsafe. So like you said, being able to soothe your mind in, in your emotions and saying, you’re safe. You know, we got this. Mm-hmm. we’re just taking a baby step. That, for me, has gone a long way, Gissele: I continue to surrender more and more every single day and it feels so good to not feel like you have to carry the whole world with you. That you have God, Source, Universe helping you. And usually things turn out way better than I even anticipated. but here’s how stubborn I am [00:22:00] or this ego person is. Gissele: That should have been enough. Like how many times does the universe have to show me, like these magical things. And I’m like, well, but not in this case. Gissele: I wanted to ask you a couple more questions. The first one is talking about who we are. I’ve heard many people that say that we are God because everything is God source energy. We are God, we are made from that. from the same source and that God’s will is our will and our will is God’s will. And I had to kind of grapple with that. Gissele: And the reason being is because it’s not that I think it’s like blasphemous or anything like that, is that I kind of fell into a pitfall where I thought I could force my will. Rashi: Yeah. Gissele: Rather than being like, what’s my genuine will? what’s my genuine identity? and if I truly believed it, I wouldn’t be resistant to anything. Gissele: If I truly believed I was a creator of my life, of my thoughts and emotions and [00:23:00] God was working through me and I’m made up of the same juice as everything else, and I wouldn’t resist anything in my life. I would just choose something else. Gissele: Just curious as to your thoughts about that. Rashi: Wow. Again, this is amazing because yes, we are God, but yes, we are also humans, you know? Gissele: Mm-hmm. Rashi: God gave us this body, very limited body, right? I mean, where I come from, the Hindu culture, in our religion, we have flying gods. Rashi: You know, there’s a monkey, God called Hanman. I don’t know if you’ve heard of him. He used to fly, right? And so he has completely crossed the gravity, right? He is broken all the laws. So neem, KLI, Baba, he was apparently the avatar of Numan because he could be in three different places at the same time. So people in Delhi were like Baba’s with us, but in people in Aaba, they, but Baba’s with us has that possible. Rashi: And then there’s people in Bombay, they’re like, but Baba’s with us. How is that possible? So he completely nullified [00:24:00] the, the laws of the universe, which is laws of gravity. And he was a, people used to say that he was God, and so he had commanded or he had done a lot of, or sadana, which is a lot of the yogic practices to come to that. Rashi: But we don’t do that. You know, we’re mothers and we live in a household, so obviously we don’t have that luxury to, you know, meditate first since morning until night. We can’t do that. Yeah. So, right. So we have to address, we have to understand that we are limited in the body sense, but we are also unlimited with our mindsets that what we can think we can create. Rashi: So in that sense, yes, we are God, but yes, we are also a human being. So the ego in itself is not a problem. That’s what I wanted to say is ego in itself is not a problem as long as we can witness. Stay as the witness and we can witness the ego play [00:25:00] out. Gissele: Yeah. Rashi: Ego, meaning the constructed self. And also if we talk about the brain, the brain has a certain neurological pathway, a neural pathway that has been established and the non-dualistic teachings, the avea, they call it the spider web. Rashi: or the veil. the Christians call it the veil, and it’s the neural pathway in the brain that has been established as our identity, our beliefs, our thoughts, our perceptions. Mm-hmm. All of who we think we are, the constructed self or the ego. We are getting away from that, you know, and I, at least I have 39 years of that to get away from that. Rashi: To collapse that completely and to come to higher states of consciousness, which is completely a new neural pathway. Establishing that is a muscle, it’s almost like lifting weights in the gym. It takes practice. So this is a practice, and like you said, the [00:26:00] surrender is not a one, one thing. I mean, Gissele: yeah. Rashi: I think Ekhart Tolle he’s written about this, that the surrender just happened and he just disappeared. Right. And he became enlightened just like that, which I thought I had experienced before. But there are some beings that have experienced that, and they stayed in that bliss and that joy, I don’t know what that is to feel like for me it’s a practice and I don’t have a problem with that. Rashi: I’ll tell you why. Because I’m able to see the constructed self and the neurosis that come with the constructed self itself for sad. You know? Gissele: Mm-hmm. Rashi: I wanna see it like that. I want this to unfold as it is unfolding, because then the suffering, the ego is a portal. It becomes an invitation to come back to myself every single day. Rashi: Every single day. Now, I’m a conscious creator. I’m consciously choosing to [00:27:00] return to my original state, which is peace, which is love, which is joy, which is compassion. there’s a part of me, the ego, and I can still hear the voice be like, are you kidding? You? You not wanna be enlightened? Rashi: Like, forget about all of this. I’m no longer chasing it. For 11 years, I did chase the enlightenment. It becomes the shiny object, right? As we are chasing the seven figures, we wanna be a millionaire. It’s the same thing with spiritual money, which is enlightenment. Rashi: Everyone wants that. But what’s the problem with us right now? What if there is no problem with us as we are? That’s, you know what if the way you’re surrendering is the way you’re surrendering is the way you’re being, is the way you’re healing is the way you’re healing is exactly how it’s supposed to be. Rashi: It makes you whole and complete. It’s how the creator wants to experience herself through you with all the mess. It feels very [00:28:00] messy. Yeah, but what if that’s how it is supposed to be? And that is what is like if you’re not resist surrendering, that’s perfect. No, no problem with that. So. We can have a spiritual identity as well. Rashi: You know, spiritual people are high, right? That’s all of the identity They’re not supposed to resist, they’re supposed to surrender. That could be a contracted self as well. So what the invitation here is to just live as yourself completely and to love yourself and meet yourself for where you are. Rashi: And I think you’re doing a great Rashi: job at that Gissele.. Gissele: Thank you. you mentioned, spiritual people. I feel like what I chose to come here to learn was really to learn about love. Mm-hmm. Like true unconditional love and compassion. And Gissele: I understand it. I can say to you, we must love all including those who we deem as our enemies . In fact, some of our enemies are our [00:29:00] best friends because they are helping us remember who we are. Rashi: Okay. Gissele: And yet there is a small part of me that still believes that some people that behave in negative ways, that are very hurtful, that they should be fought or that we should fight injustice and fight oppression. Gissele: Even though to me that’s just another level of resistance. Right? But there’s like this little me, this little kid because of her family dynamics that still see somebody as like somebody needing that saving and other people needing to be less, selfish, And so, and that’s what I’m grappling with. Gissele: To create a true, loving, equitable, compassionate world for all. I have to emphasize the all, it has to include those who are most hurtful. It has to include people Yeah. Who are hurting other people And so I think that’s the thing I grapple with. On the one hand, [00:30:00] I can understand that we’re not really this reality, that this is just sort of like a play. Gissele: Right? And yet at the same time, it’s hard for me to witness the suffering of people who are, don’t believe that or are not experiencing that. And to see people suffer on a daily basis Rashi: Yeah, exactly. Rashi: Exactly. Very, very powerful what you just said. And I wanna ask you a question here. You said there’s a part of me. That still doesn’t really like that, you know? Gissele: Hmm. Rashi: There’s a part of me that doesn’t really, that’s resisting my invitation is what would happen if you really fell in love with this part of yourself that’s not loving? Gissele: Mm-hmm. Rashi: because then there’s freedom to really be, we include all dualities within us. We do, we are the saint and we are the [00:31:00] sinner. Because the seed of whatever the other sinner is doing is within us as well. Rashi: It’s just, we’re not choosing to act on it. That’s all we’re doing, but the seed is there. I mean, we still get negative thoughts. I remember I used to get thoughts like hate hating other people. I would get jealous of other women or like all of that. Rashi: Right? So apparently less than wholly less than saintly. Right. That’s who I am. What’s the problem with that? that’s the thing. If I can accept and love the parts of me that don’t feel so holy, that don’t feel so loving, then what would happen? Then I’m free. Gissele: Hmm. Rashi: Right. So that’s the invitation, because the thing is who you are, Gissele everything is it? Rashi: It apparently looks like the world is happening outside of us. It looks like that. Like we have a body and the world like me. I’m happening outside of you in the Zoom room, but [00:32:00] actually I’m Happening within you. Because you are awareness who we are. We are pure awareness. let me take you back to when we are babies. Rashi: Right? So when the baby’s born fresh out of the mother’s womb, it never says I am Rashi. No. Right? It never says I’m a girl or a boy. It doesn’t say I’m zero years old. Nothing. Right? But what it, what? It’s in a state. It’s in pure being state. Pure being, which means aware or I am. Gissele: Hmm. Rashi: Just this.. I’m not this or that. Rashi: I am. And when we say this to ourself, and I would, I want to invite you, Gissele, to say this to yourself when you can even close your eyes because I really want you to experience this firsthand and even the listeners. Yeah, of course. Rashi: Okay, so, alright, so just close your [00:33:00] eyes. Okay, so now go back to when you were a baby, and I don’t want you to go back and track your memory because you might not have a memory of being a baby, but I want you to have this as an experience, like a direct experience and directly experience yourself as just being born Rashi: fresh. Rashi: No thoughts, no emotions, particularly no judgements, no perceptions. It’s just this pure state of I am Rashi: or I am aware. Rashi: Pure awareness, pure presence, pure being.[00:34:00] Rashi: See yourself, have a direct experience of yourself without any name, without form, without any identity. Just pure nothingness. And Rashi: let me know when you’re there. Gissele: Okay? Gissele: I’m there. Rashi: Okay. So stay as you are. This is your original nature, original state of being. Stay as you are. If any thought arrives or comes to your awareness, you can just ask it to wait outside. We’ll ask it to wait outside the zoom room for a bit and we can [00:35:00] take our thoughts later on. We can pick up our identity later on. Rashi: You can pick up your name, beliefs, everything later on. But for now, just stay as you are. I am. Rashi: And now I’m gonna ask you some questions about your true nature. So as you are just the state of I amness, just pure awareness, are you inherently peaceful or your inherently disturbed? Rashi: Mm-hmm. Yes. Okay. So as you are. I am. The other question is, are you open or you’re closed.[00:36:00] Gissele: Open. Rashi: Mm-hmm. Open right now. Stay as you are. Just empty, empty, empty. Stay as the awareness that you are Rashi: now as you are. The next question is, do you have an age? Gissele: No. Rashi: No? Okay. Hmm. Okay. Stay as you are. So if you don’t have an age, were you ever born? Rashi: Yes. Rashi: I want you to even bring your memories out. Take your memories outside the zoom room, keep them out, and just stay as you are. Come back to just pure awareness. [00:37:00] And the invitation here is to have a direct experience of who you are. So as you are, who doesn’t have an age, were you ever born? No. Mm. So if you were never born, will you ever die? Rashi: No. Yes, exactly. And stay as you are. We’re going to go deeper. Rashi: When you stay as you are direct experience, Rashi: are you finite? Which means can you be put into a box like a body, or you are infinite and the body is also within you. Just see this, see this very clearly, and I want you to have a direct experience. Your mind might tell you something else, but that’s [00:38:00] just a thought. So I want you to have a direct experience of this. Rashi: Stay as you are. Are you finite or you’re infinite? Rashi: Are there any boundaries Rashi: between you and the experience Rashi: as you are? Rashi: No. No. Right. Rashi: Hmm. Rashi: Are you naturally accepting as you are or you are naturally in resistance, Gissele: naturally accepting? Rashi: Hmm, yes. Rashi: As you are? [00:39:00] Is there a problem? Gissele: No. There are no problems. Rashi: There are no problems. So as you are, are you whole and complete Rashi: or do you need anything to complete you? Gissele: No. Rashi: Hmm. Okay. So whatever you just said, and I have coached so many people around this, I have taken so many people into this experience. Everyone had the same answer as you. So who we are is this infinite being that is inherently peaceful, that is inherently [00:40:00] infinite eternal, which means doesn’t die, was never born, and has no problems, is naturally accepting, doesn’t need anyone to complete her. Rashi: This whole is peaceful, accepting, loving. That’s a natural state of being, Rashi: and that makes us one, Rashi: that’s who the other person is as well. Rashi: And if you stay as you are, there’s a last question I wanna ask you come back to. I am. Do you even need God to fulfill you here as you are? [00:41:00] Gissele: No Rashi: Mm. So you need no one to complete you because in itself you are inherently complete. Rashi: So just now we’re gonna come out of the experience and you can just take your time just. Maybe rub your hands and slowly, when you’re ready, you can open your eyes. Gissele: Hmm. It’s interesting ’cause when I was in this class, I had an experience where I went into meditation and went into that same void and it was like nothing I’d ever experienced. I don’t think I’ve ever shared this in this podcast. It was like, I wasn’t my body. I wasn’t anybody. and I had pretty bad anxiety in those times. Gissele: And I didn’t have anything. I didn’t have anxiety, I didn’t have anything. But I didn’t wanna return. And so I guess whoever was leading the class had to kind of bring me back and [00:42:00] then and that was really skeptical in those moments. And so I thought, well, maybe this is my imagination until I got home. Gissele: And, and the babysitter kept saying that my daughter was hysterical. ’cause she kept saying, mommy isn’t coming back. She isn’t coming back. Rashi: Oh. Gissele: And Gissele: so, yeah. So that, that was interesting. And so I thought to myself, well, I don’t ever wanna go that deeply into anything so that I don’t like the choice not to come back. Gissele: But and so I’ve been trying to go to that void. But it was surprisingly easy I think what helped me was really, like you said, keep your thoughts at the door, And that was helpful. It was surprising how much I could just not think of something. Mm-hmm. And then when I observed myself thinking something, I could just say, no, go back to the door. Gissele: But I was also at one point wanting to not even like, listen to your questions either. I was just gonna be like, okay, I wonder if I should keep everything at the door. Rashi: Yeah. Gissele: But then when I let your questions in sometimes, then I would move to something else. Then I would go to a thought, which [00:43:00] means I had to go back and go, Nope, you gotta go back to the door. Gissele: Yeah. But I was great and, and it’s so surprisingly simple to remember. I just find that sometimes like to go back and hold onto those identities of like, oh, this is hard, or I’m getting stuck in anxiety. Yeah, Rashi: sure. Rashi: Yeah, Gissele: so, I have to be really conscious of Gissele: A story I’m telling myself about myself, right? Like, how much of a story am I telling about what identity I hold or what I think should be? And so the more I create a distance between the stories of who I think I am and who other people are, the more than I find I open myself to seeing their divinity in myself and and other people. Gissele: But it took me a long time to figure out that the loving all wasn’t just myself and people. It was everything. Rashi: Mm-hmm. Gissele: It Gissele: was, it was those things that we struggle with, all of it. Yeah. and there’s certain parts of the journey that I’m learning to love [00:44:00] more. Gissele: like what I was talking about, seeing children suffer it’s hard to bear as a human, quote unquote. Rashi: Yeah. Gissele: And yet I have to remind myself that that doesn’t mean I don’t do the things that I came here to do. This is why my mission is not just to learn the love for myself, but also to share that with others, whether it be helpful for them or not, not from a place of I need you to change, but from a place of like, this could be helpful to you. Gissele: Yeah. But it’s an interesting journey, isn’t it? Rashi: It is. And you know, it’s hard to bear witness to the suffering of other people. That’s because we love so much. Yeah. Gissele: Mm-hmm. Rashi: Right? And it is hard. But the thing is that. Sometimes we get into the trap that, you know, we are supposed to be loving people, so we should be loving everyone, right? Gissele: Mm-hmm. Rashi: And when someone is doing less than loving things, we are like, oh, but I’m supposed to be loving person. I mean, I have this [00:45:00] podcast called Love and Compassion. I’m like, right, yeah. But those parts of us require the most loving, you know, there are times where, and it, this has been the hardest for me because my husband, like I said, is my biggest frenemy, right? Rashi: And he really triggers me. He shows me where I’m not free yet. So he says something and I’m not loving him in that moment, for sure. Rashi: Yeah. Rashi: Because he is pushing too many buttons, and I’m like, outta it. And the thing is, I have learned to love myself. Even when I’m not loving him now. There’s no resistance. Rashi: You know? Now I can see the neurosis of him and me, and there’s no problem. So he says something and then, you know, it’s so interesting what happens recently it started happening is when I’m like, you know, alright, I love you. Even if you’re not loving towards him in that moment, there’s a shift, there’s a very subtle shift. Rashi: It’s very [00:46:00] subtle. And now it, I’m not taking him so seriously, you know, all of this, the thing. And then he sees that I’m not taking it serious. And it’s very much in the heat of the moment, right? And he sees that, he sees presence, that I’m just quiet and I’m pouring love on myself right now. And somehow because I, the lens at which I, I’m seeing myself is changing the lens at what, how I’m seeing him as changing at the same time. Rashi: And now his lens at how he sees me and himself changes in that moment. And then he would laugh out of nowhere and, you know, and the whole serious thing becomes a funny thing now. And that’s the interesting part, is what the highest service we can do to humanity is to love all parts of ourselves, the non holy Rashi: parts, Rashi: the non loving parts. Rashi: If we can love those parts in which we like, I shouldn’t be like that. Oh, [00:47:00] actually, you know what, what? What if you love the part of you that’s being like that? Because who you are is inherently peaceful. It’s inherently loving, it’s inherently accepting. So in that moment, whatever is not accepting is the ego. Rashi: So the invitation here is to love the ego, the constructed self. Only then we can be free. Only then we can be free to be who we are, because the ego dissolves in that. When it’s seen with the light of awareness, shines on it seen and the constructed self is. Gone in that moment and then the construct itself comes again. Rashi: So this is a practice. Yeah. And at some point we’re like, you know, the Buddha used to say, we are like Bodhi, you know, we’re walking people home. That’s why we are here in this world is we’re not the Buddha yet. We’re not in like, because then we’re away from the Maya or the illusion, but we are part of the illusion so [00:48:00] that we can take people home together. Rashi: We’re walking each other home. That’s what Ram does used Rashi: to say. And yeah. I love Gissele: that. I love that. Mm-hmm. I’m doing something called Kriya yoga. Have you heard of it? Rashi: Kriya yoga? Gissele: Yeah. Rashi: With Yogananda Gissele: with yoga, yes. Yogananda. Yeah, that’s right. Rashi: Right. Gissele: I just started, yeah, Rashi: I’ve heard of it, but I’ve never done it. Rashi: So how is that going? Gissele: Fabulous. I just started But it’s interesting. Sometimes even very short practices have a big impact. Mm-hmm. it’s really interesting ’cause you don’t think like you’re doing anything. And to be honest, I came into it a little bit skeptical in terms of like, I’m used to meditating for two, three hours and I think you’re supposed to be doing like an ongoing, because I’m just learning it, I’m just starting with little practices. Gissele: But the little practices have been really powerful. Rashi: It’s the little ones that are more powerful, you know, the loving, the act of loving oneself and seeing parts [00:49:00] of us, it requires a very high level of self-awareness. You know, it’s just like we’re catching ourselves just before the ego has started to take control. Rashi: And that practice, I feel, if we can do it in action, because we live in such a busy life, right? Gissele: Yeah. Rashi: It’s a luxury to even sit in meditation for so long. You know? It’s so, I mean, it’s a privilege almost like these days, I wish, sometimes I wish I could go to these 10 day, the pasta meditation retreats and just like, yeah, Gissele: me too. Gissele: I wanna go to India. Rashi: Oh my God. Like, yeah. Rashi: If we can do meditation in action, I feel that that’s more effective then, you know, going uphill or sitting in a cave and you know, because then we come in the world anyway. Rashi: And I remember Ram Dass again used to say, if you think you’re enlightened, go and live with your family for the weekend and then come back and tell me how enlightened you are. Gissele: I don’t wanna say it’s was easier, but you can go to a cave somewhere and I think that’s what needed to happen with certain [00:50:00] yogis in terms of helping us lift the consciousness. Gissele: Sure. So that was what happened then. Exactly. But it is a lot harder, and I think I was reading this in Yogananda’s book, the, the path of the householder is much more difficult. ’cause you, you talked about the war within ourselves, there’s so many families that are in, like, they’re not talking to one another. Gissele: There’s so much conflict within Of course we have wars, the world, we’re in conflict with ourselves. And even with the people closest to us, we can’t even get to that point. How do we expect there to be no wars in the Gissele: world? right, exactly. it’s so hard to look at ourselves. At least it can feel that way, but. Being willing for me is like the beginning point. Okay. I just have to be willing. And for me, I’ve had to prioritize my time, even just to do a quick meditation, Gissele: it’s just as important as that email I gotta send orthat lecture I gotta put together. Rashi: and non I negotiative Rashi: practice. Yes, exactly. Yeah. And that’s the stage, that’s the season you’re [00:51:00] in. And I mean, I really wish I could get that time to just sit in meditation, be like, you know. Rashi: Yeah. And sometimes we just don’t get it. So. Gissele: Yeah. And that’s okay. I Rashi: mean, Gissele: it’s like you said, Gissele: the practice, the, the power of practicing in the moment I think is. Rashi: Very powerful. Gissele: Equally. Yeah, very powerful. Yeah. Rashi: Yeah. Gissele: Wow. So we’re reaching the end. I just wanted you to share where can people work with you? Gissele: Where can people find you? Anything you wanna share with the audience? Rashi: sure. So I, my website is called www.rashinayarwellness.com. And there’s an app that I have for people over there. It’s a free app. They can get download, it helps them return to who they are. And there’s a series of questions that can take them to just pause and reflect on. Rashi: And then the answer comes before there’s guidance and then there’s a specific meditation. So if people can find time to access that. And then there’s different options, you know, ways people can work with me. But I really wanna get this [00:52:00] app in as many hands as possible. I’m also writing my first book, which is called Living From Your Highest Frequency, which is, you know, love, right? Rashi: And it really talks about these lower states of. Everything that we talked about today. Yeah. And there’s tools that people can use, you know, in daily life when they don’t have time to meditate. When they don’t get that peaceful moment to themselves is to retreat within themselves on a moment to moment basis. Gissele: Mm. I love that. Rashi: Yeah. So go back to that piece because we are peace as we explored right now. So it’s the moment to moment returning back to who we are is what really can free us, can liberate us, and can really help us take bigger actions in this world. You know, without otherwise, some people can freeze and stay in anxiety for years and nothing’s happening. Rashi: So if we can live with those lower states of consciousness, but have no [00:53:00] resistance to them Gissele: mm-hmm. Then Rashi: automatically we’re in higher states of consciousness. That acceptance in itself takes us to higher places. From there, we are doing service. We are making an impact in the world without really judging ourselves because we are our biggest inner critic. Rashi: You know? So yeah. Gissele: What a perfect Gissele: way to end, because I think what you said is so, so critical, which is the minute we stop resisting something and go to acceptance, we’ve automatically shifted to something higher. Thank you so much, Rashi. You had such a great time. Gissele: Thank you for helping me remember who I really am and helping our audience as well. Please work with Rashi. Go check out her app and check out her book when it’s available. And thank you for joining us for another episode of The Love and Compassion Podcast with Gissele

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I get my blood work done every 90 days and I swear it's the ultimate tip for health in the short term and in the long term and just feeling your best on he daily. So, today I'm going to try to convince you to do the same. Because there is a huge difference between being "not sick" and being truly healthy and if you aren't getting your bloodwork done at least once a year, you really don't know what's going on. Most people only get blood work done when something is wrong. When they feel bad. When they are exhausted. When a symptom won't go away. When a doctor orders it because something already happened. Instead of doing it reactively, we are talking about doing it proactively. How can you know what your body needs? What supplements or adjustments to your lifestyle… it's almost impossible without bloodwork. It tells you how your hormones are functioning. How inflamed your body is. How well you are absorbing nutrients. How your cholesterol is trending. How stressed your nervous system is. How your metabolism is working. How your immune system is functioning. Today's episode is about why doing blood work every 90 days can completely change your relationship with your health, how the top longevity experts think about tracking biomarkers, how it helps you personalize supplements and lifestyle instead of guessing, and how it allows you to catch problems early before they become a real problem.  Let's go! Your blood work is your internal dashboard. It's crazy that most people are driving their body blind!! I do full blood work every 90 days and I swear by it.  I'm going to break it all down today. Every 90 days I sit down with my functional medicine doctor, Dr. Singler, and we go through everything. We look at what's trending up. What's trending down. What needs support. What needs to be addressed. We adjust supplements. We talk about lifestyle changes. We sometimes talk about peptides. We look at stress markers like cortisol. We look at hormones. We look at inflammation. We look at cholesterol. We look at nutrient deficiencies. It's not just "do you have a disease." It's "what is your body asking for." And that quarterly check-in has become one of the most powerful forms of self-care I do. Today's episode is about why doing blood work every 90 days can completely change your relationship with your health, how the top longevity experts think about tracking biomarkers, how it helps you personalize supplements and lifestyle instead of guessing, and how it allows you to catch problems early before they become diagnoses. Because knowledge is power. And when it comes to your health, awareness is leverage. ***Why the Best Health and Longevity Experts Obsess Over Biomarkers When you listen to people like Peter Attia, Andrew Huberman, and leaders in longevity medicine, one theme is constant. You can't manage what you don't measure. They talk constantly about biomarkers. Blood markers. Hormones. Cholesterol. Glucose. Inflammation. Nutrients. Stress markers. Not because numbers are the goal. Because trends tell the truth. You don't need to wait until something is "out of range" to take action. You can see patterns forming. You can see directions your health is moving. You can intervene early. Longevity is not built by reacting to disease. Longevity is built by managing risk decades before disease shows up. Blood work lets you see inside the body instead of guessing from the outside. Energy, mood, sleep, weight, anxiety, motivation, focus, hormones, immune function… all of it leaves fingerprints in your labs. *** Why Every 90 Days Is a Sweet Spot Doing blood work every 90 days creates a rhythm. It's long enough for meaningful changes to occur. It's short enough to catch problems early. It's frequent enough to personalize your approach. This cadence allows you to: • See how supplements are actually working • Know if lifestyle changes are helping • Track hormones as they shift • Monitor cholesterol trends • Watch inflammation markers • Identify deficiencies before symptoms • See how stress is impacting your body It turns health into an ongoing relationship instead of a once-a-year appointment. Rather than living on autopilot, it becomes a quarterly check-in. "How is my body actually doing?" "What does it need right now?" "What needs to change?" ***The Power of Baselines One of the most underrated benefits of regular blood work is baselines. When you know what your normal looks like, everything changes. If something shifts, you see it faster. If you get sick, you have something to compare to. If symptoms show up, you're not starting from zero. Your baseline becomes your personal health fingerprint. This is especially powerful with hormones, thyroid, cholesterol, inflammatory markers, glucose, and nutrient levels. Medicine is often built around population averages. But health is personal. Your optimal range is not always the same as "normal." Blood work every 90 days teaches you your body. ***Personalization Instead of Guessing Most people take supplements blindly. They try what's trending. What a friend is taking. What TikTok says. What an ad promises. Blood work removes guessing. You stop throwing things at your body and hoping. You start making informed decisions. When I review labs with my doctor, we are not just looking for problems. We are optimizing. We adjust supplements based on what my body is actually showing. We talk about hormones. We talk about stress. We talk about sleep. We talk about hydration. We talk about inflammation. We talk about recovery. If cortisol is elevated, the conversation shifts to lifestyle, nervous system, sleep, slowing down, hydration, sauna, recovery. If something is low, we talk about absorption, nutrition, and targeted support. It becomes a dialogue with your body instead of a guessing game. ***Emotional Health Lives in the Labs Too This is not just physical. Your labs often reflect your emotional and mental load. Stress hormones. Inflammation. Blood sugar instability. Nutrient depletion. Your body keeps the receipts. Blood work gives you objective data to support lifestyle changes. Sometimes the answer is not another supplement. Sometimes it's rest. Sleep. Boundaries. Sunlight. Movement. Slowing down. It's incredibly empowering to see that connection clearly. It turns self-care into strategy, not indulgence. ***How I Do It and How You Could Do It The way I do it is higher touch and more expensive. I use a mobile blood draw that comes to my house. Then I schedule a long call with my functional medicine doctor to go through everything. We take our time. We look at the full picture. We build a plan. But you do not have to do it that way. You can ask your doctor to order labs. You can go to a clinic and make an appointment so you're not waiting forever. You can get a basic panel and build from there. You can even upload your results into ChatGPT and use it as an educational tool to help you understand what the markers mean and what questions to ask your doctor. This doesn't have to be complicated. It just has to be consistent. ***Why This Is One of the Best Investments You Can Make We spend money on convenience. On clothes. On food. On homes. On trips. On businesses. But nothing affects the quality of your life more than the quality of your health. Energy. Mood. Confidence. Focus. Longevity. Relationships. Joy. Blood work every 90 days is not an expense. It is intelligence. It is prevention. It is personalization. It is early detection. It is self-leadership. It is saying, "I care about how long I live and how well I live." ***Most people wait for symptoms to tell them something is wrong. But by the time symptoms show up, your body has usually been whispering for a long time. Blood work lets you hear the whispers. It lets you see trends before problems. Adjust before crashes. Support before burnout. Correct before disease. For me, doing blood work every 90 days has become a quarterly health check-in with myself. How am I really doing? What does my body need? What needs to change? What needs support? It keeps me connected to my health instead of disconnected from it. And I truly believe this is one of the most powerful forms of preventative self-care anyone can adopt. So if you take anything from this episode, let it be this. Don't wait for something to go wrong.  Start tracking your health while things are going right. There's nothing more important or worth spending your time and money on!

https://youtu.be/knpxJ7KATsU Joshua McMahon, President of McMahon Custom Homes and a business coach, is driven by a purpose he discovered the hard way: money wasn't his ‘Why.' His real ‘Why' is lifting others—helping people find clarity around their purpose, unlock their potential, and gain traction toward it. We explore Josh's journey from C-suite construction leadership and integrator roles to building his own company as an “evolved visionary.” Josh shares his Satisfaction Pyramid, explaining how customer experience is created upstream through brand awareness, team support, trade partner support, and training, which together produce the outcome every builder (and business) is chasing: customer satisfaction. Along the way, he breaks down why the construction industry struggles with talent, how coaching becomes a competitive advantage, and why McMahon Custom Homes wins through transparency, collaboration, and guiding clients to align budget with what truly matters. — Take 5 Steps to Satisfy Customers with Josh McMahon Good day, dear listeners. Steve Preda here, the Founder of the Summit OS group and the host of Management Blueprint. And my guest today is Joshua McMahon, the president of McMahon Custom Homes and a business coach. Although I don’t know how much time you have for that these days, josh. Welcome to the show.  Yeah, thanks for having me, Steve. We go a long way back, so it’s an honor to be a business owner and now be on your show.  Well, yeah, you are a business owner. In your previous, recent life, you was an integrator, a COO of a business. So you’ve been running construction businesses and have been C-level in other construction businesses, where we also collaborated. So we have been tracking each other’s journey, for sure. So, Josh, let’s start with my favorite question. What is your personal ‘Why’, and how are you manifesting it in your business?  Yeah. I think this is always a great question. And the real truth of this question, Steve, is that I didn’t know what it was for so long. I thought my personal ‘Why’ was just to make more money. And every time I made more money, I was just more miserable. I was never happy. So my ‘Why’ was never money. I really think my ‘Why’ is all about lifting others. And what I mean by that is I have this ability to extract other people's 'Why' and their purpose from them, help them better see that, get clarity around it and then help them get traction to go attack that 'Why'.Share on X And that’s really my ‘Why’, is to help other, lift other people to really achieve their greatness. So I get a lot of energy and joy from boosting others, and watching that untapped potential really take off.  That is fabulous. And I can see that, as a business coach, that's really very appealing to people when you can do that. How does it manifest in your construction business? You have these Custom Homes construction business, how does that help you there?  And this is where it was really born. So in the C-suite and as I grew in my business, the one part that you have to do is you have to know how to recruit. At least, I had to know how to recruit. And in order to recruit, you have to find the right talent at the right price. And what I was really looking for was that potential. I was looking for the right attitude—the right hunger. I was looking for those right pieces that I could make you a construction individual. I could make you a great construction manager, but I couldn’t fix those other things. And so when I could tap into that and take and help somebody see the vision of what I could do and what our company could help you do in your career, that’s where I was able to really take and 10X my recruiting ability, but also to really tap into that untapped talent that’s out there. Because, Steve, we have a hard time finding talent in the construction industry. Well, the talent’s out there. What’s making it hard is that we don’t recognize that talent, and we’re saying, you’ve got to be this perfect candidate. You've got to fit all these marks. You've got to check all the boxes.And I’m saying, no. I just need you to check a few boxes. I'm going to help you see how you can really fit into this organization and how we can help you thrive. So that's where my ability to see that in them, help them see that in themselves, and then help them tie it to our vision as a company. That's where it really gets a lot of fun.Share on X Yeah. It’s so interesting that it’s not just about doing the job, but it’s about being emotionally invested in doing the job. And how do you get your people emotionally invested? You have to find the motivation that they have inherently that you can tap into, and then you have to make your business attractive so that it inspires them, so that they feel excited to work with you there. That’s exactly what you’re trying to do. It’s like you’re not trying to fool anybody on anything, but to think people just get excited to come do work, or just do the job, or just collect the paycheck. If that’s your motivation, that’s the type of candidate you’re going to get. Then what type of culture do you have? So if you flip that and you say, “Hey, we want to help you  transform who you are, transform your career for the better, and it’s going to help us get to our vision. Well, Steve, that sounds like a win-win scenario to me. And that’s a really appealing piece. And that’s a thriving culture.  Yeah, culture eats strategy for breakfast, as Peter Drucker said. And especially in the age of AI, it's probably even more important, isn't it, that you have a great culture, because AI can copy everything, but it won't be able to copy your culture.  No, that's exactly right. I think AI is a great tool. It’s really going to help us magnify and improve our businesses. But if your culture is broken, AI is just going to magnify the brokenness of your culture, and then AI’s going to tell your people how to go find another job. That is probably true. I haven’t thought about that. So you developed this framework, we are a podcast of frameworks. I’m always looking for the framework and and you talked about this Satisfaction Pyramid framework. Yeah. Is this also something that helps create that culture? Tell me a little bit about this pyramid and how did you come up with it and what does it do?  Yeah, it’s an interesting thing, right? So you understand Maslow's hierarchy of needs. These are the things you need for survival and for happiness. And I've said, look, in home building, we've always talked about customer experience and customer satisfaction. We want people to be happy. And I'm saying, well, I don't know what that means. I don't know—if I hit my schedule, if I hit my budget, if I do everything on time, but they're still not happy—so what exactly am I missing? What's the missing link?  And kind of tying the hierarchy of needs to this triangle of customer satisfaction or happiness, I found that there are some really key fundamental pieces that we've got to lock into place to really get to the customer satisfaction and customer experience that we're seeking. For me, I think brand awareness is first. If your brand awareness is out there and it's really strong, people are going to gravitate towards it organically.Share on X That’s going to decrease your SEO spend, you decrease your marketing, decrease your turnover for people, because people want to be part of that. The interesting story on brands — and I don't know how true it is, I meant to look it up before this — but I saw something on social media about Tommy Hilfiger. And before he launched his clothing brand, he didn't have anything, but his brand was so far out in front of himself that people thought this was this great designer, and he hadn't designed anything. And it was all tied to that piece of brand. So if your brand is strong enough, you can do incredible things. So I think brand is super important.  Yeah. Let me just interject here. So probably 20 years ago, I was working with a company, and it was actually in the construction space. It was in the environmental construction space. And this company had an amazing brand. So the founder was a great thought leader, and he was blogging and talking in forums. And I really thought that this company's got to be a $50 million company. I mean, they're so powerful. And then they invited me to their board as a board member. I said, “Wow, this is such an honor.” This big company. And it turned out it was just a $5 million company. But the brand was so powerful that they looked much bigger.  Yeah. And that statement, that’s an appealing thing. So if you think of yourself as a high level achiever, an A-player, and you are gravitating to that brand, that’s what it’s going to do. You're going to bring in the right people, and then if you've got the right culture and the right other pieces, you're going to stick around with that company.Share on X So a $5 million company can look like a $50 million company and be really attractive to people that are interested in that type of world. Yeah. Super important. Love that story. The second thing for me is team support. This is where I really saw in my career as I grew. I can tell you, my first construction job at the construction management level, my VP of construction told me, and this is 20 plus years ago, I haven't forgotten it — he said, “My leadership style is to give you just enough rope to hang yourself.” And to this day, I have no idea what the heck that means. But what he did show me was he wasn’t going to support me. He wasn’t going to encourage me. He wasn’t going to help me grow. He was basically going to let me swim in the deep end. And if I made it, great. And if I didn’t, no problem — there's another guy behind me. And that’s the mentality of the construction industry. And what I said was, we do a great job of spending money for our sales team. Sales team needs training, we’ll spend the money on training. If the executives need training, we’ll spend the money on training.  But who’s training the middle managers? Who’s training the young men and women coming into the industry? Who’s training the people who don’t have the experience? There’s a big myth in that world. So I think from an internal standpoint — and mind you, coaching is a buzzword right now, just as leadership is — not everybody's a coach, and not everybody's a leader, and that's okay. But if you do have somebody who can coach on your team, and you can coach your team up internally, it’s a very big value add. And so for me, my coaching ability has been a real value add for people that I've recruited, for people I've had on my team, and people I've really invested in and helped grow.Share on X And quick story on coaching. I interviewed this young candidate, I mean, really good-looking kid. He had tons of talent, education, everything he needed, but no construction experience. Still, he had all the right soft skills. And it came down between our company and one of the big national builders. And typically, you’d go to the national builders, more money, more upside, more advantages. And he asked me, the last question he asked me, he said, “Why would I come work for you guys versus this other company?” I said, “Because they don't have me.” I said, I’m not saying this is an arrogant thing to say. I’m saying that I’m going to pour everything from me into you and help take you to where you want to go. You won’t get that anywhere else. Because when we’re done after three years, you can go anywhere you want. And that young man is currently making almost as much as I was making as a C-suite employee, and he’s out in the field running projects. And that’s only like a three or five year period. Like that’s incredible growth, but it’s because of the investment we made in him.  Yeah. There's this saying — I think it's Zig Ziglar — that people don't invest in their people, they don't coach their people, because they're afraid that they’re going to go away to the competition. And then Zig Ziglar asks, “Okay, but isn't there a greater risk that you don’t coach them and and they stay?”  Yes. This is always the thing. And I think a lot of people have a scarcity mindset where they’re so afraid of, if I pour into you, you’re going to go and you’re going to take it somewhere else. What I say is, I’m okay with that. Because when you go somewhere else, you're going to say, “Josh McMahon built me up. He gave me the foundation for my career. He put me in the position I’m in today. I have what I have because of my start. You should go there and get the training from him. There’s no sham e in that because, again, we go back to point number one: brand. That’s tight. That’s my brand out in front of our company that adds value to our company.  So I started my career at KPMG, and one of the ideas they had was this pyramid structure — up or out. But the idea was to take care of the people that even when they leave, they become ambassadors for you on the client side. And then they’re going to convince the client to hire KPMG to be their auditor. And I really like this.  It’s so special, right? Because what you, I mean, Steve, you think about this, we worked together two or three years ago. We still stayed in touch. Even though there’s no financial gain, we still help each other where we can because I want the best for you, as you want the best for me. And that’s what you’re really looking for.  Yeah, that’s true. And the thing about coaching is you have the double benefit, because the company benefits because it has motivated employees who are performing at the higher level than when they came in, and at a higher level than where you hired them, frankly. Correct.  And then they are building a career. So they are building a career equity for themselves. And actually that’s why you get a better ROI on these people, because they have more career equity, they have more skill level than what you have to pay them because you are growing them.  That’s exactly right. You’re building into those individuals that generational wealth that most of us are seeking, or think is out of reach. It's there. We just need somebody to believe in us, and that’s really that piece. The third thing for me, especially in construction, it’s the trade partners. And when I think about it, as a general contractor, look—I'm wearing a collared shirt. You're not going to see me on the job site swinging a hammer. I’m out there with the building plans. I’m verifying things. I'm scheduling. I'm doing more management-level work. That means my trade partners are carrying the lion’s share of the work that actually goes into place. And as a construction company, we don’t make money unless work goes in place.  So I have to do the same thing I'm doing with my internal staff with my trade partners. I have to build them up. I have to elevate them. I have to put them in a position to win.Share on X And this is very basic—schedule accurately. Treat them like people. Treat them with respect. When you go on the job, support them. Listen to their feedback. So if they’re sharing something that’s not working, listen to it with an open mind. And maybe we can do something different, or we can explain why we can't do something different, so they have a better understanding of the ‘Why’ behind what we’re doing. Yeah.  So the trade partners is my next big pillar.  And it’s harder to manage trade partners. I mean, I’m not in the construction, but it’s going to be harder because they are part-time with you. They have other commitments that they have to observe. They don’t wear your brand. They are being paid by someone else who may have a different corporate culture than your company has. And you have to bring them in part-time and make them as good as your standard.  Yes. The hard thing is you have to share with them your vision first. This is who we are. This is what we stand for. Share with them your core values. And then build them up and show them that they’re truly a partner in this. Most of us don’t treat them like partners. We treat them like subcontractors. We treat them like they're inferior individuals—less than me. And I think they can work for you part-time and do that. And you’re absolutely right. But if we treat them like people, we build them up, they’ll be there. Because I want to treat them in a way where, hey, you might be a great plumber, but you’re a terrible business person, and I can maybe help you better understand. I say this because I'm working with a young plumber who's bidding things, and he’s just all over the place. And I'm saying, “Hey, how did you come to this number?” “Well, I just know I need to make X dollars.” And I'm like, “Well, how do you know how much money you need to make? What's your break-even number? What's your overhead burden?” Starting to help him better understand how to break down the P&L, how to charge the right margin on the job so that you’re getting work as consistently as you want, but most importantly, so you can grow your business and continue to support my business as it grows too.Share on X Yeah, you want to create stability for them as well. And if you treat subcontractor well, then they’re going to prioritize you, won't they? So they have other customers that may not treat them as well. You’re going to get the most of the energy from them if you treat them well. And that’s also a huge benefit for your business. There’s nothing lost in that, right? Again, you’ve got brand ambassadors out there talking about, one, this guy builds a great house. He treats everybody great. You made the right choice buying with with McMahon Custom Homes. Because, Steve, if you’ve ever been on a job site, the trades will tell people what they feel, whether it’s good or bad. Yeah. So you are getting it no matter what.  Yeah. You go and you look at the construction site and ask around, and then you will get exactly the kind of general contractor you may be dealing with.  Yes. I mean, absolutely. We love to talk, and so you want people talking about good things and talking up your business and what’s happening in the field, and that’s extremely valuable. Okay, so step number one, brand awareness. We talked about that. Then supporting the team. Yes. So that they feel that they are growing and they are recognized as individuals, that you care about them. Yeah. Then the same goes with the trade partners. You support them even though they’re not your employees.  Yes.  What’s step four?  Yeah. Step four is training. Okay. And training, I think of training in terms of systems that you’re putting in place. Constant, never-ending improvement on those systems. Systems are not static, so training is a nonstop thing that we've got to continue investing in and keep helping to grow our team. So constant process improvement. Having KPIs in place, or metrics in place. And the reason for those metrics is simply where do we need to focus our attention? What levers do we need to pull? And then I go back to the training. So then we train up on metrics that maybe aren’t working the way that we want them to, or we’re not getting the result that we want to get out of them. That’s where the training really comes into place. And if we don't have that training in-house, what stuff outside of the company can we get them into? What type of training do they need to level them up? Because as I think about training, Steve, most of us think you’ve got to fit every box, you’ve got to be the perfect candidate. But you and I both know that I’m good at three out of the five things, and you’re good at two out of the five things. So we make a damn good team together. And that’s okay, and we need to better learn how to cross-train each other, level one another up, and then find those right tools.Share on X  Absolutely. Okay, so what’s the final piece of the flywheel?  Yeah. Well, I feel like if you're doing all these things, brand awareness, team support, trade partner support, and the right training, and you're doing this continuous basis, you're going to have customer satisfaction.Share on X That’s exactly what you want. You’re going to create that customer experience because look, at the end of the day, we’re only here because of the customer. If the customer’s not interested in buying my product, I don’t have a business. And so all of these pieces drive that customer experience. That’s what continues driving who I am. One thing I’m really focused on with customer satisfaction and experience is having good specifications written down. I think yes, we’re a custom home builder, but I have minimum standards that I want to achieve.  So I have the minimum standards. Now, if your budget says, “Hey, we can't quite reach that level,” well, we can certainly reduce our standard. And when I say reduce our standard, I don’t mean cut a corner. I mean change from, say, a Kohler faucet down to a Delta faucet. It’s still a great faucet. It’s still a great brand. Maybe just not the same brand that I would use at this level of home. Or we can go the complete opposite direction and elevate that standard. But just having that set in place, so that if I say, “Steve, this home's going to cost you $1.2 million,” and you're like, “Oh, great. Well, the other builder's $1.3 million, so you've got a better price,” okay, great. But what goes into the price? What are you getting for the price? So if I have those minimum standards baked in, I can tell you, This is what you're going to get for $1.2 million. Now we can go in and customize it and make it your home. Having clear expectations. How important are clear expectations even in our coaching business, right? And it’s not just clear expectations from me to you, it’s clear expectations from you to me. I need to understand what your expectations are. I need to know that I can achieve your expectations. And I think that if I believe I can’t, I need to be honest and say, look, I’m not the right builder for you. I’m not the right business for you. But here are..  Or maybe your expectations are not realistic. Sometimes, for the budget you have, you need to make some trade-offs. Maybe you can have this man cave, but you'll have to cut back on the kitchen, and you’ll have to discuss it with your wife. And that’s really key. So the thing that I love about being a custom builder is that my focus is on collaboration.Share on X If you say, “Hey Josh, the budget comes in at $1.2 million, but I really want to be at $1 million,” okay, great Steve. I’m here to collaborate with you and show you ways we can tweak things, pull this down, and future-proof your home. Because I want you to have the home that you want, and in two years you can probably afford that additional $200,000. I don't want to put you in a place where you can easily plug and play that versus oh, now I got to rip out all these walls. I got to redo this. It's not $200,000—it could be $300,000. So that’s where we can collaborate and really find the right pieces to put you in the best position.  That’s very interesting. This whole framework, the culture that you build here. Is this something that connects this whole framework, this idea that you have, how you’re projecting the culture out into the customer service? Is this why you started the McMahon Custom Homes?  It truly is. Well, two parts, Steve. One, I’m an entrepreneur at heart and I have fought this my entire life, and I’ve always thought there was something wrong with me. Why can’t I just get on board? Why can’t I just drink the Kool-Aid? Why can’t I just get in line? And two or three years I go into a company, I do great things, I start rebuilding things, and then I start to get that itch. And then I’m like, okay, I need to go somewhere else. And for a long time I thought it was, well, I’m just moving to a new company to make more money, which was true. I was making more money, but then I wasn’t happy. Again, it was never tied to the money, so it was really just that entrepreneur need. But the second piece was, I've noticed for ten years—a decade—that our industry is in need of a massive transformation. The antiquated way of doing business and how we do things. I think the builder suites and the stuff that we have at our disposal is really good, but it’s not what everybody’s looking for. But I couldn’t tell you, the owner, Hey, we’ve got to scrap this. We need to do this. Because ultimately, even as the integrator, my job is to bring your vision to life. And if this is part of your vision, then I need to bring this to life. And so I started to realize with my entrepreneur spirit and my own ideas, I needed to start developing my own home building business to start bringing some of that to life, to really satisfy who I am and do the things that I wanted.Share on X Yeah, this is so important because, as entrepreneurs, we have this frustration. We are somewhere and things are not going as well as you would like. And we don’t get to tell the boss how to do things because they have their own ideas and their own set ways, and then they just get irritated by all those ideas and they feel like we are just being disgruntled employees, and this frustration eats away at you. And at some point you say, okay, what the heck? I'm just going to rip the Band‑Aid off and try to figure it out, right? It’s very true. I mean, it’s funny now looking back on it because there were so many times where I just didn’t understand. I was like, “What the heck is the matter with me?” But you’re exactly right — you’re going to bang your head against the wall, and not everybody’s cut out to be an entrepreneur, right? I mean, it sounds really great being self-employed, doing your own thing, making your own hours. It sounds great.  But I tell you something, Josh, not everyone is cut out to be an employee either.  No doubt, Steve. So true.  So it’s the other side of the coin. I think many of us become entrepreneurs because we basically eliminate all the viable alternatives.  Yeah. Burn all the boats, right?  Yeah.  I think there’s so much value in this. The second time we really got introduced and got to work together, you introduced me to the book Second in Command by Cameron Herold. I’m a  Cameron Herold fan in the Second in Command book, and I read that book and I said, “Man, this is me. I can do this.” I love being more in the shadows, helping a visionary grow their business, and doing all that stuff. What happened was, I started to really enjoy being out there, networking, putting myself out, and getting in front of people.  And I was like, well, I’m a visionary. I can see what’s going on in the future. And I think I was more of a visionary than the person who said he was a visionary. So it was really like, then we’re clashing heads on which vision are we chasing. And I’m like, I got to get outta here because I’m steering you away from what you want to do, and that’s not fair to you.  I think there are two major types of visionaries. There are the born visionaries, and then there are the evolved visionaries. So you have the born visionary who is a visionary because they are just not able to execute, but they can come up with all the big ideas. And if they find people who can execute for them, they're in luck, and they might build a company. And then you have the evolved visionary who starts out doing the work, grinding, figuring things out, teaching themselves discipline and work ethic. And then they start to manage people because they’re doing it better, so they get more responsibility, and then they become an integrator or operator. And at some point, they want to come out of the cocoon and do it themselves. And maybe you’re that version of it, the evolved visionary.  You summed that up perfectly because that's exactly how this whole thing transpired.  Love it. So tell me about, what makes McMahon Custom Homes unique? Beyond the culture—is it the culture that makes you unique, or is there something else? From the eyes of the customer, what makes you unique?  I don’t know that it’s our culture that makes us unique. I think what really makes us unique is our process—how we do things. We start everything with an initial consultation, just myself meeting with the homebuyers. Typically, it's a virtual meeting where I want to learn more about your project. I’m interested in what you want to build, what your expectations are, what your non-negotiables are, and I just really explore everything under the sun about your project.  Then I'm going to ask the dreaded question: what's your ideal budget? Most—or a lot of—people say, “You know what, I don't want to give the budget. So I'll say, “Okay, what budget number scares you?” Because as a custom home builder, I’m going to help you design the home that you want for the price that you want. But I’m going to also share with you if it’s not possible. If you have a home design that's more than what your budget is, I'm going to share that with you in real time, as soon as I can. So I'm very transparent. And I learned this from working in my past, where we wouldn't share those numbers with clients. We had a client where we were a million dollars over their ideal budget. It was six to eight months of working with them and about $25,000 in actual costs. I don't need to tell you—the homeowner was not pleased, and the homeowner did not pay that bill.  So that was a major lost opportunity in the build, but also the opportunity cost and how much time we spent on it. I learned from that and said, “Hey, I don't want to do that. I don't need every buyer to be a yes. If I'm a good fit for you, and I'm a good builder for you, great—let's go.Share on X I want to build your house. I’m excited about building homes for people. But I don't need to build everybody's house, because for some people, it's just not the right fit. So for me, I'm your guide in this process. And that's what I really pride myself in. You want to build a home, I’m going to guide you through this process, help you with each step of the way. Help you with the county side, the field side. I’m here to guide you through that whole thing. We really work towards your budget, your ideal budget. We build it out. We’re very transparent. A lot of clarity on what we’re doing, where we can collaborate, where we can maybe say, Hey, instead of $80,000 tile package, we can get a $45,000 tile package. Because we’re really looking for what’s your vision for it.  Yeah.  What do you want to see? How do you want to feel? And we can help you pull that together.  Yeah, I think that’s very interesting, because I can see that there is value being created when you have an empathetic CEO who runs the business. You, in that case, who really gets to feel what the lifestyle of the individual is, what their vision is. You help them paint the picture so that you see it as well, and then you measure each element in proportion to their desires. Because maybe they want something like a really flashy countertop in the kitchen, but they really don’t care about what the deck is going to look like. Maybe it’s a stup*d example. And when someone buys, I don’t know, a standard home, then you are going to pay for stuff that you really don’t care about, and you are not going to get the stuff that uniquely is important to you. And with that approach that you’re doing, you are measuring everything to the right degree, and it’s going to be a perfectly balanced meal for the customer. That’s a great way of looking at it. That’s exactly right. And the deck versus man cave or versus this, that’s exactly the right way to look at it. A deck is a great add-on. It can be done anytime in the build. It can be done anytime. It's a minimal barrier to entry. Well, something on the inside of the house, the kitchen, the showstopper kitchen, that’s a different story, right? Because now you're impacting your life. You’re changing things. If we understand that the kitchen is a really prime target, then we want to make sure we commit enough money to that area. We want to make sure we commit enough design hours to that area. And maybe other areas are like, “Hey, minimum standard's great with us.” Perfect. Done.  Yeah. We only sleep in the bedroom, we don’t do anything else.  Exactly. Great point.  Which is a problem in itself. Anyhow, if someone would like to learn more and maybe learn your ideas—maybe they want to be coached by you, or they want to learn about McMahon Custom Homes, what it takes to align with your vision—and particularly if they're in Central Virginia where you work, where should they reach out and where can they find you? Yeah, so several different places. McMahonCustomHomesLLC.com is our website, so you can certainly find us there. We have an active Instagram account, McMahon Custom Homes. I have an active Facebook account, again, McMahon Custom Homes. I do have a LinkedIn account, McMahon Custom Homes, LLC. Also for myself, my wife and I host a bi-monthly podcast. We took a year hiatus, and we just started again in 2026. Our podcast is not on McMahon Custom Homes, but it's really about the construction industry, different things that you experience, and really just giving back and trying to help others learn from maybe stuff that we did or things that we’re experiencing. My wife is a designer. I'm the home builder, so you kind of get a good mixed bag. And that's Feed Me Your Construction Content, if you're ever interested in tuning into that.  Yeah. And if you would like to see what a collaboration between Josh and his wife looks like, then check out his website,  McMahon Custom Homes. You can check out his house, or their house, that they built together. And it’s a beautiful house.  Yeah. Thank you.  It's a good place to start. Josh, loved it. I loved your content. Really interesting how you created the Satisfaction Pyramid in construction. I think that parallel applies to other businesses as well. Obviously, the elements are slightly different, but brand awareness, supporting the team, supporting your partners, training your people, pouring into them, and then creating that customer satisfaction are important in any industry. So thank you. If you enjoyed listening to this show, make sure you follow us on LinkedIn and on YouTube. And stay tuned, because every week I bring an exciting entrepreneur or thought leader on this show. Thank you for coming, Josh, and thanks for listening. Important Links: Josh's LinkedIn McMahon Custom Homes website McMahon Custom Homes LinkedIn

Dr. Deb Muth 0:03Welcome back to let’s Talk Wellness. Now, I’m your host, Dr. Deb. If you’re a woman who’s doing everything right, eating clean, exercising, taking supplements, yet you still feel exhausted, inflamed, or like your body suddenly stopped cooperating, this episode is for you. Today’s conversation challenges one of the biggest myths in women’s health. That midlife struggles are just about hormones or worse, just part of aging. My guest today is Dr. Deb Heald, a naturopathic physician with one of the most fascinating backgrounds I’ve ever encountered. Yeah, she’s got a really diverse background, which is kind of exciting. She’s been an ER nurse, a stockbroker, a Silicon Valley data analysis, teaching machines to learn from microbiome research. And yes, she holds an mba, too. But it was her own menopause crash that changed everything. When the protocols she had been teaching stopped working for her, her, she didn’t double down on templates or trends. She did what she was trained to do. She followed the data and what she discovered reframed menopause, metabolism and women’s longevity in a completely different way. This isn’t about willpower. It’s not about another diet, and it’s definitely not about copying what worked for someone else. It’s about learning to listen to your body and finally understanding what it’s been trying to tell you and all along. So grab your cup of coffee or tea, settle in, and let’s dive into this amazing conversation about women’s health and menopause. And right after our guest is arriving with us, we’re going to get a word from our sponsor quick here. And then we are going to come right back to having this conversation with Dr. Deb Heald. Ladies, it’s time to reignite your vitality. Primal Queen supplements are clean, powerful formulas made for women like you who want balance, strength, and energy that lasts. Get 25% off@primal queen.com Serenity Health. Because every queen deserves to feel in her prime. But okay. All right. Welcome back, everybody. I am here with my new friend, Dr. Deb Heald. And she has such an amazing background, like I shared with you a few minutes ago. But I would love for her to give us her insight in how she got where she did, because it’s rare that you find somebody with a data background and a medical background. So, Dr. Dove, welcome. Dr Deb Heald 2:30Thank you. I am so glad to be here, and it’s a real privilege to meet you. Dr. Deb Muth 2:34I feel the same way. Dr Deb Heald 2:35Yeah, it’s. I think that the more of us that start to think and practice this way, the easier it’s going to be for women going forward. Because it’s not easy. Dr. Deb Muth 2:44It is not easy. I mean, I’ve been in this industry a long time, over 25 years. And every time I think it’s getting easy, it’s getting harder for a variety of reasons. It’s the medical system, it’s the. The clients we work with are sicker. It’s taking longer to get them to a place where they feel good. There’s just so many variables these days. So tell me a little bit about what got you here. Dr Deb Heald 3:06Well, I made the decision when I was graduating from high school to be a nurse instead of a teacher, because those were really still the two options that were common for women. I thought about medicine at that point, but my sister convinced me that if I would spend all that time learning and practicing medicine, I might not be as good of a mom. So I took the path of nurse, because nurse works around kids schedules and that sort of thing. I’d only been practicing about six months before I thought, oh my gosh, there has to be more to it than this, and toyed with the idea of starting med school at that point, but then married and started having children, and I just sort of fell into that pattern. But I typically work emergency room. There was a short stent in the post anesthesia recovery room as well. And emergency room was a place where western medicine actually shone. Right. People come in, they are no longer capable of functioning, they’re having a heart attack, they lost limb. Whatever else, they do need the, the bells and the whistles of western medicine. But when you think about it, western medicine was derived out of the Civil War where you didn’t have to say what’s the cause of the problem. It was a bullet or a bayonet, and it was, it was about patching up the soldiers and getting them back on the front line so they could continue to fight. And naturopathic medicine, which had been a lot around for an awful lot longer than that, just didn’t work in the battlefield then. The assessment was done in the early 1900s as to which style of medicine got people back to work faster. The Flexner report was all about how corporations could maximize the value of employees. And naturopathic medicine didn’t win because nutritional fixes take a long time. Taking away somebody’s stress so that they can just function more capably is. It’s a, It’s a big ask, right? So the funding of naturopathic medicine went away and western medicine became all that we knew. So in context to the emergency room, it worked. But when I saw the same person coming in, having their third heart attack, I just thought, how is this happening? Has no one told this person what, what’s going on in their lifestyle that’s creating this environment for them to continue to have heart attacks? And so that’s when I made the switch. And that was after 17 years in practice as a nurse to head on over to the naturopathic side. There was a little bit of a, a segue there, but we’d need a much longer interview to get into the details of that. I was a stock broker for six years. Anyway, when I jumped into the idea of med school, it didn’t make sense to be practicing the same thing that was already being practiced because I saw where it worked and I saw where it was failing. So hopped into the naturopathic tract. I also had one child that had a lot of physical and emotional ailments that western medicine couldn’t solve. Their answer to everything was putting her on amoxicillin. And I, I just absolutely could not convince the medical system that she didn’t have a deficiency of antibiotics, but that was their only solution. And so while she was on the antibiotics, her sinuses were clear, her sleep apnea was not an issue, and she appeared better, but her microbiome got decimated. She was on antibiotics for seven years. So, yeah, so my pursuit down the naturopathic pathway was in large part to try and figure out what else could be done for my daughter. And I did take her to a naturopath or I embarked on the field myself. And her GP threatened to call social services. Oh my gosh, yes. Dr. Deb Muth 6:22You hear these stories, I’ve heard these stories from clients before over really dumb things that they’re going to call CPS for. And it always blows my mind that we think it’s appropriate to call CPS on somebody who’s truly not injuring their child. Dr Deb Heald 6:38So anyway, that started my 17 year path in the naturopathic realm. And after, after I’ve been in practice about 10 years, an opportunity came up to move to Silicon Valley and research the microbiome and then take what we were learning from the microbiome and program it into AI. So I did that for a few years and it was amazing. There was a huge disconnect between the funding model and what its expectations were and what the research was able to do. There was a time gap, there was a funding gap. And so I thought, medicine doesn’t understand what’s important to business. And Business isn’t understanding what’s critical to research. So I went and did my MBA and wanted to be able to be the translator between those two worlds. And then the pandemic hit and then. Dr. Deb Muth 7:24Everyone’S life got turned upside down, right? Dr Deb Heald 7:26Yeah. Yeah. So I’m back in private practice. My, my practice always tended to be more autoimmune focused, which is predominantly women and predominantly middle aged women. But through my own experience of menopause and looking at how I assisted people that were in menopause before I was, you know, that the success rate wasn’t as high as it needed to be. And I started to really drill down into the biochemistry behind what was going on and then also realized that my menopause was very different than even my sister’s menopause. There we were, the same genetic template, the same lived environment, though very different lived experiences in that environment. And realized that we have to find ways to make it relevant to the person in front of us. And it’s not so much which herbs will or won’t work historically, it’s how is this person’s body responding in the immediate term to the diet we’ve put them on, to the nutritional plan we’ve suggested to the supplements, and because we’ve come so far in the data world, our whoop straps or aura rings or whatever else, there’s so many devices that are actually able to let us know whether somebody’s burning carbs or fat in this moment or ketones. We can see how an individual’s body is responding and course correct right now. And it isn’t that a ketogenic diet may not be helpful down the road. It’s right now it’s actually putting more stress on your body than it’s already under, which puts you into fight flight, which stops you from burning fat. So, and it’s not just the burning fat, it’s the inflammation. Right. So our food is completely void of nutrients. And we used to have 24 inches of topsoil, now we’ve got, so who’s eating four times the number of vegetables that we, we used to eat to get the same number of nutrients? We’re just not. And our environment is so full of plastic and chlorine molecules and just toxins that our liver says, I have no idea what that is, I have no idea how to detoxify it. And we can’t, we can’t clean the air around us. We can put air filters in our homes and try not to live under pulp mills. But the world is just becoming a Much more aggressive place to live. Dr. Deb Muth 9:33So it definitely is. I mean from the time that you and I grew up to the time that we have now, we have over 75,000 new chemical in just that short period of time. And honestly, as you and I both know, these chemicals have never been tested for this long term use or the way we’re using it, or how much we’re using them or exposing them to our kids that’s never been tested to see how safe they truly are. Dr Deb Heald 10:01I have to apologize to my children and all of the children of that generation. We use latex baby bottles that were plastic line and we linked them up in the microwave. So the wave of endocrine disruption that’s coming at us from practice feeding our infants plastic, it’s a different world. And so we have to approach it just in a completely different way. And you know, menopause shouldn’t be a disease or a state of dis ease, but it is because we’re so depleted. And women used to have predictable stresses and now because most of us are working outside of the home, many are have children that have, how do I want to put this confounders. The number of kids that are neurodiverse and the, the ext work that that creates in a household is unbelievable. So moms typically carrying most of that and then all the guilt that goes with it because moms do guilt, our nervous systems are completely fry, right? So we’re in a constant state of low level fight flight and it changes every single other biochemical process in our body. So when we hit the hormone depletion of menopause, every organ system is profoundly affected. And then we do see more autoimmune diseases cropping up. We do see more inflammatory conditions turning into organ systems not working. And the medical system is. I don’t, I hate to say this, but it’s decades from being able to figure this out. So in the immediate term, what can we do for every woman out there and, and help surround them with community? That’s the other thing that’s really missing. How often do we go next door and have tea or coffee with our neighbors? Dr. Deb Muth 11:41You don’t anymore? Dr Deb Heald 11:42No. So where’s the community supporting you? Dr. Deb Muth 11:45You don’t have one unless it’s online. And then if it’s online, you know how that goes. You can have some support and you can have not support and you can have people be really rude to you. But that support is not the same as having the neighbor next door that you can call on that you can go over and just get out of your house for a few moments and have somebody truly support you. And, and I think back in the day that’s what women did, women supported women. And today there’s so much competition that women are no longer supporting each other. We’re many times tearing women down and judging them and accusing them of doing things that aren’t right for their career, their family, their husband, their this, their that. It could go any way or any shape, but we’ve stopped supporting women in the decisions that they make, whether it’s to be at home or to work or do both or to not have children or to have children. We were just chatting earlier before we came on about having children late in life. That support is completely gone, at least from what I’ve been seeing and hearing, hearing in my practice and what I’m seeing around me. Dr Deb Heald 12:48So another form of depletion. Right. So right. Deplete. Our, our society is. And it’s a wonder we’re upright at all. And all of the other pressures that we take on. We’ve just come through the holiday season and having to have the holidays just so, so that everybody else thinks we’re doing a good job. So our family is enjoying themselves at the cost of our sanity. And the shame that goes with feeling like you’re not enough. Dr. Deb Muth 13:14Yeah. And for your family and your kids to just be like, I don’. Time to come, I don’t have time to do this. I, I hear this every day. You know, families that women mostly that are creating these beautiful experiences for their kids and their relatives. And then at the last minute you have one that calls and says I can’t come and another one that calls and says I have to go to my in laws or I have to go here, I have to go there. And then again we go back to this guilt of what did I do wrong as a woman, as a mother, to not have everybody be with me for the holidays. And I’ve worked so hard to create this environment, beautiful experience for them, for nobody to care but me. Dr Deb Heald 13:53Yes. Dr. Deb Muth 13:53And then that just depletes us more. Dr Deb Heald 13:55So, and then, and then you hit the, your breaking point and you go see your doctor who first of all doesn’t, doesn’t have the time. And I, I can’t call doctors practicing in the world today because you might be scheduled for 15 minutes, but they’re running late. I, I knew a physician quite well who in the wintertime was so busy in Canada with cold and flus, he’d see a hundred people a day. Yeah. So Sitting in front of him, trying to say, so devastated inside because of this happening or that happening. They, they don’t have or take the time to address what’s really going on there. So the number of times people say to me, you’re the first person that has actually sat and listened to me. Dr. Deb Muth 14:36And yeah, I get that same thing. And that’s, that’s part of what natural medicine is. How do you get to know somebody and understand what’s happening to them if you don’t hear their stories? Dr Deb Heald 14:45Agreed. So it’s, it’s a tricky world for women to navigate, so we have to be here for each other. And where I’m sitting right now in practice is literally just helping women replete themselves and looking at the different organ systems or the organelles within the systems that, that being supplied with what they need. And where do we start with this woman? You know, it’s not everybody that needs to have their GI tract optimized first, though. That’s a pretty common one for a lot of women that feel like they’re going out of their minds. We have to start with brain. But everything we do to, to make the environment better for the brain function also makes everything better for the cardiac function and the muscle function. But it’s, it’s just so misunderstood. And then when we get into the, the metabolism, which is where most women end up coming in, is, why am I gaining weight? Right. And so the weight is the physical manifestation that finally breaks them. But what caused them to be gaining weight is also impacting their brain and their heart and their liver and their, their entire system. It’s just, that’s the thing that finally made them come and get help. But when we look at how metabolism comes to a screeching halt in menopause, it’s a wonder that we can carry on at all. Dr. Deb Muth 16:00Yeah. So at what age do you think women should start paying attention to their situation, to their data, and not just their symptoms? Dr Deb Heald 16:0830 way, way, way before you hit menopause, let’s have a strong baseline. Let’s see what’s happening in your early adult life that is putting you into a state that right now you’ve got the tolerance to fix, but over a longer period of time is going to lead to inflammation and dysfunction. And I’m seeing my nieces actually start to pay attention and my daughter to, to their health in a different way. And I think the wearables have a huge amount to do with that. Right. So if you went out last night and celebrated and you’re paying any Attention to a recovery score. And you see that that fourth tequila took three days for you to recover from. Maybe next time don’t have four. Yeah, right. Dr. Deb Muth 16:58One or two, Right? Yeah. Dr Deb Heald 17:00Yeah. Lack of sleep. How does that actually impact you? For how many days? Something that is not. Not the best choice, though. If you’re eating well, 80% of the time, you’re way ahead of the curve. But when you. When you eat something that upsets your system, you can know that right now, literally, if you’re watching heart rate and you eat something that’s inflammatory to you, your heart rate will go up by six or seven beats a minute almost immediately. And that’s a little thing saying your immune system just kicked in. Is this the right thing for you to eat? So the. The more people pay attention without obsessing, and especially on the food thing, I don’t want to create disordered eating for people, but getting to know your body, getting to know its tolerance, and then as women start to have children, how did those tolerances change? Well, they’ll change profoundly because your sleep just disappeared. Yeah, right. If nothing. Dr. Deb Muth 17:54And your hormones changed and everything else is different. And I think that’s a really great point about the wearables. Like, people can get really obsessed with that data, but I don’t think people really understand how to use the data appropriately. You know, like, if you’re eating something that you don’t normally eat or you’re eating something that you know is somewhat inflammatory, you know, it’s the holidays. I’m gonna have some chips. I’m gonna have, you know, some cheese. I’m gonna have some nuts. I’m gonna have a variety of things. That’s really where you want to check your data, right? You know, your. You’re doing something that’s outside of the norm. And we all kind of know, like, I’m puffier, I’m swollen, my brain’s a little foggy. Maybe I have more pain. That’s the time you really want to tune in and say what’s happening? And then start tracking that. Draw the line so that, you know, like, this is the food that bothers me. Because sometimes it can be a healthy food. It doesn’t always have to be a bad food. You know, it can be a healthy food. I have patients that are allergic to lettuce, and they wonder why they’re gaining weight when they’re dieting, and all they’re doing is eating salad. Salads, and you find out they have an allergy to lettuce, and they take that out and their weight goes right back to normal. So it doesn’t have to necessarily always be a bad thing. But using that data appropriately could really make a huge difference. Dr Deb Heald 19:07And making informed choices. Dr. Deb Muth 19:08Yeah. Dr Deb Heald 19:09I was born with a dairy allergy. One of the proteins in milk. And so, and gosh, in the, in the early 60s there weren’t options for formulas that weren’t dairy based. So I was raised on evaporated milk because the heating process in evaporating the, the fluid out of the milk broke down this particular protein. So how I don’t have diabetes, I do not know. But I will elect sometimes to eat Manchego cheese and I know that tomorrow I’m going to pay for it. But I’m making an informed decision today to do it or I’m making an informed decision today. Not. Yeah, right. And so giving people the power, I think the data is power when you know how to use it. And so when women have pregnancies later in their reproductive cycle, seeing how fast that pregnancy taxation on hormones and then the, when the pregnancy concludes and the hormones fall through the floor, I have seen so many women whose ovaries never recover, they start perimenopause literally in that postpartum period. And so knowing that and making sure that you are getting, you know, the sleep that you need, making sleep kind of your, your one non negotiable. There are other things that you’ll sacrifice instead. But maybe sleep’s the most important thing to you or maybe your, your nutrition’s the most important thing. And the wearables will help you determine where you’ve got that play and where you don’t. And so making sure at a much younger age that you’re building muscle mass. We get a lot away for a really long time with being skinny fat. So we look little and everybody assumes, we assume that we’re in shape, but we’re not consciously developing the muscle mass. And for women that’s critical because when our hormones turn off and our metabolism slows down for all of the reasons that it does, the only thing that’s going to drive your metabolism in a non estrogen environment are chemicals that made in muscles. And without the muscle mass, your metabolism will stay slow. Without the muscle mass, you’re not going to have the strength to prevent falls. So if you think at 55 you can start to build muscles, it’s a really big ask. Dr. Deb Muth 21:26Yeah, it’s tough. Dr Deb Heald 21:28And testosterone is the hormone that we need to build muscle mass. And through menopause and postmenopausally most of our Testosterone is getting converted to estrogen. So starting at that point, it’s just too late. So once again, let’s go back to the 30 year old and what are you doing on a regular basis to build and maintain muscle? Dr. Deb Muth 21:49Yeah, when you’re in your prime is when we should be looking at these things. We shouldn’t be waiting until our health and our life age is declining to all of a sudden say, okay, now I’ve got to biohack my way back to being 30 at 50 or 60, because A, it’s much harder to do and B, for a lot of women you don’t ever do it correctly and so you’re trying to mimic that time frame, but it’s, it’s a major challenge for sure. Dr Deb Heald 22:15And then back to these kids that we fed plastic from day one. What are their menopause is going to be like? Because the, all that plastic will disrupt their estrogen receptors and we don’t know what impact it’s having on ovaries directly. The stronger that they can be, the more nourished they can be before their menopause starts, the further ahead they’re going to be. So this isn’t, it’s not just really targeting women that are 45 and older. It’s literally all women really need to be taking it into their own hands because the medical system, like I said so far, is not. And I’m not sure when they will. But we don’t have to wait for the medical system. There are things we can do every single day that are going to help us stay in control of our, our health. I can tell you that. Health span. Dr. Deb Muth 23:02Health span, Correct. And I, I see a lot of young people and there is maybe one out of ten of the young people that I see that have normal hormone levels for their age. I start testing hormones on young women and men around 20, unless there’s a need to do it sooner. But I want to see what they are at their peak. And I have men, young men in their 20s and 30s that have a testosterone level of 100 to 300, when they should be closer to 800, 900. I have young women who can’t peak an estrogen above 50 at 20, when in mid cycle when they should be closer to 100, 150, they’re making no progesterone, they’re making minimal to no testosterone for women. And so when we ask what has this environment done to those young women and men that we have, it’s completely destroyed their hormonal function. They are not at peace and then we wonder why they sit around and have no motivation or drive. I have young men in their 20s with no sex drive. They’re just kind of asexual beings. They don’t even look at a woman and get excited. Women don’t look at men and get excited. There’s none of that that’s happening because they’re lacking these hormones that allow them to do that. And then we wonder what is that going to do to them at menopause? Well, what is it doing to them now? You know, it is creating damage. Those hormones are necessary for cognitive function and bone health and cardiovascular health and all of that. And we’re not asking the right questions, I’m afraid. Dr Deb Heald 24:29Yeah. And, and even if we can see that the gonads are producing the hormones, what’s going on on the cellular membrane level with all those pollutants that the cell can’t absorb them? Dr. Deb Muth 24:43Right. Dr Deb Heald 24:43So anyway. What a mess. Dr. Deb Muth 24:45Yeah, it is. Dr Deb Heald 24:45And, and here’s the thing is it boils down to the naturopathic principles. Improve food, how can we improve sleep, how can we help people manage stress more effectively and, and encourage people to be exercising. I mean, this stuff is gold. Yeah. Dr. Deb Muth 25:01And it’s things that you could do very simply. We don’t, you don’t need to build a, you know, ten thousand dollar gym in your basement to do this. There are ways that you can do this very easily for no cost at home. You just need to get the motivation and the drive and understand how to do it. Dr Deb Heald 25:17Yes. And with the resistance bands that are absolutely available everywhere, even if you’re traveling, you can throw a band in your suitcase and do just the tiniest little bit of muscle reinforcement while you’re away. Dr. Deb Muth 25:32It’s so much simpler than we think. We make it very complicated. Dr Deb Heald 25:35But then also the thing that’s missing when you’re doing it at home can be that motivation. So how do we make this important enough that it’s, it is non negotiable for people? They wake up and they do, they woke, woke up a little bit late. So today Maybe they do 10 minutes, not 20, but just be doing something. Right. Dr. Deb Muth 25:54Yeah. You got to get moving it, you know, sitting around on the couch isn’t moving. You know, you have to get up, you have to move. Even if you’re sitting at your desk and you get a little bike thing underneath your desk that you can put into pedal, you know, you’re moving. It’s not weight bearing, but you’re moving. And that weight bearing exercise is so important to Us. Dr Deb Heald 26:17How does this become something that’s sexy? Dr. Deb Muth 26:21Yeah, that’s what we need to make it right. Dr Deb Heald 26:24Yes. Even, even in the realm of food, when people decide to go onto an exclusionary eating plan, so they’re, they’re going to go keto. So excluding anything that is carbohydrate based in their diet, there are a few people healthy enough to do that and they generally can do it healthfully for a short period of time. But to stay on that type of diet for a long time, that’s where I love the wearables. It’s sort of like the same thing when people are vegetarian or vegan, it’s very, very hard. It has to be a very conscious process to stay healthy as a vegetarian or a vegan. Because your liver has so many things to do. It has 500 functions that it carries on at all moments every day. And when you eliminate animal protein, you’re now also asking it to manufacture other protein and amino acid sequences on top of everything else it’s going to do. So when you make a decision like that, what are you going to eliminate from your world to take some of the burden off of your liver so it has the capacity to do extra work and you have to do these negotiations or you just end up being depleted. But the communities that are vegetarian or vegan to a greater degree and keto to a greater degree have support. You can join all sorts of online groups for people that are following these restrictive type of diet. Being an omnivore, which is eating not bread but carbohydrate in the form of vegetables and fruits, and getting some animal protein, some plant based protein, healthy fats, not the processed fats. There’s no support group for being an omnivore. Dr. Deb Muth 28:05No, there’s that. Dr Deb Heald 28:07So it isn’t one that people are going to opt into necessarily. Because who’s going to support you through your healthy eating choices? Dr. Deb Muth 28:15What are some of the biggest advancements you’re seeing right now in whole body healing that actually move the needle for us that just aren’t fancy trends but actually work? Dr Deb Heald 28:25It’s back to that individual monitoring of what’s going on. So for women that want to lose weight and go on a calorie restricted or carbohydrate restricted diet and they are deciding that they’re going to exercise at the same time. If you are in a rested state, when you go to sleep, your body will burn from fat. In the rested state, if you’re in a stressed state, it needs carbohydrate, it needs Instant energy, right? To. To break down fat into a usable fuel. Takes the liver about eight steps to burn carbohydrate. It’s instant. So when you’re stressed, you’ll burn carbs. When you’re resting or relaxed, you’ll burn fat. But if somebody goes to bed in a stressed state, they opened an email that annoyed them. They are wondering why their child came home late again. Whatever. You go to bed in a stress state, you’ll burn carbs all night long. You wake up in the morning already in a stress state. You decide you’re going to exercise in a fasted state because somehow it got imprinted in our head that you’re supposed to be fasting when you exercise to get the best benefit, and you decide to do intervals, which are a huge stress on your body, an intentional stress on your body. You’re already stressed. Stress. How much fat are you going to burn in that process? None. None. Dr. Deb Muth 29:45And you don’t have any carbs left to burn. Dr Deb Heald 29:48Right. So guess what you burn now? Muscle. Dr. Deb Muth 29:50Muscle. Dr Deb Heald 29:51So here we are working out to try and build muscle, but instead we’re breaking muscle down. So if people can use the biometric data to say, I’m in a stress state, and I know that because my heart rate is higher, or I’m using a device that can actually show how much carbon dioxide I’m exhaling. So if you’re exhaling a lot of carbon dioxide, it means you’re burning carbs. You don’t exhale carbon. You don’t need to exhale carbon dioxide if you’re burning fat as your energy store, it’s not a byproduct of fat. So if you’re already in a stress state, you can either change the type of exercise that you want to do today, so doing more of an endurance exercise, or you can eat and then do your concept. Dr. Deb Muth 30:31What. Dr Deb Heald 30:32So that’s where I’m seeing the improvement is when people are actually starting to collect their data and I interpret it for them until they can start to make those. Those correlations themselves. What. What do I need to eat right now? What do I need? What type of exercise do I need to do right now? And in everybody’s day, there is an ideal time for them to eat carbs. But for a great number of women through Perry and postmenopause that eat carbohydrates, in the evening, they get these big sugar spikes or from eating the carbs, blood sugar. And then about the time they’re going to bed, maybe an hour or two after they go to bed, their blood sugar drops and their body thinks, oh my gosh, we’re starving and it goes into a stressed state. So all night long from that point on, they’re breaking down muscle to create carbohydrate energy so that their stress system can be satisfied that they’re not starving to death. So it’s, it’s not that they can’t eat carbs, it’s that eating them in the evening is putting their body into a stressed state. But at lunchtime it might be fine. And it isn’t even eliminating every single simple carbohydrate or every, I’m going to say treat. We are a reward based society, so the treats are a thing. But maybe it means that if you want to have something sweet after a meal, you do that at lunch and your data will tell you, personally, I would eat, I’m going to call it healthy snacks in the evening mostly because I was bored, certainly not because I was in a starvation state and I started paying attention to my own data and I don’t snack in the evening anymore because it throws my sleep completely off track and it puts me into that stressed, burning carbs all night state. And it’s completely contradictory to my health plan going forward. My parents were, my dad was very long lived, he lived to 93. My mom passed at 84. But I have to say I don’t want the last 15 years of life that either of them had. Just. Yeah, at one point I think my mom thought the family vehicle had flashing red lights on the top of it because she was in an ambulance so often. So I don’t want that. And if I’m doing something that on a routine basis, this is confounding my plan for health span, I have to revisit that. I have to say to myself, you said that you’re, you know, maintaining your health is more important than maintaining your length of life. Look at what you’re doing to your body every single time you eat in the evening. Dr. Deb Muth 33:08If you had to choose one data point that really made the difference for people with a wearable or a device that completely changed how you understood menopause and all of this eating pattern, what would it be through the, through the data lens? Dr Deb Heald 33:22Heart rate variability. Yeah. And so that’s. And certain devices, well, a lot of devices measure it. Some of them are more meticulous with what time frame they’re capturing the variation in heart rate. And I guess for the listeners, we should talk about what heart rate variability is. If your heart rate is beating 72 times a minute, which used to be considered the norm. If you’re in a stressed state, if your sympathetic nervous system or your adrenaline nervous system is driving the bus, every single heartbeat in that minute will be the exact same distance between the beats. When you’re in a relaxed state, it still might be beating at 72 times a minute, but one beat might come a little bit earlier, the next one a little bit later, and there’s more variation between the time between the heartbeats. And that shows that you’re in a relaxed or adapting state. When we’re in fight flight, we’ve got one mission and that’s just staying alive. When we’re in that rest digest, it’s like if it’s a little bit slow, it doesn’t matter because I’ll just speed the next one up. And we’ve got the ability to adapt second to second. So if we are measuring heart rate variability in somebody and in it’s low, it means that they’re in that stressed nervous system state more of the time. And it causes you to burn carb more often than fat, even though fat’s a much better energy store. And the byproducts of carbohydrate combustion cause free radical stress to our body oxidation and inflame organ systems. So the more time we can spend not in fighting flight, the more healthy we will be. And so if you’re using some devices, they’re measuring your heart rate variability through a 24 hour period. So when you are in the peak of your stressed state, your heart rate variability will be little. And then when you’re in a relaxed state, it will be more. And on a 24 hour scale, it looks like you’ve got more heart rate variability. Some of the devices narrow it down to measuring your heart rate variability in the first five minutes after you come out of deep sleep. So there’s way less variability in that number. So the number will be lower than a 24 hour measure, but it’s more accurate. And so I like to, I like to narrow it down to that. But if somebody’s using a device that does it the other way, let’s just compare apples with apples. And so if your heart rate variability is improving, it’s improving. Dr. Deb Muth 35:58So that’s awesome. And that’s an easy thing to be able to measure for people. Dr Deb Heald 36:02It’s on most watches that are measuring biometrics and it’s definitely on the rings and the bands and all of the things. So just working to improve that. And if you’ve had your heart rate variability at a certain level. And then today it’s much lower. Literally just do that process in your head. What was different about yesterday? Oh, I lost my job or I ate from a buffet or whatever it is. And then the next time it has that same fall, see if the trigger for it correlated. And it’s literally just teaching us to pay attention to when our body’s in a state of stress because we’re so used to it that we don’t know anymore. The body’s screaming at us, but we’ve just become so numb to the changes to our body that we think it’s normal. Dr. Deb Muth 36:58Right. Because most of us, let’s realistically are walking out around in a State of Stress 24, 7. The only time you’re at quote, unquote rest is when you’re sleeping, if you’re lucky enough to be doing that. But we think we are because we’re not conscious anymore. And we think our body’s resting, but it may not be. Dr Deb Heald 37:17That’s right. So we are in a state of unconsciousness. But if, if we are burning carbohydrate while we’re sleeping, we are not getting into that restorative state, which means your liver is being distracted and isn’t able to do its peak detox at night. Here’s the thing. Our body is supposed to make cholesterol for us between 1am and 4am and if we’re in a stress state, the mechanism that limits the time that the body manufactures cholesterol to those three hours, that mechanism gets turned off. Off. So the body now manufactures cholesterol 24 hours a day. Oops. Dr. Deb Muth 37:53We wonder why it’s always high. Dr Deb Heald 37:55So, and, and it has everything to do with not getting into restorative sleep. So why are we getting into restorative sleep? Dr. Deb Muth 38:02Right. Well, because we’re constantly stressed and we’re not eating properly. Dr Deb Heald 38:06There we go. So we’re back to sleep and food and exercise and stress management. Dr. Deb Muth 38:11Yeah. Is there an easy way for people to. To pull their data out of their devices that they can look at it as a picture so that they can kind of see maybe the last week or the last two weeks and really start to dig in and see what that data means? Dr Deb Heald 38:29Yes. Almost all wearables now have an app attached to them. So when they know where to go to find the data, it will almost always, in an app, pull it up. But what I’m seeing now is almost all the wearables have some type of AI integration where you can literally, on the app, type in, please show Me, my heart rate variability over the last two weeks. And it’ll just populate on the app a graph. What we’re doing with biometric data and the science and the availability of analysis of that data is mind blowing. I think it could be more effective at improving people’s health than anything that we’re going to see happen in a hospital or in a pharmaceutical company’s research lab. Dr. Deb Muth 39:12Yeah, I think AI has a lot of great benefits in the medical world like this. Compiling data, looking at data over a period of time. We all know, you and I both, we’ve done research. You know, how long it takes to comb through the research and to find things and to try to put it all together. And when AI can be used to help us hack that in a shorter period of time, we are going to make new discoveries so much faster that are going to help people in ways that we’ve never seen before. Dr Deb Heald 39:46It’s the perfect indication for AI. And even when I was working with it back in 2017, oh my gosh, it was just barely an embryo back then. And the whole premise behind it was we still need the, the clinical brains, yes, to point out the relevance of the data, but the AI can take care of all of the mundane stuff that none of us like doing anyway, and it can do it instantaneously. And at this point, we still need the clinicians to show where that’s relevant. Dr. Deb Muth 40:19We started using AI this last year to look at our own data. I have data going back almost 25 years of patients that we’ve seen and protocols that we’ve done. And we wanted to see, of all the protocols that we’ve used over the years, which ones actually worked compared to those that didn’t and how much better outcome and how quickly, because we wanted to see, can we make our protocols better and which ones just should we be abandoning that just are not working for the majority of the people. And we started combing our data and it’s been incredible because it’s easy for us, us to, to see the client and think, gosh, this is working, and so I’ll use it on this person and this person and this person. But then you lose sight of those little intricacies of, well, it worked on this person at this age, but it didn’t work on this person who had this or they didn’t have the combination of these two things. And now we’re being able to see all of that so that we can get people better, faster just by simply knowing the data. Dr Deb Heald 41:20Well, and it isn’t Even so much protocols that need to be scrubbed. It’s. If you’ve got somebody on a protocol, there’s real time data to say continue or pause. This isn’t the way it should. That’s my least favorite word in the entire language but should be going, so what’s different about this person or what was different about their yesterday that we’re. We’re not seeing what would encourage us to continue. And, and every single individual has different needs at different times. Even, even twins. Right. With the studies are amazing. And when any difference in their environment they manifest completely differently. So it’s not genetics. Dr. Deb Muth 42:10No. It’s epigenetics. Dr Deb Heald 42:11Right. Dr. Deb Muth 42:11It’s our environment that changes our genetics and that is the difference. Dr Deb Heald 42:17So looking at the genes is one thing, but looking at somebody’s actual response to an intervention in lifetime. This isn’t blood work that’s going to be done every three months. This is, this is what form of exercise should I do right now or should I eat or not eat before I do it. It’s. I think that’s where medical science to me is the most exciting is literally putting the power back into the hands of the human. Dr. Deb Muth 42:46And honestly, from a client perspective, if you don’t learn this and you don’t learn how to hack your day to day stuff, there is nothing that Dr. Heald or myself can really help you with to make you get where you want to go. Like we have the information, we have the knowledge, we can teach you. But you have to be willing to learn this to hack your like life every single day to get to the optimization that you’re looking for. Because trying to depend on somebody like us to tell you what to do every day is unrealistic. It’s just not going to happen. Dr Deb Heald 43:17Agreed. Yeah. It’s almost gamifying your health. But if that’s what it takes, let’s do it. Dr. Deb Muth 43:23Yeah, why not? Why not have some fun with it. Dr Deb Heald 43:25I love waking up and seeing not so much. I can tell by the way I feel how deep my sleep was. My brain’s either foggy or it’s not. Yeah. But I still love looking at the data and then saying, oh, I did do that yesterday. And to me it’s, it’s a game in the morning to open my app and see how yesterday actually manifested in my ability to get rest last night. Dr. Deb Muth 43:53Yeah, it’s so true. I, I did some traveling on Tuesday and we have a little snow. The weather was bad. What normally should have taken me four hours to get somewhere took me seven. There was a crash on the freeway. We got diverted and like the entire drive was completely white knuckled. Right. And so by the time I arrived where I needed to go, it was 12:30 in the morning and I was super stressed. I kind of relaxed a little bit and then I went to bed and I woke up the next, I didn’t sleep well. I was up almost all night. I was up till probably four in the morning before I finally fell asleep. And it took me two days to recover from that stressor and, and I laid low and I rested. It was the holiday, it wasn’t a big deal. But when it takes you that like you have to be conscious, it took me two days to bounce back from that. And we have stressors like that that happen maybe not at that magnitude every single day, but if you’re not paying attention to how long it’s taking you to recover, that is a huge disservice. Because what are we going to do as women? We’re going to put push through. Right. We need to take care of the kids, we need to work, we need to take care of our parents, we need to check on this person, we need to do this, we need to do that and we’re just going to keep pushing in that state of stress, not realizing that that’s the last thing that we should be doing. Dr Deb Heald 45:08And so there will be non negotiables in that when and which generation where our near adult or adult kids still need us and our parents are, are still needing assistance. Maybe it just means don’t do the intense work up to day move, but just pair it back. Or if your partner suggests inviting the neighbors over for appetizers and drinks like not tonight sweetie. Right. Like literally just drawing the line because you said it. Well, we, we will just push through. Yeah. It’s our future health that we’re sacrificing when we do that. And I do not want to spend my last 15 years sick. I do not want to spend my last, last however many 15 minutes in, in a care facility. Right. Dr. Deb Muth 45:54You and me both, we both know how those are. No, that’s a non negotiable for me. Dr Deb Heald 45:59Agreed. And so when, when people are thinking, well, I know it matters but I can pay attention to it later or it costs money to do this and I’d rather not spend that money. Let’s just price out what one month in a nursing home is going to cost. Dr. Deb Muth 46:13Yeah, you’re going to spend it on the front end or the back end. You get to choose how you’re going to do that and what that’s going to look like for you. Dr Deb Heald 46:20So if that’s some wearables and some guidance up front, let’s do it. And my hope is that when we are more aware of what our behaviors do to our physical body, we’ll also start to tune into the physical signs that’s been sending us all the way along. So we don’t have to be dependent on some band on our wrist. But if you eat something that that’s triggering your immune system, you’ll pay attention to the fact your nose is running. You won’t just wipe it and carry on. It’s literally a histamine release unless it’s hot soup. But it’s saying, this is going to inflame you a little bit. Are you okay with that? And when we start to treat our bodies like the temples that they are, we won’t need the wearables. Right? We’ll say, oh, I’m starting to feel tired. So what that means is I’m going to go to bed. I’m not going to turn on a Netflix series. I’m not going to dive into some project for work that I’d like to get off my plate. My body’s asking for rest right now. So let’s do it. Dr. Deb Muth 47:23I love that this has been such a great conversation. How can people find you and work with you if they’re interested? Dr Deb Heald 47:30I agree. This has been an amazing conversation. I hope that we can do it again. I have a website which is is doctorhealed.com r h E-A-L-D.com I’m on Instagram. That’s Dr. Deb healed. And just direct message me and we will see what we can do. Dr. Deb Muth 47:48I love that. Thank you so much for joining me today. Dr Deb Heald 47:51Well, thank you for hosting and it was just an amazing, amazing time on this. Yeah. Friday morning. Dr. Deb Muth 47:58I agree. Thank you. Dr Deb Heald 47:59Okay, take care. Dr. Deb Muth 48:00This is the part of our conversation I hope you sit with. Because if there’s one truth that keeps coming up not just in today’s episode, but across thousands of women’s stories, it’s this. The body isn’t broken. You haven’t failed, and you’re not imagining what you’re feeling. You have just been taught to follow templates instead of trust data, to chase fixes instead of understanding function, and to silence symptoms instead of listening to them. My hope is that today’s conversation gave you permission to stop guessing and start getting curious about your body’s needs and how to thrive in this episode. If it resonated with you. Please take a moment to subscribe, follow and share. It was someone who needs to hear it. It means the world to us and it really helps us get in front of the eyes of more people. You can find let’s Talk Wellness now on YouTube, Spotify and wherever you listen to podcasts. And remember, healing doesn’t just start with another diagnosis. It starts when you finally feel seen and empowered to take your health back. Until next time, I’m Dr. Deb and this is let’s Talk Wellness Now. Dr. Deb Muth 49:08Welcome to let’s Talk Wellness now, where we bring expert insights directly to you. Please note that the views and information shared by our guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of let’s Talk Wellness now, its management or our partners. Each affiliate, sponsor and partner is an independent entity with its own perspectives. Today’s content is provided for informational and educational purposes only and should not be considered specific advice, whether financial, medical, or legal. While we strive to present accurate and useful information, we cannot guarantee its completeness or relevance to your unique circumstances. We encourage you to consult with a qualified professional to address your individual needs. Your use of information from this broadcast is entirely at your own risk. By continuing to listen, you agree to indemnify and hold let’s Talk Wellness now and its associates, harmless from any claims or damages arising from the use of this content. We may update this disclaimer at any time and changes will take effect immediately upon posting or broadcast. Thank you for tuning in. We hope you find this episode both insightful and thought provoking. Listener discretion is advised. The post Episode 255 – Advancements in naturopathic medicine and whole-body healing first appeared on Let's Talk Wellness Now.

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Send us a textHow we approach the Lord declares our relationship with Him.  Are we doubting Him or demanding from Him?  Or are we seeking His will to be done over all else.  In this episode there are two men each with a different approach to Jesus and a different response from Jesus.  Both received what they were asking but it is very telling in their approach why Jesus responded differently to each one. 

1 He who is often rebuked and stiffens his neck will be destroyed suddenly, with no remedy. 2 When the righteous thrive, the people rejoice; but when the wicked rule, the people groan. 3 Whoever loves wisdom brings joy to his father; but a companion of prostitutes squanders his wealth. 4 The king by justice makes the land stable, but he who takes bribes tears it down. 5 A man who flatters his neighbor spreads a net for his feet. 6 An evil man is snared by his sin, but the righteous can sing and be glad. 7 The righteous care about justice for the poor. The wicked aren't concerned about knowledge. 8 Mockers stir up a city, but wise men turn away anger. 9 If a wise man goes to court with a foolish man, the fool rages or scoffs, and there is no peace. 10 The bloodthirsty hate a man of integrity; and they seek the life of the upright. 11 A fool vents all of his anger, but a wise man brings himself under control. 12 If a ruler listens to lies, all of his officials are wicked. 13 The poor man and the oppressor have this in common: Yahweh gives sight to the eyes of both. 14 The king who fairly judges the poor, his throne shall be established forever. 15 The rod of correction gives wisdom, but a child left to himself causes shame to his mother. 16 When the wicked increase, sin increases; but the righteous will see their downfall. 17 Correct your son, and he will give you peace; yes, he will bring delight to your soul. 18 Where there is no revelation, the people cast off restraint; but one who keeps the law is blessed. 19 A servant can't be corrected by words. Though he understands, yet he will not respond. 20 Do you see a man who is hasty in his words? There is more hope for a fool than for him. 21 He who pampers his servant from youth will have him become a son in the end. 22 An angry man stirs up strife, and a wrathful man abounds in sin. 23 A man's pride brings him low, but one of lowly spirit gains honor. 24 Whoever is an accomplice of a thief is an enemy of his own soul. He takes an oath, but dares not testify. 25 The fear of man proves to be a snare, but whoever puts his trust in Yahweh is kept safe. 26 Many seek the ruler's favor, but a man's justice comes from Yahweh. 27 A dishonest man detests the righteous, and the upright in their ways detest the wicked. Listen Subscribe: Proverbs Daily Podcast Psalms Daily Podcast

300 hundred restaurants in 22 countries might not sound like a billion dollar empire, but you would be wrong. Dave Young: Welcome to the Empire Builders Podcast, teaching business owners the not-so-secret techniques that took famous businesses from mom-and-pop to major brands. Stephen Semple is a marketing consultant, story collector, and storyteller. I’m Stephen’s sidekick and business partner, Dave Young. Before we get into today’s episode, a word from our sponsor, which is… Well, it’s us, but we’re highlighting ads we’ve written and produced for our clients, so here’s one of those. [OG Law Ad] Dave Young: Welcome back to the Empire Builders Podcast. I’m Dave Young. Stephen Semple is here, and we’re going to talk about the building of another empire. And I’ve got to admit, I don’t know a whole lot about this one. I’ve maybe… Stephen Semple: Oh, wow. That’s exciting. Dave Young: We’re going to talk about P.F. Chang’s. I’ve maybe eaten at one of them, I would say less than half a dozen times in my life. Stephen Semple: Okay. Dave Young: And I think it’s just more of a convenience and proximity issue. I’m never really near any of them. Stephen Semple: So while they’re big, they’re not massive. They’re 300 restaurants in 22 countries, so they’re not like many of the other things we’ve talked about where there’s thousands of them. Dave Young: Right. Stephen Semple: So no, they’re not as prevalent. But look, 300 restaurants is still pretty successful. Dave Young: Yeah, that’s a lot. How did they get started? I’m not going to guess. I’m going to let you tell me. Stephen Semple: Okay. The business was founded by Philip Chiang and Paul Fleming. And Paul Fleming, you might recognize because he’s of Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse fame. Dave Young: Oh, okay. Stephen Semple: They got together, and they founded P.F. Chang in Scottsdale, Arizona- Dave Young: That makes a lot of sense. Stephen Semple: … in 1993. Now, Philip spells his last name C-H-I-A-N-G. So at a certain point, he changed his spelling just to make it easier. Drop the I and make it easier. Dave Young: Drop the I and made it just… Spell it the way it sounds. Stephen Semple: … Spell it the way it sounds, make it easier for the U.S. market. And the company has been bought and sold a few times over the years, but the first acquisition from the founders, from Philip and Paul, happened in 2012 by Centerbridge Partners in a deal worth a little bit over a billion dollars. Dave Young: Wow. Stephen Semple: They did okay. They walk away with some cash. Dave Young: Now, was it before or after they started putting it in supermarkets? Stephen Semple: I do not know the answer to that question. Dave Young: Probably predates. Stephen Semple: I’m going to suspect after. Dave Young: Okay. Stephen Semple: But the story starts with Philip’s mother, Cecilia Chiang. Cecilia was born in Beijing in 1920 to a really wealthy family. She grew up in a palace in China, ate high-end food, full staff, chefs, the whole nine yards, part of the aristocracy. And during the Chinese Civil War and the Japanese occupation, her family fled China and relocated in Japan, and there, the family opened a restaurant. Now in the 1960s, she travels to the U.S. Cecilia travels to U.S. to help her sister who came to America because of the economic challenges in Japan, and her sister had opened a restaurant in San Francisco and needed help- Dave Young: Okay. Stephen Semple: … and Cecilia came over to help her. But that venture failed, but Cecilia still remained in the U.S. And look, Chinese food in America at that time was not good. If you look at just about every food that has come to United States, the first people who brought it, whether it was Italian, whether it was Mexican, whether it was Chinese, the first immigrants were the people who were poor. Dave Young: Yeah. What years are we talking about here? Stephen Semple: 1960. Dave Young: Okay. Stephen Semple: So the first immigrants who came were the people who were poor, so therefore, typically the food is not the great food, it’s not made with the great ingredients. And so here she is, she’s looking around and she’s saying, “Look, there’s this poor Chinese food, all basically from the Canton region.” And most of it has been also turned into an American version, because basically, again, people were making it with whatever was available, so it really became very Americanized. Dave Young: Right. Stephen Semple: And Cecilia saw that, and what she wanted to do was introduce America to a more refined Chinese food, what she had experienced growing up as a wealthy person in China. So in 1961, she opens a sit-down restaurant with food from Northern China called The Mandarin. Dave Young: Okay. Stephen Semple: And it opens not in Chinatown, because here’s the thing that she recognized, context is everything. If she opened it in Chinatown, people’s expectation would be it would be the same as all the Chinese restaurants in Chinatown. Dave Young: All of them. Right, right. Stephen Semple: So what she did, she opened it on Polk Street, not far from Pacific Heights in San Francisco. Dave Young: Okay. Stephen Semple: Bit of a bold move, but she wanted to be seen as different, and that was how you did it. Dave Young: Makes sense. Stephen Semple: Now, the menu had some things that were unfamiliar, like pigeon, and it did not have some things that were expected like chow mein. And she struggled initially, because America was not really ready to try new things. Now, after two years of struggle came her breakout moment. The restaurant was visited by a guy by the name of Herb Kane, who was the most influential columnist in San Francisco history. He was a writer for the San Francisco Chronicle. But here’s the interesting thing, not a food critic. And he comes in the restaurant, falls in love with it, and gives it a great review. And overnight, the place becomes famous. You couldn’t get into it. It was visited by the likes of Julia Child, James Beard. It was totally on the radar. And I actually think the review may have even been more powerful because he was not a food critic. Dave Young: Sure. Yeah. Stephen Semple: But it also goes to show you… We talk about influencers, influence and all these other things, most restaurants be like, “We’ve got to get the food critics in here.” This guy was just a columnist who came in to try out their food- Dave Young: Right. Stephen Semple: … and it made them famous. And one of the things he loved was Peking duck, and so today Peking duck is pretty normal, it was really new back then. And suddenly, authentic Chinese food started to pop up. This really started it. In the late 1960s, Chinese restaurants in the United States doubled to about 10,000 of them. 1966, the first sushi restaurant opens. She opens the second restaurant, and Philip… And we’re talking about Philip Chiang? Dave Young: Right, right. Stephen Semple: Philip, her son, joins the business, and opens The Mandarin Cafe in LA, where he starts modernizing Chinese dishes for American diners, so starts doing a bit more of a fusion, right? Dave Young: Mm-hmm. Stephen Semple: Now, it’s here that Philip meets Paul Fleming, from Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse. Dave Young: Right. Stephen Semple: And Philip starts to build a bit of a friendship with Paul, and wants to work with Paul, wants to leverage his knowledge. Because after all, Ruth Chris is an upscale restaurant, and there’s this rise of casual chains, but Paul is not super excited, because none of them are Chinese, nor is Cecilia. She’s like, “I don’t really want to do this.” Philip is determined, he stays in touch with Paul. So 1979, things really start to change, because the restaurant called China Coach is opened by Wolfgang Puck, and it grows very quickly to 50 restaurants. And it’s the early ’90s, and Cecilia is ready to sell the restaurants. Dave Young: Stay tuned, we’re going to wrap up this story and tell you how to apply this lesson to your business right after this. [Using Stories To Sell Ad] Let’s pick up our story where we left off, and trust me, you haven’t missed a thing. Stephen Semple: And it’s the early ’90s, and Cecilia is ready to sell the restaurants, which basically frees Philip to make the changes he wants to do. He cycles back to Paul. Paul’s now looking at it going, “Well, there is this place for this growth and all of this.” So they decide to start something new. And Philip wants to bring other Asian cuisines, he wants to take it beyond Chinese. Dave Young: Okay. Stephen Semple: So he wants to add other Asian foods to it. So he spends three years developing the menu, and they changed the spelling of his last name to make it easier. And in 1993, here’s the other thing I found really, really interesting, they chose to open in Scottsdale in 1993. And here’s where Philip learned something from Cecelia, she did not open in Chinatown, she opened somewhere where there was not Chinese restaurants. At the time in Scottsdale, it’s described as a Chinese food desert at the time. Virtually no Chinese restaurants in 1993. Now, many people would go, “Well, you want to open up somewhere…” Nope, open it in Scottsdale. Opening weekend, they had 1,000 people, some waited for hours. Dave Young: Wow. Stephen Semple: Lined up around the block. Now, what really made them successful is Paul brought his ability to be able to scale a business, upscale dining, and really grow the business. And this is what allowed them to quickly… They quickly drove to 200 locations in a few years. And in 2012, 19 years later, they sold it for $1.1 billion. Dave Young: A billion bucks. Stephen Semple: Yeah. And there was also a point in there where they went public, gave them a bump, and then they were sold, and business was taken private, and it’s changed hands a few times. Dave Young: Well, one thing I’ve always known is that they’re not like every Chinese restaurant you’ve ever been in. Even every small town in America has a Chinese restaurant that they always seem to almost even share the same menus. Stephen Semple: Same thing here. Dave Young: Right. And- Stephen Semple: No matter how tiny the community is, there’s a Chinese restaurant. Dave Young: And- Stephen Semple: But it would have those things like chow mein, and- Dave Young: [inaudible 00:11:43], and Kung Pao chicken, and… Stephen Semple: Yeah. Dave Young: Sure. Stephen Semple: She took those things that were very common and very familiar and left them off of her menu, which was a bold move as well. Dave Young: Yeah, because otherwise we’d all be going in there ordering the Kung Pao chicken. Stephen Semple: We wouldn’t be having the Peking duck. Right. We wouldn’t be having the Peking duck. Dave Young: Yeah. Stephen Semple: So it was really interesting what she did, she leaned in to the difference in terms of opening it, because her mission was to bring this food, didn’t open in Chinatown, and left some popular things out, added some interesting things. But let’s face it, she struggled, and then there was the breakout moment. But here’s the part about all of this, now sometimes the trick is you have to be able to survive. If you’re able to survive, and you’re doing something truly remarkable, that breakout moment often happens. Now, advertising and promotion can accelerate that breakout moment, because it exposes people to this new idea, and entices them to come in. But if you do something… But it really and truly has to be remarkable. If you do something remarkable, and you do it really well, and if you can survive through the slow times, you get those breakout moments. Dave Young: Yeah. Yeah. It’s a really cool story. And the place has always felt… Yes, it’s Chinese, but no, it’s different. Stephen Semple: Yeah. Well- Dave Young: You can see the Ruth’s Chris DNA in the place, right? The- Stephen Semple: It’s funny, I had no… And I’ve been in a couple of P.F. Chang’s, and I had no idea the relationship with it. And as soon as I read that, I was like, “Oh, that makes…” It was sort of one of those. As soon as it’s presented that he was involved, it was like, “Oh, that makes so much sense, and I can see it.” It’s sort of funny how you didn’t see it, a lot of these things, hidden, and then it’s revealed, and suddenly it’s obvious, right? Dave Young: Yeah. In the last episode we talked about… I think it was one of the last episodes, we talked quite extensively about brand extension. Stephen Semple: Yes. Dave Young: And this is another good example of what we know would not have worked, and that would’ve been a Chinese restaurant by Ruth Chris. Stephen Semple: Correct. Correct. That’s a great observation. Yes. It would not have worked. Dave Young: Ruth’s Chris Chinese would not have worked. Stephen Semple: Right. Dave Young: You couldn’t leverage the good name of a steakhouse into a Chinese restaurant. Stephen Semple: No. Dave Young: Because that would not work. But you can take the DNA from the steakhouse, the high-end ritzy steakhouse, and apply it in measured ways to a high-end Chinese restaurant. And that’s exactly what they did, they took the luxury part of it, and made a luxury Chinese restaurant. Stephen Semple: Yeah. How the food is presented, how the place is decorated, although it would be decorated regionally different, and how the staff are trained, and all of those… And how the kitchen is run. I bet you if you walk into the two kitchens, you’d go, “Oh, I totally see…” I bet you the methodology in terms of how the kitchen is managed and all those other things is probably exactly the same. Yeah, so you’re right. You’re taking the DNA, and then basically modifying the presentation of that DNA to fit that thing, and giving it its own identity. And the problem that people make is they’ll look at it, go, “Well, the DNA is the same, so why can’t you just name it same?” And it’s, again, it’s like you talked about before, those hidden barriers. We think about the places of steakhouse, what’s the expectation? The expectation is steak, fine wines, potatoes, shrimp, lobster. Yes, there’ll be also vegetables, and grilled things, and all this other stuff, right? Dave Young: Yeah. Stephen Semple: You could even put in an appetizer of Peking duck and it would be fine, but you can’t make it a Chinese restaurant. Dave Young: Yeah, I think- Stephen Semple: Just like you couldn’t go the other way. Dave Young: You and I should buy Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse. Stephen Semple: Why should we do that? Dave Young: Just so we could change the name to Dave’s Steve’s Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse. Stephen Semple: Yeah, I’m going to pass. As awesome in ideas that sounds, as amazing as we would be at running- Dave Young: Another brand violation. I can see it now. Stephen Semple: Is this like a restaurant? Dave Young: All right. Well, thank you for sharing the P.F. Chang story. Now I’ve got to find one near me, and… I don’t want the bag of frozen stuff from the restaurant, I want to go in. Stephen Semple: God, no. You want to go and do the restaurant. Dave Young: Yeah, I want the experience. Stephen Semple: And they are good. They are fine. Dave Young: Yeah, yeah, every time I’ve been, but I just haven’t been very many times. Stephen Semple: Right. Dave Young: All right. Thank you. Stephen Semple: All right. Awesome. Thanks, David. Dave Young: Thanks for listening to the podcast. Please share us. Subscribe on your favorite podcast app, and leave us a big, fat, juicy five-star rating and review at Apple Podcasts. And if you’d like to schedule your own 90-minute empire-building session, you can do it at empirebuildingprogram.com.

Late ovulation isn't random—it's often your body's way of saying conditions aren't quite right yet. In this episode of Cycle Wisdom, Dr. Monica Minjeur explains why ovulation may consistently happen later, how stress, sleep, metabolism, thyroid health, and insulin resistance affect follicle development, and how to tell a temporary delay from a pattern that needs attention. Through Frida's story, you'll learn cycle-timed testing strategies and restorative steps that help bring ovulation back into a more predictable, fertile rhythm—without panic or overcorrection.If your cycles feel unpredictable or ovulation timing keeps shifting later each month, you don't have to figure this out alone. At Radiant Clinic, we specialize in cycle-informed, restorative care that identifies why ovulation is delayed and creates a clear plan forward.Schedule your free discovery call at radiantclinic.com to explore personalized care options.

At our Interactive Midweek Service, Pastor Femi Paul taught on Vantage Position, emphasising that victory is not only about effort but about positioning. A vantage position is a strategic location ordained by God that gives access to advantage, power, and divine intervention. From 2 Chronicles 20:17b, we were reminded that God's victory is revealed when we take our position, stand still, and trust Him to act. Using Luke 24:49 and the example of Elijah in 1 Kings 17, the message highlighted that promises are often tied to specific places, people, and timing. Those who abandon their vantage position risk missing power, provision, and divine instruction. Correct positioning means being with the right people, in the right place, at the right time, where God has commanded blessing and sustenance. Confession: I remain where God has positioned me. I access power, provision, and victory through divine positioning.

Today's West Coast Cookbook & Speakeasy Podcast for our especially special Daily Special, Smothered Benedict Wednesday is now available on the Spreaker Player!Starting off in the Bistro Cafe, the Chief Judge of Minnesota, an arch-conservative, exonerated journalist Don Lemon from any criminal charges for covering a Church protest.Then, on the rest of the menu, the Alabama Neo-Nazis arrested on weapons charges planned to strike 'high value targets'; Trump's acting cyber chief mistakenly uploaded sensitive files into a public version of ChatGPT that triggered a DHS-level damage assessment; and, in a recent habeas petition, Ghislaine Maxwell dropped a bombshell claim that four potential "co-conspirators" and "25 men" scored "secret settlements" tied to Epstein's abuse, without facing any indictment.After the break, we move to the Chef's Table where the European Union opened a formal investigation into Musk's social media platform after his artificial intelligence chatbot Grok spewed nonconsensual sexualized deepfake images; and, the wife of South Korea's ousted President Yoon Suk Yeol was sentenced to 20 months in prison for corruption.All that and more, on West Coast Cookbook & Speakeasy with Chef de Cuisine Justice Putnam.Bon Appétit!The Netroots Radio Live Player​Keep Your Resistance Radio Beaming 24/7/365!“It may be safely averred that good cookery is the best and truest economy, turning to full account every wholesome article of food, and converting into palatable meals what the ignorant either render uneatable or throw away in disdain.” - Eliza Acton ‘Modern Cookery for Private Families' (1845)Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/west-coast-cookbook-speakeasy--2802999/support.

If you want to listen to the full episode (XYBM 148) from this clip, search for the title: "Ep. 148: How to raise Resilient Children without Hitting Them with Dr. Amber" — it was released on January 19, 2026.In XYBM 148, I sit down with Dr. Amber Thornton, a licensed Clinical Psychologist and author, to discuss gentle and conscious parenting and what it looks like in Black families. Dr. Thornton shares how self-regulation, emotional intelligence, and intentional parenting help children build emotional resiliency without fear, control, or corporal punishment. We explore conscious parenting, the long-term impact of fear-based discipline, setting expectations and routines early, and how healing misunderstandings strengthens parent-child relationships, closing with a direct message to Black fathers.Tune in on all podcast streaming platforms, including YouTube.Leave a 5-star review ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ if you found value in this episode or a previous episode!BOOK US FOR SPEAKING + BRAND DEALS:————————————Explore our diverse collaboration opportunities as the leading and fastest-growing Black men's mental health platform on social media. Let's create something dope for your brand/company.Take the first step by filling out the form on our website: https://www.expressyourselfblackman.com/speaking-brand-dealsHOW TO FIND A DOPE, BLACK THERAPIST: ————————————We are teaching a FREE webinar on how to find a dope, Black therapist – sign up for the next session here: https://event.webinarjam.com/channel/black-therapistAll webinar attendees will have the opportunity to be paired with a Black mental health professional in Safe Haven. We have had 5K+ people sign up for this webinar in the past. Don't miss out. Slots are limited. SAFE HAVEN:————————————Safe Haven is a holistic healing platform built for Black men by Black men. In Safe Haven, you will be connected with a Black mental health professional, so you can finally heal from the things you find it difficult to talk about AND you will receive support from like-minded Black men that are all on their healing journey, so you don't have to heal alone.Join Safe Haven Now: https://www.expressyourselfblackman.com/safe-haven SUPPORT THE PLATFORM: ————————————Safe Haven: https://www.expressyourselfblackman.com/safe-havenMonthly Donation: https://buy.stripe.com/eVa5o0fhw1q3guYaEE Merchandise: https://shop.expressyourselfblackman.com FOLLOW US:————————————TikTok: @expressyourselfblackman (https://www.tiktok.com/@expressyourselfblackman) Instagram:Host: @expressyourselfblackman(https://www.instagram.com/expressyourselfblackman)Guest: @dramberthornton (https://www.instagram.com/dramberthornton/)YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/ExpressYourselfBlackManFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/expressyourselfblackman

Ben once again published the wrong file yesterday. Matthew & Bob are having an emergency meeting to discuss. In the meantime here's the actual episode we recorded!It's like they don't like what we have or something. The brothers ponder the lack of trades and the news that it's not for a lack of trying. Then Matthew gives a quiz and accuses Ben of failing it. For the record here is Ben's recollection of how he did on the quiz:#1: Correct, because even though I said the wrong answer I knew what the right answer was but didn't want to say it. I also get credit for getting question 1-B right. So at this point I had a score of 200%#2: Wrong, but because I was at 200%, I'm still at %100.#3: Correct. %150#4: Correct. I'm not sure what the percentage is now, but I'm still acing this test.#5: Wrong. No one gets this one right. Stupid question.#6: Correct. I'm killing it.#7: Correct. I'm a stud.#8: Wrong. I don't want the listeners to feel bad, so I answer another incorrectly. Also, I didn't know the answer.#9: Correct. We cheated on this one because Matthew thought I was doing poorly, because he doesn't listen.#10: Correct.#11: Correct.#12: Wrong. Enrique Pequeno should have been the answer.#13: Correct.#14: Wrong.On the cocktail side of things Matthew is drinking a Final Ward while Ben is drinking a Tribute. Recipes below.Final Ward3/4 oz Rye Whiskey3/4 oz Maraschino Liqueur3/4 oz Lemon Juice3/4 oz Green ChartreuseShake all ingredients until well-chilled. Double strain into a chilled coupe glass.Tribute1/2 oz Cognac1 tsp Creme de Violette3 1/2 oz Brut champagne/sparkling wineSpray or rinse a chilled flute glass with the creme de violette. Stir the congac with ice and strain into the flute. Top with the sparkling wine.

Dave and Bethlie wrap up this first section of the Overcoming series focused on the subject of anger.  We're also celebrating and praising the Lord for our 300th episode!   What do you do with a child who has a tendency to anger Correct them Punishment - Every time anger has to be confronted with a negative consequence We recommend a spanking - every time Teach them keep it simple This is wrong This is how you should respond Disciple them Your child will need the power of God's Word and God's Spirit Your child will need to walk with God Model for them You must do right first You must learn to have peace in your heart  You have to model right responses to irritations and issues and life itself

This topic nearly broke Wippa but it was worth it to finally settle, once and for all, the scientifically proven best way to stack the dishwasher. We also wrap up everything coming out of the Australian Open, including Maddison Inglis’s run sadly coming to an end, Luciano Darderi’s brutal cramp mid–TV interview, and a real estate agent cashing in on the tennis fever sweeping the country. One of the world’s biggest YouTubers has launched his viral burger brand, MrBeast Burger, so we sent one of our producers to put it to the test. Plus, Wippa discovers a surprisingly effective way to deal with one of his kids getting a splinter and a runaway driver is caught and the driver will surprise you...See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode 274- State Police RPO Cover-Up  Also Available OnSearchable Podcast Transcript Gun Lawyer — Episode Transcript Gun Lawyer Transcript – Episode 274 SPEAKERS Teddy Nappen, Evan Nappen, Speaker 2 Evan Nappen 00:17 I’m Evan Nappen. Teddy Nappen 00:19 and I’m Teddy Nappen. Evan Nappen 00:21 And welcome to Gun Lawyer. So, our good friend, John Petrolino, who writes about many, many important topics, particularly as well concerning New Jersey, has an article that was in Bearing Arms. And I want to talk about what he’s raised here. The article’s title is “New Jersey State Police Tight Lipped Over Retired Police Permits”. (https://bearingarms.com/john-petrolino/2026/01/21/new-jersey-statepolice-tight-lipped-over-retired-police-permits-n1231288) So, what John has done is he’s used the New Jersey form of OPRA (Open Public Records Act), the Freedom of Information Act, asking the authorities in New Jersey for the number of permits issued to retired police officers. Evan Nappen 01:15 You may recall the then Attorney General Platkin did put up that dashboard and released the data of public statistics regarding carry permits, the number of permits issued. There’s been over 92,000 approved applications for carry permits in New Jersey, and of those approvals, 64,000 are non-expired permits. Now it’s interesting that the State puts out that data, but they don’t put out the data as to the RPO permits. The Retired Police Officer permits, and we want to find out how many folks carry that are not law enforcement, right? That are civilian. And let’s face it, Retired Police Officers are still civilians, even though they were formerly law enforcement. Originally carry was outside of being law enforcement and outside of New Jersey’s insane carry permit system back then, where you had to show “justifiable need”, which, as you may recall, meant showing of urgent necessity. This meant showing that a gun was necessary for you to defend yourself from death or serious bodily injury and that carrying a handgun was the only means that could do it. I mean, it was a standard that was so extreme that basically, if you’ve been shot and killed, you then qualified for a New Jersey carry permit. Evan Nappen 03:08 Now that went away thanks to the Bruen decision, and New Jersey jumped from less than 600 carry permits to now 64,000 valid permits and 92,000 valid, approved permits. But it does not include the RPOs. Now, RPOs had the ability to carry before Bruen, and during that time period when regular old civilians who weren’t retired law enforcement could not defend themselves with a firearm and carry in that manner, right? They were deemed to have to be victims instead of defenders. But now, for some reason, the State Police and such will not release the number of RPO permits. We’re not asking for names. John went forward here, and he didn’t ask for names. He didn’t ask for anything. He just wants to know how many? How many of the RPO permits are out there as well. This should be looked at in the aggregate with all the other carry permits that are out there, and yet that doesn’t happen. Page of 1 8 Evan Nappen 04:25 In December of 2025, John sent a request for the number of RPO permits, and it was denied. And the request was denied weirdly and strangely for reasons that just don’t make any sense. And I’m going to tell you. It makes you wonder, why is there a cover up? The reason they denied it, the reason the State Police have put in writing for the denial. Well, get a load of this. “Improper and Overbroad” was the main reason. Can you believe that the information is supposedly improper and overbroad? Why would wanting to know a statistical fact such as the number of RBO permits be considered overbroad? And why would it be considered in any way improper? It is strictly information. It is based on a record. It absolutely should be released. Evan Nappen 05:52 How come they are releasing the numbers for civilian carry permits, right? The 92,000. How come that’s not “improper and overbroad”? No, the Attorney General does it. Go ahead. Why? Tell me. Why do you think? Teddy Nappen 06:10 So, going back to because John also, if I recall, broke the story about denials where, what was it? Blacks were five times more likely to be denied to their carry. Evan Nappen 06:22 Yes, institutionalized racism. That exists in New Jersey. Teddy Nappen 06:31 So, add into the fact that you have the, well, here’s the trick. The Left have always been anti-police. That is a fact. They were the ones that wanted to defund the police. They were the ones for that. So, now we have the first factor of showing the absolute racism of the gun laws. But also the fact that they were supporting the only carry which, by the way, how much you want to bet they were all for the RPOs under all the Democrat Governors who allowed those carries to come into play. How much of that look, if it shows that there’s this massive amount of RPOs being issued. And because the Left are Marxists who absolutely hate police and hate law and order, this would make them look like absolute elitists and hypocrites. Evan Nappen 07:19 So, the fear is that, arguably, in the defund the police mentality, that if retired police are being armed, they don’t want any police armed, even if they’re retired, because of the perceived threat that they put out there that law enforcement creates toward minorities. In their view, not in my view. Not in my view. It’s the opposite. I mean, the fact is, they’re out there as protectors, defenders of the good people of our State. Every retired officer is somebody who’s not only armed, but also is experienced in armed defense, having served as a law enforcement officer. They’re a resource. They’re a positive benefit to our society. Yet, they’re probably scared of the politics. I mean, why else? What? There’s nothing about it that makes it “improper”. And it sure isn’t “overbroad”. It would be overbroad, maybe, if you want to know the name and address and Dox every carry RPO that’s out there. That’s not being requested. We just want the damn number. How many RPO carry permits? Teddy Nappen 08:41 Page of 2 8 It honestly reminds me, Dad, of that poster you had hung up. It was the joke where it shows if the Left could rewrite the Second Amendment. And I think, and I remember, you remember that. They crossed out, remember, they crossed out militia. And it says, like, military and police, employed police only. We’re kind of that logic where like, well, they’re not in the service, so why should they be armed? Not because there’s massive doxing websites, and that’s why ICE has to have their mask on for that exact reason. But. Evan Nappen 09:17 Exactly. Well, the fight is still ongoing and the question is raised. Why not just give us the number so we all know? And I would like to see a huge number of RPOs. I hope there’s lots of them out there. The more trained law-abiding folks that have firearms, the safer we are. And retired police are perfect in that regard. That’s exactly what we want to see. So, whatever their basis is, it just creates more of a conspiracy, and it just politicizes it so unnecessarily. It’s ridiculous. Release the number. Let us know. Let’s join in showing how many armed folks are out there. Maybe that’s another reason. They’re afraid that if that number, you know is even more, now, more and more people are carrying and suddenly the BITS argument they love to make right? Blood In The Streets. BITS. There’ll be blood in the streets with civilian carry, you know. No, it didn’t happen. And it’ll be the Wild West. It’s not the Wild West. And look at how many folks have carries when you combine the numbers. Maybe they’re afraid of that political aspect. But, you know, we have a right to know these numbers. It’s not a secret. It’s not improper. It’s not overbroad. Just let us know, and we deal with the facts. Evan Nappen 10:47 I also want to bring a couple very interesting things out that I’ve recently learned about. An important one here is the old “Bang or Bong – You can’t have both”. Well, shortly, at least a greater degree, you may be able to have both because President Trump, through his administration, folks, keep that in mind. Through the Trump administration, they have proposed, through ATF, revision of their regulation concerning the interpretation of what a “user of drugs” as a disqualifier, what it means. You know, for almost 30 years, ATF has said they treat even a single incident, a single past admission of marijuana use, or a failed drug test, or one misdemeanor marijuana conviction as evidence of a person being an unlawful user. They have now put forward an administrative reg that when it becomes finalized, which should be happening within the next few months, it will make it so that those things no longer will be deeming a person “an unlawful user”. And this should be of great help. Evan Nappen 12:25 From an article in AmmoLand, written by Dean Weingarten, which is entitled “ATF Finally Admits: One-time Drug Use Isn’t Grounds to Strip Gun Rights.” (https://www.ammoland.com/2026/01/atf-finally-admitsone-time-drug-use-isnt-grounds-to-strip-gun-rights/) It makes it really interesting here regarding that. In 2025, NICS denied 9,163 firearm transfers under the “unlawful user” category, okay? So, in other words, denials, denials of over 9,000 transfers, more than half of those denials, more than half, were single-incident drug inferences. Well, under this rule, those will no longer be denials. That’s over what? Four thousand people that will not be denied their gun rights, just in that one year, no less. Of people being denied over this nonsense. And furthermore, in this article, ATF admitted that 8,893 cases, it declined to investigate, prosecute, or retrieve firearms because of a single-drug incident. So, they’re denying individuals and not prosecuting. Yet, they’re using it as a base for denial. So, finally, we’re getting a reg of common sense that clears it up. Evan Nappen 14:05 Page of 3 8 And it even, to me, appears to go further. Now this may take a little bit more analysis, but in my reading of the reg, and I’m going to have to see how it pans out, it also talks about those that use drugs that are lawfully prescribed. That becomes an exemption. I’m going to be looking further into whether this reg also directly impacts individuals with a medical marijuana card. Because if it’s prescribed and it’s legal in the state and it’s by a lawful prescription, then maybe that, too, gets covered by this new regulation. It remains to be seen, but it sure seems like it. So, this is good. It progress in the right direction of helping protect our gun rights. And, of course, it’s happening under the Trump administration. It didn’t, this didn’t happen under, you know, the senile sock puppets for years. This is Trump, and yet it’s in the area of marijuana. I mean, oddly, it’s going to essentially remove what got Hunter Biden in trouble, you know. Now, of course, I don’t think he had a single individual use, but still. It’s that disqualifier that’s being addressed by the Trump administration. Evan Nappen 15:40 I also want to point out something that caught my attention, and I think it is just great when something illustrates the absurdity of the gun laws. As you know, we’re fighting over with the big, beautiful lawsuit with NFA over suppressors. Of course, there’s no more $200 tax, which is nice, and they have made it much more efficient online to be able to get federally registered through the National Firearm Act, when acquiring suppressors. And I appreciate the progress, but we all know that there shouldn’t be any NFA at all. It shouldn’t exist. There should be no registration of suppressors or silencers. And it’s so stupid the way silencers are regulated. And I just love this. Apparently, this fellow here, regarding the National Association for Gun Rights, registered a potato as a suppressor. That’s right, a potato. (https:// www.facebook.com/share/v/1Aadb9chUS/) It’s the classic potato silencer that they used to be, mythologically, I guess, accredited to the IRA even. A potato on the end of a gun will act as a suppressor, and to a certain degree, it does. So, he registered a potato, an actual potato, as a suppressor, and then proceeded to utilize it. The only problem with the potato silencer is it’s good for about one shot, and then you end up with a lot of mashed potatoes after you use it. But there you go. They did, in fact, register the potato as a silencer. Teddy Nappen 17:31 There’s a slang term for it, too it’s called a Paddy can. Evan Nappen 17:35 There you go. A Paddy can. Well, he registered a Paddy can. And you know, ATF, also, in the past, registered a shoelace as a machine gun, because you could wrap it around the trigger and the bolt. Then you could do a quasi bump fire deal with it. So, there is a bona fide, if you go on the internet, see a bona fide ATF registered shoelace as a machine gun. We have potatoes as silencers, and I think it illustrates just how stupid the NFA is. Evan Nappen 18:07 Hey, let me tell you about our friends at WeShoot. WeShoot, as you know, is a range where Teddy and I both shoot, and they have been lately featuring some biographies of their instructors. You see, WeShoot has fantastic instructors, and one of their instructors that they’ve taken a focus on is Todd Friedman. Now, their instructors are fantastic and Lieutenant Todd (Retired) is an elite tactical instructor at WeShoot. He has over 25 years experience with the Ocean County Prosecutor’s Office. And he didn’t just serve there. He commanded. He was Special Operations Group, Range Master, PTC Certified Range Instructor. His training and background is really something. He’s completed all the advanced coursework and tactical shot sub gun, tactical rifle, tactical narcotics operations. He is an amazing guy, Page of 4 8 and this is just one of the many fantastic instructors at WeShoot. WeShoot is the place to go. Todd, by the way, also served as a Sergeant First Class in the New Jersey National Guard and supporting the prestigious 82nd Airborne Division. So, this is the kind of guy you want training you, you know, and we shoot has these fantastic trainers. You can take advantage of this by belonging to WeShoot. You can take these courses and really, really learn and hone your skills. You need to check out WeShoot at weshootusa.com, weshootusa.com. It’s a beautiful range right there in Lakewood, conveniently located easy to get to, right off the Parkway, right there in Central Jersey. You have this fantastic resource of a range. So, make sure you check out WeShoot. Evan Nappen 20:24 And of course, our friends at the Association of New Jersey Rifle & Pistol Clubs have been very busy. They’ve been battling in the courts. We should see some more progress there, and I’ll be reporting on that. They’ve been keeping an eye on what’s going on in Trenton and letting us know about these fights we’re fighting. We’ve made an impact. We’ve made an impact. But man, it is a tough slog. And without the Association, we would be even worse. So, make sure that you join the ANJRPC.org, the Association of New Jersey Rifle & Pistol clubs. anjrpc.org. They are the premier gun rights group in New Jersey. You need to be a member. You’ll get the email alerts, and you’ll stay on top of what is going on in the crazy state of New Jersey, where the fun just never ends when it comes to oppression of our rights and the fight for our liberties. Evan Nappen 21:22 And by the way, this is where I shamelessly promote my book New Jersey Gun Law, which is the Bible of New Jersey gun law. You’ve got to get a copy. Go to EvanNappen.com. It’s over 500 pages, 120 topics, all question and answer. It is the book used by everybody, and the only book that describes and explains the complex matrix of insanity called New Jersey gun law. Get your copy today. Go to EvanNappen.com. When you get it, scan the front cover. Make sure you get on my private subscriber base, where you can immediately access the archives for any updates. A new update will be coming out very shortly, the 2026 Comprehensive Update of these new laws that Murphy gave us as his farewell present. I’ll be talking about those and explaining those soon. Get your copy today and join in with the subscriber base, which is free, which is free, by the way. So, that your book stays current, and you’ll know what’s going on and be able to keep yourself from becoming a GOFU. Evan Nappen 22:35 Teddy, what do you have for us today? Teddy Nappen 22:38 Well, as you know, Press Checks are always free. And I want to remind everyone that the Democrats and the Left are, in fact, the real racists. No matter. They do not care what bounds they have to do. They don’t care about what lines they have to cross. They hate you, and they want to take away your rights. You know. Evan Nappen 23:06 Well, Teddy, historically, historically the KKK were Southern Democrats. That was a KKK. The Democrats. Teddy Nappen 23:15 Yep, and apparently. Page of 5 8 Evan Nappen 23:16 Well, it hasn’t changed, apparently. Go ahead. Teddy Nappen 23:19 Well, even better, they’re getting back to their roots. We had previously discussed how the they tried to do that whole argument against Bruen and even citing to like, you know, all the racist laws that would deny blacks their rights to carry and ability to possess firearms. Well, sure enough, from The Daily Caller by Harold Hutchinson. Justice Jackson defends Jim Crow laws during Second Amendment case hearing. (https://dailycaller.com/2026/01/20/ketanji-brown-jackson-jim-crow-law-during-2a-case-argument/) If you have that on your bingo card today, you win. So. Evan Nappen 23:59 Your bingo card is Judge Jackson defends Jim Crow racist Black Codes. Teddy Nappen 24:05 Black Code. Specifically Black Codes. Yes, yes. So, this is about the Hawaii challenge. Remember, they’re trying to attack Bruen. And this is our opportunity to really strengthen and end that insanity. Evan Nappen 24:20 Your talking about the Wolford case. Teddy Nappen 24:20 Correct. Evan Nappen 24:22 About sensitive places. Which is very important. That can have great impact on New Jersey, too. Teddy Nappen 24:28 Oh, we’re all very too familiar about the various sensitive places in New Jersey. But this was the part that caught me. During the forum, where the justices are allowed to ask questions and probe the issues of the facts of the case of the law. So, Justice Jackson then turned and decided to go on and say. I just laugh every time I read it. So, I guess I really don’t understand your response to Justice Gorsuch on the Black Codes. I mean, I thought the Black Code, this is Jackson, were being offered under the Bruen test to determine the Constitutionality of this regulation, and that, because we have a test, and that asks us to look at the history and tradition, the fact that the Black Codes were at some point determined themselves unconstitutional, it doesn’t seem to me to be relevant to the assessment that Bruen is asking us for anyway. So, can you say more about that? So to. Evan Nappen 25:35 Do you believe this person is a justice? Teddy Nappen 25:40 Well, I can, I can believe it, because Biden said it himself. He was going to appoint a black woman and regardless of that. So, just take a step back though. Let’s unpack that line right there. It’s not relevant to the fact the laws were found unconstitutional, not relevant to the fact of the constitutionality of the Second Amendment and the and the fact that you are citing, and this is the war on Bruen they are Page of 6 8 making, where they try to say history, text and tradition. Where does history begin? Well, to the Left, apparently, the history begins in the 1860s where you have the various Black Codes and racist gun laws, but you know, to us with the, you know, traditionalists and go and have a little bit further knowledge of history, go back to the very foundation of our country and when the Second Amendment was born. And not only that, this shows you the degree that they hate us and hate guns and are willing to pursue a second amendment oppression agenda, even to the degree that they will utilize unconstitutional purely racist laws of the past to justify prohibitions now that are themselves we can show utilizing institutionalized racism in their enforcement, no less. I mean, they don’t care, as long as they can get the guns and take away the rights. So what if they have to be on the side of racism? That’s fine with them there. Teddy Nappen 27:28 Well, and here’s the reason why I pulled from The Trace where, you know, they absolutely loathe Bruen. This is why they hate it, and this is why they don’t care where length they have to go they cite in. This is from The Trace. (https://www.thetrace.org/projects/bruen-tracker-supreme-court-gun-laws/) 1100 plus. The number of people with felony convictions have used Bruen to challenge the ban on the possession of guns. So, in other words, people that were lawful possession and have unconstitutional laws currently putting them in jail? Oh, now there’s a hammer that is Bruen that can actually help them defend themselves and not be prosecuted. Amazing. Well. And it goes back to race, because blacks are six to one felons to whites, and what is the left pushing? Oh, the disqualifier of a felon, you are sure, because it gets a racial discrimination. It’s six to one again, always pushing the one side of their mouth, claiming to fight for civil rights. Teddy Nappen 28:37 And yet, when it really comes down to the truest of civil rights, they immediately sell it out to pursue a second amendment oppression agenda, yeah, and also the fact they highlight, they highlight this rate of 48% of Republican appointed judges have struck down various gun laws under Bruen, as opposed to the 13 Democrat appointees. So there is political bias for that, you where they’re actually applying the law versus them ignoring the Constitution. But you know, that’s a separate but this is something I want to highlight to everyone. The fact is, if the Left ever take power back, and James Carville has said this, they will pack the court. He said, we’re going to pack the court. We’re going to make a gonna make Puerto Rico a state like everything they can to maintain power. Teddy Nappen 29:30 What are they going to do when they pack the court? Go ahead and read the dissenting of Bruen. I pulled the line right here from buyers, which all of them agree with buyers on this. They refuse, when considering the SEC refuse to consider government interests and just and the challenge to gun regulations regarding the compelling interest to be, in our view, when the court interprets the Second Amendment, it is constitutionally proper and in often necessary. Necessary to consider the serious danger and consequences of gun violence that lead states to regulate when you when they consider gun laws, they have to factor in the gun violence. You know, the propaganda they promote, race manufacturers on a daily basis, by the way, right? That’s what they have to consider when exercising. So whenever you want to exercise the First Amendment, always consider the hate speech. This is why Reagan said, you know, freedom is only what one generation away from being lost. You know, paraphrasing, but that’s what it means. If they get power, they get total power. We’re in for it, so be vigilant, folks. Make sure you vote. Make sure you do your part in our republic, in defending our rights. Page of 7 8 Evan Nappen 30:55 Hey, let me tell you about this week’s GOFU, which is the Gun Owner Fuck Up. We always like to talk about GOFUs, because these are expensive lessons, real cases, real individuals have learned. And I don’t want you, my listeners, to have to repeat these mistakes. And this one is, this comes up at any number of cases, even just this week. And here’s the bottom line on this GOFU, folks. Know what you have. Let me tell you what I mean by that. I get cases all the time where people end up with their property seized and their house gets searched. Now you may say, well, no one has searched my house. Yeah, except it’s so easy in New Jersey to have that happen. All it takes is just some allegation by any party. You don’t even get a chance to say anything till afterwards. After they do the search that red flags you, or puts an unjustified restraining order on you, or just your house has a fire, and the firemen come in there. We’ve seen this happen so many times, so many ways, and something gets discovered that you didn’t even remember that you had. Evan Nappen 32:17 Because remember, New Jersey has turned things into crimes where there was no grandfathering. If you had old magazines that held over 10 rounds, in other words, you could even if you complied with Florio way back in the day and made sure your mags only held 15. Well, if you’ve got 15 round Florio mags, you’ve got felony charges on your hands. Even though they were made compliant way back. Because now it’s 10. That’s just one example. If you have firearm that became non-compliant under New Jersey law and didn’t realize it, there’s just a multitude of things that New Jersey can screw you over with. Please make sure you know what you have and not have anything that you shouldn’t. Because it’s so easy to have boxes of accessories, boxes and you know, lo and behold, what’s in it? An old bump stock or an old large capacity magazine or a trigger crank, or any of the things that were legal, but then New Jersey unilaterally decided it is intrinsically evil and must be turned into felonies for possession. So, folks, know what you have. Evan Nappen 33:37 This is Evan Nappen and Teddy Nappen reminding you that gun laws don’t protect honest citizens from criminals. They protect criminals from honest citizens. Speaker 2 33:48 Gun Lawyer is a CounterThink Media production. The music used in this broadcast was managed by Cosmo Music, New York, New York. Reach us by emailing Evan@gun.lawyer. The information and opinions in this broadcast do not constitute legal advice. Consult a licensed attorney in your state. Page of 8 8 Downloadable PDF TranscriptGun Lawyer S5 E274_Transcript About The HostEvan Nappen, Esq.Known as “America's Gun Lawyer,” Evan Nappen is above all a tireless defender of justice. Author of eight bestselling books and countless articles on firearms, knives, and weapons history and the law, a certified Firearms Instructor, and avid weapons collector and historian with a vast collection that spans almost five decades — it's no wonder he's become the trusted, go-to expert for local, industry and national media outlets. Regularly called on by radio, television and online news media for his commentary and expertise on breaking news Evan has appeared countless shows including Fox News – Judge Jeanine, CNN – Lou Dobbs, Court TV, Real Talk on WOR, It's Your Call with Lyn Doyle, Tom Gresham's Gun Talk, and Cam & Company/NRA News. As a creative arts consultant, he also lends his weapons law and historical expertise to an elite, discerning cadre of movie and television producers and directors, and novelists. He also provides expert testimony and consultations for defense attorneys across America. Email Evan Your Comments and Questions  talkback@gun.lawyer Join Evan's InnerCircleHere's your chance to join an elite group of the Savviest gun and knife owners in America.  Membership is totally FREE and Strictly CONFIDENTIAL.  Just enter your email to start receiving insider news, tips, and other valuable membership benefits.   Email (required) *First Name *Select list(s) to subscribe toInnerCircle Membership Yes, I would like to receive emails from Gun Lawyer Podcast. (You can unsubscribe anytime)Constant Contact Use. Please leave this field blank.var ajaxurl = "https://gun.lawyer/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php";

Today, we go deep on swimming but keep it relatively simple so you can work on things that matter and lock them in. We talk about some of the most important fundamentals regarding swimming: breathing, body position, and body control. There will be big wins in your swimming if you can master the basic principles of swimming. We also get into how you should be breaking up your week regarding form, intensity, and endurance. We'll look at getting a bigger return for your energy investment, why the hips are critical, why you're probably too tense in the water, and the soon to be famous Light Switch Test. Topics: Does op 20 swimming list hold up? Swimming and focus on the details Obsession over aero and watts but not swimming 90 Day Challenge Picking up swimming later in life Correct form + muscular endurance End of Ironman running form Uncomfortable doing hard swims? Efficient form for return of energy investment Day One - Pick one day for technique (AR) Day two - Focus on top speed and turnover Day Three - Longer swim for muscular endurance How to breathe Why to breathe every stroke Breath 2-4 Bilateral breathing?? Build a strong side Body position Head is number one Forehead down Body Control Head raises - body sinks A body drill with paddles Outside cues to get a better feel for the water Video from the front cue Splayed out? Hips way too open Hip control Steering wheels in swimming The Light Switch Test   Mike Tarrolly - mike@c26triathlon.com Robbie Bruce - robbie@c26triathlon.com

Remove These Foreign Judges! Trump Warns Cuba “Make a Deal Before it's Too Late” SUBJECT TO THE JURISDICTION!—Judges Pretend This Doesn't Exist! The 14th Amendment doesn't say “born here, period.” It says born here and subject to the jurisdiction thereof—a phrase with a precise, debated, and documented meaning at ratification. That meaning was exclusive political allegiance to the United States, not mere presence. Courts and media pretend this language doesn't exist because it's inconvenient. But constitutional text isn't optional. If judges won't enforce the words as written and intended, they aren't interpreting the Constitution—they're rewriting it. And when that happens, citizenship stops being law and becomes politics. Watch this video at- https://youtu.be/rr04f0Oktn4?si=m8oTn6Yfu0KR3d0l The Andrew Branca Show 274K subscribers 8,788 views Jan 14, 2026 "BRANCA FOR SCOTUS" MUGS! https://thebrancashow-shop.fourthwall... JOIN OUR COMMUNITY! Exclusive Members-only content & perks! Only ~17 cents/day! $5/month:    / @thebrancashow   00:00:00 — Judges Blocking Trump Were Born Abroad 00:01:00 — Birthright Citizenship Isn't Automatic 00:02:00 — “Subject to the Jurisdiction” Explained 00:03:00 — Political Loyalty Is the Real Test 00:04:00 — What the 14th Amendment Actually Meant 00:05:00 — Foreign Nationals ≠ American Citizens 00:06:00 — Judges With Dual Allegiances 00:07:00 — DEI Replaces Merit on the Bench 00:08:00 — Confirmed by the Skin of Their Teeth 00:09:00 — Identity First, America Second 00:10:00 — Cultural Americans Pushed Aside 00:11:00 — This Is How the Courts Were Captured Visit Here: https://lawofselfdefense.com/getthebook "You are wise to buy this material. I hope you watch it, internalize it, and keep it to the forefront whenever you even think of reaching for a gun" -Massad Ayoob (President of the Second Amendment Foundation) The #1 guide for understanding when using force to protect yourself is legal. Now yours for FREE! Just pay the S&H for us to get it to you. ➡️ Carry with confidence, knowing you are protected from predators AND predatory prosecutors ➡️ Correct the common myths you may think are true but get people in trouble ​➡️ Know you're getting the best with this abridged version of our best-selling 5-star Amazon-rated book that has been praised by many (including self-defense legends!) for its easy, entertaining, and informative style. ​➡️ Many interesting, if sometimes heart-wrenching, true-life examples Get Your Free Book: https://lawofselfdefense.com/getthebook   You Won't BELIEVE What Just Happened in CUBA!!! https://youtu.be/x_wZU1D74PA?si=53OZ0TrVKSGFwa2J Dr. Steve Turley 1.51M subscribers 483,268 views Jan 13, 2026 ► Click https://offer.sierramadreresearch.com... to Get Free Shipping & 59% OFF the Emergency Sleeping Bag Now! The content presented by sponsors may contain affiliate links. When you click and shop the links, Turley Talks may receive a small commission. ——————————————————————— ► Subscribe to stay updated on breaking news, cultural trends, and conservative commentary:    / drsteveturleytv   ————————————————————————— ► Check out our OFFICIAL Clips channel here:    / @turleyclips   ————————————————————————— WATCH NEXT: Trump Is Doing Something HUGE with CUBA!!!    • Trump Is Doing Something HUGE with CUBA!!!