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Welcome!   For all of my listeners who purchased my course on Improving Windows Security - THANK YOU! We have a whopper of a warning this week about what the Department of Homeland Security is planning under the Biden Administration -- They are going to let Big Tech and Private Companies create the NO-Fly and Terrorist Watch Lists on their behalf -- Scary beyond measure.  Then Apple is doing more to protect your privacy.  We have another hack of a Commercial VPN provider and there is more so be sure to Listen in. For more tech tips, news, and updates, visit - CraigPeterson.com. --- Tech Articles Craig Thinks You Should Read: DHS Preparing to Use Private Contractors to “Scour Public Data and Social Media” To Compile Dissident Citizens for Watch List and No-Fly Lists Another Reason to hate VPNs -- Feds say hackers are likely exploiting critical Fortinet VPN vulnerabilities Mark Zuckerberg's cell phone number is among leaked personal data from 533 MILLION Facebook users, including two other founders that have been released for FREE by hackers How scammers siphoned $36B in fraudulent unemployment payments from the US Are self-driving cars safe? Will they ever be? Fender bender in Arizona illustrates Waymo’s commercialization challenge Apple is enforcing its new privacy standards and rejecting apps - New wave of App Store rejections suggests iOS 14.5, new iPad may be imminent My biggest complaint about Android? The lack of security updates. Google is trying to solve it -- What we’re expecting from Google’s custom “Whitechapel” SoC in the Pixel 6 NFTs Weren’t Supposed to End Like This Embracing a Zero Trust Security Model Turns out Most Manufacturing, Water Supply, and Power Companies Use Controllers with a Security Severity Score of 10 out of 10 Chromebooks outsold Macs worldwide in 2020, cutting into Windows market share Clubhouse is the New Up-and-Comer but  Security and Privacy Lag Behind Its Explosive Growth New York sues to shut down 'fraudulent' Coinseed crypto platform Former SolarWinds CEO blames intern for 'solarwinds123' password leak WhatsApp will basically stop working if you don't accept the new privacy policy TikTok breaching users’ rights “on a massive scale”, says European Consumer Group --- Automated Machine-Generated Transcript: Craig Peterson: [00:00:00] We're going to be talking about a fender bender in Arizona and when will these autonomous cars be safe, at least measured safe.  We've got a new wave of app store rejections from Apple. That means a couple of things, including better privacy for all of us. Hello, everybody. Craig Peterson here. Thanks for joining us today.  This is an interesting question, because we are looking at a future that we assume anyways is going to be full of autonomous vehicles. Why autonomous? What does it mean? There are various levels of autonomous, degrees, if you will. Everything from what we have today in a lot of cars, which is an assist cruise control, that'll keep you a certain distance from the car in front of you. We've got assisted braking control, where the car notices, Oh, wait a minute. Someone just hit the brakes right in front of you. I should apply the brakes and it hits the brakes even before your foot is pushing down.  Another way to do this is if you slam your foot on the brake, the car assumes you know something that it doesn't, and it increases the force that you're pushing down with. So even though you might just hit the brake fast and not necessarily hard the car will make it hard.  If you think about these types of braking, for instance, you can start to realize where we're running into a problem when it comes to defining whether or not autonomous vehicles are safe.  Bottom line is autonomous vehicles, which are all the way on the other side of this scale, it started with the brakes and now is hopefully going to end with a car that just drives itself. That's everybody's goal, Ford and GM and Chrysler- Fiat, whatever they're called nowadays of course, these autonomous vehicle companies, such as Tesla. We're going to see a way of measuring them that's different than we've ever seen before.  Right now, if you have a motor vehicle, you have a driver's license, most likely. And do you have insurance. Again, most likely and you have insurance because stuff happens. You don't really mean to hit something. You don't mean to wander out of your lane and end up in the woods. Right?  There's a lot of different things that can happen to you, including having another driver get into your way. My wife has been rear-ended. I was rear-ended. She had a beautiful little car, a little MG, and I can tell to this day that she absolutely loved that little car and she used to drive it around and go down to work. I think it was at Baxter Travenol and she'd be driving down there, just having a great time in Southern California. While she was at a stoplight and somebody rear-ended her and totaled her car. Which is just an absolute shame that wasn't her fault. Was it?  I got rear-ended, I've been ruined it, I think two or three times, never to the point that she was at, where the vehicle had major damage, let alone have to be written off, but it happened right. People aren't attentive. They misjudged the distance. It might be following too close for the conditions, rain or snow or fog or ice. There's a lots of reasons. So we have insurance and we have a driver's license to prove that we indeed at least understand the basics of driving. We passed a test, right? What is it? 70% pass rate, which frankly, isn't such a great rate if you get right down to it.  Anyway, how do we measure these cars? I mentioned the rear end collisions for a very specific purpose. These autonomous cars are racking up millions of miles on  roads out West, really California, Arizona is a very popular place for them to be tested because they don't have a whole lot of weather conditions to worry about. The roads are there and they're not changing very much, particularly in Southern California. They've all been built and there's not another square inch that isn't paved, including people's front lawn, which just absolutely boggled my mind. Why would you have a cement slab for front lawn anyways? That's California for you. These cars driving millions of miles in California are having accidents. They're not having these types of accidents you and I have.  There is a police report that was obtained by the Phoenix new times this last week that revealed a minor Waymo related crash. Now this crash occurred last October and it isn't the only one. This is, kind of, a pattern, but these have not been publicly reported until now.  I'm going to read here just a quick paragraph from what the new times in Phoenix had to say, "a white Waymo minivan" Waymo, of course, Google's little spinoff, to make these autonomous vehicles. "A white Waymo mini-van was traveling westbound in the middle of three westbound lanes on Chandler Boulevard in autonomous mode when it unexpectedly breaked for no reason." "A Waymo backup driver behind the wheel at the time told Chandler police that all of a sudden the vehicle began to stop and gave a code to the effect of stop recommended and came to a sudden stop without warning." A red Chevy Silverado pickup behind the vehicle swerved to the right, but clipped its back panel causing minor damage." No one was hurt. Overall Waymo has a pretty strong safety record.  By the way, that was from an article over at ARS Technica. They have more than 20 million testing miles in the Southwest United States.  If you think about it.  I was adding these numbers up, 20 million miles. My wife and I, we have put well more than a million miles on cars.  That's what happens when you have eight kids, right? Over the years you rack it up, 250,000 this car, 300,000 on that car. Yeah. It  adds up. That's a lot of miles.  If you start looking at how many miles the average person drives a year and start doing some comparisons with the accident numbers, you'll see really that the autonomous vehicles are having far fewer accidents. Fewer accidents involving a death, which is actually very good, but the accidents it's having, even though they tend to be minor are usually the fault of the other driver. A large majority, in fact of the accidents where these Waymo vehicles, this is according to Waymo, large majority of those crashes have been the fault of the other driver.  So what is the fault of the other driver? Who was at fault here? If that red Chevy Silverado pickup truck hit that Waymo autonomous car, it's the Chevy's fault. Why did the Chevy do it? It isn't just because he's driving a Chevy or because it's red or a pickup, he hit that car most likely, I don't know, I'm not talking to the guy, but most likely because the car did something unexpected.  If you read again, that police report it saying that even the driver quote unquote, in, in the Waymo car, this white minivan, who's sitting there to make sure the minivan doesn't run somebody over, that driver said, it was all of a sudden it began to stop. It all of a sudden began to stop and gave this code about a stop recommended and stopped with a warning. Put all of those things in a pot and stirred up and what do you have? You now have a different way of driving.  See that Chevy Silverado, if he's a good driver, he's looking ahead right down the road. If you look too close in front of you, you're going to be over-correcting. You're going to be steering all over the place. You're not going to go in a straight line. So with experience, you're looking down the road, two, three, four minimum car lengths ahead. Depends how fast you're going and that's where you're aiming.  You don't see an obstruction in front of that Waymo minivan. So you're not starting to slow down. It's just like I come up to your traffic light there's cars in front of me, and that light is red. I'm not going to be accelerating and then leaning on the brake, like so many people do. I see,  there's a red light ahead. There's cars stopped at the light. I'm just going to coast to a stop. Right? Save some energy. You save some brake pads. Stop global warming by not heating up those brake pads.  It's not something most people expect. I've never been rear-ended by doing that, but I've certainly been given the finger for doing that even though I tend to get to the cars in front of me, right? About the time the light turns green.   It's fascinating to look at, but what's going to happen? What is ultimately the way to determine how safe these cars are? We cannot use the types of assessments that our insurance companies are using.  Rear end collisions, like this, rarely get anyone killed. That's where the real high expenses come in.  The driver in the back is usually considered to be at fault.  But, what happens when the self-driving cars suddenly comes to the stop in the middle of the road. It's interesting to think about it, isn't it?   Waymo's vehicles sometime hesitate longer than a human would because they have to do all kinds of computations and consider complex situations that they're not used to.   If you've ever written code, say a hundred lines of code. It's going to be in case with cars millions of lines, but out of a hundred lines of code, about 90% of it is for the edge conditions. In other words, things that are unlikely to happen.  So when something weird happens that car's going to hesitate, and that frankly is a problem, the idiosyncrasies of self driving cars. We're going to talk about a wave of app store rejections by Apple iOS for your iPhone, iPad, et cetera. We'll tell you why right here.  You're listening to Craig Peterson, online Craig peterson.com. Apple is making another major change in order to give us more privacy.  I just started this, Improving Windows Privacy and Security Course. If you using an Apple iOS device, you're halfway there. Hello, everybody. Craig Peterson here. Thanks for tuning in . You can always hear me online@craigpeterson.com slash podcast.  Apple has been really the only major vendor out there in the smartphone industry to really have security as their prime motivation. Okay, you could argue money istheir prime motivation, right?  Apple has always tried to be secure. The hardware is quite secure. They haven't licensed their operating system to third parties and that gives them control. Like you can't have anywhere else.  Think about all of the different Android-based smartphones that are out there. There are thousands of different models.  Within each model, sometimes there are dozens of different hardware configurations. So, Google comes out with a security patch and sends it on out to the vendors, well actually makes it available for the vendors to pick up. Then the vendors go and grab it, and they have to test it, and they have to work in their own code, and then they have to work in all of the device drivers stuff, and they have to package it up.  They have to test it on all of the different models. Just think about Samsung, how many models Samsung has, just by itself, a whole lot of models.  It is almost impossible for Android phones to get security patches. Any Android phone that's more than two years old is guaranteed to not get security patches. I talked last weekend about what Samsung is doing to try and solve this. Finally, they must be listening to the show. Samsung had been more or less supporting it's top of the line models for about two years. If you bought a top of the line Galaxy phone from Samsung or another real top hot model, you might get security updates for a couple of years, and that's kind of it. Forget about it beyond that, which is why I said, if you absolutely must use Android, there's only one vendor you can use in that Samsung.  There's only one model phone that you can buy, which is Samsung top of the line phone, and you have to replace it every two years. So Samsung has come out now and said, We're going to provide support security support for our phones for five years. So they're trying to compete with Apple here. Apple has long provided support for five years. And as we saw just a couple of weeks ago with this big act of zero day attack against Apple iOS devices. They will actually provide security updates for much longer than five years, but it's way easier to provide security updates for 30 models of phones than it is for a few hundred models, which is what Samsung has. Expect Samsung to narrow down their product line and also to only really be providing support for the top models within their product lines.  Now, here's what Apple is doing right now. Apple is starting to reject some of these apps that have been in the app store for a long time, as well as new apps. They're rejecting them for a couple of reasons. The biggest reason is that as of iOS 14.5, Apple is requiring all of the vendors to tell you when you go to the app store, what information of yours they're storing, they're using, and they're selling. Okay. Pretty big deal. Isn't it? It's pretty bad deal, frankly, when you get right down to it for facebook and others. Facebook took out full page ads in major newspapers in the US saying, Oh, Apple can't do this. This is terrible. It's going to destroy a small business.  They said, it's going to destroy small business because Facebook can't pry into our lives as much. You know how it is. People say all the time, they're saying, Hey, I, why am I getting these ads? I've never even searched for it and somehow it's coming up.  There's a number of reasons why, but the bottom line is called big data. These apps like Facebook use all kinds of big data to figure out what we might like and part of that is based on what our friends are searching for. So, it puts together this massive mesh and figures it all out. Something that the Obama campaign really pioneered when Facebook gave them all of the data that they had on everyone and anyone.  I'm sitting here shaking my head because somehow that's okay, but having this Cambridge Analytica company do some of it from a paid standpoint and not get wholesale data somehow that was the most evil thing that ever happened.  They forgot about Obama, but you know, I guess that's political.  I criticize both sides of the aisle. I am an equal opportunity criticizer. They deserve it.  We've got Apple now telling Facebook and every other app developer, you have to tell the users. In fact, if you go right now to your phone, your iPad or your iPhone, or the iPod touch, you'll see if you go to the app and you scroll up. You can open a little tab and that tab will all of a sudden become a very big part of the screen because it's tell me what this app is doing with my data. If you don't tell it, Apple's going to block you from the store.  Google has, of course, a bunch of apps. You've probably used them things like Google maps, which I try not to use. Use the Apple maps its gotten much, much better than it was, and they're not tracking you and selling your data like Google does. Google has its own little app for doing searches. Of course, you've got Google Chrome, all these different things from Google. Google stopped updating their apps on the Apple app store because Apple was telling Google, you have to tell people what your doing with their data. Google didn't want to do it. We just want to update the apps, kind of, loophole that was in this whole thing.  They can't not update it forever. Now we're seeing rejections of these developers.  Here is a few lines again from ARS Technica, from a rejection letter that some developers received. "We found in our review that your app collects user and device information to create a unique identifier for the users, devices, apps that fingerprint the user's device in this way are in violation of the Apple developer program license agreement and are not appropriate for the app store."  Now, we're not talking about the fingerprint, as in the fingerprint reader, we're saying that they are looking for unique information about the phone, so they know it's you, they can put it all together. That letter goes on specifically, "your app uses algorithmically converted device and usage data to create a unique identifier in order to track the user."  Apple is really making it clear now to developers. To the ire of Facebook and Google and other companies who rely on that type of tracking to maximize the advertising revenue.  I can understand that, right. I really can. It's also clear that this app tracking transparency means that apps that are trying to track you by any means without your consent are going to face rejection. Bravo to Apple, yet again.  Now I'm not so happy about the statement they made this week. Yeah, Georgia. That's another thing entirely.  Stick around everybody. We will be right back talking more about technology. We're going to talk a little bit about what Google's planning to do in order to help with all of  these Android developers and people that are selling them. Carriers, et cetera. How's Google is going to help them with their security updates. This is an interesting way to do it. It's exactly what Apple's been doing.  You're listening to Craig Peterson. Apple's really gotten into the chip business and it isn't just because they wanted a chip for their iPhone that they could control.  In fact, Apple has even gone further and looks like Google's going to do the same. Hello, everybody. Craig Peterson here.  Google has been an interesting beast over the years. Remember they used to say that their motto was don't be evil. Then a few years ago they removed it from the website and evil seems to be their middle name, a little bit.  One of the things Google has been doing is offering an operating system that can be used and is being used to run almost anything. We're talking mostly, however, about smartphones, certainly by number.  That's called Android. Android was a little operating system, of sorts, that was developed by a kid actually Google bought it from him. They have continued to develop on it. It's not a bad little platform. The biggest problems with it really have to do with what I talked about a little earlier, the security, right? Getting the updates.  I mentioned how Apple really has a walled garden. They have their own environment where everything is contained so they can control it all. Google cannot control anything other than the Google pixel phone.  It cannot control what Samsung is doing with the operating system, Android can run on pretty much any chip that's manufactured from Intel chips, through all of these, a little fast chips, these snapdragons and many others that have been used over the years. There's a lot of them.  One of the biggest problems, of course, is the chip set. I've mentioned that Google can come out with an operating system release to fix some security problems, and then those are pushed out, but nothing's done by the carrier or maybe the developer of the handset. What Google's decided to do is make their own walled garden.  If you buy an Apple iPhone, you buy an Apple iPad, or you buy a new Apple Mac, they're all using the same basic chip set that's designed by Apple. They have some fabs where they're making some of these components. Apple has done that so again, they can control it even better. They don't have to pay that exorbitant Intel tax.  Also over at Apple trying to figure out how can we avoid the Qualcomm tax. It isn't just a Qualcomm, you know, I say tax, as in you pay way more for Intel than you would for another equivalent or better chip. In fact, I have an Apple right in front of me here, an Apple Mac. This is a Mac mini M1 based. It is way faster and cheaper than the Intel version.  You can still get the Intel version of the mini $200 more. There's your Intel tax. And it's about half the speed for some of these things.  For instance, Adobe said that this mac with the Apple chip set in it can be twice as fast as the Mac, same Mac with an Intel processor.  Apple is moving away from not just Intel now, but from Qualcomm. Google wants to move away from Qualcomm.  In many of these smartphones, including the pixels, they're using a Qualcomm Snapdragon chip. The Qualcomm makes a lot of different types of chips. They also tend to make the radio chips that are in our smartphones. The radio chips are used to talk to the cell towers, just send data to send our voice. That's what they're used for.   Apple is hiring developers right now to develop their own chip set. It might not be there for 5G. It might be 6G. In fact, that's what the advertisements for those jobs were about as 6G. But they're going to move away from all of these standard devices that are very expensive and hard to control.  Google is saying the biggest problem we have with making sure that users of the Android operating system get updates is Qualcomm. Interesting, isn't it?  Google is coming out with, what's known as a system on a chip, SOC. What that is, think of the motherboards of years past.  One of my first computers was an IBM three 60 30 mainframe, and this thing was huge and not much power.  It's just amazing to think about, but it really could sling data around even way back then. It was a nice little computer, if you will. Think about how big that motherboard was. Yeah. It had the main processor. You had the memory controllers, the bus controllers, you had everything right that needed to be there to support it. All of your IO stuff. I might have had serial UARTS built into it, et cetera, et cetera. A system on a chip is basically you got one chip and that's pretty much all you need. Obviously you got to have memory and you're going to have some sort of storage, other more permanent storage devices, but that's the basics of what a system on a chip is.  Google reportedly anyways, that the pixel six is expected to ship with Google custom white chapel is what it's going to be called system on a chip internally.  It's referred to as a GS101. And that GS could be for Google silicone. There's all kinds of people speculating that seems to be the kind of the big one.  There is a pixel six in the works. We do know that. Nine to five Google, is a website out there and they've done a lot of little spying on what's going on, but apparently it's a, I'm not going to get into all of the details, but basically it's going to have three CPU cores in it and everything. It's going to be really quite nice. A large arm core for single threaded work loads and three medium cores for multi work. We've had a problem over the years. How do you make your computer faster? And you can use Intel's approach, which is let's just throw more processors at it. That's great if the software you're using can handle multithreaded environments where you have multiple processors. Okay. You got multiple processors, but how about the access to the memory? What if the process is all one access to the same area of memory at the same time? Then you have to start blocking. It gets very complicated, very fast. Intel chips fade very, very fast. You don't have to get to too many CPU's before all of a sudden the addition of one more CPU cuts the performance of that new CPU by 50%. It really doesn't. It really doesn't take much.  They're all trying to get away from Intel. Many of them have, right? Obviously Google Android phones outside of Google as well have been based on non-Intel hardware for awhile, but they're also now trying to get rid of Qualcomm. And I think that's a good thing. Ultimately, it's going to help out a lot. We're going to see more of this thing in the future, and we're all going to benefit from it, right?  With the Google having control over their system on a chip, at least their pixel, it's going to make their life easier, which means if you buy a pixel, you're probably going to be able to get the upgrades better. Thinking in the back of my mind that maybe Samsung is looking to do the same thing. Maybe Samsung's looking to move away from the Qualcomm chips and move to Google's new system on a chip. I have no idea. I have no inside information, but that would seem to make sense for me, particularly if they want to provide support for years. By the way, Google is in the embarrassing position of offering less support for Android devices than Samsung, which is now up to three years of major updates, which by the way, is Qualcomm's maximum. Samsung has four years of security updates for some of their devices as well.  Stick around. You're listening to Craig Peterson.  You can find me online@craigpeterson.com. Don't go anywhere. You've heard about the no fly list, right? Yeah. How about the terrorist and other watch lists? These lists that people have found it's impossible to get their names off of, even when there was no reason to be there in the first place?  Well, I got some news. Hi, everybody. Craig Peterson here.  Department of Homeland security has been criticized for many things over the years. One of the things that's been criticized quite a bit about is this watch list that they maintain. They have a watch list for no fly. People get put on that watch list.  It was originally intended to be, we know this guy's a terrorist, so we're going to put them on, right.  It's not always the way it goes. It starts out almost innocuous and before you know, it, there's all kinds of people getting caught in this big, big net.  That's what's been happening lately and it's going to get worse because the Department of Homeland security has decided that they are going to hire regular old companies to help develop this no fly list and also this terrorist watch list.  Apparently these companies are going to be looking through all kinds of public data, maybe some private data, social media in order to provide information for this new domestic terror watch list. So you look at that and say, okay, I can see that.  We've talked to before problem, man, 20 years ago, I think I was talking about these data aggregators and the problems they create. Cause they're taking public records, they're putting them all together. They're figuring out how it all meshes together and they come up with a pretty accurate picture of who you are.  Now, I've got to say when I've had them on my show here before I was talking to them and said, okay, I want to look up my own records. So I looked them up on their platforms. I did not see a single one that was more than about 30% correct about me.  Now, this was again, some years ago. I think it's been probably almost a decade since I last spoke with the data aggregators. They really are trying to blend into the background, nowadays. This data that's put together by these artificial intelligence systems is not necessarily that accurate and that gets to be a real problem.  So who is DHS gonna hire? Well, from the description that has been reported on here by the Conservative Tree House, it is going to be big tech, specifically, Google, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, and more.  DHS is going to put them under contracts to hire and organize internal monitoring teams to assist the government by sending information on citizens, they deem dangerous again, what could go wrong?  Our government is not allowed to spy on us. How many times have we talked about this? You have of course the five eyes and then they added more and more. These are governments that spy on each other's citizens for each other.  So for instance, US cannot spy on US citizens. So we have an arrangement with the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, to spy on the US citizens for us that makes sense to you. Can you believe that?  We spy on their citizens for them and they spy on our citizens for us and all is good.  What's happening here is The Department of Homeland security realizes it cannot spy on us directly.  This is what they've been doing for very long time, they go to the data aggregators and they pull up the data that they want.  They want to see if this guy maybe selling illicit drugs and they pull up public records. What cars does he have? How many homesdo they own?  Who's he dating?  Has she all of a sudden been buying diamonds and mink coats? What's going on here?  So now we're seeing that the US intelligence apparatus. It's really now going live quickly, to put together lists of Americans who could be potential threats to the government and need to be watched. Now it's all well, and good. It's just like president Biden this week saying, Oh, we're going to have these red flag laws. We're going to stop the sale of certain types of firearms and things. It all sounds good. The reality is we have known about some of these people before, right? This is all just a red herring that the federal government is doing right now because the real problem is these terrorists, the domestic and otherwise that have shot up schools have almost always been reported to law enforcement as dangerous people. Some of them have even been on lists that say they cannot buy firearms, and yet they get firearms. Bad guys.  It's like here in the US. Where does our fentanyl come from?  We're not making a domestically. Our fentanyl is coming from China often through Mexico, and it is killing people here in the US. The whole George Floyd incident, and what's happening with fentanyl in his system, right. The question is, did the police operate properly? What killed him? According to the coroner's report? It was the fentanyl. that killed him.  One way or the other that fentanyl got here from China and is being used on the streets and people are dying from it. Fentanyl's illegal. How, how could they possibly get it? It's illegal for a felon to be in possession of a firearm. How did it felon get the firearm? The police were warned about people in San Bernardino, California, they were warned. The people in that business told the police. We were calling. we're really worried about this guy and nothing happened. So now what are we going to do? We're going to cast an even wider net, when we cannot take care of the reports that come in right now. We're going to get even more reports and they're going to be coming from these AI systems. Again, what, what could possibly go wrong here? It's absolutely incredible. They look at these reports, they try and determine are these actionable, the FBI or other law enforcement agencies. They've been deciding no, it's not actionable. They've been right sometimes and they've been wrong other times. This is a real problem.  What shocked me is NBC news with Andrea Mitchell, NBC news. Not a centrist news organization, very far left. NBC news is even reporting on this. They're realizing the consequences. Here's a quote from NBC. "DHS planning to expand relationships with companies that scour public data for intelligent and to better harness the vast trove of data it already collects on Americans." "The department is also contemplating changes to its terrorist. Watch listing process." Absolutely amazing. "Two senior Biden administrative administration officials told NBC news that Homeland security whose intelligence division did not publish a warning of potential violence before the January sixth Capitol riots, is seeking to improve its ability to collect and analyze data about domestic terrorism, including the sorts of public social media posts that threatened a potential attack on the Capitol." "DHS is expanding its relationships with other companies that scour public data for intelligence. One of the senior officials said, and also to better harness the vast trove of data it already collects on Americans, including travel and commercial data through customs and border protection, immigration, customs enforcement, the coast guard, secret service, and other DHS components". There you go from NBC news. So remind yourself what the FBI contractors with access to the NSA database already did in their quest for political opposition, research and surveillance, and then get everything we were just talking about. The director of national intelligence declassified, a FISA judge's ruling. So this is judge James Boasberg, 2018 ruling, where the FBI conducted tens of thousands of unauthorized NSA database queries. Do you remember that story? Very, very big deal. This judge obviously passing these things out like candy and the FBI misusing its power and authority. Again, what could possibly go wrong?  By the way, President Obama apparently has been telling us that we should use the no fly list to keep people from owning guns.  There's already a database maintained by the FBI.  This whole thing is, as I said, a red herring things are going to get really bad if law enforcement does this. Frankly, they're going to do it. There's no two ways about it.  We have to be more careful about keeping our information, our data private. That's what this whole course that started last week was all about. Improving your Windows privacy and security. Locking it down because the way Microsoft ships windows and the way it installs and configures itself by default does not keep your data private. That's a problem. So that's what we're going through. Hopefully, you were able to get into that before we closed it Friday night.  Remind yourself of this and just keep chanting nothing bad could happen here, right? Ah, the joys of all of these computers and databases and the way the work in nowadays.  By the way, if your information is out there at all, even if you use fake names and numbers and addresses and things like I do when it's not required. Right.  I don't lie to the bank. I don't lie to the IRS. Nobody else needs to know the truth. Even if you have been, keep it private, good chance that they know who you are and where you are. Crazy. Crazy.  Hey, visit me online. Craig peterson.com. Make sure you subscribe to my weekly newsletter. Hi everybody. Of course, Craig Peterson here. We're going to talk today about these drone swarms, your personal privacy risk tolerance breach highlights here over orgs individuals. What's going on? Ransomwares way up. As usual, a lot to talk about. Hey, if you miss part of my show, you can always go online to Craig peterson.com. You'll find it there. If you're a YouTube fan CraigPeterson.com/youtube.  This is really an interesting time to be alive. Is that a good way to put it right? There used to be a curse "May you live in interesting times" Least that was the rumor.  One of the listeners pointed this out, there was a TV show that was on about five years ago, apparently, and it used this as a premise. I also saw a great movie that used this as a premise and it was where the President was under attack. He was under attack by drones.  The Biden administration has a policy now where they're calling for research into artificial intelligence, think the Terminator, where you can have these fighting machines.  These things should be outlawed, but I also understand the otherside where if we don't have that tech and our enemies end up having that tech, we are left at a major disadvantage. Don't get me wrong here. I just don't like the idea of anybody doing Terminators, Skynet type of technology. They have called for it  to be investigated.  What we're talking about right now is the drone swarms. Have you seen some of these really cool drones that these people called influencers? Man, the term always bothers me. So many people don't know what they're doing. They just make these silly videos that people watch and then they make millions, tens of millions, I guess it's not silly after all.  These influencers make these videos. There are drones that they can use if they're out hiking, you might've noticed or mountain biking or climbing. They have drones now that will follow them around, automatically. They are on camera. It's following them. It focuses in on their face. They can make the drone get a little closer or further away. As long as the sky is clear there's no tree branches or anything in the way that drone is going to be able to follow them, see what they're doing and just really do some amazing shots. I've been just stunned by how good they are.  Those drones are using a form of artificial intelligence and I'm not going to really get into it right now, but there are differences between machine learning and artificial intelligence, but at the very least here, it's able to track their faces. Now this is where I start getting really concerned. That's one thing. But they are apparently right now training. When I say they, the Chinese and probably us, too, are designing drones that not only have cameras on them, but are military drones.  They have without them having to have a central computer system controlling them or figuring out targets, they're able to figure out where there's a human and take them out. These small drones, they're not going to take them out by firing, a 50 caliber round at them. These drones can't carry that kind of firepower. It's just too heavy, the barrels and everything else -- it's a part of that type of a firearm.  We're talking about small drones again. So obviously they're not going to have a missile on them either. What they do is they put a small amount, just a fraction of an ounce, of high explosives on the drone.  The idea is if that drone crashes into you and sets off its explosives, you're dead, particularly if it crashes into and sets off explosives right there by your head. Now that's pretty bad when you get down to it. I don't like the whole Skynet Terminator part of this, which is that the drones are able to find that human and then kill them.  Think of a simple scenario where there is, let's say there's a war going on. Let's use the worst case scenario and, enemy troops are located approximately here. You send the drones out and the drone has of course, GPS built into it, or some other inertial guidance system or something in case GPS gets jammed.  That drone then goes to that area. It can recognize humans and it says, Oh, there's a human and it goes and kills the human. Now that human might be an innocent person. Look at all of the problems we've had with our aerial drones, the manually controlled ones, just the ones that we've been using in the last 10 years where we say, okay, there's a terrorist here. Now they fly it in from, they've got somebody controlling it in Nevada or wherever it might be, and they get their strike orders and their kill orders. They go in and they'd take it out. There are collateral damages. Now that's always been true.  Every war.  Look at Jimmy Stewart. For example, a younger kids probably don't know who it is. Mr. Smith goes to Washington was one of his movies.  He had some great Christmas movies and stuff too. Anyhow, Jimmy Stewart was a bomber. I think he was a pilot actually in World War II.  He flew combat missions over Germany. Think of what we did in Germany, in Japan, where we killed thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds, probably of thousands of civilians. We now think, Oh we're much better than that. We don't do that anymore. We're careful about civilian casualties. Sometimes to the point where some of our people end up getting in harm's way and killed.  For the most part, we try and keep it down.  A drone like this that goes into an area, even if it's a confined area, and we say, kill any humans in this area, there are going to be innocent casualties.  It might even be friendly fire. You might even be taking out some of your own people.  They've said, okay we've got a way around this. What we're going to do is we're going to use artificial intelligence. The drone doesn't just pick out, Oh, this is a human. I'm going to attack that person. It looks at the uniform, it looks at the helmet.  It determines which side they're on.  If they're wearing an American or Chinese uniform, whatever, it might be programmed for it again, it goes into the area, it finds a human and identifies them as the enemy. Then it goes in and hits them and blows up killing that person. That's one way that they are looking to use drones. The other way is pretty, scary. It's, you can defend yourself against a drone like that. You've got a drone coming. You're probably going to be able to hear it. Obviously it depends. That drone gets close. I don't know if you've ever had the kids playing with drones, flying them around you, or you've done the same thing. You can always hit it out of the air, can't you?   If you're military and you have a rifle in your arm, you can just use the rifle and play a little baseball with that drone. There's some interesting stories of people who've been doing that already.  What happens if we're not talking about a drone, we're talking about a drone swarm. I don't know that you could defend against something like that. There have been studies that have been done. So think, you think there nobody's really working this suit? No, they sure are.  What's going to happen? Well, the Indian army is one that has admitted to doing tests and they had a swarm of 75 drones. If you have 75 drones coming after you, let's say you're a high value target. There is no way you're going to be able to defend yourself against them, unless you can duck and cover and they can't get anywhere near you with their high explosives. The Indian army had these Kamikaze-attack drones. They don't necessarily have to even have high explosives on them.   This is a new interpretation under Joseph Biden. Mr. President of the Pentagon's rules of use of autonomous weapons. We've always had to have "meaningful human control." That's the wording that they Pentagon uses meaningful human control over any lethal system. Now that could be in a supervisory role rather than direct control. So they call it "human on the loop" rather than "human in the loop." But this is a very difficult to fight against.  The US army is spending now billions of dollars on new air defense vehicles. These air defense vehicles have cannons two types of missiles, jammers.  They're also looking at lasers and interceptor drones, so they can use the right weapon against the right target at the right time. That's going to be absolutely vital here because it's so cheap to use a drone. Look what happened. What was a year plus ago now? I'm trying to remember, Central America, Venezuela, somewhere in there where El Presidente for life was up giving a speech. I'm sorry. I didn't mean that to be insulting, but that often is what ends up happening. A drone comes up and everybody's thinking: Oh, it's a camera drone, wave to the camera thing. It got very close to the President and then blew up. On purpose, right? They were trying to murder the president. That's a bad thing. He was okay. I guess some of the people got minor injuries, relatively speaking. When we're looking at having large numbers of incoming threats, not just one drone, but many drones, many of those drones may be decoys.  How cheap is it to buy one of these drones? Just like the ones that were used in China over the Olympic stadium, where they were all controlled by a computer. You just have these things, decoys, all you need is a few of them that can blow up and kill the people you want to kill very concerning if you ask me.  We're paying attention to this as are other countries as they're going forward.  We're going to talk about building your privacy risk tolerance profile, because if you're going to defend yourself, you have to know what you're going to defend against and how much defense do you need? Hey, we take risks every day. We take risks when we're going online. But we're still getting out of bed. We're still going into the bathroom. We're still driving cars. How about your online privacy risk tolerance? What is it? Hi everybody. Thanks for joining me.  We all take risks, and it's just part of life. You breathe in air, which you need. You're taking the risk of catching a cold or the flu, or maybe of having some toxic material inhaled. We just don't know do we?  Well on any given day, when we go online, we're also facing risks. And the biggest question I have with clients when I'm bringing businesses on or high value individuals who need to protect themselves and their information is: okay... what information do you have that you want to try and protect? And what is your personal privacy risk tolerance? So we build a bit of her profile from that and you guys are going to get the advantage of doing that right now without having to pay me my team. How's that for simple?  First of all, we got to understand that nothing is ever completely safe. When you're going online, you are facing real risks and no matter what people tell you, there is no way to be a hundred percent sure that your data is going to be safe online or that your individual personal, private information is going to be safe while you're online. And there's a few reasons for this.  The most obvious one, and the one we think about, I think the most has to do with advertising. There are a lot of marketers out there that want to send a message to us at exactly the right time. The right message too obviously? So how can they do that? They do that by tracking you via Google. So Google that's their whole business model is to know everything they can about you and then sell that information. Facebook, same thing. Both of those companies are trying to gather your information. They're doing it when you are not just on their sites, but when you are on other people's sites. Third party sites are tracking you. In fact, if you go to my website @ craigpeterson.com, you'll see that I do set a Facebook cookie. So I know that you're on Facebook and you visited my site and you might be interested in this or that.  Now I'm not a good marketer. Because I'm not using that information for anything, at least not right now, hopefully in the future, we'll start to do some stuff. But that's what they're doing. And the reason why I don't think it's a terrible thing don't know about you. I don't think it's bad that they know that I'm trying to go ahead and buy a car right now. Because if I'm trying to buy a car, I want advertisements about cars and I don't want to advertisements about the latest Bugatti or Ferrari, whatever it might be. I want a Ford truck, right? Just simple something I can haul stuff around. You already know I have a small farm, and I need a truck because you need one. I'd love to have a front loader and everything too, those costs money and I ain't got it. So that makes sense to me.  And now there's the other side, which is the criminal side. And then there's really a third side, which is the government side. So let's go with the government side here. In the United States our government is not supposed to track us. Now I say "supposed to," because we have found out through Edward Snowden and many other means that they have been tracking us against the law. And then they put in some laws to let them do some of it, but our government has been tracking us. And one of the ways it tracks us is through the "five eyes" program and now that's been expanded and then expanded again. But the five eyes program is where the United States asks the United Kingdom. Hey, listen. Hey bro. Hey, we can't and we're not allowed to track our citizens, but your not us.  How about we have you track,  Trump and his team? Yeah, that's what we'll do.  So there's an example of what evidence is showing has happened. So they go to a third party country that's part of this agreement,d where all of these countries have gotten together, how signed papers and said, yeah, we'll track each other citizens for each other. And that way the United States could say, Hey, we're not tracking you. And yet they're tracking because they're going to a third party country. And the United States, if you are going out of the country, then again, they can track you. Any communications are going out of the country. So that's the government side. And then of course, there's governments that track everything. You look at China and how they control all of the media. They control all of the social networking sites. They basically control everything out there.  We have to be careful with all of that stuff because it can and will be used. And we've seen it has been used to really not just harass people, but do things like throw them in prison disappear them. Look at what just happened in China, with the head of China's biggest company, basically the Amazon competitor over there. And he disappeared for months and then came back, just praising the Chinese Communist government and how great it is to have all of these people over there. Just telling them what to do and how to do it.  We obviously don't live in China. We obviously, I think have oligarchs nowadays. We have people who are rich, who are running the country. They're giving money to campaigns, they get the ear. You seen all of the bribery allegations against the Biden crime family, or his brother, his son, other members, himself as well, based on a hundred Biden's laptop. So I don't trust government for those very reasons.  The hackers let's get into the hackers here. When it comes to hackers, there are, again, a few different types. You've got hackers that are working for governments. And what they're doing is in the case of a small government, like North Korea, they're trying to get their hands on foreign currencies so that they can use those currencies to buy grain, to buy oil, coal, whatever it is they might need to buy. You have governments like China and Russia that are trying to basically run World War three. And they're out there with their hacking teams and groups and trying to figure out how do we get into the critical infrastructure in the United States? Okay. So this is how we get in. Okay. We're in over there. So if we ever want to shut down all of the power to New York City, this is what we do.  Now remember, that's what happened back in, in when was that 2004, I guess that was, yeah. I remember I was down in, I was heading actually to New York city and then all of a sudden, all of the power went out. That apparently was an accident, but it didn't need to be an accident. There are all kinds of, allegations about what actually happened there. But that's why China and Russia are trying to get into our systems. And then they obviously want to play havoc. Look at the havoc that was caused in the U S economy by this China virus that came obviously from China for Huan. if they wanted to shut down our economy, they now have proof that's all it takes. And they are working on the genetics of some of these viruses over there in China. And they're trying to modify the genes and they are the running experiments on their troops to enhance them, to make these super soldiers that maybe, need less sleep or less food are stronger or et cetera, et cetera, they are doing that.  So China is a real threat from just a number of different ways. What would it be like if they could shut down our banking system or make it so we don't trust it anymore?  Okay. That's part one of your Personal Privacy Risk Tolerance Profile. Stick around because we're going to talk more about this and what you can do to help you have privacy. What is your online, personal privacy risk tolerance? It's going to vary, I help high value individuals. I help businesses with this, and now I'm helping you as well. So let's get into part two. Craig Peterson here.  When people ask me, what should I do? That is a very nuanced question. At least it's a very nuanced to answer because you could say something like: if you want to be private, use Signal for  messaging and useTorr for web browsing, that's fine. And it works in some ways and not in others. For instance, Tor is a web browser that is like a super VPN.  It is set up so that you're not just coming from one exit point, you're coming from a whole bunch of different points on the internet. So it's hard to track you down. The problem, however, with Tor is the same problem that you have with VPN services. And I talk about this all the time. VPN services do not make your data secure. It does not keep it private. And in the case of VPN services that you might get for free or even buy, and also the case with Tor. Using those VPN services that can make you less secure again. Why did Sutton rob banks? He robbed banks because that's where the money was, where he is a bad guy going to go. If they want easy and quick access to lots of peoples. Private information?  They're going to hack a VPN server aren't they? Yeah. And if they can't hack the VPN server, why not just have server space in the same data center that VPN provider is renting their space from and then hack it from there, try and get in from there. Or maybe get into the service; the data centers will logs or the VPN servers logs, because even when they say they don't log, they all log, they have to log, they have to have your information otherwise, how can they bill you? And the ones that say we don't log, which are those people are "lieing" by the way. But those guys that have these VPN servers and they're trying not to log, they're trying not to log where you're going. They get fooled all of the time as well. Because their servers have logs, even if they're deleted and disappear.  So I just wanted to make it clear that you, I, if you have a low risk tolerance, when it comes to your privacy, Tor is not going to do it for you. VPN services are not going to do it for you. You have to look at all of the individual things you're doing online and then decide based on those. What is it that is the most. Beneficial for you in that particular case. Okay.  So Signal, I brought it up. So let's talk about it for a minute. Signal is the messaging app to use bar none. Signal is encrypted and do, and it is known to be highly secure, which again, Doesn't mean it's a hundred percent, but with Signal, you can talk to people on other platforms. You can have a Mac and talk to somebody on a, on an Android or a windows device.  But another consideration is who are you talking to? If you're talking to other people that have Macs and you don't want your information to get out, but you're not horrifically worried about it, right? You want it to be private. You want end to end encryption. You're better off using iMessage on your Mac.  If you're on Windows or Android, there are not any great built-in messaging apps. WhatsApp. If you listened last week and I've got it up on my website, WhatsApp is not great. They claim it's not horrible, but why would you use it if there's a question use Signal instead. All right. So there's just a lot to consider when we're talking about it, but here is your big bang for the buck thing. That you can do. And that is use password manager. Now we talked about how Google Chromium Google's Chrome and of course now Microsoft edge. Actually it was the other way around Microsoft edge came up with it first and now Google's adding it. But Edge has this password manager built-in. That's all well and good, but I don't know, trust those. I use a third party password manager that is designed for password management and that's all the company does. They're focused on the security behind it, which is why I recommend 1Password and lLastPass. 1Password being my absolute favorite. Use those password managers. That's the biggest bang for your buck if you have a low tolerance for your information, getting out. All right?  Now that will help to enforce good password habits. It will generate passwords for you, both of those, and it'll generate good passwords and it'll keep them for you, which is really great. If you don't want to be tracked while you're browsing online, you can use an ad blocker. I have a couple of webinars I've done on that. If you want a video of one of those webinars to go through that talks about these different blockers ad blockers and others. I'd be glad to send you a link to one of them, but you're going to have to email Me@craigpeterson.com. And I will send you a link to one of those webinars I did on that stuff. No problem. But some websites are going to break when you use an ad blocker. So sometimes you have to turn it off and you have to turn it back on. The ones I tell you  how to use and how to configure, I actually show you a step-by-step we walked through it. Those allow you to turn off that particular ad blocker on an individual site that was broken because of the ad blocker. So pretty straightforward. You don't have to remember to turn it all on and all off. All right.  Now studies are showing that people are concerned about their privacy. In fact, I believe last I saw said that I think it was about 70% of Americans believe that their smart phones are being tracked by advertisers, and the tech companies provide them with the information.  May, 2020 Pew research report talked about this, but 85% of consumers worry, they can trust corporations with their data. So what do you do? Because. Most people don't have the support or the tools. They don't have. I have the money, they didn't get a big inheritance. They're not a high value individual that needs my help and can afford it -- where we go through everything that they do and make sure they have the best solution for each thing, including banking, including going online and trading stocks, all of that stuff. You gotta be very careful with all of that stuff.  I'm really sad that I have to say this here, but there are no online privacy solutions that will work for everybody. And there are no solutions that work in every situation either. So what you need to do is understand what you care the most about. And I think for all of us, what we should care the most about is our financial situation and anything associated with that: our intellectual property, if we're businesses, our bank accounts, all of that sort of stuff is stuff we really should be concerned about. And that means you need to watch it. Make sure you're not sharing stuff that you really don't want to share. Okay?  So even privacy experts like myself, don't lock everything down. We locked most of it down. Particularly since we have department of defense clients, we have to maintain a very high standard.  All right. Stick around and visit me online. CraigPeterson.com. Make sure you sign up for my newsletter. You'll get all of the latest news and the tips I send out every week. I don't want to leave you hanging. We're going to get into a few more things to consider here, because obviously we are going to share some of our personal information. So I'm going to tell you how I share my personal information and it might be a bit of a surprise. Hello everybody. Thanks for listening.  We all enjoy products and services, and that's what I'm saying. When when I talk about security experts, we don't lock everything down. I've used 23 in me. I did that thing, of course, I'm sending in my DNA. That's been an issue in some cases, but that's what I did. I use these online map programs. I use Google maps. I use weighs more than Google maps. I use Apple maps cause I'm trying to figure out how do I get to where I want to go in a reasonable amount of time. But what I do is I lie about the answer to the security questions. Okay. I don't want them to know my dad's name. My mother's maiden name, the street. I was, I grew up on my first school, my first car, none of their business. Because it's a lot of that information is actually publicly available. How many of us on LinkedIn have right there in our profile? Yeah I went to McGill university or I w I grew up here's pictures of my childhood home, and that picture has GPS coordinates in it. So if we use the real information. We are giving away way too much. I use a little phrase I coined here, which is lie to your bank. And you might remember. I did a show on that sometime ago. And the idea here is in your line to the bank about your financial situation, it's nothing like that. You're lying to your bank about this personal information. They don't need to know these personal questions. They give you for their security questions. It's really important to understand all of this stuff. Okay. For instance, this is Jennifer Granick, she's at the ACL, you and she said her dad died recently. And the accountant said it's really important to report the death to credit companies because the answers to many of the security questions are on the public death certificate. So answers to security questions really can be a nightmare, but that doesn't mean you have to give them the right answers. So for instance, I found a site online. I should try and dig that up again, but it generated fake identities. And I had a generate like 5,000 of them for me thinking, okay, they might go at some point and it even generated fake social security numbers, fake phone numbers, names, addresses, everything, everything you'd need for a fake identity. And the idea here isn't to cheat anybody out of anything. The idea is, Hey, Mr. Website, you don't know, you don't need to know who I really am. So on some websites, I'm female some websites I've, I'm only 30 years old on other websites. I'm 80 years old. It doesn't matter. You can call it a lie if you want. But in reality, you're just trying to keep your information straight not and another advantage. Of these password managers. Cause you're trying to keep your information straight, right? It's hard to remember a lie and you have to tell a lie to enforce a lie. You're not, all that stuff your mother told you. And she's right about that too, by the way. But if you're using a password manager, what I do is I create a unique email address. In fact, my email addresses are extremely unique, so I'll use a plus sign as part of my email address and my mail server knows. Oh, okay. That's just Craig trying to track who is using. That email address. So I'll have Craig plus YouTube for instance, or@mainstreamdotnetorcraigpeterson.com. I actually have a whole bunch of domains that I use as well. And if you want a secure email service have look at proton mail. They're actually very good from a security standpoint. So there's nothing illegal about giving them this information. Yeah. You're lying to them, but you gotta keep your lies straight. Another reason to use a password manager because I have the password manager generate my. My password I put in the email, which is unique for every website I go to, I never use that same email address twice if I can avoid it. And then I, and I use aliases too in my email server. And then I go and in my notes section for that website in my password manager, I put in the answers to the security questions and I just make stuff up nonsensical stuff. So it's asking what my first car, it might be a transformational snooze. There you go. I just made something up. So I'll put those notes into my notes in my password manager and save them. So if I ever have to do some sort of a recovery with those guys, it's going to be simple. Because I just look in my password manager, I got to go in there anyways to get my password right. And my email address or username to login. And there it is, there's my security questions. And then the password manager, cause I'm using one password. It has a little database, it keeps and everything in there

EdTech and Curriculum Consultant and Easy EdTech Podcast host Dr. Monica Burns joins me to identify ways that we can hear from ALL of our students. Her suggestion? Select tools that can give our learners choice and agency in how we hear from them! Tune in to hear what tools she suggests! Show notes also available at jakemiller.net/eduducttape-episode-57 Soapbox Moment: “It’s the Chili Dogs’ Fault” Today’s Guest: Dr. Monica Burns Monica is an EdTech and Curriculum Consultant, author and former New York City public school teacher, and works with schools and organizations around the world. Monica’s website ClassTechTips.com and her Easy EdTech Podcast help educators place “tasks before apps” by promoting deeper learning with technology.  Contact Info: bit.ly/MonicaBIO Twitter - @classtechtips Facebook.com/classtechtips Pinterest.com/classtechtips Instagram.com/classtechtips A new social media - Clubhouse Edsurge - “How Educators are Using the Exclusive Social Media App Clubhouse” ClassTechTips - “15 Clubhouse Tips for Educators on the App” 2 Truths & 1 Lie Educational Duct Tape Question:  How can I hear from all of my students? Giving kids choice, agency, and options increases your ability to hear from everyone. What tools can assist with providing choice? Remove barriers for students by selecting tools that allow more students to participate. Ask yourself, “How can we leverage tools that my students and I already use?” Seesaw - An any age tool! Seesaw breakdown: Teachers push out activities (assignments) to students. Students can respond to an activity as directed or more open ended. Many ways for students to respond and show their work - Picture, video, draw, video of drawing, text, links, files, audio Seesaw can act as a LMS. Think Google Classroom + digital portfolio + parent communication! The Easy Ed Tech Podcast episode discusses Seesaw + Book Creator: https://classtechtips.com/2020/10/06/icons-in-early-childhood-082/ “I already have Google Classroom. Do I need Seesaw?” - It doesn’t have to be an either/or. Depends on goals and learning environment. Could be used for only a couple of students for those that need more ways to respond.  Lots of complementary aspects of using it. BookCreator - audio, video, picture responses for students. From Jake’s Blog - 16 types of Media you can add in Book Creator! Great for a culminating project and for students publishing work, but also could also be for everyday learning note-taking or journal. Padlet Easy Ed Tech podcast - “My #1 EdTech Tip for Teachers” Google Slides is another great example of an easy tool that can be leveled up and has many uses. It depends on your intention of using it. When you try things out, we find out what direction we want to take. “You don’t know what you don’t know!” Celebration of the Adjacent Possible Jay Strumwasser’s SpeakPipe message @Mad4CLE’s Tweet button/pin maker, Legos, Magnatiles, Duct tape, cardboard, scissors, paper for makerspacey stuff, 3D printers , Robotics (ozobots, lego, Makeblock mBot Robots, Botley robot), Lego Technic motors, MaKey MaKey, Kano, LEDs, watch batteries, copper tape, Cricut, cameo, heat press, green screen, Rube Goldberg supplies, Strawbees, Osmo, Matatalab, Imagination Playground, Unruly Splats, Cubetto, Edison Robot, WhyMaker Ways to Support the Show or Connect with Jake & other Duct Tapers! Apple Podcast Reviews FlipGrid.com/EduDuctTape Speakpipe.com/EduDuctTape #EduDuctTape on social media Telling your friends & colleagues The Duct Tapers Facebook Group - facebook.com/groups/ducttapers Stickers! Want to pass some out?  Want some for yourself? JakeMiller.net/SendMeStickers The JakeMillerTech Newsletter – Sign up! jakemiller.net/newsletter Upcoming Events Links: jakemiller.net/KSUCourse2020 Your Homework: Find an educator named Steve and tell him about the #EduDuctTape podcast!

Pick a County and Price it - the Two Ps - PP - Its a Thing Now (LA 1475) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Hi. Steven Butala: Welcome to the Land Academy show. Entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill DeWit: And I'm Jill DeWit, broadcasting from sunny Scottsdale, Arizona. Steven Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about how to pick a county and price it. We all call it the two Ps. It's a thing now. It just became a thing because it was born out of a discussion in Discord about- Jill DeWit: I thought you were going to say disgust. Steven Butala: Well, maybe there is. No. On somebody's part there might have been some disgust. It's just one of those things where it's so simple. We all know we have to do it, like exercising every morning, but it doesn't happen often enough. In my case, anyway. Jill DeWit: Would you just pick a damn county? Steven Butala: That's it. Jill DeWit: That's it. Steven Butala: And get it priced. Jill DeWit: That's it. People get hung up on that. Steven Butala: This'll kick your whole career off. Jill DeWit: Totally. And don't pick one that we've all talked about. Steven Butala: Well said. Jill DeWit: Now I'm done. We don't have to do this episode. Steven Butala: Before we get into it? Before we get into it, let's take a question posted by one of our members on the landinvestors.com online community. It's free, and if you're already a member, join us on Discord. Jill DeWit: John wrote, "How soon should I expect to start hearing back from my mailers? The first one, 600-ish mailers, went out on March 18th." So, this is cool. So Leonard, dear Leonard in Ireland ... I'll weigh in on this too. Steven Butala: Thank God. Jill DeWit: Dear Leonard in Ireland wrote a response that we have shared here. I'll read that and then I'll give you my response. Jill DeWit: Leonard wrote, "You should get a response in a mailer, but I typically buy one in 1500 sent. If I get a high response, it can be less than a thousand units per purchase, but you may not get a deal in only 600 units. Depends on how much the area is mailed. Great start and look forward to hearing your first deal. Not to say it doesn't happen, I got my first deal on a 200 unit mailer." Jill DeWit: Two things are going on here. I'll let you handle the second part, which is the volume that he sent. I'll handle, the question is, did it hit? Is anybody going to call me? This happens every single time, including to Steven and I. We'll send out these mailers, we're like, "When's it going to hit? When's it going to hit? When's it going to hit? Did we do something wrong? Did we forget our phone number on there? Is our address wrong?" We go through all the possible scenarios. Or, "They all hate them. I did something wrong. Everybody's shredding them right now. I'm not getting a response." And then you watch, you wait two days and here comes a blast of response. It's always our first reaction that we just, we're like, "Oh no." The calm before the storm. Steven Butala: I take it even more seriously than Jill. I'm like, "Ugh, I guess my career is over." Jill DeWit: Yeah, "My pricing, I'm done." Steven Butala: I guess all the land that's ever going to be sold, is sold. Jill DeWit: Is done. That's right. We're done. No one's going to do this anymore. What have we done? Jill DeWit: Yeah, whatever. No. Steven Butala: I'm just joking. Jill DeWit: So funny. Steven Butala: I used to do that a long, long, long time ago. Way before Jill. I obviously stopped doing that. Jill DeWit: Tell me about what you think about the volume he sent though. That's the thing I want you to touch on real quick. Steven Butala: I think it's crazy. I think Leonard was very, very nice about it. Jill DeWit: He was politically correct. Steven Butala: I'm running out of analogies to explain this. Now I'm thinking it's might be biological, that makes somebody want to test this mailer concept.

Description  This week Tyler is in Tennessee, Garret discovers his Quad 1, James gets to be a bulldozer, and Darin sends an all company email (almost). All of that and the guys discuss an 8 week slide in sales. Show Notes  00:00:00 - Pre Show Morning routines mess with Netflix habits at night Using “daylight savings” to your advantage 00:01:57 - Show Start Making things awkward trying to move forward without a Tyler to cue Follow-Ups 00:04:18 - Follow-Ups (James saves the day) Garret - Sandler Update Cookbook for Success What do you want and need What money do I need to make to achieve it How does that look at a daily activity level Prospecting Cookbook Prospecting Worksheets Realtime follow-up from “literal” Darin “Net New Conversations means?” 00:08:53 - The Headlines Darin Reached the end of the Q1 Epic in Strategic Product Darin sent “Level 10 Overview Email” to the entire company (in a special Darin kind of way) Fill in project Helping support team move into Hubspot as new support system The Tyler and James monkey has landed with “DIM” Level 10 disaster of a planning meeting (recovered with a second planning) Kicked off successfully Darin tells a Story (just like C-3PO) Darin vs James on “fear of the unknown” Depends on your definition of what’s “hard” Garret LT L10™ - Scored a 4.2 Single issues discussed and not solved FUD around sales Sales lost its fun James is a couch and Garret’s “cute” when he’s angry Retail and 3PL Sales L10™ - both scored a 4 Put everything in the light Pressure of sales has everyone down Acknowledge the failure and take the opportunity to create value within it Garret gives the team a “Braveheart like” speech “Once you put light on things, they lose their power” Put the gorilla in the light James Midwest Tech Connection Conversation with 30+ Venture capital firms Used some commitments during a “rough” call (it ended early) EO Mentor meeting Communication styles (good, bad) Who not How book recommendation Quad 1 work in Hubspot Bulldozer style cleanup Now slowly building back up Hubspot health Dashboard Darin was “very mean” to James Worst meeting James has had Garret takes proper credit for the failure Tyler’s not here, so its his fault Darin (round 2) Product team L10™ was “OK” (without both James and Tyler 00:41:09 - Topic 2 (1) - 800 pound elephant (Sales stopped 8 weeks ago) Sales fell flat on its face from a 30 story building Took weeks to come to light Question 1 from Darin What Broke? Garret’s answer: The sales oversight machine (broke or...didn’t exist) Step 1 put out the fire (manual and effort) Step 2 build the machine James’ answer:  Missed contracts for 1 week Missed contracts for 2 weeks Started some conversations Missed contracts for 3 weeks This is bad Started digging in week 4 Week 5 comes Contracts signed is a great “trailing” indicator to track Plenty of vanity KPIs Leads is great leading indicator So if you have the beginning and the end (what’s tracking all the middle steps) TL;DR: Leads were coming in, the machine in the middle stopped, nothing was coming out the other end Half million dollar (mess) up “Can’t change that. We’ve done bought this. How do we get a half million dollars of value?” James learned 3 things Need the sales oversight machine He let sales get too far away from him This is a quad 3 for Garret (sales management) Question 2 from Darin If we haven’t had the machine, how have we avoided this historically? Question 3 from Darin How much of this is my fault for being removed from the leadership team? Garret discovers his Quad 1 (with a little help from James and a sales slump) 01:08:03 - Questions and Long Answers  N/A This Week 01:08:04 - End of Show  “God those show note are good and the email is maybe the best part” 01:08:50 -  After Show - James’ Espresso WARNING - It goes full coffee nerd The Credits Hosts, Garret Richardson, Tyler Samples, Darin Kelkhoff, and James Maes Show Notes by Garret Richardson Proofing and Title by Darin Kelkhoff Editing, Mixing, and Mastering by Brenton Wainscott

This is it! Zero Hour Crisis in Time #0! Technically the end of the crossover event! Who will live? (Most people.) Who will die? (Most people.) Will the DC Universe ever be the same again? (Depends who you ask.) There may not be a reality anymore, but Bass and Siskoid are going to do their best to discuss the death and rebirth of the DCU in detail! Listen to the Zero Hour Strikes! Episode 19 below! Or subscribe to The Zero Hour Strikes! Podcast on iTunes. Relevant images and further credits at: Zero Hour Strikes ep.19 Supplemental This podcast is a proud member of the FIRE AND WATER PODCAST NETWORK! Visit our WEBSITE: http://fireandwaterpodcast.com/ Follow us on TWITTER: https://twitter.com/FWPodcasts Like our FACEBOOK page: https://www.facebook.com/FWPodcastNetwork Use our HASHTAG online: #FWPodcasts Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/fwpodcasts Subscribe via Apple Podcasts as part of the FIRE AND WATER PODCAST NETWORK. And thanks for leaving a comment!

https://twitter.com/BibleCottonwood/status/1376205240051978242?s=20 True Prayer... 1. Cries for God's Help (1a,c) 2. Rests on God's Vindication (1a) 3. Depends on God's Grace (1c) 4. Lists Out Our Petitions (2, 6a) 5. Results in Godly Responses (4, 5) a. We Meditate in our Hearts b. We Silence our Mouths c. We Sacrifice our Lives d. We Submit our Wills 6. Asks for God's Presence (6b) 7. True Prayer Relies on God's Faithfulness a. God relieves (1b) b. He Marks (3a) c. He Hears (3b) d. He Gives... Joy, 7 Peace, 8 Why could he rely on God's faithfulness? Because of God's Security, 8

In this episode Cheryl explains how Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) has been key for her to build a life she loves despite chronic illnesses. She also shares how she’s found a balance between ways to minimize pain and ways to live a good life despite pain. Additionally she urges listeners to ask, “Can I live a good life despite rheumatoid arthritis?” rather than “Can I live a normal life with rheumatoid arthritis?” Speaker bio:Cheryl Crow is an occupational therapist who has lived with rheumatoid arthritis for seventeen years. Her life passion is helping others with rheumatoid arthritis figure out how to live a full life despite arthritis, by developing tools to navigate physical, emotional and social challenges. She formed the educational company Arthritis Life in 2019 after seeing a huge need for more engaging, accessible, and (dare she say) FUN patient education and self-management resources. Links to things discussed in the podcast episode:Rheum to THRIVE membership - sign up today (registration closes on March 31)!Articles mentioned in this episode:Summary of research article: “Rheumatoid arthritis: 80% of sufferers can now live a “normal” lifeJAMA article: Diagnosis and Management of Rheumatoid Arthritis: A ReviewMarcel the Shell with Shoes on (“Compared to what?”)Russ Harris: The Happiness TrapAcceptance and Commitment Therapy info page8 Lessons Learned Postpartum - my blog post from 201410 years with RA - what’s the impact? - blog post from 2013Cheryl’s Arthritis Life freebies:Free Handout: Cheryl’s Master Checklist for Managing RAFree Training: Arthritis Life Hack Crash CourseCheryl’s Arthritis Life social media pages:Cheryl on InstagramCheryl’s website: Arthritis LifeCheryl’s Tiktok: @ArthritisLife Arthritis Life Facebook PageCheryl’s Twitter: @realcc Free Facebook group to discuss the podcast and connect further with others: Arthritis Life Podcast, Practical Tips & Positive, Realistic SupportMedical disclaimer: All content found on Arthritis Life public channels was created for generalized informational purposes only. The content is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.Show notes:1:20 - Why I chose this topic for today’s episode.3:00 - Does “normal” mean lack of severe joint damage? Research study showed 80% of people with rheumatoid arthritis can live a “normal life.”5:00 - What is your definition of normal - compared to what? If you’re only comparing your life to a better one, you will be disappointed.7:00 Is a “normal life” the exact life I imagined for myself pre-diagnosis? 7:55 - Is a “normal life” one where I can experience things that are important and achieve meaningful goals and life experiences? 10:05 - Can you live a normal life with RA? It depends on what your definition is, and what your hopes and dreams are underneath your concept of normal.10:35:  You may not get the normal you wanted or expected, but can you find a NEW normal you can learn to love? 12:40 - There is no guarantee for anyone of a pain free life, important to look that reality in the face.The sooner we can confront that reality head on we are actually set free, because it frees you from this pressure and energy to try to achieve a perfectly pain free life, which is pretty much impossible (setting yourself up for failure). 15:00 - How my therapists taught me the futility of trying to avoid pain and anxiety, and control is an illusion.15:45: “The hope is that you can still live a good life despite inevitable pain and suffering, that’s the hope, the hope isn’t that you can avoid it, because avoidance is not a long term sustainable strategy .”16:00 - We can take actions in our daily lives to have evidence based tools to manage and minimize our pain and function on a daily basis. “If ONLY focus on the tools to MINIMIZE pain, the problem can be the expectation or belief that we attach to the idea that if we JUST have the right tools we are going to 100% be guaranteed to avoid all pain, and I do wish that were true, but realistically it’s just not true for most people because, pain, physical or mental, is an inevitable part of the human experience.”As psychologist Dr. Russ Harris said in The Happiness Trap: “The more we try to avoid the basic reality that all human life involves pain, the more we are likely to struggle with that pain when it arises, thereby creating even more suffering.” 17:15 - Difference between pain and suffering.17:55 - I was dragged “kicking and screaming” into acceptance. If you are confused, you’re not alone! I didn’t want to “accept” any pain, I wanted to fix it and make it go away.18:45: True acceptance of the PRESENT moment is completely different than giving up or resignation.20:10 - When we’ve done everything we can to reduce pain, instead of struggling with that, we can focus on: what can we still do in the present moment?  What can I still DO that ’s important or valuable to me, DESPITE the pain? “This has been empowering because it means my happiness and the value of my life is not contingent on me controlling my pain in a perfect way, or finding the way to cure or heal my illness, it means I can still discover ways to have a good life, even when pain is present. Dr. Tabares & Dr. Hopperstad taught me this. So, I eventually learned to let go of the illusion that if I just do the RIGHT THING I could ALWAYS avoid pain, and once I let go, I was  set free.21:30 - Balancing act between using my tools (physical and metaphorical) to minimize symptoms, that’s plan A, fix or remediate the problem, and then plan B is to “workaround” it, and in occupational therapy (OT) we call that compensatory strategies.22:20 - We spend a lot of time running away from pain and running away from our disease, but what if we spent more time running TOWARDS things we can still do that are valuable?23:05 - What I  dislike about a “normal” life being defined as one without disease  - how that feels ableist to me24:15 - My old optimism: if I just find the right solution my pain will go away, RA will have no affect on my life. New optimism: me and people with it can still live rich, meaningful liv es DESPITE discomfort.27:15 - My new mission: finding a balance between controlling symptoms/minimizing symptoms *and* focusing on maximizing our quality of life despite it. 27:30 - Why I developed Rheum to THRIVE membership community and what it stands for. 28:45 - So many people get stuck in this mentality that they have to WAIT until their symptoms are fully controlled before attempting to thrive or live a full life, and I really encourage you to see what is still possible in your life, what can you still do and enjoy and accomplish despite it?29:25: Can you live a normal life with RA? Depends on your definition of normal!  29:45 - The question I like to ask more than “can I live a normal life with RA:” Can I live a GOOD life with RA? Can I be of serves to others, can I leave the world better when I leave it than when I found it?  I think YES.

We're often told not to care too much about what other people think of us. However, understanding how others perceive us can play to our advantage. Sometimes we fail to see our own mistakes or flaws, and to overcome this, we need to develop self-awareness by looking at ourselves from a different perspective. Once we realise our flaws, we can do better and achieve high performance. Craig Harper joins us in this episode to discuss how self-awareness can lead to high performance. He also explains the importance of external awareness or the ability to understand how others perceive us. We also talk about events that changed our life perspectives and how to live aligned with our values. If you want to increase your self-awareness and achieve high performance, then this episode is for you.   Get Customised Guidance for Your Genetic Make-Up For our epigenetics health program optimising fitness, lifestyle, nutrition and mind performance for your particular genes, go to https://www.lisatamati.com/page/epigenetics-and-health-coaching/. You can also join our free live webinar on epigenetics.   Online Coaching for Runners Go to www.runninghotcoaching.com for our online run training coaching.   Consult with Me If you would like to work with me one to one on anything from your mindset to head injuries, to biohacking your health, to optimal performance or executive coaching, please book a consultation here: https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/consultations.   Order My Books My latest book Relentless chronicles the inspiring journey about how my mother and I defied the odds after an aneurysm left my mum Isobel with massive brain damage at age 74. The medical professionals told me there was absolutely no hope of any quality of life again. Still, I used every mindset tool, years of research and incredible tenacity to prove them wrong and bring my mother back to full health within three years. Get your copy here: http://relentlessbook.lisatamati.com/ For my other two best-selling books Running Hot and Running to Extremes, chronicling my ultrarunning adventures and expeditions all around the world, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books.   My Jewellery Collection For my gorgeous and inspiring sports jewellery collection 'Fierce', go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/lisa-tamati-bespoke-jewellery-collection.   Here are three reasons why you should listen to the full episode: Discover what external self-awareness is and how it can help you achieve high performance. Find out why motivation alone doesn't work. Learn how to live in alignment for a healthy and meaningful life.   Resources The You Project Podcast with Craig Harper The You Project #360: Embracing the Suck with Lisa Tamati Check out Craig's books. Connect with Craig: Website | Instagram | Linkedin BrainPark   Episode Highlights [03:44] About Craig Craig used to be the fattest kid in school until he decided to lose weight at 14 years old. Curious about fitness and nutrition, he started working in gyms.  Craig eventually set up his first personal training centre in Australia. At 36 years old, Craig went to university to study Exercise Science. Realising the importance of understanding human behaviour, he's now taking a PhD in neuropsychology. [08:58] External Self-Awareness Being self-aware means understanding how other people perceive, process and experience you. You can make better connections when you know what it's like for people to be around you. Going into a situation assuming others have the same mindset can create problems. Acknowledging your lack of awareness is the first step in overcoming it.  [15:20] On High Performance High performance answers the question of how you can do better.  It applies to all aspects of life.  For Craig, high performance means getting the most out of your potential, resources and time. Listen to the full episode to get a rundown of the principles you need to achieve high performance. [16:14] Recognising Your Programming Humans have the power to recognise and change how they see the world. Because we do the same things daily, we fall into living unconsciously.  When our approach doesn't give us the results we want, it might be time to try something different. It may be not easy, but going out of our comfort zones makes us stronger.  [28:43] Working Around Genetic Predispositions What you're born with doesn't change the fact that your choices have power. Focus on things you can control and own the situation at hand. Be careful that self-awareness doesn't become self-deprecation. From there, focus on how you can attain high performance.  [33:42] Reflecting on Your Relationships Despite his nutrition expertise, Craig faces a constant battle to make good food choices.  Reflect on your relationship with food. Is it good or bad? Healthy or unhealthy? You can apply this to other aspects of your life as well. Doing this opens the door to self-management and self-awareness.  [37:51] Where People Get Their Sense of Self We learn that self-esteem, self-worth and identity is an outside-in process. Craig's theory is that it's an inside-out process.  The external and observable things don't matter as much as the things happening internally. Listen to the full episode to find out how two experiences in Craig's life put his life into perspective. [1:00:38] Motivation Alone Doesn't Work A lot of people rely on their current state of motivation to get things done.  What's important is how willing you are to put in the work despite the inconvenience and discomfort. [1:02:25] Live in Alignment Ask yourself if you're willing to put in the work to achieve your goals.  You can live in alignment with your values by following an operating system based on them.  Listen to the full episode to know the questions you need to ask yourself to create this operating system.   7 Powerful Quotes from This Episode ‘Firstly, I've got as many issues as anyone that I work with. And this is not self-loathing; this is me just going, "Okay, so how do I do better?" And this for me is the process of high performance’. ‘Nobody is totally objective or open-minded because the human experience is subjective’. ‘Real awareness and consciousness is to first be aware of your lack of awareness’. ‘The only person that can ever really get in my way is me, you know. But also, I'm the solution to me’. ‘So we get taught directly or indirectly that self-esteem and self-worth and identity is an outside-in process. My theory is that it is the other way around—it is an inside out journey’. ‘Of course, there's nothing wrong with building a great business... or whatever. That's not bad, but it's not healthy when that's the totality of who we are’. ‘I don't care what you get done when you're motivated; I care what you get done when you're not motivated because everyone's a champion when they're in the zone’.   About Craig Craig Harper is one of Australia's leading presenters, writers and educators in health, high performance, resilience, self-management, leadership, corporate change, communication, stress management, addiction and personal transformation.  Craig has been an integral part of the Australian health and fitness industry since 1982. He has worked as an Exercise Scientist, Corporate Speaker, Consultant, University Lecturer, AFL Conditioning Coach, Radio Host, TV Presenter, Writer and successful Business Owner. In 1990, Craig established Harper's Personal Training, which evolved into one of the most successful businesses of its kind.  Craig currently hosts a successful Podcast called 'The You Project'. He is also partnering with the Neuroscience Team at Monash University, where he's completing a neuropsychology PhD. There, he studies the spectrum of human thinking and behaviour.  Craig speaks on various radio stations around Australia weekly. He also hosted his weekly show on Melbourne radio called 'the Science of Sport' for a decade. Craig currently fills an on-air role as a presenter on a lifestyle show called 'Get a Life', airing on Foxtel.  As an Exercise Scientist, Craig has worked with many professional athletes and teams. While still working with groups and individuals regularly, Craig delivers more than one hundred corporate presentations annually. Want to know more about Craig and his work? Check out his website, or follow him on Instagram and Linkedin!   Enjoyed This Podcast? If you did, be sure to subscribe and share it with your friends! Post a review and share it! If you enjoyed tuning in, then leave us a review. You can also share this with your family and friends so that they can develop their self-awareness and achieve high performance. Have any questions? You can contact me through email (support@lisatamati.com) or find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. For more episode updates, visit my website. You may also tune in on Apple Podcasts. To pushing the limits, Lisa   Transcript Of The Podcast Welcome to Pushing The Limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential with your host Lisa Tamati, brought to you by lisatamati.com. Lisa Tamati: Well, hi, everyone and welcome back to Pushing The Limits. This week I have Craig Harper to guest. Now, Craig is a very well-known media personality, exercise scientist, crazy fitness guru, owns some of the biggest personal training gyms in Australia, has a huge track record as a corporate speaker, motivational speaker, worked with Olympians, worked with all sorts of athletes across a number of different sports. And he's absolutely hilarious. I really enjoyed this interview, I was on Craig's show a couple of weeks ago, The You Project, you can go and check that one out as well. A great podcast. And today we sort of did a deep dive into everything around self-awareness and understanding your potential and realising your potential. And just it was a really interesting conversation with a very interesting man. He's doing a PhD in understanding the experience that people have when they meet you. So, understanding how people see you. So it's a really interesting conversation. So, I hope you enjoy that.  Before we go over to the show, please give us a rating and review. We really appreciate any ratings and reviews that you give us. It's really hugely helpful for the show. It is a labour of love. We are about to if we haven't already, by the time this podcast goes live, developing a way that you guys can get involved as audience members of Pushing The Limits if you want to support the show. So stay tuned for that. And in the meantime, if you need help with your running or you need help with your health, then please reach out to us. You can reach us at lisatamati.com. You can check out our programmes on lisatamati.com. We have our epigenetics programme and our running programmes where we do customised run training systems, video analysis, working out a plan customised fully for you and you get a consult with me. We also do health optimisation, coaching. So if you are needing help with a really difficult health journey, then please reach out to us as well. Right, over to the show with Craig Harper.  Lisa Tamati: Well, welcome back everybody to Pushing The Limits. Today I have an hilarious, amazing, crazy, awesome guest for you, Craig Harper. Who doesn't know Craig Harper? If you're in Australia, you definitely know who the heck Craig Harper is. If you're in New Zealand, you probably know who Craig Harper is. And if you don't, you're about to find out. Welcome to the show! Craig, how are you doing? Craig Harper: Now I feel like I've got to live up to some kind of bloody pressure, some expectation. Nobody knows me in New Zealand. Let's start, you do and your mum. That's about it. Lisa: Me and mum, you left quite an impression on my mum. Craig: And my family, and relatives, and a few randoms over here, know who I am. But thank you, Lisa, for having me on. I'm really glad to be here. Lisa: It's awesome. Now, this is gonna be a bit of a hilarious show because Craig is a bit of a character. I was on Craig's show in Australia, The You Project and it was one of the most fun podcast interviews I've had. I mean, I love getting into the science and deep with stuff, but it was really fun to just slip my hair down so to speak and rant and rave a little bit in here, but it’s fun, so today there'll be no doubt a bit of it. Craig, can you tell the ones who don't know about you? You're in Melbourne or just outside Melbourne in Hampton, Victoria in Australia. Can you tell us a little bit of your background, your crazy amazing career that you have had? Craig: Sure. So I'll start with, well, maybe I'll go a little bit before my career because what happened before was a bit of a catalyst. So I had a pretty good childhood, all that stuff. I won't bore the listeners. But one of the things that was part of my growing up was being a fat kid, the fattest kid in my school. So that became a bit of a catalyst for me to explore getting in shape and all that stuff. So when I was 14, I lost a whole lot of weight. I was 90 something kilos, I went down to about 60 and I started training.  Lisa: Wow. Craig: I started running and I started doing bodyweight stuff I lost about—I literally lost a third of my body weight in 15 weeks. And it wasn't like I had a horrible childhood, it was fine. But I was called jumbo all through school. That was my name so the kids called me that, parents, teachers all that but believe it or not, it wasn't really hostile, or horrible, it was I don't know it's because I was this big, fat, pretty happy kid, right? But anyway, so, I got in shape, and that led me into a lot of curiosity, and exploration, and investigation in fitness and nutrition. And so I started working in gyms when I was 18 and had no idea what I was doing. The qualifications and the barriers to entry then were very low. So, I started working in gyms, Lisa, when I was 18, which was 1982. I'm 57 and I ended up in 1989, I think, I set up the first Personal Training Center in Australia.  Lisa: Wow. Craig: So, lots of other things around that. But I owned PT studios for 25 years at the biggest centre in the southern hemisphere in Brighton a few kilometres from where I'm sitting now, which was 10,000 square feet. It was bigger than lots of commercial gyms. But it was just a PT centre. Worked with elite athletes, work with the AFL over here Australian Football League with St Kilda footy club, Melbourne Vixens in the national and the Trans-Tasman League, it was then Netball League, Melbourne Phoenix, Nissan motorsport, a bunch of Olympians, blokes in prison, corporates, people with disability, normal people, abnormal people. I put me in the abnormal category.  Lisa: Yeah, definitely. Craig: And later on when—I didn't go to uni until I was 36 for the first time.  Lisa: Wow.  Craig: Did a degree in exercise science. It was hilarious because I'd already been working with elite people as a conditioning coach and a strength coach. And yeah, lots of stuff. I did radio over here for about 20 years. I started my podcast a few years ago, I did television for a few years, three years on national telly. I wrote for the Herald Sun, which is the main paper in Melbourne for a while. Lots of magazines, I've written a bunch of books. I've written seven, I've written nine books, I think seven or eight of them are published. I'm looking at the books on my table, I should probably know that number. Lisa: Can’t even remember, there's so many. Craig: And, like, but really the thing that I guess where we might go today, but for me was, I realised by the time I was about 19 or 20 working in gyms, I realised that how much I knew about bodies wasn't nearly as important as how much I understood human beings. And so while my understanding of anatomy and physiology and biomechanics and movement and energy systems, and progressive overload, and adaptation and recovery, and all of those things wasn't great, to be honest, like I was 20.  Lisa: Yup. Craig: But it was all right. And it improved over time. But what really mattered was how well I understood human behaviour. Because as you and I know, we can give someone a programme and direction and education and encouragement and support and resources, and not knowledge and awareness. But that doesn't mean they're going to go and do the work. And it definitely doesn't mean they're going to create the result. And it definitely doesn't mean they're going to explore their talent or their potential. And so yeah, it's been from when I was 18...  Lisa: So you've gone in it? Craig: Yeah, from when I was 18 till now, it's just been lots of different roles and lots of different places. And I guess the other main bit before I shut up was I realised when I was about 20, that I didn't like having a boss much. And not that...  Lisa: We got that in common.  Craig: In my back, my boss was a good dude. But I thought I don't want to be, like, I could do this for me. I don't need to do this for you. And so the last time I had a boss was 32 years ago. So I've been working for myself since I was 25. Lisa: Wow, that's freaking awesome. And what an amazing career and so many books, and I know that you're actually doing a PhD at the moment. So what's your PhD? And why did you choose this sort of a subject for your PhD? Craig: Yeah, so my PhD is in neuropsychology/neuroscience. So, I'm at Monash over here, we have a facility called Bryan Park, which is cool. There's lots of cool stuff there. That's where I'm based. And my research is in a thing called external self-awareness, which is understanding the ‘you’ experience for others. So in other words, it's your ability to be able to understand how other people perceive and process and experience ‘you'.  Lisa: Wow, that is a fascinating subject.  Craig: Which is, very little research on it. So I'm, I've created a scale, which is to measure this component of psychology or communication or awareness. And so I'm doing—I'm putting that through the grill at the moment, getting that validated. I’m doing two studies. The first study is being run kind of soon. But yeah, the whole research is around this thing of ‘What's it like being around me and do I know what it's like being around me'? Not from an insecurity point of view, but from an awareness point of view because when I understand, for example, the Craig experience for Lisa or for an audience or in front of all for the person I'm coaching, or the athlete I'm working with, or the drug addict, the person with addictive issues that I'm sitting with, then if I understand what it's like being around me, I can create greater and deeper connection. But one of the mistakes that a lot of leaders, and coaches, and managers, and people in positions of authority make is that they assume that people just understand what they're saying. Or they assume that people think like them. When in reality, the only person who thinks exactly like me in the world is me.  Lisa: Yeah.  Craig: And the only person who thinks like Lisa Tamati exactly all the time, 24/7 is Lisa, right?  Lisa: Yep.  Craig: So when I go into a conversation, or a situation, or a process, or a negotiation, or an encounter with somebody, and I assume that they think like me or understand like me, or that my intention is their experience, which is rarely the case, I'm more likely to create problems and solutions.  Lisa: Yeah. And you're not going to hit the nail on the head and actually get the results for where that person that you are wanting to get.  Craig: Yeah, and that is... Lisa: This is a real powerful thing because you know what I mean, just maybe as you were talking there, I was like, ‘Well, how do people perceive me?', that's an interesting thought because you just sort of go through your daily interactions with people, and you think you're a compassionate, empathetic person who gets everything in, you’re sort of picking up on different cues and so on. But then to actually think how is that person experiencing me, and I like, as a coach, as I develop as a coach, I've had problems when I'm doing one on one, and that I'm overwhelming people sometimes because I'm so passionate and so full of information. And I've had to, and I'm still learning to fit that to the person that I'm talking to. And because, for me, it's like, I've got so much information, I want to fix you and help you. And I was like, ‘Woohoo', and the person was like, ‘Heh'. Craig: So you and I connect because we're kind of similar, right? And I love that, I love your craziness and your energy, and you're full-onness. But you and I, unless we are aware around some people, we will scare the fuck out of them.  Lisa: Yup. Craig: So, that's why it's important that people like—all of us really not just you and I, but that we have an awareness of what is the leisure experience for this because like, let's say, for example, you've got five athletes, and you want to inspire them and get them in the zone, motivate them, and they're all in front of you. And so you give all of them in the same moment. And let's say they're five similar athletes in a similar, if not the same sport with a similar goal—doesn't matter—but the reality is they are five different human beings, right? They've got five different belief systems and backgrounds and sets of values and prejudices and like and emotional states, and so you're not talking to the same person. But when you deliver the same message to five different humans, and you expect the same connection? We're not thinking it through.  Lisa: Yep.  Craig: So and of course, you can't create optimal connection with everyone all the time. But this is just part of the, ‘What's it like? What's their experience of me like?' And again, it's not about ‘Oh, I'm insecure, and I want them to like me'. No, it's about, ‘I need to understand how they perceive and process me so that I can create connection'. And look, the other really interesting thing about psychology and the human experience, and metacognition, thinking about thinking more broadly, is that all of us think we're open-minded and objective, but none of us are. Nobody is totally objective or open-minded because the human experience is subjective.  Lisa: Yeah.  Craig: So, even me who understands this and is doing a PhD in it and teaches it. Well, people go back and you objective and I go, ‘No, I wish I was in it. I'd like to say I am because it sounds fucking great, but I'm not'. And the reason that I'm not is because wherever I go, my ego, my issues, my beliefs, my values, my limitations, my biases, go with me.  Lisa: Yeah.  Craig: And they are the window through which I view and process the world, right?  Lisa: Yeah.  Craig: So, our ego wants us to say, ‘Of course, I'm objective. Of course, I'm open-minded'. But the truth is, and with some things, we will be more objective and open-minded because we don't really have a pre-existing idea about it. But on a global or a broad level, our stuff goes with us everywhere, and the beginning of, without getting too deep or philosophical, but awareness—real awareness and consciousness—is to first be aware of your lack of awareness. Lisa: Love it. That is amazing. Yeah. Craig: You can't overcome the thing you won't acknowledge, or you can't get good at the thing you won't do. Right? And so I have to go, 'Firstly, I'm flawed. Firstly, I've got as many issues as anyone that I work with.’ And this is not self-loathing, this is me just going, ‘Okay, so how do I do better?' And this for me, this is the process of performance, high performance, whether it's at sport, at life, at recovery, at relationships, at connection—doesn't matter—high performance is high performance. For me, high performance means getting the most out of you and your potential and your resources and your time.  Lisa: Yup. Craig: And so the principles that work with becoming an elite athlete, most of those principles work with building a great business.  Lisa: Yep, they grow further. Craig: Which is why physicians follow through, get uncomfortable, do the work, show up, don't give up, ask great questions, persevere, roll up your sleeves, pay attention to your results, improvise, adapt, overcome. Like, this is not new stuff.  Lisa: Know that it rolls off your tongue pretty damn well because you've been in this space for a long time. And a lot of us like to go into that whole, our bias and yell at the future that we see the world through the lens, which we look through. We're not aware like, we love the programming. And this is what I had done a lot of work on for myself, the programming that I got as a kid, that I downloaded into my subconscious is running the ship, basically, and I can, as an educated, hopefully, wiser woman now, go ‘Hang on a minute, that little voice that just popped up in my head and told me, ‘I'm not good enough to do that', is not me talking. That's the programme. That's the programme I downloaded when I was, I don't know, seven or eight or something. And it's a product of that conditioning.’ And I can actually go in, and then it's that to change that story. Because that, and I think a lot of us are just running on automatic, we're still playing.  I'll give you an example. So when my mum was a kid, she was up on stage and doing a speech at school when she froze, right? And she got laughed off the stage. And kids can be nasty. And so forever in a day, she was like, ‘I will not ever speak in public again'. Because she'd had this experience as a what, a seven or eight-year-old. And she was telling me the story as a 40-something, 50-something year-old. 'No, I'm not ever getting up in a public space because', and I'm like, 'But that's just—you are not that seven or eight year old now. And you can have a choice to make that changes', and she couldn't make that change until she had the aneurysm. And then she forgot all those memories, some of those memories were gone, and that inhibition was gone. And now she'll get up and talk on stage in front of like 500 doctors. Craig: That's amazing. I love it. And what you just articulated beautifully. The core of a lot of what I do, which is recognising your programming and where does my stories, or my stories finish? And where do I start?  Lisa: Yeah. Craig: So, you think about it, from everyone listening to this from when we could reason anything, or process any data around us or understand anything from when we—I don't know, two, three months, really probably earlier but until listening to this podcast right now, all of us have been trained, and taught, and told, and programmed, and conditioned. And then, now here we are. And it's being aware of that and me to everyone is like, ‘Well, my beliefs', like think about when did you choose your beliefs?  Lisa: Yeah.  Craig: Pretty much never. They’re just there, and they’re there as a byproduct of your journey. Now that's okay, that's not bad or good. That's normal. Well, the next question is, are all of your beliefs, do they serve you? Well, the answer is no. Do any of them sabotage you? Well, a shitload! Okay, so let's put them under the microscope. So you know that word that I used before metacognition is, in a nutshell, thinking about thinking where and this is where we go, hang on. Let's just step out of the groundhog-dayness of our existence which you also spoke of, like, and let's go hang on. Because what we do, on a level we live consciously that is I've got to think about where I'm driving, and I've got to figure out what I'm giving the kids for dinner or what I'm getting, what time I'm training or, but really, on a real fundamental macro level. We live largely unconsciously...  Lisa: Yeah.  Craig: ...because we kind of do the same shit the same way...  Lisa: Everyday. Craig: ...same conversations, even you and I know. Like, I've been training in the gym since I was 14, that's 43 years, I watch people go to the gym who always do the same fucking workout.  Lisa: Yeah. Craig: Same rep, the same set, same treadmill, same speed, same inclines, same boxing, same everything, same intensity, same workload, same machines. And then they say, why isn't my body changing? Well because it doesn't need to.  Lisa: No. Given the status quo, you don’t. Craig: Because you're stimulating it the same way.  Lisa: I was working in that for years. Craig: And we can expand that to life. Whereas we, kind of, I was talking to a lady yesterday about this, and she was telling me about a conversation she has with her son who's got some issues, who's 17. And I will be really honest, ‘How many times have you had a version of that conversation with him?’ She goes, ‘1,000'.  Lisa: Wow.  Craig: I go, ‘And how's that going?’ Now, that might be an exaggeration. But the bottom line is, but nonetheless, despite the fact that it didn't work the first 999 times, she's doing it again.  Lisa: She’ll keep doing it.  Craig: So it's about, and again, it's not about beating ourselves up, it's about gamble, whatever I'm doing, whether or not it's with this relationship, or this training programme, or this habit, or behaviour, or this business, whatever I'm doing isn't working. So let's have a new conversation or no conversation, or let's try a different protocol, or let's change the way I sleep.  Lisa: Isn't that like the circuitry in the brain, when you do something for the first time that’s really hard. Because you're creating a new connection in the brain. And therefore, we go into these old routines and habits, even though we don't want to be doing them anymore, but the groove and the brain is so well-worn, that path is so—those synapses of connected or whatever they do in there, and that path is so well-worn, that it's the path of least resistance for our lazy brains, and our subconscious to do what it does all the time. So, when you're driving a car home, and you can have a conversation and be singing a song, and thinking about what you're cooking for dinner, and then you get to halfway into town, and you realise, ‘Hell, I can't even remember driving there', but you were doing it, and you were doing it safely. Because it was all on that subconscious, automated level. When you were first driving the car, it was a mission. And it was like, ‘Oh my god, I got to change the gears and steer and keep an eye on,' and it was all like overwhelmed, but then it got easier and easier and easier. And then with our rituals and habits that we develop, we make these well-worn grooves, don't we? And then we just follow the same old, same old even though it's not getting the results that we want. And when we try and step out of our comfort zone and start doing a new habit and developing a new way, there's a lot of resistance in the brain for the first few weeks, isn't there? Until you get that groove going. And then it gets easier and easier and easier once you've done it 100 times. Is that what you're sort of saying here? Craig: Yeah. I mean, that's perfect. I mean, you nailed it. Look, the thing is that everything that we do for the first time, for most of us, nearly everything, unless we've done something very similar before, but it's hard.  Lisa: Very. Craig: So I always say everyone starts as a white belt. In the dojo, you start as a white belt.  Lisa: Yeah.  Craig: When as an ultramarathon, if I went, Lisa, which I wouldn't, but if I went, ‘I'm gonna run an ultramarathon'. Well, if I started training today, metaphorically, today, I'm a white belt.  Lisa: Yeah. Craig: I'm a black belt at other stuff.  Lisa: Yeah. Craig: I'm a green belt. I'm a yellow belt. Depends what I'm doing. Depends what—I'm not bad at talking to audiences that's... I should be pretty good at it. I've done it a million times. But take me to yoga, and I'll hide in the corner because I'm as flexible as a fucking ceramic tile. I’m a white belt. Right? I bet, put me in the gym lifting weights, I go okay, right? And so, again, this is all just about awareness, and development, and ownership. And, but the thing too, is that you're right, everything is very—we do create not only neural grooves, patterns, but also behavioural, and emotional, and cognitive grooves too, where we’re very comfortable in this space. And one of the challenges for us, it's like, it's a dichotomy. Because if everyone listening to this could somehow be involved and put up a show of hands, and we said, ‘All right, everyone. How many of you want to change something about your life or your outcomes or your situation or your body? Or your operating system or your current life experience?’ Nearly everyone's going to put up their hand.  Lisa: Yes. Craig: For something, right? Something. Then if you said, all right, ‘Now, at the same time, be brutally honest with yourself, how many of you like being comfortable?’, everyone's gonna put up their hand. So the problem is, on the one hand, we say I want to be strong, and resilient, and amazing, and produce great results, and do great shit, and grow, and develop my potential and fucking kill it, and but I don't want to get uncomfortable. Well, good luck, princess, that isn't working. It doesn't work. Lisa: The world’s a bitch really, isn't it? I mean, like it is the way it works. You need resistance. Craig: How can you get strong without working against resistance?  Lisa: Yeah, yeah. Craig: Yes. Lisa: This is just the… in my boxing gym, there was a saying on the wall, ‘Strength comes from struggle', and it's just like, ‘Oh damn, that's so right'. Like it's not what we always want. And I wish sometimes that the world was made another way. But we constantly need to be pushing up against what hurts, what is uncomfortable, it's painful just from a biology point of view being in the thermonuclear range, being nice and comfortably warm and cozy is really bad for us. And for you in that all the time, we need to go into an ice bath or cold water or go surfing or something and get cold, we need to be hot, go into a sauna. And when you do these things outside of those comfort zones, we need to lift weights in order to build stronger muscles, we need to do fasting in order to have autophagy, we need—all of these things are those stuff that is outside of pleasant. And you better get used to that idea. It's not because I want to be, like, masochistic in my approach to life. But it's just the way that the world works. If you sit on your ass being comfortable eating chips all day watching Netflix, you're not going to get the results that you're looking for. Craig: That's right. And also there's this—because we only live in the moment. And because we are, and I'm generalising, and I'm sure a lot of your listeners are not what I'm about to describe. But because many of us are very instant gratification based.  Lisa: Yeah.  Craig: Right? It's like, the story is I'll eat this, I'll do this, I'll avoid that. But I'll start tomorrow, or I'll start Monday, or I'll start January 1. And that goes on for 15 years, right?  Lisa: Yep. We’ve all done it. Craig: And now I've backed myself into an emotional, and a psychological, and physiological corner that's hard to get out of because now, I'm 49. And my body's kind of fucked. And I've got high blood pressure. And I've got all these issues because I've been avoiding, and denying, and delaying, and lying to myself for a long time. Again, this is not everyone, so please don't get offended.  Lisa: And It's not a judgment. It's just the way it goes. Craig: No, because, I mean, this is what happens. Like, we live in this world where you can't say the truth.  Lisa: Yeah.  Craig: And I'm not talking about being insensitive or moral judgments on people. But the thing is, it's like, when I talk about being fat, I talk about myself because then no one could get injured, insulted...  Lisa: Insulted, yup. Craig: ...or offended, right. So when I was fat, I wasn't thick-set, or full-figured or voluptuous or stocky? I was fucking fat. Right?  Lisa: Yeah.  Craig: And, but I was fat because of my choices and behaviours.  Lisa: Yeah. Craig: Now, there are lots of variables around that.  Lisa: Yeah. Craig: But at some stage, we have to say, and again, there are people with genetics that make stuff difficult...  Lisa: Absolutely. Craig: ...for medical conditions and all that we fully acknowledge that, but at some stage, we need to go, ‘Alright, well, I'm making decisions and doing things which are actually destroying me'.  Lisa: Yeah. Craig: ‘They're actually hurting me'. And this is just about ownership and awareness and my, like, the biggest challenge in my life is me, the biggest problem in my life is me. Like, the only person that can ever really get in my way is me. But also, I'm the solution to me. Lisa: I think it's a willingness to work on it. And like, I've looked into addictions and things quite a lot too, because I know that I have an addictive personality trait. I have genetics that are predisposed to that, and I do everything obsessively. So whether that's running for like a billion kilometres, or whether that's running five companies, or whether that's whatever I'm doing, I'm doing like an extreme version of that because it's just, like, I have that type of personality and it is genetics. And I find that that's one of the study of genetics for me, it's so interesting, there's a lot of predisposition in there. However, that does not negate the fact that I can still make choices, and I can turn the ship around. And I need to be aware of those predispositions, just like mum's got some predispositions towards cardiovascular disease and putting on weight very easily. That's just a fact of life for her, and it's not pleasant. And compared to other genetic types, it's a bit of a disadvantage. However, it is a fact. And therefore, she can still make the right choices for her body.  And this is why I like working in the genetic space is really, really powerful because then I can say, well, it's not my fault that my genes are like this, but they are what they are, and we can remove some of the judgment on ourselves because I think when we—if we're judging ourselves all the time, that's not helpful either, because that stuff we’re like, ‘Oh, well, I'm just useless. And then I'm never gonna do anything,’ rather than empowering and say, ‘Well, it is what it is, the genes that I've been given are these, the environment that I've exposed to is this, the advertising and all that sort of stuff that's coming at us with McDonald's on every street corner and all of that sort of stuff, I can't influence there. What I can influence is I can educate myself and I can start to make better choices from my particular body and start taking ownership of that process and not just going, well, it's not my fault that I'm bigger boned.’ You may be bigger-boned or bigger, have genetics that are all about conservation. Then you need to be doubly careful. And put in the education, and the time, and the work, and I think it's about taking ownership and not judging yourself by getting on with the job. Like I know, like, I know my own personal and—what did you say to me the first time I met you? Something that was real self-aware anyway, without self-deprecating, and it was self-aware? I can't remember what it was that you said, it is a man who knows his own weakness and is working on it. And I think that's really key. Like, I know what I'm shit at and... Craig: And that’s not self-loathing, that's self-awareness. And here's the thing, we're all about learning and growing. And I love my life, and I'm aware that I've got some skills and gifts. I'm also aware that I've got lots of flaws and shit I need to work on. And for some people, that's part of just the journey for other people, they are in a bit of a groundhog day. I always say if you're in a bit of a groundhog day, but you're happy then stay there. Because don't change because this is how I—don't be like me, for God's sake be like you. But if being like you, if your normal operating system equals anxiety, and sleeplessness and a bit of depression, and a bit of disconnection, and I'm not talking purely about mental health, I'm just talking about that state that we all get in, which is a bit like, ‘Fuck, I don't love my life, this wasn't where I thought I would be.’  Lisa: Yeah. Craig: Then maybe start to work consciously on and acknowledge, there's some things that you can't change, some you can, and literally what you were talking about a minute ago, which is literally, ‘Okay, so there's what I've got, which is I've got these genetics, I've got 24 hours in a day. I'm 57. I've got this, these are the things I have, then there's what I do with it all.’ So I'm an endomorph. I walk past a doughnut, my ass gets bigger. That's my body type, right? So I need to go, ‘Alright, well with these, or with this disposition, how do I manage optimally with 24 hours in a day without them using the least?’  Lisa: You’ve done a lot by the little sea, Craig. Craig: How do I manage my 24 hours optimally?  Lisa: Yeah. Craig: How do I? It's like, I eat two meals a day. I don't recommend anyone else does that.  Lisa: For even the most, it’s great. Craig: But for me, I don't… Lisa: For an endomorph, that’s great. Craig: I’m an 85-kilo dude with a bit of muscle. I don't need much food. Like, I would love to eat all the fucking food because I love food. What happens when I eat what I want versus what I need is I get fat. So I differentiate between: what does my body need to be lean, strong, functional, healthy versus what does Craig the fucking ex-fat kid want to inhale?  Lisa: Yeah.  Craig: Because, and the other thing too. And this is probably a bit irrelevant. Maybe relevant, though, for a lot of people. Like I would say, of the people that I've worked with closer over the years, which is thousands and thousands.  Lisa: Yeah.  Craig: I would say most people, including me, have a relationship with food that’s somewhere on the scale between a little bit disordered and an eating disorder, right?  Lisa: Yup. Craig: And a little bit not always...  Lisa: I’ll cook my end up then. It’s always an issue. Craig: At the other end of the scale, I'm a fucking lunatic around food, right? Now, you're educated, I'm educated, but I tell people all the time. So if I was an addict, and by the way, I've never drank, never smoked, never done drugs. But if I have started drugs or alcohol, I would have probably...  Lisa: Done it well. Craig: ...a drunk and used for Australia, right? I probably would have been a champion because I'm like you. I'm addictive. Now my addiction is food. So you know people think, ‘But you're educated. But you're this, you're that.’ It doesn't matter. Like, I need to manage myself. Lisa: Still won’t hit pie. Craig: Yeah, I need to manage myself around food. Lisa: Yeah, daily.  Craig: Because if I open the cheesecake door, get out of the fucking way. Lisa: Yeah.  Craig: Right?  Lisa: I hear you.  Craig: If I open certain doors that derails me, so I need to know. And this is the same with everybody. And it's like, we all have a relationship with food. Okay. Is yours good or bad? healthy or unhealthy? Don't overthink it, just be real. We all have a relationship with our body. How’s that going? We all have a relationship with exercise, activity movement. How’s that going? We all have a relationship with money. We all have a relationship with our ego. It's like, this is opening the door on self-awareness and self-management law to a new level. Lisa: Yeah, love it. Yeah, and this is going to be a fascinating PhD. I really—I can't wait to find out more about it. And I think just having that self-awareness, like I will freely say like, I've struggled with my body image, and who I am, and am I acceptable, and I was always trying to be the skinny little modern girl when I was young, and gymnast, and as a kid, and so struggled immensely with body image issues. And people will look at me now and they go, ‘Oh, whatever, you're lean and you're fit obviously and you don't ever—you wouldn't understand.’ Oh, you have no idea how much I understand. And there's still a constant daily battle: even though I'm educated, even though I know exactly what I should be and shouldn't be doing, I don't always succeed against my —that in a sort of drive that sometimes when you get out of balance, and this is why for me like keeping myself, when I say imbalance, I mean like keeping my neurotransmitters under wraps like in a nice, ordered fashion because I have a tendency to dopamine and adrenaline being my dominant hormones, right?  So I'm just like, go, go, go! Do your absolute blow, take a jump and risk, don't think about it, do go and then burn out, crash bang! And so I need to, I need to have constant movement, I need to do the meditation thing regularly. Like before this podcast, I took five minutes to get my brain back into this space because I wanted to do a good interview. And I wasn't going to do that in this stressed-out body, I'd been doing too much admin work for 10 hours. So, I know how to manage those things. And it's the management on an everyday basis that I think and having those tools in your toolkit so that you know how to pull it up, I can feel my adrenaline going, I can feel the anger rising, I better go for a sprint out to the letterbox and back. Whatever it takes. Does it resonate with you? Craig: Yeah, 100%. What's interesting is I've been around—I worked, one of the things I didn't mention, I worked at a drug and alcohol rehabilitation centre for three years just as their kind of, what’s my title? Buddy health something, manager something, but I would only work there one day a week with them, but work with lots of addicts and alcoholics, and also athletes and all those things. But the thing is, especially with athletes, athletes tend to get their sense of self and their identity from their performances.  Lisa: Yep.  Craig: And not all, but a lot, and which is why I've known many athletes who got retired earlier than I thought. Lisa: Broke down. Craig: And well, they went into straightaway, most of them a depression or form of depression. And so this is a really interesting thing to just talk about briefly is—from a happiness and a wellness and a cognitive function, and a mental health, emotional health point of view, is to think about where you get your identity and sense of self from. Now, one of the challenges for us is, we live in a culture which is very much externally focused.  Lisa: Totally. Craig: So who you are, Lisa, who you are is what you have, and what you own, and what you wear, and what you look like, and what people think of you, and your brand, and your performance, and your outcome. All things, your shit. And I grew up in that because I was an insecure, fucking fat kid who became an insecure, muscle-y bloke. And then I woke up one day, I was 30. And I was huge, and I had muscles on my eyelids and veins everywhere. And all I was was just a bigger, more insecure version of what I used to be. Because I was still a fuckwit just in a bigger body, right? Because I wasn't dealing with the issues. Because my problem wasn't my biceps or deltoids and being my problem is, I'm mentally and emotionally bankrupt, and perhaps spiritually depending on your belief system. And so, we get taught from an early age that who you are essentially is about all things external. So we get taught directly or indirectly that self-esteem and self-worth and identity is an outside-in process.  My theory is that it is the other way around. It is an inside-out journey. It is, it's differentiating between who I am and my stuff, and recognising that everything that I have and own, and earn, and do, and my profile, and my podcast, and my results, and my brand, and my house, and my biceps, and all those physical, external observable things don't matter nearly as much from a mental and emotional health point of view as what is happening internally.  Lisa: Yeah.  Craig: So, and I'll shut up after this.  Lisa: No, that’s brilliant. Craig: But this is cool not because I'm sharing it, just this idea is cool, is that is the duality of the human experience. And what that means is that we live in two worlds. So where we do life is in this physical external place of situation, circumstance, environment, traffic lights, other humans, government, COVID, weather, runners, running, sport, all that external stuff, which is not bad. It's awesome, but that's where we do life. But where we do our living, where we do living is that inner space of feelings and ideas and creativity and passion and fear, and depression and anxiety and hope and joy, and overthinking and self doubt and self-loathing, and excitement and creativity. Lisa: Wow. Craig: It's trying to understand—because you and I know, at least a few people, maybe many who from the outside looking in their life is fucking amazing. Lisa: Yeah, yeah. Craig: It's the Hollywood life.  Lisa: It’s so nearly like that. Craig: It's a life on the outside of shiny.  Lisa: Yeah.  Craig: But I've coached many of those people, trained them, worked with them, set with them. And not all, of course, some are great. But there are many people who from the outside looking in, you would go, they're really successful. That would be the label that we use in our culture.  Lisa: Yeah.  Craig: Why are they successful? Oh, look at all of their stuff.  Lisa: Yeah. Craig: All of that stuff. Those outcomes, that house and that equals that money, that equals success. But when you sit in, you talk to that person, you go, ‘Oh, this successful person doesn't sleep much, this person needs to medicate to sleep, and also for anxiety, and also for depression. And also they hate themselves, and also they feel disconnected, and also they're lonely.’ And, or if not all of that, some of that, if not all the time, some of the time, and you got all the outside and the inside don’t match.  Lisa: Don’t unlatch. Yeah.  Craig: And so it's going. And by the way, of course, there's nothing wrong with building a great business and writing five books and being an awesome runner, or whatever, building an empire. That's not bad. But it's not healthy when that's the totality of who we are. Lisa: Yeah, and spending time on the inside, and being okay with who you are. Because I often ask myself this question. What if it was all taken away from me again and I've lost—I went through my 30s, lost everything, hit start back from scratch. We've been there, done that. I've had to go through the wringer a couple of times. If everything was taken off me, my house, my achievements, my business, which could happen tomorrow, who am I? And would I be able to get back up again? And I reckon I would, because I've got tools to rebuild. And I know that resilience is the most important thing.  Craig: Yeah.  Lisa: The question I ask myself sometimes, so, is it whether, like, I lost my father this year, last year, sorry, six months ago, so that knocked the crap out of me...  Craig: 100%. Lisa: ...out of my resilience because that was like, up until that point, it didn't matter. If I lost my job, my car, my career, and anything else, but my family were safe, and they were all alive, then that's all I needed. And then when the chief gets taken out, the cornerstone who'd been a rock, my mum was too, but that was a cornerstone, then it didn't, it was a bit of an existential bloody crisis for me because I was like, ‘And now, life is never going to be the same again.’ And that resilience, I really had to dig deep to stand back up again. And I think, so grief is one of those things. So I asked myself constantly, and one of the reasons I drive myself so hard is to protect my family, and to look after them, make sure I don't miss anything. And this one of the things I study so hard for. Just sharing a personal story there to sort of get people to understand, ‘If you lost everything, could you get back up? What would it take to break you?’ That nearly broke me, to be brutally honest. Craig: Well, I say to people who are in a bit of a—and thanks for sharing that, and sorry about your dad. God bless him.  Lisa: Yeah.  Craig: Like, I say to people, ‘Okay, let's forget all the fucking KPIs and the deck and success mantras and all right, that's good.’ I can stand in front of people and motivate, and inspire, and make them laugh, and tell stories. And that's all good. But I go, ‘I've got three words for you one question three words. And the three words and the one question are, what really matters?’ Now, what really matters is not your fucking tally. It's not your bank balance. It's not your biceps. It's not your hair colour. It's not your fucking lippy, or it's in my case, it's not your abs or and none of those things of themselves are bad. But I've been really lucky that I've worked with people who are in a really bad way, people in prison who got themselves there, of course, but then probably more impact for me was people with really bad injuries.  Lisa: That’s amazing. Craig: I work with a bloke at the moment, a mate of mine who got blown up in an accident. I trained him three days a week, and he was literally given zero chance of living like, or having any function similar to your mum.  Lisa: Wow.  Craig: And he started. He was in, like your mum, he was in a coma. I started, they said he'd be a quadriplegic. If he—firstly, they said he wouldn't live, and he lived in our luck out, mesmerised how that happened.  Lisa: Yeah. Craig: Got through the operations, he got blown up by gas bottles, which were in the back of his unit while he was driving.  Lisa: Oh my god. Craig: That blew the car apart, that blew the roof off, they shattered windows for 800 meters in the houses. And he was given zero chance of living. And he was in a coma for a long time. And I'll go in and talk to him. And when he obviously was not awakened, all the stuff that you did, and I just say to him, that I don't know, like, that'd be gone. I don't know. Like, I don’t be guessing. I don't know, I might just get well enough to get out of here. And I'll start training him. I started training him in a wheelchair, with a broomstick. And so and the broomstick literally weighed, I don't know, maybe 100 grams. And so I would put the broomstick in his hands. And I would pull his hands away. So his arm’s away from his body.  Lisa: Yep.  Craig: And I'd say now try and pull that towards you.  Lisa: Yep.  Craig: And that's where we started.  Lisa: Yeah.  Craig: With a 100-gram broomstick.  Lisa: Yeah.  Craig: Now it's three and a bit years later, I've trained him for three and a bit years.  Lisa: Wow. Craig: He is now walking with sticks. He drives himself to the gym. His brain function is fucking amazing.  Lisa: Oh my god. Craig: He’s still in constant pain. And he's got a lot of issues. But the bottom line is the dude who they went, you will never ever walk, you will never talk.  Lisa: You’ll never survive. Craig: They'll never be any—you'll never have any function, right?  Lisa: Yep.  Craig: So my two big perspective givers. That's one and the other one is—so...  Lisa: What a dude. Craig: What’s that? Lisa: What a legend. Craig: Yeah, he's amazing. He's amazing. So about 14 months ago, I was at the gym and I was training with my training partner, who's like me and he’s all buffed. He's in good shape. He’s fit. He doesn't drink, doesn't smoke, him and I are very similar. Anyway, one of the stupid things that he does is he takes I don't want to get in trouble. But he takes pre-workout, doesn't do drug. Don't do anything. I don't know. But anyway, he took a pre-workout. We're training and he's doing a set of chins. And he did 30 chins, Lisa, and he held his breath for the whole time because that's what he does. He thinks he gets more reps when he holds his breath. By the way, folks, not a great plan. Holds his breath for 30 reps. Lisa: He’s training his chemoreceptors. This for sure. Craig: Yeah, comes down, falls on his face on the floor. And I think he's having a seizure.  Lisa: Oh. Craig: And it had an instant cardiac arrest.  Lisa: Oh my god.  Craig: So, not a heart attack, a cardiac arrest. So, his heart stopped. So it took me kind of 20 seconds to realise it was that, and not... And there was—I won't describe what was going on with him.  Lisa: Yep.  Craig: But as you can imagine, turning all kinds of colours... Lisa: Yep.  Craig: ...stuff coming out of his mouth. It was messy, right?  Lisa: Yep.  Craig: So, he was dead for 17 minutes.  Lisa: Oh, my God.  Craig: I worked on him for 10 until the ambos got there or the paramedics and God bless him. fricking amazing. But what's interesting is in that, firstly, that 17 minutes could have been 17 days. That's how clearly I remember those minutes.  Lisa: Yeah.  Craig: And I'm on the floor, kneeling down next to one of my best friends in the world.  Lisa: Yep.  Craig: And I'm doing compressions and breathing, and I'm trying to save his life.  Lisa: Yeah.  Craig: And it's funny how in that moment, everything comes, without even trying, to everything comes screamingly into perspective about, ‘What is bullshit?’ Lisa: Yes.  Craig: What matters?  Lisa: Yes.  Craig: What fucking doesn't matter?  Lisa: Yes.  Craig: What I waste energy and attention on. And literally those seven, eight minutes. I mean, I think I had pretty good awareness but they really changed me.  Lisa: Yeah. I hear you. Craig: Nothing matters except the people I love.  Lisa: Exactly. Craig: I'll figure the rest out.  Lisa: Yep. It's an amazing story. Did he survive? Craig: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's five-to-two here in Melbourne.  Lisa: And he's waiting for you?  Craig: We're training at five. Lisa: Brilliant. Say hi for me. Craig: He’s still an idiot.  Lisa: He’s awesome, he's lucky he got you.  Craig: He’s still an idiot, but at least he prays when he chins. Lisa: Yeah, but like just the experience I went through with my dad. And I haven't done a whole podcast on it, and I tend to, because the two weeks fighting for his life in the hospital and fighting up against a system that wouldn't let me do intravenous vitamin C in that case that I was trying to because he had sepsis, and fighting with every ounce of my body and every ounce of my will, and in knowing that, and for those—it was 15 days that we were there, and they all blend into one because there was hardly any sleep happening in that time, a couple hours here and there and I'd fall over. But they changed me forever, in the fact that because I'm a fixer, I like to fix things and people. And when we're in the fight, I’m the best person you want in your corner of the ring. If we're in a fight for your life, or not as an, like, I'm a paramedic, but if you want someone to fight for you, then I’m the biggest person to have in your corner. But when we lost that battle, man, I was broken. And to actually not to come out the other side and to have that win and to get him back and to save his life, especially knowing I had something that could have saved his life had I been able to give it to him from day one. And you said that about your friend who got blown up and you said, ‘Just get out of here, mate, no, take it from there.’ And that's what I was saying to my dad. And as he had, ‘You just get yourself—you just hang in there, dad, because I will do what I can do here, and I've got all my mates and my doctors and my scientists all lined up ready to go. As soon as I get you the hell out of this place, I will do whatever it takes to get you back.’ But I could not do anything in a critical care situation because I had no control over him, his body, what went into him. And it was a—he was on a ventilator and so on. And so that was out of my control, you know? And that's fricking devastating.  Craig: Yeah.  Lisa: To know that and to feel that. Craig: How did that change you? Like, how did that change you in terms of... Lisa: It's still an evolving process I think, Craig, and there's a burning desire in me to get that changed in our ICU for starters, to get recognition for intravenous vitamin C, which I've done like a five-part series on my podcast for status, but I'm working on other ideas and projects for that because we're talking thousands and thousands of doctors and scientists who have the proof that this helps with things like sepsis, like ADS, like pneumonia, and it's just being ignored. And it's, we’re just 20 years behind this is one of the reasons I do what I do, is because I know that the information, like going through that journey with my mum too, the information that latest in clinical studies, all of what the scientists are doing now and what's actually happening in clinical practice are just worlds apart. And with like a 20-year delay in from there to there, and the scientists are saying this, and the doctors at the cutting edge are saying this. And so things have to change. So that's changed me in a perspective because I've never been a political person. I don't want to really get—I love being in the positive world of change, and it's, do things. But I do feel myself going into this activism space in a little way because I need to get some changes happening and some systematic things and you know you're up against the big fight.  Craig: Yeah.  Lisa: This is a big base to take on. But I'll do what I can in my corner of the world, at least but it has changed. And all that matters to me now is my family and my friends, and then from a legacy perspective, is impacting the world massively with what I do know and the connections that I do have and bringing information like we've been hearing today and these very personal real stories to people's ears because it changes the way people have their own conversations and hence start to think. Craig: Well, I think also, and thanks for sharing that. That's it. Somebody's got to step up, and you're stepping up and quite often the things that we need to do to live our values are not the things we want to do.  Lisa: No, scary.  Craig: Like, Fuck this. Yeah, I'd rather watch Netflix too. But that's not what I'm about. So it's good that you recognise that and you step into that, but I think what's encouraging about this conversation for everyone is that neither of us, well, I was gonna say, particularly special, you're quite special with what you do. But even with what you do, as an elite athlete, really, you've just put in an inordinate amount of work. Like, you've done all of the things required to become elite and to become an exception, but in many other ways, like with me, you've got issues and bullshit and flaws. And that's why I think—I'm not saying this is a great podcast by any means that or this is great conversation because that's very fucking self-indulgent. But what I mean is, I think people connect with podcasts, conversations that are just that.  Lisa: Yeah.  Craig: Where it's not like two people who are... Lisa: Scripted.  Craig: ...just shooting off like experts. It's like, yeah, we're both figuring it out, too.  Lisa: Yeah.  Craig: And by the way, I'm a dickhead too. By the way, I don't know, I've got a lot of shit wrong. Don't worry about that. It's like, I'm just having my best guess. And I always say, even as a coach, I've never changed anyone. All I've done is influenced people, but I've never done the work for them. They've always done the work. So, everyone that I've coached that succeeded, it's because they did the work. Like I didn't run the race. I didn't lift the weight. I didn't play the sport. I didn't go to the Olympics. I didn't walk out onto the arena. I didn't do anything. I'm just the guy going, ‘Fuck, come on, you can do it.’ And like, here’s a plan and here’s—it's like, I'm just the theory guy. I don't put it into—the only life that I put it into practice in is my own. Lisa: Yeah. And that's powerful. And as a role model, too. I mean the shape that you're in and the stuff that you do, and you walk the talk, and those are the people that I want to listen to. And those are the people I want to learn from. Craig: Well, my dad, my dad used to say to me, a couple of it, my dad's like a cranky philosopher. But he used to say to me a couple of things. This is irrelevant. The first one but it's, ‘You can't go to university and get a personality', right. Which is funny because my dad's like, ‘And university, it's overrated'. I agree, dad.  Lisa: Yeah.  Craig: Second thing.  Lisa: For most things. Craig: Second thing. He used to say, ‘I wouldn't trust accountants or financial planners who weren't rich'. Lisa: Or trainers who are overweight. Craig: It's like, I remember him saying to me, like a friend of his disrespect Toyota, but not a friend, but a dude he knew. He was a financial planner or an accountant. And he used to drive this old beaten up Corolla, and my dad's like, ‘Why would I listen to him?’ Like, look what he drives, like, if he knew anything about making money or maximising whatever.  Lisa:

 It's time for the Comic Talk Headlines with Generally Nerdy!  Netflix is bringing Keanu Reeves comic book to life. Kate Kane returns to Batwoman, but its not what you think. All that and MORE!! Catch up on all the nerdy headlines in TV and Movies, Tuesdays and Fridays. Plus, don't forget to subscribe for more fresh content.    TV/StreamingFollow-ups/CorrectionsLet the Right One In - Swedish NOT French… I’m dumb.Batwoman - Kate Kane is returning?? Also strange is that Ruby Rose won’t be the one in the role. Instead, CW is bringing actress Wallis Day for the part… https://deadline.com/2021/03/batwoman-wallis-day-kate-kane-javicia-leslie-ryan-wilder-the-cw-1234718851/ American Horror Story - Season 10 to be titled “Double Feature.”BRZRKRNetflix is bringing the crowd funded comic book to their streaming service in the form of an anime series AND a live action movie!! Ross Richie and Stephen Christy for BOOM! Studios are producing; Stephen Hamel for Company Films will also produce. Adam Yoelin for BOOM! Studios will executive produce. Reeves will star and produce.https://variety.com/2021/film/news/keanu-reeves-brzrkr-movie-anime-series-netflix-boom-studios-comics-1234935704/ MoviesFollow-ups/CorrectionsThe Flash - Michael Keaton says he isn’t FOR SURE in the movie. Depends on UK COVID status when it comes time. Says he hasn’t even read a script. https://deadline.com/2021/03/michael-keaton-batman-the-trial-of-the-chicago-7-ramsey-clark-sag-ensemble-award-record-interview-1234719059 Disney Movie Releases - Black Widow is now being simultaneously released on Disney+ and in theaters on June 9. No word on Disney+ price. Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings sept 3 (july 9). Free Guy Aug 13, and King’s Man Dec 22.Regal Theaters - Working for opening for Godzilla VS Kong on April 2nd https://variety.com/2021/film/news/regal-cinemas-reopen-cineworld-godzilla-vs-kong-1234936229/ Rumor MillConfirmations/RefutationsMicrosoft/DiscordMicrosoft is reportedly considering purchasing Discord, and Discord is reportedly considering either that or going public.DC ComicsNew closing rumor. This time has Robert Kirkman at the top of the list of people to take over…? Well Kirkman and Steve Geppi from Diamond Distribution. Sounds like they might each option different DC characters for publishing rights.You can support this show by visiting our merch store, or by leaving us an Apple Podcasts review.

 It's time for the Comic Talk Headlines with Generally Nerdy!  Netflix is bringing Keanu Reeves comic book to life. Kate Kane returns to Batwoman, but its not what you think. All that and MORE!! Catch up on all the nerdy headlines in TV and Movies, Tuesdays and Fridays. Plus, don't forget to subscribe for more fresh content.    TV/StreamingFollow-ups/CorrectionsLet the Right One In - Swedish NOT French… I’m dumb.Batwoman - Kate Kane is returning?? Also strange is that Ruby Rose won’t be the one in the role. Instead, CW is bringing actress Wallis Day for the part… https://deadline.com/2021/03/batwoman-wallis-day-kate-kane-javicia-leslie-ryan-wilder-the-cw-1234718851/ American Horror Story - Season 10 to be titled “Double Feature.”BRZRKRNetflix is bringing the crowd funded comic book to their streaming service in the form of an anime series AND a live action movie!! Ross Richie and Stephen Christy for BOOM! Studios are producing; Stephen Hamel for Company Films will also produce. Adam Yoelin for BOOM! Studios will executive produce. Reeves will star and produce.https://variety.com/2021/film/news/keanu-reeves-brzrkr-movie-anime-series-netflix-boom-studios-comics-1234935704/ MoviesFollow-ups/CorrectionsThe Flash - Michael Keaton says he isn’t FOR SURE in the movie. Depends on UK COVID status when it comes time. Says he hasn’t even read a script. https://deadline.com/2021/03/michael-keaton-batman-the-trial-of-the-chicago-7-ramsey-clark-sag-ensemble-award-record-interview-1234719059 Disney Movie Releases - Black Widow is now being simultaneously released on Disney+ and in theaters on June 9. No word on Disney+ price. Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings sept 3 (july 9). Free Guy Aug 13, and King’s Man Dec 22.Regal Theaters - Working for opening for Godzilla VS Kong on April 2nd https://variety.com/2021/film/news/regal-cinemas-reopen-cineworld-godzilla-vs-kong-1234936229/ Rumor MillConfirmations/RefutationsMicrosoft/DiscordMicrosoft is reportedly considering purchasing Discord, and Discord is reportedly considering either that or going public.DC ComicsNew closing rumor. This time has Robert Kirkman at the top of the list of people to take over…? Well Kirkman and Steve Geppi from Diamond Distribution. Sounds like they might each option different DC characters for publishing rights.You can support this show by visiting our merch store, or by leaving us an Apple Podcasts review.

Failure could either be your greatest weakness or greatest strength. Depends on your perspective.

On today's episode Chris talks about Love Island, Dogecoin and Depends. He also explains how to cut your own hair, his newfound love of Tom Brady, and what it's like to be Santa Claus. Tweet your questions and spread the love using the hashtag #congratulationspod on Twitter and everywhere else, and don't forget to rate, review, listen on iTunes, Google, Spotify, Stitcher, or your favorite podcast app.

WANDAVISION WAS AWESOME! We discuss the finale and overall how great the show was. Also, we talk about Coming 2 America. Was it as good as the original? Depends on what your looking for. And, HBO Max had a leak and one of us finally watches Captain Marvel.

Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/e6JW7V8LKeY In this live Q&A I discuss if you should take on biweekly mowing Customers OR just stick to weekly service ONLY. Here are 6 things to consider when it comes to offering bi-weekly mowing service: 1.) Charge 50% more for biweekly (not $5) 2.) Share weekly and biweekly mowing prices UPFRONT so there are no surprises 3.) Sell weekly as a "discounted" price... not that biweekly is an "upcharge" 4.) Tell biweekly clients that if the grass is X inches high or more then there will be an upcharge 5.) Biweekly is a great DROP SALE 6.) Depends on how big your business is... are your trying to simplify? Landscape Summit 2021 Conference ✈️ RECORDING: https://mikeandes.teachable.com/p/landscape-summit-2021 Learn How to Build a $100K/Month Landscape Business: ⚠️ ONLINE LANDSCAPING COURSE: https://www.landscapebusinesscourse.com Join Augusta Lawn Care: ⛔️ LAWN CARE FRANCHISE: https://www.AugustaLawnCareServices.com/franchise Get Your Landscape Business Website Built: ❌ LAWN CARE WEB DESIGN: https://www.LawnCareWebDesign.com Get Business Consulting From Mike:

Its Tuesday and topics tackled today include...Is there a crisis at the US/Mexico border? Depends on who you ask. The Biden administration says no but Texas Gov. Greg Abbott says there is a border crisis as a result of Biden's policies.; Lock-downs are breaking our kids and the damage could be permanent.; A German Shepherd adopted by the Biden's was removed from the White House after he displayed aggressive behavior toward security.; Texans don't have to prove they are eligible for Covid vaccine and some are jumping the line. On the JR poll, "Do you think there's a lot of line-jumping for the vaccine?"

Sit down with Josh and Dean as they watch "Taliko" and regale you with astute observations about race, culture, and "dark" conspiracies... Subscribe Android Google Play iTunes Spotify *RSS Address: http://lsgonxfiles.libsyn.com/rss *Cut and paste the web address into ‘search’, or ‘add address’, or ‘URL’, or ‘feed’ field. Depends on your podcasting app. Support Any consideration for support is greatly appreciated. Membership will present the most value as it gives you access to hundreds of hours of bonus content.  -Join LSG Media Membership -Donate -Amazon Wish List Socials-Discord -Dean on Instagram (LSGDean) -Dean on Twitch -Matt on Twitch -FB Group Disclaimer This is a commentary and criticism show that will routinely slander, suggest, and make wild claims - it should be considered comedy entertainment only, and not to be taken seriously. Take responsibility for your own feelings and actions.

Welcome!   I am sure that most of you know about the problems Texas experienced with its energy infrastructure well there is more bad news for our nations' infrastructure and that comes from a vulnerability in the programmable logic controllers that many of these large infrastructure providers use to control the flow of product. (i.e., water, electricity, natural gas, etc.). Also this week Google Chromebooks outsold Apple but that is not the whole story.  We also dug into processors and the importance of them and how it affects what you do daily. Then we discuss Clubhouse and why it may not be the best platform to get on and there is more so be sure to Listen in. For more tech tips, news, and updates, visit - CraigPeterson.com. --- Tech Articles Craig Thinks You Should Read: Embracing a Zero Trust Security Model Turns out Most Manufacturing, Water Supply, and Power Companies Use Controllers with a Security Severity Score of 10 out of 10 Chromebooks outsold Macs worldwide in 2020, cutting into Windows market share Clubhouse is the New Up-and-Comer but  Security and Privacy Lag Behind Its Explosive Growth New York sues to shut down 'fraudulent' Coinseed crypto platform Former SolarWinds CEO blames intern for 'solarwinds123' password leak WhatsApp will basically stop working if you don't accept the new privacy policy TikTok breaching users’ rights “on a massive scale”, says European Consumer Group --- Automated Machine-Generated Transcript: Craig Peterson: [00:00:00] Apple just got passed by Google's Chromebook. We'll tell you more about that. Clubhouse the app everybody seems to want, and it's invite-only. Sound familiar? That's happened before has got some serious privacy problems. Hi everybody. Craig Peterson here. Thanks for joining me today. There are a lot of things to talk about and I'm going to start with this article from ARS Technica, talking about programmable logic controllers. Now I can see you sitting there saying, what are you talking about, Craig? Who cares? Here's, what's going on. You heard about the solar winds hack? It's been something we've talked about pretty much every week here for the last Oh a month or so since it really happened. And we found out some more stuff about it this week, by the way, we know who the group is that actually did the hack very professional group. This means, of course, nation-state, but. They were going after different types of companies, that help the different types of companies, as well as government organizations. In other words, they were targeting MSPs managed services providers. And unfortunately, most of them failed because it's rare, very rare to find an MSP that actually takes care of security. And I'm not going to blame them. I'm not going to blame you for using one of these MSPs that got compromised. Because ultimately, security is a long tail thing. It is an industry in and of itself. It's hard to keep up. It's hard to keep moving forward. But I brought this up because I wanted to tie it into something we also talked about a bit for the last two weeks, and that is that water plant in Florida. This water plant in Florida had the amount of lye added to water, turned up 100 fold. Not 100%, a hundred times more lye in the water and somebody noticed and all well and good. Who did it? We don't really know, but here's the problem I want to talk about today. And that is the SCADAs systems, these PLCs, in other words, The computers that are controlling the valves in these various businesses and government agencies, the water plants, the electric plants, et cetera. You had valves. Those were these tubes. Remember that, and then transistors for a little while. Anyhow. This is something that's a very real problem because Rockwell automation you've heard of Rockwell before. I am sure of that because Rockwell has been a government contractor forever. They've done a whole lot of stuff in the military space and they do a ton also in the civilian space. Rockwell makes hardware that's used to control equipment in factories, a lot of equipment in a lot of factories, as well as all of these other places out there. And it is what's called generically a "programmable logic controller." They're selling them under this logix brand. You'll see them everywhere. They control everything you can think of out there. Some of them are very small. There might be a, like a toaster that you'd have on the countertop for instance, or something as big as one of those little pizza ovens you can put on the counter, but then they can be a whole lot bigger than that. But they help control equipment. And. Oh, the manufacturing and the processes on assembly lines and other manufacturing environments. You might remember what happened in Iran, where they had these PLCs, programmable logic controllers, that were part of this whole SCADAs system. It's all together. And in Iran, they were using them to control centrifuges and those centrifuges were being used to refine nuclear material eventually to make nuclear bombs. At least that's what we said. That's what the UN said, et cetera, et cetera. And then it makes sense, right? They have to refine the yellowcake. So that's what they were doing. And what did we do? Apparently, we got together with this country called Israel. It's over there in that same neck of the woods. And with them, we came up with some software to break into the computers at the Iran facility. Now, these computers were what we call air-gapped. They were not directly connected to the internet. So how did we hack it? We hacked the old-fashioned way. No, we didn't use a little honey bait. What happened with rep Swalwellout in California, who I don't understand how he's still sitting on the number one top secret committee in Congress, even though he spent years with this Chinese spy who obviously would have been feeding all of this information that he got back to China. I don't understand Nancy Pelosi. Sometimes this is just crazy. What's going on in Congress? It wasn't that? Okay. It wasn't a honey trap. It was a honey trap. I guess what they did is they developed this piece of malware, knew that they had to get it on to the machines that controlled the manufacturing process there in the plant that did the refining in order to make the nuclear bombs. How can you get it in if it's air-gapped, how can you get it in if those machines are not connected to the internet? But it doesn't matter if you break into the firewall because they're not behind the firewall. They're not on a network that is accessible from the outside. However, they were networked and they have to be networked inside the building so that you can have one computer that's monitoring the spin rates of all of these different centrifuges and just kind of keeping tabs on everything. So they went ahead and they put this little virus onto a thumb drive. And then, in fact, they made dozens of these thumb drives. They found out where the engineers who worked at the plant went for coffee, where they went for lunch and they scattered these around. And then a coffee spot at the lunch spot. And so now all of this stuff is scattered around these little thumb drives people, pick them up, Oh, a free thumb drive and they take them into the office. And this particular piece of malware was specifically crafted for this programmable logic controller. So if you plugged it into your computer as an accounting puter computer, it would say, Oh, wait a minute this is an accounting computer. I don't care. But these guys brought it back into their manufacturing facility and it did work there and it took over control of the machine that controlled all of these centrifuges. And fuges, it keeps saying fuses, centrifuges and it spun them out of control. And while it was spinning them out of control, it was showing a perfectly Greenlight status to the people who were trying to monitor it. They resist, it was a stroke of brilliant, but that is the type of system that we're concerned about. That's what we're talking about right now. These kinds of logic controllers that are used all over the place you can use them for almost anything you used on ships. They're used in government facilities. They're used everywhere. There was a vulnerability found and it was a, "I can't believe you did this" vulnerability. Now with solar winds, we found out it was a, I can't believe you did this vulnerability because apparently, solar winds had a password of solar winds one, two, three. Who wouldn't guess that perfectly good password? And man, we see these types of passwords all of the time. That's why I use a password manager. That's why you generate passwords or you come up with key phrases. Three or four words strung together with maybe a digit or something else in the middle somewhere and some upper lowercase characters. Right? That's how you generate a password. It's not supposed to be solar winds one, two, three. So that's problem. Number one, that's a big problem. This particular vulnerability has a severity score of 10 out of 10. Why? Why is this the worst level it could possibly be? Number one, it requires a very low skill level to be able to exploit it. Now that's interesting. Why is that? It turns out that these program, programmable logic controllers have a hard-coded key built into them. In other words, whoever programmed these things, and I'm looking at this list, there are a lot of them. Logix is the name of the company, the name of the product, and you'll see Logix in their names. And it is a whole bunch of compact Logix control, Logix drive, Logix a guard, Logix, guard on me. Now that wasn't supposed to provide cybersecurity support. All of those, okay. Then they have a hard-coded password. What that means is built right into the software is a back door with a password that can not be changed. Now, even if you bought one of those cheap firewalls from the big box retail store, you are going to be safer. Because at least it lets you change the password and you should be changing the password on your firewall. And in some cases, it also lets you change the username and you should change the username as well. But no. These Rockwell devices have a hard-coded password and Rockwell apparently is not going to issue a patch that directly addresses the problems that come from having a hard, coded key. So instead of that, they're saying, Oh, use these mitigation techniques. Isn't that what Iran did, isn't that? Why they had themselves? Nice little air gap network that was still breached? Oh, man. Oh, man. So it's a problem. It's a very big problem and they're just not paying much attention to it. Hey, stick around.  We're going to talk about Chromebooks versus Mac and Windows right here. It looks like the Wintel monopoly continues to die on the vine because of what Apple's been doing, what Google has been doing. In fact, Google is really stepping up their game here, getting rid of Intel. Hi everybody. Craig Peterson here. Thanks for joining me. We know that Intel's been around for a long time. You probably remember Intel used to brag about it. There were ads where Intel would kick in a couple of bucks if all they'd said was Intel inside. In fact, they are still doing it on machines. You buy a machine it'll probably have a little sticker if it has an Intel processor saying Intel inside. Intel had a problem, they made components that people didn't buy. Well, they bought them, but they bought them as part of something else. They did not buy an Intel processor for the fact it's an Intel processor. Makes sense. Some of them did. I certainly looked at them. I bought AMD and some others instead,. Some of the power PC stuff from IBM, just absolutely incredible, as well as others. I have done a whole lot over the years when it comes to processors, you've heard already I helped develop operating systems and implement them and the internet protocol. I've got a lot of experience with processors, no doubt about it. A lot of machine coding and assembly work over the years. I wrote C, which is a programming language used largely for a high-speed stuff like operating systems. I did a lot of that. I look at this processor from Intel as a massive failure. Marketing-wise. In the industry, it's been really great, but when I get into it from the prospect, or from the side of being an architect, of operating systems, and an architect of user interfaces. I cannot believe Intel. It's just been terrible. Part of the problem with the Intel processors and their instruction sets. The way they do the memory access and the way they do all of their IO to other devices has to do with their legacy code. They've tried to remain compatible with all kinds of older processors over the years. I can understand that I can see why they might want to do that. They're afraid that people might leave them. They started out as a memory company and through. I was going to say no fault of their own, but no luck of their own or anything else. I don't know. Another company came to them and said, Hey, can you make a cheap processor? Remember IBM looking for a cheap processor to put into this PC right. A personal computer that they didn't think would sell very many, certainly wouldn't be a great business thing. They went and said, okay what are the cheap processors we can get and put into here? Intel, 8080. That's what we'll do. All of a sudden is born the XT and the PC XT and the PC AT came. Some of these others over the years on the 8286 and the other chipsets. Anyhow, I'm getting awfully geeky on ya. Started really falling behind.  One of the ways they fell behind was in 64-bit design. In fact, Intel is AMD compatible. Now, if you can believe that. Talk about falling behind.  I don't think it's the engineers, there's some brilliant people there. It's entirely business decisions that drove them to the point they're at. They continued to increase the price of the processors. They were getting a little faster, but they still had the corner on the market because people bought Wintel they bought Windows. If they're going to get Windows, they're going to get Intel. Make sense. There were some others over the years that competed including AMD, which is Intel-compatible for the most part. They really managed to keep people out of the marketplace so they could jack-up the cost. The price structure, just keep jacking up, jacking up, jacking up. Many companies got fed up with it, including some companies that had the ability to do something about it. One of those companies is Apple. I mentioned in my newsletter last week, I had an article talking about how Apple is now apparently about to make 6G chips. 6G at the next generation of wireless and Apple's getting rid of Qualcomm and gonna make in themselves.  A company like Apple, when they want a million parts, they want them to arrive. They want them to be there on the day they ask for them and they want them to do what they asked for. Qualcomm has fallen down on that. They have not been able to meet Apple's demand. Intel has fallen flat on that. They have not been able to meet some of Apple's demands that have to do with the amount of energy they use the temperature they give off of course cause they want them on mobile devices. What did Apple do a decade ago? They said fine, forget about it. We're going to not use your Intel processors in our iPhone. They started using some other processors, some arm processors. Apple joined this community like an open-source manufacturing alliance that came up with a chip design that they could use as a basis.  Apple took that and ran with it. Today it has run so far with it that Apple has an amazing chip. Now you can see these amazing chips in your newest I-phones and your newest iPad. That's what they have in them these new Apple processors, but Apple also now has their new M series processors, which are effectively the same things they've been using in the iPhone, iPad, but beefed up in order to handle the load you'd expect to have on a laptop or a desktop with a Mac mini. I'm just so impressed with these. I was playing with both of those. One of our clients wanted them. We had them ordered and shipped to our place.  We put them on benches and we loaded them up and got them all running.  We played with them a little bit just to see what they were like. Very impressive machines.  They don't have Intel processors. Apple has switched processors a few times over the years, it went from the Intel or the Motorola over to the power PC then to the Intel, and now to its own chip design. It looks like completely new chipsets for the iPhone 13 hopefully, maybe the 14, hopefully, when that comes out. That'll probably be later this year. By the way, the 13 is just going to be an incremental update to the iPhone 12. They're saying is probably going to be like an iPhone 12S, really. Processors.  Apple doesn't need to pay the Intel tax on these processors out there.  I'm going to look right now, purchase price, Intel, a laptop CPU, just to get an idea.  I'm on there right now and I see coming right up, here's an Intel core i9 $400. Just for the CPU and that's from B&H photo and B&H has a lot of this sort of thing. Most of these Intel CPUs that are on laptops cost over $400. They're branded as core this, that, or the other things. The real expense of one, just start getting into the Xeons. Those Xeon processors can be just through the roof. Here's one here right now an Intel Xeon platinum, 8180 $11,000 while actually, it's 10,995. If Apple can make its own processor, do you think they can do it for less than 400 bucks? Of course, they can, and that's going to save them a lot of money in making some of these devices. We're going to get into those devices, like the laptops. What do you need in a laptop? Why would you go with Windows, maybe one of these other operating systems, including Mac iOS? We'll talk about that. That's going to lead us into the conversation about Chrome. Why is Chrome OS becoming so popular? Why has it surpassed now market share of Apple and where did that market share come from? People have been buying PCs, but what's going on? Stick around, you're listening to Craig Peterson and you can find me online. Craig peterson.com. We're talking about chips. Yeah we're getting maybe slightly technical, but chips matter nowadays in a way that they haven't before and yet they matter even less. I'm going to explain that. Hello everybody. Craig Peterson here.  I just said something that might've sounded confusing. Cause I said, CPU's matter more than ever. Yet they matter less than ever. Here's why. If you're looking at an Apple computer, you are looking at either an Intel processor, at least for the next couple of years or the Apple processor. If you're looking at a Windows machine for a little while Microsoft was really on a bit of a kick, trying to get Windows running on multiple platforms. In fact, it actually did.  There were some amazing things they were able to do, but really if you're getting Windows, you are going to be on an Intel platform. How about your phone? Do you have a clue as to what kind of processors in your phone? Now, you guys are the best and brightest. So yeah, you, you might, okay. You might know the exact model number and CPU clock rate and everything else about your phone, but the vast majority of people have no idea and you don't need to know. You don't need to know because it is now like a utility. You don't really know how that electron is delivered to your house. Where that came from? How that was produced? You just turn on that light switch and hope it works, right? Unlike when there's big wind storms and your power goes out, that's what you're hoping for. That's what's happening now, you buy a phone, you don't care if there's Intel inside. The same thing's true with tablets. You buy a tablet, if it's an Apple tablet guaranteed it doesn't have an Intel CPU. If you buy a Surface tablet, you can get them with Intel or without Intel. A lot of times you can tell just based on the price of the tablet now. As we move forward, we're starting to see more and more devices powered by arm chips and others. You see the idea behind Unix, which is this operating system that's underneath all of them. Unix lives underneath MacOS. Unix lives underneath Android. It lives underneath pretty much every cell phone and every device programmable device that exists today has Unix underlayment, which is the main operating system. It's fantastic. The whole goal behind that when it was designed by At&T was to make it so that this one operating system could run on anything and it did. Universities adopted it because it would run on anything and universities were getting equipment donated to them from everybody. That was anything, right? This mini-computer, that mainframe, all of these pieces of equipment got donated. They standardized on this Unix platform and the whole thing worked out quite well.  Linux is a type of Unix for those who are wondering.  The whole idea behind it is that the processor doesn't really matter because there's a version of Unix that will run on really pretty much any processor that's made today or has been made for the last 40, 50 years. Now, when you start getting into the useful computers that you and I use every day. What's underneath it? If you run a Mac, I don't think you really care. If you're on a Windows computer, I don't think you really care. What you care about is can I do that task at hand? Can I go ahead and open word, document editor. Even then you don't even care if it's Word for the most part. Word, you're going to get around it a little bit easier, but if you are over on a Mac, you could use pages. It doesn't have to be word and it doesn't have to be Windows and it doesn't have to have Intel inside. I am not giving stock advice, but I can tell you, I would not be out there buying Intel right about now. Hopefully, they got some other stuff going on. I know they're looking at some new chip designs that they can provide to people that make it pretty darn simple. Now there is another big player we haven't talked about yet and that is Google. Google's got Android, which is underneath again, a Unix operating system.  It has also on top of that, this big Java virtual machine, which has been the source of many headaches, a lot of chagrin here for developers. The beauty of it is again, Java was designed so that you can write your program once and run it on anything. You see where I'm going. We're getting to the point where the competition is going to be crazy. When it comes to the devices we use to get online or the devices that we are using for work, and it's going to get cheaper and cheaper.  I'm not talking about the cloud. The cloud is not cheaper. In most cases, the cloud can present all kinds of additional problems. We just got an email from a listener Danny today. In fact, he bought one of the little packages that we'd put together for the listeners. About 18 months ago of a special, it was a little Cisco firewall and Wi-Fi switch with security built into them, something you can't buy off the shelf. It had the firepower basic stuff in it. Anyhow. So Danny was asking because he uses G suite. How does he do a three, two, one backup? You can't with Google's G Suite.  With office three 65 or Microsoft three 65, in both cases, they have lost their client's data. So Danny was asking, so what do I do? How do I do a three, two, one backup, like you advise we do? Basically what we said is you've got to download all of your data from those cloud services, back them up properly at that point, and do it all in a format so it can be restored. So if it has to go back to the cloud, it can. It keeps your data safe. All of that stuff is, again, just it's everywhere. It's cheap. There are pros and cons to different ways of doing it. Dan is not there thinking I'm using G suite or I'm using Microsoft three 65. What processors behind it, right? You don't care. Google has said here's what we're going to do. We make a phone now, the Google smartphone isn't well adopted. It's more of an example of here's a way you can implement the Android operating system. It's a proof of concept for them. It's not a bad phone. They've tied in with some other carriers in order to provide cell phone service. They are coming out with a system on a chip. You used to have this big motherboard and if you go way back, I have a very big motherboard with all kinds of discrete components. Nowadays, all of that gets squeezed into one chip and Google has decided that they are going to make their own chip. They call it the white chapel. That's the name of the whole program.  It was reportedly made using Samsung's nine millimeter process technology. In other words, it's going to be fast. It's going to be power efficient, and initially, they are going to be putting it into their smartphones. That's not a bad idea. In their pixel smartphone sometime late this year. We haven't quite made it yet to Chromebooks, but I promise we'll get to that in just a couple of minutes. I wanted to make sure everybody had a decent understanding so that you can make the right decision for yourself and your business when it comes to what kind of computing to use. Stick around. So what kind of computer should you get? What's gonna work for you? Should you worry about the chip that's inside of it? What do you do? It just gets so confusing sometimes. That's what we're going to get into finally right now. Hi everybody. Craig Peterson here. Thanks for joining me today. Now, there are options when you are looking at a computer and I know some people don't even have a regular computer anymore, so let's start there. Really quickly many people are just using their iPad and that's what the goal was behind the iPad. I think that's what Steve Jobs had in mind. Apple always wanted it to be a replacement for your computer. It is not as flexible as a computer is by any stretch. Frankly, it's gotten a lot better, especially the iPad pro because of the faster CPU and it has a few more capabilities.  It's a good little unit.  That's what I use by the way is the iPad pro. If you are just going online and you're doing a little browsing, maybe editing a few documents, getting on a zoom call or a WebEx call, whatever it might be, doing all kinds of the regular stuff that iPad's going to work for you.  If you have an iPhone, you can link your iPad to the iPhone.  If someone calls you on FaceTime, you can actually answer, take the call on your iPad. If someone calls you on with a regular phone number, if someone does that anymore you can take that as well, right there on your iPad. iPads are inherently very safe. They have done a great job in trying to keep things pretty tight from the cybersecurity standpoint on the iPad. If you need to use Windows applications, then that's where the surface tablet might come in for you. I know some people who like their surface tablets and I know people who really don't like their surface tablets. Personally, I don't think I would buy one. There's not a huge win, but again, some people like them. They're more portable than some laptops. Now, you can get laptops in the Windows world that are as small and lightweight as an Apple laptop. Now, which would I get the Apple laptop versus a Windows? I would absolutely without a doubt, no question get the Apple. The main reason for that is that it's cheaper. Yes. I said it was cheaper.  It's cheaper because that Apple laptop is designed using high-quality components and is manufactured using high-quality stuff versus that PC. You might find a laptop PC laptop for maybe 350 bucks, and you look at the Apple laptops and they start at just under a thousand dollars. They're small the Apple ones and they are very functional and they will last. If you get the same component in your windows laptop, the same quality, the same speed, the same buses, IO, everything else, same display. You are going to pay more in the Windows world than you would on a Mac. If all you can afford or all you want is something inexpensive then I've got an option and it isn't Windows. Okay. Unless you have to have Windows, if there's a specific program you have to use that only runs on Windows while you're stuck aren't you. There is another option out there and it is called a Chromebook. It has been doing very well. 2020 was the first year that these Chromebooks outsold Apple Macintoshes. Now, that's a big deal because Apple's always been a kind of a minor player, seven to 10% of the marketplace. To see Chromebooks actually beat Apple is impressive. Now, part of the reason they're beating the Apple is what I just explained to you. They are inexpensive. Many kids are at home, right? They're going to school from home virtually and the schools need them to have a computer. What do they say? Get a Chromebook. Here's a $300 Chromebook. Go ahead and get this for your kid or here's $300 and or $300 Chromebook. In some cases, the school just buys it for the kid. Great for that. Now, remember it's Google, you're storing most of your documents up in Google's cloud. Depends on how you feel about Google and having Google with full access to all of your information. I have a big concern with Google having access to my kids' information, but that's a wholly different story out there. No question about that. Chrome is an operating system again, that is based on Unix. It's actually Linux, which is again, a version. It is something that you just won't see. The odds of you directly interacting with the operating system just keeps going down and down. Now, Windows, you still got a muck around sometimes you got to get into the registry editor. You got to do weird-ass stuff. With your Chromebook or with your Mac, you're not going to have to do that. It's not an antiquated design. It is a very modern design. Very easy to use. Now, I started the segment out by saying that CPUs matter more than ever, and yet they matter the least they've ever mattered. Here's why I said that the manufacturers now are able to choose the CPU they want to use. Unless, of course it's a Windows target, but for anything else for Chromebooks, they can use any CPU from any manufacturer. They might have to do some porting and do some work involved in that, but it's moderately minor. You can't say the same thing for Windows. Windows is locked into a couple of different architectures and you can bet Microsoft is pretty busy trying to make it so that it will run across even more CPU architectures.  It matters more to the manufacturers and matters more to you what CPU they're using, because it keeps costs under control. It gives you longer battery life. It lets them put a smaller battery in and still have longer battery life. Lots of good things. It doesn't matter at all anymore because you only care about the web browser. You only care about the text editor, right? What is it that you care about? It isn't, what's underneath all of this. Chromebooks, you can find for 150 bucks at a big box retail store and you get what you're paying for. That hardware is not going to be stellar that's for sure. But it's going to work and is going to do a decent job for you.  If you don't have any money, really, but you can afford to crack 150 bucks, look at a Chromebook. Chromebooks go all the way up into the $2,000 range. Those higher-end ones have more local storage. They're faster. There's a bunch of different benefits to them. Now, you've got the options. Apple is going to almost certainly stay with its own chipsets. It lets them keep control over the entire investment. Now,  you might say that's bad. I don't want to get locked into Apple. Well is not really going to matter that much, but you are going to get locked into Apple. The reason it's not such a bad deal is looking at the marketplace, Apple has a few dozen different designs. They have to maintain the operating system for all of their software, their device drivers, everything has to work across a few different, a few dozen models. Think about it. You've got how far back your iPhones', I know they still put out some patches for iPhone fives and sixes, they might have even older ones. So there you go. Then they had the larger versions of some of the iPhones and they had the ASCE versions. Look at that. Compare that to the Android space. Where you have hundreds of manufacturers using Android and building smartphones with it. Thousands of different models of phones each with their own device drivers and all kinds of little things. Some of these manufacturers will  go ahead and grab whatever's in the parts bin today and throw that in. Okay. This is true too, not just to the smartphone manufacturers, but if some of these PC manufacturers. Dell has been known to do this. Where it's okay, we're making a laptop today. Okay, we promise them this CPU, but this USB controller that we normally put in, we don't have it right now. I'm going to put this other one in there. It gets very confusing when you're trying to repair these things each one of those USB controllers has a different driver for Windows. So Apple, the part of the beauty of this is they only have to worry about the security and reliability of just a few dozen different designs versus Google having to worry about again, thousands and thousands of them. That's why also with Android you do not get the patches when they come out. If they come out, it can take an easy six months for a patch that's issued by Google to show up available for your phone. It typically takes Apple a matter of a week or so. It's just there. There's no comparison. That means your cybersecurity is going to be better when you can get patches. If you have an Android phone, that's more than two years old, forget about it. You're not going to get patches.  If you really are insistent, like some people I know in fact, Danny were just talking about it. He really likes his Android. Don't first of all, always buy the top model. It should probably be as Samsung.  It should be never any more than two years old. You got to trade it in every one to two years so that you're pretty sure you're going to be getting security updates in a timely fashion. There you go. That's the explanation of it. I love my Microsoft stuff for specific Microsoft apps. I really love my Mac for all the graphics and everything. It just works. It doesn't crash. The applications all just work. I use my iPad for some just general basic stuff, and Chromebooks are probably the way to go for most home users.  As we just talked about for schools as well. Hey, visit me online, CraigPeterson.com. You'll find all kinds of great information there. Craig peterson.com, Look for my podcasts. I guess this is a little bit of good news. If you're a home user, not a business or some other organization, like a state or County or city office, but we've got some breach numbers that have just come out for 2020. We're going to talk about right now. Hi, everybody. Thanks for joining me.  Of course, you can always go to my website. Yeah. Pick up all of the podcasts in case you missed something today or another week, you'll find them right there@craigpeterson.com. You can also sign up for my email list and we're going to be doing a couple of different things here. I think in the near future, we're going to be sending out some reports that we made as part of the security summer thing I did a couple of years ago, and each one of these reports and there's 30 something of them. Some of them are like five to seven pages long, but it's a checklist of all the security things you should be worrying about. Now, if you are a home user, you'll find a lot of these to be interesting. But if you're a business person, you work in an office, you help to run an office. You own a business. You need to make sure you get all of them. So make sure you are signed up Craig peterson.com and we'll be glad to get those out too. Plus we're also going to start something new every week. I usually have six to eight, sometimes as many as 10 articles in the week. I spend hours going through finding what I think are the most important things that interest me as well, but that I think will interest you guys. I put them in an email, it is it's not very long, but it's just a few sentences from each one of the stories and I have a link to the story as well, right there.  I'm going to start sending that out as well to everybody cause some people want my actual show notes. We're going to have the newsletter once a week. Then we're also planning on having a little video training as well. So it might just be straight, like straight audio. That's part of a video, but it'll be training on a specific security task or problem that's out there.  Then the course improving windows security. It's been taking us a long time. Blame it, mostly on me. Karen's also busy with babysitting grandkids at least a couple of days a week, and I'm trying to run a company as well. So it's, forgive us, but it is taking some time, but you're going to love this. I think it's turning out really well. I am about halfway done with the final edits. So I'm recording them. We go back and forth. They ended up recording them twice so that we get all of the points I wanted to cover into them. Karen's come up with a whole bunch of great screenshots and other pictures to go in with it so it's not one of these death by PowerPoint things. And we've got 21 different talks, if you will, on locking down windows and I go into the why's as well as the hows. I think that's really important, because if you don't understand why you're doing something. You're much less likely to do it. I picked that up from Mr. Tony Robbins, none other, the Anthony Robbins man. It's been over 20 years. Karen and I went to an event he had down in Boston and this was one of  his firewalk or events.  We actually got to walk on hot coals it was the weirdest thing ever. Karen was totally freaking out and I was just, wow, this is going to be weird, but we both did it. It was phenomenal. Cause it of gave you an idea of, even if you have this mental block that you can't do something you probably can. We actually did and nobody's feet were burned or anything. It was real coals. It was really hot. They were really red. It was really something that at the very end they had grass, a little square . Grass, maybe two, three feet by three feet and they had a hose running onto it. So you'd walk over it all. Then you'd just walk in on the grass and the idea there being if you had any hot coals stuck to your foot. You probably didn't want those just to stay on your foot. You'd probably want those, they get put out and taken off, so that's where that did. Anyhow. One of the things I learned from Tony was you need to have a strong reason why. We see this all of the time, Stephen Covey, if you read his stuff, you know it as well, you got to know why you're doing something. When it comes to computers and technology and security, you need to understand the why. Because it isn't just a rote thing. There are so many variations on what to do, but if you understand the why you're doing it, then I think it opens up a whole new world. You can explain it to your friends. You can help them understand it because finally you will understand it.  You'll be more motivated to do the things that you should be doing because you know why you're doing them, what it involves, what it's going to solve for you. This should be a really great course. And I spent some time in it going through the whys, give you some examples of problems people have had and what that solves. It's available hopefully here within a couple of weeks, man. I thought I'd be done by the end of January and here it's looking like it'll be the end of February. But be that as it may, keep your eyes out. If you've already emailed me to let me know, you're interested. That's great. I've got you on a list. I'll have to try and send out an email this week or sometime soon to let you guys know it that we've got it ready for you?  We will have it already for you, hopefully with the next couple of weeks. So that's that I'm told the different way of doing things that's me. I like explaining things I've been told I'm good at it. So let's I think a good thing too. I started out the segment by talking about this probably good news for end users. Because in 2020 breaches were down by 19% while the impact of those breaches fell by nearly two-thirds when we're measuring it by the number of people affected. Now, of course, if a company is breached and an organization is breached, it's counted as one. One person, if you will affect, obviously it can affect hundreds of thousands, millions of people, depending on what happens like a breach of Equifax. Are you counting that as one or you counting that as 300 million? Because that's how many records were stolen? I'm not sure it doesn't say it doesn't go into that much detail, but because the number of data breaches went down and the number of individuals affected by the data breach plummets. It's telling us something, then that is okay. That these hackers have moved away from collecting massive amounts of information and are targeting user credentials as a way to get into corporate networks to install ransomware. We've got even more news out this week about the solar winds hack. We talked about this before, and this is a company that makes software that's supposed to help manage networks, which means it's supposed to help make those networks safer. No, as it turns out, they weren't making it safer and it looks like maybe four years bad guys were in these networks. We're being managed by solar winds, not with software, right? It's not as though solar winds was managing the network is solar winds sold software services so that you could manage your own networks or in many of these cases, they were actually managing networks of third-party businesses. I do work as well for high valued in value individuals, people who have a high profile that needs to keep all of their data safe and they are constantly being gone after. They're trying to hack them all the time and the way they're trying to do it. And I talked about this really the first hour today is by this password stuffing thing. So they're trying to get in and they were successful and now it looks like it wasn't just Russia. Apparently, China knew about this hack potential knew about this bug and was using it. And apparently, it also was not. Just solar wind software. Now they're blaming some of this stuff on Microsoft office. If you have an office three 65 subscriptions, apparently they were using that to get in. So the bad guys are getting very selective. They want to go against companies and organizations like government agencies that have information there's really going to help them out. That is absolutely phenomenal. So these are stats from the identity theft resource center. And I was thumbing through as I was talking here. So it's saying that more than 300 million individuals were affected by data breaches in 2020, which means they must be counting the people whose. Information was stolen, not just the people that were hacked but it is a huge drop of 66% over 2019. And the number of reported data breaches dropped to about 1100, which is about. 20% less than 2019. So it's good. It's bad. I think the mass data collection thing is over with now. They're not as interested in it, but they are very interested in strategic attacks as opposed to just these blankets. Let's grab as much data as we can because they want to get it into these government networks, which now we've, we know they've gotten into. And then you've got this double extortion thing going on with the ransomware, where again, the going after businesses and people who they know can pay. So that's good news for the rest of us, right? The home users. It's not good news so much for some of my clients, that's what we take care of. That's why we get paid the big bucks. Now how that works. Downright stick around. When we get back, we're going to be talking more about the news this week in particular, of course, security, Facebook, and their Supreme court. Stick around. The United States has a Supreme court. Our States each have their own Supreme courts. In fact, there's probably Supreme courts all over the world. But did you know that Facebook now has something that people are calling a Supreme court? This is interesting. Craig Peterson here. Thanks for joining me. People have been complaining about Facebook and what they've been doing for years. One of the things people have really been complaining about lately is how Facebook has been censoring people, particularly according to them anyways, conservatives.  I've certainly seen evidence of that. No question don't get me wrong, but there's also left-wingers who are complaining about being censored. Facebook decided it needed to have its kind of its own version of the Supreme court. You see what happened? Bins are you have a post on Facebook that is questioned. And usually what has to happen is somebody reports it to Facebook as being off-color or whatever it is, the reporting it as. And if two or three people report it, then it goes to the moderators. That same thing is true for some of the artificial intelligence. Some of it's reviewed by moderators as well. Here's your problem. Particularly when it comes to conservatives because you post something conservative on Facebook. And if you are noticed by some of these liberal hacks that are watching Facebook accounts, they will gang up on you. And they use these bots to pretend that there is an incredible rage that there are hundreds of people who are very upset by what you just had on Facebook. When in reality, no, one's upset and they're just trying to shut you down. And there might only be two or three people who actually know about it, but they'll use these kinds of artificial intelligence, bots to flood Facebook with complaints. And they're doing that on Twitter. The left is doing it all over the place. So what happens next? The big challenge for Facebook is there are 2.7 billion users. Can you even wrap your head around a number like that? That is just massive. So they've got 2.7 billion users, and now, obviously, not everybody's on every day. But some percentage of them. And I've seen it's in the hundreds of millions of posts every day on Facebook and they log in and look around. Facebook only has 15,000 moderators. So for 2.7 billion people, 15,000 moderators just isn't a lot. And the other problem is that the moderators are suing Facebook. And they came up. This was about a year ago. With a $52 million settlement with moderators and the moderators are saying, Hey, first of all, we're crazy overworked. And then secondarily, we've got PTSD. Post-traumatic stress disorder. And they're saying that they have this because of the stuff that they've had to see, they alleged that reviewing violent and graphic images, sometimes stuff. My gosh, I might've gotten mentioned here on the air, but they had to view these. For Facebook. And they said, this just led us to PTSD. I can see that particularly since they have to have so many every day. So many of these different posts that they have to look at. And they are clocked and they are third-party contractors. They're just, all this stuff adds up. Doesn't it? Moderators who worked in California, Arizona, Texas, and Florida from 2015 until last year, every moderator will receive a minimum of a thousand dollars as well as additional funds if they are diagnosed with PTSD or related conditions. So they're saying there's about 11,000 moderators that were eligible for this compensation. But this is a very big deal. It's difficult. How do you deal with that? They've got now 15,000 moderators who are reviewing the posts of these 2.7 billion users. There is a little bit of an escalation procedure, although it's a very difficult and because there are so many people who are. Complaining and trying to take care of everything. It is a very tough situation, really for everybody involved. So they've decided what Facebook needs Facebook's decided this themselves is they've got to moderate themselves a little bit better, and the way they are going to do all of this moderation is they're going to have this kind of Supreme court that supervises. All of the moderation going on within Facebook. So they call him the new to an oversight board and. Obviously with just one board, without very many people on it, it is only going to be able to handle a small number of cases. So they have been paying attention to some of the cases. And they're trying to set precedents that will be followed by the moderators and millions of other cases. It's basically the same thing that the U S Supreme court does, where they review cases that come up from the federal district court. They can have cases that are coming up from individual States as well. And then they set standards and, without going into all of the detail of disputes between district courts, et cetera, we'll see what happens in Facebook, but lower courts are treating these us Supreme court. Rulings and dicta as binding precedents for everything in the future. So it's not easy to do in our courts. We're certainly not great at it. And there are a lot of complex procedures. And even if you're talking about moderation where you bring a moderator in. And there are some standards for that in disputes between businesses where you'll pull in a neutral third party. And they'll just usually split things down the middle. But those are going to be difficult for Facebook to put in how they reviewed five decisions. These are pretty substantive. Sixth case apparently became moot after the user deleted the post. We have an uprising and Miramar right now. You might've seen it on TV. If you're paying attention. I know a couple of channels have been talking about it. But this is an interesting problem because the military has overthrown the potentially properly democratically elected government. What do you do if there is massive cheating going on in the election? We faced that question here ourselves. In Miramar, they went ahead and the military took over and imprisoned the president. There was a post talking about that and talking about Muslims in France and China. Another one about Azerbaijanis. I don't know if you've seen what happened with Armenia and Azerbaijan and lots of history going back there with the Soviets and they created this whole problem because they didn't like the Armenians, but anyways, of all of these five, they disagreed with the lower moderators opinions and they overturned them. I think it's really good. I looked at these cases and I was shocked. I think they're doing the right thing here. Isn't that weird? Hey, you're listening to Craig Peterson. Visit me online Craig peterson.com. Hey, did you know, there is a war, if you will, between Facebook and Apple? It is getting nasty. What's going on over there. That's what we're going to talk about right now. Your privacy, Facebook, Apple, and Android. Craig Peterson here. Thanks for joining me. My golly. You know what I think about Facebook when it comes to privacy, right? Facebook and Google. I think Facebook is worse than Google, frankly. They just don't respect your privacy. They will go ahead and look at anything that they can get their hands on. We'll at that point, just go ahead and pull it together and sell it to anybody that's willing to pay. I am not fond of that. And I think you can probably guess why, and I doubt your fond of that at as well. You're not fond of that either. Apple did something. If that has really upset. Facebook and Zuckerberg have been making a lot of noise about this, but Apple announced plans about a week ago to finally roll out a change that they were putting into place in iOS 14, which is the operating system for the iPhones and iPads that Apple has. They had announced that they were going to add it the late last year. And there was huge pushback from Facebook and a few others as well. What's going on here? Bottom line is that Apple is trying to force. Apps to be transparent. What privacy do you have? What data are they taking? And in the case of iOS, as well as Android and windows, and Macs, there has been the ability for certain applications to be able to look at other apps that are on the device. And by doing that, it can get data from it. They can figure out who you are. They can give a unique fingerprint based on what apps you have and what versions they are. They're pretty clever about what they've been doing in order to harvest your information. Now you might have noticed if you go in. To the app store that there's been actually a big change already. This is the Apple app store. If you go in there and you pull up an app, any app, so let's pull up Facebook and then in the app store, and then you click, obviously on Facebook, you scroll down the app store page about Facebook. And partway down, it already has privacy information. You want to click on more info project early if it's Facebook because it doesn't fit on that homepage for the Facebook app. And it will tell you everything. Everything that Facebook wants access to. Now, some of it's self-reported by the app developers. Some of it is the stuff that happened. Figure it out either electronically or by getting people involved. I would like to think that when it comes to something as big as Facebook, they really are going that extra mile. And making sure that yes, indeed, this information is valid, it is what it is. They may not, and I'm not quite sure, but look at all of the stuff Facebook is gaining access to with you. So that was a bit of a hit people were pretty excited. Oh, wow. This is great. And although Google doesn't do what we're talking about here quite yet, I'm sure they will be not in the way that Apple is doing it, but because remember Google makes money off of you and your information, Facebook makes money off of you and your information. So if you want privacy, you cannot use Google products like Android or. Chrome. And if you want privacy, you can't use Facebook. So it's as simple as that. Of course, the big question, and we talked about this earlier in the show is how much privacy can you expect? How much do you want? What's legitimate, right? All of those types of questions. So what Apple's doing now is they said that in early spring of 2021, they are going to release this new version of iOS. And here's what happens. They've added something and this is according to a white paper and Q and a that Apple sent out. They added something called app tracking transparency, and this is going to require apps to get the user's permission before tracking their data across apps or websites owned by other companies. Under settings users will be able to see which apps have requested permission to track so they can make changes. As they see fit. You might have noticed that already under settings as you can look at the microphone settings, it'll tell you. Okay. Here's the apps that I have asked about the microphone and you can turn them off. Here's the apps that have asked about the camera. You can turn them off. So they're adding more functionality. They also, in the FAQ, they said that app developers will not be able to require users to allow tracking in order for those users to gain access to the full capabilities of the app. Now, you know how I've talked before extensively about how, if it's free your, the product. So what Apple is doing is they're saying, Hey guys if the user says, no, you can't try it. Track me across apps. No, you can't get it. This privacy information, which Apple's letting you do, they cannot Labatt automize. The app is what it comes right down to. So it was in September last year that they first said they were going to do that. Then they delayed the implementation of this tracking policy. So the businesses and app developers could get more time to figure this out. One of the things that I think is fascinating here is what Facebook's doing with fighting back. Oh, and by the way, Apple has not just gotten complaints from Facebook. There are other marketers and tech companies that frankly it makes Apple more vulnerable to some of these antitrust investigations that have been. Started really against some of these big tech companies. Although, I don't really expect much to happen under the current administration in Washington because frankly, big companies love big regulations. Because they can afford to comply with them, but startup little companies who are competitors of theirs cannot afford the lawyers for the paperwork and everything out. I look at the CMMC, we do a lot of work for the DOD, department of defense contractors, where we secure their networks. We secure their computers, we secure everything. We put it all together. And we also, for some of them there's guys, there's a 50, $50,000 upcharge for this. And that's because we're cheap. Believe it or not, it is a lot higher for other companies to do it, but we do all of the paperwork, putting together all of the policies, all of the procedures, what they have and. Auditing everything for them. And we're talking about a case and a half of paper thinking of the big cases of paper, right? 500 sheets and the ream and how many reams in a box? 10 20. I'm not even sure, but literally cases. And we. Printed it up, we wrote it all up, printed it all up, delivered it to a client just a few weeks ago. And it was a huge box of three-inch ring binders. It was all in and they didn't all fit in there. They're the big guys in the department of defense probably love this because they pay a million bucks to the people, the generate the paperwork for them internally. And they know the little guys can't afford to have full-time paper pushers. And so that's why, even though we're talking about months worth of work, why we charge 50 grand, which is a heck of a lot cheaper, believe it or not. And it's a huge discount for us. So I don't expect that the fed you're going to come up with a solution. That's truly going to help the little guy here, but Apple's announcement praised by privacy advocate nonprofits as well. And Facebook apparently has been buying full-page newspaper ads claiming it's going to hurt small businesses in a way it will cause it can make advertising. Just a little bit harder. And apparently, also Facebook has decided to rewrite its apps. So no longer even requests to access, cross-app access to your personal information. We're going to wrap up, talk a little bit about Comcast data cap, and some of these SolarWinds hack victims that didn't use SolarWinds, and ransomware payoffs have surged, even though the number of people affected has gone down. Make sure you get on my email list so that you get all of the important news. You're going to get some of this little training I'm doing and the courses that we've developed. The only way to do that is to go to Craig Peterson.com/subscribe. That's how you get on those lists and I'm not sitting there and pounding you or anything else, but I want to keep you informed. So there you go. We're probably going to increase our volume from one email a week to three so that we can provide you with a little bit more training. I want to keep these down to something that just takes you a few minutes to go through, but could save you millions of your business and tens of thousands, your retirement, if you are a home user. So make sure you are on that list. Craigpeterson.com/subscribe. Comcast. I know many of us have Comcast, I certainly do, is imposing data caps on many people in many parts of the country. That includes people to the South here, Massachusetts residents. What do you think they're doing down there? The state lawmakers have proposed a ban on data caps, a ban on new fees, and a ban on price increases for home internet services. The idea from their standpoint is we have a lot of people who are working at home because of a lockdown. What are they supposed to be doing? I'll take my daughter, one of my daughters, as an example, she's working at home. She used to work in a call center she'd go to every day. Now she's working at home. Are they paying a wage differential for her? Are they paying for the electric bill? They're not even paying for the phone bill or the phone. She has to provide her own phone. She takes inbound calls for a call center. Can you believe that? It's just amazing what's happened. The company is saving just a ton of money because people don't have to go into work. You can bet they're going to dispose of some of this space that they've been. What's happening here, we are using more bandwidth than we've ever used because more people are at home and it isn't all business related many are watching Netflix or you've got Netflix on in the background while you're working on stuff. It's just so common to do that. What data caps are doing is they say you can only use so much data a month. Then there's usually a penalty of some sort. In Comcast's case, they said for the first quarter of 2021, I believe is what they had come up with. We'll just warn you that you go over your data cap then they'll charge extra. I have a friend who has Comcast and he said, I think it took him like three days before he went over the data cap. That's not long.  It's because they're streaming TV. They've got kids working from home. Then you've got meetings that they're going to, that are now streaming. So I can see this, but from Comcast side, they now have to handle more data than they've ever had to handle before. Because we are using it, like for my daughter, she actually has a cell phone, but all of the calls are routed over the internet. Cause her cell phone hooks up to the wifi in the house and the calls come in and go out via that wifi.  It goes through the internet, it goes to her phone carrier's network. Then it goes to the call centers network. So there you go. What does that need? That needs to make sure there's no jitter. You don't want voice packets to be dropped because then it sounds terrible. It's very obvious when audio is dropped. I don't know if you've noticed if you're streaming something from one of these online streaming video services, but sometimes. It will hiccup a little bit, but have you noticed that with the smaller hiccups, the audio is fine and the problem is in the video. Now they do that for a couple of reasons, obviously video uses more bandwidth than audio uses, but the other reason is people tend to get more annoyed by audio fallout and audio problems. Comcast is saying, Hey guys, look at what we have to do with our networks. We have to expand them. We have to increase them. Now I've got to bring up again the Biden administration because of what they're planning on doing with this fairness doctrine on the internet. What they're planning on doing is saying, Hey, Comcast, just because this person uses five terabytes of data a month, you should not be charging them more than grandma that uses 10 gigabytes a month. Thousands of times more bandwidth requirements, you're not allowed to bill them differently. Cause a bit is a bit which is absolutely insane. I don't know how they can justify this sort of thing. So what's going to happen is you get companies like Comcast or other internet providers who are going to say. We are not going to invest any money into expanding our capacity because we can't charge for it. Doesn't that make sense to you? It makes perfect sense to me. By getting the FCC involved, it's just going to be crazy. Ajit Pi resigned when President Trump was leaving, he used to be the chairman. He actually had a head on his shoulders, but these new people President Biden put in there, it's insanity what they're trying to do with our networks. It's going to make it much worse. Comcast is putting data caps in. You hit the data cap it, they're just going to slow you way down. That happens too, with a lot of our cell phones, our cell phone carriers, if you use more data than they've allotted to you, they'll drop you back. So most people have 4g. Yeah. Okay. Your phone's 5g, but really guess what? You're not getting 5g. It's very rare unless you are on the T-Mobile slash Sprint plan. T-Mobile more specifically because nobody else has the coverage that T-Mobile has for 5g. So you're using 4g LTE, you hit your data cap. They're going to drop you back to 3g, which is really slow comparing the two together, all the three of them, frankly, but it's very slow compared to a 4g LTE. In mass, by the way, I should mention Verizon files and RCN. Do not impose the data caps. It's just our friends at Comcast that are doing that Vargas and Rogers. They let a group of 71 different Massachusetts lawmakers urged Comcast to halt the enforcement. By the way, the data cap is 1.2 terabytes per month, which is actually quite a bit of data. You'd have to spend a lot of time streaming TV. The cap does hurt low-income people is no question about it. If you are being forced to work from home because of the lockdown, the government's forcing you to work from home. They put their fingers in anything, and that just never seems to work out anyhow. We'll see what happens down in mass with Comcast and these guys.

Headaches can be mild or they can be severe. Join Dr. Frank Lipman and Dr. Robert Rountree as they discuss the many different types of headaches – from migraines to tension headaches – and what could be causing them. During this episode you’ll learn about: Causes of headaches are multifactored [2:36] Tension headaches [2:45] Food sensitivities and headaches [3:11] The great paradox: Brain does not feel pain [3:42] Blood vessels and your brain [4:20] Finding the source of headaches [4:47] Chronic headaches vs severe headaches [5:00] Diagnosing headache causes [5:33] Scanning for brain injury [6:00] Headache triggers [6:56] Tracking triggers with a diary [7:12] Lifestyle factors [7:44] Stress is a big factor [7:57] Dehydration and headaches [8:34] Muscle tension as a cause for headaches [9:03] Trigger points on the body [9:24] Migraines [10:20] Causes [11:18] Other triggers [12:30] Food allergies [13:13] Nutritional deficiencies [13:48] Nutrients to help with headaches [14:00] Treating headaches [16:00] Histamine response and headaches [17:56] How headaches vary headaches [19:22] Questions from the community [21:44] What are the different types of headaches [21:47] Most common: Tension and migraines [22:01] Headache is a vague name for the pain you are feeling [22:10] Important to identify cause [22:40] How long can I have a headache before I need to see a doctor? [22:58] Depends on the severity of headache [23:10] Getting to the bottom of headaches cause [25:00] Why are headaches linked to skipping meals? [26:50] Abdominal migraines [27:06] Hypoglycemia [27:47] Understanding blood sugar levels [28:11] Are headaches in the brain or some other part of the head? [29:45] Headaches come from structures of the brain [29:59] Why are headaches behind my eyes? [30:17] Muscles behind the eyes [30:21] What is good for headaches? [31:23] Ibuprofen [31:32] Willow bark extract, ginger [32:06] Releasing tension in the muscles [32:46] Resources to topics mentioned in this episode: Food Allergy and Intolerance: Making Sense of Food Sensitivities Caffeine Detox: How I Felt After Quitting Caffeine Self-Care Approaches To Treating Pain From Mayo Clinic Subscribe To More Content Make sure to never miss an episode by subscribing to the show on your podcast app. You can also learn more about what we talked about by visiting Thorne.com and checking out the latest news, videos, and stories on Thorne’s Take 5 Daily blog. * These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.

You might have heard that several California counties have been removed from the most restrictive "purple tiers" and will be allowed to further reopen -- but you might be confused if you check the COVID case rates and see that, while they've dropped a lot, they're still quite high. You might have heard lots of conflicting advice about vaccines and what is safe and what remains risky after you're vaccinated -- and again, you might be confused. Muddled messaging throughout this pandemic ... and we're going In Depth on all of it. Plus, the ongoing debate over one shot, two shot strategies for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines.  We're taking a look at two different groups of people and whether they should get priority access to COVID vaccines: farmworkers and Olympic athletes, which believe it or not is a related conversation. And has cancel culture come for Dr. Seuss?? Depends on who you talk to. The Suess estate has decided to stop publishing six books which contain racist references and imagery. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week, I have heard many people say to me, “I am so overwhelmed” “I’ve got no time for networking” or “I’ve got no space for my own brand development”. My reply to all these and more is… “What would you do if lost job tomorrow?” Reid Hoffman, the founder of LinkedIn, says the following: “If you were made redundant tomorrow, which people would you contact among your existing network? Send them an email today to renew your relationship.” My aim is to guide and advise clients who think they have a growth mindset, yet reject positive change with phrases such as: · I can’t because I’m too busy · I'm overwhelmed · Branding can wait In her ground breaking book, Mindset – the New Psychology of Success, the world-famous Carol S. Dweck, Professor of Psychology at Stanford University, states the following: “Why waste time proving over and over how great you are, when you could be getting better? Why hide deficiencies instead of overcoming them? Why look for friends or partners who will just shore up your self-esteem instead of ones who will also challenge you to grow? And why seek out the tried and true, instead of experiences that will stretch you? The passion for stretching yourself and sticking to it, even (or especially) when it’s not going well, is the hallmark of the growth mindset. This is the mindset that allows people to thrive during some of the most challenging times in their lives.” The hard truth is that to grow your mindset... ...Reposition yourself as a business problem ‘identifier and solver’, rather than as a job seeker. What is the greatest business problem you could solve for your potential new line manager? Which companies will you target? Segment and prioritize your target companies into three lists. The A list is 20 immediately attractive potential companies, the B list is the 30 next most attractive potential and the C list is the next 50 most attractive potential companies. Outline the three key most important criteria for your next move: culture, training opportunities, salary, career progression, mentoring… What ‘unique value proposition’ can you bring to your next organization? Use the Three Rs Method of connecting with and influencing people. Right person, Right timing, Right conditions. Who has the results and has succeeded in the roles you desire? What are the traits and behaviours of the top performers? Who makes the decisions for the roles within the companies you most desire to work for? The Head of the Company? The Directors? The COO? The CEO? And what about you? Do you have a strategy to access the hidden job market? Can I help you define your path to your next role? Let me finish with another quote from Carol Dweck’s seminal book: “When you enter a mindset, you enter a new world. In one world—the world of fixed traits—success is about proving you’re smart or talented. Validating yourself. In the other—the world of changing qualities—it’s about stretching yourself to learn something new. Developing yourself” Yeah, I know networking is hard...YET your career DEPENDS on it Enterprise Sales Club is now LIVE at https://www.enterprisesalesclub.com. Our purpose is to enable SaaS Sales Professionals to achieve their potential through the power of life-enhancing connections, shared experiences, and collaborative learnings. If you want to take your career to the next level, as well as improve your skills in Enterprise Sales, please contact me at adrian@adrianevans.co.uk

Perfect Pitch, it all Depends on the Audience Brandon Maslan and Jennifer K. Hill explore how to deliver the "perfect pitch" in an interview. They discuss the importance of authenticity, as well as being able to read the audience. They emphasize how important it is to practice your pitch, and to tie in your compelling personal stories to that pitch. Tips of the week: Practice, Practice, Practice Tailor your pitch Turn to hope, not fear

In real estate school, they teach you that the money is made when you buy. But that just isn’t true for apartment buildings. Yes, you have to buy right. But in the multifamily space, the money is made in the execution of your plan to increase revenue and reduce expenses. And the asset manager is responsible for making sure that happens. Daniel Simpson serves as Asset Manager at Nighthawk Equity, the investing arm of The Michael Blank organization. He has nearly 30 years of experience in multifamily, residential and commercial property management, developing an expertise in strategic business forecasting, budget allocation, complex data analysis and property financials. Daniel has an impressive track record of acquiring, renovating and repositioning C-class value-add properties in as little as 18 months. On this episode of Apartment Building Investing, Daniel joins me to share his hands-on approach to asset management, describing what he does on his monthly site visits and how he helps property managers optimize revenue and reduce expenses. He walks us through the metrics he uses to identify property management issues and explains why all problems come down to people. Listen in for Daniel’s insight on the limited role property managers should play in construction projects and learn when you should consider hiring a full-time asset manager! Key Takeaways Daniel’s insight on the fundamentals of asset management Ensure investors’ goals met, returns on target Provide guidance to property managers How often Daniel meets with property managers Speak with regional manager once/week minimum Unannounced visit to site managers once/month When to take a hands-on approach with property managers High turnover rate Higher than normal vacancy rate Lack of success in leasing units Collection issues Move-outs not entered timely Daniel’s take on why all problems come down to people Tenants rent from STAFF vs. apartment itself Asset manager’s job = find breakdown in system What metrics Daniel watches closely as an asset manager Consistency in NOI Occupancy (physical and economic) Delinquency Live PNL Closing ratio How to identify problems with property management Look at comps and communicate that with staff Secret shops to evaluate leasing staff’s performance Daniel’s process for optimizing a multifamily business Start with maximizing revenue (add $5 to $10/unit) Minimize expenses next, reevaluate contracts How Daniel thinks about managing expenses Ask questions about potential overspending Audit line items to keep property managers honest What Daniel does on his monthly site visits to a property Walk vacant units, talk with property manager Visit with leasing agents and maintenance staff Verify that move-in files match what’s in system Why property managers should not handle construction Distraction from filling units and collecting rent Better to hire GC or specialist (local or in-house) The role a property manager should play in construction Go to early meetings, input on scope and timeline Hand GC keys needed to carry out project What an average syndicator can do if they can’t afford a GC Use construction manager (part of management co) Build 5% in budget for specialist to oversee project When it’s time to hire an asset manager for your business Depends on skill set of investors in joint venture As soon as you can afford it Connect with Daniel Simpson Nighthawk Equity Email daniel@nighthawkequity.com Resources Learn More About Michael’s Mentoring Program Join the Nighthawk Equity Investor Club CLASS Leasing Podcast Show Notes  Michael’s Website Michael on Facebook Michael on Instagram Michael on YouTube Apartment Investor Network Facebook Group

If you need a hot date while you listen to this week's episode consider your mother-sister-cousin who is likely lurking somewhere under the bed. Subscribe Android Google Play iTunes Spotify *RSS Address: http://lsgonxfiles.libsyn.com/rss *Cut and paste the web address into ‘search’, or ‘add address’, or ‘URL’, or ‘feed’ field. Depends on your podcasting app. Support Any consideration for support is greatly appreciated. Membership will present the most value as it gives you access to hundreds of hours of bonus content.  -Join LSG Media Membership -Donate -Amazon Wish List Socials-Discord -Dean on Instagram (LSGDean) -Dean on Twitch -Matt on Twitch -FB Group Disclaimer This is a commentary and criticism show that will routinely slander, suggest, and make wild claims - it should be considered comedy entertainment only, and not to be taken seriously. Take responsibility for your own feelings and actions.

This week, My Girlfriendships spotlights Key West and Sanibel Island in Florida. We’ll also revisit making paella, and you’ll hear why Lisa didn’t get to make her Key Lime Pie—even though Ray did his best. Who’s Ray? Oh, just another story that made us wish we were wearing Depends.

Now that interest rates are as low as they’ve ever been, mortgage refinancing is extremely popular. But it’s also a confusing process. Do you know how to figure out when refinancing makes sense? What are the right rules to follow when refinancing your mortgage? In this episode of the Finance For Physicians Podcast, Daniel Wrenne talks about how physicians can capitalize on record-low mortgage rates. Compare and analyze all mortgage options that incorporate closing costs and other complexities. The decision to refinance is not so clear-cut and straightforward. Topics Discussed: Why refinance? New loan costs + closing costs > existing loan costs What? Find and set up a new mortgage to pay off old, existing mortgage How? Depends on the specifics of the deal What drives mortgage interest rates? Market or economic factors: 10-year treasury rate Supply and demand Credit score Percentage of home equity Debt-to-income ratios Loan payoff term Loan size What is the true cost of the loan? Add closing costs, interest and sometimes PMI Break-Even Point: When interest rate savings equal closing costs Long-term Costs: What’s the cross-benefit of keeping and paying fees? Amortization Schedule: Run numbers using calculator for current/potential loan Other Considerations: Compare rates, different lenders, and loan estimates Links: Historical 30-Year Mortgage Rates Mortgage Amortization Calculator Credit checks shouldn’t hurt you (within 45 days) Loan Estimate Explainer How Physician Loans Work Finance For Physicians

This week on the Electrek Podcast, we discuss the most popular news in the world of sustainable transport and energy, including more Tesla Roadster information, Toyota bringing EVs to the US, a new federal tax credit, and more. The Electrek Podcast is me, Fred Lambert, editor-in-chief of Electrek, and Seth Weintraub, founder and publisher of Electrek and the 9to5 network, discussing all our top stories of the week while taking questions from our readers and highlighting the most insightful comments on the site. The show is back live every Friday at 4 p.m. ET on Electrek’s YouTube channel. As a reminder, we’ll have an accompanying post, like this one, on the site with an embedded link to the live stream. Head to the YouTube channel to get your questions and comments in. After the show ends at around 5 p.m. ET, the video will be archived on YouTube and the audio on all your favorite podcast apps: Apple Podcasts Spotify Overcast Pocket Casts Castro RSS We now have a Patreon if you want to help us to avoid more ads and invest more in our content. We have some awesome gifts for our Patreons and more coming. Here are a few of the articles that we will discuss during the podcast today: Tesla to get access to $7,000 tax credit on 400,000 more electric cars in the US with new incentive reform Elon Musk asked Biden administration to implement a carbon tax Elon Musk is serious about making Tesla Roadster ‘hover’ with rocket technology Elon Musk believes Bill Gates had a big short position on Tesla (TSLA) and lost a lot of money Tesla (TSLA) buys $1.5B in bitcoin, pushing the crypto to all-time high; plans to accept as payment Toyota announces 2 electric cars coming to the US this year Audi unveils 2022 e-tron GT – combining luxury and electric performance Here’s the live stream for today’s episode starting at 4 p.m. ET (or the video after 5 p.m. ET): https://youtu.be/lS4w6cAGtIw Transcription Fred: And we are lively. These are gentlemen for a new episode of the electric podcast. I am Fred Lambert, your hosts, and as usual I'm joined by set Winthrop today. Set  [00:00:09] Seth: I'm good. [00:00:10]Fred:  All right, let's jump into this. We have a, quite a few interesting news to discuss this week, and we're going to start with one. [00:00:15] That's gonna, it's gonna affect a lot of people that are planning to buy an electric car in the U S sometime this year or even in the next few years. The The long anticipated reform of the federal tax credit for electric vehicles is, is pretty close to happening. So it was officially submitted to the house of representative in Washington. [00:00:40]And it's called, it's called the green act. And green is an acronym for growing renewable energy and efficiency. Now. Now. Cool. All right. There's, there's a bunch of different things to unpack in there. There's it's a, it, it, it, it affects the ITC for solar. It brings it back to 30% and extends it until 20 26. [00:01:02] But of course, the thing that we were more morals interested in is how does it affect the federal tax credit for electric vehicles? Because that's what needed to be reformed specifically, because, I mean, it was really unfair to a Tesla and in GM, right? Warren now don't watch buyers of this NGM don't have access to it. [00:01:20] And and sorry, I don't, I'm going to share the screen here. Sure. Got to do that thing. Quick sharing screen. Boom, we're on. Yeah. So Tesla and GM hit the threshold for the, the $200,000 to 200,000 deliveries in the U S and after that, they, they still managed to get more tasks rather than 200,000. [00:01:44] Then there's a phase out period that lasts more than a year, really. But now it's over for both automakers and basically the situation now is you have. Automakers that have EVs in the market that they're more competitive. Price-wise. Because their buyers have access to the tax credit. And this learned GM buyers don't even though for the only reason that they were sooner to market with higher volume of EVs. [00:02:09] So it doesn't make any sense. It doesn't encourage automakers to, to produce the vehicles. There are a bunch of different things were suggested over the last few years. If you've been following this, the legislation that was proposed around that some people were pushing for. Let's just remove the cap altogether and. [00:02:26] Put a timeline on it. Instead, for example, like seven $7,500 now, and by 2023, it goes down to six and then by 2025 goes down to five. And so on you phase that out until all electric vehicles or competitive with Fossil fuel powered vehicles. But somehow that didn't go, that it was isn't the solution that has been brought forward this time, especially not with this green accurate, instead of what they're proposing is a new cap of 600,000 deliveries, so significant increase But the 200,000 deliveries that happened before are still accounted for. [00:03:04] So it's really 400,000 new potential deliveries that can apply. And I'm at the new count on those 400,000 Appen when the new law is adopted. So this, this is great. Anything also also the change, the, the, the, the change, the actual amount. It's not 7,500 now. It's it's 7,000 pretty, pretty close. But in, in, in the if you read the actual a document here, they do say that the, the new cap is adopted. [00:03:33] The date of enactment are, so those sole on the date of enactment, the student to determine when the 600 officials is reached between the 200,000 and the 600, the 600,000. So. That's all they're going to account for which it's kind of a problem because normally with tax credit, you would think is just if you took delivery in that tax year. [00:03:56]But not now, we we're going to kind of have to wait for this thing to actually be enacted. And that, that means that could, that could create some problem for Tesla in, in GM. For selling cars in between now and when it's going to be enacted, because I think a lot of the people, including herself were assuming that that thing is going to pass. [00:04:15] I don't know. What, what do you think Seth [00:04:17] Seth: yeah. W you know, with the Democrats in all houses and the presidency, you would think so, although some of those tiebreaker type Democrats, like Joe Manchin of West Virginia, May not be so easy to convince. So it's not a done deal, but it seems like something will, will come out of this. [00:04:37]As for the legislation, it doesn't really make sense. I mean, it doesn't make a ton of sense. Like, you know, I never thought that the first one made a lot of sense. You know, we've been saying for you, a carbon tax is really the best way to do it. Like capitalism takeover. We're not accounting for the pollution that goes into the air. [00:04:57]If we accounted for that, everything would be fine. So, you know, this is just like kind of another like weird hack bandaid kind of thing. I mean, it, it is obviously not fair to Tesla and GM and soon Nissan, I guess that they have to you know, they, they may the early investments in EVs and now [00:05:23] Now th the competitors who kind of can, you know, leverage the battery technology that came out of, you know, Tesla and GM's early investments, you know, at LG or something those they can take advantage of that. And so LG packs in their cars and they, they get a $7,500 taxpayer GMs.  [00:05:41] Fred: That's a good point. [00:05:42] And then see like that, like Companies like a Hyundai or whatever, like , they still benefit from like the partnership with LG and [00:05:54] innovation. But I mean the same principle applies.  [00:05:57] Seth: Right? So, I mean, there's a lot of things that kind of make it unfair. I mean, it should be something across the board. And then of course, like people are going to be upset that like you can buy Teslas plaid model S. And get a $7,000 rebate on $120,000 car. [00:06:13] Like nobody who, who is going to buy $120,000 car. It needs a $7,000 rebate.  [00:06:19] Fred: Yeah, I would have thought that they would have yeah. W w w if you're updating the program, might as well introduce a cap like that, that, that one I have to admit that's a bit, it's a bit tricky. Like, yeah. I like to see those discount on, on cheaper vehicle, like the bowl, like the model three and everything, but if you're going for a plan or as you probably can afford it, you don't need to, you don't need the refund. [00:06:41] Seth: Interesting. So there was a little part in that the bill. The, I got this from the Mike Thompson house.gov site. There's a part of it, section four Oh two on page, end of page four of it for the use bars used cars, right? Yeah. And in that one buyers with up to $30,000 or $60,000 for married couples filed jointly in adjusted gross income can claim the full amount of the credit, the credit. [00:07:04] So that one is based on. Or that bit is based on the income of the people earning it. And that, that is for the, the EVs should not exceed the price of 25,000. So that's going to be probably not many Teslas there. You know, some old  [00:07:24] ones, perhaps.  [00:07:25] Fred: So they, they, they were thinking about it at least. Cause they did it for the, for the use, the car rebates. [00:07:30] So why not do it for the new one? I mean, I do understand, like the idea is just to try to convince someone that is looking for a new car, a, you want to incentivize them to choose an electric one over a gasoline one. So that that's the goal. So that's the goal at. Any, any where on the market? W whether it's luxury or not, but here's the thing in the higher end of the market. [00:07:56] Now, it's not, it's custom, petitive the all electric version. Like, if you're looking for something like the plaid model S, there's nothing like it. Gasoline powered. Like there's nothing that gets the kind of performance that that car gets. So if you, if you're looking for that kind of performance, you got to go with them all. [00:08:13] So being incentivized to get it, it doesn't make it  [00:08:19] Seth: right. So you know, this is probably going to get, you know, changed a bit before it finally gets signed and put into law. You know, hopefully it does. But you know, maybe it's more focused on getting a lower cost cars out there.  [00:08:38] Fred: Oh yeah. I mean also. [00:08:41] Most of the incentive is going to go through those. I mean, it just, you just look at the production volume, then that's ready and that that's where the cars are going. So, so it's not that big of a problem either, but it's, it's certainly gonna be an attack vector for whenever this, this bill is debated and I'm sure they're going to use that. [00:09:01] Seth: Rena. We know the, that the line already, it's going to be like, Oh, we're supporting tax breaks for billionaires that are buying Teslas, you know, like that's we th it's already, it's already been done. Yeah. Yeah,  [00:09:14] Fred: we we've heard it before, but but ultimately it's going to be, it's going to be positive for X everything and the vehicle adoption in the U S there's no doubt about it, especially with bunch of other vehicles coming to market right now that are on the lower hand of the market. [00:09:27] $7,000 difference on a 30, $40,000 car. Makes it be a much bigger difference than on a 60, $70,000 car should that that's going to be a big deal. Whether people are saying that 400,000 like a cap, again, this is not ideal, especially not for Tesla with the kind of volume they're doing right now. Like this is, this could literally just last a year for Tesla potentially. [00:09:48]I'm not, I'm not sure. Sure. If that's the case, especially with. Like it's 400,000 deliveries in the us. And I mean, with the mall, why more, three production capacity right now, Fremont, it could, it could be fairly quick. But I don't know, like a w w we're going to have to see also there's a thing There's a, there's a phase out period. [00:10:07] Again, it's not, it's not as generous or a phase out period. So what they say here is that the prevision replays, the current for his up period with a phrase up here that incident begins during the second quarter after this, the, the, the instead begins during the second calendar quarter after Sasha and Charles. [00:10:25] And so you have basically two quarters. After you hit the 600,000 deliveries or of still having the full, so, so if you have a high production rate at that point, you can still take advantage of that. $7,000 a lot. I mean, desolate and could pronounce she's still like have. 200, $300,000, 300,000 more deliveries in the 600,000. [00:10:50] It could, it could reach to close to a million, really a total. So so it's still, it's still very the vintages. So and with the timing of it too, w what's gonna be interesting is that it's going to open up the tax credit, maybe to cyber truck buyers at this point. Like, Oh yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, depending on when this is enacted and if it is exactly like that, which again, we've said that it's not necessarily the case, but you, you gave it, you gave it like, let's say a year for this, that hit the front hundred thousand. [00:11:18] So that, that puts you somewhere in 2022. And then you still have six months of, of that $7,000 access. So. I mean, I don't think so. That puts you like in second half, maybe of 20, 22. I don't know. I could kind of volume production tests, like an eight on this laboratory at this point, but still, and the higher production capacity. [00:11:38] Do you have for all the vehicle programs that you all going to get at a big boost from  [00:11:42] it? Yeah. Maybe even the Roadster will get it. Yeah. A little discount.  [00:11:47] Okay. Yeah, baby, potentially though, again, that's the one that's going to go well with people with other people. If you get access to that.  [00:11:55] Seth: Yeah, but I think the sh the story in the short term is going to be all right. [00:11:58] So now this is being talked about when we think it's pretty likely to happen, but between now, and when it happens, like, is Tesla going to really, or Tesla and GM and whatever, whoever else are they gonna, are there going to be a lot of people just waiting for that to drop and, you know, our customers Number's going to go way down in the U  [00:12:17] Fred: S I mean, doesn't make much sense to, to, until you have some clarity over, over that happening. [00:12:23] I mean, I wouldn't buy one personally, like right. $7,000. $7,000. Yeah. And for people who say, Oh, you're just like a subsidy leech and you're trying to get us us. I mean, no if, if you understand the meaning of that, of that incentive, that's incentive is there because there's a cost that is not accounted for when you buy a gasoline vehicle that you burned, if that fuel we, we, you, you just started with that said that the carbon tax will, will make us more. [00:12:48] We'll make more sense than that. And we all agree on it, but this is actually our next step. And next article that we're going to discuss is regarding Elon Musk was on Joe Rogan this week, an episode of the Joe Rogan experience. Very interesting talk now lasted about three hours, but we got a few tidbits of information were really interesting in it. [00:13:08] And one of it that color high was that, eh, Elan. Said that he talked with the Biden administration about implementing a carbon tax and they apparently weren't really receptive to it in his word. He said, they see, they said that well to seems to be too politically difficult to, to, to do.  [00:13:29]Seth: I, I get it like nobody wants to see the gas prices go up. [00:13:32] I mean, if you look at France the, the whole strike this year was because they tried to raise the price of gasoline a little bit. I mean, I don't, I don't know if it was just that and it was last year actually, but yeah,  [00:13:45] Fred: but still, I mean, there's way to implement it without affecting the lower income people. [00:13:52] Right. And the country, right.  [00:13:55] Seth: Elan did mention that, you know, those people a rebate also like you know, the. If you, if you said, Hey, look, we're not doing a carbon tax this year, but like a carbon tax in four years is coming, like for sure. So plan for it, like sell, sell your SUV, get a, you know, if you're, you don't have a lot of money and you don't want to spend a lot of gas on gas, like putting one a little bit further out there, maybe a good answer for  [00:14:25] Fred: that. [00:14:26] Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. Like, like Elan's point was, was very reasonable. Like if there is an unpriced externality, like the price, the cost that we have as a, as a society. In immediate CO2 emissions going into the atmosphere and the oceans. There's a customer that is it's clear, it's bolded, zero customer health term of hair pollution, but also long-term costs in term of, or the Zira costs. [00:14:54] Also like you look at Miami much, you're spending in the. I'm trying to solve their water problem and literally going on the water, there's a bunch of other places like that. So there's direct costs like that, but there's also a long-term cost of fishery. If the fishing industry is getting destroyed by how the CO2 is affecting the ocean and everything. [00:15:15] So there's all those direct costs and they need to be accounted for. And if you. But the markets there doesn't see that cost cause the, the, the, the there's no actual price on it. If there's not actual price on it, they don't care. You just have to, if you put a price on it, then they're going to start to do the right thing automatically. [00:15:33] Yeah. But I mean, of course you say that, that people are like, yeah, well, why aren't you just doing the right thing in the first place without the money? I mean, it just doesn't work like that. Like we're not, we're not wired that way, unfortunately. At least not all of us, but. Yeah, it doesn't sound like it's going to be in the cards for the Biden administration. [00:15:52]I don't necessarily blame them. Yeah. I know.  [00:15:54] Seth: It's super popular.  [00:15:56] Fred: Yeah. So  [00:15:57] Seth: like, I mean, the other option is like taxing at the well or taxing at the refinery or something like that. Yeah. I mean, the money is it's still going to cost more to buy gasoline, but it won't be like, you know, the breakdown won't be like, this is the money from  [00:16:11] Fred: the. [00:16:12] Yeah, but you know, all the oil industry is like, they, they will let you know that the reason you're paying more is because they are getting taxed at the other friend, RESO. They, they, they are, they, they don't have a good history in term of propaganda and marketing the ball. It's not proper again, it's actually through, like, it would be, would be through that. [00:16:28] The, the, the government would be the reason why the, the gas prices increases. I mean the, they will frame it in a way that, that looks worse than  [00:16:36] Seth: it actually. Yeah. And also if you tax it at the, well, then the military and government also has to pay more for, for gasoline, whereas they don't typically pay like the taxes that come at the, you know, at the gas station, [00:16:53] So that would be better for getting the military off of oil as  [00:16:57] Fred: well. Yeah. So short of that, short of actually putting a price on carbon, which would be the fairest way to, to, to address the problem. You have to counter balance this, like. On the officials subsidy that the oil industry gets by getting a subsidy to a green technology. [00:17:16] In this case, solar wind with the ITC and, and electric vehicles with with with this, this federal tax credit. And Because to be fair when Elan said tax the make a carbon tax, he said for electricity and gasoline. So actually actually a trustee that is produced with fossil fuels, like, like coal would, would be taxed higher than if you get solar. [00:17:40] If you get electricity from solar source. So if you have an entry vehicle, your cost, if you get it from the grid with a high mix of coal in the coal production, in the of production, from coal in that grid you would get your costs for you that your vehicle go up to. But it would also force those people to find alternative. [00:18:00] Cause that's, that's ultimately, that's the nice thing about that. Cubicle is you get a bite limited, you get more options to fuel it. If you have a gasoline powered car, you have one option gasoline. If you have an SUV vehicle, you can get it from the grid and from the grid. Sometimes you have some options, some I have to utilities will offer you some electricity from a renewable source versus or they give you like rebate and things like that for to counterbalance with, with if you're literally stuck with coal, you can get a rebate for solar and whatnot, or, but you can also get it directly. [00:18:38] If, if you have the opportunity, if you own your home, you can get solar and everything. So, so there is. Like limited somewhere options. And that, that that's the core of it. So if you are in this situation, you could decide all right, now that it cost me more to get majesty from coal, I'll look into solar. [00:18:56] So  [00:18:57] yeah,  [00:18:58] Seth: I mean, if electricity prices go up that makes solar all the better.  [00:19:03] Fred: I mean, most places it's already cheaper anyway. So but when you have a bigger upfront cost people yeah. Would like a return on investment faster, and that would be a faster return on investment for sure. All right. Other interesting thing that Ilan brought up during the, the Dragan interview he talked about the Roadster a little bit. [00:19:21]I mean, we always like to hear about the Roadster. It's been delayed a few times, but earlier this year, Ilan said that That they're completing the engineering this year and they are bringing it to production next year. So we know that the idea of the Roadster is being completed basically right now. [00:19:38]It, it has evolved a little bit since don't billing in 2017. And we know, especially with last month on wheeling of the mall as plan and plan plus that's coming later this year or actually in the podcast, it did say, but Nick said in a year now a year. Yeah. Which would put in an actually in 20, 22, not the end of the year, but I mean, that, that could have been just him giving a broad timeline on the, on the car anyway, even forget the plat. [00:20:02] Plus just the plant itself is, is getting competitive with what this learned nouns with, with the Roadsters. So now they're going to have to have higher capacity with the Roadster and part of that is going to be that space it's packaged and. I mean, everyone's been talking about it for a while. [00:20:19] About the core, I think thrusters on it, giving it either like a boost or acceleration, or even be able to hover at one point he said, and now that the engineering has been completed on the car, you were starting to think that like, all right, this, if this thing's gonna actually make it to production, this basics package is going to have fat and now, and he seems to be very serious about doing it on this show. [00:20:40] He was like, yeah, we're going to throw I'm quoting here. We are going to choose some rocket technology in that car. I want it to, or to hover we got to figure out how to make it hover without giving people that, that would be that would be a nice addition if it doesn't kill people, this is, I mean, it's not necessary, but I like that in my car. [00:21:00] When my car doesn't kill people, I always feel better about it. I  [00:21:03] Seth: want to know if it can go over water though. Like, is it like a hug?  [00:21:06] Fred: You did say that it's not okay, because when you say like hover, you can, are you literally just talking about like lifted up on the ground, just for show for a second or something. [00:21:14] And, but Rogan asked him if it's going to move. He said, yeah, you can move it. You said, you'd go pretty fast, but you're going to be time limited. So it's just going to be like hopping, like for a little while, I  [00:21:24] Seth: guess, you know, what did you think? Like a minute or 30 seconds or I doubt  [00:21:29] Fred: it's going to keep I guess 4,000 pound car up in the air for her. [00:21:34] For a minute. I mean, you talking about a high pressure Hara bottle, the silly late. So lifting up your hair for a whole minute, be able to do  [00:21:44] Seth: it while you're driving. Like, can you just drive? And you're like approaching like a Lake and then you just click the buttons and start floating and then you go over the Lake and then you. [00:21:53] I mean,  [00:21:53] Fred: I think that could be a possible cause you, you, you, you do that. If you have trusters that go towards your ground, you just put all of those trusts and then you stalking about having one in the bag that you just flipped the license plate and it pushed you to the bank. So if you do that, and then you really, some hair on the back, you can, you can move pretty fast, pretty quick. [00:22:12] Right? And like now, because it's not like rolling resistance announces, it's literally like, unless ferric resistance is the air around you. That's that stuff. And you said that. There's a lot easier to go through. So, so yeah, I feel like it's a possible just album. You can stay in the air and I'll know  [00:22:28] Seth: that would be really cool to not have to use bridges, you know, just to cross like a river real quick,  [00:22:34] Fred: but you're gonna, you're gonna have to be very precise on that because like you said through you don't, you don't want to drop too fast cause. [00:22:41] I mean, you said you're going to put a height limit on it. So probably like a mirror to six feet. So that's three through the six feet, which that's still crazy. Yeah, that's crazy. But like you said, it wouldn't kill you, but also you would, it would destroy your suspension if you drop from that. So you're going to have to slow moly land, really? [00:23:00] And  [00:23:01] Seth: they're doing yolks now, right? Instead of steering wheels, you're, you're kind of in three dimensions. So you may like pull it back and  [00:23:11] Fred: exactly, super cool. Actually, I didn't think of that. I mean, I get it, like, let's be honest people. It's insane. It's it's crazy. But it also makes some sense. I mean, the hover is just because if it's there. [00:23:30] Well do it right. But of course the actual idea behind it is yes, there is a lot of value of providing a trust or a cold, their trust or propulsion in the back for acceleration that will, that will kill your, your, your zero to 60 times. Nothing is going to be able to get close to that. I mean, it's going to break next, literally. [00:23:50]If you're not careful. And it also gives you trust on the, on the sides and downward trust to, to keep you on the ground. And there's lot of things for just regular driving that doesn't need to be strong enough to pull you in the air. But again, if, if like, you're, you're like 90% there, if you before the hover, so you just have like to crank it up and that, so, yeah. [00:24:16] And if you're really on Musk, of course, it's. That's an easy decision. You're gonna make parallel  [00:24:20] Seth: parking easy. You could have. So check this out. This is an idea. So if we go six feet up, instead of having a garage, like a, you know, a sideways garage, you could park your car up, you know, over your other car. [00:24:35] You don't have like a platform and just like pull it in there. Instead of, you know, like that the guy who runs a Nvidia has like 17 portraits.  [00:24:44] Fred: Well, I mean, that's, that's the thing though. I mean, well, what would they call that? They're that lifts there. Lifts. Yeah.  [00:24:49] Seth: So you don't need one of those, you just  [00:24:52] Fred: park all still need like a platform or something. [00:24:54] You don't want them to literally limb on the car, right?  [00:24:57] Seth: No, you have a platform, but you land, you know, you have your car and then you have another layer for your, your car. Save some money, parking in the city. You don't have to worry about You know, and just second  [00:25:07] Fred: level. Yeah. Yeah. We gonna have to see it. [00:25:12] Like it's, it's, it's pretty crazy, but it sounds like it's happening and this is working on it right now. This is going to be completed this year. Kenny  [00:25:21] Seth: Gates and fences no longer a problem just right  [00:25:25] Fred: over there. You also reiterated the fact that if you choose a space X package option, the, the air high-pressure hair bottle is going to be in the back where the backseat would go because a Roadster is supposed to have four seats. [00:25:37] Yeah. That's,  [00:25:37] Seth: that's a big,  [00:25:39] Fred: yeah. Four seats. It'd be nice. So I know you're getting through Roadster. And you're not even sure if you're going to keep one, but if you do keep on, do you go for a seat or you go space expanded?  [00:25:51] Seth: I dunno. It's hard to tell like I, I, you know, obviously we're going to learn a lot more about it, so I'm going to defer to when I know everything I can possibly know,  [00:26:01] Fred: let's assume a few things is going to be more expensive than a four-seater option. [00:26:05] So you would have to pay extra. I don't know if you, like, if the gave us like the founder series, I would assume that you did, I'm not going to make us pay anything on it, but I mean, that's an, that's an assumption of mine. Right. But let's assume that, but doesn't mean it's more expensive. But let's assume that, I mean, in term of performance, I thing in the world, it was going to come close to it. [00:26:27] Not even like a million dollar super  [00:26:30] Seth: car. Right. I mean, I don't know, like, I really like. The Roadster that we went in for the initial ride, that was like, as fast as I'd ever want to go at any point, there's like no reason to want to go that fast. Like it's painful. Like it was, it was it wasn't, you know, when you, you know, on the, the D rides, everybody's like chuckling, when they're going really fast, this was different. [00:26:56] It's like, you know, it wasn't like, it was a different kind of.  [00:27:01] Fred: Experience. I mean, you said it during the podcast 2.3 and 1.9. There's a, there's a big difference between the two. It doesn't sound like a lot, but it's actually like a big difference. Right? You'll have to do the GS, like, like, I don't know, like that's a different   [00:27:16] Seth: yeah. [00:27:16] That's the other question? Like, how do you get tires that can keep like the regular, the regular Roadster was spinning all four wheels. You're going to have to have some crazy time. I mean, I guess with, with the With the rocket boosters then. Yeah.  [00:27:30] Fred: But even, even, even with that you just going to go run through your tires super fast, but mean, I already run through my tire super fast with them. [00:27:37] Right. All three performance. And that's with three, three seconds doing 60. So, all right. Next next news item that came out of the podcast bill Gates. I mean, I was kind of surprised by that, but. So w we reported a while back when bill Gates made some comments about battery electric trucks saying that it's never going to happen. [00:28:01] And of course we, we trashed those comments back then, right. It made no sense, but Joe Rogan brought them up during the show and had Ian on addressed it. And of course he learned this at the same thing we did back then. Like, he doesn't know what he's talking about in this case. And And you brought up the fact that they already have prototypes that work. [00:28:21] I, I don't know if that's a perfect answer because it's not just like the energy density in it. Like you can show it that works for sure. But then yeah, I'll chop the shredder, the economics of it worst, but he did have a good point about what you said and that article actually confirming the same that the bash pack or at least the. [00:28:42] Is this, the mind is going to be 501 which is on the lowest side that we were expecting for sure. And you said that if you're having a $500 backpack, it's, it's not a big game changer in terms of the weight of the tractor is of course you have to manage with the economics of upright transport that mine age, the weight of the tracker so that you don't pass the next Memorial. [00:29:04] Right. Of 80,000 pounds on the road with, with your load and with the trailer. So it's all a whole generation of trying to optimize your load pounds per mile is what you going to charge them ultimately. So you want to have the lightest charter possible. They can still pull 80,000 pounds, or you can have a 40, 45,000 pound load or something like that. [00:29:29] And And he always says with, especially with a structural backpack that he on the bill last year, if you have a 512 hour structural backpack that you build with us with some eye on the weight, there's not that much either way , you don't give up that much weight, even though we're used to that you Eagles being a little bit heavier than their gasoline power counterpart. [00:29:51] So, so that was an interesting thing. But then like you to give some kind of reason why Dates with a, sort of a negative on Testa. And he said that according, I also heard that at one point he had a large short position on Tesla. I don't know if that's true or not, but things weird, people like, huh? [00:30:13] Very weird. Yeah. People I know would know the situation pretty well. That's almost Trump past like, Oh, people that I know said I asked them, are you sure? And they said, yes, he has a huge short position on Tesla. And that didn't work out too well. Bill use of the loss kind of all of the money, like a lot of people did on shorting Tesla. [00:30:32] So he didn't give a timeline, but we know that last year that's the one on a crazy run and estimated people, collectively people at short position on Tesla lost $38 billion. Of course, if I actually reached out to the bill Gates foundation to see if they can get a comment on that from from bill. [00:30:51]I don't expect that we, that we're going to get one, but I would like to have a confirming, like is inside of the story you hear, because it doesn't sound like the shorting type, like is more like exactly. You invest very long-term stuff and everything. So it doesn't sound like him. It's not impossible though, because you guys been more critical of Elon and Tesla then than you would think coming from him. [00:31:14]And personally, like, I'm not like I'm not all the shorts or the devils, like like Elan things and like, and like like a lot of more people think that like a lot of people I've been recently introduced to the idea of, of, of short short sellers with the old game stop thing and EMC and the whole wall street bet on Reddit. [00:31:31]I mean, I think there's a place for short sellers, like, because let's be honest, there's some companies that are bad that do bad, that lie. That like that it would make sense to bet against it. Like, I mean, I'm not a big fan of what's his face NYCLA. No, no. The short seller that, that they did against Enron the guy is always on CNBC, trashing, Tesla, Jim something Nope. [00:31:53] Channels, channels. All right. That, that guy, I mean, I give credit where credit credit is due. Like you, you saw the fraud that, that Enron was put a short position against it exposed. It made a bunch of money when it failing and it had to fail. It was defrauding people. So there's nothing bad with that. [00:32:19] Now. Also there's nothing bad thinking that Tesla. Is overvalued. Like there's definitely arguments to be made with that. I'm not on board with it, but I can definitely see our argument. I can not have a rational conversation with someone that says that this is what we value. That makes sense me, but I am not, but shorting it though. [00:32:39] I don't know, because like you have to look what's. W what's the positive icon for that? Like, yeah, you could make some money if there is a correction on Tesla, but at the same time test, as valuation contributes to his mission. And I think the mission is more important than all those things like to be. To, to, to accelerate the advent of renewable energy and energy transport. [00:33:03] And this high valuation certainly as helped us let, because they were able to raise a ton of money from the high valuation. So I don't know. And I'll be conflicted about that, but I'm not, I don't want to demonize the shorts. I don't like, of course the shorts that are lying about desktop, like they're take a short position and then they do a bunch of propaganda about in everything. [00:33:21] That's of course that's horrible. But in general, I don't hate shorts. [00:33:30] All right. All right. And then another big thing that turned on the market this week is we learned earlier this week on Monday that the slow when they released or 10 not thank you. The 10 K finding the sec. They reveal that last month they bought the above a large position in Bitcoin. [00:33:45] The the $1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin. The the, the, the said that it was part of a move to diversify with alternative reserve assets. So that included both digital assets, like the I mean, the, the call between digital assets never heard that, but and also gold, they bought gold too. [00:34:08] So, so the Tesla is like at the end of last quarter at close to $20 billion. So do you use the, the use 1.5 to buy Bitcoin? And they didn't disclose the goal though. The amount of gold that they bought, but of course the Bitcoin is what caught a lot of the headlines. Anyway, people didn't care much about their slaves buying gold and it sent it some big coins go on a big run. [00:34:35] What is it today like 48,000 I mean, last month when they bought it.  So they already made the, a lot of money cause $48,000 now, and a month ago it was trading between 38 and $30,000. So the, so they bought somewhere in between those and it's already up $48,000. So there was, that was a good move. [00:34:58] But of course the part of the rallies because of the study itself. So self fulfilling prophecy right there. What do you think about it, sir?  [00:35:09] Seth: The bigger news, I guess maybe was that they're going to start accepting where they're going to try to start accepting Bitcoin as payment for their cars. I think that might be a kind of a hidden gem because I know there's a lot of money out there in Bitcoin,  [00:35:26] Fred: Bitcoin millionaires. [00:35:27] Seth: Yeah. And you know, What's  [00:35:30] Fred: that they might want a Tesla. So there's that?  [00:35:32] Seth: Yeah. I mean, I think we did a story in like 2014 or something where somebody bought a Tesla, used it in Bitcoin, so it's not something new, but and you know that the idea of cashing out and then buying it and then, you know, Tesla's taking, taking on the rest. [00:35:50] I think they said that they would, you know, convert it immediately into cash. But I still think taking Bitcoin payments may open up the market for some, for some new buyers. I mean, particularly some buyers that just made a ton of money that, you know, that the buyers that are just really happy about Tesla getting into Bitcoin and they now have a lot more money and maybe they want to buy  [00:36:13] Fred: a of them. [00:36:15] Literally just. Take the profit from Tesla announcing that the big point, you just shave that off and buy a car with that. Like it's, it's crazy. But I know like some people are not on board with this idea because like, Bitcoin is not really transactional. Like it's, it's, it's more like a asset right now. [00:36:33] It's like gold, like Tesla itself. Just basically compare it to go than this. In this announcement. So you don't, you don't really go to the car dealership in, in with, with a bunch of gold and you're like, give me a car. So this is kind of the same thing. Like, especially if you, if you're going to take the goal, then change it into cash. [00:36:53] But after this is going to be the same principle there. So it doesn't mean that much  on that front, but yeah, I understand from your standpoint, what you're talking about for for Tesla, it makes sense to. Can really create some dumb and from that, but yeah. Yeah. Also some people are not on board with it due to the environmental impact of Bitcoin. [00:37:14] It does as an entity, as the blockchain does require a lot of electricity so that people are seeing that as an issue. I think it recently just surpass Argentina in term of electricity needs. It's crazy. As a, as a whole, it's like. A decent sized country now just to maintain the blockchain, just to pass the transaction on, on the blockchain. [00:37:39] But at the same time, I kind of have to think that, I mean, th th there's electricity in effect, it's, it's coming from the miners. Like the miners are the one that they're paying for the electricity to mind that currency. And they, they get some, some of that crypto in return to pay for that. Electricity use and the computing power that is required to mine it, and the whole idea between mining is to balance that computing costs electricity costs with the rewards from mining. [00:38:12] And so you want to maintain that if we discuss as low as possible and in this day and age, the lower electricity cost you can get is from renewable is from solar is from wind it's from. I do electricity. So I kinda, I would like to see a concrete study on that and see, where did they to steal the Bitcoin is using, is coming from my guess would be that it probably mostly from renewable sources. [00:38:38] My guess I don't have any actual stats from that, but I'm just running through the logic here. And I think, I think it makes sense.  [00:38:46] Seth: Yeah. I mean some people even think that Bitcoin makes Solar or more and more wind, but makes wind more viable because like, you know, for instance, in California, when there's so much solar that you can't do anything with it theoretically you could fire up a bunch of mining rigs on that extra solar power and make some money and that money could, you know, Help the balance sheet and building solar. [00:39:14] So theoretically you're building a wind farm or you're building a solar farm and you're saying, all right, well, when the prices get really low, when we're like, over-saturating the electricity market, we put some of that into Bitcoin mining rigs, and then we can therefore pay off our, our investment. So in that way, it kind of makes some sense. [00:39:34]But you know, overall there are some serious questions to be answered about the energy usage of Bitcoin. Yeah,  [00:39:40] Fred: I get it. I mean, I suggested that to Jason used w w K zero 57, like, well, known the hacker in a Tesla community. Yeah. It's a giant home solar system. I think it's like. The 40 kilowatts is something that makes it, it makes no sense. [00:39:55] I mean, he doesn't use like you use a fraction of a centricity and he also has of course, a very big self-build Tesla battery on system. So I suggested to him, you should, you should use that extra solar that you, that you make to. To, to, to build some kind of mining rig in that I, he was receptive Natty. [00:40:15] I don't know if he ever kind of came through with it. I need to look into it. I mean, he's, he's  [00:40:19] Seth: on the grid though. He can just send his extras energy.  [00:40:22] Fred: I think it was, he, he built it up grid. I'm not, I'm not sure, but I mean, yeah, it was, it's also, I don't know if like net muttering exists in North Carolina again, right. [00:40:33] To penetrate. I don't know, but I mean here, like right now my house is not being heated and I'm in Quebec, in the, in the winter. And 90% of my heating is coming from mining rigs. I have, I have three mining rigs in my house located in different rooms and those things, they, they eat up so much that they, they take up my, my eating. [00:40:53] So they actually replaced my trusty costs from eating to, to mining. And also it's coming from hydro electricity. So. My my house is literally powered mining bit, not the Queensland mining Ethereum right now. How much, how  [00:41:06] Seth: much money have you in dollars  [00:41:08] Fred: in dollars? I mean, I've been doing it for over a year now. [00:41:12] Probably got three. If their arms, it's not three, three, three, either three, either. And right now that I never sold them and they're worth 1800 bucks each right now. So I'm actually probably made money at this point already a year and a year and a half into it. Probably because you can account for the cost of electricity, of course. [00:41:30] And well, actually it's been done by the council that you see, I, I heat with electricity here. So so that, that counterbalance itself basically, and the, the cost of the mining machines to I mean, th the biggest around thousand bucks, I think it's 800 bucks or something. Right. So, so, yeah, I've probably made money at this point. [00:41:46] I one here in this room though, I only, I only shut it down from when I'm doing the podcast, because it's a little bit loud for the podcast, but then as soon as the podcast had done, turn it back on. And so I'm losing money doing the podcast right now. People didn't like, that's how much I love you guys. [00:42:02] Seth: I it is, it is interesting that the other part of that like, well, the excess heat from the resistance, from the, from the video cards and the, you know, the GPS is heating your home. That makes that's an interesting point of the equation.  [00:42:19] Fred: People were discussing too. Like if you link Bitcoin, Tesla, what if like all Tesla vehicles right now, there's a supercomputer that is not being used when it's parked. [00:42:29] So if you're plugged in and you're parked well to come together, obviously or why not? Would you be able to mind some cryptocurrency would that, would that computer of course Even if it's plugged in, you still use some of your battery cars because the anchor see something come to the battery and then the batteries is being charged. [00:42:50] So there is some degradation on that front, but I mean, it's probably, it would be small so that there there's some calculation to be made if it's actually worded, but it could be interesting.  [00:43:00] Seth: Yeah. I would much rather have my car mining Bitcoin than being used as a taxi.  [00:43:06] Fred: Yeah. I mean famously said doesn't want any Ford in scars, but by himself. [00:43:12] And that's my main but yeah, I mean, you could imagine something like, especially if, even if they're not plugged in, they even imagine it feels like the cyber truck, for example, that's the, does this solar cover thing and we're going to get into that too, but Elan discussed it a little bit in term of introducing solar. [00:43:31] Sells on cars. He said that the cyber truck is gonna be the first one with the cover for the bed being solar powered so that that's not going to hide a lot of mileage. Like you said, I think around 10 miles per day for a separate truck, but what it would though, it would also cancel any, any vampire drain for the car. [00:43:51] Yeah. And that's it. As you want to mind the car, then you could, it could be mining. Cryptocurrency with solar, if that was an option on it. So that, that could be interesting. Yeah. Once  [00:44:03] Seth: you fill up your battery, you just, it switches over to mining. Yeah. I mean, that's not going to be, that's not going to turn out a lot of coins, but  [00:44:12] Fred: no, but yeah, I mean the, the, the whole thing about this, this hardware 3.0 computer is that it's, it's, it's efficient too, so right. [00:44:22] All right, moving on. No. Oh, I guess I didn't put this on everything in there, but yeah, he discussed introducing you basically explain what we all know for, for a while. Now he explained to Rogan why solar on Corazon not make that much sense? Because of the under surface area of the solar and the efficiency of solar cell these days. [00:44:46] And if you want to go much higher and you. Go much higher in costs do so balanced. Don't make sense. You're much better off having solar on your home. Yeah. And then charging your car like that. But explain for bigger cars. It could make sense like the cyber trucks bed would make sense. Any also talk about the Tesla van. [00:45:06] I mean, if you remember a few weeks ago, we only confirmed that that's the we'll make event. As soon as it makes sense in term of battery supply. As soon as they have the batteries floated to make those vans. And he said for a van that you would make a lot of sense to have a solar roof on it, because you have a much bigger surface area that is flat. [00:45:22] So you can put solar cells on that. And he also suggested to put the deployable roof on each side where you could extend it. And it was all pretty much talking about camping. Like it can think then you make it like a little tiny motor home, really like it, a little sprinter ones. That, so with extending on each side, yet you provide shade. [00:45:41] You can build like Like a little camping area, all of it. And on those shades, there's also solar cells on it. So now you can have like a triple the roof area in solar power and that could generate decent amount. But again, I want to say decent amount, we're talking probably 30 miles a day. It's not nothing crazy. [00:46:01]However, it's still useful. Like, especially if you, if you do a campaign type of the camper with that, With that van, then let's see you have like 300 miles all over there that you can literally let go 300 miles from your home. You sit at like a camping spot where you, where your car is. You can either plug it in or you can just pull out the solar. [00:46:22] And if you're staying there for a few days, then you can replenish your battery. Or you can also run things out of your van with that or power. So it's a, it's a no brainer in my opinion, it just, it just makes sense. Okay. I don't think this is gonna be the first to do it, but we going to see that happen a lot. [00:46:41] I  [00:46:42] Seth: thought a Yuan was a little bit dismissive of solar powered cars. Like I, you know, I agree like normal cars. You can't really build a normal car and have it covered with solar panels and get any, you know, useful range out of it. But, you know, 20 miles is not nothing like a lot of people You don't have a commute of 20 miles a day. [00:47:02] So. Like theoretically, they would get most of their miles from solar. You know, we'll, you've seen cars like a Lightspeed and that one, the sole sole Scion cyan or, yeah. And then there's that other one? Aptera like the three wheeled one. Yeah. Yeah. That, you know, they claim to be almost entirely powered by solar. [00:47:24] Obviously you can charge them by a traditional means, but because they're so efficient and so aerodynamic, and then, you know, the wheels are very small and there's, it's small inside, but in that case, you're kind of, you're getting a real, like a long distance in the sun then. And those kinds of all, em, Come from those solar races that there's one in Australia where they go from like Darwin to Adelaide. [00:47:50] And there's one in the U S that, you know, they kind of cross and they're, these are kind of like bikes that have like a covering a super aerodynamic solar covering they're very quick crash with those. No, you don't even want to like. Tip over those things, you probably just fall apart, but they're so light. [00:48:09] They're so aerodynamic. And this, the covering of solar is enough to power them along with, with a passenger too. So it can definitely be done. It's just the trade offs are, you know, to have like a normal car that you would expect to have is isn't great.  [00:48:24] Fred: So, yeah. And all those cars is especially that Tara, for example, and the, the, the lights the, the lightning one is one of them a little bit, a bit more bullish on, but the , the whole thing is that, or solar matter on it, because it's so efficient, but at the same time to make the car so efficient, they have to make it like. [00:48:47] I wrote more aerodynamic and making it all there more over the NAMIC it reduced the surface on which you can put solar. So like, it is, there's this weird trade-off here that you have to be careful for. So I'm going to want to see like extensive tests on those cars to, to, to really see like the impact on solar, on them. [00:49:05]Because I have a suspicion that's a little bit gimmicky, like to see that they are solar power, like yeah. I want to see actual use cases, not extreme use cases, someone that has like a 30 mile commute or something like that and see like how much of it is going to be solar and how much you need to charge it, which is fine. [00:49:24] Again, I think a mix of both is perfectly fine, but if your advertise your car has solar power, like we have to be clear about what they really are. Yeah. All right. Toyota. The electric car and a U S what is this? What is happening? Yeah, I mean, Toyota is, is, is announcements sometimes. And now the, like, they kind of announce a few months ago, like, Oh, we're making an electric SUV, like sent out the press release and everything. [00:49:54] We're making electric SUV and more like, cool. Show it to us or something, but all right. Now they're saying we're bringing electric cars all at your cars to the U S the, to your, the North America. And that began the Butte in the U S this year three new electrify models, but don't panic. [00:50:13] They did specify to be these and a PHEV. So two ology vehicle and a plug-in hybrid. Crazy thing though, in the same announcement, which again, extremely little the announcement. That's basically what I just said. Like that's it, those three cars are coming to the U S are going to be the beauty of this year in the U S and the same announcement. [00:50:33] They were like, Hey, by the way, a plug-in hybrid is just as good as like all electric cars. See, as long as you don't use the gas part. Yeah. They released a study showing that all the vehicles produce just as much emissions as plug-in hybrids, which of course you can show those, you can make numbers say anything and you can probably make them say that I didn't look too deep into the study because of course, I mean, w we, we see the value of plugging hybrids, electric, that we understand it, and everything is just that all electric vehicles are obviously the future here and bugging the hybrids where. [00:51:10] Sort of like a compromise for a while, a transitional vehicle and eh, the all three vehicles I've improved so much at this point that it just doesn't make sense to focus on plug-in hybrids right now, if you're, if you're, if you're you right now on the toolmaker working on the plug-in hybrid program, you're kind of wasting your time. [00:51:27] You just put those resources on making better all electric vehicles right now. And you're probably being very, or actually. But the resources and making more batteries, probably like as a, of course the biggest advantage in my view of a plug-in hybrid is not that, Oh, we can go long distance with the gas tanks to full gas state is that you can, if you optimize it right, you can drive a lot of electric mileage without adding a big battery pack in it. [00:51:54] So you can make more of them with the limited battery supply that we have right now, that's, that's nothing in the biggest advantage of plug-in hybrids are ever. Obviously it's a compromise having two powertrains in the car or a generator for your energy powertrain. So, yeah. I don't know what he's teaching. [00:52:12] He felt the need to say that, especially the eye announcing to all electric vehicle in bed, but it's not like they were saying like, Oh, we're making for plug-in hybrid. And then one electric, no, you're making two, all electric vehicle. And the plug-in hybrid, by the way, plug-in average was just as good as the two electric vehicles. [00:52:27] Right.  [00

Simon Shares Bitcoin* hits US$48,000 as Tesla declares they put US$1.5billion into the crypto. Platinum finally on the move and above US$1,200 for the first time since 2015. [caption id="attachment_24687" align="aligncenter" width="888"] Platinum weekly chart[/caption] Sibanye Stillwater* (JSE code: SSW) best illustrates the boom in mining profits. In 2019 they made R62million now 2020 they expect almost R30billion and over 1000c HEPS. Could we see a 500c dividend? Metrofile* (JSE code: MFL) very solid update and the stock has recovered from their 2019 wobble. There is still two potential buyers, one stuck in Australia, truthfully, I would rather they remain potential and I will hold the stock. * I hold ungeared positions. Upcoming events; Weekly on Wednesday ~ Follow the Trader 18 February ~ Everything ETFs and tax-free investing 04 March ~ Things I wish I knew: the beginner trader Subscribe to our feed here Subscribe or review us in iTunes Should I sell the bounce? Depends why you bought the stock. A long-term investment? No, then you keep it and focus on fundamentals rather than price. A quick trade to make a few bucks. Then absolutely sell the bounce, you won't get the top price (well maybe you'll get lucky) and as we saw with Telkom (JSE code: TKG) the bounce just keeps on bouncing. So watch and wait and sell on weakness after the bounce That may be immediate or may take a few days or a week. Waiting for the weakness is a skill you'll learn, slowly over time. JSE – The JSE is a registered trademark of the JSE Limited. JSE Direct is an independent broadcast and is not endorsed or affiliated with, nor has it been authorised, or otherwise approved by JSE Limited. The views expressed in this programme are solely those of the presenter, and do not necessarily reflect the views of JSE Limited.  

Cowboys are part of American history — and even more than that, American folklore. It’s a lifestyle: play by your own rules, answer to your own conscience, and ride quietly off into the sunset at the end of the day. Noble hero or ruthless outlaw? Depends on who is making the movie. This week we will discuss the difference between herding cattle and tending sheep; the legacy of Texas legend Judge Roy Bean; the music of Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings; and why my daughter beats me regularly in my favorite game — and the surprising reason that upsets me.

Deep throat. X. The plowability of the special agents' parents. Is this even an X-Files pod anymore? Subscribe Android Google Play iTunes Spotify *RSS Address: http://lsgonxfiles.libsyn.com/rss *Cut and paste the web address into ‘search’, or ‘add address’, or ‘URL’, or ‘feed’ field. Depends on your podcasting app. Support Any consideration for support is greatly appreciated. Membership will present the most value as it gives you access to hundreds of hours of bonus content.  -Join LSG Media Membership -Donate -Amazon Wish List Socials-Discord -Dean on Instagram (LSGDean) -Dean on Twitch -Matt on Twitch -FB Group Disclaimer This is a commentary and criticism show that will routinely slander, suggest, and make wild claims - it should be considered comedy entertainment only, and not to be taken seriously. Take responsibility for your own feelings and actions.

We are continuing our run of guests, After having the King of Eastenders Shaun Williamson on we knew we needed the King of Scottish soaps too, so today we have the star of River City Stephen Purdon.. What on TV tonight? Depends. Jack & Colin would like to point you towards buymeacoffee.com/wrongtermmemory where you can buy the guys a drink for all their, let's be honest, quality work over the last few months. There are also links on wrongtermmemory.com Then, leave a review, follow us on your mate's phone and tell one person you think might enjoy what we do Member of Quite The Thing Media - quitethethingmedia.com Support this podcast

The Forex Market or the Stock Market?Podcast: #398: The Forex Market or the Stock Market?In this video:00:28 – Which is the best market to trade?00:51 – The Forex market is open 24 hours a day02:27 – It’s easy to follow and understand the 8 FX currencies03:43 – Massive liquidity in the Forex market04:44 – Use Leverage to your advantage05:42 – You can trade Forex long and short06:27 – The low cost of trading the Forex market06:47 – The ability to take high reward:risk trades08:13 – Send me the trading topics you’d like me to discussShould you trade the Forex market or should you consider trading the stock market instead? Which is best? Let's talk about that and more, right now.Hi Forex traders. It is Andrew Mitchem here, the owner of the Forex Trading Coach with video and podcast number 398.Which is the best market to trade?And I want to talk about the differences, the comparisons, the benefits of trading the Forex market over the stock market. It's a question I get asked quite often. And so I thought to help you out, I'll give you what I see the benefits of the Forex market that are clearly beneficial to us as traders and why I choose the Forex market over the stock market. So to list these in no particular order.The Forex market is open 24 hours a dayThe first one, the market is open 24 hours a day when you trade the Forex market. So it's open five days a week. It opens at 05:00 PM, New York time on a Sunday, and it closes at 05:00 PM, New York time on a Friday. So it's open for five complete days, 24 hours a day, and it doesn't shut within that time.Now that has many benefits. Depends on where you live around the world. You may find that some exchanges, if you're trading the stock market, it may be crazy hours of the day for you. As an example, for me, living here in New Zealand, I can trade the Forex market quite easily, any time of day. Yet, if I wanted to trade the US stock market, I'd need to be up from about two o'clock in the morning through to about 06:00 or 07:00 AM every day. And there is no way I'm doing that. And it depends on where you're living. If you're in Europe, let's say, you can't trade the Australian stock market very easily because of the time differences. And when you have time differences and you have exchanges open for, let's say eight hours a day, what you tend to find is between one day and the next day you have gaps in the price and you have price jumping from here and opening the next day up here. So all sorts of different things like that, which as a trader can become a problem.Yet with the Forex market, it doesn't matter where you live in the world, what time zone you're on. When you look at the market, the market is open. And that to me is a massive, massive benefit. And you just get that continual flow with the Forex market that you don't get in the stock market.It’s easy to follow and understand the 8 FX currenciesAnother benefit, when you look at the Forex market, there's really only eight currencies that we look at trading. You get to know pretty soon the characteristics, how they move, how they flow with each different currency and the currency pairs. Yet if you're trading the stock market, how on earth do you get to really know what's happening with each of those stocks, those companies, what their debt levels are like, what their employment levels are like, what their plans are? All those type of things that I don't believe that you really can know. And even if you study just a few of them, well, there's thousands of them to go and look at. So how do you know which one to look at?

Of course the girls have some take-aways from “Wendy Williams: The Movie.”  Were they earth-shattering? No. Valuable? Depends.  Sarah and Mary both agree that Wendy had some awful experiences along the way; however, after this movie, they’re not much more knowledgeable about Wendy than before. Is it fun to know that she likes to eat her caviar with Doritos? Of course it is. Do they feel bad that she didn’t think enough of herself to walk away from Kev one of the first ten times he cheated on her? Absolutely. Would they suggest you take time out of your day to watch this movie? Probably not. That’s why they recap it for you. Subscribe, like, and review—wherever you get your podcasts. Follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.  sarahcolonna.com  maryradzinski.com   © 2020-2021 Are You My Podcast?

Studies show that our work has shifted from a 50/50 balance between sedentary and active work to 80% sedentary and 20% active.  Overall that shift has led to a negative effect on our general health and in particular, our knees.  Our knees can play a big part in workplace safety as they form a critical link in our kinetic chain, connecting us to the ground and allowing freedom to move.  They can be affected by numerous factors such as the work environment, life habits, and even genetics.  Unfortunately, our trend toward a more sedentary work/life balance can put us at even greater risk of dysfunction. On this episode of the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast, I speak with Al Brown, MEMIC’s Director of Ergonomics about knees, why they can be a pain, and how to keep them healthy. Peter Koch: [00:00:04] Hello, listeners, and welcome to the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast, I'm your host, Peter Koch. There are a lot of joints in the body. Some are small like your fingers, and some are complex, like the shoulder or the wrist, but some are built to sustain heavy loads like the hip. And then there's the knee. We have two of them and the knee may seem like a fairly simple joint, after all, it just hinges back and forth. It doesn't even rotate or twist like other joints do, or at least they're not designed to do that specifically. But think about what it has to do. It really has to stabilize us when we're moving, when we're standing, when we're sitting. It has a lot to do with our ability to balance. And even though the joints below it, like the ankle joint in the bones that are in the foot and the hip, have a lot to do with how our knee works and functions. It really does connect the two parts of the body together. From a sports standpoint, knees have a pretty high percentage of injury, especially those that require surgery [00:01:00] in activities like a weighted pivot, sort of like soccer, football, tennis and basketball or sports that have a tendency for lateral posterior loading like skiing. There's a fairly significant proportion of injuries in those sporting activities have to do with the knee. There are tons of different ways that you can injure the knee. And in my work history, prior to me coming to MEMIC, I spent some time as a paid ski patroller about 10 years or so, and I still do that off and on. And I can recall plenty of knee injuries to both the staff and the guests. Some were impact related where you're going to fall down or hit something or strike something. But many were from a slow, backward, twisting fall and still others were from overuse walking down the mountain as a snow maker or even that weighted pivot as a lift operator trying to bump a chair. Knees I think overall we're one of the most frequently injured joints that I saw. And then never mind injuries. My knees, as I get older seem to be the thing that slow me down [00:02:00] after having been in a static position for a while. I just want to think about this for a minute. Can you feel it if you're sitting in a car listening to this or maybe you're sitting in a chair or have been seated for a while? When you start to get up, though, your knees might be the thing that are a little bit creaky or a little bit slow. And you can't move as fast maybe as you once could. Well, to talk about this a little more, I have Al Brown on the line with me today. And Al is MEMIC's director of ergonomics, Al has been on the podcast before and brings a unique insight into how our bodies deal with the stresses placed on them during work and play. So on today's episode, we're going to look at the knees specifically how they work and how we can keep them healthy and from being injured. Al welcome back to the podcast. Al Brown: [00:02:47] Thank you. Be happy to be here. Peter Koch: [00:02:49] Psyched to have you back. Hey, so you've been on the podcast before. Why don't you take a couple of moments here and give folks who might be listening for the first time a little background about what your history is and what you do for MEMIC [00:03:00] in your position? Al Brown: [00:03:01] Sure. Pete, appreciate that. I've been around for a while. I'm a baby boomer, but I'd like to try to keep the body young as much as I can. Started life out as a went to Penn State University for my undergrad degree and athletic training, then went on to Howard University in Washington, DC for my physical therapy training, then ended up moving to Maine. About forty years ago, I worked in an orthopedic clinic and then started my own practice with a partner and we worked on site industry, which is was a spectacular experience for me simply because that was where I got my interest in ergonomics and looking at people coming into the clinic that were injured and asking myself, well, why? What's the root cause of this? So we would actually walk back out to the job and take a look at the job tasks and realize there would be specific things that would create the risk [00:04:00] and exposure and then made our abilities to treat them much easier. So it was a natural flow to transition to work injury management, which is where we are today. I been with MEMIC for probably 18 years, fifteen of those as an employee. And essentially that's what we do, is we go out and we're partnering with industry and we look at the risks and exposures and we try to figure out what might be the cause and what they can do from an ergonomic standpoint to reengineer the job and make the change so we can lower the risk. So it's a win for all of us. So and that brings me to here today and what we do and from doing podcast to webinars to live trainings. Looking forward to those you're back to live trainings. But that's how I got here today. Have done some supplemental education at the University of Michigan, working with Armstrong and chafing up there in the engineering department and also at Harvard at the School of Public Health. So, [00:05:00] you know, you have to stay fresh. Things change, it's like medicine. A lot of what we do in the world of medicine is based on research and a lot of the other stuff is just fairy dust. So we like to kind of dust out that fairy dust when we can and get real data and statistics and follow the science. So and with ergonomics, it does change. So we're always having to stay on top of the research. Peter Koch: [00:05:23] That's one of the reasons that you bring so much depth to these conversations, is you have a great history and you've not only seen it from a physical therapy side, but you've looked at it from an industry side and you've looked at it from the research side. So I think kind of trying to build on that in our discussion today about the knee joint itself. I think it's important for us to start with the basics. Right. So we want to move out that fairy dust and we want to make sure people understand that the joint isn't actually as simplistic as folks might seem or might think. So why don't we start with some anatomy? So why don't you take us through how [00:06:00] the knee is designed, what makes it work and maybe what some of its limitations are? Al Brown: [00:06:07] Sure we can go way back Pete, but we'll try to keep it. But it's funny. You look at arms and legs and those are pretty non-functional and a human being when you're first born because we're all trying to develop core stability and that core is your butt your gut, your whole axial skeleton. And once you get some strength and control in those areas, you then can start using the extremities and that upper extremities seem to be first. And then eventually we get down to where we wobble over to the you know, we kind of pull ourselves up on the sofa or on the coffee table and we learn to stand up because we're controlling our hip muscles and then our legs and knees and then we're able to get very mobile. And that's where we are now. Sadly enough, as we age, we begin to wobble again and then we regress. When you look at the knee joint, we often sometimes [00:07:00] just refer to as the hinge joint. But it's not really true. It does hinge. But it also translates to so that there's two big bones, actually the two biggest bones in the body, the femur, which is your thigh bone, and then the tibia, which is the second largest bone, is the lower leg bone, which bears about 80 percent of the force of the weight created by the body. There's the fibula, which is the smaller bone down the side, which you can actually fracture of the fibula and still keep on going just simply because it doesn't bear much of the weight. The largest, sesamoid bone. That'll be on a test later. Peter Koch: [00:07:36] OK, thank you. Al Brown: [00:07:37] Sesamoid bones are the ones that just kind of free floating and it's kind of. And it's your kneecap or your patella, as they call it. So those four bones kind of come together. They're held together by ligaments and tendons and muscles. We look at the alignment because you have both the anatomy and the strengthening of the developmental sequence. That's what a baby goes through to where we [00:08:00] are now. But you also have the genetics that you were handed by mom and dad. So, you know, when we look down at our feet, they may impact the knee. You know, a quick thing everybody can do to see how well they're aligned is if you take your little hipbones, that little bump on the front, not your side down where your pockets are, but on the front side when you lay down and you know, you can feel those two little bumps out in the front, there's a fairly large muscle that goes through the kneecap that attaches there. And if you drew a line from there and then go all the way down to the bump right below your kneecap on your shin, there's a big bump there. And then you look at so you draw a line straight down or, you know, take a chalk line and snap a chalk line on that bad boy and see where your kneecap falls, it should almost be divided, split in half by that line. But the way people are built, if some have knock knees, are going to find that the kneecap will fall inside the line or valgus knees [00:09:00] as the term you would hear medically or if they had various knees or Bow-Legged, that kneecaps are going to fall outside that line. So that's going to impact how that kneecap moves up and down. So if you look at the underside of the kneecap, it's sort of V shaped and that V shape, it's convex. So that's you know, it's a V the projects out covered by cartilage and it fits in a complementary v shaped concave cavity in the femur. So they sort of what they call track. It's kind of like tracking in there. So you want that thing to sit right in the middle. But unfortunately, with genetics, with postural habits, with aging, with, you know, we're more sedentary lifestyle. We begin to change muscle length, muscle strength alignments and we begin to start messing around with where that kneecap, you know, tracks. So, you know, we could go on our whole podcast just on the anatomy, but it's a fairly complex [00:10:00] joint. Think of it this way, too. It functions as a close kinetic chain. Most of the time. That's a fancy term. But let me see if I can. It works, it's the thing that connects us to the Earth. So every time we put that foot on the ground, it's a kinetic chain. It's closed. We put the distance and the foot on the ground. So now all the loading comes up through the body for us to function, you know, give you an example of an open kinetic chain. Your arm is more of an open kinetic change. So when I reach out to get something, I'm not sure of a push up. But what I'm reaching out to grab something this end is not connected. It's allowing me to do stuff, to bring things to me. But your lower extremity is a closed kinetic chain, so it has to control and then move us forward. And just gate is real complex thing that we will see how it impacts us as we go through this podcast. We'll talk a little bit about, you know, what happens to us when certain things happen for example, sitting you [00:11:00] know, when you sit down Pete what happens to those giant muscles in your hips and pelvic area? What are they doing? Peter Koch: [00:11:06] Depends on what side they're on. Right. So by sitting down, everything on the front is relaxed. If I'm sitting in the back, I've got some tightness going on because it might be stretching the bottom. My glute, right. Is that how it works? Al Brown: [00:11:17] Yes. Yeah. So they're passive. So you have some that are shortening some of the lengthening. But think about activity. Is there any activity going on in. Peter Koch: [00:11:24] There's nothing going on there. Just relaxing. Al Brown: [00:11:27] Yeah. So what happens is they begin to atrophy, so now those get weaker. So what happens is those muscles get weaker. It begins to impact what goes on down below because remember that developmental sequence as a child, we have to strengthen our core and then we can start to use our big muscles on our hips and legs and our extremities. And we can function to be mobile. But if we lose some of that core strength, we begin to impact what goes on  down below. Peter Koch: [00:11:53] And all that progression as the infant grows relies on activity. If the infant is [00:12:00] not able to be active, they don't, you know, strengthen their core and then they can't build the musculature, the movement patterns in the muscle groups in order to make everything,  function. I do want to take you back a little bit into the anatomy part. So we talked about the bones. We talked about some about the muscles. We talked quite a bit about the kneecap. And I like that that conversation about how the kneecap tracks and the visual line and where does that fall, because it could give you some indications on what might be in your future. And then we'll talk later about what might we be able to do to compensate for some of that. But you didn't talk a whole lot about the tendons in the ligaments in there, which are some of the things that do get injured, especially in activities. So whether it be a sport activity or even a slip and fall, those are the things that are going to get damaged. What are the tendons and ligaments make up the knee joint and what do they do? Al Brown: [00:12:51] Sure, yeah. There's quite a few. There's four major ligaments that we look at. There's a whole bunch of ligaments. But if we look at the four that typically are highlighted [00:13:00] and take the hit and again, you know, when you look at athletes today, you know, there's a lot of let's take football, for example. You see a lot of the interior linemen just with all these things on their knees. And part of that is just to protect them because there's such big bodies moving around. And if one falls in the wrong position and whacks the knee, you can impact those ligaments or tendons or cartilage. But the four there's a medial collateral in the lateral collateral ligament and basically they're there. You know, the medial side is to prevent your news from getting. Inward, sort of like in a knock kneed position, the lateral one does the opposite, it prevents you from getting shifted outward and then inside there's two that are fairly large. There's the anterior cruciate ligament and then the posterior cruciate ligament, the anterior cruciate prevents sort of that shifting forward of your [00:14:00] that tibia. Remember that big bone in the lower leg from shifting forward and it does control some of the rotation. Posterior ligament does the opposite. So you had referenced skiing, skiing as an example of where there's a lot of torque and forces created by skis and skis today are actually you know, they're different. Back in the day when I used to lace mine up and clipped down the wire binding, we saw more just boot top fractures. And just because that's where the hit would be. But today's world, you know, it's reengineered and the boots halfway up your leg and it's clipped on. Fortunately, that tends to translate the forces up into that knee. For an example, what's it called? You're more familiar with the skiing industry than I where the back of the ski hits and it creates an interior translation of the knee forward. So it forces the knee forward quickly and you get to enter cruciate ligament injury. Peter Koch: [00:14:56] Sure. That's part of what they call the phantom foot injury. So that [00:15:00] that phantom foot motion, when the ski accelerates forward and, you know, more of your mass is above your knee than below your knee. So the thing that moves faster is the tibia and what's below the tibia with the boot that accelerates forward things above that don't move quite so fast. So you put a significant stress there on the ligaments, ACL, PCL or ACL specifically. Al Brown: [00:15:25] So that, you know, there's an example of, you know, two sports where you have traumatic injuries. You know, we also see that in industry to where somebody might be driving a truck and they've gotten to their location. And instead of climbing down like we encourage workers to do, they may step out onto those saddle tanks, look down and jump down, and all of a sudden they get a rotational force. And now we've got a torn ligament, medial collateral ligament, maybe, you know, the inter cruciate ligament with that sort of rotational torsion force, you might throw in the medial meniscus [00:16:00] and the terrible triad, as they would call it. And so you've started the process of sort of degeneration of the knee. And we've all had those little oh boy, my knee aches a little bit. What was that or what did I do? Or I jumped out of a tree or I, you know, was running around the backyard and I torqued on something and where I'm skiing down the hill and I twisted all those things kind of contribute to the general breakdown of the knee as we age. But there's those four ligaments. There's a bunch of different cartilage. There's fibro cartilage, and then there's hyaline, cartilage, fiber. Cartilage is more fibrous, just like the name implies in the hyaline, cartilage is more smooth. So that's more on joint surfaces like the top of the tibia, the bottom of the femur. It's almost like taking those bones and dipping them in a can of paint. That's where you find your hyaline cartilages, you know, sort of puts a coating over them, the meniscus or more the fibrous cartilage. So those look like donuts and they sit on top of that lower bone, the tibia, and there's like two of them side by side because the femur has that big rounded double  [00:17:00]end there that actually sits down in those cartilage. So, again, it's kind of a stabilizer for them to a certain extent when we're upright. Peter Koch: [00:17:07] So it kind of gives them a pocket, that fibrous cartilage for the femur to sit in. And then the hyaline cartilage gives those surfaces the ability to glide instead of grind. Al Brown: [00:17:18] Right. Yeah. And a key component of all that then is just moisture or snow. You know, it's called synovial fluid, joint capsule fluid. That stuff is there to lubricate the joint. And, you know, needless to say, as we get older, yeah, there's less lubrication. So, you know, things get a little stickier. It's called it you know, sometimes it's referred to as the gel factory. I think you referenced it in the beginning when you said, you know, when you go to get up in your little stiff and achy. Peter Koch: [00:17:49] That's exactly it. Al Brown: [00:17:50] Yeah. Movement promotes a reduction in that gel factor because it's like taking anything mechanical. And if you haven't moved it for [00:18:00] a while, it things get sticky. You know, there's not lubrication that grease and oil moving around the thing and we're no different. So when you're static sitting for an extended period of time, you're sort of draining out the fluids and then you start to get sort of a I'm going to call it a dryness, but no fluid between, say, the kneecap and the femur. So when you start the movement, get up to walk, get out of the truck. You have to get through that. Oh, that ache is that dryness. But then you eventually lubricate and then you're good to go. Peter Koch: [00:18:35] We talked a little bit about your body being like a car, too. And so if you think about that car that's been sitting. Idle all night, cold, cold evening, and you go to start it up in the morning, if you don't give it at the opportunity to warm up at Low Rev's and you push it down the road at moderate to fast speed, you haven't allowed the engine oil to warm up and to start to lubricate the pistons and all the internal workings. And we're [00:19:00] very much like that. The longer we sit idle, like you said, the less lubrication we're going to have and those places. And really, unlike a car, we have some advantages the younger we are. But as we get older, we have some disadvantages. Like the younger we are, the better our bar, the easier our body will have, the easier time our body will have to move fluid through those joints. The older we are, the less fluid we have and the harder it is for our body to move fluid into those joints so that we aren't quite as creaky. But like you said, movement is a great thing, right? Al Brown: [00:19:34] Oh, yeah. Pete, I am a 56 Chevy, you know. And let me tell you, it takes a while before I don't just pop out of bed anymore. It's kind of a let's give it a moment. Let's sit on the edge. Let's stretch the hamstrings. Let me stretch my arms above my head. Let me just make sure I can see. And where are my glasses, by the way? And then  I wait or I make sure that I slide my hand over to the bedrail. So [00:20:00] as I walk, I does everything work. You're sort of testing it first so that chill factors a little. Peter Koch: [00:20:06] Yeah. And you're not a broken guy. I mean you're, you're a fairly you're a fit individual. You do work out all the time or as often as you can to because you recognize that. So you're not you aren't in the place where you have to do those things because you're broken. But what you're doing is you're warming yourself up to give your body less opportunity to be broken through that movement because moving something that's not ready to be moved is not good for anything. So that's really that's a I want to make that distinction that this does not like the warm up phase, the things that we do before movements. All of those things are important to prevent injury. It can be done because you're injured, but they should be done in order to prevent it from happening in the first place. And we'll get into quite a bit of that when we start talking about strategies to lower the risk. And what do you do after you get hurt? So we'll talk about some of those things as we move through the podcast. [00:21:00] Al Brown: [00:21:00] Sure. Sure. Peter Koch: [00:21:02] So we've talked about a number of things that might make the knees hurt, but let's delve into that a little bit more. What are some things that we talked about? Sports and certainly activities that weighted pivot when I stand on one foot and then I go to turn in one direction or the other, I might be putting my cartilage at risk. I could be putting one of the ligaments at risk depending on the lateral forces, or an impact might make my knees hurt or injured. But what else can really make our knees hurt? What are some of the things that happen in today's society or are in our workplaces that make our knees ache and hurt and be sore and maybe even injured over time? Al Brown: [00:21:39] Sure. The yeah, the ones we sort of just covered and talked about are more trauma. And we do see those in the workplace, you know, those come along probably less often than we used to see because you know, know this, I don't know you realize. But back in the 60s, 1960, do you remember the 1960? Peter Koch: [00:21:59] I remember [00:22:00] at least one year of the 1960, Al Brown: [00:22:04] About half of our jobs were physical and half were sedentary. So it was about a 50/50 split as technology has crept into our lives and as we move forward in time about 80 to 85 percent of our jobs now are sedentary, and that 17, 18, 15, somewhere in that 15 percent range are now, you know, heavier work. So because you've seen that switch, we see less of the traumatic injuries. Does that mean that the injuries have gone away? No. Your question is what else?  So when we look at sedentary work, which means I think if you go into Social Security definition of sudden sedentary work, it's handling 10 pounds or less occasionally throughout the day. So in the way they referenced it was carrying a file here or walking over [00:23:00] here doing this. So but you think about most of the jobs a lot of us do nowadays. That's what we do. But what comes coupled with that is we tend to sit more. So when we sit more, we change the biomechanics of the leg in the lower extremity, in that we lose muscle mass in the buttock, we begin to tighten muscles. So now when we get up to move, we begin to see changes in the lower extremity that then begin to create knee pain. But it's from being inactive. So we see those types of injuries. Then we see the truck driver who is sedentary, the logging industry. They're up driving trucks, you know, the forwarders going in, the forwarder is coming out, and they don't even have to get up. The seat now rotates in the forward or so they can don't have to get up, but then they have to get out of the truck. Occasionally when they jump down, there's that that sedentary precursor that set them up for an injury and then they might jump down or just even stepping down. They twist wrong and then they've got the problem. And then you just have medical [00:24:00] conditions that might predispose, you know, rheumatoid arthritis and osteoarthritis, as you know, from previous trauma. So comorbidities, those aches and pains, you know, trauma that you may have occurred before in your life are now beginning to raise their ugly head if you haven't done things where you stand to lose strength. We have a sedentary job now that mal alignment of the foot, you know, if you genetically were handed over some coronating feet and coronating feet, again, fancy term for, you know, like a flat arch, you know, that's going to take that little bump we talked about earlier right below the kneecap. And it's going to shift that and it's going to shift that sort of in a position that's going to make that kneecap align and properly. So what do you do to fix some of those things? So, you know, you look at trauma, you look at sedentary activity, and then you look at disease processes and those all kind of contribute to the problem. It's hard in our world sometimes to parse out what's related to the work and [00:25:00] what's not related to the work. I think I told you earlier I was going through looking at, you know, looking at research articles on the knee and I typed in knee work injury in the first seven pages of the search were law offices. So that sort of gives you an indicator of, you know, Peter Koch: [00:25:20] It's hard to parse it out like So if one person has a concern and one person has an argument against that, it's natural to look to somebody else to help make that decision. I really do think that discussion is kind of interesting. You talk about the I guess we'll start with genetics a little bit about that. I know one of my daughters has flat arches and she's the only one in our family that has flat arches. And that translated into her when she played sports to have trouble when she ran. And now this time of year with covid and everything, sports aren't really happening. But where she's finding a difficulty [00:26:00] is actually standing for long periods of time. So if she doesn't wear her insoles to help support that arch, then what hurts on her one? It's her arch. But then her knees are sore as well because her job requires her to stand if she's going to work a seven, six, seven hour shifts, sometimes she'll be on her feet the entire time. And just that because of the arch will cause a little mal alignment. And since there's misalignment in places, it's going to cause things to become sore. That might not be sore with someone else who doesn't have that genetic challenge. Or maybe it's a challenge from an injury, like you said before, that comorbidity. Al Brown: [00:26:42] If you look at people, I mean an example of your daughter, you know, when that foot goes, you know, rotates in into a flap, you lose your arch. What it does is we can all make our foot go flat if we sort of push our knee inward, you know, like a knock kneed position. And that's kind of what [00:27:00] happens with a flat foot is that you get that lower tibia rotates outward, the knee tends to come inward. And then if you couple that with the one anatomy piece we didn't talk about early on was there is a difference between the hip with female hip width tends to be a little wider because of child bearing in the way they're built as opposed to males, tend to be a little more narrow. So you couple a pronated foot, you know, the flat foot, the female hip, which in fact she has a wider hip, and then that knee going inward and you get almost a bowstring effect. Where that that giant muscle tendon complex that goes from the hip down below the knee and incorporates the kneecap, the kneecaps getting pulled way in. And those two lines are almost on the outside of the kneecap. So it wants to take that kneecap and fire it out to the outside so she could end up with foot ankle pain, but she could also end up with knee pain just because of that mechanical [00:28:00] alignment down below. So the foot orthotic actually kind of lifts that foot. So when she's standing there, the knee comes back into position, the tibia comes back into position and that kneecap gets realigned. Peter Koch: [00:28:13] Yeah. And actually, that's what happens if you watch if I watch her walk and stand insoles versus no insoles. That's exactly what you're describing. So there is a slight knock knee when she is or her knees coming inward when she's standing and you put the insoles in. And it's not magic, it's not incredibly noticeable. But if you're paying attention, you can see the difference in the alignment and you can totally feel or hear the difference in when she comes back from work or comes back from doing something that when she's on her feet all day, the thing that she'll complain about is the her arch will be sore because she's got the insole and it's just stretching the muscles in the tendons and the ligaments in there because it's forcing the arch into a position that the body was designed to. But genetically, we didn't give it to her. So we've got to do it mechanically. She's [00:29:00] going to love me for years, I can tell you. But I think that's an interesting place because I think if you understand more about how you're structured that like we started with anatomy and physiology. So if we understand the makeup of the knee and what makes it up and what its limitations are, what it's supposed to do, and then you understand your own genetic makeup and how your knee actually functions and what affects it from your postural and your habits, then you can start making some better decisions about what you do and how you do it. I know we were talking before the podcast a little bit about teaching kids how to run in sports, which, you know, it's something that you really don't think you need to do. But I know for me specifically, coaching, coaching girls soccer at the high school level, a couple of years ago, the head coach and I made a decision to  [00:30:00]work on stride and foot placement and knee angle and explosive force in our pre-season instead of really pushing fitness. So we did a lot of fitness work, but it was more from a plyometric standpoint and really working more on movement patterns. And whereas we didn't see a huge increase in fitness, what we did see is a decrease in sort of overuse injuries that we might normally get kind of a third of the way through the season as the workloads were starting to pick up pretty heavy as you got into our gameplay season and a sequence of practice, practice, game, practice, game, practice, rest and working that through the season. So I do think that understanding where you are and then doing some things to help with your habits can help set you up for some success to not hurt overall. Al Brown: [00:30:57] If you look, we mentioned this phenomena [00:31:00] in our past podcast and that's that unconscious behavior or subconscious behavior. Most of our motor patterns, most of our movement patterns in our body are pre-programmed or they are things we've done over and over and over again. And they become we get muscle memory, we get body position, memory, and we repeat those. And then they get to the point where they're pretty much automatic. So we don't have to think about them. They can be good motor patterns and they can be bad motor patterns. And you take a guy like LeBron James, he's probably got a pretty good motor pattern with putting the basket in the hoop. But that's all automatic. That's not something he has to think about. It's actually become sort of a subconscious. You take someone like a young athlete you're talking about and for the first time or go back to that baby. They're just trying to create motor patterns to create mobility. And then when you get to a level of becoming good at a sport activity or [00:32:00] work activity, whatever it is, you have to develop motor patterns and you typically don't see what you do. You're just doing it because it's getting you from point A to point B, but a second set of eyes, like a coach or manager or whatever, can see sometimes those poor behaviors and try to modify them and create active. Is that will allow you to practice we take folks that are delayed in the world of muscle activity and one of the things I remember back when I was a physical therapist, we would say, hey, do you guys have a play set in the backyard? You might want to think about investing you want because kids will, you know, climb whatever, and they're creating different motor patterns to do different things. And through play, they actually improve their ability to stand in the world of gravity and move around because of those motor patterns. You know, you put them in front of, you know, something like a computer or a book or sit them down and it's not going to do it. You know, you need to kind of create those good motor patterns. So that's what you did, which [00:33:00] was great in the working world, the workaday world, we have to do the same thing because the workaday world is, you know, eight hours a day. I go in there and some people have good patterns and some people have not so good patterns and some have a blend. So we try to be the eyes and ears so they can understand that because you don't look at yourself. That was the other thing that, you know, we never look at ourselves. We see parts of us or in today's world. I mean, you know, you are on a virtual looking at ourselves right now and each other. But typically we don't get that opportunity. So you don't get to see what your shoulders are doing, what your hips are doing, what your legs are doing, unless someone shows you a video of it. So it's important that we help develop those motor patterns, particularly if we see that are not so good. Peter Koch: [00:33:43] Yeah, and you talk about video. I just and we're going to move on here in just a moment, but I wanted to bring the video piece up. That's one of the tools that you use when you're trying to diagnose manual material handling challenges in the workplace, photos from an office ergonomic standpoint [00:34:00] so that you're able to see certainly in an office ergonomic standpoint, you can look at the setup, but from a manual lateral handling, looking at the cycle of what's happening, because it's hard for the person to describe what they're doing. If you were to talk to them, you're going to walk into the workplace or talk to them on the phone and say, what do you do? What do you do that's causing you pain? Oh I lift stuff? Well, that's really not enough. You've got to know not just where they lift to, but what do they look like when they're lifting? And is the environment what's causing them to lift in that particular way? Or is it actually their postural habits that are keying them into doing those particular pieces? Because you could have something set up very ergonomically well, right within that power zone for someone to lift. And they may still bend over at the waist because that's what they're habit is. So habits play a huge part in how we manage things. Al Brown: [00:34:56] Well, hey, Pete, you know, you talk about habits and we're [00:35:00] talking about motor patterns and we're talking about muscle memory. Here's a classic that we've all encountered. And it's in the work environment sometimes can be an issue. And that's steps bear with me first. I think about the most steps are, you know, six inches or seven inches, you know, or somewhere around there in that range. That seems to be a feasible height that most of us can encounter. But you go up a staircase and it's and there six and a half inches, six and a half inch, six and a half inch. And then you hit that seven or eight inch step because someone miscalculated the step when the rise and run, when they built the steps, how many people go up and they stumble over that last step because they're depending on their body calculating and then going, OK, these are six and a half inch steps. I'm going to bring my foot up, you know, six inch, six and five eighths inches, you know, so I have clearance. But all of a sudden they get to that last step that's just a half inch higher. And they [00:36:00] trip over it. You know, I mean, there's an example of, you know, that repeated behavior and how we incorporate it and where we can get into trouble. Peter Koch: [00:36:08] Yeah, that and in those habits that we build over time, age changes our ability to rely on those habits as our kinesthetic sense and our proprioception changes as well. So the that electrical feedback, if you go back to think about the knee, right. If I'm walking and I'm stepping up into something, my normal habit is to bring my leg up, bending at the hip, bending at the knee that six and five eighths inch. But as I age those receptors, those electrical signals that fire to tell me how high my leg is actually lifted, they aren’t working quite as well. And there could be a dementia in there. There could be an illness in there that's causing even more of a lag. So now I don't lift my leg up. I think it's six and five eighths, but it's really four inches. And so now I just don't stumble a little bit. I catch my [00:37:00] entire foot on that step and I go right on my face onto the landing. We totally build those habits over time and age. There's lots of different things that can change how effective those habits can be, both externally and internally, it seems. Al Brown: [00:37:15] Yeah, and with a sedentary shift, you know, again, we do have that aging workforce, you know, you look at Maine in particular, we are the oldest workforce in the nation, but in general, there's a real demographic shift in the workforce out there. So those kinds of things occur. And then you've got the perfect storm with not only the aging workforce, but now much of our work is much more sedentary. So we don't get up and like that child out there running around, jumping up on the swing set. If you take the adult version now, we're not out there sort of plowing the field, pulling the weeds, walking around and exercising those muscles and sort of re-cueing all those motor patterns. We're sitting at the computer. So then when we go and do something like climb [00:38:00] those stairs, we've lost, you know, if you don't use it, you lose it. It starts to fade. And, you know, the cues aren't correct. So how do we fix that? Sometimes we go, I'm going to get rid of those stairs. I might get our house on one floor and I'm going, start digging the hole. You know, you're going in. Come on. We live in a world of gravity. You can't avoid it. Peter Koch: [00:38:20] Yeah. You got to keep moving. Peter Koch: [00:38:23] Let's take a quick break so I can tell you about our E-Ergo resource that can be used to help solve ergonomic challenges at your workplace, sometimes contacting, contracting with and scheduling an ergonomist or occupational health nurse for an onsite evaluation doesn't fit with our Just-In-Time workflow. In a competitive economy, fixing the problem right now is essential, and improving worker comfort and efficiency are key components to ongoing success. Free to our policyholders. MEMIC's E-Ergo tool can help you overcome ergonomic challenges. With just five quick photos or [00:39:00] a short 30 second video and a brief description of what's being shown, you can send us the critical demands and essential functions within the work tasks. Once received, our ergonomics team can identify risks and exposures and provide reasonable suggestions for ergonomic improvement within just a few short days. Start the E-Ergo process by logging into the MEMIC safety director at www.MEMIC.com/WorkplaceSafety. Now let's get back to today's episode. Peter Koch: [00:39:34] That statistic that you quoted before about our work, our sedentary work versus active work was about 50 50. If you go back into the 40s, 50s, 60s. And as we've moved into the 80s, 90s, 2000s and to current day, we have gone into a mostly sedentary work style. So even if you had an active [00:40:00] lifestyle back in the 50s and 60s, so you actually got out and you did stuff, if you had a sedentary lifestyle, you may be like, I remember my grandmother. Right. So many, many years ago. She might be fairly sedentary in the house. But once my grandfather came home, she would be out in the garden. She spend four or five hours out in the garden, weeding, planting, harvesting, and then coming back in and doing all that active work inside the house. So even if she did do some sedentary work inside, there is still active work that she did outside. If you have a sedentary job and now a lot of our recreational opportunities have been truncated as well, so we're not maybe as active as we once were outside, we have that double effect of having a sedentary job and also maybe a sedentary outside of work life, too. So it's a double [00:41:00] whammy almost, if you think about it. So let's talk more about how that sedentary life affects our knees specifically. Al Brown: [00:41:09] Yep, let's take sitting because that that we see sitting everywhere, it's, you know, again, you take something that is heavy duty as the logging industry all the way down to someone that works kind of in our environment like an office environment. And we see Uber, you know, and anything you name a lot of us sit. So when we look at that and we look at what happens to the anatomy of the lower extremity, you know, we can talk all about the back and the shoulder and all that stuff. But if we stay down just in the from the hip down, we're taking there's a bunch of muscles are two muscles that we look at called the iliopsoas there's the hip flexor, so if you were to bring your knee up in front of the muscles, sort of initiated, that's this giant hip flexor. Well, that muscle [00:42:00] is it sort of starts in the front of your thigh. And if you could stick your fingers through your pelvis and out the back side to your back, it attaches to the inside of your pelvis bones and then it attaches also to the spine on the back. So you shorten that muscle up. And then if you look at your knee, your knee is flexed or bent and the muscle on the back side of your thighs called your hamstring so that muscles actually shortened up. And so just looking at those two muscles, if you spend quite a bit of time at a desk and a lot of us do or sitting, it could be driving, could be it doesn't matter you seven to eight, nine hours, you begin to change the length of those muscles. So now let's try to stand up with the muscle that won't let that thigh fully engage and go fully vertical. So you have to slightly forward flex pelvis and then the knee can't fully extend since you got a slightly bent knee. [00:43:00] So now you watch people and it changes the balance and the gate when we walk. And this is when, you know, we start to see trouble because you can tell if someone's been a sitter for a long period of time because they'll start their head when they walk, will wobble back and forth side to side, side to side. And that tells me that their hip flex or their hip muscles have gotten so weak they can't stabilize the body over one leg. So when the person steps on that one leg on your right leg, the right hip has to pick up the left side, the left hip so your leg can swing through and you don't stumble. And then you wait there on the left side and the left hip kicks up and brings you through. The problem is, is that muscle gets weak when you weight bear on the right, right is weak. It drops the left. So now for you to block without stumbling, you have to throw your body back [00:44:00] over the right leg and you get this wobbling walk that you see, folks. It's actually a Trendelenburg gait. There's actually a name to it. And that tells me there's trouble ahead because we've got weakness starting. But all that translates down into that kinetic chain that attaches to the earth. So when that foot touches, we've got all those tightness going on in the muscles we de-lubricated the kneecap, the underside of the kneecap. Why wouldn't you have trouble? You know, it's a storm. Peter Koch: [00:44:29] Sure. And it all starts with sitting. Yes. And sitting for a long time. And I think it's an interesting if you're listen to this podcast and you have the opportunity to watch other people do things in the workplace. So watch somebody sit at a desk for a while, watch what their legs do. And so, you know, we talk about good ergonomic position, a desk or in a chair. And you want sure. That you want a 90 degree or close to 90 at the between the femur and the lower leg or the tibia there [00:45:00] and their feet firmly planted on the ground. We'll watch some people sit at the desk and they'll shift from that position as they get closer and closer to the screen, as their stress level goes up and up, their legs will kick underneath them, kind of curl around the legs of the chair, or I'll watch people actually sit on one leg. And you're shortening things a lot more. You're stretching things a lot more on the top side, forcing really all that lubrication out of the joint. Watch that behavior, watch those patterns, see what people do. And it's a wonder that when you sit up or stand up after being focused for a while on a conference call or focused for a while on a project at your desk or at a problem that you're trying to figure out, those habits just sort of kick in and they put you at a disadvantage. And then all of a sudden we want to move like the phone rings in the other room, or we have somebody else that comes in and we want to turn around quickly or stand up quickly. We're not ready and we've put ourselves in that odd position. Then we're going to, [00:46:00] we're not going to do our body any good that one time. And if we continue to do that, it's just going to wear parts down over time until it breaks. Al Brown: [00:46:10] Exactly right. And the one thing we, you know, the one we haven't touched on, but probably not so much again for today, but, you know, if you go back, I think in May 2019, the Harvard Health Publishing from the Harvard Medical School put out a newsletter that said the dangers of sitting and what we haven't talked about is, you know, as you approach 11 hours of sitting a day, there's 35 medical conditions and diseases that go up exponentially. You know, that's the type two diabetes, cardiovascular disease. What we don't, what we forget about is, you know, we're talking about all the mechanics today, but in the physiology of life or the physiology of these muscles, these giant muscles really help to kind of use some of that blood glucose. And if they're not, [00:47:00] and they take up a good chunk of it because they're so big so that your grandmother, when she was out doing her thing in the garden, she was using up that blood glucose. So she was you know, she was keeping her body in balance. But with the new normal of we're more sedentary. Those muscles are quiet. So not only are they getting weaker and tighter, but now we're not consuming the blood glucose. So now that begins to have physiological impacts on us. Type two diabetes, the heart disease and all those kinds of good things, right, bad things. So there's, you know, there's research around it. So we understand it. And here we are. Peter Koch: [00:47:39] Right. So it really does go to that point where the information's out there. It's not rocket science. And I don't want to belittle any of the information out there, because some of it is fairly complex. But the simplistic form of some of that research is movement is good for you. So move. And the less you move, the [00:48:00] harder it is to move later on. And so it's this downward spiral where all of a sudden you get to the point where you can't functionally move anymore, or at least you can't do it without a lot of preparation or a lot of help, and therefore you don't want to do it as much anymore. So that downward spiral of no movement is pretty challenging. So let's take that into our knees again. And what if our knees sore, like we are sore at the end of the day, our knees are kind of achy. Maybe this is the first time we really looked at it as something that we can solve. What are some things beyond general movement that we can do to help when our knees are sore after a day of being sedentary or a day of work? Al Brown: [00:48:46] Mm hmm. Well, if we go back, I mean, just looking at work, if we were to look at I'm looking at a job now or an ergonomic assessment of a foundry and right now in this particular job, they're allowing the worker to kind of move up [00:49:00] and down the line and glue castings and assemble these casting molds. And they're looking to minimize that movement. And I actually encouraged him not to take that movement away, to allow them to move. So within the work environment, sometimes we look at can we create more work pods if it's a manufacturing environment? So instead of someone standing in one place for an extended period of time, manufacturing something and assembling things, they can actually move within a pod. So it allows them to kind of move around. So that's sort of an engineering thing that you can do, that you create you broaden the job task. In that particular case, in an office setting, you know, you've seen the introduction of dynamic desks where folks consider stand now, realize because everybody thought that was the solution, not everybody. But, you know, you hear the press and the narrative was like, well, that's going to solve the problem. And then the research came out. That doesn't solve the problem. And that's right, [00:50:00] because I want you to know that standing is just as static is sitting. The value of something like a dynamic desk is to be able to take a knee joint that's been maybe in a bent position and a hip flexor that’s been in a bent position and allows you to change to a different posture and get yourself up. And when you're standing, just like, you know, when I stand on my desk, I don't stand still, you know, I wobble back and forth. I bend my knees. So I'm actually lubricating and adding value. Now, if we take an administrative change, you get construction sites, construction workers, even manufacturing that now have incorporated let's kind of like an athlete warm up before we start the day so they might have a morning session of discussion of how the day will go. But during that time, they're actually stretching their body. I have a granite installation company that does that every morning at seven o'clock, they have a circle, they do their stretches, but they also go over what's going to go on for the day. And then at the second half [00:51:00] of the day after lunch, they do it again. We have an oil delivery company fairly large in the state of Maine that when they get out of the truck, first, they step down, they climb down. They do three movements to reset their body and gravity before they initiate the pulling of the hose and yanking and filling tanks and so on and so forth, so you can take those kind of active pieces and look at it from broaden the work task or, you know, encourage change of body posture throughout the day with the office worker. We encourage we change the stretch a little bit of the movement, but we do it more midday in mid-afternoon because when you get there, you know, you're not going to do heavy activities like work. So when you sit down, it's that sedentary activity you want to break up. So getting out and moving with truck drivers, with long haul folks, you'll see now signs that say, hey, take a stretch, break it out, move around. So we try to encourage folks to kind of break up those static [00:52:00] postures, either through engineering changes by broadening the task or by just, you know, general stretch rate movements and finding opportunities to move. Peter Koch: [00:52:10] That's a really good, great point there. And I bet you folks listening to the podcast right now are in agreements with you that, yes, changing body posture throughout the day is beneficial for you. They feel it themselves. When they shift, they move, they sit, they stand. They don't stay static in one posture for too long during the day or even if they exercise before work, after work, at lunch, whatever happens that they're going to feel better at the end of the workday. But why do we have to keep repeating the message? I mean, I think that's a it's an interesting human thing to consider and it goes back to the habits. Right. So a habit is difficult to build, but easy to break. So if you've built that habit of stretching before work or doing something to [00:53:00] encourage posture, change, sit, stand desk. But if you've built that habit up over six, eight, 10, 12 weeks and now you have a different project or you get a job change or something shifts or the busyness at work, you're not finding the time or you are thinking that you can't build that time in anymore. It doesn't take that long to remove that habit. And you're right back to where you were before. So the constant repetition, that's why like a company led program, whether it be for stretching or whether it be just a check in to make sure that people are actually doing that on their own, like your delivery driver that you talked about there or I don't know, I see like your flaggers on the side of the road, Al Brown: [00:53:45] Brutal job, brutal job. Peter Koch: [00:53:47] And people think, oh, no, it's an easy job. It's not an easy job, man. Stand on your feet all day long and have a couple of breaks where you can sit by the time you get to sit during the day, if you're just standing there and if you've ever been at a [00:54:00] stop for a while, waiting for the flagger to let you go. And you've been there for one minute to minute, five minutes. Sometimes it's ten minutes depending on what's happening in the construction zone. And watch the person who's there, the person who's there, who knows their body is doing what you're saying. They're moving back and forth or stepping out. They're stepping back. They're not, not paying attention, but they're moving their body around some of those guys and gals that aren't paying attention as much. They're in that one position. They're just standing there kind of leaning on their stop sign. And they are going to be very sore at the end of the day, whether they know it or not. Al Brown: [00:54:37] Yeah, well, and it goes it's a kinetic change. So the more static you are, the more you constantly load one part of your body. I mean, that's and discomfort breeds change. So some of us have a better feedback loop than others so that if you start to act a little bit, you go, I'm going to move. And it's called you know, it's fidgeting and fidgeting as I was trying to find comfort. And if you're not a fidgeter, you're more you're more [00:55:00] just a plopper. like you just sit down, you don't move. You're going to be more prone to those things like osteoarthritis, the diabetes, all those kinds of things, because you don't get the cues to do it. So it is hard. It is a very hard thing because with aging, you have a decline in the quality of your joints faces as much as you try to. You know, let's go back to that 56 Chevy analogy. You know, even though you try to take care of it, you take care of the rust spots, you make sure the tires are aligned to keep the carburetor tuned. You know, it still probably leaves a little oil on the floor and it doesn't corner like it used to or it corners like it used to, but it's nothing compared to the newer stuff. And things break. It's not as smooth as it used to be, and it's just the aging process. So we are fighting that declining battle. But you can slow that down. I think if you look back [00:56:00] physiologically, you know, we look at what is a 78, 79 years is sort of what life expectancy is now. But you can physiologically be. 20 to 30 years younger than that chronological age. If that makes sense, you know, so you can and again, that's genetics, how you take care of yourself. And when we look at knees, it's really important because that's what connects us to the Earth to a certain extent. Your feet all the way up to the knees and then the hips and gives us the mobility we want. So if you take care of those through, you know, just healthy activities of getting out and walking, getting out and moving during the workday work because again, you don't want to just jam it all into, like, you know, a half hour or 45 minutes of exercise because we call those active couch potatoes. I think they coined that phrase in Australia. But there they have the same health risks as those folks or pretty close to the same health risk as those folks that sit all day long and don't do that because what they do after [00:57:00] they do their 45 minutes, hours of exercise, what do they do? Peter Koch: [00:57:03] Nothing. Al Brown: [00:57:03] They go sit down. They go, thank God.  Peter Koch: [00:57:06] Check that box. Al Brown: [00:57:08] The collective number of hours you spend sitting are the problem. You are better off just being a mail person, walking around and delivering mail. You're like a diesel. You just keep moving around, keep moving, keep moving. And you're burning a lot of energy, but your body is much healthier. And again, just to go back to your grandmother and grandfather back in those days, there's a lot of people that were physical, I think, of like a coal miner and those jobs to live in just today. But back in the day I lived in north eastern Pennsylvania, coal mining was very physical and so physical. It was traumatic, traumatic to the body and destroy the body so you can overdo the physical stuff, you know, that doesn't keep you healthy. You know, there's a balance. There's a sweet spot in there where one needs to take care of the human physiology and body, but not over abuse. But you can't be sedentary because [00:58:00] that's going to sort of deteriorate all those things that make up your body. So there's that you have to find that sweet spot in between. Peter Koch: [00:58:08] It brings up a thought to me that the body always seeks balance. It seeks stasis, whether it's temperature, fluid, blood pressure or whatever that is, it always seeks to be in balance somehow. And when we're out of balance, then something goes haywire. And that goes just from a structural imbalance, too. So when you're the physical demands are greater than your body can deal with, like those incredibly harsh physical jobs like coal mining, salt mining. And even today we think about some of those harsh physical jobs. Driving a truck is a pretty harsh physical job overall because it might not be as physically engaging all parts of your body in an active way, driving a truck, a long haul trucker, the forces that get placed on their back and their knees and their shoulders and their neck and everything [00:59:00] else, it's just as damaging because there's no balance. There's no stasis there. So you've got to know, like, almost know thyself, know how much is too much, whether it be a sedentary activity or it is an actually active thing that you're engaged in. You've got to know how much is too much and where to back off and how to find that balance. And like you said, I think that's a great term. Find that sweet spot for you between activity and stasis because we all like to relax. I mean, there's nothing wrong with sitting down and enjoying a breath every once in a while. But when that gets continued out too far, it certainly has some detrimental short term and long term effects on our physiology, our morbidity and our abilities to engage in the world effectively. Al Brown: [00:59:50] You know, we deal with employers and, you know, employers are dealing with an aging workforce. And so, you know, collectively they've got to think about that from an ergonomic standpoint. That's one [01:00:00] of the challenges we're faced with. And you look at its funny stairs an example. You know, some of these sort of industrial locations might have that three stairs to get by on up into change, something in a paper machine or whatever the case may be. Then there's other places that might have a whole flight of stairs. And if you're an employer and you're requiring employees to carry something and go up and down the stairs, all of a sudden if it's a two handed carry, you have to totally rely on those old knees to support you to go up or down. It's easier to go up than it is to go down. And anybody who's hike knows that it's a lot. Most people it's easier to go up the mountain than it is to go down the mountain simply because it's always a double transfer. You are putting one foot up ahead of you and you push off with the leg that's behind you to help to accelerate up over that other one that's going to help lift get your other foot up. So you always have sort of a general propeller, a double propulsion to get you [01:01:00] up. So when you climb, it works pretty well. When you come down, you are decelerating with one leg to lower yourself down. There's no you're just going. I hope that left knee holds and lowers me down to the right knee. And that's where people have problems because the mechanics change stairs, you'll see folks modify their behavior. And again, this is one of those things you think you're doing a safe thing, but they sort of turn their foot sideways on the step to come down the step. We've all done it thinking, well, if I just turn sideways, I won't. You know, it's not as bad. Peter Koch: [01:01:35] Just not as scary Al Brown: [01:01:35] Yes, it's just not as scary. But the problem is they've taken that. If we go back to your analogy of a hinge joint right now, again, it's not a simple hinge joint, but now you've taken that hinge joint, you've turned it sideways, and then you've asked it to bend in a direction that doesn't go. And you put all kinds of stress on the inside of, you know, the knee when [01:02:00] you're coming down the stairs. So you're going to talk all kinds of arthritic changes. So I guess my when you're looking at the work environments, really look at stairs as can I avoid those, is that part of the essential function of this job? If a person has to go up and down it, are they big enough? Are they all equal in height? Can we get the tools up there without them having to carry them? Never have them to hand carry something up or down stairs because they always need that extra hand to support the legs, to go up and down, get in and out of a truck. There's always got to be a three point touch to come in and out of vehicles. Peter Koch: [01:02:33] Those are great points from a workplace standpoint. And really, when we think about it, we want to make sure that we have some strategies in place to help prevent knee injuries. And those are some great pieces. Where can you limit those areas where you're going to have people put stress on their knee either through balance, through carrying stairs, ramps, uneven surfaces, all of those places. We want to make sure that there's nothing unexpected [01:03:00] in the workplace that someone's going to encounter. Maybe it's the lighting changes. Those things can certainly put you in an unbalanced position and put your knee back shoulder, whatever happens at risk, depending on what you're doing. But certainly those places where you have stairs and ramps, check them out, see if there's something that you can do to reduce the potential for a knee related injury because of what we're asking the employee to do. That's great. Great advice Al great advice. Al Brown: [01:03:29] It's you know, there's one body part. You know, everybody can go realize what aging has done to them. And there's one muscle that you can check out right away, and you can do it one or two ways, whatever works for you. But if you lie down o

Ha. Ha. Ha. The Humor of this image. It really is funny, unless you realize that your life DEPENDS of the success of this task.Can you get a CAMEL through the eye of a NEEDLE? Can't think of a way? How about if we assign a task force? Have some hearings on the matter? Call the Marines for help? Get a Presidential Committee going on it? Ha. Ha. Ha. Can't do it! Ridiculous! Out of the realm of possibility! It is IMPOSSIBLE.Well, same idea here about your earning your admission to heaven. Same idea about being "good enough", or rich enough, or powerful enough, or nice enough, or serving enough. There is no "enough". Can't do it! Ridiculous! Impossible! We all end up "falling short". We all have "one thing we lack." So then the excellent question: WHO THEN CAN BE SAVED? Before you answer, remember the CAMEL. Q: Who then can be saved? A: nobody. Ridiculous. Can't be done. It is IMPOSSIBLE.So take heart today. What is impossible with men IS POSSIBLE with God!!!! What?! Who is this God? How is this done? Listen and find out. Please consider Subscribing on Google Podcasts or Pandora or www.bewithme.us

Imagine this: You’ve developed a new product. One that you know works… and that you know people need. There’s just one minor problem: Selling that product requires you to not only enter a battlefield filled with regulatory land mines, but face competition with billions of dollars at its disposal. We’re seeing this situation play out in the multi-trillion-dollar industry that is supplement and pharmaceutical sales. It’s an industry that entrepreneurs everywhere are trying to make waves in, and just like any other industry, finding success means coupling the right product with the right strategy.Zak Williams was able to kick the door open with his company, PYM, which sells all-natural amino acid-infused chews that have proven mental health benefits. Zak is the son of the late actor, Robin Williams, and he is using his own experiences navigating the ups and downs of mental health to help him build PYM into a company that advocates for mental health support in whatever way works best for the individual. Practically, that means working out a business strategy that allows PYM to not compete against big pharma, but sit alongside it. And it includes developing new kinds of convergent experiences that allow consumers to operate in a physical and digital world simultaneously. Zak explains all of that and more on this episode of Up Next in Commerce. Main Takeaways:Play Where You Can Win: For companies that are selling natural products, trying to sell in the same channels as big pharma would be a mistake. Not only will you not be able to make the same claims about proven solutions, but you will not be able to afford to acquire enough customers to make it worth it. Instead, find other channels or methods of marketing where you can stand out, either organically, or in a more affordable way.Do Your Research: Making wild, unproven claims has always been a bad strategy for brands, but it is especially reckless when it comes to how something can affect a person’s physical or mental health. Invest in real research to back up the claims you are making, and be authentic with your message. Rather than trying to convince customers your product can cure something, help them open their minds to new experiences and products that might be part of a daily ritual or personal blend of what works on an individual basis.Convergent Experiences: As a new normal emerges post-pandemic, brands will need to focus on creating convergent experiences that allow people to engage in the physical world while still using a digital experience to achieve goals and objectives.For an in-depth look at this episode, check out the full transcript below. Quotes have been edited for clarity and length.---Up Next in Commerce is brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Respond quickly to changing customer needs with flexible Ecommerce connected to marketing, sales, and service. Deliver intelligent commerce experiences your customers can trust, across every channel. Together, we’re ready for what’s next in commerce. Learn more at salesforce.com/commerce---Transcript:Stephanie:Welcome back to Up Next in Commerce. This your host, Stephanie Postles, co-founder at Mission. Today I'm chatting with Zak Williams, the co-founder and CEO at Pym. Zak, welcome to the show.Zak:Thank you so much, Stephanie. It's a pleasure to be here.Stephanie:Yeah. I'm very, very excited to have you on. I was going through my amazing prep dock, and I first thought that Hillary was playing a joke on me when she wrote down Zak's the son of actor Robin Williams. She likes to put in silly things to see if I'm going to go with it. Then I'm like, oh wait, this is actually real. I started reading a bit about your story and your company, and I would love for you to actually start with that. Tell me a bit about what led you to Pym, and yeah, expand on that, because I was really excited to hear about the full story.Zak:Yeah, certainly. What led me to starting Pym, the mental health support company, started very early on in life. I had anxiety throughout my teens that manifested into something more extreme after my dad, the entertainer, Robin Williams, died by suicide. I found myself experiencing bouts of depression, also extreme anxiety and stress episodes. I was feeling like my life was becoming unmanageable. I was trying to use alcohol to self medicate and was trying to find any other solution that would work. I tried cannabis products, had prescription pharmaceuticals, which work for many people. For me, I didn't find the solution that necessarily helped me in a way that would work in perpetuity. Then I found some help in things like talk therapy and alike.Zak:Through that experience, a couple things happened. One was I was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and was dealing with a lot of issues associated with that. The other thing is I started to find help and support through committing to service, specifically working with mental health organizations, not for profits; supporting them around things like governance, organizational development, fundraising initiatives, strategy, business development. Whatever it is they needed help with, I wanted to jump in and support because I found actually that commitment to mental health organizations really helped me. Through that experience, another thing started to happen, which I found that me sharing my story and what I went through really helped others while helping myself. I found that being vulnerable and taking a lens of vulnerability and opening up really ultimately ended up starting that process of healing for me. I found that mental health advocacy is one component.Zak:The second component is when I took self medication out of the equation, using alcohol, and by the end I was drinking alcoholically and it was just not good for my mental health. I was feeling very emotionally dysregulated and not having a great time. When I cut out alcohol, I was still really stressed and really anxious, and realized that I needed something to support me throughout the day. I found a solution that my wife introduced me to. My wife, Olivia June, who's also co-founder of Pym. She turned me on to amino acid formulations, which when I tried them were a game changer. They helped me feel clear and erased the anxiety that I was feeling and that was ultimately crippling me. She was introduced to this sublingual tincture by one of her doctors. When I tried it, I was just like wow, this is transformative.Zak:Armed with the insights of mental health advocacy is very healing for me, and amino acid formulations really helped support me throughout the day, I realized there was an opportunity to develop something that was very near and dear to my heart, but also helpful for people while focused on the core mission of mental health support. I started Pym with the lens of creating a brand that stands for mental health support, like Red Bull stands for energy. In starting the company, we kicked off the food science and product development element of that in 2019 and created something that was both safe and effective, while also being delicious. We worked with a food scientist named Lena Kwak, who was the director and research and development for The French Laundry, which is a restaurant in northern California; a very well-known internationally regarded restaurant in California. We wanted to create something that had a great taste and smell and a texture that felt unique but also toothsome.Zak:We came upon something that we ended up testing with our early beta testers that they liked and they found effective. We kicked off the commercialization phase when we decided that everything was in line with not only how we wanted it, but how our beta testers felt it should be. Through that process, we hired the chief operating officer of Sugarfina; a wonderful man named Scott Cuillard who came on as our chief operating officer, and he accelerated the process of commercialization by 200%. Now we're at market. We're just getting this feedback from our customers and early advocates that our product is a lifeline and it's helping people in a very significant way and we're doing these giveback campaigns where we're supporting mental health organizations, starting with Bring Change to Mind, which is an organization I'm on the board of that focuses on developing communities and high schools for mental health support, while launching campaigns to break down the stigma associated with mental health.Zak:Moving into 2021, we will be deepening our relationship with Bring Change to Mind and have a portion of our proceeds of every sale going to supporting building mental health communities and high schools. That's what we've been up to in a nutshell. The why behind it relates very much to mental health advocacy. We see ourselves as a brand that stands for advocacy and we want to really triple down on supporting the movement associated with mental health. That's what we're all about.Stephanie:That's great. It seems like this kind of product would have a lot of barriers to entry, because when I think about the market right now around mental health products and CBD and cannabis and all this stuff, there's already a market there. There's already been a lot of messaging, a lot of advertising before a product based on amino acids, which honestly, I haven't even really heard of that. Tell me a bit about how you overcame those barriers and educated new audiences or are starting to. I know you just recently launched, but tell me a little bit about that process to really get your product on the front of people's mind.Zak:Sure. Amino acid formulations for mental health support is not a new thing. We didn't miraculously come upon something that was new to the world. They were gaining momentum and popularity as a way to provide mental health support by balancing out the endocrine system in the 80s and 90s. Something happened in the 90s that set off an era of a pill to solve all your problems in life. Kind of that era of taking a curative approach to symptoms. Do you know what that event might be?Stephanie:I'm guessing you're talking about prescription pills, but I don't know what the event is.Zak:Yeah. Actually, it's a very specific prescription pill. It was the creation of Prozac. The profound thing about Prozac is it was a product that would function as an antidepressant that would not kill you if you took it in excess or stopped taking it, because at the time, the available toolkit of prescription pharmaceuticals had toxicity associated with them. In certain situations, you could take a product and if you stopped taking it, you would be at risk of severely debilitating affects in the like. Prozac created kind of a safe mechanism to provide mental health support. By the way, I'm a big believer in prescription medication being helpful for many, many millions of people. I don't want to make it seem like I'm not supportive, but the momentum that amino acid formulations were getting kind of fell by the wayside and didn't favor of this era that lasted a couple decades of a pill to solve all your problems.Zak:It's only been in the last five plus, just over five years, from my perspective, that the whole idea of seeing the individual as a system, as a collection of interacting organs and functions working together to help support and sustain the body, that idea and premise has really been embraced in a major way by the medical community. Going hand in hand with that is the idea and premise that you can take certain products, to kind of balance yourself out, because they provide support for a number of different systems and create kind of a balanced ecosystem to better help you. That's kind of where amino acid formulations kind of come into play.Zak:From our perspective, we just concentrated these existing amino acids in a way in which they actually provided a more comprehensive form of support for stress and anxiety with our first product. That's the story in brief, but the challenge is very specifically we need to popularize amino acid support as a way of providing mental health support, because there's science and research behind. Science, research and studies behind amino acids being helpful for people, but people aren't too aware of it.Zak:As part of forming the company and making the effort to formulate something that's helpful for people, we established the science advisory board from Harvard Medical School, UCSF, USC, and MIT, and with specific focus on neuroscience and neuroendocrinology, with some mental health epidemiology being an element of that as well. As part of that, we are in the process of establishing a pre-trial study, which we'll then use as a foundation to go into an actual clinical study that we'll be using to really get a deeper understanding of how we can provide decisive support for the mind and the body. We're kind of in the brave new world of natural compounds providing support both for the brain and the mind and also the body, but I'm an advocate and believer in compounds that are safe and effective.Stephanie:Yeah. It does feel like the timing's right. 2020 is a year where I've at least seen a very big shift in not only healthy living, but people actually looking into the source of what they're ingesting and thinking about healthy alternatives to not only their diet but also things they're taking, whether it's prescriptions or whatever it may be. Stephanie:It feels like the market's ready for it, but then figuring out ways, like you're doing, to pull it together and put it in an easily, I guess, consumable format where people kind of know, oh, here's the five things that are coming together, here's what they're going to do. Someone's already done the science behind me, instead of trying to piecemeal these extracts and things off of Amazon together to try and fix a need based on all the YouTubers and influencers and people who are telling you oh, this is good for this, and this is good for this. It's so much information now.Zak:Right. That's what I was doing. I was cobbling together an experience that helped me, but it was a bunch of different products. I agree. I think that there is a major opportunity on the research side too. There's some great companies that are focused on establishing more research through studies. Some registered, some focused more so on doing the research to really understand how things work prior to actually doing registered studies. There's organizations and companies that are focused on actually creating frameworks to do the testing. I will give a specific shout-out to my buddy, Jeff Chen, who was one of the founders of the Cannabis Research Initiative at UCLA, and he recently started a company focused on doing research around natural compounds. His new company, Radical Science, is hyper-focused on establishing frameworks, specifically clinical frameworks, around testing for natural products. It's so essential that people actually really start understanding what it is they're putting in their body to support themselves.Stephanie:How do you approach that regulatory field? Like you said, to me, it sounds so scary entering a market like this one where you're doing things for the first time, it's new, people aren't used to it. How did you approach this field and did you find any quick paths to get past some of the crazy rules and regulations to be able to actually start creating a product and testing it and seeing how it would work?Zak:Yeah. Great question. It wasn't a cold start for me. I have several years of experience working with complex compliance and regulatory environments due to investing, advising, working within the cannabis industry.Stephanie:Got it. Okay. That's good background. You weren't a newbie to this. I've done this before.Zak:No. The lens we take. I say we in terms of our team and our advisory board is prioritizing compliance and safety. In starting the company, we sought the most sophisticated advising we could get. We need to continue prioritizing safety as front and center with what we do. We're a dietary supplement as a product class, and it's important to consider how we make claims. We are very cautious with how we do so because from our perspective, we are given the privilege and opportunity to provide support for people given a specific framework, and we want to be considerate of that framework. The key thing for us is as we go about doing studies and the like is we want to develop a deeper understanding of how we're actually providing support for people.Stephanie:Is your goal to not just be a dietary supplement eventually?Zak:The big goal for us would be to become a doctor recommended product, or there's a class of products called a medical food. What a medical food is is a product that is meant to support specific disease states in the like. It's a product class. It means there's a lot of research behind how it's been effective to support different states. You can make specific sets of claims.Zak:From our lens, the reason why medical food establishing that type of status is important for us is because that way we can actually say we've done X amount of research, it's shown to be statistically significant, and we can really make these specific claims around supporting people. That's a process. That takes a long time to do. It's not inexpensive. There's stages that we're required to kind of get through to get to that point.Stephanie:How much money are you estimating it could cost to have your product become medically food stamped? That's a weird term.Zak:There's a range. Depends on what type of condition we're seeking to support and how long the study is meant to be conducted. Generally, these studies are months long. In some cases, over a year. It's not inexpensive. Let me frame it like that.Stephanie:Yeah. I guess that it what makes me worry about maybe new entrepreneurs who see opportunities or if they're like you, but they don't have connections and they don't have the story that you have and maybe the status. You'll probably be like, don't say that, but you have a lot of things that maybe a lot of others don't. It seems like innovation's going to kind of stall if it takes so much money to get something natural into the world, or a blend of something natural, and then to be recommended over top of prescription drugs where these pharmaceutical companies have huge amounts of money and marketing.Stephanie:I read this whole book about... what was it called? Let me think. It was called like the cure to cancer or cure of cancer. Something that was abour apricot oil and the apricot seed. I don't know if you've ever read this before, but it was about how this guy was showing that apricot oil, I think that's the kind of oil it was, was having a big impact on cancer and cells and all this. All a sudden, these big pharmaceutical companies start putting out hits on him. He had to go to a whole different country to prescribe it. It seems like an insane world to even try to do something new just to start, and then also not having a huge budget or connections. It doesn't feel like anyone can enter this market, really.Zak:There's ways to do it. The barrier to entry in terms of launching a natural product is not as high as, say, launching a pharmaceutical product. You have to make certain assertions to say hey, this product will be effective. It seems to help people, and you have to generate demand. We've very much in the business of demand-gen. From a Pharma perspective, I would say that pharmaceutical companies are actually taking a lens of openness towards utilizing natural compounds to better support people.Stephanie:They're not taking out hits on you.Zak:No. Where it gets challenging is if you're going out and saying, we have a mental health support solution, and you go in certain channels where you're trying to advertise, you just get squished. You just can't afford to acquire a customer when you're talking about going in a channel which people are seeking certain mental health support solutions through search, for example.Stephanie:You have to find ways to maybe be innovative to not have to rely on the same channels as maybe the big Pharma companies and find ways to get to the users who are probably looking for that, but they just don't know exactly what to look for or the terms to search for.Zak:The big advantage that entrepreneurs should look for when it comes to creating an edge, an unfair advantage in this space is distribution advantages.Stephanie:Tell me more about that.Zak:Direct to consumer, there are some advantages, but there's also some disadvantages. We have had limited success with paid search. It's just hard for us because when people are searching for specific needs, that can be very expensive from an SEM perspective.Stephanie:What do you do instead if paid search is expensive for us? What kind of channels are you maybe looking at instead or experimenting with where maybe you're finding better results?Zak:We've had enormous success with earned media and organic SEO in the like, but that's a strategy we set out from the get go in applying. I come by our company and the products very honestly. Part of what I do in mental health advocacy is just share on a story consistently and when it's combined with Pym, people are curious. Sometimes they end up being drawn and attracted to our product. The thing too, which we found has been helpful for folks is that we're not advocating for a product to be a cure-all. It's actually kind of I don't want to say the opposite, because that's not quite what it is, but it's kind of adjacent to that. Really what we're saying for is our product's a catalyst. We want to get people into the mindset of prioritizing mental health hygiene as part of their daily rituals. Hopefully our product's a catalyst. If they're taking our product as the solution for their mental health support over the course of their day, that's great, but ideally, they should be doing other things to best support themselves.Stephanie:I think that's the messaging that will win going forward. All the companies I've had on the show so far, so many people talk about authentic messaging and not just having the same kind of corporate speak like maybe they used to years prior or something. I think thinking about how to craft that going forward, it's actually more trustworthy if you say something like, this isn't a fix. This is meant to be a part of your daily routine along with exercise and eat healthy and whatever else you need to do to stay healthy.Zak:Yeah. The thing for us we really want to push for and advocate for, something I call enrichment loops. Meaning if you come to our product and take it on a consistent basis, hopefully it adds value every time. Meaning you're clear headed, you can learn something, you can engage in an activity that's helpful. If that's not the solution for you, then we're not going to push it on you. Do something else that helps you. Again, this is where prescription pharmaceuticals, if you're finding a solution with prescriptions, by all means, take that solution. If it's meditation, if it's mindfulness activity, if it's a fitness regimen, If it's nutrition. For most people, it's most likely a mix. For me, it's a mix of meditation, eating well, some fitness, but I could definitely be better on it. I take Pym because it helps me. I'm a big believer in talk therapy and community support groups. That's my mix.Zak:To close on the unfair advantages in distribution. If you have a digital channel like an app or something, we're exploring creating a companion experience. That gives you an ownership of being able to really provide unique insight, pushed out notifications, establish a foundation of data that better helps you understand what it is a customer needs and there's an advantage there. I think blending DTC with Omnichannel is a huge opportunity, but Omnichannel can often work as just establishing brand presence that ultimately pushes people into DTC, or vice versa. It could be DTC that ultimately pushes people into a daily loop, ideally an enrichment loop, around purchasing products at their natural grocer. Okay. I'll close at that, but I think focusing on unfair advantages in distribution is how entrepreneurs will get ahead in a very challenging space.Stephanie:The one thing I've heard a lot is a lot of entrepreneurs that I've talked to on the show, a lot of them have really good stories, but not everyone tells it. Some people are hesitant to tell their story. Did you experience this with everything that happened? Did you ever feel a need to pull back and you weren't sure if you wanted to share or you weren't sure what you wanted to talk about? Tell me a bit about how you thought about sharing your story and resonating with people. Were you scared at an point to do that, because I've heard a lot of people have been? I don't know to tell.Zak:Regarding story, look, the lens I take is that there's great strength in vulnerability. I've been guarded a large part of my life, and not sharing my experience and alike, I've realized that I was losing out on opportunities to help people. I was given many advantages in life, and there are elements that have been disadvantageous. Instead of seeing it as that and seeing it as kind of a foundation for resentment or being annoyed around certain things, I say, this is just part of my experience. There might be shared experiences or there might be something that would be unique to your experience or not very many people, and I think that needs to be embraced.Zak:My whole thing is share my perspective and story. As it relates to Pym, try to be considerate of really the advocacy that underlines what we're doing as well because that's what really matters at the end of the day. I think people just need to find what it is that they want to tell, and really understand that they're crafting their story in the present, in the now. You don't want someone else's story. Own your own. It's a muscle. I had a lot of fear and anxiety around sharing stuff for a large part of my life.Stephanie:Now you're talking about even before your dad's passing you were not very vulnerable. What pushed you to want to start sharing, and why do you think you were holding back before?Zak:I think I was doing certain things that I was ashamed of. Drinking has always been a problem for me. I'll be perfectly honest, and it was something that only came to a head where I was like whoa, this is getting out of control after my dad died by suicide, but prior to that, it was something that was a challenge and I wasn't liking doing it. I think there were elements of my story that I was ashamed of, perfectly frankly. To be perfectly frank about it. In that, I realized there's certain elements of my story that are private and I relate to being considerate of the sphere of individuals or communities that are titled to that. Then there's elements that I love to share and talk about. The thing for me is when it comes to mental health, talking about mental health and alike, I like talking about it because it's very healing for me.Stephanie:Mm-hmm (affirmative).Zak:Yeah.Stephanie:Very cool. Before the show started, we were talking a little bit about converging experiences, and I want to hear how you're thinking about this, especially with probably giving certain talks that now, this past year, had to all be virtual and not as much in person. Tell me a little bit about how you're thinking about online and offline blending and what you guys are betting on for next year.Zak:Well, the big bet we're making is that people will continue needing mental health support products.Stephanie:After 2020, yes.Zak:Yeah. Here's the thing is that relative to the pandemic, there's been a shift into the COVID pandemic. We can talk about the parallel mental health pandemic, which is a thing too. There's been a shift to kind of embracing and engaging, or customers, communities, populations embracing and engaging in digital experiences, whether it's telehealth, things like that or for meetings, remote work, Zoom, things like that. We're hitting the stage where we're starting to see what a post-pandemic world will look like. Just little glimpses of it. There will likely be people wanting to connect with other people in person, people wanting to go out and shop and dance and eat out in the open. There will be certain habits and there will be people who have become acclimated to digital experiences, but people will also want to go out into the world. I think it'll be interesting to see the blend of online and offline that's going to be this new paradigm. I think as we're thinking about it Pym, we're very much thinking about establishing a companion experience to support people throughout their daily activity. Zak:For us, there is a need to really establish a better understanding of how people are requiring mental health support products and experiences. In the neuroscience community, there's something called an adjuvant experience, which has shown to be very helpful. What adjuvant means is... it's very simple. It's just something in something else.Stephanie:Something in something else. Wait. What? Sounds simple, but I don't get it.Zak:No, it's just an adjuvant experience is talk therapy and some sort of prescription protocol.Stephanie:Oh. Okay. Blending two things together. Got it.Zak:Yeah. That's adjuvant experience. From our lens, we wanted to create an adjuvant experience that is fun, accessible and accretive in terms of delivering value and support for people. The two things that are most helpful, at least based upon my experience talking with researchers and doctors and scientists about how consumer oriented mental health support experiences can help people is insight and community. The insight component involves behavioral recommendations, maybe data, specific things that help people live a life that they want to live. The community component involves supporting authentic connection with people. Those are the hints in terms of how we're thinking about developing an adjuvant experience, which ideally we hope to be convergent.Zak:I see there's an enormous opportunity, and it's very hard to get right. I'll say that. It's in the cake walk, because you need to really factor in blending the online and offline experience into something that feels natural and seamless and ideally, fun. I think a lot of companies are going to be taking that tack, because events are going to be really big, people are going to start eating out again, people are going to start shopping beyond just kind of going out and doing a foray out into the wild and then coming back.Stephanie:Oh, it just went to Costco. What a blast.Zak:For instance, where Target has really done an excellent job is on their pick-up experience. It's been a game changer for Target this year in 2020. Where you shop, you order online, and then you go to Target and you pick things up. You pick stuff up. That's technically a convergent experience, blending online and offline because it involves you having to engage in the physical world and using a digital experience to achieve your goals and objectives. I think most companies are going to have to think about that in a very meaningful way in order to maintain an edge. I think telehealth platforms have achieved a huge boost this year, but there's going to be some reversion, and it's not going to be a reversion to the previous me. They need to think about okay, what is it that we can do to establish an edge to further support people when they go out into the world again?Stephanie:Mm-hmm (affirmative).Zak:That's essentially what I mean by convergent experience. From a mental health support perspective, it's really about developing an adjuvant experience. X and Y together at last to create better support for people than the individual parts.Stephanie:Got it. I love that. That's a very good example and description, and I feel like I learned a new word. This is a win all around.Zak:Hey, it's my pleasure.Stephanie:All right. We have about 10 minutes left. I want to shift over to the lightening round. The lightening round is brought to you by our friends at Salesforce commerce cloud. This is where I'm going to ask you a question, and you have one minute or less to answer. Do you think you're ready, Zak?Zak:Yes.Stephanie:All right. What's up next on your Netflix view or Hulu or whatever you use?Zak:I'm excited about watching The Crown. It's been on my list for ages, and we're starting to get through our queue. Stephanie:A lot of people have said that, so I'm guessing you're going to enjoy it. All right. What one thing do you not understand today that you wish you did?Zak:I wish I spoke Japanese.Stephanie:That's a good one. I love Japan. It's my favorite.Zak:I love Japan too. For me, the process of learning a new language is already daunting for me. I'm not a polyglot. I don't learn other languages easily. At some point, I should just take the plunge and just start. That's my goal, learning Japanese.Stephanie:That's awesome. Sounds like a good goal. If you were to have a podcast, what would it be about and who would your first guest be?Zak:My podcast would be about getting to the very core of people's experiences, like what's their truth. Whether they know it or not, hopefully we can uncover that truth. What is it that they're all about? My first guest would likely be one of my favorite people on the planet, Dr. Adam Gazzaley, who is an advisor for Pym and a scientist and a profoundly interesting person that I'd love to get to the bottom of finding his truth.Stephanie:This sounds like a good show. I think this needs to happen. What's the nicest thing someone's ever done for you?Zak:Well, I'm a big fan of my son, Mickey.Stephanie:That's good.Zak:Having my wife, Olivia, her having carried Mickey for nearly a year.Stephanie:That's sweet.Zak:That was extremely thoughtful and considerate of her.Stephanie:That was very sweet. I like that. All right. Well, I have two more. What's up next on your reading list?Zak:There's a bunch of things, but the main one is Jim Simons' biography.Stephanie:Cool. All right. Then the last one, what one thing will have the biggest impact on ecommerce in the next year?Zak:The one thing that will have the biggest impact on ecommerce in the next year would be, I think, oh man. That's a really good question. I think it very much relates to more seamless experiences, frictionless experiences. Even though it is quick and can be considered convenient, it could be so much more convenient. I think the disrupters that are establishing quick checkouts, embedded checkouts, connecting wallets to checkout experiences, things like that, that's going to be a game changer, because people who have an edge there are going to really be able to see the difference in their bottom line. I know that's a very tactical consideration.Stephanie:That's a good answer.Zak:I think that's really one of the game changers.Stephanie:Yeah. You'll have to check out our interview with the CEO of Fast. It was very fast, and a good interview and definitely opened up my eyes to what a frictionless ecommerce world could look like.Zak:I think Fast is great.Stephanie:Yeah. All right, Zak. Thanks so much for coming on here and sharing your story and being vulnerable. Where can people find out more about you and Pym?Zak:Well, you can find out more about me through tuning into this podcast and other advocacy work I do specifically. I'll push people to advocacy. I work with organizations called Bring Change to Mind, United for Global Mental Health, Inseparable, and then Project Healthy Minds. Those are the four mental health organizations I work with. You can find out more about me through the work that I do with those organizations, and then you can find out more about Pym at youcanpym.com. Y-O-U-C-A-N-P-Y-M dot com.Stephanie:Amazing. I will be checking it out after this. Thanks so much. It was really a pleasure to have you on and love to have you back in the future when your app is out.Zak:Awesome, Stephanie. Such a pleasure.

Welcome to the My WHIM Life show where it is our mission is to create a significant impact in this world by sharing WISDOM, HUMOR, INSPIRATION & MOTIVATION in such a way that YOU will use it to affect actual real change in your own life and the lives of others creating a ripple effect of goodness! This week's guest is Kayla Collins! Kayla is a Real Estate Agent, a mom, a cancer survivor, and so much more! Please help me welcome, Kayla. Contact Kayla at: kayla@discoverboiseid.com Kayla’s Fun Facts: Q: What was your first word? A: Hmmm Q: School achievements? A: Always some off award that meant I wasn't smart but I was FULLY IN Q: What was your nickname as a child? A: Kumquat Q: Who is your favorite celebrity and why? A: Oprah because ... How could you not love Oprah. Q: What was your most embarrassing moment? A: I peed my pants while in a box with my friends attempting to go through a drive through. Yes, I know you need more information. Q: Favorite food? A: Snow Cone Q: Most disgusting food? A: I don't like slimy foods. Q: Do you sleep on your... A: Belly Q: Which superpower would you want to have and why? A: I think I would enjoy being able to be invisible. I like to people watch and I think it would be a lot more interesting if they couldn't see me watching... Yep, Creepy. Q: What is your greatest fear? A: I am pretty fearless but the idea of being burned alive is pretty terrifying. Q: What is your biggest dream? A: To help others find happiness in their lives. Q: What is your stance on pineapple on pizza? A: Depends on the day but, 99.9% its a NO. Q: If you were a flower, which one would you be? A: Daisy Q: In a zombie apocalypse, what is your weapon of choice? A: shovel. Q: If you had 10 dogs and someone took one, how many dogs would you have left? A: 10 dogs and one dead body Q: If you had to wear a disclaimer statement everywhere you went, what would it say? A: It isn't that I don't like you. Q: If you were losing your hair, would you transplant or comb over? A: Transplant Thank you so much for joining us today! Please take a moment to subscribe so you don't miss a moment of the goodness! And then share it with all of your friends who need a little WISDOM, HUMOR, INSPIRATION & MOTIVATION in their life! Hugs, Wendy

1. It looks like a mixed monday for the major stock indexes. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DIA) is lower, but the Russell 2000 (IWM), NASDAQ Composite and S&P 500 Index (SPY) are flat/ mildly positive. 2. Game Stop Euphoria on 1/1/21 was $17 and today it just hit $159. Did they come up with a vaccine or is something else afoot? It’s gone parabolic! Nearly a 10 fold increase. Seeing it in PlugPower. Everyone has jumped on the Euphoria. They’re just the flavor of the month. 3. This is a big week for earnings. Microsoft Corp (MSFT) reports earnings tomorrow afternoon. Apple Inc (AAPL) and Facebook (FB) report earnings on Wednesday. We will be flooded with other companies reporting earnings as well so it will be important to see the reactions in the stocks after the earnings announcements are made.  BBB up 40 percent today. Dillards up 14%. Dash for Trash.4. Gold/Silver futures down on both, slightly. GDX down .28 and GDXJ trading down .55. No record highs coming but good trading opportunities. Depends how the market views them. Traders market 2021.

Are humans free? Depends...How are we free? Thoughts and actions...How are we restricted? Where to begin...Stevenson dives into the new unit: LibertyHow does freedom vary around the world and how is freedom restricted? How do different cultures view individual freedom vs the collective good?

Walter White's bizarre origin story.  Subscribe Android Google Play iTunes Spotify *RSS Address: http://lsgonxfiles.libsyn.com/rss *Cut and paste the web address into ‘search’, or ‘add address’, or ‘URL’, or ‘feed’ field. Depends on your podcasting app. Follow Dean on Twitter. @Dean_LSGMedia Follow LSG Media on Twitter. @LSGMedia Support LSG Media by becoming a member. Recording/Release Schedule schedule.libertystreetgeek.net Disclaimer This is a commentary and criticism show that will routinely slander, suggest, and make wild claims - it should be considered comedy entertainment only, and not to be taken seriously. Take responsibility for your own feelings and actions.

A huge shout-out to all the winners of this season's X-Quiz and a big thanks to everyone who participated. Special thanks to Ben P. for all his help setting it up!  Subscribe Android Google Play iTunes Spotify *RSS Address: http://lsgonxfiles.libsyn.com/rss *Cut and paste the web address into ‘search’, or ‘add address’, or ‘URL’, or ‘feed’ field. Depends on your podcasting app. Follow Dean on Twitter. @Dean_LSGMedia Follow LSG Media on Twitter. @LSGMedia Support LSG Media by becoming a member. Recording/Release Schedule schedule.libertystreetgeek.net Disclaimer This is a commentary and criticism show that will routinely slander, suggest, and make wild claims - it should be considered comedy entertainment only, and not to be taken seriously. Take responsibility for your own feelings and actions.

The guys speak about National Holidays from around the world, dip into some food holidays (get it, dip?), and different terms for marijuana. What holiday is today? Depends. If you have enjoyed this episode, please give us a 5-star-rating, subscribe on a friend's phone, and join us on our other socials. Member of quitethethingmedia.com  Twitter: twitter.com/whatdoesSMHmean Discord Invite: https://discord.gg/PYE6UfSmAz Support this podcast

Andy and Ian talk fantasy basketball strategy and how you can win your fantasy league. If you could change any rule in the NFL, what would it be? The bath boys explore the dumbest rules in football and what needs to be changed. Spoiler - one of them is the onside kick. There are better solutions! Then they preview the NFC and AFC Championship games. Aaron Rodgers gets home field advantage, but don't bet against Playoff Tom. Will Patrick Mahomes play? Does it even matter when you have a stud backup like Chad Henne? Also, Philip Rivers is retiring. Sad! Is he a Hall of Famer? Depends if you're a stat guy. Finish the episode with triathlon talk. One of the bath boys is doing an Ironman!

show notes @ https://thesternmethod.com/circulatingtumorcells/ KEY TAKEAWAYS 1. What are CTCs and what do they mean? Cells from a collection of cancer cells, tumor or metastatic deposit Sometime seen on scans but not always Circulate in the blood or lymphatic tissues Can only test for the CTC in blood. Need biopsy to detect in lymphatic tissue The presence of CTCs doesn’t necessarily indicate metastatic cancer CTCs don’t live very long in the blood – persistent CTC is cause for concern Cancer spreads in two ways Metastasize (means “evil spread”) - cells travel via blood vessels Direct invasion - cells invade the tissues and then access lymphatic system or blood stream What to look for in CTC testing Only available for certain cancers – ovarian, pancreatic, colon, lung, breast, prostate Looking for two different populations of CTCs- cytokeratin(CK)-positive and CK-negative ➔  CK is an anchor molecule for cells ➔  CK-negative cells are cells that have down regulated their CK and can leave the tissue space to ‘circulate’ as a CTC ➔  CK-positive cells are rarely found in CTC tests unless through trauma or if the tumor is invasive ➔  CK-negative cells can revert back to CK-positive and “anchor in” to a new tissue site Test results provide highly individual information about that person’s specific tumor Can also see some markers you’d see on pathology specimens - things that sit on the surface of cells such as androgen and estrogen receptors Hosted By: 2. 3. 29 When to test for CTCs At diagnosis and before treatment, when cancer is the highest During treatment to gauge therapeutic response Post treatment testing to determine if cancer is still present or to identify recurrences What to do with CTC test results Depends on the patient – their history, the cancer, how aggressive, treatment proto- cols undertaken. Every situation/person is different Run other lab tests to look at supporting factors in the blood and fix those: ➔ Inflammatory markers ➔ Cell markers ➔ Immune markers ➔ Tissue markers ➔ Hormones ➔ Tissues at risk – liver, lung, bones ➔ Nutrient levels ➔ Vitamin D – 25-Hydroxy and 1,25-Dihydroxy ➔ Look at lifestyle – diet, toxins, air, water Goal is to shut down the flow of CTC into the blood CASE STUDIES / CLINICAL EXAMPLES / DIAGNOSES REFERENCED Breast cancer Colon cancer Lung cancer Ovarian cancer Pancreatic cancer Prostate cancer STUDIES / ARTICLES / CLINICAL TRIALS REFERENCED N/A BOOKS REFERENCED N/A Hosted By: 30 SUPPLEMENTS REFERENCED N/A THERAPIES REFERENCED IV Vitamin C IV Quercetin Mistletoe therapy OTHER RESOURCES Biocept FOLLOW DR RUBIN Listenandcare.com Aspenmedcenter.com PH: 480.990.1111 Remote consultations available

Livestream with Max Keiser and Stacy HerbertTopics: the inaugurationsniffing hair while wearing Depends in a Fart Club the USD turns as old as Biden's political reignGrayscale buying 18 days worth of new bitcoin supply on just one dayall value derives from monkey consciousnessbitcoiners smelling Peter Schiff's farts

Yoni Kozminski scaled an Amazon business from 2 to 5-million and built a Phillpines team and sold it to Thrassio. Sellers get stuck deep into their Amazon business, but how do you focus your day and get out of your business.Yoni has a decade spent in building digital strategy. We speak a lot about using talen to grow your business.Consulting business: www.weareescala.comTalent business: multiplymii.com Multipliers recommended book: https://www.amazon.com/Multipliers-Revised-Updated-Leaders-Everyone/dp/0062663070/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Multipliers&qid=1610986636&sr=8-1Keys to success: Hired a recruiter.Hire your replacement/multipy yourselfRemove yourself from the deliverable Put it on paperScale vs growth: Scale is staffing to the right level at the right time. How can Amazon/eCom sellers get out of the daily grind and remove themselves from the business? Give a score of all tasks from 1-5, 5 is critical, 1 don't need to be there. How competent is the person that could replace you incrementally.First step to make change is awareness. Your time should not be spent on immediate task delivery. Define the document.What is an easy way that people can delegate tasks/understand how to delegate the right tasks to their team members? - Depends on the DNA of the busienss and people.Sales Acceleration Formula book: https://www.amazon.com/Sales-Acceleration-Formula-Technology-Inbound/dp/1119047072/ref=sr_1_5?dchild=1&keywords=sales+acceleration+formula&qid=1610987654&sr=8-5Mark Roberge categorizes talent into 5 areas: https://hiredna.com/these-are-the-top-5-traits-to-look-for-in-a-sales-rep-based-on-a-mountain-of-research/CuriousityCoachabilityWork EthicIntelligencePrior SuccessBook recommendation 3 - Traction: https://www.amazon.com/Traction-Get-Grip-Your-Business/dp/1936661837/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=traction+book&qid=1610988056&sr=8-3VisionairyIntegratorIf someone is looking to sell their Amazon business, what would be some of the things they should consider when going to market?Be in it to win it.“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”― Abraham LincolnContact Yoni at yoni@multiplymii.comSupport the show (https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/myamazonguy)

Welcome to the Tuesdays with Coach Mo podcast! Today on the show I am joined by author, speaker and coach Bryan Falchuk. Building on his experience as a successful C Level executive, Bryan leverages his skills as a Certified Behavior Change Specialist to help change lives. In today's episode Beyond Barriers: When your success Depends on Getting out of Your Own Way, Bryan and I discuss: - the ugly and painful truth of self-discovery - What makes answering this ONE powerful question so very difficult - How your view of other people may distort your view of yourself - And, finally, what I like to call the 'danger zone' as that time when High Achievers with executive ambitions find themselves on the verge of derailing their career because of one failed event As he referenced during our discussion, Brian is a 3X best-selling author including his books Do A Day and The 50 75 100 Solution: Build Better relationships which leads me to this week’s segment. Coach Mo knows (A tip, a coaching question, and a bit of inspiration) TIP This week is to connect with Bryan on all social media outlets @bryanfalchuk (Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook) 1. Be sure to see the shownotes for today’s episode at TuesdayswithCoachmo.com/podcast. There you will find a link to connect with Bryan or visit his website at Bryanfalchuk.com 2. Grab a copy of his latest book The 50 75 100 Solution: Build Better relationships 3. Enroll in his Do A Day Master class if you're ready to build a life free of the pain of yesterday and the fear of tomorrow . This four-part course features videos and exercises based on his best-selling book Do A Day Coaching Question: Describe in one sentence something you want in your life. Read that sentence aloud to yourself and then answer these questions. When you achieve this what will you be hearing? When you achieve this what will you be seeing? When you achieve this how will you feel? Please send me your responses to this week's coaching question by sending me a message at Tuesdays with Coach Mo on Instagram Inspiration To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires courage. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

We Make Books is hosted by Rekka Jay and Kaelyn Considine; Rekka is a published author and Kaelyn is an editor and together they are going to take you through what goes into getting a book out of your head, on to paper, in to the hands of a publisher, and finally on to book store shelves. We Make Books is a podcast for writers and publishers, by writers and publishers and we want to hear from our listeners! Send us your questions, comments, and concerns! We hope you enjoy We Make Books! Twitter: @WMBCast  |  @KindofKaelyn  |  @BittyBittyZap Instagram: @WMBCast  Patreon.com/WMBCast "Submissions September" Episodes Referenced: Week 1 (9/3/2019): Is This Ready For Other People to See?- Submitting Your Manuscript Week 2 (9/10/2019): My Entire Novel in Three Hundred Words - The Dreaded Query Letter Week 3 (9/17/2019): Agents of Literature, Part 1: An Interview with Literary Agent Caitlin McDonald (9/18/2019): Agents of Literature, Part 2: Interviews with Agented Authors (9/19/2019): Agents of Literature Part 3: Interviews with Agented Authors Week 4 (9/24/2019): What is Going On Over There? - The Other Side of the Submissions Process Week 5 (9/30/2019): Now I’m Even More Confused – Submissions September Q&A Episode Episode Transcription (all errors are entirely Rekka's fault) Rekka (00:00):Welcome back to We Make Books, a podcast about writing, publishing, and everything in between. I'm Rekka. I write science fiction and fantasy as RJ Theodore. Kaelyn (00:09):And I'm Kaelyn. I'm the acquisitions editor for Parvus Press. Rekka (00:12):And today we apparently just have baking on our mind. Kaelyn (00:17):Yeah, I don't. It was. I. I'm just really surprised that you watch the Great British Baking Show. I don't know why I'm surprised by that. I shouldn't be. Rekka (00:26):Well, it starts when we're looking for holiday content, that's feel good and we don't want to worry about like, you know, getting drawn into one of those crappy made-for-streaming movies that everyone's talking about. And it turns out to be like worse than a Lifetime romcom kind of thing. That happened a couple of times this year. So we basically have said, okay— Kaelyn (00:49):Lookin' at you, Christmas Prince. Rekka (00:51):We can, we can trust Great British Baking Show. And so we started with the holiday episodes and then this year we were not satiated by the holiday episodes when we ran out of them. So then we just started watching season eight and now we're working our way back. Kaelyn (01:06):Yeah. But, um, in this episode, you know, we're just—for full disclosure, get ready for a lot of baking metaphor as being shoe-horned— Rekka (01:14):As many as I was eager to fill in, but I was, you know, like, you know, it was trying to be refined in my application of them. Kaelyn (01:23):Yeah. Well, so along the lines of refinement, um, you know, today we're talking about, uh, leveling up. What you can do as an author, as a writer, to help improve yourself. Rekka (01:35):Yeah. Cause you know, you can always be making forward progress even while you're waiting for the success to come to you, you know? Cause it's not going to come *to* you, for one, and for two, there's a lot of waiting involved for going out and getting it. Kaelyn (01:51):Yeah. So I think a lot of people, especially those who have been trying, you know, sending out a lot of queries, trying to get published for a long time, fall into the trap of passiveness. Of, you know, just waiting for something to happen rather than continuing to work and improve themselves and try to make something happen instead. Um, it is publishing is a weird, I can't even call it balance cause it's pretty lopsided of just like, you know, having to rely on other people to say yes and no to things. But that doesn't mean that you have no agency in this process. There's other things that you can be doing to try to tilt the scales towards a yes more than no. Rekka (02:36):And even if the scales aren't tilted, you are becoming a better writer, which is in theory why you're here. Kaelyn (02:43):Exactly. Yeah. So, you know, today's episode, we go through some, um, you know, bullet points of different things that you can be doing while you're waiting to hear back or taking a break to sort of try and improve yourself and reevaluate. Um, this is everything from, you know, as we always like to talk about, working on your writing to, you know, coming up with like a plan and having goals in mind, we'll talk a lot about goals and what is realistic and you know, what you should be doing to meet those. Rekka (03:15):Yeah. And if you, you know, if you put your entire career on pause while you wait for someone else to make a decision about you, you're going to spend more of your writing career on pause than you are actually writing. And so it's a good habit to get into, to send those, you know, queries or submissions out into the ether and then get back to it. And, uh, really that's what it's about. And even if you are nervous and creativity is hard, we have suggestions of other things that you can do that don't necessarily mean like sitting down with the keyboard and just writing and pretending like you've never sent a query out. Kaelyn (03:54):Yeah. So, um, you know, as always, we hope this, uh, episode is informational and educational and uh, that you enjoy and we'll see you on the other side of the music. New Speaker (04:19):Very nice segue Rekka. Rekka (04:20):Thank you. Uh, speaking of which, I don't know if it's a nice segue, if you call attention to the fact that as a segue, like I think that negates any credit you get for coming up with a decent segue. Kaelyn (04:32):Or am I just acknowledging your craft here? Rekka (04:36):Speaking of which, uh, today, uh, we had no topic and Kaelyn said, what do you want to talk about? And my suggestion was to talk about what you can do when everything else is up in the air and out of your control to keep moving forward and keep improving yourself so that you are getting stronger as a writer and making yourself hopefully a little more appealing every, you know, every time somebody talks to you about business stuff, whether they're an agent or a publisher. Kaelyn (05:14):Rekka's exact words were "leveling up." Rekka (05:16):Yes. I used leveling up. Kaelyn (05:18):Yeah, no, I liked it. New Speaker (05:19):Well then you asked me what I meant. So I felt like maybe that wasn't a good description. Yes. Following the description, it's a good shortcut. Kaelyn (05:29):Yes. I liked it. Leveling up. Yep. Okay. Yeah. So, you know, we're talking today about, um, as Rekka said, things you can do that are within your control to help move your career and forward and achieve your goals in writing. Because so much of this is not in your control. There is so much of just having to wait on other people to hand down judgements. Rekka (05:51):Yes. And, and you cannot even wait patiently for their judgment and know that you get a good judgment. Kaelyn (05:58):Yes. Yeah. On top of that, it's um, it's very, it's very much a spinning wheel of anxiety with a lot of this. Um, so yeah, but you know, that said you are not completely at the mercy of a cruel universe here. There are things that you can be doing to, uh—Rekka possibly disagrees. Rekka (06:19):I might've pursed my lips and bopped my head side to side and say welllllll, you know, that's, that's debatable, but we don't have time for that debate. Kaelyn (06:28):No, no, certainly not. Um, but in terms of writing, there are, you know, there are things that, yeah, you have to wait on external forces and powers and in some cases, deities to, uh, you know, let you know what's gonna happen here, but there's things that you can be doing in the meantime, you are not completely adrift on this sea. Rekka (06:46):In fact, sometimes it's helpful to be doing things in the meantime. So you're not fixated on how you are adrift at sea. Kaelyn (06:53):Writing, like every other craft, every other profession, there is always room for improvement and growth. You are never to a point where you achieve some sort of enlightenment status as a writer where okay, you now know, see and write all things. Anything that you jot down is perfect and needs no work whatsoever. There's not a —. Rekka (07:16):Unless you're Stephen King. Kaelyn (07:16):Unless you're Stephen King. Rekka (07:18):Which is a result of capitalism, not necessarily skill. Kaelyn (07:21):And possibly cocaine, but moving on. Rekka (07:24):I thought that was his directorial career. Kaelyn (07:29):But you're never to a point where you can't improve. Rekka (07:35):In fact, if you got to that point, somehow you would probably be quite bored and move on to something new. Kaelyn (07:42):Yeah. You pick up a new hobby, like, like crocheting. New Speaker (07:46):Otherwise you'll just be sitting on that throne like Conan and going, dammit. Now what? Kaelyn (07:49):Yeah. "And Alexander wept for, there were no more worlds to conquer." Rekka (07:54):Yeah, yeah, exactly. "No more words to conquer." That's what I heard. Um, yeah. So my thought and I'm, sub-tweeting literally all of my friends right now, um, is how many times I have seen people get to a certain stage where they rely on the judgment, as you say, or the response from others to move ahead to the next thing they want and how that causes them to experience a deterioration in creativity and motivation, focus, self-confidence. I mean, like there's a lot of stuff that falls apart when all you do is recycle your inbox to see if something's come in. Kaelyn (08:42):Yeah. This is, you know, there's a certain point where you're just beating your head against a wall, doing the same thing over and over again and not figuring out why this isn't working. Um, if you're just going to keep submitting the same thing over and over again, keep getting rejections and just go, "well, they just don't like it. It's fine. The way it is. I'm going to find somebody who likes us." You're not going to get very far in your career and you're probably going to end up pretty bitter. And—. Rekka (09:09):Yeah. And that's, that's the part that I'm most concerned about is, you know, cause you're, even if you make it in this career, you don't necessarily become that, you know, Hollywood picture perfect writer, successful writer. Um, but your enjoyment of being a writer can really, you know, it can take a hit when you let that kind of resentment and bitterness seep into you. Kaelyn (09:38):Yeah. So— New Speaker (09:39):Don't become a rum cake of bitterness. Kaelyn (09:45):Uh. Yes. Rekka (09:46):Right. Cause the rum cake, you soak it with rum after you finished making it. And yeah, that's what I meant. I said what I meant! Kaelyn (09:55):You heard me! Rekka (09:58):We've been watching great British baking show lately, so like all— Kaelyn (10:00):Oh hey, me too! Rekka (10:00):Okay. We are not allowed to talk about that because, cause we'll just go on for hours. I'm sure. Yes. Kaelyn (10:10):I have the best bread recipe now. Rekka (10:12):You're gonna, you're gonna put your name into the hat and get on the show? Kaelyn (10:15):Oh God. No, I'm terrified of everyone that's on that show. Rekka (10:19):I would just hang out with Noel and, and Paul, honestly. Kaelyn (10:24):Yeah. Yeah. They seem fun. Um, Paul, Paul's a little scary though. Rekka (10:28):No, see, I, I swear to God, Paul is only sc—see, I said, we weren't allowed to talk about this and we're talking about it. I said, um, the other day that Paul is only scary because of the way they edit the episodes. Like if you, if you have your ear to what's going on, like, yes, he walks around and stares at people, but I'm sure that's the same face I would make, if I were watching people I was concerned about, you know? Um, but he says really encouraging, wonderful things to people whenever he's given the opportunity. Kaelyn (10:59):But then, when they have to bring it up there, he's always the one like picking the bread up and like knocking on it. And he's like "I will rip this in half." It's a little, um, it's always, Hmm. "I, uh, think it's a little bit underdone didn't that mate." Rekka (11:14):Wow. Was that, was that your Paul Hollywood? Kaelyn (11:17):That wasn't a good Paul Hollywood. Rekka (11:19):Paul Hollywood isn't Australian. Kaelyn (11:22):Yeah, but it does call people mate. Rekka (11:24):I have not really heard him say that yet. I haven't watched enough. Obviously we need to finish this episode so I can go watch some more. Yeah. Kaelyn (11:30):Okay. But so you can be Paul Hollywood. Rekka (11:33):So wait for judgment from Paul Hollywood and be— Kaelyn (11:38):You can be your own Paul Hollywood Rekka (11:40):Be David from season eight, where you take all that critique and you actually turn it into more skill. Kaelyn (11:47):Yes. So. Rekka (11:48):Everyone go watch season eight. And so, you know what reference I just made. Kaelyn (11:51):We'll stop. I promise we're stopping right now. Rekka (11:54):I don't know if I'll I'll cut this or not. It was kind of fun. Depends how long this episode is. Since you told me it was all me, it's going to be short. So we need that filler, like rice crispy in the middle of a cake for structure. Sorry. Kaelyn (12:10):Oh my God. It's amazing because I don't think there's been a single thing made on that show that you would eat. Rekka (12:16):Oh, I can't eat a word of it. A word of it? Kaelyn (12:18):Yeah. Rekka (12:18):I can't eat a crumb of it. Kaelyn (12:20):Yeah. Rekka (12:20):Words are for writers. Crumbs are for bakers, but it is delightful to watch. Kaelyn (12:26):That said, speaking of words... We're going to get back on track here, I promise. Rekka (12:33):Nah. Kaelyn (12:33):Um, no. So there are, you know, there's a lot of different things you can be doing that are under your control to try to make yourself more appealing and to take, uh, to give yourself agency in this process, where frankly, um, it seems like you don't really have a lot of that through all of it. Rekka (12:54):It depends. And I, and I think this is exactly the point, what you see as your goals. Kaelyn (13:02):Yeah. Exactly. Rekka (13:03):Because a goal is a thing, in theory, that you have some amount of control in reaching. But if you say your goal is to get an agent and get a big publishing deal and become a best seller, where is the control in any of that? Let me tell you: there's none. Kaelyn (13:25):There's only so many writing courses you can take to get yourself to a point where you've written the world's greatest book. Rekka (13:33):But there are so many writing courses that will promise to make you a New York Times bestseller. Kaelyn (13:38):Yeah. Um, let's, you know, let's take a step back here and kind of identify, you know, some things that are attainable and things that just happen. New York Times bestsellers. I won't insult anybody by saying they just happen, but there's a lot more machination that goes on in behind the scenes— Rekka (13:57):Machination is the right word. Kaelyn (13:57):Yeah, than you realize, um, New York Times bestsellers aren't because everybody loves these books and, you know, buys a ton of them. There's a reason that the same books sit on this list for weeks, months, in the case of Harry Potter, years. Um, and it has to do a lot with, um, publishing houses, marketing dollars, um, to be clear, they're not bribing the New York Times, but the New York Times is not picking their bestseller list strictly based on how many of these books are sold. Rekka (14:34):And not even based on the merits of the book itself. Kaelyn (14:38):Yes. Having the aspiration of being a New York Times bestseller means what your actual aspiration is, is to be a globally known household name. Because that's kind of what you are looking at to get on these, some of these lists. Not always. And you know, of course, you know, bestseller lists have all kinds of subcategories and different genres, et cetera, but that is not a realistic goal because there is very little direct influence that you can exert over that process. Rekka (15:13):A goal itself, as we said, you know, you have to have some control over, and there are, you know, definitions in business planning and all that of what makes a goal. And the obnoxious, you know, uh, acronym is S.M.A.R.T., which means that the goal is specific that the goal is measurable, that it's achievable realistic and time-based, and you can see how the things that I mentioned earlier, getting an agent, getting a big publishing deal, becoming a New York Times bestseller doesn't really match this S.M.A.R.T. goal description definition. You cannot say, "Oh yes. By September I will be a New York Times bestseller." Kaelyn (16:06):Not this September, I hope. Rekka (16:08):Or you cannot even say, "Oh yes. In 10 years I will have an agent." You know, like you cannot control these things. Kaelyn (16:15):Yeah. These are, these are forces beyond your, your ability to control. Rekka (16:21):Are they achievable? Yes. Are they realistic? Yes. Bue because they happen in reality, but not because you can just sit down in a checkbox, you know, to-do list and say, "I will achieve these things." Kaelyn (16:34):Well, that's the logical fallacy that plays into the lottery. "I could win because somebody is going to have to win this." "Somebody will win this, why shouldn't it be me?" Rekka (16:43):Or "I should play because if I don't play, then I cannot win." It's not the same as "If I do play, I will absolutely win." Kaelyn (16:51):Two different, two different logical issues there. Yeah. But there's, you know, there have been so many books even that got exactly what they needed to be successful, and flopped. Rekka (17:03):Yep. Kaelyn (17:04):I think in some ways it helps to think of books like movies. You know, there's a lot of stuff that goes into them that has to do with marketing, has to do with names attached to it, has to do with, you know, can you get the right audience? Did you, you know, make the book appealing to the right group of people? The same way, books flop the same way movies, flopped, and you know, there's time and money investments that go into them. And, you know, it's, it's all a numbers game. Um, you know, that said, it's the same thing with the awards, to an extent, you know, like you don't just win an Academy award because your movie was fantastic. There are tons of really fantastic movies that have not won awards. It's all marketing. it's very political and very who-you-know, et cetera. Rekka (17:47):And we did do an entire episode on fiction awards. So go back and listen to that from last year, I'll link it in the show notes, if you want to hear about how that works. Um, and that's another bingo card item. And, and maybe that's how I distinguish them as like, "these are things that I put on my bingo card that I hope someday that I will punch off, you know, and say like, yes, I got an agent. Yes. I was guest of honor at some writing conference. Yes. I was, uh, received my 100 rejection." You know, like those are on there, too. Uh, won an award, uh, got a big, you know, publishing contract with X number of zeros, you know, put those on that list, but don't make them your standard for whether or not you've achieved what you want. And if that's all you want to achieve, please reevaluate step back and ask what, what it is that you really want out of a writing career? Pretend that none of that can ever happen and just work on you. What can you work on? Kaelyn (18:51):Yeah. So to that end, and you know, we're going to get in a minute here into some of the things you can be doing in the meantime. And this we'll, we'll certainly circle back to this, but decide what you want out of your writing career that is not to be the next Stephen King, because that's not necessarily a realistically attainable goal for everyone. Rekka (19:10):Or what that means to you, that you want to be the next Stephen King. Do you want to write a lot of like hometown horror stories? You can do that, but, and you can appeal to Stephen King's audience. "If you like Stephen King, if you loved The Stand, you will love this," you know, but, um, can you control whether you have that same level of success? Absolutely not. Kaelyn (19:33):You know, deciding like, well, I just want to get a book published. I don't necessarily need it to be one of the stories I've already written. Um, I don't necessarily need it to be in this specific genre in this genre only. "I just would like to have a book published" versus maybe a different goal is "I want to get this book that I've written published." And we'll talk about that a little bit more down the line here, but, um, so, you know, let's kind of get into this here. Some things you can do to improve your chances of attaining your goals. Um, first and foremost, as we always talk about, one of our favorite things to harp on: work on your writing. Rekka (20:13):Yeah. Don't stop writing when you send off a query to an agent. You know, like don't make that the only thing you've got in your hopper. Kaelyn (20:20):Yeah. As we said, there is no such thing as the writer who has attained enlightenment. That's not, Rekka (20:28):Especially if it's your first novel. Chances are, you're not very close. Kaelyn (20:33):Um, there's always room to be working on and improving your craft, um, in any craft really, but especially in writing. Um, it's, you know, and you may be thinking, okay, well, "I got published or, you know, I had some short that were picked up. I'm good." No, that doesn't matter. Go join a writing group anyway. Go take some, you know, maybe you don't want to take some courses. I mean, I, I love taking courses and things. I don't know why you wouldn't want to do that. But you know, join a writing group, attend a workshop, take some courses, join a group that Um, you know, reviews each other's work and gives feedback. Read things and give feedback on them. That's a great way to improve your own writing is to help other people work on theirs. So I know this is something we say all the time, "work on your writing, here's ways to do it," but this is a great way to be moving yourself along. Because on top of just staying on top of your writing, what you're doing is you're probably creating new stuff while you do this, that you may not have otherwise taken the time to do. Rekka (21:40):And every word you write is more skill that you are building. Kaelyn (21:44):Exactly. Rekka (21:45):Giving you the chance to say, you know, is, "am I using economy of phrase? Am I, um, you know, getting emotion across the way I want, am I, is my world building, you know, solid? Am I leaving the reader wanting more? Or am I leaving them in a coma because I've, you know, overdone it on the exposition?" Every time you write and you revise, you have the chance to analyze this and you have the chance to look at yourself honestly, and your writing honestly, and figure out, you know, how do you, how do you want to improve it? Like if you say "this revision pass, I'm going to work on characters," you know, or "this next book, I really want to delve into characters where before it's been all like, you know, the hero doesn't really change. It's just an adventure. And this next book, I really want to give the character arc the spotlight." You know, look for ways to challenge yourself. Because if you're just doing, what's comfortable, it is a little bit less effective. It's still good to keep writing. If you mostly do the same thing, but you are going to grow more, the more you flex your muscles and try new things. Kaelyn (22:56):Think back through the careers of all of the, you know, best-selling authors, you can name off the top of your head. They have not recently been writing what they started out writing. Rekka (23:10):Yeah. And that's the weird thing is— Kaelyn (23:12):Maybe they stay in the same genre, but the stories and the books themselves are not the same. Rekka (23:21):If you think about our obsession with classics, it's really interesting how people want to go back to like an old Spielberg movie and point out how this was so much better than any of his recent work. Um, or they want to go to an author who's written twenty books and they go back to the first book and they, you know, this series was their favorite. But if people look and even musicians, you know. Kaelyn (23:48):I was gonna say. Rekka (23:49):"This album is classic," you know? Kaelyn (23:51):Yeah. Rekka (23:52):But when you take in the discography or the bibliography or the filmography as a whole, people get really annoyed when artists evolve and change and don't do things the same way. Kaelyn (24:07):I think one of the best, uh, things I heard of that ever was I was listening to an interview with Billy Joel of all people. And Billy Joel, by the way, is a ridiculously talented pianist, like apart from, you know, we just think of him as like these poppy classic songs that are, you know, old people dance to at weddings and stuff. Billy Joel is actually very into classic piano music. And it's a very highly skilled with it. And then he composes as well. Things that aren't like, you know, what we think of Billy Joel music. And I was listening to him in this interview and he, um, he said, you know, like "I was to the point that like I was getting bored with, you know, just playing like Big Shot and Scenes From An Italian Restaurant over and over again. Um, and so every now and then I'd stop and I'd play like, you know, something new that I had written or something that was just, you know, not on an album, but, and everyone would, you know, I could feel the audience die down a bit." And, but he did say at the same time, these people have paid a lot of money to come here and see me play the songs that they love. And what he said was "I need to strike a balance between that because I'm going to be miserable if every time I just, you know, have to get up there and perform the same songs over and over again with no creativity." And so that's what happens with writing too, if you're just regurgitating the same stories over and over again with no evolution and no creativity? Rekka (25:36):You're not going to want to stick around long. Kaelyn (25:38):Yeah. I mean, I would think you'd get bored of that eventually. Um, especially, you know, if you're not in a position where you can challenge yourself, I think that's something that drives writers forward a lot is trying to challenge themselves and solve problems within their books. Rekka (25:54):And I think, you know, the genre does evolve and you are going to be left behind. You know, so if that's something that's concerning to you is about being included in the genre when people talk about it, you know, don't stand still. Kaelyn (26:08):Yeah. And that is, um, our next point here is reading. Apart from doing a lot of writing, one of the best things you can do is reading. And you know, some of this is just because you're absorbing other people's writing, you're seeing things they did, identifying techniques, tricks, et cetera. But also you're keeping up on the genre that you're interested in. Rekka (26:27):And the more books you could read. And there are a lot of them, you know, don't get me wrong. My To-Be-Read pile is, you know, taller than I am. But when you have read a lot of things, when that agent calls you back and wants to talk about your book, you will know if you've read something similar to your book that you can help position it with and help narrow down that audience again. Kaelyn (26:50):There is nothing to me, quite as disheartening as talking to an author, you know, like people I would just run into at conferences or seminars and stuff, and they'd be telling me about their book. And I'm about to say, "Oh, sure, send it along. I'll take a look." And they say, "Oh, so it's like such and such." "I'm sorry, what?" "Oh, okay. Oh, you haven't read that. Oh, okay. So kind of like this." And I don't expect everyone to have read every book, but if I named four or five and none of them are ringing a bell even a little bit, that's, um, I'm kind of looking at this and going like, does this person like science fiction and fantasy? You know, it's and again, I don't expect everyone to have read everything or for their tastes to line up exactly like mine, but there's a lot of stuff I haven't read that I at least have heard of. And I'm familiar with where its place is in, you know, the, yeah. Rekka (27:48):I mean, at least look at the long list for awards each year and make sure you're familiar with what's going on there. Even if you don't read every piece on there, um, you know, what, what is the appeal? Why did it make it to the long list? And yeah, that's a big day of homework. I did not assign you some light reading there. Like, you know, the long list itself is long. And then you also have to look into each book and see what's going on. Take a look at the cover. How was it being placed on the shelf? Is it, YA? Is it adult? You know, and be aware of the different aspects of how that book is being marketed. Because someday someone will ask you, hopefully, how you want your book marketed and you need to kind of have this background. Kaelyn (28:32):Now some of you may be going, "why do I need to be bothered with all of this? Why can't I just write the book I want to write? And if somebody is interested in it, they can get it published." Now here's the thing. Yes, you're right. On some level, it's like, "I don't, this isn't my full-time, you know, career goals and aspirations. I just wrote a book. It happens to be, you know, a science fiction and fantasy book. I enjoy that. I'm not super mega involved in all of this. I have some books I like, why can't I just write this book, put it down, and walk away?" And the answer to that is in some cases you can, yeah. That is a thing that can happen. The reason that's difficult to do is because you're going to be working with an agent and editor and a publishing house that eat, sleep, and breathe this stuff. Rekka (29:15):Right. And they rely on this for their, for their careers. And if you aren't as passionate as they are, they're not going to be passionate for you. Kaelyn (29:22):I know it's a weird, difficult spot to be in. I know it's kind of like a answer. You got to sort of get yourself in the club. Like you need to demonstrate—. Rekka (29:34):Or at least know who's in the club. Kaelyn (29:36):Yeah. Or at least know who's who's in the club. Um, I, I'm going to use this example, even though I really don't like it because I have a lot of problems with the fashion industry, but there's a scene in The Devil Wears Prada where, uh, Andy walks in and, you know, Meryl Streep's Anna Wintour avatar character is, you know, berating somebody and she says, do this. And, um, Anna or whatever her name is laughs. And they all look at her and she's like, Oh, I'm sorry. I'm still just learning about this stuff. And everyone in the room is very insulted because she is a complete newcomer and outsider to this. And Stanley Tucci gives her this sort of dressing down later where he says, "you happened into this job. There are people who spend their entire lives wanting to work in this industry. They dream of working here and you only deigned to work here. So you want to know why no one likes you, it's because you don't take us seriously. And therefore we can't take you seriously." It's very similar with publishing. Rekka (30:47):I don't feel like that situation—I mean, yes, there are people who are like," okay, agents come to me, bring me your offers." But, um, I feel like there are a lot of people who look for an agent so that they end up with a mentor and someone who's going to educate them on all this. And it would be great, I'm sure, for the agent to hear that you've done some of the homework already. Kaelyn (31:20):Yeah. So that kind of leads us into one of the other things that we can, you know, discuss here is work on ways to make yourself more appealing. For a lot of writers, the ultimate first step is landing an agent. There's a lot of stuff that goes into this. Listen to the Query Letter episode, listen to the Agents episode, listen to all the Submissions September, probably because that's, you know— Rekka (31:46):Yes. And also there are a lot of agents out there with YouTube channels or podcasts of their own, and newsletters, mailing lists, you know, like there is a lot of information out there to be had to help you understand what's going on from the agent side so that you can make their lives a little bit easier by not expecting miracles of them, but also not expecting them to do the work of educating you. Kaelyn (32:09):Yeah. So everything that I just mentioned, you know, that we talked about with the Agents episode, with Submission September, with the Query Letters, all of those have a significant element of things beyond your control. What you can do to make yourself more appealing to an agent or a publishing house is as we said, familiarize yourself with the genre, but also have a plan. Rekka (32:31):Know what kind of books you're going to be writing in a couple of years? Not necessarily like, "I have this one book, please make it sell." You want like, okay, "I have this book." And then they say, "What else you working on?" And you have more than one answer for them. Kaelyn (32:45):I think beyond, you know, all of the agent pet peeves that were talked about in terms of submission and querying, one of the things in agent least wants to hear is "I don't know what to do with myself and my book." I think there is very little that is more disheartening than he completely directionless author. Um, it's one thing to show up and be like, "well, I don't, I don't know how this industry works. That's why you're here." It's another to be, "I have no idea of what my goals and plans are beyond just this book." Um, Rekka made the example before of think how hard it is to cook for somebody who doesn't know what they want to eat. Yeah. Now imagine it's a book. Rekka (33:31):Yeah. Now imagine that your career depends on this person being successful at and enjoying their dinner. Kaelyn (33:37):Yes, exactly. So, um, you know, all of this ties together with writing, into reading, into getting yourself into the genre and that kind of atmosphere in a world that you want to publish and live in. Rekka (33:54):As part of that, I would also suggest, and, you know, we all hate social media, but get on social media and just be aware of the discourse going around in your genre. Hear the discussions that are taking place. Hear the concerns that people are having. Um, either over the industry or subject matter or diversity or, you know, all the different aspects that go into a community and an industry and a livelihood. There's a lot to just absorb. Like you don't even have to participate. You don't have to feel like you have solutions. Kaelyn (34:28):Yeah. That was exactly what I was going to say is you don't even need to participate. You can just be like an observer or a lurker. Rekka (34:34):That's the nice thing about Twitter is like everybody's airing their dirty laundry on Main. And you can just, you know, get an idea of what's out there without having to step into anything messy to begin with before you've got an agent before you've made a name for yourself. However— Kaelyn (34:48):I would even, I would even go so far as to recommend doing everything you can to avoid stepping into anything messy. Rekka (34:54):Yes. Uh, what I might suggest is with all that reading you're doing, um, it might be nice if you, you know, talked on Twitter about what you're reading and, um, and how it's impacting the way you're thinking about your own writing. Like keep it keyed into the fact that you are a writer. Like don't make a review Twitter account, make a, "I am a writer. Here's the subject matter I'm engaged with." And, you know, like, "this makes me think about this in this way as I do my own writing" kinda stuff. Kaelyn (35:28):And along those lines though, you know, it doesn't have to be a review account, but never hesitate to shout out an author who you're reading and either enjoy. Rekka (35:36):Oh absolutely, that's what I'm talking about. But like, for example, I read a book recently where they were dealing with subject matter that I absolutely had plans to approach on my own and I was concerned about a certain aspect of it. And um, this author handled it, you know, in a way that made me go, "okay, this is something to consider as I go into this." Kaelyn (35:57):Never hesitate to, you know, shout out somebody whose work you're enjoying or who, you know, has contributed to your ability to do your own work. It's um, trust me, authors cannot hear that enough. Rekka (36:09):Right. Yeah. Definitely to understand, to know that someone is out there seeing what they're trying to do and appreciating it is a big deal and it will get you maybe—um, I don't know how soon this next one was going to come up, but it might get you a little bit into networking, um, on Twitter, on social media, you know, in your groups and stuff like that. When you are talking about the work that everyone else is doing and appreciating it, and without, you know, posting 10 times a day, "my book is on Amazon at this link," you can also present the fact that you are a writer as part of this discourse. Kaelyn (36:48):It's funny because I was reading something quite a while back about how people get jobs. And most people get jobs through the recommendation of other people or through people they know. Um, I think a lot of that comes from, you know, reputation and, uh, what's the word I'm looking for here? Recommendation. Because, you know, as I always have to, I have to explain sometimes, especially for my previous job where I dealt with a lot of new hires, hiring a new person is expensive. It costs a lot of money to onboard a new full-time employee. Um, which it doesn't seem like it should, but it actually does. The same way authors are an investment. So having friends or just even people, you know, and interact with in the industry who, you know, someone can say, you know, "Rekka, you're an agent, do you happen to know Kaelyn? Like I was interested in working with her possibly like, is she, you know, is she cool? Like, should I talk to her?" And coming to that person to be able to get some feedback on you is, is very important. Um, I think, you know, especially go back and listen to our Agents episode. Agents, you know, have to be very careful about these things and have to be careful about who they choose to work with because somebody who you talked to a few times and they seem like pretty cool and everything, and then they can just go off the rails. That is time and money down the drain that they are not going to recover. Rekka (38:28):Yes. And it's going to make them more nervous to sign the next author—. Kaelyn (38:31):Definitely. Rekka (38:31):—which is not a benefit to anyone. Um, but if you, you know, if you're not even sure where to begin with networking, I would suggest volunteering with some of the organizations that put on conferences, whether they be in person or online. Kaelyn (38:46):Absolutely. Yep. Rekka (38:46):Um, that's a great way, assuming you're reliable that you can build a networking, or at least an awareness of who you are, to people who might be able to help you with a recommendation later, um, whether you know it or not. You know, like if people appreciate the hard work you put in to help with, uh, you know, an event or they appreciate that you were able to run the Slack that, you know, corresponded with, uh, uh, an event that was prerecorded or, you know, whatever else is going on in the world right now, it's hard to predict, but Kaelyn (39:23):Yeah, God only knows if we'll ever have in-person Rekka (39:27):Conferences again. Well, we will certainly be thinking hard about it. Um, but anyway, the, the idea that you proved yourself reliable. Yes. Like that person maybe didn't read your writing, but they can say like you have a good head on your shoulders. You, um, were where you said you would be, when you said you would be there. You signed up and you didn't flake. Um, you were able to go above and beyond by helping people, you know, in ways that wasn't really in the job description or whatever. Kaelyn (39:56):I will tell you, I have my current job because of that. Because yeah, this is because my boss is somebody that knew me before I worked for him. Yeah. And knew that I was a reliable straight-forward person who could do basic math. Yeah. That's the only requirements for my job, basic math. Rekka (40:18):Yeah but the Venn diagram of all those things is a small overlap. But yeah. I mean, you never know how being decent and helpful to somebody is going to pay off later and, you know, do it for altruistic reasons. But it's a good idea too. Kaelyn (40:35):And that's exactly what I was just going to say is," this is not using people. Yeah. This is, you know, you may like, you may feel like squeamish about it. You may feel like, Oh, I'm just, you know, I'm just trying to, like, I feel dirty for just trying to get my face and my name in front of all these people." First of all, you're helping them with something. Okay. So if you want to think of it in terms of that, then think of it as transactional, but that's not necessarily what's going on here. This is how people get involved in things and get introduced and meet people. Um, it's, it's difficult. And for some people, this kind of thing does not come easy. They can't walk into a room and just start chatting people up. But if you have a reason to talk to people? Rekka (41:18):That was exactly what my thinking was. The first time I went to the Nebulas, I volunteered, you know, I'd never been there before, but what I did know was that it was a really long weekend. If I didn't get to know anybody to have conversations with, I was going to be feeling real awkward by that third day. So what I did was I volunteered and I volunteered in the book room, which meant that there were coworkers to speak to, um, people who could, you know, show me the way that the room was working. And then I had conversations with those people about books. I had conversations with those people about publishing. People would walk in and say, "what's good?" And I can make recommendations because I'd been reading in my genre and I knew some of the books in the room, you know, like this works out really well on many levels. Kaelyn (42:01):And by the way, one of the great things here is that if you're volunteering at a writer, writing conference or a science fiction and fantasy conference, you're going to be around other people that enjoy those exact same things. Rekka (42:13):Well, it's easy to have those conversations at the genre conferences rather than like, say it's just the book fair, you know? Um, yeah. It's— Kaelyn (42:22):Well, I wasn't even going, you know, like this is, it's really easy compared to, "Oh, come meet, you know, a group of friends that I know." Rekka (42:29):Oh. Yeah. Yeah. Cause then, then you end up designing a podcast. I mean, yeah. Um, no, the, I think that was the best choice I ever made. I think that's why I had so much fun that first Nebulas conference was because I had a purpose and it wasn't the entire weekend, but then, you know, there were people I could, you know, pass by in the corridors between, um, presentations and panels, who I'd talked to in the book room, you know. And you could smile and nod. And I was getting really good about, you know, just talking to random strangers and that translated into having conversations later in the corridors, in, you know, in the, you know, restaurants and all that kind of stuff, because I'd already sort of like dip my toe in. And in the capacity of like, "this is my job to do this," it really helps. Kaelyn (43:24):And you know, what's, and we've definitely talked about, you know, conferences and all of this stuff before, but just one more thing to sort of reinforce there. A lot of people come to these things by themselves. There is going to be a lot of, you know, single people just walking around who, are just there because, you know, if it's something like the Nebulas that moves every two years, um, you know, maybe it was in their neighborhood and they decided to check it out. Rekka (43:48):This was the year that we're going to try it out. Yeah. And now keep in mind, some people come alone and they're there to have friends and family reunions, basically, with their found families within the community. And you don't want to tread on the toes of people clearly having a more intimate moment, but you know, like being there is the first step. Kaelyn (44:07):Believe me, there is no shortage of friendly people eager to talk to somebody about their favorite Orsen Scott Card book that you're going to find. Yeah. Rekka (44:17):Or, or someone a little more recent like P Djeli Clark or, you know Kaelyn (44:23):Have you been to the Nebulas, Rekka? Rekka (44:25):I have. We clearly ended up in different corners because nobody that I've ever stepped into a conversation with at the Nebulas is going to want to go off about Orsen Scott Card except in a different way than you're referring to. Kaelyn (44:38):Fair. Fair. Rekka (44:38):So anyway, um, you will find your people, they are there, they're in different corners. Check a different one if you didn't find them the first time. But yeah. Um, networking is important and volunteering is a great way to get started in networking. And even though we've currently moved into a virtual space where all these conferences are happening online, there's still a way to network by volunteering. Kaelyn (45:02):Yeah. Absolutely. And by the way, the fact that a lot of these are moving online and hopefully will stay virtual and therefore available to more people will give you more of an opportunity to participate and attend with these. Um, you know, it was definitely a problem that, you know, like there's a lot of these big conferences that had very little virtual presence, and so— Rekka (45:24):Very little virtual presence, and they required you to fly in from another country if you weren't a United States citizen, which therefore like you've already just pretty much blown half of your salary, if not more, for the year just to get here and you haven't even paid to get in the door or for the hotel room yet. So they were very restricted and these online, um, it it's a good thing. And even if we go back to in-person conferences, there needs to be—if you're hearing me conference organizers, I think you already know, but—uh, it needs to, it needs to stay expanded into these virtual spaces. For sure. Kaelyn (45:58):I think one of the things and not to get too sidetracked here, but I think one of the things that put off, you know, apart from sort of this awful gatekeeping aspect of these, these events, but I think one of the things that put off the organizers may have been, "this seems difficult and complicated. I don't know how we do this." And now that everyone was in a position where they have to do it, we've seen that, you know what, it's not actually as difficult and complicated as we thought it was. Rekka (46:22):Only that, but the things that made it difficult and complicated have been solved because it was a problem that everybody shared as compared to when, you know, people who needed this access for, you know, their health and safety were complaining about it but it was a small portion of the population and easy to ignore. Uh, people could just say, "Oh no, no, that's too hard. Sorry. You'll just have to come in person." Now. Now we can say— Kaelyn (46:48):We found out actually, it's not that hard. Rekka (46:49):It's not that hard. We've handled it. And yes, we can have live closed captioning and yes, we can control the quality of that live closed captioning, and should control the quality of that live close captioning. So, um, yes, it has been a big learning year for everybody. Good job us and no more excuses. So let's, uh, let's do that. All right. Sidetrack over, what's next on our outline. Cause you have the outline. I didn't write down any of our notes, Kaelyn (47:12):Actually, that was it on the outline. Rekka (47:14):That was it! All right. We did it! And we have time to leave in the Great British Baking Show references. Just drop a few more like their cake sliding off a tray. Why not? Kaelyn (47:24):I can't remember which season it was that like, they all, like, first of all, here's what I don't get about this show. Every year they film it in the summer in an un-air conditioned tent Rekka (47:38):And are surprised when the chocolate won't temper. Kaelyn (47:43):And the chocolate won't stay together! Rekka (47:43):I was watching, we watched season eight. So what we normally do is watch the Christmas episodes, the holiday episodes. Kaelyn (47:50):Exactly, yes. Rekka (47:50):And, um, so we watched this year's and we were not satisfied because last year we got to binge a whole bunch of them for the first time. And this year there was only one new one. So we, um, we went back and watched season eight and I remember the devastation of Chocolate Week being in the middle of— it was 35º Celsius in the tent when they were trying to cool and set chocolate and temper it. Kaelyn (48:22):Yeah. Anyway. Okay. We should stop. Rekka (48:22):So yes. So when you need to make the ice cream cake of your career, you can set yourself up for success, by at least making sure that you've cooled your, uh, work area on a bunch of really cool genre books that were written in the last five or ten years. That was a little weak, but I'm going to go with it. Kaelyn (48:43):No, no I like it. Keep going. Rekka (48:43):And, um, and then, uh, temper your excitement over that query you just sent out by keeping yourself busy and continuing to work and writing out your goals and your business plan so that when the agent asks you, you don't drop your biscuits on the floor. Kaelyn (49:05):Rekka, that was beautiful. Rekka (49:06):I'm very proud. Kaelyn (49:07):That was stunning. That was truly amazing. Rekka (49:09):Do I get a handshake? Kaelyn (49:09):Yes! Paul Hollywood would be proud of you. Rekka (49:14):Okay. So if you're not watching the Great British Baking Show, I hope you're inspired. They're a thankfully, um, really feel good show and it's nice to watch the contestants help each other and network and be good to each other and take that as your, your role models. Kaelyn (49:32):It really is a, uh, very inspiring show to watch for how you should conduct your career really your lives. Because when I tell people they should watch and they're like, "Oh, I don't like those reality shows. I'm like, no." Rekka (49:44):We didn't think we would either. Kaelyn (49:45):Yeah, I don't either. Everyone is so nice. Rekka (49:47):Everyone is so nice. Even the person that they tease for being heartless, is, I would happily hug. Kaelyn (49:51):Yes. Yes, definitely. Okay. So anyway, so network, um, read. Write. Work on, you know, familiarizing yourself with the genre. Work on building your knowledge base. Make it so that you can have a conversation with people that are going to be important to have conversations with. Rekka (50:08):Or just people who are going to come up the ranks with you. You know, and I say "ranks" as if there's a ladder, but you know what I mean? Like be friends with—. Kaelyn (50:16):There's totally a ladder. Rekka (50:16):Be friends with the people who are entering at the same point as you. And if you surge ahead of them, lift them up behind you. Don't, you know, shut the door and say, "Ha ha! I have excelled beyond my need to be your friend now." Um, that's just hopefully good, common sense and how to be a human, but it's yeah, not everybody, but, um— Kaelyn (50:37):Just remember a rising tide lifts all ships. Rekka (50:39):And also know what you want out of this. Like have a plan and be ready to talk to anybody about it and you can modify it as you get feedback, which is also good. Kaelyn (50:49):There is, there is no one is going to handy with stone, say, "Chisel your plan in it. And this is also your tombstone now." Rekka (50:58):I mean, it might be, you know, the time you take to chisel a message into a stone is time you could have spent writing. Kaelyn (51:05):That's a good point. Yeah. Like with like a computer, which is faster than chiseling into stone. Yeah. Never try to stop improving on this. Especially if there are certain goals that you want to hit and you're not hitting them, you are I—. Rekka (51:19):In other words, if you have goals you want to hit and you're not hitting them, the answer is not to stop and wait for them to come to you. Kaelyn (51:25):Yeah. I'm going to say something that's going to come off sounding kind of mean. And I don't mean it to be. If you have goals that you're trying to hit and you're not hitting them, the problems— it's either you or it's the goal. There are absolutely be some times in your life and your career that you're just going to be unlucky. But, more often than not, there's things you can be always be working towards improving. Rekka (51:47):Even if luck, you know, turns against you, you can keep moving forward. It just might be, you know, a little bit more disheartening. It might be more work. But if you really love this, then you know, you should be up for the challenge. And, you know, hopefully these tips will help you set yourself up to, you know, have tools you need in those darker moments to just keep working on something. Kaelyn (52:10):So for instance, when somebody puts you in a sweltering tent in the middle of a field outside a British estate and tells you to make a chocolate sculpture and it's 35º Celsius and Paul Hollywood is giving you weird looks, you can go, "All right. I trained for this." Rekka (52:24):I guess, I guess that is exactly the metaphor we needed. Kaelyn (52:31):So well anyway, that's, um, you know, we'll leave you there. Hopefully, you know— Rekka (52:35):Hopefully that's enough or made any sense. Kaelyn (52:38):Hopefully it's encouraging or, you know, maybe a little bit of a fresh thought on it. Rekka (52:42):If not, you can yell at us on Twitter or Instagram at @WMBcast, or you can find old episodes at wmbcast.com. And if that really was helpful, somehow you can thank us by supporting us on patreon.com/WMBcast. We do just appreciate anybody who supports us, but, uh, the best help you could give us would be to leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts and, uh, let people know that you enjoyed the content, how it's helped you. Um, you can even ask us questions through the comments there. Kaelyn (53:16):We love questions. If you send us a question, there's a very good chance we'll talk about it. Rekka (53:20):Yes, cause sometimes we don't know what we're going to talk about until we get on the call. And sometimes it shows. But, uh, yeah, either way, any of the ways that you reach out to us, we look forward to hearing from you and we will talk to you again in a couple weeks.

Is God the ultimate homie or an asshole? Depends on what religion you practice, right? With rise of new age spirituality and younger communities questioning ancient religious structures today, having a relationship with a Higher Power is arguably the most complicated and polarizing topic, after USA politics. All jokes aside, having an anchor for our soul through eyes of the Divine feels good and gives life meaning, regardless of what you choose to call it. Humanity has attached itself to a wide variety of stories about where we come from before the beginning of time, so why is Unity as a human race from Source is such a controversial topic?In this episode, Leroy and Diana take a deep dive into what God could be, share stories from ancient texts and facts about the climate of our modern world. We hope you enjoy this episode as much as we enjoyed researching it for you guys. Your support makes such a huge difference to us, if you feel called, please leave us a 5 star review on iTunes or share it with a friend. Thank you!Timestamps[01:04] Take a breath segment[02:40] Table topic[07:59] Intention setting[10:26] Christianity & The Bible[14:00] Weaponizing Religion[17:54] Dogmatic beliefs[19:25] Psychedelics[21:22] The first female philosopher[23:35] Science doesn't have all the answers[26:21] The symbology of Gods & The Sun[29:49] Aliens & pyramids[33:28] Astrological perspective on The Cross[35:26] Galactic Federation & Universal Law Of Polarity[37:38} Perspective of Gnostics[39:35] The hidden secret God[41:36] What God means to us personally[44:22] Why religious structures are falling apart[47:32] Accessing our ancestorsIf this content resonates with you, it would mean a ton if you could leave us a review so you can help us spread this knowledge. Leave a review on iTunes here >> Follow us on Instagram @enlightenmeradioIf you have any ideas for topics or any questions, send them to enlightenmeradio@gmail.com

The guys speak about animals having poor memories, other animal facts, and a particular seagull from Glasgow causing havoc. What is my spirit animal? Depends. If you have enjoyed this episode, please give us a 5-star-rating, subscribe on a friend's phone, and join us on our other socials. Member of quitethethingmedia.com  Twitter: twitter.com/whatdoesSMHmean Discord Invite: https://discord.gg/PYE6UfSmAz Support this podcast

We watched sedition Inciter-in-Chief Trump impeached for the second time and surely a rancid doodle was deposited in his Depends. The ensemble of Fox And Friends found themselves divided over Shitler's impeachment. Dandy GOP authoritarian Matt Gaetz went total nuclear on the House floor blathering bullcrap about Democrat hypocrisy and ANTIFA's nonexistent role in the attack on Congress. Reports revealed Republicans in the House gave reconnaissance tours to domestic terrorists organizing the attack upon the legislative branch. Traitor Josh Hawley rightly suffered a massive backlash from constituents for supporting the angry mob that invaded the Capitol. 20,000 National Guardsman are gathered in DC to protect our Democracy from armed violent traitors. The Chairman of the GOP in Nye, Nevada claimed Biden would never be president and the Rapist-in-Chief would be POTUS for the next four years. The Orange Czar experienced a tremendous drop in popularity due to the insurrection he managed to incite in DC. Ice skating rinks in Central Park will no longer bear the orange Nazi's name. Airbnb rentals won't be available during the inaugural in DC due to anticipated white supremacist violence. The horrific yet chatty founder of a neo-nazi fight club complained the country has lost its way which was paved by our slave-owning founding fathers. The pandemic continued to ravage the country with new variants popping up. Finally, the Crabs discussed how everyone on the planet really hates Jarvanka.