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Join us for this replay from the archives and learn more about oxygen intake and masks... Since the beginning of the pandemic, there has been a lot of talk about whether or not wearing a mask during exercise is a safe thing to do. Amy and Brian breakdown the studies and science behind wearing a mask and oxygen intake, and reveal why The Exercise Coach program makes wearing a mask a minor detail in the pursuit of fitness results. Covid has made wearing a mask much more common but a lot of people are wondering if it's okay to wear a mask while exercising. At the beginning of the pandemic the Exercise Coach committed to following the various guidelines, and that includes requiring masks. Generally speaking, wearing a mask is not going to hamper your workout. A good example would be how athletes have been using altitude training masks to increase physical performance for years. They don't strictly simulate being at a higher elevation, but they do increase the effectiveness of your lungs and breathing capacity. At ground level, we get all the oxygen we need to perform optimally. When we feel wiped out and exhausted from exercise, it's not due to a lack of oxygen. Even with a surgical mask, you have more than enough oxygen. Studies have been completed that show there isn't an impact on physical performance when wearing a surgical mask. They looked at the effect on blood pressure, heart rate during exercise, oxygen saturation, and carbon dioxide levels. If you have a chronic lung disease talk to your healthcare provider before performing exercise while wearing a mask. For healthy people, wearing a mask during exercise is not harmful. The Exercise Coach has seen thousands of clients over the past year and they are still getting results despite the mask. Many of the clients are actually surprised at how little impact a mask actually has. The fact that the program is brief and the studios are kept cool and well ventilated makes the workout experience quite enjoyable, even with a mask on. The workouts are still intense and effective, and since they emphasize the lowering portion of the training they net better results than traditional strength training while reducing the requirement for your body's cardiorespiratory output to increase. Eccentric training produces more force and gets you more benefits. An emphasis on the lowering portion is an advanced training technique, yet it's more comfortable. Links: exercisecoach.com This podcast and blog are provided to you for entertainment and informational purposes only. By accessing either, you agree that neither constitute medical advice nor should they be substituted for professional medical advice or care. Use of this podcast or blog to treat any medical condition is strictly prohibited. Consult your physician for any medical condition you may be having. In no event will any podcast or blog hosts, guests, or contributors, Exercise Coach USA, LLC, Gymbot LLC, any subsidiaries or affiliates of same, or any of their respective directors, officers, employees, or agents, be responsible for any injury, loss, or damage to you or others due to any podcast or blog content.
No doubt you too are trying to help clients combine intermittent fasting and exercise. I'm sure it's come up. You may be attempting to do it. You may know their doctor is suggesting it. But here's the incongruence for midlife women. Low Energy Availability (LEA) and exercising while fasting are one and the same. If you've been involved in fitness or nutrition for a minute, you know of the Female Athlete Triad. Generally, young active women essentially become menopausal when they should be having regular cycles because of energy insufficiency. LEA is right back to that and yet more detrimental for women over 40 trying to maintain muscle, also push performance, who can't afford to lose bone density but will, and have already depleted adrenals and hormone chaos occurring. In this episode, I respond to a question from one of our Food Flip programs. If you're helping clients, or yourself through the conflicting information on intermittent fasting and exercise, this may help. Right now, if you aren't yet, consider the Flipping 50 Menopause Fitness Specialist and kickstart your year with more knowledge about hormones, their function relative to exercise and understand when a client asks, what they should do, exactly how to help. Intermittent Fasting and Exercise for Midlife Women Polly, “Debra I have been wanting to incorporate fasting into my health regime. However with your current recommendations of working out in a fed state I have found it is very difficult to get enough protein and to maintain the fasted state. I read the book Feast Fast Repeat and it goes against a lot of the information you recommend. It's difficult for me to fast for 18 to 20 hours and feel good. Just wondering what your thoughts are on fasting?” Start earlier. It's pretty simple! You don't have “dinner” at dinner time.. You have a last high protein meal at 3 or 4pm. Fasting has a purpose. Getting off a plateau. You can kickstart with an 18 or 20 hour fast but there is NO reason if you're an active person to do this regularly. Rotate.., 12, 14, 15, 18 …. And the amount of carbs you do. If this was your first book? Keep reading. Your week should NOT ever look the same every day or you lose metabolic flexibility. If your goal is to stay active and gain muscle and bone density … tell me in a 20 hour fast how you manage to get micronutrients in. What we all have to do is prioritize. Are you inflamed? Need to reduce that and kick up the autophagy? Fasting for a short time may be your priority But high intensity exercise and fasting long are NOT going to coincide together well. That leaves you energy deficient. That puts you in stress. That causes a loss of muscle. Resources: WellPros Mentorship Group https://www.flippingfifty.com/store/uncategorized/fit-pros-health-coaches-monthly-membership-founder/ Your Business Scorecard: https://www.fitnessmarketingmastery.com/business-scorecard/ Flipping 50 Menopause Fitness Specialist™ Course: https://www.flippingfifty.com/menopause-fitness-specialist-program-2022/ Other Episodes You Might Like: Training Midlife Clients | Zone 2 Training For Menopause: https://www.fitnessmarketingmastery.com/zone-2-training-for-menopause/ 7 Tips to be a Personal Trainer Every Midlife Woman Wants to Work With https://www.fitnessmarketingmastery.com/be-a-personal-trainer/ 5 Menopause Exercise Programming Tips from Recent Exercise Studies https://www.fitnessmarketingmastery.com/menopause-exercise-programming/
HAPPY TOM HANKSGIVING!!! Giving a Tom Hanks movie on Thanksgiving is a great deed! I encourage you all to complete this symbolic gesture ( you don't actually have to give up a movie to someone if you don't want to.) But it's a really fun way to celebrate by giving Tom Hanks and taking a photo to go with it. Generally, a guest of honor is selected and an announcement and symbolic giving commence. FRUMESS is POWERED by www.riotstickers.com/frumess GET 1000 STICKERS FOR $79 RIGHT HERE - NO PROMO CODE NEED! JOIN THE PATREON FOR LESS THAN A $2 CUP OF COFFEE!! https://www.patreon.com/Frumess
With winter coming, it would be worth your while to review your nutrition plan for your senior horses. Generally, a senior horse is one that is older than 15 years old. However, there are many factors that can influence what we could consider a "senior horse," which we discuss. We also talk about why winter can be a tougher time for older horses when compared to our younger stock. With winter and the environmental stress associated with it, we focus in on how an older horse's dietary requirements might change. Then we give some generalities on what changes you can make to your nutritional plan to support your horses. Finally, we give some broad general tips on how to ensure you can best support your senior horses and ensure they stay healthy and happy. You can learn more about these topics by visiting our expertise page HERE If you have any questions or concerns about your own horse, please contact us HERE This podcast was brought to you by Tribute Superior Equine Nutrition
In today's episode, we wanted to discuss the topic of punishing ourselves through workouts. We are rolling into the holidays, and this is something we see all the time. People want to “earn” their food, or they feel they have overindulged and decide they are going to train extra hard to make up for it.We want to reframe your mindset going into the holidays and in life in general, because at the end of the day, you don't need to do anything crazy after having a big feast or getting off track a little.In this episode, we break down why torturing yourself at the gym by sweating hard and feeling like you're going to pass out does not actually equate to a good workout. Generally speaking, working out should make you feel good and shouldn't be draining. Draining workouts can lead to overtraining, which gets you in a lot of trouble with fatigue, burnout, and injuries. This episode encourages self reflection and an understanding of your motivation for working out. Having a “punishment” mindset with working out is borne out of negative self-talk, not being happy with your current body composition, or feeling unhappy with yourself in general. If you do fall off the wagon with your fitness routine, the best thing you can do is get back on track with a normal and consistent fitness routine, reframe food as fuel, and reframe your workout program as a beneficial way of achieving your long term goals. Our 12 week strength training and mobility program, STRONGER, is 50% Through Thanksgiving weekend. Use the code “2023CHALLENGE” at checkout: https://barpathfitness.com/stronger/
Open enrollment. Deductible. Coinsurance. HMO. Indemnity plan. If you're listening this far, you probably have a migraine already. Understanding the language of the health insurance industry, let alone selecting a health insurance plan, can be confusing, frustrating, and disheartening. But never fear - we are here to give you a crash course on everything you need to know about your insurance plan. No need to scroll through Healthcare.gov's Health Insurance glossary and risk throwing yourself out the window… We want to give you some tools here to understand what you're choosing when you pick a healthcare plan, but no one but you really knows what's best for your health, so (for better or worse) we aren't going to give any actual advice here about what healthcare plan to pick. Also, all health insurance kind of sucks, so you will probably get screwed no matter what you pick. Basically, we're going to try to decode all the mystifying language that the insurance companies use to disguise the ways they're going to screw you so at least you'll be able to anticipate how you'll get screwed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32vw4LZpelA Show Notes Names Whether you get health insurance offered by your employer, or you have to buy insurance on your own in an exchange or on healthcare.gov, or you have Medicare and you are looking at one of the privatized Medicare Advantage plans, you're going to be choosing from a series of plans that have totally incomprehensible names and acronyms, so let's start by breaking down the how the name of the plan itself will tell you something about how your insurer is going to screw you. Generally the first part of an insurance plan's name will be the name of the insurer (like “Blue Cross” or “United Health”), then you MIGHT get a word that says who is paying for the insurance plan (if it's a “Group” plan that means an employer is paying for it, an “Advantage” plan is a privatized Medicare plan), and finally there will be an acronym that only 0.005% of people in America understand - and those are the generally people making money from the plans. These acronyms will be something like HMO, HSA, PPO, EPO, or my personal favorite “GTFO” - the “get the fuck out of here that can't be a real plan” plan! Indemnity Plans (“Open Choice” or “Open Network” plans): are the opposite of managed care; you could use any doctor or hospital, there are no networks, no review of care or pre-approvals, no claims denials. These were the plans that virtually everyone had prior to the 1980s, and plans that virtually no one has today except maybe the extremely wealthy. In 1978, 95% of people had indemnity plans, then that dropped to 71% by 1988, and by 1998 it was down to 14%. Today, only 1% of workers have indemnity plans. Indemnity plans are the opposite of managed care - you can see any doctor or hospital you want, there Today, you probably wouldn't even want an indemnity plan, because the modern versions usually only pay a percentage of the cost of your care, leaving you with the rest and massive bills. Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs) represent only 12% of insurance plans today, so after taking over in the 1990s, old school HMOs are going the way of the dinosaurs. HMOs usually limit coverage to doctors/providers who work for or contract with the HMO (“in-network”). It generally won't cover out-of-network care except in an emergency. HMOs can also be limited by location, meaning you might have to live or work in a certain area to be eligible. Exclusive Provider Organizations (EPOs) are a new catch-phrase that are appearing more and more often, but they are VERY similar to an HMO, and you should think of them the same. In fact, that survey that only 12% of workers have HMO plans includes EPOs under the same category. EPOs often have larger networks than HMOs, and unlike HMOs, they don't require referrals to see specialists - as long as the specialist is in their very limited net...
Daily Halacha Podcast - Daily Halacha By Rabbi Eli J. Mansour
If a woman lit Shabbat candles on Friday evening, and accepted the onset of Shabbat with her lighting, it is permissible for her to drink afterward, before Kiddush? Generally speaking, it is forbidden to eat or drink once the Kiddush obligation takes effect until one hears or recites Kiddush. Seemingly, then, it would be forbidden for a woman to drink after lighting the Shabbat candles, since she has accepted the onset of Shabbat which triggers the obligation of Kiddush. Hacham Ovadia Yosef, however, rules that a woman may drink after candle lighting, due to a combination of two different factors. First, Hacham Ovadia distinguishes between a congregation's acceptance of Shabbat and that of an individual. An individual's private acceptance of Shabbat does not apply as strictly as the congregation's acceptance through the recitation of "Bo'i Kalla" or "Barechu" in the synagogue. Therefore, there is room to argue that the Kiddush obligation does not necessarily set in by virtue of a woman's candle lighting, and it is therefore permissible for her to drink. Secondly, the Rambam (Rabbi Moshe Maimonides, Spain-Egypt, 1135-1204) held that it is permissible to drink beverages other than wine before Kiddush. Although we do not accept this ruling as Halacha, we may nevertheless take it into account in combination with the aforementioned argument as a basis for allowing a woman to drink beverages other than wine – such as water, tea or coffee – after lighting the Shabbat candles. However, Hacham Ovdia applies this ruling only until sundown. Once the sun sets, Shabbat has begun with respect to all Halachot, and therefore one may not eat or drink anything until Kiddush past sundown on Friday evening. Summary: A woman may drink beverages other than wine after lighting the Shabbat candles until sundown, even though she has not heard Kiddush.
Against most podcasting advice, in this episode, Ash and Kane discuss the rare times when a broader podcast can work. Join them as they first discuss the reasons why a niche podcast sets you up for success but then move on to the instances where going broad is the better and more worthwhile thing to do for your podcast. KEY TAKEAWAYS If you have a large audience already, you can potentially have a broader podcast topic. A niche podcast is much easier to market, via SEO but also directly. To go broad you need to be a great host and interviewer, get great guests and be able to leverage other people's audiences. Production quality and being connected will also help you with growth on a broader podcast. Co-hosts with incredible chemistry can buck the trend of niche podcasting. Generally, to get traction on a broad subject show you need to spend money, it's rare to find success for ‘free'. Interviewing ‘interesting people' is not a good enough subject for a podcast. If you choose to go broad, audio only is not enough. You need to do video and clips to gain traction. BEST MOMENTS “If you haven't got a big audience already then being broad you're just going to get lost in the masses of lots of other shows” “When you're really specific, it helps” “They are essentially two nobodies that have blown up into mainstream fame” “It's all on personality” “You have to pay to get in front of people” “Sometimes you've got to push those boundaries to get the best content” “Realistically you need to rely on the social stuff” VALUABLE RESOURCES Website EPISODES TO CHECK OUT NEXT Podcast Production - The Cost of the Wrong Choice How to Launch a Number 1 Podcast - Part 1 ABOUT THE HOSTS Kane Baron & Ashley Morris run the UK's first and largest Podcast Agency, Progressive Media. They specialise in planning, launching, and Growing Podcasts that Generate Leads, Revenue and Business opportunities as well as helping Experts and Entrepreneurs improve Credibility and Positioning within their niche to Scale their Personal Brand and Business. Kane and Ashley manage over 100 Podcasters every week Including Rob Moore, Kevin Clifton and Dapper Laughs. They have supported hundreds of Podcasts in generating tens of Millions in combined Revenue. Progressive Media have provided Production, Marketing and Consultancy services to help creators Launch, Scale & Monetise their Podcast for over 7 years. CONNECT & CONTACT Instagram LinkedIn Email: podcast@progressiveproperty.co.ukhow to start a podcast, podcasting, hosting, downloads, monetisation, content creation, repurposing, video, youtube, tiktok, instagram, social media marketing, growth, consumption,: https://progressivemedia.uk/This show was brought to you by Progressive Media
Kico shares her experience, strength, and hope. The Laguna Niguel Speaker Meeting gathers at 7:00 p.m. every Sunday on Zoom and Live in person, please join us at https://zoom.us/s/451797737 Password: NewYMCA. Join us live at Mission Lutheran Church. 24360 Yosemite Rd, Laguna Niguel, CA 92677. 24360 Yosemite Rd - Google Maps. Generally, 2 shares (a 10 minute and 40 minute) are published mid-week, which were recorded the previous Sunday.Please contact us at lagunaniguelspeakermeeting@gmail.com for more information about the meeting or any comments you may have. Thanks for listening.RSS: Feed: https://dashboard.rss.com/podcasts/lagunaniguelspeakermeeting/
Molly shares her experience, strength, and hope. The Laguna Niguel Speaker Meeting gathers at 7:00 p.m. every Sunday on Zoom and Live in person, please join us at https://zoom.us/s/451797737 Password: NewYMCA. Join us live at Mission Lutheran Church. 24360 Yosemite Rd, Laguna Niguel, CA 92677. 24360 Yosemite Rd - Google Maps. Generally, 2 shares (a 10 minute and 40 minute) are published mid-week, which were recorded the previous Sunday.Please contact us at lagunaniguelspeakermeeting@gmail.com for more information about the meeting or any comments you may have. Thanks for listening.RSS: Feed: https://dashboard.rss.com/podcasts/lagunaniguelspeakermeeting/
It's time for the (whopping) second half of our 2023 gift guide! We tackle dads, sisters, in-laws, friends, coworkers, and some ideas for presents to ask for yourself when that feels like a necessary thing. For the full link-rich rundown, you're best off heading over to our site: athingortwohq.com/gift-guide-episodesIf there's someone on your list that we didn't get to this year, let us know who you're shopping for in our Geneva! And share more gift ideas with us at 833-632-5463, podcast@athingortwohq.com, and @athingortwohq.Tackle all that holiday shopping at MoMA Design Store and take 10% off your purchase when you use or mention promo code ATHINGORTWO online and in US MoMA Design Stores through November 23, 2023. Give your hair the gift of Nutrafol. Take $10 off your first month's subscription with the code ATHINGORTWO.YAY.Gifts for YOU!My in laws are great people who will buy exactly what ask for as long as it's 1) not personal care or appearance-related AT ALL, 2) not a ""luxury item"" or a splurge version of something (ie no fancy candles), and 3) under $100. I'm a dedicated audiobook listener and | don't need any more cookbooks or board games. They won't do a donation in lieu of gift. Gift giving is their love language but only if the gift is very practical or they got it on a significant discount. We're fortunate to be in a financial position where I'm generally able to buy practical as they're needed, but my in laws hear ""I don't need anything!"" as a snub. Help!"Uniqlo HeattechSomething YamazakiCookbooks (like The Lula Cafe one!)A traditional restock (plants, PJs, etc.)Directing them to a go-tostore like MoMA Design Store and Zingerman'sDinnerware/cookware to build on every yea—Le Creuset, vintage Fiestaware, Dansk, Heath, etc., etc.Charms for a charm bracelet/necklace like Jet Set Candy passport stamp charms (+ their NYPL card one is also very good)Dads & Fathers-in-LawMy Dad sounds more like a brand persona than a real person. He's very cosmopolitan/urbane, lives in the city center even though he's 60, takes public transit, legitimately does his weekly grocery shopping at boutique cheese/bread/specialty food stores, always dressed impeccably. OWNS a beautiful specialty meat slicer that he has in his kitchen and uses for fresh/thinly sliced prosciutto (before you go there I've done ham hocks more than once). Interests: art, food and entertaining, culture. Loves to read, usually big sweeping historical books. Always the hardest person to shop for on my list because his taste level is very out of my price range and I'm tapped out on the specialty food theme. Dad recently become a grandfather (2 grandsons and one more coming in Jan) and it was a little weird for him - he loves my sons but the image of an old guy in a rocking chair teaching kids how to whittle didn't jive with his understanding of himself. He's starting to settle in. Has a very unique grandpa name with many indecipherable layers of historical context and family history that the grandkids will probably never understand. Buys them beautifully made clothes that they would immediately ruin. Talks to them about their shared interests: boats, planes, and other well-designed machines.Hoste Bottled Cocktails Regalis Black Truffle Microwaveable PopcornNordic Ware Indoor/Outdoor Kettle Smoker Custom OpinelBerea College Intersections Charcuterie BoardBig Nights PlannerSuzanne Sullivan Porcelain Playing Cards or Bone Inlay Domino SetBlackwater & Sons Return Address StampBillion Oyster Project donationRex Design Oyster PlateMy dad. 82 years old. Loves to read serious nonfiction but bus all the books he wants. Loves French and Italian wine but his taste is too expensive for me and he has all the gadgets. Generally expensive taste that's above my pay grade. He dresses pretty dapper and lives in NYC. Gets lots of compliments on his glasses and clothes. Grills meat for dinner nearly every night but stuck in his ways when it comes to cooking. Very much a creature of habit. Likes jazz and classic rock. Best gifts I've gotten for him are interesting casual clothes he wouldn't find himself, a dapper custom English umbrella, taking him to see live jazz…Campo GrandeThe Durand - bottle opener for old bottles/corksRalph Lauren custom stuff! Hello, cashmere sweater.Vintage tie clip or cuff links from TRRVinyl Me, Please subscriptionThe Jazz Loft Project: Photographs and Tapes of W. Eugene Smith from 821 Sixth Avenue, 1957–1965Preservation Hall Drum Ornament or TambourineBlue Note merchOkay, now that I've seen this I feel okay sending a description of my dad. He's a 67-year-old workaholic lawyer many have described as "quite the character, huh?" He takes himself very seriously, though he also can be quite mischievous and loves to stir the pot. His interests include fishing, geopolitics, and monologuing. I truly feel like I've explored all gifting avenues already with him: consumables for his major sweet tooth, outdoorsy gear that he already buys himself, political or economic books that won't lead to arguments (he's conservative, I'm liberal), and seemingly every dog toy or black Labrador art print under the sun. He doesn't drink and mostly sticks to heart-healthy food. While he has many entertaining childhood stories, it seems unlikely he will set aside time for something activity-based like StoryWorth, as he spends most of his at-home free time watching YouTube videos about things like beekeeping (yes, I've gotten him multiple artisanal honeys that had little impact). I'm at my wits' end with this conundrum of a father, please help!Unexpected: 30 Years of Patagonia Outdoor PhotographyCustom Smathers & Branson BeltsPort Bait Co. Bait/LuresreMarkableNorth Spore Mushroom-Growing KitsPack of AvecMerippa House ShoesFather-in-law is the definition of introverted, deeply obsessed with cars (has several classic ones), and model trains (legit has an entire room for trains that has like, an actual functional drawbridge for the trains). Also loves good food and good tequila!“Rod Stewart's ideal Christmas present? Brushes for his model railway”Dining by Rail: The History and Recipes of America's Golden Age of Railroad Cuisine by James D. PorterfieldCharles Ro Supply Co. gift certificateToyo Toolbox Chevrolet Corvette 1961 Lego SetMajor Minis Alessi The Tending BoxSisters & Sisters-in-LawPresent for woo-woo disorganized sister who holds a grudge & has two adorable kidsHouse of Intuition CandlesA Daily Cloud CalendarHightide DTLA Moon CalendarHa Ko Incense LeavesGolde Superfoods Mask KitEsker Bodycare Discovery SetJulia Elsas Wiggle Wall HooksOk this one is may be a doozy. New SIL: she describes herself as an author but will never discuss her writing, we've never seen anything, nothing published (she is 40, we had a running theory maybe her "writing" was OnlyFans? It's unclear.) She loves Disney (I have secured Hanna Anderson Disney Christmas PJs), Rudy Giuliani (!!!), and believes enough conspiracy theories that we had to change our will about w hich uncle would get our kids if we died. Zola was "too downmarket" for their wedding registry but she doesn't know which fork to use (to be clear, both of these things are fine, just incongruent, right?). So I need something that feels sophisticated but maybe...isn't.Ami Ami Mulled Wine KitGentlewoman Modern Manners Postcard SetAnya Hindmarch Bespoke Passport WalletMadewell Disney Mickey Mouse-Embroidered Cardigan Sweater in (Re)sponsible CashmereKitsch & Disney Satin Pillowcase - Desert CrownBird by Bird by Anne LamottBlack Women Writers at Work How to Write an Autobiographical Novel: Essays by Alexander CheeCultish by Amanda MontellFour Seasons Total Landscaping HatBoyfriend's sister: 29, children's librarian and loves children's books/ movies. Pretty much hates everything I've ever given her and doesn't really have any taste that isn't just stuff her 63 y/o mother likes... when I try to get her clothes that are more age-appropriate (read: no for a woman in her 60s), she never wears them. She's not materialistic BUT loves going to Home Goods just to get stuff? Also has a New Year's Day bday so I need two things. And this is a big bday (30!)! My boyfriend got her a big set of glass Tupperware which was a huge hit, but then got her a nutri bullet (the mom loves hers) and she hated that. HELP!!!Book of the Month subscriptionPersephone GiftsTortuga or Schoolhouse or Justina Blakeney bookendsBrooklyn Public Library Books Unbanned donationVintage READ Posters from American Library AssociationRalph & James - framed children's picture book art printsFilm Art Gallery - classic children's movie posters Yellow Paper House Junque JournalOur Place Wonder OvenSIL Trying to be an influencer and posts sporadic videos on THIS APP about a home design of a suburban cookie-cutter house. Always mansplains the littlest things. Snobby but for no reason. But also probably a nice person to people she likes? Probably!Fiona's Pasta Gift BoxMaria Ida DesignsMadre Linen NapkinsBig Night or The Six Bells depending on her vibe—anything from either feels safe!Canva subscriptionAllison Bornstein or Lakyn Carlton styling sessionLivable Luxe by Brigette RomanekArranging Things by Colin King Beata Heuman: Every Room Should SingSister-in-law: she is a corporate lawyer and very much a Dallas girly (lives in Dallas but also embodies the Dallas vibes with beach blonde hair, very fancy car to drive 5 minutes to work, has a texting relationship with sales associates at various designer stores). If you read the NYTimes article from a few months ago explaining the Dallas food scene, she embodies the Dallas consumer exactly. She is a bit of a Broadway nerd. She is basically the opposite of me in almost every possible way, and I'm always afraid to shop for her. Last year I got her a gift set from The Crown Affair and I don't think she knew a thing about it. Would like to stay
THE Presentations Japan Series by Dale Carnegie Training Tokyo, Japan
There are a number of common structures for giving presentations and one of the most popular is the opening-key points/evidence-closing variety. We consider the length of the presentation, the audience, the purpose of our talk and then we pour the contents into this structure. Generally, in a 30 minute speech we can only consider a few key points we can cover, so we select the most powerful and then look for the evidence which will persuade our audience. This is where a lot of presentations suddenly snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. The structure flow is a simple one. The analysis of the occasion is straightforward, but at this next stage we can get confused about what we are trying to achieve. We might become so engrossed in the evidence assembly component that we forget the crucial “WHY” aspect of this effort. We are not here to produce mounds of statistics, battalions of bar charts or proffer reams of text on a screen. Technically oriented presenters love to bludgeon their audience with detail, usually forcing the font or scale to be so small, it is barely visible on screen. No, the WHY is all about persuading the audience to agree with our conclusion or way of thinking, This is communication skill rather than archeological or archival skill. Line charts, pie charts, comparison tables are trotted out to do battle with the perceptions and biases of the audience. The errors though include a presentation style where the actual detail is impenetrable and so is not fully accepted. The tendency to imagine that this superb, high quality data will stand by itself and not require the presenter to do much, is another grave error. “I don't have to be a good speaker, because the quality of my information is so valuable”, is a typical, if somewhat pathetic excuse. Another common error is to invest the vast majority of the available time for the presentation preparation on the accompanying slides for the talk. Digging up the data, tweeking the detail, creating the charts, arranging the order etc., keeps us quite busy. So busy, in fact, that we forget to practice the delivery of the talk. We find ourselves peering down at our audience, presenting the content for the first time up while at the podium. We are in fact practicing on our audience and this is definitely not a best practice. How should we fix this approach? Some examples of evidence are really powerful when they are numbers, but instead of drowning our audience with too many numbers, we can select a gripper and use a very big font to isolate out that one number. We then talk to that number and explain what it means. If we want to use line charts or trend analysis, then one chart per slide is a good rule. We don't split the visual concentration of our audience. We speak to the significance of the trend, knowing that our audience can see the trend line for themselves. To improve our communication effectiveness, we go one step further and we tell stories about these numbers. Who was involved, where, when and what happened. We recall stories more easily than masses of data, so the evidence and context are more easily transferred. This helps to get us around to the WHY of our talk, the key point we want the audience to absorb. And we practice the delivery over and over until we are comfortable we have the cadence right. We recall Professor Albert Mehrabian's study about the importance of not just what we say, but how we say it. Emphasising particular words, adding gestures for strengthening key points, engaging our audience by using eye contact, allowing pauses so ideas can sink in and reducing distractions so our actual words are absorbed. Structure, rehearsal, storytelling and congruent delivery combine to create a powerful success formula for presentations. Action Steps Don't be consumed with the detail, keep the main message in mind Don't be self-indulgent and think your supreme content excuses a poor delivery Allocate sufficient time for rehearsals Tell the stories behind the data Remember what you say is important but how you say it is more important
Dr Glenn McConell chats with Professor Luc can Loon from Maastricht University, The Netherlands. He is an expert with a wealth of knowledge on the role of physical activity/exercise and nutrition on muscle adaptation. A lot of his research focuses on protein and protein synthesis. He applies these studies to young healthy individuals, the aged and also has conducted important experiments on people in ICU. He makes it clear that most people, especially athletes, get enough protein in their diet so do not need to take supplements. Are there really non responders to exercise training? Anabolic resistance with aging is due to inactivity. Lots more. A very interesting chat. 0:00. Introduction 2:09. How Luc got into exercise research 6:30. Moving into protein metabolism 8:05. Using tracers to determine exercise metabolism 11:40. How much protein do we need? 16:35. Protein rich foods after exercise 17:00. Generally don't need supplements. 18:20. Food vs supplements 19:35. Effects of lower protein intakes 23:50. Protein turnover in some organs higher than muscle 28:00. Optimal protein intake/additional protein 31:00. Athletes eat more so likely don't need extra protein 34:00. Exercise increases protein uptake for up to 48hr 38:40. Increased protein synthesis doesn't necessarily mean increased muscle mass 42:37. Protein needs of strength vs endurance athletes 44:45. “Protein supplementation” just means above normal diet 49:30. Misunderstanding of research findings re translation 50:43. Need consistent exercise to adapt 56:43. Plant vs animal proteins: not a big issue 1:03:40. We are recycling a lot of protein each day 1:05:33. Exercise stimulus and individual variations of adaptations 1:07:50. Are there really non responders to exercise training? 1:11:09. Re-sensitizing muscle by changing the stimulus 1:12:42. Anabolic resistance with age (due to inactivity?) 1:16:50. Muscle loss with aging largely episodes of bed rest etc 1:20:17. Electrical stimulation prevents muscle loss in ICU 1:25:06. Normal response to resistance training with aging 1:34:22. Protein use during exercise 1:36:16. Protein synthesis occurs during exercise 1:40:00. Protein requirements when injuries/in bed 1:41:40. Does collagen supplementation have benefits? 1:45:20. What further studies would Luc like to do? 1:46:10. Personalized diet and exercise prescription 1:47:09. Sex differences, men and women studies etc 1:49:22. Takeaway messages 1:50:28. What's most important, diet or physical activity? 1:51:55. Outro Inside Exercise brings to you the who's who of research in exercise metabolism, exercise physiology and exercise's effects on health. With scientific rigor, these researchers discuss popular exercise topics while providing practical strategies for all. The interviewer, Emeritus Professor Glenn McConell, has an international research profile following 30 years of Exercise Metabolism research experience while at The University of Melbourne, Ball State University, Monash University, the University of Copenhagen and Victoria University. He has published over 120 peer reviewed journal articles and recently edited an Exercise Metabolism eBook written by world experts on 17 different topics (https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-94305-9). Connect with Inside Exercise and Glenn McConell at: Twitter: @Inside_exercise and @GlennMcConell1 Instagram: insideexercise Facebook: Glenn McConell LinkedIn: Glenn McConell https://www.linkedin.com/in/glenn-mcconell-83475460 ResearchGate: Glenn McConell Email: glenn.mcconell@gmail.com Subscribe to Inside exercise: Spotify: shorturl.at/tyGHL Apple Podcasts: shorturl.at/oFQRU YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@insideexercise Anchor: https://anchor.fm/insideexercise Google Podcasts: shorturl.at/bfhHI Anchor: https://anchor.fm/insideexercise Podcast Addict: https://podcastaddict.com/podcast/4025218 Not medical advice
Kimberley: Welcome, everybody. This is a very exciting episode. I know I'm going to learn so much. Today, we have Caitlin Pinciotti and Shala Nicely, and we're talking about when OCD and PTSD collide and intertwine and how that plays out. This is actually a topic I think we need to talk about more. Welcome, Caitlin, and welcome, Shala. Caitlin: Thank you. Shala: Thanks. Kimberley: Okay. Let's first do a little introduction. Caitlin, would you like to go first introducing yourself? Caitlin: Sure thing. I'm Caitlin Pinciotti. I'm a licensed clinical psychologist and an assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Baylor College of Medicine. I also serve as a co-chair for the IOCDF Trauma and PTSD and OCD SIG. If people are interested in that special interest group as well, that's something that's available and up and running now. Most of my research specifically focuses on OCD, trauma, and PTSD, and particularly the overlap of these things. That's been sort of my focus for the last several years. I'm excited to be here and talk more about this topic. Kimberley: Thank you. You're doing amazing work. I've loved being a part of just watching all of this great research that you're doing. Shala, would you like to introduce yourself? Shala: Yes. I'm Shala Nicely. I am a licensed professional counselor, and I specialize in the treatment of OCD and related disorders. I am the author of Is Fred in the Refrigerator?: Taming OCD and Reclaiming My Life, which is my story, and then co-author with Jon Hershfield of Everyday Mindfulness for OCD: Tips, Tricks, and Skills for Living Joyfully. I also produce the Shoulders Back! newsletter. It has tips and resources for taming OCD. Kimberley: Shoulders Back! was actually the inspiration for this episode. Shala, you recently wrote an article about post-traumatic OCD or how PTSD and OCD collide. Can you tell us about your story, particularly going back to, I think you mentioned, May 2020, and what brought you to write that article? Shala: Sure, and thank you very much for having Caitlin and me on today because I really appreciate the opportunity to talk about this and to get more information out in the world about this intertwined combination of PTSD and OCD. In May of 2020, I moved to a new house, the house that I'm in now. Of course, we had just started the pandemic, and so everybody was working at home, including me. The house that I moved into was in a brand new neighborhood. While the houses on this side of me were completed, the houses behind me and on that side were not completed. I didn't think anything of that when I moved in. But what I moved into was a situation where I was in a construction zone all the time. I was working at home, so there was no escape from it. One day I was walking behind my house, where most of the houses were in the process of being built and there were no sidewalks. As I was walking down the street, I saw, down at the end of the street, a big forklift come down the street where I was walking with my two little dogs backwards at a really high rate of speed, and the forklift driver seemed to be looking that way, and he was going that way. It happened so fast because he was going so quickly that all of a sudden I realized he was going to hit us, my dogs and me, and there was no place for us to go because we were on the road because there was nowhere else for us to be. I screamed bloody murder, and he heard me. I mean, that's how loud I screamed, and he stopped. That was not all that pleasant. I was upset. He was not happy. But we moved on. But my brain didn't move on. After that incident, what I noticed was I was becoming really hypervigilant in my own house and finding the construction equipment. If I go outside, I tense up just knowing that construction equipment is there. Over time, my sleep started becoming disturbed. I started to have flashbacks and what I call flash-forwards, where I would think about all these horrible things that could happen to me that hadn't happened to me yet but could. I'd get lost in these violent fantasies of what might happen and what I need to do to prevent that. I realized that I seemed to be developing symptoms of PTSD. This is where being a therapist was actually quite helpful because I pulled the DSM open one night and I started going through symptoms of PTSD. I'm like, “Oh my gosh, I think I have PTSD.” I think what happened, because having a forklift driver almost hit you, doesn't seem like that could possibly cause PTSD. But if you look at my history, I think that created a link in my brain to an accident I was in when I was four where I did almost die, which is when my mom and I were standing on the side of a road, about to cross. We were going to go between two parked cars. My mom and I stepped between two parked cars, and there was a man driving down the road who was legally blind, and he mistook the line of parked cars where we were standing as moving traffic. He plowed into the end of all the parked cars, which of course made them accordion in, and my mom and I were in the middle of that. I was very seriously injured and probably almost died. My mom was, too. Several months in the hospital, all of that. Of course, at that point—that was 1975—there was no PTSD, because I think— Caitlin, you can correct me—it didn't become a diagnosis until 1980. I have had symptoms—small, low-level symptoms of PTSD probably on and off most of my life, but so low-level, not diagnosable, and not really causing any sort of problems. But I think what happened in my head was that when that forklift almost hit me, it made my brain think, “Oh my gosh, we're in that situation again,” because the forklift was huge. It was the same scale to me as an adult as that car that I was crushed between was when I was four. I think my brain just got confused. Because I was stuck with this construction equipment all day long and I didn't get any break from it, it just made my brain think more and more and more, “Boy, we are really in danger.” Our lives are basically threatened all the time. That began my journey of figuring out what was going on with me and then also trying to understand why my OCD seemed to be getting worse and jumping in to help because I seemed to get all these compulsions that were designed to keep me safe from this construction equipment. It created a process where I was trying to figure out, "What is this? I've got both PTSD now, I've got OCD flaring up, how do I deal with this? What do I do?" The reason why I wanted to write the article for Shoulders Back! and why I asked Caitlin to write it with me was because there just isn't a lot of information out there about this combination where people have PTSD or some sort of trauma, and then the OCD jumps in to help. Now you've got a combination of disorders where you've got trauma or PTSD and OCD, and they're merging together to try to protect you. That's what they think they're doing. They're trying to help you stay safe, but really, what they're doing is they're making your life smaller and smaller and smaller. I wanted to write this article for Shoulders Back! to let people know about my experience so that other people going through this aren't alone. I wanted to ask Caitlin to write it with me because I wanted an expert in this to talk about what it is, how we treat it, what hope do we have for people who are experiencing this going forward. THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN OCD AND PTSD (AND POST-TRAUMATIC OCD) Kimberley: Thank you for sharing that. I do encourage people; I'll link in the show notes if they want to go and read the article as well. Caitlin, from a clinical perspective, what was going on for Shala? Can you break down the differences between OCD and PTSD and what's happening to her? Caitlin: Sure. First, I want to start by thanking Shala again for sharing that story. I know you and I talked about this one-on-one, but I think really sharing personal stories like that obviously involves a lot of courage and vulnerability. It's just so helpful for people to hear examples and to really resonate with, “Wow, maybe I'm not so different or so alone. I thought I was the only one who had experiences like this.” I just want to publicly thank you again for writing that blog and being willing to share these really horrible experiences that you had. In terms of how we would look at this clinically, it's not uncommon for people to, like Shala described, experience trauma and have these low-level symptoms for a while that don't really emerge or don't really reach the threshold of being diagnosable. This can happen, for example, with veterans who return home from war, and it might not be until decades later that they have some sort of significant life event or change. Maybe they've retired, or they're experiencing more stress, or maybe, like Shala, they're experiencing another trauma, and it just brings everything up. This kind of delayed onset of PTSD is, for sure, not abnormal. In this case, it sounds like, just like Shala described, that her OCD really latched onto the trauma, that she had these experiences that reinforced each other. Right now, I've had two experiences where being around moving vehicles has been really dangerous for me. Just like you said, I think you did such a beautiful job of saying that the OCD and PTSD colluded in a way to keep you “safe.” That's the function of it. But of course, we know that those things go to the extreme and can make our lives very small and very distressing. What Shala described about using these compulsions to try to prevent future trauma is something that we see a lot in people who have comorbid OCD and PTSD. We're doing some research now on the different ways that OCD and trauma can intersect. And that's something that keeps coming up as people say, “I engaged in these compulsions as a way to try to prevent the trauma from happening to me again or happening to someone else. Or maybe my compulsions gave me a sense of control, predictability, or certainty about something related to the trauma.” This kind of presentation of OCD sort of functioning as protection against trauma or coping with past trauma as well is really common. STATISTICS OF OCD AND PTSD Kimberley: Would you share a little bit about the statistics between OCD and PTSD and the overlap? Caitlin: Absolutely. I'm excited to share this too, because so much of this work is so recent, and I'm hopeful that it's really going to transform the way that we see the relationships between OCD and PTSD. We know that around 60% of people who have comorbid OCD and PTSD tend to have an experience where PTSD comes first or at the same time, and the OCD comes later. This is sort of that post-traumatic OCD presentation that we're talking about and that Shala talked about in her article. For folks who have this presentation where the PTSD comes first and then the OCD comes along afterwards, unfortunately, we see that those folks tend to have more severe obsessions, more severe compulsions. They're more likely to struggle with suicidality or to have comorbid agoraphobia or panic disorders. Generally speaking, we see a more severe presentation when the OCD comes after the PTSD and trauma, which is likely indicative of what we're discussing, which is that when the OCD develops as a way to cope with trauma, it takes on a mind of its own and can be really severe because it's serving multiple functions in that way. What we've been finding in our recent research—and if folks want to participate, the study will still be active for the next month; we're going to end it at the end of the year, the OCD and Trauma Overlap Study—what we're finding is that of the folks who've participated in the study, 85% of them feel like there's some sort of overlap between their OCD and trauma. Of course, there are lots of different ways that OCD and trauma can overlap. I published a paper previously where we found that about 45% of people with severe OCD in a residential program felt that a traumatic or stressful event was the direct cause of their OCD on setting. But beyond that, we know that OCD and trauma can intersect in terms of the content of obsessions, the function of compulsions, as we've been talking about here, core fears. Some folks describe this, and Shala described this to this, like cyclical relationship where when one thing gets triggered, the other thing gets triggered too. This is really where a lot of the research is focusing on now, is how do these things intersect, how often do they intersect, and what does that really look like for people? Kimberley: Thanks. I found in my practice, for people who have had a traumatic event, as exactly what happened to Shala, and I actually would love for both of you maybe to give some other examples of how this looks for people and how it may be experienced, is let's say the person that was involved in the traumatic event or that place that the traumatic event was recent that recently was revisited just like Shala. Some of them go to doing safety behaviors around that person, place, or event, or they might just notice an uptick in their compulsions that may have completely nothing to do with that. Shala, can you explain a little bit about how you differentiated between what are PTSD symptoms versus OCD, or do you consider them very, very similar? Can you give some insight into that? SYMPTOMS OF OCD & PTSD Shala: Sure. I'll give some examples of the symptoms of OCD that developed after this PTSD developed, but it's all post-traumatic OCDs. I consider it to be different from PTSD, but it is merged with PTSD because it's only there because the PTSD is there. For instance, I developed a lot of checking behaviors around the doors to my house—staring, touching, not able to just look once before I go to bed, had to be positively sure the doors were locked, which, as somebody who does this for a living, who helps people stop doing these compulsions, created a decent amount of shame for me too, as I'm doing these compulsions and saying, “Why am I not taking my own advice here? Why am I getting stuck doing this?” But my OCD thought that the construction equipment was outside; we're inside. We need to make sure it stays outside. The only way we do that is to make sure the door stays locked, which is ridiculous. It's not as if a forklift is going to drive through my front door. As typical with OCD, the compulsions don't make a lot of sense, but there's a loose link there. Another compulsion that I realized after a time was probably linked with PTSD is my people-pleasing, which I've always struggled with. In fact, Kimberley, you and I have done another podcast about people-pleasing, something I've worked really hard on over the years, but it really accelerated after this. I eventually figured out that that was a compulsion to keep people liking me so that they wouldn't attack me. That can be an OCD compulsion all by itself, but it was functioning to help the PTSD. Those would be two examples of compulsions that could be OCD compulsions on their own, but they would not have been there had the PTSD not been there. Kimberley: Caitlin, do you want to add anything about that from symptoms or how it might look and be experienced? Caitlin: Sure, yeah. I think it's spot on that there's this element of separation that we can piece apart. This feels a little bit more like OCD; this feels a little bit more like PTSD, but ultimately they're the same thing, or it's the same behavior. In my work, I usually try to, where I can, piece things apart clinically so that we can figure out what we should do with this particular response that you're having. When it comes to differentiating compulsions, OCD compulsions and PTSD safety behaviors, we can look towards both the presentation of the behavior as well as the function of it. In terms of presentation, I mean, we all know what compulsions can look like. They can be very rigid. There can be a set of rules that they have to be completed with. They're often characterized by a lot of doubting, like in Shala's case, the checking that, “Well, okay, I checked, but I'm not actually sure, so let me check one more time.” Whereas in PTSD, although it's possible for that to happen, those safety behaviors, usually, it's a little bit easier to disengage from. Once I feel like I've established a sense of safety, then I feel like I can disengage from that. There doesn't tend to be kind of that like rigidity and a set of rules or magical thinking that comes along with an OCD compulsion. In terms of the function, and this is where it gets a little bit murky with post-traumatic OCD, broadly speaking, the function of PTSD safety behaviors is to try to prevent trauma from occurring again in the future. Whereas OCD compulsions, generally speaking, are a way to obtain certainty about something or prevent some sort of feared catastrophe related to someone's obsession. But of course, when the OCD is functioning along with the PTSD to cope with trauma, to prevent future trauma, that gets a little bit murkier. In my work, like I said, I try to piece apart, are there elements of this that we can try to resist from more of an ERP OCD standpoint? If there's a set of rules or a specific way that you're checking the door, maybe we can work on reducing some of that while still having that PTSD perspective of being a little bit more lenient about weaning off safety behaviors over time. TREATMENT FOR OCD AND PTSD Kimberley: It's a perfect segue into us talking about the treatment here. Caitlin, could you maybe share the treatment options for these conditions, specifically post-traumatic OCD, but maybe in general, all three? Caitlin: Absolutely. The APA, a few years back, reviewed all the available literature on PTSD treatments, and they created this hierarchy of the treatments that have the most evidence base and went down from there. From their review of all the research that's been done, there were four treatments that emerged as being the most effective for PTSD. That would be broadly cognitive behavioral therapy and cognitive therapy. But then there are two treatments that have been specifically created to target PTSD, and that would be prolonged exposure or PE, and cognitive processing therapy or CBT. These all fall under the umbrella of CBT treatments, but they're just a little bit more specific in their approach. And then, of course, we know of ACT and EMDR and these other treatments that folks use as well. Those fall in the second tier, where there's a lot of evidence that those work for folks as well, but that top tier has the most evidence. These treatments can be used in combination with OCD treatments like ERP. There are different ways that folks can combine them. They can do full protocols of both. They could borrow aspects of some treatments, or they could choose to focus really on if there's a very clear primary diagnosis to treat that one first before moving on to the secondary diagnosis. TREATMENT EXAMPLES FOR POST-TRAUMATIC OCD Kimberley: Amazing. Shala, if you're comfortable, can you give some examples of what treatment looked like for you and what that was like for you both having OCD and PTOCD? Shala: Yes, and I think to set the ground for why the combined treatment working on the PTSD and the OCD together can be so important, a couple of features of how all this was presenting for me was the shift in the focus of the uncertainty. With OCD, it's all about an intolerance of uncertainty and not knowing whether these what-ifs that OCD is getting stuck on are true or going to happen. But what I noticed when I developed PTSD and then the OCD came in to help was that the focus of the uncertainty shifted to it's not what if it's going to happen. The only what-if is when it was going to happen because something bad happening became a given. The uncertainty shifted to only when and where that bad thing was going to happen, which meant that I had lower insight. I've always had pretty good insight into my OCD, even before I got treatment. Many people with OCD too, we know what we're doing doesn't make any sense; we just can't stop doing it. With this combined presentation, there was a part of me that was saying, “Yeah, I really do need to be staring at the door. This is really important to make sure I keep that construction equipment out.” That lowered insight is a feature of this combined presentation that I think makes the type of treatment that we do more important, because we want to address both of the drivers, both the PTSD and the OCD. The treatment that I did was in a staged process. First, I had to find a treatment provider, and Caitlin has a wonderful list of evidence-based treatment providers who can provide treatment for both on her website, which is great. I found somebody actually who ended up being on Caitlin's list and worked with that person, and she wanted to start out doing prolonged exposure, which I pushed back on a little bit. Sometimes when you're a therapist and you're being the client, it's hard not to get in the other person's chair. But I pushed back on that because I said, “Well, I don't think I need to do prolonged exposure on the original accident,” because that's what she was suggesting we do, the accident when I was four. I said, “Because I wrote a book, Is Fred in the Refrigerator? and the very first chapter is the accident,” and I talked all about the accident. She explained, “That's a little bit different than the way we would do it in prolonged exposure.” What's telling, I think, is that when I worked on the audiobook version of Fred—I was doing the narration, I was in a studio, and I had an engineer and a director; they were on one side of the glass, I'm on the other side of the glass—I had a really hard time getting through that first chapter of the book because I kept breaking down. They'd have to stop everything, and I had to get myself together, and we had to start again, and that happened over and over and over again. Even though I had relived, so to speak, this story on paper, I guess that was the problem. I was still reliving it. That's probably the right word. Prolonged exposure is what I needed to do because I needed to be able to be in the presence of that story and have it be a story in the past and not something that I was experiencing right then. I started with prolonged exposure. After I did that, I moved on to cognitive processing therapy because I had a lot of distorted beliefs around life and the trauma that we call “stuck points” in cognitive processing therapy that I needed to work through. There were a good 20 or so stuck-point beliefs. “If I don't treat people perfectly nicely, they're going to attack me somehow.” Things that could be related directly to the compulsions, but also just things like, “The world is dangerous. If I'm not vigilant all the time, something bad is going to happen to me.” I had to work on reframing all of those because I was living my life based on those beliefs, which was keeping the trauma going. I recreated a new set of beliefs and then brought exposure in to work on doing exposures that helped me act as if those new beliefs were the right way to live. If my stuck point is I need to be hypervigilant because of the way something bad is going to happen to me, and I'm walking around like this, which was not an exaggeration of really how I was living my life when this was all happening—if I'm living like that, if I'm acting in a hypervigilant way, I am reinforcing these beliefs. I need to go do exposures where I can walk by a dump truck without all the hypervigilance to let all that tension go, walk by it, realize what I've learned, and walk by it again. It was a combination of all these and making sure that I was doing these exposures, both to stop the compulsions I was doing, like the door checking, but also to start living in a different way so that I wasn't in my approach to life, reinforcing the fact that my PTSD thought the world was dangerous. I also incorporated some DBT (dialectical behavior therapy) because what I found with this combination was I was experiencing a lot more intense emotions than I'd really ever experienced in having OCD by itself. With OCD, it was mostly just out-of-this-world anxiety, but with the combination of PTSD and OCD, there were a lot more emotional swings of all sorts of different kinds that I needed to learn and had to deal with. Part of that too was just learning how to be in the presence of these PTSD symptoms, which are very physiological. Not like OCD symptoms aren't, but they tend to be somewhat more extreme, almost panicky-like feelings. When you're in the flashbacks or flash forwards, you can feel dissociated, and you're numbing out and all of that. I'm learning to be in the presence of those symptoms without reacting negatively to them, because if I'm having some sort of feelings of hypervigilance that are coming because I'm near a piece of construction equipment and I haven't practiced my ERP (Expsoure & Response Prevention) for a while, if I react negatively and say, “Oh my gosh, I shouldn't be having these symptoms. I've done my therapy. I shouldn't be having these feelings right now,” it's just going to make it worse. Really, a lot of this work on the emotional side was learning how to just be with the feelings. If I have symptoms, because they happen every now and then—if I have symptoms, then I'm accepting them. I'm not making them worse by a negative reaction to the reaction my PTSD is having. That was a lot of the tail end of the work, was learning how to be okay with the fact that sometimes you're going to have some PTSD symptoms, and that's okay. But overreacting to them is going to make it worse. Kimberley: Thank you so much for sharing that. I just want to maybe clarify for those who are listening. You talked about CPT, you talked about DBT, and you also talked about prolonged exposure. In the prolonged exposure, you were exposing yourself to the dump truck? Is that correct? Shala: In the prolonged exposure, I was doing two different things. One is the story of the accident that I was in. Going back to that accident that I thought I had fully habituated to through writing my book and doing all that, I had to learn how to be in the presence of that story without reliving it while seeing it as something that happened to me, but it's not happening to me right now. That was the imaginal part of the prolonged exposure. This is where the overlap between the disorders and the treatment can get confusing of what is part of what. You can do the in vivo exposure part of prolonged exposure. Those can also look a lot like just ERP for OCD, where we're going and we're standing beside a dump truck and dropping the hypervigilant safety behaviors because we need to be able to do that to prove to our brain we can tolerate being in this environment. It isn't a dangerous environment to stand by a jump truck. It's not what happened when I was four. Those are the two parts that we're looking at there—the imaginal exposure, which is the story, and then we've got the in vivo exposures, which are going back and being in the presence of triggers, and also from an OCD perspective without compulsive safety behaviors. Kimberley: Amazing. What I would clarify, but please any of you jump in just for the listeners, if this is all new to you, what we're not saying is, let's say if there was someone who was abusive to you as a child, that you would then expose yourself to them for the sake of getting better from your PTSD. I think the decisions you made on what to expose yourself were done with a therapist, Shala? They helped you make those decisions based on what was helpful and effective for you? Do either of you want to speak to what we do and what we don't expose ourselves to in prolonged exposure? Caitlin: Yeah. I'm glad that you're clarifying that too, because this is a big part of PE that is actually a little bit different from ERP. When somebody has experienced trauma, when they have PTSD, their internal alarm system just goes haywire. Just like in Shala's example, anything that serves as a reminder or a trigger of the trauma, the brain just automatically interprets as this thing is dangerous; I have to get away from it. In PE, a lot of what we're doing is helping people to recalibrate that internal alarm system so that they can better learn or relearn safe versus actual threat. When you're developing a hierarchy with someone in PE, you might have very explicit conversations about how safe is this exposure really, because we never want to put someone in a situation where they would be unsafe, such as, like you described, interacting with an abuser. In ERP, we'd probably be less likely to go through the exposures and say, “This one's actually safe; I want you to do it,” because so much of the treatment is about tolerating uncertainty about feared outcomes. But in PE, we might have these explicit conversations. “Do other people you know do this activity or go to this place in town?” There are probably construction sites that wouldn't be safe for Shala to go to. They'd be objectively dangerous, and we'd never have her go and do things that would put her in harm's way. Kimberley: Thank you. I just wanted to clarify on that, particularly for folks who are hearing this for the first time. I'm so grateful that we're having this conversation again. I think it's going to be so eye-opening for people. Caitlin, can you share any final words for the listeners? What resources would you encourage them to listen to? Is there anything that you feel we missed in our conversation today for the listeners? Caitlin: I think, generally, I like to always leave on a note of hope. Again, I'm so grateful that Shala is here and gets to describe her experience with such vulnerability because it gives hope that you can hear about someone who was at their worst, and maybe things felt hopeless in that moment. But she was able to access the help that she needed and use the tools that she had from her own training too, which helped, and really move through this. There isn't sort of a final point where it's like, “Okay, cool, I'm done. The trauma is never going to bother me again.” But it doesn't have to have that grip on your life any longer, and you don't need to rely on OCD to keep you safe from trauma. There are treatments out there that work. Like it was mentioned, I have a directory of OCD and PTSD treatment providers available on my website, which is www.cmpinciotti.com that folks can access if they're looking for a therapist. If you're a therapist listening and you believe that you belong in this directory, there's a way to reach out to me through the website. I'd also say too that if folks are willing and interested, participating in the research that's happening right now really helps us to understand OCD and PTSD better so that we can better support people. If you're interested in participating in the OCD and trauma study that I mentioned, you can email me at OCDTraumaStudy@bcm.edu. I also have another study that's more recent that will help to answer the question of how many people with OCD have experienced trauma and what are those more commonly endorsed ways that people feel that OCD and trauma intersect for them. That one's ultra-brief. It's a 10-minute really quick survey, NationalOCDSurvey@bcm.edu and I'm happy to share that anonymous link with you as well/ Kimberley: Thank you. Thank you so much. Shala, can you share any final words about your experience or what you want the listeners to hear? Shala: One thing I'd like to share is a mistake that I made as part of my recovery that I would love for other people not to make. I'd like to talk a little bit about that, because I think it could be helpful. The mistake that I made in trying to be a good client, a good therapy client, is I was micro-monitoring my recovery. “How many PTSD symptoms am I having? Well, I'm still having symptoms.” I woke up in the middle of the night in a panic, or I had a bad dream, or I had a flash forward. “Why am I having this? I must not be doing things right.” And then I took it a step further and said, “It would be great if I could track the physiological markers of my PTSD so I can make sure I'm keeping them under control.” I got a piece of tracking technology that enabled me to track heart rate and heart rate variability and sleep and all this stuff. At first, it was okay, but then the technology that I was using changed their algorithm, and all of a sudden my stats weren't good anymore, and I started freaking out. “Oh my gosh, my sleep is bad. My atrophy is going down. This is bad. What am I doing?” I was trying with the best of intentions to quantify, make sure I'm doing things right, focus on recovery. But what I was doing was focusing on the remaining symptoms that were there, and I was making them worse. What I have learned is that eventually, things got so bad—in fact, with my sleep—that I got so frustrated with the tracking technology. I said, “I'm not wearing it anymore.” That's one of the things that helped me realize what I was doing. When I stopped tracking my sleep, when I let go of all of this and said, “You know what? I'm going to have symptoms,” things got better. I would encourage people not to overthink their recovery, not to be in their heads and wake up in the morning and ask, “How much PTSD am I having? How much OCD am I having? If I could just get rid of these last little symptoms, life would be great,” because that's just going to keep everything going. I'll say this year, two has been a challenging one for me. I've been involved in three car accidents this year; none of them my fault. One of my neighbors, whom I don't know, called the police on me, thinking I was breaking into my own house, which meant that a whole army of police officers ended up at my house at nine o'clock at night. That's four pretty hard trauma triggers for me in 2023. Those kinds of things are going to happen to all of us every now and then. I had a lot of symptoms. I had a lot of PTSD symptoms and a lot of OCD symptoms in the wake of those events, and that's okay. It's not that I want them to be there, but that's just my brain reacting. That's my brain trying to come to terms with what happened and how safe we are and trying to get back to a level playing field. I think it's really important for anybody else out there who's suffering from one or the other, or both of these disorders to recognize we're going to have symptoms sometimes. Just like with OCD, you're going to have symptoms sometimes. It's okay. It's the pushing away. It's the rejecting of the symptoms. It's the shaming yourself for having the symptoms that causes the symptoms to get worse. Really, there is an element of self-compassion for OCD here. I like having bracelets to remind me. This is the self-compassion bracelet that I've had for years that I wear. By the way, this is not the tracking technology. I'm not using tracking technology anymore. But remembering self-compassion and telling yourself, “I'm having symptoms right now, and this is really hard. I'm anxious; I feel a little bit hypervigilant, but this is part of recovery from PTOCD. Most people with PTOCD experience this at some point. So I'm going to give myself a break, give myself permission to feel what I'm feeling, recognize how much progress I've made, and, when I feel ready, do some of my therapy homework to help me move past this, but in a nonhypervigilant, nonmicro monitoring way.” As I have dropped down into acceptance of these symptoms, my symptoms have gotten a lot better. I think that's a really important takeaway. Yes, we want to work hard in our therapy, yes, we want to do the homework, but we also want to work on accepting because, in the acceptance, we learn that having these symptoms sometimes is just a part of life, and it's okay. I would echo what Caitlin said in that you can have a ton of hope if you have these disorders, in that we have good treatment. Sometimes it takes a little bit longer than working on either one or the other, but that makes sense because you're working on two. But we have good treatment, and you can get back to living a joyful life. Always have hope and don't give up, because sometimes it can be a long road, especially when you have a combined presentation. But you can tame both of these disorders and reclaim your life. Kimberle: You guys are so good. I'm so grateful we got to do this. I feel like it's such an important conversation, and both of you bring such wonderful expertise and lived experience. I'm so grateful. Thank you both for coming on and talking about this with me today. I'm so grateful. Shala: Thank you for having us. Caitlin: Yes, thank you. This was wonderful. Kimberley: Thank you so much, guys. RESOURCES: The two studies CAITLIN referenced are: OCD/Trauma Overlap Study: An anonymous online survey for any adult who has ever experienced trauma, and can be accessed at https://bcmpsych.sjc1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_0j4ULJv3DxUaKtE or by emailing OCDTraumaStudy@bcm.edu National OCD Survey: An anonymous 10-minute online survey for any U.S. adult who has ever had OCD, and can be accessed at https://bcmpsych.sjc1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_9LdbaR2yrj0oV7g or by emailing NationalOCDSurvey@bcm.edu
On the latest episode of the Long Ash Podcast Nick and Chris discuss the state of General Cigars and how they feel they're on the precipice of something great. Listen to the full episode now!
Jason Gottesman and State Rep. Jesse Topper are back to discuss education issues – Successfully funding higher education, Issues remain on educational tax credits and the school code.
Friday, 17 November 2023 But Paul said, “I am a Jew from Tarsus, in Cilicia, a citizen of no mean city; and I implore you, permit me to speak to the people.” Acts 21:39 More precisely, the verse reads, “And Paul said, indeed, I am a man, a Jew of Tarsus of Cilicia – not an insignificant city. And I beg you, allow me to speak to the people” (CG). In the previous verse, the Roman commander had asked Paul if he wasn't the Egyptian who had stirred up a rebellion among the people and who led four thousand Sicarii into the wilderness. In response to that, it next says, “And Paul said, indeed, I am a man, a Jew.” Where the man just referred to was clearly an Egyptian who led Jews, Paul is a Jew who was being persecuted by Jews. He is contrasting himself to the Egyptian. The intent is surely to reveal to the commander that there was more hanky-panky going on than first met the eye. With that, he continues identifying himself, saying, “of Tarsus of Cilicia.” This is the second and last time that Tarsus is identified this way. The first was in Acts 9:11. Being from Tarsus meant that he was a part of the dispersion. Thus, he would be familiar with the way Gentiles lived. He would also more than likely speak several languages and dialects (see 1 Corinthians 14:18), including the Greek he is now conversing in. The particular spelling of the name in Greek is Tarseus. It is also called Tarsus in Acts 9:30, 11:25, and 22:3. James Strong speculates that the name comes from tarsos, meaning a flat basket. If so, it may reflect the layout of the city. It is one of the longest continually inhabited cities in the world. Paul came from the opposite direction of Egypt, and he claimed to be a citizen from there. If he was found lying, it would only make it worse on him. Hence, there was every reason to believe him. Paul next notes that Tarsus is “not an insignificant city.” The Greek word used to describe it is asémos. It means “not distinguished.” Vincent's Word Studies says – “...without a mark or token (σῆμα [sema]). Hence used of uncoined gold or silver: of oracles which give no intelligible response: of inarticulate voices: of disease without distinctive symptoms. Generally, as here, undistinguished, mean. There is a conscious feeling of patriotism in Paul's expression.” Ellicott further notes, “In addition to all its fame for culture, the town of Tarsus bore on its coins the word METROPOLIS-AUTONOMOS (Independent).” Having confirmed his identity, thus demonstrating that he was not a rabble-rouser, he then makes a formal request to speak to the people, saying, “And I beg you, allow me to speak to the people.” It is a formal request to the man who could allow it to be realized. His boldness in asking demonstrates that he was hoping it would make a difference in the outcome of the situation. Being a Jew and also not an instigator, then he must want to make a defense against their treatment of him. Life application: As Paul does elsewhere, he appeals to his cultural and national identity. He was willing to work within the framework of the society in which he lived, using his particular identity for the benefit of himself and the ministry. This is completely the opposite of how many cults and sects treat the national identity they possess. They shun participating in various aspects of society that affect them while actively participating in others. They claim they are not of this world, completely abusing the intent of Jesus' words, in order to not participate. At the same time, they have driver's licenses, registered marriages, and (you betcha they do) pay taxes, claiming it is right and responsible to do so. And yet, they refuse to vote, engage in politics, participate in other cultural events, etc. It is a failed “pick and choose” type of lifestyle that harms the very goals they set forth for themselves in the country in which they live. This is completely the opposite of the biblical model found in both testaments of Scripture. Don't hesitate to participate. Your failure to do so may result in the loss of rights you possess or in harm to others (such as the Jews during Nazi Germany). You have a voice as a citizen of your nation. Use it. Lord God, we are citizens of heaven because of Jesus, but we are also living out earthly lives in the lands which You have ordained for us. May we be responsible citizens of both as we await our departure from here and the trip to our final, heavenly, home with You. Help us in this. Amen.
Thaddeus shares his experience, strength, and hope. The Laguna Niguel Speaker Meeting gathers at 7:00 p.m. every Sunday on Zoom and Live in person, please join us at https://zoom.us/s/451797737 Password: NewYMCA. Join us live at Mission Lutheran Church. 24360 Yosemite Rd, Laguna Niguel, CA 92677. 24360 Yosemite Rd - Google Maps. Generally, 2 shares (a 10 minute and 40 minute) are published mid-week, which were recorded the previous Sunday.Please contact us at lagunaniguelspeakermeeting@gmail.com for more information about the meeting or any comments you may have. Thanks for listening.RSS: Feed: https://dashboard.rss.com/podcasts/lagunaniguelspeakermeeting/
Neil shares his experience, strength, and hope. The Laguna Niguel Speaker Meeting gathers at 7:00 p.m. every Sunday on Zoom and Live in person, please join us at https://zoom.us/s/451797737 Password: NewYMCA. Join us live at Mission Lutheran Church. 24360 Yosemite Rd, Laguna Niguel, CA 92677. 24360 Yosemite Rd - Google Maps. Generally, 2 shares (a 10 minute and 40 minute) are published mid-week, which were recorded the previous Sunday.Please contact us at lagunaniguelspeakermeeting@gmail.com for more information about the meeting or any comments you may have. Thanks for listening.RSS: Feed: https://dashboard.rss.com/podcasts/lagunaniguelspeakermeeting/
Toxicity happens in every profession. It happens on Wall Street, it happens in the military, and it happens in sports. Generally, it's magnified in positions when the rules or positions put a toxic person “in charge” of others. This is especially an issue when that group is made up of kids that can't take a stand against the toxicity. On this episode, Joe and Daniel discuss what a Toxic Coach looks like, why you need to deal with them now rather than later, and just how you can go about letting a coach go.
Welcome to Harry Potter Theory. Today we're ranking the most powerful PURE BLOOD wizards in the wizarding world. Blood status is one of the most controversial aspects of the wizarding world- a concept in which wizarding families can be distinguished by the level of magically-endowed family members. Generally speaking, people are slotted in to one of the following categories: Pure-blood, half-blood or muggle. We're introduced to quite a few characters in the Harry Potter story that come from these pure blood lines, and they certainly aren't afraid to remind us of it..Malfoys.... However what we must remember is that at the end of the day, PURE BLOOD status doesn't mean ANYTHING. The most powerful PURE BLOODS are NOT the most powerful wizards- in fact, a top 10 list for the most powerful wizards would only include a couple of the people in this list. The majority of powerful witches and wizards in the wizarding world are actually HALF-BLOODS. Before we get started I want to mention a couple of things. First of all,I'm going to OMIT the Hogwarts founders and the Peverells as they're sort of OP. Second of all, I'm going to TRY MY BEST to only include one person from each wizarding family, as otherwise the list could get quite overcrowded with one surname. Thirdly, I want you to pause the video and COMMENT your top 10 list down below before you dive in. Anyway, without further ado- here is my TOP 10 list of the most powerful PURE BLOOD wizards in the wizarding world. If I miss or forget a name that is deserving of a spot, please forgive me.... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Alex Lawrence, Field CISO at Sysdig, joins Corey on Screaming in the Cloud to discuss how he went from studying bioluminescence and mycology to working in tech, and his stance on why open source is the future of cloud security. Alex draws an interesting parallel between the creative culture at companies like Pixar and the iterative and collaborative culture of open-source software development, and explains why iteration speed is crucial in cloud security. Corey and Alex also discuss the pros and cons of having so many specialized tools that tackle specific functions in cloud security, and the different postures companies take towards their cloud security practices. About AlexAlex Lawrence is a Field CISO at Sysdig. Alex has an extensive history working in the datacenter as well as with the world of DevOps. Prior to moving into a solutions role, Alex spent a majority of his time working in the world of OSS on identity, authentication, user management and security. Alex's educational background has nothing to do with his day-to-day career; however, if you'd like to have a spirited conversation on bioluminescence or fungus, he'd be happy to oblige.Links Referenced: Sysdig: https://sysdig.com/ sysdig.com/opensource: https://sysdig.com/opensource falco.org: https://falco.org TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn. This promoted guest episode is brought to us by our friends over at Sysdig, and they have brought to me Alexander Lawrence, who's a principal security architect over at Sysdig. Alexander, thank you for joining me.Alex: Hey, thanks for having me, Corey.Corey: So, we all have fascinating origin stories. Invariably you talk to someone, no one in tech emerged fully-formed from the forehead of some God. Most of us wound up starting off doing this as a hobby, late at night, sitting in the dark, rarely emerging. You, on the other hand, studied mycology, so watching the rest of us sit in the dark and growing mushrooms was basically how you started, is my understanding of your origin story. Accurate, not accurate at all, or something in between?Alex: Yeah, decently accurate. So, I was in school during the wonderful tech bubble burst, right, high school era, and I always told everybody, there's no way I'm going to go into technology. There's tons of people out there looking for a job. Why would I do that? And let's face it, everybody expected me to, so being an angsty teenager, I couldn't have that. So, I went into college looking into whatever I thought was interesting, and it turned out I had a predilection to go towards fungus and plants.Corey: Then you realized some of them glow and that wound up being too bright for you, so all right, we're done with this; time to move into tech?Alex: [laugh]. Strangely enough, my thesis, my capstone, was on the coevolution of bioluminescence across aquatic and terrestrial organisms. And so, did a lot of focused work on specifically bioluminescent fungus and bioluminescing fish, like Photoblepharon palpebratus and things like that.Corey: When I talk to people who are trying to figure out, okay, I don't like what's going on in my career, I want to do something different, and their assumption is, oh, I have to start over at square one. It's no, find the job that's halfway between what you're doing now and what you want to be doing, and make lateral moves rather than starting over five years in or whatnot. But I have to wonder, how on earth did you go from A to B in this context?Alex: Yeah, so I had always done tech. My first job really was in tech at the school districts that I went to in high school. And so, I went into college doing tech. I volunteered at the ELCA and other organizations doing tech, and so it basically funded my college career. And by the time I finished up through grad school, I realized my life was going to be writing papers so that other people could do the research that I was coming up with, and I thought that sounded like a pretty miserable life.And so, it became a hobby, and the thing I had done throughout my entire college career was technology, and so that became my new career and vocation. So, I was kind of doing both, and then ended up landing in tech for the job market.Corey: And you've effectively moved through the industry to the point where you're now in security architecture over at Sysdig, which, when I first saw Sysdig launch many years ago, it was, this is an interesting tool. I can see observability stories, I can see understanding what's going on at a deep level. I liked it as a learning tool, frankly. And it makes sense, with the benefit of hindsight, that oh, yeah, I suppose it does make some sense that there are security implications thereof. But one of the things that you've said that I really want to dig into that I'm honestly in full support of because it'll irritate just the absolute worst kinds of people is—one of the core beliefs that you espouse is that security when it comes to cloud is inherently open-source-based or at least derived. I don't want to misstate your position on this. How do you view it?Alex: Yeah. Yeah, so basically, the stance I have here is that the future of security in cloud is open-source. And the reason I say that is that it's a bunch of open standards that have basically produced a lot of the technologies that we're using in that stack, right, your web servers, your automation tooling, all of your different components are built on open stacks, and people are looking to other open tools to augment those things. And the reality is, is that the security environment that we're in is changing drastically in the cloud as opposed to what it was like in the on-premises world. On-prem was great—it still is great; a lot of folks still use it and thrive on it—but as we look at the way software is built and the way we interface with infrastructure, the cloud has changed that dramatically.Basically, things are a lot faster than they used to be. The model we have to use in order to make sure our security is good has dramatically changed, right, and all that comes down to speed and how quickly things evolve. I tend to take a position that one single brain—one entity, so to speak—can't keep up with that rapid evolution of things. Like, a good example is Log4j, right? When Log4j hit this last year, that was a pretty broad attack that affected a lot of people. You saw open tooling out there, like Falco and others, they had a policy to detect and help triage that within a couple of hours of it hitting the internet. Other proprietary tooling, it took much longer than two hours.Corey: Part of me wonders what the root cause behind that delay is because it's not that the engineers working at these companies are somehow worse than folks in the open communities. In some cases, they're the same people. It feels like it's almost corporate process ossification of, “Okay, we built a thing. Now, we need to make sure it goes through branding and legal and marketing and we need to bring in 16 other teams to make this work.” Whereas in the open-source world, it feels like there's much more of a, “I push the deploy button and it's up. The end.” There is no step two.Alex: [laugh]. Yeah, so there is certainly a certain element of that. And I think it's just the way different paradigms work. There's a fantastic book out there called Creativity, Inc., and it's basically a book about how Pixar manages itself, right? How do they deal with creating movies? How do they deal with doing what they do, well?And really, what it comes down to is fostering a culture of creativity. And that typically revolves around being able to fail fast, take risks, see if it sticks, see if it works. And it's not that corporate entities don't do that. They certainly do, but again, if you think about the way the open-source world works, people are submitting, you know, PRs, pull requests, they're putting out different solutions, different fixes to problems, and the ones that end up solving it the best are often the ones that end up coming to the top, right? And so, it's just—the way you iterate is much more akin to that kind of creativity-based mindset that I think you get out of traditional organizations and corporations.Corey: There's also, I think—I don't know if this is necessarily the exact point, but it feels like it's at least aligned with it—where there was for a long time—by which I mean, pretty much 40 years at this point—a debate between open disclosure and telling people of things that you have found in vendors products versus closed disclosure; you only wind—or whatever the term is where you tell the vendor, give them time to fix it, and it gets out the door. But we've seen again and again and again, where researchers find something, report it, and then it sits there, in some cases for years, but then when it goes public and the company looks bad as a result, they scramble to fix it. I wish it were not this way, but it seems that in some cases, public shaming is the only thing that works to get companies to secure their stuff.Alex: Yeah, and I don't know if it's public shaming, per se, that does it, or it's just priorities, or it's just, you know, however it might go, there's always been this notion of, “Okay, we found a breach. Let's disclose appropriately, you know, between two entities, give time to remediate.” Because there is a potential risk that if you disclose publicly that it can be abused and used in very malicious ways—and we certainly don't want that—but there also is a certain level of onus once the disclosure happens privately that we got to go and take care of those things. And so, it's a balancing act.I don't know what the right solution is. I mean, if I did, I think everybody would benefit from things like that, but we just don't know the proper answer. The workflow is complex, it is difficult, and I think doing our due diligence to make sure that we disclose appropriately is the right path to go down. When we get those disclosures we need to take them seriously is when it comes down to.Corey: What I find interesting is your premise that the future of cloud security is open-source. Like, I could make a strong argument that today, we definitely have an open-source culture around cloud security and need to, but you're talking about that shifting along the fourth dimension. What's the change? What do you see evolving?Alex: Yeah, I think for me, it's about the collaboration. I think there are segments of industries that communicate with each other very, very well, and I think there's others who do a decent job, you know, behind closed doors, and I think there's others, again, that don't communicate at all. So, all of my background predominantly has been in higher-ed, K-12, academia, and I find that a lot of those organizations do an extremely good job of partnering together, working together to move towards, kind of, a greater good, a greater goal. An example of that would be a group out in the Pacific Northwest called NWACC—the NorthWest Academic Computing Consortium. And so, it's every university in the Northwest all come together to have CIO Summits, to have Security Summits, to trade knowledge, to work together, basically, to have a better overall security posture.And they do it pretty much out in the open and collaborating with each other, even though they are also direct competitors, right? They all want the same students. It's a little bit of a different way of thinking, and they've been doing it for years. And I'm finding that to be a trend that's happening more and more outside of just academia. And so, when I say the future is open, if you think about the tooling academia typically uses, it is very open-source-oriented, it is very collaborative.There's no specifications on things like eduPerson to be able to go and define what a user looks like. There's things like, you know, CAS and Shibboleth to do account authorization and things like that. They all collaborate on tooling in that regard. We're seeing more of that in the commercial space as well. And so, when I say the future of security in cloud is open-source, it's models like this that I think are becoming more and more effective, right?It's not just the larger entities talking to each other. It's everybody talking with each other, everybody collaborating with each other, and having an overall better security posture. The reality is, is that the folks we're defending ourselves against, they already are communicating, they already are using that model to work together to take down who they view as their targets: us, right? We need to do the same to be able to keep up. We need to be able to have those conversations openly, work together openly, and be able to set that security posture across that kind of overall space.Corey: There's definitely a concern that if okay, you have all these companies and community collaborating around security aspects in public, that well won't the bad actors be able to see what they're looking at and how they're approaching it and, in some cases, move faster than they can or, in other cases, effectively wind up polluting the conversation by claiming to be good actors when they're not. And there's so many different ways that this can manifest. It feels like fear is always the thing that stops people from going down this path, but there is some instance of validity to that I would imagine.Alex: Yeah, no. And I think that certainly is true, right? People are afraid to let go of, quote-unquote, “The keys to their kingdom,” their security posture, their things like that. And it makes sense, right? There's certain things that you would want to not necessarily talk about openly, like, specifically, you know, what Diffie–Hellman key exchange you're using or something like that, but there are ways to have these conversations about risks and posture and tooling and, you know, ways you approach it that help everybody else out, right?If someone finds a particularly novel way to do a detection with some sort of piece of tooling, they probably should be sharing that, right? Let's not keep it to ourselves. Traditionally, just because you know the tool doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to have a way in. Certainly, you know, it can give you a path or a vector to go after, but if we can at least have open standards about how we implement and how we can go about some of these different concepts, we can all gain from that, so to speak.Corey: Part of me wonders if the existing things that the large companies are collaborating on lead to a culture that specifically pushes back against this. A classic example from my misspent youth is that an awful lot of the anti-abuse departments at these large companies are in constant communication. Because if you work at Microsoft, or Google or Amazon, your adversary, as you see it, in the Trust and Safety Group is not those other companies. It's bad actors attempting to commit fraud. So, when you start seeing particular bad actors emerging from certain parts of the network, sharing that makes everything better because there's an understanding there that it's not, “Oh, Microsoft has bad security this week,” or, “Google will wind up approving fraudulent accounts that start spamming everyone.”Because the takeaway by theby the customers is not that this one company is bad; it's oh, the cloud isn't safe. We shouldn't use cloud. And that leads to worse outcomes for basically everyone. But they're als—one of the most carefully guarded secrets at all these companies is how they do fraud prevention and spam detection because if adversaries find that out, working around them becomes a heck of a lot easier. I don't know, for example, how AWS determines whether a massive account overage in a free-tier account is considered to be a bad actor or someone who made a legitimate mistake. I can guess, but the actual signal that they use is something that they would never in a million years tell me. They probably won't even tell each other specifics of that.Alex: Certainly, and I'm not advocating that they let all of the details out, per se, but I think it would be good to be able to have more of an open posture in terms of, like, you know what tooling do they use? How do they accomplish that feat? Like, are they looking at a particular metric? How do they basically handle that posture going forward? Like, what can I do to replicate a similar concept?I don't need to know all the details, but would be nice if they embrace, you know, open tooling, like say a Trivy or a Falco or whatever the thing is, right, they're using to do this process and then contribute back to that project to make it better for everybody. When you kind of keep that stuff closed-source, that's when you start running into that issue where, you know, they have that, quote-unquote, “Advantage,” that other folks aren't getting. Maybe there's something we can do better in the community, and if we can all be better, it's better for everybody.Corey: There's a constant customer pain in the fact that every cloud provider, for example, has its own security perspective—the way that identity is managed, the way that security boundaries exist, the way that telemetry from these things winds up getting represented—where a number of companies that are looking at doing things that have to work across cloud for a variety of reasons—some good, some not so good—have decided that, okay, we're just going to basically treat all these providers as, more or less, dumb pipes and dumb infrastructure. Great, we're just going to run Kubernetes on all these things, and then once it's inside of our cluster, then we'll build our own security overlay around all of these things. They shouldn't have to do that. There should be a unified set of approaches to these things. At least, I wish there were.Alex: Yeah, and I think that's where you see a lot of the open standards evolving. A lot of the different CNCF projects out there are basically built on that concept. Like, okay, we've got Kubernetes. We've got a particular pipeline, we've got a particular type of implementation of a security measure or whatever it might be. And so, there's a lot of projects built around how do we standardize those things and make them work cross-functionally, regardless of where they're running.It's actually one of the things I quite like about Kubernetes: it makes it be a little more abstract for the developers or the infrastructure folks. At one point in time, you had your on-premises stuff and you built your stuff towards how your on-prem looked. Then you went to the cloud and started building yourself to look like what that cloud look like. And then another cloud showed up and you had to go use that one. Got to go refactor your application to now work in that cloud.Kubernetes has basically become, like, this gigantic API ball to interface with the clouds, and you don't have to build an application four different ways anymore. You can build it one way and it can work on-prem, it can work in Google, Azure, IBM, Oracle, you know, whoever, Amazon, whatever it needs to be. And then that also enables us to have a standard set of tools. So, we can use things like, you know, Rego or we can use things like Falco or we can use things that allow us to build tooling to secure those things the same way everywhere we go. And the benefit of most of those tools is that they're also configured, you know, via some level of codification, and so we can have a repository that contains our posture: apply that posture to that cluster, apply it to the other cluster in the other environment. It allows us to automate these things, go quicker, build the posture at the very beginning, along with that application.Corey: One of the problems I feel as a customer is that so many of these companies have a model for interacting with security issues that's frankly obnoxious. I am exhausted by the amount of chest-thumping, you'll see on keynote stages, all of the theme, “We're the best at security.” And whenever a vulnerability researcher reports something of a wide variety of different levels of severity, it always feels like the first concern from the company is not fix the issue, but rather, control the messaging around it.Whenever there's an issue, it's very clear that they will lean on people to rephrase things, not use certain words. It's, I don't know if the words used to describe this cross-tenant vulnerability are the biggest problem you should be focusing on right now. Yes, I understand that you can walk and chew gum at the same time as a big company, but it almost feels like the researchers are first screaming into a void, and then they're finally getting attention, but from all the people they don't want to get the attention from. It feels like this is not a welcoming environment for folks to report these things in good faith.Alex: [sigh]. Yeah, it's not. And I don't know what the solution is to that particular problem. I have opinions about why that exists. I won't go into those here, but it's cumbersome. It's difficult. I don't envy a lot of those research organizations.They're fantastic people coming up with great findings, they find really interesting stuff that comes out, but when you have to report and do that due diligence, that portion is not that fun. And then doing, you know, the fallout component, right: okay, now we have this thing we have to report, we have to go do something to fix it, you're right. I mean, people do often get really spun up on the verbiage or the implications and not just go fix the problem. And so again, if you have ways to mitigate that are more standards-based, that aren't specific to a particular cloud, like, you can use an open-source tool to mitigate, that can be quite the advantage.Corey: One of the challenges that I see across a wide swath of tooling and approaches to it have been that when I was trying to get some stuff to analyze CloudTrail logs in my own environment, I was really facing a bimodal distribution of options. On one end of the spectrum, it's a bunch of crappy stuff—or good stuff; hard to say—but it's all coming off of GitHub, open-source, build it yourself, et cetera. Good luck. And that's okay, awesome, but there's business value here and I'm thrilled to pay experts to make this problem go away.The other end of the spectrum is commercial security tooling, and it is almost impossible in my experience to find anything that costs less than $1,000 a month to start providing insight from a security perspective. Now, I understand the market forces that drive this. Truly I do, and I'm sympathetic to them. It is just as easy to sell $50,000 worth of software as it is five to an awful lot of companies, so yeah, go where the money is. But it also means that the small end of the market as hobbyists, as startups are just getting started, there is a price barrier to engaging in the quote-unquote, “Proper way,” to do security.So, the posture suffers. We'll bolt security on later when it becomes important is the philosophy, and we've all seen how well that plays out in the fullness of time. How do you square that circle? I think the answer has to be open-source improving to the point where it's not just random scripts, but renowned projects.Alex: Correct, yeah, and I'd agree with that. And so, we're kind of in this interesting phase. So, if you think about, like, raw Linux applications, right, Linux, always is the tenant that you build an application to do one thing, does that one thing really, really, really well. And then you ended up with this thing called, like, you know, the Cacti monitoring stack. And so, you ended up having, like, 600 tools you strung together to get this one monitoring function done.We're kind of in a similar spot in a lot of ways right now, in the open-source security world where, like, if you want to do scanning, you can do, like, Clair or you can do Trivy or you have a couple different choices, right? If you want to do posture, you've got things like Qbench that are out there. If you want to go do runtime security stuff, you've got something like Falco. So, you've got all these tools to string together, right, to give you all of these different components. And if you want, you can build it yourself, and you can run it yourself and it can be very fun and effective.But at some point in your life, you probably don't want to be care-and-feeding your child that you built, right? It's 18 years later now, and you want to go back to having your life, and so you end up buying a tool, right? That's why Gartner made this whole CNAP category, right? It's this humongous category of products that are putting all of these different components together into one gigantic package. And the whole goal there is just to make lives a little bit easier because running all the tools yourself, it's fun, I love it, I did it myself for a long time, but eventually, you know, you want to try to work on some other stuff, too.Corey: At one point, I wound up running the numbers of all of the first-party security offerings that AWS offered, and for most use cases of significant scale, the cost for those security services was more than the cost of the theoretical breach that they'd be guarding against. And I think that there's a very dangerous incentive that arises when you start turning security observability into your own platform as a profit center. Because it's, well, we could make a lot of money if we don't actually fix the root issue and just sell tools to address and mitigate some of it—not that I think that's the intentional direction that these companies are taking these things and I don't want to ascribe malice to them, but you can feel that start to be the trend that some decisions get pushed in.Alex: Yeah, I mean, everything comes down to data, right? It has to be stored somewhere, processed somewhere, analyzed somewhere. That always has a cost with it. And so, that's always this notion of the shared security model, right? We have to have someone have ownership over that data, and most of the time, that's the end-user, right? It's their data, it's their responsibility.And so, these offerings become things that they have that you can tie into to work within the ecosystem, work within their infrastructure to get that value out of your data, right? You know, where is the security model going? Where do I have issues? Where do I have misconfigurations? But again, someone has to pay for that processing time. And so, that ends up having a pretty extreme cost to it.And so, it ends up being a hard problem to solve. And it gets even harder if you're multi-cloud, right? You can't necessarily use the tooling of AWS inside of Azure or inside of Google. And other products are trying to do that, right? They're trying to be able to let you integrate their security center with other clouds as well.And it's kind of created this really interesting dichotomy where you almost have frenemies, right, where you've got, you know, a big Azure customer who's also a big AWS customer. Well, they want to go use Defender on all of their infrastructure, and Microsoft is trying to do their best to allow you to do that. Conversely, not all clouds operate in that same capacity. And you're correct, they all come at extremely different costs, they have different price models, they have different ways of going about it. And it becomes really difficult to figure out what is the best path forward.Generally, my stance is anything is better than nothing, right? So, if your only choice is using Defender to do all your stuff and it cost you an arm or leg, unfortunate, but great; at least you got something. If the path is, you know, go use this random open-source thing, great. Go do that. Early on, when I'd been at—was at Sysdig about five years ago, my big message was, you know, I don't care what you do. At least scan your containers. If you're doing nothing else in life, use Clair; scan the darn things. Don't do nothing.That's not really a problem these days, thankfully, but now we're more to a world where it's like, well, okay, you've got your containers, you've got your applications running in production. You've scanned them, that's great, but you're doing nothing at runtime. You're doing nothing in your posture world, right? Do something about it. So, maybe that is buy the enterprise tool from the cloud you're working in, buy it from some other vendor, use the open-source tool, do something.Thankfully, we live in a world where there are plenty of open tools out there we can adopt and leverage. You used the example of CloudTrail earlier. I don't know if you saw it, but there was a really, really cool talk at SharkFest last year from Gerald Combs where they leveraged Wireshark to be able to read CloudTrail logs. Which I thought was awesome.Corey: That feels more than a little bit ridiculous, just because it's—I mean I guess you could extract the JSON object across the wire then reassemble it. But, yeah, I need to think on that one.Alex: Yeah. So, it's actually really cool. They took the plugins from Falco that exist and they rewired Wireshark to leverage those plugins to read the JSON data from the CloudTrail and then wired it into the Wireshark interface to be able to do a visual inspect of CloudTrail logs. So, just like you could do, like, a follow this IP with a PCAP, you could do the same concept inside of your cloud log. So, if you look up Logray, you'll find it on the internet out there. You'll see demos of Gerald showing it off. It was a pretty darn cool way to use a visualization, let's be honest, most security professionals already know how to use in a more modern infrastructure.Corey: One last topic that I want to go into with you before we call this an episode is something that's been bugging me more and more over the years—and it annoyed me a lot when I had to deal with this stuff as a SOC 2 control owner and it's gotten exponentially worse every time I've had to deal with it ever since—and that is the seeming view of compliance and security as being one and the same, to the point where in one of my accounts that I secured rather well, I thought, I installed security hub and finally jumped through all those hoops and paid the taxes and the rest and then waited 24 hours to gather some data, then 24 hours to gather more. Awesome. Applied the AWS-approved a foundational security benchmark to it and it started shrieking its bloody head off about all of the things that were insecure and not configured properly. One of them, okay, great, it complained that the ‘Block all S3 Public Access' setting was not turned on for the account. So, I turned that on. Great.Now, it's still complaining that I have not gone through and also enabled the ‘Block Public Access Setting' on each and every S3 bucket within it. That is not improving your security posture in any meaningful way. That is box-checking so that someone in a compliance role can check that off and move on to the next thing on the clipboard. Now, originally, they started off being good-intentioned, but the result is I'm besieged by these things that don't actually matter and that means I'm not going to have time to focus on the things that actually do. Please tell me I'm wrong on some of this.Alex: [laugh].Corey: I really need to hear that.Alex: I can't. Unfortunately, I agree with you that a lot of that seems erroneous. But let's be honest, auditors have a job for a reason.Corey: Oh, I'm not besmirching the role of the auditor. Far from it. The problem I run into is that it's the Human Nessus report that dumps out, “Here's the 700 things to go fix in your environment,” as opposed to, “Here's the five things you can do right now that will meaningfully improve your security posture.”Alex: Yeah. And so, I think that's a place we see a lot of vendors moving, and I think that is the right path forward. Because we are in a world where we generate reports that are miles and miles long, we throw them over a wall to somebody, and that person says, “Are you crazy?” Like, “You want me to go do what with my time?” Like, “No. I can't. No. This is way too much.”And so, if we can narrow these things down to what matters the most today, and then what can we get rid of tomorrow, that makes life better for everybody. There are certainly ways to accomplish that across a lot of different dimensions, be that vulnerability management, or configuration management stuff, runtime stuff, and that is certainly the way we should approach it. Unfortunately, not all frameworks allow us to look at it that way.Corey: I mean, even AWS's thing here is yelling at me for a number of services not having encryption-at-rest turned on, like CloudTrail logs, or SNS topics. It's okay, let's be very clear what that is defending against: someone stealing drives out of a data center and taking them off to view the data. Is that something that I need to worry about in a public cloud provider context? Not unless I'm the CIA or something pretty close to that. I mean, if you can get my data out of an AWS data center and survive, congratulations, I kind of feel like you've earned it at this point. But that obscures things I need to be doing that I'm not.Alex: Back in the day, I had a customer who used to have—they had storage arrays and their storage arrays' logins were the default login that they came with the array. They never changed it. You just logged in with admin and no password. And I was like, “You know, you should probably fix that.” And he sent a message back saying, “Yeah, you know, maybe I should, but my feeling is that if it got that far into my infrastructure where they can get to that interface, I'm already screwed, so it doesn't really matter to me if I set that admin password or not.”Corey: Yeah, there is a defense-in-depth argument to be made. I am not disputing that, but the Cisco world is melting down right now because of a bunch of very severe vulnerabilities that have been disclosed. But everything to exploit these things always requires, well you need access to the management interface. Back when I was a network administrator at Chapman University in 2006, even then, I knew, “Well, we certainly don't want to put the management interfaces on the same VLAN that's passing traffic.”So, is it good that there's an unpatched vulnerability there? No, but Shodan, the security vulnerability search engine shows over 80,000 instances that are affected on the public internet. It would never have occurred to me to put the management interface of important network gear on the public internet. That just is… I don't understand that.Alex: Yeah.Corey: So, on some level, I think the lesson here is that there's always someone who has something else to focus on at a given moment, and… where it's a spectrum: no one is fully secure, but ideally, you don't want to be the lowest of low-hanging fruit.Alex: Right, right. I mean, if you were fully secure, you'd just turn it off, but unfortunately, we can't do that. We have to have it be accessible because that's our jobs. And so, if we're having it be accessible, we got to do the best we can. And I think that is a good point, right? Not being the worst should be your goal, at the very, very least.Doing bare minimums, looking at those checks, deciding if they're relevant for you or not, just because it says the configuration is required, you know, is it required in your use case? Is it required for your requirements? Like, you know, are you a FedRAMP customer? Okay, yeah, it's probably a requirement because, you know, it's FedRAMP. They're going to tell you got to do it. But is it your dev environment? Is it your demo stuff? You know, where does it exist, right? There's certain areas where it makes sense to deal with it and certain areas where it makes sense to take care of it.Corey: I really want to thank you for taking the time to talk me through your thoughts on all this. If people want to learn more, where's the best place for them to find you?Alex: Yeah, so they can either go to sysdig.com/opensource. A bunch of open-source resources there. They can go to falco.org, read about the stuff on that site, as well. Lots of different ways to kind of go and get yourself educated on stuff in this space.Corey: And we will, of course, put links to that into the show notes. Thank you so much for being so generous with your time. I appreciate it.Alex: Yeah, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.Corey: Alexander Lawrence, principal security architect at Sysdig. I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn, and this episode has been brought to us by our friends, also at Sysdig. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you've hated this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, along with an insulting comment that I will then read later when I pick it off the wire using Wireshark.Corey: If your AWS bill keeps rising and your blood pressure is doing the same, then you need The Duckbill Group. We help companies fix their AWS bill by making it smaller and less horrifying. The Duckbill Group works for you, not AWS. We tailor recommendations to your business and we get to the point. Visit duckbillgroup.com to get started.
Join Turo Virta and registered sports nutritionist James LeBaigue in a comprehensive dive into the world of nutrition for endurance sports on FitMitTuro Fitness Podcast.This episode zeroes in on the pivotal role nutrition plays from the starting line to beyond the finish line. Discover the strategies for effective carbohydrate loading, the dos and don'ts to maintain energy levels, and specific guidance for vegetarian athletes to optimize their protein intake.Get expert insights into the often-overlooked relationship between micronutrients and peak performance, the nuanced role of supplements, and the ideal distribution of training intensities. Whether you're gearing up for your next marathon, embarking on a triathlon journey, or simply interested in endurance training, this conversation will equip you with the nutritional know-how and training tactics to go the distance.Connect with Turo in Instagram HEREConnect with James in Instagram HERELearn more about James: Hurrythefoodup Nutrition Nutrition Trithlon WebsiteWe would love to hear from you! Tag us (@personaltrainer_turo and @nutritiontriathlon) in your Instagram Story and let us know what was your biggest takeaway from this episode.
What you'll learn in this episode: Which essential jewelry books you should have in your library Why books are so much more reliable than internet research when it comes to gemstones and jewelry Why the Renaissance opened up a new world of adornment An overview of the periods of jewelry and how they overlapped and influenced one another How cultural turning points, like World War II and the South African diamond rush, influenced what materials were used during different time periods About Jo Ellen Cole Jo Ellen Cole is the owner of Cole Appraisal Services and the director of fine jewelry at Abell Auctions. She earned her Graduate Gemologist Diploma at the Gemological Institute of America in Santa Monica and successfully passed the prestigious Gemological Association of Great Britain's FGA examinations. Additional resources: LinkedIn Gemological and Jewelry Books for a Professional Library: GEMOLOGICAL IDENTIFICATION BOOKS Gemstones: Their Sources, Descriptions and Identification, Webster, Robert Gem Testing, Anderson, Basil Handbook of Gemstone Identification, Liddicoat Jr., Richard T. Gem and Ornamental Materials of Organic Origin, Pedersen, Maggie Campbell Gemstones of the World, Schumann, Walter Photoatlas of Inclusions in Gemstones, Vols. 1, 2 and 3, Gubelin, Edward and Koivula, John Color Encyclopedia of Gemstones, Arem, Joel The Spectroscope and Gemmology, Anderson, Basil and Payne, James, edited by Mitchell, R. Keith GENERAL REFERENCE Gemology, An Annotated Bibliography, Sinkankas, John The Complete Handbook for Gemstone Weight Estimation, Carmona, Charles Dictionary of Gems and Gemology, Shipley, Robert The Jewelers Manual, Liddicoat Jr., Richard T. and Copeland, Lawrence L. Gemstone and Mineral Data Book, Sinkankas, John DIAMONDS Diamonds, Bruton, Eric Diamond Cutting: Complete Guide to Cutting Diamonds, Watermeyer, Basil Famous Diamonds, Balfour, Ian Hardness 10, Vleeschdrager, Eddy Diamond Handbook, Newman, Renee Laboratory Grown Diamonds, Simic, Dusan and Deljanin, Branko Fluorescence as a Tool for Diamond Origin Identification – A Guide, Chapman, John, Deljanin, Branko and Spyromilios, George PEARLS Book of the Pearl, Kunz, George F. and Stevenson, Charles Hugh Pearls, Strack, Elizabeth Beyond Price, Donkin, R.A. JADE Jade, A Gemmologist's Guide, Hughes, Richard Jade For You, Ng, John Y. and Root, Edmund COLORED STONES Ruby and Sapphire, Hughes, Richard Emerald and Other Beryls, Sinkankas, John Opal Identification and Value, Downing, Paul JEWELRY HISTORY Brilliant Effects, Pointon, Marcia Understanding Jewelry, Bennett, David, and Mascetti, Daniella Jewelry in America, Fales, Margha Gandy Victorian Jewellery, Flowers, Margaret Transcript: In appraiser Jo Ellen Cole's opinion, the best thing a jewelry lover can have is a well-stocked library. Information on gems and jewelry abounds online today, but much of that information is incorrect. For that reason, Jo Ellen—a Graduate Gemologist who also passed Gem-A's FGA examination—turns to books when she has a question about a specific piece, hallmark or stone. She joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to share which books she recommends for every jewelry interest; how jewelry trends shifted over the years due to cultural forces; and how to quickly identify the characteristics of different jewelry periods. Read the episode transcript here. Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the first part of a two-part episode. Please make sure you subscribe so you can hear part two as soon as it's released later this week. I met Jo Ellen about six or seven years ago when I was studying for the GG, or the Graduate Gemology degree. In order to pass it, I needed to identify about 18 stones and get them all right, and I only had three chances to do that. This was daunting to me because I'm not a science person; I'm not a math person or anything. I wasn't working with the stones. I wasn't working in a jewelry store, so I really didn't have the opportunity to handle the stones. I called another appraiser, Charlie Carmona, whom we've had on this podcast, and asked him for a recommendation for a tutor. I thought it was a pretty weird recommendation that I was asking for, but he immediately recommended Jo Ellen, and I never looked back. She's been a great tutor. It was a few years ago, but she helped me a lot. She knows a lot about jewelry, and not just jewelry, but I find her extremely knowledgeable about vintage and antique pieces. I have talked to and been to enough appraisers to know that this is its own specialty. She's also been helpful when it comes to directing me to researchers for whatever I need. She pointed me in the right direction. Today, she's going to share with us the books that she thinks will help us with our jewelry journey. Jo Ellen, welcome to the program. Jo Ellen: Thank you so much for having me. I'm happy to be here. Sharon: I'm so glad that you deigned to be on. Now, tell us, with a GG, which is part of the GIA, you can do a lot of things. So, why did you go into appraisal as opposed to other things? Jo Ellen: Well, I found that I was lacking in salesmanship abilities, to say the least. I'm just not a salesperson, but I love to categorize; I love to research. Appraising seemed to fit that bill very well. Plus, when I realized that I was not good at sales, I met Charles Carmona, whom you mentioned before, at American Society of Appraisers—no, it was the AGA. I can't remember what that stands for, but it was a meeting. I met him, and a couple of years later, he asked me to work with him and I jumped on it. It was a wonderful experience. He's still my mentor. He's so knowledgeable and knows so much about appraising. I always feel comfortable talking to him about any problem I might encounter. He's been very instrumental. Sharon: And a big name in the L.A. market, I would say. Jo Ellen: He's really gone worldwide. He has three laboratories in China and Thailand as well. Sharon: I didn't realize that. Jo Ellen: Yeah, he's really opened up his market. He also leads a lot of traveling groups and things. He's very well-known. Sharon: I knew he was well-known in Los Angeles, but I didn't know he was that well-known around the world. Jo Ellen: Having factories in Africa, he's been around doing a lot of different things. Sharon: I've stopped purchasing books when it comes to novels or something like that. I just listen to them. Why should I purchase a book as opposed to listening online when it comes to jewelry? Why should I purchase a jewelry book? Jo Ellen: What I've noticed is that when I go online to research prices of jewelry, which I do often, I find that a lot of the information I find is not correct. I think part of the reason for that is because it's so easy to list something online. It gets your name out there, so people do that. However, they don't always double check their information. There's a lot of misinformation out there. Whereas in a book, it takes a lot longer to set it up, edit it, make sure everything's proper. I've been able to count on the information coming from books a lot better than I have been from online sources. However, I must say there is certainly a good reason to look online as well. Some of the information is very good. It's just that, personally, I feel more comfortable with a book form. Then, you can revisit that if you need to. It's easier to find. Sharon: Do you have to know if it's right or wrong before you look at a book? Jo Ellen: You have to figure that out on your own. But generally, if you have a good background in terms of knowledge of gems and gemology and antique jewelry from reading through books, a lot of times, you'll find that information is incorrect when you go online. Sharon: I know instances where I've found incorrect information about pearls or something like that. I wouldn't say I'm any kind of expert, but I know it's incorrect. Jo Ellen: Yeah. Sharon: Can you tell us quickly what you do every day? What does an appraiser do every day? Jo Ellen: If I'm not reviewing a book for a gemological publication like The Gemologist or Gems & Gemology, which doesn't do book reviews anymore—but a lot of times, I'm asked by people in the industry to review new books. So, I do that a lot, which involves going over the book line by line and figuring out what I think is proper and what isn't, or what is clear and what is not. I do that a lot. I also work at a local auctioneer two days a week, at Abell Auctions, as their fine jewelry director. I'm constantly cataloguing things and looking for prices on things, always encountering something unusual there. You get things from all over the world, and people like to use that venue as a way to sell their items. If I'm not doing that, I'm actually going to people's localities to appraise their jewelry for them, either for insurance purposes or for estate purposes if somebody has passed or wants to set up a trust. I do that a lot, but a lot of my days are spent doing what I love, which is reading. Sharon: You sound pretty conscientious to look at a book that closely when you're writing a book review. Jo Ellen: For me, it's really important to get it right. Generally, most books, even if I don't particularly like them, I can at least validate that their information is correct. I did have one book about a year-and-a-half ago that was just so egregious in its information I had to give it a bad review, which I've never done before. I called up the editor the week before it was due and said, “Why are you even covering this book? It's so awful.” He asked why, and I started pointing out little things. He was like, “Oh,” but he published the review anyhow. I didn't feel great about it because I don't like to slam people for things, but it was just so awful I had to point it out. Sharon: So, we should do our own reading, both online and with books. Jo Ellen: Absolutely. Sharon: Let's talk about a book or books and talk about the history. If you want to learn about the history of jewelry through the ages, what would you look at? Jo Ellen: There are a couple of really good books. When you write a book, it seems like the best formula is always to start at the beginning and take them through the ages. That's what they do with jewelry history. Usually, they'll start with prehistoric jewelry and how jewelry first came to be—it's one of the oldest things that humans have done that marks them as humans—and then it goes through medieval times and Renaissance, and then to Georgian and Victorian and Arts and Crafts or the Aesthetic Period, and then through Art Nouveau and Art Deco and Retro and on up to modern jewelry for today. That's usually how a book on jewelry history is set up. There are couple of really good ones out there that encapsulate what you need to know in terms of jewelry history. Sharon: Before you tell us that, I wanted to tell our listeners that we will have all this information on the website. Yes, take notes, but you don't have to write everything down; it'll be on our website. Jo Ellen: Yeah, I created a list of things that you can look for. One of the main books I recommend for overall jewelry history is a book called “Understanding Jewelry.” It's by David Bennett and Daniela Mascetti, who were both cataloguers at Sotheby's for many years and very knowledgeable in their field. It really helps to set up all those different ages of jewelry and gives wonderful examples and photographs. It's a picture book as well as an informative book, but all the information they offer has always been spot-on. I've learned so much from that book. It's one that I would definitely recommend. Sharon: I've probably seen it in every jewelry office that has books. I see that book. Jo Ellen: It's a great book. It really is. Another good one that's much simpler and has more pictures is a book called “Warman's Jewelry.” Sharon: Warman's? Jo Ellen: Yeah, W-A-R-M-A-N. The second edition was actually written by a good friend of mine, Christie Romero, who has since passed on. She used to be on the Antiques Roadshow. You'd see her on Antiques Roadshow a lot, a very knowledgeable woman. She had started her journey by traveling down to Mexico and learning all about Mexican silver and then just expanded from there. She used to give classes on jewelry at Valley College in Los Angeles. She just knew how to present things in such a way that it was very easy to assimilate that information. It has tons and tons of pictures. It also has a jewelry timeline. It's very thorough for being such an easily read book. There are even some prices in there, I think. It's now an older book, and I think there have been other editions that have been written since hers, but I always liked hers because I'm familiar with it. So, that's another good one that I would offer. Sharon: What about a book if we want to be more specific, like Georgian or Victorian jewelry? It's funny that when you say prehistoric, you could take many of the prehistoric pieces and wear them today and nobody would know the difference. But it seems to jump then to Renaissance. Jo Ellen: Because it has to do with the Dark Ages. A lot of it is about human history and civilization. During the Dark Ages, people were in such terrible shape as a civilization, they didn't have time to decorate themselves, so they usually used items from the past. There wasn't a lot of information coming out between, let's say, the 5th and 13th centuries. Then things started rolling again once society got more stabilized. Sharon: Is there a particular book we should look at if we want to pick up where society picked up? Let's say Georgian. Jo Ellen: There's a really good book on jewels of the Renaissance by Yvonne Hackenbroch. It's quite a tome. It's big, and it goes through the history of civilization as well as jewelry. It talks about the light occurring in the beginning of the Renaissance, when people started realizing there's more to life than just eating and sleeping and staying alive. You can decorate yourself. You can show your social status by what you wear, some of it being jewelry. That's a very good book for the Renaissance period. There's also another Renaissance book called “Renaissance Jewels and Jeweled Objects: From the Melvin Gutman Collection” by Parker Lesley. It shows wonderful examples of Renaissance-oriented jewelry. There's one called the Hope Pearl Jewel. It's this big, baroque pearl that's decorated as the body of a man. It's very well known. It demonstrates jewels like that. Sharon: From there, does it continue to Georgian and Victorian? Jo Ellen: Yeah, there's a really good book, “Georgian Jewelry 1714-1830,” by Ginny Redington and Tom Dawes with Olivia Collings. It's great because I had never seen a book specifically on Georgian jewelry. It's not glamorous jewelry because the techniques weren't there. It's just that people wanted to adorn themselves to help their social status. It's very collectable today. People collect Georgian jewelry all the time. It goes through the period before Queen Victoria took the throne and clarifies a lot of things. And, again, the information is spot-on. I've never had a problem with these books. When I go to confirm that information, I've never had a problem with it. Sharon: I don't collect Georgian jewelry, but I do know it's very hard to find. Jo Ellen: Yeah, it is, but it shows up at different auctions, sometimes in the most unusual places. Even at Abell Auctions you'll see it. People just hold onto these things. A lot of Georgian jewelry isn't available anymore because people would melt down those items to make new items in a newer fashion, such as a Victorian fashion. They would take the stones out, melt down the metals and then either recast them or remake them in some way into a newer-looking form. That's why you don't see a lot of Georgian jewelry anymore. Sharon: How about Victorian jewelry? There seems to be a lot of it. Jo Ellen: There's a lot of Victorian jewelry. Even though people also did it then, where they would melt things down and make a new piece out of older pieces, there is a lot of Victorian jewelry because Queen Victoria, whom that period is named after, wore a lot of jewelry. She was a big jewelry person. She loved jewelry and she used it for sentimental reasons to give imagery, to bestow favor on people. So, there's a lot of it around because people would want to copy her. Everybody started doing that. You'll have mourning jewelry from Victorian times. A lot of historical things happened during her reign, such as the finding of diamonds in South Africa, which changed the diamond market forever. Before then, there were diamonds from Brazil, primarily, or India, but they're very hard to come by and very, very expensive. Once they opened up the diamond fields in South Africa, you started getting a lot more diamond jewelry. Sharon: By mourning, you mean if somebody dies? Jo Ellen: Yeah. A lot of times, when someone would die, they would leave a certain amount of money in their will to make mourning rings or pendants for their friends and family to remember them by. So, you have this memento mori-type jewelry which has its own collecting base. People collect their little pendants, which are like little baskets with a little enamel skeleton inside, little rings that say the man or woman's name written around the inside of the band, all sorts of things like that. It's kind of sweet because, when you think about it, jewelry is one of the few art forms that's worn close to the body. It makes it more sentimental. Sharon: And the diamonds from South Africa, were they different than the other diamonds, besides being less expensive? Jo Ellen: The thing with Brazilian diamonds in particular is that they had what they call a lot of knots in them, where their crystals grow into crystals. You would have these harder-to-polish areas. With African diamonds, it's such a pure form that they're easier to polish. They didn't take as much time to polish, and they didn't break on the wheel the way that some of the Brazilian diamonds would break. Sharon: They used those diamonds in Victorian jewelry? Jo Ellen: They did. Sharon: What books should we look at if we want to learn about Victorian jewelry? Jo Ellen: There is a wonderful book—in fact, I used to know an antique dealer that used to give out these books to his clients because they were wonderfully organized. There's a book called “Victorian Jewelry” by Margaret Flower, and it goes through the different phases of Victorian jewelry. There's an early, a mid and a late phase. What she does is describe exactly what you can see during each of the phases, what types of jewelry. It's very interesting, and it gives you an overall picture of how things came to be during that time period. It's really nicely done. There's a much larger book I'm still reading because it's so big. It's called “Jewelry in the Age of Queen Victoria” by Charlotte Gere and Judy Rudoe. That also has a lot of very specific information on different types of jewelry, the makers during that time. What's interesting is you'll see the same authors over and over again because these people really use it. It's their way to express themselves as a lifestyle, almost. They're wonderful authors, and they do their research and know what they're talking about. So, those are two Victorian jewelry books I would highly recommend. I think they're wonderfully done. Then, if you want to go into French jewelry, there's another book called “French Jewelry of the Nineteenth Century” by Henri Vever. It's an enormously fat book. I'm still reading that one as well, but again, it's jewelry makers. It's huge. It gives makers' information and techniques, and it's beautifully done. That's a good book to have as well. Sharon: First of all, it strikes me that you seem to look at the pictures a lot more. You read. Most people don't read any of the book. They look at the pictures. That's different. Jo Ellen: They have pictures with jewelry; that's sure to entice you to continue looking. Sharon: Then what do you go into? Edwardian and Art Nouveau? Jo Ellen: Before that, there's actually a period called the Aesthetic Period, which is also covered in the “Jewelry in the Age of Queen Victoria” book. It was in the late 1870s through the 1900s. There were certain makers that specialized in it, like Child & Child of London. They would make these beautiful pieces that harkened back to classical times but using new techniques and materials. That was a specific period. It was a very small period, but all the jewelry that was done during that time is beautifully done. There's a book by Geoffrey Munn called “Castellani and Giuliano,” and it talks about that specific time period. For example, Castellani was known for taking antique or ancient jewelry and refiguring it for that time period around the 1900s. Sharon: He was a goldsmith? Jo Ellen: He was a goldsmith. It was actually two brothers who were goldsmiths. One of the brothers was very politically active and lost an arm when they were demonstrating or something. He got put in jail, but the other brother kept on, and then their children took over after them. In Giuliano's case, which was another manufacturer in Rome, he was known for his enamels. You will see jewelry specifically with black and white enamel accenting other colored enamels. The work is beautifully done, and it's very detailed. Sharon: We may be going back a few years. What was Berlin iron, and when was that popular? Jo Ellen: Berlin ironwork, I believe, was like 1840 through 1860. It was a result of people giving up their precious metals for the Prussian Wars that were happening at that time. They would make this Berlin ironwork, which is very delicate and lacey, but it was made out of iron because they didn't want to use precious metals for that; they wanted to use it for warfare. So, they would use ironwork as a substitute for precious metals. There are some beautifully intricate bracelets and necklaces. It looks like lace. It's really beautiful. Sharon: Is it wearable? Jo Ellen: It is wearable. It's kind of a Gothic look, so it's a heavier look. I don't know if you'd want to wear it every day because, again, it's kind of—I hate to say gloomy, but it is kind of a sober look because it's black and the tracery is so fine. But it's certainly wearable. Sharon: After the Aesthetic Period, we have Edwardian and Art Deco. What do we have? Jo Ellen: What we start with is Arts and Crafts, which is actually my favorite period. I have a lot of books on it, but there are a couple that were really good in terms of pushing forward the information I knew. One is a book called “Jewelry and Metalwork in the Arts and Crafts Tradition” by Elyse Zorn Karlin, who's a very active member of the jewelry industry. She gives lectures. It's this wonderful book on Arts and Crafts jewelry and metalwork and leads you through the making of it with the guilds. They tried to restart jewelry guilds in England where everything was made from first to last by the same person. The metal would be drawn and shaped by the person. If enamels were used, they would make the enamels themselves and apply them themselves. The stone setting was done by the same person. That was the beginning of Arts and Crafts, the person making the piece from beginning to end. Usually they're not terribly intricate, but they're beautifully fashioned with a lot of feeling. It's a very comfortable look, and it's infinitely wearable. The first part of Arts and Crafts started around 1883 through 1900. Then there was a repeat of it between around 1920 and 1935, around the same time as Art Deco. What I forgot to mention during the Aesthetic Period was Carl Fabergé from Russia. He did a lot of Aesthetic pieces. Sharon: He did the eggs, right? Jo Ellen: He did the eggs for the Russian monarchy, but he also did jewelry for everyday people. He would make little, miniature enameled eggs for the general Russian population. Those still come up today once in a while. I saw an entire necklace of Fabergé eggs, all in different enamel colors beautifully done. Everything is so beautifully fashioned. You can tell they really took time in every single aspect of the making of that jewel. That's what I love about it. It shows so much attention to detail. Sharon: We will have photos posted on the website. Please head to the JewelryJourney.com to check them out.
New Zealand's hard road to the Cricket World Cup final will become impossible if they don't hold their chances. The Black Caps will face off against hosts India in tonight's semi-final in Mumbai at 9:30pm. There's controversy brewing ahead of the match, with reports claiming India have switched the pitch to favour their spinners. Former Black Cap Peter McGlashan says this is a sign India feels threatened by the Black Caps' chances. "It's one of those things where it's difficult to do late, so I would be surprised if the New Zealand team probably knew about this a day or two ago. Generally when you arrive at a ground to practice, you're shown where the match will be played." LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Host Bart Zandbergen was joined in the podcast studio by co-host Letitia Berbaum, Paula Steurer of Sterling Public Relations, Scott Heinila of Producers Choice Network, and featured guest Landon Patterson, CEO of Hundred Acre. Landon shared tasting insights, pairing notes and little-known facts about the distinctive wines he chose to feature on the episode, while the show's guests also reviewed several wines from Copper Cane. Special thanks to Devon Ulrich, National Account Vice President, of Copper Cane Wines & Provisions for supporting this year's podcast episode alongside Hundred Acre. Featured wines in the 2023 edition of the Annual Holiday Wine Podcast include: -Senza Freni by Paul Lato 2021 Tocai Friulano -Napa Valley Quilt 2021 Fumé Blanc -Belle Glos Oeil de Perdrix Pinot Noir Blanc -Summer Dreams Twilight Pinot Noir 2021 -Belle Glos Pinot Noir Las Alturas -La Vieux Donjon Chateauneuf Du Pape -Napa Valley Quilt Cabernet Sauvignon *** The Zandbergen Report, where wealth strategies and investment wisdom collide, is led by host Bart Zandbergen. The show is also available on Apple Podcasts, Google Play Store, Podbean and Spotify. Interested in being a guest on The Zandbergen Report? Email podcast@bartzandbergen.com. Learn more about Bart by visiting www.BartZandbergen.com *** NO OFFER OR SOLICITATION: The contents of this podcast episode: (i) do not constitute an offer of securities or a solicitation of an offer to buy securities, and (ii) may not be relied upon in making an investment decision related to any investment offering Axxcess Wealth Management, LLC, an SEC Registered Investment Advisor. Axxcess does not warrant the accuracy or completeness of the information contained herein. Opinions are our current opinions and are subject to change without notice. Prices, quotes, rates are subject to change without notice. Generally, investments are NOT FDIC INSURED, NOT BANK GUARANTEED and MAY LOSE VALUE.
What happens when disaster strikes, a hurricane or fire, and communities are left stranded without power, water, or basic medical needs? Generally we rely on shipping in fuel to power generators, but that's not always an option, and certainly an imperfect one- burning the same fossil fuels which helped propogate the disaster in the first place. Sesame Solar has a solution. Today CEO and co-founder Lauren Flanagan joins us today to discuss her all in one solution for a mobile disaster relief unit powered by, you guessed it, solar. But that's not all Lauren brings to the table. From a lifetime of working in tech, she shares with us the teachings from working alongside none other than Steve Jobs.
In this mini-podcast, I tested a low-cost ($40) SPKPAL USB-C cardioid mic to record audio outdoors in order to learn if it might be usable to record a group (more than two people) podcast in a environment with noticeable ambient sound (wind, traffic, other people). The first half (about 3 minutes) of the podcast is the raw audio recording. In truth, I amplified the volume. However, no other post-processing was performed. The second half of the podcast is the same audio post-processed by Adobe Podcast Enhance. Generally speaking, I'm pleased with the sound quality of both parts of the audio (unprocessed and processed) and plan to use this mic to record an in-person podcast soon.
Generally speaking, when Markus & Ray do an episode of 5 Favorites the narrower the category, the easier it is for them to match answers. (Unlike some recent 5 Fave episodes!) It's one silly part of the game when the Imbalanced Boys take the "road to Vegas!" As is often the case, the guy's Honorable Mentions are lengthy here. Digging into the timeframe of the '70s, and narrowing the parameters to the UK Rock singers should, in theory, cause the lads to concur more often. Can you guess who they have in common? Click through and let's find out! As always, this episode is brought to you by Crooked Eye Brewery! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
On the show this week its a 2 for with @eric__83 & @krippledkratos - Talking sports - Talking movies - Talking politics - Generally talking nonsense Please Listen subcribe and rate us 5 stars and smash that like button as well as follow us at the links below Our Website: http://wheelsbluespodcast.wixsite.com https://www.instagram.com/wheelsbluespod https://www.instagram.com/tincanblues https://www.instagram.com/justinriedler https://www.instagram.com/iameric_83 https://www.instagram.com/skweed_love Discord:https://discord.gg/7MEJF7T Twitter: @WheelsBlues @krippledkratos @tincanblues @Eric__83 @Skweeed Email:@wheelsbluespodcast@gmail.com If you or someone you know is in immediate danger; call 911 right away. or Alternatively contact 780 852 2909 which is the drug and alcohol prevention/education hotline Municipality of Jasper - Mental Health Resources (jasper-alberta.com) Also N/A meetings are held every Thursdays at the Anglican Church @ 8PM Setton Hospital 815 Robson StreetJasper, Alberta T0E 1E0 THURSDAY 8:00 PM Narcotics Anonymous Northern Addictions Centre 11333 - 106 Street Grande Prairie, AB T8V 6T7 Phone: 780.538.6316 Fax: 780.538.6313 --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/wheelsbluespodcast/message
Audio recordingSermon manuscript:What are you looking forward to? Is there a family gathering coming up? Christmas is around the corner. What gifts would you like to receive? Retirement? Weddings? Children or grandchildren? There are a lot of things to look forward to. What about Jesus Christ's second coming in power and great glory? Is that on your list? Probably not. There's a proverbial saying: “It's not the end of the world.” Behind that saying is a belief that the end of the world would be a bad thing, and that's not unreasonable. The end of the world means the end of our earthly activities. This earthly life moves into the past. A somewhat unknown future rushes upon us. It is scary to think of all the things we are accustomed to failing and being presented with the unknown. You, who trust in Jesus, though, should not be afraid of him coming in power and great glory. This is not something you can do just by mustering up your nerve not to be afraid. That won't work. There is only one reason why you should not be afraid of Jesus coming again, and that is the message of the Gospel. The Gospel is the good news about the relationship between God and us. The hostility between foul sinners on the one hand and a holy God on the other has been overcome by the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. This means that when Jesus comes, our future with God will be different from what we otherwise would expect. What would we otherwise expect? An honest look at what we've done will quickly give us the answer. We haven't done what we should have done. We've done what we shouldn't have done. Meeting our Maker, face to face, immediately thrusts before us God's judgment. The books are opened. There is nothing hidden that will not be revealed. What we otherwise expect, apart from the Gospel, is that we will be horrified and ashamed. There is a stupendous truth here, not often acknowledged. Paul calls it the “ministry of the letter.” The glory of this ministry of the letter is so magnificent that nobody can stand to look at the end of it unless he has first turned to Christ. The glory of the letter of the law is in the way that it brings death and eternal death to all who do not fulfill it. This stupendous truth says that based upon how I have lived, with all my sin, I should be punished by God. He should deprive me of all happiness. He should snuff out my life. I deserve to go to hell. But no matter how glorious this divine truth is, it isn't even close to being the most glorious—at least according to Paul. Paul says that there is the ministry of the Spirit that is far more glorious. By the term, “ministry of the spirit,” he is referring to the Gospel. The Gospel declares that Jesus has taken our place. God is well pleased with all mankind because of Jesus. All who believe in him will have eternal life. So let's go back to how we might feel about the second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. Everybody has at least a little part of them that is afraid. To be perfectly unafraid would require a perfect faith. That isn't possible in this life where we are constantly under assault from the devil, the world, and our sinful flesh. There's an element of fear in each of us because the Law is true. The Law says that God should punish us for our sins, and we know that we have sinned. But here we should recall something that happens so often in what has been recorded in the Bible. So often God's people are confronted with terrible facts, terrible laws. People are surrounded by water, or by enemies, or by lions, or possessed by demons. And all these facts and laws seem to lead to one conclusion—“You're lost! There's no hope for you!” But into these terrible situations God steps in and says, “Do not be afraid.” God says, “Do not be afraid,” countless times in the Scriptures. It's as though he is saying, “I understand that these laws are calling for your destruction, but I am the Lord of all laws. So be still and see how I am God.” And so on Judgement Day we will be witness to the working of laws that are more stupendous than anything we might be familiar with from our earthly life here. Even the laws of nature will do strange and unheard of things. As Amos says in our Old Testament reading, there will be nowhere to turn, nowhere to be safe. The only one to whom we can turn and in whom we can be safe is the God who is lord over all the terrible forces. We must turn to the one who is Lord over what will be ripping this creation apart. How necessary, therefore, is the ministry of the Spirit, the word of the Gospel, through which God says, “Do not be afraid. This Law has called out for your punishment, but I have silenced all its accusations against you when I sent my Son to die for all the sins of the whole world—including yours.” So what we can see from all of this is that the Day of the Lord is tremendous. Nobody will have experienced anything like it before it happens. It should not be taken for granted—some future event that is nothing to get excited about. If ever we have been excited about anything, then this day must provoke our greatest excitement. There's to be joy for those of you who believe, but, as we think of it now, there's an element of fear too. We see this in our Gospel reading. Our Gospel reading is a parable about the end of the world. Jesus is the groom. The bride is the Holy Christian Church. The groom is coming for his bride because he loves her. The overall mood of this parable is by no means sad. The ten virgins are not dreading the coming of the groom. If anything, they are sad that he has been delayed. But then the cry comes at midnight: “He's arrived! Come out to meet him!” Those young women must have been roused from their sleep with great happiness. He's finally here! It's like Christmas morning. You don't have to prod the children to get out of bed. They come a-running like calves out of the stall. They can't wait to see him. But Jesus also has a reason for telling us about the foolish virgins as well. Their joy quickly turns to dread. They've forgotten their oil. They can't appear before the groom like that. Maybe they can get some from the others, but it turns out, no they can't. Each must believe for himself or herself. The borrowing of faith is not possible. While they are gone in search of some way to be presentable to the groom, the doors are shut. That shows that the time of grace has ended. The time of preaching the Gospel and administering the sacraments has ended. Jesus finished this parable by saying, “Watch, therefore, because you do not know the day nor the hour.” That helps us understand what happened with the foolish virgins, and it gives us our cue as well so that we do not end up in the same boat. It is not only possible, it is easy, for people who self-identify as Christians to quit watching for Christ's second coming. What do they look for instead? Generally, it's all the lovely gifts our benevolent Creator gives us in this early life. They look forward to retirement, to vacations, to the good times ahead. There's no watching or waiting for the day of the Lord. The glory of the ministry of the Spirit leaves no impression, nor do the terrors of the law. Usually they say, at least to themselves: “We know all that stuff already. There's no need to go on talking about it.” Off to sleep they go. So how do we keep watch? How do we keep oil in our lamps? How may we be prepared for Christ's second coming? You might think that fear should work. However, the fear of failure or the fear of punishment will never do it alone. If you prepare only by being fearful, then you are treating God as though he were your enemy. Perhaps by fear you can prepare somewhat for battle against him, but I don't like your chances in such a fight. Fear alone won't do. But, to be honest, an excessive fear of God's judgment is hardly a problem among us. Among us, it is rather the opposite. Fear of the Day of Judgment is shrugged off. No big deal. Or it isn't talked about. A person might wonder while hearing this parable how it is possible that these church members, these virgins, were so foolish and unprepared. Well, might it be that when they congregated as a church they never talked about Judgement Day, or it was explained away as nothing to worry about? Do you realize how rare it is to find a congregation that takes God's judgement seriously? Our land is littered with churches, but I don't know if a tenth of them take such things seriously. And yet they have well-meaning people in them who are quite sure that they are as Christian as anybody else. However, it is a Christianity on their terms instead of on God's terms. A redefined, seemingly improved or more palatable Christianity might be successful by earthly measurements, but true Christianity prepares us for Judgement Day and for the life to come. So we dare not shrug this day off, nor the fear that it tends to provoke. Nevertheless, only that person is truly worthy and well prepared who has faith in Jesus's words. And what are Jesus's words? Why is he coming? You know something he says: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. For God did not sent his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” Is not Jesus the groom, hastening to the bride whom he loves? These are the facts of God that overwhelm all other facts, no matter how glorious those other facts might appear to be. Jesus's love is more glorious. The Christian's strength is never in fear. Fear can helpful. It can be a spur to wake us up or pull us out of ruts. However, fear can't get us one inch closer to peace and to knowledge of God. For that we need God's unfailing promises, in which we believe. The Day of the Lord, the Day of Judgement, lies in the future. It could be today. It could be tomorrow. If ever we have looked forward to anything, then we should look forward to this day. It is a thrilling cry: “Wake, up! Here he comes! Come out to meet him!” May God bless you with faith so that that day will give you the inexpressible joy that it deserves.
Kingdom Come - Acts 1: Generally speaking, when people stop what they're doing to stare up at into the sky, it's because something captivating and noteworthy is taking place—good or bad—there's a story unfolding, and we can't help but find ourselves a part of it. In Acts 1—Jesus' disciples are watching in wonder as the resurrected Lord ascends into heaven after having just commissioned them to reach the world with His Good News of salvation. In some sense, this Sunday we're having our own “staring at the sky moment”. As we, like the disciples, “pause” from our usual rhythms to marvel at the resurrected Jesus and consider what it means for the mission of the Church—our mission. What we'll find is that, like the disciples, we're not meant to stay staring at the sky… we are Here to Go! That is to say: By God's design, the purpose of the Christian's life on earth is to join Jesus in His mission of reaching the world with the Good News of salvation.
In light of Prophet David Kelly's Word for us, Isaiah 54 will play a vital role in our identity and purpose as a house moving into the year of 2024. Sunday's message just scratched the surface of providing a background and context for Yahweh's Word through the prophet Isaiah to the ten northern tribes of Israel. Generally, the problem Yahweh has with His people was idolatry, but more specifically was the fact that as a nation, Israel would influence all the nations of the world with how they released the image of their ONE TRUE GOD versus all the idolatrous nations. Sadly, Israel submitted to pagan gods and forfeited their divine purpose. Yahweh sent the prophet Isaiah to point them in the right direction and give them a view of His redemption when they turned their hearts toward Him.
In this podcast episode, we discuss the recent updates rolled out by Airbnb. We analyze how these updates, which include an AI photo tour, access control, guidebooks, and pricing modifications, potentially impact both individual hosts and larger property managers. Generally, we all express that these updates are highly beneficial for single-unit hosts, while potentially harming vendors and technology companies that offer similar features. We also debate the effectiveness and accuracy of Airbnb's automated pricing recommendations, warning that it could reduce revenues for property managers. 00:00 Introduction and Casual Conversation 00:15 Reflecting on Previous Episodes and Team Dynamics 01:21 Discussing Airbnb's Recent Updates 02:13 Debate on Airbnb's New Guest-Facing Features 04:07 Exploring the Impact of Airbnb's New Host-Facing Features 11:43 Deep Dive into Airbnb's New Pricing Strategy 13:52 The Future of Airbnb and the Short-Term Rental Industry 31:31 Final Thoughts and Wrap Up Hospitality Hotline & GMC Report! Hospitality Hotline is open to everyone by using this link!