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Imagine sitting in a room full of financial professionals, entrepreneurs, and thought leaders, all gathered with a shared mission—to gain clarity, deepen understanding, and refine strategies for implementing Infinite Banking. That's exactly what happened at the Nelson Nash Institute Think Tank 2025, and today, we're sharing the most impactful takeaways with you. https://www.youtube.com/live/qTqZo7AvS88 Bruce and Becca just got back from this annual gathering, where the best minds in Infinite Banking come together to ensure that Nelson Nash's legacy remains strong and relevant. I (Rachel) wasn't able to attend in person this year, but listening to their insights and stories makes me even more eager to go in the future. If you've ever wondered how to simplify the Infinite Banking Concept (IBC) and use it effectively in today's financial climate, you'll want to read on. What is the Nelson Nash Institute Think Tank? And Why Does It Matter?1. Do Simple Better2. Think Long Range and Don't Be Afraid to Capitalize3. Don't Do Business with Banks4. Differentiate Between the Process and the Product5. The Role of Whole Life Insurance vs. IUL (Indexed Universal Life)Take Control of Your Financial FutureBook A Strategy Call What is the Nelson Nash Institute Think Tank? And Why Does It Matter? If you're not familiar, the Think Tank is an annual conference hosted by the Nelson Nash Institute (NNI). It's designed for authorized practitioners, students of Infinite Banking, and selected clients who want to understand the deeper nuances of IBC. It's not just a networking event—it's a mastermind of like-minded individuals dedicated to financial autonomy. Nelson Nash started this event over 20 years ago as a way to keep the message pure—to prevent the Infinite Banking Concept from being diluted or sensationalized. Unfortunately, we see confusion in the marketplace today, with different variations of Infinite Banking being promoted under flashy names like “accelerated banking” or “infinite wealth systems.” The Think Tank exists to bring clarity and help authorized practitioners share the true power of Infinite Banking with their clients. Here's what we learned this year: 1. Do Simple Better One of the key messages from this year's Think Tank was keeping the concept simple. Too often, people overcomplicate Infinite Banking, adding unnecessary complexity that confuses clients. One common example? The language we use. Bruce pointed out a pet peeve of his—calling policy premiums “deposits.” Some advisors use this terminology because they think clients will shut down if they hear the word “premium.” But this causes confusion. A premium is not a bank deposit. It's a strategic payment into a life insurance policy that provides long-term benefits. When we use clear, honest language, we empower people to make informed decisions. The key takeaway: Clarity leads to confidence. If you want to succeed with Infinite Banking, simplify the process, use the right terminology, and avoid unnecessary complexity. 2. Think Long Range and Don't Be Afraid to Capitalize One of the biggest mistakes people make with Infinite Banking is short-term thinking. Nelson Nash emphasized the importance of capitalization—funding your policy properly so you can reap the benefits later. At the Think Tank, Bruce and Becca discussed the trend of minimizing base premiums to maximize early cash value. While this might seem attractive at first, it contradicts the foundational principles of IBC. A well-funded policy—one with an appropriate base premium—is what creates sustainable, long-term growth. Becca shared a powerful insight: “Your behavior matters more than the product.” The Infinite Banking Concept isn't just about whole life insurance—it's about how you use it. If you're not willing to think long-term and capitalize your system, you won't see the full benefits. 3. Don't Do Business with Banks

Imagine this: you've heard that mastering Infinite Banking could be the key to financial freedom. It sounds like a perfect solution—investing in yourself, building wealth, all while being “your own banker.” But here's the truth: not everyone succeeds with infinite banking. In fact, the people who thrive are often the ones who take an entirely different approach to it. They're thinking long-term, taking responsibility, and treating this like a lifetime practice, not a quick fix. https://www.youtube.com/live/igurqrqZNdE The Infinite Banking Concept has gained popularity as a way to take control of your finances, but it's not a one-size-fits-all solution. This strategy empowers you to create lasting wealth through a well-designed whole life insurance policy, but success requires discipline and a certain mindset. In this blog, we'll break down what it really takes to succeed with infinite banking, addressing common misconceptions and why approaching it with an abundance mindset, a sense of responsibility, and long-term vision can make all the difference. Mastering Infinite Banking Starts with Abundance, Not ScarcityEmbrace Responsibility: Becoming Your Own Banker Means OwnershipThe Long Game: Mastering Infinite Banking Means Thinking GenerationallyBe Wise with Policy Loans: It's Not About Chasing Cash FlowFinding the Right Balance: Structuring Policies for Stability and GrowthBook A Strategy Call Mastering Infinite Banking Starts with Abundance, Not Scarcity Infinite banking isn't about chasing quick returns.  It is fundamentally about thinking from a place of abundance. Bruce and I (Rachel) have seen how scarcity thinking—focusing on short-term gains, instant gratification, or just trying to “fix” financial problems—often backfires. If you approach infinite banking as a “quick fix” for financial issues, you might not get the results you expect. True success happens when you're ready to shift your mindset, creating a long-term approach to managing your finances and understanding how to use cash flow wisely. Embrace Responsibility: Becoming Your Own Banker Means Ownership Nelson Nash, who developed the Infinite Banking Concept, titled his book Becoming Your Own Banker because this strategy is about empowering you to take control. But with control comes responsibility. It's up to you to make smart moves, from keeping track of your assets to choosing how you repay your loans. With infinite banking, the freedom to set your own terms also means owning the responsibility for the policy's long-term health. It's essential to maintain discipline and understand that the responsibility lies with you. The Long Game: Mastering Infinite Banking Means Thinking Generationally Mastering Infinite banking requires time. It isn't a “set it and forget it” strategy or something you can maximize in just a few years. People who benefit most from infinite banking are committed to it over the long term. The structure of the policy and its cash value grow more efficiently over time, so it's essential to go in with a long-term perspective. Policies that balance base premiums with paid-up additions (PUAs) allow for growth and future flexibility, letting you capitalize on this system for years, even decades, ahead. Be Wise with Policy Loans: It's Not About Chasing Cash Flow One of the biggest misconceptions we see is people treating infinite banking like an investment meant to generate immediate cash flow. The truth is that while you can borrow against your policy, doing so irresponsibly can limit your financial freedom. Infinite banking isn't meant to fund unsustainable habits or high-risk investments. Instead, it's a wealth-building tool that should be used wisely and with an eye on long-term stability.  It's about using capital wisely, holding onto cash when needed, and reinvesting strategically. Finding the Right Balance: Structuring Policies for Stability and Growth Proper policy design is critical.

Learn how to start your day well, pregnant or postpartum, with these tried & true tips from Andrew Pudewa, a classical educator & researcher from the Institute for Excellence in Writing! I (Rachel) have tried many of these tips myself & they have made SUCH a difference in my daily mood & routine. Mr. Pudewa covers things like:Sunlight Exposure (my favorite)Proper BreathingMindfulness, Movement, & Mindset (my other favorite)Gut HealthEnvironmental FactorsAnd more!Resources Mentioned:Andrew Pudewa's Podcast: The Arts of LanguageWellness Mama Podcast w/ Katie WellsHuberman Lab Podcast w/ Andrew HubermanJames Nester's "Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art"Dr. Rangan Chatterjee's Happy Mind, Happy Life PodcastGreat Homeschool Convention- Hear Mr. Pudewa in person NOW IT'S YOUR TURN! Support the show! The NaturalBirth Site SIGN UP for the NaturalBirth Education course to best prepare your body & mind for natural birth Read natural birth stories- and submit your own Share with anyone interested in natural birth Share our podcast with anyone you know who is interested in natural birth! "Like" our Facebook and Instagram pages Subscribe to our YouTube Channel Check out our HELPFUL PRODUCTS GUIDE

I (Rachel) cried today. It was because of the stress and pressure and overwhelm of 'all the things' I have to get done by a looming deadline, and it was sparked by the small irritations of family life. So Greg and I do what we usually do in a situation like this -- we sat down and psychoanalyzed WHY I was crying so we could process the 'emotional stacking' to help me get back to a positive state (and then recorded this episode

We are celebrating 100 episodes of the Creative Impact Podcast with special guest, Ben Caldwell!!! Ben and I (Rachel) share a bit of our story as a couple, and we chat about Ben's journey in the arts. He gives us a glimpse into his time as a dancer and dance teacher, and he shares fun and moving stories from his international travels for dance ministry. We also talk about Ben's transition out of full-time dancing, processing the losses that come with change, and rediscovering hope for the future.Thank you so much for being part of the Creative Impact Podcast community! We are so grateful for your support, and are excited to celebrate with you today!Check out our website https://creativeimpactpodcast.com for the full show notes that include Ben's biography and additional links mentioned in this episode. You can be sure not to miss a Creative Impact conversation by subscribing through your favorite podcast app.  We are so grateful to have you as a part of the Creative Impact community and would love it if you would share the show with your friends!Support the show

Episode 90 Welcome back to the podcast! After a brief break, we're back with new episodes to usher in our third year of podcasting.  We're getting started on a personal note, delving into the science, spirituality, and personal experience living with major depression. What is it and what makes it difference from normal sadness? How do antidepressants work? How do our religious traditions affirm or condemn us in our time of need? All that and how to cure your sadness with electric fish and cocaine.    Support this podcast on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/DowntheWormholepodcast More information at https://www.downthewormhole.com/ produced by Zack Jackson music by Zack Jackson and Barton Willis    Transcript This transcript was automatically generated by www.otter.ai, and as such contains errors (especially when multiple people are talking). As the AI learns our voices, the transcripts will improve. We hope it is helpful even with the errors.   Zack Jackson  00:04 You are listening to the down the wormhole podcast exploring the strange and fascinating relationship between science and religion. This week our hosts are   Rachael Jackson  00:15 Rachael Jackson, Rabbi at Agoudas Israel congregation in Hendersonville, North Carolina, and my superpower is my level of patience and ability to keep going.   Ian Binns  00:34 Ian Binns Associate Professor of elementary science education at UNC Charlotte, and I believe my superpower is teaching Adam Pryor.   Adam Pryor  00:43 I work at Bethany college and Lindsborg Kansas. My superpower is the ability to suck the energy out of a room at any moment I choose.   Zack Jackson  01:01 Or infuse it at any point.   Ian Binns  01:06 It's like the de luminator from Harry Potter, instead of taking the mite away. That's right, all the energy that's right.   Kendra Holt-Moore  01:14 Kendra Holt-Moore Oh, wait, though. Assistant Professor of religion at Bethany college and Lindsborg Kansas. I'm my superpower is the ability to not sleep whenever I have anything that needs to be done. So much so that it disturbs everyone around me who loves me and there is a name for this creature that no longer is Kendra. But instead they call our neck, which is my name, but   Zack Jackson  01:58 it's a great name, though.   Ian Binns  01:59 Yeah.   Zack Jackson  02:02 Zack Jackson UCC pastor in Reading Pennsylvania, and my superpower is the same superpower as Abraham Lincoln. Once Abraham Lincoln's superpower, I'm so glad you asked. Because that's what I want to talk about here at the beginning of this episode. Wait a second, actually, my superpower is transitions because oh, man, that was a good one. You don't make that transition. Even better is talking about the transition. Oh, man, everything is Christian. I'm so happy to be back. By the way, this this break to had was helpful in planning. And I know all of our lives are going crazy right now. But like Rachel said, It is good to be back. So um, this being a science and religion podcast, I do think it's important for us to instead talk about American history.   Ian Binns  03:04 Another one of those transitions.   Adam Pryor  03:07 You're gonna work Abe Lincoln in there, no matter what.   Zack Jackson  03:11 It's, you know, year three, and Abe Lincoln is starting like your one did with Thomas Paine. We're just gonna name drop along the way.   Adam Pryor  03:21 I can't hate on Abe Lincoln, though.   Zack Jackson  03:28 Oh, man. But I want to talk for a second here at the beginning about the difference between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas, because there's a lot of differences. And way back in the day in 1858, the two of them were locked in a tight Senate race in Illinois. And, you know, a Senate race in the Midwest in the 1800s was not all that exciting, generally speaking, not like Senate races today. But this one was special. This was the very first instance of American political theater, which we all have come to know and love slash hate. today. Most of that being the fact that it seemed like the issue of slavery was finally going to get talked about because it's been kicked down the road by generations and generations. But now with new states forming now we had to actually talk about the thing. And these two men, they stood on opposite ends of that spectrum. And also, there was a whole lot of new fancy technology that was making this local race into something more national, there was this newfangled thing called the electric telegram, which allowed news of things to spread hundreds of miles 1000s of miles, like in an instant. They also had all of these new trains all throughout the Midwest. And what would happen in these debates is these two men had Is that there would be stenographers there, and they would be writing down the transcript in shorthand as they went. And then at halftime, because there definitely was a halftime, they would give their notes to a person on a train. And that person on the train would write out the shorthand into long form. And then at the end of the train would hand it to the typist at the newspaper, who would then start and then at the end of the debate, the second half would get there. And so by like an hour and a half after the debate was done, the full transcript was already written and ready to be printed in the newspaper, which then got sent all over the Chicagoland area and out into the Midwest and like, this sort of thing had not happened before. So these men were not just talking to, you know, the good folks of Freeport or Galesburg, or whatever, but they were also talking to people in New York, in Virginia, they have this, this debate about slavery became bigger than just this local race. So on one side, we've got Stephen Douglas, a man that is not on any dollar bills. Because he though he won this race, spoiler, sorry. History kind of forgot about him. He was a little guy with a big mouth. He was known by his contemporaries as the greatest debater in generations, if he couldn't convince you and the crowd of the truth of what he was saying, then he would find a way to destroy his opponent so badly that everyone thought the other person was an idiot. He was he was amazing at what he did. He was confident. He was well known. He had the backing of the well established Democratic Party, he had great hair. And then on the other side, we've got Lincoln, a man who was six foot four, and 178 pounds, like literally a scarecrow. And he had a high pitched squeaky voice, and wore a giant hat that made them look even bigger and skinnier, like visually, not a great guy. He was also the member of the Republican Party, which was brand new, didn't have a lot of support. And at the time, he was neither pro slavery nor pro abolition. So he made everyone mad, and nobody really appreciated his position. So like on paper, this should have been such a landslide that we never heard of this Abraham Lincoln guy ever again. But Mr. Lincoln had a superpower. He did a superpower which would propel him into the national spotlight and eventually lead to his presidency. Abraham Lincoln's superpower severe clinical depression. That's right. Severe clinical depression though they didn't call it that. Back then they call it melancholia. But now if he were to be diagnosed, that's exactly what he would be diagnosed with. Which Same as me. So me and me and Ava were like the same guy. Except he was six, four and 178 pounds and I'm six, three and 270 pounds. So you know, a little bit bigger. But anyway, six, three, I am six, three.   Ian Binns  08:26 I did not know that.   Zack Jackson  08:27 I know. I'm only about four inches on your screen. But yeah, real life.   Adam Pryor  08:32 Okay, carry on. Sorry.   Zack Jackson  08:36 So, there are a couple of times in his life that he he went on, like an unofficial sort of suicide watch, where his family, his friends and family in the neighborhood would take turns checking in on him every hour or so. He couldn't get himself out of bed. And his people were worried about him. They removed every sharp thing out of his house. They brought him meals, and this would happen for like weeks at a time. He told a friend of his once that he never carried a pocket knife on him because he couldn't trust himself. There was one time when he was running for Senate, a little girl came up to him with her autograph book and asked for an autograph. And he wrote in this autograph book. The girl's name is Rosa. Rosa. You are young and I am older. You are hopeful I am not enjoy life. Eric grows colder pluck the roses air they rot   Ian Binns  09:38 Wow. Just makes you feel   Zack Jackson  09:43 warm. fuzzies right. For a little girl pulled out and looked at it was like Oh, thanks. I guess it's I think maybe he had some of Adams superpower in there too. Yeah. So, us, people, we people who live with this sort of depression, we kind of, we find ways to cope with it in the day to day grind, how to get through the day when we feel like our souls being sucked into a black hole. For me, I have always found music to be a good outlet, writing music, playing music, or being in nature has always been helpful. For Lincoln, it was being overly productive. He just worked himself until he fell asleep. And really sad poetry, which he wrote, and which he memorized other people's and used to recite at dinner parties. And that would suck the energy out of the room when he did. Or horribly inappropriate humor. He loved dark humor, too, I think most of us who are depressed, like dark humor, but those fixes are kind of like insulin for a diabetic. They, they help you get through the day. But they don't cure anything, they don't fix anything. So his his real transformation came in 1842 when he was 31 years old, and he checked himself into a hospital and received intensive mental care which 1842 this is before there was real medication, or this is pre Freud, and all of that. And so intensive psychiatric stay in those days meant a lot of sleep, quite a bit of cocaine, and Mercury and perhaps some electric shocks. Which by the way, on a side note, people have been using electricity to try to solve head problems since at least the first century. I found I found this out from there's a doctor named scrub bonitas largas. And he writes that if you have a headache, all you have to do is catch yourself a torpedo, which is a type of electric Ray, like, like a sting ray that lives in the Mediterranean, and then put it on your head, and let it electrocute you a few times, and then throw it back in the water and then you'll be fine.   Rachael Jackson  12:21 That's genius.   Zack Jackson  12:23 Yeah, so we've been electrocuting ourselves to make ourselves feel better for a very long time. And we're still doing it. And I'm going to talk a little bit about that later. But whatever he did in there was enough to get him well enough to get out and to get a mission. Like he started to see his depression differently. After that, like it was it was less of something that he suffered through and more of something that he could use for a better purpose. He, he he decided that he should use his suffering, to help alleviate other people's suffering. You see, studies have shown that happy people are really bad at fighting injustice, like truly awful. And I'm sorry to all of you happy optimists out there. It's just not your gift. Happy people tend to overestimate their abilities. They trust people too much. They see the world through rosy colored glasses. And so they don't see the need to change things all that much, because things don't look so bad to them. But we people with depression, we are under no such delusions, we think we can't stop seeing the things that are wrong, because that's just how we see the world. And we're a lot more able to empathize with the downtrodden because we are so often downtrodden ourselves. So our superpower kind of also our kryptonite, also. So Lincoln took that melancholic heart and He pointed it towards the systems that kept kept people enslaved. And while other people talked about slavery as a political issue, as issues of, of, of laws and regulations and logic and history, and blah, blah, blah. When he got up there, he spoke from his heart. And people like modern historians would say that, like, you felt what he felt when he spoke, like when he spoke, you knew that every word that came out of his mouth was coming out of his heart, and that he wasn't just a politician, that he wore his heart on his sleeve. And that level of authenticity is just so rare, that vulnerability and authenticity is so rare in in people that when a person like that comes around who's willing to speak so freely from their own feelings, it's like people listen, you know, Fred Rogers style, people connect with that on a deep level. So that was what came through and all of the communications all of the The newspaper articles that came out, they'd be like, wow, yeah, Douglas was great. But man, Lincoln really believes what he says. And that kind of authenticity became the fuel that would propel him into the White House. Eventually, he, he turned his coping mechanisms into the keys that would unshackle millions of people. His love of poetry became these heartfelt speeches, his need to stay busy kept him focused on the work of emancipation, his dark humor became something that endeared him to people in ways that other politicians didn't, he was just such a unique person who learned how to use his, his depression, for good. And that's something that I can relate with a lot, as somebody who has spent my whole life struggling with depression, and not naming it until I was, I don't know, maybe five years ago, or so, I've talked about my own journey of mental health a bunch of times on this podcast. So suffice to say, I only started seeking treatment a few years back. And it was only when I realized that I wasn't really able to be the father that my son needed that like, I couldn't get myself up to care for this baby, I couldn't feel deeply for him, I couldn't. And I had this this struggle, this debate, when I started taking my first medication. It was like, I stopped being able to be so creative, because music and creativity was one of my outlets for my depression. And so I'd only known how to be creative in depression. And so without the depression, I stopped being creative. So I had to make a choice. At that point, it was like, do I focus on the, on my son on parenting on trying to empathize with him? Or do I focus on my creative pursuits. And that was legitimately hard, because a lot of my identity was wrapped up in that. And sometimes I still wonder, like, what it would be like if I was not on any medication, but I, I'm really grateful that I have chosen to stay on. And from what I've learned about, like, what the signs of depression is, really confirmed that, that it's really important to stay healthy, and not just to get better for a while. And I'll explain why in in a bit after our first break, but yeah, so so my own personal journey, I feel like has mirrored Lincoln's, in some ways, obviously, on a much smaller scale.   Ian Binns  17:51 So far,   Zack Jackson  17:53 so far, sure. But in realizing that the thing that has been my burden my whole life, this depression, actually has become one of my superpowers, not only being able to empathize with people, and to be present in suffering, but to also have the ability to speak from a place of knowledge for people into people's lives who are suffering is not something that somebody without depression can do. And so I'm coming to terms with then how to see that in myself, I'm starting to see it more in characters in Scripture and throughout history. And we'll talk about that in just a minute. But let's take him just just a brief moment. 20 seconds to breathe, because that was pretty heavy. So one of the most helpful books for me. It's written by Andrew Solomon, it's called the noonday demon, an atlas of depression, which if you haven't read, you should if you suffer from depression, it's really helpful. And if you don't, it's really helpful in helping you to empathize with someone else. In trying to define even what depression is. It's very difficult, but he says, grief is depression in proportion to circumstance. So everyone has grief. Depression is grief out of proportion to circumstance. It is tumbleweed distress that thrives on thin air growing despite its detachment from the nourishing Earth. It can be described only in metaphor and allegory. St. Anthony in the desert, asked how he could differentiate between angels who came to him humble and devils who came in rich disguise, said that you could tell by how you felt after they departed. When an angel left you, you felt strengthened by his presence. When a devil left you felt horror. Grief is a humble angel who leaves you with strong, clear thoughts and a sense of your own depth. Depression is a demon who leaves you horrified. Which has totally been my experience of the thing. Again, it's a great book, because it's really hard to describe the, what it feels like to be depressed. And it's even harder to describe the physicality of depression. Can I tell you on a personal note, when I first saw my psychiatrist, and I was like, Hey, can you explain to me what's going on with my neurotransmitters? Like, I've heard I don't have enough serotonin, or I don't have enough of what is this? And it's making me and he said, Oh, well. Alright. So there's a certain sort of neuro mythology out there. That which is a great word, by the way, neuro mythology, that the only thing that is wrong with a depressed person is they have some bad chemicals. They don't have enough of them, or they have too much of them, and there's just out of whack. And if you fix the chemicals, you'll find it. I say it's neuro mythology, because it's too easy. It gives an easy answer to a complicated question. When in reality, we don't entirely know. So we kind of accidentally stumbled into these medications called SSRIs, or Selective Serotonin re uptake inhibitors. And they seem to boost the level of serotonin, which seems to make some depressed people better. So then by correlation, perhaps a lack of serotonin was the reason for their depression. And that's kind of we're just kind of trying things, throwing them out the wall. And if it raises your levels, you're fine. Because the thing is, you can't tell what your what the levels of neurotransmitters are in your body without a spinal tap. Because of that whole blood brain barrier. So there is no way for them to know what your chemical levels are like, and what your neurotransmitters are able to do. And so we just kind of throw things at a wall until they work. So just like on a very basic level, throwing these words around, when any part of your body wants to communicate with any other part of your body through your nervous system, it there's an electric charge that goes through the neuron. And then it gets to the end, where it releases a number of different neurotransmitter chemicals into the little space in between, they call that the synapse. And then they float around and they go over to the next neuron. And when they touch that there's receptors, and they kind of like, you know, the square one fits in the square hole, and this one fits in the circle hole. And they, they go in, and when they latch in there, that tells that neuron Oh, okay, so that's the thing we're doing, okay, cool, and then sends electrical signal down again. And so if you lack a certain type of, of neurotransmitter of chemical, then the transmission is less than good. And so like serotonin, we have found is really important for mood regulation, and for self control for energy. So like, we just assume that people who show these symptoms maybe lack these neurotransmitters. And when we do experiments where we boost them, pay, they get a little bit better. So we assume that they're connected, but we don't honestly know how. And it seems like there are some things having to do with maybe damage in the brain itself, or chemical levels. And then obviously, there's a part of it that's like learned that psychological where it's like you're dealing with trauma, and it's so complicated. And I wish it were as simple as just take a pill, and then you're fine. Me too, right? Ian and I are on the same medication. So we have some solidarity there.   Ian Binns  24:35 I feel like it's a hit or miss process.   Zack Jackson  24:37 And it really is and you don't know if it's going to work for like two weeks and then could either   Ian Binns  24:43 be okay or utterly miserable.   Zack Jackson  24:47 I was transitioning medications at the beginning of the pandemic. And then during Holy Week and Easter in a pandemic while transitioning medications with two small kids at home, and it was the Worst couple of months of my life, because all of my chemicals were thrown out out of balance because of that, you know, and then life itself circumstances were awful.   Adam Pryor  25:11 I feel like the short answer, whenever you end up talking about brain chemistry is like, it's not simple. Like, there should just be like an Asterix by every study about brain chemistry to be like, maybe   Rachael Jackson  25:27 for these particular people only.   Zack Jackson  25:30 Yeah, I mean, the future of this is in figuring out the genetic markers that cause certain things. Because we know that mental illness can be hereditary, I could trace the, the melancholia, in my own family, between, especially through the men in my family, and all of the men in my family chose to deal with it in different ways. Some of them through alcoholism, and secret vices, and some of them through religiosity and prayer. And some of them like me, through medication, and, and therapy, we kind of have all found ways of dealing with this thing that's gone through our bloodline. And my doctor tells me, you know, once we can isolate a bit better, which genetic markers are involved there, we can then just take a DNA test, and then they can create a medication for you, that is tailored to you. And so now it's just like, hey, here you go. Rachel made me a wonderful cross stitch, and sent it to me that says, If you can't make your own seratonin storebought is fine. And I love it and it's in, it's on my wall. Because I need that reminder, the storebought is fine. It's way more important to stay healthy than it is, even if I don't understand the process of it, even if it's like, I hate the fact that my happiness comes from a bottle, I should be able to do this on my own. I'm strong enough now that I don't need this anymore. And I've done this to a bunch of times where I've been like, well, I've been good for six months now. So I'm going to tell my doctor, I want to get off this medication. And then he'll be like, Well, okay, if you say so. And then I'll, I'll have a horrible regression. And then it will be like, Okay, we got to start again. And then it takes me a while to get back on. And it's just the whole thing, because my goal is to get off of the medication and to stop having to have my happiness in a bottle. But the problem is that depressive episodes are a bit like concussions in that every time you have one, it gets easier to have another and they last longer. And they're a little bit worse, actually. Jon Gruden, who's the department chair for Lopez and young. He studies long term effects of sustained stress in the depressive episodes. And he wrote that if you have too much stress and too high level of cortisol for too long, you start to destroy the very neurons that should regulate the feedback loop and turn down the cortisol levels after stress is resolved. Ultimately, this results in lesions to the hippocampus and to the amygdala, a loss of, of neural networking tissue, and the longer you remain in a depressed state, the more likely you are to have significant lesioning which can lead to peripheral neuropathy. Your vision starts to fade in all kinds of other things can go wrong, which reflects the obvious fact that we need to not only treat depression when it occurs, but also to prevent it from reoccurring. Our public health approach at the moment is just wrong. People with recurrent depression must stay on medication permanently not cycle on and off of it. Because beyond the unpleasantness of having to survive multiple painful depressive episodes, such people are actually ravaging their own neurological tissue.   Kendra Holt-Moore  29:03 Hmm. Blood Pressure just spiked. Listening to that.   Ian Binns  29:10 My watch did tell me to take a breath,   Zack Jackson  29:12 your cortisol levels just went up hearing that and you need to find a way to get him back down again. Sustained stress is bad for you. There are natural ways, right? Y'all I'm sure have natural ways of calming yourself. Right. What do you all do when you're in this sustained periods of stress?   Rachael Jackson  29:38 I crossed it.   Zack Jackson  29:40 Yeah.   Adam Pryor  29:43 I ride my bicycle.   Kendra Holt-Moore  29:47 I paced around the living room. physically exhausted myself.   Ian Binns  29:54 I will go out, sometimes about side. Sometimes I'll meditate. Though the Lego do a puzzle, something like that. I picked up golf again, on vacation. So there are times when I've gone to the driving range, if I have the time, I found while on vacation, there was a we always play when we're down there. And the last few times we've gone I haven't played I'd started to bring my old clubs that my dad gave me years ago. So they're very old. And we, I would play with play with my father in law and brother in law down there and I was hitting it pretty well. And it's just like, it's kind of fun. I'm not taking it seriously. I'm just out here enjoying myself and then one afternoon while we were there. It was a lot of downtime. We weren't doing anything. And so I just kind of look my wife and said, Honey, I think I want to go play nine holes by myself. You're out with it. She said sure. So I've called the course because I made some courses right there and they said Yeah, come on. So I went play nine holes by myself put my headphones in and listen to a podcast. And it was a great two hours. Like it really helped. And so we found that Wow, that's so now I bought a new set of clubs. not expensive though. But it's it's very therapeutic. And I found that it's nice for me to go out there and just do that this time for myself to think and and just or let go.   Zack Jackson  31:20 Yeah, well, I was gonna say I hear two themes that the neuroscientist Andrew Newberg has talked about a lot in his books, the the arousal and acquiescent systems in your body, the the ones that you get pumped up, and the ones that you get brought down. And in both of those, if you overdo it, you're the thinking part of your brain starts to shut down, as it focuses on just that part. And you get out of your spatial awareness you get out of your cognitive areas, the parts of your brain that are overthinking that are causing the feedback loop of cortisol to keep going. And so when you work yourself out, like on a bicycle, or walking or running, you're flooding your body with such high levels of these, these chemicals that it's like whoosh, wash afterwards, or if you're doing something repetitive, like cross stitch, or knitting, or golf, or meditation or something that does the opposite, that relaxes you so much that it gets you out of that, that cycle than that to, then once that stupid thinking part of your brain is done overthinking, then the natural parts can get through and flesh it all out. I mean, you see this in religious ritual, right? You either have things like tribal dances, right with the drums and the repetitious things, or you have something like a meditative, like the home, the sound of a slow Bell or something. You even see that that's the difference between modern Christian worship songs and old timey hymns is, is the same kind of deal. You're trying to either raise yourself up and do it an ecstatic state or bring yourself down into a lower state. But both of them are trying to get out of your own head to let your brain fix itself. And that's so important.   Rachael Jackson  33:17 I love I love that I love this idea of especially in religious contexts, without even necessarily knowing why we're doing those things, right, as you're saying those. In Judaism, there's a there's a word for it called a knee goon. And a goon is a wordless melody, or a repetitive, a few words melody that will come up frequently. And we'll just say the same thing for 235 minutes, it'll be the same thing. And there's really something very powerful about that. And so it's nice to know why it works.   Kendra Holt-Moore  34:16 Think it's also really scary, like the people that I know who have depression and have tried, or are in the process of trying all the various medications and nothing's working. It's just scary to her. I feel very much for those people who want a medical solution and are not sure how to navigate like, at least in the meantime, until something works if something is going to work. Not everyone knows how to navigate like other activities to help manage those symptoms. And that When people become really desperate, and so, yeah, I just, I, I know that that is a very scary process for people to just mean it's hard to like go on antidepressants anyway, like it takes, there's an adjustment period and all of that, but for nothing to work, I know people who are like, you know, trying the last thing before they go into like anti psychotics. And that's a whole other category of drugs. That is very, I mean, like, you don't want to mess with that stuff, if you don't have to, because, you know, that's, you have a whole other set of issues that can come up with, with those things. And, yeah, it's just, it's a lot, it's a very confusing puzzle that for some people seems to like not really have a solution, except, you know, whatever it is that you can try, that makes life a little bit more manageable. And like, giving you that ability to reach, not not happiness so much, but like a state of equilibrium. It's like all people really want at that point.   Zack Jackson  36:15 There's some really exciting breakthroughs in transcranial magnetic stimulation. Previously, the last ditch option for people is to, like knock them out unconscious, and then electrocute them a bunch of times in the head, electrode thought shock therapy, it's silent and can lead to memory loss and all kinds of things. But this technique, which is been approved, but your insurance won't pay for it until you've tried, literally everything else takes off course, right? focused electromagnetic stimulation into very specific portions of your brain. So they do a brain scan first. So they can identify where exactly your how your brain is situated. And then they'll do these wonderful tests, where they'll like, they'll, they'll try to locate your like motor centers. And then like, once your hand twitches, they'll be like, oh, yep. Okay, so that's where that is. And then Okay, your nose switched, okay, that's where that is. And then they can triangulate where your mood centers will be. And then use this magnetic stimulation through, like this special hat, it looks like the kind of thing that you use at a like a beauty salon to dry your hair. And it just stimulates that one part. So it's really focused on just that one part. And it, it basically exercises it because the theory is that it's underdeveloped. And so it's like it's massaging it, and it's helping it to move and whatnot. And so you do this for every single day, it's a half hour sessions every day, for a month. And then after that, most people are fine. And they might need to come in for a tune up every couple years or so. But instead of like medication that increases the, the chemical levels in your, in the synapses, this goes straight to the brain, and tries to help massage an underdeveloped part. And it seems to be working really well. And there's a lot of new breakthroughs in the technology. And if insurance would catch up and help more people get it, then it would be it would be so helpful. But I love the fact that we discovered 1000s of years ago that you could electrocute your head and feel better and that we are still doing the same thing but with science.   Rachael Jackson  38:52 It was science back then, too. They just didn't know why.   Zack Jackson  38:56 I call it that. Yeah, he also used to use sting rays while the electric rays to cure hemorrhoids too. But I didn't look into the specifics of how that word   Rachael Jackson  39:08 awkward interesting.   Kendra Holt-Moore  39:09 I have so many questions.   Rachael Jackson  39:12 I don't want to know the answers. I love this idea. And I think and without getting so much on that soapbox. I'm just moving past that conversation guys. Without getting so   Adam Pryor  39:26 jealous derailing. Like, no, no, no. That's all I'll do. I'll stop I'll stop   Rachael Jackson  39:35 is one of the challenges that we have in westernized medicine. And I'm framing it that way because I think even in places that have universal health care, which you know, America certainly needs to get on that bandwagon. But even in those places, it's still crisis management. It's not actually preventative or care. It's It's, it's all emergency medicine, it's all Something is wrong, let's treat what's wrong. Not let's actually figure this out way upstream. So the insurance industries, but also just our frame of mind of saying, we don't have to wait until we see where something is wrong, to try to help a person live the best life that we know they can live. And I think if we change our mentality with that, where we can catch up for a holistic perspective of what life can look like, will enable each other to to thrive in ways that we're not yet capable of. And then I also just want to respond to partly what you were saying, Zach, but not directly to you, but to the concept of this mental health and this, so several people very close in my life also suffer from deep clinical depression. And I suffer so and I have suffered from not clinical depression, but situational. And so it's very, very different than that. But having said that, when I look at our screen, three of us are wearing glasses, right? And we hear this idea, or you have said yourself, sack, you know, I wish, I just wish I wouldn't have to take it out of a bottle. And I wish, you know, I could just find happiness this way. And we've learned that health is health, regardless of whether it's mental health or physical health or emotional health, health, spiritual health, right? It's health. And if we're unhealthy, then we need to do whatever it takes to get us healthy. And none of us are going to be like, Oh, I just wish my eyes would work. And I'm just not gonna wear my glasses today. Because maybe today will be the day that they just decide to work. Maybe today, I'll wake up and my, my astigmatism will magically mend itself. We never ask a person to make that kind of ridiculous jump. And that because we recognize that that's just not going to happen. I'm never going to not need my glasses. Unless perhaps I go through some sort of surgery, in which case, it may or may not help it, but probably not like, especially with my astigmatism, I'm always going to need glasses. And, and there's nothing wrong with that. And so I think if we get to the point of as a society, and then hopefully internally to say, okay, so there's something going on with the physical part that we don't fully understand. We don't know why this is happening. We don't know why this part of your brain needs to massage or is underdeveloped, or these chemicals are or are not working. We don't have the why yet. But if we can get to a point of at least saying, great, we have something that's working. Why make a person feel bad about that. And don't expect yourself to be any different tomorrow. Adam, you don't like this?   Adam Pryor  43:19 Wow. You know, like no   Rachael Jackson  43:22 poker face.   Adam Pryor  43:22 I'm not on board with like shaming people about mental health. Let me start there. That's not okay. Clear? Yep. I'm on board like, okay, so like, usually when I disagree with you, it's just like, full like, No, it's not that   Ian Binns  43:42 nobody can see, can I stop just for a minute? Can you make sure you include all of that in this transition? Cuz fumbling is is awesome. Sorry. So   Adam Pryor  43:52 here. This is what I wonder about though, right? Because I like the I like the eyeglasses analogy, right? So nobody says I'm going to wake up in the morning be like, Ah ha, today, I won't wear my glasses, and my eyes will work. But also, right, like, this is a problem that's really well explained by the reductionism of science. Right? Why do I put a lens in front of my eye because I have a very clear understanding of how the light is refracting into the wrong spot. Right   Rachael Jackson  44:21 now, but 500 years ago, we didn't   Adam Pryor  44:24 know but those pieces of being able to answer the why and the development of the technology were much more parallel than what's going on here. And I think this is the place where I look at I go like, I wonder if issues of mental health fall into a very different category, because I'm not sure there is a good reductionist answer to the why. Like, there's a little part of me that says, like, is this a problem at which science starts to break down in its investigation, because the rules of how science investigates things can't ask all the right questions   Rachael Jackson  45:03 while still living within an hour, an ethical and moral way of treating human beings. Absolutely,   Adam Pryor  45:08 absolutely. Right. Right. But even I mean look like even if you do some of the things that aren't moral or ethical, you may run into some fundamental problems were because these issues, bridge that element of the reductive descriptive nature of neurotransmitters, and big feelings. You know, as my teenager is having, right? There's some, there's some drugs that should be invented for puberty, I've decided   Ian Binns  45:48 a couple of years.   Adam Pryor  45:51 So this is like, I do sort of wonder like, does this become a space, particularly in things like religion and science conversation, where it doesn't follow the neat categories that we have to talk about that. And I think the the hope, especially in Western culture, is that we've put in medical science to be able to do those sorts of things, or are in to heal in very specific ways, the bounds of what that means are really stretched in this case, which, you know, only adds to the feeling of anxiety and depression in the situation.   Zack Jackson  46:54 So what has been your experience from the religious side of depression?   Adam Pryor  47:02 I actually wanted to ask you Zack, like, do you use any, like, specific religious traditions?   Zack Jackson  47:09 In what way   Adam Pryor  47:10 in terms of thinking about ways of, of managing or, or trying to address those feelings of depression,   Zack Jackson  47:18 or when you're talking about managing religions have done a great job with that, I mean, they always talk about doing yoga, for example, doing something to get into your body, or meditation, something to get into your mind. prayer and whatnot. You know, I, personally, I've said this before, too, it's kind of my religious tradition, when I was discovering my depression said that you're too blessed to be stressed, and that depression is a problem for atheists and not for Christians. And, you know, so I know I've worked with, I've worked with my therapist on this, I know that those things are not true. I find more comfort in looking at some of the people in Scripture, like Jeremiah, for example, the weeping prophet literally wrote a book of the Bible called Lamentations. All he does is cry. He is a sad emo boy, who felt so deeply the destruction of Jerusalem, that he couldn't help but weep and his weeping became the song of a generation, and helps other people to deal with the trauma that they were experiencing. And it's something that probably only someone who feels the depths of despair like that can can do. And so like God using him, not in spite of his depression, but because of it was something it's just important for me to, to help categorize my feelings, give them validity.   Rachael Jackson  49:01 I'll add to the religious side to that. In our tradition, it's not necessarily taboo. And it my heart just hurts hearing this idea too blessed to be to be depressed, like it just is revolting. But also we have this term called Shonda, right? It's public shame. So don't talk about it. We're not going to tell you you don't have it. Y'all feel it, but we don't talk about it. And that's where I've decided to make a big change, right saying no, absolutely. We talk about it and using those subtle signs as well as the obvious science, like on my bulletin board in my office, I have, you know, the here's the suicide hotline, business card, and here's the phone number for Nami. National Alliance of mental instant National Alliance of Mental Health Institute, something of that and on my bookshelf, like it's here's the Here's how Judaism and depression looks right. Like I make it very obvious. And then when I talk in my classes and my sermons, I totally talk about it. Right? My sermons at least once a year or during the big holidays, I talk about mental health this year included in this year, I'm using King Solomon. Right? I mean, Zack, right in Jeremiah, I think King Solomon, who wrote the book of Ecclesiastes, he is right, all is futile. You kidding me? Right? Like, all is futility? utter futility. Right? Like there's an entire chapter on how utterly futile all of life is you telling me he's healthy? That is not the sign of a healthy, well rounded person who's saying these things, right? There's existential issues going on. So recognizing that they exist in our tradition, and that we should talk about it right? daska, like, we have to talk about these things. And I think that's the role that science has made that religion can play is allowing people to explore this need of themselves and encouraging them to utilize the best science that exists. To find this way I love the word they can do use equilibrium at a bare minimum, and then hopefully grow from that point.   Ian Binns  51:20 But how do we reach those who mean we talk about instant places in the Bible, that based on how we interpret it shows that you don't need to have shame? If you suffer from depression, or you have depression, right? And yet, the Bible is still as we know, with everything, right, the Bible is still used to instill shame on some people. So reaching the individuals who still feel shame because of someone else, telling them the Bible suggests it. And I know I'm majorly paraphrasing, making this easy, or simplifying it, but those are the people that need to be reached. Right? And we need to be helped.   Rachael Jackson  52:08 And I think the best that we can do is try to make broad, build those bridges of making that happen. Right, that I'm not the person who would have ever said those things I'm right, that that would never, that would never be my way of thinking. Right? But if I can't reach out, they're not coming to me, perhaps I can reach someone who is talking to them. Right that, that in my way of saying these things, I am opening doors for people to open other doors for other people to come in. Right? That that that's that's our way of reaching people that don't want to be reached also is not through us talking. But it's through the overlap. Got to bring in a Venn diagram sometime today. I can't talk directly to the said person. But perhaps we share a person in common that would then say, hey, look at this, here's an alternative to what you've learned. So I don't know if that?   Ian Binns  53:11 Does. That's my first   Rachael Jackson  53:12 offensive.   Ian Binns  53:14 No, no, no. I think part of the issue we're dealing with here too, though, around mental health, and something that we can address throughout this series is that, you know, if you pull back from the role of the Bible, there's a major stigma in this country around mental health. And I know there are elsewhere but let's just focus on where we are right now. But there's this whole notion that if you have struggle with your mental health in some way that you're not supposed to talk about it, because of the shame associated with that. And then we see the number of military personnel or retirees who you know, it's like 20 or 22, who take their lives every single day. Because they're, you know, taught that and a lot of them are typically men, and they're taught that you know, you're supposed to be a hardened warrior. So you can't talk about these these touchy feely things, and then they end up dead right? We lost that workout group I'm part of that three. I did not know him that well. We met a few times he took his life about a month ago. Because and people were shocked people were like, I have no idea I had no idea is struggling I had no idea that struggling and I didn't know him that well. I'm certain the signs were there but we don't know to look for them if because of the shame he he may have felt but that stereotypically goes with mental health is that that's one of things i've you know, Zack as I've once we met and as we got to know each other, I've always appreciated how on Facebook when you talk about your struggles with depression in your, in your journey with your depression, that you have equated it to things like us. Or arm or something with your heart or something that people tend to talk more freely about than they do if it's something with your brain, right, and that is just another part of your body. So that's that I approach it a lot that way ever since I saw you do that. I thought that made a lot of sense, right? Yeah. And so it's, and we've had many conversations on the show about who is the real me, based on the meal medication or the Minato medication.   Zack Jackson  55:30 You know, one of my favorite things about the Bible as a whole. Both the Hebrew and Christian versions is that unlike most ancient texts, it doesn't seek to idealize people. Like, if you if you're Reading about some Babylonian king from the Babylonian texts, you'll read all about how handsome he is, and how muscley he is and how he never loses and how he's God's favorite person, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But like you read about King Saul, or David or Solomon or like, like David is lifted up as the greatest King ever. And he's written all these songs, and he's such great guy, but man, the Bible tells you all about all the awful things that he's also not. Right. So like the gospels were written by the or supervised by Jesus's disciples. And so they're the ones writing this book, and they are portrayed as such nincompoops in there. Like, they did not try to sugarcoat themselves, they presented themselves as they are. So you can read this. And you can see yourself in it. And you don't see some idealized version that you can never live up to. You see people who struggle, people who are honest, sometimes up How about what they're feeling, and how they're struggling what they're dealing with. And then you see a God that is still good. And that uses, uses their weakness, as as their strength as their superpower. And that is one of the overarching themes of Scripture, as always been that that's why I have these two scripture verses tattooed on my wrists that the one is from Psalm 33, I believe that he spoken all things came into being and the other ones revelation. At, behold, I'm making all things new, that the beginning and the end of the story of the Christian scriptures anyway, begins with his creation on both ends, that it's taking the old in the broken and making something beautiful with it, like, like a mosaic, and not just shaking up the edges sketch and starting over again, because this one got broken. I love that. And I need that, as somebody who dwells in darkness on the regular. That's actually how I met Rachel, was I said that story about how the Bible begins and ends with creation. And she said, whose Bible? my Bible doesn't end that way. And I was like, this person, this person is going to be my best friend, but it's gonna be great. My life is so much richer, because she's in it. Oh, hey, Rachel, I didn't see you there.   Rachael Jackson  58:34 I want to say thank you for taking us down this journey. And for being again, so open and vulnerable with us. Not just the five of us, but anyone who's listening and anyone who feels like we can share this. That we can really share this with others. So please do so right. Even if even if you've never shared an episode or a podcast before with someone, I think having this open conversation about struggles is really important. So please feel free to share this and any other episode.   Zack Jackson  59:13 I just want to say one final thing as we as we wrap up that and then to read you a poem that I discovered that the goal as we often see, it is pure bliss, and hope and joy and laughter and all the good things. And we imagine that mental health is some mental illness is something that is keeping us from that pure bliss and only if only we had just the right combination, we would be happy all the time. And we think of hope as something so blessed and wonderful and I want to affirm the grittiness of life and of you the listener and you my fellow hosts and to say that Sometimes life is dirty and the bloody and is still is beautiful. And so I wanted to finish this by Reading a poem by a poet named Caitlin seda. That's called hope is not a bird, Emily, it's a sewer rat. This is directed at Emily Dickinson, who wrote a lovely poem about how hope is this flattering bird that comes in on the wind and I found this one to be much more inspirational. Also, there's a couple of expletives in there. And so, if you're listening, and you're a child, maybe plug your ears. Also, if you're a child, you're a super cool kid for listening to this podcast so good on you. Okay.   Adam Pryor  1:00:48 And probably you don't need to plug your ears at this point.   Zack Jackson  1:00:54 Hope is not the thing with feathers that comes home to roost when you need it most. Hope is an ugly thing. With teeth and claws and patchy fur that seems some shit. It's what thrives in the discards and survives in the ugliest parts of our world, able to find a way to go on when nothing else can even find a way in. It's the gritty, nasty little carrier of such diseases as optimism, persistence, perseverance, and joy. transmissible as it drags its tail across your path and bites you in the ass. Hope is not some delicate, beautiful bird, Emily. It is a lowly sewer rat. That snorts pesticides, like there were lines of coke, and still shows up on time to work the next day, looking no worse for the wear,   Kendra Holt-Moore  1:01:52 huh. Now I want to cross stitch of that monster, that monster   Adam Pryor  1:02:03 feels like one that could go in my office. snore snorts lines of coke and shows up for work the next day, who's pull that right.   Rachael Jackson  1:02:28 And on a different note, we have decided this year, year three of our podcast at the end of every episode, each one of us is going to share something. And one of the things that I Rachel love to share our stories from my tradition. And so I hope that you enjoy this story this week. And next week, we are going to be so excited to hear from one of the other hosts and each week, we will rotate what our story is. Sometimes it will be connected to what we are talking about. And sometimes it won't. So stay tuned for the end of every episode and let us know what you think. Today I wanted to share a story with you about prayer. And just a note about many Jewish Oh folktales whatever, they always have men as the primary. So if you've heard this story, I'm just gonna change the gender because I don't think men get up all the fun. So just putting that one out there. So once upon a time, no, not really. One day. There is a farmer in the field. And she is tilling away. And she's working really hard because every farmer I've ever met works really hard sunup sundown 365. incredibly hard work. And this person, because she is a farmer, she doesn't have time to study. She doesn't have time to pray. She doesn't have time to be a learned scholar. She does the best she can. She prays to God, whenever she needs to, in whatever way she feels she can one day or very learned scholar comes along, is driving his carriage and he stops and he sees her praying in the fields and he says, What are you doing? And she says, I'm praying. And he responds, you can't pray right now it is not the time for prayer here. Let me teach you. And she says, okay, I've always wanted to be a good Jew. I've always wanted to be a good pray er, and so she agrees. And this very learned scholar comes and lives with her and in the house. And every day for six months. He teaches her When to pray, what words to pray, how to pray exactly the right things, to do the choreography, when to bow, when to shuffle all this stuff when she learns it, because she's a great student. And then he says, Thank you for giving me this opportunity to teach you the right way to pray. And then he moves on. And he leaves the house, and she is still a farmer, tilling the soil every day harvesting and reaping when necessary. And day after day, she slowly forgets she forgets, is it two steps forward? Or three steps forward? And then how many steps back Do I have to take? And do I go left first or right first, I don't know which way to bow. And she starts getting confused. And she starts getting upset because she knows she's doing it wrong. And so she stops praying. And she no longer goes out into the field and says the prayer of her heart. She no longer prays when she's moved to. And that's how she lives her life. And the learned scholar dies. And he goes up and he meets God. And God says, What did you do? to this farmer, he went, God, I taught her. She was such a good student. She learned she learned all the prayers. And after six months, I felt my job was done. And I moved on. He said, I thought I was doing exactly what you God would have wanted me to do. And God responds, how dare you? How dare you. She has not prayed a day since you told her that she did it wrong. She was my best prayer every day, she would pray to me. And she poured out her heart to me. But you came along and told her she did it wrong. And now she hasn't prayed. That is not your role. How dare you. What we learned from this is even if we have all the rights and the rituals, the smells, and the bells and the choreography, there is no right or wrong. The best prayers are the ones that are genuine, whether they be written down, or whether they be in our hearts, whether they be a prescribed times, or it's spontaneous ones. The ones that affect us are the ones that we feel there is no wrong way to pray.   Zack Jackson  1:07:49 This has been Episode 90 of the down the wormhole podcast. If you enjoy this podcast would you do us a favor and share it with your friends. That's a simple way that you can help our third year to be our best year yet. Thanks also to our Patreon supporters for helping us to make this podcast happen. If you'd like to donate to the cause, you can find us@patreon.com slash down the wormhole podcast. We'll be back in two weeks as Ian helps us to understand the science and spirituality of anxiety and how mindfulness meditation has helped him to persevere. We'll see you then.

Episode 87 For many people, pregnancy is an exciting and hopeful time, but for carriers of hereditary diseases, it can be a nightmare. For centuries, matchmakers and family historians have done their best to arrange marriages that would result in healthy offspring, but with modern genetic testing, we can take all the guesswork out of it. Couples can nearly handpick their future children and monitor every step of their development for potential problems. While there are so many opportunities for human flourishing, there are also plenty of moral and ethical quandaries to consider. When does a living tissue become a human being with rights? When does a human being take on the image of God or develop a soul? You might be surprised at what our sacred scriptures and religious traditions do and do not have to say on the matter!    Support this podcast on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/DowntheWormholepodcast   More information at https://www.downthewormhole.com/   produced by Zack Jackson music by Zack Jackson and Barton Willis      Transcript This transcript was automatically generated by www.otter.ai, and as such contains errors (especially when multiple people are talking). As the AI learns our voices, the transcripts will improve. We hope it is helpful even with the errors.    Zack Jackson 00:05 You are listening to the down the wormhole podcast exploring the strange and fascinating relationship between science and religion. This week our hosts are Zack Jackson UCC pastor and Reading Pennsylvania. And before I had kids, I wished that they would inherit my thick brown hair, which I had gotten from my father and his father before them. And at least one of my children has it.   Rachael Jackson 00:32 Beautiful. Rachael Jackson, Rabbi at Agoudas, Israel, congregation Hendersonville, North Carolina. And before I had a child, I wished that they would inherit a combination of my dark hair, but my husband's thick, wavy, wonderful hair.   Zack Jackson 00:55 Well, as it turns out, I have two sons. And one of them has thick blond hair, and the other one has thin brown hair. So genetics, how about you how to work out for you,   Rachael Jackson 01:06 so works out. So my husband's hair is a blonde with some red undertones. And his beard is, you know, definitely blonde, brown, red combination. I have for those that haven't seen pictures of me, I have extremely dark chocolate brown hair, where it looks black in some light. And our son that has just straight up watered down chocolate brown hair kind of looks like oh, maybe cappuccino or something like that. And its thickness is a combination to it's not nearly as thick and whatever, I can't think of the right adjective to describe my husband's hair. But it's also not as thin as mine, I have very fine hair. So my son's hair is not very fine. But it has a mind of its own. And that's just hilarious. And now that he's seven, I was under the impression that maybe we should start combing it or something. We hadn't really before this. combed it. And so I tried to do that the other day, and he looks at me and he's just like, I don't care. I went, Okay, do your life. I'm not gonna carry you there. That's fine. That's fine.   Zack Jackson 02:31 You know, of all of the hard to believe crazy. Out of this world, complicated parts about this universe, genetics are one of the things that really blows my mind. Like it's just sexual reproduction in and of itself, that you can take the building blocks of one creature and another creature, and just like strip them down into a soup, and then make something new, that isn't like 5050. That could be any number of proportion of whatever of either one, and you have no idea what's going to come out the other side. And yet, what does come out the other side is often fairly recognizable, that you'd be like, yeah, my son really does look like me. And he's got my nervous tics. And he's my other son does not and my one son is allergic to the sun, which is not really allergic to it. It's a it's a weird short circuit in your brain where you get too much light and you sneeze. My mom had it. I have it. And one of my sons has it. But not the others. No, not the other.   Rachael Jackson 03:43 Yeah, well, genetics is so bizarre, maybe that's why we'd like Legos. Right? Like imagine that, that are four base pairs that make up our DNA at that combine. One again, from a scientific standpoint, we need one male and one female in our genetics to make this happen. combined these genes and next thing you know, you get a completely different structure. But what's amazing is that it's so similar. Unlike Legos, right? Where you sort of take one person, you strip them down to their base pairs, you take the other person strip them down to their base pairs, you combine it and it looks like their child's like it looks like their results. It could have the the possibilities that it could be something completely different is amazing. Right? So when you have there's this concept of recessive gene, add dominant gene. So if you have, let's say, for example, that you have two people who have brown eyes and their child is overwhelmingly Going to then have brown eyes. But perhaps let's say the mom, her mom has blue eyes, right? So this, this would be child, this hypothetical child's grandparent has blue eyes. So there's the potential of this child to then have blue eyes. But it's such a low potential, because it is a recessive gene, not a dominant gene. And that question of what is recessive and what is dominant? And what is just, you know, not for us to decide, and it's just sort of like a grab bag. And where are these things? And do we know where they are? What are the traits? How do we find them and mapping that on to this genetic code, or the genome is absolutely fascinating. And humans have their own particular genome, fruit flies, like anything that has DNA has a genome, this is one of the things that we talked about several weeks ago, when we were talking with Professor Dan Janis, and looking at the genome of these viruses, right, so they were using RNA, and we use DNA, but it's the same sort of concept that we can figure out where these things are, and what happens if we mess with them. And, and that's where the conversation that I wanted to go today is what happens when we mess with them. So in our series, we've been talking, sort of going through the life cycle of people. So last time, we were able to talk about puberty and different ideas there. And so this week, I really wanted to focus on sort of the next stage of life, which is pregnancy and all the things that come up for people around that time of life. And a caveat, something that I feel that I, I need to say, not just that I feel like I need to say, if a person or people choose not to have children, that is their choice. And that is a perfectly good way to live. And if people choose to have one, if people choose to have 10, that is their choice. And so that's something that I also want to be very clear today that just because we're talking about this does not mean that it is the way to live in our worlds, and I feel the societal pressure that, wow, you're not really, you're only having one, what's wrong with you, or you're choosing to be child free, not to child less. And so there is nothing less about not choosing to have a child. So even if you yourself, our listeners have not had a child or choosing not to have a child, I think this conversation can still be important because it's going to bring in questions of ethics, and medical ethics. So I just I just wanted to put that out there. And also I'll be using the terms male and female to identify rather than gendered terms of woman and man. Because we recognize and we support and our allies, to our LGBTQ family, and our friends. And so we recognize that the human species needs to have male and female in order to reproduce, how a person expresses themselves and who they are gendered is not necessarily part of that conversation then. So I just wanted to add those caveats in those that understanding in our conversation today. So all of that, all of that to say, it's totally amazing that we can take DNA from two different people split it up the middle and then combine it and create another creature like another human being not a creature a human being.   Zack Jackson 08:46 Not just a random,   Rachael Jackson 08:47 just some random   Zack Jackson 08:49 person chances   Rachael Jackson 08:52 are like that question. So I, I carried my child. And so when I was pregnant with him, people would say so what are you having? And like, That's such a weird question. It's like a dinosaur. I'm having a Stegosaurus like. This is like, I don't know if Nicole has a question. Or if you ever had that question on her behalf   Zack Jackson 09:14 a time people are so preoccupied with unborn fetuses, genitals, it's unsettling.   Rachael Jackson 09:21 Yes. Like, what else? Do we ever talk about it? Like really? When Elsa read or, or worse? So are you going to have another? Like, when else do we casually talk about people's sex lives? Like that is literally none of your business. It would be like asking the question, so are you and your partner having unprotected sex tonight?   Zack Jackson 09:45 Yeah, anytime a couple says like we're trying for another one. That's all I think is like wow, you just told me that you and your your partner are just going to have a lot of sex. Thanks for that. I didn't need to know that.   Rachael Jackson 09:56 This is like somehow in our semi period in society, we're allowed to be that invasive and that open about this topic.   Zack Jackson 10:07 It's someone like, So, have you thought about getting a nose job? And like, you know what this is my body? Maybe we don't talk about this right now, it seems kind of.   Rachael Jackson 10:19 Right, it seems kind of not appropriate, because we're just not in that kind of relationship. And that's, that's a boundary crosser. But we, what we do we ask that question of like, so what are you having, which is a question of genitalia. And we now, in the last, I'm just gonna not go through the whole medical thing. So I'm just going to use very broad, broad decades, within the last 100 years, we've now been able to be clarified what the genitalia will be, of an of a fetus have a yet to be born fetus using ultrasound techniques, right. So plus or minus 60 years, we've been able to do this, which is pretty cool. But it doesn't really actually change anything, just FYI. doesn't doesn't change anything. But now we know. And then, within the last few decades, we've been able to do more than ultrasounds. ultrasounds give us a glimpse into what is going on. And we hopefully, focus on the genitalia. And I say hopefully, because that means everything else is fine. That means the heartbeat is going well, that means the shape of the head is forming. That means you can see the organs that are happening and forming and that the brain is going right that it's all connecting. And it's working. And if you're getting to the point where you're really excited about if it's a boy or a girl, then that means everything else is okay. And that's not always the case. That's not always the case with ultrasound. So what do we do? What do we do? But before we get to that conversation, I want to take a step back, when we're talking about recessive and dominant genes. Now we're gonna get into some odd territory to have ethnicity. So have you heard of the royal blood disease?   Zack Jackson 12:31 In royal blood disease, like in Russia? Oh, in Russia, are we talking about like, the Czar's that are so inbred that they have all these medical problems. They had a whole there was a whole stick on that on 30 rock for for a while.   Rachael Jackson 12:50 Okay. So there's there's two, there's two royal families in the European continent that are pretty famous for medical issues. One is sort of the Russian side, which is Haemophilia. Which is sort of a royal blood disease royal, because a lot of the Royals had it. And the other is the Hapsburgs where they were so inbred that it caused massive issues. And by the end of the line, the person was sterile, right, there was just so many genetic issues that the person was sterile and couldn't then have any more of their own children. And there there went the end of the line. Right, so the Habsburgs and that, so that's an inbreeding. But there's other ways of of Ashwin is the way I'm looking for, of being in relation ship in a small group without having these dramatic inbreeding issues. One of those that's fairly common that I'm mostly intimately familiar with, is the Ashkenazi Jewish list. And the reason that that exists, is Ashkenazi Jews or central or Eastern European Jews. And for a very, very long time, it was illegal punishable by death to marry a Jewish person. And it was illegal punishable by death to convert to Judaism. So what do you do with our population? Right, they just breed with each other. Luckily, the population was large enough that it didn't cause these massive inbreeding issues that we see in in some cultures or and then the Hapsburgs. But that has caused some genetic issues and genetic traits. And we know that now. And one of the things so there is this idea of genetic screening between two people and to see what is their genetic recessive disorders recessive meaning they themselves are its carrier status, right? It's, you carry this gene doesn't affect you, but you hold it. And you could pass it along to your child. And the question is, if you're holding it, and your partner is holding it, your child's 25% gonna get it. Right. Like that's. So if you're holding something and your partner is holding something, but neither one of you have it, your child will have a 25% chance of getting it,   Zack Jackson 15:30 and then a 75% chance of being a holder if they don't get it.   Rachael Jackson 15:34 But 50% chance of being a holder and a 25% chance of not even carrying if not even being a carrier. Got it? Beautiful, right? That's sort of how these things work of all genes being equal. That's how it would work. Well, the Ashkenazi Jewish population has around 100, pretty nasty diseases, some less nasty than others, right? Most are achy, but not traumatic or disastrous. So what we do is if we have an ethnically, and this is where I'm where I'm saying, It's getting a little sticky, because we recognize that people are people. And every, you know, diversity is amazing. And we want people to just love and live and Yay. But the reality is that if you have and that also, I just want to say that when a person converts to Judaism, you're Jewish. But genetically doesn't have the same gene pool.   Zack Jackson 17:01 You mentioned Ashkenazi Jews. Yes. That's not the only group. And before I met you, I didn't know this. So I imagine a lot of our listeners also don't know, these distinctive genetic groups.   Rachael Jackson 17:16 Thank you. I does, I'm so absorbed in that world that I forget that Thank you. So Ashkenazi Jews showed up in central Eastern Europe, plus or minus 1000 years ago. Right? So we'll just use that timeframe. Where else were Jews in the world about 1000 years ago, in what's considered the ancient Near East or the Middle East, or however you want to understand? Israel, Egypt, that part of the world, right? And then in the 1500s 1492, not talking Columbus talking, the expulsion of Jews, right, and these are Sephardic Jews. And that's the, that's one of the other terms, right? Sephardic Jews are those that come from Spain, or the Iberian Peninsula to be more accurate. But 500 years ago, they were kicked out of there, and they had to go somewhere. And so where did they go? They went to the Ottoman Empire or South America. So those are Sephardic Jews, as the primary differences. There's also different rights are it e Yemenite, its Iraqi, etc, those are much smaller populations, mostly coming from a mix of Sephardic and the local populations. So even the Jews that are living in India, and those were, most of them were considered Sephardic Jews, right? Because prior to the prior to the expulsion in 1492, their families came from Spain. So when we look at a genetic, when we look at from a genetic standpoint, it's really two groups of people, Sephardic, and Ashkenazi,   Zack Jackson 19:03 and the Arctic have had more intermingling outside of their own group, BINGO,   Rachael Jackson 19:09 BINGO, because Spain and Portugal was like, get out of here. And so where did they go? They spread. Right? They went to lots of different places, and they intermingled. So their genetic their gene pool was much larger. Ashkenazi, not so much, tiny little shuttles. And the entire shuttle would be picked up and move to a different place.   Zack Jackson 19:36 And so being Christians are awful,   Rachael Jackson 19:38 right?   Zack Jackson 19:40 Historically, I think that's pretty uncontested. Yeah. So   Rachael Jackson 19:44 the Jews living in those regions, then we're had a much different experience in the Sephardic Jews. So their ability to find someone to marry was challenging. Without going into all of the details of how not quite accurate This was Fiddler on the Roof. If anyone has seen that one of the challenges that tavia has is he has to marry off his daughters. And there aren't any. There aren't any suitable Jews in their city. Right. So where does he has to find them from elsewhere? Right that that that kind of challenge of like, Okay, I've got seven daughters. What do I do? And they they brought in a matchmaker. Yay. Right? And if no one's got the song, right, Matchmaker, matchmaker maker, find me a Kashmir catch. And so they did the matchmakers job and this is getting us back to the genetic question. The matchmakers job was not just to match them with someone who could produce children, someone who could keep a roof over their their heads and, you know, happiness and love sure, but that's that's a new issue. But the matchmakers job way back when, right pre pre maternity was to know this family, did they have any issues? And were there lots of issues? Did they lose children not miscarriage? But did did their children die at young ages? And knowing that piece of information and saying Ah, and I have a family over here, right? This, this, this bride's family her, her family has had all these little graves, these little baby graves, and this groom's family, his family has all these little graves for children, do not combine them. Right. And they just know that, again, they didn't understand genetics, but they knew that there was something in this family's blood that caused these issues. And if the same issues arose in someone else's gene pool or someone else's bloodline, you don't combine those people. So that have that's one of the roles of the Ashkenazi Jewish matchmaker was to make sure that those genetic issues sort of stopped with the families as much as they could. So what we do now, is we actually do genetic pre testing, test the adults. So Zack, if I can ask the personal question, did you and Nicole have this question or wrestle with this? Or did anyone even bring this up to you to have your own genetics tested?   Zack Jackson 22:41 know, a little, that would have been so strange and invasive, and no one would have ever thought to do that.   Rachael Jackson 22:51 Okay. And after you had conceived, did that even come up?   Zack Jackson 22:56 There were no I know. They they know. Like, maybe a little bit when we're thinking about like, well, heart disease runs in both of our families. So we just need to make sure we're eating right. But like, that's, that's kind of,   Rachael Jackson 23:15 right, right. For our segment of the population, we actually talk about pre genetic testing, where we say okay, if you two want if you're both genetically Ashkenazi Jewish, let's get you pre tested and see if you're a carrier, see if this is a recessive gene. One of the most famous ones that people might have heard about is Tay Sachs. And Tay Sachs is a neurodegenerative disease, basically, where there's a piece of fat, right that the brain just turns to fat, rather than being a muscle. And because it's a muscle, or should be a muscle, it controls things. And starting around six months old, it just stops. So if you've ever been around a child, an infant who's about six months old, they're not. They're just starting to develop any ability to have language, right, just as an ooze and whatever, just somehow forming things. They're just beginning to really sit up and hold themselves, right, but they're not really mobile, right? They're not crawling, they're not walking, but they're there but you can just plop them down on the floor and be like, okay, here's your key ring, have go to town, right, those plastic keys. And starting around that age with Tay Sachs, that's when it starts to become degenerative to the point of losing all muscle control, going blind, going deaf, having zero physical ability and eventually suffocating with lungs and most children die by the age of five, if not sooner, and it is a horrific death, the the dying, the degeneration is traumatic and the death itself is awful. Well, that's a sex. And that's one of several diseases that are like that. So we suggest, and that I think I have to double check with the numbers are, there's been much more intermarriage recently, which is good for the gene pool. Not gonna say how it is for the religion, but it's good for the gene pool where the numbers are going down. But I one point I looked at was something like one and 21 and Trey were carriers of Ashkenazi Yeah, huge. And if if anyone has been to an ultra orthodox enclave, there is a lot more infant graves than the general population for all these different genetic issues.   Zack Jackson 25:53 So are people getting people are getting tested before they get married?   Rachael Jackson 25:56 Correct. So they can see if they're right, are you a carrier? And if you're not a carrier, okay, then Hmm.   Zack Jackson 26:06 I like if, if you were to get tested before you got married, and you found that you're both carriers, right? Like, would that change your decision to get married at all?   Rachael Jackson 26:19 What do you think? What would you do?   Zack Jackson 26:24 I think, well, if I'm back when I was getting ready to get married, I think I could have found out that Nicole was, you know, secretly, a Martian, or she had a disease where her hair would catch on fire every 10 years or something. And I would still probably if married her and be like, well figure it out down the line, I don't care that you've been cursed by a witch or something. That's futures x problem. Right? Right. Because has Zach was puppy dog love, and so I wouldn't have cared later down the line, though. You know, as time went on, and we thought about kids and thought, like, that's just gonna be, that's gonna be so dangerous, potentially. I don't know if I want to do that. And then maybe we'll have felt regret. I don't know. This is this is all brand new thought experiments to me.   Rachael Jackson 27:13 So let's keep going with that thought experiment. Right? So let's say you do get married. Because love triumphs and love is amazing. And kids don't make marriage, right. Marriage is its own entity. And so you can say, Yes, we choose to start a family. Turns out, we don't want to do that to us. Right. Very few people, I think would say, Oh, I'm a carrier and my partner's a carrier. Let's try it. Those are good odds. No, those are not good odds. Those are bad odds, because the result is so bad. So the answer is no, let's not do this, quote unquote, the natural way? Well, let's say you're just so tied to seeing those ticks in your kids to knowing that your kid is like you, genetically, that you're just tied to that idea. So what are some options? Right, exactly. You know, what, what are your options?   Zack Jackson 28:17 No, I would have no idea. I mean, if both partners are carriers, yeah. I mean, we don't have the technology to like, isolate and splice out those Sure   Rachael Jackson 28:26 do. What should we do?   Zack Jackson 28:29 No, we do not.   Rachael Jackson 28:31 Here's what we do have Stop it. We have the ability to create zygotes where you take a sperm and you take an egg in IVF. Right. So you make the woman like, okay, so just a little bit of medical technology. And sorry, I'm dominating the conversation. Take a little bit of technology.   Zack Jackson 28:49 I glad it's not me dominating the conversation about pregnancy and, and Jewish genetics. Very appropriate that way. Thanks. So Turkey,   Rachael Jackson 29:01 generally speaking, a woman oscillates and yields one egg per monthly cycle. Right. And then if things if, if intercourse happens at that time, and everything is right, then there's pregnancy that's able to happen. But you don't want to just take one at a time when you're trying to do IVF. You want a whole bunch, so you just like load the woman up with hormones and all these other things. And then you go in and you grab a whole bunch of eggs at the same time. It's like, I got 10.   Zack Jackson 29:38 I can't help but imagine like a farmer, right? We're doing picking chicken eggs,   29:43 bacon, chicken eggs. That's right.   Zack Jackson 29:45 This is all very scientific,   Rachael Jackson 29:47 tinier, tiny little pinchers, right. You take all of these, and you take the sperm and you take you take a sperm and you're just like, Hi, meet your partner, and they come together in a petri dish. Or test to write test two babies. And we've had that technology 40 ish years, right? And now what but the sperm and the egg get together and you're just like, Oh, it's so beautiful. Let's make more of us. And they go from that one to two to four to eight and then pause. you pause everything at eight cells.   Zack Jackson 30:20 What do you mean, you pause it,   Rachael Jackson 30:21 you stop the reactions from continuing you stop that. You freeze them. Like I don't, I don't know the science behind it.   Zack Jackson 30:30 Like actually freezing them in and like it like   Rachael Jackson 30:33 you just like you put it like you put it in spaces. That's not the right word. But like, you just stop the reaction.   Zack Jackson 30:40 This is all science fiction to me. So   Rachael Jackson 30:41 you go. And then you take one of those eight cells. You do this, lots of sperm, lots of eggs, and you take one of those eight cells, and you look at it and you say, Alright, this is going to tell me all of the genetics of the future fetus and child. Oh, yeah. And you can say, Ah, this child will have Tay Sachs, this child will have cystic fibrosis, this child will have brown eyes, brown hair, generally be tall will have no heart disease will be male. And 1/8 of a set 1/8 of this will tell you that and then you say, ah, I've taken a look. I know that this one doesn't have a six it doesn't have any genetic disorders. Fantastic. let it continue to grow. Let me pop it in your uterus, or a surrogate unit uterus if yours is not a good place to grow things. And then you grow the child's and you're fine.   31:42 Helmets off.   Zack Jackson 31:44 So wait.   Rachael Jackson 31:46 I'm blowing Zach's mine. Okay, so I know that I know that audio and Zach's head is like literally flooded?   Zack Jackson 31:53 I know, we should have been recording the video and smacking into my microphone and everything. Yeah. Okay. So you get a bunch of bunch of fertilized eggs. And, and then the doctor says to you, all right, we've got 16 here, and seven of them are with are not going to have k sex? Do you then get the choice? Like, do you want a boy? Do you want a girl? Do you want to tall kid a short kid? Or are they sequencing the full genome are just looking for those markers?   Rachael Jackson 32:27 And that's where this becomes an ethical question. Where are we asking? We I believe I Rachel believe that when we say I don't want the trauma. And I know I'm using that word again. And the tragedy of bringing a life into this world only to see it suffer and die. And we are preventing that. And that is amazing. And I completely support that. I think we should use our technology in those ways. The question then becomes, how much information do you get? Because yes, generally speaking, when you're doing the Royal you, when you're doing these investigations of the genome, it's all found, you know, what gender you know what sex it is, you know, what? hair color and all of these other things that we have genetic markers for, you know what those are, and they test for them all. And so you can have this picture of what this child could look like. And so the question becomes, okay, now you have four, three are male, and one is female. Which do you implant? Who gets that choice? Should anyone get that? Drake's? What do you think?   Zack Jackson 34:14 This is where it'll be really helpful to have more guests on the show.   Rachael Jackson 34:19 Put the pressure off of you.   Zack Jackson 34:24 Yeah, right, take the pressure off of me because it's somehow feels different when we're talking about minimizing suffering and death and weeding out something like Tay Sachs, or something else that would inevitably end in suffering and death. And then there's like the next level down, where it's like this could potentially cause suffering and death. So like markers for heart disease, or diabetes or something like that. That is may cause suffering down the line. But it's it's kind of your baseline average it sucks to be human suffering. And then there's like things that won't really affect that. But maybe the family ones that are more cosmetic, you know about height and, and weight and hair color, hair color, eye color, things like that. And then there's like this whole other category of things that are like, would cause social suffering, right? Like, you might say, Wow, it is much better to be born a man in this day and age. So if I have a choice, I'm going to raise somebody who's going to be able to get ahead easier in the world, and be like, I'm worried. So we're gonna have a son to pass on our name and get a good job, we'll make him tall, tall, dark, handsome, as best as we can. And set him up for success. And then that feels like a different ballgame that feels like custom humans and but not custom humans in the way of like designing a genome and then spitting out something. But custom humans in a sort of process of elimination, wasteful kind of a way that then feels like if we're fertilizing a bunch of eggs, and only keeping the healthy ones, because we're trying to minimize suffering and death, for some reason that feels morally better than creating a bunch just so that we can find the one that's the best, that feels a little more shady. For all of the nerds out here, my my brain is immediately going to all of those hours I spent breeding Pokemon and Pokemon field recently on switch, and putting two in there catching an egg checking to see how strong it is, and then releasing it into the wild, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of strays running around the world right now because I wanted to find the perfect one. And now when I kept and trained, and I even in a video game I felt a little dirty about   Rachael Jackson 37:09 that's good. I think that means your ethics is kind of in check. But those are the questions that people face every time they go through this process.   Zack Jackson 37:21 Yeah. And so then created, they're not intentionally,   Rachael Jackson 37:25 right. And then the question becomes, who gets to decide if there is a decision to be made? Again, so let's let's just agree that the suffering the immediate and error, irreversible or blanking on the word, guaranteed suffering and death, that were just that those, those are just not going to be implanted? Right? We just, we just, that's part of the reason for doing this, right? We're just saying, okay, no, but now we've got four healthy ones. And let's keep it at a reasonable number for that you implant to now and then you can have a sibling later and implant to in a couple of years. Right. But if you have more than that, like, who's making the decision? Is it the parents? Is it the doctor who's doing the implantation? Is it the geneticist who found this information? Right, so from my perspective, we can we have to have layers of trust and layers of ignorance. We where the trust is we trust the geneticists finds the ones that would cause suffering, and said, these ones, these ones aren't going to be good, right? To use a very subjective term. These five are great. And I'm not going to tell you anything more about it. And then the doctor, the implanter, and the parent say, Okay, I've got five good eggs. How many do you want to try now? And that's all that that's all they know. It creates a barrier, but then we'd need to check and balance with the geneticist to make sure that the genetic so then the geneticist doesn't have any say into Oh, well did. The geneticist really likes girls that the geneticist really likes brown hair, right there, that's what's good or bad.   Zack Jackson 39:22 Right? And then years down the road, there's gonna be some big breaking story about this geneticist who was like a white supremacists, right. patriarchy guy who's been intentionally implanting only men   Rachael Jackson 39:36 for why they're only boys, right? The rest are bad, right? So there has to be some sort of check in that situation of what's identified and someone to then audit using a bookkeeping term, right to audit what this geneticist is doing. So in Judaism, the answer is at this point, right because we have questions and answers called Holocaust. response and response basically says, if it's going to be suffering and death, don't implant them and just destroy the embryos. Other than that, anything other than that heart disease, Down syndrome, right, diabetes, things that just naturally occur that might make it harder in society. No, you don't get to abort, or you don't get to choose to not implant those ones for those reasons. You say, yeah, I've had enough kids. The difference in Judaism, which I personally disagree with some of this is from a gendered standpoint, or a sex standpoint, where if you already have two boys, you're allowed to choose a female one. Or if you already have two females, you're allowed to choose a male one, to ensure a balance in your nuclear family. So that's, that's sort of where the Holocaust rests.   Zack Jackson 41:06 Okay, it feels like a concession that someone made,   Rachael Jackson 41:08 right. But it's, it's exactly that you get a little bit more, because if you if if this if you're both carriers, and you want to have multiple children, and you're like, Ah, well, I've already had two boys. Make sure that this one's a girl, then they can. Mm hmm. So, but now let's, let's get forward on your ethics. Let's say you don't go through that testing, like the majority of people don't. And you're pregnant. Yay. Yay. And you have an ultrasound and something's not Yay. And they ask the question, do you want an amniocentesis? Or do you want some other genetic testing of the fetus and amniocentesis is basically where they go into the belly, and into the amniotic fluid, take some of the fluid out and test that fluid, which means that they're puncturing the amniotic sac, which is basically the baby's life. Yeah, right. So if they puncture it, and something goes wrong, there's a 1% chance of miscarriage at that point, which is a decently high percentage, for a question mark, right, of what's going to come from this. So what do you do then?   Zack Jackson 42:24 defer 100% to my wife. I feel like with most of these decisions that have to do with childbearing and, and the creation of life, that these decisions should be made by the one carrying the life and fostering the life much more than the person who had a little bit of say in the beginning. But I think at the end, I know what what she would say would be, okay, well, what what are we going to do with the information we get? And are we considering terminating the pregnancy? If we find that it's something awful? And if that's the case, then it's worth taking the chance? If we're not going to terminate the pregnancy, that it's not worth taking the chance? And we'll see what happens.   Rachael Jackson 43:21 Yeah, exactly. I think that's wonderful way of looking at it. If you ask the question, what do you do with the answer? If the answer is nothing, right, that you're doing nothing with the answer that you receive, then why ask the question   Zack Jackson 43:35 is just for peace of mind.   Rachael Jackson 43:39 Great, like, why? Right? Nobody asked that question. Nobody had the ability to ask that question. 100 years ago, right, didn't have that ability. So why is the question now if you're not going to do anything about it? which then gets us to the religious side of things. So Zack, if you could tell us about the various stages of what life is like, when does life happen? When does a soul happen? When does like in your tradition? When do those pieces happen?   Zack Jackson 44:21 Well, the various strands of Christianity are all over the place, as is true with almost anything. I came from a church that taught very strictly that life, human life begins at conception, at the moment that the sperm enters the egg and they do their little dance, and there is a single cell. Or maybe when that single spouse splits into two, that's when life exists. That's when there is a soul present. That's when this is a human being and anything you do to That human being in that womb, that would be equated to what you would have done to a person, an adult human. Essentially. We were that church who protested at Planned Parenthood and had awful giant banners of aborted fetuses and just leave without those people. And I'm horrified now. That tradition I'm in now, the United Church of Christ is kind of work. congregational denominations, every church is allowed to do their own thing. But from a national standpoint, they would say that life begins when a child is on their own, when a child is out of the mother, and is able to live by their own means.   Rachael Jackson 45:56 Almost a medical definition then, right? Yes, is it it's a viable, that it's viable,   Zack Jackson 46:01 that it's viable on its own. So after, after birth, essentially. So we're not talking like, you know, 36 weeks or whatever, but like, after the child is out on their own, then they are a, a life, and we just, we don't bother ourselves with the question of souls, entering bodies and whatnot. One person, I pointed out that up to 14 days, a, an embryo can still become twins. And so after 14 days is when the soul enters the body, because then you'd need two souls, if it was going to be twins. And so that's the moment that it happens. And when I heard that, it said, I thought to myself, this whole thing feels very arbitrary. Like, we are really trying to shove very ancient, almost mystical ideas about how the physical and the spiritual intermingle in what makes humans special from animals. And we are trying to shove that now into scientific understandings of life. And it gets messy, and then we pretend like it's not messy, and that makes it nastier.   Rachael Jackson 47:32 Is there a differentiation of something which is alive, and something which is a human life?   Zack Jackson 47:44 modern progressive Christians would say, Yes. That though, like a tissue in the uterus, is alive on its on its own, it is also so heavily connected to the mother, that it is, in some sense, a part of it. And is is just is not a human being as itself an autonomous being. Just definitionally, I mean, my own perspective, is that I try not to have a perspective because it's not my body. And I would rather listen to the people who have those bodies and have those experiences to tell me what is happening within them.   Rachael Jackson 48:31 Although I will push you on that and say that, especially as a, as a man, being an ally, is also important. And so to understand where your ally ship feels in accordance with your morality is important. But I appreciate that I applaud the idea that the person who's making these decisions as the person going through these decisions themselves,   Zack Jackson 48:59 it also helps that I no longer have a, an individual theology of a human soul. Which then kind of changes a lot of the conversation. Like if you believe that there is an immaterial spiritual thingness that resides within you, and without you, that enters into you, or is formed into you, and then once you die is freed, to continue its everlasting life in whatever afterlife, like that idea, which honestly, is a bit more Hindu than biblical. This is the Atman we're talking about more than what the Bible would talk about as a spirit, a soul, a life a person or whatever. And I mean, when I say Bible, I mean both Christian and Hebrew Bibles. A lot is read into it. I think what the the the Christian Bible Promises is a resurrection of humanity. That the dead ur dead, ur dead are dead. And that the promises not that they die and then are washed away in some ethereal state. But the promise is that the God who remembers them will resurrect them and give them new life here on earth with a physical Earth and a physical garden and trees and wildlife and all those things, there's not really a promise other than in a couple of isolated places, in Paul's writings that talk about being freed from this mortal coil. There's not really a whole lot of indication of an individual eternal soul that is present with in a person, despite the fact that it's so present within Christian theology historically, it's not really biblical. And so if you no longer have that hinderance theologically speaking, then this question becomes a lot more scientific. Like if that if that embryo that is growing into a fetus, as growing into a child within the womb is does not have an eternal essence to it. It doesn't have a them that is them that is then that is them yet, then it's an entirely different ethical question, then it is that thing, a, a divine, a carrier of the Divine?   Rachael Jackson 51:23 Yeah, that's beautiful. Thank you for, for adding to that I've not really thought about it in in those ways. That also   Zack Jackson 51:31 might get me in trouble. So I'm sorry, all of you who are listening, who are a member of my church, don't tell anyone. All three of you.   Rachael Jackson 51:42 And I'll just say, gay Judaism, big   Zack Jackson 51:51 man,   Rachael Jackson 51:52 because we basically have this idea that there are so we don't just stick to the Bible. The Bible just influences other conversations such as the Tom Budd, which is really just 2700 pages of people arguing with each other. And what does this mean? And what does this mean, and going on from there, and in these pages, one of those examples, basically says, there's this, this I got, I just got, I just got to actually share the share the line, right, so we've all heard, and a hammer Robbie's code, right? An eye for an eye, a tooth for tooth and iron for a lar, or a limb for a limb a life for a life. And there's so many ways of answering What does that mean? You know, it's like God's revenge. And then the answer is, actually, it's proportionality. And another is actually it's just talking five different kinds of damages and using the body as an example of that. Yeah, that's that's like, Torah gymnastics right there. So we, we still have that, right. So if you keep that in mind, and that that's written down in the Bible, right, written down in the Old Testament, and then there's this line in Exodus 21. Exodus 2122. For anyone that would like to check on me. It says, If men strive together, right, so you got a bar brawl going on? Right? just let's just set the scene. I'm just gonna quote the whole thing. You got a bar brawl? Right? The bar brawl happens. And this woman comes out and says, Come on, has been Time to go home. Like you got to get work in the morning. She's just like, walking up there and she's pregnant. And and like a fight ensues and the non husband accidentally kicks her and hurts her. And she miscarries. Right. And that's it. Like nothing else. She's not even bruised in the ribs. She doesn't have a scrape on her knee. She just miscarries caveat parents medical aside, it's not just a miscarriage, it can be very traumatic. I am so sorry if that's ever happened to you. I honor that challenge. That's not the point of this conversation. But I want to recognize that miscarriages are not just miscarriages. Close parentheses. So she's fine otherwise, physically. So then they say, Oh, hey, you damaged my fetus. You owe me money. The person who did the damages What is he supposed to do? And it says, yet no harm follow, he shall surely be fined according as the woman's husband shall lay upon him and he shall pay as the judge determines because the only harm came to the loss of the fetus, not to her, but it's in the same same category as a limb for a limb alive. For a life, but it was a miscarriage. And the person who caused it is not paying with any body part, including his life from that lie and there is the not so far leap of, therefore the fetus is not a life. Hmm. It had potential hay, that could have been a boy that he could have worked in the farm and you owe me for that damages, you hurt my cow, you hurt my property, and therefore you owe me for the damages of my property. But it is not a life. And it's from that line that more than that, that our understanding of So when is this life thing happening. And there are other lines that I won't go into the gruesome nature of what they talk about, basically, it says up to 40 days, it's like water. So 40 days, which, scientifically speaking, you know, it's about six weeks. So if anything happens before six weeks, whatever, like, it's just like water, like there's literally nothing else, or we're not even going to do anything if if a miscarriage or an abortion, a spontaneous or an intentional miscarriage happens, great man gonna do anything about that. And then comes that other period of it's still really attached to the female that it is living within as a parasite. Loving pregnant, totally a parasite,   Zack Jackson 56:50 your bones,   Rachael Jackson 56:51 Oh, my God. Again, loved it was not was not did not feel like   Zack Jackson 56:58 my calcium child,   Rachael Jackson 57:00 and my blood supply and my brain cells, please go on. Thanks for that. That it is not considered a nephesh it is not considered a soul a life until the moment that the entire head is outside of the body. At that point, when the entire head is outside of the body, then the life of the person delivering it and the life of this child, this infant are now equal. Up until that point, it is considered as a limb of the mother. So if you imagine a limb, and you're just like, this limb has become gangrenous, I must get rid of it. Okay, let's get rid of the limb. If your life is in danger, because this limb is going to cause you death, then you get rid of it. It is considered and so using that language that it is as a limb, I think really changes, who owns it? Who makes the decision? And what can happen to it. I know this is all new for you, do you care to react?   Zack Jackson 58:25 And it sounds like it's being treated like a person who would trample on seedlings. And the question then is do you are you then guilty of destroying my tomatoes? Or just with the things that would one day bear tomatoes? Yeah, and that's a distinction I hadn't really considered. And coming from a place like that. Yeah, Exodus. That was, I came out of left field. Because we in the evangelical world, we would often quote from especially from Psalms from some of the more poetic places of you who formed my parts. my innermost being you knew me from in my mother's womb on all of these, this language of personal autonomy before birth and intentionality of creation. And all of those were used to, to give autonomy to the thing before it's born. So it's really interesting to hear that the people who wrote those books, interpret them differently than the people who inherited them. Which is so often the case so are doing Christians and Jews.   Rachael Jackson 59:44 So So holding that holding that idea of of imbuing all of these characteristics into something that is not yet born. Here's a piece from the mission of then that I'll share with you and this is trigger warning. It's a little bit graphic and used as hyperbole, okay? Because they didn't actually enforce capital punishment. But this is using that example to highlight and underscore what they're saying. So, in the case of a pregnant woman who is taken by the court to be executed, the court does not wait to execute her until after she gives birth. Rather, she is killed immediately. But with regard to a woman who is taken to be executed, while sitting in the throes of labor, on the on the birthing stool, the court shall wait to execute her. And then the following conversation is, well, isn't it obvious that the court executes a pregnant woman rather than waiting? After all, it's just a part of her body, the fetus is considered her property? If so, the courts should wait until she gives birth before executing her and not cause him to lose the fetus. And this is no actually this is not taken into account at all. So who gets so a woman who is pregnant, who is meant to be murdered by the state right? capital punishment? Yes. Up until the point where she is in active labor, on the birth. And so for those of you that are aren't so familiar with midwifery, on the birthing stool means the woman is pushing. She's not just in labor, like she is pushing, and that baby's head is like coming out. Only until that point, they can execute her up until them   Zack Jackson 1:01:40 worth noting, too, that the mission is not a modern   Rachael Jackson 1:01:44 document. Thank you. Yes, the mission was written down approximately 1900 years ago. Yeah. So contemporary with other Christian with Christian sources that might be interpreting this in a completely different way. So that's sort of the Jewish way of understanding this.   Zack Jackson 1:02:03 Okay. Interesting, though, that it's considered a part of the mother's body and not the father's property, as I would imagine a patriarchal society would want to do that, like, don't execute her until she's given birth, because that's that child is my property is how I would imagine them back then, to be thinking, but   Rachael Jackson 1:02:19 no, and that was that was the question that came out in the gamar, which was written about 200 years later, like, wait a minute, it's his property, he should get a say, right, he doesn't. And it's like, actually, it's not his property on till it comes out.   Zack Jackson 1:02:33 Wow. So 2000 years ago, there were people saying that a woman's body is it's her body, her choice? Yeah. And   Rachael Jackson 1:02:42 it's her body. And who gets to choose? She does? Hmm. Yeah.   Zack Jackson 1:02:51 Well, the early Roman Christians got real weird about sex and REL controlling about their patriarchy. And that really went a long way into informing what Christianity in Europe would develop as for the next couple 1000 years, and we are still recovering a lot from from that. And so it's actually kind of refreshing to hear that contemporaries of early Christians, and probably some early Christians as well. We're Reading these verses and thinking about life in these ways.   Rachael Jackson 1:03:23 Yeah. So when we're thinking about life in these ways, I think it's really important for us to recognize that it's not so clear cut, that these are difficult choices, that there's no easy answers, there are no, frankly, actual answers that everyone can follow. It's right. It's not math. It's not two plus two equals four, it's that every situation is unique and of itself, and the people who are actually impacted should be the one to be making these decisions, not somebody else. And I'll just sort of use this platform to also say that lawyers and politicians have no place in the gynecological office at all, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever. They don't. They don't ever have a place that I think the only people that even dare to have a place in there is the person whose body it is their medical practitioner, and their partner. Those are the people that get a say, and no one else   Zack Jackson 1:04:37 in that order,   Rachael Jackson 1:04:38 in that order, in that order, until we come up with some other way of reproducing in that order. Yeah. So go support Planned Parenthood. Go yell at your politicians who are not choosing this who are not recognizing that and there's a few things that I'll just say that I'm going to put in the show notes. Because for those of you that have not had the experience of having yourself or a loved one or a person in your circle of concern, go through an abortion to have to make that choice. It's really easy to assign blame. And it's really easy to say what you would have done, but you've never been in those shoes. And anyone considering that choice is not taking it lightly. It's and so I just want to dispel that it's, it's never used as a birth control option. It's never used as a ploy of oops, I just forgot, well, let me just go down the street and have an abortion, right? There's no, there's no casual this to anyone that's had to make this decision. All the more. So the later in a pregnancy, this decision has to be made, the more you've heard felted kick or heard its heartbeat, or watched your own body change to accommodate this. That is not a choice that anyone wants to make. So I will be including in the show notes, some stories of people who've had to make those choices, and how they've, how they've dealt with it. Oh, I know that kind of took a serious turn. This isn't quite where we're going.   Zack Jackson 1:06:25 But I think one excellent place to land.   Rachael Jackson 1:06:28 And when we're talking about ethics, I think that that's part of our conversation is who gets to make these decisions. When we're when we're speaking ethics. And when we look at medical ethics, part of the part of the list is do no harm. Personal autonomy and resources. Right fair justice and fairness and those ways. So yeah,   Zack Jackson 1:07:01 thank you for leading us in this discussion that I'm I'm so glad it was you. And that the fact that there were so few of us here today meant that you had the space to explore that a little bit further.   Rachael Jackson 1:07:15 No thank you for doing that. And listeners please please, please tell us your your your questions. Give us your questions. Give us your your experiences that you're feeling comfortable enough to share, give us your opinions, right tell us engage us with this conversation because it's it's even more meaningful, the more we hear from you  

As women we work hard not to compare ourselves to each other. We know we shouldn't and that it's unhealthy, but it's always easier said than done.  Mikala has taken a break from social media and I (Rachel) am more obsessed than ever! Careers, parenting, relationships, faith, mental health and much more are all impacted by what we see on the grid. What would it look like if we STOPPED playing the comparison game and learned to live as ourselves??? Relationship goals are tough because two people with very different everythings are working to make a life together. Relationship challenges are as unique as snowflakes. The nuances are impossible to list, so stop aspiring to be something you saw on the Hallmark Channel or Disney+. No matter what kind of relationship you are in, you are the boss of you and get to decide what your life looks like. Word of the Year We also talk about our words for the year and how they are coming to life already, just a few weeks into the new year. We would love to hear your word of the year and how that's going for you so far. Find us below and check out some of our recommended resources:  Rachel IG: @rachelthestewart TikTok: @rachelstewart_sd Twitter: @rachelstewartsd Clubhouse: @rachelstewart1 Mikala IG: @mikalanicole Resources Relationship Goals by Michael Todd Chaos Clarified by Rachel Stewart Healthy Relationships My One Word

As a followup to our conversation about Kamala Harris, we invited someone with a very different perspective to talk to us. We had to reschedule at the last minute, but since we were already on a call might as well record, right? I (Rachel) just took a 23andMe.com DNA test and was surprised by Brooks' results. Mikala has taken one, too, so we cover a little of that. Which led to Angelina Jolie and what you would do if you knew you had a likelihood of getting cancer or you were actually diagnosed with cancer. Instagram Mikala @mikalanicole Rachel @rachelthestewart Resources 23&Me Test Ancestry DNA Test

Happy Thursday, Temptresses! Welcome to the third episode of Oral History, where I (Rachel) tell you all about the infamous Hollywood starlet, Mae West. If you've never heard of this truly ICONIC woman, do yourself a favor and press play because you're not going to want to miss your chance to learn all about the sexist, sassiest, most diamond-clad woman in all of Hollywood. In this episode, Arielle and I talk about what happens to women when they turn 30, Netflix's Too Hot To Handle, and discuss our plans for what to do when we're finally released from the shackles of COVID-19. Also we cast Michael Cera in his best role yet. As always: pour a glass, get comf, and seduce yourself with Oral History. xx Rachel Send all love, temptress topics, and seductress suggestions to oralhistorypod@gmail.com Written and edited by: Rachel Wainz Support us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/oralhistorypod Produced by Dollhouse Media --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/oral-history-pod/support

In this short podcast episode: -surprising truths about modern slavery ... (a slave is cheaper to buy now than ever before!) -where is slavery happening? Why?! How?! - a glimpse into the diamond industry - how can buying less stuff interact with freedom? - coping with injustice without turning to denial - steps you can take to make a change The podcast will take a few weeks rest whilst I (Rachel) am staying in a Buddhist monastery and will not be contactable.

We're back! We just got back from Walt Disney World and Disneyland, so this is episode 1 of 3 of our trip recap. I (Rachel) ran the Princess Half Marathon while we were there, and we wanted to share our experience with you!  But of course, we begin this episode with official Stars Wars: Galaxy's Edge opening dates and some brief information about what we know to this point. We are so excited this episode with you. We hope you enjoy, and are inspired to uncover your own Disney Magic!

Find your voice - Episode 4 - F*ck it by Joshua AsquithJoshua Asquith, is a genuinely loveable guy. He was a talented athlete destined to do great things, which he did. A World title in New York for kickboxing, semi professional football, acting in Macbeth to modelling he had the world at his feet.Until the death of his two close friends suddenly rocked his world. He then got hit with Quinsy illness along with more health complications. But with a mindset of a true champion, my UK Rock (a nickname I give him) has found a way to control what he can control.His mindset. He adopts a F*ck it mentality but the most beautiful thing about his story is, he sees himself as “ The luckiest man in the world”.I urge you to follow his story and watch this space as he comes out of his comfort zone to prove that physical or mental challenges should never stop you from being average or giving up.Thanks for listeningFree Audible book sign up:https://www.amazon.co.uk/Audible-Membership/dp/B00OPA2XFG?actionCode=AMN30DFT1Bk06604291990WX&tag=are86-21Best book on Mindset by Carol Dweck: Mindset https://amzn.to/2QajMvZSupport the podcast: https://www.patreon.com/findyourvoiceLinks to me:Website: https://www.arendeu.comInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/aren.deu/Twitter: https://twitter.com/arendeuFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/aren.singhLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aren-deu-65443a4b/Podcast: https://www.findyourvoicepodcast.com YouTube: http://tiny.cc/51lx6yLinks to guest:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/josh_asquith/#JustDeuIt & #FindYourVoice[Music]welcome to an episode of find your voicea movement led by yours trulyAren do a guy who has overcomecrippling anxiety adversity anddifficulty like so many of you in lifewhose main goal now is to help youcombat your excuses take control of yourlife write your own story and mostimportantly find your voice so nowwithout further ado I welcome the hostof the show himself mr. Aren do what'sgoing on people thank you for tuning into the show today so this episode offind your voice has really changed myperspective and I suppose this is one ofthe reasons I wanted to do this showbecause I believe everyone has a storyand there's some powerful stories outthere that just not being told now I'mvery grateful for my guests coming onthe show because although I know himthrough the property world I had no ideaabout the other things that were goingon in his life now at such a young agehe has done more things then more thingsthan I've done and he's done things thatI suppose I wish I could have done butmore importantly than that I'm moresignificant to this story and I hope youcan extract this from the end of thepodcast is how he's persevered throughso much adversity and when I say so muchadversity I mean there's a point in thepodcast where I've kind of had to stophim listing the amount of stuff thathe's going through for the simple factthat why it was hard to comprehend but -I felt like the message was alreadythere and I'm here to get him back at alater stage so we can obviously explorethat a little bit more but I rememberedand somewhere in the podcast you'regonna hear this I refer to him as the UKrock now I'm not talking about thatstick of candy that you get up that polepleasure Beach I'm talking about rockersin the Dwayne Johnson because he givesme inspiration or watch him on Instagramand it gets me to the gym in the morningit makes me kind of eradicate my excusesbut this gentleman that I spoke to doesthe same because he's battling far worsethen Dwayne the rock Johnson atsuch as young age as well and his storyis still being written I've managed tobring him out of his comfort zone toshare his story so hopefully you guyscan appreciate that and I do appreciateyou time because it's difficultsometimes sharing some of the storiesand there are some points in thispodcast which I don't even think he'sfamily knew about as well so I'm gonnastop rambling and let's check out thisepisodeokay so firstly I just want to begin bywelcoming Joshua to the show so how'reyou doing today my friend very goodthank you you yeah not too bad thank younot too bad so I just want to say thankyou for taking time out of your dayfirstly and I've briefly introduced youin the introduction myself but I thinkit's important for the listeners to geta feel for who you really are and tohear from yourself so if you wouldn'tmind if you could just explain how youbasically progress through life andended up where you are now okayso well first of all thank you forhaving me no you're welcome anythinglike this before so this should be fun Ithink it's probably easiest to startwhere I am now it's not a particularlylong journey but it's quite a packed oneI'm 24 I'm Josh I'm a physiotherapistand I'm currently just hopefully gonnabe a property investor soon all thingsbeing well God willing you will be sostart another child I am I was reallyreally lucky I had a really nice mothershe gave me everything she works allhours of the day so much so that for thefirst few years of my life I really sawthat much of her cuz she was always justkind of working hard and slaving away togive me and my sisters a good life I hadan amazing step dad and I had aintermittent real biological fatherthroughout reels a bad word my Stefan ismy real dad book and biological fatherand I saw every couple of weekends andcame down to Birmingham because that'swhere his family are so I got to have alittle bit of my black heritage a mixedrace by the way because you can't reallysee it no I Rachel whatever you want tocall it and played a lot of sportsbeing a kid through school and I am alsodid a an African recreation of Macbethwith some really famous actors which wasreally interesting experience althoughit kind of fit with some of the thingsthat I went to go and do in my teens soin my teens I am through school wasfairly normal with the exception of Iwas fighting as a kickboxer for GreatBritainso from kind of why I went whentraveling around New Zealand with myfamily in year eight of school so I wasprobably 13 got back start playing somefootball got given some trials for alocal football academy near me and theywere preseason trials so I went throughGoogle to see if I could find somewherethat keep me fit over this summer foundthis place advertised as fitnesskickboxingI fell in love with it very quickly andfrom then on I kind of never went to thetrials never pursued it that muchfurther and started fighting I had myfirst fight fortunately or unfortunatelyfor me it was with the current worldchampion from my age group and my weightand did really well- just somehow scrape a victory off himhe's now one of my really good friendsactually and then from then on I kind ofthought well maybe I'm not too bad atthis so stuck it out eventually carriedon fighting every week around thecountry and then ended up fighting forGreat Britain which was really nice gotto travel around the world then got myfirst proper world title in New Yorkwhich was kind of cool went out therethen I came home went back to school fora few dayswhen then we're back to training andthen got called up to go and fight Ithink that my next one was I picked upin Florida mm-hmm then I did I went tofight for a European title in Romebrought my toe in the finals it's kindof like knockout stages to get therebrought my toe in the final came reallyclose second then yeah so I kind of justcarried on traveling got to see somewhat got to see some really really coolplaces like Sicily Serbiaand then I managed to keep up my gradesthrough school so kept my mom happy keptmy stepdad happy and then I got to about17 and it all started to change quiterapidly from there can I just stop youjust for a quick second just before wego into that so obviously you've had avery very dull boring life and not notreally done much but they're just somany questions that it's almost likewatching a listen to a movie so I justwanna ask you a couple of questions justquickly then would jump straight backinto where you weigh the cost so youplayed Macbeth it was that sort of likewas it a school role or was it sort ofan external audition or oh yeah sorry soit was kind of there was an arm to theyoung Shakespeare come okay they werekind of doing some diverse work theywere travelling around the country andthere's some adult actors in it as welland I just I don't know how I came abouthaving this audition but ended upauditioning for this role and then I wasin a park in Salford called Horton parkwith my mum just having a picnic and shegot a phone call saying that I'd beenaccepted to play the role of youngMacduff Wow all right Mac Duff sorry soit was Macbeth that was the math wasthat play my role was young Magda rightokay shows how much I know aboutShakespeare okay have you done any sortof acting since then or that was thelast of my kind of theater acting I wentI wanted to go back into it and then gotsidetracked by football but then when Iturned about 17 mm-hmm I actually know16 when I left school I went back intoacting kind of by accident okay andanother one I've got here is kickboxingso I grew up as a massive massive VanDamme fan fan I'm not sure if you if youknow him I do I'm fantasticI would have loved to have donekickboxing and so kick box for GreatBritain that's fantastic but then youwent on to football as well yesWow okay out of the two if you have tochoose one and if you could have pursuedit for the rest of your career which onewould you have gone withvery very very good question I wouldn'tkick boxing I would say okay yeah I'mpassionate I love football I'm reallyreally passionate about football whatkickboxing gave me a and kind ofextended family around the world hmmand in terms of the places you've beenyou mentioned Sicily with what was whatwould you say was the greatest placethat you've seen oh the most interestingplace I've seen was Serbia I think ohwow why'd you say that because where westayed we got as with the Great Britainteam we got pop in a five-star hotel andthis five-star hotel was kind of like ait was built within a mall or the mallwas it built within the hotel I don'treally know which one but it was hugebut as he looked across the road you sawall the old war torn houses it still hadbullet holes in them and things likethat and it was a reality shock it wasone of those places where you have toget police escort around with you fromBritain and oh wow that must've beensome experience yeah it was sorry yeah Ijust had all these questions thinking ohmy god this guy's done a lot we're noteven at 17 yet so yeah sorry if you wantto continue from 17 you said it went alittle bit downhill yeah so it didn't gostraight downhill it kind of seems apeak fairly early I was playing footballand we're playing an elite called theNorthwest Youth Alliance which isessentially the the Youth League of thesemi-pro football teams around theNorthwest and it was kind of like thehighest non professionalsemi-professional level you could be atbelow 18 if you weren't in one of thosePro slash semi-pro first team selectionsso I was playing there and having areally really good time really enjoyingmyself and I'd also signed to a modelingagencyat that point for a little bit of extramoney and there is between shoots wherehour between castingswell I'd actually been cast there wasthe occasional day of extra work and oneday I got a phone call saying do youwant to do a day of extra work and Ithought kind of thought well it beatsgoing to college so yeah did a day ofextra work up to do my college workthere anyway just quickly jump in onthat if anyone out there listeningthis says they've got no time to doanything extra I just not gonna believehim because I don't know how you'll fitin all this in sorry carry on me ofcourse and so I kind of did a few moredays of extra work and then it kind ofjust evolved into doing a few one-lineroles in different TV programs and thenI joined then after that I thought maybeI should learn what I'm doing soenjoying like a drama group that'sreally well-known in the northwest andjoined a drive during an acting agencyand was being put forward for somereally good roles and at that time I wasalso just about to hit sponsorship fromone of the kind of biggest martial artsfight companies that were around at thetime so it's doing really well asplaying well at football my grades aregoing well at college and then all of asudden I got back to got back to collegeand I was just having a few days offfrom everything that was doing just totry and recover recuperate and I wasdriving from my mom's to my Nan'swhich was not very far away less than amile away and I remember getting a phonecall down a one-way street and Ianswered the phone on speakerphone andchucked it on the front sea and it wasjust somebody in floods of tears and Ithought why are you calling me in footto tears and it was a phone call to saythat one of my oldest ever friends hadgot meningitis and died in the nighthe'd got it the day before and he hedied in the night and I am so I kind ofjust stopped the car and couldn't moveit mmm I had to put the phone down tocall my mom and ask her would she comewalk for the car and drive it around tomy Nan's mm-hmmand I think that kind of I think thatwas probably the start of maybe it was astress or something in my in my lifethat started maybe it was something thestraw that broke the camel's back fromwhen I was carrying too much from do ifI'm acting fighting playing footballdoing my college work oh I also had ajob at McDonald's which is just in yourspare a few hours yeah so it's kind oflike and now I was where I should haveprobably beenleave I was I was working at McDonald'sfor a little bit of extra money and I'myes I'll then I kind of a few weeksafter that I was grading for my blackbelt and missed it quite a few timesthough I'd have to go and do my blackbelt and then a fight had come up andI'd take that instead because thought Iwas probably more important as part waythrough my black garden I got this kindof it was just a sore throat and myblack back was actually down nearTelford somewhere and I live in inBolton which is I don't know two hoursaway or something like thatand I was and I got this sore throat andwelcome the next day no tonsillitis andI thought nothing of it going to collegeand have some salt water couple ofparacetamol see how it gets on all thetime I was kind of like trying to dealwith my my grief so I thought wellactually maybe just kind of felt badbecause I was in a bad headspaceand it was coming up to exam time andall the rest of it and I am so it neverreally went away so I went to the doctorwho's got some antibiotics it clearedaway for a couple of days came back andthat process kind of repeated about Ithink it was 14 15 times I got someslices in a rowbetween going to the doctors gettingpainkillers and I'm one of thoseoccasions I am my at my mum's house thefloors are on different levels it's areally old house and my mum's on thevery top floor my bedroom is on themiddle floor and I kind of there was apoint where I hadn't eaten anything forabout ten days I've lost 11 kilos inbody weight and I was just lay in my bedjust sweating and in agony and Icouldn't I went to take a tiny codeinetablet to kill some of the pain and Ithink it closed what little was left ofmy throat so I couldn't so I kind ofcrawled upstairs mom or dad's room andthat's kind of last thing I rememberso I got the hospital and they were theysaid that you were very lucky becauseyou were if you'd come any later thenthat kind of would have been the end ofyou on that's what it said to my mom Iwasn't particularly awake for of courseyeah and this was what when your17:18 yeah 17 on the brink of 18 soeventually that cleared up happenedagain and it was because of somethingcalled Quincy's which are kind ofabscesses which sit behind these tonsilsand they're filled with just bacteriawhich when they burst they give you theycan give you some really serious sepsisbut Maya just burst so I was lucky to bein the hospital as mine burst so I wasluckier than most that get that then ithappened again about six months latercut the rest of that story short becauseit's quite a long story of me being outis there a reason why that happened oris it just literally like a bacterialinfection or was it a matter of youbeing perhaps rundown or everythingbecause you were doing about 300 thingsa day I think maybe it was being sorundown and then being stressed becausewhat I forgot to mention was in thisother time there was a close friend ofmine it was a female friend of mine thathadn't died sushi she had a headachejust never with a headache and it turnsout that she had a brain tumor so oneside kind of recovered from the coupleof rounds of Quincy's and my differentbouts of tonsillitis I am I had 18months of what they call post-viralfatigue syndrome which is essentiallyjust anybody's and there's kind of likeI didn't have the energy to do anythingfor the first six months if I wanted toget from my bed to downstairsI would have to have somebody eitherside of me because my legs weren'treally strong enough to carry me fromanywhere to anywhere and if if I so Icould manage kind of a longer landing tothe toilet because I could crawl it'dtake me a while so it'd be like I'm thefirst woman black right set off nowbecause if you need a way then you wantto get caught shortso about I had about six to twelvemonths of not being able to kind of beleft on my own for too long just becauseI couldn't do anything for myself reallyI couldn't I couldn't struggle to liftmy shoulders from the bed it felt likesomebody had nailed big nails throughthe front of my shoulders andinto sorry if I went quiet because I waslooking at my shoulders just rememberingnice line into the bed then after that Ikind of thought oh well kind of on themend here now so I started to get alittle bit fitter and I thought rightI'll go back to football training so myteam were nice enough to have me backwent back to football training minusthree training sessions of me doing kindof 25% of what the rest of the team weredoing and then I got home at one pointand my left knee just ballooned I don'tknow if anybody's ever injured their ACLbut I've seen one but it's kind of likeyou need your swells up goes purple butand I thought or mine hasn't gone purpleso maybe it's something else but Icouldn't it was so strong I couldn't fitmy trousers on the next day so I thoughtoh well I'll ice it and blah blah blahrested it never went away went to thedoctors they gave me someanti-inflammatories it never went awaythey sent me to a consultant who did asome keyhole surgery never went away andthen so they sent me to RheumatologyDepartment to see what was going onthey sent give me lots of blood testsand nothing came back positive theydrained the fluid couldn't figure outwhat it was as soon as they drained thefluid it came back every single time andduring this process it lasted about ninemonths of me going back and forth allthis time I felt really lethargic andjust not like the old me that could doall those other things I could barelyfind the energy to juice go to collegeor to just go and well I got fired frommy McDonald's job for being too ill andso oh sorry you feel strange bringing itall back I can only imagine so yeah fromfrom there kind of then as they kind offigured out what was going onit sort of deteriorated and it spreadfrom my knee to my left hip and then Icouldn't really use my left leg verywell a lot of the time which theythought caused a problem in my right hipturns out it was just the same problemand then it moved up from my hiptwo joints in my back and then it spreadup through the majority of my back itspread into my fingers spread into mytoes and it got to a point where as Igot to a kind of I got through mya-levels got really good grades somehowsomebody was looking over me gone to aphysiotherapy course as that kind of allwas happening I was just getting worseand worse and kind of more and I don'tsay disabled because it's not a greatword but I was I wasn't able to do thethings that to do anything and kind ofalways felt like I had the flu my eyeswere always on fire and it messed withthe way that my urinary function workedand all kinds of other problems and thenit got to a point where I justcompletely intermittent that completelycould not move so in my second year ofuniversity at the end of it I am I justthose days where probably three days outof the week I was bed bound anyway thisis getting probably getting bored no noit's not to be honest I mean in theintro which everyone hears and one ofthe reasons for this podcast is tobasically and to combat people's excusesbecause I believe that we always lookand we always think the grass is greeneron the other side or we've got it worsethan other people and we always give usour some rationale or reason in what wecan't particularly do something and thewhole premise behind this podcast itselfis to hear people who have gone throughsuch adversity but are still getting onwith it and just because at the end ofthe day there's a guy interviewed theother day and he mentioned you've gottwo choices in life you either gobackwards or you go forwards and mm-hmfor me it's inspiring to hear you sayall this because even myself and I'mguilty of this myself is I'm known asthe guy with the really poor immunesystem because I always catch a coldI've got a tissue in my hand as werespeaking now it's the kind of person Iam I'm always known for the guy withKleenex and people laugh I should haveshares with them but I've I've alwayssuffered but at the same time I'vealmost become a victim of my own storyas well because I mean I'm here tellingpeople they shouldn't make excuses orthe stories we tell ourselves butdictate our lives and I'm sitting herefeeling sorry for myself because I getcold easily and I've just listened toyour story and I'm just thinking I'vegot it so easy and and I'm sure I'm surepeople listening to this up it I thinkin the same because when I first saw youas wellI always recognized someone who keeps ingood shape and looks after him andyou've got very good physique you lookwhile you look like you eat welltraining well and you've got all thisgoing on in the background and up untilthis conversation now where I'veactually asked you specifically if youwould have mind opening up just fortheir listeners you've never mentionedyou never mention any of these excusesso I think it's admirable to be honestmate and it's inspiring so I wouldn'tfor one second think it's boring I thinkthank you people should hear this andpeople should take inspiration from itbecause I'd be very shocked if someonelistening to this has had that muchtrauma and not to mention at the age of17 you've also lost two of your bestfriends I mean I I've dealt with griefand I'm sure many of my listeners andeven some of the people I've interviewedhave dealt with a lot of grief and lossof family but I was what 26 27 wouldn'twhen it happened to me I don't know if Ihad the emotion of stability at 17 if Ihad gone through what you'd gone throughto manage the same way so pleasecontinuehonestly it's inspiring me okay as longas I'm not boring anybody no I'll makebasically I managed to get throughUniversity with a few other challengeswhich I'll touch on later but he got toa point it kind of everything that wasgoing through reared its head kind oflast year so up through all the stillfrom kind of age 17 to age 24 yeah 24 Ikind of I was kind of plowing on yes butnothing ever felt right like I neverfelt like I had the energy to do what Iwas doing but I was doing it anyway butI never felt like I could my attentionspan dwindled massively and and it wasjust hard to kind of couldn't have makea plan because I didn't know whether Iwas gonna need my crook shoes or whetherI was gonna be bed bound or whether Iwas gonna be okay to go and walksomewhereand it wasn't all doom and gloom withinthis because at one point I was onreally really high dose of steroidsand I felt like Superman for about sothat explains your physique then 2021and I just managed to kind of keep itfrom there I suppose I got I got luckythere but throughout all of this I waskind of despite the fact that I couldn'tsoexplains what really said last year oreven this year as opposed to a certainextent it kind of I got to a point whereI was on my crutches for two or threedays a week I was stuck in bed for twoor three days a week then the othercouple of days a week I was kind of Iwas I wouldn't say okay but I was goodcompared to the other bits so sometimesI'd have a couple of days where I wasgood sometimes I'd have one daysometimes out of four days I've neverreally know so I couldn't really makeany particular plans and I got to apoint where it was creeping up my spineso much that driving to work as a I'dalways be on my crutches at work as aphysiotherapist which came with its ownset of challenges not one not only beingthe jokes of all maybe you need a physioor can I help you where there's kind oflike eight speed bumps between there onthe route that I take to the clinicwhere I work and see most of my patientsand those peoples are only you couldeasily do thirty miles an hour over themand not particularly feel it but my backwas so sore that by the end of thosespeed bumps there was a I'd have to turnleft a junction some traffic lights andI would have to pull the car over at thetraffic lights loved to get out of thecar just to try and catch my breathbecause I was so I was so winded andI've broke I've been kicked in the ribsand broken themsemia I've had all sorts of pain book Iwas in so much painevery day going over these people I justhad to pull the car over and just gaspedfor air just to try and just so I couldfinish my journey to work Wowall the time while this was happening Iwas trying different medications whichweren't helping with the pain but one ofthem is a it's quite a commonly useddrug in rheumatology it's calledmethotrexate and it's in thechemotherapy family and it the sideeffects that fairly similar you don'ttend to lose your hair but the sideeffects such as vomiting and so I wouldtake my medication on Monday and spendTuesday and Wednesday kind of over thetoilet bowl when I could get there andand I would have to excuse myself frommy patients or I'd actually just takedays away from clinic or I'd just breakinto random sweats while I was talkingto people and just almost saturatemyself in sweat as a as a side effect ofthe medication and I am I had some otherhealth problems that going on at thesame time so kind of 18 months ago theyfound I had an x-ray just to track theprogress of the disease through myjoints and they found a tumor in my hipso for the past few years with the pastfew years for the past few months beingunder investigation for some cancer inmy hip all of the medications that hadbeen taken it kind of slowed my kidneyfunction down to below 20% so thosetalks of me needing some specialistkidney treatment or potentially gettingto the point where I'd need a kidneytransplant if things didn't pick up andyeah so that's kind of my health story Ikind of lost for words to be honest ermI think more importantly just currentlyI wish you all the best with the cancerscare hopefully is just a scare I knowcancer has affected millions of peopleacross the world is is broken through myfamily as well so mm-hmm it's somethingthat I don't know I just have a bad badtaste in my mouth when I think of cancerso hope hope to God and I'm not areligious man but I pray you know yourecovery I think you've been I think youcould do with a little bit of luck mateto be honest because you've sort ofcollected everybody's illnesses and howyou still manage to keep smiling andstill keep going and you're not sittingthere making excuses and I'm actuallyamazed because lucksaid earlier this is the first timewe've spoken really in-depth about aboutyour life and stuff I mean looking fromthe outside it's a completely differentperspective I mean nobody would thinkthat you've been through half of thisand and I'm sure you could probablyspeak for another 20 minutes on some ofthe stuff that you're experiencing andI'm not trying to move past that becauseI think it's important but I think thelesson is here already that peopleshould really just feel grateful foreverything that we have and it's thelittle things in lifewe're often chasing some sort ofdestination in terms of it's going togive us happiness when we've goteverything that we technically need ifwe just look at it in the right way tobe happy now I've got a lot ofadmiration for you mate you're young aswell so you keep going and hopefullythings will just start turning backaround for you I believe that yourthoughts matter as well so I'm not quitesure how you are in terms of your yourmindset and stuff but I do believe andI've done a bit of research I know I'mnot an expert that how we speak toourselves can dictate our physiologymm-hmm I know for myself for example ifwe use the analogy that I used to bescared of dogs and if somebody mentioneda dog for example my physiology wouldchange I would almost mmm as if the dogwas there and I think here I thinkpeople are aware of sometimes theirthoughts it might not necessarily belike a spider or a snake but sometimeswe're giving ourselves these fearfulthoughts that are affecting ourphysiology so hopefully you're workingon your mindset I'm sure you are I knowyou're doing pretty much everything elseso hopefully you're developing on thatand if you wouldn't mind if I could justbecause I'm fascinated by how you keepgoing and I'm sure listeners areprobably thinking firstly how is thisguy doing all this in 24 hours and thensecondly with all these complicationsthat you've got but if you could justexplain a day in the life of your lifenow so say for instance from the momentyou wake up to the moment you go tosleep because I just think it'simportant because if there are peoplethat out there making excuses for whatthey can't do stuff or they're justfeeling a bit under the weather andmyself included in that I'm not perfectthank you just how of course yeah so Idon't have a set routine because I'venever been able to have a set routinebecause I don't know whether I couldactually make our bed to do my day ornot but I docertain things that that do regardlessof whatever condition I wake up in andthe first thing I do is I wake up andcontrary to what everybody tells you isI checked my phone and I checked myphone in fear that somebody has sent mesomething that would be something Icouldn't get over maybe I've lost allthat I wouldn't like to see maybe I'velost a family member or something and ifthat's not the case then I go straightinto believing that I'm the luckiest manI know which puts a smile on my faceAbsalon I'll put something I put somenice music on usually it's a song calledthe fire by John Legend and the roots itinspires me that song and or somethingby Stevie Wonder or something justsomething half-baked something that I'veheard and something that keeps me in agood place and then if I can move I'llget up and I'll have a dance to thissong well nobody's watching absolutelyright luck cheers me up a bit and then Ilove that attack my day home usually ifI haven't some kind of thing planned inthe morning I will be awake two and ahalf hours before it if possible justbecause if I'm if I wake up and I'mincredibly sore and stiff then sometimesI can feel a little bit better in two totwo to three hours time something likethat so I just give myself that gap forjust in case but that's kind of my onlydaily routine I suppose okay okay and interms of exercise and stuff I mean Ithink you've done enough exercise by theway to last a lifetimebut if we are talking about exercisebecause I believe and I always try andpromote with my clients as well thatexercise is fundamental because you canliterally take some of the the mainthings from that in terms of likeresilience and building calluses andstuff into anything so do you still areyou still able to exercise maybe two orthree times a week or do you kind ofknock that on the head and look look atmore on how you're feeling and thenassess the day as you go on if Iphysically can do something then I willdo itI believe that rule that I have so if itmeans that I have to crawl to a place todo some exercisewhere my bottom half doesn't work and mytop half does then I'll do what I canwith my top half Wow and that is my onlyrule so sometimes it's just my left sidewhich I can't stand on or can't use orthen my right side is perfectly lookingI'm looking after two sides and thatside will work or if it's my right sidethat doesn't work then maybe my leftside is useful so I try my new actuallyhave a mutual friend that put my stateis about fitness goals and my fitnessgoal for this year is to do whatever ittakes to be well enough to beconsistently able to go to the gym anddo what I wanttwice a week by February 21st so you canhome it to that I've already made you'veactually got me feeling guilty nowbecause I did some cardio in the morningand I was planning on doing a legsession around 12:00 and I had a littlebit of Dom's and I was like now I'm notgonna do it and I wish I'd recorded thisearly because may inspire me to get myass to the gym because I feel bad nowbut I just loved what you said then I'vejust made a note of it I'm lucky enoughto have two sides and I think that'sincredible because that's perspectiveand I suppose maybe you've kind of beenforced into this reality I think a lotof people go through adversity and itmakes them stronger and they do verywell on the flip side you get people whogo through adversity and they just sitthere and feel sorry for themselves ahole their whole life you also haveanother set of people I believe on amacro level who don't really necessarilyhave the adversity or haven'texperienced it yet and they're kind ofwaiting for it they're kind of waitingfor that wake up wake-up calland I just wish that they could get somesort of inspiration or motivation orwhatever you want to call it fromsomebody like yourself because like likeyou mentioned previously like with withthe death of your your friend and likelife could just be taken away tomorrowor your own capabilities I mean you werein an extremely talented athlete and allof a sudden now you're kind of verygrateful just to be able to go to thegym twice and I just find it thatsometimes we think I will leave it tilltomorrow we'll leave it to next year andthat's not promised it's it's a shameyou don't actually actually I'm nottrying to give you another job here butit's a shame you don't you don't youdon't post more oftenabout your life and story because I'lltell you what you didn't fire a lot morepeople because I get inspired by peoplelike say for instance the rock and Ithink the whole world loves the Rockieskind of like the ultimate guy andsometimes you feel like you can't bebothered to do something you'll see youstay ascent boom you're off but foryourself to get there mate you are youare actually my UK rock at the minute sothat's a new name for you so keep it upbut if you do get time I think the worldwould love to hear a little bit moreabout you and hopefully this episode aswell will give give them a little bitmore of an insight into into your storybecause it's fascinating so far mereally enjoyed it and I've also got aI've just made a note I need to listento the fire by John so that's someonenext list I'm gonna move it over and I'mgonna move it over to fears at theminute you seem kind of unbreakable tome but if I was to ask you what yourbiggest fear is given that you've beenthrough so much alreadywould that be I thought thought long andhard about this question and I mean I'mgonna give you a bit of round the housesanswer and so I'm kind of scared ofeverything there's not many things inlife that doesn't scare mekind of walking down the street scaresme to an extent but by that same virtuethere's nothing really that scares mebecause everything seems to scare me anequal amount so I'm not gonna be pirateif I'm not paralyzed by a paralyzingcondition I'm not gonna be paralyzed bymy fears especially if I'm scared ofeverything in everybody so there's notreally anything that scares meother than mediocrity I suppose I don'tparticularly believe that I was put hereto be mediocre and fall into the crowdand to be and just to not make adifference to anybody else's life so Ithink not filling that purpose that Ibelieve I've held and that's kind ofscares me I love that well in thisconversation may I feel like I just feelcloser to you as a person now I don'thaven't you opened up and I've got a lotmore respect not that I never had anymore respect anyway that kind of comeout the wrong way but generallylistening to your story andunderstanding what you said I've got somuch admiration for you and I was I sithere sometimes and I I do a lot of selftalking mm-hmm what I always do is I wassafer in somewhere can I always give myself his self talk like I'm the baddeston the planet for example it's kind oflike a David Goggins thing love it whoelse is working at 5 or 5 a.m. in themorning and now all of a sudden I knowwhat I'm gonna be doing in the morningI'm gonna be thinking Joshua's work youknow he's ill he's got about six jobs todo he's gonna go to Mackey's and weapply for a job because he's bored Ibetter get going so I'm May hats off toyou honestly I salute you thank you sonormally at this stage I kind of jump inand ask people about adversity and and Idon't even know where to start with youmate because I think you've had obstacleafter obstacle after obstacle that youyou seem to be facing but but I'm gonnaask you anyway because I'm sure there'sthat there's a lesson here for thelisteners here that they can take awayso if you could just tell me about atime that you faced great adversitysomething that you haven't maybementioned at the minute and how youpersevered through it and then if youcould just explain the lessons and whathe's taught you because I think someonelike yourself who's given given thatexample it's gonna mean a lot more thansomebody just reading a book or readinga quote yeah so and I'm gonna pick aperiod of a couple of months in my lifewhere everything kind of went a littlebit wrong I'm gonna choose the Christmasof the end of my second year atuniversity and so they'd reached a pointwhere as I've mentioned before I wasn'tparticularly fit enough to go and workas a I would have worked as a waiter orsomething because that's what I've donein my bits where I was fitting like myfirst year Union College and there was apoint where I wasn't fit enough to doany of that my student loan wasn'tparticularly covering my rent at allI had a bursary to train which didn'twhich covered me to eat and a few of mybills but I was kind of like 1999 poundsinto a 2,000 pound overdraft and it wasabout the Christmas and it was aboutChristmastime so I was kind of I askedmy during that time as well I should saythat my um my stepdad had left my mom soand just because they parted ways atwhich meant that I was kind of the onethat was there to kind of I was up till4:00 in the morning with my mom or withmy sisters who were just kind of alldevastated by it and at the same time Ideadlines to me etc and and all thattime I had bills that I couldn't pay soit was kind of a point where I had askedmy mom for Christmas could I have somemoney to buy my younger and my oldersisters and some Christmas presentsthere's otherwise they wouldn't have gotanything from me and I would never havethem miss out just because I'dmismanaged my money or whatever and soall the time whilst this was going on mymy nan on my mom's side had got aserious case of rapidly deterioratingoutsiders where we couldn't care for heranymoreand so we had to try and find her a homeand my nan was kind of the one whichwhich brought me off as I said at thestart when my mom was working so hardand was working really hard and and mystepdads dad got some got Parkinson'sand so we were trying to find ways tohelp him so I'm just trying to keepeverybody afloat because I was the onethat that kind of just brushes stuff offbecause I've ruined everything else offand Kevin Hart says he shoulder shrugstuff I just kind of brush it off Idon't really have much alders but I gotto a point where it kind of all got andit just all the time it was just I wasjust kind of I couldn't make head ortail of anything because I was I had somuch to transfigure out out andeverything hurt so much physically and Icouldn't I was trying to figure outbills and I was trying to do myassignments so I didn't failing it keptbehind I'd already been kept behind incollege and I definitely didn't wantthat feeling again so there was a pointwhere I kind of when I'd gone back homethere was aa good bridge him Bolton that's quitehigh and quite secluded I took myself toit and just kind of thinking about whatwhat the consequences would be here if Iwas just to kind of take a trip and lookat the bottom of it I don't know what Ikind of don't know what what stopped meI think it was just the fact that Icouldn'teverybody was suffering so much alreadythat I wasn't gonna make them sufferanymore anymoreyeah and that was I think that wasprobably like my well at least I thoughtthat was my rock bottom and then afterChristmas there was a whole host ofbills which I'd never which didn't evenaccount for just cuz my head wasspinning so I ended up about threethousand pounds into my two thousandpound overdraft and I couldn't didn'twant to ask anybody because everybodywas already suffering with their ownproblems at home so I just kind of Ithink that was probably my moment ofadversity now of anything else that Ikind of struggled with the most and Ithink I got through it I found a JimRohn video on YouTube and watch that andthat kind of made me feel a little bitbetter and then I read a couple of bookslike The Alchemist and thought actuallymy life doesn't have to kind of be thisway so for well the most immediateproblem that I can affect is my moneyproblem so I learned a couple of newskills that learn a little bit of onlinemarketing and look we found a way tosell those and made my broke even andthen my student loan came in so I had alittle bit of money and so I could buy acouple more presents for my better halfand I didn't have to worry so much thenabout the bills for my rent and stufflike that so that was kind of nice andfrom there I kind of thought wellthere's no real situation that saysthat's as bad as that and I've been kindof smiling ever since to be honest Ithink reflecting on everything that hasbeen with my friends my family etc itkind of that's why I think I'm theluckiest man I know cuzcome through it all and I still gotmajority of my family still got themajority of my friends and still got anamazing dog lovely girlfriend and I'vemanaged to get a really really nicecareer so yeah I love that I'm just veryglad firstly that you didn't make thewrong move that day at the bridgebecause I think the world and yourfamily and your friends and even myselfnow getting to know you more you wouldhave all missed out mate and I mean thatsincerely you also touched on a verygood thing there as well I think whenyou when you've been at rock bottom andI don't wish this on anyone who hasn'tbeen there but sometimes I feel that ifyou've been rock bottom and you come outof it then everything's a blessing likeyou said you're the luckiest man thatyou know in the world and I suppose Isee this from my mom I see from my nanwho have who have had similar adversityto yourself and I used to laugh becauseI used to relate them to an episode ofEastEnders I was like you've almost gotlike a soap opera kind of life like thatthe adversity that we've always gonethrough and just hearing obviouslyyourself oneit proves that everyone in the world isgoing through something we're all facingour own battles and stuff just to kindof take the gratitude element from itand move forward from it and having comeout of it so even if you moved one stepaway so you move one step away from thatbridge now everything is it's so muchbetter that quite if that kind of makessense I think I think you've got theright perspective now and I'd certainlyurge you because I'm sure you've got avery very good Network knowing theperson you are and the piss and anythingthat you've got that if ever you do feelthat things spiral out of control pleasedo always reach out I'm sure you've gotmany people close to you as well thatyou can rely on and one thing I realizedis when I used to struggleI used to enclose a lot of stuff andthat's even from like my missus at thetime or my mom or my brother and it wasonly when I started showingvulnerability and I think for a guyVaughn durability is strength and we wesaw often me we have this provider thatwe can't cry or we made her cry I cryall the time you know I'm not I'm notafraid to say that becauseby me expressing my emotions andspeaking about it it just helps me somuch in terms of face and face inwhatever I'm going through and basicallydealing with it so I'm proud of you mateand I can't believe a young you are toshow such intelligence you mentionedalso something else I just took a noteof which was about the managing moneyand how you didn't when your sisters tobe without you took a kind of abilityfor mismanaging your money and up untilprobably the age of 25 myself I I had nosense of responsibility so again likeyour emotional intelligence is fantasticso um was it awkward for you man I gotmy fingers crossed for you we're on theway up the buzzer has gone off and whatI'm gonna be doing now is putting youthrough the paces so we're gonna see howquickly you can think and how quick youcan answer as many questions as possiblelet's do it there is no right or wrongif you can't think just say pass andwe're gonna start the timer for 60seconds in three two oneokay the ability to fly or be invisiblefly money or fame money Netflix orYouTube YouTube Van Damme or Bruce LeeVan Damme Coke or Pepsi pass would yourather know how you would die or whenyou were die pass summer or winter thewinter your favourite place in the wholewide world grasmere in the latest ratespeak all languages will be able tospeak to animals animals if you couldabolish one thing in the world whatwould it beit's self doubt love that your favoritesong ever the fire read minds or predictthe future and put it in feature cats ordogs dog have you ever been in a fightthen you know this hundreds and did youalways win no favorite movie star AmberHeard pancakes or waffles pancakescomedy or horror comedy singing ordancing dancing okay and that's time butI'm curious I don't know why you passbut Coke or Pepsi mate I need to knowcuz I don't really care for eitheralright okayyou don't drink any of them I do I don'tcare okay okay well I kind of carry alittle bit just a personal thing I'm aPepsi fan anyway a Pepsiexpand so okay we're just pretend thatyou like Pepsi as our yeah okay perhapsthey love it okay brilliant so we'rekind of coming towards the end of thepodcaster so we've just got a couple ofmore questions that I really want tojust try and get from you so the nextone is about reflection that's awonderful thing and when we reflect wecan often think of ways to get to wherewe are quicker or do things earlier orperhaps move us towards that goal isthat little bit quicker but I guess thejourney also teaches us a lot as wellI'm a firm believer that everythinghappens for a reason so what I want toknow is if you could go back in time toone moment where you really struggledand suffered with adversity and youcould whisper something in your ear soif you use the example that youmentioned I standing at the bridge andknowing what you know now what would youwhisper to your 17 year old right inyourself however old you were at thattime I would whisper don't be afraidbecause pain and fear are your friendsif that's the way you see them okay Ilike that because it is how we seeeverything isn't ityeah pain is fuel for me now now Istopped my toll the other day and foundit really really funny because somethingthat pain is something that motivates meto be more now it's made me stronger soI'm gonna be strong then you are me youare it's that's kind of them I don'tknow if you follow David Goggins Imentioned him earlier a little bit hmmhe's somebody who I'd certainlyrecommend looking out for he's got acouple of interviews on impact theoryokay and that guy's is incrediblebecause he kind of uses the whole painand basically pushing your body to tohis limits he's just got a new book outactually I should be getting sponsor forthis by the way but he's got a new bookout called can't hit me and I listenedto it and honestly if I'm feeling lazyfor like an ounce of a second it makesme feel like shit so it kind of likelistening to you today I feel reallymotivated I feel inspired by yourstories the stuff that you've beenthrough it's made you the person thatyou are today and you're gonna help somany other people and it's by a book Ithink you've just got a brilliantperspective on it and that brings us toour last question so the last question Ialways like to ask my guess is if in 150this time and there was a book andsomebody come across it and it was aboutyou about Joshua well I wanna know is Ishare one or two things so I'm justadding a question in here first I wantto know what the title of that bookwould be and secondly I want to knowwhat the blurb would say okay well thetitle of my book would be can I swearyou can say whatever you are me thetitle of my book would be fuckingbecause one thing I've learned is thatyou never really know what is gonnahappen so fuck it whatever happensembrace it enjoy it whether it's painfulor pleasurable or whether whether iswhether it happens to you or somebodyelse enjoy it embrace it learn from itand use it to feel you to go further soyeah I'd say fuck it cuz that's kind ofwhat I say whenever anything happens Ilove it and the blue and the blurb wouldsay he enjoyed every day that he livedhis dog was his best friendno it would say that I enjoyed every daythat he lived and he was the mostgrateful man he knew and he never he hada lot of pain and suffering but he neverreally suffered yeah I'd say that's me Ilove that endearment I love it and to behonest you're probably one of the mostgrateful people I know as well so it'sbeen a privilege before I and I justwant people to connect with youhopefully that's okay with yourself yeahcool I think your story is just startinglike I said you're very younggot all the years ahead of you you'vegot you're gonna do amazing things and Igenuinely mean that whether it's inproperty or whatever it iswho knows you might be you might be inthe theaters might be the great showman- who knows but I think before we leaveif you could just let us know just justone place that people could reach out toyou maybe connect maybe have aconversation with you because I feellikethere's so much more in your story and Ithink you'll inspire so many people maybe going through adversity and they canlearn so much from me yeah my I'mactually in the stages of writing a bookbecause there's lots that I left out ofthis interview so there's lots that Ican share with people and I would loveit if as the same courtesy you extendedto me if I could extend to everybodythat's listening that if they are everstill freed and feel like they're atrock bottom and please contact me andI'm gonna give up my Instagram becauseI'm currently in the at the beginningstage of rebranding and this is the onething that which won't be rebranded it'sjust Josh underscore Asquith that's asqu i th all but the actual links andeverything in the show ops anyway justin case anyone didn't get that spellingas for the book mate if you've got atitle let me know if you haven't closedit to the time please let me knowbecause I'll make a pledge now I'll bethe first to purchase that I think it'dbe fun lastly thank you like I saidearlier there's nothing boring ormundane about your story it's it'sinspiring and you truly inspired me Ithink people like the rock and all thosepeople yeah it helps me when I go onInstagram in the morning but seeingsomebody who I know in real life and Ispent some time with and I've got a lotof time for just in the back of my mindnow I could see myself in the morningjust be like fuck it let's go to the gymself I love it mate I just want to thankyou one more time for taking time out ofyour dayno thank you please do reach out to Joshand as always thanks for listening andremember this podcast is absolutely freeso all we ask in return is for you toshare this with a friend and drop us afive star review over on iTunes have anawesome day See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

It doesn’t matter where you’re from or what generation you belong to, I know you know someone who’s actually entitled. I’m not talking about people who are called “entitled” but don’t necessarily deserve it. (A lot of Millennials bear the brunt of this, and it’s an unfair generalization to make about an entire generation of people, considering how hardworking and engaged most of the Millennials I know are.) I’m talking about the person you know who thinks they legitimately should not have to work for anything, and who is sort of dumbfounded by the very idea of struggle. I’m talking about the person who is so deeply deluded that they constantly talk about how spectacular they are, even though they’ve done little that’s brag-worthy. We know this person. We roll our eyes at this person. The vast majority of us are definitely not this person. But here’s the kicker — most of us are still entitled, anyway. How does that work? How can so few of us resemble “that person,” and yet so many of us still be entitled? Well, because there are two forms of entitlement, and I only learned about one of them recently! For my throwback blog of the month, I (Rachel) chose to revisit this one from March of 2017. It’ll kick you in the pants, in a good way! After you’ve listened, come leave a comment if you’re willing to admit how you may have been acting entitled without realizing it. LET’S GET 2019 OFF TO THE RIGHT START The new year is right around the corner. Cue wide eyes and mild panic! …Or not. Because hey, not every year needs to be a repeat of the last! You’d be amazed by how much can shift in just a few months with a little consistency, accountability, and a willingness to make change. So if you’d like 2019 to be vastly different than 2018 (or 2017, or 2016…), then we’re happy to talk to about the prospect of 1-on-1 coaching. LINKS Leave us a comment on this episode Take the Passion Profile Quiz Submit your question for a future episode of Dear Krachel  

So, I (Rachel) am turning 30 in just a few days. And in true nerd fashion, I wanted to celebrate by having a deep conversation. It’s a party in Ravenclaw tower, ya’ll. BYOB. Bring your own butterbeer. ;) I insisted on being the “normal person” for this month’s interview, because I’m always the expert (well, at least when you hear me on the podcast ... not so sure about the rest of the time!). Kristen came up with a bunch of questions that I didn’t get to prepare for, so enjoy my spur-of-the-moment musings about … How I feel about turning 30. (SO many mixed feelings!) The best and worst things that happened in my 20s (I delve into the worst year of my life … it was a DOOZY). What I used to believe, and why I no longer believe it. Why I couldn’t take a deep breath for most of my 20s, and how I recovered from crippling anxiety. My best wisdom for anyone still in their 20s and looking to make the most of it (in true fashion, my advice is so NOT age-specific). PLUS, she subjected me to a SERIOUSLY DIFFICULT lightening round of “this or that” questions like, “Kate Middleton or Meghan Markle?” and “Order of the Phoenix or Deathly Hallows?” A true Sophie’s Choice situation! Want to give me a birthday treat? If you haven’t had a chance yet, leave us a rating and a review on the podcast! It’d make my day! And after you’ve listened, hop on over to the comments section and tell me how this episode resonated with you, and particularly what YOUR answers would be for the lightening round questions! IF YOU LIKED THIS EPISODE, YOU’LL ALSO LOVE… Emotional constipation with Joanna Platt How to find your tribe and grow a network with Carolyn Birsky Side Chat: How to figure out what to do with your life BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS FROM THIS EPISODE Outrageous Openness by Tosha Silver E-Squared by Pam Grout The Unmistakeable Touch of Grace by Cheryl Richardson Love Warrior by Glennon Doyle LINKS Leave comments on this episode here Submit a question for the next episode of Dear Krachel, our monthly podcast advice column Take the Passion Profile Quiz

Welcome to the Refine & Restore podcast! In this early pre-release episode where I (Rachel) discuss why there's a need for this podcast, what it's all about, and one powerful life-changing insight God shared with me a few years ago that will change your life and thinking, today! Also, I have a HUGE giveaway for over $300 worth of goodies you can collect by entering to win before September 1st, 2018! Giveaway Details: 75 min life + stress management coaching session with Rachel + $100 worth of swag bag goodies of my favorite things (may include a signed copy of my best-selling book! *wink wink*) >>To Enter: 1) Subscribe to this podcast 2) Screenshot that you subscribed and share on Facebook or Instagram 3) Tag me (IG: @rachelcswanson or FB page: @rachelswansonofficial) + use the hashtag #refineandrestore in your post or story! That's it! I will save these tags as entries and select a winner on the official launch day September 1st! Can't wait to connect with you more soon! --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/rachelcswanson/support