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29 February marks Rare Disease Day. This day is an opportunity for the rare community to come together to raise awareness of the common issues affecting those living with rare conditions. A rare condition is a condition that affects less than one in 2,000 in the population, and although rare conditions are individually rare they are collectively common. It is estimated that there are over 7,000 rare conditions. Around 80% of rare conditions have an identified genetic origin. In this episode of the G Word, our host Julia Vitarello, Founder and CEO of Mila's Miracle Foundation, is joined by Rich Scott, Interim CEO for Genomics England, and Ana Lisa Tavares, Clinical Lead for Rare Disease Research at Genomics England, as they discuss challenges for those living with a rare condition and the work being carried out across the genomics ecosystem to support them. Julia is the mother of Mila, a young girl who was diagnosed with a rare genetic condition called Batten Disease, and in this episode Julia takes us through Mila's story, and how she hopes to help many more families access treatments for their children.   "So when parents, children, are diagnosed whether it's a fatal or life-longing debilitating or difficult disease, if you know that what's being learned from your child both from just the genomics to the potential treatments that's helping the next child, that helps parents like me be able to continue living."   You can find out more about Mila's story in our previous podcast episode with Rich Scott, Julia Vitarello and Dr Tim Yu.   You can read the transcript below or download it here: https://files.genomicsengland.co.uk/documents/Podcast-transcripts/Rare-Disease-Day.docx  Julia: Welcome to the G Word So my life at that point seemed to just disappear in that moment, all the things that had mattered to me were gone; I knew there was something wrong with my daughter but I had absolutely no idea that a typical child who was outgoing and active and verbal and had friends could suddenly lose all of her abilities and die. My name is Julia Vitarello, and I'm your host for today's episode. Today joining me in conversation is Rich Scott, Interim CEO for Genomics England, and Ana Lisa Tavares, Clinical Lead for Rare Disease Research, also at Genomics England. Today we'll be discussing challenges for those living with a rare condition and the work being carried out across the genomics ecosystem to support them. If you enjoy today's episode, please like, share and rate the G Word on wherever you listen to your podcasts. The 29th of February marks rare disease day. This day is an opportunity for the rare community to come together to raise awareness of the common issues affecting those living with rare conditions. A rare condition is a condition that affects less than one in 2,000 in the population, and although rare conditions are individually rare they are collectively common. It is estimated that there are over 7,000 rare conditions. Around 80% of rare conditions have an identified genetic origin. Before I get into speaking with Rich and Ana Lisa, I wanted to share my story and my daughter, Mila's, story. My life as a mother started really like anyone else's, my daughter was perfectly healthy, her name is Mila. For the first three or four years of her life she was like any other kid. I live in Colorado in the United States, my daughter was a skier, she was a hiker, she was rock climbing, she was incredibly active and singing songs and swimming and riding bikes. But around four years' old she started tripping and falling, she started pulling books and toys up closely to her face; she started being covered in bruises, getting stuck on words and repeating her sentences and I brought her to about 100 different doctors and therapists around the United States to try to figure out what was going on with her. Around four years' old I started speaking with orthopaedic surgeons, with ophthalmologists, with neurologists, with speech therapists and each one of them, you know, told me pretty much that I was a crazy mom and that my daughter was typical and normal and that she would grow out of these sort of strange symptoms that she was having.      By the time that she was six years' old, I had had enough and I was crying on a regular basis, no doctor could help me and I was tired of lugging my daughter, who was now covered in bruises and tripping and falling and stuttering, together with my newborn son at the time, kind of around the country only to be told that I was crazy. And at that point at six years' old I brought her into the emergency room in the Children's Hospital Colorado, near where I live. She was in there for about a week and underwent a battery of tests and at the end of that week I was told that my daughter had a rare genetic condition called Batten Disease and that she would lose all of her abilities and die in the next few years. So my life at that point, first four years of my life seemed to just disappear in that moment, all the things that had mattered to me were gone. I knew there was something wrong with my daughter but I had absolutely no idea that a typical child who was outgoing and active and verbal and had friends could suddenly lose all of her abilities and die. After crying on my closet floor pretty much most of the day for a few weeks I picked myself up. I started to read white papers, I started to go online and learn about other rare conditions. I started to speak with parents that had fought for their children with physicians, with researchers, and did everything I could to kind of figure out if there was even a glimmer of hope. And what I was told at the time at the end of 2016 was that there is almost nothing that could be done and very little was known about my daughter's form of Batten Disease. But that there was a tiny glimmer of hope that we could maybe stop genetic disease, and that's all I needed. I started Mila's Miracle Foundation, which is a non-profit organization. I started telling Mila's story and taking care of my kids by day and trying to fight and learn and raise money by night and I started a gene replacement therapy because it was the only option that I could take on as we didn't know much at all about the disease, and by replacing it, it was kind of the only thing that I could do, but it was going to take many years and millions and millions of dollars and I knew that it wouldn't be in time for my daughter. Along the way, there was something a little bit unusual which was that my daughter had an auto recessive disease which meant that she needed to have a mutation in the same Batten causing gene from her mom, myself, and her father, and they could only find one of these two. That led me to learn about whole genome sequencing, which was kind of the most extensive way of looking at Mila's genome to figure out where this missing mutation was. And in that search I crossed paths with a Dr Timothy Yu at Boston Children's Hospital, and he volunteered with his lab to help me find this missing mutation that no other lab could possibly find. And within a few months and a lot of work, a lot of late nights and weekends and staring at screens, through whole genome sequencing, the team was able to find Mila's missing mutation and finally diagnose her fully with this rare form of an already rare Batten disease. That is where Mila's story changed and turned direction. At that point, a recently approved drug for spinal muscular atrophy was on all neurologists' minds at that moment because it had just been approved in the US by the FDA and in other countries, and it was a game changer, these children were dying and on respirators and in wheelchairs you know at the age of two and with this new drug they were actually living, many of them were living long lives and were active and happy and healthy and going to school. And Mila looking her whole genome sequence was able to kind of fit that same criteria, and so the doctors, including Dr Yu said, “What if we did the same thing for these children? What if we made a drug like this for Mila?” This drug called Antisense Oligonucleotides, or ASO seemed to be a good fit for Mila's mutation. And so a drug was made for Mila and named after her called Milasen and it was a race against time for an entire a year with a team of honestly hundreds of people across academics and industry, I was fighting to try to raise the money and awareness and working with a scientific team. And one year after Mila was diagnosed when she turned seven years' old, we moved to Boston and Mila began receiving Milasen, which was named after her, and only in that moment in time did I realise not only what a big deal this was for me as her mother, but what a big deal this was for science. She was the first person in the world to receive a medicine that was tailored just to one person and it was named after her because there was no-one else in the world they could find that shared that same mutation. When Mila began this, you know, I didn't know what to expect but I knew that she was going to lose all her abilities and die if she didn't receive this. And so once she started receiving this within just a few months, her 30 seizures a day went down to nothing; she had occasional small tiny seizures that were barely visible but her quality of life was incredibly you know improved, not to mention our family's because she was no longer thrashing and smashing her arms and legs up against walls and tables. She had been slumped and could no longer sit up. She could no longer hold her body up and take steps with my support from behind and after Milasen she started being able to do that even walk up the stairs with alternating feet with me supporting her from behind. She also had received a G-tube and was receiving all of her nutrition through the G-tube and after Milasen she started eating by mouth, it wasn't perfect, but she was eating pureed foods, and being able to swallow better and probably most importantly she was able to smile and laugh at the funny parts in the books and the stories that I had been reading and singing to her and that she had kind of really not been responding to as much before Milasen and some of that came back. So, a year into this everyone was quite shocked that Mila had done so incredibly well in this first year despite how progressed she was, progressed her condition was. Unfortunately in the second year it was during COVID and it was unclear whether or not Mila's disease had kind of stopped or whether it was slowly progressing and in the third year Mila started having problems associated with her rare condition and I was faced as a mother with the most horrible decisions anyone should ever, never, never, never have to face to decide what Mila would want if she were able to talk and tell me whether or not this was a life that she felt like she would want to live. And after three years on Milasen, which was three years ago almost this week, Mila died and in many ways my life as I knew it was kind of over. I'm a very positive happy person and I have a son and I continue getting up every day and pushing through the day but I'm not sure how any parent makes it through days, weeks, months and their whole life without their child physically there with them. Ana Lisa: We can really hear the perseverance that you had to get a diagnosis through whole genome sequencing eventually for Mila. Can you tell us a little bit more about that process and what that diagnosis, what did it mean for Mila and for your family? Julia: When Mila was first diagnosed with Batten Disease, one of the missing mutations could not be found by any lab. I did research and found out that whole genome sequencing which at the time was very, very hard to find a lab that would do it or anyone that would do it in the United States, I did learn that that was really what was needed in order to try to really get down to find the underlying genetic cause of Mila's disease and give her a full diagnosis. So once we managed to have Dr Yu's lab at Boston Children's Hospital carry out the whole genome sequence, obviously we were able to then find exactly where the broken, underlying broken kind of genetic mutation was and why that was important was for two reasons: 1) was so that we could actually have a diagnosis and even though it was the worst diagnosis we could have ever asked for, at least there was an answer and for so many years I didn't have an answer and there is nothing worse than seeing your child, you know, having all of these different symptoms and problems and having you know tens, if not hundreds, of different doctors and therapists tell you that they don't know and maybe you're just a little bit over-worked and over-worried about things, and having no answer and no idea what's wrong is like living in this limbo that's just terrible. And so whole genome sequencing allowed for us to have a full diagnosis for Mila, and it also allowed us to use that data since it was truly the precise place where, you know, we could find the precise plan where her gene was broken. It allowed the researchers to then also think about what could be done about it as well, which is the second thing a parent thinks about after they have the kind of relief in some ways, which is a strange word to use but it's true, of knowing what is wrong and then thinking, “What could I do about it now?” And so for me I would say that's how, Ana Lisa, that's how I reacted to that, is there was enormous relief initially, which is just the weirdest word ever to use for that but at least I felt like I wasn't crazy and that there was an actual reason and that it allowed us, allowed me and others to think what kind of action can we take now. Rich: One of the things that often strikes me, I'm a clinical geneticist by background, just like Ana Lisa, is how often particularly several years ago when we were in a different situation, it depended on families and parents pushing and pushing and pushing and asking, that's something I think in the UK we're really lucky that there have been changes in terms of availability of testing. Julia, as you know, we were set up ten years ago initially to run a project, a research project in partnership with the NHS called ‘The 100,000 Genome Project' asking the question about whether whole genome sequencing could be used in a diagnostic setting. Whole genome sequencing had just emerged as a thing that could even be conceived of as affordable in a healthcare system back then, and we worked with the NHS and tens of thousands of families with rare conditions and people with cancer to ask that question and again, we're really proud of what that work and our partnership with the NHS has led to, which is now in the UK. There is the availability nationally of whole genome sequencing to test in certain settings including in rare conditions that are hard to solve in this sort of way and it's one of the things which has really changed the way we can go about this, but we also know that there's still, it's still hard often to identify who should be seen by a specialist who might do a test and so on. But it has really changed things and I think it's hearing from families like yours about how challenging it is and thinking about how we turn, looking across all of the story that you told us of everything you went through, how we can make that be something where we can make it be more systematically available and work for many more people, and I know your phrase from Mila to millions really strikes a chord with me, and I know with the NHS mind-set here in the UK where it's about equity of access and I think that mind-set that you bring is so important. Julia: Yes, Rich, I think it's a really good point you know, because a lot of parents like myself, we're talking about probably millions around the world and tens of thousands just in the UK alone, spend so much time going from one physician to another and to a therapist and it takes an enormous amount of energy and time in a family that's already dealing with pain and confusion and not understanding what's going on, not to mention usually that child, in my case, Mila, is having problems that it's not easy to leave the house and get in the car and go to all these appointments. And the more we can push towards whole genome sequencing as one of the first places to go, if not the first place to go, the more it's going to cut that sort of diagnostic odyssey down to the very bare minimal. And so of course a dream would be is that any child that has, I like to think of it as soon as you kind of have more than one symptom that shouldn't normally go together, that sort of has a little red flag that goes off and in most parts of the world right now no physician wants to scare a parent like me, it's happened a number of times to me where a physician has said, “Well, you know, there is this rare condition but I'm not going to bring that up because it's so rare that the likelihood that your daughter has that, I wouldn't want to scare you.” But the more we can move towards whole genome sequencing right away to help with that answer that could cut months and very often years from that odyssey, and that is where we need to be, we can't have the tapping on the knee and stacking up blocks and running down the hall for months and years just to figure out what's going on. Ana Lisa: And I think Rich also there said a power of having a national healthcare service where patients who are having whole genome sequencing can also decide whether they wish to consent to be part of research and combining that with a national genomic research library and then the ability to work so closely with the NHS and go back to patients if there is a new diagnosis that could benefit them is really powerful I think, and that's definitely one thing that we've also learnt from these big whole genome sequencing efforts is that our knowledge is continuing to develop and some people will get a diagnosis from that immediately and we've got amazing colleagues working on diagnostic discovery looking at whole cohorts of patients now who are having whole genome sequencing and that's also been really informative and allowed a lot of new diagnoses identified also through research and through these efforts to be found. Julia: Absolutely and I think that the UK is incredibly well suited to have such widespread sort of country-wide whole genome sequencing project like what Genomics England has done because you have one system where all of the clinical and genetic data can all come in and kind of be analysed both for like you said diagnostics but also it could be, if families and patients are interested, right, in contributing to the research which then comes full circle and helps the entire system benefit from better treatments you know and better understanding of diseases. Rich: And that point of sort of thinking about how to move things forward, so the NHS has a service based in Exeter which is addressing the question where children are on intensive care, where often intervention is needed really rapidly to make a difference, so that's one of the examples where sort of thinking about making sure that service is available early and rapidly is being set up and that's been really successful and identifying a cause where that really changes the care of that child on intensive care. The other area where we're working really closely with the NHS at the moment, as you know, Julia, and in fact I think this was probably one of the reasons we first came to talk to you was thinking about our newborn genomes programme where if you like, the big question there is saying we know that there are a few hundred conditions that are within that longer list of rare conditions where there is a treatment available routinely if the diagnosis is made, and saying could we use whole genome sequencing alongside existing newborn heel prick testing which in the UK currently looks for nine, shortly to be ten, conditions. So we're just about to launch that programme and that will sequence the genomes of 100,000 babies born at maternity hospitals, not selected for children where there's something, a concern, raised, but any baby at that hospital would be eligible for the family to choose to join that research programme and really to ask that question about whether this is something that we should offer to all babies developing the scientific evidence around it, learning about how you might implement it in practice, and also having conversations about how one might do that, what public attitudes are to it and so forth, developing evidence that can move us forward in that area too. And back to Ana Lisa's point about improving knowledge, we know that today there are a certain number of conditions that one might think are comparable to those nine that are currently looked for in the UK on the heel prick that we could use genetics as a way in. We also know that through the sort of innovation and the new knowledge that you mentioned that was relevant to Mila, that list might grow quite considerably in the coming years, so it's thinking about how we set ourselves up to make sure that we're able to take advantage of that to its full. Julia: Yeah, and I think it's a great, I'm glad you brought this up Rich because the UK really is leading the world in this, there is no-one else that is doing whole genome sequencing at birth, and ultimately, that's where we need to be. You know it's not going to happen overnight and like you said, the purpose of this is really to learn a lot about how and if to roll this out maybe in a larger scale way across the UK. But ultimately, you know, as Mila's mom, I think all the time about you know how incredible what I saw at a very progressed state for Mila with this treatment and the only way to actually really truly help Mila and other Milas is to get to these children early enough so that they're diagnosed before they have symptoms and they're treated before they have symptoms. And the way to move towards that is to at least have efforts like the project, you know, the newborn screening project so that we can get to children, find them before they have symptoms, treat them before that and from what I saw from Mila I feel pretty strongly that if Mila had received Milasen at birth she might never know the effects of Batten Disease, and we as a family might never know what it's like living with a rare condition, and this is a step in that direction to help. Effie Parks: Hi there, I'm Effie Parks, mom to Ford, who lives with a rare neurodevelopmental disorder called CTNNB1 and the host of the Once Upon a Gene podcast. Our show connects families facing rare diseases, offering stories from parents, insights from experts and discussions on everything from navigating grief to exploring genetic advances. It's a space for understanding, connection and empowerment. For support and inspiration on your rare disease journey, subscribe to the Once Upon a Gene podcast on your favourite podcast app and let's navigate this path together. Ana Lisa: Julia, I'm interested to hear what you think the development of individualised medicines like the N1 treatment Mila had what that means for the sort of collaboration that's required across the genomics ecosystem to achieve that. Julia: Yeah, that's a really good question. It's been seven years that I've been thinking about this kind of individualised medicine concept, you know, as Mila kind of became the pioneer in this field and I'm not a scientist, I'm not a physician, but I've learned a lot because I've been fortunate enough to be part of thousands and thousands of conversations, including with all of you and others, Genomics England, and around the world and I think what I learned and what I've learned so far is that when you have a genetic condition most genetic conditions are individually rare and unfortunately that doesn't make them very suited to have anyone go after a treatment for them because really the only way to connect a patient, a child like Mila, to a science or technology is if they're lucky enough, and I hate to use the word ‘lucky' but they're lucky enough to be part of a large kind of cohort of people, and that allows them to be, you know, commercially viable, so a company will be maybe develop if they're lucky, a treatment for that, for those people. The only other option is this sort of like Herculean effort of which myself and Dr Yu and others went through, we had to raise millions of dollars and get hundreds of people to get on board and develop a novel medicine for one person – now how scalable is that? How many times can we do that, right? And so the only people that really have access to medicines today with genetic conditions are those that are fortunate to be part of one of these two groups, but what about everyone else which is 95% of the people? And so I think what the field is learning is that we kind of have the patients and we're finding them, especially thanks to Genomics England and others, we're starting to find them more rapidly earlier, more of them, and we have these technologies to be able to not only find them but to also treat them but we just do not have the infrastructure and the processes to connect them, we have clinical trials and we have these sort of named patient route but we don't have anything else. And so I think the genomics community, especially in the UK because it's so well suited with all the efforts that we've just brought up, is really well suited to kind of try to work together to allow for access kind of no matter how many people could benefit, it's not only one, it could be six or 20, or 200 or 500. Right now there is no access for them. So I think that the UK is really well suited, starting with whole genome sequencing, that's where it begins, it begins by identifying patients early enough and getting the data that's needed in order to diagnose them and also to help with the treatment you know, and so this is how I think the UK is really leading the world right now, including in the recent announcement of the rare therapies launch pad, which Genomics England is part of, I am part of, others are part of, Oxford Harrington Rare Disease Centre, the MHRA, others are all part of really trying to be dedicated to building the infrastructure and resources and processes that are needed to connect the patients to these technologies that exist today. Rich: I've been really inspired by the conversations and the drive that you, Julia, personally have given to those conversations. And I think what's really interesting and I think it's relevant more broadly than just in rare therapies particularly, but I think that challenge of recognising the need for the system to change to be able to respond to evidence and make the response proportionate to the expectations of various people, the patients or the families who are receiving it, the system as a whole, these sorts of therapies and rare conditions as well, are just not the shape that works well with existing paradigms, but I think it's relevant you know, in other settings as well. I'm really interested in some of the conversations that I've had with you before about balancing risk and understanding how to get that right and the fact that that really needs an open discussion in public to also understand the journey and the situation that families find themselves in. I wonder if you could tell us a bit about your perspective on getting that risk balance right? Julia: Thanks for bringing that up, Rich. I think it's really, really important because to me the way we think of risk and benefit and the risk tolerance maybe is a better way to put it is the foundation of the house that we're building. So, you know, the regulatory process and everything behind that are built on top of how we think about risk. And one of the things that I regularly think about is children that have end stage cancer, and that we as a society have accepted an enormous amount of risk for a child at end-stage cancer that has no other options that's going to die no matter what, probably very rapidly and that if they don't respond to kind of some of the main line treatments then to turn to an experimental cancer treatment which carries a very high risk is considered very acceptable by our society and that everyone, the clinicians, the families, the regulators, everyone is willing to take that risk for that child because they're going to die otherwise. And they're willing to spend money and they're willing to take the risk and often perhaps to buy that child maybe three or six months of life. So then if you look at Mila and if I tell you that instead of having a rare condition that she has an end-stage genetic disease, and I use the words from cancer, from oncology, is now suddenly the discussion changes a little bit, so Mila's going to die no matter what, no child has ever lived with her form of Batten Disease and she's going to lose all of her ability, so we know the risk of not treating Mila. The risk of treating Mila in this case was an antisense oligonucleotide, which is a modality that's been around for 30+ years, tested in animals and more frequently in numerous humans across different sort of trials. And the labs that worked on Mila's medicine felt that it was safe enough and hopefully efficacious enough. And at that point why is the hurdle so exponentially higher than what it would be for a child with end-stage cancer? The way that we are thinking about these children with end-stage genetic disease and end-stage cancer, is drastically different, so we need to first, to your point Rich, we need to start realising we've already set that precedent, we don't need to be having this discussion again. We know the risk we're willing to take for a dying child when there's no other therapeutic, no other option and they're going to die no matter what. So the risk of treating Mila, versus the risk of not treating Mila is black and white and we need to do our best and then we need to not only treat Mila but we need to learn from the treatment of Mila. We need to collect those learnings, they must be iterative learnings so that the next child that's treated with an individualised different ASO or different medicine that they don't happen in silos, but that all of this knowledge comes together so that the second and the third and the fourth and the tenth and the twentieth, the process gets better and faster and eventually cheaper so that it's accessible. Rich: Yes, and that's very much back to Ana Lisa's point on the link and for diagnostics too on continuing to learn and creating a system that recognises that that's crucial to offering the best care today but also in the future and being able to make proactive decisions more confidently if you're a policymaker, knowing that you'll continue to learn, you don't have to pretend you know everything today. Julia: It's very meaningful for parents. So when parents, children, are diagnosed whether it's a fatal or life-longing debilitating or difficult disease, if you know that what's being learned from your child both from just the genomics to the potential treatments that that's helping the next child, that helps parents like me be able to continue living. And so you know, research is this kind of generic word, I wish there were a better word for it. Really what it is, is it's learnings and it's what can be learned from my child that can help the next child? Ana Lisa: And then that learning requires a lot of collaboration, which is the super important part I think of your story. Julia: Yes, it does, it requires a lot of people starting with those diagnosing the children with whole genome sequencing all the way through just to the clinicians who are in the NHS, not to mention the researchers who are then looking at the data and bettering their understanding. Ana Lisa: I think there are also, maybe one can extend some of those parallels as well, in that I think currently we sometimes think of an individualised therapy of NF1 as being something that takes a lot of time and benefits an individual, and actually if we can really collaborate we can really set up processes that work across the ecosystem and keep learning, then I'd love to dream that actually this could help many, many different patients, with many, many different types of rare conditions because actually we've learnt how to target a little bit more at source, perhaps a particular type of genetic variant, and so a bit like cancer, we're not thinking about breast cancer, we're thinking about what sub-type, what genetic causes there are and targeting those, and if we can apply that one day more broadly across rare conditions then it might be that actually once you've learnt a certain amount, that you could scale up and treat many, many different conditions, not dependent on their frequency in the population. Julia: Yeah, that's a great dream, I share that dream. Rich, what is your, you've been in this for many years, what's your dream for the next five, ten years? Rich: I guess I have, I think there's two aspects to it. I think there's two, I think there's a lot of distance left to run for us improving on the diagnostics and I think thinking back to your conceptualisation of it Julia, of sort of thinking about how we can bring that earlier, whether that is that for example we're able to sort of more proactively flag when children have you know, more than one visit to a particular type of doctor or something that makes that happen much earlier in the process. So the tooling that we now know works whether it's whole genome sequencing or something more targeted can be used earlier in the process, or whether for example in our newborn genomes programme we get that evidence that we can look for a broader range of conditions in a screening context right at the beginning of life. And I think in five to ten years we should be in a substantially different place, we'll know whether or not we think whole genome sequencing should be there but offered for every baby at birth, and we can be much more proactive also when symptoms arise. I would also hope that on the side of therapies and intervention, we're in a substantially different position and I think, I've been amazed the last five years how my level of hope has increased. I believe we should now be in a position in five to ten years where those with a therapy that is potentially there to benefit them, should at least be able to be aware of it and there will be a clear pathway by which either that is available if it's proven, or there's a pathway that we all understand about how that can be trialled. And I think we're at the beginning of that journey and I now feel it's a responsibility of ours to work through how we can bring the right pieces into place, we can't prejudge the science, but we can set up the system that makes us be able to respond to it. Julia: Yeah, I remember Rich when you and I were speaking a number of months ago and maybe you could share the story because you talked about your hope kind of changing over time as a clinician I thought that was really powerful to me. Rich: Yeah, I remember it's probably now maybe 15 years ago being asked by a family about what my advice would be to them on the likelihood of there being a treatment for their child's particular condition being available and in fact they asked me to do it in a way that I sort of provided a formal written report to them that I spent a lot of time thinking about and agonising over and was very honestly you know saying it was highly unlikely that something would become available. If I had to write that same report today it would be very different. Julia: That's so promising to hear that. I don't know, Ana Lisa, have you had any experiences like that in the past that you feel differently now of how you would approach a family like mine? Ana Lisa: I think it's a real balance between having that hope ourselves, sharing that hope with other people and not giving false hope and it's such a balance when right now more than 95% of rare diseases don't have a treatment and I think that's such a difficult position to be in right now. And everything we've been talking about gives me massive hope for the future and a lot of what we're pouring our energy and efforts into is both the diagnostics so that we're not trying to make a puzzle with missing pieces in the dark and that's mission-critical, and then the real hope that actually this will drive therapies, which is what we really want for everybody who needs a therapy to have a therapy that's effective, whether they've got a common condition, a rare condition and that's our driving ideal. So I think I'm full of hope and optimism and I hope that it will accelerate, that's what I really hope, the momentum will build and we'll get to a certain level of knowledge, we're learning the processes, we're learning the evidence, we're learning the collaborative models that are needed to really suddenly explode our ability to treat rare conditions. Julia: Yeah, you know when Mila was, I guess when I look at newborn screening in the United States and Batten CLN7, which is Mila's kind of sub-type of her condition is not on newborn screening tests because there is no treatment for it, but the whole genome sequencing that was done for Mila was the data that we got from that was what was needed to create a treatment for her and so it's an unusual case where she was sequenced and a child and a baby, a newborn in the UK could be sequenced and not only told that they have a disease, so they have time to kind of understand the disease more but also potentially kind of prepare for a treatment that might be in the pipeline, but that data is also going to help scientists and researchers create new treatments that may not be available when that child is born but that's the data that's needed to create the treatment. Right now you guys are you're really at the forefront of solving both halves of the what I consider like a rare condition, you know, global health crisis with tens and hundreds of millions of people that have you know families like mine, like my story sounds unique, it sounds impossible but there are tens of millions of other people like me, like my story sounds unique, it sounds impossible but there is tens of millions of other people like me and so to have the UK kind of leading this effort to solve both halves of the problem, the diagnostic half, you know, what disease does a child have and find it in time and also kind of the treatments, here's where we're headed, and if we don't solve both of those problems then there is no such as access, you know to a better life, so I'm really grateful for the fact that you've set a precedent for other countries because now finally there are other countries that are looking towards you and kind of really trying to do the same thing that you're doing. Rich: Yeah, well I think we feel we're uniquely placed; the NHS in the UK and for Genomics England our partnership with the NHS, together with a number of other factors and I think the recognition from government as well as the NHS over a long period that the importance and the power of genomics and the importance of for example, making changes to regulation to get it right mean that it's something that I think we feel really privileged to be in the position to even be able to ask these big questions. Julia: yeah, I think the UK is really uniquely suited to have hung their hat on genomics so that the topics you're taking on are very central, they're not kind of on the sideline, they seem whenever I'm in the UK they say that what Genomics England is doing is at the forefront and in the middle of all the discussions with academics and companies and regulators and government. What do both of you think are the, what are the biggest kind of hurdles we have coming a few years in the newborn programme or you know, any of your other initiatives? Rich: I guess all of these are big questions and I think we need, it's back to that sort of point from Ana Lisa sort of balancing the hope and expectation, I think we're uniquely placed to develop the evidence really clearly and one of the things that we again think is so important is having this conversation in the public about it and developing a shared view, almost you know, it drives policy but it's also something which I think the whole of society needs to sort of think about how we address and what we want to do collectively. I wouldn't place it as a barrier but I would highlight it as a strength that we've had and I think we're hopeful that we'll continue is that long-term commitment in terms of government and the NHS and I think that's really powerful in this space to maintain the UK's position as being able to ask these questions and to show that leadership. Ana Lisa: And to bring together, we need to work really closely across the ecosystem. So in my mind one of the challenges is if one part is missing then that person is not going to get the treatment and how we keep joining up these really important dots across the whole ecosystem to make sure that most people will one day be able to get a treatment. Julia: And all those dots honestly, those dots can never even start unless you have a diagnosis and it's in time. And so there are so many people around the world working on each of those dots that connect a child or a patient to a treatment, but if you can't even be diagnosed or if you're diagnosed too late, which is what the reality is in the world of rare conditions right, then you know, then it's a little bit futile to race to a treatment or even think if that's possible. So I think the very, very first thing is: can we find children and patients, like can we find children like Mila in time? And I love hearing the word ‘hope' that's the word that keeps me going and doing what I'm doing because if there isn't any hope it's pretty hard to keep fighting, so I'm really glad, thank you both for having hope. Okay, we'll wrap up here. Thank you to Ana Lisa and to Rich for joining me in this conversation today as we shed some light on the challenges you know that those with rare conditions are facing. We touched on the work being carried out across the Genomics ecosystem in the UK to support those living with rare conditions. If you'd like to hear more of this, please subscribe to the G Word on your favourite podcast app. And thank you so much for listening. I've been your host, Julia Vitarello. This podcast was edited by Mark Kendrick at Ventoux Digital, and produced by Naimah Callachand.  

Julia and Jeremiah from the Sexvangelicals podcast (a podcast for providing the sex education the church didn't want you to have) join Uncertain podcast to discuss how Purity Culture can impact men.Some topics addressed in this episode: Erectile DisfunctionShame around sexSexual Agression Gender Binaries Check out two of the Sexvangelicals' episodes featuring Uncertain's host Katherine Spearing:Episode #53: Kicking Off the New Year with Spiritual Abuse: How to Leave a Controlling Family Environment, with Katherine SpearingEpisode #54: Kicking Off the New Year with Spiritual Abuse: How Romantic Comedies Can Reinforce the Worst Parts of Evangelical Culture, with Katherine Spearing Katherine: [00:00:00] Hello. How are you? Julia: Good. We're excited. Katherine: Yes. It is morning where I am, or early, early, early afternoon, and then it is evening where you all are. I know. So, thanks for giving up your Saturday night.I know you would. Probably normally be out wildly partying, Jeremiah: right? Wildly. The wildest Julia: of parties. Katherine: You in the Netherlands. Jeremiah: That's right. Hanging out with windmills and eating a bunch of cheese. Julia: Today is Sinterklaas and so I have heard that it is a chaotic time to be out. So this is a good day to be inside.We've got tea. It is raining outside. So this is actually a cozy and a Perfect way to send Saturday night. I love Katherine: it. I am so excited to be able to talk to you. I love, I love y'all's podcast episodes. I have recommended them to, I mostly recommend them to friends of mine who are recently [00:01:00] divorced and first exploring.All of the things that they were not allowed to explore pre evangelical marriage. And and so that's a, that's a recommendation y'all are a recommendation that I pass around to some folks. I love your intro. My favorite part about your, your. Podcast episode for listeners is how you, you kind of interview each other and chat like before your episodes, those, those are always really, Jeremiah: yes, absolutely.And we do talk about divorce a lot on our podcast. So, that is unfortunately a part of our story and, and, and how we've come into how we've come into recognizing the impact of purity culture on relationships, so. Is that a part Katherine: of both of your stories? Julia: It is. Yeah. We are both we are both divorced.Katherine: All right. And then, did you all get into doing what you do as sex and relationship therapy post [00:02:00] evangelicalism? Our post? These experiences or was this something that came up before, were you already working in this? Jeremiah: So I, a little bit of both for me. So, I joke with people, except it's not a joke, that I did my first couples therapy session when I was 12.And listeners, you can... Put some of the pieces together. I, so, so I've known for some time that that I wanted to be a couples therapist. Huh. And in the field of psychotherapy there's a specific license for marriage and family therapy. My license is in marriage and family therapy. And a lot of the marriage and family therapy schools are either at these big kind of research schools. So Ohio state has a big program where Julia went Michigan state has one or they're at Christian schools because the history of couples therapy and marriage family [00:03:00] of the history of couples therapy.The history of marriage therapy is pretty closely linked to the Christian community. In fact, our professional organization split in the seventies from the California organization because religious people, the, the pastors spiritual directors in the seventies said like, no, like what's happening in California is too liberal, is too progressive.Let's, let's talk about marriage and let's talk about marriage from the perspective of heteronormativity. And this is. A little bit before James Dobson starts taking over with, with focus on the family, but, but, but it's all connected to that. So. So my graduate program at Abilene Christian University is a Christian university.But interestingly, that was, I would say, probably the beginning of my deconstruction process too. Yeah. Because marriage and family therapy at its root is systems theory. So this idea that everything is interconnected you know, I can't succeed unless you [00:04:00] succeed. We, we talk about this through, through Desmond Tutu's work.And so, so I actually begin realizing, oh, like the church, a lot of the Christian stuff, like, like, isn't really making sense. It's clashing with systems theory. The system stuff makes a lot more sense to me. It connects. The problem is that in my twenties, I am employed by churches. Yeah. I'm, I'm a music my first career is through music ministry.And when I left Texas moved to Boston and very quickly get hired by a church to do music ministry. And so a lot of my thirties, then my early thirties is trying to figure out how to do a systems work. I later discovered sex therapy through, through my office. How to be a sexual health professional and to be a minister at the same time.And I thought I could pull both of them off. The church that I was in worked at claimed to be really [00:05:00] progressive. At the end of the day, I ended up getting fired. I ended up talking about sex therapy too much, made the wrong people uncomfortable, and I get the axe. Oh no! So I end up getting kicked out of Christianity, more so than leaving and choosing not to return to organized religion. Yeah, these Katherine: two things are very connected in your story, like you're very much and your vocation and your deconstruction are, are very entwined. Jeremiah: Absolutely. Julia: Yeah. Minor entwined but in a different way. Catherine when we were interviewing you, you had mentioned something that I could relate to which is the socialization for women to be some sort of caretakers within.fundamentalist, and other evangelical circles. Being a therapist is very much a nurturing type of career. The other career options I had considered were [00:06:00] teaching and nursing, also stereotypically nurturing, stereotypically associated with Christianity. So, I don't know if I would have become a therapist.Had I not grown up in the environment that I did. What a question, right? Right! Ultimately, I love it most of the time, but sex therapy was deeply connected to my deconstruction process. I got married young, at the age of 22. I am divorced and when I got married my world crumbled because I had learned that getting married, getting married young was a rite of passage into adulthood, would be the sign of my worth as a human being, and would ultimately be the way that I could access the sexuality that had been denied to me.And when I got married and I hated sex, when I got married and I didn't experience the desire from my husband that I was told would be [00:07:00] present all the time, because all men ever think about is sex, which I'm sure we'll come back to in this episode. My sense of identity shattered. My sense of identity was always in my purity as a woman, in my ability to perform my gender role, and in being a desirable person, particularly sexually.So I became very distressed and my first years married were awful for me, even though I didn't understand exactly what was happening. Yeah. I did, two years after getting married, find a phenomenal sex therapist in Boston. I will always give Nancy McGrath a huge amount of credit for my individual and relational growth.She was an amazing sex therapist, an amazing couples therapist. And my ex husband and I made a lot of progress, even though we did choose to get married. And just to get divorced. Yes. Yes. Even though my ex husband and I choose to got [00:08:00] divorced, choose to get divorced. And as I was continuing to grow, as I was continuing to heal, my therapist said, I was already a practicing therapist.She said, if you decided to become a sex therapist, you would be a great sex therapist. And that was such an affirming and healing moment for me in my sex therapy training. I admitted to myself and my therapist for the first time that I didn't want to be married. And so sex therapy training was really like the last Jenga piece that caused the tower to shatter.I wasn't an active member of a religious community when I participated in sex therapy training, but I still was. Connected to the religious world. And I was still married to my ex husband. And because I was married to a Christian man, I had status in my family system and I had status in all kinds of other systems.And then I lost my status within my family. [00:09:00] I lost my status within my community. My divorce was fodder for gossip at a funeral and becoming a sex therapist and ultimately getting divorced was what broke my connection to that world. Katherine: Woo! Goodness. Goodness. So this is somewhat of a rhetorical question that I know the answer to, but I still want to hear your answer.How interconnected is sex? To personhood and relational dynamics itself. How often do you see that connection? Jeremiah: Strongly. Strongly. Well, so, so there's two, two categories of that. In religious communities, absolutely strongly. We, we could talk maybe about the, the, the professional kind of non religious universal relationship about that later, but in the religious context very strongly, Julia: yeah.And I would say outside of religious contexts, [00:10:00] yes, but in a different way. So, when my, when I say that my sense of self crumbled after getting married, a big piece of that was sexuality. And so... I will sometimes have folks come to sex therapy in similar positions as me, and the couple might say something like, but it's just sex, and we still love each other, and I have a good life in all these kinds of ways, but it's not just sex for anyone.Sex is never just sex for anyone, but especially if you grow up in an adverse or religiously abusive context, sex is actually everything. And I'm not joking when I say everything. So if you get married and sex is painful physically or emotionally or relationally, that can have massive consequences in all areas of your life.Katherine: Right. Mm. So when you are a sex therapist and folks come to you for difficulties and [00:11:00] challenges within their sex life, very regularly, there's more happening and in their lives and in their relationships. Absolutely. Jeremiah: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, so there's a couple of things that, that come up one. Sex isn't talked about in a lot of, in a lot of couples, obviously it's not talked about at all in religious couples.Sex with each other, like they don't talk about it. That's right, that's right. Yes, yes, the church talks a lot a lot about sex. But the church doesn't give partners the tools or the skills to be able to talk about sexuality with each other. And if they do it's almost exclusively from the perspective of quantity, meaning how much do you want to have it?Yes. And from the perspective of performing gender roles where men are expected to have high volumes of sexual desire, interest, and women are expected to be asexual yet to conform to the, the needs of male partners.[00:12:00] The second way that, that this shows up is around just in, in general,, if a couple doesn't have the skills and resources to talk about sexuality, what else do they not have the skills and resources to talk about?Katherine: Right. Julia: Yeah. A whole lot of other things. That's right. Money, or child rearing, or household management. How to Jeremiah: deal with families of origin. So a lot of stuff gets avoided, and there's a lot of conflict avoidance that we find. And the second thing is that for the couples who are able to talk about sex and sexuality, there's a lot of variance regarding sex.Sex can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. Culturally speaking, sex is often thought of as a euphemism for intercourse. Julia: Vaginally penetrative intercourse. That is Jeremiah: correct. Yes. But what Julia, you and I talk about is that there's a lot of different ways that bodies can connect.Sometimes [00:13:00] involving a vaginal intercourse, sometimes not involving vaginal intercourse. Let's talk about all of it and let's talk about all of it from the perspective of like what kinds of touch do you want? And then also, how do you want that touch to happen? How do you, what do you need before your body gets the touch that it wants?There's a lot of different variables that Julia, you and I talk about, and that's on an individual level. And in couple therapy, of course, there's two people. So the ways that I go about sex are going to be different Julie from the ways that you go about sex. And, and then the work is, is how do we then make how do we make arrangements?How do we make agreements about? How to do sex, how to do anything, but for the sake of this conversation, how to do sex in a pleasurable, in a pleasurable way for both people. Yeah. Katherine: Yeah. So many, I'm like, as y'all are talking, I'm like, question, question, question, question, question, question. I Julia: know, that happens to me too.I was telling Jeremiah after our interview with [00:14:00] you and we took a bathroom break, I was like, I had 20 more questions to ask for Katherine: each episode. Well that just means that we have a podcasting relationship and we will do more episodes together in the future. This is the one, one, one, one interview I've already decided five minutes in.One interview is not enough. But one of the things that I wanted to focus on for this specific, this specific episode there is so much, and this is even just for me personally so much, uploaded A literature right now about how purity culture impacts women and women in relationships and what that does to marriages and dating and recovery after purity culture.I this is just, you know, a regular topic of conversation with my between myself and my peers. I was in a, I'm in a, like a [00:15:00] sort of deconstruction group. I call us the Renegades. And we met a couple Saturday nights ago and everyone's at different phases in their, their deconstruction.They're also at different phases in their sexuality and their sexuality exploration. And I just asked them just like a very, like, simple question of like, what would have been different? If you had been raised with like the full gamut of the feast in front of you and like that was the class that you got in Sunday school, as opposed to don't have sex.And then that's the end of it. And then also just for the subject of our conversation too, I asked them very specifically about what, so in evangelicalism, It's cisgender binaries of male and female, and you and there's no other category. And so I asked them very specifically, how did that impact you and this was all people who these are all [00:16:00] people who identify as, as, as female, and then how intricately connected that binary that gender binary is to this messaging.And so a question for you all when you meet with couples that come out of evangelicalism, what role does that binary play? In your conversations and, and for good or ill. Jeremiah: Sure. I'll start. And then I'm curious about how you'd answer that too. Again, a lot of folks coming out of evangelical systems don't have the relationship skills of the negotiation skills to figure out how to navigate one, how to navigate differences and to how to make decisions about a relationship based on their own preferences.So in the absence of that, they rely on gender roles. They rely on the performance of gender roles to [00:17:00] create expectations for, say, how administration gets done, how sex gets done, how parenting gets done, and there's a lot of resentment that is, that is there because Even though these things, these positions were assumed there weren't overt conversations about how to how to enact these you know, women and men both, like, they, they don't make verbal agreements to each other in the, in these contexts about Well, hey as, as a female partner, I absolutely want to do this particular thing as a male partner.I absolutely want to do these things. It's you should do these things. Yes. And any conversation that happens centers around the should. Like you Katherine: should do these things, not I would prefer that I do. That's right. Okay. Right. Absolutely. So one of the Jeremiah: things, Julia, you and I do with with regards to the binary is we do whatever we can to get rid of it.Katherine: I love that. Jeremiah: Yeah, [00:18:00] how would you answer that? I would Julia: agree with that. I'm sure that I'll have more to say as Katherine keeps asking questions, but the first part is recognizing What we learned about gender and how that has then impacted the relationship and what are the structures and systems and patterns that the couple falls back to.And if anyone has ever gone sledding in the winter, you know that once you've got a path that's slick, it's really hard to set a new path. So even if, like Jeremiah said, the gender roles are causing some resentment. I imagine that my ex husband probably developed some resentment around what gender role looked like for him.I had my own resentment around what that looked like for me. We didn't get ahead of the resentment by talking about it and negotiating it until it was too late. And even though that wasn't working for either one of us, it [00:19:00] was like a very slick... path down a sledding hill. And if you want something different, you've got to take that sled, move it to a new part of the hill, put it in snow that hasn't been down, and you've got to do a lot of hard work to create a new path that works.Katherine: Yes, absolutely. And it sounds like from both of your stories that sometimes that new path is a new relationship. Julia: Yes. Jeremiah: Sometimes. In our case, yes. Julia: Yeah. Go ahead. Yeah. Sometimes it is a new relationship. Sometimes it is hard work with a current partner. And sometimes it is... Being a person who is partnered with multiple people or being a person who is dating and not partnered.Mm-Hmm. So it can look all different kinds of ways. When we talk about our podcast having a relational bent what we mean is that we live in relationships with all kinds of people. Mm-Hmm. That might mean [00:20:00] starting a new path on a new hill and your family's on another hill and they're like, you abandoned us.Katherine: What's going on? Yes. Yes. Absolutely. No, I love that. I love that. And that, that expands sexuality and relationships in general, because even, even if you have this dynamic within this couple, like our sexuality impacts how we interact with everyone. It's not just our intimate partner. And I've really enjoyed it.My. deconstruction journey, learning about that because it just expands possibilities and, and just, it makes it just beautiful and vibrant. And like, there's so much here and, and so very sad and also very angry at how narrow. The teaching that I received was and how very specific and gendered it was and, so sad.And then also just like, it's a [00:21:00] fucking lie. And yet. The we'll get in all of this, but just like the, the, the conservative agenda behind that lie and unpacking that as well. And, and having that just opportunity to grieve the opportunities that I was denied. And I know that's a part of me.So many people's journeys of just like grieve, grieving this, this loss that happened. How did that play out for both of you? Julia: The grief part or a different Katherine: part? Great. Yeah. Just the grieving. If, if that was a part of your journey. Jeremiah: Oh, I think it still is a part of our journey. Yeah. I think you and I both make reference.I'm trying to remember the last time you and I both made references to our former partners. It's been within the last week. . And, and reflecting about the sadness of, of, of painful things that, that we received. Even painful things that we said missed [00:22:00] opportunities. Mm-Hmm. To to explore and, and to have conversations that, that we didn't get the chance to have.Mm-Hmm. that the church didn't want us to have. Mm-Hmm. . So, yeah. Yeah, that comes up quite a bit. Yeah. Julia: I I haven't even mentioned this to Jeremiah yet, but. Something that I say when I talk about getting divorced is that my ex husband is a really phenomenal human being. And I am, I am sad that the education neither of us received, probably to a large, large part, impacted our decision to get divorced.I am rarely on social media because it is too overwhelming for me. However, I saw that my ex husband recently celebrated his two year anniversary to his new wife. And I imagine that he is an even better partner, probably, than he was with me. Not because he wasn't a good partner to me, [00:23:00] but because he has had life to grow and evolve and learn.And... I am very happy that he is in a partnership that seems to be really beautiful for him. And I am still, I'm still really sad. I'm sad that that relationship ended. I'm sad about the ways that I contributed to hurt. I am sad about the ways that I was hurt. And I know that I will probably think about my ex spouse to some degree.Daily or often for the rest of my life. Katherine: Yeah. Yeah. Because it, it, it doesn't just go away. Deca, deconstructing and rewiring those sled paths. It's not just a, like a one and done thing. Right. Jeremiah: Well, and it also happens while Julia, you and I are also figuring out our relationship and experiencing these really beautiful [00:24:00] moments that we have.And. Kind of hashing out how we want to do different things. Grief doesn't happen in this, like, process where you take a pause from life and you go off and, and, and you grieve for an extended amount of time. Like, grief happens in the midst of these concurrent processes that, that are happening in a person's life.And, and that, that makes it even more Julia: challenging. Yeah. And I can't grieve the end of my marriage without ultimately grieving The systems that raised me, the systems that conditioned if conditioned early marriage, the systems that taught me about what dating and marriage looked like. So whenever I consider my ex husband, whenever I consider the pain or the joy that we experienced, I, I'm unable to separate that from the lack of relational and sexual health education.From the religious systems in my life. Yes. [00:25:00] Yes. Katherine: And how just so entwined those two things are and and just the reality of like those, those indentions in the snow are going to be so much more defined when it's coming from. religious space. This is what God wants from you. This is what requires from you.And then everything in that system upholds that and supports it. And these things are very deeply embedded into us and is the soup that we swim in. And so I'm really excited to just get into some practical stuff and maybe provide a little bit of a resource for folks. I would like to concentrate our our conversation on specifically.How purity culture impacts men in, in these relationships. And I, I will, we'll, we'll just start with the, with the. Typical trajectory. How, how does does purity culture show up and impact men in dating relationships? Julia: Yeah, [00:26:00] something that I say on almost every podcast is that one of the biggest double binds or mind fucks that men experience in evangelical and other Christian cultures is that they are They're sexual aggressors, and that is the way that God made them, and they are supposed to, they should lean into that, and at the same time, that is part of their evil base nature, and they have to fight it.Mm hmm. That is. An impossible, impossible place to live to be told that you've got to lean in and embrace this, but that also this is the most debased part of who you are and that shows up in a myriad of contexts. Katherine: Do you feel like. Men tend to migrate towards one or the [00:27:00] other because of that double bind.Julia: That's a good question. Good question. I would say that I've noticed men... Jeremiah: I have a Julia: way of answering that. I've got an idea, but you go first because I'm still formulating it. Jeremiah: I would say that... Men who are interested in men who are interested in kind of reinforcing the gender hierarchies tend to lean more into kind of the Kind of the ownership of sexuality and, and then also the conflict in that, that, that can come from fromadvocating for that. I would say that men who want more egalitarian relationships. Especially in, in opposite sex context. I think that those are men who tend to struggle with that that the double bind Julia, that you're referring to a little bit [00:28:00] more and as a result 10, those relationships tend to have a little bit more avoidance to them.That's anecdotal. I don't know if that, I don't have any research to support that. I would Julia: say my anecdotal experience is mostly similar and I really appreciate the theme of this episode because I, I work with a lot of couples, but I also, for probably lots of different reasons, have many individual male clients between the ages of like 25 to 37.So we talk about this. a lot. And the really challenging part is that the gender binaries that we've described means that the misogyny reinforces the, or the, sorry, the the misandry towards men that they are sexual monsters that reinforces the misogyny and the sexism. And [00:29:00] then the misogyny continues to perpetuate this patriarchal pattern.Which is such an awful systemic issue. Yeah. Yeah. And so often the misandry and the misogyny are just like fucking having this orgasm together. Sadly. What Jeremiah: is the image of the orgasm? Like Katherine: they're feeding each other. Yeah. Satisfying Julia: each other. Right, and so I absolutely want to keep on the topic that you're describing, and I've been reflecting quite a bit on like specific impacts for men, and I think we have to still acknowledge at the beginning that all of the negative consequences towards men Still continue to hurt the entire relational structure and still continue to [00:30:00] prop up the, the sexist and misogynist norms of the patriarchy.Jeremiah: Can I give an example about that that doesn't involve sex? Sure, yeah, yeah. So, I'm seven and Enneagram? No, no, no. Age 7. Enneagram 3. Oh, Katherine: okay. Oh, oh, sorry. You're about to tell a story. Yes. Started when you were 7. Jeremiah: Yes, yes. So, I'm 7 years old. Julia: I knew where that was going, but it was confusing. Jeremiah: I'm 7 years old.And I am at a part of of a Bible study that a few of my families do on Wednesday nights, because heaven forbid, we don't have some sort of a church service two to three times a week. And at this particular group from time to time, I would be I would be the only boy that was there, only penis owner that was there.So my dad had to work or that was at least his excuse for, for not showing up. [00:31:00] I made a similar excuse. So some of the other men had to, had to work. So it was the mom's wives all the kids were little girls and me. And so at seven, I remember the women in the church and this group saying, it's a devotional time at Jeremiah because you're the boy you have to lead the songs.Okay. So little seven year old me like leads a song. Can you do an example of your accent? Oh, so I grew up in Texas. I had a. Thick southern accents, very flat vowels. My name had three syllables on it. Sometimes it had two syllables, Jerma. But, then they say, okay, well, you have to leave the scripture.You have to lead the prayer. And, you know, I know that I am not the only boy who has been in that [00:32:00] experience who learned early on that, that men and women look to boys to provide quote leadership and running shit. And that's something that is still to this day, something that. I, I make the assumption that people will look to me.Men and women will look to me to run things. I step into leadership roles and, and a lot of my healing work has been giving myself permission to, to, to step out of that. And, and, and I'm good at it. I, I think that I have I enjoy being in control more than I think sometimes I would like to admit, I've also taught you and I've both actually taught Julia with plenty of men who have had similar experiences and don't want any part of that.Yeah. Right. And, and play those roles both out of a sense of obligation to the system and also do so in a way that's antithetical to their own personality traits and to their preferences. They'd much rather play a more passive role, just kind of sit [00:33:00] back, kind of watch the world kind of do its thing.And, and, and they don't know what to do. We actually had an interview quite recently on our podcast with, with a couple of men actually for, for whom that was true. So yeah, so, so the expectation then that men are not just like sexual monsters or sexual initiators, but are initiators of any kind of process with, with the exception of domestic administrative processes, which is a whole other conversation we can get into in a bit.Except for cooking and cleaning. Yeah, right. And mending the stockings. Right, right. But yeah, that's, that's, that's a lot of pressure. That is a lot of pressure. That, that men get put on and it also, it also discourages men from moving into collaborative spaces. Hmm. This is something you and I actually Katherine: May I, may I pause here for just one [00:34:00] moment because one of the things that I have noticed in this, in the space that I work in the spiritual abuse realm.Is that same thing we were talking about a podcast earlier, talking on our interview earlier about art and being ingrained with this mistrust of art. I also believe men get ingrained with this mistrust of women and how I, my work is predominantly women coming to me one because women are. You know, it's more acceptable for women to look for help and to want to collaborate one.And then two, it's a woman run organization, like we have one male board member, but other than that, like, it is run by women, and they're not going to migrate. And I know this because I watched them migrate to the Wade Mullins and the other male leaders and and not migrate to the women, because it's still just [00:35:00] ingrained into.The physique. Yeah, Jeremiah: I actually think that Catherine that that's another double bind is that I agree with you that men that that this system that we're talking about you know, where Men are expected to be in leadership positions. Women from time to time reinforce that. And there's also plenty of women that are like, Hey, no, this doesn't work for me.And then figuring out how to navigate those differences. I think that that's right, that that there are a lot of men who mistrust women and simultaneously. I don't think that men really trust men any better either. And I think that this is actually true, Julie, with what you're talking about with your, your clients.Men are much more likely to seek an individual female sex therapist for individual therapy than they are to seek an individual male for individual therapy. Julia: Really? Absolutely. But, but I want to qualify something that you said. I think you said that [00:36:00] men are equally less likely to trust other men. I would say men.might be unwilling to trust men when it comes to kind of emotional issues because men are far more likely to trust men in more stereotypical leadership positions. But in terms of like the caretaking therapy to some degree has a caretaking element to it. And so I think that men Are uncomfortable talking about sex in general.Many people are. That's not a misandrist comment. And I think it can be easier for individual men to talk to a woman about sex than a man. I don't know if seeking a female therapist for couples or family therapy is as oriented. Not for couples and family therapy. But I think that. They're going to go Katherine: to a man.Julia: Right. Because, because, because of what you're describing, Catherine, around like trusting men in these [00:37:00] forward facing leadership positions in a family or couples therapy is more forward facing, so men are more quote unquote reliable. But if it's an individual context in which. There's the assumption that emotional nurture might be more a part of it.I think that men could be more prone to seeking a woman, just to seek a woman. But all of this goes back to Catherine, exactly what you're describing around men needing to be in over leadership positions. And Jeremiah, you use the word passive growing up in my community. Passive was used as derogatory.Yeah. And that a passive man was not a man. Right. So books like Wild at Heart and pour into my community every man Battle to fight, beauty to save. Yeah. Yeah. Every everyman's battle was popular in my community and it was all about, [00:38:00] men being assertive at best, aggressive, dominant, violent at worst, and I'm even thinking about, like, my dad, and my dad is not a particularly dominant person.If my parents were out of their religious system, I would probably ask my dad what that was like because I wonder if it was really hard to be in a system in which you were told that you had to be so overtly dominant when that wasn't part of your nature. Katherine: Yeah, I'm thinking about the women that I met with.That I referred to earlier and, and they just said how most of their relationships sort of defaulted into a functionally egalitarian relationship while they still espoused complimentary and they just [00:39:00] didn't tell anybody. I think Julia: that's, I think that's how my parents marriage operates. And I think that's how Jeremiah: my ex's parents.Julia: Many relationships operate. Yeah. Jeremiah: Oh, yeah. Hmm. That would be interesting to do research Julia: on. Just a clarifying Katherine: question about men seeking out a female sex therapist, more likely to seek out a female sex therapist. Is it possible that there's some shame? In that too of they're not going to talk to another man to admit that they struggle.Yes. Julia: I can give a great example. So I had a male client and I've had several iterations of this. And he came to therapy seeking help for quote unquote, erectile dysfunction. Diagnostic language around sexual health is so damaging to men and women. So I would never use that language of erectile dysfunction, but that was his language to me.That's why I'm using it. what I would say is that [00:40:00] sexuality had some challenges for him. And one of those challenges was having the erections that he wanted to have. So we tried to get away from diagnostic language as much as possible, but. He told me that it would be one of the most shaming things possible to have a conversation with another male about about sexual health in general, particularly because men learn in and outside of religious structures that part of sexual dominance is having a specific type of erection in a specific kind of way.And that is not how erections work for many, if not all people. We could have a whole con, a whole longer conversation about erections and what men learn about their penises and what they learn about erections. It might be even worthwhile later in our conversation, but [00:41:00] over time, I really encouraged this client to talk to some of his male friends about sexuality and what was working and not working for him.And one day he came into therapy and he was like, Julia. I had a conversation with one of my male friends about sex, and it was one of the most meaningful conversations that I've ever had. And If more men talked with each other about sexuality in non toxic, dominant ways, I believe that would be massively healing towards humanity in general, regardless of gender.If the shame was stopping him. Katherine: Yeah, and I just think about how... So much of the sexual conversations for men was accountability oriented and like, how are you guarding your eyes? And how are you guarding your heart? And, you know, you know, documenting how often you masturbate and all of these like [00:42:00] very shaming?So I can see that being so just so damaging for it Julia: is. And it's so it can I say one other thing about this. It's really interesting because in another conversation, the three of us talked about how the church is not as counter cultural as they think they are.But one of the main themes is this idea of like, You. In these cases, like, the humanity of women being fairly non existent, so in secular world, that means you just keep track of how many women you have sex with, and like, they are a number to you, and you want to get as high as possible, and then Catherine, what you're describing, when men are told to, you know, document how time, how many times they masturbate and then confess to another man and like not look at another woman.It's still like this idea of like women being objects. We had a conversation several podcasts [00:43:00] ago with our friends. Sarah and... Jake. Yeah. And, and Jake was describing about, you know, going to Six Flags as a youth group. And it's like, there's gonna be a lot of boobs out there.They wouldn't have said it that way. And it's like, just avoid the boobs. Like, and, and without any conversation that these are 13 to 16 year old girls. They are not walk Sets of boobs. Yeah. But whether they're children, right? Mm-Hmm. . And so, in and outside of these contexts, women are these vessels that you either have to conquer or avoid until you get married.And you have to document how you're either like dominating or avoiding Mm-hmm. in this really restrictive version of what it means to be a man. And in either context. You are essentially a sexual monster who is either dominating and giving in to the, like, desires of the flesh, or you're working really hard to, like, fight your sin nature, and that makes you a good Jeremiah: man.And we have language for [00:44:00] this. Sex addict. Right. So so Joshua Grubbs is a researcher at Bowling Green and he has produced several articles about this that the majority of men who identify as sex addicts also have a high degree of religiosity. Oh and so the idea connected is absolutely so well, and it's, and it's connected back even to like to seven year old Jeremiah too, that, that, that, that the problem must be me.I am a sexual monster as opposed to men coming together, talking together, Julia, like what you're saying. And talking about the fucked up positions that that, that the fucked up things that men learned about their bodies, the fucked up things that men learned about women's bodies and how we all want to, how we all want to do better in our own relationships, same sex relationships, opposite sex relationships, sexual relationships, non sexual [00:45:00] relationships.Yeah. And Katherine: maybe it's not a, and I feel like I've, I've approached it. What was brought into that in a little different perspective through the trauma lens of just like addiction itself, typically, or what we call addiction typically developed out of trauma and religiosity itself typically develops out of trauma and and having and having that you know, stuff ingrained into your mind. It's not like, and, and approaching it like a, a, where you like have all of these steps and you have all of these, you know, accountability things that you're supposed to do, but then you you're not addressing the stuff underneath it and the trauma that is, Jeremiah: well, and I think that that's right.And, and I think that. It's one thing to address that trauma in a professional context. I think it's a completely different thing to address that trauma in relationships with other people who've gone through a similar thing. [00:46:00] Yeah. And that's, from my perspective, that's why the relational perspective is so, it's so powerful.Mm hmm. As the capacity to help, for the sake of our conversations, kind of men get out of some of these double binds and the shame that accompanies that double bind. Mm hmm. In, in, in more meaningful, kind of longer lasting ways. Right. Julia: Right. And the language around. Addiction also focuses on behavior versus value.So, so I will always ask clients, what does sex mean, if a person is talking about sex, if a person comes in and says that they are a sexual addict, I will ask what that means. And typically they might say, Well, I masturbate or I watch pornography. And so, so we'll talk, we'll be like, okay, so let's, let's put porn on the side.Let's put masturbation on the side as a behavior. And let's talk about like what [00:47:00] the values are. I had a really interesting client, former client who was a seminarian. And and he Had reached out to me because he thought that I was a Christian sex therapist, and I explained, I said, I am not. I said, I actually am not a part of any religious communities, but I have an understanding of Christian culture so I work with a lot of folks in this area.And I think it spoke to volumes of this client that he said, Okay, I'll work with you. with you because typically working with a secular therapist, that's like scary. And it was so interesting because he had a lot of shame around masturbation and he had a lot of shame around pornography. And we had this conversation and I said, okay.Tell me about what your sexual values are without moralistic language and without behavior language. So he talked about sex being a form of connection, and he talked about sexuality being [00:48:00] sacred, and he talked about a few other values. And I said, that's so interesting. I said, huh, I actually think almost all of the values that you have.I hold two. And, and then it was the conversation around, okay, so if sex, whether it's with yourself or someone else, if it's a form of connection, like, What does that mean? How can you enact that? If sexuality on your own or with someone else is a sacred thing, like what does that mean? And I think a big piece of work for men in Christian communities is getting out of the behavior obsession, which isn't their fault.And thinking about the value moving away from the quality of an erection, moving away from whether or not you masturbate and or watch pornography and moving about, like, what are the values that you have around your bodies about gender, about women, about men, and then like rethinking what sexuality can look like.And Jeremiah: we talk about this, [00:49:00] Julia, in our series on Sex Evangelicals The Sex Education We Wish We Had in which we talk about the sexual health principles or values from the work of Doug Brown Harvey around consent, non exploitation, conversation about contraceptions and STIs, honesty, shared values, and mutual pleasure.I love it. Those are the values that we tend to start from. But also, Julia, your question, being able to ask, what are your values as well? Like that and Katherine: being able to have an opportunity to develop your own values outside of that religious. I want to go back. I want to get into those five things that you just mentioned, but I want to go back and talk about bodies for a minute.We mentioned that women's bodies were made objects and it's like you're walking instead of boobs like it was it was objectification. And that was how a woman's body was viewed and presented to [00:50:00] men. It was also how we we viewed our own race to kind of your own body is of just like cover up cover up cover up and that was literally cover up cover up cover up and then.Here's how you use a tampon on your period. And like, that was literally it. And so for men, what are the messages about their bodies that they receive in these communities? Jeremiah: Men are machines. And, and, and this is both within Christian context and in larger capitalist contexts that men are machines that men are, that all men think about is sex.That sex is the number one most important thing and that that's what being a good man is about. And that men are meant to compete. Yeah. Mm. And, and compete with other men and also compete with women. Yeah. I, I would argue that ultimately misogyny is a A misappropriation of competition between men [00:51:00] and women as opposed to men taking that energy around some of the injustices that they experience and taking it back to like the larger political and social systems that put them into shit situations.Yeah. Julia: It's interesting, Jeremiah, because some of, I don't, I agree with everything that you said. some of what you said isn't necessarily inherent to bodies. Sure. It's about, you know, competition, for example, you use your bodies to compete, but that's more of a concept, I guess. And so I suppose, and I'd be curious.To hear how the two of you experience this similarly or differently, there wasn't a lot said about the bodies of men in my communities. And when I work with couples, especially hetero couples, women have a lot to say about their bodies and what they learned about their bodies. Men have much less to say about their bodies, at least anecdotally.And what they do say about their bodies does tend to [00:52:00] revolve around their penises. And I would say that's more from secular culture than religious culture. Although, as we've discussed, both of those things overlap. Actually I'm going to walk that back. The church doesn't talk about erections explicitly.Implicitly, there's a lot about erections. So if you edit it, you can edit that how you will. But yes, women have a lot. About their bodies that they learn that they can communicate men don't learn as much about their bodies. I Jeremiah: agree. Katherine: Yeah, and it makes me think that like what women learn about their bodies is typically oriented around a man.Or oriented around the reproductive system and having babies, men don't, don't quote unquote need their body for those things. Like they don't, they're conditioned. I don't need my body other than to protect.[00:53:00] Yeah. Yeah. And, and I remember reading this like super toxic book and the fundamentalist world about why like women need to like submit to men because like women have more power to have Babies. And so if men don't have that power, then they're going to turn into an animal. So they need like the woman to like, keep them from turning into the monster.Because the woman has this like special power and like birthing babies, very, very toxic book yet. That's it. That's kind of like it in a nutshell Jeremiah: of and that's what that's that's also a Christian relationship literature in a nutshell. Yeah, I can think of like 13 other metaphors that describe like the very similar process that you were just describing Catherine, Julia: right?Well, in going back to the erection piece, and clearly that's on my mind a lot today. When men learn that all they want is [00:54:00] sex, they, the the When they're told that's all they want. Yes, yes, yes, yes. When they are told all they want is sex. Yes. Which, when often they don't that does have some implicit Implications for for the penis and for needing to be physiologically aroused right away.And so sometimes other men will come in and talk about erectile dysfunction and I'll say, Oh, so you didn't get an erection in 30 seconds of making out or so you had sex with a partner for a longer period of time. And at one point. You lost your erection. Like, where did you learn that that's erectile dysfunction?Mm hmm. Actually, that's like very normative. Right. Functioning as a human being. But I will say that even though men don't learn as much about their bodies inherently, the implications about their bodies to [00:55:00] sexuality are pretty strong. And revolve Jeremiah: around the mythology around the penis. Yeah, yeah, yeah.Katherine: Whoa. So, what, what does a man do when they're no longer, like, The penis is not the only thing about them, like where, where does, where does the conversation go? How did they become like a full whole integrated human being? When their penis is no longer the center of their life. Well, Jeremiah: and that gets back to what I was trying to explain a little bit earlier about.I think the answer to that question is different. If a man is interested in reproducing complementarian gender hierarchical systems. I think men in those systems with with those needs have no idea what to do and have these existential crises, either over longer periods of time or in these like short term outbursts, types of [00:56:00] control behaviors.I think men that want. And strive for a more egalitarian context and opposite sex partnerships may have a little bit of an easier time exploring different ways of you know, providing, providing touch engaging in pleasure that, that don't involve, that don't center around their penises. It can Julia: come with some relief.Absolutely. Yeah, for sure. I'm thinking about some couples that Jeremiah: I've worked with. I've experienced that personally speaking. Julia: Oh, so. Is that okay that I asked him? You're the interviewer. I'm just very curious. No, I am Katherine: too. I was coming. I was coming right behind you. Jeremiah: No, Julia. I think, I think that I think that that's one of the sources of freedom that I've experienced in our relationship too.Like, like I I've shared with you some anxieties that I have around my penis and you've, you've said, Oh, well, that's silly. I don't think that most women don't think that I'm like, Oh, you're right. Oh, the research supports what you're saying. Also, like, I want a more collaborative relationship. I want to be a more collaborative person than, than I was in, in [00:57:00] my marriage.And so, yeah, I think I've been, I think a sense of relief is, is absolutely correct. I've experienced a lot of that regarding regarding sexuality regarding a lot of elements of our relationship. Very Katherine: cool. I'm such a great partner. You guys are Jeremiah: the real MVP of this operation. Katherine: Ah, I love, I love that. Segueing into some of your, your five, your five things.And also because this was probably one of the first episodes I listened to from, From you all. And I learned a lot about it. The message of consent, which I never learned until like very, very recently within the past few years and, and have friends. Who were married very young, and are now, you know, divorced and exploring things outside of it and I am having to teach them about consent, because it [00:58:00] was never a part of their upbringing, either and like, No, actually what that man just did to you was, was not consent and like sending them the YouTube video about the tea and tea and consent, tea and consent and like, you are allowed to say, No, and they should be looking for an enthusiastic.Yes. And, and how does that, I know how that like shows up for women and what, and the impact that that has on women, what is the impact that that has on men in sexuality? Well, Jeremiah: first of all, consent is a relational process. Consent is a dialogue. And part of. The narratives of masculinity is that men by being the gender and opposite sex couples by being the gender that has a higher quote sex drive should also be the initiators and that [00:59:00] initiation is so if, if initiation is expected by men If initiation is accepted to be done by men, if there's an assumption that men have higher sex drives, that women don't have high sex drives like this is setting up a recipe for some really harmful sexual experiences both in terms of, of.emotional damage that can happen through a lack of communication, lack of overt consent, and also through significant emotional, physical, psychological damage from men who overtly exploit that to abuse women. So I would, I, I, I would start there that I talked on the podcast about what happened when I in my sex therapy training, the first class that we took was around the, the six sexual health principles that I mentioned and, and, and about consent and my response leaving that was, oh, fuck, I [01:00:00] am 33 years old.I have never had this conversation and I have been. engaged in a 14 year sexual relationship that has not been particularly dialogical. Yeah. And there's reasons for that that we can talk about maybe in another context, but, but, but part of that is rooted in these expectations that both my partner and I had that, or my ex and I had that, I am the one that has a higher sex drive that it should be initiating sex.And, and, and my partner as, as a woman should be the recipient and, and, and even be even be asexual. And so according to that, I have conversations which is super, super damaging. And so I had, I came back. From a class. I talked with my ex about this. Hey, we need to talk. I am so sorry that we have been having these experiences.I want to do this differently. I'd love to figure out a way to talk to you [01:01:00] about this and my ex, who is also like steeped up in, in much more of a similar experience religious experience to Julia growing up, growing up in the Baptist church than, than I was. Her response was, Oh, it's no big deal.Thank you. Which threw me for a loop and looking back on this now, like recognizing how entrenched she still was. Yeah. In these expectations about what men do and what women do. Katherine: And it was just normal, so normal for her. She had no concept or idea of anything else. That's right. Julia: Yeah. That's bad. Well and I'm not saying bad in a that is not bad in a blaming way towards anyone.That is a bad system for all of us to have learned from, you know, this is super sad. So I've had [01:02:00] experiences in which like men have abused me sexually in an exploitive way. And that is a really awful experience. And then I've had experiences, perhaps more similar to what you're describing, Jeremiah. In which the abuse of, or the the non consensual experience is not necessarily abusive.Non consent can absolutely be abusive and I've experienced that. Or non consent can exist when a couple doesn't have relational tools to navigate consent. So I had a diagnosis of vaginismus and vulvodynia, which means essentially painful intercourse and the constriction of the vaginal muscles. Deeply connected to...Evangelicalism so I'm hesitant to use that diagnostic language, but that was what I experienced, which means that sex was often painful. And when I got married my husband and I would sometimes have these sexual experiences that were very, very physically painful. And my ex husband, who is a good human being, saw that I [01:03:00] was in pain, and he had this terrible choice in which he could stop the sexual experience because he didn't want to see his partner in pain or be any part of inflicting that.However, if he chose to stop the sexual experience, that would also communicate to me as the woman in this. situation that I was not desirable. And so sometimes he would initiate stopping the sexual experience. And I would sometimes say, no, no, no, keep going. Because for me, that was my only way of proving my worth as a human being.And so I could also have the opportunity to say, yes, let's stop this experience and save myself from the pain. Or I could power through the pain. And so both of us were stuck in these really terrible dynamics, which the experience was not consensual, right? Right. Not consensual because I was clearly in a huge amount of physical distress and emotional distress.[01:04:00] However, From my perspective, that wasn't an abusive, non consensual experience, and I think the assumption that non consent is always abusive keeps us from having these dialogues because there is so much shame associated with it. Katherine: That's right. Right, right. And I think that was something that I learned from y'all's episode about just because it's non consensual doesn't equal marital rape.And I think that that is a new, a new a new phrase. Phrase. Simple. Right. That we're, we're more acquainted with. And, and I, and I love, thank you so much for sharing your example, Julia, because It was like you both were consenting to play roles. So there was consent. You didn't necessarily, you didn't know there was anything different, you know, like, yeah, it wasn't that he, you were saying, no, I don't want this.And then he was forcing [01:05:00] still, that's a very different dynamic. We both have these roles to play. And we're both just playing Julia: and we're performing our genders and we didn't know that we could consent out of it. And sadly, I've had the experiences that you're describing in which a sexual experience was forced due to an abuse of power.And, and that's a different, that's a different kind of experience. Both are painful, both are harmful. But I think we have to have more nuanced dialogue around consent. Katherine: Absolutely. Yeah. And then, and then just, Oof. And then like your story, Jeremiah, of like recognizing that this had never happened, like, and it wasn't in an effort to, to dominate, it was in an effort to play the role that you were told.Jeremiah: Right. Right. Yeah. Right. And, and, and just to kind of build on [01:06:00] that, that yeah, like our earliest sexual experiences with my ex, yeah. Were they almost all ended with panic attacks. With my ex wife having a panic attack, and, did you Katherine: correlate it with what had just happened? Or did you think it was completely separate?I had Jeremiah: no idea what was going on. I didn't have the language for it. I just knew that there was a sexual experience for something I wanted, something I thought she wanted. And the panic attacks, obviously like shut down the experience. It, it it heightened my own desire to move into like protective spaces.And, and so I learned that initiating conversations about sex that had the capacity to bring that that, that, that kind of pain. So, so not just on a, on a, on a physical level, Julia, what you're talking about, but on a dialogical level. Sure, sure. Both. Yeah. Yeah. So. Katherine: If this is too much information, you're, I will cut it from the episode, but were, [01:07:00] was, were your first sexual experiences in marriage?Jeremiah: Depends on what you mean by sexual experience. Let's, Katherine: let's, let's play the, the Jeremiah: marital relationship was my first experience with intercourse. Got Julia: it. There you go. Yeah. Yeah. Me too. And Yeah. I think the question is relevant in the sense that that meant a following of purity culture rules because the church defines sexuality by vaginally penetrative intercourse.I think that language is so harmful because it I think that eliminates any other kinds of sexual experiences that are, that are just as, as valid and Jeremiah: just as enjoyable. Katherine: Yeah. And, and building that connection and intimacy as you were, you were talking about earlier as [01:08:00] a way of just wrapping up the episode, we've talked a little bit about this and you have shared some really great insights into the healing processes.That you have both been through and then also clients but what are some just like stepping stones and, and, and starting places for like men listening to this episode of just like how to integrate and be that whole human. And then for women who might be in that hetero cisgender relationship on on what they can like how to just kind of navigate.Potentially very brand new things that they may have learned in this episode. We can start with the men. Jeremiah: I'm also thinking about stepping stones. I think first things first, we have to start thinking about sex in ways that go beyond vaginal intercourse. That sex is the way that the ways that two bodies interact with each other in a way that creates [01:09:00] some sort of, some sort of physical pleasure.And thinking then about, well, what are the diversity of ways in, in, in, in which that happens for me what are the types of what are the types of touch that I like? Well, what are ways that I can have pleasure that, that, that don't involve touch and, and that can, that can either for myself and, and that are also relational so I think that.Thinking about stepping stones, I think that that's an important stepping stone to acknowledge that sex is not a reduction to our penises that sex involves the totality of our bodies. Yeah. Julia: I would say that learning to talk about... Sex is probably one of the stepping stones, and that's really difficult if you've never had any models for talking about sexuality. In our episode with you when we interviewed you for our podcast, you mentioned the [01:10:00] challenge of Well, how do you find a voice after leaving a religious community when you never developed one, right?And so I recognize that even, I suppose, this stepping stone is a complicated one because that would require a person or a couple or a group to step up. to create a new roadmap or to start a new pathway down this sledding hill. Maybe having some questions could be helpful. So asking a partner or a friend or someone you trust who you believe could have this dialogue with you in a meaningful way to say, you know, what did you learn about your gender growing up.What did it mean to be a man in your church? That might be a helpful first step, because it can also test out the water a little bit. Talking about what you learned is potentially vulnerable, but you're still [01:11:00] talking about something outside of yourself to a degree. And so being able to talk with someone about what that meant and what about that might've been difficult you know, to go there if, if, if the first part of that conversation goes well.Yeah. Katherine: Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just getting, just getting comfortable with like just understanding the messages. Yeah. You received. Yes. It's hard though. It's hard work. Listen to sexvangelicals. Julia: That's right. You can listen to our podcast. Jeremiah: Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts, Katherine: wherever you get your podcasts. Well, this has been very informative and also feels like the beginning of a conversation and there's just so much more to explore.Just, yeah, through this lens, but I really appreciate you providing that extra perspective[01:12:00] just because. In the purity culture conversation, it tends to center around the woman's experience. And, and it, and as we know, patriarchy doesn't just impact women, it impacts everyone. Julia: Right, right. And I think that one of the messages about purity culture is that women are the gatekeepers to sexuality.And that's something that's damaging to women, but it damages men because it erases their ability to describe Their experiences in, in their own ways , Katherine: And, and almost eliminates their agency Julia: within it. Absolutely. Absolutely. Of course. Katherine: Yeah. Well, this has been great. As we, as we wrap up , share where folks can interact with you.And then are you, are you all taking. Taking clients or do we have a full docket at the moment? Julia: They can reach out Jeremiah: to us and reach out to us. Yeah. So for more information about working with us, we're in, in the early stages of getting some coaching processes together.[01:13:00] Sex evangelicals at gmail.com. We're also on Instagram and threads at sex evangelicals. And then we also have a subsect that goes out two or three times a week called relationship 101, which you can find at sex evangelicals. subsect. com. That's super Katherine: easy and super simple. I love it. Appreciate y'all.

Julia is joined by Olly Kohn, one of the founders of The Jolly Hog brand of bacon and sausages. Olly is also a former professional rugby player who used to play for Harlequins. He tells Julia how and why he transitioned from a career in rugby to running a food brand with his two brothers and how his experience as a professional sportsman shaped his attitude towards risk-taking and learning in public. Plus, he shares how The Jolly Hog has coped in the face of supply chain disruption, why he's sad about the demise of the Great British Caff, how he used to approach food and nutrition during his rugby years – and what's next for his brand. Articles discussed by Olly and Julia: It's Brexmas! From turkeys to alcohol, how will shortages affect Christmas? | The Observer ‘Greasy spoon' cafes close doors as today's diners shun fry-ups | The Observer How I fuel: Joe Marler, Anthony Watson & Harry Randall | Red Bull Links to the big food and grocery retail stories this week: Asda charters cargo ship with festive items amid supply chain crisis | The Guardian Lidl promotes Ryan McDonnell to UK CEO | City AM Morrisons ditches soya for insects in chicken feed to hatch carbon neutral eggs | FT Waitrose ramps up Scottish presence after tie-up with Edinburgh retail institution | The Scotsman Sainsbury's aims to raise £3m to tackle food poverty this Christmas | The Grocer Marks & Spencer trialling augmented reality wayfinding app at Westfield Food Hall | The Grocer Pret a Manger launches new loyalty scheme Pret Perks | The Grocer New support for UK's world-leading agri-food and drink industry | gov.uk Ad regulator clears Tesco's Christmas campaign after 5,000 complaints | Evening Standard Learn more about the show and get in touch at thepicklist.co.uk If you enjoyed this episode, please rate, subscribe and leave a review.

》》》》》》一键领取入口《《《《《《更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听Todd: Yeah, but next time you teach, when you look at your students, think about it.Julia: I will, yeah.Todd: Who's a player, who's a pupil, who's a participant, who's a prisoner.Julia: Who's a prisoner. And do you find that you have like an even distribution of those four types within any one class or...?Todd: No, usually you'll a couple players, like let's say if you have a class of 20, if you have a class of 20 students you might have one or two players, one or two pupils, about 12-14 participants, and maybe two or three prisoners.Julia: Well, it's interesting, as you were giving those definitions, student's names and faces were coming to mind. Oh yeah, he's just described... Oh yeah, that's her, yeah. I could see how they would fit into the categories.Todd: See, it works.Julia: It does. But how does it help you teach them?Todd: I think it does help you teach, like you know how to deal with everyone differently, right. So like a prisoner, for example, you just have to have a lot of empathy, you know, you have to understand that they don't want to be there so you shouldn't expect that they have a great attitude about the class. You know, a participant, you should make it really highly interactive, you should make it very social, as much as you can. A pupil, you know, you give them the extra feedback when you write, you know, comments on their papers and stuff and you give them the encouragement like, "Oh wow, you did a really good job on your test." A player, you, you know, because I'm a language teacher, I try to talk with them a lot, like almost cordial, like a friend so that they have a lot of personal interaction. So, yeah, I think it's, you know you just kind of ... you have to adjust to each one. Yeah, and the thing about this is, I've thought about these four types a lot and I think they apply to any subject and the person can change like one person isn't automatically a player in every subject, so for some subjects you're a player, for other subjects you're a prisoner, maybe other subjects you're a participant. Okay, so what subjects were you a player?Julia: Language, definitely, foreign language, loved French. I did Latin at school as well which was quite unusual but enjoyed it.Todd: And a prisoner?Julia: A prisoner, at the time, music. When I was at school I was a prisoner in music and I don't think it was just my response to the subject, it was also my response to the teacher. Didn't have a good relationship with the teacher but nothing I could do, couldn't escape, had to be there and that affected my learning I think. Being a prisoner's not a good ... I don't think it's a good learning situation.Todd: No, definitely not.Julia: No.Todd: How about, were you ever a participant? You just did something to be with your friends and you really didn't care what it was?Julia: Yeah, there were some subjects like that I think. Like history and geography, those kinds of subjects, humanities subjects, they were mildly engaging but I liked, yeah ... I didn't have an aversion to them because I was hanging out with my friends. I didn't love them, I didn't excel in them, I wasn't particularly interested in them.

》》》》》》一键领取入口《《《《《《更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听Todd: Yeah, but next time you teach, when you look at your students, think about it.Julia: I will, yeah.Todd: Who's a player, who's a pupil, who's a participant, who's a prisoner.Julia: Who's a prisoner. And do you find that you have like an even distribution of those four types within any one class or...?Todd: No, usually you'll a couple players, like let's say if you have a class of 20, if you have a class of 20 students you might have one or two players, one or two pupils, about 12-14 participants, and maybe two or three prisoners.Julia: Well, it's interesting, as you were giving those definitions, student's names and faces were coming to mind. Oh yeah, he's just described... Oh yeah, that's her, yeah. I could see how they would fit into the categories.Todd: See, it works.Julia: It does. But how does it help you teach them?Todd: I think it does help you teach, like you know how to deal with everyone differently, right. So like a prisoner, for example, you just have to have a lot of empathy, you know, you have to understand that they don't want to be there so you shouldn't expect that they have a great attitude about the class. You know, a participant, you should make it really highly interactive, you should make it very social, as much as you can. A pupil, you know, you give them the extra feedback when you write, you know, comments on their papers and stuff and you give them the encouragement like, "Oh wow, you did a really good job on your test." A player, you, you know, because I'm a language teacher, I try to talk with them a lot, like almost cordial, like a friend so that they have a lot of personal interaction. So, yeah, I think it's, you know you just kind of ... you have to adjust to each one. Yeah, and the thing about this is, I've thought about these four types a lot and I think they apply to any subject and the person can change like one person isn't automatically a player in every subject, so for some subjects you're a player, for other subjects you're a prisoner, maybe other subjects you're a participant. Okay, so what subjects were you a player?Julia: Language, definitely, foreign language, loved French. I did Latin at school as well which was quite unusual but enjoyed it.Todd: And a prisoner?Julia: A prisoner, at the time, music. When I was at school I was a prisoner in music and I don't think it was just my response to the subject, it was also my response to the teacher. Didn't have a good relationship with the teacher but nothing I could do, couldn't escape, had to be there and that affected my learning I think. Being a prisoner's not a good ... I don't think it's a good learning situation.Todd: No, definitely not.Julia: No.Todd: How about, were you ever a participant? You just did something to be with your friends and you really didn't care what it was?Julia: Yeah, there were some subjects like that I think. Like history and geography, those kinds of subjects, humanities subjects, they were mildly engaging but I liked, yeah ... I didn't have an aversion to them because I was hanging out with my friends. I didn't love them, I didn't excel in them, I wasn't particularly interested in them.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听 Julia: OK, so we've talked about freelancing your skills and living and working abroad. Have you ever done that? Have you ever lived and worked in a...Todd: Like digitally, just like a kind of nomad?Julia: Yeah.Todd: Yeah, I did. I did it for a year. I was actually a nomad. I lived in five different countries and I did all my work online. I mainly was just doing web stuff but it was an interesting experience. I mean I had never, I thought it would be a perfect life and when I told people what I was going to do, everybody said that's amazing. You know, I mean basically I said that I was gonna just travel the world and I would just work from whatever city I was in. I would choose my own itinerary and my own destination and I would work when I wanted to and, yeah, I did it for ten months.Julia: And then why did you quit?Todd: Well, I think you referenced it earlier. It actually became incredibly lonely. I was surprised how lonely I became. I would meet people but you would always meet people as a tourist and you didn't have family and you didn't have your social network. You didn't have people that you would see every day at work.Julia: No workmates?Todd: Right. You got no workmates, no-one to go out and have a drink with and after a while you really crave like social interaction and not always being the stranger, not always being the new person, like people that know your name and yeah, so after a while I gave it up. I remember the big thing that changed is one day I was in my hotel room, actually, it was a little apartment, and I realized I had nowhere to go, I had no-one to see and I can go anywhere in the world. I had complete freedom. I could go to the airport and buy a ticket to Paris and go to Paris that day or I can go to Buenos Aires or Sydney. I could have gone anywhere in the world. There was nothing to stop me. No schedule, no appointments, no-one to report to and it was actually kind of frightening. Like it was almost paralyzing.Julia: It's like standing on the edge of an abyss looking down.Todd: It was. It was like, you know, I realized I wanted normalcy again. I wanted to have a schedule. I wanted to, you know, have the norm that I had before so I went back to teaching at university and now in my university job I have a lot of time to travel in between but just living around the world going from place to place, yeah, it wasn't so great.Julia: Well, I think it's great that you had the chance to explore this option. I'm sure everyone would benefit maybe from trying it and then working out what it is they really value because I'm sure we all think wow freedom, absolute freedom, isn't that like the ultimate goal but then when you have it, you realize well actually no, some of those constraints that I had were quite good.Todd: Right.Julia: They gave me a sense of being or they give structure to my life or meaning to my life.Todd: Totally, totally and actually now that I've done it, I would do it again. I would know how to do it right. I would do it differently than I did it before so, yeah, I learned. I'm not saying it's not worth it, I'm just saying it's not all it's cracked up to be.Julia: No, and I guess ten months is a long time maybe that's the only thing, enough of a...Todd: Exactly.Julia: But it sounds cool though. I can see the attraction definitely.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听 Julia: OK, so we've talked about freelancing your skills and living and working abroad. Have you ever done that? Have you ever lived and worked in a...Todd: Like digitally, just like a kind of nomad?Julia: Yeah.Todd: Yeah, I did. I did it for a year. I was actually a nomad. I lived in five different countries and I did all my work online. I mainly was just doing web stuff but it was an interesting experience. I mean I had never, I thought it would be a perfect life and when I told people what I was going to do, everybody said that's amazing. You know, I mean basically I said that I was gonna just travel the world and I would just work from whatever city I was in. I would choose my own itinerary and my own destination and I would work when I wanted to and, yeah, I did it for ten months.Julia: And then why did you quit?Todd: Well, I think you referenced it earlier. It actually became incredibly lonely. I was surprised how lonely I became. I would meet people but you would always meet people as a tourist and you didn't have family and you didn't have your social network. You didn't have people that you would see every day at work.Julia: No workmates?Todd: Right. You got no workmates, no-one to go out and have a drink with and after a while you really crave like social interaction and not always being the stranger, not always being the new person, like people that know your name and yeah, so after a while I gave it up. I remember the big thing that changed is one day I was in my hotel room, actually, it was a little apartment, and I realized I had nowhere to go, I had no-one to see and I can go anywhere in the world. I had complete freedom. I could go to the airport and buy a ticket to Paris and go to Paris that day or I can go to Buenos Aires or Sydney. I could have gone anywhere in the world. There was nothing to stop me. No schedule, no appointments, no-one to report to and it was actually kind of frightening. Like it was almost paralyzing.Julia: It's like standing on the edge of an abyss looking down.Todd: It was. It was like, you know, I realized I wanted normalcy again. I wanted to have a schedule. I wanted to, you know, have the norm that I had before so I went back to teaching at university and now in my university job I have a lot of time to travel in between but just living around the world going from place to place, yeah, it wasn't so great.Julia: Well, I think it's great that you had the chance to explore this option. I'm sure everyone would benefit maybe from trying it and then working out what it is they really value because I'm sure we all think wow freedom, absolute freedom, isn't that like the ultimate goal but then when you have it, you realize well actually no, some of those constraints that I had were quite good.Todd: Right.Julia: They gave me a sense of being or they give structure to my life or meaning to my life.Todd: Totally, totally and actually now that I've done it, I would do it again. I would know how to do it right. I would do it differently than I did it before so, yeah, I learned. I'm not saying it's not worth it, I'm just saying it's not all it's cracked up to be.Julia: No, and I guess ten months is a long time maybe that's the only thing, enough of a...Todd: Exactly.Julia: But it sounds cool though. I can see the attraction definitely.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听 Todd: OK, Julia, we're talking about types of people and we have some more that we can discuss. So the next one is a worrywart. Are you a worrywart?Julia: I guess when it comes to some things maybe yeah. Like sometimes I get insomnia and I know it's because my brain is worrying about stuff.Todd: Right. You just can't let it go?Julia: Yeah, which is kind of why I took up yoga and meditation because just calming down those, you know, those thoughts that are just going crazy round in your head. So I would be a worrywart if it wasn't for my yoga practice. I think yoga helps me keep my mind calm.Todd: Oh, cool.Julia: But I have that natural tendency I think.Todd: OK, so what about things around the house? Are you a clean freak?Julia: No. No, I am messy, like ridiculously messy. I don't see mess. I don't see it. It's like a blind spot.Todd: So you're a slob?Julia: Yes, kind of, yes and this is the one thing that drives my husband crazy because he's very tidy, he's very clean, very neat.Todd: So you guys are yin and yang?Julia: Yeah. He likes things to go in the proper place and he likes things to be tidied up, put away and for him it's very, it's a sort of therapeutic thing. It's, I guess, the mirror of his mental state. If there's a mess going on he feels uneasy so he needs to tidy up in order to kind of be focused and calm. I'm kind of the opposite. If everything's too tidy and neat, I get a bit freaked out. I like, I'm comfortable in a mess, very comfortable in mess.Todd: Comfortable in chaos?Julia: Yeah.Todd: Well that leads us to the next one and maybe this relates to your husband. Is he a control freak?Julia: Yes. Absolutely. He is, yes.Todd: So can you explain what a control freak is?Julia: A control freak is someone who likes to be in control, has to be in control all the time over all things.Todd: And if there's not, if there's disorder or something left?Julia: It causes him stress. It causes him stress so just simple things like maybe like a house guest. While he's a very friendly and generous and warm person, having an extra person in the house makes him uneasy because it's a factor that's out of his control.Todd: Hm, yeah. So how about other things like are you a, like a video game junkie or TV junkie?Julia: There are certain games that I have to take off my phone because they will eat away my time.Todd: Right, like Angry Birds and stuff like that?Julia: Stuff like that. The ones that, just really simplistic ones, things like Tetris and putting squares inboxes and Bejeweled where you change, moving things around. Those kinds of games I can get very readily addicted to so I have to, I have to be careful, I take them off. I had like a brief intense fling with TechM, like those fighting games. I was really into fights, fighting games, and playing.Todd: Wow, that's hardcore.Julia: Yeah, but it was shortlived and I felt like it was an unhealthy obsession.Todd: Yeah, you can, yeah.Julia: But yeah it was great. I enjoyed it when I did it. It was fun.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听 Todd: OK, Julia, we're talking about types of people and we have some more that we can discuss. So the next one is a worrywart. Are you a worrywart?Julia: I guess when it comes to some things maybe yeah. Like sometimes I get insomnia and I know it's because my brain is worrying about stuff.Todd: Right. You just can't let it go?Julia: Yeah, which is kind of why I took up yoga and meditation because just calming down those, you know, those thoughts that are just going crazy round in your head. So I would be a worrywart if it wasn't for my yoga practice. I think yoga helps me keep my mind calm.Todd: Oh, cool.Julia: But I have that natural tendency I think.Todd: OK, so what about things around the house? Are you a clean freak?Julia: No. No, I am messy, like ridiculously messy. I don't see mess. I don't see it. It's like a blind spot.Todd: So you're a slob?Julia: Yes, kind of, yes and this is the one thing that drives my husband crazy because he's very tidy, he's very clean, very neat.Todd: So you guys are yin and yang?Julia: Yeah. He likes things to go in the proper place and he likes things to be tidied up, put away and for him it's very, it's a sort of therapeutic thing. It's, I guess, the mirror of his mental state. If there's a mess going on he feels uneasy so he needs to tidy up in order to kind of be focused and calm. I'm kind of the opposite. If everything's too tidy and neat, I get a bit freaked out. I like, I'm comfortable in a mess, very comfortable in mess.Todd: Comfortable in chaos?Julia: Yeah.Todd: Well that leads us to the next one and maybe this relates to your husband. Is he a control freak?Julia: Yes. Absolutely. He is, yes.Todd: So can you explain what a control freak is?Julia: A control freak is someone who likes to be in control, has to be in control all the time over all things.Todd: And if there's not, if there's disorder or something left?Julia: It causes him stress. It causes him stress so just simple things like maybe like a house guest. While he's a very friendly and generous and warm person, having an extra person in the house makes him uneasy because it's a factor that's out of his control.Todd: Hm, yeah. So how about other things like are you a, like a video game junkie or TV junkie?Julia: There are certain games that I have to take off my phone because they will eat away my time.Todd: Right, like Angry Birds and stuff like that?Julia: Stuff like that. The ones that, just really simplistic ones, things like Tetris and putting squares inboxes and Bejeweled where you change, moving things around. Those kinds of games I can get very readily addicted to so I have to, I have to be careful, I take them off. I had like a brief intense fling with TechM, like those fighting games. I was really into fights, fighting games, and playing.Todd: Wow, that's hardcore.Julia: Yeah, but it was shortlived and I felt like it was an unhealthy obsession.Todd: Yeah, you can, yeah.Julia: But yeah it was great. I enjoyed it when I did it. It was fun.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听 Todd: So, Julia, now you are a parent.Julia: That's right.Todd: And have you heard of all these terms that we have in the US for different types of parents? I wonder if you have them in the UK?Julia: You mean like soccer mum, stuff like that?Todd: Exactly.Julia: That's the only one I've heard of actually.Todd: OK. So what do you think a soccer mom is? What have you heard?Julia: My image is a mother who dedicates her time to running her kids to and from soccer practice. Is that right?Todd: Right.Julia: And also drives a big vehicle? My image is of a big SUV or a big four-wheel drive.Todd: Right. I think it's also, it's like a parent that has many scheduled events for their child.Julia: Oh, OK.Todd: So maybe they have swimming class or soccer practice, ballet and stuff like that.Julia: Oh, maybe I'm a little bit of a soccer mum.Todd: Yeah, I think now, yeah. I think it's actually a good term. It's like, I think a soccer mom usually is considered a caring parent.Julia: OK.Todd: And they try to have their child doing productive things.Julia: It must be pretty, quite an affluent perhaps middle-class kind of parent.Todd: Yeah, exactly, exactly. Now we have the equivalent, it's called a Nascar dad.Julia: Is Nascar some kind of car racing?Todd: Yeah, basically it's just the, these cars they run around and ride around in a circle. It's kind of like horse racing for cars, you just go round and round. But, yeah, so I guess it's the same thing. It's just a dad who's really, you know, really into his kids, spends a lot of time with his kids.Julia: Would this be a stay at home dad, like a...?Todd: No, no. It's just kind of like a good old boy father, like a dad who's kind of blue-collar, not rich, you know, maybe lower middle class maybe but just kind of like your typical sitcom, TV sitcom dadI guess.Julia: But that's nice. Takes his kids everywhere, that's nice.Todd: Yeah, yeah.Julia: Involved in the...Todd: Yeah, like a Nascar dad would probably take his son's hunting and maybe take his daughter shopping and stuff like that.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听 Todd: So, Julia, now you are a parent.Julia: That's right.Todd: And have you heard of all these terms that we have in the US for different types of parents? I wonder if you have them in the UK?Julia: You mean like soccer mum, stuff like that?Todd: Exactly.Julia: That's the only one I've heard of actually.Todd: OK. So what do you think a soccer mom is? What have you heard?Julia: My image is a mother who dedicates her time to running her kids to and from soccer practice. Is that right?Todd: Right.Julia: And also drives a big vehicle? My image is of a big SUV or a big four-wheel drive.Todd: Right. I think it's also, it's like a parent that has many scheduled events for their child.Julia: Oh, OK.Todd: So maybe they have swimming class or soccer practice, ballet and stuff like that.Julia: Oh, maybe I'm a little bit of a soccer mum.Todd: Yeah, I think now, yeah. I think it's actually a good term. It's like, I think a soccer mom usually is considered a caring parent.Julia: OK.Todd: And they try to have their child doing productive things.Julia: It must be pretty, quite an affluent perhaps middle-class kind of parent.Todd: Yeah, exactly, exactly. Now we have the equivalent, it's called a Nascar dad.Julia: Is Nascar some kind of car racing?Todd: Yeah, basically it's just the, these cars they run around and ride around in a circle. It's kind of like horse racing for cars, you just go round and round. But, yeah, so I guess it's the same thing. It's just a dad who's really, you know, really into his kids, spends a lot of time with his kids.Julia: Would this be a stay at home dad, like a...?Todd: No, no. It's just kind of like a good old boy father, like a dad who's kind of blue-collar, not rich, you know, maybe lower middle class maybe but just kind of like your typical sitcom, TV sitcom dadI guess.Julia: But that's nice. Takes his kids everywhere, that's nice.Todd: Yeah, yeah.Julia: Involved in the...Todd: Yeah, like a Nascar dad would probably take his son's hunting and maybe take his daughter shopping and stuff like that.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听 Julia: And how about you? What kind of learner are you?Todd: Well I guess I'm maybe kinesthetic, that's movement, right, or doing things with your hands.Julia: Yeah, I think so or even your whole body?Todd: I don't know. Is kinesthetic using your hands or is it your whole body? Or does it matter?Julia: I'm not sure it matters. Perhaps there's two different types. I know there's something called TPR when we teach English, total physical response.Todd: Right. So that would be kinesthetic?Julia: That's maybe kinesthetic, that's where you give an instruction and the student performs the task and they use the whole body in that case but it can just be your hands or a body part. I think it's both.Todd: Yes, I think so, yeah. Yes, I mean, so basically if I do it like if I somehow have to make it or if I'm moving, I definitely think I learn better. You know, I learned how to do everything for web design and stuff like that by I think just moving the mouse, click here, click there, type here, type there, whereas like reading it from a book I just, you know, I couldn't learn it that way. So maybe, maybe, I'm kind of that way. The same with cooking, you know, like I have to do it. If I don't do it I'm not going to remember it. I just can't read a recipe and cook. So I think maybe the other thing I would be, would be, I guess would be an aural learner or auditory learner. So basically through hearing.Julia: My husband's the same, yeah.Todd: Yeah.Julia: He can hear a sentence, hear a new word, and remember it just from his ears.Todd: Really?Julia: Yeah.Todd: That's good.Julia: That's very good, yeah.Todd: Like I love podcasts and I love hearing things, that's probably why I have this website. I don't like reading too much. I do read and I actually don't even like watching TV very much. I don't like watching movies very much.Julia: Really?Todd: No. I would actually much rather listen to a radio program, a good podcast, than watch a movie.Julia: You see when I listen to a podcast...Todd: While I'm walking.Julia: There you go, definitely kinesthetic. If I listen to a podcast, I get a little bit frustrated that I can't see the people speaking.Todd: Really?Julia: It frustrates me a little bit that I can't see the faces when they're talking when I don't know what they look like.Todd: Oh, I never even thought of that. Yeah, I just don't even care.Julia: I need to, I need visual input in order for it to, I don't know, go into that part of my brain where it stays, where it stores maybe.Todd: So we're definitely two different types of learners?Julia: Absolutely, yes.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听 Julia: And how about you? What kind of learner are you?Todd: Well I guess I'm maybe kinesthetic, that's movement, right, or doing things with your hands.Julia: Yeah, I think so or even your whole body?Todd: I don't know. Is kinesthetic using your hands or is it your whole body? Or does it matter?Julia: I'm not sure it matters. Perhaps there's two different types. I know there's something called TPR when we teach English, total physical response.Todd: Right. So that would be kinesthetic?Julia: That's maybe kinesthetic, that's where you give an instruction and the student performs the task and they use the whole body in that case but it can just be your hands or a body part. I think it's both.Todd: Yes, I think so, yeah. Yes, I mean, so basically if I do it like if I somehow have to make it or if I'm moving, I definitely think I learn better. You know, I learned how to do everything for web design and stuff like that by I think just moving the mouse, click here, click there, type here, type there, whereas like reading it from a book I just, you know, I couldn't learn it that way. So maybe, maybe, I'm kind of that way. The same with cooking, you know, like I have to do it. If I don't do it I'm not going to remember it. I just can't read a recipe and cook. So I think maybe the other thing I would be, would be, I guess would be an aural learner or auditory learner. So basically through hearing.Julia: My husband's the same, yeah.Todd: Yeah.Julia: He can hear a sentence, hear a new word, and remember it just from his ears.Todd: Really?Julia: Yeah.Todd: That's good.Julia: That's very good, yeah.Todd: Like I love podcasts and I love hearing things, that's probably why I have this website. I don't like reading too much. I do read and I actually don't even like watching TV very much. I don't like watching movies very much.Julia: Really?Todd: No. I would actually much rather listen to a radio program, a good podcast, than watch a movie.Julia: You see when I listen to a podcast...Todd: While I'm walking.Julia: There you go, definitely kinesthetic. If I listen to a podcast, I get a little bit frustrated that I can't see the people speaking.Todd: Really?Julia: It frustrates me a little bit that I can't see the faces when they're talking when I don't know what they look like.Todd: Oh, I never even thought of that. Yeah, I just don't even care.Julia: I need to, I need visual input in order for it to, I don't know, go into that part of my brain where it stays, where it stores maybe.Todd: So we're definitely two different types of learners?Julia: Absolutely, yes.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听Julia: So we're talking about your wedding, Nathan. Was it a stressful experience for you?Nathan: Yes, I think you could say that it was pretty stressful in several ways. The first one was a kind of stupid thing was that a long time ago I'd broken a tooth and a couple of days before I got married, the tooth got stuck in a chocolate bar and broke again. So I'd been to an emergency...Julia: You looked pretty then?Nathan: Yeah, I'd been to an emergency dentist session to have a new cap stuck on but I was really worried that (a) I couldn't speak properly because my mouth was still a bit getting used to the shape of the tooth and I was worried that the tooth was going to fall off but also I'm not very good in front of large groups of people and I had to, I had to do some speeches and I hadn't really...Julia: You made a speech?Nathan: Yeah, I didn't really memorize the speeches properly and so I really struggled with the speeches but I think the other thing was that I couldn't relax because everybody was taking photos and every time I wanted to have a drink of beer or have a mouthful of food, someone was like just one more photo, just one more photo and so I kept on saying to people like I'm really tired, you know, I'd really like to eat my food and everybody kept on coming up and taking photos and I actually got a bit frustrated and a bit...Julia: You were grumpy on your wedding day?Nathan: Well, I get grumpy everywhere. We had three parties so the first party was...Julia: Three parties?Nathan: Yeah, we had the wedding ceremony and then we had the meal and then we had a second party where we did some games and then we had a third party at a karaoke booth which was fantastic.Julia: Right and were you still in your wedding gear for all those parties?Nathan: Yeah. Actually I said to you sometime before that my wife had two wedding dresses but by the time we went to karaoke she was on her third wedding dress.Julia: Oh, wow.Nathan: So she had a pretty good time getting changed.Julia: It was a huge event then?Nathan: It was.Julia: How long did it take to plan this wedding?Nathan: I think it took only two months. My wife's pretty organized so she's like this is going to happen, this is going to happen, boom, boom, boom.Julia: So she made most of the important stressful decisions?Nathan: Oh yeah. The planning was easy for me. I just said yes to everything.Julia: And did you go on a honeymoon?Nathan: That's a major bone of contention. That's, I've never been forgiven for this because we, I guess we really didn't have a huge amount of money and afterward my wife wanted to take...Julia: You spent a lot on the wedding.Nathan: Yeah, she wanted to have a really romantic honeymoon in the Maldives and I'd actually put the idea of the Maldives into her head when I was drinking one time and afterward, we didn't do anything after the wedding because we'd been really busy during the wedding getting friends and family to fly in.Julia: You needed a break?Nathan: Yeah, but then about a month later we went to Thailand, and then we went to Singapore and we did lots of small trips in Malaysia and different things but they weren't really romantic and so my wife is still waiting for her romantic honeymoon.Julia: You went traveling, well that's nice.Nathan: Yeah, well.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听Julia: So we're talking about your wedding, Nathan. Was it a stressful experience for you?Nathan: Yes, I think you could say that it was pretty stressful in several ways. The first one was a kind of stupid thing was that a long time ago I'd broken a tooth and a couple of days before I got married, the tooth got stuck in a chocolate bar and broke again. So I'd been to an emergency...Julia: You looked pretty then?Nathan: Yeah, I'd been to an emergency dentist session to have a new cap stuck on but I was really worried that (a) I couldn't speak properly because my mouth was still a bit getting used to the shape of the tooth and I was worried that the tooth was going to fall off but also I'm not very good in front of large groups of people and I had to, I had to do some speeches and I hadn't really...Julia: You made a speech?Nathan: Yeah, I didn't really memorize the speeches properly and so I really struggled with the speeches but I think the other thing was that I couldn't relax because everybody was taking photos and every time I wanted to have a drink of beer or have a mouthful of food, someone was like just one more photo, just one more photo and so I kept on saying to people like I'm really tired, you know, I'd really like to eat my food and everybody kept on coming up and taking photos and I actually got a bit frustrated and a bit...Julia: You were grumpy on your wedding day?Nathan: Well, I get grumpy everywhere. We had three parties so the first party was...Julia: Three parties?Nathan: Yeah, we had the wedding ceremony and then we had the meal and then we had a second party where we did some games and then we had a third party at a karaoke booth which was fantastic.Julia: Right and were you still in your wedding gear for all those parties?Nathan: Yeah. Actually I said to you sometime before that my wife had two wedding dresses but by the time we went to karaoke she was on her third wedding dress.Julia: Oh, wow.Nathan: So she had a pretty good time getting changed.Julia: It was a huge event then?Nathan: It was.Julia: How long did it take to plan this wedding?Nathan: I think it took only two months. My wife's pretty organized so she's like this is going to happen, this is going to happen, boom, boom, boom.Julia: So she made most of the important stressful decisions?Nathan: Oh yeah. The planning was easy for me. I just said yes to everything.Julia: And did you go on a honeymoon?Nathan: That's a major bone of contention. That's, I've never been forgiven for this because we, I guess we really didn't have a huge amount of money and afterward my wife wanted to take...Julia: You spent a lot on the wedding.Nathan: Yeah, she wanted to have a really romantic honeymoon in the Maldives and I'd actually put the idea of the Maldives into her head when I was drinking one time and afterward, we didn't do anything after the wedding because we'd been really busy during the wedding getting friends and family to fly in.Julia: You needed a break?Nathan: Yeah, but then about a month later we went to Thailand, and then we went to Singapore and we did lots of small trips in Malaysia and different things but they weren't really romantic and so my wife is still waiting for her romantic honeymoon.Julia: You went traveling, well that's nice.Nathan: Yeah, well.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听 Todd: OK, so Julia, I thought we would talk about social unrest.Julia: OK.Todd: So recently in the news, there has been a lot of protests, there's been some riots and I believe in your country you actually had riots recently.Julia: We did, yeah, in the summer last year, yeah.Todd: That was in London?Julia: That was in London and in a few of the other cities around the UK as well. It spread to other cities but mainly centered in London, yeah.Todd: So what was your perspective of the riots?Julia: Well we, actually, we were just visiting home and so we just arrived in London right as that all kicked off. So actually I was quite shocked and of course, a lot of my friends here were a little bit worried because they knew we were flying into London and London is suddenly all over the news and not in a good way. A lot of violence and quite shocking imagines. You don't think, when you think of London you don't think of people wearing balaclavas and smashing windows and behaving in this violent way.Todd: So it was pretty shocking?Julia: It was quite shocking but after being there I think within a week it had calmed down and I think the response from the police was very good and from the public was very good and from the media generally it was also very good so it wasn't such a big deal in the end. It was, it wasn't a political movement, it wasn't people protesting anything specific, it was just a kind of unbridled violence so it didn't gain any support.Todd: Right, so it was just basically kind of releasing maybe youthful angst or kind of built up aggression?Julia: Tensions of some, yeah, some kind but because it was all focused around consumer goods and a desire to rob stores of products like shoes and TVs and nobody really took it very seriously. You know, I want a pair of Nikes so I'm going to smash this window doesn't really gain much momentum as a movement.Todd: So there was a lot of opportunism?Julia: Absolutely. I think that's pretty much all it was, yeah.Todd: So do you think it's going to happen again in the future?Julia: No, I don't think so, no, because of the way the public responded and the way it was handled, I don't think it's the kind of thing that would gain momentum again. I don't, I think it was a one-off.Todd: Yeah, a one and done deal?Julia: I think so, yeah.Todd: Well that's good.Julia: I hope so.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听 Todd: OK, so Julia, I thought we would talk about social unrest.Julia: OK.Todd: So recently in the news, there has been a lot of protests, there's been some riots and I believe in your country you actually had riots recently.Julia: We did, yeah, in the summer last year, yeah.Todd: That was in London?Julia: That was in London and in a few of the other cities around the UK as well. It spread to other cities but mainly centered in London, yeah.Todd: So what was your perspective of the riots?Julia: Well we, actually, we were just visiting home and so we just arrived in London right as that all kicked off. So actually I was quite shocked and of course, a lot of my friends here were a little bit worried because they knew we were flying into London and London is suddenly all over the news and not in a good way. A lot of violence and quite shocking imagines. You don't think, when you think of London you don't think of people wearing balaclavas and smashing windows and behaving in this violent way.Todd: So it was pretty shocking?Julia: It was quite shocking but after being there I think within a week it had calmed down and I think the response from the police was very good and from the public was very good and from the media generally it was also very good so it wasn't such a big deal in the end. It was, it wasn't a political movement, it wasn't people protesting anything specific, it was just a kind of unbridled violence so it didn't gain any support.Todd: Right, so it was just basically kind of releasing maybe youthful angst or kind of built up aggression?Julia: Tensions of some, yeah, some kind but because it was all focused around consumer goods and a desire to rob stores of products like shoes and TVs and nobody really took it very seriously. You know, I want a pair of Nikes so I'm going to smash this window doesn't really gain much momentum as a movement.Todd: So there was a lot of opportunism?Julia: Absolutely. I think that's pretty much all it was, yeah.Todd: So do you think it's going to happen again in the future?Julia: No, I don't think so, no, because of the way the public responded and the way it was handled, I don't think it's the kind of thing that would gain momentum again. I don't, I think it was a one-off.Todd: Yeah, a one and done deal?Julia: I think so, yeah.Todd: Well that's good.Julia: I hope so.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听 Todd: So on your bike trip, how did you feed yourself. What did you eat?Julia: Hydration was a thing that we worried about. We were able to stop every few kilometers and get fresh young coconuts with the straw in the top. Did you remember doing that?Todd: Yes, that's great.Julia: That's like a natural IV hit straight there. You can get, you can live very well just roadside stalls. Breakfast on the street markets. Most Cambodians eat breakfast on the way to work. Like they gather at the market and there's people there selling noodles and the most incredible just homemade stuff.Todd: So what was a typical breakfast?Julia: Noodles, usually noodles, some kind of noodles in a soup, like noodle soup I guess probably like in Vietnam, pho, they call it. The Cambodians have a similar thing. A lot of dishes with coconut milk, not as spicy as Thai food but a lot of coriander we call it in the UK. You call it, what do you call it, cilantro, you call it in America?Todd: It sounds good.Julia: Fabulous, yes, coconut.Todd: I would imagine a lot of fruit?Julia: Let's see. In Cambodia did we get a lot of fruit. Not that much fruit actually in Cambodia. In Vietnam, I remember the mangoes. When we crossed the border it was very different even though they're neighboring countries, it was a very different kind of cuisine when we crossed into Vietnam. Palm sugar, cane sugar, we drank a lot of cane sugar, cane sugar drink.Todd: So during the day how many times would you usually eat?Julia: We'd eat breakfast, usually within the first hour. Oh, coffee. I remember the coffee. Coffee is made with condensed milk in Cambodia so that was a staple, a big shot of Cambodian coffee with condensed milk in it. We'd have breakfast. We would try and do the bulk of our riding, we'd try and do like sixty K if possible before lunch because it got too hot in the afternoons and we wanted to arrive wherever we were getting before dark because we didn't really, you know the roads weren't safe. And then we'd stop for lunch somewhere but we'd also make it a rest stop and because we didn't all cycle at the same pace, it would probably be about two hours or so by the time we all arrived in the same place. Ate lunch, again rice is a staple and then whatever they had going these lunchtime cafes. And then our evening meal would be probably when we arrived at our guesthouse or the town that we were at in the evening. So we would have three meals a day usually.Todd: And then at night you would just stay in a guesthouse?Julia: At night we'd usually stay, yeah, we stayed in guesthouses, yeah.Todd: So how did you feel when you finally reached the end of your trip?Julia: Both elated and saddened. It was a real sense of achievement that we'd made it but I wanted it to go on forever. I then had to fly back out from Ho Chi Minh. We had a few days in Ho Chi Minh just to kind of celebrate that we got to the end but I had to come back to Japan so I flew back via Bangkok, where my husband was actually waiting. I'd been away two months so it was nice to come home. You know I realized when I got to the end that I really missed my husband but during the trip I was very at peace and enjoyed it and I could have just gone on forever I think.Todd: Cycle around the world?Julia: Cycle around the world, yeah. I realized that yeah that's how you do it. It's so pleasurable to do it to ride.Todd: It sounds like an incredible trip.Julia: It was.Todd: I'm sure you'll never forget it.Julia: No, never, no, no, no.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听 Todd: So on your bike trip, how did you feed yourself. What did you eat?Julia: Hydration was a thing that we worried about. We were able to stop every few kilometers and get fresh young coconuts with the straw in the top. Did you remember doing that?Todd: Yes, that's great.Julia: That's like a natural IV hit straight there. You can get, you can live very well just roadside stalls. Breakfast on the street markets. Most Cambodians eat breakfast on the way to work. Like they gather at the market and there's people there selling noodles and the most incredible just homemade stuff.Todd: So what was a typical breakfast?Julia: Noodles, usually noodles, some kind of noodles in a soup, like noodle soup I guess probably like in Vietnam, pho, they call it. The Cambodians have a similar thing. A lot of dishes with coconut milk, not as spicy as Thai food but a lot of coriander we call it in the UK. You call it, what do you call it, cilantro, you call it in America?Todd: It sounds good.Julia: Fabulous, yes, coconut.Todd: I would imagine a lot of fruit?Julia: Let's see. In Cambodia did we get a lot of fruit. Not that much fruit actually in Cambodia. In Vietnam, I remember the mangoes. When we crossed the border it was very different even though they're neighboring countries, it was a very different kind of cuisine when we crossed into Vietnam. Palm sugar, cane sugar, we drank a lot of cane sugar, cane sugar drink.Todd: So during the day how many times would you usually eat?Julia: We'd eat breakfast, usually within the first hour. Oh, coffee. I remember the coffee. Coffee is made with condensed milk in Cambodia so that was a staple, a big shot of Cambodian coffee with condensed milk in it. We'd have breakfast. We would try and do the bulk of our riding, we'd try and do like sixty K if possible before lunch because it got too hot in the afternoons and we wanted to arrive wherever we were getting before dark because we didn't really, you know the roads weren't safe. And then we'd stop for lunch somewhere but we'd also make it a rest stop and because we didn't all cycle at the same pace, it would probably be about two hours or so by the time we all arrived in the same place. Ate lunch, again rice is a staple and then whatever they had going these lunchtime cafes. And then our evening meal would be probably when we arrived at our guesthouse or the town that we were at in the evening. So we would have three meals a day usually.Todd: And then at night you would just stay in a guesthouse?Julia: At night we'd usually stay, yeah, we stayed in guesthouses, yeah.Todd: So how did you feel when you finally reached the end of your trip?Julia: Both elated and saddened. It was a real sense of achievement that we'd made it but I wanted it to go on forever. I then had to fly back out from Ho Chi Minh. We had a few days in Ho Chi Minh just to kind of celebrate that we got to the end but I had to come back to Japan so I flew back via Bangkok, where my husband was actually waiting. I'd been away two months so it was nice to come home. You know I realized when I got to the end that I really missed my husband but during the trip I was very at peace and enjoyed it and I could have just gone on forever I think.Todd: Cycle around the world?Julia: Cycle around the world, yeah. I realized that yeah that's how you do it. It's so pleasurable to do it to ride.Todd: It sounds like an incredible trip.Julia: It was.Todd: I'm sure you'll never forget it.Julia: No, never, no, no, no.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听 Todd: What were the road conditions like that you were riding on?Julia: I'd say at least half, maybe more than half were unpaved roads. Thankfully Cambodia is very flat so it wasn't so difficult. We averaged about seventy, eighty kilometers a day but on some days it was like thirty-five degrees so it was hot, so we'd try to leave at around six o'clock in the morning. A lot of mornings we saw the sunrise. We'd grab some breakfast at a roadside market or something, noodles that kind of stuff and so the roads were unpaved and the dirt in Cambodia is very red. It's like a red clay and...Todd: But very dusty though right?Julia: Very dusty so we had to wear scarves round our faces. When we arrived in the evenings at our destination, we were absolutely filthy and I always looked at myself and thought wow I've got such a great tan today and then I got out of the shower and realized it was all dirt, completely dirt, so we'd have to, yeah, a lot of Cambodians, I think it's called a krama, it's a kind of scarf they were around the mouth and when they travel in the back of trucks and things because the dust is phenomenal.Todd: The dust in some ways might have helped with maybe sun protection from the rays? Did you find that because you were covered in dust that may be like you didn't get sunburn?Julia: I did put a lot of sunscreen on every day because I was worried about that and perhaps it did protect us yeah in that way. It just made us dirtier.Todd: So what did the locals think? So you're driving through this, you know Cambodia is a very rural country.Julia: It is and we chose some of the most rural areas because we wanted to see some of the more picturesque areas. I mean it's stunning, the landscape there was stunning. There's a word in Cambodian language for foreigners which is barang and we got very used to hearing this word. Kids would come running across the fields shouting barang, barang, barang and they'd line the roads and they'd be going hello, hello, hello, I love you, I love you, hello, hello, so we got used to this waving and cheering. I think they probably thought we looked like from another planet because we were on these quite high-tech mountain bikes, laden with front and rear panniers. We had some film equipment with us. A friend of ours had put a bracket on the front of his handlebars with a camera on it and we often would have our iPods, our digital cameras out. They probably had never seen anything like us coming through and then when we'd stop at this roadside kind of cafes, we'd just lie our bikes down beside the road and they'd all come round but they were so polite and courteous and very reserved people. They never touched any of our stuff. They were always very respectful and I had a very positive experience. Before we went there, I met quite a few people, quite a few Cambodians even who said you can't do it, it's dangerous, you know you can't do it, you're going to get robbed, there are bandits. It's going to be really dangerous and we didn't encounter a single danger and in the whole two months, six riders, we had one puncture in the whole time. It was amazing. It was absolutely amazing.Todd: You only had one flat tire?Julia: One flat tire, that was it, one and we had no problems with the bikes.Todd: And these are bumpy roads.Julia: Bumpy roads, yeah, we were blessed. We actually went and had a blessing in a Buddhist temple before we set out and the monk blessed us and blessed us for safe travel, blessed our bikes and that was a nice ritual to do before we embarked on the, but it worked.Todd: That's fantastic.Julia: Yeah.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听 Todd: What were the road conditions like that you were riding on?Julia: I'd say at least half, maybe more than half were unpaved roads. Thankfully Cambodia is very flat so it wasn't so difficult. We averaged about seventy, eighty kilometers a day but on some days it was like thirty-five degrees so it was hot, so we'd try to leave at around six o'clock in the morning. A lot of mornings we saw the sunrise. We'd grab some breakfast at a roadside market or something, noodles that kind of stuff and so the roads were unpaved and the dirt in Cambodia is very red. It's like a red clay and...Todd: But very dusty though right?Julia: Very dusty so we had to wear scarves round our faces. When we arrived in the evenings at our destination, we were absolutely filthy and I always looked at myself and thought wow I've got such a great tan today and then I got out of the shower and realized it was all dirt, completely dirt, so we'd have to, yeah, a lot of Cambodians, I think it's called a krama, it's a kind of scarf they were around the mouth and when they travel in the back of trucks and things because the dust is phenomenal.Todd: The dust in some ways might have helped with maybe sun protection from the rays? Did you find that because you were covered in dust that may be like you didn't get sunburn?Julia: I did put a lot of sunscreen on every day because I was worried about that and perhaps it did protect us yeah in that way. It just made us dirtier.Todd: So what did the locals think? So you're driving through this, you know Cambodia is a very rural country.Julia: It is and we chose some of the most rural areas because we wanted to see some of the more picturesque areas. I mean it's stunning, the landscape there was stunning. There's a word in Cambodian language for foreigners which is barang and we got very used to hearing this word. Kids would come running across the fields shouting barang, barang, barang and they'd line the roads and they'd be going hello, hello, hello, I love you, I love you, hello, hello, so we got used to this waving and cheering. I think they probably thought we looked like from another planet because we were on these quite high-tech mountain bikes, laden with front and rear panniers. We had some film equipment with us. A friend of ours had put a bracket on the front of his handlebars with a camera on it and we often would have our iPods, our digital cameras out. They probably had never seen anything like us coming through and then when we'd stop at this roadside kind of cafes, we'd just lie our bikes down beside the road and they'd all come round but they were so polite and courteous and very reserved people. They never touched any of our stuff. They were always very respectful and I had a very positive experience. Before we went there, I met quite a few people, quite a few Cambodians even who said you can't do it, it's dangerous, you know you can't do it, you're going to get robbed, there are bandits. It's going to be really dangerous and we didn't encounter a single danger and in the whole two months, six riders, we had one puncture in the whole time. It was amazing. It was absolutely amazing.Todd: You only had one flat tire?Julia: One flat tire, that was it, one and we had no problems with the bikes.Todd: And these are bumpy roads.Julia: Bumpy roads, yeah, we were blessed. We actually went and had a blessing in a Buddhist temple before we set out and the monk blessed us and blessed us for safe travel, blessed our bikes and that was a nice ritual to do before we embarked on the, but it worked.Todd: That's fantastic.Julia: Yeah.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听 Todd: So Julia, I was looking at your website and I noticed that you did a bike trip in Cambodia.Julia: Yes, that's right. I joined an organization called Pepi and we did a ride from Siem Reap to Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh City.Todd: Wow, that's pretty cool.Julia: Thank you.Todd: So how did you do this trip? Was it through some organization?Julia: Well, actually it was a couple of friends of mine lived in the same town as me and it was their idea. They wanted to, they'd been to Cambodia, they wanted to go back and they wanted to do something somehow to help in some way. They recognized there was a problem with education in Cambodia, availability of education. They wanted to build a school so they went online and they found an organization through which they could, if they raised the funds, this organization would build a school for them and so we incorporated the bike ride as part of the fundraising and as part of the learning process. We wanted to actually go to Cambodia and see the country, as much of the country as possible.Todd: So that's pretty cool. So first let's talk about the bike ride. What exactly were the details of the trip?Julia: Well, it was, this ride has now become an annual event and obviously that was the first one so the details were a little sketchy in the beginning. We kind of were making it up as we went along. We planned for about a year in terms of preparation, physical training and planning the routes and raising the money and deciding where we'd stay, how long it'd take, all those kind of things. And we, actually we hired bikes from a company in Cambodia when we got there. They were mountain bikes. We had panniers, we actually got a company that sponsored us for those so we could carry stuff with us and we visited about seventeen organizations during the ride and other NGOs, other educational organizations, a few of the other schools that were part of the same project we also visited them and we took with us teaching materials because we did some English classes and some environmental awareness classes as we rode. So those organizations kind of were the pinpoints of where we stopped and stayed.Todd: So for the bike ride you started in Phnom Penh?Julia: We started in Siem Reap.Todd: Siem Reap?Julia: Which is near Angkor Wat which is near where the school was built.Todd: And then from there you went to Phnom Penh?Julia: We went, actually we set off from our school which is on a road that runs towards the Thai border in a very rural place. It was unpaved road, it was very bumpy and it was about a two-hour drive north of Siem Reap. So from the school we headed down to Battambang which is the kind of third biggest city, not so famous, but it's a tourist destination and also a nice city, a very nice city and we followed around the lower edge of the Tonle Sap River, Lake sorry, and we did come into Phnom Penh. We spent a few nights in Phnom Penh. Then we headed down to the coast via a town called Kep and ended up at Sihanoukville which is one of the big coastal, it's a big tourist resort basically on the Cambodian coast. We stayed there a few nights then we looped back to Phnom Penh, spent another few nights in Phnom Penh, and then we followed the Mekong River through the delta and across the border into Vietnam and into Ho Chi Minh City.Todd: That's fantastic.Julia: It's beautiful.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听 Todd: So Julia, I was looking at your website and I noticed that you did a bike trip in Cambodia.Julia: Yes, that's right. I joined an organization called Pepi and we did a ride from Siem Reap to Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh City.Todd: Wow, that's pretty cool.Julia: Thank you.Todd: So how did you do this trip? Was it through some organization?Julia: Well, actually it was a couple of friends of mine lived in the same town as me and it was their idea. They wanted to, they'd been to Cambodia, they wanted to go back and they wanted to do something somehow to help in some way. They recognized there was a problem with education in Cambodia, availability of education. They wanted to build a school so they went online and they found an organization through which they could, if they raised the funds, this organization would build a school for them and so we incorporated the bike ride as part of the fundraising and as part of the learning process. We wanted to actually go to Cambodia and see the country, as much of the country as possible.Todd: So that's pretty cool. So first let's talk about the bike ride. What exactly were the details of the trip?Julia: Well, it was, this ride has now become an annual event and obviously that was the first one so the details were a little sketchy in the beginning. We kind of were making it up as we went along. We planned for about a year in terms of preparation, physical training and planning the routes and raising the money and deciding where we'd stay, how long it'd take, all those kind of things. And we, actually we hired bikes from a company in Cambodia when we got there. They were mountain bikes. We had panniers, we actually got a company that sponsored us for those so we could carry stuff with us and we visited about seventeen organizations during the ride and other NGOs, other educational organizations, a few of the other schools that were part of the same project we also visited them and we took with us teaching materials because we did some English classes and some environmental awareness classes as we rode. So those organizations kind of were the pinpoints of where we stopped and stayed.Todd: So for the bike ride you started in Phnom Penh?Julia: We started in Siem Reap.Todd: Siem Reap?Julia: Which is near Angkor Wat which is near where the school was built.Todd: And then from there you went to Phnom Penh?Julia: We went, actually we set off from our school which is on a road that runs towards the Thai border in a very rural place. It was unpaved road, it was very bumpy and it was about a two-hour drive north of Siem Reap. So from the school we headed down to Battambang which is the kind of third biggest city, not so famous, but it's a tourist destination and also a nice city, a very nice city and we followed around the lower edge of the Tonle Sap River, Lake sorry, and we did come into Phnom Penh. We spent a few nights in Phnom Penh. Then we headed down to the coast via a town called Kep and ended up at Sihanoukville which is one of the big coastal, it's a big tourist resort basically on the Cambodian coast. We stayed there a few nights then we looped back to Phnom Penh, spent another few nights in Phnom Penh, and then we followed the Mekong River through the delta and across the border into Vietnam and into Ho Chi Minh City.Todd: That's fantastic.Julia: It's beautiful.

Cindy: (00:00) This is episode 2 with Lawyer, Reiki Master and Life Coach, Julia Baginski. Cindy: (00:07) Welcome to Exploring the Seasons of Life, a podcast for everyday women who are trying to be everything to everyone and forgetting themselves in the process. Each week join Cindy MacMillan as she interviews coaches, spiritual explorers and celebrants from all walks of life about beginnings, endings and the messy-bits in between. Self-love, well-being, and mindset are at the heart of our conversations because once you change the inside, the outside will begin to change as well. Cindy: (00:38) One of my favorite quotes is: "The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others." ~ Mahatma Gandhi Cindy: (00:45) Hello friend and welcome back to Exploring the Seasons of Life podcast. I am thrilled to share my conversation with Julia Baginski with you. Julia is an Ordained member of the International Metaphysical Ministry, a Level Three Reiki Master, Certified Oracle Card Reader, and Life Coach. She is currently in seminary and on the path to ordination through Unity Worldwide Ministries, her home church in which she grew up. Julia, welcome to Exploring the Seasons of Life podcast. Thank you so much for being here today. Julia: (01:20) Thanks, Cindy. I'm really excited. I think this is going to be a great talk. Cindy: (01:24) Oh, absolutely. Well, I want to start all the conversations with this question. What does Exploring the Seasons of Life mean to you? Julia: (01:38) I think for me it has a lot of personal meaning. So in my life, Exploring the Seasons of Life is just always being open and being receptive because my husband told me this funny little saying the other day, it was just a couple of days ago, he said sometimes when you focus on the hole you miss the doughnut. I thought it was great. So it just goes to show that being open and being receptive you actually see opportunities, you get to see where you can be in service. You get to be called, you get to make a difference I think, and not really being attached to you know exactly whatever the thing in front of you is. Cindy: (02:27) Thank you so much. And what season of life are you in right now? Are you in a beginning, in an ending or messy bit right now? Julia: (02:34) Well, I think I've never said that I was in the beginning or ending. I'm always in a messy-bit. Things are always changing and always in transitions. I like to be in that state. I've grown to be comfortable with change. I'm in the midst of my second marriage, been married for two years. I'm in the midst of motherhood. I have a seven-year-old daughter and two grown stepchildren. So there's always changes going on around me. Cindy: (03:10) I like that, what you're saying about change because sometimes change is so scary for most people. Julia: (03:21) Yeah, it is. I can relate to that. Just to dive into something really deep and personal right off the bat. I think for me the biggest change that I went through was when my mom transitioned. So she died 10 years ago. We just had that 10th anniversary and that was so huge for me. And it really showed me how much of my identity I had built up around my relationship with her and being her daughter. And I think when that was, you know, it's not a chosen change, so it's like something happens in your life and you're forced to just have to deal with it and go through this change in this process. And that's grief too, but I mean, this happens on smaller levels too, right? But I think the more that we cannot have our identity based on outward things, so I'm not even talking about you know, I have to have a certain car, that’s given some people identify with their literal things, you know, people identify with their career. Julia: (04:35) I always said even when I was really practicing law and in the thick of it...I've, said, yeah, I'm a lawyer, but you know, just in the same way that a plumber is a plumber, I never kind of took that on as my identity. Right. So it was just something that I did. It was where I was in service and you know, even into roles, wife, mother, we have roles, but I think that change becomes easier when we don't put our whole identity in those roles. When our identity is inward-focused into who we are and we don't lose ourselves, then we can go through change gracefully because we really know who we are and our identity is just coming from within, from our true being. Cindy: (05:21) That is absolutely true about how our identities become so tied up in our titles sometimes. And when that change, whether it's a layoff or whatever it may be, that can make a huge impact on that person's life. And I actually am talking about myself when I say that. So yes. Thank you for saying that about change. Julia: (05:47) Oh yeah. I've had a huge struggle with that. I mean, when I was called to ministry I was, like in the thick of my law career, I've been practicing for 15 years. So it was like, Oh my gosh, there's that part of me that's like, what, you're so invested in this, you know, you invested time, you went to law school, it's a financial investment, it's an emotional investment. It's all this time. It's building the practice and all of that. You know, this was however that opportunity for change comes, whether it's a calling that you want to go after or whether it is a layoff, right. I mean it's, you're still kind of faced in that same crossroads. You're in that same flux in how to handle it. For me, I was definitely pursuing a calling that I wanted to do and I felt very called to do. Um, and kind of like disengaging my identity with, you know, Oh wow. You know, like I, I felt weird. We're saying I'm semiretired from practicing law, getting more and more retired from it. It's just been kind of a process of letting that go. Cindy: (07:07) I know that you're also enrolled in, seminary. Was there something that led you to that? I mean, was it one defining moment or was it just like a alot of small moments across time. Julia: (07:24) So, you know, hindsight is 20, 20, I can look back and see how there were like soft whispers, let's say throughout my life and I can look back and say, wow, everything that's happened in my life, exactly the way that it has, has put me in the position that I am now. And it's not anything that I didn't have full control over. I feel like I purposely designed my life to be this way. I just didn't see that this was the reason it was going this way, but it ended up being that way. So I was called to ministry previously. I mean I felt called for more years than I actually, you know, went through the program and I got ordained with International Metaphysical Ministry (IMM), I've always had a very open and perceptive and intuitive sense. So for me, ministry is, it's just kind of like a combination of the way I've, I've been up to now I know if that makes sense. Cindy: (08:30) Yeah, absolutely. So now, you're going to Unity Worldwide Ministries and how much longer do you have in that before you have your own church? Julia: (08:43) So Unity Worldwide Ministries is really interesting how it works. I'm in my second year of seminary and it is, it's such a process of faith that even the way that seminary is because you know, first, even to apply to seminary, you have to take certain classes. So there's like 18 courses that you need, in addition to a bachelor's degree to apply for school. It's like a graduate-level school. So I did all the prerequisites and once you have them, it's like there's no guarantee you're actually going to be enrolled in seminary after that, right. You go through the process and it's a real commitment and it's a commitment on faith cause it's, you know, it's 18 classes, it's a lot. Um, so I did, I did that. I was accepted. Now I'm enrolled as a second year. Julia: (09:41) Those 18 classes count as your first year. I'm halfway through the second year and it's a four year program. Yeah. So I'll be finished. Uh, I'll be finished with that in 2020 and then you know, Unity is a worldwide movement. So there are opportunities for service all over the place but I will be applying to a church. So we'll see what's open when, when I graduate. Cindy: (10:14) All right, well you'll have to keep us up to date with that. I know you also do Reiki and energy work. How can we shift our energy and bring in more self-love and self-care? Julia: Oh totally. There are so many practices. I think finding what's comfortable for you is the best thing. I mean, I'll just say like when I got to the point where I was ready to release my career and be full time in seminary and really pursue this, I just got to the point and this, I, and I had been practicing Reiki. Julia: (10:52) I mean, I had really been embracing Reiki energy into my life. I've been in my meditation practice for a long time. So it was really clear and the clarity that I received through these practices showed me that the more specialized you get in life, right, the harder, the more rigid it is and the less flexible and less open you are to other possibilities. So when I felt called to ministry, my clarity came as like, okay, so why aren't you doing it? And it's like, and if you're not doing it, then what are you doing? Are you just going to continue doing something that you're no longer called to do, that you feel complete in or are you just waiting to die at this point and maybe you'll get to do what you really need to do in the next lifetime.   Julia: (11:41) And is there a guarantee that you're going to get to do that? You don't need to start a new incarnation to have a new life if you want to see it that way. But I do really credit some of my spiritual practices for getting that clarity. And it's a lot about shifting your perspective and things like that. So I love Reiki because it’s universal life force energy that can be directed. So as far as Reiki I love to practice Reiki. I do Reiki for others. You know Unity. We have our Reiki circles. My minister at Unity is a Reiki master and she's actually who trained me in Reiki. I went to my classes with her and she's also a mentor.   Julia: (12:39) So I have a community around me that's really very high energy too. So that's really helpful. Cindy: (12:49) I was gonna say, I think having that community of people who have those, I'm going to say high vibes around you, keeps you positive and moving forward and taking care of yourself, I'm assuming. Julia:  Oh yeah. I think it does cause you look at yourself in a different way. I mean, you have kind of your mirrors around you. These people are mirrors for what's going on in your life. Reiki is so cool. You can shift so much with Reiki. Reiki can work on your belief systems. I mean, it's amazing. I even do Reiki for weight loss - I've had a couple clients work on that.   Julia: (13:36) It's been amazing. I see people and I noticed their relationships with food. Right? There are people who believe that if they look at a piece of chocolate cake, they'll gain weight, right? And they will because they believe it. And you know, and I know people who are like, food is my friend and you know, they eat anything and it just nourishes them. Their bodies are healthy and it doesn't matter what they eat, so I, I do, you know, for me it's just, I see that a lot of people's belief systems and attitudes towards things like that definitely manifest. So, just a little example, when we're doing a weight loss program with Reiki we'll set intentions with everything. Like we'll bless that water, you know, and we'll infuse Reiki energy into the water to  when we drink it; it's bringing us into our highest vibration and bringing harmony into our body, into full health.   Julia: (14:44) So it's that Reiki energy that we use to bless. It makes a huge difference in it also makes you very mindful of everything. If you're really in this practice, it's almost like a meditation with everything. You're having an experience with the water you drink, the food you eat, you know how it's connecting to your body. It's a different awareness. Cindy: I did read your article on your website about Reiki and weight loss. And I found that interesting because what you're just saying makes perfect sense to me about the things that you say to yourself about food and being mindful. Julia: Have you ever seen that water experiment with Masaru Emoto and ice crystals? They would get a cup of water and label it love. They would have one that was the war.   Julia: (15:39) Then they'd freeze it and they'd look at the crystals and the ones that had like the beautiful peaceful words were like beautiful crystals. They look to like the words that was written on them. And then the ones that were like war hate were just a mess. They were asymmetrical. I mean, it was really, really interesting. So, it just shows and human beings are, you know, we're made of at least 60% water. So it's true, you know, when you talk to yourself, you know, bless yourself. Cindy: (16:00) Thank you for talking about that because that just kind of really landed with me. The words that we say to ourselves. Going back to Reiki energy; are there three practical tips or actionable tips that we can give people that they could start practicing? Julia: (16:34) Well, I think that the first thing you would learn if I was to teach you Reiki or anybody else is there's a strong component of being centered, being in a meditative state almost. So I think establishing a meditation practice if you don't already have one, is important. And being in the silence and really asking yourself when you go into the silence or when you start your meditation to allow chi, the life force energy to be available to you. You know, cause it, it is, you just have to kind of uncover it. You have to let it out. I don't think, you know, even when I'm doing Reiki on somebody, I don't think that I'm giving anything to them. I just feel energy coming through. So it's not, it's never like somebody is healing somebody else. Julia: (17:31) We're allowing the healing energy that exists within all things, you know? Cindy: (17:39) Out of curiosity, what kind of women do you look up to as mentors? Who do you turn to when you're looking for just a little bit of guidance in your life? Julia: Yeah, sure. Well, I always have my mom, you know, and I still, even though she's transitioned 10 years ago, I still think of my mom's here right now. And I give her so much credit for being such a great parent. Like I really, I try to be like her with my daughter. So I mean, I must've had a really great childhood experience, but my mom was a Unity person and you know, I don't know that I, that I even like got it until I got it. Probably sometime in high school, but I grew up around Unity and I am really grateful to her for that. Julia: (18:32) I look up to my minister, to my mentor, I see aspects in all women that I can draw on to, you know, that's where I'm at right now is really seeing the light and seeing gifts in everybody in every interaction and every conversation. So yeah, I'm in that place right now. Cindy: (19:00) You're in the place of light and love. Is there anything I should have asked you but I didn't know to ask you? Julia: I feel like we could talk about so many things. We're on the same wavelength. I get asked to do workshops and readings and things like that. I do angel card workshops, and I'm doing one the end of next month. Julia: (19:36) Sunday, February 23, from 11:30 a.m.–12:30 p.m. I'm at Unity of Fort Pierce. We're doing an intuition workshop. I'm asking everyone to bring their own angel card deck. So I like to use Messages From Your Angels card deck or I mean it could be anything. Even at our Unity Bookstore, we have angel cards that you can buy and use for the session. And I love doing these because I feel like it's a little bit more empowering to learn how to read for yourself than just like going for reading. So I want everyone to have a deck and we'll start by clearing the deck and we say a prayer we invoke the presence of archangel angels. It's a really fun experience and I think people are surprised that when they start playing with the cards, the things that jump out at them. Julia: (20:30) It's really neat to start seeing people connect with their intuition like that. And because things mean different things to different people. So it's just really cool. I think we're going to have a lot of fun with that. As far as like group things and workshops, I love working with denials and affirmations. My favorite workshop that I've done; I created a really neat process for creating your own denials and affirmations that you can work with. So I'll tell you this, cause if anyone wants to do this, this is like something you can really dig deep. And I love Louise Hay and you get this affirmation decks or whatever, but sometimes I feel like, okay, that's nice, but maybe that's not, you know, it's not exactly resonating with where I'm at or what I want to be doing right now. Julia: (21:36) So there's this really neat process that I put together to really draw out your own affirmations. And we start with a denial too. So we can write them out on cards and it would be, you know, you'd have a denial on one side and then put your affirmation on the other. Cindy: So what does the denial look like? I mean, how would a denial read? Julia:  Okay. So I'll just start with what I would ask the person to do in the workshop. So we'll sit down and you would think first about a goal that you have or what you want your life to look like in a certain area. So it could be around finance, career, it could be a relationship, family, any area and in less than a paragraph, write out what you wish your life was like right now. Julia: (22:27) What you want it to be a year from now? Just what's your ideal situation in that area and be big about it, you know. Cindy: Okay. So with denials, it's not, I don't want anything you'd actually talking about what you do or this is how we figure out your denials. Julia: Cause you always start with what is my ideal situation? I chose something about travel. You know, I would love to have seen Italy, France and Spain just for example. And, you know, be well-traveled. The next step is, so maybe if you're listening to this, you want to pause it and do it, like actually write down, go ahead and write your paragraph. You know, what is your ideal situation in this area of your life? You know, think big, but you know, don't overthink it. Julia: (23:20) When you come back we are going to write down maybe the top three reasons why our life isn't reflecting this right now. So for me, that might be, I haven't had enough time, you know, or I don't have the money. Um, you know, whatever comes to mind, like your, maybe your top three. Once you have that list of your reasons why your life doesn't look like that right now, those are kind of like your blocks. Those should be your denials because if you don't have time, you don't have money, then you're probably looking at a prosperity abundance issue. Which time is heavily related to abundance and prosperity. So those really do go hand in hand. And before I would start an affirmation, I really would suggest doing the denial first because you want to clear that and then create a space for the affirmation to come in and take over. Julia: (24:26) So then you could write on your card, you know, if your reason was I don't have enough time, then you can say and these are the words I like to use. I give no power to the erroneous belief that there is not enough time or I give no power to the erroneous belief that I don't have enough time. Right. And because it's just a belief, it's not true. I give no power. Cindy:  It's kind of like taking that charge away. Julia: Yeah. And it's bringing it internally. So like really, you know, there's no money time thing out there that has any power over you. Believe me. It's all within, it's all your own belief systems and this is a practice of shifting your beliefs. So shifting from lack to abundance, that's how I would phrase it. And it could be, you know, I give no power to the erroneous belief that there is not enough money. Julia: (25:28) I give no power to the erroneous belief that I don't have enough funds. And then on the flip side of those, you know, you would affirm every affirmative statement should be an I am statement. So I am, or I have, so I am abundant, I have enough time, I have more than enough time. You know, I am abundant, I have enough money, more than enough money. So those would be your affirmations that kind of are like the flip side of the denials. Cindy: Thank you so much for going through that. That is a fantastic practice around self-love and self-care. Julia: Yeah, that's a really good one. I do a whole workshop around that, but if you're committed enough to do that yourself and to dig deep, it’s effective. And then the denials and affirmations keep those cards with you. Julia: (26:20) Do it in the morning when you first wake up, do it once during the day some time and then keep them by the bed, do it before you go to sleep. Eventually, you won't have to do the denials anymore. You can just do the affirmations. If you, you know, you'll feel it. So if you feel like you're good with the denials, then you don't need them just, but just keep practicing the affirmation. Cindy: So thank you. Thank you so much for sharing that. So I want to finish off with, if you could turn back time and talk to your 18-year-old self, what would you tell her about the season of life you are in now? Julia: I would tell her to stop and notice and enjoy more often. And I would tell her that everything is going to work out perfectly. You know, you have this amazing set of experiences you get to have in front of you and no worries. Cindy: (27:23) I love it. Love it. So how can people follow you on your journey and how can they support you? Do you have a website? Julia: (27:30) Yes. I have a website called RevJayaDevi.net. This was a white stone name that came up to me a couple of years ago. So, for those who don't know, Unity does a white stone ceremony at the beginning of every year. And it's based on the Bible verse where Saul becomes Paul; in his enlightenment a new name was written on the white stone for him. Right? So in Unity we have this very metaphysical experience where we have a meditation and we allow a name to come up that we write on our own white stone for the year. This was my name a couple of years ago; Jaya Devi and it means a victorious goddess. Julia: (28:23) And I was like, I like that. I like that white stone. That's the story behind Jaya Devi. Cindy: Are your workshops and events on that website? Julia: Yes, they will be there. The best thing to do is once you're on the website just follow me on Facebook. If you scroll down, Heart Mind Connection is my Facebook page and that's where I'll post events and things like that. And if you do want to find out information for a reading or get some coaching or help to develop a spiritual practice, you can connect with me on Facebook probably more easily. Cindy: Thank you so much and I truly appreciate from the bottom of my heart, you being a guest on Exploring the Seasons of Life podcast. Thank you. Julia: It was fun. Thank you. Cindy: (29:12) Thank you for listening to this week's episode of Exploring the Seasons of Life. I enjoyed my conversation with Julia about her journey from Lawyer to Seminary. I especially liked it when she said, "It goes to show - being open and being receptive you actually see opportunities and you see where you can be of service." Are you open to receiving opportunities and being of service? Make sure to visit our website, CynthiaMacmillan.com while you're at it, if you found value in this show, we'd appreciate you simply telling a friend that will help us out. Until next time. Live inspired.

Why does Star Wars matter so much to Generation X? How did it's release become such a world-changing event? Even if you were there at the time, understanding the difference between the world Before and the world After.  This episode certainly won't have all the answers, but it will look at what was happening at that moment in movies.    Space Con 4 - or IV or whatever https://fanlore.org/wiki/Space-Con_(Star_Trek_and_Science_Fiction_convention) I remember that program book - had a copy. Worked as a Gopher on the second day - no experience required, it was my first time at a con, they didn't care, they needed people. An original Star Wars Trailer, to refresh your memory, if needed. https://youtu.be/XHk5kCIiGoM It was only ten years after the START of Star Trek, barely 8 after its last episode aired on NBC, and there was talk by the guests about What Might Happen Next - what these days is referred to as Phase II https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_Phase_II It quickly turned into  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_The_Motion_Picture (No doubt, in part because of Star Wars.) I could put an image or a link on here for the lobby book that we had, but I'll just say instead to do an internet search for "original star wars 1977 theater book"   And while we're at it, "fantasia psychedelic poster" will let you see what I saw in the foyer of that theater, a young boy who was very excited that there was a movie with dinosaurs in it.  Star Wars actually made "highest grossing movie" a thing that mattered. That was probably because Gone With The Wind had been The Big One for nearly 40 years at that point - before Star Wars, well, who could feasibly dethrone the Biggest Movie Ever? Anyway, if you want to play that game, here's a place to go https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_films https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_films_in_the_United_States_and_Canada#Adjusted_for_ticket-price_inflation Hey, I messed up on Julia: It won 3 Oscars. And it's about fighting Nazis, but not the Holocaust itself. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_(1977_film) Couldn't hurt to take a look at my previous analysis of The Force Awakens http://stories.generationalize.com/2015/12/the-force-awakens-initial.html There's a reason for this link to be included, but it would be too much work to explain why. https://www.vulture.com/2019/12/what-we-lost-not-having-carrie-fisher-in-rise-of-skywalker.html For all of those Disney family films, I'm going to point out Charley and the Angel because a)it has Harry Morgan as The Angel and b) the title appears to be the first thing like "Charlie's Angels"  (I remember that I saw this movie at some point, probably thought it a decent one, but don't remember anything about it.) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0069866 And my favorite of the Dexter Riley films, Now You See Him Now You Don't. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0069031 And let's throw a bone to Arnold, since it's easily lost otherwise and it's a film I remember seeing and...yeah, I couldn't have been even a teenager at the time. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0069732/ Oh heck - how did I miss The Bad News Bears, which came out a year before Star Wars and is the first time you really SEE Generation X in a movie? https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074174/ (I could've used Bugsy Malone but sadly I've never seen it, and it seems to be trying to be a kids movie itself.) Here's a list of other Gen X films for comparison and edification. http://stories.generationalize.com/2016/03/movies-of-generation-x.html In addition to the Stories blog, I'm on Twitter at @generationalize.  Opening fanfare from the original Star Wars soundtrack, as is the closing -  Princess Leia's theme.  (Which John Williams played at one of his Hollywood Bowl performances, and noted was originally intended as a love theme for, um, her and Luke, since, well, nobody really expected changes, and, um, yeah.)    

You’d be hard pressed to find anyone in the entertainment industry who has a bad word to say about Julia Morris. A comedian, actress and presenter; she is a triple threat who’s become a go-to host for Network ten on a string of shows including I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here! which returns on January 5.Never one to shy away from work Julia is embarking on another tour in 2020 and tickets are on sale now at livenation.com.au or www.juliamorris.comIn this episode Julia talks about;What went terribly wrong that saw the entire crew of a TV show she was working on see her pooRunning out of money when she risked it all to move to the UKHow her husband kept her grounded with the best piece of adviceWhat went wrong with Sunday Night TakeawayWhy flirting with Dr Chris Brown doesn't work any moreWhy she insists on censoring some footage caught on camera for I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of HereSubscribe to McKnight Tonight and TV Blackbox here: https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/tv-blackbox-mcknight-tonight/id1415436461Robert: Julia, welcome to McKnight Tonight.Julia: How are you, hon?Robert: I'm very well, all the better for hearing from you. Hey, television, it's a roller coaster ride. You have had an extraordinary career. Do you feel that you are now at the top of your game?Julia: Well, I'm concerned about the top of the game because isn't the next bit the slide?Robert: Very good point. Very good point.Julia: Every year I'm still employed, it's not lost on me, I must say. I think I remember many years ago, Andrew Daddo saying to me, I'm talking in the 90s and he had this lovely take on, "Your first two years, you think you're the biggest star to ever hit the televisual and then for the next two years you're like, I'm kind of a senior in the industry and then the next two years you're like, Oh God, I hope I don't lose my job. I've got an awfully big mouth all of a sudden." And then he said, "The next two years you're probably out of work. And then the two years after that, you're so grateful to have a job, you just keep your head low and try your best."Robert: I think there's so much truth to that. Now I need you to correct me if I'm wrong here. I have a very vague recollection of you appearing in Kathy Griffin's My Life on the D-List where-Julia: I did.Robert: You did, so this is the bizarre thing though. She was in England trying to get across all things English and suddenly I saw an Australian teaching her about being English. How the hell did you get that gig?Julia: Isn't that dreamy? I actually had been working with the production company that were making that show. I got married to Dan in the New Year's Eve of 2005 and went straight away after getting married to New York to go and work with the production company that make Kathy's show. And so when they were in the UK they wanted the perspective of what's it like to be a foreigner in the UK as a stand up and what to look out for and what to avoid.Robert: Ah, okay. That works-Julia: So that was sort of the vibe and plus, Kathy Griffin, oh my God, she's a goddess.Robert: Yeah, absolutely. That must've been an amazing shoot because you really did take it-Julia: It was incredible.Robert: You really did take a chance going to the UK for a while, didn't you? You'd had some success in Australia with Full Frontal and then you... See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Dr. Julia Spinolo is a Doctor of Nursing Practice and Reiki Master who offers energy healing, intuitive coaching, and spiritual guidance. She combines her knowledge of science based medicine and energetic healing modalities to help clients return to their centered selves. We're talking about best practices for energy healers. If you are a Reiki Master or a practitioner of another healing modality, this is a great set of ethical guidelines. And if you are considering energy healing as a client or patient, we talk about the positive attributes you should be looking for in a practitioner, common red flags you might want to be aware of, and what kind of expectations you should have about outcomes. GUEST LINKS - JULIA SPINOLO juliaspinolo.com Resources (Research) Medical Girl Mystical World Dr. Julia Spinolo's Show MENTIONED ON THE SHOW Don't Fear Placebos Akimbo: a podcast from Seth Godin HOST LINKS - SLADE ROBERSON Slade's Books & Courses Get an intuitive reading with Slade Automatic Intuition FACEBOOK GROUP Shift Your Spirits Community BECOME A PATRON https://www.patreon.com/shiftyourspirits Edit your pledge on Patreon TRANSCRIPT Julia: I was working as a college professor and going on about life. Had my terminal degree. Thought that life was good, had a great house, had a great husband, great marriage, and then I was diagnosed with breast cancer. This was almost four years ago, which threw my world upside down. So I went through having a double mastectomy and then months of chemotherapy and then recovering. And luckily, turned out fine. Everything is fine. I'm still doing fine. But I just did not feel like myself. I got my energy back but my mind was very foggy. Had classic chemo-brain, which is where you feel like you're in a constant fog and you can't connect your thoughts or you forget things and I'm one of these very meticulous people that are on my game all the time. I'm very on the ball and I just wasn't myself. My husband, funny enough, is an oncologist. He looked at me and he said, "Well maybe this is your new normal." I was like, "No, I'm not going to let this be my new normal." So I started looking at other ways besides western medicine to see if I could start to feel better. So going back in my history, I've always been kind of a metaphysical child. I have always been interested in having psychic readings. I had my first psychic reading when I was 12. I had my aura saged at 18 on a mountaintop, and I've always been kind of connected to that world. So anyway, I go to a group meditation and they were offering pranic energy healings afterwards. I was like, you know what? I'm just going to try this to see. I had no expectations whatsoever, but I heard that it was good. People really raved about it so I'm like, why not? So I'm sitting there with no intention of what's going on. Let's just see what happens. So I had this 15 minute pranic energy healing done and it was almost immediately that I felt clear. My thoughts were... It was like the fucking light bulb came on and I was just elated. And I just fell into this. I said, "I gotta learn more about this. I know that I can do this. I'm a healer already being in medicine, because that's what we do. We help heal people and we're going to go into that later in our discussion. But as I said, I know that I can do this. So I did. I started studying, actually I looked at different modalities. I looked at pranic energy, of course you have tai chi, accupuncture, accupressure, all of that is energy work. There are so many different modalities, but reiki really resonated with me. So I studied for months and became a reiki master and really started doing that work. During this work with the energy, I did a lot of self healing and a lot of work on myself. That self work is very key for any practitioner because you've got to be right with yourself before you work with anybody else. So I did. I did a lot of healing on my own. Studied the energy work and then started seeing clients. That's how I got into this and now that's what I solely do full time. I use my medical expertise in conjunction with the energy work, because really it's all connected. The body is connected to our energy. People that have these physical manifestations, there's some root cause of what's going on and that's basically what's going on energetically. And some people are like, well what do you mean? So my thought is that everything is energy. Our cells are made up of cells that are vibrating at different frequencies that make up our different organs. But also the things that we can't see, such as our thoughts, our prayers, that kind of thing, all of that is energy. What I look at is, this is a classic example. I'm fortunate to work with a primary care group, so I'm introducing this energy work into primary care medicine, which is so freaking cool. But basically people will come to me because I'm the last resort, which I really wish it wouldn't be like that. But unfortunately, it is. Because it's like, they can't figure out what the hell is going on with me. Can you help me? Because it is. So I'll do case studies. I had a woman who was coming in and she was having all these stomach ailments and she had the battery of tests and everything was coming out fine. Everything. I mean, she had ran a gamut of tests, doctors are scratching their heads like, you know, this is just how it is and here we're going to give you this medicine that's gonna help with these symptoms, and unfortunately with western medicine, we do. We kind of shrug and be like, "Well, there's a drug for that. Let's give you that and see how you do." I'm more of like, okay, what's really going on here? So she comes to me and we start talking and kind of digging down deep. It comes across that she's had really shitty relationships where her ego, her self-esteem, was just shot. When that happens, that tells me, okay, where the energy of our self esteem is in our solar plexus, which is right in our belly, the centre of our belly. So after we went through this, and the healing that she went through, and me giving her the tools to do the self-care, keep her where she's in alignment. Because it's not just me doing the work. It's a two-way street here. The client needs to be giving the input in. Somebody doesn't come to me, I'll wave my hands around them or wave a magic wand and POOF, they're done. It doesn't go like that. So they've got to do that work too. So we work together and I mean, this can take time! It can take months of meeting and working through this. Sometimes you integrate with a therapist, if there's something that I'm not comfortable with, I definitely use other resources to help with patients. And she got to where her symptoms went away because she felt better about herself, and it wasn't... It was so rewarding to see her, that look on her face and she doesn't have to take the medicine now and she feels great about herself. I kind of went on a little tangent there.. Slade: Well let me ask you something. Let me take you back for a minute. Because I remember, I mean, you and I are friends and we talk a lot. We've had conversations about this stuff. And you told me, at one point, that you were skeptical about this type of work itself. So I'm interested, what was it that, what was the skepticism that you had and what changed for you around that? Julia: Because with my background, I was trained in evidence-based medicine. So I needed to have a number of studies to convince me that this works. That's what medicine is. That's how trials are done. We do these trials. Okay, what was the most effective treatment for this plan? So that's how we plan our course for patients. That's what I was thinking, well if this stuff works, where is the stuff out there that's proving it? And when I started looking at this, I did, as a researcher at heart, I started researching this and you know what? There is stuff out there. People don't look for that. They're like, people get uncomfortable because it's something that we can't see. It's something that's not measurable. The only thing that's really measurable is the effects on how the person feels. But also if you look at their blood pressure, for example, if they have high blood pressure, they're taking the medicine and it's not working, they go to have energy work. The thing is that the practitioners are not keeping record of that. And there's nothing that goes back to say, "Yeah this works." We're only going by word of mouth. I really strongly advocate to have that data to show, yes, this does work. That gives it the validity that it needs, that people really need to show, like, yes, this can work. Slade: So when you were researching, you said one of the things that you were most drawn to was reiki. Was that because there was more research around reiki that convinced you? Julia: You know, that's a really good question. I chose reiki because it just resonated with me. I like the flow of it. I like the teachings of it. I like that you can take what it has and you can make it your own. There's some energy modalities where you have these rules and regulations. You've gotta do it this way, that step kind of thing. You have some of that fluidity with reiki, so that's what really got me into it. But then when I started looking into the research, it was kind of like a confirmation. Yeah, this is the stuff that I really like and I can use to support the work that I do. Slade: So I know you. I know you immediately went and read a bunch of brainy stuff about this, so, I want to know in layman's terms the highlights for us. Tell us. What are some of the scientific studies that back this up? Because you're right. A lot of people don't even go and investigate it that much, but you've investigated it. So tell us what you'd found out. Julia: Well there's a lot. If people wanted to know the statistical information, like the p-values and that good stuff, that nerdy stuff, they can go to my website which will tell them at the end of the show, under Offerings, there is a tab for Resources. Slade: Okay. Julia: And that has a lot of studies in there. There's more that I could put in there, but I don't like to overwhelm people. But it has like the gist of it, just for people to say like, "Okay, this stuff really does work." So to answer your question, there are studies that have statistically significant results in patients that have acute coronary syndrome, which is heart disease. They that have received reiki have a reduction of anxiety and perceived stress. This is all measurable results. This one was really cool for me. People that received, and these are just patients in the study, patients in this study who received reiki before their colonoscopy. After they received reiki, they required less Demerol, which is pain medication, after the procedure than patients who did not have any energy healing. So that's significant, especially with our opioid epidemic and our addiction to pain medication. So that's a plus in my book. Patients that had mild Alzheimer's Disease had an increase in mental functioning and improved memory and their behavioural problems had lessened. Cancer patients who received reiki reported less fatigue and anxiety, and I'm a testament to that, which significantly improved their quality of life. And this is a really cool thing because a lot of hospitals are now implementing energy work into their practices in the hospital. So they're actually taking nurses and having them go through reiki training to help not only their patients, and have their patients more comfortable, but also they're using it on their staff to prevent burnout. And healthcare professionals who have received reiki treatments have a reduction of burnout symptoms, which is compassion fatigue. But also it increases their focus and their problem-solving skills, which is a benefit to patients because they make less mistakes. Yeah, so it's not just for the patients. It's for the patients. It's for everybody. For the primary care group that I work with, I work with the staff and the patients, because I believe that the environment needs to be healing for the patients. Because that's going to radiate off of them. If they're feeling good, it's going to radiate out. And when those patients come in to that office, they're going to feel like, hey, I'm supported, it feels good here, I know that they're here to help me. So it's a win-win. I know that you have questions about placebo, so I can hold this one study for you while we talk about that, or if you want me to talk about that now, I can. Slade: Let's go ahead and talk about placebo because I've been studying it from more of a marketing angle and I'll speak to that. But talk to me about placebo, because I think it has kind of a dirty word and I think we can change the connotation about it. But talk to me about that in the studies. Julia: Okay. So just to say that, initially when I started this is, because it wasn't my intent to get better with having this chemo brain, so as a placebo, I was kind of on the fence with it. Was I, did I really think this was going to kill me and well maybe it is. And people chalk it up to placebo. Let me say something about the placebo effect. The thing is, is that if it works, it works. Period. If the patient feels better, whether or not it's placebo or not, if they're feeling better, it's kind of like, Who cares?? They're feeling better. A lot of times, with us, we have to make it make sense to us. We need to have that statistical data for some of us. We need to have that word of mouth that somebody says to us. If somebody says it's placebo effect, it doesn't necessarily mean it's all in their head. Now I'm gonna give you this study where reiki was done on newborn babies who were born to mothers that had substance abuse problems. So these babies were at risk for detoxing, having abstinence syndrome, which, when these babies received reiki... First of all, reiki does not cause any harmful effects across the board, which is good. So it didn't show any bad effects for this. But when these babies, they don't know anything about placebo or what's really going on, when these babies had the reiki, it showed that their heart rate decreased that correlated to the peaceful state of relaxation. So explain that to me. Slade: Right. Because they can't, they don't have the consciousness for the placebo effect to work. Julia: Correct. Slade: Well, I want to say something about placebo that really, the reason why I got really interested in this, and I'll try to find the episode and link to it for everyone so they can hear him talk about it, but Seth Godin, who is basically like a marketing expert, he did a whole show about placebo and about owning the fact that if your placebo effect is effective, then it's still valuable. You know what I mean? Julia: Right! Slade: That there is something to be said for, like when somebody takes your course and they pay money to come to a classroom, well maybe they could do some of that work on their own. But part of what the workshop does is it gives them accountability, it creates a time frame and structure to learn whatever it is. All of those things are reinforcing to maybe a goal that they have. But there's also a placebo effect around the mind-body connection. The thing is that the mind-body connection is for real. So if someone's saying something to you can activate your own mind-body connection, then so be it. You know what I mean? There's nothing wrong with it. So yeah, it is really interesting though to look at and compare those results that are outside of placebo. That's when we go, "Oh crap... this person didn't even know it was being done on them." I think there have been lots of studies around prayer that have those kind of results, right? Julia: Yeah. And let me tell you, there's been studies done. There's a few that I have on my website that deal with sham reiki, which is a double blind study, which means, here I'm getting all nerdy on you, but what that is is they came in. They did a group of patients that had reiki that was done by trained, attuned practitioners. And then they had a group of patients that were "treated" with people that didn't know anything about reiki. They just came in and told them that they were a reiki person and waved their hands over them. So, this is going to get rid of our placebo effect here. So listen to this. So in this study, it statistically significantly showed that the patients that received the actual reiki was far more effective than the people that had received the sham reiki, without them even knowing it. So there's something to it. Slade: Yeah. Julia: There's something to it. Slade: Absolutely. Julia: Because it kind of debunks that placebo effect. Because of these patients that did n'o know if they were getting a true reiki practitioner or a sham reiki person. They didn't know. Slade: That's fascinating. Julia: It was REALLY fascinating. Slade: I'm so glad that you have all these resources already in one place, because there are people who will want to dig into the details. We'll just link straight to that and let them see the sources that you're pulling from. One of the reasons why I wanted to talk to you is that you do both have the medical credentials, you're ethically conscious about your reiki practitioner, you are super informed about these studies and this information. And just to be honest, when you heard me criticizing some of the aspects of energy healing and kind of going off about it, what were some of the things that went through your head that you wanted to just like shout out in defense. Julia: Well, I think that there are standards that need to be set. I mean, definitely, you know, having some ethics to the work that we do. So I'm going to address what we as energy healers need to really think about going into this work. Can we start with that first? Slade: Yeah, absolutely. That'd be great. Julia: Let's just say we'll call this the "best practices" for energy healers. This is just not for people that do reiki, but any energy modality. I think this is across the board for all energy healers or people who identify themselves as energy healers, lightworkers, what have you. The big thing is, always ask for permission to work on people. I've heard horror stories where I've heard of people being worked on when they didn't give permission, like they received distance healing from somebody. That's totally not okay. Always ask permission. Can I give you a story, a personal story? Slade: Yeah! Absolutely. Julia: I love telling stories. This was a few years ago when I was just starting my business. I had somebody that was interested in talking with me, maybe joining as a practitioner with my business. My intuition was very cautious, let me just see how it goes. We ended up having lunch and I left the meeting nice. During the meeting, she wanted to kind of like, gasp, "I want to read you, I want to do this. Can I read you now? Drop the veil", and all these theatrics and all that stuff. I was like, whatever lady. Because I've had psychic readings forever. I grew up with this stuff. So I'm like, nothing you tell me is going to, "Ohmygod!" People love that. Let me just shock the shit out of somebody. And I was like, okay... So anyway, after the lunch and everything, I was like, well that's cool. I'll keep her as a contact person, but I don't necessarily think that I'm going to work with her. At any rate, later on in the day, my stomach was feeling kind of queasy and I was like, maybe it was something I ate that's going on. Let me take another side note here. Okay, so there are things that happen with our energy, and some of it can be emotional or physical things. This doesn't discount bacteria or viruses or anything, so when people get sick and they're like, gasp, "Your energy is off." Well, maybe your energy was low enough to be susceptible to that, but stuff happens. We still get sick. People that are at high-vibe still get sick because viruses do occur, so I want to make that clear. Anyway, so my stomach wasn't feeling good, so I sent her a text and said, "Hey, are you feeling okay?" She's like, "Yeah." I said, "Oh, well that's good!" I said, "My stomach was feeling a little upset. Maybe it was just the sushi that I had, some bad sushi." Just write it off as that. She was like, "Oh no, I know what it was." And I'm like, "What was it?" And she said, "I felt that you needed energy work done so I did a bunch of work on you. People have these kinds of symptoms when I work with them, they have stomach pain or ailments and stuff like that." I lost it. "Oh no you didn't." Because you have a start to your session and an end to your session. And that's it. Anything that comes after that, like if somebody walks out my door and we're done, we're done. So this outside of let-me-heal-you or let me work on your Higher Self, that does not fly with me. So I went all over her, and I said, "Ethically, that was just a big no-no. You don't do that." She's like, "Well I'm just trying to help you. I'm trying to do what's best for you." I'm like, "You don't know what's best for me." So we really got into it. She could not understand why that was not okay. Slade: Can I tell a story too about this? Julia: Oh please! I love story time. Slade: So the whole permission thing. Anybody that's worked with me around Automatic Intuition and my mentoring knows that I'm a stickler for this. I know that there's a lot of great TV about mediums walking up to strangers in line at the butcher and reading them. I've been doing this now for like 13 years and I cannot tell you how many hundreds of emails that I receive from people telling me that my guides have communicated with them and they have a message for me. And I'm like, "Yeah, right." Julia: Okay! Slade: It's kind of a little bit insulting, you know what I mean? It's just like telling somebody, you know, that you've undressed them with your eyes or something. It's an invasion of privacy. It's also not going to be super effective if people don't have your permission and your involvement because like you said, you're not doing something AT someone. You're facilitating something that's happening within them. I know that the best readings for me is when somebody is really participating and it feels like a conversation more than me sitting in a turbin just spouting stuff out. Those styles of readings, like you said, the drama and all that stuff... I mean, there may be people who do really excellent readings with all that, but one of the things that I really want to always pound home is this idea that this stuff shouldn't make you feel bad. It shouldn't make you sick. It should be practical. And it should be empowering. And it should make you feel peaceful and hopeful and all of that stuff. So if somebody's coming at you even with just social energy boundary issues, we'll put that in the red flag category. But anyway, so... Julia: We're going to go through some red flags today in a little bit, but yeah, that was just one. Kind of piggy-backing off of that is keeping good boundaries. We as practitioners need to be respectful of other people's boundaries, and when they come to see you, again, at the end of the session, that's the end. Some people say, gasp, "Well their grandmother came to me afterwards." And I was like, "Good! If they make another session with you, you make a note of it and tell them then." Also, and this is kind of like the Hippocratic Oath where it's always do good and no harm. Always come with that good heartfelt intent. Oh, here's a big one. Check your ego. When something is going on and you want to send reiki, whether it's to a person or to a population or that kind of thing, you want to question your ethics. You want to ask yourself, Why am I doing this? Are you doing it out of a true sense of help or are you doing it for your ego? And how you can do that is, are you really truly there to help or are you looking for the accolades and the money in your pocket. So really check yourself before you do that. What is my intent here? Is it really because I care or do I want the recognition to say, I healed this person, and to brag about it? And don't do any help unless it's okay with the person. Again, going back to ask the person. But also not guaranteeing that you're going to fix them. Nobody fixes anybody. Even in medicine, we don't fix people. It's called practicing medicine for a reason. We practice it. We try to look at the best practices that have been used with these patients in these certain populations or certain diseases. It does not necessarily mean that we fix them. If it helps with that, yay. That's great. But as far as fixing people, no. So when people claim "I cured this", or "Don't do that treatment and only come to me from now on", that's part of our red flag category too. So really watch yourself and check in. What am I doing this for? Am I trying to fix this person? Am I using all the resources available that can be applicable for this person? Really check in with yourself. The other thing that I want to say is for people to do that self work on themselves. They need to do those self healing practices. They need to practice what they preach. Are they taking good care of themselves? Are they checking in? Are they having energy work done by other practitioners and that self care? Because if they're not able to take care of themselves, if they're gonna be like a martyr and wave their magic wand and fix everybody, and then they get so exhausted and compassion fatigue, they did that to themselves. So they really need to have those moments of where they're doing their self care. So those are my best practices for energy healers. Slade: I know that we definitely have a lot of people in our listening audience who are coming to this as peers. They're listening to this conversation because they ARE reiki practitioners. Like you said, even if you are a practitioner, you still want to be on the receiving end sometimes, and there may be people listening to this show who've maybe never had a reiki treatment, or a session with an energy healer. So let's flip it a little bit and look at it from the perspective of if you're looking to be a client, what are some of the things that you're looking for in choosing a practitioner, and maybe that includes some of the red flags as well. Talk about that. Julia: Okay. First of all, for people that are looking into it, they need to have an open mind of what all of this is. A lot of people will come in to be a skeptic, "Oh, I just want to figure out what this is about to debunk people", and that's just, who knows what's going to happen for that, so have an open mind. Look for your intent of what you are seeking energy healing for. The other thing is, a lot of people when they're in desperate need of help, they're going to clamour around and get so many different people involved. So if too many therapies can be, you know, they're like, the more energy work I have from different practitioners and different modalities, the best. Well people have to be patient with that to see how each modality works for them. Because I have some people say, "Well I just left my accupuncturist and I came here and then I'm going to go do yoga after I go to do this." That's too much. Do one at a time. Do one every couple of weeks or whatever. People try to get that fix. Being healed like, fast, and it just doesn't happen. Also, I want to advise people to really trust their gut. Go with that intuition of like, if somebody gives you bad vibes, or you're kind of questioning it, you're looking at their website and it doesn't really resonate with you, don't go see that person. Look at word of mouth. Your friends, what they say. Look at the testimonies on people's website and see if you really like what you read. You want to avoid anybody that says that THEIR way is the RIGHT way. Again, looking at people saying that they can cure you. That's a big red flag. So watch out for that. People that say that you ONLY need my services. You don't need to see that person. Or you don't need to go to that support group. People that kind of monopolize on that. That's something that people need to watch out for. Slade: Well here's a good point that just occurred to me as we were talking about this. So kind of trying to grab all the stuff and do everything at once. I'm gonna do yoga, I'm gonna get acupuncture, I'm gonna go to my massage therapist, and I'm gonna have reiki. That's all too much. Partly because you can't really judge then which thing is being the most effective. Julia: Correct. Slade: You know, if you break them down and do them one at a time, then you have a better sense of which one's working for you. Julia: Yeah. Slade: BUT, by the same token, you need to have supportive therapies and treatments and experiences of different kinds. For instance, you need to have actual medical treatment if it's a medical issue, in addition to energy work. And then maybe you do need something that's a support group that's more of a social experience. So that's an interesting thing that just came to me as we're talking about this, to be able to discern the difference between having a lot of different avenues of support versus doing all the things at once. You know what I'm saying? Julia: Right. I mean I do that with my... I refer out with my clients all the time. If there's something that I'm not comfortable doing, I refer them out. And I know the people that I refer them to are trusted individuals that are highly qualified to do what they do. For example, I had a gentleman that, we were talking and he realized that he had a problem with alcohol. So I referred him to this great therapist and a support group that he could have. I mean, I wasn't going to sit there and say, "I'm going to be your support..." I'm not able to do that and I can't provide that for him. I'm not going to give him false hope. Slade: Listen, I have sent more people into therapy and 12 step programs as an intuitive than I probably even would've been able to as a therapist. Julia: Yeah! And I do! I refer them to, you know, if they have something that's going on with their thyroid they say, or whatever, I'll give medical referrals. It's like I'm the go-to point. "Here. Let me guide you this way." I'm kind of like a guide for a lot of people. Slade: Yeah. Julia: They come in and they're all like, "This is what's going on." I'm like, "Okay. Let's see what I can do. If I can't help you or if this doesn't work for you, then let's go here. Here's my list of recommendations here." And go from there. Another thing that I wanted to mention for people that are looking at energy healers. If they come across energy healers and they are talking about clients and not keeping confidentiality, you know, identifying information, if they're talking about people using their names and everything, they're definitely gonna be talking about you. So you wanna make sure that your practitioner has a confidentiality clause in their policies and their procedures to make sure they ensure that for their clients. That's happened before. Because if they're talking about other people, they're definitely going to be talking about you. The last thing that I want to say with researching energy healers for people is that if they go into a session and the practitioner's like, "Well, for us to do this, you're going to have to pay me more money." I've been advised that I should be doing packages for people and it just kind of rubs me the wrong way. Because sometimes one treatment is good enough for that client and they can come back in six months or a year from now. Maybe that one treatment is enough for them, so that's something that I'm kind of like on the fence about. But anybody that locks you in to get that more money coming in. Now I'm honest with people. If they come in and see me and I feel they need a couple more sessions, I'll be like, "You know, I think you may need to see me in a couple of weeks. Let's see how this does. Let's see how you feel", that kind of thing. There's no pressure or obligation for them to give me money to help them, you know what I mean? Slade: Yeah. And I want to say something about that for other practitioners and other professional intuitives. Whatever it is that you're doing as a practice, people often ask me about bundling services and bundling sessions, the only place that I really officially bundle sessions is when I'm going to be mentoring somebody and training them in this work. And I let them know upfront, this pricing is based off this number of sessions with me. So that's something that... There is no you do one session and then, "Oh, actually, in order to complete your training, you need three more." I don't do that. I will say this too. I don't really want clients that need to talk to me once a month. Because then I worry about their dependence on the work that I'm doing for them. Julia: Yes! Slade: Versus their personal empowerment. And I also know that there's a certain type of person, and I'm one of them, who needs a really good session once every six months. And then I'm good. Julia: Yup! Slade: I've got a To-Do list coming out of that session and I'm on fire to go and work on it. So leave me alone and let me go do what you just taught me to do and see what I can do on my own. If I do run into a client who really just, they like to talk to me once a season or twice a year or whatever that is, I do create special pricing and packaging for them off the books. It's not on the website. It's kind of more like a secret deal for your best clients kind of thing. It usually involves a discount, not additional money. It's usually like, you know what? If you're going to keep coming to me every year on your birthday, you don't need to be paying as much as everyone else. I think that, when you would consider paying for bundling, like I'm going to go ahead and pay for three more sessions up front, it's as if you already had a couple with that person and you like them so much, you're already booking more booking more booking more. And then the option of doing a bundle is just a logical discount for you. That would be a great time to do it. Julia: Yeah. Like I said, I'm on the fence about that but for people to promote it, I don't know. We'll see. Maybe I'll change my mind. Slade: It shouldn't be the exit speech before you leave. Julia: Yes! Or if people say, some people say, "You have this curse. BUT I can get rid of that curse for you." Slade: Ohmygod. Julia: If you take this feather and this herb and pay me $600. That's what gives us a bad rep! All that stuff gives us such a bad rep, because of the shady stuff that happens. Slade: Well, and I have people all the time that come to me with this idea that they've been cursed or hexed by somebody else. I had a lady try to tell me that there was a man in France that she'd never met before who had cursed her for six years. And I was like, "Okay...." First of all, I do believe, I want to speak to this a little bit because I think it speaks to the idea of energy healing or working on people at a distance. I believe that we can do everything within the bubble of our own mind-body connection. I believe that you can absolutely curse your damn self. You can totally put a spell on yourself and screw yourself up. I do believe that you can make choices that you have to unravel somewhere down the road. You're like, Uh, yeah, that wasn't the best idea. But the idea of somebody being able to project magical energy at you from France and screw up your life is not something that I believe is possible unless you take that on board. In order for you to believe that you're ex-boyfriend is cursing you because he's stalking you, making your life miserable, well there's a part of your consciousness that is open to him and is taking on that belief. This gets to the idea of people doing distance healing on someone without their permission. I just don't, flat out, believe it works. Julia: So are you saying that you don't believe distant healing works? Or... Slade: I do believe distance healing works when the other person is engaged, like we were saying. Julia: Yes. Slade: When it's a dialogue. When you're facilitating their self healing, it is a conversation like you and I are having right now. We're both showing up to this. We're open to each other and we're communicating back and forth. But I can't get an interview out of you by just willing it to be so while you're down in Atlanta having coffee. That's not... I don't know. I mean there may be studies that can prove it wrong. I have seen really interesting studies around people being prayed for, that didn't even know they were being prayed for, and did not believe in prayer, who still reported miraculous healing and all that kind of stuff. So I believe... Here's the thing. I believe everything a little bit and I'm open to something until it's been debunked. But my personal feeling when I encounter somebody who says that they are removing curses for people, or that they're healing someone without their knowledge or permission. My first thought is like, meh, that's probably not very effective. It's probably just not working. Julia: It's called classic manipulation. Yeah. Classic manipulation there. Slade: Well, you have to be aware of the manipulation for it to work on you. You know what I mean? Julia: Yeah. Slade: I mean, you have to be at least having a conversation with somebody over the phone, you have to be reading an email from them. In order for somebody to manipulate you, you have to be open to that information coming in. I don't think somebody can manipulate you or curse you or heal you if you're going about your business and you've never even heard of them before. I just don't think it happens. Julia: No, I agree with you on that point. I do. Slade: That's a little rant. A little tangential rant. Julia: That's okay. You go on. This is your show. You do what you want to do. Slade: Ohmygosh. Okay, is there anything else that we feel like, oh, I know something we can say about choosing a practitioner. Julia: Yeah. Slade: One of the things that's so cool about this show in this format, is it allows people to listen to us and maybe you do look at somebody's website and well, her website's pretty and she's got some testimonials. Look here's a link to an interview she did. I'm going to go and listen to her. I'm going to listen to her talk to someone else. I'm going to watch a video. I'm gonna watch her TV show. It allows people to resonate with you and to evaluate how they feel about you. I can't imagine why you'd want to hire somebody that you didn't get a good vibe from. But I have heard time and time again that people are booking sessions with me because they listen to the podcast and they feel like they speak my language. There's something about that that we really can't control. It's happening at a level we may not even be conscious of. So, like you said, trust your gut. Be open to the fact that you have the option in a lot of cases to even talk to this person on the phone and do a free consultation or something. You know, interact with them a little bit. If they're not responsive in email, if they're weird on the phone, don't work with them. There's tons of other people out there that you would rather be working with. Julia: Umhmm. Absolutely. Slade: So. Julia: So. Slade: What do you hope to contribute to the greater conversation about spirituality and health and wellness, east meets west medicine, all that good stuff? Julia: All that good stuff. I would like for people to have an open mind, to say anything is possible, but I love seeing what I'm doing now with bringing the, where western trained physicians are bringing me in to do this eastern part of healing for their patients to have that whole well-rounded care. So what I would like to see is that, not that one is bad and the other's... Or like one's crazy and the other one is pill pushers or whatever. There's a happy balance between the two. And then really just for people to do that self-exploration and see what truly resonates with them. Slade: You have a television show that's kind of this whole concept. Tell us about that. Julia: I do! I have a... I'm just wrapping up my second season of Medical Girl Mystical World at the Lighter Side Network. It's wonderful. The network itself has over 400 shows on there with different hosts. But it's really having that mind-body-spirit, that wholesomeness, it's like feel good TV. We talk about that and I've always had people on my show where it peaks my curiosity of, let me learn more about that. That's the thing. I can't judge something when I don't know about it. You know what I mean? So I have. I've had people that do crystal healings or people that do numerology or astral projection. That kind of thing. Because these are the things I don't know enough so I want to educate myself on there so I can make informed decisions about how I want to do things. So it's my inquiring mind. Finding these people and just learning about what they do. Slade: And we're going to link in the show notes because you have a free promo where people can get three months of access to the network. Tell us about that. Julia: Yeah, so if you go to https://www.juliaspinolo.com/ If you look at the link that says "Medical Girl Mystical World", if you click that and subscribe to my email, it will give you that code where you get three months. So you can check it out. Check out my show and the other shows too. See if there's things that resonate with them. If they continue after the three months, to continue with that, it's fine. I think the monthly fee is $6.99, very inexpensive. So have them check it out. See what you like about it. Slade: Awesome. Dr. Julia Spinolo. Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today. Julia: It's an honour to be here. Thank you so much for having me. Slade: Tell us one more time where we can find you online. Julia: https://www.juliaspinolo.com/ Slade: Awesome. That was great, Julia. Thanks.

Panel: Charles Max Wood Dave Kimura David Richards Special Guests: Julia Evans In this episode of Ruby Rogues, the panel talks with Julia Evans who is a software engineer at Stripe and lives in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The panel talks with Julia about her tool Ruby Spy among other topics. Check it out! Show Topics: 1:34 – Julia gives her background. 1:52 – Chuck: You’ve been on the show before. Listeners, go check it out! 2:30 – What is Ruby Spy? 2:09 – Julia: I wanted to know WHY my computer was doing what it was doing. I felt that it was my right, so I wrote that program. 3:20 – Julia: This does have these profiling tools in Java. I thought it was unfair that Java had better tools than Ruby. I figured Ruby should have it, too. 3:44 – Chuck talks about tools and Ruby Spy. 4:05 – Julia recommends it. Julia: You had to install the gem in order to use it. 4:30 – Chuck: some people say that it has affected their performance. 4:42 – Julia: Ruby Spy is a separate process. Julia continues this conversation and goes in-depth of what Ruby Spy is, etc. 5:27 – When would you use something like this, and what kind of data would get you back to debug the slow points. 5:43 – Julia: When you run Ruby Spy it will... 6:20 – Chuck: Does it give you method names? 6:25 – Julia: Yes, 20% in this method or... 6:37 – I can see how that would be helpful on certain aspects. Being able to narrow down the 1,000 methods where you cab get your biggest bang for your buck. 7:05 – Julia comments. 7:35 – Chuck: I know people pay for Relic... 7:56 – Chuck: When it tells you which method is taking a long time, will it look at the stack and THIS method is insufficient b/c this other method is insufficient? How does it do that? 8:35 – Julia answers the questions. 8:58 – Chuck: I’d imagine that it could keep anything in memory. Did you have to do a bunch of work where THAT means THAT? 9:20 – Julia answers. Julia: The differences weren’t that big between the different versions. 9:54 – Julia goes through the different ways the versions are different. 11:56 – Panelist asks a question. Is this meant for Ruby Scripts? 12:10 – Julia: It doesn’t care – as long as you are using the Ruby Interpreter. 12:25 – Chuck: Sometimes my performance issues is Ruby, and sometimes it’s the database. For Ruby it will sit there and wait for IO. Is that a blind spot that you will have in Ruby Spy? 12:54 – Julia: Great question. There are 2 ways to do profiling. Julia explains these two ways. 13:54 – Wall Clock Time. 14:04 – Chuck: Your computer has a speed and however long it takes to run one cycle. It is similar, but... 14:26 – I guess as long as it’s relative – I was looking at these graphs you wrote. 14:51 – Julia. 14:56 – Panelist: That has been my issue. Changing context into a profiler... 15:27 – Julia. 15:38 – Chuck: Do you have to run it through something...? 15:49 – Julia. 15:53 – Chuck: Is that the most effective way to look at the data through Ruby Spy? 16:07 – Julia: I twill show you the output as it is profiling. 2 visualizations: flame graph and... 16:45 – Chuck. 16:49 – Julia: It is the only visualization that I know of. 17:00 – Chuck: I don’t know. 17:05 – Julia: You have spent this amount of % to... How much time was spent in this function or that function? I feel that the flame graph is much more helpful than a list of percentages. 17:33 – Chuck: What are you looking at in the flame graph? 17:37 – Guest: Basically what time was spent in that function. You look at what is big, and then you figure out if that is something to optimize or not. You go to the docs and... 18:36 – Jackal. 18:40 – Main problem that I would run into is the information OVERLOAD. Now you have the action controllers and all these other components that aren’t normally visual. Panelist asks a question to Julia. 19:29 – Julia: It does give you everything. If you have a real serious problem often the answer will really jump out at you. What I would say – if something is really slow it is right there. 20:08 – Chuck: You will see the name of the method? 20:15 – Chuck: Any other information it will give you? 20:22 – Julia: The line number. 20:28 – Chuck asks another question. 20:41 – Chuck: Success stories? 20:45 – Julia: Yes, I do. GitHub – success stories. Julia gives us one of her success stories. This user said that it helped them by 30%. 21:28 – I can’t imagine using a Rail app that is over 10 years old. So much as changed! A lot of the documentation would be harder to find. 22:00 – Julia gives another example of a success story. 22:10 – When it goes to production – my brain turns off and get jittery. Figure out what happens in production and I wouldn’t want to guess for an app that couldn’t be down. This is what is happening right here and right now. 22:46 – Chuck: How do they get it out into production... 22:57 – Julia: Through GitHub that you can download. If you are on a Mac and your developing you can do it through Home Brew. 23:17 – Chuck and Julia go back and forth. 23:27 – Panelist: You don’t need to have it all the time, but a good tool. 23:44 – Julia: I want people to use it but not all the time; only when they need it. 23:58 – Panelist: I think on a lot of these scripts... Rails Panel – Panelist mentions this. 25:02 – Panelist asks her a question. 25:12 – Pie Spy is something else that someone wrote. 25:28 – Julia: Ruby Spy came first, and Pie Spy is inspired Ruby Spy. He did a good job building that. 25:50 – Advertisement – Code Badges 26:35 – People still use PHP? 26:42 – Julia: Yep! 26:47 – Chuck talks about his neighbor and how he raves about this feature or that feature. 27:07 – In PHP’s defense it has come a long way. I think they are at version 7 or version 8. Sounds like they did a lot of new things with the language. 27:31 – Julia: Instead of that or this language is better – what TOOLS can we use? I hear Ruby users make fun of Java, but Java has great tools. What can we learn from that language rather than bashing the other languages? 28:13 – Chuck chimes-in. Dot.net. 28:58 – Chuck: Let’s talk about that with the opensource. 29:09 – Julia talks about the opensource project. 30:30 – Julia: I asked my manager at Stripe to do this sabbatical in advance. I worked on it for 3 months. I got a check from Segment. 31:05 – Panelist adds in his comments and asks a question. 31:26 – Julia never used it. 31:32 – I have done a lot with Ruby Motion in the past. I am curious how that would work with Ruby Spy? 32:18 – IOS is pretty locked down, so I don’t think that would fly. 32:36 – Chuck talks about Ruby Motion and how he thinks Ruby Spy would / wouldn’t fit. 32:56 – What is funny about that, Chuck, is that you can ALT click... 34:07 – Chuck mentions another app. 34:17 – Julia. 34:40 – Chuck. 35:03 – Chuck: What else are you doing with Ruby Spy that is new? 35:05 – Julia: Not much. It’s fun to see people come in to make contributions. 35:33 – Panelist: Here is a suggestion, some kind of web server that you could... 35:57 – Great idea. 36:04 – Chuck: It wouldn’t be hard to embed it. 36:12 – Julia: Sharing it between...so we don’t have to build the same thing twice. 36:33 – Chuck and Julia go back-and-forth about Ruby Spy and Pie Spy, 37:23 – Julia: Pearl was my first language, and I still love it. 37:32 – Chuck: I guess I can’t knock it because I really haven’t tried it. 37:48 – Ruby was inspired by Pearl so there’s that. 37:57 – Chuck: How do people start using your tool? What is your advice? 38:01 – Julia: Yeah just try it and see. Install it through Home Brew if you have a Mac. 38:25 – Chuck: Picks! 38:32 – Advertisement – Get a Coder Job. 39:07 – Picks! Links: Get a Coder Job Course Ruby Motion Ruby on Rails StackProf – GitHub Ruby Spy Rails_Panel – GitHub Julia Evans’ Twitter Julia Evans’ Blog Julia Evans’ GitHub Julia Evans’ LinkedIn Sponsors: Sentry Digital Ocean Get a Coder Job Course Picks: Dave Vise Deep Freeze Charles Elixir in Phoenix Vue JS Views on Vue Side Projects Doc McStuffins Headphones David Ed Lahey Julia Growing a Business Notability App

Panel: Charles Max Wood Dave Kimura David Richards Special Guests: Julia Evans In this episode of Ruby Rogues, the panel talks with Julia Evans who is a software engineer at Stripe and lives in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The panel talks with Julia about her tool Ruby Spy among other topics. Check it out! Show Topics: 1:34 – Julia gives her background. 1:52 – Chuck: You’ve been on the show before. Listeners, go check it out! 2:30 – What is Ruby Spy? 2:09 – Julia: I wanted to know WHY my computer was doing what it was doing. I felt that it was my right, so I wrote that program. 3:20 – Julia: This does have these profiling tools in Java. I thought it was unfair that Java had better tools than Ruby. I figured Ruby should have it, too. 3:44 – Chuck talks about tools and Ruby Spy. 4:05 – Julia recommends it. Julia: You had to install the gem in order to use it. 4:30 – Chuck: some people say that it has affected their performance. 4:42 – Julia: Ruby Spy is a separate process. Julia continues this conversation and goes in-depth of what Ruby Spy is, etc. 5:27 – When would you use something like this, and what kind of data would get you back to debug the slow points. 5:43 – Julia: When you run Ruby Spy it will... 6:20 – Chuck: Does it give you method names? 6:25 – Julia: Yes, 20% in this method or... 6:37 – I can see how that would be helpful on certain aspects. Being able to narrow down the 1,000 methods where you cab get your biggest bang for your buck. 7:05 – Julia comments. 7:35 – Chuck: I know people pay for Relic... 7:56 – Chuck: When it tells you which method is taking a long time, will it look at the stack and THIS method is insufficient b/c this other method is insufficient? How does it do that? 8:35 – Julia answers the questions. 8:58 – Chuck: I’d imagine that it could keep anything in memory. Did you have to do a bunch of work where THAT means THAT? 9:20 – Julia answers. Julia: The differences weren’t that big between the different versions. 9:54 – Julia goes through the different ways the versions are different. 11:56 – Panelist asks a question. Is this meant for Ruby Scripts? 12:10 – Julia: It doesn’t care – as long as you are using the Ruby Interpreter. 12:25 – Chuck: Sometimes my performance issues is Ruby, and sometimes it’s the database. For Ruby it will sit there and wait for IO. Is that a blind spot that you will have in Ruby Spy? 12:54 – Julia: Great question. There are 2 ways to do profiling. Julia explains these two ways. 13:54 – Wall Clock Time. 14:04 – Chuck: Your computer has a speed and however long it takes to run one cycle. It is similar, but... 14:26 – I guess as long as it’s relative – I was looking at these graphs you wrote. 14:51 – Julia. 14:56 – Panelist: That has been my issue. Changing context into a profiler... 15:27 – Julia. 15:38 – Chuck: Do you have to run it through something...? 15:49 – Julia. 15:53 – Chuck: Is that the most effective way to look at the data through Ruby Spy? 16:07 – Julia: I twill show you the output as it is profiling. 2 visualizations: flame graph and... 16:45 – Chuck. 16:49 – Julia: It is the only visualization that I know of. 17:00 – Chuck: I don’t know. 17:05 – Julia: You have spent this amount of % to... How much time was spent in this function or that function? I feel that the flame graph is much more helpful than a list of percentages. 17:33 – Chuck: What are you looking at in the flame graph? 17:37 – Guest: Basically what time was spent in that function. You look at what is big, and then you figure out if that is something to optimize or not. You go to the docs and... 18:36 – Jackal. 18:40 – Main problem that I would run into is the information OVERLOAD. Now you have the action controllers and all these other components that aren’t normally visual. Panelist asks a question to Julia. 19:29 – Julia: It does give you everything. If you have a real serious problem often the answer will really jump out at you. What I would say – if something is really slow it is right there. 20:08 – Chuck: You will see the name of the method? 20:15 – Chuck: Any other information it will give you? 20:22 – Julia: The line number. 20:28 – Chuck asks another question. 20:41 – Chuck: Success stories? 20:45 – Julia: Yes, I do. GitHub – success stories. Julia gives us one of her success stories. This user said that it helped them by 30%. 21:28 – I can’t imagine using a Rail app that is over 10 years old. So much as changed! A lot of the documentation would be harder to find. 22:00 – Julia gives another example of a success story. 22:10 – When it goes to production – my brain turns off and get jittery. Figure out what happens in production and I wouldn’t want to guess for an app that couldn’t be down. This is what is happening right here and right now. 22:46 – Chuck: How do they get it out into production... 22:57 – Julia: Through GitHub that you can download. If you are on a Mac and your developing you can do it through Home Brew. 23:17 – Chuck and Julia go back and forth. 23:27 – Panelist: You don’t need to have it all the time, but a good tool. 23:44 – Julia: I want people to use it but not all the time; only when they need it. 23:58 – Panelist: I think on a lot of these scripts... Rails Panel – Panelist mentions this. 25:02 – Panelist asks her a question. 25:12 – Pie Spy is something else that someone wrote. 25:28 – Julia: Ruby Spy came first, and Pie Spy is inspired Ruby Spy. He did a good job building that. 25:50 – Advertisement – Code Badges 26:35 – People still use PHP? 26:42 – Julia: Yep! 26:47 – Chuck talks about his neighbor and how he raves about this feature or that feature. 27:07 – In PHP’s defense it has come a long way. I think they are at version 7 or version 8. Sounds like they did a lot of new things with the language. 27:31 – Julia: Instead of that or this language is better – what TOOLS can we use? I hear Ruby users make fun of Java, but Java has great tools. What can we learn from that language rather than bashing the other languages? 28:13 – Chuck chimes-in. Dot.net. 28:58 – Chuck: Let’s talk about that with the opensource. 29:09 – Julia talks about the opensource project. 30:30 – Julia: I asked my manager at Stripe to do this sabbatical in advance. I worked on it for 3 months. I got a check from Segment. 31:05 – Panelist adds in his comments and asks a question. 31:26 – Julia never used it. 31:32 – I have done a lot with Ruby Motion in the past. I am curious how that would work with Ruby Spy? 32:18 – IOS is pretty locked down, so I don’t think that would fly. 32:36 – Chuck talks about Ruby Motion and how he thinks Ruby Spy would / wouldn’t fit. 32:56 – What is funny about that, Chuck, is that you can ALT click... 34:07 – Chuck mentions another app. 34:17 – Julia. 34:40 – Chuck. 35:03 – Chuck: What else are you doing with Ruby Spy that is new? 35:05 – Julia: Not much. It’s fun to see people come in to make contributions. 35:33 – Panelist: Here is a suggestion, some kind of web server that you could... 35:57 – Great idea. 36:04 – Chuck: It wouldn’t be hard to embed it. 36:12 – Julia: Sharing it between...so we don’t have to build the same thing twice. 36:33 – Chuck and Julia go back-and-forth about Ruby Spy and Pie Spy, 37:23 – Julia: Pearl was my first language, and I still love it. 37:32 – Chuck: I guess I can’t knock it because I really haven’t tried it. 37:48 – Ruby was inspired by Pearl so there’s that. 37:57 – Chuck: How do people start using your tool? What is your advice? 38:01 – Julia: Yeah just try it and see. Install it through Home Brew if you have a Mac. 38:25 – Chuck: Picks! 38:32 – Advertisement – Get a Coder Job. 39:07 – Picks! Links: Get a Coder Job Course Ruby Motion Ruby on Rails StackProf – GitHub Ruby Spy Rails_Panel – GitHub Julia Evans’ Twitter Julia Evans’ Blog Julia Evans’ GitHub Julia Evans’ LinkedIn Sponsors: Sentry Digital Ocean Get a Coder Job Course Picks: Dave Vise Deep Freeze Charles Elixir in Phoenix Vue JS Views on Vue Side Projects Doc McStuffins Headphones David Ed Lahey Julia Growing a Business Notability App

Panel: Charles Max Wood Dave Kimura David Richards Special Guests: Julia Evans In this episode of Ruby Rogues, the panel talks with Julia Evans who is a software engineer at Stripe and lives in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The panel talks with Julia about her tool Ruby Spy among other topics. Check it out! Show Topics: 1:34 – Julia gives her background. 1:52 – Chuck: You’ve been on the show before. Listeners, go check it out! 2:30 – What is Ruby Spy? 2:09 – Julia: I wanted to know WHY my computer was doing what it was doing. I felt that it was my right, so I wrote that program. 3:20 – Julia: This does have these profiling tools in Java. I thought it was unfair that Java had better tools than Ruby. I figured Ruby should have it, too. 3:44 – Chuck talks about tools and Ruby Spy. 4:05 – Julia recommends it. Julia: You had to install the gem in order to use it. 4:30 – Chuck: some people say that it has affected their performance. 4:42 – Julia: Ruby Spy is a separate process. Julia continues this conversation and goes in-depth of what Ruby Spy is, etc. 5:27 – When would you use something like this, and what kind of data would get you back to debug the slow points. 5:43 – Julia: When you run Ruby Spy it will... 6:20 – Chuck: Does it give you method names? 6:25 – Julia: Yes, 20% in this method or... 6:37 – I can see how that would be helpful on certain aspects. Being able to narrow down the 1,000 methods where you cab get your biggest bang for your buck. 7:05 – Julia comments. 7:35 – Chuck: I know people pay for Relic... 7:56 – Chuck: When it tells you which method is taking a long time, will it look at the stack and THIS method is insufficient b/c this other method is insufficient? How does it do that? 8:35 – Julia answers the questions. 8:58 – Chuck: I’d imagine that it could keep anything in memory. Did you have to do a bunch of work where THAT means THAT? 9:20 – Julia answers. Julia: The differences weren’t that big between the different versions. 9:54 – Julia goes through the different ways the versions are different. 11:56 – Panelist asks a question. Is this meant for Ruby Scripts? 12:10 – Julia: It doesn’t care – as long as you are using the Ruby Interpreter. 12:25 – Chuck: Sometimes my performance issues is Ruby, and sometimes it’s the database. For Ruby it will sit there and wait for IO. Is that a blind spot that you will have in Ruby Spy? 12:54 – Julia: Great question. There are 2 ways to do profiling. Julia explains these two ways. 13:54 – Wall Clock Time. 14:04 – Chuck: Your computer has a speed and however long it takes to run one cycle. It is similar, but... 14:26 – I guess as long as it’s relative – I was looking at these graphs you wrote. 14:51 – Julia. 14:56 – Panelist: That has been my issue. Changing context into a profiler... 15:27 – Julia. 15:38 – Chuck: Do you have to run it through something...? 15:49 – Julia. 15:53 – Chuck: Is that the most effective way to look at the data through Ruby Spy? 16:07 – Julia: I twill show you the output as it is profiling. 2 visualizations: flame graph and... 16:45 – Chuck. 16:49 – Julia: It is the only visualization that I know of. 17:00 – Chuck: I don’t know. 17:05 – Julia: You have spent this amount of % to... How much time was spent in this function or that function? I feel that the flame graph is much more helpful than a list of percentages. 17:33 – Chuck: What are you looking at in the flame graph? 17:37 – Guest: Basically what time was spent in that function. You look at what is big, and then you figure out if that is something to optimize or not. You go to the docs and... 18:36 – Jackal. 18:40 – Main problem that I would run into is the information OVERLOAD. Now you have the action controllers and all these other components that aren’t normally visual. Panelist asks a question to Julia. 19:29 – Julia: It does give you everything. If you have a real serious problem often the answer will really jump out at you. What I would say – if something is really slow it is right there. 20:08 – Chuck: You will see the name of the method? 20:15 – Chuck: Any other information it will give you? 20:22 – Julia: The line number. 20:28 – Chuck asks another question. 20:41 – Chuck: Success stories? 20:45 – Julia: Yes, I do. GitHub – success stories. Julia gives us one of her success stories. This user said that it helped them by 30%. 21:28 – I can’t imagine using a Rail app that is over 10 years old. So much as changed! A lot of the documentation would be harder to find. 22:00 – Julia gives another example of a success story. 22:10 – When it goes to production – my brain turns off and get jittery. Figure out what happens in production and I wouldn’t want to guess for an app that couldn’t be down. This is what is happening right here and right now. 22:46 – Chuck: How do they get it out into production... 22:57 – Julia: Through GitHub that you can download. If you are on a Mac and your developing you can do it through Home Brew. 23:17 – Chuck and Julia go back and forth. 23:27 – Panelist: You don’t need to have it all the time, but a good tool. 23:44 – Julia: I want people to use it but not all the time; only when they need it. 23:58 – Panelist: I think on a lot of these scripts... Rails Panel – Panelist mentions this. 25:02 – Panelist asks her a question. 25:12 – Pie Spy is something else that someone wrote. 25:28 – Julia: Ruby Spy came first, and Pie Spy is inspired Ruby Spy. He did a good job building that. 25:50 – Advertisement – Code Badges 26:35 – People still use PHP? 26:42 – Julia: Yep! 26:47 – Chuck talks about his neighbor and how he raves about this feature or that feature. 27:07 – In PHP’s defense it has come a long way. I think they are at version 7 or version 8. Sounds like they did a lot of new things with the language. 27:31 – Julia: Instead of that or this language is better – what TOOLS can we use? I hear Ruby users make fun of Java, but Java has great tools. What can we learn from that language rather than bashing the other languages? 28:13 – Chuck chimes-in. Dot.net. 28:58 – Chuck: Let’s talk about that with the opensource. 29:09 – Julia talks about the opensource project. 30:30 – Julia: I asked my manager at Stripe to do this sabbatical in advance. I worked on it for 3 months. I got a check from Segment. 31:05 – Panelist adds in his comments and asks a question. 31:26 – Julia never used it. 31:32 – I have done a lot with Ruby Motion in the past. I am curious how that would work with Ruby Spy? 32:18 – IOS is pretty locked down, so I don’t think that would fly. 32:36 – Chuck talks about Ruby Motion and how he thinks Ruby Spy would / wouldn’t fit. 32:56 – What is funny about that, Chuck, is that you can ALT click... 34:07 – Chuck mentions another app. 34:17 – Julia. 34:40 – Chuck. 35:03 – Chuck: What else are you doing with Ruby Spy that is new? 35:05 – Julia: Not much. It’s fun to see people come in to make contributions. 35:33 – Panelist: Here is a suggestion, some kind of web server that you could... 35:57 – Great idea. 36:04 – Chuck: It wouldn’t be hard to embed it. 36:12 – Julia: Sharing it between...so we don’t have to build the same thing twice. 36:33 – Chuck and Julia go back-and-forth about Ruby Spy and Pie Spy, 37:23 – Julia: Pearl was my first language, and I still love it. 37:32 – Chuck: I guess I can’t knock it because I really haven’t tried it. 37:48 – Ruby was inspired by Pearl so there’s that. 37:57 – Chuck: How do people start using your tool? What is your advice? 38:01 – Julia: Yeah just try it and see. Install it through Home Brew if you have a Mac. 38:25 – Chuck: Picks! 38:32 – Advertisement – Get a Coder Job. 39:07 – Picks! Links: Get a Coder Job Course Ruby Motion Ruby on Rails StackProf – GitHub Ruby Spy Rails_Panel – GitHub Julia Evans’ Twitter Julia Evans’ Blog Julia Evans’ GitHub Julia Evans’ LinkedIn Sponsors: Sentry Digital Ocean Get a Coder Job Course Picks: Dave Vise Deep Freeze Charles Elixir in Phoenix Vue JS Views on Vue Side Projects Doc McStuffins Headphones David Ed Lahey Julia Growing a Business Notability App

While many rural communities are home to predomenantly male leaders, there are pleanty of professional women making an impact in rural healthcare systems, industries, and organizations. Today we speak to a few of these women who are chaning the face of rural leadership and promoting equity within their communites.    - [Julia] This Rural Mission is brought to you by Michigan State University College of Human Medicine Leadership in Rural Medicine Programs. The podcast is funded in part by a generous grant provided by the Herbert H. And Grace A. Dow Foundation. To learn more about the Leadership in Rural Medicine Programs, please visit www.msururalhealth.chm.msu.edu. I'm your host, Julia Terhune, and stay tuned for more from this Rural Mission.  (lively banjo music) -[Julia] What do you want to be when you grow up? - [Dina] I don't know yet (giggling in background) but I'm thinking about maybe being a doctor. - [Julia] A doctor? What kind of doctor? - [Dina] Probably a doctor that gives checkups. - [Julia] What do you want to be when you grow up? - [Selah] Superhero. - [Julia] I think that you're gonna be a really great superhero, but I also think that you're gonna be a really good doctor, Dina. - [Salah] I'm not gonna be a superhero; I'm gonna be another doctor. - [Julia] You're gonna be a doctor, too? - [Selah] A family doctor.  (quiet giggling) - [Julia] That's perfect. You guys can both be doctors and work in the same office. - [Selah] I can be the person who gives shots. Sometimes we have to give the baby shots and they cry a lot. - [Julia] Yeah, but then you give them stickers and they feel better. I'm excited for you guys to become doctors. - [Selah] And when I become a doctor, instead of giving them a sticker, I'll give them a barbie.  (lively banjo music) - [Julia] Those little voices that you just heard are two of my favorite little people, Dina and Sala. You know, it just warms my heart because Dina and Selah live in a world that I lived in where girls could do anything. Dina wants to be a doctor; Sala wants to be a superhero. There's no reason why she can't be a superhero and why she would think that being a girl would hinder that at all, and I lived in that world, too. I lived in a world where I thought and believed that I could do anything, and for the most part, there have been very few barriers for me reaching my goals and my dreams. That's not to say that I haven't felt adversity or I haven't dealt with other roadblocks, but when it comes to my gender, I haven't felt that as much, but I know my mom did. I know my mom did, and I know that the women before us have fought so tirelessly to make a difference and to stand up for women's rights because women's rights are human rights, and I think that that has been a big thing that we need to realize and I think that there's been a lot of effort made in that area. But it's not to say that there's not more that can't be done.  (slow twangy music) There's a stereotype in rural communities that rural communities are very patriarchal, and to some degree, that actually is the case. And I will qualify that stereotype by stating that when you look at the job structure or the job market in rural communities, what you tend to see is that there is a limit in the number of industries that you find in those different counties. So while this isn't the case for every single rural county in the United States, at least what we see among the demographics in the rural counties in Michigan, the leadership of those more white collar-jobs and the leadership in more of those blue collar-jobs are men. I'm going to be interviewing a number of women who have made and are making some really amazing differences and a pretty big splash in their rural community, and no matter how you slice it or what way you look at it, the women that we're going to talk to today are leaders in their county. One area that we've seen tremendous growth in gender equality is in medical education and the medical workforce. Dr. Young lived at a time and went to medical school at a time when that fight for female representation in medical school was still alive and well. Dr. Young practices rural family medicine and her daughter is enrolled in the Rural Community Health Program at Michigan State University. Katie is a fantastic student and quite an amazing young woman, and I'm excited for you to hear this next segment because I think it really shows if we keep working towards equalizing, and making a difference,  and changing the face, and changing the standard of something, if everybody works for that same effort and if everybody continues to make it a priority,  I really think that some magical things happen and this next segment with Dr. Young and Katie Young really gets to the heart of that idea. - [Dr. Young] So when I was  young and in high school, my counselor said to me, at that time thought I wanted to go to law school, that I should not do that, that I should get a job that helped maybe be a second income when I got married and had children. And my parents always believed that I could do whatever I wanted. I just always grew up hearing that, and so when I went home and told my parents, they were, "What?" And so I always had the motivation from my parents, "You can do whatever you want." (soft melancholy chord) - [Katie] I mean I grew up in a family where my mom was the sole bread winner of the family and my dad actually stayed home with me and my younger brother and then was really involved in community otherwise, and so my sense of gender roles from a very early age was that women can be just as empowered as men easily and I was also extremely lucky to have a lot of other strong women in my life. - [Dr. Young] I had no female role models as a physician as a little girl. I do not remember ever meeting a female physician as a little girl. I was the first woman physician on staff at Charlevoix in many, many years when I started in the fall of '92, so for me it was wonderful. My practice filled up right from the get-go. I've been busy since I got here. - [Julia] Wow. - [Dr. Young] It was so cool because women wanted to see women. - [Katie] I know my mom was one of very few women in her medical school graduating class and now I'm in a medical school graduating class that's slightly over 50% women. - [Dr. Young] I honestly can't remember the exact statistics. I want to say our class was 28 to 30% women. We were less than the majority, that was for sure. - [Katie] And so I think that says a lot about how many areas have gotten broken down by people, and my mom's generation, and then my grandparent's generation. For me, I'm really interested in going in the surgical field, and you know, I got warned by my mentors who were two awesome older gentlemen surgeons when I was in high school, and my mom has pointed out to me, as well as professionals from the Lansing area that if I want to go into surgery, that that's one of the last factions of, I guess, male-dominated area in medicine. - [Julia] Do you think you can handle it? - [Katie] I'm not too worried about handling it. I feel pretty confident in my own abilities, I guess, and I feel like if I allow myself to feel intimidated or to feel embarrassed, then I feel like that just further feeds into that stereotypical role that women should be filling, which would be a subservient one, and so I think it really depends a lot on having the self-confidence and having the class to maintain a real professional demeanor, even when those around you, be they male or female colleagues, can't seem to. - [Dr. Young] I see that, in my professional career, try to set the best example every day that I can. I don't see that necessarily just as a woman, but as a human being and I hope that as we progress with time that we will see that individuals should go into careers or job opportunities based on their skills and their ability, and whether or not you're a man or a woman or the color of your skin. So I really, I mean, I know that I'm a role model, but I hope it's not just because I'm a woman. Kind of like the "When they go low, "you go high." - [Man] Three, two, one! ♫ Don't mess, don't mess ♫ Don't mess with the best ♫ 'Cause the best don't mess ♫ Don't fool, don't fool ♫ Don't fool with the cool ♫ 'Cause the cool don't fool ♫ To the East ♫ To the West ♫ (mumbles) is the best ♫ We're gonna B-E-A-T beat 'em, beat 'em ♫ B-U-S-T bust 'em, bust 'em ♫ Beat 'em, Bust 'em ♫ That's our custom ♫ Come on out, let's readjust 'em ♫ Hip hop, we're on top ♫ Go (mumbles) (upbeat guitar music) - [Julia] It's important to have an array of perspectives, an array of cultures, and an array of persons and genders in every institution and organization because those perspectives, ideas, and opinions are going to make decisions that provide equity to all persons and help to break down barriers and help to break down vulnerabilities in all types of populations and settings, and this is even more concerning and even more important when we're talking about rural communities who are already underserved.  (slow guitar music) - [Darcy] My name is Darcy Czarnik-Laurin. I'm the Executive Director for Thumb Rule Health Network. Well it was created, gosh, over a decade ago. We're looking at probably close to 13 years. A lot of the leaders, the CEOs and department heads and stuff from the rural critical access hospitals in the thumb region, and I'm going to just say that that region is Huron, Tuscola, and Sanilac Counties, there are seven critical access hospitals in those three counties and that's small hospital heavy for a rural region, but it's also very important because there aren't the larger health systems. The leaders of those hospitals, they would see one another at regional meetings and they said, "Hey, historically we are competitors. "We will always be competitors, "but we're working toward the same goal, so what can we do to work together to help one another out?" because they know the importance of rural health care. I was the female voice when I started and that's changed, but I was rather intimidated. - [Julia] Stop. Because right there, that statement is exactly what I'm talking about when I talk about having everybody at the table. When we don't have adequate representation of all persons, all creeds, all cultures, all genders, then that feeling of insecurity is a real thing. And it doesn't just stop at personal feelings because we can't control that, but it does become more systemic when people don't feel adequate, when they don't feel like they're contributing to something or that they can't, they won't, and then that voice that's sitting at the table becomes marginalized and that marginalized voice then doesn't help make all the differences that we need to see being made in communities. When we have a vulnerable population and a marginalized population within that vulnerable population, things can get pretty bad. Now, I don't mean to interrupt Darcy here because she's about to make some really interesting points, but I couldn't let an opportunity like that go to waste, so here's Darcy again. - [Darcy] Here I came onboard never holding the position that I hold with Thumb Rule Health Network. I had a lot of knowledge, I had a lot of experience, but to sit at a table with mostly a male audience sitting around the table and men that hold that position of CEO was rather intimidating to me, you know, so I don't want to mess up. (laughs) - [Julia] Do you ever think about being a female leader while you're doing your position? - [Darcy] Yes, I do. I do think about being a female leader and a lot of it I'm still nervous about, I have to be honest. - [Julia] Is that important to you, being a leader? - [Darcy] Yeah, it's definitely important. And there's times where I just sit back and I say, Hey, I came from  this tiny little village town in Arenac County. "I graduated out of a class of about 26 people," and I look back and I think what would my life look like if I hadn't met the people I met, had the upbringing I had, took the roads that I took. Talking about my class kind of just sparked something else. I want to say we had about 26 people, and out of my core group of friends that we still, and somewhat keep in touch, we have me, I'm the executive director of a nonprofit, we have a veterinarian, we have a couple RNs, we have a zookeeper. And these are all the women! Out of that small, little class out of this tiny, little, rural class D school that when people say, "Oh well, you graduated from Arenac Eastern, that's not a very good school," and it goes down to, again, the way people are raised, their community, their mentors, their support, and their choices in life. So, yeah, I think it's important that I am a leader. I may not always view myself as a leader because I still have doubts, but I know I am a leader and I'm hoping that I have some type of impact or I'm possibly a mentor to some people.  ("Ivory Girl" by Bryan Eggers) - [Julia] That is why women rule and why we need more women in leadership positions in rural America and we need more female physicians willing and ready to go into these small towns and serve for as long as it takes, much like what Dr. Young has done and what Katie Young is about to do.  Those women are making a difference. People like Darcy are sitting on these tough and intimidating committees and speaking up for what is most needed and what is most necessary, and those women are just the start of it. There are so many women who are making a difference in rural communities, so I'm just gonna encourage you  that if you have considered working with an underserved population in any capacity, whether that be a nurse, or an accountant,  or a medical doctor, I encourage you to really consider making rural your mission and making a difference in your rural community or in a rural community that you grow to love. ♫ If I searched the whole wide world ♫ My ivory girl - [Julia] I want to thank everybody again for listening to this podcast. As always, I'm going to thank Dr. Wendling for her support and encouragement of this podcast. She has made a tremendous difference in my life and in my career, as well as the life and career of so many other people and I just want to give her a sincere thank you. I also want to give a sincere thank you to Darcy. She has been a fantastic  colleague and friend over the last two years and I've enjoyed working with her and Thumb Rural  Health Network.   As much as we talked about how the group of CEOs in the thumb  are a bit intimidating, the truth of the matter is they're a group of really fantastic professional men that are devoted to the health and security of the thumb. I want to thank Dr. Young for taking time out of her busy schedule to talk to me, but I also want to thank Katie Young for taking time out of her schedule because she's a second-year medical student right now, and, man, for her to give up the time to talk to me out of her busy study schedule was tremendous, so thank you, Katie. Thank you, again, to everybody who listened to this podcast and please tune in next time for more from This Rural Mission. ♫ Couldn't find another ♫ If I searched the whole wide world, yeah ♫ My ivory girl ♫ My ivory girl ♫ My ivory girl ♫ Couldn't find another ♫ If I searched the whole wide world, yeah ♫ My ivory girl ♫ Couldn't find another ♫ If I searched the whole wide world ♫ My ivory girl ♫ My ivory girl - [Julia] Please visit our website at www.msururalhealth.chm.msu.edu. By joining our website you could connect to us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. You can also find out more about our musician. Music today was provided by Horton Creek and Bryan Eggers, a local musician and Michigan native. We hope you tune in next time to hear more from This Rural Mission.  (beep) When I say that we live in a world where girls think they  can be anything they want when they grow up,  Sala definitely proves that  that statement is true. - [Selah] I want to be famous here as a doctor. - [Man] You want to be famous— - [Selah] Or should I be a grown up that goes to gymnastics? - [Man] Should you be a grown up that goes to gymnastics or a doctor?    (laughter) That's a really tough one because both of those people are gonna be really famous. - [Selah] Both!  

The outcome of the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election was influenced by the rural vote. Host/Producer Julia Terhune talks to Michigan State University and Michigan State University College of Human Medicine students and faculty to see how perceptions of rural America have changed since the outcome of the election.  Transcript:  -[Julia] This Rural Mission is brought to you by Michigan State University College of Human Medicine Leadership and Rural Medicine programs. The podcast is funded in part by a generous grant provided by the Herbert H and Grace A Dow Foundation. To learn more about the Leadership and Rural Medicine programs please visit www.msururalhealth.chm.msu.edu. I'm your host Julia Terhune and stay tuned for more from This Rural Mission.    (folk music)   Just after the 2016 presidential election I did what every good wannabe podcaster does. I took my little voice recorder and I went and spoke to a bunch of undergraduate students. Well, maybe a few of them were graduate. I don't know.    (lively guitar music)   Every student that I asked, I asked the same question. What is your perception of rural America after the onset of the election? Most people I spoke to didn't even know what I was talking about when I said the words "rural America".   - [Man] Rural America? - [Woman] What do you mean be rural America exactly? - [Woman] What does this mean? Like which part of America are we referring to? Like just farmland America? - [Woman] I don't know honestly. Just like... I mean...Yeah, it's like farmland and stuff, but I don't know.   - [Julia] The other group didn't have much to say.   - [Woman] Um, it hasn't changed. - [Man] I think it's a hardworking community. They do a lot for our country. I mean, again, my opinion hasn't changed of them since the election. - [Man] I think that they're a very hardworking down to Earth people.   - [Woman] Honestly they kind of stayed the same.That there were hardworking people.   - [Julia] But of course I couldn't ask about the election and rural America without talking about racism.   - [Woman] Are you asking if I think that there are a whole bunch more racist people in the world or something? Um, I don't know. It kind of depends. Like, I'm from small-town Texas, so what could be considered rural America, and I know for a fact that my folks voted for Trump. And I was super against it but they didn't vote for Trump because they're racist. They vote for Trump because they're both in the military and, you know, what he was saying was gonna benefit the military more and Hillary, you know, did some horrible crap that military folks could just never forgive. - [Man] I just feel that people from rural America get like a lot of... Like a little bit of malice from the people from the city and people really aren't that bad from rural America, so.   - [Julia] Well what do you mean by "not that bad"?   - [Man] I don't know, there's kind of just like a sentiment that we're all like racist or we're all like, I don't know, anti-immigration. But really a lot of us are from different ends of the spectrum, and we're also... Admittedly we're not very...We're not quite as exposed to other, I don't know, other people, it is mostly white out there, but we don't feel like we're racist. We don't judge people, so, I don't know. But I feel like we still get a lot of malice for that.   - [Man] My mom grew up in like up north areas of Michigan and they seem to be a little, I don't know, a little far right. I'm not saying that it's a bad thing or a good thing. I just think that it's just sort of... They seem like they're a little bit disconnected from the rest of the, I guess millennial generation. I don't really know much about it 'cause I'm not from there but I think that they're just sort of closed... I'm not gonna say closed-minded because that's sort of, I don't know, sort of a stereotype. But I think that, I don't know, that somehow they need to get more involved but I don't know how they can do that because they're so far away from everything, you know what I mean? So, I mean, that's kind of it really.   - [Julia] And then there were instances like this.   - [Man] Undereducated. Believe what they want to instead of look at facts.   - [Woman] They're probably not exposed to the more urban, more current understanding of other people because they're stuck in their old ways in their little farmhouses. So they're not really exposed to a lot of different kinds of people.   - [Julia] It wasn't enough for me just to canvas  Michigan State University. I also wanted to hear from the people who are from rural America. The people who are serving rural America and the people who are vowing to serve rural America. The voices you're about to hear on this podcast consist of a number of individuals. We are going to start with Doctor Andrea Wendling, the director of Rural Community Health for Michigan State University and a family medicine physician in northern Michigan. She spoke at a round table we held with Leadership and Rural Medicine medical students after the outcome of the 2016 presidential election. All of the students sitting at that round table have devoted their clinical medical education to rural communities. This was Doctor Wendling's first comment to the group.   - [Doctor Wendling] Okay so our question for tonight is how did this election impact your vision of rural America or your feelings about rural America. My feeling is that, you know, my whole life is trying to figure out rural disparities, right? And trying to help rural populations. I think a lot about rural, I dream about rural, and so there was a lot that went on during this election around the time of the election where there were a lot of root words that were floating around like "racist" and "homophobic" and , you know, a lot of negative words. And you know, they were kind of being um...You know, they were kind of being assigned to people who supported Trump, okay, or people with conservative ideologies, right? And then it was really hard for me internalizing so much about rural America. Watching that night, like, county after county after county turn red and having people feel like okay every rural county is gonna be red and every urban county is gonna be blue when I knew that there were all these words attached to this feeling, right? You know I think at the beginning I was, you know, I was upset because all these words were attached to it, but then as you think about it there were a lot of reasons why... You know there was a lot of conversation that happened as part of the election, you know, I think that all of a sudden these issues that face rural America that are really significant, meaningful issues like the economic disparity and the educational disparity or lack of educational opportunities and lack of feeling hope,   you know, that your future will be different. You know, that kind of came to light and so there's part of me that feels like it might be an opportunity because this is stuff that was not a surprise to me, right? But seemed like it was this huge surprise to everybody. They're like what happened? Why is everybody so unhappy in rural America? It's like, have you looked at it? (laughs) You know have you seen why people are so unhappy?    (light piano music)   - [Julia] Doctor Joel Maurer is the Dean of Admissions at Michigan State University College of Human Medicine. As a rural native himself and a physician for many years he also had a profound insight to the needs of rural America. - [Doctor Maurer] Understanding that, you know, I was disappointed with the result, I kind of admire rural America for kind of figuring out a way at the grass roots level to say you can't ignore me anymore. I kind of admired a marginalized group of individuals figuring out a way to have a major impact in the leadership of this country. At least for the next four years. You know, I use Nebraska as sort of my example. And the thing that I think people tend to overlook about the state of Nebraska is that at least if you look at the Democratic side of that state, in the primaries that state went Bernie. So did Oklahoma. So did Wisconsin.   - [Julia] So did Michigan.   - [Doctor Maurer] Michigan, right. I think that in and of itself should be an indicator to the, at least the leadership of the Democratic party, that there's a certain amount of unease and unrest that's going on in some of these states. They just need some attention from someone.    (light guitar music)   - [Julia] But what is more significant is what the students themselves had to say about serving a rural  community after the outcome of the election.   - [Woman] Oh yeah, I'll be really honest about how I felt, like the next day one of the first things I said was that I don't want to go to Traverse City anymore. Like it was really a shock and it was hard. And I think that one of the things that someone said to me, my brother said this to me right away, is that these are people that you're gonna be helping, like what you're describing and you have to understand where they were coming from.   -[Woman] I was a medical assistant in Marquette for a while before med school and would hear things from people that were kind of like a racist undertone or... It's these weird things. So I think I always in my head have kind of known if you're working with people, and not necessarily from like Marquette but people who are from these tiny little one stoplight towns outside who are driving two hours to come to Marquette because that's the big city where they're gonna get care, like, it just doesn't necessarily surprise me to hear certain, I don't know, I've heard certain viewpoints before that I disagree with and was still their medical assistant and was able to in my head be like wow I don't agree with what you just said but I can still treat you like a person. Their medical care is what... It's what matters. So I guess, yes it was made more public, but my whole viewpoint of I don't agree with these people I said I'm still gonna treat these patients didn't necessarily change for me.   - [Woman] One of the things that really bothered me was like the generalization of rural America. Because I know so many people that are very well-educated, very well established that both do and do not support Trump. And yet, both alike get thrown into this general stereotype that oh, because you're from this area you're uneducated, you're racist, you're this and that. If you're from these towns, regardless of your standpoints then this is what you are. - [Man] Another thing too though, that I also noticed with my conversations were we're all healthcare people and so we are super focused on healthcare. And I don't think I ever had a single conversation with people that did support Trump that started or ended with healthcare.   - [Woman] See, I have a different experience. I had multiple conversations that started with Obamacare. Very anti-Obamacare because of all the inflation and health costs and what they didn't realize was that the inflation of health cost comes from other things that we just had a lecture on. There was three pages of a document of just listed things that made healthcare more expensive. And when push comes to shove some of the general population just doesn't understand it because they're not from a healthcare perspective.   - [Woman] Also I'm confused.   - [Woman] I don't understand it.   - [Woman] Yeah it's really confusing too. And so when they bring up Obamacare and they say... They throw this one fact, this one fact that you're unfamiliar with, but you show them all this other facts but you're not able to address that one thing that you're just unsure of. It's like you cannot connect. Even though you know from a different perspective what may or may not be better or what's true.   - [Woman] Similar to that, I forgot where we sat, but someone was talking about how there is racism and sexism in this country. Like those are just things that exist. But they're really subtle and it's these tiny little things to have these nuanced discussions about ways sexism exists in everyday life, ways racism exists in everyday life, that you really have to dissect and think a lot about to understand, whereas if you don't like Hillary Clinton people can just be like oh she's crooked. But to explain why the subtleties of sexism and why sexism lead to why you think Hillary's so crooked. You know what I mean? Like, that's a very long, deep conversation versus just being like yeah, she's crooked so I would never vote for her. And that's the end of the conversation. Or like, explaining how racism exists in society versus being from an all white town where you've never dealt with minorities and being like racism is over, what are you talking about? We have a black president. And that's just the end of the conversation. You know, like it takes a certain level of education just to be able to dissect these issues enough to know that they're even there.   - [Julia] How do you think the perception of rural America in the media right now is going to affect future leaders, future medical leaders. Students right now who might want to go on and serve those communities. Do you think it's going to be a deterrent?   - [Doctor Maurer] I think for those who want... Who know in their heart they want to serve in that capacity it's not going to be a deterrent. I think what we struggle with is you have the rural kid who is able to pursue higher education, depending on where he or she chooses to go, that kid chooses to go to an institution that does have a history of a lot of progressive thought, exposures to people who are different from themselves. What I worry about is is that kid four years later still gonna wanna go back to rural America to serve? For that matter, the kid who is from rural Michigan who really chooses to go outside their comfort zone and I'm gonna go to the University of Southern California for four years. Are we gonna be able to get that kid to come back to serve his or her rural constituents? I think the answer is "I don't know". I mean it I think it depends on what their experiences were. But I think that it's possible that that four to five-year college education, depending on where they choose to go, probably is gonna have a huge, huge influence on whether or not someone wants or chooses to return to the rural community. And that... And so I think that probably plays a bigger role. I think part of our success in being able to get students to return to medically rural underserved communities, we're gonna have to... There's gonna have to be, I think a significant outreach effort that occurs before they even hit the medical school's door. We gotta figure out a way to keep them tied to their rural roots in a positive manner and how can they use these very interesting educational hidden curriculum experiences in a residential college and university. How can they use what they've learned about life and themselves in applying that to the care that they would be able to offer in rural America. I think that's where we need to focus right now.   - [Julia] For four years Doctor Andrea Wendling has been working with pre-med undergraduate students from rural areas of Michigan. Through the Rural Pre-medical Internship Program, Doctor Wendling and Doctor Todd Shepard have worked to mentor pre-medical students who want to become doctors and want to return to rural America. Through this program Doctor Wendling and Doctor Shepard have been teaching students what it takes to get into medical school and what it takes to become a rural doctor. After four years of this program there is significant fruit coming from all of Doctor Wendling's efforts. With the onset of the election, the media coverage, and the perceptions and ideas that have come from  and out of rural America, Doctor Wendling wants all  rural and rurally-minded medical students, healthcare professionals, and young people to know this.   - [Doctor Wendling] I came in and I said, you know, there's a lot of conversation about rural Americans happening right now. And this election has brought to light a lot of, you know, a lot of things that are happening to rural people in a lot of disparity. And you know, regardless of your political ideology that's a real thing. Like, this disparity is a real thing and it affects people and it affects people  in a really meaningful way. And you know, it affects all of you in this room. And you need to understand that MSU...You know, you are part of our mission. We want rural students and we want rural students who want to care for underserved populations and we know that your path to medical school may have been harder than the paths of many of your peers because of these disparities and that's okay. You know, we want you.    (mellow country music) ♫ Gathered near the lake ♫ Celebrate the union ♫ All of my old friends and me ♫ There was singing and dancing ♫ Till the morning had come ♫ And we sang and we danced some more ♫ So long my comrades ♫ Till we meet again ♫ Years pass more quickly ♫ And the reasons for gathering ♫ Are fading away ♫ But you know who I was ♫ And I know what you went through ♫ And nobody knows me like you   - [Julia] Thank you again for listening to This Rural Mission. This podcast is produced by me, Julia Terhune. I want to extend a great deal of thanks to Doctor Joel Maurer for taking time out of his schedule to speak to me. Doctor Maurer will be highlighted on several other podcasts. What he had to say was so tremendous and so interesting. I also want to thank all of the Leadership and Rural Medicine students who took time out of their Wednesday night to meet with us at a round table. And all of them gave their profound insight and perspective onto what happened in the election. I also want to thank all of the people that I terrorized while I was canvasing around Michigan State University. It was cold, it was wet, it was rainy and there were so many people who gave me the time of day  and answered my silly little questions. As always, thank you Doctor Wendling for making this project a key priority of the Leadership and Rural Medicine programs. Until next time, I'm your host Julia Terhune and I encourage you to make rural your mission.    (mellow country music) ♫ So long my comrades   ♫ Till we meet again ♫ Years pass more quickly ♫ And the reasons for gathering ♫ Are fading away ♫ But you know who I was ♫ And I know what you went through ♫ And nobody knows me like you ♫ My comrades and friends ♫ You don't who I am right now ♫ Years and the miles had their way ♫ But you know who I was ♫ Before I became who I am ♫ I can see where I've been in your eyes ♫ So long my comrades ♫ Till we meet again ♫ Years pass more quickly ♫ And the reasons for gathering ♫ Are fading away ♫ But you know who I was ♫ And I know what you went through ♫ And nobody knows me like you   - [Julia] To learn more about the Rural Community Health Program please visit our website at www.msururalhealth.chm.msu.edu. By joining our website you can connect to us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. You can also find out more about our musician. Music today was provided by Horton Creek and Brian Edgars, a local musician and Michigan native. We hope you tune in next time to hear more from This Rural Mission.  

Audio File:  Download MP3Transcript: An Interview with Julia Hartz Co-Founder & President, Eventbrite Date: July 12, 2010 NCWIT Entrepreneurial Heroes [music] Lee Kennedy: Hi this is Lee Kennedy, board member for the National Center for Women and Information Technology or NCWIT. And we're here today as a part of a series of interviews that we're doing with extremely interesting entrepreneurs. These are women who have started IT companies in just a complete variety of sectors, and they all have just very cool stories to tell us. Today with me is Larry Nelson. And Larry is from w3w3.com. Hi, Larry. Larry Nelson: Hi, I really am happy to be on this show. And by the way there are so many parents and so many managers and leaders that listen to this show. So that's why we're tapping into all these great entrepreneurs and leaders. Lee: Great. And we also have Lucy Sanders who is the CEO for NCWIT. Thanks for joining us Lucy. Lucy Sanders: Hi Lee. Very happy to be here. And I wanted to mention that very often our entrepreneurs that we interview for this series are showing up more and more on the top 10. To watch the top 10 there, the most in this region, so the women we're interviewing are just top five entrepreneurs. Larry: You bet. Lee: Cool. Just to get right to it today we're interviewing Julia Hartz. And Julia is the co-founder and President of EventBrite. And EventBrite is the leading provider of online event management and ticketing services. Is just a really cool company, and Julia has brought the creative and energy of the entertainment business. She was at MTV formerly. Lucy: Oh wow.  Lee: Welcome Julia. Thanks for coming here today. We're looking forward to talking with you about entrepreneurship. Julia Hartz: Thank you. I'm really honored to be here. Lee: Wonderful. So can you tell us a little bit about what's going on at EventBrite lately? Julia: Oh goodness, a whole lot. Well, we were originally founded in 2006 by my husband and I and our third co-founder Renaud Visage, our CTO. And since that we bootstrapped the company. We were just three people for two years, very product focused. But I'm happy to report that we are now nearing 60 employees. So it's quite a different company today than it was even back in 2008. On the topic side we're just really focused on making life simpler for the organizers, and delighting our customers through innovations of simple tools they can use to publish event pages, promote their events to a wider audience, and sell out their events. So sell more tickets to their events. And we're also now looking at our relationship with ticket buyers. Now that we've helped event holders host over 200, 000 events, obviously that there is a larger accumulation of attendees that are now coming back to EventBrite to find out about more events that they want to attend. So that's a current feature trend that we're seeing. Lee: Well you know NCWIT runs events, so we could well be one of your future customers. Julia: [laughs] I'll give you the sales pitch. Lee: All right. [laughs] Julia: On a different time maybe. [laughs] Lee: Yeah. I would love to hear more. We find that running events can be very time consuming. So it sounds like EventBrite is on to something. So Julia, the first question is about technology. And first of all, how you became interested in technology? And also really interesting technologies that might you see on the horizon that would interest our listeners. Julia: All right. So my career as you said it before began in television. I was a development executive at MTV, and I worked the first season and the first movie of a little project called Jackass. Sorry, I'm not sure if I can say that on radio. And then I went on to FX Networks, and I worked on shows like Nip/Tuck, The Shield, and Rescue Me. So my career there was really high in creativity, and it was definitely pushing me up a little as they were in cable television, and the projects they worked on. But it was very well in technological innovation. So we found it very hard to break the traditional distribution mold as well as the traditional advertising mold for that matter. So my last year at FX I spent a lot of time on product placement, which was sort of a thankless job, trying to make sure that the label of the beer can was pointed in the right direction at all times in a scene. I started to get the inkling that there was something out there that would make me feel fulfilled, and I was lucky enough to meet Kevin about two years before I left television. I was able to see him start a company from inception. I was sold. Two years later I was ready to leave my traditional career and take the leap. So that's how I first got into technology. I felt like it would be something I would feel, I wanted to be ahead of the curve instead of trying to chasing trends, which I felt like we were doing in television at the time that I was working at MTV and FX. Technologies that I think are cool? Kevin is an avid angel investor and adviser. By virtue of that we were really lucky to be involved in a lot of different companies and see a lot of great trends come out of those companies, and very bright people. I always say that what I feel like is cool right now for me personally is not exactly original. But it is in the way of communication and information dissemination and I'll give you an example of how that applies to me and why I think it's cool. We were recently on a trip and our trip itinerary was shared with our family and anybody else who needed no know where we were through TripIt. We were not in touch with our family during the trip so I posted mobile photos of our two-year-old on Facebook so that my mom would know how she was doing at all times. In our company we share information through Yammer and we also share expenses through Blippy. Then, on the social side oftentimes, I'm checking in through Yelp to let people know where I am in case they're in the same area. We live in the city so it's not so large. So that idea that I can instantly broadcast and disseminate information easily and with no friction is really huge for me today being an entrepreneur and a mom. Larry: Well, entrepreneur and a mom, and you got this "techie" background, why are you an entrepreneur? Also tying in with that, what is it about entrepreneurship that makes you tick? Julia: I'm an entrepreneur because I believe that I can change an industry. I also love helping to build something that people want and that's extremely valuable. I feel day-to-day glee in making a difference, in working on projects that are both very large scale and very small scale. I also feel like being an entrepreneur, for me, I feel like I'm part owner in a movement. So I think if I were to sum it up, being an entrepreneur and being a parent, I feel equally about both. [laughs] So EventBrite is very much our baby and there is just something inherently satisfying about working on something that you feel such ownership and passion about. That's what entrepreneurship means to me. That's what excites me about it. Lucy: That's great. So Julia, who would you say influenced you or was a role model or mentor along the way to get into being an entrepreneur? Julia: The reason why I took the leap and didn't hesitate was because of Kevin. Entrepreneurship comes like second nature to Kevin, and he had founded two companies before that. So I really believed that everything would be OK [laughs] and that somehow, someway we would succeed. So for him there was just no question that he wanted to always be an entrepreneur and it was almost like, "Why not? Why not come work for free with me and see what we can do and how we can change the world?" So really he's the one that influenced me first and foremost. Our families really support us along the way. They're very unconditional about everything we do. As far as role models go, we have mentors in Michael and Xochi Birch who are a married couple who founded a few companies. But most notably and recently Bebo, they founded together. They gave us some great advice in the beginning, which was divide and conquer. As a married couple if you're working together never work on the same thing at the same time. Not only is that sort of a recipe for disaster if you're behind the same spreadsheet in trying to share them out, but also you get from point A to point B two times as faster, even maybe faster, because you have complementary skills. And that very much applies to Kevin and I. We divide and conquer in everything we do. At this point in the game we work on very different aspects of the business, and actually get to catch up at the end of the day. And ask each other how each others day went. And my parents are role models because just everything that they've done they've done with a lot of grace. And finally, two-year-old daughter Emma is a huge role model to both of us. Because I think, for me it's because she never backs down from wanting to know why. She doesn't settle for an answer that she can't completely believe. She can definitely be a role model for us in many different aspects. Lucy: Well, I certainly think parenting has taught me up. That's for sure. She probably got a double dose of entrepreneurship. We'll have to see what she ends up starting. Lee: Or determination. Lucy: Or determination for sure. So Julia along the way you've been encouraged, you started a company, you've worked in entertainment, you've had a great career so far. What's the toughest thing in your professional career you've ever had to do? Julia: The only thing that I dread and the toughest part of this gig is coming to the realization that a team member is not a right fit, and having to let them go. And for us it's been, we haven't had to let go many people, and that's great. But it's really hard when you're building a team, because you feel like this is your family. And for me, I feel like each person on our team is like an athlete. I have to keep them like well-feed and you know hydrated, and well, and out of the tabloids. [laughs] I want to take care of everyone who works at EventBrite. And to have to part ways with somebody is by far the toughest part of this gig. Secondly, I think making decisions that I feel like are going to maybe not sit well with our customers. And our interests have been extremely aligned with our customers since the inception of EventBrite. And we really built EventBrite through having a dialogue with our customers and understanding event organizers' pain-points, and how can we alleviate them through technology. But making decisions like pricing changes it's totally agonizing. And we have a story where we went from a freemium service to offering a free service and paid service, to just a completely paid service. And we fretted over it for months. And when we finally reached the decision and pulled that cord, not only did we not see the turn that we had expected, but we saw our conversion go up. Because people who were coming to the site going to have to make that decision over or whether not to sign for the free or paid service. So these kinds of decisions are really tough for us. And I feel like one thing we could have done better is not fret so much over it, and believe in our product, and our ability to delight our customers. Larry: That's great advice. So one of the things we wonder about and always ask and that is if you were sitting down right now with a person who's considering becoming an entrepreneur or just starting to be an entrepreneur what advice would you give them? Julia: I think that if you're going to do it you have to jump in. I mean I feel like when I visualized the leap that I took from a corporate secure job to running EventBrite and working on this project, I envisioned myself jumping in with my eyes closed, head first and all hands and feet in. I mean I don't think that it's possible to have success without completely committing yourself. So whether that is committing yourself completely mentally, or if it's mentally, logistically and financially you really have to put all your skin in the game to actually have a chance. Most start-ups don't' succeed and I think that it's for obviously a variety of reasons. But first and foremost, if you're going to choose entrepreneurship, you have to commit in every fiber of your body. Lee: The word devotion comes to mind. Lucy: Yeah. Julia: It takes a lot of devotion. You can't have one put in and one put out. It doesn't work very well. Lee: So, on the same note what it takes to be an entrepreneur, there's certain personal characteristic that everyone thinks of that makes us entrepreneur successful. What would you say are your personal characteristics that have given you the advantage as an entrepreneur? Julia: So, me personally, I feel like I have a very strong willingness to pitch in. Now, that we are 60 people and our roles as founder, I feel like at this point I do not get in the way of greatness. We hire very, very smart, capable, talented people and we need to let them have their freedom to really change this industry. But on the flip side, I am always willing to pitch in and help so whether that be any sort of mundane task. It is not mundane to me because it contributes towards the success of the EventBrite, of my baby. So, that willingness to pitch in is key. I also have an ability to be objective. So, because of my first start up, I'm not very dated and everything is very new. I try to just come about it and to have a fresh perspective and being very objective about everything that is happening and not ever feeling like we have to be status quo. We are actually trying to disrupt an industry, the ticketing industry, and so to look at it from a fresh perspective is an advantage in many different aspects of running a start up. And, finally I feel like I'm a 110 percent committed. I mean I feel extreme honors over EventBrite in a way of like I really care about it and I care about everybody who works on changing the world with us. And so, commitment and then accountability really being accountable for the bad things and the good things. I think that makes a big difference. Lucy: Julia, you've mentioned that you travel and you mentioned your family and you mentioned your devotion to EventBrite. So, we're curious. We always ask this question. How do successful entrepreneurs bring balance into both their personal and their professional lives? Julia: Right. So, first of all you have to prioritize and you have to perhaps write it down on a white board. What is most important to you and then write everything up. I mean we talk a lot about [inaudible 15:15] optimization here and I kind of feel the same way about balancing your life. For us, it is an interesting talent because EventBrite is very much our first baby and we have and I who is a part of this process. So, instead of dividing them into two things, we feel like we are in it together. Sort of cliché to say but it is very true. It takes a village and for me personally, I have to find my vortex of happiness so that for me is being a great mom and being a great entrepreneur. I have to be confident enough to ask for and receive help from our village of family and friends. And I have to prioritize. And so, I have to note that if push come to shove, what would I do in each scenario and how do that emergency sort of exit plan. That is also very applicable to working with your spouse. And so, I feel like for us, our family and our friends and our daughter, they are in it with us and so they feel invested and understand what's going on as well. Larry: Well, you have already achieved a great deal. You are doing a lot. You are young. You are building a family. What's next for you? Julia: My goal for EventBrite is to grow the service and to the only place you would ever go to buy a ticket for any event you would ever attend. And then secondly, I want to have more kids. Lucy: There you go. Julia: It gets a little bit harder to scale for some reason I don't know. I look at it and I'm like, I am pretty sure one plus one doesn't equal to so we'll see. [laughs] Larry: Well, I've got five kids and my wife and I are in business together so it works. Lucy: I have three. Julia: I need to sit down and pick your brain. Lee: Well, thank you so much Julia for talking to us. We really appreciate it. I want to remind our listeners where they can find this interview. w3w3.com and NCWIT.org and please do pass this along to other people who would be interested in listening to it. Thanks very much Julia. Julia: Thanks so much for having me.  Larry: Thanks, Julia. [music] Series: Entrepreneurial HeroesInterviewee: Julia HartzInterview Summary: Julia is a reformed Television Network Executive and comes to Eventbrite by way of FX Networks and MTV. "I'm an entrepreneur because I think I can change an industry. I also love helping to build something that people want. Being an entrepreneur, for me, I feel like I'm part owner in a movement and there is just something inherently satisfying about working on something you feel such ownership and passion about." Release Date: July 12, 2010Interview Subject: Julia HartzInterviewer(s): Lucy Sanders, Larry Nelson, Lee KennedyDuration: 17:20