Podcast appearances and mentions of laura schmidt

Lots of talk these days about ultra-processed foods (UPFs). Along with confusion about what in the heck they are or what they're not, how bad they are for us, and what ought to be done about them. A landmark in the discussion of ultra-processed foods has been the publication of a book entitled Ultra-processed People, Why We Can't Stop Eating Food That Isn't Food. The author of that book, Dr. Chris van Tulleken, joins us today. Dr. van Tulleken is a physician and is professor of Infection and Global Health at University College London. He also has a PhD in molecular virology and is an award-winning broadcaster on the BBC. His book on Ultra-processed People is a bestseller. Interview Summary Chris, sometimes somebody comes along that takes a complicated topic and makes it accessible and understandable and brings it to lots of people. You're a very fine scientist and scholar and academic, but you also have that ability to communicate effectively with lots of people, which I very much admire. So, thanks for doing that, and thank you for joining us. Oh, Kelly, it's such a pleasure. You know, I begin some of my talks now with a clipping from the New York Times. And it's a picture of you and an interview you gave in 1995. So exactly three decades ago. And in this article, you just beautifully communicate everything that 30 years later I'm still saying. So, yeah. I wonder if communication, it's necessary, but insufficient. I think we are needing to think of other means to bring about change. I totally agree. Well, thank you by the way. And I hope I've learned something over those 30 years. Tell us, please, what are ultra-processed foods? People hear the term a lot, but I don't think a lot of people know exactly what it means. The most important thing to know, I think, is that it's not a casual term. It's not like 'junk food' or 'fast food.' It is a formal scientific definition. It's been used in hundreds of research studies. The definition is very long. It's 11 paragraphs long. And I would urge anyone who's really interested in this topic, go to the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization website. You can type in NFAO Ultra and you'll get the full 11 paragraph definition. It's an incredibly sophisticated piece of science. But it boils down to if you as a consumer, someone listening to this podcast, want to know if the thing you are eating right now is ultra-processed, look at the ingredients list. If there are ingredients on that list that you do not normally find in a domestic kitchen like an emulsifier, a coloring, a flavoring, a non-nutritive sweetener, then that product will be ultra-processed. And it's a way of describing this huge range of foods that kind of has taken over the American and the British and in fact diets all over the world. How come the food companies put this stuff in the foods? And the reason I ask is in talks I give I'll show an ingredient list from a food that most people would recognize. And ask people if they can guess what the food is from the ingredient list. And almost nobody can. There are 35 things on the ingredient list. Sugar is in there, four different forms. And then there are all kinds of things that are hard to pronounce. There are lots of strange things in there. They get in there through loopholes and government regulation. Why are they there in the first place? So, when I started looking at this I also noticed this long list of fancy sounding ingredients. And even things like peanut butter will have palm oil and emulsifiers. Cream cheese will have xanthum gum and emulsifiers. And you think, well, wouldn't it just be cheaper to make your peanut butter out of peanuts. In fact, every ingredient is in there to make money in one of two ways. Either it drives down the cost of production or storage. If you imagine using a real strawberry in your strawberry ice cream. Strawberries are expensive. They're not always in season. They rot. You've got to have a whole supply chain. Why would you use a strawberry if you could use ethyl methylphenylglycidate and pink dye and it'll taste the same. It'll look great. You could then put in a little chunky bit of modified corn starch that'll be chewy if you get it in the right gel mix. And there you go. You've got strawberries and you haven't had to deal with strawberry farmers or any supply chain. It's just you just buy bags and bottles of white powder and liquids. The other way is to extend the shelf life. Strawberries as I say, or fresh food, real food - food we might call it rots on shelves. It decays very quickly. If you can store something at room temperature in a warehouse for months and months, that saves enormous amounts of money. So, one thing is production, but the other thing is the additives allow us to consume to excess or encourage us to consume ultra-processed food to excess. So, I interviewed a scientist who was a food industry development scientist. And they said, you know, most ultra-processed food would be gray if it wasn't dyed, for example. So, if you want to make cheap food using these pastes and powders, unless you dye it and you flavor it, it will be inedible. But if you dye it and flavor it and add just the right amount of salt, sugar, flavor enhancers, then you can make these very addictive products. So that's the logic of UPF. Its purpose is to make money. And that's part of the definition. Right. So, a consumer might decide that there's, you know, beneficial trade-off for them at the end of the day. That they get things that have long shelf life. The price goes down because of the companies don't have to deal with the strawberry farmers and things like that. But if there's harm coming in waves from these things, then it changes the equation. And you found out some of that on your own. So as an experiment you did with a single person - you, you ate ultra-processed foods for a month. What did you eat and how did it affect your body, your mood, your sleep? What happened when you did this? So, what's really exciting, actually Kelly, is while it was an n=1, you know, one participant experiment, I was actually the pilot participant in a much larger study that we have published in Nature Medicine. One of the most reputable and high impact scientific journals there is. So, I was the first participant in a randomized control trial. I allowed us to gather the data about what we would then measure in a much larger number. Now we'll come back and talk about that study, which I think was really important. It was great to see it published. So, I was a bit skeptical. Partly it was with my research team at UCL, but we were also filming it for a BBC documentary. And I went into this going I'm going to eat a diet of 80% of my calories will come from ultra-processed food for four weeks. And this is a normal diet. A lifelong diet for a British teenager. We know around 20% of people in the UK and the US eat this as their normal food. They get 80% of their calories from ultra-processed products. I thought, well, nothing is going to happen to me, a middle-aged man, doing this for four weeks. But anyway, we did it kind of as a bit of fun. And we thought, well, if nothing happens, we don't have to do a bigger study. We can just publish this as a case report, and we'll leave it out of the documentary. Three big things happened. I gained a massive amount of weight, so six kilos. And I wasn't force feeding myself. I was just eating when I wanted. In American terms, that's about 15 pounds in four weeks. And that's very consistent with the other published trials that have been done on ultra-processed food. There have been two other RCTs (randomized control trials); ours is the third. There is one in Japan, one done at the NIH. So, people gain a lot of weight. I ate massively more calories. So much so that if I'd continued on the diet, I would've almost doubled my body weight in a year. And that may sound absurd, but I have an identical twin brother who did this natural experiment. He went to Harvard for a year. He did his masters there. During his year at Harvard he gained, let's see, 26 kilos, so almost 60 pounds just living in Cambridge, Massachusetts. But how did you decide how much of it to eat? Did you eat until you just kind of felt naturally full? I did what most people do most of the time, which is I just ate what I wanted when I felt like it. Which actually for me as a physician, I probably took the breaks off a bit because I don't normally have cocoa pops for breakfast. But I ate cocoa pops and if I felt like two bowls, I'd have two bowls. It turned out what I felt like a lot of mornings was four bowls and that was fine. I was barely full. So, I wasn't force feeding myself. It wasn't 'supersize' me. I was eating to appetite, which is how these experiments run. And then what we've done in the trials. So, I gained weight, then we measured my hormone response to a meal. When you eat, I mean, it's absurd to explain this to YOU. But when you eat, you have fullness hormones that go up and hunger hormones that go down, so you feel full and less hungry. And we measured my response to a standard meal at the beginning and at the end of this four-week diet. What we found is that I had a normal response to eating a big meal at the beginning of the diet. At the end of eating ultra-processed foods, the same meal caused a very blunted rise in the satiety hormones. In the 'fullness' hormones. So, I didn't feel as full. And my hunger hormones remained high. And so, the food is altering our response to all meals, not merely within the meal that we're eating. Then we did some MRI scans and again, I thought this would be a huge waste of time. But we saw at four weeks, and then again eight weeks later, very robust changes in the communication between the habit-forming bits at the back of the brain. So, the automatic behavior bits, the cerebellum. Very conscious I'm talking to YOU about this, Kelly. And the kind of addiction reward bits in the middle. Now these changes were physiological, not structural. They're about the two bits of the brain talking to each other. There's not really a new wire going between them. But we think if this kind of communication is happening a lot, that maybe a new pathway would form. And I think no one, I mean we did this with very expert neuroscientists at our National Center for Neuroscience and Neurosurgery, no one really knows what it means. But the general feeling was these are the kind of changes we might expect if we'd given someone, or a person or an animal, an addictive substance for four weeks. They're consistent with, you know, habit formation and addiction. And the fact that they happened so quickly, and they were so robust - they remained the same eight weeks after I stopped the diet, I think is really worrying from a kid's perspective. So, in a period of four weeks, it re-altered the way your brain works. It affected the way your hunger and satiety were working. And then you ended up with this massive weight. And heaven knows what sort of cardiovascular effects or other things like that might have been going on or had the early signs of that over time could have been really pretty severe, I imagine. I think one of the main effects was that I became very empathetic with my patients. Because we did actually a lot of, sort of, psychological testing as well. And there's an experience where, obviously in clinic, I mainly treat patients with infections. But many of my patients are living with other, sort of, disorders of modern life. They live with excess weight and cardiovascular disease and type two diabetes and metabolic problems and so on. And I felt in four weeks like I'd gone from being in my early 30, early 40s at the time, I felt like I'd just gone to my early 50s or 60s. I ached. I felt terrible. My sleep was bad. And it was like, oh! So many of the problems of modern life: waking up to pee in the middle of the night is because you've eaten so much sodium with your dinner. You've drunk all this water, and then you're trying to get rid of it all night. Then you're constipated. It's a low fiber diet, so you develop piles. Pain in your bum. The sleep deprivation then makes you eat more. And so, you get in this vicious cycle where the problem didn't feel like the food until I stopped and I went cold turkey. I virtually have not touched it since. It cured me of wanting UPF. That was the other amazing bit of the experience that I write about in the book is it eating it and understanding it made me not want it. It was like being told to smoke. You know, you get caught smoking as a kid and your parents are like, hey, now you finish the pack. It was that. It was an aversion experience. So, it gave me a lot of empathy with my patients that many of those kinds of things we regard as being normal aging, those symptoms are often to do with the way we are living our lives. Chris, I've talked to a lot of people about ultra-processed foods. You're the first one who's mentioned pain in the bum as one of the problems, so thank you. When I first became a physician, I trained as a surgeon, and I did a year doing colorectal surgery. So, I have a wealth of experience of where a low fiber diet leaves you. And many people listening to this podcast, I mean, look, we're all going to get piles. Everyone gets these, you know, anal fishes and so on. And bum pain it's funny to talk about it. No, not the... it destroys people's lives, so, you know, anyway. Right. I didn't want to make light of it. No, no. Okay. So, your own experiment would suggest that these foods are really bad actors and having this broad range of highly negative effects. But what does research say about these things beyond your own personal experience, including your own research? So, the food industry has been very skillful at portraying this as a kind of fad issue. As ultra-processed food is this sort of niche thing. Or it's a snobby thing. It's not a real classification. I want to be absolutely clear. UPF, the definition is used by the World Health Organization and the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization to monitor global diet quality, okay? It's a legitimate way of thinking about food. The last time I looked, there are more than 30 meta-analyses - that is reviews of big studies. And the kind of high-quality studies that we use to say cigarettes cause lung cancer. So, we've got this what we call epidemiological evidence, population data. We now have probably more than a hundred of these prospective cohort studies. And they're really powerful tools. They need to be used in conjunction with other evidence, but they now link ultra-processed food to this very wide range of what we euphemistically call negative health outcomes. You know, problems that cause human suffering, mental health problems, anxiety, depression, multiple forms of cancer, inflammatory diseases like Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, metabolic disease, cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer's and dementia. Of course, weight gain and obesity. And all cause mortality so you die earlier of all causes. And there are others too. So, the epidemiological evidence is strong and that's very plausible. So, we take that epidemiological evidence, as you well know, and we go, well look, association and causation are different things. You know, do matches cause cancer or does cigarettes cause cancer? Because people who buy lots of matches are also getting the lung cancer. And obviously epidemiologists are very sophisticated at teasing all this out. But we look at it in the context then of other evidence. My group published the third randomized control trial where we put a group of people, in a very controlled way, on a diet of either minimally processed food or ultra-processed food and looked at health outcomes. And we found what the other two trials did. We looked at weight gain as a primary outcome. It was a short trial, eight weeks. And we saw people just eat more calories on the ultra-processed food. This is food that is engineered to be consumed to excess. That's its purpose. So maybe to really understand the effect of it, you have to imagine if you are a food development engineer working in product design at a big food company - if you develop a food that's cheap to make and people will just eat loads of it and enjoy it, and then come back for it again and again and again, and eat it every day and almost become addicted to it, you are going to get promoted. That product is going to do well on the shelves. If you invent a food that's not addictive, it's very healthy, it's very satisfying, people eat it and then they're done for the day. And they don't consume it to excess. You are not going to keep your job. So that's a really important way of understanding the development process of the foods. So let me ask a question about industry and intent. Because one could say that the industry engineers these things to have long shelf life and nice physical properties and the right colors and things like this. And these effects on metabolism and appetite and stuff are unpleasant and difficult side effects, but the foods weren't made to produce those things. They weren't made to produce over consumption and then in turn produce those negative consequences. You're saying something different. That you think that they're intentionally designed to promote over consumption. And in some ways, how could the industry do otherwise? I mean, every industry in the world wants people to over consume or consume as much of their product as they can. The food industry is no different. That is exactly right. The food industry behaves like every other corporation. In my view, they commit evil acts sometimes, but they're not institutionally evil. And I have dear friends who work in big food, who work in big pharma. I have friends who work in tobacco. These are not evil people. They're constrained by commercial incentives, right? So, when I say I think the food is engineered, I don't think it. I know it because I've gone and interviewed loads of people in product development at big food companies. I put some of these interviewees in a BBC documentary called Irresistible. So rather than me in the documentary going, oh, ultra-processed food is bad. And everyone going, well, you are, you're a public health bore. I just got industry insiders to say, yes, this is how we make the food. And going back to Howard Moskovitz, in the 1970s, I think he was working for the Campbell Soup Company. And Howard, who was a psychologist by training, outlined the development process. And what he said was then underlined by many other people I've spoken to. You develop two different products. This one's a little bit saltier than the next, and you test them on a bunch of people. People like the saltier ones. So now you keep the saltier one and you develop a third product and this one's got a bit more sugar in it. And if this one does better, well you keep this one and you keep AB testing until you get people buying and eating lots. And one of the crucial things that food companies measure in product development is how fast do people eat and how quickly do they eat. And these kind of development tools were pioneered by the tobacco industry. I mean, Laura Schmidt has done a huge amount of the work on this. She's at University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), in California. And we know the tobacco industry bought the food industry and for a while in the '80s and '90s, the biggest food companies in the world were also the biggest tobacco companies in the world. And they used their flavor molecules and their marketing techniques and their distribution systems. You know, they've got a set of convenience tools selling cigarettes all over the country. Well, why don't we sell long shelf-life food marketed in the same way? And one thing that the tobacco industry was extremely good at was figuring out how to get the most rapid delivery of the drug possible into the human body when people smoke. Do you think that some of that same thing is true for food, rapid delivery of sugar, let's say? How close does the drug parallel fit, do you think? So, that's part of the reason the speed of consumption is important. Now, I think Ashley Gearhardt has done some of the most incredible work on this. And what Ashley says is we think of addictive drugs as like it's the molecule that's addictive. It's nicotine, it's caffeine, cocaine, diamorphine, heroin, the amphetamines. What we get addicted to is the molecule. And that Ashley says no. The processing of that molecule is crucially important. If you have slow-release nicotine in a chewing gum, that can actually treat your nicotine addiction. It's not very addictive. Slow-release amphetamine we use to treat children with attention and behavioral problems. Slow-release cocaine is an anesthetic. You use it for dentistry. No one ever gets addicted to dental anesthetics. And the food is the same. The rewarding molecules in the food we think are mainly the fat and the sugar. And food that requires a lot of chewing and is slow eaten slowly, you don't deliver the reward as quickly. And it tends not to be very addictive. Very soft foods or liquid foods with particular fat sugar ratios, if you deliver the nutrients into the gut fast, that seems to be really important for driving excessive consumption. And I think the growing evidence around addiction is very persuasive. I mean, my patients report feeling addicted to the food. And I don't feel it's legitimate to question their experience. Chris, a little interesting story about that concept of food and addiction. So going back several decades I was a professor at Yale, and I was teaching a graduate course. Ashley Gerhardt was a student in that course. And, she was there to study addiction, not in the context of food, but I brought up the issue of, you know, could food be addictive? There's some interesting research on this. It's consistent with what we're hearing from people, and that seems a really interesting topic. And Ashley, I give her credit, took this on as her life's work and now she's like the leading expert in the world on this very important topic. And what's nice for me to recall that story is that how fast the science on this is developed. And now something's coming out on this almost every day. It's some new research on the neuroscience of food and addiction and how the food is hijacking in the brain. And that whole concept of addiction seems really important in this context. And I know you've talked a lot about that yourself. She has reframed, I think, this idea about the way that addictive substances and behaviors really work. I mean it turns everything on its head to go the processing is important. The thing the food companies have always been able to say is, look, you can't say food is addictive. It doesn't contain any addictive molecules. And with Ashley's work you go, no, but the thing is it contains rewarding molecules and actually the spectrum of molecules that we can find rewarding and we can deliver fast is much, much broader than the traditionally addictive substances. For policy, it's vital because part of regulating the tobacco industry was about showing they know they are making addictive products. And I think this is where Ashley's work and Laura Schmidt's work are coming together. With Laura's digging in the tobacco archive, Ashley's doing the science on addiction, and I think these two things are going to come together. And I think it's just going to be a really exciting space to watch. I completely agree. You know when most people think about the word addiction, they basically kind of default to thinking about how much you want something. How much, you know, you desire something. But there are other parts of it that are really relevant here too. I mean one is how do you feel if you don't have it and sort of classic withdrawal. And people talk about, for example, being on high sugar drinks and stopping them and having withdrawal symptoms and things like that. And the other part of it that I think is really interesting here is tolerance. You know whether you need more of the substance over time in order to get the same reward benefit. And that hasn't been studied as much as the other part of addiction. But there's a lot to the picture other than just kind of craving things. And I would say that the thing I like about this is it chimes with my. Personal experience, which is, I have tried alcohol and cigarettes and I should probably end that list there. But I've never had any real desire for more of them. They aren't the things that tickle my brain. Whereas the food is a thing that I continue to struggle with. I would say in some senses, although I no longer like ultra-processed food at some level, I still want it. And I think of myself to some degree, without trivializing anyone's experience, to some degree I think I'm in sort of recovery from it. And it remains that tussle. I mean I don't know what you think about the difference between the kind of wanting and liking of different substances. Some scientists think those two things are quite, quite different. That you can like things you don't want, and you can want things you don't like. Well, that's exactly right. In the context of food and traditional substances of abuse, for many of them, people start consuming because they produce some sort of desired effect. But that pretty quickly goes away, and people then need the substance because if they don't have it, they feel terrible. So, you know, morphine or heroin or something like that always produces positive effects. But that initial part of the equation where you just take it because you like it turns into this needing it and having to have it. And whether that same thing exists with food is an interesting topic. I think the other really important part of the addiction argument in policy terms is that one counterargument by industrial scientists and advocates is by raising awareness around ultra-processed food we are at risk of driving, eating disorders. You know? The phenomenon of orthorexia, food avoidance, anorexia. Because all food is good food. There should be no moral value attached to food and we mustn't drive any food anxiety. And I think there are some really strong voices in the United Kingdom Eating Disorder scientists. People like Agnes Ayton, who are starting to say, look, when food is engineered, using brain scanners and using scientific development techniques to be consumed to excess, is it any wonder that people develop a disordered relationship with the food? And there may be a way of thinking about the rise of eating disorders, which is parallel to the rise of our consumption of ultra-processed food, that eating disorders are a reasonable response to a disordered food environment. And I think that's where I say all that somewhat tentatively. I feel like this is a safe space where you will correct me if I go off piste. But I think it's important to at least explore that question and go, you know, this is food with which it is very hard, I would say, to have a healthy relationship. That's my experience. And I think the early research is bearing that out. Tell us how these foods affect your hunger, how full you feel, your microbiome. That whole sort of interactive set of signals that might put people in harmony with food in a normal environment but gets thrown off when the foods get processed like this. Oh, I love that question. At some level as I'm understanding that question, one way of trying to answer that question is to go, well, what is the normal physiological response to food? Or maybe how do wild animals find, consume, and then interpret metabolically the food that they eat. And it is staggering how little we know about how we learn what food is safe and what food nourishes us. What's very clear is that wild mammals, and in fact all wild animals, are able to maintain near perfect energy balance. Obesity is basically unheard of in the wild. And, perfect nutritional intake, I mean, obviously there are famines in wild animals, but broadly, animals can do this without being literate, without being given packaging, without any nutritional advice at all. So, if you imagine an ungulate, an herbivore on the plains of the Serengeti, it has a huge difficulty. The carnivore turning herbivore into carnivore is fairly easy. They're made of the same stuff. Turning plant material into mammal is really complicated. And somehow the herbivore can do this without gaining weight, whilst maintaining total precision over its selenium intake, its manganese, its cobalt, its iron, all of which are terrible if you have too little and also terrible if you have too much. We understand there's some work done in a few wild animals, goats, and rats about how this works. Clearly, we have an ability to sense the nutrition we want. What we understand much more about is the sort of quantities needed. And so, we've ended up with a system of nutritional advice that says, well, just eat these numbers. And if you can stick to the numbers, 2,500 calories a day, 2300 milligrams of sodium, no more than 5% of your calories from free sugar or 10%, whatever it is, you know, you stick to these numbers, you'll be okay. And also, these many milligrams of cobalt, manganese, selenium, iron, zinc, all the rest of it. And obviously people can't really do that even with the packaging. This is a very long-winded answer. So, there's this system that is exquisitely sensitive at regulating micronutrient and energy intake. And what we understand, what the Academy understands about how ultra-processed food subverts this is, I would say there are sort of three or four big things that ultra-processed does that real food doesn't. It's generally very soft. And it's generally very energy dense. And that is true of even the foods that we think of as being healthy. That's like your supermarket whole grain bread. It's incredibly energy dense. It's incredibly soft. You eat calories very fast, and this research was done in the '90s, you know we've known that that kind of food promotes excessive intake. I guess in simple terms, and you would finesse this, you consume calories before your body has time to go, well, you've eaten enough. You can consume an excess. Then there's the ratios of fat, salt, and sugar and the way you can balance them, and any good cook knows if you can get the acid, fat, salt, sugar ratios right, you can make incredibly delicious food. That's kind of what I would call hyper palatability. And a lot of that work's being done in the states (US) by some incredible people. Then the food may be that because it's low in fiber and low in protein, quite often it's not satiating. And there may be, because it's also low in micronutrients and general nutrition, it may be that, and this is a little bit theoretical, but there's some evidence for this. Part of what drives the excess consumption is you're kind of searching for the nutrients. The nutrients are so dilute that you have to eat loads of it in order to get enough. Do you think, does that, is that how you understand it? It does, it makes perfect sense. In fact, I'm glad you brought up one particular issue because part of the ultra-processing that makes foods difficult for the body to deal with involves what gets put in, but also what gets taken out. And there was a study that got published recently that I think you and I might have discussed earlier on American breakfast cereals. And this study looked at how the formulation of them had changed over a period of about 20 years. And what they found is that the industry had systematically removed the protein and the fiber and then put in more things like sugar. So there, there's both what goes in and what gets taken out of foods that affects the body in this way. You know, what I hear you saying, and what I, you know, believe myself from the science, is the body's pretty capable of handling the food environment if food comes from the natural environment. You know, if you sit down to a meal of baked chicken and some beans and some leafy greens and maybe a little fruit or something, you're not going to overdo it. Over time you'd end up with the right mix of nutrients and things like that and you'd be pretty healthy. But all bets are off when these foods get processed and engineered, so you over consume them. You found that out in the experiment that you did on yourself. And then that's what science shows too. So, it's not like these things are sort of benign. People overeat them and they ought to just push away from the table. There's a lot more going on here in terms of hijacking the brain chemistry. Overriding the body signals. Really thwarting normal biology. Do you think it's important to add that we think of obesity as being the kind of dominant public health problem? That's the thing we all worry about. But the obesity is going hand in hand with stunting, for example. So, height as you reach adulthood in the US, at 19 US adults are something like eight or nine centimeters shorter than their counterparts in Northern Europe, Scandinavia, where people still eat more whole food. And we should come back to that evidence around harms, because I think the really important thing to say around the evidence is it has now reached the threshold for causality. So, we can say a dietary pattern high in ultra-processed food causes all of these negative health outcomes. That doesn't mean that any one product is going to kill you. It just means if this is the way you get your food, it's going to be harmful. And if all the evidence says, I mean, we've known this for decades. If you can cook the kind of meal, you just described at home, which is more or less the way that high income people eat, you are likely to have way better health outcomes across the board. Let me ask you about the title of your book. So, the subtitle of your book is Why We Can't Stop Eating Food That Isn't Food. So, what is it? The ultra-processed definition is something I want to pay credit for. It's really important to pay a bit of credit here. Carlos Montero was the scientist in Brazil who led a team who together came up with this definition. And, I was speaking to Fernanda Rauber who was on that team, and we were trying to discuss some research we were doing. And every time I said food, she'd correct me and go, it is not, it's not food, Chris. It's an industrially produced edible substance. And that was a really helpful thing for me personally, it's something it went into my brain, and I sat down that night. I was actually on the UPF diet, and I sat down to eat some fried chicken wings from a popular chain that many people will know. And was unable to finish them. I think our shared understanding of the purpose of food is surely that its purpose is to nourish us. Whether it's, you know, sold by someone for this purpose, or whether it's made by someone at home. You know it should nourish us spiritually, socially, culturally, and of course physically and mentally. And ultra-processed food nourishes us in no dimension whatsoever. It destroys traditional knowledge, traditional land, food culture. You don't sit down with your family and break, you know, ultra-processed, you know, crisps together. You know, you break bread. To me that's a kind of very obvious distortion of what it's become. So, I don't think it is food. You know, I think it's not too hard of a stretch to see a time when people might consider these things non-food. Because if you think of food, what's edible and whether it's food or not is completely socially constructed. I mean, some parts of the world, people eat cockroaches or ants or other insects. And in other parts of the world that's considered non-food. So just because something's edible doesn't mean that it's food. And I wonder if at some point we might start to think of these things as, oh my God, these are awful. They're really bad for us. The companies are preying on us, and it's just not food. And yeah, totally your book helps push us in that direction. I love your optimism. The consumer facing marketing budget of a big food company is often in excess of $10 billion a year. And depends how you calculate it. I'll give you a quick quiz on this. So, for a while, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation was by far the biggest funder of research in the world on childhood obesity. And they were spending $500 million a year to address this problem. Just by which day of the year the food industry has already spent $500 million just advertising just junk food just to children. Okay, so the Robert V. Wood Foundation is spending it and they were spending that annually. Annually, right. So, what's, by what day of the year is the food industry already spent that amount? Just junk food advertising just to kids. I'm going to say by somewhere in early spring. No. January 4th. I mean, it's hysterical, but it's also horrifying. So, this is the genius of ultra-processed food, of the definition and the science, is that it creates this category which is discretionary. And so at least in theory, of course, for many people in the US it's not discretionary at all. It's the only stuff they can afford. But this is why the food industry hate it so much is because it offers the possibility of going, we can redefine food. And there is all this real food over there. And there is this UPF stuff that isn't food over here. But industry's very sophisticated, you know. I mean, they push back very hard against me in many different ways and forms. And they're very good at going, well, you're a snob. How dare you say that families with low incomes, that they're not eating food. Are you calling them dupes? Are you calling them stupid? You know, they're very, very sophisticated at positioning. Isn't it nice how concerned they are about the wellbeing of people without means? I mean they have created a pricing structure and a food subsidy environment and a tax environment where essentially people with low incomes in your country, in my country, are forced to eat food that harms them. So, one of the tells I think is if you're hearing someone criticize ultra-processed food, and you'll read them in the New York Times. And often their conflicts of interest won't be reported. They may be quite hidden. The clue is, are they demanding to seriously improve the food environment in a very clear way, or are they only criticizing the evidence around ultra-processed food? And if they're only criticizing that evidence? I'll bet you a pound to a pinch of salt they'll be food-industry funded. Let's talk about that. Let's talk about that a little more. So, there's a clear pattern of scientists who take money from industry finding things that favor industry. Otherwise, industry wouldn't pay that money. They're not stupid in the way they invest. And, you and I have talked about this before, but we did a study some years ago where we looked at industry and non-industry funded study on the health effects of consuming sugar sweetened beverages. And it's like the ocean parted. It's one of my favorites. And it was something like 98 or 99% of the independently funded studies found that sugar sweetened beverages do cause harm. And 98 or 99% of the industry funded studies funded by Snapple and Coke and a whole bunch of other companies found that they did not cause harm. It was that stark, was it? It was. And so you and I pay attention to the little print in these scientific studies about who's funded them and who might have conflicts of interest. And maybe you and I and other people who follow science closely might be able to dismiss those conflicted studies. But they have a big impact out there in the world, don't they? I had a meeting in London with someone recently, that they themselves were conflicted and they said, look, if a health study's funded by a big sugary drink company, if it's good science, that's fine. We should publish it and we should take it at face value. And in the discussion with them, I kind of accepted that, we were talking about other things. And afterwards I was like, no. If a study on human health is funded by a sugary drink corporation, in my opinion, we could just tear that up. None of that should be published. No journals should publish those studies and scientists should not really call themselves scientists who are doing it. It is better thought of as marketing and food industry-funded scientists who study human health, in my opinion, are better thought of as really an extension of the marketing division of the companies. You know, it's interesting when you talk to scientists, and you ask them do people who take money from industry is their work influenced by that money? They'll say yes. Yeah, but if you say, but if you take money from industry, will your work be influenced? They'll always say no. Oh yeah. There's this tremendous arrogance, blind spot, whatever it is that. I can remain untarnished. I can remain objective, and I can help change the industry from within. In the meantime, I'm having enough money to buy a house in the mountains, you know, from what they're paying me, and it's really pretty striking. Well, the money is a huge issue. You know, science, modern science it's not a very lucrative career compared to if someone like you went and worked in industry, you would add a zero to the end of your salary, possibly more. And the same is true of me. I think one of the things that adds real heft to the independent science is that the scientists are taking a pay cut to do it. So how do children figure in? Do you think children are being groomed by the industry to eat these foods? A senator, I think in Chile, got in hot water for comparing big food companies to kind of sex offenders. He made, in my view, a fairly legitimate comparison. I mean, the companies are knowingly selling harmful products that have addictive properties using the language of addiction to children who even if they could read warning labels, the warning labels aren't on the packs. So, I mean, we have breakfast cereals called Crave. We have slogans like, once you stop, once you pop, you can't stop. Bet you can't just eat one. Yeah, I think it is predatory and children are the most vulnerable group in our society. And you can't just blame the parents. Once kids get to 10, they have a little bit of money. They get their pocket money, they're walking to school, they walk past stores. You know, you have to rely on them making decisions. And at the moment, they're in a very poor environment to make good decisions. Perhaps the most important question of all what can be done. So, I'm speaking to you at a kind of funny moment because I've been feeling that a lot of my research and advocacy, broadcasting... you know, I've made documentaries, podcasts, I've written a book, I've published these papers. I've been in most of the major newspapers and during the time I've been doing this, you know, a little under 10 years I've been really focused on food. Much less time than you. Everything has got worse. Everything I've done has really failed totally. And I think this is a discussion about power, about unregulated corporate power. And the one glimmer of hope is this complaint that's been filed in Pennsylvania by a big US law firm. It's a very detailed complaint and some lawyers on behalf of a young person called Bryce Martinez are suing the food industry for causing kidney problems and type two diabetes. And I think that in the end is what's going to be needed. Strategic litigation. That's the only thing that worked with tobacco. All of the science, it eventually was useful, but the science on its own and the advocacy and the campaigning and all of it did no good until the lawyers said we would like billions and billions of dollars in compensation please. You know, this is an exciting moment, but there were a great many failed lawsuits for tobacco before the master settlement agreement in the '90s really sort of changed the game. You know, I agree with you. Are you, are you optimistic? I mean, what do you think? I am, and for exactly the same reason you are. You know, the poor people that worked on public health and tobacco labored for decades without anything happening long, long after the health consequences of cigarette smoking were well known. And we've done the same thing. I mean, those us who have been working in the field for all these years have seen precious little in the ways of policy advances. Now tobacco has undergone a complete transformation with high taxes on cigarettes, and marketing restrictions, and non-smoking in public places, laws, and things like that, that really have completely driven down the consumption of cigarettes, which has been a great public health victory. But what made those policies possible was the litigation that occurred by the state attorneys general, less so the private litigating attorneys. But the state attorneys general in the US that had discovery documents released. People began to understand more fully the duplicity of the tobacco companies. That gave cover for the politicians to start passing the policies that ultimately made the big difference. I think that same history is playing out here. The state attorneys general, as we both know, are starting to get interested in this. I say hurray to that. There is the private lawsuit that you mentioned, and there's some others in the mix as well. I think those things will bring a lot of propel the release of internal documents that will show people what the industry has been doing and how much of this they've known all along. And then all of a sudden some of these policy things like taxes, for example, on sugared beverages, might come in and really make a difference. That's my hope. But it makes me optimistic. Well, I'm really pleased to hear that because I think in your position it would be possible. You know, I'm still, two decades behind where I might be in my pessimism. One of the kind of engines of this problem to me is these conflicts of interest where people who say, I'm a physician, I'm a scientist, I believe all this. And they're quietly paid by the food industry. This was the major way the tobacco industry had a kind of social license. They were respectable. And I do hope the lawsuits, one of their functions is it becomes a little bit embarrassing to say my research institute is funded [by a company that keeps making headlines every day because more documents are coming out in court, and they're being sued by more and more people. So, I hope that this will diminish the conflict, particularly between scientists and physicians in the food industry. Because that to me, those are my biggest opponents. The food industry is really nice. They throw money at me. But it's the conflicted scientists that are really hard to argue with because they appear so respectable. Bio Dr. Chris van Tulleken is a physician and a professor of Infection and Global Health at University College London. He trained at Oxford and earned his PhD in molecular virology from University College London. His research focuses on how corporations affect human health especially in the context of child nutrition and he works with UNICEF and The World Health Organization on this area. He is the author of a book entitled Ultraprocessed People: Why We Can't Stop Eating Food That Isn't Food. As one of the BBC's leading broadcasters for children and adults his work has won two BAFTAs. He lives in London with his wife and two children.

In today's episode, I talk with Michael and Leela Hunter, the creators of UpSpiral Life — a year-long program and community that combines IFS, manifestation, and neurofeedback. We explore what manifestation really means through an IFS lens, how subconscious parts shape our experience, and why “feeling good” is a nervous system state we can track and train. Our conversation explores how IFS intersects with manifestation, nervous system states, and the beliefs our parts hold about what's possible. Key takeaways: How parts influence what we manifest Self Energy as a measurable frequency Why some protectors are allergic to “feeling good” How neurofeedback can support deeper IFS work Shifting vibration is getting curious about what's happening inside Michael is the founder of UpSpiral.Life, a program and community that helps people move from burnout and disconnection into greater flow, purpose, and alignment. With a background in acupuncture and the arts, Michael guides clients through personal transformation by challenging modern conditioning and helping them reconnect with what truly matters. Leela is an IFS therapist, consultant, and the Clinical Director of UpSpiral.Life. She supports clients in exploring limiting beliefs and emotional burdens with compassion and curiosity. As an Afghan Muslim woman with over 15 years of experience, Leela brings cultural depth and personal insight to her healing work. Don't miss my extended interview clip with Michael and Leela on The One Inside Substack.  Episode Sponsor: Pause With Laura ✨ Give your hard working parts some rest by joining Laura Schmidt, seasoned IFS therapist, for a restorative IFS retreat this Fall at Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health. September 14-19 IFS & LifeForce Yoga Retreat for all October 19-22  Restore YourSelf Retreat for IFS Professionals

In the early 1960s, R.J. Reynolds, one of the largest and most profitable tobacco companies in the U.S. at the time, wanted to diversify its business. Its marketing strategies had been highly successful in selling its top brands, like Camel, Winston and Salem cigarettes, and executives thought, Why not apply the same strategies to, say, the food industry?So in 1963, R.J. Reynolds acquired Hawaiian Punch. It marked the beginning of the tobacco industry's entry into the food sector. In the following decades, R.J. Reynolds and Philip Morris expanded aggressively into the food industry, acquiring major brands, like Del Monte, Nabisco, General Foods, Kraft and 7UP, where they produced hyperpalatable, chemically-engineered foods now known as ultra-processed foods, or UPFs. These products were marketed especially to children and other vulnerable groups. In Berkeley Talks episode 229, Laura Schmidt, a professor of health policy in the School of Medicine at UC San Francisco, discusses how ultra-processed foods — like cookies, sodas, instant noodles, fish sticks and cereals — are a direct legacy of the tobacco industry, and are responsible for a dramatic rise in obesity, diabetes and other chronic diseases across the country. “About 60% of the calories in Americans' diets are from ultra-processed foods,” says Schmidt, who spoke at a UC Berkeley event in May. “In the mid-'80s, when we see ultra-processed foods starting to scale up in the American food supply, we also see obesity starting to really rise. That is the moment when some of the largest food companies are owned by tobacco companies.”This talk took place on May 5, 2025, and was co-sponsored by the Berkeley Food Institute (BFI) and Berkeley Public Health. It was moderated by Isabel Madzorera, an assistant professor in food, nutrition and population health at Berkeley Public Health and co-faculty director at the Berkeley Food Institute.Watch a video of the event on the Berkeley Food Institute's YouTube page.Listen to the episode and read the transcript on UC Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts).Music by HoliznaCC0.Photo by Cory Doctorow via Wikimedia Commons. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

You can get all of our full show notes, newsletter, and ad-free listening at wickedproblems.earth.Do you need some Zen? I need a bit of that or something, just to get my head right. So we spoke with LaUra Schmidt, one-half of the dynamic duo of climate psychology along with her Good Grief Network co-founder and wife Aimee Lewis Reau, who wrote How to Live in a Chaotic Climate that was published a little over a year ago. And blimey we need more of their coping strategies than we ever thought we would when the book first came out.We get into climate grief, trauma, and resilience with Schmidt. We argue the challenges of individual versus collective climate action, the science and spiritual dimensions of environmental advocacy, and the importance of community in building resilience.Schmidt shares insights from her experiences growing up in rural Michigan, studying Buddhism, biology, and environmental science, and her efforts to help people cope with the emotional toll of climate change through the Good Grief Network's 10-step program.We also touch on the significance of finding meaning, joy, and humor amidst the chaos, while preparing for an uncertain future.02:12 Conversation with Laura Schmidt04:53 Laura's Background and Motivations16:09 The Good Grief Network24:56 The Long Dark: Seeds of Creativity25:37 Ancient Wisdom and Cultural Narratives29:29 Stories of Resilience and Human Agency31:05 The Role of Community in Modern Times38:13 Upcoming Events and Final Thoughts Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Is your healthcare tech solution experiencing high initial adoption but then watching patients drop off? Discover why 70% of remote monitoring platforms fail after enrollment, and learn the critical case management component that could save your $2M+ company from becoming another statistic.In this episode of Health Tech Growth, we dive deep into the "first date" phenomenon in healthcare technology - that exciting initial user engagement that quickly fades without proper clinical integration. Our expert guests reveal the missing link between technological innovation and sustainable patient adoption.What you'll learn:

Komplizierte Themen der Wissenschaft so kommuniziert, dass es die Menschen verstehen. Spannende Einblicke in die Umweltforschungsstation Schneefernerhaus auf der Zugspitze.

Americans are sugar obsessed. Can we cut back without making life feel less sweet? This Halloween, sugar studies expert Laura Schmidt shares tips for taming your sweet tooth. Plus, why she says we need to stop debating if sugar is addictive. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I've had many incredible women join me in conversation for many Loving Later Life episodes. As you may remember, with each guest, I ask the same 3 questions at the end of each conversation: 1. What for you have been the most rewarding things about getting older? 2. What are some of the most important lessons you have learned in your life. 3. With all that you have learned, what life advice would you pass along? In this anniversary episode I put together a highlight reel of their answers, taking one question at a time. Listening to this again you will be reminded of the wisdom they shared. There is gold in them there conversations! Take a listen and share it forward!  

In dieser Episode spricht Host Moritz Meyer mit Laura Schmidt von Snocks. Nach ihren Stationen beim Marktplatz About You und beim Aggregator OnQuality steuert Laura nun als Senior Marketing Managerin alle Marketplace Aktivitäten von Snocks - mit Ausnahme von Amazon. Laura kennt die Marketplace Landschaft damit in- und auswendig und teilt im Gespräch mit Moritz neben spannenden Insights zur Marke Snocks auch hilfreiche, operative Marketplace Hacks. Auf welcheN Marketplaces ist Snocks neben Amazon noch aktiv? Welches allgemeine Strategie verfolgt Snocks auf Zalando, About You, OTTO, Limango & Co. und wie relevant sind die einzelnen Marktplätze jeweils? Wie sieht die Multi-Channel Sortimentsstrategie von Snocks aus und wie wirkt sich der starke Amazon Fokus der Brand auf das Vorgehen auf anderen Marktplätzen aus? Laura spricht insbesondere über OTTO Market und teilt ihre ErfahrungEN zu den Themen Content, Sponsored Advertising und Reportings auf OTTO mit uns. Wie lassen sich OTTO Lisitings optimieren? Welche Produktdaten müssen unbedingt gepflegt sein? Wie setzt Snocks Sponsored Product Kampagnen ein und wo hapert es bei OTTOs Sponsored Display Anzeigen noch? Abschließend erklärt Laura, warum Limango ein Hidden Gem ist und mit welcher Strategie Snocks auch auf diesem, an sich kleinen Marktplatz, erfolgreich Umsätze generiert.

This episode is dedicated to a sweet little ole lady named Laura Schmidt.  Hear more about Miss Laura in the episode.  Dan Hernandez and Kerry Dulina of Rough Runners Run 4 a Reason in Savannah are two dear friends of mine and just 2 awesome members of the ultra-running community as well as their local community.  They not only put on great races, but they also go out of their way to positively impact the community.  A lot of us can learn from them how we can carry that mindset into our daily lives.  We recap the Bronze Dragonfly races as well as discuss many of their other races, particularly Daufuskie Island 100.  Enjoy!Run 4 a Reason's Rough Runners – Road Runners, Trail Runners, All Runners (roughrunnersr4r.com)@roughrunnersSquirrel's Nut Butter: Natural Anti-Chafe & Skin Restoring Salves (squirrelsnutbutter.com) discount code  - Timberfriends St. Pete Running Company Florida | Top 50 Running Store (stpeterunningco.com)discount code - MWM20Home - PlayOn Reliefdiscount code - martygardner15@pacertravel

Joining us on the 21st Century Vitalism podcast this week is cofounder of the Good Grief Network, LaUra Schmidt. In this episode we discuss their work in creating the '10 Steps to Resilience and Empowerment in a Chaotic Climate' program. Acknowledging the dire circumstances of our increasingly dangerous predicament, we explore some somatic practices that we can use to nurture our grief while making the necessary changes to show up for ourselves and others.  LaUra's newest book, 'How to Live In a Chaotic Climate' is out now wherever you order your books. The preferred retailer is in the links section down below!  Show Topics - What is the Good Grief Network? - Alienation of those Grieving the Planet - Learning how to Face our Grief - Why and How we Disconnect - What is a Healthy Container for Healing? - The Ten Step Program for Resiliency in a Chaotic Climate - Reaction vs. Responding - Learning how to Pause and the Frenetic Nature of our Culture - Importance of Acknowledging the Severity of the Situation - The Value of Grief - Addressing The Mortality of All Things - Hero Figures and Appreciating Ordinariness - The Importance of Community LINKS How To Live In a Chaotic Climate Book goodgriefnetwork.org

Am 24. Februar 2022 werden Europa und die Welt in ihren modernen Grundfesten erschüttert. Zum ersten mal seit dem zweiten Weltkrieg beginnt ein offener Angriffskrieg mitten auf dem europäischen Kontinent. Russland marschiert offen in die Ukraine ein. Der darauffolgende Kampf wird geprägt von Kriegsverbrechen, von Gewalt gegen die Zivilbevölkerung und von der Tatsache, wie unmittelbar uns Informationen über die russischen Gräueltaten erreichen. Denn der Ukrainekrieg ist auch eine Zeitenwende. Ein digitaler Krieg, der auch im Informationsraum stattfindet. Und ein Konflikt, in dem Europa mehr Einfluss hat, als Viele wahrhaben wollen. In dieser dreiteiligen Podcast-Serie von "Thema des Tages" versuchen wir, diesen unfassbaren Ukrainekrieg zu erklären. Von den oft vergessenen Anfängen. Über die Brutalität von mehr als zwei Jahren Krieg. Bis hin zu den geopolitischen Folgen, die wir noch für Generationen spüren werden. Das ist Teil zwei der Serie: Der Überlebenskampf. **Mehr zum Thema** [Der Ukraine-Krieg, erklärt (1/3): Die stille Invasion](https://open.spotify.com/episode/72h7qVL9o0KS7L7NOtzBty?si=DO-nImGkQYS8G8RvFEAB0A) ["Für mich hat sich alles geändert, als ich erstmals den Tod eines Kindes sah"](https://www.derstandard.at/story/3000000214658/fuer-mich-hat-sich-alles-geaendert-als-ich-erstmals-den-tod-eines-kindes-sah) Zu hören sind Markus Reisner vom Österreichischen Bundesheer und Wassylyssa Stepanenko, Journalistin bei der Associated Press und Oscargewinnerin mit "20 Tage in Mariupol". Mitarbeit: Zsolt Wilhelm, Margit Ehrenhöfer, Christoph Neuwirth, Laura Schmidt. Weitere Unterstützung: Stefan Schocher, Svitlana Mironchuk. In diesem Podcast wird Audiomaterial von folgenden Medien zitiert: ORF, ARD, "Welt", "Der Spiegel".

There’s no data better suited to a farm than data derived FROM that farm. Designing and executing an on-farm field trial can be incredibly valuable for informing changes in production practices, but it’s key that the trial be designed to deliver solid data. To tackle what it takes to get the most out of on-farm... Read More

There’s no data better suited to a farm than data derived FROM that farm. Designing and executing an on-farm field trial can be incredibly valuable for informing changes in production practices, but it’s key that the trial be designed to deliver solid data. To tackle what it takes to get the most out of on-farm... Read More

Thomas and Panu were joined by LaUra Schmidt, co- founder of the Good Grief Network and co-author of How to Live in a Chaotic Climate. Laura shared her journey of combining her background in biology and environmental studies with trauma healing and psychology to address the emotional toll of climate change. She, Panu and Thomas discussed how the 12-step inspired Good Grief program helps individuals process their grief and find resilience about climate breakdown in a safe and supportive environment. Along the way, they looked deeper at the process of steps like accepting the severity of the environmental predicament, being with uncertainty, and honoring mortality; and the importance of peer support, accountability, and finding one's unique way of taking action. Join us for an inspiring conversation!

Once soybeans are up and out of the ground, the crop can be quite resilient. What’s more, soybeans are proving hardier than first thought, and new research suggests that planting earlier — even before corn or canola — can yield good results. In this episode of the Soybean School, Laura Schmidt, production specialist with the... Read More

Thanks for tuning into this Agronomic Monday edition of RealAg Radio! On this episode, host Shaun Haney is joined by RealAgriculture's in-house agronomist, Peter ‘Wheat Pete' Johnson to discuss the Great Lakes YEN program, the basics of drainage, agvocating for agriculture, and more! Also hear from Laura Schmidt with Manitoba Pulse Growers Association on planting... Read More

Thanks for tuning into this Agronomic Monday edition of RealAg Radio! On this episode, host Shaun Haney is joined by RealAgriculture's in-house agronomist, Peter ‘Wheat Pete' Johnson to discuss the Great Lakes YEN program, the basics of drainage, agvocating for agriculture, and more! Also hear from Laura Schmidt with Manitoba Pulse Growers Association on planting... Read More

LaUra Schmidt visits Crazy Town to discuss her work with the Good Grief Network and her book, How to Live in a Chaotic Climate: 10 Steps to Reconnect with Ourselves, Our Communities, and Our Planet. Along the way, she shares wisdom and insights on courage, taking meaningful action, terror management theory, and practices for processing the strong emotions that accompany facing climate change and other aspects of the polycrisis.Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.Sources/Links/Notes:LaUra's book, How to Live in a Chaotic Climate: 10 Steps to Reconnect with Ourselves, Our Communities, and Our PlanetThe Good Grief Network's 10 Step ProgramLaUra mentioned Bayo Akomolafe and his work on "questioning our questions."Joanna Macy and The Work That ReconnectsVideo of Dr. Andrew Weil's 4-7-8 breathing techniqueDavid Graeber's book Bullshit JobsCrazy Town episode 34, "Fear of Death and Climate Denial, or... the Story of Wolverine and the Screaming Mole of Doom"Fiftieth anniversary book review in the New York Times: Ernest Becker's The Denial of DeathAyisha Siddiqa's poem "On Another Panel about Climate, They Ask Me to Sell the Future and All I've Got Is a Love Poem"Support the show

LaUra Schmidt is the founder of the Good Grief Network and the brain behind the “10-Steps to Resilience & Empowerment in a Chaotic Climate” program and the FLOW Facilitation Training modality. She is a lifelong student, curator, and practitioner of personal and collective resilience strategies. LaUra holds a BS in Environmental Studies, Biology, and Religious Studies and an MS is in Environmental Humanities. LaUra has earned certificates in “Integrative Somatic Trauma Therapy” and “Climate Psychology.”LaUra's new book on eco-distress, How to Live in a Chaotic Climate: 10 Steps to Reconnect with Ourselves, Our Communities, and Our Planet, is available through Shambhala Publications. Aimee Lewis Reau is the cofounder of the Good Grief Network and the heart behind the “10-Steps to Resilience & Empowerment in a Chaotic Climate” program and the FLOW Facilitation Training. She was born and raised in Adrian, Michigan. Aimee is an edgy & reverent contemplative, healer and yoga/intuitive movement instructor. She also DJs under the name eXis10shAL. Aimee received her Bachelor's degree in English, Poetry, and Religion from Central Michigan University before obtaining her MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Georgia College & State University. Aimee's new book on eco-distress, How to Live in a Chaotic Climate: 10 Steps to Reconnect with Ourselves, Our Communities, and Our Planet, is available through Shambhala Publications.In this special episode, we discuss:Seeking beauty and gratitudeThe birth of Good Grief NetworkThe universality of griefEmbodimentPracticeUncertaintyLiminalityDeconstructionGrief as a portalDreamsConnect with LaUra and Aimee on their website or on Instagram @goodgriefnetworkOrder LaUra and Aimee's book, How to Live in a Chaotic Climate: 10 Steps to Reconnect with Ourselves, Our Communities, and Our PlanetPodcast music by Charles Kurtz+ Read transcript

This week I'm joined by Aimee Lewis Reau and LaUra Schmidt, authors of 'How to Live in a Chaotic Climate: 10 Steps to Reconnect with Ourselves, Our Communities, and Our Planet'.  They are also co-founders of the beautifully named Good Grief Network. Aimee also DJs under the name eXis10shAL (I mention in the episode that I would spell it here as it was too time-consuming to spell it out on the podcast). We had a fascinating discussion about their 10 Steps to Resilience and Empowerment in a Chaotic Climate model, about imagination, and about the inner skills we need for the challenges ahead. I hope you love it. Do let me know what you think.   Please consider supporting the podcast by visiting www.patreon.com/fromwhatiftowhatnext and becoming a patron.

LaUra Schmidt shares practical steps that allow us to build momentum for healing and action in this time of climate crisis. She shares how we can embrace ‘Good Grief' and embody the necessary actions to cool the rising temperatures in our politics, in our families, and within ourselves.

Promotional Links: StorySeed Message and Marketing Course - a comprehensive course for regenerative entrepreneurs to build and scale their message and marketing efforts. (currently at beta price)   Being an entrepreneur is tough, and being an impact entrepreneur working to create a regenerative business can feel like an uphill battle. In episode 132, LaUra Schmidt joins us to shed light on the importance of taking care of ourselves, our Zone 0, as we work to create positive change. She especially talks through the aspect of eco-grief, how to work through that feeling, and protecting ourselves from burnout (a common plague among entrepreneurs).    You can find the show notes and other resources on our site.   Guest Bio: LaUra Schmidt LaUra Schmidt is the founder of the Good Grief Network and the brain behind the “10-Steps to Resilience & Empowerment in a Chaotic Climate” program and the FLOW Facilitation Training modality. She is a lifelong student, curator, and practitioner of personal and collective resilience strategies. LaUra holds a BS in Environmental Studies, Biology, and Religious Studies and an MS is in Environmental Humanities. LaUra has earned certificates in “Integrative Somatic Trauma Therapy” and “Climate Psychology.”

Nach dem Gewinn des Grimme Online Awards für „Teurer Wohnen“ blicken wir in unserem Hauspodcast auf eine neue Staffel „Ach, Mensch“, Urlaub in Italien und die TOUR Transalp. Außerdem stellt sich unsere Social-Media-Redakteurin Laura Schmidt vor. (00:00:00) Intro (00:00:27) Begrüßung Laura Schmidt (00:00:50) Was Laura bei detektor.fm macht (00:01:56) SocialMedia - die richtige Dosis (00:03:53) SocialMedia - was es gut macht (00:05:07) Wie Laura SocialMedia Redakteurin bei uns wurde (00:09:31) Woraus Lauras Job so besteht (00:11:12) detektor.fm knackt die 2k-Marke auf Mastodon (00:12:19) detektor.fm gewinnt den GOA mit Teurer Wohnen (00:16:01) 10. Juli: Zurück zum Thema Themenwoche: Unter Wasser (00:17:02) 12. Juli: Neue Staffel Ach Mensch (00:18:25) 24. Juli: Popfilter - Sommerurlaub in Italien mit Erik Pfeil (00:20:24) Christian und Gregor on Tour Transalp 2023 - im Antritt (00:23:19) Was Laura und Christian im Juli empfehlen (00:26:51) Verabschiedung >> Artikel zum Nachlesen: https://detektor.fm/digital/destilliert-juli-2023-ach-mensch-transalp-laura-schmidt

Nach dem Gewinn des Grimme Online Awards für „Teurer Wohnen“ blicken wir in unserem Hauspodcast auf eine neue Staffel „Ach, Mensch“, Urlaub in Italien und die TOUR Transalp. Außerdem stellt sich unsere Social-Media-Redakteurin Laura Schmidt vor. (00:00:00) Intro (00:00:27) Begrüßung Laura Schmidt (00:00:50) Was Laura bei detektor.fm macht (00:01:56) SocialMedia - die richtige Dosis (00:03:53) SocialMedia - was es gut macht (00:05:07) Wie Laura SocialMedia Redakteurin bei uns wurde (00:09:31) Woraus Lauras Job so besteht (00:11:12) detektor.fm knackt die 2k-Marke auf Mastodon (00:12:19) detektor.fm gewinnt den GOA mit Teurer Wohnen (00:16:01) 10. Juli: Zurück zum Thema Themenwoche: Unter Wasser (00:17:02) 12. Juli: Neue Staffel Ach Mensch (00:18:25) 24. Juli: Popfilter - Sommerurlaub in Italien mit Erik Pfeil (00:20:24) Christian und Gregor on Tour Transalp 2023 - im Antritt (00:23:19) Was Laura und Christian im Juli empfehlen (00:26:51) Verabschiedung >> Artikel zum Nachlesen: https://detektor.fm/digital/destilliert-juli-2023-ach-mensch-transalp-laura-schmidt

Nach dem Gewinn des Grimme Online Awards für „Teurer Wohnen“ blicken wir in unserem Hauspodcast auf eine neue Staffel „Ach, Mensch“, Urlaub in Italien und die TOUR Transalp. Außerdem stellt sich unsere Social-Media-Redakteurin Laura Schmidt vor. (00:00:00) Intro (00:00:27) Begrüßung Laura Schmidt (00:00:50) Was Laura bei detektor.fm macht (00:01:56) SocialMedia - die richtige Dosis (00:03:53) SocialMedia - was es gut macht (00:05:07) Wie Laura SocialMedia Redakteurin bei uns wurde (00:09:31) Woraus Lauras Job so besteht (00:11:12) detektor.fm knackt die 2k-Marke auf Mastodon (00:12:19) detektor.fm gewinnt den GOA mit Teurer Wohnen (00:16:01) 10. Juli: Zurück zum Thema Themenwoche: Unter Wasser (00:17:02) 12. Juli: Neue Staffel Ach Mensch (00:18:25) 24. Juli: Popfilter - Sommerurlaub in Italien mit Erik Pfeil (00:20:24) Christian und Gregor on Tour Transalp 2023 - im Antritt (00:23:19) Was Laura und Christian im Juli empfehlen (00:26:51) Verabschiedung >> Artikel zum Nachlesen: https://detektor.fm/digital/destilliert-juli-2023-ach-mensch-transalp-laura-schmidt

Laura Schmidt of Notes to Self Positive Affirmation Socks is my guest! This is a must listen if you love being inspired by someone else's story of courage, heart, and incredible success. In this episode of Loving Later Life, Laura tells her fascinating story of how she went from a pre-med degree to building what her family calls a sock empire that is changing the world one positive message at a time. The idea for Notes to Self came to her at age 47. Please join us. I promise that you will be positively inspired!

Discover the transformative power of positive affirmations and positive thinking! This mindset can change the trajectory of your life. Let's explore how to turn your beliefs into a successful enterprise. Every great business starts with belief and conviction and making it successful takes passion, dedication, and hard work.In this episode, we are joined by Laura Schmidt, who shares with us her incredible journey of discovering the strength of positive thinking. Not only did she turn this belief into a successful business, but she also wants to spread her message far and wide: that words make all the differenceKey Learnings from the Episode:[16:06] Laura's advice on how to take your business idea from thinking to the action phase.[21:57] Why should you embrace customer care, not customer service?[26:56] What does working from your happy place mean to Laura?[29:29] Laura's advice to people starting the entrepreneurship journey.About Laura Schmidt - Enthusiasm takes on a whole new meaning when you meet Laura Schmidt. Operating at speeds of fast and faster, Laura always dreamed of starting her own business and making an impact on our world.As a mentor, entrepreneur, and mother, Laura learned firsthand the importance of speaking with positivity and encouragement to others. In her free time, she sought out books, advice, and mentors who would help her become the best, most positive version of herself. As her belief in the power of positivity grew, Laura wanted to share her message with the world: that words make all the difference®.So when an idea struck in 2011 to put positive affirmations on the toes of socks, she took off running. 12 years later, with hard work and the help of her family and community, Laura has built notes to self®, which her children call “a sock empire.” Starting with high-quality athletic socks, Laura's products went through dozens of prototype phases in search of the perfect sock. And though many will tell you these are the most comfortable socks you will ever own, the socks' true impact comes from the words. Made exclusively in the U.S.A., notes to self® products are sold on notestoself.com, in hundreds of stores nationwide (Hallmark stores, hospital gift shops, boutiques, and airports, to name a few), and to companies for corporate gifting.To date, her company has donated over 120,000 pairs of notes to self® socks to homeless shelters, women's shelters, and children in great need. As notes to self® continues to grow, Laura hopes the dreams and confidence of people of all ages grow so they know they can accomplish great things!How to connect with Laura Schmidt:Website: https://www.notestoself.com/ Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/notestoselfsocksInstagram - https://www.instagram.com/notestoselfsocks/ LinkedIn - https://www.pinterest.com/notestoselfsock/YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/user/notestoselfsocksTwitter - https://twitter.com/notestoselfsockAbout the Host -Belinda Ellsworth is a Speaker, Trainer, Best-Selling Author, and PodcasterShe has been a professional speaker, mover, and shaker for more than 25 years. Having built three successful companies, she has helped thousands of entrepreneurs make better decisions, create successful systems, and build business strategies using her "Four Pillars of Success" system.Belinda has always had a passion and zest for life with the skill for turning dreams into reality. How to Connect with Belinda:Facebook -https://www.facebook.com/workfromyourhappyplaceLinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/belindaellsworthInstagram -https://www.instagram.com/workfromyourhappyplace/Website - www.workfromyourhappyplace.comJoin my membership program and discover the art of creating and sharing amazing experiences with like-minded people, all from the comfort of your own home. You get to connect with others online, learn new skills and techniques, and grow your network without ever having to leave your computer screen. To know more, click on the link https://workfromyourhappyplace.com/vip/Quotes:“The subconscious mind is highly open very early in the morning and late in the evening.”"With the right approach and careful planning, you can achieve what once seemed impossible."

How to make people stay? What motivates employees? What leads longterm motivation at work? How to optimise HR processes? How to drive change and adapt to the current employee requests? Hosted by Laura Schmidt, Co-Founder of Elevatr, Sabrina Westphälinger from Accor and Kathrin Gollubits from 25hours Hotels share valuable insights from their employer perspectives from the hotel industry. Just two examples: Accor launched an “Employee value proposition”, a promise to their employees in return for providing work with 4 pillars. 25hours, the self-proclaimed “party queen” amongst hotel chains, provides a proactive employee-driven approach encouraging employees to develop themselves and their strengths further. A must-listen to everyone interested in employer/employee success stories!

In this episode Prof. Dr. Stefan Remhof, professor at IU International University, shares the perspective on shortage of skilled labor from a researcher's point of view. The IU conducted a study analyzing aspects that motivate employees to stay at their workplace. One outcome: The higher the motivation, the higher the satisfaction. But that's easier said than done, isn't it? So Remhof shares viable success factors for employers. Here are only a few: Keep employees motivated, give feedback, show anticipation and communicate. Another interesting finding (by the way, proven in our previous episode on that topic, too!) concerns Gen Z who demand freedom and guidance at the same time, which leaves employers challenged as these two seem to be quite contradictory. But there is a solution! Tune in for a very inspirational talk with Prof. Dr. Remhof and host Laura Schmidt, Co-Founder of elevatr.

Pea aphids love to feed off the sap flowing to new pods on the plant. The trouble is, just two aphids per plant at the right stage can siphon off as much as five per cent of yield. Laura Schmidt, production specialist with the Manitoba Pulse and Soybean Growers, says that modern pea varieties are... Read More

Zweimal im Monat kratzt Laura Schmidt, die in Wirklichkeit anders heißt, den Schimmel von der Wand in ihrer Wohnung ab. Dieser ist für die 37-jährige alleinerziehende Mutter von vier Kindern mittlerweile nicht mehr nur ein Wohn-, sondern auch ein Gesundheitsproblem. Darum hat sie sich an die Caritas gewandt. Dort kennt man solche Probleme. Bernhard Löhlein berichtet (Mitarbeit: Peter Esser). Aus der Sendung: Sonntag Morgen vom 26.06.22

On this episode of Banking on KC, Laura Schmidt, founder of Notes to Self, joins host Kelly Scanlon to discuss how her business is delivering messages of positivity through everyday products. Tune in to discover: What inspired Laura's entrepreneurial journey. How she built her business from an idea to a national sensation. Why words matter. How the power of positive thinking can change the world, one person at a time. Country Club Bank – Member FDIC

After a week off for Victoria Day (and host Lyndsey Smith busy caring for lambs), we’re back! This episode of The Agronomists — brought to you by the Pest & Predators podcast, RealAg Radio, and ADAMA Canada — features Dr. Dave Hooker, associate professor at the University of Guelph-Ridgetown, and Laura Schmidt, production specialist with... Read More

After a week off for Victoria Day (and host Lyndsey Smith busy caring for lambs), we’re back! This episode of The Agronomists — brought to you by the Pest & Predators podcast, RealAg Radio, and ADAMA Canada — features Dr. Dave Hooker, associate professor at the University of Guelph-Ridgetown, and Laura Schmidt, production specialist with... Read More

Ein totes Mädchen, in Plastik gewickelt, vergraben. Keine verwertbaren Spuren. Keine konkreten Anhaltspunkte. Ein toess Mädchen ist nicht genug, im Polizeiruf gibt es sogar zwei davon. Was kannst du uns über beide verraten, Philipp Münscher? Kriminaloberkommissarin Elisabeth "Bessie" Eyckhoff (Verena Altenberger) versucht, den Mord an der 16-jährigen Laura Schmidt aufzuklären und steht vor einer fast unlösbaren Aufgabe. Gemeinsam mit Dennis Eden (Stephan Zinner), der mittlerweile auch zur Mordkommission gewechselt ist, sucht Bessie nach Hinweisen und stößt dabei auf einen früheren Fall: das Verschwinden der damals ebenfalls 16-jährigen Anne Ludwig. Gibt es zwischen diesen beiden Fällen einen Zusammenhang? Beide Mädchen sind nach dem abendlichen Eislaufen in einen weißen Transporter eingestiegen. Auf einmal taucht Caroline Ludwig (Anna Grisebach) im Kommissariat auf. Sie möchte wissen, ob das gefundene Mädchen ihre vermisste Tochter Anna ist. Bessie muss dies verneinen. Als erste Ermittlungen ergeben, dass ausgerechnet Caroline Ludwig wohl als Letzte mit Laura gesprochen hatte, steht die sehr labil wirkende Frau unter dringendem Tatverdacht. Bessie glaubt an ihre Unschuld, aber die Beweise gegen Caroline Ludwig verdichten sich immer mehr. Foto: BR/Bavaria Fiction GmbH/Hendrik Heiden

Ein totes Mädchen, in Plastik gewickelt, vergraben. Keine verwertbaren Spuren. Keine konkreten Anhaltspunkte. Ein toess Mädchen ist nicht genug, im Polizeiruf gibt es sogar zwei davon. Was kannst du uns über beide verraten, Philipp Münscher? Kriminaloberkommissarin Elisabeth "Bessie" Eyckhoff (Verena Altenberger) versucht, den Mord an der 16-jährigen Laura Schmidt aufzuklären und steht vor einer fast unlösbaren Aufgabe. Gemeinsam mit Dennis Eden (Stephan Zinner), der mittlerweile auch zur Mordkommission gewechselt ist, sucht Bessie nach Hinweisen und stößt dabei auf einen früheren Fall: das Verschwinden der damals ebenfalls 16-jährigen Anne Ludwig. Gibt es zwischen diesen beiden Fällen einen Zusammenhang? Beide Mädchen sind nach dem abendlichen Eislaufen in einen weißen Transporter eingestiegen. Auf einmal taucht Caroline Ludwig (Anna Grisebach) im Kommissariat auf. Sie möchte wissen, ob das gefundene Mädchen ihre vermisste Tochter Anna ist. Bessie muss dies verneinen. Als erste Ermittlungen ergeben, dass ausgerechnet Caroline Ludwig wohl als Letzte mit Laura gesprochen hatte, steht die sehr labil wirkende Frau unter dringendem Tatverdacht. Bessie glaubt an ihre Unschuld, aber die Beweise gegen Caroline Ludwig verdichten sich immer mehr. Foto: BR/Bavaria Fiction GmbH/Hendrik Heiden

Upon completion of The Lord of the Rings, new readers often turn to The Silmarillion. But J.R.R. Tolkien's epic collection of mythopoeic stories—covering everything from the creation of Eä (the Ainulindalë), the Valar and Mayar, the creation of the Elves as well as the events of the First and Second Ages of Middle-earth—can be overwhelming. Thankfully, Laura Schmidt, Wade Center Archivist, joins Drs. Crystal and David C. Downing to walk us through to the larger themes and storylines of this amazing volume of stories.

A profession of love! In The „We Love Hospitality“ Volume des elevatr Podcasts sprechen Laura Schmidt und Maria Mittendorfer von Fair Job Hotels mit Hospitality Enthusiasts über die Sinnstiftung und Uniqueness der Hospitality. In der Kick-off-Episode verrät Maria, wie ihre Liebe zur Hotellerie entfacht wurde und stimmt gemeinsam mit Laura auf die elfteilige Staffel ein.

LaUra Schmidt co-founded the non-profit Good Grief Network in 2016 with her wife, Aimee Lewis-Reau, to provide a space to help people cope with climate anxiety. Passionate about saving endangered species and panic-stricken about the climate emergency, LaUra had been suffering from her own climate grief and impotence. A childhood trauma survivor, LaUra had found solace in Adult Children of Alcoholics. So she took that group's 12-step model (an offshoot of AA) and developed a 10-step program for others like her. Today, it's helped more than 2,500 climate anxiety sufferers from more than 14 countries—and growing.  Schmidt describes the despair of climate anxiety as “when we wake up to how severe the climate crisis is, paralleled with our social injustice issues... our ecosite issues and our habitat destruction issues.” That wake-up call can make anyone question themselves, she says: “It really takes on a personal blend of, ‘ What can I possibly do?'” The Good Grief Network arrived right on time. A recent study published in the medical journal The Lancet found that of 10,000 young people, ages 16 to 25, in 10 countries, 84% are worried about the climate. The same study found more than 50% feel sad, anxious, angry, powerless, helpless and guilty about climate change.Forty-five percent said climate anxiety was affecting their ability to function in daily life.The authors wrote that this stress threatens the health and well-being of young people and there is an “urgent need” for an increase in research and governmental response to this critical issue.  Since its founding, The Good Grief Network has served more than 2,500 participants in more than 14 countries. Schmidt, who describes herself as a “truth-seeker, cultural critic, grief-worker, and the granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor” hopes to help others around the world develop the resiliency and skill set to create change.Resources mentioned in this episode: IPCC: AR6 Climate Change 2021The Lancet: Young People's Voices on Climate Anxiety and Government Betrayal, and Moral Injury: A Global PhenomenonAdditional Information:Today: Climate Anxiety is Real: How to Cope When it Feels Like the World is Burning  Results of the first large-scale, global peer-reviewed study on climate anxiety in children and young adults was published in the scientific journal The Lancet on Tuesday, September 14.Gizmodo: The Kids Are Not Alright  In what Gizmodo called “rare candor” by scientists, the authors said that they had hoped for significant results. But they added, “We wish that these results had not been quite so devastating.”Washington Post: Climate disasters will strain our mental health system. It's time to adaptThe Atlantic: A World Without ChildrenFollow Good Grief Network: LinkedIn: laUra schmidtWebsite: Good Grief NetworkTwitter: Good Grief Network (@GoodGriefNetwk)Instagram: Good Grief Network (@goodgriefnetwork)Follow EDF:Not yet receiving the Degrees newsletter? Join us here! Twitter: EDF (@EnvDefenseFund)Facebook: Environmental Defense FundInstagram: environmental_defense_fundLinkedIn: Environmental Defense Fund

Rex Academy: Let's Talk Computer Science In our 38th episode, we had the opportunity to interview Ms. Laura Schmidt, the Chief Talent Development Officer for the Milwaukee Tech Coalition on her opinions regarding CS education in k-20 and her strategies to double tech talent in Milwaukee. Curriculum Licensing to K12 Schools | Online Private Classes | Self Paced Online Lessons. Visit www.Rex.academy for more information or Call us on : +1 972-215-9962

I'm Taking New Nutrition Clients I'm currently taking on 5 new nutrition clients, so if you're looking for help on optimizing your diet for climbing, or you have some other health issues you'd like help with, I'm here for you! You can find out more about my nutrition offerings here. About Laura Schmidt My original idea for this podcast was to have a former nutrition client on the show to do a refresher session with them. I thought I'd show you how I work with clients and let you learn from their situation and how I worked with them. When my former client Laura Schmidt responded to my call for potential interviewees, she said she'd love to be on the show and that things were going really well for her. But I had no idea how well they were going until this interview happened. She basically had a life transformation since working with me a year ago, and it had a lot to do with her willingness to fully embrace the suggestions I made for her diet, sleep, and exercise habits. In the episode, Laura Schmidt talks about the changes she made to her diet and lifestyle since we worked together and how they improved her energy levels, her climbing, and her quality of life. We worked together for one month, and when I first met her, she had a food aversion, meaning she really didn't enjoy eating, and she had some disordered eating behaviors. Her energy was very low most of the time, and she had a hard time getting through workouts or climbing days without feeling totally exhausted during and after her sessions. She was underweight and not where she wanted to be with her climbing. Through working together, I made suggestions to make her meals more palatable, encouraged her to eat 3 full meals per day instead of snacking all the time, and I gave her some solid recommendations for calorie and macro amounts to help stabilize her energy. In this conversation we talk about the changes she made, what it meant for her lifestyle to make those changes, and how they affected her health and well-being. Her energy is much better, she's climbing harder, her mood is better, and she has a much better relationship with food now. Honestly, Laura's eating was pretty similar to what I see most of my clients doing when we first start working together. Don't feel like you won't be able to relate with Laura because she has an aversion to food; she was forcing herself to eat, and it was the same types of things (and at the same times of day) that most people do, so these changes I suggested to her will likely apply to you, too. She is so passionate about this topic now because she feels so much better. We discussed in detail the changes she made, talked about how she fuels now for climbing days, and how all of this affected her relationship with her daughter and her daughter's relationship with food. I'm so excited for this episode to be out in the world because it just shows you how incredibly powerful small changes to your diet can be. I hope you enjoy it! Laura Schmidt Episode Details Her aversion to food How she overcame a plateau in her climbing through food She was “on paper” doing all the right things, but it wasn't working So tired she couldn't train or climb really Doctors couldn't help her Her thoughts on caffeine now and before we worked together What happened with her body image through this transformation How she has energy to have passions now How her energy increased so much A diet log analysis to help her make things even better Show Links Work with me on your nutrition Laura's Instagram: @girlmeetsjoy   Please Review The Podcast on iTunes Please give the podcast an honest review on iTunes here to help the show reach more curious climbers around the world.

The Art of... | Talk [08.06.2021] Total Refusal in conversation with Jérôme Nguyen, Margit Rosen and Laura Schmidt. Computer games are at once the poster boy of the capitalist entertainment industry and the neglected mass medium of our time. The artists' collective Total Refusal explores this ever expanding field with artistic interventions. Important impulses are the role of art as a political medium, media upcycling as well as hyper-realism in computer games. The artists' collective Total Refusal was founded in 2018 by Robin Klengel, Leonhard Müllner and Michael Stumpf, and joined by Susanna Flock, Adrian Jonas Haim and Jona Kleinlein in 2020. Launched as "Digital Disarmament Movement", the group now defines itself as a "pseudo-Marxist media guerilla". The open collective criticizes existing practices in the genre of video games and opens up a new perspective with tools of appropriation and repurposing of game resources: "Acknowledging that this media is currently failing to realize its cultural potential, we aim to appropriate digital game spaces and put them to new use. Operating within games but casting aside the intended gameplay, we dedicate these resources to new activities and narratives, seeking to create 'public' spaces with a critical potential." Since 2018, the work of the artists' collective has been awarded 27 prizes and was showcased at more than 130 international film and video festivals as well as in numerous exhibitions, including the Berlinale, BFI London, Doc Fortnight at MoMA, NY, HEK Basel, Ars Electronica and the Venice Biennale 2021. Since 2019, Total Refusal is also represented in the ZKM collection. Their work »Circumventing the Circle of Death. A Pacifist Finger Excercise« is presented in the exhibition »zkm_gameplay. the next level«.

If you don't think a pair of socks can change the world... you haven't met Laura Schmidt.   Laura is the 'Chief Positive Person' of 'Notes To Self Socks' and she believes that WORDS MATTER!!!  One MILLION pairs of positive socks later, she sits down with the 'RadioDana Diaries' to explain how it all came about.  YES, famous people wear her socks.  But so do a TON of my friends because I started giving them out as gifts several years ago.  YOU are SMART, YOU are CONFIDENT and YOU are BRAVE!!!  Just ask Laura Schmidt!!!!  She is my friend, and she is Diary Entry #13... 

Was ist elevatr? in Folge 66 von Generation Hotelier mit Laura Schmidt, Zeèv Rosenberg und Alex Obertop

We're well into the growing season at this point. This episode aims to provide an update on how canola and soybeans on the Prairies are handling the challenges of this specific year – namely, the heat and drought conditions. Top Crop Manager associate editor Alex Barnard speaks with Ian Epp, Saskatchewan agronomy specialist with the Canola Council of Canada, and Laura Schmidt, production specialist, west, with Manitoba Pulse and Soybean Growers, for a mid-season update on crop progress, weather effects, and pest pressure and management tips. Never miss an episode of Inputs by subscribing to the podcast on https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/inputs-by-top-crop-manager/id1494756804 (Apple Podcasts), https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5jYXB0aXZhdGUuZm0vaW5wdXRzLWJ5LXRvcC1jcm9wLW1hLw?hl=en-CA (Google Podcasts), https://open.spotify.com/show/0VU7HhyqQJPs3XEGMDLWhm (Spotify), or wherever you listen to podcasts. Sponsored by https://climatefieldview.ca/ (Climate FieldView). Show noteshttps://www.seedmb.ca/ (Seed Manitoba) https://www.canolacouncil.org/ (Canola Council of Canada (CCC)) https://www.manitobapulse.ca/ (Manitoba Pulse and Soybean Growers (MPSG)) https://www.topcropmanager.com/forewarned-is-forearmed-soybean-cyst-nematode-in-manitoba/ (Forewarned is forearmed: Soybean cyst nematode in Manitoba)

Zwischen September 2019 und Oktober 2020 war das Forschungsschiff Polarstern des Alfred-Wegener-Instituts im Rahmen der MOSAiC-Expedition in der Arktis unterwegs. MOSAiC war die größte Arktis-Expedition aller Zeiten und hatte primär das Ziel, Messdaten für die Verbesserung von Klimamodellen zu sammeln. In dieser Episode sprechen wir mit Polarstern-Kapitän Thomas Wunderlich über das Schiff und die nautischen Aspekte, mit Expeditionsleiter Markus Rex über die wissenschaftlichen Ziele der Expedition und die Experimente, mit Modellierer Helge Goessling über die Verwendung der gemessenen Daten in Klimamodellen, und mit Laura Schmidt über ihre Tätigkeit als Eisbärenwache. Quelle: http://omegataupodcast.net/369-die-mosaic-expedition/ / Bitte abonniert den Original-Podcast-Feed: http://omegataupodcast.net/category/podcast/feed

Today I am joined by Laura Schmidt Ph.D. to discuss how some tobacco companies took over the world's largest food companies in the late sixties and early seventies. How junk food companies market their products to children and why regulation is key to solving the countries weight pandemic and much more. Topics Include:Sugar addictionChronic diseases connected to sugar consumptionTaxing sugar and sodaCampaign finance reformWhy will power isn't enough to stop us from eating unhealthy foodsEffective regulationsFood versus food-like substancesAnd other topics…Laura A. Schmidt, Ph.D., is a Professor of Health Policy in the School of Medicine at the University of California at San Francisco. She holds a joint appointment in the Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies and the Department of Anthropology, History and Social Medicine She received her Ph.D. training in sociology at UC Berkeley and while there, completed doctoral coursework in public health, and holds a masters degree in clinical social work.  Dr. Laura Schmidt works to understand how changing lifestyles are contributing to globally rising rates of chronic disease and seeks options on what to do about it. Dr. Schmidt bridges the worlds of biomedical research and population health in exploring the growing pressures of globalizing economies, rising inequality, and the marketization of products that are undermining our health. She is currently writing a book about the rise of corporate medicine in America. Resources Mentioned:NY Times Paper – How Big Tobacco Hooked Children on Sugary DrinksWebsite – https://sugarscience.ucsf.eduTed Talk – Why we can't stop eating unhealthy foodsUSFC - Sugar, and other food industry documents

In today's episode I read an article written by LaUra Schmidt (founder of the Good Grief Network). LaUra uses a critique of the film "Planet of the Humans" to make a plea to the rest of us to take an honest look at the current state of affairs and look beyond our own immediate self interests in order to realign ourselves with a more sustainable path forward. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stephen-st-peter/support

Laura Schmidt started notes to self, llc to put her belief in the power of positive thinking into action (and on people's feet!). The idea for notes to self® socks arrived while she was looking at her feet. During a trip to Western Kansas with her family on New Year's Day 2011, Laura watched the […]